Stuff You Should Know - How Werewolves Work

Episode Date: November 14, 2013

If you've ever been bitten by a wolf, you're probably familiar with the anxiety of waiting for the next full moon to see if you become a werewolf. Learn all about the lore, mental illness and rules behind lycanthropy, one of civilization's oldest metaphors. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry's over there, so it's Stuff You Should Know. OK. I'm not going to sing that song. What, Werewolves of London? Oh, that's not what I was doing.

Oh, OK. Was it of London? I think so. No, it's an American werewolf in London. Werewolves of London. I'm Warren Zevon. I never got into him. Me, neither.

Or that song. I thought when I was young, I was like, oh, that's for old people. And now that I'm an old person, I'm like, no, not for me. Yeah, good for you. You're like, give me the band. Oh, yeah. Any day. So you want to talk werewolves?

You got a good intro? You got something spicy? No. I was more just going to talk about some of my favorite werewolf movies. Well, we just talked about my favorite American werewolf in London. It's pretty tough to top that one.

It's great. And I watched the transformation scene again today. And it still holds up pretty well. Yeah. In the day of CG, I think this looks pretty good. It was direct. That's John Landis' joint, right? Yeah.

And the legendary Rick Baker did all the effects, you know. And that's the same team, by the way, who worked on Michael Jackson's thriller video. Yeah. His transformation was pretty good, too. It was good. And I think Rick Baker won the inaugural makeup award, Oscar award, that year.

Oh, yeah. He's the very first one. He was great. And some say they might have even created that award because of that movie. It's like the Grammy for the Disco. Oh, right. Remember the one year, the one and only year they had it?

Yeah, yeah. They only had a one year? Yeah. I don't remember that. That's pretty funny. There's also, have you ever seen that Mystery Science Theater 3000 werewolf? No.

Starring Joe Estevez, who's Martin Sheen's brother. Oh, really? It's good stuff. Wow. That one's definitely worth seeing. It's really, there's people. I don't think any of them. It's set in Arizona.

But a lot of people in the movie have weird Eastern European accents for no good reason. Wow. It's almost like if Tommy Wiseau had directed a werewolf movie. It's a lot like that. Holy cow. And then there's another MSD3K that was good. It was, I was a teenage werewolf, Michael Landon.

So these aren't your favorite werewolf movies, so your favorite Mystery Science theaters? Right. Yeah, because if I saw them without the Mystery Science Theater applied, it would stink. Yeah, who can forget Teen Wolf? That was a good one, too. Yeah, and that's a TV show, isn't it?

Or was for a while. There's a cartoon, and then now I think it's like a drama on MTV. Oh, it's not like the silly hijinks of a Michael J. Fox type. No, I think it's supposed to be kind of like True Blood, but it's like teenagers, yeah. Have you seen that Michael J. Fox show? No, is it any good?

No. No? No, I watched some of it just out of curiosity. I'm not that much into the network sitcoms, but I love Michael J. Fox, and I thought, let me check it out. It just, it's not that good. No, it wasn't that good. That's cool.

Yeah. I mean, hey, you got to take a shot at doing some TV. You can't all be family ties. Right, exactly. Or Teen Wolf is right, Teen Wolf, the cartoon. That's right. But yeah, that was a good movie, too. Are there any other werewolf movies?

What about The Wolfman? Sure, or like The Howling, wouldn't that a werewolf movie? Oh, yeah, The Howling or Wolfen. Silver Bullet. Yeah. That was a good one with poor Corey, one of the chorus. Corey Haim and Gary Busey, I think. Oh, my god.

That was a doomed cast. Wow. Jeez. Anyway, so those are some of our favorite werewolf movies, everybody. Thanks for listening. But anyway, The Wolfman. Not the Jack Nicholson version, the classic old version.

Right. Yeah. He did Wolf. Yeah, that was called Wolf. Yeah, that wasn't very good. Wasn't Benicio del Toro in one called The Wolfman? I think so, but I have not seen that one. So I wonder if it's based on this.

This is a 1947 movie. 41, yeah. I think it's a take on the classic Wolfman. Oh, OK. Is it Lon Cheney? Yes, I think it is Lon Cheney. That's right. He was The Wolfman, Lon Cheney Jr.

