Selects: Mermaids: Not a real thing

Mermaids aren't real. That much we know. But the history and lore of these magical and sometimes menacing creatures of the sea is pretty interesting stuff. Learn all about these half women/half fish in this classic episode.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, and welcome to Saturday. Yesterday was Friday, Tomorrow Sunday.
Today's Saturday. This is Chuck. Today's episode is Mermaids not
a real thing? This from August four, and I gotta say,
I just remember thinking this is kind of an interesting podcast,
and that's why I picked it for Saturday. Enjoy, everybody.

(00:25):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Yeah,
that's right. There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, Jerry's over there
in the ether, floating, possibly not existing, who knows. Uh.

(00:47):
And this is stuff you should know, that's right, Just
a couple of a couple of mermen trying to make
their way in the world, trying to keep their tails wet.
Yeah you know, yeah, that thing dries out. You've seen Splash. Yeah,
it's a actually post. She dried out and she was
just fine. Oh. I thought, oh, you're thinking of et

(01:10):
when he turned all white and dried out. I was
thinking a Splash because I couldn't remember. It's one of
It was one of my favorite movies as a kid.
It was a cute. Um. It was one of those
early HBO movies early Tom Hanks, which I'm a big
fan of early Tom Hanks. And um, I just thought
it was a really fun and funny movie. John Candy, Yeah,

(01:31):
it was a great movie. What's his name played the
evil man trying to expose her. Um, Eugene Leevy, I think, Oh,
was he the bad guy? Yeah, he was the one
that you know, that's a high quality movie when Eugene
Levy's the bad guy. Yeah, that was the SETV crew
And um, he actually tried to spray her and get
her wet so she would and in fact, kid turned

(01:52):
into a mermaid on the sidewalk, So that's what it was.
And she got wet, she turned in to a mermaid, right,
she got dried, no problem. Yes, And Darryl, of course,
who's running around with Neil Young? Now? Oh really? Yeah?
How about that couple? Sure? Why not? They're both environmentalists.
But there's a lot of turquoise in that bedroom. I
wonder if you hook up with Neil Young, if or

(02:14):
anyone like that, if if you're sort of a new
relationship and not like the wife they had for forty years,
if you're like, play a song, why don't you what like,
I wonder if you asked them to play music. Oh,
like you're actually into him? Yeah, Like if if you're
Billy Joel's new year old wife, do you ever say, like, hey, honey,

(02:35):
play me a tune, Play that one that you that
you wrote ten years before I was conceived. I think
I'm What I'm saying is I would have a hard
time being with Neil Young and not every night after
dinner just kind of nudging the guitar towards him, Oh,
I got you and saying I'd love to hear old Man,

(02:56):
please baby one for me, And yeah, he says, I've
played that song times. Yeah, I would guess that, well,
I can tell you I would. I would. Yeah, I
would guess that once you reach a certain point and
playing a song, you never want to hear that song
or even think about it existing again, but then you
still have to play it. I try not to think

(03:17):
about that when I'm at those shows. Yeah, it makes
me feel bad for him, like they might as well
be you know, in the monkey house or something and
you just throwing bananas at him, and God bless the
people who really bring it still where you feel like, man,
they're playing that song for me tonight, Adam Man, does
he still bring it? He's just who came to mind.

(03:39):
Whereas when I saw the Police on their reunion, they
were phoning it in really, even Stewart Copeland. Well, I
mean they were playing the songs, but it just it
didn't look like they were enjoying themselves at all. It
looked like a total money grab. Sure, they entered from
three separate entrances and exited from three separate and I
got the feeling they didn't even like speak much. That's

(04:00):
like I was reading an article on the Ramons, the
Rolling Stone one recently. Uh, yeah, I guess it was. Yeah,
they had a great article on them, so yeah, I
guess it was. It was definitely Rolling Stone. So okay,
did you read it? Yeah, then it was awesome. But yeah,
they're like they they would they would just like get
on the bus and not speak to one another, go

