Great article. Reminds me of this quote: “Tradition is a set of solutions for which we have forgotten the problems. Throw away the solution and you get the problem back.” — Donald Kingsbury
Traditions are a very similar thing to the wives tales. Somtimes they are useful, sometimes they are not, but it helps us to understand why they exist.
That's a great quote, and I don't think I've heard it before. I also love the mental torch-pass - if folks want to go further down this rabbit hole, they need only click over to Polymathic Being, or enjoy the lively discussion here in the comments. Many minds are coming together!
It was a tough gig to get published, but it was rewarding. And at the time, Cracked.com was THE comedy site. They were the first to crack the "laugh out loud funny but educational and counterintuitive" niche.
They basically had a public "Writer's Forum" where you first had to pass the first line of defense: The Moderators, who checked if your pitch was formatted correctly, whether the sources were legit (The Daily Mail and other tabloid stuff was a major no-go, as well as most casual blogs etc.), etc.
Then, your pitch would go in front of the actual editors, who'd push back on every individual entry if it wasn't surprising enough, curious enough, didn't fit the premise, etc.
And then, if you were lucky to find 5-6 entries that met their standards, you'd get a green light to write the article.
Then they'd take it, likely rewrite like 80% of it if you were a new writer, but they'd publish it under your name, pay you, and give you a link to whatever blog/site/etc. you wanted.
I was a long-time reader before trying to get published, so successfully running the above gauntlet for the first time was a really big deal at the time.
That sounds like a really important experience in becoming who you are today, you know? I think about those things I did 15 and 20 years ago as being just as important as some of the events from 40+ years ago, like legit formative childhood stuff. I mean, this is something you do with A LOT of your time these days, right? Surely, the Cracked pressure cooker was good to help you get into the habit of good sourcing, fact checking, and all the other stuff that's the barrier for entry to writing nonfiction, and I bet the confidence boost was plenty to start writing on Substack eventually. I know I had a few of those little important moments where I'm not sure I'd have the confidence today otherwise.
Would this be fun for you to write about? I mean, you told a lot of the story here- maybe that's kind of an outline you can expand on a bit if you go on a lark.
I mean, I've been writing my humor blog for a while at that point, so I'd probably be writing today either way. But it definitely gave me a confidence boost and some validation to know I can make the cut.
I don't write much personal stuff these days, but maybe one day I'll revisit it.
For what it's worth, I did write about the experience right when it first happened (curious observation: I was using UK spelling at the time. Perhaps with the recent world developments, I should switch back?):
"Naturally, women might have a slight advantage in terms of longevity simply due to men going out and getting killed more, but there was even more to it than that."
I've always heard the opposite - that women had shorter life expectancy in pre-modern times. There was at least a 30% chance of dying in childbirth; and it wasn't uncommon for a man to be widowed two times or more. Although it seems plausible that out of the women who survived their childbearing years, there may have been more who lived into old age than their male counterparts.
Great callout. I think it has more to do with post-childbirth survival - if a woman made it past this point in life and to menopause, she was much more likely to live for longer than a man in a similar situation. From what I gather, that's the nuance - it's a bit like how infant mortality rates will skew prehistoric average lifespans, making it seem as though everyone died when they reached 30, but if you reached 30, you might well live another 30 or 40 or 50 years.
"Women also tend to have stronger immune systems than men, with estrogen playing a key role." One advantage they have over men that they don't brag about too much...
You put me in mind of British author Arnold Bennett, who spent much of his life chronicling in fiction the rural world he grew up in. And one of his novels was in fact called "The Old Wife's Tale"- which I assume he meant literally...
When I set out to write this, I was thinking about including some very specific examples like that! I decided the honey/aspirin connection worked better mainly because I kind of ran out of steam toward the end, but... once again, there's extra value here in the comments! I think it's maybe good for me to leave some of these doors open so we can talk about some things like this.
Great article. Reminds me of this quote: “Tradition is a set of solutions for which we have forgotten the problems. Throw away the solution and you get the problem back.” — Donald Kingsbury
Traditions are a very similar thing to the wives tales. Somtimes they are useful, sometimes they are not, but it helps us to understand why they exist.
https://www.polymathicbeing.com/p/tradition
That's a great quote, and I don't think I've heard it before. I also love the mental torch-pass - if folks want to go further down this rabbit hole, they need only click over to Polymathic Being, or enjoy the lively discussion here in the comments. Many minds are coming together!
