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CLASSIC: The Weird, Surprisingly Recent Origin of the Tooth Fairy · Ridiculous History

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Fellow Ridiculous historians. It's pretty weird when we think about
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: all the strange things that are treated as normal. Imagine
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: if you went to some part of the world that
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: did not have a tooth fairy, and you told the child, Hey,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: when you lose your tooth, put it under wherever you're sleeping,
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: and a magical creature will give you money.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure I've brought this up to you before, Ben,
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: and I think I may have even sent you one
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: of her little missives. But the I want to say
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: Icelandic pop singer Aurora. She made the delightful point that
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: when you brush your teeth, it's the only time you
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: clean your skeleton.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Beautiful, Let's roll the show. Ridiculous History is a production
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. Growing up in the West, many of us
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: as children encounter strange myths and traditions. One of the
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: most famous is Santa Claus. But you know the one
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: that always terrified me was the tooth fairy.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: Is that a fact?
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Ben?
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: Yes? Yes, I had a.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: Deep and abiding fear of the tooth fairy. I didn't
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: like losing teeth and I didn't like touching metal. I
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: never have, so the idea that there would be someone
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: who sneaks in and like switches this tooth that I
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: have to sleep on top of with metal, you know,
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: some in the under the cover of.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: Darkness, a perfect storm of nightmare you have, young Ben.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: It's true, it's true. No, it's true. What about you
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: were you were you a tooth fairy kid? Yeah?
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and then you know, and being a dad myself.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: By the way, we need to do a quick disclaimer here.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: Spoiler alert for certain child based things.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: Ah yes, spoiler alert for stuff that's on a need
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: to know basis.
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: There you go. Yeah, that's a good diplomatic way. So
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: we're gonna do a countdown five, four, three, two one. Yeah.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: So my kid just now figured out that the tooth
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: fairy is me and her mom.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: Did you get caught?
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: No? I didn't. But it just finally was like, she's
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: like when she's at my house, she gets a certain
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: amount of money. She's a mom's house, she gets a
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: certain amount of money. And it kind of started being like,
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: wait a minute, what maybe that was our fault. We
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: should have coordinated a little bit better. But yeah, she
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: was into it, and I was about it as well,
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: and I see the benefits of it. But Robert Lamb
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: from Stuff to Blow Your Mind made a really good
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: point about how with things like the Tooth Fairy and
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: Santa Claus, we do a really bad job as a
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: culture differentiating between like myth and tradition. It has to
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: be taken so literal and become like a lie to children.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: I have resented the Santa Claus lie for a long time,
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: and I'm really happy to be done with that because
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: it really made me feel uncomfortable.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: And there's some yeah, there's some double think. It's so
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: strange too because on another podcast, Stuff they Want you
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: to Know, one of the points that haunted me before
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: for years on that show was most people growing up
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: in the US, just statistically speaking, the first conspiracy theory
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: they learn about is Santa Claus, and the conspiracy thing
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: is reals. Can you like that changes the way you
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: think about authority and parents and anyone over ten?
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: Do you remember Pete and Pete the Nickelodeon show, Yeah,
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: Redheaded Brothers.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: I just remember the tattoo the Ta Tattoo school.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you could make your dance or whatever. But
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: that show also had a bunch of really cool guest
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: appearances from like interesting musicians like Michael Stipe. First place
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: I ever heard of who Iggy Pop was. But in
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: that show, there's a thing called like the International Adult Conspiracy.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: I believe it's what it's called, and that is exactly
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: what this kind of stuff is. It is an agreed
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: upon the lie that you feed your children. And I
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: just felt uncomfortable with it because I'm like, is she
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: gonna ever trust anything? I say again, yeah, especially if
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: she figures it out herself. And I never like come clean.
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: Oh, speaking of coming clean, it's time to introduce everybody
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: to our mutual favorite part of our show, super producer
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: Casey Pegram Casey, I've got to ask, when did you
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: figure out that the tooth Fairy was not, in fact
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: a supernatural creature.
