August 4, 2016 • 40 mins
Mermaids aren't real. That much we know. But the history and lore of these magical and sometimes menacing creatures of the sea is pretty interesting stuff. Learn all about these half women/half fish today.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know front House Stuff Works
dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Yeah,
that's right. There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, Jerry's over there
in the ether, floating, possibly not existing, who knows. Uh.
(00:23):
And this is stuff you should know, that's right. Just
a couple of couple of merman trying to make their
way in the world, trying to keep their tails wet.
Yeah you know, yeah, because that thing dries out. You've
seen Splash. Yeah, it's a actually past now. She dried
out and she was just fine. Oh. I thought, oh,
(00:44):
you thinking of et when he turned all white and
dried out. I was thinking of Splash because I couldn't remember.
It's one of It was one of my favorite movies
as a kid. It's a cute movie. Um. It was
one of those early HBO movies, early Tom Hanks, which
I'm big fan of early Tom Hanks, and um, I
(01:04):
just thought it was a really fun funny movie. John
Candy movie what's his name played the evil man trying
to expose her. Um, Eugene Levy, I think, oh, was
he the bad guy? Yeah? He was the one that
you know that's a high quality movie. When Eugene Levy
is the bad guy. Yeah, there was the SETV crew
and um, he actually tried to spray her and get
(01:25):
her wet so she would and the fat kid turned
into a mermaid on the sidewalk, That's what it was.
And she got wet, she turned to a mermaid. She
got tried, no problem. Yes, And Daryl Hannah, of course,
who's running around with Neil Young? Now? Oh really? Yeah?
How about that couple? Sure? Why not? Both environmentalists. But
there's a lot of turquoise in that bedroom. I wonder
(01:48):
if you hook up with Neil Young, if or anyone
like that, if if you're sort of a new relationship
and not like the wife they had for forty years,
if you're like, ya, play a song, why don't you what? Like?
I wonder if you asked them to play music? Oh,
like you're actually into him? Yeah, Like if if you're
Billy Joel's new year old wife, do you ever say, like, hey, honey,
(02:11):
play me a tune. Play that one that you that
you wrote ten years before I was conceived. I think
what I'm saying is I would have a hard time
being with Neil Young and not every night after dinner,
just kind of nudging the guitar towards him, Oh, I
got you, and saying I'd love to hear Old Man. Yeah,
(02:32):
please baby one for me, And yeah, he says, I
played that song times. Yeah, I would guess that, well,
I can tell you I would. I would. Yeah, I
would guess that once you reach a certain point and
playing a song, you never want to hear that song
or even think about it existing again, but then you
still have to play it. I try not to think
(02:53):
about that when I'm at those shows. Yeah, it makes
me feel bad for him, like they might as well be,
you know, in the monkey house or something, and you
just throwing bananas at him. And God bless the people
who really bring it still where you feel like, man,
they're playing that song for me tonight, Adam Man did
he still bring it? He's just who came to mind.
(03:15):
Whereas when I saw the Police on their reunion, they
were phoning it in really, even Stewart Copeland. Well, I mean,
they were playing the songs, but it just it didn't
look like they were enjoying themselves at all. It looked
like a total money grab. Sure, they entered from three
separate entrances and exited from three separate and I got
the feeling they didn't even like speak much. That's like
(03:35):
I was reading an article on the Ramons, the Rolling
Stone one recently. Uh yeah, I guess it was. Yeah,
they had a great article on them, so yeah, I
guess it was. It was definitely Rolling Stones. So okay,
did you read it? Yeah, then it was awesome. But yeah,
they're like they they would they would just like get
on the bus and not speak to one another, go
(03:55):
to the next town and get on stage and play
and then come off stage and not like they would.
They would be gun stage because they had to. That
was it. And apparently, well at least Joey and who
was his big foil is those ones who really hated
each other. Yeah, supposedly they didn't speak at all for
like twenty five years straight, right because Joey stole d
(04:15):
D's like love of his life and then they were
in the band together still after that it was just
like ts Man, so weird. So like a lot of songs,
especially once like the kk K Took My Baby Away,
that's about Joey stealing dds girlfriend. Wow, it was a
great article, good read. Um, So back to splash, funny
(04:38):
movie about a mermaid, and we're gonna talk about mermaids here,
and mostly what we're gonna cover is the lore in
history and the mythology of the mermaid because there's a
little giveaway there are no mermaids. What did you look
up like pictures of real mermaids sightings and stuff. Yeah,
and it's the same thing as pictures of Bigfoot sighting,
(05:00):
some pictures of UFO sighting some weird distant blur that like,
you can't it could be kelped or it is such
an obviously doctored photo. What would be fun, though, is
if we had a time machine forget killing Hitler. If
you get like, oh yeah, that's right. I can't believe
we don't put this into good use. Forget like, um,
you know, saving the world. They're keeping the Dodo from
(05:22):
going extinct. I would take some of these doctored photos
that are just so easy to make today back to
like the nineteen twenties and be like look at this
and they go, yeah, I know, we still believe in
that stuff. With your aim being what just a freak
am out, I figured there'd be a money angle. Oh yeah,
(05:42):
Josh is traveling Wonder Wonder emporium. It's not a bad
idea where in which you just show them photos. But
I charged them like two thousand sixteen rates and no
one can possibly afford that, So I go out of business,
like almost immediately. Right, there's like one guy in the town.
It's like, oh, pay fifty to see those right, step
right up, towns only billionaire. Um, that's a great idea.
(06:06):
I don't know why no one ever thought of that.
It was a terrible idea, like from beginning to end.
Forget going back and betting on the stock market or
the outcome of the World Series. I'm gonna go back
and set up a business doom to fail. All right,
So let's talk about mermaid uh lore. Well we can
start here in the more modern age, because there are
still places that try and take people for money, like
(06:30):
we were just talking about, even like me um in
fact uh in Israel on the coast there and they
actually have a town called kyr yat Yam. And if
you go to kiryat Yam, you could win how much money?
Does he even say? Million bucks? Million American dollars if
(06:50):
you um, if you provide incontrovertible evidence of the mermaid
that is reputed to want to live there, Yeah, and
appear at sunce as of two thousand nine was the
first sighting there. Yeah, And of course what that is
is a ploy to try and get tourists and come
and spend money in the town and look for the mermaid.
(07:10):
The welcome you to Yam. I'm sure lock Ness has
made plenty of tourist money over the years. Apparently they
have a standing offer as well, and that's where the
mayor of Curiot Yam got the idea great idea. And
actually I saw that photo too. It's kind of neat.
I don't know what it is or who created it
or whatever, but there's allegedly a photo taken obviously from
(07:33):
like a cliff down on to a beach, you know,
a beach that will have like a big just slab
of rocks surrounded by sand, sand and mermaids. Right, there's
a mermaid on that rock, just kind of looking out
in the sea. And of course it could be anything.
It could be totally doctored, who knows um, But it's
from a distance and at least they didn't like go
(07:54):
full out like perfect picture of a mermaid of ever
it's it's it's just um suggest to enough that people
who believe in such things would be like, right, there,
there's a picture of a mermaid, you know, so that
was found in two thousand nine, or that surfaced in
two thousand nine, and since then the surfaced right, since
then the town's uh had that standing offer? Correct? So uh?
(08:19):
The really the interesting thing to me about mermaids is
the mythology. Did you take mythology in college at all? Yeah?
I did. It. Always wanted it to interest me more
than it did me too. It was just I don't
know if it wasn't explained to me quite well enough,
or just the ancients non bicameral mind wasn't um fused
(08:42):
together enough to interest people in the modern age. Well,
I think so. I think the stories themselves, as far
as good storytelling, we're just lacking because a lot of
them were just versions of one another, and there was
usually a very basic uh amis or moral um. And
(09:03):
in the case of mermaids, a lot of times they
were a lot of folksore even was rooted in misogyny.
