When Did We All Start Saying "Bulls*t"?

Summary

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Ridiculous History | Episode Summary

“When Did We All Start Saying 'Bulls*t'?”

Podcast: Ridiculous History
Hosts: Ben Bowlin & Noel Brown
Producer: Max “Freight Train” Williams
Date: April 28, 2026

Main Theme

This episode dives into the surprisingly rich and tangled history of the word “bullshit”—where it comes from, why we use it, and what makes it so enduring, flexible, and oddly beloved in English and American discourse. The hosts explore etymological myths and truths, the evolution of swearing in society, cultural differences, and the word's infiltration into everything from military slang to philosophy, all with their signature irreverence and humor.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Disclaimer and Philosophy on Censorship

• Early in the episode, the hosts warn listeners that the content is explicit and may not be suitable for classrooms ([01:08]).
• Decision not to bleep the episode, both as an act of empathy for producer Max and a stance against pointless censorship.
  • Ben: “I believe that censorship is bullshit.” ([01:54])
  • Max: “As long as we get more production time on this one, I can just… I'll delete them all.” ([01:40])

2. Semantic Landscape: Bullshit as a Word

• “Bullshit” is a real word, appearing in major dictionaries (Oxford, Merriam-Webster, Cambridge).
• Discusses that it functions as both a noun (foolish/insolent talk) and a verb (to talk idly or boastfully, sometimes just to chat) ([05:16]–[06:34]):
  • Noel: “Are you bullshitting me, Ben?”
  • Ben: “No, I am not.” ([05:47]–[05:49])
• The verb form can be innocent, akin to “shooting the breeze” ([06:34]):
  • Ben: “It shows us a meaning wherein bullshit is not always inherently bad.”

3. International Flavors and Synonyms

• Cambrige’s definition is meaner, framing “bullshit” more directly as “nonsense” and “an attempt to impress by saying untrue things” ([07:36]–[08:12]).
  • Noel: “A rude word meaning to try to persuade someone or make them admire you by saying things that are not true. Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, Ben.” ([08:12])
• British alternatives and Cockney rhyming slang discussed; “bollocks,” “hogwash,” “flapdoodle,” “baloney.”
• Differences in connotation, e.g., “the dog’s bollocks” (good), “a dog’s breakfast” (bad) ([10:39], [11:27]).

4. Etymology & Debunking Myths

• Common misconception: “Bullshit” refers directly to male cattle manure.
  • Ben explains: “It is a portmanteau, which we love, of bull, meaning nonsense—not a bovine animal…” ([13:26])
  • Linked to French “bull” (fraud or deceit) and possibly the Latin “bulla.”
• Agrarian myth: The idea that farmers adulterated cow manure with “bullshit” for profit is probably just “bullshit” itself ([15:06]–[17:42]).
  • Ben: “...the timeline doesn’t really match with the etymology here… it's the same across biological sex.”
  • Noel: “...the negative effects of manure had less to do with the gender of where the poop came from and more to do with the fact that it may have been uncomposted.” ([16:01])
  • Max: “Seems like something someone invented.” ([15:59])

5. First Usages and Literary Connections

• The term “bullshit” appears in print as far back as 1915 ([21:39]).
  • T.S. Eliot popularized it with his poem "The Triumph of Bullshit" ([23:14]):
    • Ben (reading): “Ladies, on whom my attentions have waited… For Christ’s sake, stick it up your ass.” ([24:51])
• Other notable literary mentions:
  • Wyndham Lewis, referencing Eliot’s poem in correspondence ([27:27])
  • Ezra Pound used “bull shit” in a 1914 letter to James Joyce ([29:10])
• Used in World War I by soldiers (ANZACs and Americans) as general slang for nonsense or army bureaucracy ([30:07]).

6. Wartime Influences and Societal Adoption

• World War I and II soldiers spread the term, applying it to empty rhetoric and nonsense during military life ([22:23], [30:07]).
• By mid-20th century, “bullshit” becomes part of casual American vocabulary, but remains taboo in formal contexts due to its vulgar roots ([22:23], [23:14]).

7. Why “Bullshit” Persists

• It spans generations, demographics, and contexts, partly because it “just has a good mouth feel” ([12:37]).
  • Noel: “It does seem to cross a lot of generational divides, I think. It also just has a good mouth feel to it.”
  • Ben: “It’s got that cool U in the first syllable… and a tight T at the end…” ([12:57])
• American English’s flexibility lets almost any word become a verb; “bullshit” is a prime example ([33:02]).

