CW: Ableism / Disability exploitation, LGBTQ+ discrimination, Sexual content (brief/legal context), Death (brieth), Religion

There’s the usual laws, like no kissing your wife on Sunday, and then there’s the law about keeping ice cream in your back pocket. Remy delivers on weird laws that are still on the books, some of which we can be arrested for very easily. Or may actively be breaking. And that you might be breaking. Right now.

We’ll start here with this data-driven reference site that compiles and maintains verified legislative information across all 50 states. Their stupid laws database is updated annually—which means someone out there is actively tracking America’s dumbest legislation so you don’t have to.

This is a legal information resource run by attorneys that cross-references actual state statutes to verify which weird laws are still enforceable. A solid starting point for separating genuine legislation from the fake stuff you find floating around on the listicles on the internet.

This is a Kentucky-based news outlet that traced the ice cream cone law back to its 19th-century horse theft origins.

This is a well-cited overview of the practice, its history in Florida and New York bars, and the legislative response. A good first stop before diving into the primary sources below.

This article was written by one of the advocates who personally lobbied the Florida Legislature for the 1989 ban. A firsthand account of how the law came to exist and why it mattered.

An investigative piece from a nonprofit Pennsylvania newsroom that traced the state’s 1861 anti-fortune-telling statute through its legislative history, including its original targeting of Philadelphia and its anti-Romani subtext.

This is the official press release from the American Civil Liberties Union on the 2010 Maryland court decision striking down Montgomery County’s fortune-telling ban on First Amendment grounds. There’s a donation popup, but just exit out of it.

Published by the Smithsonian Institution, this piece draws on historical records to document how the American dairy industry lobbied for discriminatory margarine legislation in the late 19th century. This is great context for understanding how economic interests shape food law.

This is National Geographic’s deep dive into the decades-long legislative battle between butter and margarine industries. It covers the pink-dye mandate, state-level bans, and how the dairy lobby shaped federal food policy for nearly a century.

The Foundation for Economic Education’s analysis of the federal Margarine Act and the broader economic protectionism behind anti-margarine legislation. This is useful for understanding the policy mechanics underneath what sounds like a very silly food fight.

Maintained by Middle Tennessee State University, this entry covers the full legal and constitutional history of Sabbath laws in America, from the Jamestown Colony through modern Supreme Court rulings. This is an authoritative academic reference on why so many Sunday restrictions are still standing.

An accessible explainer on the blue law history behind Sunday car dealership closures, including which states still enforce the ban and the economic reasoning that keeps the laws in place.

This Wikipedia is a broad overview of the religious practice, its origins in early 20th-century Appalachian Pentecostalism, and the state laws it prompted. It’s just a good, useful primer for the topic.

An in-depth legal analysis of the First Amendment arguments surrounding religious snake handling laws, including court rulings and the tension between religious freedom and public safety.

This is a legal blog post from the Tennessee Bar Association examining the history and current status of snake-handling prohibitions in Appalachian states. It’s written for a legal audience but accessible enough for anyone who wants these kinds of details.

News coverage of the 2014 death of Pastor Jamie Coots in Kentucky, which brought national attention to the ongoing practice of religious snake handling and the limits of the laws designed to prevent it.

A 2013 investigative piece from a leading LGBTQ+ publication documenting which states retained sodomy laws after the Supreme Court’s Lawrence v. Texas ruling and how those laws were being selectively applied in ways that still caused real harm.

A 2025 update tracking the current status of unenforced but technically active sodomy statutes, and why their continued existence on the books matters in a post-Roe legal landscape.

CW: Government Spying and Privacy Violation, War, Brief talk of 9/11

Echelon sounds like a conspiracy theory. A secret government project? Cold war private surveilling? And giant golf balls in the English countryside? This week we’re digging into the full story of mass surveillance from Cold War spy networks to the devices sitting in our homes and asking how much privacy we actually have left.

