April 28, 2026 • 39 mins
Heads-up, fellow Ridiculous Historians: this is an explicit episode, and maynot be appropriate for all audiences. It's no secret that Ben, Noel and Max are huge fans of etymology -- and there's one word that's mystified them for years. When did the English world fall in love with the term "bullsh*t"? In today's episode, the guys discover this particular curse word has a suprisingly bizarre, murky backstory, and a lot of the proposed origins of bullsh*t are, themselves ... bullsh*t.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Let's hear it for the Man,
the Myth, the Legend, our super producer, mister Max the
freight Train Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
I'm still here in the Bahamas.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
We're all in the Bahamas in our hearts. Max Bullshnip Williams.
That's mister nol no poop Brown.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
They called me straight poop.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
They call me Ben Bullen in this part of the world,
primarily due to tax purposes and folks. Before we get
into today's exploration, we have a disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Somebody's one We're talking disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
This episode may not be appropriate for all Ridiculous Historians.
It may be one that you cannot play in the classroom.
We were on the fence about whether to include a
million bleeps here or just to label it explicit and
let it ride spoiler. We went for the latter.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Death by a million bleeps was not something that we wanted.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
To go with right right.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
We did it out of honestly, we did it out
of empathy for our dear long suffering producer Max.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
The conversation was, uh, yeah, I mean, as long as
it gets more production time on this one, we can
I'll believe them all, and both Ben and nol No
we're not gonna. We're not gonna. Yeah, no, we're not
gonna do that.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
Well, there were also philosophical reasons for the choice, you know.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Also, I believe that censorship is bullshity.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
First one.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Also, first one, lets we have kind of agreeed, or
it ended up on the same page, that bullshit is
a bit of a PG. Thirteen swear, not even sure
if it makes an R rating. I think you can
have unlimited bullshit.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
You can have what bullshit if you want, and that
bullshit will be fine. That's right, folks agreed.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
We think the term bullshit has been normalized throughout throughout
a US discourse, throughout the anglosphere, honestly, And a few
weeks ago, you guys had this moment of ridiculous epiphany.
I was talking with some friends about Believe It or
Not politics, and I realized we were all using an
(02:39):
English phrase bullshit. And it's kind of bizarre because every
English speaker knows what that phrase means. But riddle me this.
There's so many animals walking, flying, and swimming along this
wide world of ours, so know how to cows of
all things, and just apparently male cows in specific. How
(03:02):
did they get such an unfair wrap? With everything pooping
all the time on the world?
Speaker 2 (03:07):
How did everybody poops?
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Right?
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Or the less popular book, nobody poops but you you
shout out?
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Family guys? How did how did bull feces in particular
become a stand in for that all that is untrue,
false or misleading? Like when did we all start saying bullshit?
Speaker 2 (03:31):
You know? It's funny, Ben.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
I also enjoy using the phrase horseshit, but that usually
just refers to something that I'm not into, like that's horseshit,
Like I'm angry about that. Bullshit, however, does imply incredulity,
And that's what I want to dig into. Man, Where
does that come from? Why are we so suspicious of bullpoop?
Speaker 1 (03:53):
First off, this may surprise the more polite, ridiculous historians
in the crowd. Bullshit is a real word. It is
found in multiple dictionaries from Oxford English down to Merriam
Webster and Cambridge. Merriam Webster defines bullshit as also, I'm
gonna stop keeping it tally because I don't have a
(04:14):
fool errand yeah. Merriam Webster defines bullshit as both a
noun and a verb, because anything can become a verb,
especially in American English. But no, I am not yeah
God as a as a noun to your earlier point there,
noel as a noun. Mirriam Webster says bullshit indicates quote, foolish,
(04:39):
or insolent talk. As a verb, it can mean either
to talk foolish, foolishly, boastfly, or idly, or the less
cutting second definition, which I think is kind of wholesome
to engage in a discursive discussion, which you know they
like to.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
We're just having a bull sash.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
You can me if you want to be polite about it,
you could call it a bull sash. But it we're
just bullshitting man, just having a good old time talking,
talking a game. But yeah again, yeah we're just horsing around,
balling around.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Yeah, that second definition is fascinating, guys. It shows us
a meaning wherein bullshit is not always inherently bad. It's
just sort of irrelevant. It's small talk. It's like shooting
the breeze. We all stayed a little later after dinner
just bullshitting, which literally happened to us in Baha Mar.
It doesn't mean we all stayed late to shout quote foolish,
(05:35):
insolent talk at each other. Instead, we probably joked about
the weather, caught up with old friends, We talked about books,
we were reading, new films we wanted to see. In
our case, we talked a little bit about the beach
and the casino in that sense, in the beach casino, Yeah,
in that sense. People around the world bullshit constantly.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
So let's jump right into uh, you know, one of
the more high falutin dictionaries the Cambridge who agrees that
bullshit is both a noun and a verb, but they
take a slightly different and arguably meaner approach because they're British.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Yeah they're they're a little bit less. Let's know how
to cut you to the quick. Oh yeah, they've got
some of the best insults either of us have ever heard.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
To Cabridge, there's just bollocks. To Cambridge.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Bullshit as a noun is a rude word for complete
nonsense or something that is not true and spoiler, there's
a clue in that definition They also turn up the
heat with their definition of bullshit as a verb, which
sounds downright accusatory. Noel, would you do the honors?
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (06:49):
I mean this is we've kind of touched on this one.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
A rude word. Why did you do an H? There?
Speaker 3 (06:53):
It's just not being British that they wouldn't have done.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
That either, A rude word.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
I do love it though, when they say the letter H,
they say H, which is a lot of fun. Sorry
to continue. A rude word meaning to try to persuade
someone or make them admire you by saying things that
are not true. Don't bullshit a bullshitter, Ben, Yeah, don't
bes a bs or so.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Again, this is all too common in political discourse. As
we were talking with maxoft Air and we all, I
think it's fair to say ridiculous historians, we all almost
certainly have met someone that makes wild claims in day
to day life. Surely a lot of us, especially in
the States. We had that one kid in grade school
(07:35):
whose dad definitely invented Nintendo, or that one or the
cop Salad who yeah, who swore up and down that
they had a boyfriend or girlfriend for real, for real,
who just happened to go to a different school.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Oh that's me.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
My girlfriend does go to a different school, lives in
a different state, as it turns out.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Oh you're going to school.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
Yeah, oh yeah, I'm going to night school. I'm studying
bullshittery Ah.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
That's not bullshit at all, right, yes, the God honest. Hey.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
And also, by the way, we talked about this a
little bit in the inso or I may be dropped it.
I'm fascinated with a kind of Midwestern term, the straight poop,
which is which means the truth, the God honest. So
how can shit be both true and fault at the
same time?
