October 30, 2021 • 42 mins
What is folklore? Turns out it's just about anything you can think of that's shared by more than two people. Art, literature, stories, dance, music, traditions, even those family heirlooms qualify. Turns out folklore is pretty neat. Learn all about it in this classic episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello friends, Chuck here with our Saturday Select pick. This
is all the way back from February. Remember that being
a very good day. Remember being happy that day because
we recorded a podcast about folklore and it was great
and a lot of fun. And it's called what Is Folklore?
And I think you'll enjoy it on the Saturday afternoon,
So queue it up and get going right here, right now.
(00:28):
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey there, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
josh Joshua Clark, and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant. Jerry
is over there, just Jerry uh, and that's stuff you
(00:49):
should know that. She has a new sip gone out
on the FX called just Jerry. It's suddenly Jerry. Um,
how you doing. I'm fine as well told me to intrude,
just checking. I'm excited about this. When I first read
our article, I was a little bit like, oh, this
(01:09):
is a little unwieldy because it's so folklore. It's just
it's an amorphous. As it turns out, it's everything, yeah,
pretty much. But then you sent um, what was that
other good article from? Actually we should shout that out.
It was from a I think the University of Louisiana
or something like that. They have a folk life folklore department,
(01:30):
and it was basically we we stumbled upon some unit
for teachers to teach what folklore is and we're like, hey,
it works for us, super helpful. Yeah, it was very helpful.
It definitely. It took a lot of this amorphous stuff
that was in our article and chipped away at the
edges and gave it a little more shape. You know, agreed, So, um,
you did kind of hit it on the head. It's
(01:52):
it's kind of like um, nailing jelly to the wall
defining what folklore is because it is so much that
phrases folklore. If if it isn't just me saying it,
if I share it and now other people say it,
it could become stuff you should know, folklore, oral oral folklore.
Did you make that up? It was I think I've
(02:15):
heard it before. Okay, so that's folklore. Yeah, I guess,
so it's a it's a variation though of Um, what
else did I hear? Oh? Yeah, we were talking about
the the nuclear fusion reactor where they were saying that
keeping plasma contained is kind of like trying to hold
jelly in a bunch of rubber bands. That's a nerd
(02:38):
science folklore. That's what inspired me to say, nailing jelly
to the wall. I like that. It seems like it
really sums it up. So folklore. Yeah, I found this
other definition I thought was pretty good, which is, uh,
traditional art, literature, knowledge and practice that is disseminated largely
through oral communication and behavioral example. Uh. And then this
(02:59):
was the key for me. Things that people traditionally believe,
do no make and say in other words, everything, Yeah,
I mean, you're right, everything that that's that's about as
good a definition as you're gonna find. One of the
problems with studying folklore is that there are so many
definitions out there. Apparently folklorists, who are people who study folklore. UM,
(03:22):
I don't like to be too judge e. It's kind
of part and parcel with their um their field of study.
You don't judge stuff, you just collect information. The problem
is is that they've also just kind of collected definitions
for folklore along the way, and there isn't one set
definition that's accepted by everybody. Yeah, a folklore collected stuff.
(03:42):
I was like, that's stupid. It wouldn't It would be
a good Why are you guys doing that? That's a
good TV show, the bad folk folkloreist. And I might
say folk here in there because I mispronounced that word
often and how are you saying? Well, a lot of
times I'll say the l in fact, up until about
(04:03):
a year ago when someone wrote in was a stupid
it's pronounced folk like f o k folk and not folk.
But the weird thing is is like I hear the
l missing when I hear folk, weird, that's some sort
of like I don't hear fo k, Like it's clear
to me that there's an fo l k in there.
(04:24):
You hear the silence. It's a great word. Oh okay,
it's beautiful. It is beautiful. Um. And another thing too
that we should point out that folklore is love to
point out is that um, it is not and should
not be associated with being backward or old timey or uneducated.
(04:46):
Like I think a lot of people have that connotation
in their heads, that folklore is like the hillbilly on
the porch, you know, when their homespun wisdoms, and it
can be that, but it's it's it's not that at all,
Like it's not just that, right. Um. A really good
example that contradicts that is, um, Snopes. Snopes dot com
(05:07):
is basically a clearinghouse of modern folklore. Oh yeah, I
never really thought about that. You know, Um the Nigerian
prince scam, that's folklore. Yeah, it sure is. Emoticons even
are considered now a form of um verbal communication verbal folklore. Yeah,
and like you said, it's everything. And the reason it's
(05:27):
everything is because, um, it comes out of groups. Like
if I just have a habit, you know where Um,
I keep a rubber band twisted around my finger until
it turns purple, and then I'll take it off for
half an hour and then do it again. That's just
some weird habit. That's not folklore. Folklore is something that's
shared between a group. Yeah, and uh, those groups can
(05:49):
be like almost anything the I think them. That great
article you sent and that says neighborhoods, communities, and regions,
but also religious groups, families, occupations, gender like pretty much
any grouping, enthusiast, hobbyists, anything you can think of that
(06:11):
you can group more than two people together. It can
be a folk group exactly. You can have like a
Catholic dockyard worker who is also a member of an
RC playing club. Yeah, who also is a member of
a book club at the local library. Right, So that
one person is going to be a member of all
(06:32):
those different folk groups, and all those folk groups are
gonna write their own folklore, true it. Uh, that's yeah,
you're right. That's another good thing to point out is
you're not just in one group. You have you spanned many,
many groups. And for instance, I have family folklore. Uh,
we have probably occupational folklore, you know, the old podcaster
(06:53):
folklore for us and our colleagues. Uh, and my gender
and my age and uh religious affiliation growing up, like,
we all have many many groups and subgroups that we
fall into, right, and we get our information from that. Yeah.
One of the things that I think has been tricky
about defining folklore is that there's not it's not obvious
(07:15):
necessarily what folklore is for not at first blush, but
if you go and read some of the people who
study it. Um. The idea of folklore is that one
of the main things it does is it reinforces membership
in a group. It makes you feel special for being
part of that group, an insider um. And then it
(07:36):
also um reinforces the norms of that group. Like folklore
is based on basically norms, customs, traditions, things that the
members of the group have said. This is what you
know we identify with. Yeah, and not always too um,
as that teaching site points out, not always reinforcing those norms,
sometimes overturning those norms. Yeah. Like a good way to
(07:57):
overturn the norm is to take an existing norm and
turn it on its ear, because it makes it really
approachable to the other people in your folk group. They
understand what you're doing very clearly, and it gives them
a different perspective, right or seeing the traditional channels. Yeah, like, uh,
I think one example I saw somewhere was taking a
traditional folk song maybe and adding verses to it to
(08:18):
spend its meaning to the opposite, perhaps like Bob Dylan
he's famous for stealing things. Or Jimmy Page. Uh oh yeah.
Have you heard that song the Zeppelin or the Yesterday
Way to Heaven lawsuit? No? No, who whose song was it? Originally?
I can't remember the name. I mean, this is not news.
It's been around for a while, but um yeah, I
(08:40):
mean they've been sued. Uh. It was a group that
opened up for for Zeppelin on an early tour and
supposedly played this song, and I think Zeppelin has I
haven't looked at it up lately, but I think they
have defeated the suit. But when you hear the song,
you're like, oh, that sounds a little bit like the
opening bit to Stairway to Happen. So it was like
(09:02):
the musical the music. It wasn't like any of the
layer that that opening guitar strumming pattern, um uh was
pretty darn similar. But um, as any musician will tell you,
everybody steals. There's only so many variations of chords and
picking patterns that you can do. And uh, it's just
part of the rich tradition of music is to nick
things respectfully, not you know, not rightbusters, I want a
(09:27):
new drug kind of steeling. Yeah, I mean that's when
your lawsuits come up. Um, it's not just music that
there's that long tradition of stealing um or nicking or
whatever you want to euphemism. It's literature is very much
the same way. There's something like five or ten themes
and all of literature and everything else is just basically
a variation of them. And that's One of the things
(09:49):
that folklore uh are folk folklorists have learned through studying
folklore is that we humans share what can be called
basically a common imagination. That humans across time and space, um,
all have a a like a a certain number of
slots of looking at the world. Certain things in the
(10:11):
world capture the human imagination in a similar way in
all different parts of the world, and we tend to
use similar explanations for them. So you'll have independently evolving
folklore among groups who've never met before, UM that seek
to explain or have a story about something that is
(10:32):
just kind of out there in the environment. Yeah, that's
a good point, um. One of the examples of that
is UH, in folklore stories are frogs and toads can
be found, and all kinds of old stories and all
cultures all over the world. That I mean, it's possible
too if you're close to one another, like uh, Korea
(10:53):
and China may have stories to overlap one another just
through a common geographical boundary. But stuff like frogs and
toads will pop up, you know, let's say in Europe
or medieval Europe or in Asia like places aren't even
close to one another where it's inexplicable basically, right, and
they'll share like a similar um personality or something in
(11:14):
the story. So like frogs and toads are commonly thought
of as shape shifting tricksters. Yeah, and I think, UM,
this article points out that that's probably because they go
from tadpole to frog or toad and they change themselves physically.
