Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles w Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there, and we're all being very dainty and mindful and considerate and this.
Is stuff you should know. That's right. And another great article from Libya. She got right to the meat of the matter. So maybe we should too.
Sure, Okay, I had about six seven minutes of discourse on my own personal experience with manners. But okay, hey, Pepper thows in, I don't really have that, I know. So we are talking about manners, and essentially we should probably define it because manners are exactly what you think of, but what you think can also slide into what really is considered etiquette, which we'll talk a little bit about later. But manners can vary quite dramatically from locality to locality.
They can be regional, national, cultural, household the household. They can differ within a neighborhood, like, for example, some houses in neighborhood will ask you to take off your shoes when you go in the house.
Others are like, why would.
You do that?
That would be considered manners one way or the other, especially the taking off of your shoes thing. So it's kind of like an expectation of polite behavior that is culturally bound. Typically that's what manners.
Are, and a time era based it.
Can be, for sure. But some Chuck Olivia cited almost out of the gate an Egypsian vizier who's a political advisor from the Furonic era. His name was ta Hotep, not to be confused with Bubba Hotep, but ta Hotep, and he in his resignation letter, essentially his retirement letter to the pharaoh, gave all of this advice to young people in particular, but it was just basically life advice. But it was generally advice on manners, and it is it holds up today, like four thousand years later.
Some of it does. One of the pieces of advice was to stay away from a battle of insults. Good advice, yep. Avoid gossip that's another good one.
Yeah.
One that's a little questionable is eat whatever a superior offers you.
Especially if they mash it in your mouths, they eat it.
Stupid cow.
Yeah, no, I agree, but they can stand the test of time, for sure. But sometimes they're very locked in time. But the difference between manners and etiquette even though you can,
you know, you can use those interchangeably generally. But etiquette is a little more formalized, like set of rules, and you'll often see them like published in books, and a lot of times it's tied to very ritualized, formalized stuff like you know, in the King's court, in royal courts, at fine formal dining meals and stuff like that, So it's a little more formal.
Yeah, Manners are another way to put it in. Manners are something that are ingrained from you by your culture, from.
Your early childhood on.
Etiquette is something you kind of actually have to actively seek out to learn, like whether it's from a book or from a finishing school or something like that.
Yeah, or you have like a.
Spinster aunt who doesn't have anything else to do but browbeat you into keeping your elbows off the table tammy, dammy oh man.
So one thing that you're going to see pop up a lot. And we probably don't even have to mention all of these examples because Libby is always so great at our cup always runneth over when she gives us stuff. But one repeated thing that you'll see is a lot of philosophers talk about this kind of stuff, and most of them agree, And most people agree that manners aren't
just it's not just, hey, be polite to people. It's this is sort of the these are sort of the unwritten rules that keep us functioning as a civilized society.
Yeah, high and low, like some are really really important, like prohibitions on violence, especially random on expected violence against other people. That's tip very better falls under Yeah, it does.
It falls under the category of manners technically. And then also it can be much more evolved in just designed to make life more pleasant, like say opening doors for people you know, man or woman, but the person following you holding the door for them, that's mannerfol It just makes it nicer than the shutting the door on somebody's face who's coming in behind you. And that If you
put all that together, manners essentially hold civilization together. They're the glue that keeps civilization civilized.
Yeah. There was one modern day philosopher that Lyvia found named Anya Barringer, who said, it's sort of like it keeps you pro social and keeps your attention focused on making sure other people are doing fine. And an example that Olivia gab was like, you know, let's say you're throwing a dinner party at your house, and what you really want to do, though, halfway through that dinner party maybe is good to bed because you're just beat, But
you don't because that would not be mannerly. So what you're doing is you're focusing on everyone else and making sure their drink is filled, that they had all they want to eat, and you're maybe clearing the dishes and doing all that stuff. So you're focused, and it's all under the umbrella of good manners. But what you're really doing is focusing on pro social behaviors.
Right, And so some people that now we enter like where some people are really critical of that. Like some people would argue, you're really tired, go to bed, Why are you Why are you sacrificing your health conceivably just to keep some people you may or may not even particularly like satisfied. Sure you would hope, but I mean, somebody always brings tammy, I know. So there's a guy, a philosopher named Diogenes. He was one of the founders of the school of Cynics way back in the day
in ancient Greece I believe in the third century. Yeah, about twenty three hundred years ago. In Diogenies, he dedicated his life to pointing out the hypocrisy that manners generate in people. He saw manners as a forced mask that people had to wear that hid their true cells from
other people. And he wasn't saying you should go around and like hit other people if you want to, Like, he married the thing with morality, like you needed to be moral and upstanding, but you didn't need to be, you know, deferential to some superior because they're superior because society says they are. They're no more superior to you than you are to them. That was diogenes whole thing.
And he hated manners so much so that he engaged in some pre shocking behavior in public just to kind of prove his point.
Yeah, as the stories go, he would masturbate and urinate in public and defecate. Yeah. So I don't know when you talk about like he really believed in like upstanding morals.
Sure, but his point was if you're doing something in private with no problem, you should be able to do it in public. You're hiding your true self if you don't masturbate in public essentially was Diogeny's point, and as a result, people don't typically take up Diogeny's point, and in fact, he's very frequently considered an exception to the rule.
Like the fact that he railed so hard against manners and just basically it seemed like a weirdo to everybody else kind of shows the importance of manners and keeping civilized society together. Like people are like, okay, yeah, I will kind of not respond to a jerk who's you know, socially my social better in exchange for not having to walk down the street and watch everybody masturbating in.
Public, right right. Even the great philosophers over time that have sort of had a problem with the really formal, hoity toity, courtly type of stuff and that kind of extravagance, most of them even still agreed that like a basic level of manners and politeness is important to hold society together, and if it was, if we didn't have that stuff,
society would just crumble. Where it can get really tricky, and we'll talk you know about this here and there is when you're you get too into policing someone else's manners, or when you're using that as sort of a I guess, sort of a dog whistle to talk about like the quote unquote wrong kinds of people and that kind of thing that can get very squirmy and thorny.
Right, We also should say, and we'll get into it a little more later, it's manners are culturally bound. Like what's what's good manners in one society is not necessarily easily translated to another society. Olivia used the example of the Joho Jojo Nazi Johoansi.
That's what I'm going with.
Joe Ho Nazi people of Namibia, and they're hunter gatherers, and they have a tradition where the hunter who brings back meat is often its typically criticized for it there not being enough meat for the meat being of like so so quality, and they're doing that to like knock them down a peg so he doesn't feel any more superior to anybody else. And you actually see this in
like the British Isles. It's a real tradition, not necessarily of criticizing the meat a hunter brings back, but it could happen and more just kind of like social restrictions like getting too big for your bridges, I think is a way to put it.
Yeah, And a lot of the European style of etiquette is historically a lot of it is based around these meal times and very formal set meal times that you sit down all together and you eat this big meal, and a lot of cultures through history don't do that kind of thing. Native Americans didn't, or you know, many tribes didn't sit and have some big meal. Their jam was to like, hey, I got a stew on the pot at all hours of the day, So if you show up in my place, I might offer you some
food you might want to eat. If you're hungry, then that's great. So we don't have that kind of formal thing. So that's obviously going to cause some friction and awkwardness when Europeans come over and meet Native Americans and say, we're going to make our way your way.
So I was reading about that and apparently that social standard for manners for offering food and having like a perpetual pot of stew going was that held up during lean times winter like it didn't matter how little food you had, you still were expected to have that pot of you for for visitors.
Yeah, and I think if the TV show Reservation Dogs is accurate, and I believe it is to modern day Native American culture. They on that show, they were they eat a lot, and they offer each other food a lot.
Yeah. Yeah.
And there's another thing about offering food is there's a lot of cultures that expect you to decline being offered additional food. But there's that's part of a larger kind of dance where you the the host continues to offer multiple times, and then after a set amount of times, you can then and are actually expected to to say, yes, that would be great, thanks, I'll take I'll take some more.
Yeah. That that can be a big thing in the South, Uh, offering you food over and over or like.
Uh.
I've experienced that with Italian families in the Northeast. Uh. You know, sit down, keep eating right, and you know, I'm usually happy, happy to oblige. I don't want to be rude.
Sure, who would be? You want to take a break, Yeah.
Let's take an early break before we dive into europe salvation no dovish no. All right. So, as we say, manners and etiquette has changed here and there over the years, and as we'll see a lot of times when there's a big sort of like a big war or big social change or a big change in power or something like that. A lot of times you'll see these etiquette
rules changing. And there's a book called The History of Manners written in nineteen thirty nine by Norbert Elias that said that, you know, medieval era through the nineteenth century, there was a big change in that. That's when people started to care a little bit how they were viewed by other people. They started to feel shame for doing
things for the first time. Yeah, and they started to say things like, you know, it's really gross to see you blow your nose at the table or to go like to get up from your meal and go urinate in the corner or something like that, and like we need we should keep our bodily functions to ourselves.
Yeah.
So around the time of the Renaissance, the first guides to manners started to come out, and that was a good example of social organization in upheaval. The Renaissance was, so it makes sense that this would be one of the first guides to manners. In Europe, it was called the sivila tate morum purillium, which means civility of childish manners.
Yeah.
It was written by Erasmus, the famous Dutch philosopher, back in fifteen thirty, and he took some time out from translating the New Testament to write down manners, which basically was like, Hey, don't stir gravy with your fingers, don't blow your nose on the tablecloth at the table. Actually, just don't blow your nose on any tablecloth anywhere in any part of the house.
Yeah.
And then if they showed spoons a lot, there would be communal soup, so you would taste the soup with the spoon, and he instructed, okay, after that, wipe it with a napkin after your use of that spoon before you put it back, which seems highly civilized for fifteen thirty.
Can I cover this other one?
Yes? Please.
It's a pretty great trick still holds up today. If you have to fart at the table, cover up the sound of the fart with a heavy cough.
I can't cough that long.
Well, And to me, those two things are sort of I don't know if I can do those things at the same time, because they both engage the same mechanisms for me, right, I don't know that'd be weird. I've never tried.
Instead, suck in a bunch of air in pucker your bottom hole. That's my advice.
Yeah, I'm gonna try that at some point, not at a dinner table. I don't fart at the dinner table at all.
Good for you, Chuck, You're really Erasmus would be proud.
In the eighteenth century, in the royal courts, things got a little more sophisticated. Etiquette got a little more rigid. They you know, the word etiquette actually came from this time period. Comes from France, obviously, and there are different stories that it came from the word for ticket or
a label. Some people you might find online that it came from signs keep off the grass, signs that King Louis had at Versailles, even though Livia said she couldn't find a lot of really great things to back that up. But Marie Antoinette apparently did have a nickname for her French aristocratic retainer, Madame Etiquette, because she was always saying, like, you gotta do this, you got to do this right.
They also did eventually start printing instructions for how to behave at court, and that really follows in the vein of a label or a ticket. So that also kind of later on, I think, after the fact, became etiquette a name for that. It didn't make its way into English until I think the seventeen hundreds of mid seventeen hundreds, and there was an Earl of Chesterfield, the fourth to be exact. His name was Philip Dormer Stanhope, and he was very famous for a series of letters that he
wrote to his illegitimate son. He was a minister in Holland for the English Crown, and while there he fathered a son, and he kept in touch and basically tried to explain to his son how to behave in civilized society. And it ended up being, if you put all the letters together, a pretty funny, witty but also very insightful treat us on manners.
At the time, Yeah, it was kind of long distance fathering. He talked about Libya. Is quite a few of these. These are pretty good, but long talkers. That's a pretty fun one. If one of these unmerciful talkers lays hold of you, hear him with patience and at least seeming attention, if he is worth obliging.
Yeah or yeah, don't carve meat to so much that you bespatter the company with the sauce or turn overturn the glasses in your neighbor's pockets. So just don't, you know, just be cool when you're carving meat, I think.
Is what he was saying.
Yeah, that's pretty good.
What else?
This one I don't quite get, although I think I do maybe for the time period. In scandal, as in robbery, the receiver is always thought as bad as the thief. So I get that he's talking about gossip. So like the gossiper, you know, is no better than the person that they're gossiping about.
No, no, I think the person listening to the gossip too.
Well, everyone's bad then, right. But what I don't get is comparing it to a robbery, Like if you're.
The fence and you're getting the stolen items, you're no better than the thief who actually went in and stole the items.
Oh, the receiver is the fence, Okay, I get it out.
Yeah yeah, like Redfoot, Yeah yeah. Another one that I thought was pretty interesting was be not dark nor mysterious, And he was basically saying, like, be friendly to everybody, but be careful how much information you share, and that is a long standing piece of advice for manners. It goes back to Yeah, it goes back to Betahoe Tep who basically said, like, when you're speaking to your equal, you can be better than them by being silent. Like, really,
watch how much information you share with those people. And the Philip Sandhope was widely criticized, I'm not sure if it was in his lifetime or not when his letters came out and were published for being a very cynical person who was also you know, shrewdly tuned in to manners and how to act courtly. But that really it's he exposed it for its worst kind of use, which is social jockeying, essentially trying trying to get ahead by hijacking the prescribed set of manners or rituals or etiquette
that that anybody can engage in. And if you do it right and you're charming enough and you peer sincere on the surface, even the greatest psychopath around can become very wealthy and powerful thanks to etiquette. Following etiquette manners.
Yeah, I mean that's a little tricky though, because a lot of people have labeled that very thing sort of the great democratizer. If you're someone who is of a you know at the time and whatever culture you're in, like in a what's looked at as a lower class, and you can learn these etiquette rules and pass yourself off physy upper class, then it levels the playing field totally.
It does both.
Yeah, it's interesting.
They're not mutually exclusive. It's just some of those people can have ill intentions or be insincere jerks. Other people are like, I really want to do better for myself and there's not easy access to college. This is how to how to get ahead in life, So I'm going to go learn this stuff and be earnest about it.
Yeah, I mean that's a common I'm not gonna call it a trope, but just sort of a common theme and a lot of movies of someone sort of conning their way into the elite society, whether it's oh gosh.
Secret of My Success, Short Circuit Too.
Six Degrees of Separation, or I can't think of Grifters is even doing that.
I've never seen it.
Oh wow, Grifters is great, But you know, I can't think of like an old sort of English movie version of that. But I know, oh, like tricking your way into court was a common theme.
What about Barry Linden. Oh, yeah, there you go, thank you, thank you everybody?
What agreatment? Did you hear the applaude?
Yeah in my head. So.
And then in the United States, the initial adoption of manners and etiquette in particular was basically European exports important to the States from very early on. And it wasn't until the nineteen twenties that well, I shouldn't say that, it wasn't until the nineteen twenties that the Americans were exposed to the formal etiquette that had developed over the years on its own in America through Emily Post. Now, it had been developing from say the mid nineteenth century on.
It basically was attached to a rocket ship during the Second Industrial Revolution in the United States and the ensuing Gilded Age, because there was suddenly a lot of very wealthy people who may or may not have had any
wealth whatsoever before. And so all of these all this etiquette, these rules of etiquette started to develop and pass along, and Emily Post was raised in that world, and she, as I think a forty something divorce a sat down and put pen to paper and wrote what became the most successful etiquette book of all time.
Yeah, in nineteen twenty two, Etiquette in Society, not a colon Everybody a comma, Etiquette in Society and business and politics and at home. These days that would still have a colon and some dumb long subtitle.
It'd be nothing. It be instead of commas to be colon, colon, colon, colon.
Everywhere, aka how to act right right. But you know, Emily Post is very famous for being sort of one of the first Americans to put this forward. She talked about belonging to the best society, and in her eyes that meant, well, you know, you're born into it in Europe, or you're born into it or earn it in the way of wealth in the US. But what I'm really trying to talk about is just how to belong in those worlds because you're polite and you have good behavior
and a charm of manner. Vanity Fair. Laura Jacobs from Vanity Fair said it was one of the twenty centuries great acts of democracy. And again it's this idea that here's the code everybody. It's for everyone to learn if they want to.
Yeah, I was reading about her. I was reading that Vanity Fair article, and Emily Post was a heck of a person. She had a great sense of humor, She had a great sense of perspective of herself in the world and even the manners that she was talking about. But she became divorced after it came to light that her husband had been running around on her. But before they divorced, she found out about this because he was being blackmailed. There's a blackmailing scheme that blackmailed everybody in
New York society. And they finally got around to Emily Post's husband and he told her about it, and she said, don't do not just fall prey to these people, like call the cops, expose these people. And she did it at the risk of great personal scandal, like she was outed as having been cheated on by her husband, which really shouldn't have shocked anybody, like all husbands cheated on their wives back then, especially in that level of society.
But she put herself out there and allowed it to happen, to be publicly humiliated, I guess is what you call it, in order to prevent some scummy blackmailers from winning again. And she actually shut down the blackmailing ring with the help of the cops just by allowing this to happen.
Was there an etiquette angler or was that just mora an Emily post?
Was it just shows that she had such a sense of justice and what was right that she was willing to put herself out there in a really un comfortable way to ensure that that justice was done.
I think, awesome.
Yeah, she's a neat person.
So Judith Martin is another very famous manner advice person here in America, Miss Manners aka Miss Manners. This advice column started in nineteen seventy eight, it's still around, and Judith Martin is another person who says, you know, this is the glue that binds society and kind of holds us all together.
Yeah.
There was another term, which I really like call the politics of respectability, coined by a historian named Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, and she was talking about black women in the progressive era who were saying, you know, be polite, be modest,
and this is how we're gonna help make change. And Olivia points out, like these these awful pictures during the Civil Rights era of black American you know, dressed in their best Sunday suit, you know, getting fire hosed at a demonstration, you know, stuff like that.
Yeah, some people have said like that's that was a good tactic, like it made a lot of sense at the time, and it probably did help quite a bit. But just if you step back and think about having to be civilized in the face of that, just to get basic entrance to to constitutional rights is pretty rotten if you stop and think about it like that.
Yeah, I mean there are a couple of angles, for sure.
So I say we take our second ad break and then come back and talk about get this manners.
Let's do it.
Noon, okay, Chuck. So we were talking earlier about how manners and even etiquette are not easily translated across culture. Sometimes some are I was looking for universal manners and I could not find them. I think the closest thing that I found that was essentially universal is and I don't even think that's correct, but I'll say that it's very widespread is the concept of superiors, equals and inferiors within a society and how you interact with each one.
That seems to be fairly universal except in Scotland and among the Jewel Huansi, Jewel hu Nasi.
Oh that's funny. Yeah, I mean, there are a lot of examples of this. There's we talked about Edward T. Hall in our pair Personal Space episode in nineteen fifty five. This is when he was some of his best work, and he talks about and this is course in nineteen fifty five. But so it's kind of funny to look at some of these. But he talked about Americans interacting with other countries, and he was like, you know, if you're from China, you might be you might think someone
raising their voice like always means that they're angry. So that if they see an American like really emphasizing a point by raising their voice, they might be caught off guard and think they're angry. Whereas, and again this is the nineteen fifties and Latin America. If a business person from America introduced themselves, like you know, from across the room and said, mister Charles W. Chuck Bryant, they may
think that's a little too formal. But then on the other hand, they also might say, but these Americans, they'll just like kick back and put their feet on their desk in the middle of a meeting. And you don't do that kind of thing at work.
I can just see an American meeting somebody from like Brazil and introducing themselves as mister right. Some Brazil's does their best, like Emo Phipps, like Lah.
Remember him?
He was famous for that who Emo Phipps. He had that weird like page boy haircut.
And he was Phillips, Emo Phillips.
I thought it was Phipps.
I thought it was Phillips. Am I wrong.
No, I think it's one of those two.
He's still around, I think, or did he just pass away?
I don't think so.
No, Okay, I never I think. Didn't we talk about him recently?
Yes?
But then I feel like we did. Okay, No, he's still a life.
Good for him? Is it Phillips or Phipps?
It's Phillips Okay, I'm sorry.
Emo, he's almost seventy. What I know?
Wow?
That page boy? That will make you look young, Chuck.
I think we're getting old too. Is one of the things.
No, Uh, let's talk about punctuality for a minute. Yeah, that's huge, because that's, depending on where you are, can mean a lot of things. I often laugh when I think back at going to my dear friend Seema's wedding.
She married my good friend Chris, and they had you know, big Indian wedding and everyone was always late on her side to all the functions, and she just always laughed and was like, hey, the Indians relationship to time is very loose, and so everyone just get used to it because it's going to be happening in all weekend long, right, And they were all wonderful and they were always late, and it was a lot of fun and funny.
So in Australia and New Zealand, punctuality is very very important, like even more important than in the United States, where it's pretty important.
Here.
I mean, there's usually about a five minute grace period to where the person is willing to not get upset I.
Think, and then fins on the thing fifteen minutes if.
It's something that you're paying somebody for, like say, oh sure, hair appointment or whatever. If you're trying to move your part closer to the crown of your head, you can be up to fifteen minutes late without without them penalizing you.
Right.
But for the most part it's pretty important here. I get the impression. In Australia New Zealand it's I saw it put it.
It's critical yeah. My deal with punctuality is I am a very punctual person. I get very stressed out if I'm running late, and I really try my best to not run late for anything. And I've but I've gotten really good about trying to not let other people's lateness upset me. Like with friends and stuff. Oh yeah, yeah, because that's no good. Like you don't want to be mad at a friend if you're waiting on them to
go do something fun and out. I mean, like, yeah, we're gonna go over and play hacky sack in the park, like you know, a concert or something that has a time that you're now sort of running late for. I would get upset, So I've what I've learned to do is not just not get upset because I can't control my emotions like that, but I have. There are certain people in my life that are always late, and I just started telling them thirty minutes early. Smart that's all
you got it. That's the I'm not even gonna call it a hack. That's just smart living.
No, that'stepulation, but smart manipulation, and I think justified to people are begging for it. We're both punctual, definitely, and I get very stressed out too. Especially, I've really had to kind of get more laid back about making it to the airport because Uman's like, let's just get there two minutes before they close the door, so we don't we don't have to spend much time.
On the airport. In theory.
I love that, but that's not no, I can't. So I used to be like a like, let's leave maybe more than two hours before our flight.
To get to the airport.
And now I'm like, okay, I can conceivably leave like maybe eighty minutes, ninety minutes before something like that, maybe an hour, depending on how like Lucy Goosey, I'm feeling.
I like to be early for flights just because I can. I just don't want to be stressed out at all, So I like to be pretty early.
Okay, so fair enough.
Punctuality very important. Another one is eye contact. That's another universal one, but it's not in a necessarily the same around the world, and in fact it's quite the opposite from place to place. In America the United States, you want to hold some sort of eye contact, there's a certain amount and you have to This just takes a lot of practice. You can very easily trep into like crazy looking territory or creepy if you overdo it. But if you underdo it, you seem untrustworthy and shady.
So you have to do just the.
Right amount of eye contact and you can look away and then you look back again, depending on how long the conversation is. Apparently in the UK you just don't really make much eye contact at all during a conversation.
Yeah. What I found works for me is to try and not think about it, because once that happens, I'm done.
Oh yeah, yeah sure.
Like in conversation with someone out to know, I try to be like, yeah, just have a normal conversation. You kind of look at someone's face in general, look them in the eyes, to the way a little bit, touch their cheek here and there if they say it's okay. But once it gets into my head, if it's a nervy situation and I'm like am I making an eye contact? And am I making too much? Then I'm just done.
For it totally, especially if you like look away seven.
Look back and they're like, why are you counting? There's there may be at least a short stuff into eye contact, because there's a lot more to just besides you know, being rude or not being rude, like the science of eye contact and what it means and the brain signals that are being received and stuff like that. So yeah, I don't know, there may be something there.
They say the eyes are the window to the face.
Quickly on punctuality. Did every tell you my Chiquill o'neial photo shoot story?
I probably have, yes, but let's hear it again because it's been a while.
Well, and I don't know if this is the angle that I even mentioned last time. But I was a on a job. It was a still photo shoot with Shaquille O'Neil on a beach in LA and he was supposed to get there at He was supposed to get there at like three so we could shoot him out at sunset on a beautiful beach at five. And Shaq showed up at like noon and said, I'm leaving it too because I got to go get my daughter from school.
And if you've never worked in film shoots and TV and movie shoots and stuff like, you don't like the schedules are very almost military like, and how rigid they are, and you don't just say, by the way, I'm going to completely change the timeframe here, but you can if you're Shaquille O'Neil.
Yeah, and if you look closely, there is not a single General Insurance commercial that was shot around sunset.
Here's the thing, though, I don't want it. He wasn't rude about it. He was very nice. He wanted to get his daughter from school, and everyone shifted their day and it worked out great and we had a good time.
Yeah, you gotta be.
Careful, Chuck, because he lives here in Atlanta. You might bump into him like a Papa John.
There, you remember me? How was that, p U?
Yeah, totally.
So there's some other questions about manners, like it's really fun. Actually, we found a great article on trip Advisor.
Written.
Clearly by somebody who's not American born or US born, but who has a pretty good idea of what goes on here. So it's really neat to see us here in America viewed externally and like our mannerisms are habits. That kind of stuff explain to somebody who's coming to the United States. So if you're want a trip Advisor and you go into United States travel articles, look for
polite manners. And it is exhaustive and extensive and very insightful actually, but it's it's pretty interesting to just kind of see us through that lens.
You know, oh totally. You sent this to me. It was a lot of fun to look through, and we were kind of trading on text like the ones we thought were funny, and we both agreed under general decorum this passage curse words should be avoided around children at all times. Some teens will curse in the streets, however, try not to confront them about it's right.
So there's a lot of people who kind of argue that manners are dead, and you can make an argument that yes, traditional manners are dead. Like knowing what fork has used for what course of the meal. It's very vanishingly understood these days. Or keeping your elbows off the table, which apparently was initiated to prevent other people from taking your like the posture you have which allows you to
lunch across the table at somebody as hostile. That's what I've seen that it prevented people back when they were much bigger lunkheads in general, from fighting one another. You just kept your elbows off the table, and it's much less aggressive if you've if.
You try them both.
The whole idea of not putting your elbows on the table is an inherited piece of etiquette that frankly is outdated. That's my take on it. If you don't put your elbows on the table because you have manners, that's fine too. But the point is there are customs and manners and etiquette that we've gone through. They're just kind of they made their point at the time, they were useful, and
now they're not so useful anymore. That doesn't mean that manners and etiquette in general have gone away, just that they've evolved, and now we have all sorts of new manners in etiquette that are thrilling for people alive in the twenty first century.
I'm thrilled by them.
At least. Another big one is smoking. I looked up the most recent stat I could find, and here in the United States, about eleven percent of people still smoke. And it's I think considered very rude these days to just light up a cigarette, even if you're outside sometimes like really close to a bunch of people.
I find it rude even if you're nowhere near a bunch of people, because those that smoke carries so well it does that that yes, you to me, I think we've reached the point where you're allowed to smoke in your own house, in your own car.
But it didn't use. I mean, we are, We're all part of this era. You and I where not even so long ago it was fine to smoke anywhere in front of anyone.
I smoked on an airplane once, like it was it was, you know, that was definitely within my lifetime.
I bet there were some French bereguys smoking there.
We were holding that smoking section down, and smoking section was the last three roads. There was nothing, no barrier, anything like that. So you're just smoking up the back of the plane. It was such a dumb idea.
Yeah, I was. I was curious because I wondered how the rest of the world was doing with smoking, And so I looked up countries who smoke the most. Yeah, and I can't remember, uh which one was number one, but it was it was like almost fit fifty percent of the people. They're still smoked. Well, this is a different one I'm looking at now, says China. But oh, here we go, it's number one. N A U r U. Now RU where is that?
I'm not sure?
And Kirabati are both at fifty two percent. There's only twelve thousand people that live in Nauru, so I'm gonna have to look up where that is. But that is, you know, I don't know if there used to be twenty four thousand people in half of them right passed from lung cancer or what.
Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. One of the other things about the evolution of etiquette in manners is just the snapshot that it provides the time we live in today, and you can get a really good picture of that. The cut ran an article. I think it's like one hundred and forty rules of etiquette, and a lot of them make a lot of sense. A lot of them like really kind of tap into the culture that we
live in now. Like my favorite one was after seventy two hours, you have amnesty from mentioning how long it took you to respond to a text, So after that you can just respond to the text like you're responding to it like no time has passed before seventy two hours. You have to say, sorry, this took me so long, And it's true. It totally makes sense, and I find it very mannerly that that just I mean, it just makes sense to me. But some whole things like that.
So if you don't answer a text after let's say you wait a whole week, Yes, you don't have to say, oh man, I'm sorry, this thing got buried.
No, you do not.
And as a matter of fact, I've kind of been intuitively picked that up because I've got one brewin with my friend Matt that is easily a week and a half old. Yeah, and I've just learned not to call it out because it makes it way worse.
They're well aware that.
It's been a week and a half and it seems insincere to be like, oh sorry, it took me a week and a half to get back to you. It's this is when I had time to like give this thought, this attention, and I'm getting back to you now. It just makes sense to me as a as a delayed texter.
What else you got anything else in there?
There were there were so many No, I mean, there's there's stuff all over about tipping, about work culture, just you know, going out to bars, dating, ghosting people, Like it's okay to ghost somebody, Uh, if you've only been on one date and you didn't follow up with a lot of texting or emails or any of your calls. You can just ghost them and feel fine about it. But if you did kind of like, you know, make it seem like you're a little more interested and then
ghost them, that's kind of mean. And then never, they said, never ghost somebody and then come back like later on in life and ask them for a favor of any kind. Like, once you go somebody, that's it.
You're done interesting. You know, I will say that, like, I'm not mister mister Manners, but I do believe in being polite and like, you know, open the door for people and stuff like that. But I think that, like, uh, I think poor manners, like if I was on the dating scene or something, I think poor manners can be a real red flag as just the overall sort of kind of person someone.
Is, right.
And I think that's what Emily Post was helping people do, was helping sincere people. She said, the three principles of etiquette of consideration, respect and honesty. Yeah, and so she was saying, if you are those three things, if you're considerate, respectful, and honest, here's what you need to do to present that in the best possible light to people. To let
people see how how great you are. This is just some easy rules for you to follow that that you know, so that you don't seem like a bore when you're out on a date, because you're not a boer. You're a considerate, respectful, honest person who deserves love.
Yeah, and you're also making other people feel comfortable and at ease, and those are things we should strive to do.
Agreed Chuck.
Well, since I agreed with Chuck and he chuckled a little bit because of something that he and I and Jerry know about. How that means it's time for listener mail.
All right, I'm going to call this one boyd. It's so old I don't even remember what to call it. It has been in the old folder for a while. Hey guys, long time first time as callers used to Sam Larry King just got done listening to the episode on International Debt Forgiveness. Oh it was not that old, and has promised it was very interesting and totally day ruining.
I wanted to mention something I'll understandably had to sort of YadA YadA on the episode for Concision, and that is the fact that the rest of Europe simply allowed Leopold the Second monarch of a neutral country to set up his own personal colony in Africa. While this is true on its face, Sebastian Major's excellent three part story on the Free State of Congo Our Fake History episodes eighty eighty one eighty two elucidates how that came to be.
While he of course goes on to recount the atrocities
committed in the Belgian Congo and horrifying detail. The first two episodes are the really interesting part where he describes the most stunning and cynical whitewashing propaganda kind of campaign that painted Leopold the Second as the paragon of late nineteenth century abolitionist moral rectitude, culminating in the formation of a charity called the International African Association, which all created of an ear beneficent stewardship that allowed unchecked exploitation of
the land and people. That's quite a sentence.
That was one sentence.
Oh yeah, wow, fantastic, And all of this is sounding like really familiar. I was like, yeah, I ran across all this in my research and I just realized now that this is from reading this email before.
That's why it sounds familiar.
It's basically like if the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation turned out to be a front for harvesting adrenochrome from children.
Nice reuff.
The story will put you in a fetal position for hours, though Sebastian Major's charming Canadian accent makes it somewhat more tolerable. Thanks guys, always great to listen to the show, and that is from John.
Thanks John, fantastic email. Thanks for pointing that out and yes we had to YadA YadA that and also in addition to Sebastian Major's probably mentioned it at the time, but behind the Bastards, did I think a couple parts on King Leopold too?
Great show from our very own network.
Well, if you want to get in touch of us with more info, like John, did we love that kind of thing, you can wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it off to Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
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