Stuff You Should Know - SYSK Selects: How Bullfighting Works

Episode Date: June 16, 2018

When the Visigoths ruled Spain, they introduced the idea of battling bulls at festivals. Today matadors get paid $100,000 and perform in front of 50,000 fans. But is bullfighting an antiquated, abusive relic or a cultural tradition above reproach? Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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You know what that means? It's time for another classic episode, Stuff You Should Know Selects. This one is from May 3rd, 2002, How Bullfighting Works. And you know what? I picked this one because I just wanted to go to people further. I came out, we usually try and keep things fairly neutral, but I came out hard against bullfighting on this because it is barbaric and awful. And I don't apologize for that.

So I'm going to puff my chest up and republish this one right now. I don't care about the tradition. I don't care about any of that. I just want people to stop bullfighting. So we get into the history of it and all that. And I think Josh was a little more neutral than I was, if I remember correctly. But yeah, I'm not into it. So go ahead and send your hate emails now if you want, or emails of support.

Here we go. How Bullfighting Works all over again. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always is Charles W. Chuck Bryant, Ole, Chuck, Ole, Ole, right back at you. Um, how are you doing? I'm great.

How are you? I'm doing pretty good. Yeah? Yeah. I've been learning a lot about bullfighting lately. I don't know if you know. I mean, bullkilling? Bullfighting is what it's called tradition.

That's not what I call it. Or you could also call it a corrido, corrida. Boy, here we go. Corrida. Have you ever been to Spain? No. Have you? Yeah.

Where? I've been to Barcelona and then Tosa de Mar, which is a little coastal town near Barcelona. Right on the coast of Brava, very nice. Have you been to... And that's it. Okay. Yeah. Have you seen a bullfight?

No. I would not do that, sir. I have seen a bullfight. Oh, yeah? And to offend you even further, not only was it a bullfight, it started off with a cockfight. It was in Cancun. I saw it with my sister and my dad. Wow.

And it was crazy because we were there, and it was a bullfight, like it wasn't like you could have accidentally walked into this thing, like it was a bullfight. And I would say 80% of the people there were white, probably American tourists who booed and yelled and shouted things the whole time. And I remember thinking of that one Simpsons, where Lisa was having a nightmare about being second chairs for saxophone in the school band, and at the concert everybody was booing and she wakes up and thinks, like, why would everybody come just to boo? It was exactly like that.

People came just to boo, the bullfight. Well, that is one... People who say bullfighting is not good, of which I'm one of them, say that that's one of the only reasons bullfights are still even going on is because of tourists. Oh, gotcha. They're the ones buying the tickets, and many times those tourists get there and they're horrified and they leave early and think, wow, what did I just spend my... No refunds.

Yeah, no refunds, man. No, exactly. So you just funded bullfighting? Yeah, exactly. Sucker. A couple of quick stats. Oh, yeah. Roughly between 200 and 250,000 bulls are killed each year.

From bullfights? From bullfights. That's a lot. I'm not sure if this is accurate, but the number I got was that 52 Matadors have been killed since 1700. I'm surprised it's that few. Have you heard of Julio Aparicio? No.

If you have a very strong constitution, Uncle Josh warned you against this one. Is this the guy through the face? Yeah. Yeah, I saw it. Holy cow. It was almost like... How is that not photoshopped? It was perfect.

The horn... So Julio Aparicio, he fell down and a bull got the best of him, gored him with his horns, with his horns, because bull's a boy. And what a boy, huh? And gored him under his chin and it threw his neck, and then the horn came out of his mouth perfectly. And a guy from Getty Images got a close up of it, like 50 of them. Dude, there's a video of it.

It's amazing. I haven't seen the video. It's on the YouTube. It's one of those that's so awful that you have to sign in and verify your age before you watch it. Gotcha. And I would do not advise people to watch this. I don't even advise you to look at the Daily Mail article that has it, but it's pretty

crazy. But yes, it happens. And I'm surprised that only... How many? 57? That I got was 52 in the last 300 plus years. So there's not much of a fight going on. And Matador is actually Spanish for killer, so...

