February 2, 2021 • 49 mins
You know Groundhog Day – the holiday on February 2 when you wake up and have to go through the same day over and over again. It turns out the holiday has deep roots in a pagan past, and has survived in a surprisingly similar form.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W Chuck Bryan over there, and Jerry's
right over there. Uh, Internet speaking wise, and this is
Stuff you should Know, a special holiday edition that comes
(00:25):
out on the holiday. Chuck, Now, is this can we
call this a holiday? Yeah? Groundhog Day is definitely a holiday.
Are you not a pagan? Well no, I just thought
holidays meant like work. You don't work in businesses, clothes.
I there's gotta be somebody that's closed on groundhog Day. Well,
(00:46):
I bet certain people in a certain town. Well, actually
they're probably everything's open because they're they're just doing this
to make money, right. They would be total fools if
they're like, yeah, I always close on groundhog Day. I
didn't think that through. So um, yeah, we'll get to
that town in a little bit. But first, Chuck, let's
talk about groundhogs themselves. Because if you don't know what
(01:06):
groundhog Day is, don't worry. This isn't one of those
ones where we need to define it for you. Just
kick back and relax and like, let us guide you
down the river of knowledge. Okay right. Uh. Groundhogs a
k a. Wood Chuck's podcast. Whistle pigs another name they are,
(01:29):
uh you know what they are? There, beautiful? Um. They
weigh twelve or fifteen pounds. They live. Put a pin
in this stat They live six to eight years. That
will come back later. They eat veggies and fruits. They're
called whistle pigs sometimes because they whistle if they're scared
or if they're looking for a mate. It's more of
a chirping sound to me. Yeah, but chirping pigs is
(01:51):
not as fun as whistle pig. That explains that high
end bourbon. Though I had no idea why it was
called whistle pig, but it's named after ground. Whistle pig.
Is that high end? Yeah, it's pretty good. Okay, it's
the kind they keep behind the counter. Well, it's on
my shelf. I don't drink a lot of bourbon. But oh,
we'll go turn it up right now while we're recording.
(02:13):
Tell us what you think. All right, I'm back and
I'm hammered everyone. Uh. They can climb trees, they can swim,
and they hibernate in late fall. And this is kind
of one of the important parts of wood chucks and
groundhogs and how they figure in the groundhog day. They
hibernate in the fall and their body temperatures drop, that
heartbeat slows down from eight to about five beats a minute,
(02:36):
they lose a lot of body fat, and then the
males in February come out and say, who wants to
do it? Right? What's crazy, though, is when they come out,
they don't actually do it. They more like make plans
for later. It's they're nervous. It's really weird. And the
reason why they do this they literally break hibernation, which
(02:56):
can kill them if they do it wrong and the
timing is wrong or they don't have enough body fat
stow it up. They do it because groundhogs are so
ornerary toward one another. They're really territorial about their food
supply and their burrow that they've probably made a lot
of enemies and heard a lot of feelings over the
past year. So they come out in February to basically
(03:18):
be like, hey, how about you and I just bury
the hatchet and I'm gonna go back to sleep for
a few more weeks. But when I come out, we'll
totally do it, and I'm going to bury something out
and oh my god, and uh they do. There's some
sort of agreement, uh, and they see each other a
few weeks later. The groundhog goes back to his burrow
(03:40):
and then he comes out for good. He finishes hybridating
in March, and then the the groundhog fornication can begin
forth with post taste. And that nuts. That's how ordnery
they are. They have to come out and make plans
for later. Yeah, they need a which is that chill
(04:00):
time in between two to really gather themselves and make
sure they're up for it. So that's super cute. That's
a nice little primer on who these little beasts are.
But this is about Groundhog Day, the holiday where America
shuts down, government doesn't do business, the banks are closed.
(04:21):
Can't buy a piece of gum to save your life.
Oh man, if only so, get that gum on February one, everybody, right.
But sometime between that point um between when America became
a place and seven, someone looked at the groundhog and
(04:41):
this little hibernation thing that they did, and they said,
you know what, we also have this weird tradition that
we're going to explain a second, where we like to
try and predict when to plant crops and what the
weather is going to do here towards the end of
winter in the spring. And let's mash that up into
a weird, weird day to honor this little thing. And
that's Groundhog Day. That's where it came from. It's a
(05:02):
couple of weird traditions, like you said, mashed together. And
the other weird tradition UM in addition to the groundhog
coming out UH in February, is UM. This this tradition
of February two being observed as UM kind of this
indicator of how much winter is going to be left.
(05:26):
And it's based on an astronomical event called the cross
quarter day, which was observed by the ancient Celts the
Pagans I mentioned earlier. UM and cross quarter days are
pretty interesting and that it's a it's a day of
the year, and there's four of them that fall between
a solstice and an equinox. And UM, do you have
(05:50):
a solstice is where the sun is either at the
most northerly or southernly part of the sky, UM, depending
on what hemisphere you're in. So it's either summer or
winter solstice. And then the equinox is where the equator
of the Earth in the equator of the Sun are
on an equal plane. Just for a minute, just for
a moment, I should say, um, and you have your
(06:10):
vernal or spring and autumnal fall equinox. Um. So those
are four quarter dates, and then in between those are
four cross quarter dates that carve up the I guess
the year even further. And to the ancient Celts, it
seems like to them the cross quarter dates weren't the
midway point of anything. They were the beginning point, whereas
(06:31):
to us the quarter dates, the solstices, and the equinox
are the beginning of the seasons. The Celts didn't see
it that way, and so they really celebrated the cross
quarter dates. Yeah, it's kind of like I guess an
American might see them as sort of a seasonal hump
day where you're kind of smack dab in the middle
of things, and we don't observe them like they do.
(06:53):
But I feel like, just an instinctively, in sort of
early to mid February every year, late January, my psyche
sort of starts to think about, all right, we're easing
towards spring. I feel like we're about halfway there, and
this is in Atlanta. Even that's the ancient pagan blood
(07:13):
coursing through your veins. It might be I think we're
we're pagans, but yeah, but to the Pagans it was.
It wasn't like the halfway points the beginning. So in
on February twod this cross quarter day. It was actually
a day called um. Well, it was called a number
of things, but to the Celts it was it was
the beginning of spring. Um. At first they called it
(07:36):
in bold, which means in the belly like the world,
the earth is pregnant and about to give birth from
into spring. Um. Like, yeah, it was when the lambing
season began, which I don't think I like that. No, no,
you do. If you if you look up lambing pictures,
it's like that's when all the baby lambs are born
and hopping around. I thought, that's what I thought too,
(07:58):
And and no, that probably a little bit later, but um,
this is when everything's still cute and sweet. Okay. They
also called it umu brigantia um after the after Bridgid,
the female deity of light. And the whole point was that,
you know, the sun had really kind of been hiding
(08:19):
for most of the winter, ever since the winter solstice,
and now it was starting to kind of creep out.
And to those of us who are like, this is
the halfway points kind of like, come on, son, keep going.
And when the Christians got their hands on the Celts,
the pagans Um, they said, well, how about this. Let's
call this like the Festival of Lights, and we'll commemorate this.
(08:39):
This is like, um the part of winter where it's
starting to get sunny er and sunnier, by having you
guys bring your candles around the church and we're gonna
bless them and then they'll just keep burning for the
rest of the winter. How about that? That's right, They
turned them into magic candles. It became known not only
as Festival of Lights, but handle moss. And you'll hear
(09:02):
that word a few times later on. And it's sort
of still grounded in seasons though. And the whole thing
here is like as far as the ancient Celts go,
and then you know people since then farmers, namely, is
when can we when is the weather going to turn here?
When is that ground gonna thaw? When can we expect
(09:22):
good weather and not be fooled into planting, only to
have it frost again and kill those early buds. That's
something that you now that you're you've taken up gardening
and stuff at your house, you will be frustrated by this.
Now to my friend, when that happens, Oh yeah, the frost,
the early frost or late frost, I should say late frosted.
(09:45):
I can't sleep well. Emily always like when things start
blooming to early. She's like, no, stop, stop, I think
it's gonna frost again. It always does. I had to Uh,
I had to stop myself. Now, I failed to stop myself.
I fertilized too late in the season, and um, and
I had a big problem with that. Man, my anecdotes
(10:09):
have just really gone downhill in the last twelve years.
I predicted your your gardening way back in the day.
I don't know if you remember that in what episode
how Gardening. Someone's gonna have to find it. But you
kind of you kind of tease me, and I said,
you're gonna get into it one day, trust me. And
you're like, I see that doesn't sound like me. Yeah thing,
(10:33):
huh yeah, I'm actually surprised at that. But I'll take
your word for it. I do want to know. So
anybody out there, if you know what Chuck's talking about,
let us know what episode it is. And at times
thing will be great toe so he can erase it. Right. So,
like I said, they were trying to figure out when
to plant, and uh, it was not a good omen
(10:57):
if it was bright and sunny, because that was a
sign of snow and a late frost to continue on
and that would not be a good time to plan.
And this is all a little confusing, yeah, if if
I'm being honest, Yeah, So, like the the whole thing
was if at Candle moss Um February two, if if
(11:17):
it was if that day was nice out, if the
sun was shining, if there were no clouds in the sky,
that actually meant that there was going to be a
much longer period of winter left. And the reason why
that kind of makes sense from a farmer's standpoint is one,
maybe you're saying, well, this pretends a growing season where
it's just going to be nice out and there's not
(11:38):
gonna be any rain. You don't want that. But also
number two, it's like you said, and like that kind
of weather might fool the plants into starting to grow
again and then bam they get hit with a late frost.
So even though it seems counterintuitive, if it's nice out
on February two at candle Moss to the ancient Celts,
that meant that there was more winter coming. If it
(11:58):
was the opposite, it was overcast, maybe even storming. If
it was just gross out, it meant that winter was
almost over, that the it was more than halfway over,
and you were probably going to see spring pretty pretty soon.
