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SYSK Gets Weird Playlist: Mermaids: Not a real thing · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Hey, everybody. We're back for another Gets Weird edition. Stuff
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: You Should Know Gets Weird playlist, and this is episode three.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: It's about mermaids, everybody. It's a pretty fun episode from
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: what I remember, and it is called Mermaids, colon, Not
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: a Real Thing.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Yeah, that's right.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Jerry's over there in the ether, floating,
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: possibly not existing. Who knows? And this is Stuff You
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: Should Know.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: That's right. Just a couple of mermen trying to make
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: their way in the world.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: Trying to keep their tails wet.
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah. You know?
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Because if that thing dries out, you've seen Splash.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's toast.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: No. She dried out and she was just fine.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: Oh, I thought, oh, you're thinking of E.T. when he
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: turned all white and dried out.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: I was thinking of Splash because I couldn't remember. It
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: was one of my favorite movies as a kid.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: It was a cute movie.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: It was one of those early HBO movies, early Tom Hanks,
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: which I'm a big fan of early Tom Hanks. And
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: I just thought it was a really fun, funny movie.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: John Candy?
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a great movie.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: What's-his-name played the evil man trying to expose her. Eugene Levy,
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: I think.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: Oh, was he the bad guy? Yeah, he was the
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: one that- You know that's a high quality movie when
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: Eugene Levy's the bad guy.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that was the SCTV crew. And he actually tried
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: to spray her and get her wet so she would- Oh,
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: was that? And in fact did turn into a mermaid
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: on the sidewalk.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: So that's what it was. If she got wet, she
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: turned into a mermaid.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: She got dried, no problem. Yes.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: And Daryl Hannah, of course, who's running around with Neil
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: Young now.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: Oh, really? Yeah.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: How about that couple? Huh. Sure. Why not? They're both environmentalists.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: But there's a lot of turquoise in that bedroom.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: I wonder if you hook up with Neil Young or
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: anyone like that if you're sort of a new relationship
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: and not like the wife they had for 40 years.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: If you're like, play a song, why don't you? What?
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: I wonder if you ask them to play music.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: Oh, like you're actually into them? Yeah, like if you're
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: Billy Joel's.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: New 25-year-old wife, do you ever say like, hey, honey,
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: play me a tune? Right.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: Play that one that you wrote 10 years before I
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: was conceived.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: I think what I'm saying is I would have a
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: hard time being with Neil Young and not every night
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: after dinner just kind of nudging the guitar toward him.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: Oh, I gotcha.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: And saying, I'd love to hear Old Man.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Please, baby, one for me.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: And yeah, he says I've played that song 45,000 times. Yeah,
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: I would guess that.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: Well, I can tell you, I would guess that Once
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: you reach a certain point in playing a song, you
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: never want to hear that song or even think about
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: it existing again.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: But then you still have to play it.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: Oh, I try not to think about that when I'm
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: at those shows.
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It makes me feel bad for them. Like, they
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: might as well be, you know, in the monkey house
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: or something.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: And you're just throwing bananas at them.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: And God bless the people who really bring it still.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: Where you feel like, man, they're playing that song for
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: me tonight.
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: Adamant.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: Does he still bring it?
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: He's just who came to mind.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: Whereas when I saw the police on their reunion, they
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: were phoning it in. Really?
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Even Stuart Copeland?
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean, they were playing the songs, but it
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: didn't look like they were enjoying themselves at all. It
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: looked like a total money grab.
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: They entered from three separate entrances and exited from three separate.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: And I got the feeling they didn't even speak much.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: I was reading an article on the Ramones.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: The Rolling Stone one recently?
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: Uh, yeah, I guess it was.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah. They had a great article on them.
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: So yeah, I guess it was, it was definitely Rolling Stone. So, okay.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: Did you read it? Yeah. Then it was awesome. But yeah,
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: like they, they would, they would just like get on
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: the bus and not speak to one another. Yeah. Go
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: to the next town and get on stage and play
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: and then come off stage and not like they would,
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: they would speak on stage cause they had to. Yeah.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: That was it.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: And apparently, well, at least Joey and who was his
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: big foil?
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: Dee Dee Dee.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: Those ones who really hated each other.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: Supposedly they didn't speak at all for like 25 years straight.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: Right, because Joey stole Dee Dee's love of his life.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: And then they were in the band together still after that.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: It was just like, T.S., man.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: So weird.
