Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, you're welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
Speaker 1: There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, there's Nol. He's back. He's
Speaker 1: actually sitting in for this one. And that makes this
Speaker 1: stuff you should know. Yeah, we left a trail of
Speaker 1: breadcrumbs or pebbles, depending on what part of the episode.
Speaker 1: That's right, we're talking about that's that's my favorite one.
Speaker 1: Now that in the Juniper Tree or my favorite and
Speaker 1: the juniper tree. Yeah, and we should say this is
Speaker 1: a two parter um. You should have already previously listened
Speaker 1: to one. We probably should have put this one out
Speaker 1: first and then done the other one. Hey, but whatever,
Speaker 1: what evs we we just think this is a nice
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed these two. Actually, I think if you
Speaker 1: can make the case that we did it in the
Speaker 1: right or because now people have thought about fairy tales
Speaker 1: and have jailed and bathed in them for like the
Speaker 1: last day or so, and now they're ready to understand
Speaker 1: what's been haunting them. But where did they come from? Right?
Speaker 1: What's the deal? And we're going to tell you what's
Speaker 1: the deal? This is I really did enjoy these O.
Speaker 1: This kind of reignited my kind of brought up a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff. Oh yeah, did you find yourself weeping?
Speaker 1: Not weeping, just kind of like remembering childhood? And I
Speaker 1: don't know, I enjoyed it. I guess I didn't read
Speaker 1: that many fairy tales. It reminded me that fairy tales
Speaker 1: are No, they're not awful, they're just very um dark, Yes,
Speaker 1: but I appreciate that part. I think it's more just
Speaker 1: the have you ever have you ever seen a picture
Speaker 1: of a human being without a face. Uh yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's kind of how I think of fairy tales.
Speaker 1: They're they're blank, they're anonymous, they're um flat. I think
Speaker 1: it's that I've actually run into that term a lot
Speaker 1: in researching for this episode. There's certainly not a lot
Speaker 1: of character development and oh and that's part of like
Speaker 1: their charm, their lure. But it's also like, you know,
Speaker 1: that's the memory I formed of them is like, um,
Speaker 1: I'm used to characters or psychologist is lacking as well,
Speaker 1: like people do stuff for almost no apparent reason whatsoever,
Speaker 1: and a lot of it's horrible stuff. Um. And that's
Speaker 1: actually kind of set the stage for fairy tales to
Speaker 1: be told and retold and retold and interpreted and analyzed.
Speaker 1: And um, I think that's what makes them so enduring
Speaker 1: is that they are there's there's there're so minimalists that
Speaker 1: they just survive because humans will change an update and
Speaker 1: we'll go from wearing bell bottoms and macromay vest to
Speaker 1: wearing like silver jump suits, which are in right now. Um,
Speaker 1: But ultimately we're still like very similar to what we were,
Speaker 1: you know, sixty years ago. And I think fairy tales
Speaker 1: um reflect that well said. And also I can say
Speaker 1: that because from what I understand, despite the fact that
Speaker 1: there is serious study of fairy tales, no one really
Speaker 1: has any definitive say over what they are. Like trying
Speaker 1: to define what a fairy tale is, chuck, Um, It's
Speaker 1: a story usually encompassing like a moral or ethical uh, lesson,
Speaker 1: but fantastical elements. Sure, okay, uh that often had dark
Speaker 1: undertones or overtones. That's actually a pretty great definition, but
Speaker 1: it does raise some questions. It's like, what is the
Speaker 1: difference between a fairy tale and a fable, or a
Speaker 1: fairy tale and a nursery rhyme? You know, what's the
Speaker 1: what is it specifically about fairy tales, and I think
Speaker 1: it's all I think they're all very similar and it's
Speaker 1: all part of folklore. So if you listened, I think
Speaker 1: in February this year, we did one on folklore, so
Speaker 1: it ties in heavily with that. Um. And also we
Speaker 1: didn't I don't know why we just defined fairy tale
Speaker 1: because we never defined what vocal fry was. Apparently I
Speaker 1: feel like we did. Yeah, we got some complaints like
Speaker 1: you never said what it was, but we demonstrated it
Speaker 1: over and over. Yeah, and we said it's like a flat,
Speaker 1: creaky way of speaking. Yeah. I don't know. I feel
Speaker 1: like we got the point across. Um. Okay, So fairy
Speaker 1: tales specifically, when you think of fairy tales, you you
Speaker 1: might think of Disney, but if you give it a
Speaker 1: little more thought, you're probably going to come up with, um,
Speaker 1: the Brothers Krim, Yeah, Matt Damon and um Heath ledger
Speaker 1: R yeah for real, uh yeah, Jacob and Wilhelm Graham
Speaker 1: uh and of course there Well, let's just go ahead
Speaker 1: and say there's a couple of types of fairy tales.
Speaker 1: There's the there's the oral tale. Yeah, the oral tale,
Speaker 1: which is and and the grand Brothers kind of exists
Speaker 1: between the two worlds. But one is the oral world,
Speaker 1: which we talked about in folklore, the age old tradition
Speaker 1: of passing stories down um via mouth parts, over and
Speaker 1: over and over, changing them, adding some spice, just like
Speaker 1: telling a joke or a ghost story or something like that,
Speaker 1: right exactly, um. And fairy tales specifically, as far as
Speaker 1: they went with oral tales are typically associated with women
Speaker 1: and typically associated with women, um, undertaking domestic chores. That
Speaker 1: that's typically where they were passed down. Um. And so
Speaker 1: you've got the oral tale and well, which makes sense.
Speaker 1: Though when I read this, I was like, why are
Speaker 1: there so many fairy tales to have women at the
Speaker 1: loom or spinning stuff, because apparently that's where they were told.
Speaker 1: It makes sense. Yeah, it's like, hey, I'm I'm bored
Speaker 1: out of my mind here spending the straw into gold.
Speaker 1: Let me eat some peyote and make up a story
Speaker 1: and you sit there and listen. Um. There's also the
Speaker 1: literary fairy tale, which appears to be there's a handful
Speaker 1: of people like Charles Perrault or challer Piero right um.
