Smells Like Humans
Top 5% global podcast! Smells Like Humans is a seasonal podcast dedicated to bringing a humorous perspective to quirky and curious aspects of human behavior. Each show, the SLH crew will focus on a different topic, and share personal stories and observations in a way that sounds like you’re hanging out with your funny friends. The stories and commentary are presented with humor and warmth, since let’s face it: we all smell like humans. (Contact us: contactSLH19581980@gmail.com)
Smells Like Humans
PLEASE LET THIS BE REAL!
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Jaimee joins Ross to discuss the fact that humans love a good hoax. Tangents include: Balloon Boy; guitar nipple; face smoothing; kidney game shows; naked animals; mirth vs joy; dog clothes; Walter Cronkite; Buck Henry; Corgis.
Notes:
Contact us: contactSLH19581980@gmail.com
Um, so they they like printed off thousands of leaflets depicting a horse wearing underwear. And the slogan was A nude horse is a rude horse.
SPEAKER_00I love it. Welcome to another episode of Smells Like Humans. This is the podcast where we explore the curious things that people do, the very human things that grab our attention and cause us to wonder what and why. I'm Ross, your host, and my guest today is so awesome. If she were a motorcycle, she would be a track-only, supercharger-equipped, carbon fiber laden, top-of-the-line, hyperbike, it's Jamie. Hi, and welcome everyone. Friends, help us. How? Send us money for therapy and share this show. Tell somebody about us. We need your help. If you like this show, please do us a great favor and share it with someone you think will like it too. We really appreciate it. And we appreciate you for listening each week. You may recall that at one point I said if people left us a five-star review and gave us sort of a sparkling write-up, we'd read it on the air, and we got such a great one by Pinky Bet.
SPEAKER_01Love it.
SPEAKER_00Pinky Bet titled their review is Smart, Funny, and Off the Wall. And it's really long. It's got so much good stuff. I'll have to share the whole thing with you later. I'll just read a snippet of it because it's like five paragraphs. Great. Imagine the most fun conversation you've ever had, and then wonder why you never have them anymore. No problem. This podcast fixes that with no pressure on you to be funny yourself. If you thought you were tuning in for a little chat about dreams or robots, rest assured at some point you'll probably hear about the guy Jamie caught shaving his chest hair in a public hot tub. How wonderful for us all to get to eavesdrop on them in the land of reality casual. And there's more.
SPEAKER_01I love that.
SPEAKER_00And there's more. At one point she says, Jamie's weird, candid, charming, quirky, sometimes shocking musings delivered in a sexy contralto.
SPEAKER_01Oh.
SPEAKER_00She also has a great laugh.
unknownDo I?
SPEAKER_00How awesome is that? Thank you, Pinky Bet.
SPEAKER_01So much. That's so nice.
SPEAKER_00Pinky Bet, we are glad that you are listening. And also you should consider a career in writing because that is some awesome writing. So yes, if you feel like this show floats your boat and you want to tell us, we will read it on the air because we love us some love. So, Jamie, let's get started. Ready. Now we know that humans like to believe fantastic stuff. We can be suckers for tall tales, conspiracy theories, scams, cons, fraud, schemes, swindles, rackets, tricks, diddles, flimp flams, hustles, griffs, and shakedowns. Mm-hmm. Did you hear me slipping diddles? That was good. I liked it. So it's been said that people probably all of us are gullible, and I think we all are at some level or another. We like to believe things, and we we can be persuaded to believe all kinds of things. Sure. But I don't think we should feel bad about that.
SPEAKER_01No.
SPEAKER_00In fact, at some point during this podcast, I'm gonna argue that it's actually a good thing. I really think it's one of the best things about human beings is our willingness to go along with fantastic stories. So what I did in preparation for this podcast is I looked up three hoaxes that I thought you in particular would like.
SPEAKER_01It's funny.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_01Is I also picked out three hoaxes that I thought that you would like. You are prescient. Isn't that a coincidence?
SPEAKER_00It's quite a coincidence. Also, I asked you to do it. We actually have not discussed this ahead of time. I am curious if we ended up picking at least one of the same.
