Hey there everyone, it's me Josh and for this week's s Y s K Selex, I've chosen a two thousand thirteen episode, How the Rosetta Stone Works. It's kind of amazing actually that had it not been for this one government decree that happened to be written in a few different languages, we may never have figured out what the heck hieroglyphics mean, and they would have been lost forever, including the culture that formed the basis of a significant portion of Western civilization. So check it out. How the Rosetta Stone Works. Coming at you right now. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and this is Stuff you Should Know, the Overly Hot Studio Edition. I have a bit of a chill now, you don't, I do. I'm not at all hawk. Yeah. You also said hurt when our new coworker shook your hand. So what does that say that it has a strong hand shape and you're always cold? Yeah, it's all these lamps in here. Well, Jerry's decorated. It's nice. It is nice. It's just like an ikea cattalog. That's right. Um, chuck. How many times have you been to Egypt? Um? Kying that trip in high school? Zero? Same here. Yeah, And yet we know an awful lot about Egypt. Yeah, it's popular, especially ancient Egypt. Like I would wager that we probably know more about ancient Egypt than modern Egypt. Yeah, most people in the West. Yeah. Is there a modern Egypt? There is, and it's undergoing quite a bit of turmoil right now. Um okay, I just wanted to make sure that you knew that Egypt was still around. Yes, okay. Um. Well, the reason that you and I know a lot about Egypt is thing to a soft science, one of the humanities. You would call it, um called egyptology, pretty on the nose name for the study of ancient Egypt. Yeah, it's a real popular thing and has been for a while a while, but not too terribly long, I would say, about the beginning of the nineteenth century. Uh. And the reason that all of it was foster than that all of it came about and that we you and me know about Egypt was because of the discovery of a tablet known as the rosetta Stone's right, but you can also go back even further and make the case that if it wasn't for Napoleon Bonaparte, we may not understand Egypt to this day. Yeah, that little guy, he wasn't that little though, Is that right? Right? He was the average height? Why? Why does why do people say that? Then? Where that come from? Because some doctor wrote down I think upon his death that he was five ft two. But what a lot of people don't realize is that the doctor was using the French inch, which is longer than the British imperial inch. So when you translate five ft two from the French inch to the imperial he was about five six, which is average height. And uh. The other reason why he was called like the little Emperor by his armies was because compared to most of his bodyguards and his people he had around them, he was shorter than them. Yeah. I guess when you're five six, he wants some six four dudes around you. So, but the idea that he was a very short man is is not correct. Yeah, I'd always heard that, but I didn't know the story the French inch. There's your band name for the day. Although I typically don't like rhyming names. French inch doesn't rhyme, it's just it sounds similar. I wouldn't call it a rhyme. French and inch. Yeah, French of the e and the eye. Yeah, that's nipicky. Well, yeah, it's the vowels that rhyme, that the content. Yeah, but if you're Steve Maltmous and you put French at the end of the line and an inch at the end of another, it would be it would be rhymy, and you'd sell a lot of records. That's right. Yeah. Um, yeah, well there was our pavement reference episode. That's becoming a daily thing too. So you want to get on with this, Yeah, let's do it. We're gonna be talking Rosetta Stone, not the language software, which neither one of us has ever used. We're talking about the the real thing, which is actually bigger than I thought. You know, many things are smaller for me, like when you see him in person, Mona Lisa, of course, Mona Lisa small. Like I went to England, I was like big Ben, that ain't so big. Yeah, I don't think I had the impression of big Bembo just kind of underwhelmed. It definitely didn't seem big, whereas the Eiffel Tower that was bigger than I thought. That is where I developed a fear of heights that still plagues me to this day. Like, it literally happened to me on the Eiffel Tower on the way up. Never had a few of heights in my entire life. On the way down, I like was hanging on to the fence, and it took me forever to get down because I was suddenly deathly afraid of it just hit me just my brain uh changed. How old were you? Uh? Seventeen? Is? Wow? Yeah, I didn't go up to the top. I probably missed out. I didn't either. It was the first level that got me really man. Wow, alright, so um, anyway, where was I going? Oh, it's bigger than I thought it was. It is um black basalt, and it weighs about three quarters of a ton um inches high point five wide and twelve inches deep. And it's it's large, it's heavy, it's um. You didn't write this, did you know? No? Um, it's about the size of a heavy coffee table. Were you about to make fun of something? No? I was just gonna say. Whoever wrote this reference referenced an L c D TV medium size. Yeah, a medium screen l C D television. Oh, by the way, thank you Teresa Dove fan request. That's who requested this one. Yeah. Okay, so, um, it's larger than I thought. And I learned a lot about this. I thought the Rosetta stone because I'm a dummy, Um, was literally like, here's what our alphabet is, and here's what everything means. And now that you found it, you can decipher everything. Yeah. I think I had the same impression as well. Until I read this, I thought it was like created as a key to hieroglyphics. Not at all. Not so it was a government document. Basically, it's a stella stella. Stella is the plural. And uh, it's not just the Egyptians that use stella stella. Um, the minds have largely been figured out. Their language has from old stella. Yeah. Um, well and that's it. Those are the two that use stella. Yeah. In this case, it's an inscription carved in three different languages, Greek, hieroglyphics, and demotic t not demonic. Yeah, demotic. But since I'm from the South, I saw fen my tea, so it might sound like I'm saying demonic um. And basically it was in the three languages to ensure that everybody could read it because it was an official government decree. Not super exciting though. No, it wasn't basically what the Rosetta stone says. And like you said, it's in three languages. There's a decree that says um, essentially that Ptolemy the fifth is a great ruler and he is a righteous worshiper of all the right gods, so he's okay in our book. And this decree was made by some priests who gathered at Memphis, and they um inscribed the stoner had and inscribed and dated March. And it's not It doesn't actually say March. Hieroglyphics. It says eighteen must sure, which on the Egyptian calendar translates to something like um March uh. And then they got the because somewhere in there the references the ninth year of Ptolemy the fifth reign, which is about so that's where they got the date from the what we would in the West equated to yeah, so um, like we said, it doesn't say anything of particular interest. At the time, it was an important message, but it's not the Rosetta stone because of what is transcribed upon that stone. No, it's the fact that it's in three different languages exactly. Yeah. So there's, like you said, hieroglyphics demotic and Greek, and hieroglyphics were a sacred um alphabet. Yeah, they used that for really important stuff. So I didn't know this either. I thought just any old thing they wanted to write was a hieroglyph Now that's what they had demiotic for or demotic that was kind of like an abbreviated shorthand more vulgar version of hieroglyphics. Yeah. And in between that was hieratic um, which was slightly more complicated than demotic, but less complicated and not sacred like hieroglyphics. Yeah, it was like a kind of a transition between um demotic and hieroglyphics cursive, right, so you can um, so you could use um hieratic for like a business transaction. But if you were saying the king is a very righteous ruler and you mentioned the gods, you're going to