Stuff You Should Know - Josh and Chuck's Christmas Extravaganza 2012

Episode Date: December 21, 2012

Kick back and raise a glass of eggnog to Josh and Chuck as they carry on a new holiday tradition of exploring the ins and outs of all things Christmas - and maybe even warm your heart along the way. Happy holidays, everybody! Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Flooring contractors agree. When looking for the best to care for hardwood floors, use Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner, the residue-free, fast-drying solution especially designed for hardwood floors, delivering the safe and effective clean you trust. Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner is available at most retailers where floor cleaning products are sold and on Amazon. Also available for your other hard surface floors like stone, tile, laminate, vinyl, and LVT. For cleaning tips and exclusive offers, visit Bona.com slash Bona Clean. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff, stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging?

They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, before we get on with the Christmas shenanigans. What? How about we do a little TV show reminder for the folks out there? We have a TV show called Stuff You Should Know. It debuts Saturday, January 19th at 10 p.m. after the hour long

season three premiere of Idiot Abroad with Carl Pilkington and Ricky Gervais. And then comes our show. Then comes our show. We're airing two episodes back to back on premiere night. Then following that on Saturday nights at 10 p.m. you will get to see one episode 30 minutes long. And if you don't have cable in any of that junk, you can get them on iTunes the day after release and watch them there at Buck 99. That's right. But there's a Christmas present. There is.

Yeah, the first episode you'll be able to get for free on iTunes the day after it's premiere. Yeah, and you know what? This is just me talking. If you're going to throw down a Buck 99 per episode for 10 episodes or gets nine, you could probably upgrade your cable package for that and get Science Channel. I'll bet. Of course, you know, it's a per month fee, but you know what I'm saying. But not only will you get our great television show Stuff You Should Know where we play ourselves as podcasters in this fictionalized office world that we live in, you'll get all the other great

shows that Science Channel has to offer, including Idiot Abroad. And oddities. Through the wormhole. Through the wormhole of Morgan Freeman. Yeah. And I watched one on the Hindenburg last night. It was really good. It was one of their one-offs. Hey, you're saying Hindenburg and what was the other one?

The nuclear bomb that is off the coast of Savannah. There was a show on that. That's right. Anyway, we're very happy to be on Science and help support us January 19th at 10 p.m. Yes, and if people want to hang out with us in person, they can come to Brooklyn and do it on January 8th, Tuesday at the Bell House, right? That's right. We are throwing a premiere party slash variety show for the TV show. Yeah.

Featuring performances by people like John Hodgman. Yeah. People like Lucy Wainwright. Yeah. Other special guests. Yeah, Lucy's in the show. Yeah. Other special guests.

There are going to be some other special guests not performing. Just kind of milling about in the crowd. Hanging out. And this all goes down at the Bell House in Gowanus, Brooklyn, January 8th. You actually have to buy tickets for this one. Yeah. We're trying to cover cost on this one. Everything else has always been free, so don't get mad at it.

Yeah. And plus, I should tell you, this is going to be a big show. Yeah. And it's only 10 bucks, though. So buy your tickets at thebellhouseny.com. And doors are at 730. Showtime is at 8. And that's it. The Bell House.

That is in Gowanus, Brooklyn, specifically 149 7th Street. Nice. Okay. So we're done. It's time, Chuck, finally for Christmas. Yay. It's Christmas. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.

I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And we're just a couple of little elves ready to do this thing. How are you feeling? Do you have some glad tidings around you? We're not naked elves, which that is foretelling from later on in the podcast. You're a bespectacled elf. Yeah, I got glasses at 41.

Looks good. Yeah. The aging hipster thing is now fully foreign. Yes, it is. But you use a velvet jacket. Yeah, they're just for reading and computer stuff, though. And to look cool with, because you look cool. Yeah, but I can't walk around at them.

Why? Well, because they're for reading. It's like, you know, I'd mess up my eyes. Oh, I thought you meant like you physically can't like you can't chew gum and walk at the same time. No, but I am having to get used to it, you know. Well, you need to put those on a little chain to dangle around. Yeah, you can like look at a bill. Like, yeah, like an old man.

It's kosher. Well, it must be Christmas because it's 90 degrees in the studio. Right. It's a little warm. It's about 75 degrees outside. Yeah, but the building doesn't know that. No. The building thinks it's wintertime.

Right. So I'm sweating. Yeah, I am too, so I don't feel bad. Good. So it's a little gamey here in our Christmas studio. But it is Christmas time. That's right. And like I said, we do have glad tidings.

Of great joy. So I guess I don't have anything more to say before we get to this to you. Let's just kick it off. I'm very excited. I am too. It is F for all. This gets me in the mood. Christmas time.

Chuck. Josh. As this is our Christmas extravaganza, there's lots of celebratory stuff, but there's also a lot of really good solid information. Yeah. Specifically, like if you, it being Christmas Day and all, haven't selected a Christmas tree yet, we have some tips on how to select one and how to care for it really.

