Guess what, mango? What's that? Well, all right, I've got a question for you. Have you ever heard of according stick? No? I don't think I have. I'm a little surprised by this because this was popular in New England in the eighteenth century, and I think that was your one of your miners, right, eighth century New England sticks sticks. Actually that's what I meant. All right. So here's how it works.
This is something that happens when young couples want to be together, and it actually originated because they weren't allowed to go on dates or hold hands. It's just kind of funny to imagine. I always think that's a funny, like like you don't want to be seen doing anything
as lude as holding hands and touff. I mean, I'm actually approved about this too, like I I don't want to hold hands and all right, Well, so what happened is these eager teens were looking for solutions because of this, and so the next best thing to sneaking out together was having a boy come over to a girl's house
and this is where they would use according stick. And so it was basically the six ft long tube and this kept the young lovers six ft apart from one another, and then sitting right there under Dad's watchful eye, you could use it to have a conversation. So basically you take turns putting your mouth or ear up to it and then whispers some things, you know, something to the other person that sounds ridiculous. It does. But the weirdest thing is that you were often surrounded by your entire
family while you were doing this. I would just make me so nervous. And so you're flirting in front of like your grandmother and your kid brother, and you know, sometimes neighbors. Just like everyone was around, and so every picture I've ever seen of it looks super awkward. But that's just the first of nine unusual courting techniques we're discussing on today's episode. So let's dive in. Y Hey,
their podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson, and as always I'm joined by my good friend Man Guesh. I ticket and sitting behind the soundproof glass lighting some candles. That's a lot of candles, and there's a nice sent of coming from the mango playing a little bit of Barry White. That's our friend and producer Tristan McNeil, So, well, I'm super excited. We're doing this thing on a courtship techniques. It's gonna be fun and weird. But I'm even more
excited for a guest. Yeah, just so everybody out there knows. When we first came to how Stuff works and we were told, hey, you have the ability to go out and recruit some great new podcasters. The first person we thought about, the first person we reached out to, was
our guest today, and that's Joe Piazza. She's the author of a book called How to Be Married, and Joe traveled the world around to what like twenty different countries, getting just these amazing ideas and hearing from some interesting people on what it's like to be married in different places. And this gave us all this idea for a podcast that we decided to call Committed. And Joe is with us today. So Joe, how's it going? Oh my gosh,
that was so flattering. I feel like you guys are courting me or something like my own candles over here. We'll get to that. We'll get to that, but first we need to talk about Committed because it has launched and we will hope all of our listeners will check it out. It's just called Committed. You can find it on Apple podcast or anywhere else that you listen to your podcast. But Joe, we obviously know a whole lot about the show, but can you tell our listeners tell
us a little bit about Committed. Yeah. So, when I first got married, I had no idea how to be a wife, no idea how to be a partner, no idea how to be married. And like you said, I traveled around the world trying to figure it out. And what I learned was there wasn't great advice per se. But the thing that stuck with me were the stories
from different people. I loved hearing the stories about real love, real commitment, real marriage, because marriage doesn't end after I do, and that's the only thing that we ever see in a romantic comedy. The stories I'm Committed are hilarious and heartbreaking, and sometimes they're both within the same five minutes. Our guests have persevered. Our first episodes were launching with a couple who law their legs in the Boston marathon bombing,
and now they're trying to rebuild their marriage. We have another couple where the wife suffered a stroke and no longer had short term memory. Her husband needs to be both his and her memory for the entire couple. And these stories are incredible. And I also get to live vicariously through the couples, So I get to find out what it's like to be married to a rock star, something I've always wanted to know, or a porn star, something I didn't know that I wanted to know, but
I definitely did, and so does everyone else. I get to find out what it's like to be in a polyamorous relationship. I got to find out what a polyamorous relationship really was. So I'm I'm obsessed with this show. The podcast is so much better than I ever thought it was going to be, and the stories are something really special. Yeah, I mean they're so beautiful and uplifting and also just so funny, like what it's like to be married to a psychic and how you are you
when you're in a marriage with the psychic. It's just so hilarious. The Psychic relationship is fantastic because not only did we find out what it's like to be married to a psychic, but she also did a past life reading for Nick and I where we found out that we were Vikings together, married Vikings in a past life, but not the raping and pillaging kind of Vikings. The community building. Hopefully you still have the hats, though Nick
still has the beard. Good, well, wonderful, Joe. I'm curious before we jump into the to the nine things, what's been your favorite part of this show so far? My favorite part of the show is just how honest people are. I feel like people are hungry to talk about real love, real commitment, real marriage, because we sugar coat everything these days on social media and everyone's posting their adorable couple of photos, hashtag couple goals, hashtag date night, and it's
really awful, right, people are hungry for something honest. They're hungry to talk about the real, nitty gritty what it's like to wake up next to the same person every day of your life. And sometimes that's amazing and sometimes it's terrible. And they're eager to tell those stories, and I'm eager to share them with the world. Yeah, I mean, I'm so excited for people to listen to partially because I find the story so inspiring. They really do make
me want to be a better partner. And you hear these stories of like the couple who survived the marathon bombing, or like the um the couple without memory. The fact that they're constantly working to make really memorable experiences so that you can remember them is just phenomenal. It's stunning and and there's so much emotion packed in here, and I really can't wait for people to listen. Yeah, every time I finished one of these episodes, I go into Nick and I'm like, I should be a better wife.
I should really we we have it pretty good. I should really just be better at this, or we need to find a better wife to join us, or let's or let's recruit a better way and that will be our next podcast. It's kind of like The Bachelorette. We didn't want to tell Joe this, but actually this whole thing was a set up to help Joe be a better one. That's that's really what this podcast is all about.
All right, Well, speaking of the emotional, we thought we would jump into these courting rituals, so I started us off with carrying a big stick. So Joe, we're gonna turn it to you. Do you have a first fun fact for us in this category? So I like this one, especially coming on the news this week that the Miss America pageant is getting rid of their bathing suit competition. Finally. Um in Niger, the Woodhabi tribe does beaty pageants the way that they should have always been done, with male
contestants out on the edge of the Sahara Desert. It's the men who dress up and paint their faces and dance to impress female judges. All right, that's a good one to kick us off. Okay, Mango, what's your what's your first fact? So this is a custom from the maw ethnic group in southwest China, and it happens at the Sister's Meal Festival in April, which I guess is
something like a Valentine's Day. And I'm not sure if you remember doing this, but like when we were in fourth grade, you might pass a crush a note that has I guess, like a box to say yes or no, and you say, like do you want to go play pop pot with me? Or do you want to go to the school dance or whatever. Um. I did that with Tristan and the other day he play with me and it was fun. He marked it yes and pasted back.
But at the Sister's Meal Festival, the women get all dolled up and they cook lots of sticky rice in different colors, and then they wait for these suitors to, I guess, serenade them. And I learned about this from a lonely planet. But after a gentleman caller serenades their crush, the woman will give them like a bundle of sticky rice. And if you unwrap it and you find two chopsticks, it means she likes you. And if you find only one chopstick, it means a polite no. But there are
also these stronger messages there too. So if you find a garlic clover a chili in your rice, it's basically a girl rejecting in front of all your friends. Yeah, I mean it basically means you've got a long neces serenading ahead of you. But if you find a single pine needle in there, it means definitely maybe, because she might see you as a fixer of single pine needle. Wow, that's pretty good. I love these different traditions in ways that people like to express or ask them to, you know,
to be a couple. But the pine needle, it feels awful because like, what did you accidentally eat it? Right, like it would just get stuck in your throat. Then you'll you'll remember definitely, maybe for a long time. And and that's the risk that you're willing to take for love. It is It is well speaking of the work that goes into expressing your love for someone. Actually, I want to talk a little bit about spooning, but not the type of spooning that that we're all familiar with here
in the US. But this is an old Welsh tradition that dates back to the seventeenth century. And so Welch boys would make these what we're called love spoons, and so they would work for days carving out these little wooden spoons that they would then offered to their crushes and then basically what they were waiting on was to see if they accepted them. And if they accepted these spoons, then that meant that, you know, they were able to
pursue this relationship. And of course if they rejected them, then it was just sad because they were rejecting both their craft and the opportunity to be a couple. And of course, you know, it's not exactly the same type of tradition now, they don't make them as in the same way, but they actually do on special occasions. They will give these um too, you know, those that they love, you know, on marriage days or other special days. It's kind of a fun tradition. I like this idea of like,
I like your cutlery, but one more. Yea, yeah, exactly, thanks me. Another question, are you guys the big spoon or a little spoon? So this is all saved for your podcast, You're gonna have to. Uh, we live in Atlanta. Were on separate sides of the bed. It's so hot.
Apparently it matters. When I was talking to the Samburu tribe in Kenya, the women told me that they were the big spoons and that the women that were the big spoons ended up having the happier marriages because it let them like exert this kind of control over their husband, but also to to comfort them in their sleep. Yeah, I'm with you, Mango. It's just I just need my space when I'm sleeping. So it's like, there's no such thing. I'm not sure what you'd be calling. It looks more
like fly on the wall type thing. So all right, here we go. So Joe, what's your what's your next fact? All right? So I never knew that Cambodian parents were this progressive. But apparently in the Krong tribe, when a girl comes of age, like a little bit after puberty, her parents build her this little hut in which she is instructed to start exploring her sexuality. They even call
it a love hut. And this, I mean, this seems like a much better place to explore your sexuality than in the back row of a movie theater watching aspen extreme. Not that that's where I explored my own sexual right, right, that's pretty movie. So parents in the tribe even encourage young women to sleep with multiple partners in order to find mr. Right. So it's a little bit like sex in the city, except it all takes place inside the hut because you're not allowed to be seen together outside
of the hut until you're officially a couple. But the nice part about this is that it's not all about the sex. It's also a place where the kids can get to know each other away from their parents. And I think that's really civilized and rational. It makes a lot of sense. That's very interesting. Yeah, alright, Mango, what do you have next? So I was thinking, like, why just keep this to humans, because they're all sorts of stupid in the animal kingdom. Well, I mean, like bower
birds make houses. I also love that fiddler crabs this pomp for women, just like they're clubbing at the Jersey Shore like that. That's one of my favorite things to watch. But nursery spiders are actually my favorite because, you know, just like the women at the Sisters Festival, they like to make little parcels of food that they've caught and then present them in pretty silk packets to their potential mates, and if the lady spider accepts it, he'll mate with
her a while she's unwrapping and eating the feast. That's less romantic, but but I do like this presenting thing. But here's the interesting part. Male nursery spiders are also idiots, and often they'll get hungry and suck the food out from the package before they gift it, and so they're just passing along an exo skeleton wrapped in the silk. Or sometimes they'll try to dupe the women by just
wrapping a twig and silk, and they're really dumb. But like the females aren't idiots, Like they'll actually way the packages and then reject the dudes immediately. Okay, yeah, that is that is pretty good. All right, Well, I know we all have one more fact to share today. Before we get to that, let's take a quick break. Welcome back to part time Genius, where we're sharing our unusual courting techniques or facts about those. So we each have one more, if you don't mind, I'll jump in next.
I've got one that I thought was pretty interesting. So obviously, all grown up knowing that whistling at someone, if a man whistles at a at a woman, we see that as inappropriate or crass, are rude, and and that's not really something that the people should be doing. But actually, in the Kickapoo tribe in Mexico, they've been using this special whistling language as a way to communicate with each
other that I thought this was actually pretty interesting. They can whistle these sweet nothings to their lovers, and actually not not just that, but they have to learn to whistle in almost special ways that our code to each other.
And they're communicating so it's not just to say like, hey, I'm attracted to you, But then they learned to pass messages back and forth through these certain whistles, so they have to kind of develop their own tone and own little language around and that I feel like it was just super interesting. So alright, so that is my last fact of the day. Jody, have one for this last fact um, And I'm hoping that Nick doesn't listen to this podcast because I'm going to try it on him
and see what happens. I'm gonna I'm gonna sneak attack him with this one. So out in the Austrian countryside in the nineteenth century, young eligible women had this very particular way to see if a guy was into them, like really into them. To make sure for sure that the guy liked them, during dances, she would take a slice of apple and wedge it into her armpit. At the end of the night, she'd give it to the guy that she liked and if he ate it, then they were clearly yeah. Yeah, And so I was going
to add it to his apple in the morning. But you know, after after I looked this up, I bought an apple down down the street of the bodega. And it's really hard to keep an apple wedged in your armpit. Yeah yeah, So I mean that's showing to devotion on both part. I the guy eats it. But if the girl manages to keep that apple in her armpit all night, you know she's she's really making an aff I was gonna say that, I know, while you're doing all the single ladies. I know, Yeah, how am I supposed to
do that? All the single ladies dance with an apple? What an interesting tradition? All right, mangoes the last one of the day. What do you have? So my final tip recording someone is to marry a tree. And this doesn't work for everyone, but the telegraph to the story on this and I vaguely heard of this custom. It actually is from India. It isn't something that plays into my community. But um, do you guys know that film star? I swear your RYE don't. So she's super stunning. She's
like known as the most beautiful woman in India. She was Miss Universe, she became a Bollywood star. She was also in Pink Panther, to which I'm sure you all saw. But apparently she's what's called monglic And it's when you've got this astrological curse on you. And apparently it's because
the way the stars line up for your birth. But essentially what it means is that Mars is going to cause havoc in your marriage, and the way out of it is by tricking Mars and getting hitched to a tree like like you do this in a full ceremony with priest and family. And the idea is that once you've pulled one over on all Mars, you're you know, you're free to court whoever you want, which in this case she she married a fellow of Bollywood love, So
that's pretty good. I want to go ahead and admit that there have been two facts that actually reminded me of Molly Shannon's character Mary Catherine Gallagher. Putting things in your armpits was the first one, and then from her oh so terrible but also wonderful movie Superstar, when she's whispering these sweet nothings to a tree and somebody calls this and buster, I just felt like I needed to
get that off my chest and admit that. So all right, Well, before we go, we've got to declare our winner, Mango, who do you think deserves to win today's fact? I mean that apple fact was so gross, so gross, and so wonderful, so wonderful at the same time. And speaking of wonderful. I do hope all of our listeners will
check out the new podcast Committed. We have had a blast working with Joe and Ramsey and the entire team here at how Stuff Works on this There are a couple of episodes now that are available for all listeners, and they'll be coming out once a week from here on. We love working with you, Joe. Congratulations on this launch and I can't wait to see what's next. Thanks guys, We're gonna have a lot of fun