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The Catacombs of Paris · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
0:11
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
0:13
Speaker 2: there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and we are going deep
0:19
Speaker 2: underneath the City of Perry, City of Lights, City too
0:23
Speaker 2: busy to sleep because it eats big apples in this
0:27
Speaker 2: episode of Stuff You Should Know.
0:29
Speaker 1: That's right, big thanks to Anna for the contribution here
0:33
Speaker 1: on the Paris Catacombs. Have you ever toured the Paris Catacombs?
0:38
Speaker 2: Yes? I have?
0:38
Speaker 1: Have you I have not, and I think I remember
0:41
Speaker 1: you telling me that you had. I've been to Paris
0:43
Speaker 1: three times, have not yet done this. It was not
0:46
Speaker 1: on my radar the first two, didn't have time the
0:48
Speaker 1: third trip. So if and when I ever get back
0:51
Speaker 1: to Paris, it's on the list I recommend.
0:54
Speaker 2: Have you ever been to the Mulin Rouge?
0:57
Speaker 3: Yes?
0:58
Speaker 2: Okay, so the Mulan Ruge is generally topless dance numbers
1:02
Speaker 2: typically right, Yeah, did you notice that when you're at
1:06
Speaker 2: the Mulan Rouge, boobs just there were so many boobs
1:09
Speaker 2: everywhere that they just totally lost all context and meaning.
1:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, twelve year old Chuck was like, I don't understand what's.
1:16
Speaker 2: Happening, right, But I'll bet even twelve year old Chuck
1:19
Speaker 2: was like yawning by the end of it, right, because
1:20
Speaker 2: there's just so many boobs everywhere that they're just it
1:23
Speaker 2: doesn't doesn't mean anything anymore. The catacombs are the Mulan
1:29
Speaker 2: Rouge of human bones.
1:32
Speaker 1: Oh, so many skulls that it's just like whatever, there's
1:35
Speaker 1: another skull.
1:36
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's bizarre because you realize you're just like,
1:39
Speaker 2: ho hum, there's another dead body. There's another dead body,
1:42
Speaker 2: there's another leg bone. But it's still worth going to
1:46
Speaker 2: just because it's so bizarre. But there's just so many
1:50
Speaker 2: human bones around you that you just it's like your
1:53
Speaker 2: brain just gets saturated and you just stop thinking of
1:57
Speaker 2: them like that.
1:58
Speaker 1: So the JSA, the Josh SAT would be Mulin Rouge
2:02
Speaker 1: is to boobs, as the Paris Catacombs is to blank
2:06
Speaker 1: human bones.
2:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, that'd be the right answer choice A. What would
2:10
Speaker 2: be the other choices?
2:12
Speaker 3: Oh?
2:12
Speaker 1: Man, I don't know. I haven't taken a test like
2:14
Speaker 1: that in so long. I'd hope you have been to
2:15
Speaker 1: take the SAT again.
2:17
Speaker 3: What it I think?
2:19
Speaker 2: So?
2:19
Speaker 3: Okay, how long does that take?
2:22
Speaker 2: I don't know, but it's changed since we were there hours?
2:26
Speaker 2: I remember it taking hours. It used to actually test
2:28
Speaker 2: IQ and now it just tests like retention.
2:32
Speaker 3: Oh well, I'm screwed.
2:34
Speaker 2: So here's the other answers. Chuck cod fishing, Yeah, modge podge.
2:41
Speaker 1: And there's got to be one close one like like
2:45
Speaker 1: like gravesite or something. Okay, there you go and you'd
2:49
Speaker 1: be like, no, no, grave wax.
2:50
Speaker 2: Do you remember that from back in the day.
2:52
Speaker 1: Is that the human goop that seeps out that you
2:55
Speaker 1: can make soap out of?
2:57
Speaker 3: Yeah?
2:58
Speaker 2: Pretty awesome.
3:00
Speaker 1: All right, that's a that's a great j Sat. We
3:02
Speaker 1: should have our own stuff. You should know, Sat. That'd
3:04
Speaker 1: be a fun thing to design.
3:05
Speaker 2: I have, It would be fun. I have one more
3:08
Speaker 2: story about the catacombs, let's hear it. So when we went,
3:11
Speaker 2: I've only been once, uh and it was a few
3:13
Speaker 2: years back. But we went with my brother in law
3:18
Speaker 2: and sister in law and our niece, a very famous
3:20
Speaker 2: Mila who's been in the movies. She played young Mary
3:25
Speaker 2: in the movie Mary that came out on Netflix this
3:28
Speaker 2: past Christmas. Did you know that? No?
3:30
Speaker 3: And you didn't.
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Speaker 1: You didn't shout that one out, So I'm glad you are.
3:33
Speaker 2: Well. We were off so I didn't get a chance to,
3:36
Speaker 2: but it's it's definitely worth watching. It's like pretty religious movie.
3:40
Speaker 2: I mean it's about Mary the mother Mary Mary. Yeah,
3:43
Speaker 2: yeah that Mary. You're like, ah Mary Mary, Sure. And
3:47
Speaker 2: it is fascinating, like my actually my brother in law
3:52
Speaker 2: also was a producer on it too, and they it
3:55
Speaker 2: has like action, it has like it's a thriller. It
3:59
Speaker 2: has like a really evil villain played by Anthony Hopkins.
4:03
Speaker 2: Like it's just a really good movie that you'll watch
4:06
Speaker 2: from beginning to end. Be like, this is pretty good.
4:09
Speaker 3: I have to check it out.
4:10
Speaker 1: And I'm also going to forgive you for when I said, Mary, Mary,
4:13
Speaker 1: for not saying.
4:15
Speaker 2: Why you bugging thank you?
4:18
Speaker 3: You passed. You're back in the good graces.
4:20
Speaker 2: Well anyway, Oh back to my story. So little Mila,
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Speaker 2: she must have been fivesh at the time, she went
4:27
Speaker 2: to the catacombs with us, right, so she's walking around
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Speaker 2: this ossiery with bones and human skulls everywhere, and you
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Speaker 2: me or I asked her, like, are are you scared
4:37
Speaker 2: right now? And she said, I boobs right, she right,
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Speaker 2: she said I would be if these were real. We're like,
4:46
Speaker 2: we just looked at each other out of the corners
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Speaker 2: of our eyes, and we were like, well, let's look
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Speaker 2: over here now, right exactly.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, Wow, that's adorable.
4:55
Speaker 2: It was very adorable. What's funny is the irony of
4:58
Speaker 2: the whole thing is this is the same kid had
5:00
Speaker 2: about the same age, who was scared to death on
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Speaker 2: the movie ride at Disney Hollywood Studios, but is standing
5:07
Speaker 2: there in the ossiary right, millions of bones, human bones
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Speaker 2: and skulls, and.
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Speaker 3: Is like, yeah, that's pretty funny.
5:14
Speaker 2: Yeah. So those are all my stories about the Catacombs.
5:17
Speaker 2: I figured we should probably start talking about it.
5:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this is I mean, let's go back in time,
5:22
Speaker 1: I guess. I mean we know already what it is.
5:25
Speaker 1: It's a series of underground tunnels where more than six
5:29
Speaker 1: million Parisians are are there, you know, forever. What's crazy
5:36
Speaker 1: they decided to move them again, right.