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: I think I figured it out pretty early on and
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: kind of kept up the illusions for a little bit.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: Ye.
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: Well, my own financial benefits, That's.
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: What I'm saying, because once you stop believing, then the
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: cash drives up. What was your exchange rate for a
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: tooth you don't mind, man, I.
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: Want to say maybe five or ten bucks.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: Oh wow, it's pretty rich.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: And if you were a child in the United States
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: in twenty thirteen, you got an average of three dollars
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: and seventy cents per lost tooth, and that's twenty three
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: percent jump over the last year's rate, twenty twelve's rate
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: of three dollars a tooth.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: And it's interesting too because this is obviously an average,
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: so some kids might get a twenty spot for their tooth,
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: some kids might just get a buck. And I believe
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: that was tracked regionally, and that it was found that
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: in the south where we live, that's where the tooth
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: fairy was the stingiest, and I believe up north is
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: where they were a bit more generous. Yeah, so this
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: is weird.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to say who in my family, but
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: there was also a practice that I thought was normal,
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: wherein it was kind of a surprise or a gamble
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: to see how much money the tooth fairy would leave you.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: Because our tooth fairy our family was like pretty pretty discerning,
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: and so some teeth would get more money because they
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: were better somehow, like a canine tooth that had a
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: point was considered you know, a nice It's like tulips.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: It was like tulips, except with just this invisible fairy creature.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and speaking of like you know, tooth fairy money
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: as some sort of financial indicator. Delta Dental, who I
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: believe we actually go through through our company, a dental
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: insurance company, actually tracked the average exchange for a tooth
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: from two thousand up to twenty sixteen and they correlated
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: it with the changes in the S and P five
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: hundred market and found that it was pretty close. Oh wow,
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: interesting and this is super interesting, Ben. This is a
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: lot of this is from a fabulous article from our
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: friends over at Mental Flaws. The tooth fairy inspired this
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: researcher to come up with something called tooth fairy science.
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: Do you want to talk about that, man, tooth fairy science.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's important, but it's not near as whimsical as
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: it sounds. An Air Force flight surgeon, skeptic and critic
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: of alternative medicine named doctor Harriet Hall coined this term
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: to essentially describe the importance of making sure some event, object,
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: or phenomena is real before attempting to study it.
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: That's right, because the example here is if you are
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: studying the amount of money the tooth fairy leaves and
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: averaging it out, you might think that you're just studying
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: the behavior to the tooth fairy or tooth fairies. But
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: what you're actually studying is the behavior of parents. And
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: so if you are studying a thing that doesn't really exist,
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: there might be another thing that is actually doing the
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: thing that you're studying that you never even considered. And
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: so it's just an important way to create good data
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: and also to plan good studies.
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is interesting because we're looking at so
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: many cultural things.
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: That describe the tooth fairy.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: One of the things that I think is fascinating, It's
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: something we were focusing on for this episode is the
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: origin of the tooth fairy because there are so many
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: things like Santa Claus, Christmas, trees, the Easter bunny, things
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: of that nature that we accept growing up as normal,
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: normal things. You know, even though many of these will
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: be tied to a religious practice, secular kids practice them too,
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: because Christmas or Hanukah, that kind of stuff is just cool,
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean. And what I think will
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: surprise a lot of people here is that the origins
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: of the tooth fairy are at least the twoth fairies.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: We understand it.
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: In the US.
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: The origins are fairly recent. We can trace back ancient
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: tales of tooth related rites of passage. That stuff is
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: really fascinating.
