Mermaids: Are They Real?

**Discussion begins at 4:30**

Reports of aquatic humanoids, or mermaids, living in our oceans have existed for thousands of years.  Japanese legends, greek mythology, and ancient folklore all contain tales of half-fish, half-human hybrids.  More recently, Animal Planet released a series called, "Mermaids: A Body Found".  This film which was described by Animal Planet as Science Fiction based on some real events and scientific theory, claimed that mermaids are real and that scientists from the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) were concealing the truth about the existence of mermaids.  A statement from NOAA simply says that 'no real evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found'.  Can we believe the hundreds of sightings that have been reported?  Or are these more likely misidentified manatees or other sea creatures as NOAA would have us believe?  Given what we know about the unexplored ocean depths, is it possible that these mysterious creatures do, in fact, exist. 

Transcript

Hey, guys.

Hey, guys.

Hey, guys.

Welcome to our season finale.

Season finale.

Season.

Also our season finale.

Yes.

Which coincides with the season finale.

We're gonna come back in the next three weeks with some kind of fun re-releases, our favorite episodes.

And then we'll see you for season two after Labor Day weekend.

In the meantime, though, let's, yes, welcome back.

Friend of the pod.

Our best friend.

Our first ever guest making a repeat performance.

Hello.

Mermaid girl.

Mermaid girl.

Yeah.

The fourth SchemeQueen.

I like to call her that.

I also like to call her that too.

We do.

What's going on, guys?

What's poppin?

Today, on my way here, guys, this is an early podcast for us.

We're recording before noon.

Oh, yeah.

And on my drive here, it's like 90 degrees outside.

I drove past my worst fear, a runner's club.

No, no, I think that's the CrossFit up the street.

I don't know.

It was a group of people running.

Right here.

Yeah.

Yeah, it was CrossFit.

Still, still my worst fear.

Still.

I'm not a fan.

Yeah.

I just, I actually, that's so funny that you guys were like, you know, I was like, oh, it's CrossFit.

I was like so happy for them.

You want to talk about Colts guys.

I used to CrossFit and it was fun.

Yeah, I CrossFitted briefly.

It's a Colt.

We had more injuries in the war zone from CrossFit than from war.

It's all about form over strength, and you need to make sure you are in correct form.

I'm big on correct form before you add weight.

Thank you, Kait, for that.

PSA.

And this is also a safety podcast.

So is it time for our drink check?

Janie, aka Mermaid Girl, what is our drink today?

Today, Megan made us these delicious, we'll call it a Mermaid Mosa.

Mermosa.

Jinx.

Mermaid with love.

Yes.

Mermaid with love.

But it's actually a limoncello spree.

But I'm also drinking a mermaid's favorite drink, which is water.

Yeah, H2O, baby.

Mermaid Girl and Birdman took their honeymoon in Italy, and they brought me back some limoncello.

And I texted them to be like, oh my gosh, you know, I served it with champagne, like the mimosa, and it was so delicious.

I like discovered this new drink.

And then Mermaid Girl had to be like, I drink that every day in Europe.

You did not discover this.

It's very refreshing.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's good.

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All right, so, we've got, again, we've been hyping this up all year.

It's time to talk mermaids.

Mermaids.

All right, so I've got an intro for you, and then we're gonna kind of hand this over to Mermaid Girl.

Dive in.

We'll go swimmingly.

All right, guys, reports of aquatic humanoids, or mermaids, living in our oceans have existed for thousands of years.

Japanese legends, Greek mythology, and ancient folklore all contain tales of half-fish, half-human hybrids.

More recently, Animal Planet released a series called Mermaids, The Body Found.

This film, which was described by Animal Planet as science fiction based on some real events and scientific theory, claimed that mermaids are real and that scientists from the National Ocean Atmospheric Administration were concealing the truth about the existence of mermaids.

A statement from the NOAA simply says that no real evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found.

Can we believe the hundreds of sightings that have been reported?

Or are these more likely misidentified manatees or other sea creatures as the NOAA would have us believe?

Given what we know about the unexplored ocean depths, is it possible that these mysterious creatures do, in fact, exist?

Yes.

Yep.

Yeah, 1000%.

Yes, I hadn't thought about mermaids as being real or not.

In the world, I do think they're super fun.

