WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.240 Imagine for a second you are running for leader 00:00:02.240 --> 00:00:04.919 of the free world, like the cameras are rolling, 00:00:05.280 --> 00:00:07.040 the press corps is hanging on literally your 00:00:07.040 --> 00:00:09.439 every syllable, and the global public is asking 00:00:09.439 --> 00:00:12.339 you to articulate your, you know, your grand 00:00:12.339 --> 00:00:14.039 master plan for the future. Right. The stakes 00:00:14.039 --> 00:00:16.179 are as high as they can possibly get. Exactly. 00:00:16.460 --> 00:00:20.019 And in response, you accidentally drop a three 00:00:20.019 --> 00:00:24.199 word phrase so spectacularly awkward, so weirdly 00:00:24.199 --> 00:00:27.129 dismissive that it doesn't just like ruin the 00:00:27.129 --> 00:00:29.789 press conference, it somehow escapes the political 00:00:29.789 --> 00:00:32.270 arena entirely. It just completely jumps the 00:00:32.270 --> 00:00:35.329 fence. Yeah. It goes on to inspire a goth rock 00:00:35.329 --> 00:00:38.130 album, titling conventions across three wildly 00:00:38.130 --> 00:00:40.590 different television shows, and then... like 00:00:40.590 --> 00:00:43.030 a deeply earnest pop song over the next three 00:00:43.030 --> 00:00:45.030 decades. I mean, it is the ultimate nightmare 00:00:45.030 --> 00:00:46.990 for a political speechwriter. You know, you spend 00:00:46.990 --> 00:00:49.329 weeks trying to craft a phrase that will be carved 00:00:49.329 --> 00:00:51.689 into marble. And instead, the candidate mumbles 00:00:51.689 --> 00:00:54.070 a throwaway line that gets carved into the pop 00:00:54.070 --> 00:00:56.289 culture bedrock. Well, welcome to the deep dive. 00:00:56.490 --> 00:00:59.909 Today, our mission is highly unusual. We are 00:00:59.909 --> 00:01:02.689 not examining a massive historical biography 00:01:02.689 --> 00:01:05.430 or some peer reviewed linguistic journal. We're 00:01:05.430 --> 00:01:07.780 looking at a linguistic fossil record. hidden 00:01:07.780 --> 00:01:11.040 in plain sight hidden on wikipedia of all places 00:01:11.040 --> 00:01:13.400 right our entire source material for this deep 00:01:13.400 --> 00:01:18.219 dive is a single remarkably brief wikipedia disambiguation 00:01:18.219 --> 00:01:21.959 page for the phrase vision thing which is such 00:01:21.959 --> 00:01:24.579 a funny phrase to even say out loud it really 00:01:24.579 --> 00:01:27.099 is and this page it's essentially just a short 00:01:27.099 --> 00:01:29.879 list of bullet points cataloging every notable 00:01:29.879 --> 00:01:32.480 piece of media or historical moment associated 00:01:32.480 --> 00:01:34.760 with this one specific phrase. Which, you know, 00:01:34.879 --> 00:01:37.480 forces us to look at this tiny piece of digital 00:01:37.480 --> 00:01:40.219 real estate as a map of cultural transmission. 00:01:40.659 --> 00:01:42.480 We really have to treat each bullet point on 00:01:42.480 --> 00:01:44.319 this list not just as a random fact, but as an 00:01:44.319 --> 00:01:46.739 artifact in a museum. Like tracking a virus almost. 00:01:46.920 --> 00:01:49.159 Yeah, exactly. We are tracking how a sequence 00:01:49.159 --> 00:01:51.620 of words mutates, survives and completely changes 00:01:51.620 --> 00:01:53.599 its psychological weight depending on, well, 00:01:53.719 --> 00:01:56.500 who's saying it and when. So to find the genesis 00:01:56.500 --> 00:01:59.409 of this entire mutation. We have to scroll all 00:01:59.409 --> 00:02:01.450 the way down to the bottom of this Wikipedia 00:02:01.450 --> 00:02:06.629 disambiguation page. The year is 1988. Ah, the 00:02:06.629 --> 00:02:09.330 late 80s. Yep. George H .W. Bush is heading into 00:02:09.330 --> 00:02:12.409 the 1988 presidential election. He's being pressured 00:02:12.409 --> 00:02:15.330 by advisors and, frankly, the media to spend 00:02:15.330 --> 00:02:17.530 some time thinking out loud about his overarching 00:02:17.530 --> 00:02:20.430 plans for his prospective presidency. They want 00:02:20.430 --> 00:02:22.449 him to, like, paint a picture of the future. 