Speaker 1: Hey, everybody. For this week's select, I've chosen our twenty
Speaker 1: nineteen episode on trick or Treating. It's a really in
Speaker 1: depth look at trigger treating and it's got a lot
Speaker 1: of surprising stuff inside, Like it turns out that if
Speaker 1: you don't set abandoned buildings on fire on Halloween, then
Speaker 1: you've been trick or treating all wrong all this time.
Speaker 1: But don't worry. We're releasing this just in time for
Speaker 1: you to learn the ropes this Halloween. Happy and extremely
Speaker 1: safe Halloween, everybody.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
Speaker 1: there's Charles v Chuck, Brian over there, there's Jerry, And
Speaker 1: this is stuff you should know that right before Halloween.
Speaker 1: Addition about.
Speaker 3: Feel like a little kid every Alloween.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty excited about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, do you get trick or treaters? No?
Speaker 1: Not really, no kind of life hashtag, et cetera.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I've told my story before, but I'll just
Speaker 2: briefly summarize again that my house is after a big
Speaker 2: curve in the road, and people seem to just stop
Speaker 2: at that curve in the road.
Speaker 1: Well, they don't want to come up on old man
Speaker 1: Bryant's house. No, you know, the old dead oak tree
Speaker 1: with the big hole in it that yeah Boo Radley
Speaker 1: hides figures in is kind of off putting. Is right
Speaker 1: on your property.
Speaker 3: And I think in my neighborhood too.
Speaker 2: They close they literally close off, the cops close off
Speaker 2: two blocks.
Speaker 3: It's just this big square of streets and.
Speaker 2: That's the official sanctioned no stress area where the parents
Speaker 2: all just walk around and get drunk and all the
Speaker 2: kids just run around and don't to worry about cars.
Speaker 3: Right, So.
Speaker 2: Everyone in my neighborhood has congregated there and you're outside
Speaker 2: of them, outside the zone. Yeah, which I kind of miss,
Speaker 2: Like I like trick or treaters coming to my house.
Speaker 2: I guess I could maybe try, and well I could
Speaker 2: move a few houses in which I'm not going to do.
Speaker 1: We could casually move the the roadblocks a little further
Speaker 1: back to include your house.
Speaker 2: Well, they're actual police cars with police officers. I can't
Speaker 2: move them, give them some but I could put signs
Speaker 2: that like, you know this way for the best yet
Speaker 2: and then you like only two more houses.
Speaker 1: Right, or like leave a trail of candy because I remember.
Speaker 2: When I first moved to Atlanta, we rented a house
Speaker 2: that got a lot of trick or treaters and I
Speaker 2: loved it.
Speaker 3: Man, I scared the heck out of those kids.
Speaker 2: Oh really, yeah, it was a lot of fun, Like
Speaker 2: I really got that was my first big adult giving
Speaker 2: out candy night, like the first time I've ever been
Speaker 2: able to do that, because you didn't have kids yet,
Speaker 2: so we weren't out of trick or treating. And uh yeah,
Speaker 2: I made a really a punt to music out, like
Speaker 2: the Psycho theme and scary John Carpenter stuff.
Speaker 3: Sure, I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: Did you like do anything to overtly scare them?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: Yes, I wore a I was dressed up as a
Speaker 2: very scary person.
Speaker 3: Huh. And I would jump out and scare them over
Speaker 3: and over and over.
Speaker 1: Did you really jump out? Good for you, Chuck, or.
Speaker 2: I would stand in the like Emily would be giving
Speaker 2: out candy, and I would just be in the darkened house,
Speaker 2: like eight feet behind her, just standing there motionless.
Speaker 3: That's always a nice attack.
Speaker 2: Nice, But the point is I sort of feel like
Speaker 2: we're missing out, Like we certainly enjoy taking our daughter out,
Speaker 2: but I really wish we had kids that came by.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I wish you did too, too bad.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a stupid house right there near the main road,
Speaker 1: so close yet so far away, so far away, and
Speaker 1: that's your forever house too. Huh Yeah no, trigger treats
Speaker 1: ever again for you.
Speaker 3: And walked in there.
Speaker 2: But what we could do is, you know, we could
Speaker 2: go to a friend's house and that they jump on
Speaker 2: their coattails.
Speaker 1: You can't sit on their couch. You have to take
Speaker 1: your shoes off in their house. You can't be comfortable.
Speaker 2: We've long talked to me and my friend Eddie and Allison.
Speaker 2: You know the I'm about. They have a good backyard.
Speaker 2: It's about doing like a haunted trail one year that
Speaker 2: like if you come trick or treating, you got to
Speaker 2: go through.
Speaker 3: The trail first.
Speaker 1: It sounds like a lot of work.
Speaker 3: It is, and it would be fun, no, I mean for.
Speaker 1: The kids who have to go through the trail kind
Speaker 1: of earn right, you got to earn that free candy.
Speaker 3: Earn that Reesa's pieces.
Speaker 1: So we just hit upon like fifteen different themes in
Speaker 1: this episode. If you'll if you'll agree, I agree, yes,
Speaker 1: So we're talking about trick or treating here, and if
Speaker 1: you look at the thing on its face, just the
Speaker 1: words trick or treat, there seems to be some sort
Speaker 1: of option here. You can do one or the other.
Speaker 1: There used to be give me a treat or you
Speaker 1: get a trick, basically was the equation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they should just change the name now to just
Speaker 3: treat night.
Speaker 1: Treat night, right exactly. We aren't one hundred you sent
Speaker 1: sure on where trigger treating came from, but what we
Speaker 1: do know is that it was originated in America in
Speaker 1: the twentieth century, and that there was this really like
Speaker 1: brief Golden age where it lived up to its name
Speaker 1: trick or treat. There was a there was an offer
Speaker 1: to not get pranked or tricked, and if you didn't
Speaker 1: take the people up on the offer, the kids up
Speaker 1: on the offer by giving them candy, you got pranked.
Speaker 1: That was the equation. It was in the name. Everybody
Speaker 1: knew the score. And then it slowly kind of moved
Speaker 1: over to what we understand today, where the police set
Speaker 1: up roadblocks and everything is.
Speaker 3: Safe these kids these days, and it's just.
Speaker 1: Kinda just like you said, just the treat side of
Speaker 1: the equation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was, of course kidding but we'll get to it.
Speaker 2: There are people that really do decry this new generation
Speaker 2: of children who just expect handouts and that it leads
Speaker 2: to the idea of the welfare state, right, and all
Speaker 2: this other garbage that I have no patience for sure,
Speaker 2: because it's just a fun thing for kids. Yeah, do
Speaker 2: you think they should be earning the stuff?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 3: No, No, I don't feel that way.
Speaker 1: I do feel well, I think it'll come through loud
Speaker 1: and clear as we do the episode.
Speaker 2: Right, Well, we should jump back a little bit to
Speaker 2: the origins of Halloween. We've gone over this before an
Speaker 2: episode's past, but we all know it originally started as
Speaker 2: a pagan harvest or not just one, but pagan harvest
Speaker 2: festivals in general among the Celts over in the UK. Yes,
Speaker 2: and that evolved into Halloween, but it had nothing to
Speaker 2: do with trick or treating at the time.