Like when I was a kid, I used to play, I was a mermaid in the pool all the time.

Only kid stuff.

Yeah, but I definitely don't play mermaids as an adult.

Yeah, I don't do that.

I lost my Apple Watch in a lake four years went by, couldn't find it, gave up on it.

Somebody was playing mermaid alone, and she was just diving down and coming up and like handing rocks to her husband.

That's so cute.

And all of a sudden she came up with an Apple Watch in her hand.

Discovered by missing Apple Watch four years.

It did not work.

No.

But then whenever I tell that story, everyone's like, oh my gosh, what?

They're like, how'd she find it?

I'm like, she was playing mermaid.

All right, mermaid girl, with the facts.

Well, I want to say thank you for that beautiful intro and talking about the, I'm using air quotes, mockumentary back in 2012 when that was released.

I remember it was May.

I was home from college and that bed, it came on TV and it came on Animal Planet.

And then the following year, there was a sequel, I believe called New Evidence.

And I mean, mind blown.

Obviously, they're saying it's a mockumentary and they're actors.

And I do believe there are actors in it.

However, isn't that what they would want us to think?

Yes.

Yeah, the government's definitely trying to hide this.

And with that rebuttal article on NOAA's website, Oh, mermaids are, you know, aquatic humanoids have never been proven.

Yeah, of course they would say that.

Well, we'd say all the time of this podcast, right?

If there's a rebuttal, we instantly believe it.

Instantly.

It's like they're fighting against it for a reason.

Literally in the car on the way here, Birdman was like, wait, really?

They actually responded about this?

Like, there's an article from NOAA about this?

I was like, yes.

Yeah.

He's like, man, that does kind of make things.

And the whole 5% of the ocean that they've actually...

Exactly.

Yeah, they've decided there aren't human, humanoid aquatic people.

I don't think you can have an definitive answer.

If we've only explored 5%, you cannot deny anything.

Well, exactly.

Like, again, I like to think that I'm pretty skeptical about a lot of the conspiracy theories we talk about.

All the things.

I feel like with the season, I've really been buying into a lot of them.

And I think the big thing is you can't disprove any of them, right?

So it's like, maybe we don't have hard evidence.

Proof proof.

Proof proof, if you know.

But yeah, so I think that's kind of why, because the ocean is so unexplored, you can't really rule out any of these.

Exactly.

Exactly.

That's the basis of most of my argument.

I did watch on Apple+.

I had to pay $3.12 to purchase the documentary.

It was worth it, but it did include in that $3.12, it included the follow-up evidence.

So you got a two-for-one.

That's a hell of a deal.

Yeah.

Two movies for $3.

And I can own them now, which means, guys, we're going to get our moneys worth.

Watch them anytime.

My documents here.

One pin.

Can I just point out that Jamie's notes are all hot pink.

It's like glitter pens.

Mermaids.

Next page, depictions and history.

I was impressed.

She came in with her notebook and she was like, I've got my documents here.

And I was, I appreciate that.

So, I mean, and Noah can't get these.

So, I mean, even just some things to consider open our minds here.

Whales used to walk on land.

What?

On four legs.

50 million years ago, this is what whales looked like.

It looks like Tanner.

Yeah, it does look like a dog.

Yes, they're very dog-like.

It's like the Montauk monster.

Go away.

Oh, my God.

It's all connected.

Whales, dolphins, Megan, don't be triggered.

Narwhals, manatees, walrus, sea lions, sea snakes, which that's a little easier to believe.

We're all land creatures that over millions of years, they went into the ocean and now they have evolved into the whales and dolphins and things we know now.

Is that why they're all mammals?

Yes.

Okay.

So they started off as mammals on the land and then they went in.

Why did they go into the water to begin with?

Probably food and other elements.

Well, do you think it was because of a catastrophic event such as a giant flood?

Hey, if we want to get biblical though, the Nuremberg Bible, it's a medieval Bible and the art in the Noah's Ark story has mermaids in the water.

Yeah, I believe that.

There's a ton of things in the Bible that have been phased out in the medieval times because they didn't want people to have free thought or whatever, medieval.

And there's a ton of things in there about extraterrestrial life.

Yeah.

Well, I also found a reference in the Talimah.

