Mermaids: Not a real thing

seen Splash. Yeah, it's a actually past now. She dried out and she was just fine. Oh. I thought, oh, you thinking of et when he turned all white and dried out. I was thinking of Splash because I couldn't remember. It's one of It was one of my favorite movies as a kid. It's a cute movie. Um. It was one of those early HBO movies, early Tom Hanks, which I'm big fan of early Tom Hanks, and um, I just thought it was a really fun funny movie. John Candy movie what's his name played the evil man trying

to expose her. Um, 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, there was the SETV crew and um, he actually tried to spray her and get her wet so she would and the fat kid turned into a mermaid on the sidewalk, That's what it was. And she got wet, she turned to a mermaid. She got tried, no problem. Yes, And Daryl Hannah, of course, who's running around with Neil Young? Now? Oh really? Yeah?

How about that couple? Sure? Why not? Both environmentalists. But there's a lot of turquoise in that bedroom. I wonder if you hook up with Neil Young, if or 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, ya, 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,

play me a tune. Play that one that you that you wrote ten 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 towards 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 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 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 did he still bring it? He's just who came to mind. 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 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 Stones. 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 to the next town and get on stage and play and then come off stage and not like they would. They would be gun stage because they had to. That was it. And apparently, well at least Joey and who was his big foil is 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 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 dds girlfriend. Wow, it was a

great article, good read. Um, So back to splash, 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 sighting, some pictures of UFO sighting some weird distant blur that like, you can't it could be kelped or it is such an obviously doctored photo. What would be fun, though, is if we had a time machine forget killing Hitler. If you get like, oh yeah, that's right. I can't believe we don't put this into good use. Forget like, um, 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 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 am out, I figured there'd be a money angle. Oh yeah, 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, oh, pay fifty to see those right, step right up, towns only billionaire. Um, 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 gonna go back and set up a business doom to fail. All right, So let's talk about mermaid uh 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 like me um in fact uh in Israel on the coast there and they actually have a town called kyr yat 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, if you provide incontrovertible evidence of the mermaid that is reputed to want to live there, Yeah, and appear at sunce as of two thousand nine was the first sighting there. Yeah, And of course what that is is a ploy to try and get tourists and come and spend money in the town and look for the mermaid. The welcome you to Yam. I'm sure lock Ness has

made plenty of tourist money over the years. Apparently they have a standing offer as well, and that's where the mayor of Curiot 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 beach, you know, 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 ever it's it's it's just um suggest to enough that people who believe in such things would be like, right, there, there's a picture of a mermaid, you know, so 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?

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 explained to me quite well enough, or just the ancients non bicameral mind wasn't um fused 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 amis or moral um. And in the case of mermaids, a lot of times they were a lot of folksore even was rooted in misogyny.

You know, you know, there'll be a woman to come along and screw your life up, right, or if you grew 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 duplacidus and a lot of mythologist 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 Natural History talked about a mermaid like creature called the neriad. Yes, I think I'm pronouncing that correctly. Yeah, in e r e I d that ei is a tough transition, is because you want to say, like the Reid, Yeah ner Reed, these are sea nymphs, half human, half fish mermaids and um. He also talked about sea 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 e A sports um just e A, 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 see. 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. 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 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 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, I think, which has my tongue kind of thing, UM, 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 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 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 c foam, 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 years. It haunts Christian Anderson wrote it way better than I just recounted it a lot less ums and likes ye. But it's

it's pretty it's worth reading. Uh. Plenty also talked about merman um back in the day, and there would be merman or seamen who would at night climb up on two ships. 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.

They are u very They're often either an omen that 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 like a siren um, they're often well, I don't we haven't even described one early. You know that a mermaid has the head and body torso of a woman, human woman, usually with huge boobs. Yeah.

If you're talking about a sailor's account, Yeah, she was busty. Did I mention the boobs? Yes, she did, sir seven times? Um 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 was some of legend that we're not ugly, really not ugly, or they were that they were not in parentheses beautiful 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 a it's it's far more frequent. What you were saying that they were beautiful and alluring. Okay, um, but we'll talk more about that after we take a break. Huh, 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 sea to their death. Yeah, 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 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 your mermaid but the yeah you could be Yeah,

sure you'd be. Who am I to disagree? You'd or Alicia Keys or Adele? Oh you know who I like his? Uh Rihanna? Oh yeah, she's great, very pretty. That part in h what's it called this at the end and she played herself. Yeah, yeah, she's pretty great, and 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 was one then 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 watched over them and uh fell in love with a human man, as you will often see a lot of these stories. 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 big tale or something I don't know was she wasn't a mermaid yet, this is where she becomes. That's that's right.

I forgot about that. So um, she accidentally kills him, and then his very shame 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 hers, like, no, I won't be a fish, just the lower half can be a fish 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 not being xenophobic, but it really like he says a lot about like humanity and like how we think of things, like no, she was so good looking that this magic couldn't even overcome that. You know. Point we placed a lot of value on that kind of thing. Uh, all right, should we move on to Germany? Yeah? This one was kind

of interesting to me because Germany's landlocked. I never really thought about that. What 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 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 coming here. Look how beautiful I am. And now I'm holding your head underwater and you can't breathe anymore, and the guys like 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 Mammy 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 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, she would you could be wealthy from her magic mirror and comb. But if you betrayed her, then what this

article says is she reigns down fury and destruction. Right then the age 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 two things emotionally. And but so the mermaid, the mermaid or mermaid or murf folk as their calling this article. Yeah, so murf 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, halford's, half women. There's there's just tons of like the minotaur, 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, you find there are some scholars out there who believe that 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,

