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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.

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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff mom never told you?

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Speaker 1: From house Stop works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to

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Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline. Caroline. Since it

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Speaker 1: is the height of summer right now and folks are

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Speaker 1: taken to the pools, I thought it would be a

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Speaker 1: good time to talk about mermaids. Do you keep mermaids

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Speaker 1: in your pool? I wish I had mermaids in my pool.

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Speaker 1: I wish I had a pool to begin with. I

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Speaker 1: don't actually have a pool. I have to bum pools

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Speaker 1: off other people. I'm a pool scavenger. Um. But while

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Speaker 1: I don't keep mermaids in my pool, I did as

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Speaker 1: a child play Mermaid. Cool for you? Good? That did

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Speaker 1: you have? Like the you know, the dolphin dive? And yeah,

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Speaker 1: it really just involved my butt sticking up above the

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Speaker 1: water and the lifeguards laughing at me. Sounds like how

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Speaker 1: I swim now? Um? And it probably we probably played

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Speaker 1: Mermaid a lot because the Little Mermaid was so popular.

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Speaker 1: Yeah um growing up and he actually the the cartoon

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Speaker 1: prince I think was one of my first crushes. Eric. Yeah, Eric,

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Speaker 1: was very the prince for for a two dimensional character.

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Speaker 1: I've dated some two dimensional people though. Well. I think

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Speaker 1: we should note that Hans Christian Anderson, of course wrote

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Speaker 1: The Little Mermaid in eighteen thirty six. But mermaid mythology

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Speaker 1: goes back a long long time. Yeah, plenty of the

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Speaker 1: Elder in the first century a d. He he was

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Speaker 1: convinced that mermaids existed, and he described them, and actually

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Speaker 1: his text was one that people sort of relied on

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Speaker 1: for hundreds of years. Um So, then going forward to

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Speaker 1: the fifth century, there was a Greek work that I

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Speaker 1: can't pronounce the a logus shore that one. Uh, it

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Speaker 1: was all about animals. It was all encompassing, and it

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Speaker 1: was so all encompassing that it included fake ones like mermaid,

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Speaker 1: like the Mermaid. Yeah, and the description of mermaids starts

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Speaker 1: out really good, really really nice, let's hear it, and

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Speaker 1: it devolves. Okay, let's see they described a mermaid as

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Speaker 1: a beast of the sea, wonderfully shaping as a maid

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Speaker 1: from the naval upward and a fish from the naval downward.

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Speaker 1: And uh, it's okay so far. And then they say,

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Speaker 1: and this beast is glad and merry and tempest and

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Speaker 1: stayed and heavy and fair weather kind of moody. Mermaids

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Speaker 1: are jerks, jerks of the sea. Well, it's interesting because

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Speaker 1: Professor Anthony Piccolo of Manhattanville College thinks that this mercurial

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Speaker 1: mermaid nature might have been developed later by Christian writers.

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Speaker 1: For instance, in the thirteenth century, we have a monk

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Speaker 1: who wrote that while mermaids did charm sailors, they are

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Speaker 1: also and this is a quote strong whorse lead men astrae. Dang, well,

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Speaker 1: it sounds like the sirens in Homer's Odyssey, even though

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Speaker 1: the sirens are actually winged women of women of a sea. Uh,

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Speaker 1: we typically associate them with mermaids, right, luring men to

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Speaker 1: their deaths? Yes, yeah, just blame it on the women. Yeah, sure,

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Speaker 1: you you wreck your ship. Yeah, just blame it on

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Speaker 1: the women, but the tails not. I thought this was

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Speaker 1: an interesting tidbit as well, just to show how how

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Speaker 1: pervasive this mermaid mythology is. Fourteen eighty three, the Nuremberg

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Speaker 1: Bible shows a mermaid and a merd dog like that

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Speaker 1: a murrd dog everybody likes pet swimming near Noah's Ark. Yeah, well,

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Speaker 1: I guess they got left behind with the unicorns, yeah,

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Speaker 1: and the dinosaurs being away Noah's Unicorns. Mermaid mythology is

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Speaker 1: also very prevalent in African cultures as well, and some

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Speaker 1: scholars think that this might have to do with ships

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Speaker 1: in the fift hundreds coming over to Africa with the

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Speaker 1: mermaids on their prows, like statues of mermaids, and maybe

