You're Wrong About - The Great American Spelling Bee with Gabe Henry

Episode Date: April 14, 2026

Can you use the word in a sentence? For this episode, Spelling Correspondent Gabe Henry takes Sarah through the surprisingly rampageous (r-a-m-p-a-g-e-o-u-s) history of the Spelling Bee, a uniquely American phenomenon. From the earliest examples of late night “spelling matches,” to the rough-and-tumble contests of the early frontier, to the controversy of the first National Spelling Bee, it turns out that these mild-mannered academic flexes were once both raucous and revolutionary. Gabe also brings his own spelling bee to test the gifted child that still buzzes within Sarah Marshall. Digressions include Ben Franklin’s morning routine, why we need more statues of kids, and the Wolf Blitzer Hologram.More Gabe Henry:gabehenry.comGabe's book Enough is Enuf: Our Failed Attempts to Make English Easier to Spell Produced + edited by Miranda ZicklerMore You're Wrong About:Bonus Episodes on PatreonBuy cute merchYWA on InstagramSupport the show

I want to see the queen of the spelling bee. I bet she's pretty scary. Welcome to your wrong about. With me today is Gabe Henry, and we're going to talk about spelling, and I'm going to sound like pepperan, and I'm much too cool for seventh grade. Gabe, thank you so much for coming back. Thank you so much for having me, Sarah. You were on to talk about the movement to standardize American spelling

when we last talk to you and about your book, And I don't know, I, what is your wheelhouse, I guess? What kind of a correspondent are we going to name you for this show? Would you like to be the spelling correspondent or is that a little bit too unfun sounding? I would be so honored. You know, I think ever since I lost my spelling bee in third grade, I've been trying to process my trauma in a really healthy and constructive way. And I think being your spelling correspondent will do the trick. Okay, perfect.

And I also will. confess at the start that I got dinged on, I think, a fifth grade, not a spelling test exactly, but I think we just had to, like, write the names of the states. And I had been reading the Dear America book about the Oregon Trail, which spelled Missouri, Missouri, Missouri. And I got a point off for that. And I'm so a little sad about it. And that was in 1999. You know, I've, um, I spent much of this past year speaking to different audiences about language and about spelling. And I always like to begin with an icebreaker. So I'll say to the audience, raise your hand if you remember what word you won on or lost on in your childhood spelling bee. And no matter the city, no matter

what age I'm speaking to, the hands always shoot up in the air. And everyone has a story. And there'll be old ladies who will share how they misspelled, you know, the word beautiful when they were seven years old in the 1940s. And they're still really angry about it because it was just so unfair. You know, Billy got easier words. Yeah, and there's something, I mean, we talked when we had you on last about what was your description of the English language? I guess there's a few good ones, but like a bunch of different languages in a trench coat was one. Yeah, eight languages in a trench coat. Yeah, and that comes through in the spelling. And I guess, yeah, what are, what are you talking about today and what sight of childhood intense feelings are we about to go into?

Well, I mean, to start, I love how spelling is such this, it's a universal subject that everyone has some strong emotions about or frustration or childhood trauma. And everyone has this like core shared childhood memory of standing on stage and trying to spell a word, at least in this country. And I mean, that's what got me interested in the history of spelling bees and why they're common in America, but not in other countries and how it became this big national event. So the way I want to start, and I apologize ahead of time, but I'm going to put you on the spot. Okay. So I want to start by giving you a mini spelling bee. Eridocytitis. Okay, let's go.

And I really want to set the stage for this. So I want you to feel what it's like to be inside one of these national competitions. I want you to be nervous. I'm already nervous. This is working. Yeah. So I want you to close your eyes. Okay.

You picture yourself on stage in front of thousands of people. And you have these bright, hot spotlights beating down on you. There are television cameras pointing at you. There's a placard around your neck that says, Sarah, with an H on it, I hope. Yeah. I like it when you, like, order at Starbucks and they're like, with an H. And I'm like, I'll know what you're saying if you say it without it. But anyway.

Yeah, I actually wanted to ask you that just for a tangent. I realized the other day that I have four people in my phone name Sarah, and two of them spell it with an H and two of them spell it without an H. So I'm curious, how often do people misspell your name without the H? Not super often. And also second question, do you harbor a lifelong resentment of Sarah's without an H? Well, okay. So I would like to say no. And I don't think it's resentment exactly.

But when I made another Sarah, I'm like, with or without an H. And if they say with, I'm like, which is correct. And if they're without, then I'm like, oh, that's nice. Because I feel like if, and this is, this maybe relates to the whole spelling thing, because I feel like, I don't know, many, if not most people feel that like words feel differently based on how they're spelled, even if they're pronounced the same in an odd way. And I'll take a Sarah without an age at Starbucks. But if someone has been walking through their entire life as a Sarah without an age, I do feel that their life has been. affected and they're a slightly different person than a Sarah with. Worse, slightly worse than you?

Well, I don't know. Maybe like, maybe they've saved time from all the ages that everybody didn't have to write and their family like saved up an extra few minutes and they used it to play boggle. I have no idea what the series are living like. It's completely different. It's like when people are like Portland is like Seattle, right? I'm like, no, they could not be more different.

And then I'm like, they're the two most similar American cities probably. Like you could not find us any more similar. And yet for that reason, it seems completely different. It sounds like you have a healthy relationship with ageless Sarah's. I know one particular ageless Sarah who will just stare daggers into your soul if you add an H to her name. And that's fair. She's not, she's not named Sarah. She's named Sarah.

And it's different. Like, I remember in serendipity, Kate Beckin-Zale is a Sarah, but then you see it spelled it out an age. And I was like, well, it's completely different. That's not really. Sarah. But there's no other way to spell Gabe that I've ever heard of unless you added like a silent H after the G, but that would just be mental. That would be insane.

So, so you're on stage. You got your placard around your neck spelled correctly. Yep. With an H. Thank God. Their television cameras pointed at you. Your family is out there in the crowd somewhere back home while your your classmates and your teachers are watching on TV.

I guess in the scenario, you're like 12. So picture 12 year old Sarah. Oh, man. And then in front of you, just below the stage, there's a panel of judges, kind of American Idol style. And in the middle of the panel is the main judge. He's known as the pronouncer. And you step up to the microphone. And he says death or exile, I guess.

And he says, you are not moving on to Hollywood. So you step up to the microphone. And the pronouncer says, Sarah, your word is. Okay, now for this scenario, I had some choices. Oh, boy. I thought about going with some ridiculously long anti-disestablishmentarianism type word with a thousand syllables. But I thought, no, I'll go easier on Sarah. And I decided instead to go with just a simple two-syllable word.

So, again, you're on stage. The room is quiet. The pronouncer looks at you and says, Sarah, your word is. is fuchsia. Fusha. And then from what I've seen on TV, you can, like, kind of stall by being like, can you use it in a sentence?

Can I have the derivation? Yeah. And you can ask me all those questions. Oh, okay. Can you use it in a sentence? Sure. So I found this very dramatic. I'm very prepared to do my homework.

I have this quote here from Henry Miller. Very dramatic quote. So here it is. For in Mexico, ladies and gentlemen, It's always high noon, and what glows is fuchsia, and what's dead is dead. Oh, Henry. Not that one. And can I have the derivation?

The derivation is German. Oh. Okay. So I'm like positive that I can spell fuchsia, but simply from the like mental exercise of imagining being in the situation, I'm like, can I though? Okay. Fuchsia. F-U-C-H-S-I-A.