Speaker 1: And then there's also Hans Christian Anderson very famously, and
Speaker 1: these people are are reputed as having created, you know,
Speaker 1: many fairy tales, and those are called literary fairy like
Speaker 1: they were original authors and made these upright. That's apparently
Speaker 1: a total like misattribution. Like for example, Little Red riding Hood, right,
Speaker 1: is a great example that's typically attributed to Charles Parrault
Speaker 1: in the I think the seventeenth or sixteenth century. Charles
Speaker 1: Charles Parralt his ancestor um and Charles Pearl. He was
Speaker 1: very famous, as famous as Hans Christian Anderson was um
Speaker 1: for for writing down fairy tales and the collections and
Speaker 1: just being delightful, right, and he was great and at
Speaker 1: the end of every one of his there was a
Speaker 1: moral to the story. Um. But the people tend to
Speaker 1: think that either if he didn't come up with it,
Speaker 1: it was originated right before then. But we found an article,
Speaker 1: um that was from it covered a two thousand nine
Speaker 1: study carried out cultural anthropologists who basically went to some
Speaker 1: biologists and said, hey, do you guys know how you
Speaker 1: trace um species and create the tree of life the
Speaker 1: taxonomy of biology? Can you do that with Little Red
Speaker 1: Riding Hood? And they said, man, you are one crazy
Speaker 1: lady or one whacked out hepcat actually may have been
Speaker 1: a man, doctor Jamie Trani. It was a man and
Speaker 1: still is probably. I mean it's only been six years.
Speaker 1: You never know. Um. So Dr Tarrani went to some
Speaker 1: biologists and figured out how to apply the same methods
Speaker 1: to this story Little Red Riding Hood, and he found
Speaker 1: that not only was it not just like a few
Speaker 1: years older than Pearl's version, it was as as as
Speaker 1: much as years old. Basically, yeah, they found variations in
Speaker 1: China and Iran and the Middle East. Um, they found
Speaker 1: some unit for the asp stables another person, they said,
Speaker 1: they found some of those from sixth century BC. So
Speaker 1: basically what they're saying is maybe nobody made these up. Well,
Speaker 1: someone at some point did, at least as far as
Speaker 1: Little Red Riding Hood goes. That there's some common ancestor
Speaker 1: that predates years before the present, and um it was.
Speaker 1: It's a very widespread tale. Um. Not only did Dr
Speaker 1: Tehranni um trace the lineage back to six BC, UM
Speaker 1: he found that you could take these tales all around
Speaker 1: the world and lump them into groups, just a few,
Speaker 1: a handful of groups, and that UM places as desparate
Speaker 1: as Iran and Nigeria and Europe all were in the
Speaker 1: same group, whereas like Japan and Burma and China were
Speaker 1: in their own group. But they all kind of bear
Speaker 1: this resemblance where there is a lion or tiger or
Speaker 1: a wolf who was posing as something else in order
Speaker 1: to get the drop on someone else. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: sometimes usually a little girl, but I think in Iran
Speaker 1: it was a boy. So details change again simple folklore,
Speaker 1: I think, but the structure, the skeleton of the story
Speaker 1: is still very much the same, traceable back years. So
Speaker 1: that that kind of answers the question that I don't
Speaker 1: know if we raised or not yet who owns or who? Who?
Speaker 1: Who came up with fairy tales? But humans did. That's
Speaker 1: the best answer you could possibly come up with. These
Speaker 1: humans came up with it and over the over the years,
Speaker 1: like you said, people in bellyship, people add people subtract um,
Speaker 1: and the Grimm brothers did exactly that same thing. All right,
Speaker 1: let's let's talk a little bit about these these grim bros.
Speaker 1: Um Jacob and Wilhelm did already say that they were
Speaker 1: born in Yakub in Part one, which I appreciated yea
Speaker 1: and wille Helm Jacob or Yakub was born in seventy five,
Speaker 1: home just a year later, and they were they were
Speaker 1: kind of rich kids. Their dad was a lawyer and
Speaker 1: they had some money. Uh. Their original house if you
Speaker 1: look at it, it's funny. It looks like I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a total Bavarian like gingerbread house. And Um, they
Speaker 1: grew up in Germany and when they were ten years old,
Speaker 1: their dad died of pneumonia. Uh, and all of a
Speaker 1: sudden they didn't have the kind of dough that they
Speaker 1: were used to having. They did was not good and
Speaker 1: in a little scary. I don't get the sense that
Speaker 1: they were like dirt poor or anything, because they still
Speaker 1: had some relatives that had some cash well. Plus also,
Speaker 1: I mean they made it all the way through law
Speaker 1: school in honor of their father, So I mean that
Speaker 1: wasn't free even back then. Yeah. There, I think their
Speaker 1: aunt paid for school. Uh. They graduated each graduate at
Speaker 1: the top of their class, and I guess what would
Speaker 1: be considered high school. And then their auntie paid for
Speaker 1: law school. And it wasn't long after law school that
Speaker 1: they got into the UM. It was about to say
Speaker 1: writing that they did right. But the editors for sure,
Speaker 1: collecting and editing and writing business. They were what's called philologists.
Speaker 1: Curating is the word I met um. And they were
Speaker 1: also they consider of themselves and were considered linguists as well.
Speaker 1: And by the way, they were Hessians, which means that
Speaker 1: they were um from the same place as the headless
Speaker 1: horseman from a sleepy hollow legend. He was a Hessian mercenary.
Speaker 1: That yeah, Um. So anyway, they they came. They graduated
Speaker 1: from law school during this period called German romanticism um,
Speaker 1: which was basically this idea that before years before, in
Speaker 1: the in the midsts of history, the Germanic people were
Speaker 1: very interesting. They had a very good grasp on things,
Speaker 1: and a lot of this was passed down through oral
Speaker 1: folk folklore and um. That this stuff was disappearing thanks
Speaker 1: to industrialization. So you get the idea that there's a
Speaker 1: little bit of nervousness at least among the intellectual um
Speaker 1: people of Germany at the time, that this cultural history
Speaker 1: was drying up very quickly, and there was a movement
Speaker 1: to collect this oral knowledge before it disappeared. And that's
Speaker 1: what um, that's what the Grimm brothers were doing when
Speaker 1: they set about collecting these stories, although they weren't very
Speaker 1: honest about it at least at first. Yeah, it was, um,
Speaker 1: we know them now is as just simply the grim
Speaker 1: Brothers fairy tales. But the original collection was called um
Speaker 1: Nursery and Household Tales or die kenda went house minchen
Speaker 1: and german Man. You're German? Is it's coming back? And
Speaker 1: there are eighty six stories originally in the collection. And
Speaker 1: by the way, big shout to the article from the
Speaker 1: New Yorker Once Upon a Time A Lord of the
Speaker 1: fairy Tale by Joan uh at Casella. Yes, very nice.
Speaker 1: I think that's it. Yeah, she wrote a great article. Um,
Speaker 1: and that's the largely the basis of our podcast. By
Speaker 1: the way, that's right, so thanks for that. But um,
Speaker 1: eighty six original stories. And like you said, originally they
Speaker 1: in the in the forward, in the introduction they were like,
Speaker 1: this is a this is all German all the time,
Speaker 1: basically word for word. We went around to the peasantry
Speaker 1: and collected this um these marks was it marching or marking?
