314 Ace of Spades Trivia

Bob Smith 00:00
Why is the Ace of Spades such an elaborately designed playing card?

Marcia Smith 00:05
And what human organ cleans itself each night?

Bob Smith 00:08
Oh, answers to those and other questions coming up in this episode of The Off Ramp with Bob

Marcia Smith 00:14
and Marcia

Bob Smith 00:15
Smith.

Bob Smith 00:30
Welcome to the Off Ramp, a chance to slow down, steer clear of crazy, and take a side road to sanity with fascinating facts and tantalizing trivia. Well, Marcia, you’re a game person, you like playing cards, or have in the past.

Marcia Smith 00:45
Yes, I do.

Bob Smith 00:46
Did you ever notice the Ace of Spades seems to be an elaborately designed card?

Marcia Smith 00:51
Never really thought about it, but why is it fancy?

Bob Smith 00:54
Well, that’s an interesting story.

Marcia Smith 00:56
Aha!

Bob Smith 00:56
And another way to ask the question was this: what government once required playing card makers to print card decks without one important card, they had to buy it from the government?

Marcia Smith 01:06
You’re kidding.

Bob Smith 01:07
No,

Marcia Smith 01:08
That’s nuts.

Bob Smith 01:09
And it was the British government, and the card was the Ace of Spades.

Marcia Smith 01:12
Really!

Bob Smith 01:13
The Ace of Spades design is elaborate because it originally was an official British tax stamp.

Marcia Smith 01:19
Oh, really?

Bob Smith 01:19
Yeah, starting with King James the First, England levied a stamp tax on all kinds of products, and in 1711 Queen Anne applied it to playing cards, a product with 52 pieces! Starting in 1712 one card in each deck, usually the Ace of Spades, had to be marked with an official government hand stamp. Then in 1765 the government went further. They said, “Okay, you make the rest of the cards, we make the Ace of Spades, and that’s what happened. So, you had card makers required to print their decks without the highest value card, the Ace of Spades.

Marcia Smith 01:57
Wow.

Bob Smith 01:58
This is how ridiculous taxes were in Great Britain. This is just 10 years before the Revolution in the United States, 1765 – so the card makers had to buy that card from the government. Can you imagine producing a product with 52 pieces, and you have to buy the most important one from the government? They bore large ornate duty stamps incorporating the royal coat of arms, and if you forged them, it was a capital crime. In 1805 a card manufacturer, Richard Harding, was caught with forged aces and the equipment to produce them, and the government executed him.

Marcia Smith 02:32
That’s a little much!

Bob Smith 02:34
By hanging. That was the British system for over 100 years. Then, starting in 1862 the government began issuing card wrappers. Manufacturers were required to use those wrappers, but they could design their own ace of spades if they wanted to. However, by that time the cards had become so iconic they kept the ornate design, and that’s why we still have it today. So, how long did British citizens have to buy playing cards with some kind of tax stamp affixed to each deck? 249 years.

Marcia Smith 03:02
That’s a lot of taxes, baby!

Bob Smith 03:03
From 1711 to 1960

Marcia Smith 03:06
That’s amazing. All right, Bob, what organ in your body? cleans itself every night.

Bob Smith 03:12
My nose. No, let’s see, what organ in my body cleans itself every night. This is – sounds kind of disgusting, Marcia. Let’s say the heart. I’ll just say that it flushes the blood through every night.

Marcia Smith 03:23
No, it is the brain.

Bob Smith 03:26
The brain?

Marcia Smith 03:27
Yes, you didn’t expect that.

Bob Smith 03:28
No, I didn’t.

Marcia Smith 03:29
It’s literally washed with fluid in a sort of rinse cycle that clears out chemical waste. Your brain works hard all day, Bob.

Bob Smith 03:38
Yes, it does,

Marcia Smith 03:39
And mine even harder.

Bob Smith 03:41
Oh Jeez. Of course!

Marcia Smith 03:43
Processing information that comes in at a staggering rate of 1 billion bits per second,

Bob Smith 03:49
That’s faster than most computers.

