Speaker 1: M Hey everybody, it's me Josh, and for this week's
Speaker 1: s Y s K Select, I've chosen Shrunken Heads, one
Speaker 1: of the all time great Stuff you Should Know episodes.
Speaker 1: It originally ran in June of two thousand eleven. And
Speaker 1: although it will teach you step by step how to
Speaker 1: shrink a human head, you should not try this at home.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Speaker 1: Clark with me as always as Charles W. Chuck Bryant,
Speaker 1: and that makes this stuff you should Know the podcast indeed,
Speaker 1: not the radio show though, no no, no, this not yet.
Speaker 1: It probably will be eventually this one. Yeah, I bet
Speaker 1: you they'll speed this one through. Man. You know it's crazy,
Speaker 1: is we could say right now, hello w FM you listeners,
Speaker 1: so that when this is read purposed into our radio
Speaker 1: show on WFMU, it'll blow their minds. What you're speaking
Speaker 1: of is we're on WFMU in New York. If you
Speaker 1: live in the New York, New Jersey area, not on
Speaker 1: one point one, you can hear us Fridays from seven
Speaker 1: to eight pm. Now that's not at all what I
Speaker 1: was speaking of or Hudson Valley at ninety point one.
Speaker 1: You got you got the call signs all over the place,
Speaker 1: don't you two stations from tattooed on your your tristep
Speaker 1: I might do that. Yeah, they're gonna rush this one through.
Speaker 1: They're gonna see I'm not even gonna say the topic,
Speaker 1: even though people already know because they clicked on it.
Speaker 1: But they're gonna see that and go, who we need
Speaker 1: to get this on the air. Um, chuck. You remember
Speaker 1: we also did one on cannibalism before. Yeah, and this
Speaker 1: is related well in the I relate to two in
Speaker 1: the introduction of this article on trunking heads. Right, So, um,
Speaker 1: there's you know, those two things really probably are equated
Speaker 1: with pre civilized barbarism savagery, um, more than any thing else. Right, agreed,
Speaker 1: And this is just as gruesome, we should point out.
Speaker 1: That's our little warning. But um, with cannibalism, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of dispute over exactly how and when it was practiced.
Speaker 1: Like we do know there is evidence that people have
Speaker 1: eaten other people in the past, but there we're starting
Speaker 1: to think that it was never in any kind of
Speaker 1: ritual form where basically it was like we're enduring some
Speaker 1: horrible climate change in famine, and so we're going to
Speaker 1: figure out how to justify this through like warring with
Speaker 1: neighbors and then feeding ourselves with their dead bodies for nutrition.
Speaker 1: But the jury still out as to whether or not
Speaker 1: cannibalism was ever practiced in any real you know, mass
Speaker 1: formed by any culture. That's not the case with head shrinking.
Speaker 1: Head shrinking is this weird little um cultural trait. I
Speaker 1: guess that um is specific to one culture as far
Speaker 1: as we know. And we know that culture because we
Speaker 1: could go down to Ecuador right now and meet some
Speaker 1: of them. Yeah, the Shore culture. Yeah, I got a
Speaker 1: few tribes that did it, but they're they're the main daddies,
Speaker 1: So a few. What you're talking about is there's evidence
Speaker 1: that other tribes did practice it in pre or para
Speaker 1: Colombian contact. Yeah, the and the evidence is like there's
Speaker 1: it's shown in tapestries um or that tribes art or something.
Speaker 1: There's only one tribe that's documented as having done it,
Speaker 1: and that's the Shore and only one that you know
Speaker 1: did it really really well. Yeah, they're pretty good at it.
Speaker 1: And if you if you're going if you're going to
Speaker 1: look up Shore and you run across Javarro shoe are
Speaker 1: it's the same people as sho are members of the
Speaker 1: Javarro language group. Yeah, and that's apparently that's a kind
Speaker 1: of a slam that the word you are. It's like
Speaker 1: a corruption of that what shu are those people? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was I think it meant like uncivilized or something
Speaker 1: and like like Eskimo, yeah maybe or eaters remember yeah yeah, uh.
Speaker 1: And the Nazis may have done it too, may have
Speaker 1: named the shore, may have shrunken heads. Oh really Yeah,
Speaker 1: they found some at bucking Wald and even presented that
Speaker 1: at the Nuremberg trials as like, hey, look what these
Speaker 1: guys did. They did all sorts of mess up stuff.
Speaker 1: There's a bar of soap in Canada that's supposedly made
Speaker 1: from um, the fat of concentration camp victims. I should
Speaker 1: say it's alleged, though they never pinpointed and said the
Speaker 1: shrunken head came from Jews from bucking Wald. But you know, well,
Speaker 1: that's what I'm saying, Like, there's very few incredibly strange,
Speaker 1: exotic things that IT culture has done that we can say, yes, definitively,
Speaker 1: these people did do this. There's no it hasn't been
Speaker 1: blown up by Hollywood or anything like that. This is
Speaker 1: legitimate and shrunken heads are are that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: And the reason why the shoe Are We're able to
Speaker 1: shrink heads and get really good at it over the
Speaker 1: years was because even after contact with Europeans like the
Speaker 1: Spanish coming into South America, um, the shoe Are we're
Speaker 1: one of the very few groups that managed to repel
Speaker 1: any kind of Spanish colonialism. Like they lived under Spanish
Speaker 1: rule for I think like thirty or thirty three years
Speaker 1: and then frankly said, we're tired of being taxed for
Speaker 1: our gold, so we're just gonna kill a lot of you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it worked. Yeah, there was a revolt, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they killed like twenty five thousand people. And then uh, Spain,
Speaker 1: was it just Spain, I guess said we're just gonna
Speaker 1: get out of here. Yeah, you guys are good exactly.
Speaker 1: And that's really saying something considering the amount of gold
Speaker 1: or that the shoe Rs like land sad On, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know that Spaniards loved their gold. So so
Speaker 1: the Spaniards were like, Okay, we know you're in there,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna leave you alone. And you go do
Speaker 1: whatever you want to do, and the Shoe are just
Speaker 1: continued to practice some head hunting and head shrinking. Head
Speaker 1: hunting practiced all over the world, right yeah, head shrinking
Speaker 1: shoe are only as far as the meetings with the Spaniards.
Speaker 1: They probably at virtually no no, And then they were like,
Speaker 1: it's not that much gold, really, I mean you can
Speaker 1: get gold elsewhere exactly. Yeah, well we'll we'll hold the
Speaker 1: Inca's hostage. I'm reading again right now. Really, it's a
Speaker 1: great book. I was hoping to read that before you
Speaker 1: read it again. Sorry, I never picked it up though.
Speaker 1: That's the first step. I even went and bought a
Speaker 1: book like special for this book. Oh yeah, one of
Speaker 1: those little clip on deals, champ So Chuck, why would
Speaker 1: anybody shrink ahead? I mean obviously they're just big dumb
Speaker 1: savages who like to shrink heads, right, I mean, there
Speaker 1: can't be there can't possibly be any explanation behind that.
Speaker 1: Not true, Josh, because as you point out, because you
Speaker 1: wrote this awesome article, Uh so you know the answer.