To start with, we can look at this distant picture of the radomes at Menwith Hill, the golf balls, that do the spying this episode is talking about.

The starting point for anyone who wants the full picture. Wikipedia’s Echelon entry is surprisingly thorough for a program that didn’t officially exist. This is the good, decently deep read if you just want something quick.

This entry covers the formation and structure of the intelligence alliance that made Echelon possible, and it explains where the name actually comes from.

This covers the 1946 agreement between the US and UK that formalized intelligence sharing and laid the groundwork for decades of surveillance.

The NSA declassified the UKUSA Agreement and put it on their own website, so these are primary documents you can go look at and read for yourself.

A well-researched breakdown of how the US-UK intelligence relationship developed before, during, and after World War II.

This is an explainer on why Cold War America was convinced nuclear annihilation was about to happen at any time. It’s good context for understanding why building a global spy network seemed perfectly reasonable at the time. It’s Khan Academy, which is free to use, but it does give a popup asking for a donation. You can just click to close it without donating if you want to.

This is a catalog of the times the world almost ended by accident including the geese, the moon, and other embarrassing near-misses that made Cold War surveillance feel necessary to the people who started it.

Before Echelon there was Shamrock, and Shamrock was already alarming. This covers the NSA’s decades-long program of reading everyone’s telegrams.

A more narrative take on Operation Shamrock that goes beyond the dry facts and actually explains how the whole arrangement worked including which companies were involved and how they justified handing over 150,000 telegrams a month.

This is a deep dive into Menwith Hill that gets into the actual technology like the Torus antennas, the spy satellites, and the sheer scale of what’s happening inside those domes.

This is a detailed report on Menwith Hill’s operations and oversight, or rather the remarkable absence of it. If you want to understand how a US intelligence facility ended up operating largely unchecked on British soil, you can read this. It’s longish at 72 pages, but it gets really into the strategic roles and economics of it all.

This is the documentation around Margaret Newsham’s whistleblowing, which is what first cracked Echelon open for public scrutiny.

This is the Wikipedia on Duncan Campbell journalist who spent thirty years being told Echelon didn’t exist and kept investigating anyway. This covers his career, the ABC Trial, the ZIRCON documentary

This is Duncan Campbell’s own investigation into Echelon, published in 2000 at the height of the European controversy. This is where the Airbus-Boeing corporate espionage story gets laid out in detail. Required reading.

This is a legal analysis of Echelon that asks the obvious question: was any of this actually legal? It’s a longer read at 44 pages, but it’s interesting.

This was published after the Snowden leaks finally confirmed what everyone suspected and connects the original Echelon program to its modern descendants.

This is the Wikipedia that has the full scope of what Snowden revealed. If Echelon was the original blueprint, the Snowden disclosures revealed just how far everything had gotten after it.

This one talks about XKeyscore, Echelon’s successor, adapted for the internet age. This covers the NSA’s search-engine-for-everything, which can pull up a comprehensive profile of basically anyone from a single email address.

This is the ACLU’s breakdown of what the Snowden leaks revealed about mass collection of American communications. It’s written for a general audience so it’s easier to understand.

This is a law review article with the title “Is Your Smart Speaker a Snitch?” This covers the legal landscape around smart speaker data and what law enforcement can and can’t do with it.

Patent filings are public record, which is how we know what Amazon and Google have been planning for their smart devices. This report goes through those patents so you don’t have to.

CW: Child Sexual Abuse/Statutory Rape Allegations, Grooming, Coerced Abortion Allegations, Domestic Violence, Manipulation, Religious exploitation, Demonic and Paranormal topics, Death

Ed and Lorraine Warren of The Conjuring franchise and more get the WWYAT treatment: knock them down brick by brick. We address their rise to fame and subsequent drift into infamy, the Judith Penney allegations, and the media empire that buoyed their reputation. Please be mindful of the content warnings this episode.

Let’s begin with a picture of Ed and Lorraine.

