Selects: Did Shakespeare really write all that stuff?

The question of Shakespeare's authorship has been around since at least the mid-1800s. Is there anything to it? In this classic episode, we dig in to this dense topic to find out. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:02Josh Clark?

  When you're in do-it-yourself mode, the last thing you want to do is drop everything to pick up that one part or tool that you need. That's where MyLowe's Rewards and MyLowe's Pro Rewards come in. Place your order, and Lowe's handles the rest. Lowe's will make the run for you with free same-day delivery. Members get more at Lowe's. $25 minimum and loyalty membership required. Order eligible items by 2 P M. Subject to weight and size restrictions and availability. Terms at lowe's.com/shippingterms. Hey, guys, it's me, Josh. And for this week's select, I've chosen our 2022 episode on Shakespeare and whether he actually wrote all that stuff, or if there even was a Shakespeare. This

• 1:45Josh Clark?

  episode is actually possibly my favorite episode of all time, because I knew nothing about this, and I learned a bunch of stuff, and I found it really interesting, and it was fun, really fun, to kind of turn around and explain it to all of you. So I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I always have every time I hear it about Shakespeare.

• 2:13Speaker 03

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 2:22Josh Clark?

  Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and Chuck's on the line. Jerry's here too. And we're about to get jiggy with it about Shakespeare.

• 2:32Speaker 02

  Can I caveat this out of the gate?

• 2:35Josh Clark?

  I guess.

• 2:38Speaker 02

  So the more we dug into this, you know, I was an English major. We talked very briefly when I was in college about Shakespeare's authorship.

• 2:45Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 2:45Speaker 02

  And I thought, hey, this would be a fun little semi easy episode. And the more we dug into it, the more this onion unfolded.

• 2:58Josh Clark?

  It's quite an onion.

• 2:59Speaker 02

  This blooming onion unfolded layer by crispy delicious layer.

• 3:03Josh Clark?

  For all of our Australian listeners, that's what we think you guys eat every night.

• 3:08Speaker 02

  Every night.

• 3:10Speaker 02

  To the point where I was almost like, you know, is this a two parter? I mean, you could probably do a 10 part episode on this.

• 3:17Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:17Speaker 02

  It's so dense. So I just want to caveat this for people that know a lot about Shakespeare authorship and saying, this is a pretty broad overview of the high points of his authorship being questioned because it is dense, baby.

• 3:33Josh Clark?

  It's the kind of thing that like extremely intelligent people take on as their like lifelong hobby. It's like that.

• 3:41Speaker 02

  We're like, we'll just bust it out in a few days. It'll be fine.

• 3:43Josh Clark?

  Yeah. You know, like how some people are like, they, they research World War II submarine warfare and know everything about it's along the same lines, but it's even bigger. There's so many people involved and each side is like, you're so naive to the other. And yes, it's true. Like we could, we could turn this into a 10 part series, but I think we've got a handle on it enough to present it. I'm feeling okay about it. And then the other thing that sticks out for me, Chuck, is this is one of the few things I've ever come across like this that I am like truly agnostic about. I do not have an opinion one way or the other.

• 4:19Speaker 02

  I don't know if I do either, actually.

• 4:22Josh Clark?

  Like, it's not like I don't care. That's not what I'm saying. Like, I genuinely can see both sides. And the other thing about it is, the more you dig into it, the more you realize, oh, neither side actually has really good evidence to support their claim. It's all just, they have to get so granular that it really quickly goes into the world of conspiracy theories pretty quickly.

• 4:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I saw this video of a guy, this wonderful gentleman who knows a lot about it, that said like, "And here's the golden bullet which proves once and for all." And he made his case and I was like, "Oh, no, no, that didn't really prove it once and for all, in my opinion."

• 4:59Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure. Because both sides do things like they get into biographical readings where they're trying to find clues within the text, or, you know, parallels to his life, or that kind of thing. And once that starts, it's like, okay, you guys are, you've just completely left the world of objectivity.

• 5:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. So what we're talking about, if you haven't guessed by now, is this idea that has been around since at least the mid 1800s, maybe before, about the question of whether or not William Shakespeare was the sole author of all of his works. And this is Shakespeare from Stratford-on-the-Avon, like, that gentleman that we know became an actor, and, you know, writer. Whether or not he was the sole author, whether or not he was a front for some other authors for some of the works, some people say he didn't write any of them. Some people said it was various women who weren't allowed to write things at the time.

• 6:00Speaker 02

  There, I saw 66 candidates over the years have been put forward.

• 6:06Josh Clark?

  I saw 80.

• 6:07Speaker 02

  Oh, really? So there you have it. Somewhere between 66 and 80 something. Of, I know we haven't been accused of writing any of Shakespeare's work.

• 6:17Josh Clark?

  I don't think so. I didn't come across that in my research.

• 6:20Speaker 02

  But it's an interesting literary, I don't even know if I want to call it a mystery, because some people just say like, no, I mean, of course he wrote it and he was, these outsized personalities, the most famous of the famous are, conspiracies are drawn to them. Elvis is still alive. Marilyn Monroe was murdered. Like, that happens when you are, you know, one of the biggest icons in your field, quite often. So some people say this just, that's all that it is.

• 6:51Josh Clark?

  In addition to that, there's a, a lack of biographical documentation that he actually did write those plays. And I think that that's also what allows for people to say, you know, well, do we really know?

• 7:07Speaker 02

  Right. Or that he didn't write them. Like, there's just, it was a time, you know, in the 1500s where there, and 1600s, where there just wasn't a ton of great preserved information. And we'll kind of talk about a lot of that.

• 7:20Josh Clark?

  So we do know that William Shakespeare did live. He was from, like you said, Stratford on Avon. It was at the time about a two to three day journey from London, about a hundred something miles, I think. And he definitely did live. He definitely did exist. That's not a question, because we do have documentary evidence that this person lived from 1564 to 1616, about 52 years. And depending on when you place his birthday, maybe 52 years on the nose. So we know he existed. Again, what's at issue, what's being questioned is whether that man, William Shakespeare from Stratford on Avon, who went on to become an actor, who went on to become a producer, who worked with the, in the Globe Theatre,

• 8:03Josh Clark?

  whether he was the author of the plays we consider written by Shakespeare. That's what's at question.