All kinds of Christmas tree stuff. So with Christmas trees, the vast majority of Christmas trees sold in the US are real trees. And this is actually like a huge, huge industry, isn't it? Yeah, we've got 30 to 35 million Christmas trees produced a year, and that's worldwide. But about 20 million or so of those are produced here in the US, which is a lot. There's also in the United States, the National Christmas Tree Association, that is a thing, says that the industry supports 21,000 growers and employs more than 100,000 people. Those are job creators.

This is a crop. Yeah. And that's the way, and we'll get into whether or not it's green to have an artificial tree or a real tree, but here's a hint, it's a crop. And that's maybe how you should think about it. Right, it is. And about a million acres of land are set aside to grow Christmas trees in the US, correct? That is correct.

And my stats say Oregon leads the United States by a long shot in producing trees, about 6.8 million in 2007. Yeah. North Carolina about three, and then Michigan at 1.5, Pennsylvania 1.2, and it just goes down from there. But apparently Michigan and Pennsylvania, it's like they're dropping 30% down. Well, every state in the Union, except for Alaska, has a Christmas tree farm on it somewhere. Why not Alaska?

Too cold, maybe? I don't know. I would think that Southern Alaska would be able to grow them. Too cold. They're just too hardy to pay for a Christmas tree. They're like, we'll just go get our own. Yeah, maybe that's it. We're Alaskans.

So while there's what, how many did you say were going to be sold in the US every year? I think about 20 million. 20 million? In the US. Okay, there's still 400 million growing in the US. Yeah. Because it takes about six to seven years for a tree to mature to a five to six foot harvestable height.

How long? Six to seven years, I understand. Yeah. And during that time, you're going to have a lot of shearing going on, which is very important. Yeah, is that what gives it the shape or is it already sort of shaped like that? I think it's already kind of shaped like that, but then to convert it from that wild Christmas tree that never quite does the trick to the Hallmark card Christmas tree, the people who grow these, the fine Christmas tree farmers, shear them on a pretty regular basis. And they cut off the lateral branches that go out, then they'll cut off the top too,

depending on how pointy they want it, how wide they want it. Do you get a real one still? No, we have an artificial one. Artificial? Yeah, it's very nice. Just drenched in ornaments. It's not one that's pre-ordinated? It's pre-lit.

Okay. But no, we collect our own very special ornament. Well, sure, because that's what normal people in society do. Right. But I didn't know that they made them pre-decorated as well for the madmen to do that. Yeah, that's what it said in this article. You can get one fully decorated that you just assemble.

Yeah, you just put your Christmas tree up and then start eating your hungry man dinner and then cry on Christmas. And then bury another body in the backyard. Yeah, that's what that's for. So where do Christmas trees come from, right? I mean, this seems like a pretty recent phenomenon, the idea of going to a Christmas tree lot and buying it. But it's actually way older.

Yeah, apparently, like many things Christmas, it is German in tradition. And maybe as early as AD 700, they started cutting down trees and putting them in the house. Yeah, I've always heard the story that it was Martin Luther who was the first to actually decorate them, though. Oh, really? With candles, which is a fire hazard. But that's a long tradition with Christmas trees, too. He was the first and last to decorate with candles.

And of course, like all things German, it spread to England, which spread to America. Yeah. And that's why we eat sauerkraut today. Right. And again, you would think that up until maybe the fifties or something, when the cities were really starting to boom, well, I guess it's when the suburbs started to boom, that people went out in their backyards and cut down trees, right?

But apparently, there have been commercial Christmas tree lots in the United States since the mid-19th century. Yeah, that really surprised me. Yeah. I figured for sure that people in the 1800s would just take the axe out and cut one down in their own backyard. Sure. That's a logical thing to think.

But no, apparently, we've always relied on guys from that movie, A Christmas Story, the Celis trees. I saw a lot the other day in New York that was just on a sidewalk. And obviously, space is a premium there. I'm sure there are lots, like empty parking lots, where they do this, but it's not like the suburbs. It was literally just on a sidewalk some dude had set up his little farm. Yeah.

Why not? It's an American tradition. So you've got your Christmas tree. You have it all selected. You're like, I like the plump short one. So I know that they sheared the top off several times in addition to the lateral branch. Yeah. And I'm going to bring it home.

But I don't know what to do with this thing. We're going to tell you, because it's very much like cut flowers. It's a plant that's dying that you can keep on life support for a little while by feeding it water. That's right. And you should these days, you can get the little trunk, a little inch or so cut off of the bottom of the trunk by your Christmas tree dude, or do that probably. But if not, you should do that yourself, because fresh cut is what you want down there.

