SYSK Gets Weird Playlist: Mermaids: Not a real thing

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2:02Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from House Stuff Works.com Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Yeah that's right there's Charles W. Tucker Bryant. Jerry's over there in the ether floating. Possibly not existing who knows. And this is stuff you should know. That's right. Couple of mermaids trying to make their way in the world. Trying to keep their tails wet. Yeah. Yeah. Because if that thing dries out you've seen splash. Yeah it's a toast. No. She dried out and she was just fine. Oh I thought oh you're thinking of ET. When you turned all white and dried out. No. I was thinking of splash because I couldn't remember. It was one of my favorite movies as a kid. It was a cute movie. It was one of those early HBO movies. Early Tom Hanks which I'm a big fan of early Tom Hanks.

3:04And I just thought it was a really fun funny movie. John Candy. Yeah it was a great movie. What's this name played the evil man trying to expose her Eugene Levy 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 is the bad guy. Yeah that was the STB crew. And he actually tried to spray her and get her wet so she would... Oh it was an effect kid. And it turned into a mermaid on the sidewalk. That's what it was. She got wet. She turned into a mermaid. Right. She got dried. No problem. Yes. And Darryl Hannah. Of course. He was running around with Neil Young now. Oh really? Yeah. How about that couple? Not. They're both environmentalists. But there's a lot of turquoise in that bedroom. I wonder if you hook up with Neil Young or anyone like that if you're sort of a new relationship and not like the wife they had for 40 years. If you're like... Play a song why don't you? What?

4:04I wonder if you asked them to play music. Oh like you're actually into them? Yeah like if you're Billy Joel's new 25 year old wife. And they would say like, hey honey, play me a tune. Play that one that you wrote 10 years before I was conceived. I think 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 toward him. Oh I got you. And saying, I'd love to hear Old Man. Yeah. Please baby, one for me. And yeah he says I played that song 45,000 times. Yeah I would guess that... Well I can tell you I would... Yeah I would guess that once you reach a certain point in playing a song you never want to hear that song or even think about it existing again. Yeah. But then you still have to play it. Oh I try not to think 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.

5:04And you just throw him bananas at him. And God bless the people who really bring it still. Sure. Where you feel like man they're playing that song for me tonight. Adamant. Is he still bringing it? He's just who came to mind. Whereas when I saw the police on their reunion they were phoning it in. Really? Yeah. 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. Oh yeah. And they didn't even like speak much. That's like I was reading an article on the Ramones. The Rolling Stone one recently? 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 would just like get on the bus and not speak to one another. Yeah. Go to the next town and get on stage and play and then come off stage and not... Like they would speak on stage because they had to.

6:04Yeah. And apparently well at least Joey and who was his big foil? Dee Dee Dee. Is those ones who really hated each other? Yeah supposedly they didn't speak at all for like 25 years straight. Right because Joey stole Dee Dee's like love of his life. Right. And then they were in the band together still after that. It was just like T.S. man. So weird. So like a lot of songs especially ones like the KKK took my baby away. Yeah that's about Joey stealing Dee Dee's girlfriend. Wow. This is a great article. Yeah good read. Yeah. So back to Splash. Funny movie about a mermaid and we're going to talk about mermaids here and mostly what we're going to cover is the lore and 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 big foot sightings and pictures of UFO sightings.

7:04So weird distant blur that like you can't it could be kelp. Or it's such an obviously doctored photo. What would be fun though is if we had a time machine forget killing Hitler. We did like my back machine. Oh yeah that's right I can't believe we put this into good use. Yeah. Forget like you know saving the world they're keeping the dodo from going extinct. I would take some of these doctored photos that are just so easy to make today. Back to like the the 1920s 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. Josh is traveling wonder wonder in boredom. It's not a bad idea. We're in which you just show them photos. But I charge them like 2016 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 2750 to see those.

8:04Right. Step right up town's only billionaire. That's a great idea. 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 going to go back and set up a business doomed to fail. All right so let's talk about mermaid lore. Well we can start here in the more modern age because there are still places that try and take people for money like we were just talking about even. Yeah like me. In fact in Israel on the coast there. They actually have a town called a kiriat yam. And if you go to kiriat yam you could win. How much money does he even say? Million bucks. Million American dollars. If you provide incontrovertible evidence of the mermaid that is reputed to wander the shore. And appear at sunset as of 2009 was the first sighting there.

