This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff.

I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and there's Jerry, and dates here in spirit, and this is short stuff,

which should be spelled exactly like it's spelled right now.

Yeah.

Should another simple spelling movement come along, Chuck.

Yeah, although they may drop an F.

Yeah, you're right.

Although that could be stoof.

But there is no such word as stoof, so I guess it wouldn't be a problem.

Yeah, but that's what we're talking about.

We're talking about the idea that English is a really tough language to learn

and that there have been many movements over the years to simplify things and spell things out a little more phonetically.

And back in 1906, none other than Teddy Roosevelt, who was president, got into this idea.

And he was a very, very popular president who had some other very famous people on board

at the time as well, right?

Andrew Carnegie, Mark Twain, William James, the father of psychology, an unnamed Supreme Court

Justice.

Basically, a lot of thinkers in America came together to basically put their might behind this,

what was another progressive movement at the time. And Teddy Roosevelt was an enthusiastic supporter of it.

He issued a, what he later called an experiment, an executive order to the printer of the United States, the official one, and said,

...