Stuff You Should Know - How Snowmen (And Snowwomen) Work

Episode Date: December 21, 2021

The details may vary but building snowmen is pretty much universal where there’s snow. Humans have probably been making them for tens of thousands of years. But it wasn’t until the last century or two that they have become the winter icon they are today. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to

believe. You can find 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 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. My friend Charles W. Chuck Bryan is here too and it's just the two of us rolling and having some fun outdoors, making snow angels, and most importantly

making snow people, which means this is Stuff You Should Know, the snow people edition. That's right. And I just want to mention if you feel a presence among us, it's because Emily, Emily's in the room with me. Oh, hi Emily. I know she can't hear you. I told her she had to, she had to sit there and be quiet. We got a sauna finally because of her lime. Oh, nice. Well, not the lime part, but the sauna part. Yeah, yeah, which she's feeling better for now, by the way, which is great news. But if you want to learn about the health benefits of the sauna, go back and listen to our episode on the sauna. That was a good one. But she was going to this membership place and driving like 40 minutes each way, like four times a week. And so we broke down

and got one. So she is quietly sitting back there sweating. Isn't it? Like, have you used it yet? Yeah. It's so great. I love it. It's really nice. I do. And it's also the solitude and just 30 minutes of quiet time because you shouldn't take your phone in there and bake it out. No, but does yours have Bluetooth? It does. So I downloaded like a couple of bird song albums and nature song albums. And I'll just like turn that on and attach it to the Bluetooth and just turn it real low. But it adds a little extra something to the sauna. Do you know what I do? Is I put on so far music for airports from Brian Eno and try to not fall asleep. I could, I'm going to give that one a try. I'll trade you one of my bird song albums for that

Brian Eno album. Yeah, we'll meet in the middle and literally exchange records. There you go. No, we'll just swap phones for a few weeks. That's right. So anyway, I have a hot, sweaty wife behind me. Okay, gotcha. So speaking of hot and sweaty, we're obviously talking about snow people today, snowmen. But you know what you don't want to do is put a snow person in a sauna. No, you don't. But that is a recurring theme of the legends and tales of snow people, Chuck, which we'll get to later. They all melt. They do. They're ephemeral, they're fleeting. And there's this guy who wrote a book. He's a humorist and a cartoonist. His name's Bob Eckstein. And he wrote like the book on snowmen and snow people is called the history of the snowman.

And he did the round. So there was like a lot of snow research or snowman research brings up his stuff. It's kind of impossible to avoid. But one of the reasons why it's impossible to avoid is because he actually did some like really good scholarship on snow people. And one of the things that he asserts, it's probably true is like our early ancestors had an aptitude for art. A snowman or a snow person is a pretty basic shape. And when you put those two together, there's a really good chance that humans have been making snowmen, snow people, snow, whatever, for tens of thousands of years, if not longer, most likely. That's right. And I think you didn't mention the book of ours just then, did you? No, not yet. Yeah, that's from 1380. And that is the first known depiction

of an actual in a manuscript of a snowman. That's a long time ago. And that was in the, oh, boy, do you want to help me out with this? Yes, it's it's Dutch. It's a Connie Krueger. No, no, the Connie Krueger. Bibliotik. It still cracks me up after all these years. People say, I'm happy to help you out with pronunciations. And we say, no, never. No, it's a part of the show. It's Connie Krueger. Yeah. Oh, very nice. So why is that J even in there? I don't know. I don't know, because the Dutch love their J's in rando places. But what we're saying is the Connie, whatever you said, Bibliotik in the Hague Netherlands is where that comes from. And you know, there was, it's a snowman who was, I guess you would have to say it's anti-Semitic, right? It's the traditional

stacked ball snow person. And it has on a yarmulke. So how do you say that? It's not a yarmulke. It's something else. It's like a red cap with like a little ball on top. Yeah. But apparently it was very Jewish cap to wear at the time. Okay. But he's sitting there, back turned to the fire. And then aside, the snowman is text pronouncing the crucifixion of Jesus. So apparently what people think is that this was, you know, Europe during the plague and they needed, they just, they needed to take their frustrations out on something. So it fell to this little Jewish snowman. Yeah. And the book of ours is a really popular Christian devotional too. And it, like, I guess in every copy of this, it was illuminated. So in every copy, that would have been the drawing