8. Variants and Related Insults

• Quick rundown of related words: dipshit, horseshit, pigshit, dogshit, shitbird—with shades of meaning from dumb to repulsive ([33:44]–[35:02]).
  • Max: “Dipshit… it’s kind of like disrespectful.” ([33:57])
  • Noel: “Horseshit to me is sort of interchangeable… I tend towards horseshit just as a way of changing it up…” ([34:09])

9. Bullshit and Media/Regulation

• The word’s presence on television and its legal status ([35:15]–[39:46]):
  • Shows like South Park, Penn & Teller’s: Bullshit!, and Rick and Morty discussed in relation to FCC rules.
  • FCC sees “bullshit” as “presumptively indecent,” but court decisions continually evolve on context, timing, and what counts as profane. ([37:20]–[38:54])
  • Noel: “It is so subjective… if you’re saying something’s bullshit, that’s not inherently profane, but if you’re being gross... then that’s different.” ([38:54])

10. Bullshit in Philosophy and Today’s World

• Philosopher Harry Frankfurt’s book On Bullshit (2005) argued that bullshit is more dangerous than lying because it represents “indifference to truth” ([40:26]):
  • Ben: “Liars will distort facts, bullshitters… speak to impress or persuade without regard for accuracy. So… the truth is sort of irrelevant.” ([40:26])
  • Noel: “‘Truth is what I say it is.’” ([41:21])
• The term's academic acceptance leads to more analysis in books and business writing.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Censorship:
  • Ben: “I believe that censorship is bullshit.” ([01:54])
• On Definitions:
  • Noel: “Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, Ben.” ([08:12])
  • Ben: “It’s a portmanteau, which we love, of bull, meaning nonsense—not a bovine animal…” ([13:26])
• On Usage:
  • Noel: “It does seem to cross a lot of generational divides… It just has a good mouth feel.” ([12:37])
• On Academic Analysis:
  • Ben: “He wrote a book called On Bullshit. He argued that bullshit is more dangerous than lying because it reflects indifference to truth rather than deliberate deception.” ([40:26])
• On Counting the Word:
  • Max: “We said horseshit seven times… just the word shit ten times… we have said bullshit… ninety times… grand total of… one hundred and seventeen.” ([41:51])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 01:08 — Disclaimer & explicit content
• 05:16 — Dictionary definitions & usage as noun/verb
• 10:37 — Synonyms, British/Australian idioms
• 13:26 — Etymology, myth-busting (agrarian origin story)
• 21:39 — First recorded uses, T.S. Eliot’s “Triumph of Bullshit”
• 30:01 — Military slang, ANZACs, soldier jargon
• 33:44 — Related insults and word variations
• 35:15 — Bullshit & television censorship, FCC rules
• 40:26 — Harry Frankfurt’s On Bullshit
• 41:51 — Max tallies frequency of curse usage

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Tone and Style

Lively, irreverent, and curious, the hosts approach swearing and etymology as a lens into history and culture. Their banter is fast and playful, with moments of genuine linguistic nerdiness. The tone reflects both analytical engagement and comedic energy.

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For Further Reading

• Harry Frankfurt, On Bullshit
• Business Bullshit (2017)
• Bullshit Jobs
• The A to Z of Business Bullshit (2018)

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Final Thought:
The history of “bullshit” is itself an object lesson in the evolution, myth-making, and flexibility of language—and perhaps a testament to just how much nonsense people are willing to churn up, name, and spread.

Transcript

[A]

Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartradio. Welcome back to the show, fellow ridiculous historians. Thank you as always, so much for tuning, tuning in. Let's hear it for the man, the myth, the legend, Our super producer, Mr. Max the Freight Train Williams.

[B]

I'm still here in the Bahamas.

[C]

We're all in the Bahamas in our hearts, Max Bullshnip Williams.

[A]

That's Mr. Noel. No poop Brown.

[C]

They call me the straight poop.

[A]

They call me Ben Bullen in this part of the world, primarily due to tax purposes. And folks, before we get into today's exploration, we have a disclaimer. Disclaimer. Disclaimer. Somebody say one more time. Disclaimer.

[B]

Disclaimer.

[A]

Disclaimer. This episode may not be appropriate for all ridiculous historians. It may be one that you cannot play in the classroom. We were on the fence about whether to include a million bleeps here or just to label it explicit and let it ride. Spoiler. We went for the latter.

[C]

Death by a million bleeps was not something that we wanted to go with.

[A]

Right, right.

[C]

We did it out of. Honestly, we did it out of empathy for our dear long suffering producer Max.

[B]

The conversation was, yeah, I mean, as long as we get some more production time on this one, we can just. I'll delete them all. And both Ben and Noel were like, no, we're not gonna.

[A]

We're not gonna do this episode. Yeah, we're not gonna do that.

[C]

Well, there were also philosophical reasons for the choice.

[A]

You know, also I believe that censorship is bullshit.

[B]

Hey, first one.

[A]

Oh, the first one. Let's go.

[C]

We all kind of agreed or ended up on the same page. That bul is a bit of a PG13 swear. Not even sure if it makes an R rating. I think you can have unlimited bullshit.

