Speaker 1: If you're dead and you can't do anything else, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't run around cursing people too for less easy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what's this nigger got the sniffles? I'm gonna beats. I
Speaker 1: don't like how that shirt fits on you. Y'all. Every
Speaker 1: shirt you try and gonna look bad. Yeah, you're gonna
Speaker 1: be real stuff conscious when you wear them too, You're
Speaker 1: gonna know they look bad. It ain't gonna be one
Speaker 1: of them things where you're like, I look good for
Speaker 1: other people are like, Now, I don't think that works.
Speaker 1: You go, no, bitch, chips in your racist money, mars
Speaker 1: man in terms stuff you can't tell me. Yep, there
Speaker 1: it is there, It is there. It is. Ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 1: Welcome to another phenomenon devastating episode of My Mama Told Me,
Speaker 1: the podcast where we died deep, deep into the pockets
Speaker 1: of black conspiracy theories and we finally worked to prove
Speaker 1: that George Washington Carver discovered over three hundred uses for
Speaker 1: the peanut, but he had zero uses for these nuts.
Speaker 1: Do you know why? Because he was castrated as a
Speaker 1: young boy. That's right. They took that man's testicles away
Speaker 1: from him, and that horrible and unfair thing happened, but
Speaker 1: I believe it was the exact motivation he needed to
Speaker 1: focus all of that other energy on other kinds of nuts,
Speaker 1: no distractions. It's like how that old saying goes when
Speaker 1: a ball nut closes a peanut opens. Huh, guys know
Speaker 1: that classic saying that everybody says, It's it's a tale
Speaker 1: is all this time? I'm your host, Lankston Herman. I'm
Speaker 1: happy to be here. What a what a lovely, lovely
Speaker 1: happy experience we have for you today, my guest, and
Speaker 1: I should say this before my guest comes on. When
Speaker 1: I was looking up information about George Washington Carver, one
Speaker 1: of the first things that pops up when you type
Speaker 1: in George Washington Carver is George Washington Carver, did he
Speaker 1: own slaves? And Uh. That's a real sad question for
Speaker 1: the Internet to have produced and really makes me feel
Speaker 1: like America is hopeless and we deserve to die from
Speaker 1: whatever virus. It doesn't have to be Corona, it can
Speaker 1: be a way sillier virus. But we don't deserve to
Speaker 1: keep living one way or the other. Anyway, my guest today,
Speaker 1: he deserves to keep living. He's a good guy. Not
Speaker 1: only is he a good person, he's a phenomenal artist.
Speaker 1: He's one of these people that I'm immensely jealous of
Speaker 1: because of his his many many skills. He is solely responsible,
Speaker 1: no help. He made our theme music, he made the
Speaker 1: artwork for this project. He he is the artist behind
Speaker 1: so much of this. I just talked ship. This motherfucker
Speaker 1: puts in the work. You guys are gonna love him.
Speaker 1: A dear friend of hilarious person Mr Nick Chambers. Every money, Hello, Hello, Hello,
Speaker 1: crowd is coming through. Great. Oh yeah, now they're here.
Speaker 1: You made that theme music and they're like, what's up?
Speaker 1: And let's be clear you you wrote some of the lyrics,
Speaker 1: but I did. I wrote the less funny lyrics in
Speaker 1: the UH. I wrote like three lyrics. I was like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, dog, just repeat it. And you were like,
Speaker 1: those are the ones that people quote to me. Though
Speaker 1: those are I was like, whila, bears are raisedst Like
Speaker 1: I get a fair amount of uh of response from
Speaker 1: But I do genuinely think the stuff about the ozone
Speaker 1: layer in the artians and the turkey stuff and is oh,
Speaker 1: just fantastic work. You really should be proud of yourself.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Yeah, nobody's gonna award you for it, and
Speaker 1: and frankly they shouldn't. It's this is a stupid, stupid
Speaker 1: thing you've done. But I'm really happy you did it.
Speaker 1: I'm grateful we have an amazing conspiracy theory to unpack today.
Speaker 1: I would argue it's new to me. I've never heard
Speaker 1: it before, certainly not one that was like, uh constantly
Speaker 1: in the lexicon of like ship that I heard growing up.
Speaker 1: I know that you come from a Jamaican home, so
Speaker 1: I have to imagine that there are some cultural sort
Speaker 1: of like connection to some of the things that were
Speaker 1: about to unpack. You said, and this is it's a
Speaker 1: fun one. You said. My mama told me if you
Speaker 1: point at a cemetery, all your fingers will fall off.
Speaker 1: Talk to me about that. Tell me more so, if
Speaker 1: you point episode there, all your things will fall off,
Speaker 1: and the only way to reverse it is to bite
Speaker 1: all of your fingers. Pre Okay, let's let's pause there
Speaker 1: for a second, because my fingers are falling off. So
Speaker 1: am I biting them preemptively? Exactly? You've pointed. You recognize
Speaker 1: you pointed. You bite them too, I guess reattach the
Speaker 1: nerves it's very medical. You bite all your fingers and
Speaker 1: then they won't fall off. I don't know what the
Speaker 1: time frame is in Well, That's what I'm wondering, is like,
Speaker 1: how quickly am I expected to uh to to notice
Speaker 1: this to bite down. I'm obviously aware of this wives tale,
Speaker 1: So why the funk am I pointing in the first place?
Speaker 1: I don't know, Like I asked, I asked, my parents
Speaker 1: are like, okay, so, and this is something that they
Speaker 1: told me long after I was a child because I
Speaker 1: was very scary as a kid. I couldn't show up,
Speaker 1: would have never been able to deal with this as
Speaker 1: a child. But uh, and going back and like asking
Speaker 1: like so weird, like who told you this? What what
Speaker 1: would happen to, Like, I don't know, just somebody my mom?
Speaker 1: And my mom said, I don't know, but it's a
Speaker 1: thing that I used to do as a kid. And
Speaker 1: my dad said, I don't know. It's from slavery. And
Speaker 1: I asked for more information and he's like, it's probably
Speaker 1: something left over. I don't understand. And and frankly, who
Speaker 1: can argue with slavery. It's not there's no retort to that.