(04:20):
to the next town and get on stage and play
and then come off stage and not like they would
they would speak on stage because they had to. That
was it. Apparently, Well, at least Joey and who was
his big foil d there's those ones who really hated
each other. Yeah, supposedly they didn't speak at all for
like twenty five years straight, right, because Joey stole d

(04:40):
D's like love of his life and then they were
in the band together still after that it was just
like ts Man, so weird, so like a lot of songs,
especially once like the kk K Took My Baby Away.
That's about Joey stealing d D's girlfriend. Wow, it was
a great article. Yeah, good ready, um so back to Splash,

(05:02):
funny movie about a mermaid, and we're gonna talk about
mermaids here, and mostly what we're gonna cover is the
lore in history and the mythology of the mermaid because
there's a little giveaway there are no mermaids. What did
you look up like pictures of real mermaids sightings and stuff. Yeah,
and it's the same thing as pictures of Bigfoot sightings

(05:24):
and pictures of UFO sighting some weird distant blur that
like you can't it could be kelped or is such
an obviously doctored photo. What would be fun, though, is
if we had a time machine. Forget killing Hitler, forget
like back machine. Oh yeah, that's right. I can't believe
we don't put this into good use. Yeah, forget like, um,
you know, saving the world. They're keeping the Dodo from

(05:46):
going extinct. I would take some of these doctored photos
that are just so easy to make today back to
like the nineteen twenties and be like, look at this,
and they go, yeah, I know, we still believe in
that stuff, with your aim being what just a freak amount.
Oh I figured there'd be a money angle. Oh yeah,

(06:06):
Josh is traveling Wonder Wonder Emporium. It's not a bad
idea where in which you just show them photos, but
I charged them like two thousand sixteen rates and no
one can possibly afford that, So I go out of business,
like almost immediately. Right there's like one guy in the town.
It's like, I'll pay twenty seven fifty to see those right,
step right up, towns only billionaire. Um, that's a great idea.

(06:31):
I don't know why no one ever thought of that.
It was a terrible idea, Like from beginning to end.
Forget going back and betting on the stock market or
the outcome of the World Series. I'm gonna go back
and set up a business doom to fail. Alright, So
let's talk about mermaid uh lore. Well, we can start
here in the more modern age, because there are still

(06:51):
places that try and take people for money, like we
were just talking about, even like me Um in fact
uh in Israel on the coast there, Um, they actually
have a town called Kiryat Yam. And if you go
to Kiryat Yam you could win how much money does
he even say? Million bucks million American dollars if you um,

(07:16):
if you provide incontrovertible evidence of the mermaid that is
reputed to want to live there and appear at sunset
as of two thousand nine was the first sighting there. Yeah,
And of course what that is is is a ploy
to try and get tourists and come and spend money
in the town and look for the mermaid. Come on, chumps,
welcome you to Kiryat Yam. I'm sure lock ness has

(07:37):
made plenty of tourist money over the years. Apparently they
have a standing offer as well, and that's where the
mayor of Kuryot Yam got the idea great idea. And
actually I saw that photo too. It's kind of neat.
I don't know what it is or who created it
or whatever, but there's allegedly a photo taken obviously from
like a cliff down on to a beat, you know,

(08:00):
a beach that will have like a big just slab
of rocks surrounded by sand, sand and mermaids. Right, there's
a mermaid on that rock, just kind of looking out
in the sea. And of course it could be anything.
It could be totally doctored, who knows, um, but it's
from a distance. And at least they didn't like go
full out like perfect picture of a mermaid of Red's.

(08:22):
It's it's just um suggestive enough that people who believe
in such things would be like the right there, there's
a picture of a mermaid, you know, so that that
was found in two thousand nine or that surfaced in
two thousand nine, and since then the surfaced right, since
then the town's uh had that standing offer, correct? So uh.

(08:44):
The really the interesting thing to me about mermaids is
the mythology. Did you take mythology in college at all? Yeah?
I did. It. Always wanted it to interest me more
than it did me too. It was just I don't
know if it wasn't explain to me quite well enough,
or just the ancients non bicameral mind wasn't um fused

(09:07):
together enough to interest people in the modern age. Well,
I think so. I think the stories themselves, as far
as good storytelling, we're just lacking because a lot of
them were just versions of one another, and there was
usually a very basic uh premise or or moral um.

