0:01

The Middle Finger. Known for

0:03

being rude. Famous for

0:05

being long. Nobody thinks

0:08

much about it, so let's have some

0:10

fun. Let's find out why the Middle

0:12

Finger is secretly

0:14

incredibly fascinating. Hey

0:33

there, folks. Welcome to a whole new

0:35

podcast episode, a podcast all about why

0:38

being alive is more interesting than people

0:40

think it is. My name is Alex

0:42

Schmidt and I'm not alone because I'm

0:44

joined by my co-host Katie Golden. Katie.

0:46

Yes. What is your

0:48

relationship to or opinion of The

0:50

Middle Finger? Use it all the

0:53

time. Man, I'm just constantly offering

0:56

people the bird. Yeah. I

0:58

think it's used a lot in road rage

1:01

and I don't really get road rage. I

1:03

sort of get like road sadness

1:05

or road ennui, I guess, but

1:07

I've had a road rage

1:10

incident where I guess a guy behind me

1:12

just didn't like that I wasn't going like

1:15

20 above the speed limit, even though I

1:17

was going five above the speed limit.

1:20

Right, right. He was wasting a lot

1:22

of his time sort of getting in

1:24

the other lane and being like next

1:26

to me and like

1:28

flipping me off like repeatedly. And I didn't

1:31

look at him at all. I

1:33

could see out of the corner of my eye the peripheral that he

1:35

was flipping me off, but the thing that

1:37

was interesting to me was that

1:40

he was, you know, wasting his

1:42

time because he was

1:44

upset that I wasn't acknowledging the

1:46

Middle Finger of communication. It's like,

1:48

well, if you're in a hurry, why

1:51

is this important? I

1:53

personally don't really use it when I'm

1:55

angry. I use it as for

1:58

a fun goo. a

2:00

little goof them up sometimes, you know, like as

2:02

a joke. I guess especially where

2:05

it's like, hey, what's this in my

2:07

pocket? And pull out, okay, what is

2:09

this middle finger? Like what's this behind

2:11

your ear? Is this a corner?

2:13

No, it's my middle finger. It's

2:16

a saucy little joke. What about you, Alex? I

2:18

know you're constantly raging.

2:20

My God, you have an anger

2:23

problem for real. Yeah,

2:27

I've mainly done the middle finger as a

2:29

gag and not even that often it's not

2:32

a go-to gag for me, but I

2:34

do feel like there was probably an era when

2:36

it was extraordinarily offensive and now it's kind of

2:38

gone around the bend of being a little silly,

2:41

you know? It's a little silly. Yeah.

2:44

Was the middle finger sort of a thing, you

2:46

know, the expression of

2:48

discontent when you were growing up or was

2:50

it something else? Yeah, pretty

2:52

much that. I've always known that and heard of it for

2:55

sure. Yeah. When I first

2:57

learned what curses are, it was a set of words on

2:59

the middle finger. Right. That

3:02

was very clearly known. In

3:04

Southern California, it was like dude

3:06

or FU dude and middle finger

3:08

sometimes. Or raised hands,

3:10

like what are you doing? The two hands

3:12

up. I think that's my

3:15

go-to when I frustrated. Yeah. Yeah,

3:17

yeah. Yeah, I feel like I'm more correct.

3:19

Like it's less of an insult and it's

3:21

more of a will the world behold this

3:24

injustice? You know? I

3:26

do the like holding two invisible trays

3:28

of what the heck is

3:30

my thing. Like what the heck? Here's

3:32

two trays heaping with what the heck.

3:37

And it's for your table, pal. Is what you say

3:39

to them. Yeah. Did you

3:41

order the what the heck platter? Cause I've got it. Yeah.

3:46

So that sums it up. Yeah.

3:49

And I've never really thought about it. It's

3:51

such a joy. Thank you to Tongue Surgery.

3:53

I'm a discord. Their name is Tongue Surgery.

3:55

That's a great name. It's

3:57

so good. And we'll talk about the body.

4:00

part of it and then the gesture a lot is

4:02

the structure. Great. Our

4:04

first set of fascinating things about

4:06

the topic is a set of

4:08

fascinating numbers and statistics this week

4:10

that's in a segment called, that's

4:12

from the statistics

4:14

zone bam-bam-bam, numbers

4:17

coming off from

4:19

the statistics zone

4:21

bam-bam-bam. That

4:27

was submitted by RoRo on the discord thank

4:29

you RoRo we have a new name for

4:31

this every week please make it as silly

4:33

and wacky and bad as possible submit through

4:35

discord or to setpotagemail.com. Fantastic.

4:38

And our first number is is not

4:40

gesture stuff it is the number six

4:43

because that is how many fingers there

4:46

are on each hand of the I

4:48

I animal species which is

4:50

a kind of lemur found in Madagascar the

4:52

I I. Oh I love

4:54

these guys I love these guys I

4:56

good I love these guys

4:59

I say I I to the I I they

5:01

are so they are such horrible looking

5:03

little gremlins but in kind of a

5:06

cute way I find them cute. I've

5:09

seen them at Duke University which has

5:11

an entire lemur center on its grounds.

5:15

In person? It's the biggest

5:17

collection of lemurs outside of Madagascar.

5:19

It's amazing. That's incredible. Yeah

5:22

everyone should go in North Carolina. Jealous.

5:24

And it's a mostly nocturnal species of

5:26

lemur. Yes. And its third

5:28

finger might be the most amazing

5:31

middle finger of any earth species.

5:33

Its hands do look

5:35

like demon hands. Yeah.

5:38

Sort of Boschian horror hands

5:41

and yeah that middle finger wow

5:43

it is long. Yeah

5:46

yeah it Boschian like a Boschian lemur.

5:48

I think people know like a ring-tailed

5:50

lemur. This is a nocturnal spooky lemur

5:52

in a great way. The

5:54

middle finger of the I I is

5:57

about 8 centimeters long which is over

5:59

3 inches. is that's

6:01

longer than the rest of the hand. Yeah.

6:03

So like it's a, it's giant compared to

6:05

the small body of this animal and bigger

6:07

than the rest of the fingers on the

6:09

hand. And that special

6:11

middle finger is also on a ball

6:14

and socket joint. So it swivels. Yeah.

6:16

It doesn't just, just kind of curl like

6:19

the rest of their fingers or our fingers.

6:22

It's got a lot of rotation and

6:24

it's skinnier than the rest of the

6:26

fingers too. It's like a really long

6:28

bony finger. It looks, their

6:31

hands are already kind of bony and

6:33

creepy and clawy, but this one is

6:35

just, it looks like a wacky wiggly

6:37

skeleton finger. It's so

6:40

good. And

6:42

yeah, they, and they use it

6:44

for everything. And in particular, they

6:47

can tap that middle finger on

6:49

trees to listen for wood boring

6:51

insect larvae, and they can tap

6:53

it eight times within a second. It's super

6:56

fast. Then they use that finger

6:58

to fish the larvae out of the wood. They can

7:00

also use the finger to scoop the flash out of

7:02

coconuts and other fruits. And so

7:04

it's a perfect eating tool for, for

7:06

exploring the forest. So when

7:09

they're tapping on the tree, they're listening for

7:11

like the hollow of the wood, or are

7:13

they listening for sort of a response from

7:15

the larva? I believe

7:18

the hollow, cause something's boring through and then

7:20

those insects are laying the larvae and what

7:22

they bored. Imagine

7:24

sitting there, your little larva and you're

7:26

inside the tree and you're all safe

7:29

and cozy, and then you hear like

7:31

a little tapping and then suddenly these

7:33

like horrible yellow teeth

7:35

chewing through your, through

7:37

your wall and then a giant

7:40

bony hell finger coming

7:42

in and scooping you out. Yeah.

7:45

Yeah. Even on that face, the other, the

7:48

other animal comparison I'm thinking of is the

7:50

flying lemurs from Avatar the Last Airbender, like

7:52

if that was super Blackford and

7:54

spooky. Yes. It's sort

7:57

of like that face, like the big eyes, you know, and

7:59

then, but then the. finger coming at you. Big

8:01

eye eyes, Ike Rumba. Yes. And

8:05

they have these little buck teeth

8:07

that they're actually, it's interesting because

8:09

their teeth are similar to beavers.

