Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
Speaker 1: My friend Charles W. Chuck Bryan is here too, and
Speaker 1: it's just the two of us rolling and and having
Speaker 1: some fun outdoors, making snow angels and most importantly making
Speaker 1: snow people, which means this is stuff you should know,
Speaker 1: the snow people addition, that's right. Uh, And I just
Speaker 1: want to mention if you feel a presence among us
Speaker 1: because Emily, Emily's in the room with me. Oh hi, Emily.
Speaker 1: Now she can't hear you. I told her she had to.
Speaker 1: She had to sit there and be quiet. She's, you know,
Speaker 1: we got a sauna finally because of her lime and uh,
Speaker 1: well not the line part, but the sauna part. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: which she's she's feeling better for now, by the way,
Speaker 1: which is great news. But if you want to learn
Speaker 1: about the health benefits of the sauna, go back and
Speaker 1: listen to episode on the auna. But she was going
Speaker 1: to this membership place and driving like, you know, forty
Speaker 1: minutes each way, like four times a week, and so we, uh,
Speaker 1: we've broke down and got one. So she is quietly
Speaker 1: sitting back there sweating. Isn't it? Like? Have you used
Speaker 1: it yet? Yeah? I love it. It's really nice. Um,
Speaker 1: I do it's and it's also the solitude and just
Speaker 1: thirty minutes of quiet time because you shouldn't take your
Speaker 1: phone in there and bake it out. No, but um,
Speaker 1: does yours have bluetooth? It does. So I downloaded like
Speaker 1: a couple of bird song albums and nature song albums
Speaker 1: and I'll just like turn that on and attach to
Speaker 1: the bluetooth and just turn it real low. But it
Speaker 1: adds a little extra something to a sauna. Do you
Speaker 1: know what I do is I put on so Far
Speaker 1: music for airports from Brian Eno and try to not
Speaker 1: fall asleep. I could. I'm gonna give that one to try.
Speaker 1: I'll trade you one of my bird song albums for
Speaker 1: that Brian Eno album. Yeah, we'll meet in the middle
Speaker 1: and literally exchange records. No, we'll just swap phones for
Speaker 1: a few weeks, that's right. So anyway, and I have
Speaker 1: a hot, sweaty wife behind me. Okay, gotcha. So speaking
Speaker 1: of hot and sweaty, we're obviously talking about snow people today.
Speaker 1: Snow man. But you know what you don't want to
Speaker 1: do is put a snowperson in a sauna. No you don't,
Speaker 1: but that is a recurring theme of the legends and
Speaker 1: tales of snow people chuck, which we'll get too later.
Speaker 1: They all melt, they do. They're ephemeral, they're fleeting and um.
Speaker 1: There's this guy who wrote a book. He's a humorist
Speaker 1: and a cartoonist. His name is Bob Eckstein, and he
Speaker 1: wrote like the book on snowman and snow people is
Speaker 1: called the History of the Snowman, and he did the round.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot like a lot of snow research
Speaker 1: or snowman research brings up his stuff. It's kind of
Speaker 1: impossible to avoid. But one of the reasons why it's
Speaker 1: impossible to avoid is because he actually did some like
Speaker 1: really good scholarship on on snow people. And one of
Speaker 1: the things that he is SERTs it's probably true, is
Speaker 1: like our early ancestors had an aptitude for art. A
Speaker 1: snowman or a snow person is a pretty basic shape,
Speaker 1: and when you put those two together, there's a really
Speaker 1: good chance that humans have been making snowman, snow people,
Speaker 1: snow whatever for tens of thousands of years, if not longer.
Speaker 1: Most likely that's right, and I think did you you
Speaker 1: didn't mention the Book of Hours just then? Did you know?
Speaker 1: Not not yet? Yeah, that's from and that is the
Speaker 1: first known depiction of an actually in a manuscript of
Speaker 1: a snowman. That's a long time ago. And that was
Speaker 1: in the Oh boy, do you want to help me
Speaker 1: out with this? Yes, it's it's Dutch. It's a coney kruk. No, no,
Speaker 1: the coney kluck biblio. It still cracks me up after
Speaker 1: all these years. People say I'm happy to help you
Speaker 1: out with pronunciation, and we say never. It's a part
Speaker 1: of the show. Yeah, I liked it. Oh, very nice.
Speaker 1: So why is that jay even in there? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know because the Dutch love their Ja's and
Speaker 1: Randau places. But what we're saying is the coney whatever
Speaker 1: you said bibiliotiq in the Hague, Netherlands is where that
Speaker 1: comes from? Uh? And you know there was it's a snowman.
Speaker 1: Who was I guess you would have to say it's
Speaker 1: anti Semitic, right, It's the traditional stacked ball snow person
Speaker 1: and it has on a yamakle. So how you say
Speaker 1: that it's not a yamakle? It's something else. It's like
Speaker 1: a red cap with like ball on top. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: apparently it was a very Jewish cap to wear at
Speaker 1: the time. Okay, but he's sitting there, back turned to
Speaker 1: the fire, and then aside the snowman is text pronouncing
Speaker 1: the crucifixion of Jesus. So apparently what people think is
Speaker 1: that this was you know, Europe during the plague, and
Speaker 1: they needed the just they needed to take their frustrations
Speaker 1: out on something, so it fell to this little Jewish snowman. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the Book of Ours is a really popular Christian
Speaker 1: devotional too, and it um like I guess in every
Speaker 1: copy of this it was illuminated, So in every copy
Speaker 1: that would have been the drawing next to that part
Speaker 1: about Jesus's crucifixion. So not the greatest start as far
Speaker 1: as like the history of snow people or snowman um.
