Stuff You Should Know - How Groundhog Day Works

Episode Date: February 2, 2021

You know Groundhog Day – the holiday on February 2 when you wake up and have to go through the same day over and over again. It turns out the holiday has deep roots in a pagan past, and has survived in a surprisingly similar form. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Munga Shatikler and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too.

Visit Skyline Drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant over there and Jerry's right over there, internet speaking wise, and this is Stuff You Should Know, a special holiday edition that comes out on the holiday, Chuck. Now, is this, can we call this a holiday? Yeah, Groundhog Day is definitely a holiday.

Are you not a pagan? Well, no, I just thought holidays meant like work, you don't work and businesses close. There's got to be somebody that's closed on Groundhog Day. Well, I bet certain people in a certain town, well, actually, they're probably everything's open because they're just doing this to make money. Right. They would be total fools if they're like, yeah, I always close on Groundhog Day. Well, I didn't think that through.

So yeah, we'll get to that town in a little bit. But first, Chuck, let's talk about Groundhogs themselves because if you don't know what Groundhog Day is, don't worry. This isn't one of those ones where we need to define it for you. Just kick back and relax and like, let us guide you down the river of knowledge. Okay? Alright. Groundhogs, a.k.a Woodchucks, a.k.a Whistlepigs, that's another name.

They are, you know what they are, they're beautiful. They weigh 12 to 15 pounds, they live, put a pin in this stat, they live six to eight years. That'll come back later. They eat veggies and fruits. They're called Whistlepigs sometimes because they whistle if they're scared or if they're looking for a mate. It's more of a chirping sound to me.

Yeah. But chirping pigs is not as fun as Whistlepig. That explains that high end bourbon though. I had no idea why it was called Whistlepig, but it's named after Groundhogs. Is that high end? Yeah, it's pretty good. Okay. It's the kind that keep behind the counter, you know?

Well, it's on my shelf. I don't drink a lot of bourbon, but... Oh, well, go turn it up right now while we're recording this and tell us what you think. All right. I'm back and I'm hammered, everyone. They can climb trees. They can swim and they hibernate in late fall, and this is kind of one of the important parts of Woodchucks and Groundhogs and how they figure in the Groundhog Day.

They hibernate in the fall and their body temperatures drop. That heartbeat slows down from 80 to about five beats a minute. They lose a lot of body fat, and then the males in February come out and say, who wants to do it? Right. What's crazy though is when they come out, they don't actually do it. They more like make plans for later. It's really weird.

The reason why they do this, they literally break hibernation, which can kill them if they do it wrong and the timing's wrong or they don't have enough body fat sort of. They do it because Groundhogs are so ornery toward one another. They're really territorial about their food supply and their burrow that they've probably made a lot of enemies and heard a lot of feelings over the past year. They come out in February to basically be like, hey, how about you and I just bury the hatchet and I'm going to go back to sleep for a few more weeks, but when I come out, we'll totally do it.

I'm going to bury something out. Oh my God. They do. There's some sort of agreement and they see each other a few weeks later. The Groundhog goes back to his burrow and then he comes out for good. He finishes hibernating in March and then the Groundhog fornication can begin forthwith post-taste. That's right.

Isn't that nuts? That's how ornery they are. They have to come out and make plans for later. Yeah, they need that chill time in between to really gather themselves and make sure they're up for it. I guess so, yeah. That's super cute. That's a nice little primer on who these little beasts are.

This is about Groundhog Day, the holiday where America shuts down. Government doesn't do business. The banks are closed. You can't buy a piece of gum to save your life. Oh man, if only. Get that gum on February 1st, everybody. That's right. But sometime between that point, between when America became a place in 1887, someone looked

at the Groundhog and this little hibernation thing that they did and they said, you know what, we also have this weird tradition that we're going to explain in a second where we like to try and predict when to plant crops and what the weather's going to do here toward the end of winter and the spring and let's mash that up into a weird, weird day to honor this little thing. Yeah. And that's Groundhog Day. That's where it came from.

It's a couple of weird traditions, like you said, mashed together. And the other weird tradition in addition to the Groundhog coming out in February is this tradition of February 2nd being observed as kind of this indicator of how much winter is going to be left. And it's based on an astronomical event called the Cross Quarter Day, which was observed by the ancient Celts, the pagans I mentioned earlier. And Cross Quarter Days are pretty interesting in that it's a day of the year and there's four of them that fall between a solstice and an equinox.

