Episode Transcript
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0:01
From the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio
0:03
at the George Washington Broadcast Center.
0:06
Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty Armstrong
0:09
and Getty Show.
0:16
So first, this.
0:19
One of the many things Elon Musk
0:21
has got his fingers into is the
0:25
whole Neural Link project, trying to figure
0:27
out how to put something in your brain where you can control
0:29
computers. They've
0:31
moved from monkeys to humans now and here's the
0:33
first human to have the
0:36
neural link thingy explaining how it works.
0:38
How are you able to actually move the car?
0:40
Sir?
0:40
We started out with a trying out a
0:42
few different things what we call kind
0:45
of differentiating like imagine movement versus
0:49
attempted movement. So a lot of what
0:51
we started out with was attempting to move. So I would
0:53
attempt to move, say my
0:56
right hand, left, right, forward,
0:59
back, and from there
1:01
I think it just became intuitive for
1:03
me to start imagining
1:06
the cursor moving. Basically,
1:09
it was like using
1:11
the force on the cursor and
1:13
I to move wherever I want to.
1:14
Just stare somewhere in the screen and
1:17
it would.
1:17
Move where I wanted it to.
1:19
I know, people in the world
1:21
of this sort of thing to be vague, who
1:24
are shocked that Elon
1:27
got the clearance to do this on human
1:29
beings. I'm sure glad he did, because I think if there's
1:31
anybody out there who wants to volunteer, let
1:33
them. The government should not get in the way of that.
1:36
But this guy, he
1:39
volunteered and they got the neuralink in his head,
1:41
and he's talking about moving the cursor on
1:43
a computer screen like you're using the force.
1:47
I'll take his word for the fact that it works.
1:49
I just every time I think of this, I feel
1:51
like I'd be sitting there thinking, don't go
1:53
left, that's going left. I don't want to go left. Go just going
1:55
right, don't go left, don't go left.
1:57
I mean, just that's
2:00
funny.
2:00
It never across my mind, kind of
2:02
like me, don't think about a white elephant thing or
2:04
whatever. Just once you got here, Yeah,
2:07
it would get into your head.
2:08
And be like, ah,
2:11
what word,
2:16
Oh my gosh?
2:18
Uh the search port.
2:19
Are you search and porn?
2:20
I didn't want to search PORTN You're supposed to be working well
2:24
to Uh.
2:24
To bring this back to a
2:27
different approach, I would say
2:29
this could lead to miraculous improvements
2:33
in the quality of life for all sorts
2:35
of people.
2:36
Oh yeah, yeah, And
2:38
then does it go to
2:40
the level I assume it would where perfectly healthy
2:42
people get that in their heads so that you can run
2:44
your turn on your TV by sitting on
2:46
the couch or something more. You know, why
2:48
the hell would I want that to drive your
2:50
car on one that the Internet of things?
2:53
So the Internet of things sucks.
2:55
It's like your your garage door
2:58
as a sensor and it opens the garage when
3:00
you get within half a block. Yeah, because oh
3:02
my thumb, it hurts so bad to press that
3:04
button. Thank god, finally there's a sensor.
3:07
No, none of that stuff is important.
3:09
Well, my my Tesla is
3:12
a one one big giant computer software.
3:15
You run the whole thing with your brain. You're
3:19
not using your feet, your hands, You're nothing. You just drumming
3:21
everything in your brain or your computer
3:23
sitting there at work or everything you do.
3:25
You just just safe wear and tear on your feet
3:27
or what what's wrong with your feet?
3:31
Is it somehow a trial
3:34
for you to use your feet?
3:36
I don't know.
3:37
I guess I just assumed that this is what people
3:39
want to be able to. So you get this immobile
3:42
for the rest of your life. I don't get out,
3:44
so you can type on your computer while you're eating
3:46
a sandwich.
3:48
Oh, it's a beautiful dream you have
3:50
there, a beautiful dream. Things
3:52
are getting weird. No, they can't wear no
3:54
more having to put down your sandwich
3:57
to type on your computer.
4:00
Okay, well, maybe I'm having more trouble coming with
4:03
practical applications than I
4:05
should.
4:07
Video games. There you go.
4:08
I could absolutely see that for video games
4:11
or doctors. You're performing surgery with both
4:13
hands, and you're doing stuff on the computer screen,
4:15
moving the mouse around and clicking on this.
4:17
And then.
4:19
I think it may have actually struck upon two examples.
4:23
Yeah, well, we'll see where this is going.
4:25
Although the whole sandwich typing thing
4:27
was pretty compelling.