use hieroglyphics, so to have it written in Greek uh demotic, which was an offshoot of hieratic which was an off shoot of hieroglyphics and um, hieroglyphics. These priests that gathered and issued this decree that was written on the Rosetta Stone, they made sure that everyone in Egypt two was literate, could read this one way or another. Yeah, And it was sort of not a stroke of luck. I mean, it was just smart thinking at the time, but ended up being a stroke of luck because the three languages, I mean, without that, I don't think we we may have never been able to figure out hieroglyphics. No, agreed, and I've been lost forever exactly. Um. And that's that's not the only way that the Rosetta Stone was kind of a bit of fortune. But um. So the reason that it was lost was up until the fourth century a d any average Egyptian could have read the Rosetta Stone one way or another. But after that the egypt it left the pharonic stage. Cleopatro is the last pharaoh of Egypt, and then it came to be ruled by the Greeks. Later on the Romans, the Tlamites, um and a bunch of different foreigners or different groups, and with these groups came the introduction of new gods and the suppression of old gods. And since hieroglyphics were um very much religious nature. They're sacred or holy, but associated with those old gods, hieroglyphics itself came to be cut off, stop suppressed. Yeah, especially Christianity. Um. They tended to want to get rid of other competing gods and languages that are tied to those gods a right. But luckily we still had Demotic, that's right. And Demotic wasn't taboo. Um. That eventually became what's known as Coptic, and Coptic used um some Greek um and then a little bit of still of the hieroglyphic symbols. So there's still like this is just a little bit, very tenuous link between Coptic and hieroglyphics. But then Coptic is lost, it's pushed out by Arabic. Yeah, and then that was like way gone, goodbye hieroglyphics. That's it. That was like the hieroglyphics is no longer understood by anyone walking planet Earth. And that means that all of the ancient Egyptian civilization itself was lost. Yeah, that and years aside from its structures. Um, the the thought put into it, the reasoning behind it, all the explanations, all of the inscriptions, all the writing all over these ancient buildings are understood by no one now, and then as a result of that, the buildings themselves, the last vestiges of this ancient civilization, are deconstructed and used for the next wave by new rulers, and so ancient Egyptian culture is lost to to the mists of time. Yeah wow, thanks very nice. Yeah, there was no love lost. They were basically like, we don't need this language anymore, we don't need these sacred buildings anymore. They're paying anyway, Let's tear them all down, build up new ones. And oddly, the Rosetta stone was actually used as a buttress in a wall of a new building. Yes, so part of the construction, right, that's how. This is another way that this is all the stroke of luck after strokes of luck. So the first stroke of luck, as you pointed out, is that they just happen to decree that this thing be written in three languages. Yeah, okay, same message in three languages. Then it's used for a building a wall, right, Yeah. Then it happens to be discovered by some French who are marooned in Egypt because they got crushed by the British right when they tried to invade. Yeah, I guess let's talk about that person. The French thought, hey, we need to we need to get a stronghold on India eventually, and Napoleon said, I think a good way to do that is to start a little further away, and let's say Egypt. Let's cut off the the Brits access to the Nile River and that will really help our cause. Unfortunately, the Brits at a great navy and pretty much destroyed all their ships and stranded them in Egypt for what nineteen years? Yeah? Yeah, And so for the French, whose ships were now at the bottom of Abu Here bay Um, they decided that they really kind of needed to set themselves to creating forts, like since we're here, right um. And it wasn't just military that was there part of this invasion, this um strategy that Napoleon had come up with to take over Egypt, it was kind of a hearts and mind strategy too, and so he created something called the Institute of Egypt, also known as the Scientific and Artistic Commission UH. Mineralogists mathematicians, art historians, of engineers, chemists, all like all of these people from the letters and sciences um brought together to understand and study Egypt. Yeah. They were actually given military rank, but they weren't. I think that was just more of a here, just so we'll call you military, Like they weren't from military backgrounds, so they're thinkers. But they were among this invading force that was less ended in France, so as the real military guys were billing the forts, the people from the Institute Egypt starts studying Egypt. Yeah, I guess they were the first Egyptologists. Yeah. Boy, it was close. Uh, they definitely were. Uh, and it was very covert operation, Like they weren't really allowed to talk about what they were doing that much except to just say, hey, we're following Napoleon's orders, acting on behalf of the good of the French Republic. This is what we're doing. Don't ask any questions, Yeah, that's what. Don't ask why I have this measuring tape out or why I'm transcribing things from papyrus. But they did, um, they did become I guess, embedded with the local population as well to help learn as much as they could. And so it's under this climate that French soldier one day, UM finds this very polished black stone that's inscribed and something about it told him that it was pretty important. So we took it to these um early gyptologists, the French, and said, you guys think this is important and they said yes, yeah. That was Lieutenant Pierre Francois Bouchard, and uh, he took it to his boss and they they said, okay, this is weird that this is built into a wall, but it's clearly something of note and maybe we should take a closer look at it. And um, immediately they started to get to work on trying to transcribe it. Super difficult at the time, um, and would prove to be difficult over the years. UM. It eventually ended up in the hands of England, of course, but luckily these uh, the Institute of Egypt people made copies of it. Yeah. I think that like etchings or the plaster molds and things, I'm sure, yeah, but they had readable copies of the Rosetta stone, so when they did give it up to the British, it wasn't entirely lost to them, that's right, and give it up as in not here have this. It was more like here, we're making this in the Treaty of Alexandria. We're gonna take this in a bunch of other stuff. So now basically you have the French and the British both have the Rosetta stone. The one group that doesn't are the Egyptians, but we'll get to that later. Both of them recognize that this is a very very important something. They know that it's some sort of decree. They recognize that it's in three different languages, and I think it becomes obvious to them that this could be the key to understanding higher glyphs, which people have tried to understand. This is not new people going back to a fellow named um Hoopolo who was a fifth century scholar. Supposedly he may not have actually existed. Um he created basically what was a translation for hieroglyphics, right, but it was a false translation, as we'll see. But you know, dating back basically from the moment that hieroglyphics were lost to history, people have tried to understand them. So these this this was the British and the French were aware of this, like this may be the key to these mysterious hieroglyphics and this is important, so we're going to try to translate it. Yeah. Well it became a race really because they didn't like each other very much and they both wanted to be the first ones to to figure out what these hieroglyphics meant and how to unlock this history and um, so they sent their best, in their brightest. On the English side, the British side, it was a scholar named Thomas Young, and then on the French side we had Jean Francois show Polion, who he was sort of born to do this. Apparently he was way into Egypt as a kid even and as a young child said I'm