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: So like a lot of songs, especially ones like the
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: KKK Took My Baby Away, that's about Joey stealing Dee
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: Dee's girlfriend.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: Wow. That's a great article. Yeah. Good read. Yeah. So
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: back to Splash. Funny movie about a mermaid. And we're
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: going to talk about mermaids here. And mostly what we're
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: going to cover is the lore and history and the
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: mythology of the mermaid. Because here's a little giveaway. There
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: are no mermaids. What? Did you look up like pictures
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: of real mermaid sightings and stuff? Yeah.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: And it's the same thing as pictures of Bigfoot sightings
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: and pictures of UFO sightings.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: Some weird distant blur that like you can't. It could
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: be kelp.
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: Or it's. such an obviously doctored photo. What would be fun, though,
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: is if we had a time machine, forget killing Hitler.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: We do.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: The playback machine. Oh, yeah, that's right. I can't believe
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: we haven't put this into good use. Forget, like, you know,
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: saving the world or keeping the dodo from going extinct.
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: I would take some of these doctored photos that are
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: just so easy to make today back to, like, the
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: 1920s and be like, look at this. And they go, yeah,
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: I know. We still believe in that stuff.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: With your aim being what?
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: Just to freak them out. Oh.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: I figured there'd be a money angle.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: Josh is traveling Wonder Emporium.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: That's not a bad idea.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: Where in which you just show them photos.
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: But I charge them, like, 2016 rates, and no one
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: can possibly afford that, so I go out of business, like,
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: almost immediately. Right.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: There's, like, one guy in the town that's like, I'll
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: pay $ 27. 50 to see those.
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: Right. Step right up. Town's only billionaire. Um.
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: That's a great idea. No one ever thought of that.
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: It was a terrible idea from beginning to end.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: Forget going back and betting on the stock market or
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: the outcome of the World Series.
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: I'm going to go back and set up a business
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: doomed to fail.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: All right, so let's talk about mermaid lore. Well, we
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: can start here in the more modern age because there
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: are still places that try and take people for money
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: like we were just talking about even.
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like me.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: In fact, in Israel... On the coast there, they actually
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: have a town called Kiryat Yam. It's a great name.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: And if you go to Kiryat Yam, you could win
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: how much money? Does it even say?
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: A million bucks.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: A million American dollars if you.
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: If you provide incontrovertible evidence of the mermaid that is
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: reputed to.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: Wander the shores.
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: Live there.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: And appear at sunset. As of 2009 was the first
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: sighting there. Yeah.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: And, of course, what that is is a ploy to
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: try and get tourists to come and spend money in
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: the town and look for the mermaid.
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: Sure. Come on, chumps. We welcome you to Kiryat Yam.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: I'm sure Loch Ness has made plenty of tourist money
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: over the years.
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: Apparently, they have a standing offer as well, and that's
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: where the mayor of Kiryat Yam got the idea.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Great idea.
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: Sure. And, actually, I saw that photo, too. And it's
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: kind of neat. I don't know what it is or
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: who created it or whatever. But there's allegedly a photo taken, obviously,
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: from like a cliff down onto a beach. You know
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: a beach that will have like a big just slab
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: of rock surrounded by sand?
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, sand and mermaids. Right.
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: There's a mermaid on that rock just kind of looking
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: out at the sea.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: And, of course, it could be anything. It could be
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: totally doctored. Who knows? But it's from a distance, and
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: at least they didn't go full out, like perfect picture
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: of a mermaid or whatever. It's just suggestive enough that
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: people who believe in such things would be like, they're
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: right there. There's a picture of a mermaid, you know?
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: Totally.
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: So that was found in 2009, or that surfaced in 2009.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: Surfaced?
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: Right. Since then, the towns had that standing offer.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: Correct. Correct. So the interesting thing to me about mermaids
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: is the mythology. Did you take mythology in college at all?
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I did. I always wanted it to interest me
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: more than it did.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: Me too.
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: It was just... I don't know if it wasn't explained
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: to me quite well enough or just the ancients' non-bicameral
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: mind wasn't fused together enough to interest people in the
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: modern age.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: Well, I think so. I think the stories themselves... as
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: far as good storytelling, were just lacking. Because a lot
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: of them were just versions of one another. And there
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: was usually a very basic premise or moral.
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: And in the case of mermaids, a lot of times
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: they were, a lot of folklore even was rooted in misogyny.
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, for sure.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: There'll be a woman to come along and screw your
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: life up.