(09:27):
And in the case of mermaids, a lot of times
they were a lot of folksore even was rooted in misogyny.
You know how you know there'll be a woman to
come along and screw your life up right, or if
you written up a woman, um, she will kill your
children or something like that, like women were not to
be trusted, and they were murderous and duplicidus and a

(09:48):
lot of mythologies to the old hag so uh, it
was in various I mean hundreds and hundreds of books
and texts, including the Talmud believe it or not. And
we've talked about plenty of the Elder, the Beer and
the Dude Rome's plan of the Elder. He in his

(10:09):
Natural History talked about a mermaid like creature called the nereid. Yes,
I think I'm pronouncing that correctly. Yeah, in E R E.
I d that EI is a tough transition. It is
because you want to say, like Nereid. Yeah, ner Red,
these are sea nymphs, half human, half fish mermaids and um.

(10:33):
He also talked about c men and we should point
out that Merman we made the joke about us being Merman.
I believe Merman were even first on the literary scene.
Is that correct? Well first, at least with mythology or
um theology. I guess there's a Babylonian god of the
sea named Ea, yeah, e a sports um just e A,

(10:57):
and he pops up in uh Babylonian mythology from I
think four thousand years ago, and they think that he's
actually the progenitor of or the predecessor I should say,
of Poseidon, who is the Greek god of the sea,
and Neptune, who's the Roman god of the sea. Because
the Greeks gave us Western culture, but they just walked

(11:19):
around to all of the neighboring cultures and picked their
favorite parts and put them together, and that was definitely
one of them. Yeah. Yeah, uh, well we talked in
our I guess it was in the folklore and fairy
tale episodes that were twin episodes almost um about the

(11:40):
original Little Mermaid and how you know she was disnified
to the fullest, but the original story was far darker, darker,
but also even more touching by far like, I went
back and read the last um the last like section
of it. Well, give me a summary at the So

(12:00):
at the end, this is where dramatically differs from the
Disney story. The little Mermaid is scorned for another woman
her the guy she loves chooses someone else and marries her,
and the Little Mermaid is like, dude, I gave up
my tail for you, I think, which has my tongue
kind of thing um, and I want to get back

(12:23):
my life. So her sisters came and bring her this
ritual knife and say, you can convert back to a
mermaid if before dawn you plunge this knife into this
dude's heart, this guy who loves heart, and you get
some of his blood on your feet, you will regrow
your tail and you can jump into the sea and
everything will be just fine again. So she goes and

(12:46):
she finds the guy sleeping with his new bride beside him,
and she just can't do it. She throws the knife
into the sea and um becomes c foam. She disintegrates
and becomes c foam. So she gives her her own
happiness up for this guy's right and dies as a result.
But even better than that, when she turns into sea foam,

(13:08):
she becomes a different mythical creature, uh like basically an
air nymph that goes around like helping humans um and
she can possibly get into heaven if she helps people
um for three hundred years. Hans Christian Andersen wrote it
way better than I just recounted it a lot less
ums and likes, but it's it's pretty it's worth reading. Uh.

(13:34):
Plenty also talked about merman um back in the day,
and there would be merman or seamen who would at
night climb up onto ships as a quote that so
I'm reading it weird, upon which the side of the
vessel where he seated himself would instantly sink downward, and
if you remain there any considerable time, even go underwater.

(13:54):
And that was something that we will see as we
talk more about mermaids is they are um very They're
often either an omen that's something bad is going to
happen to sailors or coastal dwelling people, or they actually
directly cause harm two sailors or coastal dwelling people. Yeah,
and most times under the guys of something beautiful and

(14:19):
like a siren. Um, they are often Well, I don't
we haven't even described one. Surely you know that a
mermaid has the head and body torso of a of
a woman, human woman, usually with huge boobs. Yeah, if
you're talking about a sailor's account, sure, yeah, she was busty.
Did I mention the boobs? Yes, you did, sir seven times? Um?

