December 24, 2019 • 44 mins
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You should Know, a production of I
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles w. Spirit of Christmas Bryant,
Josh Kringle, and there's Jerry Crampus rolling over there. And
(00:24):
this is uh, this is stuff you should know. That's right,
the geez, we should know how many this is? Seven? No? Yes,
our Christmas Special Edition second try, Holiday Spectacular, Spectacular, Spooktacular. No,
that's Halloween all right? All right, yeah, I don't know
(00:46):
how many of this is, but we've been podcasting for
almost twelve years now. It'll be twelve this next year, right, yes,
like summer Rich, did we release a Christmas this episode
the first year? I don't know. I'll have to go
back and do our homework ourselves. I'm sure someone knows
this stuff, but as usual, not that we're tooting our
(01:10):
own horn, but we just want to remind everyone that
we release this ad free every year. So our Christmas
episode is without taint. That's pretty great. Uh, it's untainted too, well,
you know, it always just felt weird to slap an
(01:32):
at in the middle of the Christmas themed show. Who
advertises around Christmas. Yeah, exactly, so anyway, this is uh,
we're all pleased with that. We are pra Please just
punch Jerry's especially please look at her. So, Jerry, do
you know it's Christmas? Yeah? Jerry so grumpy, So Chuck, Yes,
(01:53):
I feel like we should start this one off in
our usual tradition, um by a little bit of music
to play us into the next The first segment fantastic.
(02:17):
That's nice, it really is. Jerry is good at this
sets the mood. Um. I think that was true Siberian Orchestra.
If I'm not mistaken, wasn't We'll find out before we
get started with this episode, Chuck. We should we have
in the future concluded that here in the past we
should issue a c o A. I know who would
have thought our Christmas episode might not be appropriate for kids,
(02:40):
but we're us. So this first story has to deal
with magic mushrooms in Santa Claus and it's all legit.
But if you don't want your kids listen to that,
then don't listen to it. Okay, well, let's get on
with it. Let's do so. Um. I dug something up
years back, and we've talked about it before. At least
in passing. But the more I jumped into it, the
(03:01):
more I was like, this is nuts. I don't even
know which order we're going in. You see, I have
my papers all over, So I'm excited. I'm gonna I'm
along for the ride, just like the listener. I'm gonna
direct to hear the first Yeah you're directing, Okay, I'm
I'm this is This is really a lot of pressure
all of a sudden places everyone that's what you gotta
doesn't expect this. Let me put my shoulder or back
(03:22):
the one. Let me put my sweater over my shoulders
and get out your old school megaphone. Uh okay, Chuck,
please stand right there. Ry keep doing what you're doing, Chuck.
We're gonna talk about Santa Claus as a possible psychedelic mushroom. Alright.
I was hoping we'd start with that one. Okay. So,
like I said, we've talked about this before. I don't
(03:43):
remember what episode. I know we have, Yeah, we have,
but never this in depth. No, And I also want
to point out that the uh i'm annita Muscaria is
that the full name this mushroom? The very famous red
and White Christmas see looking mushroom, the one that anytime
(04:04):
you think of a gnome that's like the toadstool they
live around. That's right. I saw some of these just
a few weeks ago in the woods. Wow. Yeah, and
you come down yet. Well, the person I was with said,
I think those are magic mushrooms. I said, no, those
only grow and cow poop. And they were nick, No,
I think those are two. There's different kinds. Yeah, and
uh we went back to little research and it turns
out they are. We did not touch them or pick them.
(04:26):
We left them to grow. Well. Yeah, they apparently they're
also very toxic. Sure, I imagine, um, but there's ways,
there's things you can do to them to remove the toxicity,
especially if you live around rain deer. That's right. But
that plays a part in this story because this great
article you sent Santa Claus and the Santa Claus, the
Magic Mushroom and the Psychedelic Origins of Christmas by Melanie Zulu.
(04:51):
That's what I'm going with. X x U l U.
That's a great name. Uh. And what publication was this move?
What a great rag. Yeah, So Melanie Zulu basically UM
did some research on this idea. UM that Santa Claus
was inspired by those psychedelic mushrooms, the fly a Garrick mushroom. Yeah,
(05:15):
And I gotta say, when all of this stuff is
read together, there's a lot of pretty heavy coincidence. It
really is. You know else, whenever you whenever you read
about something like this where something might have been based
on their speculation or whatever, you're like, that's a couple
of those are kind of convincing from start to finish.
This is so absolutely convincing them, Like this is this
(05:37):
is the answer everybody. That's right. Magic mushrooms maybe so. Um.
On the very far end of the spectrum of the
speculation that Santa Claus is based on a psychedelic mushroom,
you'll find Jack Harror, who's a very famous pot activists,
um so so famous in fact, I believe he has
his own strain of pot, if not like brand like
(06:00):
Willie We'd basically or whatever Snoop Doggs brands are right. Um,
And Jack Harris said, not only was Santa Claus based
on a mushroom, Santa Claus was the mushroom. That's where
they got it from. It was like this is they
used to basically eat these mushrooms and call them Santa Claus. Okay,
most people, most people don't don't agree with that. Instead
(06:21):
they say, no, we think that there is something to
the idea that Santa Claus was inspired by the rituals
around this, this mushroom in particular, though. That's right. Uh. Notably,
there's a professor, professor named John Rush at Sierra College
in California, and it's pretty neat. There are like legit
(06:42):
Christmas scholars out there that you can get expert, you know,
takes on and he's one of those guys. And he said,
his quota is up until a few hundred years ago. Uh,
these practicing shaman and we're talking about shaman in uh
the lapland, yeah, in northern Finland, Northern Finland. He said,
(07:03):
are these priests they connected to older traditions. They would
collect these mushrooms, dry them up and give them as
as gifts and the winter solstice, so the stage is set.
We know this for sure. They would collect these mushrooms
and they would give them out for people to eat
and get high. Right, But exactly what they were doing
when they did that really kind of drives the Santa
(07:26):
idea home a lot. Yeah, notably what they wore. Okay, well,
let's first start with that fly, a garrick mushroom. When
you saw it, you were out in the woods. I'll
bet you they were growing at the foot of a
fir tree. They were a pine tree, some sort of
evergreen right, correct. Okay, that's almost exclusively where they grow.
I feel like I'm on the witness stand, right, would
(07:47):
you recall um? And then the other thing about it is, um,
they grow at least up in the northern climbs around
the winter solstice. So you've got the winter solstice, which
happens to inside pretty nicely with Christmas, and you have
the emergence of these mushrooms around fur trees, evergreen trees
(08:07):
around that time. Right. Then you have the Siberian shaman
or shaman's seems like it should be shaman plural even,
but it's not. Uh. They would dress up to look
like those mushrooms. So you think, all right, those red
and white mushrooms. Interesting. Um, So all of a sudden,
you've got a shaman with black boots, a red felt hat,
(08:30):
white fur red coat. Does that sound like anyone? Yeah,
it's pretty surprising. And if that were the long and
short of it, I'd be like, that's a bit of
a stretch, but let's continue, shall we. Yes, Okay, those
same shaman they would give these flying garrick toadstools out
as gifts around Christmas. But they would because by the
(08:51):
time we winter Solstice rolled around, there would be snow everywhere. Um,
they couldn't get through the door of their friends and
loved ones, you're so they would enter through the smoke hole,
the chimney you might call it, to deliver these gifts,
like smoke hole better. Yeah, I'm gonna start calling my chimney. Actually,
I don't have a chimney anymore. No, you could, though,
(09:13):
if you wanted to have a chimney. Now we got
rid of our Chimney's punch a hole in the roof,
a smoke hole. Yeah. So they would climb down wearing
the red coat, the white fur, the black boots, climb
down a chimney and deliver uh, these magic mushrooms as gifts,
as gifts, and then they would hang them in front
of the fire the people who received the gifts. Yes,
(09:36):
they would hang them to dry in front of a fire,
sometimes in hanging them in a stocking, perhaps in front
of a fire. This is all true stuff. Yeah, this
is this really went on and it just up until
a couple of hundred years ago in Siberia among the
Sami people in northern Finland, and just as an aside
northern Finland, the Lapland happens to be where the geographical
(09:59):
location where Santa lives is. Yes, and we should add
one final little note to this. They would when they're
picking these mushrooms, they want to dry them out, so
they would put them on the tree boughs, these fur trees,
hang them to dry in the sun. So now they're
hanging I don't know, ornaments, yeah maybe yeah, on trees
(10:22):
that's right, under which presents tend to grow. These presents
that are these mushrooms that are given as presents. So
if you step back and take all this stuff and
put it together, you have based on this, these rituals
among the shaman of the Sami and in Siberia um
the idea of harvesting mushrooms that grow under fir trees.
(10:44):
Fur trees that people bring into their homes and put
gifts under and hang ornaments on in order to celebrate
Santa Claus coming down the chimney wearing Santa suit with
a bag of gifts, sometimes filling up stockings with those gifts.
That's right. When you add all this stuff up, it's
really really convincing. Yeah, and then there's a little cherry
(11:05):
on top, which is apparently reindeer really love to eat
these mushrooms. Yeah. Remember how I said that they're toxic,
but there's things you can do to detoxify them. Well, yeah,
you can drink the urine of a reindeer who has
eaten this, and that is a way to detoxify it.
