Stuff You Should Know - The Dark Origins of Fairy Tales

Episode Date: November 3, 2015

Fairy tales are for kids right? Well not at first they weren't. They were dark tales of murder, rape, incest, cannibalism and mayhem geared toward adults. What changed? Chuck and Josh will drop that knowledge and more in today's episode. 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. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. 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. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya 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. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant.

And again, it's just the two of us. Yep, with you guys. Yes, just our, I feel like we're, you know, the Coke commercial from the 70s that Mad Men. Never saw the show. Oh, really? Yeah. That's a good one.

I've heard. Heard of good things? Yeah. You're not the first person I've heard mentioned it. It's like we're holding hands with our listeners all across the world, hands across the world. I'd like to buy the world a Coke thing. Is that supposedly them?

I don't want to spoil anything for anyone. Oh, okay. Wow. What happens that there's a plot, that's a huge plot point? I'll tell you afterward. Okay. If you're never going to watch the show.

Yeah, I probably won't. I mean, like I'd pick and choose what I'm going to get into, you know? Sure. Like it's a commitment, especially how many seasons do that thing go? Six, five? You're not like most people who just watch

whatever's on in front of them until it's over. But a lot of people do, most people do. What? You don't think people pick and choose? Their culture they consume? I think that they do, but I think they're more ready to jump in than I am. Like the idea of like taking your tablet to the beach

to watch TV, that's not like a great thing to me. That's like, what happened to us? So what you're saying is you're more selective than your average Joe? I guess, but I don't mean to make myself seem all like Claudia Da or anything like that, you know? I'm just saying, I don't watch TV shows like Narcos. Remember I told you to watch it the other day?

Yeah, and other folks have told me that, so I'm gonna watch it. So I saw the first episode, amazing, amazing stuff. And I started to watch the second one. I was like, I just, I can't right now. I don't know what it is about me. So you recommended that to me before you saw it? No, I saw the first episode.

Oh, okay, gotcha. Like I could have seen the first couple minutes and would have been like go watch this whole series. I think it's gonna be great. And then you bailed on it? Yeah, but I haven't bailed entirely, but I guess that's my point is like, like it's not just something I can pick up like Willie Nilly.

And I don't know why, cause it's TV. Well, here's what I used to do. Boy, we're already so sidetracked, but I don't care. Cause there's no one in here. No one here to stop us to pull the plug. Here's what I used to do is I would watch a show, let's say a few seasons, and then if it started getting bad, like True Blood or Dexter, I would be like,

well, yeah, but I gotta finish it. Oh, no. And then I got to the point where I was like, no, I don't need to finish it. No, it's true. I can bail on a TV show that starts to suck. Yeah, the showrunner bailed on you. Exactly.

So why can't you bail on the show? And then I'll just read about the finale, cause that's all I care about is seeing how it ended. Sure. And in the case of Dexter's finale, it was amazingly awfully great. Yeah. So, but yeah, I think that's fair.

Same with books too. I mean, like why plow through a book that you're like, I cannot, I cannot care about this any longer. I think it, I have, I'm only 44, but I do sense my mortality a little bit. Like, wait a minute, do I need to watch the season of this thing that I don't like? Sure.

Because I'm gonna die and I haven't seen Casablanca yet. What? I haven't seen Casablanca. Really? No. You should. I know, cause I'm gonna die. I mean, you should, like that's a any,

any night of the week kind of movie. Oh yeah. You know? All I plan to. Okay. So speaking of dying Chuck, it turns out that in fairy tales, these wonderful little things that Disney promoted

and turned into well, wonderful little things. Sure. Started out with a lot more death, a lot more destruction, a lot more cannibalism. How about murder, rape, incest, torture, kidnapping? Sex with the comatose. Necrophilia. Yeah.

Probably somewhere in one we haven't heard of yet. Yeah. Yeah, that's where fairy tales, or that's the kind of, that's the type of tales that fairy tales started out as. Yeah. And we are going to, I think we agreed we're gonna do a show on fairy tales.

Probably like the brothers Graham, Hans, Christian, and Anderson, and Charles Pirot. Oh, nice. The three biggies. Yeah. And fairy tales in general. Cause it's really interesting.

