May 31, 2017 • 13 mins
Since sexual contact can transmit disease, why don't any diseases increase our sex drive? Why is Wednesday pronounced differently than it's spelled? Why do British lawyers and judges still wear powdered wigs? The answers, plus a fond farewell.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to How Stuff Works. Now. I'm your host, Lauren Vogelbaum,
a researcher and writer. Here at How Stuff Works. Every
week I've been bringing you three stories from our team
about the weird and wondrous advances we've seen in science, technology,
and culture. However, I've got sad news for you today.
This is going to be our final week as our
(00:22):
producers at How Stuff Works are preparing to launch new projects,
which we are as excited about as we are sad
about losing this show. This final week, we're answering a
few questions that had is curious. If intimate contact can
spread disease, then why don't any diseases increase or sex drive?
And unrelated, why is Wednesday spelled so differently from how
(00:43):
it's pronounced? But first, managing editor Alison louder Milk and
our freelance writer Laurie L. Dove dive into a different
historical slash cultural question. Why in these our modern times
do British lawyers still wear powdered wigs? When was the
(01:03):
last time you saw a lawyer or a judge wearing
a powdered wig in a US courtroom? Probably never, except
perhaps for one of those historic reenactments in England. Though
whigs remain an important part of formal courtroom attire for
judges and barristers, the term there for lawyers. Many of
the judges and barristers who wear wigs in courts say
(01:24):
the headpiece, also known as a prug, brings a sense
of formality and solemnity to proceedings. Kevin Newton, a Washington,
d c. Base lawyer who studied law at the University
of London, told How Stuff Works that wigs are an
emblem of anonymity, an attempt to distance the wearer from
personal involvement in a way to visually draw on the
supremacy of the law. In fact, whigs are so much
(01:46):
a part of British criminal courts that if a barrister
doesn't wear a wig, it's seen as an insult to
the court, and not just any wig will do. Barristers
must wear a wig slightly frizzed at the ground, with
horizontal curls on the sides, and it also features two
long strips of hair that hang down below the hairline
on your neck and they support a looped curl at
(02:07):
each end. Different types of lawyers have distinctions in the
style of wig. A judge's wig is similar but more innate.
Most wigs are made of white horse hair, but as
a wig yellows with age, it takes on a coveted
patina that conveys experience. Corsair might not seem like a
particularly precious material, but when you pair specialty hair with
(02:28):
an age old craft of styling, sewing, and gluing, the
resulting wigs aren't cheap. A judge's full length wig can
cost more than three thousand dollars, while the shorter ones
worn by barristers cost more than five dollars. But why
did powdered wigs come on the fashion scene in the
first place. Why top one's head with an itchy, sweat
inducing mass of artificial curls. Blame it on syphilis. Wigs
(02:52):
began to catch on in the late sixteenth century, when
more Europeans were contracting the STD. Syphilis wouldn't have widespread
treatment the form of antibiotics until the twentieth century, courtesy
of Sir Alexander Fleming and penicillin. So back then, people
of syphilis were plagued by rash's blindness, dementia, open sores,
and hair loss. The hair loss was particularly problematic in
(03:13):
social circles. Long hair was all the rage, and premature
balding was a dead giveaway that someone had contracted syphilis. Plus,
wiggs were a big help to people with lice. After all,
it was much more difficult to treat and pick through
the hair on one's head than it was to just
sanitize a wig. No one arguably had a bigger influence
on British wigs than Louis the fourteenth of France. During
(03:34):
his reign from sixteen forty three to seventeen fifteen, the
sun King disguised his prematurely balding scalp, which historians believe
was caused by syphilis, by wearing a wig. In doing so,
he started a trend that was widely followed by the
European upper and middle classes, including his cousin Charles the Second,
the King of England, also rumored to have contracted syphilis,
who reigned from sixteen sixty to sixteen eighty five. Although
(03:57):
aristocrats and those who wished to remain in good social
standing were quick to don a wig, English courtrooms were
slower too. In the early sixteen eighties, judicial portraits still
showed a natural no wig look. By sixteen eighty five, however,
full shoulder length wigs had become part of the proper
court dress. Over time, wiggs fell out of fashion with
society as a whole. During the reign of England's King
(04:19):
George the Third from seventeen sixty to eighteen twenty, only
a few war wigs, mostly bishops, coachmen and those in
the legal profession, and the courts kept at it for
hundreds of years more. It wasn't until two thousand seven
when new dress rules finally did away with barrister wigs well.
