Episode #229 - Real Mermaids?

Our Fake History

PodcastOne

Education, Talk Radio, Society & Culture, History

4.7 • 3.5K Ratings

🗓️ 3 June 2025

⏱️ 84 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Mermaids are part of countless mythological traditions found the world over. Almost ever culture has a belief in some form of human-fish hybrid. In the west the modern mermaid evolved as combination of the sirens in Homer's Odyssey and water spirits described by Pliny the Elder. In medieval times they became symbols of sin: temptresses leading lustful men astray. In 16th century, just as belief in other mythological creatures started to fade, mermaids were suddenly taken seriously as real exotic animals. As European ships started stared exploring more distant waters, tales of mermaid encounters became increasingly common. By the 1700's the scientific community was taking the question of mermaid reality quite seriously. What is it about mermaids that made them seem so real? Tune-in and find out how stolen scales, Starbucks's secretly perverse logo, and a fish-woman from Newfoundland all play role in the story.

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1:00.2	Hey, everyone, before we get started today, I just wanted to let you know that the band I play in,
1:05.9	Fire Antlers, has a new album out now on Spotify, Bandcamp, or wherever you stream your music.
1:14.0	And if you would like to see Fire Antlers Live, the release show for the new album, The Plot
1:19.6	is Lost, will be on June 14th here in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada at Irene's Pub on Bank Street. To get a taste of what you will hear,
1:31.1	stick around to the end of the show when I will be playing the new single from The Plot is Lost,
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1:51.6	Have you ever heard of Black Isle in Northern Scotland?
1:58.4	It's one of those places named in a way to flummocks and beguile outsiders.
2:03.8	Because Black Isle isn't so much an island as it's a peninsula,
2:07.8	jutting out from Scotland's east coast into the North Sea.
2:15.1	In this way, Black Isle is a hybrid, both mainland and island.
2:22.2	And so it seems appropriate that Black Isle is the setting for one of Scotland's best-known mermaid stories. For there is no hybrid more beguiling in the whole world of human
2:30.4	folklore than the mermaid. The story goes that a long time ago, a man named Patterson was walking near Kessick
	...

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