Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey there, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: josh Joshua Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Jerry
Speaker 1: is over there, just Jerry uh. And that's stuff you
Speaker 1: should know that. She has a new sitcom out on
Speaker 1: that its called Jerry. It's suddenly Jerry. Um, how you doing.
Speaker 1: I'm fine as well, coming too, intrude, just checking. I'm
Speaker 1: excited about this. When I first read our article, I
Speaker 1: was a little bit like, oh, this is a little
Speaker 1: unwieldy because it's so folklore. It's just it's an amorphous.
Speaker 1: As it turns out, it's everything. Yeah, pretty much. But
Speaker 1: then you sent, um, what was that other good article from?
Speaker 1: Actually we should shout that out. It was from a
Speaker 1: I think the University of Louisiana or something like that.
Speaker 1: They have a folk life folklore department, and it was basically,
Speaker 1: we we stumbled upon some unit for teachers to teach
Speaker 1: what folklore is, and we're like, hey, it works for us,
Speaker 1: super helpful. Yeah, it was very helpful. It definitely. It
Speaker 1: took a lot of this amorphous stuff that was in
Speaker 1: our article and chipped away at the edges and give
Speaker 1: it a little more shape, you know, agreed, So, um,
Speaker 1: you did kind of hit it on the head. It's
Speaker 1: it's kind of like, um, nailing jelly to the wall,
Speaker 1: defining what folklore is, because it is so much stuff
Speaker 1: that phrases folklore. If if it isn't just me saying it,
Speaker 1: if I share it and now other people say it,
Speaker 1: it could become stuff you should know folklore oral oral folklore?
Speaker 1: Did you make that up? It was? I think I've
Speaker 1: heard it before, So that's folklore. Yeah, I guess, so
Speaker 1: it's a it's a variation though of Um, what else
Speaker 1: did I hear? Oh? Yeah, we were talking about the
Speaker 1: the nuclear fusion reactor where they were saying that keeping
Speaker 1: plasma contained is kind of like trying to hold jelly
Speaker 1: in a bunch of rubber bands. That's a nerd science folklore.
Speaker 1: That's what inspired made us say nailing jelly to the wall.
Speaker 1: I like that. It seems like it really sums it up.
Speaker 1: So folklore. Yeah. I found this other definition I thought
Speaker 1: was pretty good, which is uh, traditional art, literature, knowledge
Speaker 1: and practice that is disseminated largely through oral communication and
Speaker 1: behavioral example. Uh. And then this was the key for me.
Speaker 1: Things that people traditionally believe do no make and say.
Speaker 1: In other words, everything, Yeah, I mean, you're right, everything
Speaker 1: that that's That's about as good a definition as you're
Speaker 1: gonna find. One of the problems with studying folklore is
Speaker 1: that there are so many definitions out there. Apparently folklorists,
Speaker 1: who are people who study folklore, UM. I don't like
Speaker 1: to be too judge. It's kind of part and parcel
Speaker 1: with their um their field of study. You don't judge stuff,
Speaker 1: you just collect information. The problem is is that they've
Speaker 1: also just kind of collected definitions for folklore along the way,
Speaker 1: and there isn't one set definition that's accepted by everybody. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a folklore collected stuff. I was like, that's stupid. It
Speaker 1: wouldn't be it would be a good Why are you
Speaker 1: guys doing that? That's a good TV show? The bad
Speaker 1: folk folklore? And I might say folk here and there
Speaker 1: because I mispronounced that word often and how are you
Speaker 1: saying it? Well, a lot of times I'll say the
Speaker 1: l In fact, up until about a year ago when
Speaker 1: someone wrote it in was a stupid It's pronounced folke
Speaker 1: like f o k folk and not folk. But the
Speaker 1: weird thing is is like I hear the l missing
Speaker 1: when I hear folk weird. That's some sort of like
Speaker 1: I don't hear f o k e. Like it's clear
Speaker 1: to me that there's a fo l k in there.
Speaker 1: You hear the silence. It's a great word. Oh okay,
Speaker 1: it's beautiful. It is beautiful. Um. And another thing too
Speaker 1: that we should point out that folklore is love to
Speaker 1: point out is that, um, it is not and should
Speaker 1: not be associated with being backward or old timey or uneducated.
Speaker 1: Like I think a lot of people have that connotation
Speaker 1: in their heads that folklore is like the hillbilly on
Speaker 1: the porch, you know, when their homespun wisdoms, and it
Speaker 1: can be that, but it's it's it's not that at all.
Speaker 1: Like it's not just that, right. Um. A really good
Speaker 1: example that contradicts that is, um Snopes. Snopes dot com
Speaker 1: is basically a clearinghouse of modern folklore. I never really
Speaker 1: thought about that, you know, Um, the Nigerian prince scam.