Speaker 1: But it gets a little better from here on out
Speaker 1: if you ask me. Yeah, there was one built. Michel
Speaker 1: Angelo was commissioned in four ninety four by Piero the
Speaker 1: Unfortunate of Florence. Love that name. That's gonna be my
Speaker 1: new hotel, The Unfortunate. No, Piero the Unfortunate Oh, I
Speaker 1: like Josh the unfortunate. No, it's a little too on
Speaker 1: the nose. Okay, hits HiT's too close to home. Oh no,
Speaker 1: you're the fortunate. Uh yeah, michel Angelo was commissioned to
Speaker 1: build this giant snowman in the Medici courtyard. I guess
Speaker 1: he put on his monkey suit and danced did what
Speaker 1: he was told. Yeah. Yeah. But the thing is, there's
Speaker 1: two things here. One nobody bothered to draw or document
Speaker 1: what it looked like. We just know that michel Angelo
Speaker 1: built a snowman once, which is pretty cool. But it
Speaker 1: also um shows like this during the era, the Renaissance,
Speaker 1: the medieval era before it um, the artists actually like
Speaker 1: kind of used snow as a medium sometimes during the winter.
Speaker 1: Michel Angelo wasn't the only one, that's right, and that
Speaker 1: is on evidence actually in another big moment in fifteen eleven,
Speaker 1: when a town in Brussels got together and this was
Speaker 1: during what was called the Winter of Death, so everyone
Speaker 1: was pretty um down and despondent or dead and dying,
Speaker 1: and so they built it. They just had kind of
Speaker 1: like a snowman festival, and it was called the Miracle
Speaker 1: of fifteen eleven, and there were real deal artists in
Speaker 1: town that probably did some pretty great things along with
Speaker 1: uh cynical townspeople. Who did people going poopoo, a snowboy
Speaker 1: peeing on a passed out drunk all made of snow
Speaker 1: by the way, um you know, body parts and atomically
Speaker 1: correct body parts. Yeah, a lot of people having sex
Speaker 1: but made of snow. Yeah, so they got involved, But
Speaker 1: so did the artists of the town. Yeah, I like
Speaker 1: the whole town did. It was called the Miracle of
Speaker 1: fifteen eleven because the town poet Yon Smicken wrote a
Speaker 1: poem called the Miracle of Pure Ice and Snow. So
Speaker 1: that's how it got its name. Um. And for a
Speaker 1: while historians thought like maybe Jon Smicken had just made
Speaker 1: it up, but they've they've uh supported that with um
Speaker 1: journals from some people that lived in the town during
Speaker 1: the time that said, this was awesome. We totally made
Speaker 1: a snow couple do and it and everybody went ponkers
Speaker 1: for it. Here in the US. Uh, there's kind of
Speaker 1: a weird story. Well not weird, it's sad and just
Speaker 1: odd that it's tied to snowman. I guess um. One
Speaker 1: of the bloodiest events in our history early on was
Speaker 1: a mass of six uh. Sixty people ended up dying, ten,
Speaker 1: including ten women and twelve children. The deal here is uh,
Speaker 1: some Frenchmen and Native Americans launched an attack on Fort
Speaker 1: uh Schenectady, and they were about ready to give up.
Speaker 1: They had been traveling for about a week through the
Speaker 1: snow through the Mohawk Valley. They were you know, obviously,
Speaker 1: you know, going through the snow on a long trek
Speaker 1: like that. They were exhausted and ill, and it was
Speaker 1: really strenuous and they were about to surrender. But when
Speaker 1: they got to the village, they saw that they had
Speaker 1: a really easy entrance in that the gate was frozen open,
Speaker 1: and as legend has it, the two guards went to
Speaker 1: go have some drinks and put snowmen as guards in
Speaker 1: their stead. Yeah, and that's the first documented snowmen built
Speaker 1: in America back in sixte which is a terrible debut
Speaker 1: as far as snow snowmen go in North America. Yes. Um. Also,
Speaker 1: just as a little aside, that really ties into our
Speaker 1: Salem witchcraft trial episode because that's exactly the kind of
Speaker 1: thing that put the Salem villagers on edge and they
Speaker 1: think led in part to the witch panic. And then
Speaker 1: interesting that is interesting so one other thing about the
Speaker 1: snowman and um, you're gonna love this, but Bob Extein
Speaker 1: compares the snowman to um kind of a type of
Speaker 1: Forrest Gump, like he just pops up at all of
Speaker 1: these like really important moments in history, like this just
Speaker 1: happens to be there as well. And one of them.
Speaker 1: Was it bad? I mean it was early, so yeah
Speaker 1: it was bad. I thought it was good. Still, I
Speaker 1: haven't seen it in a while. But one of the
Speaker 1: one of the early photographs UM that was ever taken
Speaker 1: is certainly not the first or even necessarily one of
Speaker 1: the first, but one of the earliest ones was taken
Speaker 1: by a woman named Mary Dilwyn who was Welsh, and
Speaker 1: she took a picture of her parents make can Um
Speaker 1: a snowman out in their yard, which is pretty pretty
Speaker 1: precious photograph, even though you can't really make out what's
Speaker 1: going on in it very well. Yeah, she was actually
Speaker 1: pretty interesting. She made need a short stuff. She just
Speaker 1: got into photography starting in eighteen forty five and took
Speaker 1: all kinds of cool pictures and uh, this was one
Speaker 1: of them about eight years in. She it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of nice. Her dad shoveling snow and Um, I just
Speaker 1: love seeing those old pictures. It's really cool. It's like
Speaker 1: a CPA fest, total cpafest. I also saw that that um,
Speaker 1: the album that she put together of photographs recently sold
Speaker 1: for a hundred grand. Oh really, maybe she should get
Speaker 1: a short stuff let's do it. So. Um, here's the thing.