So that is the initial um, the initial way that
February two kind of plays into this whole thing. So
(12:20):
you know what my problem with this is is uh,
and you you put this one together and you kind
of came up with some other signs found in nature
and different cultures where they sort of looked to um
the natural rule to kind of tell the future, like
the widths of the bands of a wooly caterpillar, the
size and number of webs a spider might spin in
(12:42):
the fall, um, how the squirrels are gathering gathering their
nuts like would you frantic or calm? Or when the
geese depart from the north, how thick corn husks are
at harvest, like I love all that that stuff because
to me that is like pre science science. Um, yeah,
(13:03):
I think all of that stuff is kind of rooted
and some maybe it might be a reach for some,
but some sort of scientific basis, and it was just
from people observing, which was sort of the first science
was observation. But to me, this one is the least
scientific of them all the because it's just one day. Yeah,
it is, like it is. It's just one day, Like
(13:23):
if it's February. Second, if it's candle moss and this
is the condition, then that's your indicator. So yeah, I
guess it is the least unscientific pre science measure of
of what's the most Yeah, it really is. It really is.
It's on par with drowning a person as a witch
because you're your prediction for the the winter didn't come true.
(13:46):
The wooly caterpillars bands didn't pretend the future after all,
because there's probably something I don't know about the caterpillar,
but I bet you there's some little nugget of science
in there as to how their bands grow depending on
whether Yeah, I like the celt stuff. Oh man, that
there reminds me. So I read this article in The
New Yorker not too long ago, um, and it's about
(14:07):
we got to do an episode on it. There's this lake,
a little lake way up in the Himalayas, in the
middle of nowhere, in this really dangerous pass, and there's
always been a bunch of skeletons jumbled together at the
bottom of this lake, and you can clearly see them.
So anthropologists went in and grabbed these these skeletons or
some of them to take samples. And it turns out
(14:28):
some of them seem to be from southern Italy, um,
maybe even from Greece, from the Mediterranean. They have no
business whatsoever. Where is it up in the Himalayas, like
in Nepal right on just along uh I think a
Hindu or a Buddhist pilgrimage path um, and like it's
just really bizarre that they're there. But the author took
(14:51):
some time to just kind of go off on the
side and talk about how there was the spread of
this group from the steps of Russia uh many many
thousands of years ago. They basically brought the Indo European
language our way. But also we're super patriarch article, super
rapey um, super murdery and they really had an impact
(15:14):
you can tell a lasting impact today and how just
humans operate. But apparently in Western Europe and including the
British Isles, the Celts seemed to be much more peaceful,
much more egalitarian. UM women held much more powerful roles
than than they did under this other group. And it
really kind of drove home like wow, like history could
(15:36):
have gone a totally different direction, and like where would
we be right now if that other group had to
come out of the steps and dominated the rest of
Europe and just basically change this like um fertility worshiping
nature cult into you know, this hierarchical, patriarchical, um, murderous
(15:56):
civilization that's basically Western civilization today. I think the people
in the movie Midsummer would agree with you. That was
a given movie that I kept thinking about that as well.
During this of course, I watched that again and had
a better feeling about it. I love it the first time,
some crazy folk core man like it is really something else.
(16:18):
I haven't only seen it once. I need to see
it again. Well, maybe you won't like it the second time.
I hope that's not true, but it's possible. All right,
here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna take a break,
we're gonna regather ourselves, and we're gonna bring it back
to February two right after this. Chuck, all right, So
(17:02):
we set up what was going on back in the day,
and groundhog Day is just something that survived from that
ancient practice. Back then, especially in Germany, they had a
tradition of waking up a badger not probably not a
good idea, and seeing if it will crawl back into
its borough to see if it was a sign of
(17:23):
bad weather ahead, and then that eventually makes it over
to the United States. Some people in Pennsylvania that settled
Pennsylvania took that idea adapted it to groundhogs I guess,
because there were more groundhogs and badgers, and started looking,
uh at these groundhogs coming out and whether or not
they would see their shadow, whether or not the people
(17:45):
would see the shadow. It was the Germans who came
over who said, well, wait, there's no badgers, so how
are we going to tell about the whether there's winter
left or not? And they said, well, groundhogs will do,
I guess, And and the fact that like they were
present and then brought the superstition with them that was
based in this combination of badgers coming out of their
borrow and going back and then candle Boss and the
(18:09):
fact that there weren't any badgers and groundhogs will have
to do. That's where groundhog Day came from, in that
bizarre it is. But if you really want to talk
about groundhog Day and what we'd know as groundhog Day,
that's sort of goofy fun um money making scheme that
they came up with. Is it can be traced back
(18:29):
to one dude uh February seven, the very first groundhog
Day celebration UM was created by climber Freeze F. R. E. A. S.
The editor of the Punk Satani Spirit newspaper and Punk
Sutani is about eighty miles from Pittsburgh, Um there in
(18:50):
western Pennsylvania. It's a coal mining town and it's a
very small town. I think it's indigenous name from the
Native American People's was Town of the sand Flies. The
LENNAPPI did they have sand flies? I guess, I don't
know why else the Lennappy would have called it that.
And I was like, sand flies don't sound great. Sand
(19:12):
Flies are terrible. Not only does their bite hurt, but
they spread all sorts of diseases too, and punks Punks
Attorney basically means sand fly town, So I guess there
was a real sand fly problem there at some point,
But there's no sand western Pennsylvania. Did they have sand there?
I think a lot of the United States was marshy
before we started developing it, so there's probably a lot
(19:33):
of marsh around Western Pennsylvania at the time. I thought
they just might have really liked the settlement. And it's
be like naming something like the bed bug or something.
Isn't that why Iceland is called Iceland? And that the
old story that they basically wanted to make people either
that or else. They settlers of Greenland wanted to make
Iceland look bad and Greenland look good, so they called
(19:54):
Iceland Iceland something like that. I mean, that's one of
the first little things you hear in elementary school from
that guy. Did you know that Iceland is green and
Greenland is? I said, I remember, I remember giving that
kid a weggie. Oh wait, I was the kid who
got the wedges. Okay, makes a lot more sense. So
here we are in seven and climber Freeze has stumbled
(20:15):
upon a great little money maker to bring thousands of
people to his town to spend money. Actually, he he
started a year before that, just ever so briefly. He
just as the publisher of the punks Autawny Spirit. He
published a line that said, today is groundhog Day, and
up to the time of going to press, the beast
(20:36):
has not seen as shadow. And the fact that he
doesn't spend any time explaining what he's talking about suggests
that it was already pretty well established, at least in
the town of punks Autawny at the time, probably in
western Pennsylvania what with their large German and large groundhog population.
Um and that was it. That was the first mentioned
(20:58):
in a newspaper in America of groundhog Day. And because
groundhog Days was specifically American invention based on ancient Celtic
in in German traditions, uh, this would be the first
time in the world anyone ever mentioned it in the paper.
So he plants that seed. He wants to get a
buzz going. He's like, I'm gonna tease this out over
(21:19):
a year. No one's gonna know what's coming. No one's
gonna know. It hit him in seven and in that
year that he was sort of the idea was brewing.
He founded he got some folks together groundhog hunters and
called it the Punk Suitani Groundhog Club that would become
that in eighteen ninety nine. And they were groundhog hunters.
(21:42):
Groundhogs were pest and they would go around kill groundhogs.
Apparently they would eat them. It was a delicacy that
they served to out of towners at first, I guess
Jenny Biggs just to see if they died. And then
the locals started eating groundhogs, which I can't imagine taste
very good. But that's hilarious that the tradition of groundhog
(22:02):
Day grew out of these people eating groundhogs like groundhog hunters.
Terrible but also hilarious. And the fact that they served
them two out of towners first, also, it just really
gets me. But this this Punk's Tony Groundhog Club. Um,
they held the first um groundhog Day in seven, as
(22:23):
you were saying before, And I don't I could not
find to save my life why they chose Gobbler's Knob. Um.
But there may be a clue in why Gobbler's Knob
is named that. There's two um possible reasons given. One
is that I guess it was a hangout for turkeys,
which okay, great um or it was the place that
(22:44):
traditionally groundhog hunters or hunters of any woodland animal would
kind of come out of the woods to this hilly
area and eat what they had just caught, or cook
and eat what they just caught, possibly having picnics in
the area. So it would make sense that the ground
Hog Club would go to Gobbler's Nob where they would
normally eat groundhog if this was already associated with groundhogs
(23:06):
in that way. But either way, that's where they helped
your risk. Yeah, picturesque and um bloody, yeah, but I mean,
you know, it makes sense to have a thing. There's
what I'm saying, right right, so right, yeah, it is
quite beautiful. But that's where the first Groundhog Day in
seven was held, and it has been basically ever since.
I mean, there was a stretch here there where they
(23:26):
didn't do it, but as they were first starting to
get their footings. But I think from the turn of
the last century onward it's been at Gobbler's Knob every year.
And I think of that first one h the groundhog
saw his shadow and for parts of the area, and
this is kind of how it goes. Of course, it
was something that's unscientific parts of the area. Had it
(23:51):
worked out parts of the area, it did not work
out as far as winter ending sooner than later. Well,
I think that's kind of par for the course for sure,
of phills we'll see and so Um, although we can
thank like climber Freeze for giving us groundhog Day, Like
I said, like, it's clear this was already an established tradition,
and I think the earliest mentioned they've been able to
(24:12):
find somebody referencing groundhog Day goes back to one where
a guy named James Morris wrote in his diary about
he mentioned groundhog Day. Um, and I don't think he
said whether the groundhog saw his shadow or not. He
just mentions it and kind of describes it. So I'd
have been around for many decades before climber Freeze came
(24:35):
along with it, but climber Freeze is definitely the one
to to popularize it. Yeah, I mean he started writing
about it and writing about the you know, this amazing
groundhog that could foretell the future whether and you know
it's all a tongue in cheek and good fun. Um,
we have to talk about punk Stani Phil, of course,
the famous groundhog that is still the groundhog of record
(25:00):
in punk Sutani full name Puntsatani Phil, seer of seers,
stage of Stages, prognosticator of prognosticators, and weather profit extraordinary.