Marcia Smith 03:51
Yeah, it’s no wonder then that it needs some downtime to freshen up. Scientists have long theorized that humans and animals need sleep because it helps maintain our brains, which we know. But they have also discovered that during sleep the brain has a way of cleaning itself, and that it has some kind of fluid that sort of rinses over like a rinse cycle. And it clears out all the chemical waste from the day.

Bob Smith 04:16
So, it’s not what I was thinking – dreams are kind of a way to clean your brain, you know? They resort all your thoughts in a dream.

Marcia Smith 04:22
No we’re talking about an actual physical

Bob Smith 04:24
An actual physical thing of fluid that goes through. That’s fascinating. I had no idea. Never heard of that.

Marcia Smith 04:29
That’s why I’m here to enlighten you.

Bob Smith 04:31
Ah yes you are. Okay. All right. Marcia, pop culture question today. Who was stripped of a Grammy only to earn a Grammy nomination 35 years later? Ssomebody was actually stripped of a Grammy.

Marcia Smith 04:44
Why did – well was it plagiarism? Do you know the answer?

Bob Smith 04:48
Yes, I do know the answer. Why would I ask the question if I didn’t know the answer?

Marcia Smith 04:52
Okay, give me a hint.

Bob Smith 04:53
Earned a Grammy nomination for telling their story in an audiobook. So first off, for music, they were stripped of a Grammy, and then 35 years later earned a Grammy nomination for an audiobook. Who was it?

Marcia Smith 05:08
It was – no idea.

Bob Smith 05:10
Okay, do you ever hear of Milli Vanilli?

Marcia Smith 05:12
Yes, wasn’t he the one for plagiarizing or for lip syncing?

Bob Smith 05:17
Well, it was a duo, actually. It was two guys, they won the 1990 Grammy for best new artist, but they had return it when they were exposed for not actually singing on their album. And in the MTV era, an even greater sin, they actually lip sync their video, and somebody else sang their song! That was 1990 Fast forward 35 years, and Fab Morvan, one half of that duo was nominated for a Grammy in 2025. It wasn’t for music, it was for the audio version of his memoir, You Know It’s True: The Real Story of Milli Vanilli.

Marcia Smith 05:51
Here’s a curious question, Bob.

Bob Smith 05:53
Okay,

Marcia Smith 05:54
Why are most pool tabletops green?

Bob Smith 05:57
Oh, that’s a good question. Why are most pool tabletops green? That had to be a color that was chosen for a certain reason, because it symbolized something I would assume, or it was meant to simulate grass. Perhaps that’s it. The game is indoors, but we wanted to simulate a lawn of grass. Is that it?

Marcia Smith 06:14
Perhaps it is. Yes, it started. It all started outside. It was played on grass.

Bob Smith 06:19
Billiards was played on grass?

Marcia Smith 06:21
Well pool, snooker, billiards, and other cue sports find origins not in any particular table-based game, but rather in lawn games played outdoors.

Bob Smith 06:30
Oh, I didn’t know that.

Marcia Smith 06:31
Ground billiards caught on among the upper classes, and it was a relatively simple sport that required skill rather than physical exertion, and it provided an excellent excuse to stand around looking wonderfully aristocratic on a neatly cropped lawn.

Bob Smith 06:46
Oh, go ahead. Yes. Well, that’s very important, as we all knew.

Marcia Smith 06:49
Yes, the only problem was the weather, and inclement weather meant that the play was impossible throughout much of the year. So, the solution was to bring the game indoors.

Bob Smith 06:58
That’s kind of what I said, isn’t it?

Marcia Smith 07:00
It exactly what you said, they made it green, put it on a table, and

Bob Smith 07:04
So it does symbolize green grass or a lawn of grass. I had no idea. Bring the game inside.

Marcia Smith 07:10
Yeah, let’s do it.

Bob Smith 07:11
That’s funny. All right, I’ve got some funny word origins here. So, so that’s just so, so.

Marcia Smith 07:18
Yeah

Bob Smith 07:18
It’s not the best, it’s not the worst, it’s just so, so. How far back do you think that term goes? So,

Marcia Smith 07:23
so, so, so, 325 years.

Bob Smith 07:28
No, a little farther than that.

Marcia Smith 07:29
600. 1,000 years.