Speaker 1: But that's just our stick I was acting. Uh, they
Speaker 1: are firmly rooted in um and and magic and spiritualism
Speaker 1: in war and from an early age, little boys are
Speaker 1: taught like retrobue shan, violent retribution is a really good thing,
Speaker 1: and it's a part of our culture. Yeah. And if
Speaker 1: you don't carry out violent retribution properly, your dead uncle
Speaker 1: or your dead grandfather or whatever, your dead ancestors going
Speaker 1: to come back and bring, you know, horrible pestilence and
Speaker 1: famine on you. You're You're in trouble. So they do
Speaker 1: do it for a reason. They do it to uh,
Speaker 1: I guess ward off those spirits, right, or to or
Speaker 1: to finalize the whole thing. Yeah, well, so it's part
Speaker 1: of this larger process. There is part of this bigger belief,
Speaker 1: which is if you die, if we're related and you
Speaker 1: die of some unseen like disease. Right, let's say you
Speaker 1: die of cancer, it's not cancer, it's somebody else in
Speaker 1: another household, another shoe, our household bewitched you and using
Speaker 1: magic kills you remotely. So since there's no priestly class
Speaker 1: amongst shoe are culture, like any anybody can consult with
Speaker 1: the spirits under the right circumstances. The right circumstances being
Speaker 1: you take hallucinogenic drugs. I would take a hallucinogenic drug,
Speaker 1: probably the tema, right, Yeah, it's from a jungle vine evidently, Yes,
Speaker 1: a jungle vine that gets you lit. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: just this I want to point out. I love that
Speaker 1: from a jungle vine, like hallucinogenic mushrooms. It's like you
Speaker 1: name it. Some human has found a way to get
Speaker 1: every bit out of every single thing on the earth
Speaker 1: if it can mess you up. Don't forget toads to
Speaker 1: toads yet, looking toads, we don't recommend that though, by
Speaker 1: the way, although I was listening to an old, old,
Speaker 1: old episode and you talked about your hallucinogenic toad collection
Speaker 1: in college, just like to collect toads because it was funny,
Speaker 1: remember that. So, um, I I suspect that you died
Speaker 1: because you were bewitched. And now I've taken the tema
Speaker 1: and I'm on a vision quest and I'm consulting with
Speaker 1: your spirit maybe some other spirits to find out who
Speaker 1: killed you. And I'm gonna come down and be like, oh,
Speaker 1: it was George down the river, right, So now I
Speaker 1: have a blood vendetta against George or hey, thank you,
Speaker 1: and um, I'm going to assemble other households in the
Speaker 1: area into a confederation to go take your head George,
Speaker 1: to make it right. Hey, yeah, because if I don't,
Speaker 1: then you my dead relative are are going to haunt
Speaker 1: me and bad things are going to happen. And plus
Speaker 1: it's just a matter of like that's what our culture
Speaker 1: calls for. And you said, they'll even tell the other
Speaker 1: tribe sometimes like we're coming for you. Yeah, they'll they'll
Speaker 1: learn the other householder plans because this isn't like a
Speaker 1: quick thing. It's very well planned, um, and there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people involved, and it's very violent and bloody
Speaker 1: when it finally does happen. But yeah, they'll say we're
Speaker 1: coming after you. You're in big, big trouble, and there
Speaker 1: may be retribution, but more likely than not, it's going
Speaker 1: to be like, well, you probably shouldn't have killed his uncle,
Speaker 1: Oh really, because that was gonna be My question, isn't
Speaker 1: this just an endless loop of head shrinking and cut
Speaker 1: or cutting the shrinking. Well, it is like it's supported
Speaker 1: by death, but it's generally non violent death that they
Speaker 1: associate with magic or bewitchment, which really requires this specific
Speaker 1: type of retribution. Okay, okay, gotcha, So revenge will take place.
Speaker 1: I see. You also pointed out that maybe the whole
Speaker 1: household is slaughtered, maybe they'll take the women as wives,
Speaker 1: and we're not really sure, like, uh, they used to
Speaker 1: take the wives. Uh. Further back is at the deal,
Speaker 1: Well that some old account said that these guys are polygamous,
Speaker 1: which they are. You are are polygamous. Um, so if
Speaker 1: they do carry out one of these raids, they're going
Speaker 1: to take the women as their wives. But then a
Speaker 1: more recent one from I think the seventies or eighties
Speaker 1: or something later in the twentieth century said, no, they
Speaker 1: kill everybody they find in this household. They just don't
Speaker 1: take little kids heads. But they'll kill a little kids. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but they don't take the head. I like that even
Speaker 1: they had, hey, a line they would draw. Not much
Speaker 1: shrinking to be done. They like to sh really shrink.
Speaker 1: I wonder if that has something to do with it.
Speaker 1: But a little never mind, I'm not gonna go there.
Speaker 1: So check there's a specific way that that all this
Speaker 1: is gonna go down, right, very specific, because you are
Speaker 1: don't live near one another. They live over a pretty
Speaker 1: substantial area of the Amazon basin. Yeah, there's no high
Speaker 1: rise full of shoa right, So um, it will take
Speaker 1: days to get to this place, and when they finally
Speaker 1: get there, they basically alert their target that they're here
Speaker 1: by If they have guns, they'll shoot into the air,
Speaker 1: they'll shoot at the house or whatever. Basically they're like,
Speaker 1: come on out, punk, we're looking for Jorge. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: he killed my uncle. I imagine two. I'm making this up,
Speaker 1: but it seems like if they sent out Jorge, they
Speaker 1: might just be like, Okay, we'll just take Jorge. Um.
Speaker 1: That could be the case. Or do they just exact
Speaker 1: revenge over the whole family no matter what? You know?
Speaker 1: I would imagine that that probably depends on the person, Okay,
Speaker 1: on the amount of rage and in mourning and grieving,
Speaker 1: you know, in drugs that they're taking, right yeah, so
Speaker 1: um there. So, even if they do have guns, you
Speaker 1: use a spear if you're going to take someone's head
Speaker 1: to shrink it and turn it into we haven't even
Speaker 1: said yet. Um what's called it? Tansa or sansa? Yeah? Right,
Speaker 1: t s A and t s a yes. Um. You
Speaker 1: kill them with the spear by driving the spear through
Speaker 1: their neck their throat. That's that, and then you start
Speaker 1: this process of shrinking their head by cutting their head off,
Speaker 1: and you even do that in a specific way to right, Um,
Speaker 1: you cut chuck into a V. Right, you do between
Speaker 1: the clavicles above the clavicles in a V shape between
Speaker 1: resulting in the point of the V. I guess between
Speaker 1: the nipples. Yeah, so there's like a pointed flap hanging
Speaker 1: down from the neck like a skin ascot. Right, we
Speaker 1: should probably say that this is where it starts to
Speaker 1: get graphic in this podcast, because we're going to describe.
Speaker 1: You will know how to shrink a head after we're done.