You know, you know, there'll be a woman to come
along and screw your life up, right, or if you
grew up a woman, Um, she will kill your children
or something like that, like women were not to be trusted,
and they were murderous and duplacidus and a lot of
(09:24):
mythologist the old Hag so uh it was in various,
I mean hundreds and hundreds of books and texts, including
the Talmud, believe it or not. And we've talked about
plenty of the Elder, the Beer and the dude Rome's
plan of the Elder. He in his Natural History talked
(09:46):
about a mermaid like creature called the neriad. Yes, I
think I'm pronouncing that correctly. Yeah, in e r e
I d that ei is a tough transition, is because
you want to say, like the Reid, Yeah ner Reed,
these are sea nymphs, half human, half fish mermaids and um.
(10:09):
He also talked about sea men. And we should point
out that Merman we made the joke about us being Merman.
I believe Merman were even first on the literary scene.
Is that correct? Well, first, at least with mythology or
um theology. I guess there's a Babylonian god of the
sea named Ea e A sports um just e A,
(10:32):
and he pops up in uh Babylonian mythology from I
think four thousand years ago, and they think that he's
actually the progenitor of or the predecessor I should say,
of Poseidon, who is the Greek god of the sea,
and Neptune, who's the Roman god of the see. Because
the Greeks gave us Western culture, but they just walked
(10:55):
around to all of the neighboring cultures and picked their
favorite parts and put them together. Yeah, and that was
definitely one of them. Yeah. Uh, well, we talked in
our I guess it was in the folklore and fairy
Tale episodes that were twin episodes almost um about the
(11:16):
original Little Mermaid and how you know she was disnified
to the fullest. But the original story was far darker, darker,
but also even more touching by far. Like I went
back and read the last um the last like section
of it. Well, give me a summary at the end.
So at the end, this is where dramatically differs from
(11:39):
the Disney story. The Little Mermaid is scorned for another
woman her the guy she loves chooses someone else and
Mary's her and the Little Mermaid is like, dude, I
gave up my tail for you, I think, which has
my tongue kind of thing, UM, and I want to
get back my life. So her sisters came and bring
(12:01):
her this ritual knife and say, you can convert back
to a mermaid if before dawn you plunge this knife
into this dude's heart, this guy who loves heart, and
you get some of his blood on your feet, you
will regrow your tail and you can jump into the
sea and everything will be just fine again. So she
goes and she finds the guy sleeping with his new
(12:25):
bride beside him, and she just can't do it. She
throws the knife into the sea and Um becomes c foam.
She disintegrates and becomes c foam. So she gives her
her own happiness up for this guy's right and dies
as a result. But even better than that, when she
turns into c foam, she becomes a different mythical creature
(12:47):
UH like basically an air nymph that goes around like
helping humans UM, and she can possibly get into heaven
if she helps people. UM for three years. It haunts
Christian Anderson wrote it way better than I just recounted
it a lot less ums and likes ye. But it's
(13:07):
it's pretty it's worth reading. Uh. Plenty also talked about
merman um back in the day, and there would be
merman or seamen who would at night climb up on
two ships. As a quote, that's why I'm reading it weird,
upon which the side of the vessel where he seated
himself would instantly sink downward, and if you remain there
any considerable time, even go underwater. And that was something
(13:31):
that we will see as we talk more about mermaids.
They are u very They're often either an omen that
something bad is going to happen to sailors or coastal
dwelling people, or they actually directly cause harm two sailors
or coastal dwelling people. Yeah, and most times under the
(13:51):
guys of something beautiful and like a siren um, they're
often well, I don't we haven't even described one early.
You know that a mermaid has the head and body
torso of a woman, human woman, usually with huge boobs. Yeah.
If you're talking about a sailor's account, Yeah, she was busty.
(14:14):
Did I mention the boobs? Yes, she did, sir seven times?
Um and uh from the you know torso down, she's
a fish. Maybe web feet, maybe not very graceful, very
fast and always beautiful. Uh it depends. Oh yeah, yeah,
(14:35):
there was some of legend that we're not ugly, really
not ugly, or they were that they were not in
parentheses beautiful ugly. Uh well, I hadn't heard about that. Yeah,
it's it's in here. I thought. I'm just I must
have missed that part. It's a it's it's far more frequent.
(14:57):
What you were saying that they were beautiful and alluring. Okay, um,
but we'll talk more about that after we take a break. Huh,
(15:28):
all right, Chuck. We were saying that, for the most part,
mermaids are beautiful, and one of the reasons why they
are supposed to be beautiful is because they are frequently,
um accused of luring men sailors out to sea to
their death. Yeah, and how you do that? You do
that one of two ways. You have a beautiful singing
(15:49):
voice or you just straight up look good yourself. That's right.
And if you have a beautiful singing voice, you're a siren,
in which case you would not be a mermaid because
the siren is half bird, half woman, and they don't
even necessarily live in the water or near the water.
They're sometimes described as hanging out in fields. I guess
(16:10):
sometimes you can be very pretty and be a good singer,
right your mermaid but the yeah you could be Yeah,
sure you'd be. Who am I to disagree? You'd or
Alicia Keys or Adele? Oh you know who I like his?
Uh Rihanna? Oh yeah, she's great, very pretty. That part
(16:34):
in h what's it called this at the end and
she played herself. Yeah, yeah, she's pretty great, and she
was pretty funny. Michael Sarah likes bank her and she
just immediately turned around and smacked the heck out of him. Yeah.
I enjoyed parts of that movie, especially Michael Sarah. Yeah,
playing like a cooked out jerk. That was really funny. Um.
(16:55):
So back to the Beautiful Mermaids though, uh there there
was one then one thousand BC in Syria. And her
name how would you pronounce that? At her gaddis? Oh?
I think you nailed it? Yeah, yeah, all right, we'll
go with that. And she and you'll you'll see a
lot of duality a lot of these stories, and she
was one for sure that was a protector, a goddess.
(17:16):
I think she protected the fertility of her people, and
um watched over them and uh fell in love with
a human man, as you will often see a lot
of these stories. Yeah, dude, and it and it was
fine for a little while, like in most stories, and
then it goes south and she kills him. She crushed
(17:37):
him with her greatness. Oh, I thought, like her big
tale or something I don't know was she wasn't a
mermaid yet, this is where she becomes. That's that's right.
I forgot about that. So um, she accidentally kills him,
and then his very shame throws herself into the lake
because she wants to become a fish, and she's so
(17:57):
beautiful that it only works half as good. I really
can't figure out the math on that, but I guess
she's just so beautiful that the human beauty part of hers, like, no,
I won't be a fish, just the lower half can
be a fish because she had to fungus, so that
was easily overcome, but her face was really nice, so
the fish part just couldn't overcome that. That's right, So
(18:20):
she ended up a mermaid. Weird story, Well that's just weird,
like like, oh, it's foreign or anything. I'm not being xenophobic,
but it really like he says a lot about like
humanity and like how we think of things, like no,
she was so good looking that this magic couldn't even
overcome that. You know. Point we placed a lot of
(18:43):
value on that kind of thing. Uh, all right, should
we move on to Germany? Yeah? This one was kind
of interesting to me because Germany's landlocked. I never really
thought about that. What what does Germany have a mermaid mythology? Well,
I mean they have lakes, I guess, But mermaids are
(19:04):
ocean dwellers, aren't they know? There are some river dwellers.
Oh that's right, although I think the sirens were specifically river.
Well then in the German myth that was a river dweller, correct, Okay, yeah,
the nixes uh yeah, and they lured men into the river. Yeah,
it was a river and so they could drown them,
like again, the call of the siren coming here. Look
(19:25):
how beautiful I am. And now I'm holding your head
underwater and you can't breathe anymore, and the guys like
I regret nothing. But this duality that we're talking about is,
uh what you see a lot of times in mermaid
myths from West Africa. The Mammy Wada, the Mother Water.
(19:47):
She was a mermaid who was very nurturing and very
loving if you didn't cross her, Yeah, exactly, that's where
the duality comes in. I don't even know if that's duality.