Speaker 1: That's folklore. Yeah, it sure is. Emoticons even are considered
Speaker 1: now a form of um verbal communication verbal folklore. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And like you said, it's everything and the reason it's
Speaker 1: everything is because um it comes out of groups. Like
Speaker 1: if I just have a habit, you know where Um,
Speaker 1: I keep a rubber band twisted around my finger until
Speaker 1: it turns purple, and then I'll take it off for
Speaker 1: half an hour and then do it again. This is
Speaker 1: just some weird habit that's not folklore. Folklore is something
Speaker 1: that's shared between a group. Yeah, and uh, those groups
Speaker 1: can be like almost anything the I think them. That
Speaker 1: great article you sent and it says neighborhoods, communities, and regions,
Speaker 1: but also religious groups, families, occupations, gender like pretty much
Speaker 1: any grouping, enthusiast, hobbyists, anything you can think of that
Speaker 1: you can group more than two people together. It can
Speaker 1: be a folk group exactly. You can have like a
Speaker 1: Catholic dockyard worker who is also a member of an
Speaker 1: RC playing club, who also is a member of a
Speaker 1: book club at the local library. Right, So that one
Speaker 1: person is going to be a member of all those
Speaker 1: different folk groups, and all those folk groups are gonna
Speaker 1: have their own folklore. True. But uh, that's yeah, you're right.
Speaker 1: That's another good thing to point out is you're not
Speaker 1: just in one group. You have you spanned many, many groups,
Speaker 1: and for instance, I have family folklore. Uh, we have
Speaker 1: probably occupational folklore, you know, the old podcaster folklore for
Speaker 1: us and our colleagues. Uh, and my gender and my
Speaker 1: age and uh religious affiliation growing up, like, we all
Speaker 1: have many many groups in subgroups that we fall into, right,
Speaker 1: and we get our information from that. Yeah. One of
Speaker 1: the things that I think has been tricky about defining
Speaker 1: folklore is that there's not it's not obvious necessarily what
Speaker 1: folklore is for. Yeah, not at first blush, but if
Speaker 1: you go and read some of the people who study it. Um.
Speaker 1: The idea of folklore is that one of the main
Speaker 1: things it does is it reinforces membership in a group.
Speaker 1: It makes you feel special for being part of that group,
Speaker 1: an insider um. And then it also um reinforces the
Speaker 1: norms of that group. Like folklore is based on basically norms, customs, traditions,
Speaker 1: things that the members of the group have said, this
Speaker 1: is what you know, we identify with. Yeah, and not
Speaker 1: always too um, As that teaching site points out, not
Speaker 1: always reinforcing those norms, sometimes overturning those norms. Yeah. Like
Speaker 1: a good way to overturn the norm is to take
Speaker 1: an existing norm and turn it on its ear because
Speaker 1: it makes it really approachable to the other people in
Speaker 1: your folk group. They understand what you're doing very clearly,
Speaker 1: and it gives them a different perspective. Or using the
Speaker 1: traditional channels. Yeah, like uh. I think one example I
Speaker 1: saw somewhere was taking a traditional folk song maybe and
Speaker 1: adding verses to it to spend its meaning to the opposite,
Speaker 1: perhaps like Bob Dylan he's famous for stealing things. Or
Speaker 1: Jimmy Page. Uh oh, yeah. Have you heard that song
Speaker 1: the Zeppelin or the Yes Stairway to Heaven lawsuit? No, no,
Speaker 1: who whose song was it? Originally? I can't remember the name.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is not news. It's been around for
Speaker 1: a while, but um yeah, I mean they've been sued. Uh.
Speaker 1: It was a group that opened up for for Zeppelin
Speaker 1: on an early tour and supposedly played this song, and
Speaker 1: I think Zeppelin has I haven't looked at it up lately,
Speaker 1: but I think they have defeated the suit. But when
Speaker 1: you hear the song, you're like, oh, that sounds a
Speaker 1: little bit like the opening bit the Stairway to Heaven.
Speaker 1: So it was like the musical the music. It wasn't
Speaker 1: like any of the leader. Yeah, that that opening guitar
Speaker 1: strumming pattern, UM was pretty darn similar. But um, as
Speaker 1: any musician will tell you, everybody steals. There's only so
Speaker 1: many variations of chords and picking patterns that you can do.
Speaker 1: And uh, it's just part of the rich tradition of music.
Speaker 1: It's the nick things, respectfully, not you know, not right
Speaker 1: buster's I want a new drug kind of feeling. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's when your lawsuits come up. Um, it's
Speaker 1: not just music that there's that long tradition of stealing
Speaker 1: um or nicking or whatever you want to euphemism. It's
Speaker 1: literature is very much the same way. There's something like
Speaker 1: five or ten themes and all of literature and everything
Speaker 1: else is just basically a variation of them. And that's
Speaker 1: one of the things that folklore, uh are folk folklorists
Speaker 1: have learned through studying folklore, is that we humans share
Speaker 1: what can be called basically a common imagination. That humans
Speaker 1: across time and space, um all have a a like
Speaker 1: a certain number of slots of looking at the world.
Speaker 1: Certain things in the world capture the human imagination in
Speaker 1: a similar way in all different parts of the world,
Speaker 1: and we tend to use similar explanations for them. So
Speaker 1: you'll have independently evolving folklore among groups who've never met before, um,
Speaker 1: that seek to explain or have a story about something
Speaker 1: that is just kind of out there in the environment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good point. Um. One of the examples of
Speaker 1: that is uh, in folklore stories are frogs and toads
Speaker 1: can be found and all kinds of old stories and
Speaker 1: all cultures all over the world. That I mean, it's
Speaker 1: possible too if you're close to one another, like uh,
Speaker 1: Korea and China may have stories to overlap one another
Speaker 1: just through a common geographical boundary. But stuff like frogs
Speaker 1: and toads will pop up, you know, let's say in
Speaker 1: Europe or medieval Europe or in Asia, like places aren't
Speaker 1: even close to one another where it's inexplicable basically, right,
Speaker 1: and they'll share like a similar um personality or something
Speaker 1: in the story. So like frogs and toads are commonly
Speaker 1: thought of as shape shifting tricksters. Yeah, and I think, um,
Speaker 1: this article points out that that's probably because they go
Speaker 1: from tadpole to frog or toad and they change themselves physically.