And you have a solstice is where the sun is either at the most northerly or southerly part of the sky, depending on what hemisphere you're in. So it's either summer or winter solstice. And then the equinox is where the equator of the earth and the equator of the sun are on an equal plane, just for a minute, just for a moment, I should say. And you have your vernal or spring and autumnal fall equinox. So those are four quarter dates. And then in between those are four Cross Quarter Dates that carve up, I guess, the year even

further into the ancient Celts. It seems like to them the Cross Quarter Dates weren't the midway point of anything. They were the beginning point. Whereas to us, the quarter dates, the solstices and the equinox are the beginning of the seasons. The Celts didn't see it that way. And so they really celebrated the Cross Quarter Dates. Yeah. It's kind of like, I guess an American might see them as sort of a seasonal hump day where

you're kind of smack dab in the middle of things. And we don't observe them like they do. But I feel like just instinctively in sort of early to mid-February every year, late January, my psyche sort of starts to think about, all right, we're easing towards spring. I feel like we're about halfway there. Right. And this is in Atlanta even. That's the ancient pagan blood coursing through your veins.

It might be. I think we were pagans. But yeah, but to the pagans, it wasn't like the halfway point, it was the beginning. So on February 2nd, that's Cross Quarter Day, it was actually a day called, well, it was called the number of things. But to the Celts, it was the beginning of spring. And first they call it embolg, which means in the belly, like the world, the earth is pregnant and about to give birth from into spring.

I don't like that. Yeah. It was when the lambing season began, which- I don't think I like that. No, no, you do. If you look up lambing pictures, it's like that's when all the baby lambs are born and hopping around. Oh, I thought it might be when they're harvested.

That's what I thought too. And no, that probably comes a little bit later, but this is when everything's still cute and sweet. Oh, okay. They also called it brigantia after Brigid, the female deity of light. And the whole point was that the sun had really kind of been hiding for most of the winter, ever since the winter solstice. And now it was starting to kind of creep out.

And to those of us who are like, this is the halfway point, it's kind of like, come on sun, keep going. And when the Christians got their hands on the Celts, the pagans, they said, well, how about this? Let's call this like the Festival of Lights, and we'll commemorate that this is like the part of winter where it's starting to get sunnier and sunnier by having you guys bring your candles around the church, and we're going to bless them, and then they'll just keep burning for the rest of the winter.

How about that? That's right. They turned them into magic candles. They became known not only as Festival of Lights, but Candle Moss, and you'll hear that word a few times later on. And it's sort of still grounded in seasons, though. And the whole thing here is like, as far as the ancient Celts go, and then people since then, farmers, namely, is when can we, when is the weather going to turn here?

When is that ground going to thaw? When can we expect good weather and not be fooled into planting only to have it frost again and kill those early buds? That's something that you, now that you've taken up gardening and stuff at your house, you will be frustrated by this now, too, my friend, when that happens. Oh, yeah. The frost, the early frost, or late frost, I should say. The late frost.

I'm scared to death of it. I'm scared to death of it. I can't sleep. Well, Emily always like, when things start blooming too early, she's like, no, stop, stop. Yeah, I know. I know. Like it's going to frost again.

It always does. I had to stop myself. No. I failed to stop myself. I fertilized too late in the season, and I had a big problem with that. Man, my anecdotes have just really gone downhill in the last 12 years. I predicted you're gardening way back in the day. I don't know if you remember that.

In what episode? How gardening works? I don't know. I don't know how to find it, but you kind of tease me, and I said, you're going to get into it one day. Trust me. And you're like, man. I tease you.

That doesn't sound like me. Yeah. Oh, wait. This sounds like a little bit. It's sort of a gardening thing. Huh. Yeah. I'm actually surprised at that, but I'll take your word for it.

I do want to know. So anybody out there, if you know what Chuck's talking about, let us know what episode it is. And a timestamp would be great too. Someone else. So he can erase it. Right. That's right.

So like I said, they were trying to figure out when to plant, and it was not a good omen if it was bright and sunny because that was a sign of snow and a late frost to continue on, and that would not be a good time to plant. And this is all a little confusing, if I'm being honest. Yeah. So like the whole thing was, at Candle Moss, February 2nd, if it was, if that day was nice out, if the sun was shining, if there were no clouds in the sky, that actually meant that there was going to be a much longer period of winter left.

And the reason why that kind of makes sense from a farmer's standpoint is, one, maybe you're saying, well, this portends a growing season where it's just going to be nice out and there's not going to be any rain. You don't want that. But also number two, it's like you said, and like that kind of weather might fool the plants into starting to grow again, and then bam, they get hit with a late frost. So even though it seems counterintuitive, if it's nice out on February 2nd at Candle Moss to the ancient Celts, that meant that there was more winter coming.

