May 3, 2012 • 44 mins
When the Visigoths ruled Spain, they introduced the idea of battling bulls at festivals. Today matadors get paid $100,000 and perform in front of 50,000 fans. But is bullfighting an antiquated, abusive relic or a cultural tradition above reproach?
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
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):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
from House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me. It's always Charles W.
Chuck Bryant, hol A, Chuck Hola, Hola right back catching Um.
(00:26):
How are you doing? I'm great? How are you? I'm
doing pretty good? Yeah. Yeah, I've been learning a lot
about bull foling lately. I don't know if you know.
You mean bull killing. Bull fighting is what it's culture.
It's not what I call it. Or you could also
call it a cardido cordida. Boy, here we go corrida.
(00:47):
Have you ever been to Spain? No? Have you? Yeah?
Where I've been to? Uh? And then um Tosa de
Mar which is little coastal town near Barcelona there on
the coastal Brava, very nice. Have you been to Okay? Yeah?
(01:08):
Very Have you seen a bullfight? No? I would not,
I would not do that, sir, I have seen a
bull fight. And um, to offend you even further, not
only was it a bullfight, it started off with a
cock fight. It was in Cancoon. I saw it with
my sister and my dad, and UM, it was crazy
because we were we were there and it was a
(01:30):
bullfight like. It wasn't like you could have accidentally walked
into this thing like it was a bullfight. Um. And
I would say of the people there were um, white,
probably American tourists, who booed and yelled and shouted things
the whole time. And I remember thinking of that one
(01:54):
Simpsons where um, Lisa was having a nightmare about being
second chairs for sacks phone in the school band, and um,
at the concert, everybody was booing and she wakes up
and thinks, like, why would everybody come just to boo?
It was exactly like that. People came just to boom
to bullfight. Well, that is one people who who say
(02:17):
bullfighting is not good, of which I'm one of them,
say that that's one of the only reasons bull fights
are still even going on is because of tourists. That
they're the ones buying the tickets. And many times those
tourists get there and they're horrified and they leave early
and think, wow, no refunds making no exactly he just
(02:39):
funded bullfighting. Yeah exactly, sucker. Um. A couple of quick
stats roughly to between two hundred and two hundred and
fifty thousand bulls are killed each year from bull fights,
from bull fights, and um, I'm not sure if this
is accurate, but the number I got was it fifty
two matadors have been killed since. I'm surprised it's that few.
(03:05):
Have you heard of Julio Aparichio? If you have a
very strong constitution, Uncle Josh warns you against this one. Yeah,
holy cow. It was almost like, how is that not photoshops?
It was perfect? The horns so Julio Apariccio was he
(03:29):
fell down and bull got the best of him, gored
him with his with its horns, with his horns because
bull um and what a boy? Huh, and gordon under
his chin and it threw his through his neck and
then the horn came out of his mouth perfectly. And
(03:50):
m a guy from getting Images got a close up
of it, like like fifty of them. It's it's amazing.
I haven't seen the video. It's on the YouTube and
it's one of those that's so awful that you have
to like sign in and verify your age before you
watch it. And I do not advise people to watch this.
I don't even advise you to see the too. Look
(04:11):
at the Daily Mail article that has it. But it's
pretty crazy. But yes it happens. And I'm surprised that
only how many fifties seven? The stat I got was
fifty two in the last you know, three hundred plus years. Um,
so there's not much of a fight going on. And
matador is actually Spanish for killer, so is it really Um, yes,
(04:32):
they're killer bulls for sure. It's the whole point, Like
there's really no gray area here, like bull fighting is
the the purpose of it is to kill the bull. Yeah,
under certain conditions or um, within a certain framework. But
that's the point of bullfighting. It's not anything but that.
And if the matador fails to kill the bull, that's
on him and it is a huge disgrace, like that's
(04:55):
a that's a loss, and it's it's not very good right. Um,
what I start, I'm starting to suspect that you are
a post bull fighting Um. There are a lot of
people and apparently Spain's um. I mean in Spain, it's
like a natural cultural thing. It's been around for a while,
(05:17):
and even people who feel the same way you do
still say I still don't think it should be illegal.
It's just too much a part of our tradition. Not
everyone feels that way, though, No, definitely not. They did
a gallop pole in two thousand ten and seventy of
Spaniards said that they were ready to do away with it. Yeah,
that's a lot of Spaniards. And that's up from like
(05:38):
fifteen years earlier. So in this modern day, people are
starting to think twice about it. Well, let's let's talk
about this, Chuck, Let's talk about how how long people
have been fighting bulls on the Iberian Peninsula. We don't know,
Fox Show, but um, there is evidence of bull rituals
dating back all the way to BC. Yeah. The Mycenaeans
(06:01):
apparently used to leap over bulls that were charging. It
was like a thing, and they were always revered, you know,
as like these godlike creatures, which is why I guess
they want to kill him. What. Yeah, what's the taurus? One? Taurus?
Is that the Is that an astrological sign? Yeah? Okay, yeah,
of course pretty ancient. Uh. The article points out that
(06:22):
the Visigoth rule Um of the Iberian Peninsula from fourteen
fifteen to seven eleven um No. Four fifteen four fifteen
to seven eleven, UM had men on horseback fighting bulls um,
which evolved into mounted bullfighting which uh rijneo, which still
(06:43):
exists in Portugal horseback bullfighting where they kill the bull
outside the ring. Later on, right, they weaken it to
a certain point, which is the equivalent of killing the
bull is far. I guess there's some point of no
return that the Portuguese understand and they're like, okay, well
we're done, come outside, and then that's that. But as
(07:05):
anybody who's opposed bullfighting will tell you, that's not any
more humane. Of course, it's just out of sight of
the spectators. Um. So yeah, you've got what is it?
Ray hoo rayjono joo um. And then uh. Bull fighting
itself as we understand it today was firmly established in
(07:26):
Spain by the eleventh century UM, and it came about
during festivals, specifically one festival called the Fiesta descind Ferminton
and anybody has been to Pampalonna will recognize that because
that's where the running of the bulls takes place. And
when in July now so I seven when it used
(07:47):
to be September. And then in the sixteenth century they
moved it to July, and ever since then the running
of the bulls has been held. But it's been going
on since long before that. And it actually started with
a bunch of um ranchers their kids moving the bulls
from like their pens to about a half a mile
to the arena. Um. And then people started running alongside
(08:09):
him and evolved into the running of the bulls. Now
interesting els said the Spanish military leader uh midd eleventh century.
He was one of the first to actually bring it
into the arena and make it the sanctioned corrida, which
was government sanctioned is today at least, but what's back then,
(08:30):
I'm financially supported by governments to fifteenth century. It was
a big part of the aristocracy until Queen Isabella came
along and said this is not cool. I don't know
why she was against it, probably because she was an
animal lover. I would say that's probably a good idea,
and Pope Pious UM five almost said the uh he
(08:55):
banned it. But that didn't last very long, um only
about eight years, because people were into it pretty pretty
big time, right um. And then in about the I
guess in the six d is when that that whole
divergence between horseback and foot bull foot bull fighting took place,
and it remained um the sport of the aristocracy until
(09:19):
Philip the came along and he said, you know what,
this is barbaric. You would have to be a low
class barbarian to engage in bullfighting. So if you remember
my court and you get caught doing this, I'll shoot
you in the knee. And the aristocracy said, well, we
want our knees in tack, so we're gonna stop doing this.
(09:40):
And at this point bullfighting transferred from a kind of
high flutant, snooty pastime to the them the pastime of
the people, the national sport of the Spanish people, and
from that point on it's it's stayed that way. Yeah,
but they they The author does point there are arenas
(10:01):
in Spain that still have the royal boxes for the
royal family right to attend these things, so it hasn't
gone away completely as far as that goes. So Spain
is the heart and life center of um bullfighting, but
there's other places that it's held. Obviously, I saw him
in cancun Um. And if you're a bullfighter, you can
(10:22):
follow the season pretty much year round and get work
if you're good the heaven France. Did you know that?
I didn't, but I saw that it's been It was
banned in the UK. Had no idea anybody was fighting
bulls and going on in Germany. It was going on
all over the place. It's crazy. But that doesn't make
sense that it would happen in Germany if the Visigoths
(10:43):
are the ones who introduced it to the Iberian Peninsula
because they were Germanic people from south of the south.
Norway will call you south Way. I don't think the Goths. Uh.
So we'll walk you through what happens in a in
a corrida um in this whitewashed article version. But um,
(11:04):
before this ever happens, we'll walk you through the couple
of days before the bull even gets to the ring. Oh,
this is a special treat for me. It is the bull.
Um is not an aggressive animal at all. Bull likes
to hang around in chew grass and uh smell flowers.
That sounds like bullfighting propaganda to me. No, Ferdinand, the
(11:27):
bull it's like a sweet creature. But they actually are
not aggressive. They're only um gonna charge somebody if they're
threatened and angry, which is what bullfighting is all about. Um.