[B]

You can have as much bullshit as you want and that bullshit will be fine.

[A]

That's right, folks. Agreed. We think the term bullshit has been normalized throughout a U.S. discourse throughout the Anglosphere. Honestly. And a few weeks ago, you guys had this moment of ridiculous epiphany. I was talking with some friends about Believe it and I realized we were all using an English phrase, bullshit. And it's kind of bizarre because every English speaker knows what that phrase means. But riddle me this. There's so many animals walking, flying and swimming along this wide world of ours. So, Noel, how did cows, of all things, and just apparently male cows in specific, how did they get such an unfair rap with everything pooping all the time on the world, how did everybody poop?

[C]

Right? Or the less popular Book Nobody poops but you, but you.

[A]

Shout out Family Guy. How did bull feces in particular become a stand in for all that is untrue, false or misleading? Like, when did we all start saying bullshit?

[C]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[A]

Guaranteed Human.

[C]

This message is brought to you by Apple Card. You can apply for Apple Card right from the Wallet app on your iPhone. Get started in the Wallet app today. Subject to credit approval, Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch terms and [e-mail] Ben, I think you know that our bags aren't quite packed yet, but our brains sure are because we've got this incredible trip planned to Baja Mar in Nassau.

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Real you download TikTok and get started. You know, it's funny, Ben. I also enjoy using the phrase horseshit, but that usually just refers to something that I'm not into. Like, that's horseshit. Like I'm angry about that. Bullshit does imply incredulity, and that's what I want to dig into. Man. Where does that come from? Why are we so suspicious of bull poop?

[A]

First off, this may surprise the more polite, ridiculous historians in the crowd. Bullshit is a real word. It is found in multiple dictionaries from Oxford English down to Merriam Webster in Cambridge. Merriam Webster defines bullshit as. Also, I'm gonna stop keeping a tally because I don't have a penalty.

[C]

It's gonna be a fool's erra.

[A]

Yeah, Merriam Webster defines bullshit as both a noun and a verb, because anything can become a verb, especially in American English.

[C]

But are you bullshitting me, Ben?

[A]

No, I am not.

[C]

Thank God.

[A]

As a noun, to your earlier point there, Noel, as a noun, Merriam Webster says bullshit indicates, quote, foolish or insolent talk. As a verb, it can mean either to talk foolishly, boastfully, or idly, or the less cutting second definition, which I think is kind of wholesome to Engage in a discursive discussion, which, you know,

[C]

we like that one, too. We're just having a bull sesh. You can be. If you want to be polite about it, you can call it a bull sesh. But we're just bullshitting, man. Just having a good old time. Talking. Talking a game. But, yeah, again, just messing around. Yeah, we're just horsing around. Rolling around.

[A]

Yeah. That second is fascinating, guys. It shows us a meaning wherein bullshit is not always inherently bad. It's just sort of irrelevant. It's small talk. It's like shooting the breeze. We all stayed a little later after dinner just bullshitting, which literally happened to us in Baja. Mar. It doesn't mean we all stayed late to shout foolish, insolent talk at each other. Instead, we probably joked about the weather, caught up with old friends. We talked about books we were reading, new films we wanted. In our case, we talked a little bit about the beach and the casino. In that sense, in the beach casino. Yeah, in that sense, people around the world bullshit constantly.

[C]

So let's jump right into, you know, one of the more highfalutin dictionaries, the Cambridge, who agrees that bullshit is both a noun and a verb, but they take a slightly different and arguably meaner approach. Because they're British.

[A]

Yeah, they're a little bit less.

[C]

Brits know how to cut. Cut you to the quick.

[A]

Oh, yeah. They've got some of the best insults either of us have ever heard. To Cambridge, there's no bullshitting with them, there's just bollocks.

[C]

That's enough.

[A]

To Cambridge, bullshit as a noun is a rude word for complete nonsense or something that is not true. And spoiler, there's a clue in that definition. They also turn up the heat with their definition of bullshit as. Which sounds downright accusatory. Noel, would you do the honors? Yeah.

[C]

I mean, this is. We've kind of touched on this one. A rude word. Why did you do an H there? It's just. I'm being British, that they wouldn't have done that either. A rude word. I do love it, though, when they say the letter H, they say H, which is a lot of fun. Sorry, to continue. A rude word meaning to try to persuade someone or make them admire you by saying things that are not true. Don't bullshit a bullshitter, Ben.

[A]

Yeah, don't BS a bs. Er, so again, this is all too common in political discourse. As we were talking with Max off air and we all, I think it's fair to say, ridiculous historians, we all almost certainly have met Someone that makes wild claims in day to day life. Surely a lot of us, especially in the States, we had that one kid in grade school whose dad definitely invented Nintendo. Or that one.

[C]

Or the cop salad who. Yeah.