00:02:22.650 --> 00:02:25.509 They want the grand narrative. Right. And his 00:02:25.509 --> 00:02:27.750 response, referring to this crucial requirement 00:02:27.750 --> 00:02:30.629 of leadership, is to casually refer to it as, 00:02:30.629 --> 00:02:33.430 quote, the vision thing. I just, I always find 00:02:33.430 --> 00:02:35.310 it fascinating to look at the sheer mechanical 00:02:35.310 --> 00:02:37.530 friction in that phrase. Friction. How do you 00:02:37.530 --> 00:02:39.479 mean? Well, if you break down the linguistics 00:02:39.479 --> 00:02:41.919 of the quote, you are basically looking at two 00:02:41.919 --> 00:02:44.759 words that are at total war with one another. 00:02:45.180 --> 00:02:47.979 Let's look at the word vision first. Okay. Vision 00:02:47.979 --> 00:02:50.479 is prophetic, right? It has biblical undertones. 00:02:50.659 --> 00:02:53.340 It has heavy corporate undertones. You know, 00:02:53.419 --> 00:02:55.280 think of the mandatory corporate vision board. 00:02:55.379 --> 00:02:58.060 Oh yeah, the dreaded vision board. Yeah, exactly. 00:02:58.599 --> 00:03:00.840 It implies a capacity for sight that extends 00:03:00.840 --> 00:03:04.580 way beyond the visible horizon. It frames leadership 00:03:04.580 --> 00:03:08.340 as an abstract, highly demanding, almost spiritual 00:03:08.340 --> 00:03:11.400 intellectual task. Having a vision sounds exhausting, 00:03:11.500 --> 00:03:14.020 honestly. It requires you to be a philosopher. 00:03:14.639 --> 00:03:17.180 But then he tacks on the word thing. And thing 00:03:17.180 --> 00:03:20.599 is, well, it's essentially the junk drawer of 00:03:20.599 --> 00:03:22.840 the English language. I love that analogy. It 00:03:22.840 --> 00:03:25.199 really is the junk drawer. Right. Think about 00:03:25.199 --> 00:03:27.819 how we use it in everyday life. We use thing 00:03:27.819 --> 00:03:30.360 for objects we don't care to name or simply can't 00:03:30.360 --> 00:03:33.129 be bothered to understand. Hand me that thing 00:03:33.129 --> 00:03:35.090 I'm a jigger. What's that thing in the back of 00:03:35.090 --> 00:03:38.310 the fridge? Unidentified leftovers. Exactly. 00:03:38.650 --> 00:03:41.509 So by taking his prospective presidential plans 00:03:41.509 --> 00:03:44.009 and calling them the vision thing, he takes this 00:03:44.009 --> 00:03:46.870 massive philosophical burden and turns it into 00:03:46.870 --> 00:03:49.870 a cumbersome physical object. He makes it sound 00:03:49.870 --> 00:03:51.849 like a heavy, awkward piece of luggage he simply 00:03:51.849 --> 00:03:53.909 forgot to pack. Yeah, like, honey, did you pack 00:03:53.909 --> 00:03:55.689 the toothpaste? Did you pack the vision thing? 00:03:56.370 --> 00:03:58.430 Ah, I knew we left something in the driveway. 00:03:58.710 --> 00:04:02.580 It reduces the metaphysical to the mundane. And 00:04:02.580 --> 00:04:07.240 there is a profound pragmatic exhaustion in that 00:04:07.240 --> 00:04:10.310 linguistic choice. I mean, it is the sound of 00:04:10.310 --> 00:04:13.430 a prospective leader signaling a deep reluctance 00:04:13.430 --> 00:04:16.069 to engage in expected political theater. Just 00:04:16.069 --> 00:04:18.170 totally over it. Yeah, it's a candidate saying, 00:04:18.370 --> 00:04:20.209 listen, I know how to run the literal machinery 00:04:20.209 --> 00:04:22.029 of the government. I understand the levels and 00:04:22.029 --> 00:04:24.449 the dials. Why are you asking me to be a philosopher 00:04:24.449 --> 00:04:27.129 king on top of it? OK, but let me push back on 00:04:27.129 --> 00:04:29.029 that interpretation just a little bit, though. 00:04:29.649 --> 00:04:32.889 Doesn't pairing a lofty word like vision with 00:04:32.889 --> 00:04:37.060 a generic word like thing completely strip the 00:04:37.060 --> 00:04:39.339 power away from the concept of leadership. How 00:04:39.339 --> 00:04:41.879 so? Well, think about it like this. If I am sitting 00:04:41.879 --> 00:04:44.100 in a high -stakes job interview, and the panel 00:04:44.100 --> 00:04:46.279 asks me where I see myself in five years, and 00:04:46.279 --> 00:04:48.279 I wave my hand and say, oh, you mean that vision 00:04:48.279 --> 00:04:51.100 thing? I am probably not getting the job. Right. 