In My Footsteps: A Gen-X Nostalgia Podcast

Episode 160: 1980s Tabloid Talk Shows, Myths You Believed As A Kid, How School Was Different In the 80s, the First Sci-Fi Movie(9-4-2024)

• Christopher Setterlund • Season 1 • Episode 160

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Famous and infamous tabloid talk shows. Some of the myths you believed growing up. How school was different in the 1980s.
Episode 160 of the podcast is a trip back in time as kids go back to school.
It begins with some shows that might have been on rotation during school sick days in the 80s. With the recent death of pioneering talk show host Phil Donohue we take a look at his revolutionary show as well as some of the other tabloid-style talk shows that he helped usher in during the 1980s.
Iconic author Edgar Allan Poe said, “Believe nothing you hear and only one half that you see.” This goes double for myths you believed as kids. We go way Back In the Day to discuss some of these myths from the innocent(the moon is chasing the car), to the more ominous(gum stays in your stomach for 7 years).
In honor of Back to School this week's Top 5 looks at some ways that school was different in the 1980s compared to the present day. From technology to fashion, and some actual education, it's all here.
There is also a brand new This Week In History and Time Capsule centered around the very first science fiction movie A Trip To the Moon.
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Speaker 00:

Hello world, and welcome to the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund, coming to you from the vacation destination known as Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and this is episode 160. It's going to be a big batch of 80s nostalgia stew coming up this week. We're going to kick it off with a look back at some of the famous and sometimes infamous 1980s tabloid talk shows. We're going to go way, way back in the day and look at some of the myths that you and I and others, children growing up, believed. Things we were told that we later found out were not true. There'll be a brand new top five that are going to be the top five things that were different about going to school in the 1980s compared to now. And there'll be a brand new This Week in History and Time capsule centered around the very first science fiction motion picture ever All of that is coming up right now on episode 160 of the In My Footsteps podcast. So what are we going to talk about this week? My clever play on words, 1980 stew, or about how Labor Day has just passed and summer isn't over, but this usually marks the unofficial end of summer. Although it does start my favorite time of year. I keep saying that. Of course, I could talk about how thankful I am to all of you who listen to the podcast, who take the time out of your day to make this appointment listening, or who are checking it out for the very first time right here. Welcome in if you are. However you heard of me, however you found me, thank you so much. The biggest thanks go to my Patreon subscribers, Lori, Mary Lou, Ashley, Kevin, Marguerite, $5 a month gives you early access to the main podcast, early access to YouTube videos, and exclusive access to bonus podcast episodes, including the 11th in my series that just went up a few days ago, September 1st. I talk about my old initial impressions blog that was supposed to be a sister blog to my travel blog. It was going to be the behind the scenes look. It ended up being more of a slice of life. Almost like a journal, but not quite, with way more foolishness. Here's a clip of the randomness I'm talking about with that bonus podcast. Naturally, I did hug the lighthouse when I saw it. That wasn't a lie. I said I was like a kid meeting the Jonas Brothers, screeching and crying. Not that bad, but I felt happy. Like I had reached a seemingly impossible goal. Could you imagine being someone going to that lighthouse or any spot in general that's kind of inconspicuous and seeing someone like me walk up to it and scream and cry and hug it? They'd be dialing up the nearest institution to get me put in a straitjacket. Yeah, so that's the kind of stuff that you get when you become a Patreon subscriber. I know that becoming a subscriber, plunking down your hard-earned money, that is not feasible for everyone. So I'm doing my best to create more free content. There is a playlist on Patreon that's just free content. So go and check it out and dip your toes into the extra stuff that I create. There's going to be lots of content coming up over the next several weeks. After my vacation last week where I did lots and lots of videos... All over my travels up through New Hampshire and Vermont and back through Massachusetts. So follow me all over social media to get updated with all these different videos. I'm going to be busy with content more so than usual for the next several weeks. But speaking of content, let's get this podcast started here. It's going to be a lot of 80s fun, and I figured... It was kind of timely, but also something on my list to talk about in the future at some point anyway. As we look at 1980s tabloid talk shows, for those of us that grew up in the 1980s, these might have been sick day watching material. So let's see if you remember any of these. For those of us that grew up in the 1980s, we were lucky enough to grow up in a really unique time. The 80s was known for its excess and entertainment, and television was no exception. We all had our favorite shows in the early mornings or later in the evenings, but sometimes the best TV was the TV that we got to watch when we stayed home sick from school. Now I know if I ask you to think about, oh, what was your favorite show to watch when you were sick from school, most of you are probably going to say Price is Right. That's usually what stuck out the most. But if you were stuck at