First of all, here’s the official website of the New England Society for Psychic Research, which the Warrens founded and which has absolutely no bias whatsoever. /sarcasm. A useful timeline of their careers, written entirely by people who loved them very much.

Take a look at the outside of the museum. And this nonsense word Karen had a good time trying to pronounse.

This one is a photo gallery tour of the Warren Occult Museum. It’s cursed dolls, human skulls, a self-playing piano, and just really all sorts of things. The website talks about some of the Warren controversies too.

If you don’t want to click the link, here’s a slideshow of things you can find in the museum!

If you wanted to, you can go stay the night at the Warren’s house. It’s now an overnight rental where you can sleep in their beds, investigate the museum, and sign a waiver acknowledging you may be scratched, possessed, or levitated. All nights through August 2026 are sold out. If you click on this link, warning for flashing lights and loud sounds as soon as you open the site that you can’t turn off.

This is the Hollywood Reporter’s deep dive into the Conjuring franchise and the messy legal battles, studio cover allegations, and personal scandals lurking behind it. The article that first brought the Judith Penney story into serious mainstream coverage.

Here we go to Snopes to look at the break down of what’s actually documented about the Amityville Horror versus what the Lutzes, and the Warrens, would prefer you believe.

This is a handy listicle cataloguing the greatest hits of times the Warrens were outed as frauds.

This is Ed Warren’s famous footage of the “White Lady” ghost at Union Cemetery. According to Judith Penney, she put on a white sheet and walked around the cemetery in the dark while Ed recorded her on this grainy ass camerra as the White Lady. The short clip starts at 6.34. It’s loud and very fuzzy, so just turn your volume down.

The author the Warrens hired to write In a Dark Place explains, in his own words, what Ed Warren told him to do when the family’s stories didn’t add up. It’s about an hour long interview, but it’s interesting if you want to take the time to watch it.

CW: Harm to Animals

What is it like to experience the world at 400 frames per second? How quickly can cats see the world around them? How does it change the perception of time? This episode tackles the speed of reality. How fast can you see?

This one dives into the weird science of when a flickering light tricks your brain into seeing steady glow, from its history with monkey brain experiments to practical uses spotting epilepsy, brain fog from liver issues, and even diver narcosis. It breaks down human fusion rates at 50-90 Hz, throws in speedy shrimp hitting 200 Hz for comparison, and links it all to EEG waves and cognition testing.

And of course, let’s link over to Wikipedia where you can also read about the Critical Flicker Fusion in a less scientific article format. This lays out the psychophysics of when flickering lights look steady, covering factors like intensity, wavelength, retinal position, and adaptation that push human thresholds to 50-90 Hz. It dives into tech like why old CRT TVs flickered for dogs but not us, fluorescent lighting headaches, and wild animal extremes.

We got into talking about a couple of different animals, so here’s a few pictures of the animals we were talking about!

This one breaks down the Galway study’s massive look at 138 species’ temporal perception using flicker tests. It explains why flyers and ocean predators see super fast and how energy costs keep slowpokes like herbivores chill.

This one into how even healthy humans of the same age show surprising differences in flicker fusion speeds, with most variation between people rather than day-to-day wobbles, and hints at possible sex differences. Perfect for wondering why some folks seem quicker visually.

This one also talks about the Galway study just like the link two above, but it stands out as it has the official press release from the researchers themselves, giving direct quotes from lead author and vivid species spotlights.

This one introduces biologist Jakob von Uexküll and his “Umwelt” idea: every animal lives in a custom sensory world (ticks smell sweat and feel heat, bees see ultraviolet flowers). It teases the radical notion that there’s no universal reality, just species-specific bubbles.

Jakob von Uexküll, A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans excerpts the biologist’s 1934 classic rejecting machine-like views of animals, introducing Umwelt as each creature’s custom perceptual bubble. It flags his anti-Darwin influence and talks about the darker part of his life during Hitler’s reign.