9:05Yeah and of course what that is is is employed to try and get tourists and come and spend money in the town and look for the mermaid. Come on chumps. We welcome you to kiriat yam. Sure. Loch Ness has made plenty of tourists money over the years. Apparently they have a standing offer as well and that's where the mayor of kiriat yam got the idea. Yeah great idea. Sure. And actually I saw that photo too. And 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 onto a beach. And you know beach that will have like a big just slab of rocks surrounded by sand. Yeah sand and mermaids. Right. There's a mermaid on that rock just kind of looking out at the sea. Yeah. And of course it could be anything. It could be totally doctored. Who knows. But it's from a distance and at least they didn't like go full out like perfect picture of a mermaid or whatever. It's just suggestive enough that people who believe in such things would be like right there.

10:06There's a picture of a mermaid you know. Totally. So that was found in 2009 or that surface in 2009 and since then the surface. Right. Since then the town's had that standing offer. Correct. So the really the interesting thing to me about mermaids is the mythology. Did you take mythology in college at all? Yeah I did. I always wanted it to interest me more than it did. Me too. It was just I don't know if it wasn't explained to me quite well enough or just the ancient's non bicameral mind wasn't fused together enough to interest people in the modern age. Well I think so. I think the stories themselves as far as good storytelling or just lacking because a lot of them were just versions of one another. And there was usually a very basic premise or moral. Right. And in the case of mermaids a lot of times there were a lot of folklore even was rooted in misogyny.

11:12Oh yeah. How sure. There'll be a woman to come along and screw your life up. Right or if you've written by a woman she will kill your children or something like that. Like women were not to be trusted and they were murderous and duplacidous in a lot of mythology. It's true. The old hag. So 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 Pliny the Elder, the Beer and the Dude. Yeah. Rome's Pliny the Elder, he in his 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 E.I. is a tough transition. It is. Because you want to say like Nereid. Yeah. Nereid. These were sea nymphs. Half human, half fish mermaids. And he also talked about sea men.

12:14And we should point out that mermaids, we made the joke about us being mermaids. Yeah. I believe mermaids were even first on the literary scene. Well first at least with mythology or theology I guess there's a Babylonian god of the sea named Ea. Yeah. EA sports. Just EA. And he pops up in Babylonian mythology from I think 4000 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. Yeah. And Neptune who is the Roman god of the sea. Because the Greeks gave us Western culture but they just walked around to all of the neighboring cultures and picked their favorite parts and put them together. Yeah. And that was definitely one of them. Yeah. Yeah. Well we talked in our, I guess it was in the folklore and fairy tale episodes that were twin episodes almost.

13:16Yeah. About the 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. Yeah. Like I went back and read the last section of it. Well give me a summary at the end. So 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 Mary's her. And the little mermaid is like dude I gave up my tail for you. Yeah. I think a witch has my tongue kind of thing. And I want to get back 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 you love's heart.

14:16Yeah. 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 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 becomes sea foam. She disintegrates and becomes sea 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 she becomes a different mythical creature. Like basically an air nymph that goes around like helping humans. And she can possibly get into heaven if she helps people for 300 years. It Hans Christian Anderson wrote it way better than I just recounted it. A lot less ohms and likes. Yeah. But it's pretty it's worth reading. And Cliny also talked about merman back in the day and there would be merman or semen who would at night climb upon to ships.

15:22And as a quote, that's why 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. And that was something that we will see as we talk more about mermaids is they are very they're often either an omen. Is that something bad is going to happen to sailors or coastal dwelling people? Yeah. Or they actually directly cause harm to sailors or coastal dwelling people. Yeah. And most times under the guise of something beautiful and like a siren. Yeah. 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 woman, human woman. And she's really with huge boobs. Yeah. If you're talking about a sailor's account. Right. Sure. Oh yeah. She was busty. Did I mention the boobs? Yes you did sir. Seven times.

