137 Jovial Trivia

Bob Smith 0:00
How did the 10 gallon hat get its name?

Marcia Smith 0:03
And the first Bible in America was published in what language?

Bob Smith 0:08
The answers to those and other questions coming up in this episode of the off ramp with Bob and

Marcia Smith 0:12
Marcia Smith

Bob Smith 0:29
Welcome to the off ramp a chance to slow down steer clear of crazy take a side road to sanity and get some perspective on life. Marcia, we’ve heard this term for years and cowboy movies a 10 gallon hat. Yeah. What did you just assume that meant maybe it was a Texas brag that a hat could hold 10 gallons of water.

Marcia Smith 0:51
four quarts didn’t sound cool. So they’d say one gallon.

Bob Smith 0:55
So what do you think it came from? What do you think that had? Yeah,

Marcia Smith 0:59
it does sound like it would hold a gallon of dirt or something. So what is it?

Bob Smith 1:03
Well, you know, I was thinking about this. We were in a restaurant recently, where there was some Barrows hanging on the wall and the Freeman and the Kubishes wee with us. Just that day, I had learned that those hats were originally called gallons GA l o n s. Oh, really? Yeah. GA lone means braid. The braid that runs around the base of a cowboy hat is where the 10 gallon hat got its name, and the original spelling was GA l o n. But some Mexican cowboys were as many as 10 of those braids on their Sombrero, so they weren’t 10 gallon hats. Oh, that’s cool. That’s very intriguing. Yeah. 10 gallon hats. JLN. And that spelling later became corrupted to gallon spelled with two L’s just in case you wondered a 10 gallon hat only holds three quarters of a gallon of water. What a ruin it.

Marcia Smith 1:49
Okay, here’s a quickie. What language was the first Bible published in America? What language was it in? I

Bob Smith 1:56
think I know the answer. Isn’t it the Algonquin Indian language?

Marcia Smith 2:01
Did you get this in your religions of the world class in college?

Bob Smith 2:05
Oh, no. I just remember this was such an ironic thing. Yeah, that was the first Bible published in the United States. It was published in an Indian language, right? Yeah. So when was that first published somewhere

Marcia Smith 2:15
between 1660 and 1663. The year you were born? Thanks

Bob Smith 2:21
a lot. Wow. Can you believe that? The enemy missionary I believe did that right? Yes. Okay, I have a question for you, Marcia. What popular American car was named after a famous racecar driver. Now this driver is long gone, but the name lives on.

Marcia Smith 2:38
I want a

Bob Smith 2:40
popular American car. What popular American car what brand was named after a famous racecar driver? Well, we

Marcia Smith 2:46
know it isn’t at Saul. He wasn’t a racecar driver either. I don’t know the TransAm. No. The the Bonneville those

Bob Smith 2:56
are lines of cars. So those are Pontiacs you’re talking about. Okay. Okay, I’ll give you a hint. Okay. It’s one of the General Motors. That

Marcia Smith 3:04
tells me I’m terrible at knowing who General Motors cars are.

Bob Smith 3:08
I really don’t Okay, all right. It’s the Chevrolet. Okay, Chevrolet was named after a Swiss American racecar driver, Louis Chevrolet, who came to the US in 1901. In 1911. He was 32 years old and he teamed up with former General Motors head WC Duran to produce the first Chevrolet motor car they were produced in a New York plant at 57th street and 11th Avenue. That’s where the first Chevrolet came from. And then, of course, General Motors acquired all kinds of other cars cars made prior to GM being formed. See, they were all absorbed into this corporation, Chevy Pontiac Oldsmobile, Buick Cadillac and GMC trucks. That was what I remember. That was the hierarchy of costs. I know Chevrolet was the most reasonable and then the the Cadillacs on top. Did your parents have they had Chevrolet’s? What did your parents say

Marcia Smith 3:57
I Chevrolet when I got older though they had a Pontiac so they were moving up. Okay.