home, maybe one of your parents was home doing household work or something, you may have had to watch something different on TV. And that could have been tabloid talk shows. These were both popular and controversial. They often featured sensational topics, outrageous guests, and usually intense confrontations. But that was all part of what made it so great and so entertaining. You didn't think it was real, and I think parts of it weren't real. What I wanted to do here was go back through some of the most well-known 1980s tabloid talk shows. These had to be ones that either debuted in the 1980s or at least had a large part of their time on the air in the 1980s. And also it's timely to do right now with the recent death of 1980s tabloid talk show host legend Phil Donahue. So let's start with Phil Donahue and the Phil Donahue Show. This show is one of the ones, it didn't start in the 80s, it didn't end in the 80s, but it was there throughout the decade. It was actually on the air from 1967 to 1996. Donahue started in Dayton, Ohio in 1967, more of a local show, but it was the first talk show to have audience participation. Even though it started locally in the late 60s, it reached its heights of popularity in the 1980s, and it's often credited with pioneering the tabloid talk show format. Donahue's show focused on social issues, controversial topics that would divide political affiliations, hot-button debates, and it featured a mix of ordinary people, celebrities, and experts. Donahue was the first to go to death row, to show a baby's birth, to talk about AIDS, and visit Russia's crippled Chernobyl nuclear power plant. He also had a famous show that I remember in 1992 where he had on infamous wrestling promoter Vince McMahon to talk about the sexual allegations levied against some of his employees when it came to young boys that helped set up the ring. That's one. That's a whole other segment. You can find clips of it on YouTube. Just look up Phil Donahue, Vince McMahon. What made Donahue's show different was that it was... Interactive, the host would walk through the audience with a microphone, allowing viewers to participate directly. And compared to some later talk show hosts, Phil Donahue had a more empathetic yet probing interview style that others would try to emulate. He looked more like a kindly old uncle than a vicious pitbull interviewer trying to get the dirt from you. And as I said, Donahue was seen as a trailblazer. And this next show directly credits Donahue with them getting on the air. And that's the Oprah Winfrey Show. Oprah is now a larger-than-life cultural icon. But in the mid-1980s, she was a regular tabloid talk show host. Now, don't get me wrong. Oprah was different than most people. because she had charisma, empathy, and good storytelling ability, and she still does. Those things helped her connect with her audience on a personal level, and it made her a cultural icon and a household name. If I say the name Oprah, you know who I mean. Oprah got her start in Chicago in And her Oprah Winfrey show that ran from 1986 to 2011 is still the highest rated daytime talk show in history. Donahue blazed the path, but Oprah created the legacy that every other talk show host that came after her wished they could have. Unlike a lot of other tabloid talk shows that would come later and focused on sensationalism, the Oprah Winfrey Show blended more emotional, heartfelt stories, self-improvement content, and a lot of celebrity interviews. You could look up on YouTube Oprah Winfrey Show celebrity moments or emotional moments or things like that. And you'll likely find dozens of things that if you didn't watch the show, you probably have heard of these moments. Ones like Tom Cruise jumping on her couch. That's sad that that's the first one that I think of, but that's what I'm talking about. Oprah was known for her ability to bring out deep emotions in her guests and making them feel comfortable enough to share their most intimate experiences, which I guess is why Tom Cruise felt compelled to jump on the couch. If you don't know the episode I'm talking about, it's from 2005, and Tom Cruise was on there to promote his War of the Worlds movie. And he professes his love for Katie Holmes, the actress, and he jumps all over the couch. It's pretty wild, and it's basically become a meme ever since. My big connection to Oprah? Well, there's two. One, when I was on a trip to Maine, a big five-day road trip all through Maine, and I stopped in Bar Harbor, Oprah's yacht was out in the harbor. People were pointing it out to me. It was like the size of like 10 football fields. But the other more serious one was Oprah had her famous book club. And essentially, if she said your book was worth reading and put it on her list for her club, you were made. So with me having nine books out, I think the first... five or six, I was writing to some email that I thought might get to Oprah saying, here's my book and here's why you should put it on your book club list. That never happened though, but that's fine. When you think about the originals, as far as tabloid sensationalism talk shows, you might think of Geraldo and the Geraldo Rivera show. Oh, The show got its start in 1987. It was on until 1988. It was hosted by journalist Geraldo Rivera, and it quickly became known for its controversial and often sensational content. Geraldo, if you don't know who he is, he was already famous for his investigative reporting. This included his infamous 1986 live broadcasting of the opening of Al Capone's vault, which turned out to be empty. They basically spent the whole show building it up and then opened the door and it's like, oh, it's empty. Well, that was a waste of time. Geraldo was known for focusing on provocative topics, often featuring racially charged issues, extreme fringe groups, and highly contentious debates. This all came to