Tip Your Local Jester

[00:05] Should we do one under Google rules?
[00:13] That was the play of it.
[00:14] I'm super excited.
[00:15] You told us we had to, sir.
[00:18] You said we signed up for it.
[00:22] In the end, it's going to be better and more true than Google can give you.
[00:26] What question you got for us this week?
[00:30] Yeah, just around the corner, Monday, it's going to be April Fool's Day.
[00:38] And I want to know what we know about April Fool's Day.
[00:41] When it started, what it's about, was it like St. Thomas the Fool or something?
[00:47] I don't know.
[00:49] What do we know about April Fool's Day?
[00:53] We're going pagans.
[00:55] Pagans?
[00:56] We're going pagans.
[00:57] I feel like it's always the pagans, right?
[00:59] St. Patrick's Day was about the pagans.
[01:02] It all comes back to the pagans.
[01:04] So it's Christianity making fun of the pagans, and it ended up being a holiday?
[01:13] Sure.
[01:16] Probably the other way around, but sure.
[01:20] Surprise, we're going to crucify you.
[01:26] How old do you think April Fool's Day is?
[01:29] Is it an American holiday?
[01:31] Is it an international holiday?
[01:35] It's not a holiday.
[01:37] I wish I got April Fool's Day.
[01:40] It's not a federal holiday, but it's a holiday.
[01:43] It's like National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day or something.
[01:48] It's Groundhog Day.
[01:49] Every day is some sort of day.
[01:52] Yeah, I guess it's equivalent to Groundhog Day.
[01:55] Yeah, it's like on calendars.
[01:57] For some reason, historically, we're like, yeah, this is the day.
[02:01] I guess St. Patrick's Day is the same thing.
[02:03] Valentine's Day.
[02:06] Why do we do mean stuff to people, too?
[02:10] Oh, on April Fool's Day?
[02:11] And the internet is just unreadable on that day.
[02:14] I don't even bother.
[02:16] There's a bunch of fake news.
[02:17] Is that what it is?
[02:18] It's all fake news.
[02:19] Well, so that's the rest of the year, too.
[02:22] So it's the one day they do real news?
[02:24] Real news, yeah.
[02:27] Actually get facts on the internet on April 1st?
[02:30] That's a good question.
[02:35] So, I mean, what else would it be?
[02:37] It's some sort of celebration of people, humans being dumb.
[02:42] That's what it is, I guess.
[02:45] Gullible.
[02:46] Allowing ourselves to be gullible one day.
[02:50] I don't know.
[02:51] This is a tricky one.
[02:53] Okay, so let's break it down.
[02:55] When did it start?
[02:56] When do we think it started?
[02:58] Like, is it really old?
[02:59] Is it like medieval times?
[03:01] Or is it like, you know, Cold War?
[03:04] Like, when are we talking?
[03:06] Things like from a, probably came from a Cold War submarine or something like that.
[03:10] That's in the book you're reading, right?
[03:12] Yes, yes.
[03:14] That was the sort of driving hypothesis of the book.
[03:18] The reports of April Fool's Day as submarine warfare.
[03:23] I'm going to say like Middle Ages, yeah.
[03:27] Okay.
[03:28] And I like this pagan idea where, you know, it was maybe a pagan holiday,
[03:32] and the Christians had to like de-legitimize it, and so they made it a...
[03:38] Yeah.
[03:39] You know?
[03:40] They were sick of just killing all the pagans, so they were like,
[03:42] oh, look, they're having a big joke.
[03:44] That's what they told their kids.
[03:45] They were like, oh, they're playing a joke on you.
[03:47] But really, they were just like celebrating some weird pagan holiday.
[03:49] Right.
[03:50] So this, you think this may have been like the old pagan Christmas.
[03:54] Sure.
[03:55] And then they were like, aha, just kidding.
[03:57] Or like summer solstice or something, you know, like something that they cared about.
[04:01] And...
[04:03] It's early for the summer one.
[04:05] The spring solstice, I don't know.
[04:08] So it's harvest day.
[04:11] That's in the fall.
[04:12] But the equinoxes are the spring and the fall, right?
[04:15] Yes.
[04:16] Yeah, so could this be...
