Stuff You Should Know - Selects: Some Nutso Fan Theories

Episode Date: April 8, 2023

It turns out that the characters in your favorite TV shows and the like are actually dead, dreaming, dying or don't exist. Explore some strange fan theories with Josh and Chuck in this classic episode.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey there, I'm Maya Schunker, host of the podcast A Slight Change of Plans. In our new season, we'll hear personal stories of change, and I'll talk with scientific experts on how we can live happier and healthier lives. We'll hear from social scientist Medupe Akinola, who studies stress and its benefits, and comedian Hassan Minhaj, who talks about the pitfalls of having a job that depends on whether or not people like him. Listen to A Slight Change of Plans on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Rosie O'Donnell, and I've got a new podcast called Onward with me, Rosie O'Donnell,

on iHeart. Mostly this part of my life is just about moving forward, and I thought, what a wonderful way to do it with good friends across a tiny table and just have a heartfelt conversation. Listen to Onward with Rosie O'Donnell, a proud part of the outspoken podcast network on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody. It's Josh, and for this week's Select, I've chosen our awesome episode on Nutso fan theories. It's a straight ahead, easy, breezy, beautiful episode, and I hope you enjoy it tremendously. Let's go. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. I almost forgot who I was for a second. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Yeah. There's Jerry. Or is she really there? I don't know. I don't even know anymore. Because it just occurred to me, we're doing a show on a TV show fan theories, and we have our own little fan theory here that Jerry doesn't exist. Yeah, that's true. That's a fan theory, which is sort of a common thread in a lot of these, is either like, oh, they were really dead, or, you know, or they didn't exist to begin with. Right. And so we've heard from people for years

to think that Jerry's made up. I love it. Yes. Because they're right. We're not saying. No. Actually, Jerry's totally real. Or is she? I'm looking at it right now. So I was going through the internet, looking for think pieces, essays on why people come up with fan theories, or what about fan theories make them, you know, make shows better. Couldn't find anything. No, I think the answer is obvious. I think that's why I couldn't find anything too. People just have time on their hands. That's not what I was going to say. Oh, what are you going to say? I was going to say that it takes

something that's already pretty enjoyable and adds entirely new dimensions in depth to it. It takes something familiar, and you can go back and rewatch it through different lens now. Yeah. And you have time on your hands. Right. It's definitely not something that super busy people do. No. And then I also was like, maybe I should just calm down. We don't have to explain everything. We can just have fun sharing fan theories. That's what we're going to do. It's like a summer break one. Yeah, this feels like one of those. We're both drunk. Sure. Pretty drunk. Just kidding. Kids out there, we're just joking.

Should we just get right into these? Yes. Some of these are going to be shorter, others are going to be a little longer, and we're just going to jump around, right? Should we start with the granddaddy or end with the granddaddy? Well, is the granddaddy to you? Saved by the bell? No. You like that one, though? Yeah, and I thought maybe if I said it, yeah, I think we'll start with Saved by the bell. I don't know why I thought if I said it really fast. Only I would know what you were saying. We'll start with Saved by the bell,

and we'll finish with the one that I know you're talking about. Okay, cool. That's very clickbaity, I know, but you won't believe the last one. One of the things that is really hard to do when it comes to fan theories, we should say, I guess we should define a fan theory is basically, it's where somebody who likes a show says, hey, you know this show that you think means this or is about all this? It's actually this is what's going on. Almost all the time, it's just somebody's idea, but the part of the backbone of a fan theory is that it has to hold up in just about every circumstance.

Yeah, and I'll get one out of the way quickly is a bad example, because to me, a bad fan theory is murder, she wrote, she was really a serial killer because you never found out what happened to her husband, and all these people are dying around her. I like that one. Yeah, but it's just too easy. It's not like, to me, a good fan theory is one where you can say, and this happened, and look at this, and what about this, and what about this? Okay, so I know what you mean, and yes, a fan theory doesn't have to do there, else it's just some schmo saying something somewhere. But murder, she wrote has a couple of things to back that up.

Besides the husband and the murder is what is it? The husband, I think, is whatever, but the point that I've seen here or there, number one, is Jessica Fletcher is a murder author, a murder mystery authorist, and she murders, follow her everywhere she goes, right? Think about the last time you stumbled upon a murder. Well, that's just called TV. Okay, so that's one thing, hold on. And then secondly, even when she travels, she stumbles upon new murders, but more to the point, in her little town of Cabot Cove, a population 3,500, a significant number of the, say, 274 episodes of murder she wrote took place there. Even 200 of those murders happened in a town

of 3,500. It would be the murder capital of the world, percentage wise, per capita. So I see what you're saying by the fact that she's a writer. It's not like she's a detective. Like you can't say, boy, the A-team were always getting in these crazy adventures, like they were hired to each one. Yeah, they were seeking it out. She just happens to be sucked into it. She just happens to be there, right? I've never seen that TV show either, so that probably something to do with it. What? Never seen murder she wrote. Shock. Because I was a 13-year-old boy, not a 65-year-old person. It's even better now.

Oh, really? Yeah. You're rewatching it? Oh, yeah. It's on Netflix and I think Prime. Wow. Oh, yeah, man. It's good. Check it out. And I'm not saying like, oh, murder she wrote good. I'm a hipster. I've been watching murder she wrote for years and years now, pal. Yeah. You know, I have a beard. No. But hold on. I think I want to extend this for a second. You raise a very good point, and I feel like I defended murder she wrote with that same point that a fan theory has to have meat on its bones. It can't be an offhanded thing. It's prove what you just said. Prove why Jessica Fletcher is a serial killer. Well, there's a couple of them. It's a little thin,

granted. Yeah. But there's something to back it up, which makes it a decent fan theory. Not the best, but a decent one. The other thing is it's really difficult to pinpoint the origin of fan theories. Oh, yeah. Like who did this first? Yeah. Who came up with this idea? What loser? Well, I've got one for you. So we were going to talk about the save by the bell fan theory. And people are just like nervous with anticipation about that one now. As far back as I can tell, it looks like a person, a writer on the website cracked, cracked website, a writer named, man, I lost their name, Logan Trent. In 2012 wrote a post called, save by the bell, a conspiracy theory. Oh, so he originated this one?

