Melissa from Michigan, I work an extra part time job serving lunch at my child's school, but I still can't afford to put food on our table. Daniel from California, choosing whether to pay the rent or pay to fix the car to get to work doesn't leave us with much at all.

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Ever wondered why there are two ways to spell donuts or why some people think you can find water underground just by wandering around with a stick? Believe it or not, this is stuff you should know. You know the podcast with over a billion listeners. It's now for your eyes so you can read it. Stuff you should know. An incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things covers everything from the origin of the Murphy bed to why people get lost preorder at stuff you should know dotcom or wherever books are sold.

Hello everybody who gets to name continents. That's a great question.

And we answer that on March 22nd, 2016. I think this is a Josh Peck, a really interesting, interesting topic because, heck, I didn't know who gets to name continents and now I do. And if you haven't listened to this one, give it a listen.

Now, it's very, very cool episode. Who gets to name continents? Welcome to Step, you should know a production of NPR Radio's HowStuffWorks. Hey, and welcome to the podcast, I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bright and Jerry's over there. So this is stuff you should know, geography. We are in North America. That's right, Chuck. According to some. Yeah, actually, according to everybody. No, not everybody. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, we'll get to it. OK, we don't want to spoil, like, basically the fact of the podcast right already. This is, as I said, about geography. And if this kind of thing floats your boat, I strongly suggest you go look at how maps work or read or listen to that episode.

Yeah, it was a good one. It was.

Remember, we found that like people, other people see the the map upside down. Sure. You know, yeah. It all depends on how you look at it. Agreed. And that actually kind of comes into play not just with how you look at a map and say, oh, I'm on top and you're on bottom. So therefore you must be developing. Right. Um, naming continents is a kind of a well, we humans are kind of big on names, I guess.

Yeah, but we're big on location. Sure. Big on identifying with where we're from, with where we live, that kind of stuff. Yeah. It's a whole in group. Out group. Yes. You know.

Yeah. And boy I have to say for a short ish podcast which this is going to be, it's going to be our longest one. Let's take another break.

No, not yet. I hazard to say that I learned more in this than 10 Babi podcast and then 10 Babi podcasts.

Actually, that's not true. I learned a lot in that one too of that one. But this is just loaded with interesting stuff because I am not the biggest geography buff for someone who is a math or maps buff. Yeah, well, you like acad for their artistry, right? Yeah. And I just ordered a great new map. I wish I could remember the guy's name, but it was I read an article on this super detailed, awesome map of the United States.

This guy spent years and years drawing RB's all over the country.

No, his map. That would be great, though, although you can just follow your nose. You don't really need it. Always knows. Yeah, just like smell the horse's ass, all of that stuff. Although the RV is by far the superior of the two. Well, I think you got mix them. That's the key. Not always. I'm more of a beef and cheddar cheddar mix.

Yeah. Arby's sauce. It's delicious. Then the horse is also although I'm OK with horses for some time, I haven't had Arby's in forever.

Oh yeah. It looks delicious that I have a fairly strong roast beef sandwich is so good. Right. Yeah. All right. Uh, anyway, I ordered this amazing map and it hasn't arrived. I can't wait for it to get here though. It's going to actually. I'm going to frame this one, I think.

OK, you have all your maps framed now like a huge, huge wing of your house and just have every map you have right framed on the wall.

I should be like I'm starting to see a pattern here that would mean I have a huge room to my house all to myself. And that's not true. Uh, unfortunately, you know how to swing a hammer, don't you? Yeah. Let's build another room, a check room.

Uh, I wish my friend. So, Chuck, we were talking about, um, continents and their names and all that stuff, right? Yes. It turns out that when you think about the continents names, some seem kind of ho hum or whatever. But there's actually some really great stories behind these things. Agreed. Um, and we should probably start at the very beginning, way back way way back in 1948, even further back than that, 1926.

Two hundred million years ago, if you looked at the planet Earth, you would have seen that there weren't a bunch of different continents. There was actually one huge continent that wore headband and had enormous like four arms. Yeah. Named Pangaea. Yeah. What a stud that continent was. Yeah. And there was one ocean, uh, and the name of that ocean was Pantha Elorza. Yeah. It wasn't all divided up. It was just one big chunk of land and surrounded by one massive ocean.

