Selects: Did Shakespeare really write all that stuff?

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24:04Josh Clark:That's right. They don't build tech just for tech's sake. They build it for you. Find technology built for the way you work at dell.com slash dellpcs. Built for you.

24:27Josh Clark: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. 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, peer, everything from shacks with an X peer 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.

25:06Josh Clark: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? 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 to find, like, hidden meaning and codes to it. Right. So I think, like, the different spellings of the names is about as big a boondoggle as you're going to find in the Shakespeare authorship argument, I think.

25:43All right.

25:44Josh Clark:So we'll cast that aside. Well, hold on. Before we do, I want to point out my favorite abbreviation. Which one? I think I, well, let me look. I bet you I know which one, but go ahead. Okay, put it back in the deck. Yeah, it's back in the deck. Okay. It is Wilmshackp. Yeah, that's the one. It stands out pretty blatantly. S-H-A-K-P. I love it. Shackp. Hello, Wilmshackp. It's not a really good hotel check-in name, but it's still worth mentioning, I think. 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 educated up to 13, how could he have known about all this stuff?

26:32Josh Clark: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. And not just different things as it relates to England, different things as it relates to entirely different lands. Oh, yeah. Like think about where a lot of his stuff takes place is in Italy. Yeah. And as far as anyone knows, Shakespeare didn't go to Italy.

27:07Although, 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.

27:41You can make a case at least as good evidence as the pro-Shakespeare people. But the upshot of it is really kind of a compliment. They're saying these plays are so good 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?

28:24That's ultimately, if you want to go beyond the classicism and the elitism, that's really what their argument boils down to.

28:30Josh Clark:Yeah, I agree. And if you don't know a lot of Shakespeare, I've never really read a lot yourself, and you think you're sort of in that camp, like, I mean, this is kind of overrated, like this guy. No, these plays are brilliant. and there's a reason why they still make contemporary movies based on Shakespeare's plays or inspired by Shakespeare's plays. It's because they were all genuinely brilliant. It was great, great stuff. And what you need is a really good teacher to kind of walk you through it because it's tough to read. And we had some good ones at University of Georgia. I had one, I can't remember his name.

29:12Josh Clark:God, I can picture him in my head. He was so great. Todd Gack. No, it was Wilm. Wilm Schackpe. Schackpe. Oh, I wish I could remember his name. I bet you someone will write in in the mid-90s who the great Shakespeare— Did he play a harpsichord? No. Oh, no, I had a classics professor who played a harpsichord, yeah. This was, you know, you had to take Shakespeare I and II. Those were the only required English classes 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.

29:54Josh Clark:And here's what he's saying. Nice. Man, you were very lucky. Yeah. And once you hear that, you're like, oh, these are very contemporary stories. And that's why they still carry such weight today is because they were brilliant stories, but stories that were very relatable even now. It's not highfalutin stuff. It's just it was written at a time where it seems that way. Yeah, exactly, because we don't really speak in Renaissance English anymore, so it seems it might as well be Greek to us. But yeah, it was intended for common audiences. Like the average person would laugh or cry at those plays. And I think also it really kind of supports your point that 400 years later, those plays can still make people today laugh and cry.

30:38Like they still hold up, I guess is what you're saying. And have you ever heard of Sister Wendy? No. 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. Oh, wow. 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 to killing several hours watching Sister Wendy explain paintings because she had like a natural gift at just not only understanding what she was looking at, but explaining it really understandably.

31:17I love that.

31:18Josh Clark:And I think in Sister Wendy's case and my professor, Shakby, it comes from a place of they have such great admiration and they really want people to understand this stuff who might ordinarily go like, well, I don't get paintings like this or I don't get plays like this. I hate art. So should we get in – speaking of art, great segue. Thank you. Should we get into this mess of the bust of Shakespeare? Yeah, I mean, it's very much like his tombstone where people are like, it means this. No, it means that, you know? Yeah, so there's a bust, an effigy of Shakespeare inside the church there in Stratford.