• 8:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. So like you said, he was a real dude. He came from a family that was I mean, I kind of read it as a little bit middle class. They certainly were not like upper-class nobility types. His father was a glover. He wore, I guess he wore gloves too, but he made gloves.

• 8:29Josh Clark?

  Allow me to demonstrate.

• 8:30Speaker 02

  It'd be pretty weird if he didn't. That guy won't even wear his own gloves. But he produced these very, very fine gloves for well-to-do people. But he did achieve some, I guess, worked his way up the social chain a little bit because eventually he would serve as, was sort of like a mayor in Stratford. And again, while not nobility, like, they were fairly well-regarded as people.

• 8:57Josh Clark?

  Right. So, we don't know for certain, but there's a pretty good, there's a much better chance than not, that because of his father's position in town, because they had some money, like you said, they were middle-class, he almost certainly would have been educated at the grammar school at Stratford. So, what most people think is that William Shakespeare was educated until about the age of 13.

• 9:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:24Josh Clark?

  And he would have learned things like Latin, he would have learned history, he would have learned some classic literature. He definitely would have been exposed to stuff that whoever wrote Shakespeare's plays would go on to expound on. So, he definitely was, I can't say that. That's the thing. Like, you really have to be careful what you say about this.

• 9:45Speaker 02

  I know.

• 9:45Josh Clark?

  I was about to say, so he definitely was educated. We don't know that he was. This is all just a supposition. But it's a pretty good bet. It's a good supposition that he actually was educated.

• 9:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. And all this, you know, the reason that's important is all of this kind of comes back later, as some people say, proof that he may not have written this stuff. Because like, how could, and one of the main arguments used many times is how could a kid who came from here have known about these military exploits and the Elizabethan Court and all these different languages and all this highfalutin stuff that he wrote about. So, it's important to, you know, talk about his education. And it seems like he was a likely educated. Pretty well until thirteen, which, you know, I'm not even sure if that's early or late. As far as the time period goes, that, do you know if that was like, kind of generally it for kids?

• 10:37Josh Clark?

  It was, it was in the middle because he could have just as easily not been educated at all.

• 10:43Speaker 02

  Right, of course.

• 10:44Josh Clark?

  But he also didn't go on to Cambridge or Oxford to, to extend his studies. So he was in there in the middle. They think he was probably educated, not highly educated, but also not, you know, uneducated. That's, that's the key. And that, if, if there was evidence he had not gone to school, I think that the anti Shakespeare people would have a real like mark in their favor. But he has just enough education that you can make the case like, no, like this guy, this guy learned about this stuff already and he could have known about it. And, you know, when you add imagination and natural talent.

• 11:18Speaker 02

  Right.

• 11:19Josh Clark?

  You come up with Shakespeare conceivably.

• 11:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. He got married to Anne Hathaway, you know? Go ahead and insert Anne Hathaway joke there. You know, she's a real actor, right?

• 11:31Josh Clark?

  Sure, yeah. Devil Wears Prada and Princess Diaries.

• 11:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm a big fan. I think Anne Hathaway's great.

• 11:37Josh Clark?

  Inception? No.

• 11:39Speaker 02

  No, was she?

• 11:41Josh Clark?

  Interstellar.

• 11:42Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 11:43Josh Clark?

  She did a stellar job in Interstellar.

• 11:45Speaker 02

  Come on. They got married when, he was quite a bit younger. She was 26. He was 18. She was pregnant, which is probably a little unusual for the time. They had a daughter named Susanna and then had twins, a boy and a girl twin. And the boy named Hamnet, not Hamlet, but Hamnet.

• 12:06Josh Clark?

  Yeah, which apparently they've never turned up another use of that name in, at the time.

• 12:12Speaker 02

  Proof. He was 11 years old when he died and that kind of comes into play later on as well. And then there's about a, you know, from 1585 to about 1592, there's about a seven year gap where we don't know a lot about what was going on with Shakespeare. And then he pops up, which a lot can happen in seven years.

• 12:37Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 12:37Speaker 02

  Again, not trying to sway people one way or the other, but you can certainly learn a lot in seven years if you have some big life experiences. But he pops up in London in 1592 again, as far as the record go, goes. And, you know, keep in mind, a lot of this record before he was known in his lifetime as an author was, you know, just kind of not flimsy, but just not a lot of stuff, like various little lawsuits and mortgages and sort of banking records and stuff like that, right?

• 13:08Josh Clark?

  Yeah, yeah. And, and also, I mean, like, that's, that's about as much documentation as you would be able to come up with on most people. And you can make a case that there's more documentation on Shakespeare than most other people who weren't nobility.

• 13:23Speaker 02

  Right.

• 13:24Josh Clark?

  Of his era.

• 13:25Speaker 02

  Oh, sure.

• 13:25Josh Clark?

  And that's, that's because there's been so much scholarship and study and research into his life that they've turned up, you know, as much as they can, but what they've turned up only amounts to about 500 different pieces of documentation of one form or another.

• 13:42Speaker 02

  Right. So one of those pieces of documentation in, early on in London, is a pamphlet written by, generally believed to be written by this guy named Robert Greene. There were some other people that could have possibly written it, but it's called Greene's Groatsworth of Wit. And there's a line where he references Shakespeare in it in a contemporaneous fashion. Is that right?

• 14:08Josh Clark?

  It doesn't matter.

• 14:09Speaker 02

  Where he kind of takes a shot at him. He says, talks about Shakespeare, says, "There's an upstart crow in his own conceit the only Shakespeare in a country," which kind of translates into, he kind of thinks he's the only Shakespeare.

• 14:27Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 14:27Speaker 02

  Like, he thinks he's all that. And it should be noted also, as far as the thievery, that in Aesop's Fables, crows would steal the feathers of others. So the people in the... I don't want to say anti Shakespeare, but the people say that he might not have written these things, says this is a big clue in saying that he might have stolen some of these things. That's why he's referred to as a crow by this other guy.

• 14:51Josh Clark?

  Yeah, but in that, that, that quote, he says, "The upstart crow is beautified with our feathers," and he's a playwright. So the pro Shakespeare people, you call them the pro Stratford group, they suggest that what he's, what Green is talking about is he's poking fun at a common actor who is deigning to even attempt to write plays, which, you know, among playwrights is far more important than acting. Anybody can act, but it really takes something to, to write a play, at least that's what they thought at the time, and that he's taking a shot at him for that.