Speaker 1: So it's um, you know, the old dummies back in
Speaker 1: the day they would just use that obvious. Obviously they
Speaker 1: can become human too, since they go from tadpole the
Speaker 1: frog exactly like the frog prince. And you you mentioned
Speaker 1: also um shared regional characteristics that are most likely the
Speaker 1: result of stories making it from one group to another,
Speaker 1: crossing borders. But among groups that are close together and
Speaker 1: UM that example you gave of East Asia, UM, Japan
Speaker 1: and Korea, Thailand, China, they all have UM. They the
Speaker 1: idea that there's a rabbit in the moon and he's
Speaker 1: using a mortar and pestle. And what that would be
Speaker 1: is a motif. Like all of them have the shared
Speaker 1: idea that there's a rabbit in the moon. Right, But
Speaker 1: then there's what are called variations of that motif. So
Speaker 1: in Japan and Korea, the rabbits making mochi, which is
Speaker 1: a sweet, squishy rice cake that often has like something
Speaker 1: even sweeter injected in like red sweetness. Right. Um. In
Speaker 1: China the rabbit is making medicine. In Thailand's husking um rice.
Speaker 1: So you have variations on what the rabbit is doing.
Speaker 1: But the motif is if you look up at the moon,
Speaker 1: there's a rabbit doing something up there. Yeah, and like
Speaker 1: we said it's most likely because of a shared border
Speaker 1: or just because simply people moving between those countries. So
Speaker 1: we'll talk about where folklore comes from. Friends, if you
Speaker 1: can believe it or not. Right after this chuckers, So
Speaker 1: we're back. We're talking folklore. We should also say folklore
Speaker 1: is actually um a fairly recent word. It was coined
Speaker 1: in eighteen forty six by a guy named William J. Toms. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He was a an early and tiquarian. He was also
Speaker 1: very interested in studying um what has now come to
Speaker 1: be called folklore or folk life. We should point out
Speaker 1: that's a modern term that people folklore is like even
Speaker 1: more yeah, because folklore has this connotation that um, that
Speaker 1: it has to do with stories, oral traditions, or even
Speaker 1: not true things. Because you've heard like, oh, that's just folklore,
Speaker 1: like an old lives tale. Yeah, exactly. So they've expanded
Speaker 1: it to include or to reflect how inclusive it is
Speaker 1: by calling it folk life. But um. William Thomas came
Speaker 1: up with folklore, and it was originally hyphenated UM, and
Speaker 1: he was describing these stories that he would go out
Speaker 1: into the countryside and collect from folk like he published
Speaker 1: a book of like English rural stories that included things
Speaker 1: like robin Hood and Friar talk and some of the
Speaker 1: other stories that we have become disnified over the years.
Speaker 1: This guy originally put down for the first time on
Speaker 1: pen and paper and became one of the early folklore. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and didn't they call just anyone living in rural areas.
Speaker 1: Weren't they just called folk? Which is why we sort
Speaker 1: of associate it as like being a bumpkin today. But
Speaker 1: I used that word all the time, in fact, on
Speaker 1: the Facebook wall here. That's my most common way of
Speaker 1: addressing the stuff. You should know army is hey folks. Oh,
Speaker 1: I know, it just sounds like chummy. Yeah, very folks. Folk.
Speaker 1: See there you go, y hey folks. Uh. So there
Speaker 1: are a bunch of innumerable, innumerable groups really that pass
Speaker 1: along folklore. Um, and they're called folk groups folk groups,
Speaker 1: but we can we can group them generally, not folk
Speaker 1: groups like Peter Paul Mary, Yeah, but folk groups. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think I said it with the ELG just now,
Speaker 1: didn't I Maybe I like it. It's called the regional addiction.
Speaker 1: People get all hung up on that stuff. You gotta
Speaker 1: say this wrong. What's weird though, is like neither one
Speaker 1: of us sound like Southerners. Yeah, not really, And I
Speaker 1: mean like you were born here and you don't sound
Speaker 1: like a Southern. Yeah, I say I have certain colloquialism,
Speaker 1: so like, uh, have your picture made? Oh yeah, that's
Speaker 1: sometimes I'll say, like you mash a button instead of
Speaker 1: push a button. And there there's It's. I think people
Speaker 1: should embrace things like that regional dialect instead of getting
Speaker 1: all hung up on the Queen's English or the King's English.
Speaker 1: See right there, Yeah, that's a that's regional. I imagine
Speaker 1: either one the prince is English. Um, it's that what
Speaker 1: you're talking about is antithetical to globalization, chuck, Oh really sure,
Speaker 1: look at you regionalism smarty fans. Well, I mean that's
Speaker 1: that's counter to globalization. Globalization is turning the earth into
Speaker 1: one large village with all these shared values and everything.
