Grow a Tail Like a Horse

[00:00] 10.
[00:02] Good job, buddy.
[00:03] Yeah.
[00:04] Look at me, I'm practicing.
[00:07] Is that your first ever sync lead?
[00:09] Oh, for sure it is.
[00:11] I've never done that before.
[00:13] There's no way that's ever happened before.
[00:15] Nobody trusts me.
[00:16] We're not going to try to ask him to multitask,
[00:18] to count and press the button.
[00:20] Exactly.
[00:21] Why was it press when he just gets the button?
[00:23] Right, that's normally a disaster.
[00:25] There's no way that anyone has ever asked me to count
[00:28] and push a button at the same time.
[00:43] We doing under Googles?
[00:44] That was the play of Super Excited.
[00:47] He told us we had to, sir.
[00:50] He said we signed up for it.
[00:54] In the end, it's going to be better and more true
[00:56] than Google can give you.
[00:59] So I guess it's time for an under Googleable.
[01:02] Is that a note intro?
[01:04] Does that sound good?
[01:05] It sounds great.
[01:06] Is that what Joey says?
[01:08] It's time for an under Googleable.
[01:12] So this one came up the other day on Slack.
[01:16] Jason, you wrote something that totally threw me off,
[01:19] and I need to talk about it.
[01:22] You said shoo-in, the term shoo-in,
[01:26] and you spelled it S-H-O-O-N. And you're a very smart person.
[01:32] I assume you know what you're talking about.
[01:34] But mine is higher life.
[01:37] I assumed it was spelled shoo-in as in wearing a shoe.
[01:41] So I was S-H-O-E dash I-N. And that
[01:48] got me thinking, what's the origin of shoo-in?
[01:52] Why does it exist?
[01:53] What's the definition?
[01:54] What's the timeline?
[01:56] I always thought that it was related
[01:57] to putting my foot in a shoe.
[01:59] And I did always envision being at a shoe store.
[02:05] And the guy using the little tongue to put your shoe in.
[02:10] And I'm a shoo-in.
[02:12] And I'm now thinking that maybe my entire life has been a lie.
[02:16] And so I need to have talked to two of my smartest friends.
[02:20] What do we got on shoo-in?
[02:23] That's a good question.
[02:25] A, I have no idea how to spell it.
[02:27] I'm sure that's just what I want.
[02:29] OK, so you just made that up and maybe created
[02:32] a crisis in my mind.
[02:34] I apologize for the existential crisis
[02:36] that you've been in since I wrote that.
[02:40] I think, I guess, I always thought of it
[02:42] as like the word shoe, like shoe get away, shoe fly.
[02:49] But this is shoo-in you in.
[02:50] So like a shoe is like you're moving something
[02:53] from one place to the other and in that place it's in.
[02:56] Shoe fly don't bother me, right?
[02:57] Yeah, exactly.
[02:58] So you could probably shoe something out.
[03:01] That's probably the most common way of shoeing, I guess.
[03:05] I think generally you shoe things out.
[03:10] In this case, we're shoeing in.
[03:14] But why does that make, give me an advantage?
[03:17] Why would shoeing me in give me an advantage?
[03:21] Because the definition, Harper, do you
[03:23] have a definition of shoe-in?
[03:25] I mean, I would go with, it's basically
[03:29] already established, right?
[03:30] It's like a fade out complete.
[03:31] It's a certainty.
[03:32] It's a certainty, yeah.
[03:35] So it's a wrap, right?
[03:37] Right.
[03:40] So I also would have spelled it like you, Coalson.
[03:45] OK.
[03:47] Because once the shoe-in, it fits.
[03:49] Once the shoe-in, we're good.
[03:51] It fits.
[03:51] Yeah, it's a Cinderella thing.
[03:53] Yeah, yeah.
[03:54] That's how I sort of thought about it.
[03:56] You're a shoe-in because you're like this in the shoe.
[03:58] I actually kind of like that.
[04:00] OK.
[04:02] So maybe Jason just spelled it wrong?
[04:04] Maybe I just spelled it wrong.
[04:07] Or it's like the momentum of shoeing.
[04:14] Of shoeing.
[04:14] It takes you past all of the obstacles in the way.
[04:16] So I'm not shoeing out.
[04:18] I'm shoeing you in past the obstacles.