a head in November 1988, one of the most memorable episodes of any 80s tabloid talk show involved a massive on-air brawl between white supremacists, anti-racist skinheads, and black activists. And during this big melee, Geraldo's nose was famously broken. You could see it. When I was coming up with kind of a list of some of these 80s tabloid talk shows to talk about, I was thinking of the most famous episode that came to my mind. So that's where Donahue with Vince McMahon, Oprah with Tom Cruise, now Geraldo getting his nose broken. Another very 80s, very famous tabloid talk show with a very 80s name was Sally Jessie Raphael. Her show debuted in 1983 and went all the way to 2002. In the years leading up to her show debuting, Sally Jessie bounced around as a radio personality doing call-in advice shows in New York. And that's kind of what led to her show, her straightforward and compassionate style and approach, and also her notable trademark red-framed glasses. And in a callback, Phil Donahue was one of the people that heard Sally Jesse's show on New York radio and liked her approach so much that he ended up helping her get her foot in the door as a talk show host. Sally Jesse's show covered a wide range of topics, family issues, relationship dramas, social issues. She tried to strike a balance between tabloid sensationalism and genuine human interest. So there may have been heated debates at times. There was no chairs flying like on Geraldo's show or later on Jerry Springer. Sally Jesse also predated Oprah by three years. So she was a trailblazer as one of the first female talk show hosts. At some point, I'll have to do a tabloid talk shows of the 90s segment. because there's a few super famous ones that don't fit the bill. The Maury Povich Show, that started in 1991, just like the Jerry Springer Show. I mean, I could do a whole segment just on that. But I wanted to end this segment with one of the most infamous and short-lived tabloid talk shows of the 80s, and that's the Morton Downey Jr. show.

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His

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show was on the air 1987 to 1989, but it's one of the most aggressive and controversial talk shows maybe ever. Morton Downey Jr. was this loudmouth, chain smoker, known for his confrontational style, and it often featured screaming matches between the guests and the host. And Morton Downey Jr., he was very polarizing. People either loved him or hated him. And I think he loved that. The Morton Downey Jr. show, especially in the 1980s, was arguably the most extreme example of tabloid television. His persona was a tough-talking, no-nonsense host who didn't shy away from insulting his guests or instigating conflicts. He didn't care about having on controversial guests, white supremacists, feminists, political figures, and it was often criticized for its lack of decorum and sensationalism. But on the other hand, it also became a cultural phenomenon, pushed the boundaries of what daytime television could show. My lasting memory of Morton Downey Jr. was him being a special guest at WrestleMania 5 on Piper's pit and blowing smoke in Roddy Piper's face until Piper finally sprayed him in the face with a fire extinguisher. I'm sure there are more that I missed as far as 80s tabloid talk shows go. And like I said, I'll do a 90s one because I discovered several that I said, oh, I thought these started in the 80s, so I can't use them. But do you remember any of these growing up? Do you remember watching any of these on sick days from school? I think my mother wouldn't have minded me watching any except for Morton Downey. She probably would have said, what the hell are you watching? That's when I would have quickly grabbed the remote and changed the channel back to Price is Right. This week in history, we are going back 122 years to September 2nd, 1902, and the release of the very first ever science fiction motion picture, A Trip to the Moon. This 14-minute silent film was created by French director Georges Méliès, and it's considered one of the most important movies ever released. It's the first ever science fiction motion picture. It had an imaginative story, groundbreaking special effects, and innovative use of cinematic techniques. And this is in 1902. The plot... Spoilers for anyone who hasn't seen this movie from 1902. The film tells the story of a group of astronomers who embark on an adventurous expedition to the moon. Led by Professor Barbin Foulias... I don't even think I'm pronouncing that right, but it was played by George Melius himself. They get launched into space by a giant cannon, and when they arrive at the moon, the impact on the moon is probably the scene that, even if you haven't seen the movie, you would know it. This moon has a face, like a human face that they must have made up to have the moon around it, and the spaceship hits the moon in the eye. Then once the astronomers, as they were called. There was no astronauts yet. Once they arrive on the moon, they encounter strange phenomenon, alien life forms called the Selenites. And after several conflicts with these Selenites aliens, the astronomers managed to escape and return to Earth, and they're celebrated as heroes. It's 14 minutes, so the plot I gave you, that kind of unravels pretty fast. George Melius was originally a stage magician. So he brought a sense of theatricality and illusion to his films. And this was in the form of the set design and costumes with super in-depth backgrounds, elaborate sets and costumes. And like I said, that scene of the moon getting hit in the face by the spaceship. Melies also pioneered different special effects, stop motion substitution that allowed objects and characters to appear or disappear instantly by stopping the camera and replacing the subject. Super imposition, which by rewinding the film and