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How Death Masks Work · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Brought to you by the two thousand twelve Toyota Camry.
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. This is a very plaster
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: horrific episode of Stuff You Should Know. Did you ever
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: work a plaster when you were a kid art class?
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: That's a no, I did work. I had one of
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: those little uh pottery wheels. Oh yeah, like the the
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: toy ish version of it. Oh cool? And uh there's
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: something like clay wet clay in your hands is really
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: a neat feeling. Hey, just tell them any more of that?
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah you know, Yeah, I made for one sexy scene.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Male nipples made an appearance in that scene. Swayzy shirtless. Yeah, okay,
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: I believe so he was always shirtless? Yeah I think
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: he was. He was shirtless for most of his career.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: Have you ever seen that Dirty Dancing You know at
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: the end of that movie when like they do the
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: whole dance showdown things that somebody put iron Man in
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: over Patrick No, over, um, Jennifer Gray, So like it's
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: the whole scene, but it's Iron Man dancing with Patrick
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: so ezy and it's really neat and hilarious. For the song,
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: iron Man is used instead of Nope, iron Man the
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: cartoon superhero, the comic book hero is dancing with Patrick's
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: wazy at the for some reason. At the end of this,
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: I gotta see that now. You know what that looks like.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: You should check it out. I cannot visualize it well,
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: visualize this pal. July twenty Chicago's hot, real hot. Thirty
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: something people, thirty two people, maybe thirty three died from
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: the heat that day. That's how hot it was in Chicago.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: We should we should say Chuck and I. Um. Because
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: of our work schedules. Um, we are frequently sequestered away
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: from everybody else while they do fun things like hilarious
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: book exchanges is a good current example. Yeah, if you
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: hear people laughing in the deep background, which is something
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: you've never heard before on our show, that that's because
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: our departments having a party without us. It's really sad,
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: all right, So back to it, back to July twenty,
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: there was a heat. Yeah, there was a movie, a
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: Clark Gable movie that a guy named John Dillinger wanted
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: to go see. Famous gangster John Dillinger. He was a
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  Speaker 1: famous bank robber. He uh. He was an Indiana man
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  Speaker 1: and over the course of a year he robbed a
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  Speaker 1: ton of banks. He apparently robbed a police station or two,
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  Speaker 1: killed at least one cop. And on his birthday, a
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  Speaker 1: couple of months prior, I think it may he had
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: been made Public Enemy number one by Jager Hoover's FBI.
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  Speaker 1: On this night July, he would be betrayed by a
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  Speaker 1: woman in Red Madam as a matter of fact, and
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  Speaker 1: a sage and a sage that's right. Uh. And he
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  Speaker 1: went with his girlfriend and Anna's age, who was his
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  Speaker 1: girlfriend's landlady, to see this movie. And after they came out,
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  Speaker 1: the FBI was waiting for him. He takes off running,
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: pulls out his gun, really does, and they just kill
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: him with a hail of bullets. One of them gets
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  Speaker 1: him in the back of the neck and it goes
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  Speaker 1: out his eye. And that did it for John Dillinger,
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  Speaker 1: a k public Enemy number one and sold out by
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  Speaker 1: Anna's age as it turns out, who was then deported
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  Speaker 1: back to Romania, I think for her troubles. Yeah, thanks
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: for the help. Now here's your one way ticket on
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: this disease. Ridden ship exactly. Uh so he uh, he dies,
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  Speaker 1: but that's not the end of the story. He was
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  Speaker 1: basically put on public display. Either he was put on
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: public display or the public said, uh, we're gonna need
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  Speaker 1: to see this guy. Yeah, that was sort of a
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  Speaker 1: thing though, Like I remember when I remember when Jesse
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  Speaker 1: James was killed, same deal though. Uh, Like these notorious
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: UM criminals sometimes when they were caught, it would be
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  Speaker 1: like a big thing, like in like back back in
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  Speaker 1: the old day. They would put him like out in
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  Speaker 1: the town squear, like in the pine box, come by
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  Speaker 1: and look at him. This was I mean Chicago in
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  Speaker 1: the thirties was not that far removed from that. You know,
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  Speaker 1: wild West, I get your picture taken next to the