[04:17] No, the equinox already happened, right?
[04:20] Right, but it's just last week.
[04:22] Okay.
[04:23] I think that's the pagan holiday.
[04:24] I was always under the impression that the pagan holiday,
[04:28] the spring pagan holiday was Easter.
[04:30] That's what Christianity got Easter for that.
[04:33] The Easter bunnies rise from the whatever.
[04:36] I don't remember.
[04:37] The crypt is kind of hazy.
[04:38] Yep.
[04:39] The eggs.
[04:40] They got eggs.
[04:41] Yeah.
[04:42] Maybe instead of harvest day, it's like a planting day thing.
[04:45] And once you plant, you don't have anything to do for like a week.
[04:48] So you're just like playing jokes on one another.
[04:51] Just like, yeah, to go straight to the practical jokes
[04:53] to entertain people on the farm, right?
[04:55] Okay.
[04:56] Sure, sure.
[04:58] The problem is planting day, like, it's all weather dependence.
[05:01] And also, you usually plant for more than just a day, I think, don't you?
[05:05] It takes a while to plant.
[05:06] Right, but that's the thing.
[05:07] Yes, it's a bunch of hard work for an extended period of time.
[05:10] But when you're done, I mean, you're kind of done.
[05:12] Okay.
[05:13] Just kind of sitting there waiting for water for a while, right?
[05:16] All right, so this could go back to farming.
[05:18] How far back?
[05:22] We're saying medieval, right?
[05:24] Yeah, yeah, I'm done with medieval.
[05:26] Okay.
[05:28] All right, this is pretty good.
[05:29] Actually, that was like the age of fools.
[05:32] You know, your jesters, your town fools.
[05:37] So, Joey, you think it's a celebration of court jesters?
[05:42] It was kind of like their day off.
[05:44] It was like Boxing Day.
[05:45] Yeah, it's like Boxing Day for jesters.
[05:47] Shouldn't have tipped your local jester.
[05:51] Oh, that's a pretty good theory.
[05:58] Yeah, I got nothing better than that.
[06:00] All right, so it's the National Jesters' Day
[06:03] or some sort of Christian bastardization of a pagan holiday.
[06:10] Those are better guesses than I thought we'd come up with.
[06:13] I'll take either one of those.
[06:16] Okay, so origins are not clear, I guess,
[06:21] but it is recognized widely around the world.
[06:26] So it's not just an American thing.
[06:29] Some precursors of April Fool's Day include the Roman Festival of Hilaria,
[06:35] which I think is pretty cool.
[06:38] There's some references to it in Chaucer.
[06:44] Yeah, some Chaucer.
[06:45] Of course we got Chaucer.
[06:47] Of course.
[06:49] It always goes back to Chaucer.
[06:51] Yeah, if it happened in the middle age, Chaucer had something to say.
[06:54] Exactly.
[06:55] French poet references the holiday in a 1508 poem, I guess.
[07:07] In the middle ages, New Year's Day was celebrated on March 25th in most European towns.
[07:13] Yeah, that's weird.
[07:14] In some areas of France, New Year's was a week-long holiday ending on April 1st.
[07:19] In the Netherlands, April Fool's Day is often attributed to the Dutch victory at Brielle
[07:26] in 1572, where the Spanish duke Alvarez de Toledo was defeated.
[07:33] So everybody's apparently got their own April Fool's Day.
[07:37] That's weird.
[07:39] Gig.
[07:40] That's like a convergent evolution thing or something like.
[07:46] It was just meant to be that there was going to be a holiday on April 1st.
[07:51] History.com speculates that April Fool's Day date back to 1582 when France switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar as called for by the Council of Trent.
[08:05] People who were slow to get the news or failed to recognize that the start of the new year had moved to January 1st and continued to celebrate during the last week of March ending on April 1st became the butt of jokes.
[08:17] This included having paper fish placed on their backs and being referred to as Plason d'Avril or April Fish.
[08:29] Why fish?
[08:31] To symbolize young, easily caught and gullible people.
[08:36] Okay.
[08:39] Or just slow to the news.
[08:42] Yeah, you're right, though. It's all over the place.
[08:44] In Scotland, there was a two day event called Hunting the Gawk where people were sent on phony errands.
