WEBVTT - Why do we believe in urban legends? 0:00:00.240 --> 0:00:02.880 Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray. 0:00:03.120 --> 0:00:07.480 It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should Know? 0:00:08.080 --> 0:00:16.360 From house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to 0:00:16.400 --> 0:00:19.279 the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's all right, this is 0:00:19.280 --> 0:00:22.279 stuff you should know. Let's get to the intro. Yeah, 0:00:22.440 --> 0:00:24.680 Jerry said, we're wasting too much time at the beginning. Yeah. 0:00:24.800 --> 0:00:27.040 She said that she wished she had a third mix 0:00:27.040 --> 0:00:28.760 so she could ask a question every once in a 0:00:28.760 --> 0:00:31.040 while so we could get to the intro. Right, So 0:00:31.040 --> 0:00:33.640 what you have for lunch? Josh? I have not eaten 0:00:33.720 --> 0:00:36.040 lunch yet, actually, CenTra. I had a Gara Deli square 0:00:36.120 --> 0:00:42.160 chocolate caramel in sibs for I had a baby baby ruth. Um. 0:00:42.159 --> 0:00:46.320 I a granola bar courtesy of Discovery Channel. Thank you, yeah, 0:00:46.440 --> 0:00:52.720 raising d bar. Um. I had a cherry coke and um, 0:00:52.760 --> 0:00:56.600 that's healthy. My think that's it I've had forever. Had 0:00:56.600 --> 0:00:59.640 a green apple and some almonds, yeah, and green tea. 0:01:00.200 --> 0:01:02.680 You're all about the almonds right now, aren't you. It's 0:01:02.720 --> 0:01:04.679 a super food that reminds me. I've got to give 0:01:04.720 --> 0:01:07.640 you a recipe for roasted almonds. One of my friends 0:01:07.640 --> 0:01:09.959 told me last night it sounds really good, don't you 0:01:10.000 --> 0:01:12.959 just roast him? Well, there's some other stuff mixed together, 0:01:13.000 --> 0:01:16.119 so Alton Brown recipe. He's on the Alton Brown diet. 0:01:16.360 --> 0:01:19.480 I watched me the Seaweed Salad last night, and I 0:01:19.560 --> 0:01:23.559 was just like, he's gonna weep at any moment. Jerry 0:01:23.600 --> 0:01:26.800 is so frustrated, right she is. Her calf muscles are 0:01:26.840 --> 0:01:29.080 about to burst out of her legs. Well, maybe we 0:01:29.120 --> 0:01:31.800 should send her to Vegas. No, no, no, I got 0:01:31.840 --> 0:01:36.040 something else, Chuck. Yes, did you know that National Gang 0:01:36.040 --> 0:01:38.880 Week has come and gone? Is there such a thing 0:01:41.280 --> 0:01:44.000 that just ruined the whole thing? Well, Josh, tell me 0:01:44.040 --> 0:01:47.520 about National Gang Week? Okay? Um. National Gang Week is 0:01:47.560 --> 0:01:50.080 when all of the gangs around the United States get 0:01:50.120 --> 0:01:52.280 together and come up with a clever, pant plan to 0:01:52.400 --> 0:01:56.720 murder unwitting and innocent people. Some of the crips and 0:01:56.720 --> 0:01:59.440 the bloods get together. One imagines what the Mongols and 0:01:59.480 --> 0:02:04.600 the Hell's ain't jewels and M fourteen, M thirteen, I'm 0:02:04.600 --> 0:02:06.960 gonna get shot in the head for this again? What 0:02:07.120 --> 0:02:14.040 is it? I can't remember? Like MS thirteen? Sure, man um. Anyway, 0:02:14.320 --> 0:02:16.440 all the gangs get together and they come up with 0:02:16.480 --> 0:02:18.760 the plan that they're all going to perpetrate this year. 0:02:19.120 --> 0:02:23.959 This December. It was a baby, a fake baby or 0:02:24.000 --> 0:02:26.560 possibly a real live baby if they had any female 0:02:26.560 --> 0:02:28.560 gang members who are willing to give up their infant 0:02:28.639 --> 0:02:31.360 child for a little while in a baby seat on 0:02:31.400 --> 0:02:35.080 the side of the road, covered in blood, although uninjured, 0:02:35.120 --> 0:02:37.360 just just kind of doctored to look like they're bleeding 0:02:38.440 --> 0:02:41.560 in an effort to trap female motorists. Who would you know, 0:02:41.680 --> 0:02:49.720 inevitably stop female what female motorists? Yeah, that curse my 0:02:49.800 --> 0:02:54.400 thick tongue. Um. The drivers by, not to be confused 0:02:54.400 --> 0:02:57.880 with the