I think that's just a complex person, good, good complex
character there. Yeah, yeah, so she's great, but when you
cross her, she's murderous. Sure, all right, and that's what
(20:10):
she did. Actually she had. If you were loyal to her,
she would you could be wealthy from her magic mirror
and comb. But if you betrayed her, then what this
article says is she reigns down fury and destruction. Right
then the age word from above. But the duality is
as an important part of it because the the physical
(20:31):
creature itself is two things, and they are also two
things emotionally. And but so the mermaid, the mermaid or
mermaid or murf folk as their calling this article. Yeah,
so murf folks are half fish, half people, right, but
they're not anywhere near unique in the pantheon of mythological
(20:55):
creatures throughout the ages. Right, there's again there's sirens, halford's,
half women. There's there's just tons of like the minotaur,
half man, half bull the centaur was what half go
or horse and half man? I don't remember that sounds right?
I think half horse? Um? And I was like, where
(21:16):
did all these come from? I suspected beast reality, and
it turns out I may be right. Yeah, you find
there are some scholars out there who believe that this
is the product of a much more relaxed attitude towards
beast reality than we modern humans have today. Yeah. Yeah,
(21:37):
I still never saw that documentary about the horse. Yeah
it's a good one, zoo. Yeah, I need that fell
off my radar. Man. It's one of those ones where
they largely to recreate, like the whole thing is almost recreation,
and I usually am not hip on those. It doesn't
feel like a documentary to me, but that one changed
my mind about that whole technique that they did it
so well. It's rough. It's rough, especially like when you
(22:03):
think about you know, the animals as well. Yeah, of
course you know, but there's more than just that that
makes it rough. I need to see that. Um. So,
I guess we can talk a little bit about some
eyewitness accounts. They're all bunk, of course, but they have
happened in World War two, in Japan. On Indonesia's Kai Islands. Uh.
(22:24):
Supposedly they encountered a monster on the beach that had
you know, webbed hands and feet and was kind of
part human, part fish. It's like, look at these jazz hands.
You can't do this. And then back in the day, Uh,
some of our most revered explorers and adventure adventurers reported
(22:45):
seeing mermaids, like John Smith and Henry Hudson in Columbus. Yeah,
what was There's a good quote in here from Columbus
because he wasn't too impressed. He said, and here's the
thing I had that in his diary. He's referring to
himself in the third person. Well that says a lot.
That's odd. He's like Ricky Henderson, right, or George Costanza.
(23:09):
So he says that he saw some Oh yeah, the
quote son, and you gotta read the quote. He's out
sailing around, not a that it he Oh what is
that in the ocean? I think I'll take a look
through my spine glass. The day before when the admiral
was going to the and the admirals himself, Yeah, that's
what I'm thinking. He was the admiral of his fleet
for sure. The day before, when the Admiral was going
(23:31):
on to the Rio del Oro, that's the River of Gold.
He said he saw three mermaids who came quite high
out of the water. But we're not as pretty as
they are depicted. For somehow, in the face they look
like men. But I still thought about it. Yeah, so,
and what they think now, and I don't know how
(23:52):
they substantiated this, is that Columpus was seeing manates. Yeah,
have you seen manates? Yeah, it looks nothing like a
human From enough of a distance, though, you're like, wait,
what is that, especially if you've never seen a manatee before.
I don't think it looks human like at all. But
from enough of a distance, yeah, I can see how
(24:13):
somebody would, especially if you believe that mermaids existed, you
see a manatee. Maybe it's hard for me to totally
get that. Go there in that put my mind in
that kind of frame, in the frame of Christopher Columbus. Well,
just to have never seen a mermaid, who have never
seen a manatee, to be high on on aarro wax scalps. Okay,
(24:37):
I just blanked on the green marijuana, the green the
green drink absentthe I don't think absence was around with Columbus.
Are you kidding me? No, I'm not you shooting that stuff?
Kind of see it? Uh so he maybe saw a manatee.
I was like, yeah, they're not so great looking. After all,
(24:59):
they're nothing, right, what's everyone talking about? Uh? Yeah, he
saw one. This is like Jimmy Carter in the UFOs.
Like you're kind of surprised when you hear this that
somebody sited it. Apparently Reagan said he saw UFOs as well. Uh.
John Smith said he saw some. He liked what he saw.
He liked the look at the manatees because he said
(25:21):
he fell in love with one with long green hair. Yeah,
he said it was it wasn't bad looking, or it
wasn't unattractive or something like that. Yeah, it's kind of
a head. He hedged his bets a little bit. I
guess he wanted to check the rest of her out
and then he saw she had a tail, and it's like, oh,
I can't go there. So what's going on here? They're
(25:41):
hallucinating because they've been on the high seas too long.
That's what a lot of people say. Um. Other people
say that again, they were predisposed to believing in mermaids
because people thought mermaids existed. This were This was the
age of exploration. So it's the beginning of the age
of exploration, which means that before then the oceans were
(26:01):
largely unexplored and there were tons of beliefs in thousands
year thousands of year old mythologies about creatures that lived
in the sea. So if you thought that those things existed,
then something that looked kind of like a mermaid could
be a mermaid. So that was probably if they were
just they're just cases of mistaken identity. They were highly suggestible. Yeah,
(26:26):
we did. Yeah, that was a good one. I thought
that one was going to be awful and it turned
out pretty great. Like I remember thinking like this is
not going to go well, and kind like this one.
How do you think this one's going pretty great? All right,
let's take a break then and uh give each other
a neck rub, and we'll come back more comfortable than ever.
(26:49):
All right, there is a dude. I love this guy.
(27:19):
His name is Carl Bants and he he di're not
a Carl Bands fan. Well, I just I'm not quite
sure to understand unless did you read the article. Well,
just to set it up. Okay, So dude named Carl
Bants back in he wrote a an article in a
legitimate journal, the Journal Limnology and Oceanography, um, and they
(27:43):
published it, and it is an entirely tongue in cheek
but totally played straight account of the extinct species mermaid. Yeah,
like wherein he surmises on like for real, where they
came from, what their biology was, where they while they
left us? Yep, that they were warm water dwelling, that
(28:05):
they ate human flesh, which is why they lured people
to their death. Um. He goes so far as to
say that they um most likely only produced one or
two offspring at a time because the females of the
of the species had two breasts, and that was it. Okay,
you know, um, like like this is the thought that
(28:27):
this guy put into this this article and the fact
that he writes it totally straight and like really gives
it its due attention, Like it wasn't that that, like
this is gonna be a great idea, and just the
idea itself is hilarious, so I don't really have to
put any effort into actual execution. He put effort into
the execution and did he did pretty good. I'm not
knocking him. I guess I just don't see why this
(28:48):
journal would put something like that out there. Even I
don't know, I mean, I guess they had a good
sense of humor and they were Maybe it was the
April Fool's episode. I was wondering if that was the
case too, and I forgot to look if it was
the April issue. Perhaps he did use the words horny
skinfolds though, right, their skin, and he theorized was not smooth, smooth,
(29:09):
scaled like a regular fish. But I had quote horny
skin folds like an armadilla. Yeah. What's interesting is I
saw another account from eighteen thirty in Scotland. There's a
kind of a town called Benbecula on the Outer Hebrides, right,
which is like the outer Islands, the arca archipelago. It's
(29:32):
an archipelago. That's how you say that, right, it's archipelago. Yeah,
either way. There's a town there, a string of islands,
coastal thank you, coastal town where in eighteen thirty the
whole town swore they saw a mermaid and tried to
grab the mermaid, and the mermaid swam away. So some
kid threw a rock at it and hit it in
its back, and two days later they found it dead
(29:55):
on shore and they felt so bad about it that
they they they buried it. They gave it a funeral
with like a casket and everything, and um they said
that it didn't have scales, that it had like kind
of rough skin instead horny skinfold. Yeah, they didn't use
that term, but this is like a thing in eight
(30:16):
thirty in Scotland. Yeah, pretty interesting that when you read
the account of it years later. By the way, horny skinfolds, Yeah, yeah,
that is interesting. Uh, maybe there's something there, right, I
had to keep the folds of the horny skinfold clean,
(30:37):
you know that, like gunk gets trapped in there. I
don't know. Maybe that's the name of the first single
cleaning the folds. The other thing um that A Bants
did in his article was explained probably why they're extinct. Now.
