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Short Stuff: Tooth Fairy: Not Real · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck,
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: there's Jerry. Ghost of Dave Kustan is hanging around here somewhere,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: and that means that this is short stuff and in fact,
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: it's not a ghost. I'm mistaken, Chuck. He is a
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: tooth fairy. That's right. David is very much alive. Don't
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: worry everyone, Short Stuff producer, Dave is not a ghost. No,
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: you could astray project yourself and still be what I
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: would consider basically a ghost. I don't think. I think
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: being dead is overstated as a reason for being a ghost.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: It's being it's overrated. Yeah. Yeah, So we're talking about
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: the tooth fairy, and um, the reason I thought of
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: this is because my daughter has not lost a tooth yet.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: She's coming up on six years old with his baby teeth,
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: and um, I'm just waiting like it could have happened
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: by now and it can't happen at any time. And
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: I was, you know, I was like, all right, I
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: gotta get up on the latest research on the story
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: that I'm gonna need to tell the lie that I'm
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: going to pound into her brain, and like how much
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: money these kids get? These days a lot. It's like,
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: did you get I got like a quarter and a
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: quarter two, which apparently is like nineteen thirties level. You know.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: I also got a quarter for giving up my passive fire.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: And only later did I find out like my sisters
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: had gotten things like an easy bake oven or something
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: like that, and I got bought off for a quarter.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: I'm still to this day a little upset about that. Now,
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: how old are you when you gave it up? Like twelve?
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: It all depends on the kid. My daughter gave her
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: PASTI fire really early, so she didn't even know what
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: money was. You know, there you go, that's the way
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: to do it. She just didn't like it. Yeah, that
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: was actually thirteen, was approaching the age where I also
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: would have traded my past fire for a pack of smokes.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: You're like, give me one more to suck on something.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: I never connected it too. So the tooth dairy is
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: pretty interesting, and that since people had children all over
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: the world through antiquity, there seems to be weird little
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: stories here and there about traditions and things that you
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: would do with the tooth. It seems like it was
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: never just like well that happened. Let me just toss
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: it out of here. You know, it could have been
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: some little ceremony. You could have put it in a fire. Um.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: But this this was not like the tooth fairies. We
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: know it. No no, no, no, but it is there there,
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: and we'll talk about in a minute. But there's rituals
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: all over the world of what to do like it's
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: not like it. It just goes unnoticed. The tooth fairies
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: one of the most all American um, supernatural beings there
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: there is, and as not even not even old. It's
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: not even an old one. Apparently, the tooth fairy that
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: that is going to eventually come to visit your daughter,
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: that is running around this very night handing out dollars
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: for teeth is basically sure. Um, although you could make
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: a really strong case in court that putting the tooth
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: under the pillow it could be construed as an invitation
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: into your home. But that that tooth fairy, that particular being,
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: that entity is from basically the mid century, mid twentieth
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: century America and is very new and very young for
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: being a supernatural entity. Yeah, I think there are a
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: couple of references. There was one from eight from the
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: Chicago Daily Tribune and an editorial UM that valued the
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: contribution from the tooth Fairy at a nickel. I think
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: in twenty seven there was a short play with a
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: tooth fairy in it from Esther Watkins Arnold. Oh, it's
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: it was okay. I saw there was also a kid's
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: book from the twenties that um was an English version
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: of the eighteenth century French tooth fairy kind of thing,
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: but the tooth fairy was a mouse, Okay. The tooth
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: fairy like really kind of hit a zeitgeists in the twenties.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, it sounds like it okay. And then
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: apparently the whole thing broke wide open with a Collier's
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: magazine article in May of nineteen forty nine. Yeah, so
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: ninety nine. I mean, that's not that long ago that
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: that parents have been lying to their kids about this
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: home invader. Who would who would leave money to avoid prosecution?
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: That's right? I mean it is kind of weird, like,
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: is there any explanation that you've run across so far
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: as to why the tooth fairy wants teeth? That's something
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: that no one ever taught me. No, And you know,
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: I looked a lot of different places, and there's just
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: not a lot out there. It's pretty interesting. There's no
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: there's no weird origin story. I mean, we could make
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: one up if you want to kick that thing off.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: Let's see that. Let's just take the Cabbage Patch kids
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: origin story and just replace it with tooth fairy. Yeah,
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: or maybe the tooth fairy builds this fantasy land out
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: of out of children's teeth. That's horrific, it does it
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: sounds like the teeth monster from what was that? There
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: was a weird Canadian TV shows basically No, no, that
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: was weird in a different way. Um, I will, I
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: will come up with the name of it. But it
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: was basically a bunch of urban legends that they blew
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: out into an actual narrative over the course of the season.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: It was pretty interesting, but there was a monster made
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: of children's teeth and it was creepy. I'll send it
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: to you. You can show it to your daughter. All right, Well,
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: let's take a little break and we'll come back and
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: talk about kind of some of these strange rituals and
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: traditions all over the world right after this. Alright, So
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: we mentioned that depending on where you are in the world,
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: throughout history there have been these interesting traditions when it
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: comes of your children losing their first teeth um in
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: a lot of different countries Afghanistan, Russia, Mexico, New Zealand,
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: there is a mouse or a rat involved, whether or
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: not you put it in a box for a mouse
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: or put it in a little mouse hole like Tom
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: and Jerry's style. And I think the whole thing there
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: was it was a wish that the tooth would grow
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: back to be as strong as a rat's tooth or
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: a mouse's tooth, which makes sense. Yeah, And that's called
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: the transference, uh wish that an anthropologist might call a
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: simp called sympathetic magic, which I think is a pretty