Speaker 1: It's just like all right, it's from slavery, I guess slaves.
Speaker 1: If I'm a slave master and people sneak out at night,
Speaker 1: I would have been some horror stories like, yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a cemetery, this ghosts. You gotta bite your fingers, and
Speaker 1: why are you biting your fingers? They're coming up with
Speaker 1: the dogs. They're catching you so right, or even if
Speaker 1: it's a slave like being like, hey, didn't you kill
Speaker 1: my friend? He right over there, He's like, no, if
Speaker 1: you point your fingers gonna fall off, don't point it
Speaker 1: a ship. Get back to work. It's just you're just
Speaker 1: creating fear where fear wasn't, so you keep people in line.
Speaker 1: I think I think that's that's a respectable choice. I
Speaker 1: guess as a slave owner. The one, the one is
Speaker 1: The one thing I respect about slave owners is they
Speaker 1: came up with silly games to keep their slaves in mind. Slavery.
Speaker 1: Not a fan, but if you're gonna be a slave owner,
Speaker 1: you gotta do something silly. Tell him their fingers are
Speaker 1: gonna fall off? Why not? All right, talk to me
Speaker 1: a little bit about because I mentioned it in the preamble.
Speaker 1: But your parents are Jamaican, Yes, yes, do you think
Speaker 1: do you think that this comes from that, because I've
Speaker 1: never heard that before, Like, I don't think that's necessarily
Speaker 1: an American conspiracy if you will. Yeah, I haven't heard
Speaker 1: it anywhere else. And I looked up trying to find
Speaker 1: some information about I couldn't find anything. So I don't
Speaker 1: know which Marley came over this ship. I'll tell you
Speaker 1: right now, it's that Nigga Ziggy. That Nigga Ziggy was
Speaker 1: out of pocket when he came up with this ship.
Speaker 1: That's a classic Ziggy. You name somebody Ziggy, they're gonna
Speaker 1: have some weird thoughts. You're gonna say something crazy. You
Speaker 1: gotta keep up with his more talented brothers. He's gonna
Speaker 1: say something wild. It's interesting because even in looking this up,
Speaker 1: obviously this and I think some of my listeners would
Speaker 1: even want to argue about this ship somewhere on the internet.
Speaker 1: This falls probably closer to something that we qualify as superstition,
Speaker 1: right that, Like it's a little more about like the
Speaker 1: mythical than it is about like conspiratorial thing. But I
Speaker 1: personally would argue, and I'd be curious to hear your
Speaker 1: thoughts that I actually don't think there's that big of
Speaker 1: a difference between conspiracy and superstition. It's something that you're
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's necessarily proven, but you believe
Speaker 1: in its real to you, So I definitely would put
Speaker 1: it there. I think so. And then I think, you know,
Speaker 1: the reality is that conspiracies are just superstitionous that haven't
Speaker 1: had enough time to cook. You know what I mean that,
Speaker 1: like you give this one a thousand years or even
Speaker 1: like ship that that we think is like like right
Speaker 1: now people are arguing whether or not five G is
Speaker 1: sucking up our bodies, right, or whether or not five
Speaker 1: G is some sort of poisonous thing in the universe, right,
Speaker 1: And we're gonna argue about that as like a conspiracy
Speaker 1: or whatever. But you let that cook long enough, and
Speaker 1: a thousand years from now, if we live that long,
Speaker 1: somebody's gonna be like, hey, man, don't put yourself on
Speaker 1: below your waist, because if you put yourself on below
Speaker 1: your waist, you'll curse your family blood for generations. And
Speaker 1: that will know that that just means that, like, oh,
Speaker 1: cell phone waves were cooking your testicles, but they don't
Speaker 1: know that they're they're making it superstitions When it was
Speaker 1: conspiracy back when we were alive to it exactly. It's
Speaker 1: so weird thing because, like my parents are very religious,
Speaker 1: so for this ghost thing to be part of their
Speaker 1: their life is like a weird turn. I have believe
Speaker 1: like ghosts and monsters, no goat, But if if you
Speaker 1: mentioned like demons or the devil or anything, they're like
Speaker 1: on board, Like yeah, ghost, forget that. I don't believe
Speaker 1: any of that stuff. But have you ever seen any demon?
Speaker 1: My mom told us that she she witnessed someone being
Speaker 1: possessed in college. To this day, to this day, she
Speaker 1: maintains that she's you gotta unpack that a little bit.
Speaker 1: Tell me what happened where she's she witnessed the possession,
Speaker 1: then went to a trigg she just witnessed an exorcism,
Speaker 1: and then went off to the quad to her friends.
Speaker 1: You got pe soup on my notebook. It was it
Speaker 1: was this is in in Jamaica, and there was a
Speaker 1: girl who lived in her dorm who was into like
Speaker 1: weigi and spiritism and stuff. And she had a friend
Speaker 1: who was also into it, and so they were in
Speaker 1: like chapel and the and the preacher was talking. It
Speaker 1: was a religious school. So the preachers talking about you
Speaker 1: know Jesus, and and as you do. And I don't know,
Speaker 1: I felt the name he was talking about Jesus is weird.
Speaker 1: And the preacher was being a while that day. He
Speaker 1: was talking about like Ravioli and trap music. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but anyway, it was church. So he's talking about Jesus.