If it was the opposite, if it was overcast, maybe even storming, if it was just gross out, it meant that winter was almost over, that it was more than halfway over and you were probably going to see spring pretty soon. So that is the initial way that February 2nd kind of plays into this whole thing. So you know what my problem with this is? And you put this one together and you kind of came up with some other signs found in nature in different cultures where they sort of look to the natural world to kind of tell the future, like the widths of the bands of a woolly caterpillar, the size and number

of webs a spider might spin in the fall, how the squirrels are gathering their nuts, or when the geese depart from the north, how thick corn husks are at harvest, like I love all that stuff because to me, that is like pre-science science. I think all of that stuff is kind of rooted in some, maybe it might be a reach for some, at some sort of scientific basis, and it was just when people observing, which was sort of the first science, was observation, but to me, this one is the least scientific of them all. Because it's just one day.

Yeah, like it is, it's just one day, like if it's February 2nd, if it's candle moss, and this is the condition, then that's your indicator. So yeah, I guess it is the least unscientific pre-science measure of what's to come. Yeah, it really is. It really is. It's on par with drowning a person as a witch because your prediction for the winter didn't come true, the woolly caterpillars' bands didn't pretend the future after all. Because there's probably something, I don't know about the caterpillar, but I bet you

there's some little nugget of science in there as to how their bands grow depending on weather. Yeah, I like the kelp stuff. Oh man, that reminds me. So I read this article in The New Yorker not too long ago, and it's about, we got to do an episode on it. There's this lake, a little lake, way up in the Himalayas in the middle of nowhere in this really dangerous pass, and there's always been a bunch of skeletons jumbled together

at the bottom of this lake, and you can clearly see them. So anthropologists went in and grabbed these skeletons or some of them to take samples, and it turns out some of them seem to be from southern Italy, maybe even from Greece, from the Mediterranean. They have no business whatsoever. And where is it? It's in the Himalayas, like in Nepal. Oh wow.

Right? Just along, I think, a Hindu or a Buddhist pilgrimage path, and it's just really bizarre that they're there. But the author took some time to just kind of go off on the side and talk about how there was this spread of this group from the steppes of Russia many, many thousands of years ago. They basically brought the Indo-European language our way, but also were super patriarchal, super rapey, super murdery, and they really had an impact, you can tell, a lasting impact today in how just humans operate.

But apparently in Western Europe and including the British Isles, the Celts seemed to be much more peaceful, much more egalitarian. Human held much more powerful roles than they did under this other group, and it really kind of drove home, like, wow, history could have gone a totally different direction. And where would we be right now if that other group hadn't come out of the steppes and dominated the rest of Europe, and just basically changed this fertility-worshipping nature cult into this hierarchical, patriarchal, murderous civilization that's basically Western civilization today? I think the people in the movie Midsomer would agree with you.

That was a good movie. I kept thinking about that as well during this. Of course. I watched that again and had a better feeling about it. Yeah. I didn't love it the first time. It's some crazy folk horror, man, like it is really something else. Totally.

I've seen it once. I need to see it again. Well, maybe you won't like it the second time. I hope that's not true, but it's possible. All right. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to take a break. We're going to re-gather ourselves, and we're going to bring it back to February 2nd, right

after this. I'm Mangesh Atikulur, and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention, because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it.

So I rounded up some friends and we dove in, and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop, but just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change, too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Alright, so we set up what was going on back in the day, and Groundhog Day is just something that survived from that ancient practice back then, especially in Germany, they had a tradition of waking up a badger, probably not a good idea, and seeing if it would crawl back into its burrow to see if it was a sign of bad weather ahead, and then that eventually makes it over to the United States. Some people in Pennsylvania that settled Pennsylvania took that idea, adapted it to Groundhogs, I guess, because there were more Groundhogs than Badgers, and started looking at these Groundhogs coming out and whether or not they would see their shadow, or whether or not

the people would see the shadow. It was the Germans who came over who said, well, wait, there's no Badgers, so how are we going to tell about whether there's winter left or not? And they said, well, Groundhogs will do, I guess. And the fact that they were present and then brought the superstition with them that was based in this combination of Badgers coming out of their burrow and going back, and then candle moss, and the fact that there weren't any Badgers, and Groundhogs will have to do, that's where Groundhog Day came from.

Isn't that bizarre? It is. But if you really want to talk about Groundhog Day, and what we know as Groundhog Day, the sort of goofy, fun, money-making scheme that they came up with, is it can be traced back to one dude, February 2nd, 1887, the very first Groundhog Day celebration, was created by Clymer Fries, F-R-E-A-S, the editor of the Punxsutawney Spirit newspaper, and Punxsutawney is about 80 miles from Pittsburgh. They're in Western Pennsylvania.

It's a coal mining town, and it's a very small town. I think its indigenous name from the Native American peoples was Town of the Sandflies. Yeah, the Lenape. Did they have sandflies? Did they have sand? I guess. I don't know why else the Lenape would have called it that, and I was like, sandflies don't sound great.

Keep people out of there. Sandflies are terrible. Not only does their bite hurt, but they spread all sorts of diseases, too. And Punxsutawney basically means sandfly town, so I guess there was a real sandfly problem there at some point. But there's no sand. This is Western Pennsylvania. Did they have sand there?

I think a lot of the United States was marshy before we started developing it. So there's probably a lot of marsh around Western Pennsylvania at the time. I thought they just might have really liked the settlement, and it'd be like naming something like Home of the Bedbug or something. Isn't that why Iceland is called Iceland, and not the old story that they basically wanted to rid people? Either that or else the settlers of Greenland wanted to make Iceland look bad, and Greenland looked good, so they called Iceland Iceland something like that.

I mean, that's one of the first little things you hear in elementary school from that guy. Did you know that Iceland is green, and Greenland is icy? That's right. I remember giving that kid a wedgie. Oh, wait. I was the kid who got the wedgie. Oh, okay. It makes a lot more sense.

So here we are in 1887, and Climer Freeze has stumbled upon a great little money maker to bring thousands of people to his town to spend money. Actually he started a year before that, just ever so briefly, he just, as the publisher of the Punxotani Spirit, he published a line that said, today is Groundhog Day, and up to the time of going to press, the beast is not seen in shadow. And the fact that he doesn't spend any time explaining what he's talking about suggests that it was already pretty well established, at least in the town of Punxotani at the time, probably in western Pennsylvania, well with their large German and large Groundhog population.

And that was it. That was the first mention in a newspaper in America of Groundhog Day. And because Groundhog Day is a specifically American invention based on ancient Celtic and German traditions, this would be the first time in the world anyone ever mentioned it in a paper. So he plants that seed. He wants to get a buzz going. He's like, I'm going to tease this out over a year.

No one's going to know what's coming. No one's going to know what hit him in 1887. And in that year that he was sort of, the idea was brewing, he founded, he got some folks together, Groundhog Hunters, and called it the Punxotani Groundhog Club that would become that in 1899. And they were Groundhog Hunters, Groundhogs were passed, and they would go around, kill groundhogs, apparently they were to eat them. It was a delicacy that they served to out of towners at first, I guess, it's guinea

pigs just to see if they died. And then the locals started eating groundhogs, which I can't imagine tastes very good. No, but that's hilarious that the tradition of Groundhog Day grew out of these people eating groundhogs, like groundhog hunters. Terrible. Terrible, but also hilarious. And the fact that they served them to out of towners first also just really gets me. But this Punxotani Groundhog Club, they held the first Groundhog Day in 1887, as you were

saying before. And I could not find, to say my life, why they chose Gobbler's Knob. But there may be a clue in why Gobbler's Knob is named that. There's two possible reasons given. One is that, I guess it was a hangout for turkeys, which okay, great. Or it was the place that traditionally groundhog hunters or hunters of any woodland animal would kind of come out of the woods to this hilly area and eat what they had just caught or cook and eat what they just caught, possibly having picnics in the area.

So it would make sense that the Groundhog Club would go to Gobbler's Knob where they would normally eat groundhog if this was already associated with groundhogs in that way. But either way, that's where they held you. Picture-esque. Yeah. Picture-esque and bloody. Yeah, but I mean, you know, it makes sense to have a thing there is what I'm saying. Right, right.

So, right. Yeah, it is quite beautiful. But that's where the first Groundhog Day in 1887 was held and it has been basically ever since. I mean, there was a stretch here or there where they didn't do it, but as they were first starting to get their footings. But I think from the turn of the last century onward, it's been at Gobbler's Knob every year.

Yeah, and I think of that first one, the Groundhog saw his shadow. And for parts of the area, and this is kind of how it goes, of course, with something that's unscientific, parts of the area had, it worked out parts of the area, it did not work out as far as winter ending sooner than later. Well, I think that's kind of par for the course for fill as we'll see. And so, although we can thank like climber freeze for giving us Groundhog Day. Like I said, like it's clear this was already an established tradition. I think the earliest mention they've been able to find of somebody referencing Groundhog

Day goes back to 1841, where a guy named James Morris wrote in his diary about, he mentioned Groundhog Day. And I don't think he said whether the Groundhog saw his shadow or not. He just mentions it and kind of describes it. So it had been around for many decades before climber freeze came along with it. But climber freeze was definitely the one to popularize it. Yeah. I mean, he started writing about it and writing about the, you know, this amazing Groundhog

that could foretell the future weather and, you know, it's all in tongue and cheek and good fun. We have to talk about Punxsutawney fill, of course, the famous Groundhog that is still the Groundhog of record in Punxsutawney, full name, Punxsutawney fill, seer of seers, sage of sages, prognosticator of prognosticators and weather prophet extraordinary is Phil's full name. That's right. And it's very cute.

I guess he wasn't named Phil until, I don't know, the first half or the mid middle of the last century because the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club on their website says that he is named after King Philip. And King Philip is not, I don't think who they're talking about. I think they're referencing Prince Philip, who is Queen Elizabeth's husband. And he wouldn't have really become a public figure until, you know, the thirties, maybe the forties or fifties. So before that, the Groundhog, you know, that stretch.

But the Groundhog was known as a brayer Groundhog, brother Groundhog or brother Groundhog. That's what they all called him before. But the thing about Punxsutawney fill, which is what he's named now, he may have had different names. But the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club maintains that he's still the same Groundhog that they, the group came upon back in 1887. But it's this magically living, long living Groundhog who's been alive for, I guess now 133 years since that first Groundhog Day in 1887.

Right. So, you know, we said earlier to put a pin in the fact that Groundhogs live, what was it, like six to eight years or something like that? Something about ten in captivity. Sure. Well, he's in captivity, but 133 is way beyond that. So they cooked up a fun little story there. They said that Phil was able to live so long because he drinks a punch made of dandelions

every summer. And I think they saw the writing on the wall and said, hey, we can make another money making day out of this thing if we have a little summer festival picnic thing where Phil drinks this dandelion juice, as it were. And so now they have a big celebration for Phil's annual drinking of the daisy juice. Right. Or dandelion juice. And we mentioned that, you know, back years back the Groundhog was treated as a pest and

eaten, hunted and eaten. And that they may have had like a picnic around Gobbler's knob to eat the Groundhogs. This annual tradition now where they all celebrate Phil gaining seven more years to his life seems to have been based on the annual Groundhog hunt and roast. So they went from eating Groundhogs to pretending that this one has been alive for 133 years thanks to this magical potion that he drinks. I wonder if they make great efforts to get a Groundhog that really looks like the original Phil.

I think Groundhogs look a lot alike to humans. Yeah. You know? Sure. They look like Uggah for the Georgia Bulldogs. Like they have different Uggahs. Right. And white Bulldogs, you know, they all, all the Uggahs look a little bit different and

we all, like that's part of the personality of, of each Uggah. But I think the Groundhogs you're saying they just, like you didn't have a big white stripe down the middle of his head or anything. I see. I see what you mean. Yeah. Yeah. No, they've got a, because it's, you know, the thing about the Uggahs is, you know, it's

Uggah six or that's Uggah a million or something like that. Like they're meant to be, they're different Uggahs, but they're all related in some way at least through school spirit. This is supposed to be all of the successive Groundhogs. Whenever they come upon, you know, him in his burrow and he's not moving any longer, like the, yeah, they would, I guess kind of have to find a Groundhog that looks kind of like him so that they can be like, well, this is the, this is the same one he's been around for 133 years.

All I'm saying is it's probably not very hard to pull the wool over human beings' eyes when they're like, no, it's the same Groundhog, you know? I think, I think the Uggahs are all the same family line if I'm not mistaken. Is that right? I don't know if all of them in history, but I think there's this very prominent Savannah family that, uh, where all the Uggahs come from if I'm not mistaken. Didn't, um, I should know this. The main guy, the guy who was on trial in midnight of the Garden of Good and Evil, wasn't

he the Uggah breeder for a while? I don't know, but it had something to do with that. I feel like he, he had some, yeah, he had something to do with the Uggahs and if not like the actual, the owner of the, the Uggah's mom or something. Yeah. Pretty good movie. I never read the book. I did both.

And they were both pretty good. It was one of those ones where like the movie's just about as good as the book. Back when you could watch a Kevin Spacey movie. That's right. Yeah. Creeped out. Yep. And John Cusack does a good job too.

That's right. And you could watch a John Cusack movie and not be creeped out. So let's take, let's take a break here and we'll talk about, you know, we mentioned that when Phil dies in the dead of night, they have to get him out of there quietly. We'll talk about how they might do that right after this. I'm Mangesh Atikular and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking.

You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down.

Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, so we're back and we have a dead groundhog on our hands. Yeah.

Well, if Punxatani Phil passes away, which has clearly happened, probably every eight to 10 years, they can do so quietly because Phil leads a very pampered life, an indoor life, you might say. Oh, yeah. Cushy. Because he has handlers, he has a full sort of staff, volunteers that look after Phil now have funny titles like Shingle Shaker or Chief Health Man. And they make sure Phil leads a pretty cush life there in captivity.

