Lois Smith

[On Rick On Theater, I’ve said of actress Lois Smith (b. 1930), whom I’ve seen on stage a number of times in different kinds of roles (not to mention several TV and film performances), that she’s “truly one of this country’s top performers” and that her “prominence . . . comes from her absolute command of any role she plays, irrespective of the quality of the rest of the production.”  In a 2011 report on this blog, I made the definitive statement, “I don’t think Smith can deliver anything less than a credible and warm performance.”  I’m doubling down on that assessment. 

[I met Smith briefly after a performance—playing opposite her was David Margulies, a former teacher of mine, so I waited by the stage door to say hello to him—and I got to tell Smith how much I liked her work.  Something else I wrote in a ROT report: “I think Lois Smith is an honest-to-God living national treasure.”

[Posts on ROT that feature commentary on Lois Smith are: “The Illusion” (1 July 2011), “Heartless” (10 September 2012), “The Trip to Bountiful (2005)” (25 May 2013), and “John” (1 September 2015).]

“LOIS SMITH AND THE WORK THAT ENDURES”
by Lyndsey Bourne

[The following transcript was slugged “Interview” and was posted on the American Theatre website on 23 December 2025; it didn’t appear in the magazine’s print edition.]

The 95-year-old actor reflects on her rich and rewarding stage career, and the life it drew from and made for her.

For more than 70 years, Lois Smith has been delivering performances that have the power to remind an audience what a night at the theatre is for, and what a play can do. Across stage and screen, Smith has built a body of work remarkable not just for its longevity but for its consistency of purpose. She gravitates toward writing that unsettles and deepens, that asks something of her, and of her audiences. She has consistently met that demand with a blend of rigor and curiosity that has made her a touchstone for several generations of artists.

In September, I was invited to an early screening of the upcoming film The Steel Harp [upcoming independent comedy directed by Alex Thompson and Kelly O’Sullivan and written by O’Sullivan;   

Ley Line Entertainment, Fusion Entertainment, release date to be announced], in which Smith stars. She anchors the film with steadiness and grace, with the same searching, steely gaze and emotional precision that has defined her stage work for more than seven decades.

When we spoke a few weeks after her 95th birthday [3 November 2025], our conversation moved from her earliest days on Broadway [Time Out for Ginger (1952) by Ronald Alexander, The Wisteria Trees (1955) by Joshua Logan, The Young and Beautiful (1955) by Sally Benson] through the landmark productions that shaped her career, to the rhythms of her life now. In person she is warm and generous—as well as very tough, practical, and discerning. She brings to every exchange a level of care, thought, and attention that feels increasingly rare for a person of any age. At 95, she’s reflective without nostalgia, clear-eyed about the industry’s changes, and devoted to the communal spark that makes theatre worth returning to.

In the time since we spoke, it is the reverence for her craft, the integrity she exudes, that has stayed with me most. That and the indelible sound of her deep, endearing laugh.

The following is an edited transcript of our conversation.

LYNDSEY BOURNE: I’ve been having so much fun revisiting some of your work. I watched an archival recording of Buried Child [Broadway, 1996; by Sam Shepard; Nominee for 1996 Tony for Best Featured Actress in a Play] earlier this week, and The Trip to Bountiful [Off-Broadway, 2005; by Horton Foote; 2006 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Lead Actress, 2006 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Play, 2006 Obie Award for Best Performance, 2006 Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Actress in a Play, and Nominee for 2006 Drama League Award for Distinguished Performance]. 

LOIS SMITH: I think those are two of my best works.

In Buried Child, especially, the final reveal in the third act—when we learn about the baby as you’re going up the stairs, gripping the side of the banister with both hands and your back to the audience—it’s devastating. It’s rare to be so moved by back acting.

Discovering that was very specific and very real. Gary Sinise [b. 1955], who directed it, was so fierce, holding everybody so tight, we’d go crazy. [The production transferred from Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company.] Afterwards, I felt if he hadn’t done that, we never would have gotten to where we got. I felt free because we were so grounded. And he was delighted at the things that came forth.

The Trip to Bountiful too. Carrie Watts is such a physically and emotionally demanding role. I kept thinking, for an old play, it feels very contemporary. 

Oh gosh, yes. What a beautiful play. Horton [Foote; 1916-2009] was with us all the time, and he loves actors—he was a delight. He’d been working on that play for 50 years. In ’53 it was on television and Broadway the same year. Then, of course, he adapted it for the film [1986]. The original had something like five huge sets and three acts. In 2005, when we did it at the Signature, Harris Yulin [1937-2025], the director, proposed we cut it down. We did it in 90 minutes without stopping. Horton was all for it—he made it happen. It was so exciting. 

I’d love to go back to the very beginning of your career. You moved to New York in 1952, is that right? Were you scared, coming here on your own, all the way across the country for those first few months? [Smith was born in Topeka, Kansas, but her family had moved to Seattle, Washington, around 1941.]

No, I wasn’t scared. I was excited.

You were ready to start your life.

New York seemed like the place for me. I was at the University of Washington in the Drama Department. There were two theatres on campus performing plays year-round with student casts. Every play ran for six-week runs, six nights a week, to a paid audience. It was like being in a stock company or something—a kind of theatre training that was beyond classwork.

We drove from Seattle to New York in a little old Ford that boiled over during the day, so we drove at night. It was really crazy.

What were you hoping for when you moved here? Were you thinking long-term about your career, about the kind of life you wanted to build?

I don’t think I had that kind of thought. I wanted to work—and I was lucky. When my husband and I first came, he was going to Harvard. We stayed a month in a little rented room. I worked all night sorting checks in a bank on Wall Street; he had a filing job. I looked for acting work during the day.

That summer, I got my first job, a play on Broadway called Time Out for Ginger; Melvyn Douglas [1901-81] played my father. Suddenly I had a Broadway salary. In those days it was nothing like what it is now, of course, but it was more money than I’d ever made in one day. I came here hoping to work and I lucked out. There was a lot of theatre going on then. Off-Broadway didn’t yet exist, but there were a lot of plays on Broadway, there were showcases, television dramas—I don’t mean series but plays filmed live for television. That’s how I got started in television.

[For some comments on theater on television, see my post “Cinderella: Impossible Things Are Happening (CBS-TV, 31 March 1957)” (25 April 2013).

[Off-Broadway was just getting started at the beginning of the 1950s. It’s first real success was the 1952 revival of Tennessee Williams’s (1911-83) Summer and Smoke directed by José Quintero (1924-99) at the Circle in the Square Theater in Greenwich Village.  The play had failed on Broadway in 1948, but ran in the Village for over 100 performances—and audiences and the press took notice, helping establish Off-Broadway and a legitimate New York theater venue.

[Summer and Smoke’s success was followed by the first musical success of Off-Broadway, the 95-performance run of Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) and Kurt Weill’s (1900-50) Threepenny Opera (which had also flopped on Broadway) in 1954, the same year that the Village Voice inaugurated the Obie Awards to recognize excellence in the new theatrical venue.]

I don’t want to presume, but it must have been difficult in the 1950s to be a woman and an actor, and then also a mother. [Smith and her husband, Wesley, had a daughter in 1958.] What was it like for you?

Well, you know, it’s me, all those years, all those 70 years. So it’s hard to say. I was lucky in that there was a lot of work. And sometimes, like right now, there isn’t. By the time I’d been here, I think, two years, I had done some television work and a film, which meant I could make a living—which you can’t do in the theatre, or almost can’t.

Was it steady work?

Oh, never. It’s not steady.