This one probes whether CFF measurements across 70+ species hint at differences in felt time duration, unpacking evolutionary logic for why faster vision might mean more subjective moments per second (or not). It’s part of their moral weight series.

This one tackles the big puzzles of how we sense duration, succession, and time’s flow, from Augustine’s memory riddle to the “specious present” where motion gets perceived as extended yet “now,” plus debates on order, memory strength models, and whether time experience fits tensed vs. tenseless metaphysics. Brain-bender kind of stuff.

This one argues that animals with faster subjective time rates cram more moments into the same objective seconds, potentially amplifying suffering or pleasure and flipping moral priority rankings compared to brain-size metrics. It estimates ~70% chance of big interspecies differences using reaction times and neurology as clues, urging animal advocates to factor this into welfare math.

And just for fun because Karen talked about her dog Reese on this episode, here’s a picture of Reese!

What if you could SMELL your movies? What if the protagonist walked on screen and you recognized their smell as much as their musical motif? This episode, Karen tells us about the history of Smell-O-Vision and how it briefly came to light in the movie theatre.

For a starting place, let’s begin with Wikipedia’s Smell-O-Vision History Page. It’s the basic timeline of scented cinema from 1906 rose oil experiments to the 1960 disaster premiere. It gets into the tech, the rivalry with AromaRama, and why Time magazine eventually called it one of the worst ideas ever. It’s a good starting point if you want the broad strokes without getting too deep in the weeds.

Hans Laube Biography on in70mm.com is a personal reflection on the Swiss inventor who made Smell-O-Vision happen. It gets into his background as an osmologist and how he developed the technology that pumped scents through theater seats. As well as lots of other things about him as well.

We also talked about the movie The Scent of Mystery, which was made to be the first real movie using Smell-o-Vision. This is an interview with the director and cinematographer, Jack Cardiff. talking about making the film. He discusses working with the Smell-O-Vision technology, how the movie was written around the smells instead of the other way around, and his growing realization during production that the scents weren’t delivering what they promised. It’s a good behind-the-scenes look at what it was actually like to shoot a movie dependent on a gimmick that was falling apart.

Variety’s 1959 Review of Scent of Mystery is the contemporary critical response to the first and only Smell-O-Vision film. It covers how the premiere went down, which smells worked and which bombed, and the technical problems with the system.

Behind the Scenes of Scent of Mystery YouTube Video is a documentary about the 2015 recreation of Smell-O-Vision screenings in Bradford and Copenhagen. It shows volunteers prepping 307 vials of scent, testing battery-powered fans, and coordinating who releases which smell when during the movie. Good if you want to see what it actually looks like to make this work in a theater and hear from audience members about whether the smells landed or failed.

The Lingering Reek of Smell-O-Vision on LA Times is a 2006 article breaking down the premiere disaster. It talks about the hissing pipes, scents showing up at the wrong time, and how the audience basically hated it. Good read if you want the play-by-play of opening night going sideways.

Here’s some extra reading for free if you’re interested. Inventing the Movies is a book about Hollywood’s history of innovation and resistance to new technology from Thomas Edison to Steve Jobs. It covers the battles between people trying to push cinema forward and the industry trying to keep things the same. Good for broader context on how Hollywood deals with gimmicks and tech that threatens the status quo. There’s a chapter in here about Smell-o-Vision Karen used, and the book is free on Archive.org for you to read.

Smells and Memory on Cleveland Clinic is an explainer on why scents trigger memories and emotions so strongly. It breaks down the brain science behind how smell connects to memory and why those connections are more emotional than visual ones. Useful for understanding why anyone thought Smell-O-Vision could actually work as a storytelling tool. This is another bonus reading material.

In Glorious Smell-O-Vision Documentary on Scented Storytelling is a 2020 film by Tammy Burnstock about Hans Laube and the rise and fall of scented cinema. It digs into why Scent of Mystery was both the first and last Smell-O-Vision movie and includes actual scented screenings where audiences smell the original scents plus new ones. There’s a link at the bottom of the page on this one where it asks you to contact the person in charge of it to get it if you want to experience it!