Speaker 1: No, it wasn't wrong. Again, trick or treating is a
Speaker 1: one hundred percent American invention, that's right. And so with
Speaker 1: Halloween in particular, you've got all these different components for
Speaker 1: the modern Halloween or for trick or treating. Yes, you
Speaker 1: have going from house to house, you have getting two
Speaker 1: said house and asking for a treat, basically sanctioned begging,
Speaker 1: got your costume, costume, dressing up, being outside, kind of
Speaker 1: parading around. All of these things find their origin in
Speaker 1: the Celtic and I think specifically Gaelic harvest festivals that
Speaker 1: introduced the dark half of the year. That's right, And
Speaker 1: in particular there was Sowyn, which forever I've always said
Speaker 1: sam Hayne, because that's how it's spelled.
Speaker 3: Now, you said Salen right when we did our have
Speaker 3: a wee an episode, didn't you? Probably? Yeah?
Speaker 1: By the way, speaking of sown or sam Hayne, you
Speaker 1: realized that I went to New York and saw the
Speaker 1: Misfits on Saturday.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, how was that?
Speaker 1: I mean it, it was great, colossally amazing. This is
Speaker 1: the original Misfits, right, the original Misfits. Glenn Danzig, Jerry
Speaker 1: Only Sure, Doyle, Wolfgang von Frankenstein. Yeah, who actually specifically
Speaker 1: invited us to this listener right, yes, to this this show.
Speaker 3: And it was that's amazing.
Speaker 1: Knock your socks off?
Speaker 3: Didn't the Damned play as well?
Speaker 1: The Damned opened, and then Rancid and then the Misfits
Speaker 1: just tore the roof off the sucker.
Speaker 3: I saw when I saw you were going.
Speaker 2: I looked up some YouTube clips of this tour and
Speaker 2: it looked pretty amazing.
Speaker 1: It was amazing and I think Glenn Danzig said that
Speaker 1: was their last one ever. Oh really, and so we
Speaker 1: got to see it. Wow, yeah, you me and I
Speaker 1: had a great time.
Speaker 3: Amazing.
Speaker 1: So big, big thanks to Doyle Wolfgang von Frankenstein for
Speaker 1: the invite.
Speaker 3: The stage set up looked great, it was.
Speaker 1: It was just a really cool show and they played
Speaker 1: almost everything.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was just a really good show.
Speaker 3: That's fantastic. So anyway back to Sowyn, Yeah, so I
Speaker 3: mean that's a perfect time to mention that show. Though
Speaker 3: it all worked out, it did.
Speaker 2: Hallow's Eve was the night considered when the veil between
Speaker 2: the living and the dead was the shortest, and so
Speaker 2: that's when this that's when Halloween formed.
Speaker 1: Right right, So people would dress up in like modern
Speaker 1: day Ireland, Scotland, I believe, Wales. Yeah, man, they would
Speaker 1: dress up like demons or fairies or supernatural characters who
Speaker 1: were because this veil was so thin between the living
Speaker 1: and the dead or the supernatural, right, they could cross over.
Speaker 3: These preachers could cross over and communicate.
Speaker 1: So if you dressed up them. Maybe they would be
Speaker 1: confused and think you're one of them and leave you alone.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 1: So this now we've got the costume thing going right.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: And part of that was the community getting together, getting
Speaker 2: drunk on you know, probably high octanea meat and stuff
Speaker 2: like that, and they would pray through the town. They
Speaker 2: still have Halloween parades all over the place. Right here
Speaker 2: in Atlanta we have one of the best and little
Speaker 2: Five Points Halloween parade.
Speaker 1: Fantastic, Like when you think about the Halloween preyed at
Speaker 1: your town, like that is centuries millennia old. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: tradition is.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So we have those two things going on, and then
Speaker 2: the one missing piece is knock knock, Hey give me candy. Right,
Speaker 2: But this we have the origins of which came and
Speaker 2: it's still not Halloween. It took American kids to put
Speaker 2: all this stuff together. But the European tradition of souling,
Speaker 2: which was when kids on Hallow z would go from
Speaker 2: house to house and pray for the souls the departed,
Speaker 2: and in exchange you would get a soul cake.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which I looked up. They look pretty good.
Speaker 3: What is it? Just a little bit good?
Speaker 1: It looks like a muffin top like top of the muffin.
Speaker 1: To you, it looks really good.
Speaker 2: Soul cakes or mumming, which is and this sounds fantastic.
Speaker 2: I wish kids still had to do this stuff. You
Speaker 2: would have to perform a short musical number or some
Speaker 2: kind of performance to get a treat of some kind, right,
Speaker 2: maybe a little spare change.
Speaker 1: Right, So in that sense you have going to house
Speaker 1: to house and getting something from the owners of the house,
Speaker 1: like a treat or something like that.
Speaker 3: That's right, But there was a reason.
Speaker 1: For that, praying for the soul of their departed loved one,
Speaker 1: doing a little dance number something like that. The prank part,
Speaker 1: the prank part of the equation that also existed before
Speaker 1: trick or treating too, and in fact that was kind
Speaker 1: of the origin the biggest tradition of Halloween itself was pranking.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that came from Ireland, is that right?
Speaker 1: Yeah, in the eighteen eighties, they would prank. They would
Speaker 1: just run around doing pranks and then they would blame
Speaker 1: those fairies or demons, right, han sown for the mischief
Speaker 1: that it wasn't nuts, it was the fairies.
Speaker 3: On sam Hin, right, I mean it sounds.
Speaker 1: That's how it's spelled.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really that's a confounding pronunciation, it is.
Speaker 1: But there you have it.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: And then pranks back then, and of course we're pretty
Speaker 2: low key dingdung ditch stuff like that, moving the neighbor's
Speaker 2: furniture to the roof.
Speaker 1: I saw that. Yeah, flower pot on the chimney. Sure,
Speaker 1: but it would also get way way worse than that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I looked up mischief night. We never did that.
Speaker 2: In Georgia, no or Devil's Night.
Speaker 1: It was also called.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is the night before Halloween when all these
Speaker 2: pranks would happen region to region is called different apparently.
Speaker 2: In New Jersey it's mischief Night, Cabbage Nights. Well, in Camden,
Speaker 2: New Jersey's Mischief Night. Other parts of New Jersey call
Speaker 2: it cabbage Night. Since NATA calls it Damage Night.
Speaker 1: That's pretty overt. That's a punk band name, right there.
Speaker 3: Damage Night, Yeah, totally that you insurance deductible night. Other part.
Speaker 2: I don't know why Ohio is so highly represented here.
Speaker 2: Beggar's Knight is something else. They called it in Ohio.
Speaker 1: Chok, because there's nothing else to do in Ohio but
Speaker 1: sit around and wait for that night.
Speaker 3: For Hellow's Eve.
Speaker 2: Other names Doorbell Knight, Trick Night, Corn Night, Tic Tac Night,
Speaker 2: Goosey Night, and then in Canada Gate Night or Matt
Speaker 2: Knight if you're in Quebec, because mat.
Speaker 3: They would take.
Speaker 1: They would steal the gate off your fence or the
Speaker 1: mat from your doorstep and.
Speaker 3: Oh really remove it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, so they're pretty on the nose, especially Damage Night.
Speaker 2: But Devil's Night in Detroit it became legendary over about
Speaker 2: a twenty year period in the seventies and through the
Speaker 2: mid nineties. I saw before they finally got a little
Speaker 2: bit of a could put a dent in it by
Speaker 2: forming Angels Night.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they kind of rebranded it.
Speaker 3: Well, not rebranded.
Speaker 2: The angels were volunteers who would walk around to keep
Speaker 2: kids from setting everything on fire.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, because that's what they did on Devil's Night.
Speaker 3: It was a night of arsen It was a night
Speaker 3: of arson.
Speaker 1: I thought that it ran its course because they burned
Speaker 1: all the buildings down in Detroit. There was nothing else left.
Speaker 3: It was a real problem.
Speaker 2: Though I looked into it and like hundreds of kids,
Speaker 2: Like in nineteen ninety four, I think there were like
Speaker 2: three hundred and fifteen kids arrested from the Devils Night
Speaker 2: fires and other stuff.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty four, the peak of Devil's Night in Detroit,
Speaker 1: there were eight hundred and ten cases of arson in
Speaker 1: one night. Amazing in Detroit. Yeah, they would just set
Speaker 1: the city on fire.
Speaker 2: And I'm sure some of these were bags of poop
Speaker 2: on a doorstep, which I think we can all agree
Speaker 2: is harmless fun.
Speaker 1: It is, unless you're the steppy cever.
Speaker 3: Did any of the stuff? I never rolled a house.
Speaker 1: Oh you didn't, Now that was fun.
Speaker 3: I'm so mad. I was so busy being good.
Speaker 1: Never too late, buddy.
Speaker 3: I know I should roll a house or fork a yard.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that is the plastic forks.
Speaker 2: Just basically get like two thousand plastic forks and stick
Speaker 2: them in the yard.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I've never heard of that one. You never
Speaker 3: did that. Really chew up a lawnmower.
Speaker 2: I never egged a house because I always heard that, Yeah,
Speaker 2: really damage his paint.
Speaker 3: Yeah. We did have the Junior senior egg fight every year.
Speaker 3: That was kind of fun.
Speaker 1: Well, there you go, you got something.
Speaker 3: We get together in a field and throw eggs at
Speaker 3: each other.
Speaker 1: Aside from wasting a lot of press resource with well eggs, yes,
Speaker 1: but also toilet paper. You really should roll somebody's house
Speaker 1: at least once in your life. It's great, is it?
Speaker 3: Yeah? All right, Yeah, I'm gonna roll your condo.
Speaker 1: I remember when I was a kid. Actually, my friend
Speaker 1: and I rolled the neighbor's house, but we had to
Speaker 1: be in or at least, so we were doing it
Speaker 1: basically in broad daylight. It was dusk at best, and
Speaker 1: the cop drove by, which never happened in our neighborhood ever.
Speaker 3: Never.
Speaker 1: The cops just weren't needed, right, It was just I
Speaker 1: think we talked about in the free Range episode in
Speaker 1: parents episode, you could just do whatever. And we had
Speaker 1: to knock out of the house of the neighbor whose
Speaker 1: house we just rolled to let us in to hide
Speaker 1: from the cop. She went out and told the cop like,
Speaker 1: it's it's fine, don't worry about it. We rolled her
Speaker 1: house and had to get safe harbor from her.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And you can't really clean up a roll house,
Speaker 3: can you.
Speaker 1: You can? And if they come tell your parents what
Speaker 1: you did. The rain makes it way worse.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I mean you can't you up there can right?
Speaker 1: Some of it's inevitably stuck up there. But you can
Speaker 1: pull it down as gingerly as you can to get
Speaker 1: as much as you can. But no, some's going to
Speaker 1: be left over.
Speaker 3: All right, I'm going to roll a house.
Speaker 1: Okay, just know whose house you're rolling, like, you don't
Speaker 1: want to get shot at or anything.
Speaker 2: I don't see that anymore either, I feel like it.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't live in the suburbs. Maybe it's
Speaker 2: a little more prone to happen there. Yeah, but it
Speaker 2: seems like a lost art it very well.
Speaker 1: Maybe I don't know anybody who rolls. I just assumed
Speaker 1: it was because we'd outgrown it, you know.
Speaker 3: Emily called it teeping house.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's Ohio.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, all right, let's take a break.
Speaker 1: We barely talked about this. I think we're one page
Speaker 1: in good that's great, all.
Speaker 4: Right, stop, should stop, should know?
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 1: So to recap, Chuck, we have the costumes in play now.
Speaker 1: We have being out on Halloween nights sometimes parading drunkenly community,
Speaker 1: we have going from house to house, and we have
Speaker 1: the prank factor.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 1: All of these things are out there, floating around, have
Speaker 1: been out there for centuries millennia. By the time America
Speaker 1: is born and makes it to the twentieth century, and
Speaker 1: at some point some kids said, we think, hey, you
Speaker 1: know what, we could pull all this together and turn
Speaker 1: it into something really amazing and peculiar and unique called
Speaker 1: trick or treating.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: You found a great piece from a sociologist named Samira Kawash,
Speaker 2: great name called Gangsters, Pranksters, and trick or Treating nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty to nineteen sixty.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and is this.
Speaker 2: That pure period, Yeah, that you were talking about where
Speaker 2: she thinks that American kids just created this thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's two historical views, because we don't know where
Speaker 1: it came from.
Speaker 3: Huh.
Speaker 1: One historical view, and I think this is what Kawash
Speaker 1: believes too, is that it was actually kids who figured
Speaker 1: this out, which is great, who said we can extort
Speaker 1: adults to not prank them if they give us treats, right,
Speaker 1: And that it was a genuinely a kid in mention
Speaker 1: of kids, they made it up, right, And there's some
Speaker 1: evidence for that kind of thing. A lot of like
Speaker 1: the early newspaper accounts of it kind of call the
Speaker 1: kids gangsters and say they're extorting people. It's also possible
Speaker 1: that was like written super tongue in cheek and that dry.
Speaker 1: It was kind of dry and lost to the ages.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The other historical view is that the kids were out
Speaker 1: pranking and doing the pranks, and it was the adults
Speaker 1: that introduced treats into the equation to buy them off,
Speaker 1: okay to yeah, to keep them from pranking.
Speaker 2: Right, Los Angeles possibly as the point of origin, and
Speaker 2: this one wealthy kids. I guess that makes sense that
Speaker 2: this would be the idea of like kids a privilege. Sure,
Speaker 2: you know, like come around, give me stuff. But apparently
Speaker 2: in Los Angeles, kids in the wealthy parts of town
Speaker 2: would dress up and their parents would take them around
Speaker 2: from house to house and this is this is that
Speaker 2: pre nineteen thirty period though.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they think sometime in the twenties, and if you
Speaker 1: think about it, that really resembles what we do today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But in between that origin and where we've arrived today,
Speaker 1: there was this pure period nineteen thirty to nineteen sixties.
Speaker 1: Some people might even take it a little further beyond that,
Speaker 1: where the kids seem to have run the show, and
Speaker 1: there really was both sides of the equation.
Speaker 2: A trick or a treat, right, But that term actually
Speaker 2: was in nineteen twenty seven in an article. Right, it's
Speaker 2: at the first time they found the two words in print.
Speaker 3: Together, I guess three words.
Speaker 2: That was in an article about a town called Blackie
Speaker 2: in Alberta, Canada. Yeah, and it seems like all of
Speaker 2: it was sort of on the West coast early on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and again they think possibly it did originate in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, or it may have originated in multiple towns
Speaker 1: on the West coast roughly at the same time.
Speaker 2: But we're thinking twenties because in nineteen nineteen there was
Speaker 2: a book by Ruth Edna called Ruth ruth Na Kelly
Speaker 2: called The Book of Halloween, and it didn't mention any
Speaker 2: kind of trick or treating in there.
Speaker 1: No, and it's like an exhaustive, comprehensive homemaker.
Speaker 3: Oh review would have been in there, right for sure,
Speaker 3: and you.
Speaker 1: Got to think, like poor Ruth ed Ni Kelly's like, gosh,
Speaker 1: if I just waited like two years to put this
Speaker 1: book out, they're going to come up with something brand
Speaker 1: new with Halloween two years after I come.
Speaker 3: Up with this book, I wrote the book on it. Right,
Speaker 3: not quite now it's out of date.
Speaker 2: But they did find mentions of it in newspapers out
Speaker 2: West Portland, Washington, Reno, Nevada, Nevada, Helena, Montana.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you can kind of track its progress from
Speaker 1: the dates and mentions in West East paper articles. Right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So there's those two sides. One say that it was
Speaker 1: kids who came up with it on their own. Perhaps
Speaker 1: they were introduced with the idea of going from house
Speaker 1: to house to get treats in Los Angeles, but then
Speaker 1: they said, well, we're also doing these prankings. Maybe we
Speaker 1: can say, hey, we won't prank you if you give
Speaker 1: us a treat. There's that view. The other view, again
Speaker 1: is that it was adults who said, whoa kids, You know,
Speaker 1: we don't want you setting fires any longer, derailing street
Speaker 1: cars because every once in a while, somebody would die,
Speaker 1: people would get shot at by angry neighbors. Sometimes somebody
Speaker 1: would be in one of those buildings that they set
Speaker 1: on fire and they die. People would die in a
Speaker 1: building that kids set on fire as a Halloween prank.
Speaker 1: So for the most part though, it was just kind
Speaker 1: of tolerated as one night a year when the kids
Speaker 1: basically had power and we're allowed to run the show.
Speaker 1: So this idea, this other historical view that adults finally said, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, we're not going to just say you can't
Speaker 1: do pranking. That'll probably be a bad thing. But why
Speaker 1: don't we just start having parties on Halloween night while
Speaker 1: we're out pranking, and they'll be cider and doughnuts, and
Speaker 1: you can come inside and bob for apples and maybe
Speaker 1: do that instead of running around pranking the neighborhood. And
Speaker 1: once you did do that, you went from and this
Speaker 1: is samir k Wash putting it, like you under the
Speaker 1: rules of society. You went from this powerful kid who
Speaker 1: could levy a prank on you if he or she
Speaker 1: wanted to, to a house guest of the adult who
Speaker 1: now had you in and had given you donuts and cider.
Speaker 1: You're really going to set their house on fire as
Speaker 1: a prank after that? Of course not, you're not going to.
Speaker 1: So in this sense, trick or treating was something the
Speaker 1: adults introduced to keep kids from carrying out these pranks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it was by the time World War two
Speaker 2: came around. It was a big thing in the nineteen forties.
Speaker 2: But of course, with the sugar rationing and just the
Speaker 2: fact that there was World War two going on, it
Speaker 2: put a dent in it for a little while, but
Speaker 2: it came back bigger than it ever had been after
Speaker 2: the war, And.
Speaker 1: I mean seriously, it came very close to dying out
Speaker 1: going from World War Two. It was pretty new. It
Speaker 1: hadn't gained that much traction. There were a lot of
Speaker 1: cranks and grumps who were not happy about this kind
Speaker 1: of thing.
Speaker 2: I'm curious what else had died in the war and
Speaker 2: never came back. There's got to be lots of little things.
Speaker 1: That's a great question to look it up.
Speaker 2: But there were a couple of big pop culture sort
Speaker 2: of tent poles that helped Halloween along Charles Schultz's pe Nuts.
Speaker 2: Of course, it wasn't the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown yet.
Speaker 1: That was the sixties, I think, yeah.
Speaker 2: But in nineteen fifty one he had a four day
Speaker 2: comic strip run around Halloween where the Peanuts gang got
Speaker 2: already and got their costumes going, and that really brought
Speaker 2: it to the forefront.
Speaker 3: And then Donald Duck. It was a cartoon Donald Duck Trick.
Speaker 2: Or Treat a year after that that had Donald working
Speaker 2: with his nephews, or trying to prank his nephews while
Speaker 2: they were trick or treating and working with a witch,
Speaker 2: and then the candy companies get involved.
Speaker 1: There was also a very famous costume company called Ben
Speaker 1: Cooper Costumes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're the ones that did like the cheap.
Speaker 1: Yes, plastic mask like a Vinyl smod that's right. But
Speaker 1: they had this really great talent of identifying what was
Speaker 1: going to be like a hop culture phenomenon.
Speaker 3: Before it ever blew up. Yeah, it'd get the right.
Speaker 1: They're cheap, yeah, but they were also making these things
Speaker 1: like ten months before, so they really had to have
Speaker 1: foresight and they were really good at it. But the
Speaker 1: fact that you could get cheap, amazing costumes that the
Speaker 1: little kids all wanted of their favorite characters, yeah, that
Speaker 1: definitely helped things along too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was It's hard to overstate like how big
Speaker 2: of a deal it was to a kid to be
Speaker 2: that the certain whatever they wanted to be. I think
Speaker 2: it's still that way, I'm sure it is, but now
Speaker 2: it's a lot easier, I think to buy costumes, right.
Speaker 2: I think when you and I were kids, there's a
Speaker 2: lot of fashioning costumes.
Speaker 1: Uh huh.
Speaker 2: When you didn't have the ability to be like the
Speaker 2: alien from Alien or you know, it was a lot
Speaker 2: harder to put together these elaborate costumes, but once you
Speaker 2: get your heart set on it, you like you had.
Speaker 3: To sure, you know.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to tell you my best costume, and
Speaker 1: you tell me yours. Okay, okay, my mom made one
Speaker 1: from scratch. Yeah, clown is a clown costume. But the
Speaker 1: big kicker was that it was an upside down clown
Speaker 1: walking on his hands, So my feet were the clown's hands. Yes,
Speaker 1: his head is like dangling between my legs. I've got
Speaker 1: his legs sticking up off of my shoulders and I
Speaker 1: don't remember my head must have been covered up like
Speaker 1: I was in his butt or something like that, right,
Speaker 1: but I was upside down walking clown. Greatest costume ever?
Speaker 3: Really? Yeah? Got any pictures somewhere? Okay?
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I did a lot of funny ones, like my brother
Speaker 2: and I were Han Solo and Luke Skywalker when I
Speaker 2: was really little nice. But then I got into like
Speaker 2: I was always wanted to do like funny characters. I
Speaker 2: like like I like Ed Grimley one year, the Saturday
Speaker 2: Night Live character I did Ed Grimley one year, and
Speaker 2: I was I don't know, I felt like I was
Speaker 2: always trying to make people laugh. I never did scary.
Speaker 1: Stuff until little kids started coming around and trick or
Speaker 1: treating me at your house.
Speaker 3: Yes, and then you started just scaring like movie characters.
Speaker 2: Like even into my adult years, you know, I would
Speaker 2: try and find some cool movie character, like Hi from
Speaker 2: Raising your Zona.
Speaker 3: I did one year.
Speaker 1: It's almost a grimly same here.
Speaker 3: Uh No, not all actually uh.
Speaker 2: And then one year I did a great I actually
Speaker 2: won a contest in New Jersey one year when I
Speaker 2: was a hardy kushna and I like shaved my head.
Speaker 2: I did the whole thing. Wow, I had literature. I
Speaker 2: passed out. Wow, made the whole the whole deal.
Speaker 1: You just ended up joining a local chapter for a
Speaker 1: little while. It was fine, really got into the role.
Speaker 3: But I haven't. It's been a few years since I've
Speaker 3: dressed up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, same here, because I just, oh, that's not true.
Speaker 3: I haven't been.
Speaker 2: I haven't been to a Halloween party in probably five years. Right,
Speaker 2: what were you last year?
Speaker 1: I was Patrick Bateman from American Psycho.
Speaker 3: So you were you, but with a tie, right and like.
Speaker 1: A giant inflatable brick cell phone.
Speaker 3: Uh huh?
Speaker 1: And you was a specific Michael Jackson A moment of
Speaker 1: Michael Jackson's history where he's holding blanket over the balcony.
Speaker 1: Oh sure, and Momo wast it's you can see it
Speaker 1: on Instagram.
Speaker 3: That's great. Yeah, I have to check that out, all right.
Speaker 2: So the candy company started getting involved, That's where I
Speaker 2: left off.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because the costume company.
Speaker 3: They knew it was gold for them.
Speaker 2: Mars Incorporated in the early nineteen fifties were doing ad
Speaker 2: campaigns on TV and in newspapers and on the radio
Speaker 2: and stuff about trick or treat. It became a thing
Speaker 2: with UNISEF. They had a Trick or Treat for UNISEF
Speaker 2: campaign back then.
Speaker 1: I think they still might, you know. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: talking about the little boxes. I think so holds change.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they.
Speaker 1: Would just give them to little kids, and while they
Speaker 1: were out trick or treating, they'd also ask for change
Speaker 1: for UNISEF right to help needy kids overseas. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that actually went a really long way to legitimizing trick
Speaker 1: or treating.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: They're doing a lot in these days too for kids
Speaker 2: special needs kids like it. It's taken this long to
Speaker 2: finally get the word out, Like the blue pumpkins.
Speaker 3: Have you heard of those?
Speaker 2: If you trick or treat with a blue pumpkin, that
Speaker 2: means that you have some special need where you may
Speaker 2: not be able to walk to a front door and
Speaker 2: say trick or treat. I'm dressed as you know, Michigan
Speaker 2: j bullfrog what.
Speaker 3: That'd be a great costume? It would be.
Speaker 1: But did you pull that off of I just yeah, wow, nice.
Speaker 3: He's been on my mind lately. I guess so.
Speaker 2: But so people know, like, oh, you've got a blue pumpkin,
Speaker 2: so I shouldn't say, like, you know, come on, kid,
Speaker 2: why don't you tell me what your costume is?
Speaker 3: And?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 3: It's good though, like that it's taken.
Speaker 2: It's ironic that it's taken this long to get parents
Speaker 2: on board to the fact that some kids need, you know,
Speaker 2: different kinds of treatment.
Speaker 1: I don't know if ironic is the best word, as
Speaker 1: much as disappointing is. Yeah, you know, you're probably right.
Speaker 1: Should we take another break? Oh my god, we're gonna
Speaker 1: have to take three more?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: Not, okay, yes, we will then.
Speaker 4: Stop? You should know stop? You should I should know?
Speaker 1: All right, So I think basically what we were saying
Speaker 1: when we left off, it's sorry about the nostalgia here everybody.
Speaker 1: But I mean, come on, you.
Speaker 3: Get us in a room. Yeah, around Halloween, it's going
Speaker 3: to happen.
Speaker 1: So by the early fifties, trigger treating was huge and
Speaker 1: established and had so if the nineteen thirty to nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty was the Heyday, the golden age of trigger treating,
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty to nineteen fifty nine was the salad days
Speaker 1: of the Heyday?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: And when did people start complaining about it? The seventies
Speaker 2: and eighties, nineties.
Speaker 1: Far back as the twenties. Oh really, yeah, because those
Speaker 1: newspaper articles that you can track the progress of Halloween,
Speaker 1: more often than not they were like old cranks complaining
Speaker 1: about how they didn't want to have to give tricks
Speaker 1: or treats or whatever little kids.
Speaker 3: Don't you blackmail me?
Speaker 1: They don't, Yeah, exactly, you know, what are we teaching
Speaker 1: our kids? And there's actually, if you kind of scratch
Speaker 1: beneath the surface of trick or treating, at first, it
Speaker 1: appears to be kind of a weird power struggle between
Speaker 1: kids and adults, and it definitely is that, But there's
Speaker 1: also another power struggle going on between adults of two
Speaker 1: different minds, ones who are like you are overparenting by
Speaker 1: being upset about this or like this is just one
Speaker 1: night a year, it's good for kids, and other people
Speaker 1: are saying like this is terrible for kids. Well, allowing
Speaker 1: them to go from house to house to beg is
Speaker 1: just a bad idea. It's unsafe a is another way
Speaker 1: to put it to. So there's like a struggle weirdly
Speaker 1: over trick or treating, and it has to do with
Speaker 1: underparenting and overparenting and that conversation about the whole thing.
Speaker 2: I have seen parents ruin kids' experiences, whether it's like
Speaker 2: a Easter egg hunt or trick or treating.
Speaker 3: I've seen this in action.
Speaker 1: Because they're too involved. Yeah, yeah, I mean that's what
Speaker 1: it comes down to, is just how involved are you
Speaker 1: in your kids trick or treating. For a very brief period,
Speaker 1: there was very little involvement in kids trick or treating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people say that's actually really good
Speaker 1: for kids. In this other way that we've kind of
Speaker 1: started to evolve toward is not.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't remember my parents taking me around trick
Speaker 2: or treating. I'm sure that happened maybe when I was
Speaker 2: really little, and we certainly would have had to go
Speaker 2: somewhere else, because you know, I've lived on the dirt road,
Speaker 2: the dirt road with no neighbors or very few of them.
Speaker 2: But I just all my memories stem from being like
Speaker 2: probably ten to fifteen and being completely on my own
Speaker 2: with my friends.
Speaker 3: Ten to fifteen, ten years old.
Speaker 1: But to fifteen, that's pretty late.
Speaker 3: What to trick or treat?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, oh, now we trick or treated up until
Speaker 2: probably the like the ninth orteenth grade.
Speaker 1: Well we'll get to it, but in some places you
Speaker 1: get to get arrested for that.
Speaker 3: When did you stop? You'd still trick or treat if
Speaker 3: they would let you.
Speaker 1: I think I stopped around thirteen.
Speaker 3: Well, maybe fifteen was too late. Maybe thirteen or fourteen.
Speaker 1: You're fine, nough fifteenth great, go with God.
Speaker 2: No, but you're you're probably right now that I'll look
Speaker 2: back at. Maybe I went to Halloween parties, but maybe.
Speaker 1: There's a kind of an unofficial slash official again in
Speaker 1: some places cut off after twelve, really done? Yeah, because
Speaker 1: thirteen you're a teenager now, and that's not kids stuff
Speaker 1: as we'll see it. Allegedly, trick or treating is a
Speaker 1: transition from kidhood to adulthood, and by the time you're thirteen,
Speaker 1: you've made that transition that's in your past. It's sad,
Speaker 1: but it's I don't know why, I'm like Christopher walk
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, but I am. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Maybe I wasn't going that late, but I definitely remember
Speaker 2: going by myself at a certain point. But now with
Speaker 2: my neighborhood, it's just that I see mostly parents.
Speaker 3: Not involved at all.
Speaker 2: They're there kind of like if your child is two
Speaker 2: or three, helping them walk to the door and stuff. Sure,
Speaker 2: but otherwise we're just drinking and the kids are doing
Speaker 2: their things.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about this. Then let's skip toward the
Speaker 1: end and we'll jump back. Okay, all right, there is
Speaker 1: this debate over, you know, whether it's better to just
Speaker 1: kind of cross your fingers and hope for the best
Speaker 1: and let your kids go out and trick or treat
Speaker 1: on their own, whether that's good or whether we need
Speaker 1: to the world's just too unsafe for that, and we
Speaker 1: need to much more manage kids trick or treating than
Speaker 1: just letting them go out on their own.
Speaker 3: Well, it depends on where you are. That's the big divide.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And one of my personal heroes, the world's worst
Speaker 1: mom Lenori's Kanazi, who came up with the Free Range
Speaker 1: Kid's blog and the whole movement. Frankly, she makes this
Speaker 1: really great point that when we let kids trick or treat,
Speaker 1: we let them confront danger like on their own, and
Speaker 1: it's real, it's just a thin, the narrowest margin of danger.
Speaker 1: I mean, people always talk about like the you know,
Speaker 1: like the worst things that could happen on on Halloween
Speaker 1: when a kids out trigger treating, getting hit by a car,
Speaker 1: getting kidnapped by a stranger, getting like, yes, just stuff
Speaker 1: that happens, and it can't happen. It's true, but it
Speaker 1: happens so infrequently that the chances are it's not going
Speaker 1: to happen, and you're actually better off just letting the
Speaker 1: kid roll the dice, because, as Lenorise Kanazi puts it,
Speaker 1: when when you go trigger treating, you're transitioning from being
Speaker 1: a kid to a grown up, and you're doing this
Speaker 1: quite literally. You go with your parents first, and they
Speaker 1: kind of teach you the rules of the road, like
Speaker 1: just take one piece of candy, or that house over
Speaker 1: there has their lights off, so leave them alone. They
Speaker 1: don't want to have anything to do with this and
Speaker 1: then after that you let them go on their own, right,
Speaker 1: and they kind of take the ball and roll with it.
Speaker 1: And she says that that when they're out trick or
Speaker 1: treating kids dressed like grown ups, they take to the streets,
Speaker 1: they encounter the scariest possible locals, which is in goblins,
Speaker 1: and then yes, they're doing the scariest possible time night
Speaker 1: and the whole thing is dressed rehearsal for adulthood, and
Speaker 1: that like, that's the benefit of trick or treating.
Speaker 2: I don't quite get that that is the same as adulthood.
Speaker 2: Like you and I all the time walking around night
Speaker 2: fighting goblins and water.
Speaker 1: Right, exactly where would we have been without trick or
Speaker 1: treating to prepare us for fighting goblins?
Speaker 4: All right?
Speaker 1: But just confronting fears are on their own, without their
Speaker 1: parents managing their world for them so that they can
Speaker 1: handle themselves, have the confidence to know they can handle themselves.
Speaker 1: And I guess feel good about having confronted their fears
Speaker 1: and gotten candy in return. Let's not forget about that. Yeah, Now,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, it's just just take the candy.
Speaker 1: It's fine, right, Mommy and Daddy made it perfect for you.
Speaker 1: All you have to do is go get the candy.
Speaker 1: You're in a perfect bubble and everything's fine. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: I kind of tend to fall on Lenor's Knazzi's side
Speaker 1: on that.
Speaker 3: Well, should we talk a little bit about the.
Speaker 2: You know, whether or not there have been all these
Speaker 2: real horror stories over the years, and whether or not
Speaker 2: any of those are true. As far as the razor
Speaker 2: blade and the apple and stuff like that, hypodermic needles
Speaker 2: and candy, this stuff doesn't happen, No.
Speaker 1: And the thing to point out, and I know we've
Speaker 1: talked about it before, is that it was an urban
Speaker 1: legend that came true.
Speaker 2: Right There was one case, and this is actually kind
Speaker 2: of funny if you asked me. In nineteen fifty nine,
Speaker 2: there was a dentist in California named William Shine who
Speaker 2: I took alo laxative pills and disguise them as candy
Speaker 2: and give out four hundred and fifty of them jerk
Speaker 2: to kids, and they were all pooping.
Speaker 1: I guess, so I think a few did poop. Nobody
Speaker 1: got injured, though.
Speaker 3: Right now, you're not gonna get injured from a laxative.
Speaker 1: You could poop over, poop over poop.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but this is when I think this real story
Speaker 2: got out. And then all of a sudden he gets
Speaker 2: morphed into needles and razor blades or poison or candy
Speaker 2: laced with heroin and.
Speaker 3: Stuff like that. Well that did happen.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, but that's the thing, Like the examples that
Speaker 2: are listed are reverse engineered almost right.
Speaker 1: Right, So, there was a little boy in Texas who
Speaker 1: died from eating a cyanide laced pixie stick right in Texas,
Speaker 1: in I can't remember what year.
Speaker 3: Of seventy four, and.
Speaker 1: It turned out that it was his dad. That his
Speaker 1: dad was the scum of the earth who had taken
Speaker 1: out insurance policies on his own children, good Lord, and
Speaker 1: then gave them spiked Halloween candy to make it look
Speaker 1: like some mad poisoner he killed his kids so he
Speaker 1: could collect insurance. One of his kids did die, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't just some random Halloween poisoner. That guy didn't
Speaker 1: really exist at the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, nineteen seventy in Detroit was the heroin incident. This
Speaker 2: kid overdose, These kids ate their uncle stash is what
Speaker 2: really happened. And then the uncle's like, oh crap, let
Speaker 2: me sprinkle the heroin on the candy and cook up
Speaker 2: the story and maybe cook up some heroin right since
Speaker 2: I'm cooking, Yeah, and to try and get out of this.
Speaker 3: So again, it really happened, but not in the way
Speaker 3: that you think.
Speaker 1: No. The thing that got everybody so that William Shine guy,
Speaker 1: who I just think is a scale for that, because
Speaker 1: he scared the pants off of America's parentsh He basically said, hey, hey,
Speaker 1: you know how you're letting your kids run free? Something
Speaker 1: really bad could happened to him, and I just showed
Speaker 1: you how. And from that that next year on, the
Speaker 1: parents were anxiously involved in Halloween like they never had
Speaker 1: been before. Sure because of William Shine. But the thing
Speaker 1: that really killed Halloween, or at least cemented I think
Speaker 1: the anxieties in the heads of parents in America is
Speaker 1: that tail and All poisoner. Oh, sure canceled Halloween nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty two. Did it really almost drove Ben Cooper Costumes
Speaker 1: out of business? Candy sales went down fifty percent.
Speaker 3: Trick or treated in nineteen eighty two, Well.
Speaker 1: Your parents didn't love you. I think I did too.
Speaker 1: I don't remember not I would remember not trick or
Speaker 1: treating one year.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because that would have been eleven. That's prime time, right,
Speaker 2: Apparently those are the retirement years.
Speaker 1: But all of this stuff added a veneer of fear
Speaker 1: and anxiety on trick or treating for parents, not for
Speaker 1: kids necessarily, but for parents, and it drew them into
Speaker 1: what was possibly just a kid run activity because of fear,
Speaker 1: probably irrational. Yeah, and now you have to this day,
Speaker 1: the FDA sending out guidelines around Halloween saying don't let
Speaker 1: your kids eat any candy until they bring it home,
Speaker 1: which is just torture. Yeah, and you have to inspect
Speaker 1: it and if you've see any pinholes or tears or
Speaker 1: anything that looks weird, just throw it away. Some hospitals
Speaker 1: say bring your kids candy and well X ray ye
Speaker 1: to see if there's any razor blades or needles in
Speaker 1: it or something like that. This is the kind of
Speaker 1: terror that ironically is overlaid on Halloween. It's like fun
Speaker 1: terror has actual real terror on top of it, which
Speaker 1: makes it less fun.
Speaker 3: We don't inspect candy. Oh you don't you roll the dice? Huh?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's great.
Speaker 3: I don't know anyone who does.
Speaker 1: Really.
Speaker 3: Oh, man, I was raised like that. You inspect it candy.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, my parents were serious about it.
Speaker 3: We never did. I don't know, I just I don't know.
Speaker 3: That's great.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's that thing of like if you're the because
Speaker 2: it doesn't happen.
Speaker 1: Right, No, I'm hardened to hear that. Yeah, because when
Speaker 1: we did our Free Range Kids episode, I remember thinking, like,
Speaker 1: what what's going on now? Like like kids are treated
Speaker 1: like this yor not.
Speaker 3: Being poisoned by Halloween candy. It's just not happening, right,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Plus in our neighborhood, with the sanctioned closure, all
Speaker 2: the candy is, people aren't buying their own candy. It's
Speaker 2: like the neighborhood buys all the candy and they congregated
Speaker 2: in these couple of blocks.
Speaker 3: Oh that's cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, I mean there could be a madman living
Speaker 2: among us. It happens, but that's like being scared to
Speaker 2: walk out your front door for fear of being murdered.
Speaker 1: Right right, Chuck, You know you just can't live that way.
Speaker 3: You can't live that way. You know.
Speaker 1: You told me a story about a village, Like villages
Speaker 1: in Japan have like a festival or two every year. Now,
Speaker 1: like the whole community comes out it's like a big deal.
Speaker 1: And there was one village, a little tiny town where
Speaker 1: this one woman, just I guess, went mad and poisoned
Speaker 1: the curry that she brought to the village. Thing, kill
Speaker 1: the bunch of townspeople. It happens, It does happen. But
Speaker 1: you're right, you can't not eat the curry just because
Speaker 1: of the small, small chance that some mad person has
Speaker 1: poisoned it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The way I look at it is, if that's what happens,
Speaker 2: then that's you know, your numbers up, your numbers up
Speaker 2: in your story in the newspaper, right to scare other people.
Speaker 1: Sure, you get to be immortalized on stuff.
Speaker 2: You should know it's trick or treat going away, Josh,
Speaker 2: I don't know, Chuck, I say, no, Okay, that's good.
Speaker 1: I'm glad to hear that, because again I'm living hashtag
Speaker 1: condo life. I'm out of the action.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, there's this the last bit of this
Speaker 2: article you sent talked about it going away potentially, But
Speaker 2: I just I don't think that's ever ever going to happen.
Speaker 3: So what are your arguments for it going away?
Speaker 1: That it might My arguments or your are my observation,
Speaker 1: your observations. One of the big ones is that fear
Speaker 1: among parents that helicopter parenting has not been good for
Speaker 1: trick or treating. Ah okay, okay, but think about that's
Speaker 1: a real struggle going on right now overparenting versus underparenting.
Speaker 1: Which one's gonna win out right? Okay. Another one is
Speaker 1: there's a perception that that trick or treating is dying out,
Speaker 1: which is kind of funny, is there. Yes, because people
Speaker 1: are moving back into towns and gentrifying those towns, like
Speaker 1: we talked about in the Historic District episode, and as
Speaker 1: they're doing that. Trigger treating was never huge in the city,
Speaker 1: and so people who were raised in the suburbs and
Speaker 1: or were used to it or moving into the city
Speaker 1: and there's no trigger treating going on anymore. So I
Speaker 1: guess trick or treating is dying because that's what I'm seeing.
Speaker 3: I beg to differ with that too.
Speaker 1: Okay, But I mean, you don't live in the city city,
Speaker 1: you live in a neighborhood.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but that's all Atlanta is a bunch of neighborhoods. Okay,
Speaker 2: you mean I don't live downtown.
Speaker 1: Maybe these people live in Des Moines.
Speaker 3: I don't know. No one lives in downtown Atlanta.
Speaker 1: No, it's true, although it has gotten cooler than it
Speaker 1: was like a decade ago.
Speaker 2: Sure, but I beg to differ that trick or treating
Speaker 2: doesn't go on in the cities. I think there are
Speaker 2: apartment buildings in New York where people trick or treat,
Speaker 2: like just because it's not the picket fence suburban neighborhood.
Speaker 3: Sure, I think trick or treating goes on everywhere.
Speaker 1: But this author my house, Julie Beck, who wrote in
Speaker 1: The Atlantic, she put it really well that basically the
Speaker 1: suburbs and trick or treating just go hand in hand. Sure,
Speaker 1: Like the suburbs are set up for trick or treat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you've got houses that are close together, super safe, yeap
Speaker 1: where people who live there are just well enough off
Speaker 1: to buy enough candy for the whole neighborhood. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: all have kids, They know each other enough that you're
Speaker 1: not embarrassed for your kid to go up in trick
Speaker 1: or treat there, and you know that this candy is
Speaker 1: not going to be poisoned. In the city, you're much
Speaker 1: more isolated from one another, even though you're living on
Speaker 1: top of one another.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think maybe if we're talking about like
Speaker 2: areas where there are poor kids and where poverty is
Speaker 2: run rampant, then maybe there's less traditional trick or treating,
Speaker 2: but there are programs and parties and things they try
Speaker 2: to do for those kids too.
Speaker 1: Okay, so those very things may end up being what
Speaker 1: kills trick or treating, I should say, the purest version
Speaker 1: of trick or treating. You can also just make the
Speaker 1: case well that's what it's evolving into, and just go
Speaker 1: with it.
Speaker 3: I think it will probably be both.
Speaker 2: But you're talking about the big Halloween parties, community parties,
Speaker 2: trunk or treating, trunk or treating, or what was it
Speaker 2: called Halloween tailgating, Halloween tailgating, trunk or treating. This is
Speaker 2: the idea that you and we had this at our school.
Speaker 2: We had the Halloween festival, but that did not replace
Speaker 2: trick or treating.
Speaker 1: Okay, this replaces trick or treating for a lot of children.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So you go out and you get in a big
Speaker 2: church parking lot essentially, yep, and you have Bob and
Speaker 2: Frapples and the dunk tank.
Speaker 1: Oh this is different, and huh, this is a little
Speaker 1: different than that well.
Speaker 3: I mean I've seen these in person, and.
Speaker 1: Okay, but that's a Halloween festival you're talking about.
Speaker 2: No, No, I'm talking about instead of trick or treating. It's
Speaker 2: a big party where they have candy and they have
Speaker 2: activities and games and stuff.
Speaker 1: So are you going from car to car getting candy
Speaker 1: like the cars or houses?
Speaker 2: No, not necessarily, but they're giving out candy.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're not talking about a trunk er treating.
Speaker 3: It feels very nitpicky to me. No, but it's not.
Speaker 3: And here's why I'm not talking about a Halloween festival though.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's fine, that's fine, but you're not talking about
Speaker 1: a trunk er treating either.
Speaker 2: You mean you walk five feet to a car and
Speaker 2: they give you candy, then five feet to another car
Speaker 2: and they say, don't play any games, don't bob for apples,
Speaker 2: or don't do anything else.
Speaker 3: All you're doing is walking to cars.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that they don't have bobbing for apples,
Speaker 1: but the purpose of trunk or treating is to basically
Speaker 1: set up a safe ring of cars where the kids
Speaker 1: are literally penned in. Yeah, the kids who used to
Speaker 1: be the ones who were running the show are now
Speaker 1: penned in by the anxious adults cars handing out candy
Speaker 1: rather than going to houses, walking around to church parking
Speaker 1: lot for trunk or treating instead of trick or treating. Yes,
Speaker 1: these are not the kids who could pull that.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to replace trick or treat what the.
Speaker 1: Kids in the goonies were able to pull off because
Speaker 1: they had freedom and spark. That kids who trunk or
Speaker 1: treat are being denied right as let me go back
Speaker 1: to my friend Lenor Skanazi. She says, the trunk or
Speaker 1: treating is just another adult light activity, one that reinforces
Speaker 1: the community killing idea that kids aren't ever safe outside
Speaker 1: the home, school or supervised program. And that is most
Speaker 1: definitely the message that kids get when they're trunk or treating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that is not going to kill trick
Speaker 2: or treating or take over trick or treating.
Speaker 1: We'll see, Chuck.
Speaker 2: I hope you're right, because one thing I have not
Speaker 2: seen since I've lived in Atlanta is any big trunk
Speaker 2: or treating activities.
Speaker 1: Well, that's because you live in Atlanta. All you have
Speaker 1: to do is go out to the suburbs and they're everywhere.
Speaker 3: But the suburbs are made for trick or treating. They're
Speaker 3: out in the neighborhoods.
Speaker 1: I got to end on a quote I ran across
Speaker 1: a website, I guess a church website that's talking about
Speaker 1: trunk or treating. It's awesome this quote. It says that
Speaker 1: the scariest part about the night this is a trunk
Speaker 1: or treating night, isn't the costumes. It's the possibility that
Speaker 1: you could miss out on the chance to use trunk
Speaker 1: or treat to build relationships and reach these kids with
Speaker 1: the gospel. Well, yeah, that's the opposite of what Halloween
Speaker 1: is all about.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 1: Have you got anything else? It's about arson, right, eight
Speaker 1: and ten cases of it. Sorry, I'm one of those
Speaker 1: curmudgeons that it turns out one more thing. Yes, if
Speaker 1: you like Halloween, go on to our old Stuff you
Speaker 1: should know website and search Halloween and Creepy and you're
Speaker 1: gonna find some amazing slideshows we put together over the
Speaker 1: years that I remember that. One of my favorite is
Speaker 1: cute and creuddy Halloween costumes, vintage Halloween costumes that are
Speaker 1: really creepy, best Jack lanterns, all sorts of great stuff.
Speaker 3: Remember those days where we count page views and get
Speaker 3: excited about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this one felt like a bit of a tirade.
Speaker 3: Yeah was it? I don't think so.
Speaker 1: Okay, Kim, Well, if you want to know more about Halloween,
Speaker 1: get out of there and trigger treat. And since I
Speaker 1: said that as time for listener may.
Speaker 2: This is follow up on paraphilias that we wanted to
Speaker 2: read for the last few weeks. Just now get into it.
Speaker 2: Hey guys, longtime listener, first time writer. I've had this
Speaker 2: episode pop up a few times. It's just been on
Speaker 2: my mind. I'm in our N with MSN and background
Speaker 2: and have background in neurophysiology who enjoys studying abnormal psych
Speaker 2: I understand you were doing a show on psychological term
Speaker 2: on a psychological term, but you may have ended up
Speaker 2: painting wrong ideas onto certain practices, specifically S and M
Speaker 2: and cross dressing. From when I've come to know, it's
Speaker 2: extremely rare that people practice these primarily for sexual gratification.
Speaker 2: Of course, these practices are adult in nature. Most regard
Speaker 2: it as an emotional practice or exploration of self. For example,
Speaker 2: shibari or rope bondage takes hundreds of hours of practice
Speaker 2: to perform and those that partake describe a meditation like
Speaker 2: state as a result, though most would say it's sn M.
Speaker 2: Most cross stressors describe the long process of becoming female
Speaker 2: as cathartic and self affirming, although be it temporary. Simplifying
Speaker 2: cross stressors to those who walk around on high heels
Speaker 2: to reach completion, well imagine saying that about a trans woman.
Speaker 2: Of course, if you were doing these practices for sexual gratification,
Speaker 2: all the power to you. I suggest you look into
Speaker 2: kink culture as an episode. It's where a wide range
Speaker 2: of people congregate and share their interest in a community
Speaker 2: that is founded off respect and consent their meetups and
Speaker 2: presentations on practices so that others can learn proper technique.
Speaker 2: The most that practice would like to keep their privacy,
Speaker 2: and that is from Anonymous.
Speaker 1: Takes a lot, Anonymous. That was a good correction emails right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: If you want to get in touch with us like
Speaker 1: Anonymous did to set us straight, we love that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. You can join us at stuff youshould Know
Speaker 1: dot com and check out our social links there, and
Speaker 1: you can send us an email to Stuff podcast at
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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