I've read that he eats a lot of ice cream and actually had to have a tooth removed once because he had a cavity from eating so much sugar. Yeah, he's basically kept very happy and strung out on junk food, I guess. But that inner circle that you mentioned, that's 15 local volunteers who basically, they're not the Punxatani Groundhog Club, they're like the upper echelon, the leaders of the Punxatani Groundhog Club, it sounds like. And only a couple of them are allowed to handle Phil. And the president is the only one who actually can communicate with Phil, as we'll see.

Yeah, they, and we'll talk about the movie in a bit, but if you've seen the movie, you've seen those tuxedos and top hats, or if you, you know, you got the day off at work anyway, if you tune in to watch the coverage, you're going to see those tuxedos and top hats because they say, hey, Phil's a VIP, when VIPs came to town back in the day, this is what we'd wear when we met him at the train, and he is our most famous resident, so we're going to pay him that respect. Well, the other thing that I saw, the other explanation I saw, that explanation actually came from one of the former inner circle members.

But in other explanations, that some of those early, like 19th century depictions of Breyer Groundhog was in a top hat. Like he was supposed to be this very intelligent forecaster of weather, and so they would depict him in like a top hat, and I think that's probably likelier where it came from, and they just forgot somewhere along the way. Oh, well, Phil does a lot of sleeping. He does not hibernate though, because he, like I said, he's in his, his climate-controlled burrow, he doesn't have these cues from nature to let him know when anything is at all.

As far as he knows, it's always perfect weather, except every February when he gets yanked out of there, taken out in the cold in the middle of the night, to his other, thankfully, climate-controlled burrow that is built into a stump. If you've never seen it, you can just Google an image of this, kind of nice scene, it's got a stage there and a stump, and it's, you know, it looks like something you'd see at a, like a show at Six Flags or something. That's exactly right. The country bears jamboree or something.

Totally. Yeah, that's great. I couldn't quite put my finger on what it looked like, but that is exactly what I was thinking of and couldn't find now. So it's a bit of a rude awakening, like you said, it's the middle of the night for Phil, like they give him some time to kind of relax and like get settled into his stump, his showtime stump, I guess is what you call it. Sure.

But I can't imagine that he's like getting a lot of relaxation in because just outside of that stump is anywhere from, I've seen 8,000 up to 20,000 people all hanging out on Gobler's knob. And this is in a town of about 5,000 people. So the population might be quadrupled depending on whether Groundhog Day, say falls on a weekend. And they are so loud. It's a rowdy, boisterous crowd. They shoot off fireworks.

They have live music all throughout the night. This is all leading up to dawn, basically from about 3 a.m. to about 6.30 a.m. They just are partying right outside of Phil's stump. And then I wonder if there's a drink, like a signature drink. I saw that there's, yeah, I saw there's a Groundhog punch that has to do with like vodka and a bunch of other stuff. But I also have a distinct impression that this might be, if not dry, at least way more family friendly than everybody wasted on punch kind of thing.

No, that's true. I mean, you don't want it to be like, well, like the Kentucky Derby. Dude, man, things get dark there real quick. You've been to one of those, right? Yeah, and it got dark there real quick. Man, that was like... Like the second the race is over? Yeah, even though before, during, after is just utter chaos.

You mean I were like, we didn't leave, we fled. It was crazy, dude. Yeah, but now I get the impression that this is a lot more clean cut than the Kentucky Derby. I feel, when I saw fireworks, I just felt bad for Phil that can't be, he must have been scared. For sure. And I'm sure all the dogs in the area are like, I hate Groundhog Day, you know, and neighbors

that aren't really big on Groundhog Day are probably not very happy. I mean, but... Well, if you go to town, you air BNB your place is what you do. I would guess so. Because again, 5,000 people live in town, 20,000 additional people show up, and hopefully if you own a business, you've listened to Chuck and your businesses open that day. So you mentioned the president is the only one who can speak to Phil or understand Phil. When Phil emerges from that burrow, he does speak, Groundhog Ease is what they call it,

and the president is the only person, even in that inner circle, that can understand and translate for the people. And Phil is kind of a rapper, isn't that right? I think that's being rather generous, but yes, he speaks in rhyme, kind of a sing-song rhyme, yeah. Well, I mean, it looks like a rap to me. On this Groundhog Day, I'm happy to say... I love fruity pebbles in a major way.

Was that a commercial? Yes. It was ironically, well, I guess the opposite of ironically, expectedly, fruity pebbles commercial. So yeah, so he speaks in sing-song, the president translates for everyone, they all have a good time, and keep in mind, this is at dawn, so I imagine the whole affair is over pretty quickly. And they got to be so tired too, but everybody gets powered up by some Vodka-based Groundhog punch.

Sure. They're like, why are we drunk at 8.15? That's right. I think that's kind of the case, at least for some people, but that's the whole shebang. They kind of stretched it out for a week, I've seen, that the whole festivities kind of take place over the week, but seems like February 2nd is kind of the big day, February 1st slash 2nd. So is he accurate though?