So in the two days prior to the bull showing
up at the arena, they are abused. Um they are
uh basically mentally destroyed versions of what a bull should be.
(11:52):
You're fat bull. While they do fatten them up to
make them slow. Well, that's a big problem, and you
can call somebody out for that, Okay. Um. They have
wet newspaper stuffed in their ears so they can't hear anything.
They have vasoline rubbed on their eyes so their visions blurred.
They have their eyes taped open so they can't sleep. Uh.
(12:14):
They stuffed cotton up their nostrils so they can't breathe
very well, and they stick and needle through their genitals.
That'll that'll take anybody off. They rubbed this caustic solution
on their legs, which makes the bull not be able
to balance and uh keeps the bull from lying down. Ever.
They strap their horns to the ceiling of their transport
(12:34):
truck uh to take them on their long hot journey's
wherever they're going. And for the two days before they
keep them in a in a box. Oh wait, I'm sorry,
that's not all they give them drugs to either pep
them up or slow them down, just to keep them
in whatever state they want them in, and give them
laxatives uh, to just obviously make things even more uncomfortable. Um.
(13:00):
Then they put the bull in the in this dark
box for two days uh to disorient the bull. Finally,
when they open the box, there's a light at the
end of the tunnel that the bull thinks, my god,
I'm finally getting out of here. Runs to the light
and all of a sudden they're in a bull ring, right,
And there's trumpets and fanfare and people cheering, um, and
(13:21):
the bulls like, oh cool, how's how's that? Hey, how
are y'all doing? I've been through some rough times lately. Um.
Some of that stuff, I think if you were found out,
you would be disqualified immediately, especially doing stuff that slowed
the bull down or made it less dangerous. Yes, the
(13:42):
bull ring is a ring for a reason. Um. Bulls
would want to go try and hide in a corner,
but the ring, the circular ring, will confuse in a
bull to where it can't hide anywhere. Have you ever
seen that footage of that bowl that like makes it
up into the stands, Like jumps up and then is
in the stands like on top of people. It was crazy.
(14:02):
Was that bull run our test? No? Do you get
that joke? Okay? So the different acts I believe are
called ter CEOs. Yes, I believe so. And there's three
of them, right, Yes, there's three of them. And the
that's three acts in a fight in a cardido, yes,
in a bull fight. Yeah, and um there's no suspense
(14:26):
going on either by the way they all go down
the same way. I bet it's suspenseful for the bull. Um.
So the bull comes out the first act or what? Uh? Yeah?
Act one? Okay. In act one there are um guys
called peka doors and they're mounted on horseback and they
(14:47):
are basically, um, I guess, low level torreros or bullfighters
because both. A matador is not the only kind of bullfighter.
He is the cream of the crop, pinnacle of bullfighters,
the well paid rock star. Yes, um, but he works
with the crew of pika doors who show up in
the first act, and bandilli airos who show up in
(15:10):
the second act. But the pika doors what they do
is they lance the bowl between his shoulder blades, around
his neck muscles and the whole point of this chuck.
You'll love this one is to weaken the neck muscles
so that the bull's head hangs so that the matador
can get to its heart more easily. Yeah. It also
hits a gland in the neck that releases adrenaline. Apparently.
(15:34):
Um so they lanced the bull three times and twist
the blade around to ensure maximum blood loss. Um. Three
matadors will now come in. They will fight individually later on,
but they all come in at first in the first
act with their capes. And this is and for the
for the bull fight, it's an afternoon of them. There's
(15:54):
six bowls and three matadors, and each matador fights two
bowls and each bull fight takes about fifty in twenty minutes. Yes.
Um so they come in with their little capes and
uh do their little maneuvers to draw attention away from
the pika doors. And the Pika doors go and hide
behind their little walls. They have these interior walls that
(16:16):
they can hide behind. Whenever the bull starts to get
too dangerous, they run and hide behind these walls. Yes,
or if this America, the Pika doors would be dressed
as clowns and would hide in barrels. Look at rodeo. Yeah,
it will do a rodeo podcast at some point. Do
we have to sure they don't. I don't think they
kill the cals and rodeos. Okay, Um, So the pika
(16:40):
doors leave the ring, the matadors leave the ring at
two begins, and the vandel Garros, I know that's a
tough one. They're they're basically bullfighters, assistant bullfighters. Put they're
on foot, yes, and if you've ever seen a bullfighter
a picture of bull fight, bulls seem to have some
(17:00):
um crepe barbed sticking out of him. That's the bandelierros work. Yes,
and that is called a bandias and it's a barbed dart.
It's adorned colorfully. The bulls aren't the only things dying
in this episode, and so was the Spanish language, because
we are butchering it. I'm trying uh this of course,
(17:23):
further weekends the bull um so the mighty Matador doesn't
have much work to do, so the bull is still dangerous.
Um are They run in circles at this point to
to get it nice and dizzy and confused. The manador
comes out for the final act and he has ten
ten official minutes to kill the bull, well, to do
(17:44):
a little showing off first and then kill the bull.
Um after the ten minute warning. After the ten minutes
he gets in a viso, which is a warning first warning.
After three minutes he gets another one, and then he
gets a third one, so he has a total of
in actuality fifteen minutes to kill the bull or else
the bull is let out alive and the matadors disgraced.
(18:05):
But for the most part, the matador is going to
dispatch the bull, and um, he does it. He first
starts using the cape. And the cape is always held
in the left hand. Is it? That's all right handed? Dudes?
I did not. I was looking, and I could even
tell that they were. Um there, the cape was kind
of clumsy held in the left hand. They were still
holding it in the left hand. Well, the guys I
(18:26):
saw were practicing, So maybe I don't know, but I
don't see why they would practice with their right hand.
I don't either. Okay, but you have a cape in
one hand, you have a sword in the other. Yes,
and the point of the cape, by the way, we
should probably get to this now. Um cape is always
red because red Anger's bulls right not true. Balls are
(18:46):
color blind, so they're not angered by red or any
other color. What does get them going is the movement
of the cape and sticking swords in their neck. That's
another thing that gets them going. Um. And actually that's
not necessarily true. By the time the manador comes out,
sometimes the um the bowl is really tired from blood
(19:07):
loss and being tortured for a couple of days apparently, um.
And so the manador really kind of has to work
to get it riled up again. And even though the
bulls just like, just kill me, manador is like, not yet,
we have a crowd to please first, So um the
the manador. Eventually after the cape work is done. Um.
Oh the cape is read by the way to high bloodstains. Um.
(19:30):
Once the cape work is done, the manador will um
as the bull runs past him, will plunge the sword
in between his shoulder blades and what's called a estoccata,
which is the death blow. And uh. It properly delivered
estocata will sever the bulls a order and that will
be that almost immediately for the bull. If it's not
(19:52):
done correctly, then the bull can be in even more
tremendous pain as it bleeds out. But to protecting into this,
a bandeliero will come out and immediately deliver any any
another thrust of a blade to make sure the bull
is dead with a plantilla a smaller knife. Ideally they
(20:16):
killed him with one blow. That rarely happens because apparently
matadors aren't so great at doing that anymore. I don't
know if they ever were. And uh, a lot of
times the bull lives even through the smaller knife plunge
and is still alive when the ears and tail or
hoof or cut off and presented to the matador. We
usually there's a there's another fail safe um where they
(20:40):
just bring out a tractor and run the bull over
a bunch of times to make sure that it's that's
so nice. If that doesn't work, then the people come
down from the stands and just start shooting it. That's
not true, and it's not funny. It's not funny because
it's not true, and they oftentimes do survive hanging on
by read. Their lungs are punctured, so they're bleeding, like
(21:04):
drowning in their own blood and like vomiting up blood
through their nose and mouth like a whale. Dying and flurry. Uh.
And sometimes they will take it outside and skin it
while it's even still alive. Yeah, that's a kind of
a tradition. Um. I saw the bull after the bullfight.
It was pretty sad. Um. They take the bull right
outside and um, they'll dress it and then sell the
(21:28):
meat at the stadium. Um, which is customary and very strange,
but that's one of the aspects of bullfighting. If you've
ever wanted a bull burger and you wanted to eat
it right after you saw it die, go to a
bullfight in Spain. Uh. They will drag the bull out
with some mules attached to chains. And UM, I don't
(21:51):
know if the booing booing you heard, because apparently the
people will boo and throw beer cans at the bull
at the end. I don't know if that's what you were.
It depends, so depends Um. No, no, no, no, that's
this was. They were booing the matador, the bliros, the doors, everybody.
They were booing a whole country of Mexico for this. Um.
(22:12):
Yeah they're booing everybody. No. Um, it depends on the bull.
If the bull was um a woss, then I could
see the fans throwing beer cans at it. There's also
um that an aspect of this that cannot be denied
that a bull that shows great bravery, anger, um spirit, spunk,
really tries to kill the matador or the bandili arrows
(22:35):
will be very much revered by the people in the
stands and gruesomely UM. They'll bring it out for a
victory lap, being dragged by the mules in a circle
around the arena. After it's dead, or apparently while it's
still dying, people will cheer it through roses for it UM.