Bob Smith 4:03
All right. Well, yeah, your dad had that Pontiac when we first got married for a couple of 100 that V eight boys just barely pressed down on

Marcia Smith 4:10
that. You didn’t press that and went by itself, right? It just charged ahead. It just had a mind of its own. All right. What do carob seeds

Bob Smith 4:17
and diamonds have in common?

Marcia Smith 4:22
Carob seeds and diamond syrup car

Bob Smith 4:24
OB and diamonds? I don’t know. The carrot car at a standard unit of measurement for diamonds. The carrot was originally based on the weight of a carob seed. Oh, is that right? Yeah, that’s clever. Just you know some word trivia there.

Marcia Smith 4:39
Okay, since you took two questions, I’ll take two. Okay. All right. Here’s a quickie which leading man rejected the role of Han Solo. Was it Mel Gibson, Al Pacino or Dustin Hoffman. Wow,

Bob Smith 4:52
I can’t imagine Dustin Hoffman going in outer space. Solo I’d say it’s Al Pacino.

Marcia Smith 5:00
Good guesses. Correct. He’s kind of cute for that, he would have been, but now he’s such a Corleone that you can’t picture him as Solo. Okay, I want to give him a galaxy that that was that was his father. All right, here’s a word origin I have two of them today and you’ll like them I think especially the second one. What is the origin Bob of the word paraphernalia.

Bob Smith 5:23
paraphernalia para what is para mean? Para means partial right? paraphernalia for nail Yeah,

Marcia Smith 5:29
it’s Greek for beside beside

Bob Smith 5:32
Okay, beside I don’t know paraphernalia

Marcia Smith 5:36
for NA, and that’s Greek for dowry. So medieval Roman law said that when a young woman married, her dowry became the legal property of her legal husband, you know, like my dad gave you all my worldly goods?

Bob Smith 5:50
It didn’t work in our case. Okay.

Marcia Smith 5:53
But the other stuff, the stuff that wasn’t in the dowry was the paraphernalia or the goods besides the dowry? And the lady got to keep that though. No kid the side stuff that wasn’t in the dowry, so

Bob Smith 6:06
like the collateral you might call this thing surrounding Yeah,

Marcia Smith 6:10
probably like china cups or you know, little treasure. Little treasure lace

Bob Smith 6:14
Yeah, you can have them. Yeah, you can have them babe. Yeah, I get the money. You get the money. Wow. So that’s where the term paraphernalia.  And it referred. So it was like a legal term. Yeah, that meant everything other than the dowry. Just harsh, wasn’t it? Okay. What do you got? Where was America’s first apple orchard?

Marcia Smith 6:36
Well, is that go back to Johnny Appleseed? No,

Bob Smith 6:40
it’s before that. That was Mr. Chapman who came through the southern Ohio area where my folks were born. Yes,

Marcia Smith 6:46
Johnny. Yeah. John Chapman. Okay, so this was before course, he had to get his apple seeds from somewhere. I’ll say mean,

Bob Smith 6:53
this goes back 400 years and it’s the right coast, but the wrong state. Now I’m close. What is it? It’s in Boston, Massachusetts. That’s where the first apple orchard was the first cultivated apples in the United States. Did we have wild apples? There were apples there. But the ones that took root, so to speak, were the ones that came on the boat. This is in 1623. They were planted in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Boston. But at the time, it was the land of the Massachusett tribe.

Speaker 1 7:22
That was the name of the Indian JSSA si Hu s e t t tribe.

Bob Smith 7:27
There were apples in the new world, but the ancestors of the fruit we aII eat today actually originated in Central Asia. This is an interesting voyage here. They originated in Central Asia. They entered Europe through the Silk Road. And then they were brought to North America on ships by Europeans. And then the settlers in Massachusetts developed some of the famous first varieties of apples. Have you ever heard of the Roxbury Russet? No, that’s the first colonial apple. It’s considered an heirloom apple today, you can still find them they still grow.