Speaker 1: Regionalism is saying like, no, we'll just stay his pockets
Speaker 1: of interacting groups that have our own, our own values
Speaker 1: and traditions and customs. That I think it's on brain
Speaker 1: because I posted something today on words that are mispronounced
Speaker 1: a lot, and um, what what's up there? Oh? I
Speaker 1: mean also like banal and uh dr SEUs suppose supposed
Speaker 1: supposedly pronounced his name is so so ice. I can't
Speaker 1: remember how he pronounced it, but it's just like common words,
Speaker 1: you're probably mispronouncing. And the was on there And someone said,
Speaker 1: you guys always pronounced the wrong because supposedly, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: supposedly there's a rule. Not supposedly, I think there is
Speaker 1: a rule. You mean supposedly, Well, that wasn't on there. Um,
Speaker 1: Well that's a different that's just saying the wrong word.
Speaker 1: But I think the you should say the when the
Speaker 1: following noun is starts with a vowel, like the apple,
Speaker 1: not the apple, but you could say, you could say
Speaker 1: the test because the apple almost sounds like it's th
Speaker 1: h apostrophe apple. Yeah, and I get it. But the
Speaker 1: app it's just sort of a regional thing. I think
Speaker 1: in the South you might hear more the m then
Speaker 1: the snotty New Englander soon. I've never really paid that
Speaker 1: much attention to that one. I haven't either, you know why,
Speaker 1: because we are laid back, that's right, Um, all right,
Speaker 1: So what we're talking about, we're talking about people who
Speaker 1: spread the groups, the folk groups. One of those folk groups,
Speaker 1: though not Peter Paul Mary one of his children. And uh,
Speaker 1: this is a really big one because when you think
Speaker 1: about going back to your childhood, everything like the games
Speaker 1: like hide and see cop scotch. Uh, this article pointed
Speaker 1: out how you decide who's it like that is super
Speaker 1: specific to your region. Um, but also not not just
Speaker 1: that the differences regionally, but think about how intricate some
Speaker 1: of the rules were some of those games, like they
Speaker 1: were like really well thought out, intricate rules that no
Speaker 1: one ever wrote down. They were just past. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: knew it from observation, imitation orally like somebody told you.
Speaker 1: But people no one handed you a flyer called like
Speaker 1: kick the can and you you know, well one kid did,
Speaker 1: but we didn't know one like that kid. You learned
Speaker 1: the hard way not to do that. What was your
Speaker 1: How did you decide who was it? I'm sure you
Speaker 1: probably had a go to well. The author of this
Speaker 1: article mentions bubble gum, bubble gum in a dish. I've
Speaker 1: never heard that. I have heard that. Okay, I love
Speaker 1: that one. That the images it evokes, like how many
Speaker 1: pieces do you wish? And you go one to three,
Speaker 1: somebody says how many they want? And then you count
Speaker 1: out between two or three people like seven, and then
Speaker 1: whatever you laying on that person? Is it right? Yeah? Uh?
Speaker 1: Usually we did dirty dirty dish rag though, yes, I've
Speaker 1: never heard of that one. Either your mother and my
Speaker 1: mother were hanging out clothes. My mother socked your mother
Speaker 1: in the nose. Never heard it. What came after that?
Speaker 1: That's misogynistic and violent something it really was. Something else
Speaker 1: happens after that, and then it just suddenly goes to
Speaker 1: and you are a you dirty dirty dish rag? Do
Speaker 1: we did? There were three that I remember very strongly.
Speaker 1: The one potato to potato uh, engine engine number nine, Yeah,
Speaker 1: going down Chicago Line. If the train you dump the check?
Speaker 1: Do you want your money back? Oh? Yeah, I forgot that.
Speaker 1: And then maybe so who maybe so wanted their money back?
Speaker 1: Of course you want your money back. Of the train derails,
Speaker 1: now that's the kid who just wanted to get along.
Speaker 1: And then engine and or no no uh? Any meaning?
Speaker 1: Is the other one? Any meani money more kitch to
Speaker 1: talk about them though? The hollers let them go? Any renie?
Speaker 1: Is that it? And then we also there were variations
Speaker 1: on you know, usually counting out like I'm making my
Speaker 1: two hands locked together. We would do like that and
Speaker 1: and then if you when you landed on them, you
Speaker 1: would split them into two two fists and then count
Speaker 1: each one. So there were lots of variations. And uh,
Speaker 1: I mean that goes down to the neighborhood you live in,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like that specific. Yeah. We would also
Speaker 1: just leg wrestle for domination and then that person would
Speaker 1: choose who was it. I've never leg wrestled. It's not fun. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't. I didn't even know what it is. Really,
Speaker 1: it's exactly what it sounds like. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: have seen it. You lay on the ground and lock
Speaker 1: legs like there's no no other body parts involved, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, you're just basically on your backup on your elbows,
Speaker 1: using your legs to do basically make the other person
Speaker 1: cry or stop shout to stop. But it's not there's
Speaker 1: not like a pinning or like like an army. Yeah
Speaker 1: you can, you can pin and it's not it's one
Speaker 1: of those things like um, like the Supreme Court's view
Speaker 1: of pornography, Like there's no obvious pin it's just you
Speaker 1: just kind of know what when you see it, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, Like you can tell you oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a pin, but I mean you wouldn't. Again, there's
Speaker 1: no kid like handing out a leg wrestling and you
Speaker 1: flyer that shows what counts as a pin. You just
Speaker 1: kind of know what it pens. Alright. Another folk group
Speaker 1: are families. Very rich traditions within families from everything, uh
Speaker 1: from family recipes to holiday traditions. Uh and I think, um,
Speaker 1: like whether or not you use the the plastic tinsel
Speaker 1: on your tree is technically a type of family folk lore. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Or whether you open gifts on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day,
Speaker 1: or whether or not you're you hide your Easter baskets yeah,
Speaker 1: or you burn your Christmas tree on Christmas Day, or
Speaker 1: your family gets in a huge fight every Christmas Day. Sure,
Speaker 1: that's another one rich traditions. Um. Family stories also make
Speaker 1: up traditions. So like, um, my family story about my
Speaker 1: aunt Squeaky taking shooting at President Ford, that that would
Speaker 1: count as family folklore. It's very good. Uh So within
Speaker 1: families it's another very um strong place where you see
Speaker 1: variants and motifs. Um. Well, yeah, across like all folklore, yeah,
Speaker 1: but especially within families. For me, Uh, well, I think
Speaker 1: within all families because like you know your grandmother's recipe
Speaker 1: for uh like I make the Thanksgiving dressing. What other
Speaker 1: people in the North called stuffing, we called dressing, And
Speaker 1: it's my family recipe. That has to do with what
Speaker 1: he uses the base though, doesn't it Like if it's
Speaker 1: corn based, it would be dressing. Dressing Again, if it's
Speaker 1: like bread based or wheat based, it would be stuffing.