Is Phil's full Name's right, and it's very cute. I
guess he wasn't named Phil until I don't know the
first half or the mid middle of the last century,
(25:23):
because the the Punks Attanni Groundhog Hog Club on their
website says that he is named after King Philip, and
King Philip is not I don't think they're talking about.
I think they're referencing Prince Philip, who is Queen Elizabeth's husband,
and he wouldn't have really become a public figure until
you know, the thirties, maybe the forties or fifties. So
(25:46):
before that, um, the groundhog, you know, that's stretch um.
But the groundhog was known as a bear groundhog, brother
groundhog or brother groundhog. That's what they all called him before.
But the thing about Punks Attorny Phil, which is what
his name now, he may have had different names, but
the Punks Attorny Groundhog Club maintains that he's still the
(26:09):
same groundhog that they the group came upon back in
eighteen eighty seven. That is this magically living, long living
groundhog who's been alive for I guess now a hundred
and thirty three years since that first Groundhog Day in
eighteen eighty seven. Right, So you know we said earlier
(26:30):
to put a pin in the fact that groundhogs live,
was it like six to eight years or something like that,
That ten in captivity. Sure, well, he's in captivity, but
hundred and thirty three it seems like a wave beyond that.
So they cooked up a fun little story there. They
said that Phil is able to live so long because, um,
(26:50):
he drinks a punch made of dandelions every summer. And
I think they saw the riding on the wall and said, hey,
we can make another money making day out of this
thing if we have a little summer festival picnic thing
where Phil drinks this uh, dandelion juice as it were.
(27:11):
And so now they have a big celebration for Phil's
annual drinking of the daisy juice or dandelion juice. And
we mentioned that, you know, back years back, the groundhog
was treated as a pest and eaten hunted and eaten,
and that they may have had like a picnic around
Gobbler's Knob to eat the groundhogs. This annual tradition now
(27:32):
where they all celebrate Phil gaining seven more years to
his life, seems to have been based on the annual
groundhog hunt and roast. So they went from eating groundhogs
to pretending that this one has been alive for a
hundred and thirty three years thanks to this this magical
potion that he drinks. I wonder if they make great
(27:55):
efforts to get a groundhog that really looks like the
original Phil think groundhogs look a lot alike to humans. Yeah,
you know, but it's like Ugga for the Georgia bulldogs,
Like they have different uggas and white bulldogs. You know,
they all all the Uggans look a little bit different,
and we all like that's part of the personality of
(28:15):
of each Ugga. But I think the groundhogs you're saying,
they just like he didn't have a big white stripe
down the middle of his head or anything. I see,
I see what you mean. Yeah, yeah no, but they've
got to because it's you know, the thing about the
uggas is, you know it's uga six or that's ug
a million or something like that. Like they're meant to
be there, different Uggas, but they're all related in some way,
(28:36):
at least through school spirit. Um, this is supposed to
be all of the successive groundhogs. Whenever they come upon
you know, him and his burrow and he's not moving
any longer, um like the yeah, they would, I guess
kind of have to find a groundhog that looks kind
of like him so that they can be like, well,
this is the this is the same one. He's been
(28:57):
around for a hundred thirty three years. All I'm saying
is probably not very hard to pull the wool over
human being's eyes when they're like, no, it's the same crownhog.
You know. I think I think the Uggs are all
the same family line, if I'm not mistaken. I don't
know if all of them in history, but I think
there's this very prominent Savannah family that, uh where all
(29:19):
the Uggs come from, if I'm not mistaken. Didn't the
main guy, the guy who was on trial and Midnight
of the Garden of Good and Evil? Wasn't he the
Ugga breeder for a while, I don't know, but it
had something to do with that. I feel like he
he had something. Yeah, he had something to do with
the Uggs and if if not like the actual the
owner of the the Ugga's mom or something. Yeah, pretty
(29:42):
good movie. I never read the book. I did both
and they were both pretty good. It was one of
those ones where like the movies just about as good
as the book. Back when you could watch a Kevin
Spacey movie that's right, creeped out and John Kisack does
a good job too, that's right. And you could watch
a John Keisack movie to be crazy. So let's take
(30:03):
let's take a break here and we'll talk about you know,
we mentioned that, uh, when Phil dies in the dead
of night, they have to get him out of there quietly.
We'll talk about how they might do that right after this.
(30:37):
Le Okay, so we're back and we have a dead
groundhog on our hands. Yeah. Well, if punksatany Phil passes away,
which has clearly happened probably ever every eight to ten years, Uh,
they can do so quietly. Because Phil leads a very
pampered life. Uh an indoor life, you might say, oh yeah,
(31:01):
because he has handlers, he has a full sort of staff, volunteers,
that look after Phil, and they all have funny titles
like Shingle Shaker or Chief Chief health Man, and uh,
they make sure Phil leads a pretty cush life there
in captivity. I've read that he eats a lot of
(31:22):
ice cream and actually had to have a tooth removed
once because he had a cavity from eating so much. Yeah,
he's he's basically kept very happy, um and strong out
on junk food, I guess, um. But that inner circle
that you mentioned, that's fifteen local volunteers who basically they're
not the punk Stutawny ground Hog Club. They're like the
(31:45):
the upper echelon the leaders of the punch Stutawny ground
Hog Club, it sounds like. And only a couple of
them are allowed to handle Phil um and the president
is the only one who actually can communicate with Phil.
As we'll see. Yeah, they and we'll talk about the
movie in a bit. But if you've seen the movie,
you've seen those tuxedos and top hats, or if you
(32:09):
you know you got the Delpa work. Anyway, if you
tune in to watch the coverage, you're gonna see those
tuxedos and top hats because they say hey fills the
v I P When v I P s came to
town back in the day. This is what we'd wear
when we met him at the train. And he is
our most famous residents. We're going to pay him that respect. Well,
the other thing that I saw, the other explanation I saw,
and that explanation actually came from one of the former
(32:31):
Inner Circle members. But in other explanations that some of
those early like um nineteenth century depictions of Breyer groundhog
Um was in a top hat, like he was supposed
to be this very intelligent um uh forecaster of of weather. Um,
And so they depict him in like a top hat.
And I think that's probably likelier where it came from,
(32:53):
and they just forgot somewhere along the way. Well, Phill
does a lot of sleeping. Um. He does not hibernate though,
because he, like I said, he's in his his climate
controlled burrow. He doesn't have these cues from nature to
let him know when anything is at all. Uh. He
as far as he knows, it's always perfect weather, except
(33:16):
every February when he gets yanked out of there, taken
out in the cold in the middle of the night
to his other thankfully climate controlled burrow that is built
into a stump. If you've never seen it, you can
just google an image of this. Um kind of nice scene.
It's got a stage there in a stump, and it's
you know, it looks like something you'd see it. Uh uh,
(33:39):
like a show at six Flags or something that's exactly
right the country bears jamboree or something totally. Um, yeah,
that's great. I couldn't quite put my finger on what
it looked like, but that is exactly what I was
thinking of and could find now. So um, it's a
bit of a rude awakening. Like you said, it's the
middle of the night, ful phill, but they give him
some time to kind of real ax and like get
(34:00):
settled into his his um stump, his showtime stump, I guess,
is what you call it. But I can't imagine that
he's like getting a lot of relaxation. And because just
outside of that stump is anywhere from I've seen eight
thousand up to twenty thousand people all hanging out on
Gobbler's Knob. And this is in a town of about
(34:22):
five thousand people, so the population might be quadruple depending
on whether Groundhog days, say, falls on a weekend, and
they are so loud there. It's a rowdy, boisterous crowd um.
They shoot off fireworks, they have live music all throughout
the night. This is all leading up to dawn. Basically
from about three am to about six thirty am, they
(34:43):
just are partying right outside of Phil's stump. And then
if there's a drink, like a signature drink, yeah, I
saw there's a groundhog punch that has to do with
like vodka and a bunch of other stuff. But I
also have a distinct impression that this might be, if
not dry, at least way more family friendly than yeah,
(35:05):
everybody wasted on punch kind of thing. No, that's true.
I mean you don't want to you don't want it
to be like, uh well, like the Kentucky Derby. Dude, Man,
things get dark. They're real quick. You've been to one
of those, right, Yeah, and it got dark. They're real quick. Man.
That was like like the second the race is over. Yeah,
and even no before during after it's just utter chaos.
(35:27):
You mean I were like, we we didn't leave, we fled.
It was crazy, dude. Yeah, But now I think of
the impression that this is a lot more clean cut
than than the Kentucky Derby. I feel when I saw fireworks,
I just felt bad for Phil that can't Yeah, you
must have been scared, for sure. And I'm sure all
the dogs in the area are like I hate groundhog Day,
(35:51):
you know, and neighbors that aren't really big on Groundhog
Day are probably not very happy. I mean, but airbnbr
place is what you do. I would guess so, because again,
five thousand people live in town, twenty additional people show
up and hopefully if you own a business you've listened
to chuck in your businesses open that day. So you
(36:11):
mentioned the president is the only one who can speak
to Phil or understand Phil. Uh. When Phil emerges from
that borough, he does speak. Um. Groundhog ease is what
they call it. And the president is the only person
even in that inner circle that can understand and translate
for the people. And Phil is is kind of a rapper,
(36:32):
Isn't that right? I think that's being rather generous, But yes,
he he speaks in rhyme, kind of sing song rhyme. Yeah, well,
I mean it looks like wrapped to me on this
groundhog Day. I'm happy to say I love fruity pebbles
in a major way. Was that a commercial? Yes, it
(36:54):
was ironically well, I guess the opposite of ironically expectedly, um,
fruity pebbles commercial. Uh so yeah, So he speaks and
sings song, the president translates for everyone. They all have
a good time. And keep in mind, this is at dawn.
So I imagined the whole affair is over pretty quickly. Yeah,
they've got to be so tired too. Um, but everybody
(37:17):
gets powered up by some vodka based groundhog punch. Sure,
they're like, why are we drunk? Aft is right? I
think that's kind of the case, at least for some people.