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Speaker 2: Right, But you have no idea who's who, Like one
5:41
Speaker 2: bone doesn't belong to another bone, no idea whose skull
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Speaker 2: is who? It's crazy.
5:45
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.
5:47
Speaker 1: So if you go back in time, let's say forty
5:50
Speaker 1: five million years during the Lutesian period, there was an
5:54
Speaker 1: erosion event that caused a lot of what became to
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Speaker 1: be known as Lutesian or Paris rock or Paris limestone
6:04
Speaker 1: or Parisian limestone deposited there, and that is if you
6:08
Speaker 1: go to Paris and you see everything as a sort
6:11
Speaker 1: of creamy gray, that's what that is. And that's what
6:14
Speaker 1: gives Paris its distinct look because they had loads and
6:18
Speaker 1: loads and loads of it. And the reason we're starting
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Speaker 1: with this is because the mining of that Lutetian limestone
6:26
Speaker 1: is where these tunnels started, about two thousand years ago,
6:30
Speaker 1: on the banks of the rivers. There they had these
6:32
Speaker 1: quarries where they would mine the heck out of this stuff,
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Speaker 1: and before you know it, Paris is sitting on top
6:40
Speaker 1: of a vast network of tunnels.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, something like thirty two square kilometers of tunnels, which,
6:47
Speaker 2: to put in American terms, is like a lot of bananas. Yes,
6:53
Speaker 2: ten times the size of Central Park apparently is underneath Paris. Yeah,
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Speaker 2: I think it's three hundred kilometers of tunnels. Isn't that
7:02
Speaker 2: just nuts?
7:03
Speaker 3: It's a lot.
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Speaker 2: But I mean, if you think about it, if you
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Speaker 2: mine an area, a small, relatively small area, for a
7:09
Speaker 2: couple thousand years, you're gonna you're gonna make some headway eventually.
7:13
Speaker 2: And that's what they did. The key is this chuck. Originally,
7:17
Speaker 2: these quarries were sensibly well outside of the city of Paris. Yeah,
7:22
Speaker 2: but we're talking about a very very tiny original city
7:25
Speaker 2: of Paris that eventually grew and grew and grew, and
7:28
Speaker 2: over time Paris overtook these old quarries that in most
7:33
Speaker 2: cases were no longer used or mined any longer. So
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Speaker 2: the city built itself over abandoned mines that people had
7:40
Speaker 2: just plumb forgotten about.
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Speaker 1: That's right, and that you know, that presents a couple
7:45
Speaker 1: of very big problems. First of all, if you've got
7:47
Speaker 1: a city growing and growing and getting built on and
7:49
Speaker 1: built on and getting heavier and heavier, and a lot
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Speaker 1: of the underground has been dug out, that is a problem.
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Speaker 1: And there were numerous incidents of sinkholes, of buildings collapsing
8:03
Speaker 1: into themselves, of all kinds of you know, tragedies happening
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Speaker 1: over the years throughout the history of Paris because it
8:10
Speaker 1: was built on, you know, hollow ground in a lot
8:13
Speaker 1: of places.
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Speaker 2: Right. That's why another very famous nickname for Paris is
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Speaker 2: the Florida of Europe.
8:18
Speaker 3: Right, I'm sure they love that.
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Speaker 1: The other big problem is that Parisians used to love
8:26
Speaker 1: burying themselves in Paris, like you wanted to be laid
8:30
Speaker 1: to rest in the city where you grew up and lived.
8:33
Speaker 2: Your life at your church typically too.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, like very very locally. And by the eighteenth century,
8:39
Speaker 1: late eighteenth century, this was a big, big problem. There
8:43
Speaker 1: were too many bodies those disease was being spread. So
8:48
Speaker 1: this led to a couple of things. I think in
8:50
Speaker 1: the seventeen thirties there was an actual parliamentary commissioned study
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Speaker 1: about how disease from these you know, dead people everywhere
9:01
Speaker 1: in Paris was hurting the city. And then it took
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Speaker 1: about forty years. Eventually, in seventeen seventy seven, King Louis
9:10
Speaker 1: what is that sixteenth created the IGC You want to
9:15
Speaker 1: pronounce that?
9:16
Speaker 2: Oh yes, please? The Inspection General des Cartiers.
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Speaker 3: And what were they charged with?
9:24
Speaker 2: So carriers is French for careers, and another word for
9:28
Speaker 2: career is a path or tunnel. So this was the
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Speaker 2: commission overseeing minds and mind shafts in.
9:36
Speaker 1: Paris, right, So basically, hey, we got this report forty
9:40
Speaker 1: years ago that no one's acted on, so we need
9:43
Speaker 1: to really start looking into this stuff. And a chief inspector,
9:49
Speaker 1: can you pronounce.
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Speaker 2: His name, Charles excel f Guillemote.
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Speaker 1: He came along as the chief inspector and said, all right,
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Speaker 1: you know what, we're gonna shore up these minds and
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Speaker 1: make sure that they're not gonna keep collapsing. And also
10:07
Speaker 1: we're gonna start moving bodies out of here. We had
10:08
Speaker 1: a body problem, not a three body problem, we have
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Speaker 1: a million's body problem. Yeah, and we're gonna start moving
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Speaker 1: bodies out of Let's start with the oldest one, the
10:18
Speaker 1: Holy Innocent Cemetery, which has been around since eleven eighty six.
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Speaker 1: Let's start moving things out of here and from other cemeteries.
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Speaker 1: Close these things down and start moving him into these
10:27
Speaker 1: old mind shafts.
10:29
Speaker 2: Yeah. And like you said, there was a body problem,
10:30
Speaker 2: I think you kind of touched on it a second ago,
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Speaker 2: where there was a general sense of disease coming from
10:37
Speaker 2: these putrefying bodies that were just piling up in the cemeteries.
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Speaker 2: But structurally speaking also so like I guess at the
10:45
Speaker 2: time in France, they would bury you with a bunch
10:48
Speaker 2: of other people who died at the same time in
10:50
Speaker 2: a group pit let you decompose. After five years, they
10:53
Speaker 2: would bury you up and then they would just deposit
10:55
Speaker 2: your bones into ossiery. They just they were like, here's
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Speaker 2: a bunch of bones, move on to the next group
11:01
Speaker 2: of people and bury them for five years. So many
11:04
Speaker 2: people's bones built up over the years that neighborhoods built
11:08
Speaker 2: near this. They're like sellers would collapse in and bones
11:12
Speaker 2: would just come out because of the pressure put on
11:14
Speaker 2: these huge piles of bones that were building up. So
11:17
Speaker 2: there was a huge problem with it. But I also
11:20
Speaker 2: read that that was a bit of like a cover story,
11:26
Speaker 2: that they were really interested, that the government of Paris
11:29
Speaker 2: was interested in reclaiming some really great real estate now,
11:34
Speaker 2: and so they did this, whether people liked it or not.
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Speaker 2: And they actually went into these cemeteries and moved the
11:42
Speaker 2: bones under the cover of night.
11:45
Speaker 1: That's right to the tunnels and people, you're doing what, Yeah,
11:51
Speaker 1: And they said, don't don't worry about it, just go
11:53
Speaker 1: back to sleep. And from seventeen eighty five to seventeen
11:57
Speaker 1: eighty seven, over a couple of years, they not only
12:01
Speaker 1: from Holy Innocence, but all the nearby cemeteries they moved
12:05
Speaker 1: these bodies. In April of seventeen eighty six, the catacombs
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Speaker 1: were consecrated officially that was called the Paris Ostuary at first,
12:16
Speaker 1: but catacombs sounds creepier.