gonna I'm gonna figure out hieroglyphics one day. Yeah. He was even called the Egyptian because he had dark skin and dark hair. And um, I think a magician like foretold his fame one day. Yeah, when he was born. Supposedly a magician said this guy is gonna be famous, and and he was and um, yeah, he was a very talented linguist. He studied under a guy named um Sylvester de Sassy. Yeah, Antoine Isaac Sylvester de Sassy. Uh, he um, who would take a crack at the Rosetta stone. But he trained Uh Shampolion. Is that how we're saying it? Well, yeah, sure he trained him. Um, but Champoleon quickly became went from student to master. He applied for he applied to be a student at an institute in Paris, and they were impressed enough with his application that they said, how about you just skip the school part and come beyond the faculty. That's pretty good. Yeah, that's a talented linguist. Yeah. They said the same thing when I applied to Georgia. Is that right? Like you just want to go and be an English teacher? Yeah? Na, oh really you turned down? Huh sure I wanted to be a student. Oh gotcha. Um. So before all this happens, Um, we we have the Greek inscription transcribed, which that was Reverend Stephen Watson in eighteen o two. And I don't want to say it was no big deal, but there were quite a few people that could have done this. It wasn't like unlocking hieroglyphics, but it was a necessary part of the process. So we want to give him his due. So we have a we have a translation and accurate translation of what the says exactly. So that's step one. And if you have one translated, then if you're a linguist, I guess. I mean it sounds really difficult to do too. I mean it's I can't imagine the painstaking the process of figuring out and alphabet. Yeah, I mean, I think about how hard it is to translate a well known language in a language that you speak. Imagine translating uh, language that's totally lost into something understandable. Um. So we had the Greek and then eventually we had the Demotic as well. Um. Yeah, thanks to Yeah Antoine Uh. And that same year, at the same time, a Swedish diplomat named Aker balade Um also translated the demotic um and they both went about it two different ways. I thought this was pretty interesting. Yeah, So do saucy Um figured out that there were two proper names at least in there, Ptolemy and Alexander, and he used those to match up sounds and symbols. Um Aker Blade probably had the bigger breakthrough. He used a different technique. He recognized that there was something similar between Demotic and Coptic, and he was well schooled and Coptic, which helped obviously. Yeah, that that was his big breakthrough. He he figured out what words spelled love, temple and Greek, and he used that to form basically this rough uh structure for Demotic based on his awareness of Coptic. Yeah, that's only eleven letters. That's pretty impressive. Yeah, but I mean, if you've got eleven letters, that's a decent I think they called it a skeletal outline. I guess that's what you'd have. Well, yeah, I mean, especially since Coptic was only what twenty two plus a couple more from hieroglyphics, it's like a big wheel of fortune game, yes to that, right. So the thing is, though, this established connection now between coptic and Demotic and then Demonic and hieroglyphics, since they're side by side, that kind of opened up this mentality that would be needed to finally crack the hieroglyphics for for um, the Rosetta Stone. And Thomas Young was the first to really try it. He was the British guy, and he got somewhat far, but he gave up. Yeah, he in eighteen fourteen. His big breakthrough was figuring out what a cartouche was, and that is Um, it's they say oval, but it's a little more squared away with round edges. But it's a loop basically with hieroglyphic characters in it. And he figured out that these are not only proper names, but royal names. Anything containing containing a cartouche is a royal name, which was a big breakthrough because he identified tolem Me the pharaoh's name in one of the car cartouches cartouche cartouches, and uh, his queen Baronica was in there as well, So he said, you know what again, I've got these two names now to work with. Um. But he was still working on Haro Polo's false premise that hieroglyphics was not phonetic in nature and that it was based just on symbols. Right, That's what Harropolo's big contribution was to confuse a centuries worth of scholars. It's not bad for young because he was onto something. And if he wasn't using that the fake or or not fake but just the poor system, then he might have figured it out. Right. So this is the thing, like everyone believed Popolo. Because Roppolo claimed that his translation was a direct translation from hieroglyphic. It was written in the fifth century a d. Right around the time we lost hieroglyphics, so it was considered to be a primary source and basically completely reasonable. But it was wrong. It was wrong because it said that hieroglyphics are symbolic. So like, if you see a cart a picture that looks like a cart next to a cat and then a lizard, what that should say under Hiropolo's translation is cart, cat lizard. This kept throwing everybody off because it didn't make sense, especially right, especially when compared to the Greek translation. In the translation of Demotic, it didn't make any sense whatsoever. So, like you said, Young gave up, but he published his findings, and you can really strongly make a case that had it not been for Young's breakthrough, Uh, Champolion would not have cracked the Rosetta Stone. No, which uh we should mention here that like they should just accept each other as as co workers and colleagues and get along. But there was a competition that exists to this day of who what country claims that they translated the Rosetta Stone. The French still say that champaign was really the one. The Brits obviously say, no, it was really young, and even when they displayed it in nineteen seventy two with the one of the few times it's left England or maybe the only time they let France display it for like a year. Um, they argued about the size of the photos of the two on both sides of it, when in fact the photos were the same size of Young and Champollion. Yeah, not photos but portraits. Yeah, But the French were like, well, no, Young's is bigger. The Brits were like, no, his is bigger, and they were the same size. So they were really just they never came to a common ground on who did it, when in fact they both did. And there were rumors apparently during that time that France was going to to steal the Rosetta stone and keep it and not turn it back to England. And this is in the nineteen seventies, so it's not like a long time ago. Um. So Champagnon picked up in eighteen fourteen where Young left off and started to think, you know what, I need to think more about this this simple thing that Harapolo like, I don't know if he he was on base after all, And that was actually the breakthrough he um he got some old cartouches, and he figured out, um, that the last two letters and one of them were identical. So that's a good thing because you know that it's the same letter. He figured out that it was the letter S and um. Then the first character was a circle, and he said, maybe that's the sun and in ancient Egypt, the sun god was raw and Coptic. Yeah, and so basically figured out that that name was Ramsey's. Yeah. Then that was a huge breakthrough. He figured out the the identical letters, the last two were sas first one was raw and since he knew that it was in a cartouche that it was a royal name from that era, the only person it could have been was Ramsey. So that's how we cracked the code, like you say ye and cracked it in like, hey, this is a phonetic thing. He was wrong the whole time, and apparently he fainted on the spot, which is dramatic. Yeah, I'm kind of cute. He was French. Sure. Um. So out of that moment, Egyptology was fully born, Like now we had a way to understand all this stuff that hadn't been destroyed and reused as building material. Just took a long time though. It wasn't like they could just read it. It still took a lot of translating. Oh yeah, but they had the basis. Um. Yeah, all they've done is transcribe one single stella. They had millennia worth of