But um, that's the whole shebang. They kind of stretched
it out for a week. I've seen that the whole
festivities kind of take place over the week. But it
seems like February second is kind of the big day
(37:38):
February first slash second. So is he accurate though, that's
the question that The answer to that question is no,
not at all, because it's unscientific. Well yeah, that's definitely unscientific.
But somehow Phil is even worse than chance at predicting
the weather. Now, the Groundhog Club says he's he's correct
a percent of the time. Um. That's the whole tongue
(38:01):
in cheek thing. And then some people like to try
to prove them right and say, well, yes, in some
parts of the country he's right, in other parts he's not.
But for the punk Sittawny area or western Pennsylvania he's
he's he hits between thirty and forty on any given
ten year stretch between two thousand ten and two thousand nineteen,
(38:23):
between two thousand and one and two thousand ten, um,
So that's not very good. I mean, like, if you
just toss a coin, you could expect to come up
heads or tails better than that, And that's basically what
they're doing. UM. And we should say, in Phil's defense,
he's not predicting anything. This is all the very very
insane inner circle who are making these predictions. So they're
technically the ones who are worse than chance at predicting
(38:46):
whether there's going to be six more weeks of winter
or in early spring. Yeah. I didn't want to be
there in the first place. That's right. There's I saw
footage of one a bit the the gout the handler's finger,
and um only got some of the glove, but it
looked like it would have been pretty vicious had he
gotten any of his actual finger. It was hilarious and
the crowd went wild. They loved it. He literally bit
(39:09):
the hand that feds it. Yeah, I guess, so he's like,
give me some more ice cream. So should we talk
about the movie? We can't not talk about the movie.
I didn't think we were talking about the movie groundhog Day,
a movie which I have covered on movie Crush. This
was the favorite movie of Griffin McElroy, of the famous
(39:30):
McElroy Brothers podcasting. I saw that. I thought it was
Justin mclroy was a Griffin, now justin. He was on
two though. He did with Nail and I another great movie,
and Griffin picked picked groundhog Day, and he says. Griffin's
quote was not only do I think it's my favorite movie?
He said, I think it's the best movie, like literally
(39:53):
the best movie. He had some groundhog punch himself. He
loves it, and uh and love it. It's a little
you know, it doesn't age super well. Kind of it's
a little problematic, is kind. He's a little he's a
little he's just a little aggressive. He he doesn't take
(40:13):
no for an answer over and over and over, and
that's the point of the movie. But watching it through
to today's lens is sort of like he back off, Dude,
She's not interested, right, So yeah, I get you. Um
So the for those of you who haven't seen it,
first of all, go see it. But then secondly, it's
it's um about this reporter. He gets stuck in this
(40:34):
time loop where he's living February second Groundhog Day in
punks its hawny over and over and over again. His
name is Phil And it had such a huge impact. Yeah,
and they never explained why this happens. It just happens
to him, which I think is something that makes the
movie that much more enjoyable. But um, the this movie
(40:55):
had such an impact on um the culture that today
people associate groundhog Day not just with you know, predicting
whether there's gonna be an early spring or more winter.
They predicted with weird things like losing track of time
or time doing odd things, or having deja vu. And
that's strictly from the movie. Like that was never a
(41:16):
part of Groundhog Day until this movie came along. Yeah,
I mean people will say that if something happened again
to you or whatever you say. Oh man, it's like
groundhog Day. Uh. And it's you know, it's pretty rare
for a movie to enter the sort of public consciousness
to that degree. And also it's interesting and displace something
that's already taking that spot even you know what I'm saying,
(41:39):
or add to it at least. Yeah, for sure. Um.
When I was doing research for the movie Crush episode,
I did see that thing that you included here that
the original screenwriter and eventual co writer to Harold Ramos,
Danny Ruben Um the original script it was ten thousand
years um that he was living because is of the
(42:00):
Buddhist principle that it takes ten thousand years for a
human soul to be perfect, and they change that up
in the movie. And there is a lot of robust
debate about how many days occur in the movie. Um, supposedly,
and I look this up in a bunch of different places.
(42:20):
If you just look at the movie the number of
times it repeats, it's thirty eight, Okay, I saw, But
if there are people who have taken time to calculate
how long it really is. Because you know, he learns
foreign languages, he becomes a master piano player. Uh and
and people have taken great links to actually calculate how
(42:43):
long it would take to do all this, and everyone,
I mean, there are some exact days that people have calculated,
but everyone is sort of landed in the neighborhood of
about ten years, including Harold Ramos saying, yeah, we feel
like it's about ten years that he's relived in order
to learn all this stuff. I like ten thousand more.
I'm going with Danny Ruben's estimate. You know, well, if
(43:07):
it was ten thousand years, he would just be like
it'd be like in the matrix at the end or something. Well,
at some point he says, I'm a god, so you know,
maybe it still is in there. But um, yeah. One
of the things about that movie too, Chuck, is, um
it's part of the festivities now, the show it the
night before at like the local theater, and um it's
(43:30):
been a boon for the town as well, not just
Groundhog Day, but the movie itself has drawn people to
the town to kind of see, you know, Punks Attawny,
and they're usually very disappointed to find out that they
didn't actually shoot the town in Punks Autonny. They shot
it in Woodstock, Illinois. So while they named like the
businesses and took like cop cars from Punksutawni and like
(43:51):
moved a lot of punks Tawny two Woodstock, you can't
visually see like, oh this is where this this you know,
this is where ned Ryerson crosses the street um to
say hi, you know downtown, Like that's in Woodstock, Illinois.
So I think they don't tell people that until after
they've made their way to punt Stani and spend at
least fifty dollars, then they tell them, Okay, this wood Stock,
(44:14):
Illinois that you're really after. Yeah, I mean what do
you think. Do you want to go to punt Stani
and kind of be at the real place or do
you want to go to Illinois to kind of see
these real old movie locations. I would like to go
to neither of those places. I'm good with the seeing
clips old clips um on YouTube. That's fine with me.
(44:34):
Like It's never struck me as like a great um
uh holiday. I think, not because of Groundhog Day or
the fact that it's in western Pennsylvania or anything like that, um,
but because February two is just such a sucky time
of the year. I hate that time of the year.
Um that nothing really good can happen around then. So
(44:56):
you know, the beginning of February always thinks, which is
ironic because my wedding anniversaries in mid February. That to
me is when things pick up. Yeah, I pulled that
out at the end of night. You did, I forgot
you guys got you got married in warm climbs. Yeah,
we we escaped to Hawaii because February is kind of
gross in the United States. Yeah, my anniversary sometime in
(45:19):
late April. I can never remember the day. Well, hey,
just start saying after this, we'll just say all the
different numbers, will find out the right one and then
Jerry can edit it in all right, Um, you you
got anything else? I got nothing else. Um well, if
you want to know more about Groundhog Day, just go online.
(45:40):
I think this year it's a streaming there because of COVID.
They're not having people out, but they are streaming is
so you can go check out the punks Attorny Groundhog
Clubs website for all the links and everything. And since
I directed everyone to the punks Attorny Groundhog Clubs website.
As per usual, it's time for a listener. Now I'm
(46:02):
going to call this hot off the presses. This came
in thirty seconds ago and I didn't have one prepared,
and this is a good one. Hey, guys, hope you're
doing well. Josh, Chuck and Jerry over there. My name
is Mike Martin. He him his thank you for that. Mike.
I'm a classical musician, a bassist in the New World
Symphony in Miami Beats, Florida. Been an avid listener for
(46:24):
six years. My sister Jessica got me hooked on your
show after we were traveling to see our family got
stuck behind an oil tanker. The truck pulled to a
stop on a quiet stretch of highway Rural in the
middle of the night, when the driver put on the
hazards jumped out of the vehicle. Confused, we attempted to
go around when the hood of the truck burst into flames.
After backing away to a safe distance, my sister laughed side,
(46:47):
pulled out her phone and said, looks like we're not
going anywhere. Have you heard of stuff you should know?
Since then, I've listened to your entire catalog five times. Wow.
So this is a long email, but I'm gonna get
to the cruxt of it here. It was about the
Clan episode uh in his experience as a black man.
(47:07):
He said, I really appreciate your recent episode in the KKK,
especially with Chuck mentioned about feeling you need to do
a comprehensive dive on the Clan because of the terror
and harm they visited on Black Americans like myself twenty
six years old, and even when I was a young
child in the nineties, there were cross burnings near my
home in semi rural Pennsylvania. Uh. We moved a few
(47:28):
towns over not long afterwards, but all my life as
a black child living in the Northeast, I live with
explicitly racist iconography. On walks with friends in the woods,
we'd find swastikas and racist screeds spray painted on abandoned
railroad buildings. Who was not uncommon to see Confederate flags
on people's homes and cars. Even in school, I'd find
nooses tied on the pool cords of blinds. I even
(47:51):
remember the first time I was called the N word
in a school bathroom in the first grade, and the
principle's response to my parents in his office, we can't
help what people teach their kids at home. Man, the
way I was treated improved as I got older, but
it prompted me to start thinking about how the more
insidious and subtle elements of racism impact my life and
those of others from a very young age. And then
(48:15):
Mike went on to give a lot of great recommendations
for episodes he thinks we should do uh, and he says,
stay safe and be well. And that is from Mike
Martin the bass player. Nice Mike, thanks a lot for
writing and I'm sorry all of that could happen to you. Yeah, um,
and yeah, thanks for the ideas. Give me an idea
that he gave us for an episode. He said jazz
(48:38):
because he said it. It's a lot of different things
that we've talked about, um, kind of coming together uh
in musical movement. So that's one that we've talked about.
Is just cheez like Ken Burns did. However many hours
on jazz. How do we do five minutes on jazz? Whatever?
We did a two part on evil kinevel. We can
do anything. Be about scooda dude, you just do that
(49:02):
the whole time, all right, Maybe we shouldn't do one
on jazz. Now I think about sorry Mike. Well, if
you want to get in touch with this like Mike
didn't and share the horrors of your childhood, we want
to hear that in a weird way, um, and also
to share with the rest of you so we can
all feel like a stuff you Should Know family even
more than we did before. Uh. And you can wrap
(49:23):
it up, spank it on the bottom gently, and send
it off to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio because at the iHeart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W Chuck Bryan over there, and Jerry's
right over there. Uh, Internet speaking wise, and this is
Stuff you should Know, a special holiday edition that comes
(00:25):
out on the holiday. Chuck, Now, is this can we
call this a holiday? Yeah? Groundhog Day is definitely a holiday.