SPEAKER_01There's one in particular that I think we might have picked the same. The first one that I picked is The Great Donor Show.
SPEAKER_00The Great Donor Show? Yes. No, I don't know this one.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00Oh, nice. Okay, tell me about it.
SPEAKER_01I picked this one because I thought it was so crazy. So The Great Donor Show was a reality show in the Netherlands in 2007.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01And the basis of the show was this terminally ill woman.
SPEAKER_00Wow.
SPEAKER_01Is donating a kidney and the contestants on the show, there's 25 contestants that need a kidney or they're gonna die.
SPEAKER_00Oh no.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_00And this is supposed to be on TV.
SPEAKER_01It's on TV. Yeah. So people were able to text into the show to vote for the person that they thought should win the kidney. And uh every it you had to pay for the text messages. So um every time you texted in, the money went to the Dutch Kidney Foundation, which is nice. They give some money to a foundation.
SPEAKER_00The DKF.
SPEAKER_01Yep. Um, but it was later revealed that the woman, uh the terminally ill woman on the show was an actress.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But the contestants were actual real people that really needed kidneys.
SPEAKER_00Oh no. Yeah. This was this really happened. This really happened. Because I thought you were gonna say the whole thing was made up and they were just scamming people for money. Oh no. This is horrifyingly unethical.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Um, so it did come out that the the contestants on the show knew that the woman was an actress and that they weren't actually gonna get her kidneys, but they um went on the show to kind of bring awareness to the uh kidney foundation.
SPEAKER_00Wow. Yeah. So they knew they weren't getting a kidney.
SPEAKER_01Right, but the general public didn't, and they thought they were really like helping these people, and people were pissed.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because they were spending money to text in. And what were they basing their judgments on? Like, oh, I like that guy's haircut, he needs a kidney.
SPEAKER_01They all need a kidney. Even if it was like, even if she really did have a kidney, it's still a pretty messed up idea for a show, right? Oh, it's twisted.
SPEAKER_00Twisted. It's so twisted, but on the other hand, it's not it's adjacent to some of the junk they put on, right? It's not that far off.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Are you ready for my first one?
SPEAKER_01I'm so ready. I can't wait.
SPEAKER_00Balloon boy.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00Do you know about balloon boy?
SPEAKER_01I do know about balloon boys.
SPEAKER_00It's hard for me to imagine anything that I would know about that you would not know about.
SPEAKER_01I know everything.
SPEAKER_00I know. Everything that I ever know about. Jamie has not only not only does she know it, but she's known it for a long time. So for our anyone in the audience who doesn't know what balloon or who balloon boy was, it was uh an incident in 2009, there was a homemade helium-filled gas balloon shaped to resemble a flying saucer, and it was released into the atmosphere from Fort Collins, Colorado, by this couple, Richard and Mayumi Heen or Henne, I don't know how they say their name. And they claimed that their six-year-old son, whose name was Falcon, which is a great name. I like that name, actually.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's good.
SPEAKER_00It's a cool name. They claim the six-year-old son was trapped inside the balloon.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00And was floating uncontrollably across the state. Man, I remember this.
SPEAKER_01It was so crazy at the time.
SPEAKER_00Authorities confirmed the balloon reached 7,000 feet. That's really high for a balloon.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and a small child.
SPEAKER_00And uh, yes, and it's uh it was flight lasted about 90 minutes, and of course, the media got on this. They were done chasing OJ, so they started chasing this balloon, and the incident and the boy, the boy was Falcon was nicknamed Balloon Boy.
SPEAKER_01Yep.
SPEAKER_00Where's Balloon Boy? Yeah. So the balloon was pursued by helicopters and local police. And after flying about 50 miles, it landed north of the uh Denver airport. The kid's not inside. Oh no.
SPEAKER_01Oh no, and then it's a balloon boy.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, then there were reports that an object was seen falling from the balloon.
SPEAKER_02Oh no.
