Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, and welcome to Saturday. Yesterday was Friday, Tomorrow Sunday.
Speaker 1: Today's Saturday. This is Chuck. Today's episode is Mermaids not
Speaker 1: a real thing? This from August four, and I gotta say,
Speaker 1: I just remember thinking this is kind of an interesting podcast,
Speaker 1: and that's why I picked it for Saturday. Enjoy, everybody.
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. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, Jerry's over there
Speaker 1: in the ether, floating, possibly not existing, who knows. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this is stuff you should know, that's right, Just
Speaker 1: a couple of a couple of mermen trying to make
Speaker 1: their way in the world, trying to keep their tails wet.
Speaker 1: Yeah you know, yeah, that thing dries out. You've seen Splash. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a actually post. She dried out and she was
Speaker 1: just fine. Oh. I thought, oh, you're thinking of et
Speaker 1: when he turned all white and dried out. I was
Speaker 1: thinking a Splash because I couldn't remember. It's one of
Speaker 1: It was one of my favorite movies as a kid.
Speaker 1: It was a cute. Um. It was one of those
Speaker 1: early HBO movies early Tom Hanks, which I'm a big
Speaker 1: fan of early Tom Hanks. And um, I just thought
Speaker 1: it was a really fun and funny movie. John Candy, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a great movie. What's his name played the
Speaker 1: evil man trying to expose her. Um, Eugene Leevy, I think, Oh,
Speaker 1: was he the bad guy? Yeah, he was the one
Speaker 1: that you know, that's a high quality movie when Eugene
Speaker 1: Levy's the bad guy. Yeah, that was the SETV crew
Speaker 1: And um, he actually tried to spray her and get
Speaker 1: her wet so she would and in fact, kid turned
Speaker 1: into a mermaid on the sidewalk, So that's what it was.
Speaker 1: And she got wet, she turned in to a mermaid, right,
Speaker 1: she got dried, no problem. Yes, And Darryl, of course,
Speaker 1: who's running around with Neil Young? Now? Oh really? Yeah?
Speaker 1: How about that couple? Sure? Why not? They're both environmentalists.
Speaker 1: But there's a lot of turquoise in that bedroom. I
Speaker 1: wonder if you hook up with Neil Young, if or
Speaker 1: anyone like that, if if you're sort of a new
Speaker 1: relationship and not like the wife they had for forty years,
Speaker 1: if you're like, play a song, why don't you what like,
Speaker 1: I wonder if you asked them to play music. Oh,
Speaker 1: like you're actually into him? Yeah, Like if if you're
Speaker 1: Billy Joel's new year old wife, do you ever say, like, hey, honey,
Speaker 1: play me a tune, Play that one that you that
Speaker 1: you wrote ten years before I was conceived. I think
Speaker 1: I'm What I'm saying is I would have a hard
Speaker 1: time being with Neil Young and not every night after
Speaker 1: dinner just kind of nudging the guitar towards him, Oh,
Speaker 1: I got you and saying I'd love to hear old Man,
Speaker 1: please baby one for me, And yeah, he says, I've
Speaker 1: played that song times. Yeah, I would guess that, well,
Speaker 1: I can tell you I would. I would. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: would guess that once you reach a certain point and
Speaker 1: playing a song, you never want to hear that song
Speaker 1: or even think about it existing again, but then you
Speaker 1: still have to play it. I try not to think
Speaker 1: about that when I'm at those shows. Yeah, it makes
Speaker 1: me feel bad for him, like they might as well
Speaker 1: be you know, in the monkey house or something and
Speaker 1: you just throwing bananas at him, and God bless the
Speaker 1: people who really bring it still where you feel like, man,
Speaker 1: they're playing that song for me tonight, Adam Man, does
Speaker 1: he still bring it? He's just who came to mind.
Speaker 1: Whereas when I saw the Police on their reunion, they
Speaker 1: were phoning it in really, even Stewart Copeland. Well, I
Speaker 1: mean they were playing the songs, but it just it
Speaker 1: didn't look like they were enjoying themselves at all. It
Speaker 1: looked like a total money grab. Sure, they entered from
Speaker 1: three separate entrances and exited from three separate and I
Speaker 1: got the feeling they didn't even like speak much. That's
Speaker 1: like I was reading an article on the Ramons, the
Speaker 1: Rolling Stone one recently. Uh, yeah, I guess it was. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they had a great article on them, so yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess it was. It was definitely Rolling Stone. So okay,
Speaker 1: did you read it? Yeah, then it was awesome. But yeah,
Speaker 1: they're like they they would they would just like get
Speaker 1: on the bus and not speak to one another, go
Speaker 1: to the next town and get on stage and play
Speaker 1: and then come off stage and not like they would
Speaker 1: they would speak on stage because they had to. That
Speaker 1: was it. Apparently, Well, at least Joey and who was
Speaker 1: his big foil d there's those ones who really hated
Speaker 1: each other. Yeah, supposedly they didn't speak at all for
Speaker 1: like twenty five years straight, right, because Joey stole d
Speaker 1: D's like love of his life and then they were
Speaker 1: in the band together still after that it was just
Speaker 1: like ts Man, so weird, so like a lot of songs,
Speaker 1: especially once like the kk K Took My Baby Away.