next to that part about Jesus's crucifixion. So not the greatest start as far as like the history of snow people or snowmen. But it gets a little better from here on out, if you ask me. Yeah. There was one built Michelangelo's commission in 1494 by Piero the Unfortunate of Florence. I love that name. That's going to be my new hotel check-in. Josh the Unfortunate. No, Piero the Unfortunate. Oh, I like Josh the Unfortunate. No. It's a little too on the nose. Okay. It hits too close to home. Oh, no. You're the fortunate. Yeah. Michelangelo was commissioned to build this giant snowman in the Medici courtyard. I guess he put on his monkey suit and danced and did what he was told.

Yeah. Yeah. But the thing is, there's two things here. One, nobody bothered to draw or document what it looked like. We just know that Michelangelo built the snowman once, which is pretty cool. But it also shows during the Renaissance, the medieval era before it, the artists actually kind of used snow as a medium sometimes during the winter. Michelangelo wasn't the only one. That's right. And that is on evidence actually in another big moment in 1511 when a town in Brussels got together. And this was during what was called the Winter of Death. So everyone was pretty down and despondent or dead and dying. And so they built a, they just had kind of like a snowman festival. And it was called The Miracle of 1511. And

there were real deal artists in town that probably did some pretty great things along with cynical townspeople who did people going poo poo, a snow boy peeing on a passed out drunk, all made of snow by the way. Right. You know, body parts, anatomically correct body parts. Yeah. A lot of people having sex but made of snow. Yeah. So they got involved. But so did the artists of the town. Yeah. Like the whole town did. It was called The Miracle of 1511 because the town poet Jan Smeckin wrote a poem called The Miracle of Pure Ice and Snow. So that's how it got its name. And for a while, historians thought like maybe Jan Smeckin had just made it up, but they've

supported that with journals from some people that lived in the town during the time that said, this was awesome. We totally made a snow couple do it and everybody went bonkers for it. Here in the US, there's kind of a weird story. Well, not weird. It's sad and just odd that it's tied to snowmen, I guess. One of the bloodiest events in our history early on was the massacre of 1690. 60 people ended up dying, including 10 women and 12 children. The deal here is some Frenchmen and Native Americans launched an attack on Fort Schenectady and they were about ready to give up. They had been traveling for about a week through the snow, through the Mohawk Valley. They were obviously going through the snow on a long trek like that. They were exhausted

and ill and it was really strenuous and they were about to surrender. But when they got to the village, they saw that they had a really easy entrance in that the gate was frozen open and as legend has it, the two guards went to go have some drinks and put snowmen as guards in their stead. Yeah. That's the first documented snowmen built in America back in 1690, which is a terrible debut as far as snowmen go in North America. Yes. Also, Chuck, this is a little aside, that really ties into our Salem witchcraft trial episode because that's exactly the kind of thing that put the Salem villagers on edge and they think led in part to the witch panic. Isn't that interesting? That is interesting. So, one other thing about the snowmen and

you're going to love this, but Bob Eckstein compares the snowman to kind of a type of forest gump. He just pops up at all of these really important moments in history. He just happens to be there as well. With bad CG. And one of the... Was it bad? I mean, it was early. So, yeah, it was bad. I thought it was good still. I haven't seen it in a while, but one of the early photographs that was ever taken is certainly not the first or even necessarily one of the first, but one of the earliest ones was taken by a woman named Mary Dilwin who was Welsh and she took a picture of her parents making a snowman out in their yard, which is a pretty precious photograph even though you can't really make out what's going on in it very well.

Yeah, she was actually pretty interesting. She may need a short stuff. She just got into photography starting in 1845 and took all kinds of cool pictures and this was one of them about eight years in. It's kind of nice. Her dad shoveling snow and I just love seeing those old pictures. It's really cool. It's like a sepia fest. Total sepia fest. I also saw that that the album that she put together of photographs recently sold for a hundred grand. Oh, really? Maybe she should get a short stuff. Let's do it. So here's the thing. Up to this point, Chuck, snowmen, snow people have been basically like the provenance of artists. They've been used for political satire, for lowbrow copulation humor.

They've just kind of existed as almost like a simulacrum to real humans doing real human things, right? But around the time when Christmas became like a thing in the United States and in the UK during the Victorian era, that's when the snowman finally took the shape of the snowman as we recognize them today. Like they were part of winter. They were happy, jolly. They didn't have any guile. They just wanted to like just be free. They almost like they had a sense that their lives were very short and limited and they were just trying to spread joy and happiness. The idea of a snowman or snow person we have today is based in that Victorian age. That's right. And maybe we should take a break there.

Okay. And we'll come back and talk about Christmas snow people right after this. Who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This I promise you. Oh God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep. We know that, Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids relationships life in general can get messy.

You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to frosted tips with Lance Bass on the I heart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikala. 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 can crash 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. All right. So snowmen are popping up all over the place. And sometimes in some countries, and we've done plenty of weird Christmas legends and Christmas,

like different weird cultural things around the world. Yeah. And we'll do plenty more. Yes. And there's plenty more to come, everybody, hopefully. Fear one day we're going to run out of Christmas stuff. Never. We'll just start making it up and add to the Christmas legend. Oh, all right. Well, that's a good idea. That's some 2028 stuff right there. One of these legends is the Snegorokta. Snegorokka.

I'm trying this. Snegorochka. Oh, you're going to go with the cheat. The ch-ch. Yeah. Well, she's Russian. Snegorochka, which was a snow maiden in Russian lore, and these stories, you know, and this is where the melting starts. That was, hey, as the story goes, that she was a snow girl. She's built by an elderly couple who didn't have kids of their own. We're not able to. And so she comes to life,

just like a Disney movie, and becomes their daughter, essentially. And they're playing and they're having fun. And one of the things that they decide to do in true Russian folk legend fashion was, hey, let's decide to play a game where we jump over a fire with our little snow daughter. And of course, you know what happens. She ends up melted and gone. And in the original stories, that was that. The couple lost her forever. They knew joy for a brief time, and then they lost her. And maybe we're worse off than they had ever been before. And by the way, we're probably all going to starve this winter. Yes.

The end, right? Luckily, the Russians, like the rest of the world, said, you know what, we've been a little grim for a while. Let's kind of like, pep things up as we start to enter the 20th century. And the Snegorochka kind of was revived, I guess, and was associated with dead morows, who's known as grandpa frost. And that is what Santa Claus calls himself when he goes to Russia. And he goes to Russia and he gives out presents around New Year's, because he's so busy giving out presents in other parts of the world around Christmas time that in Russia, it's traditional that he gives them out around New Year's. And Snegorochka became dead morows' granddaughter, and she helps them give out presents around New Year.

That's right. We also have a great cartoon from Nazi Germany, which we'll get into in a second. But it's called Der Schnee Mann, the snowman. And it was a 10 minute short, still is a 10 minute short, unless they added onto it. I didn't know about it. Have you seen it yet? I've watched a little bit of it, but I couldn't make it through the whole thing. It is so cute. I didn't care for it. Oh, you didn't? Nah.

Oh, well, yeah, I could see not what not watching it. Then if it doesn't click with you, I could see being really turned off by it. But it's about a snowman. And again, this says there's another melting coming, but a snowman who obviously is doing snowman things, playing outside, having a good time, and then eventually goes inside of a house nearby and sees a calendar of July and these pictures of summertime and thinks, Hey, this is pretty great. I want to get on that. Yeah, I would love to see summer. And so let me let me put myself in the ice box and just wait

until the right moment. And then finally, July comes around, snowman gets out, plays around, ultimately melts, but has a good time and experiences summer and dies with a smile on his little face as it melts away. Yeah, he's singing as he melts to nothingness. Like he's definitely fulfilled like his dream. It was pretty great. And so for a long time, people who had seen Der Schneemann in the US and outside of Europe had no idea it was a Nazi film, but it was directly commissioned by Joseph Goebbels because during the war, and I think Der Schneemann was was made in 1943, a Nazi Germany was like cut