Are there roles you feel most connected to? Which plays still stick with you the most?

It’s interesting, you immediately picked two of them: The Trip to Bountiful, Buried Child. Also The Grapes of Wrath [Broadway, 1990; Book adapted by Frank Galati from the novel by John Steinbeck; from Steppenwolf; 1990 Tony Nominee for Best Featured Actress in a Play]. I think they were my best work. They were examples of what it is when it’s good—when it’s the real thing. When people are working together with skill and trust and love. So many things have to come together. And in those cases, they did. You can’t do it alone. Though as a playwright, you probably feel more than others that you are alone, at least for a good part of the process.

Just the first half, really. I love being in rehearsal. I’m just a playwright so I can get to the rehearsal room, you know?

It’s the best place.

Do you feel your approach to a rehearsal process changes with each role, with every play, whether it’s a new play or a classic?

It’s always different. I mean, I’m speaking now ideally and about my best experiences. Of course, it’s not always wonderful. It’s very hard. And it hasn’t always worked beautifully, which has to do with everything: the play, the actors, the director. This is a slightly different subject, but when Glynis Johns [1923-2024; British actress and singer] died this year, I read an obituary where she said, “I think my best thinking is in the theatre.” That’s exactly how I feel.

[Smith was probably referring to Johns’s remark quoted in her New York Times obituary of 6 January 2024 (Johns died the year before Smith’s interview for AT): “Acting is my highest form of intelligence, the time when I use the best part of my brain” (Anita Gates, “Glynis Johns, 100, Dies; ‘Mary Poppins’ Actress And Tony Award Winner”; online, the notice was entitled “Glynis Johns, Tony Winner for ‘A Little Night Music,’ Dies at 100,” posted on 4 January, the day of the actress’s death.)

Looking back, was there a decade in theatre that feels most meaningful to you?

My first decade. That excitement—everything was new. The fact that I got work quickly and in all three mediums meant that I could keep working. In ’55 I did a Broadway play, The Young and Beautiful; Sally Benson [1897-1972] wrote it based on F. Scott Fitzgerald [1896-1940] stories. That was very early in my career—fun. By then we were living in Princeton [New Jersey]; my husband was a classicist and taught at Princeton. My daughter was born there in ’58. I had various jobs during that time, Broadway plays. Sometimes they would close quickly.

[In addition to the stage work Smith did in the ’50s, she did many TV shows, a number of them episodes of anthology series, a popular format of the era in which each episode presents a different story and a different set of characters (Kraft Television Theatre [1953], Studio One [1954], Modern Romances [1955]).  She also made her film début in East of Eden in 1955 (see a brief anecdote about Smith and this film in my report on Heartless (referenced in the introduction above).]

Did your daughter come with you when you worked, when you traveled for jobs?

When she was a little baby, I remember a job when I was carrying her in a handbag practically, and my mother from Seattle came down to L.A. and babysat while I was doing a television show there. That happened more than once. Then in the ’60s, we lived in Philadelphia; my husband’s next job was at Penn [University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia]. I worked for Theatre of the Living Arts. André Gregory [b. 1934] was artistic director.

You’ve mentioned a few directors already—Gary Sinise, Harris Yulin—and how much their approaches shaped those productions. Are there other directors or collaborators you’ve especially loved working with—people who really understood you or lifted you up in the work?

Frank Galati [1943-2023], certainly. I first worked with him in The Grapes of Wrath at Steppenwolf. I think we did three more things together.

[Smith was also directed by Galati in The Royal Family by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber (1990) and Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children (2001); in 2009, Smith performed in William Shakespeare’s (1564-1616) The Tempest in a cast that also included Galati, under the direction of Tina Landau (b. 1962). All three of these productions were performed at Steppenwolf in Chicago; none traveled to New York City as The Grapes of Wrath and Buried Child did.]

What was it about him?

His presence. His manner of working. Who he was. I remember when we did The Grapes of Wrath in ’88, he hadn’t been a member of the company very long. He was a phenomenon in Chicago, and they were very pleased that they lured him to come and be a member at Steppenwolf. This was a great big cast; everyone was working at the top of their game. They had gotten my name from asking around because they didn’t have a Ma Joad in the company. Anyway, it was a huge production. Everybody felt a lot of agency; nobody was shy. It was my first experience with him and with the company. It was really falling in love.

I’m also thinking about how important and meaningful working with Irene Lewis [b. 1945] has been to me.

Tell me about her.

She was artistic director at Baltimore Center Stage [1991-2011]. I first met her when she cast me in Escape From Happiness by George Walker (1993). Then she asked what I’d like to do. I mentioned [George Bernard] Shaw [1856-1950] and The Cherry Orchard [Anton Chekhov (1860-1904)]. She directed me in Mrs. Warren’s Profession [1999] and then as Ranevskaya [1994].

She used all of the allotted rehearsal time—and used it well. I find this less and less the norm. There is no substitute for what happens during rehearsal. There is no substitute for the experience and growth of the production of a play during the rehearsal hours together. She exemplified an understanding and practice of the art of rehearsal. My times of working with her were probably in the 1990s.

At what point did you move back to New York?

It was the beginning of the ’70s, when we were living in Philadelphia, and my daughter and I moved back to New York. That was really kind of scary.

You were a single mom, is that right? How did you manage that?

One of the first things I did coming back to New York was a Joyce Carol Oates [b. 1938] play, Sunday Dinner [1970]. Curt Dempster [1935-2007] directed it; this was right around the time he started EST [Ensemble Studio Theatre, Dempster’s repertory and developmental company]. Then, fairly early on, I got a job in a soap opera. And then another. [Among others, Smith appeared in 708 episodes of Somerset in 1972-74 and 247 episodes of The Doctors in 1977-79.] For a long time, I had several running jobs in soap operas—hardly what I would most love to do—but my goodness, Monday to Friday, daytime hours! Amazing. That was a real break, you know? Not in my sense of myself as an actor, but as an actor who was working, which was very important. I was making enough money to comfortably live on. That was how I managed as a single mom in those early years, in her school years.

How important have your friendships in the theatre been—to sustaining your career, your resilience, to moving through all these decades?

Amazingly important. Harold Clurman [1901-80] was another director I loved and a very good friend. I first worked with him in Tennessee Williams’s Orpheus Descending [Broadway, 1957], probably. Harold introduced me to Stella Adler [1901-92; actress and acting teacher] and her daughter, Ellen, who he had really raised with Stella from the time she was with the Group Theatre through all its years. Ellen and I both had daughters, born, I think, a day apart.

[Stella Adler, aside from being a renowned actor in her own right—she was a founding member of the famous Group Theatre with Clurman, Lee Strasburg, and Cheryl Crawford---was one of the United States’ most esteemed acting teachers and interpreters of Method acting and the system of actor training conceived by Konstantin Stanislavsky (1863-1938), in whose theories the Method was based (see “The Method – a Review” [12 March 2022] and “Bombast to Beckett” [13 January 2025], both by Kirk Woodward).

[Adler was born into an acting family, founded by her father, Jacob Adler (1855-1926), a star of the Yiddish theater (see my post “National Yiddish Theatre – Folksbiene” (23 and 26 August 2012). Her mother, Sara (1858-1953), was also a Yiddish theater actor, and so was her brother, Luther (1903-84), who became a prominent figure in films and the English-speaking stage.

[Stella Adler was married to Clurman, author of one of the most influential books about directing, On Directing (1974), from 1942-59, which includes the period when Smith was starting her career in New York.  Adler’s daughter, known as Ellen Adler (1927-2019), though her father was Stella’s first husband, Horace Eliascheff (1896-1944) and Ellen was married to clarinetist David Oppenheim (1922-2007). Ellen Adler was a painter, musical artist, and guardian of the Adler family name and legacy.]