16:22And from the you know torso down, she's a fish. Maybe web feet, maybe not. Very graceful, very fast and always beautiful. It depends. Oh yeah. Yeah. There was some of legend that were not ugly. Really? Yeah. Not ugly or they were ugly. That they were not in parenthesis. Beautiful. Come on. Ugly. Well I hadn't heard about that. Yeah. It's in here. No, I'm just I must have missed that part. It's far more frequent what you were saying that they were beautiful and alluring. Okay. But we'll talk more about that after we take a break, huh? Don't you want to touch? Don't you want to touch? Don't you want to tell me? Don't you want to hold her? Stop. Stop. Oh my Jesus.

17:23It's 95 degrees and your air conditioner suddenly starts making a very weird noise. That's when you post your task on airtasker. Find local help for repairs, yard work, errands and more without losing your cool. Go to airtasker.com or download the app. Airtasker. Get anything done. Change it. You know, eating is a huge part of our lives. It fuels us. It brings us together and it's one of life's great pleasures. But once a meal's over, we don't think much about what happens next, unless something starts to feel off. Because what we eat and how our bodies respond to it is complicated. That's right. From the very first bite, food kicks off a chain reaction. The brain and the immune system, the constant back and forth, we can't see and often don't fully understand. So we want to introduce to you eating interrupted, a new podcast from iHeart Ruby Studio. It's hosted by longtime journalist and Crohn's patient, Cynthia McFadden. Eating interrupted explores everything from food, allergies and intolerance and why they seem to be on the rise to how digestion changes as we age and what it's really like to live with a chronic GI condition.

18:25Through personal stories and expert insight, listen in to unpack what it means when your body doesn't always respond to food the way you expect and what science is now revealing about why. Listen to eating interrupted on the iHeart app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone, if you've ever wanted to feel what it's like inside an episode of a show you love, hang with podcast hosts beyond the mic or swap screens for sunsets with curious like-minded people, then stuff at sea is your kind of voyage. That's right, stuff at sea is a five-night culture-soaked escape where pink sand paradise meets curious minds. Sailing round trip on October 2nd to 7th, 2026 from New York City to Bermuda. This voyage drops you straight into the iHeart podcast stuff universe. On top of the adults only experience you already love, you'll get live podcast episode recordings behind the scene sessions, themed activations and more unmissable on board moments. Yeah, and there's overnight stays in Bermuda, so there's no rush.

19:27Just long, sundrench days to explore or do absolutely nothing at all. And back on board, curiosity sparks connection through conversations, experiences and a lineup designed to keep things as thought-provoking as they are unforgettable. Stuff at sea is part of the new specialty sailing collection that transforms beloved podcasts into immersive at sea experiences exclusively with virgin voyages. Expect more stories, more hosts, and more ways to experience the voices that you love. Book now at virginvoidges.com slash stuff. Alright, 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 accused of luring men sailors out to sea to their death.

20:27Yeah, and how you do that. You do that one of two ways. You have a beautiful singing voice, 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 a siren is half bird, half woman. Yes. And they don't even necessarily live in the water or near the water. They're sometimes described as hanging out in fields. Yeah. I guess sometimes you can be very pretty and be a good singer. Right? You're a mermaid. But the, yeah, you could be. Yeah, sure. You'd be, uh... Who am I to disagree? You'd be Beyonce. Right. Or Alicia Keys. Right. Or Adele. Oh, you knew who I like as a... Rihanna. Oh, yeah. She's great. She's very pretty. That part in, uh... What's it called? This is the end. And she played herself. Yeah, yeah. She's pretty great. She was pretty funny. Yeah. Michael Sarah likes banked her, and she just immediately turned around and smacked the heck out of them.

21:29Yeah, I enjoyed parts of that movie, especially Michael Sarah, Yeah. Playing like a coked out jerk. That was really funny. Yeah. Um, so back to the beautiful mermaids though, uh... There was one in 1000 BCE in Syria, and her name... How would you pronounce that? At her gattis? Ooh, I think you nailed it. Yeah. Yeah. All right, we'll go with that. And she... And you'll see a lot of duality in a lot of these stories, and she was one for sure that was a protector, a goddess. I think she protected the fertility for people, and watched over them, and fell in love with a human man, as you will often see in a lot of these stories. A dude. Yeah, a dude, and it was fine for a little while, like in most stories, and then it goes south. Yeah. And she kills him. She crushed him with her... Greatness. Oh, I thought like her big tail or something. I don't know, well, she wasn't a mermaid yet. This is where she becomes a mermaid.

22:29Oh, that's true. I forgot about that. So, um, she accidentally kills him, and then is 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 she's just so beautiful that the human beauty part of her is like, no, I won't be a fish. Just the lower half can be a fish. Yeah. Because she had tofungus, so that was easily overcome. But her face was really nice, so the fish parts just couldn't overcome that. That's right. So, she ended up a mermaid. Weird story. Well, not just weird, like, oh, it's foreign or anything. I'm not being xenophobic, but it really like says a lot about humanity and how we think of things. No, she was so good looking that this magic couldn't even overcome that. Yeah. It's a point. We place a lot of value on that kind of thing. All right. Should we move on to Germany?

23:30Yeah. This one was kind of interesting to me, because Germany's landlocked. Oh, I never really thought about that. What does Germany have a mermaid mythology? Well, I mean, they have lakes. I guess. But, mermaids are 100% ocean dwellers, aren't they? No, there are some river dwellers. Oh, that's right. Although I think the sirens were specifically river. Well, then in the German myth, it was a river dweller. Correct. Okay. Yeah, the nixes. Yeah. And they, Lord, man, into the river. Yeah, it was a river. And so they could drown them. And the call of the siren coming here. Look how beautiful I am. Right. Check these out. And now I'm holding your head underwater. Right. And you can't breathe anymore. And the guy's like, I regret nothing. But this duality that we're talking about is what you see a lot of times in mermaid myths from West Africa, the mommy Wada, the mother water.

24:30She was a mermaid. She was very nurturing and very loving. If you didn't cross her. Yeah, exactly. That's where the duality comes in. I don't even know if 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, you could be wealthy from her magic mirror in comb. But if you betrayed her, then what this article says is she rains down fury and destruction. Right. Right. She rained the H word from above. But the duality is an important part of it because the physical creature itself is two things. Sure. And they are also two things emotionally. But so the mermaid, the mermaid or mermaids or murf folk as they're called in this article. Are they really? Yeah. The murf folk are half fish, half people, right?

25:30But 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 just tons of like the the Minotaur, half man, half bull. The Centaur was what, half goat or horse and half man. I don't remember that sounds right. I think have horse. And I was like, where did all these come from? I suspect a beastiality and it turns out I may be right. Oh, yeah. Yeah. What'd you find? There are some scholars out there who believe that this is the product of a much more relaxed attitude toward beastiality than we modern humans have today. Yeah. I still never saw that documentary about the horse. Yeah. It's a good one. Yeah. I need that fell off my radar. Man, it's one of those ones where they largely do recreate, like the whole thing's almost

26:30recreation. Right. 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. They did it so well. Really? Yep. It's rough. I bet. 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. Man, I need to see that. So I guess we can talk a little bit about some eyewitness counts. They're all bunk, of course. But they have happened in World War II in Japan on Indonesia's Kai Islands. Supposedly they encountered a monster on the beach that had, you know, webtoons and feet and was kind of part human, part fish. Yeah. It's like, look at these jazz hands. You can't do this. And then back in the day, some of our most revered explorers and adventure, adventurers reported seeing mermaids like John Smith and Henry Hunson and Columbus.

27:32John Smith. John Smith loves him. Yeah. What was a good quote in here from Columbus, because he wasn't too impressed. Yeah. 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's on it. You got to read the quote. He's out sailing around. Not a day. Not a day. Oh, what is that? Oh, should I take a look through my spying glass? The day before when the admiral was going to the, in the admiral himself. Yeah. That's what I'm thinking. He was the admiral of his fleet for sure. The day before when the admiral was going on to the Rio del Oro. That's the river of gold. He said he saw three mermaids who came quite high out of the water, but were not as pretty as they are depicted. For somehow in the face, they look like men. But I still thought about it. Yeah. So, what they think now, I don't know how they substantiated this, is that Columbus was

28:36seeing manatees. Yeah. Have you seen manatees? Yeah. It looks nothing like a human. From enough of a distance, though, you're like, wait a minute. What is that? Especially if you've never seen a manatee before. I don't think it looks human like at all. From enough of a distance. You think? 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 and put my mind in 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 what's the green stuff. With arrow wax scalps. Oh my God. I just blanked on the green. Marijuana? No. The green drink. Absent. I don't think Absent was around with Columbus. Oh, you kid me. No, I'm not. You shooting that stuff. I can't see it.

