Stuff You Should Know - The Catacombs of Paris

Episode Date: February 4, 2025

Beneath Paris lies the bones of more than 6 million people. And you can walk among them for 31 euros. These are the Paris catacombs. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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sports, and more. Joined by the sharp voices of the shows, correspondents, and contributors. And with extended interviews and exclusive weekly headline roundups, this podcast gives you content you won't find anywhere else. Ready to laugh and stay informed? Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And we are going deep underneath the city of Paris, city of lights, a city too busy to sleep

because it eats big apples. In this episode of Stuff You Should Know. That's right. Big thanks to Anna for the contribution here on the Paris Catacombs. Have you ever toured the Paris Catacombs? Yes I have, have you? I have not, and I think I remember you telling me that you had.

I've been to Paris three times, have not yet done this. It was not on my radar the first two, didn't have time the third trip. So if and when I ever get back to Paris, it's on the list. I recommend it. Have you ever been to the Moulin Rouge? Uh, yes. Okay. So the Moulin Rouge is generally topless dance numbers typically, right? Yeah. Did you notice that when you were at the Moulin Rouge, boobs just, there were so

many boobs everywhere that they just totally lost all context and meaning. Yeah. 12 year old Chuck was like, I don't understand what's happening. Right. But I'll bet even 12 year old Chuck was like, I don't understand what's happening. Right, but I'll bet even 12 year old Chuck was like yawning by the end of it, right? Cause there's just so many boobs everywhere that they're just, it doesn't mean anything anymore.

The catacombs are the Moulin Rouge of human bones. Oh, so many skulls that it's just like, whatever. There's another skull? Yeah, yeah, it's bizarre because you realize you're just like, ho hum, there's another dead body, there's another dead body, there's another leg bone. But it's still worth going to just because it's so bizarre. But there's just so many human bones around you

that you just, it's like your brain just gets saturated and you just stop thinking of them like that. So the J-SAT, the Josh SAT would be Moulin Rouge is to boobs as the Paris Catacombs is to blank. Human bones. Yeah. That'd be the right answer. Choice A. What would be the other choices?

Oh man, I don't know. I haven't taken a test like that in so long. I'd be willing to take the SAT again. Would it? I think so. Okay. Sure. How long does that take?

I don't know, but it's changed since we were there. Hours, I remember it taking hours. It used to actually test IQ and now it just tests like retention. Oh, well, I'm screwed. So here's the other answers, Chuck. Cod fishing? Yeah. Modge podge?

There's gotta be one close one. Like, like, like, uh, grave site or something. Okay, there you go. And you'd be like, no. No, grave wax. Do you remember that from back in the day? Is that the human goop that seeps out? Mm-hmm. That you can make soap out of? Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Pretty awesome. All right, that's a great JSAT. We should have our own stuff you should know, that'd be a fun thing to design. I have, it would be fun. I have one more story about the catacombs. Let's hear it.

So when we went, I've only been once, and it was a few years back, but we went with my brother-in-law and sister-in-law and our niece, the very famous Mila who's been in a bunch of movies. That's right. She played young Mary in the movie Mary that came out on Netflix this past Christmas. Did you know that? No, and you didn't, you didn't shout that one out, so I'm glad you are. Well, we were off, so I didn't get a chance to,

but it's definitely worth watching. It's like a pretty religious movie. I mean, it's about Mary, the mother of Jesus. Oh, Mary, Mary. Yeah, yeah, that Mary. You're like, ah, Mary, Mary, sure. And it is fascinating. Like, actually, my brother-in-law

also was a producer on it, too. And it has action, it's a thriller, it has like a really evil villain played by Anthony Hopkins. Like it's just a really good movie that you'll watch from beginning to end and be like, this is pretty good. I have to check it out. And I'm also gonna forgive you

for when I said Mary Mary for not saying. Why you bugging? Thank you. You passed, you're back in the good graces. Well anyway, back to my story. So little Mila, she must've been five-ish at the time. She went to the cat that comes with us, right? So she's walking around this ossuary

with bones and human skulls everywhere. And you me or I asked her like, are you scared right now? And she said, I would be right. She, right. She said, I would be if these were real. We're like, we just looked at each other, the corners of our eyes and we're like, well, let's look over here now.

Right. Exactly. Yep. Wow. That's adorable. It was very adorable. What's funny is the irony of the whole thing, is this is the same kid at about the same age

who was scared to death on the movie ride at Disney Hollywood Studios, but is standing there in the ossuary, millions of bones, human bones and skulls, and is like, meh. Yeah, that's pretty funny. So those are all my stories about the catacombs. I figure we should probably start talking about it.