For the most part, wigs were no longer required during
family or civil court appearances, or when appearing before the
(04:42):
Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. Whigs, however, remain in
use in criminal cases in the UK and Ireland, judges
continued to wear wigs until two thousand eleven, when the
practice was discontinued. In England and other former English and
British colonies like Jamaica, for instance, which ditched the wigs
in two thousand thirteen, lawyers and judges now only wear
wigs for ceremonies. The habit persists, though perhaps for symbolic reasons.
(05:06):
After all. Adherence to tradition is a powerful human trait.
And by the way, before all that wigging out of
her wigs started in the seventeenth century, British lawyers had
a dress code that would seem positively moderate. They're expected
to appear in court with short hair and neatly trimmed beards.
(05:27):
Next up, staff editor eas Jeff Coote and our freelancer
justicalin Shields explore the biological reasons why, despite the ways
in which contagion works, humans are not sex zombies. Diseases
are just like the rest of us. They get out
(05:47):
there every day and hustle. But pathogen's job is to infect,
and if it fails to consistently establish footholes and new hosts,
it doesn't survive, and like the rest of us, diseases
need to have off to compete. Every so often, a
pathogen happens across a great news strategy for infecting a
bunch of people. Take rabies, for example. The virus developed
(06:10):
a way to affect this host behavior so that the
host is highly motivated to transmit the virus to somebody
else through biting the living crap out of them. That
seems like a winning strategy. So why don't all pathogens
influence their host behavior in a way that will make
them want to get really close to another potential host. Why,
for instance, don't sexually transmit infections boost our sex job
(06:31):
to guarantee transmission. Well, it's a great premise for a
trashy made for TV science fiction movie, But with turning
hosts into sex zombies necessarily make the disease any more successful. Possibly,
but from a disease transmission perspective, pathogens are also like
everybody else and that they can't really choose how they evolve.
(06:53):
Though boosting sex jobs could be helpful, it wouldn't necessarily
enact the right mutations to change the host behavior. There
are very few mechanisms to make that happen. Like rabies,
the pathogen could alter the function of its host nervous
system by infecting nervous tissue, or it could manipulate the
endocrine system by messing with hormones or a combination of
the two. But assuming any of this actually happened, it
(07:16):
would also be important for the mutation not to damage
other crucial functions of the pathogen or host in the process,
because detrimental mutations don't last in the long run. There's
also the small matter of virulence. From a pathogen's perspective,
there's a delicate balance between how infectious your host is
and how long they can stay contagious. Diseases like ebola
(07:38):
aren't necessarily great as spreading because they kill people very quickly.
Going all scorched earth in terms of virulence results in
a host who is too incapacitated and dies too quickly
to go out to the bars to find somebody to
take home to their sick bed. So a disease that
makes people horny may be too intense on the brain
and cause an early death for the host. That means
(08:00):
the disease would always barely stay afloat within a community,
because it would probably manage to infect only one other
animal before its host does. For all the virulence of
a bowla in West Africa, it only succeeds in infecting
one and a half more people for every person who
comes down with it. On the other hand, for every
person who gets the measles virus, fifteen others could be
(08:23):
infected before the first person gets better or dies. Even
though manufacturing sex zombies is a cool idea, many animals,
particularly humans, are pretty good at spotting abnormal social behavior.
Just like you probably know to avoid a rabbit dog
if you saw one, you likely also give a wide
birth to a sex zombie at the end of a
bar riddled with cupid blue. Finally, this week, Step editor
(08:54):
Christopher Hassiotis and our freelance writer Loreal dev again dig
into a bit of etymology because of that silent D
in Wednesday. Most Americans don't pronounce the first D in Wednesday,
but there it is, setting pretty so what gives, Well,
(09:16):
that's a question for the Ages the Middle Ages to
be exact. The Medieval period, also called the Middle Ages,
is a time in European history that stretches from the
fifth to the fifteenth century CE. It's also a time
that had great influence over the dialects that would eventually
form our modern English language. American English is rooted in
ancient European languages. As far back as the fifth century.
(09:39):
Several related Germanic dialects were introduced to Anglo Saxon realms
in what is now Scotland. As people interacted, languages fused,
and a dialect known as Old English emerged. This borrowed language,
which sprung from many roots continued to transform over the centuries.
It later took on the influence of Romance languages, which
sprung from Latin, as well as a version of the French,
(10:00):
which spoken by Viking raiders who conquered areas of England.
By the eleventh century, this new variety of English became
known as Middle English. Even now, language continues to change
and adapt because of the influences of a variety of
cultures and developments. The Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary, for instance,
recently up to its content count by more than one
thousand words, adding specimens like binge, watch, photo bomb, and truther.