things to like papyruses and or papyri um and building inscriptions and sarcopha guy and all the letters. Yeah, whatever you know. Um, And so Egyptology is born, and now that it's understood at that moment, there's also a great desire to protect Egypt and all of its treasures. Yeah, and to get things right because previous to that, in Napoleon and Gang did a pretty good job. But they also speculated a lot. Yeah, because they couldn't read hybrid glyphic. Yeah, so they ended up correcting a lot of things about what they thought about Egypt. And Um, like you said, they wanted to protect things because Egypt at the time was I mean, they were selling these things off to collectors left and right because a they didn't know their true value and be there was a market for it. Sure, doctors during the Middle Ages who were just dummies would use mummies from Egypt. Uh, they grind it up and use it to cure disease, which didn't work, um, And so there was this move to protect Egyptian antiquities from Egyptians. There was kind of this patriarchal mentality, especially among the British, that we need to get everything out of Egypt and into museums and into like the hands of us, who will preserve them and not sell them to Middle Age or Middle Middle Ages doctors for cure alls. But to his credit, in my opinion, Champoleon argued very strongly in favor of keeping them, in founding a museum in Egypt to store these, keeping them in Egypt. Yeah, I think he was a little bit of a control freak, Like he knew that he could care for things in the proper way, and he I don't think he trusted even other museums at the time to care for things in the right way. And he was kind of right because a lot of it was destroyed. Yeah, Like apparently to preserve an ancient papyrus you have to store it in a low humidity um area. Yeah, in a chamber, in a in a bamboo box container. And they didn't know this, and they shipped them by seed to the UK, and they all like crumbled the nothingness on the way. Um. Yeah, So the Rosettason still sits in the museum in London, where it's been since eighteen o two, except for the time it went to France briefly. Uh. And in two thousand three, egypt I was like, you know what, I want this thing back, not I, we want this thing back and it's ours and it's I don't care who found it, it's ours. And England said in two thousand five, took him two years to build a replica and say, hey, how about this, this is just like it. I guess at least they didn't try to pass it off as the real one. Well, yeah, that's true, um cinema replica and they're like, I appreciate this, this is nice, but we really would like the real thing. And England said no. And not just England, but a lot of the big museums, the Louvera and um, a bunch of the world museums kind of all got together in support of one another and said, you know what repaid repatriotation is. We're not into it. We're just not gonna give things back anymore because we can care for it best. It belongs to the world now. And they just sort of banded together and said, we're keeping our stuff. And that's I think we're it's probably gonna stay. They are trying to get it for a I think in two thousand twelve they tried to get it for a the grand opening of the Grand Egypt Museum. It sounds like it didn't happen, But even then they said now they wanted for like three weeks and they said nope, under the guys of I don't know if it's guys, but they said, would be too dangerous to transport it. That's the story they have at least. Uh. So that's uh how museums work. Pill and deny village and deny Um. You got anything else, No, sir. That is the Rosetta stone, everybody. If you want to learn more about it, you should type that word. Those words are O S E T T A stone in the search bar house to works uh and it will bring up this article. And since I said search bar means it's time for a message by m h uh, Now, chuck, it's time for listener mail. Oh no, how about instead? Okay, all right, for those of you don't know, this is at the point where we read off the people who were nice enough to send us little gifts and trinkets and music and letters and all sorts to things, and um, here we go. Go ahead, all right. Sarah send us some cool graphic prints, one of which was you Can't Take the Sky from Me from one of my favorite shows, Firefly. Yeah, very cool prints. Amy sent us a lovely carved wooden cicada from Timber Green Woods. Yeah, yeah, it's very cool. Uh. And McDonough sent us a snoopy postcard and a handwritten letter of thanks. Very nice. Uh. Liz from New Zealand sent us a lot of stuff that's New Zealand candy, New Zealand chocolate, New Zealand chips, surfboard, postcard, really lovely frame photos from her dad, Rudy Goldstein photography that's on Facebook. Uh, it's our Goldstein photography, so check it out. Yeah it's very cool. I have those on my desk. Um. Sean Antonia sent us some custom vinyls some stickers from eight one one Graphics dot com. He and his brother. Yeah, I had this company and that cool stuff like skater style stuff. Right. Um, buy costumes dot com. It's buy costumes dot Com sent us a full size adult gremlin costume, which Ben Bowling wore all day yesterday in the office here. Yeah, Ben Bowling from stuff they don't want you to know and car stuff. He's weird. Did you see that? He emailed me they did that? Did you actually see that? I haven't seen a picture of them yet. I put on the hand one day and try to creep out Strickland. But he was like, that's not the first gremlin hand up. Haddam my shoulder. Uh cat TP. Megan sent a cat tpe my way because I have two cats and uh, my big boy Lauren gets in it now. We call it his spirit tent and he just hangs out in there, and uh it's pretty neat. I mean it's what you think. It's like a little small TP for your kiddie that it's very cute. So if you have a cat, I would suggest you buying one. Um, let's see, Susan sent you a birthday card. It's a dog drinking beer. Yeah, yeah, that was nice. Yeah it was Kellum Clark sent us some T shirts. Um and he is a handyman in Brooklyn and he gifted us two hours of handyman work to give to someone. We know in Brooklyn. That's very really cool. So I've actually texted our buddy Joe Randazzo said, Hey, you need any work done? We have two three hours of handyman work. So if you're in Brooklyn, you can go to not just Handyman dot com and uh, give kill him a call. He'll fix your sink or do whatever what you need around the house. I guess what's he gonna do for Joe. I don't know. Joe didn't respond. What We'll go to Hodgeman next, I guess, and just work our way down the lithu all the Hodgeman he can afford to pay people, we should give it to like some else. Okay, all right, I'll figure it out. Uh. Clive Fantasy gave us some really cool Panama Canal postcards. Yeah, that's her name, Rachel from Uber. Have you heard of Uber. It's a it's sort of like a taxi cab service now but it's town cars and they have an app and you can like say just come get me now, right. Yeah, he was telling me about that. Yeah, they sent us Uber gift cards. Um, and I will send you your gift code for us, like a hundred bucks and free a lot. I know somebody's going to be going to the airport for free. Yeah. Kristen Curran has been taking us along with her on a tour of Europe. It seems like we've got postcards from her from Edinburgh, Bruges, Amsterdam, Slovakia, Berlin all over the place. Yeah, so thanks for those. Um. We also got something from Threadless self designed t shirt bigfoot cradling and alien lockness monsters in the background. Yeah. There was also like men in black and an abduction going on, all sorts of stuff. Very cool. Uh. And then Kira Newron sent the wives some jewelry um and you can visit her store. Thank you very much, Kira at um Cariboo Classics dot Etsy dot com. So that's that's our administrative details for now, right. Yeah, part one. We'll have a part two, I guess on the next episode. Yes, we will, where we'll cover music in books. Nice. If you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at s y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook, dot com slah Stuff you Should Know, and you can join us at our home on the web. Stuff you Should Know dot Com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or where ever you listen to your favorite shows.