Speaker 1: We're always like any seconds late with us. Also, if
Speaker 1: you shrink ahead because of this, we no longer consider
Speaker 1: you a member of the stuff. You should know nation
Speaker 1: you've gone off the deep end. You're a murderer and
Speaker 1: you should be punished severely for your crime. Okay, is
Speaker 1: that a good disclaimer? Yeah? I hope we didn't have
Speaker 1: to say that. But there may be one sick oh
Speaker 1: out there. You never know. So, like you said, you
Speaker 1: cut it into V shape and then you set a
Speaker 1: hair band potentially or a vine like a scrunchy Yeah okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: because they often the men often wear their hair long
Speaker 1: and they'll have it back in a ponytail, and once
Speaker 1: you have stabbed somebody cut their head off in this
Speaker 1: methodical way, you need to get out of there because
Speaker 1: there may be reinforcements coming. So you loop it through
Speaker 1: the throat and then out the mouth tied off, and
Speaker 1: you've got a little pocketbook yep, and you tie it
Speaker 1: around your waist or throw it over your shoulder, and
Speaker 1: you get the heck out of there, exactly because you
Speaker 1: know that this is um there your you will be
Speaker 1: killed if you're found right, Yeah, I would imagine they
Speaker 1: don't like get when you killed neighbors or whatever. But
Speaker 1: um also, you need to get out of there because
Speaker 1: you you've just probably discarded your weapons. Once you use
Speaker 1: um a weapon to kill somebody in this ritual manner,
Speaker 1: it's spoiled. Like everything from this first from the beginning
Speaker 1: stages of this raid all the way to the end
Speaker 1: of it. The stuff that you're using is spoiled and
Speaker 1: has to just be left behind. So you're probably running
Speaker 1: to get out of there and your your weaponless. And
Speaker 1: I would agree with that that tactic anyway. I mean
Speaker 1: lightens the load well now and like we say later,
Speaker 1: there's like a clay pot and other things you use
Speaker 1: like that is spoiled, you know, because it has a
Speaker 1: head on it. Yeah, it's just dirty, Like get it
Speaker 1: out of there on you don't want to cook in it.
Speaker 1: Now we're getting to that though, So um wow, this
Speaker 1: is a really methodical one, isn't it? Like step by
Speaker 1: step as is shrinking heads. And you know what's funny is,
Speaker 1: as I was reading this the whole time, I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's how I drink ahead, Like it all makes total
Speaker 1: perfect sense. And they've been doing it for centuries, not millennia,
Speaker 1: so they really do have it down to step by step. Now.
Speaker 1: Obviously it's easier for us to see it as step
Speaker 1: by step as outsiders. Sure there's tons of significance with
Speaker 1: every single step and you know, a lot of symbology,
Speaker 1: but for the most part, it is a very methodical
Speaker 1: way of you know, taking and shrinking ahead that this
Speaker 1: year are practiced. That's right. So we left off with
Speaker 1: getting the heck out of Dodge, and that is when
Speaker 1: the process begins, because like you said, they live far
Speaker 1: apart from each other, so they can't just wait till
Speaker 1: they get back. It might be three days later and
Speaker 1: you're gonna have a rotten head. So they started immediately
Speaker 1: with an elder tribesman who's probably not doing the fighting,
Speaker 1: but he he heads up the process. What's what we
Speaker 1: are they called he is called the kuraca. They started
Speaker 1: on the waiting word for him. Well, he's probably the
Speaker 1: one who he's the head of the household or he's
Speaker 1: like them in this confederation of households that was assembled.
Speaker 1: He's probably like the most respected or war worn warrior
Speaker 1: shrunk ahead or two in another word. Yeah, he knows
Speaker 1: what he's doing, and he's probably the one who took
Speaker 1: the nattema and had the vision quest and got the answer.
Speaker 1: But basically he is the party planner for this whole thing,
Speaker 1: and he's the one imbued with the most um spiritual
Speaker 1: significance throughout. So he's the one who's going to shrink
Speaker 1: the head. But he doesn't. He he didn't necessarily go
Speaker 1: on this raid. And if he didn't, then he met
Speaker 1: this raiding party at a predesignated camp, one of many
Speaker 1: along the way back home from the place where they
Speaker 1: just killed the people at home. So he says Jorges
Speaker 1: the man, go get him to a checkpoint, a exactly
Speaker 1: camp fun and now they're meeting there. Okay, so that's
Speaker 1: where we are. It is very methodical, uh, and it's important,
Speaker 1: he said, to be attended to these steps because if
Speaker 1: you do it wrong, it doesn't count. Right. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're not. You're part of this is paying homage to
Speaker 1: your dead ancestor or or appeasing your dead ancestor. And
Speaker 1: if you if you don't do it right, then your
Speaker 1: dead ancestor is not a peas and you're in trouble.
Speaker 1: It doesn't count. And part of that is um, like
Speaker 1: if the sirocca the karaka right, um. When he starts
Speaker 1: this process, he'll say, there's like incantations, and it's not
Speaker 1: just him, it's like everybody in the rating party is
Speaker 1: very much paying attention to this and being a part
Speaker 1: of it. So he'll be like, I'm, you know, pulling
Speaker 1: the the throat from the neck, and the other people
Speaker 1: say he's pulling the throat from the neck. And it
Speaker 1: goes down like that pretty much every step of the way.
Speaker 1: There's nothing funny about that. It's the way you said it.
Speaker 1: I think we also need to point out that the
Speaker 1: warrior guys also have to do certain things like, um,
Speaker 1: not eat certain food substained from sex. Um, don't. They
Speaker 1: don't hunt alone. And this is this is during the
Speaker 1: whole like year long process. Uh no, this is during
Speaker 1: the drinking process, all right, because the spirit is held
Speaker 1: at bay. Yeah and you said it. I mean this
Speaker 1: is a yearlong process. Um. It doesn't take a year
Speaker 1: to shrink Ahead, but Ahead holds this man entical significance
Speaker 1: for a year. And there's certain prescribed celebrations that have
Speaker 1: to take place to fulfill this obligation to the dead ancestor.
Speaker 1: It's a big deal. Yeah. Yeah, you don't just shrink
Speaker 1: heads willy nilly at least and um, chuck, I don't
Speaker 1: know if we should say here or not. But the
Speaker 1: head has three significances, right Yeah. First, it's physical proof
Speaker 1: to the dead ancestor that you're carrying out this revenge
Speaker 1: on his or her behalf. Yeah, so a trophy in
Speaker 1: a way, but not like Europeans thought of it, right. Um. Secondly,
Speaker 1: it has a spiritual significance where you are. It is
Speaker 1: the vessel in which the spirit of the person who's
Speaker 1: been killed, whose head it was, is trapped, so you're
Speaker 1: commanding that person now and then um. Thirdly, it increases
Speaker 1: the social status of the of the warrior who who's
Speaker 1: wearing it, because you wear that thing for like a
Speaker 1: year around your neck exactly. So let's tell him how
Speaker 1: it's done. Let's step one. Well, first, if you want
Speaker 1: to shrink ahead, Josh, you have to skin ahead because
Speaker 1: you can't shrink a skull. Everyone knows that. So you
Speaker 1: need to get the Basically, what you want to do
Speaker 1: is cre at a halloween mask where there once was
Speaker 1: a full head. So you uh cut some flaps that
Speaker 1: that around the base of the skull that and I
Speaker 1: guess sort of like when you're taking chicken skin off,
Speaker 1: you can or if you're like uh spicing chicken under
Speaker 1: the skin, sometimes you'll cut a sliver and then you'll
Speaker 1: stick your fingers in there. So you're you're loosening little
Speaker 1: by little the skin from the skull, cutting the tendons
Speaker 1: and cutting everything the muscles that hold it all together. Right,
Speaker 1: But you want to cut close to the skull because
Speaker 1: one of the aims of this is to keep the
Speaker 1: facial characteristics of the person so that he would be
Speaker 1: recognizable to his family except smaller. Yeah, So you're you're
Speaker 1: working all that through, you're separating it from the skull.
