Transcript
Speaker: So I have like a hard time falling asleep.
Speaker: So I'll like listen to like sleepy podcasts that are designed to make you fall asleep.
Speaker: Which one of them, by the way, I was like on the cusp of slumber and it cut to an ad that was like, it was like, what did it say?
Speaker: It was like,
Speaker: Do you think you won't be a victim of identity theft?
Speaker: Think again.
Speaker: And you're just like, fuck!
Speaker: Where are my credit cards?
Speaker: There's a new victim every 20 seconds.
Speaker: You're next, Brett.
Speaker: Brett, yeah.
Speaker: Welcome to Trust, Don't Verify, the show where two of us are telling a story, but only one of us is telling the truth, and it's up to the decider to determine who that is.
Speaker: My name is Carter.
Speaker: I will be deciding today, and I'm joined by Aaron.
Speaker: Sounds sexy.
Speaker: Right back at you.
Speaker: And Brett.
Speaker: Ooty who?
Speaker: Oof.
Speaker: I'm wet.
Speaker: I'll just start off and say it right now.
Speaker: Listen, I'll admit it.
Speaker: I'm part of the Totino's lifestyle.
Speaker: Does anyone have any preference on who goes first?
Speaker: No, I can go first, Brett, if you want.
Speaker: I'll take it.
Speaker: I'll take it.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And we do have a theme of sorts.
Speaker: And that theme is, what'd you say, linguistics?
Speaker: Linguistics.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: So, Brett, go ahead.
Speaker: Kick it off.
Speaker: Carter, get your listening pants on.
Speaker: Oh, let me put pants on in general then.
Speaker: Sorry.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Get any pants on, please.
Speaker: We can see everything.
Speaker: Actually, you know what?
Speaker: Let's just get started.
Speaker: Let's just get started.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Go ahead, Brett.
Speaker: Nicole Kidman and her AMC Featers intro.
Speaker: Mel Gibson and his voicemails.
Speaker: Outback Steakhouse and its balloon onion.
Speaker: These are but a few of the exports from down under that made their way up over.
Speaker: But none are more iconic than perhaps the marsupial native to Western Australia, the kangaroo.
Speaker: Mel Gibson, Australian.
Speaker: He is, but he was born in New York.
Speaker: I didn't know that.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Featured prominently in the 2003 film Kangaroo Jack, currently sitting at 8% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Speaker: Criminally underrated.
Speaker: which is about a pair of friends who are tasked with delivering $50,000 U.S. to someone in Australia on behalf of a crime boss.
Speaker: While they're there, they ran over a kangaroo, and thinking that the kangaroo was dead, naturally they put their hoodie and sunglasses on the kangaroo to pose for a photograph.
Speaker: The kangaroo quickly regains consciousness and hops away with the $50,000 in the hoodie pocket.
Speaker: There's an extended scene in the movie, which is the only thing I remember about it, where the kangaroo jack wraps the Sugarhill Gang's Rapper's Delight.
Speaker: Ah, it comes full circle.
Speaker: Why?
Speaker: Every time?
Speaker: And now he'll be rapping for us in the mindset of a kangaroo.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: And I hip and I hop.
Speaker: But how did the kangaroo get its name?
Speaker: Well, how about you two joeys hop in my pouch?
Speaker: I'd love to.
Speaker: As we hop back in time to discover the origin of kangaroo.
Speaker: Captain James Cook was a renowned British cartographer, explorer, and Royal Navy officer who made a name for himself for his detailed maps of Newfoundland, for making the first circumnavigation of New Zealand, and for making the first recorded European contact with the eastern coastline of the Hawaiian Islands.
Speaker: But it was his 1772 voyage to prove whether or not the hypothetical continent of Terra Australis truly existed.
Speaker: It does not.
Speaker: And this is where our story begins.
Speaker: Captain Cook departed Plymouth Sound on 13 July 1772.
Speaker: in command of his or her majesty's ship resolution with 180 men on board and enough provisions for a year.
Speaker: Their first port of call was in Portugal, which they successfully made on, did they say first August or one August?
Speaker: for the British.
Speaker: I have no idea.
Speaker: 1st.
Speaker: 1st.
Speaker: 1st.
Speaker: I think it's 1st August.
Speaker: Otherwise, I think August 1 would be how they'd say that.
Speaker: I think they'd say 1st August.
Speaker: If you're going to do number 1st, I think you have to say 3rd.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: If you are a listener in Europe, particularly in Britain, please email us and let us know at trustdonverify.com.