Speaker 1: And then the woman ran out and then people that
Speaker 1: sorry said something through her to the floor, and so
Speaker 1: they picked her up and her friend ran out. After
Speaker 1: they picked them up, brought them back to the dorm
Speaker 1: and for a long time they were like praying and
Speaker 1: trying to get Jesus out of that. My mom said that, um, there,
Speaker 1: in the name of Jesus, I tell I tell you
Speaker 1: to get out. And the woman who was trying to
Speaker 1: invoke Jesus to get rid of the demon, like every
Speaker 1: time she would go to say the name of Jesus,
Speaker 1: her tongue would curl up and prevented saying it. And
Speaker 1: then the luijiboard girl said in a voice that they
Speaker 1: had never heard before, who is this Jesus? So it
Speaker 1: turns out she was just possessed by gay black man
Speaker 1: and that's pretty cool. Titus Burgess came down to Jamaica,
Speaker 1: for weeks was possessing. Yeah, that's why. So she heard
Speaker 1: this voice, that's what she says. And what did she
Speaker 1: do after that? Did she run away? Was she? Did
Speaker 1: she stay and watched the whole thing? Like? What was
Speaker 1: her response? She watched the whole thing. And then they
Speaker 1: ended up sending the girl to the hospital. And then
Speaker 1: this was during like final exams time, so they canceled
Speaker 1: exams the next day because nobody in the door and
Speaker 1: really got any sleep because there was an exorcism going on.
Speaker 1: Oh and I would have paid somebody to pretend to
Speaker 1: be possessed during the middle of my finals. Sweet part
Speaker 1: of me thinks, like, was it is that? What the
Speaker 1: whole thing was? Like a study for the exam? You
Speaker 1: know what, they can't make you take a test if
Speaker 1: you feel with demons, I'm gonna pretend. I just pretend.
Speaker 1: That's that's fucking nuts, And that's it's such a weird
Speaker 1: to your point, that's such a weird thing for your
Speaker 1: parents to be like anti the possibility of ghosts or
Speaker 1: goblins or whatever it is, but fully committed to the
Speaker 1: ghosts and goblins of religious text that like, it's in
Speaker 1: essence the exact same thing it's just connected to a
Speaker 1: book that they read versus the ones that they didn't.
Speaker 1: It's it's almost like people fully believing in the Marvel
Speaker 1: universe but being like Batman gets a funk out of here.
Speaker 1: That ain't that ain't scripture. That ain't a part of
Speaker 1: what I. I subscribe to him and I ironed me
Speaker 1: and let's talk about that. But that means you in
Speaker 1: the Book of Tony Stark three verse Jarvis. Okay, so
Speaker 1: your parents tell you this. You said they didn't tell
Speaker 1: you until you got older? Yeah, at what point or
Speaker 1: was there a point where did you believe it? Were
Speaker 1: you at all? Like? Oh, maybe I gotta be careful
Speaker 1: about that. You know, the context of it was like
Speaker 1: we were talking about things that we believed as kids,
Speaker 1: and they came up in that context. So it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a stupid thing. Oh so they were acknowledging
Speaker 1: it's a stupid right, Okay, So that makes it a
Speaker 1: little easier. It's not like you're having a reason with
Speaker 1: your parents being like, you know, if you pointed a cemetary,
Speaker 1: you gotta bite your fingers otherwise bad boy's gonna fall off, right.
Speaker 1: It's like, why would you even tell me that. Just
Speaker 1: say that from when I point at the cemetery, don't
Speaker 1: it's like it's a snake bite, like we gotta come in,
Speaker 1: but it's like all the glue back in. It doesn't
Speaker 1: make sense. I don't know exactly what's happening with the fingers. Okay,
Speaker 1: So so they tell you this as something that they
Speaker 1: once believed. Did your parents grow up near each other.
Speaker 1: Did they know each other at a young age? No?
Speaker 1: I think around maybe college age is when they met.
Speaker 1: So it's something that they heard independently of each other.
Speaker 1: They lived kind of in the same area in Kingston,
Speaker 1: but I don't think they knew each other growing up. Sure,
Speaker 1: so it was enough they believed it enough that they
Speaker 1: they're stuck in their memories independently. And then they both
Speaker 1: were like, hey, by the way, you buy your fingers fingers,
Speaker 1: and that's how they met. Let's build a family together.
Speaker 1: We can make a little comedian musician baby together. Let's
Speaker 1: do that. They put the rings on each other's fingers
Speaker 1: with their mouths and bit the finger on the way.
Speaker 1: I like the idea that your father put the ring
Speaker 1: off first, and then your mom was like, you know
Speaker 1: what to do and then you had to bite that
Speaker 1: finger and it wasn't this actual thing, It was merely protection. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for the possibility that your fingers fall off. I want
Speaker 1: this ring to stay on for a long time. How much?
Speaker 1: Let me ask you this, because if you grew up
Speaker 1: in a pretty religious household, how much of that do
Speaker 1: you follow today? Are you a religious person? Do you
Speaker 1: believe in any of it? What stuck? If anything, I
Speaker 1: think there's a like in times of like stress and fear,
Speaker 1: it will come back, just like as a reflex. Sure. No,
Speaker 1: it's like I can't find my keyth Lord if you
Speaker 1: see them anywhere. Lord, please let this airplane stay all
Speaker 1: the way up in the air and not do some
Speaker 1: weird ship. Yeah. There was one Halloween where I went
Speaker 1: to UM. I was coming back from Vancouver and I'm
Speaker 1: on the plane and I'm I'm a nervous flyer. I
Speaker 1: do not like it. And I looked and there was
Speaker 1: a nun on the plane. I was like, okay, cool,
Speaker 1: she's here. She's like she's a liaison. Were good, And
Speaker 1: I remember it's Halloween, Like this lady could clear. So
Speaker 1: I'm just sitting there like quiet, like Lord, if that's
Speaker 1: if she's with you cool. If she's not and you're
Speaker 1: mad at her, just let my part of the plane
Speaker 1: land somewhere, right, because that could have easily just been
Speaker 1: a sinner. That could have been just a lady dressed
Speaker 1: as a nun, which is blasphemous, which gives God every
Speaker 1: reason to to flick your little airplane out of the sky,
Speaker 1: has punishment for the what this bitch is doing. Exactly,
Speaker 1: I didn't see the bottom have it could have been
Speaker 1: all actually none, nobody just cross covered panties and you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: thank God that this lady is here. I feel safe. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: you're going to hell. You're about to die. It's all.
