The Catacombs of Paris

27:00Exactly. How long does the tour take, Josh? You went through it. An hour. I don't remember it taking an hour more or less. It's weird because when you're in the catacombs, you're out of time. There is no light whatsoever reaching you. The only light in there is electric. And apparently that's only been around since the 70s. Before that, they gave you a candle and said, good luck. 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 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.

27:41Okay. That sounds about right. You go down a big spiral staircase. There's a lot of stair climate, 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 for years and redid it from memory, carved into the stone.

28:32Wow, 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. uh like you mentioned 72 is when electricity came along uh there is something called uh ariadne's thread a black line uh 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 minus uh and was associated with mazes and labyrinths and uh while it is a literal thing painted there um it's also you know 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.

29:41Yeah, 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 remember seeing that at all.

30:17I 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? 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.

30:59Help 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's, 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 there were old chandeliers kind of hanging around still. I forgot about that. Yeah, yeah. Super cool. That's totally what it was.

31:31Super cool. Yeah. What else? What other cool rooms are off limits? That's it. You're not going to talk about Salazi 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. That was a subset of a group called UX, short for Urban Experiment. And there are these, it's an artist collective in Paris founded in 1981 by a group of teenagers back then.

32:25That 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 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 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.

33:10And 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 things, 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.

34:05Yeah, 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. No, I haven't either. 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. 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.

34:39And 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.

35:00New year, new goals, and in this economy, a better money plan is more necessary than ever. I am Matt. And I'm Joel. We are from the How to Money podcast, and every week we help you to spend smarter, save more, and make sense of what's going on out there. If you want 2026 to be the year you finally feel in control of your money, we're here to give you the tools and advice to help you make it happen. Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Dr. Priyanka Wally. And I'm Hari Kondabolu. It's a new year. And on the podcast Health Stuff, we're resetting the way we talk about our health.

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37:38so 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 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 catophile, and I guess there was an article in the, I think 2015 or something like that, that estimated there's around a hundred genuine catophiles.

38:28The cataflicks are probably going to leave you alone at the very least to 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 uh 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 wow that sounds kind of cool until your house caves in and the city's like, it's your property, top to bottom.

39:15So 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. 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, 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.

39:56Yeah, 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, like, 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. Kind of cool. Chatty airs. Chatty airs? Chat is C-H-A-T, that's cat. Oh, nice. And e-airs is flaps, I guess.

40:37Yeah. it's been in a bunch of movies and stuff too right yeah um one of the most famous uses of the paris underground came in the phantom of the opera and um i'm not sure if it was in the original novel although i probably was but i certainly know that in the stage play or the musical um there that's where the phantom lives but more of the point there's supposedly like an underground lake there that the phantom like rose's 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 um andrew lloyd weber one of the two it that when they were building the opera house to keep the foundation from just filling up with water over and over again while they were They built a reservoir to impound the water in.

41:29And so it's like 12 feet deep by almost, I think, like 60 yards, 60 meters long. Hey. 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.

41:54what 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 I shouldn't have asked you ruined the story 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 one? No, I didn't play that one. Do you play any of them? Assassin's Creed? No. Do you have something against them? No. No. I just, you know, my gaming is limited.

42:33I 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, 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 a bad person comes out, it's just, yeah, it scares big grown boy Chucky.

43:16Fantastic. Alan Wake 2, everybody. Like Alan Wake, like somebody's name? Yeah. The 2nd 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 J.R. if I was a junior. Oh, totally. Call me J.R. What does it stand for? It stands for Junior. uh here's one cool thing and this guy might be worth a uh podcast on his own uh but there's a photographer he went by the name uh nadar i guess n-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.

44:18But 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.

45:01Yeah, 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 like a stone hill in Budapest. Oh, wow. 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.

45:41And 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. 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 who 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.

46:21But 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?

46:52There'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.

47:33Like, 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 Asper. Asper? Yeah. You can put a little emphasis on the T at the 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 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.

48:28And 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.

48:45Were you creeped out down there or was it just like, 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 got to 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 videotape 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.

49:28And 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 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.

50:06Hey, 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 didn't talk about him it's just sad yeah no disrespect intended we both loved Gene Gene how do you not?

50:46Exactly. 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.

51:27And 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 of this book as one of your sources as it was written by a real-life TV historian named Adam Nedeff 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.

52:06And 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 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.

52:38Stuff 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.

52:53Hey, it's Joel. And Matt from HowToMoney. If your New Year's resolution is to finally get your finances in shape, we've got your back. Prices, they're still high, and the economy is all over the place. But 2026 is the year for you to get intentional and make real progress. That's right. Each week we break down what's happening with your money, the most important issues to focus on, and the small moves that make a big difference. Kick off the year with confidence. Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm John Polk. For years, I was the poster boy of the conversion therapy movement.

53:30the ex-gay who married an ex-lesbian and traveled the world telling my story of how I changed my sexuality from gay to straight. You might have heard my story, but you've never heard the real story. John has never been anything but gay, but he really tried hard not to be. Listen to Atonement, the John Palk story on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Dr. Priyanka Wally. And I'm Hari Kondabolu. It's a new year. And on the podcast Health Stuff, we're resetting the way we talk about our health. Which means being honest about what we know, what we don't know, and how messy it can all be.

54:11I like to sleep in late and sleep early. Is there a chronotype for that or am I just depressed? Health Stuff is about learning, laughing, and feeling a little less alone. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.