Speaker: Podcast at gmail.com.
Speaker: How do you say the dates?
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: On 1st August, 1772.
Speaker: By 22nd November, they passed through the Cape Verde Islands off the coast of South Africa and headed for the outer edge of the Antarctic Circle for a week before changing course for an island in the South Atlantic that, I swear to God, this is true.
Speaker: And I can even share my screen to prove this is true.
Speaker: Wikipedia says this island is named Cape Circumcision.
Speaker: But it's actually Cape Circuncision.
Speaker: It's very different.
Speaker: They spelled circumcision as you would expect.
Speaker: I'm going to go ahead and lock in my guess that Aaron is telling the truth.
Speaker: Final answer, because this is bullshit.
Speaker: Wait, Cape Circumcision, but it's supposed to be Circumcision?
Speaker: It's actually Cape Circumcision, but Wikipedia in like the main article has it as Cape Circumcision.
Speaker: I swear to God, that's true.
Speaker: Also, is it a new strategy to just say, I swear this is true?
Speaker: No, it's his oldest strategy.
Speaker: I know what you're saying is that part's not part of what you're saying, but still just like, listen, swear, I swear.
Speaker: Trust me.
Speaker: This is true.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: They would stop there for additional provisions, but on 14th December, they had gotten lost in the dense fog near the Antarctic Circle for just over two weeks.
Speaker: where they suffered from the intense cold.
Speaker: There was pack ice that formed around them, and that kept them stuck in roughly the same spot for an additional two weeks until the midsummer cleared things up a bit.
Speaker: Midsummer of the South, I guess.
Speaker: Midsummer of the movie.
Speaker: Midsummer, Midsummer.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But things only got bumpier from there.
Speaker: They hit their first severe storm around 50 degrees south, 75 degrees east.
Speaker: Is that how you properly say coordinates?
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And then their second around, 30 degrees south, 115 degrees east.
Speaker: And it was the second storm that affected them the worst, snapping the four main yard and severely damaging the main top mast.
Speaker: On the 11th of March, the H or HMS resolution ran aground on the southwest corner of... Underrated.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: That took me a sec.
Speaker: Of Australia.
Speaker: Underrated.
Speaker: Sorry.
Speaker: Running short on food and water and in need of repairs, Captain Cook and first mate Tobias Forneau led a party into Australia.
Speaker: Artist William Hodges was a member of this party who frequently accompanied Captain Cook on his journeys to chronicle the different things that they saw.
Speaker: The drawings, along with Captain Cook's findings, were often featured in publications upon their return.
Speaker: The Wikipedia pages about Hodges include sketches of an iceberg in Antarctica, a human sacrifice in Tahiti, and what we now know as the kangaroo.
Speaker: The crew found the animal absolutely bewildering.
Speaker: After about a week in the outback, the party came across the Aboriginal people, and after very rough communications between the two groups, Captain Cook pointed at the animal that hopped around and asked what it was.
Speaker: An Aborigine responded with kangaroo.
Speaker: Captain Cook logged this in his notes, and eventually they were able to resupply and make their way back to England.
Speaker: As was typical, Cook's discoveries were published alongside Hodges' now painting.
Speaker: So he took a sketch of the kangaroo and then later painted it upon their return to give more details.
Speaker: And that was so the painting was published, labeled the kangaroo.
Speaker: But it wasn't until roughly five years later that the British explorers discovered that kangaroo meant I don't know.
Speaker: in the aboriginal language.
Speaker: I like the idea.
Speaker: I know we're probably saying, I don't know what you're asking, but if that's true.
Speaker: What is that?
Speaker: I've never seen it before in my life.
Speaker: I've never fucking seen that.
Speaker: They're everywhere.
Speaker: We thought you guys brought those.
Speaker: What?
Speaker: Don't fucking tell me.
Speaker: Look at that.
Speaker: I think I know what that shit is.
Speaker: Oh, man, that's funny.
Speaker: What is that thing?
Speaker: Dude.
Speaker: Like a native.
Speaker: I think I'd still be here if I knew.
Speaker: Just be out there, man.
Speaker: I don't fucking know.
Speaker: Out there.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: That's so cool.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Do we need a quick break or are we good to keep trucking?
Speaker: We take a quick break and then we'll hop on back.
Speaker: That is really funny.
Speaker: We don't know.
Speaker: I've never seen that thing before until you got here.