(14:44):
And uh from the you know torso down she's a
fish maybe web feet maybe not very graceful, very fast
and always beautiful. Uh, it depends. Oh yeah, yeah. There
were some of legend that we're not ugly really yeah,

(15:05):
not ugly, or that they were not in parentheses beautiful
comma ugly. Uh. Well, I hadn't heard about that. Yeah,
it's it's in here. I thought. I'm just I must
have missed that part. It's it's it's far more frequent
what you were saying, that they were beautiful and alluring. Um,
but we'll talk more about that after we take a break. Huh.

(15:53):
All right, Chuck. We were saying that, for the most part,
mermaids are beautiful and one of the reasons why they
are supposed to be beautiful is because they are frequently
um accused of luring men sailors out to see to
their death. Yeah, and how you do that? You do
that one of two ways. You have a beautiful singing voice,

(16:14):
or you just straight up look good yourself. That's right.
And if you have a beautiful singing voice, you're a siren,
in which case you would not be a mermaid because
the siren is half bird, half woman, and they don't
even necessarily live in the water or near the water.
They're sometimes described as hanging out in fields. I guess
sometimes you can be very pretty and be a good singer, right,

(16:39):
your mermaid? But the yeah you could be, Yeah, sure
you'd be. Who am I to disagree? Or Alicia Keys
or Adele? Oh you know who I like his? Uh Rihanna?
Oh yeah, she's great man, very pretty. That part in

(17:00):
uh what's it called this at the end and she
played herself, Yeah, yeah, she's pretty great. She was pretty funny.
Michael Sarah likes bank her and she just immediately turned
around and smacked the heck out of him. Yeah. I
enjoyed parts of that movie, especially Michael Sarah. Yeah, playing
like a cooked out jerk. That was really funny. Um,
So back to the beautiful mermaids though, Uh there there

(17:24):
was one and one thousand BC in Syria. And her name,
how would you pronounce that? At her gaddis? Oh, I
think you nailed it. Yeah, yeah, all right, we'll go
with that. And she and you'll you'll see a lot
of duality a lot of these stories. And she was
one for sure. That was a protector, a goddess. I
think she protected the fertility of her people and um

(17:45):
watched over them and uh, fell in love with a
human man, as you will often see in a lot
of these stories. Dude, yeah, dude, and it and it
was fine for a little while, like in most stories,
and then it goes south and she kills him. She
crushed him with her greatness. Oh I thought, like her

(18:06):
big tail or something. I don't know. Well, she wasn't
a mermaid yet. This is where she becomes. That's right,
I forgot about that. So um, she accidentally kills him
and then his very shamed throws herself into the lake
because she wants to become a fish, and she's so
beautiful that it only works half as good. I really
can't figure out the math on that. But I guess

(18:29):
she's just so beautiful that the human beauty part of hers, like, no,
I won't be a fish, just the lower half can
be a fish. Yeah, because she had to fungus, so
that was easily overcome, but her face was really nice,
so the fish part just couldn't overcome that. That's right,
So she ended up a mermaid. Weird story. Well, that's
just weird, like like oh, it's foreign or anything. I'm

(18:51):
not being xenophobic, but it really like says a lot
about like humanity and like how we think of things like, no,
he was so good looking that this magic couldn't even
overcome that. You know that point. We place a lot
of value on that kind of thing. Uh, all right,
should we move on to Germany? Yeah? This one was

(19:14):
kind of interesting to me because Germany's landlocked. I never
really thought about it. What does Germany have a mermaid mythology? Well,
I mean they have lakes, I guess, but mermaids are
ocean dwellers, aren't they know? There are some river dwellers. Oh,
that's right, although I think the sirens were specifically river. Well,

(19:36):
then in the German myth that was a river dweller. Correct, Okay, yeah,
the Nixes. Uh yeah, and they lured men into the river. Yeah,
it was a river, and so they could drown them,
like again the call of the siren. Come in here.
Look how beautiful I am. And now I'm holding your
head underwater and you can't breathe anymore. And the guys like,