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Speaker 1: there was some kind of you know, sort of mythology

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Speaker 1: mixed up that started to happen because there were always

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Speaker 1: these water spirits among African um mythologies, such as the

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Speaker 1: Mammy Water, which is one of the most powerful African

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Speaker 1: water spirits, and she's often portrayed as a mermaid. So

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Speaker 1: they wonder if maybe the water spirits somehow like evolved

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Speaker 1: into these mermaid like creatures. And then in the Caribbean

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Speaker 1: we get Lacerin, it was a mermaid water spirit spirit

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Speaker 1: as well. And then in Inuit Loure we have a

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Speaker 1: Sedna who has depicted as a mermaid. And Senna has

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Speaker 1: a really sad story. Basically, she's the squirrel who just

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Speaker 1: got had a really rough time and her fingers and

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Speaker 1: toes end up being Yeah, first her dad tried to

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Speaker 1: like her out, and then there was a rainstorm, and

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Speaker 1: he was like, get out of my boat, said now

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Speaker 1: it was kind of like the reverse of Titanic. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's like throwing her overboard. Um, so she lives in

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Speaker 1: the sea and her fingers became the whales and the seals.

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Speaker 1: That's kind of cute. Yeah, she must have had giant fingers,

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Speaker 1: very large ones. And then we have Aboriginal tribes in

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Speaker 1: Australia who would speak of ancient water spirits called yawk

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Speaker 1: yawks that also looked like mermaids, so dotted around the globe.

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Speaker 1: How fascinating is this? We have mermaids. It's not just Copenhagen,

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Speaker 1: the little mermaids stealing all the mermaid thunder. No, no, no,

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Speaker 1: We've got a lot of water legends. Yes, yak yawks

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Speaker 1: and mommy wat does yeah, my next band name. So

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Speaker 1: while all this mythology developed, there were also a lot

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Speaker 1: of supposed mermaid sightings. Yeah, people like Christopher Columbus filled

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Speaker 1: their heads with two many too many fairy tales maybe,

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Speaker 1: and also they were a little bit lonely on the ocean.

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Speaker 1: And in around the time that Columbus bumped into what

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Speaker 1: is now America, he reported seeing three mermaids and he wrote,

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Speaker 1: They're not as beautiful as they are represented, which is

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Speaker 1: probably true when you take into account that what he saw,

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Speaker 1: we're likely manatees. Y. Yeah, no, I not beautiful. No,

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Speaker 1: maybe in their own way beautiful. I mean I would

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Speaker 1: like to hug a manatee. Are you kidding? But I

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Speaker 1: hear that they smell and they don't really look like

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Speaker 1: you know that if you think about arial, you know,

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Speaker 1: with the seashell bra and the flowing hair. Yeah, well,

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Speaker 1: we don't know that manatees many years ago did not

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Speaker 1: wear sea shells. But this is oh man, I've got

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Speaker 1: some follow up for search to do. What I get

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Speaker 1: back to my desk after this podcast. Then we have

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Speaker 1: in sixteen o eight English explorer Henry Hudson sailing off

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Speaker 1: the coast of Russia when he reported seeing a mermaid

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Speaker 1: by his ship and oh wait, but what do you know?

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Speaker 1: It's tail was that of a porpoise. So yeah, I

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Speaker 1: would I would just assume that he was a drunk sailor. Um.

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Speaker 1: But he actually got some backup, granted, you know, two

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Speaker 1: hundred years later um by a biologist pH Goss, who

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Speaker 1: said the sailors were too experienced to have mistaken a

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Speaker 1: seal or dolphin for a mermaid, so naturally they had

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Speaker 1: to be right. Could he be a drunk biologist? Maybe? Absolutely?

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Speaker 1: Do you know biologists? Um? And then in the seventeen hundreds,

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Speaker 1: Christian missionaries in Africa claimed that in Golins were catching

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Speaker 1: and eating mermaids, but they weren't the only ones. Right.