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Strangers shit.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
There's this great Finnish comedian that I follow, a stand
up guy who plays with language a lot, and he
is fascinated by something being a piece of shit being bad,
something being the shit being good. That guy's name is
Ismo I S m O. Last name Likola l e
(08:44):
I k O l A. Do check him out. He's
just a genius, and we're wrestling with a lot of
the stuff our Finnish stand up pal is wrestling with
as well. You know, it's weird because Noel, there are
dozens of synonyms that convey the same or similar meaning
without themselves being curse words. Nonsense, hogwash, ballooney bollocks in
(09:08):
the UK also means nonsense. It is considered a rude
word like bloody, but it's not on the left.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
Bollocks. Also the bulls bollocks. Right, Yeah, that's a good thing.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
It's like yelling.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
Balls now the bulls. The dog's bollocks is a good thing. Ah.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Yes, once again, I'm just saying we've got and antonyms.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Huh is that Cockney rhyming the dog ball, porky pies.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
Yeah, porky pies is lies. Being in Barney is being
in trouble because Barney rubble. A lot of Cockney rhyming
slang seems to involve Hannah Barbara cartoon characters. Scooby. Not
a Scooby means you don't know what you're talking about,
not a Scooby doo a clue, that's the right one.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I believe the dog's bollocks may be
a different episode of World put it in our were
our quarterly things we left out?
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Yeah, the dogs bollocks is good, but a dog's breakfasts
not good?
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Right, yes, because as we know it, dogs youatpoop, and.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
It all comes back around, comes from dust to dust.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
Right, Yeah, bull dust is also an Australian version of bullshit.
But there there are so many words, right, nonsense, hogwash, maloney, bollocks,
uh and who could forget obviously, flap doodle, oh my gosh,
not to mention, not to mention. Still, for some reason,
(10:37):
bullshit as a phrase occupies this special place in the
beating heart of the American dialect, right, or the various
American dialects. It's weird because it crosses generations, acrosses demographics.
You will hear the most wealthy, oldest people say something
is bullshit, and then you will hear the youngest people
(10:58):
say bullshit, like a fifth grader might say bullshit, and
then you both pause. Right, It's like uh in a
Christmas story where the kid says the F word RF
and then the narrator kicks in. But I didn't say fudge.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
No, he sure, that's a fun movie. Now, this is great, Ben,
It's a really good point. It does seem to cross
a lot of generational divides. I think it also just
has a good mouthfeel to it. I think sometimes words
just kind of take on a life of their own
and get popular because they're fun to say.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
It's that it's got that cool you in the first syllable,
and then it's got not to sound too spectrmy here,
and it's got a.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Tight t at the end, so yeah, and a hard sush.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Yeah. It's emphatic, right, and so. Like so many other words,
the origin story of the phrase bullshit is surprisingly murky.
It is fraught with misconceptions. Uh, let's put on our
etymology caps nol because.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
We played wearing it, Ben, Yeah you did.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
I think it looks good on you, and we played
a bit of a trick at the top of the show.
We were kind of bullshitting you, fellow ridiculous historians about bullshit.
It is a common misconception that bullshit directly refers to
male cattle. That is not the case. It is a portmanteau,
which we love, of bull meaning nonsense, not a bovine animal,
(12:29):
not a cow. It's pretty directly related, therefore, to the
English phrase bollocks, which comes to English via the French
word bull, which means fraud or deceit. And it's also
quite likely the meaning of bull here.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
Latines, way, Wayne, that's wild, Okay, so that's one mystery
somewhat done and dusted.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
We'll get back to it.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
Yet, things, as they tend to do in the historical
game of telephone, we always like to reference, get a
little bit murkier and order to part the more we
attempt to figure out exactly how this term originated. And
you know, much like manure spread gardener, that was a
(13:14):
gardening joke.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
That's for all the gardeners in the crowd tonight. Similar
to the F word, sorry mom, bullshit has several competing
origin stories, and one of these is really interesting. A
common bit of scuttle but argues that the word comes
from agrarian communities.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
Right all right, already said that one up by accident,
and they would sell cow manure, of course, to use
as fertilizer that they would spread.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
According to this story, the poop of the female cow
is good for plants and agriculture, yet the poop from
the male cow is either less helpful or downright harmful.
So if you're a bad intention unethical farm you are
out to up your profits, then you start to step
(14:04):
on or cut your proper cow manure with poop from
the male cows as well, you sell the literal bullshit
by claiming it is cowshit. Later down the line, as
the seasons progressed, the customer they had suckered would see
damaging effects on the crops. So the story tells us
(14:24):
that people started saying, don't sell me no bullshit, and
over the years this was shortened to just bullshit, and
then further shortened to bull.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
I don't know. That seems like something someone invented.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
And Ben I definitely had no idea, this idea or
this notion that cow manure, not all manure was created equal.
But I have a little bit of a suspicion that
the negative effects of manure had less to do with
the gender of where the poop came from and more
to do with the fact that it may have been
uncomposted fresh uncomposted or it turns out can actually be
(15:01):
harmful to crops due to high levels of ammonia and
nitrogen and salts that can actually damage and inhibit seed germination.
But I think you were going to that place with this.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Yeah, you know, what's a fun story. We love a
fun story. I'm a Max's team here. It's up there
with the concept of buying a pig in a poke
or caveat temptur it's probably wrong. There are a couple
of immediately obvious issues with the narratives. So first off,
cowpoop is going to be more or less a question
(15:34):
of processing. It's the same across biological sex. The things
that are really going to affect your cowpoop output or
cowpoop output are going to be factors like the diet,
hydration environment, individual medical conditions or disease, and again processing.
And secondly, you know, as we were pointing now, the
(15:56):
timeline doesn't really match with the etymology here. You can
still see dictionaries of great repute. Encyclopedia is arguing over
this bull as an animal versus bull as nonsense question.
But for now it is safe to say the farmer
origin story is itself wait for it, a bullshit you need.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
It's a bit.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
It's a bit of shit, So it's full of shit
it is. Whoever may have told this tale out of school,
It does turn out the real meaning of it, as
you mentioned earlier, much more likely stems from that French
(16:43):
translation bull meaning nonsense or an untruth, dating back to
the seventeenth century. Bullshit's been used since around nineteen fourteen
nineteen fifteen and British and American slang, and that word
made its way into the American lexicon late in the
nineteenth century, where bullshit was first documented in a nineteen
(17:04):
fifteen edition of The New Republic and used to describe hollow,
empty rhetoric. You know thing or two about that. American
serviceman in World War One adopted the term to describe
things taking it's a little broader as just things that
are generally not good, and.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
So by the mid twentieth century, bullshit is firmly ensconced
in the casual American vocabulary, but it's mostly going to
be confined to these unrecorded, unpublished conversations because of the
vulgarity of its second syllable.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
It's kind of haram right.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
In fancy pants discourse. It becomes popularized in World War Two,
and no kidding, this is a bit of a plot
twist for us, we have to thank one of America's
best writers for the popularization of bullshit.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Guys.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
It's none other than the legendarily uptight, the lovingly pretentious,
the problematically racist poet Extraordinariy ts Elliott.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Ah.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
Yes, the jellical man himself.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
There it is, that's.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
Him, right, yeah, yeah, he wrote cats Yeah, the Cats guy.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
He would not have liked the Filmata.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
She would have preferred them with buttholes.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
So it sounds crazy, right, He was kind of a
buttle Yeah, he kind of was.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Sorry, man, we know you're from Missouri. So it sounds crazy.
It sounds almost like bullshit. Hang on, hear us out.
Between nineteen ten and nineteen fifteen he wrote a poem
called The Triumph of Bullshit and it's a ballad, and
he finalized it with a few small changes in nineteen sixteen.
(18:53):
Just to give you a sense of this. It is
not on the level of Proof Rock or The Wasteland,
but it is an early example of this phrase in print.
The final form of it, Just to give you the
first first verse is ladies on whom my attentions have waited.
