October 18, 2025 • 27 mins
Ben here: Noel and I are sailing the seas this week -- wish us luck! Luckily, our Super Producer Max is holding it down with some of our favorite Classic episodes. Here's one for all the kids scared of dentists: "For millions of kids in the West, the story is as mysterious as it is profitable: Once your baby teeth begin falling out, hide them beneath your pillow. Sometime in the night, the Tooth Fairy will retrieve the tooth, leaving you some cash -- perhaps spare change, perhaps as much as twenty dollars -- to thank you for your gift. So where does this idea come from? Join the guys as they explore the strange, surprisingly recent origin of the Tooth Fairy. (And parents, if you're listening with your kids, be warned: This episode does include spoilers.)"
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fellow Ridiculous historians. It's pretty weird when we think about
all the strange things that are treated as normal. Imagine
if you went to some part of the world that
did not have a tooth fairy, and you told the child, Hey,
when you lose your tooth, put it under wherever you're sleeping,
(00:21):
and a magical creature will give you money.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
I'm pretty sure I've brought this up to you before, Ben,
and I think I may have even sent you one
of her little missives. But the I want to say
Icelandic pop singer Aurora. She made the delightful point that
when you brush your teeth, it's the only time you
clean your skeleton.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Beautiful, Let's roll the show. Ridiculous History is a production
of iHeartRadio. Growing up in the West, many of us
(01:15):
as children encounter strange myths and traditions. One of the
most famous is Santa Claus. But you know the one
that always terrified me was the tooth fairy.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Is that a fact?
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Ben?
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Yes? Yes, I had a.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Deep and abiding fear of the tooth fairy. I didn't
like losing teeth and I didn't like touching metal. I
never have, so the idea that there would be someone
who sneaks in and like switches this tooth that I
have to sleep on top of with metal, you know,
some in the under the cover of.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Darkness, a perfect storm of nightmare you have, young Ben.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
It's true, it's true. No, it's true. What about you
were you were you a tooth fairy kid? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Yeah, and then you know, and being a dad myself.
By the way, we need to do a quick disclaimer here.
Spoiler alert for certain child based things.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Ah yes, spoiler alert for stuff that's on a need
to know basis.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
There you go. Yeah, that's a good diplomatic way. So
we're gonna do a countdown five, four, three, two one. Yeah.
So my kid just now figured out that the tooth
fairy is me and her mom.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Did you get caught?
Speaker 2 (02:30):
No? I didn't. But it just finally was like, she's
like when she's at my house, she gets a certain
amount of money. She's a mom's house, she gets a
certain amount of money. And it kind of started being like,
wait a minute, what maybe that was our fault. We
should have coordinated a little bit better. But yeah, she
was into it, and I was about it as well,
and I see the benefits of it. But Robert Lamb
(02:51):
from Stuff to Blow Your Mind made a really good
point about how with things like the Tooth Fairy and
Santa Claus, we do a really bad job as a
culture differentiating between like myth and tradition. It has to
be taken so literal and become like a lie to children.
I have resented the Santa Claus lie for a long time,
(03:12):
and I'm really happy to be done with that because
it really made me feel uncomfortable.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
And there's some yeah, there's some double think. It's so
strange too because on another podcast, Stuff they Want you
to Know, one of the points that haunted me before
for years on that show was most people growing up
in the US, just statistically speaking, the first conspiracy theory
they learn about is Santa Claus, and the conspiracy thing
(03:38):
is reals. Can you like that changes the way you
think about authority and parents and anyone over ten?
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Do you remember Pete and Pete the Nickelodeon show, Yeah,
Redheaded Brothers.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
I just remember the tattoo the Ta Tattoo school.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
Yeah, and you could make your dance or whatever. But
that show also had a bunch of really cool guest
appearances from like interesting musicians like Michael Stipe. First place
I ever heard of who Iggy Pop was. But in
that show, there's a thing called like the International Adult Conspiracy.
I believe it's what it's called, and that is exactly
what this kind of stuff is. It is an agreed
upon the lie that you feed your children. And I
(04:13):
just felt uncomfortable with it because I'm like, is she
gonna ever trust anything? I say again, yeah, especially if
she figures it out herself. And I never like come clean.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Oh, speaking of coming clean, it's time to introduce everybody
to our mutual favorite part of our show, super producer
Casey Pegram Casey, I've got to ask, when did you
figure out that the tooth Fairy was not, in fact
a supernatural creature.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
I think I figured it out pretty early on and
kind of kept up the illusions for a little bit.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Ye.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Well, my own financial benefits, That's.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
What I'm saying, because once you stop believing, then the
cash drives up. What was your exchange rate for a
tooth you don't mind, man, I.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Want to say maybe five or ten bucks.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Oh wow, it's pretty rich.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
And if you were a child in the United States
in twenty thirteen, you got an average of three dollars
and seventy cents per lost tooth, and that's twenty three
percent jump over the last year's rate, twenty twelve's rate
of three dollars a tooth.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
And it's interesting too because this is obviously an average,
so some kids might get a twenty spot for their tooth,
some kids might just get a buck. And I believe
that was tracked regionally, and that it was found that
in the south where we live, that's where the tooth
fairy was the stingiest, and I believe up north is
(05:41):
where they were a bit more generous. Yeah, so this
is weird.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
I'm not going to say who in my family, but
there was also a practice that I thought was normal,
wherein it was kind of a surprise or a gamble
to see how much money the tooth fairy would leave you.
Because our tooth fairy our family was like pretty pretty discerning,
and so some teeth would get more money because they
were better somehow, like a canine tooth that had a
(06:10):
point was considered you know, a nice It's like tulips.