It is the reindeer metabolized the the toxic parts, but
(11:25):
they they don't metabolize all of the hallucinogenic parts, so
you can boil their urine and drink the urine and
not be um uh sick. Yes, but still, twig, Should
we have had a c o A at the top
of this Maybe, probably, so we'll have to go back
(11:46):
and record it one. Okay, Well that's it for that one. Huh. Yeah.
So should we throw our bag of magic mushrooms in
the sleigh? Yeah, and take off for the next house.
Quite a gift, okay, Chuck. So uh, behind the scenes,
(12:11):
I've done a little directing. That's right, and we have
determined I should say I've determined that we're going to
do uh this one about It's a Wonderful Life a
movie I still have not seen? What for real? Yeah,
there's a lot of the old Christmas classics I haven't seen.
I haven't seen Santa Claus is coming to Town, Miracle
into Street. I haven't seen this. Wow, you haven't seen
(12:36):
the the stop motion Santa Claus Is coming to town. No,
I've seen that. What are you talking about? Man? And
I think I just made up a movie that doesn't exist.
That's a song and it's a stop motion movie. Yeah. Yeah,
I've heard and seen both those things. You could have
just stopped with, um, it's a wonderful life. Yeah, you
should see a Miracle on thirty four three. That's just wonderful.
(12:57):
I don't know. To me, there are three Christmas movies
and that's all I see. Oh, there's a lot more
than that. There's Elf, there's wait a minute, there's Christmas
Vacation and there's a Christmas story. Okay, you're putting Elf
above Miracle on thirty four Street. Your brain is broke.
I am putting it light years ahead of it. And
I haven't even seen it. Everyone I know to see
(13:19):
it says It's a Wonderful Life is boring. No, no,
I haven't seen that, but it sounds boring. It's great.
It's a wonderful movie, and it beats elf just terribly.
I will watch that just so I can come back
and argue, please do I'll wait. I would argue that
they're so different, like why compare them? Well, you can
(13:41):
compare them because Miracle on thirty four Stree is so better?
Do you laugh? Four times? Probably four and fifty? Oh
I didn't know it was a comedy. Well I'm just
lying right now. But you don't know that. Let's talk
about this Mental Floss writer J. Saraphine, great name who
put out and we still love Mental Flaws as much
(14:03):
as we always did. Yeah, it's one of our favorite
favorite publications. We even know the guys who founded it.
I know their colleagues, so we can do this right.
But you don't know if he wrote a great article
called how It's a Wonderful Life went from box office
to accidental Christmas tradition. Yeah, I should say this kicks
off what really? This is the Intellectual Property Um Law
(14:26):
edition of our Christmas episodes. Yeah, good point. It's a
weird thread. It just keeps popping up. So this movie
from directed by Frank Capra, tells the story of George Bailey.
I can't believe you haven't seen this movie. And it's
I've just heard it so boring. It's not no desire,
it's not It's a classic wonderful movie. Like it's not
(14:48):
one of those things where it's like, oh, you have
to see it's just like life changing movie. It's just
it's a good, sweet movie with great themes, well acted,
well directed. Everything about it is It's just a good movie.
You should really see it. You have to see it.
I demand that you see it. I'll watch Elf again.
Do you not like Elf? Or is fine? It's a
(15:10):
good movie. I'll watch it just a couple of times
over the Christmas season. I got problems with Elf. But
don't not see It's a Wonderful Life because you like Elf? Okay, okay, okay,
So I'm not going to see it despite you. So
in when it was released, the critics and the audiences
(15:31):
didn't like it. Imagine that, uh, And it was a
big box office flop for Frank Capra's brand new production
company Liberty Films. Yeah, it was so. Um Capra was
a pretty famous director in the thirties and he went
off to um head up the propaganda film division for
the US government during World War Two, and then after
(15:51):
that he and some other director friends of his got
together and said, let's start our own production company, and
they did. They started Liberty Films, and the first project
from Liberty Films was It's a Wonderful Life, and it
was a mess. It was a mess. It actually as
much as It's a just a holiday classic for every
(16:11):
single person on earth except for you. Um. It was
a huge dud, like you were saying, uh, early on
in its life, so much so that it actually it
wiped their company out because it turned out to be
a really big bet. It had a two million dollar
budget initially, which is something like twenty six million dollars today,
still pretty modest, but back then, if you were a
(16:32):
new fledgling production company, that was a big first feature,
and it actually ended up being like a three point
seven million dollar film. It went that far over. Yeah,
it almost doubled its budget because it had a what
the they referred to as a bloated shooting schedule. Uh.
They were rewriting the script over and over and over.
It was it sounded like just a nightmare production, which
(16:54):
is pretty funny when you think about it. Yeah, and
they kept rewriting the script despite the fact that it
was based on a short story. It wasn't just an
original story. That might have been the problem. But maybe
sometimes a short story is difficult. Yeah, I can see that.
So regardless, this over budgeted. Uh, I think they turned
it in late. Even um movie was released, the public
(17:17):
didn't like it, the critics didn't like it. Uh, and
it was basically headed for the dustbin of history if
not for the fact that in ninety four the movie
entered the public domain because the copyright holder forgot to
file for renewal. I saw forgot to. I also saw
(17:37):
that they just didn't bother. Okay, they imagine that that,
like they knew the copyright was it was coming up,
and they just said, forget it. It's this literally isn't
worth our time and effort. But yes, either way, In
nine entered the public domain, and it went from this
schlocky flop because that was one of the other things too,
(17:58):
this is an audience. In ninth, they thought that this
was just too corny um, and they rejected it the wholesale.
But by the time the seventies came around, people were
a lot more jaded um, and they kind of wanted
that that corny home spun kind of nostalgia from the forties.
(18:22):
That wasn't George Bailey, you haven't even seen the movie,
and that was you know who Jimmy Stewart is. So um.
They they like every TV station that wanted it, got
its hands on its free for the free. They could
show this movie over and over and over again, and
they did the idea of running a Christmas movie marathon
(18:44):
the same movie, like they do with a Christmas Story today.
That was apparently founded in the mid seventies by It's
a Wonderful Life entering the public domain, and that was
a tradition up until when the Supreme Court of the
United States ruled and Stuart v. Abend And that's Jimmy Stewart,
by the way. But it's another movie, Rear Window, right,
(19:08):
which is a certified great movie and a classic, and
critics love that one and so did the public. That
was a movie, uh that established a precedent that allowed
republic pictures. Republic pictures who originally owned the film's copyright,
to regain ownership because they own the copyright on that
short story that you mentioned and the score of the movie.
(19:30):
So there, like you on the score, you on that
short story, you basically on the movie. Yeah. Their argument
was you cannot show this movie without the story or
without the score, so like, that's this is our movie.
And and the Supreme Court or the the whatever court
ruled on it said, yeah, you're right, that's right. So
NBC stepped in and said, well, we've got a bunch
(19:51):
of cash here, we're flushed from friends making us a
trillion dollars. We're going to spend some of this on
the rights to U A Wonderful Life. And they locked
it down. And that's why you don't see twenty four
hour marathon. So it's a wonderful life anymore. And that's
why you don't see it on f x X anymore. Right,
(20:12):
But if you happen to be listening to this in
the United States on Christmas Eve, the day that this
comes out, it's on tonight on NBC, I will not
be watching Do Do Do Okay, Chuck. So we're going
(20:38):
to spend the rest of the episode with me convincing
you to watch It's a wonderful life. I can't. I'm
so agitated right now, I can barely sit. It's my
gift to you. Um, where do you want to go next? Mr? Director? Well,
let's keep the intellectual property law thread going, okay, And
we're gonna talk about a song, a little ditty and
(20:59):
it is called Santa Claus Is Coming to Town. That's
it's a fake movie that you made up that you've
never seen, that no one's ever seen. But it's also
that classic animated film Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.
I think it's ranking bass, isn't it. Yeah, And it's
also a song that goes a little something like this
one handed to song redacted. That was good, Chuck, You
(21:22):
like that? Oh? That was better than Bruce Springsteen and
the Jackson Five put together. Because we can't afford to
pay for that. No, they say that it's one of
the richest songs ever written because seven number seven, richest
song of all time written by a man. And I
got this original article in k y Man wrote Santa
(21:45):
Claus Is Coming to Town by Jeff Seuss. I think
they mean northern Kentucky. Yeah, sure, for those of you
who live outside the n K Y region. Well, it's
interesting when you see it. Do you think, is that
say New York City. Nope, that does not Northern Kentucky.
That's what they wanted to think. A couple of years
ago from Cincinnata dot Com and Jeff Suice, and they
(22:05):
were championing one of their own lyricist. Haven Gillespie is
a Kentuckian and he actually worked for one day at
the Cincinnati Enchoirer, which is the paper that owns Cincinnati
dot Com. That's right, so he was really one of
their own. He was born in born in February. Uh,
worked as a type setter in Cincinnata and Chicago and
(22:29):
became a really famous lyricist. But this is kind of
a neat little side note. Even though he got very
famous as a songwriter, whenever he was in Cincinnati, apparently
he would do some shifts at a newspaper print shop
just to keep up his union status. Healthcare pretty interesting. Yeah, so, um,
he wrote a few songs. Actually, he wrote one of
(22:51):
what I think is one of the best songs ever written.