If you consider my merits a small it, deoliated, alembicated, utund, tasteless, fantastical, monotonous, crotchety, constipated, impotent,
(19:25):
galimattias affected, possibly imitated. For Christ's sake, stick it up
your ass, and every scene, everythow dude, every verse. And
it's like a three verses right, and every verse ends
with a refrain for Christ's sakes, For Christ's sake, stick
it up your ass, the triumph of bullshit. Look this
(19:50):
guy is all.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
Right Susian for a minute there, Ben, it was I love.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
All this jelical language.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
Yes, that is true. Susianis to that as well.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
Elliott did not invent this word sucineity.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
We should keep it, Max, keep it please. And he
popularized the phrase bullshit with this poem, but the poem
did not see print immediately after he wrote it. The
earliest citations of the phrase bullshit come to us from
(20:27):
the equally fancy pants boffins at the Oxford English Dictionary.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Ah.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
Yes, second in fancy pants neess only to Cambridge in
my humble estimation. Not sure there's the data there to
back it up.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
Cambridge versus Oxford ultimate smash.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Let's go fight, So the earlier. That's a great question.
I wonder how they feel about each other.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
Yeah, who's the fancist of lads?
Speaker 1 (20:53):
Who's got the cravat versus the regular necktie?
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Oh, that is the question. You know, we're a cravat?
To Ben, who's that? It was? Uh?
Speaker 3 (21:03):
Fred from the Scooby Doo Gang.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
Oh that's right. A bit of a cravat, I keep
forgetting about or.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Was it an ascot?
Speaker 3 (21:10):
Never mind? I think wait, wait, wait, didn't we know?
I think a cravat is just to catch all the
umbrella term.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
That's where I was going. Yeah, everything's necktie everything like that.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
I love quibbling over semantics.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
All right, Max, with the facts, we are one and
(21:47):
we know that regardless of egghead hierarchy. The Oxford English Dictionary,
which we love, says the earliest citations.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
Book, it's you. It's a page turner, second only to
the Bible.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Uh yeah, okay, I've definitely read cover to cover a
question about.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
It many times. I U name a verse.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
They're all good, They're all just so good.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
Oh yeah, that's real write my.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
Favorite, especially that one from Bubble Fiction that wasn't in
the Bible. You know it isn't in the Bible. Ben,
what's that potatoes? And that was a big reason that
the people were suspicious of.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
Yes, yeah, during the Great Exchange, which will be another episode.
Dare I say a series we're getting to in the
futures coming right up day tuned for Thursday for part
one of that. We want you to know that the
Oxford English Dictionary the OED they cite the first occurrence
(22:50):
of bullshit coming from the letters of a British writer
named Wynton Lewis and the American essayists and poet Ee Cummings.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
This is still.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
Confusing because here Wyndham Lewis is directly quoting Elliot's poem
in a letter from nineteen fifteen, and Lewis writes, quote,
Elliot has sent me bullshit and the ballad for Big Louise.
They are excellent bits of scholarly reboldry. So rebolds cheeky
(23:26):
cheeky devil that that ts Eliot. So we do know
that there are other modern writers that began using the
phrase as well, because why wouldn't they. It's already starting
to creep into the lexicon. It's fun to say. One
of my favorite names in modern literature Ezra Pound.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
It's like give me an Ezra pound you meaning like
dab me up. He used it in nineteen fourteen in
a letter to James Joyce, who liked farts writing include
check that one out if you want another rebald episode
talking about James Joyce and love of Lady Farts. He said,
I enclose a prize sample of bullshit.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Yeah, he spaced it out, he said bull space ship
he did.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
It's still we're still getting there. We're still getting there.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
I think we can all agree. We're pretty sure that
Ezra Pounds, another problematic guy who was an excellent poet.
We're pretty sure he meant bullshit in the figurative sense, because,
so far as we can tell, ol Ezra did not
actually include cow poop with the letter.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
That would have been a terrorist act.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Yeah, that would have been like Jared Leto playing the joker.
Speaker 3 (24:38):
Right, Yeah, apparently all those rumors though, by the way
he started himself, Oh my gosh, yeah yeah that guy.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Wow, classic Morbius, what a fellow. Well he's morb Morban
out so.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
Hard right now.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
It's true.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
There's one other origin story that we have to get to,
and this one takes us halfway around the world.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
Yeah, New Zealand, I can't do it. Are not New Zealand. Hey, God,
that was better.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
Come at us and we deserve it, and we're ready
for your blows. New Zealanders and Australians alike. Aussie's Eric Partridge,
is this fellow's name, and he claimed that the term
was popularized by soldiers, which we already have another version
of the story where it's American soldiers beginning to use
the term as just bad stuff. And we know that Army,
(25:28):
my job is Army, very fond of quippie and sometimes
body terms like fu bar all of that stuff, so
it makes a lot of sense. In this version, it
is the new Zealand and Australian soldiers the Army Corps.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
Rather and Zach shouting yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
During World War One, this term began being flung around.
According to Partridge, British officers of the war placed high
emphasis on bull bullshit, which I love that that is
sort of how we say it, but I also enjoy
it quite a lot when people say bullshit with a question,
kind of with a upward We're.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
Almost Mandarin in our intonations there.
Speaker 3 (26:12):
It's true high emphasis on bull which consisted of ensuring
soldiers were perfectly dressed with clean clothing when it proved
to be a hindrance during military operations. ANZAC troops mocked
this emphasis on presentation by calling it a bullshit bull
(26:33):
shit bullshit right sucking the Chinese meal, Oh guys, we're
just bullshitting, and there we have it, fellow ridiculous historians.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
Like so many other popular words and phrases, the true
origin of bullshit may be lost to history. It might
even be an example of parallel thinking because the word
is just so tasty. You know, we don't know who
exactly was the.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
First edgy with bullshit just.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
That tasty bullshit. We don't know who exactly was the
first edgy wit in all of human history to cook
this one up, but we know it was again becoming
commonplace by the early twentieth century, and it became massively
popular once civilization fell into World War Two. And if
you look at the various linguistic measures of the frequency
(27:24):
of a word, it's skyrockets as a noun as we
go into the nineteen eighties, right, And then at the
same time we see the growth of bullshit as a verb,
as bullshitting someone, and this becomes this becomes a fascinating,
i would say, case test or case study, a proof
(27:46):
of concept that you can kind of do whatever you
want in American English. That's part of why words like
bullshit become popular, because almost any word you can imagine
can be turned into.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
A verb right.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
We williamsed it verbify it. I'm a fan. I'm a
you know, and I'm also a fan of it. I
think I speak for all of us language. It's a
lot of fun.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Three out of five.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
Okay, fair enough, I'm great and hard No, it's good
you are.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
You're great. I'm grading on a curve.
Speaker 3 (28:23):
You couldn't leave us, though, Ben, without some fun bullshitty
bits of trivia at a step two, several of which
we've already mentioned, but leading off here in this list
that you've included is dipshit, which is fun because but
it also weirdly, it just it cuts man calling somebody
a dipshit.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
It feels hurtful.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
It's dismissive, it's a diminutive. Dipshit means stupid. These all
have their own spin on the earlier formula horseship, which
was mentioned earlier. It means bullshit, but it's somehow dumber.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
I don't I think with dipshit, I kind of it's
kind of like disrespectful, like work. I don't even think
highly of horseshit is. I don't know. It's maybe a
little bit more respectful, but somehow calling you dummer, that's
personal max context.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Though, horseshit to me is sort of interchangeable. I think
bullshit has become so almost saturated and overused that I
tend towards horseshit just as a way of changing it
up a little bit.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
You know, the horseshit a lot too, for the same reason.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
Yeah, pig shit means be meat slopping down pig shit
with these meatbags, right, meats.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
Both dumb and simultaneously repulsive. Shout out to I think
you should leave. Dog Shit means disgusting, also just bad.
