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Why do we believe in urban legends? · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should Know?
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Speaker 1: From house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
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Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's all right, this is
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Speaker 1: stuff you should know. Let's get to the intro. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: Jerry said, we're wasting too much time at the beginning. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: She said that she wished she had a third mix
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Speaker 1: so she could ask a question every once in a
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Speaker 1: while so we could get to the intro. Right, So
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Speaker 1: what you have for lunch? Josh? I have not eaten
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Speaker 1: lunch yet, actually, CenTra. I had a Gara Deli square
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Speaker 1: chocolate caramel in sibs for I had a baby baby ruth. Um.
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Speaker 1: I a granola bar courtesy of Discovery Channel. Thank you, yeah,
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Speaker 1: raising d bar. Um. I had a cherry coke and um,
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Speaker 1: that's healthy. My think that's it I've had forever. Had
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Speaker 1: a green apple and some almonds, yeah, and green tea.
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Speaker 1: You're all about the almonds right now, aren't you. It's
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Speaker 1: a super food that reminds me. I've got to give
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Speaker 1: you a recipe for roasted almonds. One of my friends
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Speaker 1: told me last night it sounds really good, don't you
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Speaker 1: just roast him? Well, there's some other stuff mixed together,
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Speaker 1: so Alton Brown recipe. He's on the Alton Brown diet.
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Speaker 1: I watched me the Seaweed Salad last night, and I
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Speaker 1: was just like, he's gonna weep at any moment. Jerry
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Speaker 1: is so frustrated, right she is. Her calf muscles are
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Speaker 1: about to burst out of her legs. Well, maybe we
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Speaker 1: should send her to Vegas. No, no, no, I got
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Speaker 1: something else, Chuck. Yes, did you know that National Gang
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Speaker 1: Week has come and gone? Is there such a thing
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Speaker 1: that just ruined the whole thing? Well, Josh, tell me
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Speaker 1: about National Gang Week? Okay? Um. National Gang Week is
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Speaker 1: when all of the gangs around the United States get
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Speaker 1: together and come up with a clever, pant plan to
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Speaker 1: murder unwitting and innocent people. Some of the crips and
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Speaker 1: the bloods get together. One imagines what the Mongols and
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Speaker 1: the Hell's ain't jewels and M fourteen, M thirteen, I'm
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Speaker 1: gonna get shot in the head for this again? What
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Speaker 1: is it? I can't remember? Like MS thirteen? Sure, man um. Anyway,
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Speaker 1: all the gangs get together and they come up with
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Speaker 1: the plan that they're all going to perpetrate this year.
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Speaker 1: This December. It was a baby, a fake baby or
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Speaker 1: possibly a real live baby if they had any female
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Speaker 1: gang members who are willing to give up their infant
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Speaker 1: child for a little while in a baby seat on
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Speaker 1: the side of the road, covered in blood, although uninjured,
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Speaker 1: just just kind of doctored to look like they're bleeding
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Speaker 1: in an effort to trap female motorists. Who would you know,
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Speaker 1: inevitably stop female what female motorists? Yeah, that curse my
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Speaker 1: thick tongue. Um. The drivers by, not to be confused
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Speaker 1: with the drive by, which is a gang activity. Um,
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Speaker 1: the too to trap female to risks um who would
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Speaker 1: stop and try to, you know, see if the baby's okay,
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Speaker 1: help it? And then out of the bushes comes from
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Speaker 1: gang members who beat and rape and murder her. That
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Speaker 1: sounds to me like an urban legend, Josh too. Two
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Speaker 1: police departments issued warnings about this. Really, this past December
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Speaker 1: is so ridiculous. When pressed about their sources, they both said,
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Speaker 1: you know, actually we can't verify any of this, so
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Speaker 1: don't pass it along. It was just an idea somebody had, Yeah,
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Speaker 1: you know, the other big gang. When I remember hearing
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Speaker 1: this one myself was if someone flashes their headlights at
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Speaker 1: you and you flash them back, then it's a gang
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Speaker 1: and they'll turn around and follow you and kill you.
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Speaker 1: The one I heard was, um, if they if you
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Speaker 1: see somebody driving without headlights on and you flash them,
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Speaker 1: they'll turn around and kill you. It's part of a
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Speaker 1: gang initiation. It's so not true. No, it's not. And
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Speaker 1: what we're talking about obviously are urban legends, but more specifically,
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Speaker 1: the article is called how Urban Legends Work. We decided
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Speaker 1: to call this podcast, why do we Believe Urban Legends? Yeah,
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Speaker 1: you know, yeah, we'll get to that for sure. I
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Speaker 1: mentioned Vegas early on though, because of the very popular
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Speaker 1: old story that the man goes to Vegas and he
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Speaker 1: chats it up with a nice lady at the bar
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Speaker 1: and goes back to the room with her, and then
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Speaker 1: he wakes up dazed and confused in a tub of
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Speaker 1: ice the next day with a side hurting and uh
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Speaker 1: with a note saying call nine one one and clearly
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Speaker 1: his kidneys have been removed. Yeah, upon examination, as kidneys
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Speaker 1: are removed. This actually gave me a moment of terror, chuck,
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Speaker 1: because if you remember in the organ donation podcast. We
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Speaker 1: talked about a guy named Mohammed Seline Khan who had
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Speaker 1: his kidney removed, and I thought, Um, did we get
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Speaker 1: taken and pass along bad information that tom she right?