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Speaker 2: I guess, hey, have I been saying ossiery?
12:21
Speaker 3: I think so?
12:22
Speaker 2: Oh man, thank you for gently correcting me.
12:25
Speaker 3: Well, I wasn't sure I was pronounced.
12:27
Speaker 2: To be honest, I sounded like a six year old
12:28
Speaker 2: kid trying to pronounce it.
12:33
Speaker 1: So catacombs took over as the sort of, you know,
12:36
Speaker 1: the go to word, and they kind of just dumped
12:40
Speaker 1: him in there for a while, until in eighteen ten
12:44
Speaker 1: there was a new Quary inspector who said, maybe we
12:47
Speaker 1: can have a little fun with this.
12:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, just to be clear, when they moved the
12:51
Speaker 2: bones from the graveyard to these abandoned mine shafts, they
12:57
Speaker 2: would just go up to a hole in the ground
12:58
Speaker 2: and dump bone into the mine shaft and they would
13:03
Speaker 2: just pile up where they fell at the bottom of
13:05
Speaker 2: the mine shaft. That's how they were transferred. And like
13:08
Speaker 2: you said, finally one of the inspectors, a Quorey inspector
13:12
Speaker 2: named Louis Etienne Harry card Deturi. Pretty sure, I said
13:17
Speaker 2: that right. Nice. He said, like you said, let's have
13:20
Speaker 2: some fun. So he got busy with his quarry men
13:25
Speaker 2: stacking bones into these now famous configurations of tibias and
13:30
Speaker 2: phibias and finger bones and thigh bones and neck bones
13:36
Speaker 2: and then headbones. Finally all of them with their eye
13:39
Speaker 2: sockets facing out. They built walls throughout the whole, these
13:44
Speaker 2: whole catacombs where that had been designated in ossiary or
13:48
Speaker 2: in French and ossuary.
13:50
Speaker 1: That's right, And I think from now to the end
13:53
Speaker 1: of time, a skull should be known as a headbone.
13:56
Speaker 2: And that what it Isn't that old drybone song and
13:59
Speaker 2: that what they call it?
14:00
Speaker 1: Oh?
14:00
Speaker 3: Is it? What connected to the headbone? That one?
14:02
Speaker 2: Yeah? Don't they say that?
14:04
Speaker 1: Oh I don't know, I think so, I don't remember
14:06
Speaker 1: that part. That's like the part, oh well, what was
14:10
Speaker 1: connected to it? I think the yeah, yeah probably and
14:15
Speaker 1: the neck bone is connected to the skull.
14:18
Speaker 2: Right, And then everybody just stopped singing and goes yeah yeah.
14:25
Speaker 1: So, like you mentioned, there are no headstones there, so
14:27
Speaker 1: you don't know who is who. We do know there
14:30
Speaker 1: are some famouses there, like Robespierre, very famous statesman is there.
14:36
Speaker 1: There's a painter named Simon Vouet. What how would you
14:42
Speaker 1: say that?
14:43
Speaker 2: Hey, yeah, you're right, I was gonna say, but there'd
14:45
Speaker 2: be an extra te I.
14:46
Speaker 1: Think, okay, and then this guy, I think we should
14:50
Speaker 1: maybe do a show on at some point Charles, I
14:53
Speaker 1: would say paralt as an American. But what is that Paral.
14:58
Speaker 2: Let's just go with your I say, Ossiery. So I
15:01
Speaker 2: don't know why, asking me, well.
15:03
Speaker 1: You took French, I didn't. This guy was like the
15:06
Speaker 1: granddaddy of the modern fairy tale. So he wrote Little
15:09
Speaker 1: Red Riding Hood and Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty and Pussing
15:12
Speaker 1: Boots and yeah, did you know about this guy?
15:14
Speaker 2: He put them all into a collection that he attributed
15:17
Speaker 2: to Mother Goose. So I couldn't find definitively that he
15:20
Speaker 2: invented Mother Goose, but he certainly he certainly made Mother
15:23
Speaker 2: Goose a star.
15:26
Speaker 1: You're gonna go a long way, baby, stick with me.
15:29
Speaker 1: Should we take a break or you got something else? I?
15:32
Speaker 2: Oh, well, we should probably say that. The reason why
15:34
Speaker 2: there's not a lot of people that you've heard of
15:37
Speaker 2: today because they stopped adding bones in eighteen sixty. They
15:40
Speaker 2: said that's enough. Sure, this is a little nuts. Somebody
15:44
Speaker 2: thought of this like almost one hundred years ago. They
15:47
Speaker 2: were clearly insane. Paris went along with it. Let's just
15:51
Speaker 2: pretend like it was okay, but just stop doing it
15:54
Speaker 2: any further.
15:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, Jim, Jim Morrison can stay where he's at.
15:57
Speaker 2: I look to see if he ever went and visited
15:59
Speaker 2: the cattle combs, and I could not find that he
16:01
Speaker 2: ever did. So let's just say he didn't.
16:04
Speaker 3: Oh, just as a tourist.
16:07
Speaker 1: Oh interesting, I just was cured diary today.
16:11
Speaker 3: I went to the catacombs. I found my solace there.
16:15
Speaker 2: Right, it was awesome.
16:17
Speaker 1: All right, So now that break, and we're going to
16:19
Speaker 1: come back and talk about all the weird stuff that's
16:21
Speaker 1: happened there over the decade since.
16:44
Speaker 2: So, Chuck, there's been at the catacombs a lot of
16:49
Speaker 2: bone deposits, bone stacking, that kind of stuff. But that
16:53
Speaker 2: I think we said at the outset that takes up
16:55
Speaker 2: just a really small amount of all of the tunnels
16:58
Speaker 2: that are under that are under Paris. They've done some
17:02
Speaker 2: other really fascinating stuff. Dozens and dozens of different interesting,
17:08
Speaker 2: really creative, inventive things with these tunnels, right, hundreds of
17:12
Speaker 2: different things.
17:14
Speaker 1: Yes, for sure. And I don't want to make you
17:16
Speaker 1: feel self conscious. I was laughing at a dirty joke
17:18
Speaker 1: that I couldn't sail loud.
17:19
Speaker 2: Oh, I want to know.
17:23
Speaker 3: I'll tell you later.
17:23
Speaker 2: Oh I know.
17:25
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, So.
17:27
Speaker 1: A lot of i mean monks used to make chartruse
17:31
Speaker 1: down there. Was that the birthplace of chartreuse. Yeah, in
17:35
Speaker 1: the catacombs.
17:36
Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't remember mentioning that in our Marrow episode,
17:39
Speaker 2: but we definitely talked about chartreuse.
17:42
Speaker 3: Yeah for sure. So that's one thing that happened back then.
17:46
Speaker 3: Mushroom farming.
17:47
Speaker 1: There's been a great tradition of alcohol brewing actually over
17:49
Speaker 1: the years, because I mean, one of the great things
17:52
Speaker 1: about having an underground system like that is it's very
17:56
Speaker 1: stable temperature wise. It's about sixty degrees fahrenheit always.
18:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is about fifteen and a half degree celsius
18:03
Speaker 2: for our French friends.
18:04
Speaker 3: That's right.