shooting again, Melies created scenes with double exposures, such as the appearance of stars and planets in the background. He used jump cuts, hand painted color, which didn't really help when the films were basically all shown in black and white. And A Trip to the Moon being the first science fiction film, it's credited with establishing many of those key tropes of science fiction movies, like exploration of space, encounters with extraterrestrial life, technological marvels and innovation, and also satire and social commentary. As far as the film industry itself goes, A Trip to the Moon helped with narrative structure and storytelling. It was a more complex narrative structure to cinema that moved beyond the short, simple scenes of everyday life that captured those original films of the 1890s into the turn of the 20th century. George Mellius' work here on A Trip to the Moon inspired filmmakers like Fritz Lang, who created Metropolis, which was in the late 1920s, but also more modern filmmakers like Stanley Kubrick and George Lucas. So essentially, A Trip to the Moon helped inspire Star Wars. George Mellius' A Trip to the Moon from 1902 is way more than just a film. It's that kind of cinematic milestone, a touchpoint that helps shape the future of the whole movie industry. And it's a quick watch. It's 14 minutes. You could watch that movie like four times. I could fit that into this podcast for A Trip to the Moons. But the first science fiction film and one of the most influential movies of all time, A Trip to the Moon, made its debut 122 years ago this week in history. Oh, that music means it's brand new time capsule time. We talked about a movie from 1902, so we're going to go super far in the past to 1997, 27 years ago this week. Let's see what was going on in the world of pop culture back then. The number one song was Mo Money Mo Problems by the Notorious B.I.G. This was the second single off of Notorious B.I.G.' 's Life After Death album. It was number one for two weeks, and ironically, Knocked from the number one spot, the song I'll Be Missing You that was written in tribute to Notorious B.I.G. who had been murdered about six months earlier. It was also Biggie's second posthumous number one single, making him the only artist ever to have two number one songs after his death. The number one movie was Fire Down Below and you could get into the theater with a ticket costing $4.59. This is an action film starring Steven Seagal and Kris Kristofferson, among others, in which a federal agent finds a toxic waste dumping grounds and has to deal with the locals in trying to get this shut down. It is a whopping 14% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. It was nominated for four Razzie Awards, including Worst On-Screen Couple for Steven Seagal and his guitar. But yeah, watch it if you want. The number one TV show was Monday Night Football. This was a game between the Green Bay Packers, who defeated the Chicago Bears 38-24. The Packers, led by Brett Favre, were coming off of their Super Bowl victory, where they defeated Drew Bledsoe, Bill Parcells, and my New England Patriots, another slap in the face of my fandom at the time. The Bears weren't a good team, and they really didn't have any stars on their team. I was just trying to look to find someone to share. I guess Eric Kramer, the quarterback. And if you were around back then, first week of September 1997, you're headed back to school or to college like I was. Maybe you wanted to call one of your friends to tell them about the exciting game between the Packers and the super good Chicago Bears. Well, you're in luck. You can get yourself a cellular phone through the RadioShack catalog. Yes, these were the cutting-edge kind of OG cell phones. RadioShack had their own brand, including the CT500 special flip phone with vibration. The phone weighed 9 ounces, and its battery had a 60-minute time limit before it'd have to be recharged. I think it's 60 minutes of talking time. This was just a phone. There was no video screen, no texting, no emails, just a phone in your pocket. And you could order this sweeping new technology for $69.99 or about $137 when adjusted for inflation to 2024. So it's actually not a bad deal if you just needed a phone. I know that the average iPhone now is closer to what, $600, $700? I'm not saying I'd rather have a vibrating flip phone that weighed almost a pound rather than my smartphone, but still, it's not a bad deal. And that'll wrap up a brand new This Week in History and Time capsule. Since school has started again for so many kids out there, and since I originally started school 40 years ago, I figured I've had enough time that I could look back and see the differences. So let's look at the top five differences about school in the 1980s compared to now. I tell you, this week's podcast here, this has been really one big fun walk through my childhood with the tabloid talk shows, coming up the myths that you believed as a kid, and this segment here, things I remembered about school back when I first started that are just different from today. I haven't been in school in now 28 years, high school, and I had... Nieces that have graduated high school, nephews that have graduated high school. And I know what they told me about how their school days and years were. They would look at me like I had three heads when I would tell them back in my day, this is how school was. And after I got over the fact that I was old enough to be talking like that, I started to really think. I wanted to make an actual list of things I remembered from school that I knew at least weren't as relevant as they were back in the 80s. I'm thinking that some of these things I bring up will be relevant only to kids that went to school in the 80s or maybe early 90s. Some will be a little more overarching where those of you that went to school in the 70s