"The Little Mermaid" (Danish: Den lille havfrue), sometimes translated in English as "The Little Sea Maid",[1] is a fairy tale written by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen. Originally published in 1837 as part of a collection of fairy tales for children, the story follows the journey of a young mermaid princess who is willing to give up her life in the sea as a mermaid to gain a human soul.

The Battle of Cartagena de Indias (Spanish: Sitio de Cartagena de Indias, lit. 'Siege of Cartagena de Indias') took place during the 1739 to 1748 War of Jenkins' Ear between Spain and Great Britain. The result of long-standing commercial tensions, the war was primarily fought in the Caribbean; the British tried to capture key Spanish ports in the region, including Porto Bello and Chagres in Panama, Havana, and Cartagena de Indias in present-day Colombia.

https://www.pornhub.com/insights/2024-year-in-review

Use code CITATION at the link below and get 60% off an annual plan: http://incogni.com/citation

Three op-eds by billionaires.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/10/28/jeff-bezos-washington-post-trust/

https://about.fb.com/news/2020/02/big-tech-needs-more-regulation/

https://www.ft.com/content/a46cb128-1f74-4621-ab0b-242a76583105

A ghost ship, also known as a phantom ship, is a vessel with no living crew aboard; it may be a fictional ghostly vessel, such as the Flying Dutchman, or a physical derelict found adrift with its crew missing or dead, like the Mary Celeste.[1][2] The term is sometimes used for ships that have been decommissioned but not yet scrapped, as well as drifting boats that have been found after breaking loose of their ropes and being carried away by the wind or the waves.

The Bonus Army was a group of 43,000 demonstrators – 17,000 veterans of U.S. involvement in World War I, their families, and affiliated groups – who gathered in Washington, D.C., in mid-1932 to demand early cash redemption of their service bonus certificates. Organizers called the demonstrators the Bonus Expeditionary Force (B.E.F.), to echo the name of World War I's American Expeditionary Forces, while the media referred to them as the "Bonus Army" or "Bonus Marchers". The demonstrators were led by Walter W. Waters, a former sergeant.

Tom cleans out his unrelated chrome tabs on interesting wikipedia articles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_ironing

https://woodcarvingillustrated.com/deep-sea-jack-o-lanterns/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobby_tunneling

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaver_drop

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Thomas_Knight

So we actually recorded this last week on Monday so one of the last paragraphs of the episode has outdated info in it. The Pizzagate guy was killed by police during a traffic stop after allegedly pulling out a gun and pointing it at police. This incident happened 4 days after we recorded this episode. https://www.npr.org/2025/01/10/g-s1-42040/pizzagate-gunman-killed-police-north-carolina

"Pizzagate" is a conspiracy theory that went viral during the 2016 United States presidential election cycle, falsely claiming that the New York City Police Department (NYPD) had discovered a pedophilia ring linked to members of the Democratic Party while searching through Anthony Weiner's emails.[1][2][3] It has been extensively discredited by a wide range of organizations, including the Washington, D.C. police.[2][3][4]

Pythagoras of Samos[a] (Ancient Greek: Πυθαγόρας; c. 570 – c. 495 BC)[b], often known mononymously as Pythagoras, was an ancient Ionian Greek philosopher, polymath, and the eponymous founder of Pythagoreanism. His political and religious teachings were well known in Magna Graecia and influenced the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, and, through them, the West in general. Knowledge of his life is clouded by legend; modern scholars disagree regarding Pythagoras's education and influences, but they do agree that, around 530 BC, he travelled to Croton in southern Italy, where he founded a school in which initiates were sworn to secrecy and lived a communal, ascetic lifestyle.

This episode was inspired by our tall tales episode. We each take a crack a writing another host's fictional bio. This was supposed to be a Christmas Episode but was delayed.