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Speaker 1: Turns out Tommy was right. I went and double checked
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Speaker 1: his sources, and I saw a picture of the guy
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Speaker 1: with like the huge sewn up um incision where his
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Speaker 1: kidney was removed. It was an ABC News story. Yeah, yeah,
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Speaker 1: that was real. That is pretty much fair fiable, right,
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Speaker 1: But that that story was around long before that happened
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Speaker 1: to him. Yeah, And I think we even um postulated
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Speaker 1: that that urban legend gave rise to actual fact, right, Yes, yeah,
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Speaker 1: and that does happen. Sometimes life imitates art and the
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Speaker 1: other way around. Sometimes it's uh, something from a plot
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Speaker 1: of a horror movie, or sometimes an urban legend is
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Speaker 1: inserted into the plot of a horror movie, like the
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Speaker 1: hook Killer. You want to tell that one? Well, yeah,
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Speaker 1: that one's been around since the nineteen fifties when um
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Speaker 1: teenagers first started going parking, which is when they would
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Speaker 1: drive out to inspiration Point and and make out neck
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Speaker 1: and m The story goes that the they hear the story,
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Speaker 1: it's always some someone who's escaped from an insane asylum
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Speaker 1: back when you hooked hand hooked hand. And then the
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Speaker 1: they hear someone scratching on the car and they don't
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Speaker 1: do anything and they just leave and they get home
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Speaker 1: later and find that a hook is sticking into like
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Speaker 1: the door handle. Not no, and it's a that and
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Speaker 1: the biggest one, the Vegas kidney one are considered cautionary tales. Right.
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Speaker 1: You have very common hallmark of many urban legends that
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Speaker 1: they are called cautionary tales, right. And and most cautionary
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Speaker 1: tales also involve some sort of morality twist to him, right,
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Speaker 1: Like in in the most extreme cases, the guy who
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Speaker 1: was in Vegas who was chatting with the girl was
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Speaker 1: actually married and he went back to her hotel room.
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Speaker 1: So the moral of the story is don't cheat on
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Speaker 1: your wife, right, or else something really horrible is going
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Speaker 1: to happen to you. Uh. In the case of the
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Speaker 1: teenagers in the fifties, um, it was teenagers necking as
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Speaker 1: you put it, old man, um and uh, the the
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Speaker 1: the more, the moral of the story is don't have
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Speaker 1: premarital sex. Right, we'll go park your car and do
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Speaker 1: things like this. You shouldn't know, um nothing right, So
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Speaker 1: the the the What's interesting about this is that urban
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Speaker 1: legends um reflect our own morality, our own values. Think
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Speaker 1: about that, from the fifties to the when the first
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Speaker 1: folk folklorist um I Guess chronicled that Vegas kidney story.
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Speaker 1: Right in forty years, it went from necking to cheating
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Speaker 1: on your wife, right, And one could argue that our
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Speaker 1: values had expanded like that or devolved to that same
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Speaker 1: degree in that same period of time. It's a good point. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: did you hear a bunch of them when you were
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Speaker 1: first going to college? When I look back on some
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Speaker 1: of the stories I've passed along as fact, I couldn't
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Speaker 1: be more ashamed I heard these. I never passed them along.
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Speaker 1: You didn't. Even if I didn't pass them along, I
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Speaker 1: believe some of them. Yeah, that there's a couple of
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Speaker 1: common ones. One is the be careful if you're in
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Speaker 1: a dorm room man with someone you don't know, because
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Speaker 1: you wake up every day and feel all groggy and
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Speaker 1: like you've been taking advantage of for a very good reason,
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Speaker 1: because your roommate was knocking you out and performing indecent
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Speaker 1: acts on you. What you slept not true very much
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Speaker 1: an urban legend, as is the the if your roommate
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Speaker 1: kills themselves, you get straight. A's that quarter, which I
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Speaker 1: have to say, forms the premise of one of the
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Speaker 1: greatest um Zach Morris movies of all time, what's that
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Speaker 1: Dead Man on Campus? Dude? Did you ever see that? No?
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Speaker 1: That was a great movie. That was the plot though, Yeah,
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Speaker 1: that was the whole plot. He smokes a bong in
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Speaker 1: that movie. It's kind of startling for having grown up
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Speaker 1: on Saved by the Bell? Oh he is that his
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Speaker 1: character name? Is that his real name? Yeah? I don't
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Speaker 1: remember his real name? Oh? Zach was his character? And
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Speaker 1: Saved by the Bell? Is Zach? A blond guy? Zack?
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Speaker 1: If you're listening, um, send us an email telling us
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Speaker 1: your real name. Now we we'll look it up in
8:41
Speaker 1: a second, So don't bother email. I prefer an email
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Speaker 1: from him. Okay, So um, Chuck, Like, we said that
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Speaker 1: these things kind of tend to reflect our own morality,
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Speaker 1: our own values, and you said they reflect our fears,
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Speaker 1: and that's absolutely true. There's a lot of urban legends.
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Speaker 1: I would even say the vast majority of them have
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Speaker 1: to do with some sort of fear, right right, And
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Speaker 1: that's one reason we pass them along is because they
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Speaker 1: resonate with us. We have loved ones in our lives.