Speaker 1: Uh for what the tales German for tales the marching
Speaker 1: or marken house myrchin merchant. So they went around to
Speaker 1: the Vulk the peasantry and collected the merchant from them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it didn't change a word specifically. They said they had
Speaker 1: a primary source, a woman named Dorothea VMan, and she
Speaker 1: was a peasant and a village near them. Um. But
Speaker 1: it turns out and that all of this again was folklore,
Speaker 1: which I can't fault them too much because that was
Speaker 1: their business. No, but they jumped it up to be
Speaker 1: a little more folks tho than it was. Well, they
Speaker 1: both basically lied in there in the introduction in their
Speaker 1: first um, the first edition, which was published in two
Speaker 1: volumes in eighteen twelve and eighteen fifteen. Right, and so
Speaker 1: this nursery and household tales became known as rooms fairy tales.
Speaker 1: And at first it was definitely um a much more
Speaker 1: of an intellectual pursuit. There are lots of footnotes. They
Speaker 1: tried to make it seem like they were just collecting
Speaker 1: and preserving this German folk knowledge and all that. But
Speaker 1: it turns out that they they did have that primary
Speaker 1: source and that woman, but she was pretty far from
Speaker 1: a peasant. Apparently she was the wife of a tailor,
Speaker 1: which was part of the merchant class, not the peasant class,
Speaker 1: and she was just one source. They relied on friends
Speaker 1: and family and relatives and other collections of fairy folk
Speaker 1: folk tales and fairy tales that they just lifted. Um.
Speaker 1: And we're not suggesting there were thieves. This was a
Speaker 1: common thing to do. It was. But again they bald
Speaker 1: faced ly lied in there in the in the introduction
Speaker 1: in preface, which is funny, but it's um. Yeah, they were.
Speaker 1: They were they were trying to adopt an aura for
Speaker 1: their project that they wanted it to have that it
Speaker 1: didn't necessarily have. Well, yeah, and I don't think we
Speaker 1: mentioned the source wasn't even a German descent. She was
Speaker 1: a French. You cannot. Yeah, So they even kind of
Speaker 1: trump that up right, which means that a lot of
Speaker 1: the stuff that, like Red Riding cap Um, is a
Speaker 1: rip off of Charles Perrault's Little Red Riding Hood or
Speaker 1: an adaptation whatever you want to call it. But again,
Speaker 1: this is in the midst of this German romanticism, where
Speaker 1: German culture was trying to be promoted and um uh,
Speaker 1: celebrated and preserved. Um. So all of this stuff was
Speaker 1: very much painted as German, even though not necessarily any
Speaker 1: of it was German. In origin, but it was far
Speaker 1: more ancient than even the French that they were lifting
Speaker 1: it from. That's right. Um, all right, here, let's take
Speaker 1: a little break and let's come back and let's talk
Speaker 1: a little bit more about these grand brothers and we're
Speaker 1: back and Chuck. Before we get back to it, I
Speaker 1: want to shout out to guest producer Noel, who is
Speaker 1: responsible for the fairy tale themed jingle that this episode
Speaker 1: in the first one too. Yeah, we asked and he
Speaker 1: was like, too easy, I'll do with my eyes closed
Speaker 1: while I'm asleep. He did with an alligator chasing me.
Speaker 1: That's right, So thanks Noel. It's awesome. All right. These
Speaker 1: are grand brothers. Uh. They were. They were tight. They
Speaker 1: were really really close with each other. They were they
Speaker 1: worked really close with each other. They were buddies from
Speaker 1: what I can tell. Uh, And apparently for most of
Speaker 1: their career they worked at desks facing each other. That
Speaker 1: classic writing partner than we are now, Yes, even though
Speaker 1: it's one desk, right and we only sit here to record. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess there is some similarity here there. Sure we're
Speaker 1: making magic and they were too. I think that's the similarity, right, Sure,
Speaker 1: yakop was it was a difficult introvert in Willehelm was
Speaker 1: pretty laid back. Wilhelm would eventually get married because he
Speaker 1: was more outgoing and had four kids, whereas Yakop stayed
Speaker 1: a bachelor his whole life. Um, and they were tight.
Speaker 1: They worked as librarians together for a lot of their career. Uh.
Speaker 1: And like you said, they were uh philologists. It is
Speaker 1: um like they worked on most things, I think eight
Speaker 1: things together. Yakop wrote twenty one books on his own,
Speaker 1: bill Holm fourteen. And they were I mean, one of
Speaker 1: them wrote a book on grammar. One of them wrote
Speaker 1: like a history book. They were smart dude. They were
Speaker 1: smart dudes. Um. But their their life's work, aside from
Speaker 1: the fairy tales, ended up being they seemed to be
Speaker 1: sort of obsessed with making a German dictionary complete, like
Speaker 1: writing a dictionary. Yeah, they've made it to f I
Speaker 1: believe before they died. Yeah, and then some some other
Speaker 1: people came along and said we're going to carry on
Speaker 1: this work and finish and it was completed. But it
Speaker 1: was a massive project. Yeah, I mean, like for decades
Speaker 1: they worked up just to get through f right and
Speaker 1: I think, um who died first, I believe Wilhelm, the
Speaker 1: younger one, died first and Jacob carried the dictionary on
Speaker 1: for four more years even after his death. But um
Speaker 1: Yacob said, Okay, I'm done with the fairy Tales. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna move on to other stuff. And Wilhelm actually edited
Speaker 1: that thing for forty five years. It went through seven
Speaker 1: editions of the Fairytale Thing, Yes, the Nursery and Household Tales,
Speaker 1: the Grim fairy Tales, Scary it went, I'm sorry, I switched.
Speaker 1: Um it went from uh, it went from yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess eighteen twelve to yeah. Eighteen fifty seven was when
Speaker 1: he released the last edition, and they were very different
Speaker 1: books by the time the first edition in the last
Speaker 1: edition came out, and even between the first and second editions,
Speaker 1: they were tremendously different books. Because Um, the Grimm brothers
Speaker 1: decided that their book wasn't selling like they thought it
Speaker 1: would e G. Hot k Yeah, if you listen to
Speaker 1: the previous episode, it was originally much darker and aimed
Speaker 1: at adults and was poorly reviewed and didn't sell well. Right,
Speaker 1: and for grammarians listening by e G. I'm an example
Speaker 1: not that is I would have said I E had
Speaker 1: I meant that. But um, they they decided that if
Speaker 1: they could just kind of alter their book just a
Speaker 1: tiny bit, it would sell a lot better. So they
Speaker 1: went through and took out all the sex, basically. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and tradition of modern Americans take out the sex, pump
Speaker 1: up the violence, right, But these are like early nineteenth
Speaker 1: century Germans doing this, and I guess it's that that
Speaker 1: same thing. Um, And here, Chuck, I have a question,
Speaker 1: and it's a rhetorical question, but so you know how
Speaker 1: nursery rhymes are just fairy tales are just weird. They're
Speaker 1: very weird. There's a lot of random things that just
Speaker 1: seem really out of talking eggs that break and right,
Speaker 1: but also like really horrific violence for children's story and
Speaker 1: all that. Yeah, I think that this is the point
Speaker 1: where that weirdness sets in because they went through and
Speaker 1: they took the same tales and they altered them just
Speaker 1: slightly for children. But it went from these are adults
Speaker 1: or these are stories for adults meant to be told
Speaker 1: from one adults to another, not for kids, to let's
Speaker 1: adapt these for kids. And um, in that adaptation, that
Speaker 1: weirdness set in that's still there today. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that's when it happened. That wasn't even a rhetorical question.