So it's um, you know, the old dummies back in
the day, they would just use that obvious. Obviously they
(11:37):
can become human too, since they go from tadpole to
frog exactly like the frog prince. And you you mentioned
also UM shared regional characteristics that are most likely the
result of stories making it from one group to another
crossing borders. But among groups that are close together, and
UM that example you gave of East Asia, UM, Japan
(11:59):
and CRE Thailand, China, they all have UM. They the
idea that there's a rabbit in the moon and he's
using a mortar and pestle. And what that would be
is a motif. Like all of them have the shared
idea that there's a rabbit in the moon, right, But
then there's what are called variations of that motif. So
in Japan and Korea, the rabbits making mochi, which is
(12:22):
a sweet, squishy rice cake that often has like something
even sweeter injected in, like red bean sweetness. Right. Um,
in China, the rabbit is making medicine. In Thailand's husking
um rice. So you have variations on what the rabbit
is doing, but the motif is if you look up
at the moon, there's a rabbit doing something up there. Yeah,
and like we said, it's most likely because of a
(12:44):
shared border or just because simply people moving between those countries.
So we'll talk about where folklore comes from. Friends, if
you can believe it or not. Right after this, chuckers,
(13:12):
So we're back. We're talking folklore. We should also say
folklore is actually um a fairly recent word. It was
coined in eighteen forty six by a guy named William J. Toms. Yeah,
he was a um an early and tiquarian. He was
also very interested in studying um. What has now come
(13:34):
to be called folklore or folk life. We should point
out that's a modern term that people folklore is like
even more Yeah, because folklore has this connotation that um,
that it has to do with stories, world traditions or
even not true things because you've heard like, oh, that's
just folklore, like an old lives tale. Yeah, exactly. So
they've expanded it to include or to reflect how inclusive
(13:58):
it is by calling it folk life. But um William
Tom's came up with folklore and it was originally hyphenated
um and he was describing these stories that he would
go out into the countryside and collect from folk. Like
he published a book of like English rural stories that
included things like Robin Hood and Friar Talk and some
(14:19):
of the other stories that we have become disnified over
the years. This guy originally put down for the first
time on pen and paper and became one of the
early folklorest. Yeah, and didn't they call just anyone living
in rural areas. Weren't they just called folk? Which is
why we sort of associated as like being a bumpkin today.
But I use that word all the time in fact
(14:39):
on the Facebook while here, that's my most common way
of addressing the stuff you should know army is hey folks. Oh,
I know, it just sounds like chummy to me. Yeah,
very folks. Folk. See there you go, yeah, hey folks.
Uh So there are a bunch of innumerable innumerable groups
really that pass along folklore. Um, and they're called folk
(14:59):
group folk groups, but we can we can group them generally,
not folk groups like Peter Paul Mary, Yeah, but folk groups. Yeah.
I think I said it with the eldest, now, didn't
I maybe I like it. It's called the regional ad diction.
People get all hung up on that stuff. You gotta
say this wrong. What's weird though, is like neither one
(15:21):
of us sound like Southerners. Yeah, not really, And I
mean like you were born here and you don't sound
like a Southerner. Yeah, I say, I have certain colloquialism,
so like, uh, have your picture made? Oh yeah, that's
sometimes I'll say, like you mash a button instead of
push a button. Yeah, And there's It's I think people
should embrace things like that regional dialect instead of getting
(15:42):
all hung up on the Queen's English or the King's English.
See right there, Yeah, that's a that's regional. I imagine
either one. The prince is English. Um, it's that what
you're talking about is antithetical the globalization. Chuck. Oh really sure,
look at you regionalism, smarty fans. Well, I mean that's
that's counter to globalization. Globalization is turning the earth into
(16:04):
one large village with all these shared values and everything.
Regionalism is saying like, no, we'll just stay his pockets
of interacting groups that have our own our own values
and traditions and customs like that. I think it's on
the brain because I posted something today on words that
are mispronounced a lot and um, what what's up there? Oh?
(16:24):
I mean also like banal and uh. Dr Seuss supposed
supposedly pronounced his name is u so ice. Again, I
can't remember how he pronounced it, but it's just like
common words you're probably mispronouncing. And the was on there
And someone said, you guys always pronounced the wrong because supposedly, yeah, exactly,
(16:46):
supposedly there's a rule. Not supposedly, I think there is
a rule. You mean supposedly, Well, that wasn't on there. Um,
well that's a different that's just saying the wrong word.
But I think the you should say the in the
following noun is starts with a vowel, like the apple,
not the apple, but you could say you could say
(17:10):
the test because the apple almost sounds like it's th
h apostrophe apple. Yeah, And I get it, but that's apple.
It's just sort of a regional thing. I think in
the South you might hear more the m than the
snotty New Englanders. So I've never really paid that much
attention to that one. I haven't either, you know why,
because we are laid back, that's right. Um, all right,
(17:32):
So what we're talking about, we're talking about people who
spread the groups, the folk groups. One of the folk
groups though not Peter poll Mary one of his children.
And uh, this is a really big one because when
you think about going back to your childhood, everything like
the games like hide and see cop scotch. Uh. This
article pointed out how you decide who's it like that
(17:55):
is super specific to your region. Um, but also not
just that the difference is regionally, but think about how
intricate some of the rules were some of those games,
like they were like really well thought out, intricate rules
that no one ever wrote down. They were just past.
Yeah you knew it from observation, imitation orally like somebody
(18:19):
told you, but people no one handed you a flyer
called like kick the can and you you know, well
one kid did, but we didn't know one like that kid.
He learned the hard way not to do that. What
was your How did you decide who was it? I'm
sure you probably had a go to well. The author
of this article mentions, bubble gum, bubble gum in a dish.
I've never heard that. I have heard that. I love
(18:41):
that one. That the images it evokes, like how many
pieces do you wish? And you go one to three, five,
somebody says how many they want, and then you count
out between two or three people like seven, and then
whatever you land on that person, is it right? Usually
we did dirty dirty dish rag? Though, yes, I've never
heard of that one. Either your mother and my mother
were hanging out clothes. My mother socked your mother in
(19:03):
the nose. Never heard it. What came after that? That's
misogynistic and violent something it really was. Something else happens
after that, and then it just suddenly goes to and
you are at you dirty dirty dish rag? You we did?
There were three that I remember very strongly. The one
potato to potato, Uh engine engine number nine, Yeah, going
(19:25):
down Chicago Line. If the train should doump the check,
do you want your money back? Oh? Yeah, I forgot that?
And then maybe so who maybe so wanted their money back.
Of course you want your money back of the train
de rails. Now that's the kid who just wanted to
get along. Uh and then engine and or no no? Uh?
Any meani is the other one? Sure? Any MENI money
mo kitch talking about them to the hollers. Let them go?
(19:46):
Any menie? Was that it? And then we also there
were variations on you know, usually counting out like I'm
making my two hands locked together. We would do like that,
and and then if you when you land it on them,
you would split them into two two fists and then
count each. So there were lots of variations. And uh,
(20:08):
I mean that goes down to the neighborhood you live in,
you know, like that specific. Yeah. We would also just
leg wrestle for domination and then that person would choose
who is it. I've never leg wrestled. It's not fun. Yeah,
I don't. I didn't even know what it is. Really,
it's exactly what it sounds like. I mean I think
I've seen it. You lay on the ground and lock
legs like there's no no other body parts involved, right,
(20:32):
I mean, you're just basically on your backup on your
elbows using your legs to do. Let's see objective basically
make the other person cry or stop shout to stop.
But it's not. There's not like a pinning or like
like an army. Yeah you can, you can pin, and
it's not. It's one of those things like, um, like
the Supreme Court's view of pornography, Like there's no obvious pin.
(20:54):
It's just you just kind of know what when you
see it, you know what I mean, Like you can
tell you, oh, yeah, that's a pin, but I mean
you wouldn't. Again, there's no kid like handing out a
leg wrestling and you flyer that shows what counts as
a pin. You just kind of know what it pens. Alright.