[04:21] And there you go.
[04:22] You're a shoe-in.
[04:24] Yeah, what does shoeing things away even mean, though, right?
[04:27] I feel like that's like, is that like?
[04:29] Shoe fly shoe.
[04:32] What's this?
[04:32] The more you say it, the more weird it sounds.
[04:36] Also, the more you spell it.
[04:37] So if it is S-H-O-O, that's a weird word.
[04:41] It's definitely a weird word.
[04:43] Shoe.
[04:44] But I feel like, I don't know, I
[04:46] feel like it's maybe even not even a word, right?
[04:49] It's just like a made-up word for.
[04:51] It's like onomatopoeia, almost.
[04:52] Exactly.
[04:54] Exactly.
[04:54] Is it the act of me chewing things?
[04:57] Yeah.
[04:59] OK.
[05:01] And I always think of shoe fly don't bother me.
[05:03] That's the first thing I think of.
[05:04] So you're just kind of batting away flies.
[05:07] But then there's this shoe in.
[05:08] And are those things even connected?
[05:10] I mean, in my head, they weren't connected
[05:13] until Jason spelled it like S-H-O-O.
[05:15] And now I'm having an existential crisis.
[05:18] OK, so we have two independent situations.
[05:22] Yeah, this jellyfish done us quick.
[05:25] Right, exactly.
[05:27] Which is the name of the plot.
[05:30] So on the one hand, it's shoe with an E in.
[05:33] And we want to guess what the origin of that
[05:37] is, where that comes about.
[05:39] Does that start in department stores
[05:41] when people are fitting you into shoes in, say,
[05:44] the 40s or 50s or something?
[05:46] Oh, no, I'm guessing earlier.
[05:47] I'm guessing back when we had, what's
[05:49] the name of a shoe guy?
[05:50] Macy's.
[05:51] We're in the 40s.
[05:53] No, no, we're like, what are the shoes?
[05:56] Cobblers.
[05:58] Cobblers.
[05:58] I'm thinking we're like, yeah, 1700s cobblers or shoe-ins.
[06:03] And it's like, they made a shoe.
[06:05] It happens to fit.
[06:07] It's yours now.
[06:09] It's yours now.
[06:14] Cobblers just have random lengths of leather.
[06:18] So they just make it shoe for them.
[06:20] Hopefully this fits them well.
[06:21] Or maybe it's pretty standardization of shoe sizes.
[06:26] They measured your foot and they built it.
[06:27] And then they were just keeping their fingers crossed.
[06:30] And like, let's get this shoe in.
[06:32] I mean, this is before standardized measurement even.
[06:35] They're just like, meh.
[06:38] Sure.
[06:39] It's a several thumbs.
[06:41] Yeah.
[06:42] Right.
[06:44] OK, so I kind of like that.
[06:47] And my guess is maybe that if you spell it the other way,
[06:50] shoe-in, with an O, double O, that sounds
[06:57] like a very middle English to me, right?
[07:02] It does.
[07:03] It's not much different in time.
[07:04] I mean, I guess it's a couple hundred years probably.
[07:07] But maybe Irish or something.
[07:09] Like, I mean, part of the English or the British.
[07:13] Gaelic, perhaps.
[07:15] Yeah.
[07:17] Yeah, I'm thinking if it's shoe S-H-O-O,
[07:21] I'm thinking it's earlier.
[07:23] I'm thinking it's like 1500s.
[07:26] It's Shakespeare.
[07:28] Yeah, I'm thinking more Shakespeare
[07:30] if it's shoe-in with two O's.
[07:33] And then if it's cobblers, I'm thinking it's like 1700s.
[07:37] And I'm still not thinking America's either time.
[07:39] I'm thinking, I like your idea of British or Irish
[07:42] or some sort of European.
[07:46] For shoe-in, you like British.
[07:49] Yes.
[07:50] For shoeing flies.
[07:53] I like Irish.
[07:54] You like Irish for that.
[07:55] I kind of like American for that.
[07:57] OK, all right.
[07:58] Really?
[07:58] It feels sort of rustic-y, old, busty, homespun-y, made-up
[08:04] word.
[08:04] Yeah, it's shoe-in-flies off the whiskey bottle out west.
[08:11] Shoe-in-flies off your apple pie.