Is it really? Yeah. Yes, they're killer bulls, for sure. It's the whole point. There's really no gray area here. Bullfighting is the purpose of it is to kill the bull under certain conditions or within a certain framework, but that's the point of bullfighting. It's not anything but that, and if the Matador fails to kill the bull, that's on him, and

it is a huge disgrace, like that's a loss, and it's not very good. But I'm starting to suspect that you are opposed to bullfighting. There are a lot of people, and apparently in Spain, it's like a natural cultural thing. It's been around for a while. And even people who feel the same way you do still say, I still don't think it should be illegal. It's just too much a part of our tradition. Not everyone feels that way, though.

No, definitely not. They did a Gallup poll in 2010, and 70% of Spaniards said that they were ready to do away with it. Oh, really? Yeah. That's a lot of Spaniards. And that's up from 31% like 15 years earlier. So in this modern day, people are starting to think twice about it.

Well, let's talk about this, Chuck. Let's talk about how long people have been fighting bulls on the Iberian Peninsula. We don't know a full show, but there is evidence of bull rituals dating back all the way to 1500 BC. Yeah, the Mycenaeans apparently used to leap over bulls that were charging. It was like a thing. And they were always revered, you know, as like these godlike creatures, which is why I guess they want to kill them.

That's the Taurus one. Taurus? Is that an astrological sign? Yeah. Okay, yeah. That's pretty ancient. The article points out that the Visigoth rule of the Iberian Peninsula from 1415 to 711... No, 415.

What did I say? 1415. Yeah, 415 to 711. Had men on horseback fighting bulls, which evolved into mounted bullfighting, which rejonio, which still exists in Portugal. Yeah. Horseback bullfighting, where they kill the bull outside the ring later on. Right.

They weaken it to a certain point, which is the equivalent of killing the bull as far, I guess. There's some point of no return that the Portuguese understand. And they're like, okay, bull, we're done. Come outside. And then that's that. But as anyway, who's opposed to bullfighting will tell you that's not any more humane. Of course not.

They're out of sight of the spectators. Right. So, yeah, you've got, what is it, rejonio? Rejonio. Rejonio. And then bullfighting itself, as we understand it today, was firmly established in Spain by the 11th century. Yeah.

And it came about during festivals, specifically one festival called the Fiesta de San Ferman. And anybody who's been to Pamplona will recognize that, because that's where the running of the bulls takes place, and when? In July now. Oh, is it? July 7th to 14th. When did it used to be? September.

Oh, okay. And then in the 16th century, they moved it to July. And ever since then, the running of the bulls has been held, but it's been going on since long before that. And it actually started with a bunch of ranchers and their kids moving the bulls from like their pens to about a half a mile to the arena. And then people started running alongside them and evolved into the running of the bulls now.

Interesting. Yeah. El said the Spanish military leader, mid-11th century, he was one of the first to actually bring it into the arena and make it the Sanction Corita. Which was government sanctioned, is today at least, I don't know if it was back then, I imagine it was. And it's financially supported by governments too. 15th century.

It was a big part of the aristocracy until Queen Isabella came along and said this is not cool. I don't know why she was against it, probably because she was an animal lover. I would say that's probably a good idea. And Pope Pius V, I almost said V, he banned it, but that didn't last very long. Only about eight years because people were into it pretty big time. Right. And then in about the, I guess in the 1600s is when that whole divergence between horse

back and foot bullfighting took place. And it remained the sport of the aristocracy until Philip V came along and he said, you know what, this is barbaric. You would have to be a low class barbarian to engage in bullfighting. So if you're a member of my court and you get caught doing this, I'll shoot you in the knee. And the aristocracy said, well, we want our knees intact. So we're going to stop doing this.

And at this point, bullfighting transferred from a kind of highfalutin snooty pastime to the pastime of the people, the national sport of the Spanish people. That's true. And from that point on, it stayed that way. Yeah, but the author does point out that there are arenas in Spain that still have the royal boxes for the royal family to attend these things. So it hasn't gone away completely as far as that goes. So Spain is the heart and life center of bullfighting, but there's other places that

it's held. Obviously, I saw one in Cancun. And if you're a bullfighter, you can follow the season pretty much year round and get it work. If you're good. They have it in France. Did you know that? I didn't.