Well, let's make this a two-parter. So this will be part one and then part two will be a fuller explanation of everything we just talked about. Agreed. Okay. So we don't have to go into it too much, but the point is, is that many, many years ago,

there were such things as oral traditions. Yes. Folk tales, and they were typically passed along by say, women who are working at looms. Yeah. Or people who put the kids to bed and were passing the time before the fire, because there weren't tablets you could take to the beach

to watch Orange as a New Black anywhere, you know? So you had to entertain yourself somehow. So adults told each other tales, and these formed the basis of fairy tales, which seems weird to us now, because fairy tales you tend to associate with kids, but that just wasn't the case before. Yeah, and apparently the brothers,

Graham, Jakob and Wilhelm originally intended them for adults, things weren't selling so well. So they said, maybe we should sanitize these a little bit, lighten them up and see if we can get kids to read these grisly morality tales. Right. To scare them into being, you know, straight shooters. Yeah, and then Walt Disney came along and he said,

you think you sanitize things? Wait a while, I put my Disney stank on it. Yeah. Because my Disney stank smells like roses. It does. There's like glitter and like fairies, and it's just all very nice. Smells like, I was trying to think of the best smell

I can think of, but. Plus smells pretty great. I had a friend who used to call the S-U-A-V-E shampoo, called it Swayve. Really? That was pretty funny. On purpose? Yeah, like.

Or like that was legitimately what they thought it was. Yeah, he really thought that. He like, you know, stayed at his house and like, hey, if you need anything, let's soap and put some Swayve in there. No, it's hilarious. Yeah. You were talking about how Disney sanitized it.

Yeah, that's right. Sanitized things. And so we're gonna, I don't think we're gonna do all 10, because that's what we do. But we're gonna talk about some of the earlier versions of now sanitized classics. Yeah.

Because it's kind of fun. Because you see just how far we came by, you know, when things became Disney-fied, Chuck. Should we talk about Pinocchio? Yeah. That's a good one. Which was, as far as Disney films go, that was maybe the creepiest of all.

Yeah. Because of the stranger danger that wound throughout it. Totes. And that was part of the original thing, was like, you don't go off as strangers. You don't run away from home. Exactly. Because there's plenty of predatory adults

who wanna just do all sorts of horrible things with you. That's right. So, Pinocchio was kidnapped by a strong bully and basically was threatened with, you know, Pinocchio was made of wood and said, I'm gonna burn you alive. You're gonna make a good fire one day. Yeah.

And then you get too old. Right. If you don't stay young, which is also creepy. Yeah, it is. And Pinocchio was like, oh no, Mr. Bill. But the source story was by Carlo Calodi in 1883. Right, who? Carlo Calodi.

And so, Pinocchio was teased in that version about his wood head by Jimny Cricket. I don't know if they call him Jimny Cricket in that version though. No. But it was a cricket. Yeah. You have a top hat and sing when you wish upon a star.

No, that was all Disney. Yeah. So, Pinocchio gets really upset and throws a hammer and kills the cricket with a hammer. Yeah. And then Pinocchio is hanged and killed, tied up, hanged and killed by the fox and the cat. Oh, I thought like by the court for killing the cricket.

No, by his enemies. But he loses his temper and as a result, one of the main characters in the story loses his life. Yeah. And Pinocchio's left to be like, oh, what have I done? Right. And then he's killed.

That's a great children's story. That is. But think about how bizarre that is that at one point, there was a story that adults told one another about a wooden boy. Yeah, who they really wanted to stay a boy or else they'd burn him alive. Yeah.

And we'll get into more like fairytale analysis and that kind of thing in the other episode. Sure. Just chew on that for a little while. Chew on the weird psychosis that lies behind that. All right, next we have The Little Mermaid, which I don't think, of course I'm just guessing, but I didn't know there was an original source story.

Hans Christian Andersen. Yeah, I had no idea. Yeah. 1837, was it actually called The Little Mermaid? I guess it was. I think it was. And there's actually a statue of The Little Mermaid in Hans Christian Andersen's home country.

Oh, really? Uh-huh. Utopia? Yes. In Denmark. Yes, he was Danish, right? I think Copenhagen Harbor, there's a statue of her. But not the Disney one.

Right. So that is Ariel, obviously. We all remember and love that movie. Actually, I didn't because I was a senior in high school at the time, so I wasn't into that. Yeah. I was too busy watching bad TV on the beach. You all right?