SPEAKER_00So then there was a speculation that Falcon fell out of the balloon and was probably dead somewhere. Yeah. Like stuck in the jaws of a bear because it was Colorado. They got bears, right? Probably. If you're listening to the show in Colorado, please confirm that you have bears. You got mountains, you gotta have bears.
SPEAKER_01You gotta.
SPEAKER_00Don't they go together? Sure.
SPEAKER_01Bears, wolves, they got bears.
SPEAKER_00Except in the I don't know about the desert. I think in the desert, if you have mountains. You don't have bears though.
SPEAKER_01Desert bears?
SPEAKER_00I never seen 'em. I've never heard of them because they got no trees. In the desert, there's no trees. So if it's a mountain in the desert, no trees, what's a bear gonna do?
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00I mean, the bear's just gonna be like, what am I supposed to do here with no trees?
SPEAKER_01It's too damn hot.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's hot. There's no fish.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I don't see it. Can't picture it. I can't picture it. And if I can't picture it, it doesn't exist. So later, this kid, Falcon, was found hiding in the attic of his home. And it came uh to be known after some interviews and some investigation that the whole thing was a hoax because the dad and mom were trying to get on reality television, and they'd been on a reality show of some kind. Yeah. And they were trying to get their, you know, get the next gig. So this whole thing was set up from the beginning. And they did get in a little bit of trouble, but they eventually, I think the governor pardoned them at some point. They did get some jail time, but it was clear after investigation that it was a publicity stunt, and they were just marketing themselves. Okay. But it was, but people just immediately were like, yes, this happened. A kid is in a balloon, and then the kid fell out of the balloon.
SPEAKER_01People were freaking out. I remember this.
SPEAKER_00And the media, as usual, yeah, they were not asking, and it's like, oh, we have a balloon boy. This is a great story. So we don't need to ask no questions because now every TV in the world, or at least in America, is on our channel. Right. Watching this balloon. Yeah. And now that the kid's not in the balloon, well, now it's a whole nother thing we can like spend another couple of days.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00Balloon boy. So you knew about that.
SPEAKER_01I didn't know about balloon boy.
SPEAKER_00Did you know right away that it was a hoax, or were you in there too?
SPEAKER_01No, I don't think so. I think at the time, I mean, everyone, yeah, everyone was kind of freaking out. It was like mass hysteria. I don't think I knew. Yeah. Yeah. It seemed crazy that a parent would put their kid in a balloon, but people are stupid.
SPEAKER_00Well, yeah, and these people were pretty out there in terms of their willingness to try things to get attention. Plus, they named their kid Falcon. Yeah. So whenever you're naming whenever you have an unconventional name for a kid, you are up for anything. Right. I will also say that putting a small child in a balloon is is not a bad idea. No. Because that kid will learn something that they will not learn anywhere else if they're up in a balloon floating.
SPEAKER_01Science.
SPEAKER_00Uh yeah, science and gravity in particular. What's your what's your next one?
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00I bet it's going to be the one I have. I am almost positive.
SPEAKER_01Almost certain.
SPEAKER_00I would bet a hundred dollars with myself.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_00That the next one is going to be the one I have.
SPEAKER_01All right.
SPEAKER_00Go.
SPEAKER_01Cello scrotum. No! I've never Where do you find these things? Cello scrotum.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Whoa. That sounds like a bad diagnosis.
SPEAKER_01I know, right?
SPEAKER_00I'm sorry. You have cello scrotum.
SPEAKER_01I regret to inform you that you've been diagnosed with cello scrotum.
SPEAKER_00You have cello scrotum and your child is in a balloon.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so cello scrotum is a medical report published in the British Medical Journal in 1974.
SPEAKER_00Wow.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So this woman and her husband um had read in a different medical journal about a condition called guitar nipple.
SPEAKER_00So musical.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01Where people that played guitar, like that it rubbed against your nipple and like caused chafing and whatnot. And sh and she thought that it sounded ludicrous and made up. And so she said, Well, I'm gonna write uh a journal entry about something called cello scrotum.
SPEAKER_00Oh, I see.