Speaker 1: That was just a statement, thank you you're putting it
Speaker 1: out there. Had I ended an up speak, though, I
Speaker 1: could have made the case that it was rhetorical. Uh So,
Speaker 1: in this and then the very next edition out of
Speaker 1: the seven, they went ahead and after the bad sales
Speaker 1: and stuff, and like I said, they sanitized it and
Speaker 1: geared it too kids, but they also dropped that stuff
Speaker 1: from the intro. All the lies in the intro were like,
Speaker 1: I guess, why why do we even do that? Yeah?
Speaker 1: You know, of course, sorry everybody. That was just dumb
Speaker 1: on our parts. It was Wilhelm yaco Is likes like
Speaker 1: no yucom and it just goes back and forth for
Speaker 1: like eight pages. Uh So, in the previous podcast we
Speaker 1: mentioned Rupunzel. How that was, um, how Rapunzel. Basically the
Speaker 1: lady in question got pregnant after having sex. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: they would they would, uh, they would whitewash that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. They would sanitize the sexier parts. Right, They
Speaker 1: just took out the fact that she got pregnant and
Speaker 1: didn't mention what the prince and she were doing, right,
Speaker 1: They just left it up to the parents to imagine
Speaker 1: and the kids to just be dummies and not know
Speaker 1: what they were talking about. Right, But like we said
Speaker 1: to the violent stayed um and in some cases even
Speaker 1: got worse, like when Um Hansel and Well, the violence
Speaker 1: got worse, but they also did sanitize it a little bit,
Speaker 1: just to make it a little more palatable, like in
Speaker 1: Hansel and gretel Uh. In the previous show, we mentioned
Speaker 1: that Um it was it was a stepmother, an evil stepmother,
Speaker 1: which we'll we'll talk about later as a recurring motif
Speaker 1: UM that took the children out in the woods to
Speaker 1: abandon them, and the original version it was both a
Speaker 1: real mother and a real father, And they were like,
Speaker 1: all right, you know that's really bad, so let's at
Speaker 1: least make it an evil stepmother that the dad tries
Speaker 1: to battle and say no, don't do this, right, but
Speaker 1: eventually gives into, gives into and the kids are still
Speaker 1: taking out in the woods to die, but it's just
Speaker 1: a little bit more like, Okay, well it's not the
Speaker 1: real parents because that's just horrific. So the violence is
Speaker 1: still there, but they've taken away a little bit of
Speaker 1: the psychological terror by replacing the mother slightly with a stepmother. UM,
Speaker 1: and yeah, I think that that's a I guess that
Speaker 1: is something of a cleansing process as far as editing goes.
Speaker 1: But the violence is still in there, and it seems
Speaker 1: very weird, especially today when you look back at this
Speaker 1: and think like they were reading this to kids. But
Speaker 1: there's a very smart woman named A s byatt who's
Speaker 1: children's off herself but also an expert on children's books,
Speaker 1: and she wrote the introduction to a UM collection I
Speaker 1: think actually the an addition of the Grimm's Fairy Tales
Speaker 1: by Maria Tatar, who's a basically the foremost expert on
Speaker 1: fairy tales working today. Yeah, that's Zip's not around anymore.
Speaker 1: He's retired because that guy, He's still available for comment
Speaker 1: for sure, but Tatar seems to be the She's taken
Speaker 1: up the mantle from him and uh in this edition.
Speaker 1: A s By writes in the introduction of it that, yes,
Speaker 1: this violence seems weird, but if you step back and
Speaker 1: think of it as uh seventeenth and eighteenth century Tom
Speaker 1: and Jerry cartoons, it becomes way more understandable and at
Speaker 1: the same time way more acceptable as well. Like, think
Speaker 1: about all the horrible things that Jerry did to Tom,
Speaker 1: and what you're looking at is the same exact stuff
Speaker 1: in a fairy tale, So it's not quite as odd
Speaker 1: as you would think. Yeah, And as far as the
Speaker 1: historical motif or the motif of the evil step mom,
Speaker 1: there's a historical realism there that um, someone else pointed
Speaker 1: out that at the time, you know, women died in
Speaker 1: childbirth a lot, and so oftentimes there was a widow
Speaker 1: or a widower left with kids that they would bring
Speaker 1: in a stepmother and resources could be scared. So you'll
Speaker 1: see this recurring motif over and over, this evil stepmother
Speaker 1: who basically is competing for both the affections and food
Speaker 1: of their little children that they inherited that they don't like.
Speaker 1: So that's why you see it pop up over and
Speaker 1: over and over, because that's kind of what happens sometimes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's the sociohistorical interpretation of fairy tales, which is
Speaker 1: um basically takes fairy tales largely on their face. I mean, like,
Speaker 1: if you have a talking egg or something like that,
Speaker 1: you're not going to be like well, obviously in the
Speaker 1: twelfth century, eggs talked, but there were a lot of
Speaker 1: there's a lot of context in background that um that
Speaker 1: I think people imbue with a lot more fancifulness than
Speaker 1: need be. For example, like the the presence of wicked
Speaker 1: step mothers throughout or in the case of Hansel and
Speaker 1: gretel um a child abandonment like if you look back
Speaker 1: at the fourteenth century, during famines and plagues, I think
Speaker 1: it was the Black Death in particularly just leveled Europe.
Speaker 1: A lot of people abandoned their children because they just
Speaker 1: couldn't feed them any longer. So this wasn't like so
Speaker 1: outlandish that it only belongs in fairy tale, and it
Speaker 1: might have been like a fairly approachable theme that people
Speaker 1: talked about to kind of hash out the feelings of
Speaker 1: collective societal guilt at the fact that child abandonment was rampant.
Speaker 1: You know, it's I think the sociohistorical interpretation is probably
Speaker 1: my favorite. Can we talked about the juniper tree real quick?