Hey there everyone, it's me Josh and for this week's s Y s K Selex, I've chosen a two thousand thirteen episode, How the Rosetta Stone Works. It's kind of amazing actually that had it not been for this one government decree that happened to be written in a few different languages, we may never have figured out what the heck hieroglyphics mean, and they would have been lost forever, including the culture that formed the basis of a significant portion of Western civilization. So check it out. How the Rosetta Stone Works. Coming at you right now. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and this is Stuff you Should Know, the Overly Hot Studio Edition. I have a bit of a chill now, you don't, I do. I'm not at all hawk. Yeah. You also said hurt when our new coworker shook your hand. So what does that say that it has a strong hand shape and you're always cold? Yeah, it's all these lamps in here. Well, Jerry's decorated. It's nice. It is nice. It's just like an ikea cattalog. That's right. Um, chuck. How many times have you been to Egypt? Um? Kying that trip in high school? Zero? Same here. Yeah, And yet we know an awful lot about Egypt. Yeah, it's popular, especially ancient Egypt. Like I would wager that we probably know more about ancient Egypt than modern Egypt. Yeah, most people in the West. Yeah. Is there a modern Egypt? There is, and it's undergoing quite a bit of turmoil right now. Um okay, I just wanted to make sure that you knew that Egypt was still around. Yes, okay. Um. Well, the reason that you and I know a lot about Egypt is thing to a soft science, one of the humanities. You would call it, um called egyptology, pretty on the nose name for the study of ancient Egypt. Yeah, it's a real popular thing and has been for a while a while, but not too terribly long, I would say, about the beginning of the nineteenth century. Uh. And the reason that all of it was foster than that all of it came about and that we you and me know about Egypt was because of the discovery of a tablet known as the rosetta Stone's right, but you can also go back even further and make the case that if it wasn't for Napoleon Bonaparte, we may not understand Egypt to this day. Yeah, that little guy, he wasn't that little though, Is that right? Right? He was the average height? Why? Why does why do people say that? Then? Where that come from? Because some doctor wrote down I think upon his death that he was five ft two. But what a lot of people don't realize is that the doctor was using the French inch, which is longer than the British imperial inch. So when you translate five ft two from the French inch to the imperial he was about five six, which is average height. And uh. The other reason why he was called like the little Emperor by his armies was because compared to most of his bodyguards and his people he had around them, he was shorter than them. Yeah. I guess when you're five six, he wants some six four dudes around you. So, but the idea that he was a very short man is is not correct. Yeah, I'd always heard that, but I didn't know the story the French inch. There's your band name for the day. Although I typically don't like rhyming names. French inch doesn't rhyme, it's just it sounds similar. I wouldn't call it a rhyme. French and inch. Yeah, French of the e and the eye. Yeah, that's nipicky. Well, yeah, it's the vowels that rhyme, that the content. Yeah, but if you're Steve Maltmous and you put French at the end of the line and an inch at the end of another, it would be it would be rhymy, and you'd sell a lot of records. That's right. Yeah. Um, yeah, well there was our pavement reference episode. That's becoming a daily thing too. So you want to get on with this, Yeah, let's do it. We're gonna be talking Rosetta Stone, not the language software, which neither one of us has ever used. We're talking about the the real thing, which is actually bigger than I thought. You know, many things are smaller for me, like when you see him in person, Mona Lisa, of course, Mona Lisa small. Like I went to England, I was like big Ben, that ain't so big. Yeah, I don't think I had the impression of big Bembo just kind of underwhelmed. It definitely didn't seem big, whereas the Eiffel Tower that was bigger than I thought. That is where I developed a fear of heights that still plagues me to this day. Like, it literally happened to me on the Eiffel Tower on the way up. Never had a few of heights in my entire life. On the way down, I like was hanging on to the fence, and it took me forever to get down because I was suddenly deathly afraid of it just hit me just my brain uh changed. How old were you? Uh? Seventeen? Is? Wow? Yeah, I didn't go up to the top. I probably missed out. I didn't either. It was the first level that got me really man. Wow, alright, so um, anyway, where was I going? Oh, it's bigger than I thought it was. It is um black basalt, and it weighs about three quarters of a ton um inches high point five wide and twelve inches deep. And it's it's large, it's heavy, it's um. You didn't write this, did you know? No? Um, it's about the size of a heavy coffee table. Were you about to make fun of something? No? I was just gonna say. Whoever wrote this reference referenced an L c D TV medium size. Yeah, a medium screen l C D television. Oh, by the way, thank you Teresa Dove fan request. That's who requested this one. Yeah. Okay, so, um, it's larger than I thought. And I learned a lot about this. I thought the Rosetta stone because I'm a dummy, Um, was literally like, here's what our alphabet is, and here's what everything means. And now that you found it, you can decipher everything. Yeah. I think I had the same impression as well. Until I read this, I thought it was like created as a key to hieroglyphics. Not at all. Not so it was a government document. Basically, it's a stella stella. Stella is the plural. And uh, it's not just the Egyptians that use stella stella. Um, the minds have largely been figured out. Their language has from old stella. Yeah. Um, well and that's it. Those are the two that use stella. Yeah. In this case, it's an inscription carved in three different languages, Greek, hieroglyphics, and demotic t not demonic. Yeah, demotic. But since I'm from the South, I saw fen my tea, so it might sound like I'm saying demonic um. And basically it was in the three languages to ensure that everybody could read it because it was an official government decree. Not super exciting though. No, it wasn't basically what the Rosetta stone says. And like you said, it's in three languages. There's a decree that says um, essentially that Ptolemy the fifth is a great ruler and he is a righteous worshiper of all the right gods, so he's okay in our book. And this decree was made by some priests who gathered at Memphis, and they um inscribed the stoner had and inscribed and dated March. And it's not It doesn't actually say March. Hieroglyphics. It says eighteen must sure, which on the Egyptian calendar translates to something like um March uh. And then they got the because somewhere in there the references the ninth year of Ptolemy the fifth reign, which is about so that's where they got the date from the what we would in the West equated to yeah, so um, like we said, it doesn't say anything of particular interest. At the time, it was an important message, but it's not the Rosetta stone because of what is transcribed upon that stone. No, it's the fact that it's in three different languages exactly. Yeah. So there's, like you said, hieroglyphics demotic and Greek, and hieroglyphics were a sacred um alphabet. Yeah, they used that for really important stuff. So I didn't know this either. I thought just any old thing they wanted to write was a hieroglyph Now that's what they had demiotic for or demotic that was kind of like an abbreviated shorthand more vulgar version of hieroglyphics. Yeah. And in between that was hieratic um, which was slightly more complicated than demotic, but less complicated and not sacred like hieroglyphics. Yeah, it was like a kind of a transition between um demotic and hieroglyphics cursive, right, so you can um, so you could use um hieratic for like a business transaction. But if you were saying the king is a very righteous ruler and you mentioned the gods, you're going to