Death and Gambling

[00:01] All right, it is time to hang on one second.
[00:05] That's what I said, though.
[00:06] That's a good one.
[00:07] Oh, I nailed it.
[00:08] Yeah, you did.
[00:09] I nailed it.
[00:10] All right, I'll grab another beer.
[00:11] All right, no, I've got one, too, so go ahead.
[00:14] Okay.
[00:15] All right.
[00:16] All right.
[00:19] It is time for another Under Googles.
[00:26] Best part of the pod.
[00:28] Yep.
[00:40] We do an Under Googles.
[00:41] That was the play of Super Excited.
[00:43] You told us we had to, sir.
[00:46] You said we signed up for it.
[00:49] In the end, it's going to be better and more true
[00:53] than Google can give you.
[00:55] All right, I'm ready for this.
[00:57] My brain is primed.
[00:59] I've been studying falconry and Pliny the Elder
[01:04] and Pliny the Younger, and I'm ready to do this.
[01:09] Coalson, what do you got for me this week?
[01:11] How's your horse racing?
[01:12] Have you been studying that?
[01:17] How is my horse racing?
[01:19] Horse racing is the new Pliny the Elder.
[01:21] It is.
[01:22] I think we haven't seen a Pliny in a long time.
[01:24] We've seen a lot of horse racing.
[01:26] You know, I hear a lot of TikToks about that,
[01:28] kind of about that phrase.
[01:30] It's running hot on Instagram.
[01:34] Yes.
[01:35] You're big on the TikToks, are you?
[01:38] Next question.
[01:41] Joey's on to the next thing.
[01:43] TikTok is already old in Joey's world.
[01:45] Yay.
[01:46] So I've been hanging out with Harper this week,
[01:49] and I feel like Harper has a Google.
[01:52] He's been hiding from me.
[01:54] He's been waiting for this moment.
[01:56] We can all be together.
[01:58] Oh, I've hidden none of the things.
[02:00] Okay.
[02:01] But I do want to know where,
[02:05] and probably Jason just knows the answer as an academic to this,
[02:09] but chalk it up.
[02:12] Oh.
[02:14] The phrase chalk it up.
[02:16] Shocking it up to whatever causal thing, right?
[02:20] Yeah.
[02:22] Yeah, I think it's just keeping score, keeping tabs,
[02:25] like you would on, say, a chalkboard when you play darts.
[02:30] You just chalk it up.
[02:32] I'm going to go with that, but horse racing.
[02:35] Did they use chalk at all in horse racing?
[02:37] I'm sure that they did.
[02:39] I remember when I was in college,
[02:42] I studied abroad in London,
[02:44] but then at the end,
[02:46] me and a few other guys went to Ireland
[02:48] and spent a week in Ireland.
[02:51] One of the things we did there is we went to the dog racing track,
[02:54] because apparently that was a thing to do
[02:56] in whatever small Irish town we were in.
[02:58] Of course, it's all gambling, right?
[03:03] They would have dudes at the bottom of the stands or whatever,
[03:09] and each one of them would have a chalkboard,
[03:11] and they'd be like marking...
[03:13] Oh, they're legit chalking it up.
[03:15] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[03:18] So, Irish early 2000s.
[03:21] Yeah, exactly.
[03:23] I think we nailed it.
[03:25] So, okay.
[03:27] Joey, can you give me a definition of chalking it up?
[03:31] The way I always understood it to be
[03:35] was sort of just like saying,
[03:38] that's the explanation, is chalk it up to that.
[03:41] This is why that happened.
[03:43] We know this from some other source.
[03:46] We're chalking it up to that.
[03:48] Is it worth parsing,
[03:50] whether it is derivation of a causal effect or scorekeeping?
[03:56] It's become derivation effect,
[03:59] even if it came about scorekeeping, right?
[04:02] Potentially.
[04:04] I mean, I guess maybe, yeah.
[04:06] I mean, the way I always think about it is sort of like,
[04:11] you would say, here's something to happen,
[04:14] and somebody's response would be like,
[04:16] chalk it up as in, this is why it was that way.
[04:19] That's the explanation.
[04:20] That's definitely how I think of it.
[04:21] We nailed it.
[04:22] Yeah, chalk it up.
[04:23] Yeah, I think it's a scoring first,
[04:25] and then it's kind of like it's a point for,
[04:30] you know, whatever, AGI.