Speaker: Like you said, you didn't bring that?
Speaker: I've never seen this guy.
Speaker: I thought that dude was with you.
Speaker: Oh, shit.
Speaker: All right, so y'all okay?
Speaker: Yeah, I'm feeling good.
Speaker: Feeling good.
Speaker: That was good.
Speaker: You okay, though?
Speaker: I'm feeling good, you know.
Speaker: I just can't get it right now.
Speaker: But are you okay?
Speaker: For real?
Speaker: Can we take another break?
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And we're back.
Speaker: Okay, let's dive in.
Speaker: And I'm not talking about the state of Oklahoma.
Speaker: Okay, for real now, you probably know the word okay, but you probably don't know the centuries-long historical battle over its origin, perhaps the bloodiest in American history.
Speaker: Maybe not, but two competing explanations reign supreme in this heated historical hostility.
Speaker: According to Wikipedia, quote,
Speaker: These missionaries ended many sentences in their translation of the Bible with the particle okeh, meaning it is so, which was listed as an alternative spelling in the 1913 Webster's Dictionary under okeh.
Speaker: These two missionaries who had lived with the Choctaw compiled an entire book on the spelling and pronunciation of their vernacular.
Speaker: According to Byington's Dictionary of the Choctaw Language, subsequent Choctaw spelling books de-emphasized the spellings list in favor of straight prose.
Speaker: and they made use of the particle, but they too never included it in the words list or discussed it directly.
Speaker: The presumption was that the use of the particle oque, or hoque, was so common and self-evident as to preclude any need for explanation or discussion for either its Choctaw or non-Choctaw readership.
Speaker: This is, of course, only one explanation for this linguistic legend, and with no offense intended to our perhaps premier prior peoples, the other explanation is a bit more provocative.
Speaker: According to the Smithsonian organization, the term OK is as American as apple pie, or at least the city of Boston.
Speaker: So maybe more like as American as racism.
Speaker: You see, it's argued...
Speaker: Sorry.
Speaker: Sorry to our Bostonian listenership, if you exist, but you kind of know the city you live in.
Speaker: Kind of.
Speaker: Kind of.
Speaker: Maybe.
Speaker: Brad Marchand, if you're listening.
Speaker: You see, it's argued that the term was first coined, at least in print, in the Boston Morning Post in 1839.
Speaker: OMG!
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: It's hard to believe, but just like the youth of today, abbreviations were all the rage amongst writers of the time.
Speaker: But interestingly, misspelled abbreviations were particularly in vogue.
Speaker: In fact, OK wasn't the first attempt at a similar meaning abbreviation.
Speaker: The abbreviation fad began in Boston in 1838 and used expressions like OFM, our first men, NG, meaning no go, GT, meaning gone to Texas, and SP...
Speaker: SP, of course, meaning small potatoes.
Speaker: Hold on.
Speaker: Go ahead.
Speaker: How frequently are people going to Texas?
Speaker: Pretty often.
Speaker: That's what I was going to say.
Speaker: Is that such a common occurrence?
Speaker: Oh, he's GT.
Speaker: Where's Bobby?
Speaker: GT.
Speaker: GT.
Speaker: GT.
Speaker: What do you want me to say?
Speaker: Because of euphemism?
Speaker: Only if the guy's really well endowed.
Speaker: But not as well endowed as someone who's gone to Alaska.
Speaker: Okay, I get it.
Speaker: All right, big.
Speaker: I don't know if we had Alaska at the time.
Speaker: I don't remember when those were.
Speaker: We definitely didn't.
Speaker: We just got Louisiana.
Speaker: Yeah, no, we definitely didn't.
Speaker: Okay, so none of those abbreviations are misspelled, of course, but like I said before, many of them had exaggerated misspellings, which according to the person who wrote this was meant to be funny.
Speaker: One predecessor of OK was O.W.
Speaker: standing for Ol' Right, meaning all right, just misspelled badly.
Speaker: Right as in like the Wright brothers and all but spelled with an A or an O instead of an A.
Speaker: This was a meme, if you will.
Speaker: Per Charles Gordon Green at the same Boston publication, quote, this trend produced many unsuccessful terms such as OW, an OK-like term for all right.
Speaker: But things quickly turned from WTF to LOL when all correct or OK hit the scene and literally traveled around the world and as far as the moon.
Speaker: Man, just what a time to be alive.
Speaker: I mean, these things are like funny to be like.