[A]

Who swore up down that they had a boyfriend or girlfriend. For real. For real. Who just happened to go to a different school.

[C]

Oh, that's me. My girlfriend does go to a different school. Lives in a different state as it turns out.

[A]

Oh, you're going to school?

[C]

Yeah, oh yeah, I'm going to night school. I'm studying bullshittery.

[B]

Ah, that's not bullshit at all.

[A]

Right.

[C]

Yes, the God honest. Hey, and also by the way, we talked about this a little bit in the intro or I maybe dropped it. I'm fascinated with a kind of midwestern term, the straight poop. Which is. Which means the tr. The God honest. So how can shit be both true and false at the same time? Schrodinger's shit.

[A]

There's this great Finnish comedian that I follow, a standup guy who plays with language a lot and he is fascinated by something being a piece of shit being bad, something being the shit being good. That guy's name is Ismo. I S M O Last name Likola. L E I K O L A do check him out. He's just a genius. And we're wrestling with a lot of the stuff our Finnish stand up pal is wrestling with as well. You know, it's weird because. No, there are dozens of synonyms that convey the same or similar meaning without themselves being curse words. Nonsense, Hogwash, Baloney. Bollocks in the UK also means nonsense. It is considered a rude word, like bloody, but it's not on the level.

[C]

Bollocks. Also the bulls bollocks.

[A]

Right, yeah.

[C]

It's like that's a good thing.

[A]

It's like yelling balls.

[C]

No, the bulls.

[A]

The.

[C]

The dog's bollocks is a good thing.

[A]

Ah, yes.

[C]

Once again, I'm just saying we've got synonyms and antonyms. Huh?

[A]

Is that cockney rhyming? The dog Porky pies.

[C]

Yeah, Porky pies is. Is lies. Being in Barney is being in trouble. Cause Barney Rubble a lot of cockney rhyming slang seems to involve Hanna Barbera cartoon characters. Scooby. Not a scooby means you don't know what you're talking about. Not a Scooby Doo. A clue. That's a good one.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I believe the dogs bollocks may be a different episode. Or put it in our quarterly. Things we left out.

[C]

Yeah, the dog's Bollocks is good, but a dog's breakfast, not good, Right?

[A]

Yes, because as we know, dogs, you poop.

[C]

It all comes back around. Comes from dust to dust, right? Yeah.

[A]

Bulldust is also an Australian version of. But there are. There are so many words, right? Nonsense, hogwash, baloney, bollocks. And who could forget, obviously, flap, doodle.

[C]

Oh, my gosh. Not to mention gobbledygood.

[A]

Not to mention. Still, for some reason, bullshit as a phrase occupies this special place in the beating heart of the American dialect. Right. Or the various American dialects. It's weird because it crosses generations, it crosses demographics. You'll hear the most wealthy, oldest people say something is bullshit, and then you'll hear the youngest people say bullshit. Like a fifth grader might say bullshit. And then you both pause, right? It's like in A Christmas Story where the kid says the F word, right? Fudge. And then the narrator kicks in. But I didn't say fudge.

[C]

No, he sure didn't. That's a fun movie. No, this is great, Ben. It's a really good point. It does seem to cross a lot of generational divides, I think. It also just has a good mouth feel to it. I think sometimes words just kind of take on a life of their own and get popular because they're fun to say.

[A]

It's got that cool U in the first syllable, and then it's got. Not to sound too spectrumy here. And it's got a tight T at the end, so it's.

[C]

And a hard shush.

[A]

Yeah, it's emphatic. Right. And so, like so many other words, the origin story of the phrase bullshit is surprisingly murky. It is fraught with misconceptions. Let's put on our etymology caps, Noel, because we played.

[C]

You came wearing it, Ben.

[A]

Yeah, you did. I think it looks good. And we played a bit of a trick at the top of the show. We were kind of bullshitting you fellow ridiculous historians about bullshit. It is a common misconception that bullshit directly refers to male cattle. That is not the case. It is a portmanteau, which we love, of bull, meaning nonsense. Not a bovine animal, not a cow. It's pretty directly related, therefore, to the English phrase bollocks, which comes to English via the French word which means fraud or deceit. And it's also quite likely the meaning of bull here derives from Latin ibuyo.

[C]

Yes, way, Wayne. That's wild. Okay, so that's one mystery somewhat done and dusted. We'll get back to it yet. Things as they tend to Do. In the historical game of telephone, we always like to reference, get a little bit murkier and harder to parse the more we attempt to figure out exactly how this term originated. And much like make manure spread nicely, man, if you're a gardener, that was a gardening joke.

[A]

That's for all the gardeners in the crowd tonight. Similar to the F word. Sorry, mom. Bullshit has several competing origin stories. And one of these is really interesting. A common bit of scuttlebutt argues that the word comes from agrarian communities. Right.

