Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil

Episode Date: April 10, 2023

Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin explore why the phrase "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" is secretly incredibly fascinating. Special guest: Jason Pargin.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode.Hang out with us on the new SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5Hear Alex's new "explainer podcast" about all things MaxFun: https://youtu.be/6kNplapKs-w (It's uploaded to YouTube because he filmed his face while he taped it.)

See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. Known for and famous for monkeys. Nobody thinks much about this phrase, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why see no evil, a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm very much not alone. I'm joined by my wonderful co-host, Katie Golden. Katie, hello. Happy Monkey Podcast Day. I'm so excited for Monkey Podcast Day. And also, folks, we're past the maximum fun drive, and thank you to every single person who has supported and backed it and been part of it. But as part of celebrating that, we kind of stacked up extra special guests to join me and Katie, not just during, but right after. And what a special guest this week. He is a old pal of ours. He is a best

selling author. His upcoming next book is the third in the Zoe Ash series. It is Zoe is too drunk for this dystopia. Available for pre-order now. Pre-order books. It's what authors depend on and what makes books sing in the world. But we are so happy to be joined by author, TikTok star, and so much more, Jason Pargin. Jason, hello. TikTok star. That's how the world's going to remember me, isn't it? Feels good, right? I think those of us who've known you for a while get a kick out of saying it because

it's new and also it's fun, you know? Yes. For people who, do we have a lot of listeners who are MaxFun people who were not listening to the show before? Yeah. So, so far, that's what I'm hearing. Yeah. I show up here sometimes.

I worked with Alex back in the cracked.com days. I have been on his show many times. I write books and everyone thinks that it is very funny that statistically now in 2023, most people who have encountered me have encountered me on TikTok where, where the videos I've posted are now crossed recently crossed a hundred million views, which means that's more people than have read any of the books I worked so hard on or any of the columns I wrote it cracked over the course of 13 years or any of the podcasts, add it all up. It does not equal my freaking TikTok reach. So it's fine. It's fine. I'm not complaining. It's fine that a book that literally took me

two years to write will be seen by one, one thousandth of the people who will watch a TikTok that I made in 40 seconds. It's fine. You can tell he's fine by the way his voice is right now. I don't I don't want the government to ban the app because I don't want to have to then do this all over again on whatever knockoff TikTok we're forced to make. But that's a subject for another day. I'm happy to be on the show. I'm always happy to be on the show. Thank you.

What will they call TikTok USA when that app is developed, right? Will it be Freedom Talk? Will it be Bald Eagle Talk? I don't know. I don't know what we'll call it. See, here's the thing. Social media apps never have names that mean anything. Like who would guess what TikTok, if you knew nothing else, who would guess what that product

is or Tumblr or any of them? So it will be, I'm going to guess, a nonsense word that is spelled wrong. Freebly. Sure. Perfect. And it won't have any vowels, any of the vowel sounds you made there. It won't have any of those. No, only consonants and then like all lowercase and then a period in the middle of it. I'm downloading it now. And I'm so excited about this topic this week.

It is, I believe, the first one chosen through the Discord specifically. We're now doing our democracy for suggesting and voting on topics through Discord. And thank you to Blue Crab for picking this one. The topic is see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. Let's go around, maybe starting with Jason. What is your relationship to this topic or opinion of this topic? I am very curious to find out how many listeners, their connection to this, because I think we've seen, I think there's a horror franchise called See No Evil. It's a phrase we've heard. And then I think some smaller number of people have seen the monkeys where there's little figurines and there's a monkey who's got his hands over his eyes, one with his hands over his ears, ones with his hands over his mouth. And so growing up, I saw those fake dreams.

I saw that decoration. I saw those monkeys referenced in cartoons doing that motion, but did not know what it was. And I guess as a kid, foolishly assumed, well, this means something to the adults, I guess. But that is a very complicated question, it turns out, of what it means. Because as a teenager, when I got older, I thought, oh, it's a criticism of people who ignore something horrible happening in the world, that they're like, nope, I don't see it, I don't hear it, I don't talk about it. And it turns out, kind of no, it's very unclear what it means. And so it gets into the other subject that I am very fascinated by, which is why some icons and symbols just stick in the human brain, even if we don't agree on what they mean, because this has been around for a while.

Yeah, it really turns out that I, Katie, how about you? How did you come across this? Because as we'll talk about, it's millennia old, which is very exciting. from the books would kind of come out of their books and interact. And they would typically also have like these monkeys as like a bookend. And the little monkeys would come alive and sing a little song of like, see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. I had no concept of what it meant. I just enjoyed watching the singing monkeys. And we're going to find out there's a running theory through this that I think part of why this has survived over century after century is that it is just fun to say and look at. I don't know. It's very much. There's a rich, deep history.

Obviously, we would not have done an entire show about it if there wasn't. But I think the thing that delighted young Katie and me, too, because it obviously stuck in my brain, may not be much deeper than that. But, yeah, obviously the same cartoon. Which, by the way, the cartoons from those 1940s era, like Mary Melody's cartoons, just full of references to old politicians and actors that we had no context for. But I think as little kids you just accept that, well,

this is probably something. Yeah, it's, this is probably something it's. Yeah. It's just a character. I don't know what this is, but it's, it must, it must be something. Yeah. Yeah. He must be talking like that for a reason. He must be, you know, I mean, I'm sure I'm like a lot of listeners. I'm very easy to please. If I see a monkey, I just kind of smile, automatic reaction. I see a monkey and I'm like, ha ha, look at that monkey. Growing up for me, that was kind of our bit about it because I didn't know it from cartoons, but I've got one sibling, my brother, and then on my dad's side, just one male cousin out of all my cousins. And so at Schmidt family parties, they'd have me and my brother

and my cousin, Michael, do this pose for a photo. And it was like, ah, look at the little boy. It's kind of like monkeys. Ha ha ha. But I didn't know where it's from. And I just sort of assumed that because my grandpa in particular was very Catholic, I assumed maybe it's biblical and then they depict it with monkeys. It sounds like wisdom. We never think about it philosophically in the family, but maybe it's another thing we've learned from Catholic church, but it's not, turns out. The reality is not very far from that. There's elements of it. There's elements of the wisdom and also there are strong elements of monkeys are fun no matter what they're doing. Is this a monkey cult? Is this what we're going towards?