What was your daughter’s relationship to you being a working actor? Did she ever talk about it with you? Was she thrilled by your job or was it just what Mom did?

I think she was interested. I remember when I was in the Theater of the Living Arts, she was in grade school, and it was the first time that my husband had brought her to see a play all the way through—a modern-day version of The Misanthrope [Molière (French; 1622-73)]. I must have been about 35, I’m guessing, something like that. [The production was staged in mid-1965, so Smith would have been just under 35 and her daughter would have been just over 7.] Afterwards she said, “Here you are, getting your gray hair, and you were so bouncy.” So that was my first review from my daughter. 

That’s so good—that’s my favorite review I’ve ever heard.

Isn’t that wonderful?

When you’re on a stage, what’s your favorite sound to hear from an audience?

Oh, gosh. You know, it could be silence. It could be laughter. As long as they’re listening.

I can think of a time an audience just went crazy for you: In Annie Baker’s [b. 1981] John [2015; see my report, referenced above on the introduction], when you came out to do that speech at the start of the second intermission.

Wasn’t that fun?

Amazing. Everyone’s just leaving and then you come out from behind that big red curtain and you start talking.

There were people afterwards, who were so mad they missed it. They didn’t know it was going to happen; they were already gone. 

I almost missed it. And then I heard your voice and ran back inside. That year, 2015, you also had Marjorie Prime [Jordan Harrison (b. 1977)]. 

It was a crazy year. We did Marjorie Prime at the Taper [Mark Taper Forum, Los Angeles, 2014; Playwrights Horizons, 2015] and then, not long after that, I did a play at Steppenwolf, which Frank Galati directed, called The Herd [by Rory Kinnear (b. 1978), 2015]. Then I came back to New York. I think that’s when I first read Lily Thorn[e]’s play, Peace for Mary Frances [2018], and then I went straight into John and then straight into the movie of Marjorie Prime [BB Film Productions, 2017], and then straight—truly, the next day after we finished shooting—right into the Playwrights Horizons production of Marjorie Prime. I don’t think I’d ever had so much good, interesting, exciting work pile up on top of each other. But it was horrible because my beloved, David Margulies [1937-2016], was sick and getting sicker and sicker. He died during all of that; it was awful. I didn’t even understand for a while afterwards how much in shock I was through parts of that year. It was . . . It was really awful. It was wonderful, but it was awful. It was just one of those . . . one of those things.

It must have been overwhelming. And to have so much attention on you at that time, in your career . . . It really was a huge year for you.

Yeah, it was a huge year.

I think Marjorie Prime and John are two of the most important plays of the last 25 years. Certainly, two of the most memorable nights I’ve spent in the theatre. Do you still see a lot of theatre? I know I’ve spotted you in quite a few audiences.

After the pandemic, I sort of made a point of it. It’s one of the most important things I do. 

What do you look for in a play when you’re a member of the audience? What do you hope for when you go to the theatre?

I don’t know if I go with a hope; I think I go with a habit. Still, there’s that little happy feeling, a hopeful feeling, at the beginning, right before a play starts, being there together. What do you hope for?

I think I hope I’ll be surprised.

Yes, surprise is one of the best things, isn’t it? I agree. We need it.

What are you thinking about these days? How do you like to spend your time?

I love to read novels. That hasn’t been as true lately. When The Steel Harp became a reality, I kind of stopped reading. I just spent all my time on that script. I don’t think I’ve ever been a hasty person, but I’ve become much more of a slow mover than I used to be. Everything is slower, I think. I take too long to read the Times in the morning.

But what’s too long?

No, you’re right. It’s a morning ritual. David and I always used to read the Times together in the morning; I think that’s part of why I continue doing it. That’s how my day begins.

Now I’m organized around social dates, theatregoing dates: dinner with friends, theatre with friends. I’m 95. Many things are different. I’m not as strong. But I can still work, and with pleasure, thank God. I just had a television job that dropped in for a couple of days. There were things I couldn’t do physically, but it turned out to be okay. I love working. I really do.

What do you hope for the future of the theatre?

I haven’t thought a lot about that. It’s hard to think about the future of theatre without thinking about what kind of world it will exist in. I guess I would say that the things most precious to me—the interconnectedness of people and experience, thought and concern—that they be present in the work. I don’t think I have a clear vision or hope for the future, except that it be . . . rooted.

[Lyndsey Bourne (b. ca. 1992) is a Canadian writer, teacher, and doula (a woman who assists mothers during labor and after childbirth) working with The Doula Project.  She’s currently based in Brooklyn, New York.  Her plays include The Second Body (workshopped at La MaMa E.T.C., New York City, in 2020Mabel’s Mine (still in workshop; reading in July 2025), and I Was Unbecoming Then (Canadian première: 2024 ).  She teaches playwriting at Playwrights Horizons Theater School (New York University Tisch School of the Arts).]

Fossil Words

 

[In paleontology, the study of the forms of life existing in prehistoric times, a fossil is any preserved evidence of ancient life, including shells, imprints, burrows, coprolites, and organically-produced chemicals.  This includes the mineralized (converted to a mineral; petrified) remains of an animal or plant.

[Fossil words are words that have largely fallen out of common use but still survive in idioms and set phrases.  Evan Porter, a professional writer with a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology from Towson University (Towson, Maryland), explains how this happens:

Though English has technically existed for well over a thousand years, today’s modern version of the language is nearly unrecognizable from its roots in Old [mid-5th century (around 450 CE) to the late 11th century (around 1066 or 1150 CE)] and Middle English [1100/1150 to 1500].  Over time, words and phrases evolve and transform in both pronunciation and meaning.  New words are created, and many older words die out.

Some antiquated words, however, manage to survive the passage of time even if they're not regularly used in everyday conversation or writing.  How can they hold on without ever actually being used?  By being “fossilized.”

“A fossil word is a word that appears primarily in the context of a specific phrase.  Words can become fossilized either because they grow antiquated or because they're replaced by other words in common speech.  But the phrase in which they appear remains,” says author and etymologist Jess Zafarris in a TikTok video[.]

—“19 nearly-extinct 'fossil words' that only survive hidden inside these specific idioms,”

Upworthy, 10 December 2025

[Etymology, which is an important aspect of the formation and eventual fossilization of fossil words, is the study of the sources and development of words and their components.

[Readers of Rick On Theater may know that I’m both a wordie and a language geek.  (I even contributed a few times to William Safire’s [1929-2009] “On Language” column in the New York Times Magazine [1979-2009].)  When I was working on the recent post on “Sign Museums,” and I was looking into the history of Moxie, the soft drink popular in New England, and the etymology of the noun ‘moxie’ that came from the drink’s name, I came across Jess Zafarris’s blog Useless Etymology, I found it attention-grabbing. 

[Oddly perhaps, I’d never heard of fossil words.  After reading Zafarris’s book excerpt on the subject, I decided to share it with ROTters.  So, first, here’s her brief discussion of fossil words, followed by a few additions from other sites I located on the ’Net.]

“ETYMOLOGICAL EXCAVATION: WHAT IS A FOSSIL WORD?”
by Jess Zafarris 

[Posted on Useless Etymology, Jess Zafarris’s blog, on 11 November 2025, this article is drawn from her 2025 book, Useless Etymology: Offbeat Word Origins for Curious Minds (Chambers, 2025), an exploration of unusual word histories.]