Are you not a pagan? Well no, I just thought
holidays meant like work. You don't work in businesses, clothes.
I there's gotta be somebody that's closed on groundhog Day. Well,
(00:46):
I bet certain people in a certain town. Well, actually
they're probably everything's open because they're they're just doing this
to make money, right. They would be total fools if
they're like, yeah, I always close on groundhog Day. I
didn't think that through. So um, yeah, we'll get to
that town in a little bit. But first, Chuck, let's
talk about groundhogs themselves. Because if you don't know what
(01:06):
groundhog Day is, don't worry. This isn't one of those
ones where we need to define it for you. Just
kick back and relax and like, let us guide you
down the river of knowledge. Okay right. Uh. Groundhogs a
k a. Wood Chuck's podcast. Whistle pigs another name they are,
(01:29):
uh you know what they are? There, beautiful? Um. They
weigh twelve or fifteen pounds. They live. Put a pin
in this stat They live six to eight years. That
will come back later. They eat veggies and fruits. They're
called whistle pigs sometimes because they whistle if they're scared
or if they're looking for a mate. It's more of
a chirping sound to me. Yeah, but chirping pigs is
(01:51):
not as fun as whistle pig. That explains that high
end bourbon. Though I had no idea why it was
called whistle pig, but it's named after ground. Whistle pig.
Is that high end? Yeah, it's pretty good. Okay, it's
the kind they keep behind the counter. Well, it's on
my shelf. I don't drink a lot of bourbon. But oh,
we'll go turn it up right now while we're recording.
(02:13):
Tell us what you think. All right, I'm back and
I'm hammered everyone. Uh. They can climb trees, they can swim,
and they hibernate in late fall. And this is kind
of one of the important parts of wood chucks and
groundhogs and how they figure in the groundhog day. They
hibernate in the fall and their body temperatures drop, that
heartbeat slows down from eight to about five beats a minute,
(02:36):
they lose a lot of body fat, and then the
males in February come out and say, who wants to
do it? Right? What's crazy, though, is when they come out,
they don't actually do it. They more like make plans
for later. It's they're nervous. It's really weird. And the
reason why they do this they literally break hibernation, which
(02:56):
can kill them if they do it wrong and the
timing is wrong or they don't have enough body fat
stow it up. They do it because groundhogs are so
ornerary toward one another. They're really territorial about their food
supply and their burrow that they've probably made a lot
of enemies and heard a lot of feelings over the
past year. So they come out in February to basically
(03:18):
be like, hey, how about you and I just bury
the hatchet and I'm gonna go back to sleep for
a few more weeks. But when I come out, we'll
totally do it, and I'm going to bury something out
and oh my god, and uh they do. There's some
sort of agreement, uh, and they see each other a
few weeks later. The groundhog goes back to his burrow
(03:40):
and then he comes out for good. He finishes hybridating
in March, and then the the groundhog fornication can begin
forth with post taste. And that nuts. That's how ordnery
they are. They have to come out and make plans
for later. Yeah, they need a which is that chill
(04:00):
time in between two to really gather themselves and make
sure they're up for it. So that's super cute. That's
a nice little primer on who these little beasts are.
But this is about Groundhog Day, the holiday where America
shuts down, government doesn't do business, the banks are closed.
(04:21):
Can't buy a piece of gum to save your life.
Oh man, if only so, get that gum on February one, everybody, right.
But sometime between that point um between when America became
a place and seven, someone looked at the groundhog and
(04:41):
this little hibernation thing that they did, and they said,
you know what, we also have this weird tradition that
we're going to explain a second, where we like to
try and predict when to plant crops and what the
weather is going to do here towards the end of
winter in the spring. And let's mash that up into
a weird, weird day to honor this little thing. And
that's Groundhog Day. That's where it came from. It's a
(05:02):
couple of weird traditions, like you said, mashed together. And
the other weird tradition UM in addition to the groundhog
coming out UH in February, is UM. This this tradition
of February two being observed as UM kind of this
indicator of how much winter is going to be left.
(05:26):
And it's based on an astronomical event called the cross
quarter day, which was observed by the ancient Celts the
Pagans I mentioned earlier. UM and cross quarter days are
pretty interesting and that it's a it's a day of
the year, and there's four of them that fall between
a solstice and an equinox. And UM, do you have
(05:50):
a solstice is where the sun is either at the
most northerly or southernly part of the sky, UM, depending
on what hemisphere you're in. So it's either summer or
winter solstice. And then the equinox is where the equator
of the Earth in the equator of the Sun are
on an equal plane. Just for a minute, just for
a moment, I should say, um, and you have your
(06:10):
vernal or spring and autumnal fall equinox. Um. So those
are four quarter dates, and then in between those are
four cross quarter dates that carve up the I guess
the year even further. And to the ancient Celts, it
seems like to them the cross quarter dates weren't the
midway point of anything. They were the beginning point, whereas
(06:31):
to us the quarter dates, the solstices, and the equinox
are the beginning of the seasons. The Celts didn't see
it that way, and so they really celebrated the cross
quarter dates. Yeah, it's kind of like I guess an
American might see them as sort of a seasonal hump
day where you're kind of smack dab in the middle
of things, and we don't observe them like they do.
(06:53):
But I feel like, just an instinctively, in sort of
early to mid February every year, late January, my psyche
sort of starts to think about, all right, we're easing
towards spring. I feel like we're about halfway there, and
this is in Atlanta. Even that's the ancient pagan blood
(07:13):
coursing through your veins. It might be I think we're
we're pagans, but yeah, but to the Pagans it was.
It wasn't like the halfway points the beginning. So in
on February twod this cross quarter day. It was actually
a day called um. Well, it was called a number
of things, but to the Celts it was it was
the beginning of spring. Um. At first they called it
(07:36):
in bold, which means in the belly like the world,
the earth is pregnant and about to give birth from
into spring. Um. Like, yeah, it was when the lambing
season began, which I don't think I like that. No, no,
you do. If you if you look up lambing pictures,
it's like that's when all the baby lambs are born
and hopping around. I thought, that's what I thought too,
(07:58):
And and no, that probably a little bit later, but um,
this is when everything's still cute and sweet. Okay. They
also called it umu brigantia um after the after Bridgid,
the female deity of light. And the whole point was that,
you know, the sun had really kind of been hiding
(08:19):
for most of the winter, ever since the winter solstice,
and now it was starting to kind of creep out.
And to those of us who are like, this is
the halfway points kind of like, come on, son, keep going.
And when the Christians got their hands on the Celts,
the pagans Um, they said, well, how about this. Let's
call this like the Festival of Lights, and we'll commemorate this.
(08:39):
This is like, um the part of winter where it's
starting to get sunny er and sunnier, by having you
guys bring your candles around the church and we're gonna
bless them and then they'll just keep burning for the
rest of the winter. How about that? That's right, They
turned them into magic candles. It became known not only
as Festival of Lights, but handle moss. And you'll hear
(09:02):
that word a few times later on. And it's sort
of still grounded in seasons though. And the whole thing
here is like as far as the ancient Celts go,
and then you know people since then farmers, namely, is
when can we when is the weather going to turn here?
When is that ground gonna thaw? When can we expect
(09:22):
good weather and not be fooled into planting, only to
have it frost again and kill those early buds. That's
something that you now that you're you've taken up gardening
and stuff at your house, you will be frustrated by this.
Now to my friend, when that happens, Oh yeah, the frost,
the early frost or late frost, I should say late frosted.
(09:45):
I can't sleep well. Emily always like when things start
blooming to early. She's like, no, stop, stop, I think
it's gonna frost again. It always does. I had to Uh,
I had to stop myself. Now, I failed to stop myself.
I fertilized too late in the season, and um, and
I had a big problem with that. Man, my anecdotes
(10:09):
have just really gone downhill in the last twelve years.
I predicted your your gardening way back in the day.
I don't know if you remember that in what episode
how Gardening. Someone's gonna have to find it. But you
kind of you kind of tease me, and I said,
you're gonna get into it one day, trust me. And
you're like, I see that doesn't sound like me. Yeah thing,
(10:33):
huh yeah, I'm actually surprised at that. But I'll take
your word for it. I do want to know. So
anybody out there, if you know what Chuck's talking about,
let us know what episode it is. And at times
thing will be great toe so he can erase it. Right. So,
like I said, they were trying to figure out when
to plant, and uh, it was not a good omen
(10:57):
if it was bright and sunny, because that was a
sign of snow and a late frost to continue on
and that would not be a good time to plan.
And this is all a little confusing, yeah, if if
I'm being honest, Yeah, So, like the the whole thing
was if at Candle moss Um February two, if if
(11:17):
it was if that day was nice out, if the
sun was shining, if there were no clouds in the sky,
that actually meant that there was going to be a
much longer period of winter left. And the reason why
that kind of makes sense from a farmer's standpoint is one,
maybe you're saying, well, this pretends a growing season where
it's just going to be nice out and there's not
(11:38):
gonna be any rain. You don't want that. But also
number two, it's like you said, and like that kind
of weather might fool the plants into starting to grow
again and then bam they get hit with a late frost.
So even though it seems counterintuitive, if it's nice out
on February two at candle Moss to the ancient Celts,
that meant that there was more winter coming. If it
(11:58):
was the opposite, it was overcast, maybe even storming. If
it was just gross out, it meant that winter was
almost over, that the it was more than halfway over,
and you were probably going to see spring pretty pretty soon.
