74: Autumn Leaves & Swearing
Let's Learn Everything!
Linguistic Treats and Halloween Tales
This chapter features a playful discussion about a tiny frog and its connection to linguistics, interwoven with nostalgic Halloween stories and the concept of reverse trick-or-treating. The speakers share their early passions for language, highlighting memorable experiences that shaped their appreciation for words and communication.
Why do leaves change color? No... like really? Like, show-me-the-scientific-literature-really? After all how mysterious could the answer be? And holy frick we're finally doing a topic on swearing!! What are the eras of swearing, and what is swearing actually good for?
Listen to our episode of Escape this Podcast: Oceananigans pt. 3 - The Bering-toss Strait
Images we Talk About:
Carotenemia Hands
Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:03:34) Autumn Leaves
(00:53:04) Swearing
(01:42:57) Outro
Support us with a Max Fun Membership!
Congrats to Kelly & Zach on the book prize! We should write a book, chilli peppers are spicy cause mammals digest them before pooping them out, magnesium makes leaves green, it’s worth it to drop leaves because when they do work they’re so efficient, man trees are interesting, carotenemia, “yeah so if you want an unnecessary amount of detail…”, Caroline has an answer for all our questions, anthocyanins, red leaves could be aposematic, finding one explanation for a color doesn’t mean we know for sure, Tom calls the climate change turn, warmer weather keeps leaves greener in autumn (good) but there’s less sunlight to use it (bad), animals use autumn leaf colors to help with migration, wont someone think of the leaf peepers, I don’t know/we don’t know, this might be too much swearing - thats a threat and a promise, the versatility of fuck, “fuck is good”, may all your teeth fall out except one to give you a toothache, Ella read a book for this of all topics, “hmm… fuck cunt shit…”, determining a historic swear is like jazz - it’s the swear words you don’t see, stop trying to make clit a thing, Ella was totally right to put a swear warning at the top, the nuance of gender roles in ancient rome, Fuck has a beautiful equality to it, shitepokes and windfuckers, cunt used to be just a regular word for vulva, medieval ages didn’t care about shit… literally, the journey of swearing makes dull history exciting, UK US Australia swearing differences, if Ella’s dad saind cunt that’s naughty - if Tom’s dad said it they’d need to have a conversation, our swearing histories, why do we keep swearing? swearing has social benefits, swearing is intimate! swearing for emphasis and believability, we swear without thinking and yet it’s so socially complex, swearing activates different parts of the brain, the “fuck” region of our brain and the fuck region of our brain are closer than we thought, screaming neutral words as a control, swearing is why Ella is the strongest host, we still don’t know Why swearing is so powerful for us, tell us your favorite swears! review corner breaks the fourth wall.
Sources:
Cleaveland Clinic : Can Eating Too Many Carrots Turn Your Skin Orange?
Harvard Forest: The Process of Leaf Color Change
USDA: Science of Fall Colors
Harvard Forest: The Biological Significance of Leaf Color Change
2022 Paper: The phenomenon of red and yellow autumn leaves: Hypotheses, agreements and disagreements
2004 Paper: Plant coloration undermines herbivorous insect camouflage
Science Direct: Plant coloration undermines herbivorous insect camouflage
2004 Paper: Nature's Swiss Army Knife: The Diverse Protective Roles of Anthocyanins in Leaves
2012: Simulated herbivory advances autumn phenology in Acer rubrum
2002 Paper: Foliage color contrasts and adaptive fruit color variation in a bird-dispersed plant community
CID: How Climate Change Impacts Leaf Pigments
Image: Heam VS Chlorophyll
---
Yiddish Curse
Swearing: A Social History of Foul Language, Oaths and Profanity in English - Geoffrey Hughes
Holy Shit by Mellisa Mohr
Stapleton et al “The power of swearing: What we know and what we don’t”
Study: Swearing as a Hypoalgesic
Study: Swearing Makes you Stronger
The AI-powered Podcast Player