You go to My Head. Do you know that song? Uh?
I don't know. You'll have to listen to because like
this song redacted, but there's a Marlene Dietrich version of it.
It's amazing. It's a great song as it is, but
Marlene Dietrich singing it just does something to it that's
really something. I think it's Marlena, right or is this
(23:13):
her sister Marlene? Is it Marlena? I think so, didn't it?
I don't care anyway? Um Ms Dietrich does a really
great rendition of it. Did I say her last name correctly?
I think it's Frau Dietrich yet so um. Haven Gillespie
wrote this song, and he had a couple of like songs,
and then he finally wrote a hit, and this is
in the Tim pan Alley era, right, Um. He finally
(23:36):
wrote a hit called Breezing along with the Breeze, which
is the dumbest name anyone's ever given to a song.
But people liked it, and he moved to New York
and he really started writing for Tim pan Alley and Earnest.
But it wasn't until Santa claus Is coming to town
that he was on a easy street. That's right. A
publisher at Leo Piss named Edgar Bittner came forward and said,
(23:56):
here's a composer, Mr J. Fred Coots, don't you get
together and right a children's Christmas song? Coots and Gillespie.
That's right and heat. This was I don't know whether
he took this as an insult or not, but he
said he wrote it as a favor for a friendly
publisher who said, I had a vocabulary children could understand.
(24:17):
Maybe that's a sweet sentiment, who knows. But he basically said, hey,
dumb dumb write a dumb dumb Christmas song. Do it?
And he did it very quickly, something like fifteen minutes.
He said, on the back of an envelope. Isn't it
like of all classic songs, minutes on the back of
an envelope? Yeah, that's fishy. Including the police is do
(24:39):
do do no Die Die die. Uh. Publishers thought the
song was corny. Um. The very first person to sing it, Uh,
Eddie Cantor originally rejected it. But his wife was like,
come on, honey, is there any day that a wife
hasn't saved like she saved this song from obscurity because
(25:01):
any Cannery. He was huge at the time. Yeah, he
had a radio show and on Thanksgiving Day she said,
sing it for the love of God, and he did
and it blew up. And if you listen to Tin
pan Alley, you know that what happens when a song
blows up means sheet music is selling because it's not
recorded music yet. And I don't normally go use Wikipedia
for work. I'll use it in my personal life. But
(25:24):
I couldn't help but come across an article on this
They said that it's sold half a million UM sheet music. Yes,
in a day. Wow, that's how big it blew up. Man,
that's incredible. It really is incredible. And by the way,
Wikipedia is hitting everybody up right now, and I contributed
(25:44):
twenty dollars. I'm just saying, yeah, yeah, because I think
it's good that it exists in the world and I
think we need it. So no, I love it. Read Wikipedia,
give him a few bucks. Yeah, we've never used it
as source material. Um. Half of our Internet review think
we do, right, But that's why we don't do. It's
because we want to prove them wrong every day of
(26:05):
the week. That's right. But uh, this song skyrocketed. I
guess would you say a half million? Yeah, that's what
Wikipedia said. That's pretty amazing. I can't believe I just
said that, Um the first time it was recorded, and
I said they didn't have recorded music. Of course they did.
October twenty four four was when Harry Reusser's orchestra recorded it. Um.
(26:28):
Gillespie died in nineteen seventy five, having written more than
a thousand songs and as a Songwriting Hall of Fame member. Uh.
And like you said, it's one of the seven richest
songs ever, it really is. So Um. There's some really
interesting stuff about that that pertains to copyright law, because
if it's one of the richest songs ever, if you
own the rights to that song, you want to hang
(26:49):
on to those rights big time. You know, you want
that birthday, happy birthday to you money? Right, So um,
which doesn't exist any longer, right, Um. But the the
airs of Coots, the guy who wrote the music, UM,
they entered into a contract with E. M. I, which
is the huge giant music publisher UM back in nineteen
(27:11):
fifty one, and then again in nineteen eighty one and
in nineteen seventy six. Get this, I didn't know this
these I think this is the Supreme Court ruled that
if you had a publishing agreement with somebody after thirty
five years, you could say it's enough, it's done. I
want the rights back no matter what. As long as
this this agreement was entered into after nineteen seventy eight,
(27:35):
So the Coots family again had in nineteen fifty one
agreement and in nineteen eighty one agreement. Well e m
I said, no Coots tried to file a termination order
on this um and for this nine one agreement. And
even though this is the contract we have with them,
is the agreement we're really going to say it's the
(27:55):
nineteen agreement, So the family can't issue this termination. A
circuit court judge said, am I, you're wrong. Your agreement
with the Coots family, UH is based on this agreement
which came after which means it wasn't grandfather, which means
that thirty five years after one, the rights to Santa
(28:17):
Claus Is coming to town reverted to the Coots family
for an extended UH copyright protection period going to that's right.
Isn't that fascinating? That is? And UH, if you wondered
why I wasn't talking much during that segment everyone, because
on the way in the room, I said, you know,
all that stuff I sent about dense copyright law. Who's
(28:38):
just so boring, let's not do it. But Josh is
directing this episode, so you got it in there? Yeah?
I love it. It was. I think it's really interesting,
especially considering this is like the family this guy's errors
got it back in two thousand and sixteen. They got
the rights back to one of the richest songs ever.
That's right, and they're rolling in it now. Yeah. Do
you know what they're called as a unit, the Little
(29:00):
It's that's that's the court ruled in favor of the
Little Coots. Isn't that the name of the Chucky Cheese
animatronic band? I think so, Chuck E Cheese and the
Little Coots. What was Showbiz Pizza's band name? M man,
did you ever see that documentary? No? Oh, dude, there's
a documentary on show biz about the animatronic band from
(29:21):
show Biziness, the guy who invented it, the people who
collect them and keep them in their house. I'd like
to see that. It's one of the better ones ever.
I didn't go to show Biz a lot because there
was two near us. There was a Chuck E Cheese
and there was a local I don't know if it
was a chain called Sergeant Singers Pizza Circus. Did Sergeant
Singer work there? Because if so, that was local? Uh? Yeah,
(29:45):
he asked me to call him Serge and then he
later appeared on six ft under Sergey. Nice nice ref
But I want to see that documentary. All right? So
shall we load up the sleigh though? Are we done
talking about Santa claus is coming to town? I think
so unless you have some more copy right long you
want to go first, Let's leave the courtroom behind for
(30:06):
the rest of the episode. All right, we've got what
do we got? Two more segments here? We do? Well,
let's have a little music plays into the next mention?
All right, all right, chuck? And then there were two
(30:30):
giddy with anticipation. Are you about which one we're gonna do? Ohh,
I haven't told you yet. Well, we're gonna go back
to our friends Mental Floss again. We're gonna go in
particular to uh an article for Mental Floss by a
guy named Tate Williams, and it's about Christmas tree flocking. Yes,
And my only criticism here, Mr Tate Williams, because he
(30:52):
did not title this what the flock is flocking? Yeah,
you really missed an opportunity there, well, so staring you
in the face. With most pub occasions, usually it's the
editor that comes up with headlines. So Tape probably suggested
that the editor was like, no, I'm in a bad
mood today and and shot that down. So now it's
titled what exactly as Christmas Tree flocking, very straight ahead, right,
(31:15):
that's right. But what is flocking? Well, flock well, flocking
In particular, Chuck is adding texture, fiber texture, Well, what's
flocking something In this particular instance, flock is fake snow, right,
And there's a whole like there's a whole movement. Maybe
I don't know if that's the right word, but there's
a subculture of people who like to make it look
(31:37):
like it's snowed in very particular parts of their house,
inside their house. Yeah. And the only I've never been
into this stuff because it just looks like a nightmare
to clean, and especially with animals, like my tree is
already being destroyed on day one by my my terrible cats.
But uh, I worked in the movie industry, as you know,
(32:00):
and I worked in TV commercials as you know, and
so I know both of this. Every like September or October,
I would work on these you know those car commercials
where it's a very happy couple and there's a big
bow on a car. They're wearing sweaters. They're wearing sweaters
and they're throwing snow. That's all on the back lot
in l A. And it's a ton of fake snow
(32:20):
and it's awful to work with that. Flocking is terrible. Okay,
So if you're working with it under those circumstances, yes,
I could see it being terrible. But there are people
out there that are like, no, we don't get snow here.
And I like the idea of it looking like there's
snow on my tree, but it's hot outside. I live
in Arizona or New Mexico or um Nevada or um
(32:43):
you know the southern part or Texas where some parts
of it are very hot, although it snows in Texas
as well. Have you ever been where at Christmas time
somewhere where it's really hot, It's not it's weird. I
used to think it was weird. Now I've gotten used
to it. I like it, really, Yeah, l A was,
I mean part of what happens. And I don't know
if this is true for wherever you were but um,
(33:05):
in l A, people would really go over the top,
I think to combat the fact that it's just l A.