So that is the initial um, the initial way that
February two kind of plays into this whole thing. So
(12:20):
you know what my problem with this is is uh,
and you you put this one together and you kind
of came up with some other signs found in nature
and different cultures where they sort of looked to um
the natural rule to kind of tell the future, like
the widths of the bands of a wooly caterpillar, the
size and number of webs a spider might spin in
(12:42):
the fall, um, how the squirrels are gathering gathering their
nuts like would you frantic or calm? Or when the
geese depart from the north, how thick corn husks are
at harvest, like I love all that that stuff because
to me that is like pre science science. Um, yeah,
(13:03):
I think all of that stuff is kind of rooted
and some maybe it might be a reach for some,
but some sort of scientific basis, and it was just
from people observing, which was sort of the first science
was observation. But to me, this one is the least
scientific of them all the because it's just one day. Yeah,
it is, like it is. It's just one day, Like
(13:23):
if it's February. Second, if it's candle moss and this
is the condition, then that's your indicator. So yeah, I
guess it is the least unscientific pre science measure of
of what's the most Yeah, it really is. It really is.
It's on par with drowning a person as a witch
because you're your prediction for the the winter didn't come true.
(13:46):
The wooly caterpillars bands didn't pretend the future after all,
because there's probably something I don't know about the caterpillar,
but I bet you there's some little nugget of science
in there as to how their bands grow depending on
whether Yeah, I like the celt stuff. Oh man, that
there reminds me. So I read this article in The
New Yorker not too long ago, um, and it's about
(14:07):
we got to do an episode on it. There's this lake,
a little lake way up in the Himalayas, in the
middle of nowhere, in this really dangerous pass, and there's
always been a bunch of skeletons jumbled together at the
bottom of this lake, and you can clearly see them.
So anthropologists went in and grabbed these these skeletons or
some of them to take samples. And it turns out
(14:28):
some of them seem to be from southern Italy, um,
maybe even from Greece, from the Mediterranean. They have no
business whatsoever. Where is it up in the Himalayas, like
in Nepal right on just along uh I think a
Hindu or a Buddhist pilgrimage path um, and like it's
just really bizarre that they're there. But the author took
(14:51):
some time to just kind of go off on the
side and talk about how there was the spread of
this group from the steps of Russia uh many many
thousands of years ago. They basically brought the Indo European
language our way. But also we're super patriarch article, super
rapey um, super murdery and they really had an impact
(15:14):
you can tell a lasting impact today and how just
humans operate. But apparently in Western Europe and including the
British Isles, the Celts seemed to be much more peaceful,
much more egalitarian. UM women held much more powerful roles
than than they did under this other group. And it
really kind of drove home like wow, like history could
(15:36):
have gone a totally different direction, and like where would
we be right now if that other group had to
come out of the steps and dominated the rest of
Europe and just basically change this like um fertility worshiping
nature cult into you know, this hierarchical, patriarchical, um, murderous
(15:56):
civilization that's basically Western civilization today. I think the people
in the movie Midsummer would agree with you. That was
a given movie that I kept thinking about that as well.
During this of course, I watched that again and had
a better feeling about it. I love it the first time,
some crazy folk core man like it is really something else.
(16:18):
I haven't only seen it once. I need to see
it again. Well, maybe you won't like it the second time.
I hope that's not true, but it's possible. All right,
here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna take a break,
we're gonna regather ourselves, and we're gonna bring it back
to February two right after this. Chuck, all right, So
(17:02):
we set up what was going on back in the day,
and groundhog Day is just something that survived from that
ancient practice. Back then, especially in Germany, they had a
tradition of waking up a badger not probably not a
good idea, and seeing if it will crawl back into
its borough to see if it was a sign of
(17:23):
bad weather ahead, and then that eventually makes it over
to the United States. Some people in Pennsylvania that settled
Pennsylvania took that idea adapted it to groundhogs I guess,
because there were more groundhogs and badgers, and started looking,
uh at these groundhogs coming out and whether or not
they would see their shadow, whether or not the people
(17:45):
would see the shadow. It was the Germans who came
over who said, well, wait, there's no badgers, so how
are we going to tell about the whether there's winter
left or not? And they said, well, groundhogs will do,
I guess, And and the fact that like they were
present and then brought the superstition with them that was
based in this combination of badgers coming out of their
borrow and going back and then candle Boss and the
(18:09):
fact that there weren't any badgers and groundhogs will have
to do. That's where groundhog Day came from, in that
bizarre it is. But if you really want to talk
about groundhog Day and what we'd know as groundhog Day,
that's sort of goofy fun um money making scheme that
they came up with. Is it can be traced back
(18:29):
to one dude uh February seven, the very first groundhog
Day celebration UM was created by climber Freeze F. R. E. A. S.
The editor of the Punk Satani Spirit newspaper and Punk
Sutani is about eighty miles from Pittsburgh, Um there in
(18:50):
western Pennsylvania. It's a coal mining town and it's a
very small town. I think it's indigenous name from the
Native American People's was Town of the sand Flies. The
LENNAPPI did they have sand flies? I guess, I don't
know why else the Lennappy would have called it that.
And I was like, sand flies don't sound great. Sand
(19:12):
Flies are terrible. Not only does their bite hurt, but
they spread all sorts of diseases too, and punks Punks
Attorney basically means sand fly town, So I guess there
was a real sand fly problem there at some point,
But there's no sand western Pennsylvania. Did they have sand there?
I think a lot of the United States was marshy
before we started developing it, so there's probably a lot
(19:33):
of marsh around Western Pennsylvania at the time. I thought
they just might have really liked the settlement. And it's
be like naming something like the bed bug or something.
Isn't that why Iceland is called Iceland? And that the
old story that they basically wanted to make people either
that or else. They settlers of Greenland wanted to make
Iceland look bad and Greenland look good, so they called
(19:54):
Iceland Iceland something like that. I mean, that's one of
the first little things you hear in elementary school from
that guy. Did you know that Iceland is green and
Greenland is? I said, I remember, I remember giving that
kid a weggie. Oh wait, I was the kid who
got the wedges. Okay, makes a lot more sense. So
here we are in seven and climber Freeze has stumbled
(20:15):
upon a great little money maker to bring thousands of
people to his town to spend money. Actually, he he
started a year before that, just ever so briefly. He
just as the publisher of the punks Autawny Spirit. He
published a line that said, today is groundhog Day, and
up to the time of going to press, the beast
(20:36):
has not seen as shadow. And the fact that he
doesn't spend any time explaining what he's talking about suggests
that it was already pretty well established, at least in
the town of punks Autawny at the time, probably in
western Pennsylvania what with their large German and large groundhog population.
Um and that was it. That was the first mentioned
(20:58):
in a newspaper in America of groundhog Day. And because
groundhog Days was specifically American invention based on ancient Celtic
in in German traditions, uh, this would be the first
time in the world anyone ever mentioned it in the paper.
So he plants that seed. He wants to get a
buzz going. He's like, I'm gonna tease this out over
(21:19):
a year. No one's gonna know what's coming. No one's
gonna know. It hit him in seven and in that
year that he was sort of the idea was brewing.
He founded he got some folks together groundhog hunters and
called it the Punk Suitani Groundhog Club that would become
that in eighteen ninety nine. And they were groundhog hunters.
(21:42):
Groundhogs were pest and they would go around kill groundhogs.
Apparently they would eat them. It was a delicacy that
they served to out of towners at first, I guess
Jenny Biggs just to see if they died. And then
the locals started eating groundhogs, which I can't imagine taste
very good. But that's hilarious that the tradition of groundhog
(22:02):
Day grew out of these people eating groundhogs like groundhog hunters.
Terrible but also hilarious. And the fact that they served
them two out of towners first, also, it just really
gets me. But this this Punk's Tony Groundhog Club. Um,
they held the first um groundhog Day in seven, as
(22:23):
you were saying before, And I don't I could not
find to save my life why they chose Gobbler's Knob. Um.
But there may be a clue in why Gobbler's Knob
is named that. There's two um possible reasons given. One
is that I guess it was a hangout for turkeys,
which okay, great um or it was the place that
(22:44):
traditionally groundhog hunters or hunters of any woodland animal would
kind of come out of the woods to this hilly
area and eat what they had just caught, or cook
and eat what they just caught, possibly having picnics in
the area. So it would make sense that the ground
Hog Club would go to Gobbler's Nob where they would
normally eat groundhog if this was already associated with groundhogs
(23:06):
in that way. But either way, that's where they helped
your risk. Yeah, picturesque and um bloody, yeah, but I mean,
you know, it makes sense to have a thing. There's
what I'm saying, right right, so right, yeah, it is
quite beautiful. But that's where the first Groundhog Day in
seven was held, and it has been basically ever since.
I mean, there was a stretch here there where they
(23:26):
didn't do it, but as they were first starting to
get their footings. But I think from the turn of
the last century onward it's been at Gobbler's Knob every year.
And I think of that first one h the groundhog
saw his shadow and for parts of the area, and
this is kind of how it goes. Of course, it
was something that's unscientific parts of the area. Had it
(23:51):
worked out parts of the area, it did not work
out as far as winter ending sooner than later. Well,
I think that's kind of par for the course for sure,
of phills we'll see and so Um, although we can
thank like climber Freeze for giving us groundhog Day, Like
I said, like, it's clear this was already an established tradition,
and I think the earliest mentioned they've been able to
(24:12):
find somebody referencing groundhog Day goes back to one where
a guy named James Morris wrote in his diary about
he mentioned groundhog Day. Um, and I don't think he
said whether the groundhog saw his shadow or not. He
just mentions it and kind of describes it. So I'd
have been around for many decades before climber Freeze came
(24:35):
along with it, but climber Freeze is definitely the one
to to popularize it. Yeah, I mean he started writing
about it and writing about the you know, this amazing
groundhog that could foretell the future whether and you know
it's all a tongue in cheek and good fun. Um,
we have to talk about punk Stani Phil, of course,
the famous groundhog that is still the groundhog of record
(25:00):
in punk Sutani full name Puntsatani Phil, seer of seers,
stage of Stages, prognosticator of prognosticators, and weather profit extraordinary.
Is Phil's full Name's right, and it's very cute. I
guess he wasn't named Phil until I don't know the
first half or the mid middle of the last century,
(25:23):
because the the Punks Attanni Groundhog Hog Club on their
website says that he is named after King Philip, and
King Philip is not I don't think they're talking about.