Marcia Smith 7:59
Is that why they call them heirloom? Because because they go back to the first apples in America because

Bob Smith 8:04
they were the first cultivated, you know, the first as a breed or as we like honey crisp, right? Yeah, right. But the heirloom apples, the Roxbury Russet goes back to the mid 1600s. And then another fruit still grown today is the bluish maroon colored blue per mane developed in the late 1700s. So those all came from that apple orchard in Boston, Massachusetts. So that’s where it was. All right.

Marcia Smith 8:28
All right, this info Bob comes to you directly from the United States Social Security website. All right. Can you name any of the top five names of men or women that were the most popular and the most use over the past 100 years? Well, Robert,

Bob Smith 8:45
of course it is number two. Very, very, really number two. Yeah. John is probably one. That’s three. Three. Okay, Michael, for so there were a lot of biblical names. Yeah. Andrew Thomas. Names like that. James,

Marcia Smith 9:01
Robert, John, Michael and David. over 100 years still the most popular, not necessarily in that order at all times it changes from year to year but overall, that’s the most used name. Okay, women,

Bob Smith 9:13
okay, those similarly, probably Mary, right. Number one, Margaret. Is that one?

Marcia Smith 9:19
No. Okay. Elizabeth. Yes. That’s number five. Okay. Joyce? No, these three are going to be hard to get this two three and four Harriet, Hilda

Bob Smith 9:27
and no. Okay. Hilda guide.

Marcia Smith 9:30
It’s Patricia, Jennifer and Linda. Oh, really? Yeah. So the five top names the last 100 years for women marry Patricia, Jennifer, Linda and

Bob Smith 9:40
Elizabeth. Isn’t that interesting? I never think of Jennifer as being an older Namie either.

Marcia Smith 9:44
I mean, Linda, I could

Bob Smith 9:45
see all of those others. Sure. All right. Some animal questions. Marsha. All right. What animal carries her babies nearly two years before they are born elephants. That’s exactly right. They carry their babies longer than any other animal 20 to 22 months. Can you imagine being pregnant that long? No. And the average female elephant has an average of how many calves during her lifetime? Oh,

Marcia Smith 10:09
gosh. Not that many. I would think if it’s a couple of years to do it. I’ll say four, four. That’s

Bob Smith 10:16
right for calves. So they’re carrying four calves. Two years of peace. Wow, that’s a lot. And twins are rare. A newborn elephant calf weighs about what?

Marcia Smith 10:26
I’ll say. 400 pounds.

Bob Smith 10:29
200 pounds and it stands about three feet tall. Okay. 200

Marcia Smith 10:33
Yeah, that’s plenty. I would give birth to a 400 pound baby. I don’t think so. Then

Bob Smith 10:37
when elephants get to be complete size, they can consume up to 500 pounds of food and 60 gallons of water a day. Oh, my God. That’s more than you would. Okay. No, it’s hard to believe. Oh, wow, I got some more elephant questions, too. All

Marcia Smith 10:54
right. Well, you save him. I got some biggies here. What is the origin of the word pedigree? You know what a pedigree,

Bob Smith 11:02
right? It’s the lineage basically. Of a dog or a person. See of animal pedigree pedigree? So it’s degree Peda meaning something. I don’t know. What is it?

Marcia Smith 11:14
Well, you’re right about the pedo What is it stand foot? Yeah, okay. It’s from the French word P DeGroote. It translates to the foot of a crane. The foot of a crane directly apparently the French thought the look of a genealogy chart small at the top and branched out at the bottom it looked more like the web foot of a bird than the roots of a tree Okay, so any Frenchman who came from a family prominent to have a family tree was said to have a Pete The grew the foot of a Crane. Crane. Yeah, because it all branched out at the bottom sounds

Bob Smith 11:50
almost like it’s an insult, doesn’t it? Yes. See? You have three looks at the foot of a crane.

Marcia Smith 11:55
Okay, see or die where the tree of life around my neck and look at it. It doesn’t know you don’t see it foot.

Bob Smith 12:01
It doesn’t look like the foot of a crane. Okay, another animal. We know the Bible says Jonah was swallowed by the whale in the famous story. But have there been any accounts of whales swallowing men or women in modern times? Modern

Marcia Smith 12:13
Times? Yes. All right, when? Well, Pinocchio was one.

