83: The Most Boring Element & Solving Shakespeare’s Accent

Episode notes

What is the most boring element, and just how boring could it possibly be? Turns out: VERY! And how can we decipher what Shakespeare sounded like, and who among us can lay claim to his accent?

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:03:52) The Most Boring Element
(00:48:53) Solving Shakespeare’s Accent
(01:26:37) Outro

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We’re not going for the easy sappy answer, what makes something boring? all the oxygen stans updating wikipedia, the most boring is obviously bohrium, thulium is used in lasers and x-rays, about 24 grams of astatine per planet, shout out Sir Martin Poliakoff, the 4 elements that came from pitchblende, Caroline stop anthropomorphizing protactinium, the isotope brevium, you could have been called abracadabra and instead your legal name is Actinium’s dad, wow what a fascinating [Rn]5f 26d7s2 ground state electron configuration! give me more random letters and numbers Tom! protactinium is there if your smoke detector is old, the global ocean conveyor belt, THC (Thermal Haline Circulation), that’s the ocean bit- anyway here’s something completely different about protactinium, paleoclimatology sounds a lot like protactinium, Ella realizes the turn, HE DID IT, whoa Caroline doing thumbs up to climate change, they’re de-extincting William Shakespeare, where better to waste my time pursuing this than Let’s Learn Everything, shakespeare is typically performed in received pronunciation, wait this is secretly a UK vs US topic! I’m surprised it took you 3 years to figure out we just keep you for your American accent, Americans have vestigial roticity, the universal beauty of two dudes yapping, what a strange elitism to claim to have Elizabethan English, Appalachian claims of shakespearean accents as a way to boost image, if you want to know what people sounded like back then… look at what people wrote about it! more one to one spellings like “philome” for film, we can deduce the accent from rhymes and puns, I loov this topic, Tom’s accent gets miscalibrated, an open midback is really stylish these days, open mid back unrounded vowel, Ella can move your tongue with her mind, I see why this gameshow didn’t make it to television, don’t wast a reem on a droom, the Rorscach test of the Original Pronunciation created by David and Ben Crystal, flecks of every dialect, “it’s a sound that reminds people of the accent of their home, and so they ten to listen more with their heart than their head”, “American English simply isn’t good enough for Shakespeare”, the Sundry Boroughs of New York baby! the language of Shakespeare is dead but alive in English everywhere, Shakespeare was meant to be played for the public – so it should be spoken like the public, Shakespeare’s accent belongs to all of us!

Sources:
Amazing paper from Nature Chemistry: “The Most Boring Chemical Element”
HPS on Protactinium
Los Alamos Laboratory on Protactinium
Periodic Videos on Protactinium
Mining Website on Protactinium’s History
Britannica on Pitchblende
Nature Chemistry: “Peculiar Protactinium”
NOAA on the Global Ocean Conveyor Belt
NOAA on Plankton
EOS on Protactinium for Paleoclimatology
Protactinium/Thorium in Paleoclimatology Textbook
Carbonbrief’s Climate Tipping Points
Thorium Protactinium Dating
Yu, Francois, and Bacon’s first paper on Protactinium Ocean Current Dating
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Wiki: British colonisation of the Americas
Wiki: Early Modern English
History of English: Early Modern English
BBC: How Americans preserved British English
The Historical Linguist Blog: American English – The language of Shakespeare?
Dialect Blog: Shakespearean vs. Modern English
National Geographic: Tangier Island
BBC: The Tiny Island with a British accent
Language Myths Book
David Crystal’s Original Pronunciation evidence
Paper: Early Modern English Phonology
Oxford Dictionary: Early modern English: grammar, pronunciation, and spelling
University of Toronto: Early Modern English Phonology
NPR: How Did the Bard Really Sound
Youtube: Shakespeare: Original pronunciation