CW: Murder, Death, Religious Trauma 

What ARE the nephilim? Where did they come from and how did their existence prompt the Christian god to drown 99.999% of humanity? This episode dives in to explore the history and the conspiracy of nephilim.

Let’s just start where so many people do, which is to start with Wikipedia. The Wikipedia deep-dive on Nephilim covers all the major theories, etymology debates, biblical references, Book of Enoch, and even historical hoaxes like the Cardiff Giant . Basically everything from the episode, but academic and without the monsterfucker discussion .

Then Britannica. Britannica hits all the biblical references, breaks down the etymology, and summarizes the main camps: fallen angel baby-daddies versus Seth’s morally corrupt descendants . Short, fact-checked, and perfect if you want the Cliff’s Notes version. It’s actually shorter than the Wikipedia.

A scholarly but readable breakdown from the NIV Bible site that digs into the Hebrew etymology, explores whether “sons of God” means angels or Seth’s descendants, references ancient Ugaritic texts and Egyptian letters, and covers the immortality angle. It’s not totally dry, I promise.

EBSCO’s academic research starter covers the biblical basics, dives deep into the Book of Enoch’s Watchers narrative (including the hilariously disputed height calculations that make the Nephilim anywhere from 450 to 4,500 feet tall), and includes solid historical context about when these texts were actually written. More scholarly than Wikipedia but still readable, with a full bibliography if you want to go even deeper.

Biblical Archaeology Society covers the Genesis and Numbers mentions and breaks down the “sons of God” and “daughters of Adam” phrasing. The author argues Genesis 6:4 is actually praising the Nephilim as “heroes of old,” which is…a choice. Also includes an absolutely unhinged comments section where people debate everything from ancient astronauts to mRNA vaccines being modern Nephilim corruption, so that’s entertaining.

Basically a one-stop reference shop that compiles multiple Bible dictionaries and encyclopedias (Easton’s, ISBE, Strong’s Hebrew) all in one place. Covers the Genesis and Numbers passages, breaks down the three main theories, and includes the Hebrew etymology. Perfect if you want quick cross-references without clicking through a dozen different sources.

A deep-dive tracking how Nephilim interpretations have ping-ponged over 2,000 years from Enoch’s fallen angels (possibly ripping off Prometheus) to Augustine calling it “absurd,” then weirdly making a comeback in the 1700s when fundamentalists and modernists both arrived at “angels and giants” from totally opposite directions.

This is a breakdown of the major Nephilim theories. They walk through the problems with each theory (angels can’t procreate, the text never says possession, etc.) and ultimately land on “the Bible doesn’t give us enough info to be dogmatic about it”.

A 42-minute YouTube deep-dive from Bible Teaching on the Book of Enoch’s version of events which covers the Watcher angels’ rebellion, their forbidden hookups with human women, the birth of the Nephilim giants, and how this all spiraled into God hitting the cosmic reset button with Noah’s flood. Also tackles the tricky question of how giants kept popping up after the flood if they were supposed to be wiped out.

And for fun, here’s the fake giant skeletons that people use as hoaxes when they claim they’ve found nephilims.

CW: Animal Harm (super briefly), Colonialism 

Far to the north, the inukpasugjuit sleeps. Once there were giants of all sorts making their homes on the polar ice, but now we don’t see even a silhouette in the distance. We meander into Inuit folklore this week, sharing what we could find on Inukpasugjuit.

Let’s start with sharing the children’s book that M was using as a resource for some of this and that we were looking at pictures from. If you click on the image, it will take you to where you can read the book online.

This site talks about the myth and it doubles up as a way for you to see the Syllabics and Roman Orthography versions of the Inuktitut language as it’s written in both of those and English. It’s very cool!

