Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: The Sandman

Episode Date: March 20, 2019

Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream! But who is the sandman? We'll tell you in today's edition of short stuff.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and there's Jerry. Let's get busy.

Bring me a dream, Josh. That's a good song. It's catchy. It is. It's been in some movies, including Halloween. Right. It played during the end credits of Halloween. And? I can't remember for the life of me.

I know that there's an even better example of it. I can't remember, Chuck. I'm sorry. Back to the future. Oh, really? Yeah. Was it the credits? No, it was in the night.

It can only be used in the credits. Right. No, Marty goes back to 1955, and I believe it's one of the first songs he hears when he goes into Hill Valley. And that song, very famously, Mr. Sandman, is what we're talking about, everyone, was a big, big hit in the year 1955 from the Cordettes.

Nice. That's a great band name, too. The Cordettes, yeah. Acapello Ladies. What more do you want in the 1950s? Nothing. Maybe Civil Rights, that kind of thing, but still. Well, good point.

At least you could hear that song while you were fighting for them. That's right. So this Sandman that's mentioned in the Mr. Sandman is actually not a 50s character. It was actually from way earlier, probably out of Central and Eastern Europe. And it was one of those very famous characters

that arose from Central and Eastern Europe's preoccupation with the duality of darkness and light in the same human being, just like in Santa Claus. That's right. When you wake up in the morning, and you have, we call them eye boogers in our house, what do you call them? Sleep.

I guess if anything. You have sleep in your eye? Crusties, we don't have an official house name for it, but these are names I've always called it. Yeah, sleep, that's what we called it in our house growing up, you have sleep in your eye. I think that's the last time I had a house name for it. Yeah.

So I've called them eye boogers, I don't know where I got that, but that's technically. Well, that's different. Huh? An eye booger occurs during the daytime. Sleep is like the crusty stuff that you wake up with. Not in my house.

Oh, hey, Chuck, let me ask you this. Have you ever woken up with such a copious amount of sleep or eye boogers, whatever you want to call it? Don't say what you're about to say. That like your eye is crusted shut, like you can't open it? I knew you'd say that. Has that ever happened to you?

No. It's atrocious. You've had that happen? You have to be very sick, but yes, it has happened to me before, and I'm like, I can't open my eye. Oh, that's so gross. Well, there's a name for it.

There's a real scientific name of that crust, R-H-E-U-M. Is that pronounced room? I think room, yeah. All right. That's the scientific name. It's a discharge that dries up, it comes out of your eyes, it dries up when you're asleep. And if you are from Northern Europe,

and it was a few hundred years ago, you might be told, or might have been told, that the Sandman had come and visited you and sprinkled sand in your eyes while you slept, or magic dust at least. And that's what it was. And you would think maybe as a child, like why would a Sandman wanna come

and sprinkle magic sand in my eyes to make my eyes crusty, it doesn't make any sense. Well, apparently this is a byproduct of the mechanism by which the Sandman spun your dreams. It was the Sandman who was responsible for your dreams, which is why the Cordettes asked the Sandman to bring them a dream, because that's where your dreams came from, the Sandman.

That's right. We don't know exactly where the Sandman comes from, but we do have some ideas, and we're gonna talk about those right after this break. Oh. [♪ upbeat music playing On the podcast, HeyDude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, HeyDude,

bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use HeyDude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends,

and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist?

So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to HeyDude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast,

Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation?

If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man.

And so, my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life.

Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast, and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, so I promised the origin of the Sandman. We don't know for positives.

It was not Metallica. But in 18th century German dictionaries, that was, um, like this is the first time I believe it was on the paper, on paper, on the paper. I just turned into a German. What's wrong with Todd? Oh, he's on the paper. Der Sandman kommt, means Sandman is coming.

And the whole idea was that the Sandman would come along and parents would tell the story, um, in Germany. Although that one woman says she didn't think it was German folklore, right? She thinks that it kind of became popularized in Germany, much like, um, you know, like our conception of Santa Claus probably came from that area, but it was maybe from a different area altogether,

like maybe Norway or Finland or something. But it was just, you know, it was the Germans, the German immigrants who really brought the concept to America. All right, well, I think that's what she means. Gotcha, because that didn't make sense to me. Regardless, in 1818, there was a writer named Eta Hoffman that wrote Der Sandman with two ends.

