March 18, 2010 • 31 mins
Vikings were fierce, plundering Scandinavian warriors; and even today, their reputation precedes them. Josh and Chuck investigate what the Vikings were really like in this episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
the Super Weird Podcast. This is a weird podcast, not
(00:21):
necessarily for you guys, but it is for Chuck and I. Yes,
I'm Josh Clark. That's Chuck Bryant. Let's get back to
what this is a weird podcast. Yes, to explain, our
studio is being renovated drum roll, which is awesome. It's
gonna be super fancy and like a real studio. But
right now we are actually recording in some odd office
(00:43):
that has windows. Yeah, this is really weird. This's the
first time we've recorded a show outside the regular studio,
and um, it might sound a little different. Jerry has
explained that there's something called room tone, and it's different
from room to room. Jerry just made that up. I
bought it. Plus, it looks like the walls are closing
in on us. We're actually a lot closer than a
(01:05):
little cramped. This is just odd. So if if we
seem a little angrier than usual, it's because of the
stupid room So uh, I think we're gonna call this,
what do we determine? I voted for the Reconstruction Tapes
of the Reconstruction Era, and I made the joke saying
that we should call it the Eponymous Era because that
was a much better album. But that was just the
(01:27):
greatest hits collection by Orim. No it wasn't. It was,
well it was, That's why it was so good. All right,
So what's your witty intro? Or is this all just
out the door? It's way off the door, buddy, Okay,
you see it, yes, leaving Chuck, Josh. Have you ever
met a Viking? Uh? No, I haven't. Well, you know
(01:51):
the football team, right, Minnesota Vikings. Yeah, I've seen them.
You can tell their helmet a mile away because they
have those horns on the side, which are very Viking.
Se No, not true, Yes it is. Uh. It turns
out a bunch of archaeologists were um digging around, uh,
the north, the Nordic area Scandinavia, which includes what Sweden, Denmark,
(02:16):
the Netherlands and yeah I think Finland, sure, Norway too,
can you forget the Norwegians? Um And they found an
ancient helmet with some horns on it, and this was
before we had um reliable carbon dating technology and they said, well,
it's a Viking, but it turns out that it was
(02:37):
probably from the pre Viking era, right, Well that's when
it was popularized in the in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
You know, the the enormous woman would come out with
her bosom very prominent and uh, you know, a helmet
with with horns or wings. And it turns out they
wouldn't have worn this because these guys were or dedicated
(03:02):
to battling as efficiently and as brutally as any group
that's ever sprung up on the global map. Yes, they
were very good at what they do. And I just
want to point out this is a listener request, a
very recent one actually that piqued our interest, and this
is from David d from Waterloo. He said, can you
do something on vikings since you've covered Ninja and um,
(03:25):
what else did we cover? Pirates? He said, I hear vikings.
You stuff warriors called berserkers who would eat magic mushrooms
before sending them into battle. And uh, we're going to
talk about that, so stay tuned. It's a teaser. So
chuck there there does seem to be a lot of
um misconception around vikings. But one of the things I
took from this article by the Grabs their a Grabanowski
(03:47):
he writes good stuff he does, um, was that there's
also a lot of accuracy in the history associated with
with Vikings, Like they were extremely brutal, they would indiscriminately
kill men, women, children. Um. So let's let's peel this apart.
Let's separate fact from fiction as it were. Right, Yes,
(04:07):
when were they around? H josh? The Vikings were prominent
in uh Europe in the ninth through the eleven centuries,
commonly known as the Age of the Viking. Right, and Um,
you tend to think of Vikings as Nordic. They were
sure they were from Scandinavia, which are the countries we
listed off earlier. But this These weren't communities of Vikings.
(04:34):
Vikings were like a job. Yeah, it was a profession, basically,
a you were a professional conqueror. Yeah, because Scandinavians are
also farmers and um did many other things weavers, and uh,
they weren't just Vikings. It's not interchangeable. Viking and Scandinavians
not interchangeable. Weaving has never really been a lucrative job.
(04:54):
You know, it's not not even back then. But yeah,
so there was a group that that were dedicated to
moving out of the North Lamb downward into Europe. Yeah,
because Scandinavia it wasn't a very hospitable place. I imagine
it still isn't, you know. Lots of ice, lots of
winter snow, not that much land, and the land that
is available isn't all arable. So yeah, they went and
(05:18):
took it, you know, like broadwater. Uh. There was also
evidence that population pressure led to Viking plundering, yeah, because
they started to grow and then obviously as they grew,
they needed more things. And this is before they started
spreading out, because eventually they would do that, but at
first they would just go plunder and then return home
(05:41):
to Viking land Scandinavia. You said that they were around
from the ninth of the eleventh centuries, right, So there
were Scandinavian cultures before the ninth century. There were Scandinavian
cultures after the ninth century, so two years basically, um,
this population explosion forced this group out to go get
(06:01):
more resources, to more conquering, to conquer more land, and
then the end point at the eleventh century actually generally
represents the adoption of Christianity. The Vikings did readily. Yeah
once you once you converts, like, you can't plunder any longer,
at least not you know, only plundering in the name
of God. And Vikings were were pagans pre pre Christianity, right,
(06:27):
and which also means that they worshiped the pantheon of gods.
There Um, their religion was actually highly personalized. There was
no central church in any of the Scandinavian cultures and
their their religion was actually highly personal Uh. It evolved
in relative isolation without a central church and any of
(06:47):
these Scandinavian cultures. Um, but there was a a pantheon
of gods that were recognizable across these cultures generally, right,
two groups should we talk about them real quick? Yeah, Uh,
the s and the Veneer were the two groups of gods,
and the scre were very warlike. That's Odin and Thor,
(07:09):
and then the Assir were kind of like hippies like
fertility goddesses and gods. Uh. They lived. The gods lived
in Asgard and it was a kingdom connected to mortal
Earth by a rainbow bridge, which I didn't know which
is you think Okay, so um, Scandinavian pre Christian pagan
religion is pretty sweet. They've got hippies, they have rainbow bridges.
(07:32):
They had evil giants and dark elves. Yeah, here's where
it gets dark dwarves. And apparently the gods were destined
to fight against these giants and evil forces in a
battle known as Ragnarok. Right, and they were also predicted
to lose, which would plunge uh Mortal Earth and uh
Asgard into chaos, darkness, disorder, which I mean to think
(07:56):
about that, chuck. All of our religions today are pretty hopeful, Like,
even if there isn't into the world, if you adhere
to that religion, you're gonna be saved. You won't be
around for like the torment. Right, this this religion as
loose as it was predicted, Like, no, our gods are
gonna lose and we're all gonna be in really big trouble. Right.