Speaker 1: It makes me so frustrated, even watching the way that
Speaker 1: people behave on airplanes now, not even relation to just
Speaker 1: religion necessarily, although I do think that for me, it's
Speaker 1: like I believe that something's up there. I don't know
Speaker 1: what to call it or how if the books that
Speaker 1: we wrote have anything to do with it, but there's
Speaker 1: certainly I don't think that we just came up with
Speaker 1: us on our own. That said, they're like so many
Speaker 1: people refuse to follow basic airplane rules, and it feels
Speaker 1: like you like we're already spitting in God's face by
Speaker 1: flying up here. And you know what I mean, Like
Speaker 1: we're already breaking the rules. You don't, Yeah, close your
Speaker 1: fucking laptop, you idiot, Like you don't don't do the
Speaker 1: extra ship that even humans are Like, I I don't know,
Speaker 1: this might be too far. We probably shouldn't do this one.
Speaker 1: That's fucking crazy. How do you know better than the
Speaker 1: people who are running the plane? Right? And I don't.
Speaker 1: And to that point, I don't think that they know anything.
Speaker 1: So if they're telling me, okay, if they start off
Speaker 1: literally by being like, hey, y'all, here's what scares us,
Speaker 1: that's maybe that's how they need to rephrase the whole
Speaker 1: like airplane breakdown. Right, with all of our knowledge and
Speaker 1: study and training, this is the thing that we're not
Speaker 1: sure about. Yeah, would rattles my bones. That's when you
Speaker 1: leave your cell phone on by the time we take off.
Speaker 1: I don't know why, what's gonna happen? Maybe nothing, but
Speaker 1: boy do I get nervous And I'd be like, all right,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna turn my cell phone off. I would. I
Speaker 1: would be more comfortable with a with a pilot who's like, hey,
Speaker 1: I've been off the past couple of days just beat like,
Speaker 1: let me know it, this is we're gonna be hitting
Speaker 1: some terms. But hey, hey, whoa, who wasn't that crazy? Whoa?
Speaker 1: That ship was all right? All right, we gotta take
Speaker 1: a chill for us, like old on, I'm gonna land
Speaker 1: this bad boy and just re resettle myself because that
Speaker 1: was crazy. Comes on you just here, whoa, I ain't
Speaker 1: even gonna lie. We got some ship coming up on
Speaker 1: the radar that y'all ain't gonna funk with. And I
Speaker 1: don't funk with it either. Anyway. Enjoy the peanuts and
Speaker 1: uh and cocoa on your screens. We're only playing cocoa. Okay.
Speaker 1: Last question, So you're not a particularly religious person, you're
Speaker 1: not necessarily buying into their version of spirituality, at least
Speaker 1: as in terms of the fingers falling off? Are there
Speaker 1: any parts of things that they've said, like this that
Speaker 1: you were like, Oh, I can get with that. I
Speaker 1: see where that comes from, and I actually agree with that.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's agreeing, but the whole demon thing,
Speaker 1: like even though I don't know if I believe it's
Speaker 1: it's just like the cell phone on the airplane. It's
Speaker 1: like you know what. I don't know if they are
Speaker 1: demons in here, but let me just say Jesus a
Speaker 1: few times, just in case, so they know. I know.
Speaker 1: It's like cocking cocking a shotgun. I like that. You
Speaker 1: think Jesus is like beetlejuice, and if you say his
Speaker 1: name or a certain number of times, he's just gonna
Speaker 1: pop up and do cool shit. I think Jesus. I
Speaker 1: think Jesus is busier, right, I just see that as
Speaker 1: this page or number. I wanted to know that, Like, ay,
Speaker 1: I called you, you could call me back, come back ready,
Speaker 1: No rush, I get it. You're a busy dude. You
Speaker 1: got holes in your feet, in your hands. But whenever
Speaker 1: you're ready, just it's called me back. It's me Nick.
Speaker 1: By the way, it's Nick, your part time servant. It's Nick,
Speaker 1: the guy who only kind of believes in you. You know,
Speaker 1: when it's convenient for me. Do you remember? All right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a break. We'll be back with more
Speaker 1: Nick Chambers and more, my mama told me. And we
Speaker 1: are back. Yeah, we're back here with more Nick Chambers more.
Speaker 1: My mama told me. We're still talking about that. The
Speaker 1: possibility of your fingers falling off sort of uh Dory
Speaker 1: and Gray style. I guess if you point at a
Speaker 1: cemetery just turned to ash because you didn't nip on
Speaker 1: him right after you point. What do you think parents
Speaker 1: were trying to get you from from doing with the
Speaker 1: don't point at a cemetery because that's what a lot
Speaker 1: of these old wives sales are cooked in, is like
Speaker 1: allegories and lessons for being a better person. What's the
Speaker 1: fear for a young person pointing at a cemetery. I
Speaker 1: have no idea. I don't know. I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's like like respecting the dead or uh, just pointing
Speaker 1: in general, which is a long way to go to
Speaker 1: just to get kids to not point. Yeah, i'd say
Speaker 1: so you could have just said take your hat off
Speaker 1: when we when we're around the grave. But as they
Speaker 1: you're like view point before to god. Right. Somebody said
Speaker 1: it was like if the if you point at a cemetery,
Speaker 1: then the dead can see you and then they'll come
Speaker 1: and get you with some like that. I don't know. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I could see that, like you're building it's like pointing
Speaker 1: out a regular person almost where it's like you're opening communication. Yeah, yeah, now,
Speaker 1: you're being rude, so now I gotta retaliate. And the dead,
Speaker 1: I guess apparently are petty as ship and they're like
Speaker 1: that motherfucker pointed at me. You cursed, bitch, you cursed.