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: Right, or if you screw up a woman, she will
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: kill your children or something like that. Women were not
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: to be trusted, and they were murderous and duplicitous in
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: a lot of mythology. It's true.
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: The old hag. So it was in various, I mean,
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: hundreds and hundreds of books and texts, including the Talmud,
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: believe it or not. And we've talked about Pliny the Elder,
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: the beer, and... the dude.
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: Rome's Pliny the Elder. He, in his natural history, talked
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: about a mermaid-like creature called.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: The Nereid.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: I think I'm pronouncing that correctly.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, N-E-R-E-I-D.
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: That E-I is a tough transition.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: It is.
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: Because you want to say, like, Nereid. Yeah. Nereid.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: These were sea nymphs, half-human, half-fish mermaids. And he also
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: talked about sea men. And we should point out that mer-men,
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: we made the joke about us being mer-men.
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: I believe mer-men were even first on the literary scene.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: Is that correct?
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: Well, first at least with mythology or theology, I guess.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: There's a Babylonian god of the sea named Ea.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: Ea.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: Ea.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: Sports.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: Just EA.
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: And he pops up in Babylonian mythology from, I think,
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: 4,000 years ago. And they think that he's actually the
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: progenitor of, or the predecessor, I should say, of Poseidon,
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: who is the Greek god of the sea, and Neptune,
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: who's the Roman god of the sea. Because the Greeks
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: gave us Western culture, but they just walked around to
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: all of the neighboring cultures and And pick their favorite
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: parts and put them together. Yeah. And that was definitely
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: one of them.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Well, we talked in our... I
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: guess it was in the folklore and fairy tale episodes.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: There were twin episodes almost.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: About the original Little Mermaid and how she was Disney-fied
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: to the fullest. But the original story was far darker.
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: Darker, but also... Even more touching by far.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: Like I went back and read the last section of it.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: Well, give me a summary at the end.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: So at the end, this is where it dramatically differs
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: from the Disney story. The Little Mermaid is scorned for
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: another woman. The guy she loves chooses someone else and
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: marries her. And the Little Mermaid is like, dude, I
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: gave up my tail for you. Yeah. I think a
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: witch has my tongue kind of thing. Um, and I
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: want to get back my life. So her sisters came
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: and bring her this ritual knife and say, you can
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: convert back to a mermaid. If before dawn you plunge
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: this knife into this dude's heart, this guy who loves
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: heart and you get some of his blood on your feet,
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: you will regrow your tail and you can jump into
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: the sea and everything will be just fine again. So
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: she goes and she finds the guy sleeping. with his
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: new bride beside him, and she just can't do it.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: She throws the knife into the sea and becomes sea foam.
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: She disintegrates and becomes sea foam. So she gives her
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: own happiness up for this guy, right? And dies as
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: a result. But even better than that, when she turns
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: into sea foam, she becomes a different mythical creature, like
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: basically an air nymph that goes around like helping humans, right?
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: and she can possibly get into heaven if she helps
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: people for 300 years. Hans Christian Andersen wrote it way
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: better than I just recounted it. A lot less ums
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: and likes, but it's worth reading.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: Pliny also talked about mermen back in the day, and
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: there would be mermen or seamen who would at night
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: climb up onto ships. There's a quote, that's why I'm
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: reading it.
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: Weird.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: Upon which the side of the vessel where he seated
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: himself would instantly sink downward. And if you remain there
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: any considerable time, even go underwater.
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: And that was something that we will see as we
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: talk more about mermaids is they are very, they're often
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: either an omen, that something bad is going to happen
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: to sailors or coastal dwelling people, or they actually directly
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: cause harm to sailors or coastal dwelling people.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and most times under the guise of something beautiful
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: and like a siren.
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: They are often, well, we haven't even described one. Surely
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: you know that a mermaid has the head and body
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: torso of a woman, human woman.
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: Usually with huge boobs.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if you're talking about a sailor's account. Right. Sure.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: You're like, oh, yeah, she was busty.
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: Did I mention the boobs?
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: Yes, you did, sir, seven times. And from the torso down,
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: she's a fish. Maybe webbed feet, maybe not. Very graceful,
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: very fast, and always beautiful.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: It depends.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah?
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there were some of legend that were not. Ugly.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: Really?
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: Not ugly, or they were ugly?
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: That they were not. In parentheses, beautiful, comma, ugly.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: Well, I hadn't heard about that.
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's in here.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: I thought, no, I'm just, I must have missed that part.