(08:17):
But if you were a noble, awesome warrior and you
died in battle, you would go to Valhalla, which was
warrior heaven, and you would be transported there by the Vulkyrie,
which were little warrior angels at the command of Robert
Duval right, and uh, what happened was in heaven you
would fight alongside Odin and feast and die in battle
(08:41):
every day, and you would get up alive the next
day and do it all over again. Right, that's their
idea of heaven. It was who was pretty funny. Yeah,
so them that that battle part is really significant because, um,
in Scandinavia and many of the Scandinavian cultures, a young
man proved himself by going, I Viking. Yeah that I'm
gonna get a T shirt made it says I Viking.
(09:02):
And just see how many people know what that means.
That's like the verb of what Vikings did, leaving your homeland,
going down, butchering, raping, pillaging, studying, churches on fire. Churches
are actually a big target of their's because the churches
are where most of the gold was stored, livestock, spices, jewels, whatever, um.
(09:22):
So they would target churches and and kill everybody or
else they would take them as thralls slaves, which I
looked up the etymology of enthrall. Then that's where it
comes from. So when you're telling somebody you're enthralled by them,
you're saying that you're enslaved by their by how interesting
they are interesting. And you know that Actually all the
(09:46):
church thing is kind of key too, because that's how
the that's like, the only written history about the Vikings
where it was was written by the hand of the
church that was plundered. So that's one reason. Because the
Vikings only told oral orald stories folklore, right, but scrawls,
scrawls which told saga's it's where all these words come from.
(10:06):
And uh, but the church was the ones who actually
wrote down stuff. So that's why a lot of the
written history of the Vikings is so brutal, because they
were the people that were just you know, had someone
went I Viking on them, right, chuck. And they also
attribute the word Viking to um Europeans who were conquered. Yeah,
I mean there are a lot of different uh theories
(10:26):
there on the word. There are most of them. Do um.
Either the Norse adopted a word that was that they
were called by the Europeans like um uh, an old
English word vic w i c means port port of
trade um, which is where the Vikings like to attack.
(10:47):
Another theory is that it came from the Norse word
vic big different, but this one's v I k meaning
bay or body of water. Or there's another word that
sounds similar that means to turn away or to leave
on a journey, which is as we said, what going.
I Viking began with um. And then there's the last one,
(11:08):
which makes a lot of sense, is called um. It's
an old Norse word called viking or which means pirate.
That's that's my guess, right, But they think that they
picked that up from the Europeans they conquered. So either way,
these people were written about by Europeans, they were named
by Europeans. They were just going to get some food
and gold cheap. Yes, how they do this though? Should
(11:32):
we talk about that? Yeah, I Viking. Yeah, they were
famous for being experienced seamen. They were built awesome boats
and built boats that traveled really fast through the water.
So when the when the Christian uh you know, let's
say a monastery would see the Viking ships approaching and
dragon ships, yeah, dragon boats, they didn't have much time
(11:55):
because they would get there really really fast because they
were very experienced fishermen. And uh, I guess since we're
on the boats, we we should talk about that for
a second. Yeah, they had pretty particular boats as Um,
you know, I think anybody could pick one out. They
had a double sided hole, which I thought was pretty
cool because you can go forward or backward without having
to turn around. You just pick up your butt and
(12:16):
turn around and start rowing the other way right, or
just switch the sail around. Um. They had a keel,
They had riveted wood construction. Um. And then they had
a single mask, and this mask could be as much
as um or the the sail that that was attached
to the mass could be like three thirty square feet
of double sided wool, all hands sewn, usually painted red
(12:38):
to symbolize the blood that was about to be spilled
by the people who saw it approaching. UM. And then
you see pictures of Viking ships with like the little
circles along the side. Yeah, that's actually accurate. Um. Most
Viking ships had mounts where somebody could put their shield
up as extra protection to to protect the guys who
were rowing. Of course makes good sense. Took about a
(13:00):
seventy ft Viking long ship. Josh would have required about
eleven trees to make it about three ft in diameter each,
and then one really tall tree to make the keel.
So I guess it was all one piece. Yeah, and
these things could haul but through the water apparently because
they're real narrow and they used wind power and manpower.
(13:21):
Viking manpower was that was something. So what happened when
you saw a dragon boat chuck? You saw a dragon
boat docks and all of a sudden, this horde of
Vikings just comes streaming off at you. You poop your
pants the first thing you do. I would have rolled
around the ground crying like a baby and offering up
my cattle to be spared. But you might not be spared.
(13:44):
They generally would not leave much. Anything woulden was burned.
They would just burn the town to the ground. Kill people,
take women if they wanted, or kill them, take children
if they wanted, or kill them. Take the cattle. Probably
wouldn't kill the cattle now they wanted the cattle. They
were more useful in humans generally. Um. And you would
also see these guys coming at you with the acts, which,
(14:05):
as everybody knows, is my weapon of choice for a
zombie apocalypse. Right, you would go I Viking on zombies, sure,
and Josh. As far as their battle gear, like you said,
the sword was huge. The swords are about as long
as the uh as a man's arm, right. They also
had bows and lances and javelins. Uh, And they wore
(14:26):
like you would think, they wore big heavy iron helmets
with a little nosepiece that came down a lot of
times they wore iron on their breastplate unless they had
some dough and they could afford chain mail. But this
kind of indicates how strong these dudes were. Do you
know what, Like an iron Viking helmet would weigh a
lot a lot and actually Vikings, well not Vikings, but
(14:47):
skin Navians, I should say. Skin Navian cultures were really
really adept at doing whatever they wanted to do with
iron because they've been pulling it from bogs um very
easily without any need for mining for many, many centuries.
So they were kind of ahead of the curve as
far as the iron age goes. And chuck. When these
(15:08):
guys died, let's say you were a Viking, had had
some successful raids, garnered some powers, some money. The concept
of a Viking funeral, you know, being put on a
ship instead of fire a fire and pushed out to see,
that's actually accurate. Yeah, that's one way they did it.
They also, Yeah, the other way would be that they
(15:29):
entombed you in uh an earthen barrow, which is like
a mound. It was called mounting. Right. The thing is,
if you were a thrall, let's say you have been
captured in battle and taken back to Scandinavia, and you
were a servant to this guy, especially particularly useful servant,
you would probably be murdered and entombed in the thrall
(15:50):
or the barrow. Yeah. The deal there was they believed
in a life after death. Um. Whether it was like
an eternal life, didn't really know, or just like a
temporary life until you get to your old life. But
they definitely believed that you did not just die. So
that's why they would send you along with maybe your
favorite slave or your possessions. They would your cat, they
would bury you with your clothes on, and maybe with
(16:12):
your your acts, and they would send you along with
these things that they think you would need in the
following life to go I Viking. Uh. You know there
was another a stratified class almost um in Viking warrior culture. UM.