Right. And then as we'll see later, this prominent theory, by the way. Right.

OK, we don't like no one was around back then two million years ago and be like no to 2016 sixteen. Right. This is the way things are land wise around here. Yeah, no. And this theory actually was we've talked about before, it had to have been in the earthquakes episode. This guy was awesome. Alfred Wegener. Yeah. Back in I think 1915, he published his theory on Continental Drift. Yeah. It's pretty amazing. Um, the theory.

Well, there's some reasons behind it, but the theory is that, you know, the earth is made up. These big plates. If you listen to our volcanoes or earthquake episodes, we talk a lot about that. And over time, these things cracked apart and shifted and drifted. Uh, and we now have many continents. Right. But that's. What people thought for a very long time, like they guess they just took for granted that the continents were the way they were.

But Alfred Wegener, first of all, he noticed on a map like, wow, it looks like you could really touch Africa, East or West Africa into the eastern part of South America really nicely. Yeah. And in fact, the more I look at it, the whole thing looks like a puzzle that kind of fits together. Yeah. If you're if you have a brain. So that's where he got his idea first and then he started setting about proving it or supporting coming up with evidence of that.

Yeah, that's good. And one of the things he looked at was coal seams along the edges of these puzzle pieces and found that they were composed of basically the same stuff.

Yeah, like coal in Pennsylvania. Deposits in Pennsylvania were similar or the same to those in Poland and Germany and Great Britain. Yeah, which shouldn't happen because what coal is is basically compressed former organisms. Yeah. Decaying matter. Right. Yeah. And so you would think that these different organisms would have evolved differently on different continents if they weren't together in the fact that they were the same and decomposed in about the same amount suggests that they were all part of the same landmass at one point.

Pretty neat. And then he also found fossils on different continents that really shouldn't have been the same.

Yeah, he saw plant fossils and said, wait a minute, I'm finding this stuff in places that are wildly different from one another as fossils. So maybe, again, that lends to my theory. Or how about this mountain range, the Appalachian Mountains, very similar to the Atlas Mountains of Morocco. Maybe it was all one big mountain, this mass at one point. And it turns out they probably were. That's right. What was the name of that mountain range?

Elections were part of the central Pangaea Mountains, which apparently formed through the collision of the supercontinents of Gondwana and All-Russia.

Yeah, because then we're also, in addition to this, How Stuff Works article. You found a great article by T a ghost who writes for live science and wrote some pretty great stuff. Yeah, this is really good. And GOCE is basically just broke it all out, like how Pangaea formed. What Pangaea broke into is a really interesting article. Yeah.

And concise. I like articles. It's not fluff, you know. Right. Just like packed with experts get to right at the beginning. OK, I love it. And don't let up. Don't stop till you have enough.

So in the article they talk about the, uh, the process that spanned a few hundred million years with a continent called Laurentia. That's a great continent name part of it, which includes part of North America and some other micro continents. It formed eventually you're America. That's not bad. It sounds like a Kraftwerk album.

Oh, it does totally. Uh, your America crashes into Gondwana, which I mentioned before.

And I I'm want to I'm just going to come out and say I like these pre current continent continent names. Pretty white dude names, right? I guess so. But I think they were named by white dudes, probably more creative white dudes.

And Gondwana included Africa, Australia, South America and Indian subcontinent. Yeah.

So like all of these, it's so hilarious that all of these these ideas of nationalism and all this and if you just come back a few hundred million years ago, used to be one you'd be neighbors. Yeah. Let's all just lighten up. Shackley And that's actually a thing that we we talked about in the maps. Episode two is like when you draw a map, you are you're making a political statement. It's just there's such a sense of otherness and togetherness based on geographical distribution.

Yeah, it is. It's it's interesting. It says a lot about the human psyche. Yeah. We should do a podcast one day on the human family tree.

Yeah. Is super interesting. Yeah. Uh, so getting back to the supercontinent, a couple of hundred million years ago, Gondwana split off from Luritja. Mm hmm. That's a good one to fifty million years later, Gondwana broke up and then they had sixty million years ago, North America split off from Eurasia. And these are all the prominent theories again. Yeah, well, they follow the continental drift theory. Yeah. And I mean, it's not like they're just like.