4:31
Oh my god, ah.
4:33
From uh laughter to anger. This
4:36
is talk radio. This actually does
4:38
make me mad. I heard about it on the way in Sliding
4:41
under the Radar. I don't know why Joe
4:43
Biden didn't do this in the first place. So
4:45
he tried to make
4:48
taxpayers bail out college kids
4:51
all at once, and the Supreme Court said you
4:53
can't do that. Since then,
4:56
they have, piece by piece, with a variety
4:58
of different programs. The President of
5:00
the United States, with a stroke of a pen wiped
5:02
out now one hundred and forty
5:05
four billion dollars of
5:07
college student debt, with the latest six
5:09
billion happening overnight. The
5:12
letters are going out to about
5:14
four hundred thousand public service workers
5:17
thanking them for their service,
5:19
and they're about to have their college debt race.
5:21
So, if you're a firefighter, cop,
5:23
nurse, teacher, social worker,
5:27
your college loans are forgiven
5:29
by the rest of the taxpayers for
5:32
some reason, even though those are great paying jobs
5:35
with great benefits. Somebody
5:37
who doesn't have a great paying job and has no
5:39
benefits is going to pay for
5:42
your college loan for some reason.
5:45
In essence.
5:45
Yeah, yeah,
5:47
it's it's obscene, it's
5:50
undemocratic, it's anti
5:52
progressive, it's just wrong
5:55
land.
5:56
You know.
5:56
Maybe my least favorite aspect
5:58
of this is it enables the scam
6:01
of the current college university
6:05
money suck to continue.
6:08
Right yep.
6:08
That is the uh one
6:11
of the results of this is why are they ever
6:13
going to have to deal with prices?
6:14
There's no pressure on that.
6:17
Right right. It's like there's a criminal in town
6:20
defrauding people. You go to the government
6:22
and say he stole fifty thousand dollars from me.
6:24
The government says, why don't we just let's
6:26
not worry about it. Here's fifty thousand dollars.
6:28
Okay, just be on your way. Now, be on
6:31
your way. Because the universities
6:33
are a giant for profit scam and they vote
6:35
Democrat almost entirely.
6:36
So the Biden Harris administration used
6:39
something in the Public
6:43
Service Loan Forgiveness PSLF
6:45
plan that got passed during COVID,
6:49
and they're taking money out of that to help
6:51
our public servants not have to pay for their college.
6:53
Well, if we decide is a country that we think firefighters,
6:56
nurses, and teachers shouldn't have
6:58
to pay for their student loans. Okay, let's vot on that
7:00
and have some legislation. But the president
7:02
just deciding that and the rest of US
7:04
taxpayers picking up the bill. Maybe
7:06
you paid. Maybe you're a firefighter,
7:09
but you went ahead and paid for your kid to go to college.
7:12
You know, cash lived a frugal life.
7:14
That was stupid. Should have taken out a big loan and gone
7:16
to USC.
7:17
Well, you went to Chico instead of USC because
7:19
it was cheaper than that was a mistake. Go to the expensive
7:21
college, take out the loans and wait for the government
7:24
to the taxpayer to bail you out.
7:26
God, it's so maddening. Yeah, it
7:28
is, absolutely and it.
7:29
Keeps happening, and there doesn't seem to be any
7:32
Trump should mention this every time he talks.
7:35
Oh, I think it would resonate like crazy with
7:37
the core Trump crowd, although he's
7:39
already got them. It's so
7:42
obvious what's going on here, just this desperation
7:46
to hang on to young voters for
7:48
Biden and the Democrats, because whether
7:50
it's the Israel Hamas thing
7:53
or the fact that he promised
7:55
then didn't deliver the transferring
7:57
their loans to other taxpayers, they're
8:00
desperate, desperate for young people to come out.
8:02
So they're just pandering the
8:04
most you know, obscene
8:06
and probably illegal ways.
8:10
Speaking of redistribution and
8:12
how it can't last, and it's annoying to
8:14
me.
8:15
I love this story.
8:16
This is my favorite story that came across in the last twenty
8:18
four hours from the Wall Street Journal. The Russian
8:20
threat forces Europe to choose
8:23
either bolster your defense or protect
8:25
social spending. But you can't do both.
8:28
Fine, you'd love that one. Finally,
8:30
the rubber meets the road on this. So
8:33
after hearing all our lives about you,
8:36
know how in name
8:38
your European country, they get nine
8:41
weeks of vacation and get to
8:43
retire at fifty five with
8:45
a full pension. And it
8:47
always seemed.