And there was this little subgroup that the guy who
(16:32):
called for this podcast mentioned berserkers. So these guys I
want to talk about berserkers yeah, if you've seen the
movie Clerks. Did you see Clerks? Yeah? Remember uh Silent
Bob's cousin Olaf from my Russia. He sang a medal.
He was in a Russian metal band he had. It's
long called Bezerka. I don't remember that. That was the
(16:54):
first time I heard Berserker And wait, we can't say
the lyrics because they're really filthy, but it was funny. Well,
what he was talking about where this this group of
warriors that were they think that they grew out of
a bear cult, like these people worship bears. They were nuts.
They during battle especially, they would go nuts. They would um.
It was told in the Sagas that they would take
(17:16):
on they would either become a bear or a bowl
for something like that. They would shape ship or else
they would take on the qualities of a bear like.
They would go into battle naked or shirtless, or at
the very least armorless. They would cut five people's heads
off at once with one swing of an axe. They
couldn't feel pain. Supposedly, they would scream a lot. Their
eyes were kind of glazed over. Part of the problem
(17:38):
was is they would get into such a um war frenzy,
a battle frenzy that if you were near them, even
if you were on their side, they'd kill you just
as soon as they would kill somebody else. And as
the guy said, they do think that, um, this bear
colt that went berserk, the berserkers um were on mushrooms
(17:59):
during battle. That may be the case. Can you that?
So you would take this regular already super badass warrior
viking then jack him up on magic mushrooms and give
him an ax, give him an ax and tell him
to like take his clothes off and wear like a
bear skin. And uh, it was That was it. It
(18:19):
was all over. I've read a little bit more about them,
and what's weird is the same guys. They also think
it's possible that this cult was largely made up with
them mentally ill, right or else maybe a little slow? Yeah, Um,
these same guys would also go berserk during like physical
labor sometimes too. You just didn't want to hang out
(18:40):
with the berserkers, basically you wanted to be in battle
with them. But like fifty meters to the left or
the right, nowhere near him, I would go in way
behind there. I would drag up the rear behind the
berserk also saw another theory that um, they weren't in
fact on magic mushrooms, but they uh drank heavily and
(19:00):
got wasted basically on mead before battle too. Huh. Wouldn't
that slow you down? Though? Um, I would think so,
but it would also kind of make you somewhat impervious
to pain and not care as much. And yeah, I've
gone berserka on a Friday night. Yeah, yeah, I subscribed
to the mushroom theory for two reasons. One, it's awesome
to uh. Ritual use of mushrooms in certain Scandinavian cults
(19:25):
is known for a fact, so it's entirely possible. These guys,
all right, we're Truman, So David d from Waterloo. That's
what initially piqued my interest, and that's why we did
this podcast. So Josh says, yes, okay, uh, chuck, these
guys weren't all berserk, right, No, the the Vikings and
the Scandinavian cultures they came from actually were pretty good
(19:48):
at democracy. Yeah. Supposedly, the the the common farmer would
have just as much say in matters Viking as as
the higher ups. Right, they had um assemblies. I don't
know if they were annual or more frequent, but they
had scheduled assemblies where everybody got together talked about matters
of the day, divided land. Um. And they called them
(20:11):
things because I think they just couldn't think of the
word at the time, right, Maybe they were a little slow.
And there was a guy. I love this part. There
was a guy who was in charge of running the meetings.
He was an impartial judge and they called him the lawmaker,
So he was the lawmaker of the thing. Pretty generic stuff,
primitive democracy, you could call it. Um. And they actually
(20:32):
extended this downward to the lands that they conquered. Um.
These guys made it a lot further south than I realized.
Did you know all this? And now I didn't as
far as going through Europe? Yeah, Um, they the Vikings
um conquered a town called Ulster. A Danish Viking did
an eight thirty nine and crowned himself king, and um
(20:55):
founded what is now the town of Dublin. Did you
know that? I did not know that until I read this. Uh.
They said they actually laid siege to Paris at some point.
They controlled part of England half of England from the
late nineteenth century to the eleventh century Danish Vikings, and
they struck a deal with France with Frederick the Simple Charles, Charles,
(21:15):
Charles is simple. You don't want your king to be
called the simple, No, especially when the Viking leader was
named Rolo. So they were causing a lot of problems
with the Franks. And so Charles the Simple, poor thing
sat down with Raloh and struck a deal and said, hey, um,
why don't you guys leave us alone and convert to
Christianity and I'll give you Normandy And they said okay,
(21:38):
said and uh, Frederick the Simple went that was easy.
Charles is simple. Yeah, he's a simple guy. Yeah. Um.
And like we said, the Vikings were they readily converted
to Christianity. These lands that they conquered and held um
for centuries, and they especially in Ireland and England. The
(22:00):
the Celts and the Anglo Saxons would defeat the Vikings,
and then more Vikings would come in and defeat whoever.
So it changed hands pretty much constantly. But through this interaction,
even though it was fighting, Vikings eventually became absorbed into
these local areas. They brought their customs, but took on
new customs, and the the whole milange or the whole
(22:22):
area of Ireland, England, France. Um is a milange actually
of Nordic culture and Southern European culture. I learned a
lot with this one. And they actually had trading routes
all the way down in North Africa. They did. And Chuck,
we've talked about this before. You know that they settled
North America. Of Eric the Red. He was exiled for murder.
(22:49):
This is another thing that they probably did it the
things they tried people. Uh, Eric the Red was accused
of murder. He was convicted, so they exiled him. He
took a bunch of guys with them and went from
Sland over to Greenland. His son was born there, Leif Ericson,
son of Eric, Right, and he said, you know, I'm
going to travel even further west and he ended up
in Newfoundland. This is just part of the oral tradition
(23:11):
until the nineteen sixties when an archaeologist discovered the traces
of this um of Leif Ericson's Viking settlement in Newfoundland.
He found a horned helmet, right, He's like, oh, it's
a Viking of course. So yeah, they were all over
the place. Yes, And if they sound like all they
did was rape and pillage and plunder. They did a
(23:33):
lot of that, but not so much anymore than anyone
else at the time. That was just kind of the
action of the time. But they were just so much
better at it than anyone else. They got this rep.
But they also, Josh had entertainment. Did you know that?