This rabbi between 1040 and 1105 AD described the mermaid.

So it's in the Jewish Bible, pretty much.

There are fish in the sea with which half is in the form of a man and half of the form of a fish.

A later rabbi commented on this phrase by saying, this refers to the creature in the sea, which is similar in part to a person from the navel upwards and is similar to a woman in all aspects in that it has breasts and long hair like that of a woman, and from the navel downwards, it is a fish.

So these are religious books that are referencing mermaids.

So a rabbi and a mermaid walked into a room.

Oh, no.

Well, similarly, the earliest mermaids in art that we know of is around 1000 BC.

Okay.

So it's just interesting whether or not you believe, it's interesting how all of these ancient cultures have different mermaid myths.

They have it in art, like ancient clay art, the medieval Bible, early maps, like the really old maps where they have pictures of mermaids in the ocean and everything.

And a lot of these cultures, like way, way, way back, they weren't necessarily communicating with each other.

So how did they all have these depictions?

Yeah.

And a lot of them are places near the ocean.

So I asked Birdman this question and he said, well, you know, the manatees and blah, blah, blah.

I'm like, okay, sure.

But men are so logical.

I'm like, right.

We really think all of these ancient sailors were so starved for women that they, all of them thought that manatees were a mermaid.

Hold on.

Actually, I could also believe.

Yeah.

Giving a little benefit of the doubt there, but yeah.

Manatees are so ugly.

When I tried to, I tried to think like, okay, a lot of these sightings that occurred, you know, maybe, can you imagine how pitch black the ocean was in?

Oh, right.

Yeah.

Like, I mean, you know, who else spotted?

Let's just take this back to-

Christopher Columbus.

To the extraterrestrial.

So Christopher Columbus also had mermaid sightings.

Yeah.

And so I'm thinking about Christopher Columbus time in the 1400s, like that the ocean must have been terrifying, like just pitch black.

It's nighttime.

So I mean, I guess I can kind of see how maybe people would, maybe, and maybe they're hallucinating.

We said you cannot hallucinate from security though.

That wasn't right.

That's not a thing.

No, but you can hallucinate from other things.

Maybe from like syphilis or something.

Yeah.

You know, just being bored out there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I'm trying to be like, okay, maybe hydration.

But you know, these sightings, like you said, there have been so many of them and they have persisted even to modern times when I feel like that's, there's, we have electricity now.

Right?

Right.

So Megan, I've actually never thought about that.

Like being so pitch black at night.

I don't know why I never get everything.

Just like the light of the stars.

I mean, even now it's so dark.

Okay.

So beyond the artistic depictions, the maps, all of that, we also have the aquatic ape theory, which, yes, the aquatic ape theory has been mostly debunked by scientists.

But, you know, hey, I don't know.

Could be some kernels of accuracy there if we want to dive into it.

All right.

So the basis is due to, you know, looking for food and safety, things like that.

Some apes took to the land and became us, and some took to the sea.

And there are some similarities between humans' current day with, you know, things that could have helped us in the water millions of years ago, which, you know, some people believe could be leftover relics of an old time.

But there are no fossils to prove this evolutionary timeline.

But I read an article that was saying maybe the fossils are in the sea.

Oh my god.

In our unexplored ocean?

In the other 95%.

Oh, I love that.

It would be.

That's why you can't discredit any of this.

Right, right.

Well, so when it kind of relates to like all these animals that became sea creatures, you know, I showed you guys that crazy looking whale, and now we have, we still have whales.

So, you know, our brains are, it's hard for us to comprehend millions and millions of years of evolution, but yeah.

So some took to the land.

Some of the similarities are, you know, when our fingers get pruney, it helps us grab things under water.

We have a little bit of webbing between our fingers and toes.

Some people have like full webbing.

And yeah, humans are good swimmers.

We can hold our breath longer than most mammals.

So yeah, some people believe that competition for food and everything forced some apes into the water.

Another animal is the brown bear.

Some diverged in the water and became polar bears.

Whoa.

Maybe we could talk about some of the sightings.

Oh, yeah.

Okay, so this one's actually somewhat recent, from 2012 in Zimbabwe.

2012, the end of the world.

2012, Zimbabwe.

This is interesting because this is also the year the mockumentary came out.

Some dam workers were trying to install a water pump.