They say, let's say the Indian subcontinent broke off shore from this continent. It's like, no, they have gone through and done the geological comparisons. Yeah, and it seemed like when this basically matched up to that and that's what they've come up with. It's pretty astounding that it is that if you have enough patience and brains, uh, so interestingly, they talk to a little bit in the article about climate and what it might have been like back then.

And maybe the interior of this large supercontinent was completely dry because it was surrounded by mountains, uh, maybe parts of what is now North America used to be like the Amazon rainforest, like a super lush jungle. Right. Would be kind of cool. Yeah.

But if you once you got into the interior, when you crossed the what was it, the central the central Pinga Mountains. Yeah. Like you were just you apparently there is a ring of mountains that that ran around the middle of the whole Pangaea in the interior and it just produced rain shadows that kept rain out from the interior of the continent. So it would have just been a just a totally arid desert.

Pretty cool. It is cool. And of course, this isn't over. They point out in the article that things are still changing. Australia's is creeping up on Asia. Yeah, very slowly, of course. Yeah. Pretty cool and posh part of eastern Africa is just trying to get out of the rest of Africa.

Yeah. Eastern Africa is staying so long. I'm, uh, I'm going off on my own. I'm going to seek my own fortune and adventure. Of course, this is over the course of hundreds of millions of years. So you will likely not be around unless the singularity happens soon. Yeah, exactly. Then you may. And you can be like, this is pretty cool. The people of Sydney will have a docking party with the people of Hong Kong.

I love that. Uh, so you want to take a little break here, then we'll talk a little bit about these names.

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Now, that is true. So that is the theory of continental drift and the whole idea is that there's a layer of magma. Yeah, and then on top of it are the continental plates and they're constantly shifting and moving again, albeit very slowly. And when they do, they expose a fissure and you've got volcanic activity or two plates slide up against one another, one subduction below the other one, and you have earthquakes. So there's a lot of evidence that continental drift is real and that things like hollow earth are probably not correct.

Probably. Have you noticed every time we do any kind of geography, especially when we mention plate tectonics, the the hollow earth people come out of the woodwork and just send us emails and leave comments and yeah, they're they're they're like the high fructose corn syrup people. They're like really active in the comment section. Yeah.

Frodo and the gang. Yeah. That's Middle Earth different in Pangaea, we should mention is Greek for all lands or all earth. So that's a great name for the original supercontinent. Right. And Pantha losses all ocean. The ocean that surrounded and Pangaea was what's considered a true continent. We should say this because they'll come up later. But a true continent is a landmass surrounded by ocean on all sides.

I'm looking at you Asia in Europe. I know. You know. I know. In fact, part of it, actually, I think you sent this idea, didn't you? Yeah. What the whole idea for the show was from you. But not too long ago I was I think Emily asked me. She was like, what is Russia? Is that part of is it Asian or is it European? And I was like, well, I don't know, Asia.

Let's go look. Well, it depends part of it really. Well, yeah, part of it then. Same with Turkey is it's split. And, you know, some people identify with Europe, some people identify with Asia. Wow. That's why the term Eurasia.

Well, no, I got that and I got it from this article, but I didn't know that, like, Russia itself was split, you know. Yeah, that's what it says, huh. Like I could see, like, uh, Kazakhstan or something being like straddling the sides. But I didn't realize, like, Russia itself was split. So that's pretty interesting. Yeah. Maybe some Russians will write in. Tell us how you identify. Yeah.

Are you Eurasian, Asian, European. Which one? Yeah. Because obviously a lot of these lines are drawn culturally.

Right. Because their mountain ranges that they're separated. Yeah. That's not I mean it's a geographical border, but not when you're speaking in continents.

It's not in continents. Right. So we told them Gerry's bad joke. Yes. Before we started, Jiří said, I guess we're technically all in continent.

And I said, no, technically, we're all on continent, and then she said, or within continent, and none of the three things that we said were funny, but that's that's how things happened before we hit record.