So you would get some really nice decorations and people
really went the extra mile. But uh, I just always
had a hard time getting in the Christmas spirit there.
I know what you mean, and that's what I thought too.
But I've I've been in Florida for a couple of
Christmas is and yeah, it's actually kind of pleasant. Yeah yeah,
(33:30):
all right, yeah, because I've you seen the movie Bad Sand.
It's set in Arizona, I think was it, I don't remember,
and it really kind of plays up that thing where
it's just like weird desert and Christmas juxtaposition. It's not
a good fit. Yeah, but I find Florida Christmas time
is very nice. Okay, fair enough, I know what you mean.
That is what I'm trying to say in the spirit
(33:51):
of the season. Well, people for a long time, they
have been trying to get that look, um all the
way back to the eighteen hundreds, using things like cotton
or flower. Apparently in the popular mechanics in that was
a recipe with cornstarch, uh, silicate mineral mica and varnish.
I don't want to use like silica and varnish. I mean,
(34:13):
all of this sounds like if you add one more thing,
it's a bomb, right, you know, but silica you can
inhale and get silicosis. Did you know that? Like people
who work with granite countertops are susceptible to It's really
bad news. Yeah. And there's there's been long been kits
that you can buy make your own. Yeah, there was
one that General Mills put out called snow Flock s
(34:35):
n O hyphen fl Okay. They're like, let's take out
any sensibleness to this name, and that's what we'll call it.
There's an ad for it, it's so cute. There's like
a General Mills blog or there used to be, and
there's like a newspaper ad for the snow flock thing
where it was like a canister filled flock that you
would hook up to your vacuum cleaner and I guess
(34:56):
somehow reverse the polarity and use it to blow the flow. Yeah,
you reverse the plarity on the flux capacitor. Well, very nice.
It uh. It seems like there's one big shot company
now called Peak Seasons in Riverside, California, at least they're
the only one that Mr Tate Williams recognizes. Yeah, I
(35:17):
mean they seem like they're the heavyweight player here. Uh.
And they make and sell a lot of this stuff.
And they start with um, something that they like into
toilet paper, just a big role that you feed into
a machine and it comes out the other side. They
liken it to baby powder. Yeah, it's like a very
white powdery substance. Yeah. And some of them are um.
(35:38):
Some of the flock comes in uh, like colors. And
if you have a colored flock like royal blue or
purple or gold or something that you have to add
cotton to like hold the die. But for the most
part they produced this stuff um with some corn starts,
I believe, the paper and then borre on um all
together makes this flock that they say all in bags.
(36:01):
And they ship these bags out to like Christmas tree farms,
where you can go to a Christmas tree farm and say,
I want that tree, but I want it flocked. Make it,
so take that tree and flock it. And what they're doing, right,
what they're doing is they're adding some peak seasons flock
bag of flock to their flock gun and they shoot
it out. They shoot this mixture that Peak season sells them,
(36:21):
and at the end of this gun it mixes with
a mist of water and it turns into this kind
of slurry that sprays onto the tree and she's like
stop stop, and um, that's when you know it's done.
That's right. But here's the deal with this flocking process. Um,
it's got to look good or else you're kind of
screwed because you can't reflock. You can't spray it again.
(36:45):
That tree can't get wet a second time because it
won't dry once it's been flocked. You can never go
buck right, nicely done, terrible And we are on fire
in this episode with the dad Buns. Yeah, anything else
on fly. Yes. You can also not contribute to Big Flock.
If you don't want to. You can make it yourself. Um.
(37:07):
There's a video by a person called Mama Flock, you
know in the Flock Tones something Mama Yeah really, Mama
from Scratch. I think they got into your head subconsciously.
Mama from Scratch had a recipe that consisted of barber salt,
corn starch, and white glue. Whip it into a froth
(37:30):
and then you painted on and apparently when it dries,
it puffs up and you've got some nice flocking, so
you can make it yourself at home too. Here's my
Christmas tree tip for the year. Don't allow them to
stuff it into netting. Why because it's harder to get
it back to Christmas tree shaped. Really Yeah, I mean
(37:51):
you want that tree for those bowels to fall, and
that's a struggle anyway. When they wrap it up tight
and a net and strap it to your car, it's just, uh,
it's harder to unfurl. Maybe you need heavier ornaments. No,
I don't need anything. I need to not have that net. See,
I have a pickup truck, so I just throw it
in the back. No one's strapping anything to my car. Yeah,
(38:12):
but doesn't it doesn't get wind burned on the way back?
Where am I Alaska? Well? No, I mean at high speeds,
driving on a high speed really really fast. Now that
I get my trees locally, okay, right, yeah, thought in
the back of the truck, it's all great. What if
you don't have a truck, what do you recommend, Well,
you can strap it to the top, But I don't
see the need for that netting. I don't I don't.
(38:35):
I don't know why they do that. I think it's
to prevent windburn. I'm not kidding. Well, it's not a sock,
it's you're still getting wind blown on it. Yeah, I
mean some, but I think it's so compressed that it's
I don't know what's the most part. Okay, all right,
all right, all right. Now that we settled that the
(39:08):
last I don't know if it was actually settled. Well,
I just want to finish so I can go watch.
It's a wonderful life. I'm so happy. I'm gonna do
it today. It's the miracle of the season that just happened,
miracle on at Pond City Market. So um check. I
think we should finish then on this sweet little thing
that they do over in Finland, in particular in Turku, Finland,
(39:30):
which is the oldest city in the whole country. It
was founded in the twelfth century, the thirteenth century, and
since the hundreds, about a century after it was founded,
they've been reading this Declaration of Christmas Peace every year,
almost every single year since, that's right, And it sounds
(39:50):
like a really sweet thing, and it is with the
tinge of menace because what they do every year is
the bells of the Turku Cathedral real toll in the
midday on Christmas Eve, the chief of administration goes out
to a balcony. Uh there in the old square in town.
There's a lot of fanfare and reads this declaration and
(40:12):
really brings out the people. Even in the worst of weather.
They said there could be like ten thousand people out there, yeah,
the square, tons of people. Uh. The exact wording over
the years from the original declaration have been lost to time.
But the long and short of it is this is, hey,
everyone be cool, everyone be harmonious, Everyone be peaceful and
(40:33):
love your neighbor or else, or else you're going to
be punished. That's pretty much it. And not with coal
with monetary fines. Yeah, and I would look this up.
So basically, the local administrator of like a town during
the medieval era um was beholden to the local representative
of the church to keep everything nice and orderly around Christmas,
(40:57):
this holiest season for the church. And they were basically saying,
if you make me look bad to the church, I'm
going to really bring down the hammer on you. So
they've lost the wording, like you said, on some of
the older versions, but they've been reading the same one
since nineteen o three and apparently back in the old days. Uh,
and still the gist of it today is that any war,
(41:19):
any violence, it ceases on Christmas. You got a bone
to pick with your neighbor. If you're a Hatfield or McCoy,
cut it out. Stop for Christmas season and Christmas season.
By the way, this starts at noon on Christmas Eve.
Did you say that, Yeah, I was at midday, Okay. Um,
So from that point on until the end of Christmas,
you're expected to just live peacefully at least avoid one
(41:40):
another if you're in a feud like you're that's part.
That's the first part. Well, yeah, the next part is
you you can't work, which is that's great. You can
feed your cows and things. Yeah, why should the cows
suffer because you're hanging out on Christmas? Right, but don't work?
And uh, you can't even have guests apparently unless you
have permission from the authorities. Right, and then that's great.
Back in the day, if you were punished, if you
(42:01):
were found in violation of this, you could be fined
so severely that it says that you could be in
debt for the rest of your life. So they took
it very seriously, and it wasn't until the nineteen seventies
that they actually removed punishment from the law books in Finland. Amazing.
So now seventies right, so now there's no real punishment
to this, but they still read this proclamation every year. Um,
(42:24):
there's other towns that do it, but but as far
as anyone knows, Turkus is the oldest and the longest continuous,
one great tradition. I'd like to close this episode with this,
if you're okay with that, So before we split, I
want to say Mary, Mary Christmas to everybody. Happy Holidays, um,
happy Hanukah. I hope it was a good one, um
(42:47):
happy everything. Yeah, however you choose to celebrate this year,
or even if you don't at all, we h we
hope you're having a good time with your friends and family.