drive by, which is a gang activity. Um, 0:02:58.040 --> 0:03:02.000 the too to trap female to risks um who would 0:03:02.040 --> 0:03:04.480 stop and try to, you know, see if the baby's okay, 0:03:04.600 --> 0:03:06.760 help it? And then out of the bushes comes from 0:03:06.760 --> 0:03:10.600 gang members who beat and rape and murder her. That 0:03:10.680 --> 0:03:15.040 sounds to me like an urban legend, Josh too. Two 0:03:16.000 --> 0:03:21.000 police departments issued warnings about this. Really, this past December 0:03:21.120 --> 0:03:24.919 is so ridiculous. When pressed about their sources, they both said, 0:03:25.000 --> 0:03:26.760 you know, actually we can't verify any of this, so 0:03:26.800 --> 0:03:30.000 don't pass it along. It was just an idea somebody had, Yeah, 0:03:30.000 --> 0:03:31.680 you know, the other big gang. When I remember hearing 0:03:31.680 --> 0:03:35.240 this one myself was if someone flashes their headlights at 0:03:35.280 --> 0:03:37.760 you and you flash them back, then it's a gang 0:03:37.760 --> 0:03:39.840 and they'll turn around and follow you and kill you. 0:03:39.960 --> 0:03:41.800 The one I heard was, um, if they if you 0:03:41.840 --> 0:03:44.200 see somebody driving without headlights on and you flash them, 0:03:44.200 --> 0:03:46.360 they'll turn around and kill you. It's part of a 0:03:46.400 --> 0:03:50.280 gang initiation. It's so not true. No, it's not. And 0:03:50.320 --> 0:03:53.680 what we're talking about obviously are urban legends, but more specifically, 0:03:53.800 --> 0:03:57.120 the article is called how Urban Legends Work. We decided 0:03:57.160 --> 0:04:01.080 to call this podcast, why do we Believe Urban Legends? Yeah, 0:04:01.200 --> 0:04:04.040 you know, yeah, we'll get to that for sure. I 0:04:04.080 --> 0:04:06.680 mentioned Vegas early on though, because of the very popular 0:04:06.800 --> 0:04:10.240 old story that the man goes to Vegas and he 0:04:10.320 --> 0:04:12.120 chats it up with a nice lady at the bar 0:04:12.280 --> 0:04:14.480 and goes back to the room with her, and then 0:04:14.480 --> 0:04:16.920 he wakes up dazed and confused in a tub of 0:04:16.960 --> 0:04:20.560 ice the next day with a side hurting and uh 0:04:20.600 --> 0:04:22.919 with a note saying call nine one one and clearly 0:04:23.279 --> 0:04:26.719 his kidneys have been removed. Yeah, upon examination, as kidneys 0:04:26.720 --> 0:04:30.640 are removed. This actually gave me a moment of terror, chuck, 0:04:30.720 --> 0:04:33.880 because if you remember in the organ donation podcast. We 0:04:33.960 --> 0:04:37.160 talked about a guy named Mohammed Seline Khan who had 0:04:37.200 --> 0:04:41.120 his kidney removed, and I thought, Um, did we get 0:04:41.200 --> 0:04:44.760 taken and pass along bad information that tom she right? 0:04:45.200 --> 0:04:47.719 Turns out Tommy was right. I went and double checked 0:04:47.720 --> 0:04:49.960 his sources, and I saw a picture of the guy 0:04:50.080 --> 0:04:54.320 with like the huge sewn up um incision where his 0:04:54.440 --> 0:04:57.880 kidney was removed. It was an ABC News story. Yeah, yeah, 0:04:57.920 --> 0:05:00.640 that was real. That is pretty much fair fiable, right, 0:05:00.760 --> 0:05:03.559 But that that story was around long before that happened 0:05:03.600 --> 0:05:06.160 to him. Yeah, And I think we even um postulated 0:05:06.200 --> 0:05:10.800 that that urban legend gave rise to actual fact, right, Yes, yeah, 0:05:10.839 --> 0:05:13.599 and that does happen. Sometimes life imitates art and the 0:05:13.600 --> 0:05:16.560 other way around. Sometimes it's uh, something from a plot 0:05:16.640 --> 0:05:19.480 of a horror movie, or sometimes an urban legend is 0:05:19.520 --> 0:05:22.440 inserted into the plot of a horror movie, like the 0:05:22.480 --> 0:05:25.680 hook Killer. You want to tell that one? Well, yeah, 0:05:25.680 --> 0:05:28.120 that one's been around since the nineteen fifties when um 0:05:28.279 --> 0:05:31.240 teenagers first started going parking, which is when they would 0:05:31.320 --> 0:05:34.440 drive out to inspiration Point