32:01Josh Clark: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 did he look like? And how do we know that's what he looked like? Like, we've all seen the picture, and there's like this one painting and this one bust. And that's kind of where everything 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. 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.

32:38Josh Clark:I think she said it was highly likely. Professor Orlin 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 was a regular at the Globe and kind of put all these clues together. But some people say it was his dad and not him because of this whole sack of grain argument. 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. Yeah. And it looks like one way you can interpret this thing at the bottom, this puffy thing that's at the hands of the bust, the effigy, as a sack of grain.

33:29I don't know if it were a sack of grain, why anyone would ever present it in that position. Right. It doesn't make any sense. It's a little weird looking. 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. And the pro-Stratford people are like, don't be ridiculous. This is obviously a pillow. Right. And at some point, somebody did revise the bus. 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 hand rest for him to write on because he's got a piece of paper on it and a quill in his other hand.

34:10But the anti-Shakespeare people jump on that and say like, see, it was altered to fit this, to cover up this conspiracy later on.

34:20Josh Clark: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. Oh, that's a good way to get around it, sure. 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. 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.

34:59Josh Clark:Oh, really? Yeah, isn't that interesting? So somebody out there has Shakespeare's skull in their personal collection. It's probably Rosencrantz or Guildenstern. I like that reference. That's a great Shakespeare joke. It's good. There's some people out there that were like, nailed it. Good. 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 it was a forward written by a guy named Ben Johnson who was a rival of Shakespeare's.

35:42Josh Clark: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 forward. But I think you found stuff later on where he was kind of like, I had my fingers crossed the whole time. Kind of, yeah. So the pro-Stratford people who believe Shakespeare is Shakespeare say, look, man, this guy was known as a rival, a friendly rival, but a real rival, really critical, like had a 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.

36:38The anti-Shakespeare camp says, like you said, Ben Johnson had his fingers crossed the whole time. 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. 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.

37:16Josh Clark: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. Yeah, hating him. 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 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.

38:19Josh Clark:They were meant to be sort of biting criticisms of all kinds of various things that these gentlemen could not put their name on. 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 putting forth the idea of social reform and 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 nobility, noblesse, I guess, they wouldn't deign to have their stuff published.

39:02It would erode their social reputation, even accepting the idea that they would be beheaded for treason. So there are a couple of reasons 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. Yeah, and that, you know, it makes a little bit of sense.

39:29Josh Clark: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 was kind of on record saying that she didn't research history books or records and things like that. She believed that the proof was sort of in the plays themselves and in the text basically, like with these clues. Apparently she used to go to Shakespeare's tomb a lot and kind of just hang out there and like try to convince the, I guess the tomb keeper, whoever, you know, takes care of the cemetery.

40:11Josh Clark:The crypt keeper. Yeah, the crypt keeper. I didn't want to say it. To be let in and like almost got in at one point apparently, but I think she got sick and couldn't. But she thought that the, you know, the deep secret was within that tomb. Yeah, she kind of kicked off the nuttier camp of the questioning of Shakespeare. In addition to kicking off the whole thing, she put like kind of a nutty sheen to it, like the idea that you could get your answers just from reading the plays, that the clues were in there. The thing is, is Francis Bacon was known to amuse himself by including, you know, hidden codes and messages in his writings.

40:54So if it was Francis Bacon, that's not that much of a stretch. And supposedly Mark Twain and some friends did actually turn up, if you read the first folio, there is, I guess, some series of lines that spell out Francisco Bacono.

41:14Josh Clark: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. Or didn't he? Right. No evidence that he ever wrote any kind of plays. Right. Or did he? Right. Then 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.

42:05The thing is, the anti-Shakespeare side has been accused of making those documents up, of forging those documents to support Delia Bacon's Francis Bacon theory.