use hieroglyphics, so to have it written in Greek uh demotic, which was an offshoot of hieratic which was an off shoot of hieroglyphics and um, hieroglyphics. These priests that gathered and issued this decree that was written on the Rosetta Stone, they made sure that everyone in Egypt two was literate, could read this one way or another. Yeah, And it was sort of not a stroke of luck. I mean, it was just smart thinking at the time, but ended up being a stroke of luck because the three languages, I mean, without that, I don't think we we may have never been able to figure out hieroglyphics. No, agreed, and I've been lost forever exactly. Um. And that's that's not the only way that the Rosetta Stone was kind of a bit of fortune. But um. So the reason that it was lost was up until the fourth century a d any average Egyptian could have read the Rosetta Stone one way or another. But after that the egypt it left the pharonic stage. Cleopatro is the last pharaoh of Egypt, and then it came to be ruled by the Greeks. Later on the Romans, the Tlamites, um and a bunch of different foreigners or different groups, and with these groups came the introduction of new gods and the suppression of old gods. And since hieroglyphics were um very much religious nature. They're sacred or holy, but associated with those old gods, hieroglyphics itself came to be cut off, stop suppressed. Yeah, especially Christianity. Um. They tended to want to get rid of other competing gods and languages that are tied to those gods a right. But luckily we still had Demotic, that's right. And Demotic wasn't taboo. Um. That eventually became what's known as Coptic, and Coptic used um some Greek um and then a little bit of still of the hieroglyphic symbols. So there's still like this is just a little bit, very tenuous link between Coptic and hieroglyphics. But then Coptic is lost, it's pushed out by Arabic. Yeah, and then that was like way gone, goodbye hieroglyphics. That's it. That was like the hieroglyphics is no longer understood by anyone walking planet Earth. And that means that all of the ancient Egyptian civilization itself was lost. Yeah, that and years aside from its structures. Um, the the thought put into it, the reasoning behind it, all the explanations, all of the inscriptions, all the writing all over these ancient buildings are understood by no one now, and then as a result of that, the buildings themselves, the last vestiges of this ancient civilization, are deconstructed and used for the next wave by new rulers, and so ancient Egyptian culture is lost to to the mists of time. Yeah wow, thanks very nice. Yeah, there was no love lost. They were basically like, we don't need this language anymore, we don't need these sacred buildings anymore. They're paying anyway, Let's tear them all down, build up new ones. And oddly, the Rosetta stone was actually used as a buttress in a wall of a new building. Yes, so part of the construction, right, that's how. This is another way that this is all the stroke of luck after strokes of luck. So the first stroke of luck, as you pointed out, is that they just happen to decree that this thing be written in three languages. Yeah, okay, same message in three languages. Then it's used for a building a wall, right, Yeah. Then it happens to be discovered by some French who are marooned in Egypt because they got crushed by the British right when they tried to invade. Yeah, I guess let's talk about that person. The French thought, hey, we need to we need to get a stronghold on India eventually, and Napoleon said, I think a good way to do that is to start a little further away, and let's say Egypt. Let's cut off the the Brits access to the Nile River and that will really help our cause. Unfortunately, the Brits at a great navy and pretty much destroyed all their ships and stranded them in Egypt for what nineteen years? Yeah? Yeah, And so for the French, whose ships were now at the bottom of Abu Here bay Um, they decided that they really kind of needed to set themselves to creating forts, like since we're here, right um. And it wasn't just military that was there part of this invasion, this um strategy that Napoleon had come up with to take over Egypt, it was kind of a hearts and mind strategy too, and so he created something called the Institute of Egypt, also known as the Scientific and Artistic Commission UH. Mineralogists mathematicians, art historians, of engineers, chemists, all like all of these people from the letters and sciences um brought together to understand and study Egypt. Yeah. They were actually given military rank, but they weren't. I think that was just more of a here, just so we'll call you military, Like they weren't from military backgrounds, so they're thinkers. But they were among this invading force that was less ended in France, so as the real military guys were billing the forts, the people from the Institute Egypt starts studying Egypt. Yeah, I guess they were the first Egyptologists. Yeah. Boy, it was close. Uh, they definitely were. Uh, and it was very covert operation, Like they weren't really allowed to talk about what they were doing that much except to just say, hey, we're following Napoleon's orders, acting on behalf of the good of the French Republic. This is what we're doing. Don't ask any questions, Yeah, that's what. Don't ask why I have this measuring tape out or why I'm transcribing things from papyrus. But they did, um, they did become I guess, embedded with the local population as well to help learn as much as they could. And so it's under this climate that French soldier one day, UM finds this very polished black stone that's inscribed and something about it told him that it was pretty important. So we took it to these um early gyptologists, the French, and said, you guys think this is important and they said yes, yeah. That was Lieutenant Pierre Francois Bouchard, and uh, he took it to his boss and they they said, okay, this is weird that this is built into a wall, but it's clearly something of note and maybe we should take a closer look at it. And um, immediately they started to get to work on trying to transcribe it. Super difficult at the time, um, and would prove to be difficult over the years. UM. It eventually ended up in the hands of England, of course, but luckily these uh, the Institute of Egypt people made copies of it. Yeah. I think that like etchings or the plaster molds and things, I'm sure, yeah, but they had readable copies of the Rosetta stone, so when they did give it up to the British, it wasn't entirely lost to them, that's right, and give it up as in not here have this. It was more like here, we're making this in the Treaty of Alexandria. We're gonna take this in a bunch of other stuff. So now basically you have the French and the British both have the Rosetta stone. The one group that doesn't are the Egyptians, but we'll get to that later. Both of them recognize that this is a very very important something. They know that it's some sort of decree. They recognize that it's in three different languages, and I think it becomes obvious to them that this could be the key to understanding higher glyphs, which people have tried to understand. This is not new people going back to a fellow named um Hoopolo who was a fifth century scholar. Supposedly he may not have actually existed. Um he created basically what was a translation for hieroglyphics, right, but it was a false translation, as we'll see. But you know, dating back basically from the moment that hieroglyphics were lost to history, people have tried to understand them. So these this this was the British and the French were aware of this, like this may be the key to these mysterious hieroglyphics and this is important, so we're going to try to translate it. Yeah. Well it became a race really because they didn't like each other very much and they both wanted to be the first ones to to figure out what these hieroglyphics meant and how to unlock this history and um, so they sent their best, in their brightest. On the English side, the British side, it was a scholar named Thomas Young, and then on the French side we had Jean Francois show Polion, who he was sort of born to do this. Apparently he was way into Egypt as a kid even and as a young child said I'm