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: It's far more frequent what you were saying, that they
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: were beautiful and alluring.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: But we'll talk more about that after we take a break, huh?
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: We'll talk about Josh. We'll talk about Chuck. And we'll
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: talk about Jerry. We'll talk about all kinds of stuff. Stuff. Shit.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: All right, Chuck. We were saying that for the most part,
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: mermaids are beautiful. And one of the reasons why they
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: are supposed to be beautiful is because they are frequently
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: accused of luring men, sailors, out to sea to their death.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: And how do you do that? You do that one
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: of two ways. You have a beautiful singing voice.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: Or you just straight up look good yourself.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: And if you have a beautiful singing voice, you're a siren,
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: in which case you would not be a mermaid because
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: a siren is half bird, half woman.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: And they don't even necessarily live in the water or
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: near the water. They're sometimes described as hanging out in fields.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I guess sometimes you can be very pretty and
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: be a good singer.
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: If you're a mermaid? Mm-hmm.
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: But the, yeah, it could be. Yeah. Sure. Who am
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: I to disagree?
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: You'd be Beyonce. Right. Or Alicia Keys. Right. Or Adele. Oh,
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: you know who I like is Rihanna.
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. She's great.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: She's very pretty.
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: That part in, what's it called? This is the End?
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: When she played herself?
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: She was pretty great in that.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: She was pretty funny.
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: Michael Cera, like, spanked her, and she just immediately turned
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: around and smacked the heck out of him.
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I enjoyed parts of that movie, especially Michael Cera.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: Playing like a coked-out jerk. That was really funny.
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: So back to the beautiful mermaids, though. There was one
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: in 1000 BCE in Syria, and her name, how would
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: you pronounce that? Adargadis?
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: Oh, I think you nailed it. Yeah? Yeah.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: All right, we'll go with that. And you'll see a
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: lot of duality in a lot of these stories. And
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: she was one for sure that was a protector, a goddess.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: I think she protected the fertility of her people and
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: watched over them and fell in love with a human man,
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: as you will often see in a lot of these stories.
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: A dude.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a dude. And it was fine for a little while,
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: like in most stories. And then it goes south. Yeah.
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: And she kills him.
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: She crushed him with her... Greatness.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: Oh, I thought like her big tail or something.
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: I don't know. Well, she wasn't a mermaid yet. This
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: is where she becomes a mermaid.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's true. That's right. I forgot about that. So
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: she accidentally kills him and then is very shamed, throws
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: herself into the lake because she wants to become a fish.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: And she's so beautiful that it only works half as good.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: I really can't figure out the math on that.
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: No.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: But I guess she's just so beautiful that the human
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: beauty part of her is like, no, I won't be
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: a fish.
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: Just the lower half can be a fish.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: Because she had toe fungus. So that was easily overcome.
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: But her face was really nice. So the fish part
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: just couldn't overcome that.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: That's right. So she ended up a mermaid.
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: What a weird story. But not just weird. Yeah. Like, oh,
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: it's foreign or anything. I'm not being xenophobic, but it
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: really says a lot about humanity and how we think
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: of things. Like, no, she was so good looking that
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: this magic couldn't even overcome that. Yeah, that's a good point.
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: We place a lot of value on that kind of thing.
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: All right, should we move on to Germany?
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this one was kind of interesting to me because
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: Germany's landlocked.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: Oh, I never really thought about that.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: Why does Germany have a mermaid mythology?
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean, they have lakes.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: I guess.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: But mermaids are 100% ocean dwellers, aren't they?
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: No, there are some river dwellers.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's right.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: Although I think the sirens were specifically river.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: Well, in the German myth, it was a river dweller, correct?
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: Okay. Yeah. The Nix's?
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And they lured men into the river. Yeah, it
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: was a river. And- So they could drown them. Like, again,
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: the call of the siren, come in here. Look how
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: beautiful I am.
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: Right, check these out.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: And now I'm holding your head underwater.
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: And you can't breathe anymore.
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: And the guy's like, I regret nothing.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: But this duality that we're talking about is what you
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: see a lot of times in mermaid myths. From West Africa,
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: the Mami Wada, the mother water, she was a mermaid.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: She was very nurturing and very loving.
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: If you didn't cross her.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. That's where the duality comes in.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: I don't even know if that's duality. I think that's
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: just a complex person. Good complex character there. Yeah? Yeah.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: So she's great, but when you cross her, she's murderous. Sure.
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: And that's what she did, actually. If you were loyal
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: to her, you could be wealthy from her magic mirror
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: and comb. But if you betrayed her, then what this
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: article says is she rains down fury and destruction.