A fossil word is a word that primarily appears in the context of phrases or idioms. It typically comes attached to other words. The phrase survives even when the word itself becomes antiquated and rarely appears on its own.

Think about the phrase “to and fro.” “Fro” was a preposition and adverb meaning “away” or “backwards.” It almost never appears on its own, but “to and fro” remains in wide use.

Another example is the word “bated” in the phrase “bated breath.” It’s a past participle form of the word “abate” [to make or become less in amount, intensity, degree, etc.] but that form is not typically used in English unless it’s attached to the word “breath.”

Although the word “bide” can still be found independently in some English dialects [to mean ‘to endure,’ ‘stay,’ or ‘wait’], it’s heavily associated with the phrase “bide one’s time” in American English. It’s related to the words “abide” and “abode,” and both are from the Old English bidan, meaning “to stay, live, or remain.”

“Lam” is rare outside of the phrase “on the lam,” and its origin is a bit mysterious. In the Elizabethan era it was both a verb meaning “to beat,” and a noun meaning a heavy blow, so “on the lam” which was originally American crime slang, might imply the same thing as the term “beat it” does when it comes to running away. It’s also thought to be related to the word lambast. To “lambast,” which was originally pronounced and spelled “lambaste” (and still is in some cases, depending on your region) combines that lam verb, to “beat,” with a 17th century sense of the verb “baste,” which comes from Old Norse [spoken across Scandinavia and spread through Viking settlements, including the British Isles, from roughly the 8th to 13th centuries] and also means to thrash someone.

Both spic and span are fossilized in the phrase “spic” and “span.” A spic is a nail, and span is a word for a wood chip. The phrase refers to something that’s freshly cut by a workman’s hands, like a brand-new nail from a smith or perhaps like a fresh cutting from a lumberjack. Both of these are Germanic and probably from Old Norse. “Span new” is recorded as a variation on “brandnew” in the 1600s.

“The whole shebang” is another etymological mystery. We do know that Walt Whitman [1819-92] used the word “shebang” as a word for a shelter in his 1862 prose work “Specimen Days”:

“Besides the hospitals, I also go occasionally on long tours through the camps, talking with the men, &c. Sometimes at night among the groups around the fires, in their shebang enclosures of bushes.”

It may also be related to various words for taverns; in Irish, Scottish and South African dialects, a speakeasy or illicit tavern might be called a “shebeen.”

The “lo” in “lo and behold” is a generic Old English exclamation. It’s probably an imperative of the word “look” or in Old English loken. But you might also use it as a greeting, or if you’re surprised, or if you need to express joy or grief. Sounds like it’s all about tone of voice.

“Caboodle” is fossilized in the phrases “kit and caboodle” and “the whole caboodle.” The first of these phrases is predated by similar terms such as “kid and cargo” and “kit and boodle.” An earlier version of the phrase “the whole caboodle” was simply ”the whole boodle.” “Caboodle” and “boodle” both mean “collection,” with the ca- on caboodle probably operating as an intensifier, implying a really big boodle. Both are thought to be from the Dutch ter[m] boedel, meaning “property.” The “kit” in “kit and caboodle” is, of course, the modern word for any collection of items used to repair, maintain, or make another item, or all the clothes and equipment needed to perform a task or play a sport [this usage is common in British English]. It too is probably Dutch in origin, from the term kitte meaning a “wooden vessel” or a wooden ship. Hence “kit and caboodle” implies “the whole ship and its cargo.”

Sometimes fossil words are only semi-fossilized. The word “figment” can certainly be used independently to describe something invented, but it most often appears in the phrase “figment of your imagination.” The word “inclement” is rarely used outside of the phrase “inclement weather,” from the Latin [clemens, clementis], “mild, placid.” “Turpitude” rarely appears outside of the phrase “moral turpitude.”  This word is from the Latin turpis meaning vile, foul or ugly. So moral turpitude is utter depravity and vileness.

Another form of semi-fossilization: The word “dint” is a predecessor to the word “dent,” which remains in use as a word for a small indentation or defect. You may have read this word in historical or fictional accounts of people wearing armor; a small indentation in armor is often a dint rather than a dent. Similarly the little indentations in coconuts are often called dints instead of dents. But there’s also the idiom “by dint of,” meaning “by means of,” and in this context dint is fossilized because this is the only scenario in which “dint” has this definition. But both usages have the same origin: A dint (or in Old English, dynt) was a blow dealt in a battle, just like we see in the armor sense, so in the context of the phrase “by dint of” it suggests the force by which a blow or other action is carried out. So, you might receive a dint in your armor by dint of fighting in a battle. “Dent” came along later (early 14th c.) from the same etymological source as “dint,” but “dent” became the preferred spelling in the 15th century due to influence from Latin-derived words like indent and indentation.

Much ado about ado

Another fossil word worth a more detailed excavation is “ado.” Nowadays, it’s most often found in the phrases “without further ado” and “much ado about nothing,” which survived thanks to the name of the Shakespearean comedy. But did you know that the word “ado” is a contraction—and an infinitive?

As you probably know from your grade school grammar lessons, an infinitive is the base form of a verb, the form it takes when it’s not conjugated [to inflect (a verb) for each person, in order, for one or more tenses; to vary the form of (i.e., to inflect) a word to express tense, gender, number, mood, etc.]. In English, we pair unconjugated verbs with the word “to” to create the infinitive.  An infinitive phrase is something like “to walk,” “to go,” “to speak,” or “to do.” The word “to” usually acts as a preposition, but in infinitive phrases, it acts as what we call a particle [known as the sign of the infinitive]. This usage of the word “to” came around in Middle English as an adaptation of the word “to” in the Old English dative case.

[The dative case is the grammatical form for the indirect object of a sentence, the person or thing that receives the direct object or who benefits from the action. Modern English doesn’t have the dative case in the declensions (the inflection of nouns, pronouns, and adjectives); we use the objective case (the accusative case in languages such as Latin, German, and Russian) with a preposition such as ‘to’ or ‘for’ to form a prepositional phrase: I gave the letter to her; or I gave her the letter.

[(In the examples, the pronoun her and the prepositional phrase to her are the indirect objects; the direct object, the person or, in this instance, the thing acted upon, is the noun the letter. In German, the sentence would read: Ich gab ihr den Brief; the word ihr is the dative case of sie, the nominative or subjective case of the pronoun ‘she.’ The phrase den Brief is the direct object and is the accusative or objective case of der Brief.)]

But English also has some influence from Old Norse thanks to the Vikings. For an example of why this matters with the word “ado,” let’s take a look at Norwegian, which is a modern Nordic language. Norwegian infinitives are generally introduced by the particle å, which is cognate with the English word “at.”

So, if Middle English had had more influence from Old Norse, our modern infinitive particle could very well have ended up being “at” rather than “to.” So instead of “to speak” or “to walk,” we could have ended up having “at speak” and “at walk” as infinitives. And that’s exactly what’s happening with the word “ado,” which is a contraction of “at” and “do.”

So why does “ado” mean a commotion or a big deal? Well, you know how sometimes when there’s a lot of drama or commotion, or someone throws a big event, we sometimes say that it’s “a big to-do” or “a whole to-do”? Using this infinitive like this i[t] literally suggests that there is a lot to do or a lot that has to be done.

In the phrase “a big to-do,” the infinitive phrase “to-do” is cosplaying as a noun. “Ado” functions the same way, but it uses that Norse-influenced infinitive structure, with “at” in place of “to,” and then it’s contracted to “ado.” Ado is the older word, first recorded in Norse-influenced areas of northern England, and “to-do” arose later in the 16th century, taking over in a lot of contexts.