It was like tulips, except with just this invisible fairy creature.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Yeah, and speaking of like you know, tooth fairy money
as some sort of financial indicator. Delta Dental, who I
believe we actually go through through our company, a dental
insurance company, actually tracked the average exchange for a tooth
from two thousand up to twenty sixteen and they correlated
(06:40):
it with the changes in the S and P five
hundred market and found that it was pretty close. Oh wow,
interesting and this is super interesting, Ben. This is a
lot of this is from a fabulous article from our
friends over at Mental Flaws. The tooth fairy inspired this
researcher to come up with something called tooth fairy science.
Do you want to talk about that, man, tooth fairy science.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Yeah, it's important, but it's not near as whimsical as
it sounds. An Air Force flight surgeon, skeptic and critic
of alternative medicine named doctor Harriet Hall coined this term
to essentially describe the importance of making sure some event, object,
or phenomena is real before attempting to study it.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
That's right, because the example here is if you are
studying the amount of money the tooth fairy leaves and
averaging it out, you might think that you're just studying
the behavior to the tooth fairy or tooth fairies. But
what you're actually studying is the behavior of parents. And
so if you are studying a thing that doesn't really exist,
(07:45):
there might be another thing that is actually doing the
thing that you're studying that you never even considered. And
so it's just an important way to create good data
and also to plan good studies.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Yeah, and this is interesting because we're looking at so
many cultural things.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
That describe the tooth fairy.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
One of the things that I think is fascinating, It's
something we were focusing on for this episode is the
origin of the tooth fairy because there are so many
things like Santa Claus, Christmas, trees, the Easter bunny, things
of that nature that we accept growing up as normal,
normal things. You know, even though many of these will
(08:27):
be tied to a religious practice, secular kids practice them too,
because Christmas or Hanukah, that kind of stuff is just cool,
you know what I mean. And what I think will
surprise a lot of people here is that the origins
of the tooth fairy are at least the twoth fairies.
We understand it.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
In the US.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
The origins are fairly recent. We can trace back ancient
tales of tooth related rites of passage. That stuff is
really fascinating.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Like the throwing of the teeth, which appears across several
different cultures, which is really interesting. The vikings did it,
especially baby teeth.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Yeah, yeah, the offering of a tooth to a rat
because it would make your like a rat or a
rodent of some sort, because it was thought to ensure
that the child's teeth would grow strong.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
And that's really interesting when we get into the modern
day tooth fairy myth, or at least the story that
likely was the cause of it, where the tooth fairy
is in fact a rodent.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Yes, yes, it's true. So we know that at least
in Europe. The ritual of how to handle one's shed
baby teeth is global. There are just different rituals around it.
Like you said, no, this tradition in Europe at least
dates back to the earliest written records in Norse and
Northern European cultures, and during the Middle Ages there were
(09:57):
superstitions about children's teeth. You had to burn your baby
teeth to save a child from hardship in the afterlife,
or you would wear children's teeth to bring you good
luck in battle, or you would bury teeth to hide
them from witches. And it's interesting because back then it
(10:18):
was thought that if a witch were to get a
hold of your teeth, the witch would have power over you.
It's kind of weird, right.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
It is a little weird.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
So what's this what's this original story? Because we can
kind of trace it back, right.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
It's neat, but it's really cool because it kind of
incorporates some of the things we were just talking about.
So it turns out that the tooth fairy. The origins
of the tooth fairy date back to eighteenth century France,
when a fairy tale called oh boy, I try to
do casey proud la bon petitri la bon SOI yeah,
and what does that translate to, sir?
Speaker 3 (10:52):
It's like the good little mouse.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Oh, it's the good little mouse, and it's the good
little Casey on the case. So this is the story
of le bon petit the good little Mouse. There is
an evil king who imprisons a good queen, and the
queen is sort of like a you know, a snow
white type figure. She can talk to the animals and
(11:15):
all that, and so she gets a little mouse to
help her out of this jam.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
That's right, that's right, And the mouse, luckily for her,
it turns out not to just be an intelligent, plucky
little rodent. Also, the mouse is secretly a fairy, and
once revealed to be a member of the fair folk
or a fay, the former mouse frees the queen and
then knocks out all of the king's teeth yikes, at
(11:42):
which point, as you would naturally do in fairy tale logic,
he hides these teeth under the king's pillow and then
eventually as the king killed.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Oh so that's not creepy at all.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Well we could do, you know we. I'm sure everyone
listening to this has heard stories before war about how
much more morbid and graphic the original version of fairy
tales are, you know what I mean. So don't let
the patina of Disney feel goodery fool you about the
true nature of fairy tales. But that's fantastic, right, So
(12:15):
this goes back to what we were saying earlier about
the cultural thing with rodents.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
It's right, rodents and teeth and the sacrifice of teeth,
the offering up of teeth and the pillow even exactly.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Yeah, So let's fast forward a little bit to an
especially pivotal article that was written in nineteen oh eight.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
That's right, because one of the earliest mentions of the
tooth Fairy, which that is not the language used in
the play, right, No, No, it's it's the cute little
mouse fairy right there, teeth involved in the pillow, and
that kind of cements the whole mythology of the tooth Fray.