(19:56):
I regret nothing. But this duality that we're talking about
is uh what you see a lot of times in
mermaid myths from West Africa. The Mommy Wada, the mother Water.
She was a mermaid who was very nurturing and very
loving if you didn't cross her. Yeah, exactly. That's where

(20:21):
the duality comes in. I don't even know that's duality.
I think that's just a complex person, good, good complex
character there. Yeah, yeah, so she's great, but when you
cross her, she's murderous. Sure, all right, And that's what
she did. Actually, she had If you were loyal to her,
she would you could be wealthy from her magic mirror
and comb. But if you betrayed her, then what this

(20:45):
article says is she reigns down fury and destruction right
word from above. But the duality is as an important
part of it because the the physical creature itself is
two things, and they are also too things emotionally. And
but so the mermaid, the mermaid or mermaid or murf

(21:05):
folk as their call in this article. Yeah so mrf
folks are half fish half people, right, But they're not
anywhere near unique in the pantheon of mythological creatures throughout
the ages. Right, there's again, there's sirens, half birds, half women.
There's there's just tons of hat like them. The minataur

(21:29):
half man, half bull. The centaur was what half go
or horse and half man. I don't remember that sounds right,
I think half horse um. And I was like, where
did all these come from? I suspected beast reality, And
it turns out I may be right. Yeah, yeah, you
find there are some scholars out there who believe that

(21:50):
this is the product of a much more relaxed attitude
towards beast reality than we modern humans have today. Yeah. Yeah,
I still never saw that documentary about the horse. Yeah
it's a good one, zoo. Yeah, I need that fell
off my radar. Man. It's one of those ones where
they largely to recreate, Like the whole thing is almost recreation,

(22:14):
And I usually am not hip on those. It doesn't
feel like a documentary to me, But that one changed
my mind about that whole technique that they did it
so well. It's rough. It's rough, especially like when you
think about you know, the animals as well. Yeah, of
course you know, but there's more than just that that
makes it rough. I need to see that, um So.

(22:37):
I guess we can talk a little bit about some
eyewitness accounts. They're all bunk, of course, but they have
happened in World War two in Japan on Indonesia's Kai Islands. Uh.
Supposedly they encountered a monster on the beach that had
you know, webbed hands and feet and was kind of
part human part fish. It was like, look at these
jazz hands. You can't do this. And then back in

(23:00):
the day, uh, some of our most revered explorers and
adventurer adventurers reported seeing mermaids, like John Smith and Henry
Huntson and Columbus him, Yeah, what was There's a good
quote in here from Columbus because he wasn't too impressed.

(23:22):
He said, and here's the thing. I read that in
his diary. He's referring to himself in the third person. Well,
that says a lot. That's odd. He's like Ricky Henderson, right,
or George Costanza. So he says that he saw some
oh yeah, the quote cent and you got to read
the quote. He's sailing around, not that it e Oh

(23:42):
what is that in the ocean? I think I'll take
a look through my spye glass. The day before when
the admiral was going to the and the admiral is himself, Yeah,
that's what I'm thinking. He was the admiral of his
fillet for sure. The day before when the admiral was
going on to the Rio del Oro, that's the river
old he said he saw three mermaids who came quite

(24:02):
high out of the water. But we're not as pretty
as they are depicted. For somehow, in the face they
look like men. But I still thought about it. Yeah. So,
and what they think now, and I don't know how
they substantiated this, is that Columpus was seeing manatees. Yeah.
Have you seen manatees? Yeah, it looks nothing like a human.