Bob Smith 07:31
No, no.

Marcia Smith 07:31
Aristotle used to

Bob Smith 07:32
No, no, no. It does go bavck to Henry the Eighth, though. Believe it or not. If things aren’t quite bad, but they’re not quite good either, you might be tempted to call them so-so. And people have been using that term for middling circumstances since the days of Henry the Eighth. So, it goes back to as far as the 1530 dictionary, the bilingual dictionaries, French and English, written by the English priest and scholar John Palsgrave, who was a tutor in King Henry’s royal household. So back then, I suppose they were asking King Henry, do you like your new wife or not? Yeah, she’s so, so! That meant she kept her head right? So-so. So that was the wives that lived – they were so so, I guess, for King Henry the Eighth.

Marcia Smith 07:57
You got the profound pool table question. Yes, so here’s another mind-boggling question.

Bob Smith 08:17
Okay.

Marcia Smith 08:20
Why are there holes in most pen caps?

Bob Smith 08:23
What’s that? Holes in most pen caps? I don’t know what you mean.

Marcia Smith 08:27
Regular pens, like a Bic pen.

Bob Smith 08:29
Well, like a Bic pen. Okay. Why are there holes in the tops of those?

Marcia Smith 08:32
They’re very small, but they’re there.

Bob Smith 08:34
I bet it has to do with air pressure. The ink has to have a way to breathe in order for the levels to remain where they should,

Marcia Smith 08:41
That’s a good answer, but nay, it’s a life-saving safety feature, Bob.

Bob Smith 08:45
What?

Marcia Smith 08:46
It ensures that if the cap is swallowed, it allows a minimum of air to pass through it if it’s in your throat. And prevents suffocation until help can arrive. Apparently, about 100 people die each year from swallowing pen caps and Bic –

Bob Smith 09:00
From swallowing pen caps?

Marcia Smith 09:02
You know how we all chew on pen caps

Bob Smith 09:04
When you’re a kid, yeah.

Marcia Smith 09:05
Bic first introduced this safety feature in the 1980s

Bob Smith 09:09
Holes in pen caps?

Marcia Smith 09:11
Correct.

Bob Smith 09:11
How does that help you?

Marcia Smith 09:12
If it’s lodged in your throat, it allows a little air to get down, so you don’t suffocate,

Bob Smith 09:18
Man. I’ll never think of those pens again. Yeah,

Marcia Smith 09:21
it’s not a whole lot of air, but it’s enough to keep you alive till rescue gets there.

Bob Smith 09:26
Wow, okay.

Marcia Smith 09:26
Keep that in mind.

Bob Smith 09:28
Oh dear, all right. Another word, Marcia. The word spill. Spill. What did it first mean originally? We think of it like “to spill the beans”, spill the gossip, right?

Marcia Smith 09:40
Yeah.

Bob Smith 09:40
That goes back about 200 years, but before that, spill meant something else. Any idea?

Marcia Smith 09:44
Spill.

Bob Smith 09:46
Spill

Marcia Smith 09:47
Was it like you take a spill off a horse?

Bob Smith 09:49
No.

Marcia Smith 09:50
And you don’t spill milk. Okay, it has a whole different meaning.

Bob Smith 09:54
It might relate to blood, but it meant to kill or destroy. Spill did. It’s been suggested this. Somewhat bloody original meaning might relate to bloodied animal fur or even flayed skin. Spill. Today it just means to reveal or disclose anything. Spill the beans. Okay, one more antivirus. How far back do you think that goes?

Marcia Smith 10:14
All right, I’ll say 1600s

Bob Smith 10:16
Doesn’t go back that far.

Marcia Smith 10:18
1892

Bob Smith 10:18
Close to that time. Yeah, we associate antivirus with computers, but the original antivirus was a medical term in 1914, so that’s how far back that goes. That was the same year that “time travel” was coined. Time travel and antivirus first came into being in 1914. Just kind of an interesting thing.

Marcia Smith 10:37
Okay. All right, Bob, clownfish,

Bob Smith 10:40
Clownfish!

Marcia Smith 10:41
Clownfish. What do clownfish, wrasses? That’s a kind of fish moray eels and slipper snails have in common.