8:11

Their teeth are and other rodents,

8:13

but these are not rodents, these

8:15

are lemurs. They are constantly

8:17

growing because they use them to chew into

8:20

wood so much like they need the constant

8:22

growth. Otherwise they wear them down and they

8:24

can't chew out maggots anymore.

8:27

Wow. That's really interesting. Yeah. And

8:30

also, here's one other thing they use their

8:32

middle finger for. This was

8:35

first observed by human scientists in

8:37

2022 because it's relatively difficult to

8:39

observe eye eyes. Scientists

8:41

observed an eye eye using its middle finger to pick

8:43

its nose. Yeah. And

8:47

to then eat the mucus that it pulled out.

8:50

We'll link the Natural History Museum in

8:52

London for an incredible diagram of how

8:54

deep into their head they pick their

8:57

nose with this gigantic spindly finger. Look

9:00

at this horrible little gremlin. My God. It's

9:03

like this photo. It's the best.

9:05

It is a nighttime photo since

9:08

eyes are like shining that creepy

9:10

night photography luminescence. And

9:12

it's a very scrungely looking animal.

9:15

It's got sort of a sunken face

9:17

and its hair looks

9:20

like it has never showered, which is it

9:22

actually has never showered. And

9:24

then it's got this weird little bony claw hand

9:26

and then its finger appears to go basically

9:30

through its entire skull,

9:32

through the nasal cavity.

9:36

Why? Alex,

9:39

for God's sakes, why? Apparently

9:42

mucus eating in primates is

9:44

relatively understudied. But

9:47

according to the Natural History Museum in London, the

9:49

other number here is 12. Eye

9:51

eyes are the 12 species, including humans, that

9:54

we've observed doing it. Okay.

9:56

Well, funny. They're just doing it why

9:58

I guess a bunch of primates do it. including us.

10:01

Funding for nose

10:03

picking primates please. We need to understand.

10:05

We need to know this. I

10:08

mean that's interesting right because that

10:10

sounds super gross right but mucus does

10:12

have a bit of nutritional value.

10:15

I'm not telling you all to pick

10:17

any ear boogers. Please don't.

10:20

But mucus in

10:22

nature is eaten like say the

10:24

slime coat on a fish can

10:26

be eaten. Maybe they're

10:28

just looking for a little bit of recycling

10:30

a little extra nutrition there. Yeah.

10:33

But yes it seems like

10:35

we need more research on

10:39

primate mucus and its

10:41

culinary properties. Wow

10:44

you sound so excited about that project.

10:46

I actually am. At

10:49

a school yeah. The

10:52

next number here is 2012 because

10:55

2012 is when a

10:57

scientist and a doctor at the University of

10:59

Utah collaborated to publish

11:02

a controversial theory about the

11:04

origin of human hand shapes

11:06

and sizes. Ooh.

11:08

This has been pushed back on a lot

11:10

but it was a new guess about why

11:12

our fingers are the different lengths they are.

11:14

Hmm. Is it for nose

11:17

picking? No although I

11:19

guess somebody could guess that. But this

11:21

was covered by science writer Ed Yang

11:23

at the time writing for National Geographic.

11:26

Biologist David Carrier and emergency room

11:28

physician Michael Morgan theorized that human

11:31

hands evolved so the fingers can

11:33

cushion each other for punching. In

11:37

which case the middle finger would be kind

11:39

of a central pillar of a hand shaped

11:42

for punching. Hey you know

11:45

you you can't hug with

11:47

nuclear arms but you can punch

11:49

with our hands because they were

11:52

made for punching right. And

11:55

that's just what they'll do to do to

11:57

do one of these days these hands. are

12:00

gonna punch a

12:03

fellow primate in the

12:05

woods. There's

12:09

a lot of pushback on this,

12:11

mainly anatomists and biologists pointed to

12:14

the lack of punching behavior in

12:16

our closest relatives, such as chimpanzees.

12:19

They also pointed out that when humans

12:21

throw punches with their hands, they really

12:24

easily fracture and injure their hands. They

12:26

don't seem that optimal for punching. Yeah.

12:29

I mean, couldn't it also be

12:32

grasping comfortably things? Could it not

12:34

be for punching but for tool

12:36

use, like grabbing a rock or

12:38

grabbing a stick so that the

12:41

fingers are... Because that's

12:43

something that our primate cousins do do.

12:47

That's exactly the main and probably

12:49

more accurate counter theory, because we

12:51

don't know for sure. But we

12:53

think that the probable real reason

12:55

human fingers are the lengths they

12:58

are is grasping, partly for grasping

13:00

tools and also for hanging, like

13:03

hanging from branches, hanging from various

13:05

stuff. Hanging out. And

13:07

according to anatomist Randall Sussman of the

13:10

med school at SUNY Stony Brook, the

13:12

hands muscles are arranged in an axis coming

13:14

together at the middle finger in order

13:17

to strengthen that for grasping and

13:19

hanging. It makes sense

13:21

in us and other primates that have

13:24

some kind of origin from trees. Yeah.

13:26

So that's probably why our middle finger

13:29

is the longest and relatively strong. Also

13:32

for babies hanging onto their mothers,

13:34

like that's a big thing for

13:36

primates. And so babies, human babies

13:38

actually have this reflex where they

13:40

can grab onto things and they

13:42

have surprising like grip strength from

13:45

being born, which is theorized to be sort

13:47

of leftover from like the baby has to

13:49

come out and be able to grab onto

13:51

its mother. That

13:53

makes total sense and makes more sense than punching. Punching.

13:56

The baby comes out ready to punch.

13:59

Yes. Yeah,

14:01

and the main difference between human and

14:03

other ape hands is that humans have

14:05

a relatively long thumb. So

14:08

our other fingers are still relatively primate-like

14:11

compared to the thumb, and so that

14:13

also fits this idea. We

14:16

basically have a big middle finger for grasping. Okay,

14:18

hey, you know what? I think

14:21

people grasp the concept when I give them the

14:23

middle finger, so how about that? Yeah,

14:27

if you say, grasp this, people will be like,

14:29

I would be offended, but you're teaching me about

14:31

primates. And

14:34

yeah, the next number here brings us into

14:36

the gesture. The number is 423 BC. But

14:42

here, 423 BC, that's

14:44

the premiere date in Athens, Greece of

14:47

a play called The Clouds by

14:49

the playwright and comedy writer, Aristophanes.

14:53

And he wrote in a middle finger bit where

14:56

someone says, pretty,

14:58

I am walking here. I

15:01

don't think they said pretty pale,

15:03

but I, I aggress here. I don't

15:05

know how they would talk in these,

15:07

in these times, but you know, yeah,

15:11

this, this exchange, they didn't really use

15:13

the middle finger for anger. They used

15:15

it as part of a broader penis

15:17

joke. Ah, they

15:19

loved, they loved dongs at this time. I've

15:21

been, okay, Pompey was a bit earlier than

15:23

this, I think, but like, man, they sure

15:25

love dongs. And Greece

15:27

and its influence on Rome, there's a real

15:29

through line here we'll get into. Yeah.

15:33

Yeah. Because the exchange in the

15:35

clouds, here's the dialogue exchange. It

15:37

starts with the character of Socrates. They

15:39

wrote Socrates into the play. Socrates

15:42

says polite society will accept

15:44

you if you can discriminate,

15:46

say, between the martial anapest

15:49

and common dactylic, sometimes

15:51

vulgarly called finger rhythm. I

15:55

don't understand anything you just said. Is this

15:57

a sex joke? get

16:00

there, yeah, because there's another

16:02

character named Strepsiades, and Strepsiades

16:04

says, finger rhythm? I know

16:06

that. Cenocretes says, define it

16:08

then. And now Strepsiades

16:11

does penis stuff. He extends his middle

16:13

finger in an obscene gesture and says,

16:15

why it's tapping time with this finger? Of

16:18

course, when I was a boy, and then

16:21

the stage direction here is raising his

16:23

phallus to the ready. And

16:26

then he says, I used to make rhythm with this one.