Yeah. But I saw that it's been, it was banned in the UK, had no idea anybody was fighting bulls in the UK. It was going on in Germany. It was going on all over the place. It's crazy. But that does make sense that it would happen in Germany if the Visigoths are the ones who introduced it to the Iberian Peninsula because they were Germanic people from south

of the south Norway. We'll call it. Look at you. South way. Look at you. Oh, thanks. So we'll walk you through what happens in a Corrida in this whitewashed article version. But before this ever happens, we'll walk you through the couple of days before the bull

even gets to the ring. Oh, this is a special treat for me. It is. The bull is not an aggressive animal at all. Bull likes to hang around and chew grass and smell flowers. That sounds like anti-bullfighting propaganda to me. No, Ferdinand the Bull. It's like a sweet creature.

But they actually are not aggressive. They're only going to charge somebody if they're threatened and angry, which is what bullfighting is all about. So in the two days prior to the bull showing up at the arena, they are abused. They are basically mentally destroyed versions of what a bull should be by the time they get there. Bull. Well, they do fatten them up to make them slow.

Well, that's a big problem. And you can call somebody out for that. Okay. They have wet newspaper stuffed in their ears so they can't hear anything. They have Vaseline rubbed on their eyes so their visions blurred. They have their eyes taped open so they can't sleep. They stuff cotton up their nostrils so they can't breathe very well and they stick a needle through their genitals.

That'll take anybody off. They rub this caustic solution on their legs, which makes the bull not be able to balance and keeps the bull from lying down ever. They strap their horns to the ceiling of their transport truck to take them on their long, hot journey to wherever they're going. And for the two days before, they keep them in a box. Oh, wait. I'm sorry.

That's not all. They give them drugs to either pep them up or slow them down just to keep them in whatever state they want them in and give them laxatives to just obviously make things even more uncomfortable. Then they put the bull in this dark box for two days to disorient the bull. Finally, when they open the box, there's a light at the end of the tunnel that the bull thinks, my God, I'm finally getting out of here, runs to the light and all of a sudden they're in a bull ring. And there's trumpets and fanfare and people cheering and the bulls like, oh, cool.

How's it? Hey, how are you all doing? I've been through some rough times lately. Some of that stuff, I think if you were found out, you would be disqualified immediately, especially doing stuff that slowed the bull down or made it less dangerous. Yes. The bull ring is a ring for a reason. This would want to go try and hide in a corner, but the ring, the circular ring will confuse

in a bull to where it can't hide anywhere. Have you ever seen that footage of that bull that like makes it up into the stands, like jumps up and is in the stands like on top of people? It was crazy. Was that bull run our test? No. Do you get that joke? Yeah.

Okay. So the different acts, I believe, are called tercios. Yes. I believe so. And there's three of them, right? Yes, there's three of them. And that's three acts in a fight, in a corrido. Yes.

In a bull fight. Yeah. And there's no suspense going on either, by the way. They all go down the same way. I'll bet it's suspenseful for the bull. So the bull comes out, the first act, or what? Yeah, act one. Okay.

Act one, there are guys called picadors, and they're mounted on horseback. And they are basically, I guess, low-level toreros or bullfighters, because Matador is not the only kind of bullfighter. He is the cream of the crop pinnacle of bullfighters. The well-paid rock star. Yes. But he works with a crew of picadors who show up in the first act, and bandelieros who show up in the second act.

But the picadors, what they do is they lance the bull between his shoulder blades around his neck muscles. And the whole point of this, Chuck, you'll love this one, is to weaken the neck muscles so that the bull's head hangs so that the Matador can get to its heart more easily. Yeah. It also hits a gland in the neck that releases adrenaline, apparently. Crazy. So they lance the bull three times and twist the blade around to ensure maximum blood loss.

Three Matadors will now come in, they will fight individually later on, but they all come in at first in the first act with their capes. And this is, for the bullfight, it's an afternoon of them, there's six bulls and three Matadors, and each Matador fights two bulls. And each bullfight takes about 15 to 20 minutes, roughly. So they come in with their little capes and do their little maneuvers to draw attention away from the picadors, and the picadors go and hide behind their little walls. Yes.

They have these interior walls that they can hide behind whenever the bull starts to get too dangerous. They run and hide behind these walls. Yes. Or if this were America, the picadors would be dressed as clowns and would hide in barrels. Like at Rodeo? Yeah. It will do a Rodeo podcast at some point.

Maybe we have to. Sure. Okay. I don't think they kill the cows in Rodeos. No. Okay. So the picadors leave the ring, the Matadors leave the ring, Act 2 begins, and the bandel Yarros.