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Speaker 1: There's people we care about, or at the very least,
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Speaker 1: we're having a good day and we don't want some
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Speaker 1: stranger to fall into some horrible misfortune. So we pass
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Speaker 1: these along. And if they're passed along to a person
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Speaker 1: who maintains the same kind of fears and maybe the
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Speaker 1: same level of fears and the same um dope believability um,
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Speaker 1: they'll absorb them, fear them, and pass them along themselves.
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Speaker 1: Many times, it's also regionalized, so what maybe if you're
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Speaker 1: in Seattle, it could be a neighborhood in Seattle where
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Speaker 1: this happened. If you're in Atlanta, it could be East Lake.
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Speaker 1: So they get regionalized, and all of a sudden you think, well,
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Speaker 1: I it may not be true, but I should tell
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Speaker 1: my friends this um on the internet, such as in
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Speaker 1: an email out just in case, because it's happening right here,
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Speaker 1: right and because it's in a place that you can visualize,
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Speaker 1: it has that much greater of an impact on you. Fear.
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Speaker 1: Once again, sure, I mean, if you can visualize your fear,
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Speaker 1: you can fear even more. Yeah, good point. Thanks, that's
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Speaker 1: gonna be on my tombstone. Should we talk about some
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Speaker 1: some dead giveaways that you're in fact hearing an urban
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Speaker 1: legend and not the real thing. Tots, Uh, it happened
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Speaker 1: to a friend of a friend. That's the classic definite
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Speaker 1: is what they call it. And actually, um, if it
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Speaker 1: happens to a friend of a friend, usually when you
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Speaker 1: pass it along, you're not gonna say a friend of
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Speaker 1: a friend because you just immediately lost credibility right there. Um,
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Speaker 1: so you're going to say it happened to my my friend,
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Speaker 1: Chuck's friend, or it happened to Chuck's friend. You know, Chuck,
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Speaker 1: it happened to one of his friends who neither one
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Speaker 1: of us have ever met. Right. That that personalizes it
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Speaker 1: a little more, brings it home a little further. Or
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Speaker 1: if I were a real liar, right or really desperate
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Speaker 1: for attention, I would say it happened to Chuck, even
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Speaker 1: though Chuck told me it happened to a friend of his.
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Speaker 1: But I'm just gonna gloss over that part because I
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Speaker 1: really want you to believe what I'm saying, because if
10:56
Speaker 1: you believe what I'm saying, then I can more easily
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Speaker 1: believe what i'm saying, Right, and people innately want to
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Speaker 1: believe their friends when they hear things, and people innately
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Speaker 1: want to tell a good yarn. So a couple of
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Speaker 1: those together spin a good yarn, and then, uh, is
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Speaker 1: that what the it's called spinning yarn? Put those two
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Speaker 1: together and you get urban legends. Yeah. I actually remember
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Speaker 1: the first urban legend I heard. And my buddy rad
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Speaker 1: in Montana, my best friend in high school, actually Radford.
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Speaker 1: He uh he told me, I remember this so distinctly
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Speaker 1: about the Eddie Murphy and the elevator. It used to
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Speaker 1: be Reggie Jackson before that. The story is the lady
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Speaker 1: gets on the elevator and it's it's some African American
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Speaker 1: with his large entourage or a dog. It's a dog.
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Speaker 1: It's a dog. Dog. Yeah, it's the crux of it. Okay, well,
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Speaker 1: and see it changes. That's the hallmark of an urban
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Speaker 1: legend to it changes per story, but the lady will
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Speaker 1: clutch her person fear, and then later on she finds
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Speaker 1: out it's at a hotel that her hotel stay was
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Speaker 1: paid for. It's like, courtesy of Eddie Murphy. We got
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Speaker 1: the best laugh I've had in weeks because we scared you.
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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's not how a mom told it. She
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Speaker 1: said that, um, and I think, if I remember correctly,
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Speaker 1: she told me that it had happened to a friend
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Speaker 1: of hers or someone she works with. Friends. Well, that's
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Speaker 1: what Rat said. I remember it was his mom, someone
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Speaker 1: his mom worked with. Well, in this case, it was
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Speaker 1: Lionel Ritchie or Reggie Jackson. I think the other variation
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Speaker 1: I heard was Reggie Jackson, Lionel Richie. I never heard
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Speaker 1: Eddie Murphy. But he's in there there in like a
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Speaker 1: very nice hotel that allows huge dogs, and the guy
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Speaker 1: has a dog with him, so he's he's even more intimidating,
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Speaker 1: and uh, the the woman is trying to avoid eye contact,
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Speaker 1: is scared clutching her first, that kind of thing. Um.
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Speaker 1: And then all of a sudden, the guy goes sit lady,
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Speaker 1: and the woman sits down in the elevator and the
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Speaker 1: guys like I was talking to my dog. And then
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Speaker 1: her hotel stay is paid for by Reggie Jackson or
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Speaker 1: Lionel Ritchie or Eddie Murphy or one imagines P Diddy, yeah,
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Speaker 1: or jay Z. But I just rad, if you're listening,
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Speaker 1: you lied to me, buddy, way back when when we
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Speaker 1: were eating turkey sandwiches after school. You lied to me,
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Speaker 1: I remember distinctly, and I'll never forget it. So, Josh,
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Speaker 1: that was a lot of time to uh, to give
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Speaker 1: up the one dead giveaway friend of a friend. So
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Speaker 1: we'll go through some of these other ones quickly. Actually
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Speaker 1: we already did. There are many variations. That's a dead giveaway.