Yeah. That's why we don't release this stuff beforehand. It's usually much better than that. So let's get down to this, Chuck. All right. Let's talk about naming continents. Right? All right. Apparently with continents, if you are prominently involved with this discovery, you typically get some sort of naming rights.

Yeah, and a lot of these are very just conjecture goes into maybe who named these and who didn't. One big exception is Antarctica. Right, because it's new ish. It's like Pluto. Yeah. As far as when people discovered it, uh, in fact, you can go to The New York Times and read in 1984 about the naming of Antarctica. Yeah. If you were so inclined to be bored to tears.

No, I love those old articles. I like a lot of them, too.

Like, remember the subway accident where people got shot out of the subway tunnel that was being dug? Yeah, that was an interesting article. This one is it's bad. Oh, did you read it? No, just listen. Okay.

Well, a man named Sir John Murray was a great explorer and oceanographer. He was part of the famous HMS Challenger expedition, which for my money is the greatest of all ocean going explorations. The Challenger. Yeah, man. Sixty nine thousand nautical miles. Wow. Unbelievable. If you look at the map of this thing, the route, it was just it's staggering. Do you have a map of it? I don't own one, but I looked it up today, OK?

It's pretty neat. And I never knew what HMS stood for. Did you know that Her Majesty's ship. Yeah, I never knew that. Yeah. Oh, it's just like HMS the there's another one that I don't like, Oremus. I don't know, and what is the USS just United States ship? I don't know, I never thought about that either. Probably, probably. Someone from the Navy can maybe point in the right direction. So anyway, John Murray, even though the expedition, the Challenger expedition, did not, they kind of buzzed Antarctica, they didn't actually see the land, but they came close.

But he would later go on to do, like, actually go to Antarctica.

OK, I was going to say, like, then how did he know anything about it? I guess his interest was piqued. He saw icebergs and stuff.

And I'm coming back. Yeah, because this place is cold.

He's I'm coming for you tomorrow. Antero. So in 1984, he actually was able to name it as a combination of Aunt opposite in Arctic, the North Pole. So the opposite of the North Pole, a.k.a. the South Pole. Pretty neat. And which one has penguins. And so Antarctica has penguins in the North Pole doesn't in that right. I don't remember. But that's like that's the case. Right. Doesn't want have one and the other one doesn't.

I know we got a lot of emails. We did. I don't know why I'm doing this again. I know I might as well just hook a car battery up to my nipples.

It'll get the same effect. I got you on that one.

Yeah, that was good.

Um, so let's talk about America, because I just realized something. Check this may be played in geography classes in like middle school and stuff. So if that's the case, I want to go ahead and apologize to all the middle schoolers that just had to hear me say that.

That's OK. And don't don't try that at home.

But I do it doesn't matter what grade you're in or how long out of school you are. Agreed. So America, the name America, if you went to took civics class or geography in elementary school and high school, you probably got the story that America was Puchi was it was named after him. European explorer. Yeah.

That guy has been slandered, maligned, maybe worse than Columbus even. Yeah. Apparently he had a lot of rivals back in Italy and they worked very hard to sully his name. And it was quite effective over the centuries to the point where there was a big almost a revival in in hatred for America. Best interest and a lot of really inaccurate ideas were were revived based on propaganda, contemporary propaganda against him.

So so what's the idea that he ripped off Columbus?

Well, that's not it depends on your definition of ripped off. So I don't have the impression that he ever said I discovered America. He said Columbus discovered America. But the distinction between Vespucci and Columbus is that Columbus didn't realize he hadn't hit already, that he hadn't hit undiscovered or previously undiscovered by European land. Right. Right. He thought that he had just found another route to the West Indies, apparently, until he died. Yeah, this Puchi was the one to say no Europeans ever seen this before.

I please. That was great. No, it wasn't like it.

And so he is the one who supposedly this continent was named after because he was the one to recognize it as previously uncharted land.

Yeah. And it's on record in fifty seven, a cartographer, a German cartographer named Martine Vollertsen simular our two favorite accents.

Yeah, Italian and German. Yeah. Two of the only two you can still do these days. Right. And not get taken a desk for sure.