OK, so in this movie, you said it was 1941, I think, right? Yeah. Lon Cheney, basically, they set the rules for werewolves. It was to werewolves what Bram Stoker's Dracula was, to vampires, or Nandila Living Dead was to zombies. Like, it set the rules. Yeah, for sure. And one of the big rules that it set

was that if you were a werewolf, you were up the creek for the rest of your life until somebody put a silver bullet in you. Yeah, you were doomed to, well, I think in the sequel is when the full moon part came in. Before it was seasonal, like the fall, you would turn into a wolf, which isn't so bad. Because, I mean, you turn into a werewolf 12 times a year

the other way. This is just like once a year. It's like, who can't handle that? That's true. The only cure is death. And of course, this is just the Wolfman. It was based on folklore, which we'll get into now, that had all kinds of different rules for many, many years

before people had been writing about werewolves. But this is the movie werewolf, yeah. Right, but I mean, when you think of werewolves, you think of being killed by a silver bullet, transforming in a full moon, being warded off by a wolf's bane, which I didn't know about until I read this article. But it's kind of like to werewolves

what garlic is, the vampires. And the fact that it's incurable, that once you're a werewolf bitten by a werewolf, you become a werewolf, and you're going to be a werewolf until you die, all of those are since the 1940s. Yeah, and not every movie since then follows that path. But that's definitely the most iconic werewolf template.

Right, that's a good word. But you're right, werewolves have been present in folklore for many, many millennia. It turns out the first mention of werewolves comes from the Epic of Gilgamesh, which that to me is a clue to what werewolves are really supposed to be. But in Gilgamesh, the goddess Ishtar, who doomed Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman,

originally is trying to get with Gilgamesh. And Gilgamesh is like, hey, lady, I've heard about your past with other guys. You turned one of them into a wolf. And just to make matters worse, in an ironic twist, the guy was a shepherd. So he's attacking his own flock. He's at odds with his own dogs.

That was a mean thing to do. It's cruel. Well, you and I have no future. That's right. And she said, fine, out, wolf. So that was Gilgamesh, and that's from the 18th century BCE. Yeah, I thought you were going to say 1840 something.

Another story, Ovid's The Metamorphosis, a traveler visits King Lycaon of Acadia. And he says, you know what? I think you may be immortal, so I'm going to have a little test. I'm going to feed you human meat, which I guess is a good test back then to see if someone's immortal. And the guest turned out to be Jupiter, the god Jupiter.

And she said, wait, this is human meat. I'm pissed off now. I'm going to transform you into a wolf. Lycanos? Exactly. And that's where the word comes from. Lycos, the Greek word meaning wolf. And then lycanthropy is?

Well, it's either turning into a wolf or in our modern times, thinking you're a wolf. Lycanthropy is actually a diagnosis of mental illness. It's a real delusion, a self-identity disorder. Wow, where you think you're a wolf? Yeah. Or you think you're a werewolf, or a beast. That's pretty crazy.

Yeah. So this was not unique to, shape-shifting wasn't unique to a time period or a place. Depending on where you were from, if you were from a place that had wolves, it might be wolves. But no, Tracy's making the point. This is Tracy Wilson Jam, by the way. She makes the point that it's so ingrained into folklore

that if a culture is from an area that had wolves, there's werewolf folklore. That's right. It's almost a given. But in Africa, you might turn into a hyena. Or in Japan, you might turn into a fox. Which is nice. Like shape-shifting.

You know a fox? Yeah. Shape-shifting inspires fear for three main reasons. I thought it was kind of funny. This is one of the funniest bullet lists in the whole site. Reason number one, shape-shifting inspires fear, is you become a powerful carnivore. So that's scary.

Right. That would instill fear. Number two, you are actually transforming into something that you fear already. Right. So that's even scarier. Yeah. And you have no way of escaping yourself.

So everybody's scared at this point, including the werewolf. Yeah. And number three, you are going to have to perpetually deal with this over and over and over. Until somebody puts a silver bullet in you. So those are the three reasons that shape-shifting inspires fear. So that was so weird.

Like everybody, that's reason enough to go on to the site and look at this article. Yeah. Just check out this bullet list. Agreed. It's not even bulleted. It's numbered. Yeah.

That's some quality work. So a lot of times in this folklore and literature, lycanthropy is more of a punishment doled out. Oftentimes for being some sort of sexual deviant and almost always a dude. Yeah. Yeah, that's a big point, like in vampirism, it goes both ways.