and 60s might feel the same way. But let's just get started with the honorable mentions. There are honorable mentions and the top five is in no particular order. And you'll have to let me know if I forgot anything. I tried my best to do my research, but eventually I said, I think I got all the fun ones, but who knows? So honorable mentions for things that were different about school in the 1980s include the super awesome laser pattern photos you could get I think I did it two years in a row. Those really didn't age well. But I digress. There was also typing class where you learned how to type on a typewriter, not a computer keyboard. There was also way more of an emphasis on lunchboxes, lunchbox culture. The lunchbox that you had said a lot about who you were, what you enjoyed. I'm not saying lunchboxes aren't a thing still now, but it felt like in the 80s into the early 90s that sometimes having the right or wrong lunchbox could make or break your popularity. Another honorable mention was that famous cart that would get rolled into your classroom with the big old TV on it so you could watch either Reading Rainbow, 321 Contact, maybe some kind of learning show on PBS. And the last... honorable mention was having to take the presidential fitness test and get the presidential fitness award. This was held in schools from the late 1950s through the early 2010s and consisted of things like pull-ups, sit-ups, 50-yard dash, things like that. Did you ever have to take the presidential physical fitness test in school? Well, those are the honorable mentions. Let's get into the actual top five. We'll kick it off with number one, film strips. Ah yes, film strips. That muted brownish-yellow color film shown up on the projector but you had to turn it when it would beep. So many kids would raise their hands wanting to be the one that turned the film strip. These were just basic early education film strips. Take notes on it or just watch it. Film strips were seen as a cheaper alternative to full motion picture film. They were popular from the 20s all the way into the 80s. So this is one I'm assuming that any of you that went to school in the 50s through the early 90s would remember film strips. But early 90s, that was kind of the end with the advent of the VCR. And like I said in the honorable mentions, the cart with the TV on it, that kind of did in film strips. They faded away quickly as the 80s ended. Number two is penmanship class. Any of you out there take penmanship class in school? I had a penmanship teacher, Mr. Moran. He would come, I don't know if it was once a month or once every other week, but he would teach us cursive. Yes, cursive handwriting, not cursive font so you can make it look like a signature. Actual cursive where the letter Q looks like the number two and such. Naturally, this was bigger when writing letters was the main thing and taking notes with a pen and a notebook was a thing. With the advent of texting on phones and email and the computer in general, penmanship has become less relevant. I was always proud of my cursive skills, and now it's something that's useless. Like, I can't put that on a resume. Can write nicely. That's not to say that penmanship class is gone. There are still some states that have penmanship cursive writing as mandatory in school curriculum, which I think is good. What if the apocalypse comes and the computers go down? How are you going to write notes to send with someone to save you? Number three, and this is very 80s, the Apple II computer along with green-lined computer paper. Back in episode 153, I talked about the Oregon Trail PC game while we played that in the 1980s on an Apple II computer. The Apple II was an innovator as far as home personal computers went. And I remember when I saw them in my school, South Yarmouth Elementary, I thought we had won the lottery or something. Because from the time I first used a computer in school in probably 1985... It was another 11 years before we got a computer in my house. Obviously, compared to what you have now, your smartphone probably has more power than the Apple II did in the early 1980s. But when the options before were no computers, this was ahead of its time. Then if you wanted to print out a paper or something from the computer, you had the paper. It was white and green lined like thick lines. Can you see it in your head with the perforated holes on the side? And you can hear the noise that the old computer printers would make. But it was the coolest thing to be seven, eight, nine years old and to be able to print out something from a computer. The current generation that grew up with smartphones, they'll look back at that and hear me waxing nostalgic about green and white computer paper and say, God, what was wrong with you? But we didn't have smartphones then, so this was brand new. In another 40 years, kids of that generation are going to look back at these smartphones and say, oh, you had to hold your phone in your hand and have it implanted in your eyes or something. But we'll move on from potential big brother scenarios to number four. Walking home from school. Obviously, kids still walk home from school. There are kids that live within a few hundred yards of their school if they live in cities or suburbs. But I think this speaks more to the society and culture at the time in the 1980s that kids walking anywhere wasn't seen as an invite for them to get kidnapped. I didn't live close enough to my school when I was in elementary school to have even had the option of walking home. But in middle school, I did it all the time. I used my Google map skills and just did a little bit of measurement to see. It was about a mile and a half for me to walk from Mattakeith Middle School to my house. But when you're 11, 12 years old, parents out there, could you imagine if your kids lived a mile and a half from