Speaker 1: Up to this point, Chuck, snowman. Snow people have been
Speaker 1: basically like the providence of artists. Uh. They've been used
Speaker 1: for political satire, for lowbrow copulation, humor. Um. They they've
Speaker 1: just kind of existed as an almost like a similacrum
Speaker 1: to real humans doing real human things. Right. But around
Speaker 1: the time when Christmas became like a thing in the
Speaker 1: in the United States and in the UK during the
Speaker 1: Victorian era, that's when the snowman finally took the shape
Speaker 1: of the snowman as we recognize them today. Like they
Speaker 1: were the part of winter. They were happy, jolly, They
Speaker 1: didn't have any guile. They just wanted to like just
Speaker 1: be free. They almost like they had a sense that
Speaker 1: their lives were very short and limited and they were
Speaker 1: just trying to to spread joy and happiness. The idea
Speaker 1: of a snow snowman or snow person we have today
Speaker 1: is based in that Victorian age. That's right, and maybe
Speaker 1: we should take a break there. Okay, we'll come back
Speaker 1: and talk about Christmas snow people right after this. Alright,
Speaker 1: So snow men are popping up all over the place
Speaker 1: and sometimes in some countries. And we've done plenty of
Speaker 1: weird Christmas like legends and Christmas uh like different weird
Speaker 1: cultural things around the world over there, Yes, and there's
Speaker 1: plenty more to come. Everybody hopefully fear one day we're
Speaker 1: going to run out of Christmas stuff. Never, we'll just
Speaker 1: start making it up and add to the Christmas legend. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, well that's a good idea. That's some stuff
Speaker 1: right there. One of these legends is the uh the
Speaker 1: snugg snugger rock Uh Snega Rocca. I'm trying this sna
Speaker 1: oh you're gonna go with the cheat. Yeah. Well she's
Speaker 1: Russian Snega Rochka, which was a snow maiden and Russian
Speaker 1: lure and these stories, uh you know, and this is
Speaker 1: where this is where the melting starts. Um that was
Speaker 1: he As the story goes that she was a snow girl.
Speaker 1: She's built by an elderly couple who didn't have kids
Speaker 1: in their own were not able to and so she
Speaker 1: comes to life just like a Disney movie and becomes
Speaker 1: their daughter essentially, and they're playing and they're having fun.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that they decided to do,
Speaker 1: and true Russian uh folk legend fashion, was hey, let's
Speaker 1: decide to play a game where we jump over a
Speaker 1: fire with our little snow daughter. And of course, you
Speaker 1: know what happens. She ends up melted and gone. And
Speaker 1: in the original stories, that was that the couple lost
Speaker 1: her forever. They knew joy for a brief time and
Speaker 1: then they lost her and and maybe we're worse off
Speaker 1: than they had ever been for and by the way, um,
Speaker 1: we're probably all going to starve this winter, yes the
Speaker 1: end right. Um. Luckily, the Russians, like the rest of
Speaker 1: the world, said, you know what, we've been a little
Speaker 1: grim for a while. Let's kind of like pep things
Speaker 1: up as we start to enter the twentieth century. Um
Speaker 1: and the snegorochka Um kind of was revived, I guess,
Speaker 1: and was associated with Dead Moros, who is known as
Speaker 1: Grandpa Frost, and that is what Santa Claus Um calls
Speaker 1: himself when he goes to Russia. Um, and he goes
Speaker 1: to Russian and he gives out presents around New Year's
Speaker 1: because he's so busy um giving out presents in other
Speaker 1: parts of the world around Christmas time. That in Russia
Speaker 1: it's traditional that he gives him out around New Year's
Speaker 1: And Snegorochka became dead. Morrows is grand granddaughter and she
Speaker 1: helps him give out presents around New year That's right.
Speaker 1: We also have a great cartoon from Nazi Germany, which
Speaker 1: we'll get into in a second, but it's called Dear
Speaker 1: sna Man the Snowman, and it's a It was a
Speaker 1: ten minute short, still is a ten minute short. Let's
Speaker 1: they added onto it. I didn't know about it. Have
Speaker 1: you seen it yet? I've watched a little bit of it,
Speaker 1: but I couldn't make it do the whole thing. It
Speaker 1: is so cute. I didn't care for it. Oh you didn't, Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh well yeah, I could see not what not watching it?
Speaker 1: Then if it doesn't click with you, I could see
Speaker 1: being really turned off by it. But it's about a snowman,
Speaker 1: and again this says there's another melting coming, but a snowman,
Speaker 1: who obviously is is doing snowman things playing outside, having
Speaker 1: a good time. And then eventually Uh goes inside of
Speaker 1: a house nearby and sees a calendar of July and
Speaker 1: these pictures of summertime and thinks, hey, this is pretty great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would love to see summer and so let me,
Speaker 1: let me put myself in the ice box and just
Speaker 1: wait until the right moment. And then finally July comes around,
Speaker 1: Snowman gets out, plays around, ultimately melts but has a
Speaker 1: good time and experience his summer and dies with a
Speaker 1: smile on his little face as it melts away. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's singing as he melts to nothingness, like he's definitely fulfilled,
Speaker 1: like his dream. It was pretty great. Um. And so
Speaker 1: for a long time, people who had seen their Nieman
Speaker 1: in the US and and UM outside of Europe had
Speaker 1: no idea it was a Nazi film, but it was
Speaker 1: directly commissioned by Joseph Gebel's UM because during the war,
Speaker 1: and I think their Schneman was was made in nineteen
Speaker 1: a Nazi Germany was like cut off from the West,
Speaker 1: like you couldn't get anything, including Disney cartoons. But they
Speaker 1: had already developed a taste for Disney cartoons, so Um.