gonna I'm gonna figure out hieroglyphics one day. Yeah. He was even called the Egyptian because he had dark skin and dark hair. And um, I think a magician like foretold his fame one day. Yeah, when he was born. Supposedly a magician said this guy is gonna be famous, and and he was and um, yeah, he was a very talented linguist. He studied under a guy named um Sylvester de Sassy. Yeah, Antoine Isaac Sylvester de Sassy. Uh, he um, who would take a crack at the Rosetta stone. But he trained Uh Shampolion. Is that how we're saying it? Well, yeah, sure he trained him. Um, but Champoleon quickly became went from student to master. He applied for he applied to be a student at an institute in Paris, and they were impressed enough with his application that they said, how about you just skip the school part and come beyond the faculty. That's pretty good. Yeah, that's a talented linguist. Yeah. They said the same thing when I applied to Georgia. Is that right? Like you just want to go and be an English teacher? Yeah? Na, oh really you turned down? Huh sure I wanted to be a student. Oh gotcha. Um. So before all this happens, Um, we we have the Greek inscription transcribed, which that was Reverend Stephen Watson in eighteen o two. And I don't want to say it was no big deal, but there were quite a few people that could have done this. It wasn't like unlocking hieroglyphics, but it was a necessary part of the process. So we want to give him his due. So we have a we have a translation and accurate translation of what the says exactly. So that's step one. And if you have one translated, then if you're a linguist, I guess. I mean it sounds really difficult to do too. I mean it's I can't imagine the painstaking the process of figuring out and alphabet. Yeah, I mean, I think about how hard it is to translate a well known language in a language that you speak. Imagine translating uh, language that's totally lost into something understandable. Um. So we had the Greek and then eventually we had the Demotic as well. Um. Yeah, thanks to Yeah Antoine Uh. And that same year, at the same time, a Swedish diplomat named Aker balade Um also translated the demotic um and they both went about it two different ways. I thought this was pretty interesting. Yeah, So do saucy Um figured out that there were two proper names at least in there, Ptolemy and Alexander, and he used those to match up sounds and symbols. Um Aker Blade probably had the bigger breakthrough. He used a different technique. He recognized that there was something similar between Demotic and Coptic, and he was well schooled and Coptic, which helped obviously. Yeah, that that was his big breakthrough. He he figured out what words spelled love, temple and Greek, and he used that to form basically this rough uh structure for Demotic based on his awareness of Coptic. Yeah, that's only eleven letters. That's pretty impressive. Yeah, but I mean, if you've got eleven letters, that's a decent I think they called it a skeletal outline. I guess that's what you'd have. Well, yeah, I mean, especially since Coptic was only what twenty two plus a couple more from hieroglyphics, it's like a big wheel of fortune game, yes to that, right. So the thing is, though, this established connection now between coptic and Demotic and then Demonic and hieroglyphics, since they're side by side, that kind of opened up this mentality that would be needed to finally crack the hieroglyphics for for um, the Rosetta Stone. And Thomas Young was the first to really try it. He was the British guy, and he got somewhat far, but he gave up. Yeah, he in eighteen fourteen. His big breakthrough was figuring out what a cartouche was, and that is Um, it's they say oval, but it's a little more squared away with round edges. But it's a loop basically with hieroglyphic characters in it. And he figured out that these are not only proper names, but royal names. Anything containing containing a cartouche is a royal name, which was a big breakthrough because he identified tolem Me the pharaoh's name in one of the car cartouches cartouche cartouches, and uh, his queen Baronica was in there as well, So he said, you know what again, I've got these two names now to work with. Um. But he was still working on Haro Polo's false premise that hieroglyphics was not phonetic in nature and that it was based just on symbols. Right, That's what Harropolo's big contribution was to confuse a centuries worth of scholars. It's not bad for young because he was onto something. And if he wasn't using that the fake or or not fake but just the poor system, then he might have figured it out. Right. So this is the thing, like everyone believed Popolo. Because Roppolo claimed that his translation was a direct translation from hieroglyphic. It was written in the fifth century a d. Right around the time we lost hieroglyphics, so it was considered to be a primary source and basically completely reasonable. But it was wrong. It was wrong because it said that hieroglyphics are symbolic. So like, if you see a cart a picture that looks like a cart next to a cat and then a lizard, what that should say under Hiropolo's translation is cart, cat lizard. This kept throwing everybody off because it didn't make sense, especially right, especially when compared to the Greek translation. In the translation of Demotic, it didn't make any sense whatsoever. So, like you said, Young gave up, but he published his findings, and you can really strongly make a case that had it not been for Young's breakthrough, Uh, Champolion would not have cracked the Rosetta Stone. No, which uh we should mention here that like they should just accept each other as as co workers and colleagues and get along. But there was a competition that exists to this day of who what country claims that they translated the Rosetta Stone. The French still say that champaign was really the one. The Brits obviously say, no, it was really young, and even when they displayed it in nineteen seventy two with the one of the few times it's left England or maybe the only time they let France display it for like a year. Um, they argued about the size of the photos of the two on both sides of it, when in fact the photos were the same size of Young and Champollion. Yeah, not photos but portraits. Yeah, But the French were like, well, no, Young's is bigger. The Brits were like, no, his is bigger, and they were the same size. So they were really just they never came to a common ground on who did it, when in fact they both did. And there were rumors apparently during that time that France was going to to steal the Rosetta stone and keep it and not turn it back to England. And this is in the nineteen seventies, so it's not like a long time ago. Um. So Champagnon picked up in eighteen fourteen where Young left off and started to think, you know what, I need to think more about this this simple thing that Harapolo like, I don't know if he he was on base after all, And that was actually the breakthrough he um he got some old cartouches, and he figured out, um, that the last two letters and one of them were identical. So that's a good thing because you know that it's the same letter. He figured out that it was the letter S and um. Then the first character was a circle, and he said, maybe that's the sun and in ancient Egypt, the sun god was raw and Coptic. Yeah, and so basically figured out that that name was Ramsey's. Yeah. Then that was a huge breakthrough. He figured out the the identical letters, the last two were sas first one was raw and since he knew that it was in a cartouche that it was a royal name from that era, the only person it could have been was Ramsey. So that's how we cracked the code, like you say ye and cracked it in like, hey, this is a phonetic thing. He was wrong the whole time, and apparently he fainted on the spot, which is dramatic. Yeah, I'm kind of cute. He was French. Sure. Um. So out of that moment, Egyptology was fully born, Like now we had a way to understand all this stuff that hadn't been destroyed and reused as building material. Just took a long time though. It wasn't like they could just read it. It still took a lot of translating. Oh yeah, but they had the basis. Um. Yeah, all they've done is transcribe one single stella. They had millennia worth