And there's a there's a a UM. There's a rule
(22:56):
where the crowd or the matador can ask for in
uh indolito, which is a reprieve for a particularly courageous bull,
and the president of the of the bullfight the referee
can say, yes, I give this bullet reprieve because it's
such an awesome bowl. We're gonna let it live. And
the manador proceeds to um with an empty hand simulate
(23:20):
the death blow, saying I could have killed the bull,
but I like the bull so much I lobbied to
get it released. That bull is taken away and UM
put out the stud for the rest of its life.
And there was one it's very rare to get an indulto. Um,
And there was one one bull called Manzanito in he
(23:41):
got an indulto because he gored all three manadors in
the plaza that day. Wow. That that that will get
you off right there. You get to go stud for
the rest of your life. Mr. Bull. Horses are also abused.
The ones that participate, their ears are stuffed with newspaper,
wet newspaper, the blindfolded, and they sever their vocal cords
(24:02):
so they can't scream out in pain because people don't
want to hear that. Yeah, people don't like that, So
they sever the vocal cords. So the horses that are,
you know, trembling in fear inside this ring at this bowl,
don't bark out and let people know that. And if
the horses are hurt, they take them out of the
ring and patch them up and send them right back
(24:23):
in there. Where are you getting this activist info all
over the place? Yeah, yeah, okay, I mean it's not
activist info, it's how it goes down. No, it all
just kind of has a certain ring to it. I'm
not disputing it. I'm just saying like, yeah, well, I mean,
coming out of my mouth, it probably sounds activist because
I think it's an awful thing to do something like this.
(24:45):
But this is the these is the facts. Okay, Well
in check you will love the next part wherein we
talk about famous matador. Yeah, I feel free. So uh,
people have been doing this since well, we said like
the eleventh century, right, El sid was supposedly the first
guy to fight a bull in an arena. UM, and
(25:06):
since then it's it's just become huge, big business. UM.
But the first reel and probably only real golden age
if you call it that, bullfighting happened UM from nineteen fourteen,
and there were two matadors, Juan Belmonte Garcia and Jose Gomez,
(25:28):
who fought bulls under the name joslit though um had
a rivalry and um. Belmonte Garcia was actually the first
guy apparently to stand still or stand his ground when
he was doing cape work with a bull rather than
try to run away from the bull. He's in fantasy footwork.
(25:50):
Jsalito was his rival, and the rivalry was really going swimmingly,
I guess for everybody but the bulls, until Hosalito was
fatally gored UM at a match that both of them
were at Garcia and Jsalito were fighting at um in
N and that end of the Golden age of bullfighting.
(26:11):
You'll be happy to hear. He must have been small Zalito. Yeah,
his name is Jose, and I think if you're Jose
and they call you hosalito, that means you're small, like
add that eto to anything Alito or young because he
started very young. Oh yeah, maybe that's true. He started
at age thirteen, um and he was only I think
twenty twenty five when he died. When he was gord so. Uh.
(26:35):
Another guy who's gorge is named Manuel Rodriguez E Sanchez.
Do you think that's like the mothers and the father's
names when it's two last names and there's an e
in and in the middle. I don't know. I would
think so. And well, Rodriguez in Sanchez. You put the
Rodriguez together and the Sanchez is together and you get
Manuel also known as Menelette. Maybe so. And he was
(26:59):
Gordon in He was the top matador from nineteen forty
and nineteen forty seven, and I think is goring and
the end of his being the top mattador was not coincidental.
I think you're probably right. Uh, should we talk about
the bulls because it's very specific what kind of bulls
are fighting. They're all four years old, which I didn't know,
(27:22):
I didn't, um, and they are specifically bred to bullfight.
In the weigh about thirt hundred pounds. You want to
translate that niquilas for our friends, it's that's right. And um,
they are bread and ranches. And this article says that
they're tested for bravery and ferocity and that if you
(27:43):
pass that test, you would become a fighting bull. Um.
And that may be true sometimes, but uh, matadors like
to make their money and they don't want to be gored.
So the high falutin mattadors will request very placid, docile
bulls just to keep the show going. Is that true?
That's what That's what I read. Okay, So have they
(28:07):
just want to put on the show, you know, they
don't want to die too? Well, I'm sure they don't
want to want to make They want to make a
few million bucks a year doing it easy too, because
they get paid about a hundred grand a bullfight and
they can do maybe thirty to forty or more. Yeah,
I know the um Oh, the guy bel Monte. He
had a record hundred and nine bullfights in It's like
(28:32):
in Rocky three when he was fighting all the chumps
just for a pay day. Oh yeah, he didn't want
any real challenge. But ultimately he did want a real
challenge because he fight. He fought Draco, well, he fought
Clever Lang and three and three it was the Russian.
Three was clever Lane. No, yeah, the first two were Apollo,
(28:52):
the third was Clever Langing. The fourth was the Russian.
I thought that he was, uh, Tommy Morrison. And then
the six was when he came back as a trainer, huh.
And the seventh was him enjoying a nice sandwich for
two hours. No, Rocky three was definitely clever Line, because
that was my favorite one until I got older and
(29:12):
I realized that the person one was actually the better one.
You know. I thought that I would think that too,
and then I went back and watched it as an adult.
I'm like, I mean, it's pretty good, but man, I
loved it. There's just too much character development, and for
a Rocky movie, well, it was a love story. It
wasn't even a boxing movie. Wrong with you, I understand,
but it was a love story starring and written and
(29:33):
directed by Sylvester Stallone. That's right, all right, Back to
the bulls. Bulls are never exposed to more than one fight. Yeah,
so apparently they have very good memories, so they learned
how to out due the uh, the matador in their
in their cape. So that's why they don't fit them twice.
And the guys who test their ferocity for I guess
(29:54):
the ones that are tested, those are done on horseback,
so that the bulls not like, oh I remember as capes,
I'm gonna get you, I associate you with laxatives. Well,
even this article says that they they alter bulls to
make them easier to fight. But this is what I'm saying, so, um,
it's a very participatory sport for the spectators. Um. So,
(30:17):
like you can ask for an indolito, you can also
challenge or charge uh somebody with fighting an altered bowl,
one that's overfed and too fat and slow, one whose
horns have been altered, because apparently the tips of the
horns of a bull are very much like a cat's whiskers,
and if you remove that, the bull is not going
to have a very good sense of kinetics. And will
(30:40):
never hit the matador. So if the crowd thinks that
your career is like over pal, that's why I don't
think it's quite as widespread either that or else. Um.
Bullfighting crowds have become complacent. Well, I think that's definitely true. Yeah, Well,
because it's tourists they don't know how to spot a
fat bull, Well, then that very well may be the case.
(31:02):
And they also apparently the way they stabbed them and
where they stabbed them, they do so in order to
make sure they charge straight instead of like I've got
a bad left leg, all of a sudden, I'm gonna
be going left all day or right all day. So, Chuck,
we mentioned that you can make a pretty decent living
doing bull fights, but you also mentioned, um that there's
(31:27):
there may be the death of bull fighting as it were.
Do you think that's really true. I mean, seriously, people
have been doing this since the fourth century, and now,
all of a sudden, just because of a bad economy
and animal activism, bullfighting is going down. It's starting to well.
The polls that the popular sentiment is changing in Spain
(31:50):
over the past fifteen years is one um. Catalonia is
the first region in mainland Spain to actually ban it
in Barcelona's in Catalana. You, yeah, which is big because
Barcelonlona had not one, not two, but three bullfighting arenas.
That's right, and that took effect. That took effect actually
just this year. On January one, they said, like, let's
(32:13):
finish out the two thousand eleven season and then we'll
ban it shouting from that point they had the last
one at UH in September. I think September two thousand
eleven was the last one ever. UM. That's a huge deal.
But even in Spain they're kind of like this nooty
Catalans like they don't they don't enjoy bullfighting. I think
(32:34):
that's made some quarters of Spain even more fiercely proud
of it. Yeah, probably like Madrid apparently is still very
proud of their bullfighting UH. In two thousand and ten,
one of the state television stations said, we are going
to ban coverage live coverage of it because kids can
watch this on TV. UM. They happen in the hours
(32:54):
in the early afternoon hours, in early evening, so they
won't broadcast until after ten pm. Now, right, Well, there's
a there's a law that says you can't show animal
cruelty on Spanish television until after ten pm because of children.
And so that's effectively banned showing bullfighting in Spain. Um,
which is a huge blow to it. Um, I guess
(33:17):
economically or financially, because I mean think about how many
how much money comes from television deals and sponsorships. If
you can get rid of it on TV, like, that's that.