8:47
Like, oh, why that's unfair. How come we don't get that in
8:49
the United States.
8:51
Well, a lot of the reason is they
8:53
didn't have to provide national
8:56
security. Our biggest expense, well,
8:58
actually, up until recently, our basic Our biggest
9:00
expense now is paying our
9:03
debt on our loan any
9:07
the interest, paying the interest on the
9:09
debt that we've created. But
9:11
for a most of our history, our biggest expense
9:14
has been national defense. We spend more than
9:16
anybody else in the world, you
9:18
know, oftentimes multiples of
9:20
every other country added together. But
9:23
these other countries didn't have to do that because they knew that
9:25
the United States would come to their protection
9:27
if the Soviet Union moved
9:30
on. Whatever European
9:32
country. Well, those days are over. They don't
9:34
feel like they can count on NATO or the United States,
9:36
and now they're finally having to rearrange
9:39
their social contract, said
9:41
the Lithuanian foreign minister, who
9:44
has warned that Russia will eventually attack NATO
9:46
countries if it isn't defeated in Ukraine. They're
9:48
going to have to change the structure
9:50
of their society. No more
9:53
giant hammock where you get to retired
9:55
an early age, you get a gazillion weeks of vacation.
9:58
Cradle the graves say, you can't
10:00
afford it anymore.
10:02
Yeah. One clarification is that the
10:05
defense is the biggest non I'm
10:08
sorry, the biggest discretionary spending
10:11
aside from the entitlements. Although
10:14
with the defense and homeland security over
10:17
sixteen percent of what the.
10:18
Federal government spends.
10:20
If you added that to
10:22
social security and health and that sort of thing, yeah,
10:24
we would have that sort of safety net
10:27
ert hammock European system.
10:29
I gotta believe that is not going to be pain free
10:33
because it has been a couple of generations
10:35
that have been able to count on the cradle
10:37
to grave giant safety
10:39
hammock in all those European countries. And if
10:41
that is going to get paired way down, Oh,
10:44
that's going to hurt. Talking about expectations,
10:47
yipes.
10:48
What's interesting, I'm looking at various
10:51
versions of the pie chart pie
10:56
charts, and for some
10:58
reason, they don't include interest on
11:00
the debt specifically, it's lumped
11:02
in other Why would
11:05
you do that if
11:07
you're going to go to the trouble of baking a pie chart,
11:09
bake it right, jackasses.
11:13
How about this reality?
11:16
Europe would need at least twenty
11:19
years to build
11:21
a European force capable of reversing
11:23
a Russian invasion of Lithuania, according
11:25
to analysis came out
11:27
in twenty nineteen. So they were counting on the
11:30
United States. That's without the United States.
11:32
With the United States, you could count on it because
11:34
you know we were going to stop it. But now that
11:36
they're thinking maybe the United States won't
11:38
stop it, they need twenty years
11:41
to build up a force that could keep Russia
11:43
from invading Lithuania.
11:45
I didn't particularly like the way he went about
11:47
it in some ways, but Trump was one hundred percent
11:49
right calling NATO on their
11:51
bull crap and our
11:54
allies.
11:54
One hundred percent right.
11:56
Again, some of the things he said I thought were terrible,
11:58
But in principle, y'all
12:01
got to step up, and y'all got to step up
12:03
now, and it.
12:04
Looks exactly the right thing to do, and it
12:06
looks like it's gonna happen.
12:08
Trump abandoning NATO, Well
12:11
again, I wouldn't have threatened it exactly.
12:12
The way he did.
12:15
But come on, you can't in good conscience
12:17
argue with the fact that he was right and he got
12:19
results.
12:23
Quick. Yes or no. Question. Do you think sho Heo
12:25
Tani is betting on baseball or
12:28
sports?
12:30
No, but my level of
12:32
certainty is low. Wild
12:36
guess.
12:38
His interpreter says that Shoeotani
12:41
gave him that four and a half million dollars to cover
12:44
gambling debts. Would
12:46
you do that for someone else's gambling
12:48
debts? Now, the story out
12:51
today is that the interpreter stole the money
12:53
from shoe Atani. Does your interpreter have
12:55
enough access to your finances to
12:58
steal four and a half million dollars from you?
13:00
Why would the.
13:00
Guy was truly devious, he might
13:03
be able to. Why would your interpreter
13:05
have enough financial access
13:07
to take four and a half million dollars from you? Well,
13:11
if he's an insidious person,
13:13
dishonest and clever, as
13:17
you were having him do things for
13:19
you with various financial
13:21
institutions, investment brokers or whatever,
13:24
he would think, Oh, I'm keeping this what's
13:26
that password again? There? Show hey?