18:05
Speaker 1: And so that means you can do a lot of
18:07
Speaker 1: stuff from like storing wine to storing brewer beer exactly.
18:12
Speaker 2: One of the things that made it so appealing. In
18:14
Speaker 2: addition to being able to keep it at like a
18:17
Speaker 2: constant cave temperature, cave age to anything is pretty great. Typically,
18:22
Speaker 2: this is also real estate in the heart of Paris. Yeah,
18:26
Speaker 2: that you know, you can use some steps and go
18:29
Speaker 2: up street side and all of a sudden you're right there,
18:31
Speaker 2: your customers without having to pay the incredibly high price
18:34
Speaker 2: of real estate in Paris top side.
18:37
Speaker 3: Oh good point, it's not.
18:40
Speaker 2: I've read it somewhere.
18:42
Speaker 1: Mushroom farming was another big deal, because one thing you
18:45
Speaker 1: don't need a ton of for most mushrooms is light. Sometimes,
18:50
Speaker 1: you know, you want them to fruit. You may be
18:52
Speaker 1: able to manipulate light or something like that, but generally
18:56
Speaker 1: mushroom growing can be done in very dark places. And
18:59
Speaker 1: so starting in the nineteen century, actual mushroom farming and
19:03
Speaker 1: not just like I'm gonna grow a few mushrooms like
19:05
Speaker 1: they were producing about a thousand tons of catacom mushrooms
19:09
Speaker 1: a year.
19:09
Speaker 2: Yeah. For some reason, I'm gonna have to ask you
19:13
Speaker 2: never to use the word fruit and mushroom near each
19:16
Speaker 2: other again. I find it troubling for some reason. Really, Yeah,
19:20
Speaker 2: mushrooms fruiting is I don't like that at all.
19:24
Speaker 3: That's really funny.
19:25
Speaker 2: Yeah all right, but I'm serious though.
19:28
Speaker 3: No, I'll never do it.
19:29
Speaker 2: Okay, thank you, although you do owe me about seven
19:32
Speaker 2: or eight mentions for that oysters too.
19:34
Speaker 1: Oh that's right, I feel better now, okay, Oh yeah,
19:37
Speaker 1: that's right.
19:37
Speaker 2: You should tell everybody you're finally feeling good.
19:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm finally feeling well. It was I had some
19:43
Speaker 1: fruity mushrooms and everything's fine.
19:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, So let's see what else chuck Oh, I was
19:51
Speaker 2: totally joking when I said there's been hundreds of creative uses.
19:53
Speaker 2: There's been basically three, and two of them are technically
19:56
Speaker 2: the same, which is brewing alcohol.
19:58
Speaker 3: At mushroom farming.
19:59
Speaker 2: And what's third, brewing alcohol and brewing alcohol depending on
20:05
Speaker 2: which kind of alcohol, beer or scharchers. That's it.
20:08
Speaker 1: It's also been a good Heidi spot over the years,
20:10
Speaker 1: depending on what's going on with the government. During the
20:13
Speaker 1: French Revolution, revolutionaries hit out down there and were chased
20:18
Speaker 1: down there. Sure, there was an alt right group in
20:20
Speaker 1: the thirties called how would you pronounce that?
20:23
Speaker 2: Joshchaoul Lac of Ghoul.
20:27
Speaker 1: They not only hid down there, but would use it
20:30
Speaker 1: as a way to get around and potentially break into
20:33
Speaker 1: government buildings I guess from the bottom.
20:36
Speaker 2: Yeah. Until the fifties, and in some cases even decades
20:39
Speaker 2: after that, there were a lot of buildings in Paris
20:43
Speaker 2: who had doors, sometimes forgotten doors in their cellars or
20:48
Speaker 2: basements that led directly to the catacombs or the underground
20:52
Speaker 2: tunnels in Paris.
20:54
Speaker 3: Yeah, pretty cool.
20:54
Speaker 2: So it was kind of easy to get down there
20:56
Speaker 2: for a very long time. It's actually really recent that
20:59
Speaker 2: it's now very hard to get into the off limits parts.
21:04
Speaker 2: But as we'll see, that doesn't actually deter anybody.
21:08
Speaker 1: No, of course not during World War Two. Obviously there's
21:11
Speaker 1: going to be either Nazis down there or the French
21:15
Speaker 1: Resistance might be down there.
21:17
Speaker 2: Did you just see them in like adjoining tunnels but
21:19
Speaker 2: not knowing that the other one's there.
21:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, that sounds like a Tarantino thing.
21:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, it does.
21:25
Speaker 1: But what they're most famous for now is being able
21:28
Speaker 1: to go down there with your your niece the movie star. Yeah,
21:32
Speaker 1: it's been a tourist attraction since Napoleon said, you know,
21:35
Speaker 1: it would be great. The year's eighteen oh nine. I
21:37
Speaker 1: think it's high time we start letting people down there
21:40
Speaker 1: to tour this pretty cool thing. And it's sort of
21:44
Speaker 1: vacillated over the years. It used to be like, you know,
21:46
Speaker 1: you could go down there once a month be you
21:48
Speaker 1: were citizen of Paris. Only sometimes it was like quarterly.
21:53
Speaker 1: Finally they said, you know what, let's just make money
21:58
Speaker 1: on this, right and it's open what Tuesday to Sunday.
22:03
Speaker 1: I guess it close on Monday, like a lot of
22:04
Speaker 1: museums do. Ninety five to eight thirty. It'll cost you
22:08
Speaker 1: thirty one euros these days, which is about the same
22:12
Speaker 1: in dollars I think right right now.
22:14
Speaker 2: It's like point ninety six euros to the dollar I
22:16
Speaker 2: think today.
22:17
Speaker 3: Okay, so pretty close, man, you really keep up with that.
22:20
Speaker 3: Not bad.
22:22
Speaker 2: Thanks.
22:23
Speaker 3: Let me see how my eurostocks are doing. No.
22:26
Speaker 2: Actually, to tell you the truth, I was going to
22:29
Speaker 2: translate the dollar that you could make off of a
22:34
Speaker 2: cow in our our Tragedy of the Commons episode euros
22:39
Speaker 2: and we never got around to it.
22:42
Speaker 3: That's funny.
22:42
Speaker 2: I can also tell you zero point eight pounds to
22:44
Speaker 2: the dollar today as well. But a dollar one sixty
22:49
Speaker 2: Australian dollars to the dollar.
22:51
Speaker 1: Well, I just came back from Mexico City, so I
22:53
Speaker 1: basically just divide by twenty?
22:56
Speaker 2: Is it twenty now? It was like ten last time
22:58
Speaker 2: we were there.
23:00
Speaker 3: Has it changed twenty?
23:01
Speaker 2: Has it was? Am I just wrong? It was twenty
23:03
Speaker 2: back then.
23:05
Speaker 1: I don't know, but I think you divide by twenty
23:07
Speaker 1: ish now. And but my friends that we were with
23:10
Speaker 1: were like, I can't even think of it that way.
23:11
Speaker 3: I have to.
23:12
Speaker 1: I heard if all you have to do is like
23:14
Speaker 1: drop a zero and then divide that in half, so
23:17
Speaker 1: everyone has to.
23:18
Speaker 2: Jump on one and shout how much is this?
23:24
Speaker 3: Exactly?
23:26
Speaker 1: How long does the tour take? Josh, you went through it? Uh?