SPEAKER_01Which is from Yeah. So where the you know the cellos hold it between their legs, it rubs against your scrotum and it causes like some problems to your junk. Thirty-four years after she wrote the article, a different a new article came out called A Symphony of Maladies, and it was all about different uh musical ailments that people had. Um so they referenced Cello Scrotum, uh Fiddler's Neck, and Flautist Chin.
SPEAKER_00I have Fiddler's neck. That I have.
SPEAKER_01That you have.
SPEAKER_00I didn't know I don't play the fiddle. Yeah. But I got the neck.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00The fiddler's neck. That's and that's a bad thing. It is.
SPEAKER_01It's not great. Um so yeah, so 34 years after um she wrote it and people accepted it as an actual fact, she came out and said, Well, I find I I have to tell you that this is completely fictitious. And if anybody ever watched a cellist actually play, they would know that this is not a thing. I just wrote it because I read about guitar nipple and I thought it was so absurd that I thought, wow, surely I can con someone the same way.
SPEAKER_00So how long did it take for people to figure out that there's no I mean she came forward 34 years ago. Oh, you mean she just let it hang there?
SPEAKER_01She let it hang for all those years, and then the then this new article came out about the other uh musical medical conditions, and she was finally like, okay, I I have to say something now. This has gone on long enough.
SPEAKER_00Wow, that's fascinating. Yeah, yeah, it's just interesting. There's so many things like that that people just throw out there and people just run with it. It's like, yeah, okay. Yeah. And we're just um it's just we're just really ready for fantastic things like that. We're just ready for it. We're set up for it. I already know you know about this. My next one.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00It's the Manti Teo catfish.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_00Mantai Teo was a college football player when this was happening. So young person. So this is the one where he had this girlfriend that although he said he met her at one point, he actually never met her. It was an online relationship and he fell in love with her and all this stuff. And none of that's extraordinary, even if that was made up. He told the media that she was dying of leukemia and that she died on the same day his grandmother died, if I remember correctly. Yeah. And it turns out it wasn't a real person. No, it was a real person, but wasn't the person who he thought it was. Their name then was Ronaya Tuyasisopo. I hope I said that right. I think that's right.
SPEAKER_01I'm sure you did.
SPEAKER_00So Ranaya at the time was actually in love with this football player, Man Taiteo. And so it was this catfishing was not comp uh, you might not even say it was malicious because it was their way of, you know, having this relationship that they wanted to have. His girlfriend supposedly dies of leukemia. Of course, the media are going nuts with the story because they love the story. Like, here's this guy, he's a Heisman Trophy candidate, he plays for Notre Dame, and his girlfriend died, and his grandmother died. And there's nothing that sports people like more than a hero story. Right. You know, succeeding in the face of the worst kind of adversity. And so that everyone was very taken in by this story. And at some point, the catfisher calls him again after this girlfriend is supposedly dead and says, I'm not dead. So not only was Mantaiteo taken in, but all the rest of us were too. There's a lot of layers, and this Tuyasa Sopo confessed eventually that there was a hoax, that they were the ones, only them were doing the hoax, because at one point they thought, oh, it's multiple people involved. There must be.
SPEAKER_01I think they played different characters too. I'm pretty sure they were like their pretending to be the girlfriend's sister or something like that relative at some point.
SPEAKER_00They were really good at putting on these voices, and they were able to demonstrate how they did it on one show or another during during an interview. When we're in the middle of these stories as observers and we're consumers of them or we're taking them in, we don't really ask a lot of critical questions. We just accept it.
SPEAKER_01I think this one was so interesting at the time, too, because it was before like catfish the movie and catfish the TV show and all that came out. This was like kind of the first catfish story that was ever publicized, really. Really? Okay. I think so, if I remember correctly. Um, and so people hadn't really heard about it, the term wasn't common, and you know, people were like, How could you fall for that? You're so stupid, you know. And he was also the there's a whole other layer because uh Manta Teo was Mormon.
SPEAKER_00Oh, I forgot about that. That's right.