Speaker 1: That's about Joey stealing d D's girlfriend. Wow, it was
Speaker 1: a great article. Yeah, good ready, um so back to Splash,
Speaker 1: funny movie about a mermaid, and we're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: mermaids here, and mostly what we're gonna cover is the
Speaker 1: lore in history and the mythology of the mermaid because
Speaker 1: there's a little giveaway there are no mermaids. What did
Speaker 1: you look up like pictures of real mermaids sightings and stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's the same thing as pictures of Bigfoot sightings
Speaker 1: and pictures of UFO sighting some weird distant blur that
Speaker 1: like you can't it could be kelped or is such
Speaker 1: an obviously doctored photo. What would be fun, though, is
Speaker 1: if we had a time machine. Forget killing Hitler, forget
Speaker 1: like back machine. Oh yeah, that's right. I can't believe
Speaker 1: we don't put this into good use. Yeah, forget like, um,
Speaker 1: you know, saving the world. They're keeping the Dodo from
Speaker 1: going extinct. I would take some of these doctored photos
Speaker 1: that are just so easy to make today back to
Speaker 1: like the nineteen twenties and be like, look at this,
Speaker 1: and they go, yeah, I know, we still believe in
Speaker 1: that stuff, with your aim being what just a freak amount.
Speaker 1: Oh I figured there'd be a money angle. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: Josh is traveling Wonder Wonder Emporium. It's not a bad
Speaker 1: idea where in which you just show them photos, but
Speaker 1: I charged them like two thousand sixteen rates and no
Speaker 1: one can possibly afford that, So I go out of business,
Speaker 1: like almost immediately. Right there's like one guy in the town.
Speaker 1: It's like, I'll pay twenty seven fifty to see those right,
Speaker 1: step right up, towns only billionaire. Um, that's a great idea.
Speaker 1: I don't know why no one ever thought of that.
Speaker 1: It was a terrible idea, Like from beginning to end.
Speaker 1: Forget going back and betting on the stock market or
Speaker 1: the outcome of the World Series. I'm gonna go back
Speaker 1: and set up a business doom to fail. Alright, So
Speaker 1: let's talk about mermaid uh lore. Well, we can start
Speaker 1: here in the more modern age, because there are still
Speaker 1: places that try and take people for money, like we
Speaker 1: were just talking about, even like me Um in fact
Speaker 1: uh in Israel on the coast there, Um, they actually
Speaker 1: have a town called Kiryat Yam. And if you go
Speaker 1: to Kiryat Yam you could win how much money does
Speaker 1: he even say? Million bucks million American dollars if you um,
Speaker 1: if you provide incontrovertible evidence of the mermaid that is
Speaker 1: reputed to want to live there and appear at sunset
Speaker 1: as of two thousand nine was the first sighting there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And of course what that is is is a ploy
Speaker 1: to try and get tourists and come and spend money
Speaker 1: in the town and look for the mermaid. Come on, chumps,
Speaker 1: welcome you to Kiryat Yam. I'm sure lock ness has
Speaker 1: made plenty of tourist money over the years. Apparently they
Speaker 1: have a standing offer as well, and that's where the
Speaker 1: mayor of Kuryot Yam got the idea great idea. And
Speaker 1: actually I saw that photo too. It's kind of neat.
Speaker 1: I don't know what it is or who created it
Speaker 1: or whatever, but there's allegedly a photo taken obviously from
Speaker 1: like a cliff down on to a beat, you know,
Speaker 1: a beach that will have like a big just slab
Speaker 1: of rocks surrounded by sand, sand and mermaids. Right, there's
Speaker 1: a mermaid on that rock, just kind of looking out
Speaker 1: in the sea. And of course it could be anything.
Speaker 1: It could be totally doctored, who knows, um, but it's
Speaker 1: from a distance. And at least they didn't like go
Speaker 1: full out like perfect picture of a mermaid of Red's.
Speaker 1: It's it's just um suggestive enough that people who believe
Speaker 1: in such things would be like the right there, there's
Speaker 1: a picture of a mermaid, you know, so that that
Speaker 1: was found in two thousand nine or that surfaced in
Speaker 1: two thousand nine, and since then the surfaced right, since
Speaker 1: then the town's uh had that standing offer, correct? So uh.
Speaker 1: The really the interesting thing to me about mermaids is
Speaker 1: the mythology. Did you take mythology in college at all? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I did. It. Always wanted it to interest me more
Speaker 1: than it did me too. It was just I don't
Speaker 1: know if it wasn't explain to me quite well enough,
Speaker 1: or just the ancients non bicameral mind wasn't um fused
Speaker 1: together enough to interest people in the modern age. Well,
Speaker 1: I think so. I think the stories themselves, as far
Speaker 1: as good storytelling, we're just lacking because a lot of
Speaker 1: them were just versions of one another, and there was
Speaker 1: usually a very basic uh premise or or moral um.
Speaker 1: And in the case of mermaids, a lot of times
Speaker 1: they were a lot of folksore even was rooted in misogyny.
