ShortHand: Werewolves

0:00Everyone talks about how challenging it is to raise kids. But what about protecting them? Outlet covers, kitchen cabinet locks, baby gates, where do you even start? Well, protecting your home and auto is a great place to start. Progressive offers customised coverage options, so you can be sure that you have the right coverage for you and your loved ones. They're basically the outlet covers, kitchen cabinet locks and baby gates of insurance. Don't wait. Get your quote today at Progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company. Affiliates and other insurers. Not available in all states. Who here picked a bank at 16? Probably because it was the one that their parents used and then never looked back.

0:39I know I did. I didn't really think about what I wanted my bank to do for me. Or what they could offer me that other banks couldn't. That's where Chime comes in. Chime is changing the way that people think about banking. Chime offers the most rewarding fee-free banking, all with no overdraft fees, no monthly fees, no minimum balance fees. You get 5% cash back on Chime card in a category of your choice, like gas or groceries, all while building credit through regular everyday spending with no credit check. You can also grow your money faster with a savings rate that's nine times the national average. And if you're ever in a pinch, Spot Me lets you overdraft up to $200 fee free. Join the millions who are already banking fee free with

1:23America's number one choice for banking. Head to Chime.com slash red-handed. That's Chime.com slash red-handed. Sign up now. It only takes a few minutes. Chime is a fintech, not a bank. Banking services and ChimeCard provided by Chime's bank partners. Qualifying direct deposits required. Terms and limits apply. Go to Chime.com slash disclosures for details. Hello. Hello. Hello and wolf. And actually, very appropriately, we are recording this under the light of a full moon. Wow. It's as if we planned it. I know. If your algorithm keeps pushing those weird Alpha Omega Werewolf erotica stories onto your feed and your For You page, well, it's only going to get worse after this, I'm afraid. So why not? Just say fuck it, like my my earrings i'm very pleased with my new earrings they say fuck it on them

2:30so why not join me and my earrings and come with us on a journey to track the curious history of vampires weirdo cousins from the earliest myth-based superstitions of ancient greece through the skulking demonic beasts of the Dark Ages, to whatever yassified teen heartthrob vibe they've got going on these days. From the Old English were, meaning man, and wolf, meaning wolf, the Encyclopedia Britannica defines a werewolf as a man who turns into a wolf at night and devours animals, peoples or corpses, but returns to human form by day. In modern times, these guys are linked intrinsically to the full moon, during which they're thought to transform and wreak havoc on the world, before presumably resuming their roles as law-abiding citizens for the rest of the lunar cycle.

3:24But where did it all start? And have they always appeared in the form that we recognise today? This is another Halloween Shorthand. The earliest written record of man-to-wolf transformations is where everything else fucking is for the first time, in the Epic of Gilgamesh. And the Epic of Gilgamesh is like, it's the first written Great Flood story and blah-ba-dee-blah-ba-dee-bloo-blee-blah. It's the oldest surviving work of literature in the world, ever. And it's a story, and Gilgamesh walks around loads and he rejects a goddess called Ishtar's sexual advances, reminding her of how she once cursed one of her exes by turning him into a wolf. Not the worst thing to be turned into. It's, yeah, I would have turned my ex into a slug.

4:16I was going to say, a slug. And then I'd cover him in salt and watch him disintegrate. So murder. Can't murder a slug. No court can convict me. Hope he's doing so well. But the werewolf as we know it, a bloodthirsty man-wolf hybrid creature, only really started to knock about a few thousand years later in ancient Greece and ancient Rome. The first official account of a werewolf can be found in the Republic, as in Plato's Republic, and that's from about 380 BCE. And there's also A Man-Wolf in Metamorphoses by Ovid, which I trudged through in my GCSE classics. So fucking boring. Basically, it's a really, really, really long book. It's like that fucking thick. And it's just stories of people turning into animals.

5:11That's it. I mean, you need one. We've got the fucking picture. That's my Yelp review. Anyway, so those are very early notations of men being turned into wolves. But they're myths. No one is saying that they are even remotely true. No one's even attempting it. Still, though, even though I think of it as boring as shit, the account that he gives of Zeus turning someone into a wolf actually transformed the basis of our modern concept of a werewolf, which is a man who is cursed with wolf-like bloodlust as a punishment for previous immoral behaviour. So during the ancient era, werewolves were part of a mostly fictional storytelling realm, rather than something people truly believed in. But by the Middle Ages, scholars were talking about them as if they were the real deal.