If only. Sounds good. Capuchin monkeys, actual little monks that have their little monkey religion and they go to monkey monasteries, which they call monk-isteries. And many weeks we start with a set of numbers and statistics, but this week I want to get straight into the entire story of where this comes from and how we ended up with it, and then we'll do stats and numbers at the end. So this week we're starting with takeaway number one. The phrase, see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, probably originated as an Asian Buddhist saying translated into Japanese language and culture. A lot of this first takeaway will be fuzzy. A lot of this will be distant historically, but we think it came from Buddhism in Asia. And then

the point where it started reaching the rest of the world started in Japan. I hope listeners are not frustrated by your words like maybe and seems to, because surely they understand. They're regular listeners of the show. If you go back far enough in history, which is not very far at all, you just reach a black box of, I don't know, nobody wrote it down. The vast majority of human history is a total mystery to us. We just have to kind of assume this is what probably happened. The problem is everyone from that time period has unfortunately died. So we cannot ask them.

Yeah, I'm sorry. I know. Yeah. Bad news. Bad news, guys. They're all dead. So, but that's interesting. So, I mean, it kind of, so it's kind of a mantra.

It seems like it has some either spiritual or philosophical significance then. I think the mystery we are trying to solve for the listeners here is, well, how did monkeys become involved? We'll get to that. We're getting to that because this is going to, it's not going to be clear at all when we start. Why monkeys? It's coming. This is why I find this fascinating. In fact, I find it incredibly fascinating in a way that's not obvious. It's like secretly. In a way that's secret, yeah. Yeah.

You're both very sweet. So the key sources for this first takeaway, there's a piece for Atlas Obscura by users Fred Cherrygarden and Johnny Raven. All good names. All very good names. Cherrygarden? Yeah, one of them has a bird. Yeah, Raven?

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. The other source here is the Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore, edited by Jacqueline Simpson and Steve Roud. Less good names. I don't mean to be mean, but slightly less good names. Yeah, I definitely did a lot of cross-checking of these kinds of sources this week because the start of the story is so fuzzy because the history of this phrase may go back more than

2,000 years. This phrase, see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, it might have roots in each of those ideas separately, if that makes sense. You can just tell someone to see no evil, or just tell someone to hear no evil, or just tell someone to speak no evil. And we don't know exactly which part of Asia coined an individual part or all of it. One possible candidate is Confucian China, because there's a statement in a text called the Analects of Confucius. It is, quote, look not at what is contrary to propriety, listen not to what is contrary to propriety, speak not what is contrary to propriety, make no movement which is contrary to propriety, end quote. And does it have any kind of meaning beyond the surface level

of just be polite and proper? That's a great question. Yeah. This is just too far beyond my experience and our time for me to know. Yeah. I mean, you have not mastered sort of philosophy and you have not sort of reached a state of greater being, Alex. Because yeah, as we talk about this phrase, there's just a not citable, not researchable thing of you can take this phrase very surface level or very entire meaning of life. Like it can just be, hey, be calm in situations. Or it can be kind of approaching the golden rule, like do nothing to others that you would not want onto yourself. This is the meaning of life. Yeah, but also we're going to find out in a moment, because I know what Katie is asking.

This phrase, the way they boiled it down in Japanese, rhymes. And it's a fun rhyme. Well, the human brain, this is science, if you can turn a slogan into a fun little rhyme, it will stick in the brain way, way, way better than if it's just a phrase. There's something about rhymes or something about the rhythm that just, you know, like, like some of us, not me, of course, but to remember the order of the alphabet, we still have a little song we have to sing, um, to remember which, which letter goes where, uh, and the song is kind of like forces a rhyme to kind of like, so the question I think you're asking is like, well, that clunky phrase, surely that's people weren't saying that to each other. But so the question is like, well, was there something?

Did it have some pizzazz in the original language? It's like, well, remember, a stitch in time saves nine or whatever. Yeah. Or liberty, liberty, liberty, Liberty, Liberty, Liberty, Liberty. It's from the insurance of Confucius. That's how he protected his things. Best jingle ever. Yeah. I'm like convinced that was written by a really annoyed ad writer who like, they're like, no, you need to make it more clear who we are. It's like, fine, Liberty, Liberty, Liberty. This ties into it clear who we are. It's like, fine, liberty, liberty, liberty.

This ties into it. But when I, because my degree was in like radio broadcasting and that kind of thing. And they used to have this rule for a 30 second ad. If they, if the company's trying to get their phone number out there, you have to have the phone number in the ad six times and 30 seconds. Verbally, you need to say it six times, like to stick in the brain. And same thing with like slogans. It's like, no repetition. You got to say it over and over and over and over again. And so instead of where as a writer, you want to think, okay, what do you want to be like Don Draper? Like, okay, what's what, what are the fundamental things people are looking

for in insurance reliability? What da da da. It's like, no, you need a cartoon lizard. And to say a phrase four or five times, that's how you sell in reality. It's not about trying to give people information. It's not about trying to convince them of anything. It is a nonsense phrase and a cartoon animal of some kind that people enjoy looking at. There's also been research that shows even if you don't immediately trust a commercial, after like a few months, you'll kind of forget where you heard it from, just that you heard about it and it's stuck in your brain. And that actually gives it sort of this superficial reliability that you can't quite put a finger on,

but you're like, yeah, I remember hearing about this. You don't remember that it was from a commercial. So then you kind of, when you're looking for things, you're like, oh yeah, I kind of heard something about Geico maybe being good. I don't remember that a Geico told me that, but I think it was an Australian man. I don't know. New Zealand? It is familiar. Therefore it is comfortable, therefore it is safe. Yes. Maximumfun.org slash join. Folks. Sincerely, though.

