Halloween Spooktacular! 10 Things You Need to Know
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The Ten News: Episode 513
10 Things You Need to Know with The Ten News!
1. ❓Halloween Origins
2. 🥬 Magic Cabbages!? 3.🎃 Speed Carving Jack-O'Lanterns
4. 👨🌾 Growing Giant Pumpkins
5. 💀 Dia de los Muertos
6. 🍭 Candy Wasn't the Only Treat
7. 🎭 Top Costumes for 2024!
8.🐾 Dressing up Your Pet
9. 🐈⬛ Black Cats and Good Luck?
10. 🌽 Candy Corn Trivia
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Transcript:
INT. TEN NEWS STUDIO
<SFX Door opens>
RYAN: Good morning Pa—oh my giblets. <SFX spooky sounds, wolf howling, owl hooting, creepy crawly things> Someone spook-ified the studio–
KAP: Hey Ry–
RYAN: AHHHHHHH!
KAP: Happy Halloween! Ready to start the show?
RYAN: Yes, wait, no. Hi Kap. What’s going on here? Where’s Pam?
KAP: Pam took the day off, I’m filling in.
RYAN: Why is she taking off on one of her favorite holidays?
KAP: Pam had very important business to attend to. And I love Halloween and decided to step in.
RYAN: Uh huh. And how do I know you’re not Pamela Kirkland in a really good Tracy Kaplan costume?
KAP: Ryan, the more you question that, the less time we’ll have for the Halloween party.
RYAN: Okay… I’m a skeptical Ryan Willard.
KAP: I’m Tracy Leeds Kirkand–I mean Kaplan. It’s Thursday, October 31st
RYAN: This is Ten Scary–
KAP: Sweet–
RYAN: And spooky Halloween Things You Need to Know.
KAP: Ryan, do think about Halloween and wonder - who came up with the idea to dress up in costumes and get free candy from your neighbors?
RYAN: I already know. A GENIUS.
KAP: What about Samhain?
RYAN: That sounds like a character from The Lord of the Rings.
KAP: It’s a festival, silly! A lot of favorite Halloween traditions come from the Celtic festival of Samhain. It celebrates the harvest at the end of the summer, and welcomes “the dark half of the year.” Celtic people believed that during this transition into the colder months, spirits walked the earth. <SFX spooky sounds> So, they used disguises to confuse these spirits, so that the spirits would leave the people alone. There are also a few possible origins of trick-or-treating, but Samhain is one of them, because people would leave out food for the spirits. Eventually, people started to dress as these spirits for similarly delicious offerings. The familiar Halloween color duo of orange and black also goes back to the festival - black represents the death of summer, and orange represents the autumn harvest season.
KAP: I need to find some orange and black to wear today. I love Halloween traditions, but what about the weird ones, like cabbage night? <SFX record scratch>
RYAN: Kap, if you’re giving out cabbage this year instead of candy, I will end this podcast RIGHT NOW.
KAP: Cabbage night stems from an old Scottish tradition - 19th century newspapers reported on a holiday pastime where a young woman pulled up a cabbage to determine her future husband.
RYAN: Woah. A psychic cabbage? I like cole slaw, but I’d LOVE it if it told the future.
KAP: If the cabbage pulled a lot of dirt on its roots, it was the sign of finding a rich husband. It’s also thought that women used to use the stem to predict what their future husbands would look like. But Halloween cabbages weren’t just for predicting romance, which is a sentence I never thought I’d say. Going back to the 19th century, some kids tossed cabbage, corn on the cob, and rotten vegetables to celebrate and ward off death. <SFX splat> What’s more, the tradition of carving pumpkins on Halloween had origins in cabbage, too! In an old Irish legend, Drunken Jack supposedly wandered between heaven and hell with a hollow cabbage lit with burning coal, simulating a flashlight.
RYAN: Woah, a cabbage jack-o-lantern? I wonder what Stephen Clarke thinks of that.
KAP: Who?
RYAN: Stephen Clarke is the world record holder for the fastest time to carve a pumpkin, which is 16.47 seconds. To earn this record, he had to carve a jack-o'-lantern with a complete face, including eyes, nose, mouth and ears. In addition to being a super-speed pumpkin carver, Clarke is a sixth-grade teacher of social studies, religion and middle school PE, who also coaches football, basketball and track.