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: Like the throwing of the teeth, which appears across several
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: different cultures, which is really interesting. The vikings did it,
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: especially baby teeth.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, the offering of a tooth to a rat
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: because it would make your like a rat or a
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: rodent of some sort, because it was thought to ensure
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: that the child's teeth would grow strong.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: And that's really interesting when we get into the modern
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: day tooth fairy myth, or at least the story that
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: likely was the cause of it, where the tooth fairy
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: is in fact a rodent.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, it's true. So we know that at least
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: in Europe. The ritual of how to handle one's shed
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: baby teeth is global. There are just different rituals around it.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: Like you said, no, this tradition in Europe at least
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: dates back to the earliest written records in Norse and
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: Northern European cultures, and during the Middle Ages there were
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: superstitions about children's teeth. You had to burn your baby
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: teeth to save a child from hardship in the afterlife,
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: or you would wear children's teeth to bring you good
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: luck in battle, or you would bury teeth to hide
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: them from witches. And it's interesting because back then it
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: was thought that if a witch were to get a
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: hold of your teeth, the witch would have power over you.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: It's kind of weird, right.
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: It is a little weird.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: So what's this what's this original story? Because we can
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: kind of trace it back, right.
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: It's neat, but it's really cool because it kind of
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: incorporates some of the things we were just talking about.
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: So it turns out that the tooth fairy. The origins
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: of the tooth fairy date back to eighteenth century France,
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: when a fairy tale called oh boy, I try to
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: do casey proud la bon petitri la bon SOI yeah,
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: and what does that translate to, sir?
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: It's like the good little mouse.
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: Oh, it's the good little mouse, and it's the good
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: little Casey on the case. So this is the story
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: of le bon petit the good little Mouse. There is
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: an evil king who imprisons a good queen, and the
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: queen is sort of like a you know, a snow
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: white type figure. She can talk to the animals and
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: all that, and so she gets a little mouse to
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: help her out of this jam.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: That's right, that's right, And the mouse, luckily for her,
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: it turns out not to just be an intelligent, plucky
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  Speaker 1: little rodent. Also, the mouse is secretly a fairy, and
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: once revealed to be a member of the fair folk
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: or a fay, the former mouse frees the queen and
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: then knocks out all of the king's teeth yikes, at
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: which point, as you would naturally do in fairy tale logic,
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: he hides these teeth under the king's pillow and then
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: eventually as the king killed.
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: Oh so that's not creepy at all.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: Well we could do, you know we. I'm sure everyone
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: listening to this has heard stories before war about how
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: much more morbid and graphic the original version of fairy
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: tales are, you know what I mean. So don't let
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: the patina of Disney feel goodery fool you about the
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: true nature of fairy tales. But that's fantastic, right, So
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: this goes back to what we were saying earlier about
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: the cultural thing with rodents.
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: It's right, rodents and teeth and the sacrifice of teeth,
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: the offering up of teeth and the pillow even exactly.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So let's fast forward a little bit to an
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: especially pivotal article that was written in nineteen oh eight.
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: That's right, because one of the earliest mentions of the
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: tooth Fairy, which that is not the language used in
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: the play, right, No, No, it's it's the cute little
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: mouse fairy right there, teeth involved in the pillow, and
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: that kind of cements the whole mythology of the tooth Fray.
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: But it doesn't really have a name yet. So in
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: a column in the Chicago Daily Tribune nineteen oh eight
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: called Household Hints, somebody writes in and suggests that I'm
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: going to quote it. And this is also cribbing this
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: from this mental floss article that has a list of
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: unexpected things about the tooth Fairy. Many a refractory child
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: will allow a loose tooth to be removed if he
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: knows about the tooth Fairy. If he takes his little
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: tooth and puts it under the pillow when he goes
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: to bed, the tooth Fairy will come in the night
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: and take it away, and in its place will leave
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: some little gift. And then you got a play that
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: comes out in the late twenties by Esther Watkins called
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: the tooth Fairy, right, and that's history.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: And this was a re release of that original French story,
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: The Good Little Mouse. It was in English, it was
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty seven specifically, and this is where the
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: mouse fairy character becomes cemented with some of the imagery
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: that we have seen before, the wings in particular. And
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: there are scattered references afterwards and around this time to
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: the tooth Fairy in the first half of the twentieth century,
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: but it doesn't really hit its boom. It's Malcolm Gladwell
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: esque tipping point until after World War Two, because one
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: of the most popular stories in Callers magazine in nineteen
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: forty nine mentions the tooth Fairy, and this, you know,
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: this makes it a little bit more legitimate. But from
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: what we found, the tooth Fairy didn't even enter in
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: encyclopedia until what the late seventies.