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: She rained the H word from above.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: But the duality is an important part of it because
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: the physical creature itself is two things.
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: And they are also two things emotionally and physically.
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: So the mermaid or merman or merfolk, as they're called
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: in this article.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: Are they really?
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So merfolk are half fish, half people, right?
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: But they're not anywhere near unique in the pantheon of
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: mythological creatures throughout the ages, right? Again, there's sirens, half birds,
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: half women. There's just tons of, like the minotaur, half man,
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: half bull.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: The centaur was what, half goat or horse and half man?
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: I don't remember that sounds right.
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: I think half horse. And I was like, where did
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: all these come from? I suspected bestiality, and it turns
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: out I may be right.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah?
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: What'd you find?
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: There are some scholars out there who believe that This
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: is the product of a much more relaxed attitude toward
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: bestiality than we modern humans have today.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. I still never saw that documentary about the horse. Yeah.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: It's a good one. Zoo.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah. That fell off my radar.
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: Man, it's one of those ones where they largely... do recreate,
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: like the whole thing's almost recreation. Right. And I usually
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: am not hip on those. It doesn't feel like a
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: documentary to me. Yeah. But that one changed my mind
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: about that whole technique. They did it so well.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: Really? Yep.
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: It's rough.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: I bet.
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: It's rough. Yeah. Especially like when you think about, you know,
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: the animals as well.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, of course.
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: You know? But there's more than just that that makes
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: it rough.
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: Man, I need to see that. So I guess we
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: can talk a little bit about some eyewitness accounts. They're
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: all bunk, of course, but they have happened. In World
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: War II in Japan on Indonesia's Kai Islands, supposedly they
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: encountered a monster on the beach that had webbed hands
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: and feet and was kind of part human, part fish.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was like, look at these jazz hands. You
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: can't do this.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: And then back in the day, some of our most
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: revered explorers and adventurers reported seeing mermaids. Like John Smith
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: and Henry Hunton.
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: And Columbus. John Smith. Everybody loves him.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what was... There's a good quote in here from
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: Columbus because he wasn't too impressed.
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah. He said... And here's the thing. I read that
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: in his diary he's referring to himself in the third person.
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: Well, that says a lot.
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: That's odd. He's like.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: Ricky Henderson.
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: Right. Or George Costanza. So he says that he saw some... Oh, yeah.
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: The quote's not in here. You've got to read the quote.
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: He's out sailing around. Oh, what is that out in
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: the ocean? I think I'll take a look through my
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: spying glass.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: The day before when the admiral was going to the...
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: And the admiral is himself.
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. He was the admiral of
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: his fleet for sure.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: The day before when the admiral was going on to
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: the Rio del Oro.
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: That's the River of Gold.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: He said he saw three mermaids who came quite high
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: out of the water but were not as pretty as
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: they are depicted. For somehow in the face they look
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: like men.
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: But I still thought about it.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so.
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: End scene.
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: What they think now, and I don't know how they
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: substantiated this, is that Columbus was seeing manatees.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Have you seen manatees?
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it looks nothing like a human.
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: From enough of a distance, though, you're like, wait a minute,
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: what is that? Especially if you've never seen a manatee before.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: I don't think it looks human-like at all.
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: From enough of a distance, it can. Yeah, I can
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: see how somebody would... Especially if you believe that mermaids existed.
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: You see a manatee?
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: Maybe it's hard for me to totally get that. Go
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: there and put my mind in that kind of frame.
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: In the frame of Christopher Columbus?
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: Well, just to have never seen a mermaid, to have
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: never seen a manatee, to be high on, what's the
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: green stuff?
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: Arawak scalps. Oh, my God.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: I just blanked on the green.
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: Marijuana?
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: No.
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: The green.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: The green drink. Absinthe.
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: I don't think Absinthe was around with Columbus.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: Are you kidding me?
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: No, I'm not.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: You're shooting that stuff.
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: I can kind of see it.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: So he maybe saw a manatee and was like, eh,
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: they're not so great looking after all.
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: They're not that great.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: What's everyone talking about?
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he saw one. This is like Jimmy Carter and
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: the UFOs. You're kind of surprised when you hear this
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: that somebody cited it. Apparently Reagan said he saw UFOs
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: as well. John Smith said he saw some. He liked
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: what he saw. He liked the look of the manatees
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: because he said he fell in love with one with
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: long green hair.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he said it wasn't bad looking or it wasn't
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: unattractive or something like that.