Speaker 1: All right, let's unpack some of this research. And we
Speaker 1: we talked a little bit about the way that superstition
Speaker 1: feels like it's it's sort of leading the way in
Speaker 1: this one. And I wanted to do a little research
Speaker 1: on like superstition as a as a belief system. How
Speaker 1: many people actually believe in superstitions in general, And apparently
Speaker 1: twenty five percent of Americans identify themselves as superstitious in
Speaker 1: some way, shape or form. They say that, yes, I
Speaker 1: would consider myself a superstitious person. That sounds about right. Okay,
Speaker 1: hell yeah, it was over your life, you would say.
Speaker 1: One and four people are like, ay, don't split that pole,
Speaker 1: don't right. It's things like that or like with sports
Speaker 1: kind of things, for sure, I think right, And and
Speaker 1: to that point, it's so cooked into even like the
Speaker 1: way that our systems work, right, superstition is kind of
Speaker 1: a part of everything. Like there's no floor in most
Speaker 1: hotel rooms, and that's just because somebody decided that was
Speaker 1: a bad number, and they were like, well, we can't
Speaker 1: get guests to sleep here, so we'll just get rid
Speaker 1: of the number. That's and it's still the thirteenth floor.
Speaker 1: It's just a different number floor number. Yeah, it's like, bitch,
Speaker 1: I know a fourteen eight means this ain't this ain't
Speaker 1: a trick. This is just thirteen. And you're not telling
Speaker 1: me that you think the bad luck is gonna get
Speaker 1: lost in the hotel was looking for calling down to
Speaker 1: the lobby like hey, I just I can't find my room.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. The is the third time I've called, but
Speaker 1: I just can't find my room. So yeah, even with that,
Speaker 1: this is something fascinating I didn't realize. But there are
Speaker 1: other superstitions that sort of follow that same trajectory in
Speaker 1: other places, right, Like I think we we often have
Speaker 1: a very Americanized view of like what numbers are bad
Speaker 1: or rules and ship But in China the number four
Speaker 1: is bad, Like they don't funk with the number four
Speaker 1: at all. So like I imagine that there's a bunch
Speaker 1: of things that they skip over with the number four
Speaker 1: because they don't funk with that. Or for example, in Brazil,
Speaker 1: this airline loof that loof Dans. I don't know how
Speaker 1: to pronounce it. I'm not from there, But they don't
Speaker 1: have a seventeenth row on their airline, right, But they
Speaker 1: don't tell you that there're seventeen rows. They say it's
Speaker 1: something else because they don't want people to think that,
Speaker 1: you know, they're sitting seventeen because apparently seventeen is bad.
Speaker 1: Does this say why these specific number? So did you
Speaker 1: do you know why they pick these specific numbers? No?
Speaker 1: I mean I think it's similar to us, where it
Speaker 1: just sort of like is a a old legend that
Speaker 1: bills and then it's less about them actually believing it
Speaker 1: and more about them preparing for people who do believe it. Right,
Speaker 1: It's a lot of these companies are just like saying like, look,
Speaker 1: I don't give a funk, I just want your money.
Speaker 1: But it does it's easier to get your money if
Speaker 1: you're not sitting there going I refuse to sit in
Speaker 1: the thirteenth row or the seventeenth row or whatever it is.
Speaker 1: I do really love the idea of there being a
Speaker 1: a Brazilian Friday the seventeen, which but just Brazilian Jason
Speaker 1: running around murdering people or Michael Myers. I thought, yeah,
Speaker 1: just Michael Myers with the airhorn. The mask is all
Speaker 1: colorful with the feathers and instead of the air it's
Speaker 1: just there's beautiful feathers just dancing towards you. He's wearing
Speaker 1: a mesh tank top. It looks good. Michael Myers looks good.
Speaker 1: Miguel Meyers, No, I don't know. I don't know Portuguese,
Speaker 1: I don't know Virgilian Portuguese, but I bet there's a
Speaker 1: Miguel down there. Miguel Myers looks great. Okay, so uh.
Speaker 1: Superstition apparently derives from the assumption that a connection exists
Speaker 1: between cocurring, non related events, basically meaning that if my
Speaker 1: fingers fall off after I pointed a cemetery, it's easy
Speaker 1: to point at the cemetery and blame that instead of examining,
Speaker 1: for example, why the funk I have leprosy? You know
Speaker 1: what I mean? Like, where did this leopardsy come from?
Speaker 1: And how did I get that as an adult? It's
Speaker 1: just someone trying to hide their leprosy from their friends.
Speaker 1: I I don't have leprosies. Just look at that cemetery
Speaker 1: over there. Oh god, oh man, the devil, don't got me. Demons,
Speaker 1: those cursed demons stole my fingers. Yeah, I think it's
Speaker 1: such a fascinating thing because at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: so much of superstition and so much of conspiracy theory.
Speaker 1: And this is something that the research sort of shows
Speaker 1: is that it's often connected to people's want for control,
Speaker 1: right that, like, you live in this uncontrollable environment. Everything
Speaker 1: is is chaotic and mayhem, and the easiest way to
Speaker 1: make sense of that chaos and mayhem is to say, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: here's a rule that I know how to follow. Here's
Speaker 1: the thing that I know. If I do this, at
Speaker 1: least I feel in charge of the whole thing, like
Speaker 1: they even said, like and some of the research I
Speaker 1: saw that that, uh, in Germany, between nineteen eighteen and
Speaker 1: nineteen forty, the measures of economic threat correlated directly with
Speaker 1: the measures of superstition. That like, superstition was going up,
Speaker 1: because between nineteen eighteen and nineteen forty, they the money
Speaker 1: was fucked up in Germany right there. Post World War One,
Speaker 1: pre World War Two, they're still like rebuilding as a country,
Speaker 1: and so they're being hyper superstitious and ship right, So
Speaker 1: who who is keeping track of the superstition number. I'm
Speaker 1: superstitious about that. Sure, yeah, okay, I'm here. I wasn't
Speaker 1: why what you're throwing down? But why? Why is that
Speaker 1: a thing that you've paid attention to, or how specifically
Speaker 1: during the time when a bunch of Jews are being killed? Like,
Speaker 1: why are you so focused on superstition right now when
Speaker 1: you could be helping your neighbors. Right, we don't want
Speaker 1: to print all that stuff. Let's print about the superstitions.