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  Speaker 1: body of Jesse James. So that's kind of what they
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  Speaker 1: do with Dillinger UM. And at least two different groups
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  Speaker 1: actually three, but only one was authorized made casts of
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  Speaker 1: his face after he was dead, and we call those
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  Speaker 1: death masks. What those guys were doing was carrying on
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  Speaker 1: a centuries old tradition, millennia old. Really, if you want
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  Speaker 1: to get technical of basically making a negative image of
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  Speaker 1: a dead person and his face so you can make um,
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  Speaker 1: I guess masks from it later on, yeah, or you know,
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  Speaker 1: a full statute head um bust if you will, or
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  Speaker 1: bust or full statue if you really want to go
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  Speaker 1: all the way. But um, curiously, and I find this
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  Speaker 1: to be one of the facts of the show. They
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: did make a positive of Dillinger's face, and j Edgar
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  Speaker 1: Hoover had one in his office as I guess, uh,
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  Speaker 1: sort of a trophy of swords he did. I thought
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: that was pretty cool. I never knew that, Yeah, that
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  Speaker 1: would be cool. And not only have a death mask
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  Speaker 1: of John Dillinger, but the one that was in Jedger
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  Speaker 1: Hoover's office, that's just specific. Um. So I said that
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: this is a very old thing and it goes back
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: at least to the Egyptians. But they're the first ones
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  Speaker 1: who we know made some sort of funerary mask of
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  Speaker 1: the deceased. They had a very good reason, and there's
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: was that if the soul, if you didn't make a
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  Speaker 1: mask of the deceased, the soul couldn't find the body
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  Speaker 1: any longer. It wouldn't have a face in the afterlife. Yeah,
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: because as you learned in our mummification cast, you the
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: face is wrapped up right, so there is no face
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  Speaker 1: any longer. So there you have it. You got like
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: a King Tut and it's not like the regular death mass.
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  Speaker 1: It didn't look like them, right or Nate. Uh, Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: I think King Tuts was actually like that's his face. Yeah,
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: that they went to that level of trouble. I mean,
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  Speaker 1: I knew they tried to make it look like him,
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  Speaker 1: but was it actually a mold of it? Yeah. The
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  Speaker 1: Egyptians weren't the only ancient group to uh to do
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: this either, Chuck. The Mycenaeans, who were whose civilization was
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: discovered by Heinrich Schliemer. Yeah. Um, he found some death
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  Speaker 1: masks and they're really rough and weird looking, but they are.
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  Speaker 1: They took gold sheets that were pliable enough so that
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  Speaker 1: they laid over a people's faces and they made like
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: a again, a funerary mask. Yeah. So if you didn't have, um,
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  Speaker 1: if you weren't super famous or nobleman or um have
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  Speaker 1: a lot of money, you could still get the old
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  Speaker 1: death mask. It was probably made of linen and painted
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: gold or papyrus maybe, um, but you you could still
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  Speaker 1: get your death mask even if you weren't king died. Sure. Um.
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  Speaker 1: The Romans did a lot of this too, and the
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: Romans actually had I thought I knew everything about ancient
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: Rome but um, it turns out that they made death masks,
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  Speaker 1: and there at the funeral, a person who kind of
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: looked like the deceased would wear their death mask, and
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: then other people would wear that person's ancestors their dead
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  Speaker 1: relatives death masks, and basically you just have like a
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  Speaker 1: dead family reunion at the person's funeral. Then after the
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  Speaker 1: funeral that that recently deceased person's death mask was put
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  Speaker 1: together with all of his relatives or her relatives just
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: wait for the next person that and then he would
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: come out with everybody else to bring the new person
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  Speaker 1: into the circle, which is kind of neat. I didn't
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  Speaker 1: realize that they did that. It's very odd, but and
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: I wonder if they would do impressions of them like, oh,
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: I'm uncle Slaviast, look at me, I love wine, Come
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  Speaker 1: here and sit on my lap. Yeah. Uh so, um,
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  Speaker 1: you mentioned the ancient Romans. Um Caesar Julius Caesar actually
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  Speaker 1: had a full wax cast of his entire body after
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  Speaker 1: his death, stab wounds and everything. And Mark Anthony was
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  Speaker 1: I guess dumb enough to go show it off to
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  Speaker 1: a crowd, and they rioted and burned down the Senate building.
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  Speaker 1: So I don't know what reaction he was looking for.