He came to the conclute their extinct um. He said
they were warm water, so they would have cohabitated or
(30:58):
shared the their a system with jellyfish. And as humans
started to fish more and more of the sea, um,
we upset the ecological balance. Jellyfish populations were allowed to
boom which is the case. And they stung the mermaids
to death because the mermaids had they lacked the blubber
that would protect them not just in cold water, but
(31:18):
from jellyfish things as well. So they died out from
jellyfish things. Yeah, because their their upper skin was just
regular skin. It wasn't the horny skin folds, so it
provided no protection. Exactly. That's it's worth reading. Go check
it out. It's called Mermaids the Biology, Their Biology, Culture
and Demise. You can find like the full pdf online. Well,
(31:38):
I think we have to address the animal planet snapoo.
I don't know if they would call it a snapper.
I think they would call it a ratings bonanza. Yeah, which,
what was the other when we talked about the Megalodon?
When Discovery Channel aired a Megalodon documentary that appeared by
all accounts to be true and was not the same
thing with Mermaids, But they did it twice, they did
(32:02):
they did a sequel because it got like you said,
huge ratings and uh, this was a documentary, Um, well
not a documentary. It was a mockumentary that looked like
did you watch any clips or anything of the second one? Yeah, yeah,
I mean, it looked like, you know, a show like
a hunting Bigfoot crew. It's like, you know, we got
(32:24):
this mermaid, we know where she is, and we're down
here hunting and the yeah, below the surface. Yeah, and
they interviewed a guy that looked like Zack Gallifanakis. If
only it would have been a Califannakis, it would have
made it much better. But um, you know, then it
was one of these shows where at the end and
small lettering it it's right, not be small, but at
the end of the credits it's like this was all
(32:46):
made up. These are actors and yeah, but if you
go online, people are still like arguing over the the
legitimacy or credentials of the marine geologist Torsten Schmidt. That's
a great name, it is um and people are like, well,
if he were a real scientist, he would have been
published elsewhere besides this, and he's not published. And it's
(33:07):
like that's because he's not real. He's made up. This
is like settled. They didn't even pretend that it was real,
So I don't I don't know if that's the case
or not, because I mean they said it wasn't on
the at the end of the show, okay, but they
didn't come out and say everybody, everybody right, it's so
actually Noah. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had to
(33:29):
release and they felt they needed to release a statement
after the first one saying like, hey, um, mermaids don't exist,
no evidence has ever been found. We're Noah the end.
And I bet they love that even show. Yeah, my god,
Noah's making a statement. Yeah, it's gonna be over the news, right,
And so I guess enough people bought it and and
(33:50):
um bought into it that they were able to release
a sequel. And in the sequel, the reason they released
the sequel was because Torsten Schmidt had footage of a
webbed hay and like smacking the windshield of his little
like um underwater sub man sub um and then swimming off.
And so they just kept showing that over and over
(34:12):
and over again, and it was Sack gallup and Akis
he did look like him, Tonty a lot um. I
thought you were going to say that. It was found
out when Torsten Schmidt showed up on a episode of
Two Broke Girls the next week, right like a waiter
and a progressive insurance and it's like customer and over
two exactly. There's one other sighting I wanted to mention
(34:33):
this one, the second for my favorite, after the Scottish one.
It was in Adam, Netherlands. Is it eat him like
the cheese? Yeah? Okay, Um. Two girls were like rowing
their boats and found a mermaid and took it home
and dressed it up as a little girl and taught
it to live on land. But it remained mute its
(34:54):
whole life. Yeah, but isn't that cute? That very cute,
Like you're coming home with us, Oh, you've got a family. Ts,
we got a family too, and it's your new family.
And they just made that story up and told people
and it survived, I guess interesting, although they didn't they
support they didn't apparently like they matriculated the mermaid into
(35:15):
human society there. But we're talking fourteen thirty, so who
knows what was going on. They were eating, They probably
got their hands out on somebody who was like who knows,
and they're like, oh, mermaid, this is a mermaid. Oh,
just someone who had some sort of physical and made
them come live with them just as a girl for
(35:36):
the rest of their life. Like SCHLITZI or something. Yeah,
like we did in the freak shows. They would just
call them make up whatever animal they wanted to. That
was another great episode. Two are you just recounting the
good ones while we do this one? Just to remind
people it gets better. So being a mermaid is an
(35:56):
actual job you can get if you back in the
day in the nineteen for teas in fifties, it was
a big hit. Uh to go to a like a
c park and have mermaid shows and specifically one in
is it WEEKI watching Springs? Yeah, WEEKI watching Springs Florida
on your Tampa And uh, it was a booming business
back then. They said, um, between half million and a
(36:19):
million tourists every year and including big famous people like
Elvis Presley and Don Knots. Those are the two they mentioned.
Those two would trash and play together. Oh I bet
Don gets into the whiskey. It's all over. Um. So yeah,
it was a huge deal back then. They're still doing
it there today. But it is a real job you
can um, you can go if you're a great swimmer,
(36:44):
Like you have to know what you're doing. Oh yeah,
Like it seems like, oh yeah, you just put on
that that tail, but that tail is is heavy and awkward.
Well but yeah, and plus like somewhat buoyant swimming with
your legs together. Yeah, that's very difficult. Yeah, it's not
an easy job from what I can tell. Yeah, so
apparently once you put like they look very graceful, uh,
swimming around in those things. But you go put one
(37:06):
on and get in a pool and see what happens.
Right in this article, I think rightly points out that
the professional mermaids that you see today are um, like
this is from years and years and years of practice,
Like they didn't just get in the water and they're like, yeah,
I'm a natural. Yeah exactly. Um can be really awkward.
And you also have to know how to hold your
(37:27):
breath like a mo like a mo yeah it's stop myself,
Yeah you do. And you have to learn how to
swim the mermaid crawl, which is what they name it.
But you know it's not like regular swimming. Uh yeah right,
you know. And you can make a little dough too,
a little bit. It said. You can be hired like
(37:47):
it's a one off for a party. What is that?
Like you go to like a neighborhood pool and everyone
gathers around like look at the mermaids class out of
rhythm and you're like, what do you guys want me
to do? I guess you can do that. But the
most mostly what I've seen are like the shows in
some like Sleepy Florida town, right like Gator Farm and
(38:08):
does the start in the in the WEEKI watching Mermaids
or like a resorts or something like that. Yeah, back
when they used to love that kind of thing. Uh.
And some of these uh professional mermaids apparently use their
uh status as a soapbox for ecology and efforts to
keep the oceans clean. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Yeah, there
(38:30):
seems to be a real threat of that running through
the professional mermaid culture. You're like an eco activist. That's
a decent band name too, professional mermaid culture. This one
was rich with band band names horny Skinfolds. Yeah. Uh.
If you want to know more about mermaids, you can
(38:51):
type that word in the search bart how stuff works
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we are going to ask you for something because we
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spreading the word is awesome. We always appreciate that. But
(39:12):
one thing we haven't asked you to do in a
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Oh yeah, because that makes a big difference if there
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(39:34):
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(39:56):
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(40:17):
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(40:38):
thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff Works dot
com
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know front House Stuff Works
dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Yeah,
that's right. There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, Jerry's over there
in the ether, floating, possibly not existing, who knows. Uh.
(00:23):
And this is stuff you should know, that's right. Just
a couple of couple of merman trying to make their
way in the world, trying to keep their tails wet.