Speaker 1: You know how you know there'll be a woman to
Speaker 1: come along and screw your life up right, or if
Speaker 1: you written up a woman, um, she will kill your
Speaker 1: children or something like that, like women were not to
Speaker 1: be trusted, and they were murderous and duplicidus and a
Speaker 1: lot of mythologies to the old hag so uh, it
Speaker 1: was in various I mean hundreds and hundreds of books
Speaker 1: and texts, including the Talmud believe it or not. And
Speaker 1: we've talked about plenty of the Elder, the Beer and
Speaker 1: the Dude Rome's plan of the Elder. He in his
Speaker 1: Natural History talked about a mermaid like creature called the nereid. Yes,
Speaker 1: I think I'm pronouncing that correctly. Yeah, in E R E.
Speaker 1: I d that EI is a tough transition. It is
Speaker 1: because you want to say, like Nereid. Yeah, ner Red,
Speaker 1: these are sea nymphs, half human, half fish mermaids and um.
Speaker 1: He also talked about c men and we should point
Speaker 1: out that Merman we made the joke about us being Merman.
Speaker 1: I believe Merman were even first on the literary scene.
Speaker 1: Is that correct? Well first, at least with mythology or
Speaker 1: um theology. I guess there's a Babylonian god of the
Speaker 1: sea named Ea, yeah, e a sports um just e A,
Speaker 1: and he pops up in uh Babylonian mythology from I
Speaker 1: think four thousand years ago, and they think that he's
Speaker 1: actually the progenitor of or the predecessor I should say,
Speaker 1: of Poseidon, who is the Greek god of the sea,
Speaker 1: and Neptune, who's the Roman god of the sea. Because
Speaker 1: the Greeks gave us Western culture, but they just walked
Speaker 1: around to all of the neighboring cultures and picked their
Speaker 1: favorite parts and put them together, and that was definitely
Speaker 1: one of them. Yeah. Yeah, uh, well we talked in
Speaker 1: our I guess it was in the folklore and fairy
Speaker 1: tale episodes that were twin episodes almost um about the
Speaker 1: original Little Mermaid and how you know she was disnified
Speaker 1: to the fullest, but the original story was far darker, darker,
Speaker 1: but also even more touching by far like, I went
Speaker 1: back and read the last um the last like section
Speaker 1: of it. Well, give me a summary at the So
Speaker 1: at the end, this is where dramatically differs from the
Speaker 1: Disney story. The little Mermaid is scorned for another woman
Speaker 1: her the guy she loves chooses someone else and marries her,
Speaker 1: and the Little Mermaid is like, dude, I gave up
Speaker 1: my tail for you, I think, which has my tongue
Speaker 1: kind of thing um, and I want to get back
Speaker 1: my life. So her sisters came and bring her this
Speaker 1: ritual knife and say, you can convert back to a
Speaker 1: mermaid if before dawn you plunge this knife into this
Speaker 1: dude's heart, this guy who loves heart, and you get
Speaker 1: some of his blood on your feet, you will regrow
Speaker 1: your tail and you can jump into the sea and
Speaker 1: everything will be just fine again. So she goes and
Speaker 1: she finds the guy sleeping with his new bride beside him,
Speaker 1: and she just can't do it. She throws the knife
Speaker 1: into the sea and um becomes c foam. She disintegrates
Speaker 1: and becomes c foam. So she gives her her own
Speaker 1: happiness up for this guy's right and dies as a result.
Speaker 1: But even better than that, when she turns into sea foam,
Speaker 1: she becomes a different mythical creature, uh like basically an
Speaker 1: air nymph that goes around like helping humans um and
Speaker 1: she can possibly get into heaven if she helps people
Speaker 1: um for three hundred years. Hans Christian Andersen wrote it
Speaker 1: way better than I just recounted it a lot less
Speaker 1: ums and likes, but it's it's pretty it's worth reading. Uh.
Speaker 1: Plenty also talked about merman um back in the day,
Speaker 1: and there would be merman or seamen who would at
Speaker 1: night climb up onto ships as a quote that so
Speaker 1: I'm reading it weird, upon which the side of the
Speaker 1: vessel where he seated himself would instantly sink downward, and
Speaker 1: if you remain there any considerable time, even go underwater.
Speaker 1: And that was something that we will see as we
Speaker 1: talk more about mermaids is they are um very They're
Speaker 1: often either an omen that's something bad is going to
Speaker 1: happen to sailors or coastal dwelling people, or they actually
Speaker 1: directly cause harm two sailors or coastal dwelling people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and most times under the guys of something beautiful and
Speaker 1: like a siren. Um, they are often Well, I don't
Speaker 1: we haven't even described one. Surely you know that a
Speaker 1: mermaid has the head and body torso of a of
Speaker 1: a woman, human woman, usually with huge boobs. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you're talking about a sailor's account, sure, yeah, she was busty.
Speaker 1: Did I mention the boobs? Yes, you did, sir seven times? Um?
Speaker 1: And uh from the you know torso down she's a
Speaker 1: fish maybe web feet maybe not very graceful, very fast
Speaker 1: and always beautiful. Uh, it depends. Oh yeah, yeah. There
Speaker 1: were some of legend that we're not ugly really yeah,
Speaker 1: not ugly, or that they were not in parentheses beautiful
Speaker 1: comma ugly. Uh. Well, I hadn't heard about that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's in here. I thought. I'm just I must
Speaker 1: have missed that part. It's it's it's far more frequent
Speaker 1: what you were saying, that they were beautiful and alluring. Um,
Speaker 1: but we'll talk more about that after we take a break. Huh.