and and make out neck 0:05:35.160 --> 0:05:39.000 and m The story goes that the they hear the story, 0:05:39.040 --> 0:05:42.760 it's always some someone who's escaped from an insane asylum 0:05:42.839 --> 0:05:46.320 back when you hooked hand hooked hand. And then the 0:05:46.880 --> 0:05:49.920 they hear someone scratching on the car and they don't 0:05:49.960 --> 0:05:52.200 do anything and they just leave and they get home 0:05:52.279 --> 0:05:54.760 later and find that a hook is sticking into like 0:05:54.800 --> 0:05:58.800 the door handle. Not no, and it's a that and 0:05:59.000 --> 0:06:03.760 the biggest one, the Vegas kidney one are considered cautionary tales. Right. 0:06:04.000 --> 0:06:06.599 You have very common hallmark of many urban legends that 0:06:06.600 --> 0:06:09.560 they are called cautionary tales, right. And and most cautionary 0:06:09.560 --> 0:06:13.880 tales also involve some sort of morality twist to him, right, 0:06:13.960 --> 0:06:17.200 Like in in the most extreme cases, the guy who 0:06:17.279 --> 0:06:20.120 was in Vegas who was chatting with the girl was 0:06:20.160 --> 0:06:22.640 actually married and he went back to her hotel room. 0:06:22.720 --> 0:06:25.240 So the moral of the story is don't cheat on 0:06:25.320 --> 0:06:27.479 your wife, right, or else something really horrible is going 0:06:27.520 --> 0:06:29.359 to happen to you. Uh. In the case of the 0:06:29.360 --> 0:06:34.599 teenagers in the fifties, um, it was teenagers necking as 0:06:34.640 --> 0:06:38.280 you put it, old man, um and uh, the the 0:06:38.520 --> 0:06:41.279 the more, the moral of the story is don't have 0:06:41.320 --> 0:06:44.039 premarital sex. Right, we'll go park your car and do 0:06:44.120 --> 0:06:48.960 things like this. You shouldn't know, um nothing right, So 0:06:49.120 --> 0:06:52.640 the the the What's interesting about this is that urban 0:06:52.720 --> 0:06:58.760 legends um reflect our own morality, our own values. Think 0:06:58.800 --> 0:07:02.000 about that, from the fifties to the when the first 0:07:02.080 --> 0:07:07.200 folk folklorist um I Guess chronicled that Vegas kidney story. 0:07:07.320 --> 0:07:10.440 Right in forty years, it went from necking to cheating 0:07:10.480 --> 0:07:14.120 on your wife, right, And one could argue that our 0:07:14.240 --> 0:07:18.040 values had expanded like that or devolved to that same 0:07:18.080 --> 0:07:20.800 degree in that same period of time. It's a good point. Yeah, 0:07:20.960 --> 0:07:22.880 did you hear a bunch of them when you were 0:07:22.920 --> 0:07:26.600 first going to college? When I look back on some 0:07:26.680 --> 0:07:30.160 of the stories I've passed along as fact, I couldn't 0:07:30.160 --> 0:07:33.119 be more ashamed I heard these. I never passed them along. 0:07:33.280 --> 0:07:35.640 You didn't. Even if I didn't pass them along, I 0:07:35.680 --> 0:07:38.120 believe some of them. Yeah, that there's a couple of 0:07:38.160 --> 0:07:40.720 common ones. One is the be careful if you're in 0:07:40.720 --> 0:07:42.679 a dorm room man with someone you don't know, because 0:07:43.160 --> 0:07:46.520 you wake up every day and feel all groggy and 0:07:47.120 --> 0:07:49.720 like you've been taking advantage of for a very good reason, 0:07:49.720 --> 0:07:53.840 because your roommate was knocking you out and performing indecent 0:07:53.880 --> 0:07:57.760 acts on you. What you slept not true very much 0:07:57.800 --> 0:08:03.600 an urban legend, as is the the if your roommate 0:08:03.680 --> 0:08:07.160 kills themselves, you get straight. A's that quarter, which I 0:08:07.200 --> 0:08:09.840 have to say, forms the premise of one of the 0:08:09.920 --> 0:08:15.040 greatest um Zach Morris movies of all time, what's that 0:08:15.240 --> 0:08:18.840 Dead Man on Campus? Dude? Did you ever see that? No? 0:08:19.120 --> 0:08:22.320 That was a great movie. That was the plot though, Yeah, 0:08:22.440 --> 0:08:24.240 that was the whole plot. He smokes a bong in 0:08:24.280 --> 0:08:26.640 that movie. It's kind of startling for having grown up 0:08:26.680 --> 0:08:31.080 