off from the West like you couldn't get anything, including Disney cartoons, but they had already developed a taste for Disney cartoons. So he went to Hans Fischer Kussen, I think I nailed his name, which sounds like somebody that Rose Nyland would have dated on Golden Girls back in the day. But Hans Fischer Kussen became known as Germany's Walt Disney, right? That's right. I feel like his name should have an umlaut, did it not? I saw K-O-E and I took the O-E as like a stretched out or deconstructed umlaut. That's why I said it like that. So you're just making up rules for the German language basically?

Yeah. They listen to me now. Gotcha. Yeah, he was like the Walt Disney and apparently he did not put any propaganda in this film even though some people say, you know what, the snowman waiting for July like that is subtext. It's basically the Germans longing to be free from the Nazi party, but his son says no, no, no to that. My dad was apolitical and did not make his films with a political bent. But at the very least it does not and clearly does not have any Nazi propaganda and you could watch it over and over again. There's nothing um that that seems like you know pro-Nazi or anything. It's just like this guy made a cartoon with utterly outside of the context of the Nazi

party ruling Germany and being in World War Two at the time. It's really interesting. It's definitely worth seeing. It's on all over YouTube. So I wonder how many people will take it like they didn't like it like you or how many people will be like that's pretty good. Maybe you should do a poll. Let's do one of those Twitter polls or something. All right. Okay, so then Chuck everybody knows about Der Schneemann and if they didn't they do now, but everybody really knows here in the States at least about Frosty the snowman. Have you heard of Frosty? Of course. I love the, I love that cartoon, that original cartoon which we're going to talk about. I love that. I love Christmas, traditional Christmas music. So I love that song. So it wasn't originally a

Christmas song. Did you know that? Well, I mean here's my deal is I associate winter songs as Christmas songs. I'm not as picky as saying like they didn't say the word Christmas. So it's not a Christmas song. You didn't say the magic word. It could be played around spring break if you wanted to. Yeah, I mean there are plenty of wintertime songs that I associate as Christmas. Yeah, I guess you would never hear the original Frosty or Winter Wonderland or Jingle Bells. Those are usually the three cited as non-Christmas Christmas songs. You would never hear them after Christmas. Like you don't play those on January 1st or 2nd. So I guess they are Christmas songs for sure. But the point is that they don't mention Christmas, which is why people

say that. Frosty does finally mention Christmas after Rankin' Bass got ahold of him and turned the song into the 1969 May for TV movie, though. That's right. And this song was a pretty big hit, by the way. There were these songwriters, Steve Nelson and Jack Rawlins, that realized you could make a lot of dough pretty fast by cranking out holiday themed songs. They wrote Here Comes Peter Cottontail for Easter. They wrote this Frosty song for Gene Autry after they saw that he had a big smash with Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer. And these are no brainers. I bet they knocked these things out in no time at all and got some pretty good cash for it. Yeah, it made it to like number seven on the charts, which is not bad at all. And I think

between Rudolph and Frosty, they kicked off like the idea of Christmas songs in general. So there was this big debate over where the song took place. But apparently it's been settled now that Frosty the Snowman, the song takes place in the town of Armonk, New York, if anybody ever asks you. Yeah, big debate, meaning 18 people in Armonk, New York. Well, no, White Plains supposedly laid claim to it, even tentatively. But Armonk is like, we're not playing that. I think one of the writers lived in Armonk for a while and they're like, it's Armonk for sure. So that became obviously the cartoon that you were speaking of, which was, you know, that's still plays today. One of the Rankin' Bass cartoons. So good. Classic. It's great. There were sequels,

there was Frosty's Winter Wonderland in 76. Not quite as good, but not bad. They were married, Frosty and his wife, Crystal were married by Parsons Brown from the Winter Wonderland song. Quite a cameo. And this then led to the stop motion, Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July. The things were kind of jumping the shark at this point, I think, in 79. And then Frosty returns in 92. And then not to be outdone, they made another one in 2005, Legend of Frosty the Snowman. Yeah, I think Frosty, Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July was still very cute and sweet. But the Frosty returns is definitely, it jumped the shark. It's terrible. It was in the early 90s. It was bad. So that's the U.S.'s claim to Snowman.