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, 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's like, look at these jazz hands. You can't do this. And then back in the day, Uh, some of our most revered explorers and adventure adventurers reported seeing mermaids, like John Smith and Henry Hudson in Columbus. Yeah, what was There's a good quote in here from Columbus

because he wasn't too impressed. He said, and here's the thing I had 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 son, and you gotta read the quote. He's out sailing around, not a that it he Oh what is that in the ocean? I think I'll take a look

through my spine glass. The day before when the admiral was going to the and the admirals 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 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 manates. Yeah, have you seen manates? Yeah, it looks nothing like a human 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 that kind of frame, in the frame of Christopher Columbus. Well, just to have never seen a mermaid, who have never

seen a manatee, to be high on on aarro wax scalps. Okay, I just blanked on the green marijuana, the green the green drink absentthe I don't think absence was around with Columbus. Are you kidding me? No, I'm not you 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 nothing, right, what's everyone talking about? Uh? Yeah, he saw one. This is like Jimmy Carter in the UFOs.

Like you're kind 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 at 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's kind 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 tail, and it's 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 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, 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. Like I remember thinking like this is not going to go well, and kind like this one. 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, there is a dude. I love this guy. His name is Carl Bants and he he di're not a Carl Bands fan. Well, I just I'm not quite

sure to understand unless did you read the article. Well, just to set it up. Okay, So dude named Carl Bants back in he wrote a an article in a legitimate journal, the 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 surmises on like for real, where they came from, what their biology was, where they while they

left us? Yep, 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, um, like 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 did 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 they 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. Perhaps he did use the words horny skinfolds 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 armadilla. 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 an archipelago. That's how you say that, right, it's archipelago. Yeah, either way. There's a town there, a string of islands, coastal thank you, 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 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 horny skinfold. Yeah, they didn't use that term, but this is like a thing in eight

thirty in Scotland. Yeah, pretty interesting that when you read the account of it years later. By the way, horny skinfolds, Yeah, yeah, that is interesting. Uh, maybe there's something there, right, I had to keep the folds of the horny skinfold clean, you know that, 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 conclute their extinct um. He said they were warm water, so they would have cohabitated or shared the their a system 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 things as well. So they died out from

jellyfish things. Yeah, because their their upper skin was just regular skin. It wasn't the horny skin folds, so it provided no protection. Exactly. That's it's worth reading. Go check it out. It's called Mermaids the Biology, Their Biology, Culture and Demise. You can find like the full pdf online. Well, I think we have to address the animal planet snapoo. I don't know if they would call it a snapper.

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, 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 yeah, below the surface. Yeah, and they interviewed a guy that looked like Zack Gallifanakis. If only it would have been a Califannakis, 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 it's right, not be 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 the legitimacy or credentials of the marine geologist Torsten Schmidt. That's a great 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. This is like settled. They didn't even pretend that it was real, So I don't I don't know if that's 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 right, it's so

actually Noah. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had to release and they felt they needed to release a statement after the first one saying like, hey, um, mermaids don't exist, no evidence has ever been found. We're Noah the end. And I bet they love that even show. Yeah, my god, Noah's making a statement. Yeah, it's gonna be 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 hay and like smacking the windshield of his little like um underwater sub man sub um and then swimming off. And so they just kept showing that over and over and over again, and it was Sack gallup and Akis he did look like him, Tonty a lot um. I

thought you were going to say that. It was found out when Torsten Schmidt showed up on a episode of Two Broke Girls the next week, right like a waiter and a progressive insurance and it's like customer and over two exactly. There's one other sighting I wanted to mention this one, the second for my favorite, after the Scottish one. It was in Adam, Netherlands. Is it eat him like

the cheese? Yeah? Okay, Um. Two girls were like rowing 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, 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 they didn't they support 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 out 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 physical and made them come live with them just as a girl for the rest of their life. Like SCHLITZI 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? 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 for teas in fifties, it was a big hit. Uh to go to a like a c park and have mermaid shows and specifically one in is it WEEKI watching Springs? Yeah, WEEKI watching Springs Florida on your Tampa And uh, it was a booming business back then. They said, um, between half million and a million tourists every year and including big famous people like

Elvis Presley and Don Knots. Those are the two they mentioned. Those two would trash and play together. Oh I bet Don gets into the whiskey. It's all over. Um. So yeah, it was a huge deal back then. They're 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 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, 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, Like they didn't just get in the water and they're like, yeah, I'm a natural. Yeah exactly. Um can be really awkward. And you also have to know how to hold your breath like a mo like a mo yeah it's stop 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, you know. And you can make a little dough too, a little bit. It said. You can be hired like it's 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 mermaids class out of rhythm and 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 does the start in the in the WEEKI watching Mermaids or like a resorts or something like that. Yeah, back when they used to love that kind of thing. Uh. And some of these uh professional mermaids apparently use their uh status as a soapbox for ecology 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 an eco activist. That's a decent band name too, professional mermaid culture. This one was rich with band band names horny Skinfolds. Yeah. Uh. If you want to know more about mermaids, you can type that word in the search bart how stuff works dot com. And since I said search bar, it's time

for listener mail. Actually, Lee in lieu of listener mail today, Uh, we are going to ask you for something because we people often say like how can I help the show? Uh, spreading the word is awesome. We always appreciate that. But one thing we haven't asked you to do in a long time is to 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. Just be honest with your conscience, punch your conscience, and uh yeah, go to iTunes leave a review for us, because just having reviews is a good thing. And um, 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. 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 um, the other thing that we also need our more jingles. These jingles that you hear, these bumpers are from fans and listeners, musicians, very kind ones. Yeah, and they really enjoy doing it and we love throwing them out there. So send us your jingle and um, we can't promise we'll use it, but we probably will, yeah, because they're pretty great. Yeah. So that's all I got

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