Speaker 1: Let's run that story first. Hey, hey, stop writing about
Speaker 1: these Jews. Man, don't you see all these black cats?
Speaker 1: Every Let's focus that's bad cats. I do a killer
Speaker 1: German impression. I don't know if because come look at
Speaker 1: the black cats. Mad just I love I just love language.
Speaker 1: That's my thing. Turkey isn't a German phrase. They're talking
Speaker 1: about actual turkey. Yeah, at the time, black people turned
Speaker 1: it into turned it into a cultural something else. But
Speaker 1: now they were talking about an actual turkey named jive.
Speaker 1: He was unlike in the German community. One of the
Speaker 1: things that I ended up finding in a lot of
Speaker 1: the research that I was unpacking is that there's actually
Speaker 1: quite a few other cemetery based conspiracy theories. In fact,
Speaker 1: I found a website that listed nearly like a hundred
Speaker 1: of them. I've listed one of my favorites, and I
Speaker 1: would love to get your reaction on a few of these.
Speaker 1: But one of them was being first to leave a
Speaker 1: cemetery after a funeral could bring you death. You'll die
Speaker 1: if you leave first. Yep, if you leave that funeral first,
Speaker 1: you might die. I mean we're already here. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: it's a scary thing to tell somebody, like, you know,
Speaker 1: if you leave version, you don't die, right. You know
Speaker 1: what it was? It was a very unlike person on
Speaker 1: their deathbed, like, you know, if you leave my funeral first,
Speaker 1: you go, there's a bunch of annoyed people standing around
Speaker 1: this grave like you about to leave. But I think
Speaker 1: that's there's something really really insightful in what you're saying.
Speaker 1: Is that so much of this while we make it
Speaker 1: something dramatic or something, you know, like something that's affecting
Speaker 1: the whole world, the reality is it's something that affected
Speaker 1: a few individuals, and they are so selfish and and
Speaker 1: sort of like self centered in all of this that
Speaker 1: they then make it a rule for everybody to follow.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean you, we don't all have
Speaker 1: to throw salt over our shoulder. You did, dog, you
Speaker 1: deal with You live in that salt needing life right right.
Speaker 1: You're the one with the saltless back. You deal with
Speaker 1: that ship. You got this unsalted back, My back as
Speaker 1: salty as funk. I'm fine. I don't need none of that.
Speaker 1: My shoulder plays of saltines, But tell me these ain't
Speaker 1: salty in my Here's another one that I thought was
Speaker 1: really interesting. They say, locking the door of your home
Speaker 1: after a funeral procession passes by is bad luck at
Speaker 1: what point, like as it's going by or later that day,
Speaker 1: just I believe they said. After which that part bugged
Speaker 1: me in the same way that they seemed to be
Speaker 1: bugging you, where it's like, okay, so I just gotta
Speaker 1: keep my door unlocked always. Now that feels a little
Speaker 1: like I used to watch the show True Blood. It's
Speaker 1: the whole vampire like they could only come in if
Speaker 1: you get invited. That seems like some backwards, like the
Speaker 1: ghosts can't operate a locked door after the possession, like
Speaker 1: leave it open for right, So they're saying, hey, just
Speaker 1: leave it open, let the ghost in, and then they'll
Speaker 1: leave you alone. But if you lock that door, they'll
Speaker 1: be piste and they'll want vengeance. Here's my personal favorite.
Speaker 1: A witch. This is a real supercision. A witch must
Speaker 1: be buried face down to prevent the community further supernatural spells.
Speaker 1: If this doesn't want work, unbury them and turn their
Speaker 1: clothes inside out, then rebury them face down. Say that,
Speaker 1: let's part again. Sure a witch. If you're gonna bury
Speaker 1: a which, you gotta bury your face down. That's that's
Speaker 1: what they're saying. And if you funk up and don't
Speaker 1: do that, you gotta dig her up, turn her clothes
Speaker 1: inside out, and then rebury her face down. Take your
Speaker 1: time with it. There's no there's no correct answer here.
Speaker 1: I'll be frank with you. It's again. I think it's
Speaker 1: just somebody got caught in a situation where they were
Speaker 1: digging up a lady. She was a witch. That's why
Speaker 1: she's naked because I had to turn It's just somebody
Speaker 1: in Salem, right. This is a man. This is a
Speaker 1: sick man who dug up a lady and wanted to
Speaker 1: fuck took her clothes off. Let's be honest. It was
Speaker 1: a man who was fucking corpses and somebody somebody walked
Speaker 1: up and was like, Hey, why the funk are you
Speaker 1: sticking your dick and that lady's butt? And you're like,
Speaker 1: oh what, Oh no, she'll witch. I gotta bury her
Speaker 1: face down and turn her clothes inside out. That's why
Speaker 1: she naked and my dick is inside of her. I
Speaker 1: had a much more wholesome idea that it's like a
Speaker 1: local dressmaker and he's trying to get his name out there,
Speaker 1: so he buried them. So the tag is out on
Speaker 1: the back, so you buried them, and people, Oh, this
Speaker 1: is let's go to listen. She dead, but she looked good.
Speaker 1: I'm wanting to that was this tagline. She did, but
Speaker 1: she looked good. Okay. The other thing that I sort
Speaker 1: of wanted to look into in terms of these theories
Speaker 1: around cemeteries is that it seems to be often be
Speaker 1: connected to threat of death and decay, right, which I
Speaker 1: have to assume comes from our history of terrible like
Speaker 1: burial practices and diseases that sometimes follow those burial practices.
Speaker 1: If you've watched any like old tiny television, you know
Speaker 1: these motherfucker's didn't watch their hands. They weren't like cleaning
Speaker 1: up properly after bodies. And I wanted to sort of
Speaker 1: like unpack, like what is our actual history with like clean,
Speaker 1: effective burial practices. And apparently there are example, horrible examples.