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: It was kind of a, he hedged his bets a
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: little bit.
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: I guess he wanted to check the rest of her out. Yeah.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: And then he saw she had a tail and he's like, oh,
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: can't go there.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: So what's going on here? Are they hallucinating because they've
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: been on the high seas too long?
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: That's what a lot of people say.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: Other people say that, again, they were predisposed to believing
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: in mermaids because people thought mermaids existed. This was the
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: age of exploration. So it's the beginning of the age
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: of exploration, which means that before then, the oceans were
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: largely unexplored. And there were tons of beliefs in thousands
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: of year old mythologies about creatures that lived in the sea.
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: So if you thought that those things existed... then something
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: that looked kind of like a mermaid could be a mermaid.
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: So that was probably, they were just cases of mistaken identity.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: They were highly suggestible.
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: We did one on sea monsters, remember?
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: We did. Yeah. That was a good one. I thought
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: that one was going to be awful, and it turned
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: out pretty great.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: That episode?
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I remember thinking, this is not going to go well.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: Kind of like this one. Yeah. How do you think
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: this one's going?
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: Pretty great.
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: All right. Well, let's take a break then. And give
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: each other a neck rub. Okay. And we'll come back
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: more comfortable than ever.
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: All right. There is a dude. I love this guy.
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: His name is Carl Bantz. You're not a Carl Bantz fan?
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: Well, I'm not quite sure I understand unless.
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: Did you read the article?
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: Well, just to set it up.
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: Okay, so a dude named Carl Bantz back in 1990...
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: He wrote an article in a legitimate journal, the journal
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: Limnology and Oceanography. And they published it. And it is
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: an entirely tongue-in-cheek but totally played straight account of the
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: extinct species mermaid.
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like where he surmises on, like for real, where
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: they came from, what their biology was. Why they left us.
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: Yep, that they were warm water dwelling, that they ate
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: human flesh, which is why they lured people to their death.
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: He goes so far as to say that they most
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: likely only produced one or two offspring at a time
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: because the females of the species had two breasts and
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: that was it.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: You know?
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: Um, like, like this is the thought that this guy
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: put into this, this article and the fact that he
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: writes it totally straight and like really gives it its
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: due attention. Like it wasn't that, that like, this is
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: going to be a great idea and just the idea
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: itself is hilarious. So I don't really have to put
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: any effort into actual execution. He put effort into the
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: execution and he did pretty good.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: I'm not knocking him, I guess. I just don't see
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: why this journal would put something like that out there even.
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: I mean, I guess they had a good sense of humor,
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: and maybe it was the April Fool's episode.
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: I was wondering if that was the case, too, and
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: I forgot to look if it was the April issue.
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: Perhaps. He did use the words horny skinfolds, though. Right.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: Their skin, he theorized, was not smooth-scaled like a regular fish,
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: but it had, quote, horny skinfolds.
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: Like an armadillo.
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: What's interesting is I saw another account from 1830 in Scotland.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: There's a town called Bembecula on the outer Hebrides, right?
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: Which is like the outer islands, the archipelago. It's an archipelago.
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: That's how you say that, right? Archipelago?
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: Either way. There's a town there.
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: String of Islands.
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: Coastal, thank you. A coastal town where in 1830, the
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: whole town swore they saw a mermaid and tried to
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: grab the mermaid and the mermaid swam away. So some
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: kid threw a rock at it and hit it in
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: its back. And two days later, they found it dead
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: on shore and they felt so bad about it that they-
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: Killed the kid? They buried it. They gave it a
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: funeral with like a casket and everything. Wow. And- They
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: said that it didn't have scales, that it had kind
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: of rough skin instead.
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: Horny skinfolds.
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they didn't use that term. But this is like
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: a thing in 1830 in Scotland. Yeah, pretty interesting when
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: you read the account of it years later.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: That's a kind of band name, by the way.
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: Horny skinfolds?
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Nice. Yeah, that is interesting. Maybe there's something there. Right.
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: How do you keep the folds of the horny skinfold clean,
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: you know? I bet, like, gunk gets trapped in there.
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: Gross.
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: Maybe that's the name of the first single, Cleaning the Folds.
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: The other thing that Bantz did in his article was
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: explain probably why they're extinct now. He came to the
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: conclusion that they're extinct. He said they were warm water,
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: so they would have cohabitated or shared their ecosystem with jellyfish.