Me, Remy, went off on a side tangent when we started talking about language and how long it too for Inuktitut to be officially recognized as a language. This is where I talked about colonialism. I have a lot of feelings about that as someone with a strong Indigenous heritage. This website talks about the journey of the Inuktitut language from the beginning, through colonialism and residential schools, up to when it was re-recognized as an official language in the 1990s.

This is the Syllabics used in Inuktitut, which I find just really interesting and once you learn how it works, it’s not horribly difficult. Click on the picture to read more about the language and legislation.

And if you go to Omniglot by clicking this button, you can see more example images and hear people speaking in the language!

Finally, just some extras, on the button on the top, you’ll find a website that teaches you all sorts of things about the Inuit people about crafts, culture, government relationships, dogs, the environments, and lots more all in video format. The button on the bottom is labeled as The Vintage Nunavut Cookbook, and it’s what it sounds like: a cookbook!

This week, Karen answers a listener’s questions about the history and purpose of scales in music. Why do we use scales? Where did the come from? Let’s find out!

For her sources, Karen pulled a lot of information from the Wikipedia page for what the musical scales are, so I’m going to drop those here before I start posting videos. If you go to this wikipedia page for what a scale is, you can look at the section for “types of scales” and see the different types like chromatic, nonatonic, etc like we talked about in this episode. If you want a deeper read on what those are than what Karen gives here, I suggest going and reading about them here.

From me, if you want to hear a little example of lots of different types of scales, this page will give you a tiny example you can listen to.

This page gives you an overview of the history of music throughout many different cultures.

This is the Divje Babe Flute, which was made using punching holes in the femur of a cave bear and was thought to be made by Neanderthals as a form of musical instrument. Click the image to read about it.

Here’s a lovely video of Ljuben Dimkaroski from the European Music Archaeology Project playing a reconstruction of the bone flute.

This is a page about the Hurrian Hymns, which are the oldest surviving substantially complete work of notated music in the world. It was written in cuneiform on clay tablets excavated from the ancient city of Ugarit. Click the image to learn more.

If you want to hear a reconstruction of the Hurrian Hymns, here’s a nice long Youtube video where people played them. We listened to the one starting at 24.57

Here is the page about the Natya Shastra, the Sanskrit treatise on the performing arts, containing 36 chapters with a cumulative total of 6,000 poetic verses.

Here is a really informative video of how to sing the gamakas which are essential melodic embellishments, turns, and oscillations used in Indian classical music. This is a really interesting and short video to help you hear the turns in the scale that we were talking about. It won’t let me embed it, so here’s the link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIPraIlSmIk

The monk who is considered the founder of what is now considered the standard music staff was Guido d’Arezzo, and he lived from about 991 until after 1033. This music notation to the left is from about the 1300s. Click on the image to learn about how we got from early notation to what we have now.

Here’s a video about Guido if you want to hear his story.

And Karen looked up this list of Open Source software if you want to get into making music but don’t know how to play an instrument.

CW: Murder, Discussion of Mental Illness

You ever heard of the Bunny Man Bridge? That’s fine, Karen and Remy hadn’t either, not until M went and blasted them with having heard it first hand. Be prepared for hatchets and a variety of bunny suits and an absolute shredding of the looks of the bridge.

Let’s start off with just a picture of the Bunny Man Bridge.

And while we’re here, let’s hear from our on-site investigators, Karen’s parents!

Here’s a little more evidence, if you need it, curtesy of Karen’s Mom.

Now let’s look at what the Fairfax County government site has to say about it. This Fairfax County Library page traces the real‑world roots of the Bunny Man legend. It investigates the handful of actual 1970 incidents and shows how those few facts over time ballooned into a sprawling urban legend.

This article is doing basically the same thing as the Fairfax County Library page but in a much more condensced version

This article from Northern Virginia Magazine talks about the origins of the urban legend and the various retellings of it, but it also talks about how rising suburban sprawl, community anxiety, and retellings contributed to the transformation of the myth, turning a few unsettling night-time encounters into one of Northern Virginia’s most persistent urban legends.