29:37So he maybe saw a manatee. He was like, eh, they're not so great looking after all. You're not that great. What's everyone talking about? Yeah, he saw one. This is like Jimmy Carter in the UFOs. Like you're kind of surprised when you hear this that somebody cited it. Apparently Reagan said he saw UFOs as well. 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 wasn't bad looking. It wasn't unattractive or something like that. Yeah. He hedged his bets a little bit. I guess he wanted to check the rest of her out. Yeah. And then he saw she had a tail and he's like, oh, can't go there. So what's going on here? Are they hallucinating because they've been on the high seas too long? That's what a lot of people say. Other people say that again, they were predisposed to believing in mermaids because people thought mermaids existed. This is the age of exploration.

30:38So 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 of year old mythologies about creatures that lived in the sea. So if you thought that those things existed, then something that looked kind of like a mermaid could be a mermaid. So that was probably, they were just cases of mistaken identity. They were highly suggestible. Yeah. They were good when I'll see monsters. Remember? We did. Yeah. That was a good one. I thought that one was going to be awful and it turned out pretty great. That's the episode. Yeah. I remember thinking like this is not going to go well and kind of like this one. Yeah. How do you think this one's going? Pretty great. All right. Well, let's take a break then and give each other a neck rub. Okay. And we'll come back more comfortable than ever. All right. So, moving days going great until the couch won't fit through the door.

31:53That's when I turned to air tasker. Post your task and find local help for packing, cleaning, furniture assembly, errands and more. Go to airtasker.com or download the app. Or tasker. Get anything done. You know, eating is a huge part of our lives. It fuels us. It brings us together and it's one of life's great pleasures. But once a meal's over, we don't think much about what happens next unless something starts to feel off. Because what we eat and how our bodies respond to it is complicated. That's right. From the very first bite, food kicks off a chain reaction. Signals moving between the gut, the brain and the immune system. The constant back and forth we can't see and often don't fully understand. So we want to introduce to you eating interrupted. A new podcast from I Heart Ruby Studio. It's hosted by longtime journalist and Crohn's patient, Cynthia McFadden. Eating interrupted explores everything from food, allergies and intolerance and why they seem to be on the rise to how digestion changes as we age and what it's really like to live with a chronic GI condition. Through personal stories and expert insight, listen in to unpack what it means when your

32:55body doesn't always respond to food the way you expect and what science is now revealing about why. Listen to eating interrupted on the I Heart app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone, if you've ever wanted to feel what it's like inside an episode of a show you love, hang with podcast hosts beyond the mic or swap screens for sunsets with curious like-minded people, then stuff at sea is your kind of voyage. And it's right, stuff at sea is a five night culture soaked escape where pink sand paradise meets curious minds sailing round trip on October 2nd to 7th, 2026 from New York City to Bermuda. This voyage drops you straight into the I Heart podcast stuff universe. On top of the adults only experience you already love, you'll get live podcast episode recordings behind the scene sessions themed activations and more unmissable on board moments. Yeah, and there's overnight stays in Bermuda. So there's no rush, just long, sundrench days to explore or do absolutely nothing at

33:57all. And back on board, curiosity sparks connection through conversations, experiences and a lineup designed to keep things as thought provoking as they are unforgettable. Stuff at sea is part of the new specialty sailing collection that transforms beloved podcasts into immersive at sea experiences exclusively with virgin voyages, expect more stories, more hosts and more ways to experience the voices that you love. Look now at virginvoidges.com slash stuff. There is a dude. I love this guy. His name is Carl Bance. And he, he did not call Bance fan. Well, I just, I'm not quite sure understand unless. Did you read the article? Well, just set it up. Okay. So a dude named Carl Bance back in 1990, he wrote an article in a legitimate journal, the

35:01journal, a limb knowledge and oceanography. And they published it and it is an entirely tongue in cheek, but totally played straight account of the extinct species mermaid. Yeah, like we're in he, he surmises on like for real where they came from, what their biology was, where they, why they left us. Yep, that they were warm water dwelling that they ate human flesh, which is why they lowered people to their death. He goes so far as to say that they most likely only produced one or two offspring at a time because the females of the species had two breasts and that was it. Okay. You know, sure. Like, this is the thought that this guy put into this article and the fact that he writes it totally straight. Yeah. And like really gives it its due attention. Like, it wasn't that, like this is going to be a great idea and just the idea itself is hilarious.

