Literal Love Languages, Royal Dog of Madagascar, King Tut’s Undies
August 12, 2026
AI Summary
5 min readIn 1922, Howard Carter and his team opened the tomb of Tutankhamun and found over 5,000 objects. Among the golden death masks and ceremonial robes, they also discovered 145 pairs of the young pharaoh’s linen underpants. That number—145—is so excessive it raises an immediate question: why pack that many loincloths for the afterlife? The answer, as historian Greg Jenner explains on this episode of The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, is not straightforward, but it opens a door into a much larger story about ancient Egyptian genetics, the limits of scientific speculation, and the strange ways we assign meaning to clothing.
Linguistic Exogamy and the Myth of the "Strange" Practice
The episode’s first major thread comes from host Rachel Faltman, who explores the concept of linguistic exogamy—a cultural rule, found among several language groups of the Tucano people (who call themselves the Yapamasa) in the northwestern Amazon, that requires individuals to marry someone who speaks a different language. At first glance, this sounds like a bizarre constraint: imagine not being able to talk to your spouse. But Faltman quickly dismantles that Western-centric framing.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:05) **Ad Read: Mint Mobile Summer Sale** - Hosts read a promotional ad for Mint Mobile's summer sale, offering all plans for $15 a month.
- 2 (00:48) **Ad Read: Accenture and Spotify** - A sponsored message about Accenture and Spotify working together to reinvent ad sales operations.
- 3 (01:21) **Ad Read: Google Chrome with Gemini** - A promotional segment for Google Chrome's new Gemini AI feature, which assists users with tasks like summarizing long articles.
- 4 (01:48) **Show Introduction and Guest Arrival** - The hosts introduce the podcast and welcome guest Greg Jenner, host of the BBC comedy history show "You're Dead to Me."
- 5 (03:59) **Teaser Round: Three Weird Facts** - Each host presents a one-line teaser for the facts they'll share, setting up the episode's segments.
- 6 (05:50) **Rachel's Fact: Linguistic Exogamy of the Tucano People** - Rachel dives into her fact about the practice of linguistic exogamy among the Tucano (Yapamasa) people of the Northwestern Amazon.
- 7 (18:28) **Rachel's Fact: Modeling Historical Language Diversity** - Rachel connects her main fact to a new computational modeling study about the historical peak of human language diversity.
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Show Notes
Greg Jenner joins the show to unravel all of the secrets hidden in King Tut's undies. (Seriously. There are a lot.) Plus, Sara Kiley tells the story of the crusty white dog from Madagascar, and Rachel goes down a rabbit hole about only marrying someone who DOESN'T speak your language.
Check out Greg's show! https://link.mgln.ai/YDTM-Weirdest-Thing
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