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Hello, everyone. Welcome to America Under the Microscope. Hi, LuLu.

Hi, James.

I thought today we would continue and talk about these folk heroes that America has.

Talking about folk tales, folk heroes, I've heard of this expression, tall tales, like tall and short.

Tall tales are also called big fish stories. Tall tales are basically… these stories are legends that people have heard that may be originally based on a true story. But through retelling and stories that they just become so different than the original like This person was able to climb this high when maybe the original stories like he went up a hill.

Yeah, I think this is what happens with sort of folk tales because it's been retold so many times, everyone tries to add bits into it.

Yeah, but this happens also with just general people's own lives.This is where the term Big Fish Story comes in because it's the same idea, but it's more individual. It goes like this, It's like there was this one time I was fishing at the lake and I caught a fish that was so big.

And then the next time he caught a whale.

And then he caught a whale. And then the time after that he got two whales, big fish story.

So he just gradually sort of blew up. Who's the first folk hero you're going to talk about?

The first folk hero wasn't a real person as far as I know. But it's a person named Paul Bunyan who is a giant, literal giant really really big guy, who lived in the northern parts of the United States, near the Great Lakes area and he was a lumberjack.

So someone who cuts down trees.

And he had a pet ox named Babe, Babe the Blue Ox.

Was the ox blue?

Yeah.

According to the legend?

According to the legend. So Paul Bunyan helped lumberjacks that were in the area cutting down the trees.

Being a giant?

Being a giant, yes, it's easy for him. Babe could pull all the logs, he could easily cut down the trees with his axe and giant strength. And apparently he also like to eat lots of pancakes and things like this.

Do you know what I realized? This is such an American tall tale because you think about all the elements, this whole lumberjack, this whole cutting down trees and this sort of helping the local lumberjacks and also eating pancakes, all of these are pretty American elements, this whole frontier spirits, I guess .

I kind of want pancakes now.

Would you say Paul Bunyan is the story like a household story like everyone knows?

Everyone knows Paul Bunyan. As kids, we read stories about them in school. There's cartoons about him, he shows up in the pop culture like on shows like the Simpsons.

That's where I knew him for the first time, the Simpsons.

Yeah, you just entered into American culture as a whole so he's just one of those names that everybody knows.

Like the whole idea of being powerful as in he's a giant, but also kind of nice and friendly?

Yeah, but that comes across even in American comic books if you take super heroes like Superman, super strong super powerful but helps the little guy. So it kind of does continue on through other aspects of American culture, especially super hero culture.

With greater power comes greater…?

Responsibility, with great power comes great responsibility, Spiderman.

So apart from that, who else?

Who should we go on to next？Next we'll actually talk about a real person, someone Americans called Johnny Appleseed.

Johnny Appleseed, Appleseed?

His real name is John Chapman.

So Appleseed, let me guess, has to do with apples?

It does. So the legend is this man walked across America and planted apple trees everywhere he's like the image a lot of Americans have in their head, it’s like friendly old guy with a bag of apple seeds just throwing them out and just grow trees randomly. Now the truth is, he was a very friendly guy. He did plant trees, but not like throw over seeds randomly. He built like nurseries where there were a few trees and he did give out apples to the other people. But he's kind of seen as the symbol of …

Agriculture?

Not agriculture so much, but nature, conservationism, like protecting the environment and stuff because he was big on nature and protecting the environment and stuff, he does have that image still to today. But most Americans they only think of it like: Oh, he's the guy who planted lots of apples.

Father of all apples in America.

Yeah. There's been again, he's like Paul Bunyan, he shows up in our cartoons and other things and there's stories and songs about him.

It's very interesting to think that your sort of folk heroes are mostly to do with sort of agriculture and then cutting down trees.

That is part of agriculture, forestry.

Yeah, forestry and then agriculture, these sort of motif.

It makes sense if you look at American history because for a long time, that's what America was, wild, untamed, land years farming, forestry were far more common.

So if you're a very good farm hand,I guess you become a hero.

I guess so.

One thing, this is not really a folk hero, but I think it's like a legendary creature. For me, if I think about America, north America, I think a big foot.

Big foot.

First of all, bigfoot, Sasquatch…

They're the same thing. It's just bigfoot is the English, Sasquatch is the native American word. I don't know which tribe that word comes from, but it is a native American word. What Sasquatch is supposed to be, this big furry humanoid ape creature that lives in the forest of the pacific northwest.

It's like an ape man, isn't it？

Yeah. Some people like it's the missing link between apes and humans evolutionary or things like this. And there are like you can go online and you can find like these really fuzzy poor quality videos of people claiming: There's big foot right there. It's like I found big foot, I found his hair.

This really sounds a lot like Loch Ness Monster.

It is almost exactly the same kind of thing.

Fuzzy videos and lots of people believe in it.

People go out to the forest with their cameras trying to find Big Foot, there's Big Foot Tours, people go to the forrest trying to find it and camping to get it.

You know, there's an actual word cryptozoology?

Yeah, cryptozoology.

That's a thing, so basically the study of mythical creatures.

Big foot is not mythical, don't you know that？It's real.

So let me guess, most Americans still somewhat believe that Big Foot is probably a thing?

No.

Really?

No. People who believe in cryptozoology is a very small group. It's not the majority.

Because in China we have those legends as well. And then still I mean, for me, I tend to believe there is some mystery out there that we can't…

I think there's mystery out there, but I don't jump to mystical creature. I just jump to… just like we just don't know this about the universe yet.

You have to see it to believe it.

It has to be proven.

In the previous episode and in this episode, we've talked about a lot of these folklore, folk tales and folk legends.Why do you think people are so interested? I mean, not just in America, but all over the world, you can see these legends, they are always very much attached to the land.

I think it's part of just people like to tell stories. I mean we're social species we like to talk and share and you look at different cultures all around the world they like to tell their stories.

Emm.

I just think sometimes it just gets confused about what was real and what was not and people forget. And it just morph into these tall tails and since a lot of them are very interesting stories, they just keep getting passed down.

Like, for me, it's also because that's like pre-computer definitely pre-electricity times, people would just probably gather around, tell each other stories.

Yeah, you can just imagine people sitting in the pub drinks like “I'm going to tell you a story about this man I met up in the north called Paul Bunyan. ” “He's not real.” “ Yes, he is. ”

And then it gets passed down, but it is part of the sort of the national or cultural identity as well.

It's part of American cultural identity. Every culture has these tall tales, and these folk heroes and they all are added to the fabric of culture.

And to be honest, if you think about it, all countries started with hunting, gathering and then farming. So a lot of these traditional folk heroes, they have to do with these qualities like they are hard working folk. And then they are nice to…

Help the little guy.

Yeah.

But do you think it has changed over the years with the internet and everything？Do you think kids now don't really have that interest in all of these？

I don't think they do, because there's so many other options and things they can learn from. I mean, kids nowadays, I think the new thing will be comic book super heroes because nowadays kids are just like they just don't care about Paul Bunyan or anything. It's like they care about Batman.

I think because of all these new media, these sort of legends or modern day or contemporary legends or the equivalent of urban legends, they sort of go beyond borders.

Yeah.

It's not so much attached to a specific land anymore. Think about Superman, probably all the kids know Superman.

He is pretty well-known, he gets around.

Of course. Alright, so maybe next time we will find a chance to talk about urban legends, especially some more contemporary ones.

Urban legends.

That's the part…

Scary.

I'm really interested in. Okay. And by the way, just to remind you guys, a lot of these things James and I talked about in these two episodes, you can find so many cultural references in a lot of the TV shows, movies or cartoons.

Absolutely.

And as James mentioned earlier, all of these are pretty much you can find in the Simpsons I highly recommend the Simpsons

Simpsons did it already. They did everything.

They did everything and if you want to actually know more about general American culture, pop culture, history all of that, I think watching the Simpsons is a pretty light hearted way to go about it.

Yeah it's been on for so long they've covered so many things it's actually a good choice.

You know what, next time we should do an episode on the Simpsons. I pretty much watched all of them.

Okay, we can do that.

All right, so thank you again, James, for coming to the show.

Thank you for having me.

We'll see you next time.

Bye everyone.

Bye.