Fuchsia. That is correct. Yay. Oh, thank God. I'm still in it. I'm genuinely amazed. Thank you. We never did spelling bees actually that I can remember when I was growing up or spelling contests at school. So I kind of, and I was like a pretty good, hey, we got a cat. And I was a pretty good speller. I think just because I read so much, which then of course meant that I would spell things like Missouri. But I was always, I don't know. I always wanted to have the spelling bee experience. And I think, it would have freaked me out pretty much instantly, but it would have been, I don't know, this was nice. I got to do the thing I didn't get to do. Well, there it is. You just had the experience. It's over. You won. Wow. Yeah. I guess there were no other contestants. We only had one word prepared and we

only invited one person. Yeah. You know what? I'll take it. I'm happy with it. I won. Well, I will give you some more praise, which is that I've asked dozens of people how to spell fuchsia. That's kind of like my got your word because everyone misspells it and you're the first person who had actually spelled it right on the first try. Oh, that's exciting. God, I'm like genuinely very pleased by that. There is a quote unquote gifted child inside me who's still desperate for validation. When I think about the like national spelling B scenario you described, I think A about how intense just the friction between my parents, that's something that that big would bring up when I was that age and how I can imagine being pretty stressed about that. And just like, yeah, the feeling of having to do it in front

of all those people, even if it's something that you know that you're good at at home. It's just like, it is fascinating to think of kids being under that amount of pressure, although I guess we kind of like to do that in a lot of different areas. Yeah, I wonder if the reason you get such like brainiac prodigies from, you know, six-year-olds and eight-year-olds is because they don't have that sense of like self-consciousness or mortality yet. Like they, they're, I don't know. Because I think when you hit high school and you have to make a speech on stage, your body thinks it's dying. Like it shakes. Yeah. Or at least mine. But I think as a kid, you could be, you know, a concert pianist and maybe that just, that shakiness doesn't come. Yeah. Or you just get used to it maybe. I don't know.

Yeah, and there's this, I mean, I feel like people always like to talk about how kids are resilient. And I was thinking about that the other day. And I was like, you know, I think we, I think we use that phrase to excuse ourselves for more than we should, maybe, as adults. Because I think what we mean when we talk about the resilience of kids is that they can get through almost anything when it is happening. And then years later, they're going to have to figure out how to deal with it and, you know, get therapy and stuff. so that I think we confuse the ability to survive extreme situations while they're upon you with them not mattering to you that much, you know? Yeah, I think you're right. Yeah, but yeah, it's, I don't know, I also remember being that age and kind of sincerely

believing that I could maybe learn everything if I managed my time well, you know? And there's like, there's a real, there must be a word for this in some more pensive language than ours, I hope, but just the feeling of like, there's. There are so many books I'm just not going to have time to read. I'm not even going to have time to read all the Stephen King books probably during my lifetime. Like I have other stuff to do. And if I could have an extra life just for reading, I would take it. And I could learn how to spell everything. Have you ever seen the Twilight episode, Time Enough at Last? Oh, yeah. Well, no, I haven't because my mom told me about it when I was about 12. And I thought it was so awful that I've watched

many Twilight Zone episodes and I love that show and I recommend it to people constantly. I was thinking about it last night. I was trying to remember an episode and it was something, something Rance McGrew. But I've never watched time enough at last because I think it's just the worst thing I can think of, you know, and also I wear really thick glasses. Yeah, you're really susceptible to the fate of Burgess Meredith. Yeah. It could happen to me. It could happen to me like later today, when I really think about it. So yeah, it's just too real, man. I know. Well, so anyway, you did a great job on the spelling bee, at least. Yeah, I feel great. I have a little trophy. So that was basically what a modern spelling bee looks like. But contests like this have been going on

in one form or another since the 1700s, and they weren't always called bees. They were called spelling trials, spelling schools. Yeah. Spelling trial is a good one. I know, because you really feel like you're going to be sentenced to some terrible fate if you miss it. They were called spelling matches, spelling wars, spelling fights. Okay. And I think fights is a pretty accurate name considering how many of these contests did devolve into full-blown physical fights. Really? When are we talking here? Like 19th century? Okay. So I have this New York Times article.

Oh, my God. From 1877. I'm so excited. And it's describing a spelling contest that took place between. between two teenage girls in New York City. So I'm just going to read this snippet. And this is not a formal spelling me. This is kind of like...

Like a we don't have TV yet, kind of a thing. Like a West Side Story, we meet in an alleyway with knives kind of spelling bamb. All right, of course. Yeah. All right. So this is from 1877. Nellie Wilson and Rosie McGrath met on Saturday night last, and by mutual agreement, organized an impromptu spelling match upon the spot.

All went well until Rosie... having given her friend a particularly difficult word which she could not master, hailed her defeat with a peculiarly aggravating taunt of, I told you so. The expression aroused Nellie's wrath, and the match, which had been solely designed to settle the question of orthographical prowess, became a wrestling match,

which ended by both contestants being taken to the station house after a desperate onslaught on each other's fair tresses. The story of the match, was told to Justice Kilbrith at the Essex Market Police Court, and he sent Nellie to prison for five days. Wow. Nelly. Yeah.

Oh, Nelly. As far as we know, that's the only spelling bee that ever led directly to prison time. So they, in the 1800s, they could sometimes be these like playground battles, like these real contentious, uh, challenges. But originally when they started out, they were a teaching tool. And they were mostly used in New England during colonial. times in the 1700s. And it was just a way to get kids reading and writing by making it fun and competitive. Because apparently if you teach kids how to spell by turning it into a competition,

it's just easier. Yeah, I believe it. And then, you know, maybe the kids get violent eventually, but let's worry about that later. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So they were referred to originally as spelling schools. And they were very popular. It was a diversion for the class. It also probably got kids' energy out. So, you know, they weren't as, you know, mischievous. So I have this description here from a Connecticut man in the 1700s describing one of these spelling schools. And he says, Another of our customs was to choose sides in the classroom to spell once or twice a week. The words to be spelled went from side to side. And at the conclusion, the side that one was permitted to leave the school room, while the other had to sweep the room and build the fires the

next morning. Oh, my God. Yeah. So they were, you know, you're learning. but there are also stakes. So, you know, you have to, you're entering a labor contract. If you lose, you've got some work to do. Yeah. And one of the reasons these spelling competitions start to emerge around the 1700s is this is when dictionaries start to appear. And we talked about this last time.

You know, we get our first true English dictionary in 1755 from Samuel Johnson. Please listen to our previous episode about that. It's a delight. Yeah. And then prior to this, there was. was just really no single standardized way to spell in English. It was very loose. Right. It was flexible. Which as you point out in your book, like Shakespeare spelled his own name differently in every signature we have of his, right? Yeah. Sometimes he spelled it with an X where the

K should be. Sometimes he spelled it with. That's his emo phase. Yeah. And sometimes he'd spell it with. Oh, Shacks. He'd kind of like just start out spelling his name correctly and then just take like a bar trumpet solo. It was just improv. It's jazz spelling. Yeah. Yeah. It's jazz spelling.

I like that. That's good branding. So then in the 1700s, along come these dictionaries. And suddenly there's this notion of a right way to spell a word and a wrong way to spell a word. And this is really what sparks this gamification of spelling because now you have the dictionary as this arbiter. Right. Because in the past, if you tried to have a spelling be someone would just kind of throw a bunch of spaghetti at the wall and you'd be like, yeah, sure, why not? That makes sense.

I don't even know how you'd test it back then. You'd be like orange and they'd be like, O, R-A-N-J and be like, yeah, okay, I'll take it. I'll take it. I'll allow it. It's an all-allow-it kind of a spelling B. Yeah, it's really subjective judge, you know, he's really making the decisions there. I mean, I guess it's like the way we judge most talent competitions where the judges are like, I do or do not like that. And it's nice that, you know, it's nice to have objectivity. It makes it's more democratic, but anyway. Well, you spelled orange correctly, but you were out of key. So you're going home.

But I don't like your outfit. 4.7. So basically, then along come these dictionaries, and then there's this arbiter and these games start coming about and they become part of colonial education. And eventually, people realize that there's kind of a spectator appeal in it. Like people like watching these contests almost more than participating in them. So once people realize this appeal, schools began holding these contests in the evening instead of in the daytime so that families and neighbors could come out and watch.

And they kind of transform from this classroom exercise into more of an event, like an entertainment. And I have a description here of one of these contests from the early 1800s. And what I love about this description is it starts off sounding like a sports play-by-play and ends up sounding almost like a Robert Frost poem. Okay. Down goes one after another, as words of three syllables are followed by those of four, and these again by words of similar pronunciation and diverse significations,

until only Moses and Susan remain. The spelling book has been exhausted. Dictionaries are turned over. Memories are ransacked for words of learned length and thundering sound, until by and by Moses comes down like a tree. And Susan flutters there still like a little leaf aloft that the frost and the fall have forgotten. The victory is declared and the contest is dismissed.