Speaker 1: All right, Chuck. We were saying that, for the most part,
Speaker 1: mermaids are beautiful and one of the reasons why they
Speaker 1: are supposed to be beautiful is because they are frequently
Speaker 1: um accused of luring men sailors out to see to
Speaker 1: their death. Yeah, and how you do that? You do
Speaker 1: that one of two ways. You have a beautiful singing voice,
Speaker 1: or you just straight up look good yourself. That's right.
Speaker 1: And if you have a beautiful singing voice, you're a siren,
Speaker 1: in which case you would not be a mermaid because
Speaker 1: the siren is half bird, half woman, and they don't
Speaker 1: even necessarily live in the water or near the water.
Speaker 1: They're sometimes described as hanging out in fields. I guess
Speaker 1: sometimes you can be very pretty and be a good singer, right,
Speaker 1: your mermaid? But the yeah you could be, Yeah, sure
Speaker 1: you'd be. Who am I to disagree? Or Alicia Keys
Speaker 1: or Adele? Oh you know who I like his? Uh Rihanna?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, she's great man, very pretty. That part in
Speaker 1: uh what's it called this at the end and she
Speaker 1: played herself, Yeah, yeah, she's pretty great. She was pretty funny.
Speaker 1: Michael Sarah likes bank her and she just immediately turned
Speaker 1: around and smacked the heck out of him. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: enjoyed parts of that movie, especially Michael Sarah. Yeah, playing
Speaker 1: like a cooked out jerk. That was really funny. Um,
Speaker 1: So back to the beautiful mermaids though, Uh there there
Speaker 1: was one and one thousand BC in Syria. And her name,
Speaker 1: how would you pronounce that? At her gaddis? Oh, I
Speaker 1: think you nailed it. Yeah, yeah, all right, we'll go
Speaker 1: with that. And she and you'll you'll see a lot
Speaker 1: of duality a lot of these stories. And she was
Speaker 1: one for sure. That was a protector, a goddess. I
Speaker 1: think she protected the fertility of her people and um
Speaker 1: watched over them and uh, fell in love with a
Speaker 1: human man, as you will often see in a lot
Speaker 1: of these stories. Dude, yeah, dude, and it and it
Speaker 1: was fine for a little while, like in most stories,
Speaker 1: and then it goes south and she kills him. She
Speaker 1: crushed him with her greatness. Oh I thought, like her
Speaker 1: big tail or something. I don't know. Well, she wasn't
Speaker 1: a mermaid yet. This is where she becomes. That's right,
Speaker 1: I forgot about that. So um, she accidentally kills him
Speaker 1: and then his very shamed throws herself into the lake
Speaker 1: because she wants to become a fish, and she's so
Speaker 1: beautiful that it only works half as good. I really
Speaker 1: can't figure out the math on that. But I guess
Speaker 1: she's just so beautiful that the human beauty part of hers, like, no,
Speaker 1: I won't be a fish, just the lower half can
Speaker 1: be a fish. Yeah, because she had to fungus, so
Speaker 1: that was easily overcome, but her face was really nice,
Speaker 1: so the fish part just couldn't overcome that. That's right,
Speaker 1: So she ended up a mermaid. Weird story. Well, that's
Speaker 1: just weird, like like oh, it's foreign or anything. I'm
Speaker 1: not being xenophobic, but it really like says a lot
Speaker 1: about like humanity and like how we think of things like, no,
Speaker 1: he was so good looking that this magic couldn't even
Speaker 1: overcome that. You know that point. We place a lot
Speaker 1: of value on that kind of thing. Uh, all right,
Speaker 1: should we move on to Germany? Yeah? This one was
Speaker 1: kind of interesting to me because Germany's landlocked. I never
Speaker 1: really thought about it. What does Germany have a mermaid mythology? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean they have lakes, I guess, but mermaids are
Speaker 1: ocean dwellers, aren't they know? There are some river dwellers. Oh,
Speaker 1: that's right, although I think the sirens were specifically river. Well,
Speaker 1: then in the German myth that was a river dweller. Correct, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: the Nixes. Uh yeah, and they lured men into the river. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a river, and so they could drown them,
Speaker 1: like again the call of the siren. Come in here.
Speaker 1: Look how beautiful I am. And now I'm holding your
Speaker 1: head underwater and you can't breathe anymore. And the guys like,
Speaker 1: I regret nothing. But this duality that we're talking about
Speaker 1: is uh what you see a lot of times in
Speaker 1: mermaid myths from West Africa. The Mommy Wada, the mother Water.
Speaker 1: She was a mermaid who was very nurturing and very
Speaker 1: loving if you didn't cross her. Yeah, exactly. That's where
Speaker 1: the duality comes in. I don't even know that's duality.