Yeah. So in the movie, we all remember that Ariel makes a deal with Ursula, the sea witch, and she says, you know what? You can be human if you'd like. Just give me that beautiful singing voice of yours. Yeah. And in the real version,

there was the witch offers her a potion in exchange for her tongue. Which she cuts out. Yeah. And Ariel says, sure, first of all, which is weird. Yeah. But she says, this will also make you feel like a sword has pierced your body forever.

And you'll be able to dance, but it will feel like you're dancing on knives. And then it'll feel like there's maggots eating at your open wounds. Oh, man. So she takes the deal anyway. All for a dude. Yeah, all for a guy.

So say what you will about that as well. In the original version, eventually these, I think these sea ladies come out of the ocean and say, if you kill the prince, they give her a dagger. Say, you can kill this guy, and drip that blood on your feet, and you'll get your mermaid tail back. Yeah.

And then she says, I can't do it. So she flings herself into the ocean and becomes seafoam. Which is what happens. But then she goes, the sisters take her into heaven. And the dude ends up marrying another lady, which she watches as she's ascending into heaven, right? Man. So no blood on her feet.

Nope, never killed the prince. Okay. Cinderella? Yes. Not Cinderfella. No. Great Jerry Lewis movie. With Dean Martin too, right?

Was Dean in that one? I think he might have been. Man, I love those. Cinderfella. Was it the same thing? Was it the exact same story, but just Jerry Lewis's? Pretty much. Okay.

And it's a pretty old story, but the Disney version basically has like, Cinderella is very sweet and beautiful and kind, but she's being basically human trafficked by her own wicked stepmother. Yeah. Who makes her do everything that her two lazy, ugly, inside and out daughters won't do.

Yeah. Or shouldn't, we don't want to do. That's right. Like clean out the cinders from the fireplace. Hence her name. Is that where that came from? I believe so. No idea.

So the original story was from 1697 and Chow Perot, Cinderella or the Little Glass Slipper. And as you remember in the original, she is allowed to go to the, she's dressed up by the- Fairy godmother. Yeah, fairy godmother. Yep.

Very great character of all time. All pretty. You get to ride in this great horse drawn carriage. Which used to be a pumpkin. Remember. And it will turn into a pumpkin at midnight. Yes. And you will lose all those nice clothes

in that glass slipper. If you want everyone to like you for being wealthy, make sure they don't see you after midnight. You have to- Seriously, like the messages these are sending when you really dig into it. I know. They're pretty horrifying.

I can't wait to talk about it in the next episode, man. This is all just one big teaser for everybody. It is. The fun teaser before the grim ending. So she takes off before midnight. The Prince is like, wait, wait, come back. Please. And she's like, no, I gotta go.

See, I can't let you see that I'm actually poor and pretty. And he's like, what? I couldn't hear you. She's like, nothing. And she takes off, but she lives behind her glass slipper. That's right. And this glass slipper that fits her perfectly is what the Prince decides to use

to identify this mystery woman. So he starts looking throughout the kingdom. Correct. And in the original version, which I said by Pirro, it's actually pretty much like that. But in 1812, and that's the thing with fairy tales, they're rewritten a lot throughout the ages by different folks with different versions.

And in 1812, the Grim Brothers had a version called Ashen Putel. Which I don't even know what that means. I don't either. Ashen, maybe it's the same thing. Cinder and Ashen. Maybe. I don't know, Putel, what is that?

I have no idea. Okay, but anyway. So the evil stepmother in this version says to her stepdaughters, to the oldest one, she's like, here's what you do. I know that shoe won't fit around your big hammer toe. So here's a knife, cut that thing off, and the shoe will fit.

And she does it. She cuts off her toe, puts on the slipper, and the Prince is like, this is great! Until these magic pigeons come along and say, hey, Prince, check that toe out, it's bleeding through the glass slipper. Like her shoe is filled with blood. She's like Romeo and Michelle's high school reunion

all of a sudden. So the Prince is like, you get away from me imposter, and sends the eldest daughter, the eldest step sister away. The youngest one tries the same thing, except she cuts off part of her heel, which seems to be exponentially more painful than cutting off your own toe.