There are hearts that flutter and hearts that ache, secret hopes that are not realized, and fond looks that are not returned. There is a jingling among the bells at the door. One after another, the sleighs dash up, receive their nestling freight and are gone. God, that's beautiful. It's a lot of pathos.

I know. Such simpler times. So basically, as these contests become more and more popular as evening entertainment, schools start challenging other schools, and it expands into these regional contests. So imagine you're attending one of these contests, and it's your local school versus the school from the next town over. I mean, naturally you're going to root for your team.

your local spellers. It's your hometown. So the contests now start to take on more the energy of a sporting event. There's cheering and heckling and I assume some drinking and maybe things get a little physical out in the parking lot. And what's funny is that throughout all of this, they're getting more and more cutthroat, they're getting more and more revelrous and full of entertainment. And throughout all of this, they're still calling them spelling schools because I think it's believe that it's a deliberate decision to kind of appease the Puritan sensibilities of New England at the time. School makes it sound wholesome and educational. Right. You can revel all you on as long as it's in service of education,

surely. Yes. And, you know, if a Puritan minister or judge hears that a spelling school is going down tonight at the local schoolhouse, he's probably not going to investigate. God, I love that. Yeah. So there's still largely this New England phenomenon. But then in the early 1800s, New Englanders start moving out west, the frontiers expanding, and they're establishing schools and churches out west, and they're bringing this concept of spelling schools to the rest of the country. The frontier is expanding, and we're going to spell on it. I think for a lot of these frontiersmen, I think they like the fact that it comes from New England because it gives their settlements, this air of culture and sophistication. I mean, it was very rough and bare bones

out there. And I think for them to bring a little slice of New England with them, it makes it feel more like a real American settlement. Yeah. This reminds me of, I guess, heard about the existence of singing school out West as well as kind of, you know, in the context of, I think, Lauren Elmanzo Wilder going on singing school dates where it was like, you know, it had school in the title and you get taught songs and sort of how to harmonize and stuff, but it seemed like it was also a way for people to socialize, you know, I guess, I don't know. This, I mean, in a way, I don't know if this is too big of a connection to draw, but I was also reflecting this week that like we've kind of in the way that we talk, at least if one is spending too much time online, which most people are because we

are forced to these days. We've like lost the language of just relaxing, right? Because it's like, I feel like maybe this is me being TikTok pilled, but I'm like, I feel like I'm seeing a lot of, especially younger women talking about like he got a reset and then rot or like I did this and this and then I rot it on the couch. And it's like, I don't think that you can begin to rot within two or three hours. I think he might have just been sitting down and resting or like watching a movie or something. But sure, you were decomposing. And I know that it's like language sort of gets skunked takes on its own sort of, you know, it evolves and that's great. But just the thing where we can't let ourselves relax. And even if we're relaxing, we have to do it harder than everybody else somehow.

So I guess this idea of, oh, they're going to singing school. That sounds very productive. They're definitely not going to be, you know, not to say that I know what was going on with, you know, Lauren El Manzo Wilder, but let's, you know, they're definitely not going to be making out in the sleigh after, right? School. I guess this is, I don't know, the American. American obsession with productivity. It's not like we chose to be obsessed with this, you know, because it's, we would die if we weren't in many times throughout history. But it's, I don't know, it's an interesting thing. So it's negative connotations to every word we use to describe not doing anything, you know, you're lazy, you're loafing, you're rotting. Like, why can't we just

be, I don't know, why can't we just, there must be some French term that is way more positive. Yeah, I would like that. I'm going to take the evening off and just die. Just die a little. I'm just going to get close to death and then I'll be good. Or like killing time. I'm going to murder six or seven hours tonight. I'm going to be an unrepentant.

It's going to be a bloodbath of time. And it's like you're just watching Star Wars. I feel like this is a George Carlin bit that never occurred. It's it. God, I remember watching the first ever episode of, SNL with my mom once and George Carlin hosted and just from what I remember absolutely bombed. It like opened with the stand-up monologue and I feel like the audience was like either not miced properly or did not know what to do with it. It was about like football and baseball and the different languages

of them. And I've always found that comforting. It's like, you know what? Everybody bombs, even George Carlin, even on the first episode of Saturday Night Live. Yeah, we got to relax as a people. But okay, So we're in spelling school. Spelling is seeking its alleged manifest destiny. And God, I hope this doesn't get violent at all. Oh, I can't imagine it ever would. So, well, cue the California Gold Rush. Oh, no.

1840s, the California Gold Rush, it brings a much rougher crowd at West. And these boomtown starts springing up. And spelling contests, for whatever reason, they become like this leisure act. in many of these mining towns. It was just their entertainment. You know, it wasn't all brothels and gambling. I mean, you know, a man can only brothel for so many hours and then you got to. And then you got to go over the saloon and try to spell pneumonia.

It was never, they never had this on Deadwood. Well, maybe they did. I didn't finish it. Maybe I should finish Deadwood. Anyway. Oh, you missed, you missed the spelling the episode. I missed the spelling. Spelling Beast season.

You missed the karaoke episode? I miss all the good stuff, I guess. All I remember is all swearing Jen having a kidney stone. Yeah. So these California minors, they start coming out west. These spelling matches, they start to lose their Puritan veneer at this point. The people stop calling them schools. Now they're using words like spelling matches and fights and wars.

And I think generally they've just become a bit rougher around the edges. So I have this poem here from 1878. It describes a fight that allegedly broke out at a spelling match in California among minors. And it's clearly a tongue-in-cheek poem, so don't take it as fact, but it captures a little bit of the spirit of these matches. It's from the shouts and murmurs section. All right, here it goes. There was lanky Jim of Sutter's Fork and Bilsen of LaGrange and Pistol Bob, who wore that day, a knife by way of change. change. There was poker dick from whiskey flat and Smith of Shooters Bend and Brown of Calaveras,

which I want no better friend. The first word out was parallel and seven let it be, till Joe waltzed in his double L betwixt the A and E. Then rhythm came. He tried to smile and said they had him there, and Lanky Jim with one long stride, got up and took his chair. Then with a trembling voice in hand and with a wandering eye, the chair next offered eider duck, and Dick began with I. Ider duck is a bird, and it starts with the letters E.I. Not I. And Bilsen smiled. Then Bilsen shrieked, just how the fight begun. I never knowed for Bilsen dropped, and Dick, he moved up one.

Then Quick got up three-finger jack and locked the door and yelled. Not one mother's son goes out until these words have all been spelled. You want to know the rest, my dears? That's all, for in me, you see, the only gent that live to tell about the spelling B. Oh, I love it. This reminds me of, I think it's the same meter, I mean, as a lot of things, but as Mulgabill's bicycle, which I feel like is kind of a, I don't know, similar tale of woe. This is the woe.

This is the woe. This is the woe. A-B rhyming. It's the woe meter. The one meter. Yeah. So, all right. So in this poem, they're calling it a spelling bee.

So that's around the time. They start calling it this. This is the 1870s. And it has nothing to do with bumblebees. Yeah, I was going to ask, do you know where the bee came from? Yes. So the bee in this sense, it's a term for, like, a communal gathering in which everyone is focused on the same task.

Oh. Oh. So, like, quilting bees were very popular. And this was when women would get together and work on a day. different section of a quilt. And there would be like logging bees where men would clear land and cut down trees and barn raising bees. So that's where this term comes from. And that being said, if you go to any spelling bee today, they always lean into the honeycomb motif. There's usually some guy in a bee costume. So maybe it's maybe the word has started to take on a different meaning

when it comes to bees. Maybe people start to think of a spelling bee as more of a hive or more of a, you know, everyone's being industrious and buzzing around. Yeah. I don't know, but that's where it does come from. Working hard and then dying for the queen. She, you know, excretes eggs out of her gigantic thorax. I want to see the queen of the spelling bee. I bet she's pretty scary.