16:30

Ah, I see. We're talking

16:32

about like angry America down the street

16:34

giving the finger. I think he does

16:36

the like grabbing your pants crotch, basically.

16:39

We still do it, you know? And

16:42

he does a joke at

16:44

least about penises, maybe about manual

16:46

stimulation too, and involving a

16:48

middle finger gesture. In

16:51

423 BC, in public, like in front of

16:53

an audience. We think we're so

16:55

different from these ancient peoples, but we're

16:58

all the same. We got the same brain. Yeah.

17:00

And that speaks to this

17:03

gesture because takeaway number one,

17:08

since the time of ancient Greece,

17:11

the middle finger gesture has kind

17:13

of represented male genitals. Okay.

17:18

It's also moved beyond that. And there's

17:20

a scientific study of modern Americans suggesting

17:22

that it now has its own meaning

17:25

separate from that. But the

17:27

Greeks and the Romans in particular

17:29

used it to offensively represents a

17:32

penis and balls. Ah,

17:34

well, okay. I can see the

17:36

wiener aspect, the phallus, but I

17:39

don't, the scrotal sort of thing, why

17:41

is that the rest of your hand?

17:43

Like is what's going on with that?

17:46

The rest of your hand below it, which

17:48

is right proportionally a little funny, but

17:50

it's what people are going with. A little funny, a little

17:53

funny, you know. Hmm. Well,

17:57

it's, you know, since school

18:00

students, if you are listening to this and

18:02

you wrote a wiener

18:04

on your notes and your teacher got

18:07

mad at you, just say, I am

18:09

practicing an ancient tradition from antiquity, from

18:13

Grecian antiquity. Yeah. Tell

18:16

them Katie Golden visited Pompeii

18:18

and saw it graffitied, graffitode.

18:21

Exactly. Name dropped me. Tell your teacher to

18:23

take it up with me. But

18:26

if they look really mad, say I did it, then they'll blame

18:28

me instead. Katie's in the clear. Right. I'm

18:30

in the clear. I'm on

18:33

a different continent, so what can they do to

18:35

me? Yeah. And

18:37

Terrin does an extradite, I'm going to claim. I

18:39

don't know. That's probably not true. Let's

18:41

not test that. And

18:48

this takeaway, the key sources are

18:50

a law review article by American

18:53

University law professor Ira P. Robbins,

18:56

a piece for BBC News magazine by

18:58

Daniel Naysaw and a 2019 study

19:00

published in PLOS One by Benjamin

19:02

K. Bergen of UC San Diego.

19:06

And they're all looking at the ancient

19:08

history, truly, of the middle finger gesture.

19:12

According to anthropologist Desmond Morris, quote, it's

19:14

one of the most ancient insult gestures

19:16

known. The middle finger is the penis

19:19

and the curled fingers on either side

19:21

are the testicles, end quote. Okay.

19:25

But I thought that the penis

19:27

and testicles, it's interesting because a

19:29

lot of times in antiquity it

19:31

was used as sort

19:33

of a symbol of fertility,

19:36

fecundity. It was a good luck

19:38

charm, so it wasn't always meant

19:40

to be an offensive symbol. So

19:44

was it like, did it have

19:46

sort of different meanings at the same time or did

19:48

the meaning shift? Different meanings

19:51

at the same time. Yeah, it was very context dependent.

19:54

And because, yeah, you're absolutely right.

19:57

We can link about a especially

19:59

Roman figurine. of a winged penis

20:02

whose Latin name was a fastenum so

20:04

that's where the word fascinating comes from

20:06

fun for this show but

20:09

yeah that should be our new logo what the

20:11

heck if only

20:13

if only we could get

20:16

that past the apple and Spotify

20:18

sensors Howard I

20:20

hope New York State doesn't extradite oh boy

20:22

let's see yeah cuz

20:28

cuz there's that and

20:31

either the full guarantee or or in

20:33

some cases we'll talk about gestures where

20:35

there's basically a threat to do a

20:37

penis to the other person you know

20:39

like it's it's it's

20:42

a very flexible symbol in it and

20:44

its connotation right and yeah

20:46

people came up with a gesture that was recognized

20:49

to be negative we're such

20:51

a funny species cuz you

20:53

know there's just so much like we

20:55

we come up with literature we come

20:57

up with art and we're still like

21:00

my genitals look at my genitals here's

21:02

a symbol of my genitals yeah

21:05

and then put it in Greek drama although

21:07

Aristophanes was probably on the comedy ends people

21:09

were probably like I'm not seeing a good

21:11

play I'm seeing Aristophanes it's gonna be you

21:14

know Wow ancient

21:16

burn not seeing one of those

21:18

Oscar plays I'm seeing Aristophanes Tony I guess

21:20

you get it we have some kind of

21:22

tincture for that ancient burn and

21:28

this was very clear to ancient Greeks

21:30

Aristophanes may or may not have coined

21:32

it but it was out there as

21:34

early as the 400th BC in

21:36

330 BC somebody published a

21:39

book about eminent Greek philosophers where

21:41

they describe an exchange where the

21:44

order Demosthenes is walking away

21:46

from the cynic philosopher Diogenes

21:49

and Diogenes gives him the middle finger and

21:52

says there goes the demagogue of Athens Wow

21:55

and the ancient Romans just took

21:57

this on along with a lot of other

21:59

Greek culture and they called the

22:01

middle finger the impudent

22:07

finger means shameless or indecent

22:10

the digitus imputicus oh

22:13

yeah I'm telling that you tell

22:15

your teacher that's why you're waving around you know right

22:17

it's just the digitus and

22:20

puticus this was

22:22

very well known to be rude

22:24

there there's a possibly fake account

22:26

of the Roman Emperor Caligula instead

22:28

of offering his

22:30

ring for subjects to kiss offering his middle

22:32

finger that does feel

22:34

made up which was understood to be

22:37

like kiss me on the penis but there

22:39

was a lot of defamatory stuff about those

22:41

emperors by their enemies so I'm

22:43

no I'm sure he wasn't a nice guy

22:45

but you know I think he may

22:47

have been an a-hole but I

22:50

don't know if he was the a-hole of

22:52

the magnitude that was written about him they

22:55

really overplayed their propaganda with him

22:57

yeah I could have just said

22:59

he did a bad job I

23:01

think yeah and the other wild

23:04

story is the the Roman historian and

23:07

Tacitus he describes a

23:09

battle between a Roman Legion

23:11

and German warriors and

23:13

he describes the German warriors giving the middle

23:16

finger to the Roman soldiers as they advanced

23:18

on each other so either

23:20

either that's real and the and the culture

23:22

spread to Germany or it's

23:24

made up but speaking to this Roman belief

23:26

that the gesture is truly rude yeah

23:29

kind of like the Germans are really

23:31

sort of savages in there yeah and

23:34

they're like leopard skin leader

23:36

hose and oh if

23:39

only Wow rolled in a Munich

23:41

with that oh baby yeah free beer you I don't

23:43

think there's

23:46

leopards in Germany no not

23:49

anymore they turned a minute too many leader

23:51

hoseon stupid not

23:54

all cultures feature this gesture this way and

23:56

there's debate about it possibly kind of

23:59

fading and the post-Roman period and

24:01

before coming back and how that would have

24:03

happened. Between then

24:05

and now, the gestures become pretty

24:07

separate from a penis in most people's

24:09

minds. Like, this takeaway is surprising to

24:11

a lot of people, right? We don't necessarily think of that.

24:15

And in a 2019 study at

24:18

UC San Diego, Benjamin K.

24:20

Bergen ran psychological studies

24:22

where they primed people

24:24

with thoughts about penises or about

24:27

the word penis, but,

24:29

quote, the results showed that

24:31

the middle finger induced no priming

24:33

of penis compared with control. Unlike

24:36

another obscene penis representing gesture,

24:39

finger bang, which did. Can

24:44

you run that one back for me, Alex?