And I guess the reason is it drinks up the water more readily. Well, yeah, it's the same thing as bringing home flowers. When you get flowers, you want to cut them again before you put them in the water. Cut stems. Yeah. But there's actually a rule of thumb for how much water you want to give a Christmas tree. Basically, a live tree or fresh cut tree, as you call them. Yes.

Can drink up to a gallon of water a day. Yeah, I am remiss every year. It's here's how it goes in my house. Oh crap, I haven't checked the water in like three days. And I go and stick my finger in there and it's dry as a bone. Sure. And the needles all fall off of my hair. Yeah.

And then I pour water in it and the tree just looks at me like, thanks jerk. Well, apparently there's a way to handle this, right? So you get a Christmas tree stand that holds. I think you want probably up to a gallon with the tree in it. Sure. Because a lot of people will say, oh, it holds a gallon. Well, if you put a four inch diameter Christmas tree trunk into that, it's going to hold less than a gallon.

Or it's going to spill out on your floor. And you need to give your tree a quart or a liter of water, depending on where you live in the world, for every inch of diameter of the trunk. Okay. So if you have a four inch diameter Christmas tree trunk, that's just pretty substantial. Sure. You want to make sure that your tree holder can hold a gallon of water.

And you want to add a gallon of water every day. Yeah. I used to heard some sort of like syrup or sweetener or something helps, but I'm not sure about that. I've never heard that one. Really? Yeah. I've heard that, but I don't know if it's true.

Well, we'll find out. Yeah. I mean, I should have looked it up, I guess. It just hit me. Yeah. I've not heard that one. Really? That's good stuff.

But like I said. Maybe it's just like a tree for the tree. Yeah, maybe so. Here's some sat back. So if you don't feel like keeping up with a live Christmas tree, you can always, of course, go the artificial route. And those are actually also older than I realized. Boo.

I boo artificial trees. Man, I'm telling you, our artificial tree is awesome. What does it smell like? It smells like heaven. It smells like love. Or does it smell like PVC made in Asia? No, I mean, I know what you mean, but we have like a cinnamon and cinnamon broom behind it.

It takes care of everything. Does your tree smell like cinnamon? I don't think it does. No, it smells like a tree, a lovely fir tree. I'm just, I'm anti artificial, but I get it. Some people don't like the fuss of going out and getting one or cleaning up needles or whatever your reason is. So Chuck, apparently people have wanted to get around that fuss

for many, many years. Apparently, again, in the 19th century, artificial trees were around. Yeah, it seems like it sort of mirrored the Christmas tree lot. Around the same time, I guess. And they were originally made to look like real trees, many which still are. But in the 1950s, they got a little crazy. And we actually have one of these trees from the 1950s.

You don't put it up? Yeah, I put it up and it's small. So we have one in the sunroom. So you selectively poo poo artificial trees? I selectively poo poo using an artificial tree in lieu of a real tree. Gotcha. So we have our little 50s retro with the color wheel, the fire hazard tree in one room.

What color is it? It's silver. Nice. Yeah. Do you have like the bright colored ornaments on it and everything? We just do like, I think we just do like one kind of single red ball. Nice. Not a single ball, but one single style.

I got you. All over the tree. Very tasteful. And it's not like our regular tree, we have all of our childhood stuff and the stuff we bought together, stuff like that. And our Exxon commemorative and our Chevron commemorative ornaments, McDonald's ornaments. No, but you know how like every corporation on earth has a Christmas ornaments.

Could you imagine if that's all you had? Yeah, that'd be kind of sad. That'd be awful. So you were saying that a lot of people turn to fake trees because of the mess and all that stuff. There's also another really good reason that people increasingly are selecting artificial trees. And there's some really top-notch artificial, expensive artificial trees out there

that look very much like real trees. And it's becoming a growing alternative for people who are eco-conscious. And there's developed this big debate over whether artificial trees or regular trees are better for the environment. Yeah. And it seems very logical if you grow a tree to cut it down to use a gallon of water a day to keep it alive for a few weeks before you throw it out. Well, right?

Throw it out, mulch it. Maybe, not everybody does. Oh, sure. I'm just saying it seems like an environmental nightmare. Yeah, could be. But so the artificial tree would seem smarter. But apparently there's a study done in 2009 that basically said once and for all like, no, actually, depending on how long you keep your artificial tree, you're better off getting

a real tree every year. Yeah, they did the study in Montreal and they said, and they said this is the most definitive study yet, said that you have to reuse that artificial tree for more than 20 years to be greener. This includes greenhouse emissions, resources, human health impacts. Like I said, a lot of fake trees contain PVC. They're generally manufactured in Asia and shipped over here. You definitely cannot mulch those. No.

So once you get sick of it, it's probably going to have been a, what do you call it, garbage lot? What do you call those? Landfill. Landfill or field. Landfield, is that? No. So, of course, the chairman and chief executive of Balsam Hill, makers of artificial tree says,

no, no, ours are more green. Yeah. Well, he was saying, the point he makes is that if you take all of the emissions created by all of the Americans driving to a Christmas tree lot, getting their Christmas tree and driving home, in addition to whatever transportation costs, because most of those Christmas tree lots around here, all those trees are coming from North Carolina and they're being trucked in a semi-down and all that. Sure.

If you put all that together, you compare that to a ship carrying 50,000 artificial Christmas trees from China, the artificial trees more environmentally conscious. Yeah. But the study supported it, too. Which one? Well, the study eventually. Oh, sure. Over the course of 20 years.

I mean, you'd have to take care of your tree for 20 years, but you know. Well, and look at the bright side, your tree will then be retro. In 20 years. 20 years later. You can use nothing but red ornaments on that. Exactly. So that's all I got, except for, you know, mulch your trees afterward, because they can end up, you know, I mean, you don't have to do it yourself, most cities have programs

where you can put it out and they'll mulch it and it'll end up on a playground somewhere. A nice fine-smelling playground of Douglas Fur. Or if you have an artificial tree, you can reuse it. Yeah. Just box it up, put it in the attic, reuse it again next year. So Chuck, you've heard of NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, right? I'm a big fan. They're basically like the missile defense group for the U.S. and Canada.

Yeah, I did not know it was a joint effort by both countries. I did not know it was U.S. and Canada, it makes sense. I have a feeling, I'm probably wrong, that the U.S., like, set this all up and then told Canada, hey, we need to put some of our stuff up there. That's a distinct possibility. It'll keep you safe if you just give us that plot of land. Right. And they said, sure.

Yeah. Hey. Well, NORAD, famous for tracking missiles, is also famous for a Christmas tradition of tracking Santa Claus. Pretty great tradition. Yeah, back in 1955, this serendipitous accident happened when a Sears department store accidentally listed CONAD, which is the Continental Air Defense Command, which was the predecessor to NORAD. Sears listed CONAD's operations hotline as Santa Claus's number.

So all of a sudden, CONAD started getting all these calls from little kids wanting to talk to Santa Claus, right? That's right. And instead of being an old curmudgeon, the director at the time, Colonel Harry Shoup, said, you know what? We've located Santa's sleigh on the radar here, and we're tracking him as we speak, no doubt to the delight of the dozens of calls received from the kids that year. And it started a little tradition in 1958, and all of a sudden, it was a thing.

Yeah. Well, 1958 was when NORAD started, right? Oh, before that, it was CONAD, you're right. And then the FAA got in on it, right? And as of 2006, the FAA clears Santa for flight every year. Which is pretty cute. I wonder if they, did they just say, yeah, we're tracking him, or do they put a little, like, you know, realism into it?

Like, if the sleigh weighed this much and he's traveling this fast. Oh, there's like a whole website you can go to if you'd like to delight kids that you love. Is it real science, though? No, it's not. FAA.gov slash Santa brings up all sorts of different stuff. This whole epic saga about Santa's preparations for his Christmas deliveries. And then if you want to track Santa at home, you can go to noradsanta.org. All right, Josh, let's talk about one of my favorite Christmas time drinks.

Eggnog. That's one of my favorite, too. And I don't drink it much to have about one solid cup at my Christmas party. That's all you have a year? Yeah, I mean, how much of that can you drink? You're totally out of it. Plus, at what, you drink it a lot? You need to open your eyes, buddy.

What do you drink? You can drink more than one cup of eggnog a year. Well, I mean, when do you drink it besides Christmas? Or do you drink it multiple times at Christmas? Multiple times around Christmas. Okay, yeah, I just make a batch homemade, of course, if you buy it at the carton. Oh, so you make it? Oh, sure.

Have you tried George Washington's recipe? No, but that's going to be on the list this year. I can tell you that I tried George Washington's recipe using store-bought, but with this booze, and it is out of sight. We'll get to it soon, but let's talk about eggnog and its origins first. All right, they can trace it back to possibly the 14th century. And, of course, it was the medieval Englishman drinking something known as poset, which didn't have eggs, though.

It was hot milk curdled with ale, wine, often sweetened and spiced, which sounds really nasty. Eh, curdled milk? All right, they were trying to get bombed is what they were trying to do. Pretty much, and then eventually somebody said, hey, let's see what happens when we add eggs to this. Yeah, some raw eggs that could make you sick. Yeah, they did. Eventually, the wine came to be replaced by sherry and madera, and as this drink

that eventually became eggnog became more complex, it became more expensive. And over in Europe, basically, you had to be rich to have a decent glass of eggnog, right? Yeah, it became the stuff of, I don't know, would you say aristocrats or a little too highfalutin? No, I would say that. Okay. And we should say we want to thank our friends over at Mental Floss for providing us with this material. Oh, is that this one?

Yeah. Here's our glass of eggnog raised to you guys. Boy, I wish I was drinking it right now, actually. So the first eggnog in the U.S. apparently was drank by Captain John Smith. What was it at his settlement? Yeah, 1607. Sure, what are you going to do? Kick back in James Sound, have a little eggnog.

Yeah. And because it's the U.S., we had plenty of eggs and plenty of booze, so it wasn't like in England, and it became pretty popular here. Yeah, and it's still in England, its popularity went down the tubes. And even still, like some people drink eggnog there, but not very often. It's very much an American thing, even though we totally cribbed it from Europe, yeah. Well, good for us. And they actually think that the word eggnog, one of the origin stories for the word was that

it's a contraction of egg and grog, which is what Americans used to ask the bartenders for at the end of the 18th century. Right. Or it came from the word noggin, which was the little small wooden mug that they served it in. And yet another says Norfolk slang, nog refers to the strong ales that were served in those cups. Yep. So somewhere in there lies the word origin.

Which one do you like? I like the American contraction. Egg and grog? Yeah, eggnog. All right. Regardless of where the name came from, the first use of eggnog to describe this drink came about 1800. And there's a guy named Isaac Weld Jr., who described eggnog as consisting of new milk,

eggs, rum, and sugar beat up together. Pretty simple. Yeah. He had to put new milk in there, I guess, because the old version was curdled milk. Or buttermilk. Yeah. Can you imagine buttermilk, eggnog? I've never even had buttermilk, except in-

When you were bad? Things in the end that way makes me drink buttermilk. I've only had it in recipes that I've used for cooking and baking. And I might very well like it to this day, but I've been so grossed out my entire life because my dad drank it and he would put a whole thing of cornbread in it and stir it up until it was just a big mushy, goopy mess and he would eat it with a spoon. Wow. And I just can't even look at it to this day because that grossed me out so much as a kid. I don't blame you.

Wow. It's the southern thing. Are you sure? Oh, I'm positive. Okay. Buttermilk with cornbread? Very big. Okay, so...

George Washington. Very American? Yeah. What's more American than George Washington? Not much. George Washington's eggnog. Yeah. We have his recipe.

He left his recipe and he must have been soused when he wrote the recipe because he forgot to include how many eggs, but he included everything else. And this is a verbatim recipe left by George Washington found in the Mount Vernon records. Okay? Yep. May I? Please. One quart cream, one quart milk, one dozen tablespoons of spoon sugar, one pint brandy.

Pint. One half pint rye whiskey, one half pint Jamaica rum, one quarter pint sherry. So that's two and a quarter pints of liquor. We should point out. Right, which makes a quart and a quarter, quart and an eighth. Okay. That's a lot of liquor. That's a lot of booze.

I want to point out here that you can do an easy conversion here. If you take the cream and the milk, that's 64 ounces. You take the two and a quarter pints. That's 36 ounces. Okay. And you can do some easy conversion. So basically, if you do four, if you want to buy your eggnog, this is my tip here. This isn't in the recipe.

Yeah. If you want to buy commercially made eggnog, you use four ounces of that to one ounce brandy, one half ounce rye, one half ounce rum, and a quarter ounce sherry. And you will be pretty close to Washington's little concoction. All right. Back to the recipe. Yes. Mix liquor first, then separate yolks and whites of eggs.

Add sugar to beaten yolks. Mix well. Add milk and cream slowly beating. Beat whites of eggs until stiff and fold slowly into mixture. Let set in cool place for several days. These days that would be your refrigerator. Taste frequently, which means go get a buzz every day. Make sure your eggnog's all right.

Yeah. And apparently Georgie Boy loved the stuff. Oh, he did. He loved his liquor. Oh yeah. That's why his teeth were all rotten. Actually, that's not true. It might have contributed.

So if you get eggnog in the stores these days, you're probably not going to have a lot of egg in it. FDA regulations say that only require about 1% of the final weight be made from solid egg yolks. And then egg-flavored, eggnog-flavored milk is really just milk. It's got maybe 0.5% egg yolk. So I say make it yourself. It's fun. If you do make it yourself though, you want to use pasteurized eggs because if you use fresh eggs, you could come down with salmonella.

A lot of people say, well, wait a minute, I'm putting 2.5 pints of booze in this concoction. Of course, it's going to kill all the salmonella. FDA says not necessarily. Don't risk it. Just use pasteurized eggs. I don't use pasteurized eggs. I should though.

Yeah, you should. Do you boil your water when you netty pot yet? No. I live by the sea in my pants. Well, then don't even bother using pasteurized eggs then. I don't. Look, I'm not the one that's always sick. All right, so is that it on eggnog?

Unless you want to tell the story of Judge Garnett of Matthews County. Should be. Sure. All right, in 1900, Good Housekeeping ran a story about the tradition in Virginia and it had this anecdote. So religiously is the custom of eggnog drinking observed. The Judge Garnett of Matthews County tells the story of rushing in on Christmas morning. The one his father that his house was on fire.