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Speaker 1: In the seventeen thirty nine, apparently mermaid meat is in

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Speaker 1: high demand, a Scottish publication reported that the crew of

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Speaker 1: a ship sailing in the Caribbean ran low on supplies,

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Speaker 1: and so to supplement their diets they caught innate mermaid's

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Speaker 1: and said that they tasted like veal. Really, I am

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Speaker 1: hungry mermaids tastes like veal, and we would of course

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Speaker 1: be remiss to not mention the Fiji mermaid. This is

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Speaker 1: probably the greatest hoax mermaid hoax ever carried out, And

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Speaker 1: of course the guy behind it was none other than

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Speaker 1: Pet Barnum, but a huckster, Oh, huckster Barnum. This is

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Speaker 1: an eighteen forty two p T. Barnum somehow gets his

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Speaker 1: hands on what is the top half of a monkey

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Speaker 1: and the tail of a fish sewn together, And it

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Speaker 1: is even serious. Google image Fiji mermaid and it is well,

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Speaker 1: there were actually a lot of them well floating around

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Speaker 1: so to speak. Apparently a lot of people were making

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Speaker 1: these fake mermaids, fake mermaids and selling them to tourists

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Speaker 1: and sailors, and so they just sort of got into

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Speaker 1: the market. Yeah. It was basically supposed to be like

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Speaker 1: the archaeological remains of Haggard mermaids um and it became

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Speaker 1: this huge tourist attraction that he displayed at his museum

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Speaker 1: in New York. But he used a great marketing tactic,

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Speaker 1: which was to have a poster advertising these three gorgeous,

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Speaker 1: very traditional mermaids like come come inside, come and see

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Speaker 1: these lovely dames of the sea. And then you go in,

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Speaker 1: you pay your your dime and nickel and you you go

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Speaker 1: and you see this Haggard he mermaids of this snaggle

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Speaker 1: teeth and claws. Yeah, but people were still, yeah, they

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Speaker 1: paid money. Amy, what did they have to do back then?

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Speaker 1: There were no podcast No, all they had with those

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Speaker 1: pianos that played themselves right now, yes, this is gonna say, god, um,

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Speaker 1: so we have all these uh, these mermaid sides. And

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Speaker 1: there was even up and I think it was reported

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Speaker 1: in Life Science in two thousand nine. Supposedly there were

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Speaker 1: some mermaid sightings and real they still pop up every

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Speaker 1: now and then, which I find pretty fascinating. People want

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Speaker 1: to see people still drinks. Well, it's kind of like

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Speaker 1: the lockness monster. We really we want to believe in mermaids.

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Speaker 1: I mean you and I maybe wanted to when we

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Speaker 1: were kicking our little butts up trying to swim like mermaids. Um.

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Speaker 1: We found some pretty great stories of real life mermaids

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Speaker 1: Like these are women who really identify with the mermaid

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Speaker 1: life and have even gone to great links to uh

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Speaker 1: create fins with which to murr around. To murder around

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Speaker 1: is made of a verb to murder. Um. Yeah, Hannah

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Speaker 1: Frasier Um took some money that she got when her

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Speaker 1: grandmother passed and had a mermaid tail maid and she

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Speaker 1: uses it to to dive to great depths, holds her

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Speaker 1: breath for a long time. Um. But she also uses

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Speaker 1: this image of herself that she's created as a mermaid

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Speaker 1: to draw attention to ocean issues such as dolphin hunting

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Speaker 1: in Japan. Yeah, and she actually almost got killed by

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Speaker 1: some fisherman. She claims that they tried to back up

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Speaker 1: over her and some other people with their propellers. I mean,

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Speaker 1: it's stuff out there for a mermaid. Well. Then there's

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Speaker 1: also the story of Nadia Vessey, who had both legs

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Speaker 1: amputated at a young age, but she was able to

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Speaker 1: enlist this special effects team to build a high tech

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Speaker 1: Mermaid tale that took him two years to construct, and

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Speaker 1: now in her fifties, she still swims with She's able

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Speaker 1: to swim out in the water with this crazy mermaid tail. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and she says that adults seem more enchanted by it

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Speaker 1: the children do. I wonder if just the kids are like, well, yeah,

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Speaker 1: of course mermaid and Christopher Columbus saw them, so yeah,

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Speaker 1: what manatees. But Linda Walbert, if only for her prize

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Speaker 1: winning quote, which we will read you, I think is

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Speaker 1: my favorite real life Mermaid. She's just she's into it, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: Lynda Walbert. Actually, she also uses her mermaid alter ego

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Speaker 1: to draw attention for to a cause she participates in,