And as we always say every year, this season could
be very tough for other people, and so just keep
that in mind and show some kindness, show some compassion
and reach out to someone if you think they may
(43:07):
be uh, they need that hand. Be kind everybody. That's great,
l You'll be fined, right, So everyone, to end this Uh,
this Christmas spectacular, We're going to finish with the declaration
of Christmas Peace. Tomorrow, God willing is the graceful celebration
(43:33):
of the birth of our Lord and Savior, and thus
is declared a peaceful Christmas time to all by advising
devotion and to behave otherwise quietly and peacefully. Because he
who breaks this peace and violates the peace of Christmas
by any illegal or improper behavior, shall, under aggravating circumstances,
(43:54):
be guilty and punished according to what the law and
statutes prescribe for each and every offense separately. Finally, a
joy's Christmas Feast is wish to all inhabitants of the city,
and by city we mean world. Happy Holidays everyone. Stuff
(44:16):
You Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's How
Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit
the iHeart Radio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You should Know, a production of I
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles w. Spirit of Christmas Bryant,
Josh Kringle, and there's Jerry Crampus rolling over there. And
(00:24):
this is uh, this is stuff you should know. That's right,
the geez, we should know how many this is? Seven? No? Yes,
our Christmas Special Edition second try, Holiday Spectacular, Spectacular, Spooktacular. No,
that's Halloween all right? All right, yeah, I don't know
(00:46):
how many of this is, but we've been podcasting for
almost twelve years now. It'll be twelve this next year, right, yes,
like summer Rich, did we release a Christmas this episode
the first year? I don't know. I'll have to go
back and do our homework ourselves. I'm sure someone knows
this stuff, but as usual, not that we're tooting our
(01:10):
own horn, but we just want to remind everyone that
we release this ad free every year. So our Christmas
episode is without taint. That's pretty great. Uh, it's untainted too, well,
you know, it always just felt weird to slap an
(01:32):
at in the middle of the Christmas themed show. Who
advertises around Christmas. Yeah, exactly, so anyway, this is uh,
we're all pleased with that. We are pra Please just
punch Jerry's especially please look at her. So, Jerry, do
you know it's Christmas? Yeah? Jerry so grumpy, So Chuck, Yes,
(01:53):
I feel like we should start this one off in
our usual tradition, um by a little bit of music
to play us into the next The first segment fantastic.
(02:17):
That's nice, it really is. Jerry is good at this
sets the mood. Um. I think that was true Siberian Orchestra.
If I'm not mistaken, wasn't We'll find out before we
get started with this episode, Chuck. We should we have
in the future concluded that here in the past we
should issue a c o A. I know who would
have thought our Christmas episode might not be appropriate for kids,
(02:40):
but we're us. So this first story has to deal
with magic mushrooms in Santa Claus and it's all legit.
But if you don't want your kids listen to that,
then don't listen to it. Okay, well, let's get on
with it. Let's do so. Um. I dug something up
years back, and we've talked about it before. At least
in passing. But the more I jumped into it, the
(03:01):
more I was like, this is nuts. I don't even
know which order we're going in. You see, I have
my papers all over, So I'm excited. I'm gonna I'm
along for the ride, just like the listener. I'm gonna
direct to hear the first Yeah you're directing, Okay, I'm
I'm this is This is really a lot of pressure
all of a sudden places everyone that's what you gotta
doesn't expect this. Let me put my shoulder or back
(03:22):
the one. Let me put my sweater over my shoulders
and get out your old school megaphone. Uh okay, Chuck,
please stand right there. Ry keep doing what you're doing, Chuck.
We're gonna talk about Santa Claus as a possible psychedelic mushroom. Alright.
I was hoping we'd start with that one. Okay. So,
like I said, we've talked about this before. I don't
(03:43):
remember what episode. I know we have, Yeah, we have,
but never this in depth. No, And I also want
to point out that the uh i'm annita Muscaria is
that the full name this mushroom? The very famous red
and White Christmas see looking mushroom, the one that anytime
(04:04):
you think of a gnome that's like the toadstool they
live around. That's right. I saw some of these just
a few weeks ago in the woods. Wow. Yeah, and
you come down yet. Well, the person I was with said,
I think those are magic mushrooms. I said, no, those
only grow and cow poop. And they were nick, No,
I think those are two. There's different kinds. Yeah, and
uh we went back to little research and it turns
out they are. We did not touch them or pick them.
(04:26):
We left them to grow. Well. Yeah, they apparently they're
also very toxic. Sure, I imagine, um, but there's ways,
there's things you can do to them to remove the toxicity,
especially if you live around rain deer. That's right. But
that plays a part in this story because this great
article you sent Santa Claus and the Santa Claus, the
Magic Mushroom and the Psychedelic Origins of Christmas by Melanie Zulu.
(04:51):
That's what I'm going with. X x U l U.
That's a great name. Uh. And what publication was this move?
What a great rag. Yeah, So Melanie Zulu basically UM
did some research on this idea. UM that Santa Claus
was inspired by those psychedelic mushrooms, the fly a Garrick mushroom. Yeah,
(05:15):
And I gotta say, when all of this stuff is
read together, there's a lot of pretty heavy coincidence. It
really is. You know else, whenever you whenever you read
about something like this where something might have been based
on their speculation or whatever, you're like, that's a couple
of those are kind of convincing from start to finish.
This is so absolutely convincing them, Like this is this
(05:37):
is the answer everybody. That's right. Magic mushrooms maybe so. Um.
On the very far end of the spectrum of the
speculation that Santa Claus is based on a psychedelic mushroom,
you'll find Jack Harror, who's a very famous pot activists,
um so so famous in fact, I believe he has
his own strain of pot, if not like brand like
(06:00):
Willie We'd basically or whatever Snoop Doggs brands are right. Um,
And Jack Harris said, not only was Santa Claus based
on a mushroom, Santa Claus was the mushroom. That's where
they got it from. It was like this is they
used to basically eat these mushrooms and call them Santa Claus. Okay,
most people, most people don't don't agree with that. Instead
(06:21):
they say, no, we think that there is something to
the idea that Santa Claus was inspired by the rituals
around this, this mushroom in particular, though. That's right. Uh. Notably,
there's a professor, professor named John Rush at Sierra College
in California, and it's pretty neat. There are like legit
(06:42):
Christmas scholars out there that you can get expert, you know,
takes on and he's one of those guys. And he said,
his quota is up until a few hundred years ago. Uh,
these practicing shaman and we're talking about shaman in uh
the lapland, yeah, in northern Finland, Northern Finland. He said,
(07:03):
are these priests they connected to older traditions. They would
collect these mushrooms, dry them up and give them as
as gifts and the winter solstice, so the stage is set.
We know this for sure. They would collect these mushrooms
and they would give them out for people to eat
and get high. Right, But exactly what they were doing
when they did that really kind of drives the Santa
(07:26):
idea home a lot. Yeah, notably what they wore. Okay, well,
let's first start with that fly, a garrick mushroom. When
you saw it, you were out in the woods. I'll
bet you they were growing at the foot of a
fir tree. They were a pine tree, some sort of
evergreen right, correct. Okay, that's almost exclusively where they grow.
I feel like I'm on the witness stand, right, would
(07:47):
you recall um? And then the other thing about it is, um,
they grow at least up in the northern climbs around
the winter solstice. So you've got the winter solstice, which
happens to inside pretty nicely with Christmas, and you have
the emergence of these mushrooms around fur trees, evergreen trees
(08:07):
around that time. Right. Then you have the Siberian shaman
or shaman's seems like it should be shaman plural even,
but it's not. Uh. They would dress up to look
like those mushrooms. So you think, all right, those red
and white mushrooms. Interesting. Um, So all of a sudden,
you've got a shaman with black boots, a red felt hat,
(08:30):
white fur red coat. Does that sound like anyone? Yeah,
it's pretty surprising. And if that were the long and
short of it, I'd be like, that's a bit of
a stretch, but let's continue, shall we. Yes, Okay, those
same shaman they would give these flying garrick toadstools out
as gifts around Christmas. But they would because by the
(08:51):
time we winter Solstice rolled around, there would be snow everywhere. Um,
they couldn't get through the door of their friends and
loved ones, you're so they would enter through the smoke hole,
the chimney you might call it, to deliver these gifts,
like smoke hole better. Yeah, I'm gonna start calling my chimney. Actually,
I don't have a chimney anymore. No, you could, though,
(09:13):
if you wanted to have a chimney. Now we got
rid of our Chimney's punch a hole in the roof,
a smoke hole. Yeah. So they would climb down wearing
the red coat, the white fur, the black boots, climb
down a chimney and deliver uh, these magic mushrooms as gifts,
as gifts, and then they would hang them in front
of the fire the people who received the gifts. Yes,
(09:36):
they would hang them to dry in front of a fire,
sometimes in hanging them in a stocking, perhaps in front
of a fire. This is all true stuff. Yeah, this
is this really went on and it just up until
a couple of hundred years ago in Siberia among the
Sami people in northern Finland, and just as an aside
northern Finland, the Lapland happens to be where the geographical
(09:59):
location where Santa lives is. Yes, and we should add
one final little note to this. They would when they're
picking these mushrooms, they want to dry them out, so
they would put them on the tree boughs, these fur trees,
hang them to dry in the sun. So now they're
hanging I don't know, ornaments, yeah maybe yeah, on trees
(10:22):
that's right, under which presents tend to grow. These presents
that are these mushrooms that are given as presents. So
if you step back and take all this stuff and
put it together, you have based on this, these rituals
among the shaman of the Sami and in Siberia um
the idea of harvesting mushrooms that grow under fir trees.
(10:44):
Fur trees that people bring into their homes and put
gifts under and hang ornaments on in order to celebrate
Santa Claus coming down the chimney wearing Santa suit with
a bag of gifts, sometimes filling up stockings with those gifts.
That's right. When you add all this stuff up, it's
really really convincing. Yeah, and then there's a little cherry
(11:05):
on top, which is apparently reindeer really love to eat
these mushrooms. Yeah. Remember how I said that they're toxic,
but there's things you can do to detoxify them. Well, yeah,
you can drink the urine of a reindeer who has
eaten this, and that is a way to detoxify it.