13:30
Home run a sixty nine.
13:32
Ortimation point exactly?
13:36
Okay? I'm just Jina jet Is down here.
13:40
Who knows. This
13:43
has the smell of
13:45
something. I
13:48
mean, obviously I was going to say something on tooward is going
13:50
on, that's obvious, but it's not
13:52
quite what it seems. I just don't know what
13:55
what is exciting more of the ways there.
14:05
New research is adding that remote
14:07
learning during the pandemic was a key driver
14:10
of academic declines.
14:11
We know from the nation's report card.
14:13
Reading scores for thirteen year olds fell by four
14:15
points in the twenty twenty two twenty twenty
14:17
three school year compared to the year before the pandemic,
14:20
so twenty nineteen twenty twenty when it comes
14:22
to math scores nine points
14:24
for thirteen year olds.
14:25
Wow.
14:25
Reading and math scores for thirteen year olds fell.
14:28
At all levels, even.
14:29
You know, high performers and low performers, but
14:31
they were much larger these declines for lower performing
14:34
students.
14:35
I can't think about it or talk about it anymore. I
14:37
guess that's the way the country is, which is why we don't think
14:39
or talk about it. It was obvious
14:42
from the first week that zoom
14:44
learning was worthless, and
14:46
nobody talked about it for some reason.
14:49
Well, yeah,
14:51
yeah, I think people were talking
14:54
about it, but they weren't. Their
14:56
voices were drown out by the teachers unions, primarily
15:00
which because of honest concern about
15:03
teachers' health and much
15:05
more frequently an opportunity to
15:07
use it as a negotiating leverage,
15:10
wouldn't let the kids back in school. It was absolutely
15:12
obscene.
15:13
You know, I haven't.
15:16
I'm slightly less pessimistic
15:19
that all of the lessons we should have learned
15:21
won't be learned because there
15:24
has been a fair amount of coverage of
15:27
this survey and similar stuff fairly
15:30
recently.
15:32
There seems to be some reckoning with
15:34
the mistake.
15:34
So then your optimistic view is if
15:36
we had another pandemic, we might do better.
15:39
Well, we're probably not going to have another pandemic.
15:41
And then the people that foisted this upon
15:43
us and our children paid no price
15:45
for it zero. In fact, they
15:47
were mostly rewarded. Yeah,
15:51
yeah, I would agree with all of that.
15:54
All I'm asking is that people are
15:56
aware of it so they can better look out
15:58
for their interests in the future,
16:00
whether it's another pandemic or just for
16:03
whatever reason. I just don't
16:05
think there's any downside to people
16:07
understanding what happened and
16:10
in fact, that's that's got to be the starting
16:12
point. Whether that flowers
16:14
into something more significant like you're suggesting,
16:16
I don't know, but you know that's
16:18
that's enough for me, just admit
16:21
it.
16:23
They did some polling in Gaza
16:27
in the West Bank that
16:29
I think you'll find disturbing. We can
16:31
get to that coming up a little bit later.
16:33
And there's so much I'd love to squeeze into the
16:35
show, but we don't have a lot of time, Like why
16:38
people swear so blank in much these days?
16:40
So you blank in bunch of mother blankers.
16:42
You swear so blank and much, you know, it's
16:45
hard to blank and listen to you.
16:46
Well, So starting with the premise, you believe
16:49
everybody swears more than they used to.
16:51
I do, yes, yes,
16:54
although it's more complicated than that, for reasons
16:57
I know you're oh arnold,
17:00
for reasons I know you're familiar with different
17:02
words become normalized
17:05
through time. And so an
17:09
F bomb now is not what an F
17:11
bomb used to be. It's like obscenity inflation.
17:13
Yeah, an F bomb is like an S bomb from
17:16
thirty years ago. Yes, definitely.
17:19
Yeah. Theah Armstrong
17:22
and.
17:22
Getty, a
17:24
couple of the kids had these little bottles of nutmeg
17:27
in their bags.
17:27
What do you have nutmeg for?
17:30
And they were like, oh, culinary quest. So
17:32
then they're at lunch and she's talking
17:34
to the culinary teacher and she was like, what
17:36
are you guys making that needs that much nutmeg?
17:40
And the culinary teacher said, what are you talking
17:42
about?
17:42
We're not making.
17:43
Anything with nutmeg.
17:44
Well, the resource officer overheard them
17:47
and he was like, you remember what, students.
17:49
The resource officer goes in the classroom, looks
17:51
in their backpacks and finds little jars and nutmeg.