[C]

All right. They set that one up by accident. And they would sell cow manure, of course, to use as fertilizer that they would spread.

[A]

According to this story, the poop of the female cow is good for plants and agriculture. Yet the poop from the male cow is either less helpful or downright harmful. So if you're a bad intentioned, unethical farmer, you are out to up your profits, then you start to step on or cut your proper cow manure with poop from the male cows as well. You sell the literal bullshit by claiming it is cow shit. Later down the line, as the seasons progress, the customer they had suckered would see damaging effects on the crops. So the story tells us that people started saying, don't sell me no bullshit. And over the years, this was shortened to just bullshit and then further shortened to bull. I don't know.

[B]

That seems like something someone invented.

[C]

And Ben, I definitely had no idea this idea or this notion that cow manure, not all manure, was created equal. But I have a little bit of a suspicion that the negative effects of manure had less to do with the gender of where the poop came from and more to do with the fact that it may have been uncomposted. Fresh uncomposted manure, it turns out, can actually be harmful to crops due to high levels of ammonia, nitrogen, and salts that can actually damage and inhibit seed germination. But I think you were going to that place with this.

[A]

Yeah, you know, it's a fun story. We love a fun story. I'm on Max's team here. It's up there with the concept of buying a pig in a poke or caveat emptor. It's probably wrong. There are a couple of immediately obvious issues with the narrative. So first off, cow poop is going to be more or less a question of processing. It's the same across biological sex. The things that are really going to affect your cow poop output or cow poop output are going to be factors like the diet hydration, environment, individual medical conditions or disease, and again, processing. And secondly, you know, Noel, as we were pointing out, the timeline doesn't really match with the etymology here. You can still see dictionaries of great repute, encyclopedias arguing over this bull as an animal versus bull as nonsense question. But for now, it is safe to say the farmer origin story is itself. Wait for it, a bullshit.

[C]

Oh no, it's a bit.

[A]

It's a bit of shit.

[C]

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[A]

It is.

[C]

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[C]

It does turn out the real meaning of it, as you mentioned earlier, much more likely stems from that French translation, bull, meaning nonsense or an untruth, dating back to the 17th century. Bullshit's been used since around 1914, 1915 in British and American slang. And that word made its way into the American lexicon late in the 19th century, where bullshit was first documented in a 1915 edition of the New Republic and used to describe hollow, empty rhetoric. We know a thing or two about that. American servicemen In World War I adopted the term to describe things, taking it a little broader as just things that are generally not good.

[A]

And so by the mid 20th century, bullshit is firmly ensconced in the casual American vocabulary. But it's mostly gonna be confined to these unrecorded, unpublished conversations. Because of the vulgari of its second syllable, it's kind of haram, right? In fancy pants discourse. It becomes popularized in World War II. And no kidding, this is a bit of a plot twist for us. We have to thank one of America's best writers for the popularization of bullshit. Guys, it's none other than the legendarily uptight, the Lovingly pretentious, the problematically racist poet extraordinaire, T.S. eliot.

[C]

Ah, yes, the Jellicle man himself.

[A]

There it is.

[C]

That's him, right?

[A]

Yeah, yeah, he wrote Cats.

[C]

Yeah, the Cats guy.

[A]

He would not have liked the film adaptation.

[C]

He would have preferred them with buttholes.

[A]

So it sounds crazy, right?

[C]

Almost because he was kind of a butthole.

[A]

Yeah, he kind of was. Sorry, man. We know you're from Missouri. So it sounds crazy. It sounds almost like bullshit. He on hear us out. Between 1910 and 1915, he wrote a poem called the Triumph of Bullshit, and it's a ballad. And he finalized it with a few small changes in 1916. Just to give you a sense of this. It is not on the level of Prufrock nor the Wasteland, but it is an early example of this phrase in print. The final form of it, just to give you. The first verse is. Ladies, on whom my attentions have waited, if you consider my merits, a small eated, alembicated, orotond, tasteless, fantastical, monotonous, crotchety, constipated, impotent, gallimatias affected, possibly imitated. For Christ's sake, stick it up your ass. And every scene, every dude, every verse. And it's like a. Three verses, right? And every verse ends with a refrain. For Christ's sake. For Christ's sake, stick it up your ass. The triumph of.

[C]

Look, this guy downright Susan for a minute there, Ben. Top of that, I loved it. Yeah.

[A]

All this Jellicle language.

[C]

Yes, that is true. There's some suss to that as well.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Elliot did not invent this word.

[C]

Suity.

[A]

Never mind suity. I love it. We should keep. Keep it, Max. Keep it, please. And he popularized the phrase bullshit with this poem. But the poem did not see print immediately after he wrote it. The earliest citations of the phrase bullshit come to us from the equally fancy pantsed boffins at the Oxford English Dictionary.

[C]

Ah, yes. Second in fancy pants Ness. Only to Cambridge, in my humble estimation. Ooh, not sure there's the data there to back it up. I don't know. Cambridge versus Oxford. Ultimate smash. Let's go fight.

[A]

So the earlier. That's a great question. I wonder how they feel about each other. Yeah.

[C]

Who's the fanciest of lads who's got

[A]

the cravat versus the regular necktie?

[C]

That is the question. You know who wore a cravat? Ben?

[A]

Who's that?

[C]

It was Fred from the Scooby Doo gang.

[A]

Oh, that's right.

[C]

I got a bit of a cravat.

[A]

I Keep forgetting about it.

[C]

Or was it an ascot? Never mind. I think. Wait, wait, wait. Didn't we. No, I think a cravat is just a catch all the umbrella term.

[B]

Yeah, that's where I was going. Yeah. Everything's necktie assholes and everything like that.

[C]

I love quibbling over semantics.

[A]

All right, Max, with the facts. We are in that one. And we know that regardless of egghead hierarchy. The Oxford English Dictionary, which we love, says the earliest citations for book. It's your favorite. It's a page turner, second only to the Bible. Yeah, okay.

[C]

I've definitely read cover to cover question about it many times. I name a verse. They're all good. They're all just so good.

[A]

Oh, yeah, that's real Pete Hagseth right there.

[C]

My favorite. Especially that one from Bubble fiction. That wasn't in the Bible. You know what isn't in the Bible, Ben?

[A]

What's in that?

[C]

Potatoes. And that was a big reason that the people were suspicious of them.

[A]

Yes. Yeah. During the great exchange, which will be another episode, dare I say, a series we're getting to in the future. So stay tuned for Thursday for part one of that. We want you to know that the Oxford English Dictionary, the oed, they cite the first occurrence of coming from the letters of a British writer named Windham Lewis and the American essayist and poet E.E. cummings. This is still confusing because here Wyndham Lewis is directly quoting Eliot's poem in a letter from 1915. And Lewis writes, eliot has sent me bullshit. And the Ballad for Big Louise. They are excellent bits of scholarly ribaldry.

[C]

So rebold.

[A]

You're so rebold.

[C]

Cheeky, cheeky devil. That, that, that, that. T.S. eliot. So we do know that there are other modern writers that began using the phrase as well. Cause why wouldn't they? It's already starting to creep into the lexicon. It's fun to say one of my favorite names in modern literature, Ezra Pound. I don't know. It's like, give me an Ezra Pound. Meaning, like, dab me up. He used it in 1914 in a letter to James Joyce, who liked farts writing. Check that one out if you want another ribald episode talking about James Joyce and his love of lady farts. He said, I enclose a prize sample of bullshit.

[A]

Yeah, he spaced it out. He said, bull space shit.

[C]

He did. We're still getting there. We're still getting there.

[A]

I think we can all agree, we're pretty sure that Ezra Pound, another problematic guy who was an excellent poet. We're pretty sure he bullshit in the figurative sense, because so far as we can tell, Olezra did not actually include cow poop with the letter because that

[C]

would have been a terrorist act.

[A]

Yeah. That would have been like Jared Leto playing the Joker, right?

[C]

Yeah. Apparently. All those rumors, though, by the way he started himself.

[A]

Oh, my gosh.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, that guy. Wow.

[A]

Classic Morbius.

[C]

What a fellow. Well, he's morbin. Morbid out.

[A]

Morbin's so hard right now.

[C]

It's true.

[A]

There's one other origin story that we have to get to, and this one takes us halfway around the world.

[C]

Yeah. To New Zealand. I can't do it, Arnar.

[A]

New Zealand.

[C]

There you go. That was better. Come at us and we deserve it. And we're ready for your blows, New Zealanders and Australians alike. Aussies. Eric Partridge is this fellow's name and he claimed that the term was popularized by soldiers, which we already have another version of the story where it's American soldiers beginning to use the term as just bad stuff. And we know that Army. My job is army. Very fond of quippy and sometimes bawdy terms like fubar and all of that stuff. So it makes a lot of sense. In this version, it is the New Zealand and Australian soldiers, the Army Corps, rather. Anzac, shout out to the biscuits.

[A]

Thanks, guys.

[C]

Yeah. During World War I, this term began being flung around. According to Partridge, British officers of the war placed high emphasis on bull. Bullshit. Which I love that. That is sort of how we say it, but I also enjoy it quite a lot when people say bullshit with a question, kind of with the upward inflection point.

[A]

We're almost Mandarin in our intonations there.

[C]

It's true. High emphasis on bull, which consisted of ensuring soldiers were perfectly Dr. Clothing when it proved to be a hindrance during military operations. ANZAC troops mocked this emphasis on presentation by calling it a bullshit.

[A]

Bullshit.