And this phrase, quickly, how it got to the rhyming and powerful, I guess you could call it jingle, is that Confucian origin I mentioned. That's just one theoretical place where it might have really been sparked. And that Confucian text is from the Warring States period, which is more than 2000 years ago. But it's also possible this idea originated in India, where Buddhism originated, and then reached China through trade or through that religious conversion. But all of this is fuzzy. What we're clear on is that there was a cultural exchange from China to Japan around the 700s AD. So around 1300 years ago, the 700s AD, Buddhist monks go from China to Japan, and many proverbs from Chinese culture, but also from Asian Buddhism, because those are also separate things. Many proverbs and cultural things from all that enter Japanese culture, enter Japanese religion.

And all of this combination results in a Japanese language saying, which is mizaru kikazaru iwazaru. Now we're talking. Mizaru kikazaru iwazaru. That feels good on the mouth. Yes. And that is how you create a... I don't want to use the term mind virus because I don't want a negative connotation. But the concept of a meme, of an idea that travels and that lasts across centuries, it's something like that. It is fun to say. It's got the wisdom embedded in it. It's something parents can say to kids. It's something you can put into

a piece of calligraphy that looks nice on a wall, like live, laugh, love, the alliteration there. That is a virus, live, laugh, love. That is like a herpes, live, laugh, love. And boiling an idea down to a series of syllables and a rhyme, something like that, you have created something that will outlast you. Yeah. Maybe, because obviously advertisers are trying to do this all the time. They'll spend hundreds of millions of dollars coming up with a slogan that everybody immediately forgets. But then sometimes they'll come up with one that just becomes a part of the language forever.

Yeah, like I can say special eyes and everyone knows what Adam talking about. I actually don't know. What is that no it's a contact lens commercial uh and it's like uh you know it's like i have specialized and it was oh they're spelling it okay and then it's uh and then it was sort of designed to be like a soap opera, but it was about a guy ordering contact lenses and being not believing that you could order his brand of contact lenses through the mail. And then she shows him that you can. And he goes, my brand. And. But even that name, like it takes off like a rocket ship because of how those words work in English. This one, it seems to have taken off in the Japanese language because mizaru, kikazaru, iwazaru, the we've got no seeing, no hearing, no speaking.

That a little bit vibes that well, but mizaru, kikazaru, iwazaru. Just feels good. So is the evil part just implied? Because that has stripped out the impropriety. Yeah. Yeah, as far as I'm learning from these sources translating Japanese, the evil is implied in that phrase, which is surprising, too. It's surprising that that can be totally clear when you would think it's almost moving it just totally into the realm of funny monkeys doing faces. Well, this almost sounds like meditation versus exclude evil from your life and from your words and from your side or whatever.

But again, the meetings are fuzzy because they were handed down long after the people who came up with them were dead and couldn't tell us what they meant. That's right, yeah. was what they meant. That's right. Yeah. The ambiguity though, like that is something we're good at is with symbols, you nest a bunch of different concepts inside that symbol. The symbol doesn't have to directly communicate what, um, what it is fully meet. The full meaning of the symbol doesn't have to be on the symbol. It's like with letters. You can contain a lot of concepts. So you can simplify a mantra or a saying to something that is not literally saying what you know it's supposed to be saying. But then at the same time, over long periods of time, the original meaning of that can then transform or become lost. Also, sometimes we just communicate ideas to each other that don't mean anything.

Sometimes we'll put live, laugh, love up on a little sign in our kitchen that do not sit around every day pondering, I should laugh more. I should, I should, isn't life about loving? It's like, no, it's just a thing. It's just a thing I bought for my kitchen. It's like, no, it's just a thing. It's just a thing I bought for my kitchen. It seems to fit my vibe.

And a lot of the words we use and that we say to each other as a species, they're totally stripped of meaning. It's just these are some sounds we make at each other to acknowledge we're part of the same culture. Yeah, I even feel like Live, Laugh, Love in particular can benefit just from typeface. Like just if the store or the designer puts it in good fonts, that can kind of be the hook to get somebody to buy it. And like the sounds and words and meaning are not quite why it's like, oh, look at that flow. If you pick three words that are in that same lacy font, you could probably sneak something really naughty on your wall and it'd take people a while to see it. Yeah, I mean, the word lick can just slide right in there, right? It's going to pass over.

Yeah. This is the word lick three times. Lick, lick, lick. And just in the prettiest font. It's the most serial killer thing I can think of. You could only do that in like an ice cream store.

Yeah, even then you would not want to. Or a dog's house. Or a dog could put it up, right? Then it's just fun. Then it's just sweet. Or a dentist, right? Yes, dentist, we're all on the same page. Dentists love it when they stick their hands in there and you start licking their fingers. That's their favorite thing. I mean, I like it when my dog does that to me, so I figure my dentist will like it when I do it to them.

And especially with the philosophical meaning of this saying, see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. I looked a bit into expert opinions on the history of Buddhism and on how it spread in this time. I'm going to link about a compilation of scholarly articles called Buddhisms in Asia. And the editors of that say that as Buddhism spread in Asia in its early days, in many contexts, it responded to what the anthropologist James Clifford has termed the predicament of culture, a sense of being off center in a world of competing meaning systems or being in a culture and at the same time being compelled to look critically at it, end quote. fits this thing where this phrase can mean a lot of things to a lot of people, because it seems to have some fundamental elements of not doing wrong. And maybe also you could say there's a fundamental element of not letting things throw you. And so that all kind of fits a chaotic situation or

just lots of different people's lives and predicaments. Like it can be as flexible as live, laugh, love. I don't mean to keep comparing it to that goofy thing. It means more than that, but you know what I mean? I mean, it is interesting because if I had to ascribe meaning to it today, I think about like negative thinking. And when you do sort of like a cognitive behavioral therapy, there's this idea that if you have an internal monologue that's negative, that may seem harmless at first, but then it starts to influence your thinking in general, and then your actions and your behaviors and your emotions, and it becomes sort of a feedback loop. So to interrupt it, when you have a negative internal monologue, even if it's something like, oh, I'm such an idiot, I messed this up. You know, if you change that to like, well,

this was inevitable that, you know, I'm going to make a mistake. It's okay. I'm going to move on. Then you can transform your emotional outlook on things. And so that kind of, I get that meaning from it, but then I feel like there's so many other meanings you could take from it. You have discovered the secret, which is that it is something that is open enough to interpretation that many people coming from many different points of view can look at it and say, yeah, I can see, you know what, to me, this means. yeah i can see you know what to me this means whereas i growing up i thought the reason that we had monkeys doing is that we were making fun of the idea that it was a criticism of authority figures who refuse to see corruption refuse to see what's going on or citizens who refuse to you know they ignore injustice and so it's like nope i don't want to see it i don't want to hear about it i don't want to talk about it That's not my problem that these people are being oppressed.