But it doesn't really have a name yet. So in
a column in the Chicago Daily Tribune nineteen oh eight
(13:01):
called Household Hints, somebody writes in and suggests that I'm
going to quote it. And this is also cribbing this
from this mental floss article that has a list of
unexpected things about the tooth Fairy. Many a refractory child
will allow a loose tooth to be removed if he
knows about the tooth Fairy. If he takes his little
tooth and puts it under the pillow when he goes
(13:23):
to bed, the tooth Fairy will come in the night
and take it away, and in its place will leave
some little gift. And then you got a play that
comes out in the late twenties by Esther Watkins called
the tooth Fairy, right, and that's history.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
And this was a re release of that original French story,
The Good Little Mouse. It was in English, it was
in nineteen twenty seven specifically, and this is where the
mouse fairy character becomes cemented with some of the imagery
that we have seen before, the wings in particular. And
there are scattered references afterwards and around this time to
(14:04):
the tooth Fairy in the first half of the twentieth century,
but it doesn't really hit its boom. It's Malcolm Gladwell
esque tipping point until after World War Two, because one
of the most popular stories in Callers magazine in nineteen
forty nine mentions the tooth Fairy, and this, you know,
(14:27):
this makes it a little bit more legitimate. But from
what we found, the tooth Fairy didn't even enter in
encyclopedia until what the late seventies.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Right, Yeah, a very modern and American creation.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
Yeah, it's much more recent than you might think. And
according to some people who have researched the history of
the tooth fairyes, such as Michael Hinkston over at Salon,
we can't overestimate the amount of influence corporations had over
the creation of tooth fairy. So we said, so, like,
(15:06):
you know, the old story was Santa Claus before the
Coca Cola Santa. The appearance of Santa vary widely. He
might be really skinny, his costume differed. But once a
soda company made this sort of pleasant, ruddy cheeked guy
who's always wearing the same costume, right, they sort of
codified this icon, first in the US and now around
(15:31):
the world. That's how people think of Santa Claus often.
So he puts the finger at another corporate entity that
sort of solidified the idea of the tooth fairy. And
you can find this article it's called Don't Tell the
Kids The Real History of the Tooth Fairy. In this
he delves into the work of perhaps the most influential,
(15:52):
most prominent tooth fairy scholar scholar, Yeah, tooth fairy scholar,
Rosemary Wells.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
Right, exactly, rose Mary Wells. And she saw what we've
been seeing that the practice of you know, dealing with
teeth in a ritualistic way, I guess for lack of
a bet, yeah, I know, was a thing across cultures,
but there was precious little known about the origins of
the tooth Fairy. And she's the one who kind of
dug in and found a lot of this stuff and
(16:20):
really went to town. She interviewed all kinds of folks,
anthropologists and parents and kids, and came out with a
series of articles to get to the heart of this
mythical creature, the root character, the root. Indeed the root
that was a joke from her previous episode as a
call back. Yeah yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
So she dove into this and became known as like
the global expert on these traditions, the evolution of this
in the zeitgeist. She even opened up the Twoth Fairy
Museum in her home in Deerfield. So people who study
this will tell you that there are several factors that
(17:04):
led to the tooth fairies agreed upon depiction.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Here in the US.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
And first we should mention for a long time, no
one agreed with the tooth fairy looked like right.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
That's right. It wasn't really a prominent feature. It was
just kind of a winged, tiny creature, a.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Thing that happened.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Yeah, you know, especially since the origins were it being
a literal mouse, right right, So this.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Changes a little bit. The animation giant Disney starts using
fairies and fairy godmothers in the nineteen fifties in a
lot of their films like tinker Bell and Cinderella's right,
so you get this image of like, this is what
a fairy has.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Right, it's not a long jump to just insert that
visual that Disney provided the public consciousness with, and there
you got your tooth fairy.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Yeah, it's like, hey, this is what a fairy looks like.
Now that one's just a tooth themed fairy.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
Lack of a better fact, he's picture the tooth fairy
as being a tinker Bell esque figure.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Yeah, you know what, I'm right there with you, man.
There's another thing that happens here right around the same time.
Because we said the tooth theory didn't really blow up
till post World War two US. Right, that's an economic boom,
there's an increase in prosperity. If you're living through the
Great Depression, you might not have a nickel to give.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
A kid, absolutely not, and that would be a frivolous
use of a nickel.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
And then, secondly, at least, as it's argued in Forbes magazine,
the child's centered view of the American family doesn't really
come into play until post World War Two. Now, again
this is Forbes, but the author argues that after World
War Two it became normal for parents to cater to
their children.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
To kind of dote on them. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah,
before they have them like out working in the fields
or whatever. You know.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
There's an interesting idea here too, which is equating a painful,
scary experience for children to some sort of reward.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Like you'd be brave, get that tooth out, you got
a dollar come in your way or a nickel or whatever.
Super capitalist not to mention, you can even double down
on that and make it about like, hey, if you
brush your teeth, roll well, the tooth fairre will give
you more money or whatever.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
You know.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
Oh nice parenting, parenting jiu jitsu.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
Did you do that? Course, that's a great move. I'm
impressed with you, so we I think we already talked.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
Now.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
She knows I'm a dirty liar, so you know, nothing
I say will ever stand again.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
You tell her you're a dirty liar who kept her
teeth clean.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
That's true.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
It might be a Jack Nicholson moment for you, Like
in that what was it? What's the name of that
film A Few Good Men, A Few good Men. Yeah,
you can't handle the tooth. That's funny, that's cute, ben
I like that.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Speaking of handling the teeth, that's another part of the
whole Rigamar role is you got to kind of sneak
in like a thief in the night and scond with
the tooth from under your sleeping child's pillow and then
shove it somewhere. I have a drawer full of baby
teeth somewhere. I always pictured you as that kind of guy. Yeah,
speaking of that, though, you told me a really interesting
story about someone who stumbled upon a cash of teeth
(20:07):
in a building, in the walls of a building here
in Georgia.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Yes, that's true. In October of this year in Valdosta, Georgia,
which is in South Georgia for people unfamiliar with the state,
there were some construction workers who were at the TB.
Converse building and they were trying to prepare the place
for They were essentially trying to renovate it, and they
(20:30):
wanted to get it ready for a new commercial tenant.
And that's when they discovered around one thousand individual teeth
oh buried in a wall on the second floor with.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
The tooth ferry. We're in fact real Yeah, I know
you are just shutting your way through this one. I
appreciate you sticking, staying without a taking one for the team.