Speaker 1: You remove the eyes. You discard the eyes, you discard
Speaker 1: the cartilage. You just guard the skull with the brain
Speaker 1: inside of it, evidently, and uh, what else do you
Speaker 1: cut away the cartilage that holds the nose and the
Speaker 1: ears intact. So so, like you said, just like a mask,
Speaker 1: it's just what you have is the scalp in the
Speaker 1: face and the neck, all that skin still connected, and
Speaker 1: the hair right and the holes where the eyes were
Speaker 1: and those flap in the mouth, and all that stuff
Speaker 1: is there. It's just there's no bone or connective tissue,
Speaker 1: or there is connected tissue and fat still, there's just
Speaker 1: no bone any longer. So this is the most gruesome
Speaker 1: mask that you could ever envision in your life, because
Speaker 1: it's real. I wonder if you have ever put it on.
Speaker 1: I don't know, Hey, look at me, like, yeah, it
Speaker 1: have to be uh, karaco with a small head and
Speaker 1: a victim with a really big head. But yeah maybe. So,
Speaker 1: although this is so specific, there's no way because that
Speaker 1: would mean that the revenge will come up on your head,
Speaker 1: all right. So that's that's the skinning. So now we
Speaker 1: get to the shrinking. Yes, now you have that rubbery mask,
Speaker 1: it's made out of real skin because it's a real person, um,
Speaker 1: and do you you have to boil it down first?
Speaker 1: It's that you you mentioned a clay pot. They make
Speaker 1: a ceramic pot that is just big enough to hold
Speaker 1: a head, and they make it just for that person's head.
Speaker 1: Because it's never been used before and it will never
Speaker 1: be used again. They'll break it and leave it in
Speaker 1: the river ahead. At this point, a skin bag, the
Speaker 1: face bag, head, skin the skull bag. Okay, this is
Speaker 1: going off the rails, so um, the the the Kuraco
Speaker 1: dips it three times into this heated water. This heated
Speaker 1: over a camp fire. And this is like one of
Speaker 1: those situations where he says like, I'm dipping the head,
Speaker 1: and then the warriors will be like he's dipping the head,
Speaker 1: you know. And then I think on the third time,
Speaker 1: he leaves it in there for um, thirty minutes, no
Speaker 1: more than thirty minutes. And I've seen several sources site this,
Speaker 1: but no more than thirty minutes because after that the
Speaker 1: hair starts to come out. But this, the skin bag,
Speaker 1: skull bag um basically simmers at a like a light
Speaker 1: boil for thirty minutes. Yeah, and remember vinneg or not
Speaker 1: olive oil. Sorry, because the olive oil floats at the top. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and imagine there was trial and air in this too,
Speaker 1: because they probably boil it too long. The hair came out,
Speaker 1: and they're like, no, we like it with the hair. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so let's let's work on this. Yes, so they figured
Speaker 1: out in thirty minutes you can't really go beyond that
Speaker 1: or else you lose a lot of hair. So then
Speaker 1: after that you take it out, and this thing is
Speaker 1: already shrunk by about a quarter now or a third
Speaker 1: third um, and you leave it to dry. You dangle
Speaker 1: it from like a spear and just let it dry
Speaker 1: for a while. Break the pot. Yep, they want to
Speaker 1: see a pot spoiled. And then once this is dry,
Speaker 1: now you're entering the real curing process. The head is
Speaker 1: already noticeably smaller, unsettlingly smaller, but it's gonna get a
Speaker 1: lot smaller, like you said, the size of a fist
Speaker 1: through this dry heat curing process. Yeah. And like I said,
Speaker 1: this all makes total sense. This is how I would
Speaker 1: have done it had I been as sura. So we
Speaker 1: should probably also say that um, when it was boiled,
Speaker 1: pigs were likely inserted to keep the mouth closed, right,
Speaker 1: and those pigs may be left in or they may
Speaker 1: be removed, but either way, the mouth is going to
Speaker 1: be sown shut after it's dried to to begin this
Speaker 1: dry hearing process. In between the boiling and the dry hearing,
Speaker 1: they're going to start to sow the orifices shut, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: Because what you want to end up with is something
Speaker 1: that you can turn upside down like a sack and
Speaker 1: put hot rocks, um, then hot pebbles, and then eventually
Speaker 1: hot sand in there, and a step by step process
Speaker 1: to dry it from the inside out. And they roll
Speaker 1: it around in there because you don't want it to
Speaker 1: sit there and just burn through a cheek. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: would burn through a cheek exactly, So they move it around,
Speaker 1: they work it around, it dries a little by little
Speaker 1: until you get to the sand, and at that point
Speaker 1: it I'm sorry. They use a blade to press against
Speaker 1: the lips, and then here's the lips. They use hot
Speaker 1: rocks in the outside to press it against and rub
Speaker 1: it against like an iron, like you're ironing a an Oxford, right,
Speaker 1: because you're as a shrinking. If you don't shrink it evenly,
Speaker 1: the face is going to get distorted. I mean, think
Speaker 1: about this like you're shrinking it down almost like to
Speaker 1: you know, like the point of linear perspective, the vanishing point, right,
Speaker 1: So imagine that's in the center of this head. You're
Speaker 1: you're trying to shrink it all down evenly to that point, right. Um,
Speaker 1: And that's got to be incredibly difficult because you're doing
Speaker 1: it with hot rocks and hot pebbles and hot sand,
Speaker 1: and you boiled the skin, you know, I mean, like,
Speaker 1: so to to bring it down, you have to um
Speaker 1: smooth it out once in a while by basically using
Speaker 1: a hot flat rock as an iron, a clothes iron
Speaker 1: to smooth out the wrinkles. Let me ask you how
Speaker 1: you get it down so small? Remember, hey, there goes Elvis. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was. You just reminded me of that. Like the
Speaker 1: intro of this had five different variations of that scene,
Speaker 1: description of that scene, and I couldn't figure out why
Speaker 1: I couldn't make it work. And then I finally realized, oh,
Speaker 1: this is a lot more serious than the beetles. Don't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the beetle juice reference isn't isn't allowed in this one.
Speaker 1: I think it's allowed in the podcast. Sure, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: the podcast totally different. That was because that was a
Speaker 1: great part. That's how he switches numbers with the tribesman. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's in the waiting room. He has like nine millions
Speaker 1: something and then he goes, hey, there goes Elvis and
Speaker 1: he switches number four. Good stuff. Do you know the numbers? Huh? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, that's pretty impressive. Thank you. It's a
Speaker 1: great movie. He did much. Oh and um, so that
Speaker 1: guy didn't look anything like a shoe Are. And I
Speaker 1: think he used like some sort of magical dust to
Speaker 1: shrink beetle juice. It was totally off. But um, the
Speaker 1: I think another appearance of sho Are in the movies
Speaker 1: is um, the Raiders of the Lost Ark with the
Speaker 1: gold skull in the beginning re member the guys who
Speaker 1: all have the bows and arrows. From what I've seen
Speaker 1: of what she Are looked like. Those are Those were
Speaker 1: very closely modeled after she Are tribes people. Interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, okay, so Chuck, where we last left off
Speaker 1: poor Jorge's head. Um, he had hot rocks and hot
Speaker 1: pebbles and hot sand being rolled around in His eyes
Speaker 1: have been so shut. His mouth had been so and
Speaker 1: shut is the flap had been so shut. So it
Speaker 1: was just a pouch too. I guess somebody pressed a
Speaker 1: hot machete to his lips, probably the karaka. Um And
Speaker 1: and no, I didn't see anything about the ears being
Speaker 1: so and shut, but I surely they have to be.
