Smartest Year Ever

Gordy

The Smartest Year Ever began as a 365-day experiment in curiosity. In 2025, I dropped a new fact every single day. History, science, language, word origins, and strange true stories, all the stuff that somehow makes you sound smarter in conversation. The goal hasn’t changed: help you become the world’s greatest conversationalist.

  1. Oct 24

    Could You Get Jet Lag Before Airplanes Existed?

    Could you experience jet lag before airplanes existed? Did passengers aboard the Titanic suffer from it? Could ancient Roman travelers get jet lag? And how fast would you actually have to travel to outrun your body's internal clock? Today on Smartest Year Ever, I'm tracing the surprising history of jet lag—from ancient Rome and transatlantic ocean liners to record-breaking steam trains, early aviation, and the invention of the phrase "jet lag" itself. Along the way, we'll explore the science of circadian rhythms, why traveling east affects your body differently than traveling west, how Earth's rotation creates differences in solar time, and why your biological clock struggles to adjust when you cross time zones. We'll investigate the Titanic's unusual shipboard clocks, the record-setting RMS Mauretania, a spectacular 1905 train journey orchestrated by a notorious con man, and a sleep scientist who spent weeks underground trying to change his body's natural rhythm. And I did the math to answer a question I couldn't stop thinking about: What is the actual speed at which you begin to outrun your body clock? The answer is far more surprising than you might expect. We'll also uncover how early pilots and airship passengers experienced time-zone fatigue before commercial jet travel became commonplace—and how the term jet lag finally entered our vocabulary. If you've ever wondered what causes jet lag, why flying east is harder than flying west, how time zones work, or when humans first experienced jet lag, this is a journey through the fascinating intersection of history, astronomy, transportation, and sleep science. SOURCES Titanic & Ocean Liners Encyclopedia Titanica. (n.d.). Titanic: Time altered. National Library of Wales. (1909). Fishguard's red-letter day: Mauretania arrives. The Science of Jet Lag Boulos, Z., et al. (1995). Light treatment for sleep disorders: VII. Jet lag. Journal of Biological Rhythms. Aschoff, J., et al. (1975). Re-entrainment of circadian rhythms after phase-shifts of the zeitgeber. Chronobiologia. Czeisler, C. A., et al. (1999). Stability, precision, and near-24-hour period of the human circadian pacemaker. Science. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (n.d.). Jet lag. In CDC Yellow Book. Ancient Travel & Railroads Stanford University. (n.d.). ORBIS: The Stanford geospatial network model of the Roman world. The New York Times. (1883). A quiet change to the standard time. California State Railroad Museum. (n.d.). Death Valley Scotty's race for glory. The Human Body Clock National Park Service. (n.d.). Dreaming underground: The Mammoth Cave sleep study. Early Aviation Mohler, S. R., Dille, J. R., & Gibbons, H. L. (1968). Circadian rhythms and the effects of long-distance flights (FAA Report AM 68-8). Post, W., & Gatty, H. (1931). Around the world in eight days. Fédération Aéronautique Internationale. (2019). Ninety years since the first round-the-world airship flight. Airships.net. (n.d.). Hindenburg 1936 flight schedule. Where the Name Came From Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. (n.d.). When did the term "jet lag" come into use? Sutton, H. (1966, February 13). Discussion of jet lag. Los Angeles Times. Music thanks to Zapsplat. #JetLag #sciencefacts #historyfacts #travel #LearnOnSpotify