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Speaker 1: The topic is one that is often on the news
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Speaker 1: or one that people gossip about. Yeah, that's a big one.
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Speaker 1: Like we Got Stuff podcast, got a forwarded email about
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Speaker 1: UM census workers. Yeah, yeah, the census is about to happen,
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Speaker 1: so now don't open your door unless they have a
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Speaker 1: confidentiality agreement and certain other things. They'll murder you. Yeah,
13:42
Speaker 1: we got it this morning. Okay, was that when that ironic? Yeah,
13:45
Speaker 1: but that actually happened when the census worker we thought
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Speaker 1: was killed, but it turns out it's a suicide. So
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Speaker 1: oftentimes it will spin off of a real news story
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Speaker 1: and get morphed. Yeah, which is kind of scary because
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Speaker 1: a lot of urban legends have been portrayed as fact
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Speaker 1: in the news the newspapers. Well, that's another reason people
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Speaker 1: believe them is because they trust the news when they
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Speaker 1: ought not, which is sad because really, frankly, you shouldn't.
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Speaker 1: You shouldn't. You should take all news stories with a
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Speaker 1: green as salt. You know, it's just some dude or
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Speaker 1: chick reporting something kind of file a story, just like
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Speaker 1: we do. We get things wrong all the time. Clearly,
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Speaker 1: why shaking your head? Just people know, we call ourselves out.
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Speaker 1: But it's true. I think it's funny that we do that,
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Speaker 1: and we need to do that because in the in
14:29
Speaker 1: this day and age, pretty much our entire job, or
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Speaker 1: at least a significant portion of it, chuck is avoiding
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Speaker 1: giving out false information. Yeah, we have to go through
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Speaker 1: and verify it, which is getting increasingly harder. Yeah, we try,
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Speaker 1: We definitely do. We were talking about pop culture, and
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Speaker 1: sometimes movies will work it in or the other way around.
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Speaker 1: In the movie Goodwill Hunting, remember they tell the story
14:54
Speaker 1: about the guy who gets pulled over by the cop
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Speaker 1: because he's drunk, and then an accident happens in the
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Speaker 1: cop as to run to the accident, and the guy
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Speaker 1: jumps in his car goes home. The cop comes the
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Speaker 1: next morning and the guy denies that he was ever
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Speaker 1: out drinking until he looks and notices that in his
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Speaker 1: driveway he had jumped in the squad car by accident.
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Speaker 1: Not true, but it's an urban legend. It was in
15:15
Speaker 1: good will hunting the Simpsons, which one. You know how
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Speaker 1: you always hear the story about like a mouse in
15:22
Speaker 1: a in a coke bottle? Remember the Simpsons when they
15:25
Speaker 1: Barney and Homer visit the Duff Brewery and the guys
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Speaker 1: on the line fills on the line checking the bottles
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Speaker 1: as they go by. He's like, good, good nose, good needle.
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Speaker 1: And then he turns his head and like Hitler's head,
15:36
Speaker 1: it goes by the bottle. That's a good one. Did
15:39
Speaker 1: you see the YouTube clip of Hitler finding out that
15:42
Speaker 1: Scott Brown won the Massachusetts Senate seat? I did? You
15:45
Speaker 1: sent it to me? Good? Is that an urban legend?
15:48
Speaker 1: Or did Scott Brown really win the Senate seat? He
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Speaker 1: really did? I thought was made up? Um? Oh, there's
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Speaker 1: a pretty It's pretty much impossible to trace the origin
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Speaker 1: of a um any urban legend, really, no one ever
16:00
Speaker 1: knows where they come from. One of the reasons why
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Speaker 1: is because it follows oral tradition or it used to
16:05
Speaker 1: generally right right folk It is folklore, and it's actually
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Speaker 1: studied by cultural anthropologists and folkloreist, which I think is
16:12
Speaker 1: probably a sub set of cultural anthropology. UM. And the
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Speaker 1: the Hey, Dave, have you seen the Encyclopedia of Urban Legends? No.
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Speaker 1: I used to have a cartoon book though, of urban legends.
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Speaker 1: It was pretty cool, nice. Well, the Encyclopedia of Urban
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Speaker 1: Legends is fairly anthropological in nature. It's pretty thick tone.
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Speaker 1: It's on Google Books. We can check it out. But
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Speaker 1: the author of it, Jan Harold brun Van, Harold, why
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Speaker 1: are you doing this to me today? Are you talking
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Speaker 1: to your mouth or to me both? Um? The the
16:46
Speaker 1: author Jan Harold brun Van Um kind of laments that
16:50
Speaker 1: the the internet has removed that aspect the oral tradition
16:55
Speaker 1: by digitizing it. And now I'll just click forward and
16:59
Speaker 1: and uh broom Van suggests that the golden age of
17:04
Speaker 1: uh of um urban legends was the sixties of the eighties,
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Speaker 1: although they've been around a lot longer than that, right, yeah,
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Speaker 1: since the thirties and forties. I said, I found even
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Speaker 1: further back than that. Um. Apparently at Scott Fitzgerald and
17:17
Speaker 1: the twenties referred to contemporary legends the the the critic
17:22
Speaker 1: took to mean the same thing as an urban legend. Sure.