on Saved by the Bell? Oh he is that his 0:08:31.160 --> 0:08:32.840 character name? Is that his real name? Yeah? I don't 0:08:32.840 --> 0:08:35.480 remember his real name? Oh? Zach was his character? And 0:08:35.760 --> 0:08:37.800 Saved by the Bell? Is Zach? A blond guy? Zack? 0:08:37.840 --> 0:08:40.200 If you're listening, um, send us an email telling us 0:08:40.240 --> 0:08:41.920 your real name. Now we we'll look it up in 0:08:41.920 --> 0:08:43.960 a second, So don't bother email. I prefer an email 0:08:43.960 --> 0:08:47.840 from him. Okay, So um, Chuck, Like, we said that 0:08:47.880 --> 0:08:50.559 these things kind of tend to reflect our own morality, 0:08:50.600 --> 0:08:53.760 our own values, and you said they reflect our fears, 0:08:53.920 --> 0:08:57.520 and that's absolutely true. There's a lot of urban legends. 0:08:57.559 --> 0:08:59.840 I would even say the vast majority of them have 0:09:00.040 --> 0:09:02.679 to do with some sort of fear, right right, And 0:09:02.720 --> 0:09:04.959 that's one reason we pass them along is because they 0:09:05.000 --> 0:09:08.120 resonate with us. We have loved ones in our lives. 0:09:08.120 --> 0:09:10.199 There's people we care about, or at the very least, 0:09:10.440 --> 0:09:12.240 we're having a good day and we don't want some 0:09:12.360 --> 0:09:15.240 stranger to fall into some horrible misfortune. So we pass 0:09:15.320 --> 0:09:17.800 these along. And if they're passed along to a person 0:09:17.840 --> 0:09:20.760 who maintains the same kind of fears and maybe the 0:09:20.800 --> 0:09:26.120 same level of fears and the same um dope believability um, 0:09:26.240 --> 0:09:29.839 they'll absorb them, fear them, and pass them along themselves. 0:09:30.320 --> 0:09:34.240 Many times, it's also regionalized, so what maybe if you're 0:09:34.240 --> 0:09:36.840 in Seattle, it could be a neighborhood in Seattle where 0:09:36.840 --> 0:09:39.320 this happened. If you're in Atlanta, it could be East Lake. 0:09:39.679 --> 0:09:41.839 So they get regionalized, and all of a sudden you think, well, 0:09:41.880 --> 0:09:43.880 I it may not be true, but I should tell 0:09:44.120 --> 0:09:46.880 my friends this um on the internet, such as in 0:09:46.880 --> 0:09:49.680 an email out just in case, because it's happening right here, 0:09:49.840 --> 0:09:53.199 right and because it's in a place that you can visualize, 0:09:53.200 --> 0:09:56.000 it has that much greater of an impact on you. Fear. 0:09:56.080 --> 0:09:59.720 Once again, sure, I mean, if you can visualize your fear, 0:09:59.760 --> 0:10:03.640 you can fear even more. Yeah, good point. Thanks, that's 0:10:03.679 --> 0:10:07.000 gonna be on my tombstone. Should we talk about some 0:10:07.000 --> 0:10:09.960 some dead giveaways that you're in fact hearing an urban 0:10:10.040 --> 0:10:13.880 legend and not the real thing. Tots, Uh, it happened 0:10:13.920 --> 0:10:16.640 to a friend of a friend. That's the classic definite 0:10:17.280 --> 0:10:19.600 is what they call it. And actually, um, if it 0:10:19.679 --> 0:10:22.600 happens to a friend of a friend, usually when you 0:10:22.640 --> 0:10:24.880 pass it along, you're not gonna say a friend of 0:10:24.880 --> 0:10:28.880 a friend because you just immediately lost credibility right there. Um, 0:10:28.920 --> 0:10:32.199 so you're going to say it happened to my my friend, 0:10:32.280 --> 0:10:34.920 Chuck's friend, or it happened to Chuck's friend. You know, Chuck, 0:10:34.960 --> 0:10:36.480 it happened to one of his friends who neither one 0:10:36.480 --> 0:10:39.840 of us have ever met. Right. That that personalizes it 0:10:39.880 --> 0:10:41.760 a little more, brings it home a little further. Or 0:10:42.440 --> 0:10:46.400 if I were a real liar, right or really desperate 0:10:46.440 --> 0:10:49.280 for attention, I would say it happened to Chuck, even 0:10:49.280 --> 0:10:51.360 though Chuck told me it happened to a friend of his. 0:10:51.800 --> 0:10:53.840 But I'm just gonna gloss over that part because I 0:10:53.880 --> 0:10:56.320 really want you to believe what I'm saying, because if 