24:46

I want you to repeat that. Yeah, the

24:48

middle finger induced no priming of penis compared

24:50

with the control. Like another

24:52

obscene penis representing gesture, parenthetical

24:55

finger bang, which did. Just

24:58

a diagram of the finger bang, of the

25:00

initial positions of the finger. You

25:02

extend the finger, the index finger on

25:04

one hand, and you have the thumb

25:06

and middle finger on the other,

25:08

and you insert the index finger into

25:10

the cone formed by your thumb and

25:18

middle finger repeatedly. Yeah,

25:20

I bought a copy of this study and they put it

25:22

in a brown bag before I left 7-Eleven. They

25:25

were like, okay, here you go. Yeah. Bergen

25:29

says this suggests the middle finger's meaning has

25:31

shifted over time. And in

25:33

technical language, it began as an

25:35

iconic gesture. Like it was an

25:37

icon of a penis. It looked

25:39

like visually an icon. Right.

25:42

And it's gone from being technical

25:44

word iconic to technical word emblematic.

25:47

Like it's now just an emblem

25:49

of rudeness that's not necessarily depicting

25:52

a part of the body. It's

25:54

sort of like with letters, right? Letters

25:56

used to kind of be iconic. They

25:58

used to... be direct

26:01

representative of an object to

26:03

kind of give you a sense of the

26:07

Syllable that you're saying and then

26:09

they became just abstract emblems

26:12

for a concept of a

26:14

sound Exactly. And

26:16

so so this gesture is rude on

26:18

its own and it's the shape it

26:21

is because People probably guys

26:23

decided it kind of looks like a penis and

26:25

balls just 2,000 years ago ancient

26:28

ladies could be you know Crude

26:32

as well. I'm sure It's

26:34

more fun if they picked it I guess so either way.

26:37

Yeah It is interesting to

26:39

me how we don't really like I mean

26:41

the the the finger bang symbol does I

26:44

guess technically have sort of a vulva

26:47

crude depiction of a vulva, but it's not like

26:49

we're not going around like doing like an O

26:51

shape at people like a for

26:54

some reason the the lady

26:57

the female genitalia do not Seem

27:01

as vulgar or not used as much

27:03

in sort of a vulgar context on one

27:05

hand But on the other hand like there's

27:07

a lot more modesty in force

27:09

on women Especially earlier on like where

27:12

it's like a naked woman is seen

27:14

as more Potentially vulgar than

27:16

a naked man because see with

27:18

the phallus It's like well, this

27:20

is funny and crude but also not

27:22

as taboo say as the female

27:24

part That's right,

27:27

and it it ties straight into our next

27:29

takeaway too because takeaway number

27:31

two There's

27:35

a slew of international variations on

27:37

the middle finger gesture and

27:40

that difference helped us PoW's

27:42

defeat North Korean propaganda Yeah

27:47

US PoW's defeated their North Korean captors

27:49

that way because it's not it was

27:51

not such a known gesture in East

27:53

Asia in the interesting interesting

27:57

Yeah, but this is this is a very familiar

28:00

gesture in the US and Canada. And

28:02

they've kind of globalized it, especially in the last

28:04

few decades. Like most of the world

28:07

knows the middle finger now, but until

28:09

a few decades ago, it

28:11

was not such a thing. And there's other gestures in other

28:13

countries that we'll talk about. So

28:15

were these POWs just given the

28:17

middle finger to their captors as

28:19

a way to show

28:21

that they are not being treated

28:24

well, like in published photos? Yes.

28:26

Yeah. Wow. And

28:29

in 1968, there was

28:31

a US Navy spy ship called the

28:34

USS Pueblo. And

28:36

this is after the active Korean

28:38

war, but still in the Cold War,

28:40

still in a state of combat, plus

28:42

the US is fighting a Vietnam war.

28:44

So the North Koreans claim

28:46

the Pueblo went into their waters and captured

28:48

it. 83 crew members are North

28:50

Korean prisoners. And

28:53

the North Koreans tried to turn that into a propaganda

28:55

weapon. They like forced the

28:58

sailors to be in press photos and

29:00

footage and write a bunch of false

29:02

confessions of crimes and profess allegiance to

29:04

this much better North Korean society that

29:06

they were thrilled to be in. Then

29:09

one day a Pueblo crew member tried

29:11

giving the middle finger to a camera

29:13

crew. It's just as a small act

29:15

of rebellion. And to their

29:17

surprise, they produced a newsreel with the middle

29:19

finger in it. The North Koreans

29:21

just made that and broadcast it. And the guys

29:23

saw it and they were like, Hey, you just

29:25

like gave the finger in the newsreel. That's okay.

29:29

And another guy tried it with another camera crew

29:31

and they realized this was not

29:33

a common gesture in North Korea in the 1960s. Right.

29:37

I know that being a prisoner of war is

29:39

not funny, but hey, you

29:42

got to find a little bit of

29:44

gallows humor there. That's, that's pretty incredible.

29:46

And also like effective, right? Because you're

29:48

sort of, uh, showing that you're not

29:50

really, this is not, you're not really

29:53

giving a true

29:55

confession here or your, your sort of,

29:57

do not hold your captors in high

29:59

regard. Precisely. So

30:01

then what happens from there is the

30:04

crew said that they just flashed the

30:06

middle finger any time they saw a

30:08

photo camera or video camera at all.

30:11

Just all of them started doing it all the time.

30:14

They also came up with a cover story.

30:16

They told the North Koreans it was a

30:18

Hawaiian good luck gesture. Like

30:21

sort of a variant of Hang Loose that the

30:23

North Koreans had in front of. We're

30:26

certainly hanging loose here on a

30:28

POW ship, yes. So

30:31

that like North Korean state media puts

30:33

out these things where there's a

30:35

bunch of texts about the Americans are all

30:37

loving our imprisonment. And then an entire group

30:39

of Americans is all giving the middle finger

30:42

to the camera. Unfortunately

30:44

for the crew, an issue

30:46

of Time magazine like printed that and

30:48

described the scam. No, don't.

30:52

And so the crew was

30:55

tragically like tortured a bunch as punishment. But

30:58

at the same time, the North

31:00

Koreans realized the game's up. Like

31:03

we can't use these guys for propaganda anymore.

31:06

Anything else we make with them will just be

31:08

side by side with the past middle finger photos.

31:11

So later that year they got

31:13

released from custody and returned to the U.S. Okay,

31:17

well, good. I personally

31:19

– this is a hot take, but I don't like

31:21

torture. I think it's bad. There's

31:24

a lot of darkness in the story because it's

31:26

just awful being imprisoned by the North Koreans.

31:29

And also they busted

31:31

themselves out essentially with the middle finger.

31:34

Like they broke the scam that the North Koreans

31:36

were trying to run by scamming them back with

31:38

the middle finger. Much

31:40

like the Aye-Aye busts into the

31:42

trees to get the grubs with

31:44

its middle finger, they

31:47

busted out of prison

31:49

with their middle fingers. It's

31:52

poetic, I guess, right? No,

31:55

I'm thinking about Aye-Ayes again. It feels great. Oh, they're so

31:57

cool. Yeah, they are cool.

32:00

Like if you had an AI

32:02

with you in a war, the

32:04

war would just be over because they're

32:06

so haunted. They're too spooky. Yeah,

32:09

the other side would surrender. You have

32:11

a haunted monkey. I can't fight you. They're

32:14

lemurs, not monkeys. I'm sorry. Our

32:18

pro-Simian listeners were like, hey. Hey.

32:21

And yeah, the other reason the Pueblo

32:23

crew could do this trick is that,

32:26

again, until very recently, there was a lot of

32:28

variation in terms of a rude

32:30

gesture and the middle finger gesture style across

32:32

the world. And maybe the

32:34

best known alternative is the British V sign.