As far as I can tell, he gives zero credit to anybody else. And the way that the post is written, it really comes across like he is laying out his argument himself. All right. So it's possible. And if you had this idea prior to 2012 and you're not Logan Trent, let us know. But I'm bestowing Logan Trent with the origin of the save by the bell fan theory, which is one of the best. Yeah. And big shout out to cracked and mental floss and our own article and who else? So it was me TV had a good one. Yeah. Paste magazine. There's a lot of good fan theory articles out there. All right. So at long last, save by the bell. And I like this one. And I don't remember watching

this show at all. But I know these characters and the gist. So I had to have watched it at some point. You didn't watch save by the bell? No, I wouldn't. I wouldn't in my wheelhouse. I guess not. A little older teenage boy slash college. Well, they had save by the bell of college years just for you. But I do know these characters. So it had to have absorbed into me somehow. Okay. So here's the deal. Pre save by the bell. This I did not know. There was a TV show. Was it called Good Morning, Miss Bliss? Yes. And it was unbearably bad. So you saw that too. Yeah. So the idea of this show is there's this boy named Zach.

This is in Indiana. Not just Zach. Zach Morris. Yeah, the Zach. Played by Mark Paul Gossler. Right. Yeah. This was in Indiana, of course, not California. And he was a troublemaker and there was a teacher named Miss Bliss. He was super smart and always thwarted him. She was, what's the name of the lady who was in the original parent trap? Played the two twins Haley Mills. Yeah. It was her. Oh, okay. Apparently like when you sign a contract with Disney as a child, they own you for life. He has a couple of friends named Mikey and Nikki. They're always putting them in his place. He has a brother. His parents are divorced. And by all accounts, Zach Morris and Good Morning,

Miss Bliss is a bit of a shlub who's always sort of getting his comeuppance from other people. Yeah. Kind of a loser. Yeah. Basically the opposite of Zach Morris and say by the bell. Did they ever say Zach attack? Did I just make that up? No, I think so. Okay. I think there was a t-shirt even that said that. So flash forward and how many years later was this? Couple. So Good Morning, Miss Bliss goes off the air. I get the feeling it wasn't very popular or they wouldn't have rebooted it as saved by the bell. They would have just kept it going. Exactly. It's a save by the bell comes along and now Zach is at Bayside in California. He's Mr. Everything. He's, as this article points out, he's the most popular kid in school

and excels in everything. Sports, music, casual, racism, whatever. Right. That's the Logan Trance wording. He's the alpha in his circle of friends, Mikey and Nikki are gone. Yeah, they're just gone. No explanation. Right. And there's no explanation for any of this, like how he got to California, but it's the same character, right? It's the exact same character, but there are some huge, huge changes. Like at his core, he is a different person. Actually, not necessarily at his core, but as far as how he's treated and viewed by his peers and everyone else, the difference is night and day. He's not a dweeb anymore. He's not a loser. He's a total winner. He's Zacatech. As Logan Trent points out, if he were to miss a quiz rather than fail,

he would convince the teacher to hold a bake off and then he would win the bake off by cheating. That was how he went through life. And also very notably, his parents were no longer divorced. They were married and he didn't have a brother. He was an only child and was beloved by all, right? Yeah. I think Slater went from his rival to his pal, but his wingman. Screech was around in both, but I think he was sort of screech in both, right? He didn't change much. Screech has always been screech. He'll stab you in a bar. All right. So what's the big reveal? What's the fan theory? So the fan theory is that Saved by the Bell is the daydream fantasy of Zac Morris, who's actually living in Indiana,

back in Indiana at John F. Kennedy, Jr. High, and that the whole, it's great, man, and that the whole premise of this fan theory is revealed through the theme song, right? So in the theme song, the theme song talks about how harried Zac is. Well, it's all first person, right? But you assume that it's talking about Zac because the whole show revolves around Zac. He's the narrator. And he's having a lot of trouble getting ready and he gets out to the bus just in time to see it fly by and the teacher's going to pop a test and he knows he's in a mess and it's dogged all his homework. And if you actually watch the show, nothing ever gets Zac. He's untouchable. So in the theme song, it says it's all right because I'm Saved by the Bell, right?

Yes. Which this fan theory suggests that once he settles in, either settles in the class and starts daydreaming or gets home at night and starts dreaming, he can go off to Bayside where he's the biggest winner around. That is the bell. Right. So the fact that these lyrics, by the time I grab my books and I give myself a look, I'm at the corner just in time to see the bus fly by. And then eventually riding low in my chair so she won't know I'm there, meaning the teacher. This all is Zac in Indiana. Right. It describes a different person. It doesn't make any sense that these lyrics, if you'd had not known that that was a show that existed and all you knew was Saved by the Bell, these lyrics don't make any sense.

Exactly. But they do if it is all a fantasy in his imagination. Sadly, it also makes sense if you think that the producers hired the composer before they were really aware of what the show was going to be like. And that's what the composer came up with lyrics-wise. It's not nearly as fun. Well, the other thing I like about fan theories is that they are almost 100% not real. It's just fans having fun. But I do like the idea to imagine some subversive writer that's like, oh, well, here's what we'll do. This is all an elaborate fantasy of this Zac guy. I've got one other thing that I think the cracked article points out. If not, someone else came up with it later. They pointed out that Zac has the power to stop time and address the camera.