[Jess Zafarris’s Useless Etymology: Offbeat Word Origins for Curious Minds is available for purchase from various online (Bookshop.org, Amazon, Barnes & Noble) and physical retailers.  It provides an accessible deep dive into etymology for a general audience and covers topics like ‘astronaut’ meaning ‘star-sailor,’ ‘companion’ meaning ‘sharing bread,’ and the etymology of ‘trivia,’ making it an engaging read for word lovers.  

[Zafarris presents this with wit and whimsy, arguing that understanding word origins provides “superpowers” for language.  Reviewers praised it for debunking common myths and highlighting the global, cross-cultural influences on the English language. 

[Zafarris, a popular etymology content creator, is known for her TikTok posts (@jesszafarris) and blog (uselessetymology.com), where she shares similar content.]

*  *  *  *
EXAMPLES OF ENGLISH FOSSIL WORDS

champing

Phrase: champing at the bit (excited for something)

Definition: This is just a variation of “chomping.” Often, people will in fact say “chomping at the bit” instead, but this is considered an eggcorn, which is a language mistake often caused because someone has heard an idiom incorrectly.

vim

Phrase: vim and vigor (full of life)

Definition: Energy, excitement. But you’d never say someone is full of just “vim.”

kith

Phrase: kith and kin (friends and family)

Definition: a person’s friends, acquaintances and basically anyone you know who isn’t covered by “kin.” Kith has also found a second life as the name of a retail establishment.

[Established in 2011 in New York City, Kith (sometimes stylized as KITH) is a lifestyle brand and specialty retailer that offers seasonal collections of men’s, women’s, and children’s apparel, accessories, and footwear. It now has outlets all over New York, the U.S., and the world.]

loggerheads

Phrase: at loggerheads (in a heated, dead-locked dispute)

Definition: a foolish person. Today, the word only survives as the name of a certain breed of turtle, a certain breed of bird and a few locations in England. It’s not entirely clear how “at loggerheads” started referring to two people having a disagreement.

deserts

Phrase: just deserts (to get what one deserves)

Definition: what one deserves. Sometimes — but rarely — someone will refer to “deserts” without the “just,” yet they’re almost always a pairing. The fact that “deserts” (the comeuppance) is pronounced differently from “deserts” (the biome) leads many people to mistake it for “just desserts.”

wedlock

Phrase: out of wedlock (in a state of not being married)

Definition: in a state of being married. This word fell out of fashion because it’s simple enough to say that someone is married or not. But the euphemistic phrase “a child born out of wedlock” (which is still frowned upon in many parts of the world) has kept this word alive.

knell

Phrase: death knell (a sign of the end of something)

Definition: the sound of a funerary bell. Historically, people would literally ring a bell to alert the world that someone has died. Sometimes this was called a “passing bell” or a “death bell.” This isn’t a particularly common practice anymore, but it lives on in this idiom.

dudgeon

Phrase: in high dudgeon (enraged)

Definition: a state of indignation. No one seems to be in low dudgeon anymore, though.

hither

Phrase: hither and thither (all over the place), hither and yon (in disparate directions), come hither (come here, usually seductively)

Definition: toward this place. “Hither” is one of the rare fossil words that has survived in multiple different phrases. In most other contexts, “hither” is pretty easily replaced by “here,” which is similar but not the same. “Here” refers to an exact location, but “hither” refers to a direction toward an exact location.

petard

Phrase: hoist by their own petard (to be destroyed by your own weapon)

Definition: a small bomb. “Hoist” also isn’t particularly common, and it means “to be raised” (usually by pulleys, but sometimes by a petard). Perhaps unsurprisingly, the works of William Shakespeare are the source of a number of idioms that hold fossil words. The phrase “hoist with his own petard” was originally used in a speech in Hamlet (Act 3, scene 4).

[The original spelling of Shakespeare’s line was “hoist with his own petar” (no d).  This may have something to do with the etymology of the word, which is derived from the French word péter, which means ‘to fart.’ It’s a reference to the noise the small bomb makes when it explodes.]

ken

Phrase: beyond one’s ken (outside of one’s knowledge)

Definition: a person’s knowledge. While this word is not very common in English, you’ll find it in Scots as a verb meaning “to know.”

amok: from the Malay word amuk; often seen in the phrase “run amok,” ‘to run about with or as if with a frenzied desire to kill.’ Hard to be amok without running.

ruth: ‘pity’ or ‘compassion’; used in “ruthless,” meaning ‘lacking compassion.’

wreak: ‘to inflict or execute’ (punishment, vengeance, etc.); primarily used in “wreak havoc,” ‘to cause considerable confusion, disorder, or damage.’ Hard to wreak without havoc.

asunder: ‘into separate parts; in or into pieces’; as in “torn asunder,” meaning ‘to be pulled or ripped violently into separate pieces’

bandy: really two words: meaning 1: ‘to pass from one to another or back and forth’; ‘give and take’; ‘trade’; ‘exchange’ as in “bandy about”; meaning 2: from a Scots word, bandy, meaning ‘bowed’ or ‘curved outward,’ “bandy-legged” means ‘bowlegged’

beck: from Middle English bekken meaning ‘to signify’; ‘beckon,’ ‘beck’ means ‘a gesture used to signal, summon, or direct someone’ and appears in the expression “at one’s beck and call”; the verb form “beckon” is still common in non-idiom-specific use

betide: ‘to happen to’; ‘come to’; ‘befall’; as in “woe betide you/us/them”

eke: from Middle English eke (‘to add to,’ ‘augment’; ‘to increase’); used in “eke out,” meaning ‘to obtain with difficulty or effort’

fettle: as in “in fine fettle”; the verb, ‘to fettle,’ originally meant ‘to put things in order,’ ‘tidy up,’ ‘arrange,’ or ‘prepare,’ so to be in fine fettle means to be 'in excellent health, spirits, or condition,'  The original verb remains in specialized use in metal casting ('to remove sand from a casting'; 'to repair the hearth of an open-hearth furnace').

helter skelter: 'in a haphazard manner'; 'without regard for order,' as in “scattered helter-skelter about the office”; Middle English skelten, ‘to hasten’

madding: ‘’making mad’; ‘maddening’ as in “far from the madding crowd”

math: from Middle English, ‘a mowing’; ‘aftermath’: what comes after the mowing, usually of strongly negative connotation, implying a preceding catastrophe

scot: in Middle English, a local tax, originally paid to the lord or ruler and later to a sheriff; historically in Britain, “scot free” meant “exempt from royal tax or imposts.”  By extension, it later came to mean “without consequences or penalties” or “free without payment.”

sleight: an artful trick; sly artifice; a feat so dexterous that the manner of performance escapes observation; the phrase “sleight of hand” refers to the skill in feats requiring quick and clever movements of the hands, especially for entertainment or deception.

shrive: “To hear or receive a confession”; preserved only in inflected forms occurring only as part of fixed phrases: ‘shrift’ in “short shrift,” meaning “to give little and unsympathetic attention to,” and ‘shrove’ in “Shrove Tuesday,” the final day of Shrovetide, which marks the end of the pre-Lenten season; it’s observed in many Christian countries through participating in confession, the ritual burning of the previous year’s Holy Week palms, and finalizing one's Lenten sacrifice

wend: as in “wend your way,” meaning “to proceed on your way,” although its former past tense “went” is still in use as the past tense of “to go”

yore: “time long past,” as in “of yore,” usually (but not exclusively) “days of yore”

[To fill the list out, I added some fossil words from posts from Babbel. Reddit, and Wikipedia.

[I have several other posts on ROT that cover words and etymologies (e.g.: “Short Takes: Word Origins & Other Derivations” [4 July 2010]), as well numerous posts on writing.]

Sign Museums

 

[I suspect most people think of museums as either art collections like the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, or natural history repositories such as New York’s American Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in D.C. 

[Of course, there are many specialized museums, including art collections devoted to single artists or specific kinds of art, displays of certain types of technology, and exhibits of national or regional history.  Some museums become well known and draw thousands or even hundreds of thousands of visitors a year.

[On the other hand, there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of museums that aren’t so prominent, are off the tourist paths, and may even seem a little . . . well, odd.  Not far from where I live in Manhattan, for instance, are the National Museum of Mathematics and the Museum of Sex.  Seriously, they’re actual museums.

[In Washington, a city of well over 170 museums, galleries, and historic sites—one of the densest museum environments in the world—there’s the International Spy Museum and National Postal Museum; the Army Medical Museum used to be in the District but relocated to suburban Silver Spring, Maryland, and changed its name to the National Museum of Health and Medicine.

[There used to be the Bead Museum (yes, beads!; closed in 2008), the National Gallery of Caricature and Cartoon Art (closed in 1997; collections now at the Library of Congress), the National Museum of Crime & Punishment (closed in 2015), the National Pinball Museum (closed in 2011), and the Newseum (about journalism and dedicated to the First Amendment; closed in 2019; currently seeking new location).

[In New York City. with over 260 museums, there’s the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, the Museum of Illusions (Chelsea in Manhattan), the Museum of Ice Cream (SoHo in Manhattan), the Museum of Interesting Things (East Village in Manhattan), and the Brooklyn Seltzer Museum (Cypress Hills).

[Back until 1972, the Ripley's Believe It or Not! Odditorium was in Times Square (it had a two-headed goat!); a new Ripley space, the Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Times Square, opened, but didn’t survive the pandemic and closed in 2021. The K.B.G. Espionage Museum in Manhattan’s Chelsea also didn’t make it after the pandemic, closing in 2020.

[Last week I learned that there are museums of signage.  Who knew?  I discovered that little factoid when I watched the evening news a few days ago and saw a report about the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio.

[The English word ‘sign’ has a several meanings.  For the purpose of this post, I’m going to restrict the use to a few specific senses, principally any kind of visual graphics created to display information to a particular audience.  This would customarily be a signboard, a device used to identify or advertise a product, event, premises, or property.

[Variations on this definition include information signs that present notices that instruct, advise, inform, or warn people; traffic signs that instruct drivers, such as stop signs, speed limit signs, cross walk signs, and so on; commercial signage, including flashing signs, such as on retail stores, factories, or theaters, and other establishments.

[Signs such as these are ubiquitous and have been around since the establishment of the written word, and even before that, with the information being communicated symbolically, like the three gold balls of the pawnbroker or the colored spiral of the barber pole.

[When I went to check out ASM, I found an earlier report from late last year about another collection of signs right here in New York City, the New York Sign Museum in Brooklyn.  I live in Manhattan, across the river from Brooklyn, and never even heard of it!

[So, here are the two reports on sign museums, just because I find their existence a curiosity.  See of you find them so, too.]

“NOSTALGIA AND NEON: SIGN MUSEUM IN BROOKLYN
WORKS TO PRESERVE NEW YORK HISTORY, STORIES”
by Joelle Garguilo 

[The earlier report on a sign museum, which I obviously hadn’t seen, aired on Eyewitness News on ABC 7 New York (WABC-TV, Channel 7 in New York City) on 29 October 2025.  (The transcript of the report includes a video clip.)]

NEW YORK (WABC) – If you’re looking for a good sign, this is it!

In a city like New York, history is all around us, even where you’d least expect it – like the thousands of signs you’ll pass while strolling down city streets.

The New York Sign Museum in Brooklyn is working to preserve the unseen history behind vintage signage.

The museum is home to more than 200 rescued signs, advertising everything from restaurants and bars to barber shops and tailors.

David Barnett and Mac Pohanka are on a mission to ensure these pieces of New York City history don’t end up in the trash.

“You sort of take things for granted, especially with New York City signage,” Barnett said. “The signs have stories to tell. They’re New York stories. That’s why I think it’s so important to save this stuff.”

Their passion led them to the building in East New York where Barnett and Pohanka began the museum.

“For us, there’s so much craft, there’s so many stories,” Barnett said.

“I mean, talk about a sign with stories. Right? Cops and, the mob bosses would have allegedly, would have, like, lunches there,” Barnett described the history of one restaurant sign.

The museum also offers tours where visitors can learn how vintage signs reflect the city that once was.

“This is the Starlite Deli sign from Times Square. This was like a local institution. An older couple came on the tour, and they came up and said, we’re the owners of Starlite Deli. They said, you know, it was it was so meaningful for them to see the sign here and to see it preserved,” Barnett said.

For Barnett, the work is rooted in a family tradition he didn’t even know existed until recently.

“My great-grandfather was a sign painter in New York,” Barnett said. “I think the signs represent New Yorkers and they represent that part of us. The signs have stories to tell, they’re New York stories. And, they are our stories to tell, so that’s why I think it’s so important to save this stuff, because when we lose that, we lose a part of who we are.

[The New York Sign Museum is located in East New York at 2465 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11207; its phone number is (646) 450-0621 and its e-mail address is nysignmuseum@gmail.com.

[Joelle Garguilo is an Emmy Award-winning entertainment reporter for WABC.  A native New Yorker, she began her career in broadcast television 15 years ago at NBC, interviewing hundreds of stars of the screen and stage including Oprah Winfrey, Tom Cruise, George Clooney, Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, Timothee Chalamet, Julia Roberts, Tony Bennett, Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth, among others.

[Throughout her tenure, she held multiple roles across the network.  Most recently, she worked as an on-air entertainment and features reporter for New York Live correspondent for E! News while contributing at the Today Show with Hoda & Jenna.

[Garguilo’s talents have earned her two Emmy Awards, one for the magazine program New York Live: Home for the Holidays and a second for Outstanding Entertainment: Program Features/Segment for New York Live Features/Segments.]

*  *  *  *
“CINCINNATI MUSEUM CELEBRATES THE HISTORY
OF SMALL BUSINESSES THROUGH THEIR SIGNS”
by Tony Dokoupil 

[The CBS Evening News report on the American Sign Museum ran on 15 January 2026; I saw it on WCBS (Channel 2 in New York City).  It was part of Tony Dokoupil’s “Live from America Tour,” the new anchor’s two-week round of live broadcasts in, aside from Cincinnati, cities like Miami, Dallas, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Denver, Detroit, Chicago, and Pittsburgh.  (The report’s transcript is accompanied by a video.)]

Cincinnati — All his life, Tod Swormstedt has been fascinated, not necessarily by American small businesses, but by their signs, which announce to all the world — or at least the folks on Main Street — "we're here."

That interest prompted Swormstedt in 1999 to found the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati.

The museum is a collection of more than a century of entrepreneurship and ambition. A few of the businesses are still around, but the vast majority are not.

"To me, it's all about small business, the heart of America," Swormstedt told CBS News. 

The museum says it has more than 800 signs, 1,500 photographs, 175 pieces of artwork and 300 tools that celebrate American signage.  

It's a reminder of the moxie it has always taken to start something new, and the good fortune when it lasts.

[The slang word ‘moxie’ is curious, both in its meaning and its derivation. It’s almost archaic, seldom used today and largely regional in application, and thus no longer widely understood. It means ‘courageous spirit,’ ‘determination,’ or ‘perseverance,’ among other things. I have an idea why Tony Dokoupil chose it in this instance, but the explanation is too extensive for this space, so I’m going to postpone it until the afterword to this post.]

"The memory of the business is alive and well here through their signs," Swormstedt said.

Around one last corner, we found Tom Wartman and Bing Reising, professional benders — as the craft of neon sign-making is known — who created a new American sign for a classic American company, "CBS Evening News."

[The noun ‘moxie’ originated from Moxie Nerve Food, a patent medicine produced in Massachusetts around 1876 “that can recover brain and nervous exhaustion; loss of manhood, imbecility and helplessness” (Frederic G. Cassidy,“The Etymology of Moxie,” Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America, No. 16 [1995], 208-211).

[The name of the tonic comes from a word that appears in Maine, where the drink’s creator was born, in lake and river names, such as Moxie Falls, and in the local name of a plant, the moxie-plum.  One proposed etymology for the word is an Abenaki word meaning ‘dark water’; Abenaki is an Algonquian language of Quebec and northern New England.  Another suggested origin is that it's an Algonquian root maski-, meaning ‘herbal infusion.’

[The tonic’s manufacturers added soda water to the concoction in 1885, transforming it into a carbonated beverage.  Later, the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 banned unproven health claims, forcing the company to remove “Nerve Food” from its name and drop advertisements claiming it could cure ailments.

[By the 1920s, Moxie became the most popular soda in America.  During the Great Depression (1929-39), however, Moxie started to lose market share to Coca-Cola and other national soft drink brands and by the late 1940s, Moxie was largely a regional favorite in New England. 

[In 2005, Moxie was named the official state soft drink of Maine, and in 2018, the beverage was bought by Coca-Cola.  When I was a preteen, in the mid- and late ’50s, I went to summer camp in Maine, and I had my first taste of Moxie there--and my last!  I didn't like it at all—it tasted bitter and mediciny—and never tried it again.

[The American Sign Museum is in the Camp Washington neighborhood of Cincinnati at 1330 Monmouth Avenue.  The phone number is (513) 541-6366 and the e-mail address is info@americansignmuseum.org.

[Tony Dokoupil is the anchor of the new CBS Evening News with Tony Dokoupil.  He previously served as co-host of CBS Mornings and anchored The Uplift, a weekly series spotlighting positive and inspiring stories for CBS News 24/7.]

[I think Dokoupil chose to use the old-fashioned word ‘moxie’ for his report on ASM because the signage preserved there harks back to an earlier era, as does the word and, like the journalist observed of the businesses represented by the signs, ‘moxie’ is pretty much defunct.  The word belongs to the time when the businesses whose signs are on display were operating.]

Robots! (Part 2)

 

[Part 2 of “Robots!” is the final installment of this short series.  As I acknowledged in Part 1, I decided to post this transcript while I was watching 60 Minutes last week.  When Bill Whitaker, the correspondent, referenced the earlier robotics report from 28 March 2021, I decided to post both transcripts.

[As I usually do with multi-part posts, I recommend reading the foregoing parts in order before jumping in in medias res.  In this case, the introduction to Part 1 contains a very brief run-down on robots and the origin of the word, itself.  (If you don’t already know how the word was coined, you might be surprised.)]

“BOSTON DYNAMICS’ AI-POWERED HUMANOID ROBOT
IS LEARNING TO WORK IN A FACTORY”
by Bill Whitaker and Marc Lieberman

[Four years and nine months after airing the report in Part 1 of this series, CBS’s, 60 Minutes ran the segment below on 4 January 2026 (this link includes the video of the segment).  It was a follow-up to the Anderson Cooper report, this time with Whitaker as correspondent, and the news magazine broadcast revisited Boston Dynamics.

[In December 2020, Hyundai Motor Group, the Korean auto-maker, made a deal to buy 80% of Boston Dynamics, and in June 2021, just after the earlier 60 Minutes report at the end of March, Hyundai completed the agreement and officially took control of BD.  It’s unknown even now what this change of hands means in terms of BD’s robotics work, though the auto-maker has launched a new division to create “walking cars” and other robots.]

Will AI-powered humanoid robots someday work alongside us?

Bill Whitaker: For decades, engineers have been trying to create robots that look and act human. Now, rapid advances in artificial intelligence are taking humanoids from the lab to the factory floor. As fears grow that AI will displace workers, a global race is underway to develop human-like robots able to do human jobs. Competitors include Tesla, startups backed by Amazon and Nvidia, and state-supported Chinese companies. Boston Dynamics is a frontrunner. The Massachusetts company, valued at more than a billion dollars, is hard at work on a humanoid it calls Atlas. South Korean carmaker Hyundai holds an 88% stake in the robot maker. We were invited to see the first real-world test of Atlas at Hyundai’s new factory near Savannah, Georgia. There, we got a glimpse of a humanoid future that’s coming faster than you might think.

Voice-over (Bill Whitaker): Hyundai’s sprawling auto plant is about as cutting-edge as it gets. More than 1,000 robots work alongside almost 1,500 humans, hoisting, stamping and welding in robotic unison. This may look like the factory of the future, but we found the future of the future in the parts warehouse, tucked away in the back corner, getting ready for work. 

Meet Atlas: A 5'9", 200[-]pound, AI-powered humanoid created by Boston Dynamics. The rise of the robots is science fiction no more.

[Atlas, which was featured in the 2021 60 Minutes report covered in Part 1 of this series, was created in 2013. Boston Dynamics released YouTube videos of Atlas at different stages of its development in 2013 (the video in this link seems to be broken), 2016, 2017, May 2018, October 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 (x 2), 16 April 2024, and 17 April 2024.]

Bill Whitaker: I have to say, every time I see it, I just can’t believe what my eyes are seeing. Is this the first time Atlas has been out of the lab?

Zack Jackowski: This is the first time Atlas has been out of the lab doing real work.

Voice-over: Zack Jackowski heads Atlas development. He has two mechanical engineering degrees from MIT and a mission to turn the robot into a productive worker on the factory floor. We watched as Atlas practiced sorting roof racks for the assembly line without human help.

Bill Whitaker: So he’s working autonomously.

Zack Jackowski: Correct

Bill Whitaker: You’re down here to see how Atlas works in the field, and you’ll be showing Atlas off to your bosses at Hyundai?

Zack Jackowski: Yeah.

Yeah, a little bit. I– and I– I think a lot of our roboticists would’ve thought that was pretty crazy five, six years ago. 

Voice-over: When 60 Minutes last visited Boston Dynamics in 2021 [this is the report from 2021, posted as Part 1], Atlas was a bulky, hydraulic robot that could run and jump. Back then, Atlas relied on algorithms written by engineers. When we dropped in again this past fall, we saw a new generation Atlas with a sleek, all-electric body and an AI brain, powered by Nvidia’s advanced microchips, making Atlas smart enough to pull off hard to believe feats autonomously. We saw Atlas skip and run with ease.

Bill Whitaker: Do you ever stop thinking, gee whiz?

Scott Kuindersma: I remain extremely excited about where we are in the history of robotics but we see that there’s so much more that we can do, as well.

Voice-over: Scott Kuindersma is head of robotics research, a job he proudly wears on his sleeve.

Bill Whitaker: You even have on a robot shirt.

Scott Kuindersma: Well, once I saw that this shirt existed, there was no way I wasn’t buying it.

Voice-over: He told us robots today have learned to master moves that until recently were considered a step too far for a machine.