And then there's also, Um, they've shown that there's evidence
that government, that the federal government of Spain is pretty
much what's propping up bull fighting these days, because um,
(33:39):
there were what it went from a thousand bull fights
in two thousand eight to eight hundred and two dozen
ten in Spain, and um, that two hundred was almost exclusively, um,
the result of cuts and government subsidies to small towns
that can't afford to put on a bull fight. And
so that means that, yeah, the government's holding the whole
thing up. Yeah. I read a couple of interesting articles today.
(34:00):
One of them was from a veterinarian. Uh, and they
have vets at the bullfight um on staff, I guess ah.
And this vet went on record as saying they did
all this testing of like adrenaline and or adrenaline and
all these different uh chemicals in the body on these
(34:21):
bulls that had just survived, ones that were dead ones
before they went in, and basically to prove that the
bull suffers a great deal because there's this misguided notion
that the bull doesn't suffer because they're this magical creature.
I saw this one interview with a Bandaliro and he
said that a veterinarian this is translated obviously, but he said,
(34:44):
a veterinarian told me that the bulls have a special
cell in their body that prevents it from suffering and
feeling pain. That's not true. Oh are you sure. Yeah,
there's no special cell that that keeps them from feeling pain. Well,
that's a that's a larger debate too. I mean, like,
I believe bulls can suffer. But you know, um, if
(35:04):
you've read David Foster Wallace is considered the lobster. Can
a lobster suffer? Is no susception is the perception the
physical feeling of pain is that the same thing is suffering.
Now we've shown it's not. Remembering our happiness audiobook, we
talked about the difference between experiencing physical pain and experiencing
suffering right now. They actually utilize different parts of the brain.
(35:25):
So if there's no suffering, is inflicting pain on something
e g. Cooking it? Um? Is that cruel? That's a
good point, it is, But I think bulls experienced suffering.
It's especially if they go through what you describe. Yeah,
and if you're against bull fighting and you want to
do something, you can email the or mail the embassies
(35:47):
of these countries that still participate and tell them that, hey,
I'm not going to visit your country. I'm not gonna
spend my money there. If you're still gonna endorse this,
it's a small thing you can do. Becaun, you mail
me some wine because I can't make it over. There's
some temperar neo. Uh. And I just I'm gonna go
on record as saying this whole thing that it's a
(36:09):
it's part of the culture is just crap. Well, the
the Spanish federal government would disagree with you because in
two dozen tend and what a lot of people see
as a response to um the Catalonia band Um, the
Spanish government transferred jurisdiction over bullfighting from the Interior Ministry
to the cultural ministry, so as an attempt to keep
(36:30):
it from being banned. It's gonna be uh, it'll be
a tough fault one. But yeah, apparently even Mexico now
is entertaining the idea of banning it. You know some
other things that were defended as culture, genital mutilation on females,
witch burning, bear baiting. Have you ever heard of that? Um? No.
(36:50):
Bear baiting was popular in England up until the eighteenth century.
That is, when you take a bear like a you know,
grizzly bearer, brown bear, like a clown, well not far off,
You put it in a pit and chain it to
a mistake and release dogs on it, and the dogs
kill the bear or the bear kill some of the dogs,
so they release more dogs, and people sit around and
(37:12):
gamble on is the bear gonna get eaten first or
the dog's gonna get killed first? And uh, it's blood sport.
And I think this is the same thing. You know. Um,
that's where bulldogs came from, and that's where they got
their name from. It's called bull baiting. And bulldogs used
to not even come close to resembling what they do now.
They were actually bred to be less vicious. Um. By
(37:36):
making them slower and dumber and more cuddly, or not dumber,
but more cuddly. Um. And that's how we have the
modern bulldogs now. But they evolved from basically uh, in
the nineteenth century bulldogs. Where we're where um pitple breed
is now where there are a lot of people being like,
we just need to wipe this breed off the face
of the planet. It's gone out of control. They're crazy.
(37:58):
Everybody scared them. They're killing people. Um. And then they
managed to breathe the meanness out of them. But bull
bull baiting to bull baiting bulls just have been taken
it well. Embarbating actually still happens in Pakistan and it's uh,
it's horrific. So two from me to you people of Spain, Mexico, France. Uh,
(38:22):
ritualized killing of animals for people to pay for and
watch is a little outdated and just silly and cruel,
and I say, please stop from from chuck to you,
from me to you. And one more thing. The whole
notion of culture. Isn't that supposedly to advance your civilization?
(38:43):
And isn't that supposed to mean like positive things like culture?
I mean, what brings people together more than the ritual
down here and wanting wanting bull fight. All right, I'm done. Um, So,
how do you feel about bullfighting? Person? Which I think
it's great. If you want to learn more about bull
(39:04):
fighting UM or Chuck's views on it, you can type
in Chuck or bull fighting in the search part how
stuff works dot com. Uh, and I said search bar,
which means it's time for listener mail. We're very riled
up listener mail. That's right now. This is calm. I'm
gonna call this. Uh. Illustrator wrote us about the comics episode. Guys,
(39:27):
I'm in currently an illustrator. Uh. Does you not have
much hope for his future in that field? No? I
think he does. Um. I found because he does like
Digital Illustration Team. I guess um. I found your podcast
when I was hip deep in art school at the
Art Institute of Boston. But there are only so many
times I could listen to the same old Our Lady
Peace songs on repeat from that group. No, he had
(39:49):
like one song into the same song gets which song was?
I can't remember. I dug it this song. Actually I
got the CD because of that song. Man, I used
to fall for out when I was fourteen and just
be like, that's the only good song on the whole
CD before the Kiss single. Yeah. Um, I'm now a
professional illustrator, but I also teach art at a I B.
(40:13):
And was able to live a many dream when my
higher ups approached me about teaching a comic book class.
So he was pretty stoked about this UM on the comics.
And this is just some things he pointed out on
the comics code of authority you guys talked about. World
War Two was long over and the new round of
superheroes Spider Man, Fantastic Four had yet to emerge from
the minds of Lee Kirbean Ditko. As a result, comics
(40:35):
were merely treading water and chasing from fad to fad,
Westerns to romance to eventually horror. Horror comics are what
really started to worry everyone, so they began to put
pressure on companies like EC, who had made their names
in Over the Top four. In turn, EC basically jettisoned
at Steak in horror comics and latched onto a little
(40:56):
humor comic, uh Mad, which we talked about. It was
like UM stories guaranteed to drive you mad, exactly the original,
but to this point Mad was published basically as a
comic book. In essence, EC was looking to hedge its bets,
so it relaunched Mad as a magazine UM, which is
a very different distinction because all of a sudden wasn't
(41:17):
under the code of authority. Uh. We were blessed with
the very first Mad magazine, a very calculated move since
they were not heavily scrutinized by comics and they didn't
have to worry about the comics code. It is UM.
I hope to make it big as a comics illustrator
in children's book illustrator who says I can't do both.
I also thought you might like to know that you're
(41:38):
keeping me company during these long hours chasing the dream.
And this dude's stuff is awesome and if you want
to hire Greg Marathus, you can get in touch with
him at the Greg Marathas Studio, which is g R
E G M A R A T h A s
dot com or Rida's blog Greg Maratha dot blog spot
(42:01):
dot com. Nice and stuff is very cool. I told
him I'd keep them in mind if we ever needed
we could do some drawings. We need some Facebook timeline drawings.
If he's holling to work for free, you get to it.
Did we remember we um we got chastised biographic designer
for holding that T shirt contest. Yeah, I emailed him back.
Actually we did use to calm them down. Uh yeah,
(42:25):
I was like, you know, most of these were amateur designers.
There was some pros in there, but never mind. And
it's not like we've forced anybody to do with But
there's a whole there's a whole movement um from designers
about design contests being awful, Like what other industry basically
asked for free work as a contest quote unquote, there's
like fiction contests. Yeah, there's all kinds of so box Derby's. Yeah,
(42:49):
there's a lot of stuff that people do for free
as part of a contest, bake offs or bakes off.
I'm sorry. And I saw some designers that say, I
don't agree with that contests make me better and that's
a ridiculous idea. Architecture as a field has been in
contest mode for a century or more, and like, yeah,
(43:12):
that's there's a lot of work put into it. There's
a lot of work put into graphic design. Contests are
everywhere I think that's a ridiculous stance. Well, his point
was because he mailed me back and he was like, well,
find the contest is fine, but you should give them
a cut of the T shirt sales. I don't disagree
with that. Well, I know that we had no choice. Well, no,
we're in no position whatsoever to share that told him
due if it was up to me, they would get
(43:34):
of the T shirt sales. I don't know about that. Well,
we don't get any well, I know, but still we
could if we could negotiate on their behalf, we would
work a little bit in for us to what a
volatile episode right to the end. So I guess if
you want to express your volatility UM toward us, that's cool.
We can handle it. We've been taken up for years.
You can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast.
(43:56):
You can send us stuff on Facebook, including Facebook art
for the timeline um at Facebook dot com slash stuff
you should know. You can also email us at Stuff
Podcast at Discovery dot com. Be sure to check out
our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join How
(44:19):
Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising and
perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. Brought to you by the reinvented
two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
from House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me. It's always Charles W.