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: And as humans started to fish more and more of
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: the sea, we upset the ecological balance. Jellyfish populations were
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: allowed to boom, which is the case. And they stung
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: the mermaids to death because the mermaids had, they lacked
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: the blubber that would protect them, not just in cold water.
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: but from jellyfish stings as well. So they died out
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: from jellyfish stings.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because their upper skin was just regular skin.
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: It wasn't the horny skin folds.
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: So it provided no protection. Exactly.
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: It's worth reading. Go check it out. It's called Mermaids,
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: Their Biology, Culture, and Demise. You can find the full
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: PDF online.
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: Well, I think we have to address the animal planet Snafu.
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: I don't know if they would call it a Snafu.
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: I think they would call it a ratings bonanza.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, which, what was the other, oh, when we talked
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: about the Megalodon, when Discovery Channel aired a Megalodon documentary
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: that appeared by all accounts to be true and was not.
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: Same thing with Mermaids, but they did it twice. They did.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: They did a sequel because it got, like you said,
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: huge ratings. And this was a documentary, well, not a documentary,
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: it was a mockumentary, That looked like, did you watch
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: any clips or anything?
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: Of the second one, yeah.
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it looked like, you know, a show,
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: like a hunting Bigfoot crew. It's like, you know, we
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: got this mermaid, we know where she is, and we're
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: down here hunting.
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: 3,000 feet below the surface.
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and they interviewed a guy that looked like Zach Galifianakis,
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: and if only it would have been Zach Galifianakis, it
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: would have made it much better. But, you know, then
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: it was one of these shows where at the end,
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: in small lettering, well, it's probably not even small, but
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: at the end of the credits, it's like, this was
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: all made up. These are actors.
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but if you go online, people are still like
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: arguing over the legitimacy or credentials of the marine geologist
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: Torsten Schmidt.
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: That's a great name. It is.
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: And people are like, well, if he were a real scientist,
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: he would have been published elsewhere besides this. And he's
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: not published. And it's like, That's because he's not real.
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: He's made up.
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this is like settled.
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: They didn't even pretend that it was real.
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: So I don't know if that's the case or not.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean, they said it wasn't at the end
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: of the show. Okay.
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: But they didn't come out and say, everybody, everybody.
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: Oh, well, I see what you mean. Right.
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: So actually, NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, had
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: to release and they felt they needed to release a
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: statement after the first one saying like, hey, mermaids don't exist.
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: No evidence has ever been found. We're Noah, the end.
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: And I bet they'd love that even.
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: Oh, my God, Noah's making a statement about our show.
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: Exactly, yeah.
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: It's going to be all over the news.
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: Right. And so I guess enough people bought it and
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: bought into it that they were able to release a sequel.
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: And in the sequel, the reason they released the sequel
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: was because Torsten Schmidt had footage of a webbed hand, like,
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: smacking the windshield of his little, like, underwater sub, two-man sub,
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: and then swimming off. Yeah. And so they just kept
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: showing that over and over and over again. Yeah, I
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: saw that shot.
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: It was cool.
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: It was Zach Galifianakis.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: He did look like him, didn't he?
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: A lot.
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: I thought you were going to say it was found
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: out when Torsten Schmidt showed up on an episode of
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: Two Broke Girls the next week.
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: He's like a waiter.
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and a progressive insurance ad. It's like customer number two.
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: There's one other sighting I wanted to mention. This one
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: is second for my favorite after the Scottish one.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: It was in Edinburgh. Netherlands? Is it Edom? Sure. Like
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: the cheese?
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: Okay. Two girls were like rowing their boats and found
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: a mermaid and took it home and dressed it up
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: as a little girl and taught it to live on land,
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: but it remained mute its whole life.
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: Like E.T.
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Isn't that cute?
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: That is very cute.
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: They're like, you're coming home with us. Oh, you've got
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: a family? T.S. We've got a family too, and it's
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: your new family.
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: And they just made that story up and told people
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: and it survived?
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: I guess.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: Interesting.
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: Although they didn't, they didn't apparently, like they matriculated the
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: mermaid into human society there, but we're talking 1430. So
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: who knows what was going on?
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah. They were eating.
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: They probably got their hands on somebody who was like,
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: who knows? Yeah. And they're like, oh, mermaid, this is
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: a mermaid.
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: Oh, just someone who had some sort of physical deformation.
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: And made them come live with them.
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: Dressed as a girl for the rest of their life,
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: like Schlitzie or something.