Speaker 1: I think that's just a complex person, good, good complex
Speaker 1: character there. Yeah, yeah, so she's great, but when you
Speaker 1: cross her, she's murderous. Sure, all right, And that's what
Speaker 1: she did. Actually, she had If you were loyal to her,
Speaker 1: she would you could be wealthy from her magic mirror
Speaker 1: and comb. But if you betrayed her, then what this
Speaker 1: article says is she reigns down fury and destruction right
Speaker 1: word from above. But the duality is as an important
Speaker 1: part of it because the the physical creature itself is
Speaker 1: two things, and they are also too things emotionally. And
Speaker 1: but so the mermaid, the mermaid or mermaid or murf
Speaker 1: folk as their call in this article. Yeah so mrf
Speaker 1: folks are half fish half people, right, But they're not
Speaker 1: anywhere near unique in the pantheon of mythological creatures throughout
Speaker 1: the ages. Right, there's again, there's sirens, half birds, half women.
Speaker 1: There's there's just tons of hat like them. The minataur
Speaker 1: half man, half bull. The centaur was what half go
Speaker 1: or horse and half man. I don't remember that sounds right,
Speaker 1: I think half horse um. And I was like, where
Speaker 1: did all these come from? I suspected beast reality, And
Speaker 1: it turns out I may be right. Yeah, yeah, you
Speaker 1: find there are some scholars out there who believe that
Speaker 1: this is the product of a much more relaxed attitude
Speaker 1: towards beast reality than we modern humans have today. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I still never saw that documentary about the horse. Yeah
Speaker 1: it's a good one, zoo. Yeah, I need that fell
Speaker 1: off my radar. Man. It's one of those ones where
Speaker 1: they largely to recreate, Like the whole thing is almost recreation,
Speaker 1: And I usually am not hip on those. It doesn't
Speaker 1: feel like a documentary to me, But that one changed
Speaker 1: my mind about that whole technique that they did it
Speaker 1: so well. It's rough. It's rough, especially like when you
Speaker 1: think about you know, the animals as well. Yeah, of
Speaker 1: course you know, but there's more than just that that
Speaker 1: makes it rough. I need to see that, um So.
Speaker 1: I guess we can talk a little bit about some
Speaker 1: eyewitness accounts. They're all bunk, of course, but they have
Speaker 1: happened in World War two in Japan on Indonesia's Kai Islands. Uh.
Speaker 1: Supposedly they encountered a monster on the beach that had
Speaker 1: you know, webbed hands and feet and was kind of
Speaker 1: part human part fish. It was like, look at these
Speaker 1: jazz hands. You can't do this. And then back in
Speaker 1: the day, uh, some of our most revered explorers and
Speaker 1: adventurer adventurers reported seeing mermaids, like John Smith and Henry
Speaker 1: Huntson and Columbus him, Yeah, what was There's a good
Speaker 1: quote in here from Columbus because he wasn't too impressed.
Speaker 1: He said, and here's the thing. I read that in
Speaker 1: his diary. He's referring to himself in the third person. Well,
Speaker 1: that says a lot. That's odd. He's like Ricky Henderson, right,
Speaker 1: or George Costanza. So he says that he saw some
Speaker 1: oh yeah, the quote cent and you got to read
Speaker 1: the quote. He's sailing around, not that it e Oh
Speaker 1: what is that in the ocean? I think I'll take
Speaker 1: a look through my spye glass. The day before when
Speaker 1: the admiral was going to the and the admiral is himself, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what I'm thinking. He was the admiral of his
Speaker 1: fillet for sure. The day before when the admiral was
Speaker 1: going on to the Rio del Oro, that's the river
Speaker 1: old he said he saw three mermaids who came quite
Speaker 1: high out of the water. But we're not as pretty
Speaker 1: as they are depicted. For somehow, in the face they
Speaker 1: look like men. But I still thought about it. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: and what they think now, and I don't know how
Speaker 1: they substantiated this, is that Columpus was seeing manatees. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Have you seen manatees? Yeah, it looks nothing like a human.
Speaker 1: From enough of a distance, though, you're like, wait, what
Speaker 1: is that, especially if you've never seen a manatee before.
Speaker 1: I don't think it looks human like at all. But
Speaker 1: from enough of a distance. Yeah, I can see how
Speaker 1: somebody would, especially if you believe that mermaids existed. You
Speaker 1: see a manatee, maybe it's hard for me to totally
Speaker 1: get that go there in that put my mind in
Speaker 1: that kind of frame, in the frame of Christopher Columbus, well,
Speaker 1: just to have never seen a mermaid, to have never
Speaker 1: seen a manatee, to be high on on the aarrow
Speaker 1: wax scalps, like I just blanked on the green marijuana,
Speaker 1: the green, the green drink absinthe I don't think Absinthe
Speaker 1: was around with Columbus. Are you kidding me? No, I'm not.
Speaker 1: You're shooting that stuff. Kind of see it. Uh so
Speaker 1: he maybe saw a manatee. I was like, yeah, they're
Speaker 1: not so great looking. After all, they're not that great.
Speaker 1: What's everyone talking about? Uh? Yeah, he saw one. This
Speaker 1: is like Jimmy Carter in the UFOs. Like you're kind
Speaker 1: of surprised when you hear this that somebody sited it.
Speaker 1: Apparently Reagan said he saw UFOs as well. Uh. John
Speaker 1: Smith said he saw some. He liked what he saw.