I didn't know you knew so much about bees. I mean, doesn't everybody know about bees? I don't think I knew what part of the queen's body she excretes from, but everything else I'm with you. Well, I, you know what? That was probably wrong. I guess know that a thorax is like, you know, in the middle. We'll look into it. There's probably right now a real bee person who's like, Sarah, my God, got to get it together. Sound off in the comments. Yeah. All right. So this is the 1870s now. Spelling bees are becoming very popular, not just as this classroom exercise, but now is entertainment and regional entertainment and leisure activities. and mining towns, and they are becoming more popular as these, I don't know if they're statewide yet, but definitely citywide competitions. And this is basically around the time that spelling bees start to collide with something called the simplified spelling movement.

And anyone who's read my book knows that I'm absolutely obsessed with this movement. So just as a little background, this simplified spelling movement, it was basically this centuries-long campaign to make English easier to. spell. So people wanted to remove silent letters and phoneticize words and spell love, L-U-V, and laugh, L-A-F, and though T-H-O. And people who were part of this movement, like one of the first big names to join was Benjamin Franklin. In 1768, he drafted this new phonetic spelling system that tried to respell busy as B-I-Z-I and could as K-U-L-D. And he tried to remove six letters, from the alphabet that he considered redundant letters like C,

because clearly anything that C can do, K and S, can also do very easily. I guess. It's such a cute little letter, though. It is. And it's the same lowercase as uppercase, which is very nice when you're a child. But we can't get all precious about our letters. Sometimes letters got to go. No, we've got to kill our darlings, death to C. I mean, what if your name has a C in it?

I guess if you're Benjamin Franklin, you don't have to worry about it. I know. Although I don't know what his middle name was. Oh. But, you know, if he had his way, everyone's just going to have to adapt. You're going to have to change your letter to a K or an S. Wow. And the same thing with the letter Y, same thing with the letter J, Q, W, and X.

All of these letters, he considered redundant because you can make those sounds using other letters. I mean, if we got rid of Q, then Scrabble would be a lot easier. I will give him that. Yeah. And also, do you have in your book, and maybe you're about to say this, but I feel like I remember he, like, gets really excited. And then in classic Benjamin Franklin fashion, he sends his idea to, like, a hot lady. And she's like, mm. Yeah, I don't use that wording.

But yeah, he absolutely does. He gets... That's a paraphrase, yeah. He gets excited about this proposal. I mean, he's an inventor. He gets excited about everything he comes up with because he's got a pretty good... record of successful inventions. So he comes up with this one. He writes it down. He sends it to this woman. She's the daughter of his landlady. And she's like 20. She's like 50 years, his junior, they have this

pen pal correspondence. And he's very excited to send it to her. She is not excited to receive it. She waits three months before replying. And when she finally does, it's just there's no enthusiasm there. She basically just picks it apart and tells him all the price. problems with it and all the reasons it would never work out. And he, um, he, he just basically shelves the project and never talks about it again. Yeah, I don't know. I guess find that very cute and silly. The cuteness of some of these dead old white men, sometimes they just warm your heart. Well, I feel like it's like, I feel, I, you know, I think that revering the founding fathers is a bit much. And also, I don't think that they had zero good ideas. I think thinking of them is like,

cute, silly men is what works for me, you know? Because isn't it like, I maybe even talked about this last time, but like Thomas Jefferson, really good ideas, a lot of moral atrocity as well in his life. But what I like to think of him as is the guy who broke his arm or something trying to do a handspring to impress a woman in France when he was far too old to be doing that. Like that to me is Thomas Jefferson. Oh, that's fantastic. It really humanizes him. He's just a silly guy.

Yeah. Also, I feel like Benjamin Franklin invented the performative early morning routine because he has like the whole thing in his, what, his autobiography about like, here is how I, here's my daily routine that I absolutely don't do because I like playing chess in the bath with my mistress or whatever. And about like, you know, like delivering his newspaper or whatever with. his wheelbarrow so that people would see him out there be and go, oh, that Ben Franklin, he certainly is industrious. And now there's a lot of people who are pretending to be industrious for a living on social media. And that's Ben Franklin, baby. You know, I will admit

in college, I think freshman year I read the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. And I did try to do a very regimented schedule of self-improvement like he did. Yeah, you wake up and you contrive the business of the day, right? Yeah. But like time for exercise and time for reading and time for studying certain literary texts. Yep. Memorizing certain poems, like all these little things that I try to do it for a few months. And I remember some of those poems. Yeah. And it's just, I don't know, it's like, I mean, I really like routine, but I think that there needs to be like squishiness for me within routine. And I also remember in the autobiography of Ben Franklin, he has. this thing about like and I realize that beer is pointless because bread has the same or more

nutrition. It's like Ben, pull the other one, you know? We're not doing it for the nutrition. So Ben, so Ben, he gets his proposal rejected. Never really talks about it again, but this movement to reform English, to simplify it to make it more consistent, it catches on. And then later in the 1780s, Noah Webster comes along and this. This is, you know, 30 years before Webster's Dictionary, but he writes this proposal titled an essay on a reform mode of spelling. He insists that all silent letters should be removed from English and that the word tongue should be spelled T-U-N-G and that machine should be spelled M-A-S-H-E-E-N.

And T-M-M-M-M-H-E-N-N-T-E-E-N. And tongue-M-M-M-H-M-M-H-E-N-N-T-E-R. Yeah, not for sure. And daughter should be spelled D-A-W-T-R. And again, this proposal doesn't go anywhere. It just gets this backlash of ridicule. It's just so easy to mock these kinds of proposals because this spelling really does look childish. You're basically asking a six-year-old to sound out the word tough, you know, or a three-year-old.

And they'll spell it T-U-F. So, again, it doesn't go anywhere. But the movement takes off. In the 1800s, it's building and building. And spelling societies start appearing all over the U.S. and Britain. And they're all pushing vastly different ideas for how to simplify and streamline English. There are some reformers who want to remove letters from the alphabet and some who want to add letters to the alphabet.

There's some who want to flip letters upside down and some who want to replace all letters with numbers. It really runs the gamut. And the people behind these proposals, you know, as kooky as some of them are, the people are like these well-respected academics. So they're scholars and scientists and Oxford. professors, people with real credibility. So, for instance, in 1879, there's an organization formed in England called the English

Spelling Reform Association, and its vice presidents are Alfred Lord Tennyson and Charles Darwin. Oh, because they weren't busy. They weren't busy. And then later, there's an organization called the Simplified Spelling Society, and its vice president is H.G. Wells. And Mark Twain is part of it. So there's this big push among well-respected academics with a lot of intellectual credibility. And because so many prominent figures become involved in this movement, simplified spelling begins

to spread very rapidly across the U.S. And at the same time that it's becoming popular, spelling bees are also becoming increasingly popular. And it's like two parallel trends. And they're both related to English spelling and they're happening simultaneously. You know, they kind of have different goals. Because on one side, you have the simplified spellers who are trying to fix English and eliminate its inconsistencies. And on the other side, you have spelling bees, which are essentially celebrating those inconsistencies and rewarding those who can master those inconsistencies.

So you end up with these two opposing forces, and they're pulling in different directions. One's pulling toward tradition. One's pulling toward reform. And it all comes to this breaking point. right around 1906. Hmm. So 1906, this is the year that the simplified spelling board is founded in New York City by Andrew Carnegie. He's a steel tycoon, probably among the five richest people in the world at the time.

And he's a big funder of art and educational causes. So he's the namesake of Carnegie Hall and Carnegie Mellon University and thousands of libraries and museums across the U.S. And just for anyone in Pittsburgh. who wants to hear it. So you know, we know. Carnegie. I know it's Carnegie. But everyone in the rest of the country says Carnegie.

I'm sorry, we can't help it. I agree with you that it should be Carnegie or Carnegie. I looked this up because I talk about him a lot in my book. And when we had to do the audiobook, this was a point of debate among a lot of people at my publisher. I bet. And we decided Carnegie is just the more popular, more widespread version. But Carnegie is correct. And I think in the original Scottish, Carnegie was what he grew up pronouncing.

Right. I don't know. And that's, yeah, like a funny thing about this whole area, too, that like things become true by being prevalent, you know? Like, could you argue that comprised of has become a real meaning of the word comprised, even though that's not how it works and it doesn't need enough and people say comprised of because they're always thinking of composed of. But now people here comprised of enough that it has become like a real term. I don't know. I enjoy knowing the correct way to say things, but I'm not going to make other people do it. It just makes me happy personally.