I know, that's a tough one. Yeah, they come in. They're a mouthful. They're basically bullfighters, assistant bullfighters, but they're on foot. Yes. And if you've ever seen a bullfight or a picture of a bullfight, bulls seem to have some crepe barbs sticking out of them. That's the bandel Yarros work.

Yes. And that is called a bandorias, and it's a barbed dart that's adorned colorfully. Bulls aren't the only things dying in this episode, so is the Spanish language because we are butchering it. I'm trying. This of course further weakens the bull, so the mighty Matador doesn't have much work to do. So the bull is still dangerous.

They run in circles at this point too to get it nice and dizzy and confused. The Matador comes out for the final act, and he has 10 official minutes to kill the bull. Well to do a little show and off first, and then kill the bull. After the 10 minute warning, or after the 10 minutes he gets in a viso, which is a warning, first warning. After three minutes he gets another one, and then he gets a third one. So he has a total of, in actuality, 15 minutes to kill the bull, or else the bull is let out alive, and the Matador is disgraced.

But for the most part the Matador is going to dispatch the bull, and he does it. He first starts using the cape, and the cape is always held in the left hand. Is it? I saw right handed dudes. I did not. I was looking, and I could even tell that the cape was kind of clumsy held in the left hand. They were still holding it in the left hand.

Well the guys I saw were practicing, so maybe, I don't know, but I don't see why they would practice with their right hand. Yeah, I don't either. Right. Okay, but you have a cape in one hand, you have a sword in the other. Yes. And the point of the cape, by the way, we should probably get to this now. Sure.

The cape is always red, because red angers bulls, right? No. True. No, bulls are color blind, so they're not angered by red or any other color. What does get them going is the movement of the cape. And sticking swords in their neck. That's another thing that gets them going, too. And actually, that's not necessarily true.

By the time the Matador comes out, sometimes the bull is really tired from blood loss and being tortured for a couple of days, apparently. Yeah, of course. And so the Matador really kind of has to work to get it riled up again, even though the bull's just like, just kill me, the Matador's like, not yet, we have a crowd to please first. So the Matador, eventually, after the cape work is done, oh, the cape is red, by the way, to high bloodstains. Once the cape work is done, the Matador will, as the bull runs past him, will plunge the

sword in between his shoulder blades in what's called a estocada, which is the death blow. And a properly delivered estocada will sever the bull's aorta, and that will be that almost immediately for the bull. If it's not done correctly, then the bull can be in even more tremendous pain as it bleeds out. But to protect against this, a bandellero will come out and immediately deliver any another thrust of a blade to make sure the bull is dead. With a puntilla, with a smaller knife.

Ideally, they kill them with one blow, that rarely happens, because apparently Matador's aren't so great at doing that anymore, I don't know if they ever were. And a lot of times, the bull lives even through the smaller knife plunge, and is still alive when the ears and tail or hoof are cut off and presented to the Matador. Usually, there's another failsafe, where they just bring out a tractor and run the bull over a bunch of times, to make sure that it's, if that doesn't work, then the people come down from the stands and just start shooting it. That's not true.

And it's not funny. It's not funny, because it's not true. And they oftentimes do survive, hanging on by a thread. Their lungs are punctured, so they're bleeding, like drowning in their own blood and like vomiting up blood through their nose and mouth. Like a whale dying and flurry. And sometimes, they will take it outside and skin it while it's even still alive. Yeah, that's kind of a tradition.

I saw the bull after the bullfight, it was pretty sad. They take the bull right outside, and they'll dress it and then sell the meat at the stadium, which is customary and very strange, but that's one of the aspects of bullfighting. If you've ever wanted a bull burger and you wanted to eat it right after you saw it die, go to a bullfight in Spain. They will drag the bull out with some mules attached to chains. And I don't know if the booing you heard, because apparently the people will boo and throw beer cans at the bull at the end.

I don't know if that's what you were... It depends. So it depends. No, no, no. They were booing the Matador, the Bandolieros, the Picadors, everybody. They were booing the whole country of Mexico for this. Yeah, they were booing everybody. No, it depends on the bull.

