Expertease Experts on: Sextants – Your Guide to Navigation

Danno, we are so excited to talk to you about your area of expertise, the seafaring navigational tool used by seagoing seafarers. As a collector, I own the finest Sextant Dextant. You're listening to Expertise, spelled wrong, the podcast where the world's most expert experts discuss their areas of expertise expertly. Expert comedy writer, Clare Sera, and expert comedy writer, Danno Sullivan, bring their expertise to other unrelated expertises. Clare, our audience tonight is composed mostly of Sextant builders. And that's my... Expertise. Spelled wrong? Naturally.

Welcome to the podcast. Give us the basics. What was seafaring like before the Sextant? Before the Sextant existed, seafaring navigation was extremely dangerous, Clare. It was completely unpredictable, extremely unreliable. Basically, a bunch of sailors would get in a boat and flail. Oh my goodness, I can't imagine. Before sailing, it was called flailing. And that's the reason why. Oh, I see. That was, of course, expressed in many a sea shanty. Come flail away, flailing along on the wings of a breeze. Flailing, take me away to where I'm going. Flay, lady, flay.

These are the sea shanties that helped us cross the seas. The heads of the young men were turned by these beautiful songs that seemed to represent something over the horizon. Now, is it true that the sirens of the sea had something to do with the invention of the Sextant? Well, naturally, those young men of the sea would have been attracted to those water-bound beauties. But they were ruled by religion in those days, so before the Sextant, it was the first date ant. I see. And then the marriage dant. And eventually, the Sextant was allowed. They were ruled by religion in those days, very strict.

The flailers were ruled by religion? Everyone was ruled by religion. Right. Right. Well, and if I might point out a positive to that end, it was religion that gave us the names of the stars by which the Sextant created a map. Yeah, there's the Catholic star and the big Presbyterian, which is shaped, you connect those seven dots and they become a big Presbyterian. Yes, the Methodist star. Yes, Methodist major and Methodist minor. Right. Danno, tell us a little bit about the instrument itself. Pictures I've seen, they're usually made of brass. Why is that? The Sextant is a confusing tool, and that's the reason it was not invented until so late in navigational history.

You would think something that valuable, flailers, would have been seeking for it, searching for a tool that they knew must exist, but yet didn't. It was the mere fact of working with brass that slowed them down. Brass is a very malleable metal, so malleable in fact, that it's very easy just to crumple it and it just bends in ways that you don't want it to. So if you're trying to make a brass tool that has to be intricate, delicate, and precise, you can't do it with big, fat, fumbly fingers. Have you ever seen Titian paintings? Oh yes, Titian, we call him in Canada.

Because of my religious affiliation, we're not allowed to pronounce it that way. But... Wait, did he paint in brass? I think I might have missed it. He was painting in exactly the era we're discussing, and I don't know if you've noticed the voluminous sausage-like fingers of every single person in those paintings. So imagine somebody with fat fingers trying to work with this delicate, delicate, light metal to create a precise instrument. You just wind up with big, wadded balls of brass everywhere you look. So I get the sense... I think I saw one of Titian's paintings of that.

You saw a Titian with big balls of brass? Yeah, I think it was oil on canvas. Well, you're teaching us not only about navigational seafaring evolution, but the evolution of man's hands. They go together. They go hand in hand, you might say. In the 1500s, 1600s, 1700s, the human hand was still very primitive, Claire. You don't realize how long ago in developmental history that is. We look back to, say, colonial times, and we picture George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, and all those engravings, they have their hands in their pockets. You don't see them depicted.

And in fact, when I say they had their hands in their pockets, what they had was their stumps in their pockets. Grotesque, stubby-fingered stumps. If you look at those times, seafaring was in its earliest stages, but so was everything else, Claire. Religion, politics. Try counting money with nub fingers. Try signing a declaration with nub fingers. Try building a sex tent. It's almost impossible. It wasn't really until the 1800s, when evolution sprung forth with the discovery of evolution, that finally fingers were usable. That is a point for another podcast, Daniel, that evolution began in the 1800s.

Evolution couldn't exist until it was discovered by Darwin. What's amazing, Claire, is that he was pre-evolution. So he was doing his original research with those little nub hands, and was able to evolve in the moment of not only discovering evolution, but creating evolution. That's what I call intelligent design. I'm sure that he got to those archipelago islands using a sex tent, which is where all this sprang from. It was an important instrument, but even more important were maps. A map. And that's how he discovered those islands, where we discovered evolution.

If we had not found those islands, Dano, we would still be stubby-fingered brass ball buffoons. He couldn't have discovered those islands without a map, and he couldn't draw the map until he discovered the islands. You see, it's cyclical. This is like the creation of the universe itself. We look up and we see Methodist Minor or Methodist Major, and we think it's always existed. But that's not the... How could something always exist? There had to be something before the Methodists. Well, now, this is getting into your controversial... The book that you wrote before you became a sex tent expert.

Called I'm Not a Sex Tent Expert Yet by Dan O'Sullivan. It was not a big seller. Out of context, it made no sense to anybody. Even in the first book, you took a lot of criticism for what some called bizarre chapters on seemingly unrelated chapters. Maybe I could have used the help of a good editor to take out a chapter like Top Ten Recipes with Turnips and Carrots. A lot of people said that really had no place being. That would be perfect in a cookbook. Well, and to be honest, I of course read the book before chatting with you today. And your obsession with turnips and carrots, I couldn't help but wonder if it came from being on the archipelagos where you had no access to vegetables of any kind and probably had a bit of a vitamin deficiency.

Yeah, the scurvy set in early. And I'm going to tell you right now, everything that moves looks like a turnip or a carrot. I'm not going to ask you if you attacked yourself. I attacked myself out of hunger. Is that what you're asking? I couldn't help but wonder. I was so hungry, Clara, that I would eat my own arm. And I literally did. Fortunately, you're not going to believe this, but in the land of evolution, I had begun to de-evolve due to the lack of carrots and turnips. The long fingers that I was going to eat had de-evolved to prior generation's nubs.

And when I slung my hand towards my mouth for a bite, my arm was much shorter than I expected it to be. And I missed my mouth entirely, thus not eating my own arm and saving my own life and becoming the hero of my own story. Absolutely unbelievable. Quiet. The Expertise Spelldrong podcast is free and, like the Amish, all are welcome. Be sure to sign up for our email announcements at funnypodcast.com and follow us in your favorite podcast app, like the expert podcast listener we know you are. Which leads me to the question, other than the sex tant, is there a next tant coming up down the road?

Yeah, you're going to love the next tant. It goes bing when you use it. We're just trying to make it seem fun and festive for the next generation of sex tant users. Frills and bells and whistles. It's red, it's got the sound. And we're looking at maybe putting on a tassel. It's a brilliant idea. Well, you know, I know that our listeners are going to be first in line for the next tant. Yeah. I think our listeners are going to be pretty frill, frills. Well, if they're flailing, I'm sure they'll be frilled.