Sounds Better In the German

[00:00] Okay, so we don't need to do a welcome. No, you don't do anything
[00:05] This is what we enter with apparently this will all be the conversation and something that happens in a year from now
[00:12] Okay, well future people
[00:19] You're living in those sky high interest rates
[00:23] on fire
[00:27] Mother nature is raging
[00:30] Cheers we do under Google rules. That was the play of super excited told us we had to
[00:50] We signed up for it in the end it's gonna be better and more true than Google can give you so
[00:59] typically
[01:00] We try to answer questions that Google can't answer Coalson in in a long-running segment called the under Google's
[01:08] I don't think that Google can't answer them
[01:10] I think I think we try to become Google Google answers them for us
[01:15] Well in the post-apocalyptic hellscape in which you know, this the world is now mired. There probably is no Google
[01:21] There is no Google. So this is so we are the best thing you can come up with
[01:27] That's right. Yeah. All right, so we are the last
[01:32] bastion of Google
[01:33] Anyway, is there anything just last bastion of human knowledge can answer for you this week?
[01:40] So I have a real brief story. Of course, it's gonna be too long, but I was I was in Moab with
[01:48] friend of the show and
[01:52] Patreon Mike Morrow and his family were hanging out with his cousin's family
[01:58] Adorable kids
[02:01] Maya the the middle childhood, I think she's 11 decided she was gonna tell a ghost story
[02:09] And I just want to I just want to
[02:13] Relay the first two lines of the ghost story a daughter and her mother moved to
[02:22] Oregon in the middle of nowhere
[02:26] With no Wi-Fi
[02:29] Because their father had suddenly and mysteriously turned into a pillow
[02:38] That tracks line two
[02:42] He no longer lived with them but visited often
[02:48] That's a pretty solid opening to a story it turned into a three-night story
[02:54] It was they was like, yeah, so the three fires
[02:58] ghost story
[02:59] Shout out to Maya, but this is gonna be a shout out to Gustav Gustavo
[03:06] or Gus
[03:07] her older brother who got really excited that we do under Google's and I assume he's listening now because I've hooked him up with
[03:15] The pod and he he gave me lots of questions on the hike hikes up
[03:22] In Moab, but this is my favorite one. I think cold feet
[03:28] Why do you get cold feet when you're gonna get married? What does that mean? Where did it come from?
[03:34] What's it about and I thought that's really good question so Gustavo we will figure it out better than Google for you
[03:44] so the the
[03:46] Meaning I guess of cold feet is it's it's something that you're committed to but at the last second you
[03:52] Want to back out having second having second second thoughts, right? Yeah
[03:58] How is that related to cold feet? Is that like dipping your toes in a frozen pond?
[04:05] Or taking off your high heels so you can run away faster
[04:13] So you're in so you're in the the full bridal gown
[04:19] You're in the really you're the six inch heels and you're like
[04:23] Chills. Yeah, and so you just take off the the the the heels and you just run for it. Yeah
[04:29] Yeah, I like this idea
[04:32] My feet got cold on the the pavement while I ran out the back door
[04:37] Feet do is it do we use it? Obviously the most
[04:41] common usage is in relation to marriage at least in my
[04:46] Lifetime. Yeah, I don't I don't know another time. We use it in other contexts like
[04:52] You can I just it's
[04:55] Certainly most common with regard to marriage, right? But it seems like it's borrowed from marriage
[05:00] But I mean you like you could get
[05:03] Could you get cold feet about a job that you're gonna about a job or about a house?
[05:07] You're gonna buy or something. I mean you could still use that but I think we normally use it in marriage
[05:13] Which which I think helps us
[05:16] With the question or completely throws us off track. We'll find out
[05:21] The other thing the only thing that I could think of besides
[05:25] Putting your feet in cold water making you not want to get in the water because they were like, oh my feet are too cold was
[05:34] Graveyard's hmm, I don't know why but I feel like
[05:41] You know you're down six feet cold, you know, there's some sort of like
[05:47] Phrase from the Wild West where we're putting people in the ground and they've got cold feet
[05:53] I don't know. I got maybe it's a
[05:57] shorthand for back in the day like getting the heebie-jeebies or something like that like it's a it's a bad omen type
[06:04] situation
[06:07] Yeah, I don't know
[06:09] Or like, you know if you sense a storm coming your knees swell up that type of thing, you know, you get cold feet
[06:15] That means bad
[06:17] juju is on the way
[06:20] So you're so you're you're associating cold feet with bad juju because that's why you would try to get out of a wedding
[06:25] I would I wasn't thinking sensing bad juju. I was thinking like I'm just
[06:31] chicken shit
[06:34] Okay, I see
[06:36] so okay
[06:38] Your first thought Coalson about the cold feet in the water
[06:41] You're thinking like everybody's gonna go dive in the pond and then you stick your feet in it's cold
[06:46] And then you don't want to say you're like, I'm not diving in
[06:50] Yeah, okay. That's my idea. So it's not so much. It's not so much about juju. It's about I'm just chicken shit
[06:59] Okay. Yeah, that's that's a good one
[07:02] Trying to think of other contexts in which you you experience cold feet. Oh while sleeping
[07:09] Like if your feet come out from underneath the blanket I get cold feet all the time. Sure
[07:14] Yeah, you could potentially like really doesn't change your behavior though. Yeah
[07:19] Physiologic on how old this goes back right? Like I mean are we is this
[07:27] post invention of the sock
[07:29] Or is this pre invention of the sock?