Local divers and workers were hired to see what was blocking the pump, and when they surfaced, they vowed never to return.

Being skeptical of the workers' reasons for quitting, the government hired outside help, of course, as they thought the belief was cultural, but the new workers reported the same thing and refused to finish the repairs.

To this day, the dam is still not finished.

Oh.

Your sightings go back.

You said a thousand BC, or that was just art depictions.

Art depictions.

Yeah, because I hadn't I'd seen like year one AD was like the first sighting.

And then again, there have been pretty consistent sightings.

Do you guys know who Captain John Smith is?

Pocahontas' boyfriend.

Pocahontas.

He's not a good person.

No, we know this.

That was that was.

So while sailing off the coast of Massachusetts in 1614, Captain John Smith saw a mermaid.

He reported seeing, quote, the upper body of her.

The upper part of her body perfectly resembled that of a woman, and she was swimming about with all possible grace near the shore.

She had large eyes, rather too round, a finely shaped nose, a little too short, well-formed ears, rather too long, and her long green hair imparted to her an original character by no means unattractive.

Ooh, green hair.

And then 1943, so there were a couple big ones.

I saw Japanese soldiers stationed in Indonesia in the 1940s, and they reported spotting several mermaids that they described as roughly four foot nine inches tall, pinkish skin, human-looking face and limbs, spikes along its head, and a mouth like a carp.

And then they heard news of a dead mermaid on shore.

They tried to get scientists to investigate, but nobody wanted to investigate.

Oh, nothing happened.

It's kind of like the Montauk modes.

Yeah.

There are a couple places that have actually offered a reward.

So in 1967 in British Columbia, a group of tourists claimed they were on a ferry, and they claimed that they saw a, again, a mermaid with silvery blonde hair.

Very different, right?

Eating a salmon, and then she dove into the water, and they've offered a $25,000 reward.

No one has jumped on that.

There's been no evidence since.

And then in Israel, there's a million dollar reward, because a bunch of people saw, over a dozen people saw a mermaid.

A woman lying in the sand in a weird way.

People say it was half girl, half fish, jumping like a dolphin.

It does all kinds of tricks and then disappear.

Again, they offered a million dollars.

No, but it's a shown up.

I have another question.

Why do they come to the surface?

Like what's the, like do they need to come to the surface?

Do they come to the surface out of curiosity?

Like what's the theory?

I, yeah, probably curiosity.

Okay, they don't need to come to the, like they-

I mean, I can't answer that.

Like dolphins, dolphins need air.

They need air.

They're mammals.

The aquatic humanoids probably need air.

You know what?

Yeah.

Aquatic creatures that make no sense to me.

And like, how did they evolve?

Platypuses.

Why do they sweat milk?

I was asking Jamie if she read about the recent mermaid autopsy.

This is breaking-

Okay, I have to say-

In the last two years.

I don't know how Megan stays on topic so easily.

Because how do you just brush off a comment like that?

Jamie, did you read about the recent mermaid autopsy?

How recent?

I think it was like 2022.

Okay, tell me more.

In the 1700s, there were so many mermaid sightings in Japan.

Well, they were worshiped, particularly during COVID, because they were believed to have immortality and to ward off illness.

And so there was this one mermaid that was allegedly caught off the coast of Japan between 1736 and 1741, and it was on display in this church in like a glass whatever.

The Okuyama Folklore Society, led by Hiroshi Kinoshita, led this study, said, if you were to imagine it normally, you would think it was a combination of the lower body of a fish and the upper body of an ape.

So it underwent X-ray imaging, CT scanning, fluorescent X-ray analysis and DNA analysis and, Kait's favorite, carbon dating.

Ooh.

And here's what they found.

Okay.

I'm sorry, Jamie.

Fake.

The lower half of the body is fish, but the upper half is not mammalian.

Most of the upper body was actually made from cloth, paper and cotton, though pufferfish skin was used on the arms, shoulders, neck and cheeks.

The creature's hair is mammalian in origin.

Its nails were made from animal keratin, and the jaws were taken from an unknown carnivorous fish.

No internal skeleton was detected, but there are metal needles in the back of the neck and lower body.

The bottom half, meanwhile, was manufactured with scales from a croaker fish.