Speaker 1: But I didn't see it anywhere in any of this
Speaker 1: in the sources. I think that's implicit. But um, so
Speaker 1: now you have this thing, it's getting more and more shrunk,
Speaker 1: and um, it's probably about as shrunk as it's going
Speaker 1: to get from the hot pebbles or whatever. So you
Speaker 1: hang it over a fire. That's the final drying stage, right,
Speaker 1: and then you take some camp fire charcoal ash rub
Speaker 1: it on the scan, which gives it the distinctive like
Speaker 1: darkened look. That and the fact that it's been shrunk
Speaker 1: down by dry heat, and um, you have yourself as
Speaker 1: Santa at That takes a few days, right, the final
Speaker 1: fire drying process. Yeah, okay, all right, done, and that's it.
Speaker 1: And um, we should also note that the hair doesn't
Speaker 1: shrink at all, so if you you might not think
Speaker 1: about it when you're looking at it, But any shrunken
Speaker 1: hen you've ever seen as a tiny head with very
Speaker 1: long hair, like guy I didn't necessarily have long hair Um,
Speaker 1: his head just shrunk a lot. He might have had
Speaker 1: a flat top two about the size of a man's fist,
Speaker 1: about a quarter of the size of a regular human head. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's gruesome, but I mean, as is our way with
Speaker 1: don't judge other cultures. Who am I as Chuck in
Speaker 1: Atlanta to judge these people in South America has been
Speaker 1: doing this for millennia. It's kind of neat. Yes, is
Speaker 1: that wrong to say? Okay, it is. It's interesting, it is,
Speaker 1: and we're our interest in this is probably more refined
Speaker 1: and less like oh than like our fellow Americans from
Speaker 1: like fifty or a hundred years ago. Yeah. Sure, you
Speaker 1: know right, you know this was filmed. One guy actually
Speaker 1: filmed the rituals. Yes, that's what I'm saying. It's documented. Yeah,
Speaker 1: one is the only time anyone has ever put a
Speaker 1: camera on this. Yes, and they're pretty sure that was it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen it. It looks like it. Oh you
Speaker 1: saw it? Is it on the YouTube? No way? Edmund Blowski? Yes, wow, alright,
Speaker 1: Well I'm gonna go look that up like right now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I don't know, I don't remember the guy's name.
Speaker 1: I wasn't like, oh, yes, of course Edmund, But I
Speaker 1: mean he's the only one who had it on there,
Speaker 1: so yeah, wasn't Tim Burton. No, he doesn't know what
Speaker 1: he's talking about. So all right, where are we here? Uh,
Speaker 1: it's own shut. You've got the beginnings of your vengeance,
Speaker 1: but this is the beginning of the long, year long
Speaker 1: process of fulfilling this. Yes, so basically, you walk into town,
Speaker 1: your town, your household, holding this new Santa you just
Speaker 1: made along the way aloft with like the Rocky theme
Speaker 1: going off in your head. Right, sure, because you are
Speaker 1: as bad as they come. That's right. You've just taken
Speaker 1: a head of some somebody who killed your relative and
Speaker 1: you shrunk it. And now you're gonna wear that around
Speaker 1: your neck for the next year. And it's time to party. Yes,
Speaker 1: that is the first thing that happens is a big
Speaker 1: what you call in quotes ceremonial dance at which there
Speaker 1: is an orgy of wild drinking. Yeah. This guy did
Speaker 1: a brief ethnography of the shore for the National Geographic Society,
Speaker 1: and that's how he described this first um, this first party,
Speaker 1: and he thought, why paraphrase it, Let's just throw quotes
Speaker 1: around it because it's perfect. I mean that guy saw it,
Speaker 1: you know. And they drink chicha, which is maniac beer,
Speaker 1: and chichas a ormaniac as a shrub, so they make
Speaker 1: this cheecha out of I think maniacs are root so
Speaker 1: a shrub I saw route. Maybe it's the root of
Speaker 1: that shrub. So maniac, right. They drink this stuff all
Speaker 1: the time as it is. So the average adult male
Speaker 1: UM drinks three to four gallons eleven to fifteen liters
Speaker 1: of maniac beer every day, just as a normal matter
Speaker 1: of course. So that's every day drinking. Imagine how much
Speaker 1: they drink at a wild orgy of drinking, like an
Speaker 1: actual celebration. Imagine kegs of chicha are abundant, right, and
Speaker 1: they go for days. The celebration goes for days, and
Speaker 1: basically the war the warrior, the raid party, UM have
Speaker 1: whatever stances they've made and are showing it off and
Speaker 1: using them to recreate like what happened? Um, that's like
Speaker 1: to try that the chicha. Like we get beer from like,
Speaker 1: you know, this is my beer from Wyoming. I don't
Speaker 1: know if we have any Ecuadorian listener, and we appreciate
Speaker 1: that beer, but I want to try chicha. I want
Speaker 1: to see what that's all about. I bet it's pretty gross.
Speaker 1: If we have any Ecuadorian listeners, we'd love to have some.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's like bottled commercially. Well, they just
Speaker 1: send it to us in a bucket. A bucket. That's
Speaker 1: how people used to get beer up until like the forties.
Speaker 1: I think, Yeah, you go down to the brewery with
Speaker 1: like a bucket and they'd fill it up. Those are
Speaker 1: the days, but you'd spill so much I imagine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you drink it down a little first where
Speaker 1: you hit the road on the way home. You get
Speaker 1: home and be like, man, a bucket since you need
Speaker 1: to go back. It's billed it along the way into
Speaker 1: my mouth. Alright, So more parties? How many parties in total?
Speaker 1: Three feasts and parties? Yeah, there's three. Um there's the
Speaker 1: first one, which is the numb Pink. Then there is
Speaker 1: the um Nappin and Amianu and Ammianu is the last one.
Speaker 1: It occurs about a year after this raid and Amiano
Speaker 1: means fulfillment as far as I under stand. And at
Speaker 1: the end of this they're like, yeah, we don't need
Speaker 1: this anymore seriously, and it ends up in a gift
Speaker 1: shop in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, or like they they they are
Speaker 1: known to like give it to their kids as toys.
Speaker 1: It loses all significance whatsoever, like overnight, like after AMU,
Speaker 1: it goes from this prized um spiritual, social um, cultural
Speaker 1: significant item right to nothing nothing. So the the um
Speaker 1: you are, we're known to be fairly surprisingly friendly people.
Speaker 1: If they thought you were on the up and up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if they if you had something to trade and you
Speaker 1: were there to trade with them, they would say, yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: as long as they thought was fair. Remember they revolted
Speaker 1: in nine against Spanish colonial rule because they thought they
Speaker 1: were being unfairly taxed, and I bet they probably were. Sure. Um,
Speaker 1: so if they think you're on the up and up
Speaker 1: and you're cool and you're not doing them any harm
Speaker 1: or whatever, then you can trade with them. And that
Speaker 1: happened big time, yes, And Europeans said, what you got there, buddy? Uh? Whoa,
Speaker 1: this is a Santa. It's a shrunken head of somebody
Speaker 1: who insulted my um or who killed my uncle, and
Speaker 1: then my kids playing with it now. And then they say, well,
Speaker 1: I got a boomstick that you might be interested in exactly,
Speaker 1: and that began the trade of shrunken heads between the
Speaker 1: West and the shoe Are And it started out just
Speaker 1: like that, a gun for a shrunken head, one for one.