That's the question. The answer to that question is no, not at all. Because it's unscientific. Well, yeah, it's definitely unscientific, but somehow Phil is even worse than Chance at predicting the weather. Now the Groundhog Club says he's correct 100% of the time. That's the whole tongue-in-cheek thing. And then some people like to try to prove them right and say, well, yes, in some parts

of the country, he's right, in other parts he's not. And for the Ponxitani area, or Western Pennsylvania, he hits between 30% and 40% on any given 10-year stretch, 40% between 2010 and 2019, 30% between 2001 and 2010. So that's not very good. I mean, like if you just toss a coin, you could expect to come up heads or tails better than that. And that's basically what they're doing. And we should say in Phil's defense, he's not predicting anything.

This is all the very, very insane inner circle who are making these predictions. So they're technically the ones who are worse than Chance at predicting whether there's going to be six more weeks of winter or in early spring. Yeah, Phil didn't want to be there in the first place. That's right. I saw footage of one in 1997 where he bit the handler's finger and only got some of the glove, but it looked like it would have been pretty vicious had he gotten any of his actual finger.

It was hilarious. And I went wild, they loved it. He literally bit the hand that feeds him. Yeah, I guess so. He's like, give me some more ice cream. So should we talk about the movie? We can't not talk about the movie. I didn't think we were talking about the movie.

Groundhog Day, a movie which I have covered on Movie Crush. This was the favorite movie of Griffin McElroy of the famous McElroy Brothers podcasting family. I saw that. I thought it was Justin McElroy. No, Justin, he was on too, though. He did With Nail and I, another great movie. And Griffin picked Groundhog Day and he says, Griffin's quote was, not only do I think it's

my favorite movie, he said, I think it's the best movie, like literally the best movie ever made. It seemed like he had some Groundhog punch himself. He loves it. And I love it. It's a little, you know, it doesn't age super well, kind of, it's a little problematic. Is it? Oh, like, is it kind of chauvinist?

Bill Murray's a little, he's a little, he's just a little aggressive. He doesn't take no for an answer over and over and over again. And that's the point of the movie. But watching it through today's lens is sort of like, you back off, dude, she's not interested. So yeah, I get you. So the, for those of you who haven't seen it, first of all, go see it. But then secondly, it's about this reporter who gets stuck in this time loop where he's living February 2nd, Groundhog Day, in Punxsutawney, over and over and over again.

And his name is Phil. And it had such a huge impact, yeah. And they never explain why this happens. It just happens to him, which I think is something that makes the movie that much more enjoyable. But the, this movie had such an impact on the culture that today people associate Groundhog Day, not just with, you know, predicting whether there's going to be an early spring or more winter, they predict it was weird things like losing track of time or time doing odd things or having deja vu.

And that's strictly from the movie. Like that was never a part of Groundhog Day until this 1993 movie came along. Yeah, I mean, people will say that if something happened again to you or whatever you say, oh man, it's like Groundhog Day. Yeah. And it's, you know, it's pretty rare for a movie to enter the sort of public consciousness to that degree. And also, and displace something that's already taking that spot even, you know what I'm saying,

add to it at least. Yeah, for sure. When I was doing research for the movie crush episode, I did see that thing that you included here that the original screenwriter and eventual co-writer to Harold Ramis, Danny Rubin, the original script, it was 10,000 years that he was living because of the Buddhist principle that it takes 10,000 years for a human soul to be perfect. And they changed that up in the movie. And there is a lot of robust debate about how many days occur in the movie.

And I look this up in a bunch of different places. If you just look at the movie, the number of times it repeats is 38. Okay. I saw 23. But if there are people who have taken time to calculate how long it really is because, you know, he learns foreign languages, he becomes a master piano player, and people have taken great lengths to actually calculate how long it would take to do all this. And I mean, there are some exact days that people have calculated, but everyone has sort

of landed in the neighborhood of about 10 years, including Harold Ramis saying, yeah, we feel like it's about 10 years that he's relived in order to learn all this stuff. I'd like 10,000 more. I'm going with Danny Rubin's estimate, you know? Well, if it was 10,000 years, he would just be like, it'd be like in the matrix at the end or something. Well, at some point, he says, I'm a god. Yeah, that's true.

You know? Maybe it still is in there. But yeah, one of the things about that movie too, Chuck, is it's part of the festivities now. They show it the night before at like the local theater. And it's been a boon for the town as well. Not just Groundhog Day, but the movie itself has drawn people to the town to kind of see, you know, Punxatani.