That's the one that we all watch around Christmas time, the holidays. But the U.K. has their own. They said, no, no, we're not going to follow your trend. We're going to start our own. And back in 1978, a guy named Raymond Briggs wrote a book, and you can't really say wrote a book because it's a wordless picture book. So I guess he drew or illustrated a book called The Snowman. And it is a very, very sweet book. And it was made into possibly an even sweeter TV adaptation that they show around the holidays every year over there. It is about a boy and a snowman. And of course, the snowman comes to life. And you know what's coming, everybody. Fun. That's right. Fun. They become buddies. They explore all around the house.

They play dress-up. They ride a motorcycle. They take a flight out to sea into the North Pole to meet Santa. But he melts like all other snowperson stories ever. Yeah, it's, I watched it the other day. And man, it'll get you right in the bread basket. It is really sweet. And apparently, originally, when they did the, when they aired the TV movies starting in 1982, it was on Channel 4, which had just begun broadcasting like the month before. And so they had a hit on their hands right out of the gate. But originally, there was like a live-action intro by Raymond Briggs, who's like, you know, I built a snowman when I was a kid and it inspired me to make this. So please enjoy. And the Brits were like, we need to get this

over to America. They're going to go nuts for this. But apparently, somebody at some launch at like Spago or something like that said, no, no, no. No one knows who Raymond Briggs is. You're going to have to come up with somebody else to do the intro. And they said, who could do it, Chuck? Who could possibly take over from Raymond Briggs that the Americans would recognize? That would be none other than David Bowie, who weirdly has a, because that in the Bing Crosby thing has an oddly large Christmas presence. I thought of that too. Well, apparently he did this for his son. Moon director. I can't remember his name right now. What is his name? I want to say Doug or Douglas, but it's not.

Moon unit Bowie. Something like that. Yes. But he directed Moon and he's wonderful. Duncan. Yes. I can't remember. He had a different last name though, right? Right. It's not Bowie. Regardless, he said he did it for his son. So I wonder if he did the thing with Bing Crosby for his son as well. I bet he did. Which by the way, man, did you know John Lennon was famously like a terrible dad? John Lennon was famously a terrible person. Well, I ran across something, I think on Quora where somebody broke down, like just what he was, you know, some of the terrible stuff he was doing as far as his son Julian alone was concerned. I was like, wow, I had no idea. Yeah. He was a complicated guy and had a really rough childhood and was a bit of a

jerk in general. Just one of those things, you know, not a good guy. So back to Bowie. I don't want to lose the magic of this, Chuck, because- Well, Bowie did the intro. Raymond Briggs was replaced with David Bowie and this is like the 1982 Let's Dance or 83 Let's Dance era, right? So he's got his platinum spiky blonde hair and he does the intro basically saying like, I was this boy and look, I even have the scarf that the snowman gave me as proof. Hold on a second. Did you just say he had spiky hair during the Let's Dance era? It was high. It was high hair, spiky-ish. No, no, no. That was Ziggy Stardust era when he had the spiky hair. No, I don't mean that. I don't mean that. Yeah, the big pompadour in Let's Dance. It was a pompadour, wasn't it?

Yeah. I guess it wasn't spiky. Okay, thank you for that. So he had the big Let's Dance pompadour, but it was platinum. We're agreed on that, correct? Yeah, I was just, I was trying to cut off the David Bowie pen and see what email us. Stop that dead in its tracks. Few people know this, but David Bowie religiously listens to stuff you should know every week. Oh, did he? Oh, that's right. Oh, yeah. I was even listening to Black Star the other day. Good album. It's great. Okay. So that's the UK's version of their own snowman. It's just simply called the snowman. And if you haven't seen it, go watch it because it is very touching with or without David Bowie.