00:04:51.139 --> 00:04:53.100 You'd be shown the door pretty quickly. Exactly. 00:04:53.240 --> 00:04:55.560 I'm communicating that I don't care. Yeah. I'm 00:04:55.560 --> 00:04:58.019 actively dismissing the core requirement of the 00:04:58.019 --> 00:05:00.250 role. Well, you might not get the job in a corporate 00:05:00.250 --> 00:05:04.310 boardroom, sure. But in politics, deflating a 00:05:04.310 --> 00:05:07.769 lofty concept can sometimes be a perverse form 00:05:07.769 --> 00:05:10.490 of relatability. A perverse form of relatability. 00:05:10.610 --> 00:05:13.649 Yeah, because the average voter in 1988 might 00:05:13.649 --> 00:05:17.449 also have been exhausted by grand sweeping political 00:05:17.449 --> 00:05:19.910 narratives. We're talking about an audience that 00:05:19.910 --> 00:05:22.509 had just lived through some very intense ideological 00:05:22.509 --> 00:05:25.670 decades. Oh, that makes sense. So by downgrading 00:05:25.670 --> 00:05:28.879 vision to a thing, Bush inadvertently tapped 00:05:28.879 --> 00:05:31.560 into a sort of blue collar, roll up your sleeves 00:05:31.560 --> 00:05:34.680 pragmatism. But, you know, regardless of whether 00:05:34.680 --> 00:05:36.899 it was a brilliant accident or a terrible gaffe, 00:05:37.279 --> 00:05:39.579 we aren't here to judge the politics of it. The 00:05:39.579 --> 00:05:42.500 point is, he minted a phrase so perfectly awkward 00:05:42.500 --> 00:05:44.180 that it couldn't be contained to a political 00:05:44.180 --> 00:05:46.379 campaign. Yeah, it had to escape. It absolutely 00:05:46.379 --> 00:05:49.060 had to escape. And escape it did. The speed of 00:05:49.060 --> 00:05:51.339 that cultural turnover is what brings us to the 00:05:51.339 --> 00:05:54.339 next artifact on the Wikipedia page. We are shifting 00:05:54.339 --> 00:05:56.740 conceptually from the realm of political speech 00:05:56.740 --> 00:05:59.259 into the realm of auditory rebellion. A pretty 00:05:59.259 --> 00:06:02.399 big leap. A massive leap. Because just two years 00:06:02.399 --> 00:06:05.959 later in 1990, Vision Thing becomes the title 00:06:05.959 --> 00:06:08.620 of an album by the band The Sisters of Mercy. 00:06:08.779 --> 00:06:10.980 Which is wild because two years in the pre -internet 00:06:10.980 --> 00:06:13.319 age is essentially overnight. The cultural digestion 00:06:13.319 --> 00:06:15.600 is incredibly fast. But the mechanics of that 00:06:15.600 --> 00:06:18.319 digestion are what really puzzle me. Like, why 00:06:18.319 --> 00:06:21.019 would a band take a politician's awkward phrasing 00:06:21.019 --> 00:06:23.470 and stamp it right on their album cover? It's 00:06:23.470 --> 00:06:26.209 a fair question because the Sisters of Mercy 00:06:26.209 --> 00:06:29.860 are a goth rock alternative band. I have a hard 00:06:29.860 --> 00:06:31.959 time believing that teenagers buying his Sisters 00:06:31.959 --> 00:06:35.199 of Mercy cassette tape in 1990 were deeply invested 00:06:35.199 --> 00:06:38.060 in the policy platforms of the 88 election. You 00:06:38.060 --> 00:06:40.100 know, were they just using the phrase because 00:06:40.100 --> 00:06:42.500 the nihilism of the word thing sounded edgy? 00:06:42.600 --> 00:06:44.540 Well, the teenagers buying the album might not 00:06:44.540 --> 00:06:46.240 have been reading the political op -eds, but 00:06:46.240 --> 00:06:48.579 the artists themselves were keenly aware of the 00:06:48.579 --> 00:06:50.379 atmosphere. They were paying attention. Exactly. 