He very famously made a map. There was a big effort in France in the fifteen hundreds to really bring the modern map into the forefront. And like these old maps like these are made by a bunch of dummies who didn't know anything. So let's really expand our geographic knowledge. Well, yeah, this has been like Mercader started working. Yeah. So this this would cut map that Volter Mueller made was the first to depict a separate Western hemisphere, the first to show the Pacific Ocean as a separate thing.

Oh, this guy, he was he's like that sea monster off of there.

Uh, I'd leave a sea monster. Okay. Just for fun. But he is an Easter egg there. Yeah. There was one of these maps. There is one of these maps still existing. And in 2003, three, the Library of Congress bought it. With donation from Discovery Channel, oh, is that right? Apparently nice for 10 million bucks, it was in a castle for 350 years in southern Germany and they're like, wow, let's buy it and display it.

I wrote about a guy who found an original copy of the Declaration of Independence folded up behind a painting that he bought at a yard sale gallery. That for dollars. Amazing. And I think he sold it for like a few million. And then Norman Mailer bought it for like eight million.

Wow. But, yeah, somebody just found the Declaration of Independence, I guess, in much the same way. That's amazing. Yeah, I got nothing in my attic. I even looked. Oh, you did.

I was so sure you don't know. But I guess you do have some old doors, doors that can be worth 30, 40 bucks.

Yeah. The door from the early 1930s. Yeah. People love those things. They go crazy for. I think it's neat. But, you know, I wanted like a stash of no gold bullion or something like prohibition era money. Yeah. My house in oil. Was your house built in like 1930 Prohibition? Yeah, I guess so. Maybe some old booze, yeah, moonshine, right? Be delicious.

So the the reason this map is significant by Balsom simular is that it it says America like North South America or designated America. Yeah. By this map and this is map that is in question was from when was it.

Fifteen or seven. Fifteen or seven.

And somebody said, hey buddy, why did you call it America. And he said, I did it in honor of America. VESPUCCI Sure.

So the first guy who really uses the word America is on record apparently is saying he named it America after Amerigo Vespucci. Yeah, but a lot of people said that's a lie. It's a historical fallacy. It's an accurate. Right. One guy went so far as to say that America was actually changed his name after America was named and that his real name was Giovanni Vestibules. You know, Albergo Vesp.

Oh that he changed his name to a merry go from Albury go to conveniently align with the naming of America. Right.

But apparently and this is this again this is contemporary stuff. People said you changed your name you big liar. Right. And then in the 1970s I think some historian revived it and like that was the idea. But somebody else went back and apparently found his baptismal certificate. That lists him as a Marigot vespucci.

Huh?

The thing is, is that still doesn't mean that America was named after WPT chatroom. There is a long tradition among cartographers that had already been established by the time America was discovered to name new lands. If you're naming it after an explorer, you named it after the explorers last name. If you wanted to name it after royalty, you named it after the royalties. First names to think about it. Georgia. Yeah, yeah. Um, uh, Virginia.

Yeah. And then Columbus. Sure. Or Hudson. I like the explorers last name or royalties. First name is how you name states. So they would have named America this spooky land, the United States of us. Puchi. Exactly. Rather than America. Yeah, that'd be great. But if it's not named after Puchi, then where did America come from?

Well, there are some theories. One is that it was named after the America, America, America. And it's a Mayan word, actually.

Yes. Mountains in Nicaragua.

And this is where my money goes. You think so? So people think that Columbus and Vespucci both went to these mountains after American Native said, hey, there's gold in them there, hills. All right. Which, of course, is really all they wanted anyway. Well, that's not true. They wanted to discover new lands, but hopefully new lands with gold. Right. And people you could subjugate. Exactly.

Um, so that they went to there and then it was named after those mountains. Yeah, not bad.

And did you say both Columbus and disputed or supposedly traveled to these mountains. Yeah. Because they wanted the gold. Right. So that's a pretty good reason to call it that. And it when you combine that with the evidence that a cartographer likely would have named it was beauty land rather than America after a Marigot, it's entirely possible that America is actually named after a indigenous Mayan word. For some mountains. I think it means place of wind in mind.