Yeah you know, yeah, because that thing dries out. You've
seen Splash. Yeah, it's a actually past now. She dried
out and she was just fine. Oh. I thought, oh,
(00:44):
you thinking of et when he turned all white and
dried out. I was thinking of Splash because I couldn't remember.
It's one of It was one of my favorite movies
as a kid. It's a cute movie. Um. It was
one of those early HBO movies, early Tom Hanks, which
I'm big fan of early Tom Hanks, and um, I
(01:04):
just thought it was a really fun funny movie. John
Candy movie what's his name played the evil man trying
to expose her. Um, Eugene Levy, I think, oh, was
he the bad guy? Yeah? He was the one that
you know that's a high quality movie. When Eugene Levy
is the bad guy. Yeah, there was the SETV crew
and um, he actually tried to spray her and get
(01:25):
her wet so she would and the fat kid turned
into a mermaid on the sidewalk, That's what it was.
And she got wet, she turned to a mermaid. She
got tried, no problem. Yes, And Daryl Hannah, of course,
who's running around with Neil Young? Now? Oh really? Yeah?
How about that couple? Sure? Why not? Both environmentalists. But
there's a lot of turquoise in that bedroom. I wonder
(01:48):
if you hook up with Neil Young, if or anyone
like that, if if you're sort of a new relationship
and not like the wife they had for forty years,
if you're like, ya, play a song, why don't you what? Like?
I wonder if you asked them to play music? Oh,
like you're actually into him? Yeah, Like if if you're
Billy Joel's new year old wife, do you ever say, like, hey, honey,
(02:11):
play me a tune. Play that one that you that
you wrote ten years before I was conceived. I think
what I'm saying is I would have a hard time
being with Neil Young and not every night after dinner,
just kind of nudging the guitar towards him, Oh, I
got you, and saying I'd love to hear Old Man. Yeah,
(02:32):
please baby one for me, And yeah, he says, I
played that song times. Yeah, I would guess that, well,
I can tell you I would. I would. Yeah, I
would guess that once you reach a certain point and
playing a song, you never want to hear that song
or even think about it existing again, but then you
still have to play it. I try not to think
(02:53):
about that when I'm at those shows. Yeah, it makes
me feel bad for him, like they might as well be,
you know, in the monkey house or something, and you
just throwing bananas at him. And God bless the people
who really bring it still where you feel like, man,
they're playing that song for me tonight, Adam Man did
he still bring it? He's just who came to mind.
(03:15):
Whereas when I saw the Police on their reunion, they
were phoning it in really, even Stewart Copeland. Well, I mean,
they were playing the songs, but it just it didn't
look like they were enjoying themselves at all. It looked
like a total money grab. Sure, they entered from three
separate entrances and exited from three separate and I got
the feeling they didn't even like speak much. That's like
(03:35):
I was reading an article on the Ramons, the Rolling
Stone one recently. Uh yeah, I guess it was. Yeah,
they had a great article on them, so yeah, I
guess it was. It was definitely Rolling Stones. So okay,
did you read it? Yeah, then it was awesome. But yeah,
they're like they they would they would just like get
on the bus and not speak to one another, go
(03:55):
to the next town and get on stage and play
and then come off stage and not like they would.
They would be gun stage because they had to. That
was it. And apparently, well at least Joey and who
was his big foil is those ones who really hated
each other. Yeah, supposedly they didn't speak at all for
like twenty five years straight, right because Joey stole d
(04:15):
D's like love of his life and then they were
in the band together still after that it was just
like ts Man, so weird. So like a lot of songs,
especially once like the kk K Took My Baby Away,
that's about Joey stealing dds girlfriend. Wow, it was a
great article, good read. Um, So back to splash, funny
(04:38):
movie about a mermaid, and we're gonna talk about mermaids here,
and mostly what we're gonna cover is the lore in
history and the mythology of the mermaid because there's a
little giveaway there are no mermaids. What did you look
up like pictures of real mermaids sightings and stuff. Yeah,
and it's the same thing as pictures of Bigfoot sighting,
(05:00):
some pictures of UFO sighting some weird distant blur that like,
you can't it could be kelped or it is such
an obviously doctored photo. What would be fun, though, is
if we had a time machine forget killing Hitler. If
you get like, oh yeah, that's right. I can't believe
we don't put this into good use. Forget like, um,
you know, saving the world. They're keeping the Dodo from
(05:22):
going extinct. I would take some of these doctored photos
that are just so easy to make today back to
like the nineteen twenties and be like look at this
and they go, yeah, I know, we still believe in
that stuff. With your aim being what just a freak
am out, I figured there'd be a money angle. Oh yeah,
(05:42):
Josh is traveling Wonder Wonder emporium. It's not a bad
idea where in which you just show them photos. But
I charged them like two thousand sixteen rates and no
one can possibly afford that, So I go out of business,
like almost immediately. Right, there's like one guy in the town.
It's like, oh, pay fifty to see those right, step
right up, towns only billionaire. Um, that's a great idea.
(06:06):
I don't know why no one ever thought of that.
It was a terrible idea, like from beginning to end.
Forget going back and betting on the stock market or
the outcome of the World Series. I'm gonna go back
and set up a business doom to fail. All right,
So let's talk about mermaid uh lore. Well we can
start here in the more modern age, because there are
still places that try and take people for money, like
(06:30):
we were just talking about, even like me um in
fact uh in Israel on the coast there and they
actually have a town called kyr yat Yam. And if
you go to kiryat Yam, you could win how much money?
Does he even say? Million bucks? Million American dollars if
(06:50):
you um, if you provide incontrovertible evidence of the mermaid
that is reputed to want to live there, Yeah, and
appear at sunce as of two thousand nine was the
first sighting there. Yeah, And of course what that is
is a ploy to try and get tourists and come
and spend money in the town and look for the mermaid.
(07:10):
The welcome you to Yam. I'm sure lock Ness has
made plenty of tourist money over the years. Apparently they
have a standing offer as well, and that's where the
mayor of Curiot Yam got the idea great idea. And
actually I saw that photo too. It's kind of neat.
I don't know what it is or who created it
or whatever, but there's allegedly a photo taken obviously from
(07:33):
like a cliff down on to a beach, you know,
a beach that will have like a big just slab
of rocks surrounded by sand, sand and mermaids. Right, there's
a mermaid on that rock, just kind of looking out
in the sea. And of course it could be anything.
It could be totally doctored, who knows um, But it's
from a distance and at least they didn't like go
(07:54):
full out like perfect picture of a mermaid of ever
it's it's it's just um suggest to enough that people
who believe in such things would be like, right, there,
there's a picture of a mermaid, you know, so that
was found in two thousand nine, or that surfaced in
two thousand nine, and since then the surfaced right, since
then the town's uh had that standing offer? Correct? So uh?
(08:19):
The really the interesting thing to me about mermaids is
the mythology. Did you take mythology in college at all? Yeah?
I did. It. Always wanted it to interest me more
than it did me too. It was just I don't
know if it wasn't explained to me quite well enough,
or just the ancients non bicameral mind wasn't um fused
(08:42):
together enough to interest people in the modern age. Well,
I think so. I think the stories themselves, as far
as good storytelling, we're just lacking because a lot of
them were just versions of one another, and there was
usually a very basic uh amis or moral um. And
(09:03):
in the case of mermaids, a lot of times they
were a lot of folksore even was rooted in misogyny.
You know, you know, there'll be a woman to come
along and screw your life up, right, or if you
grew up a woman, Um, she will kill your children
or something like that, like women were not to be trusted,
and they were murderous and duplacidus and a lot of
(09:24):
mythologist the old Hag so uh it was in various,
I mean hundreds and hundreds of books and texts, including
the Talmud, believe it or not. And we've talked about
plenty of the Elder, the Beer and the dude Rome's
plan of the Elder. He in his Natural History talked
(09:46):
about a mermaid like creature called the neriad. Yes, I
think I'm pronouncing that correctly. Yeah, in e r e
I d that ei is a tough transition, is because
you want to say, like the Reid, Yeah ner Reed,
these are sea nymphs, half human, half fish mermaids and um.