• 15:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, and we should point out that being an actor back then and being a part of the theater was not like it is today. It wasn't some revered position. It was sort of, you know, bawdy plays and common people were into this kind of thing. So it wasn't, when he, he says he was just an actor, that's a pretty big diss.

• 15:49Josh Clark?

  Right. So the, the last thing that we have, I guess the last documentation, although there's other stuff that's been turned up, they, they did archaeological expeditions on his house. I think his house has been under ownership of a public trust since like the 19th century. And they've, they've carried out archaeological examinations of it, and they found that he, he went back and forth between London and Stratford. So they know stuff about him like that. But as far as like documentation goes, the last piece of documentation we have comes in 1616, which is his will that he wrote. And then a few months later, he died. And the last, I guess the last, last piece of documentation is

• 16:34Josh Clark?

  his tombstone, which in and of itself is curious, because his tombstone contains a curse on it, but not his name.

• 16:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, is that the one with the quote?

• 16:45Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it's a curse. He's saying like, "Don't dig me up, or you're gonna be cursed."

• 16:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, it says, "Good friend, for Jesus' sake, forbear to dig the dust enclosed here. Blessed be the man who spares these stones, and cursed be he who moves my bones." Some people point to that as poor writing and saying, "Well, Shakespeare was a great writer. Wouldn't have written this kind of shabby curse." And other people say, "Who said Shakespeare even wrote that necessarily?"

• 17:14Josh Clark?

  This is a good instructive example of like, kind of the back and forth between these people. Right? This is terrible writing. Who said Shakespeare wrote it? And then the anti-Shakespeare crew says, "Well, of course he wrote it, because who else would just not think to put his name on his own tombstone?" And the other ones just put their head in their hands and just start crying. And it just goes downhill from there. But that's a really good example of like, the just kind of like, people will jump on any single thing that they possibly can, and often interpret it one way or the other. So one thing, one single thing provides evidence for both sides. It's that kind of thing.

• 17:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally. Another thing that people point to is the fact that of, you know, we don't have a lot of like, letters and papers and things like that, because his family line ended in 1670. I think he had a granddaughter, Elizabeth Barnard, that died without bearing children.

• 18:13Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 18:13Speaker 02

  So, most of his stuff basically lost, as far as family possessions and things like that. People do point to the will at times and say, "Well, in his will, you know, he leaves certain things, but like, there's never any mention of any manuscripts." And again, this is all like, it's a little weird maybe, but none of this is proof. And, you know, through the personal records that we do have, and those 500 references, like, none of them really reference him, like, manuscripts and him writing things.

• 18:47Josh Clark?

  Right. That's what's most compelling to me, is that when you put together the... Documentation about his life that we know, it's clear, he's involved in the theater. He's an actor. We get that. That's, that comes through loud and clear. What doesn't come through, that isn't documented at all, is him as a writer. And that, that thing about the will, the fact that if you look at the wills and bequeaths of other writers of the time, you can find evidence that they were writers. They like leave books to other people that they're, they, they leave unfinished manuscripts that stay in the family for, for generations.

• 19:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:27Josh Clark?

  And it is very curious, his will is very curious. But the fact that his personal stuff was just lost to history because his granddaughter was the end of the family line, that actually holds up. Because other great authors of, say, the same age or of any age, a lot of the reason that their personal effects and papers are still, still around is because their family home was passed down from generation to generation to generation.

• 19:56Speaker 02

  Right.

• 19:56Josh Clark?

  And there was a long enough period of time for the importance of that writer to become clear. And so other people came in and said, can we have your great, great, great grandfather's personal effects? We want to put them in this museum. There's enough time. There wasn't enough time. There was only 70 years between the death of Shakespeare and the end of his family line. And he didn't become widely popular until the, I think, middle of the 18th century. So he was kind of a victim of that. And that, both, both of those, to me, provide really good evidence for why there isn't documentation of his writing, you know?

• 20:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. And the will, and by the way, we, The Atlantic has a great, great, pretty deep dive article, as they do, on this, which provided a lot of the supplementary information that we got.

• 20:46Josh Clark?

  By Elizabeth Winkler.

• 20:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:48Josh Clark?

  From 2019.

• 20:50Speaker 02

  Great read. One of the things that Winkler points out and other people have pointed out on the will as well is like Shakespeare wrote a lot about music. And I think there were 300 musical terms in all of his plays. Mention of 26 musical instruments and like in his will, he didn't, he didn't even have a lute to pass down to anybody. And like you said, didn't have books even like a library that he wanted to give. And, you know, again, this is not proof necessarily of, necessarily of anything, but it's, all of this stuff has added up over the years to enough for people to arise to like, get suspicious about it, I think.

• 21:30Josh Clark?

  Exactly. You want to take a break, a breather, I guess you could call it?

• 21:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, let's take a, let's take a breather, let's take five.

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• 25:17Speaker 02

  One thing that Ed, who helped us put this together, mentions that, I wanted to get your take on it. I didn't really think it had a whole lot to do with it one way or the other, was all of the various misspellings of Shakespeare's name over the years.

• 25:31Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 25:32Speaker 02

  He would sign it in different ways. He would abbreviate it in different ways. There are documents with, I mean, it looks like 15 different ways of spelling Shakespeare. Everything from "shacks" with an X-Pier to "spear" as in something you would jab somebody with. It's misspelled all over the place. And I just kind of took that as, you know, people misspelled things a lot back then. There weren't, you know, there weren't necessarily records that you could go look at very easily. So you might just take a guess at how to spell a name. And then it was on the record. And so I didn't really think that factored in much. Did you?

• 26:09Josh Clark?

  I didn't. And the impression I have is that all the different spellings are easily explained away from just the era, like you just said, and that the people who clomp onto that are actually looking into them just to find like hidden meaning and codes to it.

• 26:24Speaker 02

  Right.

• 26:24Josh Clark?

  So I think like the different spellings of the names is, it's about, yeah, it's about as big a boondoggle as you're gonna find in the Shakespeare authorship argument, I think.

• 26:33Speaker 02

  All right. So we'll cast that aside.

• 26:35Josh Clark?

  Well, hold on. Before we do, I want to point out my favorite abbreviation.

• 26:38Speaker 02

  Which one? I think, oh, let me look. I bet you I know which one. But go ahead.

• 26:43Josh Clark?

  Put it, put it back in the deck.

• 26:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's back in the deck.