Bob Smith 12:17
Pinocchio that’s not even a real person is who all right. In 1891 in English whaler was reportedly swallowed by a sperm whale. He lived in its belly unconscious for 24 hours really? Where he must have come out supposedly survived. Yeah, but accounts indicate he suffered a temporary unbalanced mind and permanently bleached skin. Geez, when was that? That was an 1891. And in 1894, a sailor was less fortunate after being swallowed. He was found later dead and partially digested, but came out. Whales have actually swallowed people over the centuries. Have you

Marcia Smith 12:54
ever played bridge bop? Once? I think so within 500 or so how many hands of bridge can be dealt from one pack of cards? How many different hands

Bob Smith 13:06
can be dealt to different combinations? Yeah, I don’t know. Just take a guess. 150?

Marcia Smith 13:12
Well, I said within 500. So it goes higher than that. Okay.

Bob Smith 13:18
725 Wow, that’s really cool. 850 600 billion. Oh, my goodness

Marcia Smith 13:24
combination. No, it I saw the algebraic formulation for this. And it is pretty astronomical. Just think of that. That’s hard to believe. 100 billion possible combinations in a hand of bridge? Well, it’s

Bob Smith 13:39
considered a very skilled sport to play. There are all kinds of national and international organizations that award prizes, and is

Marcia Smith 13:47
that a lot of like in chess, a lot of analytical thinking or,

Bob Smith 13:51
apparently, some people do it for competition. One of our CEOs, the company, I used to work for — his wife, I found that in her obituary, he was a world class bridge player she had certified by some organization. I had no idea that anything was like that. I think we should take a break now. Okay. We’ll be back with more in just a moment. You’re listening to the off ramp with Bob.

Marcia Smith 14:10
And me. And me,

Bob Smith 14:12
Smith. We’ll be back. All right, we’re back. Bob Smith and Marcia Smith with the off ramp, the podcast dedicated to insatiable curiosity and lifelong learning. I have a question for you. If you went to the highest altitude town in the world, what country would it be in? Peru? Kenya, Switzerland or Australia?

Marcia Smith 14:36
How say Switzerland?

Bob Smith 14:39
I would have thought that too. It’s not Peru. It’s Peru. It’s the town of La Rin con Jada.

Marcia Smith 14:46
You say that beautifully.

Bob Smith 14:47
Thank you.

Marcia Smith 14:48
You’re welcome.

Bob Smith 14:49
It’s located more than 16,000 feet above sea level in the Peruvian Andes. 30,000 people live there. Really? That’s amazing. The thin air and frigid temperatures. make life difficult. It was founded as a gold mining camp. It continues to grow as more people go there in hopes of finding gold. Wow, highest altitude town. 16,000 feet.

Marcia Smith 15:11
That’s pretty nice city again.

Bob Smith 15:13
La Rin con Jada? R I N co N ADA la Rin con yada. That’s a

Marcia Smith 15:18
pretty name. Coming down to earth. We live in the Midwest, right, Bob? Oh, the United States. Yes. In the United States with our global listeners, we have to specify, we are in the middle of the United States. So can we Bob, you and I walked to Russia from our house.

Bob Smith 15:34
Can we walk to Russia? Do we want to walk to Russia from our house right

Marcia Smith 15:41
out the front door?

Bob Smith 15:43
Isn’t there a town called Russia in Wisconsin? That’s it? Yeah, yes,

Marcia Smith 15:46
we could. I’m sorry, the country of Russia. Oh, we

Bob Smith 15:50
have to make this clear to our global listeners, Marcia, that we’re talking about another country? You have a

Marcia Smith 15:55
fair amount of global listeners to do so. Yes. But no,

Bob Smith 15:59
then I guess the answer must be yes. Because you keep pressing me on this. But I don’t know how that’s possible.

