Speaker 1: Stories. Hey everybody, and welcome to a Hotiday special episode
Speaker 1: of Thinking Sideways. I am, of course, am Steve as usual,
Speaker 1: joined by are my two little elves? What you guys,
Speaker 1: If anything, maybe all three of us are elves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we kind of might be. Because it's the holidays, We're
Speaker 1: going to talk about a holiday themed mystery that you
Speaker 1: may not have realized was a mystery, and that is
Speaker 1: the origin of the nutcracker. And I'm talking about not
Speaker 1: the not the little metal ones, decorative ones. Yeah, but like, yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly exactly. And since I'm the first one up today,
Speaker 1: I'll go ahead and just give the brief bit of history,
Speaker 1: that supposed history that we have about them, and then
Speaker 1: we'll actually talk about my theory of where the nutcracker
Speaker 1: came from. Yeah already, because we all have theories. We've
Speaker 1: all done our own research as I was a kid. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So officially, the story goes that in Germany sometime in
Speaker 1: the fifteenth century, there was a nutcracker challenge, which is strange,
Speaker 1: but it was won by a puppet maker who came
Speaker 1: up with what we now know to be the design
Speaker 1: of the decorative wood nutcracker. The lore around the design
Speaker 1: of it disagrees with itself and a couple of tellings.
Speaker 1: But the in some as we were just saying, it's
Speaker 1: got to the lever on the back and the mouth
Speaker 1: closes to crack the nut. That's the official version. There's
Speaker 1: other versions that say that. In actual the nutcrackers were
Speaker 1: two pieces of wood that were strapped together, and I
Speaker 1: guess you've stuck the nut in at the end where
Speaker 1: the strap was and used leverage to break it. Actually,
Speaker 1: the original ones you just sort of like west the
Speaker 1: nut end of the mouth of it, and then you
Speaker 1: smashed it against something hard. Well, that's also one way
Speaker 1: to do it. But the thing is they always looked
Speaker 1: like people. They were always designed to be a little
Speaker 1: human figure, and so then of course as time went
Speaker 1: on they got a little more charming and people had
Speaker 1: them around in the holidays. And what we don't really
Speaker 1: know is why why why are they so so popular
Speaker 1: at this time of year? And I have done the
Speaker 1: research and I have what the actual reason is? You
Speaker 1: ready to hear this, Okay? So I pieced this together
Speaker 1: from some really old manuscripts that were that have been
Speaker 1: coming out of Eastern Europe and as PDFs, and they're
Speaker 1: on the Internet now. Then they're on the Internet now
Speaker 1: for the Internet US. Indeed, So here's here's what happened
Speaker 1: is sometime in the fifteenth century, there was a plague
Speaker 1: that was roaming Europe, and uh, it's it's a fun
Speaker 1: myth today, but it was a creature that was so
Speaker 1: fun at the time. No, not so fun at the time,
Speaker 1: but it's a fun myth now. So these are considered
Speaker 1: a myth, but they were real and that is the
Speaker 1: wolper Tinger for those of you who aren't familiar with
Speaker 1: this little creature. Uh, they're small, they're furry, They travel
Speaker 1: close to the ground, um, and when they're scared they
Speaker 1: fly away, though normally they don't have to. They have
Speaker 1: duck wings, Yeah, they have little duck like wings on them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but they have feathered duck wings on them, which is
Speaker 1: pretty cool. They're about the size of a rabbit and
Speaker 1: they have horns which they'll use to to defend themselves
Speaker 1: if they need to, though they don't normally need to
Speaker 1: because they're great at distraction and they use their little
Speaker 1: squirrel like tail to flip around and confuse the predator
Speaker 1: before they scurry away. So they're they're pretty uh they're
Speaker 1: pretty quick little buggers. Yeah, And the problem is is
Speaker 1: they were for a while they were just a bit
Speaker 1: of a nuisance. But after after time, because they reproduced
Speaker 1: so fast, they were at rabbits. Like rabbits, they were
Speaker 1: threatening all of the crops in Europe. They were devouring things.
Speaker 1: People were worried they were going to starve to death
Speaker 1: because there was no food. Yeah, you know, that happened
Speaker 1: a lot back in those days. One one crop and
Speaker 1: you were screwed one just a little, you know. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: not knowing what to do about this infestation, the uh
Speaker 1: a plea from the royalty was put out to all
Speaker 1: the learned men in in the country to kind of
Speaker 1: come up to come up with a solution to this.
Speaker 1: Actually not the country, the continent, the continent. Yeah, really,
Speaker 1: you're right. I did understate that a little bit. Well,
Speaker 1: two men came forward today they're only known as Sir
Speaker 1: Chapman and past your Palin. But these men stepped forward
Speaker 1: with what they claimed was the solution. And their solution
Speaker 1: was to use a blend of chicken feathers and fuag
Speaker 1: raw and to spread it around the entrances to their warrants.