The old gentleman first let his son to the breakfast table and ladled out his glass of eggnog, drank one with him, and then went to care for the burning building. That is the love of eggnog. Oh, and little whipped cream on top, little cool whip to Josh, one of my favorite parts of Christmas, because I don't have a working fireplace, even though I'm working on that, by the way. You see the soot on my hands? Oh, nice. Yeah, I've been cleaning my chimney.

Very nice. It's awful work, by the way. I imagine. And I have black lung and I'm sneezing up black boogers. So because of all this, one of my favorite traditions is the Yule Log on the TV set. Yeah, that actually dates back to 1966 when a guy named Fred Thrower, who is a programming director, realized that a lot, a lot, a lot of New Yorkers who subscribed to station WPIX TV, New York, didn't have fireplaces, so he figured out maybe we should take a video loop of a nice little fire set

to Christmas music and broadcast that. Not only does everybody get a fire in their house, but we all get the day off, except for the one engineer who has to make sure that this is going right. Yeah, and I didn't see this in there, but I bet a bunch of people in programming thought, this is not going to work. This is a really stupid idea. Yeah, and it became a pretty big tradition, so Fred Thrower came out on top, right? That's right.

In 2004, they started broadcasting it in high definition. Cable picked it up pretty shortly after Cable came around. And then now you can find it on YouTube. Yeah, I watch it on my local cable provider. You just search through during Christmas time and it's the Yule Log right there. Do you prefer Christmas music or crackling fire sound? I do my own Christmas music, so therefore I prefer the crackling fire sound. Very nice.

Yes, you? I like the crackling fire myself. Yeah, yeah. So do they do that? Do they they don't give you both? Not in Fred Thrower's neighborhood. It was set to Christmas music, but if you go like on YouTube, you can find one, two, three hour increments of just crackling fire.

Nice. Hey Chuck. Hey Josh. Have you ever heard of a guy named the Grinch? Yes, a dude. You've seen the Grinchy Soul Christmas many, many times, right? How the Grinch Soul Christmas, yeah. Yeah.

Yes, it is how the Grinch Soul Christmas. I've seen that many times. I've seen the movie. I love the Grinch. Yeah, the Jim Carrey movie, pretty good. Yeah. You know, not bad at all. Really got into the hoos.

Blew your mind at the end that it all took place on like a molecule and a snowflake. Yeah. Yeah, I was surprised by that. Spoiler. Is it? Well, sure. But he wasn't seeing that. I don't know.

Yeah. Hopefully no one listening to this. But we've got the origin story. Thanks to our buddies at NPR, right? About how the Grinch Soul Christmas and how Ted Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, created this thing. Yeah, apparently Geisel was a little more like the Grinch than your average who in Whoville. In the 1920s, he was an illustrator, and the very first idea of Grinch came about when he was drawing illustrations of basically what looked like a boogeyman combined with Santa.

Yeah. And it was sort of the first little inkling that like a malevolent Santa was around and spoiling things for people. So he was apparently a bit of a curmudgeon. I saw, I think, one of his daughters said that he was Grinch on his bad days and cat in the hat on his good days. I could see that all of those based on himself, for sure. With the Grinch, he published that in 1957 at age 53, and it was pretty much an instant success.

Yeah, he was literally inspired. Apparently one day he looked in the mirror, he was doing a self-portrait like Rockwell style, where you look in the mirror, and he said he looked in the mirror and saw the Grinch looking back. So it was very much based on his perception of himself, at least. Sure. So the book takes off. And then in 1966, CBS says, hey, man, let's make a version of this, a TV movie version. And this is how the Grinch became green, actually, thanks to a guy named Chuck Jones, who made a name for himself, creating characters like the Road Runner, Wiley Coyote, Bugs Bunny.

Just to name a few. You know, his granddaughter listens. Oh, is that right? Yes, she wrote in a couple of weeks ago about, you know, I can't remember what it was about, but she says, by the way, I'm Chuck Jones' granddaughter. Oh, that's cool. And I wrote her back, said, you're messing with me. She's like, oh, no, I'm not.

I get that all the time. I'm the real deal. Well, it's a good thing that Chuck Jones came on board, because he ended up being, to Dr. Seuss, what Stanley Kubrick was, to Stephen King in The Shining. He took a very classic, awesome idea and put the modern, possibly better spin on it, brought it to life, you could say, for people around the world. Yeah, because it was in black and white in the book, a little pink here and there. But like you said, Chuck Jones made him green and apparently changed the face a little bit

to look like himself from the original book, which he said he liked to do in a lot of his characters, was give a little bit of himself. Well, he said that, I heard he, subconsciously, he snuck himself in when he looked in the mirror, like Norma Rockwell or Dr. Seuss, to kind of get an expression right. Right. He would end up inadvertently drawing himself as well. That's pretty cool. Yeah.