Whereas you found something totally different. I think this idea has persisted for exactly that reason, because it is a universal multi-tool that many people can look at and say, no, as a mantra, this has deep meaning for me, even though people are taking totally opposite meanings from it. Yeah. It's like a Rorschach test, but with monkeys, which is kind of a coincidence because whenever I look at a Rorschach test, I see monkeys. No matter what, every time. Monkeys kissing, monkeys dancing. Yeah. And the universality of it, we have one other big takeaway, and it's a huge one, because it's how we basically got to here and got to sitting and taping this episode. Takeaway number two.

Japanese language and mythology is how the idea of see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil got represented by monkeys and got introduced to English. Finally, the monkeys are about to show up in the story. This is when I'm interested. I start listening now. There are listeners who have been scrubbing through this recording, trying to hear the word monkey to see when the monkeys show up. It's here. It's whatever the minute mark is that this is yeah learning what the waveform for monkey looks like monkeys maximumfund.org join monkeys maximumfund.org join that's a great scheme i've got it's working really well uh and the key sources here the are those previous sources

in the first takeaway. And we're also using a report from NPR's show, The Two-Way by Camilla Dominovsky. Because in Japanese, this phrase is mizaru kikazaru iwazaru. And there's still some vagueness in this part of the story. But the gist is what happens is this phrase from China and possibly from Buddhism gets translated into Japanese, and those words mizaru, kikizaru, iwazaru all end in the same sound. They all end in zaru, and that's very similar to the Japanese word saru, which is usually translated, spelled s-a-r-u, but that word means monkey. So just coincidentally, these Japanese words are a play on words for monkeys, and that kicks this off. I just love how those

just little coincidences create such a domino effect in culture. Yeah, that's all it took. If you look into any element of the popular culture and try to trace it back far enough, this is what you get. Whether you're talking about fairy tales, holidays, when you try to piece together why we celebrate Easter with bunnies and eggs, and then trying to discern, it's like, well, yeah yeah but how did they get connected how did they get merged and again a lot of these go back so far that it is just a guess the concept of the christmas tree of where santa claus came from and there's like eight different characters that they combined and so often it's just like, well,

traders from this country went to this country and they had this custom and the country they went to had this custom and they kind of just merged them together because they wanted to sell merchandise. And so they need the stuff that everybody would buy. So they just kind of made like, and you can see that happening in real time, the way ideas kind of collide. I don't want to say that it's random because I don't want to make it sound like it's meaningless, but the evolution of icons and

slogans and phrases and sayings and things like that is incredible to watch because there is such a randomness to it where it could easily have been different. And then it's like, well, it kind of kind of sounds like monkey. And so people started thinking like making monkey jokes or monkey pictures or monkey figurines or whatever. And you were then off to the races. Yeah. Yeah. And like this monkey, it's the, the breakout character of, of this kind of idea. And it also turns out not only are Buddhism and China and other cultural things influencing Japan, but Japan influenced this phrase back partly because there's longstanding Japanese mythology about monkeys. It's all over various early culture

there. NPR talked to Dr. Akiko Wally, who's a specialist in Japanese Buddhist art and a professor at the University of Oregon. And she recommended looking into a Japanese folk faith that predated Buddhism. It's called Koshin. And in some Koshin traditions, monkeys played a role as intermediaries between the gods and humans. There was a lot of engraved monkey art at various shrines and temples for that. Also tales of monkeys causing mischief or monkeys trying to impersonate humans. And then there are simply a lot of monkeys there, in particular a species called the Japanese macaque that is on most islands. Katie, you may have known more about that. Yeah, I love macaques.

There's a lot of monkey culture in Japan. Like it's not, it's a much more common animal there than it is here. And I think it's important for people to remember that like the reputations that animals have or the sorts of cultural significance they have varies. So we may have an animal like a black cat or a raven or a monkey and then we have certain ideas about them like the black cat is bad luck the monkey is silly and dumb and the raven is like a harbinger of doom and then you look at different cultures and it's completely different like a raven is good luck or a black cat is you know a good thing like it's lucky to cross a black cat's path or a monkey is wise and clever.

This is what I found most interesting about this whole subject. Because when I was a kid, then I saw my first exposure to the see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil was three monkeys in America and much of the West. I, a monkey is a comical thing. Like, if you put, you know, a chimpanzee and little overalls, that's whatever he does. Like, I'm now delighted. Like, I don't care what happens. Like, you put him in a little hat, put him wearing people clothes. You know, people come to the zoos.

Everybody immediately wants to see the monkeys. And I'm using the term monkey to describe all primates. Please do not get mad at me if you actually know your animals, Katie. I just use a universal term. I was about to attack you. Yeah. How dare you use the word monkey for Dunstan checks in. Dunstan is not a monkey, sir. The reason I thought that this saying was a criticism was because I thought, Oh, you're making fun of people who do this. Because if you portray in the USA, someone as a monkey,

either you're being racist, right? Or you're making fun of them, right? Like that's, it's always a negative. Like there, you're never complimenting a president. If you're making, if you're drawing them as a primate. You're saying they're either silly or saying something much, much darker. So when I saw this, I automatically, even as a kid thought, oh, we are mocking people who close their eyes and close their ears and refuse to talk about certain subjects by portraying them as silly, silly monkeys. When you tell me, well, actually, they got attached to this in Japan because they're, like monkeys, are seen as somewhat sacred or intermediaries to the gods or as wise or whatever,

that blows my mind because it means we completely flip the meaning just by the randomness of our culture seeing primates in a certain way, just completely different from how they see them. That is the kind of stuff I love because that's there. It becomes comical watching an idea cross borders and just get transmogrified into something totally different, but equally meaningful, but just from a different direction. It's interesting too, because in the US, we do not, like in North America, we do not have a native primate population. And so like, we don't really interact with monkeys or other primates except for in zoos. Whereas like in Japan at the time that this saying came into being, they did have a big macaque population probably interacted with them. And so it's funny to me that monkeys have become in like United States culture, probably other cultures is synonymous with goofy and dumb because they're extremely intelligent.