I did not check layd on me. They did. They socialized,
and when they socialized, they it was generally competitions because
(23:53):
they were clearly big on competing. There was cutting, so
they would compete in friendly games like running and wrestling
and horseback riding. Uh. They had acrobats and entertainers, poem
tellers and tall tale tellers. And they actually ice skated.
What they did they made ice skates out of animal
bones and played a game on the ice skates, similar
(24:17):
to hurling, which I looked at hurling hurling. Hurling is
sort of like the best I can say is, uh,
it looks sort of like a cross between rugby and
field hockey. I think it was on ice because you
had a stick and you're hitting a ball toward a net,
So maybe it was the first ice hockey. No, nothing
(24:38):
to do with hote. Uh. Yeah, so they were. They
were into all sorts of games. Actually had a game
called Kinky Bat, which was like ping pong, except they
used shields. I wanted. So they would use a shield
to hit like a ball back and forth over. I
don't know if it was a net or just back
and forth on some surface, but they potentially invented ice
(25:00):
hockey and ping pong. Wow, how about that? That is something.
Speaking of Viking culture, Chuck um Vikings made it into
our culture popular culture big time, quite a bit. Obviously
The You Got Thor, the Marvel superhero, one of my
favorites of all time, soon to be a movie next year. Yeah,
made at least one appearance in um Adventures in Babysitting.
(25:22):
Oh I didn't see that movie. He played the mechanic.
Oh really very interesting. Uh yeah, Kenneth Brandon was making
that movie. Um, Anthony Hopkins plays Odin and some Australian
guy plays Stor. He didn't look very thory though. When
I looked at the pictures, I'm sure they're going to
deck him out and give him long blonde hair. Oh. Actually,
I meant to mention that apparently some of them used
to um bleach their hair. Blond because I guess it
(25:46):
was more intimidating, so that that is not a myth.
So where else popular culture led Zeppelin? Can we we
can't not talk about led Zeppelin? Go ahead, Well, anyone's
ever seen song remains the same obviously, or listened to
some Zeppelin songs knows that they were big on aside
from Lord of the Rings, Valhalla, Vulkyrie, that kind of thing,
(26:06):
Hammer the Gods was the name of their biography. Uh
did you ever read that on crazy? Uh? And the
Immigrant Song is the most clear example after the famous Whale.
At the beginning, Um, you'll hear lyrics like we come
from the land of the ice and snow, from the
midnight sun, where the hot springs blow Hammer of the
(26:26):
Gods will drive our ships to land to fight the Horde,
singing cry Valhalla, I am coming. So I always thought
that song was about apple Chians. No, that is Vikings. Huh. Yeah,
Robert Plant was big into that and uh, Spike TV.
Have you heard of the show Deadliest Warriors? I have. Actually,
it's pretty cool. They picked like warriors against each other,
(26:47):
and the Vikings actually in their scenario lost to the Samurai.
I could see that barely though, these uh shallon monks samurais.
But I know they said the samurai UH wanted a
squeaker because they were a little bit more disciplined than
the the Crazy Eye Viking. I wonder if they took
mushrooms for that show. I don't know, and I think
(27:09):
that's it. Oh, actually I got one a couple of
more myths if you want to hear him. Vikings were
not dirty. They have the reputation of being dirty, filthy people.
They actually bathed once a week, which was a lot
for back then. Yeah, definitely, and they washed their face
every day apparently. So you were just saying before the podcast,
so you're the cleanest person that we know you were
(27:30):
the Vikings, I'm cleaner than a Vikings. Sure well sure.
And they did not drink from the skulls of the conquered.
That was a mistranslation apparently into Latin. And they they
apparently would drink mead from a horn occasionally as as
like a ritual, but ordinarily they would just drink from
a mug. That's it for the Vikings. Chuck for real,
(27:52):
nice additional research. Appreciate that, um and Uh. If you
want to learn a little more see some cool picks,
including some actual swords, which I thought was pretty cool.
What about you, Chuck loved it. You could type vikings
into the handy search bar how stuff works dot com,
which leads us to listener mail. Not quite yet, Josh,
you always do that. I'm teasing. Uh, actually, I'm not teasing.
(28:16):
We just want to plug. We did a little interview
with the dude named Wayne and Omaha, Nebraska. Yes, Worlds
of Wayne. Worlds of Wayne podcasts which he interviews artists
and musicians and cool people. So I don't know why
he called us, but he did. And uh, it's actually
already up. So if you want to hear a pretty
fun interview with us and go to Worlds of Wayne
(28:38):
dot l I B s y N dot com or
Josh said, you can just google Worlds of Wayne and
that's the first thing that comes up. It is, I've
done it. So apparently there's no store called Worlds of Wayne,
which is good, and it's episode one thirteen and you'll
see our big logo there and click on it. It's
kind of a cool, fun little interview. No listener mail, right, yes,
(28:59):
Okay to Josh, I'm gonna call this another list of
first from Patrick Okay is our our our super fan,
Patrick compolsies list of first in our show, which I
think we're kind of cool because I wouldn't take he is. So.
The first podcast, of course was how grassoline works? And
was that you and Poulette? Yeah? And is that accurate?
(29:23):
I don't remember. Okay, that was like two episodes ago.
I know, well, uh what what we're close to that? Actually? Um?
The first podcast with Candice Gibson was now Candice Keener
was how altruism works? First podcast with me remember doesn't
does come stay in your stomach? I thought it was
the introduced toothpaste? That was it. It was one of
(29:45):
those two Patrick, que might have to take issue with
your steps, buddy. Uh. First mentioned the fight or flight
response was how hysterical strength works. That was a great one.
First podcast with three people, How contagious yawning works. First
time Josh mentions being born in Ohio. Oh, how the
eye of the Tornado works? No, that's what he says.
First bleeped out swear word, first of many, how swearing
(30:09):
works obviously. First mention of Josh and Chuck's pets are
dogs of Shark's favorite meal. First podcast over ten minutes.
How can a cat scuba dive? Remember scuba cat Sure?
First over twenty is Quitting Smoking Contagious? First over thirty,
How lobotomies work, and recently the first over forty, How
(30:30):
witchcraft Works? And then just a couple of more. First
listener mail was issued in How Einstein's Brain Works, and
the first podcast that Patrick listened to is is the
World Going To End? In twelve? Awesome? I love the
first there's some great stats. This is the first one
in the new the new room. Yeah, make a note, Patrick,
and then we'll have the first in the awesome studio.
(30:53):
I don't like this room at all. Yeah, Like my
neck feels weird. I'm on the opposite side. Everything's wrong,
and I'm bury out of sorts. Well, if you have
a story about going berserk, we would love to hear it.
You can wrap it up in an email and send
it to stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com.
