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Hey and welcome to the short stuff I'm Josh.
There's Chuck Jerry, C2 Dave's here in spirit.
This means it's short stuff.
Let's go.
Yeah, we're talking about the P-Sign today.
This was put together by a guy named Josh Clark.
No, this is from Jettelon Shields at How Stuff Works.
That's right.
I was just kidding around.
Or actually, I was serious, but as I was saying it, I noticed I was wrong.
Wow, this is gotten tricky.
I tried to play it already.
Stop laughing.
But we're talking.
That's right. We're talking about the P-Sign, the very familiar circle with the one vertical line,
straight down the center, and then the two lines, branching off at 45 degree angles.
The P-Sign, everybody, come on.
I mean, it's everywhere.
It's been everywhere, and weirdly Chuck, it's not that old actually, which I guess isn't that weird.
I think it's actually weird that it's older than I thought it was.
How about that?
Okay.
All right, let's get into it.
Let's get into it because it didn't start out when the gentleman who created it,
one Gerald Holtum, he didn't say, hey, this is a P-Sign, everybody.
He was a British artist.
He wouldn't have said it like that anyway.
He would have had an accent.
And he was an activist, and he was a conscientious objector of World War II.
And it was the time in the 1950s when he was doodling around.
When people were worried, this is post World War II, and the US dropped two atomic bombs on Japan.
And the, you know, sort of, peace nicks of the world were like, hey, this cannot stand, man.
We don't want anyone to do this ever again, and so some groups started forming to try and counter that.
Yes, specifically, there was a group called the Direct Action Committee against nuclear war.
The group of pacifists at the time, this is the late 50s.
This is pre-hippie, but these people definitely prefigured the hippies who were soon to come.
But they were legitimately worried about a world where not just one, but two, and then now three,
at the time, nations had nuclear weapons that they were stockpiling.
And they ended up co-founding with some other groups, the campaign for nuclear disarmament.
That's just basically said, let's just get rid of these things.
It was, you thought it was a good idea, you tried it, it turned out to be a horrific idea.
Let's stop doubling and tripling and quadrupling down on this, and let's just get rid of them all together.
That's right. That's a group that's still around the day, which is pretty great.
And one of the first big things they did was organized a march in London from Trafalgar Square,
about 52 miles, or in this case, 83 clicks away to Aldermiston, where they're,
where they had a facility that was producing nuclear material. And Holtum said, you know what?
Everybody, we need a logo.
They did. I guess he probably sounded a little bit like that, like the sheriff of Nottingham.
That's very kind of you. So he came up with this, this peacine for the event, for that march.
And I've seen two different competing explanations of that design. And I don't know if it was just
coincidence or what, but he said later on in a letter to somebody, the artist himself, David,
or Gerald Holtum, said that it was meant to be a kind of stylized minimalist version of a
person in despair standing there with their arms out to their sides downward in their palms facing
out. And he says, like in the manner of a Spanish peasant being executed by a firing squad in
a Goya painting, there's a very famous Goya painting of a peasant being executed by a French
firing squad. But he has his hands up in the air. He doesn't have them downward. So I don't know what
Gerald Holtum was talking about. The one that makes way more sense is since he was creating this for
the campaign for nuclear disarmament, it was actually also called the CND logo, that it was actually,
it's a semi-fork, it's a combination of semiforks that Sam for N and D.
That's right. And a semi-fork is basically an alphabet that you use flags. And this is before
you could communicate via short distance radio. Like you see people out on the tarmac. They're
waving those flags around and they're not just saying like over here, over there. You can actually
spell things out by using those. They're spelling out over here over there. That's exactly right.
Yeah, but that's what they're doing. It's a wave communicating over a long range where you can't
hear somebody. Yeah, so the N, which is for nuclear, is two lines that basically come apart at a 45
degree angle away from the guy holding or the person holding the semiforks. Right. Right. So they're
standing there straight as an arrow with their arms out to their sides downward holding the flags.
That's N. You're spelling an N if you do that. Right. If you want to do a D, you hold one flag
straight up in the air, one flag down, maybe throw your head back all the flash stands just for
a little extra touch. And you're spelling a D for disarmament. So if you put that in a circle,
what you have friends is the peace sign, aka the campaign for nuclear disarmament logo. And
that could be coincidence. Is that what we're saying here? It's not possible. It's coincidence.
Okay. So what are you saying then that Holtum was just, uh, I don't know if he was misquoted.
If he forgot, I just don't understand the Goya thing because it doesn't even show up in a Goya
painting. Yeah, I just looked up the painting. He's definitely got his arms up. Yeah, there's no
mistaking it. I mean, maybe if you turned him upside down, but no. So the, um, they made these
badges out of a white clay that they had baked. And the message was basically if there was a
nuclear war, these badges would be one of the few things left behind that would survive.
You know, that's fine. But the symbol, I think, was enough. It was very simple. It was very easy
to reproduce. And very key before he takes a break, we were mentioned that, uh, Holtum did not
copyright this thing because he wanted it spread far and wide. And that's exactly what happened.
Yeah. I was going to suggest we left it as a cliffhanger whether he copyrighted it or not,
but I think you made the right decision. All right. Then let's say this. Did he copyright it?
Let's find out after the break. My name is Curly and I'm Maya and welcome to the Super Secret
Bestie Club podcast. A super secret club where we talk about super secret things. Yeah,
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it's popping. I was like, text your ex, I'm like, touch the blame. Ego will have you crying over
a closed door that had nothing behind it. And I say, be yourself, have fun and have a good giggle.
Listen to the Super Secret Bestie Club. As part of the Michael Thurough podcast network available
on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. In July 1881,
a man walked into a train station, pulled out a gun and shot the president of the United States.
James Garfield's assassination horrified the American people and they wanted his killer,
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So we said that these pacifists that were into nuclear disarmament in the late 50s prefigured the
hippies and they definitely didn't. What's interesting is the piece symbol is a direct connection
between those two groups because we didn't say Gerald Holsom did not copyright his creation.
It was free for anybody to use and he did that on purpose. That was a very deliberate thing for him to
do because at first he was spreading this message for nuclear disarmament but as the hippies kind of
adopted it and took on more and more other stuff that they wanted to see change for the better,
the piece I kind of morphed and evolved from the symbol that everybody recognized meaning
nuclear disarmament to one that meant just peace in general. A whole catch-all is what it became
expanded. That's right and like we said many times already he didn't copyright this thing so
it was very easy to distribute without having to worry about fear of legal repercussions or
paying somebody for its use. So all of a sudden it was all over the place and just became ubiquitous
and tied to this idea of peace which you know peace and anti-nuclear war is not the biggest leap
but it was definitely not the peace sign until Vietnam came around. Yeah it's also kind of expanded to
be a symbol for the struggle to be recognized and treated equally like women's rights movements
environmental movements the apartheid anti-apartheid movement all adopted the peace symbol the
ruling party of South Africa tried to ban it in fact and that did not take and Gerald Holton for his
part he wanted the peace symbol on his headstone and he didn't get it I don't know why I just
spoiled that but it seems weird to me like if you say I want something on this on my headstone
there are very few cases where I think people should be like no we're not going to put that
on his headstone but he wanted an inverted peace symbol in the in the manner of a gorye
peasant being executed. Exactly he was like instead of hands down it should be up like symbolizing
growth and like you know the tree of life where mankind lives and I guess whoever was in charge of his
funeral said nah right I'm sick of that stupid symbol very strange there's one other thing we
got to throw away and let's say these bends logo yeah I mean you can't go to a Atlanta
Falcon's football game without seeing that peace sign there on the stadium right yeah I kind of
wondered about this but obviously I didn't put too much thought into it because I knew the Mercedes
Benz company had been around long before the 1950s and that was the case it was first it was actually
the dimelar brothers adopted it as a logo they adapted it from a postcard their father had sent
them and their home had been marked on the postcard with a three point of blue star they're like let's
make that our logo which is sweet and wholesome until you realize what the three points of the star
stand for the company's dominance of products for you son land see an air which is not exactly
peace symbolized so it's not it all related that's right I chuck said that's right I'm out of
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