  2. Oct 10

    The Bizarre Real History (and Myths) Hidden in Your Deck of Cards

    You’ve probably handled a deck of playing cards hundreds of times. But have you ever stopped to ask what a Jack actually is? Why the Ace of Spades looks different from every other ace? Why the King of Hearts appears to be doing something very strange? Or where the Joker came from? Today I dive into the surprisingly bizarre history of playing cards, and separate the real history from some of the most popular myths. We’ll trace the evolution of the modern 52-card deck across centuries and continents, from early Mamluk playing cards and European court cards to the origins of hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades. Along the way, I explore the strange history of the Jack and Knave, the meaning of the Ace, Britain’s playing-card tax, the famous King of Hearts, the origins of the Joker, and whether a deck of cards really has anything to do with the calendar. It turns out the ordinary deck sitting in your drawer is basically a 600-year game of historical telephone and almost every part of it has a story. Music thanks to Zapsplat. Sources Berry, J. (2001). Taxation on Playing-Cards in England from 1711 to 1960. IPCS Papers 3. Dickens, C. (1861). Great Expectations. Chapman and Hall. Dummett, M., & Abu-Deeb, K. (1973). Some remarks on Mamluk playing cards. Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 36. Parlett, D. (1991). A History of Card Games. Oxford University Press. Bell, B. The man hanged for printing his own ace of spades. BBC News. International Playing-Card Society. Playing-card history and reference materials. The World of Playing Cards. Playing-card history and collection materials. Worshipful Company of Makers of Playing Cards. Card Design: The Ace of Spades. Online Etymology Dictionary. Entries for “Ace,” “Knave,” and “Jack.” Merriam-Webster. “Spade.” #PlayingCards #Historyfacts #hiddenhistory #DidYouKnow #LearnOnSpotify #mythbusted

  3. Sep 26

    This City Was Richer Than El Dorado - Built on Blood, Destroyed by Seeds

    Deep in the Amazon rainforest, a city once became so spectacularly wealthy that its true story sounds more like the legend of El Dorado. Today, I’m exploring the incredible rise and fall of Manaus, Brazil, the city transformed by the Amazon rubber boom into one of the most extravagant places of its era. Rubber barons built electric streetlights and streetcars in the middle of the rainforest, imported European luxuries thousands of miles into the Amazon, and constructed the magnificent Teatro Amazonas opera house from materials shipped across the Atlantic and carried upriver. But beneath that extraordinary wealth was a much darker story. So how did a remote city in the Amazon become a real-life version of El Dorado? What was the human cost of its incredible fortune? And how could something as ordinary as a few crates of seeds help destroy an economic empire? This is the remarkable history of Manaus, the Amazon rubber boom, Henry Wickham, rubber barons, biopiracy, and one of history’s strangest economic collapses. Sources • Casement, R. (as cited in Goodman, J.). (2009). The Devil and Mr. Casement. Verso. • DePaul University College of Law, World Without Genocide. (n.d.). Putumayo genocide. • Grann, D. (2009). The Lost City of Z: A tale of deadly obsession in the Amazon. Doubleday. • Latin America Bureau. (2021, November 26). The Putumayo atrocities. • Mongabay. (2024, November 8). The rubber boom and its legacy in Brazil, Peru, Bolivia and Colombia. • Orion Magazine. (2024, December 17). Opera in the Amazon. • Rainforest Cruises. (n.d.). Manaus Opera House & Festival Amazonas de Ópera. • Reis, L. T. (1938). Inspetoria Especial de Fronteiras [Documentary film]. Brazilian Ministry of War. • Slate. (2014, January 14). Teatro Amazonas, the unlikely opera house in Manaus, Brazil. • Fathom. (2017, August 30). The rubber baron’s outpost in the Amazon. • The Tropical Rainforest. (n.d.). A brief history of rubber. Music thanks to Zapsplat. #Manaus #AmazonRainforest #HiddenHistory #historyfacts #Brazil #Rubbertrees #LearnOnSpotify

  4. Sep 19

    Why Is This the Ring Finger? The Myth Behind the Wedding Ring

    Why do we wear wedding rings on the fourth finger of the left hand? And where did the idea of the “ring finger” come from in the first place? Today I dig into the surprisingly strange history behind one of the most familiar traditions in the world. We’re following the story of the vena amoris, or “vein of love,” from ancient accounts of a mysterious connection between the fourth finger and the heart, through medieval wedding ceremonies, the Book of Common Prayer, and the traditions that eventually shaped where millions of people wear their wedding rings today. But the history gets even stranger when you look at the ring itself. Why are diamonds associated with engagement rings? How ancient is that tradition, really? And what role did De Beers and one of the most famous advertising slogans ever written play in changing what an engagement ring was supposed to look like? It’s a story involving ancient anatomy, Roman writers, medieval Christianity, wedding customs, advertising, diamonds—and a supposedly timeless tradition whose actual history is considerably messier than it looks. Sources: Epstein, E. J. (1982, February). Have you ever tried to sell a diamond? The Atlantic. Isidore of Seville. De Ecclesiasticis Officiis. Kunz, G. F. (1917). Rings for the finger: From the earliest known times to the present. J. B. Lippincott Company. Macrobius. Saturnalia (Book VII). Pliny the Elder. Natural History (Book XXXIII, Chapter 6). Swinburne, H. (1686). A treatise of spousal or matrimonial contracts. The Church of England. (1549/1662). The Book of Common Prayer: The solemnization of matrimony. Zaręba, K. (2006). Circulation over the centuries: William Harvey (1578–1657). Kardiologia Polska. Medieval marriage ceremony. (2010, August 11). Classically Christian. A Diamond Is Forever: The slogan’s history. ADIF. Music thanks to Zapsplat. #WeddingRings #RingFinger #Historyfacts #DidYouKnow #FunFacts #LearnOnSpotify