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  Speaker 1: That probably wasn't it. And they're like, we love your records,
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  Speaker 1: not that Mark Anthony. So um, I guess with the
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  Speaker 1: Romans too, with the Gypsians. Basically throughout history, if you
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  Speaker 1: weren't wealthy, you, um probably weren't going to have a
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  Speaker 1: death mask made of you. If you weren't wealthier, you
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  Speaker 1: weren't like the king. Yeah. And one reason is because
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  Speaker 1: a lot of times these were artists before photography, artists
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  Speaker 1: and painters and sculptors. As soon as someone died of note,
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  Speaker 1: they would get their death mask made so they could
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  Speaker 1: then paint them and sculpt them and have a reference
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  Speaker 1: for what they look like. Yeah, and the same thing.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, artists didn't paint nobody's you know what I'm saying,
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  Speaker 1: So you didn't need to have a death mask made
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  Speaker 1: of you. Um. And this is this is pretty much
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  Speaker 1: the way it was for Europe, in Europe for most
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  Speaker 1: of history except in Italy. Italy pretty early on said
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  Speaker 1: if you if you, if you achieve something notable, probably
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  Speaker 1: make a death mask of you. So if you see yeah,
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  Speaker 1: early inventors and artists and those kind of like poets.
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  Speaker 1: If you're in Italy, you probably have a death mask made.
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  Speaker 1: If you're a notable personality like Da Vinci, sure he's
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  Speaker 1: probably a death mask. Um. But elsewhere England, France, all that,
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  Speaker 1: it wasn't until late modern history that um, he started
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  Speaker 1: to see death masks of non noble people coming out.
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  Speaker 1: And as a matter of fact, it was Madame Tussoed,
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  Speaker 1: the lady behind the wax museums, who who kind of
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  Speaker 1: brought um death masks to the masses during the French Revolution.
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  Speaker 1: She and her uncle, uh Philippe Courteous, They were just
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  Speaker 1: masters of wax and they worked a lot. Um. There
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  Speaker 1: was one of Louis the sixteenth Mistresses, was went underwent
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  Speaker 1: the guillotine, and um, she apparently had a terrible grimace
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  Speaker 1: on her face when she died. People could have seen
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: you also curled up your hand for some reason. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: I don't think she didn't too, um and uh so
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  Speaker 1: her Philippe Curtis, uh he basically pinched her face back
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  Speaker 1: into pinch the decapitated heads face back into a nice
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: position and then rolled her in some whacks that he
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: laid out next to the grave. Wow, yeah, that's that's
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  Speaker 1: they They were operating on this higher death mask level
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  Speaker 1: like no one ever has. But the Madam two sold
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  Speaker 1: Wax museum that you enjoyed today grew out of a
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  Speaker 1: death mask operation. Interesting and it seems like a very
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  Speaker 1: macab thing to do. But um, if you it's different
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  Speaker 1: now these days we like to remember our deceased ones
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  Speaker 1: as living and look at photographs of them doing things
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  Speaker 1: where they're alive and lively and go die over there
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  Speaker 1: where we don't have to think about the close casket funeral.
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  Speaker 1: But um, it wasn't the same back then. They would
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  Speaker 1: have they would royal and wealthy families would display these
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  Speaker 1: death mask of their relatives in like you know, the
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  Speaker 1: parlor room or the drawing room or here in the
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  Speaker 1: main hallway, and it was you know, it was the
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  Speaker 1: point of pride. It wasn't like macawbre weird or And
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: then eventually it became pseudo scientific with the advent of phrenology. Phrenology,
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: we I wish we had a good article on that.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: We don't. I haven't seen one. It's pretty interesting, like
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  Speaker 1: the early days of that stuff. Maybe we'll pulling together.