32:39

Despite the US and Canada's close relationship

32:41

to Britain, they really had a very

32:43

different version which is you extend the

32:45

middle finger and pointer finger with the

32:47

palm facing inward. And

32:49

usually kind of an upward motion. The meaning is up

32:52

yours. And that was, was

32:54

that meant to be sort of female

32:56

parts? It

33:00

is the meaning of your finger up

33:02

someone's butt. Oh, well,

33:04

hey, you know what? We

33:08

all have different tastes, different strokes for different

33:10

folks. I'm not here to judge. And

33:14

that gesture was especially popular until

33:16

World War II because

33:18

then first Belgian leaders

33:21

on the allied side and then

33:23

later other allied leaders, especially Winston

33:25

Churchill, popularized V for victory. And

33:28

then in the 1960s, people got a P

33:30

sign going. And so that's, you just flip

33:32

your palm around basically for the difference, but

33:34

people wanted to avoid the confusion. And so

33:37

they've drifted more toward the middle finger. Yeah.

33:40

In Italy, there's a sign sort of

33:42

on the other side of the conflict.

33:45

There's a sign that's like, it's like

33:47

devil horns in the US for

33:50

like, if you're doing a metal show like, yeah,

33:53

devil horns. But

33:55

in Italy, it's actually sort of

33:57

a rude gesture and a homophobic

33:59

gesture. to imply that

34:01

the other person has a different

34:03

sexual orientation. But

34:06

then there's that same gesture, if you turn it

34:08

upside down, I think it becomes an anti-evil

34:17

eye kind of thing, where it's like

34:19

the evil eye is this concept that

34:21

someone can curse you with an evil

34:23

eye, but then these hands in the

34:25

shape of a horn, but facing down

34:29

is like a protection against the evil

34:31

eye. So sort of a similar kind

34:33

of like, it's

34:35

not really involving the middle finger, I guess, except

34:38

that the middle finger is down, actually. So

34:41

yeah. That's one of

34:43

the big examples. Yeah, there are key gestures

34:46

doing that same, I'm

34:48

pointing a fence at you, that are

34:51

very different hand shapes and not necessarily

34:53

phallic. Yeah, there's

34:55

that Italian one. There's also one

34:57

that's popular in Greece, Turkey, and parts

34:59

of Central Europe called the fig. And

35:02

the fig is where you clench

35:05

your fist, but you put your thumb between

35:07

the index finger and middle finger. Sort

35:10

of like a, like a, I got your nose

35:12

kind of thing. Yes. And

35:14

it is the same hand motion as an

35:16

American joke of I got your nose, but

35:18

don't do it on the street in Greece

35:20

or Turkey, because it's an

35:23

extremely offensive gesture. And

35:25

that was why everyone was mad at me,

35:27

because I kept getting their noses. Yeah,

35:31

you shouldn't take so many noses in the

35:34

Bosphorus, I guess. Yeah.

35:37

Yeah. And, and that gesture

35:39

possibly has its visual origin and resembling

35:41

a vulva, actually. That might be more

35:44

of a vaginal look. Okay.

35:47

Is this thumb supposed to be the

35:49

clitoris? Yeah, kind of. Okay.

35:52

There you go. Ladies, equality. We've

35:54

done it. Some

35:56

other rude gestures, one that's pretty

35:59

well known in America. is some

36:01

people call it the forearm jerk. In

36:03

France, where it's popular, it's called the

36:05

brad-e-anur. But it's where

36:07

you bend your elbow at a 90

36:10

degree angle and then slap your forearm

36:12

upward over your other forearm. Brad-e-anur

36:15

means like arm of honor,

36:17

right? Yeah, so it's kind of

36:19

an ironic name. I see,

36:21

French and irony. Yeah,

36:24

and then maybe the most

36:26

surprising and risky one for

36:28

Americans is that the thumbs

36:31

up sign is considered an

36:33

up yours sign in Afghanistan,

36:35

Iran, Nigeria, and Australia, and

36:38

Israel and Greece in

36:40

various communities. Probably less

36:43

and less again because of American globalization,

36:45

but it has meant up

36:47

yours in many countries, even

36:49

though it's the most chill way of

36:52

doing a positive gesture in the United

36:54

States. Has this ever started

36:56

a war? No, not

36:58

that I know of. So we got away with that, folks.

37:01

Worked out. And

37:03

that's a ton of numbers and two

37:05

big takeaways. When we return, we'll explore

37:07

lots more wild incidences of the middle

37:09

finger. And I'm gonna try to

37:12

do all the gestures during

37:14

the break. Practice.

37:17

Yeah. Folks,

37:27

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we're back. Katie, rest your hands. You've

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39:32

I got I got fingy cramps from all

39:34

the rudeness I've been doing. And

39:39

this middle finger gesture we mentioned it's

39:41

very big in Canada in addition to

39:43

the US. The next number here is 1982. Dear

39:48

that Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Stupid

39:51

rhyme. It works. That

39:54

in 1982 is when Canadian

39:57

Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau sparked

40:00

national protests by giving three

40:02

protesters the middle finger in

40:04

Western Canada. Wow.

40:07

Hey now, come on, that's not

40:09

very Prime Ministerly. The Prime Minister.

40:11

What were the protesters protesting? Yeah,

40:14

they were protesting a call by

40:17

Pierre Trudeau to not give government

40:19

workers raises, and to

40:21

keep expenses down for public workers. And

40:24

so when he was visiting Salmon

40:27

Arm, British Columbia, three

40:29

protesters demonstrated against him. He gave them

40:31

the finger from his train car and

40:33

they responded by throwing vegetables at it.

40:38

I love you, Canada. You know, I

40:40

mean, you've got your problems, you've got

40:42

your problems, you've got your nasty secrets,

40:44

but throwing vegetables at

40:47

the train that your Prime Minister

40:49

is so good. What

40:52

kinds of vegetables we talking about? We

40:55

don't know, but there's a fun

40:57

progression where Trudeau was on a vacation

40:59

train trip. Like he had gone all

41:02

the way west on a train in

41:04

Canada. And he also went

41:06

with his three sons, one of whom is

41:08

future Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Okay,

41:10

yes. Because I was thinking, wow, what

41:13

a coincidence that there's a Trudeau, but

41:16

it's snepotism. Yeah, it's some

41:18

Bush or Adam stuff. Yeah. Some

41:20

Bush. It's some Bush hijinks. I

41:23

guess we ran out of charismatic

41:26

Bushes, didn't we? Mmm,

41:29

feels like you're underappreciating, Jeb. Yep!

41:32

Exclamation point. Yep. Please

41:35

clap. Poor old

41:37

Jeb. So, so what

41:39

happens is he, Pierre gives them the finger,

41:41

they throw vegetables at him. And

41:44

then a trend starts where Trudeau's

41:46

train is slowly returning east and

41:48

more and more protesters throw more

41:50

and more vegetables at the train.

41:53

Oh man, that's, yeah. I mean,

41:55

you know, I am sad about the waste

41:58

of folate from those vegetables,

42:00

but still get them with

42:03

them vegetables. So

42:05

cute. By the end, the

42:07

press nicknamed his train the Caesar Salad

42:10

Special. Because it

42:12

was so heaped with produce. That's

42:14

about as spicy as Canadians

42:17

will get. Call on

42:19

your train the Caesar Salad Express.

42:21

That's peak rudeness. It's

42:24

really good. Yeah. And it

42:26

eventually got dangerous. Apparently in Sudbury,

42:28

Ontario, so most of the way

42:30

back to Ottawa, but in Sudbury,

42:33

Ontario, 500 protesters threw

42:35

vegetables and rocks and broke

42:38

several train windows. Well,

42:40

now... So that's spicy. Now, hang on,

42:42

guys. You got

42:45

your... I feel like you should stick

42:47

with the vegetable theme, right? Because you

42:49

don't want to hurt the train. The

42:51

train's an innocent in this

42:53

situation. And the

42:56

train car is now in a museum because

42:58

it was so famous for its attack. Do

43:00

people still throw vegetables at it?

43:03

I guess I would if I visited the museum. I would see

43:05

if they'd let me knock a little cabbage at it for the

43:07

fun. Just a little baby carrot.

43:09

A baby carrot. Oh, yeah. You

43:12

want me to be harmed? Yeah. And

43:15

then, apparently to this day, some

43:17

Canadians will call the middle finger

43:19

gesture of Trudeau salute. But

43:22

this mainly comes up in politics

43:25

because this story became a symbol

43:27

of national politicians and

43:29

Eastern politicians not respecting Western

43:31

Canada. There can be

43:33

tension between Eastern and Western Canada over

43:35

various issues. And Western

43:38

politicians will bring up policies they

43:40

feel are rude as, you know,

43:42

another Trudeau salute from out East.