Like you say that movie was dog shit. Yeah, you
wouldn't say that movie was bullshit unless you had some
philosophical issue with it. But if you were just gonna
outright say something sucks, you call it dog shit. Yeah.
(29:52):
And shitbird means an objectionable or despicable person, sometimes also
with the low key connotation of being lacey.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
Well, that also is one that gets thrown around in
military parlance a lot, and also in like you know,
law enforcement and prison. It seems like the prison what
is it called pos or CEOs correctional officers, they will
call you a shitbird at least in you know OZ.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
We also know that the etymology of bullshit has not
actually been studied as well as we would assume or hope,
given the ubiquity of the word, because part of it
is because it became so mainstreamed, especially with the historic
South Park episode, which was one of the first programs
(30:41):
in the US to use the word shit on television.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
Also, I mean, speaking of bullshit on television, there's that
Penn and Teller TV show literally called bullshit where I
think they may stylize it in print with like an
asterisk or something like that, but I've never seen it,
but I'm pretty certain they say it, and I'm wondering,
we got to look this up before we wrap. Where
does it land on the FCCS.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
So I will say so Rick and Morty is a
show that is always trying to push it as far
as possible. So in like Rick and Morty, you can say,
like shit, they say shit all the time, and it's
on censored on TV. But it's like the conducts around
it they.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
Got, but it's also on cable. It's different rules. It's
not on like broadcast.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
Well, Penn and Teller was on HBO. Okay, okay, they
doesn't have it doesn't have to comply with the FEC
rules on that way. Yeah, the the issue was I
with HBO was one of the one of the pay channels.
I believe.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
For a while the FCC was rationing out uses of
strong language. So for instance in show uh, in even
cable shows like Lost or Breaking Bad, they started to
run into well, pre Breaking Bad, they started to run
into situations where they could use a strong word once
(31:58):
and the FCC maybe still find them. But but they
ate it. Yeah, but they just ate a cost of
doing business makes the show better.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
The FCC currently defines three things they don't like obscene
in decent or profane obscene consumptively indecen Right, you know
it when you see it, right, So obscene means you
don't have protection of the First Amendment. Uh. The indecent
(32:30):
content is you know your bits, Yeah, it's Australia country.
Last one is profane content, yes.
Speaker 3 (32:43):
Indeed, and the sacred and the profane. And interestingly enough,
the Commission the FCC has previously found the word bullshit
to be presumptively indecent and they define it as profane
or vulgar or irreverence of course language, et cetera. And
to your point band that can lead to fines for broadcasters.
But courts, on the other hand, have oftentimes struck down
(33:07):
FCC and decency policies, finding them to be too vague
as recently as twenty ten, and appeals courts struck down
some aspects of this policy after it they tried to
apply it to quote, fleeting expletives that kind of slide
through on live television.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
Yeah, language or material that in context depicts or describes
in terms patently offensive as measured by here this well
contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium end quote. So
they're really going back to that old argument about James
(33:45):
Joyce's ulysses, which is what is pornography? What is indecent?
I know it when I read here or see it.
Speaker 3 (33:51):
Yeah, And that also is inherently flawed because it is
so subjective, right, And if I'm not mistaken, the current
stance the FC takes on bullshit is that it is
not considered profane in all contexts, meaning that set and
setting is everything. You know, So I would argue, or
it would seem that if you're saying something's bullshit, that's
(34:13):
not inherently profane. But if you're like being gross or something.
Then that's different.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
Yeah, it's more about or at least it seems to
be more about in the days of destination watching and
broadcast TV, it's more about when the program is aired.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
Well, that would be six am to ten pm.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
And then after ten you know, Gil will freaky with it.
Speaker 3 (34:39):
Six am to ten pm rather is considered I believe
the term is safe harbor. It is applied to stuff
that children may, within a reasonable doubt be around to
check out.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
And that's why I show like Wrick and Mortar gets
a little bit morelywey, because it's always playing, you know,
eleven twelve pm.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
Right, and so will end it here. We hope you've
enjoyed this exploration. We hope you don't find the story
of bullshit bullshit because we're obviously very interested, so much
so that we lost account of the times, the amount
of times we said, we're still going, it's still going, okay, I.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
Say before I say we have to cut it off, so.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
We have to go okay, that's another one. We have
to end on this. Why has this ubiquitous word bullshit
been been kind of ignored. It's probably because it had
it had this social taboo. Aura about it. But in
two thousand and five, and this is thanks to a
(35:44):
guy named Larry Walsh. In two thousand and five, a
philosopher named Harry Frankfurt gave the word academic weight. He
wrote a book called on Bullshit. He argued that bullshit
is more dangerous than lying because it reflects in different
to truth rather than deliberate deceptions. So liars will distort facts.
(36:05):
Bullshitters count it speak to impress or persuade without regard
for accuracy, so that, like propaganda, the truth is sort
of irrelevant. And this leads us to what we church is,
what I say it is. This leads us to exactly
the post truth society we've talked about on our sister
(36:26):
show stuff they don't want you to know. If you
want to learn more about bullshit, check out books like
Business Bullshit twenty seventeen, Bullshit Jobs A Theory twenty eighteen,
Bullshit Management twenty twelve, and of course, The A Disea
of Business Bullshit twenty eighteen. Now when catalogs corporate buzzwords, Max,
(36:47):
how did we do? What's our final count?
Speaker 2 (36:49):
All right, we're going to we're cutting it off now? Okay, yes,
so I'm gonna go who list. We said shitbird twice,
we said dogshit twice, we said pig shit twice, we
said dipshit four times, we said horseshit seven times, we
said just the word shit ten times, and we have
(37:12):
said bullshit, not counting that one obviously. Actually let's count
that one. Go ahead. Yeah, we've said bullshit, so both
of those ninety times.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Leading us to a grand total of.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Oh I got them all together. I haven't all separated, sonety.
But out of ninety one hundred, one hundred and seven,
one hundred and eleven plus one seventeen.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
All right, I think we did pretty well. Big big
thanks to our super producer mister Max Williams for counting
the poops quite literally, big big thanks, of course, you
fellow ridiculous historians for tuning in.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
I think Jonathan Strickland aka the Quist curses Okay, yes, okay.
Speaker 3 (38:00):
You guys got got a dirty mouth.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
He probably adds like the old school an achronistic British curse,
So true, so true.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
Who else do we think, Oh, Christoph Fracionas need to
Jeff cod here. In spirit, of course, we thanked the quizzler.
We must thank the puzzler mister A J. Bahamas himself.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
Big big thanks to the rude dudes of Ridiculous Crime.
If you like us, you will love them. Please tune
into some of their upcoming past and present episodes. This
is a true crime show all about the most ridiculous
things you can imagine, and it is the only true
(38:39):
crime show that is guaranteed ninety nine percent murder free.