Interesting. Yeah. Uh, another theory and this one, I don't think is very I don't think it holds water, but there was a British royal rep named Richard Emeric America and supposedly explorer John Cabot became the first. Well, this isn't supposed in fourteen ninety seven. He definitely became the first to sail under the British flag to the new world.

And apparently when he got back, he got a big wad of cash from America and he was like, hey, I'm going to name the country and continent after you then.

But there's really nothing to substantiate that right now.

And then Cabot retired to make some pretty decent butter. Oh, yeah. Set him. I think so. OK, surely it's him still.

Maybe it's several hundred years ago. You want to take a break again.

Yeah, let's break and then we'll talk about our favorite continent, Australia. Did you know the original Mr. Potato Head was an actual potato, did you know that all tequila's are Mesko but not all mesoscale in tequila? Did you know some goats climb trees? Did you know there really was a Jones family that everyone in New York was trying to keep up with or that Pablo Picasso was a child prodigy who could draw before he could talk? You will stuff you should know.

An incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things. Preorder now. It's stuff you should know dotcom or wherever books are sold. Ever wondered why there are two ways to spell donuts or why some people think you can find water underground just by wandering around with a stick? Believe it or not, this is stuff you should know. You know the podcast with over a billion listeners. It's now for your eyes so you can read it. Stuff you should know. An incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things covers everything from the origin of the Murphy bed to why people get lost preorder at stuff you should know dotcom or wherever books are sold.

So, Chuck, you were telling everybody our favorite continent is Australia. Yeah, that's what Lex Luthor Gene Hackman is Lex Luthor wanted in Superman. He wanted Australia. Yeah. To his own.

Or Superman, too. Yeah, I remember the three the three.

Terence Terence Stamp and the gang. Yeah. Came down and he and Lex Luthor was working in cahoots with them and they were like, well what do you want in return for delivering Superman. He said Australia.

I don't remember that. Yeah. And Gene Hackman was great. I saw this the beginning of a movie with Robin Williams and Walter Matthau. Robin Williams was like a baby at the time, but like they foil a robbery and, like, become heroes, I think. And then they yeah, they go to like a survivalist camp or something.

Yeah, I think it is a cult survivor, so I think so I felt like the first time.

I totally know the movie, but I was like, man, there is no one, no one on the planet like Walter Matthau now me anymore. Like he was awesome then. I was like, I just can't imagine Robin Williams and Walter Matthau working together. And then didn't they do like Moscow on the Hudson? Wasn't that one. And well, I don't want I don't think Martha was in that one. Oh, it was it. I thought it was maybe it was I could be wrong because I never saw it.

Those early Robin Williams movies were great. Were were into Garp. I never saw that one. So that was by the guy who did Cider House Rules, right? Yeah. John Irving. Yeah, he's pretty great. Oh yeah. But then it made me think about Couche trip. You remember that movie with Dan Aykroyd and Walter Matthau?

I didn't see it was a good yes. It was so good. I, I haven't seen it in decades, but I guarantee it still holds up. I mean, it's Methow and Akroyd. Yeah. One's like a con man pretending to be crazy and the other one actually is crazy. Who is the only person who can sense that this guy is a con man? You know, I've never been, you know, sorry. He's a con man pretending to not be crazy.

OK, well, that makes more sense. It's great. I've never been the hugest Dan Aykroyd guy. He definitely is Dan Aykroyd, Dan Aykroyd, and I don't dislike them. But Walter Matthau was providing a nice, slow burning distraction over here. If you don't like Dan Aykroyd, you'll still like culture. Yeah.

And boy, the odd couple, Martha Lemon, if I ever saw that original one. So good. All right.

That's called movie sidebar with Josh and Chuck.

And it started with Gene Hackman. We didn't even talk about him. Oh, I love Gene Hackman. He needs to unretire, is what I'm saying. Seriously, like, go make another movie.

Yeah, your swan song. That's what I say. All right, we own you, Gene Hackman, Australia, which is what Gene Hackman is Lex Luthor wanted. Um, it is a bit of a mystery to most people. Will point to Matthew Flinders in 1882 as the Namer because he was the first to circumnavigate it and create that map and Australia's mean southern. So it all makes sense, right? Yeah, back back in the day. The cartographers were already aware of Australia before Matthew Flinders circumnavigated it, but they called it the Terra Australis, which is the southern land.