It is the reindeer metabolized the the toxic parts, but
(11:25):
they they don't metabolize all of the hallucinogenic parts, so
you can boil their urine and drink the urine and
not be um uh sick. Yes, but still, twig, Should
we have had a c o A at the top
of this Maybe, probably, so we'll have to go back
(11:46):
and record it one. Okay, Well that's it for that one. Huh. Yeah.
So should we throw our bag of magic mushrooms in
the sleigh? Yeah, and take off for the next house.
Quite a gift, okay, Chuck. So uh, behind the scenes,
(12:11):
I've done a little directing. That's right, and we have
determined I should say I've determined that we're going to
do uh this one about It's a Wonderful Life a
movie I still have not seen? What for real? Yeah,
there's a lot of the old Christmas classics I haven't seen.
I haven't seen Santa Claus is coming to Town, Miracle
into Street. I haven't seen this. Wow, you haven't seen
(12:36):
the the stop motion Santa Claus Is coming to town. No,
I've seen that. What are you talking about? Man? And
I think I just made up a movie that doesn't exist.
That's a song and it's a stop motion movie. Yeah. Yeah,
I've heard and seen both those things. You could have
just stopped with, um, it's a wonderful life. Yeah, you
should see a Miracle on thirty four three. That's just wonderful.
(12:57):
I don't know. To me, there are three Christmas movies
and that's all I see. Oh, there's a lot more
than that. There's Elf, there's wait a minute, there's Christmas
Vacation and there's a Christmas story. Okay, you're putting Elf
above Miracle on thirty four Street. Your brain is broke.
I am putting it light years ahead of it. And
I haven't even seen it. Everyone I know to see
(13:19):
it says It's a Wonderful Life is boring. No, no,
I haven't seen that, but it sounds boring. It's great.
It's a wonderful movie, and it beats elf just terribly.
I will watch that just so I can come back
and argue, please do I'll wait. I would argue that
they're so different, like why compare them? Well, you can
(13:41):
compare them because Miracle on thirty four Stree is so better?
Do you laugh? Four times? Probably four and fifty? Oh
I didn't know it was a comedy. Well I'm just
lying right now. But you don't know that. Let's talk
about this Mental Floss writer J. Saraphine, great name who
put out and we still love Mental Flaws as much
(14:03):
as we always did. Yeah, it's one of our favorite
favorite publications. We even know the guys who founded it.
I know their colleagues, so we can do this right.
But you don't know if he wrote a great article
called how It's a Wonderful Life went from box office
to accidental Christmas tradition. Yeah, I should say this kicks
off what really? This is the Intellectual Property Um Law
(14:26):
edition of our Christmas episodes. Yeah, good point. It's a
weird thread. It just keeps popping up. So this movie
from directed by Frank Capra, tells the story of George Bailey.
I can't believe you haven't seen this movie. And it's
I've just heard it so boring. It's not no desire,
it's not It's a classic wonderful movie. Like it's not
(14:48):
one of those things where it's like, oh, you have
to see it's just like life changing movie. It's just
it's a good, sweet movie with great themes, well acted,
well directed. Everything about it is It's just a good movie.
You should really see it. You have to see it.
I demand that you see it. I'll watch Elf again.
Do you not like Elf? Or is fine? It's a
(15:10):
good movie. I'll watch it just a couple of times
over the Christmas season. I got problems with Elf. But
don't not see It's a Wonderful Life because you like Elf? Okay, okay, okay,
So I'm not going to see it despite you. So
in when it was released, the critics and the audiences
(15:31):
didn't like it. Imagine that, uh, And it was a
big box office flop for Frank Capra's brand new production
company Liberty Films. Yeah, it was so. Um Capra was
a pretty famous director in the thirties and he went
off to um head up the propaganda film division for
the US government during World War Two, and then after
(15:51):
that he and some other director friends of his got
together and said, let's start our own production company, and
they did. They started Liberty Films, and the first project
from Liberty Films was It's a Wonderful Life, and it
was a mess. It was a mess. It actually as
much as It's a just a holiday classic for every
(16:11):
single person on earth except for you. Um. It was
a huge dud, like you were saying, uh, early on
in its life, so much so that it actually it
wiped their company out because it turned out to be
a really big bet. It had a two million dollar
budget initially, which is something like twenty six million dollars today,
still pretty modest, but back then, if you were a
(16:32):
new fledgling production company, that was a big first feature,
and it actually ended up being like a three point
seven million dollar film. It went that far over. Yeah,
it almost doubled its budget because it had a what
the they referred to as a bloated shooting schedule. Uh.
They were rewriting the script over and over and over.
It was it sounded like just a nightmare production, which
(16:54):
is pretty funny when you think about it. Yeah, and
they kept rewriting the script despite the fact that it
was based on a short story. It wasn't just an
original story. That might have been the problem. But maybe
sometimes a short story is difficult. Yeah, I can see that.
So regardless, this over budgeted. Uh, I think they turned
it in late. Even um movie was released, the public
(17:17):
didn't like it, the critics didn't like it. Uh, and
it was basically headed for the dustbin of history if
not for the fact that in ninety four the movie
entered the public domain because the copyright holder forgot to
file for renewal. I saw forgot to. I also saw
(17:37):
that they just didn't bother. Okay, they imagine that that,
like they knew the copyright was it was coming up,
and they just said, forget it. It's this literally isn't
worth our time and effort. But yes, either way, In
nine entered the public domain, and it went from this
schlocky flop because that was one of the other things too,
(17:58):
this is an audience. In ninth, they thought that this
was just too corny um, and they rejected it the wholesale.
But by the time the seventies came around, people were
a lot more jaded um, and they kind of wanted
that that corny home spun kind of nostalgia from the forties.
(18:22):
That wasn't George Bailey, you haven't even seen the movie,
and that was you know who Jimmy Stewart is. So um.
They they like every TV station that wanted it, got
its hands on its free for the free. They could
show this movie over and over and over again, and
they did the idea of running a Christmas movie marathon
(18:44):
the same movie, like they do with a Christmas Story today.
That was apparently founded in the mid seventies by It's
a Wonderful Life entering the public domain, and that was
a tradition up until when the Supreme Court of the
United States ruled and Stuart v. Abend And that's Jimmy Stewart,
by the way. But it's another movie, Rear Window, right,
(19:08):
which is a certified great movie and a classic, and
critics love that one and so did the public. That
was a movie, uh that established a precedent that allowed
republic pictures. Republic pictures who originally owned the film's copyright,
to regain ownership because they own the copyright on that
short story that you mentioned and the score of the movie.
(19:30):
So there, like you on the score, you on that
short story, you basically on the movie. Yeah. Their argument
was you cannot show this movie without the story or
without the score, so like, that's this is our movie.
And and the Supreme Court or the the whatever court
ruled on it said, yeah, you're right, that's right. So
NBC stepped in and said, well, we've got a bunch
(19:51):
of cash here, we're flushed from friends making us a
trillion dollars. We're going to spend some of this on
the rights to U A Wonderful Life. And they locked
it down. And that's why you don't see twenty four
hour marathon. So it's a wonderful life anymore. And that's
why you don't see it on f x X anymore. Right,
(20:12):
But if you happen to be listening to this in
the United States on Christmas Eve, the day that this
comes out, it's on tonight on NBC, I will not
be watching Do Do Do Okay, Chuck. So we're going
(20:38):
to spend the rest of the episode with me convincing
you to watch It's a wonderful life. I can't. I'm
so agitated right now, I can barely sit. It's my
gift to you. Um, where do you want to go next? Mr? Director? Well,
let's keep the intellectual property law thread going, okay, And
we're gonna talk about a song, a little ditty and
(20:59):
it is called Santa Claus Is Coming to Town. That's
it's a fake movie that you made up that you've
never seen, that no one's ever seen. But it's also
that classic animated film Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.
I think it's ranking bass, isn't it. Yeah, And it's
also a song that goes a little something like this
one handed to song redacted. That was good, Chuck, You
(21:22):
like that? Oh? That was better than Bruce Springsteen and
the Jackson Five put together. Because we can't afford to
pay for that. No, they say that it's one of
the richest songs ever written because seven number seven, richest
song of all time written by a man. And I
got this original article in k y Man wrote Santa
(21:45):
Claus Is Coming to Town by Jeff Seuss. I think
they mean northern Kentucky. Yeah, sure, for those of you
who live outside the n K Y region. Well, it's
interesting when you see it. Do you think, is that
say New York City. Nope, that does not Northern Kentucky.
That's what they wanted to think. A couple of years
ago from Cincinnata dot Com and Jeff Suice, and they
(22:05):
were championing one of their own lyricist. Haven Gillespie is
a Kentuckian and he actually worked for one day at
the Cincinnati Enchoirer, which is the paper that owns Cincinnati
dot Com. That's right, so he was really one of
their own. He was born in born in February. Uh,
worked as a type setter in Cincinnata and Chicago and
(22:29):
became a really famous lyricist. But this is kind of
a neat little side note. Even though he got very
famous as a songwriter, whenever he was in Cincinnati, apparently
he would do some shifts at a newspaper print shop
just to keep up his union status. Healthcare pretty interesting. Yeah, so, um,
he wrote a few songs. Actually, he wrote one of
(22:51):
what I think is one of the best songs ever written.