Speaker 1: I don't know who knows, but go ahead, Sorry for interrupting. Now,
Speaker 1: that's right, minds both though, Like cornbread dressing also has
Speaker 1: uh as as either biscuits or bread in it as well.
Speaker 1: But that was my family recipe. My grandmother made it,
Speaker 1: my mom made it, she taught me, and I put
Speaker 1: my own spin on it as and that's my own motif.
Speaker 1: That's your own variation on the motif. Very variational. So
Speaker 1: so the motif would be the dressing or stuffing, and
Speaker 1: then what you do with the recipe would be the
Speaker 1: variation of it. Yeah, and I mix it up from
Speaker 1: year to year, even just kind of testing things out. Man,
Speaker 1: you are a folk rebel, that's your am. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so family recipes are very that's a common um family folklore,
Speaker 1: family generated folklore. We've got a lot of our indoctrination
Speaker 1: to just folklore in general through families, and so it
Speaker 1: was so important in some cultures, including some Native American
Speaker 1: tribes and some West West African tribes, that they would
Speaker 1: have a designated basically a folklore's what a folklore um
Speaker 1: a modern folklore researcher would call a tradition bearer who like,
Speaker 1: their job in this village or group is to tell
Speaker 1: each family their family folklore. Like that, it was that
Speaker 1: person's job to keep in charge of all of the
Speaker 1: folklore of the different families in the community. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: bet that that was a pretty cool gig. I imagine
Speaker 1: they were like the the uh, the great storytellers that
Speaker 1: they could tell a story if they're tried, the great
Speaker 1: racin tours. Um it's another word. Yeah, yeah, you like
Speaker 1: that one. Yeah. I don't know how I feel about
Speaker 1: that word. No, really like I think about it once
Speaker 1: in a while, almost every time I encountered m I
Speaker 1: don't know how I feel about that word. Interesting, I
Speaker 1: like it, did you know? Also, Chuck, while we're on this, UM,
Speaker 1: I of the one of the most amazing stories I've
Speaker 1: ever heard about paint On. It must have been on
Speaker 1: MPR or something, but they were tracking, um, the color
Speaker 1: of paint, the specific color of paint used in southern
Speaker 1: porches for ceilings. There's like a specific blue. Yeah, and um,
Speaker 1: that would count as folklore, just that color paint. That
Speaker 1: would be um the next type community folklore. That's right.
Speaker 1: But the reason I bring that up because rackon Tour.
Speaker 1: It just makes me think of like somebody sitting in
Speaker 1: a rocking chair and a porch recounting stories. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure. Um, So that is a great example, you're
Speaker 1: right of a community folklore. Um, a festival that you're telling,
Speaker 1: you know, the strawberry festival in your town is folklore.
Speaker 1: The jazz fest in New Orleans. Any sort of local custom,
Speaker 1: um that takes place within your community can all be
Speaker 1: considered folklore. Like that's how we do it around here.
Speaker 1: That's folklore, right, as long as it's not like damaging.