36:01So I don't really have to put any effort into actual execution. He put effort into the execution and it did. Yeah, he did pretty good. I'm not knocking him, I guess. 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 fool's episode. I was wondering if that was the case too and I forgot to look if it was the April issue. Hmm. Perhaps he did use the words horny skin folds though. Right. Their skin and he theorized was not smooth, smooth scaled like a regular fish, but I had quote, horny skin folds. Like an armadillo. Yeah. Interesting is I saw another account from 1830 in Scotland. There's a town called Benbecula on the outer Hebrides, right? Which is like the outer islands, the archipelago. It's an archipelago, that's how you say that, right? It's your archipelago. Yeah. Either way, there's a town there. String of islands.

37:01Coastal, thank you. Coastal town. Where in 1830, 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 two days later, they found it dead on shore and they felt so bad about it that they killed the kid. They buried it. They gave it a funeral with like a casket and everything. And they said that it didn't have scales that it had like kind of rough skin instead. Hornies skinfold. Yeah, they didn't use that term. But this is like a thing in 1830 in Scotland. Yeah, pretty interesting that when you read the account of it years later. That's a big band name, by the way. Hornies skinfolds? Yeah. Nice. Yeah, that is interesting. Maybe there's something there, right? I mean, keep the folds of the Hornies skinfold clean, you know? A bit like gunk gets trapped in there. Gross.

38:03Maybe that's the name of the first single cleaning the folds. The other thing that a bandstit in his article was explained probably why they're extinct now. He came to the conclusion that they're extinct. He said they were warm water, so they would have cohabitated or shared their ecosystem with jellyfish. And as humans started to fish more and more of the sea, 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 things as well. So they died out from jellyfish things. Yeah, because their upper skin was just regular skin. Right. It wasn't the Hornies skinfolds. Yeah. So they provided no protection. Exactly. That's a, it's worth reading. Go check it out. It's called mermaids, the biology culture and demise. You can find like the full PDF online. Well I think we have to address the animal planet, snafu. I don't know if they would call it a snafu.

39:06I think they would call it a ratings bananza. Yeah, which, what was the other, oh, when we talked about the Megalodon, when Discovery Channel aired a Megalodon documentary that appeared by all accounts to be true, and was not. Same thing with mermaids, but they did it twice. They did. They did a sequel because it got, like you said, huge ratings. And this was a documentary, 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 they, 3,000 feet. Yeah. Below this surface. Yeah, and they interviewed a guy that looked like Zach Galifanakis. If only it would have been Zach Galifanakis, it would have made it much better. But you know, and it was one of these shows where at the end, in small lettering, it was right now, in small, but at the end of the credits, it's like, this was all made up, these

40:08are actors. Yeah, but if you go online, people are still like arguing over the legitimacy or credentials of the marine geologist Torsten Schmidt. That's a great name. It is. 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 know if that's the case or not. Well, 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. Oh, well, essentially. No. Right. And so actually no other national oceanic and atmospheric administration had to release and they felt they needed to release a statement after the first one saying like, hey, mermaids don't exist. No evidence has ever been found. We're Noah, the end. And I bet they'd love that even. They're like, oh, yeah. Oh, my God. Noah's making a statement about it. Yeah. It's going to be all over the news.