of things to like papyruses and or papyri um and building inscriptions and sarcopha guy and all the letters. Yeah, whatever you know. Um, And so Egyptology is born, and now that it's understood at that moment, there's also a great desire to protect Egypt and all of its treasures. Yeah, and to get things right because previous to that, in Napoleon and Gang did a pretty good job. But they also speculated a lot. Yeah, because they couldn't read hybrid glyphic. Yeah, so they ended up correcting a lot of things about what they thought about Egypt. And Um, like you said, they wanted to protect things because Egypt at the time was I mean, they were selling these things off to collectors left and right because a they didn't know their true value and be there was a market for it. Sure, doctors during the Middle Ages who were just dummies would use mummies from Egypt. Uh, they grind it up and use it to cure disease, which didn't work, um, And so there was this move to protect Egyptian antiquities from Egyptians. There was kind of this patriarchal mentality, especially among the British, that we need to get everything out of Egypt and into museums and into like the hands of us, who will preserve them and not sell them to Middle Age or Middle Middle Ages doctors for cure alls. But to his credit, in my opinion, Champoleon argued very strongly in favor of keeping them, in founding a museum in Egypt to store these, keeping them in Egypt. Yeah, I think he was a little bit of a control freak, Like he knew that he could care for things in the proper way, and he I don't think he trusted even other museums at the time to care for things in the right way. And he was kind of right because a lot of it was destroyed. Yeah, Like apparently to preserve an ancient papyrus you have to store it in a low humidity um area. Yeah, in a chamber, in a in a bamboo box container. And they didn't know this, and they shipped them by seed to the UK, and they all like crumbled the nothingness on the way. Um. Yeah, So the Rosettason still sits in the museum in London, where it's been since eighteen o two, except for the time it went to France briefly. Uh. And in two thousand three, egypt I was like, you know what, I want this thing back, not I, we want this thing back and it's ours and it's I don't care who found it, it's ours. And England said in two thousand five, took him two years to build a replica and say, hey, how about this, this is just like it. I guess at least they didn't try to pass it off as the real one. Well, yeah, that's true, um cinema replica and they're like, I appreciate this, this is nice, but we really would like the real thing. And England said no. And not just England, but a lot of the big museums, the Louvera and um, a bunch of the world museums kind of all got together in support of one another and said, you know what repaid repatriotation is. We're not into it. We're just not gonna give things back anymore because we can care for it best. It belongs to the world now. And they just sort of banded together and said, we're keeping our stuff. And that's I think we're it's probably gonna stay. They are trying to get it for a I think in two thousand twelve they tried to get it for a the grand opening of the Grand Egypt Museum. It sounds like it didn't happen, But even then they said now they wanted for like three weeks and they said nope, under the guys of I don't know if it's guys, but they said, would be too dangerous to transport it. That's the story they have at least. Uh. So that's uh how museums work. Pill and deny village and deny Um. You got anything else, No, sir. That is the Rosetta stone, everybody. If you want to learn more about it, you should type that word. Those words are O S E T T A stone in the search bar house to works uh and it will bring up this article. And since I said search bar means it's time for a message by m h uh, Now, chuck, it's time for listener mail. Oh no, how about instead? Okay, all right, for those of you don't know, this is at the point where we read off the people who were nice enough to send us little gifts and trinkets and music and letters and all sorts to things, and um, here we go. Go ahead, all right. Sarah send us some cool graphic prints, one of which was you Can't Take the Sky from Me from one of my favorite shows, Firefly. Yeah, very cool prints. Amy sent us a lovely carved wooden cicada from Timber Green Woods. Yeah, yeah, it's very cool. Uh. And McDonough sent us a snoopy postcard and a handwritten letter of thanks. Very nice. Uh. Liz from New Zealand sent us a lot of stuff that's New Zealand candy, New Zealand chocolate, New Zealand chips, surfboard, postcard, really lovely frame photos from her dad, Rudy Goldstein photography that's on Facebook. Uh, it's our Goldstein photography, so check it out. Yeah it's very cool. I have those on my desk. Um. Sean Antonia sent us some custom vinyls some stickers from eight one one Graphics dot com. He and his brother. Yeah, I had this company and that cool stuff like skater style stuff. Right. Um, buy costumes dot com. It's buy costumes dot Com sent us a full size adult gremlin costume, which Ben Bowling wore all day yesterday in the office here. Yeah, Ben Bowling from stuff they don't want you to know and car stuff. He's weird. Did you see that? He emailed me they did that? Did you actually see that? I haven't seen a picture of them yet. I put on the hand one day and try to creep out Strickland. But he was like, that's not the first gremlin hand up. Haddam my shoulder. Uh cat TP. Megan sent a cat tpe my way because I have two cats and uh, my big boy Lauren gets in it now. We call it his spirit tent and he just hangs out in there, and uh it's pretty neat. I mean it's what you think. It's like a little small TP for your kiddie that it's very cute. So if you have a cat, I would suggest you buying one. Um, let's see, Susan sent you a birthday card. It's a dog drinking beer. Yeah, yeah, that was nice. Yeah it was Kellum Clark sent us some T shirts. Um and he is a handyman in Brooklyn and he gifted us two hours of handyman work to give to someone. We know in Brooklyn. That's very really cool. So I've actually texted our buddy Joe Randazzo said, Hey, you need any work done? We have two three hours of handyman work. So if you're in Brooklyn, you can go to not just Handyman dot com and uh, give kill him a call. He'll fix your sink or do whatever what you need around the house. I guess what's he gonna do for Joe. I don't know. Joe didn't respond. What We'll go to Hodgeman next, I guess, and just work our way down the lithu all the Hodgeman he can afford to pay people, we should give it to like some else. Okay, all right, I'll figure it out. Uh. Clive Fantasy gave us some really cool Panama Canal postcards. Yeah, that's her name, Rachel from Uber. Have you heard of Uber. It's a it's sort of like a taxi cab service now but it's town cars and they have an app and you can like say just come get me now, right. Yeah, he was telling me about that. Yeah, they sent us Uber gift cards. Um, and I will send you your gift code for us, like a hundred bucks and free a lot. I know somebody's going to be going to the airport for free. Yeah. Kristen Curran has been taking us along with her on a tour of Europe. It seems like we've got postcards from her from Edinburgh, Bruges, Amsterdam, Slovakia, Berlin all over the place. Yeah, so thanks for those. Um. We also got something from Threadless self designed t shirt bigfoot cradling and alien lockness monsters in the background. Yeah. There was also like men in black and an abduction going on, all sorts of stuff. Very cool. Uh. And then Kira Newron sent the wives some jewelry um and you can visit her store. Thank you very much, Kira at um Cariboo Classics dot Etsy dot com. So that's that's our administrative details for now, right. Yeah, part one. We'll have a part two, I guess on the next episode. Yes, we will, where we'll cover music in books. Nice. If you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at s y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook, dot com slah Stuff you Should Know, and you can join us at our home on the web. Stuff you Should Know dot Com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or where ever you listen to your favorite shows.