So the original cut was about 12 minutes long, which was too short. So it was up to Jones and Geisel to fill it out. And one of the main ways they filled it out was through Max, the dog, who Jones felt represented the audience, and Max became a much larger character in the short, TV short than he was in the book. Yeah, I mean, a lot of stuff hinged on him. He had to keep the sleigh from going over. That's a lot to put on a little dog.

It is. Another thing that brought it to life was the soundtrack. It was narrated and the voice of the Grinch was done by Boris Karloff of old people. Like, they were like, well, let's see. Who's the master of horror movies at the time? Oh, yeah, you. You come do the voice for this children's cartoon. Well, I saw an interview with Chuck Jones and he said, I'm glad that that ended up happening

because he knew what a great voice actor he was. And he said, not many people. Because back then he did a lot of voices without people knowing it was him. Yeah. Because you just couldn't Google it and find out who did that. As they very aptly put it in this NPR story, Boris Karloff nailed the story's simultaneous lighthearted and ominous tone. I think that's a pretty fair assessment.

I agree. Albert Haig wrote the songs and then you're a mean one, Mr. Grinch. Yeah, wrote the music, but guys will actually wrote the lyrics. Oh, he did. Yeah. That means that seems appropriate. Yeah, totally. But you're a mean one, Mr. Grinch, of course, was sung by Thurrell Ravenscroft.

Had no idea. And I think like most people, I believe that it was Boris Karloff. Oh, no, it was Tony the Tiger. But yeah, he was Tony the Tiger. Yeah. Ravenscroft. They're great. So Ravenscroft was uncredited in the original film.

Was that right? Yeah. So was June Foray, who did Cindy Luhu. Oh, yeah. And apparently Chuck Jones and Geisel were both like pretty upset about this. And like every interview they ever did made sure they pointed out like it's not Karloff singing like he couldn't even sing. And June Foray was Cindy Luhu.

And so they tried to get it in as many articles as possible. That was nice. Yeah. Good for them. Everybody loves the Grinch except for two brothers, David and Bob Grinch, who lived in Ridgefield, New Jersey and wrote a letter to Theodore Geisel and said, hey, can you change the name of the Grinch? Because that's our last name and everybody's teasing us.

And Dr. Seuss wrote back. Yeah. And I hope that they still have this letter because it read, I disagree with your friends who harass you. Can't they understand that the Grinch in my story is the hero of Christmas? Sure, he starts out as a villain, but it's not how you start out that counts. It's what you are at the finish. And he sealed it with a kiss.

So I've got the lyrics here for the classic song and the Grinch is compared to many things in the song. Charming is an eel. Cuddle is a cactus. A bad banana with a greasy black peel. An empty hole, brain full of spiders. Garlic in your soul. A seasick crocodile.

A heart full of unwashed socks. That's my favorite one. Or a dead tomato squash with multi-purple spots. That's pretty good. Crooked jerky jockey. And he drives a crooked horse. You're a three-decker sauerkraut and toadstool sandwich with arsenic sauce. I'm very surprised I didn't understand that Dr. Seuss wrote the lyrics of the song.

Yeah, it's different when you read it. When it's sung, it just sort of goes along. You read it, it's like, man, this is the work of a madman. So you got anything else? No. It ran on CBS for 22 years and then TBS acquired it. And now you can find it all over the place, thanks to TBS. And thank you, Mr. Grinch.

All right, Josh. I see dangling the mistletoe above my head. You know what that means. Come over here. Give me a big smacker. There's actually a procedure to all this. When people kiss under the mistletoe, the kiss initiator takes a berry from the mistletoe. And never knew that.

And eventually, once all the berries are used up, the mistletoe is used up, there's no longer good luck for kissing under it. That's right. And it's supposed to be good luck for married couples. It means their marriage will be successful and long. Bad luck if you don't and you're a married couple. And if you are a single woman who fails to get kissed, you will not get married for another year.

A year. Don't even bother. And this is a very, very, very ancient tradition. They think that it dates back to the Vikings, thinking that this was a fertility plant. It possibly derives from enemies who would meet under the mistletoe. If they happened to be under a mistletoe, they would put their arms down and embrace and go on a ceasefire for the day until they took up arms again the following day. Exactly.

Like our little story last year, remember that? Yeah, the Christmas truce. Actually, they partied well into the new year. Yeah, they did. I wondered if there was mistletoe. It would seem appropriate. So what else? It's a source of luck.

It is a sexual symbol of virility. And what else do you need? Oh, apparently maidens would place it under their pillow at night like a tooth fairy style. But I don't see what they would get in return. They would get the dream of their prince charming. And also, if you were a maiden, you could burn some mistletoe and find out how your marriage is going to go. If it burned very steady and long, you're going to have a nice, long, happy life with marriage.