Yeah. Same bit. Apparently Charles Peralt was like, I can't come up with anything else. We'll just go with the same thing. The two pigeons point out the bloody shoe, and the younger sister goes away, and then finally somehow Cinderella ends up

in the, with the shoe on, right? Yeah, and he says, I found you. We're gonna go get married, and in an act of good favor, she invites the step sisters to the wedding. Because she was such a nice person. Probably to rub salt in the wounds. Well, yes.

And also because she knew that her pigeon friends were going to pluck their eyes out, which they did. Yep. One at a time, they pluck out one eye each, and then they come back and finish the job, and then pluck out the other eyes. So here's the thing. We were raised with this kind of stuff, right?

Yeah, sure. Like, I mean, I'm familiar with the Disney version of all of these things, but I also had like a fair idea that there was a weird, darker foundation of these stories before, right? Imagine not having ever been exposed to this kind of thing. Think about how bizarre some of the twists and turns

that take place in these stories are. Talking pigeons end up plucking out the sister's eyes after exposing them earlier. Like, that's just a weird extra twist, you know? Yeah, like if the aliens came down, right, they're like, this is what we read our children on it. What is wrong with you?

All right, well, let's take a little break here. Oh, yeah, we forgot to do this. And we'll come back and talk about a little someone with a red writing something. I think I might know who you mean. ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] 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.

It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop 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, Hey Dude, 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. Not another one.

Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. 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 podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

All right, Little Red Riding Hood. That's who I was talking about, everybody. Mm. I was not going to guess that. So let's recap the real story here, which is everyone knows this one as well. I'm assuming Little Red Riding Hood is traveling through the woods to deliver food

to her dying grandmother. And she meets the hungry wolf. Yeah, she's bringing butter, a pot of butter. Is that what it was? Yeah, according to Charles Perrault. Delicious. So the wolf says, I like to think way in advance and make grand scheme, so I'm going to tell you,

little girl, who I'd like to eat, to sit here and pick some flowers. Grandma would love some flowers if she's dying. Yes, so, and by the way, where's grandma live? And Little Red Riding Hood, well, she starts picking flowers. Like, oh, down the way and take a left at the old oak tree and then don't make eye contact with the talking pigeons. That's right.

Right? And you'll find grandma's house. So the wolf takes off while Little Red Riding Hood is picking her flowers, unbeknownst to her, the wolf has gone and is now eating her grandmother to death. Yeah, and then like Norman Bates style dresses up in her clothing, sits with his back through her in a rocking chair and lays in wait,

which you would think that's dark enough. Yeah, that's pretty dark. Just eating grandmother is bad enough, right? In the grim version, it was called Little Red Cap. Which doesn't have the same ring. No. Little Red Riding Hood. That's beautiful.

Just rolls off the top. Little Red Cap. No. No good. It just kind of ends right there, you know? So Little Red Riding Hood is actually eaten by the wolf in their version. And then a.

Yeah, because she comes in and the wolf is dressed as the grandmother and they have a little exchange and she ends up getting eaten, right? In exchange? Yeah. And so he eats her dead, or we think she's dead. A woodsman comes along and cuts the wolf open with, well, there's different versions.

Sheers are in acts. And the woman, the grandmother in Little Red Riding Hood, come out. And as if you think that's the end, no, no, no. Let's fill the wolf with rocks. Oh, do they? In the grim version? In the grim version, the wolf gets up and tries to go away,

but he is weighted down by the rocks inside of his body and collapses and dies. Wow. So it's a good ending. Yeah, it is. In that case. That's the grim version and the Charles Peralta version. He ended his with the moral of the story kind of thing.

And the moral of his story was, do not get in bed with a sexual predator. Yeah. Because in his story, Little Red Riding Hood comes to grandmother's house. And she suspects that something is amiss. But she still takes off her clothes and gets into bed with grandmother

when she's invited to by this wolf dressed as grandmother. And she says, what big arms you have, what big legs you have, what big ears you have. And the wolf has a smooth answer for everything, you know what I'm saying? And then ends up eating her. She dies. She's eaten to death by a wolf.