You go to My Head. Do you know that song? Uh?
I don't know. You'll have to listen to because like
this song redacted, but there's a Marlene Dietrich version of it.
It's amazing. It's a great song as it is, but
Marlene Dietrich singing it just does something to it that's
really something. I think it's Marlena, right or is this
(23:13):
her sister Marlene? Is it Marlena? I think so, didn't it?
I don't care anyway? Um Ms Dietrich does a really
great rendition of it. Did I say her last name correctly?
I think it's Frau Dietrich yet so um. Haven Gillespie
wrote this song, and he had a couple of like songs,
and then he finally wrote a hit, and this is
in the Tim pan Alley era, right, Um. He finally
(23:36):
wrote a hit called Breezing along with the Breeze, which
is the dumbest name anyone's ever given to a song.
But people liked it, and he moved to New York
and he really started writing for Tim pan Alley and Earnest.
But it wasn't until Santa claus Is coming to town
that he was on a easy street. That's right. A
publisher at Leo Piss named Edgar Bittner came forward and said,
(23:56):
here's a composer, Mr J. Fred Coots, don't you get
together and right a children's Christmas song? Coots and Gillespie.
That's right and heat. This was I don't know whether
he took this as an insult or not, but he
said he wrote it as a favor for a friendly
publisher who said, I had a vocabulary children could understand.
(24:17):
Maybe that's a sweet sentiment, who knows. But he basically said, hey,
dumb dumb write a dumb dumb Christmas song. Do it?
And he did it very quickly, something like fifteen minutes.
He said, on the back of an envelope. Isn't it
like of all classic songs, minutes on the back of
an envelope? Yeah, that's fishy. Including the police is do
(24:39):
do do no Die Die die. Uh. Publishers thought the
song was corny. Um. The very first person to sing it, Uh,
Eddie Cantor originally rejected it. But his wife was like,
come on, honey, is there any day that a wife
hasn't saved like she saved this song from obscurity because
(25:01):
any Cannery. He was huge at the time. Yeah, he
had a radio show and on Thanksgiving Day she said,
sing it for the love of God, and he did
and it blew up. And if you listen to Tin
pan Alley, you know that what happens when a song
blows up means sheet music is selling because it's not
recorded music yet. And I don't normally go use Wikipedia
for work. I'll use it in my personal life. But
(25:24):
I couldn't help but come across an article on this
They said that it's sold half a million UM sheet music. Yes,
in a day. Wow, that's how big it blew up. Man,
that's incredible. It really is incredible. And by the way,
Wikipedia is hitting everybody up right now, and I contributed
(25:44):
twenty dollars. I'm just saying, yeah, yeah, because I think
it's good that it exists in the world and I
think we need it. So no, I love it. Read Wikipedia,
give him a few bucks. Yeah, we've never used it
as source material. Um. Half of our Internet review think
we do, right, But that's why we don't do. It's
because we want to prove them wrong every day of
(26:05):
the week. That's right. But uh, this song skyrocketed. I
guess would you say a half million? Yeah, that's what
Wikipedia said. That's pretty amazing. I can't believe I just
said that, Um the first time it was recorded, and
I said they didn't have recorded music. Of course they did.
October twenty four four was when Harry Reusser's orchestra recorded it. Um.
(26:28):
Gillespie died in nineteen seventy five, having written more than
a thousand songs and as a Songwriting Hall of Fame member. Uh.
And like you said, it's one of the seven richest
songs ever, it really is. So Um. There's some really
interesting stuff about that that pertains to copyright law, because
if it's one of the richest songs ever, if you
own the rights to that song, you want to hang
(26:49):
on to those rights big time. You know, you want
that birthday, happy birthday to you money? Right, So um,
which doesn't exist any longer, right, Um. But the the
airs of Coots, the guy who wrote the music, UM,
they entered into a contract with E. M. I, which
is the huge giant music publisher UM back in nineteen
(27:11):
fifty one, and then again in nineteen eighty one and
in nineteen seventy six. Get this, I didn't know this
these I think this is the Supreme Court ruled that
if you had a publishing agreement with somebody after thirty
five years, you could say it's enough, it's done. I
want the rights back no matter what. As long as
this this agreement was entered into after nineteen seventy eight,
(27:35):
So the Coots family again had in nineteen fifty one
agreement and in nineteen eighty one agreement. Well e m
I said, no Coots tried to file a termination order
on this um and for this nine one agreement. And
even though this is the contract we have with them,
is the agreement we're really going to say it's the
(27:55):
nineteen agreement, So the family can't issue this termination. A
circuit court judge said, am I, you're wrong. Your agreement
with the Coots family, UH is based on this agreement
which came after which means it wasn't grandfather, which means
that thirty five years after one, the rights to Santa
(28:17):
Claus Is coming to town reverted to the Coots family
for an extended UH copyright protection period going to that's right.
Isn't that fascinating? That is? And UH, if you wondered
why I wasn't talking much during that segment everyone, because
on the way in the room, I said, you know,
all that stuff I sent about dense copyright law. Who's
(28:38):
just so boring, let's not do it. But Josh is
directing this episode, so you got it in there? Yeah?
I love it. It was. I think it's really interesting,
especially considering this is like the family this guy's errors
got it back in two thousand and sixteen. They got
the rights back to one of the richest songs ever.
That's right, and they're rolling in it now. Yeah. Do
you know what they're called as a unit, the Little
(29:00):
It's that's that's the court ruled in favor of the
Little Coots. Isn't that the name of the Chucky Cheese
animatronic band? I think so, Chuck E Cheese and the
Little Coots. What was Showbiz Pizza's band name? M man,
did you ever see that documentary? No? Oh, dude, there's
a documentary on show biz about the animatronic band from
(29:21):
show Biziness, the guy who invented it, the people who
collect them and keep them in their house. I'd like
to see that. It's one of the better ones ever.
I didn't go to show Biz a lot because there
was two near us. There was a Chuck E Cheese
and there was a local I don't know if it
was a chain called Sergeant Singers Pizza Circus. Did Sergeant
Singer work there? Because if so, that was local? Uh? Yeah,
(29:45):
he asked me to call him Serge and then he
later appeared on six ft under Sergey. Nice nice ref
But I want to see that documentary. All right? So
shall we load up the sleigh though? Are we done
talking about Santa claus is coming to town? I think
so unless you have some more copy right long you
want to go first, Let's leave the courtroom behind for
(30:06):
the rest of the episode. All right, we've got what
do we got? Two more segments here? We do? Well,
let's have a little music plays into the next mention?
All right, all right, chuck? And then there were two
(30:30):
giddy with anticipation. Are you about which one we're gonna do? Ohh,
I haven't told you yet. Well, we're gonna go back
to our friends Mental Floss again. We're gonna go in
particular to uh an article for Mental Floss by a
guy named Tate Williams, and it's about Christmas tree flocking. Yes,
And my only criticism here, Mr Tate Williams, because he
(30:52):
did not title this what the flock is flocking? Yeah,
you really missed an opportunity there, well, so staring you
in the face. With most pub occasions, usually it's the
editor that comes up with headlines. So Tape probably suggested
that the editor was like, no, I'm in a bad
mood today and and shot that down. So now it's
titled what exactly as Christmas Tree flocking, very straight ahead, right,
(31:15):
that's right. But what is flocking? Well, flock well, flocking
In particular, Chuck is adding texture, fiber texture, Well, what's
flocking something In this particular instance, flock is fake snow, right,
And there's a whole like there's a whole movement. Maybe
I don't know if that's the right word, but there's
a subculture of people who like to make it look
(31:37):
like it's snowed in very particular parts of their house,
inside their house. Yeah. And the only I've never been
into this stuff because it just looks like a nightmare
to clean, and especially with animals, like my tree is
already being destroyed on day one by my my terrible cats.
But uh, I worked in the movie industry, as you know,
(32:00):
and I worked in TV commercials as you know, and
so I know both of this. Every like September or October,
I would work on these you know those car commercials
where it's a very happy couple and there's a big
bow on a car. They're wearing sweaters. They're wearing sweaters
and they're throwing snow. That's all on the back lot
in l A. And it's a ton of fake snow
(32:20):
and it's awful to work with that. Flocking is terrible. Okay,
So if you're working with it under those circumstances, yes,
I could see it being terrible. But there are people
out there that are like, no, we don't get snow here.
And I like the idea of it looking like there's
snow on my tree, but it's hot outside. I live
in Arizona or New Mexico or um Nevada or um
(32:43):
you know the southern part or Texas where some parts
of it are very hot, although it snows in Texas
as well. Have you ever been where at Christmas time
somewhere where it's really hot, It's not it's weird. I
used to think it was weird. Now I've gotten used
to it. I like it, really, Yeah, l A was,
I mean part of what happens. And I don't know
if this is true for wherever you were but um,
(33:05):
in l A, people would really go over the top,
I think to combat the fact that it's just l A.
So you would get some really nice decorations and people
really went the extra mile. But uh, I just always
had a hard time getting in the Christmas spirit there.