If the bull was a wuss, then I could see the fans throwing beer cans at it. There's also an aspect of this that cannot be denied, that a bull that shows great bravery, anger, spirit, spunk, really tries to kill the Matador or the Bandolieros, will be very much revered by the people in the stands. And gruesomely, they'll bring it out for a victory lap, being dragged by the mules in a circle around the arena after it's dead, or apparently while it's still dying. People will cheer it, throw roses for it. And there's a rule where the crowd or the Matador can ask for an indolito, which is

a reprieve for a particularly courageous bull. And the president of the bullfight, the referee, can say, yes, I give this bull a reprieve because it's such an awesome bull, we're going to let it live. And the Matador proceeds to, with an empty hand, simulate the death blow, saying, I could have killed the bull, but I like the bull so much, I lobbied to get it released. What a guy. That bull is taken away and put out to stud for the rest of its life. And there was one, it's very rare to get an indolito.

And there was one bull called Manzanito in 1887, he got an indolito because he gored all three Matadors in the plaza that day, that will get you off right there. You get to go stud for the rest of your life, Mr. Bull. Horses are also abused, the ones that participate. Their ears are stuffed with newspaper, wet newspaper, they're blindfolded, and they sever their vocal cords so they can't scream out in pain because people don't want to hear that. They don't want to hear.

Horses screaming? Yeah, people don't like that. So they sever the vocal cords so the horses that are, you know, trembling in fear inside this ring at this bull don't bark out and let people know that. And if the horses are hurt, they take them out of the ring and patch them up and send them right back in there. Where are you getting this activist info? All over the place.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay. I mean, it's not activists info, it's how it goes down. No, it all just kind of has a certain ring to it. I'm not disputing it, I'm just saying like. Yeah. Well, I mean, coming out of my mouth, it probably sounds activist because I think it's an awful

thing to do something like this. But this is the, these is the facts. 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 going to 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.

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So people have been doing this since, well, we said like the 11th century, right? Elsid was supposedly the first guy to fight a bowl in an arena. And since then, it's just become huge, big business. But the first real and probably only real golden age, if you call it that, of bullfighting, happened from 1914 to 1920. And there were two matadors, Juan Belmont E. Garcia and Jose Gomez, who fought bulls under the name Jose Lito, had a rivalry. And Belmont E. Garcia was actually the first guy, apparently, to stand still or stand his

ground when he was doing Cape work with a bull, rather than try to run away from the bull using fancy footwork. That erect style. Yeah. Jose Lito was his rival, and the rivalry was really going swimmingly, I guess, for everybody, with the bulls, until Jose Lito was fatally gored at a match that both of them were at. Garcia and Jose Lito were fighting at in 1920. And that ended the golden age of bullfighting.

You'll be happy to hear. He must have been small. Jose Lito? Yeah, his name is Jose. And I think if you're Jose and they call you Jose Lito, that means you're small. Like add that ito to anything or Lito or young because he started very young. Oh yeah. Maybe that's true.

He was 13, and he was only, I think, 25, yeah, he was 25 when he died when he was gored. So another guy who's gored is named Manuel Rodriguez, Sanchez. Do you think that's like the mother's and the father's names when it's two last names and there's an E and and in the middle? I don't know. I would think so. Manuel Rodriguez and Sanchez, you put the Rodriguez together and the Sanchez is together and you get Manuel.

Also known as Manolete. Maybe so. And he was gored in 1947. He was the top matador from 1940 to 1947. And I think his goering and the end of his being the top matador was not coincidental. I think you're probably right. Should we talk about the bulls? Because it's very specific.

What kind of bulls are fighting? They're all four years old, which I didn't know. I didn't either. And they are specifically bred to bullfight and they weigh about 1300 pounds. You want to translate that, Nikilos, for our friends? It's 590 kilograms. And they are bred on ranches and this article says that they are tested for bravery and ferocity and that if you pass that test, you become a fighting bull.

And that may be true sometimes, but matadors like to make their money. And they don't want to be gored. So the highfalutin matadors will request very placid docile bulls just to keep the show going. Is that true? Yeah. Well, that's what I read. They just want to put on the show, you know.

They don't want to die. Well, I'm sure they don't want to die. They want to make a few million bucks a year doing it. Easy too. Because they get paid about 100 grand a bullfight and they can do maybe 30 to 40 or more. I know the guy Belmonte, he had a record 109 bullfights in 1919. It's a lot. It's like in Rocky III when he was fighting all the chumps just for a payday.