23:29
Speaker 2: An hour? I don't remember it taking an hour more
23:32
Speaker 2: or less. I don't it was. It's weird because when
23:35
Speaker 2: you're in the catacombs, you're out of time, like there
23:38
Speaker 2: is no no light whatsoever reaching you. The only light
23:42
Speaker 2: in there is electric and apparently that's only been around
23:45
Speaker 2: since the seventies. Before that, they give you a candle
23:48
Speaker 2: and take good luck, but it's it's the light that
23:52
Speaker 2: isn't there is almost It makes it even eerier because
23:55
Speaker 2: it's sodium light, so it's got a kind of an
23:57
Speaker 2: orangish yellowish cast to it. Oh yeah, it's just a
24:01
Speaker 2: weird place to be. So I believe that it's an hour,
24:04
Speaker 2: but I have no recollection of how long it took.
24:07
Speaker 1: Okay, that sounds about right. You go down a big
24:10
Speaker 1: spiral staircase. There's a lot of stair climate obviously, right.
24:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's yes, there is, Okay, like five hundred steps
24:19
Speaker 2: or something. Like that. So, yeah, you go down like
24:20
Speaker 2: a spiral staircase and there's multiple stairs.
24:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you're walking down, down, down Before you enter
24:29
Speaker 1: you go, you go through something called the Port Mahone Corridor,
24:33
Speaker 1: which has a replica of the Port Mahone Fortress. I
24:37
Speaker 1: imagine that looks kind of cool, right, it does.
24:39
Speaker 2: I don't remember it, but I looked up a picture
24:41
Speaker 2: and a little bit on that. The guy who carved
24:45
Speaker 2: that was a not a hostage, an inmate at this
24:51
Speaker 2: prison for years and redid it from memory, carved into
24:57
Speaker 2: the stone.
24:57
Speaker 3: Wow, that's pretty cool.
24:58
Speaker 2: And he actually died there from a landslide or a
25:04
Speaker 2: rock in or something like that. I can't remember what
25:05
Speaker 2: it's called. While he was building some steps to get
25:10
Speaker 2: to it.
25:11
Speaker 3: Oh geez.
25:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, he really he dedicated his life to that thing.
25:16
Speaker 3: That's very sad.
25:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, but appropriate for the catacombs. Yeah, if you think about.
25:22
Speaker 1: It, if you can just stay right there, if you die,
25:26
Speaker 1: Like you mentioned, seventy two is when electricity came along.
25:29
Speaker 1: There is something called Ariadne's thread, a black line to
25:35
Speaker 1: ensure that you don't get lost. And I thought, well,
25:38
Speaker 1: what a strange name that is.
25:40
Speaker 2: Oh, you looked it up too.
25:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, so Ariadney was a daughter of King Minus and
25:45
Speaker 1: was associated with mazes and labyrinths. And while it is
25:49
Speaker 1: a literal thing painted there, it's also you know, ties
25:53
Speaker 1: back to Ariadne and the sort of like while she
25:58
Speaker 1: was a person, it's also like a logic, like applying
26:01
Speaker 1: logic to all possible routes of a maze to get
26:03
Speaker 1: out is Ariadne as well?
26:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, I also saw that she helped theseus get out
26:10
Speaker 2: of the labyrinth by leaving a thread for him to
26:13
Speaker 2: follow back after he slew the minotaur.
26:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, what does this look like? Though I couldn't find
26:18
Speaker 1: any pictures of this actually in the cateculmy.
26:20
Speaker 2: I don't remember it either. Okay, it's supposedly on the ceiling,
26:24
Speaker 2: and I think it's just a black line.
26:28
Speaker 3: Okay, that's yeah, Boy, you don't remember much about.
26:30
Speaker 2: This, I don't. It's weird, Like I have pictures of it,
26:34
Speaker 2: and I remember the thing with Mila, But like a
26:37
Speaker 2: lot of these pictures that I went and looked at online,
26:40
Speaker 2: I'm like, I don't remember seeing that at all. I
26:43
Speaker 2: don't think I was drunk. I'm pretty sure I was
26:46
Speaker 2: fairly sober. I think I just my episodic memories shot
26:50
Speaker 2: the Holy.
26:51
Speaker 3: Heck you remember those boobs?
26:55
Speaker 2: I do. I guess they made more of an impression
26:57
Speaker 2: on me than I remembered.
27:00
Speaker 3: You mentioned.
27:01
Speaker 1: Well, let's talk about some of these chambers. A lot
27:04
Speaker 1: of them are like the coolest parts of the catacombs
27:08
Speaker 1: are not open to the public and technically officially illegal
27:12
Speaker 1: and off limits.
27:13
Speaker 2: So okay, but that might that may be why I
27:15
Speaker 2: don't remember some.
27:16
Speaker 1: Of these, because they weren't the super cool once we're
27:19
Speaker 1: not on the tour.
27:21
Speaker 2: I guess I'm just hey man, I'm just grasping at
27:23
Speaker 2: straws here. Help me out.
27:25
Speaker 1: Well, I looked at some pictures of some of these.
27:27
Speaker 1: The Laplage, which means the beach, is a really cool
27:30
Speaker 1: room because it's got a sandy floor and they painted
27:33
Speaker 1: like a beach scene on the wall. But it's it
27:36
Speaker 1: looks I mean, all these places look like the like
27:39
Speaker 1: where the Lost Boys might hang out.
27:40
Speaker 2: You know. That was one of the coolest things about
27:43
Speaker 2: that movie, that backstory that the crazy, amazing rich hotel
27:49
Speaker 2: slid into the ocean and now that's where they lived
27:52
Speaker 2: and there were old chandeliers coming hanging.
27:54
Speaker 3: Out about that.
27:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, totally what it was super cool. Yeah, what else?
27:58
Speaker 1: What other cool rooms are off?
28:00
Speaker 2: That's it.
28:03
Speaker 3: You're not gonna talk about Sala z or Z.
28:09
Speaker 2: I did not look that one up, but there are
28:10
Speaker 2: let me, let me give you a couple other ones.
28:12
Speaker 2: There was a group called the Mexican de la pearfores PAFA.
28:17
Speaker 2: Let's just say it like that. They overtook one of
28:21
Speaker 2: the caves beneath the Palais de Chillo and set up
28:25
Speaker 2: a movie theater there with a bar and room for
28:29
Speaker 2: twenty people to watch a movie. And I did not
28:31
Speaker 2: find what movie they showed.
28:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is super cool.
28:35
Speaker 3: That was.
28:38
Speaker 1: A subset of a group called UX, short for Urban Experiment,
28:42
Speaker 1: and they are these It's an artist collective in Paris,
28:46
Speaker 1: founded in nineteen eighty one and by a group of
28:49
Speaker 1: teenagers back then that like they'll do this cool stuff,
28:54
Speaker 1: like they snuck into the Pantheon for months in a
28:58
Speaker 1: row to restore a clock there, but like on the
29:01
Speaker 1: on the down low.
29:02
Speaker 2: Yeah that I saw. That was a subgroup of UX
29:05
Speaker 2: called the unter Gunther and they were the ones that
29:08
Speaker 2: actually did the clock. UX is almost like an umbrella group.
29:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, just like the group that did the movie theater.
29:14
Speaker 2: They were a subgroup, right exactly. And then UX also
29:18
Speaker 2: is like a acronym for urban explorer too, which these
29:22
Speaker 2: people also are. So they kind of almost made a
29:24
Speaker 2: play on slang, which is really something.