Speaker 1: He liked the look of the manatees because he said
Speaker 1: he fell in love with one with long green hair. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he said it was it wasn't bad looking, or it
Speaker 1: wasn't unattractive or something like that. Yeah, it was kind
Speaker 1: of a head. He hedged his bets a little bit.
Speaker 1: I guess he wanted to check the rest of her
Speaker 1: out and then he saw she had a tale, is like, oh,
Speaker 1: I can't go there, So what's going on here? They're
Speaker 1: hallucinating because they've been on the high seas too long.
Speaker 1: That's what a lot of people say. Um, other people
Speaker 1: say that again, they were predisposed to believing in mermaids
Speaker 1: because people thought mermaids existed. This were This was the
Speaker 1: age of exploration, So it's the beginning of the age
Speaker 1: of exploration, which means that before then the oceans were
Speaker 1: largely unexplored and there were tons of beliefs in thousands
Speaker 1: year thousands of year old mythologies about creatures that lived
Speaker 1: in the sea. So if you thought that those things existed,
Speaker 1: then something that looked kind of like a mermaid could
Speaker 1: be a mermaid. So that was probably if they were
Speaker 1: just they're just cases of mistaken identity. They were highly suggestible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we did. Yeah, that was a good one. I thought
Speaker 1: that one was going to be awful and it turned
Speaker 1: out pretty great episode. Like I remember remember thinking like
Speaker 1: this is not going to go well and kind like
Speaker 1: kind of like this one. Yeah, how do you think
Speaker 1: this one's going pretty great? All right, let's take a
Speaker 1: break then and uh give each other a neck rub,
Speaker 1: and we'll come back more comfortable than ever. All Right,
Speaker 1: there is a dude. I love this guy. His name
Speaker 1: is Carl Bants and he did not Carl Bands fan. Well,
Speaker 1: I just I'm not quite sure I understand unless did
Speaker 1: you read the go ahead the article? Well, just to
Speaker 1: set it up. Okay, So dude named Carl Bants back,
Speaker 1: he wrote a an article in a legitimate journal, the
Speaker 1: Journal Limnology and Oceanography. Um, and they published it. And
Speaker 1: it is an entirely tongue in cheek but totally played
Speaker 1: straight account of the extinct species mermaid. Yeah. Like wherein
Speaker 1: he he surmises on like for real, where they came from,
Speaker 1: what their biology was, where they while they left us? Yep,
Speaker 1: that they were warm water dwelling, that they ate human flesh,
Speaker 1: which is why they lured people to their death. Um.
Speaker 1: He goes so far as to say that they um
Speaker 1: most likely only produced one or two offspring at a
Speaker 1: time because the females of the of the species had
Speaker 1: two breasts, and that was it. Okay, you know, sure, um,
Speaker 1: Like this is the thought that this guy put into
Speaker 1: this this article, and the fact that he writes it
Speaker 1: totally straight and like really gives it its due attention,
Speaker 1: Like it wasn't that that, like this is gonna be
Speaker 1: a great idea, and just the idea itself is hilarious,
Speaker 1: so I don't really have to put any effort into
Speaker 1: actual execution. He put effort into the execution and it did.
Speaker 1: He did pretty good. I'm not knocking him. I guess.
Speaker 1: I just don't see why this journal would put something
Speaker 1: like that out there. Even I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess he had a good sense of humor and
Speaker 1: they were Maybe it was the April Fools episode. I
Speaker 1: was wondering if that was the case too, and I
Speaker 1: forgot to look if it was the April issue. Perhaps
Speaker 1: he did use the words horny skinfolds though, right, their
Speaker 1: skin and he theorized was not smooth, smooth scaled like
Speaker 1: a regular fish. But I had quote horny skinfolds like
Speaker 1: an armadillo. Yeah. What's interesting is I saw another account
Speaker 1: from eighteen thirty in Scotland. There's a kind of a
Speaker 1: town called Benbecula on the Outer Hebrides, right, which is
Speaker 1: like the outer Islands, the Arca Archipelago. It's archipelago. That's
Speaker 1: how you say that, right, Ture arcapela ago. Yeah, either way,
Speaker 1: there's a town there, string of islands, coastal thank you,
Speaker 1: the coastal town where in eighteen thirty the whole town
Speaker 1: swore they saw a mermaid and tried to grab the mermaid,
Speaker 1: and the mermaid swam away. So some kid threw a
Speaker 1: rock at it and hit it in its back, and
Speaker 1: two days later they found it dead on shore and
Speaker 1: they felt so bad about it that they they they
Speaker 1: buried it. They gave it a funeral with like a
Speaker 1: casket and everything, and um they said that it didn't
Speaker 1: have scales, that it had like kind of rough skin
Speaker 1: instead hornie skinfold. Yeah, they didn't use that term. But
Speaker 1: this is like a thing in eighteen thirty in Scotland. Yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty interesting that when you read the account of it
Speaker 1: years later. The band name by the Wayne Skinfolds. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is interesting. Uh, maybe there's something there, right, I
Speaker 1: had to keep the folds of the arny skinfold clean
Speaker 1: you know, but like gunk gets trapped in there. I
Speaker 1: don't know. Maybe that's the name of the first single
Speaker 1: cleaning the folds. The other thing um that A Bants
Speaker 1: did in his article was explained probably why they're extinct.