Bob Smith 10:51
They all go to the circus. I don’t know, slippe?,

Marcia Smith 10:56
Slipper snails.,

Bob Smith 10:57
Slipper snails, and clownfish. And what’s the other one, Raz what?

Marcia Smith 11:01
Wrasses W R A S S E S.

Bob Smith 11:04
I don’t know, what do they have in common?

Marcia Smith 11:06
They are all born male.

Bob Smith 11:09
Oh, really?

Marcia Smith 11:09
Yes. Let us focus, though, on the clownfish, because that one I know from Finding Nemo. Nemo was a clown fish.

Bob Smith 11:15
Okay

Marcia Smith 11:16
If you recall.

Bob Smith 11:16
No, I didn’t remember that, Marsh

Marcia Smith 11:18
No? All clown fish, Bob, are born male and you’re saying, well, how do you reproduce?

Bob Smith 11:23
How do you reproduce, Marcia?

Marcia Smith 11:24
Good question, Bob. It’s only when the group’s dominant female dies or disappears that a male begins to develop into a female.

Bob Smith 11:34
Oh my goodness!

Marcia Smith 11:35
And becomes the new matriarch.

Bob Smith 11:37
So, these are trans fish.

Marcia Smith 11:38
It’s exactly what it is. Who knew?

Bob Smith 11:40
See, there’s stuff like that in nature that’s weird and normal. People have no idea, right?

Marcia Smith 11:45
Yes, all clownfish have the ability to turn female, and the change is permanent once it occurs. So, you can’t go back,

Bob Smith 11:53
Can’t go back.

Marcia Smith 11:54
The transformation begins almost immediately after the dominant female leaves. Can you believe that?

Bob Smith 12:00
No, that’s odd.

Marcia Smith 12:01
Oh, there she goes. Oh no, I’m getting booed.

Bob Smith 12:04
Not a boy anymore.

Marcia Smith 12:05
It starts in the brain before manifesting itself in sex organs, so keep that in mind.

Bob Smith 12:11
Well, hopefully it doesn’t happen to me.

Marcia Smith 12:13
Researchers have identified no fewer than 500 fish species capable of changing sex. No kidding,

Bob Smith 12:21
500 fish species can change their sex?

Marcia Smith 12:24
Yeah, the process is believed to have reproductive benefits, as it allows a single fish to reproduce as both sexes throughout its entire life.

Bob Smith 12:33
A very full life!

Marcia Smith 12:36
Can’t say you don’t know what it’s like to be pregnant.

Bob Smith 12:38
My life as a girl, my life as a boy.

Bob Smith 12:40
Yeah.

Bob Smith 12:40
There’s your memoir! Holy cow. Hey, here’s an interesting question. The statistic – funny when people compare weird statistics. How does the number of Americans with a college degree compare with the number of Americans with a criminal record?

Marcia Smith 12:55
I would think there are more college degrees than criminal records, but I think you’re asking me, because it’s not that.

Bob Smith 13:02
Unfortunately no. Believe it or not, it’s pretty even. britannica.com reports that more than 70 million Americans have some form of a criminal record.

Marcia Smith 13:13
How many?

Bob Smith 13:14
More than 70 million Americans, and roughly the same number of Americans have a bachelor degree or higher,

Marcia Smith 13:21
And that’s dropping down now too. Golly,

Bob Smith 13:24
That’s an interesting anomaly, isn’t it? In statistics, holy cow

Marcia Smith 13:28
Thatj’s very interesting. Okay, Bob, how do dolphins protect their snout when rooting around the sea floor for dinner?

Bob Smith 13:35
I never thought they’d have to, but I guess they have to. Do they wear kind of a sea snout masks or something. Do they have a little protective device?

Marcia Smith 13:45
They’re left over from Covid 19.

Bob Smith 13:47
I don’t know what. What do they do?

Marcia Smith 13:48
This is really interesting.

Bob Smith 13:50
Okay

Marcia Smith 13:50
To further prove just how intelligent these creatures are, bottlenose dolphins in Shark Bay, Australia have been observed using marine sponges to protect their snouts.

Bob Smith 14:02
What really?