(31:15):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,
check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot
com home page. Brought to you by the reinvented two
thousand twelve camera it's ready. Are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
the Super Weird Podcast. This is a weird podcast, not
(00:21):
necessarily for you guys, but it is for Chuck and I. Yes,
I'm Josh Clark. That's Chuck Bryant. Let's get back to
what this is a weird podcast. Yes, to explain, our
studio is being renovated drum roll, which is awesome. It's
gonna be super fancy and like a real studio. But
right now we are actually recording in some odd office
(00:43):
that has windows. Yeah, this is really weird. This's the
first time we've recorded a show outside the regular studio,
and um, it might sound a little different. Jerry has
explained that there's something called room tone, and it's different
from room to room. Jerry just made that up. I
bought it. Plus, it looks like the walls are closing
in on us. We're actually a lot closer than a
(01:05):
little cramped. This is just odd. So if if we
seem a little angrier than usual, it's because of the
stupid room So uh, I think we're gonna call this,
what do we determine? I voted for the Reconstruction Tapes
of the Reconstruction Era, and I made the joke saying
that we should call it the Eponymous Era because that
was a much better album. But that was just the
(01:27):
greatest hits collection by Orim. No it wasn't. It was,
well it was, That's why it was so good. All right,
So what's your witty intro? Or is this all just
out the door? It's way off the door, buddy, Okay,
you see it, yes, leaving Chuck, Josh. Have you ever
met a Viking? Uh? No, I haven't. Well, you know
(01:51):
the football team, right, Minnesota Vikings. Yeah, I've seen them.
You can tell their helmet a mile away because they
have those horns on the side, which are very Viking.
Se No, not true, Yes it is. Uh. It turns
out a bunch of archaeologists were um digging around, uh,
the north, the Nordic area Scandinavia, which includes what Sweden, Denmark,
(02:16):
the Netherlands and yeah I think Finland, sure, Norway too,
can you forget the Norwegians? Um And they found an
ancient helmet with some horns on it, and this was
before we had um reliable carbon dating technology and they said, well,
it's a Viking, but it turns out that it was
(02:37):
probably from the pre Viking era, right, Well that's when
it was popularized in the in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
You know, the the enormous woman would come out with
her bosom very prominent and uh, you know, a helmet
with with horns or wings. And it turns out they
wouldn't have worn this because these guys were or dedicated
(03:02):
to battling as efficiently and as brutally as any group
that's ever sprung up on the global map. Yes, they
were very good at what they do. And I just
want to point out this is a listener request, a
very recent one actually that piqued our interest, and this
is from David d from Waterloo. He said, can you
do something on vikings since you've covered Ninja and um,
(03:25):
what else did we cover? Pirates? He said, I hear vikings.
You stuff warriors called berserkers who would eat magic mushrooms
before sending them into battle. And uh, we're going to
talk about that, so stay tuned. It's a teaser. So
chuck there there does seem to be a lot of
um misconception around vikings. But one of the things I
took from this article by the Grabs their a Grabanowski
(03:47):
he writes good stuff he does, um, was that there's
also a lot of accuracy in the history associated with
with Vikings, Like they were extremely brutal, they would indiscriminately
kill men, women, children. Um. So let's let's peel this apart.
Let's separate fact from fiction as it were. Right, Yes,
(04:07):
when were they around? H josh? The Vikings were prominent
in uh Europe in the ninth through the eleven centuries,
commonly known as the Age of the Viking. Right, and Um,
you tend to think of Vikings as Nordic. They were
sure they were from Scandinavia, which are the countries we
listed off earlier. But this These weren't communities of Vikings.
(04:34):
Vikings were like a job. Yeah, it was a profession, basically,
a you were a professional conqueror. Yeah, because Scandinavians are
also farmers and um did many other things weavers, and uh,
they weren't just Vikings. It's not interchangeable. Viking and Scandinavians
not interchangeable. Weaving has never really been a lucrative job.
(04:54):
You know, it's not not even back then. But yeah,
so there was a group that that were dedicated to
moving out of the North Lamb downward into Europe. Yeah,
because Scandinavia it wasn't a very hospitable place. I imagine
it still isn't, you know. Lots of ice, lots of
winter snow, not that much land, and the land that
is available isn't all arable. So yeah, they went and
(05:18):
took it, you know, like broadwater. Uh. There was also
evidence that population pressure led to Viking plundering, yeah, because
they started to grow and then obviously as they grew,
they needed more things. And this is before they started
spreading out, because eventually they would do that, but at
first they would just go plunder and then return home
(05:41):
to Viking land Scandinavia. You said that they were around
from the ninth of the eleventh centuries, right, So there
were Scandinavian cultures before the ninth century. There were Scandinavian
cultures after the ninth century, so two years basically, um,
this population explosion forced this group out to go get
(06:01):
more resources, to more conquering, to conquer more land, and
then the end point at the eleventh century actually generally
represents the adoption of Christianity. The Vikings did readily. Yeah
once you once you converts, like, you can't plunder any longer,
at least not you know, only plundering in the name
of God. And Vikings were were pagans pre pre Christianity, right,
(06:27):
and which also means that they worshiped the pantheon of gods.
There Um, their religion was actually highly personalized. There was
no central church in any of the Scandinavian cultures and
their their religion was actually highly personal Uh. It evolved
in relative isolation without a central church and any of
(06:47):
these Scandinavian cultures. Um, but there was a a pantheon
of gods that were recognizable across these cultures generally, right,
two groups should we talk about them real quick? Yeah, Uh,
the s and the Veneer were the two groups of gods,
and the scre were very warlike. That's Odin and Thor,
(07:09):
and then the Assir were kind of like hippies like
fertility goddesses and gods. Uh. They lived. The gods lived
in Asgard and it was a kingdom connected to mortal
Earth by a rainbow bridge, which I didn't know which
is you think Okay, so um, Scandinavian pre Christian pagan
religion is pretty sweet. They've got hippies, they have rainbow bridges.
(07:32):
They had evil giants and dark elves. Yeah, here's where
it gets dark dwarves. And apparently the gods were destined
to fight against these giants and evil forces in a
battle known as Ragnarok. Right, and they were also predicted
to lose, which would plunge uh Mortal Earth and uh
Asgard into chaos, darkness, disorder, which I mean to think
(07:56):
about that, chuck. All of our religions today are pretty hopeful, Like,
even if there isn't into the world, if you adhere
to that religion, you're gonna be saved. You won't be
around for like the torment. Right, this this religion as
loose as it was predicted, Like, no, our gods are
gonna lose and we're all gonna be in really big trouble. Right.