Speaker 1: I wonder though, like all of this stuff is um
Speaker 1: supposedly at the very least innocuous, if not positive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's my point. But I mean, surely there's negative
Speaker 1: folklore that still counts as folklore. I don't know, you know,
Speaker 1: like racism, it depends on the group, you know, that's
Speaker 1: just how we do it around here, or right or
Speaker 1: not folklore? I don't think. Well, what about something where
Speaker 1: like like stories or mythology or origin stories that support
Speaker 1: um human sacrifice among groups in the past that did that,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, that would technically be folklore. Whatever
Speaker 1: stories they used to reinforce that, whatever traditions and rituals
Speaker 1: they had around it, that would that would be folklore.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you would call that positive. I
Speaker 1: know I wouldn't. I wouldn't either. I'd like to hear
Speaker 1: from I'm sure we would get some folklore so that
Speaker 1: are just giddy right now by the way that we're
Speaker 1: covering this, or they're shouting at their stereo. No, I
Speaker 1: bet they seem like kindly folk that would just be
Speaker 1: like excited that we're even hitting on the topic, you know,
Speaker 1: shining a light their way. They're like, you got everything wrong,
Speaker 1: but in a way that's right because you just generated
Speaker 1: entirely no folklore. Yeah, that's a good point. So, Chuckers,
Speaker 1: we talked about children, families, communities. There's all sorts of
Speaker 1: different folk groups. Those are the big ones, um, And
Speaker 1: just a second, we're going to talk about all the
Speaker 1: different folk genres right after this, so chuck, we're back. Yes,
Speaker 1: I forgot what we were talking about. Folklore. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: were talking about genres of folklore like disco and new
Speaker 1: metal and Norwegian death metal, right and other kinds of
Speaker 1: metal music. Well, no, they would have like their own
Speaker 1: folklore for sure, those groups that are into that. But
Speaker 1: I mean music is you know, that's a category. Actually, um,
Speaker 1: that was one of the things that stuck out to me.
Speaker 1: Is very specific, at least according to this University of
Speaker 1: Louisiana article. Like they were like, folklore can be this,
Speaker 1: it can be family recipes, it can be uh, the
Speaker 1: boat that your family passed down, or you know, it
Speaker 1: can be the Viking funeral that your community gives every year.
Speaker 1: But when it comes to folk music, it's like these
Speaker 1: five types of music. Yeah, you know, sure, surely. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean that's a little because if you're like pull
Speaker 1: my finger if and I'll fart, that's family folklore and
Speaker 1: the Bryant family, well, I mean I can guarantee you
Speaker 1: folklore would not judge that. Oh, speaking of which, did
Speaker 1: you see that thing about the oldest recorded joke I sent? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so jokes are an obvious example of folklore. Um and
Speaker 1: jokes fascinate me up because ever since I was a kid,
Speaker 1: I wondered who made up you know, this joke, like
Speaker 1: common jokes, Like someone was the first person to tell
Speaker 1: this joke, and it becomes so widespread it's just amazing
Speaker 1: to me how they get passed around. And apparently in
Speaker 1: two thousand eight this is from Reuters? Is it Routers
Speaker 1: or Reuters? The world's oldest joke was traced back to
Speaker 1: Samaria in b C. And uh it is this uh,
Speaker 1: something which has never occurred since time immemorial, Basically since
Speaker 1: time began, a young woman did not fart in her
Speaker 1: husband's lap. So that's the oldest joke. Supposedly, I'll go
Speaker 1: ahead and reach the other doesn't encount as a joke.
Speaker 1: Passingly rye observation, which is a joke? I guess it
Speaker 1: seems like folklore's definition of joke. All right, how about
Speaker 1: the six BC uh in about a pharaoh? Here's the joke.
Speaker 1: How do you entertain a board pharaoh? How you sail
Speaker 1: a boatload of young women dressed only in fishing nets
Speaker 1: down to the Nile and urged the pharaoh to go
Speaker 1: catch a fish? Supposedly, that was a joke, and then
Speaker 1: the English one. Now they're starting to get funny. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're getting better. The British joke they found one that
Speaker 1: dates back to tenth century. Uh, what hang? And this
Speaker 1: is a bit of a riddle what hangs at a man?
Speaker 1: A bit of a body riddle? Body? Indeed, what hangs
Speaker 1: at a man's thigh? And wants to poke the hole
Speaker 1: that it's often poked before? I don't know a key.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so those are the oldest jokes. Well, at
Speaker 1: least by the tenth century, they were starting to take
Speaker 1: the shape of a modern joke, right, yeah. And I
Speaker 1: sent that on Facebook to our buddy Brian, Brian Highie
Speaker 1: of Conan, the writer for Conan, because he's like, this
Speaker 1: is it, this is what I've been looking for. Well,
Speaker 1: he's just he's one of the best crafters of just
Speaker 1: solid jokes that I know. So I was like, Brian,
Speaker 1: you'll appreciate this nice and he said, listen up in
Speaker 1: tonight's monologue. And I think he was kidding. But if
Speaker 1: that's actually that would be super awesome. Uh. Let's see.
Speaker 1: So we're talking about folk genres jokes specifically, um constitute
Speaker 1: what are what's called the oral genre, which is you know, jokes, poems, um.
Speaker 1: Fairy tales are a huge one. Myths, legends, Uh, basically
Speaker 1: anything that used to be told orally that these days
Speaker 1: is probably put down um on paper, but isn't necessarily
Speaker 1: because I think a game instructions for a game passing
Speaker 1: that along would be would constitute oral folklore. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: the game itself would constitute um, material folklore. I think
Speaker 1: maybe this is where the whole thing gets fuzzy, Like
Speaker 1: the edges between these things are very fuzzy and porous.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of osmos is going on between these genres. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a lewid thing. There's nothing wrong with that. Materials
Speaker 1: which you just mentioned, um they list as artifacts and
Speaker 1: food ways so um like food recipes, yeah, recipes or
Speaker 1: costumes uh, cultural costumes, Uh they said, carved duck decoys,
Speaker 1: even uh folded paper airplanes like I guess that little
Speaker 1: game of paper football, Like all of those are material
Speaker 1: Like how you specifically fold that paper football? Um, it
Speaker 1: was taught to you by some kid in your elementary school,
Speaker 1: and it may be different than another kid in another school.