17:25
Speaker 1: And then even before that, I think in uh the
17:27
Speaker 1: eighteen nineties there was a French columnists who asked to
17:31
Speaker 1: cities maintain folklore just as rural areas to interesting the
17:35
Speaker 1: answer that is a big fat yes obviously. Yeah. So
17:38
Speaker 1: that's when they were actually called out as urban legends.
17:40
Speaker 1: Like we said, it goes back centuries tradition of folklore.
17:44
Speaker 1: Historians are big on verifying and writing things down, and
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Speaker 1: folklore's tell stories with their mouths. Yeah, like we do, right,
17:52
Speaker 1: that sounds like a T shirt. Folklore's do it with
17:54
Speaker 1: their mouths. Um. And like you said, check, these things
17:58
Speaker 1: go back centuries, if not further. Um. And again, all
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Speaker 1: legends reflect um, the feelings, the fears, that kind of
18:07
Speaker 1: thing of the culture at the time. So we're before uh,
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Speaker 1: in the you know, pre industrial age. Most fairy tales
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Speaker 1: that had something bad happening to them, we're set in
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Speaker 1: the woods, like Handling Gretel or snow White or whatever.
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Speaker 1: These fairy tales were set in the woods because the
18:23
Speaker 1: woods were still very scary places, filled with bandits and
18:26
Speaker 1: bears and scary monsters, super freaks. Yeah. Yeah. One thing
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Speaker 1: I thought was interesting is the famous website snopes dot
18:36
Speaker 1: Com clearly can put an end to a lot of
18:38
Speaker 1: these Internet if you're smart enough to good look at
18:40
Speaker 1: Snopes these Internet rumors that get started. But one thing
18:43
Speaker 1: I thought was interesting was reading this article is that
18:46
Speaker 1: Snopes evidentally gets a lot of angry emails because people
18:49
Speaker 1: want to believe their friends so much that their friends
18:52
Speaker 1: not made this up, that they will email Snopes angrily
18:56
Speaker 1: and say, you're calling my friend a liar. This really happened.
18:58
Speaker 1: He said, it happened to his best friend, and snubs
19:01
Speaker 1: just like doubt. They even respond to those, and they like,
19:04
Speaker 1: send us your address so we can send a guy
19:06
Speaker 1: to come hit you with a tack hammer. Right, and
19:08
Speaker 1: I have some swamp land in Florida, I can tell
19:09
Speaker 1: you exactly. Um. We were talking about the origins of
19:13
Speaker 1: these things, chuck right. Um. Right, So folklore's anthropologists and uh,
19:19
Speaker 1: pretty much any smart person can point to actual advance
19:24
Speaker 1: that are maybe misinterpreted or expanded upon become the source
19:28
Speaker 1: of urban legends. E g. Uh, temporary tattoos laced with LSD. Right,
19:33
Speaker 1: that could have been birthed out of the real practice
19:36
Speaker 1: of a chemist who make LSD would oftentimes put it
19:39
Speaker 1: on I guests still do put it on like a
19:42
Speaker 1: stamp with a cartoon character, and so that might have
19:45
Speaker 1: gotten confused with um temporary tattoos. So the word spreads
19:49
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, And what I love is
19:51
Speaker 1: that the story goes is they give them these LSD
19:54
Speaker 1: tattoos to get the kids hooked on LSD, which is
19:57
Speaker 1: just silly. Yeah, it's not physically addicted ing at all,
20:00
Speaker 1: north psychologically addicting. I imagine it's much more psychologically aversive
20:05
Speaker 1: than anything I'm getting nostalgic Halloween. Lots of urban legends
20:10
Speaker 1: around Halloween. Yeah, with the tainted candy and the razor
20:13
Speaker 1: blades in the apple. You know it's crazy is we
20:16
Speaker 1: were talking about how the Oregon thief actually probably got
20:19
Speaker 1: the idea from the urban legend. There have been instances
20:23
Speaker 1: of people tainting Halloween candy after the the urban legend
20:29
Speaker 1: was around. Interesting, most of the ones that have like
20:33
Speaker 1: razor blades, and I have to say this is from Snopes.
20:36
Speaker 1: There's a pretty long article on Halloween candy with razor
20:39
Speaker 1: blades and needles. But um, most of the ones that
20:42
Speaker 1: have actually been perpetrated were hoaxes or they wanted to
20:47
Speaker 1: get attention or something like that. Um, but poison candy
20:52
Speaker 1: actually does. It's come up many many times around Halloween,
20:56
Speaker 1: and you know, in non Halloween days, the other three
21:00
Speaker 1: sixty four days where kids have died. Apparently, yes, and
21:04
Speaker 1: this is not an urban legend. Apparently uh in. I
21:07
Speaker 1: don't remember what state it was in, but a friend
21:10
Speaker 1: of a friend told me, um that a little kid
21:14
Speaker 1: died after getting into his uncle's stash of heroin, and
21:17
Speaker 1: so the family actually sprinkled his candy Halloween candy with
21:22
Speaker 1: hero with heroin from the uncle's stash to protect the uncle.