(10:24):
The word wednesday has adapted over time too. Its origin
lies in Old English's Germanic languages, where it emanated from
the word Wooden's degg. Throughout Old English and Middle English,
it remained in homage to the Anglo Saxon god Woden
and the Germanic god Woden. You may be more familiar
with the Norse equivalent Odin, recently prominently featured in the
(10:45):
movie adaptations of Marvel's Thor comics. Woden was a powerful god,
one who created the human race. He also represented poetry
and the arts, but instigated battles and wars. He can
be compared in some aspects with the ancient Roman deity Mercury,
who is a messenger to the gods. The Germanic god
Woden is to a certain degree comparable to Mercury, which
(11:06):
is why Wednesday in Romance languages mercureti in French, Mercolelli
in Italian, and Miracolis in Spanish. Now, as Wodenes dagg
moved from Old English to Middle English, its spelling and
pronunciation changed. Wednesday is just one example of words like
February or Ptarmigan, where letters appear in the words spelling
but not in its pronunciation. The curious case of America's
(11:29):
silent D doesn't extend to parts of England, Scotland, and India,
for instance, where many people enunciate the letter though some don't.
Language is tricky. While there's no specific moment that can
pinpoint the fading away of Wednesday's D in spoken American English,
and no reason why. Though an oceanic divide seems to
have spurred language's evolution, the erosion of a pronounced letter
(11:51):
over time isn't all that uncommon phonologically speaking. When that
happens to a letter in the interior of a word.
It's called syncope. You may be feel you're with. Syncope
is a poetic device going or a river instead of over,
and you may not even notice it. In some common
words that would sound odd with every letter enunciated. Chocolate
has a central oh that's not fully pronounced, and Christmas
(12:14):
sounds more like a celebration of someone called Chris, though
it celebrates a figure known as the Christ. That's why
people don't eat chocolate on Christmas Day, even though when
it falls on a Wednesday, the Woden's Day. Wednesday anyway,
the middle of the week. That's our show for this
(12:36):
week and forever. Thank you so much for tuning in
and writing in over the past year. We've been so
honored by your support. Thanks as well to our producer
Dylan Fagin, our editorial liaison Allison Loudermilk, and all of
our hosts and writers whose work we've been lucky to feature.
Their work is also featured on other podcasts in the
House to Works Family, look us up sometime. If you'd
(12:56):
like to get in touch, you can still eternally send
us an email at now po cast at how stuff
works dot com, and of course, for lots more stories
like these, head on over to our home planet, how
stuff works dot com MHM
Welcome to How Stuff Works. Now. I'm your host, Lauren Vogelbaum,
a researcher and writer. Here at How Stuff Works. Every
week I've been bringing you three stories from our team
about the weird and wondrous advances we've seen in science, technology,
and culture. However, I've got sad news for you today.
This is going to be our final week as our
(00:22):
producers at How Stuff Works are preparing to launch new projects,
which we are as excited about as we are sad
about losing this show. This final week, we're answering a
few questions that had is curious. If intimate contact can
spread disease, then why don't any diseases increase or sex drive?
And unrelated, why is Wednesday spelled so differently from how
(00:43):
it's pronounced? But first, managing editor Alison louder Milk and
our freelance writer Laurie L. Dove dive into a different
historical slash cultural question. Why in these our modern times
do British lawyers still wear powdered wigs? When was the
(01:03):
last time you saw a lawyer or a judge wearing
a powdered wig in a US courtroom? Probably never, except
perhaps for one of those historic reenactments in England. Though
whigs remain an important part of formal courtroom attire for
judges and barristers, the term there for lawyers. Many of
the judges and barristers who wear wigs in courts say
(01:24):
the headpiece, also known as a prug, brings a sense
of formality and solemnity to proceedings. Kevin Newton, a Washington,
d c. Base lawyer who studied law at the University
of London, told How Stuff Works that wigs are an
emblem of anonymity, an attempt to distance the wearer from
personal involvement in a way to visually draw on the
supremacy of the law. In fact, whigs are so much
(01:46):
a part of British criminal courts that if a barrister
doesn't wear a wig, it's seen as an insult to
the court, and not just any wig will do. Barristers
must wear a wig slightly frizzed at the ground, with
horizontal curls on the sides, and it also features two
long strips of hair that hang down below the hairline
on your neck and they support a looped curl at
(02:07):
each end. Different types of lawyers have distinctions in the
style of wig. A judge's wig is similar but more innate.