It can be men, women. They're usually clean, and they're very sophisticated, typically vampires are. Yeah. At least from Bram Stoker onward. Sure. But with werewolves, it's very much supposed to be like the epitome of masculinity gone feral.

Yeah. Brutish. Yeah. Violent, hairy, muscular, strong. Sound like they want to add. Right, exactly. Seeking same. Right.

For some crazy stuff. Cosplay. There you go. They dress up like vampires. Exactly. So when it's a punishment, it varies. Sometimes it's a permanent thing. You're transformed into a wolf forever.

Sometimes it's a number of years, usually seven or nine. That comes into play over and over again. Yeah, and Chase is making a good point here. There are distinctions among our modern understanding of werewolves and the folklore, which was like, it wasn't always a punishment. Sometimes it was a positive thing, as we'll see. And it wasn't always permanent.

Sometimes it just lasted for a very brief time. But there are folklore. There is folklore. What's plural of folklore? Folklore. Folklore's stumbled upon a huge gaping hole in English. But in German folklore in particular, there is stories of people turning into werewolves

on purpose under their own volition voluntarily in order to basically become wolf-like to go hunt better because they're balding. Who knows? There's all sorts of reasons to become a wolf. And it's temporary, too. So it's voluntary and temporary. Yeah, and a lot of times, if that's the case,

there's a belt made from wolf skin or something that we'll put on that will transform them, something like that. In northern Europe, like Germany and Belgium and the Netherlands, this is pretty common. And wolf stories are big in northern Europe. It's huge. Well, remember our Vikings episode?

Yeah, the berserkers. Yeah, so they would put on bear skins, eat mushrooms, and then just go crazy in battle. They were berserk. They went berserk. There's an Icelandic tradition, also, of a type of warrior who would put on wolf skins and think he was transformed into a wolf

and would fight viciously like that, too. Again, probably on mushrooms. Right. Wolf versus bear versus mushrooms. Yeah. That sounds crazy. Mushrooms win. No, mushrooms like the ref.

Oh, OK. Like fight. Yeah, that's the equalizer. I guess so. In some of these tales, clothing has a lot to do with it. Like some of them, you have to remove your clothes in order to become a werewolf. Yeah, are you seeing the dichotomy here?

Like in some, you have to put on a wolf pelt to become a werewolf. And some, you have to take your human clothes off. And do you remember I was saying, I feel like the epic of Gilgamesh is a clue to what werewolves represent. So you know the epic of Gilgamesh we've talked before is like it was written at a time when

civilization is emerging. And the whole thing of Gilgamesh is basically like, hey, everybody get on board with society, and we'll live in cities and be civilized. And if not, then you're a wild man. I think that's the same thing with the werewolf lore. Like if you acted outside of society's prescribed norms, you would go so far that you would become an actual beast.

And you would be cursed in this way. And it was basically like a cautionary tale. Or it was also a way to kind of take a dig at a miscreant. Somebody who wasn't living up to society like, you're nothing but a werewolf, you're a beast. Yeah, yeah. Get it together, man. It became kind of a catchphrase in certain societies.

Sure. Not a catchphrase. But like you said, something you would call a bad person. But I think that's what the metaphor of the werewolf is supposed to be. Although Tracy goes to great lengths to point out just how sexually based it is. Yeah, like it also ties into puberty and menstruation.

I never really considered that. So we were talking about the clothing having a lot to do with it. Sometimes, of course, you would turn into the werewolf and you would wake up naked and have to put your clothes back on. Sometimes you. Well, you have to take your clothes off

to become the werewolf. Yeah, yeah. That's another indication that you're leaving society. You're taking off your clothes and becoming wild. Do you see, am I making my point? Yeah. OK. Because I feel like I'm all over the place today.

No, no. You're making your point. OK. In one tale, a man removed his clothes, peed in a circle around them, and calls the clothes to turn into stone, meaning no one could take the clothes anywhere. And when he got back and turned back into a person, he would have his clothes there.

But it didn't say, and I didn't find the tale, how he turned the stone clothes back into cloth. Yeah, maybe it happened after the transformation or something, or maybe he had to poop on them. No, to transform back into a human, he had to put his clothes back on. So he had to figure out as a wolf how to. Put on stone clothes?

Yeah. Yeah, I think a lot of these stories are so old, they don't get into the specifics like that. That's just stupid. Like, they didn't think a podcaster 400 years later was going to nitpick. Stupid peasants. Yeah.