SPEAKER_01And and I'm not sure if the catfisher was also Mormon or not, which would add a whole other layer because being gay and being Mormon is not okay, and so there's a reason why I felt when I watched the documentary they felt like they had to, you know, take on this persona because they grew up in a family that was very like they wanted him to do sports and be an athlete and be manly, and they were obviously struggling with their sexuality. And yeah, there's a lot of layers to this story.
SPEAKER_00Fascinating one. Yeah, pretty wild. I recommend people dig into it. I wanted to say this is a complete tangent. Yeah. And our show is known for tangents. A couple of shows ago we were talking about the fact that you had some face stuff. You had a primping, a plumping, a twisting. Appealing. Appealing. Yeah, we didn't really try to skip. We didn't really talk about it. We were just talking about that you had some peeling. Maybe we didn't go into it, but we've talked about improvements, maintenance activities in the past on this show. Yeah. But I was gonna mention that today your face looks right peeled to perfection. You look like a portrait. It's perfect. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01It's the perfect compliments today in this episode.
SPEAKER_00So smooth.
SPEAKER_01Thank you.
SPEAKER_00So I was um, I think I might have mentioned to you, but I'm not sure. I'd heard about this new kind of sensational skin tightening technique called Elochore or something.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00And it's the one where they they this is really new out there in the world. There's not a lot of these machines, but they're gonna be, it's gonna be a lot more common. It's coming to a dermatologist near you.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00Soon they'll be doing this at Walmart. I'm pretty sure I talked to you about it because what it is is this is just layman's understanding, but instead of a facelift where it's kind of like they grab all the skin up and tie it in a knot behind your head, I don't know what they do.
SPEAKER_02Uh-huh. This turn the crank.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they turn the crank. So we can't get another five years off. Well, yeah, and it just gets tighter and tighter, and then your face just explodes.
SPEAKER_01I can't blink.
SPEAKER_00Uh I can't blink.
SPEAKER_01I can't eat, but I look great.
SPEAKER_00Butter me. So um, why would I be buttered? I don't know. I like butter. So, anyway, so what it does is it's like takes these little core, it's like a little core of skin away. Yeah. So it's like instead of it just poking it, like sometimes they do things with needles.
SPEAKER_02Micro needling.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, micro needling, but the micro needling doesn't take out skin, but this does.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00So it takes out the skin. So what happens is it heals, and then your sk your whole skin, it's all tighter.
SPEAKER_01Because it's got to squish back together.
SPEAKER_00For real.
SPEAKER_01Wow.
SPEAKER_00Like it's like having a facelift without getting a facelift.
SPEAKER_01Interesting.
SPEAKER_00So I uh so I was talking to somebody about this and they got really excited about it. And I got, I was kind of like, wow, that sounds pretty cool. And what we first heard was, you know, it's gotta recovery time. Okay, because this is some intensive stuff, but you know, it's a few days.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So you better take the week. So she just sent me, this person just sent me a video of somebody who just had it done. Uh huh. And they're doing that check in every day. Yeah. Like, okay, here's I am. Okay, guys, it's only one day, and my face is puffy and it's red, and it looked like like if your face looks As bad as her face did on day one, they would put your boyfriend in jail. Like they wouldn't even ask you what happened. They'd be like, obviously.
SPEAKER_01This guy's gotta go. He's a menace to society.
SPEAKER_00And you'd be like, no, no, no, no. I walked into a door. And they'd be like, no, we're taking him to prison. So uh so it looked really bad. Like it looks really bad. But she's like, it's okay, it's a little puffy, it's not too sore, it's a little sensitive. Okay. Second day, okay, guys, and it still looks really bad. Third day, okay, guys. And you could see on her face like she's starting to get concerned. She's freaking out. Four days, five days, six days. It still looks like hell, seven days, eight days. And the thing is, there's all it's like makes these little square, red squares.
SPEAKER_01Okay. My fear, you know, I have the tripophobia.
SPEAKER_00They don't think it's that. It doesn't it doesn't look like that. It looked more like it, you know what it looked like? It looked like she was making out with a hot waffle iron. I kid you know.
SPEAKER_01It's more like a burn. It looks like a burn. Yeah. All over the face.