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, a very modern and American creation.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's much more recent than you might think. And
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: according to some people who have researched the history of
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: the tooth fairyes, such as Michael Hinkston over at Salon,
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: we can't overestimate the amount of influence corporations had over
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: the creation of tooth fairy. So we said, so, like,
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: you know, the old story was Santa Claus before the
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: Coca Cola Santa. The appearance of Santa vary widely. He
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: might be really skinny, his costume differed. But once a
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: soda company made this sort of pleasant, ruddy cheeked guy
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: who's always wearing the same costume, right, they sort of
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: codified this icon, first in the US and now around
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: the world. That's how people think of Santa Claus often.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: So he puts the finger at another corporate entity that
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: sort of solidified the idea of the tooth fairy. And
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: you can find this article it's called Don't Tell the
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: Kids The Real History of the Tooth Fairy. In this
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: he delves into the work of perhaps the most influential,
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: most prominent tooth fairy scholar scholar, Yeah, tooth fairy scholar,
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: Rosemary Wells.
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: Right, exactly, rose Mary Wells. And she saw what we've
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: been seeing that the practice of you know, dealing with
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: teeth in a ritualistic way, I guess for lack of
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: a bet, yeah, I know, was a thing across cultures,
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: but there was precious little known about the origins of
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: the tooth Fairy. And she's the one who kind of
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: dug in and found a lot of this stuff and
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: really went to town. She interviewed all kinds of folks,
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: anthropologists and parents and kids, and came out with a
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: series of articles to get to the heart of this
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: mythical creature, the root character, the root. Indeed the root
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: that was a joke from her previous episode as a
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: call back. Yeah yeah, yeah yeah.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: So she dove into this and became known as like
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: the global expert on these traditions, the evolution of this
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: in the zeitgeist. She even opened up the Twoth Fairy
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: Museum in her home in Deerfield. So people who study
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: this will tell you that there are several factors that
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: led to the tooth fairies agreed upon depiction.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: Here in the US.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: And first we should mention for a long time, no
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: one agreed with the tooth fairy looked like right.
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: That's right. It wasn't really a prominent feature. It was
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: just kind of a winged, tiny creature, a.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: Thing that happened.
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, especially since the origins were it being
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: a literal mouse, right right, So this.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: Changes a little bit. The animation giant Disney starts using
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: fairies and fairy godmothers in the nineteen fifties in a
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: lot of their films like tinker Bell and Cinderella's right,
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: so you get this image of like, this is what
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: a fairy has.
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: Right, it's not a long jump to just insert that
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: visual that Disney provided the public consciousness with, and there
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: you got your tooth fairy.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like, hey, this is what a fairy looks like.
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: Now that one's just a tooth themed fairy.
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: Lack of a better fact, he's picture the tooth fairy
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: as being a tinker Bell esque figure.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know what, I'm right there with you, man.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: There's another thing that happens here right around the same time.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: Because we said the tooth theory didn't really blow up
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: till post World War two US. Right, that's an economic boom,
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: there's an increase in prosperity. If you're living through the
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: Great Depression, you might not have a nickel to give.
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: A kid, absolutely not, and that would be a frivolous
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: use of a nickel.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: And then, secondly, at least, as it's argued in Forbes magazine,
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: the child's centered view of the American family doesn't really
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: come into play until post World War Two. Now, again
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: this is Forbes, but the author argues that after World
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: War Two it became normal for parents to cater to
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: their children.
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: To kind of dote on them. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: before they have them like out working in the fields
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: or whatever. You know.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: There's an interesting idea here too, which is equating a painful,
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: scary experience for children to some sort of reward.
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: Like you'd be brave, get that tooth out, you got
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: a dollar come in your way or a nickel or whatever.