(08:17):
But if you were a noble, awesome warrior and you
died in battle, you would go to Valhalla, which was
warrior heaven, and you would be transported there by the Vulkyrie,
which were little warrior angels at the command of Robert
Duval right, and uh, what happened was in heaven you
would fight alongside Odin and feast and die in battle
(08:41):
every day, and you would get up alive the next
day and do it all over again. Right, that's their
idea of heaven. It was who was pretty funny. Yeah,
so them that that battle part is really significant because, um,
in Scandinavia and many of the Scandinavian cultures, a young
man proved himself by going, I Viking. Yeah that I'm
gonna get a T shirt made it says I Viking.
(09:02):
And just see how many people know what that means.
That's like the verb of what Vikings did, leaving your homeland,
going down, butchering, raping, pillaging, studying, churches on fire. Churches
are actually a big target of their's because the churches
are where most of the gold was stored, livestock, spices, jewels, whatever, um.
(09:22):
So they would target churches and and kill everybody or
else they would take them as thralls slaves, which I
looked up the etymology of enthrall. Then that's where it
comes from. So when you're telling somebody you're enthralled by them,
you're saying that you're enslaved by their by how interesting
they are interesting. And you know that Actually all the
(09:46):
church thing is kind of key too, because that's how
the that's like, the only written history about the Vikings
where it was was written by the hand of the
church that was plundered. So that's one reason. Because the
Vikings only told oral orald stories folklore, right, but scrawls,
scrawls which told saga's it's where all these words come from.
(10:06):
And uh, but the church was the ones who actually
wrote down stuff. So that's why a lot of the
written history of the Vikings is so brutal, because they
were the people that were just you know, had someone
went I Viking on them, right, chuck. And they also
attribute the word Viking to um Europeans who were conquered. Yeah,
I mean there are a lot of different uh theories
(10:26):
there on the word. There are most of them. Do um.
Either the Norse adopted a word that was that they
were called by the Europeans like um uh, an old
English word vic w i c means port port of
trade um, which is where the Vikings like to attack.
(10:47):
Another theory is that it came from the Norse word
vic big different, but this one's v I k meaning
bay or body of water. Or there's another word that
sounds similar that means to turn away or to leave
on a journey, which is as we said, what going.
I Viking began with um. And then there's the last one,
(11:08):
which makes a lot of sense, is called um. It's
an old Norse word called viking or which means pirate.
That's that's my guess, right, But they think that they
picked that up from the Europeans they conquered. So either way,
these people were written about by Europeans, they were named
by Europeans. They were just going to get some food
and gold cheap. Yes, how they do this though? Should
(11:32):
we talk about that? Yeah, I Viking. Yeah, they were
famous for being experienced seamen. They were built awesome boats
and built boats that traveled really fast through the water.
So when the when the Christian uh you know, let's
say a monastery would see the Viking ships approaching and
dragon ships, yeah, dragon boats, they didn't have much time
(11:55):
because they would get there really really fast because they
were very experienced fishermen. And uh, I guess since we're
on the boats, we we should talk about that for
a second. Yeah, they had pretty particular boats as Um,
you know, I think anybody could pick one out. They
had a double sided hole, which I thought was pretty
cool because you can go forward or backward without having
to turn around. You just pick up your butt and
(12:16):
turn around and start rowing the other way right, or
just switch the sail around. Um. They had a keel,
They had riveted wood construction. Um. And then they had
a single mask, and this mask could be as much
as um or the the sail that that was attached
to the mass could be like three thirty square feet
of double sided wool, all hands sewn, usually painted red
(12:38):
to symbolize the blood that was about to be spilled
by the people who saw it approaching. UM. And then
you see pictures of Viking ships with like the little
circles along the side. Yeah, that's actually accurate. Um. Most
Viking ships had mounts where somebody could put their shield
up as extra protection to to protect the guys who
were rowing. Of course makes good sense. Took about a
(13:00):
seventy ft Viking long ship. Josh would have required about
eleven trees to make it about three ft in diameter each,
and then one really tall tree to make the keel.
So I guess it was all one piece. Yeah, and
these things could haul but through the water apparently because
they're real narrow and they used wind power and manpower.
(13:21):
Viking manpower was that was something. So what happened when
you saw a dragon boat chuck? You saw a dragon
boat docks and all of a sudden, this horde of
Vikings just comes streaming off at you. You poop your
pants the first thing you do. I would have rolled
around the ground crying like a baby and offering up
my cattle to be spared. But you might not be spared.
(13:44):
They generally would not leave much. Anything woulden was burned.
They would just burn the town to the ground. Kill people,
take women if they wanted, or kill them, take children
if they wanted, or kill them. Take the cattle. Probably
wouldn't kill the cattle now they wanted the cattle. They
were more useful in humans generally. Um. And you would
also see these guys coming at you with the acts, which,
(14:05):
as everybody knows, is my weapon of choice for a
zombie apocalypse. Right, you would go I Viking on zombies, sure,
and Josh. As far as their battle gear, like you said,
the sword was huge. The swords are about as long
as the uh as a man's arm, right. They also
had bows and lances and javelins. Uh, And they wore
(14:26):
like you would think, they wore big heavy iron helmets
with a little nosepiece that came down a lot of
times they wore iron on their breastplate unless they had
some dough and they could afford chain mail. But this
kind of indicates how strong these dudes were. Do you
know what, Like an iron Viking helmet would weigh a
lot a lot and actually Vikings, well not Vikings, but
(14:47):
skin Navians, I should say. Skin Navian cultures were really
really adept at doing whatever they wanted to do with
iron because they've been pulling it from bogs um very
easily without any need for mining for many, many centuries.
So they were kind of ahead of the curve as
far as the iron age goes. And chuck. When these
(15:08):
guys died, let's say you were a Viking, had had
some successful raids, garnered some powers, some money. The concept
of a Viking funeral, you know, being put on a
ship instead of fire a fire and pushed out to see,
that's actually accurate. Yeah, that's one way they did it.
They also, Yeah, the other way would be that they
(15:29):
entombed you in uh an earthen barrow, which is like
a mound. It was called mounting. Right. The thing is,
if you were a thrall, let's say you have been
captured in battle and taken back to Scandinavia, and you
were a servant to this guy, especially particularly useful servant,
you would probably be murdered and entombed in the thrall
(15:50):
or the barrow. Yeah. The deal there was they believed
in a life after death. Um. Whether it was like
an eternal life, didn't really know, or just like a
temporary life until you get to your old life. But
they definitely believed that you did not just die. So
that's why they would send you along with maybe your
favorite slave or your possessions. They would your cat, they
would bury you with your clothes on, and maybe with
(16:12):
your your acts, and they would send you along with
these things that they think you would need in the
following life to go I Viking. Uh. You know there
was another a stratified class almost um in Viking warrior culture. UM.