Chuck Bryant, hol A, Chuck Hola, Hola right back catching Um.
(00:26):
How are you doing? I'm great? How are you? I'm
doing pretty good? Yeah. Yeah, I've been learning a lot
about bull foling lately. I don't know if you know.
You mean bull killing. Bull fighting is what it's culture.
It's not what I call it. Or you could also
call it a cardido cordida. Boy, here we go corrida.
(00:47):
Have you ever been to Spain? No? Have you? Yeah?
Where I've been to? Uh? And then um Tosa de
Mar which is little coastal town near Barcelona there on
the coastal Brava, very nice. Have you been to Okay? Yeah?
(01:08):
Very Have you seen a bullfight? No? I would not,
I would not do that, sir, I have seen a
bull fight. And um, to offend you even further, not
only was it a bullfight, it started off with a
cock fight. It was in Cancoon. I saw it with
my sister and my dad, and UM, it was crazy
because we were we were there and it was a
(01:30):
bullfight like. It wasn't like you could have accidentally walked
into this thing like it was a bullfight. Um. And
I would say of the people there were um, white,
probably American tourists, who booed and yelled and shouted things
the whole time. And I remember thinking of that one
(01:54):
Simpsons where um, Lisa was having a nightmare about being
second chairs for sacks phone in the school band, and um,
at the concert, everybody was booing and she wakes up
and thinks, like, why would everybody come just to boo?
It was exactly like that. People came just to boom
to bullfight. Well, that is one people who who say
(02:17):
bullfighting is not good, of which I'm one of them,
say that that's one of the only reasons bull fights
are still even going on is because of tourists. That
they're the ones buying the tickets. And many times those
tourists get there and they're horrified and they leave early
and think, wow, no refunds making no exactly he just
(02:39):
funded bullfighting. Yeah exactly, sucker. Um. A couple of quick
stats roughly to between two hundred and two hundred and
fifty thousand bulls are killed each year from bull fights,
from bull fights, and um, I'm not sure if this
is accurate, but the number I got was it fifty
two matadors have been killed since. I'm surprised it's that few.
(03:05):
Have you heard of Julio Aparichio? If you have a
very strong constitution, Uncle Josh warns you against this one. Yeah,
holy cow. It was almost like, how is that not photoshops?
It was perfect? The horns so Julio Apariccio was he
(03:29):
fell down and bull got the best of him, gored
him with his with its horns, with his horns because
bull um and what a boy? Huh, and gordon under
his chin and it threw his through his neck and
then the horn came out of his mouth perfectly. And
(03:50):
m a guy from getting Images got a close up
of it, like like fifty of them. It's it's amazing.
I haven't seen the video. It's on the YouTube and
it's one of those that's so awful that you have
to like sign in and verify your age before you
watch it. And I do not advise people to watch this.
I don't even advise you to see the too. Look
(04:11):
at the Daily Mail article that has it. But it's
pretty crazy. But yes it happens. And I'm surprised that
only how many fifties seven? The stat I got was
fifty two in the last you know, three hundred plus years. Um,
so there's not much of a fight going on. And
matador is actually Spanish for killer, so is it really Um, yes,
(04:32):
they're killer bulls for sure. It's the whole point, Like
there's really no gray area here, like bull fighting is
the the purpose of it is to kill the bull. Yeah,
under certain conditions or um, within a certain framework. But
that's the point of bullfighting. It's not anything but that.
And if the matador fails to kill the bull, that's
on him and it is a huge disgrace, like that's
(04:55):
a that's a loss, and it's it's not very good right. Um,
what I start, I'm starting to suspect that you are
a post bull fighting Um. There are a lot of
people and apparently Spain's um. I mean in Spain, it's
like a natural cultural thing. It's been around for a while,
(05:17):
and even people who feel the same way you do
still say I still don't think it should be illegal.
It's just too much a part of our tradition. Not
everyone feels that way, though, No, definitely not. They did
a gallop pole in two thousand ten and seventy of
Spaniards said that they were ready to do away with it. Yeah,
that's a lot of Spaniards. And that's up from like
(05:38):
fifteen years earlier. So in this modern day, people are
starting to think twice about it. Well, let's let's talk
about this, Chuck, Let's talk about how how long people
have been fighting bulls on the Iberian Peninsula. We don't know,
Fox Show, but um, there is evidence of bull rituals
dating back all the way to BC. Yeah. The Mycenaeans
(06:01):
apparently used to leap over bulls that were charging. It
was like a thing, and they were always revered, you know,
as like these godlike creatures, which is why I guess
they want to kill him. What. Yeah, what's the taurus? One? Taurus?
Is that the Is that an astrological sign? Yeah? Okay, yeah,
of course pretty ancient. Uh. The article points out that
(06:22):
the Visigoth rule Um of the Iberian Peninsula from fourteen
fifteen to seven eleven um No. Four fifteen four fifteen
to seven eleven, UM had men on horseback fighting bulls um,
which evolved into mounted bullfighting which uh rijneo, which still
(06:43):
exists in Portugal horseback bullfighting where they kill the bull
outside the ring. Later on, right, they weaken it to
a certain point, which is the equivalent of killing the
bull is far. I guess there's some point of no
return that the Portuguese understand and they're like, okay, well
we're done, come outside, and then that's that. But as
(07:05):
anybody who's opposed bullfighting will tell you, that's not any
more humane. Of course, it's just out of sight of
the spectators. Um. So yeah, you've got what is it?
Ray hoo rayjono joo um. And then uh. Bull fighting
itself as we understand it today was firmly established in
(07:26):
Spain by the eleventh century UM, and it came about
during festivals, specifically one festival called the Fiesta descind Ferminton
and anybody has been to Pampalonna will recognize that because
that's where the running of the bulls takes place. And
when in July now so I seven when it used
(07:47):
to be September. And then in the sixteenth century they
moved it to July, and ever since then the running
of the bulls has been held. But it's been going
on since long before that. And it actually started with
a bunch of um ranchers their kids moving the bulls
from like their pens to about a half a mile
to the arena. Um. And then people started running alongside
(08:09):
him and evolved into the running of the bulls. Now
interesting els said the Spanish military leader uh midd eleventh century.
He was one of the first to actually bring it
into the arena and make it the sanctioned corrida, which
was government sanctioned is today at least, but what's back then,
(08:30):
I'm financially supported by governments to fifteenth century. It was
a big part of the aristocracy until Queen Isabella came
along and said this is not cool. I don't know
why she was against it, probably because she was an
animal lover. I would say that's probably a good idea,
and Pope Pious UM five almost said the uh he
(08:55):
banned it. But that didn't last very long, um only
about eight years, because people were into it pretty pretty
big time, right um. And then in about the I
guess in the six d is when that that whole
divergence between horseback and foot bull foot bull fighting took place,
and it remained um the sport of the aristocracy until
(09:19):
Philip the came along and he said, you know what,
this is barbaric. You would have to be a low
class barbarian to engage in bullfighting. So if you remember
my court and you get caught doing this, I'll shoot
you in the knee. And the aristocracy said, well, we
want our knees in tack, so we're gonna stop doing this.
(09:40):
And at this point bullfighting transferred from a kind of
high flutant, snooty pastime to the them the pastime of
the people, the national sport of the Spanish people, and
from that point on it's it's stayed that way. Yeah,
but they they The author does point there are arenas
(10:01):
in Spain that still have the royal boxes for the
royal family right to attend these things, so it hasn't
gone away completely as far as that goes. So Spain
is the heart and life center of um bullfighting, but
there's other places that it's held. Obviously, I saw him
in cancun Um. And if you're a bullfighter, you can
(10:22):
follow the season pretty much year round and get work
if you're good the heaven France. Did you know that?
I didn't, but I saw that it's been It was
banned in the UK. Had no idea anybody was fighting
bulls and going on in Germany. It was going on
all over the place. It's crazy. But that doesn't make
sense that it would happen in Germany if the Visigoths
(10:43):
are the ones who introduced it to the Iberian Peninsula
because they were Germanic people from south of the south.
Norway will call you south Way. I don't think the Goths. Uh.
So we'll walk you through what happens in a in
a corrida um in this whitewashed article version. But um,
(11:04):
before this ever happens, we'll walk you through the couple
of days before the bull even gets to the ring. Oh,
this is a special treat for me. It is the bull.
Um is not an aggressive animal at all. Bull likes
to hang around in chew grass and uh smell flowers.
That sounds like bullfighting propaganda to me. No, Ferdinand, the
(11:27):
bull it's like a sweet creature. But they actually are
not aggressive. They're only um gonna charge somebody if they're
threatened and angry, which is what bullfighting is all about. Um.
So in the two days prior to the bull showing
up at the arena, they are abused. Um they are
uh basically mentally destroyed versions of what a bull should be.