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  Speaker 1: It's like when people were just starting to figure out
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  Speaker 1: the brain and not really having any idea what they
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  Speaker 1: were doing, really missing the mark a lot of times. Yeah. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: So phrenology basically was the idea that you could predict
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  Speaker 1: a person's personality behavior, whether someone was a criminal or not, um,
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  Speaker 1: how intelligent they would grow up to be by like
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  Speaker 1: the shape of their face, the shape of their skull,
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  Speaker 1: the bumps on their skull, um. And so phrenologists, as
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  Speaker 1: as this field grew in the nineteenth century, kind of
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  Speaker 1: increased the demand for um death masks because they wanted
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  Speaker 1: to compare people side by side. So you've gotten some
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  Speaker 1: pretty cool death masks of say like um, John Joseph Merrick,
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  Speaker 1: Oh really yeah, um or uh, he's I think there's
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  Speaker 1: like full body asks of him, um or you know,
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: a criminal or a genius or whatever, and these phrenologist
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  Speaker 1: would keep him side by side and try to compare
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  Speaker 1: and figure out. It's God, there's got to be a
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: key there somewhere, and they have themselves convinced, but they
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: were all wrong. Was there something There had to be
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: something to some of that research, right, I think there
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: was a lot of consensus among scientists, and they're all wrong.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: Let's disappointing. Um. One cool thing is that later on,
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  Speaker 1: in today's world, you can look back at some of
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  Speaker 1: these death masks and gain a little bit of insight diagnostically,
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: speaking on how someone might have died. UM. In this
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  Speaker 1: article they mentioned Scottish writer Sir Walter Scott. They think
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  Speaker 1: now he died of a stroke because his death mask
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  Speaker 1: he has the telltale signs of, like the droopy face
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: on one side. And Abraham Lincoln they think might have
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  Speaker 1: had a wasting disease because he had life masks made,
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  Speaker 1: which is the same thing except alive. Before he died,
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: had a couple of them made, and that they look
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: at these now and say, you know what Abraham Lincoln
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: might have been dying of, like tuberculosis or something? Maybe? Right?
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: Is that what they just said, a wasting disease. I
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: didn't even know what. I think that's a disease. Yeah,
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: that makes sense, consumption. But then, of course Booth took
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: care of that in a more hasty manner. Yes, I
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: don't want to give a spoiler away for the movie,
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: but I'm pretty surely can get shot. Um. There was
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: a speaking of Booth. His brother Edwin had a UM.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: He was like one of the most famous actors at
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: least in the country, if not the world when he
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: was working, and he had a death mask made and
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: it was collected by a man named Lawrence of Arabia. No,
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: his name was Lawrence Hutton, and Lawrence Hutton was a
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: literary um editor for Harper's Magazine, which is still around today.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: Very good UM. And he was in a junk store
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: in New York one time and ran across the death
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: mask and it just was immediately smitten with the idea
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  Speaker 1: of collecting these things. So he spent the rest of
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: his life traveling the world finding death masks, buying him
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: having am made of people. In some cases he had
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: one of Edwin Booth. And he amassed this incredibly large collection,
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: the world's largest individual collection of death masks UM. And
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: when he died, he bequeathed it to Yale. No, Princeton,
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry. So Princeton has this museum of death masks
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: now and see that. Well, lucky for you, buddy, they
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: digitized it. Yep. They have like this really nice website, UM,
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: the Lawrence Hutton death Mask Museum website and it's got
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: all of them on there. It's really really interesting. Some
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: are very very old and like poorly done. There's one
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: of Lincoln that it's just like looking at Lincoln's face
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: because he's so recognizable, but to see the details. Daniel
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: dey lewis right there all right, and you can't hear
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: his weird voice, but you can almost you can almost
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: hear it's just looking at it. But the it's it's
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: the details. That's the thing about death masks that are
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: so I think um alluring to some people is it's
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: it's not only the detail of like you know, they're
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: the age and face and what life did to them,
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: but it's also the detail of the absence of life,
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: like that it's a death mask, you know, like the
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: hollow eyes or in the case of Dillinger, the bullet hole. Um.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: Apparently that his death mask was so detailed. They did
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: such a good job with it that you could see
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: the abrasions on his face from where he hit the
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: pavement when he fell down dead. You're looking at some
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: of these up close, like the details remarkable, it's pretty eerie. Um.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: So if you can't make it the Princeton, you can
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: check out the Lawrence Hutton. Just type in Lawrence Hutton
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: Princeton and we'll bring that up. It's pretty cool little
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: website you can spend some time on. Yeah, and if
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: you do go to Princeton. They got a great little
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: brup pub. You should go to see the death mask,
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: go have some beer. What a pub? Yeah, I mean
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: I can't remember. I mean I assume it's still there.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: It opened new when I was living there in the
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: mid nineties. Um, I bet it's still there, but it
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: was kind of a new at the time. It was
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: like with brew pub. Yeah, this is crazy. It's crazy, alright,
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about how you do this, shall we Yes,
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: you need to do it really soon after the person dies,
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: because you don't want the bloat to set in. Um,
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: you can distort the face and they want like the
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: death face after right, exactly, So they would apply grease
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: to the face, especially on facial hair because, uh, it
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: made it easier to take the bandages off and they
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: didn't want to like rip out your eyebrows. Yeah, because
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: you still had a funeral of the hold exactly. Uh,
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: do you want to look like Sergeant Mauser from police Academy?