Marcia Smith 14:03
When rooting around the seafloor for small fish. Mothers pass on this nifty foraging method to their offspring, though females usually show more interest in learning than males. Duh

Bob Smith 14:14
You’re just coming down on guys right and left.

Marcia Smith 14:17
I’m sorry. No, I’m that’s not called for. Additionally, scientists have observed dolphins in this region engaging in peer-to-peer learning for another technique known as shelling. The dolphins chase fish into empty giant snail shells, and then they push the shells to the surface, and then tip the wading prey into their mouths.

Bob Smith 14:39
Oh dear.

Marcia Smith 14:39
Can you picture that? So, what’s the bottom line? Pop dolphins have the capacity to teach each other how to use tools.

Bob Smith 14:46
Well, I guess that’s true.

Marcia Smith 14:48
Yeah, isn’t that interesting?

Bob Smith 14:49
Get the sponge part, but the other one is quite interesting. It’s like you’re trying to eat caviar or something, isn’t it? Weird thing,

Marcia Smith 14:57
Oysters.

Bob Smith 14:57
Oysters. Okay, yeah, like eating oysters, ah. Okay,

Marcia Smith 15:01
Okay. Bob, ready. Yeah. What is an aquagenic ureticary?

Bob Smith 15:05
What’s that again?

Marcia Smith 15:07
Aquagenic ureaticaria.

Bob Smith 15:09
Uratecaria. Aquagenic ureticaria. Aqua genic meaning genetic, meaning like Genesis, like it’s it’s born in water, and then I don’t know what the rest of the word is.

Marcia Smith 15:22
You got the water right, it sounds impossible, but some people live with a rare condition called Aqua Genetic Uticariya, in which contact with water, regardless of its temperature or source, can trigger painful hives or burning skin reactions.

Bob Smith 15:38
Oh my goodness!

Marcia Smith 15:38
They’re allergic to water.

Bob Smith 15:40
Wow.

Marcia Smith 15:41
Rain, sweat, tears, or even a shower can induce symptoms. Tears, you break out into hives, which typically appear within minutes and last anywhere from 30 minutes to a couple of hours. Only about 50 cases have been documented worldwide since the first case was reported in ’64.

Bob Smith 15:59
Wow, can you spell it again,

Marcia Smith 16:01
aquagenic, like it sounds, and then u r t i c a r i a. Researchers believe water may interact with substances in or on the skin to form compounds that trigger localized histamine response. Living with this condition requires constant caution. If you can imagine everyday actions, such as hand washing or getting caught in the rain, become risks that require mitigation.

Bob Smith 16:28
That sounds awful.

Marcia Smith 16:29
Yeah, isn’t it?

Bob Smith 16:30
Yeah.

Marcia Smith 16:30
Other weird allergies I came across was being allergic to sunlight, touch, cold, and here’s one: exercise.

Bob Smith 16:39
Everybody’s allergic to that! That’s funny.

Marcia Smith 16:42
Physical symptoms show up.

Bob Smith 16:44
Geez, okay. Well, that’s unfortunate, because exercise is so important. Wow, those are all weird things.

Marcia Smith 16:51
Yeah, not a zillion people have them, but they have them

Bob Smith 16:54
all right. I think it’s time for a break. You’re listening to The Off Ramp with Bob and Marsha Smith. We’ll be back in just a moment.

Bob Smith 17:02
We’re back, you’re listening to The Off Ramp with Bob and Marcia Smith. We do this each week for the Cedarburg Public Library, Cedarburg, Wisconsin. Then, after that, we put it on podcast platforms where it’s heard

Marcia Smith 17:13
All over the world.

Bob Smith 17:15
Okay,

Marcia Smith 17:16
Sad isn’t it. I’m sorry.

Bob Smith 17:17
Wake up, Marcia. Okay, I got a word origin question. Do you know what typos are?

Marcia Smith 17:23
Well, sure, I had a million of them.

Bob Smith 17:25
Okay, what are they?

Marcia Smith 17:27
It’s when you make a mistake and put an A instead of an E, or whatever,

Bob Smith 17:33
usually when you’re using a keyboard,

Marcia Smith 17:34
correct?

