Stuff You Should Know - SYSK Gets Weird Playlist: Mermaids: Not a real thing

Episode Date: September 18, 2026

Mermaids aren't real. That much we know. But the history and lore of these magical and sometimes menacing creatures of the sea is pretty interesting stuff. Learn all about these half women/half fish today.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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That's a pretty fun episode from what I remember, and it is called Mermaids, colon, not a real thing. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from How StuffWorks.com. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Yeah, that's right. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Jerry's over there in the ether, floating, possibly not existing. Who knows? And this is stuff you should know. That's right. Just a couple of merman trying to make their way in the world. Yeah. Trying to keep their tails wet. Yeah. You know? Yeah.

Because if that thing dries out, you've seen splash. Yeah. It's toast. No. She dried out and she was just fine. Oh, I thought, oh, you're thinking of E.T. When he turned all white and dried out. No, I was thinking of Splash because I couldn't remember.

It was one of my favorite movies as a kid. It was a cute movie. It was one of those early HBO movies, early Tom Hanks, which I'm a big fan of early Tom Hanks. And I just thought it was a really fun, funny movie. John Candy? Yeah, it was a great movie. What's his name? played the evil man trying to expose her.

Eugene Levy, I think. Oh, was he the bad guy? Yeah, he was the one that you know that's a high quality movie when Eugene Levy's the bad guy. Yeah, it was the SCTV crew. And he actually tried to spray her and get her wet so she would, and in fact did turn into a mermaid on the sidewalk.

So that's what it was, if she got wet, she turned to a mermaid. Right. She got dried, no problem. Yes, and Darrell Hannah, of course. He was running around with Neil Young now. Oh, really? Oh really?

Yeah, how about that couple? Huh. Sure. Why not? They're both environmentalists. But there's a lot of turquoise in that bedroom. I wonder if you hook up with Neil Young, or anyone like that, if you're sort of a new relationship

and not like the wife they had for 40 years. If you're like, yeah, play a song, why don't you? What? Like, I wonder if you ask them to play music. Oh, like you're actually into them? Yeah, like if you're Billy Joel's new 25-year-old wife, Do you ever say like, hey honey, play me a tune? Right.

Play that one that you wrote 10 years before I was conceived. I think what I'm saying is I would have a hard time being with Neil Young and not every night after dinner just kind of nudging the guitar toward him. Oh, I gotcha. And saying, I'd love to hear old man. Yeah. Please, baby, one for me. And yeah, he says I played that song 45,000 times. Yeah, I would guess that.

Well, I can tell you, I would, yeah, I would guess that once you reach a certain point in playing a song, you never wanna hear that song or even think about it existing again. Yeah. But then you still have to play it. Oh, I try not to think about that when I'm at those shows. Yeah, it makes me feel bad for them. Like they might as well be, you know,

in the monkey house or something. You just throw them bananas at them. And God bless the people who really bring it still. Sure. Where you feel like, man, they're playing that song for me. tonight. At a man? Does he still bring it? He's just who came to mine.

Whereas when I saw the police on their reunion, they were phoning it in. Really? Yeah. Even Stuart Copeland? Well, I mean, they were playing the songs, but it just, it didn't look like they were enjoying themselves at all. It looked like a total money grab. Sure. They entered from three separate entrances and exited from three separate. Oh, yeah.

And I got the feeling they didn't even, like, speak much. That's like, I was reading an article on the Ramones. The Rolling Stone one recently? Yeah, I guess it was. Yeah, they had a great article on them. So yeah, I guess it was recently. It was definitely Rolling Stone. So, okay, did you read it?

Yeah, it was awesome. But yeah, like, they would just, like, get on the bus and not speak to one another. Yeah. Go to the next town and get on stage and play and then come off stage and not, like they would speak on stage because they had to. Yeah, that was it.

And apparently, well, at least Joey and who was his big foil? D, D, D.D. those ones who really hated each other. Yeah. Supposedly they didn't speak at all for like 25 years straight. Right, because Joey stole Didi's love of his life. Right.

And then they were in the band together still after that. It was just like T.S. man. So weird. So like a lot of songs, especially ones like the KKK took my baby away, that's about Joey stealing Didi's girlfriend. Wow. This is a great article.