Marcia Smith 16:03
Well, it’s possible. Because at the Bering Straits, there’s only two and a half miles of water between the two islands, Russia owned and American owned. And when it freezes in the winter, you can walk

Bob Smith 16:18
over Wow. Okay, and the two islands can do that. Yeah. All right. So

Marcia Smith 16:22
you heard it here first,

Bob Smith 16:23
I guess I guess I did. Okay, Marcia. You know, we had some questions recently about the history of computer dating. Yeah, I’ve got another one today. Okay, how did a shower and a foggy bathroom, revolutionize online dating, a shower and a foggy bathroom? Which

Marcia Smith 16:40
means you could you could leave messages in the mirror.

Bob Smith 16:44
Right? You’re on the right trail? It does have to do with a foggy mirror. Okay, tell me. It’s how the tinder swipe was invented. Oh, that makes sense. That app was launched in 2012. And you swipe to the right to like profiles, and you swipe the left to move on. Critics say that Tinder, you know made dating a game with that kind of, you know, kind of cruel? Well, Tinder co founder Jonathan badeen says from the beginning he had a nagging desire to gamify dating profiles. He was in the shower one day, and he got out and he realized he’d forgotten to turn on the bathroom fan. And so the mirror was all foggy, foggy. So he wiped the mirror clean in two different directions. And that’s when he was inspired. Oh, I could do this with the app.

Marcia Smith 17:28
Why didn’t I think of Yeah, how about that? Yeah.

Bob Smith 17:31
So today, Tinder uses the swipe 1.4 billion times a day across 196 countries. So that’s a global app.

Marcia Smith 17:40
All right, Bob. Besides water, what do we need to have an ocean tide?

Bob Smith 17:46
Besides water? What do we need to have an ocean tide? Well, we need the moon. That’s it. Because the moon basically pulls the water back and forth, doesn’t it right. No

Marcia Smith 17:55
Moon no tide. The gravitational pull generates something called the tidal force. And the tidal force causes Earth and its water to bulge out on the side closest to the moon and the side farthest from the moon. These bulges of water are high tides. I’ve always found that interesting. It is. So if we didn’t have the moon, we wouldn’t have the tide. If we didn’t

Bob Smith 18:16
have tide. We wouldn’t have clean laundry. Okay, what mountain range Marcia has the most unclimbed mountains.

Marcia Smith 18:24
You’re not giving me any multiple choice? I’ll say the Andes.

Bob Smith 18:29
I’ll give you some choices then the Andes? No. The Himalayan mountains, the Alps, the Rocky Mountains, okay, I’ll say which range has the most unclimbed mountains I’ll say the Rockies. That’s a good one. That’s a big long mountain range goes up to Canada down to the United States but

Marcia Smith 18:48
no. How the one or the other.

Bob Smith 18:51
I’m not going to repeat those. The Himalayas the Alps and the rocky

Marcia Smith 18:55
Okay, I’ll say the Alps. No. Okay, one more guess. Okay. Emma land. Oh,

Bob Smith 19:00
you got it. Right, Marcia? Yes, the Himalayas. Mount Everest is the highest mountain peak in the world, but it’s easier to reach than others in the Himalayas, believe it or not. So the most unclimbed mountains are where the highest mountain is in the world. The Himalayas. All

Marcia Smith 19:18
right. Okay, Bob. Let’s get more. What?

Bob Smith 19:20
Profound Oh, cheeks.

Marcia Smith 19:23
Where did the first Napnap joke appear? Oh,

Bob Smith 19:27
dear, gosh, just must go back hundreds of years. Verse knock knock joke. So it’s not from the vitamin? Is it from the British or American traditions? That’s my question.

Marcia Smith 19:38
I’m asking the questions here. Bob.

Bob Smith 19:40
Is it from the British or American? What kind of clue do I get? Okay, yes, the man who’s always asked to give clues.

Marcia Smith 19:47
Okay. It’s from England.

Bob Smith 19:50
Is it possible? It goes back to William it does.

Unknown Speaker 19:54
William Shakespeare Can you name

Bob Smith 19:56
the work? So one of Shakespeare’s plays has a knock knock joke.