Big thanks to everybody who went with us despite the explicit,
expleditive nature of this episode, and Noel, thanks to you.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
Ah, thanks to you as well.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
Man.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
We'll see you next time. Folks.
Speaker 3 (39:05):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Let's hear it for the Man,
the Myth, the Legend, our super producer, mister Max the
freight Train Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
I'm still here in the Bahamas.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
We're all in the Bahamas in our hearts. Max Bullshnip Williams.
That's mister nol no poop Brown.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
They called me straight poop.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
They call me Ben Bullen in this part of the world,
primarily due to tax purposes and folks. Before we get
into today's exploration, we have a disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Somebody's one We're talking disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
This episode may not be appropriate for all Ridiculous Historians.
It may be one that you cannot play in the classroom.
We were on the fence about whether to include a
million bleeps here or just to label it explicit and
let it ride spoiler. We went for the latter.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Death by a million bleeps was not something that we wanted.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
To go with right right.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
We did it out of honestly, we did it out
of empathy for our dear long suffering producer Max.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
The conversation was, uh, yeah, I mean, as long as
it gets more production time on this one, we can
I'll believe them all, and both Ben and nol No
we're not gonna. We're not gonna. Yeah, no, we're not
gonna do that.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
Well, there were also philosophical reasons for the choice, you know.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Also, I believe that censorship is bullshity.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
First one.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Also, first one, lets we have kind of agreeed, or
it ended up on the same page, that bullshit is
a bit of a PG. Thirteen swear, not even sure
if it makes an R rating. I think you can
have unlimited bullshit.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
You can have what bullshit if you want, and that
bullshit will be fine. That's right, folks agreed.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
We think the term bullshit has been normalized throughout throughout
a US discourse, throughout the anglosphere, honestly, And a few
weeks ago, you guys had this moment of ridiculous epiphany.
I was talking with some friends about Believe It or
Not politics, and I realized we were all using an
(02:39):
English phrase bullshit. And it's kind of bizarre because every
English speaker knows what that phrase means. But riddle me this.
There's so many animals walking, flying, and swimming along this
wide world of ours, so know how to cows of
all things, and just apparently male cows in specific. How
(03:02):
did they get such an unfair wrap? With everything pooping
all the time on the world?
Speaker 2 (03:07):
How did everybody poops?
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Right?
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Or the less popular book, nobody poops but you you
shout out?
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Family guys? How did how did bull feces in particular
become a stand in for that all that is untrue,
false or misleading? Like when did we all start saying bullshit?
Speaker 2 (03:31):
You know? It's funny, Ben.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
I also enjoy using the phrase horseshit, but that usually
just refers to something that I'm not into, like that's horseshit,
Like I'm angry about that. Bullshit, however, does imply incredulity,
And that's what I want to dig into. Man, Where
does that come from? Why are we so suspicious of bullpoop?
Speaker 1 (03:53):
First off, this may surprise the more polite, ridiculous historians
in the crowd. Bullshit is a real word. It is
found in multiple dictionaries from Oxford English down to Merriam
Webster and Cambridge. Merriam Webster defines bullshit as also, I'm
gonna stop keeping it tally because I don't have a
(04:14):
fool errand yeah. Merriam Webster defines bullshit as both a
noun and a verb, because anything can become a verb,
especially in American English. But no, I am not yeah
God as a as a noun to your earlier point there,
noel as a noun. Mirriam Webster says bullshit indicates quote, foolish,
(04:39):
or insolent talk. As a verb, it can mean either
to talk foolish, foolishly, boastfly, or idly, or the less
cutting second definition, which I think is kind of wholesome
to engage in a discursive discussion, which you know they
like to.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
We're just having a bull sash.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
You can me if you want to be polite about it,
you could call it a bull sash. But it we're
just bullshitting man, just having a good old time talking,
talking a game. But yeah again, yeah we're just horsing around,
balling around.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Yeah, that second definition is fascinating, guys. It shows us
a meaning wherein bullshit is not always inherently bad. It's
just sort of irrelevant. It's small talk. It's like shooting
the breeze. We all stayed a little later after dinner
just bullshitting, which literally happened to us in Baha Mar.
It doesn't mean we all stayed late to shout quote foolish,
(05:35):
insolent talk at each other. Instead, we probably joked about
the weather, caught up with old friends, We talked about books,
we were reading, new films we wanted to see. In
our case, we talked a little bit about the beach
and the casino in that sense, in the beach casino, Yeah,
in that sense. People around the world bullshit constantly.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
So let's jump right into uh, you know, one of
the more high falutin dictionaries the Cambridge who agrees that
bullshit is both a noun and a verb, but they
take a slightly different and arguably meaner approach because they're British.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Yeah they're they're a little bit less. Let's know how
to cut you to the quick. Oh yeah, they've got
some of the best insults either of us have ever heard.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
To Cabridge, there's just bollocks. To Cambridge.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Bullshit as a noun is a rude word for complete
nonsense or something that is not true and spoiler, there's
a clue in that definition They also turn up the
heat with their definition of bullshit as a verb, which
sounds downright accusatory. Noel, would you do the honors?
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (06:49):
I mean this is we've kind of touched on this one.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
A rude word. Why did you do an H? There?
Speaker 3 (06:53):
It's just not being British that they wouldn't have done.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
That either, A rude word.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
I do love it though, when they say the letter H,
they say H, which is a lot of fun. Sorry
to continue. A rude word meaning to try to persuade
someone or make them admire you by saying things that
are not true. Don't bullshit a bullshitter, Ben, Yeah, don't
bes a bs or so.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Again, this is all too common in political discourse. As
we were talking with maxoft Air and we all, I
think it's fair to say ridiculous historians, we all almost
certainly have met someone that makes wild claims in day
to day life. Surely a lot of us, especially in
the States. We had that one kid in grade school
(07:35):
whose dad definitely invented Nintendo, or that one or the
cop Salad who yeah, who swore up and down that
they had a boyfriend or girlfriend for real, for real,
who just happened to go to a different school.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Oh that's me.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
My girlfriend does go to a different school, lives in
a different state, as it turns out.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Oh you're going to school.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
Yeah, oh yeah, I'm going to night school. I'm studying
bullshittery Ah.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
That's not bullshit at all, right, yes, the God honest. Hey.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
And also, by the way, we talked about this a
little bit in the inso or I may be dropped it.
I'm fascinated with a kind of Midwestern term, the straight poop,
which is which means the truth, the God honest. So
how can shit be both true and fault at the
same time?
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Strangers shit.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
There's this great Finnish comedian that I follow, a stand
up guy who plays with language a lot, and he
is fascinated by something being a piece of shit being bad,
something being the shit being good. That guy's name is
Ismo I S m O. Last name Likola l e
(08:44):
I k O l A. Do check him out. He's
just a genius, and we're wrestling with a lot of
the stuff our Finnish stand up pal is wrestling with
as well. You know, it's weird because Noel, there are
dozens of synonyms that convey the same or similar meaning
without themselves being curse words. Nonsense, hogwash, ballooney bollocks in
(09:08):
the UK also means nonsense. It is considered a rude
word like bloody, but it's not on the left.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
Bollocks. Also the bulls bollocks. Right, Yeah, that's a good thing.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
It's like yelling.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
Balls now the bulls. The dog's bollocks is a good thing. Ah.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Yes, once again, I'm just saying we've got and antonyms.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Huh is that Cockney rhyming the dog ball, porky pies.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
Yeah, porky pies is lies. Being in Barney is being
in trouble because Barney rubble. A lot of Cockney rhyming
slang seems to involve Hannah Barbara cartoon characters. Scooby. Not
a Scooby means you don't know what you're talking about,
not a Scooby doo a clue, that's the right one.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I believe the dog's bollocks may be
a different episode of World put it in our were
our quarterly things we left out?