21:26
Speaker 1: Uh to make it look like somebody had poisoned the
21:28
Speaker 1: kid with with heroin and that really happened. It happened.
21:32
Speaker 1: What if Snopes is wrong about all this stuff? I
21:34
Speaker 1: don't know. I've had that horrible feeling before, horrible thoughts,
21:37
Speaker 1: sat upright in bed, been like tis roll pops, Like
21:40
Speaker 1: Snopes is just this one dude, He's just like this inclusion,
21:46
Speaker 1: he's like the wizard behind the curtain. That'd be pretty cool.
21:49
Speaker 1: I guess we should point out a few of these
21:51
Speaker 1: email urban legends, just so you don't forward them around
21:54
Speaker 1: to your your friends and family. Be wary of anything
21:57
Speaker 1: free obviously that's a that's a dead giveaway. Usually. Well,
22:02
Speaker 1: that's just like the pigeon drop. Yeah, sure, yeah, you
22:06
Speaker 1: just you if anybody starts talking to you about money
22:09
Speaker 1: and you've never met them, you don't want to respond, right.
22:12
Speaker 1: Another dead giveaway, Josh, is if you ever get an
22:14
Speaker 1: email that starts with a line if you for this email, colon,
22:19
Speaker 1: or if it says this is not an urban legend, colon,
22:22
Speaker 1: then it's probably an urban legend. Yeah. And then of
22:25
Speaker 1: course there is a the famous Nemon Marcus cookies email,
22:31
Speaker 1: which I've actually received. I have received this one as well.
22:33
Speaker 1: I've never made him of you. No, well, they're just
22:36
Speaker 1: regular cookies. Tom Harris is they're delicious. I think he
22:39
Speaker 1: made them before this article. That is research pal. Yeah, well,
22:43
Speaker 1: detail this one. This is a very famous one. So
22:45
Speaker 1: back in I think the nineties, uh late nineties, there
22:49
Speaker 1: was an email that was sent around where it talked
22:52
Speaker 1: about the Neiman Marcus chocolate chip cookie recipe which made
22:56
Speaker 1: some delicious chocolate chips they say, or chocolate chip cookies. Um.
22:59
Speaker 1: And a woman apparently asked for name and Marcus, uh
23:04
Speaker 1: somebody at the store to give her the recipe for
23:06
Speaker 1: the cookies and they gave it to her, but they
23:08
Speaker 1: charged her for it, they said to fifty And when she,
23:11
Speaker 1: you know, gets her bill later that month, she sees
23:13
Speaker 1: that they charged two hundred and fifty dollars instead of
23:17
Speaker 1: two dollars and fifty cents for this recipe. The woman
23:19
Speaker 1: finds it outrageous. Contact Name and Marcus and they're like, well,
23:22
Speaker 1: our cookies are really good. We're not going to refund
23:24
Speaker 1: your money. Uh. So she decided that to get them back,
23:28
Speaker 1: she would forward the email with the recipe and an
23:31
Speaker 1: email to everybody and spread it around to get back
23:35
Speaker 1: at Niman Marcus, you were my crutch, Chuck. Not true, Josh.
23:39
Speaker 1: They didn't even make the chocolate chip cookie at the time.
23:43
Speaker 1: In the eighties it was Mrs Fields, not Name and Marcus,
23:46
Speaker 1: and before that it was the Waldorf Astoria Hotels red
23:50
Speaker 1: velvet cake. Take that. Stupid people who believe forward an
23:54
Speaker 1: emails who I'm sad to say, not only did my
23:58
Speaker 1: mom pass along bunk information with the line old Richie
24:00
Speaker 1: slash Reggie Jackson story. Um, but my dad, I found out,
24:05
Speaker 1: is a birther. Really are you kidding me? Yeah, he's
24:09
Speaker 1: not in any kind of structured to organized capacity in
24:13
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, he wasn't even aware of
24:15
Speaker 1: the term birther, but he believed af forwarded email that
24:18
Speaker 1: was birth in nature, which again that was a real occurrence.
24:23
Speaker 1: There were people out there who wanted to see Barack
24:26
Speaker 1: Obama's birth certificate claiming he was not born in this country.
24:30
Speaker 1: Is originally said that his birth certificate was doctor that
24:33
Speaker 1: he was really a born in Kenya. Um YadA, YadA, YadA,
24:37
Speaker 1: and therefore he shouldn't be president. Right, But the the
24:41
Speaker 1: that has taken on a life of its own, so
24:42
Speaker 1: out of this original idea, it's become an urban legend
24:46
Speaker 1: and a forwarded email urban legend, which are really the
24:49
Speaker 1: dregs of urban legend society because you're not even taking
24:52
Speaker 1: the time to spend a good yarn at that point. No,
24:54
Speaker 1: and that's why um brun Van was saying, like it
24:57
Speaker 1: was best from the sixties of the eighties. You know,
24:59
Speaker 1: there's there's spider eggs and bubble yam and co can's
25:02
Speaker 1: hanging from car doors and the calls coming from upstairs
25:06
Speaker 1: and the great part about it was that everybody was
25:08
Speaker 1: personalizing it because it happened in East Lake or it
25:11
Speaker 1: happened in Peoria, Illinois, depending on where you are, And
25:15
Speaker 1: so there was it took effort, and there was there
25:18
Speaker 1: was personalization done to it, and so people were engaging
25:21
Speaker 1: in oral folklore tradition without even realizing it, and it
25:25
Speaker 1: kept it alive and vital. Now it's just forwarding. That's it. Well,
25:28
Speaker 1: you and I remember clearly. I remember Rad lying to
25:32
Speaker 1: me in the night that I'm sorry ten or eleventh grade.