6:09Gervais of Tilbury, an English statesman who compiled the encyclopedia Ottia Imperiala in the early 13th century, wrote this. In England, we have often seen men change into wolves, according to the phases of the moon. Cool. Cool. No reference, no evidence. Is this like that puma that everybody thinks exists in Essex? Oh, the wildcat? Yeah. That's real though. Oh, is it? Yeah. Escape from a zoo. Oh no. I live really near a pink forest. Date quite a lot of edibles and go walking in the woods. Though I do piss myself, so I don't think they'll attack me. Sure-fire trick to survive. I don't think they'll attack me. Sure-fire trick to survive. I don't want this defective human. Isn't that what they say? Soil yourself.

6:51What? I've never heard that in my life. Oh my god, yes. If a bear is coming for you, or a wild animal is coming for you, you should lay down on the floor, pretend to be dead, and soil yourself. Because they'll think you're rotten and they won't eat you or attack you. They'll be so like, and then they'll leave i'm gonna google this but i'm pretty sure there's a whole quora article on it should you soil yourself when you're being attacked but they're talking about a person anyway we don't need to get into this i think it's worth a shot great i'm so glad i'm just about to go and spend two weeks in the wilderness with you wilderness are we not wildernessing in new zealand yeah wilderness i promise not to soil

7:33myself okay cool i'll hold you to that and if you do i'm just gonna throw you to the you won't want to hold me to anything if i so how did we how did we get here talking about you shitting yourself in the woods i did not i'm not going to shit myself it doesn't soil mean shit it does but i don't like that idea so you wouldn't even do it to save yourself from a being eaten by a bear i don't know if i could i i ironically think that i know like shitting yourself is like obviously i'm scared i think if i was scared i don't think i could have a bowel movement i think i need to be very relaxed to have a bowel movement don't you if you're under pressure i just don't think i've ever been under that much pressure sure where the only way myself is to shit my pants

8:21like if i just put a gun to your head now and I was like, go on, Hannah, have a bowel movement or I'm going to shoot you in the head. I don't know. Maybe. Look, I'm sure there will soon be some sort of horrible Netflix reality show about it. And we can wonder about it then. They've already done it in Japan, probably. Yeah, I was going to say. Anyway, we're all... It's Squid Game season two. Yeah. It's commonly known that the entirety of Europe got a bit weird in the medieval era when it came to religious zealotry. And that was all exacerbated by the Black Death, which by the 14th century was sweeping across the continent and wiping out 50% of its population. Yeah, I'd probably become a bit more godsy

9:01if 50% of people I knew just died. I mean, I'd be dead so one in two in rural areas most affected by the plague bodies would pile up and that meant that they were scavenged by lots of things but wolves mainly and the wolves got so brave that they started to sniff around human settlements. Oh my God, do you just think Christmas came early if you're a wolf? Oh yeah. Just piles and piles and piles of dead bodies. Wolves were pretty unpopular back then, so unpopular in the UK we killed them all and we don't have them anymore. Dr Amanda Hopkins of Warwick University noted that wolves were linked with greed and gluttony in the allegorical tradition so no one was wearing those horrible t-shirts or had those throws on the wall

9:53I just acquired a t-shirt with three wolves on it it was given to me as a present how do you feel about that? I feel, I haven't tried it on but I feel pretty good about it I think it's the blankets I feel, I haven't tried it on, but I feel pretty good. Okay, great. About it, I think. It's the blankets for me. I can't do blankets. I'll be wearing it in a strictly ironical way. Great. That's fine. Yes. So as the wolves are chomping on dead plague bodies, paranoia, unsurprisingly, was at an all-time high when it came to disease and also moral righteousness. So it makes sense that anxieties surrounding the until now completely mythical werewolf might get a bit more intense. Werewolves over time turned from a fun bedtime story fodder into a very real fear for the people of medieval

10:41Europe. And before long, the 50% of them that weren't dead and being eaten by wolves decided to do something about it. Everyone talks about how challenging it is to raise kids. But what about protecting them? Outlet covers, kitchen cabinet locks, baby gates, where do you even start? Well, protecting your home and auto is a great place to start. Progressive offers customised coverage options, so you can be sure that you have the right coverage for you and your loved ones. They're basically the outlet covers, kitchen cabinet locks and baby gates of insurance. Don't wait. Get your quote today at Progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company. Affiliates and other insurers. Not available in all states.