Another folk group or families, very rich traditions within families
from everything, uh from family recipes to holiday traditions. Uh.
(21:19):
And I think, um, like whether or not you use
the the plastic tinsel on your tree is technically a
type of family folk lore. Yeah, Or whether you open
gifts on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, or whether or
not you're you you hide your Easter baskets yeah, or
you burn your Christmas tree on Christmas Day, or your
family gets in a huge fight every Christmas Day. Sure,
(21:41):
that's another one rich traditions. Um family stories also make
up traditions. So like, um, my family story about my
aunt Squeaky taking shooting at President Ford that that would
count as family folklore. That's very good. Uh uh So
within families it's another very um strong place where you
(22:04):
see variants and motifs. Um. Well yeah, across like all folklore, yeah,
but especially within families for me, uh or I think
within all families because like you know, your grandmother's recipe
for like I make the Thanksgiving dressing what other people
in the North called stuffing, we called dressing, and it's
my family recipe. That has to do with what he
(22:25):
uses the base though, doesn't it Like if it's corn based,
it would be dressing dressing. Yeah, and if it's like
bread based or wheat based, it would be stuffing. I
don't know who knows, but go ahead, sorry for interrupting now,
that's right, minds both though, like cornbread dressing also has
uh as as either biscuits or bread in it as well.
(22:47):
But that was my family recipe. My grandmother made it,
My mom made it, she taught me, and I put
my own spin on it as and that's my own motif,
that's your own variation on the motif. Very variational. So
you said the motif would be the dressing or stuffing,
and then what you do with the recipe would be
the variation of it. Yeah, and I mix it up
from year to year, even just kind of testing things out. Man,
(23:08):
you are a folk rebel, sure I am. But yeah,
so family recipes are very that's a common um. Family folklore,
family generated folklore. We got a lot of our indoctrination
to just folklore in general through families, and so it
was so important in some cultures, including some Native American
(23:30):
tribes and some West West African tribes, that they would
have a designated basically a folklore's what a folklore um
a modern folklore researcher would call a tradition bearer, who
like their job in this village or group is to
tell each family their family folklore. Like that, it was
that person's job to keep in charge of all of
(23:53):
the folklore of the different families in the community. Yeah,
I bet that that was a pretty cool gig. I
imagine they were like the the the great storytellers that
they could tell a story if they're trying the great
Racan Tours. That's another word. Yeah, you like that one. Yeah,
I don't know how I feel about that word. No,
(24:14):
really like I think about it once in a while,
almost every time I encountered m I don't know how
I feel about that word. Interesting. Yeah, I like it,
did you know? Also, Chuck, while we're on this, UM,
I heard the one of the most amazing stories I've
ever heard about paint on It must have been on
MPR or something, but they were tracking, um, the color
(24:37):
of paint, the specific color of paint used in Southern
porches for ceilings. There's like a specific blue. Yeah, and um,
that would count as folklore, just that color paint. That
would be um, the next type community folklore. That's right.
But the reason I bring that up because Racan Tour.
(24:58):
It just makes me think of like somebody sitting in
a rocking chair and a porch recounting stories. Yeah, yeah,
for sure. Um, So that is a great example You're
right of a community folklore. Um, A festival that you're telling,
you know, the strawberry Festival in your town is folklore.
The jazz fest in New Orleans, any sort of local custom,
(25:19):
um that takes place within your community can all be
considered folklore, like that's how we do it around here.
That's folklore, right, as long as it's not like damaging.
I wonder though, like all of this stuff is um
supposedly at the very least innocuous, if not positive. Yeah,
(25:41):
that's that's my point. But I mean, surely there's negative
folklore that still counts as folklore. I don't know, you know,
like like racism, it depends on the group, you know,
that's just how we do it around here, or right
or not folklore. I don't think. Well, what about something
where like like stories or mythology or origin stories that
(26:03):
support um human sacrifice among groups in the past that
did that, you know, I mean, that would technically be folklore.
Whatever stories they used to reinforce that, whatever traditions and
rituals they had around it, that would that would be folklore.
I don't know if you would call that positive. I
know I wouldn't. I wouldn't either. I'd like to hear
from I'm sure we'll get some folklore so that are
(26:25):
just giddy right now by the way that we're covering this,
or they're shouting at their stereo. No, I bet they
seem like kindly folk that would just be like excited
that we're even hitting on the topic, you know, shining
a light their way. They're like, you got everything wrong,
but in a way that's right because you just generated
entirely no folklore. Yeah, that's a good point. So, chuckers,
(26:46):
we talked about children, families, communities. There's all sorts of
different folk groups. Those are the big ones. Um, And
just a second, we're going to talk about all the
different folk genres right after this, So Chuck, we're back.
(27:14):
I forgot what we're talking about folklore. Yeah, we were
talking about genres of folklore like disco and new metal
and Norwegian death metal, right and other kinds of metal music. Well, no,
they would have like their own folklore for sure, those
groups that are into that. Yeah, but I mean music
is you know, that's a category. Actually, Um. That was
(27:36):
one of the things that stuck out to me. Is
very specific at least according to this University of Louisiana article,
Like they were like, folklore can be this. It can
be family recipes. It can be uh, the boat that
your family passed down, or you know, it can be
the Viking funeral that your community gives every year. But
when it comes to folk music, it's like these five
types of music. Yeah, you know, sure, sure, yeah. I
(28:00):
mean that's a little because if you're like pull my
finger if and I'll fart, that's family folklore and the
Bryant family. Well, I mean, I can guarantee you folklore's
would not judge that. Oh, speaking of which, did you
see that thing about the oldest recorded joke? I sent?
So jokes are an obvious example of folklore. Um, and
(28:20):
jokes fascinate me up because ever since I was a kid,
I wondered who made up you know, this joke, like
common jokes, Like someone was the first person to tell
this joke and it becomes so widespread it's just amazing
to me how they get passed around. And apparently in
two thousand eight this is from Reuters. Is it Rooters
or Reuters? The world's oldest joke was traced back to
(28:45):
Samaria in b C. And uh it is this, uh
something which has never occurred since time immemorial, basically since
time began, a young woman did not fart in her
husband's lap. So that's the oldest joke. Supposedly, I'll go
ahead read the other two. It doesn't count as a joke.
(29:06):
Oh passingly rye observation, which is a joke. I guess
it seems like folklore's definition of joke. All right, how
about the six BC? Uh in about a pharaoh? Here's
the joke, how do you entertain a board pharaoh? How
(29:27):
you sail a boatload of young women dressed only in
fishing nets down to the Nile and urged the pharaoh
to go catch a fish? But supposedly that was a joke.
And then the English one. Now they're starting to get funny. Yeah,
they're getting better. The British joke. They found one that
dates back to tenth century. Uh, what hang? And this
is a bit of a riddle. What hangs at a man?
(29:49):
A bit of a body riddle? Body? Indeed, what hangs
at a man's thigh? And wants to poke the hole
that it's often poked before? I don't know a key?
Oh yeah, so those are the oldest jokes. Well, at
least by the tenth century, they were starting to take
the shape of a modern joke, right, yeah. And I
(30:10):
sent that on Facebook to our buddy Brian Brian Kylie
of Conan, the writer for Conan, because he's like, this
is it, this is what I've been looking for. Well,
he's just he's one of the best crafters of just
solid jokes that I know. So I was like, Brian,
you'll appreciate this, and he said, listen up in tonight's monologue.
(30:30):
And I think he was kidding. But if that's actually
that would be supersome. Yeah. Uh, let's see. So we're
talking about folk genres. Jokes specifically, UM constitute what are
what's called the oral genre, yes, which is you know, jokes, poems, UM.
Fairy tales are a huge one, myths, legends, Uh, basically
(30:54):
anything that used to be told orally that these days
is probably put down um on paper or hyped, but
isn't necessarily because I think a game instructions for a
game passing that along would be would constitute oral folklore. Yeah,
but the game itself would constitute um material folklore. I
think maybe this is where the whole thing gets fuzzy,
(31:18):
Like the edges between these things are very fuzzy and porous.
