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

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