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: Do you remember? Yeah, he got his eyebrows blowing off.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: That is. Have you ever seen anyone with no eyebrows?
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: I saw Mouser. It's just weird because sometimes you can't
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: pinpoint why they look so freaky. I remember guy in
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: high school shaved his eyebrows. One of the you know,
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: one of the bad kids, came in one day with this.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: That's how he was rebelling. I don't know, he was
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: just one of those bad kids. Like I didn't associate
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: with him because I was a good boy. But he
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: came in one day in my industrial large class. He
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: has eyebrows shaved, and it freaked me out. Oh yeah,
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: Like I definitely didn't have anything to do it after that.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: It was really strange looking he saved his eyebrows. Yeah,
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: I think it was probably a pink floid thing. So, um,
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: then you applied the plaster bandages. Um you. It's interesting
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: is the first layers where you get all your detail,
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: that's really what the death mask is, and then all
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: the other layers just reinforced that first layer. Right. It
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: telegraphs that anybody who's ever hung dry wall knows that
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: if you don't get that thing smooth when you tape it,
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: it just it's broadcast throughout the whole the whole wall.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: It's that it's just ruined. Yeah, I just set the
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: high I was just putting the house down. My guest bedroom. Yeah,
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: that's just very bad job in there. Uh. And it's
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: funny when contractors have come by since then, they've gone
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: in that room and I've been like, yeah, boy, I
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: don't know who did this. It sucks. Um. All right,
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: So the plaster sets Back in the day, it took
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: about an hour. These days, um, it'll set in just
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: a few minutes, and then you carefully remove the mold.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: You've got your negative, and then it's up to you.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: You can do a wax positive, you can do bronze,
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: um what else. However, but you want to charge people, Yeah,
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: I guess so marble. There's one in Napoleon that they
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: made out of marble. Really Yeah. Yeah, he's not very
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: intimidating when you see his death mask, but I mean
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: they broke his spirit pretty good. Yeah. Sure, exile to
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: an island. It's just you and some other jerks. It
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: might have been nice. Yeah, I don't think he liked it.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: He was too bent on taking over the world. The
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: stick came on an island was like the greatest insult
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: is what you control now, Napoleon and this little tiny space.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: Um you said that, Uh that these days plaster drives
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: in a few minutes. Um. And actually there were death masks.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: I'm sure somebody somewhere still making a death mask here there,
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: but um, George Bernard Shaw had one made when he
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: died in the nineteen fifties, so it's still some something
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: of a modern event. Um, I'm totally gonna get one made,
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: are you Yeah? Why not? All right? Uh? Nicola Tesla
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: had one made. Yeah, his is Have you ever seen his?