[C]

Bullshit.

[A]

Right.

[C]

Succulent Chinese meal.

[A]

Oh, guys, we're just bullshitting. And there we have it, fellow ridiculous historians. Like so many other popular words and phrases, the true origin of bullshit may be lost to history. It might even be an example thinking. Because the word is just so tasty, you know, we don't know who exactly was the first edgy wit.

[B]

Tasty bullshit.

[A]

Just that tasty bullshit. We don't know who exactly was the first edgy wit in all of human history to cook this one up, but we know it was again becoming commonplace by the early 20th century, and it became massively popular once civilization fell into World War II. And if you look at the various linguistic meas. Frequency of A word. It skyrockets as a noun as we go into the 1980s. And then at the same time, we see the growth of bullshit as a verb, as bullshitting someone. And this becomes a fascinating, I would say case test or case study. A proof of concept that you can kind of do whatever you want in American English. That's part of why words like bullshit become almost any word you can imagine can be turned into a verb. Right?

[C]

We Williams it, verbify it. I'm a fan. You know what I'm also a fan of? And I think I speak for all of us. Language. It's a lot of fun.

[A]

Three out of five.

[C]

Okay, fair enough.

[A]

I'm grading hard.

[C]

No, it's good. You are. I'm grading on a curve. You couldn't leave us though, Ben, without some fun, bullshitty bits of trivia to step to, several of which we've already mentioned. But leading off here in this list that you've included is dipshit, which is fun, but it also, weirdly, it just, it cuts, man. Calling somebody a dipshit just feels hurtful.

[A]

It's dismissive. It's diminutive. Dipshit means stupid. These all have their own spin on the earlier formula. Horseshit, which was mentioned earlier. It means bullshit, but it's somehow dumber.

[B]

I don't know. I think with dipshit, I kind of. It's kind of like disrespectful. Like we're like. I don't even think highly of you. Like, horseshit is. I don't know, it's maybe a little bit more respectful. But somehow calling you dumber, that's personal Max.

[C]

Context, though, horseshit to me is sort of interchangeable. I think bullshit has become so almost saturated and overused that I tend towards horseshit just as a way of changing it up, up a little bit.

[B]

You know, I say horseshit a lot too, for that same reason.

[A]

Yeah, pig means be meat slopping down

[C]

pig with these meat bags.

[A]

Right. Beats both dumb and simultaneously repulsive. Shout out to. I think you should leave. Dog means disgusting.

[C]

Also just bad. Like you say that movie was dog.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

You wouldn't say that movie was unless you had some philosophical issue with it. But if you were just going to outright say something sucks, you call it dog.

[A]

Yeah. And shitbird means an objectionable or despicable person sometimes. Also with the low key connotation of being lazy.

[C]

Well, that also is one that gets thrown around in military parlance a lot. And also in like, you know, law enforcement and prison terms. It seems like the prison. What is it called? Pos or cos. Correctional officers.

[A]

Right.

[C]

They will call you a shitbird, at least in, you know, Oz.

[A]

And we also know that the etymology of bullshit has not actually been studied as well as we would assume or hope, given the ubiquity of the word, because part of it is because it became so mainstreamed, especially with the historic south park episode, which was one of the first programs in the US to use the word shit on television.

[C]

Also, I mean, speaking of bullshit on television, there's that Penn Teller TV show literally called Bullshit, where I think they may stylize it in print with like an asterisk or something like that, but I've never seen it, but I'm pretty certain they say it. And I'm wondering, we gotta look this up before we wrap. Where does it land on the FCC's.

[B]

So I will say so. Rick and Morty is a show that's always trying to push it as far as possible. So in the Rick and Morty, you. You can say like, shit. They say shit all the time. And it's uncensored on tv, but it's like the context around it they got.

[C]

But it's also on cable. It's different rules. It's not on, like, broadcast.

[B]

Well, Penn and Teller was on hbo.

[C]

Okay, okay.

[B]

It doesn't have to comply with the FCC rules on that way.

[A]

Yeah. The issue is, I think it was hbo.

[B]

It was one of the.

[A]

One of the pay channels, I believe for a while, the FCC was rationing out usage of strong language. So, for instance, in even cable shows like Lost or Breaking Bad, they started to run into. Well, pre Breaking Bad, they started to run into situations where they could use a strong word once and the FCC maybe still find them, but they just ate it. Yeah, but they just ate to. Cost of doing business. Makes the show better. The FCC currently defines three things they don't like obscene, indecent or profane.

[C]

Obscene, presumptively indecent, even.

[A]

Right. You know it when you see it. Right. So obscene means you don't have protection of the First Amendment. The indecent content is. Is, you know, your bits. It's Australia.

[C]

Oh, the bits. Indeed. We're in a bit country.

[A]

Last one is profane content.