Yeah. Okay, let's continue. Standardized spelling is on a collision course with spelling bees and wackiness, I hope. Okay. So in 1906, the cause that catches Carnegie's attention is simplified spelling. And he becomes really obsessed with this idea that you can improve American society by simplifying the way we spell. which is what a lot of these reformers believed, because if you can improve literacy and increase efficiency, it's going to save people time and money and just create a more educated electorate. I feel like he could have become obsessed with steel mill safety or something,

but I can see how this would be like, you know, that might be a bit of a busman's holiday, I guess, for him. I mean, you don't become among the five richest people in the world by being concerned with steel mill safety. Well, I suppose that's true. With respect to his family, I mean, no disrespect. You know, I love the libraries. Yeah.

Love the concert hall. So he forms a simplified spelling board in 1906. He recruits 30 members to be part of it. These include Mark Twain, Melville Dewey, who is the creator of the Dewey Decimal System. Beautiful. William James, the philosopher and psychologist, an acting U.S. Supreme Court justice named David Brewer. It's just this real who's who of intellectuals in America at the time. It's really got an incredible roster.

And the goal of the organization is to seek out teachers and journalists and all these other gatekeepers of language and try to convince them to adopt simplified spelling. So in 1906, for instance, Mark Twain attends a dinner event for the Associated Press. And he makes a speech to this room full of journalists. and he says, I am here to make an appeal to the nations on behalf of simplified spelling. If the Associated Press will adopt and use our simplified forms, and thus spread them to the ends of the earth,

covering the whole spacious planet with them as with a garden of flowers, our difficulties are at an end. And we shall be rid of pneumonia and nomadic and diphtheria and pterodactyl, and all those other insane words which no man addicted to the simple Christian life can try to spell and not lose some of the bloom of his piety in the demoralizing attempt. Wow. Spelling pneumonia is making people worse Christians. I had no idea. And basically, for the most part, once again, the public does not love this. I mean, they love making fun of it, as we all would, as we all should. Right. Because it is very funny and, again, like, very cute to see these like very serious grown men

who are very important in their time period telling us all to spell enough with a U and an F at the end. Yeah, and it's just one of the main reasons that the movement never caught on. You'd imagine people of this caliber of intellect would also understand something about branding and what the public,

what a mainstream group of people would like, what the everyday layperson will allow into their everyday lives and changing your spelling from scratch is not necessarily something that people want to do. And newspapers poke fun at it a lot. They use these exaggerated phonetic headlines like spelling Carnegie with a K and misspelling words on purpose just to make the whole thing look absurd. Yeah.

So that's most of the backlash. It's mockery. It's ridicule. But there is one person who's completely won over by the simplified spelling board. and that is U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt. Classic. So Roosevelt becomes so excited about simplified spelling that he writes a letter to the simplified spelling board

saying, the president will hereafter spell the way you say he ought to. And he does. He directs his stenographer to respell all documents and correspondences from the Oval Office in simplified spelling. Then he directs the government printing office to do the same, and he orders all federal communications to be written in simplified spelling. spelling. No, Teddy. This is too much. This was judicial rulings and census reports and like bills and laws.

The Supreme Court with a K. Come on. No, Teddy. I know you're the more fun Roosevelt, but there's a limit, you know. I don't know what it was. I think, I mean, it's funny to us, but to them it was a very serious thing. And I think for Teddy, he always saw himself as a reformer, like a leader, someone who's going to lead America. into the 20th century. And I think for him, simplified spelling was just that next linguistic frontier that he was going to conquer on his horse. And he was going to be an American hero. I think that's the way he saw it. Yeah. And to be fair, I guess, to the idea, it's like, you know, this is a ridiculous language to learn how to spell it. And I do see, like, it does

seem like a meaningful campaign to want to make it easier for people to feel confident using the language that we speak. It just, I don't know. I just, I guess with all this hindsight, it's like, I don't, clearly that didn't work out. And I don't know if that would have been so obvious at the time. But yeah, I don't, I don't want to act like it's like an idea without merit because I think that like maybe at base it is kind of really a very democratic idea, which we don't have enough of lately. Yeah, there, there is a lot of merit to it. I don't want to say there isn't. I mean, if you ask me, should spelling be simpler? In English, I'd say yes. If you ask me, should we simplify it? I'm not so sure because I don't think going into the language and, like, forcing it is really a

practical thing. Right. Like, you can't really pull it into the future, just like you can't really pull it back into the past. It's just going to do what it does. Right. Yeah. And I guess that's the beautiful thing about it is that it will evolve, but we don't really get to decide how that happens. And that is maybe a very democratic thing because people will either start adopting, you know, a phrase or a pronunciation or a new word or they won't. And you can't as one person decide what they're going to like. Right. Noel Webster actually is this great quote. Something like the progress of language is like the course of the Mississippi River. I guess in the sense that you can't redirect that water flow. You can't change the course of that water. You can't

change the flow. At most, you can kind of sit on the riverbank and observe it, or you could dip your toes into it, but that river is going to evolve the way it evolves. It's going to depend on geology and geography and weather. And us as humans, we can't do anything except observe it. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. So Roosevelt gets really simplification happy. There's, again, a wave of political cartoons mocking him, there's one depicting him holding a gun, firing bullets into this very large dictionary, basically saying he's murdering English. And because he's the most powerful person in the world, it's the highest office in the land. And because simplified spelling has reached the Oval Office, it becomes this really hotly debated issue in the country. It's

dividing people into those in favor of reform and those who believe in preserving English as it is. And funnily enough, Roosevelt, he abandoned simplified spelling after a few months. Public humiliation is, it's bad. But the debate just gets bigger and bigger. And then that's when it starts spilling over into local spelling bees. They kind of become these sites of protest. There's one girl at a spelling bee in Indiana who causes some controversy because she refuses to accept her first place prize because the first place prize is a photograph.

of President Roosevelt. So she's making a statement against simplified spelling. Apparently, when she offers the prize to her fellow contestants, they all refuse it to. Then there's a girl in Pennsylvania who makes a big scene at a spelling bee when she refuses to spell the word honest with an H. So she's coming at it from the other end, the pro-reform side. Oh, boy. And likewise, there's a boy at a Pittsburgh spelling bee who insists on spelling the word

heightened as H-I-T-U-N. That does feel very, very this moment of people to be like, actually, I decide how to spell things at the spelling bee. Yeah, we're going back to Shakespeare time where you just, you spell it the way you feel it. Yeah. Well, I just like, it feels like we're in a moment of just kind of the, you know, what's going on culturally in the United States, partly having to do with, not to put the blame on kids because I never will. but, you know, people being like, I actually feel that the truth is this and I am not accepting any notes. And it's like, oh, well, you're talking about like something that there actually is an objective answer to and you're not accepting it. And it's, that's a, that's a weird place to be in, you know. Well, there's the truth and then there's my truth.

Yeah. And my truth is that heightened is spelled H-I-T-U-M. I mean, that makes more sense to me than people putting beef fat on their feet. faces, to be honest. That's true. That's true. Oh, boy. Yeah. So basically, throughout the spelling bee world at this time, kids are using spelling bees as these little, like, soapboxes to weigh on, way in on this national debate. And similar things are happening in classrooms and in newsrooms and the tension is building between reformers and traditionalists. And it's right at this moment, right when the

spelling debate is reached its most visible and political peak that America decides to hold its first national spelling bait. Yeah. So here we go. Here we go. So the date is announced for June 29th, 1908. It's going to be held in Cleveland, Ohio in this big 6,000 seat theater called the Hippodrome. And traditionalists are rejoicing.

They see this as a rebuttal to simplified spelling. One journalist calls it a flagrant defiance of simplified spelling. It's just this big symbolic repudiation of this reform movement. I will say there also happens to be some conspiracy-minded people who think this is kind of a ploy to sneak simplified spelling back into the spotlight. And that somehow the kids will step on stage expecting a normal spelling bee only to find out this is a simplified spelling bee. And they have to spell with as few letters as possible or something. but the rumor is nonsense. So it's June 1908.

It's the week of America's first national spelling bee. Cleveland is decorated with colorful banners and streamers and workers are setting up this big firework show for after the event. It's this big celebration of spelling. And there are 60 students who have come from around the country to compete. They're all in eighth grade, and they're representing four regional teams. They're from New Orleans, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Erie. So they call it a national spelling bee, but I guess it's more of a regional showdown.