29:29
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is really something.
29:30
Speaker 1: But all of these people who sneak down there and
29:33
Speaker 1: do stuff are known as cataphiles, and those are the people,
29:37
Speaker 1: the urban adventurers who illegally find their way into the
29:41
Speaker 1: catacombs to to party, to hang out, to show movies,
29:47
Speaker 1: to have concerts and parties and like.
29:53
Speaker 3: All things. All kinds of things.
29:55
Speaker 1: Are going on down there over the decades, and it
29:58
Speaker 1: seems to have re kicked off. I mean they've been
30:02
Speaker 1: doing it since the eighteen hundreds. I think they had
30:04
Speaker 1: a a Chopin, like forty five piece orchestra did a
30:09
Speaker 1: Chopon concert down there.
30:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, they played Chopin's Funeral March and I was like, yeah,
30:13
Speaker 2: I'm not familiar with that one. It's Darth Vader's.
30:16
Speaker 1: Theme, is it or does it just sound like it?
30:22
Speaker 2: It's Darth Vader's There's it's not possible that John Williams
30:25
Speaker 2: just coincidentally came up with that. As to the theme, Yeah,
30:30
Speaker 2: it's like an adaptation of the funeral march.
30:33
Speaker 1: Okay, well that's probably a well known thing, then.
30:35
Speaker 2: It's gotta be. I've never heard that before though now
30:38
Speaker 2: I know everything there is about Star Wars. Just try me.
30:44
Speaker 1: In the seventies and eighties is when it seems like
30:46
Speaker 1: the cataphiles really kind of you know, took roost down
30:50
Speaker 1: there because it was a great place to go hide,
30:53
Speaker 1: like the punk rock movement kind of moved downstairs, underground
30:57
Speaker 1: literally underground.
30:59
Speaker 2: Hey.
31:00
Speaker 1: Then they've tried to keep people out over the years,
31:01
Speaker 1: but like you said, people are going to find a
31:02
Speaker 1: way in if they want to.
31:03
Speaker 2: That's right. And I say, we take another break and
31:07
Speaker 2: we'll come back and find out. Do people find their
31:09
Speaker 2: way in if they want to after this, let's do it.
31:37
Speaker 1: So, Yeah, people do find their way in, like I said,
31:40
Speaker 1: And they've been doing that a lot since the beginning.
31:43
Speaker 1: And you know, besides partying and doing drugs, like there
31:46
Speaker 1: are all kinds of like cool works of art, the
31:48
Speaker 1: murals painted on some walls, obviously, all kinds of graffiti.
31:53
Speaker 1: Sometimes they leave messages and leaflets and things for each
31:57
Speaker 1: other to find and try to avoid. The cataflix, which
32:01
Speaker 1: is literally translated as catach.
32:03
Speaker 2: Cops Yeah, this is a special detachment of the Gendarmes
32:08
Speaker 2: that their whole thing is catching people down in the tunnels.
32:13
Speaker 2: And from what I read that, if you're a true cataphile,
32:18
Speaker 2: and I guess there was an article in the I
32:20
Speaker 2: think twenty fifteen or something like that that estimated there's
32:23
Speaker 2: around one hundred genuine cataphiles, the cataflicks are probably going
32:29
Speaker 2: to leave you alone at the very least, just maybe
32:33
Speaker 2: give you a warning or something like that. If you're
32:35
Speaker 2: a tourist in the sense of like the fight club
32:39
Speaker 2: support group tourists, then you're probably going to get that
32:43
Speaker 2: sixty euro fine because you really, as far as the
32:46
Speaker 2: cataflics are concerned, you have no business being down there.
32:48
Speaker 2: It's dangerous. You got no respect for tradition, like the
32:52
Speaker 2: actual cataphiles too. And something else I read, Chuck, you're
32:56
Speaker 2: actually trespassing a private property because if you buy a
32:59
Speaker 2: piece of real estate in Paris, your ownership extends to
33:04
Speaker 2: whatever is below it in the underground. Wow, that sounds
33:07
Speaker 2: kind of cool until your house caves in and the
33:11
Speaker 2: city's like it's your property top to bottom. So good
33:15
Speaker 2: luck with that.
33:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, wow, I didn't know that that's pretty cool.
33:19
Speaker 2: And they actually at city hall make that sound when
33:21
Speaker 2: you come in to ask them for help.
33:24
Speaker 3: You know, Parisians pioneered the fart noise.
33:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, the raspberry, the the spine. That's sixty euros you mentioned,
33:34
Speaker 1: I saw sixty five. I mean that's just like double
33:36
Speaker 1: the cost of legal entry. So it's it's not the
33:38
Speaker 1: biggest fine.
33:38
Speaker 2: No, no, no, And it kind of does kind of
33:42
Speaker 2: give you a sense that it's not considered like the
33:45
Speaker 2: the crime of the century in Paris. But at the
33:48
Speaker 2: same time there's a special police attachment to catch people
33:52
Speaker 2: doing that, so there's almost mixed messages with that.
33:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, the IGC, that inspection group with a
33:59
Speaker 1: French name, still maintains it and they've been doing so
34:03
Speaker 1: since seventeen seventy seven, and there are still collapses here
34:06
Speaker 1: and there, but it is mainly short up. Oh. This
34:10
Speaker 1: other thing I thought was fun that the ways that
34:12
Speaker 1: people have found their way in. When they close off
34:15
Speaker 1: an area, sometimes the cataphiles will go in there and
34:17
Speaker 1: like reopen it and make a way to get in,
34:20
Speaker 1: and they're called I don't know how you would say
34:23
Speaker 1: it in French, but it translates as cat flaps like
34:25
Speaker 1: a cat door.
34:27
Speaker 3: Kind of cool.
34:27
Speaker 2: Shatty ears, shatty airs shot is chat that's cat and
34:33
Speaker 2: e airs is flaps. I guess.
34:36
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's been in a bunch of movies and stuff too, right.
34:40
Speaker 2: Yeah. One of the most famous uses of the Paris
34:43
Speaker 2: Underground came in The Phantom of the Opera. And I'm
34:47
Speaker 2: not sure if it was in the original novel, although
34:50
Speaker 2: it probably was, but I certainly know that in the
34:53
Speaker 2: stage play or the musical, that's where the Phantom lives.
34:58
Speaker 2: But more of the point, there's suppose like an underground
35:01
Speaker 2: lake there that the Phantom like ros Is gondola on. Right. Cool,
35:06
Speaker 2: There actually is an underground reservoir under the Paris Opera House.
35:11
Speaker 2: It's not an urban legend that guesst On throw made up.
35:14
Speaker 2: It was or Andrew Lloyd Webber, one of the two
35:18
Speaker 2: that when they were building the Opera House, to keep
35:21
Speaker 2: the foundation from just filling up with water over and
35:23
Speaker 2: over again while they were building it, they built a
35:27
Speaker 2: reservoir to impound the water in, and so it's like
35:30
Speaker 2: a twelve feet deep by almost I think like sixty
35:34
Speaker 2: yards sixty meters long. Hey, little reservoir that you could
35:38
Speaker 2: conceivably sale of gondola on if you were the kind
35:41
Speaker 2: of person to live underground.
35:43
Speaker 1: Do you know if the water is it continually filling up?
35:48
Speaker 2: I don't know. Give me a break, man.