But that would be like the tooth fairies like Burrow,
like Den.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Perhaps that's what they do with the teeth, right, that's
the to me as a kid, that was the weirdest thing.
What the hell is that ferry with those teeth?
Speaker 4 (21:00):
Like the bone collector right right, like the bone clothing
any I mean, if you think about it, this is
a weirdly common trope, like Cereal mascots, you know, like
the Lucky Charms guy.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
He's just taking all these charms. What's he doing with them?
Speaker 2 (21:14):
It's freakish, you know. He's also really skinny too, so
he's alw he's not eating at all. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
Yeah, And it's not like the tooth fairy is putting
the teeth in its mouth and getting a bigger smile.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Though that's a great idea for a horror story, and
there is in fact a spooky tooth fairy. I believe
not to mention a silly tooth fairy starring the rock
and then subsequent I believe straight to video sequels Larry
the Cable Guy.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
So I would love to see Tom Waits's tooth fairy.
It's like a haggard old wizard with like tiny wings
and he comes in. He's like, suh, gotta keep quiet, mister,
pocket the bucket.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
That's great. If you guys haven't seen Tom Waits in
the Ballad of Buster Screws, we gotta let it go.
Absolute delight.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
So I feel like we've learned a lot here. The
tooth fairy is, at least the way we understand it
is so much more recent. It's that cross pollination of
this mouse that sneaks into a kid's bedroom, and then
this general idea of the quote unquote good fairy.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Right, we just sort of.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
Smushed them together America style melting pot, a melt there
we go. Yeah, we fond duded it, and then it
caught on.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
And spread like wildfire.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
I feel like there's also an economic aspect to this too,
you know what I mean. Sure, it's not like put
your teeth under your pillow and you get to spend
more time with your loved ones. It's put your teeth
on your pillow. Here's three dollars and seventy cents.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Yeah, and those dollars in nickels and tens and twenties,
and guy, I wonder if any kid ever got one
hundred surely, surely, yeah, somewhere must be nice anyway. Yeah,
add up in twenty fifteen to two hundred and fifty
six million dollars. That is bonkers. Yeah, and there's okay.
(23:11):
I found the quote that I wanted to. I want
to sit here about the economic part. And I appreciate
you putting in that that huge number, that statistic for us. So,
going back to Christina Kilgrove's article in Forbes, she says
the Tooth Fairy holds a shorter and less visible pedigree
than Santa Claus, but her macroeconomic function in today's society
(23:33):
differs only in degree. Santa Claus's promise is pre monetary
goodness gets you barbies or a Rambo doll. The tooth
Fairy's promise is more modern anything, even your own body,
can be turned into gold. That, in its final reductive wisdom,
is precisely the vaunted magic of free enterprise. That is
(23:55):
dark spot on. Actually, man, I want to rattle off
a couple of these other maybe non monetary traditions at
the end here, should we just leave it with that
amazing quote?
Speaker 1 (24:06):
Ie, I don't know. Let's maybe we can find something
a little less dark dark.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Yeah, let's talk about some of the other traditions that persist.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Let's travel around the world. So we've been to the
United States, but we talked about Wait, we talked about
tooth tossing, right.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
Yeah, it's true. In countries like Turkey and even Greece
or Mexico, kids throw their teeth onto the roof. Why,
I don't know, that's where they belong. Good, good luck,
I guess I'm not sure. Ben. You mentioned something earlier
about how it would maybe encourage healthy growth of adult teeth.
(24:47):
But in the Philippines, Korea, India, and Vietnam, only the
lower teeth get tossed.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
Oh, I remember this because the upper teeth go on
the floor. And the idea is that, through I guess
sympathetic magic or attraction, the new tooth.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
Will grow toward the old one. Smart makes sense, right,
it does make sense.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
And then there are other tooth tossing things where sometimes the.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
Kid will yell out a wish while.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
They're tossing a tooth, got it, which makes I guess
makes more sense to me for some reason, because it
feels like an exchange, very instant exchange.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
Well, I don't have a tooth to throw, Ben, but
I wish we could just keep talking about teeth forever.
But I don't think you make it. You're shuddering at
this point. You're literally you're in a cold sweat.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Yeah, but we're doing this for the ridiculous Historian's very
I'm doing it for you all throughout Central Asia. If
you have a kid that loses a tooth, remember it's
traditional to put the tooth into some fat and feed
it to a dog. Please don't try that. I don't
know how a dog would digest a tooth. This is
done because the idea is that the grown up tooth
that replaces it will be as strong as a dog's tooth.
(25:57):
And if there's no dog around, bury it by a
tree so that the new tooth and strong roots. That's
a quote from mental Floss.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
That's wonderful. That's wonderful.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
So do you have kids, how did you handle the
tooth fairy growing up? You know what I mean. I'd
love to hear from people who didn't really have it
as a thing in their house, because not everybody.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Does absolutely, Or if you're a parent, how do you
feel about the tooth fairy lie let us know. You
can write to us at Ridiculous at HowStuffWorks dot com,
or we can hit us up on our Facebook group,
the Ridiculous Historians, where we just have a good old
time hanging out by the Internet fire, you know, warming ourselves,
burning our teeth, dricking hot cocoa together with the other
(26:39):
ridiculous historians that hang out there. There's a lot of fun.
