How the Rosetta Stone Works

Sometimes providence smiles on historians. Thus is the case with the Rosetta stone, an ancient Egyptian tablet that served as the key for unlocking hieroglyphics, lost to time for a millennia. Learn about the international intrigue, rivalry to translate it and the luck that led to the founding of Egyptology.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the all new Toyota Corolla. Welcome
to Stuff You Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W.
Chuck Bryant, and this is Stuff you Should Know, the

(00:23):
Overly Hot Studio Edition. I have a bit of a chill. No,
you don't, I do. I'm not at all hot. Yeah.
You also said that it hurt when our new coworker
shook your hand. So what does that say that it
is a strong hand shape. Okay, and you're always cold? Yeah,
it's always lamps in here. Well, Jerry's decorated. It's nice.

(00:46):
It is nice. It's just like an Ikea cattalog. That's right. Um, Chuck,
how many times have you been to Egypt? Um? Kinding
that trip in high school? Zero? Same here? Yeah, and
yet we know an awful lot about Egypt. Yeah, it's popular,
especially ancient Egypt. Like I would wager that we probably

(01:08):
know more about ancient Egypt than modern Egypt most people
in the West. Yeah, is there a modern Egypt? There is?
And uh, it's undergoing quite a bit of turmoil right now. Um, Okay,
I just wanted to make sure that you knew that
Egypt was still around. Kay Um. Well, the reason that
you and I know a lot about Egypt is thanks

(01:29):
to a soft science one of the humanities. You would
call it um called egyptology, pretty on the nose name
for the study of ancient Egypt. It's a real popular
thing and has been for a while a while, but
not too terribly long, I would say, about the beginning
of the nineteenth century. Uh. And the reason that all

(01:52):
of it was foster than that all of it came
about and that we you and me know about Egypt
was because of the discovery of a tablet known as
the Rosetta stone. Right. But you can also go back
even further and make the case that if it wasn't
for Napoleon Bonaparte, we may not understand Egypt to this day. Yeah,

(02:14):
that little guy, he wasn't that little though, is that right? Right?
He was average height? Why why does why do people
say that? Then? Where that come from? Because some doctor
wrote down I think upon his death that he was
five ft two. But what a lot of people don't
realize is that the doctor was using the French inch,
which is longer than the British Imperial inch. So when

(02:39):
you translate five ft two from the French inch to
the imperial he was about five six, which is average height.
And uh. The other reason why he was called like
the little Emperor by his armies was because compared to
most of his bodyguards and his people he had around him,
he was shorter than them. Yeah. I guess when you're
five six, he wants some six four dudes or on you. Right. So,

(03:01):
but the idea that he was a very short man
is is not correct. Yeah, I'd always heard that, but
I did another story, the French Inch. There's your band
name for the day. Although I typically don't like rhyming names,
French inch doesn't rhyme. It's just it sounds similar. I
wouldn't call it a rhyme. French and inch, Yeah, French

(03:23):
of the e and the eye. Yeah, that's nippicky. Well yeah,
it's the vowels that rhyme, that the confidence. Yeah. But
if you're Steve Maltmous and you put French at the
end of the line and an inch at the end
of another, it would be it would be rhymy and
you'd sell a lot of records. That's right. Yeah. Um, yeah, Well,
there was our pavement reference episode. That's becoming a daily

(03:46):
thing too. So you want to get on with this, Yeah,
let's do it. We're gonna be talking Rosetta Stone, not
the language software, which neither one of us has ever used. No,
we're talking about the the real thing, which is actually
bigger than I thought. You know, many things are smaller
for me, like when you see him in person, Lisa,

(04:07):
of course, mona Lisa small. Like I went to England,
I was like, big Ben, that ain't so big. Yeah,
I don't think I had the impression of big Bembo.
It's kind of underwhelmed. It definitely didn't seem big. Whereas
the Eiffel Tower that was bigger than I thought. That
is where I developed a fear of heights that still
plagues me to this day. Like it literally happened to
me on the Eiffel Tower on the way up. Never

(04:29):
had a fear of heights in my entire life. On
the way down, I like was hanging on to the
fence and it took me forever to get down because
I was suddenly deathly afraid of height. Just hit me
my brain Uh changed? How old were you? Uh? Seventeen
is wow? Yeah? I didn't go up to the top.