• 26:46Josh Clark?

  Okay. It is Wilmshakp.

• 26:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:50Josh Clark?

  Is that the one?

• 26:51Speaker 02

  It stands out pretty blatantly.

• 26:53Josh Clark?

  S-H-A-K-P. I love it.

• 26:55Speaker 02

  Shakp. Hello, Wilmshakp.

• 26:59Josh Clark?

  It's not a really good hotel check-in name, but it's still worth mentioning, I think.

• 27:03Speaker 02

  That's pretty good. So like we mentioned, sort of what's at the root of a lot of these theories is... What Ed, I think rightly, calls elitism. Which is, how could this guy, even, you know, educated up to 13, how could he have known about all this stuff? How could he have known about military exploits? And, you know, if you read Shakespeare's plays, which, if you're an English major, you have to read a lot of them, there's a lot going on in these plays about a lot of different stuff. He didn't write about just kind of one kind of thing. So it implies like a really deep breadth of knowledge about a lot of things.

• 27:43Josh Clark?

  And not just different things as it relates to England, different things as it relates to entirely different lands.

• 27:48Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 27:49Josh Clark?

  Like, think about where a lot of his stuff takes places, in Italy.

• 27:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:53Josh Clark?

  And as far as anyone knows, Shakespeare didn't go to Italy. Although, remember, there's that lost year, eight-year period, they call them the lost years. It's entirely possible he went to Italy during that time. It's also just as possible that he didn't go to Italy during that time. We just don't know. But that is something that really stands out. And, yes, there is a tremendous amount of elitism and classicism among some of the anti-Shakespeare group. But I think that that is, I think that dismisses a lot of their points out of hand. And they do have some really good points. They're not just cranks and crackpots. Like, they have some pretty good evidence. You can make a case, at least as good evidence, that, as the pro-Shakespeare people.

• 28:38Josh Clark?

  But the upshot of it is really kind of a compliment. They're saying, these plays are so good.

• 28:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:45Josh Clark?

  That Shakespeare is arguably the greatest writer who ever lived. He has such a crazy imagination, he's so funny, he has such an extensive vocabulary, such an amazing grasp of the human condition. Could it really all have been written by this man from, at the time, the country, who was educated up to 13, who came from the middle class, who may or may not have ever traveled out of England? How is that even possible? Are people born that gifted? That's ultimately, if you want to go beyond the classicism and the elitism.

• 29:17Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 29:18Josh Clark?

  That's really what their argument boils down to.

• 29:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I agree. And if you don't know a lot of Shakespeare, have never really read a lot yourself, and you think, like, you're sort of in that camp, like, ah, I mean, this is kind of overrated, like, this guy? No, these plays are brilliant and uh there's a reason why they still make contemporary movies based on Shakespeare's plays or inspired by Shakespeare's plays. Uh it's because they were all genuinely brilliant. It was great, great stuff. And uh what you need is a really good uh teacher to kind of walk you through it because it's it's tough to read. And we had um we had some good ones at Georgia, University of Georgia. I had one, I can't remember his name. God, I can picture him in my head. He was so great.

• 30:04Josh Clark?

  Todd Gack.

• 30:06Speaker 02

  Someone, no, it was Wilm.

• 30:08Josh Clark?

  Wilm Shakpe.

• 30:11Speaker 02

  Shakpe. Um, oh, I wish I could remember his name. I bet you someone will write in in the uh mid 90s who the great Shakespeare.

• 30:18Josh Clark?

  Did he play a harpsichord?

• 30:19Speaker 02

  No.

• 30:20Josh Clark?

  Oh, well, no, I had a classics professor.

• 30:23Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 30:24Josh Clark?

  Who played the harpsichord, yeah.

• 30:25Speaker 02

  This was, you know, you had to take Shakespeare one and two. Those were the only required English classes as a as an English major. So that kind of shows the importance. But what he did was he sat us down and we read the plays out loud in class. And after every, you know, short bit, he would say, well, here's what's going on and here's what he's saying here.

• 30:45Josh Clark?

  Nice. Man, you were very lucky.

• 30:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. And once you, once you hear that and you're like, oh, these are very contemporary stories. And that's why they still uh carry such weight today is because they were brilliant stories, but stories that were very relatable even now. It's not, it's not highfalutin stuff. Uh it's just, it was written at a time where it seems that way.

• 31:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. Because we don't really speak in, you know, Renaissance English anymore. So it seems it might as well be Greek to us. Um, but yeah, it it was intended for common audiences. Like, the average person would laugh or cry at those, at those plays. And I think also it like really kind of supports your point that 400 years later, those plays can still make people today laugh and cry. Like, they still hold up, I guess, is what you're saying. And um, have you ever heard of Sister Wendy?

• 31:34Speaker 02

  No.

• 31:35Josh Clark?

  She is, she's a nun. I don't believe she's still with us. And I think in the 90s, she made this series of videos where she just went around to museums around the world and explained paintings to you. In a way that I would love to find a Sister Wendy of Shakespeare. I'm sure there's somebody out there. But you could do a lot worse of killing several hours watching Sister Wendy explain paintings. Cause she was, she had like a natural gift at just not only understanding what she was looking at, but explaining it really understandably.

• 32:07Speaker 02

  I love that. And I think in Sister Wendy's case and my professor, Shakby, it's, it, it comes from a place of, um, they have such great admiration and they want us, they really want people to understand this stuff. Who might ordinarily go like, well, I don't get it. I don't get paintings like this or I don't get plays like this.

• 32:26Josh Clark?

  I hate art.

• 32:28Speaker 02

  Uh, so should we get in, speaking of art, great segue. Uh, should we get into this mess of the, the bust of Shakespeare?

• 32:37Josh Clark?

  Yeah. I mean, it's another, it's very much like his tombstone where people are like, it means this. No, it means that, you know?

• 32:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. So there's a bust, an effigy of Shakespeare, uh, inside the church there in Stratford. And there's been a lot of controversy over this thing because part of it is not necessarily like, was he the author? Although it does play into that, but sort of like, what, what did he look like? And how do we know that's what he looked like? Like, we've all seen the picture. Uh, and there's like this one painting and this one bust. And that's kind of where everything's comes from. And some people say this was done after he was dead. Like, we really don't know that that's what he looked like. Um, I think just a couple of years ago, this professor and expert made a pretty good case that beyond most reasonable doubt, that it was actually done.