42:18Josh Clark:Oh, interesting. Yeah, so they weren't discovered until 1931, which is pretty convenient. and it's entirely possible that they were just forged. All right. Should we take another break here? Yeah, let's. All right. We'll take another break. We'll talk a little bit more about whether Shakespeare wrote that stuff.

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44:47Josh Clark:That's right. They don't build tech just for tech's sake. They build it for you. Find technology built for the way you work at dell.com slash dellpcs. Built for you.

45:09So 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. 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.

45:49Josh Clark:Yeah. And like ironically, because she kind of, I mean, you know, various tawdry accounts say she was driven to madness. 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. Right. 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? Yeah. I mean, there's a whole camp and a whole other, and, you know, we can't get into this too much in detail.

46:37Josh Clark:But there's a whole movement that says out of the 80 people, like we really think it was the 17th Earl of Oxford. Yeah, 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 that also you can compare his poetry and 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 questions or the similarities end there, if I'm not mistaken. And that to me, it was the sixth Earl of Derby who has a little more to offer.

47:28Josh Clark:Oh, really? I didn't see much about Derby. There was one other thing. So Derby has his own group, the Derbyites. Right. Of course they do, man. This is what I mean. It's an onion. It's a blooming onion. So there was one other thing about Devere that is pretty suspicious. There were two narrative poems that Shakespeare dedicated to a man who was raised in the same household as Devere. And from what anybody could tell, there's no reason Shakespeare would know this person. And why would Shakespeare dedicate two poems to this nobleman he didn't know? But De Vere certainly knew him. He was basically raised alongside him like a brother.

48:06So that, along with the biographical reading, the close reading, looking for parallels between De Vere's life and Shakespeare's plays, are what kind of back up the Oxfordian theories.

48:18Josh Clark:Interesting, because Christopher Marlowe is another one who is 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 the conspiracy 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 it's just a little far-fetched if you ask me well yeah if you're supposing that Marlow faked his death in order to continue writing you've now got a conspiracy theory wrapped in a conspiracy theory yeah maybe that's what bothers me but it's interesting because you know Marlow is a pretty interesting dude in himself supposedly he may have been a secret agent for the crown yeah he was an atheist He was his own playwright.

49:26People 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 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.

49:57Josh Clark:Yeah, agreed. There have been people that put forth the idea that there were several different women that might have been the real authors because women were not allowed to write plays at the time. 80 % 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.

50:28Josh Clark:It's kind of a, I don't know about flimsy, but it kind of demeans Shakespeare a bit to say that, well, it had to be a woman because they were so progressive about women taking a stand, when in fact Shakespeare seemingly very much thought that way himself. Right, like how could a man write women like this? Come on. 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.

51:08Oh, yeah.

51:09Josh Clark:There was a meme in 2015 that went all over social media that just had the picture of this black woman and said, this is Amelia Bassano. She really wrote Shakespeare 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. Oh, I saw she was Venetian. No, I saw that she was Moroccan and had some Italian in her, so that 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.

51:52Josh Clark: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 half the people that see it just say, Oh, well, look at that. Shakespeare was all written by this lady back then. Probably solved. Yeah, problem solved. And that's just not how it works. 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.

52:30So 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. So that's what some other people kind of look at and say, see, Shakespeare was a woman. Well, I mean, 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. So maybe Shakespeare was progressive and decided to be a front for these great works.

53:12But 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 or would want to hide behind Shakespeare's name.

53:30Josh Clark:Yeah. What do you call that? A motive. Yeah. You got means, motive, and opportunity. You put those three together, you got your Shakespeare. Well, that's what I mean about the maybe women wrote them. I mean, there was definite motive there. Right, exactly. So there was one other thing that happened. I mean, a lot of stuff happened over the course of this 100, almost 200 years now of questioning Shakespeare's authorship. But back in 1987, a Oxfordian Charlton Ogburn got the at least three sitting Supreme Court justices, John Paul Stevens, William Brennan and Harry Blackmun, to hold a mock trial to determine if Shakespeare actually was the author of Shakespeare's plays.