35:53
Speaker 1: Oh what about the average?
35:56
Speaker 2: Right? But I mean so it definitely has to be
35:59
Speaker 2: constantly replace because they had to build this reservoir, yeah,
36:02
Speaker 2: to hold the water that was always trickling in. But yeah,
36:05
Speaker 2: it makes sense. Why why wouldn't it overflow once in
36:08
Speaker 2: a while.
36:08
Speaker 3: I don't know that shouldn't a beast?
36:10
Speaker 2: I don't know, you're ruined the story.
36:12
Speaker 1: But gamers might recognize the catacombs from Assassin's Creed unity
36:18
Speaker 1: pretty cool.
36:19
Speaker 2: I was looking at screenshots of that. It's pretty neat.
36:21
Speaker 2: Did you play that?
36:22
Speaker 3: Yeah? No, I didn't play that.
36:23
Speaker 1: Do you play any of them Assassin's Creeds?
36:26
Speaker 3: No?
36:27
Speaker 2: Do you have something scream?
36:29
Speaker 3: No? I just you know, my gaming is limited.
36:32
Speaker 2: I see what's your latest game.
36:35
Speaker 1: I'm playing a horror game right now called Alan Wake two.
36:39
Speaker 1: It's the second Alan Wake and I'd never played a
36:42
Speaker 1: horror game before, and it is pretty scary.
36:46
Speaker 2: So it's genuinely scary. Yeah, that's awesome.
36:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like when you're playing this game and you know,
36:52
Speaker 1: they look so good now and there's so realistic. So
36:54
Speaker 1: you're creeping around with a flashlight in these rooms and
36:58
Speaker 1: you hear noises and see things in it's like it's
37:00
Speaker 1: super creepy.
37:01
Speaker 2: Are they like jump scares or do they just create
37:03
Speaker 2: like a sense of ongoing dread? Both, Wow, that's master.
37:07
Speaker 1: Definitely ongoing dread. And then when the jump scare happens,
37:10
Speaker 1: when when a bad person comes out.
37:11
Speaker 3: It's just yeah, it's it's scares, big grown.
37:15
Speaker 2: Boy, chucky, fantastic.
37:17
Speaker 3: Alan Wake to everybody, like.
37:19
Speaker 2: Alan Wake, like somebody's name, yeah, the second or the sequel?
37:25
Speaker 1: The sequel, Okay, it would be Alan Wake Junior. I
37:29
Speaker 1: think problem, I guess, so don't call me junior.
37:31
Speaker 2: Henry Ford the second was not a junior.
37:34
Speaker 3: Yeah, because who wants to be called junior?
37:36
Speaker 2: I don't know. I'd go with JR. If I was
37:39
Speaker 2: a junior. Oh, totally call me JR. What does it
37:43
Speaker 2: stand for? Stands for junior?
37:47
Speaker 1: Uh, here's one cool thing, and this guy might be
37:50
Speaker 1: worth a podcast on his own. But there was a
37:53
Speaker 1: photographer as he went by the name Nadar. I guess
37:57
Speaker 1: in a dar And this is in the eighteenth sixties.
38:00
Speaker 1: His real name is.
38:03
Speaker 3: Felix. I guess how would you pronounce that last name?
38:06
Speaker 2: Oh to.
38:08
Speaker 3: Sean.
38:09
Speaker 1: He was a very accomplished dude, sort of the pioneer
38:11
Speaker 1: of the medium. This is early photography and the guy
38:15
Speaker 1: in Paris photography wise at the time. But he invented
38:19
Speaker 1: a battery operated light basically and is one of the
38:22
Speaker 1: first people ever in the history of photography to use
38:26
Speaker 1: artificial light to take a picture. And over the course
38:29
Speaker 1: of three months starting in eighteen sixty one, he went
38:31
Speaker 1: down into the catacombs with you know, eighteen minutes per exposure. Yeah,
38:37
Speaker 1: took a lot of pictures of the catacombs and they
38:40
Speaker 1: are super cool and creepy pictures from eighteen sixty one.
38:44
Speaker 2: They are creepy. What's cool is because of that eighteen
38:46
Speaker 2: minute exposure time, any of the photographs of workers working
38:51
Speaker 2: in the catacombs are actually dummies as stand ins.
38:55
Speaker 3: Ah, that makes sense.
38:56
Speaker 2: It makes it even a little creepier too, if you
38:59
Speaker 2: ask me.
39:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, and those headmones weren't moving, so they're fine.
39:02
Speaker 2: I've got I have one more thing for you about
39:05
Speaker 2: dummies in underground places. There's a awesome one of the
39:09
Speaker 2: great I'm sure. I've talked about before. One of the
39:11
Speaker 2: greatest tourist attractions I've ever been to in my life
39:13
Speaker 2: was in Budapest. There's something called the Hospital in the Rock,
39:17
Speaker 2: and I think it was maybe World War two, maybe
39:20
Speaker 2: Cold War, but it was a hospital that they dug
39:23
Speaker 2: out of a cave system on a like a stone
39:26
Speaker 2: hill in Budapest. Wow, And it's a hospital. It's got
39:30
Speaker 2: like that white, creepy subway tile, like there's gurneys everywhere still,
39:36
Speaker 2: and it was like, this is a emergency hospital in
39:38
Speaker 2: case the town ever got bombed or whatever. And they
39:41
Speaker 2: have dummies everywhere, mannequins, and that just just chef's kisses
39:47
Speaker 2: it for me, Like it makes it so scary, even
39:50
Speaker 2: though they're not trying to make it scary. Yeah, it
39:53
Speaker 2: just really is. I think if you have dummies in
39:57
Speaker 2: your tourist attraction, you've just taken it to another level.
40:02
Speaker 2: Like put dummies in your touris. Don't just leave it
40:05
Speaker 2: for people use their dumb imaginations, Like give them some
40:08
Speaker 2: dummies dressed up and it'll really make it. You'll you'll
40:11
Speaker 2: be rolling in the dough after that. I think.
40:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, the very least is gonna up the creep
40:17
Speaker 1: factor because that just dead, dead eyed expression of a dummies.
40:20
Speaker 2: Right. Great, But if you ever go to Budapest, you
40:23
Speaker 2: have to go to the hospital in the rock. It's amazing.
40:26
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to ask Emily. You know she took
40:28
Speaker 1: a solo trip there a couple of years ago. I
40:30
Speaker 1: need to see if she went there.
40:31
Speaker 2: I think I asked you if she did or not,
40:33
Speaker 2: And I don't know if she did.
40:35
Speaker 3: But probably not because she would have. I feel like
40:37
Speaker 3: I would have remembered her telling you.
40:38
Speaker 2: It definitely seems like it would have been up her
40:40
Speaker 2: alley though, for sure.
40:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, She's like, were their paintings there then?
40:44
Speaker 3: I didn't know.
40:46
Speaker 2: The dummies their faces were?
40:48
Speaker 1: Oh that's true.
40:50
Speaker 3: What about crime?
40:51
Speaker 1: There's been a lot of crime there over the years, because,
40:54
Speaker 1: like you said, that's a good place to pop underground
40:56
Speaker 1: and then pop up into somebody's like expensive wine cellar
41:00
Speaker 1: or something.
41:01
Speaker 2: Yeah. Apparently in twenty seventeen some thieves stole over a
41:05
Speaker 2: quarter of a million dollars worth of wine that was
41:08
Speaker 2: cooling in a cave I guess belong to some winery.