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Speaker 1: Swim to Empower, which is a nonprofit that helps kids

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Speaker 1: in the Bahamas learn to swim because they apparently have

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Speaker 1: a really high drowning rate. Um, and so she said

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Speaker 1: the magic of having a mermaid do it, you know,

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Speaker 1: bring attention to these issues. It's almost like a unicorn

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Speaker 1: trowning up and saying, would you like to learn how

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Speaker 1: to ride horses? I mean, yes, yes, unicorn, I would

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Speaker 1: like to ride on your back across a rainbow. Um, well,

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Speaker 1: then your glittery nain. But one more incredible fact about

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Speaker 1: Lynda Walburt. She can hold her breath underwater for about

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Speaker 1: five minutes, and she basically insinuates that you're a wolfe

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Speaker 1: if you can't, because she said, yeah, you know, you

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Speaker 1: just have to get over that uncomfortable feeling of being

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Speaker 1: able to breathe dying. Yeah, but the real life Mermaids

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Speaker 1: that we must talk about. And I wanted to save

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Speaker 1: this for last because I you can't get any kitchier.

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Speaker 1: And WEEKI watching oh yeah, the Home of Mermaids, and

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Speaker 1: we watch in WEEKI watche that's hard to say really fast.

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Speaker 1: In WEEKI watching Florida. Um, take it away, Caroline, I

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Speaker 1: will speechless. Yeah I know. Newton Perry is a former

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Speaker 1: Navy steal so tough guy. Yeah yeah, And he started

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Speaker 1: WEEKI watching springs. He apparently there were some some natural

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Speaker 1: springs with a lot of junk like people just tossed

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Speaker 1: refrigerators in or whatever. He cleared it out. He put

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Speaker 1: up a sign in the road that said, you know,

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Speaker 1: WEEKI Watching Springs. He hired some lovely bathing beauties and

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Speaker 1: taught them how to breathe underwater using hoses. This is

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Speaker 1: a nineteen forty six he opens up the WEEKI WATCHI

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Speaker 1: attraction and it was a huge surge attraction, especially in

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Speaker 1: the sixties. They would perform eight shows a day to

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Speaker 1: sell out crowds. And you can YouTube some great videos

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Speaker 1: of vintage wiki Watche Mermaids shows, because there was one

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Speaker 1: I saw of the It was like a news real

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Speaker 1: type of thing, um showing the beauties in training, the

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Speaker 1: mermaids and training, and the narrator was like the bathing

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Speaker 1: beauties smiling on the waters. Incredible um and and I

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Speaker 1: think it was in nineteen sixty one. Even Elvis visited,

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Speaker 1: but he was all like, why didn't you build this

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Speaker 1: like in New York instead of down here in Florida. Well,

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Speaker 1: there were no refrigerator springs New York, I guess, But sadly,

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Speaker 1: I mean, Wicky watch you has been through some tough times,

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Speaker 1: as you can imagine, with things like oh I don't

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Speaker 1: know Serula and it's underwater or just television. I mean,

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Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't really want to drive to Florida.

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Speaker 1: But no. Actually, in talking about this, I uncovered a

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Speaker 1: repressed memory that I think my parents took me to

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Speaker 1: Wiki watch you when I was literally maybe because I

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Speaker 1: feel like we went to Disney World, uh for a

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Speaker 1: little bit, for a weekend, and maybe on the way

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Speaker 1: back we stopped there because I distinctly remember sitting in

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Speaker 1: a in a theater that was built sort of below ground,

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Speaker 1: up against this giant glass plate under the spring or whatever,

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Speaker 1: and I remember being so disappointed that the mermaids had

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Speaker 1: to breathe through water hoses. I thought, fakes you phone,

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Speaker 1: you thought that you should be able to just yeah.

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Speaker 1: And I feel like someone even told me, you know,

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Speaker 1: this is young Caroline, like six years old. Oh, they're

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Speaker 1: just they're just practicing. They just need the hoses. If

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Speaker 1: you come back next time, they won't use them. You're like,

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Speaker 1: there will be no net, You're you know this is

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Speaker 1: this is no mermaid hacks. Um. Yeah. Now, since I've

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Speaker 1: been reading about all this Mermaid stuff, I really want

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Speaker 1: to watch Splash as soon as possible. Uh, done it,

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Speaker 1: don't need to do it again. I was really hoping

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Speaker 1: to just not do any research for this podcast except

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Speaker 1: watch watch Splash and just see how how it go.