Bob Smith 17:35
Okay, but that wasn’t the original meaning.

Marcia Smith 17:38
No?

Bob Smith 17:38
The original root word in Greek was typos, t y p o s, which means a strike or an impression. So, a physical impression made by striking a mark, a stamp, or a pattern. That’s what typos meant, and that meaning flowed directly into early printing. Metal type literally struck an impression onto paper, and that’s why we call the letters type, because it’s banging – it’s hitting the paper – because of the physical impressions they made. As for typo, the printing industry invented that term. It was 1816 It meant slang for a typographer, a person who manually set type. It wasn’t a mistake.

Marcia Smith 18:13
Okay, that makes sense.

Bob Smith 18:14
Yeah, he’s like, oh, that’s a typo, that meant a person who, that was their profession.

Marcia Smith 18:18
When did it become a mistake?

Bob Smith 18:19
Well, apparently 76 years went by, and the typographers apparently made a lot of mistakes. Because by 1892 printers were using the word typo for an error by someone who sets the type. “Oh, there’s a typo!” So now you’ve got a profession that’s being denigrated. That’s so funny. By 1892 typewriters had arrived, and the same kind of errors that typesetters made were made by everyday people, missed strikes, dropped characters, transposed letters made by people, regular people using typewriter keyboards. So that’s how the term migrated to us today.

Marcia Smith 18:53
I’ve told you before about my favorite typo, when I was at a newspaper. Again, that was funny. We sold out all the newspapers that day, and what, what, oh, what was in the paper? All the reporters ran to go through the paper to see what the heck everybody was buying it for. Something obviously was a miss, and it turned out to be on the church page, where they ran the announcements for upcoming events, and the event was a potluck dinner, only it didn’t say luck, it had a different letter than L, and it was, it had a huge response out there in Christian land, as I

Bob Smith 19:30
recall, you said it said pot blank dinner, bring your utensils,

Marcia Smith 19:34
that’s exactly what

Bob Smith 19:35
it said, bring

Marcia Smith 19:36
your own utensils, okay, well, let the

Bob Smith 19:39
imagination figure out what the pot blank dinner was, but it rhymed with luck, I think.

Marcia Smith 19:44
So, all right, Bob, here’s something for you to ponder. When there is no doubt, if someone’s killed, Bob, you say they were caught red-handed.

Bob Smith 19:51
That’s correct.

Marcia Smith 19:52
Where does that come from?

Bob Smith 19:53
Red-handed. That came from, let’s see, what was that? Wasn’t that butchers, and somebody would steal. Meat or something like that, and if they caught red-handed, we know nothing

Marcia Smith 20:03
more obvious than that.

Bob Smith 20:04
Okay? What

Marcia Smith 20:04
is it? Okay, you go back to 15th century Scotland,

Bob Smith 20:08
okay?

Marcia Smith 20:08
And its original reference was to murder, and the red on the hands of the accused was the blood of the victim, okay? That

Bob Smith 20:17
makes sense.

Marcia Smith 20:17
Yeah, that does

Bob Smith 20:18
make sense.

Marcia Smith 20:19
All

Bob Smith 20:19
right, I have another question. Here we talked about typos. I ask AI, are there any other professions whose names became synonymous with mistakes? Butcher, that’s if one did you know that?

Marcia Smith 20:32
No,

Bob Smith 20:33
originally that meant a meat cutter, but by the 1500s to butcher meant to mangle or botch a task in surgery, carpentry, or writing, butcher became shorthand for a person who makes a mess of things. That’s awful, isn’t it? Butchers had a good reputation until doctors who didn’t do things well became butchers. Here’s another one: cobbler. A cobbler was a shoemaker, but by the 1600s to cobble together meant to patch something crudely, implying the kind of quick, imperfect repairs associated with low-status shoemakers. There’s a few more here. Bungler, you know what a bungler

Marcia Smith 21:11
is? Someone that has a little clumsy, and

Bob Smith 21:14
right, it comes from the Coopers jargon. Coopers were people who made barrels for wine and stuff, and a bung that was the wooden plug in a barrel, and a bungler meant a clumsy worker who couldn’t fit a bung properly, they couldn’t fit it into that hole that they were supposed to,