43:45

And then his son, Justin Trudeau, is just

43:47

tied to this by association, partly because he

43:49

was on the car he was there. And

43:53

when he was campaigning to be Prime Minister

43:55

in 2013, Justin Trudeau

43:57

visited Kelowna, British Columbia. He

44:00

said that he learned from his father that,

44:02

quote, one should always wave with all five

44:04

fingers. Yeah. In

44:06

reference to this well-known scandal. Have

44:10

you heard the conspiracy theory

44:12

that Justin Trudeau's father is

44:14

not Pierre Trudeau, but

44:17

instead Fidel Castro? It

44:19

rules. It's so fake. Yeah.

44:23

I'm not really someone who gets

44:26

into conspiracy theories, but I

44:29

want, I like this. I like it. Yeah.

44:32

I just like that. Like, look at

44:34

these faces, right? They're

44:36

both handsome young men. Look at

44:38

that. Right. Two

44:40

people can't have dark hair without being

44:43

related. No. It's fake and it's great.

44:46

I mean, you know, come on. Like,

44:48

look, if you want me, if

44:50

I could pick a conspiracy theory

44:52

that could be correct, I'm

44:55

going to pick that one over the moon

44:57

landing being faked. Right. Maybe

44:59

he was conceived on the

45:02

moon by Fidel Castro. We've

45:04

never seen Justin Trudeau and the moon

45:07

in the same picture. Prove me

45:09

wrong. Show

45:12

me proof I'm wrong. We'll

45:16

also link your really great recent Somewhere News

45:18

episode that you wrote about conspiracy theory. That's

45:21

so good. I don't know

45:23

what you're talking about. Everything's true in that

45:25

episode. Oh, I see. You

45:29

didn't write it. Ooh, Warmbo wrote

45:31

it. Yeah. Yeah. We're

45:34

getting into some deep, deep lore that the

45:37

average listener is not going to know what

45:39

we're talking about. Something

45:42

known to everyone. Next number, the fall of 2004.

45:47

Fall of 2004 is when video

45:49

surfaced of US President George W.

45:51

Bush as Texas governor giving

45:53

the middle finger to his adviser. Hey,

45:56

you know what? Now you're talking, right?

45:58

You're not giving your middle

46:00

finger to the people, you're giving it to

46:03

your own cabinet. Yeah,

46:05

and this is a situation where it

46:07

was basically the opposite of a scandal,

46:09

because what happens is, fall of 2004,

46:12

George W. Bush is running for re-election

46:14

as president, and then his opponents

46:16

say, ah, we found a clip that

46:18

will destroy him. And it

46:21

was Bush, in front of a camera for

46:23

like an on-purpose message as Texas governor, but

46:26

like joking around with his advisor, Karen

46:28

Hughes, and he says, quote, she's still

46:30

telling me what to do, and then

46:32

gives her a playful middle finger. And

46:35

then somebody off camera says, hey, is this

46:37

camera running? And Bush jokes that he was

46:39

simply doing a one fingered victory salute. And

46:43

so the clip like goes around the

46:45

relatively new internet, and his opponents are

46:47

like, oh, we've caught him being rude

46:49

and terrible. Basically, nobody cared,

46:51

and if anything, people found it a sign of

46:53

his sense of humor. And he won re-election. It

46:55

was fine. That's

46:58

such a miscalculation in terms of

47:00

like what people's

47:02

sensibilities are. I

47:05

think that this keeps happening, right?

47:07

Where someone does not super offensive

47:09

or mean, but I mean something

47:12

that's like kind of like rude

47:14

or like, you know, not

47:16

proper. And

47:18

it's always like, oh, people are going

47:20

to really be upset that X candidate

47:23

used the wrong salad fork. And it's

47:25

like, no. Right. We're

47:29

all like, I don't know the salad forks and people

47:31

who bring that up. Yeah. Right.

47:34

Yeah. I eat salad with my fingers.

47:36

It's so different from Trudeau. Like it was

47:38

a non-issue joking with your friends. Like the

47:40

one good George W. Bush thing is that

47:42

he seemed to be a fun hang. Right.

47:45

And this clip was him being a fun

47:47

hang, and we just worked for him. A

47:50

man I could have some

47:53

kind of alcoholic beverage with,

47:56

maybe like maybe a Sauvignon

47:58

block with. Yeah,

48:00

there we go. And everybody's like, boo,

48:02

wine stinks, and then votes for votes

48:04

some more somehow. Third term.

48:07

It's called freedom juice now. And

48:13

yeah, and another number here is about

48:15

the oldness of the middle finger gesture in the

48:17

United States. The number is 1886. 1886 is the

48:19

year when baseball player Charles

48:25

Radborn snuck a middle finger into a

48:27

team photo. Fun. And

48:30

it is it is potentially the oldest

48:32

like media capture of

48:34

a middle finger gesture in American

48:36

history. Was he

48:38

doing it fly like having it on

48:41

his leg or something where it's like

48:43

my hand is resting on my leg

48:45

and there's my middle finger or was

48:47

he just full on flipping the bird?

48:50

Interestingly, we have an example of him doing each

48:52

thing. Mixing

48:54

it up. And it

48:57

also apparently got around because Charles

48:59

Radborn nicknamed old Haas. He

49:01

was a future baseball Hall of Famer and

49:04

an excellent pitcher. And in 1886, the

49:07

Boston Bean Eaters baseball team

49:09

is so long ago, that was a team name. Guys,

49:13

come on. Bean Eaters. Yeah,

49:15

baseball is a great sport. Man, we're

49:17

just such an incredible forceful team.

49:20

What would inspire confidence in our

49:22

fans? Oh, yeah.

49:24

Eating beans. And

49:26

then Boston's like, Oh, no, no, we

49:29

found a more intimidating name. Red Sox.

49:31

Now they're scared. Yeah, we were. Gosh,

49:34

what is intimidating when we wear

49:36

little cute little suckies on our

49:38

little pizzis? Now

49:42

we found a really intimidating mascot, a tiny

49:44

leprechaun for a basketball team. Now. Now people

49:46

are scared of Boston, right? Right.

49:49

We're really good at this. But

49:52

1886 opening day

49:55

for the Boston Bean Eaters, the

49:57

whole team has gathered and Radborn did. a

50:00

full hand up, not sneaky middle finger,

50:02

but in a big group photo. Okay.

50:06

And then this got published, publicized, and

50:08

there might be older pictures of a

50:10

middle finger, but this was the first

50:12

one that got like shown to a

50:15

large group of Americans. I

50:17

see. The first one to corrupt our

50:19

youth. I'm

50:23

corrupting the youth. The other example is the

50:25

next year, 1887, Radborn poses for a baseball

50:27

card. And

50:31

in this time, most baseball cards

50:33

were published by tobacco companies. So

50:35

this was a tobacco company promotional

50:37

baseball card. And Radborn

50:39

put both hands on his hips and did

50:42

the middle finger with one hand. And

50:44

so that was also distributed widely. Nobody

50:46

caught it before production. I

50:49

love that. Yeah. So

50:51

that's how far back the middle finger gesture goes

50:53

in America at a minimum. And so

50:56

that's part of why it's kind of

50:58

swung around to being playful. Like once an

51:00

obscenity is old enough, we all kind of

51:02

just get used to it, I think. And

51:04

then we don't sweat it so much. Yeah.

51:07

Just like how we all lift

51:10

our fallacies up next to our

51:12

middle finger because it's such an

51:14

old gesture that now it's no

51:16

luck. A big deal. That's

51:19

right. The Greeks taught us. The Greeks did

51:21

teach us. And our last

51:23

takeaway of the main show is takeaway

51:25

number three. The

51:30

middle finger is an interesting constitutional

51:32

law case study. Now

51:35

I have nothing but respect

51:37

for the boys in blue. Is

51:40

there a way to get that across

51:42

sarcastically? Like through, like how

51:44

do I do? Okay. I have nothing

51:47

but respect for the boys

51:50

in blue. There we

51:52

go. But I, but you know, I

51:54

think that we do have a right

51:56

to flip them off. I'm not saying

51:59

I do. I'm so

52:01

polite. So, but I'm,

52:03

but, you know, it seems like we

52:05

should have the right to do that

52:08

without being arrested. Yeah.

52:10

And essentially, if you have

52:12

time and money and the

52:15

main example of this is the story of a white man,

52:19

you can give the middle finger to police

52:22

and the law will protect you in

52:24

most cases. That's

52:26

the thing, though. The law may

52:28

eventually protect you, but in the

52:31

meantime... You

52:33

have to work the system first. Yeah, which

52:36

may include physical violence, especially

52:38

if you are, you know,

52:40

what's the word I'm

52:42

looking for? Not privileged.

52:44

Yeah. You know, so like, I

52:46

don't know that I would suggest

52:48

it, given that it's

52:51

not like being legally and, you

52:54

know, morally justified will protect

52:56

you from immediate consequences that

52:59

may be unconstitutional. Yeah.

53:02

And we'll talk about a couple other countries here

53:04

too, but the main one is the US. Lots

53:07

of countries have a general principle of free expression

53:09

and under US law, in many

53:11

cases, the middle finger has been

53:14

determined to be speech and has

53:16

been determined to be something protected

53:18

by the First Amendment. That's

53:20

why whenever people are like, speech, speech,

53:22

speech at like a wedding or something,

53:25

I just give everyone the

53:27

middle finger and I'm like, enough said.

53:30

Right. We already told you what

53:32

to tell your teacher. Now valedictorians, listen up.

53:35

When you're giving a speech at graduation. I

53:38

like that we're cultivating this image of me where

53:41

I am just a real rascal. Real

53:46

rule, a real rule bender. We

53:48

were both so polite in high school, right? Yeah.

53:50

I was a weenie. I was such

53:53

a weenie. Yeah, me too. But

53:55

now I'm like, avatar the rule bender.

54:00

I feel like that gives away what a weenie

54:02

I am for making that joke. So, you

54:04

know. Yeah.

54:07

And so one source here is

54:09

again, American University law professor Ira

54:11

Robbins. He says in various cases,

54:13

the middle finger gesture has been

54:15

found to be expressing anger, rage,

54:18

frustration, disdain, protest, defiance,

54:21

comfort, or even excitement.

54:24

There's various situations where it's been defined as

54:26

a way of speaking that with your hands.

54:29

It's almost the logic of how... I

54:32

love flipping my parents off on Christmas morning.

54:34

I just so excited. It

54:38

is. It's like a woohoo, like

54:41

the rock fingers or something. It's going to

54:43

be that. And because

54:45

it's a complex way of speaking, you're

54:48

pretty much allowed to do it. I

54:50

mentioned a white man being an example. Back

54:53

in 2016, the podcast Criminal by

54:55

Phoebe Judge, they interviewed

54:57

an Oregon resident who gives

54:59

the middle finger to every police officer he

55:01

sees. Oh, you know. It's

55:03

just what he does going around. And

55:06

in one instance, the police proceeded to

55:08

chase him down and write him tickets

55:10

for a broken tail light and a

55:12

darkened license plate. But

55:15

then he, through time and money

55:17

and obstreperousness, sued and won a

55:19

legal settlement of $4,000. And

55:24

the police department told the interviewer that it

55:26

just cost less to do that than to

55:28

argue the case. Right.

55:30

But it was considered an illegal

55:32

search and tickets to chase him

55:34

down for a middle finger. They

55:37

couldn't proceed to notice issues

55:39

with his car based on a middle finger. He's allowed

55:41

to say that to a cop. That

55:44

makes sense, right? If you were not going to

55:46

give a ticket until you were offended by someone,

55:49

then yeah, it's just

55:51

retribution. Yeah. And

55:54

so if you will survive

55:56

that encounter and if you have money and

55:58

time. Which is questionable. Okay.

56:01

Right. Another

56:03

similar example, Ira Robbins says there

56:05

was a Texas resident named Robert

56:08

Lee Coggin. In 2003, he

56:10

gave the middle finger to another

56:12

driver, was convicted of disorderly conduct and

56:15

fined $250. And

56:18

he successfully challenged that on free speech

56:20

grounds after spending $15,000 in legal fees.

56:25

Like just to make a point, he

56:27

said First Amendment and he was right.

56:29

It's how it works. Yeah.

56:32

I mean, you know, like you

56:34

don't got to like it, but

56:37

you do got to constitutionally protect

56:39

it. Yeah. And

56:42

there's like a few ways we do

56:44

restrict speech based on the Constitution. The

56:47

middle finger is generally considered not

56:50

a violation of obscene speech rules

56:52

that would limit speech. The

56:55

main exception is if your middle finger

56:57

incites violence, that's where

56:59

you can be restricted in your use of

57:01

it. Yeah. In

57:04

what context would that incite violence though?

57:06

Because it can't, it's not fighting words,

57:08

right? Where you give someone the middle

57:10

finger and they punch you and thus

57:12

it's inciting violence because that would be

57:14

like, like, you know, fighting words.

57:17

It's not really that. So it would have

57:19

to be you give the middle finger to

57:21

a mob who go and do violence in

57:24

the name of your middle finger. But how

57:26

would that ever happen? You're

57:28

hitting on the right thing. It can be

57:31

fighting words if it's accompanying other things you're

57:33

doing. Yeah. I see.

57:35

Like they would need to successfully argue

57:38

that you did a middle finger along

57:40

with facial expressions or verbal words that

57:42

are correctly inciting violence. So

57:45

if I give you the middle finger, I'm like,

57:47

you don't even look like a clam. Why are

57:49

you called the clam? It's

57:51

you, Alex. Oh no, I punched

57:53

my monitor. Oh no. Oh

57:55

no. Then he's Alex Schmidy, the steamed clam.

58:01

I'm going to go design my superhero costume later.

58:03

Anyway, anyway, back on topic. In

58:06

that Texas case of Robert Lee Coggin,

58:09

when the court found him not

58:11

guilty, they specifically said motorists can

58:13

be prosecuted for a middle finger

58:15

accompanying road rage or reckless driving.

58:18

I mean, at that point, it's not really, does

58:20

the middle finger even play a role? Because

58:23

if you're doing reckless driving and

58:25

road rage, that seems like that's

58:27

already a lot. Like, does the

58:30

middle finger add anything onto that? Yeah,

58:34

it probably only adds a little. It

58:36

becomes a situation where a middle

58:39

finger is almost like additional evidence. So

58:41

it's very hard to make it the

58:43

main evidence, like simply giving somebody that

58:46

gesture. Under US law, it's

58:48

pretty hard to convict you of anything once

58:50

you fight it out in a court. Right.

58:53

You have the money, time, and you have

58:55

not been, you know,

58:58

unalived in a road

59:00

rage sort of

59:04

situation because apparently everyone is armed

59:07

to the teeth in the US. Yeah,

59:11

and in general, don't fight people in the US

59:13

because there is solid Supreme Court precedent

59:15

that fighting words are not protected by

59:17

the First Amendment. There's

59:20

a 1992 decision where they said

59:22

that fighting words aren't protected because

59:24

of the quote, intolerable and socially

59:26

unnecessary mode of expressing whatever idea

59:28

the speaker wishes to convey. The

59:32

argument is whatever you are trying to communicate,

59:34

you can do it without

59:37

pushing someone to violently fight

59:39

you. And that's pretty much true.

59:42

Yeah. I guess I should say it's

59:44

true in a world where judging is perfect and

59:46

they don't just say, yeah, yeah, I

59:49

think it's tricky, right? Because at what, how

59:51

do we, at what

59:53

point is, were awards, at

59:57

what point is awards violence? point

1:00:00

is words equivalent to say

1:00:03

violence, right? Like it seems,

1:00:06

it would concern me, right, in terms

1:00:08

of like determining what is fighting words,

1:00:10

right? But that's why I'm not a

1:00:12

lawyer. Other countries treat

1:00:14

this differently too, which is interesting to

1:00:16

me. The two big examples

1:00:18

in Ira Robbins' law are- Let me guess,

1:00:20

Germany. Is Germany one of them? Yes,

1:00:22

Germany is one of them. I knew it. And

1:00:25

his other example is France. Yeah.