Speaker 1: Now he came to the conclust right their extinct um.
Speaker 1: He said they were warm water, so they would have
Speaker 1: cohabitated or shared the their ecosystem with jellyfish. And as
Speaker 1: humans started to fish more and more of the sea, um,
Speaker 1: we upset the ecological balance. Jellyfish populations were allowed to boom,
Speaker 1: which is the case, and they stung the mermaids to death.
Speaker 1: Because the mermaids had they lacked the blubber that would
Speaker 1: protect them not just in cold water, but from jellyfish
Speaker 1: stings as well. So they died out from jellyfish stings. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because their their upper skin was just regular skin. It
Speaker 1: wasn't the horny skin folds, so it provided no protection exactly.
Speaker 1: It's worth reading. Go check it out. It's called Mermaids
Speaker 1: the Biology. Their biology coal True in Demise. You can
Speaker 1: find like the full pdf online. Well, I think we
Speaker 1: have to address the animal planet snaphoo. I don't know
Speaker 1: if they would call it a snaphoo, I think they
Speaker 1: would call it a ratings bonanza. Yeah, Which what was
Speaker 1: the other when we talked about the Megalodon when Discovery
Speaker 1: Channel aired a Megalodon documentary that appeared by all accounts
Speaker 1: to be true and was not the same thing with Mermaids,
Speaker 1: But they did it twice. They did they did a
Speaker 1: sequel because it got like you said, huge ratings and uh,
Speaker 1: this was a documentary. Um, well, not a documentary. It
Speaker 1: was a mockumentary that looked like did you watch any
Speaker 1: clips or anything of the second one? Yeah? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it looked like, you know, a show like a
Speaker 1: hunting Bigfoot crew. It's like, you know, we got this mermaid,
Speaker 1: we know where she is, and we're down here hunting
Speaker 1: and the three thousand feet yeah, below the surface. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they interviewed a guy that looked like Zack Gallifinakis.
Speaker 1: If only it would have been Zacal Fineckis, it would
Speaker 1: have made it much better. But um, you know then
Speaker 1: it was one of these shows where at the end
Speaker 1: and small lettering it was right, not me small, but
Speaker 1: at the end of the credits, it's like this was
Speaker 1: all made up. These are actors and yeah, but if
Speaker 1: you go online, people are still like arguing over the
Speaker 1: the legitimacy or credentials of the marine geologist Torsten Schmidt's
Speaker 1: name it is um and people are like, well, if
Speaker 1: he were a real scientist, he would have been published
Speaker 1: elsewhere besides this, and he's not published, and it's like
Speaker 1: that's because he's not real. He's made up. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is like settled. Right. They didn't even pretend that it
Speaker 1: was real, So I don't I don't know if that's
Speaker 1: the case or not, because I mean, they said it
Speaker 1: wasn't on the at the end of the show, okay,
Speaker 1: but they didn't come out and say everybody, everybody, well right,
Speaker 1: it's so Actually Noah, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Speaker 1: had to release in They felt they needed to release
Speaker 1: a statement after the first one saying like, hey, um,
Speaker 1: her maids don't exist. No evidence has ever been found.
Speaker 1: We're Noah the end, And I bet they love that
Speaker 1: even show. Yeah, oh my god, Noah's making a statement. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be all over the news, right, And so
Speaker 1: I guess enough people bought it and and um bought
Speaker 1: into it that they were able to release a sequel,
Speaker 1: and in the sequel, the reason they released the sequel
Speaker 1: was because Torsten Schmidt had footage of a webbed hand
Speaker 1: like smacking the windshield that was little like um underwater
Speaker 1: subw man sub um and then swimming off. And so
Speaker 1: they just kept showing that over and over and over again,
Speaker 1: and it was Sack Gallif and Akis. He did look
Speaker 1: like him, Tony a lot um. I thought you were
Speaker 1: going to say that it was found out when Torsten
Speaker 1: Schmidt showed up on a episode of Two Broke Girls
Speaker 1: the next week. Right, it's like a waiter and a
Speaker 1: progressive insurance add it's like customer and over two exactly.
Speaker 1: There's one other sighting. I wanted to mention this one,
Speaker 1: the second for my favor after the Scottish one. It
Speaker 1: was in Adam, Netherlands. Is it eat him? Sure? Like
Speaker 1: the cheese? Yeah? Okay. Um. Two girls were like rowing
Speaker 1: their boats and found a mermaid and took it home
Speaker 1: and dressed it up as a little girl and taught
Speaker 1: it to live on land. But it remained mute its
Speaker 1: whole life. Yeah, but isn't that cute? That very cute.
Speaker 1: They're like, you're coming home with us, Oh, you've got
Speaker 1: a family. Ts, we got a family too, and it's
Speaker 1: your new family. And they just made that story up
Speaker 1: and told people and it survived. I guess interesting, although
Speaker 1: they didn't they supported they didn't apparently like they matriculated
Speaker 1: the mermaid into human society there. But we're talking fourteen thirty,
Speaker 1: so who knows what was going on. They were eating.