Marcia Smith 21:30
it’s came bungler, yeah,

Bob Smith 21:31
you’re so incompetent, you’re a bungler, you

Marcia Smith 21:33
can’t get that cork in the hole, that’s exactly right, wow, and then this is the

Bob Smith 21:37
one I find the most interesting, botch, botcher,

Marcia Smith 21:40
yeah,

Bob Smith 21:41
botcher, and the word botch come from tailoring, and they go back to the Middle Ages. Botchin meant to patch or repair. Tailoring was a higher profession, a master tailor. They made garments from scratch. Repair tailors handled patching in a professional manner. Botchers, these were menders who did quick, cheap, imperfect repairs to clothing, they often patch things crudely below professional standards. So, a botcher was the tailor you went to when you didn’t have enough money for a proper job.

Marcia Smith 22:12
Oh, wow. So,

Bob Smith 22:13
they would botch the job up.

Marcia Smith 22:14
Okay,

Bob Smith 22:15
it wouldn’t look as good as a tailor, but you know, at least they’d fix the hole in your clothing.

Marcia Smith 22:18
Isn’t that interesting? Yeah, the origins are fascinating. It is, if you like words, which we do, but that

Bob Smith 22:24
goes back to the 1500s By the 1500s that had turned into a negative term, a botched job. Any task done badly.

Marcia Smith 22:32
All right, it’s time for aka, also known as.. okay, it’s a card game, and I give you a category, then you have to figure out the word I’m looking for based on my word.

Bob Smith 22:42
Okay,

Marcia Smith 22:43
okay, all right. The category is professions kids want to be when they grow up. Okay, so if I said to you, mr. Dre,

Bob Smith 22:53
mr. Dre,

Marcia Smith 22:54
what would the profession be? Dr.

Bob Smith 22:57
Dre?

Marcia Smith 22:57
Yes,

Bob Smith 22:58
was it Dr. Dre?

Marcia Smith 22:59
Yeah,

Bob Smith 22:59
so they want to be a musician. What,

Marcia Smith 23:02
what’s his name?

Bob Smith 23:03
Dr. Dre.

Marcia Smith 23:04
What’s the first word?

Bob Smith 23:05
Doctor.

Marcia Smith 23:06
The kids want to grow up to be a doctor. Okay, okay. You get it now. I

Bob Smith 23:10
thought we were talking about Dre. Did the headphones? She

Marcia Smith 23:13
did a whole bunch of things.

Bob Smith 23:14
Okay,

Marcia Smith 23:15
okay. Miss Leia,

Bob Smith 23:17
Miss Leia, Princess. They want to be a princess.

Marcia Smith 23:19
That’s right. Flame Boxer Flame.

Bob Smith 23:22
flame boxer.

Marcia Smith 23:24
Just put it together,

Bob Smith 23:26
fire boxer. I don’t know,

Marcia Smith 23:28
fire

Bob Smith 23:29
fighter.

Marcia Smith 23:30
Yes.

Bob Smith 23:30
Oh, firefighter. Okay, because they’re a boxer. I see. Okay,

Marcia Smith 23:32
got it. Okay. If I say television test episode, that would be

Bob Smith 23:38
a pilot.

Marcia Smith 23:39
That’s very good.

Bob Smith 23:39
Okay.

Marcia Smith 23:40
Sewing machine brand

Bob Smith 23:42
singer,

Marcia Smith 23:43
right? And the last one, toy train. What’s the profession that kids want to be when they grow up?

Bob Smith 23:50
An engineer.

Marcia Smith 23:51
Toy train, yeah. You can put them together, and they’re or airplanes. Sometimes you buy them, and you take them home, and you put them together. Oh,

Bob Smith 24:00
models,

Marcia Smith 24:01
that’s it.

Bob Smith 24:01
Oh, okay.

Marcia Smith 24:02
So,

Bob Smith 24:02
toy train, that does not fit that.

Marcia Smith 24:04
Yeah, I know that’s what they use. That’s why I gave you more.

Bob Smith 24:06
Yeah,

Marcia Smith 24:06
a lot of little girls want to be models. That’s

Bob Smith 24:09
true.