Scott Kuindersma: And a lot of this has to do with how we’re going about programming these robots now, where it’s more about teaching, and demonstrations, and machine learning than manual programming.

Bill Whitaker: So this humanoid, this mechanical human, can actually learn?

Scott Kuindersma: Yes. And– and we found that that’s actually one of the most effective way[s] to program robots like that.

Voice-over: Atlas learns in different ways. In supervised learning, machine learning scientist Kevin Bergamin – wearing a virtual reality headset – takes direct control of the humanoid, guiding its hands and arms, move-by-move through each task until Atlas gets it.

Scott Kuindersma: And if that teleoperator can perform the task that we want the robot to do, and do it multiple times, that generates data that we can use to train the robot’s AI models to then later do that task autonomously.

Voice-over: Kuindersma used me to demonstrate another way Atlas learns.

Scott Kuindersma: That v– very stylish suit that you’re wearing is actually gonna capture all of your body motion to train Atlas to try to mimic exactly your motions. And so you’re about to become a 200-pound metal robot.

Voice-over: He asked me to pick an exercise. They captured the way I work as well.

Bill Whitaker: I am here at the AI Lab at Boston Dynamics. All of my movements, my walking, my d– arm gestures are being picked up by these sensors . . .

Voice-over: Then engineers put my data into their machine learning process. Atlas’ body is different from mine, so they had to teach it to match my movements virtually – more than 4,000 digital Atlases trained for six hours in simulation.

Scott Kuindersma: And they’re all trying to do jumping jacks, just like you. And as you can see, they’re just starting to learn, so they’re not very good at it.

Voice-over: The simulation, he told us, added challenges for the avatars, like slippery floors, inclines, or stiff joints, and then homed in on what works best.

Scott Kuindersma: And it can eventually get to a state where we have many copies of Atlas doing really good jumping jacks.

Voice-over: They uploaded this new skill into the AI system that controls every Atlas robot. Once one is trained, they’re all trained.

Scott Kuindersma: So that’s what you look like when you’re exercising.

Bill Whitaker: Uh-huh.

Voice-over: And what I look like doing my job.

Bill Whitaker: I am here at the AI Lab at Boston Dynamics. All of my movements, my walking, my d– arm gestures are being picked up by these sensors …

Bill Whitaker: This is mind-blowing.

Voice-over: Through the same processes, Atlas was taught to crawl, do cartwheels. It didn’t fare as well with the duck walk.

Scott Kuindersma: Oh, that was fun. And then this happens.

Bill Whitaker: And then this happens.

Scott Kuindersma: We love when things like this happen, actually. Because it’s often an opportunity to understand something we didn’t know about the system.

Bill Whitaker: What are some of the limitations you see now?

Scott Kuindersma: Well, I’d- I would say that most things that a person does in their daily lives, Atlas or– other humanoids can’t really do that yet. I think we’re start–

Bill Whitaker: Like- like what?

Scott Kuindersma: Well, just putting on clothes in the morning, or pouring your cup of coffee and walking around the house with it.

Bill Whitaker: That’s too difficult for– for Atlas?

Scott Kuindersma: Yeah, I think there are no humanoids that do that nearly as well as a person would do that. But I think the thing that’s really exciting now is we see a pathway to get there.

Voice-over: A pathway provided by AI. What stands out in this Atlas is its brain. Nvidia chips – the ones that helped launch the AI revolution with ChatGPT – process the flood of collected data, moving this humanoid robot closer to something like common sense.

Scott Kuindersma: So the analogy might be if I was teaching a child how to do free throws in basketball, if I allow them to just explore and come up with their own solutions, sometimes they can come up with a solution that I didn’t anticipate. And that’s true for these systems as well.

Voice-over: Atlas can see its surroundings and is figuring out how the physical world works.

Scott Kuindersma: So that some day you can put a robot like this in a factory and just explain to it what would– you would like it to do, and it has enough knowledge about how the world works that it has a good chance of doing it.

Robert Playter: There’s a lot of excitement in the industry right now about the potential of building robots that are smart enough to really become general purpose.

Voice-over: Robert Playter, the CEO of Boston Dynamics, spearheaded the company’s humanoid development. He’s been building toward this moment for more than 30 years. The cornerstone was this robotic dog, Spot, introduced almost a decade ago. Spots are trained in heat, cold and varied terrain, and roam the halls of Boston Dynamics.

Robert Playter: So we have some cameras– thermal sensors, acoustic sensors. An array of sensors on its back that lets it collect data about the health of a factory.

Voice-over: Spots carry out quality control checks at Hyundai, making sure the cars have the right parts. They conduct security and industrial inspections at hundreds of sites around the world. What began with Spot has evolved into Atlas.

Robert Playter: So this robot is capable of superhuman motion, and so it’s gonna be able to exceed what we can do.

Bill Whitaker: So you are creating a robot that is meant to exceed the capabilities of humans.

Robert Playter: Why not, right? We– we would like things that could be stronger than us or tolerate more heat than us or definitely go into a dangerous place where we shouldn’t be going. So you really want superhuman capabilities.

Bill Whitaker: To a lotta people that sounds scary. You don’t foresee– a world of Terminators [an allusion to the title character played by Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1984’s science fiction film The Terminator (Orion Pictures) and its sequels]?

Robert Playter: Absolutely not. I think if you saw how hard we have to work to get the robots to just do some of the straightforward tasks we want them to do, that would dispel that– that worry about sentience and rogue robots.

Voice-over: We wondered if people might have more immediate concerns. We saw workers doing a job at the Hyundai plant that Atlas is being trained to perform.

Bill Whitaker: I guarantee you there are going to be people who will say, “I’m gonna lose my job to a robot.”

Robert Playter: Work does change. So the really repetitive, really back-breaking labor is really- is gonna end up being done by robots. But these robots are not so autonomous that they don’t need to be managed. They need to be built. They need to be trained. They need to be serviced.

Voice-over: Playter told us it could be several years before Atlas joins the Hyundai workforce fulltime. Goldman Sachs predicts the market for humanoids will reach $38 billion within the decade. Boston Dynamics and other U.S. robot makers are fighting to come out on top. But they’re not the only ones in the ring. Chinese companies are proving to be formidable challengers. They’re running to win.

Bill Whitaker: Are they outpacing us?

Robert Playter: The Chinese government has a mission to win the robotics race. Technically I believe we remain– in the lead. But there’s a real threat there that, simply through the scale of investment– we could fall behind.

Voice-over: To stay ahead, Hyundai made that big investment in Boston Dynamics.

Zack Jackowski: Four robots . . .

Voice-over: We were at the Georgia plant when Atlas engineer Zack Jackowski presented Atlas to Heung-soo Kim, Hyundai’s head of global strategy. He came all the way from South Korea to check in on the brave new world the carmaker is funding.

Bill Whitaker: What do you think of the progress that they’ve made with Atlas?

Heung-soo Kim: I think we are on track– about the development. Atlas, so far, it’s very successful. It’s a kind of– a start of great journey. Yeah.

Voice-over: The destination? That humanoid future we mentioned at the start – robots like us, working beside us, walking among us. It’s enough to make your head spin.

[Bill Whitaker is an award-winning journalist and 60 Minutes correspondent who has covered major news stories, domestically and across the globe, for more than four decades with CBS News.

[Marc Lieberman joined 60 Minutes in 2014.  Working with correspondent Bill Whitaker, he has produced more than 40 stories, including breaking news, newsmaker interviews, profiles, and in-depth investigations.  He started his career at CBS News in 1992.]