Yeah, so this is, I mean, let's go back in time, I guess. I mean, we know already what it is. It's a series of underground tunnels where more than six million Parisians are there forever. Unless they decide to move them again. Right, right, but you have no idea who's who. Like one bone doesn't belong to another bone.

No idea whose skull is who, it's crazy. Yeah, yeah. So if you go back in time, let's say 45 million years during the Lutetian period, there was an erosion event that caused a lot of what became to be known as Lutetian period, there was an erosion event that caused a lot of what became to be known as Lutetian or Paris rock or Paris limestone or Parisian limestone deposited there. And that is, if you go to Paris and you see everything as that sort of creamy gray, that's what that is and that's what gives Paris its distinct look because they had

loads and loads and loads of it. And the reason we're starting with this is because the mining of that Lutetian limestone is where these tunnels started. About 2,000 years ago on the banks of the rivers there they had these quarries where they would mine the heck out of this stuff. And before you know it, Paris is sitting on top of a vast network of tunnels. Yeah, something like 32 square kilometers of tunnels, which to put in American terms is like a lot of bananas. Yes. Ten times the size of Central Park, apparently, is underneath Paris. I think it's 300 kilometers of tunnels.

Isn't that just nuts? It's a lot. But I mean, if you think about it, if you mine an area, a small, relatively small area for a couple thousand years, you're going to make some headway eventually, and that's what they did. The key is this, Chuck. you're going to make some headway eventually. And that's what they did. The key is this, Chuck.

Originally, these quarries were sensibly well outside of the city of Paris. Yeah. But we're talking about a very, very tiny, original city of Paris that eventually grew and grew and grew. And over time, Paris overtook these old quarries that in most cases were no longer used

or mined any longer. So the city built itself over abandoned mines that people had just plumb forgotten about that's right And that you know that presents a couple of very big problems first of all if you've got a city growing and growing and getting built on and built on and getting heavier and heavier and A lot of the underground has been dug out that is a problem and there were numerous incidents of sinkholes, of buildings collapsing into themselves, of all kinds of tragedies happening over the years

throughout the history of Paris, because it was built on hollow ground in a lot of places. Right, that's why another very famous nickname for Paris is the Florida of places. Right. That's why another very famous nickname for Paris is the Florida of Europe. Right. I'm sure they love that. The other big problem is that Parisians used to love burying themselves in Paris. Like, you wanted to be laid to rest in the city where you grew up and lived your life. At your church, typically, too.

Yeah, like very, very locally. And by the 18th century, late 18th century, this was a big, big problem. There were too many bodies. The disease was being spread. So this led to a couple of things. I think in the 1730s, there was an actual parliamentary commission study about how disease from these dead people everywhere

in Paris was hurting the city. And then it took about 40 years, eventually in 1777, King Louis the, what is that, 16th, created the IGC. You wanna pronounce that? Oh yes, please. The Inspection Generale des Carrières. Carrières. And what were they charged with?

So Carrières is French for careers, and another word for career is a path or tunnel. So this was the commission overseeing mines and mine shafts in Paris. Right. So basically, hey, we got this report 40 years ago that no one's acted on, so we need to really start looking into this stuff. And Chief Inspector, can you pronounce his name? Charles Axel F. Guillemot. SLF Diomote. He came along as the chief inspector and said,

all right, you know what? We're gonna shore up these mines and make sure they're not gonna keep collapsing. And also we're gonna start moving bodies out of here. We got a body problem, not a three body problem, we have a millions body problem. And we're gonna start moving bodies out of, let's start with the oldest one, the Holy Innocence Cemetery,

which has been around since 1186. Let's start moving things out of here and from other cemeteries, close these things down, and start moving them into these old mine shafts. Yeah. And like you said, there was a body problem. I think you kind of touched on it a second ago, where there was a general sense of disease coming from these

putrefying bodies that were just piling up in the cemeteries. But structurally speaking also, so like I guess at the time in France, they would bury you with a bunch of other people who died at the same time in a group pit, let you decompose. After five years, they would bury you up and then they would just deposit your bones in an ossuary. They just, they were like, here's a bunch of bones, let's move on to the next group of people and bury them for five years. So many people's bones built up over the years that neighborhoods built near this, they're like cellars would collapse in and bones would just come out because of the pressure put

on these huge piles of bones that were building up. So there was a huge problem with it. But I also read that that was a, um, a bit of like a cover story that they were really interested that the government of Paris was interested in reclaiming some really great real estate now. And so they did this, whether people liked it or not, and they actually went into these cemeteries and moved the bones under the cover of night. That's right, to the tunnels.

And people are like, you're doing what? Yeah. And they said, don't worry about it, just go back to sleep. And from 1785 to 1787, over a couple of years, they, not only from Holy Innocence, but all the nearby cemeteries, they moved these bodies in April of 1786. The catacombs were consecrated officially.

That was called the Paris Ossuary at first, but catacombs sounds creepier, I guess. Hey, have I been saying Ossiary? I think so. Oh man, thank you for gently correcting me. Well, I wasn't sure how it was pronounced to be honest. I sound like a six-year-old kid trying to pronounce it. So Catacombs took over as the sort of, you know,

the go-to word. And they kind of just dumped them in there for a while until in 1810, there was a new quarry inspector who said, maybe we can have a little fun with this. Yeah. So just to be clear, when they moved the bones from the graveyard to these abandoned, um, mine shafts, they would just go up to a hole in the ground and dump bones into the mine shaft and they would just pile up where they fell at the bottom of the mine shaft. That's how they were transferred. And like you said, finally, uh, one of the inspectors, a quarry inspector named Louis

Etienne Harry Card de Turi. Pretty sure I said that right. He said, like you said, let's have some fun. So he got busy with his quarry men, um, stacking bones into these now famous configurations of tibias and fibias and finger bones and thigh bones and, um, neck bones, uh, and then head bones finally. All of them with their eye sockets facing out, they built walls throughout these whole catacombs

that had been designated an ossuary, or in French, an ossuary. That's right, and I think from now to the end of time, a skull should be known as a head bone. Isn't that what it is in that old dry bone song? Isn't that what they call it? Oh, is it what, connected to the head bone, that one? Yeah, don't they say that?

Oh, I don't know. I think so. I don't remember that part. That's like the part. Oh, well, what was connected to it? I think the neck bone, yeah. Yeah, probably so. And the neck bone's connected to the skull.

Right. And then everybody just stops singing and goes home. Yeah. So like you mentioned, there are no headstones there, so you don't know who is who. We do know there are some famouses there, like Robespierre, a very famous statesman is there. There's a painter named Simon Vue.

How would you say that? Yeah, you're right. I was gonna say et, but there'd be an extra T-E, I think. Oh, okay. And then this guy, I think we should maybe do a show on at some point, Charles, I would say Peralt as an American, but what is that, Perel? Let's just go with your, I say Ossieri,

so why I don't know why you're asking me. Well, you took French, I didn't. This guy was like the granddaddy of the modern fairy tale. So he wrote Little Red Riding Hood and Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty and Puss in Boots. Yeah. Didn't know about this guy. He put them all into a collection

that he attributed to Mother Goose. So I couldn't find definitively that he invented Mother Goose, but he certainly made Mother Goose a star. That's, you're gonna go a long way, baby. Stick with me. Should we take a break or you got something else? I, oh, well, we should probably say that the reason why there's not a lot of people

that you've heard of today because they stopped adding bones in 1860. They said, that's enough. Sure. Let's, this is a little nuts. Somebody thought of this almost 100 years ago. They were clearly insane. Paris went along with it.

Let's just pretend like it was OK, but just stop doing it any further. Yeah, Jim Morrison can stay where he's at. I looked to see if he ever went and visited the Catacombs and I could not find that he ever did. So let's just say he didn't. Oh, just as a tourist? Mm-hmm.

Oh, interesting. I just was curious. Dear Diary, today I went to the Catacombs. I found my solace there. Right, it was awesome. Alright, so now that break and we're going to come back and talk about all the weird stuff that's happened there over the decades since. Do you want to understand an invisible force that's shaping your life? I'm Osvalosian, one of the new hosts of the long-running podcast Tech Stuff.

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It's for the voters to decide. Follow The Big Take podcast on the iHeartRadio deposits, bone stacking, that kind of stuff. But that, I think we said at the outset, that takes up just a really small amount of all of the tunnels that are under Paris. They've done some other really fascinating stuff, dozens and dozens of different interesting, really creative, inventive things with these tunnels, right? Hundreds of different things. Yes, for sure.

And I don't wanna make you feel self-conscious, I was laughing at a dirty joke that I couldn't say out loud. Oh, I wanna know. I'll tell you later. Oh, I know. Yeah, yeah. So, a lot of, I mean, monks used to make chartreuse down there, was that the birthplace of chartreuse?

Yeah. In the catacombs? Yeah. I don't remember mentioning that in our Amaro episode, but we definitely talked about chartreuse. Yeah, for sure. So that's one thing that happened back then. Mushroom farming, there's been a great tradition of alcohol brewing actually over the years.

Because, I mean, one of the great things about having an underground system like that is it's very stable temperature-wise. It's about 60 degrees Fahrenheit always. Yeah, which is about 15 and a half degrees Celsius for our French friends. That's right. And so that means you can do a lot of stuff from like storing wine to brewing beer. Exactly.

One of the things that made it so appealing in addition to being able to keep it at like a constant cave temperature, cave age to anything is pretty great typically. This is also real estate in the heart of Paris. That you can use some steps and go up street side and all of a sudden you're right there at your customers without having to pay the incredibly high price

of real estate in Paris top side. Oh, good point. It's not money. Top side Paris. I've read it somewhere. Mushroom farming was another big deal because one thing you don't need a ton of for most mushrooms is light.

Sometimes if you want them to fruit, you may be able to manipulate light or something like that. But generally, mushroom growing can be done in very dark places. And so starting in the 19th century, actual mushroom farming, and not just like, I'm gonna grow a few mushrooms. Like they were producing about a thousand tons

of catechol mushrooms a year. Yeah. For some reason, I'm gonna have to ask you never to use the word fruit and mushroom near each other again. I find it troubling for some reason. Really? Yeah, mushrooms fruiting is, I don't like that at all. That's really funny.

Yeah. All right. But I'm serious though. No, I'll's really funny. Yeah. All right. But I'm serious though. No, I'll never do it. Okay, thank you. Sure. Although you do owe me about seven or eight mentions for that oyster stew. Oh, that's right.

I feel better now. Oh, good. Oh yeah, that's right. You should tell everybody you're finally feeling good. Yeah, I'm finally feeling well. It was, I had some fruity mushrooms and everything's fine. Congrats. Yeah. So let's see, what else Chuck?

Oh, I was totally joking when I said there's been hundreds of creative uses. There's been basically three and two of them are technically the same, which is brewing alcohol. Yeah, mushroom farming, what's the third? Brewing alcohol and brewing alcohol, depending on which kind of alcohol, beer or charters, that's it.

It's also been a good hidey spot over the years, depending on what's going on with the government during the French Revolution. Revolutionaries hid out down there and were chased down there. There was an alt-right group in the 30s called, how would you pronounce that, Josh? La Cagoule.

La Cagoule, they not only hid down there, but would use it as a way to get around and potentially break into government buildings, I guess, from the bottom. Yeah, until the 50s, and in some cases, even decades after that, there were a lot of buildings in Paris who had doors, sometimes forgotten doors, in their cellars or basements that led directly to the catacombs or the underground tunnels in Paris.

Yeah, pretty cool. So it was kind of easy to get down there for a very long time. It's actually really recent that it's now very hard to get into the off-limits parts, but as we'll see, that doesn't actually deter anybody. No, of course not. During World War II, obviously, there's gonna be either Nazis down there, or the French resistance might be down there.

Can't you just see them in adjoining tunnels, but not knowing that the other one's there? Yeah, that sounds like a Tarantino thing. Yeah, it does. But what they're most famous for now is being able to go down there with your niece, the movie star. Yeah.

It's been a tourist attraction since Napoleon said, you know what would be great? The year's 1809, I think it's high time we start letting people down there to tour this pretty cool thing. And it sort of vacillated over the years. It used to be like you know you could go down there once a month if you were a citizen of Paris only. Sometimes it

was like quarterly. Finally they said you know what let's just let's just make money on this. And it's open what Tuesday to Sunday I guess they close on Monday like a lot of museums do. 9.45 to 8.30, it'll cost you 31 euros these days, which is about the same in dollars I think, right? Right now? It's like 0.96 euros to the dollar I think today. Okay, so pretty close. Man, you really keep up with that, not bad.

Thanks. Let me see how my Euro stocks are doing. No, actually to tell you the truth, I was going to translate the dollar that you could make off of a cow in our tragedy of the commons episode. Oh. The Euros and stuff like that. I see, you found it.

Okay. But we never got around to it. That's funny. I can also tell you it's.8 pounds to the dollar today as well, but a dollar,.8 pounds to the dollar today as well. But a dollar, 160 Australian dollars to the dollar. Well I just came back from Mexico City so I basically just divide by 20. Is it 20 now? I thought it was like 10 last time we were there.

Has it changed or is it 20? Am I just wrong it was 20 back then? Oh I don't know. But I think you divide by 20-ish now. But my friends that we were with, they were like, I can't even think of it that way. I heard all you have to do is drop a zero and then divide that in half. So everyone has their own way of doing it.

Jump on one foot. Thinking about it. And shout, how much is this? Exactly. How long does the tour take Josh? You went through it. An hour. I don't remember it taking an hour more or less.

I don't, it was, it's weird because when you're in the catacombs, you're out of time. Like there is no light whatsoever reaching you. The only light in there is electric. And apparently that's only been around since the seventies. Before that, they gave you a candle and said, good luck. Yeah, cool. But it's the light that is in there is almost, it makes it even eerier because it's sodium light.

So it's got kind of an orangish yellowish cast to it. Oh yeah. It's just a weird place to be. So I believe that it's an hour, but I have no recollection of how long it took. Okay, that sounds about right. You go down a big spiral staircase. There's a lot of stair climbing, obviously, right?

Yeah, it's, yes, there is. Okay. Like 500 steps or something like that, so yeah. You go down like a spiral staircase, and there's multiple stairs. Yeah, so you're walking down, down, down. Before you enter, you go through something called the Port Mahone Corridor, which has a replica

of the Port Mahone Fortress. I imagine that looks kind of cool, right? It does, I don't remember it, but I looked up a picture and a little bit on that, the guy who carved that was a, not a hostage, an inmate at this prison, um, for years and redid it from memory, uh, carved into the stone. Wow. That's pretty cool.

And he actually died there from a landslide or a rock in or something like that. I can't remember what it's called. Um, while he was building some steps to get to it. landslide or a rock in or something like that. I can't remember what it's called. While he was building some steps to get to it. Oh, geez. Yeah, he really. He caved in, huh? He dedicated his life to that thing.

That's very sad. Yeah, but appropriate for the catacombs, if you think about it. You can just stay right there. If you die. Like you mentioned, 72 is when electricity came along. There is something called Ariadne's Thread, a black line to ensure that you don't get lost. And I thought,

well, what a strange name that is. Oh, you looked it up too? Yeah, so Ariadne was the daughter of King Minos and was associated with mazes and labyrinths. And while it is a literal thing painted there, it also ties back to Ariadne and the sort of like while she was a person, it's also like a logic, like applying logic to all possible routes of a maze to get out is Ariadne as well. Yeah, I also saw that she helped Theseus get out of the labyrinth by leaving a thread for him to follow back after he slew the Minotaur. Yeah, what does this look like though?

I couldn't find any pictures of this actually in the catacombs. I don't remember it either. Okay. It's supposedly on the ceiling. I think it's just a black line. Okay, that's, yeah. Boy. I think it's just a black line. Okay, that's, yeah. Boy, you don't remember much about this.

I don't, it's weird. Like, I have pictures of it, and I remember the thing with Mila, but like a lot of these pictures that I went and looked at online, I'm like, I don't remember seeing that at all. I don't think I was drunk. I'm pretty sure I was fairly sober.

I think I just drunk. I'm pretty sure I was fairly sober. I think I just, my episodic memory is shot to holy heck. You remember those boobs. That's right. I do, I guess they made more of an impression on me than I remembered. You mentioned, well let's talk about some of these chambers. A lot of them are like the coolest parts of the catacombs are not open to the public and

technically officially illegal and off limits. So okay, that may be why I don't remember some of these. Because they weren't the super cool ones were not on the tour. I guess. I'm just, hey man, I'm just grasping at straws here. Help me out. Well, I looked at some pictures of some of these. The La Plage, which means the beach,

is a really cool room because it's got a sandy floor and they painted it like a beach scene on the wall. But it looks, I mean, all these places look like the, like where the Lost Boys might hang out, you know? That was one of the coolest things about that movie. That backstory that the crazy, amazing, rich hotel slid into the ocean and now that's where they lived and they were old chandeliers kind of hanging out.

I forgot about that. Yeah, yeah, that's totally what it was. Super cool. Yeah, what else? What other cool rooms are off limits? That's it. You're not gonna talk about Salazee or Zed? I did not look that one up, but there are, let me give you a couple other ones.

There was a group called La Mexicaine de la Perforation. Let's just say it like that. They overtook one of the caves beneath the Palais de Chalot and set up a movie theater there with a bar and room for 20 people to watch a movie and I did not find what movie they showed. Yeah, that is super cool. That was a subset of a group called UX, short for Urban Experiment,

and they're these, it's an artist collective in Paris founded in 1981 and by a group of teenagers back then, that like, they'll do this cool stuff, like they snuck into the pantheon for months in a row to restore a clock there, but like on the down-low. Yeah, I saw that was a subgroup of UX called the Unterguther. And they were the ones that actually did the clock.

UX is almost like an umbrella group. Yeah, just like the group that did the movie theater. They were a subgroup. Right, exactly. And then UX also is like an acronym for urban explorer too, which these people also are. So they kind of almost made a play on slang, which is really something.

Yeah, that is really something. But all of these people who sneak down there and do stuff are known as cataphiles. And those are the people, the urban adventurers, who illegally find their way into the catacombs to party, to hang out, to show movies, to have concerts and parties and like, all kinds of things are going on down there

over the decades and it seems to have really kicked off. I mean, they've been doing it since the 1800s. I think they had a Chopin, like 45 piece orchestra did a Chopin concert down there. Yeah, they played Chopin's Funeral March. And I was like, I'm not familiar with that one. It's Darth Vader's theme. Is it?

Or does it just sound like it? It's Darth Vader's. It's not possible that John Williams just coincidentally came up with that as Darth Vader's. There's, it's not possible that John Williams just coincidentally came up with that as Darth Vader's theme. Yeah, it's like an adaptation of the funeral march. Okay, well that's probably a well-known thing then. It's gotta be.

I've never heard that before though. And I know everything there is about Star Wars. Just try me. In the 70s and 80s is when it seems like the cataphiles really kind of took roost down there because it was a great place to go hide. Like the punk rock movement kind of moved downstairs, underground, literally underground.

Hey. And they tried to keep people out over the years, but like you said, people are gonna find a way in if they want to. That's right. And I say we take another break and we'll come back and find out do people find their way in if they want to After this

Let's do it Do you want to understand an invisible force that's shaping your life? I'm Osvaldo Loshan, one of the new hosts of the long running podcast Tech Stuff. I'm slightly skeptical, but obsessively intrigued. And I'm Kara Price, the other new host, and I'm ready to adopt early and often. On Tech Stuff, we travel all the way from the mines of Congo to the surface of Mars to the dark corners of TikTok to ask and attempt to answer burning questions about technology. One of the kind of tricks for surviving Mars is to live there long enough so that people evolve into Martians.

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numbers. So that's why we created The Big Take from Bloomberg podcasts, to give you the context you need to make sense of it all. Every day in just 15 minutes, we dive into one global business story that matters. You'll hear from Bloomberg journalists like Matt Levine. A lot of this Boomstock stuff is I think embarrassing to the SEC. Amanda Mull, who writes our Business Week buying power column. Very few companies who go viral are like totally prepared for what that means.

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And, you know, besides partying and doing drugs, like there are all kinds of like cool works of art. There's murals painted on some walls, obviously all kinds of graffiti. Sometimes they leave messages and leaflets and things for each other to find and try to avoid the cataflicks, which is literally translated as catacops. Yeah. It's just a special detachment of the gendarmes

that their whole thing is catching people down in the tunnels. And from what I read that if you're a true catafile, and I guess there was an article in the, I think 2015 or something like that, that estimated there's around a hundred genuine catafiles, the cataflicks are probably going to leave you alone, at the very least, just maybe give you a warning or something like that. If you're a tourist in the sense of like the fight club support group tourist, then you're probably going to get that 60 euro fine, because really, as far as the

cataflics are concerned, you have no business being down there, it's dangerous, you got no respect for tradition like the actual cataphiles do, and something else I read Chuck, you're actually trespassing on private property, because if you buy a piece of real estate in Paris, your ownership extends to whatever's below it in the underground. And that sounds kind of cool until your house caves in

and the city's like, it's your property, top to bottom. So good luck with that. Yeah, wow, I didn't know that. That's pretty cool. And they actually at City Hall make that sound when you come in to ask them for help. Right. You know, Parisians pioneered the fart noise.

Yeah, the raspberry. The fine, the 60 euros you mentioned, I saw 65. I mean, that's just like double the cost of legal entry. So it's not the biggest fine. No, no, no. And it kind of does kind of give you a sense that it's not considered like the crime of the century in Paris, but at the same time,

there's a special police detachment to catch people doing that. So there's almost mixed messages with that. Yeah, for sure. The IGC, that inspection group with the French name, still maintains it. They've been doing so since 1777. And there are still collapses here and there,

but it is mainly shored up. Oh, this other thing I thought was fun, the ways that people have found their way in. When they close off an area, sometimes the cataphiles will go in there and reopen it and make a way to get in. And they're called, I don't know how you would say it in French, but it translates as cat flaps, like a cat door.

Kinda cool. Shadieres. Shadieres, okay. Shat is C-H-A-T, that's cat. Oh. And e-air is flaps, I guess. Yeah. It's been in a bunch of movies and stuff too, right? Yeah, one of the most famous uses of the Paris Underground

came in The Phantom of the Opera. And I'm not sure if it was in the original novel, although it probably was, but I certainly know that in the stage play or the musical, that's where the Phantom lives. But more to the point, there's supposedly like an underground lake there that the phantom like, roses gondola on, right?

Cool. There actually is an underground reservoir under the Paris Opera House. It's not an urban legend that Gaston Theroux made up. It was, or Andrew Lloyd Webber, one of the two, when they were building the opera house, to keep the foundation from just filling up with water over and two, when they were building the opera house, to keep the foundation from just filling up with water

over and over again while they were building it, they built a reservoir to impound the water in. And so it's like 12 feet deep by almost, I think like 60 yards, 60 meters long, little reservoir that you could conceivably sail a gondola on if you were the kind of person to live underground. Do you know if the water is it continually filling up?

I don't know. Give me a break, man. What about the evaporation? But I mean, so it definitely has to be constantly replaced because they had to build this reservoir to hold the water that was always trickling in. But yeah, it makes sense. Why wouldn't it overflow once in a while? I don't know.

That shouldn't have asked. I don't know. You ruined the story, but. Gamers might recognize the catacombs from Assassin's Creed Unity. Pretty cool. I was looking at screenshots of that. It's pretty neat. Did you play that? Yeah No, I didn't play that. Do you play any of them?

Assassin's Creed's no Do you have something against them or no? No, I just you know, my gaming is limited. I see. What's your latest game? I'm playing a horror game right now called Alan Wake 2 it's the second Alan Wake. And I'd never played a horror game before and it is pretty scary. So it's genuinely scary.

Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah, like when you're playing this game, they look so good now and they're so realistic so you're creeping around with a flashlight in these rooms and you hear noises and see things and it's like, it's super creepy. Are they like jump scares or do they just create like a sense of ongoing dread? Both. Wow that's masterful. Definitely ongoing dread and then when the jump scare happens when it when a bad person comes out it's just yeah it's it

scares big grown boy Chucky. Fantastic. Alan Wake too, everybody. Like Alan Wake, like somebody's name? Yeah. The second or the sequel? The sequel. Okay. It would be Alan Wake Jr. I think probably. I guess so.

Don't call me Jr. Henry Ford the second was not a Jr. Yeah. Cause he wants to be called Jr. I don't know. I'd go with JR if I was a Jr. Oh, totally. Call me Jr. What does it have to be called Junior? I don't know. I'd go with JR if I was a Junior. Oh, totally. Call me JR.

What does it stand for? It stands for Junior. Here's one cool thing, and this guy might be worth a podcast on his own, but there's a photographer, he went by the name Nadar, I guess, N-A-D-A-R, and this is in the 1860s. His real name is Felix, I guess, N-A-D-A-R, and this is in the 1860s. His real name is Felix, I guess. How would you pronounce that last name?

Oh, Tournachon. Tournachon? He was a very accomplished dude, sort of the pioneer of the medium. This is early photography and the guy in Paris, photography-wise at the time. But he invented a battery-operated light, basically, and is one of the first people ever in the history of photography to use artificial light to take a picture. And over the course of three months, starting in 1861, he went down into the catacombs with, you know, 18 minutes per exposure, took a lot of pictures

of the catacombs, and they are super cool and creepy pictures from 1861. They are creepy. What's cool is because of that 18 minute exposure time, any of the photographs of workers working in the catacombs are actually dummies as stand-ins. Oh, that makes sense. It makes it even a little creepier too, if you ask me. Yeah, and those head bones weren't moving,

so they're fine. I have one more thing for you about dummies in underground places. There's an awesome, one of the great, I'm sure I've talked about it before, one of the greatest tourist attractions I've ever been to in my life was in Budapest. There's something called the Hospital in the Rock.

And I think it was maybe World War II, maybe Cold War, but it was a hospital they dug out of a cave system on a, like a stone hill in Budapest. Oh, wow. And it's a hospice, got like that white, creepy subway tile, like there's gurneys everywhere still, and it was like just this emergency hospital in case the town ever got bombed or whatever. And they have dummies everywhere, mannequins.

And that just, just chef's kisses it for me. Like it makes it so scary, even though they're not trying to make it scary. Uh, it just really is. I think if you have dummies in your tourist attraction, you've just taken it to another level. Like put dummies in your tourist attraction, you've just taken it to another level. Like put dummies in your tourist attraction. Don't just leave it for people to use their dumb imaginations.

Like give them some dummies dressed up and it'll really make it, you'll be rolling in the dough after that, I think. Yeah. Well, the very least is gonna up the creep factor because that just dead-eyed expression of a dummy is gonna be great. But if you ever go to Budapest,

you have to go to the hospital in The Rock. It's amazing. I'm gonna have to ask Emily. You know, she took a solo trip there a couple years ago. I need to see if she went there. I think I asked you if she did or not, and I don't know if she did, but... Probably not because she would have,

I feel like I would have remembered her telling me about that. It definitely seems like it would have been up her alley though, for sure. Yeah, she was like, were there paintings there? Then I didn't go. The dummies were painted, their faces were. Oh, that's true. What about crime?

There's been a lot of crime there over the years, because like you said, that's a good place to pop underground and then pop up into somebody's like expensive wine cellar or something. Yeah, apparently in 2017 some thieves stole over a quarter of a million dollars worth of wine that was cool in a cave, I guess belonged to some winery.

Yeah. Not cool. People have been stealing bones down there since there have been bones down there. Highly illegal. Yeah, you don't wanna do that. I mean, not just for the illegality. That's really disrespectful. Yeah, I think that a lot of them back in the day were to sell to, sort of like cadavers,

sell to medical students. Like, hey, here's a head bone for however many francs. Right. Sheckles? Yeah. What about ghosts, Chuck? Yeah, of course there's going to be ghosts down there. There's a couple of more well-known than others.

I think the most well-known is a guy named Philibert Aspert. Yeah. You can put a little emphasis on the T at the end there. Aspert? I think so. Maybe that's a little too much, but somewhere in end there. Asperte? I think so. Maybe that's a little too much, but somewhere in between those two.

I know I'm wrong, but when it comes to French, I just wanna drop the last letter of everything. Well, they do that a lot. That's how they get you. Exactly. Exactly. Anyway, he worked at a military hospital in the late 18th century, and apparently in 1793, got lost in the catacombs

with his own lone candle and never found his way out. And just like I said, the convenient thing about dying down there is you just stay there. And apparently if you bring a candle there, you hear his voice just before the candle goes out. He says, welcome in Bienvenu. Were you creeped out down there or was it just like, oh, this is a cool thing?

It was not at all creepy. It's not presented to be creepy either. It's just, it is what it is. Right, bunch of bones. Yeah, I was not at all creeped out. Yeah, I gotta go check it out next time. Did you look at that video, by the way, the one that's like highly likely faked?

Yeah, I didn't, I wasn't moved by it at all, were you? No, there's this video tape that, I think it was like 2017, that circulated, that was like, you know, it was like a Blair Witch thing, like is it real, is it not? It was a guy walking through the catacombs and apparently gets lost and starts to freak out and run and hear sounds, and then the last shot you see

is like the camera falling to the ground and into like a puddle. And some people say it's real, some people say it's not. I don't know, it feels like it's probably faked, but I wasn't like, oh my God, it was kind of not that interesting. Yeah, agreed. It was like a dull two sentence horror story.

Yeah, agreed. You got anything else about the catacombs? Nope, it's on the list. Yep, you should go. You'll enjoy it, and don't forget the hospital in The Rock, too. Right. Since Chuck said right, of course,

that means it's time for listener Mayo. Right. Since Chuck said right, of course, that means it's time for listener mail. Here's a correction to our gong show episode. Hey guys, there was one big error in this. Oh, I know what this is. Is it an omission? No. Something we got wrong.

What was our omission? Jean Jean the dancing machine. Oh yeah. Can you believe we didn't mention Jean Gene the Dancing Machine in the entire episode? I thought we had, but apparently we didn't. But yeah, big shout out to Gene Gene, a legend of that show. I think both of us thought that we had

because Livia clearly included him in the article as mentioned. Yeah, he was in there. I think we just passed over him and didn't talk about him. It's just sad. Yeah, no disrespect intended. We both loved gene gene. How do you not? Exactly. So this was an error though. Chuck Barris guys did not invent syndication Hmm, it has been around in television forever with some notable 1950 shows such as see hunting and life with Elizabeth Nor was the parent game the first syndicated game show or even Chuck's first syndicated show Hunt and Life with Elizabeth, nor was The Parent Game, The First Syndicated Game Show,

or even Chuck's First Syndicated Show. First Syndicated Game Shows came in 1965, Everything's Relative and PDQ, and Chuck Baris's first foray in 1969, The Game Game. Initially that was to give local stations some color options since old sitcoms wouldn't be in color, but syndication exploded in 1972 because the FCC gave the 730 time slot back to the local stations. And for those stations, it was cheaper to buy a game show

than to make local content. I know this, guys, because I'm a bit of a semi-pro TV historian. Oh, yeah? Yeah, with an emphasis on game shows in particular. So I feel a duty when something as broadly misstated as that was, I have to try and correct the record. I had hoped you used Gong, this book,

as one of your sources, as it was written by a real life TV historian named Adam Netaf, who I've done some research for in the past. Hope you're enjoying the snow today. So this came a little while ago. But that is from Mike Berger in Livonia, Michigan. And Mike, hang on to your email and we might hit you up if we ever need any insight on TV history.

Yeah, thanks a lot, Mike. I mean, criticism from Caesar. That's pretty awesome. Totally. Well, if you wanna be like Mike and just completely devastate us in something we said and just show how utterly wrong we were, we'd love to hear that stuff, especially if you're an historian, semi-pro or otherwise.

You can send us an email to stuffpodcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Do you want to see into the future? Do you want to understand an invisible force that's shaping your life? Do you want to experience the front force that's shaping your life? Do you want to experience the frontiers of what makes us human?

On Tech Stuff, we travel from the minds of Congo to the surface of Mars, from conversations with Nobel Prize winners to the depths of TikTok, to ask burning questions about technology, from high tech to low culture and everywhere in between. Join us. Listen to Tech Stuff on the iHeartRadio app,

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