Casey gets on, Jonathan Strickland the Quizzler gets on, or
as you like to call him, Ben the Quizzler, just
to take him down a pet, you gotta take him
down when he gets big. He is a haughty boy.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Sometimes he gets big, little too big, a little big
little big. So thanks also to Alex Williams, you compose
our track. Thanks to you, Lol Brown, And it sounds
like you're doing a pretty solid job navigating the ethically
fraught path of parenthood.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
Well, you know, when it all came out, she definitely
didn't hate me or distrust me, So I guess I'm
doing okay. We'll see you next time, folks. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Fellow Ridiculous historians. It's pretty weird when we think about
all the strange things that are treated as normal. Imagine
if you went to some part of the world that
did not have a tooth fairy, and you told the child, Hey,
when you lose your tooth, put it under wherever you're sleeping,
(00:21):
and a magical creature will give you money.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
I'm pretty sure I've brought this up to you before, Ben,
and I think I may have even sent you one
of her little missives. But the I want to say
Icelandic pop singer Aurora. She made the delightful point that
when you brush your teeth, it's the only time you
clean your skeleton.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Beautiful, Let's roll the show. Ridiculous History is a production
of iHeartRadio. Growing up in the West, many of us
(01:15):
as children encounter strange myths and traditions. One of the
most famous is Santa Claus. But you know the one
that always terrified me was the tooth fairy.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Is that a fact?
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Ben?
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Yes? Yes, I had a.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Deep and abiding fear of the tooth fairy. I didn't
like losing teeth and I didn't like touching metal. I
never have, so the idea that there would be someone
who sneaks in and like switches this tooth that I
have to sleep on top of with metal, you know,
some in the under the cover of.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Darkness, a perfect storm of nightmare you have, young Ben.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
It's true, it's true. No, it's true. What about you
were you were you a tooth fairy kid? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Yeah, and then you know, and being a dad myself.
By the way, we need to do a quick disclaimer here.
Spoiler alert for certain child based things.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Ah yes, spoiler alert for stuff that's on a need
to know basis.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
There you go. Yeah, that's a good diplomatic way. So
we're gonna do a countdown five, four, three, two one. Yeah.
So my kid just now figured out that the tooth
fairy is me and her mom.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Did you get caught?
Speaker 2 (02:30):
No? I didn't. But it just finally was like, she's
like when she's at my house, she gets a certain
amount of money. She's a mom's house, she gets a
certain amount of money. And it kind of started being like,
wait a minute, what maybe that was our fault. We
should have coordinated a little bit better. But yeah, she
was into it, and I was about it as well,
and I see the benefits of it. But Robert Lamb
(02:51):
from Stuff to Blow Your Mind made a really good
point about how with things like the Tooth Fairy and
Santa Claus, we do a really bad job as a
culture differentiating between like myth and tradition. It has to
be taken so literal and become like a lie to children.
I have resented the Santa Claus lie for a long time,
(03:12):
and I'm really happy to be done with that because
it really made me feel uncomfortable.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
And there's some yeah, there's some double think. It's so
strange too because on another podcast, Stuff they Want you
to Know, one of the points that haunted me before
for years on that show was most people growing up
in the US, just statistically speaking, the first conspiracy theory
they learn about is Santa Claus, and the conspiracy thing
(03:38):
is reals. Can you like that changes the way you
think about authority and parents and anyone over ten?
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Do you remember Pete and Pete the Nickelodeon show, Yeah,
Redheaded Brothers.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
I just remember the tattoo the Ta Tattoo school.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
Yeah, and you could make your dance or whatever. But
that show also had a bunch of really cool guest
appearances from like interesting musicians like Michael Stipe. First place
I ever heard of who Iggy Pop was. But in
that show, there's a thing called like the International Adult Conspiracy.
I believe it's what it's called, and that is exactly
what this kind of stuff is. It is an agreed
upon the lie that you feed your children. And I
(04:13):
just felt uncomfortable with it because I'm like, is she
gonna ever trust anything? I say again, yeah, especially if
she figures it out herself. And I never like come clean.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Oh, speaking of coming clean, it's time to introduce everybody
to our mutual favorite part of our show, super producer
Casey Pegram Casey, I've got to ask, when did you
figure out that the tooth Fairy was not, in fact
a supernatural creature.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
I think I figured it out pretty early on and
kind of kept up the illusions for a little bit.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Ye.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Well, my own financial benefits, That's.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
What I'm saying, because once you stop believing, then the
cash drives up. What was your exchange rate for a
tooth you don't mind, man, I.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Want to say maybe five or ten bucks.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Oh wow, it's pretty rich.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
And if you were a child in the United States
in twenty thirteen, you got an average of three dollars
and seventy cents per lost tooth, and that's twenty three
percent jump over the last year's rate, twenty twelve's rate
of three dollars a tooth.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
And it's interesting too because this is obviously an average,
so some kids might get a twenty spot for their tooth,
some kids might just get a buck. And I believe
that was tracked regionally, and that it was found that
in the south where we live, that's where the tooth
fairy was the stingiest, and I believe up north is
(05:41):
where they were a bit more generous. Yeah, so this
is weird.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
I'm not going to say who in my family, but
there was also a practice that I thought was normal,
wherein it was kind of a surprise or a gamble
to see how much money the tooth fairy would leave you.
Because our tooth fairy our family was like pretty pretty discerning,
and so some teeth would get more money because they
were better somehow, like a canine tooth that had a
(06:10):
point was considered you know, a nice It's like tulips.
It was like tulips, except with just this invisible fairy creature.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Yeah, and speaking of like you know, tooth fairy money
as some sort of financial indicator. Delta Dental, who I
believe we actually go through through our company, a dental
insurance company, actually tracked the average exchange for a tooth
from two thousand up to twenty sixteen and they correlated
(06:40):
it with the changes in the S and P five
hundred market and found that it was pretty close. Oh wow,
interesting and this is super interesting, Ben. This is a
lot of this is from a fabulous article from our
friends over at Mental Flaws. The tooth fairy inspired this
researcher to come up with something called tooth fairy science.