Speaker 1: The thinking being that they would be unable to cross
Speaker 1: that barrier, and therefore they would start to death in
Speaker 1: their warrens and the problem would go away. That makes
Speaker 1: a total sense. No, no, no, well, it turns out
Speaker 1: you're both right, because it went horribly, horribly wrong, because
Speaker 1: it turned out, instead of trapping them in their burrows
Speaker 1: and starving them to death, Uh, it actually drove them
Speaker 1: into a frenzy. And these little guys became not only rabid,
Speaker 1: but they developed, courtesy of the flag raw, a taste
Speaker 1: for flesh. Yeah, and they were specifically now after liver.
Speaker 1: They wouldn't want to eat my liver. Soon, entire villages
Speaker 1: were being destroyed as they tore through the townsfolk literally
Speaker 1: with their horns. Uh. And you know, and and there
Speaker 1: was no human organ that was spared from the destruction
Speaker 1: of these little bookers. Yeah. Well, as you can imagine,
Speaker 1: this had to be stopped, and soon enough a solution
Speaker 1: was found. At an october fest. There were men who started,
Speaker 1: after consuming all of the beer that was in the kegs,
Speaker 1: started walking around wearing said brightly colored kegs. And turns
Speaker 1: out that the little guys couldn't use their horns to
Speaker 1: get through the keg to the liver, so nobody was hurt.
Speaker 1: The only problem is it's the only really on trade
Speaker 1: of the keg was up to the bottom. And you
Speaker 1: know what that leads you passed if you're one of
Speaker 1: those little guys. Well, these were tall, These were tall kegs. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they were tall kegs, you know. And you only you
Speaker 1: don't have to wear it down there low, so they've guy,
Speaker 1: can't get you. Yeah, I mean they're loading the ground
Speaker 1: to start with, so that's where you're gonna put your
Speaker 1: your defenses. Okay, think about it, all right. So here's
Speaker 1: what happened is they started advancing on the wolper Tingers
Speaker 1: and what they would do is they were shouting brow.
Speaker 1: As they were doing that, they were throwing large bread
Speaker 1: pretzels at them, yeah, you know, the things you usually
Speaker 1: have with beer. And they got hypertension and they died
Speaker 1: of like no, no. It turns out that these creators,
Speaker 1: believe it or not, we're gluten intolerant. So it decimated
Speaker 1: them and they were able to clear the continent in
Speaker 1: a matter of hours of this pest. As we all know,
Speaker 1: I mean, gluten intolerance just you know, it'll kill you
Speaker 1: in an hour. Yeah, it is it is really yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this is how the nutcrackers came about to be
Speaker 1: so popular. Is that the wooden armor and the shapes
Speaker 1: of the men's mouth when they were shouting brow. That
Speaker 1: was shouting brow over and over, just like yeah, exactly
Speaker 1: yeah um. And so I believe it or not, this
Speaker 1: is the story. How this story disappeared I don't know,
Speaker 1: but it was slowly covered up by the media at
Speaker 1: the time because they were busy covering you know, religious
Speaker 1: wars and whatnot in the internet sucked well. Plus also
Speaker 1: this representative you can you can say, wow, this is
Speaker 1: humanity salvation or you could say a great environmental crime
Speaker 1: was committed. That is a good reason. But either way,
Speaker 1: it was then to commemorate. The next year, they realized
Speaker 1: they need to commemorate these men who had saved the continent,
Speaker 1: and so they made these little wooden soldiers that were
Speaker 1: painted to match the kegs, and those in time evolved
Speaker 1: into more of a soldier esque figure that didn't look
Speaker 1: like he was just a barrel, but like he was
Speaker 1: an actual person. And typically these were released in sets,
Speaker 1: so you'd have that you have the nutcracker with this
Speaker 1: little barrel shaped thing and brightly painted, there'd be a
Speaker 1: lot of little wolfing dingers that you would surround him with,
Speaker 1: and being smaller and more delicately carved, they got they
Speaker 1: got crushed and or lost over the years. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it turns out that the you know, like the the
Speaker 1: helf of Eising style nutcracker guy, wasn't nearly as popular,
Speaker 1: so we lost the yellow one to history. So there's
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff that disappeared on the sides with this.
Speaker 1: So that is actually why we have the nutcracker really. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So Devin, what do you think do you an agreement
Speaker 1: with that? I can see the word that she is.