(24:25):
From enough of a distance, though, you're like, wait, what
is that, especially if you've never seen a manatee before.
I don't think it looks human like at all. But
from enough of a distance. Yeah, I can see how
somebody would, especially if you believe that mermaids existed. You
see a manatee, maybe it's hard for me to totally
get that go there in that put my mind in

(24:47):
that kind of frame, in the frame of Christopher Columbus, well,
just to have never seen a mermaid, to have never
seen a manatee, to be high on on the aarrow
wax scalps, like I just blanked on the green marijuana,
the green, the green drink absinthe I don't think Absinthe

(25:10):
was around with Columbus. Are you kidding me? No, I'm not.
You're shooting that stuff. Kind of see it. Uh so
he maybe saw a manatee. I was like, yeah, they're
not so great looking. After all, they're not that great.
What's everyone talking about? Uh? Yeah, he saw one. This
is like Jimmy Carter in the UFOs. Like you're kind

(25:32):
of surprised when you hear this that somebody sited it.
Apparently Reagan said he saw UFOs as well. Uh. John
Smith said he saw some. He liked what he saw.
He liked the look of the manatees because he said
he fell in love with one with long green hair. Yeah,
he said it was it wasn't bad looking, or it
wasn't unattractive or something like that. Yeah, it was kind

(25:54):
of a head. He hedged his bets a little bit.
I guess he wanted to check the rest of her
out and then he saw she had a tale, is like, oh,
I can't go there, So what's going on here? They're
hallucinating because they've been on the high seas too long.
That's what a lot of people say. Um, other people
say that again, they were predisposed to believing in mermaids

(26:16):
because people thought mermaids existed. This were This was the
age of exploration, So it's the beginning of the age
of exploration, which means that before then the oceans were
largely unexplored and there were tons of beliefs in thousands
year thousands of year old mythologies about creatures that lived
in the sea. So if you thought that those things existed,

(26:38):
then something that looked kind of like a mermaid could
be a mermaid. So that was probably if they were
just they're just cases of mistaken identity. They were highly suggestible. Yeah,
we did. Yeah, that was a good one. I thought
that one was going to be awful and it turned
out pretty great episode. Like I remember remember thinking like

(27:00):
this is not going to go well and kind like
kind of like this one. Yeah, how do you think
this one's going pretty great? All right, let's take a
break then and uh give each other a neck rub,
and we'll come back more comfortable than ever. All Right,

(27:40):
there is a dude. I love this guy. His name
is Carl Bants and he did not Carl Bands fan. Well,
I just I'm not quite sure I understand unless did
you read the go ahead the article? Well, just to
set it up. Okay, So dude named Carl Bants back,
he wrote a an article in a legitimate journal, the

(28:04):
Journal Limnology and Oceanography. Um, and they published it. And
it is an entirely tongue in cheek but totally played
straight account of the extinct species mermaid. Yeah. Like wherein
he he surmises on like for real, where they came from,
what their biology was, where they while they left us? Yep,

(28:27):
that they were warm water dwelling, that they ate human flesh,
which is why they lured people to their death. Um.
He goes so far as to say that they um
most likely only produced one or two offspring at a
time because the females of the of the species had
two breasts, and that was it. Okay, you know, sure, um,

(28:50):
Like this is the thought that this guy put into
this this article, and the fact that he writes it
totally straight and like really gives it its due attention,
Like it wasn't that that, like this is gonna be
a great idea, and just the idea itself is hilarious,
so I don't really have to put any effort into
actual execution. He put effort into the execution and it did.
He did pretty good. I'm not knocking him. I guess.

(29:11):
I just don't see why this journal would put something
like that out there. Even I don't know. I mean,
I guess he had a good sense of humor and
they were Maybe it was the April Fools episode. I
was wondering if that was the case too, and I
forgot to look if it was the April issue. Perhaps
he did use the words horny skinfolds though, right, their
skin and he theorized was not smooth, smooth scaled like

(29:34):
a regular fish. But I had quote horny skinfolds like
an armadillo. Yeah. What's interesting is I saw another account
from eighteen thirty in Scotland. There's a kind of a
town called Benbecula on the Outer Hebrides, right, which is
like the outer Islands, the Arca Archipelago. It's archipelago. That's