Speaker 1: There's a this ancient city in Turkey. I'm not even
Speaker 1: gonna pretend to pronounce this name, but it was not
Speaker 1: you know, the city of Jive, Turkey. Uh, nine thousand
Speaker 1: years ago, people used to bury their beloved under their
Speaker 1: houses as an attempt to separate themselves from their ancests
Speaker 1: or not separate themselves or out there from their ancestors
Speaker 1: emotionally or physically or smell. Yes, you just have a
Speaker 1: rotting corpse buried underneath your home because you want to
Speaker 1: be connected. Yeah, that's so, just as many people in
Speaker 1: your family died that under that's right, and I have
Speaker 1: there was some more people are dying because of this rotting,
Speaker 1: festering corpse underneath your home. And this is in what
Speaker 1: what is this? This was nine thousand years ago? So
Speaker 1: according to some people, the earth didn't exist yet, but
Speaker 1: according to it was BC. Let's just agree it was
Speaker 1: BC before before. And you know what, that's how they
Speaker 1: get that's how they get you before coffience is how
Speaker 1: you end up getting murdered by time. I guess I
Speaker 1: don't know, all right. This is another one that was
Speaker 1: pretty wild. It said that in some parts of ancient Greece,
Speaker 1: people used to put iron nails across the dead bodies
Speaker 1: to prevent an eventual undesired resurrection. Basically like, in order
Speaker 1: to prevent zombies from rising, they would basically nail parts
Speaker 1: of the body to the coffin, into the ground or
Speaker 1: to the ground, whatever it was. But you know, ship's
Speaker 1: gotta be juice, gotta be popping about that nail, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, It's gonna squirt right when we
Speaker 1: hit that nail in there. I've opened a caprice son
Speaker 1: before I know. So you're nailing the person to the coffin. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just in case the zombifying and get back up. But
Speaker 1: can't they just like I've seen zombie movies where they
Speaker 1: just whatever part of them is stuck, they just ripped
Speaker 1: that part off and keep coming. Yeah, well that's not
Speaker 1: what they believed in ancient Greece. Apparently an iron nail
Speaker 1: was enough for a zombie to be like, oh damn,
Speaker 1: they got I was gonna eat their brains. But never mind,
Speaker 1: that's cool, smart y'all, smart o y'all going to ben
Speaker 1: math or something that's cool. Right, And also, if you're
Speaker 1: coming from a time where you've been hearing stories about
Speaker 1: Jesus and Lazarus, people coming back to life is not
Speaker 1: too far fetched, I suppose, right, sure, they believed in resurrection,
Speaker 1: and for them it was it was more of which
Speaker 1: resurrections they liked and which ones they didn't. I guess
Speaker 1: they preferred certain resurrections over others. Who do you want
Speaker 1: to come back for another season? It was it was
Speaker 1: really American Idol study style voting to keep you underground
Speaker 1: or or around underground or around next year on Grecian television. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is the last piece of research that I sort
Speaker 1: of wanted to dig into because I do think that
Speaker 1: that left that leprosy and sort of like these conversations
Speaker 1: around like where so many of these conspiracies comes from
Speaker 1: is valid, right that, like a lot of it is
Speaker 1: diseases and sicknesses that we then blow up into something
Speaker 1: more extreme. And it turns out in my research, I
Speaker 1: found out that leopard see actually still exists in Jamaica
Speaker 1: today in this day and age. A lot to be
Speaker 1: proud of of your home country. But come on, but
Speaker 1: if fairly in five cases of leprosy were found in
Speaker 1: Jamaica alone, which I didn't even know was still a thing,
Speaker 1: You know what I mean? I mean, I guess if
Speaker 1: you're wearing so many mess shirts, it's too much bacteria
Speaker 1: falling in and out. You gotta cover some of that.
Speaker 1: All that daggering, somebody's gonna catch, right, you dagger till
Speaker 1: somebody's fingers fall along to the pieces to make a
Speaker 1: dance out of that. Yeah, I dropped the finger that.
Speaker 1: All right, we're gonna take one more break. We'll be
Speaker 1: back with more Nick Chambers and more, my mama told me.
Speaker 1: And we are back you know, no, no, no, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're back here with more Nick Chambers more. My mama
Speaker 1: told me. We're still talking about the horrors of leprosy
Speaker 1: that seemed to be overtaking Jamaica and the silly conspiracy
Speaker 1: theories that Nick's family came up with to help explain
Speaker 1: the fact that in leprosy still exists in I know,
Speaker 1: I thought that was a Bible disease and nothing else.
Speaker 1: I'm amazed. I'm shocked. Yeah, is anyone is Sean Paul
Speaker 1: on this in raising money. I love that. You know
Speaker 1: how a con is an Africa helping people get like
Speaker 1: electricity and building hospitals and shipped. I would love it
Speaker 1: if Sean Paul just dedicated all his energy to leprosy.
Speaker 1: That's it, he's gonna get rid of it. Don't touch.
Speaker 1: This music has changed. He used to touch all the time,
Speaker 1: but now he's like, don't, don't do it. It's got
Speaker 1: social distancing. Jamaican dance hall music man Daggering from Afar
Speaker 1: made my FaceTime. All right, let's play a game. This
Speaker 1: is a very fun game that I like to play.
Speaker 1: You know it, you love it. It's a game called
Speaker 1: White Ugly. You're disgusting. I'm gonna kill you. Give me
Speaker 1: two alright, white lies. This is a fun game where Nick,
Speaker 1: I'm going to introduce to you a widely held conspiracy
Speaker 1: theory in the white community, conspiracy theory that many whites
Speaker 1: seem to believe in. And what I would love for
Speaker 1: you to do is unpack why you think this conspiracy
Speaker 1: theory is so important to white people. What do you
Speaker 1: think it is that they believe in? What are these
Speaker 1: sneaky motherfucker's up to you give what I'm saying the
Speaker 1: conspiracy theory for you, And this is a new one
Speaker 1: for me. I had not heard this before, but apparently
Speaker 1: there's a fair amount of people who believe that the
Speaker 1: Queen of England is a cannibal, that she that she
Speaker 1: eats humans, and that is how she maintained for this
Speaker 1: long that she's now whatever, ninety five years old, and
Speaker 1: part of the way that she stayed so youthful and
Speaker 1: stayed in power is by eating the flesh of other
Speaker 1: human beings. My question for you, why do you think
Speaker 1: that white people think that the Queen Elizabeth the second
Speaker 1: is a cannibal? Well, when you say white people, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna assume you mean white men. Sure, so I think
Speaker 1: for an a white man to see a white woman
Speaker 1: or any woman in power, there's got to be something.