Yeah. Good read. Yeah. So back to Splash. Funny movie about a mermaid, and we're gonna talk about mermaids here, and mostly what we're gonna cover is the lore and history

and the mythology of the mermaid, because here's a little giveaway. There are no mermaids. What? Did you look up like pictures of real mermaid sightings and stuff? Yeah, and it's the same thing as pictures of Bigfoot sightings and pictures of UFO sightings. Some weird distant blur that, like,

You can't, it could be kelp. Or it's such an obviously doctored photo. What would be fun though is if we had a time machine, forget killing Hitler. We do. Way back machine. Oh yeah, that's right. I can't believe we haven't put this into good use. Yeah.

Forget like, you know, saving the world or keeping the dodo from going extinct. I would take some of these doctored photos that are just so easy to make today back to like the 1920s and be like, look at this. And they go, yeah, I know. We still believe in that stuff. With your aim being what? Just to freak them out. Oh, I figured there'd be a money angle. Oh, yeah.

Josh is traveling Wonder Emporium. It's not a bad idea. Where in which you just show them photos. But I charge them like 2016 rates and no one can possibly afford that so I go out of business almost immediately. Right, there's like one guy in the town's like, I'll pay 2750 to see those.

Right. Step right up. Town's only billionaire. That's a great idea. No one ever thought of that. It was a terrible idea like from beginning to end. Forget going back and betting on the stock market or the outcome of the World Series.

I'm going to go back and set up a business doomed to fail. All right, so let's talk about mermaid lore. Well, we can start here in the more modern age because there are still places that try and take people for money like we were just talking about even. Yeah, like me. In fact, in Israel on the coast there, they actually have a town called Kiryat Yam.

And if you go to Kiryat Yam, you could win, how much money does he even say? Million bucks. Million American dollars. If you provide incontrovertible evidence of the mermaid that is reputed to live there and appear at sunset. As of 2009 was the first. exciting there.

Yeah, and of course what that is is a ploy to try and get tourists and come and spend money in the town and look for the mermaid. Sure. Come on, chumps. We welcome you to Kiryat Yam. I'm sure Loch Ness has made plenty of tourist money over the years. Apparently they have a standing offer as well and that's where the mayor of Kiriott Yam got the idea.

Yeah, great idea. Sure. And actually I saw that photo too. And it's kind of neat. I don't know what it is or who created it or whatever but there's allegedly a photo taken obviously from like a cliff down onto a beach. You know a beach that will have like a big slab of rocks surrounded by sand. Yeah, sand and mermaids.

Right. There's a mermaid on that rock just kind of looking out of the sea. Yeah. And of course, it could be anything. It could be totally doctored. Who knows. But it's from a distance. And at least they didn't like go full out, like perfect picture of a mermaid or whatever.

It's just suggestive enough that people who believe in such. things would be like, right there. There's a picture of a mermaid, you know? Totally. So that was found in 2009, or that surfaced in 2009. And since then the towns. Surfaced. Right.

Since then the towns had that standing offer. Correct. So the really interesting thing to me about mermaids is the mythology. Did you take mythology in college at all? Yeah, I did. I always wanted it to interest me more than it did. Me too.

It was just, I don't know if it wasn't explained to me quite well enough or just the ancient's non-bicameral mind wasn't fused together enough to interest people in the modern age. Well, I think so. I think the stories themselves, as far as good storytelling, we're just lacking because a lot of them were just versions of one another. And there was usually a very basic premise or moral, Right.

And in the case of mermaids, a lot of times, there were, a lot of folklore even was rooted in misogyny. Oh yeah, for sure. You know, there'll be a woman to come along and screw your life up. Right, or if you screw up a woman, she will kill your children or something like that. Like women were not to be trusted

and they were murderous and duplicitous in a lot of mythology, it's true. The old hag. So it was in various, I mean, hundreds and hundreds of, of books and text, including the Talmud, believe it or not. And we've talked about Pliny the Elder,

the Beer, and the Dude. Yeah. Rome's Pliny the Elder, he, in his natural history, talked about a mermaid-like creature called... The Nereid. Yes. I think I'm pronouncing that correctly. Yeah, N-E-R-E-I-D.

That E-I is a tough transition. It is. Because you want to say like N-R-I-D. Yeah. These were sea nymphs, half-human, half-fish mermaids. And he also talked about sea men. And we should point out that mermin, we made the joke about us being merman.

I believe mermen were even first on the literary scene, is that correct? Well, first at least with mythology or theology, I guess, there's a Babylonian god of the sea named EIA, Ea, EA sports. Sports. Just EA. And he pops up in Babylonian mythology from, I think, 4,000 years ago.

And they think that he's actually the progenitor of, or the predecessor, I should say, of Poseidon, who is the Greek god of the sea. And Neptune, who's the Roman god of the sea. Because the Greeks gave us Western culture, but they just walked around to all of the neighboring cultures and picked their favorite parts and put them together. Yeah. And that was definitely one of them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, we talked in our, I guess it was in the folklore and fairy tale episodes that were twin episodes almost. Yeah. About the original Little Mermaid and how, you know, she was Disneyified to the fullest. But the original story was far darker. Darker, but also even more touching by far. Yeah. I went back and read the last section of it. Well, give me a summary at the end.

So at the end, this is where it dramatically differs from the Disney story. The Little Mermaid is scorned for another woman. The guy she loves chooses someone else and marries her. And the Little Mermaid is like, dude, I gave up my tail for you. I think a witch has my tongue kind of thing. And I want to get back my life.

So her sisters came and bring her this ritual knife and say, you can convert back to a mermaid if before dawn you plunge this knife into this dude's heart, this guy who loves heart, and you get some of his blood on your feet, you will regrow your tail and you can jump into the sea and everything will be just fine again. So she goes and she finds the guy sleeping with his new bride beside him and she just can't do it.

She throws the knife into the sea and becomes sea foam. She disintegrates and becomes seafoam. So she gives her own happiness up for this guy's, right? And dies as a result. But even better than that, when she turns into seafone, she becomes a different mythical creature, like basically an air nymph that goes around like helping humans and she can possibly get into heaven

if she helps people for 300 years. Hans Christian Anderson wrote it way better than I just recounted it. A lot less ums and likes. Yeah. But it's pretty, it's worth reading. Pliny also talked about merman back in the day and there would be merman or seamen

who would at night climb up onto ships, is a quote, that's why I'm reading it, weird, upon which the side of the vessel where he seated himself would instantly sink down, and if you remain there any considerable time, even go underwater. And that was something that we will see as we talk more about mermaids is they are very,

they're often either an omen, that's something bad is gonna happen to sailors or coastal dwelling people. Yeah. Or they actually directly cause harm to sailors or coastal dwelling people. Yeah, and most times under the guise of something beautiful and like,

like a siren. Yeah. They are often, well, I don't, we haven't even described one. Surely you know that a mermaid has the head and body torso of a woman, human woman. Usually with huge boobs.

Yeah, if you're talking about a sailor's account. Right. Sure. You're like, oh yeah, she was busty. Did I mention the boobs? Yes, you did, sir, seven times. And from the, you know, torso down, she's a fish. Maybe web feet, maybe not, very graceful, very fast,

and always beautiful. It depends. Oh yeah? Yeah, there was some of legend that were not, ugly. Really? Yeah. Not ugly or they were ugly. That they were not in parentheses, beautiful,

comma, ugly. Well, I hadn't heard about that. Yeah, it's in here. I thought, no, I'm just, I must have missed that part. It's far more frequent what you were saying, that they were beautiful and alluring. Okay. But we'll talk more about that after we take a break, huh?

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on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Pods, or wherever you get your podcasts. Lisa, we should tell them about our new show. Oh my God, Lexi. We have a new podcast. It's called Don't Lie to Me. I'm Lexi You want to. We're two best friends, 22 years apart, but so close at heart. And I'm Lisa Di Giulio, the old one, which means we have wildly different references, occasionally different opinions, and at this point in my 50s, I've lived it all. I'm not going to get anyone fighting. That is wild. I learned that about you today. Now in my 30s, being the founder of new shoes, good taste is my business, and I've always got something to say. If men were just honest about this, there would be so much more peace in the world.

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Listen on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I don't really care. All right, Chuck. We were saying that for the most part, mermaids are beautiful. And one of the reasons why they are supposed to be beautiful is because they are frequently accused of luring men, sailors out to sea to their death.