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Yeah, the dogs bollocks is good, but a dog's breakfasts
not good?
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Right, yes, because as we know it, dogs youatpoop, and.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
It all comes back around, comes from dust to dust.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
Right, Yeah, bull dust is also an Australian version of bullshit.
But there there are so many words, right, nonsense, hogwash, maloney, bollocks,
uh and who could forget obviously, flap doodle, oh my gosh,
not to mention, not to mention. Still, for some reason,
(10:37):
bullshit as a phrase occupies this special place in the
beating heart of the American dialect, right, or the various
American dialects. It's weird because it crosses generations, acrosses demographics.
You will hear the most wealthy, oldest people say something
is bullshit, and then you will hear the youngest people
(10:58):
say bullshit, like a fifth grader might say bullshit, and
then you both pause. Right, It's like uh in a
Christmas story where the kid says the F word RF
and then the narrator kicks in. But I didn't say fudge.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
No, he sure, that's a fun movie. Now, this is great, Ben,
It's a really good point. It does seem to cross
a lot of generational divides. I think it also just
has a good mouthfeel to it. I think sometimes words
just kind of take on a life of their own
and get popular because they're fun to say.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
It's that it's got that cool you in the first syllable,
and then it's got not to sound too spectrmy here,
and it's got a.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Tight t at the end, so yeah, and a hard sush.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Yeah. It's emphatic, right, and so. Like so many other words,
the origin story of the phrase bullshit is surprisingly murky.
It is fraught with misconceptions. Uh, let's put on our
etymology caps nol because.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
We played wearing it, Ben, Yeah you did.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
I think it looks good on you, and we played
a bit of a trick at the top of the show.
We were kind of bullshitting you, fellow ridiculous historians about bullshit.
It is a common misconception that bullshit directly refers to
male cattle. That is not the case. It is a portmanteau,
which we love, of bull meaning nonsense, not a bovine animal,
(12:29):
not a cow. It's pretty directly related, therefore, to the
English phrase bollocks, which comes to English via the French
word bull, which means fraud or deceit. And it's also
quite likely the meaning of bull here.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
Latines, way, Wayne, that's wild, Okay, so that's one mystery
somewhat done and dusted.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
We'll get back to it.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
Yet, things, as they tend to do in the historical
game of telephone, we always like to reference, get a
little bit murkier and order to part the more we
attempt to figure out exactly how this term originated. And
you know, much like manure spread gardener, that was a
(13:14):
gardening joke.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
That's for all the gardeners in the crowd tonight. Similar
to the F word, sorry mom, bullshit has several competing
origin stories, and one of these is really interesting. A
common bit of scuttle but argues that the word comes
from agrarian communities.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
Right all right, already said that one up by accident,
and they would sell cow manure, of course, to use
as fertilizer that they would spread.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
According to this story, the poop of the female cow
is good for plants and agriculture, yet the poop from
the male cow is either less helpful or downright harmful.
So if you're a bad intention unethical farm you are
out to up your profits, then you start to step
(14:04):
on or cut your proper cow manure with poop from
the male cows as well, you sell the literal bullshit
by claiming it is cowshit. Later down the line, as
the seasons progressed, the customer they had suckered would see
damaging effects on the crops. So the story tells us
(14:24):
that people started saying, don't sell me no bullshit, and
over the years this was shortened to just bullshit, and
then further shortened to bull.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
I don't know. That seems like something someone invented.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
And Ben I definitely had no idea, this idea or
this notion that cow manure, not all manure was created equal.
But I have a little bit of a suspicion that
the negative effects of manure had less to do with
the gender of where the poop came from and more
to do with the fact that it may have been
uncomposted fresh uncomposted or it turns out can actually be
(15:01):
harmful to crops due to high levels of ammonia and
nitrogen and salts that can actually damage and inhibit seed germination.
But I think you were going to that place with this.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Yeah, you know, what's a fun story. We love a
fun story. I'm a Max's team here. It's up there
with the concept of buying a pig in a poke
or caveat temptur it's probably wrong. There are a couple
of immediately obvious issues with the narratives. So first off,
cowpoop is going to be more or less a question
(15:34):
of processing. It's the same across biological sex. The things
that are really going to affect your cowpoop output or
cowpoop output are going to be factors like the diet,
hydration environment, individual medical conditions or disease, and again processing.
And secondly, you know, as we were pointing now, the
(15:56):
timeline doesn't really match with the etymology here. You can
still see dictionaries of great repute. Encyclopedia is arguing over
this bull as an animal versus bull as nonsense question.
But for now it is safe to say the farmer
origin story is itself wait for it, a bullshit you need.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
It's a bit.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
It's a bit of shit, So it's full of shit
it is. Whoever may have told this tale out of school,
It does turn out the real meaning of it, as
you mentioned earlier, much more likely stems from that French
(16:43):
translation bull meaning nonsense or an untruth, dating back to
the seventeenth century. Bullshit's been used since around nineteen fourteen
nineteen fifteen and British and American slang, and that word
made its way into the American lexicon late in the
nineteenth century, where bullshit was first documented in a nineteen
(17:04):
fifteen edition of The New Republic and used to describe hollow,
empty rhetoric. You know thing or two about that. American
serviceman in World War One adopted the term to describe
things taking it's a little broader as just things that
are generally not good, and.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
So by the mid twentieth century, bullshit is firmly ensconced
in the casual American vocabulary, but it's mostly going to
be confined to these unrecorded, unpublished conversations because of the
vulgarity of its second syllable.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
It's kind of haram right.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
In fancy pants discourse. It becomes popularized in World War Two,
and no kidding, this is a bit of a plot
twist for us, we have to thank one of America's
best writers for the popularization of bullshit.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Guys.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
It's none other than the legendarily uptight, the lovingly pretentious,
the problematically racist poet Extraordinariy ts Elliott.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Ah.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
Yes, the jellical man himself.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
There it is, that's.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
Him, right, yeah, yeah, he wrote cats Yeah, the Cats guy.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
He would not have liked the Filmata.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
She would have preferred them with buttholes.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
So it sounds crazy, right, He was kind of a
buttle Yeah, he kind of was.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Sorry, man, we know you're from Missouri. So it sounds crazy.
It sounds almost like bullshit. Hang on, hear us out.
Between nineteen ten and nineteen fifteen he wrote a poem
called The Triumph of Bullshit and it's a ballad, and
he finalized it with a few small changes in nineteen sixteen.
(18:53):
Just to give you a sense of this. It is
not on the level of Proof Rock or The Wasteland,
but it is an early example of this phrase in print.
The final form of it, Just to give you the
first first verse is ladies on whom my attentions have waited.