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: good band name though. Wishing that your child's tooth grows
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: back like a rat's tooth. That would be one of
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: those careful what you wish for kind of situations. If
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: you ask me, that's true people do um well. Actually,
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: so there's like actually supposedly nine things, including everything from
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: throwing the tooth into the sun, which that's got to
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: be hard to do, not possible. Much more easy is
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: to throw it into a fire like that between the legs.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: Huey Lewis style, a little weird um onto or over
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: the roof of your house. Yeah, that's not a lot
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: of Asian countries do this, okay. So one of the
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: things I saw it was that a lot of these rituals,
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: pretooth fairy rituals, were often wrapped up or tied into
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: burial rituals of that same culture. So does that mean
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: that there are cultures are there that throw their there
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: they're deceased, onto the roof of the house. You think
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: maybe it's like a sky burial kind of thing. I
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: don't know. I don't know. I was being funny at
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: first and then pulled it out into into into something
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: really thought provoking at the end. Uh, what else do
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: people do? I think a lot of people bury them, right,
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: and that kind of makes or hide them and that
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: kind of maybe that's where we got under the pillow.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: I don't know. And then, um, it's from probably has
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: nothing to do with the dead or the deceased, but
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: there's one where the mother or the kid, or you
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: make a poor animal swallow the tooth and talk about
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: a write of passage. Because that's why all of these um,
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: all of these cultures have a ritual surrounding the loss
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: of the first tooth, because that's basically the first rite
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: of passage any kid cognizantly goes through. And so you know,
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: cultures tend to make a big deal about it. But
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: imagine your culture having you swallow your baby's tooth and
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: then you pass it as the mom, Like, that's gotta
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: provoke some sort of you know, a mixed bag of emotions. Yeah,
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: for some reason, it just that was the first thing
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: that came to mind when I saw that mom sometimes
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: swallow baby teeth basically ye, from that, from that little
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: little vignette. So it seems like when it really became
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: the tooth fairy that we think of in America, it
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: came about at the same time that Disney was putting
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: out movies like Pinocchio and Cinderella, two movies that each
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: fit featured these benevolent fairies who granted wishes. And I
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: think it may have just been the public consciousness and
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: we borrowed, like we said, from other cultures that may
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: be buried their teeth or hid their teeth into the
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: under the pillow thing and an exchange for money. Yeah,
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: and the money thinks still seems confounding, like it's fairy
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: coming for your tooth. That's pretty cute, and that makes
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: sense that Disney would influenced it based on the time.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: But the money thing supposedly dates back to twelfth century
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: Norse custom, which was that you would pay a tooth
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: fee to the kid who got there who lost their
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: their first baby tooth. And you know, rather than them
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: putting it in the pillar there being any supernatural being
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: who came to collect that, you just hand the kids
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: some money or whatever tell them to go away now. Um,
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: So I think those combined to form this modern incarnation
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: of the tooth fairy. Yeah, and what's the going rate
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: these days? From what I saw, it's about three dollars
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: and seventy cents, which means there's some weird parents out
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: there who are right at the median who leave three
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: dollars and seventy cents under their kids pillow in exchange
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: for the tooth. But that also means that there's plenty
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: of parents out there who are leaving like ten bucks,
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: you know, who are skewing the average upwards. And don't
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: email me because I know a median is not the
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: same thing as average. I guess, I guess, Emily, and
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: I need to do some soul searching, uh, to find
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: out what the value of this tooth is because it's
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: you know, it can also be an opportunity to teach
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: you know, kids have no idea what things cost. They
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: think everything is free, so it can be an opportunity
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: to teach them. Yeah, disappointment. You know about the value
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: of money, and you know what what this might buy
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: or maybe you can save it or say part of it.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: I don't know, but the the introduction to money and
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: income kind of starts with the tooth ferry. It's pre
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: allowed ones. Yeah, well I read that there was a
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: from a folklore that said, like the reason why this
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: tooth fairies an American invention and gives you money exchange
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: or something. As you're teaching your kids capitalism, it would
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: just make total sense. Yeah. I mean, she's got piggy banks,
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: so we'll we'll put change in there occasionally, but that
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: that's about it as far as money goes. She thinks,
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: you know, everything costs nothing. Well, you can teach her
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: the value of a human tooth now, and she'll go
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: around the rest of her life thinking she can get
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: about three dollars and seventy cents per tooth if she just,
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: you know, really tries at it. I think if I
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: tried to do three seventy on the nose, Emily would
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: just be like, are you kidding me? Put a fiver
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: in there would be hilarious. Hey, report back when when
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: it happens, will you? Yeah? And I also want to
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: quickly shout out Janet Varney, one of our good friends
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: here in the industry, a podcaster and one of the
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: co founders of s F sketch Fest and the j
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: V Club. Yeah, j V Club, great, great show. Um,
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: I think I had no tooth when I was first
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: a guest of Janet's JV Club Live It sketch Fest,
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: And when I got home, she sent me and Janet's
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: Janet is wanted to just send people funny gifts like this.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: She sent me a little tooth fairy pillow. That is
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: very sweet. Yeah, because you can you can get an
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: actual pillow, right, that's special for the little pocket fairy. Okay,
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: that's great. Yeah, so um, well that's the tooth fairy
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: unless you got anything else to you. I got nothing
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: else except three fake teeth. You can get some money
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: for that, almost a little over ten dollars Chuck Aaron
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: Cooper would pay fifteen. There you go. Um and since
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: Chuck said Aaron Cooper, then of course that means short
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: stuff is out. Stuff you should Know is a production
• 12:45
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• 12:48
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• 12:51
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