Marcia Smith 19:59
Hey, said no snack phrase. I don’t know if it’s exactly a joke, but it’s the least likely of his work. You’d think of it. It’s Macbeth. No kidding. Hi, Leon. laugh a minute. Oh

Bob Smith 20:11
my goodness, but

Marcia Smith 20:12
it’s not knock. Who’s there is the name of basil Bob.

Bob Smith 20:19
And that was a big rocket a big laugh back in the day. I’ll take it. And it

Marcia Smith 20:22
wasn’t Bob until the 1900s that they became more of a joke and funny with such gems as Knock knock. Who’s there? Rufus Rufus. Who? Rufus the most important part of your house.

Bob Smith 20:35
All right, what Canadian provinces home to that country’s only desert. So I’m giving you four. Oh, thank you. The Yukon, New Brunswick Manitoba or British Columbia,

Marcia Smith 20:47
I’ll say, Manitoba.

Bob Smith 20:49
It’s British Columbia. Okay. I believe it’s the Okanagan desert there. It’s considered Canada’s only desert. It’s not exactly a sprawling sea of sand though. It’s over 19 square miles. So compare that to 3.5 million square miles in the Sahara Desert, British Columbia. That’s where Canada’s only desert is interesting.

Marcia Smith 21:08
Okay. What is the Antikythera Mechanism? You know what that is?

Bob Smith 21:13
That’s in my watch. It’s right behind the No, I don’t know. The what again,

Marcia Smith 21:19
the anti Thira mechanism, k y th e Ra. Theorem

Bob Smith 21:24
mechanism? Hmm. Sounds like it’s mechanical. Uh huh. So I’d say it’s a feat of engineering.

Marcia Smith 21:32
Yes.

Bob Smith 21:33
How long ago? Was it though? Believe

Marcia Smith 21:34
it or not, it’s a form of a computer from ancient Greece. Oh, no kidding. 2000 years ago, the mechanism is one of the most astounding archaeological finds in history. It was discovered within runes of ancient Greco Roman shipwreck in 1900. By sponge divers, it has different dials and wheels. Yeah, it was brought to the surface the following year as part of the world’s first major underwater excavation. And it wasn’t until the 1950s, that scientists figured out how the remaining parts of this mechanism were used. They weren’t all there. So it just sort of sat around for 50 years. And it was about the size of a mantel clock, and the mechanism was full of dozens of gears, the handle on the size. And when the handle turned, the device calculated eclipses, moon phases, the movements of the five visible planets, and more. That’s amazing, isn’t it? 2000 years old,

Bob Smith 22:31
that they had that kind of a device and mechanical device that they were using to determine all those things.

Marcia Smith 22:37
It even included a dial for the timing of ancient Olympics and religious festivals.

Bob Smith 22:42
I think they have actually used, you know, some kind of scanning technology like, you know, X ray oriented or MRI CAT scans to actually go behind the scenes and see what it really looks like inside because it was all kind of they had barnacles, Oh,

Marcia Smith 22:55
yeah. It took them forever to figure out what it was but once they got it cleaned up, and

Bob Smith 22:59
what’s the name of it, again,

Marcia Smith 23:00
the Antikythera mechanism,

Bob Smith 23:03
the anti K Thira mechanism. Okay, Marcia, back to two new word questions for you. All right. Where did these come from? go haywire, go haywire. What does it mean?

Marcia Smith 23:16
It means something goes wrong is that when the wire around the haystack isn’t working anymore and the hay falls out?

Bob Smith 23:23
You’re right hay wire was a wire for baling hay. And in addition to tying up bundles Hey, where it was used to fix and hold things together in a makeshift way on farms haywire became a term for any kind of malfunctioning thing the fact that the wire itself got easily tangled when it was unspooled contributed to the messed up meaning of the word Yeah,

Marcia Smith 23:42
I get good credit for that answer.