(29:58):
how you say that, right, Ture arcapela ago. Yeah, either way,
there's a town there, string of islands, coastal thank you,
the coastal town where in eighteen thirty the whole town
swore they saw a mermaid and tried to grab the mermaid,
and the mermaid swam away. So some kid threw a
rock at it and hit it in its back, and

(30:18):
two days later they found it dead on shore and
they felt so bad about it that they they they
buried it. They gave it a funeral with like a
casket and everything, and um they said that it didn't
have scales, that it had like kind of rough skin
instead hornie skinfold. Yeah, they didn't use that term. But

(30:39):
this is like a thing in eighteen thirty in Scotland. Yeah,
pretty interesting that when you read the account of it
years later. The band name by the Wayne Skinfolds. Yeah,
that is interesting. Uh, maybe there's something there, right, I
had to keep the folds of the arny skinfold clean

(31:01):
you know, but like gunk gets trapped in there. I
don't know. Maybe that's the name of the first single
cleaning the folds. The other thing um that A Bants
did in his article was explained probably why they're extinct.
Now he came to the conclust right their extinct um.
He said they were warm water, so they would have

(31:21):
cohabitated or shared the their ecosystem with jellyfish. And as
humans started to fish more and more of the sea, um,
we upset the ecological balance. Jellyfish populations were allowed to boom,
which is the case, and they stung the mermaids to death.
Because the mermaids had they lacked the blubber that would
protect them not just in cold water, but from jellyfish

(31:44):
stings as well. So they died out from jellyfish stings. Yeah,
because their their upper skin was just regular skin. It
wasn't the horny skin folds, so it provided no protection exactly.
It's worth reading. Go check it out. It's called Mermaids
the Biology. Their biology coal True in Demise. You can
find like the full pdf online. Well, I think we
have to address the animal planet snaphoo. I don't know

(32:07):
if they would call it a snaphoo, I think they
would call it a ratings bonanza. Yeah, Which what was
the other when we talked about the Megalodon when Discovery
Channel aired a Megalodon documentary that appeared by all accounts
to be true and was not the same thing with Mermaids,
But they did it twice. They did they did a
sequel because it got like you said, huge ratings and uh,

(32:32):
this was a documentary. Um, well, not a documentary. It
was a mockumentary that looked like did you watch any
clips or anything of the second one? Yeah? Yeah, I
mean it looked like, you know, a show like a
hunting Bigfoot crew. It's like, you know, we got this mermaid,
we know where she is, and we're down here hunting
and the three thousand feet yeah, below the surface. Yeah,

(32:55):
and they interviewed a guy that looked like Zack Gallifinakis.
If only it would have been Zacal Fineckis, it would
have made it much better. But um, you know then
it was one of these shows where at the end
and small lettering it was right, not me small, but
at the end of the credits, it's like this was
all made up. These are actors and yeah, but if
you go online, people are still like arguing over the

(33:18):
the legitimacy or credentials of the marine geologist Torsten Schmidt's
name it is um and people are like, well, if
he were a real scientist, he would have been published
elsewhere besides this, and he's not published, and it's like
that's because he's not real. He's made up. Yeah, this
is like settled. Right. They didn't even pretend that it
was real, So I don't I don't know if that's

(33:40):
the case or not, because I mean, they said it
wasn't on the at the end of the show, okay,
but they didn't come out and say everybody, everybody, well right,
it's so Actually Noah, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
had to release in They felt they needed to release
a statement after the first one saying like, hey, um,
her maids don't exist. No evidence has ever been found.

(34:03):
We're Noah the end, And I bet they love that
even show. Yeah, oh my god, Noah's making a statement. Yeah,
it's gonna be all over the news, right, And so
I guess enough people bought it and and um bought
into it that they were able to release a sequel,
and in the sequel, the reason they released the sequel
was because Torsten Schmidt had footage of a webbed hand

(34:24):
like smacking the windshield that was little like um underwater
subw man sub um and then swimming off. And so
they just kept showing that over and over and over again,
and it was Sack Gallif and Akis. He did look
like him, Tony a lot um. I thought you were
going to say that it was found out when Torsten