(10:09):
He also talked about sea men. And we should point
out that Merman we made the joke about us being Merman.
I believe Merman were even first on the literary scene.
Is that correct? Well, first, at least with mythology or
um theology. I guess there's a Babylonian god of the
sea named Ea e A sports um just e A,
(10:32):
and he pops up in uh Babylonian mythology from I
think four thousand years ago, and they think that he's
actually the progenitor of or the predecessor I should say,
of Poseidon, who is the Greek god of the sea,
and Neptune, who's the Roman god of the see. Because
the Greeks gave us Western culture, but they just walked
(10:55):
around to all of the neighboring cultures and picked their
favorite parts and put them together. Yeah, and that was
definitely one of them. Yeah. Uh, well, we talked in
our I guess it was in the folklore and fairy
Tale episodes that were twin episodes almost um about the
(11:16):
original Little Mermaid and how you know she was disnified
to the fullest. But the original story was far darker, darker,
but also even more touching by far. Like I went
back and read the last um the last like section
of it. Well, give me a summary at the end.
So at the end, this is where dramatically differs from
(11:39):
the Disney story. The Little Mermaid is scorned for another
woman her the guy she loves chooses someone else and
Mary's her and the Little Mermaid is like, dude, I
gave up my tail for you, I think, which has
my tongue kind of thing, UM, and I want to
get back my life. So her sisters came and bring
(12:01):
her this ritual knife and say, you can convert back
to a mermaid if before dawn you plunge this knife
into this dude's heart, this guy who loves heart, and
you get some of his blood on your feet, you
will regrow your tail and you can jump into the
sea and everything will be just fine again. So she
goes and she finds the guy sleeping with his new
(12:25):
bride beside him, and she just can't do it. She
throws the knife into the sea and Um becomes c foam.
She disintegrates and becomes c foam. So she gives her
her own happiness up for this guy's right and dies
as a result. But even better than that, when she
turns into c foam, she becomes a different mythical creature
(12:47):
UH like basically an air nymph that goes around like
helping humans UM, and she can possibly get into heaven
if she helps people. UM for three years. It haunts
Christian Anderson wrote it way better than I just recounted
it a lot less ums and likes ye. But it's
(13:07):
it's pretty it's worth reading. Uh. Plenty also talked about
merman um back in the day, and there would be
merman or seamen who would at night climb up on
two ships. As a quote, that's why I'm reading it weird,
upon which the side of the vessel where he seated
himself would instantly sink downward, and if you remain there
any considerable time, even go underwater. And that was something
(13:31):
that we will see as we talk more about mermaids.
They are u very They're often either an omen that
something bad is going to happen to sailors or coastal
dwelling people, or they actually directly cause harm two sailors
or coastal dwelling people. Yeah, and most times under the
(13:51):
guys of something beautiful and like a siren um, they're
often well, I don't we haven't even described one early.
You know that a mermaid has the head and body
torso of a woman, human woman, usually with huge boobs. Yeah.
If you're talking about a sailor's account, Yeah, she was busty.
(14:14):
Did I mention the boobs? Yes, she did, sir seven times?
Um and uh from the you know torso down, she's
a fish. Maybe web feet, maybe not very graceful, very
fast and always beautiful. Uh it depends. Oh yeah, yeah,
(14:35):
there was some of legend that we're not ugly, really
not ugly, or they were that they were not in
parentheses beautiful ugly. Uh well, I hadn't heard about that. Yeah,
it's it's in here. I thought. I'm just I must
have missed that part. It's a it's it's far more frequent.
(14:57):
What you were saying that they were beautiful and alluring. Okay, um,
but we'll talk more about that after we take a break. Huh,
(15:28):
all right, Chuck. We were saying that, for the most part,
mermaids are beautiful, and one of the reasons why they
are supposed to be beautiful is because they are frequently,
um accused of luring men sailors out to sea to
their death. Yeah, and how you do that? You do
that one of two ways. You have a beautiful singing
(15:49):
voice or you just straight up look good yourself. That's right.
And if you have a beautiful singing voice, you're a siren,
in which case you would not be a mermaid because
the siren is half bird, half woman, and they don't
even necessarily live in the water or near the water.
They're sometimes described as hanging out in fields. I guess
(16:10):
sometimes you can be very pretty and be a good singer,
right your mermaid but the yeah you could be Yeah,
sure you'd be. Who am I to disagree? You'd or
Alicia Keys or Adele? Oh you know who I like his?
Uh Rihanna? Oh yeah, she's great, very pretty. That part
(16:34):
in h what's it called this at the end and
she played herself. Yeah, yeah, she's pretty great, and she
was pretty funny. Michael Sarah likes bank her and she
just immediately turned around and smacked the heck out of him. Yeah.
I enjoyed parts of that movie, especially Michael Sarah. Yeah,
playing like a cooked out jerk. That was really funny. Um.
(16:55):
So back to the Beautiful Mermaids though, uh there there
was one then one thousand BC in Syria. And her
name how would you pronounce that? At her gaddis? Oh?
I think you nailed it? Yeah, yeah, all right, we'll
go with that. And she and you'll you'll see a
lot of duality a lot of these stories, and she
was one for sure that was a protector, a goddess.
(17:16):
I think she protected the fertility of her people, and
um watched over them and uh fell in love with
a human man, as you will often see a lot
of these stories. Yeah, dude, and it and it was
fine for a little while, like in most stories, and
then it goes south and she kills him. She crushed
(17:37):
him with her greatness. Oh, I thought, like her big
tale or something I don't know was she wasn't a
mermaid yet, this is where she becomes. That's that's right.
I forgot about that. So um, she accidentally kills him,
and then his very shame throws herself into the lake
because she wants to become a fish, and she's so
(17:57):
beautiful that it only works half as good. I really
can't figure out the math on that, but I guess
she's just so beautiful that the human beauty part of hers, like, no,
I won't be a fish, just the lower half can
be a fish because she had to fungus, so that
was easily overcome, but her face was really nice, so
the fish part just couldn't overcome that. That's right, So
(18:20):
she ended up a mermaid. Weird story, Well that's just weird,
like like, oh, it's foreign or anything. I'm not being xenophobic,
but it really like he says a lot about like
humanity and like how we think of things, like no,
she was so good looking that this magic couldn't even
overcome that. You know. Point we placed a lot of
(18:43):
value on that kind of thing. Uh, all right, should
we move on to Germany? Yeah? This one was kind
of interesting to me because Germany's landlocked. I never really
thought about that. What what does Germany have a mermaid mythology? Well,
I mean they have lakes, I guess, But mermaids are
(19:04):
ocean dwellers, aren't they know? There are some river dwellers.
Oh that's right, although I think the sirens were specifically river.
Well then in the German myth that was a river dweller, correct, Okay, yeah,
the nixes uh yeah, and they lured men into the river. Yeah,
it was a river and so they could drown them,
like again, the call of the siren coming here. Look
(19:25):
how beautiful I am. And now I'm holding your head
underwater and you can't breathe anymore, and the guys like
I regret nothing. But this duality that we're talking about is,
uh what you see a lot of times in mermaid
myths from West Africa. The Mammy Wada, the Mother Water.
(19:47):
She was a mermaid who was very nurturing and very
loving if you didn't cross her, Yeah, exactly, that's where
the duality comes in. I don't even know if that's duality.
I think that's just a complex person, good, good complex
character there. Yeah, yeah, so she's great, but when you
cross her, she's murderous. Sure, all right, and that's what
(20:10):
she did. Actually she had. If you were loyal to her,
she would you could be wealthy from her magic mirror
and comb. But if you betrayed her, then what this
article says is she reigns down fury and destruction. Right
then the age word from above. But the duality is
as an important part of it because the the physical
(20:31):
creature itself is two things, and they are also two
things emotionally. And but so the mermaid, the mermaid or
mermaid or murf folk as their calling this article. Yeah,
so murf folks are half fish, half people, right, but
they're not anywhere near unique in the pantheon of mythological
(20:55):
creatures throughout the ages. Right, there's again there's sirens, halford's,
half women. There's there's just tons of like the minotaur,
half man, half bull the centaur was what half go
or horse and half man? I don't remember that sounds right?