In one tale, called Biz Cleverette, an adulterous wife steals the werewolf's clothes, which keeps him in wolf mode forever. But he gets her back. He bites her nose off. Yeah. Like a good wolf. And in doing so, I don't think in Breton,

they necessarily said that lycanthropy was transmitted, which is another good point about whether the metaphor of it could be disease, like transmitted disease. Oh, right. But she would have, under certain traditions, become a werewolf herself for being bitten by a werewolf. That's right. But you mentioned that in some lore and stories and movies,

it is totally voluntary, as werewolves are a race, like a dwarf or a troll. Right. Like a twilight. They're like wolf people. And they can transform at will from hunky, long-necked, long-torsoed dudes into long-necked, long-torsoed. Yeah, that guy.

Who? The guy in twilight. The werewolf guy? Yeah. Can't think of his name. But the dude's neck and torso are like eight feet long. Really? He's kind of funny looking.

But they can transform willy-nilly into a wolf, bad CG-looking wolf, right back out in like an incident. There's no like transformation. Just like, I'm a wolf. Oh, gotcha. Yeah, you've never seen that stuff, have you? You shouldn't. Well, the transformation is very important.

Well, not in twilight. Well, it's the same. Or true blood. It's the same thing in true blood. They just like boom, they're werewolves. Right, OK. Well, that actually follows the tradition. It's fairly recent, like basically Rick Baker era,

where the transformation became really important and like just kind of like a, hey, everybody, check this out. Yeah, I think let's get into that after a message break. Oh, OK. 2023 is already well underway, everybody. So don't wait any longer to level up your small business. And the way you can do that is by joining up with stamps.com. That's right, because with stamps.com,

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OK, so we're talking about transformation. It's like one of the biggest deals in movies now, unless it's Twilight, like I said, and you're just doing it. That's really strange. I would have thought that they'd, I couldn't see what you're saying. Yeah, and Twilight, like it's so fast that they can, he'll be like running through the woods and jump up in the air

and come down as a wolf to keep running. It really takes all the, and they look so crappy, the CG's so bad. Really? Yeah, it's just terrible, and they're huge. It's just, it's really very poor werewolfing. So I could, but I can see skipping past that, if you are describing a race of people.

Yeah. More than one person. I get it. And like they need to come in and out a lot. With a movie like An American Werewolf in London, it just follows the story of one hapless lycanthrope. Yeah, where the transformation is the biggest part of the story. Very important, and they show every bit of it.

But if you go back and read the literature, the werewolf literature, you're not gonna find too many descriptions of the transformation. No. It's mostly like a recent film thing. Yeah, and in most of those movies, like if you are fighting a werewolf

and you cut off his arm, it'll instantly be like a human arm. Yeah, which is pretty cool. It's very cool. Yeah, and same thing goes for when you kill a werewolf. In some traditions, if you kill the werewolf, while it's a wolf, he's gonna stay a wolf forever. I don't like that. No, he's gotta turn back into the human.

And I think it was in, it was part of the lore in American Werewolf in London. Like doesn't he get hurt? And like that's how somebody knows he's the werewolf, because he's sustained an injury as a wolf and now he's wearing that injury as a person again. Wait, how do you become a wolf? Is that what you're talking about?

No, how they knew he was a werewolf. Like didn't somebody, doesn't like the girl he's involved with know that he's a werewolf because he comes back injured? Like doesn't he get his eyes stabbed out or something? No, I think he, I mean, he and Griffin Dunn go off into the Moors after being in a pub and get attacked by a werewolf.

Right. Griffin Dunn dies, he goes to the hospital. Right. And I think the nurse becomes his girlfriend. Okay, so later on, somebody stabs the werewolf in the eye and when he becomes a man again, his eye is missing. I can't remember the day of doubt. I think either that or I'm just completely making this up.

But I feel like I can see it. Well, if it's not that movie, it's another similar one. Right, but the point is, if you sustain an injury as a werewolf in most traditions, especially modern werewolf lore, you will have that same injury as a person when you transform back. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I see what you mean.

I couldn't remember too until I rewatched it today how he, it's like, how did he get out of his clothes? Cause I don't remember busting out of the clothes. He looks up at the window and sees the full moon and just gets up and starts screaming and rips his shirt off and takes his pants off. Does he? Yeah.