And if the flame's flickered, you might want to work a little extra hard. That's right. And that is mistletoe. Chuck, you've heard of Santa Claus? Sinterklaas, Krampus, all those guys, right? St. Nicholas is the Dutch version of Santa Claus. And he's not as nice as our American version. In fact, he had a little helper, an elf named Black Pete, and Black Pete's job was to accompany,

I know, St. Nicholas on his rounds and to keep up with the naughty boys and girls. And when they encountered one of the boys or girls who's naughty, Black Pete would whip them. That's the Dutch Santa Claus. I just, yeah, I love it. Well, you found a great story for us about elves that I think we should read word for word, because it's just beyond adorable. Yeah, this is classic. You've heard this before, right?

I have, but it's been a very long time. Yeah, I was the same way. And there's been different versions. But this is called The Elves and the Shoemaker from the Brothers Grimm. And it is our annual Christmas reading. Last year we did Night Before Christmas. Yeah. This year it's The Elves and the Shoemaker.

So without further ado. A shoemaker, by no fault of his own, had become so poor that at last he had nothing left but leather for one pair of shoes. So in the evening, he cut out the shoes which he wished to begin to make the next morning. And as he had a good conscience, he lay down quietly in his bed, commended himself to God, and fell asleep. In the morning, after he had said his prayers, and was just going to sit down to work, the two shoes stood quite finished on his table.

He was astounded, and he knew not what to say to it. He took the shoes in his hands to observe them closer, and they were so neatly made that there was not one bad stitch in them, just as if they were intended as a masterpiece. Soon after a buyer came in, and as the shoes pleased him so well, he paid more for them than was customary. And with the money, the shoemaker was able to purchase leather for two pair of shoes. He cut them out at night, and next morning was about to set work with fresh courage. But he had no need to do so, for when he got up, they were already made.

And buyers also were not wanting. Who gave him money enough to buy leather for four pair of shoes. The following morning, too, he found the four pairs made, and so it went on constantly. What he cut out in the evening was finished by the morning, so that he soon had his honest independence again, and at last became a wealthy man. Now it befell that one evening, not long before Christmas, when the man had been cutting out, he said to his wife before going to bed, What thank you if we were to stay up tonight and see who it is that is lending us this helping hand.

The woman liked the idea and lighted a candle, and then they hid themselves in a corner of the room, behind some clothes which were hanging up there, and watched. When it was midnight, two pretty little naked men came, sat down by the shoemaker's table, took all the work which was cut out before them, and began to stitch and sew and hammer so skillfully, and so quickly with their little fingers, that the shoemaker could not turn away his eyes for astonishment. They did not stop until all was done, instead finished on the table, and then they ran quickly away. Next morning the woman said, well, I would have said a lot of things, but this is what this lady

said, The little men have made us rich, and we really must show that we are grateful for it. They run about so, and have nothing on, and must be cold. I tell thee what I'll do, I will make them little shirts, and coats, and vests, and trousers, and both of them a pair of stockings, and do thou, too, make them two little pairs of shoes. The man said, I shall be very glad to do it. And one night, when everything was ready, they laid their presents all together on the table, instead of the cut out work, and then concealed themselves to see how the little men would behave. At midnight they came bounding in, naked, and wanted to get to work at once.

But as they did not find any leather cut out, but only the pretty little articles of clothing, they were at first astonished, and then they showed intense delight. They dressed themselves with the greatest rapidity, putting pretty clothes on and singing. Now we are boys so fine to see, why should we longer cobblers be? Then they danced, and skipped, and leapt over chairs and benches, at last they danced out of doors. From that time forth they came no more, but as long as the shoemaker lived, all went well with him, and all his undertakings prospered. The Elves and the Shoemaker by the Brothers Grimm

So I guess the moral here is, if you are ever helped by any unclothed elves, clothe them. That's what I got from this one. That's what I got too. So, uh, I've got no listener mail, I say we should just give our annual glad tidings. I agree. Shout. I agree.

Glad tidings to you all. Happy holidays. Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah. Happy Kwanzaa. Yeah. Have a tip-top tet. However you celebrate this time of year, and even if you choose not to,

I just hope you're feeling great. Yeah, I'll put Chuck. Sure. I wanted to say a very special Merry Christmas to my lovely wife, Yumi. It's very nice. And to your wife as well, Chuck. Hey, thanks. To all of our families, Merry Christmas.

Yes. To all of our listeners, thank you for a very wonderful, wonderful year with you guys. And we look forward to another wonderful year with you as well. Yep. Jerry, do you echo the sentiment? Absolutely. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff.

Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jack move, or being robbed. They could call civil acid for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm Brooke Shields. And my new podcast, Now What, dives deep into life's make or break moments. Those things that stop you in your tracks and leave you wondering, now what do I do? You know, I had to learn how to walk again. I realized I don't think we should get married. Listen to Now What with Brooke Shields on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.