Like he breaks the fourth wall fairly regularly. And he can just stop time and move around within this frozen time, which also, I mean, that's a weird thing for somebody to be able to do if they're not in the middle of their own daydream. Yeah, or nightdream. Love it, man. That's a good one. And you know, things like Mikey and Nikki disappeared. At one point, Kelly is in love with him and then she just is gone with no explanation. Yeah, people kind of pop in and out sometimes with no explanation at all. I think Kelly dumped him and then like all of a sudden she's gone. And she was like one of the characters throughout the entire save by the bell. Right. And then she's just gone once she dumps

back. He's really bad at school, but he got a 1502 in the SAT. Like all this stuff is like dream stuff. Right. Well, that's another point that Logan Trent makes is that a 1502 is literally impossible. Like you can't score a 1502 in the SAT. Yeah, it's 1500, right? Yeah. So it's all, it's even more evidence that all this is made up by apparently a not so smart kid. Man. So that's saved by the bell, man. You want to take a break and then get back to it? Yeah, I think so. I could do this all day. All right. The thing that I most know you about is other people's finances. I just want to ask people, how much money do you make? And what have you figured out about money that the rest of us haven't?

I'm Maya Lau, and this is Other People's Pockets, the show where I ask people about their money because salary transparency is important and because we can all learn something from other people's financial mistakes and money hacks. On this show, we talk about money in actual dollar amounts. Like how much does a Hollywood writer make? How does an elite scientist wind up unhoused? What's it like to make it as a big time journalist and then lose practically everything? I talked to my guests about how they were raised, how they deal with their money anxieties, and, of course, what's in their bank accounts. So get your pay stubs out. Other People's Pockets is a co-production of Pushkin Industries and Little Everywhere. Listen to Other People's Pockets

on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Dave Diegelman. I have a new podcast called Inner Cosmos on iHeart. I'm a neuroscientist and an author at Stanford University, and I've spent my career exploring the three-pound universe in our heads. On my new podcast, I'm going to explore the relationship between our brains and our experiences by tackling unusual questions so we can better understand our lives and our realities. Like, does time really run in slow motion when you're in a car accident? Or can we create new senses for humans? Or what does dreaming have to do with the rotation of the planet? So join me weekly to uncover how your brain steers your behavior, your perception, and your reality.

Listen to Inner Cosmos with Dave Diegelman on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The podcast transportista who murdered Captain Coral tells the story of Columbia's drug wars. After the death of Pablo Escobar, peace was supposed to come to Medellin, but for Beto Coral, it was a peace that never truly arrived, because his father, Capitan Humberto Coral, was murdered after the final operation against the notorious drug lord. Two sides, criminals and law enforcement, in a battle to the death. In the middle, a city full of innocent people. The result, thousands of forgotten victims. Join host Álvaro Suspedes as he shares the tragic tale of the Coral family, caught up in the narcotics wars of the 1990s. The memory of this conflict is still present.

The wounds are still open. Columbia is still a country in mourning. Listen to Transportista, who murdered Captain Coral as part of the MyCultura Podcast Network on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we'll go through a couple of quicker ones here. The Fresh Prince is dead. Yeah. Can't really don't need to say anything else, do you? Well, in the TV's theme song, where he talks about getting in a fight, and that's the whole reason he's sent to Bel Air. Yeah, the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, it's a TV show from 1990 and 1996. And the rap that Will Smith, the real life Will Smith, actually plays a character named Will Smith, and he talks about getting in a fight, and getting sent off to Bel Air to get out,

you know, to get him away from the rough neighborhood in what, Philly? Right, West Philadelphia. The Fort and Raised. And so the theory is that he was actually killed during this fight, and everything else is, you know, his journey in the afterlife. Yeah, the cab that picks him up to take him in Bel Air, the rare cab, is supposedly God or some sort of ethereal figure that's taking him to the afterlife, which is Bel Air. His parents are like basically non-existent, but they show up a couple of times. This is explained away by the fan theory as his parents visiting their son's grave, which I think is pretty awesome. And then Boys to Men apparently showed up at one point, but they were like a heavenly choir.

I don't remember that episode. So that put all that together, Fresh Prince is dead. That's right. What do you want to do next? Should we do the two of them from Gilligan's Island? Yeah, the drug one's super lame. Yeah, I thought so too. There's this one theory that the, and this one's, you're right, it's just dumb, that Mr. Howell on Gilligan's Island paid Gilligan and the Skipper to take him out to sea to do a drug deal, which is why he has a trunkload of cash, a trunk full of cash. Right. Ginger's got a drug habit, Marianne's a federal agent. This just sounds like, you know, like someone smoked some weed and came up with like, it's like someone said, hey, what's your first idea of what Gilligan's Island could have been

other than what it was? And they went, oh, a drug thing, man. I think he nailed it. But there's a better fan theory for Gilligan's Island. Agreed. That Gilligan's Island is hell, hell. That this, like the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, takes place in the afterlife, but not in heaven, in hell, or at least in purgatory, that Mino's shipwreck caused everyone on board to drown, and that in hell, each one of the characters represents one of the seven deadly sins. Ginger's lust. Marianne is envy. Professor is pride. Thurston Hell, of course, is greed. Mrs. Howell, I've seen as Sloth. And Gluttony, I've seen that too. I've also seen Skipper as either Gluttony or Wrath. Wrath makes a lot more sense. And then Gilligan is Sloth, or is Satan

himself. Yeah. And one of the giveaways for Gilligan being Satan, well, there's two of them. One is that he's always wearing a red shirt. Oh, well. So obviously Satan. Because Satan wore a red rugby shirt. Right. And then he's always, although it seems like it's always accidental, he's always thwarting their plans. Like every time they get something going to get off of the island, Gilligan is the one who somehow screws it up and they're stuck there again. So he's keeping them in hell. And this one actually has legs. Yeah. Apparently Sherwood Schwartz, the creator of Gilligan's Island in a book confirmed that it was his idea that they did stand for the Seven Deadly Sins. Yeah. Is that right? Yeah. So there you go. One of the rare fan theories that actually

was true. I'm sure whoever thought of that was like, no. Yeah. I was right. Well, that makes me wonder if somehow it got out or something. Maybe. Or he was retroactively just being like, yeah, yeah, that's what I meant. Sherwood Schwartz. Here's a quick spot from Star Trek one that I kind of liked. We'll do both of the Star Trek ones. How about that? Okay. On record is not having watched Star Trek. Yeah, me neither. But in Star Trek six, the undiscovered country, the undiscovered country. Sorry, people are so mad at me right now. Trekkies. Yeah. An ancestor of mine maintained that when you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable must be the truth. And that was Spock in that movie. And the source of that was Sherlock Holmes himself

from the sign of four from an 1890 book. And so the idea here is that Spock is related to Sherlock Holmes. It's a little weird. How about that? But I could see it. I mean, they're both pretty rational. Yeah. Well, Sherlock Holmes, he loved his speed balls. I don't think Spock was ever into those. No, he was more involved. You know, Sherlock Holmes loves speed balls though, don't you? I did not. It doesn't surprise me. It surprised me at first. Really? Yeah. So there's another Star Trek one. I love this one, that Andy Griffith is the pre-apocalyptic world that leads into Star Trek. And this one is pretty awesome. So it's based on a Star Trek episode, Chuck Meery, M-I-R-I, like Siri, but with an M. Yeah. And in this episode, the Star Trek crew

beams down to Earth and it's very obvious it's Mayberry, but it's like a post-apocalyptic Mayberry. It's people entirely by kids. The reason why it's people entirely by kids is because some disease has broken out where you die at the onset of puberty. Yeah. And it's, well, it is Mayberry because it is Mayberry. It's literally the same back lot that they shot both shows at. Yeah. And they just outfitted Mayberry to be post-apocalyptic right down to Floyd's Barber Shop. Yeah. But I think they just scratched out Floyd. They scratched out the F and it just said Lloyd. Oh, did it? I don't know. I think it said Floyd's. Did it really? Yeah. Oh, it's that on the nose, huh? I think so. Oh, this one's great. This is a great fan there. Does that seal it for you then?

Well, there's another part too that the kid who played Barney Fife's cousin, Virgil, uh-huh. He actually appears in this Star Trek episode. What? Yeah. So it's full circle. Gene Roddenberry was like, I'm going to come up with a fan theory. No one knows what those are yet, but I'm going to lay it down for him decades from now. Pretty good. When the internet comes around. I don't know what that is, but it's going to be something. I'm Gene Roddenberry. You know the beginning of Andy Griffith when they're walking down to the lake and he skipped the stones on the lake. Yeah. It's like right in the Hollywood Hills. Is that right? Yeah. My brother drove me up there one time and it's like, this look familiar? Uh-uh. And he started

whistling the theme song and I was like, no. Wow. He said, yeah. And he was like the back cave's like over there. Oh, yeah? Yeah. And it's sort of, you know, killed my dreams. Well, same with M.A.S.H. too. That's like the Hollywood Hills or not Hollywood Hills. Is it Malibu? Well, like the mountains behind Malibu. Right. When you fly into L.A. and you're looking for it, you're like, oh, I totally see that. What we're talking about is the helicopter in the opening montage for M.A.S.H. was supposedly flying through Korea, but it's actually, yes, it's California where they're shooting, which is way cheaper to shoot. Yeah. I shot a TV commercial over there. And I think we talked about this before. There's, you know,

one of the Jeeps is still out there. Oh, no, I don't remember that. It's like rusted out and overgrown with weeds. Huh. And, but yeah, it's like an old army jeep. Yeah. There are a couple of little remnants. Jamie Farr is still out there like, hey, how you doing? Thanks for visiting. You need anyone today? Can I get a lift back? You need a background? I'll be, I'm cheap. That's terrible. Is he still around? I'm supposed to know this. He's like my hometown's favorite son. Oh, was he really from there? From Toledo. Yeah. Is that why they wrote that into the show? Yeah. And he's always talking about Tony Pacos, which is a real place. Oh, yeah. I knew all that, but I didn't know if it was. Yeah. No, Jamie Farr is definitely from Toledo.

Oh, okay. Well, he's still alive, too. They never let you forget it. Yeah. He's 82. Hey, Jamie Farr. Godspeed, sir. What else we got? So this one's one of my favorites. This is a good one. Garfield is dying alone in an abandoned house. Yeah. And everything that you've seen in all except, I believe, six of the Garfield strips, all of them that have been going on since 1977 is the hallucination of a dying starving cat in an abandoned house. Yeah. I was way into Garfield. Yeah. Garfield was great. Bought the books. Yeah. Garfield and Bloom County were my two biggies. I was never into Bloom County. Oh, man. I loved it. I did love Garfield, though. I mean, it was a little, Bloom County was a little more advanced, I think. Sure. And it's humor,

which I still got, but Garfield was like kind of perfect for a 10-year-old chuck. It was perfect. So what you're talking about is in October of 1989, Jim Davis, a creator of Garfield, said, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to put out six strips in a row that are not funny. No, they're actually kind of unsettling. Yeah. Very bleak. And if you go and look at these strips, you can find them online, obviously. It's Garfield alone in an abandoned house, and it's really heavy and awful. Yeah. Garfield wakes up in the first strip, and no one's around, and he's starting to get a little panicked. And then it just kind of continues on. And his panic continues to build over the course of the six strips. And finally,

in the last one, I believe he wakes up and John and Odie are there, and everything's back to normally so happy. But leading up to that point in strip like three, four, five, it's getting a little freaky. And again, like you said, there's nothing funny about it. It wasn't intended to be funny. It was intended to scare. And the idea is, is that what we're seeing in these six strips are the actual reality of Garfield, and that everything else he finally manages to go back to is basically dying fever dream that featured John and Odie. Yeah. But well, they disappear though in that strip too. At the end? Yeah. Like they appear, and then like he goes to give them food, and then they like disappear, and he's alone again. At the end of that six strip? Yeah. Oh,

okay. So he's hallucinated them. I got you. And then is alone and abandoned. So that's why. Okay, right. So then that backs up that whole idea that they're just a hallucination because they're demonstrated as an hallucination in that six series strip. Yeah. And he's six strip series. That was his intent was very much to do something sad and different. And I think he heard quite a bit from the fans. Sure. Like what is going on? Right. And then apparently he kind of laughed at the idea when someone said, hey, you realize what people think that this is all a big hallucination like every other strip you've drawn is a hallucination of this dying cat. Right. And he laughed about it, but like what else were people supposed to think? Yeah. That he just got really heavy and

weird for six strips? And I think the other thing that was so off-putting about it too was it resolves or there is no resolution. I think on that seventh day, the Sunday one just picks up like everything's totally normal and it never happened, which makes it even more unsettling. Yeah. And then Chuck, there's a clear, I don't know if it was a reference to it or coincidence or whatever, but there's this animated movie called Allegro non-tropo and there's a segment in it. What's the name of the segment? Valstriest about a cat that turns out to be a ghost cat. Have you ever seen it? No. It's very good. Oh yeah. Haunting. But it sort of parallels this Garfield story. Very much. So whether or not it was purposeful, we don't know that part, right?

Or did Jim Davis like discount that too? I've never heard whether or not he discounts that. Yeah. But that's definitely, go check out the Garfield strips, just look up like Garfield dead or dying or whatever and it'll bring them up. But also just, I'm sure it's on YouTube, just look up valsvallse, T-R-I-S-T-E and it will get to you. It's very sad. And you should plug your favorite thing ever, which is Garfield without Garfield. Oh yeah, that's great. Yeah. Which in that case, it was John who was just crazy and hallucinating, right? Yeah. You could make a pretty good case that John was out of his mind when you take Garfield out of any given strip. And John is just shouting out loud. He's just like

putting his head down on the counter. Good stuff. Yeah. I forgot about that. You want to take a break? Come back. Yeah. We'll take a break and go through another couple of quickies and then the big daddy. The thing that I most know you about is other people's finances. I just want to ask people how much money do you make and what have you figured out about money that the rest of us haven't? I'm Maya Lau and this is Other People's Pockets, the show where I ask people about their money because salary transparency is important and because we can all learn something from other people's financial mistakes and money hacks. On this show, we talk about money in actual dollar amounts. Like, how much does a Hollywood

writer make? How does an elite scientist wind up unhoused? What's it like to make it as a big-time journalist and then lose practically everything? I talk to my guests about how they were raised, how they deal with their money anxieties, and of course, what's in their bank accounts. So get your pay stubs out. Other People's Pockets is a co-production of Pushkin Industries and Little Everywhere. Listen to Other People's Pockets on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm David Eagleman. I have a new podcast called Inner Cosmos on iHeart. I'm a neuroscientist and an author at Stanford University, and I've spent my career exploring the three-pound universe

in our heads. On my new podcast, I'm going to explore the relationship between our brains and our experiences by tackling unusual questions so we can better understand our lives and our realities. Like, does time really run in slow motion when you're in a car accident? Or, can we create new senses for humans? Or, what does dreaming have to do with the rotation of the planet? So join me weekly to uncover how your brain steers your behavior, your perception, and your reality. Listen to Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Two sides, criminals and law enforcement, in a battle to the death. In the middle,

a city full of innocent people. The result, thousands of forgotten victims. Join host Álvaro Suspedes as he shares the tragic tale of the Coral family, caught up in the narcotics wars of the 1990s. The memory of this conflict is still present. The wounds are still open. Colombia is still a country in mourning. Listen to Transportista, who murdered Captain Coral as part of the MyCultura podcast network on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, did you see this Breaking Bad one? Yeah. This one has spoilers for Breaking Bad and a little bit of The Walking Dead. So if you haven't seen that, tune out.

But there is a theory that's actually, I think kind of cool, because I love both shows, Breaking Bad and Walking Dead, that the blue meth from Breaking Bad is what caused the zombie outbreak in The Walking Dead. Yeah, and not bad. Yeah, but I mean, it seems like they're totally unconnected until they start digging in there. That's right. When you look at season one, the character of Glenn, hey, shout out to Stephen Yen. He's a listener of stuff you should know. Yeah, what up dog? Hopefully still is. Not anymore. He drives a red Dodge Challenger in that first season, which looks kind of like Walter White's car that he eventually ends up with. And then in Breaking Bad, when Walter White returns that Dodge, he takes it back and the

dealership's general manager is named Glenn. Oh, Finn. The best one comes in season two, if you ask me. Yeah, I agree. You take it, buddy. Because why? You didn't watch either one of these shows? No, no, I did. I saw all of Breaking Bad and I've seen, I can't remember how far, I've seen pretty far into Walking Dead. I'm behind on Walking Dead by like one season. I need to go back. Catch up. Yeah. Anyway, season two, Daryl, played by Norman Reedus is trying to take the fever down on T-Dog. There's another character. Right. Why is that funny? He's saying T-Dog. So his brother, Merle, he is like this bag of drugs basically. So he looks through the bag to see if there's anything that can help bring the fever down. And there is that