Speaker 1: There's got to be something wrong with her. She gotta
Speaker 1: be do something, doing some evil. So there's no King's
Speaker 1: how that gotta be right? That is that, like you know,
Speaker 1: Philip would be the king. But the bitch keep telling her,
Speaker 1: telling them she gonna eat them, keep saute and her
Speaker 1: servants keep Philip be like cool, I just back off.
Speaker 1: She's crazy. You want to be king, but she won't
Speaker 1: let him because she's crazy. It's it's crazy. It's wild
Speaker 1: out there in England. Which which fork is the human fork?
Speaker 1: The way they said they have the whole spread? Which
Speaker 1: for it? That's the one she keep in her pocket.
Speaker 1: That's a private fort, you know what I mean. It's
Speaker 1: strapped to her thigh guard a boat. This one's as
Speaker 1: the one she waits till like a door get shut
Speaker 1: too quick, and it's like just one of those slaves
Speaker 1: that they don't call slaves no more in there because
Speaker 1: they're slaves. I'm watching the crown right now, and that's slavery.
Speaker 1: I don't give a funk what they say, right, I
Speaker 1: don't care how many trumpets you put before. It's exactly it.
Speaker 1: I walk into a room and then another, like a
Speaker 1: more important person comes into the room, and I bow,
Speaker 1: and they go, get the funk out of here, bitch,
Speaker 1: and I gotta just scurry off. I'm forty. No, I'm
Speaker 1: a slave. If I'm forty and I gotta scurry, I'm
Speaker 1: a slave. If words have make you run out the room, yeah,
Speaker 1: words from an old lady. Yeah, let's let's look if
Speaker 1: this is a job like you keep telling me it is.
Speaker 1: Let's make this a professional setting. Give me an HR,
Speaker 1: give me a somebody that that can answer my concerns.
Speaker 1: But if you're gonna make me scurry, then just admit
Speaker 1: I'm a slave, and let's let's move forward. Honestly, exactly,
Speaker 1: there's no Her Majesty's hr. Yes and frankly, and I'm
Speaker 1: willing to start this conspiracy theory. Now, I'm not unconvinced
Speaker 1: that the Queen isn't sexually assaulting a fair amount of
Speaker 1: those uh servants, know what I mean. That's why she
Speaker 1: aliveed so long. She got that what she's still she's
Speaker 1: she's she's just stand in the hallway and you gotta bow.
Speaker 1: It's like further down, keep bowing, not low enough, you
Speaker 1: know where I like it. And then when she's done,
Speaker 1: she rings a bell and that servant gotta scurry out,
Speaker 1: fucking nutcase, bring me the scurrying bell. I'm clum clog.
Speaker 1: I do to think there's so much of this history
Speaker 1: that that is it's absurd and it's cooked in the
Speaker 1: weird thing within. This goes back to your point with
Speaker 1: the monarchy, is that they are almost being progressive, right,
Speaker 1: They're almost introducing this idea that a woman can be
Speaker 1: in charge of an entire country before a lot of
Speaker 1: other places are willing to do that, which you could
Speaker 1: argue as a cool thing, But even in doing that,
Speaker 1: there's so much undermining that happens in placing this woman
Speaker 1: in this position of power. So she's not truly in charge.
Speaker 1: She's just a figurehead that puts on army clothes sometimes,
Speaker 1: but it's not You're not actually this powerful figure. And
Speaker 1: so to your point, there's probably a bunch of dudes
Speaker 1: who are sitting back like, you know, the bitch don't
Speaker 1: do nothing. We were the real power is the man,
Speaker 1: but they the only explanation is she eat kids or
Speaker 1: whatever it is. That's yeah, it's surely nuts. Well, Nick,
Speaker 1: I think we did it. I think we we nailed
Speaker 1: this episode. I think I think that was what a
Speaker 1: beautiful time. Could you tell the people at home where
Speaker 1: they can find you, what cool stuff do you have
Speaker 1: going on? Sure? I'm Chambers Comedy on social media. Do
Speaker 1: a podcast with Towanda Gonna called Towandah's Life Requests where
Speaker 1: we uh it's a musical advice shows and people come
Speaker 1: in with situations that they're going through into one to
Speaker 1: prescribe them a song to listen to to help them
Speaker 1: with that situation. Hell yeah, it's a beautiful time. Nick
Speaker 1: is a beautiful man. The artwork is beautiful, the music
Speaker 1: is beautiful. Please go and follow him, and as always,
Speaker 1: like and subscribe. I would like for more people to
Speaker 1: like and subscribe to this thing. Apparently you got to
Speaker 1: say that to people. But please like and subscribe and
Speaker 1: write comments. I like the comments. They make me feel good.
Speaker 1: I read and check for him every day, despite the
Speaker 1: fact that that seems like a psychopathic way of living.
Speaker 1: I I go on there every day hoping there's a
Speaker 1: new comment for me to read. And I would love
Speaker 1: to read yours. Uh, And it's always. If you would
Speaker 1: love to send me stuff, you can send it to
Speaker 1: my Mama pod at gmail dot com my mama pod
Speaker 1: at gmail dot com. Otherwise, by bitch, because my crop
Speaker 1: chips in your mails. Qualitators are racist. The mostly lay
Speaker 1: mostly money stuff I can't tell me