(04:49):
I probably missed out. I didn't either. It was the
first level that got me really wow. Alright, so, um, anyway,
where was I going? Oh, it's bigger than I thought
it was. It is um black basalt, and it weighs
about three quarters of a ton um inches high point
five inches wide and twelve inches deep. And it's it's large,

(05:11):
it's heavy, it's um. You didn't write this, did you? No? Um,
it's about the size of a heavy coffee table. Were
you about to make fun of something? I was just
gonna say. Whoever wrote this ref referenced an l c
D TV of medium size. Yeah, a medium screen l
c D television. Oh, by the way, thank you to
Teresa Dove fan request. That's who requested this one. Yeah. Okay, so, um,

(05:36):
it's larger than I thought. And I learned a lot
about this. I thought the Rosetta stone because I'm a dummy.
Um was literally like, here's what our alphabet is, and
here's what everything means, and now that you found it,
you can decipher everything. Yeah. I think I had the
same impression as well. Until I read this, I thought
it was like created as a key to higher glyphics,

(05:59):
not at all. Not so it was a government document. Basically,
it's a stella stella. Stella is the plural. And uh,
it's not just the Egyptians that use stella stella um.
The Mayans have largely been figured out their language has
from old stella. Yeah. Um. Well, and that's it. Those
are the two that use stella. Yeah. In this case,

(06:22):
it's an inscription carved in three different languages, Greek, hieroglyphics
and demotic with the t not demonic. Yeah, demotic. But
since I'm from the South, I saw it in my tea,
so it might sound like I'm saying demonic um. And
basically it was in the three languages to ensure that
everybody could read it because it was an official government decree.

(06:45):
Not super exciting though. No, it wasn't basically what the
Rosetta stone says. And like you said, it's in three languages.
There's a degree that says um. Essentially that Ptolemy the
fifth is a great ruler and he is a righteous
worship or of all the right gods. So he's okay
in our book. And this decree was made by some

(07:05):
priests who gathered at Memphis and they um inscribed the
stoner had and inscribed and dated March, and it's not.
It doesn't actually say March hieroglyphics. It says eighteen must Shire,
which on the Egyptian calendar translates to something like um

(07:27):
March uh. And then they got the because somewhere in
there the references the ninth year of Ptolemy, the fifth reign,
which is about so that's where they got the date
from the what we would in the West equate it to. Yeah,
so um, like we said, it doesn't say anything of

(07:47):
particular interest at the time, it was an important message.
But it's not the Rosetta stone because of what is
transcribed upon that stone. No, it's the fact that it's
in three different languages. So there's like you said, hieroglyphics,
Demotic and Greek, and hieroglyphics were a sacred um alphabet. Yeah,

(08:11):
they used that for really important stuff. I didn't know
this either. I thought just any old thing they wanted
to write was a hieroglyphics. Now that's what they had
demiotic for or demotic that was kind of like an
abbreviated shorthand more vulgar version of hieroglyphics. Yeah, and in
between that was hieratic um, which was slightly more complicated

(08:35):
than demotic, but less complicated and not sacred like hieroglyphics. Yeah,
it was like a kind of a transition between Um
demotic and hieroglyphics. Curve right, so you can UM, so
you could use um hieratic for like a business transaction.

(08:55):
But if you were saying the king is a very
righteous ruler and you mentioned the gods, you're to use hieroglyphics.
That's so to have it written in Greek UH demotic,
which was an offshoot of hieratic, which was an off
shoot of hieroglyphics, and UM hieroglyphics. These priests that gathered

(09:17):
and issued this decree that was written on the Rosetta stone,
they made sure that everyone in Egypt two was literate
could read this one way or another. Yeah, And it
was sort of not a stroke of luck. I mean,
it was just smart thinking at the time, but ended
up being a stroke of luck because the three languages,
I mean, without that, I don't think we we may
have never been able to figure out hieroglyphics. No agreed,

(09:37):
And I've been lost forever exactly. Um. And that's that's
not the only way that the Rosetta Stone was kind
of a bit of fortune. But UM. So the reason
that it was lost was up until the fourth century
a d any average Egyptian could have read the Rosetta
Stone one way or another. But after that the egypt

(10:01):
it left the pharonic stage. Cleopatra is the last pharaoh
of Egypt, and then it came to be ruled by
the Greeks, later on the Romans, the Tlamites, UM, and
a bunch of different foreigners or different groups. And with
these groups came the introduction of new gods and the

(10:22):
suppression of old gods. And since hieroglyphics were um very
much religious in nature. They're sacred or holy, but associated
with those old gods, hieroglyphics itself came to be cut
off stop suppressed. Yeah, especially Christianity. Um. They tended to
want to get rid of other competing gods and languages

(10:45):
that are tied to those gods. Right, But luckily we
still had Demotic, that's right, and Demotic wasn't taboo. UM.
That eventually became what's known as Coptic, and Coptic used
UM some Greek um and in a little bit of
still of the hieroglyphic symbols. So there's still like this,
just a little bit, very tenuous link between Coptic and hieroglyphics.

(11:09):
But then Coptic is lost, it's pushed out by Arabic,
and then that was like way gone, goodbye hieroglyphics. That's it.
That was like the hieroglyphics is no longer understood by
anyone walking planet Earth. And that means that all of
the ancient Egyptian civilization itself was lost thousand years aside

(11:30):
from its structures, um, the the thought put into it,
the reasoning behind it, all the explanations, all of the inscriptions,
all the writing all over these ancient buildings are understood
by no one now. And then as a result of that,
the buildings themselves, the last vestiges of this ancient civilization,
are deconstructed and used for the next wave by new rulers,

(11:55):
and so ancient Egyptian culture is lost to the mists
of time. Yeah, wow, thanks very nice. Yeah, there was
no love lost. They were basically like, we don't need
this language anymore, we don't need these sacred buildings anymore.
They're pagan anyway. Yeah, let's tear them all down, build
up new ones. And oddly, the Rosetta stone was actually

(12:17):
used as a buttress in a wall of a new building. Yes,
so part of the construction. Right, that's how this is
another way that this is all just stroke of luck
after stroke of luck. So the first stroke of luck,
as you pointed out, is that they just happened to
decree that this thing be written in three languages, same

(12:37):
message in three languages. Then it's used for a building
a wall, right, Yeah, Then it happens to be discovered
by some French who are marooned in Egypt because they
got crushed by the British right when they tried to invade. Yeah,
I guess let's talk about that person. The French thought, hey,

(12:58):
we need to we need to get a stronghold on
India eventually, and Napoleon said, I think a good way
to do that is to start a little further away,
and let's say Egypt. Let's cut off the the Brits
access to the Nile River and that will really help
our cause. Unfortunately, the Brits at a great navy and

(13:19):
pretty much destroyed all their ships and stranded them in
Egypt for what nineteen years? Yeah. Yeah. And so for
the French, whose ships were now at the bottom of
Abu Kir bay Um, they decided that they really kind
of needed to set themselves to creating forts, like since
we're here, right, um. And it wasn't just military that

(13:42):
was there part of this invasion, this um strategy that
Napoleon had come up with to take over Egypt, it
was kind of a hearts and mind strategy too, and
so he created something called the Institute of Egypt, also
known as the Scientific and Artistic Commission uh mineral a.
Just mathematicians, art historians, a lot of engineers, chemists, all

(14:04):
of like, all of these people from the letters and
sciences UM brought together to understand and study Egypt. Yeah,
they were actually given military rank, but they weren't. I
think that was just more of a here just so
we'll call you military, Like, they weren't from military backgrounds,
so they were thinkers. But they were among this invading

(14:27):
force that was left stranded in France. So as the
real military guys were billing the forts, the people from
the Institute Egypt starts studying Egypt. Yeah, I guess they
were the first Egyptologist. Yeah, boy, it was close. Uh,
they definitely were. Uh, and it was very covert operation,

(14:47):
like they weren't really allowed to talk about what they
were doing that much except to just say, hey, we're
following Napoleon's orders, acting on behalf of the good of
the French Republic. This is what we're doing. Don't ask
any questions, yeah, that's what. Don't ask why I have
this measuring tape out or why I'm transcribing things from papyrus.
But they did, um, they did become I guess embedded

(15:08):
with the local population as well to help learn as
much as they could. And so it's under this climate
that French soldier one day, um finds this very polished
black stone that's inscribed and something about it told him
that it was pretty important. So we took it to
these um early egyptologists, the French, and said, you guys

(15:33):
think this is important and they said yes, yeah. That
was Lieutenant Pierre Francois Bouchard, and uh, he took it
to his boss and they they said, okay, this is
weird that this is built into a wall, but it's
clearly something of note and maybe we should take a
closer look at it, and UM, immediately they started to
get to work on trying to transcribe it. Super difficult

(15:55):
at the time, UM, and would prove to be difficult
over the years. UM. It eventually ended up in the
hands of England, of course, but luckily these uh, the
Institute of Egypt people made copies of it. Yeah, I
think that like etchings or in the plaster molds and things.
I'm sure, yeah, But they had readable copies of the

(16:18):
Rosetta Stone, so when they did give it up to
the British, it wasn't entirely lost to them, that's right,
and give it up as in not here have this.
It was more like here, we're taking this in the
Treaty of Alexandria. We're gonna take this in a bunch
of other stuff. So now basically you have the French
and the British both have the Rosetta Stone. The one

(16:42):
group that doesn't are the Egyptians. We'll get to that later. UM.
And both of them recognized that this is a very
very important something. They know that it's some sort of decree.
They recognize that it's in three different languages, and I
think it becomes obvious to them that this could be
the key to understanding hieroglyphics, which people have tried to understand.

(17:07):
This is not new people going back to a fellow
named um Horapolo, who was a fifth century scholar. Supposedly
he may not have actually existed. Um he created basically
what was a translation for hieroglyphics, right, but it was

(17:29):
a false translation, as we'll see. But you know, dating
back basically from the moment that hieroglyphics were lost to history,
people have tried to understand them. So these this this
was the British and the French were aware of this,
like this may be the key to these mysterious hieroglyphics,
and this is important, so we're going to try to

(17:49):
translate it. Yeah. Well it became a race really because
they didn't like each other very much and they both
wanted to be the first ones to figure out what
these hieroglyphics meant and how to unlock this history and
um so they sent their best, in their brightest on
the English side, the British side, it was a scholar
named Thomas Young, and then on the French side we

(18:10):
had Jean Francois Champollon who he was sort of born
to do this. Apparently he was way into Egypt as
a kid even and as a young child said I'm
gonna I'm gonna figure out hieroglyphics one day. Yeah. He
was even called the Egyptian because he had dark skin
and dark hair. And um, I think a magician like

(18:32):
foretold his fame one day. Yeah, when he was born.
Supposedly a magician said this guy's can be famous, and
and he was and um, yeah, he was a very
talented linguist. He studied under a guy named Um Sylvester
de Sassy. Yeah, Antoine Isaac Sylvester de Saucy. Uh he um,

(18:55):
who would take a crack at the Rosetta stone. But
he trained uh Champolion. Is that how we're saying it. Yeah,
sure he trained him. Um, but Champolion quickly became went
from student to master. He applied for he applied to
be a student at an institute in Paris, and they
were impressed enough with his application that they said, how

(19:18):
about you just skipped the school part and come beyond
the faculty. That's pretty good. Yeah, that's a talented linguist. Yeah.
They did the same thing when I applied to Georgia.
Is that right? Like you just want to go and
be an English teacher? Na, Oh really you turned it down. Huh. Sure,
I wanted to be a student. Oh gotcha. Um. So
before all this happens, Um, we we have the Greek

(19:38):
inscription transcribed, which that was Reverend Stephen Watson in eighteen
o two. And I don't want to say it was
no big deal, but there were quite a few people
that could have done this. It wasn't like unlocking hieroglyphics,
but it was a necessary part of the process. Right,
So we want to give him his due. So we
have a we have a translation and accurate translation of

(19:59):
what the says exactly. So that's step one. And if
you have one translated, then if you're a linguist, I guess.
I mean it sounds really difficult to do too. I
mean it's I can't imagine the painstaking the process of
figuring out and alphabet. Yeah, I mean, I think about
how hard it is to translate a well known language

(20:20):
and a language that you speak. Imagine translating uh, language
that's totally lost into something understandable. Um. So we had
the Greek and then eventually we had the demotic as well. Um. Yeah,
thanks to Yeah Antoine Uh and that same year at
the same time as Swedish diplomat named Aker balade Um

(20:44):
also translated the demotic um and they both went about
it two different ways. I thought this was pretty interesting. Yeah,
so do saucy Um figured out that there were two
proper names at least in there, Ptolemy and Alexander, and
he used those two match up sounds and symbols. Um
Awker Blode probably had the bigger breakthrough. He used a

(21:07):
different technique. He recognized that there was something similar between
demotic and coptic, and he was well schooled and coptic,
which helped obviously. Yeah, that that was his big breakthrough.
He he figured out what words spelled love, temple, and Greek,
and he used that to form basically this rough uh
structure for Demotic based on his awareness of coptic. Yeah,

(21:31):
that's only eleven letters. It's pretty impressive. Yeah, but I mean,
if you've got eleven letters, it's a decent I think
they called it a skeletal outline. I guess that's what
you'd have. Well, yeah, I mean, especially since Coptic was
only what twenty two plus a couple more from hieroglyphics.
It's like a big wheel of fortune game. Yes after that, right.
So the thing is though, this established connection now between

(21:52):
coptic and demotic and then demonic and hieroglyphics, since they're
side by side, that kind of opened up this meant
reality that would be needed to finally crack the hieroglyphics
for for um, the Rosetta stone. And Thomas Young was
the first to really try it. He was the British guy,
and he got somewhat far, but he gave up. Yeah,

(22:16):
he in eighteen fourteen. His big breakthrough was figuring out
what a cartouche was, and that is um, it's they
say oval, but it's a little more squared away with
round edges, but it's a loop basically with hieroglyphic characters
in it. And he figured out that these are not
only proper names, but royal names. Anything in pain and

(22:38):
containing a cartouche is a royal name, which was a
big breakthrough because he identified Tolemy, the pharaoh's name in
one of the car cartouches cartouche cartouches, and uh, his
Queen Baronica was in there as well, so he said
you know what again, I've got these two names now

(22:58):
to work with hum but he was still working on
Roppolo's false premise that hieroglyphics was not phonetic in nature
and that it was based just on symbols. Right, That's
what Horopolo's big contribution was to confuse a centuries worth
of scholars bad for young because he was onto something

(23:19):
and if he wasn't using that the fake or or
not fake but just the poor system, then he might
have figured it out. Right. So this is the thing
like everyone believed for Apolo, because Popolo claimed that his
translation was a direct translation from hieroglyphic. It was written
in the fifth century a d. Right around the time

(23:39):
we lost hieroglyphics, so it was considered to be a
primary source and basically completely reasonable. Yeah, but it was wrong.
It was wrong because it said that hieroglyphics are symbolic.
So like, if you see a cart a picture that

(24:00):
looks like a cart next to a cat and then
a lizard, what that should say under a Hiropolos translation
is cart, cat lizard. This kept throwing everybody off because
it didn't make sense, especially right, especially when compared to
the Greek translation and the translation of Demotic that didn't
make any sense whatsoever. So, like you said, Young gave up,

(24:23):
but he published his findings, and you can really strongly
make a case that had it not been for Young's breakthrough, Uh,
Champolion would not have cracked the Rosetta Stone. No, which
uh we should mention here that like they should just
accept each other as as co workers and colleagues and
get along. But there was a competition that exists to

(24:45):
this day of who what country claims that they translated
the Rosetta Stone. The French still say that Champagnan was
really the one. The Brits obviously say no, it was
really Young. And even when they displayed it in nineteen
seventy two with the one of the times it's left
England or maybe the only time they let France display
it for like a year, um, they argued about the

(25:09):
size of the photos of the two on both sides
of it, when in fact the photos were the same
size of Young and Champion. Yeah, not photos but portraits. Yeah.
But the French were like, well, no, Young's is bigger.
The Brits were like, no, his is bigger, And they
were the same size, so they were really just they
never came to a common ground on who did it,

(25:29):
when in fact they both did. And there were rumors
apparently during that time that France was gonna to steal
the Rosetta stone and keep it and not turn it
back to England. And this is in the nineteen seventies,
so it's not like a long time ago. Um. So
Champagnon picked up in eighteen fourteen where Young left off
and started to think, you know what, I need to
think more about this, this simple thing that Harapolo like,

(25:52):
I don't know if he he was on base after all.
And that was actually the breakthrough he um. He got
some old cartouches and he figured out, um, that the
last two letters and one of them were identical. So
that's a good thing because you know that it's the
same letter. He figured out that it was the letter
S and um. Then the first character was a circle,

(26:14):
and he said, maybe that's the sun and in ancient Egypt,
the sun god was raw and coptic. Yeah, and so
basically figured out that that name was Ramseys. Yeah. Then
that was a huge breakthrough. He figured out the the
identical letters, the last two were S S, the first
one was raw and since he knew that it was
in a cartouche, that it was a royal name from

(26:37):
that era, the only person it could have been was Ramsey.
So that's how we cracked the code like you say yea,
and cracked it in like, hey, this is a phonetic thing.
He was wrong the whole time, and apparently he fainted
on the spot, which is dramatic, kind of cute. He
was French. Sure. Um. So out of that moment, Egyptology

(26:59):
was fully born, Like now we had a way to
understand all this stuff that hadn't been destroyed and re
used as building material. Just took a long time though.
It wasn't like they could just read it. It still
took a lot of translating. Oh yeah, but they had
the basis. Um. Yeah, all they've done is transcribe one
single stella. They had millennia worth of things to like

(27:22):
papyrus is and papyri um and building inscriptions and sarcopha
guy and all that letters. Yeah whatever. Yeah, um, And
so Egyptology is born. And now that it's understood, at
that moment, there's also a great desire to protect Egypt

(27:42):
and all of its treasures. Yeah, and to get things
right because previous to that in Napoleon and gang did
a pretty good job. But they also speculated a lot. Yeah,
because they couldn't read hyard glyphics. Yeah, so they ended
up correcting a lot of things about what they thought
about Egypt. And Um, like you said, they wanted to
protect things because Egypt at the time was I mean,
they were selling these things off to collectors left and

(28:05):
right because a they did another true value and be
there was a market for it. Sure, doctors during the
Middle Ages who were just big dummies would use mummies
from Egypt. Uh, they grind it up and use it
to cure disease, which didn't work. Um. And so there
was this move to protect Egyptian antiquities from Egyptians. There

(28:30):
was kind of this patriarchal mentality, especially among the British,
that we need to get everything out of Egypt and
into museums and into like the hands of us who
will preserve them and not sell them to Middle Age
or Middle Middle Ages doctors for cure alls. But to
his credit, in my opinion, Champoleon argued very strongly in

(28:53):
favor of keeping them in founding a museum in Egypt
to store these keeping them in Egypt. Yeah. I think
he was a little bit of a control freak, like
he knew that he could care for things in the
proper way and he I don't think he trusted even
other museums at the time to care for things in
the right way. And he was kind of right because
a lot of it was destroyed. Yeah, Like apparently to
preserve an ancient papyrus you have to store it in

(29:16):
a low humidity um area. Yeah, in a chamber and
in a bamboo box container. And they didn't know this,
and they shipped them by seed to the UK and
they all like crumbled the nothingness on the way. Um. Yeah.
So the Rosettason still sits in the museum in London,

(29:39):
where it's been since eighteen o two, except for the
time it went to France briefly. Uh. And in two
thousand three Egypt it was like, you know what, I
want this thing back, not I we want this thing
back and it's ours and it's I don't care who
found it, it's ours. And England said in two thousand
five took him two years to build a replica and say, hey,

(30:02):
how about this, this is just like it I guess
at least they didn't try to pass it off. Well, yeah,
that's true. UM sind him a replica and they're like,
I appreciate this, this is nice, but we really would
like the real thing. And England said no, and not
just England, but a lot of the big museums, the
LOUVERA and UM, a bunch of the world museums kind

(30:25):
of all got together in support of one another and said,
you know what repaid repatriotation is. We're not into it.
We're just not gonna give things back anymore because we
can care for it best. It belongs to the world now.
And they just sort of banded together and said, we're
keeping our stuff, and that's I think we're it's probably

(30:45):
gonna stay. They are trying to get it for a
I think in two thousand twelve they tried to get
it for a the grand opening of the Grand Egypt Museum.
Sounds didn't happen, but even then they said now they
wanted for like three weeks and they said nope, under
the guys of I don't know if it's guys, but
they said, would be too dangerous to transport it. That's
the story they have at least well. Yeah, uh so

(31:09):
that's uh how museums work, pillage and deny village and deny.
Um you got anything else? That is the Rosetto stone, everybody.
If you want to learn more about it, you should
type that word. Those words are O S E T T.
A stone in the search bar house to works. Uh,
and it will bring up this article. And since I

(31:30):
said search bar means it's time for a messagery. Uh, now, Chuck,
it's time for listener mail. Oh no, how about instead? Okay,

(31:54):
all right for those of you don't know, this is
at the point where we read off the people who
we're nice enough to send us little gifts and trinkets
and music and letters and all sorts of things, and um,
here we go go ahead, all right, Sarah send us
some cool graphic prints, one of which was you Can't
Take the Sky from Me from one of my favorite shows, Firefly. Yeah,

(32:18):
very cool prints. Uh. Amy sent us a lovely carved
wooden cicada from Timber Green Woods. Yeah, yeah, it's very cool. Uh.
And McDonough sent us a snoopy postcard and a handwritten
letter of things. Very nice. Uh. Liz from New Zealand
sent us a lot of stuff that's New Zealand candy,
New Zealand chocolate, New Zealand chifs, surfboard postcard, really lovely

(32:42):
framed photos from her dad Rudy Goldstein Photography. But on Facebook,
Uh it's our Goldstein photography, so check it out. Yeah,
it's very cool. I have those on my desk. Um
Sean Antonia sent us some custom vinyls, some stickers from
eight one one Graphics dot com. He and his brother. Yeah,
I have this company. It's cool stuff like skater style stuff. Right.

(33:04):
Um buy Costumes dot com. It's b u y Costumes
dot Com sent us a full size adult gremlin costume
which Ben Bowling wore all day yesterday in the office here. Yeah,
Ben Bowling from stuff they don't want you to know
and car stuff. He's weird. Did you see that? He
emailed me they did that? Did you actually see that?
I haven't seen a picture of him yet. I put
on the hand one day and try to creep out

(33:25):
strict wind, but he was played. That's not the first
Grimlin hand I've had him shoulder. Uh. Cat tpe Megan
sent a cat tpe my way because I have two
cats and uh my big boy Lauren gets in it now.
We call it his spirit tent and he just hangs
out in there, and uh, it's pretty neat. I mean
it's what you think. It's just like a little small
TP for your kiddie though. It's very cute. So if

(33:48):
you have a cat, I would suggest you buying one. Um,
let's see, Susan sent you a birthday card. It's a
dog drinking beer. Yeah, yeah, that was nice. Yeah, Kellum
Clark sent us some T shirts. Um, and he is
a handyman in Brooklyn, and he gifted us two hours
of handyman work to give to someone we know in Brooklyn.

(34:08):
That's very really cool. So I've actually texted our buddy
Joe Randazzo said, hey, you need any work done, we
have two three hours of handyman work. So if you're
in Brooklyn, you can go to not just Handyman dot
com and uh, give kill him a call. He'll fix
your sink or do whatever what you need around the house.
I guess what's he gonna do for I don't know.
Joe didn't respond. What We'll go to Hodgeman next, I guess,

(34:31):
and just work our way down the list all the Hodgeman.
You can afford to pay people, we should give it
to like someone else. Okay, all right, we'll figure it out. Uh.
Clive Fennessy gave us some really cool Panama Canal postcards. Yeah,
it was your neat Rachel from Uber. Have you heard
of Uber. It's a it's sort of like a taxi
cab service now but it's town cars and they have

(34:53):
an app and you can like say just come get
me now that. Yeah. They sent us Uber gift cards. Um,
and I will see you your gift code for us
a hundred bucks and free. Thanks a lot. I know
somebody's going to be going to the airport for free. Yeah.
Kristen Curran has been taking us along with her on
a tour of Europe. It seems like we've got postcards

(35:15):
from her from Edinburgh, Bruges, Amsterdam, Slovakia, Berlin all over
the place. Yeah, so thanks for those. Um. We also
got something from Threadless self designed t shirt bigfoot cradling
and alien lockness monsters in the background. Yeah. There was
also like men in black and an abduction going on,
all sorts of stuff. Very cool. Uh. And then Kira

(35:37):
Newron sent the wives and jewelry um and you can
visit her store. Thank you very much, Kira at um
Cariboo Classics dot Etsy dot com. So that's that's our
administrative details for now, right, Yeah, part one. We'll have
a part two, I guess on the next episode. Yes
we will, where we'll cover music in books. Nice. If

(35:57):
you want to get in touch with us, you can
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can join us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you
Should Know. You can send us an email to Stuff
Podcast at Discovery dot com, and you can join us
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(36:20):
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