Speaker: It's the same thing like the rubber chicken and the chattering teeth.
Speaker: Benny Hill music just in general.
Speaker: Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker: When was like the rubber chicken funny?
Speaker: What about it is funny?
Speaker: Like, I don't know.
Speaker: Couldn't tell you.
Speaker: Although the term is speculated to have been around for a decade or more prior to this first publication, the incomparable interjections ascent really began in 1840 when the Democratic Party during that presidential election contended that it stood for Old Kinderhook, a nickname for candidate Martin Van Buren.
Speaker: That's right, founder of the Van Buren Boys.
Speaker: A native of Kinderhook, New York,
Speaker: coined the term vote for okay which rolled off the tongue in a way martin van buren evidently did not
Speaker: According to Wikipedia, in response, Whig opponents of the Democratic Party attributed OK in the sense of all correct to the bad spelling of Andrew Jackson, Van Buren's predecessor.
Speaker: This countrywide publicity surrounding the election appears to have been a critical event in OK's history, widely and suddenly popularizing it across the United States.
Speaker: That second explanation, by the way, the Boston one, the meme one is the one that's accepted by linguists more so than the Choctaw one.
Speaker: What the fuck?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I love how it also turned into a meme about like, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Well, Andrew Jackson couldn't spell.
Speaker: That's probably where you got it from.
Speaker: I don't know if that's true.
Speaker: I mean, he probably was fucked up on... That's true.
Speaker: That's 100% true.
Speaker: Everything I just said.
Speaker: Mercury.
Speaker: Oh.
Speaker: I want to say, so the contention here is that OK stood for all correct, like all correct, but spelled incorrectly.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: And because the fucking Boston Press put that out?
Speaker: As a meme.
Speaker: Fucking hilarious.
Speaker: And they tried before with all right, spelled with a W. Yeah.
Speaker: I think that's objectively funnier.
Speaker: I mean, it's spelled bad, but ow.
Speaker: It's way better.
Speaker: Yeah, but okay makes sense.
Speaker: O-W doesn't roll off the tongue.
Speaker: So yeah, the contention here is that okay originally stood for old correct and that it became popular because it was used as a nickname for Martin Van Buren.
Speaker: So, all right.
Speaker: I guess if you guys want to go ahead and turn the cameras off, I'll start to venture a guess.
Speaker: Let's go.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: I have some thoughts.
Speaker: The whole thing.
Speaker: It's good.
Speaker: The both stories really good.
Speaker: I think I'm leaning more towards Aaron's being true.
Speaker: But one thing that really throws me off is that the old Kinderhook thing.
Speaker: I'd never heard anything about that.
Speaker: And I felt like that sounds made up.
Speaker: I can believe all the weird bullshit about they thought that O.W.
Speaker: and O.K.
Speaker: was funny.
Speaker: It is funny.
Speaker: It's funny now, ironically.
Speaker: It's funny because they thought it was funny.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: It's funny because it's the furthest thing from funny.
Speaker: It makes no sense.
Speaker: So the old Kinderhook thing, to me, sounds like BS.
Speaker: That sounds like the kind of shit that Aaron would really get off on writing.
Speaker: because he loves doing stuff like that and he always has to throw an old hickory reference in every single time you know he can't me and carter me and carter are both fascinated by andrew jackson that is true and that's what i'm saying so this sounds like it's from the inner machinations of aaron's mind because he's like i gotta look at that's gonna be a good one just gotta fucking throw andrew jackson in also the amount of puns this man put in and he even stuck in a pond
Speaker: Way too wavy.
Speaker: Way too wavy panda club, Richard.
Speaker: So I'm leaning.
Speaker: I'm more leaning towards Aaron telling the truth other than the things I just outlined.
Speaker: With Brett, I love the story.
Speaker: I love that conclusion.
Speaker: I almost feel like I've heard some legend of the word kangaroo, though I definitely can't confirm that in my head.
Speaker: It just seems like something, but it's just because it's a compelling story.
Speaker: Kangaroo, meaning I don't know.
Speaker: I'm going to say, I think I'm ready to lock this in.
Speaker: It's a tough one.
Speaker: I definitely...
Speaker: I'm just venturing a guess because I don't have a strong feeling for either.
Speaker: But I'm just going to go ahead and say, Brett, is this made up?
Speaker: Final answer.
Speaker: Final answer.
Speaker: I'm going to try it out.
Speaker: Was I right or was I wrong?