0:10:56.360 --> 0:10:58.960 you believe what I'm saying, then I can more easily 0:10:59.000 --> 0:11:01.960 believe what i'm saying, Right, and people innately want to 0:11:02.000 --> 0:11:05.480 believe their friends when they hear things, and people innately 0:11:05.520 --> 0:11:07.840 want to tell a good yarn. So a couple of 0:11:07.840 --> 0:11:11.000 those together spin a good yarn, and then, uh, is 0:11:11.000 --> 0:11:15.439 that what the it's called spinning yarn? Put those two 0:11:15.480 --> 0:11:18.400 together and you get urban legends. Yeah. I actually remember 0:11:18.480 --> 0:11:22.079 the first urban legend I heard. And my buddy rad 0:11:22.120 --> 0:11:26.360 in Montana, my best friend in high school, actually Radford. 0:11:26.640 --> 0:11:29.880 He uh he told me, I remember this so distinctly 0:11:29.920 --> 0:11:33.120 about the Eddie Murphy and the elevator. It used to 0:11:33.120 --> 0:11:35.600 be Reggie Jackson before that. The story is the lady 0:11:35.920 --> 0:11:39.199 gets on the elevator and it's it's some African American 0:11:39.240 --> 0:11:42.600 with his large entourage or a dog. It's a dog. 0:11:42.920 --> 0:11:46.240 It's a dog. Dog. Yeah, it's the crux of it. Okay, well, 0:11:46.280 --> 0:11:48.120 and see it changes. That's the hallmark of an urban 0:11:48.160 --> 0:11:51.080 legend to it changes per story, but the lady will 0:11:51.120 --> 0:11:54.920 clutch her person fear, and then later on she finds 0:11:54.920 --> 0:11:57.080 out it's at a hotel that her hotel stay was 0:11:57.120 --> 0:11:59.840 paid for. It's like, courtesy of Eddie Murphy. We got 0:12:00.120 --> 0:12:02.680 the best laugh I've had in weeks because we scared you. 0:12:02.920 --> 0:12:06.360 Oh yeah, that's not how a mom told it. She 0:12:06.480 --> 0:12:09.760 said that, um, and I think, if I remember correctly, 0:12:09.800 --> 0:12:11.720 she told me that it had happened to a friend 0:12:11.760 --> 0:12:13.679 of hers or someone she works with. Friends. Well, that's 0:12:13.720 --> 0:12:15.680 what Rat said. I remember it was his mom, someone 0:12:15.720 --> 0:12:18.440 his mom worked with. Well, in this case, it was 0:12:18.520 --> 0:12:22.800 Lionel Ritchie or Reggie Jackson. I think the other variation 0:12:22.880 --> 0:12:25.199 I heard was Reggie Jackson, Lionel Richie. I never heard 0:12:25.280 --> 0:12:28.520 Eddie Murphy. But he's in there there in like a 0:12:28.679 --> 0:12:31.080 very nice hotel that allows huge dogs, and the guy 0:12:31.120 --> 0:12:35.120 has a dog with him, so he's he's even more intimidating, 0:12:35.559 --> 0:12:39.160 and uh, the the woman is trying to avoid eye contact, 0:12:39.240 --> 0:12:41.520 is scared clutching her first, that kind of thing. Um. 0:12:41.600 --> 0:12:44.400 And then all of a sudden, the guy goes sit lady, 0:12:44.880 --> 0:12:47.720 and the woman sits down in the elevator and the 0:12:47.760 --> 0:12:49.920 guys like I was talking to my dog. And then 0:12:50.080 --> 0:12:52.760 her hotel stay is paid for by Reggie Jackson or 0:12:52.800 --> 0:12:57.240 Lionel Ritchie or Eddie Murphy or one imagines P Diddy, yeah, 0:12:58.120 --> 0:13:00.920 or jay Z. But I just rad, if you're listening, 0:13:01.080 --> 0:13:04.360 you lied to me, buddy, way back when when we 0:13:04.360 --> 0:13:06.319 were eating turkey sandwiches after school. You lied to me, 0:13:06.360 --> 0:13:10.200 I remember distinctly, and I'll never forget it. So, Josh, 0:13:10.360 --> 0:13:13.000 that was a lot of time to uh, to give 0:13:13.080 --> 0:13:16.000 up the one dead giveaway friend of a friend. So 0:13:16.160 --> 0:13:18.439 we'll go through some of these other ones quickly. Actually 0:13:18.480 --> 0:13:21.920 we already did. There are many variations. That's a dead giveaway. 