Speaker 1: That seems fair. Yeah, I'm surprised that the Europeans didn't
Speaker 1: try to take advantage of that and be like, this
Speaker 1: boomstick is pretty pricey. I might I need like five
Speaker 1: of those heads. Or maybe they didn't want to push
Speaker 1: their life. Yeah, I wouldn't push my luck. One for
Speaker 1: one sounds like a good straighter. You give them their
Speaker 1: gun and you call them sir the whole time. Well,
Speaker 1: and since they did give them guns, that led to
Speaker 1: a downward spiral. Uh Like usually when you introduced guns
Speaker 1: into a culture of war there, Well, they remember, they
Speaker 1: don't use guns to kill. They used the spear to hunt,
Speaker 1: just to shoot and be like, check me out, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna scare the tar out of you by shooting at
Speaker 1: your house, but I'm really going to cut your head
Speaker 1: off with a spear. Well, what really started the war
Speaker 1: was I think the Europeans came there to do this trading,
Speaker 1: and then that, of course brought disease that they weren't
Speaker 1: used to seeing. And so that disease killed people, and
Speaker 1: that they thought, of course, because they were shoe are
Speaker 1: they didn't know it was disease. They thought it was magic.
Speaker 1: So they started taking drugs and saying it was Jorge.
Speaker 1: More disease equals more death, equals more retribution. That is
Speaker 1: more as a huge and very overlooked aspect of how
Speaker 1: European encroachment into shoe are culture, uh increased the um
Speaker 1: the war among the shoe are um and the other
Speaker 1: way it did was just simple supply and demand. The
Speaker 1: Europeans wanted more heads than the shoe are head. So
Speaker 1: the shoe are We're like, okay, well let's we'll just go,
Speaker 1: you know, start warring more frequently. Before it was a
Speaker 1: very infrequent thing. And then um, by I think the
Speaker 1: turn of the twentieth century, that war was like a
Speaker 1: monthly endeavor which had never been seen before amongst you are. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you said, between eighteen eighty nine and nineteen eleven, one
Speaker 1: area declined in population by because of this war, just
Speaker 1: because of war, not even disease, just war. That's a
Speaker 1: lot of dead people, it's a lot of shrunken head
Speaker 1: and it's because the West demanded it. They wanted this.
Speaker 1: They were willing. They were very much in demand because
Speaker 1: they saw them as obviously very exotic collectibles and um.
Speaker 1: But they did have a if I like this, they
Speaker 1: had a shoe. I had a backup plan in case
Speaker 1: you were able to go and kill the person who
Speaker 1: inflicted pain upon your family. But I couldn't get your head.
Speaker 1: They'll allow you to get the head of a sloth instead.
Speaker 1: But I imagine that's sort of shameful. Like the guy
Speaker 1: with the sloth around his neck might be like, it's
Speaker 1: not hor he's a little self conscious. Yeah, at the party,
Speaker 1: I think so, like he's partying, but he's like, ah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's off to the side, like drinking and punch. Now,
Speaker 1: what if they do, you know, if they don't even
Speaker 1: get retribution, they don't what if they get defeated. I
Speaker 1: didn't run across anything like that. I just I think
Speaker 1: that it was obviously a possibility because they you know,
Speaker 1: you're staging arrade. These people know you're coming, and they're
Speaker 1: not they're not they're not sending out Jorge, you know,
Speaker 1: on their own. Um, they're gonna fight you probably, Um,
Speaker 1: So yeah, I I don't know. I think you just
Speaker 1: failed and you're dead, right, so you probably don't care
Speaker 1: that much about what happened up your uncle because you're
Speaker 1: sitting next to him right now and you're getting an
Speaker 1: ear full phone. So uh uh. The sloth heads are
Speaker 1: significant because they have a feeling that that might be
Speaker 1: some of the early forgeries which became commonplace. I think
Speaker 1: like about of the ones that they have today are
Speaker 1: likely forgeries. Yeah, but but they were authentic because the
Speaker 1: you are made, Um, they were sho are tansas. They
Speaker 1: just weren't human, right, so um that started. That was quickly.
Speaker 1: They quickly ran out of the sloth ones, and then
Speaker 1: they were they were counterfeited by people who weren't you are,
Speaker 1: So you would have monkey heads, ones made out of
Speaker 1: goat or horse skin, um, human heads that were stolen
Speaker 1: and shrunken by amateurs um from you know, bodies from
Speaker 1: the Morgues and Ecuador who had nothing to do with
Speaker 1: the shoe are and the shoe are never had anything
Speaker 1: to do with these shrunken heads. And there's a lot
Speaker 1: of ways that you can tell an authentic sho are
Speaker 1: sansa tansa. I'm gonna say it both ways the whole time. Um,
Speaker 1: and uh, one of them is. Um, the lips are
Speaker 1: usually so shut, and they were nodded in a certain way,
Speaker 1: and the strings were left a dangle. It's called the
Speaker 1: shoea not that's a dead giveaway. Um. And there's there's
Speaker 1: I ran across this one source. It was basically like
Speaker 1: here ten identifying characteristics of a Santa number one head shrunk. Right. Well,
Speaker 1: there's one. Um, there are a couple of specimens of
Speaker 1: entirely shrunken bodies. But the people didn't go there's one
Speaker 1: guy who's like a an Ecuadorian general or something or
Speaker 1: military officer. Um, the person who shrunk his whole body
Speaker 1: didn't go to the trouble of removing all of the
Speaker 1: bones from the hand or feet. Uh so he's just
Speaker 1: a little body with like big hands and feet. That's
Speaker 1: kind of cool. It is kind of cool, but not authentic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and I just cooked up an idea though. If
Speaker 1: I was I went to get Jorge, but I could
Speaker 1: not get Jorge's head, and I was shamed into getting
Speaker 1: a monkey instead. I would just tell people that that
Speaker 1: was Jorge and that he sort of looked like a monkey. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I wonder if that would work. I don't know, No,
Speaker 1: if you're a big fat lying shoe, are it would work? Okay?
Speaker 1: You know? Yeah, so Chuck we Um, you mentioned that
Speaker 1: like eight percent or something of all senses are considered counterfeit.
Speaker 1: I'm it was probably. I would think it's even higher
Speaker 1: than that. Like big museums, big time museums were collecting
Speaker 1: these or received them through donations of like famous adventurers
Speaker 1: or collectors widows. Um. Which is a moral issue. It
Speaker 1: is these days. It didn't used to be. It was
Speaker 1: just like oh, cool shrunken head, right, Oh cool mummy. Right.
Speaker 1: But now there is this question of repatriation. Like we
Speaker 1: remember in the Total Pole episode we talked about George H. W.
Speaker 1: Bush signing the Grave Repatriation Actor Native Americans. So this
Speaker 1: is a this is a big issue, and it has
Speaker 1: been on since like the eighties or nineties, I would say, um,
Speaker 1: And now all of a sudden, all these museums who
Speaker 1: were used to making gobs of cash off of displaying
Speaker 1: shrunken heads are like, oh, we're kind of on morally
Speaker 1: gray ground here, which is really like we're on immoral ground.
Speaker 1: So what do we do with this? Well, some people
Speaker 1: are returning them. Some museums have returned them, and that
Speaker 1: I guess solves that problem other ones, I guess. I
Speaker 1: mean they're testing them now a lot. In fact, this
Speaker 1: week they got the first DNA successful DNA tests from
Speaker 1: a shrunken head. Ah. Who did it turn out to be? Uh?