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like we did in the freak shows. They would
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: just call them, make up whatever animal they wanted to.
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: That was another great episode, too.
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: Are you just recounting the good ones while we do
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: this one?
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: Just to remind people, it gets better.
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: So being a mermaid is an actual job you can get.
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: Back in the day, in the 1960s, 40s and 50s,
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: it was a big hit to go to like a
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: sea park and have mermaid shows.
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: And specifically one in, is it Weeki Wachee Springs?
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Weeki Wachee Springs, Florida, near Tampa. And it was
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: a booming business back then. They said between half a
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: million and a million tourists every year, including big famous
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: people like Elvis Presley and Don Knotts.
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: Those are the two they mentioned.
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: Those two would trash a place together.
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: Oh, I bet. Don gets into the whiskey. It's all over. So, yeah,
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: it was a huge deal back then. They're still doing
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: it there today, but it is a real job. You
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: can go, if you're a great swimmer, you have to
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: know what you're doing.
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: It seems like, oh, yeah, you just put on that
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: tail thing. But that tail is heavy and awkward.
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, and plus like swimming.
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: And somewhat buoyant.
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: Swimming with your legs together.
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's hard.
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: It's very difficult. Yeah, it's not an easy job from
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: what I can tell.
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so apparently once you put like, they look very
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: graceful swimming around in those things, but you go put
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: one on and get in a pool and see what happens.
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: Right, and this article I think rightly points out that
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: the professional mermaids that you see today are... Like, this
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: is from years and years and years of practice. Yeah. Like,
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: they didn't just get in the water and they're like, yeah,
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: I'm a natural.
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. It's got to be really awkward.
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: Sure. And you also have to know how to hold
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: your breath like a mo.
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: Like a mo? Yeah.
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: I stopped myself.
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you do. And you have to learn how to
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: swim the mermaid crawl, which is what they name it. But,
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: you know, it's not like regular swimming.
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, right.
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: You know?
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: And you can make a little dough, too.
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: A little bit.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: It said you can be hired, like, as a one-off
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: for a party. What is that like? You go to, like,
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: a neighborhood pool, and everyone gathers around, like, look at
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: the mermaid.
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: And claps out of rhythm.
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: That's so funny.
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: And you're like, what do you guys want me to do?
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: I guess you can do that. But mostly what I've
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: seen are, like, the shows in some, like, sleepy Florida town. Right. Like,
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: Gator Farm.
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: That was the start.
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: And the Weeki Wachee mermaids.
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: Or, like, at resorts or something like that. Yeah.
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: Back when they used to. Love that kind of thing.
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: And some of these professional mermaids apparently use their status
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: as a soapbox for ecology.
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: And efforts to keep the oceans clean.
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's pretty cool. Yeah. There seems to be a
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: real thread of that running through the professional mermaid culture.
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: You're like an eco-activist.
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: That's a decent band name, too.
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: Professional mermaid culture?
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah. This one was rich with bands.
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: Band names. Horny skin folds.
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: Uh, if you want to know more about mermaids, you
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: can type that word in the search bar at howstuffworks.com.
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail.
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: Actually, in lieu of listener mail today, uh, we are
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: going to ask you for something. Cause we, people also
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: often say like, how can I help the show? Spreading
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: the word is awesome. We always appreciate that. But one
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: thing we haven't asked you to do in a long
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: time is go to iTunes and leave a review.
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: Because that makes a big difference if there are reviews,
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: even if they're not favorable. Just be honest.
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: Vote with your conscience.
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: Vote your conscience. And, yeah, go to iTunes, leave a
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: review for us. Because just having reviews is a good thing.
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: And tell a friend. Help spread the word. I feel
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: like years go by before we say things like this.
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I think literally that's the case.
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's been a long time. So we really appreciate
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: the way the show was built was on word of
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: mouth largely. We really count on that. So tell a friend.
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: Go to iTunes and leave a recommendation. And the other
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: thing that we also need are more jingles.
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: These jingles that you hear, these bumpers, are from fans
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: and listeners, musicians.
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: Very kind ones.
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and they really enjoy doing it, and we love
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: throwing them out there. So send us your jingle, and
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: we can't promise we'll use it, but we probably will.
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because they're pretty great.
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's all I got.
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: Well, thanks. If you want to get in touch with
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: us to help us out with any of this stuff,
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: you can tweet to us at SYSK Podcast. You can
• 40:41
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• 40:45
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• 40:48
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• 40:58
  Speaker 2: on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com.