And that's the end of the story. And then the moral is, is little girls should not expose themselves to predation by sexual predators, basically. It's not exactly how Peralta put it, but essentially that's what he was saying. Well, here's a direct quote from Peralta, or Piero, excuse me. From this story, one learns that children, especially

young lasses, pretty courteous and well-bred, do very wrong to listen to strangers. And it is not an unheard thing if the wolf is thereby provided with his dinner. I say, wolf, for all wolves are not of the same sort. There is one kind within amenable disposition, neither noisy nor hateful nor angry, but tame, obliging and gentle, following the young maids

in the streets, even into their homes. Alas, who does not know that these gentle wolves are all such creatures the most dangerous? So you're basically saying, like, they're all gross and dirty and preying on you. Yeah, which I mean, hats off to him for performing that public service. Sure.

But where's the fairy tale that says, sexual predators do not predate? I don't think they read stories for. But they were once young children, young boys, who could have been raised on that kind of thing. That's a good point, you know? I tip my little red cap to you. Thank you.

Oh, this is a good one. Hansel and Gretel. Yeah, I grew up next to an older couple who had a dog named Gretel Schnauzer. So cute, sweet dog. So this one starts out with an evil stepmom married to a dad of the father of Hansel and Gretel. And she's like, you guys eat way too much food,

and your dad and I are in danger of going hungry. So we're going to take a long walk in the woods, and only two of us are coming back. So the kids, she does this twice, because the kids are smart enough on the first go around to leave a trail of pebbles in the woods. Oh, I thought it was breadcrumbs. That's part two.

Oh, OK. At first, they leave the pebbles, they come back, and she's like, son of a... Yeah. All right, we're going to do this again, and you're not taking any pebbles. She walks about into the woods again. They leave breadcrumbs, which are famously eaten,

and so they are now stranded in the woods. By the pigeons. They're talking pigeons, huh? Probably so. Yeah. So the plan has worked from the evil step monster. They then encounter the bloodthirsty witch, who basically is like, look at this sweet gingerbread house.

Why don't you come on in here, because I know you little piglets like to eat. Yeah. And they do, they go in. Yeah, they go in, and I mean, a house made of gingerbread. Like, that's a great device right there. Sure. You know?

Yeah. I mean, who wouldn't want to just come into that house and see what's inside if the house is made of gingerbread? Yeah. What the heck is the microwave made of? There might be charcuterie inside. Sure. So once inside, they're trapped, because this

is the house of an old witch who seems like a kindly old lady as they're going in. Then once the door shuts, they're in trouble, all right? Yeah, Gretel was basically enslaved. Hansel is locked in a cage and fattened up. Yeah, like a goose. So she can eat him. Yeah.

And then at some point, the witch says, what the heck, I'll eat you both. And this gives Gretel the chance to get a drop on the witch. Yeah, which is pretty funny to me. The witch is basically like, hey, Gretel, why don't you go and look in that oven, let me know if it's hot enough. And she's blind, and the witch is.

And Gretel's like, I don't know what you mean. Why don't you show me what you mean? Right. And the witch says, oh, OK. You stupid girl, let me show you. Exactly, so she shuffles over and she's like, you stick your head in like this, engage the, ah! Right, because Gretel went and pushed her in by the rump,

and the witch is burned alive to death. Yes, and then Hansel and Gretel make their way back home, and the stepmother is dead. Right. But in the alternate version, Gretel is like, wow, Hansel, you do look pretty good and eats him alive. Oh, really? No.

No. Well, what gets me is they go back home, stepmother's dead, they don't explain how she died, and I wonder if the dad was just like, so sorry about marrying that lady who tried to kill you twice. He's don't dig any holes in the backyard. Should we take a break? Oh, yes, I think we should.

All right, we'll take another quick break, and we'll come back with some of my favorites. 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. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop 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 Hey Dude, 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. 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 will 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. 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. Welcome back to Storytime with Chuck and Josh. Yes, adult storytime. Yeah, because if your kids are listening to this, you're a monster yourself.

Rumpelstiltskin. This one really creeped me out when I was a kid, because it featured an imp, like a creepy beastly imp. Who, not only that, had a lack of control over his emotions. He was prone to emotional outbursts. He was unstable, which made him even more scary. So this one starts out. There's Miller, who tells the king that my daughter can

spend straw into gold. You ought to see this girl go. He's totally full of it, though. Totally full of it. I don't know what. I'm sure he was expecting to get away with it. I don't know how. Who knows?