Yeah, because Pittsburgh and Erie are like two hours apart, I want to say. That's very cute. Got a lot of Pennsylvanians in this one. I know. So they're setting up for the contest. Everything is going smoothly until a few days before the competition when a controversy emerges. And this has nothing to do with spelling reform. Okay.

It has to do with one girl on the Cleveland team named Marie Bolden. Marie is 13 years old. She's the star speller at her school and she's black. So when the New Orleans team finds out that they'll be competing against a black girl, they threatened to boycott the entire competition. Jesus Christ. Yep. Okay.

Remember this is 1908. It's right in the middle of Jim Crow. Segregation is legal in the South. But this spelling bee is taking place in the north, which it's not subject to Jim Crow. and the organizers of the B refused to give in to this threat. The New Orleans superintendent keeps pushing. He insists he's going to withdraw his entire team unless Marie Bolden is removed. Again, the organizers don't budge.

Which, I mean, I'm, you know, not to see into the mind of this person, but it does occur to me that, like, perhaps you wouldn't care so much if you weren't afraid that she would be your students, you know? Yeah. Imagine the fear of, you know, a racist team. from the South thinking they might get shown up. Yeah, and then what? And also it's like, you know, people are racist just out of habit, I think. But yeah, I guess the fear of having to witness someone else's excellence. Yeah, man.

I thought you were going to tell me that Marie was secretly 45 years old and just like hadn't gotten a lot of nutrition when she was growing up. That's the kind of scandal that I'm trying to hear. Man, I wonder what your media diet is. because that is quite the scandal. You know, too much forensic files for sure. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

All right. So New Orleans is threatening a boycott. Cleveland is pushing back. It's the standoff and it continues. It drags on. Good for the B. But they're, you know, yeah, not conceding any of that. I agree, right?

You wouldn't totally expect this in 1908. And yet, there it is. And it's pretty impressive. And the standoff drags on until the eve of the. be the night before. And finally, like it basically the last possible moment, the superintendent gives up. His bluff has been called. He knows his team has traveled too far across the country. They're not going to turn back. So he drops the threat. Nice. Next morning, thousands of people arrive at the hippodrome. There's a band playing out in the street. The 60 competitors are ushered on stage.

And the national spelling bee begins. And Sarah, this brings us to round two. of your spelling B. Oh, boy. I'm going to give you three words that were actually part of this competition and I guess we'll see if you're smarter than an eighth grader from 1908. I really don't think I am, but yeah, let's get into it. All right. These are, I think, a little bit easier than Fuchsia and you nailed that one. So I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful to. All right. All of my pride is writing on this one, I must say. Sarah, the first word is cemetery. Okay. Wow. See, And this is like, I feel like I know how to spell cemetery, but now that we are asking me, I'm like, wait, is there an A in cemetery? I don't think there is. Okay. C-E-M-E-T-E-R-Y. Is that right?

That is correct. Oh, thank God. Okay. God. This is very stressful. And just so we get the etiquette, right? Oh, yeah. I have to say the word cemetery before I spell it. Is that right? And then you say it at the end. Okay. Cemetery. C-E-M-E-T-E-R-Y cemetery. That is correct.

I want to do this right. Okay, great. Sarah, your second word is, pumpkin. Okay, I do feel good about this one. Pumpkin. P-U-M-P-K-I-N- Pumpkin. I have always felt that you should be able to ask for a pumpkin of syrup at Starbucks, and that means you get like half of a pump.

It's a pumpkin. It's not a whole pump. It's a pumpkin. It's a little child pump. And if you want to take a tiny little nap, you take a napkin. This is not caught on. You know, and if your dog wants a pump, it's a pup pump. Yeah, exactly.

All right. So third word, last word. Okay. Your word is mischievous. Okay. See, this one I know is tricky for people partly because many people, including my dad, pronounce it mischievous. But I feel like once you know,

how it's pronounced, it's easier to spell. So I'm gonna, okay, mischievous. M-I-S-H-I-E-V-O-U-S, mischievous. That is correct. Yay. Four for four. Ah, God, this has been incredible for my confidence, I got to say. Can you imagine if you were born in 1888, you would thrive.

I would, but, you know, glasses, technology was not perhaps as good. So I feel like I would be walking around with a magnifying glass the whole time. I don't know. I come from, I have a lot of ancestors who apparently were looking at things that were very close to their faces for a living. All right. So the spelling bee, it goes on all day. And the format is a little different from what we're used to. Spellers are called up one of the time. That part's the same. But if they get a word wrong, they're not eliminated that just counts against their score and their team score. And then at the end of the night, all the scores are tallied to find the winner, which means

it's a really long competition. Can you imagine round after round of 60 people taking their turn? So it goes on into the evening. Yeah. It sounds like an election day, honestly. Yeah. You know, remember when elections were like kind of fun, you'd be like waiting for the returns to come in and watching the states turn different colors and it wasn't. entirely as grim as it is now. I mean, you know, it's not like the stakes have ever been zero, but I remember there used to be at least a sense of like enjoyment spectating that kind of a thing. So I don't know, more long spelling dees. I remember that too. Yeah. I remember that too. And yet I've been burned too many times. Yeah, we can't go back. We can't go back to watching Wolf Blitzer

appear as a hologram. Oh boy. And having, you know, that was, that was a fun one. Yeah. hologram blitzer, like an all like Anakin Skywalker. He'll appear in a hologram long after he's dead. Yeah, that's right. We'll be watching hologram wolf blitzer until we are holograms ourselves. So everyone's taking their turn. It takes hours. The bee stretches all the way into the evening.

Finally, it ends. The scores are tallied. Erie finishes last with 85 misspelled words. New Orleans finishes third with 66. Pittsburgh is second with 47 and Cleveland, 40 misspelled words. They win the B. They take home the team prize. Nice job, Cleveland.

Cue the applause. Then it turns to the individual prize and it's a tie. This is a tie between two spellers. They both have perfect scores. They've gone all day without misspelling anything. Thank you. And these are a girl named May Thursby from the Pittsburgh team and Marie Bolden from Cleveland.

Okay. Now, the rules state that in the event of a tie, the prize goes to the contestant from the stronger team. And the stronger team that day is Cleveland, which means Marie Bolden becomes America's first national spelling bee champion. Marie Bolden. Maybe there is a statue of her, but if there is and I would like to see one. At least there should be a hologram.

Yeah. I feel like there should be more stats. statues of kids. And I guess this is not a real person, but in Grant Park in Portland, there's a statue of Ramona Quimby. And I think that's really nice. More statues of real and fictional kids. That's what I think. Because kids do some very impressive things throughout history. And this is, I don't know, just one of those stories. And what better way to inspire future kids than to have a statue of children? Right. As opposed to telling children, you know, someday if you grow up and you,

get on a horse and make other people kill a lot of an additional group of people. You can have a statue that the pigeons sit on all day. Yeah, you too can have pigeons shit on you. Which you can already have now as a human being. Wow. All right. So Marie Bolden's the champion. And the theater erupts in applause.

And she's swarmed by journalists and by spectators. She's later celebrated in newspapers around the, country with some obvious exceptions. The next day, the black writer, Booker T. Washington even mentions Marie in a speech. He's speaking to a white audience and he says to them, you will admit that we spell out of the same spelling book that you do. And I think you will also admit that we spell a little better. So that was America's first national spelling bee. And you know, you don't want it to sound too much like a Disney movie. It's not all happily ever after for race relations in the country.

But it is this beautiful moment. I think in American history, and at the very least, I guess we know it really angered the New Orleans superintendent, which I think that's a good victory. Yeah, I'm happy with that. I mean, I feel like there's this, I don't know, that stories are tricky because every story has to have an ending and that in reality things just go on and on and on.