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Speaker 1: I don't know, I have bad memories of that movie

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Speaker 1: Tom Hanks and dary Lenna. I guess. I mean I

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Speaker 1: like the mermaid aspect of it when I was a kid. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I don't think I need to see it again. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it was kind of I was hoping to run across

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Speaker 1: some kind of analysis, like feminist analysis of Mermaids, you know,

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Speaker 1: because especially like uh because Arial is a great example

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Speaker 1: of the impossible um body proportions at Disney Will will

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Speaker 1: give their female She also has a giant head with

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Speaker 1: all that she's got, Her waist is like the size

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Speaker 1: of a pencil, and then she's got this ginormous head

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Speaker 1: prompt to shoulders. Maybe she's actually just a manatee, that's

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Speaker 1: all it is. Uh So, Yeah, if you, if you

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Speaker 1: all know any Mermaids out there, any wiki watching fans listening,

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Speaker 1: I'd like to hear from you. And if anybody out

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Speaker 1: there wants to defend Mermaids against their horace reputation, I'd

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Speaker 1: like to hear that too. Yes, write us in with

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Speaker 1: all of your all of your mermaid thoughts. Um, we

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Speaker 1: hope you enjoyed. Uh surprisingly robust mythology of Mermaids spans

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Speaker 1: the globe who knew? I did not know that and

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Speaker 1: now I do so. Anyway, if you would like to

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Speaker 1: email us our address his mom stuff at how suffworks

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Speaker 1: dot com and in the meantime, I have just one

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Speaker 1: email here to read today on our episode on whether

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Speaker 1: women can be aggressive in dating, let's hear it. So

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Speaker 1: I've got a pretty detailed story here on a woman

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Speaker 1: who wants to be anonymous who asked a guy out

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Speaker 1: and it just so. She says, I feel like women

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Speaker 1: can't be aggressive in dating, especially in high school when

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Speaker 1: there's so much stress put on social status, high school gossip,

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Speaker 1: and keeping your ego and image intact. I thought that

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Speaker 1: was out of high school for me. Uh. There was

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Speaker 1: this guy who I knew liked me, and it acted

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Speaker 1: all confident around me when he was with his friends,

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Speaker 1: but when it was just him, he got nervous and fidgety.

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Speaker 1: So I finally approached him and talked to him directly,

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Speaker 1: and then I did the worst thing you can do.

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Speaker 1: I asked him if he'd like to hang out over

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Speaker 1: Facebook message never asked someone to hang out over Facebook.

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Speaker 1: I had no confidence and I sounded so awkward and pathetic. Anyway,

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Speaker 1: when I mentioned it in person, he basically said, Oh, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I've been busy with football, but maybe when it's over,

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Speaker 1: I'll get back to you. I was so mad that

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Speaker 1: he pulled the whole whole. I'm such a cool jock

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Speaker 1: that it's that I'm busy being a hot shot and

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Speaker 1: having girls loved me from afar. It was so horribly

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Speaker 1: embarrassing that I ignored him in my classes for the

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Speaker 1: rest of the year. But once I stopped talking to

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Speaker 1: him and avoided him, he suddenly liked me again and

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Speaker 1: started being the aggressor. But I had lost all interest

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Speaker 1: in him because of the humiliation I suffered for money

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Speaker 1: to hang out with him in the first place. It

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Speaker 1: seems like guys start to like you once you stopped

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Speaker 1: liking them and completely stop trying It's It can be

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Speaker 1: confusing for sure, for sure, so keep keep the stories

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Speaker 1: of confusion and date ing coming our way. It's mom

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Speaker 1: stuff at how stuff works dot com. You can also

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Speaker 1: head over to Facebook and say hello and leave a comment,

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Speaker 1: and follow us on Twitter. If you'd like, We're at

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Speaker 1: mom Stuff Podcast. And then lastly, you can read our

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Speaker 1: blog during the week It's stuff Mom Never told You

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Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. Be sure to check

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Speaker 1: out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join

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Speaker 1: how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising

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Speaker 1: and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The How Stuff Works I

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Speaker 1: Find app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes, brought

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Speaker 1: are you