Sand or charcoal powder mixed in a paste like substance was used to paint the body's surface.

Observation with optical and electron microscopes was also undertaken.

They concluded that the creature was manufactured.

They estimate, because again, they thought that this was from the 1600s to the 1700s.

It was captured in the 1700s, but actually late 1800s.

Debunked.

So they're just thinking that there was such a warship or this warship for mermaids that people were just making fake mermaids, selling them in markets.

Like the Fiji Mermaid that it was like a Barnum and Bailey.

And you know those like the state fair, and they would have those little things you could go in for a couple of dollars.

And it had like the Fiji Mermaid and, you know, all those crazy animals.

Yeah, the bearded woman.

Uh-huh.

Yeah.

And some of it was people who were alive in there, which was sad, and then all of the like shriveled up stuff.

But on the outside of the tent, it would be like, mermaid, real mermaid in there.

And you would go in and it was shriveled up.

Sad.

Sounds like you lived this.

Oh, yeah, I went several times.

Always hopeful.

I just don't know if aquatic humanoids exist, that they are necessarily being caught.

Yeah, I think they live really deep in the ocean.

Well, there are actually are some people who report that they captured them and they took them home.

And some of them like nursed them back to health and then released them.

Some of them claim that the mermaids died in their care.

That's really sad.

Also, it's really sad that why are you all these so many stories about people kidnapping mermaids, like let them live.

It's kind of like the extraterrestrials, like if they have made it this long, if we believe that there are extraterrestrials living in the ocean, they've made it this long living in miles deep in the ocean, why would they service and be captured if like they've been...

Right.

Do you guys know about the Bloop?

No, no, but I like the name.

In 1997, researchers, they talk about the Bloop in the documentary as well.

In 1987, researchers using underwater microphones placed more than 3,219 kilometers apart across the Pacific.

They recorded numerous instances of this noise known as the Bloop, which was unlike anything they had heard before.

It kind of just sounds like, it's like, you know, ocean sounds, bloop.

People investigated this for like decades, like was this secret underwater military exercise?

Were these ship engines?

Were they giant squids, whales, or a mermaid?

Anyway, what they ended up saying in 2005 was that this Bloop was really the sound of an ice quake where an iceberg cracked and broke away from an Antarctic glacier.

And they just heard this, like the echo so far.

But prior to that, people were like, is this a mermaid?

Blooping?

But are they talking to each other in the ocean?

Like, do you know what was really?

That's what I always picture it, like the Harry Potter mermaids, where they're like, you know, it sounds like screaming above water.

But when you bring it down below water, they're singing.

They did something in the documentary with the pitch.

But it was pretty screechy.

The mermaids were all traveling together as a pack to protect themselves.

And then a great white showed up, and then they all were panicked.

And so one of the mermaids stabbed himself and swam away to attract the great-

Oh my god, that's like in Twilight, the third wife in Twilight.

Yes.

Do you know what I'm talking about?

The third wife in Twilight.

Was it Eclipse?

When Bella, to distract, is learning about like Native American stories based, the Twilight Native Americans.

And there's a story of the third wife, the other werewolves, and this wife of the chief killed herself to distract the werewolves, the vampires so that the werewolves could live.

And then Bella does the same thing, like she cuts herself.

Are you saying that the mermaid documentary is the sole the plot for?

Yeah.

From Twilight.

Twilight.

Yeah.

When did Twilight come out?

Twilight came out in the early 2000s.

Breaking Dawn of Spring.

2008 was Twilight.

And yeah, I was about to say this documentary is 2012.

Because Kait, there were five films, not three.

Yeah.

And they all came out.

Three books.

Right?

Four books.

Five films.

I hate Twilight.

Fake fans.

I would never claim to be a fan of Twilight.

And I don't want to be put in that box.

I think it's the worst story.

And I'm sorry I'm sitting beside two really big Twilight fans, but I can't stand it.

It is so bad.

I've never said it was good.

Hold on.

I never said it was good.

So the NOAA rebuttal that was posted on the website says...

Can I ask a question?

What's NOAA?

National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration.

Yeah, she said it up top.

Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Atmospheric, that means the sky?

So they said, No evidence of aquatic humanoids have ever been found.

Why then do they occupy the collective unconscious of nearly all seafaring peoples?

That's a question best left to historians, philosophers and anthropologists.

Yep, exactly.

Why do they occupy the collective mind?

Interesting.

That's a good question.

Yeah.

Good question.

I have many questions, actually.

Okay, well.

About mermaids.

Okay.

Okay.

Number one, I've already asked this question.

Why do they come to the surface?

Do they still need oxygen?

Do they still have the lungs?

And the theory is that they have evolved to have gills, right?

Like, that is the theory.

Like, they, they breathe under water, too?

I'm not sure.

I think they need air.

Okay.

So they just can hold their lungs.

I think they can hold their breath a really long time.

Okay.

They can hold their breath for a really...

Okay.

But then the question becomes...

I mean, Reddit says, you know, because, because theoretically, they are supposed to be like humans, for the most part, with evolutionary changes above the diaphragm.

Right.

So our lungs are above our diaphragm, so they should still have lungs.

But they just think that, like whales, or you're talking about dolphins, but like whales who, you said, lived on the earth before, they have just evolved to where they're able to hold their breath for a very long time, and then you come up and you take a breath, and then you hold your breath for a very long time.

Okay.

I also have more questions.

Okay.

Okay.

Number one, how long can they hold their breath?

We don't know, obviously, because we've never actually been able to study that.

But number two, if they live in colonies at the bottom of the ocean, how long are they actually able to stay at the bottom of the ocean without coming to the surface to have a breath?

Because like whales and dolphins, they sort of just sleep towards the surface, right?

Like they're constantly breaching.

I think I read whales can hold their breath for like over two hours, but they can't.

Right, right.

All night sleep.

Yeah.

So my question is like, I'm not trying to kill the vibes, but like, would they not have to, if they continue to breathe like humans and they don't have gills, meaning they can breathe underwater, would they not have to be more toward the surface?

Like would that not be a thing?

Yeah.

I think they come up and get a breath.

Yeah.

But like then where do they live?

Because if they're supposed to be hidden, you would think that they would be living like deep, deep.

Yeah.

And do they sleep in caves?

Do they sleep in little towns?

Do they sleep in the water?

Yeah.

They're in the lost sea.

Maybe they're in the Trent, that like big thing out the coast of California.

You know what I'm talking about?

What we talked about in the Extra-Terrestrials?

But that's just my thought, is like do they truly need air to breathe?

And if so, then they can't go below the surface for too long, and therefore they can't like live in colonies super deep.

Because they can't dive that fast.

If you could hold your breath for a few hours, I think they could live pretty deep.

Yeah, this says, well, now we're on Quora.

Okay.

Where all the good facts are.

And this says, they live underwater and are believed to breathe through gills like fish do rather than through lungs like humans.

The adaptation allows them to extract oxygen from water and survive in their aquatic environment.

Yeah, I don't know.

We need more evidence to study.

But you know what?

We're not going to find that if we're exploring Mars and the moon and not our own ocean.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, that's deep.

Yeah, so those are my questions.

Like, did they somehow evolve to have a different like circulatory system?

Or did they still need air?

They still need oxygen?

I mean, they, I mean, fish require oxygen, but they can extract it from the water.

But like, do they still require that pure H, I mean, that pure O2 from the atmosphere?

You know what I mean?

No, but that's a good question to consider.

Kait's a Y girl.

Yeah.

How, a how girl?

A Y girl?

A Y girl, a how girl.

Tell me how it works.

Yeah, because I'm not, I'm not not believing.

I just want to know how.

Because I do think that, like, there's validity to sightings.

You can't tell people they didn't see something.

No, like some of those Scottish ones, they, like, had the people swear under oath.

And they were, like, adamant.

And then the people who questioned them were like, I believe their story.

Yeah.

So, it doesn't mean that they don't exist.

I think I'm more, my, it's sort of like the extraterrestrials when we were talking about it the other week when I was like, but why are they here?

Because all the movies just say, like, oh, they're here to take over the world, but it seems like they're just living symbiotically with us.

Right?

Yeah, I think you nailed that one, that we have a resource they need or want, but they aren't trying to harm us.

Right.

And I believe that it's a very serious episode coming up, but yeah, I think the Mermaids probably, I don't think they're trying to lure sailors to their death or...

No, no.

I think everything has evolved to add some folklore and some fun.

Everything evolves.

They're probably just trying to live their lives.

Yeah.

They probably are just as intrigued with us as we are with them.

Yeah.

You know?

But I wonder if they've learned.

They've learned.

They can't come up and say hello.

Yeah.

How many times?

There were so many stories I didn't even go into about people kidnapping these Mermaids.

And then that one, if you believe that damn story that we kind of don't believe, right?

It talks about how they made her live with them for years and she kept trying to escape back into the ocean.

They wouldn't let her.

How cool.

Let her live her life.

Right.

There was one I liked about there were two Mare children that they heard.

They heard some sailor heard like crying.

And when he found them, one of them was deceased, but one was just like injured and he took that one home and he fed it.

I think he said fed it fish and milk.

And then after four days released him back into the ocean, I was like, what a good story.

Also, why didn't they autopsy the dead Mare child?

And then we could have answers for you, Kait.

Yeah, that's a great question.

But was it back in the day though, when like autopsies weren't a thing?

I mean, I think it was like in the 80s.

Yeah, or autopsies.

I think an autopsy for centuries, probably.

I don't think autopsies are that, because that's how they first learned about science, taking apart dead bodies.

But like purposeful autopsies for like crime, I don't know.

Purpose, as opposed to an unintentional autopsy?

Like science, pivot, discovery.

Oh, the first autopsy was in 1302.

Yeah.

But also you're just like thinking about like, what did they do with those autopsies in 1302?

Like what were they looking for?

Lungs.

Like they were looking at our human body.

Human body.

Like Aristotle, not Aristotle.

Leonardo.

Or about like Freud, who was, you know, trying to find...

And like Freud.

Yes.

Oh, yeah.

About bodies.

Oh, yeah.

That's how we know so much about our own bodies, by taking apart dead bodies.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's literally how the first like, anatomy was created.

I guess I would say too, like if...

What?

Okay.

The moon is four miles above us.

What would Noah's motivation be to conceal that mermaids are real?

I mean, they don't want everybody out there on the ocean looking.

The oceans would be flooded with people searching.

Are they diving the ocean?

They're probably worried about like the men kidnapping mermaids to marry them.

That's like that new thing.

Yeah.

How do they reproduce?

That's a good question.

Because it is not an infection.

Another one we should not answer.

If you watch...

What was that movie?

Shape of Water.

Okay, but that was different.

You can learn.

Shape of Water, the other documentary to watch for this.

Hold on.

You learn a lot about anatomy in that movie.

None of it real.

Yeah, I'm sure it's...

And then another question is, do they have their periods?

Well, do all mammals have periods?

They should, right?

Because it's like...

Wait, so you're telling me like an elephant obulates?

An elephant.

They would have to.

Probably only do like once a year or something.

13 to...

Oh my gosh.

Oh, it's 13 to 18 weeks long is the cycle.

I thought there was a period for 13 weeks.

I was like, I think we have it bad.

Back on track here.

So final thoughts?

Um, I think we just don't know enough about the ocean to say no.

Yeah, agreed.

Yeah.

Yeah, I agree.

You can't say no to anything.

But I do have questions.

Yeah.

Your questions are fair.

Yeah.

Yeah, I agree.

Yeah.

I think, again, like all the other seasonal conspiracies, you can't rule them out until we have a better knowledge of our ocean.

All right.

What's the poll going to be then, Kait?

The poll.

Are mermaids real?

Yes or no?

Keep it simple.

And what should the people do after this episode?

Yeah.

Scroll on down, leave us a five-star review, leave us a comment, send us an email, share us with your friends, share us with your family, share us on your Instagram and your social media.

And yeah, thanks for listening, guys.

Yeah.

Thank you for tuning in to our season finale.

Thank you to Jamie, Mermaid Girl, for helping us out with two episodes during the season.

Thank you for having me.

Yeah.

We hope to see her and you all next season.

In the meantime, join us the next three weeks while we replay some of our favorite episodes with a little extra commentary, and we'll see you after Labor Day Yeah.

for a whole new season of Conspiracy.

I hope you guys had a great time in this first season, and also the season.

We had a great time.

Yeah, this was fun.

I hope Jamie added some seasoning to it.

A little sea salt.

A little spicy sea salt.

All right.

Bye, guys.