• 33:28Speaker 02

  I think she said it was highly likely. Um, Professor Orland said, it's highly likely that it was done while he was alive. And that he commissioned it because she thinks she knows who did the bust. And that that person lived near him and, uh, was a regular at the Globe and kind of put all these clues together. Uh, but other people, some people say it was his dad, uh, and not him because of this whole sack of grain argument.

• 33:55Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so there was an etching that was made of the bust within some period of time after the bust was erected, but before it was altered. So the bust has definitely been altered.

• 34:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:07Josh Clark?

  And it looks like, one way you can interpret this this thing at the bottom, this puffy thing that's at the hands of the bust, the effigy, as a sack of grain. I don't know if it were a sack of grain, why anyone would ever present it in that position.

• 34:24Speaker 02

  Right.

• 34:25Josh Clark?

  It doesn't make any sense.

• 34:26Speaker 02

  It's a little weird looking.

• 34:27Josh Clark?

  Right, so what the anti-Shakespeare, anti-Stratford people are saying is like, yeah, it's his dad. It's not him. Or if it is Shakespeare, he was known for his grain-carrying skills, not his writing skills.

• 34:41Josh Clark?

  And the pro-Stratford people are like, don't be ridiculous, this is obviously a pillow.

• 34:45Speaker 02

  Right.

• 34:45Josh Clark?

  And at some point, somebody did revise the bust, so it is unequivocally a pillow. Like, there's just no way to mistake it. And it's not so much a pillow as it is like a handrest for him to write on, because he's got a piece of paper on it and a quill in his other hand. But the anti-Shakespeare people jump on that and say like, see, it was altered to fit this, to cover up this conspiracy later on.

• 35:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. And that quill has been stolen and replaced, I think, so many times over the years that now, I don't know if it currently has the quill, or if it has the quill and it's now behind glass.

• 35:22Josh Clark?

  Oh, that could, that's a good way to get around it, sure.

• 35:24Speaker 02

  I'm not really sure, but, you know, that became, you know, obviously something you could just snatch out of his hand, and you've got Shakespeare's quill on your door.

• 35:35Josh Clark?

  Speaking of being snatched, apparently that curse on his tombstone didn't work because they did a scan of it on the 400th anniversary of his death and found that at least his skull was missing, if not all of his remains.

• 35:48Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 35:49Josh Clark?

  Yeah, isn't that interesting? So somebody out there has Shakespeare's skull in their personal collection.

• 35:55Speaker 02

  It's probably Rosenkrantz or Gildenstern.

• 35:58Josh Clark?

  Uh, I like that reference.

• 36:00Speaker 02

  That's a great Shakespeare joke.

• 36:01Josh Clark?

  It's good.

• 36:04Speaker 02

  There's some people out there that were like, nailed it.

• 36:07Josh Clark?

  Good.

• 36:08Speaker 02

  Another thing as far as evidence goes is the first folio, which is, I think it was the first collection that they put in print of all of Shakespeare's plays, including 18 that had never been in print before. And there was a, I guess, was it a foreword written by a guy named Ben Johnson, who was a rival of Shakespeare's? He was kind of known as a jealous, sort of argumentative guy. But he calls Shakespeare the swan of Avon and is sort of very laudatory in this foreword. But I think you found stuff later on where he was kind of like, I had my fingers crossed the whole time?

• 36:51Josh Clark?

  Kind of, yeah. So the pro Stratford people who believe Shakespeare was Shakespeare say, look, man, this guy was known as a rival, a friendly rival, but a real rival, really critical, like had a biting, biting criticism and sense of humor. And also was not one to just be like, to just bow to nobility or privilege or wealth or status, right? So if this guy is saying that Shakespeare, the swan of Avon, which places this man at Stratford on Avon, because Ben Johnson is calling him that, that proves that Shakespeare was Shakespeare. The anti-Shakespeare camp says, like you said, Ben Johnson had his fingers crossed the whole time.

• 37:34Josh Clark?

  And that really what he was doing was providing cover for this larger, essentially conspiracy of people who actually were Shakespeare. He was lending his renown to it.

• 37:48Josh Clark?

  Neither one really makes sense. I mean, unless Ben Johnson had like a complete change of heart. It just doesn't quite add up, but then also the idea that he would provide that cover for a group of noble people seems unlikely as well, too.

• 38:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, I agree. One of the first public doubters in the 1800s was a woman named Delia Bacon, no relation to Francis Bacon, although you may think so because one person that Delia Bacon put forward as one of the authors was Francis Bacon. Delia Bacon was an American, was a writer, had a sort of a long life before she got into kind of hating Shakespeare.

• 38:38Josh Clark?

  Yeah, hating him.

• 38:40Speaker 02

  Like, really didn't like Shakespeare and really wanted to prove that he was not the author. And her idea was that it was Francis Bacon, Walter Raleigh, and I think maybe some other people, too, who were these very well-regarded people of, you know, philosophy and politics and science, who would not have been allowed to put forth these plays. And what these plays, what they really were, were not even meant for entertainment or for the stage. They were meant to be sort of biting criticisms of all kinds of various things that these gentlemen could not put their name on.

• 39:17Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so there's, yeah, either they couldn't put their name on it because they would be executed as basically treasonous to the crown, because they were, you know, putting forth the idea of social reform and, you know, women's rights and all sorts of stuff, taking potshots at the nobility. Or there's another theory called the stigma of print that was introduced in, I think, the 1870s, and that was that they, just out of noble...

• 39:46Josh Clark?

  Nobility, noblesse, I guess, they wouldn't deign to have their stuff published. It would, it would erode their social reputation, e- even accepting the idea that they would be beheaded for treason. So there are a couple of reasons that, that somebody like Francis Bacon would have to cover up his identity if he were actually Shakespeare. And that same stigma of print and political cover argument gets extended to other people beyond Bacon too.

• 40:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that, you know, it makes a little bit of sense. As far as Delia Bacon, she was able to talk Ralph Waldo Emerson into basically kind of buying her story. And he arranged for her sponsorship, basically, to go to England to kind of research this. Apparently in England, she, she was kind of on record saying that she didn't research history books or records and things like that. She believed that the, the proof was sort of in the plays themselves.