17:54
They're all suspended because these flipping teenagers
17:56
have figured out that you can use nutmeg to
17:59
get high.
18:01
How do you get high off nutmeg? It's
18:07
you smoke it, nord it or smoke
18:09
it. And just surely they're not shooting it
18:11
up.
18:11
I know your lifestyle, Michael, do you probably know? I
18:14
have no idea?
18:18
Well, and what do they call it? Ginger breading
18:21
or something.
18:21
Like that, grandma's
18:27
kitchen.
18:29
Hey, you want to get in grandma's kitchen?
18:32
Oh yeah, I'm down.
18:34
Let's get it right in the kitchen.
18:35
So why does what do you have
18:38
for us there?
18:38
Katie? So it's saying that there.
18:40
Apparently when your body metabolizes
18:43
that, it forms
18:45
a form of md M A like, uh,
18:49
like an ecstasy?
18:50
Like how many in my grandma's muffins would I have
18:53
to eat before this would happen? I
18:56
mean, how much nutmeg do I need to consume as
18:59
a man who primary ingests it during
19:01
the eggnog season? I don't think I had a single
19:03
eggnog last Christmas season.
19:05
You've lost the joy
19:07
of life.
19:09
No, that's not true. I did have an
19:11
agnog. It's not I have lost the joy of life,
19:13
but I had an agnog. I was told one to
19:15
three seeds.
19:17
Really, that's all it takes.
19:18
Yeah, it says one to three seeds or five
19:20
to thirty grams of it ground for
19:24
itinogenic properties.
19:26
Okay, so you got a wolf down a bunch
19:28
of nutmeg. Okay.
19:29
So why is everybody blank
19:32
and swearing so blank and much?
19:33
I don't know if I can actually answer that, But I found this
19:35
article to be just really entertaining
19:38
and funny and
19:41
informative too. Coming up, what's
19:44
really the most obscene thing you
19:46
could have said in the Middle Ages?
19:48
And I'll use the.
19:49
Word on the air.
19:50
That's right, Stay with us. So
19:55
I'm going to use the word bunt. My
19:58
kids costs way more than I did at their age.
20:01
They hear way more cursing
20:03
than I did at their age.
20:07
So this piece that was written by somebody named
20:09
Constance Grady for vox
20:11
dot com, which is in its politics
20:13
insufferable, but I thought this was pretty interesting.
20:16
She starts with.
20:18
The sea word crap. No,
20:22
my kids, the sea word is crap, or at
20:24
least that's they did. I don't know about my eighth grader,
20:27
he probably doesn't anymore. But no, we're
20:29
talking about bunt, laying
20:31
down a bunt.
20:32
If you will see you in Toledo, yes
20:35
exactly, one may as well begin
20:37
with all the bunts. Over
20:39
the past few years, my social media feeds
20:41
have been gradually filled up with people, largely
20:44
American cis. White women in their
20:46
thirties, never use the term cis ever,
20:49
congratulating themselves on serving
20:53
c what.
20:55
I don't hear that word. I don't think I've ever
20:57
said that word, and I don't and
21:00
I don't hear it very often.
21:02
You know.
21:02
I became aware a long time ago that among
21:06
Brits it just means like it's
21:09
dudes. It's
21:11
like a friendly
21:15
derogatory term for your friend.
21:17
Well, I live long enough that the sea word
21:19
is mainstreamed and just said all the
21:21
time.
21:22
Yes, yes you will. In fact, that's what she's saying.
21:24
Among American women in their thirties,
21:27
like online, the more online culture,
21:30
that people use it all the time to describe
21:33
fashions, to describe themselves
21:36
having sex.
21:37
No use it, use it in context
21:40
so that I understand what you mean when you use it in fashion.
21:44
Congratulating themselves on serving
21:46
bunt bunty little
21:48
library glasses are all the rage.
21:54
Beyonce in Pure Honey
21:56
sings bunty bunt, bunt
21:59
bunt. I'm told,
22:02
I know, I know. Does it's
22:07
mainstreamed among women
22:10
in their thirties apparently? So
22:13
anyway, let's move on from that because it's making me really
22:15
too.
22:15
I'm sweating.
22:18
Our boss is about to die. Uh
22:21
so that is only the latest we've
22:24
got one. Right there, Katie wants to weigh in.
22:27
You what what
22:29
the hell?
22:30
I don't know how you're supposed to use the word.
22:32
I'm having trouble figuring out the context.
22:34
So what you have is a woman?
22:36
Yes, well you tell us are you are?
22:39
Are you referring to other women?