SPEAKER_00And then like 11 days, 12 days. That's the last one she makes because it's still it keeps going. It was a lot better in 12 days. But you could still see the waffle iron.
SPEAKER_01No.
SPEAKER_00And I'm like, and then she's talking about three months. And then they're saying now, if you've got like slack skin, yeah. So like me, like where skin is just hanging off. Like I walk around, I'm like an elephant. My skin touches the ground, okay? So if you've got slack skin, you might have to do this once a month for three months. What? So it's like three months, you can't, and it was so bad, there's no way you can't cover it with makeup. You can't actually put anything on your face because you have to heal first. So this is horrifying. It looked like, I mean, for my money, I would do the facelift before I would do that. And I don't plan on doing either one, but man, it looked really bad.
SPEAKER_01Crazy.
SPEAKER_00I'm just telling you.
SPEAKER_01Okay, I'll pass on that one. In case it comes up.
SPEAKER_00Okay, what's your next one?
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00This will be your last one.
SPEAKER_01This is my last one.
SPEAKER_00Okay. It's our last chance for intersectionality. That's right. Hit me, Sergeant. Cinna. Yes, we have a Society for Indecency to Naked Animals. I knew some of them.
SPEAKER_01Well, we got one.
SPEAKER_00We would have a hit, and I picked this one because I said Jamie will like.
SPEAKER_01I will definitely pick that one.
SPEAKER_00You also know I love animals, and we talked about animals many times on the show, especially dogs. Okay, let's let's hear about this.
SPEAKER_01There's so much about this.
SPEAKER_00It's a good one.
SPEAKER_01It's a pretty good one. Yeah. You want me to go or you want you to go. Okay.
SPEAKER_00I want to hear your version of it.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so it basically, okay, the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals. It was basically a satirical hoax aimed at clothing indecent naked animals.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So they were trying to, my understanding was they were trying to kind of push against what they saw as sort of the conservative moralists of the times, which would have been in the early 60s. Right. 50s and 60s. So they were kind of it was like a pushback on that whole moralism.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so go on.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So um it was on the news a lot, and they had um this comedian named Buck Henry who they pretended was the CINAH president, and they gave him a fake name of G. Clifford Prout.
SPEAKER_00Right. Right. And I will add in that because I know who Buck Henry was. Okay. And he was the perfect example of mild-mannered middle America.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00He just looked like a regular guy who you'd see out puttering in his yard. He looked like a G. Clifford Prout. Yeah, exactly. He's perfect. And he actually had a very long career, but yes.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Um, so they they like printed off thousands of leaflets depicting a horse wearing underwear. And the slogan was a nude horse is a rude horse.
SPEAKER_00I love it. I love it. It's like when I saw that, it's like I need that t-shirt.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I love that. A nude horse.
SPEAKER_01A nude horse is a rude horse.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00What else did you learn about it?
SPEAKER_01Well, um, I learned that it was um exposed on uh uh by a staff member of Walter Cronkite.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01Yep. And he was so mad.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01Um, I think there was a quote from the guy that created the prank that said when Cronkite eventually found out that he'd been conned, and I was the guy behind it, he called me up. I'd never heard him that angry on TV, not about Hitler, Saddam Hussein, or Fidel Castro. He was furious with me.
SPEAKER_00Walter Cronkite was a huge news journalist back when they the people on the news actually wrote their own news. Back in the day when there were still only three networks. Okay. So he was a huge figure. And at one point, he based on either a poll or just hype, he was described as the most trusted person in America. So when he got duped, he took, I mean, it was like a blow to his ego, right? Because he everyone thinks he's always completely straight and on the straight and narrow and doesn't get fooled and just the facts. And here he is taken in by Buck Henry and the gang with their clothing on animals.
SPEAKER_01That's so crazy. And it went on for like several years, I think. It was like 59 to 61. Oh, it was even longer.