And they're usually very disappointed to find out that they didn't actually shoot the town in Punxatani. They shot it in Woodstock, Illinois. So while they named like the businesses and took like cop cars from Punxatani and like moved a lot of Punxatani to Woodstock, you can't visually see like, oh, this is where this, you know, this is where Ned Ryerson crosses the street to say hi, you know, downtown. Like that's in Woodstock, Illinois. So I think they don't tell people that until after they've made their way to Punxatani

and spent at least $50, then they tell them, okay, this Woodstock, Illinois that you're really after. Yeah. I mean, what do you think? Do you want to go to Punxatani and kind of be at the real place or do you want to go to Illinois to kind of see these real movie locations? I would like to go to neither of those places. I'm good with just seeing clips, old clips on YouTube.

That's fine with me. I think it's never struck me as like a great holiday, I think not because of Groundhog Day or the fact that it's in Western Pennsylvania or anything like that, but because February 2nd is just such a sucky time of the year. I hate that time of the year that nothing really good can happen around then. So, you know, the beginning of February always stinks, which is ironic because my wedding anniversary is in mid-February. But to me is when things pick up.

I pulled that out at the end, didn't I? You did. I forgot. You got married in warm climates. Yeah. We escaped to Hawaii because February is kind of gross in the United States. Yeah. My anniversary sometime in late April, I can never remember the day.

20-something. Well, hey, just start saying after this, we'll just say all the different numbers. We'll find out the right one and then Jerry can edit it in. So, you got anything else? I got nothing else. Well, if you want to know more about Groundhog Day, just go online. I think this year it's 100% streaming because of COVID, they're not having people out, but they are streaming it.

So, you can go check out the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club's website for all the links and everything. And since I direct everyone to the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club's website, as per usual, it's time for Listener Mail. I'm going to call this Hot Off the Presses. This came in 30 seconds ago and I didn't have one prepared and this is a good one. Hey, guys, hope you're doing well. Josh, Chuck, and Jerry over there.

My name is Mike Martin. He, him, his. Thank you for that, Mike. I'm a classical musician, a bassist in the New World Symphony in Miami Beach, Florida. I've been an avid listener for six years. My sister, Jessica, got me hooked on your show after we were traveling to see our family. We got stuck behind a oil tanker. The truck pulled to a stop on a quiet stretch of highway, rural, in the middle of the night

when the driver put on the hazards, jumped out of the vehicle, confused. We attempted to go around when the hood of the truck burst into flames. After backing away to a safe distance, my sister laughed, sighed, pulled out her phone and said, looks like we're not going anywhere. Have you heard of stuff you should know? Nice. Since then, I've listened to your entire catalog five times. Wow, Mike.

That's amazing. That's amazing. So this is a long email, but I'm going to get to the crux of it here. It was about the Klan episode and his experience as a black man. He said, I really appreciate your recent episode on the KKK, especially what Chuck mentioned about feeling a need to do, a comprehensive dive on the Klan because of the terror and harm they visited on black Americans like myself. I'm 26 years old and even when I was a young child in the 90s, there were cross burnings

near my home in semi rural Pennsylvania. We moved a few towns over not long afterwards, but all my life is a black child living in the Northeast. I live with explicitly racist iconography on walks with friends in the woods. We'd find swastikas and racist screeds spray painted on abandoned railroad buildings. It was not uncommon to see Confederate flags on people's homes and cars. Even in school, I'd find nooses tied on the pool cords of blinds. I even remember the first time I was called the N word in a school bathroom in the first

grade and the principal's response to my parents in his office. We can't help what people teach their kids at home. Man, the way I was treated improved as I got older, but it prompted me to start thinking about how the more insidious and subtle elements of racism impact my life and those of others from a very young age. And then Mike went on to give a lot of great recommendations for episodes he thinks we should do. And he says, stay safe and be well, and that is from Mike Martin, the bass player.

Nice, Mike. Thanks a lot for writing in. I'm sorry all of that could happen to you. And yeah, thanks for the ideas. Give me an idea that he gave us for an episode. He said jazz because he said it's a lot of different things that we've talked about kind of coming together in a musical movement. So that's one that we've talked about is just, jeez, like Ken Burns did however many hours

on jazz. How do we do 45 minutes on jazz? Whatever. We did a two-parter on evil, can evil. We can do anything. Be about to go to do. You just do that the whole time, all right? Maybe we shouldn't do one on jazz.

Now I think about, sorry, Mike, well, if you want to get in touch with us like Mike did and share the horrors of your childhood, we want to hear that in a weird way. And also to share it with the rest of you so we can all feel like a Stuff You Should Know family even more than we did before. And you can wrap it up, spank it on the bottom gently, and send it off to stuffpodcastatihartradio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app. All podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

I'm Munga Shatikular, and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too.

Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.