That's right. We have a few more touch points for the United States culturally. Calvin and Hobbes, never read Calvin and Hobbes, but apparently Calvin was the boy or was Calvin the tiger? You're going to get us some mail for that one, buddy. Yes, Calvin was the boy. All right. I don't, if you don't, if you don't know something, you don't know it. No, no, it's true, but the people who are into Calvin and Hobbes are like really into Calvin and Hobbes and they're going to be mad at us. Like how can you not read Calvin and Hobbes? Exactly. Those are the kind of emails we're going to get. Well, Calvin, I guess, built great snowmen. Yeah, good ones, real dark ones where like they would be run over by a train or something like that. Just good ones.

There's a, people have posted like collections of all the ones that were printed over the years. They're definitely worth checking out. There's of course Olaf from Frozen, which I'm dying to know if you're the one or if you got this from somewhere else who said he is widely considered the best character in the movie. I got it from somewhere else. Really? Yeah. Who said that? Who's the best? I don't remember one of our sources. Interesting. Who's the best character in the movie? Well, I mean, I think if you ask any young girl who saw Frozen, they would say Anna or Elsa, the two lead characters. Maybe this was from the parents point of view? I don't know. You know, he's the, I take it you haven't seen Frozen or Frozen 2. No, I have not seen either one.

It's, he's like the character that you have in every Disney movie. He is the comic relief. The donkey? Sort of the goon. He's the donkey. Yeah. I got you. Yeah. Oh, that's fine. Yeah. I think people like Josh Gad as well. Yeah. Yeah. But I just, I thought it was funny. I don't know if anyone would consider him the best character in the movie. Well, I would and I've never seen it. So, that was very funny. That we also have to shout out Chuck the movie Jack Frost from I think 1998. Yeah. starring Michael Keaton as Jack Frost Snowman who is a reincarnated, reincarnated him. Yeah. I think people, you could just do yourself a favor and watch. If you have two minutes, go watch the Jack Frost trailer online. It's got every bad dumb joke you

could think of on a snowman from like his arms falling off. There's one scene where they throw snowballs at him and they lined on him as, as breasts and he goes, oh, not for me or something like that and rubs those off. He, he gets shaved down to go through a skinny crevasse as he's sledding and goes, boy, I've really gotten thin here or something like that. It's the worst thing ever. But at the very end of this trailer, it says Jack Frost coming to theaters, blah, blah, blah, featuring music from Hanson. Oh, wow. That's a real 98 selling point. Yeah. Hanson been famously lobbied, launched the lawsuit to have themselves taken off of that movie, but to no avail. It wouldn't surprise me because it was really bad and Roger Ebert hated this

movie and has a part in his book. I hated, hated, hated this movie. Yeah. He said Jack Frost could have been co-directed by Orson Welles and Steven Spielberg and still be unwatchable because of that damn snowman. The snowman gave me the creeps. Never have I disliked a movie character more. It looks really bad. And Roger Ebert has seen a lot of movie characters and he's saying like Jack Frost is the worst of them all for me. Yeah. He might be right. You want to take another break and then come back and wrap up some, some snowman stuff? Let's do it. Okay. We'll be right back, everybody. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough

or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay. I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep. We know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen.

So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. 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 second hand 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. 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, Chuck. So one of the things about snowmen, snow people, snow citizens, are that they are inextricably associated with winter, right? Yes. So some people around the world have hit upon the fact that you can use a snowman as a stand-in

in effigy for winter. And that if you can get rid of a snowman in some spectacular fashion, you may also be able to symbolically banish winter in favor of being replaced by spring. And the people of Zurich, Switzerland have done just that. They have a festival called Sexelauten, which sounds hotter than it actually is. Sexelauten translates to the ringing of the six o'clock bells. That's right. And this is actually a spring festival. And it's a little bit akin to our Groundhog Day celebration in that it signifies the end of winter. We're ready to move on. And so we're going to blow up a snowman to do so. And they load this thing up with literally

146 of dynamite in its head. It's built out of cotton and straw. And it is lit like a wicker man basically on a big pyre. And then in the time that it takes those flames to reach the dynamite and blow up is how much longer it's going to be till summer. So that's sort of the tie into Groundhog Day. Yeah. I think the faster it burns, the warmer the summer is going to be. And they're like, yay, the spring's here now. And Gaylord, Michigan has an Alpenfest. And they adopted this as well, but they have a slight modification where rather than banishing winter, the townspeople write down like their problems or worries or concerns on a piece of paper and all those get stuffed in the

snowman. So when the snowman burns, their problems burn away as well, which I think is right. It's no 140 sticks of dynamite, but they came upon something that's good too. Should we go over some world records? How could you not? How could you talk about snowmen and snow people without talking about world records? Like this would be an incomplete episode, you know? Let me see. Here's one that was pretty good. In 1999 in Bethel, Maine, they made Angus King of the Mountain after Senator Angus King. And this bad boy was 113 feet tall and had real deal trees for arms and car tires for buttons. That was big until 2008 when they did Olympia after Olympia

Snow, another senator. They love their senators in Maine. Yeah, they really do. And this thing was 13 million pounds and 122 feet. And if you look at pictures of this, it's pretty impressive. Like they said 60 people built it. I was surprised it wasn't more than a couple of hundred. Yeah, because it was apparently just about 30 feet shorter than the Statue of Liberty, the actual statue itself without the base, which is this is a really huge snowman or snow woman, I should say in this case. And so they held and may still hold the record that was

when 2008? I think so. They might. Apparently prior to that Dartmouth College, they have a winter carnival that National Geographic once called the Mardi Gras of winter or the north or something like that. They used to hold the record. I think they held it as recently as 1987. So it's possible that Bethel, Maine still holds the record for tallest snowman. That's wonderful. Go Mainers. And then for the most snowmen ever built, you would just have to get in your way back machine

and travel to Sapporo, Japan in 2003, where you would find 12,379 snowmen. But you'd also say, wait a minute, wait a minute, they're cheating because they're only doing two balls rather than the traditional three balled snowman. And people would say, nope, that's how the Japanese build snowmen. Did you know that? That's right. Little two balled snowman. I like the two ball variety. It's very cute. Apparently it's based, it's called the Yuki Daruma. Yuki means snow and Daruma is a little around Japanese doll that's based on the, what's his name, Bodidharma, the guy who is

alleged to have brought, alleged, who's thought to have brought Zen Buddhism from India to China and just kind of kicked off the whole thing. So that's why the Japanese make their doll, or their snowman, two ball snowmen. That's right. But here in the United States, we do three balls. And the bigger the better. And name them after your senator or else you're a commie. So if you want to build a snow person, you want to, the snow's got to be just right. They're not just right. There's a range, but some snow doesn't work as well as other snow. You want good packing snow. So you want temperatures that are closer to melting point.

And the snowflakes being a little, little wetter helps out a lot. Yeah. So you take that packing snow, Chuck, and you start with the snowball and you roll it along the snow. You don't want to go too deep or else you're going to get a lot of crud, like leaves and pine straw in there. And that is just unsightly as far as the snow person is concerned. And there's this guy named Keith Martin that Martha Stewart Living interviewed. He's an ice sculptor. He said, big tip here when you're halfway through, cut to the left or cut to the right, because then your ball is going to keep a rounder shape rather than turning into like a giant snow cigar or something like that. Yeah. That's the hardest part, I think, is if you really

want it super round and you don't want it to look like a, like a cylinder, like some small rugs stacked on each other, like carpet runners, I guess. Yeah, sure. That's what mine always ended up looking like because I didn't follow that tip. You got to alternate directions. So that's a big one. And then also Martha Stewart says that you need to decorate and dress your snowman or snow person. And that quote, a pine cone still attached to its branch makes a distinguished pipe, which is a great tip. You know, Jerry's meant Martha Stewart. I didn't know that. That's right. Jerry, I think last year, I think we did something with her with a company and Jerry actually got to go up there to her house. Oh, I remember that. Yeah. Yeah. And

she like stole a vase or something. No, no, no. Don't out her. Yeah, I forgot about that. That's cool. She said it was just as amazing in real life as you would expect from what I remember. Yeah, she was like, it was very cluttered. He's kind of messy. So one last thing, we got to end on this, okay? There's a kids site called kidaddle, K-I-D-A-D-L. Are you going to do these? Yes, we are going to do these because they are one. Oh, I'm not. So the site kidaddle says, don't just finish your snowman or snowwoman, snow kids, snow baby, even if you want to impress Chuck, by just giving it a distinguished pipe, you got to name your snow creation as well. And don't just name him or her frosty or crystal,

right? And they came up with a big list of suggested names and Chuck is going to join me here in trading off these names. Oh, I'm not going to read any of these because I know if you build a snow person with your child, the only thing you can do is let your child name that snow person. Sure, but if your kid's like, I can't think of anything, here are some suggestions like mistletoe jolly leaves. It's a good one. What else, Chuck? I don't know. My kid would name it fart poop, the snowman. Or what about peppermint cuddle pudding? That might be my favorite. Oh, right. Sugar von carols. Okay. Teddy McColl. And then the last one is twinkle prance a lot. That's a great name for a snow person. That's right. So I think the moral here is if you have

trouble naming your snow person, get online and get some suggestions from a search engine. From kidaddle. That's right. Are they sponsoring us or something? No, but they just came up with some adorable names and I thought they deserved to be shouted out for that. So they are shouted out. And we should also shout out all of the other sources. There were a ton of them, but they include Smithsonian, Atlas Obscura, the Farmers Almanac, the Garden, FairyTales.biz, because there's big money in FairyTales online, the Library of Congress, Songfacts, and Martha Stewart Living and more. So thanks to all of those sources too. And thanks to everybody, Chuck, who joined us for this great holiday themed episode on snow people, huh? That's right. Not our Christmas episode.

No, it will be one of those stories. That's right. And so since Chuck said don't worry, everybody, that means it's time for a listener mail. So we're going to shout out our friends at Coed here at the end of the year. Yeah. If you don't know, Coed, the cooperative for education, they work to stop the cycle of poverty through education in Guatemala. We went down to Guatemala years ago with them. They do great work and we've been working with them ever since. And they are the home stretch of reaching their target milestone of their Thousand Girls initiative. And the last batch of students identified to start the school year in early 2022. They have the last ones and they just need a few dozen more sponsors. Yes. To get past that

finish line of a Thousand Girls sponsored to continue past the sixth grade in Guatemala. That's where they are. That's what they're trying to do. Yep. So it's $80 a month to change a kid's life. As they put it, you can fully sponsor a student or you could do half of that $40 a month to pay for half of the student's education. And if two stuff you should know listeners, each chip in half, that will be one. And like you said, they're just a couple dozen short of their goal. And I think stuff you should know listeners can definitely get a Coed there, don't you? I definitely think so because we have some statistics from how stuff you should know army members have helped out Coed over the years. 446 supporters have collectively raised more than

$731,500. Very nice. Amazing. 29 of you have actually gone down to take that tour in Guatemala, which we highly recommend. And 122 rise students have been or are currently sponsored by members of the stuff you should know army, which is amazing. What great work everyone is doing with Coed and the benevolence of the stuff you should know army always means so much to us. Yep. And I think we can double, triple, quadruple that just hopefully with this call out because I think the more people who know about Coed and learn about Coed, the more people who are going to want to help out. So you can go find out a lot more about Coed by just going to CoedUC.org, CoedUC.org. Check it out and then hopefully donate your sponsor because Chuck and Josh

have given our seal of approval on Coed many, many times. That's right. And if you actually want to pick out a student to sponsor, which you can do, these are real people, everyone, go to cooperativeforeducation.org slash sponsor-students. Yep. And that's it. If you want to get in touch with us in the meantime to let us know how you helped out Coed, again, that's cooperative for education.org slash sponsor-students, you can send us an email to stuffpodcast.ihartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye,

bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find 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.