And it's, you know, it's just like the Grimm's brother stuff. It's this horrifying nursery rhyme, or not nursery rhyme, but sort of a story, a kid's story about a nurse telling a story about this creature who throws sand in your eyes of little kids who don't go to sleep and your eyes fall out of your sockets. Then the Sandman collects those eyeballs, puts them in a bag and lives on the dark side of the moon,

goes home and carries them there, and then feeds those eyeballs to his children. There you go, that's what happens with the Sandman. And it makes a lot of sense because especially if you were a 18th or early 19th century German, one good way to get kids to go to sleep was to just terrify them with the story. But it also provides a physical function too,

because what is the appropriate reaction when somebody tells you something like that, that a person exists and is going to come to your bedside soon, it's to shut your eyes tightly and to keep them shut ostensibly until you wake up in the morning. So it's pretty clever if you really think about it. Sure.

But the dark side of the moon thing, that's just, that's, I mean, like icing on the cake, you know? It just makes me feel good knowing that in like 18, 18 parents were struggling with putting their kids to bed. I think they always have. I think so, you don't think about that though. I think that from the time that it became not okay socially to lay on your kid until they weren't unconscious

and then went to sleep, from that moment on, it became a struggle to get your kid to go to sleep. Yeah, very interesting. Flash forward a bit to 1841, when none other than Hans Christian Andersen put out a fairy tale. Do you want to pronounce this? I can, are you ready for this?

I was practicing, I looked it up. Really? Ulla Luke E. Wow. And it's not dead on, but it's okay. Yeah, anytime I see one of those letters that looks like the null set, I have no idea what to do with it.

But we finally know how to pronounce Ulla, or Ulla. Ulla? Yeah, do you remember in the Lego episode, we call them all Kirk Christiansen? Oh, that's right, it was Ulla Kirk Christiansen. Yep, that's it. So finally, after basically a decade, we have corrected ourselves,

but that is the inventor of Lego's name pronounced correctly. Yeah, because I remember joking like, oh, Kirk Christiansen. Yeah, and we met a guy once at, I can't remember, some telecommunications company, and he was the president, and we called them Oll. And they corrected us, but it was just lost on us that that was not right.

And I think we, up to this point, up to this moment, we've called everybody Oll. All right, so what is it again? Olla what? Ulla, Ulla Luke E. Okay, so that's the story, that's the fairy tale. It means old shut your eye. Yeah, that's a good title.

I think so too, but it's weird that Hans Christian Andersen doesn't just call him the Sandman. He does everything but call him the Sandman. Well, because Vial accounts, he got it from Dursanman, right? Yeah, for sure. But I mean, was he worried he was ripping off Dursanman or something?

I'm not sure why he didn't just call it Dursanman. If the Sandman or Sandman was already a widely recognized figure. I don't know. At any rate, in the story, Ulla Luke E. Good. Very good.

With Dress and Silk, jammies, very nice, stylish, and would carry an umbrella, colorful umbrella. And I guess, I mean, it doesn't really say would he do the same thing basically? He would not, he would squirt milk in your eye rather than, yes, rather than sand. Which is another, it's like, come on, Andersen, you're a beloved children's author.

You can just go with the original. Yeah, and he also, it says in here, that he introduces a boy in the story to death and sexuality. Which is a little odd, but it is typical like children's fairy tale, nursery rhyme, children's story kind of thing, where there's this weird duality

between people who are really, really kind. They also have a shadow side, or it can be a shadow alter ego, like with Santa. And I think what was Santa's alter ego? Was it Black Peter? I don't remember. The very least it was Krampus, but I know that some of those traditions,

there was like a dark figure that would like, that was the guy who would steal the children who had been naughty, and then it eventually translated into Santa leaving coal in your stocking if you've been naughty. That's right. But prior to that, it was like, you'd just be kidnapped and eaten by Santa's heavy hitter.

This is the same thing. The Sandman has the same thing. And in this Hans Christian Andersen story, Ulla has an alter ego, a brother, who rather than visiting the kids' bedsides to bring their dreams, visits everybody's bedside once to bring death. And his name is also Ulla Lucaia.

Yeah, he would walk in, say, exit light, enter night. Forever. Take your stand. It's often never, never land forever kid. Oh, I always thought it was take my hand. Well, I think that's a different verse, right? Oh, okay. I got in trouble last time

and talked about Metallica on the show, so. One of the, you did for what? I think I said that album's stunk or something. It probably did, depending on the album you were talking about. Unless it was And Justice for All or any preceding album. Yeah, Ride the Lightning. That was a good one.

Still holds up. Agreed. Another verse goes, don't steal singles from our band. But in the end, the story of Hans Christian Andersen wrote was just like all the Grimm's fairy tales. There's always this dark, awful thing and it's usually embedded in a lesson to teach your children. And in this case, the lesson is go to sleep now

because I'm tired. And we're both tired, so we're gonna end this short stuff right here. That's right. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com.