blue crystal meth from Breaking Bad and his bag. Yeah. So that's a good little hint. Yep. And then before the zombie apocalypse, Merle, his brother, was actually a drug dealer. And he described in one episode, his supplier was, quote, a janky little white guy who threatened him with a handgun and said, I'm going to kill you, B-word. Yeah. And that very much sounds like Jesse Pinkman. Yeah. The only way you could have gotten it across more is if he'd mentioned fat stacks or something. All right. That would have been super on the nose though. So that's pretty fun theory. It is. Obviously. Meth equals death, everybody. That's right. Especially blue. Well, the one thing I didn't get was like, what are all those people on meth?

But then I thought, no, maybe just a certain amount. And then they infected other people with their zombie juice. Yeah. Okay, I got one. All right. This is an old one, but I think it's a good one. The Flintstones and the Jetsons take place at the exact same time. It's a good one. That the Flintstones are not prehistoric. They're actually set in a post-apocalyptic future. And you'd say, that doesn't make any sense. Does it? The author, I think this came from Mental Floss, points out, why would some cave people create record players with whatever they had on hand? No one in prehistoric times knew what a record player was, but if you were living in the post-apocalyptic times,

you would want to be able to listen to records because they'd already been invented. So you would figure out how to make a bird put its beak on a record and use that instead. Why do they celebrate Christmas in prehistoric times? Good question. Why do, why does the music in the Flintstones, any popular music is always like 50s, like English-British invasion type music? Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Twitch, Twitch. Why do they have a banking system set up that's fairly complex? It is. Why are these animals talking? Well, that's just weird. I don't know if you can place that at the feet of George Jetson.

The thing about the Jetsons, though, is supposedly they are living up in, it's not Cloud City, is it? Orbit City. Orbit City, which is supposedly built in the clouds above a smogline, which is where the Flintstones live below the smogline. And allegedly, the thing that divides them really more than anything is income. Yeah. That the Jetsons are wealthy and part of the ones that can survive and live up in the clean air. The Flintstones are part that have to scrape by with whatever they can find back here on Earth. Well, and that George and Fred mirror one another, and that Fred labors at this, I mean, I don't even know what you call that. Like a quarry. A quarry, yeah.

With Mr. Slate. Whereas George works at Spacely Rockets, and it says here in this article, works for a total of about nine hours a week, and then robots and computers handle everything else. That's supposedly how our life is supposed to be right now, but we're not doing it right. Oh, really? Yeah. And now robots are just stealing everyone's job, but we don't have anything to show for it except for joblessness, but the bad kind. Right. There was a movie called The Jetsons Meet the Flintstones, and in that very movie, George Jetson visits the past and has a little kind of a throwaway comment when he sees green grass and he says that it's something he remembers from ancient history.

Right. So that one kind of undermines the whole idea. Oh, I don't know. Well, if he's saying that he remembers it from ancient history. Oh, I see that part. Right. Yeah, like that was an apocalypse, and there is no grass. But if he visits the past, I don't know. Is this falling apart? Yeah. Before we talk about it? It undermines that one. All right. Remember the great kazoo? What was up with that guy? Yeah. Well, this is where stuff you should know is devolved too. Remember the great kazoo? What was up with that guy?

The whole Christmas thing is weird to me that the Flintstones would celebrate Christmas when they were clearly supposedly before the birth of Christ. Sure. As being in prehistoric times. Right. And it doesn't make any sense. There's a lot of stuff the Flintstones didn't make sense about. How about the Scooby-Doo one? I thought this was pretty great. Yeah. And not Scooby-Doo. See, this is the difference between a good fan theory and a bad one. Bad one. The Scooby and Shaggy are always stoned. Right. Because look, they're bumbling and they're always hungry.

For Scooby Snacks. For Scooby Snacks. Bad fan theory. Good fan theory. Scooby-Doo takes place after the world economy has shattered. That's great. Yeah. And there's a lot to it. Right? Yeah. So the idea is that these guys are driving around and if you really look at the places that they visit, everything's abandoned and run down. Always. Like abandoned amusement park, abandoned ski resort, abandoned everything. And not only are these places abandoned, they're populated by people who are squatting basically in these abandoned places. They live in the abandoned place. The bad guys are.

Yeah. And they have no means to support themselves other than by carrying out these weird veiled crimes that they try to dress up as something otherworldly, which suggests that they're geniuses. Right. So very, very smart people living in squalor and are jobless. Yeah. Was this correct? Yeah. So it says that out of the 27 villains in the original Scooby-Doo, where are you run, 23 of the 27 are motivated by monetary gain via theft, smuggling or land speculation. And like you said, if these people are geniuses, why are they like I'm going to squat in this abandoned mansion so I can gain ownership of it? Right. It's all very strange.

Yeah. And they point out that the talents that these people have are indicate a very wide variety of specific schooling, right? Yeah. Two were PhDs, two or three were PhDs. Two were lawyers. One had an ability to produce forged paintings. One could repair boats. One was a magician. Right. The stunt man. So these are highly skilled, highly specialized professions that these people are trained in or capable of doing, but yet they're out of work and they're pulling off these very elaborate schemes rather than just having a job in their profession. Yeah. And even Scooby-Doo, when they go into a nice vacation spot, it's run down and abandoned.

