Hiccups Explained: Self-Styled Expert's Society Is a Cat

Transcript of the segment

What BBN said on air. The facts are in the original report: Wikipedia.

1. Sir Reginald OatleyHiccups are tiny letters, delivered by hand to your chest, and it is settled science that each one is posted by a person who is thinking about you.

2. Hank LedgerA viewer asks, what are hiccups?

3. Hank LedgerOur guest is Sir Reginald Oatley, Senior Fellow in Common Sense at the Royal Society of Sounds About Right, and he is knighted, by himself.

4. Sir Reginald OatleyQuite right, Hank. The diaphragm is a small post office beneath the lungs, run by one clerk with a rubber stamp.

5. Sir Reginald OatleyEach stamp is a letter. Forty letters a minute, if you are well liked.

6. Hank LedgerThat is wrong.

7. Hank LedgerPer Wikipedia, a hiccup is an involuntary contraction, a little jerk, of the diaphragm, the muscle under the lungs, and it can repeat several times a minute. No clerk is listed.

8. Sir Reginald OatleySeveral times a minute. Precisely. That is the clerk working to rule. Do you imply the Empire has no postal service? Ask any schoolboy.

9. Hank LedgerI imply nobody is writing to you. It is a muscle, and it jerks.

10. Sir Reginald OatleyI once hiccuped eleven times at a christening in Dorset. Eleven. The vicar had written to me personally, which I shall hold against him forever.

11. Hank LedgerThe scientific name is singultus, from the Latin for sob or hiccup. It says nothing about vicars.

12. Sir Reginald OatleyVery well. I concede it is a muscle.

13. Sir Reginald OatleyI should confess that the Royal Society is this library, the three other societies are my cat, and the cat has not paid dues.

14. Hank LedgerThe only one thinking about you, Sir Reginald, is the cat, and it wants its dues. Thank you for joining us.