[08:54] Gawk is a word for a cuckoo bird.
[08:57] In Ireland, it was traditional to entrust the victim with an important letter to be given to a name person.
[09:03] That person would then ask the victim to take it to someone else and then so on and so forth.
[09:10] And the letter was finally opened to contain the words, send the fool further.
[09:13] Oh, that's really cruel.
[09:16] They had the same joke every year in Ireland.
[09:19] We do that with rookies at restaurants.
[09:22] You go, could you go next door and give me a borrow a bar extender?
[09:29] And they're like, oh, yeah, cool.
[09:30] And they run over there.
[09:31] And then, of course, all restaurant people know that's a joke.
[09:33] And so they're like, oh, man, we're using ours.
[09:35] You got to go to the restaurant.
[09:36] So like, you have a real secret.
[09:40] That's pretty awesome.
[09:41] Yeah.
[09:42] You asked for a bar extender?
[09:43] Yeah, there's a lot of different ones.
[09:44] What do they think that is?
[09:46] Well, there's something that make it sound like it's a thing you might use.
[09:50] I can't remember the other ones, but you just make somebody go on a fool's errand
[09:56] and other restaurants know the joke.
[09:58] And so they send them to another restaurant.
[10:00] You get the kid to run around for an hour.
[10:03] That's great for someone that's getting paid in tips.
[10:07] Yeah.
[10:08] Well, they're still in training, usually.
[10:11] Okay.
[10:12] Coalson, you talked about April fish.
[10:14] Did you include that the this was also often included an attempt to attach a
[10:18] paper fish to the victim's back?
[10:20] Yeah.
[10:21] Yeah.
[10:22] Yeah.
[10:23] Okay.
[10:24] I was reading all that happened.
[10:27] There's also the thing where we make the kids drain the coffee machine.
[10:38] So they have to just fill buckets of water.
[10:41] But the thing is, the coffee machine is actually attached to the water line
[10:45] so you can't ever empty it.
[10:48] So we usually wait for them to go through a couple buckets of water
[10:51] before we tell them.
[10:54] I don't like that.
[10:56] We only have so much fresh water, Jim.
[11:00] It's pretty funny, though.
[11:01] You just horrified California.
[11:07] Suck at California.
[11:10] Yeah, yeah.
[11:11] It's great.
[11:12] It's great for you in your Great Lakes region and your plethora of
[11:15] fresh water.
[11:17] Yeah.
[11:18] Actually, it's great about Indiana.
[11:20] If I get thirsty, I can just walk to a Great Lake any time I want.
[11:24] Fill up.
[11:26] Okay.
[11:31] That's interesting.
[11:32] I feel like I learned something.
[11:33] Yeah.
[11:34] I'm going to get some paper fish ready.
[11:42] People love to make other people look stupid, is what we learned all over the
[11:46] world and for a very long time.
[11:50] I like the old New Year's Day one.
[11:53] I think that's kind of funny.
[11:56] Yeah.
[11:57] Did you see the thing about the – they were supposed to go to London Tower to see
[12:02] the washing of the lions?
[12:05] That was one of them.
[12:08] That was like in the 1600s, what was that?
[12:12] For April Fool's Joke?
[12:14] Yeah.
[12:15] Are you trying to fool us?
[12:16] No.
[12:17] The British government was in on it.
[12:18] Apparently, they had put out a big thing.
[12:19] They were supposed to go see the washing of the lions.
[12:23] I don't know.
[12:24] Did the British government have a bunch of lions?
[12:26] Sure.
[12:28] I mean, somebody's got to eat the pagans.
[12:30] Right.
[12:33] Yeah.
[12:34] You go to see the washing of the lions and you just get eaten.
[12:37] Yeah.
[12:38] A monster.
[12:39] Surprise.
[12:40] They stole everything else from Africa, so why not the lions?
[12:43] Why not?
[12:44] Why not?
[12:47] Too soon, man.
[12:49] Too soon.
[12:57] Did I actually mention to you guys that I witnessed a kidnapping the other
[13:02] night?
[13:03] What?
[13:04] No.
[13:05] I just decided to let him sleep.
[13:07] Oh, boy.
[13:09] That's a new hoster.