They're one of the most intelligent animals out there. Yes, they can be silly, but they are very clever. And animals that are not that smart have become synonymous with wisdom, like owls. Owls are great. I love owls. They're not like the smartest animal. They are a, you know, they're not even the smartest bird. Parrots are much more. I mean, it's always hard to compare animal intelligence. But if you are going strictly by puzzle solving ability, these sort of cognitive abilities, something like a parrot is actually much more clever than an owl. Something like a crow is much more clever than an owl.

Owls aren't like particularly stupid birds, but they're not the smartest. And yet there's an air of elegance to them, I guess, sort of a mystery to them that we just think that they're wise. Whereas a parrot is bright and colorful and loud. And we're like, eh, that must be kind of dumb. And it's like, no, actually the bright, colorful, loud one is very smart. The owl may not be doing much. And we're like, eh, that must be kind of dumb. And it's like, no, actually, the bright, colorful, loud one is very smart. The owl may not be doing much. And we think it's just thinking really intensely. But it's probably just like in its brain, like mouse, mouse, mouse, mouse, mouse, mouse, mouse.

But also you can have cases where creatures have shown up in mythology. And also you can have cases where creatures have shown up in mythology and then that portrayal, like one writer with them is in a zoo where they're almost being brought out as a performance, like they're in a cage and we're watching them as if they are entertaining us. It's like, oh, look how funny he swings around. Look how funny he throws his poop at us. Look how funny they are when they do this and that and the way he eats a banana. It's like, well, they're not doing that to entertain you. That's just the setting in which you observe them. And then you immediately think of like, oh, he's clowning around. He's, you know, he's performing. The monkeys are funny. Whereas if you just saw them in your yard, you probably would not think of it the same way. Right, exactly. And I think when we anthropomorphize

something like a monkey, they aren't going to measure up to human behavior, but they're going to be close. And so to us, that is, it's being dumb. It's being stupid, right? Like, look at it. It's like, we say something to it and then it makes this face and that's silly and dumb. And we're thinking of it in terms of like, it's supposed to measure up to human behavior and human concepts and be able to, you know, we've even tried to teach them sign language, which didn't really work out that well. And so it's, I think that because they're somewhat similar to us, when we try to put them in a human context, we're like, oh, they're just like really stupid. But then if you put them in any other context, it's very clear that they are actually incredibly intelligent and

they have their own form of communication and intelligence that does not, it's not just like that they're furry humans. They are their own thing. And if you can see that and you can see what their behavior is, you're bound to be impressed by it. Man, absolutely. These monkeys that were just more common in Japan and viewed differently in Japan, they made the saying different. According to the Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore, this Japanese saying was used to teach prudence and teach purity. You could still find the art funny where monkeys are covering their faces and their ears and stuff, but it seems like it was a relatively serious saying, and so it got depicted in a lot of monkey art at shrines and temples and became religious art.

It's very different from what we've done with primates in circuses or in zoos, where you wait for them to do something weird. Are we going to get into something that may be kind of a sensitive subject, which is the fact that people were selling merch with the three monkeys almost from the start. I am not saying that this piece of wisdom and that this iconography has persisted because it is such a great bit of merch to sell. But they have sold a lot of merch and it really does. That is a factor in how ideas travel. The idea that you can go to a distant land and they have this little thing,

this painting or this whatever key chain, whatever they had back then, t-shirts with the monkeys. Everybody loves monkeys. It's got the little saying on it. Certain ideas persist because they lend themselves to merch. I'm not saying that's why this one persisted. I'm saying that is a real factor in the world. Well, also things that were spiritually significant for many different cultures were not above merchandising.

Like they're in these ancient Greek temples, like the Temple of Zeus or Athena, you would go and immediately you would come by like a market selling you offerings. And it was, you know, it, I mean, in a way, when you like look back and you think about it, it was kind of like Disneyland. Like you go by and they're like selling you all these things that you can then go use in the temple. And it doesn't mean that it had less of a spiritual significance to people. But there was definitely, you know, where you can make a buck and sell a t-shirt with like Athena's face on it, you're going to do that. Not that they had that back then. Humans love little funny things that can hang around their walls.

That is as fundamental a human thing as anything else we do. Yeah. And this topic really has, I think, brought a lot of people joy in that form. We even have specific date and location for one rendering of this that got turned into especially British merchandise and U.S. merchandise. According to Atlas Obscura, this motif artistically of the monkeys spread all over Japan. And then the key depiction of it was at a grand shrine that was built in 1617. Atlas Obscura says the Grand Toshogu Shrine was built and dedicated to the first shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate. One of the buildings that form the complex of this shrine is the sacred stable, adorned with an eight-panel sculpture,

and the most notable panel is the three wise monkeys, which is three Japanese macaques doing this funny thing of mizaru, kikazaru, iwazaru, not seeing, not hearing, not saying. That was built in 1617. Apparently during the Meiji era, starting in 1868, there was a big attempt by the Japanese government to do mass media the way that people in Britain and the U.S. and elsewhere were doing it. And then between that and people visiting, this image of a Japanese sculpture, either as illustrations or as photos, goes worldwide. And then that also gets carved and minted and smelted into all sorts of different trinkets, too. And apparently it was extra popular with British soldiers in the First World War. They

would carry it as lucky charms as a physical thing. They are so cute. The original one, is that what I'm looking at here? This colorful picture? Yeah. And we have a picture of it. It's wonderful. It's adorable. I love their expressions. They have so much attitude, I guess, like their little faces. I also just like, they look kind of pleased with themselves, like more so a lot of these sculptural renditions I see, they actually look kind of scared. And I like this version where they're just like, hee hee. Yeah, the one artist did an amazing job and they really sparked like a global change that makes all three of us familiar with it. Yeah, because now this image and this saying is in the jaws of capitalism. Now it is something there are moving millions of units, and now it has been swallowed up into the West, and now it is a thing you can sell. And now we are in a whole different, different phase, because if you could interview the hundreds of millions of people who have owned

some piece of three wise monkeys merch and ask them what it means to them, I'm going to guess the Katie's reaction. I love, I love's faces. He looks embarrassed in that first one there. It's kind of funny. I think that is as far as it goes. There is a point where we buy things because we saw it and saw someone else had it, and then we bought it for ourselves. That is as deep as the meaning goes, which is fine. But the way ideas spread in the mass media capitalism era, very different than how they spread prior to that. Once you started getting into the 1920s or whatever, and it's like British soldiers had these in their pockets, it's like, yeah, now it's a thing. Now it's a thing that every souvenir shop has in it.

Yeah, and then as text, it even might have glommed on to a Middle Ages saying. Apparently, there used to be a late Middle Ages saying in English, which is, hear all, see all, say not. One more time, that's hear all, see all, say not, which is different. But apparently, some Europeans made figurines of the monkeys doing that where two of the monkeys are trying to hear and trying to see and then that has also sort of dovetailed into ultimately being this this asian saying that people probably didn't know is asian so what is that that's the same like remain like remain silent or don't talk too much. What's the what's the value there? They're trying to. Yeah, I think it's sort of a keep your cards close to your chest meaning like just be smart about stuff. But it's also sort of like the other saying that's the topic. It could mean lots of different things.

Better for people to think you a fool than for you to open your mouth and remove all doubt. People who say stuff like that love to hear themselves talk more than anyone else, is the funny thing. It's like what they really mean is, you should let me do all the talking. Yay! Okay, there was something that I... The three monkeys in this image, is it supposed to be the same monkey making three gestures, or is it a group of three monkeys? Oh, you know, I think that's a perfect segue into the stats and numbers. Oh, I'm sorry. You're about to get to that.

I apologize. I jumped the gun. And that's where we're headed. So, folks, we're going to take a short break. We're going to tell you about all sorts of stuff. MaximumFun.org slash join. And then we'll come back with stats and numbers on the rest of the show. Hey, it's Alex, and I want to tell you two things I'm excited about. One is the thing I have been excited about since episode one of this podcast.

For the entire run of this podcast, it has been supported by listeners. Now more than ever with our wonderful partners at Maximum Fun, it's a listener-supported network. That's how these are artist-owned shows. That's how it's an employee-owned co-op. It can only exist through listener support. So listeners who support this show are the reason you are hearing this show. In order to make that support go as far as it possibly can, I am also always looking for companies that make sense as a sponsor to jump in and do an extra little tag team on top of that listener support. This week, that sponsor is Wild Grain. Wild Grain is the first ever Bake From Frozen

subscription box for sourdough breads, fresh pastas, and artisanal pastries. One more time, that's sourdough breads, fresh pastas, and artisanal pastries. In other words, the three best foods, right? I would not turn down any of those ever, which is why I keep checking the tracking on the wild grain box that is coming my way. Also, as I track that box, I know that I will get to have my foods very quickly because every item bakes from frozen in 25 minutes or less. If you have an oven, if you even do a toaster oven sized amount, you're going to be able to eat this very quickly after receiving it in the best way. Also, Wild Grain is based in Boston. Shout out our northeastern neighbors, Boston. And I like that they are rooted in the Boston community. For every new member,

Wild Grain donates six meals to the Greater Boston Food Bank. So when you eat good as a Wild Grain member, you also get to do good at the same time. There's also just an accidental nice thing here for me, because as you remember from a few weeks ago, we did an episode about yeast. Me and Katie got to talk about yeast all the time, like, oh, yeast does all this magic stuff. Really got me in the mood for sourdough. I don't know about you. I don't know if the episodes impact you that way, especially if they're foods.

But man, I wanted to have some sourdough. And so I just keep checking this tracking on this wild grain box because I know I'm going to open it. I'm going to preheat the oven and I'm basically immediately going to prepare myself sourdough. It bakes from frozen in 25 minutes or less. So within the hour, I'm going to be chowing down. It's going to be great. And let's set that up for you. For a limited time, you can get $30 off the first box, plus free croissants in every box. Wow. When you go to wildgrain.com slash SifPod to start your subscription, free croissants in every box and $30 off your first box when you go to

wildgrain.com slash SifPod. Again, that's wildgrain.com slash SifPod, or you can use promo code Sifpod at checkout. I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places. Yes, I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney.

I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience. One you have no choice but to embrace because, yes, listening is mandatory. you have no choice but to embrace because yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. I forgot that we hadn't done the stats already. So I thought we had skipped this point because the fact that this could possibly be the same monkey three times infuriates me for some reason. No, it's got to be three monkeys.

They've each got three names like Huey, Dewey, and Louie. I refuse any other version. Yeah, folks, we are back and we're going to dive into that idea that you may not have thought of, but maybe this is the same monkey repeatedly. But to get into that on every episode, we get into a set of fascinating numbers and statistics. This week, that is in a segment called Stats Rule Everything Around Me. Sif, get the knowledge. Numerical thrill, y'all.

Folks, that name was submitted by Alan Sigismund on Twitter. Thank you for that Wu-Tang, Alan. And there's a new name for this segment every week. Please make him as silly and wacky and bad as possible. Submit through that Discord for Sif that we have. Also, personal note from Alex. I think this is going to be the last episode before I stop using Twitter. The accounts will still be up for me and for the podcast.

But it just hasn't been a good experience on that app. And there's so many other ways to hang out, in particular, the Discord. There's a link in the description of the episode to join the Discord. We're also on Instagram, also on TikTok, it's fpod. But let's hang out other ways, and it's great. But what we really want to know, why could this be just one monkey? But what we really want to know, why could this be just one monkey? Because one way of finding that out has been emoji. First number here is 2015. The first number here is 2015. That is the year when Unicode added three emoji to the world's emoji keyboard, representing each of these three monkeys.

The see no evil monkey, hear no evil monkey, speak no evil monkey. The see no evil monkey, hear no evil monkey, speak no evil monkey. And Emojipedia says they were all added in the global Unicode set in Emoji 1.0. They were not in some earlier forerunners of Emoji created by Japanese mobile phone companies. If you want to hear all about the history of that, listen to the Bison Emoji podcast miniseries that I made with Katie Guesting. Alex is in the pocket of big emoji. There, I said it. You did not make me sign an NDA.

Oh, no. Next number here is a poll result. It is 53.4%. So not a huge majority, but a majority. 53.4% of respondents to a twitter poll in 2016 said that they think this is one monkey making three different faces rather than three different monkeys so literally most people thought it was just one monkey this whole time yeah that is, I gobsmacked. family emoji. And it seems like especially in the emoji era, we've landed on this new possibility that it is one monkey doing three things. People who mainly have discovered them through their keyboard rather than Merry Melodies or my grandpa, I guess they're deciding,

oh, it's that monkey doing different stuff. We love the one monkey we all know. This is historical revisionism, I think, of monkeys. Yeah, and this poll also got around. It was posted by comedy writer Johnny Sun. He did this poll and was, he says, surprised by the result. There were also a few people who responded to the poll with the kinds of information we've been talking about on the podcast. They replied to the tweet and said, it was Aru Kikizaru. You need to know that. But Johnny proceeded to think deeply on what it means, and he decided that it probably means there's now a split between the mythological origin and the modern emoji keyboard usage. emoji keyboard usage. And he says, quote, the one monkey team, I think is more interesting because they speak on the side of how these emoji are interpreted and used in day-to-day life.

I mean, it's yet another transformation of this from its original meaning. We went from sort of a saying to monkeys, to monkey sculpt carving, to handheld monkey, portable monkeys, now digital monkeys. Yeah. Let me just say, the revelation in here that this maybe is supposed to be the same monkey making three different gestures, and that maybe it always has meant that? Is there a definitive answer? You're probably getting to it. That really, for some reason, really, really bothers me, the idea that maybe I've always been looking at it wrong. Yeah, I believe it is supposed to be three separate monkeys in the pre-internet version, in the version that's being carved and represented

places. But again, this is not scriptural or not from one legend everybody subscribes to. It's kind of whatever you make of it. So are the monkeys friends? Are they brothers? Are they all three brothers and the nephew to a rich monkey? And they're the nephew to a rich monkey. The image you pasted in the iconic, like carving or whatever this is,

they've intentionally give them all the exact same, like coloring on their fur and like on their chest, the exact same eyes. If they were supposed to be three different monkeys, like one should have a mustache. One should have a hat. Do you see what I'm saying? Like in the rules of art, if it was supposed to be a wacky three,

you and Louie type situation, they would have some differentiation. And they. A red hat, a green hat, blue hat. Yeah. This looks suspiciously to me, like it's the same one at different phases of denial or whatever. And I never until preparing for this podcast had ever considered that idea. And now I have been, I have become convinced that it is not three wise monkeys at all. It is one monkey making three different gestures, which makes me mad for reasons I don't, I can't really put my

finger on. Or what if it's two clones of one monkey, but they don't know which one's the original anymore? They're all at a rooftop pointing guns at each other in a standoff. It's the same monkey that has come back through time to warn his younger and older self not to live in denial. Yeah, I've seen time, Jim. Sure. It's like monkey tenant? Yes. It is a reverse temporal pincer move.

Yeah, and also, I didn't know these monkeys are part of the big contingent of Japanese emoji. Because I think people don't really think about it, but if you look at the whole keyboard, it's really heavy on Japan specific stuff. Like there's the fish cake with a swirl design emoji. There's a lot of snacks that are pretty Japanese specific. There's an emoji for the Tokyo Tower. There's an emoji for the symbol for onsen hot springs. And I now know that these monkeys are another one of those like emoji originated in Japan. And it's a low-key way that Japanese culture has become an even bigger thing in the world. Yeah.

I mean, I think that is once we have a more international form of communication, whether it's through the internet or just the better ease of traveling at the turn of the century, it's like then we start to have these ideas from other cultures come together, come to new cultures, but then we don't always, the original meaning of those things don't always transfer. So then we may ascribe some kind of new meaning or, you know, a meaning that goes completely contrary to the original meaning, but that's kind of what happens once you have a more universal communication. Yeah.

And thus you will find out if you try to read a text from even 100 years ago, let alone something from a thousand years ago, you must understand part of what is inscrutable about it is that there are jokes and references and things that have been long forgotten and nobody remembers the context for it. Yeah. It's the same thing. When people look at our culture in the future and they look at our emojis, they'll be like, well, what was, did people used to eat eggplant when they got together for dates? Like why do they always have so many eggplant emojis in there when they're like talking to their partners or whatever? It's like culture is like that. We've totally forgotten the context of which any of this stuff was invented. We've also got some jokes that just stay consistent.

They're solid gold no matter what era. Like, people have been doing graffiti wieners forever. And it always basically means the same thing of like, ha ha, a wiener. Yes. Hey, look, that's the joke. Yeah. Check it out. Drawn the same way.