Maybe he was going to hit the king over the head with something when he came to look and then marry him while he was unconscious. So the king says, great, she's cute. Let's trap her in the castle and lock her in a room with a bunch of straw, spin it into gold, lady. And I'll marry you. Yeah, and she's like, she gets in there and she's like, I have no idea how to spin anything into gold.

And this little imp, Rumpelstiltskin, climbs up, says, I can actually do that. And if you give me some jewelry, I'll spin that junk into gold. He does so. The king is like, this is sweet. Let me lock you in a bigger room with more straw. Rumpelstiltskin comes back, spins all that into gold

for more jewelry, comes back a third time. Because now she's hooked. Yeah, she's hooked. And she's like, I don't have any more jewelry. Like, what are we going to do here? Right. And what does he say? He says, I got an idea.

I got an idea. I've always wanted to own a human child. So you go ahead and start spinning. And I'll make sure this gets turned into gold. And then you can marry the king. And when you guys have a kid, you just give it to me. And she's like, what are you going to do with the kid? Don't worry about it.

Don't worry about that at all. He'll be fine. So she says, that sounds like a good idea. I can get the gold now, but pay later. And he says, yes, if you want to look at it like that, that's fine. And she says, let's do it. So they end up colluding this last time.

The king marries her and years pass. And then the woman has a child. And one day Rumpelstiltskin, a child she came to love. Despite knowing that there was a bounty on the child's head. Yeah, and it was conceived under duress, let's just say. But she loved the child. And Rumpelstiltskin comes a calling. Yeah, and he says, hey, remember me?

And she's like, how could I forget? He said, I'm back to claim my bounty. Give me that kid. I've got lots of neat things planned. And she says, I'd kind of like to keep my kid, actually. And he's like, no, no, no, no, no, no. OK, I love fun and games. So how about this?

I have a really weird name that you've never heard before. I've never told you. If you can guess my super weird one-of-a-kind name, we'll just call the whole thing off. Yeah, I'll give you three days, even. Yeah. And she gets the name. She does.

Well, she overhears them, right? She sneaks around and overhears them in his own layer. I don't remember. I think that's how it is. OK, so she, but she guesses his name correctly. And he does not like that at all. Oh, no. By the way, in the early 80s, Hervé Vieuchet's tattoo

from Fantasy Island played Rumpelstiltskin in a TV version of this. Yeah. So this outburst must have been particularly upsetting, because you love tattoo, so you don't want to see tattoo playing Rumpelstiltskin having this outburst where he's just lost his human child that's been promised to him for years because this lady managed

to guess his name. And he goes, the devil told you that. And he stomps his foot. And he stomps it so hard, it goes right into the earth and gets stuck there. Like up to his waist. Yeah. And he gets really angry about that and says,

let me get my leg out of here. And he tears his body into two pieces. Yep. And the lady's off the hook. Yeah, in the 1812 version, he just runs away and they actually went back in 1857 to allow him to tear his body in half. It's a weird way to die.

Agreed. Who has that kind of upper body strength? Well, Rumpelstiltskin. I guess so. And there's a new TV show out, too. I don't know if it's still out that had a lot of these characters. Like once upon a time or something? Yeah, yeah, I think so.

Yeah. I didn't watch it, though. I think it's still around. Oh, is it? I think so. What's his face? Robert Carlisle is in it from Trainspotting. Love that guy.

Yeah, he's good. All right, let's skip that one, because that one was just. What about Snow White? You want to do that one? Yeah, Snow White. So Snow White was the one that changed everything. That was Disney's first animated full-length feature. And apparently, everybody, including his wife,

said, do not do this. This is not the way to try to make your name. Yeah. And he said, no, I'm going to do it. He borrowed $1.5 million at the time to make this movie. And it turned out that everybody loved it. Obviously, it's apparently the 10th highest grossing film of all time, adjusted for inflation.

Wow, still. That's crazy. Yeah. So Snow White was the one that everybody thinks of when you think of a fairy tale becoming sanitized or disnified, you know? Yeah, because in the grim version, there was a heart in a box that the evil

was the evil witch. The evil witch. The one who is jealous of Snow White's beauty. Right. She wanted her heart in a box. Yes. That actually made it into the Disney version. Yeah, that was the sanitized version.