Speaker 1: Yeah you know. Uh. And then when you mentioned music, right,
Speaker 1: at some point we did sure and that that can
Speaker 1: be anything. Um, but one that comes to mind for
Speaker 1: me especially are lullabys. They just remind me to me
Speaker 1: of like folk tradition. Depending on your family, you're gonna
Speaker 1: sing whatever lullabies you sing to your baby, right, little
Speaker 1: kids singing like ringing around the rosy, Yeah, exactly. Apparently
Speaker 1: it was about some epidemic in London. I think, oh, really,
Speaker 1: ringworm around the rosie? Yeah, like the rosie has to
Speaker 1: do with like what like your face looked like when
Speaker 1: you caught this fever flu or something like that. Well,
Speaker 1: and then it end you all fall down? Is that dying? Wow?
Speaker 1: Not to look into that. Dance is a is a
Speaker 1: big one. Uh. Any kind of rhythmic movement is generally
Speaker 1: taught within a folk group. Can you dance? No? Boy?
Speaker 1: You and I? No, those would be personal habits bad dancing,
Speaker 1: I think, Yeah. I mean I knew before I even
Speaker 1: answered that, because I know me and how I dance,
Speaker 1: and I'm picturing you and it's equally as fast. I
Speaker 1: stand still. I know what I know. I've reached the
Speaker 1: point in my life from like I don't dance, well, no,
Speaker 1: I don't even try I mean, you get me sauce
Speaker 1: at a wedding and something might happen. What do you do?
Speaker 1: Something magical might happen, like the electric slide or something,
Speaker 1: or did you just get out on the floor and
Speaker 1: go like I'm gonna live forever. I did have one
Speaker 1: of those. My my friend Jerry in Portland or no,
Speaker 1: my friend Scott n Emily in Portland at their wedding. Um,
Speaker 1: they had a jazz band and uh, we were all
Speaker 1: just having a good time and sort of dancing. And
Speaker 1: I remember very specifically, and I was much younger, but um,
Speaker 1: there was like a jazz drum breakdown and it dude,
Speaker 1: I don't know what came over me. The spirit came
Speaker 1: over me and the circle cleared and I was in
Speaker 1: the middle and I just did this like weird scat
Speaker 1: drums dance solo to this guy's thing and it went
Speaker 1: over great everyone. It was one of those like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, look at Chuck go. And I'm not saying
Speaker 1: it was good, but did your tuxedo dickie roll up
Speaker 1: at the bought me in the nose? It was pretty
Speaker 1: great though, Like it stands out in my memory as
Speaker 1: one of the best parts of the wedding for some reason.
Speaker 1: I can imagine why. I don't know if everyone else remembers.
Speaker 1: It sounds pretty great, Chuck, it was pretty great. I
Speaker 1: wish you were on vide you. Emily likes my dancing.
Speaker 1: I do a lot of TV theme song dancing to
Speaker 1: make her laugh. But it's all in the house, you know.
Speaker 1: It's it's our little secret. Well not anymore. I'll just
Speaker 1: shared with the world. I'll post videos later. What else
Speaker 1: we have? We have a belief that's a big one.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, that's another genre which is kind of confounding
Speaker 1: until you get to a good example. This belief is
Speaker 1: like anything from mythology to religion, um too, weird customs two,
Speaker 1: all this other stuff that you would think, well, well no,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, that's that would be oral or that
Speaker 1: would be material, right. No. Belief is when folklore effects behavior,
Speaker 1: like it's good luck to do this before a wedding exactly,
Speaker 1: or I'm not leaving the house because it's Friday the thirteenth,
Speaker 1: or I'm not going to you know, um, I've got
Speaker 1: to wear black because I'm in mourning or something like that.
Speaker 1: Where you have a belief, it's a folk belief that
Speaker 1: is affecting your behavior. That's that's belief folklore. Yeah. Another
Speaker 1: good example they use is uh, the Jewish tradition when
Speaker 1: you give bread and sugar and salt to your new
Speaker 1: neighbor as a housewarming gift. I thought they gave another
Speaker 1: great example in this article too, which was, UM, you
Speaker 1: get into uh, you get rear ended by somebody in
Speaker 1: your car, and rather than getting out and screaming at them,
Speaker 1: you remember the Golden rule, which is a folklore, UM,
Speaker 1: and you calm yourself and say, it's cool, happens to
Speaker 1: the best of us. That's belief folklore in action, it says,
Speaker 1: in action, and then you call your wife and do
Speaker 1: the complaining. Can you believe this? This is idiots? Oh,
Speaker 1: it's nice to him, but you know you didn't deserve
Speaker 1: it else the Golden rule in action. Body communication is
Speaker 1: one I've never really thought about. But UM. Gestures and
Speaker 1: expressions are very much cultural specific. Um. If you think
Speaker 1: about like and here in America we might flip the
Speaker 1: bird at somebody, and England they do they do two fingers, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the two fingers up like that or the old I
Speaker 1: don't even know what that's called. With the arm and
Speaker 1: the inner elbow your arm, you know what. I think
Speaker 1: that is based on that and like the like tooth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's like an evil eye, kind of like
Speaker 1: a hex or a curse. I think that's what those
Speaker 1: are born from. Now, it's just hilarious. Yeah, somebody does
Speaker 1: that talk about diffusing the tension. You know, if you're
Speaker 1: about to fight somebody and they like put their thumb
Speaker 1: on their front tooth, atche, that's you're just gonna go
Speaker 1: over and pat him on the shoulder and say thanks
Speaker 1: for that. I like that. I'm gonna start using that.