(11:52):
You're fat bull. While they do fatten them up to
make them slow. Well, that's a big problem, and you
can call somebody out for that, Okay. Um. They have
wet newspaper stuffed in their ears so they can't hear anything.
They have vasoline rubbed on their eyes so their visions blurred.
They have their eyes taped open so they can't sleep. Uh.
(12:14):
They stuffed cotton up their nostrils so they can't breathe
very well, and they stick and needle through their genitals.
That'll that'll take anybody off. They rubbed this caustic solution
on their legs, which makes the bull not be able
to balance and uh keeps the bull from lying down. Ever.
They strap their horns to the ceiling of their transport
(12:34):
truck uh to take them on their long hot journey's
wherever they're going. And for the two days before they
keep them in a in a box. Oh wait, I'm sorry,
that's not all they give them drugs to either pep
them up or slow them down, just to keep them
in whatever state they want them in, and give them
laxatives uh, to just obviously make things even more uncomfortable. Um.
(13:00):
Then they put the bull in the in this dark
box for two days uh to disorient the bull. Finally,
when they open the box, there's a light at the
end of the tunnel that the bull thinks, my god,
I'm finally getting out of here. Runs to the light
and all of a sudden they're in a bull ring, right,
And there's trumpets and fanfare and people cheering, um, and
(13:21):
the bulls like, oh cool, how's how's that? Hey, how
are y'all doing? I've been through some rough times lately. Um.
Some of that stuff, I think if you were found out,
you would be disqualified immediately, especially doing stuff that slowed
the bull down or made it less dangerous. Yes, the
(13:42):
bull ring is a ring for a reason. Um. Bulls
would want to go try and hide in a corner,
but the ring, the circular ring, will confuse in a
bull to where it can't hide anywhere. Have you ever
seen that footage of that bowl that like makes it
up into the stands, Like jumps up and then is
in the stands like on top of people. It was crazy.
(14:02):
Was that bull run our test? No? Do you get
that joke? Okay? So the different acts I believe are
called ter CEOs. Yes, I believe so. And there's three
of them, right, Yes, there's three of them. And the
that's three acts in a fight in a cardido, yes,
in a bull fight. Yeah, and um there's no suspense
(14:26):
going on either by the way they all go down
the same way. I bet it's suspenseful for the bull. Um.
So the bull comes out the first act or what? Uh? Yeah?
Act one? Okay. In act one there are um guys
called peka doors and they're mounted on horseback and they
(14:47):
are basically, um, I guess, low level torreros or bullfighters
because both. A matador is not the only kind of bullfighter.
He is the cream of the crop, pinnacle of bullfighters,
the well paid rock star. Yes, um, but he works
with the crew of pika doors who show up in
the first act, and bandilli airos who show up in
(15:10):
the second act. But the pika doors what they do
is they lance the bowl between his shoulder blades, around
his neck muscles and the whole point of this chuck.
You'll love this one is to weaken the neck muscles
so that the bull's head hangs so that the matador
can get to its heart more easily. Yeah. It also
hits a gland in the neck that releases adrenaline. Apparently.
(15:34):
Um so they lanced the bull three times and twist
the blade around to ensure maximum blood loss. Um. Three
matadors will now come in. They will fight individually later on,
but they all come in at first in the first
act with their capes. And this is and for the
for the bull fight, it's an afternoon of them. There's
(15:54):
six bowls and three matadors, and each matador fights two
bowls and each bull fight takes about fifty in twenty minutes. Yes.
Um so they come in with their little capes and
uh do their little maneuvers to draw attention away from
the pika doors. And the Pika doors go and hide
behind their little walls. They have these interior walls that
(16:16):
they can hide behind. Whenever the bull starts to get
too dangerous, they run and hide behind these walls. Yes,
or if this America, the Pika doors would be dressed
as clowns and would hide in barrels. Look at rodeo. Yeah,
it will do a rodeo podcast at some point. Do
we have to sure they don't. I don't think they
kill the cals and rodeos. Okay, Um, So the pika
(16:40):
doors leave the ring, the matadors leave the ring at
two begins, and the vandel Garros, I know that's a
tough one. They're they're basically bullfighters, assistant bullfighters. Put they're
on foot, yes, and if you've ever seen a bullfighter
a picture of bull fight, bulls seem to have some
(17:00):
um crepe barbed sticking out of him. That's the bandelierros work. Yes,
and that is called a bandias and it's a barbed dart.
It's adorned colorfully. The bulls aren't the only things dying
in this episode, and so was the Spanish language, because
we are butchering it. I'm trying uh this of course,
(17:23):
further weekends the bull um so the mighty Matador doesn't
have much work to do, so the bull is still dangerous.
Um are They run in circles at this point to
to get it nice and dizzy and confused. The manador
comes out for the final act and he has ten
ten official minutes to kill the bull, well, to do
(17:44):
a little showing off first and then kill the bull.
Um after the ten minute warning. After the ten minutes
he gets in a viso, which is a warning first warning.
After three minutes he gets another one, and then he
gets a third one, so he has a total of
in actuality fifteen minutes to kill the bull or else
the bull is let out alive and the matadors disgraced.
(18:05):
But for the most part, the matador is going to
dispatch the bull, and um, he does it. He first
starts using the cape. And the cape is always held
in the left hand. Is it? That's all right handed? Dudes?
I did not. I was looking, and I could even
tell that they were. Um there, the cape was kind
of clumsy held in the left hand. They were still
holding it in the left hand. Well, the guys I
(18:26):
saw were practicing, So maybe I don't know, but I
don't see why they would practice with their right hand.
I don't either. Okay, but you have a cape in
one hand, you have a sword in the other. Yes,
and the point of the cape, by the way, we
should probably get to this now. Um cape is always
red because red Anger's bulls right not true. Balls are
(18:46):
color blind, so they're not angered by red or any
other color. What does get them going is the movement
of the cape and sticking swords in their neck. That's
another thing that gets them going. Um. And actually that's
not necessarily true. By the time the manador comes out,
sometimes the um the bowl is really tired from blood
(19:07):
loss and being tortured for a couple of days apparently, um.
And so the manador really kind of has to work
to get it riled up again. And even though the
bulls just like, just kill me, manador is like, not yet,
we have a crowd to please first, So um the
the manador. Eventually after the cape work is done. Um.
Oh the cape is read by the way to high bloodstains. Um.
(19:30):
Once the cape work is done, the manador will um
as the bull runs past him, will plunge the sword
in between his shoulder blades and what's called a estoccata,
which is the death blow. And uh. It properly delivered
estocata will sever the bulls a order and that will
be that almost immediately for the bull. If it's not
(19:52):
done correctly, then the bull can be in even more
tremendous pain as it bleeds out. But to protecting into this,
a bandeliero will come out and immediately deliver any any
another thrust of a blade to make sure the bull
is dead with a plantilla a smaller knife. Ideally they
(20:16):
killed him with one blow. That rarely happens because apparently
matadors aren't so great at doing that anymore. I don't
know if they ever were. And uh, a lot of
times the bull lives even through the smaller knife plunge
and is still alive when the ears and tail or
hoof or cut off and presented to the matador. We
usually there's a there's another fail safe um where they
(20:40):
just bring out a tractor and run the bull over
a bunch of times to make sure that it's that's
so nice. If that doesn't work, then the people come
down from the stands and just start shooting it. That's
not true, and it's not funny. It's not funny because
it's not true, and they oftentimes do survive hanging on
by read. Their lungs are punctured, so they're bleeding, like
(21:04):
drowning in their own blood and like vomiting up blood
through their nose and mouth like a whale. Dying and flurry. Uh.
And sometimes they will take it outside and skin it
while it's even still alive. Yeah, that's a kind of
a tradition. Um. I saw the bull after the bullfight.
It was pretty sad. Um. They take the bull right
outside and um, they'll dress it and then sell the
(21:28):
meat at the stadium. Um, which is customary and very strange,
but that's one of the aspects of bullfighting. If you've
ever wanted a bull burger and you wanted to eat
it right after you saw it die, go to a
bullfight in Spain. Uh. They will drag the bull out
with some mules attached to chains. And UM, I don't
(21:51):
know if the booing booing you heard, because apparently the
people will boo and throw beer cans at the bull
at the end. I don't know if that's what you were.
It depends, so depends Um. No, no, no, no, that's
this was. They were booing the matador, the bliros, the doors, everybody.
They were booing a whole country of Mexico for this. Um.
(22:12):
Yeah they're booing everybody. No. Um, it depends on the bull.
If the bull was um a woss, then I could
see the fans throwing beer cans at it. There's also
um that an aspect of this that cannot be denied
that a bull that shows great bravery, anger, um spirit, spunk,
really tries to kill the matador or the bandili arrows
(22:35):
will be very much revered by the people in the
stands and gruesomely UM. They'll bring it out for a
victory lap, being dragged by the mules in a circle
around the arena. After it's dead, or apparently while it's
still dying, people will cheer it through roses for it UM.