Speaker 1: It was published in this week's issue of or Maybe
Speaker 1: It's a monthly quarterly Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, and it
Speaker 1: was on display. The head was on display at a
Speaker 1: museum and Tel Aviv, and UH, a senior lecturer at
Speaker 1: a veterinary school, which I thought was interesting, tested this
Speaker 1: thing and authenticated it as real human skin and uh
Speaker 1: probably and died in South America, probably of Afro Ecuadorian descent. Wow,
Speaker 1: so we knew it was real anyway. But with DNA
Speaker 1: now it's like, all right, it's and now we can
Speaker 1: tell well and now you can test though at least
Speaker 1: these museums can to see if they're forgeries. If they're forgeries,
Speaker 1: I guess there's no harm in keeping them no on display,
Speaker 1: They're probably not gonna draw the visitors in like a
Speaker 1: real stance it would, right, But UM, the the Smithsonian's
Speaker 1: um oh, which one was at the National Museum of
Speaker 1: the American Indian led the way in repatriating stances to
Speaker 1: the shore in UH. I think, and then other museums
Speaker 1: are thinking of doing it, think very publicly and very
Speaker 1: hard about it. Like the Pitt Rivers Museum in England
Speaker 1: has a pretty substantial collection. There was a lot of
Speaker 1: like basically grave robbing and looting of cultures in the
Speaker 1: nineteenth and twentieth centuries that were funded by museums. They
Speaker 1: now have these collections that everybody was cool with that
Speaker 1: all of a sudden the public is not so cool with.
Speaker 1: So maybe we should give that stuff back because these
Speaker 1: are human remains, and Santa's in particular are called um
Speaker 1: quasi objects because there because of the transformation they go through,
Speaker 1: they're not just human remains. They're also cultural artifacts. But
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, they're human remains. And
Speaker 1: really they should probably go back to what's now the
Speaker 1: Shore Federation, which was established in the nineteen fifties and
Speaker 1: supposedly since then there hasn't been a Santa. But that
Speaker 1: that film from nineteen sixty one kind of undermines that idea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and didn't you point out to that um the uh
Speaker 1: during the boom in in the trade of the shrunken
Speaker 1: heads that people would rob Ecuadorian morgues of their heads
Speaker 1: to to make these. So that's certainly hinky, yeah, to
Speaker 1: say the least. Yeah, So I guess the moral of
Speaker 1: this entire episode is if you have a shrunken head,
Speaker 1: you should probably give it back. That's right. And didn't
Speaker 1: the Christians stop all this? Aren't they to blame or
Speaker 1: to be credited with? Yea, Christian missionaries are the ones
Speaker 1: who kind of brought the shoe are more into Ecuadorian
Speaker 1: society and um got their their culture into this Shoe
Speaker 1: r Federation and they stopped worrying with within themselves too. Yes,
Speaker 1: but there are still rumors and will end it on
Speaker 1: this one as recently as nine six. So like everybody's like,
Speaker 1: if you're a shoe are supposedly you don't shrink heads anymore,
Speaker 1: but you know exactly how to do it. Under the
Speaker 1: right circumstances, you would do it right, But everything's just
Speaker 1: been so cool for so long you don't have to
Speaker 1: do it. But supposedly in the nineteen nineties six uh
Speaker 1: Senapa war, I believe is what it was between Peru
Speaker 1: and Ecuador. Ecuadorian soldiers who were sho are modern soldiers. Yes,
Speaker 1: so there was a rumor that they were making santsa
Speaker 1: out of the heads of Peruvian soldiers that they killed
Speaker 1: during this war. Yeah. I wonder if they followed the
Speaker 1: whole process, the year long deal with the celebrations, or
Speaker 1: if it was more modernized, like I'm just gonna do
Speaker 1: this for the old old school guys. I don't know,
Speaker 1: keep the the culture alive. Well, the idea that it
Speaker 1: happened during the Senate War has been largely pooh pooed.
Speaker 1: But I don't know if they did. I don't know
Speaker 1: how they did it, but I'll bet that all of
Speaker 1: the other people in their platoon were really scared of them,
Speaker 1: probably so. So that's it for headshrinking. Literally, there's nothing
Speaker 1: more to say about. No, I can't think of anything.
Speaker 1: I even looked. If you want to see a bunch
Speaker 1: of pictures of shrunken heads and stuff like that, you
Speaker 1: can look at my article on how stuff works dot
Speaker 1: com by typing in shrunken heads in the handy search
Speaker 1: bar how stuff works dot Com. That's how I found it,
Speaker 1: and that brings up not listener mail as I understand it.
Speaker 1: Right now, Josh, you know what it's time for say
Speaker 1: it Edge. That's right, Josh. This is the point that
Speaker 1: we do every few months where we thank fans for
Speaker 1: sending tokens of their appreciation in and many of them
Speaker 1: are trying to get a small plug of their own,
Speaker 1: which we don't mind doing as long as it's on
Speaker 1: the up and up. And so here we go. We'll
Speaker 1: just tag team this. Listen up for your name, and
Speaker 1: if we forgot you, please remind us and you will
Speaker 1: be on the next edition. Uh. Susannah from Archie Comics
Speaker 1: knows that I was an Archie comic fan from the
Speaker 1: show and that you made fun of me for that,
Speaker 1: and so she sent us a load of stuff Archie
Speaker 1: boxer shorts and comics and depends I showed it to
Speaker 1: you and you didn't want it. Chuck. You also got
Speaker 1: both of the gift cards from George from Guitar Center
Speaker 1: in Austin, Texas. George, I appreciate that, yeah, man, but
Speaker 1: I knew that Chuck would put it too a lot
Speaker 1: better use than I would, so he got that one.
Speaker 1: You could have got like a like a guitar sent
Speaker 1: her T shirt. Alright, thank you, George. I used them
Speaker 1: both already. Vanessa, you sent us germ inspired plushies and
Speaker 1: they're these little zippered pouches that look like germs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: two of my nieces are crazy those. Yeah I should, uh,
Speaker 1: I should donate those to a small child. Uh. Germ
Speaker 1: usa dot com is where you can find those, and
Speaker 1: she donates of sales to St. Jude's Children's Hospital. So
Speaker 1: that is very much worthy. And if you are red
Speaker 1: gifting them to really kind of complete the whole thing,
Speaker 1: cough into it first and then zip it up real
Speaker 1: quick and then give it to the little plush germs.
Speaker 1: That's good. Look in the show. Sure, culture, I think sure? Uh,
Speaker 1: Liz it a bit sweets dot Com send us some
Speaker 1: more chocolate switch, Thank you, Liz. But she owed it
Speaker 1: to us after the Molecular Gastronomy podcast. It was in return. Remember, yeah,
Speaker 1: are we one up on her now or she even
Speaker 1: were even now? Okay, but we got a good deal
Speaker 1: going with her, so let's just keep this up. So
Speaker 1: thanks a little bit sweets dot com. That is l
Speaker 1: I D D A B I T sweets dot com.
Speaker 1: And it's so good. That's true, Chuck. I mean we're
Speaker 1: not just plugging it. I mean every time we get
Speaker 1: a package from her. I just delighted. Yes in fat
Speaker 1: her farmer, I'll send us unicorn tiers from unicorn tiers
Speaker 1: dot org. And uh my unicorn tiers were tears of joy.
Speaker 1: Apparently there are different kinds of unicorn tiers. Really, yes,
Speaker 1: mine were tears of joy tears. Jody sent us in
Speaker 1: Geo coins from her gcation experience. It was very nice.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's right, no plugg there, just a kind deed.
