If you find yourself in France and the name Brian pops up, there’s a good chance it’ll be met with the question, “Where is Brian?” There is only one correct answer to this question: “Brian is in the kitchen.”

But…why is this the correct answer? And how is this a joke? To get to the bottom of this quandary, you’ll have to go back in time to the 1970s, or to a video posted on Instagram by travel content creator Roya Fox.

As Fox explains in the clip, “Where is Brian?” is one of France’s most famous jokes, which references a widely popular vintage English-speaking textbook for 6th graders, titled méthode Speak English Classe de 6e.

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One of the exercises in this textbook had students listen to an audio that asked various questions, then prompted them to use the images in the book to answer the questions. One of the prompts was “Where is Brian?” And, judging by the image in the........

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