• 40:46Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 40:47Speaker 02

  Uh, and in the, in the text, basically, like with these clues. Apparently she used to go to Shakespeare's tomb a lot and, and kind of just, you know, hang out there and like try to convince the, I guess, the tomb keeper, whoever, you know, takes care of the cemetery.

• 41:01Josh Clark?

  The crypt keeper.

• 41:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, the crypt keeper, I didn't want to say it, uh, to be let in. And like, uh, almost got in at one point, apparently, but I think she got sick and couldn't and,

• 41:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 41:11Speaker 02

  But she thought that the, you know, the deep secret was within that tomb.

• 41:15Josh Clark?

  Yeah, she kind of kicked off the nuttier, um, camp of the, the, um, questioning of, of Shakespeare. In addition to kicking off the whole thing, she, she put like kind of a nutty sheen to it, like the idea that you could get your answers just from reading the plays.

• 41:34Speaker 02

  Right.

• 41:35Josh Clark?

  That the clues were in there. The thing is, is Francis Bacon was known to, to amuse himself by including, you know, hidden codes and, and messages in his writings. So if it was Francis Bacon, that's not that much of a stretch. And supposedly Mark Twain and some friends, um, did actually turn up. If you read the first folio, there is, uh, I guess some series of lines that spell out Francisco Bacono.

• 42:04Speaker 02

  It's pretty good. I mean, here's the thing, though. Francis Bacon wrote a lot about a lot of stuff, but not a lot of fiction and prose.

• 42:13Josh Clark?

  Or didn't he?

• 42:14Speaker 02

  Right. No evidence that he ever wrote any kind of plays, or did he?

• 42:19Josh Clark?

  Right. There was this other thing that kind of came along. So Delia Bacon is widely regarded as the person who kicked off the "it was Shakespeare, Shakespeare" idea. But supposedly, there was a person who came before her, James Wilmot, who in 1781 sat down to write a biography of Shakespeare and did all the research in London and Stratford-on-Avon, and was astonished by the lack of documentation that Shakespeare had written those plays and started to suspect it and that he kicked it off. The thing is, the anti-Shakespeare side has been accused of making those documents up,

• 43:03Josh Clark?

  of forging those documents to support Delia Bacon's Francis Bacon theory.

• 43:08Speaker 02

  Oh, interesting.

• 43:09Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so they weren't discovered until 1931, which is pretty convenient. And it's entirely possible that they were just forged.

• 43:18Speaker 02

  All right, should we take another break here?

• 43:20Josh Clark?

  Yeah, let's.

• 43:20Speaker 02

  All right, we'll take another break. We'll talk a little bit more about whether Shakespeare wrote that stuff.

• 43:47Josh Clark?

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• 44:03Speaker 02

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• 44:50Speaker 04

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• 44:53Josh Clark?

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• 44:56Speaker 02

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• 45:12Speaker 04

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• 45:20Josh Clark?

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• 45:43Josh Clark?

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• 46:00Josh Clark?

  So one more thing about Delia Bacon before we wrap it up. Like you said, she was a good writer. And her exhaustive examination of the texts of Shakespeare's plays resulted in a 620-page book.

• 46:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:15Josh Clark?

  The philosophy of the plays of Shakespeare unfolded. And she's often credited with basically prefiguring, if not kicking off, the idea of literary criticism, of close readings of stuff to find other meanings. And she was doing it to expose noble people as Shakespeare, but she was really good at it, and people said, well, hey, maybe we should do this for other stuff, too.

• 46:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, and ironically, because she kind of... I mean, you know, various tawdry accounts say she was driven to madness.

• 46:47Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm.

• 46:48Speaker 02

  Uh, I'm not sure how accurate that is, but it did seem like it pretty much consumed her in the latter stages of her life and that her family was kind of embarrassed and stuff like that.

• 46:58Josh Clark?

  Right. So Francis Bacon was not the only person put forth and there's probably as far as like believers go, somebody who at least rivals, if not eclipses him, and that would be the 17th Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere, right?

• 47:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, there's a whole, uh, there's a whole camp and a whole other, and you know, we can't get into this too, uh, too much in detail, but there's a whole movement that says out of the 80 people, like, we really think it was the 17th Earl of Oxford.

• 47:35Josh Clark?

  Yeah, there's, it's called the Oxfordian theory of Shakespearean authorship. And there is, you know, some stuff to it. He was a poet, which Ed points out, that's so much for the stigma of print. And then also, you can compare his poetry and in like some specific works of poetry to some of Shakespeare's poetry and see some real comparisons. But as far as I can tell, the, the questions or the, the similarities end there, if I'm not mistaken, like, and that to me, it was the sixth Earl of Derby who has a little more, a little more to offer.

• 48:18Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 48:20Josh Clark?

  Oh, um.

• 48:20Speaker 02

  I didn't see much about Derby.

• 48:22Josh Clark?

  There was one other thing. So Derby has his own group, the Derbyites.

• 48:25Speaker 02

  Right. Of course they do, man. This is what I mean. It's an onion. It's a blooming onion.

• 48:29Josh Clark?

  So there was one other thing about de Vere that is pretty suspicious. There were two narrative poems that Shakespeare dedicated to a man who was raised in the same household as de Vere. And from what anybody could tell, there's no reason Shakespeare would know this person.

• 48:46Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 48:46Josh Clark?

  And why would Shakespeare dedicate two poems to this, this noble, nobleman he didn't know? But Devere certainly knew him. He was, he was basically raised alongside him like a brother. So that, along with the biographical reading, the close reading, looking for parallels between Devere's life and Shakespeare's plays are what kind of back up the Oxfordian theories.

• 49:09Speaker 02

  Interesting, because that, Christopher Marlowe is another one, who was a contemporary and friend of Shakespeare's, and they collaborated and they influenced one another. And the details around Marlowe's death are hinky enough to where some people thought, or at least, you know, the conspiracy is that, is that he faked his death because he was going to be executed by the Crown and continued to write and then used his friend Billy Shakespeare as a front to continue to get those plays out. I'm not really sure about this because, I don't know, that's, it's just a little far-fetched, if you ask me.

• 49:51Josh Clark?

  Well, yeah, if, and if you're, if you're supposing that Marlowe faked his death in order to continue writing, you've now got a conspiracy theory wrapped in a conspiracy theory.

• 50:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe that's what bothers me.

• 50:04Josh Clark?

  But it's interesting because, you know, Marlowe is a pretty interesting dude in himself. Supposedly, he may have been a secret agent for the Crown.