There's a lot of osmosis going on between these genres. Yeah,
it's a fluid thing. There's nothing wrong with that. Materials
which you just mentioned, um, they list as artifacts and
food ways so um like food recipes, yeah, recipes or
(31:38):
costumes uh, cultural costumes, Uh, they said, carved duck decoys,
even uh folded paper airplanes, like I guess that little
game of paper football, Like all of those are material,
Like how you specifically fold that paper football? Um, it
was taught to you by some kid in your elementary
school and it may be different than another kids in
(32:00):
another school. Yeah you know. Uh. Then when you mentioned music, right, yeah, yeah,
at some point we did, sure and that that can
be anything. Um, but one that comes to mind for
me especially are a lullabies. They just remind me to
me of like folk tradition. Depending on your family, you're
gonna sing whatever lullabies you sing to your baby, right,
(32:21):
little kids singing like ring around the rosy, Yeah exactly,
which apparently it was about some epidemic in London. I think,
oh really yeah, ring worm around the rosy. Yeah, like
the rosie has to do with like what like your
face looked like when you caught this fever flu or
something like that. Well, and then it end you off
all down? Is that dying? Wow? Not to look into
(32:45):
that dance is a is a big one Uh, any
kind of rhythmic movement is generally taught within a folk group.
Can you dance? No, boy, you and I know those
would be personal habits bad dancing. I think, yeah, I
(33:05):
mean I knew before I even answered that, because I
know me and how I danced, and I'm picturing you
and it's equally as bad. I stand still. I know what,
I know. I've reached the point in my life from
like I don't dance, well, no, I don't even try.
I mean, you get me sauce at a wedding and
something might happen. What do you do? Something magical might happen,
like the electric slide or something, or do you just
(33:27):
get out on the floor and go like I'm gonna
live forever. I did have one of those, my my
friend Jerry in Portland or no, my friends Scott Nimily
in Portland at their wedding. Um, they had a jazz
band and uh, we were all just having a good
time and sort of dancing, and I remember very specifically,
and I was much younger, but um, there was like
a jazz drum breakdown and it's dude, I don't know
(33:51):
what came over me. The spirit came over me, and
the circle cleared and I was in the middle and
I just did this like we your scat drums dance
solo to this guy's thing, and it went over great everyone.
It was one of those like, oh my god, look
at Chuck go. And I'm not saying it was good,
but um, did your tuxedo dickie roll up at the end.
(34:14):
That taught me in the nose. It was pretty great though,
Like it stands out in my memory as one of
the best parts of the wedding for some reason. I
can imagine why. I don't know if everyone else remembers.
It sounds pretty great, Chuck, that was pretty great. I
wish it were on video. Emily likes my dancing. I
do a lot of TV theme song dancing to make
her laugh. But it's all in the house, you know.
It's it's our little secret. Well not anymore now, just
(34:36):
shared with the world. I'll post videos later. What else
do we have? We have a belief that's a big one.
Uh yeah, that's another genre which is kind of confounding
until you get to a good example. His belief is
like anything from mythology to religion. Um too weird customs
(34:59):
two all this other stuff that you would think, well,
well no, wait a minute, that's that would be oral
or that would be material, right. No. Belief is when
folklore effects behavior, like it's good luck to do this
before a wedding exactly, or I'm not leaving the house
because it's Friday the thirteenth, or I'm not going to
(35:20):
you know, Um, I've got to wear black because I'm
in mourning, or something like that. Where you have a
a belief, it's a folk belief that is affecting your behavior.
That's that's belief folklore. Yeah. Another good example they use is, uh,
the Jewish tradition when you give bread and sugar and
salt to your new neighbor as a housewarming gift. I
(35:42):
thought they gave another great example in this article too,
which was, um, you get into uh, you get rear
ended by somebody in your car, and rather than getting
out and screaming at them, you remember the Golden rule,
which is a folklore, um, and you calm yourself and say,
it's cool, happens of the best of us. That's believed folklore.
(36:02):
In action, it says, yeah, in action, and then you
call your wife and do the complaining. Can you believe
this this idiot. Oh, it's nice to him, but you
know you didn't deserve it. What else? The golden rule
in action body communication is one I've never really thought about.
But um, gestures and expressions are very much cultural specific. Um.
(36:25):
If you think about like and here in America we
might flip the bird at somebody, and England they do
they do two fingers, Yeah, the two fingers up like
that or the old I don't even know what that's called,
with the arm and the inner elbow, you know what.
I think that is based on that and like the
like too. Yeah, I think it's like an evil eye,
(36:46):
kind of like a hex or a curse. I think
that's because you're born from Okay, now it's just hilarious. Yeah,
somebody does that talk about diffusing the tension. Yeah, you know,
if you're about to fight somebody and they like put
their thumb on their front to at you, that's you're
just gonna go over and pat him on the shoulder
and say thanks for that. I like that. I'm gonna
start using that. Although I had to have my fake
(37:09):
front tooth, I wouldn't want to mess with that. Well,
what about this one? The finger on the thumb on
the nose and your fingers up and twiddling. Yeah, that's
an old one that reminds me. I asked you guys
if you saw the breakdancing six year old right yeah,
Oh my gosh. One of the things this girl does
at like a break off. She's in a competition with
this maybe twelve year old boy. He's pretty good. This
(37:32):
girl levels him and one of the things she does
is like slide toward him on her knees, doing that
with like her thumb on her nose, like wagging her
fingers at him. And you're like, oh, yeah, this girl
is six years old, but it's awesome. You have to
check her out. I love that. Like everyone out there is,
like Josh is mentioning this girl every other podcast. I'm
and I'm going to continue to until everybody writes in
(37:53):
and say, yes, I've seen it now. The other, um,
the other insult is the old this one right here?
Oh yeah, that I seemed I saw that a lot
in the seventies. I guess you can just probably describe.
It's where you Yeah, I was trying to think of
fingers under your chin, yeah, and flick it, flick them
all together outward. Yeah, yeah, yeah, like a buzz off buddy.
(38:14):
You know who does that is a Maggie Simpson. She
does that. Oh really yeah, she's a classy girl. So Chuck,
we could probably just keep doing this for the next
four or five hours because folklore is everything. Yeah, and
we both have our own folklore. Um, but I think
we kind of covered it. I think so too. Have
(38:34):
you got anything else right now? No? I mean I
really don't, like you said, it's so all encompassing and broad.
I think we just think it's pretty good overview. Yeah,
but what's neat is I mean, like, if you're even
remotely interested in this, there's a whole world out there,
all the stuff you take for granted. If you just
go start looking into folklore research, totally open your eyes,
(38:54):
and what's neat is you'll see your own stuff reinforced.
You'll see your reflection of yourself, but you'll also see
other cultures as well, and how they do bear similarities
to your own, your own beliefs. And it's a lot
if it's a lot harder to to feel inclusive and
exclusive from groups that you realize that you share some
really fundamental stuff in common with, No matter how distant
(39:16):
they are. Yeah, and that's the point I saw a
lot in the research. I think it's it's pretty neat.
It's a common it's a binding agent for humanity. Pretty neat,
go humanity. All right, Well, if you want to learn
more about folklore, you can type that word into the
search bar how stuff works dot com. And since I
said that, hey, there's a little bit of how stuff
(39:37):
for stuff you should know folklore s Yeah. Uh, it's
time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this, uh creepy
email sort of when you think about it. How's that
for a title? I can't wait. That's the tradition is
awkwardly named listener mails by me. Okay, I wouldn't say awkward.
(39:57):
You do pretty great with them. Okay, I appreciate it. Hey,
guys and Jerry, I have just listened to your podcast
on the Singularity a k a. The Rise of the Machines,
and it occurred to me that the entire podcast explored
the question of how and when the singularity will happen.
But since we do not know exactly what would cause
it or what the results would be, isn't it entirely
(40:19):
possible that it has already happened. It is quite conceivable
that singularity happened some time ago, and that the machines decided,
knowing that humans currently believe the Singularity not to have happened,
that the best course of action was to keep their
sentience hidden until some appropriate future time. Uh. It is
(40:39):
fun to imagine, he says. Fun. I say chilling through
the bone. To imagine the machine simply lying in wait.
As humans unaware adopt technology into every conceivable facet of
modern life, then one day we will wake up and
our computer screens will simply say hello world. That is
from j um oh JM. He's like he doesn't want
(41:03):
to be targeted by the machine. They know you type
that pal. Sure. Uh yeah, that is a little creepy,
don't you think? I never thought about it. That could
It could very well be true. And if computers are
sentient and they're smart enough to be quiet for now,
then we're in big, big trouble because it already displays
a lot of deceptiveness. I think quietly sentient was that
(41:25):
was a Pink Floyd song. I think learning to be
Quietly center. Yeah. Uh, if you want to give us
some great Pink Floyd titles, we love those. I think
you could probably start a meme with that. Uh. You
can send them to us via Twitter using our Twitter
handle at s y s K podcast. You can join
(41:46):
us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know.