If you consider my merits a small it, deoliated, alembicated, utund, tasteless, fantastical, monotonous, crotchety, constipated, impotent,
(19:25):
galimattias affected, possibly imitated. For Christ's sake, stick it up
your ass, and every scene, everythow dude, every verse. And
it's like a three verses right, and every verse ends
with a refrain for Christ's sakes, For Christ's sake, stick
it up your ass, the triumph of bullshit. Look this
(19:50):
guy is all.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
Right Susian for a minute there, Ben, it was I love.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
All this jelical language.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
Yes, that is true. Susianis to that as well.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
Elliott did not invent this word sucineity.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
We should keep it, Max, keep it please. And he
popularized the phrase bullshit with this poem, but the poem
did not see print immediately after he wrote it. The
earliest citations of the phrase bullshit come to us from
(20:27):
the equally fancy pants boffins at the Oxford English Dictionary.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Ah.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
Yes, second in fancy pants neess only to Cambridge in
my humble estimation. Not sure there's the data there to
back it up.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
Cambridge versus Oxford ultimate smash.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Let's go fight, So the earlier. That's a great question.
I wonder how they feel about each other.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
Yeah, who's the fancist of lads?
Speaker 1 (20:53):
Who's got the cravat versus the regular necktie?
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Oh, that is the question. You know, we're a cravat?
To Ben, who's that? It was? Uh?
Speaker 3 (21:03):
Fred from the Scooby Doo Gang.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
Oh that's right. A bit of a cravat, I keep
forgetting about or.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Was it an ascot?
Speaker 3 (21:10):
Never mind? I think wait, wait, wait, didn't we know?
I think a cravat is just to catch all the
umbrella term.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
That's where I was going. Yeah, everything's necktie everything like that.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
I love quibbling over semantics.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
All right, Max, with the facts, we are one and
(21:47):
we know that regardless of egghead hierarchy. The Oxford English Dictionary,
which we love, says the earliest citations.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
Book, it's you. It's a page turner, second only to
the Bible.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Uh yeah, okay, I've definitely read cover to cover a
question about.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
It many times. I U name a verse.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
They're all good, They're all just so good.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
Oh yeah, that's real write my.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
Favorite, especially that one from Bubble Fiction that wasn't in
the Bible. You know it isn't in the Bible. Ben,
what's that potatoes? And that was a big reason that
the people were suspicious of.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
Yes, yeah, during the Great Exchange, which will be another episode.
Dare I say a series we're getting to in the
futures coming right up day tuned for Thursday for part
one of that. We want you to know that the
Oxford English Dictionary the OED they cite the first occurrence
(22:50):
of bullshit coming from the letters of a British writer
named Wynton Lewis and the American essayists and poet Ee Cummings.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
This is still.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
Confusing because here Wyndham Lewis is directly quoting Elliot's poem
in a letter from nineteen fifteen, and Lewis writes, quote,
Elliot has sent me bullshit and the ballad for Big Louise.
They are excellent bits of scholarly reboldry. So rebolds cheeky
(23:26):
cheeky devil that that ts Eliot. So we do know
that there are other modern writers that began using the
phrase as well, because why wouldn't they. It's already starting
to creep into the lexicon. It's fun to say. One
of my favorite names in modern literature Ezra Pound.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
It's like give me an Ezra pound you meaning like
dab me up. He used it in nineteen fourteen in
a letter to James Joyce, who liked farts writing include
check that one out if you want another rebald episode
talking about James Joyce and love of Lady Farts. He said,
I enclose a prize sample of bullshit.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Yeah, he spaced it out, he said bull space ship
he did.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
It's still we're still getting there. We're still getting there.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
I think we can all agree. We're pretty sure that
Ezra Pounds, another problematic guy who was an excellent poet.
We're pretty sure he meant bullshit in the figurative sense, because,
so far as we can tell, ol Ezra did not
actually include cow poop with the letter.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
That would have been a terrorist act.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Yeah, that would have been like Jared Leto playing the joker.
Speaker 3 (24:38):
Right, Yeah, apparently all those rumors though, by the way
he started himself, Oh my gosh, yeah yeah that guy.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Wow, classic Morbius, what a fellow. Well he's morb Morban
out so.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
Hard right now.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
It's true.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
There's one other origin story that we have to get to,
and this one takes us halfway around the world.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
Yeah, New Zealand, I can't do it. Are not New Zealand. Hey, God,
that was better.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
Come at us and we deserve it, and we're ready
for your blows. New Zealanders and Australians alike. Aussie's Eric Partridge,
is this fellow's name, and he claimed that the term
was popularized by soldiers, which we already have another version
of the story where it's American soldiers beginning to use
the term as just bad stuff. And we know that Army,
(25:28):
my job is Army, very fond of quippie and sometimes
body terms like fu bar all of that stuff, so
it makes a lot of sense. In this version, it
is the new Zealand and Australian soldiers the Army Corps.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
Rather and Zach shouting yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
During World War One, this term began being flung around.
According to Partridge, British officers of the war placed high
emphasis on bull bullshit, which I love that that is
sort of how we say it, but I also enjoy
it quite a lot when people say bullshit with a question,
kind of with a upward We're.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
Almost Mandarin in our intonations there.
Speaker 3 (26:12):
It's true high emphasis on bull which consisted of ensuring
soldiers were perfectly dressed with clean clothing when it proved
to be a hindrance during military operations. ANZAC troops mocked
this emphasis on presentation by calling it a bullshit bull
(26:33):
shit bullshit right sucking the Chinese meal, Oh guys, we're
just bullshitting, and there we have it, fellow ridiculous historians.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
Like so many other popular words and phrases, the true
origin of bullshit may be lost to history. It might
even be an example of parallel thinking because the word
is just so tasty. You know, we don't know who
exactly was the.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
First edgy with bullshit just.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
That tasty bullshit. We don't know who exactly was the
first edgy wit in all of human history to cook
this one up, but we know it was again becoming
commonplace by the early twentieth century, and it became massively
popular once civilization fell into World War Two. And if
you look at the various linguistic measures of the frequency
(27:24):
of a word, it's skyrockets as a noun as we
go into the nineteen eighties, right, And then at the
same time we see the growth of bullshit as a verb,
as bullshitting someone, and this becomes this becomes a fascinating,
i would say, case test or case study, a proof
(27:46):
of concept that you can kind of do whatever you
want in American English. That's part of why words like
bullshit become popular, because almost any word you can imagine
can be turned into.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
A verb right.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
We williamsed it verbify it. I'm a fan. I'm a
you know, and I'm also a fan of it. I
think I speak for all of us language. It's a
lot of fun.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Three out of five.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
Okay, fair enough, I'm great and hard No, it's good
you are.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
You're great. I'm grading on a curve.
Speaker 3 (28:23):
You couldn't leave us, though, Ben, without some fun bullshitty
bits of trivia at a step two, several of which
we've already mentioned, but leading off here in this list
that you've included is dipshit, which is fun because but
it also weirdly, it just it cuts man calling somebody
a dipshit.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
It feels hurtful.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
It's dismissive, it's a diminutive. Dipshit means stupid. These all
have their own spin on the earlier formula horseship, which
was mentioned earlier. It means bullshit, but it's somehow dumber.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
I don't I think with dipshit, I kind of it's
kind of like disrespectful, like work. I don't even think
highly of horseshit is. I don't know. It's maybe a
little bit more respectful, but somehow calling you dummer, that's
personal max context.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Though, horseshit to me is sort of interchangeable. I think
bullshit has become so almost saturated and overused that I
tend towards horseshit just as a way of changing it
up a little bit.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
You know, the horseshit a lot too, for the same reason.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
Yeah, pig shit means be meat slopping down pig shit
with these meatbags, right, meats.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
Both dumb and simultaneously repulsive. Shout out to I think
you should leave. Dog Shit means disgusting, also just bad.