I think half horse? Um? And I was like, where
(21:16):
did all these come from? I suspected beast reality, and
it turns out I may be right. Yeah, you find
there are some scholars out there who believe that this
is the product of a much more relaxed attitude towards
beast reality than we modern humans have today. Yeah. Yeah,
(21:37):
I still never saw that documentary about the horse. Yeah
it's a good one, zoo. Yeah, I need that fell
off my radar. Man. It's one of those ones where
they largely to recreate, like the whole thing is almost recreation,
and I usually am not hip on those. It doesn't
feel like a documentary to me, but that one changed
my mind about that whole technique that they did it
so well. It's rough. It's rough, especially like when you
(22:03):
think about you know, the animals as well. Yeah, of
course you know, but there's more than just that that
makes it rough. I need to see that. Um. So,
I guess we can talk a little bit about some
eyewitness accounts. They're all bunk, of course, but they have
happened in World War two, in Japan. On Indonesia's Kai Islands. Uh.
(22:24):
Supposedly they encountered a monster on the beach that had
you know, webbed hands and feet and was kind of
part human, part fish. It's like, look at these jazz hands.
You can't do this. And then back in the day, Uh,
some of our most revered explorers and adventure adventurers reported
(22:45):
seeing mermaids, like John Smith and Henry Hudson in Columbus. Yeah,
what was There's a good quote in here from Columbus
because he wasn't too impressed. He said, and here's the
thing I had that in his diary. He's referring to
himself in the third person. Well that says a lot.
That's odd. He's like Ricky Henderson, right, or George Costanza.
(23:09):
So he says that he saw some Oh yeah, the
quote son, and you gotta read the quote. He's out
sailing around, not a that it he Oh what is
that in the ocean? I think I'll take a look
through my spine glass. The day before when the admiral
was going to the and the admirals himself, Yeah, that's
what I'm thinking. He was the admiral of his fleet
for sure. The day before, when the Admiral was going
(23:31):
on to the Rio del Oro, that's the River of Gold.
He said he saw three mermaids who came quite high
out of the water. But we're not as pretty as
they are depicted. For somehow, in the face they look
like men. But I still thought about it. Yeah, so,
and what they think now, and I don't know how
(23:52):
they substantiated this, is that Columpus was seeing manates. Yeah,
have you seen manates? Yeah, it looks nothing like a
human From enough of a distance, though, you're like, wait,
what is that, especially if you've never seen a manatee before.
I don't think it looks human like at all. But
from enough of a distance, yeah, I can see how
(24:13):
somebody would, especially if you believe that mermaids existed, you
see a manatee. Maybe it's hard for me to totally
get that. Go there in that put my mind in
that kind of frame, in the frame of Christopher Columbus. Well,
just to have never seen a mermaid, who have never
seen a manatee, to be high on on aarro wax scalps. Okay,
(24:37):
I just blanked on the green marijuana, the green the
green drink absentthe I don't think absence was around with Columbus.
Are you kidding me? No, I'm not you shooting that stuff?
Kind of see it? Uh so he maybe saw a manatee.
I was like, yeah, they're not so great looking. After all,
(24:59):
they're nothing, right, what's everyone talking about? Uh? Yeah, he
saw one. This is like Jimmy Carter in the UFOs.
Like you're kind of surprised when you hear this that
somebody sited it. Apparently Reagan said he saw UFOs as well. Uh.
John Smith said he saw some. He liked what he saw.
He liked the look at the manatees because he said
(25:21):
he fell in love with one with long green hair. Yeah,
he said it was it wasn't bad looking, or it
wasn't unattractive or something like that. Yeah, it's kind of
a head. He hedged his bets a little bit. I
guess he wanted to check the rest of her out
and then he saw she had a tail, and it's like, oh,
I can't go there. So what's going on here? They're
(25:41):
hallucinating because they've been on the high seas too long.
That's what a lot of people say. Um. Other people
say that again, they were predisposed to believing in mermaids
because people thought mermaids existed. This were This was the
age of exploration. So it's the beginning of the age
of exploration, which means that before then the oceans were
(26:01):
largely unexplored and there were tons of beliefs in thousands
year thousands of year old mythologies about creatures that lived
in the sea. So if you thought that those things existed,
then something that looked kind of like a mermaid could
be a mermaid. So that was probably if they were
just they're just cases of mistaken identity. They were highly suggestible. Yeah,
(26:26):
we did. Yeah, that was a good one. I thought
that one was going to be awful and it turned
out pretty great. Like I remember thinking like this is
not going to go well, and kind like this one.
How do you think this one's going pretty great? All right,
let's take a break then and uh give each other
a neck rub, and we'll come back more comfortable than ever.
(26:49):
All right, there is a dude. I love this guy.
(27:19):
His name is Carl Bants and he he di're not
a Carl Bands fan. Well, I just I'm not quite
sure to understand unless did you read the article. Well,
just to set it up. Okay, So dude named Carl
Bants back in he wrote a an article in a
legitimate journal, the Journal Limnology and Oceanography, um, and they
(27:43):
published it, and it is an entirely tongue in cheek
but totally played straight account of the extinct species mermaid. Yeah,
like wherein he surmises on like for real, where they
came from, what their biology was, where they while they
left us? Yep, that they were warm water dwelling, that
(28:05):
they ate human flesh, which is why they lured people
to their death. Um. He goes so far as to
say that they um most likely only produced one or
two offspring at a time because the females of the
of the species had two breasts, and that was it. Okay,
you know, um, like like this is the thought that
(28:27):
this guy put into this this article and the fact
that he writes it totally straight and like really gives
it its due attention, Like it wasn't that that, like
this is gonna be a great idea, and just the
idea itself is hilarious, so I don't really have to
put any effort into actual execution. He put effort into
the execution and did he did pretty good. I'm not
knocking him. I guess I just don't see why this
(28:48):
journal would put something like that out there. Even I
don't know, I mean, I guess they had a good
sense of humor and they were Maybe it was the
April Fool's episode. I was wondering if that was the
case too, and I forgot to look if it was
the April issue. Perhaps he did use the words horny
skinfolds though, right, their skin, and he theorized was not smooth, smooth,
(29:09):
scaled like a regular fish. But I had quote horny
skin folds like an armadilla. Yeah. What's interesting is I
saw another account from eighteen thirty in Scotland. There's a
kind of a town called Benbecula on the Outer Hebrides, right,
which is like the outer Islands, the arca archipelago. It's
(29:32):
an archipelago. That's how you say that, right, it's archipelago. Yeah,
either way. There's a town there, a string of islands,
coastal thank you, coastal town where in eighteen thirty the
whole town swore they saw a mermaid and tried to
grab the mermaid, and the mermaid swam away. So some
kid threw a rock at it and hit it in
its back, and two days later they found it dead
(29:55):
on shore and they felt so bad about it that
they they they buried it. They gave it a funeral
with like a casket and everything, and um they said
that it didn't have scales, that it had like kind
of rough skin instead horny skinfold. Yeah, they didn't use
that term, but this is like a thing in eight
(30:16):
thirty in Scotland. Yeah, pretty interesting that when you read
the account of it years later. By the way, horny skinfolds, Yeah, yeah,
that is interesting. Uh, maybe there's something there, right, I
had to keep the folds of the horny skinfold clean,
(30:37):
you know that, like gunk gets trapped in there. I
don't know. Maybe that's the name of the first single
cleaning the folds. The other thing um that A Bants
did in his article was explained probably why they're extinct. Now.
He came to the conclute their extinct um. He said
they were warm water, so they would have cohabitated or
(30:58):
shared the their a system with jellyfish. And as humans
started to fish more and more of the sea, um,
we upset the ecological balance. Jellyfish populations were allowed to
boom which is the case. And they stung the mermaids
to death because the mermaids had they lacked the blubber
that would protect them not just in cold water, but
(31:18):
from jellyfish things as well. So they died out from
jellyfish things. Yeah, because their their upper skin was just
regular skin. It wasn't the horny skin folds, so it
provided no protection. Exactly. That's it's worth reading. Go check
it out. It's called Mermaids the Biology, Their Biology, Culture
and Demise. You can find like the full pdf online. Well,
(31:38):
I think we have to address the animal planet snapoo.
I don't know if they would call it a snapper.
I think they would call it a ratings bonanza. Yeah, which,
what was the other when we talked about the Megalodon?
When Discovery Channel aired a Megalodon documentary that appeared by
all accounts to be true and was not the same
thing with Mermaids, But they did it twice, they did
(32:02):
they did a sequel because it got like you said,
huge ratings and uh, this was a documentary, Um, well
not a documentary. It was a mockumentary that looked like
did you watch any clips or anything of the second one? Yeah, yeah,
I mean, it looked like, you know, a show like
a hunting Bigfoot crew. It's like, you know, we got
(32:24):
this mermaid, we know where she is, and we're down
here hunting and the yeah, below the surface. Yeah, and
they interviewed a guy that looked like Zack Gallifanakis. If
only it would have been a Califannakis, it would have
made it much better. But um, you know, then it
was one of these shows where at the end and
small lettering it it's right, not be small, but at
the end of the credits it's like this was all
(32:46):
made up. These are actors and yeah, but if you
go online, people are still like arguing over the the
legitimacy or credentials of the marine geologist Torsten Schmidt. That's
a great name, it is um and people are like, well,
if he were a real scientist, he would have been
published elsewhere besides this, and he's not published. And it's
(33:07):
like that's because he's not real. He's made up. This
is like settled. They didn't even pretend that it was real,
So I don't I don't know if that's the case
or not, because I mean they said it wasn't on
the at the end of the show, okay, but they
didn't come out and say everybody, everybody right, it's so
actually Noah. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had to
(33:29):
release and they felt they needed to release a statement
after the first one saying like, hey, um, mermaids don't exist,
no evidence has ever been found. We're Noah the end.
And I bet they love that even show. Yeah, my god,
Noah's making a statement. Yeah, it's gonna be over the news, right,
And so I guess enough people bought it and and
(33:50):
um bought into it that they were able to release
a sequel. And in the sequel, the reason they released
the sequel was because Torsten Schmidt had footage of a
webbed hay and like smacking the windshield of his little
like um underwater sub man sub um and then swimming off.
And so they just kept showing that over and over
(34:12):
and over again, and it was Sack gallup and Akis
he did look like him, Tonty a lot um. I
thought you were going to say that. It was found
out when Torsten Schmidt showed up on a episode of
Two Broke Girls the next week, right like a waiter
and a progressive insurance and it's like customer and over
two exactly. There's one other sighting I wanted to mention
(34:33):
this one, the second for my favorite, after the Scottish one.
It was in Adam, Netherlands. Is it eat him like
the cheese? Yeah? Okay, Um. Two girls were like rowing
their boats and found a mermaid and took it home
and dressed it up as a little girl and taught
it to live on land. But it remained mute its
(34:54):
whole life. Yeah, but isn't that cute? That very cute,
Like you're coming home with us, Oh, you've got a family. Ts,
we got a family too, and it's your new family.
And they just made that story up and told people
and it survived, I guess interesting, although they didn't they
support they didn't apparently like they matriculated the mermaid into
(35:15):
human society there. But we're talking fourteen thirty, so who
knows what was going on. They were eating, They probably
got their hands out on somebody who was like who knows,
and they're like, oh, mermaid, this is a mermaid. Oh,
just someone who had some sort of physical and made
them come live with them just as a girl for
(35:36):
the rest of their life. Like SCHLITZI or something. Yeah,
like we did in the freak shows. They would just
call them make up whatever animal they wanted to. That
was another great episode. Two are you just recounting the
good ones while we do this one? Just to remind
people it gets better. So being a mermaid is an
(35:56):
actual job you can get if you back in the
day in the nineteen for teas in fifties, it was
a big hit. Uh to go to a like a
c park and have mermaid shows and specifically one in
is it WEEKI watching Springs? Yeah, WEEKI watching Springs Florida
on your Tampa And uh, it was a booming business
back then. They said, um, between half million and a
(36:19):
million tourists every year and including big famous people like
Elvis Presley and Don Knots. Those are the two they mentioned.
Those two would trash and play together. Oh I bet
Don gets into the whiskey. It's all over. Um. So yeah,
it was a huge deal back then. They're still doing
it there today. But it is a real job you
can um, you can go if you're a great swimmer,
(36:44):
Like you have to know what you're doing. Oh yeah,
Like it seems like, oh yeah, you just put on
that that tail, but that tail is is heavy and awkward.
Well but yeah, and plus like somewhat buoyant swimming with
your legs together. Yeah, that's very difficult. Yeah, it's not
an easy job from what I can tell. Yeah, so
apparently once you put like they look very graceful, uh,
swimming around in those things. But you go put one
(37:06):
on and get in a pool and see what happens.
Right in this article, I think rightly points out that
the professional mermaids that you see today are um, like
this is from years and years and years of practice,
Like they didn't just get in the water and they're like, yeah,
I'm a natural. Yeah exactly. Um can be really awkward.
And you also have to know how to hold your
(37:27):
breath like a mo like a mo yeah it's stop myself,
Yeah you do. And you have to learn how to
swim the mermaid crawl, which is what they name it.
But you know it's not like regular swimming. Uh yeah right,
you know. And you can make a little dough too,
a little bit. It said. You can be hired like
(37:47):
it's a one off for a party. What is that?
Like you go to like a neighborhood pool and everyone
gathers around like look at the mermaids class out of
rhythm and you're like, what do you guys want me
to do? I guess you can do that. But the
most mostly what I've seen are like the shows in
some like Sleepy Florida town, right like Gator Farm and
(38:08):
does the start in the in the WEEKI watching Mermaids
or like a resorts or something like that. Yeah, back
when they used to love that kind of thing. Uh.
And some of these uh professional mermaids apparently use their
uh status as a soapbox for ecology and efforts to
keep the oceans clean. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Yeah, there
(38:30):
seems to be a real threat of that running through
the professional mermaid culture. You're like an eco activist. That's
a decent band name too, professional mermaid culture. This one
was rich with band band names horny Skinfolds. Yeah. Uh.
If you want to know more about mermaids, you can
(38:51):
type that word in the search bart how stuff works
dot com. And since I said search bar, it's time
for listener mail. Actually, Lee in lieu of listener mail today, Uh,
we are going to ask you for something because we
people often say like how can I help the show? Uh,
spreading the word is awesome. We always appreciate that. But
(39:12):
one thing we haven't asked you to do in a
long time is to go to iTunes and leave a review.
Oh yeah, because that makes a big difference if there
are reviews, even if they're not favorable. Just be honest
with your conscience, punch your conscience, and uh yeah, go
to iTunes leave a review for us, because just having
reviews is a good thing. And um, tell a friend,
(39:34):
help spread the word. I feel like years go by
before we say things like this. Yeah, well I think
literally that's the case. It's been a long time, so
we really appreciate the way the show was built was
on word of mouth largely. We really count on that.
So tell a friend, go to iTunes and leave a recommendation.
And um, the other thing that we also need our
(39:56):
more jingles. These jingles that you hear, these bumpers are
from fans and listeners, musicians, very kind ones. Yeah, and
they really enjoy doing it and we love throwing them
out there. So send us your jingle and um, we
can't promise we'll use it, but we probably will, yeah,
because they're pretty great. Yeah. So that's all I got
well thanks. If you want to get in touch with
(40:17):
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(40:38):
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