And there's a there's a a UM. There's a rule
(22:56):
where the crowd or the matador can ask for in
uh indolito, which is a reprieve for a particularly courageous bull,
and the president of the of the bullfight the referee
can say, yes, I give this bullet reprieve because it's
such an awesome bowl. We're gonna let it live. And
the manador proceeds to um with an empty hand simulate
(23:20):
the death blow, saying I could have killed the bull,
but I like the bull so much I lobbied to
get it released. That bull is taken away and UM
put out the stud for the rest of its life.
And there was one it's very rare to get an indulto. Um,
And there was one one bull called Manzanito in he
(23:41):
got an indulto because he gored all three manadors in
the plaza that day. Wow. That that that will get
you off right there. You get to go stud for
the rest of your life. Mr. Bull. Horses are also abused.
The ones that participate, their ears are stuffed with newspaper,
wet newspaper, the blindfolded, and they sever their vocal cords
(24:02):
so they can't scream out in pain because people don't
want to hear that. Yeah, people don't like that, So
they sever the vocal cords. So the horses that are,
you know, trembling in fear inside this ring at this bowl,
don't bark out and let people know that. And if
the horses are hurt, they take them out of the
ring and patch them up and send them right back
(24:23):
in there. Where are you getting this activist info all
over the place? Yeah, yeah, okay, I mean it's not
activist info, it's how it goes down. No, it all
just kind of has a certain ring to it. I'm
not disputing it. I'm just saying like, yeah, well, I mean,
coming out of my mouth, it probably sounds activist because
I think it's an awful thing to do something like this.
(24:45):
But this is the these is the facts. Okay, Well
in check you will love the next part wherein we
talk about famous matador. Yeah, I feel free. So uh,
people have been doing this since well, we said like
the eleventh century, right, El sid was supposedly the first
guy to fight a bull in an arena. UM, and
(25:06):
since then it's it's just become huge, big business. UM.
But the first reel and probably only real golden age
if you call it that, bullfighting happened UM from nineteen fourteen,
and there were two matadors, Juan Belmonte Garcia and Jose Gomez,
(25:28):
who fought bulls under the name joslit though um had
a rivalry and um. Belmonte Garcia was actually the first
guy apparently to stand still or stand his ground when
he was doing cape work with a bull rather than
try to run away from the bull. He's in fantasy footwork.
(25:50):
Jsalito was his rival, and the rivalry was really going swimmingly,
I guess for everybody but the bulls, until Hosalito was
fatally gored UM at a match that both of them
were at Garcia and Jsalito were fighting at um in
N and that end of the Golden age of bullfighting.
(26:11):
You'll be happy to hear. He must have been small Zalito. Yeah,
his name is Jose, and I think if you're Jose
and they call you hosalito, that means you're small, like
add that eto to anything Alito or young because he
started very young. Oh yeah, maybe that's true. He started
at age thirteen, um and he was only I think
twenty twenty five when he died. When he was gord so. Uh.
(26:35):
Another guy who's gorge is named Manuel Rodriguez E Sanchez.
Do you think that's like the mothers and the father's
names when it's two last names and there's an e
in and in the middle. I don't know. I would
think so. And well, Rodriguez in Sanchez. You put the
Rodriguez together and the Sanchez is together and you get
Manuel also known as Menelette. Maybe so. And he was
(26:59):
Gordon in He was the top matador from nineteen forty
and nineteen forty seven, and I think is goring and
the end of his being the top mattador was not coincidental.
I think you're probably right. Uh, should we talk about
the bulls because it's very specific what kind of bulls
are fighting. They're all four years old, which I didn't know,
(27:22):
I didn't, um, and they are specifically bred to bullfight.
In the weigh about thirt hundred pounds. You want to
translate that niquilas for our friends, it's that's right. And um,
they are bread and ranches. And this article says that
they're tested for bravery and ferocity and that if you
(27:43):
pass that test, you would become a fighting bull. Um.
And that may be true sometimes, but uh, matadors like
to make their money and they don't want to be gored.
So the high falutin mattadors will request very placid, docile
bulls just to keep the show going. Is that true?
That's what That's what I read. Okay, So have they
(28:07):
just want to put on the show, you know, they
don't want to die too? Well, I'm sure they don't
want to want to make They want to make a
few million bucks a year doing it easy too, because
they get paid about a hundred grand a bullfight and
they can do maybe thirty to forty or more. Yeah,
I know the um Oh, the guy bel Monte. He
had a record hundred and nine bullfights in It's like
(28:32):
in Rocky three when he was fighting all the chumps
just for a pay day. Oh yeah, he didn't want
any real challenge. But ultimately he did want a real
challenge because he fight. He fought Draco, well, he fought
Clever Lang and three and three it was the Russian.
Three was clever Lane. No, yeah, the first two were Apollo,
(28:52):
the third was Clever Langing. The fourth was the Russian.
I thought that he was, uh, Tommy Morrison. And then
the six was when he came back as a trainer, huh.
And the seventh was him enjoying a nice sandwich for
two hours. No, Rocky three was definitely clever Line, because
that was my favorite one until I got older and
(29:12):
I realized that the person one was actually the better one.
You know. I thought that I would think that too,
and then I went back and watched it as an adult.
I'm like, I mean, it's pretty good, but man, I
loved it. There's just too much character development, and for
a Rocky movie, well, it was a love story. It
wasn't even a boxing movie. Wrong with you, I understand,
but it was a love story starring and written and
(29:33):
directed by Sylvester Stallone. That's right, all right, Back to
the bulls. Bulls are never exposed to more than one fight. Yeah,
so apparently they have very good memories, so they learned
how to out due the uh, the matador in their
in their cape. So that's why they don't fit them twice.
And the guys who test their ferocity for I guess
(29:54):
the ones that are tested, those are done on horseback,
so that the bulls not like, oh I remember as capes,
I'm gonna get you, I associate you with laxatives. Well,
even this article says that they they alter bulls to
make them easier to fight. But this is what I'm saying, so, um,
it's a very participatory sport for the spectators. Um. So,
(30:17):
like you can ask for an indolito, you can also
challenge or charge uh somebody with fighting an altered bowl,
one that's overfed and too fat and slow, one whose
horns have been altered, because apparently the tips of the
horns of a bull are very much like a cat's whiskers,
and if you remove that, the bull is not going
to have a very good sense of kinetics. And will
(30:40):
never hit the matador. So if the crowd thinks that
your career is like over pal, that's why I don't
think it's quite as widespread either that or else. Um.
Bullfighting crowds have become complacent. Well, I think that's definitely true. Yeah, Well,
because it's tourists they don't know how to spot a
fat bull, Well, then that very well may be the case.
(31:02):
And they also apparently the way they stabbed them and
where they stabbed them, they do so in order to
make sure they charge straight instead of like I've got
a bad left leg, all of a sudden, I'm gonna
be going left all day or right all day. So, Chuck,
we mentioned that you can make a pretty decent living
doing bull fights, but you also mentioned, um that there's
(31:27):
there may be the death of bull fighting as it were.
Do you think that's really true. I mean, seriously, people
have been doing this since the fourth century, and now,
all of a sudden, just because of a bad economy
and animal activism, bullfighting is going down. It's starting to well.
The polls that the popular sentiment is changing in Spain
(31:50):
over the past fifteen years is one um. Catalonia is
the first region in mainland Spain to actually ban it
in Barcelona's in Catalana. You, yeah, which is big because
Barcelonlona had not one, not two, but three bullfighting arenas.
That's right, and that took effect. That took effect actually
just this year. On January one, they said, like, let's
(32:13):
finish out the two thousand eleven season and then we'll
ban it shouting from that point they had the last
one at UH in September. I think September two thousand
eleven was the last one ever. UM. That's a huge deal.
But even in Spain they're kind of like this nooty
Catalans like they don't they don't enjoy bullfighting. I think
(32:34):
that's made some quarters of Spain even more fiercely proud
of it. Yeah, probably like Madrid apparently is still very
proud of their bullfighting UH. In two thousand and ten,
one of the state television stations said, we are going
to ban coverage live coverage of it because kids can
watch this on TV. UM. They happen in the hours
(32:54):
in the early afternoon hours, in early evening, so they
won't broadcast until after ten pm. Now, right, Well, there's
a there's a law that says you can't show animal
cruelty on Spanish television until after ten pm because of children.
And so that's effectively banned showing bullfighting in Spain. Um,
which is a huge blow to it. Um, I guess
(33:17):
economically or financially, because I mean think about how many
how much money comes from television deals and sponsorships. If
you can get rid of it on TV, like, that's that.
And then there's also, Um, they've shown that there's evidence
that government, that the federal government of Spain is pretty
much what's propping up bull fighting these days, because um,
(33:39):
there were what it went from a thousand bull fights
in two thousand eight to eight hundred and two dozen
ten in Spain, and um, that two hundred was almost exclusively, um,
the result of cuts and government subsidies to small towns
that can't afford to put on a bull fight. And
so that means that, yeah, the government's holding the whole
thing up. Yeah. I read a couple of interesting articles today.