25:34
Speaker 1: You remember your mom telling me stories like I remember
25:37
Speaker 1: this specifically in his kitchen. I remember that day specifically,
25:40
Speaker 1: but I don't remember whatever Jack asked for? Did me?
25:44
Speaker 1: The the gang headlight thing? Should we talk about a
25:47
Speaker 1: couple of real ones real quick before you wrap it up? Yeah?
25:49
Speaker 1: These are great, Chuck. Chuck found some on cracked dot
25:52
Speaker 1: com and uh, the more fantastic ones we actually did
25:56
Speaker 1: go and double check with Snopes, the big fat guy
25:58
Speaker 1: who doesn't check any thing. Right. Yes, okay, so Chuck
26:02
Speaker 1: take it away. Well one of them, um has happened recently?
26:06
Speaker 1: Is that the famous Halloween when there's all manner of
26:07
Speaker 1: Halloween ones like we said, where someone hung themselves in
26:11
Speaker 1: their yard? Yeah? We when what podcast? Did we talk
26:14
Speaker 1: about that? I can't remember. I can't either, but we
26:16
Speaker 1: definitely did. And the story goes that someone hung themselves
26:18
Speaker 1: and people thought it was a Halloween Halloween decoration, so
26:21
Speaker 1: they the body stayed there for several days until they
26:24
Speaker 1: realized it was real and this actually really did happen. Yeah.
26:28
Speaker 1: And then there's the uh, the one about the couple
26:31
Speaker 1: who spend the night in a hotel room and they
26:34
Speaker 1: can't figure out where the stench is coming from, and
26:37
Speaker 1: when they finally go downstairs to ask for their money
26:39
Speaker 1: back the next morning, the hotel management investigates and finds
26:42
Speaker 1: a dead body under the bed. Apparently it's happened a
26:45
Speaker 1: bunch of times. Kansas City, Atlantic City, Florida, California. It's
26:49
Speaker 1: very distressing. Yeah, and and the Cracked blogger makes a
26:53
Speaker 1: good point that in these cases, in just about all
26:56
Speaker 1: of them, what's insane is that the people spent the
26:58
Speaker 1: night in the room the whole time, the variably and
27:00
Speaker 1: they're so great. Tell him the best one, Cracked is awesome.
27:03
Speaker 1: They're so funny. Yeah, I love that website and that
27:05
Speaker 1: it's one of your faiths. Uh, the fun House Mummy,
27:09
Speaker 1: this one is the best one ever. Uh. The myth
27:12
Speaker 1: is that a prop at a carnival was Um, I
27:15
Speaker 1: guess in the in the scary fun house was not
27:18
Speaker 1: a prop mummy, but it was in fact a real
27:22
Speaker 1: dead body. So if this story couldn't get any more fantastic,
27:26
Speaker 1: you're wrong. Right, here's how the urban legend goes. Um.
27:31
Speaker 1: The crew for the six Million Dollar Man was filming
27:35
Speaker 1: an episode and they needed a fun house, so they
27:37
Speaker 1: went down to Long Beach to the New Pike Amusement Park, right,
27:41
Speaker 1: and there was a dummy hanging in the shot, and
27:44
Speaker 1: the director filmed the shot. Apparently it was like, I
27:46
Speaker 1: don't like that dummy. There's somebody get rid of it.
27:48
Speaker 1: Some guy goes to grab it, the arm comes off,
27:51
Speaker 1: and they noticed a human bone inside. Right, You thought, wow,
27:54
Speaker 1: that's pretty realistic. Yeah, And so they did a little
27:57
Speaker 1: more investigating and figured out that it was a real corpse,
28:00
Speaker 1: a mummified, embalmed human corpse that was actually hanging in
28:04
Speaker 1: a fun house being that people took as a dummy. Right,
28:08
Speaker 1: six million dollar Man, Chuck, is this true? It is true?
28:11
Speaker 1: Isn't that crazy? And it doesn't in there because apparently
28:14
Speaker 1: the body, the undertaker had done such a swell job
28:19
Speaker 1: with the embalming process that he put this body on
28:22
Speaker 1: display for a matter of years, could pay a nickel
28:24
Speaker 1: to come see this body. And then two guys that
28:28
Speaker 1: worked for the amusement park or no traveling carnival disguise
28:33
Speaker 1: themselves as what his brothers his brothers to come claim
28:38
Speaker 1: the body, and they actually stole the body and it
28:40
Speaker 1: traveled around the country, eventually ending up in Long Beach. Yes.