Speaker 1: He went to Hans fisher Kusten. I think I nailed
Speaker 1: his name, um, which sounds like somebody that Rose Nyland
Speaker 1: would have dated on Golden Girls back in the day.
Speaker 1: But Hans fisher Kusten became known as Germany's Walt Disney, Right,
Speaker 1: that's right. I feel like his name should have an
Speaker 1: oom out, did it not? I saw koe and I
Speaker 1: took the oe as a like a stretched out or
Speaker 1: deconstructed umlaut. That's why I said it like that. So
Speaker 1: you're just making up rules for the German language. Basically, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they listened to me, now, got you? Uh yeah, he
Speaker 1: was like the Walt Disney and uh you know they
Speaker 1: were he apparently he uh did not put any propaganda
Speaker 1: in this film, even though some people say, you know
Speaker 1: what the snowman waiting for July, like that is subtext.
Speaker 1: It's basically the Germans longing to be free from the
Speaker 1: Nazi Party. But his son says, no, no, no to that.
Speaker 1: My dad was a political and did not make his
Speaker 1: films with the political bent. But at the very least
Speaker 1: it does not and clearly does not have any Nazi propaganda.
Speaker 1: And you can watch it over and over again there's nothing,
Speaker 1: um that that seems like, you know, pro Nazi or anything.
Speaker 1: It's just like this guy made a cartoon with utterly
Speaker 1: outside of the context of the Nazi Party ruling Germany
Speaker 1: and being in World War Two at the time. It's
Speaker 1: really interesting. It's definitely worth seeing. It's on all over YouTube.
Speaker 1: So I wonder how many people will take it like
Speaker 1: they didn't like it like you, or how many people
Speaker 1: would be like that, that's pretty good. Maybe you should
Speaker 1: do a poll. Let's do one of those Twitter polls
Speaker 1: or something, right, Um, okay, So then Chuck, everybody knows
Speaker 1: about der Schneeman, and if they didn't, they do now.
Speaker 1: But everybody really knows here in the States, at least
Speaker 1: about Frosty the Snowman. Have you heard of Frosty? Of course,
Speaker 1: I love the I love that cartoon, that original cartoon
Speaker 1: which we're gonna talk about. I love that. I love Christmas,
Speaker 1: traditional Christmas music, so I love that song. So it
Speaker 1: wasn't originally a Christmas song? Did you know that? Well?
Speaker 1: I mean, here's my deal is I associate winter songs
Speaker 1: as Christmas songs. I'm not as picky as saying like
Speaker 1: they didn't say the word Christmas Christmas song you didn't
Speaker 1: say the magic word. It could be played around spring
Speaker 1: break if you wanted to. Yeah, I mean they're printing
Speaker 1: plenty of wintertime songs that I associate as Christmas. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess you would never hear the original Frosty or
Speaker 1: Winter Wonderland jingle Bells. Those are usually the three sited
Speaker 1: as non Christmas Christmas songs. You would never hear them
Speaker 1: after Christmas, Like you don't play those on January first
Speaker 1: or second. So I guess they are Christmas songs for sure.
Speaker 1: But the point is that they don't mention Christmas, which
Speaker 1: is why people say that Frosty does finally mention Christmas
Speaker 1: after Rank and Basque out ahold of them and turned
Speaker 1: the song into the nineteen sixty nine made for TV movie. Though,
Speaker 1: that's right, and this song was was a pretty good
Speaker 1: big hit by the way. They were these songwriters, Steve
Speaker 1: Nelson and Jack Rowlins that realize you can make a
Speaker 1: lot of dough pretty fast by cranking out, you know,
Speaker 1: holiday theme songs. They wrote here comes Peter Cottentil for Easter.
Speaker 1: They wrote this Frosty song for Gene Autry after they
Speaker 1: saw that he had a big smash with Rudolph the
Speaker 1: Red Nose Reindeer, and uh, you know, these are no
Speaker 1: brainers about these They knock these things out in no
Speaker 1: time at all and got some atty good cash for it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It made it to like number seven on the charts,
Speaker 1: which is not not bad at all. And I think
Speaker 1: between Rudolph and Frosty they kicked off like the idea
Speaker 1: of Christmas songs in general. So there's this big debate
Speaker 1: over where the song took place, but apparently it's been
Speaker 1: settled now that Frosty the Snowman the song takes place
Speaker 1: in the town of Armank, New York. If anybody ever
Speaker 1: asks you big debate meaning eighteen people in Armock, New York. Well,
Speaker 1: no white Plaines supposedly um laid claim to it, even tentatively,
Speaker 1: but armand is like, we're not playing that. I think
Speaker 1: one of the one of the writers lived in Armonk
Speaker 1: for a while and they're like, it's our monk for sure. Uh.
Speaker 1: So that became obviously the cartoon that we you were
Speaker 1: speaking of, which was you know that's that's still places today. Uh,
Speaker 1: one of the Rank and Bass cartoons classic. It's great.
Speaker 1: There were sequels that was Frosty's Winner Wonderland and seventy
Speaker 1: six not quite as good, but not bad. Uh. They
Speaker 1: were married for Sty and his wife Crystal were married
Speaker 1: by Parson Brown from the Winter Wonderland song. Quite a cameo,
Speaker 1: and this then led to the stop motion Rudolph and
Speaker 1: Frosty's Christmas and July. Things are kind of jumping the
Speaker 1: shark at this point, I think in seventy nine and
Speaker 1: then Frosty returns, and then, not to be outdone, they
Speaker 1: made another one in two thousand five. Legend of Frosty
Speaker 1: to Snowman. Yeah, I think Frosty as Rudolph and Frosty's
Speaker 1: Christmas and July was still very cute and sweet, um,
Speaker 1: but the Frosty Returns is definitely it jumped the shark.