[C]

Yes, indeed. And the sacred and the profane. And interestingly enough, the Commission, the FCC has previously found the word bullshit to be presumptively indecent. And they define it as profane or vulgar or irreverent, coarse language, et cetera. And to your point, Ben that can lead to fines for broadcasters. But court courts, on the other hand, have oftentimes struck down FCC indecency policies, finding them to be too vague. As recently as 2010, an appeals court struck down some aspects of this policy after they tried to apply it to, quote, fleeting expletives that kind of slide through on live television.

[A]

Yeah. Language or material that in context, depicts or describes in terms patently offensive as measured by, hear this well, contemporary standards for the broadcast medium. End quote. So they're really going back to that old argument about James Joyce's Ulysses, which is, what is pornography? What is indecent? I know it when I read here or see it.

[C]

And that also is inherently flawed because it is so subjective. Right. And if I'm not mistaken, the current stance that the FCC takes on bullshit is that it is not considered profane in all contexts. Meaning, set and setting is everything. You know, So I would argue, or it would seem that if you're saying something's bullshit, that's not inherently profane, but if you're, like, being gross or something, then that's different.

[A]

Yeah, it's more about, or at least it seems to be more about in the days of destination watching and broadcast tv, it's more about when the program is aired.

[C]

Well, that would be a huge to

[A]

10pm and then after 10, you know, get a little freaky with it.

[C]

6am to 10pm rather, is considered. I believe the term is safe harbor.

[A]

Right.

[C]

It is applied to stuff that children may, within a reasonable doubt, be around to check out.

[B]

And that's why, like, a show like Rick and Morty gets a little bit more leeway, because it's always playing, you know, 11, 12pm or 12am and so

[A]

we'll end it here, folks. We hope you've enjoyed this exploration. We hope you don't find the story of. Because we're obviously very interested. So much so that we lost count of the times, the amount of times.

[B]

No, we did not.

[A]

Still going. It's still going.

[B]

Okay, I'm gonna say before I say we have to cut it off. So do you guys want to get any more in before we have to go?

[C]

That's bullshit.

[A]

Okay, that's another one. We have to end on this. Why has this ubiquitous word bullshit been been kind of ignored? It's probably because it had this social taboo aura about it. But in 2005, and this is thanks to a guy named Larry Walsh, in 2005, a philosopher named Harry Frankfurt gave the word academic weight. He wrote a book called On Bullshit. He argued that bullshit is more dangerous than lying because it reflects indifference to truth rather than deliberate deception. So liars will distort facts, bullshitters count it, speak to impress or persuade without regard for accuracy. So that, like propaganda, the truth is sort of irrelevant. And this leads us to what was.

[C]

Truth is what I say it is.

[A]

This leads us to exactly the Post truth society we've talked about on our sister show, Stuff they don't want you to know. If you want to learn more about bullshit, check out books like business bullshit 2017, bullshit jobs, a, the bullshit management 2012, and of course, the A to Z of Business Bullshit 2018. That one catalogs corporate buzzwords. Max, how did we do? What's our final count?

[B]

All right, we're going to. We're cutting it off now. Okay.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

So I'm gonna go through the list. We said shitbird twice. We said dog shit twice. We said pig shit twice. We said dipshit shit four times. We said horseshit seven times. We said just the word shit ten times. And we have said bullshit. Not counting that one, obviously. Actually, let's count that one. Go ahead. Yeah, we've said bullshit. So can I count both of those

[A]

90 times, leading us to a grand total of.

[B]

Oh, I didn't cut them all together. I have them all separate. So 90. But out of 90. 100. 1. 1. 107. 111 plus 117.

[A]

All right. I think we did pretty well. Big, big thanks to Our super producer, Mr. Max Williams, for counting the poops. Quite literally. Big, big thanks, of course, to you fellow ridiculous historians for tuning in. Yeah, I think Jonathan Strickland, AKA the Quister Curse.

[C]

Have you ever.

[A]

He does okay.

[C]

You guys got a. Got a dirty mouth.

[A]

He probably has, like, the old school anachronistic British curses.

[C]

That's also true. That's also true.

[A]

Who else do we thank?

[C]

Oh, Christopher Osceota's Anita Jeffcoat here in spirit, of course. We thanked the quizzter. We must thank the puzzler, Mr. AJ Bahamas himself.

[B]

Mm.

[A]

Big, big thanks to the rude dudes of ridiculous crime. If you like us, you will love them. Please tune in to some of their upcoming past and present episodes. This is a true crime show all about the most ridiculous things you can imagine. And it is the only true crime show that is guaranteed 99 murder free. Big thanks to everybody who. Who went with us, despite the explicit expletive nature of this episode. And Noel, thanks to you.

[C]

Ah, thanks to you as well, man. We'll see you next time, folks, For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. This is an iHeart podcast.

[A]

Guaranteed Human.