Speaker: You got it right!
Speaker: That was my Aziz Ansari.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Oh my god.
Speaker: Oh my god.
Speaker: Way to guess.
Speaker: Let me put my fingers in your mouth.
Speaker: I'm sorry if you felt that way.
Speaker: Let's not.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: We've all seen the text.
Speaker: We've all seen the text.
Speaker: Let's just talk about it.
Speaker: Just don't verify.
Speaker: Me too, Adrian.
Speaker: We're against Aziz, okay?
Speaker: Let's venture into the cultural fray.
Speaker: Yeah, of 10 years ago.
Speaker: But anyway, it feels like it.
Speaker: Um, that was awesome.
Speaker: So yeah, that was actually, that was actually really, that was actually really hard, but I just felt that, um,
Speaker: they would have a name for the kangaroos at this point because they're probably running around all day causing fucking havoc.
Speaker: They probably had to eat them for hundreds of years.
Speaker: So it's just like, fuck it.
Speaker: Yeah, we're calling that thing.
Speaker: Though, of course, the cover story of I don't know what that guy's asking.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But, you know, that was really good.
Speaker: But what sold me more than that was a bunch of bad fucking jokes from an old rag, like from a real old timey newspaper.
Speaker: And they're like, this is going to be some funny shit.
Speaker: This is like, oh, all right.
Speaker: Although it's Boston, so I don't know why I give them that accent.
Speaker: I was like, yeah, newspaper would print this fucking bullshit and be like, it's comedy.
Speaker: It's funny.
Speaker: You just don't get it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Excellent.
Speaker: Excellent stories.
Speaker: I really had a lot of fun.
Speaker: So thank you guys.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Brett came up with that.
Speaker: Well, is it right to say you came up with that idea?
Speaker: Um, maybe for the podcast.
Speaker: I had the idea for this medium.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So that was actually that story was featured in the movie Arrival, the movie where aliens come to Earth and Amy Adams plays like a linguistics specialist, a linguist, and she is charged with
Speaker: communicating with the aliens and, you know, the military, of course.
Speaker: I feel like a lot of these sci-fi movies are like the military versus science people.
Speaker: And anyway, she tried.
Speaker: Please, no spoilers.
Speaker: I haven't seen it.
Speaker: Okay, well, hey, no spoilers at all, but she basically just throws that story out there as a made-up thing to buy herself some more time.
Speaker: Yeah, but the general buys it as like, okay, you know, it's important that we establish a better understanding with the aliens because, you know, if you don't, we could misinterpret things.
Speaker: We'll never get to have sex with them.
Speaker: I've seen that movie.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I love it.
Speaker: I have only seen it once and it was years and years ago.
Speaker: I've never seen it, but I heard it was really good.
Speaker: It's really good.
Speaker: It's great.
Speaker: It's really good.
Speaker: So that's funny that it was like in my head, like, I feel like I've heard this story.
Speaker: It's so familiar.
Speaker: I have seen that movie.
Speaker: I love the movie, but it was, I couldn't quote anything from it other than.
Speaker: Even if you had seen it though, you wouldn't have necessarily known that story was fake.
Speaker: They could have presented it in the movie as a story, but it was actually true.
Speaker: I think Brett just said that it... Anyway, whatever.
Speaker: Okay, whatever.
Speaker: It doesn't matter.
Speaker: Even if they presented it as fake in the movie.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Either way, I have seen the movie, so I'm a real idiot because I did not remember that part at all.
Speaker: But that's awesome.
Speaker: And thanks for bringing it up and...
Speaker: Anyway, I had a lot of fun.
Speaker: So I guess then next time we're back to Brett guessing.
Speaker: Mr. Brett.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: Mr. Brett.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: Mr. Brett.
Speaker: So with that, I think we'll start wrapping it up.
Speaker: I just wanted to say if you...
Speaker: happen to have the time and inclination, please review our show and rate it.
Speaker: That would be huge.
Speaker: It'd be a lot of help.
Speaker: And of course we are open to any questions or comments.
Speaker: Trust don't verify podcast at gmail.com.
Speaker: So if you have any suggestions, questions, comments, please send them in.
Speaker: And Aaron, Brett, do you guys have anything?
Speaker: Who do you?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I just want to say a hoodie who that's huge.
Speaker: Well said.
Speaker: Well said.
Speaker: Hoodie who.
Speaker: And we hope that you will join us next time in two weeks.
Speaker: Thank you.