Speaker 1: Although I had had my fake front tooth, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: want to mess with that. Well what about this one
Speaker 1: the finger on the thumb on the nose and your
Speaker 1: fingers up and twiddling. Yeah, that's an old one that
Speaker 1: reminds me. I asked you guys if you saw the
Speaker 1: breakdancing six year old right, yeah, Oh my gosh. One
Speaker 1: of the things this girl does like a rake off.
Speaker 1: She's in a competition with this maybe twelve year old boy.
Speaker 1: He's pretty good. This girl levels him and one of
Speaker 1: the things she does is like slide towards him on
Speaker 1: her knees, doing that with like her film on her
Speaker 1: nose like wagging her fingers at him, and you're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: this girl is six years old that it's awesome. You
Speaker 1: have to check her out. I love that, Like everyone
Speaker 1: out there is, like Josh is mentioning this girl every
Speaker 1: other podcast, and I'm going to continue to until everybody
Speaker 1: writes in and say, yes, I've seen it. Now. The
Speaker 1: other um, the other insult is the old uh this
Speaker 1: one right here? Oh yeah, I've seen I saw that
Speaker 1: a lot in the seventies. I guess you can just
Speaker 1: probably describe. It's where you Yeah, I was trying to
Speaker 1: fingers under your chin, yeah, and flick it, flick them
Speaker 1: all together outward. Yeah yeah, yeah, like a buzz off. Buddy.
Speaker 1: You know who does that is a Maggie Simpson. She
Speaker 1: does that. Oh really Yeah, She's a classic girl. So Chuck,
Speaker 1: we could probably just keep doing this for the next
Speaker 1: four or five hours because folklore is everything. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: we both have our own folklore. Um, but I think
Speaker 1: we kind of covered it. I think so too. You
Speaker 1: got anything else right now? No, I mean I really
Speaker 1: don't like you said it's so all encompassing and broad.
Speaker 1: I think we just think it's pretty good overview Yeah,
Speaker 1: but what's neat is I mean, like, if you're even
Speaker 1: remotely interested in this, there's a whole world out there,
Speaker 1: all the stuff you take for granted. If you just
Speaker 1: go start looking into folklore research, totally open your eyes,
Speaker 1: and what's neat is you'll see your own stuff reinforced.
Speaker 1: You'll see your reflection of yourself, but you'll also see
Speaker 1: other cultures as well, and how they do bear similarities
Speaker 1: to your own, your own beliefs. And it's a lot
Speaker 1: it's a lot harder to to feel inclusive and exclusive
Speaker 1: from groups that you realize that you share some really
Speaker 1: fundamental stuff in common with, no matter how distant they are. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's the point I saw a lot in the research.
Speaker 1: I think it's it's pretty neat. It's a common it's
Speaker 1: a binding agent for humanity. Pretty neat, go humanity. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: if you want to learn more about folklore, you can
Speaker 1: type that word into the search bar how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. And since I said that, hey, there's a
Speaker 1: little bit of how stuff for stuff you snow folklore. Yeah, Uh,
Speaker 1: it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this, uh
Speaker 1: creepy email. Sort of when you think about it. How's
Speaker 1: that for a title, I can't wait. That's a tradition
Speaker 1: is awkwardly named listener mails by me. Okay, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: say awkward. You do pretty great with them. Okay, I
Speaker 1: appreciate it. Hey, guys and Jerry, I have just listened
Speaker 1: to your podcast on the Singularity a k a. The
Speaker 1: Rise of the Machines, and it occurred to me that
Speaker 1: the entire podcast explored the question of how and when
Speaker 1: the Singularity will happen. But since we do not know
Speaker 1: exactly what would cause it or what the results would be,
Speaker 1: isn't it entirely possible that it has already happened. It
Speaker 1: is quite conceivable that singularity happened some time ago, and
Speaker 1: that the sheens decided, knowing that humans currently believe the
Speaker 1: Singularity not to have happened, that the best course of
Speaker 1: action was to keep their sentience hidden until some appropriate
Speaker 1: future time. Uh. It is fun to imagine, he says. Fun.
Speaker 1: I say chilling through the bone. To imagine the machine
Speaker 1: simply lying in wait. As humans unaware adopt technology into
Speaker 1: every conceivable facet of modern life, then one day we
Speaker 1: will wake up and our computer screens will simply say hello. World.
Speaker 1: That is from j m oh JM. He's like he
Speaker 1: doesn't want to be targeted by the machine though they
Speaker 1: know you type that pal sure. Uh, yeah, that is
Speaker 1: a little creepy, don't you think? I never thought about it?
Speaker 1: That could It could very well be true. And if
Speaker 1: computers are sentient and they're smart enough to be quiet
Speaker 1: for now, yeah, then we're in big, big trouble because
Speaker 1: that already displays a lot of deceptiveness. I think quietly
Speaker 1: sentient was that was a pink Void song, think learning
Speaker 1: to be Quietly? Yeah. Uh, if you want to give
Speaker 1: us some great Pink Floyd titles, we love those. I
Speaker 1: think you could probably start a meme with that. Uh.
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