22:40
By that or yes, and
22:43
it replaces the word that rhymes
22:45
with itch quite okay, okay,
22:48
I see, so it's gone from.
22:51
Kind of a friend and.
22:53
It's also a way of saying I'm having
22:56
sex. It is among
23:00
this person's online
23:02
circle. Yeah, New York hipster writer.
23:05
Okay, okay, I I haven't heard of
23:07
it for that, but among my circle of friends,
23:09
bunt and bunty are quite common
23:12
but degatory. But it's derogatory,
23:15
and I do know that in Australia and Ireland,
23:17
like the UK, yeah, bunt is like that's
23:19
your mate.
23:21
Because I remember when somebody we worked
23:23
with it they were younger than us. But this is quite
23:25
a few years ago. But one woman coming and say
23:27
what what's up?
23:29
What she said?
23:30
Hey, And I was like what that's like a
23:33
okay, cool greeting. Now it wasn't
23:35
when I was younger, but but
23:38
let's see, is becoming that kind
23:41
of that can that those.
23:42
Words like uh.
23:45
And we
23:48
can say those it's okay, but it
23:50
feels it.
23:52
It just gives me the yeah, I don't know, but those
23:54
can be terms of endearment like amongst
23:56
really close.
23:57
To try that on a woman today, see
23:59
if it comes off as a during mister bunt on
24:01
me, so let me know how that goes.
24:02
Didn't feel good? Yeah, didn't
24:05
feel good? I have one no wow, yeah,
24:07
low moment.
24:08
That is the wrong way, Jack Michael,
24:10
am I wrong low moment for I think?
24:12
So yeah, let's let's
24:14
please move on.
24:16
So the aforementioned, well not mentioned
24:19
word is the only the latest in a series of
24:21
previously unspeakable words that have overtime
24:23
become trendy to say. The F bomb
24:26
is now in such widespread use that
24:28
it has come to seem a little antiquated that you can't
24:30
say it on network TV, and
24:33
TV long ago gave up trying to ban
24:35
phrases like ass and pissed off,
24:37
although they were once considered so obscene.
24:41
Lenny Bruce was arrested for using
24:43
them. Wow, and folks,
24:46
that wasn't nineteen ten, That was nineteen sixty
24:48
nine. Is that roughly right
24:50
for Lenny Bruce getting arrested or was it just
24:52
a little earlier than that, maybe
24:55
more like the early sixties. I
24:57
think early sixties. Yeah, early sixties
24:59
is you can look it up, and
25:02
then then it gets into the part that I really
25:05
enjoyed.
25:07
That was nineteen sixty one.
25:09
Thank you in the face of all these dirty
25:11
words, A person might be forgiven for asking why
25:13
the blank or people swear so blanket
25:15
much these days, And then they
25:17
go into this book in praise of profanity.
25:21
That says it's hard
25:23
to prove that they are.
25:25
That's for a number of methodological reasons
25:27
right to the author Michael Adams. For one thing, while people
25:29
swear a lot on social media, it's hard to show
25:31
that social media users are representative of
25:33
the population. And for another, we don't
25:36
have a real sense of how people swore fifty years
25:38
ago, as they failed to keep detailed
25:40
records.
25:41
True, I know,
25:44
I wish I swore less. It's
25:46
always I always feel like it's
25:48
a lazy it's
25:51
just it's just it's just not good
25:53
on most levels. It's course, it's
25:56
not creative, it's not
25:59
very descriptive.
26:00
If you over use various words.
26:02
Yeah, it's often obscenities
26:04
are used as what they call intensifiers.
26:07
It signals that I really really mean
26:09
this. There are other ways to do that
26:12
that are more difficult. You have to think about
26:14
it or have a better vocabulary. So it is, it
26:16
is lazy, but it works. It does work
26:18
with my kids.
26:19
They know if I use certain words, I'm
26:21
quite serious about what is happening.
26:24
On the other hand, we all know somebody
26:27
who says, to tell you what, I went to the blanke in store
26:29
and the blank and bread was so blank and fresh, I couldn't
26:31
blank and believe it. And it loses
26:34
its intensifying power.
26:35
Brank and feet hurt. Yeah, exactly always.
26:38
But they make the point that if people aren't swearing
26:40
more than they used to, they certainly are swearing differently
26:43
than they're used to, said a different professor
26:45
who wrote a book called What
26:47
the f What swearing reveals about
26:50
our language, our brains, and ourselves. The
26:52
specific words that are judged to be a profane
26:54
change over time. We all know that. But we're
26:56
currently experiencing a lot of flux. And exactly
26:58
how offensive particular judged to be
27:01
with an L flux? Yes,
27:05
you really are on edge. Flux?