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: Is interesting because I've only seen the one picture that one. Yeah,
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: as a younger man, so he got older. He's just
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: I don't know, you know, the ears are huge, and
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: his nose was really large. It doesn't look that large
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: in this picture, and I guess I've never seen it
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: at profile. But yeah, he looks sort of like David Bowie. No,
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: it was a guy, the old old guy who took
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: all the drugs Walter Math, not Burrows, but Timothy Learry
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: sort of looked like a Timothy Larry before he died,
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: like just old virt Timothy Leary died on webcam, right,
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: didn't he like live stream his death? Like even before
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: anyone knew how to live stream, he figured it out somewhere.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: I had no idea. I believe you did. That's sad.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: I'm sure it's up on the web all right. Shall
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: we tell her awesome kind of fact of the podcast
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: story of the Unknown Woman of the Scene a k a.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: The Lincoln You list scene, nineteenth century Paris, Josh, here's
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: the story. An anonymous woman, UH moved to Paris from
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: the country, falls in love with a young man and
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: gets her heart broke in two by this French jerk.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: She is distraught. She cast herself into the river and
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: uh the river scene? Is it scene? I believe and
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: sin and nobody claimed the body ever, and the mortician
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: was was taken her beauty and the he said, oh,
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: this dead lady is so hot. Maybe, but um he
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: was taken with her beauty and her calm, almost peaceful
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: expression on her face. No one ever claimed her. He
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: did a death mask and said, now she is known
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: as the unknown Women of the Scene or the sink
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: the Lincoln. And they a lot of people ended up
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: having uh copies of this death mask in their house
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: as I guess art or something. Yeah, this is kind
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: of weird. Yeah, but I mean this is this is
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: before collector's plates had come along, maybe and it was
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: like spoons from St. Louis or this lady's death mask. Right. Um,
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: so the the author of this article poke some holes
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: in that story. Yeah. The truth is that the this
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: death mask was in wide circulation, right, but the it
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: probably wasn't from a woman who drowned, because her features
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: would have become bloated and distorted by the time she
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: started to float to the surface. Um. And she also
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: looks kind of peaceful. Yeah, so they think that's probably
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: a life mask posed for by a live model, but
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: they never recorded who it was. But the mystery around it,
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: I think probably helped sell some of the death masks,
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: so they kept it going. And then that's the end
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: of the story. You think, here's where it gets really
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: good me. Yeah. Uh. Nineteen sixty Peter Safar, an Austrian doctor,
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: is developing this really radical new thing called trying to
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: save someone who's having a heart attack. Rather than just
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: being like, oh well yeah, which is something I could do?
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: There is something you could do. It's called CPR, and
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: he championed it and got in touch with a Norwegian
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: toymaker named asmund uh Laird. All that sounds so made up,
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: it does and arm intens arian and um said, you
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: know what, I need a way to teach this. I
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: need some sort of like plastic dummy to teach people
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: how to do this new thing old CPR. And I
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: got this. I got just the thing. This will use
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: this face of this woman of the scene and throw
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: it on a dummy bust. And that is who recessa
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: Annie was. And as I was reading this the whole time,
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: I was like, no way, is that recessa Annie? Is
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: that recessa Annie? And it was on the following page
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: was the sentence that became recessa Annie. And I literally
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: felt like, I don't know, it felt like exalted. Yeah, man,
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: I used to like put my mouth on that thing
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: on the nineteenth century death mask. Yeah yeah, every summer
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: for lifeguarding. My mom used to teach CPR classes and
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: she had a recessa Annie and the kid too, who
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: had like that snappy little track suit, like dark blue tracks,
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: like you had these in your house. Yeah, it was
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: a little off, but yeah, eventually I was like it's neat. Yeah,
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: I can't believe. I'm still a little blown away that
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: that's who they ended up using. Yeah, very neat. And
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: when you looked and I looked up the death mask,
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: and then I looked up Pricessa Annie, and I was like, Yeah,
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: that's her. That's cool, Except she's got nostrils in a
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: mouth hole, right, which is very important if you're going
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: to practice CPR, right, or if you're gonna make a
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: life mask, you want to make sure that the person
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: has a way to breathe, and that's usually threw straws
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: into the nostrils. Josh, if you live in Michigan Midland
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: County Historical Museum, there they have Jesse James and Butch Cassidy. Sweet.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: You can go by and check that out. You know.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: If you go to the Maker's Mark Distillery there little tour,
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: they have Frank James Gunn. One of the owner's grandfathers
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: was the guy who Frank James surrendered to and he
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: handed his pistol over. It's pretty neat. Have you ever
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: been there? Did you dip your own bottle? They let
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: you do that, they do, Yeah, I know, why didn't
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: you do that? Man? How can you go to the
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: maker's mark and not dip your own bottle. If you
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: dip your own bottle, then it becomes a memento and
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: it seems like a waste of bourbon. Oh you wouldn't
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: drink it all right? Uh where else? There's this very
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: cool thing and uh called the Black Museum. I look
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: this up in Scotland Yard. Oh yeah, I want to