Speaker 1: I love this one. So, like we said, in fairy tales,
Speaker 1: there's there's incests, there's cannibalism, there's murder, there's torture, there's
Speaker 1: buried alive. There are all kinds of things that happen
Speaker 1: in the junifer tree. Maybe well, I don't know, maybe
Speaker 1: the worst one of them all. So in this case,
Speaker 1: we have an evil stepmother, of course, who hates her stepchild,
Speaker 1: who was a boy. So she comes home and says, hey,
Speaker 1: you want an apple, and the boy says, sure, let
Speaker 1: me lean in there and get one, and she it's
Speaker 1: a trunk, and she slams the trunk down and cuts
Speaker 1: his head off. And that's just the beginning. So she's like,
Speaker 1: all right, probably not a wise move. Let me put
Speaker 1: the kid in a chair. Let me stick this head
Speaker 1: back on his neck and wrap a scarf around it,
Speaker 1: and just here, open his eyes here, and put a
Speaker 1: little smile on his face. And then her real daughter
Speaker 1: comes in, not a stepdaughter, her favorite, real daughter. And
Speaker 1: it's like, he looks all weird. Why is he just
Speaker 1: sitting there like adult? She says, I don't know, go
Speaker 1: slap him and and bring him around a bit. Boxes
Speaker 1: the ear, I think, is what she So she boxes
Speaker 1: his ear. His head falls off. And by the way,
Speaker 1: the little girl, which makes it even more horrific what
Speaker 1: you're about to say, loved the little boy though it
Speaker 1: was a stepbrother, even though in the mom's eyes they
Speaker 1: were rivals. For these scarce resources. A little girl loves
Speaker 1: a little boy, so go ahead. So she knocks his
Speaker 1: head off, and the mom's like, you knocked your brother's
Speaker 1: head off, But you know what, We're gonna just keep
Speaker 1: this quiet between us and you won't get in any trouble.
Speaker 1: Let's just cook him into a stew and feed him
Speaker 1: to your father or step And the little girls like
Speaker 1: beside herself with like guilt and shame and horror at
Speaker 1: the fact that she or the thought that she killed
Speaker 1: her beloved stepbrother, but she goes along with it because
Speaker 1: this is what her mom is saying. And the father
Speaker 1: comes home and he eats the stew and actually it's
Speaker 1: black pudding. Yeah, I'm not sure what that is. But um,
Speaker 1: the father eats it and he's like this is all
Speaker 1: for men, a little misogyny and greed on the end,
Speaker 1: because he's like, no one else in this family is
Speaker 1: going to eat this, yeah but me. It's pretty nuts.
Speaker 1: And in the end, the little the little girl takes
Speaker 1: the boy's bones and buries him by the juniper tree,
Speaker 1: and he's reborn as a bird and ends up killing
Speaker 1: the wicked stepmother um, and then comes back to life
Speaker 1: as the boy so it all works out in the
Speaker 1: end for the boy. But it's pretty nuts as far
Speaker 1: as like these stories go, Like that has it all?
Speaker 1: Do you want to talk about how children played butcher
Speaker 1: with each other? Yes, this one's very short, and we
Speaker 1: should point out many of these are very short, like
Speaker 1: Little Red Riding Hood was only four pages long. I
Speaker 1: think Rapunzel was only two or three. But that also,
Speaker 1: in and of itself, was the work of the Grim brothers.
Speaker 1: They would embellish this stuff tremendously and often double it
Speaker 1: and double it from a few paragraphs to a couple
Speaker 1: of pages. So still short. And by the way, if
Speaker 1: you want to read a really neat analysis of the
Speaker 1: juniper tree, read Ernest Parkins analysis on word words and edgeways. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty cool. He finds at out of neat symbolism
Speaker 1: in it. All right, here's how children played butcher with
Speaker 1: each other. It's a great title. A man once slaughtered
Speaker 1: a pig while his children were looking on. When they
Speaker 1: started playing in the afternoon, one child said to the other,
Speaker 1: you beat the little pig, and I'll be the butcher.
Speaker 1: Whereupon he took an open blade and thrust it into
Speaker 1: his brother's neck. Their mother, who was upstairs in a
Speaker 1: room bathing the youngest child in a tub, heard the
Speaker 1: cries of her other child, quickly ran downstairs, and when
Speaker 1: she saw what had happened, drew the knife out of
Speaker 1: the child's neck and in a rage, thrust it into
Speaker 1: the heart of the child who had been the butcher.
Speaker 1: Then she rushed back to the house to see what
Speaker 1: her other child was doing in the tub, but in
Speaker 1: the meantime it had drowned in the bath. The woman
Speaker 1: was so horrified that she fell into a state of
Speaker 1: utter despair, refused to be consoled by the servants, and
Speaker 1: hanged herself. When her husband returned home from the fields
Speaker 1: and saw this, he was so distraught that he died
Speaker 1: shortly thereafter the end. That's like the episode of Dragnet
Speaker 1: where they have a pop party and the parents forget
Speaker 1: their child is in the bath and it drowned. Was
Speaker 1: that on Dragnet? Wow? So you know, of course I'm laughing,
Speaker 1: because I mean, you can't take that seriously, right if
Speaker 1: you watch Dragnet you can well no, I mean that
Speaker 1: story it's just so over the top and weird and
Speaker 1: violent and dark and stuff just happens like again, there's
Speaker 1: almost no psychology to these things. People just do stuff
Speaker 1: well supposedly. Uh. I think Wilhelm Grim said specifically about
Speaker 1: that one, like No, the clear lesson here is it's like,
Speaker 1: don't play with knives and things, which is and that's
Speaker 1: a good point, and I don't know if we've even
Speaker 1: said that, Like the the predominant theory for why these
Speaker 1: things even exist is um, as far as being taught
Speaker 1: to children goes, they are lessons their tails and how
Speaker 1: to grow up, how to avoid strangers, stay away from knives,
Speaker 1: stay away from I guess, which is like don't eat
Speaker 1: houses made of gingerbread, just good life lessons that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. They're sexual predators out there, yeah, which we'll
Speaker 1: talk about, but let's take another break. You're ready for it, yes, okay,
Speaker 1: So Chuck you um, you said that there are sexual
Speaker 1: predators out there and they're little red riding hood in particular,
Speaker 1: Like if you read it, especially if you read the
Speaker 1: Grim version and not the Charles Barrault version, it's um
Speaker 1: like everything comes out great in the end, she saved. Um,
Speaker 1: you can read between the lines a little bit and
Speaker 1: that's the key. Though, Like these these fairy tales even
Speaker 1: after they became sanitized through seven editions, even after they
Speaker 1: became disneyfied um, there's still this underlying thread, the theme,
Speaker 1: the central theme, the message look out for sexual predators,
Speaker 1: don't cut your brother's head off with a knife like that.
Speaker 1: They can't be expunge and the story still remain the same.
Speaker 1: It's it's so woven into the fabric of them, and
Speaker 1: I think that's one of the things that makes them interesting.
Speaker 1: But alternately, something else I ran across, and I think
Speaker 1: that a s buy it Um article was the idea
Speaker 1: that they don't have any designs on you. They're not
Speaker 1: trying to teach you a lesson necessarily in and of themselves.