Do you want to talk about that, man, tooth fairy science.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Yeah, it's important, but it's not near as whimsical as
it sounds. An Air Force flight surgeon, skeptic and critic
of alternative medicine named doctor Harriet Hall coined this term
to essentially describe the importance of making sure some event, object,
or phenomena is real before attempting to study it.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
That's right, because the example here is if you are
studying the amount of money the tooth fairy leaves and
averaging it out, you might think that you're just studying
the behavior to the tooth fairy or tooth fairies. But
what you're actually studying is the behavior of parents. And
so if you are studying a thing that doesn't really exist,
(07:45):
there might be another thing that is actually doing the
thing that you're studying that you never even considered. And
so it's just an important way to create good data
and also to plan good studies.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Yeah, and this is interesting because we're looking at so
many cultural things.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
That describe the tooth fairy.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
One of the things that I think is fascinating, It's
something we were focusing on for this episode is the
origin of the tooth fairy because there are so many
things like Santa Claus, Christmas, trees, the Easter bunny, things
of that nature that we accept growing up as normal,
normal things. You know, even though many of these will
(08:27):
be tied to a religious practice, secular kids practice them too,
because Christmas or Hanukah, that kind of stuff is just cool,
you know what I mean. And what I think will
surprise a lot of people here is that the origins
of the tooth fairy are at least the twoth fairies.
We understand it.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
In the US.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
The origins are fairly recent. We can trace back ancient
tales of tooth related rites of passage. That stuff is
really fascinating.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Like the throwing of the teeth, which appears across several
different cultures, which is really interesting. The vikings did it,
especially baby teeth.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Yeah, yeah, the offering of a tooth to a rat
because it would make your like a rat or a
rodent of some sort, because it was thought to ensure
that the child's teeth would grow strong.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
And that's really interesting when we get into the modern
day tooth fairy myth, or at least the story that
likely was the cause of it, where the tooth fairy
is in fact a rodent.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Yes, yes, it's true. So we know that at least
in Europe. The ritual of how to handle one's shed
baby teeth is global. There are just different rituals around it.
Like you said, no, this tradition in Europe at least
dates back to the earliest written records in Norse and
Northern European cultures, and during the Middle Ages there were
(09:57):
superstitions about children's teeth. You had to burn your baby
teeth to save a child from hardship in the afterlife,
or you would wear children's teeth to bring you good
luck in battle, or you would bury teeth to hide
them from witches. And it's interesting because back then it
(10:18):
was thought that if a witch were to get a
hold of your teeth, the witch would have power over you.
It's kind of weird, right.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
It is a little weird.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
So what's this what's this original story? Because we can
kind of trace it back, right.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
It's neat, but it's really cool because it kind of
incorporates some of the things we were just talking about.
So it turns out that the tooth fairy. The origins
of the tooth fairy date back to eighteenth century France,
when a fairy tale called oh boy, I try to
do casey proud la bon petitri la bon SOI yeah,
and what does that translate to, sir?
Speaker 3 (10:52):
It's like the good little mouse.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Oh, it's the good little mouse, and it's the good
little Casey on the case. So this is the story
of le bon petit the good little Mouse. There is
an evil king who imprisons a good queen, and the
queen is sort of like a you know, a snow
white type figure. She can talk to the animals and
(11:15):
all that, and so she gets a little mouse to
help her out of this jam.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
That's right, that's right, And the mouse, luckily for her,
it turns out not to just be an intelligent, plucky
little rodent. Also, the mouse is secretly a fairy, and
once revealed to be a member of the fair folk
or a fay, the former mouse frees the queen and
then knocks out all of the king's teeth yikes, at
(11:42):
which point, as you would naturally do in fairy tale logic,
he hides these teeth under the king's pillow and then
eventually as the king killed.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Oh so that's not creepy at all.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Well we could do, you know we. I'm sure everyone
listening to this has heard stories before war about how
much more morbid and graphic the original version of fairy
tales are, you know what I mean. So don't let
the patina of Disney feel goodery fool you about the
true nature of fairy tales. But that's fantastic, right, So
(12:15):
this goes back to what we were saying earlier about
the cultural thing with rodents.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
It's right, rodents and teeth and the sacrifice of teeth,
the offering up of teeth and the pillow even exactly.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Yeah, So let's fast forward a little bit to an
especially pivotal article that was written in nineteen oh eight.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
That's right, because one of the earliest mentions of the
tooth Fairy, which that is not the language used in
the play, right, No, No, it's it's the cute little
mouse fairy right there, teeth involved in the pillow, and
that kind of cements the whole mythology of the tooth Fray.
But it doesn't really have a name yet. So in
a column in the Chicago Daily Tribune nineteen oh eight
(13:01):
called Household Hints, somebody writes in and suggests that I'm
going to quote it. And this is also cribbing this
from this mental floss article that has a list of
unexpected things about the tooth Fairy. Many a refractory child
will allow a loose tooth to be removed if he
knows about the tooth Fairy. If he takes his little
tooth and puts it under the pillow when he goes
(13:23):
to bed, the tooth Fairy will come in the night
and take it away, and in its place will leave
some little gift. And then you got a play that
comes out in the late twenties by Esther Watkins called
the tooth Fairy, right, and that's history.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
And this was a re release of that original French story,
The Good Little Mouse. It was in English, it was
in nineteen twenty seven specifically, and this is where the
mouse fairy character becomes cemented with some of the imagery
that we have seen before, the wings in particular. And
there are scattered references afterwards and around this time to
(14:04):
the tooth Fairy in the first half of the twentieth century,
but it doesn't really hit its boom. It's Malcolm Gladwell
esque tipping point until after World War Two, because one
of the most popular stories in Callers magazine in nineteen
forty nine mentions the tooth Fairy, and this, you know,
(14:27):
this makes it a little bit more legitimate. But from
what we found, the tooth Fairy didn't even enter in
encyclopedia until what the late seventies.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Right, Yeah, a very modern and American creation.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
Yeah, it's much more recent than you might think. And
according to some people who have researched the history of
the tooth fairyes, such as Michael Hinkston over at Salon,
we can't overestimate the amount of influence corporations had over
the creation of tooth fairy. So we said, so, like,
(15:06):
you know, the old story was Santa Claus before the
Coca Cola Santa. The appearance of Santa vary widely. He
might be really skinny, his costume differed. But once a
soda company made this sort of pleasant, ruddy cheeked guy
who's always wearing the same costume, right, they sort of
codified this icon, first in the US and now around
(15:31):
the world. That's how people think of Santa Claus often.