0:13:22.640 --> 0:13:24.880 The topic is one that is often on the news 0:13:25.360 --> 0:13:28.040 or one that people gossip about. Yeah, that's a big one. 0:13:28.240 --> 0:13:32.079 Like we Got Stuff podcast, got a forwarded email about 0:13:32.240 --> 0:13:35.400 UM census workers. Yeah, yeah, the census is about to happen, 0:13:35.480 --> 0:13:38.560 so now don't open your door unless they have a 0:13:38.559 --> 0:13:42.440 confidentiality agreement and certain other things. They'll murder you. Yeah, 0:13:42.440 --> 0:13:45.000 we got it this morning. Okay, was that when that ironic? Yeah, 0:13:45.200 --> 0:13:47.760 but that actually happened when the census worker we thought 0:13:47.800 --> 0:13:50.280 was killed, but it turns out it's a suicide. So 0:13:50.360 --> 0:13:52.400 oftentimes it will spin off of a real news story 0:13:52.480 --> 0:13:55.319 and get morphed. Yeah, which is kind of scary because 0:13:55.360 --> 0:13:59.240 a lot of urban legends have been portrayed as fact 0:13:59.400 --> 0:14:02.880 in the news the newspapers. Well, that's another reason people 0:14:02.920 --> 0:14:05.679 believe them is because they trust the news when they 0:14:05.720 --> 0:14:09.960 ought not, which is sad because really, frankly, you shouldn't. 0:14:10.320 --> 0:14:12.280 You shouldn't. You should take all news stories with a 0:14:12.320 --> 0:14:14.520 green as salt. You know, it's just some dude or 0:14:14.679 --> 0:14:17.440 chick reporting something kind of file a story, just like 0:14:17.480 --> 0:14:19.880 we do. We get things wrong all the time. Clearly, 0:14:20.800 --> 0:14:24.880 why shaking your head? Just people know, we call ourselves out. 0:14:25.400 --> 0:14:27.520 But it's true. I think it's funny that we do that, 0:14:27.600 --> 0:14:29.720 and we need to do that because in the in 0:14:29.800 --> 0:14:33.440 this day and age, pretty much our entire job, or 0:14:33.440 --> 0:14:37.040 at least a significant portion of it, chuck is avoiding 0:14:37.120 --> 0:14:40.080 giving out false information. Yeah, we have to go through 0:14:40.120 --> 0:14:43.440 and verify it, which is getting increasingly harder. Yeah, we try, 0:14:43.840 --> 0:14:47.520 We definitely do. We were talking about pop culture, and 0:14:47.600 --> 0:14:50.800 sometimes movies will work it in or the other way around. 0:14:51.240 --> 0:14:54.440 In the movie Goodwill Hunting, remember they tell the story 0:14:54.480 --> 0:14:56.360 about the guy who gets pulled over by the cop 0:14:56.400 --> 0:14:59.640 because he's drunk, and then an accident happens in the 0:14:59.680 --> 0:15:02.960 cop as to run to the accident, and the guy 0:15:03.120 --> 0:15:05.520 jumps in his car goes home. The cop comes the 0:15:05.600 --> 0:15:07.960 next morning and the guy denies that he was ever 0:15:07.960 --> 0:15:10.640 out drinking until he looks and notices that in his 0:15:10.720 --> 0:15:13.080 driveway he had jumped in the squad car by accident. 0:15:13.520 --> 0:15:15.880 Not true, but it's an urban legend. It was in 0:15:15.960 --> 0:15:20.320 good will hunting the Simpsons, which one. You know how 0:15:20.320 --> 0:15:22.360 you always hear the story about like a mouse in 0:15:22.400 --> 0:15:25.920 a in a coke bottle? Remember the Simpsons when they 0:15:25.960 --> 0:15:29.080 Barney and Homer visit the Duff Brewery and the guys 0:15:29.080 --> 0:15:30.960 on the line fills on the line checking the bottles 0:15:31.000 --> 0:15:34.560 as they go by. He's like, good, good nose, good needle. 0:15:34.800 --> 0:15:36.680 And then he turns his head and like Hitler's head, 0:15:36.680 --> 0:15:39.320 it goes by the bottle. That's a good one. Did 0:15:39.320 --> 0:15:42.160 you see the YouTube clip of Hitler finding out that 0:15:42.200 --> 0:15:45.520 Scott Brown won the Massachusetts Senate seat? I did? You 0:15:45.560 --> 0:15:47.880 sent it to me? Good? Is that an urban legend? 0:15:48.120 --> 0:15:50.000 Or did Scott Brown really win the Senate seat? He 0:15:50.080 --> 0:15:52.960 really did? I thought was made up? Um? Oh, there's 0:15:53.040 --> 0:15:56.880 a pretty It's pretty much impossible to trace the origin 0:15:57.160 --> 0:16:00.920 of a um any urban legend, really, no one ever 0:16:00.920 --> 0:16:02.560 knows where they come from. One of the reasons why 0:16:02.680 --> 0:16:04.800 is because it follows oral tradition or it used to 0:16:05.200 --> 0:16:09.480 generally right right folk It is folklore, and it's actually 0:16:09.520 --> 0:16:12.760 studied by cultural anthropologists and folkloreist, which I think is 0:16:12.800 --> 0:16:18.240 probably a sub set of cultural anthropology. UM. And the 0:16:18.240 --> 0:16:21.960 the Hey, Dave, have you seen the Encyclopedia of Urban Legends? No. 0:16:22.120 --> 0:16:24.840 I used to have a cartoon book though, of urban legends. 