27:09
Was that word?
27:10
One of the harshest medieval swears
27:12
you could say was zounds zounds
27:18
like or ere a zounds,
27:22
show me your zounds. No, that
27:24
was a contraction in a
27:27
weird way. Don't question it. Of Christ's
27:29
wounds by
27:33
zounds. By Christ's wounds was
27:36
the strongest, most horrifying
27:38
thing you could say. And
27:41
I wish I could read this to you. Oh this
27:43
is so priceful, priceless. Rather,
27:46
I'm sorry I'm reading and talking at the same time. In
27:48
her book Holy S, A Brief History
27:50
of Swearing, which I actually own a copy of, Melissa
27:53
Moore notes that both London and Oxford
27:55
boasted medieval streets called
28:03
I'm gonna use bunt again, Grope
28:07
bunt Lane, okay,
28:11
And then she writes,
28:13
by a medieval country pond and
28:16
I can't read this. There
28:18
would have been a blank row in
28:21
there, fishing, a wind, blanker
28:23
flying above, blank smart
28:25
and blank blank hugging
28:28
the edges of the pond, and a blank
28:30
amongst the grass. Those are
28:33
in today's sadly unvivid terminology,
28:35
the birds heron and kestrel, the
28:38
plant's water pepper, whorehound,
28:40
and dandelions. But a
28:42
lot of them had names that were perfectly
28:45
fine at the time, but it involved
28:48
words that are considered implite or
28:50
obscene now. It's like a weather
28:53
vane was a weather cock, but
28:55
people don't say that now because
28:57
you know there are
28:59
and there are other examples of that. Actually, that word
29:02
meaning a rooster, well, a
29:04
rooster when the cock crows blah
29:06
blah blah used
29:09
to be in all sorts of expressions that
29:11
have come out of favor and
29:13
have had more quote unquote polite substitutes
29:15
made for them. Because that word has gone from
29:17
unlike the F bomb or the C bomb,
29:20
which has gone from utterly unacceptable
29:22
to common among certain people, that
29:24
one went the opposite way, which is interesting.
29:29
Hmmm.
29:30
So in the Middle Ages,
29:32
like zounds, was genuinely
29:35
shocking, which is why even today
29:37
our vocabulary we're talking about profanity
29:40
is religiously inflected. We talk about oaths
29:42
and swearing and cursing because in the Middle Ages,
29:44
to invoke God out loud meant
29:47
that God was going to pay attention to whatever you were
29:49
promising. When you said ged
29:51
it, you were swearing before God
29:54
and summoning God as your witness
29:56
to what was being said. And that
29:58
was like, dude, you don't you I don't summon the
30:00
Almighty over you're mad at
30:03
the quality of the ham.
30:04
I just gd it. These pancakes
30:06
are good.
30:08
Well right, yeah, yeah, that would be just
30:10
shocking. And there are a fair number
30:12
of people who still take taking the Lord's name in vain
30:14
very seriously and to the extent that we annoy
30:17
you with it, we apologize.
30:18
It's just it's just we're
30:20
not going to change. Well
30:23
that too.
30:25
This author of Holy
30:28
S A Brief History of Swearing, which again I recommend
30:30
highly, points
30:32
out that bodily words were unremarkable
30:35
in the Middle Ages because there was so little
30:37
privacy from anybody's bodies,
30:40
shared bedrooms, no indoor plumbing,
30:42
defecation and sex happened more or less openly,
30:45
and there was no point in being delicate about it
30:47
with your language.
30:48
We thought about that before.
30:49
If you're going to have sex for even if it just
30:51
for procreation, and you got
30:54
six kids in all basically one room
30:56
hunt, where would you do it when, wherever
30:59
you.
31:00
Happen to be, when you happen to want
31:02
to So I
31:04
can't lie a lot,
31:08
Michael, that's so annoying. But
31:10
it was in the fifteenth century
31:12
and especially the nineteenth century, the height
31:14
of the Victorian era, that that stuff
31:17
became quote unquote unmentionable.
31:23
Yeah.
31:23
I mean, if you got a big chamber
31:25
pot out in the middle of your one room hut,
31:28
everybody's gonna see it, and
31:32
nobody's.
31:32
Gonna say, oh, don't talk about pooping.
31:34
There's a pile of it right there,
31:37
or everybody pretending like they don't do that.
31:41
There's more of this.
31:41
We'll post it at armstrong and getty dot com
31:44
under hot links. I think you will enjoy
31:46
it. It's it's funny. Now.
31:48
I know if I have a time machine and land in the Middle
31:50
Ages, I can drop a zounds on people and get
31:52
their attention.
31:54
Well, no, I'm serious. We'll finish
31:56
strong next.
32:05
Creditors want to force Rudy Giuliani
32:07
to sell his three point five million dollar Florida
32:10
condo to help pay off is nearly one hundred
32:12
and fifty two million dollars in debt.
32:14
These are crazy times today. Rudy called Trump like
32:17
could I stay with you?
32:17
And Trump was like, I was gonna ask you the same thing, man.
32:22
Rudy Giuliani makes
32:24
Tiger Woods seem like Tom
32:26
Hanks in terms of falls from
32:28
grace.
32:29
Oh yeah, yeah, oj Like
32:33
wow, he
32:35
was.
32:36
America's mayor after nine to eleven. Seemed
32:38
like he's showing to be president someday.
32:41
Everybody respected him, valued
32:43
his judgment and steady hand
32:46
on the till and what.
32:49
Yeah tiller tiller not
32:51
the till tiller.
32:54
Yeah wow, that's something did he lose was he
32:56
always this way or did he lose his mind?
32:57
Does anybody know? I guess we don't know.
33:02
Thought.
33:04
Yeah, here's your host for final thoughts,
33:06
Joe Getty.
33:07
Let's get a final thought from everybody on the crew to
33:09
wrap things up for the day. There is our technical director.
33:12
He'll lead us off. Michael, just trying
33:14
to calm down. When we were doing that segment about
33:17
the history of swearing, I was so close
33:19
to the dumb button at all times, So I'm just
33:21
trying to calm down back here.
33:22
Her professionals, Michael, We're not going to accidentally
33:25
say a bad word.
33:26
You're looking a little twitchy in there. Yeah.
33:28
Katie Green are esteemed newswoman.
33:30
Has a final thought, Katie, Well, you guys get
33:32
ready because I'm changing my title from Katie the News
33:34
Lady to Katie the News bunt no bo
33:37
no no.
33:40
Yeah.
33:40
Yeah.
33:40
A final thought please as it goes more
33:43
mainstream. Oh no, I
33:45
just saw this headline. Pensions
33:47
are popular recent survey saw it fines.
33:50
Some wonder if firms will bring them back. Huh
33:53
really so some sort of deal where you
33:55
get paid for.
33:55
The rest of your life after you work somewhere that's
33:57
popular.
33:58
You like that?
33:58
Da? Okay, I mean too. Are
34:00
they going to come back? No, they aren't.
34:03
My final thought is I'm so interested in the change
34:05
in real estate commissions and how that's going to shake out
34:07
going forward, and how nobody's really sure.
34:10
I mean, for instance, now the buyers got
34:12
to write a check to their own realtor
34:16
as they're writing a check to buy the house and
34:18
the rest of it, and can't finance it into the mortgage
34:20
like they.
34:21
Used to in a fact, Wow, So
34:24
I didn't realize that well.
34:25
Right, because you know, the buyer's agents
34:28
share came out of the seller's money,
34:30
which really became part of the price of the house,
34:33
which is part of which is your mortgage.
34:34
Yeah, and get divided up over thirty years as opposed
34:37
to write a check for nine thousand dollars or
34:40
whatever.
34:40
Nobody's quite sure where this is going.
34:43
Wow.
34:43
As a hopeful buyer this summer,
34:46
I'm wondering myself. Armstrong,
34:48
you get you wrapping up another grueling four hour
34:50
workday.
34:51
So many people, thanks so little time. Go to Armstrong
34:54
and getty dot com. These great articles
34:56
and stories we referred to. They're
34:58
under hot links. You can find them there, I'm strong
35:00
in giddy dot com. Pick up some swag while you're there.
35:02
By T shirt helps keep everybody on the payroll. We'll
35:04
see you for the Friday Show tomorrow. God bless
35:07
America. I'm
35:10
strong and Getty.
35:11
We were going to be bigger than Russia and Saudi
35:13
Arabia put together times too.
35:15
But damn it, that's insane. The reality
35:17
is why after lie after
35:20
lie, I'm gone call my lawyer.
35:23
So let's go with a bang.
35:24
One of my kids said either the other
35:26
day, and I said, look, we're not in either family. I
35:30
grew up in either person. Grandpa'sn't
35:32
either person. We're either people. We're not
35:34
either people.
35:35
All right, let I know, thanks you all very much.
35:37
Armstrong and Getty
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