00:06:50.860 --> 00:06:52.980 Music, especially alternative and goth rock, 00:06:53.180 --> 00:06:56.410 acts as a societal mirror. The 1980s were a decade 00:06:56.410 --> 00:06:59.230 defined by massive overarching political and 00:06:59.230 --> 00:07:02.750 economic narratives. Cold War, Wall Street booms, 00:07:03.110 --> 00:07:06.069 the idea of a cohesive top -down direction for 00:07:06.069 --> 00:07:08.240 society. Right, the big picture stuff. Yeah. 00:07:08.500 --> 00:07:11.459 And as the calendar turned to 1990, the alternative 00:07:11.459 --> 00:07:14.240 music scene was defined by its desire to tear 00:07:14.240 --> 00:07:17.220 those massive narratives down. They smelled blood 00:07:17.220 --> 00:07:19.800 in the water. OK, so when a political figure 00:07:19.800 --> 00:07:23.319 accidentally reveals a vulnerability, like a 00:07:23.319 --> 00:07:26.779 seemingly pragmatic void regarding the future, 00:07:27.660 --> 00:07:31.180 the artist sees on it as proof that The people 00:07:31.180 --> 00:07:33.180 in charge are just, you know, making it up as 00:07:33.180 --> 00:07:36.339 they go. Precisely. By taking Vision Thing and 00:07:36.339 --> 00:07:39.160 elevating it to an album title, the band turns 00:07:39.160 --> 00:07:42.079 a political stumble into a rebellious manifesto. 00:07:42.139 --> 00:07:44.339 That's fascinating. They're essentially broadcasting, 00:07:44.680 --> 00:07:46.519 the people steering the ship don't know where 00:07:46.519 --> 00:07:48.740 we are going and neither do we. But we're going 00:07:48.740 --> 00:07:52.060 to put a heavy cynical backbeat to it. It captures 00:07:52.060 --> 00:07:55.319 the societal aimlessness at the dawn of the 1990s 00:07:55.319 --> 00:07:58.040 perfectly. So the phrase stops being about a 00:07:58.040 --> 00:08:00.910 politician's lack of a plan and being about a 00:08:00.910 --> 00:08:02.930 whole generation skepticism toward authority. 00:08:03.290 --> 00:08:05.189 Exactly. It gets weaponized. It transitions from 00:08:05.189 --> 00:08:07.930 a reluctant sigh in a campaign office to being 00:08:07.930 --> 00:08:10.850 blasted out of stadium speakers. But The Freeze 00:08:10.850 --> 00:08:13.230 wasn't content just conquering the music industry. 00:08:13.370 --> 00:08:15.769 No, it had more work to do. It had to move from 00:08:15.769 --> 00:08:18.329 auditory rebellion into visual storytelling. 00:08:18.920 --> 00:08:20.959 According to the source material, the phrase 00:08:20.959 --> 00:08:23.839 seeped into the naming conventions of incredibly 00:08:23.839 --> 00:08:26.540 diverse television universes. This is where it 00:08:26.540 --> 00:08:28.660 gets really interesting syntactically. Yeah, 00:08:28.680 --> 00:08:30.699 because we have it listed as an episode title 00:08:30.699 --> 00:08:33.019 across three drastically different shows. We 00:08:33.019 --> 00:08:35.679 have the American TV series Big Love, we have 00:08:35.679 --> 00:08:38.620 season 12 of NYPD Blue, and we have an episode 00:08:38.620 --> 00:08:41.639 of the series Angel. This is where we see the 00:08:41.639 --> 00:08:44.559 phrase operating as a syntactic skeleton key. 00:08:45.019 --> 00:08:48.059 It is cut just vaguely enough to unlock the door 00:08:48.059 --> 00:08:50.759 to almost any narrative genre. That is the perfect 00:08:50.759 --> 00:08:53.330 way to describe it, a skeleton key. Just looking 00:08:53.330 --> 00:08:55.750 at the titles of these shows, because our Wikipedia 00:08:55.750 --> 00:08:58.230 source gives us absolutely no plot summaries, 00:08:58.309 --> 00:09:00.389 just the name you can tell they occupy entirely 00:09:00.389 --> 00:09:02.590 different emotional landscapes. Oh, completely. 00:09:02.690 --> 00:09:05.389 Big Love sounds expansive, emotional, complex, 00:09:05.490 --> 00:09:08.509 dealing with sprawling family dynamics. NYPD 00:09:08.509 --> 00:09:11.429 Blue sounds institutional, procedural, gritty, 00:09:11.870 --> 00:09:14.909 and grounded in a very specific, dirty, urban 00:09:14.909 --> 00:09:18.570 reality. And Angel sounds ethereal, singular, 00:09:19.070 --> 00:09:21.049 dealing with the supernatural or the spiritual. 