But yeah, but those moments, I don't know, there's something about a moment like that that also kind of like stays dynamic in a way that people can revisit throughout history maybe and that these I don't know these triumphs maybe don't go stale yeah if I'm making sense yeah I agree you need to kind of in case those moments and concrete in a way like I mean they are statues and are like collective memory right we have to have some kind of happy triumphs to harken back to, to have any hope for the future. Even if we're telling our stories as though they're clean and they're clear and they're buttoned up and they sound like a fairy tale, it is good to have those in our memory collectively. Yeah. And that, you know,

and that success kind of brings its own demons a lot of the time and that sort of the way the story continues often gets into that. But also it's like, I mean, there are without a out kids in the United States today who are being excluded from, you know, educational opportunities on the basis of race and people are, I think, less overt about their intents now. But in a way, I don't know, it seems like that kind of story also remains as meaningful as it does, because with a little bit of revision about the same thing, I feel like could happen somewhere in America right now, you know, not this exact spelling bee, but like something meaningful to kids. Yeah. where adults are intentionally excluding kids for pretty nefarious reasons, you know?

Yeah. Yeah, I agree. And I think this victory, like Marie Bolden's victory, there is something very American about it because of how democratic. Right. This, I think spelling bees are democratic. You know, when I was doing research for this subject, I was asking myself a lot, why is this such a uniquely American phenomenon? Like, they don't even have regular spelling bees in England. So it's not even like a specifically English language phenomenon.

It is an American phenomenon. And I think, I mean, one of the reasons historically is that, you know, England, they were more obsessed with correct pronunciation than correct spelling because correct pronunciation meant you came from a certain class. Right. It meant you had a certain upper class upbringing. You took elocution lessons. But spelling is classless. It's more egalitarian because in theory, anybody who, you know, everybody who. who owns an English dictionary can win a spelling bee.

You know, forget all your expensive tutors. If you own a big, chunky, 30-pound on a bridge dictionary, you can be a spelling bee champion. All the words come from that book. Right. Which I think appeals to a certain democratic image we have. You know, you could have Marie Bolden competing against a descendant of the Mayflower. You could have a first-generation immigrant competing against whoever. It's more of a level playing field.

Yeah. Yeah, and this thing too that I feel like so many, you know, English words from England, especially like surnames and place names, are famously difficult to pronounce because there's like three syllables that you're not supposed to pronounce and just like leave unspoken and it becomes such a shibboleth kind of a thing. And of course, you know, I'm sure that in the spelling bees of today, I mean, I remember, I'm sure this has come up for you, there was a national spelling bee documentary about 15 years ago where, you know, it gets into like, there are some kids who kind of have to do it themselves and there are some kids whose parents can afford

tutors or even more tutors or even higher powered tutors or whatever. And that, you know, of course, I don't know, we find ways to unlevel the playing field even when it should be. But yeah, that at the end of the day, it's like, surely if we're to believe in the goals and the ideals of this country, like a big part of it is letting kids succeed on their own merit and sort of seeing what they can do when they're not being held back. Yeah. So it is this very American moment in 1908. And it also, for the simplified spellers,

it kind of marks the beginning of the end for their movement. Because spelling bees become a big national phenomenon. And, you know, Carnegie starts becoming increasingly impatient with his simplified spelling board. It's not making much progress. He cuts off funding in 1917. and then a few years later, the board officially dissolved. So it kind of ends a chapter in these dual movements

and the way they've been competing with each other throughout the 1800s. And there are occasional reformers who come along after that trying to simplify English. George Bernard Shaw makes a pretty valiant attempt in the 1940s before he dies. But the movement, it just never returns to the heights of 1906. So I guess in that sense, it's like traditional spelling one. Spelling bees are more popular than ever. And you just don't hear much from the simplified spellers. You know, of all the possible movements, this is one that I wouldn't mind coming back, you know, because I think it's like, it feels kind of silly and over the top, but like not intrinsically harmful.

And that's more than I can say about a lot of other stuff. In fact, it's intrinsically, I mean, if it succeeds, if it succeeds, it would increase literacy. Right. Like if it succeeds in the long run, if it really does catch on and then 100 years from now, you don't even think of it as a reformed mode of spelling.

It's just the way you do things. Yeah. Then it would probably increase access to education because as it is, English is a uniquely messy and difficult language to learn to spell. It takes us two to three times longer to learn than learning Spanish or German or Italian. But the German thing is humbling because that's not a language you think of as being particularly easy to metabolize.

And they have all that crazy long words. But yeah, it's like an internal consistency, I guess, that we don't have. Right. It's the kind of consistency that if you learn the set of rules for that language, you can apply those set of rules in most scenarios. But in English, if you learn the sound of G makes, you don't know at all what the sound that makes in different scenarios. Sometimes it's a hard G. Sometimes it's a soft G. Sometimes makes the sound of an F like in rough or tough. And sometimes it's silent like in night. I mean, how do you teach a kid so many contingencies? It's a lot easier to teach them 100 rules that they have to memorize and they apply in all cases. So that's really the problem. That's what these spelling reformers were trying to do. They were trying to come up with a set of rules that in the long run would make English. English more on a level with a lot of other more phonetic European languages, and it would save us a lot of schooling.

You know, most Italians learn, they master Italian spelling in their first year of school. God damn it. And when it comes to English spelling, most of us don't master it in an entire lifetime. No. Yeah. I mean, I'm confident in my spelling, but as you can see, I get rattled pretty easily when we're doing an imaginary spelling bee. Yeah.

And because it, right, there's like not really rules to fall back on. And yet at the same time, like, I am so very fond of the English language as it is. And in all of its ridiculousness, then it's, I would be sad to lose a lot of the sillier parts of it, if it ever came to that, which I don't imagine happening. But, yeah, I don't know. I love this horrible language in which we speak. I do too. I love it for all its flaws and its faults. But at its core, language should be about communication. And if you're cutting out, you know, 30% of the population, you're cutting them out of being part of this conversation, then I don't know if it's really doing its job.

Right. But I don't know. I would, I do feel like precious about complicated English words that I had to learn to spell. And a lot of people also take a history. historical perspective and they look at a multi-syllable English word and they can see that, oh, this syllable came in because the Romans conquered us and they spoke Latin. And that syllable came in because the Vikings conquered us and they spoke Norse. And they like that historical record of it. I just personally don't think it's the most practical thing we could have. Right. It's like trying to communicate in a series of museum plaques. And yeah, we have cows and beef because of the Normans and the Saxons and the Normans said buff and whatever. But yeah, I guess it's, I don't know,

maybe there's room for a lot is maybe one of the beautiful things too. And I think whenever people try and police the way that others are using English, it's really, you can't, you can't stop innovation. And I think that like the ways that, you know, do you ever have a cat who runs across the room and then starts sharpening his claws for no particular reason with an incredible sense? And then he runs away as mysteriously as he arrived. Okay. But yeah, I guess it's just that I feel like maybe the thing that feels most democratic to me right now is not trying to sort of implement a system of spelling, even if it's a simplified one, but like letting people keep using the English language in the ways that work for them. And not having any one person or institution

claiming that they get to decide what gets to be correct or not. Because I think if you're successfully communicating an idea and if people understand what you're saying, then like, that's what we want, I think. And I think that that's maybe like the final note of irony in all this is it's what's happening today in like digital communication. Yeah. People, you know, routinely abbreviate words when they're texting. Yeah.

I write THRU for through all the time. And sometimes I spell the word you is just the letter you. And these were all spellings that. that were proposed centuries ago by these simplified spellers. And so maybe like, I mean, these spellings now, maybe the difference is that when they were proposed by reformers, they're coming from the top down, from an authority figure who's trying to force it upon us.

But now with the digital speak, the text speak, it's coming from the bottom up and it's happening naturally and it's not being forced upon us by politicians. it's just there to meet the needs of our world. Some of these catch on more than others. I know that LOL and OMG are now in the Oxford English Dictionary. Yeah. And LOL is a great one because it's like it used to mean laughing out loud.

And I feel like people really used it that way for a few years there. And now it's like a part of millennial irony, I think, where it's like I will very frequently text my friends and be like, I feel. you know, like when things, like typically about something pretty awful, you know, where I'll all be like, I got the flu again, LOL. Yeah, I got a $1,200 water and sewer bill, L.O.L. Which I did, by the way. I have to figure out what happened with that. Oh, boy.

Why God, why. I think that that's a, that's an abbreviation. I think we missed out on why God, why. Yeah. WGW. WGW. WGW. But right, and that like we, that communication is like, we have to at least think it's our idea,

maybe to make a change and to be told how to do things a certain way. It feels too personal. That's really the way I think language has to evolve, at least for us in America, where we've never loved authority figures. We got rid of our kings, I mean, in some sense. Yeah. I mean, some people appear to really want a king while also claiming loudly that they don't want anyone to tell them what to do. And I guess it's based on the idea that they want someone to tell other people what to do. That's my analysis right now. Yeah. You know, it's kind of a sad image. I'm reluctant to bring this up, but I thought about this a lot when I was writing this book and talking about it with my editor. The fact that if simplified spelling were to make a comeback as part of like some big

political reform, it could very easily be Donald Trump that pushes it. Yeah. To distract from whatever is going on. To distract from a war, to distract from a scandal. Yeah. Hey, guess what, everyone? Now you're going to spell like me. And we're going to enforce this.

And everyone has to spell in this simple way. And the most important word in the sentence has to be in caps. All caps. Sometimes all caps. Sometimes three caps. Sometimes one. Sometimes six. I, yeah, I could see it happening.

I can too. Yeah, I don't know. It's tricky. I guess, like, I will never stop having a lot of hope and love for the American people. And I think part of that is because by making the show, I get to, you know, I get to interact with the people who listen to it and get to hear from them. And, of course, people who don't particularly care for the show are wonderful people who give me a lot of hope as well. But, like, just from that, I don't know. It's very easy to get over.

by news of people doing like awful things around the country. And I think just kind of, sometimes I like to just kind of sit quietly and think about how many people out there are just like getting up and trying to find a way to take care of the people around them and to make other people's lives a little bit easier and to just love their family and their friends and to love their country by doing things that the people in power right now are not into, but, you know, but still, if the people in power are against democracy, then you have to become a criminal in order to keep perpetuating it. And that's fine. But I don't know. Yeah, I just, it's, I like to think of all those people out there scattered across the country who we never hear about on the news and who

are doing good things every day and just, you know, trying to make pancakes. And trying to spell. And just trying to spell. Well, I will say, if anyone out there is looking for something to really warm your heart, make you happy. There's nothing better out there than watching the National Spelling Bee. It is kids from like six to 14. Really, I mean, they are absolute prodigy geniuses. And they are so absolutely adorable. Yeah.

It's one of my favorite things. I've attended the last few years for research. And it's incredible, incredible celebration of spelling. And these kids are just very cute. Yeah. Yeah. And it's just like, I don't know, something great about watching someone get to be proud of something they've worked really, really hard on. Something I think about a lot actually is when Nadia Komenich was in the 1976 Olympics, she was, you know, I don't know if she was the first gymnast to get a perfect 10, but it was certainly the first perfect 10 for Olympic gymnastics.

And, you know, it's a scoring system we don't have today. You know, things have gotten more complex. and I think that all sports evolve. That's a whole other topic. Get me a gymnast to tell me more. But she was 14 years old and apparently had no media training because I don't think that anyone had time or resources for that. And there's these like wonderful interviews where like she's just scored like a perfect 10

and something. And journalists are like, Nadia, Nadia, how did you get so good at gymnastics? And she's like, I am so good because I work very hard. When is this year's spelling B? It's the last week of May, and it's in Washington, D.C., or it's outside of D.C. in Maryland, but it's the last week of May, and it's a three-day event. I think that they air the final day on TV. It used to be on ESPN.

I don't know if it is anymore, but it's kind of funny that it used to be on ESPN. Just, you know, Sports Center highlights. I mean, I've watched competitive cornhole. on ESPN. I have a lot more respect for competitive spelling. Sorry to the cornholeers out there. If we corrected the pronunciation of Carnegie for part of our audience, you should probably also note that some people call it bags. People call it bags? Okay, that's cute. Yeah, I have a friend in Chicago. She calls it bags. Wow. Now, I feel like that's a super, maybe a super regionalism, Because there's also, like, Oregonians really do not have a lot of weird terms or accent stuff.

We all sort of sound like primetime news anchors, which I think is very sad accent-wise. But like one thing that we say that really consistently baffles outlanders, I think, is at some point, someone in Oregon and Idaho decided that seasoned potato witches are called Jojo's. and we've all just called them that ever since. I think that'll be my next episode. I'm going to do so much research into that specific potato wedge factoid. You're going to go to Idaho. You're going to find the original Jojo. Yeah.

Or just like, I don't know, any... Listen, I want you to come talk about any language thing that is obsessing you at any time because I always have the best time when you come on. I'd be very happy to. You know, I feel like I've done a good job so far of avenging my third grade spelling be lost. So I'm going to take this as a personal win. Yeah, I think this is the most avenging you can do before it becomes potentially dangerous.

This is perfect. And tell us about what is your book called. I enjoyed it so much. And where can people find more of your work and all that stuff? So the book is Enough is Enough is Enough. And the second Enough is Spelled E-N-U-F. subtitle Our Failed Attempts to Make English Easier to Spell.

You can follow me on Instagram at gabe.henry. And by the time this episode airs, I guess we'll be a few weeks out from the Scripps National Spelling Bee, and I'll be part of the festivities. I'm going to be in D.C. around that time hosting an adult spelling bee

at the Planet Word Museum, which, if you've never been, it's this incredibly fun, interactive museum, voted entirely to language, So that'll be on May 30th, I believe. Incredible. That's so great. And I will be there in spirit whispering,

it's comprised, not comprised of. You're thinking of composed of. Which is more of a grammar bee thing. But, yeah. Because why would our national grammar be held in Canada? It's a Lisa Simpson. Sorry, our national grammar rodeo, excuse me, when it's grammar, it's a rodeo.

as we learned in The Simpsons. Man, if you misquote the Simpsons, you're going to get a lot of Simpsons fans. Oh, no. I know. They will abandon you for life. Yeah. It's okay. I've got the B people now. Thank you so much. This was really, I don't know. I really, I have the best time when we do these. Thank you, Sarah. I do too. And that was our episode.

Thank you so much for listening. And thank you for checking out our bonus episodes as well. well over on Patreon and Apple Plus subscriptions. Our most recent one is an episode with our deep sea correspondent Brianna Bowman about whether these orcas really do have it out for oligarchs. And if not, then why are they sinking those yachts? Also, in case you didn't hear about it in our last episode, we have a prompt for its submissions again for you to send in some little audio clips.

I recommend the voice memo app that just comes on the iPhone or whatever. equivalent you have on whatever you use, but however you would like to record yourself is fine by me that I just find to be pretty easy. And I want to hear you tell us about what you love. And that's pretty open-ended, but it could be a place, a time of day, a creature, a moment in a piece of music, or a little ritual you have an act of service that you like to perform. forum for others. Truly, whatever sparks your imagination. We've been getting just the most wonderful submissions so far,

including, I think, a trend of people talking about maligned creatures, maligned places. I can't imagine what gave them that idea. But please send those to our show email address for this type of thing, Sloppy and Alive at gmail.com. It's a Stetford-Wise reference. S-L-O-P-P-Y-A-N-D-A-L-I-V-E at g-Mail.com. And I'll say something I love, which I've already mentioned in this episode, I think, but I love it so much, I'm saying it again,

that in Portland at Grant Park, we have statues of not just Ramona Quimby, but Henry Huggins and his dog Ribsey. And if you have some interesting statuary or have seen any in your experience in the world, I would love to hear about that, too. especially statuary depicting children's literature, which we could probably do with some more of. So go ahead and send those in. You have until the end of April. We want to put this out for you in June. And we're just so excited to hear from you. It is one of my absolute favorite things. And perhaps that is also the thing that I love is getting to hear from you.

Sloppy and Alive at Gmail.com. Just don't stand where it's incredibly windy. And keep it to about three minutes or less. thank you to you for sending those in or thinking about it. And thank you to the people who make this show. Miranda Zickler is our producer and editor. Nicole Ortiz is our administrative assistant. Gabe Henry is our newly crowned spelling correspondent. And I'm so happy about that. And we have links and show notes to where you can find Gabe's book. Enough is enough. And I can't recommend it enough. It is very fun and very funny. the history of language always is in good hands. Thank you for listening.

Thank you for sharing all of this with us. We can't wait to see you again in two weeks.