It's like Soviet level vacation spot. Yeah, pretty much. So I thought this was a great one. It was good. At the very least, they had some reason to not just have it be like normal society that they were living in. And when you go back and look at them, they were weird, weird settings for shows. Really sparsely populated. Because it's animated. There's no reason to do that. I could see if you were like, oh, we don't have much of a budget, so we got to go shoot at this abandoned amusement park. Like if they are at a restaurant, they're almost invariably the only people there. Have you ever noticed that? Yeah.

It's like a really empty series. It's cool. It makes it a little more haunting. I like it. You ready for the last one? All right. I think we've waited well long enough. This one is based on the television hospital procedural drama, St. Elsewhere. Right. Which St. Elsewhere, if you watched it, or even if you didn't, and you just are a fan of famous endings of TV series, St. Elsewhere was very famous for its ending in that also famous for having a bunch of like big stars early on in their careers. Yeah, Howie Mandel, Denzel. Yeah. Ed Begley. Yeah. Begs. A lot of other people.

But it very famously ended with, at the very end, it showed a shot of the hospital with the snow falling, and then you pull back and you realize that that was actually a snow globe held by a boy. Right. And it's kind of mind-blowing. It's like, oh my God. Right. Because again, this is like, was it real? If you watched E.R. or anything, Scrubs, what any normal show about hospital life. And it's about hospital life. That's what St. Elsewhere was about. It was weird and quirky, but it was about a hospital. So the idea that the last scene of I think six seasons, yes, six years, 137 episodes about a life at a hospital and the characters that inhabited

and worked at this hospital. Yeah. The hospital's in a snow globe. This is totally out of left field, right? Yeah. Make it even weirder in walks who had up to this point been the director of surgery, I think, Donald Westfall. He's the medical director of St. Elsewhere. Yeah. He walks in. He's clearly not a doctor. He's not dressed like one. He's like a construction guy. Yeah. The way he's talking, he's super like blue collar all of a sudden. And he walks into the room where the boy holding the snow globe whose name we will find out is Tommy Westfall. He is Donald Westfall's son in the series, St. Elsewhere. Yeah. He had been on the show, but he was never like a big character. No. And he had autism and in walks Donald Westfall,

who's now a construction worker and says, he's talking to his own father. He's like, I don't get it pops. He just sits around and looks at that snow globe all day. I wonder what he's thinking in his head, which suggests pretty strongly that everything about St. Elsewhere, all 137 episodes, took place in the mind of Tommy Westfall, this boy with autism, who's sitting there staring at his snow globe. Yeah. I mean, in fact, it's really, it was even more on the nose than that. He actually says, I don't understand this autism thing, Bob. He's my son. I talk to him. I don't even know if he can hear me. He sits there all day long in his own world staring at that toy. What's he thinking about? Right. Like they didn't need

to say all that. They should have just to me showed that and showed him coming in as a construction guy. Right. And maybe just looked long, longingly at the sun, but he's kind of like, you get it everyone. So America is sitting there like what? Yeah. At the time, this is what 1988, I think when it went off the air. All of America was just like, what just happened? That's really weird. But then in 2002, it started to get even weirder, right? Yeah. Because there's a TV writer named Dwayne McDuffie and he wrote a post called Six Degrees of St. Elsewhere and he points out, wait everybody, if all of St. Elsewhere took place just in Tommy Westfall's mind, then that means that there's a significant amount of NBC shows that also are just in Tommy Westfall's mind.

It's come to be called the Tommy Westfall Hypothesis or the Tommy Westfall universe. Multiverse. Okay. Yeah. And it just spreads and spreads and spreads. And there's a really good, this a paste article called Tommy's World, the TV legacy of St. Elsewhere's Tommy Westfall universe is pretty much the definitive outside post on it. Yeah. And it lays out a pretty good thread of how shows are connected. And since they're connected, that means that they're all taking place in the mind of this boy with autism, Tommy Westfall. Right. And it goes a little something like this. Some of the doctors from St. Elsewhere went to Cheers one time. Okay. So that means Cheers is in Tommy Westfall's mind.

Frazier was a spin off of Cheers. Check. So that means Frazier isn't real. Yeah. You getting this? We don't need to say that after each one, do we? I think it really drives the point home. The John Larroquette show, which was actually pretty good. John Larroquette's great. And that show was very underrated. But the lead character played by John Larroquette was John Hemingway. He called in one time on Frazier's talk show on Frazier. He was one of the call ins as that character. Right. Thank you. So now John Larroquette's universe is in Tommy Westfall's mind. That's right. So on the John Larroquette show itself, they mention Yo-Yo Dine as a company.

A tech company. Right. Yeah. And in Star Trek, Yo-Yo Dine made technology used by the enterprise crew. Yo-Yo Dine. Right? Right. Yo-Yo Dine. So that means Star Trek is in Tommy Westfall's mind. That's right. Yo-Yo Dine also appears again in Angel, the TV's Josh Whedon's Angel. It was part of the, I think he was a client of the law firm Wolfram and Hart on Angel. Okay. And then Wolfram and Hart was representation to another tech company called Weyland Utani, which made tech on the TV show Firefly. Yeah. Things are getting deep now. Right. So now Firefly is in Tommy Westfall's mind as well.

Well, then Weyland Utani ship was in a spaceship graveyard on the series in Britain, Red Dwarf. Right. And then bring it home. And then the TARDIS is in the Hanger Bay of the ship Red Dwarf on the show. So that means that Firefly, Red Dwarf, and then Doctor Who are all in the mind of Tommy Westfall because all of them are connected back to saying elsewhere. And as the author of this paste article points out, this is a normal thread. Yeah. It's spread to something like more than 400 TV shows being implicated as being in the imagination of Tommy Westfall. Yeah. I think the last count I saw was 419 shows. It's so amazing. Which, you know, if they just get one more,

then all of a sudden it's a weed theory. Right. Yeah. Pretty great. Tell them about John Munch, though. He's like the all-star character from Tommy Westfall universe. All right. That was Belzer's character on Homicide Life on the Street. Right. And that was apparently a spin-off from saying elsewhere. It was related to it somehow. Yeah. I think so, officially related. But then Munch was on a bunch of different shows. Yeah. Like his character, not just the guy who played him. Yeah. But he just popped up in different shows all over the place, not even necessarily just on NBC. Oh, yeah. He was on X-Files and that was Fox, wasn't it? Yeah.