00:09:21.350 --> 00:09:24.279 You have expanse. of emotion, gritty procedure, 00:09:24.960 --> 00:09:29.860 and ethereal singularity. Yet, vision thing effortlessly 00:09:29.860 --> 00:09:32.440 slots into every single one of them. The secret 00:09:32.440 --> 00:09:35.539 to that adaptability lies in the subtle grammatical 00:09:35.539 --> 00:09:37.879 shifts documented right there on the Wikipedia 00:09:37.879 --> 00:09:40.159 page. Wait, they aren't all exactly the same? 00:09:40.360 --> 00:09:42.899 No. We aren't actually looking at the exact same 00:09:42.899 --> 00:09:45.639 phrase repeated three times. The writers of these 00:09:45.639 --> 00:09:48.100 three shows tweaked the grammar, specifically 00:09:48.100 --> 00:09:51.000 the articles preceding the noun, to custom fit 00:09:51.000 --> 00:09:53.340 the psychological tone of their specific worlds. 00:09:53.539 --> 00:09:55.220 Okay, I actually have a theory about these tweaks. 00:09:55.360 --> 00:09:57.379 Let's start with Big Love. Let's hear it. The 00:09:57.379 --> 00:10:00.539 source lists their episode as simply Vision Thing. 00:10:00.679 --> 00:10:02.759 They drop the article entirely. There is no the, 00:10:02.899 --> 00:10:06.120 there is no a, it's just two bare words. To me, 00:10:06.320 --> 00:10:08.019 stripping away the article makes it sound like 00:10:08.019 --> 00:10:11.019 an unnameable supernatural force. Am I off base 00:10:11.019 --> 00:10:13.179 there, or is the grammar doing a lot of heavy 00:10:13.179 --> 00:10:15.500 lifting for the drama? Your instinct is spot 00:10:15.500 --> 00:10:17.899 on. In linguistics, when you drop the article 00:10:17.899 --> 00:10:20.740 to create a bare noun phrase, you elevate the 00:10:20.740 --> 00:10:23.240 concept from a specific instance to an absolute 00:10:23.240 --> 00:10:26.659 abstract. An absolute abstract. Yes. You aren't 00:10:26.659 --> 00:10:29.580 dealing with a vision or the vision. You are 00:10:29.580 --> 00:10:32.820 dealing with the platonic ideal of vision itself. 00:10:33.480 --> 00:10:36.519 It makes it feel monumental, like we must reckon 00:10:36.519 --> 00:10:40.320 with. Vision thing. It sounds like an unstoppable 00:10:40.320 --> 00:10:43.659 emotional force, which perfectly fits the tone 00:10:43.659 --> 00:10:46.720 of a sprawling, emotionally complex family drama. 00:10:46.779 --> 00:10:50.259 Oh, wow. OK, contrast that with NYPD Blue. Their 00:10:50.259 --> 00:10:52.659 season 12 episode doesn't drop the article. They 00:10:52.659 --> 00:10:55.269 titled it The Vision Thing. They restored the 00:10:55.269 --> 00:10:57.490 definite article. Which seemingly takes it right 00:10:57.490 --> 00:11:00.090 back to the original 1988 quote, but we have 00:11:00.090 --> 00:11:02.029 to look at the context here. Right, the cop show 00:11:02.029 --> 00:11:04.830 context. In a gritty police procedural, adding 00:11:04.830 --> 00:11:07.970 the, does something very specific. It institutionalizes 00:11:07.970 --> 00:11:10.470 the concept. Like it's a known recurring problem 00:11:10.470 --> 00:11:13.230 in the precinct. Yes, exactly. Think about the 00:11:13.230 --> 00:11:15.549 vocabulary of a bureaucratic environment. You 00:11:15.549 --> 00:11:17.409 have the paperwork, the flu going around, the 00:11:17.409 --> 00:11:19.029 chain of command, and now you have the vision 00:11:19.029 --> 00:11:22.029 thing. It sounds like a mundane item on a detective's 00:11:22.029 --> 00:11:24.429 to -do list that nobody wants to handle. It does. 00:11:24.509 --> 00:11:28.210 It takes this lofty concept of foresight and 00:11:28.210 --> 00:11:31.129 grounds it in a deeply bureaucratic physical 00:11:31.129 --> 00:11:34.330 reality. It turns a philosophical crisis back 00:11:34.330 --> 00:11:37.629 into a physical chore. That is brilliant. Okay, 00:11:37.629 --> 00:11:39.750 that brings us to the third show, Angel, which 00:11:39.750 --> 00:11:42.070 deals with the supernatural. And they titled 00:11:42.070 --> 00:11:44.110 their episode That Vision Thing. They swapped 00:11:44.110 --> 00:11:47.149 the definite article the for the demonstrative 00:11:47.149 --> 00:11:49.929 pronoun that. And this one feels almost like 00:11:50.580 --> 00:11:53.059 antagonistic to me it is entirely antagonistic 00:11:53.059 --> 00:11:55.980 the word that functions as a distancing mechanism 00:11:55.980 --> 00:11:58.980 distancing yeah when you use that before a noun 00:11:58.980 --> 00:12:01.139 phrase you are linguistically pointing your finger 00:12:01.139 --> 00:12:03.320 at something across the room you are saying to 00:12:03.320 --> 00:12:05.679 the audience I see it I acknowledge its existence 00:12:05.679 --> 00:12:08.779 but I absolutely do not want it near me oh it's 00:12:08.779 --> 00:12:10.700 the difference between saying the dog is barking 00:12:10.700 --> 00:12:13.620 and that dog is barking one is just a statement 00:12:13.620 --> 00:12:16.179 of environmental fact the other is an expression 00:12:16.179 --> 00:12:19.500 of deep annoyance Exactly. By calling the episode 00:12:19.500 --> 00:12:22.600 that vision thing, the writers instantly convey 00:12:22.600 --> 00:12:25.000 a sense of exasperation. The characters aren't 00:12:25.000 --> 00:12:26.860 just dealing with a prophecy, they are dealing 00:12:26.860 --> 00:12:30.039 with that vision thing again. It turns the supernatural 00:12:30.039 --> 00:12:34.240 into a recurring nuisance. So for you, listening 00:12:34.240 --> 00:12:37.120 to this deep dive, consider how pliable the English 00:12:37.120 --> 00:12:39.860 language really is. You take two core words, 00:12:40.220 --> 00:12:43.019 vision thing. You swap out a single tiny word 00:12:43.019 --> 00:12:46.220 at the front using nothing. using the or using 00:12:46.220 --> 00:12:48.940 that, and you can perfectly calibrate the tone 00:12:48.940 --> 00:12:51.779 to match an emotional family drama, a gritty 00:12:51.779 --> 00:12:55.000 cop show, or a supernatural mystery. It's honestly 00:12:55.000 --> 00:12:57.340 amazing. The source material here is secretly 00:12:57.340 --> 00:13:00.179 giving us a masterclass in syntax masquerading 00:13:00.179 --> 00:13:02.659 as a television directory. It really proves that 00:13:02.659 --> 00:13:05.240 writers are incredibly opportunistic. They will 00:13:05.240 --> 00:13:07.440 scavenge a political gaffe, strip it down for 00:13:07.440 --> 00:13:09.759 parts, and rebuild it to serve whatever narrative 00:13:09.759 --> 00:13:11.980 engine they are currently running. But the scavenging 00:13:11.980 --> 00:13:14.580 doesn't stop in the era of early 2000s television. 00:13:15.139 --> 00:13:17.340 To truly understand the undeniable staying power 00:13:17.340 --> 00:13:19.720 of these words, we have to jump all the way forward 00:13:19.720 --> 00:13:21.899 to the present, or at least very recent history. 00:13:22.080 --> 00:13:26.139 The final mutation. Exactly. We jump 34 years 00:13:26.139 --> 00:13:29.179 from the original quote to the year 2022. The 00:13:29.179 --> 00:13:31.799 Wikipedia page notes that the band Simple Minds 00:13:31.799 --> 00:13:34.019 released a song titled Vision Thing on their 00:13:34.019 --> 00:13:37.059 2022 album and the album is titled Direction 00:13:37.059 --> 00:13:39.820 of the Heart. I would actually argue that this 00:13:39.820 --> 00:13:42.820 single bullet point from 2022 is the most profound 00:13:42.820 --> 00:13:45.299 piece of data on the entire disambiguation page. 00:13:45.840 --> 00:13:48.559 It blows my mind purely from a mathematical standpoint. 00:13:49.139 --> 00:13:53.080 1988 to 2022. That is within three decades between 00:13:53.080 --> 00:13:55.679 a politician expressing frustration on a campaign 00:13:55.679 --> 00:13:58.480 trail and a band releasing a song with that exact 00:13:58.480 --> 00:14:00.980 title. It's a massive span of time for pop culture. 00:14:01.179 --> 00:14:03.620 Right. I have to wonder about the concept of 00:14:03.620 --> 00:14:06.330 origin at this point. In 2022, is the phrase 00:14:06.330 --> 00:14:09.309 vision thing even connected to George HW Bush 00:14:09.309 --> 00:14:12.049 anymore? Or has it completely severed ties with 00:14:12.049 --> 00:14:14.730 its creator to become a standalone idiom in the 00:14:14.730 --> 00:14:16.350 English language? That question brings us to 00:14:16.350 --> 00:14:18.610 a crucial linguistic phenomenon known as semantic 00:14:18.610 --> 00:14:21.629 bleaching. We are witnessing semantic bleaching 00:14:21.629 --> 00:14:24.110 combined with total cultural absorption. Wait, 00:14:24.110 --> 00:14:25.929 hold on. Let's unpack semantic bleaching. Are 00:14:25.929 --> 00:14:28.230 we talking about taking literal bleach to a stained 00:14:28.230 --> 00:14:30.210 shirt until the original color is completely 00:14:30.210 --> 00:14:32.309 washed out? That is actually the perfect metaphor. 00:14:32.490 --> 00:14:35.250 Oh, really? Yeah. In linguistics, semantic bleaching 00:14:35.250 --> 00:14:37.789 happens when a word or a phrase slowly loses 00:14:37.789 --> 00:14:40.809 its original specific, often intense meaning 00:14:40.809 --> 00:14:43.570 over time. The context just gets washed out. 00:14:43.720 --> 00:14:45.559 Okay, that makes sense. Well, when the Sisters 00:14:45.559 --> 00:14:48.179 of Mercy used the phrase in 1990, the connection 00:14:48.179 --> 00:14:51.340 to the 1988 election was raw, immediate, and 00:14:51.340 --> 00:14:54.179 intentional. The political irony was the dye 00:14:54.179 --> 00:14:56.659 that gave the phrase its color. Right. The 1990 00:14:56.659 --> 00:14:59.059 audience saw the political stain clearly. But 00:14:59.059 --> 00:15:01.860 apply the bleach of 34 years of time. A massive 00:15:01.860 --> 00:15:04.179 portion of the audience listening to the 2022 00:15:04.179 --> 00:15:07.059 Simple Minds album wasn't even alive when the 00:15:07.059 --> 00:15:09.100 original quote was spoken. I mean, I barely remember 00:15:09.100 --> 00:15:12.019 it myself. Exactly. The political context has 00:15:12.019 --> 00:15:14.600 completely evaporated. The creator no longer 00:15:14.600 --> 00:15:17.080 owns the words, the culture owns them, and we 00:15:17.080 --> 00:15:18.940 can see the result of that bleaching by looking 00:15:18.940 --> 00:15:21.860 at the context the source provides. The 2022 00:15:21.860 --> 00:15:24.480 song lives on an album called Direction of the 00:15:24.480 --> 00:15:28.360 Heart. Which is such an incredibly earnest, emotionally 00:15:28.360 --> 00:15:32.620 open title. It implies seeking, feeling, navigating 00:15:32.620 --> 00:15:36.070 by your inner truth rather than like... logic 00:15:36.070 --> 00:15:38.649 or politics. Right. So by the time the phrase 00:15:38.649 --> 00:15:41.610 reaches direction of the heart in 2022, it has 00:15:41.610 --> 00:15:45.230 completely shed its sarcastic, dismissive political 00:15:45.230 --> 00:15:48.210 armor. It has morphed from a grumpy political 00:15:48.210 --> 00:15:51.889 complaint into a genuine, likely poignant exploration 00:15:51.889 --> 00:15:54.909 of finding one's path in life. That is so wild 00:15:54.909 --> 00:15:57.889 to think about. The thing is no longer a forgotten 00:15:57.889 --> 00:16:00.809 piece of luggage from a campaign stop. The thing 00:16:00.809 --> 00:16:04.629 is the human soul trying to find its way forward. 00:16:04.840 --> 00:16:06.899 That is a beautiful evolution. It's almost like 00:16:06.899 --> 00:16:09.840 a rescue mission for language. Culture took a 00:16:09.840 --> 00:16:12.740 discarded, clumsy string of words, put them through 00:16:12.740 --> 00:16:16.019 the wash for 34 years, and slowly polished them 00:16:16.019 --> 00:16:18.179 until they meant something profound. It is the 00:16:18.179 --> 00:16:20.379 ultimate recycling program, and I think it highlights 00:16:20.379 --> 00:16:21.919 something essential for you to understand about 00:16:21.919 --> 00:16:24.320 the information diet we all consume daily. What's 00:16:24.320 --> 00:16:26.299 that? We have this bias toward intentionality. 00:16:26.379 --> 00:16:28.460 We tend to think that the most impactful quotes, 00:16:28.580 --> 00:16:30.759 the ones that will last, will be the ones that 00:16:30.759 --> 00:16:33.440 are deeply planned, the ones read carefully off 00:16:33.440 --> 00:16:35.980 teleprompters during momentous historical occasions. 