  5. Sep 12

    Which Came First: Orange the Fruit or Orange the Color?

    Which came first: orange the fruit or orange the color? It sounds like a simple question.. until you realize that orange-colored sunsets, fire, animals, leaves, and hair obviously existed long before English speakers had a name for the color. Today, I trace the surprising history and etymology of the word “orange” from ancient Sanskrit through Persian, Arabic, the Mediterranean, and eventually English. Along the way, we’ll follow the history of the orange fruit, find out what medieval Europeans actually meant when they talked about oranges, and investigate a popular claim about how the word supposedly lost its original N. But the bigger mystery is what English speakers called the color orange before “orange” became a color word. That takes us into Old English color vocabulary, Chaucer’s description of a fox as somewhere between yellow and red, Shakespeare’s unusual use of “orange-tawny,” and Isaac Newton’s famous experiments with the visible spectrum. We’ll also get into rebracketing and juncture loss, why apron used to be napron, the completely unrelated origin of the Dutch House of Orange, and the strange linguistic reason people with unmistakably orange hair are still called redheads. It’s a story about word origins, etymology, color history, linguistics, medieval English, Shakespeare, Newton, and how languages divide up the world around us, all hiding inside one incredibly ordinary word. 🍊 So: fruit or color—which came first? Music thanks to Zapsplat. Anglo-Norman Dictionary. (n.d.). Orange. Anglo-Norman Dictionary. Online Etymology Dictionary. (n.d.). Apron. Etymonline. Online Etymology Dictionary. (n.d.). Orange. Etymonline. Online Etymology Dictionary. (n.d.). Redhead. Etymonline. Folger Shakespeare Library. (n.d.). Much Ado About Nothing. Folger Shakespeare Library. Folger Shakespeare Library. (n.d.). A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Folger Shakespeare Library. Harvard University. (n.d.). The Nun’s Priest’s Tale. Geoffrey Chaucer Website. Newton, I. (1704). Opticks: Or, a treatise of the reflexions, refractions, inflexions and colours of light. London. Topper, D. (1990). Newton on the number of colours in the spectrum. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, 21(2), 269–279. University of Glasgow. (n.d.). Old English colour vocabulary. University of Glasgow. #Etymology #WordOrigins #LanguageHistory #DidYouKnow #orange #historyfacts #LearnOnSpotify Sources

  6. Sep 5

    Why Is “Colonel” Pronounced “Kernel”? The Hidden Word Origins of Military Ranks

    Why is “colonel” pronounced “kernel” when there isn’t even an R in the word? And what do captain, corporal, lieutenant, sergeant, major, general, admiral, and private actually mean? Today I’m digging into the etymology and hidden word origins of military ranks, starting with one of the strangest spelling and pronunciation mysteries in English: colonel vs. kernel. From there, things get even weirder. Is corporal related to corpse? Does lieutenant really mean what it looks like when you break the word apart? Why do the British pronounce lieutenant “leftenant”? Are admiral and admire related? And what could the lowest military rank, private, possibly have in common with privilege? Along the way, I trace these familiar military words through Latin, Italian, French, Arabic, and English, exploring linguistic phenomena like dissimilation, doublets, changing pronunciation, borrowed words, and historical spelling. Some of the most official-sounding military titles turn out to have surprisingly ordinary beginnings, while others preserve linguistic mysteries that scholars still haven't completely solved. If you love etymology, word origins, linguistics, military history, language history, weird English words, surprising facts, and the hidden stories behind everyday language, this episode is for you. Sources Harper, D. (n.d.). Online Etymology Dictionary. Etymonline. Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Merriam-Webster Dictionary. O’Conner, P. T., & Kellerman, S. (2015, February 25). Is it loo-TEN-ant or lef-TEN-ant? Grammarphobia. Music thanks to Zapsplat. #Etymology #WordOrigins #Linguistics #MilitaryHistory #LearnOnSpotify

  7. Aug 29

    Why Do We Call It a “Pair of Pants” If It’s Only One Thing?