I think they're referencing Prince Philip, who is Queen Elizabeth's husband,
and he wouldn't have really become a public figure until
you know, the thirties, maybe the forties or fifties. So
(25:46):
before that, um, the groundhog, you know, that's stretch um.
But the groundhog was known as a bear groundhog, brother
groundhog or brother groundhog. That's what they all called him before.
But the thing about Punks Attorny Phil, which is what
his name now, he may have had different names, but
the Punks Attorny Groundhog Club maintains that he's still the
(26:09):
same groundhog that they the group came upon back in
eighteen eighty seven. That is this magically living, long living
groundhog who's been alive for I guess now a hundred
and thirty three years since that first Groundhog Day in
eighteen eighty seven. Right, So you know we said earlier
(26:30):
to put a pin in the fact that groundhogs live,
was it like six to eight years or something like that,
That ten in captivity. Sure, well, he's in captivity, but
hundred and thirty three it seems like a wave beyond that.
So they cooked up a fun little story there. They
said that Phil is able to live so long because, um,
(26:50):
he drinks a punch made of dandelions every summer. And
I think they saw the riding on the wall and said, hey,
we can make another money making day out of this
thing if we have a little summer festival picnic thing
where Phil drinks this uh, dandelion juice as it were.
(27:11):
And so now they have a big celebration for Phil's
annual drinking of the daisy juice or dandelion juice. And
we mentioned that, you know, back years back, the groundhog
was treated as a pest and eaten hunted and eaten,
and that they may have had like a picnic around
Gobbler's Knob to eat the groundhogs. This annual tradition now
(27:32):
where they all celebrate Phil gaining seven more years to
his life, seems to have been based on the annual
groundhog hunt and roast. So they went from eating groundhogs
to pretending that this one has been alive for a
hundred and thirty three years thanks to this this magical
potion that he drinks. I wonder if they make great
(27:55):
efforts to get a groundhog that really looks like the
original Phil think groundhogs look a lot alike to humans. Yeah,
you know, but it's like Ugga for the Georgia bulldogs,
Like they have different uggas and white bulldogs. You know,
they all all the Uggans look a little bit different,
and we all like that's part of the personality of
(28:15):
of each Ugga. But I think the groundhogs you're saying,
they just like he didn't have a big white stripe
down the middle of his head or anything. I see,
I see what you mean. Yeah, yeah no, but they've
got to because it's you know, the thing about the
uggas is, you know it's uga six or that's ug
a million or something like that. Like they're meant to
be there, different Uggas, but they're all related in some way,
(28:36):
at least through school spirit. Um, this is supposed to
be all of the successive groundhogs. Whenever they come upon
you know, him and his burrow and he's not moving
any longer, um like the yeah, they would, I guess
kind of have to find a groundhog that looks kind
of like him so that they can be like, well,
this is the this is the same one. He's been
(28:57):
around for a hundred thirty three years. All I'm saying
is probably not very hard to pull the wool over
human being's eyes when they're like, no, it's the same crownhog.
You know. I think I think the Uggs are all
the same family line, if I'm not mistaken. I don't
know if all of them in history, but I think
there's this very prominent Savannah family that, uh where all
(29:19):
the Uggs come from, if I'm not mistaken. Didn't the
main guy, the guy who was on trial and Midnight
of the Garden of Good and Evil? Wasn't he the
Ugga breeder for a while, I don't know, but it
had something to do with that. I feel like he
he had something. Yeah, he had something to do with
the Uggs and if if not like the actual the
owner of the the Ugga's mom or something. Yeah, pretty
(29:42):
good movie. I never read the book. I did both
and they were both pretty good. It was one of
those ones where like the movies just about as good
as the book. Back when you could watch a Kevin
Spacey movie that's right, creeped out and John Kisack does
a good job too, that's right. And you could watch
a John Keisack movie to be crazy. So let's take
(30:03):
let's take a break here and we'll talk about you know,
we mentioned that, uh, when Phil dies in the dead
of night, they have to get him out of there quietly.
We'll talk about how they might do that right after this.
(30:37):
Le Okay, so we're back and we have a dead
groundhog on our hands. Yeah. Well, if punksatany Phil passes away,
which has clearly happened probably ever every eight to ten years, Uh,
they can do so quietly. Because Phil leads a very
pampered life. Uh an indoor life, you might say, oh yeah,
(31:01):
because he has handlers, he has a full sort of staff, volunteers,
that look after Phil, and they all have funny titles
like Shingle Shaker or Chief Chief health Man, and uh,
they make sure Phil leads a pretty cush life there
in captivity. I've read that he eats a lot of
(31:22):
ice cream and actually had to have a tooth removed
once because he had a cavity from eating so much. Yeah,
he's he's basically kept very happy, um and strong out
on junk food, I guess, um. But that inner circle
that you mentioned, that's fifteen local volunteers who basically they're
not the punk Stutawny ground Hog Club. They're like the
(31:45):
the upper echelon the leaders of the punch Stutawny ground
Hog Club, it sounds like. And only a couple of
them are allowed to handle Phil um and the president
is the only one who actually can communicate with Phil.
As we'll see. Yeah, they and we'll talk about the
movie in a bit. But if you've seen the movie,
you've seen those tuxedos and top hats, or if you
(32:09):
you know you got the Delpa work. Anyway, if you
tune in to watch the coverage, you're gonna see those
tuxedos and top hats because they say hey fills the
v I P When v I P s came to
town back in the day. This is what we'd wear
when we met him at the train. And he is
our most famous residents. We're going to pay him that respect. Well,
the other thing that I saw, the other explanation I saw,
and that explanation actually came from one of the former
(32:31):
Inner Circle members. But in other explanations that some of
those early like um nineteenth century depictions of Breyer groundhog
Um was in a top hat, like he was supposed
to be this very intelligent um uh forecaster of of weather. Um,
And so they depict him in like a top hat.
And I think that's probably likelier where it came from,
(32:53):
and they just forgot somewhere along the way. Well, Phill
does a lot of sleeping. Um. He does not hibernate though,
because he, like I said, he's in his his climate
controlled burrow. He doesn't have these cues from nature to
let him know when anything is at all. Uh. He
as far as he knows, it's always perfect weather, except
(33:16):
every February when he gets yanked out of there, taken
out in the cold in the middle of the night
to his other thankfully climate controlled burrow that is built
into a stump. If you've never seen it, you can
just google an image of this. Um kind of nice scene.
It's got a stage there in a stump, and it's
you know, it looks like something you'd see it. Uh uh,
(33:39):
like a show at six Flags or something that's exactly
right the country bears jamboree or something totally. Um, yeah,
that's great. I couldn't quite put my finger on what
it looked like, but that is exactly what I was
thinking of and could find now. So um, it's a
bit of a rude awakening. Like you said, it's the
middle of the night, ful phill, but they give him
some time to kind of real ax and like get
(34:00):
settled into his his um stump, his showtime stump, I guess,
is what you call it. But I can't imagine that
he's like getting a lot of relaxation. And because just
outside of that stump is anywhere from I've seen eight
thousand up to twenty thousand people all hanging out on
Gobbler's Knob. And this is in a town of about
(34:22):
five thousand people, so the population might be quadruple depending
on whether Groundhog days, say, falls on a weekend, and
they are so loud there. It's a rowdy, boisterous crowd um.
They shoot off fireworks, they have live music all throughout
the night. This is all leading up to dawn. Basically
from about three am to about six thirty am, they
(34:43):
just are partying right outside of Phil's stump. And then
if there's a drink, like a signature drink, yeah, I
saw there's a groundhog punch that has to do with
like vodka and a bunch of other stuff. But I
also have a distinct impression that this might be, if
not dry, at least way more family friendly than yeah,
(35:05):
everybody wasted on punch kind of thing. No, that's true.
I mean you don't want to you don't want it
to be like, uh well, like the Kentucky Derby. Dude, Man,
things get dark. They're real quick. You've been to one
of those, right, Yeah, and it got dark. They're real quick. Man.
That was like like the second the race is over. Yeah,
and even no before during after it's just utter chaos.
(35:27):
You mean I were like, we we didn't leave, we fled.
It was crazy, dude. Yeah, But now I think of
the impression that this is a lot more clean cut
than than the Kentucky Derby. I feel when I saw fireworks,
I just felt bad for Phil that can't Yeah, you
must have been scared, for sure. And I'm sure all
the dogs in the area are like I hate groundhog Day,
(35:51):
you know, and neighbors that aren't really big on Groundhog
Day are probably not very happy. I mean, but airbnbr
place is what you do. I would guess so, because again,
five thousand people live in town, twenty additional people show
up and hopefully if you own a business you've listened
to chuck in your businesses open that day. So you
(36:11):
mentioned the president is the only one who can speak
to Phil or understand Phil. Uh. When Phil emerges from
that borough, he does speak. Um. Groundhog ease is what
they call it. And the president is the only person
even in that inner circle that can understand and translate
for the people. And Phil is is kind of a rapper,
(36:32):
Isn't that right? I think that's being rather generous, But yes,
he he speaks in rhyme, kind of sing song rhyme. Yeah, well,
I mean it looks like wrapped to me on this
groundhog Day. I'm happy to say I love fruity pebbles
in a major way. Was that a commercial? Yes, it
(36:54):
was ironically well, I guess the opposite of ironically expectedly, um,
fruity pebbles commercial. Uh so yeah, So he speaks and
sings song, the president translates for everyone. They all have
a good time. And keep in mind, this is at dawn.
So I imagined the whole affair is over pretty quickly. Yeah,
they've got to be so tired too. Um, but everybody
(37:17):
gets powered up by some vodka based groundhog punch. Sure,
they're like, why are we drunk? Aft is right? I
think that's kind of the case, at least for some people.
But um, that's the whole shebang. They kind of stretched
it out for a week. I've seen that the whole
festivities kind of take place over the week. But it
seems like February second is kind of the big day
(37:38):
February first slash second. So is he accurate though, that's
the question that The answer to that question is no,
not at all, because it's unscientific. Well yeah, that's definitely unscientific.