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: go there. Well you can't. I know. I want to
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: meet Scotland Yard detective who can get me in? Well
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: you can't, you're not at Scotland Yard Detective yourself. I
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: will then go to Scotland Yard Detective School so I
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: can get into this thing. This thing has been around
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: since eighteen seventy four and then moved and refurbished in
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties to New Scotland Yard. And it was
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: originally called the Black Museum. Now it's called the Crime Museum.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: And do they have like letters from Jack the Ripper
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: in there? They have nooses that hung famous people, They
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: have weapons from famous murder cases and a bunch of
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: death masks. Apparently, why would you not let the public
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: in that? I think any British police officer can go
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: if they like, make a reservation like you don't have
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: to be a Scotland yard dick, but uh yeah, pretty
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: cool at the Ripper Letters, that's awesome. Yeah, there's gotta
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: be some movie plot based around the Black Museum that
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: you could come up with that seems like a just
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: the name itself, like everything comes alive maybe at night. Yeah,
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: there you go. There's your movie and poor Ben Stiller
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: gets in trouble and that's where it goes self. Um,
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: if you want to learn more about death masks and
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: you want to see some cool pictures of death masks,
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: you can type the words death masks into the search
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: bar how stuff works dot com. And since I said
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: search bar, it's time for what, well, a couple of
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: quick pieces of business and then listen to mail. Okay,
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: so what's the first order of business, Chuck, Well, we
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: got a TV show coming out on Science Channel January nineteenth,
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: which is right around the corner, uh ten pm, aaring
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: two episodes on the first night, premiere night after Idiot
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: Abroad's premiere, which is a very good leading for us.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: We're super excited about that. And what more do you
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: need to know? Nothing? You need to know that you
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: should be there watching. Yeah, such a little DVR and uh,
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: you know, give us some love, make some noise at
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: the Science channel Facebook page that will help us out.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: And Twitter, Yeah, we appreciate it. What about listening now? Okay, Josh,
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this Martha. Martha's got a few corrections
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: for us on our and we haven't done corrections in
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: a while. But on our topic of peak oil. She's
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: in the business. Uh, she knows a lot about it. Uh.
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: First of all, she affirms me, which I like. Chuckle's right. Guys, dinosaurs,
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: in no way, shape or form make up oil or
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: gas deposits. Most of the source material comes from things
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: like algae and phytoplankton that has died and sunk to
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: the bottom of its lake, ocean or seat um number two.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: The things you said about proved reserves being unreliable, it's
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: partially true, guys. In some countries, like the U S
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: and Canada, UK the members of the Eurozone, proved reserves
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: are actually audited by regulatory bodies. In the US it's
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: the sec U. This is because an investor would most
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: likely consider the amount of proved reserves a company has
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: access to, since that tends to be a good indicator
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: of the health of the firm, whether or not it's
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: a sound investment. If you misrepresent your reserves to the public,
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: sec will come after you and the penalties can be severe.
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: So in some countries the proved reserves is very conservative,
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: actually heavily audited and is probably pretty reliable. But she
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: did point out that other countries, um where they might
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: not want to be as forthcoming. You can get some
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: hinky numbers, right, So I feel like we said that
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: I can't remember. Uh. And then number three she takes
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: its t task a little bit. On fracking. She said,
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: I know it's a contentious subject and we just should
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: do a podcast on this. It's in the in my ideas.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: Cute is it? Um? You guys refer to fracking as
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: causing an environmental disaster every time someone does it. You
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: may call me a shill, but even Lisa Jackson of
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: the e p A, who was not a friend of
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: the oil industry, has said that there are no proven
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: cases of wracking resulting in underground freshwater contamination, and fracking
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: has been conducted in the U s. It's some id forties.
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: It's far more likely that poor, well designed and bad
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: cement jobs would be the culprit. However, there is a
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: big study being conducted right now by the e p A,
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: so all this may change if they find something, but
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: as of now, the science doesn't support the position of
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: most anti fracking groups. So I definitely want to do
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: a podcast on this now. I feel like she's challenged.
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: I feel like she's using psychology on us right now.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: She is. I love your show. I find it fascinating,
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: but I'm weird like that, keep up the great work.
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: Can't wait to your TV show in January. And that
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: is from Martha. Martha. That was a perfect letter from
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: an expert, somebody in the field, taking us the task,
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: being nice about it, yeah, and letting us tell everybody
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: else that maybe we got it wrong, maybe didn't you know,
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: and then mentioning our TV show exactly. So thank you
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: for the perfect letter. Yes. Uh. If you want to
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: send us a perfect tweet, you can tweet to us
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: at s y s K podcast. You can send us
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: the for perfect Facebook posting at Facebook dot com, slash
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: stuff you Should Know, and you can send us a
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: perfect email to Stuff podcast at Discovery dot com. For
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: Stuff works dot com m brought to you by the
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: two thousand twelve Toyota Camera