Speaker 1: They just are what they are. Maybe the person telling
Speaker 1: you that fairy tale wants you to learn that lesson.
Speaker 1: The fairy tale in and of itself couldn't care less
Speaker 1: whether you you learned that lesson or not. It's just
Speaker 1: here's a snapshot of what happened in twelve seventeen to
Speaker 1: this little boy who played with knives with his brother.
Speaker 1: Will learn it or don't, we don't care. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: that's uh. What was Zip's first name? Jack? Jack? Zip's
Speaker 1: he was may still be here he said, he's retired now, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's He worked at the University of Minnesota. Is a
Speaker 1: comparative literature professor and German professor go Golden Gophers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: uh uh. And he for many many years was the
Speaker 1: pre eminent fairy tale dude. He was where you would go.
Speaker 1: He turns up all over the place in his research.
Speaker 1: But he said, though, um that there usually is like
Speaker 1: a come upance, Like he says, whoever is a tyrant
Speaker 1: at which an evil brother or mother who wants her
Speaker 1: own daughter dead, they will always be punished. There will
Speaker 1: always be justice. And usually the characters that are of
Speaker 1: humble origins go on to have like great success, like
Speaker 1: the you know, the uh, poor maiden marries the prince
Speaker 1: in the end in most cases it's true, but not always.
Speaker 1: Or the king who wants to have an incestuous relationship
Speaker 1: with his daughter ends up getting killed or something like that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In that case, I believe what was his wife was
Speaker 1: dying and he said, I will only remarry if I
Speaker 1: can find someone as beautiful as you, and turns out
Speaker 1: that's my daughter. What was that one called, like many
Speaker 1: or something like it was called the creep King. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that's a recurring theme. Actually it's a very ancient one.
Speaker 1: It falls under the Cinderella story um which apparently so
Speaker 1: there's a I don't know if we mentioned it or not,
Speaker 1: but there's a folklore cataloging device like cataloging convention. And
Speaker 1: I think Cinderella stories, which is the persecuted heroin is
Speaker 1: uh number five ten A yeah, for real, it's the
Speaker 1: Arne Thompson Uther classification five ten A persecuted heroin Cinderella
Speaker 1: stories the Uther pen dragon, and that's another. Cinderella is
Speaker 1: another one, like there was one woman in particular who
Speaker 1: collected three eighty five different versions of the Cinderella story
Speaker 1: from around the world, and I think they've identified as
Speaker 1: many as fifteen. So Cinderella is another very very ancient
Speaker 1: one as well. And the one that you recounted about
Speaker 1: the king you wants to Mary's daughter, that particular one
Speaker 1: from Greece. Yeah, I think that was called all Kinds
Speaker 1: of Fur. It's all hyphenated, like that's her name or something.
Speaker 1: I think it's um. So we're talking talk about like
Speaker 1: sanitizing it and um Joan a Casella comes to the
Speaker 1: Grimm's defense like saying you can't really fault these guys
Speaker 1: for for changing this stuff, because again, it doesn't really
Speaker 1: belong to anybody. They belong to the ages, and the
Speaker 1: Grimms just put their stamp on it. Um. And then also,
Speaker 1: you know, uh, if you if you just take an
Speaker 1: oral tradition and faithfully write it down, it's going to
Speaker 1: be virtually unreadable. So they definitely stylized that. They added
Speaker 1: some more pros, and they made it a lot more memorable,
Speaker 1: and it became a beloved book. It's a Unesco book
Speaker 1: Memory of the World, I think collection, so like it's
Speaker 1: a it's a very well beloved book. But some people say,
Speaker 1: you know, if why should the Grimms be the only
Speaker 1: ones to be able to change fairy tales? Why why
Speaker 1: does it have to end with them? Maybe it's time
Speaker 1: to rewrite them some Well, isn't that what uh tartar
Speaker 1: zips that's his position. No, no no, no, but I thought
Speaker 1: the one in who uh name? What isn't that what
Speaker 1: she's done? Didn't she release a new version? In two
Speaker 1: thousand five, she released an annotated version, but she didn't
Speaker 1: rewrite them. What SIPs is saying is like, here's the
Speaker 1: basic story, go rewrite it as your own and um,
Speaker 1: there's been some feminist collections that that are rewritten stories. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like why is every girl defenseless and needs a man
Speaker 1: to rescue her from poverty or danger? Right, And that's
Speaker 1: a feminist interpretation of a lot of um, the fairy tales,
Speaker 1: some people say, if you look a little further, like, yes,
Speaker 1: all the ones that Disney picked and all the most
Speaker 1: popular ones are very much patriarch patriarchally slanted to where
Speaker 1: it is a damvel in distress as a prince that
Speaker 1: has to come help her and she's helpless until he
Speaker 1: comes along and then whatever. Um, But if you look
Speaker 1: a little further, there are some very there are other
Speaker 1: ones where they're resourceful heroines. And think of Hansel and Gretel.
Speaker 1: Gretel tricks the witch and kills her all by herself
Speaker 1: without the help of Hansel, who's being fattened up by himself. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I'm sure Disney, Walt Disney himself was just like, man,
Speaker 1: they love this stuff, like of course I'm gonna they're
Speaker 1: eating it up. Yeah, but there, but there. You can
Speaker 1: also look at Hollywood two is a means of taking
Speaker 1: these classic fairy tales and rewriting the Grim versions like, Um,
Speaker 1: there's a huge I don't want to call it a movement,
Speaker 1: but there's there's like a trend, I guess, trend to
Speaker 1: to taking these things that were disneyfied versions of the
Speaker 1: stories and restoring them back even even to their pre
Speaker 1: grim darker roots, just making them dark again roots there
Speaker 1: grimmar pre grim roots. Yeah. Um, have you ever seen
Speaker 1: Freeway with Reese Witherspoon? Oh? Yeah, that was a little
Speaker 1: red writing a little red riding hood. And if you're
Speaker 1: a feminist, I guarantee you appreciate that version a little
Speaker 1: Red riding Hood because she takes no guff and comes
Speaker 1: out on top and at no points for yeah, and
Speaker 1: Brooks shields as his wife, and she like it's crazy.
Speaker 1: It's a neat, neat movie. But that's a good example
Speaker 1: of a rewriting of a classic fairy tale. Like, no,
Speaker 1: it doesn't have to end with the Grims totally. Uh.