[07:33] Well, yeah, I was gonna say physiologically right so one of the outputs of nervousness is likely sweating
[07:40] So to your point Coalson if you are wearing socks then
[07:44] You know that could potentially make your feet cold if they are wet sure
[07:50] Yeah
[07:51] Well, that's also interesting because you think about I mean I I know
[07:57] That you know, I've seen die hard and
[08:02] He gets super stressed out from from flights and he makes fists with his toes and the carpet
[08:10] To make himself feel better
[08:13] Yeah, she was off on the plane big no-no
[08:16] No, no, no once he gets back once he gets off the plane
[08:19] Okay, and that's why he has no shoes and in the in the in the plot of the movie
[08:25] But I think that that's probably closely related like I'm thinking like maybe
[08:30] shoes off our
[08:32] connection to
[08:34] the ground
[08:37] It says it's a grounding theory I got nothing I'm getting nowhere
[08:43] Cold feet are bad when the ground is cold is all I'm trying to get with. Yeah, I'm stumped on this one
[08:52] I'm not
[08:54] any creative
[08:56] Flashes of inspiration. Well, let's maybe take some stabs at a time frame. What do you guys think this might have come up? How come up?
[09:05] Good question. This seems very old to me
[09:09] Like Greek ish or something. Oh, okay. Okay
[09:15] So so you would but because we associate it with weddings, is that is that informing your
[09:27] Old schoolness
[09:29] No, I just it just seems like an old wives tale type thing that goes back
[09:34] Okay, many many years. I mean, maybe I'm just stuck on this bad juju idea. Well, no, what do you yeah
[09:39] If you get cold feet, maybe you're gonna get sick
[09:42] Sort of thing, you know, like keep your feet warm because if you don't you'll get sick
[09:48] That could be a thing
[09:49] They could be back a long way barefoot and pregnant aspect to that. Sure. Oh, well, yeah, for example. Yeah, I
[09:57] think I'll probably go later just because the idea of
[10:02] Voluntary marriage on a large scale was maybe a little later. It's very news. It's like no point in having cold feet
[10:11] And at least in the way we currently understand
[10:14] Along those signs though I did have a question is is the cold feet typically in in the
[10:21] you know
[10:23] Normative heteronormative, you know male-female relationship. Is it is it typically the
[10:30] groom or the bride that experiences cold feet I I
[10:35] Don't experience it either. I think it's a I mean I have always understood it as either one that doesn't want to go to the
[10:42] The altar at the last minute and I don't think about it as male or female. I could be wrong, but that's
[10:49] I
[10:50] Tend to think that as well, but I don't know hyper what do you think? Yeah, I don't know that I have
[10:55] Any association either way either?
[10:58] Okay, which is informative
[11:02] Okay, so then you think it was so when are we starting to get voluntary that like that's a relatively new
[11:08] Yeah, so the
[11:10] 20s
[11:11] convention
[11:13] like
[11:14] Yeah, we haven't been doing voluntary marriage for that long
[11:17] I mean, I guess the peasants were doing that
[11:23] And it may be that we find that this is something that floated around in the vernacular for a while
[11:28] Before anybody put pen to paper thing. Okay, what okay? What about this then if it's not the peasants making the decision
[11:34] What if it's about the?
[11:36] the aristocracy's
[11:40] That that is making a decision that it's getting
[11:45] sort of
[11:46] lined up for marriage and
[11:49] The wealthy is is often where we get some of these phrases, you know, we get stuff from horse-raising and and from
[11:57] You know gambling and death is normally I think we're yet all our things
[12:02] so so what if this is a
[12:04] It's the wealthy people that have been set up for marriage and then they have a question about it
[12:11] instead of like the
[12:13] You know sure the peasants
[12:15] Any idea how those two things were tied together?
[12:18] Yeah, well, I mean the sense in which
[12:22] You would have to
[12:25] Reject some level of wealth to get out of this
[12:30] How does that make your feet cold?