I know what you mean, and that's what I thought too.
But I've I've been in Florida for a couple of
Christmas is and yeah, it's actually kind of pleasant. Yeah yeah,
(33:30):
all right, yeah, because I've you seen the movie Bad Sand.
It's set in Arizona, I think was it, I don't remember,
and it really kind of plays up that thing where
it's just like weird desert and Christmas juxtaposition. It's not
a good fit. Yeah, but I find Florida Christmas time
is very nice. Okay, fair enough, I know what you mean.
That is what I'm trying to say in the spirit
(33:51):
of the season. Well, people for a long time, they
have been trying to get that look, um all the
way back to the eighteen hundreds, using things like cotton
or flower. Apparently in the popular mechanics in that was
a recipe with cornstarch, uh, silicate mineral mica and varnish.
I don't want to use like silica and varnish. I mean,
(34:13):
all of this sounds like if you add one more thing,
it's a bomb, right, you know, but silica you can
inhale and get silicosis. Did you know that? Like people
who work with granite countertops are susceptible to It's really
bad news. Yeah. And there's there's been long been kits
that you can buy make your own. Yeah, there was
one that General Mills put out called snow Flock s
(34:35):
n O hyphen fl Okay. They're like, let's take out
any sensibleness to this name, and that's what we'll call it.
There's an ad for it, it's so cute. There's like
a General Mills blog or there used to be, and
there's like a newspaper ad for the snow flock thing
where it was like a canister filled flock that you
would hook up to your vacuum cleaner and I guess
(34:56):
somehow reverse the polarity and use it to blow the flow. Yeah,
you reverse the plarity on the flux capacitor. Well, very nice.
It uh. It seems like there's one big shot company
now called Peak Seasons in Riverside, California, at least they're
the only one that Mr Tate Williams recognizes. Yeah, I
(35:17):
mean they seem like they're the heavyweight player here. Uh.
And they make and sell a lot of this stuff.
And they start with um, something that they like into
toilet paper, just a big role that you feed into
a machine and it comes out the other side. They
liken it to baby powder. Yeah, it's like a very
white powdery substance. Yeah. And some of them are um.
(35:38):
Some of the flock comes in uh, like colors. And
if you have a colored flock like royal blue or
purple or gold or something that you have to add
cotton to like hold the die. But for the most
part they produced this stuff um with some corn starts,
I believe, the paper and then borre on um all
together makes this flock that they say all in bags.
(36:01):
And they ship these bags out to like Christmas tree farms,
where you can go to a Christmas tree farm and say,
I want that tree, but I want it flocked. Make it,
so take that tree and flock it. And what they're doing, right,
what they're doing is they're adding some peak seasons flock
bag of flock to their flock gun and they shoot
it out. They shoot this mixture that Peak season sells them,
(36:21):
and at the end of this gun it mixes with
a mist of water and it turns into this kind
of slurry that sprays onto the tree and she's like
stop stop, and um, that's when you know it's done.
That's right. But here's the deal with this flocking process. Um,
it's got to look good or else you're kind of
screwed because you can't reflock. You can't spray it again.
(36:45):
That tree can't get wet a second time because it
won't dry once it's been flocked. You can never go
buck right, nicely done, terrible And we are on fire
in this episode with the dad Buns. Yeah, anything else
on fly. Yes. You can also not contribute to Big Flock.
If you don't want to. You can make it yourself. Um.
(37:07):
There's a video by a person called Mama Flock, you
know in the Flock Tones something Mama Yeah really, Mama
from Scratch. I think they got into your head subconsciously.
Mama from Scratch had a recipe that consisted of barber salt,
corn starch, and white glue. Whip it into a froth
(37:30):
and then you painted on and apparently when it dries,
it puffs up and you've got some nice flocking, so
you can make it yourself at home too. Here's my
Christmas tree tip for the year. Don't allow them to
stuff it into netting. Why because it's harder to get
it back to Christmas tree shaped. Really Yeah, I mean
(37:51):
you want that tree for those bowels to fall, and
that's a struggle anyway. When they wrap it up tight
and a net and strap it to your car, it's just, uh,
it's harder to unfurl. Maybe you need heavier ornaments. No,
I don't need anything. I need to not have that net. See,
I have a pickup truck, so I just throw it
in the back. No one's strapping anything to my car. Yeah,
(38:12):
but doesn't it doesn't get wind burned on the way back?
Where am I Alaska? Well? No, I mean at high speeds,
driving on a high speed really really fast. Now that
I get my trees locally, okay, right, yeah, thought in
the back of the truck, it's all great. What if
you don't have a truck, what do you recommend, Well,
you can strap it to the top, But I don't
see the need for that netting. I don't I don't.
(38:35):
I don't know why they do that. I think it's
to prevent windburn. I'm not kidding. Well, it's not a sock,
it's you're still getting wind blown on it. Yeah, I
mean some, but I think it's so compressed that it's
I don't know what's the most part. Okay, all right,
all right, all right. Now that we settled that the
(39:08):
last I don't know if it was actually settled. Well,
I just want to finish so I can go watch.
It's a wonderful life. I'm so happy. I'm gonna do
it today. It's the miracle of the season that just happened,
miracle on at Pond City Market. So um check. I
think we should finish then on this sweet little thing
that they do over in Finland, in particular in Turku, Finland,
(39:30):
which is the oldest city in the whole country. It
was founded in the twelfth century, the thirteenth century, and
since the hundreds, about a century after it was founded,
they've been reading this Declaration of Christmas Peace every year,
almost every single year since, that's right, And it sounds
(39:50):
like a really sweet thing, and it is with the
tinge of menace because what they do every year is
the bells of the Turku Cathedral real toll in the
midday on Christmas Eve, the chief of administration goes out
to a balcony. Uh there in the old square in town.
There's a lot of fanfare and reads this declaration and
(40:12):
really brings out the people. Even in the worst of weather.
They said there could be like ten thousand people out there, yeah,
the square, tons of people. Uh. The exact wording over
the years from the original declaration have been lost to time.
But the long and short of it is this is, hey,
everyone be cool, everyone be harmonious, Everyone be peaceful and
(40:33):
love your neighbor or else, or else you're going to
be punished. That's pretty much it. And not with coal
with monetary fines. Yeah, and I would look this up.
So basically, the local administrator of like a town during
the medieval era um was beholden to the local representative
of the church to keep everything nice and orderly around Christmas,
(40:57):
this holiest season for the church. And they were basically saying,
if you make me look bad to the church, I'm
going to really bring down the hammer on you. So
they've lost the wording, like you said, on some of
the older versions, but they've been reading the same one
since nineteen o three and apparently back in the old days. Uh,
and still the gist of it today is that any war,
(41:19):
any violence, it ceases on Christmas. You got a bone
to pick with your neighbor. If you're a Hatfield or McCoy,
cut it out. Stop for Christmas season and Christmas season.
By the way, this starts at noon on Christmas Eve.
Did you say that, Yeah, I was at midday, Okay. Um,
So from that point on until the end of Christmas,
you're expected to just live peacefully at least avoid one
(41:40):
another if you're in a feud like you're that's part.
That's the first part. Well, yeah, the next part is
you you can't work, which is that's great. You can
feed your cows and things. Yeah, why should the cows
suffer because you're hanging out on Christmas? Right, but don't work?
And uh, you can't even have guests apparently unless you
have permission from the authorities. Right, and then that's great.
Back in the day, if you were punished, if you
(42:01):
were found in violation of this, you could be fined
so severely that it says that you could be in
debt for the rest of your life. So they took
it very seriously, and it wasn't until the nineteen seventies
that they actually removed punishment from the law books in Finland. Amazing.
So now seventies right, so now there's no real punishment
to this, but they still read this proclamation every year. Um,
(42:24):
there's other towns that do it, but but as far
as anyone knows, Turkus is the oldest and the longest continuous,
one great tradition. I'd like to close this episode with this,
if you're okay with that, So before we split, I
want to say Mary, Mary Christmas to everybody. Happy Holidays, um,
happy Hanukah. I hope it was a good one, um
(42:47):
happy everything. Yeah, however you choose to celebrate this year,
or even if you don't at all, we h we
hope you're having a good time with your friends and family.
And as we always say every year, this season could
be very tough for other people, and so just keep
that in mind and show some kindness, show some compassion
and reach out to someone if you think they may
(43:07):
be uh, they need that hand. Be kind everybody. That's great,
l You'll be fined, right, So everyone, to end this Uh,
this Christmas spectacular, We're going to finish with the declaration
of Christmas Peace. Tomorrow, God willing is the graceful celebration
(43:33):
of the birth of our Lord and Savior, and thus
is declared a peaceful Christmas time to all by advising
devotion and to behave otherwise quietly and peacefully. Because he
who breaks this peace and violates the peace of Christmas
by any illegal or improper behavior, shall, under aggravating circumstances,
(43:54):
be guilty and punished according to what the law and
statutes prescribe for each and every offense separately. Finally, a
joy's Christmas Feast is wish to all inhabitants of the city,
and by city we mean world. Happy Holidays everyone. Stuff
(44:16):
You Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's How
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The Bobby Bones Show
Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.