54:15And they did on C-SPAN. They held like a trial and heard the evidence and Shakespeare had his own attorney arguing for him. And it was pretty interesting. But it went two to one, I think, in favor of Shakespeare from Stratford as the author.

54:32Josh Clark:But they did like real research and stuff? It wasn't just like a stunt? No. So the Supreme Court justices were kind of taking it tongue in cheek. But I got the impression that Charlton Ogburn was like, yes, this is finally going to prove it definitively one way or another. And it didn't even fall in his favor. Interesting. Yeah, it is interesting what people did in the 80s on C-SPAN. I got a few more little things here from that Atlantic article that point to his authorship as being genuine. One is that he had a narrative poem called Venus and Adonis. That was a very popular poem at the time that was put in print.

55:14Josh Clark: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 okay 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 is a pretty big clue that he probably wrote this stuff. Although not proof. No, because those people could be – they went and saw a play by Shakespeare.

55:58That doesn't mean that they met Shakespeare and talked to Shakespeare about the authorship of the plays.

56:03Josh Clark:And leaned over his shoulder while he wrote it. Right. Proof. The other last thing that I saw in that Atlantic article, this is the one – or actually this was in a – this was the golden bullet from that video that I saw. Oh, was it? Okay. was Shakespeare was apparently concerned that 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, you could be a true gentleman if you had a coat of arms. And apparently it's a really long process.

56:39Josh Clark:They don't just hand them out to anybody. You've got to have a certain level of achievement to get a coat of arms. So he went through this big, long process and had— He went all Barry Lyndon on there. Oh, man, what a movie. 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.

57:14Oh, wow.

57:15Josh Clark:He was actually Ben Johnson's schoolmaster and apparently just knew everything happening on the literary scene, inside and out. And in one of his books, 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 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. No, it's not. I mean, like, this guy could just be playing along, lending his considerable weight. 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.

58:01And 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 that talented and gifted? Or 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 family crests and money and fame to let them use his name as the playwright.

58:35Josh Clark:Yeah. 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. There was Entaming of the Shrew. He mentions these Latin phrases that are in specifically from 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. All of it kind of gave me a headache. And I was like, can we just love these plays? Right, exactly. That's exactly right. That's the ultimate point. Let's just love the plays. People get serious about this, though.

59:15Yeah, they definitely do. I mean, it's pretty interesting. I mean, I get it. And it's kind of fun to watch from the outside, too.

59:21Josh Clark:Yeah. You got anything else? No, we could go on all day, but we'd never get anywhere. There's like 10 things I'm leaving on the table, so we just got to keep moving on, right? All right, let's do it. 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. I'm going to call this just came in over the wire. I thought it was kind of funny from our friend Stephen in Kagoshima, Japan. Oh, perfect. About eating squid.

1:00:01Josh Clark:It 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. Squidly Diddly 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 and kind regards from Steven in Kagoshima, Japan a squid haven and a squid ink pasta destination Steven, 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.

1:01:06Okay. Thank you for responding to that, Stephen. Sure. 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 stuffpodcast at iheartradio.com.

1:01:24Josh Clark:Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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1:02:36Stuff at Sea is a five-night, adults-only sailing trip that brings the Stuff Podcast universe to life on board. This voyage is a culture-soaked escape where pink sand paradise meets curious minds. Sailing round trip from New York City to Bermuda on October 2nd to 7th, 2026, this voyage drops you straight into the iHeart Podcast Stuff universe. On top of the adults-only experience you already love, you'll get live podcast episode recordings, behind-the-scenes sessions, themed activations, and more unmissable onboard moments. Learn more at virginvoyages.com slash stuff. This is an iHeart Podcast.

1:03:13Guaranteed human.