SPEAKER_00Even longer it went on. Um well, so what happened was so Cronkite figures it out. Okay, and disavows the whole thing. But they continue to keep this going because not everybody watched Walter Cronkite back in the day. And and it wasn't like today where there's instantly it's everywhere on the internet, like there's no secrets, everything's out there immediately, everyone hears about it, there are memes, right? You know, whatever. Back then, you could like go your whole life and not know Jack.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Which, by the way, is very peaceful.
SPEAKER_01Great way to live.
SPEAKER_00It's a I think actually it's the best way to live. People during my lifetime, you know, I've had this discussion with people about, you know, the value of being an informed citizen. And I've taken all kinds of positions on this, but at that this point now I'm looking back on everything, and I feel like the less you know, the better off you are.
SPEAKER_01Ignorance is bliss.
SPEAKER_00I really do believe that because ultimately it doesn't matter. Yeah, none of it matters.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00And then you croak.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So I can't don't remember where you stand on dressing animals. Do you dress your dogs? Are you putting coats and slacks, hats on your dogs? What's your deal?
SPEAKER_01There's a I mean, your dogs could use some help. Yeah, definitely. I have one, my precious baby angel with a face that only a mother could love. Dog's got no teeth. She's got no teeth. She went bald for a little bit. That happens. For like a hot minute, she went bald on her back, and I made her wear a t-shirt because she would lick it incessantly. Lick her back incessantly, and then the fur would all come off.
SPEAKER_00So many times I've been down that road.
SPEAKER_01I know, right?
SPEAKER_00So I have empathy.
SPEAKER_01Yes. And I do put them in costumes for photos, for costume days. Okay. But generally when she's not hairless, they don't wear clothes.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'm not a big fan of clothing, putting clothing on animals, but um sometimes I see it's itchy for them. I I just it for them it makes no sense. They they evolved from, you know, they got they've got a built-in sweater. They're all good. Like they don't, but it's so it's all it's a human thing where we're like, oh, they must be cold. Yeah. Um no but a sweater. But I saw a dog the other day who's kind of weird anyway. It's I don't know what it is, it's a very small dog, it's a pocketbook dog, basically. A little bigger than that. And the dog is kind of kooky anyway, like it's interested, but doesn't it's like doesn't want to be petted. It almost acts like more like a cat.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00But I see it in my elevator. And so uh the dog had a sweater on, but it was not the right color for that dog. Like I'm not an expert on color matchups, but you know this was wrong. It was like a light blue sweater, yeah. And it looked weird, and it was on this brownish dog, and I was like, that dog needs like a red tight sweater, like a tight red sweater, like you see on the some of those wiener dogs. The other thing I saw the other day is I I was walking down the street and I saw Corgi with such a great, you know, Corgi is a queen dog, yeah, former queen. So um, it had such a rich black coat. I was like, wow, that is a good looking Corgi. Like I don't normally feel this way. And I walked it up, walked up to the person, the owner, and I said, that is probably the best looking Corgi I've ever seen. And as the words are coming out of my mouth, I got close enough to realize it was wearing a dark like sweater. And it's like, and but I couldn't stop the sentence.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00So all I could do is just walk faster so there wouldn't be any more interaction.
SPEAKER_01That corgi's day.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, the corgi was well, I'm not sure because the corgi is sitting there thinking, oh, you don't why don't you can't you appreciate me for me and not get so get into my clothes, stop objectifying me. So these are fantastic stories, there's tons of them out there. We love to believe in fantastic things, and I think the reason for that is, first of all, fantastic things makes life bearable.
SPEAKER_01True.
SPEAKER_00If we allow ourselves just to believe in a little magic, a little conspiracy, a little flimflam, a diddle, if you will, it makes life a little more interesting. Yeah. And our ability to have these flights of imagination are is the same stuff that leads us to produce wonderful ideas and inventions and breakthroughs and and create the art that we create and create the music and the poetry and the books and the relationships and all the stuff that we just think, I wonder if. And that is a great feature of human beings. So that's part one is that I think the reason that we're susceptible to these things is um, first of all, we like a diversion because if we didn't have these fantastic things to believe in, even if a part of us says this probably isn't real, yeah. But I just want to see what's in the balloon. Right. Falcon, where are you, Falcon? And where's Falcon today?