11:25Who here picked a bank at 16? Probably because it was the one that their parents used and then never looked back. I know I did. I didn't really think about what I wanted my bank to do for me or what they could offer me that other banks couldn't. That's where Chime comes in. Chime is changing the way that people think about banking. Chime offers the most rewarding fee-free banking, all with no overdraft fees, no monthly fees, no minimum balance fees. You get 5% cash back on Chime Card in a category of your choice, like gas or groceries, all while building credit through regular everyday spending with no credit check. You can also grow your money faster with a savings rate that's nine times the

12:05national average. And if you're ever in a pinch, Spot Me lets you overdraft up to $200 fee-free. Join the millions who are already banking fee-free with America's number one choice for banking. Head to Chime.com slash red-handed. That's Chime.com slash red-handed. Sign up now. It only takes a few minutes. Chime is a fintech, not a bank. Banking services and ChimeCard provided by Chime's bank partners. Qualifying direct deposits required. Terms and limits apply. Go to Chime.com slash disclosures for details. That's right. It's time for some werewolf trials, baby. Although it's worth pointing out that only a small fraction of witchcraft-related persecution was linked to accusations of werewolfery,

12:52there's still plenty out there for us to sink our teeth into. Originating in the Valais and Vaud regions of modern-day Switzerland, in the early 15th century, trials of so-called werewolves spread throughout Europe in a wave of hysteria, before eventually, quietly, dying down in the 18th century. It's crazy how people just go mad for it. They were mad for it for three centuries before someone was like, what are we doing? We've got farms to fucking till. France became known as a veritable hotspot for werewolves. In fact, they were mad for a bit of lupine action. Sounds like English propaganda to me. I was going to say. Men were accused and executed on suspicion of being bloodthirsty loupgaras,

13:42or whatever that means. I wonder if it's also because of that quote from the Englishman that was like, Englishmen turn into wolves all the time. The French are like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Still, at least some of them, it seems, were legitimate wrong-uns, the people that were being executed in these faux trials. In 1521, Pierre Bourgeau and Michael Vedant admitted they'd sworn allegiance to the devil and had an ointment to turn themselves into wolves, a form that they took to go out and murder children. Parroting their story was a guy called Giles Garnier, more commonly known as the Werewolf of Dol, although he went a step further by eating the kids too. The majority of these guys could have been what we'd recognise today as your common garden variety serial killers,

14:33but their vicious crimes were so incomprehensible to the puritanical society of the time that it was thought they must be beasts, not men. That, or their confessions, were helped along somewhat by some good old-fashioned medieval torture. Either way, they were burned at the stake in a bid to destroy their cursed bodies. One of the most notorious executions was that of Peter Stump, double P. The werewolf of Bedburg. News of a werewolf brutalising women and children in Bedburg spread like wildfire in 1589. Stump's trial largely rested on testimony that the wolf that had been doing all of this brutalising was missing its left front paw. Oh my god. It's like kiff kef i'm sorry to break it to you everybody but stump wasn't peter's real surname

15:33he didn't have a left hand it's so good i mean who knew that the medieval folk running around burning people at the stake for being werewolves also had a good sense of humor still had just office pants yeah it is like the kef joke which we've told so many times but i just love that joke so much i was like i worked at a factory once and there was a guy there who everyone called kef and i didn't work out for years that they were calling him kef his real name was keith but it's because he only had one eye no they said they take the eye out and then it's just k-e-t-h oh it's because he lost an eye yeah uh i love that it's your favorite joke and you didn't even really understand no i feel like i understood it the first time i read it when it was written like