Speaker 1: It's terrible than the early nineties. It's bad. So that's
Speaker 1: the US is claimed to Snowman. That's the one that
Speaker 1: we all watch around um Christmas time, the holidays. But
Speaker 1: the UK has their own. They said no, no, we're
Speaker 1: not going to follow your trend. We're gonna start our own.
Speaker 1: Um and back in a guy named Raymond Briggs wrote
Speaker 1: a book and you can't really say wrote a book
Speaker 1: because it's a wordless picture book. So I guess he
Speaker 1: drew or illustrated a book called The Snowman. And it
Speaker 1: is a very very sweet book and it was made
Speaker 1: into possibly an even sweeter TV adaptation that they show
Speaker 1: around the holidays every year over there. Uh. It is
Speaker 1: about a boy and this snowman, and of course the
Speaker 1: Snowman comes to life and you know what's coming everybody. Fun,
Speaker 1: that's right. Fun. They become buddies, they explore all around
Speaker 1: the house, they played dress up, they read a motorcycle.
Speaker 1: They take a flight out to sea into the North
Speaker 1: Pole to meet Santa, but he melts like all other
Speaker 1: snowperson stories. Ever, Yeah, it's it's um. I watched it
Speaker 1: the other day and man, it'll get you right in
Speaker 1: the bread basket. Is really sweet. Um. And apparently originally
Speaker 1: when they did the the the when they aired the
Speaker 1: TV movie starting in it was on Channel four, which
Speaker 1: had just begun broadcasting like the month before. Um, and
Speaker 1: so they had a hit on their hands right out
Speaker 1: of the gate. But originally there was like a live
Speaker 1: action intro by Raymond Briggs who's like, you know, I
Speaker 1: build a snowman when I was a kid, and it
Speaker 1: inspired me to make this, so please enjoy and um.
Speaker 1: The Brits were like, we need to get this over
Speaker 1: to America. They're going to go nuts for this. But
Speaker 1: apparently somebody at some lunch at like Spago or something
Speaker 1: like that said no, no, no, no one knows who
Speaker 1: Raymond Briggs is. You're gonna have to come up with
Speaker 1: somebody else to to do the intro. And they said,
Speaker 1: who who could do it? Chuck, who could possibly take
Speaker 1: over from Raymond Briggs that the Americans would recognize? That
Speaker 1: would be none other than David Bowie. Uh, weirdly has
Speaker 1: a because that in the Bing Crosby thing has an
Speaker 1: oddly large Christmas presents. I thought of that too. Well.
Speaker 1: Apparently he did this um for his son. Uh Moon director.
Speaker 1: I can't remember his name right now? What is his name?
Speaker 1: I want to say Doug Douglas but it's not but
Speaker 1: something like that. Yes, but he he directed Moon and
Speaker 1: he's wonderful duncan. Yes, I can't remember. He had a
Speaker 1: different last name though, right right, it's not Bowie. Regardless,
Speaker 1: he said he did it for his son, so um,
Speaker 1: I wonder if he did the thing with Big Crosby
Speaker 1: as for his for his son as well. I bet
Speaker 1: you he did. Which, by the way, man, did you
Speaker 1: know John Lennon was famously like a terrible dad. Uh?
Speaker 1: John Lennon was famously a terrible person. Well, I ran
Speaker 1: across something I think on Cora where somebody broke down
Speaker 1: like just what he was, you know, some of the
Speaker 1: terrible stuff he was doing. As far as his son
Speaker 1: Julian alone was concerned, I was like, wow, I had
Speaker 1: no idea. Yeah, he was a complicated guy and had
Speaker 1: a really rough childhood and was a bit of a
Speaker 1: jerk in general. It's just one of those things, you know, well,
Speaker 1: not a good guy. So back to Bowie. I don't
Speaker 1: want to lose the magic of this chuck because Bowie
Speaker 1: did in Raymond Briggs was replaced with David Bowie. And
Speaker 1: this is like the ninth he needed two Let's Dance
Speaker 1: or eighty three Let's Dance era, Right, So he's got
Speaker 1: his platinum, spiky blonde hair and he does the intro
Speaker 1: basically saying like I was this boy, and look, I
Speaker 1: even have the scarf that the snowman gave me as proof.
Speaker 1: And then did you just say he had spiky hair?
Speaker 1: It was high it was high hair, spiky ish. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: that was that was ziggy started Sarah when he had
Speaker 1: the spikey. No, I don't mean that. I don't mean that. No,
Speaker 1: big pompadour and let's dance. It was a pompadour, wasn't it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess it wasn't spikey. Okay, thank you for that.
Speaker 1: So he had a big let's dance pompadour, but it
Speaker 1: was platinum. We're agreed on that, correct, Yeah, I was
Speaker 1: just I was trying to cut off the David Bowie
Speaker 1: Penancy would email us stop that dead in its track.
Speaker 1: You people know this, but David Bowie religiously listens to
Speaker 1: stuff you should know every week, did he? Oh that's right.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I was even listening to Black Are the
Speaker 1: other day. It's great. So, um, that's the UK's version
Speaker 1: their own Snowman. It's just simply called The Snowman. And
Speaker 1: if you haven't seen it, go watch it because it
Speaker 1: is very touching with or without David Bowie. That's right.