Like you say that movie was dog shit. Yeah, you
wouldn't say that movie was bullshit unless you had some
philosophical issue with it. But if you were just gonna
outright say something sucks, you call it dog shit. Yeah.
(29:52):
And shitbird means an objectionable or despicable person, sometimes also
with the low key connotation of being lacey.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
Well, that also is one that gets thrown around in
military parlance a lot, and also in like you know,
law enforcement and prison. It seems like the prison what
is it called pos or CEOs correctional officers, they will
call you a shitbird at least in you know OZ.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
We also know that the etymology of bullshit has not
actually been studied as well as we would assume or hope,
given the ubiquity of the word, because part of it
is because it became so mainstreamed, especially with the historic
South Park episode, which was one of the first programs
(30:41):
in the US to use the word shit on television.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
Also, I mean, speaking of bullshit on television, there's that
Penn and Teller TV show literally called bullshit where I
think they may stylize it in print with like an
asterisk or something like that, but I've never seen it,
but I'm pretty certain they say it, and I'm wondering,
we got to look this up before we wrap. Where
does it land on the FCCS.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
So I will say so Rick and Morty is a
show that is always trying to push it as far
as possible. So in like Rick and Morty, you can say,
like shit, they say shit all the time, and it's
on censored on TV. But it's like the conducts around
it they.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
Got, but it's also on cable. It's different rules. It's
not on like broadcast.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
Well, Penn and Teller was on HBO. Okay, okay, they
doesn't have it doesn't have to comply with the FEC
rules on that way. Yeah, the the issue was I
with HBO was one of the one of the pay channels.
I believe.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
For a while the FCC was rationing out uses of
strong language. So for instance in show uh, in even
cable shows like Lost or Breaking Bad, they started to
run into well, pre Breaking Bad, they started to run
into situations where they could use a strong word once
(31:58):
and the FCC maybe still find them. But but they
ate it. Yeah, but they just ate a cost of
doing business makes the show better.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
The FCC currently defines three things they don't like obscene
in decent or profane obscene consumptively indecen Right, you know
it when you see it, right, So obscene means you
don't have protection of the First Amendment. Uh. The indecent
(32:30):
content is you know your bits, Yeah, it's Australia country.
Last one is profane content, yes.
Speaker 3 (32:43):
Indeed, and the sacred and the profane. And interestingly enough,
the Commission the FCC has previously found the word bullshit
to be presumptively indecent and they define it as profane
or vulgar or irreverence of course language, et cetera. And
to your point band that can lead to fines for broadcasters.
But courts, on the other hand, have oftentimes struck down
(33:07):
FCC and decency policies, finding them to be too vague
as recently as twenty ten, and appeals courts struck down
some aspects of this policy after it they tried to
apply it to quote, fleeting expletives that kind of slide
through on live television.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
Yeah, language or material that in context depicts or describes
in terms patently offensive as measured by here this well
contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium end quote. So
they're really going back to that old argument about James
(33:45):
Joyce's ulysses, which is what is pornography? What is indecent?
I know it when I read here or see it.
Speaker 3 (33:51):
Yeah, And that also is inherently flawed because it is
so subjective, right, And if I'm not mistaken, the current
stance the FC takes on bullshit is that it is
not considered profane in all contexts, meaning that set and
setting is everything. You know, So I would argue, or
it would seem that if you're saying something's bullshit, that's
(34:13):
not inherently profane. But if you're like being gross or something.
Then that's different.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
Yeah, it's more about or at least it seems to
be more about in the days of destination watching and
broadcast TV, it's more about when the program is aired.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
Well, that would be six am to ten pm.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
And then after ten you know, Gil will freaky with it.
Speaker 3 (34:39):
Six am to ten pm rather is considered I believe
the term is safe harbor. It is applied to stuff
that children may, within a reasonable doubt be around to
check out.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
And that's why I show like Wrick and Mortar gets
a little bit morelywey, because it's always playing, you know,
eleven twelve pm.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
Right, and so will end it here. We hope you've
enjoyed this exploration. We hope you don't find the story
of bullshit bullshit because we're obviously very interested, so much
so that we lost account of the times, the amount
of times we said, we're still going, it's still going, okay, I.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
Say before I say we have to cut it off, so.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
We have to go okay, that's another one. We have
to end on this. Why has this ubiquitous word bullshit
been been kind of ignored. It's probably because it had
it had this social taboo. Aura about it. But in
two thousand and five, and this is thanks to a
(35:44):
guy named Larry Walsh. In two thousand and five, a
philosopher named Harry Frankfurt gave the word academic weight. He
wrote a book called on Bullshit. He argued that bullshit
is more dangerous than lying because it reflects in different
to truth rather than deliberate deceptions. So liars will distort facts.
(36:05):
Bullshitters count it speak to impress or persuade without regard
for accuracy, so that, like propaganda, the truth is sort
of irrelevant. And this leads us to what we church is,
what I say it is. This leads us to exactly
the post truth society we've talked about on our sister
(36:26):
show stuff they don't want you to know. If you
want to learn more about bullshit, check out books like
Business Bullshit twenty seventeen, Bullshit Jobs A Theory twenty eighteen,
Bullshit Management twenty twelve, and of course, The A Disea
of Business Bullshit twenty eighteen. Now when catalogs corporate buzzwords, Max,
(36:47):
how did we do? What's our final count?
Speaker 2 (36:49):
All right, we're going to we're cutting it off now? Okay, yes,
so I'm gonna go who list. We said shitbird twice,
we said dogshit twice, we said pig shit twice, we
said dipshit four times, we said horseshit seven times, we
said just the word shit ten times, and we have
(37:12):
said bullshit, not counting that one obviously. Actually let's count
that one. Go ahead. Yeah, we've said bullshit, so both
of those ninety times.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Leading us to a grand total of.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Oh I got them all together. I haven't all separated, sonety.
But out of ninety one hundred, one hundred and seven,
one hundred and eleven plus one seventeen.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
All right, I think we did pretty well. Big big
thanks to our super producer mister Max Williams for counting
the poops quite literally, big big thanks, of course, you
fellow ridiculous historians for tuning in.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
I think Jonathan Strickland aka the Quist curses Okay, yes, okay.
Speaker 3 (38:00):
You guys got got a dirty mouth.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
He probably adds like the old school an achronistic British curse,
So true, so true.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
Who else do we think, Oh, Christoph Fracionas need to
Jeff cod here. In spirit, of course, we thanked the quizzler.
We must thank the puzzler mister A J. Bahamas himself.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
Big big thanks to the rude dudes of Ridiculous Crime.
If you like us, you will love them. Please tune
into some of their upcoming past and present episodes. This
is a true crime show all about the most ridiculous
things you can imagine, and it is the only true
(38:39):
crime show that is guaranteed ninety nine percent murder free.
Big thanks to everybody who went with us despite the explicit,
expleditive nature of this episode, and Noel, thanks to you.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
Ah, thanks to you as well.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
Man.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
We'll see you next time. Folks.
Speaker 3 (39:05):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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