(34:00):
One of them was from a veterinarian. Uh, and they
have vets at the bullfight um on staff, I guess ah.
And this vet went on record as saying they did
all this testing of like adrenaline and or adrenaline and
all these different uh chemicals in the body on these
(34:21):
bulls that had just survived, ones that were dead ones
before they went in, and basically to prove that the
bull suffers a great deal because there's this misguided notion
that the bull doesn't suffer because they're this magical creature.
I saw this one interview with a Bandaliro and he
said that a veterinarian this is translated obviously, but he said,
(34:44):
a veterinarian told me that the bulls have a special
cell in their body that prevents it from suffering and
feeling pain. That's not true. Oh are you sure. Yeah,
there's no special cell that that keeps them from feeling pain. Well,
that's a that's a larger debate too. I mean, like,
I believe bulls can suffer. But you know, um, if
(35:04):
you've read David Foster Wallace is considered the lobster. Can
a lobster suffer? Is no susception is the perception the
physical feeling of pain is that the same thing is suffering.
Now we've shown it's not. Remembering our happiness audiobook, we
talked about the difference between experiencing physical pain and experiencing
suffering right now. They actually utilize different parts of the brain.
(35:25):
So if there's no suffering, is inflicting pain on something
e g. Cooking it? Um? Is that cruel? That's a
good point, it is, But I think bulls experienced suffering.
It's especially if they go through what you describe. Yeah,
and if you're against bull fighting and you want to
do something, you can email the or mail the embassies
(35:47):
of these countries that still participate and tell them that, hey,
I'm not going to visit your country. I'm not gonna
spend my money there. If you're still gonna endorse this,
it's a small thing you can do. Becaun, you mail
me some wine because I can't make it over. There's
some temperar neo. Uh. And I just I'm gonna go
on record as saying this whole thing that it's a
(36:09):
it's part of the culture is just crap. Well, the
the Spanish federal government would disagree with you because in
two dozen tend and what a lot of people see
as a response to um the Catalonia band Um, the
Spanish government transferred jurisdiction over bullfighting from the Interior Ministry
to the cultural ministry, so as an attempt to keep
(36:30):
it from being banned. It's gonna be uh, it'll be
a tough fault one. But yeah, apparently even Mexico now
is entertaining the idea of banning it. You know some
other things that were defended as culture, genital mutilation on females,
witch burning, bear baiting. Have you ever heard of that? Um? No.
(36:50):
Bear baiting was popular in England up until the eighteenth century.
That is, when you take a bear like a you know,
grizzly bearer, brown bear, like a clown, well not far off,
You put it in a pit and chain it to
a mistake and release dogs on it, and the dogs
kill the bear or the bear kill some of the dogs,
so they release more dogs, and people sit around and
(37:12):
gamble on is the bear gonna get eaten first or
the dog's gonna get killed first? And uh, it's blood sport.
And I think this is the same thing. You know. Um,
that's where bulldogs came from, and that's where they got
their name from. It's called bull baiting. And bulldogs used
to not even come close to resembling what they do now.
They were actually bred to be less vicious. Um. By
(37:36):
making them slower and dumber and more cuddly, or not dumber,
but more cuddly. Um. And that's how we have the
modern bulldogs now. But they evolved from basically uh, in
the nineteenth century bulldogs. Where we're where um pitple breed
is now where there are a lot of people being like,
we just need to wipe this breed off the face
of the planet. It's gone out of control. They're crazy.
(37:58):
Everybody scared them. They're killing people. Um. And then they
managed to breathe the meanness out of them. But bull
bull baiting to bull baiting bulls just have been taken
it well. Embarbating actually still happens in Pakistan and it's uh,
it's horrific. So two from me to you people of Spain, Mexico, France. Uh,
(38:22):
ritualized killing of animals for people to pay for and
watch is a little outdated and just silly and cruel,
and I say, please stop from from chuck to you,
from me to you. And one more thing. The whole
notion of culture. Isn't that supposedly to advance your civilization?
(38:43):
And isn't that supposed to mean like positive things like culture?
I mean, what brings people together more than the ritual
down here and wanting wanting bull fight. All right, I'm done. Um, So,
how do you feel about bullfighting? Person? Which I think
it's great. If you want to learn more about bull
(39:04):
fighting UM or Chuck's views on it, you can type
in Chuck or bull fighting in the search part how
stuff works dot com. Uh, and I said search bar,
which means it's time for listener mail. We're very riled
up listener mail. That's right now. This is calm. I'm
gonna call this. Uh. Illustrator wrote us about the comics episode. Guys,
(39:27):
I'm in currently an illustrator. Uh. Does you not have
much hope for his future in that field? No? I
think he does. Um. I found because he does like
Digital Illustration Team. I guess um. I found your podcast
when I was hip deep in art school at the
Art Institute of Boston. But there are only so many
times I could listen to the same old Our Lady
Peace songs on repeat from that group. No, he had
(39:49):
like one song into the same song gets which song was?
I can't remember. I dug it this song. Actually I
got the CD because of that song. Man, I used
to fall for out when I was fourteen and just
be like, that's the only good song on the whole
CD before the Kiss single. Yeah. Um, I'm now a
professional illustrator, but I also teach art at a I B.
(40:13):
And was able to live a many dream when my
higher ups approached me about teaching a comic book class.
So he was pretty stoked about this UM on the comics.
And this is just some things he pointed out on
the comics code of authority you guys talked about. World
War Two was long over and the new round of
superheroes Spider Man, Fantastic Four had yet to emerge from
the minds of Lee Kirbean Ditko. As a result, comics
(40:35):
were merely treading water and chasing from fad to fad,
Westerns to romance to eventually horror. Horror comics are what
really started to worry everyone, so they began to put
pressure on companies like EC, who had made their names
in Over the Top four. In turn, EC basically jettisoned
at Steak in horror comics and latched onto a little
(40:56):
humor comic, uh Mad, which we talked about. It was
like UM stories guaranteed to drive you mad, exactly the original,
but to this point Mad was published basically as a
comic book. In essence, EC was looking to hedge its bets,
so it relaunched Mad as a magazine UM, which is
a very different distinction because all of a sudden wasn't
(41:17):
under the code of authority. Uh. We were blessed with
the very first Mad magazine, a very calculated move since
they were not heavily scrutinized by comics and they didn't
have to worry about the comics code. It is UM.
I hope to make it big as a comics illustrator
in children's book illustrator who says I can't do both.
I also thought you might like to know that you're
(41:38):
keeping me company during these long hours chasing the dream.
And this dude's stuff is awesome and if you want
to hire Greg Marathus, you can get in touch with
him at the Greg Marathas Studio, which is g R
E G M A R A T h A s
dot com or Rida's blog Greg Maratha dot blog spot
(42:01):
dot com. Nice and stuff is very cool. I told
him I'd keep them in mind if we ever needed
we could do some drawings. We need some Facebook timeline drawings.
If he's holling to work for free, you get to it.
Did we remember we um we got chastised biographic designer
for holding that T shirt contest. Yeah, I emailed him back.
Actually we did use to calm them down. Uh yeah,
(42:25):
I was like, you know, most of these were amateur designers.
There was some pros in there, but never mind. And
it's not like we've forced anybody to do with But
there's a whole there's a whole movement um from designers
about design contests being awful, Like what other industry basically
asked for free work as a contest quote unquote, there's
like fiction contests. Yeah, there's all kinds of so box Derby's. Yeah,
(42:49):
there's a lot of stuff that people do for free
as part of a contest, bake offs or bakes off.
I'm sorry. And I saw some designers that say, I
don't agree with that contests make me better and that's
a ridiculous idea. Architecture as a field has been in
contest mode for a century or more, and like, yeah,
(43:12):
that's there's a lot of work put into it. There's
a lot of work put into graphic design. Contests are
everywhere I think that's a ridiculous stance. Well, his point
was because he mailed me back and he was like, well,
find the contest is fine, but you should give them
a cut of the T shirt sales. I don't disagree
with that. Well, I know that we had no choice. Well, no,
we're in no position whatsoever to share that told him
due if it was up to me, they would get
(43:34):
of the T shirt sales. I don't know about that. Well,
we don't get any well, I know, but still we
could if we could negotiate on their behalf, we would
work a little bit in for us to what a
volatile episode right to the end. So I guess if
you want to express your volatility UM toward us, that's cool.
We can handle it. We've been taken up for years.
You can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast.
(43:56):
You can send us stuff on Facebook, including Facebook art
for the timeline um at Facebook dot com slash stuff
you should know. You can also email us at Stuff
Podcast at Discovery dot com. Be sure to check out
our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join How
(44:19):
Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising and
perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. Brought to you by the reinvented
two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
Show Links
AboutOrder Our BookStoreSYSK ArmyRSSPopular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
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.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com