Most wigs are made of white horse hair, but as
a wig yellows with age, it takes on a coveted
patina that conveys experience. Corsair might not seem like a
particularly precious material, but when you pair specialty hair with
(02:28):
an age old craft of styling, sewing, and gluing, the
resulting wigs aren't cheap. A judge's full length wig can
cost more than three thousand dollars, while the shorter ones
worn by barristers cost more than five dollars. But why
did powdered wigs come on the fashion scene in the
first place. Why top one's head with an itchy, sweat
inducing mass of artificial curls. Blame it on syphilis. Wigs
(02:52):
began to catch on in the late sixteenth century, when
more Europeans were contracting the STD. Syphilis wouldn't have widespread
treatment the form of antibiotics until the twentieth century, courtesy
of Sir Alexander Fleming and penicillin. So back then, people
of syphilis were plagued by rash's blindness, dementia, open sores,
and hair loss. The hair loss was particularly problematic in
(03:13):
social circles. Long hair was all the rage, and premature
balding was a dead giveaway that someone had contracted syphilis. Plus,
wiggs were a big help to people with lice. After all,
it was much more difficult to treat and pick through
the hair on one's head than it was to just
sanitize a wig. No one arguably had a bigger influence
on British wigs than Louis the fourteenth of France. During
(03:34):
his reign from sixteen forty three to seventeen fifteen, the
sun King disguised his prematurely balding scalp, which historians believe
was caused by syphilis, by wearing a wig. In doing so,
he started a trend that was widely followed by the
European upper and middle classes, including his cousin Charles the Second,
the King of England, also rumored to have contracted syphilis,
who reigned from sixteen sixty to sixteen eighty five. Although
(03:57):
aristocrats and those who wished to remain in good social
standing were quick to don a wig, English courtrooms were
slower too. In the early sixteen eighties, judicial portraits still
showed a natural no wig look. By sixteen eighty five, however,
full shoulder length wigs had become part of the proper
court dress. Over time, wiggs fell out of fashion with
society as a whole. During the reign of England's King
(04:19):
George the Third from seventeen sixty to eighteen twenty, only
a few war wigs, mostly bishops, coachmen and those in
the legal profession, and the courts kept at it for
hundreds of years more. It wasn't until two thousand seven
when new dress rules finally did away with barrister wigs well.
For the most part, wigs were no longer required during
family or civil court appearances, or when appearing before the
(04:42):
Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. Whigs, however, remain in
use in criminal cases in the UK and Ireland, judges
continued to wear wigs until two thousand eleven, when the
practice was discontinued. In England and other former English and
British colonies like Jamaica, for instance, which ditched the wigs
in two thousand thirteen, lawyers and judges now only wear
wigs for ceremonies. The habit persists, though perhaps for symbolic reasons.
(05:06):
After all. Adherence to tradition is a powerful human trait.
And by the way, before all that wigging out of
her wigs started in the seventeenth century, British lawyers had
a dress code that would seem positively moderate. They're expected
to appear in court with short hair and neatly trimmed beards.
(05:27):
Next up, staff editor eas Jeff Coote and our freelancer
justicalin Shields explore the biological reasons why, despite the ways
in which contagion works, humans are not sex zombies. Diseases
are just like the rest of us. They get out
(05:47):
there every day and hustle. But pathogen's job is to infect,
and if it fails to consistently establish footholes and new hosts,
it doesn't survive, and like the rest of us, diseases
need to have off to compete. Every so often, a
pathogen happens across a great news strategy for infecting a
bunch of people. Take rabies, for example. The virus developed
(06:10):
a way to affect this host behavior so that the
host is highly motivated to transmit the virus to somebody
else through biting the living crap out of them. That
seems like a winning strategy. So why don't all pathogens
influence their host behavior in a way that will make
them want to get really close to another potential host. Why,
for instance, don't sexually transmit infections boost our sex job
(06:31):
to guarantee transmission. Well, it's a great premise for a
trashy made for TV science fiction movie, But with turning
hosts into sex zombies necessarily make the disease any more successful. Possibly,
but from a disease transmission perspective, pathogens are also like
everybody else and that they can't really choose how they evolve.
(06:53):
Though boosting sex jobs could be helpful, it wouldn't necessarily
enact the right mutations to change the host behavior. There
are very few mechanisms to make that happen. Like rabies,
the pathogen could alter the function of its host nervous
system by infecting nervous tissue, or it could manipulate the
endocrine system by messing with hormones or a combination of
the two. But assuming any of this actually happened, it
(07:16):
would also be important for the mutation not to damage
other crucial functions of the pathogen or host in the process,
because detrimental mutations don't last in the long run. There's
also the small matter of virulence. From a pathogen's perspective,
there's a delicate balance between how infectious your host is
and how long they can stay contagious. Diseases like ebola
(07:38):
aren't necessarily great as spreading because they kill people very quickly.
Going all scorched earth in terms of virulence results in
a host who is too incapacitated and dies too quickly
to go out to the bars to find somebody to
take home to their sick bed. So a disease that
makes people horny may be too intense on the brain
and cause an early death for the host. That means
(08:00):
the disease would always barely stay afloat within a community,
because it would probably manage to infect only one other
animal before its host does. For all the virulence of
a bowla in West Africa, it only succeeds in infecting
one and a half more people for every person who
comes down with it. On the other hand, for every
person who gets the measles virus, fifteen others could be
(08:23):
infected before the first person gets better or dies. Even
though manufacturing sex zombies is a cool idea, many animals,
particularly humans, are pretty good at spotting abnormal social behavior.
Just like you probably know to avoid a rabbit dog
if you saw one, you likely also give a wide
birth to a sex zombie at the end of a
bar riddled with cupid blue. Finally, this week, Step editor
(08:54):
Christopher Hassiotis and our freelance writer Loreal dev again dig
into a bit of etymology because of that silent D
in Wednesday. Most Americans don't pronounce the first D in Wednesday,
but there it is, setting pretty so what gives, Well,
(09:16):
that's a question for the Ages the Middle Ages to
be exact. The Medieval period, also called the Middle Ages,
is a time in European history that stretches from the
fifth to the fifteenth century CE. It's also a time
that had great influence over the dialects that would eventually
form our modern English language. American English is rooted in
ancient European languages. As far back as the fifth century.
(09:39):
Several related Germanic dialects were introduced to Anglo Saxon realms
in what is now Scotland. As people interacted, languages fused,
and a dialect known as Old English emerged. This borrowed language,
which sprung from many roots continued to transform over the centuries.
It later took on the influence of Romance languages, which
sprung from Latin, as well as a version of the French,
(10:00):
which spoken by Viking raiders who conquered areas of England.
By the eleventh century, this new variety of English became
known as Middle English. Even now, language continues to change
and adapt because of the influences of a variety of
cultures and developments. The Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary, for instance,
recently up to its content count by more than one
thousand words, adding specimens like binge, watch, photo bomb, and truther.
(10:24):
The word wednesday has adapted over time too. Its origin
lies in Old English's Germanic languages, where it emanated from
the word Wooden's degg. Throughout Old English and Middle English,
it remained in homage to the Anglo Saxon god Woden
and the Germanic god Woden. You may be more familiar
with the Norse equivalent Odin, recently prominently featured in the
(10:45):
movie adaptations of Marvel's Thor comics. Woden was a powerful god,
one who created the human race. He also represented poetry
and the arts, but instigated battles and wars. He can
be compared in some aspects with the ancient Roman deity Mercury,
who is a messenger to the gods. The Germanic god
Woden is to a certain degree comparable to Mercury, which
(11:06):
is why Wednesday in Romance languages mercureti in French, Mercolelli
in Italian, and Miracolis in Spanish. Now, as Wodenes dagg
moved from Old English to Middle English, its spelling and
pronunciation changed. Wednesday is just one example of words like
February or Ptarmigan, where letters appear in the words spelling
but not in its pronunciation. The curious case of America's
(11:29):
silent D doesn't extend to parts of England, Scotland, and India,
for instance, where many people enunciate the letter though some don't.
Language is tricky. While there's no specific moment that can
pinpoint the fading away of Wednesday's D in spoken American English,
and no reason why. Though an oceanic divide seems to
have spurred language's evolution, the erosion of a pronounced letter
(11:51):
over time isn't all that uncommon phonologically speaking. When that
happens to a letter in the interior of a word.
It's called syncope. You may be feel you're with. Syncope
is a poetic device going or a river instead of over,
and you may not even notice it. In some common
words that would sound odd with every letter enunciated. Chocolate
has a central oh that's not fully pronounced, and Christmas
(12:14):
sounds more like a celebration of someone called Chris, though
it celebrates a figure known as the Christ. That's why
people don't eat chocolate on Christmas Day, even though when
it falls on a Wednesday, the Woden's Day. Wednesday anyway,
the middle of the week. That's our show for this
(12:36):
week and forever. Thank you so much for tuning in
and writing in over the past year. We've been so
honored by your support. Thanks as well to our producer
Dylan Fagin, our editorial liaison Allison Loudermilk, and all of
our hosts and writers whose work we've been lucky to feature.
Their work is also featured on other podcasts in the
House to Works Family, look us up sometime. If you'd
(12:56):
like to get in touch, you can still eternally send
us an email at now po cast at how stuff
works dot com, and of course, for lots more stories
like these, head on over to our home planet, how
stuff works dot com MHM
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.