Speaker 1: They probably got their hands on on somebody who was
Speaker 1: like who knows, and they're like, oh, mermaid, this is
Speaker 1: a mermaid. Oh, just someone who had some sort of
Speaker 1: physical and made them come live with them, just as
Speaker 1: a girl for the rest of their life, like Schlitze
Speaker 1: or something. Yeah, like we did in the Freak shows.
Speaker 1: They would just call them, make up whatever animal they
Speaker 1: wanted to. That was another great episode. Two are you
Speaker 1: just recounting the good ones while we do this one?
Speaker 1: Just to remind people it gets better? So being a
Speaker 1: mermaid is an actual job you can get if you
Speaker 1: back in the day. In the nineteen forties and fifties,
Speaker 1: it was a big hit, uh to go to a
Speaker 1: like a sea park and have mermaid shows, and specifically
Speaker 1: one in is it wiki Watchie Springs? Yeah, WEEKI Watchee
Speaker 1: Springs Florida near Tampa. And uh, it was a booming
Speaker 1: business back then. They said, um, between half million and
Speaker 1: a million tourists every year, including big famous people like
Speaker 1: Elvis Presley and Don Knots. Yeah, those are the two
Speaker 1: they mentioned. Those two would trash and place together. Oh
Speaker 1: I bet Don gets into the whiskey. It's all over. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it was a huge steal back then. They're
Speaker 1: still doing it there today. But it is a real job.
Speaker 1: You can um, you can go if you're a great swimmer,
Speaker 1: like you have to know what you're doing. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: Like it seems like, oh, yeah, you just put on
Speaker 1: that that tail, but that tail is is heavy and awkward.
Speaker 1: Well but yeah, and plus like somewhat buoyant swimming with
Speaker 1: your legs together. Yeah, that's hard, very difficult. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not an easy job from what I can tell. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so apparently once you put like they look very graceful,
Speaker 1: uh swimming around in those things. But you go put
Speaker 1: one on and get in a pool and see what happens.
Speaker 1: Right in this article, I think rightly points out that
Speaker 1: the professional mermaids that you see today are um like
Speaker 1: this is from years and years and years of practice,
Speaker 1: Like they didn't just get in the water and they're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm a natural, yeah exactly. Um, it's really awkward. And
Speaker 1: you also have to know how to hold your breath
Speaker 1: like a mo like a mo yeah it's not myself,
Speaker 1: Yeah you do. And you have to learn how to
Speaker 1: swim the mermaid crawl, which is what they name it.
Speaker 1: But you know it's not like regular swimming. Uh yeah, right,
Speaker 1: you know. And you can make a little dough too,
Speaker 1: a little bit. It said. You can be hired like
Speaker 1: as a one off for a party. What is that?
Speaker 1: Like you go to like a neighborhood pool and everyone
Speaker 1: gathers around, like, look at the mermaid claps out of rhythm.
Speaker 1: That's so fun. You're like, what do you guys want
Speaker 1: me to do? I guess you can do that. But
Speaker 1: the most mostly what I've seen are like the shows
Speaker 1: in some like Sleepy Florida town right like Gator Farm
Speaker 1: and the start in the in the WEEKI watching Mermaids
Speaker 1: or like at resorts or something like that. Yeah, back
Speaker 1: when they used to love that kind of thing. Uh.
Speaker 1: And some of these um professional mermaids apparently use their
Speaker 1: uh status as a soapbox for ecology and efforts to
Speaker 1: keep the oceans clean. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: seems to be a real thread of that running through
Speaker 1: the professional mermaid culture. You're like an eco activists. That's
Speaker 1: a decent band name too, professional mermaid culture. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: one was rich with bands name Horny Skinfolds. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: if you want to know more about mermaids, you can
Speaker 1: type that word in the search bart how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. And since I said search bar, it's time
Speaker 1: for listener mail. Actually in lieu of listener mail today, Uh,
Speaker 1: we are going to ask you for something because we
Speaker 1: people also often say like how can I help the show? Uh,
Speaker 1: Spreading the word is awesome. We always appreciate that. But
Speaker 1: one thing we haven't asked you to do in a
Speaker 1: long time is to go to iTunes and leave a review.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, because that makes a big difference if there
Speaker 1: are reviews, even if they're not favorable. Just be honest
Speaker 1: with your conscience about your conscience. And uh, yeah, I
Speaker 1: go to iTunes leave a review for us, because just
Speaker 1: having reviews is a good thing. And UM, tell a
Speaker 1: friend help spread the word. I feel like years go
Speaker 1: by before we say things like this. Yeah, well I
Speaker 1: think literally that's the case. Yeah, it's been a long time,
Speaker 1: so we really appreciate the way the show was built
Speaker 1: was on word of mouth largely. We really count on that,
Speaker 1: So tell a friend go to iTunes and leave a recommendation.
Speaker 1: And um, the other thing that we also need our
Speaker 1: more jingles. Oh yeah, these jingles that you hear, these
Speaker 1: bumpers are from fans and listeners, musicians, very kind ones. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they really enjoy doing it and we love throwing
Speaker 1: them out there. So send us your jingle and um,
Speaker 1: we can't promise we'll use it, but we probably will, yeah,
Speaker 1: because they're pretty great. Yeah. So that's all I got. Well. Thanks.
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