Right. In the full grim version, she wanted to eat the liver and lungs of Snow White, as a matter of fact, which is a little freaky. So the sanitized Disney version wasn't quite fully sanitized compared to the other one, but a little. They cut out the cannibalism. Yeah, and in the grim version, Snow White at her wedding,

the evil stepmother gets involved there, and the guest heat a pair of iron shoes on burning coals for Snow White into these shoes to dance until she dies. Yep. From wearing, I guess, her feet are burned off or something. Or she just danced herself to death. She's a dance, dance, dance, dance, dancing machine. We've got a couple more here.

Rapunzel. Yeah, overtly sexual. Overtly sexual. And I just realized, while researching this, that the Beastie Boys were clearly literature fans. Right. From the What Comes Around song, Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair, or I will climb up and get

into your underwear. That's the Beastie Boys line. And I remember it when I heard that line, I was like, well, that's childish. But that's actually exactly what happens in the original version. Ad rock, that was pretty childish. Yeah.

Is that what you thought to yourself? I did. Not like your usual collegiate, high-minded stuff. Right. Shake your rump. So Disney's movie Tangled is the Rapunzel version that's been super sanitized. And it's about a young girl whose hair

has miraculous properties that make you not age. So obviously, there's going to be some evil lady that wants that hair. Yep, who happens to be a witch who builds a tower to house Rapunzel. Unfortunately, she doesn't think to make the tower taller than Rapunzel's hair is long. Error.

Rapunzel has a suitor, a prince, I believe. It's got to be a prince. I don't even have to look down. Yes, I'm sure it's a prince. Always needed a prince to save the damsel. Right, which we'll talk about in the next episode. But she liked to let her hair down and let the guy climb up her hair every night

after the witch went to sleep. And they would get it on in the tower where she was locked up. And they did this a lot. Yeah. And apparently, one day, she was very young and naive otherwise. And she said to the witch, my clothes grow tight. And the witch is like, what?

You know what that means. Figured out what was going on. Yeah. Banished Rapunzel to the desert and said, be gone with you. And the prince comes back one day and tries to, I guess he gets into the tower somehow. Yeah, he climbs up in the tower and he is confronted not by Rapunzel, his lover.

But by the witch. By the wicked witch. Who's like, I know what you did. Yes. And there are a couple of versions. He either leaps from the tower or she pushes him from the tower. And in both versions, his eyes are gouged out by the thorns below.

Right. So he's blinded. Right, but he's still very much in love. He wanders the earth blind and homeless from that point on until he by chance encounters Rapunzel, who's living as a single mom, raising their kids. Twins. On her own.

Yeah. Apparently in a desert-like town, maybe somewhere in Nevada or Arizona. That's Barstow. OK, so she's in Barstow raising their twins as a single mom. And he, a homeless blind man, encounters her. And apparently it's just like when Ralphie comes back home in a Christmas story.

She starts crying at the sight of him. Right. And her tears heal him. Yeah. Heal his sight. Now that he has sight, apparently he's immediately got a home again. Sure.

So they make their way back to his kingdom and get married and live happily ever after. Which is very rare, if you haven't caught on by this point in time. What? Live happily ever after? Yeah. Yeah.

That is a really rare story. And it's sweet, too. Because the love goes beyond that immediate, once the sex dries up, it seems like another- Children's story? Yeah. That the dude is just like, whatever, I'm fine. This guy in one version jumps out of the tower

to kill himself and is blinded and wanders the earth. That's sweet. Once the sex dries up. From Punzel. All right. Let's finish it off with the worst of them all. Because it straight up is rape. Yeah.

There's no dancing around what happens in Sleeping Beauty. No. It's like Kill Bill. What do you mean? The beginning of Kill Bill. Oh, sure. You remember? Yeah.

So in the Disney version, in 1959, of course, you remember there was a young princess and a sorceress dooms her and casts a spell on her and says, you're going to die at 16, which is, even in our time, pretty young. Did you understand why? No. Probably jealousy.

Yeah. She's probably ugly and Sleeping Beauty was a beauty. Sure. So she says, you know what? You're going to prick yourself on a spindle and you're going to die. That is the spell. It can only be undone by a good fairy.