So he puts the finger at another corporate entity that
sort of solidified the idea of the tooth fairy. And
you can find this article it's called Don't Tell the
Kids The Real History of the Tooth Fairy. In this
he delves into the work of perhaps the most influential,
(15:52):
most prominent tooth fairy scholar scholar, Yeah, tooth fairy scholar,
Rosemary Wells.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
Right, exactly, rose Mary Wells. And she saw what we've
been seeing that the practice of you know, dealing with
teeth in a ritualistic way, I guess for lack of
a bet, yeah, I know, was a thing across cultures,
but there was precious little known about the origins of
the tooth Fairy. And she's the one who kind of
dug in and found a lot of this stuff and
(16:20):
really went to town. She interviewed all kinds of folks,
anthropologists and parents and kids, and came out with a
series of articles to get to the heart of this
mythical creature, the root character, the root. Indeed the root
that was a joke from her previous episode as a
call back. Yeah yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
So she dove into this and became known as like
the global expert on these traditions, the evolution of this
in the zeitgeist. She even opened up the Twoth Fairy
Museum in her home in Deerfield. So people who study
this will tell you that there are several factors that
(17:04):
led to the tooth fairies agreed upon depiction.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Here in the US.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
And first we should mention for a long time, no
one agreed with the tooth fairy looked like right.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
That's right. It wasn't really a prominent feature. It was
just kind of a winged, tiny creature, a.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Thing that happened.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Yeah, you know, especially since the origins were it being
a literal mouse, right right, So this.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Changes a little bit. The animation giant Disney starts using
fairies and fairy godmothers in the nineteen fifties in a
lot of their films like tinker Bell and Cinderella's right,
so you get this image of like, this is what
a fairy has.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Right, it's not a long jump to just insert that
visual that Disney provided the public consciousness with, and there
you got your tooth fairy.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Yeah, it's like, hey, this is what a fairy looks like.
Now that one's just a tooth themed fairy.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
Lack of a better fact, he's picture the tooth fairy
as being a tinker Bell esque figure.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Yeah, you know what, I'm right there with you, man.
There's another thing that happens here right around the same time.
Because we said the tooth theory didn't really blow up
till post World War two US. Right, that's an economic boom,
there's an increase in prosperity. If you're living through the
Great Depression, you might not have a nickel to give.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
A kid, absolutely not, and that would be a frivolous
use of a nickel.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
And then, secondly, at least, as it's argued in Forbes magazine,
the child's centered view of the American family doesn't really
come into play until post World War Two. Now, again
this is Forbes, but the author argues that after World
War Two it became normal for parents to cater to
their children.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
To kind of dote on them. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah,
before they have them like out working in the fields
or whatever. You know.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
There's an interesting idea here too, which is equating a painful,
scary experience for children to some sort of reward.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Like you'd be brave, get that tooth out, you got
a dollar come in your way or a nickel or whatever.
Super capitalist not to mention, you can even double down
on that and make it about like, hey, if you
brush your teeth, roll well, the tooth fairre will give
you more money or whatever.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
You know.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
Oh nice parenting, parenting jiu jitsu.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
Did you do that? Course, that's a great move. I'm
impressed with you, so we I think we already talked.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
Now.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
She knows I'm a dirty liar, so you know, nothing
I say will ever stand again.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
You tell her you're a dirty liar who kept her
teeth clean.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
That's true.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
It might be a Jack Nicholson moment for you, Like
in that what was it? What's the name of that
film A Few Good Men, A Few good Men. Yeah,
you can't handle the tooth. That's funny, that's cute, ben
I like that.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Speaking of handling the teeth, that's another part of the
whole Rigamar role is you got to kind of sneak
in like a thief in the night and scond with
the tooth from under your sleeping child's pillow and then
shove it somewhere. I have a drawer full of baby
teeth somewhere. I always pictured you as that kind of guy. Yeah,
speaking of that, though, you told me a really interesting
story about someone who stumbled upon a cash of teeth
(20:07):
in a building, in the walls of a building here
in Georgia.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Yes, that's true. In October of this year in Valdosta, Georgia,
which is in South Georgia for people unfamiliar with the state,
there were some construction workers who were at the TB.
Converse building and they were trying to prepare the place
for They were essentially trying to renovate it, and they
(20:30):
wanted to get it ready for a new commercial tenant.
And that's when they discovered around one thousand individual teeth
oh buried in a wall on the second floor with.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
The tooth ferry. We're in fact real Yeah, I know
you are just shutting your way through this one. I
appreciate you sticking, staying without a taking one for the team.
But that would be like the tooth fairies like Burrow,
like Den.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Perhaps that's what they do with the teeth, right, that's
the to me as a kid, that was the weirdest thing.
What the hell is that ferry with those teeth?
Speaker 4 (21:00):
Like the bone collector right right, like the bone clothing
any I mean, if you think about it, this is
a weirdly common trope, like Cereal mascots, you know, like
the Lucky Charms guy.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
He's just taking all these charms. What's he doing with them?