Matthew Flinders is like I like the sound of Australia more. It's more pleasing to the ear, apparently, is how it was put. All right. The thing is, is in for a very long time. That's how Australia was named as far as anyone's concerned. But then Australia's National Library discovered a way older map before 1882. From 1945.

Yeah, from a German astronomer named Sirico, Yakup Sombath. That's a great name. Great name.

Not at all German, if you ask me, except for the Yakob thing. Uh, Sombath is. But that Sirico definitely doesn't look German. No, but yeah. 1045 45. That's like way, way before. Yeah.

And apparently there's maps that are even slightly older than that around and one of them might have been produced by Mercader himself that also refer to the area around Australia as Australia, something. So not everyone was referring to it exclusively as the Terra Australis. OK, but it's it's probable that the Syriac go yakoub zoom bath is the one who first labeled Australia. All right. We should do a podcast on the history of Australia.

Sure.

Super interesting. Starring Hugh Jackman for the World War two part.

By the way, when I mentioned Hugh Jackman is P.T. Barnum, OK? He is, in fact, playing P.T. Barnum in an upcoming musical version of a movie, but either didn't know or I subliminally knew, OK, but I didn't overtly know.

I thought later on after I found that out, that you'd just been messing with me the whole episode. Well, I apologize for assuming that that's all right. I either didn't know or maybe I had read that and just forgotten something because you said it like three times. Yeah, yeah. Or maybe I should get into cast. If you didn't know, then hats off to you, because that was prescient. So now let's move on to oh, did you see some of the suggestions we got the.

Oh, for P.T. Barnum. Yeah.

I think the my favorite one is John C. Riley. He'd be a Jauncey or he'd be an odd P.T. Barnum, but he could totally do it. Yeah, I saw one someone said Tom Hardy, who like he'd be great in anything, but he's in everything right now.

He's so hot right now. And then someone sent Colm Meaney, who was sort of like the other names, like I know the name.

Who is it? He's like the English. John C. Reilly. Sort of looks like he's older, though, right. Or he may be Irish and Irish. Yeah, he's a little older. Yeah. Yeah, I know who he is. They kind of look alike a bit. Komin, he's got a little more dampeners to a little more suaveness maybe.

Well, there's nothing about John C. Suave. Have you seen. We need to talk about Kevin. Oh, you'll love it. The movie The Sleeper with John C. Reilly and Tilda Swinton about they have a kid who's a bad kid until this Swinton's having to deal with it. Interesting. Really great movie. It's on Netflix right now. I love John C. Reilly.

So he's kind of a prop in the background for this. It's mostly Tilda Swinton and I'm sure appreciate hearing that.

He knows, OK, there's no way he played that role and does it now. All right.

I never knew we could talk so much about movies and this one, I didn't see that coming. Um, so let's talk about the other continents, um, Africa, Asia and Europe. Basically, what it boils down to with the rest of these is there were likely named by sailors who had to call them something. Yeah, probably and the like Africa has a few different contenders that are pretty good. Um, there's a the Africa people who are in the northern part of Africa, they're Berber tribe.

Yeah. Not a bad source. Yeah. Makes sense. And then apparently a PreK in Greek or Pryke in Latin means Sunee. Right. Yeah. OK, since two. And then there's so who knows. The point is there's no documentation for when Africa was first named and it was most likely Africa, Europe and Asia were named by seafaring folks who were like we're going this place and they needed a name for this place. So they their families would know where they were to go look for him if they didn't come back.

Yeah. And so they came up with names like Europe and Asia. Yeah. Phoenician sailors. It's believed they may have used their proximity to the sun because Asia might come from AQ HQ for Sunrise or East and Europe, which is of course West closer to the sunset. If you're standing in the east. Right. CREB Arab, which means sunset or west.

That's a Phoenician word. Right.