• 50:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:12Josh Clark?

  He was an atheist. He was his own playwright. People loved him as a playwright at the time. But he was no Shakespeare. Like, literally, he's probably the flimsiest person you could attribute Shakespeare's writings to, because Marlowe was gloomy and super atheist and, and he was, his plays just didn't have that same kind of humanism and funniness that Shakespeare's plays had. And also, why wouldn't Marlowe just write these plays under his own name? He had no reason to write these plays under different names.

• 50:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, agreed. There had been people that put forth the idea that the, there were several different women that might have been the real authors, because women were not allowed to write plays at the time. Eighty percent of the plays written during this time were anonymous, and no author was listed. And a lot of people said, hey, a lot of these were written by women, and they just couldn't put their name on it. Many of Shakespeare's plays and ideas are very progressive.

• 51:19Speaker 02

  It's kind of a, kind of a, I don't know about flimsy, but it kind of demeans Shakespeare a bit to say that like, well, it had to be a woman because they were so progressive about women like taking a stand, when in fact Shakespeare seemingly very much thought that way himself.

• 51:36Josh Clark?

  Right, like, how could a man write women like this? Come on.

• 51:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's a woman named Mary Sidman Herbert, who has a whole foundation that's trying to prove that she wrote, kind of the worst of the internet happened about seven years ago, when you get these memes that are just full of false stuff, and then everyone starts spreading them around.

• 51:59Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah.

• 52:00Speaker 02

  There was a meme in 2015, went all over social media, that just had the picture of this black woman, and said, "This is Amelia Basano, she really wrote Shakespeare's stuff. She was not allowed to be a published author because she was a black woman at a time where she was suppressed and all this stuff." None of this stuff was true. First of all, she was maybe Moroccan, she was definitely not of African descent.

• 52:26Josh Clark?

  Oh, I saw she was Venetian.

• 52:28Speaker 02

  Nah, I saw that she was Moroccan and had some Italian in her, so that, you know, makes a little sense. But, she was definitely not of African descent. She was a published author, so the whole notion that she wasn't allowed to publish things wasn't right. She was kind of a well-known poet, I think, at the time. So, this kind of thing gets passed along the internet, and then, you know, half the people that see it just say, "Oh, well look at that, Shakespeare was all written by this lady back then."

• 52:57Josh Clark?

  Problem solved.

• 52:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, problem solved, and that's just not how it works.

• 53:00Josh Clark?

  One of the other things I saw that, and I think the people who are like Shakespeare was a woman, are like, "Well, okay, if we're starting to question Shakespeare's authorship, we can't ignore this whole group of people who had every reason to hide their identity as authors of these plays, because they were women and they weren't allowed to do this kind of stuff." So there was a critic who in 1593 wrote of a, who praised a gentlewoman who was writing some amazing plays and sonnets. And this was the year after Shakespeare pops back up after his lost years and when he was starting to write. But that the critic said he didn't want to reveal who it was because he didn't want to basically get her in trouble.

• 53:43Josh Clark?

  So that's what some other people kind of look at and say, see, Shakespeare was a woman.

• 53:48Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, I think, I think this theory makes a lot more sense than a lot of the others. You know, just by the sheer fact that women would not have been allowed to.

• 53:57Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 53:58Speaker 02

  So maybe Shakespeare was progressive and decided to be a front for these great works.

• 54:04Josh Clark?

  But it reveals a point about being an anti Shakespeare, anti, I guess Stratford person is you have to, part of it is you have to explain why somebody would want to fake authorship, would want to hide behind Shakespeare's name.

• 54:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. What do you call that? A motive.

• 54:23Josh Clark?

  Yeah. You got means, motive, and opportunity. You put those three together, you got your Shakespeare.

• 54:31Speaker 02

  Well, that's what I mean about the, maybe women wrote them. I mean, there was definite motive there.

• 54:36Josh Clark?

  Right. Exactly. So there was one other thing that happened. I mean, a lot of stuff happened over the course of this hundred, almost 200 years now of questioning Shakespeare's authorship. Back in 1987, a Oxfordian, Charlton Augburn, got the, at least three sitting Supreme Court justices, John Paul Stevens, William Brennan, and Harry Blackman, to hold a mock trial to determine if Shakespeare actually was the author of Shakespeare's plays. And they did on C-SPAN. They had, they held like a trial and heard the evidence and Shakespeare had his own attorney arguing for him. And it was pretty interesting, but they, they, it went two to, two to one, I think,

• 55:19Josh Clark?

  in favor of Shakespeare from Stratford as the author.

• 55:23Speaker 02

  But they did like real research and stuff? It wasn't just like a, you know?

• 55:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 55:28Speaker 02

  Stunt?

• 55:29Josh Clark?

  No. So the Supreme Court justices were kind of taking it tongue in cheek, but I got the impression that Charlton Augburn was like, yes, this is finally going to prove it definitively one way or another. And it didn't even fall in his favor.

• 55:42Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 55:43Josh Clark?

  Yeah. It is interesting what people did in the eighties on C-SPAN.

• 55:48Speaker 02

  I got a few more little things here from that Atlantic article. Uh, that point to his authorship as being genuine. Uh, one is that he had a narrative poem called Venus and Adonis. There was a very popular poem at the time, uh, that was put in print. Uh, and it was printed by a gentleman named Richard Field, who apparently went to school with him at Stratford. So that's a, that's a pretty good little hint.

• 56:13Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 56:14Speaker 02

  Um, he was written about at the time, so it's not like he was never known until his death and then all of a sudden became super popular like. He died a rich man and, uh, was written about with, uh, by literary critics. Um, at the time and, and entertainment and play critics. So there were contemporaneous, um, criticisms of his writing while he was still living. Which, which is a pretty, you know, pretty big clue that he probably wrote this stuff.

• 56:43Josh Clark?

  It is.

• 56:43Speaker 02

  Not proof.

• 56:44Josh Clark?

  No, because those people could be, they, they went and saw a play by Shakespeare. That doesn't mean that they met Shakespeare and talked to Shakespeare about the authorship of the plays.

• 56:53Speaker 02

  And leaned up his shoulder while he wrote it.

• 56:55Josh Clark?

  Right. Proof.

• 56:58Speaker 02

  Uh, the other last thing that I saw in that Atlantic article, this is the one, or actually this was in a, uh, this was the golden bullet from that video.