1:00:29

And he says that after the eras

1:00:31

of Nazism and European fascism, countries

1:00:33

like Germany and France instituted a

1:00:35

lot of specific restrictions on hateful

1:00:37

speech and violence inciting speech. There's

1:00:40

an entire German law called the

1:00:43

Law of Insult, which criminalizes stuff

1:00:45

including specific insulting gestures. Mm-hmm.

1:00:48

Germany is a really interesting

1:00:51

example of both

1:00:53

the good intentions and the dangers

1:00:55

behind this concept, right? Because obviously

1:00:57

like quashing Nazism is perhaps the

1:01:00

most noble cause you could have.

1:01:03

But then I think what one sees

1:01:06

in Germany is sometimes protests

1:01:08

and speech, especially now, like

1:01:12

when it applies to

1:01:14

non-Nazi ideologies, right? And

1:01:16

other things can,

1:01:18

then it's like they can

1:01:20

use these laws, right, that

1:01:22

were originally meant to keep

1:01:24

Nazism at bay for other

1:01:27

policing other speech, right? So

1:01:29

it is making sure those

1:01:31

laws then can't be applied

1:01:33

to other speech is very

1:01:35

important. Exactly, yeah.

1:01:38

And so it just puts you in more

1:01:40

of a gray area because you don't know

1:01:42

how the judge will come down or the

1:01:44

police officer will react. And France

1:01:47

is its own gray area too because they

1:01:49

have specific legal protections for

1:01:51

people's personal honor and legal

1:01:54

precedent allowing people to fight back if

1:01:56

their honor has been affronted. So French.

1:02:00

Yeah. It's

1:02:03

called the Zutallur law. And

1:02:08

so for those two reasons, the

1:02:10

middle finger is relatively restricted in countries

1:02:12

like Germany and France. In

1:02:14

the US, we don't really protect

1:02:16

personal honor and we don't have those

1:02:19

German style guardrails against a

1:02:21

Nazi past. The

1:02:23

very, very last thing there is in

1:02:26

Vermont, a man named Ted Pelkey in

1:02:28

2018, he constructed a

1:02:31

700 pound giant wooden statue

1:02:33

of a middle finger on his

1:02:35

property because he was

1:02:38

angry with the local town select board

1:02:40

for not letting him rezone the land

1:02:42

and put his business on it. And

1:02:44

after 10 years, he says of arguing with them, he

1:02:47

just gave up and put up a middle finger instead.

1:02:50

Fantastic. And it was

1:02:52

like easily legally defensible, even

1:02:54

though the middle finger was visible from

1:02:56

the highway. It qualified as

1:02:58

public art in addition to free speech. I

1:03:02

love it. And so all sorts of

1:03:04

First Amendment protections defended a giant 700 pound

1:03:07

wooden middle finger. I

1:03:09

love it. It's free speech,

1:03:11

it's American, and it's about

1:03:13

terrible zoning laws. It's

1:03:15

fantastic. I'm pro giant

1:03:18

middle finger when it comes to extremely

1:03:21

restrictive zoning regulations.

1:03:25

And also just like, man, it

1:03:28

is again, proud to be

1:03:30

American. Yeah, apparently you

1:03:32

can still see it in Westford, Vermont.

1:03:35

In 2019, he told the Vermont Digger blog that

1:03:37

he's going to keep it up forever and that

1:03:39

it is quote awesome. We're

1:03:42

doing it folks. Q?)

1:04:01

That's the main episode for this week.

1:04:03

Welcome to the outro with fun features

1:04:05

for you such as help remembering this

1:04:07

episode with a run back through the

1:04:10

big takeaways. Takeaway

1:04:15

number one, since the time of

1:04:17

ancient Greece, the middle finger gesture

1:04:19

has kind of represented male genitals.

1:04:22

Takeaway number two, there's a slew

1:04:25

of international variations on the middle

1:04:27

finger gesture and that difference helped

1:04:29

US POWs defeat North Korean propaganda.

1:04:33

Takeaway number three, the middle finger

1:04:35

is a major constitutional law case

1:04:37

study. Plus so many

1:04:39

stats and numbers this week about

1:04:42

the middle finger in Canadian political

1:04:44

scandal, US political non scandal, the

1:04:46

origins of US baseball and the

1:04:49

entire primate world relationship to this

1:04:51

digit. Those

1:04:56

are the takeaways. Also I said that's

1:04:58

the main episode because there is more

1:05:01

secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you

1:05:03

right now. If you support

1:05:05

this show at maximumfun.org. Members

1:05:08

are the reason this podcast exists.

1:05:10

So members get a bonus show

1:05:12

every week where we explore one

1:05:14

obviously incredibly fascinating story related to

1:05:16

the main episode. This week's bonus

1:05:18

topic is two astounding middle fingers

1:05:20

in modern Northern Italy, and you

1:05:22

can go see both of them.

1:05:24

We've seen one visit sifpod.fun

1:05:27

for that bonus show for library of

1:05:29

16 dozen other secretly incredibly

1:05:31

fascinating bonus shows and a catalog of

1:05:33

all sorts of max fun bonus shows.

1:05:35

It's special audio just for members. Thank

1:05:38

you to everybody who backs this podcast

1:05:40

separation. Additional fun

1:05:42

things. Check out our research sources on

1:05:44

this episode's page at maximumfun.org. Key

1:05:47

sources this week include a law

1:05:49

review article by American University law

1:05:51

professor Ira P. Robbins and

1:05:54

tons of digital historical resources

1:05:56

from Canada's national post Atlas

1:05:58

Obscura Britain's imperial war. Museum

1:06:00

and more. That page

1:06:02

also features resources such as native-land.ca.

1:06:04

I'm using those to acknowledge that

1:06:07

I recorded this in Lenapehoking, the

1:06:09

traditional land of the Muncie Lenape

1:06:11

people and the Wapinger people, as

1:06:13

well as the Mohican people, Skatagoke

1:06:15

people, and others. Also, Katie taped

1:06:17

this in the country of Italy and I want

1:06:19

to acknowledge that in my location, in many other

1:06:22

locations in the Americas and elsewhere, Native

1:06:24

people are very much still here. That

1:06:26

feels worth doing on each episode and

1:06:28

join the free SIF Discord, where we're

1:06:30

sharing stories and resources about Native people

1:06:32

and life. There is a link in

1:06:35

this episode's description to join the Discord.

1:06:37

We are also talking about this episode

1:06:40

on the Discord and, hey, would you

1:06:42

like a tip on another episode? Because

1:06:44

each week I'm finding you something randomly

1:06:46

incredibly fascinating by running all the past

1:06:48

episode numbers through a random number generator.

1:06:51

This week's pick is episode 49. That's

1:06:53

about the topic of postal codes,

1:06:55

like zip codes and stuff. Fun

1:06:58

fact there, every country has an

1:07:00

obsolete postal code system, with the

1:07:02

specific exception of the Republic of

1:07:04

Ireland. So I recommend

1:07:06

that episode. I also recommend my co-host

1:07:09

Katie Golden's weekly podcast, Creature Feature, about

1:07:11

animals and science and more. Our theme

1:07:13

music is Unbroken Unshaven by the Budos

1:07:15

Band. Our show logo is by artist

1:07:18

Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza

1:07:20

for audio mastering on this episode. Special

1:07:22

thanks to the Beacon Music Factory for

1:07:25

taping support. Extra, extra

1:07:27

special thanks go to our members and thank

1:07:29

you to all our listeners. I'm thrilled to

1:07:31

say we will be back next

1:07:33

week with more secretly incredibly fascinating.

1:07:35

So how about that?

1:07:39

Talk to you then. Maximum

1:07:59

fun. A worker-owned network

1:08:01

of artist-owned shows supported

1:08:03

directly by you.