    Why do we call it a pair of pants when it’s only one piece of clothing? And why is pants always plural when you’d never ask someone to hand you “a pant”? Today I dig into the surprisingly bizarre history and etymology of pants, from medieval European clothing and separate leg coverings to pluralia tantum, the linguistic term for words that behave like plurals even when we think of them as one object. Pants aren’t alone: scissors, pliers, tongs, binoculars, and glasses all have some similarly strange grammatical behavior. But English grammar is only part of the mystery. We’ll look at how other languages handle the word for pants, why French and German don’t necessarily treat the garment the way English does, and how Italian leads us into an entirely different rabbit hole about the actual origin of the word “pants.” Along the way, we’ll encounter medieval hose, doublets, some spectacularly unsubtle codpieces, Henry VIII, Renaissance fashion, commedia dell’arte, an Italian comedy character named Pantalone, the rise of pantaloons, and even a period when respectable people thought the word pants sounded vulgar. It turns out one of the most ordinary phrases in the English language contains centuries of fashion history, linguistics, grammar, and etymology hiding in plain sight. Music thanks to Zapsplat. #Etymology #Linguistics #WordOrigins #History #DidYouKnow #FunFacts #LearnOnSpotify Sources Oxford English Dictionary. (n.d.). “Breech, n.”; “Breeches, n.”; “Pant, n.².”; “Pantaloon, n. and adj.”; “Trousers, n.” Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). “The history of ‘pants.’” Merriam-Webster. Harper, D. (n.d.). “Pants”; “Breeches”; “Trousers.” Online Etymology Dictionary. Fashion Institute of Technology. (n.d.). “Codpiece.” Fashion History Timeline. Bartels, V. (2015). “What goes up must come down: A brief history of the codpiece.” University of Cambridge Research. Encyclopaedia Britannica. (n.d.). “Commedia dell’arte.” Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica. (n.d.). “Pantaloon.” Encyclopaedia Britannica. Corbett, G. G. (n.d.). “Pluralia tantum nouns and the theory of features.” University of Surrey. Académie française. (n.d.). “Pantalon.” Dictionnaire de l’Académie française. Cambridge University Press. (n.d.). “Plurale tantum.” Cambridge Dictionary. Holmes, O. W. (1846). “Urania: A rhymed lesson.”

  8. Aug 22

    Why Don’t English Speakers Name Their Kids Jesus?

    Why is Jesús a completely normal name across the Spanish-speaking world, while Jesus is almost unheard of as a given name among English speakers? Today I explore the surprising history and etymology of the name Jesus, from its ancient Hebrew origins to the very different naming traditions that developed in England, Spain, and Latin America. Along the way, we’ll trace how Yeshua changed as it moved through Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and English—and uncover a linguistic twist hiding in plain sight. We’ll also dig into medieval Christian naming customs, the historical reverence surrounding the name Jesus, Spanish baptismal records, and a fascinating theory connecting the rise of Jesús as a Spanish given name to the 19th-century revival of Sacred Heart devotion. Sources: Ilan, T. (2002). Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity, Part I: Palestine 330 BCE–200 CE. Mohr Siebeck. Renevey, D. Devotion to the Name of Jesus in Medieval English Literature, c. 1100–c. 1530. Oxford University Press. Fernández-Villaverde, J. (2019, October 19). Jesús Told Me the Answer. The Volokh Conspiracy, Reason. Juncal Campo, M. (2023/24). Nombres de pila en España: Una revisión bibliográfica. GTLex, Universidade Federal de Uberlândia. Music thanks to Zapsplat. #Etymology #LanguageHistory #History #DidYouKnow #learnonspotify #linguistics #names

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About

The Smartest Year Ever began as a 365-day experiment in curiosity. In 2025, I dropped a new fact every single day. History, science, language, word origins, and strange true stories, all the stuff that somehow makes you sound smarter in conversation. The goal hasn’t changed: help you become the world’s greatest conversationalist.

Information

  • Creator
    Gordy
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    403
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Gordy
  • Show Website
    Smartest Year Ever