[08:12] I guess I was just thinking like middle ages Europe
[08:16] because it's like there were a lot more flies.
[08:23] They were fly.
[08:23] Yeah.
[08:25] There should be a lot of words for shoeing flies
[08:28] because flies were everywhere.
[08:30] OK, that's fair.
[08:33] But maybe at that point you don't even worry about shoeing a fly.
[08:36] There's just so many flies.
[08:38] You just give up.
[08:39] Yeah, you just grow a tail like a horse
[08:41] because evolution is the only way out.
[08:47] Isn't your constant daily job is to just shoe flies?
[08:54] Shoe.
[08:54] Yeah.
[08:55] Shoe.
[08:56] Shoe.
[08:57] It's so weird.
[08:59] OK, so, OK, this doesn't say it.
[09:06] From the website of Professor Paul Bryan's,
[09:09] shoe-in with an E is a common misspelling.
[09:14] The expression purportedly comes from the practice
[09:16] of corrupt jockeys, holding the horses back and shoeing
[09:21] a preselected winner across the finish line to guarantee
[09:24] that it will win.
[09:25] See, again, we fail to take damn horse racing.
[09:30] And here we are.
[09:31] Horse racing's everything.
[09:32] It's more common than Shakespeare or Valkyrie.
[09:36] You know what?
[09:36] Actually, now that we think about it,
[09:38] even if it was spelled the other shoe,
[09:40] why didn't we guess horse shoes?
[09:42] Oh, hi, third person.
[09:44] Oh, man, we are getting bad at this.
[09:46] It's always horse racing.
[09:48] Well, that's one sight.
[09:49] So let's see.
[09:50] Oh, my god.
[09:55] For shoe S-H-O-O, I don't have a lot of documentation here,
[10:01] but I got 1620s to drive away by calling shoe
[10:06] from the exclamation late 15th century,
[10:08] perhaps instinctive, compared German shoe, Italian shoe,
[10:14] shoeed shoeing.
[10:17] So it's Italian?
[10:20] I mean, European late 1500s or the 1600s,
[10:26] I think we were kind of close on that.
[10:29] Right.
[10:30] Yep.
[10:33] So yeah, I'm reading on writings explained
[10:39] that shoeing means a candidate is very
[10:41] likely to win a contest or competition.
[10:45] They've got some connection to voting,
[10:46] but it does seem like it also is horse racing.
[10:51] Yeah, I'm running across a whole lot of horse racing, man.
[10:54] Yep, yep, yep, yep.
[10:56] Sounds like horse racing.
[10:57] Oh, my god.
[10:58] Look, I mean, so it was so much Shakespeare.
[11:02] Has horse racing taken over?
[11:04] Is it all the things now?
[11:07] Why do people care so much about horse racing?
[11:11] It's like such a minimalistic thing on my radar as a human.
[11:15] It's just like, why does so much vernacular come from that?
[11:22] So is this American horse racing, then, if it's a shoe in?
[11:25] You said you've got a 1600 shoe in.
[11:28] Well, no, that's for shoe.
[11:29] I didn't track down.
[11:31] That's for shoe.
[11:33] Shoe in, I think, it sounds like, was later, but I don't know.
[11:38] OK.
[11:39] I can't get a time on this thing, yeah, either.
[11:46] First known use, 1937.
[11:50] OK, so yeah, so it's horse racing.
[11:52] That's horse racing at its peak.
[11:56] All right, well, there you go.
[11:58] The more you know about horse racing.
[11:59] Yeah, so I'm seeing, at the turn of the 20th century,
[12:02] the verb shoe followed by in came to mean used in horse racing.
[12:10] I do want to give you credit, though, Jason,
[12:12] because I keep reading over and over again.
[12:16] Yes.
[12:17] I keep seeing over and over again that shoe, S-H-O-E-N,
[12:22] is a misspelling.
[12:24] And that S-H-O-O-I-N is the correct way to spell this.
[12:30] So you spelling it correctly, created on Google.
[12:35] Well done, sir.
[12:35] And the next digital crisis for Coalson,
[12:37] which I can only assume will now resolve itself,
[12:41] and him just crawling into a corner
[12:42] and going fetal for days on it.
[12:48] Your life is a lie.
[12:49] It was a lie.
[12:51] Everything I thought is a lie.