0:16:24.840 --> 0:16:27.720 It was pretty cool, nice. Well, the Encyclopedia of Urban 0:16:27.800 --> 0:16:31.600 Legends is fairly anthropological in nature. It's pretty thick tone. 0:16:31.600 --> 0:16:34.360 It's on Google Books. We can check it out. But 0:16:34.480 --> 0:16:39.520 the author of it, Jan Harold brun Van, Harold, why 0:16:39.520 --> 0:16:42.760 are you doing this to me today? Are you talking 0:16:42.760 --> 0:16:46.320 to your mouth or to me both? Um? The the 0:16:46.360 --> 0:16:50.360 author Jan Harold brun Van Um kind of laments that 0:16:50.480 --> 0:16:54.480 the the internet has removed that aspect the oral tradition 0:16:55.440 --> 0:16:59.160 by digitizing it. And now I'll just click forward and 0:16:59.680 --> 0:17:04.840 and uh broom Van suggests that the golden age of 0:17:04.200 --> 0:17:08.880 uh of um urban legends was the sixties of the eighties, 0:17:09.320 --> 0:17:11.960 although they've been around a lot longer than that, right, yeah, 0:17:12.040 --> 0:17:14.639 since the thirties and forties. I said, I found even 0:17:14.680 --> 0:17:17.879 further back than that. Um. Apparently at Scott Fitzgerald and 0:17:17.920 --> 0:17:22.760 the twenties referred to contemporary legends the the the critic 0:17:22.840 --> 0:17:25.160 took to mean the same thing as an urban legend. Sure. 0:17:25.320 --> 0:17:27.520 And then even before that, I think in uh the 0:17:27.600 --> 0:17:30.879 eighteen nineties there was a French columnists who asked to 0:17:31.200 --> 0:17:35.040 cities maintain folklore just as rural areas to interesting the 0:17:35.040 --> 0:17:38.320 answer that is a big fat yes obviously. Yeah. So 0:17:38.359 --> 0:17:40.359 that's when they were actually called out as urban legends. 0:17:40.359 --> 0:17:43.600 Like we said, it goes back centuries tradition of folklore. 0:17:44.440 --> 0:17:48.000 Historians are big on verifying and writing things down, and 0:17:48.160 --> 0:17:52.320 folklore's tell stories with their mouths. Yeah, like we do, right, 0:17:52.640 --> 0:17:54.639 that sounds like a T shirt. Folklore's do it with 0:17:54.680 --> 0:17:58.880 their mouths. Um. And like you said, check, these things 0:17:58.920 --> 0:18:02.160 go back centuries, if not further. Um. And again, all 0:18:02.280 --> 0:18:07.040 legends reflect um, the feelings, the fears, that kind of 0:18:07.040 --> 0:18:10.560 thing of the culture at the time. So we're before uh, 0:18:10.560 --> 0:18:15.359 in the you know, pre industrial age. Most fairy tales 0:18:15.400 --> 0:18:17.240 that had something bad happening to them, we're set in 0:18:17.280 --> 0:18:20.679 the woods, like Handling Gretel or snow White or whatever. 0:18:21.200 --> 0:18:23.199 These fairy tales were set in the woods because the 0:18:23.240 --> 0:18:26.280 woods were still very scary places, filled with bandits and 0:18:26.400 --> 0:18:31.760 bears and scary monsters, super freaks. Yeah. Yeah. One thing 0:18:31.800 --> 0:18:36.320 I thought was interesting is the famous website snopes dot 0:18:36.359 --> 0:18:38.720 Com clearly can put an end to a lot of 0:18:38.720 --> 0:18:40.840 these Internet if you're smart enough to good look at 0:18:40.840 --> 0:18:43.879 Snopes these Internet rumors that get started. But one thing 0:18:43.920 --> 0:18:46.240 I thought was interesting was reading this article is that 0:18:46.320 --> 0:18:49.440 Snopes evidentally gets a lot of angry emails because people 0:18:49.560 --> 0:18:52.200 want to believe their friends so much that their friends 0:18:52.400 --> 0:18:56.000 not made this up, that they will email Snopes angrily 0:18:56.040 --> 0:18:58.720 and say, you're calling my friend a liar. This really happened. 