He didn't want any real challenge. But ultimately he did want a real challenge because he fought Draco. Well he fought Clubber Lang in Rocky III. In three, it was the Russian. Oh, no, no. Yeah. Three was Clubber Lang. No.

Yeah. The first two were Apollo. The third was Clubber Lang. The fourth was the Russian. I thought that he was the third. Tommy Morrison. And then the sixth was when he like came back as a trainer. Huh.

And the seventh was him enjoying a nice sandwich for two hours. No. Rocky III was definitely Clubber Lang because that was my favorite one. Okay. Until I got older and I realized that the first one was actually the better one. You know, I thought that I would think that too. And then I went back and watched it as an adult and I'm like, I mean, it's pretty good, but oh man, I loved it.

There's just too much character development in it for a Rocky movie if you ask me. Well, it was a love story. It wasn't even a boxing movie. I'm with you. I understand. But it was a love story starring and written and directed by Sylvester Stallone. That's right. All right.

Back to the bulls. Bulls are never exposed to more than one fight. Yeah. So apparently they have very good memories. Sure. They had to out-duel the Matador and their cape. Yeah. So that's why they don't fight them twice.

And the guys who test their ferocity for, I guess, the ones that are tested, those are done on horseback so that the bulls not like, oh, I remember those capes. I'm going to get you. Yeah. I associate you with laxatives. Well, even this article says that they alter bulls to make them easier to fight. But this is what I'm saying. So it's a very participatory sport for spectators.

So like you can ask for an indolito. You can also challenge or charge somebody with fighting an altered bull, one that's overfed and is too fat and slow, one whose horns have been altered. Because apparently the tips of the horns of a bull are very much like a cat's whiskers. And if you remove that, the bull's not going to have a very good sense of kinetics and will never hit the Matador. Yeah. So if the crowd thinks that, your career is like over, pal.

That's why I don't think it's quite as widespread. Either that or else bullfighting crowds have become complacent. Well, I think that's definitely true. Yeah. Well, because it's 80% tourists. They don't know how to spot a fat bull. Well, then that very well may be the case. And they also, apparently, the way they stab them and where they stab them, they do so

in order to make sure they charge straight instead of like, I've got a bad left leg all of a sudden. So I'm going to be going left all day or right all day. Yeah. Yeah. So Chuck, we mentioned that you can make a pretty decent living doing bullfights. But you also mentioned that there may be the death of bullfighting, as it were. You think that's really true?

I mean, seriously, people have been doing this since the fourth century. And now all of a sudden, just because of a bad economy and animal activism, bullfighting is going down? It's starting to. Where's the evidence? Well, the polls that the popular sentiment is changing in Spain over the past 15 years is one. Catalonia is the first region in mainland Spain to actually ban it.

And Barcelona is in Catalonia. Yeah, which is big because Barcelona had not one, not two, but three bullfighting arenas. That's right. And that took effect. Or Plaza del Toros. That took effect actually just this year on January 1st. They said like, let's finish out the 2011 season and then we'll ban it starting from that point.

Yeah. They had the last one in September, I think September 28th, 2011 was the last one ever. Was it? But that's a huge deal. But even in Spain, they're kind of like the snooty Catalan's, like they don't enjoy bullfighting. I think that's made some quarters of Spain even more fiercely proud of it. Yeah, probably so. Like Madrid apparently is still very proud of their bullfighting.

Right. In 2010, one of the state television stations said, we are going to ban coverage, live coverage of it because kids can watch this on TV. They happen in the hours and the early afternoon hours and early evening. So they won't broadcast until after 10 p.m. now. Right. So there's a law that says you can't show animal cruelty on Spanish television until after 10 p.m. because of children.

And so that's effectively banned showing bullfighting in Spain, which is a huge blow to it, I guess, economically or financially because, I mean, think about how much money comes from television deals and sponsorships. If you can get rid of it on TV, that's that. Yeah, that's true. And then there's also, they've shown that there's evidence that the federal government of Spain is pretty much what's propping up bullfighting these days. Because there were what, it went from 1,000 bullfights in 2008 to 800 in 2010 in Spain.