You can send us an email to stuff Podcast at
how Stuff Works dot com, and, as always, joined us
at our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know
dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of
I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit
the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
(42:08):
listen to your favorite shows. H
Hello friends, Chuck here with our Saturday Select pick. This
is all the way back from February. Remember that being
a very good day. Remember being happy that day because
we recorded a podcast about folklore and it was great
and a lot of fun. And it's called what Is Folklore?
And I think you'll enjoy it on the Saturday afternoon,
So queue it up and get going right here, right now.
(00:28):
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey there, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
josh Joshua Clark, and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant. Jerry
is over there, just Jerry uh, and that's stuff you
(00:49):
should know that. She has a new sip gone out
on the FX called just Jerry. It's suddenly Jerry. Um,
how you doing. I'm fine as well told me to intrude,
just checking. I'm excited about this. When I first read
our article, I was a little bit like, oh, this
(01:09):
is a little unwieldy because it's so folklore. It's just
it's an amorphous. As it turns out, it's everything, yeah,
pretty much. But then you sent um, what was that
other good article from? Actually we should shout that out.
It was from a I think the University of Louisiana
or something like that. They have a folk life folklore department,
(01:30):
and it was basically we we stumbled upon some unit
for teachers to teach what folklore is and we're like, hey,
it works for us, super helpful. Yeah, it was very helpful.
It definitely. It took a lot of this amorphous stuff
that was in our article and chipped away at the
edges and gave it a little more shape. You know, agreed, So, um,
you did kind of hit it on the head. It's
(01:52):
it's kind of like um, nailing jelly to the wall
defining what folklore is because it is so much that
phrases folklore. If if it isn't just me saying it,
if I share it and now other people say it,
it could become stuff you should know, folklore, oral oral folklore.
Did you make that up? It was I think I've
(02:15):
heard it before. Okay, so that's folklore. Yeah, I guess,
so it's a it's a variation though of Um, what
else did I hear? Oh? Yeah, we were talking about
the the nuclear fusion reactor where they were saying that
keeping plasma contained is kind of like trying to hold
jelly in a bunch of rubber bands. That's a nerd
(02:38):
science folklore. That's what inspired me to say, nailing jelly
to the wall. I like that. It seems like it
really sums it up. So folklore. Yeah, I found this
other definition I thought was pretty good, which is, uh,
traditional art, literature, knowledge and practice that is disseminated largely
through oral communication and behavioral example. Uh. And then this
(02:59):
was the key for me. Things that people traditionally believe,
do no make and say in other words, everything, Yeah,
I mean, you're right, everything that that's that's about as
good a definition as you're gonna find. One of the
problems with studying folklore is that there are so many
definitions out there. Apparently folklorists, who are people who study folklore. UM,
(03:22):
I don't like to be too judge e. It's kind
of part and parcel with their um their field of study.
You don't judge stuff, you just collect information. The problem
is is that they've also just kind of collected definitions
for folklore along the way, and there isn't one set
definition that's accepted by everybody. Yeah, a folklore collected stuff.
(03:42):
I was like, that's stupid. It wouldn't It would be
a good Why are you guys doing that? That's a
good TV show, the bad folk folkloreist. And I might
say folk here in there because I mispronounced that word
often and how are you saying? Well, a lot of
times I'll say the l in fact, up until about
(04:03):
a year ago when someone wrote in was a stupid
it's pronounced folk like f o k folk and not folk.
But the weird thing is is like I hear the
l missing when I hear folk, weird, that's some sort
of like I don't hear fo k, Like it's clear
to me that there's an fo l k in there.
(04:24):
You hear the silence. It's a great word. Oh okay,
it's beautiful. It is beautiful. Um. And another thing too
that we should point out that folklore is love to
point out is that um, it is not and should
not be associated with being backward or old timey or uneducated.
(04:46):
Like I think a lot of people have that connotation
in their heads, that folklore is like the hillbilly on
the porch, you know, when their homespun wisdoms, and it
can be that, but it's it's it's not that at all,
Like it's not just that, right. Um. A really good
example that contradicts that is, um, Snopes. Snopes dot com
(05:07):
is basically a clearinghouse of modern folklore. Oh yeah, I
never really thought about that. You know, Um the Nigerian
prince scam, that's folklore. Yeah, it sure is. Emoticons even
are considered now a form of um verbal communication verbal folklore. Yeah,
and like you said, it's everything. And the reason it's
(05:27):
everything is because, um, it comes out of groups. Like
if I just have a habit, you know where Um,
I keep a rubber band twisted around my finger until
it turns purple, and then I'll take it off for
half an hour and then do it again. That's just
some weird habit. That's not folklore. Folklore is something that's
shared between a group. Yeah, and uh, those groups can
(05:49):
be like almost anything the I think them. That great
article you sent and that says neighborhoods, communities, and regions,
but also religious groups, families, occupations, gender like pretty much
any grouping, enthusiast, hobbyists, anything you can think of that
(06:11):
you can group more than two people together. It can
be a folk group exactly. You can have like a
Catholic dockyard worker who is also a member of an
RC playing club. Yeah, who also is a member of
a book club at the local library. Right, So that
one person is going to be a member of all
(06:32):
those different folk groups, and all those folk groups are
gonna write their own folklore, true it. Uh, that's yeah,
you're right. That's another good thing to point out is
you're not just in one group. You have you spanned many,
many groups. And for instance, I have family folklore. Uh,
we have probably occupational folklore, you know, the old podcaster
(06:53):
folklore for us and our colleagues. Uh, and my gender
and my age and uh religious affiliation growing up, like,
we all have many many groups and subgroups that we
fall into, right, and we get our information from that. Yeah.
One of the things that I think has been tricky
about defining folklore is that there's not it's not obvious
(07:15):
necessarily what folklore is for not at first blush, but
if you go and read some of the people who
study it. Um. The idea of folklore is that one
of the main things it does is it reinforces membership
in a group. It makes you feel special for being
part of that group, an insider um. And then it
(07:36):
also um reinforces the norms of that group. Like folklore
is based on basically norms, customs, traditions, things that the
members of the group have said. This is what you
know we identify with. Yeah, and not always too um,
as that teaching site points out, not always reinforcing those norms,
sometimes overturning those norms. Yeah. Like a good way to
(07:57):
overturn the norm is to take an existing norm and
turn it on its ear, because it makes it really
approachable to the other people in your folk group. They
understand what you're doing very clearly, and it gives them
a different perspective, right or seeing the traditional channels. Yeah, like, uh,
I think one example I saw somewhere was taking a
traditional folk song maybe and adding verses to it to
(08:18):
spend its meaning to the opposite, perhaps like Bob Dylan
he's famous for stealing things. Or Jimmy Page. Uh oh yeah.
Have you heard that song the Zeppelin or the Yesterday
Way to Heaven lawsuit? No? No, who whose song was it? Originally?
I can't remember the name. I mean, this is not news.
It's been around for a while, but um yeah, I
(08:40):
mean they've been sued. Uh. It was a group that
opened up for for Zeppelin on an early tour and
supposedly played this song, and I think Zeppelin has I
haven't looked at it up lately, but I think they
have defeated the suit. But when you hear the song,
you're like, oh, that sounds a little bit like the
opening bit to Stairway to Happen. So it was like
(09:02):
the musical the music. It wasn't like any of the
layer that that opening guitar strumming pattern, um uh was
pretty darn similar. But um, as any musician will tell you,
everybody steals. There's only so many variations of chords and
picking patterns that you can do. And uh, it's just
part of the rich tradition of music is to nick
things respectfully, not you know, not rightbusters, I want a
(09:27):
new drug kind of steeling. Yeah, I mean that's when
your lawsuits come up. Um, it's not just music that
there's that long tradition of stealing um or nicking or
whatever you want to euphemism. It's literature is very much
the same way. There's something like five or ten themes
and all of literature and everything else is just basically
a variation of them. And that's One of the things
(09:49):
that folklore uh are folk folklorists have learned through studying
folklore is that we humans share what can be called
basically a common imagination. That humans across time and space, um,
all have a a like a a certain number of
slots of looking at the world. Certain things in the
(10:11):
world capture the human imagination in a similar way in
all different parts of the world, and we tend to
use similar explanations for them. So you'll have independently evolving
folklore among groups who've never met before, UM that seek
to explain or have a story about something that is
(10:32):
just kind of out there in the environment. Yeah, that's
a good point, um. One of the examples of that
is UH, in folklore stories are frogs and toads can
be found, and all kinds of old stories and all
cultures all over the world. That I mean, it's possible
too if you're close to one another, like uh, Korea
(10:53):
and China may have stories to overlap one another just
through a common geographical boundary. But stuff like frogs and
toads will pop up, you know, let's say in Europe
or medieval Europe or in Asia like places aren't even
close to one another where it's inexplicable basically, right, and
they'll share like a similar um personality or something in
(11:14):
the story. So like frogs and toads are commonly thought
of as shape shifting tricksters. Yeah, and I think, UM,
this article points out that that's probably because they go
from tadpole to frog or toad and they change themselves physically.
So it's um, you know, the old dummies back in
the day, they would just use that obvious. Obviously they
(11:37):
can become human too, since they go from tadpole to
frog exactly like the frog prince. And you you mentioned
also UM shared regional characteristics that are most likely the
result of stories making it from one group to another
crossing borders. But among groups that are close together, and
UM that example you gave of East Asia, UM, Japan
(11:59):
and CRE Thailand, China, they all have UM. They the
idea that there's a rabbit in the moon and he's
using a mortar and pestle. And what that would be
is a motif. Like all of them have the shared
idea that there's a rabbit in the moon, right, But
then there's what are called variations of that motif. So
in Japan and Korea, the rabbits making mochi, which is
(12:22):
a sweet, squishy rice cake that often has like something
even sweeter injected in, like red bean sweetness. Right. Um,
in China, the rabbit is making medicine. In Thailand's husking
um rice. So you have variations on what the rabbit
is doing, but the motif is if you look up
at the moon, there's a rabbit doing something up there. Yeah,
and like we said, it's most likely because of a
(12:44):
shared border or just because simply people moving between those countries.
So we'll talk about where folklore comes from. Friends, if
you can believe it or not. Right after this, chuckers,
(13:12):
So we're back. We're talking folklore. We should also say
folklore is actually um a fairly recent word. It was
coined in eighteen forty six by a guy named William J. Toms. Yeah,
he was a um an early and tiquarian. He was
also very interested in studying um. What has now come
(13:34):
to be called folklore or folk life. We should point
out that's a modern term that people folklore is like
even more Yeah, because folklore has this connotation that um,
that it has to do with stories, world traditions or
even not true things because you've heard like, oh, that's
just folklore, like an old lives tale. Yeah, exactly. So
they've expanded it to include or to reflect how inclusive
(13:58):
it is by calling it folk life. But um William
Tom's came up with folklore and it was originally hyphenated
um and he was describing these stories that he would
go out into the countryside and collect from folk. Like
he published a book of like English rural stories that
included things like Robin Hood and Friar Talk and some
(14:19):
of the other stories that we have become disnified over
the years. This guy originally put down for the first
time on pen and paper and became one of the
early folklorest. Yeah, and didn't they call just anyone living
in rural areas. Weren't they just called folk? Which is
why we sort of associated as like being a bumpkin today.
But I use that word all the time in fact
(14:39):
on the Facebook while here, that's my most common way
of addressing the stuff you should know army is hey folks. Oh,
I know, it just sounds like chummy to me. Yeah,
very folks. Folk. See there you go, yeah, hey folks.
Uh So there are a bunch of innumerable innumerable groups
really that pass along folklore. Um, and they're called folk
(14:59):
group folk groups, but we can we can group them generally,
not folk groups like Peter Paul Mary, Yeah, but folk groups. Yeah.
I think I said it with the eldest, now, didn't
I maybe I like it. It's called the regional ad diction.
People get all hung up on that stuff. You gotta
say this wrong. What's weird though, is like neither one
(15:21):
of us sound like Southerners. Yeah, not really, And I
mean like you were born here and you don't sound
like a Southerner. Yeah, I say, I have certain colloquialism,
so like, uh, have your picture made? Oh yeah, that's
sometimes I'll say, like you mash a button instead of
push a button. Yeah, And there's It's I think people
should embrace things like that regional dialect instead of getting
(15:42):
all hung up on the Queen's English or the King's English.
See right there, Yeah, that's a that's regional. I imagine
either one. The prince is English. Um, it's that what
you're talking about is antithetical the globalization. Chuck. Oh really sure,
look at you regionalism, smarty fans. Well, I mean that's
that's counter to globalization. Globalization is turning the earth into
(16:04):
one large village with all these shared values and everything.
Regionalism is saying like, no, we'll just stay his pockets
of interacting groups that have our own our own values
and traditions and customs like that. I think it's on
the brain because I posted something today on words that
are mispronounced a lot and um, what what's up there? Oh?
(16:24):
I mean also like banal and uh. Dr Seuss supposed
supposedly pronounced his name is u so ice. Again, I
can't remember how he pronounced it, but it's just like
common words you're probably mispronouncing. And the was on there
And someone said, you guys always pronounced the wrong because supposedly, yeah, exactly,
(16:46):
supposedly there's a rule. Not supposedly, I think there is
a rule. You mean supposedly, Well, that wasn't on there. Um,
well that's a different that's just saying the wrong word.
But I think the you should say the in the
following noun is starts with a vowel, like the apple,
not the apple, but you could say you could say
(17:10):
the test because the apple almost sounds like it's th
h apostrophe apple. Yeah, And I get it, but that's apple.
It's just sort of a regional thing. I think in
the South you might hear more the m than the
snotty New Englanders. So I've never really paid that much
attention to that one. I haven't either, you know why,
because we are laid back, that's right. Um, all right,
(17:32):
So what we're talking about, we're talking about people who
spread the groups, the folk groups. One of the folk
groups though not Peter poll Mary one of his children.
And uh, this is a really big one because when
you think about going back to your childhood, everything like
the games like hide and see cop scotch. Uh. This
article pointed out how you decide who's it like that
(17:55):
is super specific to your region. Um, but also not
just that the difference is regionally, but think about how
intricate some of the rules were some of those games,
like they were like really well thought out, intricate rules
that no one ever wrote down. They were just past.
Yeah you knew it from observation, imitation orally like somebody
(18:19):
told you, but people no one handed you a flyer
called like kick the can and you you know, well
one kid did, but we didn't know one like that kid.
He learned the hard way not to do that. What
was your How did you decide who was it? I'm
sure you probably had a go to well. The author
of this article mentions, bubble gum, bubble gum in a dish.
I've never heard that. I have heard that. I love
(18:41):
that one. That the images it evokes, like how many
pieces do you wish? And you go one to three, five,
somebody says how many they want, and then you count
out between two or three people like seven, and then
whatever you land on that person, is it right? Usually
we did dirty dirty dish rag? Though, yes, I've never
heard of that one. Either your mother and my mother
were hanging out clothes. My mother socked your mother in
(19:03):
the nose. Never heard it. What came after that? That's
misogynistic and violent something it really was. Something else happens
after that, and then it just suddenly goes to and
you are at you dirty dirty dish rag? You we did?
There were three that I remember very strongly. The one
potato to potato, Uh engine engine number nine, Yeah, going
(19:25):
down Chicago Line. If the train should doump the check,
do you want your money back? Oh? Yeah, I forgot that?
And then maybe so who maybe so wanted their money back.
Of course you want your money back of the train
de rails. Now that's the kid who just wanted to
get along. Uh and then engine and or no no? Uh?
Any meani is the other one? Sure? Any MENI money
mo kitch talking about them to the hollers. Let them go?
(19:46):
Any menie? Was that it? And then we also there
were variations on you know, usually counting out like I'm
making my two hands locked together. We would do like that,
and and then if you when you land it on them,
you would split them into two two fists and then
count each. So there were lots of variations. And uh,
(20:08):
I mean that goes down to the neighborhood you live in,
you know, like that specific. Yeah. We would also just
leg wrestle for domination and then that person would choose
who is it. I've never leg wrestled. It's not fun. Yeah,
I don't. I didn't even know what it is. Really,
it's exactly what it sounds like. I mean I think
I've seen it. You lay on the ground and lock
legs like there's no no other body parts involved, right,
(20:32):
I mean, you're just basically on your backup on your
elbows using your legs to do. Let's see objective basically
make the other person cry or stop shout to stop.
But it's not. There's not like a pinning or like
like an army. Yeah you can, you can pin, and
it's not. It's one of those things like, um, like
the Supreme Court's view of pornography, Like there's no obvious pin.
(20:54):
It's just you just kind of know what when you
see it, you know what I mean, Like you can
tell you, oh, yeah, that's a pin, but I mean
you wouldn't. Again, there's no kid like handing out a
leg wrestling and you flyer that shows what counts as
a pin. You just kind of know what it pens. Alright.
Another folk group or families, very rich traditions within families
from everything, uh from family recipes to holiday traditions. Uh.
(21:19):
And I think, um, like whether or not you use
the the plastic tinsel on your tree is technically a
type of family folk lore. Yeah, Or whether you open
gifts on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, or whether or
not you're you you hide your Easter baskets yeah, or
you burn your Christmas tree on Christmas Day, or your
family gets in a huge fight every Christmas Day. Sure,
(21:41):
that's another one rich traditions. Um family stories also make
up traditions. So like, um, my family story about my
aunt Squeaky taking shooting at President Ford that that would
count as family folklore. That's very good. Uh uh So
within families it's another very um strong place where you
(22:04):
see variants and motifs. Um. Well yeah, across like all folklore, yeah,
but especially within families for me, uh or I think
within all families because like you know, your grandmother's recipe
for like I make the Thanksgiving dressing what other people
in the North called stuffing, we called dressing, and it's
my family recipe. That has to do with what he
(22:25):
uses the base though, doesn't it Like if it's corn based,
it would be dressing dressing. Yeah, and if it's like
bread based or wheat based, it would be stuffing. I
don't know who knows, but go ahead, sorry for interrupting now,
that's right, minds both though, like cornbread dressing also has
uh as as either biscuits or bread in it as well.
(22:47):
But that was my family recipe. My grandmother made it,
My mom made it, she taught me, and I put
my own spin on it as and that's my own motif,
that's your own variation on the motif. Very variational. So
you said the motif would be the dressing or stuffing,
and then what you do with the recipe would be
the variation of it. Yeah, and I mix it up
from year to year, even just kind of testing things out. Man,
(23:08):
you are a folk rebel, sure I am. But yeah,
so family recipes are very that's a common um. Family folklore,
family generated folklore. We got a lot of our indoctrination
to just folklore in general through families, and so it
was so important in some cultures, including some Native American
(23:30):
tribes and some West West African tribes, that they would
have a designated basically a folklore's what a folklore um
a modern folklore researcher would call a tradition bearer, who
like their job in this village or group is to
tell each family their family folklore. Like that, it was
that person's job to keep in charge of all of
(23:53):
the folklore of the different families in the community. Yeah,
I bet that that was a pretty cool gig. I
imagine they were like the the the great storytellers that
they could tell a story if they're trying the great
Racan Tours. That's another word. Yeah, you like that one. Yeah,
I don't know how I feel about that word. No,
(24:14):
really like I think about it once in a while,
almost every time I encountered m I don't know how
I feel about that word. Interesting. Yeah, I like it,
did you know? Also, Chuck, while we're on this, UM,
I heard the one of the most amazing stories I've
ever heard about paint on It must have been on
MPR or something, but they were tracking, um, the color
(24:37):
of paint, the specific color of paint used in Southern
porches for ceilings. There's like a specific blue. Yeah, and um,
that would count as folklore, just that color paint. That
would be um, the next type community folklore. That's right.
But the reason I bring that up because Racan Tour.
(24:58):
It just makes me think of like somebody sitting in
a rocking chair and a porch recounting stories. Yeah, yeah,
for sure. Um, So that is a great example You're
right of a community folklore. Um, A festival that you're telling,
you know, the strawberry Festival in your town is folklore.
The jazz fest in New Orleans, any sort of local custom,
(25:19):
um that takes place within your community can all be
considered folklore, like that's how we do it around here.
That's folklore, right, as long as it's not like damaging.
I wonder though, like all of this stuff is um
supposedly at the very least innocuous, if not positive. Yeah,
(25:41):
that's that's my point. But I mean, surely there's negative
folklore that still counts as folklore. I don't know, you know,
like like racism, it depends on the group, you know,
that's just how we do it around here, or right
or not folklore. I don't think. Well, what about something
where like like stories or mythology or origin stories that
(26:03):
support um human sacrifice among groups in the past that
did that, you know, I mean, that would technically be folklore.
Whatever stories they used to reinforce that, whatever traditions and
rituals they had around it, that would that would be folklore.
I don't know if you would call that positive. I
know I wouldn't. I wouldn't either. I'd like to hear
from I'm sure we'll get some folklore so that are
(26:25):
just giddy right now by the way that we're covering this,
or they're shouting at their stereo. No, I bet they
seem like kindly folk that would just be like excited
that we're even hitting on the topic, you know, shining
a light their way. They're like, you got everything wrong,
but in a way that's right because you just generated
entirely no folklore. Yeah, that's a good point. So, chuckers,
(26:46):
we talked about children, families, communities. There's all sorts of
different folk groups. Those are the big ones. Um, And
just a second, we're going to talk about all the
different folk genres right after this, So Chuck, we're back.
(27:14):
I forgot what we're talking about folklore. Yeah, we were
talking about genres of folklore like disco and new metal
and Norwegian death metal, right and other kinds of metal music. Well, no,
they would have like their own folklore for sure, those
groups that are into that. Yeah, but I mean music
is you know, that's a category. Actually, Um. That was
(27:36):
one of the things that stuck out to me. Is
very specific at least according to this University of Louisiana article,
Like they were like, folklore can be this. It can
be family recipes. It can be uh, the boat that
your family passed down, or you know, it can be
the Viking funeral that your community gives every year. But
when it comes to folk music, it's like these five
types of music. Yeah, you know, sure, sure, yeah. I
(28:00):
mean that's a little because if you're like pull my
finger if and I'll fart, that's family folklore and the
Bryant family. Well, I mean, I can guarantee you folklore's
would not judge that. Oh, speaking of which, did you
see that thing about the oldest recorded joke? I sent?
So jokes are an obvious example of folklore. Um, and
(28:20):
jokes fascinate me up because ever since I was a kid,
I wondered who made up you know, this joke, like
common jokes, Like someone was the first person to tell
this joke and it becomes so widespread it's just amazing
to me how they get passed around. And apparently in
two thousand eight this is from Reuters. Is it Rooters
or Reuters? The world's oldest joke was traced back to
(28:45):
Samaria in b C. And uh it is this, uh
something which has never occurred since time immemorial, basically since
time began, a young woman did not fart in her
husband's lap. So that's the oldest joke. Supposedly, I'll go
ahead read the other two. It doesn't count as a joke.
(29:06):
Oh passingly rye observation, which is a joke. I guess
it seems like folklore's definition of joke. All right, how
about the six BC? Uh in about a pharaoh? Here's
the joke, how do you entertain a board pharaoh? How
(29:27):
you sail a boatload of young women dressed only in
fishing nets down to the Nile and urged the pharaoh
to go catch a fish? But supposedly that was a joke.
And then the English one. Now they're starting to get funny. Yeah,
they're getting better. The British joke. They found one that
dates back to tenth century. Uh, what hang? And this
is a bit of a riddle. What hangs at a man?
(29:49):
A bit of a body riddle? Body? Indeed, what hangs
at a man's thigh? And wants to poke the hole
that it's often poked before? I don't know a key?
Oh yeah, so those are the oldest jokes. Well, at
least by the tenth century, they were starting to take
the shape of a modern joke, right, yeah. And I
(30:10):
sent that on Facebook to our buddy Brian Brian Kylie
of Conan, the writer for Conan, because he's like, this
is it, this is what I've been looking for. Well,
he's just he's one of the best crafters of just
solid jokes that I know. So I was like, Brian,
you'll appreciate this, and he said, listen up in tonight's monologue.
(30:30):
And I think he was kidding. But if that's actually
that would be supersome. Yeah. Uh, let's see. So we're
talking about folk genres. Jokes specifically, UM constitute what are
what's called the oral genre, yes, which is you know, jokes, poems, UM.
Fairy tales are a huge one, myths, legends, Uh, basically
(30:54):
anything that used to be told orally that these days
is probably put down um on paper or hyped, but
isn't necessarily because I think a game instructions for a
game passing that along would be would constitute oral folklore. Yeah,
but the game itself would constitute um material folklore. I
think maybe this is where the whole thing gets fuzzy,
(31:18):
Like the edges between these things are very fuzzy and porous.