This one talks about the physical location with some pictures as well as talks about the connection to Donnie Darko.

This one offers a first person look at the bridge. It explains the various origins for the Bunnyman urban legends. The author describes visiting the overpass and gives, as the name of the site suggests, a brutally honest review.

This article traces how the Bunnyman legend grew from two 1970 incidents into a sprawling horror myth. It recounts the original events, and the article shows how the legend’s details far outpaced any verified evidence yet the tale persists, inspiring horror stories, Halloween dares, and local ghost lore.

There wasn’t a great place to put this, but here’s the ax that was supposedly part of one of the original crimes that inspired the Bunnyman myth. We talked for several long minutes about how fake this looks.

CW: Implied Harm to Animals, Death, Brief mention of Covid-19

Where are the mermaids? Why aren’t they filing their taxes? I’ll tell you why: GOVERNMENT CONSPIRACY. They talked all about it in this documentary the ANIMAL PLANET showed back in— what’s that? It wasn’t a real documentary? It’s a pseudodocumentary that had a hand in eroding media literacy and fostering distrust in government-backed science?! Now hold on…

So when we were doing this episode, Karen made a comment about how Christopher Columbus maybe didn’t know what a mermaid was supposed to look like and that’s why he fell for the manatee/dugong. And that lead to a discussion about the very old and widespread portrayal of mermaids and sirens in art throughout history. So let’s just start with that. This link will take you to a lot of images of mermaids in art from the very ancient to more modern.

Here are just a few that I had pulled out of the article for them to look at.

This is just the NOAA statement about how mermaids aren’t real.

This looks at the history of the belief in mermaids. The article explores how mermaid myths from European melusines to Japanese ningyo and Irish merrow reflect human fascination with the unknown, mixing folklore, cultural symbolism, and sailors’ misidentifications of marine animals. Even though mermaids aren’t real, their stories reveal much about human imagination, fear, and our relationship with the sea.

The piece traces how mermaid myths go back thousands of years, appearing in ancient stories across many cultures from water‑spirits in Africa to legendary creatures in Europe and Asia. It explains that famous “sightings,” including one by Christopher Columbus, were almost certainly misidentifications of marine mammals like manatees or dugongs rather than actual merfolk. The article also highlights the NOAA statement.

Let’s looks at some more pictures as we move into the modern day. People are faking mermaids since the 1800s or so. We have the Feejee/Fiji mermaid, the Hull Mermaid, Banff Mermaid, and this one from the Enjuin temple are pictures I have for you, but there’s lots more out in the world.

This article looks at the Japanese mermaid from the Enjuin temple where they really looked into what it was made out of. What this mermaid was made of is the same thing they all are, which is largely paper mache, monkey bones, fish scales, and other things like that.

Then we can go into the modern fakery with the Animal Planet documentary Mermaids: The Body Found. I have a little clip from it. It’s not really a trailer in the modern sense but it’s something. Very silly.

At the end of the episode, we talked about the harm that fake documentaries like these do. They erode the public’s trust in authority figures they trust, like reputable TV channels like Animal Planet used to be or how the History channel used to be or Discovery, or news sites or government bodies.

This article talks about that. The article argues that “Mermaids: The Body Found,” presented in the style of a legitimate nature‑documentary, had real-world consequences beyond just entertainment. By mixing genuine‑looking footage, real institutions (like NOAA) and fictional interviews with actors, the show blurred the line between fact and fiction and many viewers ended up believing mermaids were real. Because the presentation was so convincing, it helped fuel distrust toward real science and institutions. The article warns that when networks trade credibility for shock value it undermines public trust and can make people more susceptible to misinformation even on serious issues like climate change, conservation, or public‑health science. This documentary was so successful it really paved the way for this network and others like it, like the History channel, to start making more and more fake documentaries presented as fact.

This show is more than a hoax. It’s a cautionary example of how entertainment packaged as “reality” can warp public understanding and erode faith in actual scientific knowledge. That’s what this article is about.