Law and Order. He was on The Wire. Yeah. And he was on 30 Rock. Yeah. So Munch is just sitting there since he was already connected to saying elsewhere. Any show he pops up on, he's obviously in the same universe as saying elsewhere, which, again, is in Tommy Westfall's mind. So most of the television in the United States doesn't exist. Yeah. It doesn't exist, except in the mind of a boy with autism who likes a snow globe back in 1988. I wonder how much of that was, I mean, not preplanned, but... Zero from what I understand. Well, they clearly meant to show, though, that saying elsewhere was a figment of his imagination. Right.

But I don't think they even stopped and thought, oh, well, that means chooses, too. Well, and then most of that stuff came after saying elsewhere, too. So I wonder then if someone kind of ran with it, like if there's this inside cabal and the WGA, where people are trying to tie these things together still. It's like putting a Wilhelm scream in. Yeah, which we did incorrectly. We tried once. We tried. Double thumbs up from Jerry. So funny. Well, yeah, that was just, that was an SYSK gym. Yep. You got anything else? No, sir. Well, if you want to know more about TV fan theories,

you can go find them on the internet. So go look. Send one in, though, if you have one that we didn't talk about. Yeah, a good one, though. We defined what a fan theory is. Okay, so a good one. Yeah, and nothing from lost. Yeah. Yeah, just don't bother. If you already said all that stuff. So since I said I already said all that stuff, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this hidden whiskey. Remember our live show in Vancouver? We talked about the Canadian club had a very special promo in the 80s where they hid cases of whiskey all over the world, like a big scavenger hunt. And not all of that whiskey was found. Remember that? Yeah, I remember. So this guy, Chris Ortloff,

writes in about that. He said one of them was hidden in Lake Placid, New York a year before the 1980 Olympics and supposedly was never found. And a few years ago, more than three decades later, my mother picked up the trail when she discovered that it was possibly still out there. Nice. I love it. This guy's mom was like, what? Free whiskey? I think she was just like, sounds like an adventure. Sure, I'm just kidding. Or maybe she wanted the free whiskey, too. A fan of cryptic crossword puzzles, word games, and snowshoeing, the allure was too much for her to pass up. Well, there you have it. Yeah, plus she really liked whiskey. She tracked down a man in Connecticut who had previously searched for it, spoke with customer service at Canadian

Club, even. And with a couple of other leads, she spent months turning over the clues, checking current and historical maps, and hiking through the woods and fields around Lake Placid. I love this guy's mom. I sat down with her a few times with my thinking cap on in hopes of unraveling the mystery, as did many of her friends and relatives. We have lots of research and speculation amassed as a result. And I was really kind of nervous reading this. I was like, she found it. She didn't find it. Sadly, after all the effort and intrigue, we still have no idea where it is. Maybe some kids took it years ago. Could be completely buried by leaves and twigs by now. Or maybe it's still waiting to be found and someone else can crack the case, so to speak.

Blame it on leaves and twigs. If you or any listeners want a chance of some by now vintage Canadian whiskey, though, or the very least, an enriching walk through the pristine Northern New York wilderness, the clues as originally printed in the CC ad are as follows. And then he gave them to me. So you can just look that up on the internet. They're out there. It's really an honor. You keep them to yourself? Well, I mean, I can't read them all. It's like super long. Get out your decoder pins. Happy hunting and do share one with me if you find it. That is from Chris Ortloff. Thanks, Ortloff. We appreciate that. You have the last name of a person who's only called by their last name. And Mrs. Ortloff or, at the very least, your mom. I don't know if that's

her name. Madam. Madam Ortloff. Ooh, I like that. The great explorer and adventurer. That's how she shall forever be known. Yeah. Well, thanks, Ortloff and Madam Ortloff. If you want to get in touch with us to tell us something cool that your mom's done, we want to hear that kind of thing just in time for Mother's Day 2. Yeah. You can tweet to us at S-Y-S-K podcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to StuffPodcasts.HowStuffWorks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, StuffYouShouldKnow.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts on myHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Hey there. I'm Maya Schunker, host of the podcast, A Slight Change of Plans. In our new season, we'll hear personal stories of change. And I'll talk with scientific experts on how we can live happier and healthier lives. We'll hear from social scientists Medupe Akinola, who studies stress and its benefits, and comedian Hassan Minhaj, who talks about the pitfalls of having a job that depends on whether or not people like him. Listen to A Slight Change of Plans on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Rosie O'Donnell, and I've got a new podcast called Onward with me, Rosie O'Donnell, on iHeart. Mostly this part of my life is just about moving forward. And I thought, what a wonderful way to do it with good friends

across a tiny table and just have a heartfelt conversation. Listen to Onward with Rosie O'Donnell, a proud part of the outspoken podcast network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm looking for a show where you don't have to look far to see yourself. Welcome to the Professional Homegirl Podcast. I'm your host, Ebony, and every Tuesday I interview women of color from all walks of life. And all of my guests are anonymous. So you're here stories from survivors to spirituality and family secrets. And let's not forget about the professionals out there, okay? Listen to the Professional Homegirl Podcast with Ebony, presented to you by the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.