• 57:05Josh Clark?

  Oh, was it? Okay, good.

• 57:07Speaker 02

  Was Shakespeare was apparently concerned that, um, his dad's reputation sort of and the family's reputation suffered later in life because of financial problems that his dad had. And he really wanted to kind of restore their name and get a coat of arms made, which is, uh, you could, you know, it's like you could be a true gentleman if you had a coat of arms. And apparently it's a really long process. They don't just hand them out to anybody. You gotta, like, have a certain level of achievement to get a coat of arms. So he went through this big, long process and had.

• 57:38Josh Clark?

  He went all Barry Lyndon on there.

• 57:40Speaker 02

  Oh, man. What a movie.

• 57:43Speaker 02

  He had a couple of different men in the Herald's office. Who defended Shakespeare's right to have a coat of arms because other people were saying, who is this guy even like he came from not much and he shouldn't have a coat of arms. And one of the guys who defended him was a man named William Camden. Who this guy in the video referred to as one of the most learned men in all of England.

• 58:04Josh Clark?

  Oh, wow.

• 58:05Speaker 02

  Uh, he was actually Ben Johnson's schoolmaster. And apparently just knew everything on happening on the literary scene inside and out. And in one of his books, he uh, it was called The Remains of a Greater History. He talks about all the great writers of the time. And he lists William Shakespeare of Avon uh, in that book. So he said, that's the golden bullet. Again, if it's just a front, it's still no real proof of authorship.

• 58:35Josh Clark?

  No, it's not. I mean, like this guy could just be playing along lending his, his.

• 58:39Speaker 02

  Or didn't know, you know.

• 58:40Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that's another one too. Like, that's the thing. Like the anti Stratfordians have caused the pro Stratfordians to actually defend their position. And in doing so, it's kind of revealed that both of them are kind of on shaky ground. It's almost just a matter of belief. Do you want to believe that one man was that brilliant and, and that talented and gifted? Um, or do you, can, can you just not believe that? It just doesn't make any sense to you. So it was a cabal of noble people who were trying to advance political reform and hiding behind William Shakespeare and paying him off with maybe um, family crests and money and, and fame.

• 59:21Speaker 02

  Right.

• 59:22Josh Clark?

  To, to let, let them use his name as their, you know, the playwright.

• 59:26Speaker 02

  Yeah. Uh, they also say like where he was from. There was some regional slang that was very specific to where he was from that was used. Uh, there was in Taming of the Shrew. Uh, he mentions these Latin phrases that are in specifically from a, a Latin book that apparently was known to have been used at his school, at his grammar school in Stratford. So again, there's all these little hints and clues. Uh, all of it kind of gave me a headache.

• 59:55Josh Clark?

  Right?

• 59:55Speaker 02

  And I was like, can we just like love these plays?

• 59:58Josh Clark?

  Uh, right. Exactly. That's exactly right. That's the ultimate point. Let's just love the plays.

• 1:00:04Speaker 02

  People get serious about this, though.

• 1:00:06Josh Clark?

  Yeah, they definitely do. I mean, it's pretty interesting and it's

• 1:00:09Speaker 02

  I mean, I get it.

• 1:00:09Josh Clark?

  Kind of fun to watch from the outside, too.

• 1:00:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:13Josh Clark?

  You got anything else?

• 1:00:14Speaker 02

  No, we could go on all day, but

• 1:00:16Josh Clark?

  Totally.

• 1:00:17Speaker 02

  We'd never get anywhere.

• 1:00:18Josh Clark?

  There's like 10 things I'm leaving on the table, so we just gotta keep moving on, right?

• 1:00:22Speaker 02

  All right.

• 1:00:23Josh Clark?

  Keep on keeping on, Chuck. If you want to know more about Shakespearean authorship, there is a giant gaping rabbit hole you can jump down on the internet and say sayonara to all of your other pursuits. And since I said sayonara, it's time for listener mail.

• 1:00:40Speaker 02

  I'm gonna call this, just came in over the wire. I thought it was kind of funny, from our friend Stephen in Kagoshima, Japan.

• 1:00:49Josh Clark?

  Oh, perfect.

• 1:00:50Speaker 02

  About eating squid. Says, "Love the show, fellas. Reason not to be so touchy, though. About eating squid, they are child murdering sea vermin." He said, "The reason squid die after they mate is a survival adaptation, because if not, they would eat the eggs and newly hatched squid from themselves and other squid in the spawning areas."

• 1:01:15Josh Clark?

  Huh.

• 1:01:15Speaker 02

  "Squidly didly is an infanticidal maniac and should be cooked and eaten, albeit sustainably, of course." So that's the argument, is that these squids deserve to be eaten, because they would be eating themselves if not for this adaptation. So he also says, "Tell Josh not to eat uncooked squid. That is not great."

• 1:01:39Josh Clark?

  All right.

• 1:01:40Speaker 02

  And, "Kind regards from Stephen in Kagoshima, Japan. A Squid Haven and a Squid, Inc. Pasta destination."

• 1:01:48Josh Clark?

  Stephen, that was a really great, eye-opening email. I may have seen the light. I'm not sure yet. I'll have to get back to you. Okay?

• 1:01:57Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:01:59Josh Clark?

  Thank you for responding to that, Stephen.

• 1:02:01Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:02:02Josh Clark?

  If you want to be like Stephen and get in touch with us and send us a potentially eye-opening email, you can do that. Send it off to [email protected].

• 1:02:15Speaker 03

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 1:02:31Josh Clark?

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  Hosted by Andrew Stratton, these perspectives highlight that life is more than a moment, a condition, or a tough day. Living with a rare disease can be challenging, but it does not define the Voices of Vivgard. In these episodes, they share their stories, from diagnosis to working with their care team on their treatment plan. Listen to Voices of Vivgard on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's play a quick game. When I say Carnival Cruise, what comes to mind? Maybe a buffet, maybe a lively Lido deck, or maybe you've already decided cruising isn't for you. But we can assure you, a Carnival Cruise isn't what you think. From casual bites to five-star dining, laugh-out-loud comedy, relaxing spa, and unforgettable shore excursions, Carnival has everything you want in a vacation.

• 1:03:57Josh Clark?

  So take another look, then book your next getaway at carnival.com. Ships registry, the Bahamas and Panama.

• 1:04:04Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.