The man doesn’t have time to carve slowly! But he shares his wisdom and his talent with his students, saying “everybody has a talent; some people are lucky enough to figure it out, and some people, it takes longer. I didn’t know what mine was until I was almost 40 years old.” Even though he’s already a record holder, he’s got high hopes for the future, saying he’d like to break the record for underwater pumpkin carving. <SFX underwater sound effects>
KAP: Underwater pumpkin carving?! Where was that in the olympics?!
KAP: And speaking of pumpkin savvy teachers, a Minnesota horticulture teacher held onto his champion title for the fourth year in a row at an annual pumpkin-weighing contest. Travis Gienger took home another victory at the 51st World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off in California, with a pumpkin weighing in at 2,471 pounds! If you can believe it, this still isn’t as heavy as his world-record setting entry last year, which was 2,749 pounds. He and his family drove the giant gourd for 35 hours from his pumpkin patch to the competition, and he said the award-winning pumpkin is headed to Southern California next, for a team of professional carvers to do a giant 3D carve at a Halloween event.
RYAN: My only question is, how big a pie do you think that pumpkin would make, and will they share it with me?
KAP: Ryan, be honest…
RYAN: You’re right, I could eat a 2 and a half thousand pound pumpkin pie myself! <SFX burp>
RYAN: And while I’m eating that pie, I can start getting ready for Day of the Dead, or Día de Muertos. It is a joyful celebration of loved ones who have passed on, celebrated mostly in Mexico on November 1 and 2. Families set up altars so the spirits of their loved ones can find their way home. The altars include photos, favorite items, or favorite foods of the deceased. They deserve a snack! It’s a long way back from the afterlife.
KAP: Ryan, are you just guessing how long it takes to travel back as a spirit or is there something you want to tell me?
RYAN: I’m just going off of Google maps. But don’t fill up on altar snacks, because many head to the graveyard with a feast. They clean tombstones, sing songs, and chat with their ancestors.
KAP: Before we get our snacks out for the holiday, let’s take a quick break.
Hey Ten’ers! Our last Election Special minisode is on Tuesday and we need to hear from you! We wanna know: What issues do you care about the most? Who do you want to win the presidential election? If you got to meet a presidential candidate, what would you tell or ask them? Check out the link in our show notes where you can send us a voice note. We might just have you on the show! Speaking of the show, back to it!
KAP: Trick-or-treating for candy may feel like the hallmark of Halloween but did you know that there was a time when candy wasn’t the norm?
RYAN: Okay, I won’t be taking my time machine back to whatever that era is–
KAP: Back in the 1930s and 40s when trick-or-treating first started becoming common, kids were given treats like homemade cookies, pieces of cake, fruit, nuts, coins, and toys. In the 50s, candy manufacturers took advantage of the tradition and began to promote their products. Since candy was affordable, convenient, and delicious, it worked out well. It wasn’t until the 70s, though, that candy really became the iconic trick-or-treat item. A big reason for this was safety, because parents became wary of things that weren’t pre-wrapped or factory-made, just in case some not-so-nice things made it into homemade treats. This includes innocent mistakes, like allergens.
RYAN: I love trick-or-treating, but I don’t get that candy for free - I earn my haul with awesome costumes. Have you heard of all the incredible costumes this year? If you haven’t, look at what Google Trends says about the most popular costume searches are. The most searched terms include plenty of Beetlejuice options, including Shrunken Head Bob and Delores. For a little less of a spooky movie, Inside Out stars Envy, Anger, and Disgust are big options. There are also real-life iconic characters like Raygun, the memorable Australian breakdancer from the Olympics, and pop star Sabrina Carpenter. If dancing and singing aren’t your superpower of choice, Deadpool and Wolverine costumes were also front-runners. And of course, if you’re just not interested in dressing up as a person, super, cartoon, or otherwise, you’re not alone! Another hugely popular costume? A Chipotle burrito! I really love my burritos!
KAP: Dressing up is so fun, and it’s even more fun with a furry friend. According to the Retail Federation, Americans spend $700 million annually on costumes for their pets! <SFX bark, meow, oink> The most popular pet costumes include a pumpkin, a hot dog, a bat, a bumblebee and a spider, but the animals certainly don’t miss out on trending costumes like Barbie and Beetlejuice. With more people buying costumes for their pets, companies have increased the selection of pet costumes by more than 30% in the past two years.