And that 200 was almost exclusively the result of cuts in government subsidies to small towns that can't afford to put on a bullfight. And so that means that, yeah, the government's holding the whole thing up. Yeah, I read a couple of interesting articles today. One of them was from a veterinarian and they have vets at the bullfight on staff, I guess. And this vet went on record of saying they did all this testing of like adrenaline and noradrenaline and all these different chemicals in the body on these bulls that had just survived, ones that were dead, ones before they went in, and basically to prove that the bull suffers

a great deal. Because there's this misguided notion that the bull doesn't suffer because they're this magical creature. I saw this one interview with a bandolero and he said that a veterinarian, and this is translated obviously, but he said, a veterinarian told me that the bulls have a special cell in their body that prevents it from suffering and feeling pain. That's not true. Oh, are you sure?

Yeah, there's no special cell that keeps them from feeling pain. Well, that's a larger debate too. I mean, like I believe bulls can suffer, but you know, if you've read David Foster Wallace's Consider the Lobster, can a lobster suffer? Is no seception, is the perception, the physical feeling of pain, is that the same thing is suffering? No, we've shown it's not. In this audio book, we talked about the difference between experiencing physical pain and experiencing

suffering, and they actually utilize different parts of the brain. So if there's no suffering, is inflicting pain on something, e.g. cooking it, is that cruel? Yeah, that's a good point. It is, but I think bulls experience suffering, especially if they go through what you describe. Yeah, and if you're against bullfighting and you want to do something, you can email the, or mail the embassies of these countries that still participate and tell them that, hey, I'm not going to visit your country, I'm not going to spend my money there.

If you're still going to endorse this, it's a small thing you can do. But can you mail me some wine? Because I can't make it over there. Some timperineo. And I'm going to go on record of saying this whole thing, that it's part of the culture is just crap. Well, the Spanish federal government would disagree with you because in 2010, and what a lot of people see as a response to the Catalonia ban, the Spanish government transferred

jurisdiction over bullfighting from the interior ministry to the cultural ministry. Yeah, as an attempt to keep it from being banned. It's going to be, it'll be a tough fought one, but yeah, apparently even Mexico now is entertaining the idea of banning it. We know some other things that were defended as culture, genital mutilation on females, witch burning, bear baiting, you ever heard of that? No. Bear baiting was popular in England up until the 18th century.

That is when you take a bear, like a grizzly bear or brown bear, well, not far off. You put it in a pit and chain it to a steak and release dogs on it. And the dogs kill the bear, or the bear kills some of the dogs, so they release more dogs, and people sit around and gamble on, is the bear going to get eaten first, or the dog is going to get killed first? And it's blood sport, and I think this is the same thing. You know, that's where bulldogs came from, and that's where they got their name from. It's called bull baiting.

Oh, really? And bulldogs used to not even come close to resembling what they do now, and they were actually bred to be less vicious by making them slower and dumber and more cuddly, or not dumber, but more cuddly, and that's how we have the modern bulldogs now. But they evolved from basically, in the 19th century, bulldogs were where people breed is now, where there are a lot of people being like, we just need to wipe this breed off the face of the planet. It's gone out of control, they're crazy, everybody's scared of them, they're killing

people, and then they managed to breed the meanness out of them. But bull baiting too, bull baiting, bulls just have been taking it all over the place. Well, and bear baiting actually still happens in Pakistan, and it's horrific. So from me to you, people of Spain, Mexico, France, ritualized killing of animals for people to pay for and watch is a little outdated, and just silly and cruel, and I say, please stop. From Chuck to you. From me to you.

And one more thing, the whole notion of culture, isn't that supposedly to advance your civilization, and isn't that supposed to mean like positive things, like culture? I mean, what brings people together more than... The ritual is killing... You don't come here and watching bullfights. All right, I'm done. Stuff you should know. 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 slipdresses and choker necklaces. We're going to 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. I'm Mangesh Atikular. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running

and pay attention, because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father.

And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Find the Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Offset Box. So how do you feel about bullfighting personally? I think it's great. If you want to learn more about bullfighting or Chuck's views on it, you can type in Chuck

or bullfighting in the search bar at howstuffworks.com, and I said search bar, which means it's time for listener mail, a very riled up listener mail. That's right. Now this is calm. I'm going to call this illustrator, wrote us about the comics episode. Nice. Guys, I'm currently an illustrator. Does he not have much hope for his future in that field?

No, I think he does. Okay. I thought because he does like digital illustration too. I guess. I found your podcast when I was hip deep in art school at the Art Institute of Boston, but there are only so many times I could listen to the same old Our Lady Peace songs on repeat. Remember that group? No.