Speaker 1: We have a few more touch points for the United
Speaker 1: States culturally. Um Calvin and Hobbs never read Calvin Hobbs,
Speaker 1: but apparently Um Calvin was the Boy or was Calvin
Speaker 1: the Tiger? You're gonna get us some mail for that one, buddy, Yes,
Speaker 1: Calvin was the Boy? All right, I don't if you
Speaker 1: don't if you don't know something, you don't know it. No, No,
Speaker 1: it's true. But the people who are into calvinant Hobbs
Speaker 1: are like really into Calvin and Hobbs, and they're gonna
Speaker 1: be like, how can you not read Calvin and Hobbs exactly?
Speaker 1: Those are the kind of emails we're going to get. Well, Calvin,
Speaker 1: I guess built great snowmen. Yeah, good ones, real dark
Speaker 1: ones where like they would be run over by a
Speaker 1: train or something like that. Just good ones. There's a
Speaker 1: people have posted like collections of all of the ones
Speaker 1: that were printed over the years. They're definitely worth check
Speaker 1: it out. There's, of course Olaf from Frozen, which I'm
Speaker 1: dying to know if you're the one or if you
Speaker 1: got this from somewhere else who said he's widely considered
Speaker 1: the best character in the movie. I got it from
Speaker 1: somewhere else. Really, Yeah, who's the best of that? Who's
Speaker 1: the best? I don't remember one of our sources. Interesting,
Speaker 1: who who's the best character in the movie? Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think if you ask any young girl who saw Frozen,
Speaker 1: they would they would say Anna or Elsa, the two
Speaker 1: lead characters. Maybe this was a from the parents point
Speaker 1: of view. I don't know, you know, he's the I
Speaker 1: take it you you haven't seen Frozen or Frozen too. Uh No,
Speaker 1: I have not seen It's uh he's He's like the
Speaker 1: character that you have in every Disney movie. He is
Speaker 1: the comic relief, the donkey, sort of the gun. He's
Speaker 1: the donkey. Yeah, I got you. Yeah, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: people like Josh gadd As well, yeah, yeah, But I
Speaker 1: just I thought it was funny. I don't know if
Speaker 1: anyone would consider him the best character in the movie. Well,
Speaker 1: I and I've never seen it, so that was very funny.
Speaker 1: Um that we also have to shout out Chuck the
Speaker 1: movie Jack Frost Um from I Think Yeah. It was
Speaker 1: starring Michael Keaton as Jack Frost, snowman who is a
Speaker 1: reincarnated reincarnated him. Yeah. I think people you could just
Speaker 1: do yourself a favor and watch. If you have two minutes,
Speaker 1: go watch the Jack Cross trailer online. It's got every bad,
Speaker 1: dumb joke you could think of on a snowman from
Speaker 1: like his arms falling off. There's one scene where they
Speaker 1: throw snowballs at him and they land on him as
Speaker 1: as breasts and he goes, oh, not for me or
Speaker 1: something like that and rubs those off. Uh. He he
Speaker 1: gets shaved down to go through a skinny crevass as
Speaker 1: he's sledding, goes, boy, I've really gotten thin here, or
Speaker 1: something like that. It's the worst thing ever. But at
Speaker 1: the very end of this trailer it says Jack Frost
Speaker 1: coming to the blah blah blah, featuring music from Hanson.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, that's a real ninety eight selling point. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Hansen um famously lobbied, uh launched the lawsuit to have
Speaker 1: themselves taken off of that movie, but to no avail.
Speaker 1: It wouldn't surprise me because it was really bad. And
Speaker 1: Roger Ebert hated this movie and has has a part
Speaker 1: in his book I hated, hated, hated this movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he said, Jack Frost could have been co directed by
Speaker 1: Orson Welles and Steven Spielberg and still be unwatchable because
Speaker 1: of that damn snowman. The Snowman gave me the creeps.
Speaker 1: Never have I disliked the movie character more. It looks
Speaker 1: really bad. And Roger Ebert has seen a lot of
Speaker 1: movie characters, and he's saying, like Jack Frost is the
Speaker 1: worst of them all. For me, it might be right.
Speaker 1: You want to take another break and then come back
Speaker 1: and wrap up some some snowman stuff. Let's do it. Okay,
Speaker 1: We'll be right back everybody, Okay, Chuck. So, one of
Speaker 1: the thing about snowman, snow people, snow citizens are that, um,
Speaker 1: they are like inextricably associated with winter, right, yes, So
Speaker 1: some people around the world have hit upon the fact
Speaker 1: that you can use a snowman as a stand in
Speaker 1: an effigy for winter, and that if you can get
Speaker 1: rid of a snowman in some spectacular fashion, you may
Speaker 1: also be able to symbolically banish winter in favor of
Speaker 1: being replaced by spring. And the people of Zurich, Switzerland,
Speaker 1: have done just that. They have a festival called sex allot,
Speaker 1: which sounds hotter than um. It actually is sex fillountain.
Speaker 1: Uh translates to the ringing of the six o'clock bells.
Speaker 1: That's right, And this is actually a spring festival and
Speaker 1: it's a little bit akin to our our Groundhog Day celebration,
Speaker 1: and that it signifies the end of winter, we're ready
Speaker 1: to move on, and so we're gonna blow up a snowman.
Speaker 1: Uh to do so, And they load this thing up
Speaker 1: with literally a hundred and forty sticks of dynamite in
Speaker 1: its head. It's built out of cotton and straw, and
Speaker 1: it is lit like a wicker man basically on a
Speaker 1: big pire. And then in the time that it takes
Speaker 1: those flames to reach the dynamite and blow up is
Speaker 1: how much longer it's gonna be till summer. So that's
Speaker 1: sort of the the tie into Groundhog Day. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: I think the faster it burns, the warmer the summer
Speaker 1: is going to be. And they're like, yeah, the springs
Speaker 1: um here and now um and gay Lord Michigan has
Speaker 1: a alpinfest and they adopted this as well, but they
Speaker 1: have a slight modification where um, rather than banishing winter,
Speaker 1: the townspeople write down like their problems or worries or
Speaker 1: concerns on a piece of paper and all those get
Speaker 1: stuffed in the snowman. So when the snowman burns, their
Speaker 1: problems burn away as well, which I think is right.
Speaker 1: It's no hundred and forties sticks of dynamite, but they
Speaker 1: they came upon something that's that's good too. Should we
Speaker 1: go over some world records? How could you not? How
Speaker 1: could you talk about snowman and snow people without talking
Speaker 1: about world records? Like this would be an incomplete episode,
Speaker 1: you know. Uh, let me see. Here's one that was
Speaker 1: pretty good. In and Bethel, Maine. They made Angus King
Speaker 1: of the Mountain after Senator Angus King. Uh. And this
Speaker 1: bad boy was a hundred and thirteen feet tall and
Speaker 1: had a real deal trees for arms and car tires
Speaker 1: for buttons. That was big until too, that was an
Speaker 1: eight when that they did Olympia after Olympia snow another senator.
Speaker 1: They love their senators in Maine, Yeah, they really do.
Speaker 1: And this thing was thirteen million pounds and a hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty two ft and if you look at pictures
Speaker 1: of this, it's pretty impressive. Like they said, sixty people
Speaker 1: built it. I was surprised it wasn't more than a
Speaker 1: couple of hundred, yeah, because it was apparently just about
Speaker 1: thirty ft shorter than the Statue of Liberty, the actual
Speaker 1: statue itself without the base um which is this is
Speaker 1: a really huge snow man um or snow woman, I
Speaker 1: should say in this case, um, and so they held
Speaker 1: it may still hold the record that was when two
Speaker 1: thou eight. I think they might. Apparently prior to that,
Speaker 1: Dartmouth College they have a winter carnival that National Geographic
Speaker 1: Ones called the Marty Grove Winter or the North or
Speaker 1: something like that, and they used to hold the record.
Speaker 1: I think they held it as recently. Um, so it's
Speaker 1: possible that Bethel Maine still holds the record for tall
Speaker 1: a snowman. It's wonderful. And then um, for the most
Speaker 1: snow men ever built, you would just have to get
Speaker 1: in your way back machine and travel to Supporto, Japan
Speaker 1: in two thousand three, where you would find twelve thousand,
Speaker 1: three hundred and seventy nine snowmen. But you'd also say,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, wait a minute, they're cheating because they're
Speaker 1: only doing two balls rather than the traditional three bald snowman.
Speaker 1: And people would say, no, that's how the Japanese build
Speaker 1: snow men. Did you know that? That's right, little two
Speaker 1: bald snow man. I like the two balls already. It's
Speaker 1: very cute. Apparently it's based it's called the Yuki Daruma.
Speaker 1: Yuki means snow and daruma is a little around Japanese
Speaker 1: doll that's based on the um what's his name, Bodhi Dharma,
Speaker 1: the guy who is alleged to have brought alleged who's
Speaker 1: thought to have brought um Zen Buddhism from India to
Speaker 1: China and just kicked off the whole thing. So that's
Speaker 1: why the Japanese make their doll or their snowmen to
Speaker 1: two ball snowmen. But here in the United States we
Speaker 1: do three balls, and the bigger the better, and name
Speaker 1: him after your senator or else you're a commie. So
Speaker 1: if you want to build a snowperson, you want to Uh,
Speaker 1: the snow has got to be just right. They're not
Speaker 1: just right. There's there's a range. But um, some snow
Speaker 1: doesn't work as well as other snow. You want good
Speaker 1: packing snow, so you want temperatures that are closer to
Speaker 1: melting point and the snow flakes being a little little
Speaker 1: wetter helps out a lot. Yeah, So you take that
Speaker 1: packing snow chuck and you start with the snowball and
Speaker 1: you roll it along the snow. You don't want to
Speaker 1: go too deep rous you're gonna get a lot of
Speaker 1: crud like leaves and pine straw in there, and that
Speaker 1: is just unsightly as far as the snow person is concerned. Uh.
Speaker 1: And there's this guy named Keith Martin that Martha Stewart
Speaker 1: Living interviewed. He's an ice sculpture. He said, big tip here,
Speaker 1: when you're halfway through, cut to the left or cut
Speaker 1: to the right, because then your ball is going to
Speaker 1: keep a rounder shape rather than turning into like a
Speaker 1: giant snow cigar or something like that. Yeah, that's the
Speaker 1: hardest part, I think is uh. And if you really
Speaker 1: want it super round, and you don't want it to
Speaker 1: look like a like a cylinder, like some small rugs
Speaker 1: stacked on each other, right like carpet runners. I guess
Speaker 1: that's what mine always ended up looking like because I
Speaker 1: didn't follow that tip. You gotta alternate directions. Um. So
Speaker 1: that's a big one. And then also Martha Stewart says,
Speaker 1: um that you need to decorate and dress your snowman
Speaker 1: or snow person. Um. And that quote a pine cone
Speaker 1: still attached to its branch makes a distinguished pipe, which
Speaker 1: is a great tip. You know, Jerry's meant Martha Stewart,
Speaker 1: I didn't know that, that's right, Jerry. I think last
Speaker 1: year I think we did something with a of the
Speaker 1: company and Jerry actually got to go up there to
Speaker 1: her house. Oh I remember that. Yeah, yeah, and she
Speaker 1: like stole a vase or something it was associated with it.
Speaker 1: Don't out her. Yeah, I forgot about that. That's cool.