Yeah. And how do you do that? You do that one of two ways. You have a beautiful singing voice? Yep. Or you just straight up look good yourself. That's right. And if you have a beautiful singing voice,

you're a siren, in which case you would not be a mermaid because a siren is half bird, half woman. Yes. And they don't even necessarily live in the water, or near the water, they're sometimes described as hanging out in fields. Yeah. I guess sometimes you can be very pretty

and be a good singer, right? You're a mermaid? Mm-hmm. But the, yeah, it could be. Yeah, sure. You'd be, uh, who am I to disagree? You'd be Beyonce. Right.

Or Alicia Keys. Right. Or Adele. Oh, you know who I like is Rihanna. Oh yeah, she's great. She's very pretty. That part in, what's it called? This is The End?

And she played herself? Yeah, yeah. She was pretty great. She was pretty funny. Michael Sarah like spanked her and she just immediately turned around and smack the heck out of them. Yeah, I enjoyed parts of that movie,

especially Michael Sarah. Yeah. Playing like a cooked out jerk. That was really funny. Yeah. So back to the beautiful mermaids though There was one in 1000 BCE in Syria And her name, how would you pronounce that?

Adirgaddis Oh, I think you nailed it. Yeah? All right, we'll go with that. And you'll see a lot of duality in a lot of these stories And she was one for sure that was a protector, a goddess. I think she protected the fertility of her people And watched over them

and fell in love with a human man, as you will often see in a lot of these stories. A dude. Yeah, a dude, and it was fine for a little while, like in most stories, and then it goes south. Yeah. And she kills him. She crushed him with her greatness.

Oh, I thought like her big tail or something. I don't know, well, she wasn't a mermaid yet. This is where she becomes a mermaid. Oh, that's true, that's right. I forgot about that. So she accidentally kills him, and then is very shame, throws herself into the lake because she wants to become a fish.

And she's so beautiful that it only works half as good. I really can't figure out the math on that. But I guess she's just so beautiful that the human beauty part of her is like, no, I won't be a fish. Just the lower half can be a fish. Yeah. Because she had toe fungus, so that was easily overcome.

But her face was really nice, so the fish part just couldn't overcome that. That's right. So she ended up a mermaid. weird story. But not just weird like, like, oh, it's foreign or anything. I'm not being xenophobic, but it really like,

says a lot about humanity and like how we think of things. Like, no, she was so good looking that this magic couldn't even overcome that. Yeah, that's a good point. We place a lot of value on that kind of thing. All right, should we move on to Germany? Yeah, this one was kind of interesting to me because Germany's landlocked.

Oh, I never really thought about that. Yeah, what does Germany have a mermaid mythology? Well, I mean, they have lakes. I guess. But mermaids are 100% ocean dwellers, aren't they? No, there are some river dwellers. Oh, that's right. Although I think the sirens were specifically river.

Well, in the German myth, it was a river dweller, correct? Mm, okay, yeah, the nixes? Yeah, and they lured men into the river. Yeah, it was a river. and so they could drown them. Like again, the call of the siren, come in here, look how beautiful I am. Right, check these out.

And now I'm holding your head underwater. Right. And you can't breathe anymore. And the guy's like, I regret nothing. But this duality that we're talking about is what you see a lot of times in mermaid myths from West Africa, the Mami Wada, the Mother Water. She was a mermaid who was very nurturing,

and very loving. If you didn't cross her. Yeah, exactly. That's where the duality comes in. I don't even know that's duality. I think that's just a complex person. Good complex character there. Yeah? Yeah.

So she's great, but when you cross her, she's murderous. Sure, all right. And that's what she did actually. She had, if you were loyal to her, you could be wealthy from her magic mirror in comb. But if you betrayed her, then what, this article says is she rains down fury and destruction.

Right. Right out of an action. She reign the H word from above. But the duality is an important part of it because the physical creature itself is two things. Sure. And they are also two things emotionally and morally. So the mermaid or merman or murfoke

as they're call in this article. Are they really? Yeah. So murfoke are half fish, half people, right? Yeah. But they're not anywhere near, unique in the pantheon of mythological creatures throughout the ages, right?

There's, again, there's sirens, half birds, half women. There's just tons of, like the Minotaur, half man, half bull, the centaur was what, half goat or horse and half man? I don't remember that sounds right. I think half horse. And I was like, where did all these come from? I suspect a beastiality.

and it turns out I may be right. Oh yeah? What'd you find? There are some scholars out there who believe that this is the product of a much more relaxed attitude toward beastiality than we modern humans have today. Yeah. Yeah. I still never saw that documentary about the horse.