Bob Smith 23:43
You do get credit but what about this one? Okay, I’ll give you credit for

Marcia Smith 23:48
that. Good job. Just throw me a bone

Bob Smith 23:51
boat job Marsha. I cool job. Here’s a little treat for you there. Okay, Marcia. Here’s another one on the carpet when you get called on the carpet. Yes. What does that expression mean? Where does it come from? Since

Marcia Smith 24:02
you’re being dressed down? Right, right. Okay, so what the origins of that called on the carpet? Well, in the queen and king days only they had a little carpet under their thrones and if you were called on the carpet, you had some dues to pay.

Bob Smith 24:17
That’s right. Yes, so am I good if they’re very close you got it almost exactly right carpet originally met a thick cloth that could be placed on anything so carpet could be on the floor, on the bed or on the table. And usually that was only wealthy people could afford Yeah, clods or carpet. The image most people have associated with this phrases when we’re a servant or an employee is called to the fancier part of the house where there’s carpet. So you’re called on the carpet because something’s wrong but the origin on the carpet actually goes back to the tablecloth meaning when there was an issue for discussion by some kind of official or counsel, it was on the carpet. It’s on the table for us to discuss it makes perfect sense. So you know you can tell where Both of those came from only the rich people can afford the carpet.

Marcia Smith 25:03
My last question I just sold off of public radio this morning on a quiz show, but

Bob Smith 25:08
what you’re supposed to say is I sourced it from I source. We don’t steal things here. That’s wrong. I sourced it. And you were attributing where it came from?

Marcia Smith 25:17
Yes. Okay. Yes. Here’s the one I still know. Recently Bob 2800 employees from peloton got laid off. Remember, peloton Oh

Bob Smith 25:27
yeah, very big and COVID but after that, sales went down, went back to the gyms

Marcia Smith 25:31
Yeah, they were laid off fired. Let’s just call it what it is called

Bob Smith 25:35
on the carpet first. Then they were fired. What

Marcia Smith 25:39
was the unusual thing that they got in their departing package? A one year free subscription to their peloton app. So they could watch people that was still employed by peloton. Good exercise. That’s insensitive, isn’t it? Give them one year and it’s $40 a month. So that ain’t cheap. I

Bob Smith 25:59
know. But somebody wasn’t thinking when they do that. And it’s yeah, if they’re

Marcia Smith 26:02
making fun of it on public radio, you know, you’ve done bad, man,

Bob Smith 26:06
I guess. All right. Marsha beat around the bush. What about that expression? Where does that come

Marcia Smith 26:11
out of these today? Yeah, beat around the bush. Well, let’s see in the good old days, you had to beat the bush to see if there were any animals in there hiding to eat you. And so you gotta

Bob Smith 26:22
write animals are involved and you’re close again. I’ll give you this one to Marsh. Thank you. Good job. Yeah. Well, the common phrases thought to have originated in response to game hunting in Britain. While hunting birds participants would beat the bushes to draw out the birds so you could kill them. Therefore they were beating around the bush before getting to the main point of the hunt. actually capturing the birds

Marcia Smith 26:46
makes infinitely good sense. That’s where it comes from. And sadistic but good sense.

Bob Smith 26:50
And you’ve earned points today for your Saturday. Stick understanding of human nature. Very good Marsh. All

Marcia Smith 26:56
right. I have a wrap up quote from the beloved Dalai Lama. Okay. And it is love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.

Bob Smith 27:09
That’s true. It is. We need more of those. Yes, I

Marcia Smith 27:13
did this household Mr. Wai

Bob Smith 27:16
you’re the one who has a great understanding of the sadism of human beings not

Marcia Smith 27:20
me loving compassion.

Unknown Speaker 27:21
Okay, good job.

Bob Smith 27:25
That’s it for today. Okay, I’m Bob Smith. I’m

Marcia Smith 27:27
Marcia Smith. Join us again

Bob Smith 27:29
next time when we return with more fascinating facts and tantalizing trivia here on the off ramp. The off ramp is produced in association with CPL radio online and the Cedarburg Public Library Cedarburg, Wisconsin.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai