Speaker 1: Hello, Puzzlers. Welcome to the Puzzler Podcast the Purple Mountains
Speaker 1: Majesty above the Fruited Puzzle Plane. I am your host,
Speaker 1: AJ Jacobs, and today's guest is the amazing Stephen Domnr. Author,
Speaker 1: journalist and host of Freakonomics Radio. Welcome Stephen, Thank you
Speaker 1: Aj very much. And actually, Stephen, I don't know this,
Speaker 1: even though we are friends, I forget. Are you a
Speaker 1: puzzle fans, crosswords, Sudoku, any of that?
Speaker 2: I'm well, I like them, but I don't do them.
Speaker 1: You admire them from afar.
Speaker 2: No, I mean I would like to do them, but
Speaker 2: I feel like life is a series of choices and
Speaker 2: that you're constantly making and often revising and changing.
Speaker 1: True.
Speaker 2: But when I was when I was a young lad
Speaker 2: and I learned the notion of opportunity cost, which is
Speaker 2: kind of one of the essential things, essential concepts in economics,
Speaker 2: I was really taken with it. It's just, you know,
Speaker 2: it basically just says it for every you know, hour
Speaker 2: or dollar or brain cell that you spend on one
Speaker 2: thing is a dollar, hour, et cetera. You can't spend
Speaker 2: on something else. And so also there was a maxim
Speaker 2: taught by either Stella, Stella Adler and or Stanislavsky, with
Speaker 2: whom Stella Adler studied, And this was in the instruction
Speaker 2: of acting, and the maxim was your choice is your talent.
Speaker 2: And I've always been very, very taken with that. And
Speaker 2: so I waste a lot of time in my life,
Speaker 2: like everybody does. But one way I've chosen to not
Speaker 2: quote waste no offense is by doing I do take events,
Speaker 2: is by doing that kind of entertainment. Although I will
Speaker 2: say this, I really really, really really like backgammon.
Speaker 1: Which is puzzle adjacent. Yeah. Well, two quick follow ups. One,
Speaker 1: I wrote a whole book on why puzzles are not
Speaker 1: a waste of time but are going to save the world.
Speaker 3: I am.
Speaker 2: I am aware of that, and I am aware that
Speaker 2: I'm challenging the orthodoxy of not only you, but this program,
Speaker 2: and that is I apologize.
Speaker 1: And secondly, the opportunity cost, I would argue everything when
Speaker 1: whenever you're not doing a puzzle, then that's the opportunity
Speaker 1: cost to.
Speaker 2: Life. Is a puzzle, you're saying, and if you're not
Speaker 2: solving at the moment, you're just wasting your time.
Speaker 1: Exactly, all right. So that said, whether or not you
Speaker 1: love puzzles. You do love words. You are a fan
Speaker 1: of words and ideas, and I do too. And one
Speaker 1: of my favorite types of words or categories are the nims.
Speaker 1: The ny ms so short for names. So you've got pseudonym.
Speaker 1: Of course, it's the fictional name. Authors sometimes use eponym,
Speaker 1: which is when you use a proper noun, like googling
Speaker 1: or scotch tape. One of my favorites, which I learned recently,
Speaker 1: was the capital nim. I don't know if you've ever
Speaker 1: heard of.
Speaker 2: That, I think I do. Well, wait, do you mean
Speaker 2: not a demonem? I don't know demon it's actually wait,
Speaker 2: it's actually called capital Wait, capital nim. That's the that's
Speaker 2: the word.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you mine, and you tell me your mine.
Speaker 1: Is that you change the case of the letter, and
Speaker 1: it changes the meaning and pronunciation of the word Polish
Speaker 1: and Polish. Polish and Polish is the most famous capital nime. Well,
Speaker 1: what is a demonym?
Speaker 2: I don't a demonem? A deminem is? I believe I
Speaker 2: could very well be wrong, but I believe it's the
Speaker 2: word that denotes uh where someone is from. So a
Speaker 2: New Yorker, a Minnesota, and a Michigander.
Speaker 1: That interesting. Gotcha. Our puzzle is another great nim which
Speaker 1: is the retronym, which I had not heard of. But
Speaker 1: this is actually from our chief puzzle officer, Greg Pliska.
Speaker 1: And I'll give you an example of a retronym. Before
Speaker 1: the invention of the electric guitar, we never needed the
Speaker 1: term acoustic guitar because all guitars were acoustic. So the
Speaker 1: term acoustic guitar is a retronym, a word that you
Speaker 1: have to form to distinguish it from an already existing thing.
Speaker 1: So the new version creates a new word for the
Speaker 1: old version. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2: Love it? I didn't know there was a word for
Speaker 2: that level name.
Speaker 1: Okay, So we're going to give you some clues and
Speaker 1: you will tell us what the retronym is that I
Speaker 1: am cluing. So, for instance, and this one doesn't count,
Speaker 1: so low Steaks sell phones and mobile phones, they created
Speaker 1: the retronym landline that just did not exist.
Speaker 2: Beautiful, all right?
Speaker 1: What about this? This is a retronym that came about
Speaker 1: after the introduction of two one percent non fat and skim.
Speaker 2: M I know that one. I grew up with cows
Speaker 2: or a cow, so I know that whole milk was
Speaker 2: the only milk, although I will say this, when you
Speaker 2: grow up with the cow and you go get your
Speaker 2: milk from the cow, you we would milk the cow,
Speaker 2: you know, into a bucket. Then we poured into these
Speaker 2: one gallon glass or plastic jars that came from like
Speaker 2: industrial sized mayonnaise, and then you let it sit and
Speaker 2: then the cream, as we all know, rises to the
Speaker 2: top quite literally, and then you would skim off the
Speaker 2: cream and do other stuff with it, like make whipped
Speaker 2: cream and maybe butter. So even though it is true
Speaker 2: that we think of whole milk as like a hole
Speaker 2: in the adjectival sense, not as whole as you might
Speaker 2: think that.
Speaker 1: First of all, I knew you grew up on a farm,
Speaker 1: but that you were out there every morning milking the cow.
Speaker 2: I was not out there every morning. I was the
Speaker 2: youngest of eight and by the time I was probably
Speaker 2: seven eight nine years old, we no longer had a
Speaker 2: cow because most of the other kids had gone off
Speaker 2: to college and whatnot, and there wasn't as much need
Speaker 2: to have our own cow. We would go to a
Speaker 2: nearby person to get milk, so I was never actually
Speaker 2: a milker.
Speaker 1: Amazing look at that, all right, this retronym. This is
Speaker 1: actually probably the most famous product retronym, and it came
Speaker 1: about after the introduction of New Coke. And you might
Speaker 1: have even done a Freakonomics episode on it. Perhaps not so,
Speaker 1: I guess you're looking for Classic Coke I am. Indeed,
Speaker 1: Coca Cola Classic only existed from nineteen eighty five to
Speaker 1: two thousand and nine during the failed New Coke experiment
Speaker 1: here And I mean it was hilarious to read about
Speaker 1: this because for those two young to remember, they introduced
Speaker 1: a new formula of hoke tho was slightly sweeter that
Speaker 1: they thought was going to take off, and people got
Speaker 1: really really pissed, and there were accusations of communist plots
Speaker 1: all sorts of things. Okay, so this retronym came about
Speaker 1: after the addition of Alaska and Hawaii. And I will
Speaker 1: accept several retronyms. There are actually several retronyms. And it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily a word. It's it could be a phrase,
Speaker 1: as in the Coca Cola Classic.
Speaker 2: The phrase that comes to mind is probably not the
Speaker 2: right one. I think of it as like the lower
Speaker 2: forty eight or the Continental United States.
Speaker 1: Both are accepted.
Speaker 2: You both are accepted but it sounds like there might
Speaker 2: be even more.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, the official term is, according to Wikipedia, the
Speaker 1: conterminous United States.
Speaker 2: That see, you know, that's what I meant to say.
Speaker 1: But the other other two fun facts, I'll just keep
Speaker 1: it to two. The lower eight is makes no sense, no,
Speaker 1: because Hawaii. Most of Hawaii is south of the Florida.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I was never comfortable with lower forty eight.
Speaker 2: It also felt slightly self flagellating to me.
Speaker 1: Oh last fun fact was that there's also the Continental
Speaker 1: United States, which includes Alaska, but not Hawaii or any
Speaker 1: of the territories. That were, all right, I'm gonna throw one.
Speaker 1: We'll just do one more.
Speaker 2: How's that I would do one hundred more? These are fun?
Speaker 2: Oh good, well this do you have a hundred?
Speaker 1: I don't have a hundred. This one is also a
Speaker 1: product not quite as famous as the classic. But this
Speaker 1: retronym came about after the introduction of peanuts to a
Speaker 1: certain small round chocolate candy, a certain small multi colored
Speaker 1: round that is not.
Speaker 2: I guess right, So there must be a word to
Speaker 2: describe the non pena eminem's Would it be plain eminem?
Speaker 1: It is? You say that like you're guessing, But you learn.
Speaker 2: I didn't want to. I didn't want to say it
Speaker 2: because again that feels kind of judgy clan.
Speaker 1: It's true, well, it's what they they chose it, so
Speaker 1: they made their bed. Like it says on the name plane,
Speaker 1: Eminem's plane is what you're right. Nowadays they wouldn't do it.
Speaker 1: This was nineteen fifty four.
Speaker 2: I mean I could see original or familiar or you know,
Speaker 2: like loved ones.
Speaker 1: But plean, Yeah, you're right, you're absolutely right. That was
Speaker 1: that they didn't know marketing back then. They didn't know
Speaker 1: what the hell they were doing. All Right, we'll leave
Speaker 1: it there because you know, we can always return to
Speaker 1: retronyms at some other time.
Speaker 2: But I said that it's over to agents.
Speaker 1: Will we have other things to tell you, don't worry,
Speaker 1: but you could still play long because I'm going to
Speaker 1: give one as okay, as an extra credit for the
Speaker 1: listeners at home. This retronym came about because of the
Speaker 1: electronic versions of documents, your PDFs, etc. All right, So
Speaker 1: with that we will say goodbye about puzzlers. Please don't
Speaker 1: forget to subscribe or tell your friends, and we will
Speaker 1: meet you here tomorrow for more puzzling puzzles that puzzle
Speaker 1: you puzzlingly.
Speaker 3: Hello Puzzlers. Chief Puzzle Officer Greg Pliska, here with the
Speaker 3: extra credit answer from our previous episode. We played Find
Speaker 3: the Link with Stephen J. Dubner, and I asked you
Speaker 3: this extra credit question, how many presidential surnames are also
Speaker 3: legitimate dictionary entries. So here's your answer.
Speaker 4: I think there are four words that are relatively common
Speaker 4: English words that are also presidential soames. Those would be Grant,
Speaker 4: ford as to ford, a river, bush, and Trump. You
Speaker 4: might also include Carter a person who drives a cart,
Speaker 4: and the two slang terms hoover, another term for vacuum,
Speaker 4: and Johnson, a slang term for the male genitalia. Two
Speaker 4: other words do appear in some English dictionaries polk polk
Speaker 4: to dance a polka, and tyler a person who lays
Speaker 4: tiles or a freemason's doorkeeper. So if you got all
Speaker 4: nine of those, give yourself extra credit for the extra credit.
Speaker 4: Thanks for playing with us, and we'll see you here
Speaker 4: next time.