[04:33] So I would like to suggest that it's about...
[04:41] Shout out G-E-I.
[04:42] Shout out G-E-I.
[04:43] They used to chalk dead bodies.
[04:47] We chalk it up.
[04:49] Okay.
[04:50] What is this like?
[04:51] Pool cues.
[04:52] We chalk up pool cues.
[04:54] That's probably better than death.
[04:56] I mean, historically, in this game, we've had...
[04:59] It usually, like, makes the statement, right, not pool.
[05:02] We've had more death than billiards.
[05:04] Right, right, right, right, right.
[05:06] As a podcast.
[05:09] But so, yeah, if you chalk up your cue
[05:11] and you're ready to hit the ball,
[05:13] let's just chalk it up to this thing.
[05:15] It doesn't play.
[05:16] It doesn't play.
[05:17] It doesn't be ready to go.
[05:18] It does be ready to go.
[05:19] But that's not how I understand the term.
[05:20] Now that I couldn't have started there,
[05:21] but I had to morph into something else.
[05:23] It does, but I think it morphs.
[05:24] I definitely think it morphs.
[05:25] I think it starts as ready to go and turns into,
[05:27] yeah, we already knew that.
[05:29] I mean, billiards and dog racing are probably old as hell.
[05:33] Yes.
[05:34] And we've learned that horse racing is usually everything.
[05:37] It's everything to me.
[05:41] So, okay.
[05:43] Joey.
[05:44] When do you think people started using chalk?
[05:46] Well, I was going to say this.
[05:47] This is my question.
[05:48] So I think that you can start carving on things
[05:53] from stone to stone very early on, right?
[05:56] This is the sort of the history of human art.
[06:00] You're chalking stone with the other stone.
[06:04] Okay.
[06:05] Now, where do you find chalk?
[06:09] And how does that become a thing that can be washed away?
[06:13] Sure.
[06:14] But I think of chalking art on another rock with a rock as chalk.
[06:21] I think of it that way.
[06:22] I don't know if that's the chalk.
[06:23] I mean chalk.
[06:24] Yeah.
[06:25] Jayhawk?
[06:26] Jayhawk?
[06:27] Rock chalk?
[06:28] Jayhawk?
[06:29] Chalk rock or Jayhawk?
[06:30] I don't know.
[06:31] Something like that.
[06:32] Very bad.
[06:33] Yacht rock for Jayhawk?
[06:34] Yacht rock for Jayhawk.
[06:35] That sounds true.
[06:37] Okay.
[06:38] So, it goes way back in time is what we're saying.
[06:41] So, the origin of this could be basically anywhere in-
[06:47] Cave paintings.
[06:48] Civilized human history.
[06:49] No.
[06:50] I'm saying chalking it up is 1920s detectives and we're chalking around a dead body.
[06:56] That's what I'm going with.
[06:57] That's recency bias.
[06:58] You just listened to gumshoes.
[06:59] I was going to say, yeah.
[07:00] I did just listen to gumshoes.
[07:01] Totally gumshoes.
[07:02] What is the chalk?
[07:03] Is that like help with the decomposition?
[07:04] No.
[07:05] It just shows where the body landed.
[07:06] Oh, oh, I see.
[07:07] You're chalking around the body.
[07:08] That was their idea of CSI.
[07:09] Right, exactly.
[07:10] I got you.
[07:11] Instead of taking a picture, we just chalked around where the body laid out.
[07:15] Yeah, yeah.
[07:16] So, you get the arms and the legs sprawled in certain ways.
[07:28] I saw you struggling with the tense of lay there.
[07:31] I don't know the right answer, but I just want to point out.
[07:33] Thank you for understanding.
[07:34] Where the body lay.
[07:36] Right.
[07:37] Maybe?
[07:38] I don't know.
[07:39] It's been a while, but I'm thinking this is a Shakespeare thing.
[07:41] I think this goes back to Shakespeare.
[07:43] Really?
[07:44] I mean, why not?
[07:45] Chalk it up.
[07:46] Is he trying to do a Chaucer joke?
[07:50] Maybe.
[07:51] I don't know that I studied enough English to get that.
[07:55] It was-
[07:56] That was pretty subtle.
[07:57] A slant pun.
[07:58] A slant pun.
[08:01] Which is the name of the pun?
[08:03] Yeah, I'm thinking that or-
[08:09] Dog racing.
[08:11] Horse racing.
