Jack's Lemming Confusion... Again.

So apparently this was covered a decade ago but it was time for a refresher. Jack was under the impression that lemmings commit mass suicide by running off cliffs.  Turns out, a lot of people think that to be true. The reason why is interesting! 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I've spent my whole life under the impression that lemmings
run off a cliff. Well, it turns out so this
got more interesting the more I read about it during
the break. They do not commit suicide by running off
a cliff, as is the popular conception, and how it
became popular is really interesting, and I'll get to that
in a second. But they do regularly because of herd
mentality and migration and a strong urge to migrate, and

(00:23):
where they are in the Arctic or whatever, they do
regularly run off cliffs and fall in the water and
drown because they're all following each other and they're migrating,
and they're dumb beasts, they're little rodents. So it's not
completely bogus, the whole lemmings running off a cliff. It's
just not like I've had it with this world, goodbye
cruel world, and they run and jump off.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
It's not suicide.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
It's negligence. Perhaps the most influential and infamous presentation of
the myth of lemmings committing suicide by running off a cliff.
And I'll bet this is what I saw as a
kid that has been stuck in my head. My whole
life was the nineteen fifty eight Disney film Why White Wilderness,
which won an Academy Award for a Documentary Feature. So
I saw that, and that's why I think this. So

(01:07):
you can't blame me, blame Disney. And in which producers
threw lemmings off a cliff to their deaths to fake
footage of a mass suicide as far as as well
as faked scenes of a mass migration. Why it doesn't
get to why they did that. Why did Disney throw
lemmings off cliffs to film them jumping off cliffs? Better footage?

(01:29):
I have in my mind the scene of lemmings flying
off cliffs. They were thrown off cliffs by Disney to
make this documentary. I'll save y'all the need to write
an email or a text. Yes, I remember we talked
about this like a decade ago. Nobody brought it up. Yeah,
I know, Well that's fine. I forget what we've talked
about the next day. So it's kind of weird that

(01:50):
or the next minute that I remember that. But yeah,
you're right, that infamous Disney documentary. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation made
a documentary called Cruel Camera about Disney's movie which found
that the lemmings used for White Wilderness were flown from
Hudson Bay to Calgary, Alberta, Canada, far and where. Far
from casting themselves bodily out into space, as the film's

(02:13):
narrator states, they were in fact dumped off the cliff
by the camera crew from a truck.

Speaker 3 (02:19):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
Because of the limited number of lemmings at their disposal,
which in any case were the wrong subspecies, the migration
scenes were assimulated using time tight camera angles and a
large snow covered turntable. And this is stuck in people's
consciousness like mine, because I saw that original Disney movie,
and of course I would believe that as a documentary
it went under dang oscar. Wow, that's an interesting story,

(02:43):
isn't as far as me forgetting that. We talked about
this ten years ago. I said to my son yesterday,
I said, you know, one of the great advantages of
being old. Because I was telling them, I don't remember
what I was telling him. I said, I'm sure I
knew this before, but I just learned it again and
it's very exciting. And I was telling him some tidbit
about something. I said, I've probably learned this four times
and forgotten it. But it's exciting every single time.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
Eh, Well, what are you gonna do? So this is
apropos nothing, but it struck me. I was just flipping
through an email and Twitter and that sort of thing.
Maxine Waters just tweeted many You're worried that the judges
extended Trump's trial date. Not to worry.

Speaker 3 (03:19):
Trump can't run, Trump can't hide. He will be imprisoned
with Ivanka by his side. Wait a minute, where did
Ivanka come in? Why did she come in for a kickin?
And she's gonna be by his side in some sort
of weird family prison. What are you talking about, Maxine.

Speaker 1 (03:37):
I'm unfamiliar with the laws that would allow that to happen.

Speaker 3 (03:41):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (03:42):
I just want to reiterate. While you're watching Frozen with
your daughter this weekend, perhaps pause the movie and tell
her that Disney took a dump trunk full of lemmings,
backed it up to a cliff, and then don't them
out into the air to make a movie falsifying a myth.

(04:05):
The Disney Corporation now is then evil. I need to
know more about why they did that. Seems like that's
its own interesting story. Well, they thought that'd be incredibly
compelling and won an Oscar. All Right, they're documenting a
bizarre and how could you forget that?

Speaker 2 (04:25):
I mean, just an.

Speaker 1 (04:27):
Incredibly striking bit of nature. They just happen to make
it up. Okay, I'm gonna do a little fancy film
work today about how squirrels ride unicycles and submit it.
See if I can get that going. What the hell
Disney