Speaker 1: Matt Lively sent us a sketch book Grandma's Big Breakfast
Speaker 1: and other drawings. Is that the one with the everybody
Speaker 1: made a little squiggle and he draw from it? I believe,
Speaker 1: So okay, thanks Matt, it's very neat. We got something
Speaker 1: from Jenna Dalmas and Jenna was on the co ed
Speaker 1: trip to Guatemala with Jerry. Is it Gina? It is
Speaker 1: Jenna spell Gina, and Jerry told me how to pronounce it,
Speaker 1: and she sent a CD. She's a musician, and she
Speaker 1: sent us some c D s and T shirts and
Speaker 1: you can support her at Jenna Dalmas dot com. But
Speaker 1: that is g I n A D A l m
Speaker 1: A s dot com. And I haven't listened to c
Speaker 1: D yet because I just got it, but I'm gonna
Speaker 1: check it out. Looks like some sort of all country
Speaker 1: type of thing, which I did. So do you remember
Speaker 1: those competing gross stories, the paramedic and the ear nurse?
Speaker 1: Who are I think married? Um? And we did. We
Speaker 1: judged which story was grosser, fish in the butt yes
Speaker 1: or intestines pushed back in and we voted intestines. Well,
Speaker 1: Matt and Anna, whose stories those worse than us? Thank
Speaker 1: you beers, so thank you for the beers. Johnny Spanish,
Speaker 1: I doubt if that's his real name. He sent Uh,
Speaker 1: he does Discover Spanish. There's a podcast actually called Discover
Speaker 1: Spanish and it teaches you Spanish. And he sent us
Speaker 1: a CD set from Language Treks And um, I haven't
Speaker 1: listened to it yet, but if long wanted to learn
Speaker 1: Spanish and I didn't want to throw down for it's
Speaker 1: Rosetta Stone. Yeah, so I'm gonna I'm gonna try. Why
Speaker 1: was it pricey? Yeah? So I'm gonna got it now
Speaker 1: for free from Johnny Spanish. Yes, he's gonna teach you
Speaker 1: to say stuff that you're not supposed to be saying.
Speaker 1: Probably so. Carrie and Ryan sent us a lovely photo
Speaker 1: of woods on fire. She teaches back country landscape photography
Speaker 1: at a community calls in DuPont, Washington, and you can
Speaker 1: go check out her stuff at photos by carry dot
Speaker 1: com photos by k E R R I E dot com.
Speaker 1: All one word, Josh, we got some beef jerky. I know,
Speaker 1: this was awesome. It was so good. I almost finished
Speaker 1: it all on the way home. And it was a slab.
Speaker 1: Yeah it was. It was like my bucket of beer,
Speaker 1: but it was beef jerkey. It was Bud's beef jerkey
Speaker 1: from northern California. And Mike Geotas or Guiotas sent us
Speaker 1: that And did he send us anything else? I don't,
Speaker 1: I don't. I think it was just. I mean that's plenty,
Speaker 1: but at the first some reason I thought that was
Speaker 1: beer that went with it or just and Mike, if
Speaker 1: you want to keep that coming, if you can stagger
Speaker 1: him so I get a new one every day, that
Speaker 1: would help me a lot. What's next, Uh, let's see.
Speaker 1: Allison and Fraser from Victoria, British Columbia sent us the
Speaker 1: s Y S K Army T shirt. This was a
Speaker 1: an entrant into our contest that we had some time back, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, I think we should have another teacher contest.
Speaker 1: What do you think I was thinking that just the
Speaker 1: other day. Actually, all right, and there's um didn't win,
Speaker 1: but it's awesome and we've got our versions of it.
Speaker 1: We can wear them are out now. Yeah they're Canadian.
Speaker 1: It might have won, but they were not allowed because
Speaker 1: of of silly rules. Yes they couldn't. They couldn't even enter.
Speaker 1: But they're in the image gallery and they made the
Speaker 1: shirt anyway inside to us. So thank you very much,
Speaker 1: you guys. And finally I want to give a personal
Speaker 1: thanks to Dr Gabriel Bird, dentist of Norman, Oklahoma, because,
Speaker 1: as you know, Josh, I am potentially looking at braces
Speaker 1: and jaw surgery for my messed up bite that is
Speaker 1: weakening my teeth. You're like Lisa Simpson projected like ten
Speaker 1: years out. Awful, man, so awful. And I posted on
Speaker 1: Facebook one day about people that had experience with this,
Speaker 1: and Doc Bird uh said, Hey, dude, I'm a dentist
Speaker 1: in Oklahoma. Call me. So I did, and we spent
Speaker 1: like an hour on the phone and he gave me
Speaker 1: all sorts of like awesome tips and advice on what
Speaker 1: to look for in my appointment, and uh, we're Facebook
Speaker 1: buddies now and it was very yeah, very kind of him.
Speaker 1: So if you're in the Norman, Oklahoma area, highly recommend
Speaker 1: Dr Gabriel Bird and he's quite a dream boat. And
Speaker 1: then finally we have about ten more shoutouts. Um, We've
Speaker 1: got a juma and other stories from Tyler Davis. He
Speaker 1: sent us a self published book which is pretty awesome.
Speaker 1: Got a nice origami crane from Jordan's Hatswell in South Australia.
Speaker 1: We got a letter from Courtney B who is an
Speaker 1: archaeologist in Alama Gordo, New Mexico. Thank you. We got
Speaker 1: a very nice letter from Sam W and Sam, tell
Speaker 1: your dad thank you for introducing you to the podcast
Speaker 1: from us please. We got a valentine from Vlada. I
Speaker 1: don't know if we ever thank Flada for that one.
Speaker 1: I found it in some postcards. We got a postcard
Speaker 1: from Grenada from Emily. Postcard from Hell Cayman Islands from
Speaker 1: famous Tracy who we know very well. Postcard from Gisborne,
Speaker 1: New Zealand from Susan p. Postcard of Benjamin Smythe on
Speaker 1: the UC Berkeley campus. Cool. Have you heard of this guy?
Speaker 1: He's just holding a sign that says you're perfect. It's nice.
Speaker 1: Positive dude, he's wrong, but that's nice. Uh, And that
Speaker 1: that came from Magnolia. Thanks Magnolia got a postcard from
Speaker 1: Michelle w in Leiden, Holland, and then a postcard of
Speaker 1: a Garotte execution in the Philippines at the turn of
Speaker 1: the century from Cecile, who's a doctor in Manila. It's
Speaker 1: like a guy wearing a bag over his head and
Speaker 1: there's like a machine that looks kind of like a press,
Speaker 1: but it's vertical. No, it's horizontal rather than vertical, and
Speaker 1: he's being executed. Some guys are standing around, but the
Speaker 1: executed is just sitting there holding his hat like I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna hang onto my hat while they kill me.
Speaker 1: Did you do you still have that? Yeah? I don't
Speaker 1: think I saw that. I want to see that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty serious. But thank you everybody for all that stuff,
Speaker 1: And thank you to everybody who has ever sent anything
Speaker 1: that we forgot. If we did, it was a total oversight.
Speaker 1: It has nothing to do with how we feel about
Speaker 1: what you sent us. Send us an email and say, jerks,
Speaker 1: I sent you this. How could you not thank me?
Speaker 1: I love you anyway? Signed you Okay, You can send
Speaker 1: that email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. M