Speaker 1: In The Company of Wolves, wasn't that a that was
Speaker 1: a rewrite of or redo of a little writing her
Speaker 1: two a little more of a horror though, right? I
Speaker 1: think so? I didn't see it. I didn't either. I
Speaker 1: think that was Neil Jordan's right, crying game, Yeah, like
Speaker 1: one of his early movies. So um, we have to
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about the Nazis here, because the
Speaker 1: Nazis were big on co opting things for their own purposes. Uh.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that co opted were Grim's
Speaker 1: fairy tales. And since World War Two there's been a
Speaker 1: big I don't know about big again, maybe it was
Speaker 1: such a trend, but there were folks who said that,
Speaker 1: you know, when you look at these, they're talking about
Speaker 1: German nationalism and discipline and violence and obedient and order
Speaker 1: and obedience. And I think the grand brothers were like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's totally nationalism. We were all about Germany. But but
Speaker 1: we died like decades before Hitler was even born. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: I don't think they would have appreciated that it was
Speaker 1: co opted by the Nazis, and Hitler saying like, put
Speaker 1: these in schools, this is awesome, Like read this stuff,
Speaker 1: put them in boy scout rooms everywhere, that's funny. So um,
Speaker 1: the Allies came in and occupied Germany and one of
Speaker 1: the things they said was like, you guys can't teach
Speaker 1: this Grim book anymore. And bandit and a lot of
Speaker 1: towns around Germany became very political because it was very
Speaker 1: much associated with the Third Reich. And one of the
Speaker 1: reasons why is because the Third Reich said, go teach
Speaker 1: this to young German kids, to make sure that they
Speaker 1: know they're German and that they will triumph over the
Speaker 1: Allied Wolf because they're all little red riding hood that's right,
Speaker 1: little Nazi kids, that's right. So um, again, people make
Speaker 1: the case like, you can't really hang that on the
Speaker 1: Grim brothers. They didn't foresee Nazism and this this German
Speaker 1: nationalism in and of itself isn't necessarily inherently evil, and
Speaker 1: if you put it in the context of German romanticism,
Speaker 1: most countries in Europe were undergoing nationalist fever, you know.
Speaker 1: So um. There was some anti semitism though, and some
Speaker 1: of the tales, yeah, and that can't be gotten around either. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One was called The Jew and the Brambles, where the
Speaker 1: protagonists torments a Jewish person by dancing, making him dance
Speaker 1: on the thicket of thorns, uh, calls him a dirty dog.
Speaker 1: And then there's I mean, there's various I think said
Speaker 1: three basically of the two hundred tales had Jewish characters,
Speaker 1: and they were never like favorable. Yeah, the other two
Speaker 1: um referenced the Jewish stereotype of being stingy with money
Speaker 1: or something like that. Yeah, the good bargain. And a
Speaker 1: lot of people are like, well, let's just expunge those
Speaker 1: two um, and some people have from their collections. I
Speaker 1: think that's the other thing too, is you can if
Speaker 1: the Grim's kind of set a precedent for you can
Speaker 1: take these tales and cleanse them if you want, or
Speaker 1: do whatever you want to them, like there they belong
Speaker 1: to the ages. Well, and that's then comes in the
Speaker 1: people who posit whether or not it's that's good for
Speaker 1: Should we sanitize that? Should we not? Uh? W h Alden,
Speaker 1: I love this. He described the people who sanitize him
Speaker 1: as the Society for the Scientific Diet, the Association of
Speaker 1: Positive Parents, positivist parents, the League for the Promotion of
Speaker 1: Worthwhile Leisure, or the cooperative Camp of Prudent Progressives. Man.
Speaker 1: That is so w ah Todden. He couldn't just leave
Speaker 1: it at one description. H So he clearly wasn't in
Speaker 1: favor of it. Some people think, uh it's good for us.
Speaker 1: Um A man name uh Bruno Bettelheim in a name
Speaker 1: Bruno Bedelheim. Yeah, totally is it sounds like a bond
Speaker 1: villain or something. A book called The Uses of Enchantment,
Speaker 1: and he was very Freudian in nature that he basically
Speaker 1: says that we all, all these kids have these unconscious
Speaker 1: desires and these books help, uh what like these repressed
Speaker 1: desires come out, help them deal with them. Yeah. Well
Speaker 1: it helps children, yeah, deal with their repressed desires. Like
Speaker 1: the example of the UM. So we talked about the
Speaker 1: sociohistorical interpretation of the presence of wicked stepmothers. Right, there
Speaker 1: are lots of stepmothers and they were competing for resources
Speaker 1: bet Ohaim and the Freudians say, well, no, the stepmothers
Speaker 1: are there because UM children love their mother, but they
Speaker 1: also hate their mother, and this gives them a way
Speaker 1: to work through the complex. Yeah, that complex um combination
Speaker 1: of emotions where they can hate the wicked stepmother, but
Speaker 1: they can also love the biological mother who's absent or
Speaker 1: appears early on and then dies, but who is always
Speaker 1: very loving and kind. Right, so they can work that out.
Speaker 1: That's a great example of it. Yeah, and then you
Speaker 1: have Zips, who Jack Zip says, you know what it
Speaker 1: really is is, uh, children see the fairy tale as
Speaker 1: like a counterworld of reflection of their own world, and
Speaker 1: it allows them to, you know, consider what's going on
Speaker 1: in that world and then take steps in their own
Speaker 1: world to reform it and not do those things right.
Speaker 1: And specifically it teaches children to identify tyrants and people
Speaker 1: who are power mad, and people who hoard money or
Speaker 1: harm other people, because those people almost invariably come to
Speaker 1: a terrible end in those things. And then fairy tales, right,
Speaker 1: So you've got all these different interpretations Freudian Carl Young
Speaker 1: got into it um, sociohistorical feminist interpretation, Jack Zipe's own
Speaker 1: personal leftist interpretation, right um, and all of them, although
Speaker 1: they compete here there none of them are wrong and
Speaker 1: none of them are right. And then again, it's the
Speaker 1: beauty of fairy tales. It's like a blank white piece
Speaker 1: of ply would that we project our own thoughts and
Speaker 1: fears and hopes and ideas onto culture by culture, age
Speaker 1: by age. And Tatar and her collection did a pretty
Speaker 1: smart thing. I think she actually collected some of the
Speaker 1: more disturbing one in the back of the book under
Speaker 1: the title Tales for Adults. Basically read these first on
Speaker 1: your own. See if you want to read them to
Speaker 1: your kid, don't frontload it with the juniper tree. Right.
Speaker 1: And actually, Joan Accella says that you should take an
Speaker 1: exact and if and just cut the juniper tree out
Speaker 1: of your said that. I thought that was pretty funny. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know if your kids got a
Speaker 1: strong fortitude. It's up to the parents. But it wasn't
Speaker 1: always up to the parents. There was a big movement
Speaker 1: in the mid twentieth century for um realism among children's books. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and the Grimms were first on the chopping block there. Instead,
Speaker 1: it was replaced by like Judy Goes to the Firehouses.
Speaker 1: Zachcella says, I totally like think about it. It's like
Speaker 1: a total fifties children's book, like see Dick and Jane Run.