SPEAKER_01Falcon's a grown. I would love to know. Yeah. He works for NASA now.
SPEAKER_00He works for NASA. He's out there with the China balloons.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. That's me.
SPEAKER_00No, Falcon. So, yeah, not anymore. No, we're not going for it. So, part one is we need diversion. Part two is it's just a symptom of our ability to imagine wonderful things and imagine and just creative things. And if we didn't have that ability, yeah, we probably wouldn't be so ready to believe fantastic things, but then we would be a lot less interesting. Right. We'd be boring. Yeah. Life would be boring. And then the third take on this for me, and I'm gonna ask you for a reaction to any of the takes, okay, is that I think we forget because we are always searching for the next fantastic thing to react to, to be mad about, or to be amazed by, or to believe in, like, oh wow, conspiracy number 437, that's really cool. I'm gonna run for that one, or balloon boy, or girlfriend, or whatever. I'm gonna believe these things. We forget that just being alive is fantastic, and there's fantastic things happening all around us every moment. Like you sitting there right now doing this podcast. That's pretty amazing.
SPEAKER_01My peeled face. Well, I I that's part of it.
SPEAKER_00But even if your face was unpeeled, it was completely unpeeled, it would still be fantastic that we are in this moment having this conversation and sharing it with the world and bringing some joy to people's lives. Or I joy is probably too strong of a term.
SPEAKER_01We hope for we shoot for joy. We probably get a little smirk.
SPEAKER_00We'll take mirth.
SPEAKER_01Yes, mirth.
SPEAKER_00We shoot for joy, we'll take mirth. Is mirth worse than joy?
SPEAKER_01I'm not sure, but I like it.
SPEAKER_00I think I would want joy if I had my choice between joy and mirth. I would choose joy because mirth seems a little less.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00It's good.
SPEAKER_01But that's what we're getting.
SPEAKER_00I say we're That's about where we're at. We're shooting for joy and delivering on mirth.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_00And that's fantastic that we're doing that. And everyone listening to this almost is just all they had to do was click a link. And that's pretty fantastic. And there are things around us all the time. And I'm not saying stop and smell the flowers, but you could.
SPEAKER_02If you wanted to.
SPEAKER_00It's not about that so much. It's more about just like we're always chasing the next thing. Did you watch the show? Did you go to this concert? Did you try this new diet? Did you do all the exercise? All these things. Chase, chase, chase, chase. When really just being here is pretty amazing. And that are those are my takes on the fantastic worldview. You like the hot takes? Good. I want to thank you for joining us, not only for those hot takes, but for this episode. Thanks for um sharing your hoaxes, and I'm glad we had some intersectionality. Is that the proper way to use that?
SPEAKER_01I think that's good. Yeah, I like it.
SPEAKER_00I'm not sure it is. But if we were doing a Venn diagram of our hoaxes, the uh the animals enclosed, the nude horse, the nude horses would be in the middle.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00If I remember what a Venn diagram is. Thanks to all of you for joining us for this episode. If you like what we're doing, uh you can share the show. That would help us. We're on Patreon. You can join us on Instagram. You can also send us messages there, and we love to hear from you. Also, if you want your review read on the air, write us a sparkling review on Apple Podcasts. Give us five stars. It's kind of weird if you don't use Apple Podcasts that much. It's kind of weird to navigate their how to write a review. You have to be paying attention. And if you're over 30 years old, you might get you might stumble. Okay, so I get it. But if you can do that, that's a really cool way to help us because apparently the way it's set up is if there are enough good reviews, then somehow we rise up in the kingdom of podcasts. And by the way, there's like a million of them. So any help you can give us, we can use. We're small, shrunken, independent, and all we're trying to do is shoot for joy. And we hope, but we're delivering on mercy. And we hope you will tune in to another episode. Because whether you are hanging out with a nude horse or just someone who has a bad case of guitar nipple, it's important to remember that we all smell like humans. Goodbye, everybody. Did you hear me slipping diddles?
SPEAKER_01That was good, I liked it.