school, letting them walk home? Now granted, I walked mostly through the woods, but still there were dangerous owls that could have swooped down and stolen my backpack, so you never know. That is a sort of true story. One time I was walking home with my friend Hassan, and we saw an owl in a tree. A big ol' owl. And knowing that owls, if they attack you, will go for the highest point on your head, namely your eyes, he and I grabbed tree branches like we were taught in school so that if the owls swooped, they would attack the branch and not our faces. Enough of owl attacks. Let's move on to the final part of the top five things different about school in the 1980s, and that is number five, encyclopedias and the Dewey Decimal System as far as research goes. I know that's a lot of words right there. Basically, it's how you would research papers in school in the 1980s. No Google, no Wikipedia, no laptops, no Wi-Fi. It was physical encyclopedias or looking up actual books using the Dewey Decimal System in the library. Do any of those words make sense to you younger listeners? Encyclopedia, Dewey Decimal. I'll even go as far as in college having to use microfilm and microfiche to look up old newspaper archives. It's so much easier now to just go to the site that's digitized them. Research was so much different and so much harder in the 1980s. And because I went through it in the 80s and 90s, it makes me appreciate how much easier it is for me to research and write articles or podcast notes today. All the way back in episode 24, I talked about the Xenial generation, which was kind of a hybrid Gen X and Millennial. This little strip of years, 1977 to 83, and I fall into that. And a big part of being a Xenial was being old enough, growing up long enough without technology and the advancements so that you remember life before, but you also appreciate what you have now. And that's how I feel. If all the technology went away, I could probably amuse myself for a while. But I'm so glad we have it. So that wraps up the top five. Those of you that went to school in the 80s or before, do you remember any of these things? Film strips, penmanship class, the Apple II computer and its fun green-lined computer paper, walking home from school like it was nothing. or encyclopedias and the Dewey Decimal System for research. I've said it a million times on this podcast, but I'm so glad I grew up when I did. But a part of growing up is being told things, myths that you believe are true. So we're going to take a deep dive into my own psyche and see if you believed in any of these myths too when you were growing up. All right, so we're going to pull back the curtain here, probably invite some laughter from you. We're going to look back at some myths that I believed as a kid and maybe you believed as a kid that ended up being false. These could be things that either you were told as a kid by your parents or other kids on the playground or things that you just developed that you thought were real just by your own experiences growing up. A sort of bonus... To kick this segment off, to kind of give you an idea of what I'm talking about as far as myths go, was the myth growing up that you believed in either Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, or the Tooth Fairy, or all of them. Typically, there was some moment growing up where you discovered that Santa Claus wasn't a real person coming down the chimney. And that sadness over Santa not being real was quickly replaced by joy knowing you still got the presents, you didn't care where they came from. Sorry to anyone that's super young out there listening, or older that still thinks Santa or the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy is real. I hope I'm not spoiling that for anyone. Oh man, like if you're listening to this in your car and your kids are in the back, oh no, I'm sorry. Alright, so let me get into detail with more of these. These are all things that, even if for a brief moment, I believed were actually true. The first one a lot of you probably believed were true or were told were true, and that was the fact that sitting too close to the TV would damage your eyes or make you go blind. I am 46. I've got really good vision, especially for my age, especially when both my parents wear glasses. I can tell you I sat close to the TV a lot. I played video games close to the TV a lot. Now maybe my eyesight is worse than it should be. Maybe I'm supposed to be like Superman and seeing through the wall. But I can tell you I'm very happy with how my eyes are at this point. This will be the point where I go back and look at this episode of the podcast in like a month when all of a sudden I need reading glasses. I think this myth was just parents mad that they were sitting on the couch and their kids were in the way of the TV so they would tell them that. Do any of you parents out there now, do you tell your kids to get away from the TV? Or do you say it about their tablets, their computers, don't sit so close? It'll all be fine when TV is just pumped into a chip in our eyes. And then you'll say don't sit too close to your eyes because the TV's there. Another myth I believe that some of you might still think is true is that sugar makes you hyper. There are more recent research studies showing that there's no conclusive connection between sugar and hyperactivity or ADHD. In fact, some of the research says that hyperactivity in children might be more likely linked to additives in food rather than the sugar in it. This research I found was in the past couple of years, so this is a myth that people could have thought was true even up to now. And granted, there could be research that comes out tomorrow that says, no, no, sugar does make you hyper, because I always thought that. If I got a candy bar, whatchamacallit, and regular Mountain Dew, I'd just be so hyper. But I think that came down more to the caffeine and the Mountain Dew. One myth that definitely stuck with me all the way probably up into my early 20s was that cracking your knuckles causes arthritis. Here, hold on. Ah, you like that ASMR? That was cracking my knuckles. I had always assumed that I was going to have arthritis by this point in my life due to cracking my knuckles a lot. And granted, my knees, my hips, my shoulders, elbows, they're all creakier and sometimes crack and pop, but I don't have arthritis. I still go for good length runs and walks. Again, I think this myth was from parents that didn't want to hear their kids making that noise, popping their knuckles. Working in the fitness industry for almost 10 years, I can tell you I've seen more arthritis being just degenerative. It's like part of your genes. Runs in your family, you're more likely to get it whether you crack your knuckles or not. Now that being said, rheumatoid arthritis runs on both sides of my family, so I might end up getting it whether I crack my knuckles or not. I'll just blame it on that. One of the stupidest myths ever that I briefly believed was true was the myth that if you make a certain face, like a stupid looking face, it could lead to permanent changes so your face would get stuck like that. I think I was told this more from my grandparents. But the brief moment that I thought it might be true was thanks to the movie One Crazy Summer that came out in 1986. So I was eight or nine years old. And there's a kid that makes a face like pulls his eyes down and his lips up and someone slaps him on the back and his face gets stuck like that. So he's this hideous monster running around for the rest of the movie. The only way your face is going to get stuck like something is if you're flash frozen. And I don't think that happens too often. But is that one? Did anyone ever have that told to them? Oh, don't you make that face. It's going to get stuck like that. I honestly don't know if any of my friends and I ever tried to prove this myth real, like make a face like that and have someone else smack you on the back. And when it didn't freeze, you're like, all right, well, that was fake. A really nice, kind of sweeter myth that I wish was true was when I was little being in the car at night and being told the moon was following the car, making sure we made it home. That's something more the sweetness and innocence of little kids to believe, oh, look, the moon is kind of shepherding us home. That's a way nicer myth to tell your kids than don't crack your knuckles, you're going to get arthritis, or don't make a stupid face, you're going to get stuck like that. When you're told, look, the moon, it's following you home. That's very nice. We move on to a more sinister myth and one I definitely believe probably even through high school. And that was that if you swallowed your gum you were chewing, it would take up to seven years to digest. So for all of you out there that believe that's true, don't worry, it's not. You can go ahead and swallow all the gum you want. That was my fear, was not so much swallowing one piece of gum, was that of over the period of seven years, how much gum I would chew and swallow, and that eventually my stomach would just be filled with gum. Then there's no way to digest it if you've got a baseball-sized chunk of gum in your stomach. Especially if you've got the big league chew, the shredded gum. I need a big handful of that and swallow it and just stomach full of it. But I believed that forever. I would spit my gum on the sidewalk or stick it under my desk. Because it was better to do that than risk getting it stuck in your stomach for seven years. Another one that was so stupid, but I definitely believed it was true, especially as a little kid. was that eating any kind of a seed would make whatever that seed was grow in your stomach. This could be watermelon or apple or orange. Any seed, if you ate it, the seed wouldn't digest. It would just embed itself in your stomach and just grow a plant there. This had to be something that I was told on the playground in elementary school or at lunch. Maybe I had an apple or something and someone said, make sure you don't eat the seeds. It'll grow an apple tree in your stomach. Because I could never see anyone in my family, like elders, being that sadistic to tell me that at the dinner table. Like not even trying to be funny. I couldn't see my Nana or Nina and Grandpa saying, don't eat that seed. You'll have a plant in your stomach. That was one thing when trying to pin down where I remembered these myths from. They just were there in my head. I was trying to remember any myths that my grandparents had told me. Because those would have been a neat look back at their childhood. But do any of you remember specific myths that your parents or grandparents told you? One myth that I'm pretty sure probably one of my siblings told me when we got a little bit older was was the myth that in an average year while sleeping, you swallow up to seven spiders. This is one that's actually easy to believe because when you're sleeping, I've had times that if it's hot, I don't have a sheet on and a spider will crawl across my foot. That's actually happened quite a bit. And yeah, you've got spiders in your house. No matter how clean it is, they're in the walls. Ooh, get scared. But as stupid as spiders are just walking across you when you're asleep, what are the odds that they're going to crawl into your mouth and just allow themselves to be swallowed? But I believed it. I believed it for many years that spiders were getting in my mouth, but I didn't mind it too much because I was asleep. So it's like, whatever. I'm not saying there's never been a case of a spider crawling in someone's mouth and getting accidentally swallowed. But research shows it's not really true that spiders aren't that dumb. One more myth that I definitely believed was true, definitely through my teenage years, was the myth of not going swimming for one hour after eating. This actually originated in a 1908 Boy Scout handbook saying to wait 90 minutes. With the belief that blood flow was diverted to the stomach to help with digestion, which could lead to fatigue. But don't worry, there's no evidence that this ever happens. So you can eat a huge giant buffet and then run right in the ocean and be fine. Although you might end up puking from running, but not from the actual swimming. Were there any other myths that I forgot to include? I may end up doing a part two. That is if there's enough horrible scarring memories of myths that you were told as a kid. But yes, I at one point believed all of these were true, even if briefly. I don't know what's the worst to admit. That in Rocky IV, I thought Carl Weathers was really killed when Apollo was killed. Or the fact that I believed that the moon was chasing my car. I guess it'd be worse if I still believed one of those things today in my 40s. So I guess being 8 years old and believing it wasn't that bad. But until next time, that'll wrap up episode 160 of the podcast. Thank you so much to everyone for tuning in, sharing, rating, reviewing. Thank you to those of you that have been listening on YouTube. When Google Podcasts went away back in April, they migrated to YouTube. So these podcasts are over there. It's standalone. It's the episode image with the list of what's on the show and just my voice. There's no video to it because, God, I don't have time to make a full video podcast. Maybe someday I'll have time to do that. But thank you because those podcasts have been doing pretty well over there. So I'm appreciative of those of you that are giving that medium a try. Maybe someday I'll be able to do video podcasts when I get a camcorder that actually fits what I'm looking for. For my road trip vacation I went on last week up to New Hampshire and Vermont, I brought my regular camera, which also shoots 4K video, so it's not like it's not for recording. I guess my main thing is if I set the camera up to record me, I can't see myself on the screen. So I have no idea what I'm looking at. The last thing I want is to do a video podcast and have the camera like half on my face for the whole time. And this looks worse than something I would have done when I was 14. Next week, we've got episode 161. This is going to be a fun look back episode. Because not only am I going to pass four years alcohol-free, but I'm going to kind of celebrate it by going back to episode one of the podcast. I'm going to kind of reboot the original Back in the Day segment, which was a look at the Nintendo Entertainment System. I was listening to a podcast recently. Chris Van Vliet, he's awesome, does great interviews. But he had said something that stuck with me. that if you can't look back at your original content and cringe a little, then you haven't improved. I can tell you that looking back, especially at my first handful of podcasts, I definitely cringe at my delivery. Like I was trying to be way more buttoned down and serious than just letting myself be myself. A lot of it was not knowing how to do a podcast. actually talking about certain topics, not just being free-flowing and foolish like the radio shows I did with my friends in high school and middle school. And I'm not saying I'm going to redo all of these podcasts, like the first dozen or so. I'm not going to live off of my past like that. Live off my past by talking about fresh things. We'll see. Likely I'll do a few back-in-the-day segments that I'll revise. But we're going to start next week with episode 161 with looking back at the Nintendo Entertainment System part two. Follow me all over social media, Instagram threads, my Facebook fan page. I accept everyone over there. I don't accept friend requests on Facebook from people I don't know. So don't get offended if you request me and I'm like, no, thank you. I'm not in a popularity contest on Facebook like that. But you can make me popular on the Facebook fan page or Instagram or threads. Definitely go subscribe on YouTube. I'm doing my best to have new videos besides this podcast up every Friday. I'm doing my best to have a consistent presence over there. But being a content creator, it's a lot of work, especially to do it well. And I'm not just videos on YouTube. I'm the podcast. I'm Patreon. I am blog posts. That's a lot of work for one person, especially someone that works a full-time day job. That's why listening and sharing the show and sharing the YouTube videos is so important to a content creator. I can promote myself all I want, and I do, but it means more when you do it. We've still got a few weeks of summer. The weather is still amazing. It's going to be good all the way through October, at least where I am. I don't mind it getting down in the upper 40s at night where you wake up and you put on a long sleeve early in the morning, but by the afternoon it's T-shirt and shorts again. That's the good stuff. But get out there and enjoy it all you can. Take the podcast with you wherever you go. I had a lot of fun doing this podcast this week. A lot of great 80s memories, some a little embarrassing, but that's fine. We're all friends here. And I'll keep pumping out the content as much as I can as often as I can. Remember, in this life, don't walk in anyone else's footsteps. Create your own path and enjoy every moment you can on this journey we call life because you never know what tomorrow brings. Thank you all once again for tuning in. This has been the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund. You already knew that. I'll talk to you all again soon.

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Christopher Setterlund

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