And there was this little subgroup that the guy who
(16:32):
called for this podcast mentioned berserkers. So these guys I
want to talk about berserkers yeah, if you've seen the
movie Clerks. Did you see Clerks? Yeah? Remember uh Silent
Bob's cousin Olaf from my Russia. He sang a medal.
He was in a Russian metal band he had. It's
long called Bezerka. I don't remember that. That was the
(16:54):
first time I heard Berserker And wait, we can't say
the lyrics because they're really filthy, but it was funny. Well,
what he was talking about where this this group of
warriors that were they think that they grew out of
a bear cult, like these people worship bears. They were nuts.
They during battle especially, they would go nuts. They would um.
It was told in the Sagas that they would take
(17:16):
on they would either become a bear or a bowl
for something like that. They would shape ship or else
they would take on the qualities of a bear like.
They would go into battle naked or shirtless, or at
the very least armorless. They would cut five people's heads
off at once with one swing of an axe. They
couldn't feel pain. Supposedly, they would scream a lot. Their
eyes were kind of glazed over. Part of the problem
(17:38):
was is they would get into such a um war frenzy,
a battle frenzy that if you were near them, even
if you were on their side, they'd kill you just
as soon as they would kill somebody else. And as
the guy said, they do think that, um, this bear
colt that went berserk, the berserkers um were on mushrooms
(17:59):
during battle. That may be the case. Can you that?
So you would take this regular already super badass warrior
viking then jack him up on magic mushrooms and give
him an ax, give him an ax and tell him
to like take his clothes off and wear like a
bear skin. And uh, it was That was it. It
(18:19):
was all over. I've read a little bit more about them,
and what's weird is the same guys. They also think
it's possible that this cult was largely made up with
them mentally ill, right or else maybe a little slow? Yeah, Um,
these same guys would also go berserk during like physical
labor sometimes too. You just didn't want to hang out
(18:40):
with the berserkers, basically you wanted to be in battle
with them. But like fifty meters to the left or
the right, nowhere near him, I would go in way
behind there. I would drag up the rear behind the
berserk also saw another theory that um, they weren't in
fact on magic mushrooms, but they uh drank heavily and
(19:00):
got wasted basically on mead before battle too. Huh. Wouldn't
that slow you down? Though? Um, I would think so,
but it would also kind of make you somewhat impervious
to pain and not care as much. And yeah, I've
gone berserka on a Friday night. Yeah, yeah, I subscribed
to the mushroom theory for two reasons. One, it's awesome
to uh. Ritual use of mushrooms in certain Scandinavian cults
(19:25):
is known for a fact, so it's entirely possible. These guys,
all right, we're Truman, So David d from Waterloo. That's
what initially piqued my interest, and that's why we did
this podcast. So Josh says, yes, okay, uh, chuck, these
guys weren't all berserk, right, No, the the Vikings and
the Scandinavian cultures they came from actually were pretty good
(19:48):
at democracy. Yeah. Supposedly, the the the common farmer would
have just as much say in matters Viking as as
the higher ups. Right, they had um assemblies. I don't
know if they were annual or more frequent, but they
had scheduled assemblies where everybody got together talked about matters
of the day, divided land. Um. And they called them
(20:11):
things because I think they just couldn't think of the
word at the time, right, Maybe they were a little slow.
And there was a guy. I love this part. There
was a guy who was in charge of running the meetings.
He was an impartial judge and they called him the lawmaker,
So he was the lawmaker of the thing. Pretty generic stuff,
primitive democracy, you could call it. Um. And they actually
(20:32):
extended this downward to the lands that they conquered. Um.
These guys made it a lot further south than I realized.
Did you know all this? And now I didn't as
far as going through Europe? Yeah, Um, they the Vikings
um conquered a town called Ulster. A Danish Viking did
an eight thirty nine and crowned himself king, and um
(20:55):
founded what is now the town of Dublin. Did you
know that? I did not know that until I read this. Uh.
They said they actually laid siege to Paris at some point.
They controlled part of England half of England from the
late nineteenth century to the eleventh century Danish Vikings, and
they struck a deal with France with Frederick the Simple Charles, Charles,
(21:15):
Charles is simple. You don't want your king to be
called the simple, No, especially when the Viking leader was
named Rolo. So they were causing a lot of problems
with the Franks. And so Charles the Simple, poor thing
sat down with Raloh and struck a deal and said, hey, um,
why don't you guys leave us alone and convert to
Christianity and I'll give you Normandy And they said okay,
(21:38):
said and uh, Frederick the Simple went that was easy.
Charles is simple. Yeah, he's a simple guy. Yeah. Um.
And like we said, the Vikings were they readily converted
to Christianity. These lands that they conquered and held um
for centuries, and they especially in Ireland and England. The
(22:00):
the Celts and the Anglo Saxons would defeat the Vikings,
and then more Vikings would come in and defeat whoever.
So it changed hands pretty much constantly. But through this interaction,
even though it was fighting, Vikings eventually became absorbed into
these local areas. They brought their customs, but took on
new customs, and the the whole milange or the whole
(22:22):
area of Ireland, England, France. Um is a milange actually
of Nordic culture and Southern European culture. I learned a
lot with this one. And they actually had trading routes
all the way down in North Africa. They did. And Chuck,
we've talked about this before. You know that they settled
North America. Of Eric the Red. He was exiled for murder.
(22:49):
This is another thing that they probably did it the
things they tried people. Uh, Eric the Red was accused
of murder. He was convicted, so they exiled him. He
took a bunch of guys with them and went from
Sland over to Greenland. His son was born there, Leif Ericson,
son of Eric, Right, and he said, you know, I'm
going to travel even further west and he ended up
in Newfoundland. This is just part of the oral tradition
(23:11):
until the nineteen sixties when an archaeologist discovered the traces
of this um of Leif Ericson's Viking settlement in Newfoundland.
He found a horned helmet, right, He's like, oh, it's
a Viking of course. So yeah, they were all over
the place. Yes, And if they sound like all they
did was rape and pillage and plunder. They did a
(23:33):
lot of that, but not so much anymore than anyone
else at the time. That was just kind of the
action of the time. But they were just so much
better at it than anyone else. They got this rep.
But they also, Josh had entertainment. Did you know that?
I did not check layd on me. They did. They socialized,
and when they socialized, they it was generally competitions because
(23:53):
they were clearly big on competing. There was cutting, so
they would compete in friendly games like running and wrestling
and horseback riding. Uh. They had acrobats and entertainers, poem
tellers and tall tale tellers. And they actually ice skated.