[12:32] Boy, it would be a big decision and it might just take all the blood out of your body and take it to your head
[12:43] Your brain's working overtime, it's sort of a panic attack
[12:46] Mmm, okay. Okay
[12:48] That's that's I like my pond theory better
[12:53] Yeah, I think that's pretty strong so we're getting let's go pond theory and
[13:03] let late
[13:04] 19th century or something like that. I feel like old Westy
[13:08] Yeah, like the 1880s mid 1800s somewhere in there. Yeah. Okay post Civil War
[13:16] American
[13:17] Does this feel like a German phrase? No, the Germans don't have feelings
[13:23] Don't throw your baby out with the bathwater
[13:27] It's just it's just basically a rule it's not about your feeling you guys ready
[13:35] Yeah
[13:36] The origin of the term itself has been largely attributed to American author Stephen Crane who added the phrase in
[13:44] 1896 to second edition of his short novel Maggie a girl of the street
[13:49] It's
[13:51] Crane rights. I knew this was the way it would be they got cold feet. So
[13:58] girls of the streets got cold feet that was end of the
[14:05] It was the end of the quote
[14:07] So apprehension or doubt strong enough to prevent a planned course of action. So not necessarily wedding jitters solely
[14:15] a loss of lack or courage a
[14:17] wave of timidity or feel
[14:19] fearfulness
[14:22] The term is present in seed time and harvest by Fritz Reuter published in 1862. Oh
[14:29] 1862 that is Civil War and
[14:33] Former professor of Italian at Princeton attributed the first you the phrase de Volpona
[14:38] Produced by Ben Johnson in 1605 the true origin of the first usage of the phrase remains debated
[14:45] unconfirmed
[14:47] so somebody has
[14:50] They think they could go back to 1605 potentially and we're talking about always cold
[14:55] Yeah
[14:56] we're talking about the psychological effect chilled hands and feet that rise from release of adrenaline in the moment of
[15:01] Intention danger or that in it or that inactivity the waiting before the action is taken that will cause the feet to get cold
[15:07] so okay, so the idea that yeah in anxiety your the the blood leaves your limbs was
[15:15] My second idea not the not the pond idea
[15:19] There's a Lombard proverb
[15:21] Let's see in the Italian phrase a ver fredo
[15:26] Piede or to be cold in the feet means to have no money
[15:31] So it may become some gambling
[15:34] or dowry
[15:36] Yeah, no, yeah, yeah
[15:42] So it here are very few references to it between 1605 and the late 1800s
[15:51] Hmm. Yeah, that's all according to slate. I've got the idioms calm going with
[15:59] Presbyterian missionaries in the 1800s
[16:03] As an excuse to back out of something
[16:06] Man cannot be converted while suffering from cold feet or an empty stomach
[16:12] All right. Let's say so mental floss has some other theories. They're just fun to play around with there. So
[16:19] One theory has it that
[16:22] Cold feet came into use when soldiers who developed frostbite on their toll toes were subsequently unable to serve
[16:31] The phrase was meant to be but in what really does it say this is World War two
[16:37] People who were reluctant to serve in World War two were said to be cold footers
[16:43] But the the origin of cold feet predates that obviously
[16:49] And then there's the gambling thing, so it's basically gambling is the only other thing
[16:57] It's always gambling
[16:59] Mm-hmm or death
[17:01] So that Fritz Reuter German novel published in 1862
[17:09] He used it twice, but it involved jokes
[17:12] About losing their nerves and in both cases
[17:15] The person getting cold feet is a shoemaker. Oh very clever. That's a good joke
[17:23] Cuz that's better in the German
[17:27] He's making shoes, but he's not wearing them
[17:31] But nobody know there's nothing about putting your feet in the pond and not wanted to dive in huh?
[17:37] Because that's my best idea
[17:39] No, but I mean it was a physiological reaction. It happened in the late 1800s. We touched all that stuff. So
[17:50] I'm gonna say we nailed it
[17:53] And I also did mention the Germans and there's some precedent of the 1600s
[17:58] Yeah, and the English Americans and Europe begins to cover your bases
[18:06] You don't have to look for Google in the post-apocalyptic post-apocalyptic world we got this got this
[18:13] As long as we keep our beacon going and keeping these under Googles
[18:21] Going out into the podcast
[18:23] Universe
[18:25] All right. Well, there you go Gustavo
[18:27] That's right. Did not answer your question, but
[18:31] That's the fun of the game asked the right question
[18:34] He's a he's a swimmer. He's a diver. I think he's in shouldn't cold feet. So
[18:41] He probably has cold feet all the time in the sense that his feet are cold because he swims
[18:45] Maybe when he gets that a really high dive board, he's got a little little nervous
[18:50] Sure, I've got a lot of other questions from him that we will use over the next multiple years
[18:58] Shout out guys shout out