Yeah, it's a good one. Zoo. Yeah, I need that fell off my radar. Man, it's one of those ones where they largely do recreate. Like the whole thing's almost recreation. Right. And I usually am not hip on those. It doesn't feel like a documentary to me,

but that one changed my mind about that whole technique. They did it so well. Really? Yep. It's rough. I bet. It's rough. Especially like when you think about the animals as well. Yeah, of course.

You know? But there's more than just that that makes it rough. Man, I need to see that. So I guess we can talk a little bit about some eyewitness accounts. They're all bunk, of course, but they have happened in World War II. In World War II in Japan on Indonesia's Kai Islands, supposedly they encountered a monster on the beach

that had webbed hands and feet and was kind of part human, part fish. Yeah, it was like, look at these jazz hands, you can't do this. And then back in the day, some of our most revered explorers and adventurers reported seeing mermaids like John Smith and Henry Hunton.

and Columbus. John Smith. Yeah, what was, there's a good quote in here from Columbus because he wasn't too impressed. Yeah. He said, and here's the thing, I read that in his diary

he's referring to himself in the third person. Well, that says a lot. That's odd. Ricky Henderson. Right, or George Costanza. So he says that he saw some, oh yeah, the quote's on it. You got to read the quote.

He's out sailing around. La da-da-da-de-de-de-de. Oh, what is that? in the ocean. I think I'll take a look through my spying glass. The day before when the admiral was going to the, and the admiral is himself. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking.

He was the admiral of his fleet for sure. The day before when the admiral was going on to the Rio del Oro, that's the river of gold. He said he saw three mermaids who came quite high out of the water but were not as pretty as they are depicted. For somehow in the face they look like men. But I still thought about it.

Yeah. So what they think now, and I don't know how they substantiated this, is that Columbus was seeing manatees. Yeah. Have you seen manatees? Yeah, it looks nothing like a human. From enough of a distance though, you're like, wait a moment, what is that?

Especially if you've never seen a manatee before. I don't think it looks human like at all. From enough of a distance. You think? Mm-hmm. Yeah, I can see how somebody would, especially if you believe that mermaids existed. You see a manatee?

Maybe it's hard for me to just to... I can totally get that. Go there in that, put my mind in that kind of frame. In the frame of Christopher Columbus? Well, just to have never seen a mermaid, to have never seen a manatee, to be high on... On, what's the green stuff?

Arrowback scalps. Oh, my God. I just blanked on the green... Marijuana? No. The green... The green drink. Absinth.

I don't think Absinth was around with Columbus. Oh, you kidding me? No, I'm not. You shooting that stuff. I can kind of see it. So he maybe saw a manatee and he was like, eh, they're not so great looking after all. They're not that great.

What's everyone talking about? Yeah, he saw one. This is like Jimmy Carter in the UFOs. Like you're kind of surprised when you hear this that somebody cited it. Apparently Reagan said he saw UFOs as well. John Smith said he saw some. He liked what he saw.

He liked the look at the manatees because he said he fell in love with one with long green hair. Yeah, he said it wasn't bad looking or so it wasn't unattractive or something like that. Yeah. It was kind of a head, he hedged his bets a little bit. Yeah.

I guess he wanted to check the rest of her out. Yeah. And then he saw she had a tail and he's like, oh, can't go there. So what's going on here? Are they hallucinating because they've been on the high seas too long? That's what a lot of people say. Yeah.

Other people say that, again, they were predisposed to believing in mermaids because people thought mermaids existed. This was the age of exploration. So it's the beginning of the age of exploration, which means that before then, the oceans were largely unexplored. And there were tons of beliefs

in thousands of year old mythologies about creatures that lived in the sea. So if you thought that those things existed, then something that looked kind of like could be a mermaid. So that was probably, they were just, they're just cases of mistaken identity. They were highly suggestible.

Yeah, they did one on sea monsters, remember? We did, yeah. Yeah, that was a good one. I thought that one was going to be awful and it turned out pretty great. That episode? Yeah. Like I remember thinking like, this is not gonna go well.

Kind of like this one. Yeah. How do you think this one's going? Pretty great, all right. Well, let's take a break then and give each other a neck rub. And then we'll come back. More comfortable than ever.

All right. want to hear. Listen anytime, anywhere. Music, radio, podcasts, unlimited audio. It's on the free IHurt radio app. One app, no subscription. Always free. Grab the free app. Everywhere you go. Always free. Download the free IHard radio app today. I'm Hamza. And I'm Martin. And we're the hosts of Out of Character. It's a podcast. I know. There's a lot of them to listen to these days. How are you going to get to us? Well, there's a specific reason why you should listen to us. We are the best podcast in the entire world, I swear. I know, bold.

But why don't we list some of the things we might talk about on a regular episode? So sometimes we'll talk about, I don't know, the Uber driver we just had. And how nice they were, or if we tipped them or not, come and find out. Sometimes we'll talk about that weird news story from last week. It's the one you're thinking about, trust me. Or maybe we'll talk about music and what's happening in the underground or drama in music, or TV shows or the Met Gala and what the actors wore. What we're saying is we're not afraid to talk about everything under the sun.

And if you want to see what that's like, come join us. It's a place where everyone can hang out, anyone. Wherever you're from, whatever you're like, you're welcome. Listen out of character from Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Pods, or wherever you get your podcasts. Lisa, we should tell them about our new show. Oh my God, Lexi. We have a new podcast.

It's called Don't Lie to Me. I'm Lexi Youanu. We're two best friends, 22 years apart, but so close at heart. And I'm Lisa Di Giulio, the old one, which means we have wildly different references, occasionally different opinions, and at this point in my 50s, I've lived it all. I'm not going to get anywhere fighting. That is wild. I learned that about you today.

Now in my 30s, being the founder of new shoes, good taste is my business. And I've always got something to say. If men were just honest about this, there would be so much more peace in the world. We're going to talk about dating, relationships, beauty, getting older, and a little wiser. We're best friends, but we don't always agree. Because you told us how accommodating you are. Obviously, I would do what I think I could do to fight the fight, but there's only so much fight I can fight. Don't lie to me.

Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Liar. Listen on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts. or wherever you get your podcast. I don't really care. There is a dude.

I love this guy. His name is Carl Bants. And he, you're not a Carl Bants fan? Well, I'm not quite sure I understand unless... Did you read the article? Well, just to set it up. Okay, so a dude named Carl Bantz back in 1990,

he wrote an article in a legitimate journal, the journal Limnology and Oceanography, and they published it and it is an entirely tongue in cheek but totally played straight account of the extinct species mermaid. Yeah like where and he he surmises on like for real where they came from what their biology was where they why they left us. Yep that they were warm water dwelling that they ate human flesh which is why they lured people to their death. He goes so far as to say that they most likely only produced one or two offspring at a time

because the females of the species had two breasts and that was it. Okay. You know? Sure. Like this is the thought that this guy put into this article and the fact that he writes it totally straight. Yeah.

And like really gives it its due attention. Like it wasn't that like this is going to be a great idea and just the idea itself is hilarious. So I don't really have to put any effort into actual execution. he put effort into the execution and he did pretty good. I'm not knocking him, I guess. I just don't see why this journal

would put something like that out there even. I don't know. I mean, I guess he had a good sense of humor and maybe it was the April Fool's episode. I was wondering if that was the case too and I forgot to look if it was the April issue. Perhaps. He did use the words horny skin folds though.

Right. Their skin, he theorized, was not smooth scaled like a regular fish but it had, quote, horny skin folds. Like an armadillo? Yeah. What's interesting is I saw another account from 1830 in Scotland.

There's a town called Bembecula on the outer Hebrides, right? Which is like the outer islands, the archipelago. It's an archipelago, that's how you say that, right? Archipelago. Yeah. Either way, there's a town there.

String of islands. Coastal. Thank you. A coastal town where in 1830, the whole town swore they saw a mermaid and tried to grab the mermaid and the mermaid swam away. So some kid threw a rock at it and hit it in its back. And two days later they found it dead on shore

and they felt so bad about it that they- Kill the kid? They buried it. They gave it a funeral with like a casket and everything. Wow. And they said that it didn't have scales, that it had like kind of rough skin instead.

Horny skinfold. Yeah, they didn't use that term, but this is like a thing in 1830 in Scotland. Yeah, pretty interesting that when you read the account of it years later. That's like that, that's a band name by the way, horny skin folds?

Yeah, nice. Yeah, that is interesting. Maybe there's something there. Right. How do you keep the folds of the horny skinfold clean, you know? I bet like gunk gets trapped in there. Gross.

I don't know. Maybe that's the name of the first single, cleaning the folds. The other thing that Bance did in his article was explain probably why they're extinct now. He came to the conclusion that they're extinct. He said they were warm water, so they would have cohabitated

or shared their ecosystem with jellyfish. And as humans started to fish more and more of the sea, we upset the ecological balance. Jellyfish populations were allowed to boom, which is the case, and they stung the mermaids to death because the mermaids had, they lacked the blubber that would protect them, not just in cold water, but from jellyfish stings as well.

So they died out from jellyfish stings. Yeah, because their upper skin was just regular skin. Right. It wasn't the horny skin folds. Yeah. So it provided no protection. Exactly. Pretty good theory.

It's worth reading. Go check it out. It's called mermaids, their biology, culture, and demise. You can find like the full PDF online. Well, I think we have to address the animal planet, snafu. I don't know if they would call it a snafu. I think they would call it a ratings bonanza.

Yeah, which, what was the other, oh, when we talked about the Megalodon, when Discovery Channel aired a Megalodon documentary that appeared by all accounts to be true and was not. Same thing with mermaids, but they did it twice. They did. They did a sequel because it got, like you said, huge ratings.

And this was a documentary, well, not a documentary, it was a mockumentary that looked like, did you watch any clips or anything? Of the second one, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it looked like, you know, a show, like a hunting bigfoot crew, it's like, you know, we got this mermaid, we know where she is, and we're down here hunting,

and they... Three thousand feet below the surface. Yeah, and they interviewed a guy that looked like Zach Gallifanakis, if only it would have been Zach Galaphnackus, it would have made it much better. But, you know, And it was one of these shows were at the end,

and small lettering, well, it was probably not me small, but at the end of the credits, it's like, this was all made up, these are actors, and people still buy it. If you go online, people are still, like, arguing over the legitimacy or credentials of the marine geologist, Torsten Schmidt. That's a great name.

It is. And people are like, well, if he were a real scientist, he would have been published elsewhere besides this. And he's not published, and it's like, that's because he's not real. He's made up. Yeah, this is like settled. Right.

They didn't even pretend that it was real. So I don't know if that's the case or not. Well, I mean, they said it wasn't on the, at the end of the show. Okay, but they didn't come out and say everybody, everybody. Oh, well, I said you mean. Right. So actually, Noah, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

had to release, and they felt they needed to release a statement after the first one saying like, hey, mermaids don't exist, no evidence has ever been found. were Noah the end. And I bet they'd love that even. Oh, yeah. Oh my God, Noah's making a statement about this show. It's going to be all over the news.

Right. And so I guess enough people bought it and bought into it that they were able to release a sequel. And in the sequel, the reason they released the sequel was because Torsten Schmidt had footage of a webbed hand like smacking the windshield of his little like underwater sub, two-man sub.

and then swimming off. Yeah. And so they just kept showing that over and over and over again. Yeah, I saw that shot. It was cool. Galaphanakis. He did look like him, didn't he? A lot.

I thought you were going to say it was found out when Torsten Schmidt showed up on an episode of two broke girls the next week. Right. It was like a waiter. Yeah, and a progressive insurance ad is like customer in over two. Exactly. There's one other citing I wanted to mention.

This one is second for my favorite after the Scottish one. It was in Edom, Netherlands. Is it Edom? Sure, like the cheese? Yeah, okay. Two girls were rowing their boats and found a mermaid and took it home and dressed it up as a little girl

and taught it to live on land, but it remained mute its whole life. Like E.T. Yeah, but isn't that cute? That is very cute. They're like, you're coming home with us. Oh, you've got a family? T.S., we got a family too, and it's your new family.

And they just made that story up and told people in it, survived. I guess. Interesting. Although they didn't, they didn't, apparently, like they matriculated the mermaid into human society there, but we're talking 1430, so who knows what was going on? Yeah.