Speaker 1: You know. Um and it was I guess Maurice Syndec
Speaker 1: with Where the Wild Things Are? Who? Who said I
Speaker 1: we were not doing that anymore. He brought the cool
Speaker 1: back to children's books. He definitely did. Yeah, I have it,
Speaker 1: read many children's books lately, But I think there's a
Speaker 1: lot of you read Daddy Sat on a duck, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I did read that. Lots of far jokes in that one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was written by one of our listeners. Um, highly
Speaker 1: recommended it is. It's very good. But I think these
Speaker 1: days there's a mix of things going on, realism, fanciful
Speaker 1: stuff stories and now uh well this is more of
Speaker 1: a young adult novel. But Colum Alloy of the December
Speaker 1: sort of three part children's novels, like big, big books
Speaker 1: about this fantastical world in Oregon, this forest in Oregon
Speaker 1: where I can't I bought them all. I can't wait
Speaker 1: to read him. It's cool man, Yeah, I think he's
Speaker 1: he's that's more the tradition of the like lion which
Speaker 1: in the wardrobe And you said that, I wanted to say,
Speaker 1: Avon is not the name Narnia Narnia. Um, yeah, I
Speaker 1: have no idea where children's books are these days either.
Speaker 1: I wonder though, what what it reflects about society at large,
Speaker 1: whatever phase children's books are, whether it's realism or fancifulness,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, like are we like when you're in
Speaker 1: an economic downturn? Is realism or fantasy the one that
Speaker 1: steps in? Yeah, I would guess fantasy because people want
Speaker 1: to escapism. Then I was way into that stuff. I
Speaker 1: wasn't into like Hobbit and Lord of the Rings and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. But I love Maurice Sendak really and
Speaker 1: stuff that was really kind of out there. I love
Speaker 1: Dr Seuss. I found out that it's um not every
Speaker 1: boy read Ramona Quimpy books. I thought it was Nix
Speaker 1: apparently not. Yeah. I read uh some Judy Bloom Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course. Um and I did read the first couple
Speaker 1: of the The Chronic What Cools of Narnia? Did you
Speaker 1: ever see that skit? No, it's one of the setting
Speaker 1: live shorts they were doing, Chris Parnell and Sandberg. We're
Speaker 1: doing a rap the Chronic What Cools of Narnia. I
Speaker 1: didn't see that. It's like a very weird, misplaced What
Speaker 1: did you see Mr Shows coming back on Netflix? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Well close as we're gonna get the Mr Show. I
Speaker 1: don't think they can call it Mr Show. No, they're
Speaker 1: calling it uh with like w slash Bob and David.
Speaker 1: I can't wait. Man. I saw a couple of clips
Speaker 1: and it looks like, Yeah, it looks like it's going
Speaker 1: to be as good as it ever was. I'm pretty
Speaker 1: Before we leave you, since we're talking about fairy tales,
Speaker 1: we thought would be appropriate to mention that two of
Speaker 1: our horror fiction contest submitters are published once published again.
Speaker 1: J McMurray published The Dreamings of Leonard J. M. Leaper
Speaker 1: and you can check that out at take publishing dot
Speaker 1: com not Leper, no Leaper. And then also you can
Speaker 1: find Patrick Scott. He wrote play I Believe, which was
Speaker 1: in Meat for Tea magazine and you can find uh
Speaker 1: information about that at meat for t dot com. Uh.
Speaker 1: Since I said meat for Tea, it's time for listener, man,
Speaker 1: I don't I wish it was time for us to
Speaker 1: meet for tea No M E A T. Yeah, okay kidding,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this uh a little bit more on
Speaker 1: vocal Fry. We've got a lot of response from this one.
Speaker 1: I think it's second in controversy only homelessness. Yeah. A
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of ladies wrote in women that
Speaker 1: were very appreciative. A lot of men wrote in, um
Speaker 1: who were not appreciative. Many were too, Yeah, many were,
Speaker 1: But a lot of dudes wrote in. I think they're
Speaker 1: part of the men's movement. You know. It was divided
Speaker 1: like you would expect, but there were men who wrote
Speaker 1: in to support us. There are women who who wrote
Speaker 1: into to criticize vocal Fry. They agreed with Naomi Wolf. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I just want to clear up, I don't mean
Speaker 1: all old white men are awful. I don't I you
Speaker 1: don't even need to say that. If you're not one
Speaker 1: of the ones that are doing these things, then great,
Speaker 1: who cares? Yeah, I know you don't need to defend
Speaker 1: the ones who are all right, here we go. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: just want to say thanks so much for your recently
Speaker 1: for recently tackling some very charged gender issues in the
Speaker 1: most mature but not apologist of ways. I like how
Speaker 1: this emails on, whether it be female puberty, vocal Fry,
Speaker 1: or your excellent double duo with the stuff you misson
Speaker 1: History Class Crew and listener mail. You nailed what I
Speaker 1: consider to be the best way to handle the ubiquitous
Speaker 1: double standards that women find themselves held to state that
Speaker 1: it is unequivpably wrong, then calmly and rationally pick apart
Speaker 1: why you were not trying to start a gender war,
Speaker 1: though I'm sure there are those out there who will
Speaker 1: take it as such. Uh see the beginning of this email. Um,
Speaker 1: but you meticulously undercut the meticulously undercut the arguments and
Speaker 1: unconscious justifications that allow these attitudes to endure underneath all
Speaker 1: the truths by consensus and familial and cultural norms. Very
Speaker 1: little remains to give weight to these perspectives, and I
Speaker 1: believe that both genders are, albeit slowly shedding them, thanks
Speaker 1: to the efforts of you and many others on this path.
Speaker 1: Very well said right now, this is the road to equality, dudes.
Speaker 1: I throw that in there, and I cannot say how
Speaker 1: much I appreciate your proper championing of it. We are
Speaker 1: all persons, no matter our gender, and should you respected
Speaker 1: as such, free as much as possible of worthless generalizations. Also,
Speaker 1: as a side note, I was once upon a time
Speaker 1: a linguist and very much agree with your handling of
Speaker 1: socio linguistics A linguists. Sorry, Chuck, is that because I
Speaker 1: said like linguists, linguisticator or something. A linguists most fundamental
Speaker 1: tenant is that no use of language to communicate is wrong,
Speaker 1: and thus linguistic evolution should be no more surprising than
Speaker 1: that of pop music or fashion. Yeah, the prescriptivists are
Speaker 1: just screaming at their ipous ideas and perspectives change and language,
Speaker 1: by its nature will rise to meet it. Cheers. That
Speaker 1: is from David, a long time Stuff you Should Know FAM.
Speaker 1: Thanks a lot, David. That was a very kind email,
Speaker 1: Very well said UM representative. I would say about half
Speaker 1: of the emails that we got about vocal Fride the
Speaker 1: other half. If you want to get in touch with us,
Speaker 1: you can tweak to us at s y s K podcast.
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Speaker 1: Stuff podcast at how stuff Works dot com and has
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