Marcia Smith 24:09
Okay,

Bob Smith 24:10
and boys too.

Marcia Smith 24:11
Yeah,

Bob Smith 24:11
okay. I have more professions that became negative terms.

Marcia Smith 24:14
Okay, you know,

Bob Smith 24:15
scribe, that means a person who writes, right? But a scribbler,

Marcia Smith 24:19
the

Bob Smith 24:20
scribbler was originally a term that meant a scribe who wrote hastily or carelessly.

Marcia Smith 24:26
Okay, a bad

Bob Smith 24:27
scribe was a scribbler. Okay, hack,

Marcia Smith 24:30
hack.

Bob Smith 24:31
This one relates to a physical location. The earliest sense of New York, hackney, is it from the London district of Hackney, which in medieval terms was pasture land, where the horses were kept, so a hackney horse, or a hack, I’m going to hire a hack, referred to a common, ordinary horse anyone could hire, or a coach for hire,

Marcia Smith 24:49
that’s

Bob Smith 24:50
where that term comes from, but by the 1700s hack became anybody who worked for hire in a mechanical, uncreative way, writers were a perfect target. It, because they often wrote to order for newspapers or pamphlets or publishers. Many were paid by the page, encouraging speed over equality, and the literary world had strong hierarchies, making it easy to sneer at routine writers. Oh, they’re just hacks. And then, by the mid 1700s hack need meant worn out from too much use. Okay, so writer equivalent of a tired Hackney rental horse. I thought that was interesting.

Marcia Smith 25:27
All right, so you recall that last week I said goodbye to Where in the World segment because I ran out of Where in the World cars, but doesn’t mean I can’t come up with my own. Bob, oh, you did good. I just have one here. Okay, so Where in the world is the Hellenic Republic? What country?

Bob Smith 25:44
The Hellenic Republic is, I believe, Greece.

Marcia Smith 25:47
Yes. Okay. Good for you. Okay. This is ancient TV. Who played the blacksmith on Gunsmoke from 1962 down 1965

Bob Smith 25:57
Burt Reynolds.

Marcia Smith 25:58
Oh, you knew that. Yeah, that was news to me,

Bob Smith 26:01
you know. I’ve never seen any of those episodes. I’d like to see one of those episodes, see how well he did.

Marcia Smith 26:05
Some happy channels. Yeah, yeah, I’m sure

Bob Smith 26:07
they are.

Marcia Smith 26:08
I’m sure he did a good job. Can I start my quotes here?

Bob Smith 26:11
Yes.

Marcia Smith 26:11
So these are quotes from sport coaches. Okay,

Bob Smith 26:14
okay,

Marcia Smith 26:15
I got three. All right, here’s John McKay. These are all sport coaches. When asked about his team’s execution. He said, I’m in favor of

Bob Smith 26:26
it. That must have been a bad season. Yeah,

Marcia Smith 26:27
these are all people commenting on the game of the day. Rokibera, I can always count on him. Baseball is 90% mental, the other half is physical.

Bob Smith 26:36
He always said those kind of things. That’s

Marcia Smith 26:40
funny. And Brian Clow, he said on paper we had the better team. Unfortunately, we were playing on grass. There you go, that’s the problem with that. Oh my

Bob Smith 26:51
goodness,

Marcia Smith 26:52
good. We lost the game, quote, very

Bob Smith 26:54
good quote. We hope you’ve enjoyed the show. We’d like to remind you, if you’d like to participate, we’d love to hear from you. Go to our website, The Offramp dot show, and go to contact us, and you can send us a question or a comment, or you know, something to stump the other person. We’d love that. Tell us where your writing is from. We’d love to hear from you, and love to know where you’re listening.

Marcia Smith 27:13
We just love so much. We’re

Bob Smith 27:15
full of love. We love to end the show too. So we’re gonna end it right now.

Marcia Smith 27:19
Let’s cash it in here. I’m Bob

Bob Smith 27:21
Smith.

Marcia Smith 27:21
I’m Marcia Smith. Join

Bob Smith 27:22
us 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 the Cedar Brook Public Library, Cedarburg, Wisconsin. Visit us on the web at The Off Ramp dot show.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai