Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know front House Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, Jerry's over there
Speaker 1: in the ether, floating, possibly not existing, who knows. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this is stuff you should know, that's right. Just
Speaker 1: a couple of couple of merman trying to make their
Speaker 1: way in the world, trying to keep their tails wet.
Speaker 1: Yeah you know, yeah, because that thing dries out. You've
Speaker 1: seen Splash. Yeah, it's a actually past now. She dried
Speaker 1: out and she was just fine. Oh. I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: you thinking of et when he turned all white and
Speaker 1: dried out. I was thinking of Splash because I couldn't remember.
Speaker 1: It's one of It was one of my favorite movies
Speaker 1: as a kid. It's a cute movie. Um. It was
Speaker 1: one of those early HBO movies, early Tom Hanks, which
Speaker 1: I'm big fan of early Tom Hanks, and um, I
Speaker 1: just thought it was a really fun funny movie. John
Speaker 1: Candy movie what's his name played the evil man trying
Speaker 1: to expose her. Um, Eugene Levy, I think, oh, was
Speaker 1: he the bad guy? Yeah? He was the one that
Speaker 1: you know that's a high quality movie. When Eugene Levy
Speaker 1: is the bad guy. Yeah, there was the SETV crew
Speaker 1: and um, he actually tried to spray her and get
Speaker 1: her wet so she would and the fat kid turned
Speaker 1: into a mermaid on the sidewalk, That's what it was.
Speaker 1: And she got wet, she turned to a mermaid. She
Speaker 1: got tried, no problem. Yes, And Daryl Hannah, of course,
Speaker 1: who's running around with Neil Young? Now? Oh really? Yeah?
Speaker 1: How about that couple? Sure? Why not? Both environmentalists. But
Speaker 1: there's a lot of turquoise in that bedroom. I wonder
Speaker 1: if you hook up with Neil Young, if or anyone
Speaker 1: like that, if if you're sort of a new relationship
Speaker 1: and not like the wife they had for forty years,
Speaker 1: if you're like, ya, play a song, why don't you what? Like?
Speaker 1: I wonder if you asked them to play music? Oh,
Speaker 1: like you're actually into him? Yeah, Like if if you're
Speaker 1: Billy Joel's new year old wife, do you ever say, like, hey, honey,
Speaker 1: play me a tune. Play that one that you that
Speaker 1: you wrote ten years before I was conceived. I think
Speaker 1: what I'm saying is I would have a hard time
Speaker 1: being with Neil Young and not every night after dinner,
Speaker 1: just kind of nudging the guitar towards him, Oh, I
Speaker 1: got you, and saying I'd love to hear Old Man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: please baby one for me, And yeah, he says, I
Speaker 1: played that song times. Yeah, I would guess that, well,
Speaker 1: I can tell you I would. I would. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: would guess that once you reach a certain point and
Speaker 1: playing a song, you never want to hear that song
Speaker 1: or even think about it existing again, but then you
Speaker 1: still have to play it. I try not to think
Speaker 1: about that when I'm at those shows. Yeah, it makes
Speaker 1: me feel bad for him, like they might as well be,
Speaker 1: you know, in the monkey house or something, and you
Speaker 1: just throwing bananas at him. And God bless the people
Speaker 1: who really bring it still where you feel like, man,
Speaker 1: they're playing that song for me tonight, Adam Man did
Speaker 1: he still bring it? He's just who came to mind.
Speaker 1: Whereas when I saw the Police on their reunion, they
Speaker 1: were phoning it in really, even Stewart Copeland. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: they were playing the songs, but it just it didn't
Speaker 1: look like they were enjoying themselves at all. It looked
Speaker 1: like a total money grab. Sure, they entered from three
Speaker 1: separate entrances and exited from three separate and I got
Speaker 1: the feeling they didn't even like speak much. That's like
Speaker 1: I was reading an article on the Ramons, the Rolling
Speaker 1: Stone one recently. Uh yeah, I guess it was. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they had a great article on them, so yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess it was. It was definitely Rolling Stones. So okay,
Speaker 1: did you read it? Yeah, then it was awesome. But yeah,
Speaker 1: they're like they they would they would just like get
Speaker 1: on the bus and not speak to one another, go
Speaker 1: to the next town and get on stage and play
Speaker 1: and then come off stage and not like they would.
Speaker 1: They would be gun stage because they had to. That
Speaker 1: was it. And apparently, well at least Joey and who
Speaker 1: was his big foil is those ones who really hated
Speaker 1: each other. Yeah, supposedly they didn't speak at all for
Speaker 1: like twenty five years straight, right because Joey stole d
Speaker 1: D's like love of his life and then they were
Speaker 1: in the band together still after that it was just
Speaker 1: like ts Man, so weird. So like a lot of songs,
Speaker 1: especially once like the kk K Took My Baby Away,
Speaker 1: that's about Joey stealing dds girlfriend. Wow, it was a
Speaker 1: great article, good read. Um, So back to splash, funny
Speaker 1: movie about a mermaid, and we're gonna talk about mermaids here,
Speaker 1: and mostly what we're gonna cover is the lore in
Speaker 1: history and the mythology of the mermaid because there's a
Speaker 1: little giveaway there are no mermaids. What did you look
Speaker 1: up like pictures of real mermaids sightings and stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's the same thing as pictures of Bigfoot sighting,
Speaker 1: some pictures of UFO sighting some weird distant blur that like,
Speaker 1: you can't it could be kelped or it is such
Speaker 1: an obviously doctored photo. What would be fun, though, is
Speaker 1: if we had a time machine forget killing Hitler. If
Speaker 1: you get like, oh yeah, that's right. I can't believe
Speaker 1: we don't put this into good use. Forget like, um,
Speaker 1: you know, saving the world. They're keeping the Dodo from
Speaker 1: going extinct. I would take some of these doctored photos
Speaker 1: that are just so easy to make today back to
Speaker 1: like the nineteen twenties and be like look at this
Speaker 1: and they go, yeah, I know, we still believe in
Speaker 1: that stuff. With your aim being what just a freak
Speaker 1: am out, I figured there'd be a money angle. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: Josh is traveling Wonder Wonder emporium. It's not a bad
Speaker 1: idea where in which you just show them photos. But
Speaker 1: I charged them like two thousand sixteen rates and no
Speaker 1: one can possibly afford that, So I go out of business,
Speaker 1: like almost immediately. Right, there's like one guy in the town.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, pay fifty to see those right, step
Speaker 1: right up, towns only billionaire. Um, that's a great idea.
Speaker 1: I don't know why no one ever thought of that.
Speaker 1: It was a terrible idea, like from beginning to end.
Speaker 1: Forget going back and betting on the stock market or
Speaker 1: the outcome of the World Series. I'm gonna go back
Speaker 1: and set up a business doom to fail. All right,
Speaker 1: So let's talk about mermaid uh lore. Well we can
Speaker 1: start here in the more modern age, because there are
Speaker 1: still places that try and take people for money, like
Speaker 1: we were just talking about, even like me um in
Speaker 1: fact uh in Israel on the coast there and they
Speaker 1: actually have a town called kyr yat Yam. And if
Speaker 1: you go to kiryat Yam, you could win how much money?
Speaker 1: Does he even say? Million bucks? Million American dollars if
Speaker 1: you um, if you provide incontrovertible evidence of the mermaid
Speaker 1: that is reputed to want to live there, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: appear at sunce as of two thousand nine was the
Speaker 1: first sighting there. Yeah, And of course what that is
Speaker 1: is a ploy to try and get tourists and come
Speaker 1: and spend money in the town and look for the mermaid.
Speaker 1: The welcome you to Yam. I'm sure lock Ness has
Speaker 1: made plenty of tourist money over the years. Apparently they
Speaker 1: have a standing offer as well, and that's where the
Speaker 1: mayor of Curiot Yam got the idea great idea. And
Speaker 1: actually I saw that photo too. It's kind of neat.
Speaker 1: I don't know what it is or who created it
Speaker 1: or whatever, but there's allegedly a photo taken obviously from
Speaker 1: like a cliff down on to a beach, you know,
Speaker 1: a beach that will have like a big just slab
Speaker 1: of rocks surrounded by sand, sand and mermaids. Right, there's
Speaker 1: a mermaid on that rock, just kind of looking out
Speaker 1: in the sea. And of course it could be anything.
Speaker 1: It could be totally doctored, who knows um, But it's
Speaker 1: from a distance and at least they didn't like go
Speaker 1: full out like perfect picture of a mermaid of ever
Speaker 1: it's it's it's just um suggest to enough that people
Speaker 1: who believe in such things would be like, right, there,
Speaker 1: there's a picture of a mermaid, you know, so that
Speaker 1: was found in two thousand nine, or that surfaced in
Speaker 1: two thousand nine, and since then the surfaced right, since
Speaker 1: then the town's uh had that standing offer? Correct? So uh?
Speaker 1: The really the interesting thing to me about mermaids is
Speaker 1: the mythology. Did you take mythology in college at all? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I did. It. Always wanted it to interest me more
Speaker 1: than it did me too. It was just I don't
Speaker 1: know if it wasn't explained to me quite well enough,
Speaker 1: or just the ancients non bicameral mind wasn't um fused
Speaker 1: together enough to interest people in the modern age. Well,
Speaker 1: I think so. I think the stories themselves, as far
Speaker 1: as good storytelling, we're just lacking because a lot of
Speaker 1: them were just versions of one another, and there was
Speaker 1: usually a very basic uh amis or moral um. And
Speaker 1: in the case of mermaids, a lot of times they
Speaker 1: were a lot of folksore even was rooted in misogyny.
Speaker 1: You know, you know, there'll be a woman to come
Speaker 1: along and screw your life up, right, or if you
Speaker 1: grew up a woman, Um, she will kill your children
Speaker 1: or something like that, like women were not to be trusted,
Speaker 1: and they were murderous and duplacidus and a lot of
Speaker 1: mythologist the old Hag so uh it was in various,
Speaker 1: I mean hundreds and hundreds of books and texts, including
Speaker 1: the Talmud, believe it or not. And we've talked about
Speaker 1: plenty of the Elder, the Beer and the dude Rome's
Speaker 1: plan of the Elder. He in his Natural History talked
Speaker 1: about a mermaid like creature called the neriad. Yes, I
Speaker 1: think I'm pronouncing that correctly. Yeah, in e r e
Speaker 1: I d that ei is a tough transition, is because
Speaker 1: you want to say, like the Reid, Yeah ner Reed,
Speaker 1: these are sea nymphs, half human, half fish mermaids and um.
Speaker 1: He also talked about sea men. And we should point
Speaker 1: out that Merman we made the joke about us being Merman.
Speaker 1: I believe Merman were even first on the literary scene.
Speaker 1: Is that correct? Well, first, at least with mythology or
Speaker 1: um theology. I guess there's a Babylonian god of the
Speaker 1: sea named Ea e A sports um just e A,
Speaker 1: and he pops up in uh Babylonian mythology from I
Speaker 1: think four thousand years ago, and they think that he's
Speaker 1: actually the progenitor of or the predecessor I should say,
Speaker 1: of Poseidon, who is the Greek god of the sea,
Speaker 1: and Neptune, who's the Roman god of the see. Because
Speaker 1: the Greeks gave us Western culture, but they just walked
Speaker 1: around to all of the neighboring cultures and picked their
Speaker 1: favorite parts and put them together. Yeah, and that was
Speaker 1: definitely one of them. Yeah. Uh, well, we talked in
Speaker 1: our I guess it was in the folklore and fairy
Speaker 1: Tale episodes that were twin episodes almost um about the
Speaker 1: original Little Mermaid and how you know she was disnified
Speaker 1: to the fullest. But the original story was far darker, darker,
Speaker 1: but also even more touching by far. Like I went
Speaker 1: back and read the last um the last like section
Speaker 1: of it. Well, give me a summary at the end.
Speaker 1: So at the end, this is where dramatically differs from
Speaker 1: the Disney story. The Little Mermaid is scorned for another
Speaker 1: woman her the guy she loves chooses someone else and
Speaker 1: Mary's her and the Little Mermaid is like, dude, I
Speaker 1: gave up my tail for you, I think, which has
Speaker 1: my tongue kind of thing, UM, and I want to
Speaker 1: get back my life. So her sisters came and bring
Speaker 1: her this ritual knife and say, you can convert back
Speaker 1: to a mermaid if before dawn you plunge this knife
Speaker 1: into this dude's heart, this guy who loves heart, and
Speaker 1: you get some of his blood on your feet, you
Speaker 1: will regrow your tail and you can jump into the
Speaker 1: sea and everything will be just fine again. So she
Speaker 1: goes and she finds the guy sleeping with his new
Speaker 1: bride beside him, and she just can't do it. She
Speaker 1: throws the knife into the sea and Um becomes c foam.
Speaker 1: She disintegrates and becomes c foam. So she gives her
Speaker 1: her own happiness up for this guy's right and dies
Speaker 1: as a result. But even better than that, when she
Speaker 1: turns into c foam, she becomes a different mythical creature
Speaker 1: UH like basically an air nymph that goes around like
Speaker 1: helping humans UM, and she can possibly get into heaven
Speaker 1: if she helps people. UM for three years. It haunts
Speaker 1: Christian Anderson wrote it way better than I just recounted
Speaker 1: it a lot less ums and likes ye. But it's
Speaker 1: it's pretty it's worth reading. Uh. Plenty also talked about
Speaker 1: merman um back in the day, and there would be
Speaker 1: merman or seamen who would at night climb up on
Speaker 1: two ships. As a quote, that's why I'm reading it weird,
Speaker 1: upon which the side of the vessel where he seated
Speaker 1: himself would instantly sink downward, and if you remain there
Speaker 1: any considerable time, even go underwater. And that was something
Speaker 1: that we will see as we talk more about mermaids.
Speaker 1: They are u very They're often either an omen that
Speaker 1: something bad is going to happen to sailors or coastal
Speaker 1: dwelling people, or they actually directly cause harm two sailors
Speaker 1: or coastal dwelling people. Yeah, and most times under the
Speaker 1: guys of something beautiful and like a siren um, they're
Speaker 1: often well, I don't we haven't even described one early.
Speaker 1: You know that a mermaid has the head and body
Speaker 1: torso of a woman, human woman, usually with huge boobs. Yeah.
Speaker 1: If you're talking about a sailor's account, Yeah, she was busty.
Speaker 1: Did I mention the boobs? Yes, she did, sir seven times?
Speaker 1: Um and uh from the you know torso down, she's
Speaker 1: a fish. Maybe web feet, maybe not very graceful, very
Speaker 1: fast and always beautiful. Uh it depends. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there was some of legend that we're not ugly, really
Speaker 1: not ugly, or they were that they were not in
Speaker 1: parentheses beautiful ugly. Uh well, I hadn't heard about that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's in here. I thought. I'm just I must
Speaker 1: have missed that part. It's a it's it's far more frequent.
Speaker 1: What you were saying that they were beautiful and alluring. Okay, um,
Speaker 1: but we'll talk more about that after we take a break. Huh,
Speaker 1: all right, Chuck. We were saying that, for the most part,
Speaker 1: mermaids are beautiful, and one of the reasons why they
Speaker 1: are supposed to be beautiful is because they are frequently,
Speaker 1: um accused of luring men sailors out to sea to
Speaker 1: their death. Yeah, and how you do that? You do
Speaker 1: that one of two ways. You have a beautiful singing
Speaker 1: voice or you just straight up look good yourself. That's right.
Speaker 1: And if you have a beautiful singing voice, you're a siren,
Speaker 1: in which case you would not be a mermaid because
Speaker 1: the siren is half bird, half woman, and they don't
Speaker 1: even necessarily live in the water or near the water.
Speaker 1: They're sometimes described as hanging out in fields. I guess
Speaker 1: sometimes you can be very pretty and be a good singer,
Speaker 1: right your mermaid but the yeah you could be Yeah,
Speaker 1: sure you'd be. Who am I to disagree? You'd or
Speaker 1: Alicia Keys or Adele? Oh you know who I like his?
Speaker 1: Uh Rihanna? Oh yeah, she's great, very pretty. That part
Speaker 1: in h what's it called this at the end and
Speaker 1: she played herself. Yeah, yeah, she's pretty great, and she
Speaker 1: was pretty funny. Michael Sarah likes bank her and she
Speaker 1: just immediately turned around and smacked the heck out of him. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I enjoyed parts of that movie, especially Michael Sarah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: playing like a cooked out jerk. That was really funny. Um.
Speaker 1: So back to the Beautiful Mermaids though, uh there there
Speaker 1: was one then one thousand BC in Syria. And her
Speaker 1: name how would you pronounce that? At her gaddis? Oh?
Speaker 1: I think you nailed it? Yeah, yeah, all right, we'll
Speaker 1: go with that. And she and you'll you'll see a
Speaker 1: lot of duality a lot of these stories, and she
Speaker 1: was one for sure that was a protector, a goddess.
Speaker 1: I think she protected the fertility of her people, and
Speaker 1: um watched over them and uh fell in love with
Speaker 1: a human man, as you will often see a lot
Speaker 1: of these stories. Yeah, dude, and it and it was
Speaker 1: fine for a little while, like in most stories, and
Speaker 1: then it goes south and she kills him. She crushed
Speaker 1: him with her greatness. Oh, I thought, like her big
Speaker 1: tale or something I don't know was she wasn't a
Speaker 1: mermaid yet, this is where she becomes. That's that's right.
Speaker 1: I forgot about that. So um, she accidentally kills him,
Speaker 1: and then his very shame throws herself into the lake
Speaker 1: because she wants to become a fish, and she's so
Speaker 1: beautiful that it only works half as good. I really
Speaker 1: can't figure out the math on that, but I guess
Speaker 1: she's just so beautiful that the human beauty part of hers, like, no,
Speaker 1: I won't be a fish, just the lower half can
Speaker 1: be a fish because she had to fungus, so that
Speaker 1: was easily overcome, but her face was really nice, so
Speaker 1: the fish part just couldn't overcome that. That's right, So
Speaker 1: she ended up a mermaid. Weird story, Well that's just weird,
Speaker 1: like like, oh, it's foreign or anything. I'm not being xenophobic,
Speaker 1: but it really like he says a lot about like
Speaker 1: humanity and like how we think of things, like no,
Speaker 1: she was so good looking that this magic couldn't even
Speaker 1: overcome that. You know. Point we placed a lot of
Speaker 1: value on that kind of thing. Uh, all right, should
Speaker 1: we move on to Germany? Yeah? This one was kind
Speaker 1: of interesting to me because Germany's landlocked. I never really
Speaker 1: thought about that. What what does Germany have a mermaid mythology? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean they have lakes, I guess, But mermaids are
Speaker 1: ocean dwellers, aren't they know? There are some river dwellers.
Speaker 1: Oh that's right, although I think the sirens were specifically river.
Speaker 1: Well then in the German myth that was a river dweller, correct, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: the nixes uh yeah, and they lured men into the river. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a river and so they could drown them,
Speaker 1: like again, the call of the siren coming here. Look
Speaker 1: how beautiful I am. And now I'm holding your head
Speaker 1: underwater and you can't breathe anymore, and the guys like
Speaker 1: I regret nothing. But this duality that we're talking about is,
Speaker 1: uh what you see a lot of times in mermaid
Speaker 1: myths from West Africa. The Mammy Wada, the Mother Water.
Speaker 1: She was a mermaid who was very nurturing and very
Speaker 1: loving if you didn't cross her, Yeah, exactly, that's where
Speaker 1: the duality comes in. I don't even know if that's duality.
Speaker 1: I think that's just a complex person, good, good complex
Speaker 1: character there. Yeah, yeah, so she's great, but when you
Speaker 1: cross her, she's murderous. Sure, all right, and that's what
Speaker 1: she did. Actually she had. If you were loyal to her,
Speaker 1: she would you could be wealthy from her magic mirror
Speaker 1: and comb. But if you betrayed her, then what this
Speaker 1: article says is she reigns down fury and destruction. Right
Speaker 1: then the age word from above. But the duality is
Speaker 1: as an important part of it because the the physical
Speaker 1: creature itself is two things, and they are also two
Speaker 1: things emotionally. And but so the mermaid, the mermaid or
Speaker 1: mermaid or murf folk as their calling this article. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so murf folks are half fish, half people, right, but
Speaker 1: they're not anywhere near unique in the pantheon of mythological
Speaker 1: creatures throughout the ages. Right, there's again there's sirens, halford's,
Speaker 1: half women. There's there's just tons of like the minotaur,
Speaker 1: half man, half bull the centaur was what half go
Speaker 1: or horse and half man? I don't remember that sounds right?
Speaker 1: I think half horse? Um? And I was like, where
Speaker 1: did all these come from? I suspected beast reality, and
Speaker 1: it turns out I may be right. Yeah, you find
Speaker 1: there are some scholars out there who believe that this
Speaker 1: is the product of a much more relaxed attitude towards
Speaker 1: beast reality than we modern humans have today. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I still never saw that documentary about the horse. Yeah
Speaker 1: it's a good one, zoo. Yeah, I need that fell
Speaker 1: off my radar. Man. It's one of those ones where
Speaker 1: they largely to recreate, like the whole thing is almost recreation,
Speaker 1: and I usually am not hip on those. It doesn't
Speaker 1: feel like a documentary to me, but that one changed
Speaker 1: my mind about that whole technique that they did it
Speaker 1: so well. It's rough. It's rough, especially like when you
Speaker 1: think about you know, the animals as well. Yeah, of
Speaker 1: course you know, but there's more than just that that
Speaker 1: makes it rough. I need to see that. Um. So,
Speaker 1: I guess we can talk a little bit about some
Speaker 1: eyewitness accounts. They're all bunk, of course, but they have
Speaker 1: happened in World War two, in Japan. On Indonesia's Kai Islands. Uh.
Speaker 1: Supposedly they encountered a monster on the beach that had
Speaker 1: you know, webbed hands and feet and was kind of
Speaker 1: part human, part fish. It's like, look at these jazz hands.
Speaker 1: You can't do this. And then back in the day, Uh,
Speaker 1: some of our most revered explorers and adventure adventurers reported
Speaker 1: seeing mermaids, like John Smith and Henry Hudson in Columbus. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what was There's a good quote in here from Columbus
Speaker 1: because he wasn't too impressed. He said, and here's the
Speaker 1: thing I had that in his diary. He's referring to
Speaker 1: himself in the third person. Well that says a lot.
Speaker 1: That's odd. He's like Ricky Henderson, right, or George Costanza.
Speaker 1: So he says that he saw some Oh yeah, the
Speaker 1: quote son, and you gotta read the quote. He's out
Speaker 1: sailing around, not a that it he Oh what is
Speaker 1: that in the ocean? I think I'll take a look
Speaker 1: through my spine glass. The day before when the admiral
Speaker 1: was going to the and the admirals himself, Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: what I'm thinking. He was the admiral of his fleet
Speaker 1: for sure. The day before, when the Admiral was going
Speaker 1: on to the Rio del Oro, that's the River of Gold.
Speaker 1: He said he saw three mermaids who came quite high
Speaker 1: out of the water. But we're not as pretty as
Speaker 1: they are depicted. For somehow, in the face they look
Speaker 1: like men. But I still thought about it. Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: and what they think now, and I don't know how
Speaker 1: they substantiated this, is that Columpus was seeing manates. Yeah,
Speaker 1: have you seen manates? Yeah, it looks nothing like a
Speaker 1: human From enough of a distance, though, you're like, wait,
Speaker 1: what is that, especially if you've never seen a manatee before.
Speaker 1: I don't think it looks human like at all. But
Speaker 1: from enough of a distance, yeah, I can see how
Speaker 1: somebody would, especially if you believe that mermaids existed, you
Speaker 1: see a manatee. Maybe it's hard for me to totally
Speaker 1: get that. Go there in that put my mind in
Speaker 1: that kind of frame, in the frame of Christopher Columbus. Well,
Speaker 1: just to have never seen a mermaid, who have never
Speaker 1: seen a manatee, to be high on on aarro wax scalps. Okay,
Speaker 1: I just blanked on the green marijuana, the green the
Speaker 1: green drink absentthe I don't think absence was around with Columbus.
Speaker 1: Are you kidding me? No, I'm not you shooting that stuff?
Speaker 1: Kind of see it? Uh so he maybe saw a manatee.
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, they're not so great looking. After all,
Speaker 1: they're nothing, right, what's everyone talking about? Uh? Yeah, he
Speaker 1: saw one. This is like Jimmy Carter in the UFOs.
Speaker 1: Like you're kind of surprised when you hear this that
Speaker 1: somebody sited it. Apparently Reagan said he saw UFOs as well. Uh.
Speaker 1: John Smith said he saw some. He liked what he saw.
Speaker 1: He liked the look at the manatees because he said
Speaker 1: he fell in love with one with long green hair. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he said it was it wasn't bad looking, or it
Speaker 1: wasn't unattractive or something like that. Yeah, it's kind of
Speaker 1: a head. He hedged his bets a little bit. I
Speaker 1: guess he wanted to check the rest of her out
Speaker 1: and then he saw she had a tail, and it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: I can't go there. So what's going on here? They're
Speaker 1: hallucinating because they've been on the high seas too long.
Speaker 1: That's what a lot of people say. Um. Other people
Speaker 1: say that again, they were predisposed to believing in mermaids
Speaker 1: because people thought mermaids existed. This were This was the
Speaker 1: age of exploration. So it's the beginning of the age
Speaker 1: of exploration, which means that before then the oceans were
Speaker 1: largely unexplored and there were tons of beliefs in thousands
Speaker 1: year thousands of year old mythologies about creatures that lived
Speaker 1: in the sea. So if you thought that those things existed,
Speaker 1: then something that looked kind of like a mermaid could
Speaker 1: be a mermaid. So that was probably if they were
Speaker 1: just they're just cases of mistaken identity. They were highly suggestible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we did. Yeah, that was a good one. I thought
Speaker 1: that one was going to be awful and it turned
Speaker 1: out pretty great. Like I remember thinking like this is
Speaker 1: not going to go well, and kind like this one.
Speaker 1: How do you think this one's going pretty great? All right,
Speaker 1: let's take a break then and uh give each other
Speaker 1: a neck rub, and we'll come back more comfortable than ever.
Speaker 1: All right, there is a dude. I love this guy.
Speaker 1: His name is Carl Bants and he he di're not
Speaker 1: a Carl Bands fan. Well, I just I'm not quite
Speaker 1: sure to understand unless did you read the article. Well,
Speaker 1: just to set it up. Okay, So dude named Carl
Speaker 1: Bants back in he wrote a an article in a
Speaker 1: legitimate journal, the Journal Limnology and Oceanography, um, and they
Speaker 1: published it, and it is an entirely tongue in cheek
Speaker 1: but totally played straight account of the extinct species mermaid. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like wherein he surmises on like for real, where they
Speaker 1: came from, what their biology was, where they while they
Speaker 1: left us? Yep, that they were warm water dwelling, that
Speaker 1: they ate human flesh, which is why they lured people
Speaker 1: to their death. Um. He goes so far as to
Speaker 1: say that they um most likely only produced one or
Speaker 1: two offspring at a time because the females of the
Speaker 1: of the species had two breasts, and that was it. Okay,
Speaker 1: you know, um, like like this is the thought that
Speaker 1: this guy put into this this article and the fact
Speaker 1: that he writes it totally straight and like really gives
Speaker 1: it its due attention, Like it wasn't that that, like
Speaker 1: this is gonna be a great idea, and just the
Speaker 1: idea itself is hilarious, so I don't really have to
Speaker 1: put any effort into actual execution. He put effort into
Speaker 1: the execution and did he did pretty good. I'm not
Speaker 1: knocking him. I guess I just don't see why this
Speaker 1: journal would put something like that out there. Even I
Speaker 1: don't know, I mean, I guess they had a good
Speaker 1: sense of humor and they were Maybe it was the
Speaker 1: April Fool's episode. I was wondering if that was the
Speaker 1: case too, and I forgot to look if it was
Speaker 1: the April issue. Perhaps he did use the words horny
Speaker 1: skinfolds though, right, their skin, and he theorized was not smooth, smooth,
Speaker 1: scaled like a regular fish. But I had quote horny
Speaker 1: skin folds like an armadilla. Yeah. What's interesting is I
Speaker 1: saw another account from eighteen thirty in Scotland. There's a
Speaker 1: kind of a town called Benbecula on the Outer Hebrides, right,
Speaker 1: which is like the outer Islands, the arca archipelago. It's
Speaker 1: an archipelago. That's how you say that, right, it's archipelago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: either way. There's a town there, a string of islands,
Speaker 1: coastal thank you, coastal town where in eighteen thirty the
Speaker 1: whole town swore they saw a mermaid and tried to
Speaker 1: grab the mermaid, and the mermaid swam away. So some
Speaker 1: kid threw a rock at it and hit it in
Speaker 1: its back, and two days later they found it dead
Speaker 1: on shore and they felt so bad about it that
Speaker 1: they they they buried it. They gave it a funeral
Speaker 1: with like a casket and everything, and um they said
Speaker 1: that it didn't have scales, that it had like kind
Speaker 1: of rough skin instead horny skinfold. Yeah, they didn't use
Speaker 1: that term, but this is like a thing in eight
Speaker 1: thirty in Scotland. Yeah, pretty interesting that when you read
Speaker 1: the account of it years later. By the way, horny skinfolds, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that is interesting. Uh, maybe there's something there, right, I
Speaker 1: had to keep the folds of the horny skinfold clean,
Speaker 1: you know that, like gunk gets trapped in there. I
Speaker 1: don't know. Maybe that's the name of the first single
Speaker 1: cleaning the folds. The other thing um that A Bants
Speaker 1: did in his article was explained probably why they're extinct. Now.
Speaker 1: He came to the conclute their extinct um. He said
Speaker 1: they were warm water, so they would have cohabitated or
Speaker 1: shared the their a system with jellyfish. And as humans
Speaker 1: started to fish more and more of the sea, um,
Speaker 1: we upset the ecological balance. Jellyfish populations were allowed to
Speaker 1: boom which is the case. And they stung the mermaids
Speaker 1: to death because the mermaids had they lacked the blubber
Speaker 1: that would protect them not just in cold water, but
Speaker 1: from jellyfish things as well. So they died out from
Speaker 1: jellyfish things. Yeah, because their their upper skin was just
Speaker 1: regular skin. It wasn't the horny skin folds, so it
Speaker 1: provided no protection. Exactly. That's it's worth reading. Go check
Speaker 1: it out. It's called Mermaids the Biology, Their Biology, Culture
Speaker 1: and Demise. You can find like the full pdf online. Well,
Speaker 1: I think we have to address the animal planet snapoo.
Speaker 1: I don't know if they would call it a snapper.
Speaker 1: I think they would call it a ratings bonanza. Yeah, which,
Speaker 1: what was the other when we talked about the Megalodon?
Speaker 1: When Discovery Channel aired a Megalodon documentary that appeared by
Speaker 1: all accounts to be true and was not the same
Speaker 1: thing with Mermaids, But they did it twice, they did
Speaker 1: they did a sequel because it got like you said,
Speaker 1: huge ratings and uh, this was a documentary, Um, well
Speaker 1: not a documentary. It was a mockumentary that looked like
Speaker 1: did you watch any clips or anything of the second one? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it looked like, you know, a show like
Speaker 1: a hunting Bigfoot crew. It's like, you know, we got
Speaker 1: this mermaid, we know where she is, and we're down
Speaker 1: here hunting and the yeah, below the surface. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: they interviewed a guy that looked like Zack Gallifanakis. If
Speaker 1: only it would have been a Califannakis, it would have
Speaker 1: made it much better. But um, you know, then it
Speaker 1: was one of these shows where at the end and
Speaker 1: small lettering it it's right, not be small, but at
Speaker 1: the end of the credits it's like this was all
Speaker 1: made up. These are actors and yeah, but if you
Speaker 1: go online, people are still like arguing over the the
Speaker 1: legitimacy or credentials of the marine geologist Torsten Schmidt. That's
Speaker 1: a great name, it is um and people are like, well,
Speaker 1: if he were a real scientist, he would have been
Speaker 1: published elsewhere besides this, and he's not published. And it's
Speaker 1: like that's because he's not real. He's made up. This
Speaker 1: is like settled. They didn't even pretend that it was real,
Speaker 1: So I don't I don't know if that's the case
Speaker 1: or not, because I mean they said it wasn't on
Speaker 1: the at the end of the show, okay, but they
Speaker 1: didn't come out and say everybody, everybody right, it's so
Speaker 1: actually Noah. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had to
Speaker 1: release and they felt they needed to release a statement
Speaker 1: after the first one saying like, hey, um, mermaids don't exist,
Speaker 1: no evidence has ever been found. We're Noah the end.
Speaker 1: And I bet they love that even show. Yeah, my god,
Speaker 1: Noah's making a statement. Yeah, it's gonna be over the news, right,
Speaker 1: And so I guess enough people bought it and and
Speaker 1: um bought into it that they were able to release
Speaker 1: a sequel. And in the sequel, the reason they released
Speaker 1: the sequel was because Torsten Schmidt had footage of a
Speaker 1: webbed hay and like smacking the windshield of his little
Speaker 1: like um underwater sub man sub um and then swimming off.
Speaker 1: And so they just kept showing that over and over
Speaker 1: and over again, and it was Sack gallup and Akis
Speaker 1: he did look like him, Tonty a lot um. I
Speaker 1: thought you were going to say that. It was found
Speaker 1: out when Torsten Schmidt showed up on a episode of
Speaker 1: Two Broke Girls the next week, right like a waiter
Speaker 1: and a progressive insurance and it's like customer and over
Speaker 1: two exactly. There's one other sighting I wanted to mention
Speaker 1: this one, the second for my favorite, after the Scottish one.
Speaker 1: It was in Adam, Netherlands. Is it eat him like
Speaker 1: the cheese? Yeah? Okay, Um. Two girls were like rowing
Speaker 1: their boats and found a mermaid and took it home
Speaker 1: and dressed it up as a little girl and taught
Speaker 1: it to live on land. But it remained mute its
Speaker 1: whole life. Yeah, but isn't that cute? That very cute,
Speaker 1: Like you're coming home with us, Oh, you've got a family. Ts,
Speaker 1: we got a family too, and it's your new family.
Speaker 1: And they just made that story up and told people
Speaker 1: and it survived, I guess interesting, although they didn't they
Speaker 1: support they didn't apparently like they matriculated the mermaid into
Speaker 1: human society there. But we're talking fourteen thirty, so who
Speaker 1: knows what was going on. They were eating, They probably
Speaker 1: got their hands out on somebody who was like who knows,
Speaker 1: and they're like, oh, mermaid, this is a mermaid. Oh,
Speaker 1: just someone who had some sort of physical and made
Speaker 1: them come live with them just as a girl for
Speaker 1: the rest of their life. Like SCHLITZI or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like we did in the freak shows. They would just
Speaker 1: call them make up whatever animal they wanted to. That
Speaker 1: was another great episode. Two are you just recounting the
Speaker 1: good ones while we do this one? Just to remind
Speaker 1: people it gets better. So being a mermaid is an
Speaker 1: actual job you can get if you back in the
Speaker 1: day in the nineteen for teas in fifties, it was
Speaker 1: a big hit. Uh to go to a like a
Speaker 1: c park and have mermaid shows and specifically one in
Speaker 1: is it WEEKI watching Springs? Yeah, WEEKI watching Springs Florida
Speaker 1: on your Tampa And uh, it was a booming business
Speaker 1: back then. They said, um, between half million and a
Speaker 1: million tourists every year and including big famous people like
Speaker 1: Elvis Presley and Don Knots. Those are the two they mentioned.
Speaker 1: Those two would trash and play together. Oh I bet
Speaker 1: Don gets into the whiskey. It's all over. Um. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a huge deal back then. They're still doing
Speaker 1: it there today. But it is a real job you
Speaker 1: can um, you can go if you're a great swimmer,
Speaker 1: Like you have to know what you're doing. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: Like it seems like, oh yeah, you just put on
Speaker 1: that that tail, but that tail is is heavy and awkward.
Speaker 1: Well but yeah, and plus like somewhat buoyant swimming with
Speaker 1: your legs together. Yeah, that's very difficult. Yeah, it's not
Speaker 1: an easy job from what I can tell. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: apparently once you put like they look very graceful, uh,
Speaker 1: swimming around in those things. But you go put one
Speaker 1: on and get in a pool and see what happens.
Speaker 1: Right in this article, I think rightly points out that
Speaker 1: the professional mermaids that you see today are um, like
Speaker 1: this is from years and years and years of practice,
Speaker 1: Like they didn't just get in the water and they're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm a natural. Yeah exactly. Um can be really awkward.
Speaker 1: And you also have to know how to hold your
Speaker 1: breath like a mo like a mo yeah it's stop myself,
Speaker 1: Yeah you do. And you have to learn how to
Speaker 1: swim the mermaid crawl, which is what they name it.
Speaker 1: But you know it's not like regular swimming. Uh yeah right,
Speaker 1: you know. And you can make a little dough too,
Speaker 1: a little bit. It said. You can be hired like
Speaker 1: it's a one off for a party. What is that?
Speaker 1: Like you go to like a neighborhood pool and everyone
Speaker 1: gathers around like look at the mermaids class out of
Speaker 1: rhythm and you're like, what do you guys want me
Speaker 1: to do? I guess you can do that. But the
Speaker 1: most mostly what I've seen are like the shows in
Speaker 1: some like Sleepy Florida town, right like Gator Farm and
Speaker 1: does the start in the in the WEEKI watching Mermaids
Speaker 1: or like a resorts or something like that. Yeah, back
Speaker 1: when they used to love that kind of thing. Uh.
Speaker 1: And some of these uh professional mermaids apparently use their
Speaker 1: uh status as a soapbox for ecology and efforts to
Speaker 1: keep the oceans clean. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: seems to be a real threat of that running through
Speaker 1: the professional mermaid culture. You're like an eco activist. That's
Speaker 1: a decent band name too, professional mermaid culture. This one
Speaker 1: was rich with band band names horny Skinfolds. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about mermaids, you can
Speaker 1: type that word in the search bart how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. And since I said search bar, it's time
Speaker 1: for listener mail. Actually, Lee in lieu of listener mail today, Uh,
Speaker 1: we are going to ask you for something because we
Speaker 1: people often say like how can I help the show? Uh,
Speaker 1: spreading the word is awesome. We always appreciate that. But
Speaker 1: one thing we haven't asked you to do in a
Speaker 1: long time is to go to iTunes and leave a review.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, because that makes a big difference if there
Speaker 1: are reviews, even if they're not favorable. Just be honest
Speaker 1: with your conscience, punch your conscience, and uh yeah, go
Speaker 1: to iTunes leave a review for us, because just having
Speaker 1: reviews is a good thing. And um, tell a friend,
Speaker 1: help spread the word. I feel like years go by
Speaker 1: before we say things like this. Yeah, well I think
Speaker 1: literally that's the case. It's been a long time, so
Speaker 1: we really appreciate the way the show was built was
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Speaker 1: So tell a friend, go to iTunes and leave a recommendation.
Speaker 1: And um, the other thing that we also need our
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Speaker 1: can't promise we'll use it, but we probably will, yeah,
Speaker 1: because they're pretty great. Yeah. So that's all I got
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