Welcome to Interesting If True, the podcast that gets stuck in your head and hopefully not an orifice.

I'm your host this week, Shea, and with me is...

I'm Aaron, and this week I got new networking equipment which is cool. Also, “my wifi is down” is officially the new “I was stuck in traffic.”

I’m sure you have all heard by now about the Ever Given super freighter being stuck sideways into the Suez canal. In case you haven’t, on March 23 shipping traffic through Egypt’s Suez Canal was grounded to a halt after a large vessel called the “Ever Given” got stuck in the passageway. You have probably seen the memes all over the internet or have heard jokes about how one backhoe worked tirelessly alone to help extricate the ship from the shore. Luckily the ship was finally flushed this past Monday. Either way, it really got me thinking of being stuck, stuck on what to write, stuck in my house, stuck in the arm with my last covid shot. So today I bring you stories of stuck, fastened fascinations, and cemented comedies. So glue yourself to your seat and let's have some fun.

Stone Vagina

Our story starts in the quaint German town of Tübingen, home to a research university and plenty of campus “art.” The art in question is from a Peruvian artist Fernando de la Jara, Pi-Chacán is a 32-ton sculpture made out of red Veronese marble meant to signify "the gateway to the world". The sculpture's name is from the native Peruvian Quechuan language. According to de la Jara, the word chacán means "place where the action of water has tunneled through a large rock or a mountain", or alternatively "lovemaking". Pi is both a Greek character and a mathematical symbol, π, that looks similar to a door or a vulva. Now, why vulva? Well, I probably should have mentioned but the statue is of a huge stone vagina. By itself, it is a very interesting piece but it wasn’t until June of 2014 when an American student (why did it have to be us) studying abroad in Germany came across the striking anatomical depiction and decided to pose for pictures with it along with some friends. Like many exchange students, stupid decisions were made and the best angle for the shot was determined to be inside the genitalia, a sentence I have never before written. The student quickly realized that without the soft cartilage bones babies have he would have trouble extricating himself from the stone canal and thus was hopelessly stuck. 22 firefighters came to help remove the boy. It must have been a slow day, and it was reported that firefighters turned midwives were able to remove the student "by hand and without the application of tools." A c-section would have been hell by the sounds of it. The mayor of Tübingen told the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper that he struggled to imagine how the accident could have happened, "even when considering the most extreme adolescent fantasies. To reward such a masterly achievement with the use of 22 firefighters almost pains my soul."

The last laugh was had by the artist, De la Jara. He said he was working to create a sculpture even a blind person could appreciate by using different textures and appealing to the tactile senses. “It’s not only visual,” he said. “It’s not only with the eyes.” Basically, de la Jara intended for people to check out the sculpture up close. “The principal part of the work isn’t outside.” So the American might not have been totally off-base, a small consolation for the sheer scale of his embarrassment. “It’s participatory art,” de la Jara said. “It should be entered.” It’s just that, since the sculpture was installed in 2001, no one’s actually gotten stuck. “I believe [he got caught] because he had a lack of coordination” de la Jara said. “Or maybe it was a lack of sensibility.” “It might also be a little bit the fault of the work,” he added. De la Jara quipped that it was almost as if the sculpture had taken reveng...

Welcome to Interesting If True, the podcast that’s wetter than an otter’s pocket, because today’s show is about making water wetter! Oh yeah!

I'm your host this week, Aaron, and with me are:

I'm Shea, and this week I learned that eggs are the most popular form of children to eat.

Snake oil or cure all, you won't be the judge... because it's nonsense 100% of the time.

Before I dive in, I want to take a moment and say that almost every source I've found refers to alkaline water as snake oil. And while I understand the sentiment I can't help but point out that snake oil wasn't "snake oil" until charlatans replaced the minimal effects of elixirs make with the Chinese Water Snake with... you know, whatever they have around. Whereas alkaline water has literally never, ever, been good for you.

Alkaline stuff has become incredibly popular. Beverage Marketing Corporation, a research and consulting group who does exactly what the name suggests, found that in 2014 alkaline water was a 40mil a year proposition. Four years later, it was closer to 700mil.

Anyone with half a brain cell should be able to suss out why alkaline diets, especially alkaline water, won't ever help you but indeed can harm you—and if you're particularly unlucky, kill you horribly.

To understand alkaline water we first need to understand acids, those are the things below 7 on the pH scale, and bases or alkaloids, those above 7 on the same scale, with 7 itself being neutral. Your body is naturally slightly alkaline, with blood for example typically being at 7.40. Meanwhile stomach acid can be between 1.5 and 3.5, coffee is typically in the 4.2 to 5.3 range. On the base side of things you'll find you blood, most cleaning products, baking soda and even more so in baked-baking soda (as one might make to create authentic ramen noodles), and on the extreme end potassium and cesium.

So, what could possibly say "healthy" more than upping those alkalinity points with alkaline water and diet until you gain the awesome power of raw cesium?! That's right, nothing.

So drink up because as totally reputable site n-o-v-a.com says alkaline water: 1. Restores Ph balance in the body (I guess everyone pre-bottled hippy-water was just walking around acid-melting everything like a Xenomorph with hemophilia), Increases Energy levels, [it's] extra hydrating than other water (grammar theirs), and it can help reduce signs of aging.

So pretty woo, but not as woo-woo and the woos can do.

For the real lowdown on alkaline water I had to do some Googling and surprise, surprise, I quickly found out all the alkaline secrets Big Water Cycle doesn't want you to know about. For example, it cures cancer when consumed with Chemo!

The cancer claims are almost entirely based on the idea that cancer cells create an ever-so-slightly more acidic environment to thrive, and therefore alkalizing that environment will kill the cancerous cells. Which is true... in a laboratory setting. Of course, in a lab cells are actually kind of difficult to keep alive anyway and by the same logic a handgun will also eliminate cancer by making its petri dish inhospitable.

Alkalizing your body is an entirely different hill to climb.

Unfortunately for the basic woos, (hehe, see what I did there) everything in nature goes against the idea that you should alkalinize yourself. Even the CO2 in our lungs and blood is acidic. So, Alkalinzing yourself isn't going to be easy. Which is where Real Water and its competitors will help you out. With water ranging from 5 to 9 on the pH scale, they've got the water that's for you, not mater which side of the 7 your woo falls.

From ScienceBasedMedicine by way of Flying Crane Acupuncture, Kangan water (another brand name) is recommended for:

cancer,

Welcome to Interesting If True, the podcast that’s much, much better than most things now associated with the number 45...

I'm your host this week, Shea, and with me are:

I'm Aaron, and this week I learned that one day all of us will buy a food with an expiration date longer than our own…

The Jerk Off!

Inspired as a nickname for the soda clerk who operated soda fountains as late as the 1950s, the “Soda Jerk” title was inspired by the jerking action a server used to swing the soda fountain handle back and forth when adding soda water to a fountain beverage. They prepared milkshakes and other treats using drink mixers that feature spindles and agitators to fold air in for smooth and fluffy results served in tall glasses. Soda Jerks were charged not only with preparing delicious treats for customers, but with entertaining them as well. Their responsibilities were many—breaking and draining eggs with one hand, carving chicken, remembering orders, pulling the correct spigots and spindles on the drugstore soda fountain. But most of all, the NY Times reported, “the prime requisite of their station is the ability to bandy words.”

Soda jerks became known across the country for this kind of esoteric slang. They were often virtuosic wordsmiths, with a gift for puns and riffs. And, at a time when the United States was nuts for all things ice-cream, they were at once “consummate showmen, innovators, and freelance linguists of the drugstore stage,” writes Michael Karl Witzel in The American Drive-In. “America’s soda jerk became the pop culture star of the Gilded Age.”

The colorful jargon of the Soda Jerk was verbal shorthand for calling out orders as part of putting on a show for customers. The order consisted of the method of preparation, the number and size of the order, the basic soda fountain item, and any special instructions, such as “Shake One in the Hay and Spit on It” (a strawberry shake with raspberries on top). Soda fountains had handbooks of recipes they had to memorize, but hundreds of variations were created on the fly by the creative Soda Jerks.

By the 1950’s capitalism all but killed the old time soda fountains, the increase in technology and the wish to expedite helped push the jerks out the door. By then diners were the new big hang out, the good ol greasy spoon of yore to the place of soda fountains but they kept some of the language and peppered in some of their own.

Similar to visiting a foreign country where English is not spoken, diner lingo is virtually unknown outside the United States. The light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek and even sometimes risqué phrases could be heard in wide use in busy diners during the 1920’s continuing on well into the 1970’s. Diner lingo was never intended for use in speeding up the order-to-table process. Rather, it was a spontaneously developed mnemonic means of making orders easier to hear and remember above the conversational din of the busy diner. It also provided patrons and employees with a free form of entertainment.

Today we are going to test your soda jerking skills in our first ever JERK OFF!! Today’s quiz will be the interesting slang used by jerks and slop slingers back in the 50’s and we will compete to see who will be the Jerk of the year.

* I am going to start with an easy one, and actually the slang that got me started down this rabbit hole. Used both in Soda fountains and then eventually in diners what does “to 86” something mean?

Remove an item from an order or from the menu; throw an item away (plenty of theories on the origins of this one, including: a reference to Article 86 of the New York State Liquor Code, which defines the circumstances under which a patron should be refused alcohol; a reference to coffins, usually eight feet long and buried six feet und...

Welcome to Interesting If True, the podcast that’s proud to fight like a girl!

I'm your host this week, Big Papa, and with me is Shea:

I'm Shea, and this week I learned that bologna is just hotdogs for people who like pancakes.

I'm Aaron, and this week I learned that the powerful Amazon warrior is called Amazon Prime.

Amazons Will Get You

This week began with International Women's Day and because I'm a dick-having hoser I forgot to post anything on the socials.

So instead, I'm going to pander a bit—but don't worry, not nearly as much as that scene in End Game. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about... that was... oof.

Today I'm going to talk about actual Amazons! The warrior women, not the company. As brutal as the Amazons could be, they still let you take a piss-break.

The more I read about the Amazons the more clear it becomes that this will need to be a muli-part show. So I'll do a little intro and then talk about one specific tribe of female warriors, the Mino, or Minon depending on who you talk to.

These warriors were called the Dahomey Amazons by the European writers from whom most of this information will come. I did find some records of Fon oral histories but they're scarce. The French didn't leave much when they were done with the area...

So these won't be your typical Amazons, at least, not in the Wonder Woman sense. At some point we will talk about Themiscyra, the city-state not the magic island, and the Amazons of Asia's Steppes, but for now I'll only go into that stuff far enough to explain how these African warrior women came to be called Amazons... and basically, it's fake news.

From Adrienne Mayor's The Amazons,

"one thing everyone seems to think they know about Amazons: that the name has something to do with only having one breast so they could easily fire an arrow or hurl a spear."

Which I think we've all heard. Unfortunately, it's nonsense. Anyone whose seen Hunger Games or done any non-sausage fest archery knows that the ladies can tuck that jazz enough not to boob up the works. For the archeology record, there are thousands of Greek artworks depicting warrior women with both boobs. The translation of "Amazon" as "without breast" was the invention of Greek historian Hellanikos in the fifth century BCE.

Basically, he shoehorned the meaning of Greek words, "a" meaning "lack", and "mazon" being close to the Greek word for breast, from which we get the modern world mammary. Put them together and you've got a terminology that even Hellanikos's contemporaries called BS, never mind modern archeologists.

Seh-Dong-Hong-Beh, a leader of the amazons

Still, the Greeks were obsessed with the idea of the legendary warrior women. So much so that any Grecian hero worth his salt would need to face them, from Hercules to Achilles. They often gave the location of the Amazons as the eastern Mediterranean on the steppes of Eurasia. And indeed warrior graves have been found there and, once we invented DNA testing and accurate bioarchaeological analysis, we stopped calling them all dudes. In total, about 1/3 of those buried with spears, knives, and visible war-wounds were women. Today we attribute the graves to the Scythian nomads whose women fought alongside their men well into the modern era... well, ok, Andromache did anyway, less so for the rest of them.

So, back to modern-day Benin. Benin, formally Dahomey (/de`hoomi/), was annexed into the french empire in 1904 until its independence in 1975. It's a small country in West Africa tucked between Togo and Nigeria. Its small coastal area is part of what was then (and by "then" I mean way, way too recently) called the Slave Coast.

A sketch of a warrior and her equipment

Welcome to Interesting If True, the podcast that’s gone to the dogs… or, other animals really, some goats and a pig for sure.

I'm your host this week, Aaron, and with me are: Shea!

I'm Shea, and this week I learned that during cold winter months, alligators will fall asleep with their snouts sticking through the ice to get fresh air. It is at this point you can safely draw dicks on their noses.

It's a critter show

I'm Aaron, and this week I learned that teaching a dog to play fetch is easy, but teaching a pig to play Fortnight pays your rent!

Things have been a little more hectic than usual in interesting land so I thought we could all use a feel-good show. And like all writers with too little time, alcohol, and faith in humanity, I've turned to animals. A pig and a couple of jackasses to be specific.

Sadly, this week's show is exactly one jackass short, so in Steve's stead I give you the fantastic tail of Canadian war-donkey, Sergeant Bill, Bill -y Goat that is.

Our story begins in August of 1914—which started on a Thursday for Greg and a Wednesday for Julian, saw Charlie Chaplin's film debut in Making a Living, and that curfluffle in Europe was picking up steam—which brings us to Broadview, a small town in Saskatchewan with a goat.

On August 23rd the soldiers of the freshly formed 5th Western Cavalry Expeditionary Force had stopped in Broadview to pick up some recruits who, while queuing for the train, spotted a little girl with a goat. And wanting it for a good luck charm, and also because it was 1914 and you could just take stuff from people, they took the goat from young Daisy Curwain to make it their mascot.

Sources all agree that Daisy agreed the soldiers could have it, but there's never any mention of payment or how a group of soldiers from 1914 demanding a little girl give her pet to the war effort might have influenced her willingness to part with Billy. Frankly, I find all of this suspect... pretty sure some dudes stole a goat.

Still, Private Bill was now properly conscripted. He lived and trained with the 5th in Canada and their base in England. Unfortunately, the 5th would soon be deployed to the front and no mascots were allowed in the trenches.

As you can imagine this didn't sit well with the boys of the 5th who, like many other regiments in both world wars, found a creative way to endanger the life of their dear animal companion.

According to Sergeant Harold Baldwin, author of Holding the Line

“We could not part with Billy; the boys argued that we could easily get another colonel, but it was too far to the Rocky Mountains to get another goat. The difficulty was solved by buying a huge crate of oranges from a woman who was doing brisk trade with the boys. The oranges sold like hot cakes and in a jiffy the orange box was converted into a crate and Billy [was] shanghaied into the crate and smuggled aboard the train.”

So there ya go, now you're a goat and, just like a naive young aristocrat from Themiscara, you're lost in a whirlwind of action, intrigue, and warm beer.

The soldiers beer rations--and often their paperwork--were his favorite foods.

Bill would go on to have a distinguished career ... for a goat.

More seriously, at Ypres, Bill was found in a shell crater standing guard over a wounded Prussian soldier--despite having his own shrapnel wounds.

Later, in the Second Battle of Ypres Private Bill stood his ground with the brave Canadian soldiers, now famous for not retreating from Germany's first major deployment of poison gas. Despite what should have been a goat-ending toxic cloud.

For his steadfast valor at Ypres Bill was promoted to the rank of Sergeant in February of 1915 at Neuve Chapelle.

Welcome to Interesting If True, the podcast that records the A and B segments out of order, so only patrons will get the call forwards… sorry.

Hosting this week is Madam Jenn but she can’t raise listener spirits alone, for that we’ll need Sir Steve the Serious, and Shea the Buttery. I’m Aaron, and this week….

Show Story- The Flim Flam Femme Fatales

* https://www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/madame-blavatsky-and-theosophy/

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helena_Blavatsky

* http://blavatskyarchives.com/index.htm (Aaron, please don’t click as your brain will angrily rebel.)

* https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Theosophy

* https://daily.jstor.org/spiritualism-science-and-the-mysterious-madame-blavatsky/

* https://cdn.website-editor.net/e4d6563c50794969b714ab70457d9761/files/uploaded/IncidentsInTheLifeOfMadameBlavatsky_APSinnett.pdf

This week I have decided to share with you all the story of someone that, perhaps surprisingly, I find very fascinating and in many ways inspiring. It would require too much unpacking to get into the why’s now, but I’m sure you may see them unfold as we go along.

So again, welcome to a story of weird...history...eee...eee

The tradition of charlatans, chicanery and snake oiling (ewwww….) is often thought of as a man’s game. (I mean, the term wasn’t Flim Flam Female.) But, as unlike so many professions (except for the original, seems like we get to keep the banner for that one), the ladies could totally get in on this game throughout the ages. Sometimes whether they wanted to or not, as I think some of the Oracles at Delphi weren’t there of their own free will for the free tripping.

Also, depending on the time period, these kinds of pursuits could dramatically backfire. As in, during several points throughout history it was found that ‘wise women’, healers, seers and anything other than a spirit-broken housewife were highly flammable and/or hangable.

So with that in mind, and the fact that I can never get enough of Aaron’s Russian accent, I would like to introduce the Ukranian-born Helena Petrova Blavatsky. Or perhaps you might recognize her by the more common nomenclature, Madame Blavatsky.

The Cambridge-based Society for Psychical Research had this 1885 respect-tinged quote about the eerily Jake Gyllenhall-resembling Madame B:

“For our part, we regard her as neither the mouthpiece of hidden seers, nor as a mere vulgar adventuress; we think that she has achieved a title to permanent remembrance as one of the most accomplished, ingenious, and interesting imposters in history.”

(Now, before I continue, a quick bit of housekeeping bc of my rant last week and my constant fear of plagiarism: I’d been aware of and interested in Mdm. B for quite some time, but didn’t know exactly how absolutely riveting her story was until I listened to the amazing 3 part podcast series on her by Our Fake History, which started in May 2018. Full disclosure, I haven’t listened since it originally ‘aired(?)’ but I will go ahead and tell you right now that it was more complete and historically-contextual than what I’m going to provide. Please do check it out, but for my sake wait until after I’m done with my take bc that’s just polite and you would never hear the reactions of the boys in Sebastian’s episodes.)

Welcome to Interesting If True, ze podcast zat vill heal vut ales you, yaaa.

I'm your host zis veek, Aaron, and with me is dos ubermensch Dr. Shea:

I'm Shea, and this week I learned that you can tell how evil a company is by how touching their super bowl commercial attempts to be.

Dur Uber Medicine

I mean, I’m pretty sure “uber” is German for something but the “dur” that’s there because… the people in this story. People who, having never admitted there is anything they don’t know—unless it’s to sell you on their next line of reasoning with nuisance-logic—want to sell heal you.

And so, it is my unique schadenfreude to introduce you to Germanic New Medicine’s “Dr.” Ryke Geerd Hamer.

Hamer, born 1935, is the founder of GNM, or German(ic) New Medicine. Following his death a number of people picked up GNM. Today I have a few clips from “Doctor” Melissa Sell. All her materials claim she’s a doctor but having given her site and socials a good once over, I can’t find that she’s ever been to school, much less medical school. I’m happy to be corrected, but insofar as I can tell, not only is she not a doctor, she barely plays one on YouTube.

But before all that, let’s take a jump over to Germany, and a step back to the 1980s...

So it’s 1981 and a German Doctor by the name of Hamer has discovered that “every DISEASE is caused by shock experience that catches us completely off guard.” And “how did he do this?” you might ask. Well, the answer is equal parts tragedy and stupidity. In 1953 Hamer started medical… and theological...studies at Tubingen Stift—a school owned and operated by the Evangelical-Lutheran Church. While this school has put some folks you may know, like Johannes Kepler, the astronomer the Kepler zone is named for, it also created a bunch of zealots and nazis. So that’s less great.

Speaking of Italian royalty, The Prince of Naples, Vittorio Emanuele Alberto Carlo Teodoro Umberto Bonifacio Amedeo Damiano Bernardino Gennaro Maria di Savoia, or Vittorio Emanuele of Savoy for short, the last prince of Italy, shot Hamer’s son, Dirk, to death in his sleep on the King’s Yacht, on August 8th, 1978. In the wee-hours of the night Vittorio discovered his yacht’s rubber dinghy had been used to go to another neighboring yacht. For reasons unknown, Vittorio armed himself with a rifle and attempted to board the other yacht. Not being a particularly agile pirate he awoke one of the yachts passengers and upon seeing them move, shot at them. He missed the passenger entirely, but mortally wounded the young Dirk, who he would later be filmed laughing about. The same film would be crucial evidence in the civil wrongful death case Dirk’s sister brought and won against the disposed prince.

Vittorio is a real stand up guy, who we’ll definitely hear more about in a coming episode. Aside from being a murderer he’s also quoted as saying Mussolini’s anti-Semitic laws were “not that terrible,” he frequently fought with other royals, and was eventually arrested for running a prostitution ring. So yeah, we’ll get there everyone

Back to our proper story, we now have a German theologian and doctor whose son was murdered by Italy's royal family. Of course, it never rains but it does pour, and just a few months after Dirk’s murder Hamer discovers he’s got prostate cancer… According to wikipedia and most of the summary-style sources I found, most of his German New Medicine sites and information say it was testicular cancer. Either way, dude has cancer and he blames it on the shock of hearing of his son’s death.

Not to minimize his grief or the tragedy of it all, but this was the “Eurika!”moment for German New Medicine. Hamer just knew, in his heartiest of hearts, and testiest of testicals, that these two events had a causal relationship. And so,

Welcome to Interesting If True, the podcast that believes laughter is the best medicine… if these are the only other options.

I'm your host this week, Aaron, and with me are:

I'm Shea, and this week I learned that if you take the thread out of a sewing machine it becomes a stabbing machine.

And it’s time for another…

Tawdry Tales of Terrible Triage, The Twofer!

When last we spoke of yee-oldie medicine it was pre-plague, when we could still get together. Now, having quarantined for what feels like forever, we might have some idea of the kind of desperation that drives someone to wear pigeons in the hope that they’re healing power will at least get you to a Chipoltey and back in one piece.

Sadly, no such luck.

If Covid doesn’t get you one of its mutant spawn might! But enough about Jubilee, it’s round two for medieval (-ish) medical nonsense—and this time, it’s personal! We’re gonna find out if Shea knows enough about yee-oldie doctor’n to be proclaimed If True Studio’s new resident on call.

If you were a dirty, dirty villager in the before-times, you were probably worried about Yee-Oldie European Super-death. Or as you lay people may know it, Yersinia pestis—and boy-howdy was it a pest. By the end of the second plague it had killed nearly a third of Europe.

And yeah, I said “second.” Turns out that It’s had three noteworthy runs.

The first known as the Plague of Justinian, affected the Sassanid empire (that’s Neo-Persian, or the last Persian imperial dynasty) and their, apparently, enemies the Byzantines. The initial outbreak killed an estimated 25 million and over the course of two more centuries of recurrences, another 25.

The second was the Black Death which ran wild through Europe on flee-covered rats, rather than the noxious odors they attributed it to but refused to really do anything about until August of 1858…

And the third was in China. It had moved around the Southwest for some time before infecting Guangzhou (aka Canton), a water source for nearby Hong Kong. It killed 20,000 people becoming known as the 1894 Hong Kong plague. From there it spread to ports around the world as a proper pandemic infecting people globally with icky Black Death, but also a ton of anti-Chinese and anti-Asian bigotry including the Geary Act.

Closing on that nightmare (... in 19-fucking-43) and given what you’ve learned about the plague, if you wanted to avoid the Black Death’s fated grasp, where was the best place to keep your farts?

Yep, that’s right, a mason jar.

Physicians, using the world as loosely as it’s ever been used, would tell people to trap their terrible tushy turbulence. The goal here wasn’t to stave off the lingering effects of an all boiled-cabbage and sadness diet but to build up one's stockpiles of PPE. That’s right, in the event of a Black Death incursion these life-saving jars of your own literal farts were to be used as a breathing apparatus, not unlike airplane masks or cartoonishly holding an upside down canoe on the ocean floor. Because… “it’s sterile to your own body” or something I’m sure.

I did have to do a little Googly-Googly on this because… ya know… but it turns out, from reputable sources, that it was basically one of many smell-based Hail Mary’s. Later called the “therapeutic stink” the idea was that if you had a face full of this, or roses if you were a money-having person, you could avoid the stink of death.

David Havilland, author of Why You Should Store Your Farts in a Jar & Other Oddball or Gross Maladies, Afflictions, Remedies and Cures, first explained to AOL News in 2011....

Welcome to Interesting If True, the podcast of dubious facts.

I'm your host this week, Shea, and with me is Aaron

I'm Aaron, and this week I learned that Chewbacca is science-fiction’s most famous nudist.

Seriously, the only thing stopping you from seeing his little Ewok is that he’s basically a space alpaca.

Origins of some words I can’t spell

So the other day I was reading a comic book, as I do, and I saw for the first time the word milquetoast spelled out, M I L Q U E toast for the uninitiated. I immediately looked it up and was surprised to find out the origin. This was my inspiration for tonight's story, the origins of words I can’t spell!

Etymology – the study of word origins – is a fantastically interesting discipline that yields some incredible facts about where the hugely diverse array of words that make up the English language come from. The language is a quirky and nuanced one. It offers an enormous vocabulary and boasts status as a lingua franca, a language that is adopted as a common language between speakers whose native languages are different. Our language is a melting pot, because of this we get some really interesting word origins.

I’ll start with Milquetoast since I don’t want to leave you in suspense for much longer. The term meaning lacking character and often is used to describe a weak or feeble person is a newer word first appearing in the New York World newspaper in 1924 in a comic strip called “The Timid Soul.” The comic featured the character Casper Milquetoast described by the author, H. T. Webster, as "the man who speaks softly and gets hit with a big stick". The character's name is a deliberate misspelling of the name of a bland and fairly inoffensive food, milk toast. Milk toast, light and easy to digest, is an appropriate food for someone with a weak or "nervous" stomach. Because of the popularity of Webster's character, the term milquetoast came into general usage in American English to mean "weak and ineffectual" or "plain and unadventurous". When the term is used to describe a person, it typically indicates someone of an unusually meek, bland, soft or submissive nature, who is easily overlooked, written off, and who may also appear overly sensitive, timid, indecisive or cowardly. Milquetoast appears in most American English dictionaries, but is not in many other English dictionaries.

https://hairygreeneyeball.blogspot.com/2008/12/timid-soul.html

This word I have been spelling wrong for the entirety of 2020, “quarantine” has its origins in the devastating plague, the Black Death, which swept across Europe in the 14th century, wiping out around 30% of Europe’s population. It comes from the Venetian dialect form of the Italian words “quaranta giorni”, or “forty days”, in reference to the fact that, in an effort to halt the spread of the plague, ships were put into isolation on nearby islands for a forty-day period before those on board were allowed ashore. Originally – attested by a document from 1377 – this period was thirty days and was known as a “trentine”, but this was extended to forty days to allow more time for symptoms to develop. This practice was first implemented by the Venetians controlling the movement of ships into the city of Dubrovnik, which is now part of Croatia but was then under Venetian sovereignty. We now use the word “quarantine” to refer to the practice of restricting the movements, for a period of time, of people or animals who seem healthy, but who might have been exposed to a harmful disease that could spread to others.

When someone “goes berserk”, they go into a frenzy, run amok, perhaps even destroying things. Picture someone going berserk and it’s not difficult to imagine the ancien...

Welcome to Interesting If True, the podcast that makes you hungry.

I'm your host this week, Shea, and with me is:

I'm Aaron, and this week I learned that if everyone who smelled it is dead, ‘twas Poseidon who dealt it. More on the depth’s smelly gasses in the patron segment.

That one time in Scotland

The pandemic and the incompetency of our last administration has made it harder and harder to make ends meet. Our unemployment rate is higher than ever before and access to good healthy foods is near impossible without being loaded. I decided to look back through history and find a story of perseverance, a story of people, who, when the chips were down picked themselves off and made a new life for them and their family. This story comes from Scotland back in the 1700’s when life wasn’t nearly as fun and easy as it is now, this story recounts the life, love, and eventual destruction of one Sawney Bean.

Alexander “Sawney” Bean was born the son of a poor farmer in the late 17th century. Growing up a poor farmer Sawney felt like his talents were being wasted. His talents, by the way, were being incredibly lazy. So he ran away from home and took to the streets to see if he could make some easy money. During this time he fell in love with a woman named Agnes Douglas who was into the same things as him, being lazy, it was kismet! Not long after their marriage Swaney and Agnes were run from town, though exact reasons why are unclear, though one source claims Agnes was accused of witchcraft. Now on their own, destitute and alone their luck was about to change. While searching for a place to stay the couple found a great abandoned cave off the coast of South Ayrshire, kind of South West of Glasgow. The cave stretched about a mile into the earth and had a single entrance that disappeared with high tide, a perfect place to build a new family.

Lacking a trade, it was Sawney’s plan to support his new wife on the proceeds of robbery. It proved a simple enough matter to ambush travellers on the lonely narrow roads that connected the villages of the area. You remember Sawney was quite lazy, this seemed like the easiest method for making money. They fed themselves by living off the land. Lest images of wheat, turnips, fish and rabbits come to mind. Disabuse yourself of that notion. Old tales claim the means by which the Bean’s sustained themselves was by robbing any man, woman or child unlucky enough to cross their paths.

Swaney soon worried he could be identified by his victims and made the decision, not to stop, but to kill his victims. A lot harder to finger someone when you’re dead. After the bodies were looted and carefully searched Swaney had another brilliant idea, why let this meat go to waste…

Once dead, the Beans removed the corpses to their lair and chopped them up. They satiated their immediate hunger before prudently pickling some leftovers for when times were lean.

The years passed and the family grew. The eight sons and six daughters needed feeding so they continued in their barbarous practices, hunting in a pack to ensure that their quarry could not escape. One estimate puts the amount that the family killed at around 1,000 souls.

The high protein diet seemed to have been effective as Mrs Bean started to produce little baby Beans. Fourteen little Beanie babies in total, each with a very unhealthy appetite for human flesh. As the Beanie babies grew up and in turn, through incest, produced Beanie babies of their own, their cooking pots increased in size dramatically. Over two decades, generations of Beanie babies grew up in Bennane Cave, refining their skills of murder and cannibal cuisine including, the now lost art of salting and pickling the flesh, they prepared for leaner times. When their rations would eventually spoil, we all forget stuff in the back of the fridge,