Yeah, it is. Yeah. But a final number here. It's a conceptual number because the number is infinity. And that is too many. That's too many numbers. Too big. And it's just because that's the number of different ways this phrase, this topic can get applied to a failure to do the right thing, which we talked about earlier. But

just fast Googling, I found a piece from the Irish Examiner using it to criticize Catholic officials' approach to sex abuse, a piece from The Guardian criticizing British and international leaders for how they ran the London 2012 Olympics, editorial on IndieWire.com by director Lexi Alexander about all sorts of problems in Hollywood, and just fast cursory Google search, I found articles accusing the last three U.S. presidents, Obama, Trump, and Biden, of see no evil, hear no evil policies. It's one of the permanent ways this phrase is part of the furniture in our world and in our life. To the point now that it is hard for me to imagine scenarios where these days in our culture, where it would be presented as like a positive thing, Like the idea of just, you know, promoting purity, purity of mind and to not, you know, expose yourself to evil and that kind of thing. Like as, even as a

religious value and as a moral value, like, like don't listen to, you know, evil and don't look at evil images and don't talk about evil things, even among evangelicals, I don't hear that promoter as a value. It's more about confronting evil, not keep your mind pure by just keeping that out of your world. Don't look at it. Don't think about it. Don't talk about it. There are many sectors in America where that's the value they promote as a positive. It's almost entirely this other thing. It's like, yeah, you turned a blind eye to corruption. It's also not like the original meaning didn't necessarily seem to be specifically about evil in the sense that we think of it now. It could have been just like, don't keep your mind in the gutter, you know, like, or, you know, negative

negativity or impropriety, you know, these other concepts other than just like pure evil. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that can really make this phrase stick into the future because there will always be evil. We'll always think about it. And oddly, another related phrase I'm thinking of, I learned it from TikTok and it involves monkeys. It's people saying, I learned it from TikTok and it involves monkeys. It's people saying, not my circus, not my monkeys is the saying, which means this isn't my problem. If I expend emotional energy, sweating it or fretting about it, it's not something that impacts me and it's not my job to fix it.

The saying, again, is not my circus, not my monkeys. But this is a very flexible idea. It can get applied to all sorts of stuff. I'm imagining a very panicked ringleader going, it is my circus and these are my monkeys. Give me back my monkeys. That's a saying that I thought was regional from where I'm from, from the Midwest, because it implies that the monkeys have escaped and are rampaging. And you're saying, I don't own the circus.

Those are not my monkeys oh but it doesn't it doesn't expand on this scenario at all it's just the only context in which someone could say not my circus not my monkeys it's like the monkeys are just creating a havoc in the background burning things down and just destroying everything because they have escaped and as you try and say it is not my job to round up those monkeys. It's not talk, talk to Mr. Talk to Mr. Barnum. I also wonder how I'm excited to see how see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil transforms again, because as people use the emojis, there's going to be new meetings ascribed to them. Just like, you know, everybody knows the peach emoji has a meaning, uh, you know, then, you know, like it will have new meanings as we use them in social media.

Actually, I don't know what the peach emoji means. I was bluffing. I was hoping everyone would think I knew what that meant. Peach season. Uh, yeah, I, i've actually like organically seen the see no evil emoji specifically for embarrassment like somebody's saying oh i'm so embarrassed and they tag it with a monkey covering its eyes and that is something we are going to expound on in the bonus episode i happen to know perfect because that is a whole thing of real animals actually doing this gesture. And when humans do it, what does it mean and why do we do it? Tune into that. Maximumfun.org.

Monkey! Monkey! Maximumfun.org. Join! Monkey! folks that's the main episode for this week right away i want to say thank you to our special guest jason pargin and to jesse thorne jordan morris ellen and christian weatherford elliot kalin all the folks who joined us in special appearances for the Maximum Fun Drive and beyond. There will also be future extra folks joining me and Katie from time to time or when there's a special opportunity for it. I'm so glad

we have that flexibility. And more fundamentally, I'm so glad for friends. Friends have just been absolutely incredible in letting people know about this show from its very beginning and letting people know the new news of, you know, it's still pretty new news joining this Network Maximum Fun. We're so happy to be a part of it. And thank you to them. Thank you to you for enjoying the fun as we do it. Now, as you know, this is the outro. It has fun features for you, such as help remembering this episode with a run back through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, the phrase, see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, probably originated as an Asian Buddhist saying translated into Japanese language and culture. language and culture. Takeaway number two, Japanese language and mythology are how the idea of see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil got represented by monkeys and also introduced to English. We also had a whole set of stats and numbers about new modern meanings for this phrase,

everything from ignoring evil in the world to deciding one single monkey is all three of the emoji. Those are the takeaways. Also, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now. If you support this show at MaximumFun.org. And we previewed it right at the end of the episode there. The bonus show is about real-life monkeys inventing their own meaning for the see-no-evil gesture. They independently started doing it, and for a specific communication reason. dozen other bonus shows and a catalog of all sorts of Maximum Fun bonus shows, a bunch of new Boko from the Drive that just happened. It is special audio just for members. Thank you for being somebody who backs this podcast operation. Additional fun thing, check out our research

sources on this episode's page at MaximumFun.org. Key sources this week include Atlas Obscura, the Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore, edited by Jacqueline Simpson and Steve Roud. Also a book, a scholarship called Buddhisms in Asia, Traditions, Transmissions, and Transformations that's edited by Nicholas S. Brazavan and Micheline M. Sung and published by State University of New York Press. That page also features resources such as native-land.ca. I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Canarsie and Lenape peoples.

Also, Katie taped this in the country of Italy. Jason recorded this on the traditional land of the Shawnee, Eastern Cherokee, and Sahasayaha peoples. And I want to acknowledge that in my location, Jason's location, and many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, Native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode, and join the free SIF Discord where we're sharing stories and resources about Native people and life. We're also talking all about this episode on the Discord. And hey, would you like a tip on another episode? Each week I'm finding something randomly incredibly fascinating for you by running all the past episode numbers through a random number generator. This week's pick is episode 22, which is a fantastic episode all about mayonnaise. Turns

out mayonnaise might be named after a Mediterranean city named after a Carthaginian general. So I recommend that episode. I also recommend my co-host Katie Golden's weekly podcast Creature Feature about animals, science, and more. I also recommend our guest's newest novel. That book is Zoe is Too Drunk for This Dystopia. It's available for pre-order now. And as I said at the beginning, authors count on your pre-orders. The wonderful Jason Pargin is a full-time novelist, and this is the third book in the Zoe Ashe series. That whole series is amazing. He often tweets sales on the previous ones, and this next one is going to be fantastic. Our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by the Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio

mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks go to our members. And thank you to all our listeners. I'm thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating So how about that? Talk to you then. MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Audience supported.