28:45
Speaker 1: What's even more amazing is that we know whose body
28:47
Speaker 1: this is. Yes, we do. It was a bank robbing
28:50
Speaker 1: bandit named Elmer McCurdy who lived out his violent career
28:54
Speaker 1: at the about the turn of the last century, early
28:58
Speaker 1: twentieth century. Uh. He was killed in the shootout for
29:01
Speaker 1: forty six bucks and two jugs of whiskey. Uh. And
29:05
Speaker 1: like you said, the undertaker did such a good job
29:07
Speaker 1: in balming him. He charged people in nickel to come
29:09
Speaker 1: look at this bandit. Uh. And that was that. So
29:12
Speaker 1: when they finally laid him to rest, I think in
29:15
Speaker 1: like two thousand six. Really, no, it couldn't have been. No, No,
29:19
Speaker 1: it would have been a couple of years after the
29:21
Speaker 1: six million dollar man thing in seventy six. Okay. Um.
29:24
Speaker 1: They they supposedly put cement over his casket so that
29:29
Speaker 1: nobody could dig him up and do the same thing
29:31
Speaker 1: all over again. Yeah, true story. Yeah. So Cracked actually
29:35
Speaker 1: has a about eleven of them over the span of
29:38
Speaker 1: a couple of articles. And then I saw other sites
29:40
Speaker 1: that said they had real ones. But um, again, you
29:43
Speaker 1: can't always believe everything. I don't know if I believe Cracked. No,
29:46
Speaker 1: that's why I went and checked it out. It's snops
29:48
Speaker 1: and they they had the same story, uh different, slightly different,
29:52
Speaker 1: but all the facts were the same, same name, same everything.
29:55
Speaker 1: Friend of a friend. Yeah, is that it? That's it man?
29:59
Speaker 1: I mean we can go on urban life. Yeah, we
30:01
Speaker 1: could just could be in eleven our podcast. Um, but
30:04
Speaker 1: let's not make it that way. Now, if you want
30:06
Speaker 1: to learn more about urban legends, you can look it
30:10
Speaker 1: up in the handy search bart how stuffworks dot com. Chuck,
30:12
Speaker 1: it's time for listener mint. Now. It's not Josh what
30:15
Speaker 1: We are not going to do listener mail today because
30:17
Speaker 1: we are going to plug this thing like a finger
30:20
Speaker 1: and a dike. So Chuck, go ahead, then, if you're
30:22
Speaker 1: going to do that, let's do it well. First of all,
30:25
Speaker 1: we want to plug the new science podcast that we
30:27
Speaker 1: talked about for a while. And it is called Stuff
30:30
Speaker 1: from the Science Lab with our comrades. Robert Lamb, who
30:33
Speaker 1: you might remember from doing me Rendition the reading of
30:37
Speaker 1: the Jack the Ripper letter. Yeah gotta, he doesn't do
30:41
Speaker 1: that voice in the podcast, so unfortunately. And Alison, they
30:44
Speaker 1: do a great job with science e stuff. Hell of
30:46
Speaker 1: in ea there. And we're going to plug Strickland's podcast
30:49
Speaker 1: tech Stuff. Even though he talks smack about us, he
30:52
Speaker 1: really does. Then this we are going to plug stuff
30:55
Speaker 1: he missed in history class with our colleagues. Now Katie
30:58
Speaker 1: used to be Jane and Candice now it's eighty and
31:00
Speaker 1: Sarah Dowdy full time. They do a great job. And
31:04
Speaker 1: what else do we have? High speed stuff? Yeah, Scott
31:08
Speaker 1: and Ben Scott and Been do a great auto podcast,
31:10
Speaker 1: very funny. Ben and Matt also do stuff they don't
31:13
Speaker 1: want you to know it video podcast on conspiracies, which
31:17
Speaker 1: is awesome. Yeah, Coolest Stuff on the Planet is another
31:19
Speaker 1: great travel video podcast. And what are what are we forgetting? Yeah, Sminty,
31:24
Speaker 1: our sminty gals. Yeah, how can we forget? Sminty? Did
31:27
Speaker 1: you see that email we accidentally got that was intended
31:29
Speaker 1: for them? Today? Uh, stuff mom never told you of course?
31:33
Speaker 1: Is uh the some people liking it to the female
31:37
Speaker 1: version of what we do. Yeah, they have a huge
31:39
Speaker 1: cult following to do. They're great, they're really funny quality stuff. Oh,
31:42
Speaker 1: of course there's stuff Genius and brain Stuff, both of
31:45
Speaker 1: which a feature. Are a Steam founder Marshall Brain Yeah,
31:49
Speaker 1: and Stuff of Genius is really short. And if you're
31:51
Speaker 1: into like cool monty python esque graphics, don't like it. Yeah,
31:55
Speaker 1: And of course there's the blogs always. You can just
31:58
Speaker 1: type in the blogs at how stuff works die com. Right,
32:01
Speaker 1: plug fest is over. Plug Fest is over. You haven't
32:04
Speaker 1: done in a while. If you want to send us
32:07
Speaker 1: an email, we probably will do reader mail again right
32:12
Speaker 1: starting next week. Okay, if you want to send us
32:15
Speaker 1: an email on absolutely anything, you can wrap it up
32:19
Speaker 1: and send it to stuff podcast at how stuff works
32:22
Speaker 1: dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics.
32:29
Speaker 1: Is it how stuff works dot com. Want more how
32:32
Speaker 1: stuff works, check out our blogs on the how stuff
32:35
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32:40
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