There's a lot of osmosis going on between these genres. Yeah,
it's a fluid thing. There's nothing wrong with that. Materials
which you just mentioned, um, they list as artifacts and
food ways so um like food recipes, yeah, recipes or
(31:38):
costumes uh, cultural costumes, Uh, they said, carved duck decoys,
even uh folded paper airplanes, like I guess that little
game of paper football, Like all of those are material,
Like how you specifically fold that paper football? Um, it
was taught to you by some kid in your elementary
school and it may be different than another kids in
(32:00):
another school. Yeah you know. Uh. Then when you mentioned music, right, yeah, yeah,
at some point we did, sure and that that can
be anything. Um, but one that comes to mind for
me especially are a lullabies. They just remind me to
me of like folk tradition. Depending on your family, you're
gonna sing whatever lullabies you sing to your baby, right,
(32:21):
little kids singing like ring around the rosy, Yeah exactly,
which apparently it was about some epidemic in London. I think,
oh really yeah, ring worm around the rosy. Yeah, like
the rosie has to do with like what like your
face looked like when you caught this fever flu or
something like that. Well, and then it end you off
all down? Is that dying? Wow? Not to look into
(32:45):
that dance is a is a big one Uh, any
kind of rhythmic movement is generally taught within a folk group.
Can you dance? No, boy, you and I know those
would be personal habits bad dancing. I think, yeah, I
(33:05):
mean I knew before I even answered that, because I
know me and how I danced, and I'm picturing you
and it's equally as bad. I stand still. I know what,
I know. I've reached the point in my life from
like I don't dance, well, no, I don't even try.
I mean, you get me sauce at a wedding and
something might happen. What do you do? Something magical might happen,
like the electric slide or something, or do you just
(33:27):
get out on the floor and go like I'm gonna
live forever. I did have one of those, my my
friend Jerry in Portland or no, my friends Scott Nimily
in Portland at their wedding. Um, they had a jazz
band and uh, we were all just having a good
time and sort of dancing, and I remember very specifically,
and I was much younger, but um, there was like
a jazz drum breakdown and it's dude, I don't know
(33:51):
what came over me. The spirit came over me, and
the circle cleared and I was in the middle and
I just did this like we your scat drums dance
solo to this guy's thing, and it went over great everyone.
It was one of those like, oh my god, look
at Chuck go. And I'm not saying it was good,
but um, did your tuxedo dickie roll up at the end.
(34:14):
That taught me in the nose. It was pretty great though,
Like it stands out in my memory as one of
the best parts of the wedding for some reason. I
can imagine why. I don't know if everyone else remembers.
It sounds pretty great, Chuck, that was pretty great. I
wish it were on video. Emily likes my dancing. I
do a lot of TV theme song dancing to make
her laugh. But it's all in the house, you know.
It's it's our little secret. Well not anymore now, just
(34:36):
shared with the world. I'll post videos later. What else
do we have? We have a belief that's a big one.
Uh yeah, that's another genre which is kind of confounding
until you get to a good example. His belief is
like anything from mythology to religion. Um too weird customs
(34:59):
two all this other stuff that you would think, well,
well no, wait a minute, that's that would be oral
or that would be material, right. No. Belief is when
folklore effects behavior, like it's good luck to do this
before a wedding exactly, or I'm not leaving the house
because it's Friday the thirteenth, or I'm not going to
(35:20):
you know, Um, I've got to wear black because I'm
in mourning, or something like that. Where you have a
a belief, it's a folk belief that is affecting your behavior.
That's that's belief folklore. Yeah. Another good example they use is, uh,
the Jewish tradition when you give bread and sugar and
salt to your new neighbor as a housewarming gift. I
(35:42):
thought they gave another great example in this article too,
which was, um, you get into uh, you get rear
ended by somebody in your car, and rather than getting
out and screaming at them, you remember the Golden rule,
which is a folklore, um, and you calm yourself and say,
it's cool, happens of the best of us. That's believed folklore.
(36:02):
In action, it says, yeah, in action, and then you
call your wife and do the complaining. Can you believe
this this idiot. Oh, it's nice to him, but you
know you didn't deserve it. What else? The golden rule
in action body communication is one I've never really thought about.
But um, gestures and expressions are very much cultural specific. Um.
(36:25):
If you think about like and here in America we
might flip the bird at somebody, and England they do
they do two fingers, Yeah, the two fingers up like
that or the old I don't even know what that's called,
with the arm and the inner elbow, you know what.
I think that is based on that and like the
like too. Yeah, I think it's like an evil eye,
(36:46):
kind of like a hex or a curse. I think
that's because you're born from Okay, now it's just hilarious. Yeah,
somebody does that talk about diffusing the tension. Yeah, you know,
if you're about to fight somebody and they like put
their thumb on their front to at you, that's you're
just gonna go over and pat him on the shoulder
and say thanks for that. I like that. I'm gonna
start using that. Although I had to have my fake
(37:09):
front tooth, I wouldn't want to mess with that. Well,
what about this one? The finger on the thumb on
the nose and your fingers up and twiddling. Yeah, that's
an old one that reminds me. I asked you guys
if you saw the breakdancing six year old right yeah,
Oh my gosh. One of the things this girl does
at like a break off. She's in a competition with
this maybe twelve year old boy. He's pretty good. This
(37:32):
girl levels him and one of the things she does
is like slide toward him on her knees, doing that
with like her thumb on her nose, like wagging her
fingers at him. And you're like, oh, yeah, this girl
is six years old, but it's awesome. You have to
check her out. I love that. Like everyone out there is,
like Josh is mentioning this girl every other podcast. I'm
and I'm going to continue to until everybody writes in
(37:53):
and say, yes, I've seen it now. The other, um,
the other insult is the old this one right here?
Oh yeah, that I seemed I saw that a lot
in the seventies. I guess you can just probably describe.
It's where you Yeah, I was trying to think of
fingers under your chin, yeah, and flick it, flick them
all together outward. Yeah, yeah, yeah, like a buzz off buddy.
(38:14):
You know who does that is a Maggie Simpson. She
does that. Oh really yeah, she's a classy girl. So Chuck,
we could probably just keep doing this for the next
four or five hours because folklore is everything. Yeah, and
we both have our own folklore. Um, but I think
we kind of covered it. I think so too. Have
(38:34):
you got anything else right now? No? I mean I
really don't, like you said, it's so all encompassing and broad.
I think we just think it's pretty good overview. Yeah,
but what's neat is I mean, like, if you're even
remotely interested in this, there's a whole world out there,
all the stuff you take for granted. If you just
go start looking into folklore research, totally open your eyes,
(38:54):
and what's neat is you'll see your own stuff reinforced.
You'll see your reflection of yourself, but you'll also see
other cultures as well, and how they do bear similarities
to your own, your own beliefs. And it's a lot
if it's a lot harder to to feel inclusive and
exclusive from groups that you realize that you share some
really fundamental stuff in common with, No matter how distant
(39:16):
they are. Yeah, and that's the point I saw a
lot in the research. I think it's it's pretty neat.
It's a common it's a binding agent for humanity. Pretty neat,
go humanity. All right, Well, if you want to learn
more about folklore, you can type that word into the
search bar how stuff works dot com. And since I
said that, hey, there's a little bit of how stuff
(39:37):
for stuff you should know folklore s Yeah. Uh, it's
time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this, uh creepy
email sort of when you think about it. How's that
for a title? I can't wait. That's the tradition is
awkwardly named listener mails by me. Okay, I wouldn't say awkward.
(39:57):
You do pretty great with them. Okay, I appreciate it. Hey,
guys and Jerry, I have just listened to your podcast
on the Singularity a k a. The Rise of the Machines,
and it occurred to me that the entire podcast explored
the question of how and when the singularity will happen.
But since we do not know exactly what would cause
it or what the results would be, isn't it entirely
(40:19):
possible that it has already happened. It is quite conceivable
that singularity happened some time ago, and that the machines decided,
knowing that humans currently believe the Singularity not to have happened,
that the best course of action was to keep their
sentience hidden until some appropriate future time. Uh. It is
(40:39):
fun to imagine, he says. Fun. I say chilling through
the bone. To imagine the machine simply lying in wait.
As humans unaware adopt technology into every conceivable facet of
modern life, then one day we will wake up and
our computer screens will simply say hello world. That is
from j um oh JM. He's like he doesn't want
(41:03):
to be targeted by the machine. They know you type
that pal. Sure. Uh yeah, that is a little creepy,
don't you think? I never thought about it. That could
It could very well be true. And if computers are
sentient and they're smart enough to be quiet for now,
then we're in big, big trouble because it already displays
a lot of deceptiveness. I think quietly sentient was that
(41:25):
was a Pink Floyd song. I think learning to be
Quietly center. Yeah. Uh, if you want to give us
some great Pink Floyd titles, we love those. I think
you could probably start a meme with that. Uh. You
can send them to us via Twitter using our Twitter
handle at s y s K podcast. You can join
(41:46):
us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know.
You can send us an email to stuff Podcast at
how Stuff Works dot com, and, as always, joined us
at our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know
dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of
I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit
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(42:08):
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