Speaker 2 (21:14):
It's freakish, you know. He's also really skinny too, so
he's alw he's not eating at all. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
Yeah, And it's not like the tooth fairy is putting
the teeth in its mouth and getting a bigger smile.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Though that's a great idea for a horror story, and
there is in fact a spooky tooth fairy. I believe
not to mention a silly tooth fairy starring the rock
and then subsequent I believe straight to video sequels Larry
the Cable Guy.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
So I would love to see Tom Waits's tooth fairy.
It's like a haggard old wizard with like tiny wings
and he comes in. He's like, suh, gotta keep quiet, mister,
pocket the bucket.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
That's great. If you guys haven't seen Tom Waits in
the Ballad of Buster Screws, we gotta let it go.
Absolute delight.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
So I feel like we've learned a lot here. The
tooth fairy is, at least the way we understand it
is so much more recent. It's that cross pollination of
this mouse that sneaks into a kid's bedroom, and then
this general idea of the quote unquote good fairy.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Right, we just sort of.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
Smushed them together America style melting pot, a melt there
we go. Yeah, we fond duded it, and then it
caught on.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
And spread like wildfire.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
I feel like there's also an economic aspect to this too,
you know what I mean. Sure, it's not like put
your teeth under your pillow and you get to spend
more time with your loved ones. It's put your teeth
on your pillow. Here's three dollars and seventy cents.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Yeah, and those dollars in nickels and tens and twenties,
and guy, I wonder if any kid ever got one
hundred surely, surely, yeah, somewhere must be nice anyway. Yeah,
add up in twenty fifteen to two hundred and fifty
six million dollars. That is bonkers. Yeah, and there's okay.
(23:11):
I found the quote that I wanted to. I want
to sit here about the economic part. And I appreciate
you putting in that that huge number, that statistic for us. So,
going back to Christina Kilgrove's article in Forbes, she says
the Tooth Fairy holds a shorter and less visible pedigree
than Santa Claus, but her macroeconomic function in today's society
(23:33):
differs only in degree. Santa Claus's promise is pre monetary
goodness gets you barbies or a Rambo doll. The tooth
Fairy's promise is more modern anything, even your own body,
can be turned into gold. That, in its final reductive wisdom,
is precisely the vaunted magic of free enterprise. That is
(23:55):
dark spot on. Actually, man, I want to rattle off
a couple of these other maybe non monetary traditions at
the end here, should we just leave it with that
amazing quote?
Speaker 1 (24:06):
Ie, I don't know. Let's maybe we can find something
a little less dark dark.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Yeah, let's talk about some of the other traditions that persist.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Let's travel around the world. So we've been to the
United States, but we talked about Wait, we talked about
tooth tossing, right.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
Yeah, it's true. In countries like Turkey and even Greece
or Mexico, kids throw their teeth onto the roof. Why,
I don't know, that's where they belong. Good, good luck,
I guess I'm not sure. Ben. You mentioned something earlier
about how it would maybe encourage healthy growth of adult teeth.
(24:47):
But in the Philippines, Korea, India, and Vietnam, only the
lower teeth get tossed.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
Oh, I remember this because the upper teeth go on
the floor. And the idea is that, through I guess
sympathetic magic or attraction, the new tooth.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
Will grow toward the old one. Smart makes sense, right,
it does make sense.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
And then there are other tooth tossing things where sometimes the.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
Kid will yell out a wish while.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
They're tossing a tooth, got it, which makes I guess
makes more sense to me for some reason, because it
feels like an exchange, very instant exchange.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
Well, I don't have a tooth to throw, Ben, but
I wish we could just keep talking about teeth forever.
But I don't think you make it. You're shuddering at
this point. You're literally you're in a cold sweat.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Yeah, but we're doing this for the ridiculous Historian's very
I'm doing it for you all throughout Central Asia. If
you have a kid that loses a tooth, remember it's
traditional to put the tooth into some fat and feed
it to a dog. Please don't try that. I don't
know how a dog would digest a tooth. This is
done because the idea is that the grown up tooth
that replaces it will be as strong as a dog's tooth.
(25:57):
And if there's no dog around, bury it by a
tree so that the new tooth and strong roots. That's
a quote from mental Floss.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
That's wonderful. That's wonderful.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
So do you have kids, how did you handle the
tooth fairy growing up? You know what I mean. I'd
love to hear from people who didn't really have it
as a thing in their house, because not everybody.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Does absolutely, Or if you're a parent, how do you
feel about the tooth fairy lie let us know. You
can write to us at Ridiculous at HowStuffWorks dot com,
or we can hit us up on our Facebook group,
the Ridiculous Historians, where we just have a good old
time hanging out by the Internet fire, you know, warming ourselves,
burning our teeth, dricking hot cocoa together with the other
(26:39):
ridiculous historians that hang out there. There's a lot of fun.
Casey gets on, Jonathan Strickland the Quizzler gets on, or
as you like to call him, Ben the Quizzler, just
to take him down a pet, you gotta take him
down when he gets big. He is a haughty boy.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Sometimes he gets big, little too big, a little big
little big. So thanks also to Alex Williams, you compose
our track. Thanks to you, Lol Brown, And it sounds
like you're doing a pretty solid job navigating the ethically
fraught path of parenthood.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
Well, you know, when it all came out, she definitely
didn't hate me or distrust me, So I guess I'm
doing okay. We'll see you next time, folks. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
Popular Podcasts
CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist
It’s 1996 in rural North Carolina, and an oddball crew makes history when they pull off America’s third largest cash heist. But it’s all downhill from there. Join host Johnny Knoxville as he unspools a wild and woolly tale about a group of regular ‘ol folks who risked it all for a chance at a better life. CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist answers the question: what would you do with 17.3 million dollars? The answer includes diamond rings, mansions, velvet Elvis paintings, plus a run for the border, murder-for-hire-plots, and FBI busts.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.