And he's just naked and that's where he starts the transformation once he's like naked in his apartment. That was a really good movie. Yeah, I enjoyed it. Funny and apparently the studio executives had a big problem with it, you know, because they were like, it was genre bending. They were like, wait, this is funny,

but it's horror, like we don't get it. Oh, good. It's not funny enough and it's not scary enough and it ended up being a big hit. I didn't see the other one though, the American werewolf in Paris. I didn't either. Isn't it like Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy?

That's before Sunrise. Oh yeah. But Julie Delpy was in it, I think. Okay, that's why I'm thinking that. Yeah, but no, Ethan Hawke. So Chuck, there's been, you know, remember the witchcraft trials that were so famous over here in Salem mass and the other colonies?

Yeah. So there were actually, you know, there were witchcraft trials and witch hunts in Europe before then and at the same time, but there was also werewolf hunts. Yeah, I never knew this. Makes total sense though. So apparently between 1520 and 1630,

there were 30,000 recorded cases of werewolves. Reported werewolves, werewolves, people executed for being werewolves and some of these things were not just neighbor, you know, turning in neighbor so neighbor A can get neighbor B's land or wife or children or whatever. Right. There were some cases of people who were executed

because they were self-confessed werewolves. Specifically, there's this guy named Gilles Garnier. Yeah, what's his story? He was a kind of a hermit. He and his wife lived out in the woods. Like you had to kind of walk through a lot of woods to get to their place in a village in France. I can't remember where exactly,

but Gilles fancied himself a werewolf. He thought he really was a werewolf and he was attacking children, like tearing them to pieces with his hands and teeth and then eating them. And like he would eat them on the spot and would apparently get pretty far. Just as a human, he wouldn't like dress up.

No, but he thought he was transforming. And so finally he was caught in the act once. Right, well, he was caught in the act once by some people who confirmed that he wasn't a werewolf. He was in the form of a man, but he was still acting like a werewolf. Right. So they figured out that he wasn't really a werewolf,

but the fact was he still ate a bunch of children that he killed and torn to pieces. So he was burned alive at the stake. For just being a murderous goon. Exactly. Another guy who was named Jean Grenier a few years later, he was actually holed up in a monastery for the same crime, but they found him insane.

Yeah, these were just cannibals. Right, but they thought they were werewolves. Sure, sure. And there's a bit of a attendant lore to the whole thing. A lot of these cases are thought to be the result of hallucinogens, specifically Dutura, which has been shown to make people think that they are animals even today.

Ergot, same thing. Yeah, that's one. And they think that that's a fungus that can make you hallucinate. And they think that had something to do with the Salem Witch trials too. Basically people were just messed up on drugs. Yeah.

What else? Hypertrichosis is another strange disorder that people might have thought made you, when you point out that guy. Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty sad. It's everyone has seen that. They call it like the wolf man syndrome

where hair grows all over your face. That dude does not look sad. He looks suave. He does look pretty suave, doesn't he? Yeah, his family actually is, he's one of 19 people on the planet to be affected by a condition called congenital generalized hypertrichosis.

And they're all in the same family, right? Right. In Mexico. Yeah. His family has this condition. He does look suave though. Mm-hmm. He wears it well.

Right. Rabies is another reason. If you're bitten by something, you might go a little nutty in the advanced stages, hallucinating things. Plus agitated. Yeah, and if you think about it, if you're just a bystander peasant in 16th century France,

and you see somebody get bit by a wolf, and then later on that person starts acting kind of wolf-like because they're rabid and you don't know what rabies is. Boom. There's your werewolf outbreak. Yeah. Wolf hybrids, wolves and dogs, co-mingling and having the sex and making,

you can get those, you know, as pets. Wolfdog hybrids. But it's the same kind of deal. They attack people in villages, and they think we're under attack by werewolves. Yeah, there's this really cool Atlas Obscura article about the beast of Guevoldan.

So, G-E-V-A-U-D-A-N. And it's about like these wolf attacks, but they're like supernatural wolves. And they won't go away, and all these villagers kept being killed by wolves. And the last one was actually killed by a girl, a little shepherdess. Wow.

Who stabbed this charging beast in the chest and finally ended this like century of wolf attacks. But it's worth reading for sure. So let's take another little second for a message break. Snuff is sugar. 2023 is already well underway, everybody. So don't wait any longer to level up your small business. And the way you can do that

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slash online privacy protection. All right, so moving on. As recently as the 1930s in Africa and what's now Ghana, there was a belief widespread that people could turn into hyenas. So this isn't like hundreds of years ago. And as recently as the 80s,

this practice in the Iberian Peninsula, I don't really get this. There was a ritual or a practice to keep people from turning into werewolves where children would act as godparents for their younger siblings. The seventh and ninth child, again, seven and nine, coming into play.

So the werewolves would basically recruit excess children. So like if a family had too many children, then the werewolves would come after those kids. So the older siblings would be like, okay, well, you're my kid, I'm your godparent now. So they would do that up until the 1980s. Yeah, so on paper, it shaves off the number of kids that a family technically has,

at least as far as werewolves are concerned. But yeah, they were doing this until the 80s. That's weird. And I don't think we mentioned not all werewolves are bad in literature and books and films. A lot of them have compassion from the audience because they're kind of saddled with this thing now that they have to deal with.

It's a struggle between your higher and lower self, your primitive and your citified self. But we have to mention in the Harry Potter series, Remus Lupin is benevolent. And of course, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Oz, he learned to control his werewolfing. So he could be a good guy and win willow back. Yeah, did you watch that, Buffy?

No, not really. It was pretty good. Yeah. I'm not going to say it was the greatest in the room, like some people do, but some people are crazy for that. Oh yeah, it was huge. Yeah. But yeah, to each his own.

Agreed. Let's see, you got anything else? I got nothing else. Werewolves. Yeah. That was a good one. Next full moon. Watch out.

Yeah. Seriously. I haven't even thought that and I can't remember the last time I looked at a full moon and thought werewolves. Yeah. It's been a long time. Well, they haven't had any really good movie. Like the Benicio del Toro movie wasn't very good.

I didn't think so. Jack Nicholson movie wasn't good. Yeah. It's been a while since they've made a really good werewolf movie. Early 1980s, I would say. Yeah, 1981. Well, if you want to learn more about werewolves, again, seeing this really interesting bullet list, you can type werewolf into the

search bar at HouseofWorks.com and it will bring up this article. And since I said search bar, it means it's time for listener mail. I am going to call this guide dog feedback from Kate. Okay. Hey, dudes. I've listened to you for ages, but never really had anything worth writing about until the guide dogs episode way back in the day around 2000. My fifth grade teacher, Mrs. McKernan, managed to convince our public

school system to train a guide dog in our classroom. Her name was Karik. That is K-E-R-I-C. And she was this adorable little black lab. Mrs. McKernan would bring her to class every day and took her home every night. And in the meantime, Karik was not only trained on basic commands by the teacher, but by all of the students as well. Yeah, pretty neat.

It's a lot of input for that dog. I know. Well, Karik didn't make it. Karik went with our classroom everywhere, including a few field trips, and she got her own school photo for the yearbook that year. That's pretty cute. I would have put her on the cover. Needless to say, we all bawled when she was sent off to finish her training.

Sadly, she was one of the dogs that did not pass final training. Maybe it had something to do with the 30 kids giving her instructions. No, this is how you sit down. No, you sit down like this. No, I should mention, I didn't read this part, but she did say that they got pamphlets on everyone being consistent. Right. Okay.

I'm just kidding. You know how I put in with listener mail. Sure. It's how I share. But in Karik's defense, she was disqualified under a really hard test for any dog. She had to sit next to a wheelchair while a bucket full of tennis balls were dropped off a balcony. And solve a Rubik's Cube at the same time.

That's right. And she could not grab any of them. So that's like, that's ridiculous. Sheesh. After that, Mrs. McKernan took her back though and officially adopted her and still brought her into new classes occasionally. Recently, Mrs. McKernan, I have really hard time saying that word. Move schools and has had Karik qualified under habit.

Human animal bond in Tennessee is a therapy dog for her new schools students. So she said it was a great experience and it's worth telling your listeners it never hurts to ask your workplace and see if they can do something like we did. And I guess if you're going to train a guide dog, you want to really get them ready for that test with all the tennis balls. Yes. Man, that's a rough one. That is from Kate.

I bet the dog even ones that do it are just like, hey, they're bleeding out of their ears. Yeah. Concentrating so hard. Kate, thank you very much for writing in. We appreciate it. Back in the day of 2000. Jeez. If you want to share a story that makes Chuck and I feel super old, you can tweet to us

at syskpodcast. You can send us something on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast at discovery.com. And as always, check us out at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com.