0:18:58.880 --> 0:19:01.720 He said, it happened to his best friend, and snubs 0:19:01.760 --> 0:19:04.040 just like doubt. They even respond to those, and they like, 0:19:04.119 --> 0:19:06.040 send us your address so we can send a guy 0:19:06.119 --> 0:19:08.040 to come hit you with a tack hammer. Right, and 0:19:08.040 --> 0:19:09.920 I have some swamp land in Florida, I can tell 0:19:09.920 --> 0:19:13.439 you exactly. Um. We were talking about the origins of 0:19:13.480 --> 0:19:19.320 these things, chuck right. Um. Right, So folklore's anthropologists and uh, 0:19:19.440 --> 0:19:23.920 pretty much any smart person can point to actual advance 0:19:24.000 --> 0:19:28.000 that are maybe misinterpreted or expanded upon become the source 0:19:28.000 --> 0:19:33.680 of urban legends. E g. Uh, temporary tattoos laced with LSD. Right, 0:19:33.800 --> 0:19:36.680 that could have been birthed out of the real practice 0:19:36.840 --> 0:19:39.720 of a chemist who make LSD would oftentimes put it 0:19:39.760 --> 0:19:42.040 on I guests still do put it on like a 0:19:42.080 --> 0:19:45.040 stamp with a cartoon character, and so that might have 0:19:45.080 --> 0:19:49.520 gotten confused with um temporary tattoos. So the word spreads 0:19:49.520 --> 0:19:51.520 and all of a sudden, And what I love is 0:19:51.560 --> 0:19:54.160 that the story goes is they give them these LSD 0:19:54.200 --> 0:19:57.639 tattoos to get the kids hooked on LSD, which is 0:19:57.680 --> 0:20:00.480 just silly. Yeah, it's not physically addicted ing at all, 0:20:00.680 --> 0:20:05.560 north psychologically addicting. I imagine it's much more psychologically aversive 0:20:05.560 --> 0:20:10.720 than anything I'm getting nostalgic Halloween. Lots of urban legends 0:20:10.760 --> 0:20:13.880 around Halloween. Yeah, with the tainted candy and the razor 0:20:13.920 --> 0:20:16.200 blades in the apple. You know it's crazy is we 0:20:16.200 --> 0:20:19.920 were talking about how the Oregon thief actually probably got 0:20:19.960 --> 0:20:23.400 the idea from the urban legend. There have been instances 0:20:23.640 --> 0:20:29.800 of people tainting Halloween candy after the the urban legend 0:20:29.920 --> 0:20:33.480 was around. Interesting, most of the ones that have like 0:20:33.560 --> 0:20:35.920 razor blades, and I have to say this is from Snopes. 0:20:36.520 --> 0:20:39.240 There's a pretty long article on Halloween candy with razor 0:20:39.280 --> 0:20:42.640 blades and needles. But um, most of the ones that 0:20:42.840 --> 0:20:47.960 have actually been perpetrated were hoaxes or they wanted to 0:20:47.960 --> 0:20:52.080 get attention or something like that. Um, but poison candy 0:20:52.119 --> 0:20:55.960 actually does. It's come up many many times around Halloween, 0:20:56.720 --> 0:20:59.560 and you know, in non Halloween days, the other three 0:21:00.000 --> 0:21:04.520 sixty four days where kids have died. Apparently, yes, and 0:21:04.560 --> 0:21:07.919 this is not an urban legend. Apparently uh in. I 0:21:07.960 --> 0:21:10.280 don't remember what state it was in, but a friend 0:21:10.320 --> 0:21:14.120 of a friend told me, um that a little kid 0:21:14.200 --> 0:21:17.600 died after getting into his uncle's stash of heroin, and 0:21:17.680 --> 0:21:22.560 so the family actually sprinkled his candy Halloween candy with 0:21:22.800 --> 0:21:25.399 hero with heroin from the uncle's stash to protect the uncle. 0:21:26.080 --> 0:21:28.520 Uh to make it look like somebody had poisoned the 0:21:28.600 --> 0:21:31.320 kid with with heroin and that really happened. It happened. 0:21:32.560 --> 0:21:34.200 What if Snopes is wrong about all this stuff? I 0:21:34.240 --> 0:21:37.399 don't know. I've had that horrible feeling before, horrible thoughts, 0:21:37.440 --> 0:21:40.359 sat upright in bed, been like tis roll pops, Like 0:21:40.440 --> 0:21:46.439 Snopes is just this one dude, He's just like this inclusion, 0:21:46.520 --> 0:21:49.200 he's like the wizard behind the curtain. That'd be pretty cool. 0:21:49.840 --> 0:21:51.240 I guess we should point out a few of these 0:21:51.240 --> 0:21:54.000