41:14
Speaker 3: Yeah.
41:14
Speaker 2: Cool.
41:16
Speaker 1: People have been stealing bones down there since. There have
41:18
Speaker 1: been bones down there, highly illegal.
41:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, you don't want to do that, I mean, just
41:22
Speaker 2: not just for the illegality, that's really disrespectful.
41:26
Speaker 3: Yeah.
41:26
Speaker 1: I think that a lot of them back in the
41:28
Speaker 1: day were to sell to sort of like kidaber Selta
41:32
Speaker 1: medical students, like, hey, here's a headbone for however many francs.
41:37
Speaker 2: Right, shekels, Yeah, what about ghosts, chuck.
41:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course there's going to be ghosts down there.
41:45
Speaker 1: And there's a couple of more well known than others.
41:48
Speaker 1: I think the most well known is a guy named
41:52
Speaker 1: Philibert Aspare.
41:55
Speaker 2: Yeah. You can put a little little emphasis on the
41:57
Speaker 2: tea at the end.
41:58
Speaker 1: There as sperit.
42:00
Speaker 2: So maybe that's a little too much. But somewhere in
42:02
Speaker 2: between those two.
42:03
Speaker 1: I know I'm wrong, But when it comes to French,
42:05
Speaker 1: I just want to drop the last letter of everything.
42:07
Speaker 4: Well, they do that a lot, get you exactly exactly Anyway,
42:14
Speaker 4: He worked at a military hospital in the late eighteenth
42:17
Speaker 4: century and apparently in seventeen ninety three got lost in
42:21
Speaker 4: the catacombs.
42:22
Speaker 1: With his own loan candle and never found his way out.
42:27
Speaker 1: And just like like I said, the convenient thing about
42:30
Speaker 1: dying down there is you just stay there and apparently
42:33
Speaker 1: if you bring a candle there, you hear his voice
42:35
Speaker 1: just before the candle goes out.
42:37
Speaker 2: He says, welcomin bienviny.
42:44
Speaker 1: Were you creeped out down there? Was it just like, oh,
42:46
Speaker 1: this is a cool thing.
42:47
Speaker 2: It was not at all creepy. It's not presented to
42:50
Speaker 2: be creepy either. It's just it is what it is, right,
42:56
Speaker 2: a bunch of bones. Yeah, I was not at all
42:58
Speaker 2: creeped out.
43:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, I gotta go check it out next time.
43:03
Speaker 1: Did you look at that video, by the way, the
43:04
Speaker 1: one that's like highly likely faked.
43:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't. I wasn't moved by it at all.
43:10
Speaker 1: Were you No, there's this videotape that I think it
43:14
Speaker 1: was like twenty seventeen that circulated that was like, you know,
43:19
Speaker 1: it's like a blair witch thing, like is it real?
43:21
Speaker 3: Is it not?
43:21
Speaker 1: It was a guy walking through the catacombs and apparently
43:24
Speaker 1: gets lost and starts to freak out and run and
43:27
Speaker 1: hear sounds and then the last shot you see is
43:29
Speaker 1: like the camera falling to the ground into like a puddle,
43:33
Speaker 1: And some people say it's real, some people say it's not.
43:36
Speaker 2: It.
43:36
Speaker 3: I don't know.
43:36
Speaker 1: It feels like it's probably faked, but I wasn't like,
43:39
Speaker 1: oh my god, it was kind of not that interesting.
43:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, agreed, it was like a dull, two sentence horror story.
43:46
Speaker 3: Yeah agreed.
43:48
Speaker 2: You got anything else about the catacombs?
43:51
Speaker 3: Nope, it's on the list.
43:52
Speaker 2: Yep, you should go. You'll enjoy it, and don't forget
43:54
Speaker 2: the hospital in the Rock too.
43:56
Speaker 3: Right.
43:57
Speaker 2: Since Chuck said write, of course, that means it's time
43:59
Speaker 2: for a listener.
43:59
Speaker 1: May here's a correction to our Gonk Show episode. Hey guys,
44:06
Speaker 1: there was one big error in this.
44:08
Speaker 2: Oh I know what she says is an omission.
44:12
Speaker 3: No, something we got wrong. What was our omission?
44:15
Speaker 2: Jane Jane the Dancing Machine?
44:17
Speaker 1: Oh you believe we.
44:18
Speaker 2: Didn't mention Jane Jane the Dancing Machine in the entire episode.
44:23
Speaker 1: I thought we had, but apparently we didn't. But yeah,
44:26
Speaker 1: I think big shout out to Gene Jen a legend
44:29
Speaker 1: of that show.
44:29
Speaker 2: I think both of us thought that we had, because
44:31
Speaker 2: Olivia clearly included him in the articles in there. I
44:35
Speaker 2: think we just passed over him and didn't didn't talk
44:38
Speaker 2: about him. It's just just sad.
44:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, no disrespect intended. We both loved Jean Jean. How
44:44
Speaker 1: do you not exactly, so this was an error. Though
44:47
Speaker 1: Chuck Barris, guys, did not invent syndication, it has been
44:51
Speaker 1: around in television forever, with some notable nineteen fifty shows
44:55
Speaker 1: such as Sea Hunting and Life with Elizabeth. Nor was
44:58
Speaker 1: the Parent Game the first indicated game show, or even
45:01
Speaker 1: Chuck's first syndicated show. First indicated game shows came in
45:05
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty five Everything's Relative and PDQ and Chuck Barris's
45:10
Speaker 1: first four A in nineteen sixty nine the Game Game.
45:14
Speaker 1: Initially that was to give local stations some color options,
45:17
Speaker 1: since old sitcoms wouldn't be in color, but syndication exploded
45:20
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy two because FCC gave the seven point
45:23
Speaker 1: thirty time slot back to the local stations, and for
45:26
Speaker 1: those stations it was cheaper to buy a game show
45:28
Speaker 1: than make than to make local content. I know this, guys,
45:32
Speaker 1: because I'm a bit of a semi pro TV historian.
45:35
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, with an emphastest on game shows in particular.
45:39
Speaker 1: So I feel a duty when something is broadly mistated
45:43
Speaker 1: as that was, I have to try and correct the record.
45:45
Speaker 1: I had hoped you use Gong this book as one
45:50
Speaker 1: of your sources as it was written by a real
45:52
Speaker 1: life TV historian named Adam Nedef, who I've done some.
45:56
Speaker 3: Research for in the past.
45:58
Speaker 1: I hope you're enjoying The snow today came a little
46:00
Speaker 1: while ago, but that is from Mike Berger in Livonia, Michigan.
46:05
Speaker 1: And Mike, you gotta hang on to your email and
46:07
Speaker 1: we might hitch up if we ever need any insight
46:10
Speaker 1: on TV history.
46:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks a lot, Mike. I mean, criticism from Caesar.
46:14
Speaker 2: That's pretty awesome, totally. Well, if you want to be
46:17
Speaker 2: like Mike and just completely devastate us in something we
46:20
Speaker 2: said and just show how utterly wrong we were, we'd
46:24
Speaker 2: love to hear that stuff, especially if you're an historian,
46:27
Speaker 2: semi pro or otherwise. You can send us an email
46:30
Speaker 2: to Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
46:37
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
46:40
Speaker 1: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
46:44
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.