Cracked.com (back when it was pretty awesome) once did a whole roundup of Old Wives' Tales that have been confirmed by science: https://www.cracked.com/article_20176_5-old-wives-tales-about-health-confirmed-by-science.html
Perfect accompaniment. You wrote for Cracked for a while, right? Were the folks there pretty cool to work with?
It was a tough gig to get published, but it was rewarding. And at the time, Cracked.com was THE comedy site. They were the first to crack the "laugh out loud funny but educational and counterintuitive" niche.
They basically had a public "Writer's Forum" where you first had to pass the first line of defense: The Moderators, who checked if your pitch was formatted correctly, whether the sources were legit (The Daily Mail and other tabloid stuff was a major no-go, as well as most casual blogs etc.), etc.
Then, your pitch would go in front of the actual editors, who'd push back on every individual entry if it wasn't surprising enough, curious enough, didn't fit the premise, etc.
And then, if you were lucky to find 5-6 entries that met their standards, you'd get a green light to write the article.
Then they'd take it, likely rewrite like 80% of it if you were a new writer, but they'd publish it under your name, pay you, and give you a link to whatever blog/site/etc. you wanted.
I was a long-time reader before trying to get published, so successfully running the above gauntlet for the first time was a really big deal at the time.
That sounds like a really important experience in becoming who you are today, you know? I think about those things I did 15 and 20 years ago as being just as important as some of the events from 40+ years ago, like legit formative childhood stuff. I mean, this is something you do with A LOT of your time these days, right? Surely, the Cracked pressure cooker was good to help you get into the habit of good sourcing, fact checking, and all the other stuff that's the barrier for entry to writing nonfiction, and I bet the confidence boost was plenty to start writing on Substack eventually. I know I had a few of those little important moments where I'm not sure I'd have the confidence today otherwise.
Would this be fun for you to write about? I mean, you told a lot of the story here- maybe that's kind of an outline you can expand on a bit if you go on a lark.
I mean, I've been writing my humor blog for a while at that point, so I'd probably be writing today either way. But it definitely gave me a confidence boost and some validation to know I can make the cut.
I don't write much personal stuff these days, but maybe one day I'll revisit it.
For what it's worth, I did write about the experience right when it first happened (curious observation: I was using UK spelling at the time. Perhaps with the recent world developments, I should switch back?):
https://nest-expressed.com/2013/05/24/im-on-cracked/
That's a great little time capsule! And yes, maybe it's time for me to considour UK spelling.
"Naturally, women might have a slight advantage in terms of longevity simply due to men going out and getting killed more, but there was even more to it than that."
I've always heard the opposite - that women had shorter life expectancy in pre-modern times. There was at least a 30% chance of dying in childbirth; and it wasn't uncommon for a man to be widowed two times or more. Although it seems plausible that out of the women who survived their childbearing years, there may have been more who lived into old age than their male counterparts.
Great callout. I think it has more to do with post-childbirth survival - if a woman made it past this point in life and to menopause, she was much more likely to live for longer than a man in a similar situation. From what I gather, that's the nuance - it's a bit like how infant mortality rates will skew prehistoric average lifespans, making it seem as though everyone died when they reached 30, but if you reached 30, you might well live another 30 or 40 or 50 years.
I think your last sentence is spot-on.
"Women also tend to have stronger immune systems than men, with estrogen playing a key role." One advantage they have over men that they don't brag about too much...
You put me in mind of British author Arnold Bennett, who spent much of his life chronicling in fiction the rural world he grew up in. And one of his novels was in fact called "The Old Wife's Tale"- which I assume he meant literally...
When I set out to write this, I was thinking about including some very specific examples like that! I decided the honey/aspirin connection worked better mainly because I kind of ran out of steam toward the end, but... once again, there's extra value here in the comments! I think it's maybe good for me to leave some of these doors open so we can talk about some things like this.
I always wondered - who was the first to go hey, my hand hurts let me nosh on some of that willow bark?
I do this with every psychoactive substance. It's a fun game to play.