RYAN: While pets are getting more and more involved in Halloween, there’s one animal that’s long been an important Halloween symbol. I mean besides me, Ryan “Party Animal” Willard. It’s the black cat! <SFX cat yowl> Written records connect black cats to magic and mysticism as early as the year 1233, where they were said to be an embodiment of Satan.
KAP: Okay for the record, Midnight, the Ten News Cat <SFX MIDNIGHT MEOW> has absolutely no connection to Satan, the prince of darkness–
RYAN: The lasting link between black cats and witchcraft came from witches’ honor for the natural world, plants, and animals. So, that turned into an old lady and her cats into a connection between a witch and her pet. Then add the medieval European belief that the devil and witches could take the form of black cats, and it makes a lot of sense that crossing paths with one was bad luck.
KAP: Well Midnight is my good luck charm, <SFX MIDNIGHT MEOW> and maybe she’ll be yours too when Owen drops some trivia…
<SFX Trivia Theme song>
OWEN: Candy corn is a sweet treat that’s synonymous with Halloween. Which of the following is true about the sugary snack?
October 30th is National Candy Corn Day
There are versions of candy corn for other holidays besides Halloween
A pound of candy corn used to cost 25 cents
<SFX 5 second clock tick>
OWEN: Did ya get it? The answer is…ALL OF THEM!
RYAN: Woah! What?! You tricked me! ABOUT treats! You tricked about treats!
OWEN: Mwahahaha happy Halloween, Ryan! And happy belated Candy Corn Day, which was yesterday, October 30th. This controversial love-it-or-hate-it candy is now cranked out by factories but was originally made by hand back in the 1880s. And the company that makes it, makes different colored versions for other holidays. Despite a lot of people not liking it, it’s actually one of the most popular Halloween candies. Today you can get a pound of the candy for a little under $10, but it originally cost 25 cents a pound!
OWEN: Ryan, are you crying?
RYAN (sniffling): It’s tears of joy. You tricked me so well. I’m so proud of you Owen.
KAP: And that’s Ten Things You Need to Know! Ryan, are you ready for the Halloween party?
RYAN: You know it!
KAP: Is that a Maui costume…?
RYAN: Yes, yes it is Kap. I’m very excited for Moana 2, so, what can I say, except you’re welcome? Wait, where’s your costume?
KAP: I’ll show you after we give Ten News Snaps. But first, here’s a quick note for the grownups.
[Ad Break]
RYAN:Time for Ten News Snaps! <Grand fanfare SFX>
KAP: Hey Ry, I just found out that Ten’ers can now leave comments on Spotify. They just have to click on an episode and click the comment box!
RYAN: No way, that’s so cool! Did we get any?
KAP: Yup! A Ten’er named Erin B said, “I love the show.” and then left 21 butterfly emojis.
RYAN: You gotta be joking, lemme have a look… BLEEAH Why would you do that Erin B? You were our first Spotify comment and you soiled it with your wretched butterflies. Stop spookin me people!
KAP: FYI, Ten Things You Need to Know drops on Thursdays, and our deep dive episodes drop once a month. If you want some bonus content, you could join the Ten’ers Club on our website. And to our grownups, if you want to help support the Ten News, you can make a tax-deductible donation at the link in our show notes. The whole team thanks you for your support!
RYAN: “The Ten News” is a co-production of Small But Mighty Media and Next Chapter Podcasts, and part of the Airwave Podcast Network.
KAP: The Ten News creative team is trading candy with each other so we all have our favorites and includes Tracey “Not a” Crooks, Adam “The Great Bambino” Bernard, “Captain” Kyle Murdock, Hebba “The Big Cheese” Gouda and Carson “Pitter Patter” Potter. Big thanks to Owen for contributing to this episode..
RYAN: Our Production Director is Jeremiah “On Fyaah” Tittle, and our Executive Producers are Donald “Not Dim but” Albright and show creator Tracy “Takes the” Leeds Kaplan. I’m Ryan Willard.
KAP: And I’m Tracy Leeds Kaplan–
RYAN: WAIT. The episode is almost over. If you’re actually Pamela in a really good Kaplan costume, now’s the time to show me–
<SFX Mission Impossible Mask Removal Sound>
PAM: Happy Halloween Ryan!
RYAN: AHHHHHHHH! <SFX Runs Away>
PAM: Got ‘em! Happy Halloween Ten’ers, and thanks for listening to the Ten News!