So it's possible. Phoenician sailors named Asia in Europe. There's other ones too, like Europa, the Greek mythological figure, right? Yeah. And then Asia could have been named after a ruler named Osseous, a Trojan ruler. Yeah, I don't think that's. That's the fun thing about things where it's like no one knows you sure, like that's not right. Yeah, you read certain you read theories and some make sense to you and some don't write like that.

That's why I don't think math never appealed to me and why it does appeal to math fans because its rules apply and like there is a right and a wrong. I'm much more prone to be like to think about something and have theories about it.

Well, you know, they say you read a lot of fiction, right? Yeah. They say that people who read fiction are much more open to ambiguous resolutions or non resolution lacking closure. Yeah. And because you so frequently get that from fiction, it leads to the question, though, which is first, are you attracted to fiction? Because right now it usually has resolutions like that, or have you been trained to accept resolutions like that from appreciating fiction?

Well, back to movies. One of my favorite things, which really bothers a lot of people are movies with ambiguous endings. If if done right. I think it's one of the coolest things you can do in a movie is to not wrap it up in a little bow and kind of leave the end with the decision, like. Sure. What's going on here possibly for a sequel? Well, maybe. I bet math majors hate that, though, now that I think about it.

Oh, yeah. You know, yeah.

And then finally, some people still, depending on where you are in the world, don't recognize all the continents.

No. And this actually makes sense to me because we said earlier, a continent is a body of land surrounded on all sides by a body of water. Right. So that means that a lot of the continents that we recognize over here in the west as continents ain't continents. Yeah, they're incontinent. So according to some parts of the world, North America and South America, it's just America. Yeah. And then Europe and Asia. Just Eurasia. Yeah.

And that's it.

I've got a great pavement T-shirt that has North America on it and it says Canada and then Mexico. And in the middle it says pavement. And I get a lot of compliments on it. And I think it's from people thinking I'm making a statement like the United States is just a bunch of pavement and like, you know, Canada or Mexico aren't when in fact, it's just the band. Yeah. Or maybe they're all just pavement bands. You can't tell.

You can never tell these days. Did I tell you I'm Facebook friends with Bob Sestanovich from Pavement? You didn't. I tricked him because we had some mutual friends.

Your mom said that you have to be friends with me on Facebook. Yeah, it's pretty great, though. I like seeing insight into these, like, people I revere. Sure. He's a big horse racing guy. Oh, yeah. Yeah. He likes the ponies, too. Yeah.

I don't like going to the track necessarily, but I like the big three. Yeah. Although I would go to the track. We don't have them around here. Yeah. We don't. And bring it on, send the email about how I'm wrong for going to the track or wanting to. If you want to know more about naming continents or geography or any of that jazz head on over to HowStuffWorks dot com and type in geography and the search bar and it will bring up a mess of great articles.

And I said, mess, it's time for the listener mail.

I'm going to call this road trip and we get a lot of emails from people that listen to us while they're road tripping. Yes, to very nice. Hey, guys, my husband and I are adventuring on a road trip from Texas throughout Florida. I've been addicted to the show for a couple of months now, but my husband is not. Listen to a podcast in his life. I started the driving in the trip and he asked if I could make it all the way to Florida.

First of all, my husband, Tom. Yeah, that's pretty serious stuff. All right. We're in Texas on.

Can you make it all the way to Florida? Yeah, I got to catch some Zs. I need show that I said that if I could listen to stuff, you should know that I wouldn't stop driving his side, regrettably. And then let me turn to episode on five days into the trip, every time we get into the car, he now says, Educate me on stuff I should know. Nice. Our biggest debates are deciding on which podcast to listen to next.

We literally made it to one of our destinations and sat in the car for another fifteen minutes after a three hour drive just to finish an episode. That's wonderful. Thank you so much for what you do. And that is from Kim and Tom Kepler. And since we are not recording too far out these days, they are most likely still on the trip. Yeah, enjoy the trip, be safe, have fun and drive, you know, every now and then.

Tom Yeah. Really, Tom let's get it together, shall we? That's awesome. I hope they just heard this. Yeah. If you want to get in touch with us because you love us on a road trip or you whatever, you can tweet to us. So that's why ask podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff. You should know you can send us an email to Stuff podcast at HowStuffWorks dot com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuff.

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