[08:12] Before dog racing.
[08:13] Which would put you in the late 1800s.
[08:19] Yeah, sure.
[08:20] I definitely feel like it's-
[08:25] You know, originally when I was thinking of this, I was thinking of it as either a professorial
[08:30] writing literally on chalkboards, because these are the people who write on chalkboards
[08:34] to me.
[08:35] Mm, okay.
[08:36] Professors.
[08:37] Chalk it up.
[08:38] Right.
[08:39] So chalk it up to whatever the professor did or whatever.
[08:42] Or alternative is organized gambling.
[08:47] Now, given what I know about human beings, I'm going to say that organized gambling.
[08:53] Yeah, nobody learns terms from school.
[08:55] Nobody likes school.
[08:56] Nobody likes school.
[08:57] Everybody likes giving their money to people.
[08:59] Yeah, either from elementary school or college.
[09:02] They still don't care.
[09:03] They forgot everything they learned.
[09:05] I mean, if it doesn't relate directly to gambling, then they forgot.
[09:08] Right.
[09:09] Yeah.
[09:10] I'm going with that.
[09:11] Okay, so I'm with you.
[09:12] I think it's either death or gambling.
[09:13] I'm going organized gambling late 1800s.
[09:15] Okay.
[09:16] Isn't everything though, Coalson?
[09:18] Definitely.
[09:19] Death or gambling.
[09:20] Wait, aren't those like the only certain things in their life was death or gambling?
[09:24] Yeah.
[09:25] And I think I can avoid taxes, I think.
[09:28] If I die.
[09:31] To chalk something up is to attribute it.
[09:36] When we chalk something up to experience, we're saying that although it wasn't the outcome we wanted,
[09:39] we can at least learn from the experience.
[09:41] The phrase originated with the custom of marking bar tabs and scores on a slate in pubs.
[09:48] So it's both drinking and gambling.
[09:50] Okay, good.
[09:51] Good, good, good.
[09:52] Perfect.
[09:53] Scorekeeping, what I saw.
[09:59] Yeah, but probably also money, right?
[10:01] Because there was probably a time that bars you couldn't even differentiate between gambling
[10:07] and drinking because you're not paying with money as you go.
[10:10] There's no credit cards, right?
[10:12] There's just you're running the tab.
[10:14] Everything's a tab.
[10:15] So while you're there, gamble it up.
[10:18] Right.
[10:19] And maybe pay for your drinks.
[10:23] I am seeing on some English Stack Exchange site that J.S. Farmer and W.E. Hindley, in their
[10:33] book Slang and Its Analogues from 1890, first attribute chalk it up to, I don't know what
[10:43] that is, something in 1597.
[10:48] All my debts stand chalked up on the post for liquor.
[10:52] Yeah, so there's some others in like 1611.
[10:59] So it's old.
[11:00] It is old.
[11:02] And so chalk it up is like the writing chalk, C-H-A-L-K.
[11:07] Right.
[11:08] There's also a chalk, C-H-O-C-K, which is like that wooden block that you put under
[11:14] airplane tires when you park, right?
[11:17] So you can also be chalk full.
[11:20] That's not chalk like the writing thing.
[11:23] Sure.
[11:24] It's like a block.
[11:25] Oh, okay.
[11:30] But some people confuse those two things.
[11:33] So chalk like the writing utensil would be the correct spelling in this scenario.
[11:41] So it was close.
[11:42] It wasn't Shakespeare, but it was.
[11:43] I mean, you nailed the time.
[11:44] Probably in the parlance around that time.
[11:46] You nailed the time.
[11:47] So it should have been Shakespeare.
[11:48] So what was the year you got?
[11:51] 1597 was what I saw.
[11:54] And definitionally to credit or ascribe something, right?
[11:57] So it's both score keeping and like causal, you know, underpinnings.
[12:04] So that's interesting.
[12:08] So we win.
[12:09] We nailed it.
[12:10] We nailed it.
[12:11] We do.
[12:12] I also like this one a lot to attribute outcome or result to some specific cause,
[12:15] especially one that mitigates on one's responsibility or culpability.
[12:19] So I'm going to chalk it up to Coalson.
[12:21] Fair enough.
[12:22] Chalk this up to Coalson.
[12:23] Yep.
[12:24] I'm going to land Stevenson high five myself.
[12:26] Bam.
[12:27] Yeah.
[12:29] Nice work team.