41:08Right. And so I guess enough people bought it and 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 like smacking the windshield of his little like underwater sub to man sub. And then swimming off. Yeah. And so they just kept showing that over and over and over again. Yeah. It was cool. It was cool. It was a Gala Fennakis. He did look like him, didn't he? A lot. I thought you were going to say they, it was found out when Torsten Schmidt showed up on a episode of Two Broke Girls the next week. Right. And a progressive insurance ad is like customer number two exactly. There's one other sighting I wanted to mention. This one is second for my favorite after the Scottish one. It was in Adam Netherlands. Is it Edom? Sure. Like the cheese? Yeah. Okay. Two girls were like rowing their boats and found a mermaid and took it home and dressed

42:12it up as a little girl and taught it to live on land. But it remained mute. It's whole life. Like ET. But isn't that cute? That is very cute. They're like, you're coming home with us. Oh, you've got a family. T.S. 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 they didn't, they didn't, they didn't, like they matriculated the mermaid into human society there, but we're talking 1430. So who knows what was going on? Yeah. They were eating per person. They probably got their hands on somebody who was like, who knows? Yeah. And they were like, oh, mermaid. This is a mermaid. Oh, just someone who had some sort of physical de formation and made them come live with them. Just as a girl for the rest of their life. Like Schlitzie 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 too. Are you just recounting the good ones? Why would we do this one? Yeah.

43:13Just 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 1940s and 50s, it was a big hit to go to a like a C-park and have mermaid shows. And specifically one is it Wiki Watchy Springs? Yeah. Wiki Watchy Springs, Florida, near Tampa. And it was a booming business back then. They said between half million and a million tourists every year, including big famous people. Like Elvis Presley and Don Nuts. Yeah. Those are the two they mentioned. Those two would trash a place together. Oh, I bet Don gets into the whiskey. It's all over. So yeah, it was a huge deal back then. They're still doing it there today. But it is a real job. 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 tail. But that tail is heavy and awkward. Yeah, and plus swimming.

44:14And swimming buoyant. Swimming with your legs together? Yeah, that's hard. Very difficult. Yeah, it's not an easy job from what I can tell. Yeah. So apparently once you put like they look very graceful swimming around and those things, but you go put one on and get in a pool and see what happens. Right. And this article I think rightly points out that the professional mermaids that you see today are like this is from years and years and years of practice. Yeah. You didn't just get in the water and they're like, yeah, I'm a natural. Yeah, exactly. That would be really awkward. Sure. And you also have to know how to hold your breath like a moe. Like a moe? Yeah. I stopped 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. Yeah, right. 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.

45:16Claps out of rhythm. That's so funny. 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 in some like sleepy Florida town. Right. Like Gator Farm and those the start in the in the week you watch your mermaids or like at resorts or something like that. Yeah. Back when they used to love that kind of thing. And some of these professional mermaids apparently used their status as a soap box for ecology. Yeah. And efforts to keep the oceans clean. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Yeah. There seems to be a real threat of that running through the professional mermaid culture. You're like a eco activist. That's a decent band name too. Professional mermaid culture. Yeah. This one was rich with bands. Band names. Hornies skin folds. Mm-hmm. Yeah. If you want to know more about mermaids, you can type that word in the search bar at House of Forks.com. And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail.

46:21Actually in lieu of listener mail today, we are going to ask you for something because we people often say like, how can I help the show? Spreading the word is awesome. We always appreciate that. But one thing we haven't asked you to do in a long time is go to iTunes and leave a review. Oh yeah, because that makes a big difference if there are reviews. Even if they're not favorable. Yeah. Yeah, be honest. Vote with your conscience. Vote with your conscience. And yeah, go to iTunes, leave a review for us because just having reviews is a good thing. And tell a friend, help spread the word. I feel like years go by before we say things like this. Yeah. Well, I think literally that's the case. Yeah, it's been a long time. So we really appreciate the way the show was built was on word of mouth largely. We really count on that. So tell a friend, go to iTunes and leave a recommendation. And the other thing that we also need are more jingles. Oh yeah. These jingles that you hear, these bumpers are from fans and listeners, musicians.

47:24Very kind ones. Yeah, and they really enjoy doing it and we love throwing them out there. So send us your jingle and we can't promise we'll use it, but we probably will. Yeah. So that's all I got. Well, thanks. If you want to get in touch with us to help us out with any of this stuff, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast.com. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.house.org. And as always join us at our home on the web. StuffYouShouldNo.com For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit House StuffWorks.com. It's 95 degrees and your air conditioner suddenly starts making a very weird noise. That's when you post your task on AirTasker. Find local help for repairs, yard work, errands, and more without losing your cool. Go to airtasker.com or download the app. AirTasker, get anything done.

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49:27This is an I Heart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.