They were eating. They probably got their hands on somebody who was like, who knows? Yeah. And they're like, oh, mermaid, this is a mermaid. Oh, just someone who had some sort of physical deportation. Made them come live with them. Yeah. Just as a girl for the rest of their life.

like Schlitsy or something. Yeah, like we did in the freak shows. They would just call them make up whatever animal they wanted to. That was another great episode too. Are you just recounting the good ones while we do this one? Just to remind people, it gets better. So being a mermaid is an actual job you can get. If you, back in the day in the 1940s and 50s,

it was a big hit to go to like a sea park and have mermaid shows. And specifically one in, Is it Wikiwachi Springs? Yeah, Wikiwachi Springs, Florida, near Tampa. And it was a booming business back then. They said between half million and a million tourists every year, including big famous people, like Elvis Presley and Don Knott's.

Yeah, those are the two they mentioned. Those two would trash a place together. Oh, I bet. Don gets into the whiskey. It's all over. So, yeah, it was a huge deal back then. They're still doing it there today, is a real job.

You can go, if you're a great swimmer, like you have to know what you're doing. Oh yeah. Like it seems like, oh yeah, you just put on that tail. But that tail is heavy and awkward. Well, yeah, and plus like, and somewhat buoyant. Swimming with your legs together.

Yeah, that's hard. It's very difficult. Yeah, it's not an easy job from what I can tell. Yeah, so apparently once you put, like they look very graceful swimming around in those things, but you go put one on and get in a pool and see what happens. Right, and this article I think rightly points out

that the professional mermaids that you see today are, like this is from years and years and years of practice. Yeah. Like they didn't just get in the water and they're like, yeah, I'm a natural. Yeah, exactly. It's gotta be really awkward. Sure.

And you also have to know how to hold your breath like a mo. Like a mo? Yeah, I stop myself. Yeah, you do, and you have to learn how to swim the mermaid crawl, which is what they name it. but you know it's not like regular swimming. Yeah, right. You know?

Yeah. And you can make a little dough too. A little bit. It said you can be hired like as a one-off for a party. What is that like? You go to like a neighborhood pool and everyone gathers around like look at the mermaid. You claps out of rhythm. That's so funny.

And you're like, what do you guys want me to do? I guess you can do that. But mostly what I've seen are like the shows in some like sleepy Florida town. Like a gator farm and- Those are the start. And the Wiki-Wachi mermaids. Or like at resorts or something like that. Yeah, back when they used to love that kind of thing.

And some of these professional mermaids apparently use their status as a soapbox for ecology. Yeah. And efforts to keep the oceans clean. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Yeah. There seems to be a real threat of that running through the professional mermaid culture.

You're like an eco-activist. That's a decent band name too. Professional mermaid culture? Yeah. This one was rich with bands. Band names. Horny skin folds. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. If you want to know more about mermaids, you can type that word in the search bar at how stuffworks.com, and since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. Actually, in lieu of listener mail today, uh,

we are going to ask you for something, because we people often say like, how can I help the show? Spreading the word is awesome. We always appreciate that. But one thing we haven't asked you to do in a long time is go to iTunes and leave a review. Oh, yeah.

Because that makes a big difference if there are reviews, even if they're not favorable. Just be honest. Vote with your conscience. Vote your conscience. And yeah, go to iTunes, leave a review for us because just having reviews is a good thing.

And tell a friend, help spread the word. I feel like years go by before we say things like this. Yeah, well, I think literally that's the case. Yeah, it's been a long time. So we really appreciate. The way the show was built

was on word of mouth largely. We really count on that. So tell a friend, go to iTunes and leave a recommendation. And the other thing that we also need are more jingles. Oh, yeah. These jingles that you hear,

these bumpers are from fans and listeners, musicians. Very kind ones. Yeah. and they really enjoyed doing it, and we love throwing them out there. So send us your jingle, and we can't promise we'll use it, but we probably will. Yeah, because they're pretty great. Yeah, so that's all I got.

Well, thanks. If you want to get in touch with us to help us out with any of this stuff, you can tweet to us at SYSK Podcast. You can join us on Facebook.com slash Stuff You Should Know. You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at How StuffWorks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, Stuff You Should Know.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit How StuffWorks.com. Lisa, tell them about our new show.

We have a new podcast. It's called Don't Lie to Me. I'm Lexi Youanu. We're two best friends, 22 years apart, but so close at heart. And I'm Lisa Di Giulio, the old one, which means we have wildly different references, occasionally different opinions, and at this point in my 50s, I've lived it all. Now in my 30s, being the founder of new shoes, good taste is my business. business. Listen on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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