What they did they made ice skates out of animal
bones and played a game on the ice skates, similar
(24:17):
to hurling, which I looked at hurling hurling. Hurling is
sort of like the best I can say is, uh,
it looks sort of like a cross between rugby and
field hockey. I think it was on ice because you
had a stick and you're hitting a ball toward a net,
So maybe it was the first ice hockey. No, nothing
(24:38):
to do with hote. Uh. Yeah, so they were. They
were into all sorts of games. Actually had a game
called Kinky Bat, which was like ping pong, except they
used shields. I wanted. So they would use a shield
to hit like a ball back and forth over. I
don't know if it was a net or just back
and forth on some surface, but they potentially invented ice
(25:00):
hockey and ping pong. Wow, how about that? That is something.
Speaking of Viking culture, Chuck um Vikings made it into
our culture popular culture big time, quite a bit. Obviously
The You Got Thor, the Marvel superhero, one of my
favorites of all time, soon to be a movie next year. Yeah,
made at least one appearance in um Adventures in Babysitting.
(25:22):
Oh I didn't see that movie. He played the mechanic.
Oh really very interesting. Uh yeah, Kenneth Brandon was making
that movie. Um, Anthony Hopkins plays Odin and some Australian
guy plays Stor. He didn't look very thory though. When
I looked at the pictures, I'm sure they're going to
deck him out and give him long blonde hair. Oh. Actually,
I meant to mention that apparently some of them used
to um bleach their hair. Blond because I guess it
(25:46):
was more intimidating, so that that is not a myth.
So where else popular culture led Zeppelin? Can we we
can't not talk about led Zeppelin? Go ahead, Well, anyone's
ever seen song remains the same obviously, or listened to
some Zeppelin songs knows that they were big on aside
from Lord of the Rings, Valhalla, Vulkyrie, that kind of thing,
(26:06):
Hammer the Gods was the name of their biography. Uh
did you ever read that on crazy? Uh? And the
Immigrant Song is the most clear example after the famous Whale.
At the beginning, Um, you'll hear lyrics like we come
from the land of the ice and snow, from the
midnight sun, where the hot springs blow Hammer of the
(26:26):
Gods will drive our ships to land to fight the Horde,
singing cry Valhalla, I am coming. So I always thought
that song was about apple Chians. No, that is Vikings. Huh. Yeah,
Robert Plant was big into that and uh, Spike TV.
Have you heard of the show Deadliest Warriors? I have. Actually,
it's pretty cool. They picked like warriors against each other,
(26:47):
and the Vikings actually in their scenario lost to the Samurai.
I could see that barely though, these uh shallon monks samurais.
But I know they said the samurai UH wanted a
squeaker because they were a little bit more disciplined than
the the Crazy Eye Viking. I wonder if they took
mushrooms for that show. I don't know, and I think
(27:09):
that's it. Oh, actually I got one a couple of
more myths if you want to hear him. Vikings were
not dirty. They have the reputation of being dirty, filthy people.
They actually bathed once a week, which was a lot
for back then. Yeah, definitely, and they washed their face
every day apparently. So you were just saying before the podcast,
so you're the cleanest person that we know you were
(27:30):
the Vikings, I'm cleaner than a Vikings. Sure well sure.
And they did not drink from the skulls of the conquered.
That was a mistranslation apparently into Latin. And they they
apparently would drink mead from a horn occasionally as as
like a ritual, but ordinarily they would just drink from
a mug. That's it for the Vikings. Chuck for real,
(27:52):
nice additional research. Appreciate that, um and Uh. If you
want to learn a little more see some cool picks,
including some actual swords, which I thought was pretty cool.
What about you, Chuck loved it. You could type vikings
into the handy search bar how stuff works dot com,
which leads us to listener mail. Not quite yet, Josh,
you always do that. I'm teasing. Uh, actually, I'm not teasing.
(28:16):
We just want to plug. We did a little interview
with the dude named Wayne and Omaha, Nebraska. Yes, Worlds
of Wayne. Worlds of Wayne podcasts which he interviews artists
and musicians and cool people. So I don't know why
he called us, but he did. And uh, it's actually
already up. So if you want to hear a pretty
fun interview with us and go to Worlds of Wayne
(28:38):
dot l I B s y N dot com or
Josh said, you can just google Worlds of Wayne and
that's the first thing that comes up. It is, I've
done it. So apparently there's no store called Worlds of Wayne,
which is good, and it's episode one thirteen and you'll
see our big logo there and click on it. It's
kind of a cool, fun little interview. No listener mail, right, yes,
(28:59):
Okay to Josh, I'm gonna call this another list of
first from Patrick Okay is our our our super fan,
Patrick compolsies list of first in our show, which I
think we're kind of cool because I wouldn't take he is. So.
The first podcast, of course was how grassoline works? And
was that you and Poulette? Yeah? And is that accurate?
(29:23):
I don't remember. Okay, that was like two episodes ago.
I know, well, uh what what we're close to that? Actually? Um?
The first podcast with Candice Gibson was now Candice Keener
was how altruism works? First podcast with me remember doesn't
does come stay in your stomach? I thought it was
the introduced toothpaste? That was it. It was one of
(29:45):
those two Patrick, que might have to take issue with
your steps, buddy. Uh. First mentioned the fight or flight
response was how hysterical strength works. That was a great one.
First podcast with three people, How contagious yawning works. First
time Josh mentions being born in Ohio. Oh, how the
eye of the Tornado works? No, that's what he says.
First bleeped out swear word, first of many, how swearing
(30:09):
works obviously. First mention of Josh and Chuck's pets are
dogs of Shark's favorite meal. First podcast over ten minutes.
How can a cat scuba dive? Remember scuba cat Sure?
First over twenty is Quitting Smoking Contagious? First over thirty,
How lobotomies work, and recently the first over forty, How
(30:30):
witchcraft Works? And then just a couple of more. First
listener mail was issued in How Einstein's Brain Works, and
the first podcast that Patrick listened to is is the
World Going To End? In twelve? Awesome? I love the
first there's some great stats. This is the first one
in the new the new room. Yeah, make a note, Patrick,
and then we'll have the first in the awesome studio.
(30:53):
I don't like this room at all. Yeah, Like my
neck feels weird. I'm on the opposite side. Everything's wrong,
and I'm bury out of sorts. Well, if you have
a story about going berserk, we would love to hear it.
You can wrap it up in an email and send
it to stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com.
(31:15):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,
check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot
com home page. Brought to you by the reinvented two
thousand twelve camera it's ready. Are you
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Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
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