00:16:36.200 --> 00:16:39.279 Carefully curated speeches. Right. But this deep 00:16:39.279 --> 00:16:42.139 dive proves that inspiration and cultural touchstones 00:16:42.139 --> 00:16:45.179 usually come from the most unlikely, unscripted, 00:16:45.259 --> 00:16:47.620 and awkward moments. Words outlive their original 00:16:47.620 --> 00:16:49.860 intentions. They absolutely do. They escape the 00:16:49.860 --> 00:16:51.639 mouths of the people who say them, and they take 00:16:51.639 --> 00:16:54.080 on a life of their own. They get adopted by Goths 00:16:54.080 --> 00:16:56.759 in 1990, television detectives a decade later, 00:16:57.179 --> 00:16:59.279 and earnest rock stars a generation after that. 00:16:59.960 --> 00:17:02.299 The speaker fades into history, but the phrase 00:17:02.299 --> 00:17:05.720 keeps walking. Let's recap this incredible journey, 00:17:05.779 --> 00:17:07.960 because it truly is staggering when you lay out 00:17:07.960 --> 00:17:11.480 the timeline. What started as a prospective president's 00:17:11.480 --> 00:17:13.680 reluctance to outline his big -picture plans 00:17:13.680 --> 00:17:17.359 in 1988, reducing his entire political philosophy 00:17:17.359 --> 00:17:20.539 to a vague, annoying object, sparked a multi 00:17:20.539 --> 00:17:23.299 -decade fire. A very slow -burning fire. Yeah. 00:17:23.420 --> 00:17:25.460 Two years later, it serves as a rebellion for 00:17:25.460 --> 00:17:28.599 a 1990 goth rock album. Then it splinters, becoming 00:17:28.599 --> 00:17:31.119 a syntactic skeleton key across the wildly diverse 00:17:31.119 --> 00:17:34.400 television genres of Big Love, NYPD Blue and 00:17:34.400 --> 00:17:37.339 Angel, using grammar to subtly change its psychological 00:17:37.339 --> 00:17:39.759 weight for each world. Just by swapping out a 00:17:39.759 --> 00:17:43.299 single word? Exactly. And finally, 34 years later, 00:17:43.700 --> 00:17:46.240 washed clean by semantic bleaching, it lands 00:17:46.240 --> 00:17:49.619 as a 2022 song on an album about following your 00:17:49.619 --> 00:17:52.180 heart, completely untetted from its political 00:17:52.180 --> 00:17:54.599 genesis. It perfectly illustrates that we do 00:17:54.599 --> 00:17:56.910 not control the legacy of our own language. We 00:17:56.910 --> 00:17:59.509 only launch the words. We do not get to decide 00:17:59.509 --> 00:18:01.329 where they land or what they will mean to the 00:18:01.329 --> 00:18:03.589 people who find them. We only launch the words. 00:18:04.430 --> 00:18:06.950 That is a brilliant way to frame it. Which brings 00:18:06.950 --> 00:18:08.630 me to a final thought I want to leave you with. 00:18:08.750 --> 00:18:10.930 Something to mull over as you go about your day. 00:18:11.089 --> 00:18:13.029 A little homework for the listener. Exactly. 00:18:13.430 --> 00:18:16.190 Think about the endless stream of offhand comments, 00:18:16.930 --> 00:18:19.089 viral gaffes, or awkward phrasing we hear in 00:18:19.089 --> 00:18:22.180 the news cycle right now. We laugh at them, we 00:18:22.180 --> 00:18:24.460 meme them for 24 hours, and then we completely 00:18:24.460 --> 00:18:26.759 forget them. Because the news cycle moves so 00:18:26.759 --> 00:18:29.400 fast. But based on the linguistic fossil record 00:18:29.400 --> 00:18:32.819 we just explored, which of today's clumsy accidental 00:18:32.819 --> 00:18:35.359 quotes is currently waiting to be the title of 00:18:35.359 --> 00:18:38.380 an acclaimed album or a hit television episode 00:18:38.380 --> 00:18:40.859 34 years from now? The history books are probably 00:18:40.859 --> 00:18:42.819 taking notes right now on something someone just 00:18:42.819 --> 00:18:45.000 accidentally mumbled into a hot mic. So the next 00:18:45.000 --> 00:18:46.980 time you hear a leader stumble over their words, 00:18:47.400 --> 00:18:51.420 don't just cringe. Pay close attention. You might 00:18:51.420 --> 00:18:53.640 just be listening to the opening track of a masterpiece 00:18:53.640 --> 00:18:55.019 released in the year 2060.