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: Super capitalist not to mention, you can even double down
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: on that and make it about like, hey, if you
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: brush your teeth, roll well, the tooth fairre will give
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: you more money or whatever.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: Oh nice parenting, parenting jiu jitsu.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: Did you do that? Course, that's a great move. I'm
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: impressed with you, so we I think we already talked.
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: Now.
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: She knows I'm a dirty liar, so you know, nothing
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: I say will ever stand again.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: You tell her you're a dirty liar who kept her
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: teeth clean.
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: That's true.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: It might be a Jack Nicholson moment for you, Like
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: in that what was it? What's the name of that
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: film A Few Good Men, A Few good Men. Yeah,
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: you can't handle the tooth. That's funny, that's cute, ben
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: I like that.
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: Speaking of handling the teeth, that's another part of the
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: whole Rigamar role is you got to kind of sneak
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: in like a thief in the night and scond with
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: the tooth from under your sleeping child's pillow and then
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: shove it somewhere. I have a drawer full of baby
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: teeth somewhere. I always pictured you as that kind of guy. Yeah,
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: speaking of that, though, you told me a really interesting
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: story about someone who stumbled upon a cash of teeth
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: in a building, in the walls of a building here
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: in Georgia.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: Yes, that's true. In October of this year in Valdosta, Georgia,
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: which is in South Georgia for people unfamiliar with the state,
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: there were some construction workers who were at the TB.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: Converse building and they were trying to prepare the place
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: for They were essentially trying to renovate it, and they
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: wanted to get it ready for a new commercial tenant.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: And that's when they discovered around one thousand individual teeth
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: oh buried in a wall on the second floor with.
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: The tooth ferry. We're in fact real Yeah, I know
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: you are just shutting your way through this one. I
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: appreciate you sticking, staying without a taking one for the team.
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: But that would be like the tooth fairies like Burrow,
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: like Den.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: Perhaps that's what they do with the teeth, right, that's
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: the to me as a kid, that was the weirdest thing.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: What the hell is that ferry with those teeth?
• 21:00
  Speaker 4: Like the bone collector right right, like the bone clothing
• 21:03
  Speaker 4: any I mean, if you think about it, this is
• 21:05
  Speaker 4: a weirdly common trope, like Cereal mascots, you know, like
• 21:10
  Speaker 4: the Lucky Charms guy.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: He's just taking all these charms. What's he doing with them?
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: It's freakish, you know. He's also really skinny too, so
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: he's alw he's not eating at all. Yeah.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's not like the tooth fairy is putting
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: the teeth in its mouth and getting a bigger smile.
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: Though that's a great idea for a horror story, and
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: there is in fact a spooky tooth fairy. I believe
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: not to mention a silly tooth fairy starring the rock
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: and then subsequent I believe straight to video sequels Larry
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: the Cable Guy.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: So I would love to see Tom Waits's tooth fairy.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: It's like a haggard old wizard with like tiny wings
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: and he comes in. He's like, suh, gotta keep quiet, mister,
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: pocket the bucket.
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: That's great. If you guys haven't seen Tom Waits in
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: the Ballad of Buster Screws, we gotta let it go.
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: Absolute delight.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: So I feel like we've learned a lot here. The
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: tooth fairy is, at least the way we understand it
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: is so much more recent. It's that cross pollination of
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: this mouse that sneaks into a kid's bedroom, and then
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: this general idea of the quote unquote good fairy.
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: Right, we just sort of.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: Smushed them together America style melting pot, a melt there
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: we go. Yeah, we fond duded it, and then it
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: caught on.
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: And spread like wildfire.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: I feel like there's also an economic aspect to this too,
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Sure, it's not like put
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: your teeth under your pillow and you get to spend
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: more time with your loved ones. It's put your teeth
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: on your pillow. Here's three dollars and seventy cents.
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and those dollars in nickels and tens and twenties,
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: and guy, I wonder if any kid ever got one
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: hundred surely, surely, yeah, somewhere must be nice anyway. Yeah,
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: add up in twenty fifteen to two hundred and fifty
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: six million dollars. That is bonkers. Yeah, and there's okay.
