WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 1 00:00:00.070 --> 00:00:03.179 This would have been a talk that I gave at a live show with an audience, 2 00:00:03.179 --> 00:00:05.160 but it's June 2020 as I record this, 3 00:00:05.160 --> 00:00:07.860 so instead, I am at home, talking to my camera, 4 00:00:07.860 --> 00:00:09.615 and possibly my neighbours if they can hear me, 5 00:00:09.615 --> 00:00:12.869 and also cursing the drivers with loud engines who seem intent 6 00:00:12.869 --> 00:00:16.760 on making as much noise as possible directly outside my flat today. 7 00:00:16.760 --> 00:00:21.629 I asked 64,000 people about the children's rhyme "Jingle Bells, Batman Smells". 8 00:00:21.629 --> 00:00:23.388 And here is what I found out. 9 00:00:24.550 --> 00:00:27.920 When I was a kid, the next line of that was "Robin flew away". 10 00:00:27.920 --> 00:00:30.839 That was how the song went in my school. No more lines. 11 00:00:30.839 --> 00:00:34.039 Turns out there are multiple completing versions, including the one that 12 00:00:34.039 --> 00:00:38.390 singer and actor Robert Goulet sang on the Simpsons in December 1993. 13 00:00:38.390 --> 00:00:41.414 That version goes, "Jingle Bells, Batman smells..." 14 00:00:47.652 --> 00:00:51.500 "Flew away" versus "laid an egg". Two different bird jokes. 15 00:00:51.500 --> 00:00:53.519 And here's the hypothesis that I want to test: 16 00:00:53.519 --> 00:00:57.540 that the Simpsons measurably changed which version of that song was popular. 17 00:00:57.540 --> 00:01:01.079 That kids who saw that episode, either when it first aired or in reruns, 18 00:01:01.079 --> 00:01:03.590 either learned it for the first time from there, 19 00:01:03.590 --> 00:01:06.350 or it replaced the version they knew. 20 00:01:06.350 --> 00:01:08.500 Because, according to various pop histories, 21 00:01:08.500 --> 00:01:12.110 that song was around for decades before the Simpsons. 22 00:01:12.110 --> 00:01:14.670 It probably started in California in the 60s, 23 00:01:14.670 --> 00:01:18.140 inspired by the Adam West Batman TV series, then it was spread by military kids 24 00:01:18.140 --> 00:01:22.310 moving around America and the world with their families. Probably. 25 00:01:22.310 --> 00:01:23.620 There are other Jingle Bells parodies, 26 00:01:23.620 --> 00:01:25.860 including some really genuinely awful bigoted ones, 27 00:01:25.860 --> 00:01:29.110 I am not considering them. I'm asking, very specifically, 28 00:01:29.110 --> 00:01:32.240 about the one where Batman smells. 29 00:01:32.240 --> 00:01:34.540 Never mind that it's entirely the wrong part of the year. 30 00:01:34.540 --> 00:01:38.412 It's 2020. Time is meaningless. Let's talk about Jingle Bells in the middle of summer. 31 00:01:38.412 --> 00:01:39.830 So. I sent out a survey. 32 00:01:39.830 --> 00:01:43.159 First, I asked each person for two bits of information: 33 00:01:43.159 --> 00:01:46.503 the year they were born, and the country they were in when they were eight. 34 00:01:46.503 --> 00:01:48.871 I figure eight years old is about the right time for a kid 35 00:01:48.871 --> 00:01:52.150 to be endlessly singing this at their friends in the playground. 36 00:01:52.150 --> 00:01:55.730 Now, if the person answering said they were from the US or UK, 37 00:01:55.730 --> 00:01:58.729 I asked for their zipcode, or the first part of their postcode, 38 00:01:58.729 --> 00:01:59.810 from when they were a kid. 39 00:01:59.810 --> 00:02:04.149 That meant I could very roughly put a pin in a map for each of them. 40 00:02:04.149 --> 00:02:07.380 And there are those pins, thank you very much to everyone who responded. 41 00:02:07.380 --> 00:02:09.650 And then, I asked two questions: 42 00:02:09.650 --> 00:02:13.180 first, what they called the most basic playground chase game, 43 00:02:13.180 --> 00:02:15.490 what Americans call "tag", and then second, 44 00:02:15.490 --> 00:02:17.670 to complete the song: Jingle Bells, Batman Smells. 45 00:02:17.670 --> 00:02:20.150 For both those questions, I didn't offer any suggestions, 46 00:02:20.150 --> 00:02:22.660 I didn't want to prompt with any words that might make people go 47 00:02:22.660 --> 00:02:25.630 "oh, yeah, sure, that one I guess?" 48 00:02:25.630 --> 00:02:27.780 They had to remember. 49 00:02:27.780 --> 00:02:29.140 Which was probably a good idea, 50 00:02:29.140 --> 00:02:32.640 but it meant that sifting through this data was a nightmare, 51 00:02:32.640 --> 00:02:34.110 because give people a blank text box 52 00:02:34.110 --> 00:02:38.210 and some of them will decide to tell you their life story in it. 53 00:02:38.210 --> 00:02:42.540 In the analysis, I only included respondents who used the word "Robin" in their answer. 54 00:02:42.540 --> 00:02:45.200 That's because for the first couple of hours of that survey being out, 55 00:02:45.200 --> 00:02:50.410 I hadn't made it clear that you could just leave that answer blank if you didn't know. 56 00:02:50.410 --> 00:02:53.240 So quite a lot of people who didn't know the song interpreted the question as 57 00:02:53.240 --> 00:02:56.200 "make up some lyrics of your own". That's my bad. 58 00:02:56.200 --> 00:02:59.260 I suspect a few people back then also Googled the answer, 59 00:02:59.260 --> 00:03:01.840 but I don't think that'll have affected the final results all that much. 60 00:03:01.840 --> 00:03:07.300 That also removed people who were just quoting either Spongebob Squarepants or Madagascar. 61 00:03:07.300 --> 00:03:12.060 Those versions were just invented by scriptwriters and forced into kids' heads by marketing. 62 00:03:12.060 --> 00:03:14.600 I don't want to count those here. 63 00:03:14.600 --> 00:03:18.730 I was going to filter out anyone who didn't use either "flew" or "egg", 64 00:03:18.730 --> 00:03:23.210 but it turns out more than 1,000 people know the next line of the song as "Robin ran away"? 65 00:03:23.210 --> 00:03:28.490 I think if you don't have a bird pun in that line, you're missing out, but who am I to judge? 66 00:03:28.490 --> 00:03:32.520 I also filtered anything that was obviously spam or malicious. 67 00:03:32.520 --> 00:03:35.470 When all that was said and done, once all that filtering was finished, 68 00:03:35.470 --> 00:03:43.490 I had answers from 42,886 people who knew some version of the song with "Robin". 69 00:03:43.490 --> 00:03:46.700 Here's the breakdown by year of birth, and by geography. 70 00:03:46.700 --> 00:03:49.430 Now, while I'm still counting answers from earlier years, 71 00:03:49.430 --> 00:03:52.540 I'm only going to show graphs from 1973 and onwards, 72 00:03:52.540 --> 00:03:55.050 because those are the birth where I have more than 50 replies 73 00:03:55.050 --> 00:03:57.460 from both the US and UK. 74 00:03:57.460 --> 00:04:00.050 The graphs get weird before then, and I think that's because 75 00:04:00.050 --> 00:04:02.210 the number of people who put in false birth years 76 00:04:02.210 --> 00:04:04.310 starts to have a really significant effect. 77 00:04:04.310 --> 00:04:07.780 I also can't collect data from anyone born in 2007 or later, 78 00:04:07.780 --> 00:04:11.340 because the law's very strict on collecting data from kids under 13. 79 00:04:11.340 --> 00:04:16.049 So with all that in place, I tracked keywords for the various versions of the song. 80 00:04:16.049 --> 00:04:19.390 If you had a completely unique version, I wasn't going to count it, 81 00:04:19.390 --> 00:04:21.120 because it might contain personal information. 82 00:04:21.120 --> 00:04:24.600 Shoutout to the one person who was insulting their siblings in their answer, 83 00:04:24.600 --> 00:04:28.080 at great lengths, and also explained all the jokes. 84 00:04:28.080 --> 00:04:31.700 But if a few people had roughly the same version, I did include a check for it. 85 00:04:31.700 --> 00:04:34.300 So. Let's talk about those many other variants. 86 00:04:34.300 --> 00:04:38.030 I'm not musical, and frankly, singing a half-dozen ridiculous versions of Jingle Bells 87 00:04:38.030 --> 00:04:41.140 sounds like something that will very much come back to haunt me, 88 00:04:41.140 --> 00:04:45.382 but I do know someone who can perform these far better than I can. 89 00:04:45.382 --> 00:04:46.382 Jack. 90 00:05:01.901 --> 00:05:04.730 That version was only sent in by a few Australians, 91 00:05:04.730 --> 00:05:08.020 but also two people from north-west Washington DC. 92 00:05:08.020 --> 00:05:10.704 So maybe they were diplomatic or army kids? No idea. 93 00:05:10.704 --> 00:05:12.270 Oh, and in other versions of that, 94 00:05:12.270 --> 00:05:14.720 it's Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse doing the stabbing. 95 00:05:14.720 --> 00:05:17.271 Because children are monsters. 96 00:05:17.271 --> 00:05:20.360 And on that note, let's cover the thirty-nine people, 97 00:05:20.360 --> 00:05:21.850 again, from all over the world, 98 00:05:21.850 --> 00:05:24.017 who all share this second verse. 99 00:05:39.532 --> 00:05:42.050 That was one of the less violent versions of it, 100 00:05:42.050 --> 00:05:44.440 one ends with a request to be shot in the head. 101 00:05:44.440 --> 00:05:47.850 Now, like I said, I did rule out any answer that didn't include Robin, 102 00:05:47.850 --> 00:05:51.140 but I do want to highlight just one international version of Jingle Bells, 103 00:05:51.140 --> 00:05:54.660 just to show that this is not entirely an English-speaking joke. 104 00:05:54.660 --> 00:05:57.040 Sweden has many variations on this: 105 00:06:05.240 --> 00:06:11.480 The colour and particular private part of the bear that's painted appear to change between people. 106 00:06:11.480 --> 00:06:15.410 Now we get to the most common versions. 107 00:06:15.410 --> 00:06:18.690 One is almost exclusive to the UK and New Zealand, 108 00:06:18.690 --> 00:06:22.760 because those are the countries that use the word "motorway" for big highways. 109 00:06:22.760 --> 00:06:26.680 More than two thousand people have some variation on this: 110 00:06:33.470 --> 00:06:35.150 There are a long cast of characters, 111 00:06:35.150 --> 00:06:38.540 all of whom lost some usually-intimate part of their body or clothing, 112 00:06:38.540 --> 00:06:43.330 on various motorways that change depending on where in the UK you are. 113 00:06:43.330 --> 00:06:46.089 In south Wales, it's "on the M4 motorway". 114 00:06:46.089 --> 00:06:47.628 In Scotland, the M9. 115 00:06:47.628 --> 00:06:52.085 62 people, almost all Australians, said the last line of that should be: 116 00:06:56.095 --> 00:06:58.650 TAA being a now-defunct Australian airline. 117 00:06:58.650 --> 00:07:02.670 However, that is better than the two Scottish people who said it should be: 118 00:07:07.432 --> 00:07:11.600 And the idea of 90s kids-TV fever-nightmare Mr Blobby 119 00:07:11.600 --> 00:07:14.570 just defecating in the middle of the-- 120 00:07:14.570 --> 00:07:16.045 --I can't say that! 121 00:07:16.290 --> 00:07:20.674 Then there's this one from 221 mostly-British people, where after Robin flew away: 122 00:07:25.080 --> 00:07:27.676 And then from 23 British people, mostly 80s kids: 123 00:07:32.419 --> 00:07:35.834 Kojak, fictional TV detective with a lollipop part of pop culture in the UK in the 80s. 124 00:07:40.746 --> 00:07:43.673 Again, British, more than 100 people. 125 00:07:43.673 --> 00:07:45.783 Version after version after version of the song came up 126 00:07:45.783 --> 00:07:50.150 as being popular over here but not in the US or Canada. 127 00:07:50.150 --> 00:07:53.090 There was only one significant variant I could find 128 00:07:53.090 --> 00:07:54.832 that was definitely North American: 129 00:07:59.351 --> 00:08:02.050 More than 1500 people know that version, 130 00:08:02.050 --> 00:08:05.510 including more than 15% of the Canadians who replied. 131 00:08:05.510 --> 00:08:07.270 Almost no-one outside North America has heard it. 132 00:08:07.270 --> 00:08:10.468 There were a couple of smaller American variations. 133 00:08:18.546 --> 00:08:21.180 90 people, with a big cluster in the Pacific Northwest. 134 00:08:21.180 --> 00:08:24.040 The exact year changes, but almost everyone in that group agreed 135 00:08:24.040 --> 00:08:26.239 that Robin "laid" the gun. 136 00:08:27.187 --> 00:08:29.234 And the final North American variant is: 137 00:08:31.803 --> 00:08:33.919 Which just seems a bit half-assed, frankly, 138 00:08:33.919 --> 00:08:35.510 like it got made up by a parent 139 00:08:35.510 --> 00:08:37.936 trying to give the kids something more wholesome to sing? 140 00:08:37.936 --> 00:08:40.017 But it was only 35 people. 141 00:08:40.017 --> 00:08:43.590 America seems to have way fewer regional variations than the UK, 142 00:08:43.590 --> 00:08:45.500 and I have no idea why. 143 00:08:45.500 --> 00:08:47.240 That doesn't just happen for songs, either. 144 00:08:47.240 --> 00:08:51.680 In this book from 1959, "The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren", 145 00:08:51.680 --> 00:08:55.600 Iona and Peter Opie conducted a survey of dozens of schools in Britain, 146 00:08:55.600 --> 00:08:57.910 asking about the words and rhymes they use. 147 00:08:57.910 --> 00:08:59.560 It is a famous piece of research, 148 00:08:59.560 --> 00:09:02.930 but it's also a catalogue on how children are really cruel to each other. 149 00:09:02.930 --> 00:09:05.470 There's a whole chapter in here on nicknames and epithets, 150 00:09:05.470 --> 00:09:08.140 and I'll just read from the table of contents here: 151 00:09:08.140 --> 00:09:11.100 they have a list of names for Spoil-sports, Sourpusses, Spitfires, 152 00:09:11.100 --> 00:09:16.070 Clever-dicks, Dafties, Fools, Dunces, Copycats, Gibbers, Cheats, Swankpots, 153 00:09:16.070 --> 00:09:20.630 Nosey Parkers, Stare-cats, Cowards, Crybabies, Sneaks, Crawlers, Bullies. 154 00:09:20.630 --> 00:09:23.670 Plus, there's a whole section on "tortures and hair-pulling", 155 00:09:23.670 --> 00:09:26.647 and a separate chapter on physical appearance insults. 156 00:09:26.647 --> 00:09:28.670 Children are monsters. 157 00:09:28.670 --> 00:09:31.190 Anyway, what this book also has are maps. 158 00:09:31.190 --> 00:09:35.470 They're the best known bit: this old copy here actually has its spine broken 159 00:09:35.470 --> 00:09:38.580 on one of the map pages, presumably because someone photocopied it. 160 00:09:38.580 --> 00:09:42.089 This map covers "truce terms", the words that kids use to say that they are 161 00:09:42.089 --> 00:09:44.970 temporarily out of a game, because they've got stitch, 162 00:09:44.970 --> 00:09:46.380 or they're tying their shoelaces. 163 00:09:46.380 --> 00:09:50.080 In the UK, those words change not just in different parts of the country, 164 00:09:50.080 --> 00:09:52.040 but even from one town to the next. 165 00:09:52.040 --> 00:09:55.529 And that's why I asked about the game that people call "tag". 166 00:09:55.529 --> 00:09:57.730 Because if you're American, of course it's called tag, 167 00:09:57.730 --> 00:10:02.250 more than 96% of Americans and Canadians replying said it was called tag, 168 00:10:02.250 --> 00:10:05.110 and almost everyone who disagreed misidentified a different game 169 00:10:05.110 --> 00:10:06.700 and wrote something like "hide and seek", 170 00:10:06.700 --> 00:10:10.010 maybe because they didn't think I'd be asking such a simple question. 171 00:10:10.010 --> 00:10:13.293 In America: it's. called. tag. 172 00:10:13.293 --> 00:10:16.700 In Britain, only 29% of people called it tag. 173 00:10:16.700 --> 00:10:19.910 Not only are there different names, but just like the Opies did for truce terms, 174 00:10:19.910 --> 00:10:23.431 you can draw a map of what "tag" is called around the UK. 175 00:10:23.431 --> 00:10:27.370 For some reason, America tends to be one massive, homogenous blob, 176 00:10:27.370 --> 00:10:30.010 even for games and songs that are made up more recently, 177 00:10:30.010 --> 00:10:32.810 whereas Britain has loads of variants. 178 00:10:32.810 --> 00:10:35.390 Which brings me, finally, to the big question. 179 00:10:35.390 --> 00:10:38.250 Is it "laid an egg" or "flew away"? 180 00:10:38.250 --> 00:10:41.210 And did the Simpsons change it? 181 00:10:41.210 --> 00:10:43.570 So first of all, let's compare the basic numbers. 182 00:10:43.570 --> 00:10:47.670 Now, all I'm doing here is showing the percentage of people who said "laid an egg" 183 00:10:47.670 --> 00:10:50.330 out of all the replies who knew some version of the song. 184 00:10:50.330 --> 00:10:53.250 And you can see, "egg", by far the most popular. 185 00:10:53.250 --> 00:10:57.730 78% said it's "egg". So it seems like there's a clear winner: 186 00:10:57.730 --> 00:11:00.250 until you break it down by country. 187 00:11:00.250 --> 00:11:03.980 More than 98% of Americans said it was "laid an egg". 188 00:11:03.980 --> 00:11:08.120 98% percent! You can't get 98% of Americans to agree on anything. 189 00:11:08.120 --> 00:11:10.190 Of course the Simpsons chose it. 190 00:11:10.190 --> 00:11:14.220 Only someone who grew up outside the US would ever think that sounds wrong. 191 00:11:14.220 --> 00:11:17.910 But "Robin flew away" is clearly the British version. 192 00:11:17.910 --> 00:11:21.240 But remember, the answers were also broken down by year of birth. 193 00:11:21.240 --> 00:11:23.890 For the US, it's always a very high percentage, of course. 194 00:11:23.890 --> 00:11:28.420 But if the Simpsons had an effect in the UK, then we'd expect to see that 90s kids, 195 00:11:28.420 --> 00:11:31.380 which means people born from the early eighties onwards, 196 00:11:31.380 --> 00:11:34.195 they would be more likely to know the "egg" version. 197 00:11:35.923 --> 00:11:39.390 And I wish, I wish, I wish, I had a camera on my face when I first saw that data. 198 00:11:39.390 --> 00:11:42.050 I could not ask for better proof of that hypothesis. 199 00:11:42.050 --> 00:11:44.710 Can I 100% trace that back to the Simpsons? 200 00:11:44.710 --> 00:11:46.580 No, of course not, there could be some other factor. 201 00:11:46.580 --> 00:11:51.080 But the Simpsons was one of the most important pop-culture shows in the UK in the mid-90s, 202 00:11:51.080 --> 00:11:53.410 a lot of folks will have seen that episode, 203 00:11:53.410 --> 00:11:56.470 and I cannot think of any other reason for that change. 204 00:11:56.470 --> 00:12:00.420 And it also explains why the change happens everywhere in the UK at once: 205 00:12:00.420 --> 00:12:03.990 this isn't a local version that spread outward from a single location, 206 00:12:03.990 --> 00:12:06.350 it's a version that appeared everywhere, 207 00:12:06.350 --> 00:12:08.140 probably because it was imposed by television. 208 00:12:08.140 --> 00:12:10.910 And as the Simpsons drifts into history, 209 00:12:10.910 --> 00:12:13.000 as kids aren't watching it any more, 210 00:12:13.000 --> 00:12:16.260 the British versions of the song are reasserting themselves. 211 00:12:16.260 --> 00:12:21.970 Yes, America, Robin might well lay an egg for you, but over here? He flies away. 212 00:12:21.970 --> 00:12:23.860 - Thank you, Jack. 213 00:12:23.860 --> 00:12:25.524 - Thanks! Today's sponsor is... 214 00:12:25.524 --> 00:12:26.670 - No!