X ... marks the spot

Let me tell you about X!

Transcript

00:01.05
Christina Scovel
All right, all right. Welcome back to A Pinch of Honesty. In our alphabet soup, we're at week nine, which is surprising to me, and the letter X.

00:12.30
Christina Scovel
I want to start off by saying X marks the spot. For me, X is a treasure map. X is one of those symbols that gets tossed around and tossed down. And I think it is one of the backbones of our alphabet these days.

00:26.74
Christina Scovel
Let me give you a little bit of history about the letter X. So X is one of the most ancient letters we have in our alphabet. It originates from 700 BC and it evolved from a letter called Semeca, probably not pronouncing it correctly, it looks like um kind of a tree, right? So it's a line with ah three other lines that cross it in parallel.

00:50.34
Christina Scovel
um In When it originated, it made an S sound. And then the Greeks got a hold of it in 800 BCE. Of course, those of you know that for the Greeks, this was actually a number, right? So it is, or sorry, for the Romans, it's a number 10.

01:11.73
Christina Scovel
um It has had different sounds in different languages. So it makes a sh sound in Portuguese and a ch sound in some Spanish words.

01:22.77
Christina Scovel
For algebra, it is the letter X. It's the thing to be solved for. There's also the mystery behind it of the X-Files or Planet X, or could be rated X. You put an X where you want to mark the spot for signature.

01:38.72
Christina Scovel
There are brands that are edgy like SpaceX or that are out there, where it's used as that mysterious and all-encompassing interesting thing.

01:50.40
Christina Scovel
Most importantly, it is a symbol for multiplication, which as a math nerd, how can you not absolutely love it? um X by Sue Grafton is part of the alphabet mystery, and it is one of the most popular books with X in the title.

02:07.69
Christina Scovel
I kind of feel like I want to read this alphabet mystery after going through and doing all these letters. um The most common word that uses the letter X is actually X-ray. And if you're wondering what is an interesting location that starts with an X, it is, i'm going to pronounce it wrong probably, but Zion, China, where the Terracotta Army resides.

02:32.65
Christina Scovel
And X has been part of our writing, part of our our world um for more than 2,700 years, just ah in different incarnations of our language.

02:48.03
Christina Scovel
Now I want to talk about why X is near and dear to my heart. First of all, I work in a division called X, which makes it absolutely quintessential for me. But more importantly, there was a movie that came out in 1980. It was a movie that the struck a chord with me, and the movie was Xanadu.

03:06.05
Christina Scovel
I love the movie so much that I wrote the word Xanadu permanent marker across my down jacket that winter, and and misspelled it, and the marker bled.

03:18.77
Christina Scovel
We were poor, so I had no choice but to wear this hideous monstrosity of a jacket that said something that wasn't Xanadu across the back of it. Now, for you those of you who haven't seen Xanadu, it is a kind of fantasy sci-fi film with Olivia Newton-John.

03:37.30
Christina Scovel
um It's got a 1940s and sci-fi hodgepodge between it. What really sucked me in was that there could be a world out there that with a flip of a wrist could appear. That fantasy and sci-fi were something that felt very real to me when I watched this movie.

04:00.63
Christina Scovel
Of course, it was also a musical. It also had disco. lot the music was done by Electric Light Orchestra. And so all of these things to me made it my favorite movie of that year. And as a matter of fact,

04:12.64
Christina Scovel
Still to this day, it's one of those movies that strikes a chord with me. Now, it is considered an absolute flop. As far as movies went, it cost them $20 million dollars to make it back then, and it only made $23 million. dollars It was considered appalling.

04:26.89
Christina Scovel
and so i ask you, on this journey of alphabets, in enjoying the letter X, why don't you take a second and download or go watch the movie Xanadu.

04:38.15
Christina Scovel
And with that, I'll catch you on the flip side.