But somehow Phil is even worse than chance at predicting
the weather. Now, the Groundhog Club says he's he's correct
a percent of the time. Um. That's the whole tongue
(38:01):
in cheek thing. And then some people like to try
to prove them right and say, well, yes, in some
parts of the country he's right, in other parts he's not.
But for the punk Sittawny area or western Pennsylvania he's
he's he hits between thirty and forty on any given
ten year stretch between two thousand ten and two thousand nineteen,
(38:23):
between two thousand and one and two thousand ten, um,
So that's not very good. I mean, like, if you
just toss a coin, you could expect to come up
heads or tails better than that, And that's basically what
they're doing. UM. And we should say, in Phil's defense,
he's not predicting anything. This is all the very very
insane inner circle who are making these predictions. So they're
technically the ones who are worse than chance at predicting
(38:46):
whether there's going to be six more weeks of winter
or in early spring. Yeah. I didn't want to be
there in the first place. That's right. There's I saw
footage of one a bit the the gout the handler's finger,
and um only got some of the glove, but it
looked like it would have been pretty vicious had he
gotten any of his actual finger. It was hilarious and
the crowd went wild. They loved it. He literally bit
(39:09):
the hand that feds it. Yeah, I guess, so he's like,
give me some more ice cream. So should we talk
about the movie? We can't not talk about the movie.
I didn't think we were talking about the movie groundhog Day,
a movie which I have covered on movie Crush. This
was the favorite movie of Griffin McElroy, of the famous
(39:30):
McElroy Brothers podcasting. I saw that. I thought it was
Justin mclroy was a Griffin, now justin. He was on
two though. He did with Nail and I another great movie,
and Griffin picked picked groundhog Day, and he says. Griffin's
quote was not only do I think it's my favorite movie?
He said, I think it's the best movie, like literally
(39:53):
the best movie. He had some groundhog punch himself. He
loves it, and uh and love it. It's a little
you know, it doesn't age super well. Kind of it's
a little problematic, is kind. He's a little he's a
little he's just a little aggressive. He he doesn't take
(40:13):
no for an answer over and over and over, and
that's the point of the movie. But watching it through
to today's lens is sort of like he back off, Dude,
She's not interested, right, So yeah, I get you. Um
So the for those of you who haven't seen it,
first of all, go see it. But then secondly, it's
it's um about this reporter. He gets stuck in this
(40:34):
time loop where he's living February second Groundhog Day in
punks its hawny over and over and over again. His
name is Phil And it had such a huge impact. Yeah,
and they never explained why this happens. It just happens
to him, which I think is something that makes the
movie that much more enjoyable. But um, the this movie
(40:55):
had such an impact on um the culture that today
people associate groundhog Day not just with you know, predicting
whether there's gonna be an early spring or more winter.
They predicted with weird things like losing track of time
or time doing odd things, or having deja vu. And
that's strictly from the movie. Like that was never a
(41:16):
part of Groundhog Day until this movie came along. Yeah,
I mean people will say that if something happened again
to you or whatever you say. Oh man, it's like
groundhog Day. Uh. And it's you know, it's pretty rare
for a movie to enter the sort of public consciousness
to that degree. And also it's interesting and displace something
that's already taking that spot even you know what I'm saying,
(41:39):
or add to it at least. Yeah, for sure. Um.
When I was doing research for the movie Crush episode,
I did see that thing that you included here that
the original screenwriter and eventual co writer to Harold Ramos,
Danny Ruben Um the original script it was ten thousand
years um that he was living because is of the
(42:00):
Buddhist principle that it takes ten thousand years for a
human soul to be perfect, and they change that up
in the movie. And there is a lot of robust
debate about how many days occur in the movie. Um, supposedly,
and I look this up in a bunch of different places.
(42:20):
If you just look at the movie the number of
times it repeats, it's thirty eight, Okay, I saw, But
if there are people who have taken time to calculate
how long it really is. Because you know, he learns
foreign languages, he becomes a master piano player. Uh and
and people have taken great links to actually calculate how
(42:43):
long it would take to do all this, and everyone,
I mean, there are some exact days that people have calculated,
but everyone is sort of landed in the neighborhood of
about ten years, including Harold Ramos saying, yeah, we feel
like it's about ten years that he's relived in order
to learn all this stuff. I like ten thousand more.
I'm going with Danny Ruben's estimate. You know, well, if
(43:07):
it was ten thousand years, he would just be like
it'd be like in the matrix at the end or something. Well,
at some point he says, I'm a god, so you know,
maybe it still is in there. But um, yeah. One
of the things about that movie too, Chuck, is, um
it's part of the festivities now, the show it the
night before at like the local theater, and um it's
(43:30):
been a boon for the town as well, not just
Groundhog Day, but the movie itself has drawn people to
the town to kind of see, you know, Punks Attawny,
and they're usually very disappointed to find out that they
didn't actually shoot the town in Punks Autonny. They shot
it in Woodstock, Illinois. So while they named like the
businesses and took like cop cars from Punksutawni and like
(43:51):
moved a lot of punks Tawny two Woodstock, you can't
visually see like, oh this is where this this you know,
this is where ned Ryerson crosses the street um to
say hi, you know downtown, Like that's in Woodstock, Illinois.
So I think they don't tell people that until after
they've made their way to punt Stani and spend at
least fifty dollars, then they tell them, Okay, this wood Stock,
(44:14):
Illinois that you're really after. Yeah, I mean what do
you think. Do you want to go to punt Stani
and kind of be at the real place or do
you want to go to Illinois to kind of see
these real old movie locations. I would like to go
to neither of those places. I'm good with the seeing
clips old clips um on YouTube. That's fine with me.
(44:34):
Like It's never struck me as like a great um
uh holiday. I think, not because of Groundhog Day or
the fact that it's in western Pennsylvania or anything like that, um,
but because February two is just such a sucky time
of the year. I hate that time of the year.
Um that nothing really good can happen around then. So
(44:56):
you know, the beginning of February always thinks, which is
ironic because my wedding anniversaries in mid February. That to
me is when things pick up. Yeah, I pulled that
out at the end of night. You did, I forgot
you guys got you got married in warm climbs. Yeah,
we we escaped to Hawaii because February is kind of
gross in the United States. Yeah, my anniversary sometime in
(45:19):
late April. I can never remember the day. Well, hey,
just start saying after this, we'll just say all the
different numbers, will find out the right one and then
Jerry can edit it in all right, Um, you you
got anything else? I got nothing else. Um well, if
you want to know more about Groundhog Day, just go online.
(45:40):
I think this year it's a streaming there because of COVID.
They're not having people out, but they are streaming is
so you can go check out the punks Attorny Groundhog
Clubs website for all the links and everything. And since
I directed everyone to the punks Attorny Groundhog Clubs website.
As per usual, it's time for a listener. Now I'm
(46:02):
going to call this hot off the presses. This came
in thirty seconds ago and I didn't have one prepared,
and this is a good one. Hey, guys, hope you're
doing well. Josh, Chuck and Jerry over there. My name
is Mike Martin. He him his thank you for that. Mike.
I'm a classical musician, a bassist in the New World
Symphony in Miami Beats, Florida. Been an avid listener for
(46:24):
six years. My sister Jessica got me hooked on your
show after we were traveling to see our family got
stuck behind an oil tanker. The truck pulled to a
stop on a quiet stretch of highway Rural in the
middle of the night, when the driver put on the
hazards jumped out of the vehicle. Confused, we attempted to
go around when the hood of the truck burst into flames.
After backing away to a safe distance, my sister laughed side,
(46:47):
pulled out her phone and said, looks like we're not
going anywhere. Have you heard of stuff you should know?
Since then, I've listened to your entire catalog five times. Wow.
So this is a long email, but I'm gonna get
to the cruxt of it here. It was about the
Clan episode uh in his experience as a black man.
(47:07):
He said, I really appreciate your recent episode in the KKK,
especially with Chuck mentioned about feeling you need to do
a comprehensive dive on the Clan because of the terror
and harm they visited on Black Americans like myself twenty
six years old, and even when I was a young
child in the nineties, there were cross burnings near my
home in semi rural Pennsylvania. Uh. We moved a few
(47:28):
towns over not long afterwards, but all my life as
a black child living in the Northeast, I live with
explicitly racist iconography. On walks with friends in the woods,
we'd find swastikas and racist screeds spray painted on abandoned
railroad buildings. Who was not uncommon to see Confederate flags
on people's homes and cars. Even in school, I'd find
nooses tied on the pool cords of blinds. I even
(47:51):
remember the first time I was called the N word
in a school bathroom in the first grade, and the
principle's response to my parents in his office, we can't
help what people teach their kids at home. Man, the
way I was treated improved as I got older, but
it prompted me to start thinking about how the more
insidious and subtle elements of racism impact my life and
those of others from a very young age. And then
(48:15):
Mike went on to give a lot of great recommendations
for episodes he thinks we should do uh, and he says,
stay safe and be well. And that is from Mike
Martin the bass player. Nice Mike, thanks a lot for
writing and I'm sorry all of that could happen to you. Yeah, um,
and yeah, thanks for the ideas. Give me an idea
that he gave us for an episode. He said jazz
(48:38):
because he said it. It's a lot of different things
that we've talked about, um, kind of coming together uh
in musical movement. So that's one that we've talked about.
Is just cheez like Ken Burns did. However many hours
on jazz. How do we do five minutes on jazz? Whatever?
We did a two part on evil kinevel. We can
do anything. Be about scooda dude, you just do that
(49:02):
the whole time, all right, Maybe we shouldn't do one
on jazz. Now I think about sorry Mike. Well, if
you want to get in touch with this like Mike
didn't and share the horrors of your childhood, we want
to hear that in a weird way, um, and also
to share with the rest of you so we can
all feel like a stuff you Should Know family even
more than we did before. Uh. And you can wrap
(49:23):
it up, spank it on the bottom gently, and send
it off to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio because at the iHeart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
Show Links
AboutOrder Our BookStoreSYSK ArmyRSSPopular Podcasts
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.