He had like one song. Okay. So he listened to the same song over and over? Which song was it? Oh, I can't remember. I dug the song actually. I got the CD because of that song. Man, I used to fall for that when I was like 12, 14, and you'd just be like, that's the

only good song on the whole CD. For the Kasingel, I'm now a professional illustrator, but I also teach art at AIB and was able to live a mini-dream when my higher-ups approached me about teaching a comic book class. Sweet. So he was pretty stoked about this. On the comics, and this is just some things he pointed out, on the comics code of authority you guys talked about, World War II was long over and the new round of superheroes, Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, had yet to emerge from the minds of Lee, Kirby, and Ditko.

As a result, comics were merely treading water and chasing from fad to fad, westerns to romance, to eventually horror. Horror comics were what really started to worry everyone, so they began to put pressure on companies like EC who had made their names and over-the-top horror. In turn, EC basically jettisoned its stake in horror comics and latched on to a little humor comic, Mad, which we talked about. It was like stories guaranteed to drive you mad, I think it was the original version. But to this point, Mad was published basically as a comic book.

In essence, EC was looking to hedge its bets, so it relaunched Mad as a magazine, which is a very different distinction because it all of a sudden wasn't under the code of authority. Right. In 1955, we were blessed with the very first Mad magazine, a very calculated move since they were not heavily scrutinized like comics and they didn't have to worry about the comics code. Very smart.

It is. I hope to make it big as a comics illustrator and children's book illustrator who says I can't do both. I also thought you might like to know that you're keeping me company during these long hours chasing the dream. This dude's stuff is awesome. If you want to hire Greg Marathas, you can get in touch with him at the Greg Marathas studio, which is G-R-E-G-M-A-R-A-T-H-A-S.com or read his blog, GregMarathas.blogspot.com.

His stuff is very cool. I told him I'd keep him in mind if we ever needed drawings. We could use some drawings. We need some Facebook timeline drawings. Yeah. If he's willing to work for free. Yeah, get to it. Remember, we got Chastised by a graphic designer for holding that t-shirt contest.

Yeah, I emailed him back, actually. Did you just call him down? Yeah. I was like, you know, most of these were amateur designers. There was some pros in there, but none of them seemed to mind. It's not like we forced anybody to do it. But there's a whole movement from designers about design contests being awful, like what other industry basically asks for free work as a contest, quote unquote.

There's like fiction contests. Yeah, there's all kinds of contests. Soapbox derbies. There's a lot of stuff that people do for free as part of a contest. Bake-offs or bakes-off, I'm sorry. And I saw some designers that say, I don't agree with that. Contests make me better. And if you don't...

Architecture? Don't enter. That's a ridiculous idea. Architecture as a field has been in contest mode for a century or more. And like, yeah, there's a lot of work put into it. There's a lot of work put into graphic design. Contests are everywhere. I think that's a ridiculous stance.

Well, his point was, because he emailed me back and he was like, well, fine, the contest is fine, but you should give them a cut of the t-shirt sales. I don't disagree with that. Well, I know, but we had no choice. Well, no, we're in no position whatsoever to share it. Yeah, I told them, dude, if it was up to me, they would get 100% of the t-shirt sales. I don't know about that. Well, we don't get any.

Well, I know. But still, we could, if we could negotiate on their behalf, we would work a little bit in for us, too. Man, what a volatile episode. Right to the end. Yeah, so I guess if you want to express your volatility toward us, that's cool. We can handle it. We've been taking it for years.

You can tweet to us at S-Y-S-K podcast. You can send us stuff on Facebook, including Facebook art for the timeline, at facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can also email us at stuffpodcastatdiscovery.com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join House of Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. I'm Munga Shatikler, and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want

to believe. You can find it in major league baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me. And my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes, because I think your ideas are about to change too.

Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Chuck Wicks from Love Country. Talk to Chuck, where we bring you what's really happening in the country music family. We also, if you love country, here's the deal, you love country music. You can be on the podcast. So if you're a fan of country music, well, you can call in anytime, be like, oh, I want to talk about this.

Paul Cogan called in. He's like, Chuck. I love your podcast. Jason Aldean, Jimmy Allen, Carly Pierce, Lauren Alaina. Listen to new episodes of Love Country. Talk to Chuck every Monday and Thursday on the Nashville Podcast Network, available on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts.