The Catacombs of Paris

Banking with Capital One helps you keep more money in your wallet with no fees or minimums on checking accounts and no overdraft fees. Just ask the Capital One Bank Guy.
It's pretty much all he talks about in a good way. He'd also tell you that this podcast is his favorite podcast, too.
Thanks, Capital One Bank Guy. What's in your wallet? Terms apply.
See CapitalOne.com slash bank. Capital One N.A.
Member FDIC. Catchy tune, right? But don't let the urge to sing along distract you from the truck drifting towards your lane.
Or that lane-splitting biker creeping up beside you. Fortunately, every Hyundai offers advanced safety features that can alert you to potential dangers around you.
And Hyundai has over 120 IIHS top safety awards since 2006. Because Hyundai is always working to ensure the road doesn't...
Get you, get you, get you, get you. One way.
Hyundai there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant.
And we are going deep underneath the city of Paris, city of lights, 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're at the Moulin Rouge,

boobs just, there were so many boobs everywhere that they just totally lost all context and meaning.

Yeah.

Twelve 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.

Because 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-S-A-T, the Josh-S-A-T would be Moulin Rouge is to boobs as the Paris catacombs is to blank.
Human bones. 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.

That'd be fun 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.

Oh, I sure.

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 um cod fishing yeah modge podge there's got to be one close one like like like uh gravesite or something okay there you go and you'd be like no no grave wax do 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 SAT.
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.

Oh, yeah. The very famous Mila who's been in a bunch of movies.

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 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

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 like

Thank you. and it is fascinating.
Like, actually, my brother-in-law also was a producer on it, too.

And it has, like, action.

It has, like, 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 going to forgive you for when I said Mary Mary for not saying. Why are you bugging? Thank you.
You passed. You're back at the good graces.
Well, anyway, back to my story. So little Mila, she must have been five-ish at the time.
She went to the catacombs with us, right? So she's walking around this ossuary with bones and human skulls everywhere.

And Yumi or I asked her, like, are you scared right now?

And she said, I would be.

No, they're like boobs.

Right.

She said, I would be if these were real.

We just looked at each other out of the corners of our eyes and we're like, well, let's look over here now. Right.
Exactly. Yeah.
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 an ossuary of 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, you know, forever.
What's crazy. 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 Lutejan period, there was an erosion event that caused a lot of what became to be known as Lutejan 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. 10 times the size of Central Park, apparently, is underneath Paris.
Yeah. 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.
Originally, these quarries were sensibly well outside of the city of Paris. 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 plum 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 Europe.
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, you know, 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?

Mm-hmm.

Created the IGC.

You want to pronounce that? Oh, yes, please. The Inspection General de Carrières.
And what were they charged with? So carriers is French for careers. 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. Diamote.
He came along as the chief inspector and said, all right, you know what? We're going to shore up these mines and make sure they're not going to keep collapsing. And also, we're going to 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 going to 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 going to 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 ossiary.
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, their 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 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.
It was called the Paris Ossuary at first, but catacombs sounds creepier, I guess. Hey, have I been saying ossuary? 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 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, one of the inspectors, a quarry inspector named Louis Etienne Herricard de Toury.

Pretty sure I said that right.

He said, like you said, let's have some fun.

So he got busy with his quarry men stacking bones into these now famous configurations of tibias and fibias and finger bones and thigh bones and neck bones 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? Yeah.
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 think the neck bone yeah yeah probably so and the neck bones connected to the skull right and then everybody just stopped singing and goes yeah yeah uh so like you mentioned there are no headstones there so you don't know who is who uh we do know there are some famouses there, like Robespierre, a very famous statesman is there.
There's a painter named Simon Vuey. Probably, yeah.
What? How would you say that? A. Yeah, you're right.
I was going to 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, Peralt? Let's just go with your, I say ossiary, so 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. And yeah, I 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 he certainly made Mother Goose a star.
You're going to 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 like almost a hundred years ago. They were clearly insane.
Paris went along with it. Let's just pretend like it was okay, 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.
All right. 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.
Banking with Capital One helps you keep more money in your wallet. with no fees or minimum fees.
Thank you. Thanks, Capital One Bank guy.
What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com slash bank.
Capital One N-A, member FDIC. Hi, it's Karen in Georgia from My Favorite Murder.
If you think cruising down the open road is all sunsets and wind in your hair, maybe it's time you need to grow up. Hyundai knows driving can be chaos, so they've packed their cars with technology that keeps you covered.
Hyundai offers available class-exclusive advanced safety features to help protect you and your family. They put your safety first and everything else second.
Change lanes with confidence thanks to the available Blindspot View Monitor, which actually shows you a live video feed of your blind spots. The standard Forward Collision Avoidance Assist can help prevent or mitigate accidents by alerting you of an imminent collision and automatically applying the brakes if you don't.
And Hyundai vehicles are equipped with the standard driver attention warning system,

which constantly monitors your attention levels.

Once detected, it's sounds alerts and visual cues to help bring your focus back on the road.

Learn more about Hyundai at HyundaiUSA.com.

Call 562-314-4603 for complete details.

That's H-Y-U-N-D-A-I-U-S-A dot com

or call 562-314-4603.

Goodbye.

We were getting where we couldn't pay the bill.

PG&E asked customers about their biggest concerns

so we could address them one by one.

That's terrifying.

That's fair.

Joe, Regional Vice President, PG&E.

We have to run the business in a way that keeps people safe,

but it starts driving costs down.

I would love to see that.

We're on our way.

I hope so.

PG&E electricity rates are now lower than they were last year.

Hear what other customers have to say and what PG&E is doing about it at pge.com slash open dash lines. so chuck uh there's been uh at the catacombs a lot of bone deposits bone stacking that kind of stuff um 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 want to make you feel self-conscious. I was laughing at a dirty joke that I couldn't say out loud.
Oh, I want to 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.
Yeah. That, you know, you can use some steps and go up street side and all of a sudden you're right there.
Your customers without having to pay the incredibly high price of real estate in Paris topside. Oh, good point.
It's not mine. Topside 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, you know, 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 going to grow a few mushrooms.
Like they were producing about a thousand tons of catacomb mushrooms a year. For some reason, I'm going to 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 never do it.
Okay, thank you. 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. Mushroom farming, and what's the third? Brewing alcohol and brewing alcohol, depending on which kind of alcohol, beer or chartreuse.
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 hit 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, you know, 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 going to be either Nazis down there

or the French Resistance might be down there. Can't you just see them in like 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, it'd be great.
The year is 1809. I think it's high time we start letting people down there to tour this pretty cool thing.
And it's 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 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, that's how you found it?

We never got around to it.

That's funny.

I can also tell you it's 0.8 pounds to the dollar today as well.

But $1.60 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. I think it's 20.
Am I just wrong it was 20 back then? Like last year? Oh, I don't know. But I think you divide by 20-ish now.
But my friends that we were with here were like, I can't even think of it that way. I heard all you have to do is like drop a zero and then divide that in half so everyone has jump on one foot thinking and shout how much is this exactly uh how long does the tour take josh you went through it uh an hour i don't remember it taking an hour more or less i i don't it was it's weird because when you're in the catacombs, you're out of time.
Like there is no, 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.
Um, but it's, it's the light that is in there is almost, it makes it even eerier because it's sodium light. So it's got a

kind of an orangish, yellowish cast to it. 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. Yes, there is.
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 um before you enter you go you go through something called the port mahon corridor uh which has a replica of the port mahon 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 for years and redid it from memory, 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.
While he was building some steps to get to it. Oh, geez.
Yeah, he really 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 thought well what a strange name that is oh you looked it up too yeah so ariadne was the daughter of king minus uh and was associated with mazes and labyrinths and uh while it is a a literal thing painted there um it's also you know ties back to ariadne and the the sort of um like while she was a person it's also, you know, ties back to Ariadne and the, the sort of, um, like while she was a person, it's also like a, a logic, like applying logic to all possible routes of a maze to get out, uh, is, is Ariadne as well.

Yeah. I, um, 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, 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. 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, my, 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, OK, that might that may be why I don't remember some of these.

Because they weren't the super cool ones who 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, like, a beach scene on the wall.

But it looks, 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, the crazy,

amazing rich hotel slid into the ocean.

And now that's where they lived.

And there 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 where they lived and there were old chandeliers kind of hanging around.
I forgot about that. Yeah, yeah.
Super cool. That's totally what it was.
Super cool. Yeah.
What else? What other cool rooms are off limits? That's it. You're not going to 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 the Mexican 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.
was um a subset of a group called ux short for urban experiment and there are these it's an artist collective uh in paris founded in 1981 and by a group of teenagers back then uh 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'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 Untergunther.

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 a 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 show movies.
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 theme. Yeah.
It's like an adaptation of the Funeral March. Okay.
Well, that's probably a well-known thing then. It's got to 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, you know, 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 going to 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. Banking with Capital One helps you keep more money in your wallet with no fees or minimums on checking accounts and no overdraft fees.
Just ask the Capital One Bank Guy. It's pretty much all he talks about in a good way.
He'd also tell you that this podcast is his favorite podcast, too. Thanks, Capital One Bank guy.
What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com slash bank.
Capital One N-A, member FDIC. Hi, it's Karen in Georgia from My Favorite Murder.
You know, there's driving a car and then there's driving a Hyundai EV. Hyundai's EV lineup isn't just electric.
It's exciting. Hyundai's Ioniq 5 and Ioniq 6 can charge from 10 to 80% in as little as 18 minutes.
Perfect for quick pit stops on busy days. Whether it's charging fast, driving comfortably or feeling safe, Hyundai's EV lineup is designed to make electric driving feel easy and exciting.
And Hyundai's EVs aren't just practical. They're responsive, smooth, and feel powerful on the road, making your daily commute or weekend drive way more enjoyable.
Plus, every Hyundai EV comes with standard safety features, like highway driving assist and blind spot collision warning, so you can drive with extra confidence. Hyundai backs up their EVs with a 10-year, 100,000-mile limited electric battery warranty, so you know they stand by their vehicles.
Learn more about Hyundai EVs at HyundaiUSA.com. Call 562-314-4603 for complete details.
That's H-Y-U-N-D-A-I-U-S-A.com or call 562-314-4603. America's best warranty claim based on total package of warranty programs.
See dealer for limited warranty details. See your Hyundai dealer for further details and limitations.
Goodbye. We were getting where we couldn't pay the bill.
PG&E asked customers about their biggest concerns so we could address them one by one. That's terrifying.
That's fair. Joe, Regional Vice President, PG&E.
We have to run the business in a way that keeps people safe, but it starts driving costs down. I would love to see that.
We're on our way. I hope so.
PG&E. We have to run the business in a way that keeps people safe, but it starts driving costs

down. I would love to see that.
We're on our way. I hope so.
PG&E electricity rates are now lower

than they were last year. Hear what other customers have to say and what PG&E is doing

about it at pge.com slash open dash lines. so yeah people do find their way in uh like i said and they've been doing that a lot since the beginning uh and you know besides partying and doing drugs like there are all kinds of like cool works of art there's mur 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 cataflix, which is literally translated as catacops. Yeah, it is a special, 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 cataphile, and I guess there was an article in I think 2015 or something like that, that estimated there's around 100 genuine cataphiles, 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 you really,

as far as the cataflicks 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,

Thank you. As far as the cataflicks 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.

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 you know parisians pioneered the fart noise yeah the raspberry uh the the spine that 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 uh oh this other thing i thought was

fun that the ways that people have found their way in um when they close off an area sometimes

the cataphiles will go in there and like reopen it and make a way to get in and they're called uh

i don't know how you would say it in french but it translates as cat flaps like a cat door

kind of cool sheddy ears sheddy air shot is c-h-a-t that's cat oh and e errors is flaps i guess

Thank you. cat door.
Kind of cool. Chatier's.
Chatier? Chat is C-H-A-T, that's cat. Oh.
And E-airs 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 of the point, there's supposedly like an underground lake there that the Phantom like rose his 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 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. A 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.

Well, 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 shouldn't have asked i don't know you ruined the story but gamers might recognize uh 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 creeds no do you have something against them or no no i just you 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've 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 and 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 massive. Definitely ongoing dread.
And then when the jump scare happens, when a bad person comes out, it's just, yeah, it scares big grown boy Chucky. Fantastic.
Alan Wake 2, 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 Junior. Henry Ford II was not a Junior.
Yeah, because who wants 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, uh, podcast on his own.
Uh, but there was a photographer as he went by the name, uh, Nadar, I guess in a D A R. And this is in the 1860s.
His real name is, uh, Felix, I guess. How would you pronounce that last name? Oh, uh, Tournachon.
Tournachon. Uh, 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.

Yeah.

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 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 that they dug out of a cave system on a stone hill in Budapest. And it's a hospital.
It's 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 chef's kisses it for me. Like it makes it so scary, even though they're not trying to make it scary.

Yeah.

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.

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, at the very least, it's going to up the creep factor because that just dead-eyed expression of a dummy is pretty great. But if you ever go to Budapest, you have to go to the hospital in the Rock.
It's amazing. I'm going to have to ask Emily.
You know, she took a solo trip there a couple of 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 cooling 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 want to 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. Shekels?

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 between those two. I know I'm wrong, but when it comes to French, I just want to drop the last letter of everything.
Well, they do that a lot. That's how they get you.
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 and bienvenue. 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'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 um there did you look at that video by the way the one that's like highly likely faked yeah i i didn't i wasn't moved by it at all were you no there's this videotape that i think it was like 2017 that circulated that was like you know it's 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.

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 and the rock too.
Right. Since Chuck said right, of course, that means it's time for a 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? Gene Gene the Dancing Machine.
Oh, yeah. Can you believe we didn't mention Gene 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.
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. It has been around in television forever, with some notable 1950s shows such as Sea 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 Barris' 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 7.30 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 is 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 Nediff,

who I've done some research for in the past.

I 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, I'm going to 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 want to be like Mike and just completely devastate us in something we said and just show how utterly wrong we were,

we love to hear that stuff, especially if you're an historian, semi-pro or otherwise.

You can send us an email to stuffpodcasts

at iheartradio.com.

Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app.
Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. This podcast is his favorite podcast, too.
Thanks, Capital One Bank guy. What's in your wallet?

Terms apply.

See CapitalOne.com slash bank.

Capital One N-A, member FDIC.

We were getting where we couldn't pay the bill.

PG&E asked customers about their biggest concerns so we could address them one by one.

That's terrifying.

That's fair.

Joe, Regional Vice President, PG&E.

We have to run the business in a way that keeps people safe, but it starts driving costs down. I would love to see that.
We're on our way. I hope so.
PG&E electricity rates are now lower than they were last year. Hear what other customers have to say and what PG&E is doing about it at pge.com slash open dash lines.
Hey, this is Adam Devine. Blake Anderson.
And Anders Holm from This is important hyundai's most electric ev lineup changes the way you look at and feel about evs especially hyundai evs they have ultra fast charging in the ionic 5 and the ionic 6 from 10 to 80 percent in as little as 18 minutes using a 350 kilowatt 800 volt dc ultra fast charger. Plus you get America's best warranty with a 10 year, 100,000 mile limited electric battery warranty.
Learn more about Hyundai EVs at HyundaiUSA.com. Call 562-314-4603 for complete details.

America's best warranty claim based on total package of warranty programs.

See dealer for limited warranty details.

See your Hyundai dealer for further details and limitations.