Of course, the good fairy comes along. Says, you can get out of this slumber if a prince, your true love, awakens you with a kiss. Yes. Pretty innocuous, right? Sure. I mean, why not? Why not just let's make it interesting,

is what the witch said. That's right. But there's an earlier version in the 14th century from France. I have no idea how to pronounce that. Paris Forest? OK. And in this version, the prince returns, finds the woman,

laying in bed, naked and unconscious. Yeah. And he rapes her. Yeah. He's like, I can't help myself. And I'm a prince, so no rules apply to me. Pretty much. So she becomes pregnant, has a kid, still while asleep.

She doesn't wake up from this. She gets raped. She gets pregnant, has a baby. Her little baby bites on her finger, thinking he's breastfeeding, and causes the spindle, the chip from the spindle, to fall out of her hand, I guess. Yeah, her finger, where she picked it. Yeah, and saves her.

So all anybody had to do was remove the, what's it called? The flax chip. No, what does it call when a piece of wood gets into your finger? Oh, a splinter. Splinter. Yeah. She had a splinter.

All anybody had to do was remove it, and she would have been fine. Pretty much. Luckily, her kid was a dumb dumb, and didn't know a breast from her finger. That's right. And there's another version called the Sun, the Moon, and Talia from the 1634 by Gimbatista Basil.

And in this version, it's a king who actually rapes the maiden. She has twins, and the queen finds out, and she says, you know what? Come here, cook. Take this lady. Take her kids. Cook them, kill them, cook them, and feed them to the king. And he says, all right, but then he goes off.

He's like, I just can't do that. What am I, some kind of sicko? All right, I'll just kill a baby lamb instead. And he feeds them lamb. So yeah, if you were a cook or a huntsman or a woodsman during this era, part of your job was murder. You were expected to murder innocents at the whim of the people in charge.

Yeah, I'm just cutting down some trees. You need me to kill someone? I got an X. You want me to put someone's heart in a box? All right. Well, that was it. Be sure to listen to part two of this where we talk about all the weirdness that's

behind all of this weirdness, right? And I bet drugs. Sure. It's always behind the weirdness, right? Don't you think the Grim Brothers were token on something? I don't know. Let's find out. All right.

If you want to know more about fairy tales that were way darker than you realize as a kid, just type something like that into the search bar howstuffworks.com. And it will bring up this wonderful article. And since I said wonderful, it's time for Listener Mail. I'm going to call this we inspired someone to go back to college.

Wow. How about that? Hey, guys, my name is Marie. I'm from Lakewood, Ohio, suburb of Cleveland. I've been listening for a few years. And oh, I'm sorry, for years. Oh, OK. And as soon as I heard you were coming to Pittsburgh,

I flipped out and called my mother immediately. She's also a huge fan. Her name is Joanne. Please give her a shout out. So they came to Pittsburgh and they were in the audience. Nice. Thanks, guys. She said that was great.

So however, the reason I'm writing is way more important than that. You guys were my inspiration to go back to college. After listening to how sign language works, I signed up for classes about a week later. By the first day, I was in love, not just with the language, but also with school. I'd forgotten how much I loved to learn and be challenged.

And at the start of fall semester next year, I'll be returning to school full time and it could not be happier. In the words of my best friend's dad, you belong there. Nice. How about that? Congratulations. Also, in your episode, you mentioned

three sentence structures for sign language. I employee, employee I, or I employee I. And you're curious about the last structure. And the purpose is for clarification. With the different structures, long sentences, or sentences like, I love you can get super confusing. She said or sentences. It's clearly not long sentences.

It's hard to tell who is giving and who is receiving the love by adding the second I. You are clarifying who is performing the verb. Nice. So thanks again for being my entertainment and my inspiration. Keep on doing what you do. You never know whose life you will influence next. That is from Marie Rasmussen.

Thank you so much for that email, Marie. We appreciate you. Best of luck in college and continuing your education. Yep. And thank you to you and your mom, Joanne, for coming to our show. I'm glad you guys had a good time. If you want to get in touch with us,

because we inspired you to do something great, or because we make you angry, whatever. Actually, you know what? We don't care to hear from you if we make you angry. It's good to do yourself. Yeah. You can get in touch with us via Twitter at S-Y-S-K podcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuffyoushouldknow.

You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. 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 slipdresses 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. Listen to Hey Dude, 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. 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. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life.

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.