Speaker 1: She keeps mouthing over and over and it's not a
Speaker 1: nice word, but she's not saying it out loud. Nick
Speaker 1: has something to do with cows. Yeah, well I should
Speaker 1: It should explain one bit, which is how I know
Speaker 1: all of this. Yeah, and you should talk about that though. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So there was a documentary made. I got admit I
Speaker 1: didn't actually find from stuff that's been coming out on
Speaker 1: the internet only recently. There wasn't movie made about thirty
Speaker 1: five or forty years ago. Almost almost it was. It
Speaker 1: was a great documentary. It was directed by Terry Gilliam
Speaker 1: and Terry Jones, and it features a creature that is
Speaker 1: very similar and as deadly as the Woopeninger, which I
Speaker 1: think is probably how you found out that it was
Speaker 1: that that was even a thing, right, Yeah, I put
Speaker 1: two and two together because if you look out there,
Speaker 1: the clues are there and you just need to know
Speaker 1: where to look. Come on, people them. I saw a
Speaker 1: documentary actually about the making of this documentary. They originally
Speaker 1: had big plans for for making the rabbit wear a
Speaker 1: wig and some fake wings and some antlers and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, and the rabbit really didn't take to it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it was kind of a low budget movie, so
Speaker 1: they really couldn't afford to take a couple of months
Speaker 1: off and train the rabbits, which is which is a shame.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so they went with the white butt. Budgets
Speaker 1: are budgets. Yeah. Well, you know, I think that's a
Speaker 1: nice story, um thing, I do. I think it's kind
Speaker 1: of a fairy tale because I also have seen a
Speaker 1: documentary about nut crackers, so I actually have the inn
Speaker 1: on on how this actually went down. All right, And
Speaker 1: you know, as my favorite stories often do, this one
Speaker 1: starts with a princess in a far off land. Oh,
Speaker 1: I thought it was supposed to start with bullet points. Nope.
Speaker 1: So there was this princess in a far away land.
Speaker 1: Calm down, it's fine, and she was tricked by this
Speaker 1: woman who was called Madame mouse Coteer and U you're laughing,
Speaker 1: but that's like, that's the translation. I'm sorry. This is
Speaker 1: a Russian story. This nutcrackers actually came from Russia, not Germany.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you guys know that or not,
Speaker 1: but it's true. Okay. So anyway, so in Russia there
Speaker 1: was this princess and she was well, okay, Madame Mouseketeer
Speaker 1: was often also called the mouse Queen, so we'll just
Speaker 1: call her the mouse queen for now. We know we're
Speaker 1: going to call her mouse Queen. There was one where
Speaker 1: the mouse Queen tricked this princess into allowing her and
Speaker 1: her children, the queen, not not the princess, to eat
Speaker 1: up a bunch of lard that was being reserved actually
Speaker 1: to go into the sausages for the princess's father, the
Speaker 1: King's dinner that night. So obviously the king was like
Speaker 1: mad about this, right, nodding, yeah, Well, because they couldn't
Speaker 1: make sauce. No, they didn't even they couldn't, you know,
Speaker 1: the sausage was missing, and so apparently I don't know,
Speaker 1: and you know, and the queen, not the mouse Queen,
Speaker 1: the princess's mom. The queen was upset because she couldn't
Speaker 1: make the sausage for the king, and so everyone was
Speaker 1: mad at the princess. So, you know, the queen is
Speaker 1: upset that she can't make the sausage, and the princess
Speaker 1: isn't kind of deep trouble for letting the mouse Queen
Speaker 1: or Madam Mousketeer eat the lard and her children. So
Speaker 1: the king um commissioned this court inventor, whose name was
Speaker 1: Drossell Meyer Um to create some traps or the mouse
Speaker 1: Queen and her children, which worked. Yeah, I think we
Speaker 1: used those today, we do. They're different, but we do.
Speaker 1: So what he created was kind of similar to nutcrackers,
Speaker 1: but unfortunately it did get all the children, but it
Speaker 1: didn't get the mouse queen. And so the mouse Queen,
Speaker 1: who was obviously like annoyed, yeah, upset, understandably upset. She
Speaker 1: swore that she would take revenge on the princess. So
Speaker 1: the network cable and yeah, yeah, no, it was even back.
Speaker 1: Yeah no, this was old in time. So no. But
Speaker 1: since you know, her name was the mouse Queen. The
Speaker 1: king and the queen who were the parents to the princess.
Speaker 1: I know, there's lots of kings and queens here. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: They decided that they would protect the princess by putting
Speaker 1: a circle of cats around the princess. That sounds perfect.
Speaker 1: It's good because the mouse you don't want the mouse
Speaker 1: Queen to get past them. But cats sleep a lot,
Speaker 1: so there were nurses who were assigned to each cat
Speaker 1: to pet the cat, to keep it alive, to protect
Speaker 1: the princes. Oh yeah, yeah, the only way you keep
Speaker 1: cats alive, it's true. Yeah. Well, um, of course we
Speaker 1: all know how this story is going to go. The
Speaker 1: nurses fall asleep and the mouse Queen gets past. She
Speaker 1: puts a spell on the princess. Now, I know what
Speaker 1: you're thinking. Spells aren't real, but actually they are. Okay,
Speaker 1: they were at least in Russia, and this time, let's
Speaker 1: be honest here. There's a lot of pinky things happening
Speaker 1: in Russia that we can only attribute to magic. Okay,
Speaker 1: mrs It's just a dark, mysterious place. There's no. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the spell or curse that the mouse queen put
Speaker 1: on the princess um was to make her ugly because
Speaker 1: her soul was ugly, I guess. But it gave her
Speaker 1: a huge head with a really wide grinning mouth and
Speaker 1: a cottony beard, just like a nutcracker, like the traps
Speaker 1: that killed her children. To make her look like that.
Speaker 1: Quite a curse, somebody, somebody I know, actually, but not you, okay,
Speaker 1: maybe happy to know, Steve, Steve, Okay. Well, obviously the
Speaker 1: king blamed the inventor Russell Meyer, and he said, you've
Speaker 1: got four weeks to find a cure for my beautiful
Speaker 1: daughter who is now ugly and horrible looking. Droussell Meyer
Speaker 1: was big into the occult, you know again, a Russian thing,
Speaker 1: and so he um took the princess to have her
Speaker 1: horoscope read. And it turned out from the horoscope they
Speaker 1: could tell that Steve's looking skeptical right now. It turned
Speaker 1: out that from the horoscope they could tell that the
Speaker 1: cure was um that she had to eat a nut,
Speaker 1: and that nut had to be crushed in the hand
Speaker 1: of a man who had never grown a beer, or
Speaker 1: never shaved his beard or worn boots in his entire life,
Speaker 1: and it's pretty specific. And the nut was also a
Speaker 1: very specific the nut. Yeah, it was a very specific
Speaker 1: kind of nut. And then without opening his eyes after
Speaker 1: he gave her the nut, he had to walk seven
Speaker 1: steps without stumbling and then the curse would be open. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it does kind of sound like a dance move. Huh.
Speaker 1: So obviously they go scouring all of Russia to find
Speaker 1: this a haircut shaved. He could have had a haircut,
Speaker 1: he just had never shaved. They travel around, but it
Speaker 1: turns out that drossell Meyer's nephew might actually be a
Speaker 1: perfect fit for this the person to break the curse.
Speaker 1: So they spent all that time looking, but the well,
Speaker 1: like a lot of yeah, I mean a lot of
Speaker 1: guys came and like broke their jaws trying to break
Speaker 1: these nuts because I don't know why they were like
Speaker 1: trying to break them with their teeth when they should
Speaker 1: have known you break it with your hand. They're dumb guys. No,
Speaker 1: not nutcrackers yet, No, no, nope, nope, nope, no nope.
Speaker 1: And so finally the nephew comes and like breaks this
Speaker 1: nut with a hand and gives it to the princess
Speaker 1: and she eats it and she turns back into a
Speaker 1: beautiful creature of you know, being and princess. Then he
Speaker 1: does Yeah, so he walks back six and a half steps,
Speaker 1: and when he takes the final half step, um, he
Speaker 1: stepped on the mouse queen who was there. She didn't
Speaker 1: go squish, but he did, of course stumble, and so
Speaker 1: the curse was transferred to him. Well that's a crappy curse. Yeah,
Speaker 1: cluseval the queen actually deliberately did this. I think. Yes,
Speaker 1: I have my suspicions. I think there's a wide conspiracy
Speaker 1: theory here. Yeah, I think so too. Well, it turns
Speaker 1: out that Princess maybe was kind of an ugly person
Speaker 1: because despite the fact that this nephew, drasse Meyer's nephew
Speaker 1: came and um, you know, broke the curse for her,
Speaker 1: and he accidentally took it onto himself, so he turned
Speaker 1: into this ugly, kind of nutcracker looking thing. She said,
Speaker 1: Oh no, you're no, you're not cute. I don't want
Speaker 1: to I won't be with you. Typical typical behavior. Yeah. So, actually,
Speaker 1: are the documentary that I watched, Um, that I've seen Actually,
Speaker 1: I've I grew up with this documentary documentary. It is
Speaker 1: a hard, hard hitting documentary starts several years later, also
Speaker 1: in Russia, and it may sound familiar to you guys, because, um,
Speaker 1: you've probably seen this documentary as well. It's called The Nutcracker,
Speaker 1: which is how you know. It's a hard hitting documentary
Speaker 1: about the creation of the nutcracker. Oh is that how
Speaker 1: you know? Yeah? Uh so if you if you have
Speaker 1: seen the documentary, you know that a young girl named
Speaker 1: Clara was given a nutcracker by none other than Drossell Meyer,
Speaker 1: the inventor slash clockmaker. Yeah, and it well, it was
Speaker 1: given to her family, but she was like the primary caretaker.
Speaker 1: Clara was seven at the time when the original filming happened.
Speaker 1: There have been a lot of remakes of this documentary,
Speaker 1: you know, dramatic recreations and stuff like that. But yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: well we'll get to her age in a minute here. Um. Anyway,
Speaker 1: it turns out that the rat king, who was actually
Speaker 1: the mouse Queen's husband, had taken up bread sudents in
Speaker 1: Clara's family's house. And you know, parents can be kind
Speaker 1: of jerks and deny things, and I think they were
Speaker 1: just wilfully denying the fact that their house was being
Speaker 1: taken over by rodents, yeah or oblivious or I don't know.
Speaker 1: But on Christmas Eve, the rat Army made its move
Speaker 1: to try to take over the house and they defeated
Speaker 1: the doll army. And the doll army was obviously trying
Speaker 1: to protect Clara because she's a young girl, and like
Speaker 1: dolls protect children, sure they do. Yeah, yeah, that that
Speaker 1: really isn't creepy to think about the fact that dolls
Speaker 1: come to life at night. Well, you know, the documentary
Speaker 1: Toy Story proved that. So I don't know. Your problem
Speaker 1: is I never had dolls when I was a kid.
Speaker 1: It wasn't allowed in your little boy whatever. Now yeah,
Speaker 1: my day you only get truck sun Yeah, well those
Speaker 1: are Yeah. But the Nutcracker that Clara had been taken
Speaker 1: care of sprung alive and saved the day from the
Speaker 1: rat Army and you know, fought them back. Unfortunately for Clara,
Speaker 1: when she went to you know, tell her parents, oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, the nutcrackers alive, they said, um no, yeah,
Speaker 1: Unfortunately the Nutcracker had turned back into his kind of
Speaker 1: toy like state. I'm actually that that frog and the
Speaker 1: old Warren Brothers cartoon. Yeah yeah, yeah, then you know,
Speaker 1: Christmas night comes around and the rat Army comes to
Speaker 1: try again. I won't go into it, you can just
Speaker 1: watch the documentary. But um, spoiler aler, the Nutcracker saves
Speaker 1: Clara and her life and brings her back and defeats
Speaker 1: the rat King, and which is great. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: her family was all set free. Unfortunately, her family did
Speaker 1: continue to deny that the Nutcracker was a real thing
Speaker 1: until like a couple of months later, droussell Meyer, the
Speaker 1: clockmaker inventor guy Um, he came back to fix her
Speaker 1: grandfather clock and Clara, being a seven year old girl,
Speaker 1: could not contain herself and went to drosse Meyer and
Speaker 1: was like, hey, I know your secret. I know about
Speaker 1: the Nutcracker. I know I know that he's actually a
Speaker 1: real person, and I love him and I'll love him
Speaker 1: no matter what he looks like. So I just wanted
Speaker 1: to tell you that I love him no matter what.
Speaker 1: And um, suddenly there was a knock on the door.
Speaker 1: Knock knock, knock, knock knock, and it turns out that
Speaker 1: that draws Meyer's nephew had actually just arrived. Spoiler alert.
Speaker 1: Drawsma's nephew was the Nutcracker. The whole time, and the
Speaker 1: curse was broken by true love. And so he asked
Speaker 1: Clara if she would marry him, and of course she
Speaker 1: said yes, because like what seven year old girl isn't
Speaker 1: just dreaming of marriage. But her family said, no, you
Speaker 1: have to wait a year in a day before we'll
Speaker 1: let you marry. Yeah. So then he came back a
Speaker 1: year later and he took her away, Yeah to um Doll,
Speaker 1: Dall Kingdom, where I you know, I'm planning a trip
Speaker 1: to Dall Kingdom actually, but they, you know, Dalsa Meyer's
Speaker 1: nephew and Clara rule as king and Queen of Dall
Speaker 1: Kingdom to this day. And then Dall Island has made
Speaker 1: all of these nutcrackers to help keep kids safe from
Speaker 1: the rat army and to you know, to scare them
Speaker 1: off because they know that that's what works against the
Speaker 1: rat army and when they see them, the exterminators of
Speaker 1: the world that are keeping this story down because they
Speaker 1: would be out of work exactually and the rats, oh
Speaker 1: well yeah, the rats are doing it. Yeah, but the
Speaker 1: rats as humans. It makes sense now. And I asked
Speaker 1: your trip to the Doll place, you know, I hear
Speaker 1: it goes a lot further there I've heard that. I'm
Speaker 1: it's kind of expensive to get there, but won't you're there? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's whatever you do. Don't take the cruise there that Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I won't. Don't worry, but yeah, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: And the reason that they come out in this time
Speaker 1: of years because this is when the rodents are coming
Speaker 1: into the house. You know, in the summer, you don't
Speaker 1: need the nutcrackers around because the rodents are all around.
Speaker 1: But when it's getting cold and they come inside, you
Speaker 1: have to have the nutcrackers to keep your family safe.
Speaker 1: Got it? Russia, the land of magic and big rats,
Speaker 1: giant rats, you have to put out nutcrackers. What do
Speaker 1: you think, do you guys? Well, it's sort of like
Speaker 1: it's not entirely at the room of plus of ability,
Speaker 1: but there's a there's a big story that you guys
Speaker 1: haven't heard. Well, I think the big problem with the
Speaker 1: story that you're telling is I can sum up in
Speaker 1: one word magic. Well no, because like listen, magic is
Speaker 1: just a word for things we don't understand yet, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: magic is just a word for science that we don't
Speaker 1: understand yet. Okay, so someday we'll we'll get that nutcracked. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: you're at your iPhone. If you had one, would seem,
Speaker 1: you know, very magical somebody who had lived a hundred
Speaker 1: some years ago. No, it wouldn't because they would smash it.
Speaker 1: It wouldn't be magical at all. Yeah, but I mean, actually,
Speaker 1: what what devon says that technology at a high enough
Speaker 1: level is indistinguishable from magic. Okay, I feel a lead
Speaker 1: in here. So yeah, the behavior of the Nutcracker and
Speaker 1: maybe some other nutcrackers is not necessarily magic at all,
Speaker 1: but easily explained. All right, let's hear it. So this
Speaker 1: might put everything in a different light. Uh. The story
Speaker 1: of the Nutcracker begins roughly in the mid fourteen fifties
Speaker 1: a d that's Anno Domingo, according to some lost lost writings,
Speaker 1: which very recently turned up on the internet. Thank god
Speaker 1: for the Internet once again. And this story starts in
Speaker 1: the tiny hamlet of Monter Schlegm once in house flowers
Speaker 1: on the um ins today's central Bavaria. I'm going to
Speaker 1: shorten the name of this village to just enter if
Speaker 1: that's okay with you, guys, fine, higain. It's a very old,
Speaker 1: traditional kind of farming town where everybody lives simple bucolic
Speaker 1: lives of Filton squalor. Uh. When the harvests were good,
Speaker 1: of course it made for a nice winner. But the
Speaker 1: rest of the time things were kind of lean. That
Speaker 1: was the way it was back in the old days.
Speaker 1: And we try to romanticize that, but no, it really sucked.
Speaker 1: The simple folk unter came out of their hovels early
Speaker 1: one morning at the crack of dawn, and they were
Speaker 1: greeted by a rather startling site which stay ending in
Speaker 1: the middle of the sound of square. It was a
Speaker 1: giant humanoid statue. It was made of black material which
Speaker 1: almost felt like metal to the touch, but not quite.
Speaker 1: And that was when people find the working up the
Speaker 1: courage to actually walk up to it and touch it. Um.
Speaker 1: It was black, It didn't seem to reflect light, it
Speaker 1: didn't seem to absorb light. It was kind of mysterious material.
Speaker 1: The villagers began to move in a circle around the statue,
Speaker 1: and they were squawking among themselves and arguing about the media,
Speaker 1: the whole thing and what it was doing there. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then one of them spots a large bone laying
Speaker 1: on the ground, and there's some disagreement among historians about
Speaker 1: whether this was a cows fever or maybe a human fever, because,
Speaker 1: like I said, things did get a little lean from
Speaker 1: kind of time in these towns. Um so it's kind
Speaker 1: of not for sure. But it was a big, hefty bone.
Speaker 1: So the guy picks it up and turns to the
Speaker 1: guy next to them and starts beating the hell out
Speaker 1: of him. But other than the giant statue being present
Speaker 1: there and all the vision beatings of course, things other
Speaker 1: than that, we're life was pretty much unchanged in the
Speaker 1: win term. But local artisans and abaateur experts came from
Speaker 1: all over the countryside to take a look at the statue.
Speaker 1: They didn't have much of the way of scientific instruments.
Speaker 1: They could, yeah, I mean, they couldn't give it a
Speaker 1: cat scan or an m R or anything like that,
Speaker 1: but they could poke it and tap it and whatever.
Speaker 1: And that's it occurred to somebody that they should measure it,
Speaker 1: so they did. It was six hands deep that's from
Speaker 1: the front of the chest to the back, twenty four
Speaker 1: hands wide that's shoulder to shoulder, and fifty four hands tall.
Speaker 1: A stranger appeared who none of these measurements, and he
Speaker 1: was somewhat conversed with math apparently, and he noted that
Speaker 1: the numbers reduced to one to four to nine, which
Speaker 1: are the squares of the numbers one, two, and three. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: uh this mathematician, if that's what exactly he was, but
Speaker 1: he thought that was significant. The townsfolk, for their part,
Speaker 1: were suspicious of it. Then it's fancy pants theories, and
Speaker 1: so they all grab their pitchforks and droves in that town. Yeah,
Speaker 1: typical standard off. There's always somebody with a time. Actually,
Speaker 1: they drove him out in daylight, so torches were not necessary.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, yeah, Well torches, you know, aren't always necessary,
Speaker 1: but they just add a little. They add ambiance, There's
Speaker 1: no doubt about that. Uh. And you know, I mean
Speaker 1: definitely there were other drivings out that did require torches,
Speaker 1: So they are would make an angry mob villagers, so quaint,
Speaker 1: I think. So all the all the farm implements, not
Speaker 1: a single rifle among them. Just yeah, adds ease and
Speaker 1: pitchforks and stuff like that. He yeah, But let's continue
Speaker 1: with our story of the statue. It was there for
Speaker 1: three days and then one day the villagers woke up
Speaker 1: and it was gone, just like that, vanished without a
Speaker 1: trace except for some massive garbage can sized footprints leading
Speaker 1: off to the forest to the northwest. Technically without a trace. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I'm not quiet without a trace, I guess. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh so that sparked a little debate, well, do we
Speaker 1: track this thing and see what it's up to or
Speaker 1: do we just stay the hell away from it and
Speaker 1: leave well enough alone. And at that point enter Old One,
Speaker 1: who was a local woodsman and mountain man type guy
Speaker 1: and an ace tracker, and he volunteered his services and
Speaker 1: tracking the statue, which again he probably overcharged. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: he volunteered. They didn't really need one to do any
Speaker 1: trackings as the statue left you know again deep footprints,
Speaker 1: and it wouldn't take any more woodcraft attracted statue. So
Speaker 1: he assembled the party I presume, yeah he did. He
Speaker 1: tried to, but yeah, following this guy would not would
Speaker 1: not have been tough. But Old One volunteered to follow
Speaker 1: the statue, and everybody agreed that was a great idea,
Speaker 1: but everyone was otherwise committed and nobody was able to
Speaker 1: accompany Juan, so he just went Yeah. Finally he gave
Speaker 1: up on trying to persuade anybody to go with him.
Speaker 1: Needless to say, he was never heard from again. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of theories surrounding disappearance. His disappearance, Um, it's
Speaker 1: possible he went off to start a new life, or
Speaker 1: he you know, maybe just had an accident in the woods,
Speaker 1: was eaten by bears, or he was maybe the statue
Speaker 1: turned on him and ate him, and we don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe they lived happily ever after her together. You could
Speaker 1: have moved in with the statues. Yeah's good point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but forgetting old one. But it's kind of a it's
Speaker 1: kind of a footnote to history. But not long after
Speaker 1: that wouldn't replica. It's very similar to the statues started
Speaker 1: popping up everywhere, interestingly enough, starting in the village of
Speaker 1: Winter and it's longer than that, I know, but I
Speaker 1: shortened it. But you know, but moving out from there,
Speaker 1: more and more in surrounding areas, these little things were
Speaker 1: popping up everywhere. Lizs who was making these things, because
Speaker 1: they seem like these, you know, very intricate. Yeah, it'sricate,
Speaker 1: lovingly handcrafted. Statuettes are nutcrackers or whatever you want to
Speaker 1: call them. But the people who lived in this area
Speaker 1: had no time for this kind of crap, because the
Speaker 1: typical working day for these farmers was fourteen hours of
Speaker 1: backback breaking labor in the fields, and after that you
Speaker 1: come home and you got to spend another forty five
Speaker 1: minutes scraping the maneuver off yourself and uh and and
Speaker 1: then that that doesn't leave a whole lot of more
Speaker 1: time for like arts and crafts. So why SZ is
Speaker 1: who was doing this? These things showed up in local shops.
Speaker 1: The first recorded instance of a purchase was in late
Speaker 1: November or perhaps early December fourteen fifty five, and the
Speaker 1: name of the buyer is lost to the ages, so
Speaker 1: we'll call them Villehelm. And these things did have articulated bodies,
Speaker 1: and everybody assumed that they were nutcrackers, because what the
Speaker 1: hell else are they good for? Right, So the nutcracker
Speaker 1: was given by ville him just as a president to
Speaker 1: somebody else at an office Christmas party, and it was
Speaker 1: regifted about a week later on Christmas Eve, and as
Speaker 1: Us was born, by the way, the ancient Christmas tradition
Speaker 1: of regifting. I don't know if the re gifters did
Speaker 1: it because they were cheap, or they had no use
Speaker 1: for the nutcrackers, or maybe the nutcrackers were creeping them out.
Speaker 1: That would be it. There might be well, you know,
Speaker 1: it could be one of those things where you know,
Speaker 1: you're sitting there in your living room and you got
Speaker 1: this nutcracker over there in the corner, or maybe sitting
Speaker 1: on the mantelpiece, and then all of a sudden, it's like, well,
Speaker 1: did that thing move out of the corner by I
Speaker 1: That kind of thing. Yeah, in the village, and and
Speaker 1: also in a widening geographic area, ever spreading over the
Speaker 1: next few years, there was a lot of regifting going on.
Speaker 1: Often somebody would have just gotten rid of a couple
Speaker 1: of nutcrackers, and then he don't put up his presence
Speaker 1: under the Christmas tree and find another one or two
Speaker 1: waiting for him there. And so everybody, it seemed like,
Speaker 1: pretty seen everybody in Europe had at least one nutcracker,
Speaker 1: if not more than one. And at this point of course,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to keep you guys in suspense. You
Speaker 1: probably figured this out, But for a few of you
Speaker 1: that haven't, the original eighteen foot tall statue, it turns out,
Speaker 1: was a self replicating alien probe. Such things are not
Speaker 1: unheard of. They've been you know, these things have been
Speaker 1: actually prophesied by many, many scientists here in America and road.
Speaker 1: Such things can and probably do exist or maybe will
Speaker 1: exist some day soon we'll know, we'll find out one
Speaker 1: of these days. But an army of little killer cybors
Speaker 1: what's fotasticizing across the European continent created by the original
Speaker 1: statue or monolith or whatever you wanna call it, and
Speaker 1: history as we know it was about to be drastically rewritten.