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: I found the quote that I wanted to. I want
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: to sit here about the economic part. And I appreciate
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: you putting in that that huge number, that statistic for us. So,
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: going back to Christina Kilgrove's article in Forbes, she says
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: the Tooth Fairy holds a shorter and less visible pedigree
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: than Santa Claus, but her macroeconomic function in today's society
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: differs only in degree. Santa Claus's promise is pre monetary
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: goodness gets you barbies or a Rambo doll. The tooth
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: Fairy's promise is more modern anything, even your own body,
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: can be turned into gold. That, in its final reductive wisdom,
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: is precisely the vaunted magic of free enterprise. That is
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: dark spot on. Actually, man, I want to rattle off
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: a couple of these other maybe non monetary traditions at
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: the end here, should we just leave it with that
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: amazing quote?
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: Ie, I don't know. Let's maybe we can find something
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: a little less dark dark.
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, let's talk about some of the other traditions that persist.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: Let's travel around the world. So we've been to the
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: United States, but we talked about Wait, we talked about
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: tooth tossing, right.
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's true. In countries like Turkey and even Greece
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: or Mexico, kids throw their teeth onto the roof. Why,
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: I don't know, that's where they belong. Good, good luck,
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: I guess I'm not sure. Ben. You mentioned something earlier
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: about how it would maybe encourage healthy growth of adult teeth.
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: But in the Philippines, Korea, India, and Vietnam, only the
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: lower teeth get tossed.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: Oh, I remember this because the upper teeth go on
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: the floor. And the idea is that, through I guess
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: sympathetic magic or attraction, the new tooth.
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: Will grow toward the old one. Smart makes sense, right,
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: it does make sense.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: And then there are other tooth tossing things where sometimes the.
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: Kid will yell out a wish while.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: They're tossing a tooth, got it, which makes I guess
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: makes more sense to me for some reason, because it
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: feels like an exchange, very instant exchange.
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: Well, I don't have a tooth to throw, Ben, but
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: I wish we could just keep talking about teeth forever.
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: But I don't think you make it. You're shuddering at
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: this point. You're literally you're in a cold sweat.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but we're doing this for the ridiculous Historian's very
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: I'm doing it for you all throughout Central Asia. If
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: you have a kid that loses a tooth, remember it's
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: traditional to put the tooth into some fat and feed
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: it to a dog. Please don't try that. I don't
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: know how a dog would digest a tooth. This is
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: done because the idea is that the grown up tooth
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: that replaces it will be as strong as a dog's tooth.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: And if there's no dog around, bury it by a
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: tree so that the new tooth and strong roots. That's
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: a quote from mental Floss.
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: That's wonderful. That's wonderful.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: So do you have kids, how did you handle the
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: tooth fairy growing up? You know what I mean. I'd
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: love to hear from people who didn't really have it
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: as a thing in their house, because not everybody.
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: Does absolutely, Or if you're a parent, how do you
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: feel about the tooth fairy lie let us know. You
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: can write to us at Ridiculous at HowStuffWorks dot com,
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: or we can hit us up on our Facebook group,
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: the Ridiculous Historians, where we just have a good old
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: time hanging out by the Internet fire, you know, warming ourselves,
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: burning our teeth, dricking hot cocoa together with the other
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: ridiculous historians that hang out there. There's a lot of fun.
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: Casey gets on, Jonathan Strickland the Quizzler gets on, or
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: as you like to call him, Ben the Quizzler, just
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: to take him down a pet, you gotta take him
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: down when he gets big. He is a haughty boy.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: Sometimes he gets big, little too big, a little big
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: little big. So thanks also to Alex Williams, you compose
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: our track. Thanks to you, Lol Brown, And it sounds
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: like you're doing a pretty solid job navigating the ethically
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: fraught path of parenthood.
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, when it all came out, she definitely
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: didn't hate me or distrust me, So I guess I'm
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: doing okay. We'll see you next time, folks. For more
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.