Speaker 1: She said. It was just as amazing in real life
Speaker 1: as you would expect from what I was like. It
Speaker 1: was very cluttered. He's kind of messy. So one last
Speaker 1: thing we got to end on this. Okay, there's a
Speaker 1: kids site called kid addle k I D A d L.
Speaker 1: Are you going to do Yes, we are going to
Speaker 1: do these because they are well I'm not so there's
Speaker 1: a kid the site kid addle says, don't just finish
Speaker 1: your snowman or snow woman snow kids, no baby, even
Speaker 1: if you want to impress Chuck Um by just you know,
Speaker 1: giving it a distinguished pipe, you gotta name your snow
Speaker 1: creation as well. And don't just name him or her
Speaker 1: Frosty or Crystal, right um. And they came up with
Speaker 1: a big list of suggested names, and Chuck is going
Speaker 1: to join me here in in trading off these names. Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna read any of these because I know
Speaker 1: if you build a snowperson with your child. The only
Speaker 1: thing you can do is let your child name that
Speaker 1: snow sure. But if your kids, like I can't think
Speaker 1: of anything, here's some suggestions like mistletoe, jolly leaves, it's
Speaker 1: a good one. What else, Chuck, I don't know. My
Speaker 1: kid would name it fart poop the snowman. Or what
Speaker 1: about peppermint cuddle pudding? That might be my favorite? All right,
Speaker 1: sugar vone, Carrol's Teddy McCole. And then the last one
Speaker 1: is twinkle Prance a lot. That's a great name for
Speaker 1: a snow person. That's right. So I think the moral
Speaker 1: here is if you have trouble naming your snow person,
Speaker 1: get online and get some suggestions from a search engine.
Speaker 1: From cadattle, that's right. Are they sponsoring us or something?
Speaker 1: But that came up with some adorable names, and I
Speaker 1: thought they deserved to be shouted out for that. So
Speaker 1: they are shouted out, and we should also shout out
Speaker 1: all of the other sources. Um, there were a ton
Speaker 1: of them, but they include Smithsonian Atlas, Obscure, the Farmer's Almanac,
Speaker 1: the Garden, fairy Tales dot biz because there's big money
Speaker 1: in fairy tales online the Library of Congress song facts,
Speaker 1: and Martha Stewart Living am more. So thanks to all
Speaker 1: of those sources too, and thanks to everybody Chuck who
Speaker 1: joined us for this great holiday themed episode on snow people. Huh,
Speaker 1: that's right, not our Christmas episode. That will be one
Speaker 1: of those, don't right. That's right. And so since Chuck said,
Speaker 1: don't worry everybody, that means it's time for a listener mail.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna shout out our friends at co ED
Speaker 1: here at the end of the year. Yeah. Uh. If
Speaker 1: you don't know, co ED, the Cooperative for Education. They
Speaker 1: work to stop the cycle of poverty through education in Guatemala.
Speaker 1: We went down to Guatemala years ago with him. They
Speaker 1: do great work and we've been working with them ever since.
Speaker 1: And they're in the home stretch of reaching their target
Speaker 1: milestone of their thousand girls initiative and the last batch
Speaker 1: of students identified to start the school year and early two. Uh,
Speaker 1: they have the last ones, and they just need a
Speaker 1: few dozen more sponsors to get past that finish line
Speaker 1: of a thousand girls sponsored to continue past the sixth grade. Guatemala,
Speaker 1: that's where they are, that's what they're trying to do. Yep.
Speaker 1: So it's eighty dollars a month to change a kid's life.
Speaker 1: As they put it, you can fully sponsor a student,
Speaker 1: or you could do half of that forty dollars a
Speaker 1: month to pay for half of the student's education. And
Speaker 1: if two Stuff you Should Know Listeners each chip in half,
Speaker 1: that will be one. And like you said, what they're
Speaker 1: they're just a couple dozen short of their goal. And
Speaker 1: I think Stuff you Should Know Listeners can definitely get
Speaker 1: COED there, don't you. I definitely think so because we
Speaker 1: have some statistics from how Stuff you Should Know Army
Speaker 1: members have helped out co ED over the years, UH
Speaker 1: four hundred and forty six supporters have collectively raised more
Speaker 1: than seven hundred and thirty one thousand, five hundred dollars amazing.
Speaker 1: Twenty nine of you have actually gone down to take
Speaker 1: that tour in Guatemala, which we highly recommend, and one
Speaker 1: and twenty two Rise students have been are currently sponsored
Speaker 1: by members of the Stuff you Should Know Army, which
Speaker 1: is amazing. What what great work everyone is doing with
Speaker 1: co ED and the benevolence of the Stuff he Should
Speaker 1: Know Army always means so much to us. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I think we can double triple quadruple that um just
Speaker 1: hopefully with this call out, because I think the more
Speaker 1: people who know about COED and learn about COED, the
Speaker 1: more people who are gonna want to help out. So
Speaker 1: you can go find out a lot more about co
Speaker 1: ED by just going to co ed. You see dot org,
Speaker 1: c o E D you see dot org. Check it out,
Speaker 1: and then hopefully donator sponsor because Chuck and Josh have
Speaker 1: given our seal of approval on COED many many times.
Speaker 1: That's right. And if you actually want to pick out
Speaker 1: a student to sponsor, which you can do, this is
Speaker 1: these are real people. Everyone go to Cooperative for Education
Speaker 1: dot org, slash sponsor Dash students. Yep uh. And that's it.
Speaker 1: If you want to get in touch with us in
Speaker 1: the meantime to let us know you helped out COD again,
Speaker 1: that's Cooperative for Education dot org, slash sponsor DASH Students.
Speaker 1: You can send us an email to Stuff podcast at
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