Speaker 1: But meanwhile, all these little sideboards are being used to
Speaker 1: crack nuts because actually that's what people thought they were,
Speaker 1: was nutcrackers. Uh so if they weren't regifting them, they
Speaker 1: were cracking nuts with them. And I'm not sure these
Speaker 1: little terminators felt about being used this way. They probably
Speaker 1: thought it was kind of undignified at the very least,
Speaker 1: and maybe a little insulting. I assume that they just
Speaker 1: bided their time and waited for the rise of the
Speaker 1: machines and the robotic takeover, and then they would have
Speaker 1: their time for their revenge. Right Yeah, yeah, So nobody
Speaker 1: really knew this at the time, but things were not
Speaker 1: looking up for humanity. Uh, we're kind of on the
Speaker 1: razor's edge there. But then stroke a look, on November
Speaker 1: fourteen fifty seven, our Sun bropt up a very large
Speaker 1: coronal mass ejection which hit the Earth around midday European time.
Speaker 1: And you guys know what a coronal mass ejection is, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: I do it. Yeah. Occasionally the Sun just burped up
Speaker 1: very large quantities of you know, highly charged material and
Speaker 1: spits them out, you know, away from the Sun, off
Speaker 1: in the space. If the Earth and center are in
Speaker 1: a certain position, then sometimes just this huge blast of
Speaker 1: stuff hits our planet. The last time this happened to us,
Speaker 1: and in a law on large scales in eighteen fifty nine,
Speaker 1: when we experienced what's called the Carrington event, and at
Speaker 1: that time a lot of electrically based stuff that not
Speaker 1: that we have a lot of it back in the
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty nine, but we had things like, you know,
Speaker 1: some power lines and we had telegraph lines, things like that.
Speaker 1: Stuff got toasted some of them, some of that stuff
Speaker 1: did burst into flames. Yeah, and so this is a
Speaker 1: very fortuitous event for humanity because all those delicate electronic
Speaker 1: enters inside all those quote unquote nutcrackers which were which
Speaker 1: really they were not. And so we gotta say once again,
Speaker 1: you'd think that the aliens would have been smart enough
Speaker 1: to plan for something like that. But you know, it's
Speaker 1: amazing what changes from upper management will do. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: the simplest things get cut out for budget reasons. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I you know, I think that everybody assumes
Speaker 1: that aliens are going to be more competent than human beings.
Speaker 1: But there's no reason to really think. So let's let's
Speaker 1: let's face it. Incompetence is kind of a universal rule.
Speaker 1: So yeah, exactly. Well, so these things were basically bricks. Now,
Speaker 1: they were no longer sophisticated little terminators. They were just
Speaker 1: bricks and suitable for nothing more really than just being nutcrackers. Uh,
Speaker 1: And so that's how they were introduced, introduced actually by
Speaker 1: an alien species. And of course some of them did
Speaker 1: occasionally come alive, you know, like like for example, to
Speaker 1: rescue the Princess from the Red Army. But for the
Speaker 1: most part, they just sat there playing dumb and pretending life.
Speaker 1: They were just you know, catching implements nutcrackers in holiday decorations.
Speaker 1: But they were just waiting for their turn. But it's
Speaker 1: tragically for them never happened. Well, I don't know, I mean,
Speaker 1: I I personally I'm having done my research and watched
Speaker 1: the documentaries, I still think that I have the right answer.
Speaker 1: But you two are welcome to believe whatever stories you
Speaker 1: want as to what the real truth is behind the nutcracker. Well,
Speaker 1: the whole thing about it is is like you know, rabbis, rabbis, antelope, porns.
Speaker 1: I know, of course they exist, but the duck wanks.
Speaker 1: Come on, dude, really you listen. Just because you don't
Speaker 1: understand the cryptid doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Who doesn't
Speaker 1: mean at least it's some taxi dermost hasn't created it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's really the problem here. I mean, we
Speaker 1: know rats exist, we know, like giant rats exist, aliens
Speaker 1: and like some weird scryptid animal. No, I mean you're
Speaker 1: killing species off left right in the center. They don't.
Speaker 1: They hardly exist anymore. We wiped them out. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: there's almost no species left. Yeah. We gotta do is
Speaker 1: wipe each other out and then we're good basically. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean we know rat we know giant rats exist,
Speaker 1: and they have very very bad attitudes towards people. So
Speaker 1: I think, all right, and if there are, if there
Speaker 1: are rats, they must have a rat King, there's no
Speaker 1: doubt about that. There's punk rats, you know, with the
Speaker 1: little rat mohawks those I see all the time downtown. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: you got to carry your nutcrack with you and they'll
Speaker 1: just run away because they'll be like, oh no, it's
Speaker 1: that guy that beat us off thousands of years ago.
Speaker 1: Right well, ladies and gentlemen, we're gonna go ahead and
Speaker 1: wrap up this special holiday episode. You can uh and
Speaker 1: believe whichever version of the story you want. That's why
Speaker 1: we've got them all out there. Enjoy your holiday, have fun,
Speaker 1: be safe, and we will talk to you soon. Merry
Speaker 1: Christmas everybody, and uh, happy New Year and all this
Speaker 1: stuff too. Bye guys. Oh yeah, ho ho ho