(34:46):
Schmidt showed up on a episode of Two Broke Girls
the next week. Right, it's like a waiter and a
progressive insurance add it's like customer and over two exactly.
There's one other sighting. I wanted to mention this one,
the second for my favor after the Scottish one. It
was in Adam, Netherlands. Is it eat him? Sure? Like
the cheese? Yeah? Okay. Um. Two girls were like rowing

(35:11):
their boats and found a mermaid and took it home
and dressed it up as a little girl and taught
it to live on land. But it remained mute its
whole life. Yeah, but isn't that cute? That very cute.
They're like, you're coming home with us, Oh, you've got
a family. Ts, we got a family too, and it's
your new family. And they just made that story up
and told people and it survived. I guess interesting, although

(35:34):
they didn't they supported they didn't apparently like they matriculated
the mermaid into human society there. But we're talking fourteen thirty,
so who knows what was going on. They were eating.
They probably got their hands on on somebody who was
like who knows, and they're like, oh, mermaid, this is
a mermaid. Oh, just someone who had some sort of

(35:55):
physical and made them come live with them, just as
a girl for the rest of their life, like Schlitze
or something. Yeah, like we did in the Freak shows.
They would just call them, make up whatever animal they
wanted to. That was another great episode. Two are you
just recounting the good ones while we do this one?

(36:15):
Just to remind people it gets better? So being a
mermaid is an actual job you can get if you
back in the day. In the nineteen forties and fifties,
it was a big hit, uh to go to a
like a sea park and have mermaid shows, and specifically
one in is it wiki Watchie Springs? Yeah, WEEKI Watchee
Springs Florida near Tampa. And uh, it was a booming

(36:39):
business back then. They said, um, between half million and
a million tourists every year, including big famous people like
Elvis Presley and Don Knots. Yeah, those are the two
they mentioned. Those two would trash and place together. Oh
I bet Don gets into the whiskey. It's all over. Um.
So yeah, it was a huge steal back then. They're

(37:00):
still doing it there today. But it is a real job.
You can um, you can go if you're a great swimmer,
like you have to know what you're doing. Oh yeah,
Like it seems like, oh, yeah, you just put on
that that tail, but that tail is is heavy and awkward.
Well but yeah, and plus like somewhat buoyant swimming with
your legs together. Yeah, that's hard, very difficult. Yeah, it's

(37:22):
not an easy job from what I can tell. Yeah,
so apparently once you put like they look very graceful,
uh swimming around in those things. But you go put
one on and get in a pool and see what happens.
Right in this article, I think rightly points out that
the professional mermaids that you see today are um like
this is from years and years and years of practice,

(37:43):
Like they didn't just get in the water and they're like, yeah,
I'm a natural, yeah exactly. Um, it's really awkward. And
you also have to know how to hold your breath
like a mo like a mo yeah it's not myself,
Yeah you do. And you have to learn how to
swim the mermaid crawl, which is what they name it.
But you know it's not like regular swimming. Uh yeah, right,

(38:06):
you know. And you can make a little dough too,
a little bit. It said. You can be hired like
as a one off for a party. What is that?
Like you go to like a neighborhood pool and everyone
gathers around, like, look at the mermaid claps out of rhythm.
That's so fun. You're like, what do you guys want
me to do? I guess you can do that. But
the most mostly what I've seen are like the shows

(38:28):
in some like Sleepy Florida town right like Gator Farm
and the start in the in the WEEKI watching Mermaids
or like at resorts or something like that. Yeah, back
when they used to love that kind of thing. Uh.
And some of these um professional mermaids apparently use their
uh status as a soapbox for ecology and efforts to

(38:51):
keep the oceans clean. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Yeah, there
seems to be a real thread of that running through
the professional mermaid culture. You're like an eco activists. That's
a decent band name too, professional mermaid culture. Yeah, this
one was rich with bands name Horny Skinfolds. Yeah. Uh,

(39:13):
if you want to know more about mermaids, you can
type that word in the search bart how stuff works
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(39:34):
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(39:55):
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(40:17):
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(40:40):
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