16:16that and then i've been retelling it wrong great or retelling it and getting a laugh but not understanding it myself everyone else understands the joke you're telling except you i did wonder deep down i said there's only one eye now i get it because he lost an eye it's so much better when you tell it right anyway there you go everyone and, that is my favourite joke. Anyway, let's get back to Stump. Evidence, bit weak, but it was absolutely nothing compared to what Stump had up his sleeve. He still has two sleeves. How do you know? Were you there? We should also note that Peter Stump had been seriously tortured he'd been on the rack and after that he confessed to practicing black magic from the age of 12

17:10and using a belt given to him by the devil himself to transform into a greedy devouring wolf Stump confessed to having killed and cannibalized 14 children and 2 pregnant women ripping fetuses from their wombs and eating their hearts, panting hot and raw as dainty morsels. One of these children, Stump claimed, was his very own son. Peter Stump was executed on Halloween 1589. He was placed on a cartwheel and had his flesh torn off by red hot pincers and then he was beheaded before being dumped on a burning pyre just to make totally sure he wasn't coming back. If this October anybody is like I really want some horrible fucking torture shit to listen to medieval in format I would highly recommend Dan carlin's painful

18:07attainment episode i can't find it anywhere what oh my god so dan carlin fucking genius but he's taken a lot of his stuff off no not painful attainment i i've not been able to find it anywhere and i've been looking for it for a couple of years because you keep talking about i will try find it and i will post the link in this episode description. Yeah. I'll just send it to you. If you can find it, it's so fucking good. I like struggle to get through it. It's also four hours long. Sick one. It's sick in every sense. So anyway, let's stick with this. The trials were far from just a handy way of catching bona fide bad guys. In fact, they disproportionately targeted vulnerable groups such as beggars,

18:53hermits and immigrants. In Austria, some destitute elderly men were known to peddle charms and incantations to paranoid citizens, which was a bit too close to sorcery for the authorities' liking. Some of these spells were known as wolfgassen, a protective ward against wolves, or their darker cousin, wolfban, a malevolent spell causing a wolf attack. What was likely just a harmless money spinner was taken as sacrilege, and several of these men were put on trial as alleged werewolves. Why would you sell protection against wolf attacks if you're a werewolf? A good point. But it didn't matter. As in the witch trials running concurrently, many of those accused only confessed under extreme torture. As for why they were targeted, it's theorized that some of the men could have

19:45suffered from diseases like porphyria, causing sensitivity to light, reddish teeth and psychosis. And blue pee. Oh, wow. Or maybe they even had genetic conditions like hypertrictosis that causes excessive hair growth. But like people also putting pigs on trial and stuff, you know. People were fucking bored. I don't think we need to rationalise it to porphyria, to be honest. Others might also have been suffering from what is sometimes referred to as clinical lycanthropy, a mental illness under the umbrella of delusional misidentification syndrome, in which a person believes that they are a wolf, which was actually all the rage back then. Cases of this syndrome are pretty heavily influenced by existing cultural factors and beliefs, and given that medieval Europe was

20:36gripped by werewolf mania, it makes sense that people's psychosis might have latched on to this particular theme. As with all crazes though, from shag bands to the Kardashians, the tide would eventually start to turn. I think the Kardashians are here to stay, to be honest. Whilst superstitions continued to persist in the most rural areas of Central and Eastern Europe, gradually most people stopped believing in werewolves as a real threat. So it all went a bit quiet on the werewolf front for a while, until the Victorians brought it back in a big way. Werewolves were never as popular as vampires or ghosts, they still aren't, but they were a topic of interest in scholarly circles and featured in several pieces of Gothic literature,

21:19notably Clements Houseman's 1896 novel The Werewolf, whose inclusion of a female werewolf is thought to be indicative of anxieties around the changing role of women at the time, sounds about right. And since we all know that the Victorians were secret pervs in buttoned-up corsets, it's hardly a surprise that their fascination with werewolves centred around the idea of repressed beastly desires in humans, particularly women. Now, not to bring down the vibe or anything, but you know who else was into werewolves? The Nazis. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. We actually did a shorthand on weird Nazi occult shit that briefly touched on werewolves, so if you want to know more, go and check that episode out. I can't remember the number.

21:59But basically, Hitler and his cronies made werewolf imagery a key part of their propaganda campaign, running an anti-Semitic smear campaign that compared Jewish people with life-leeching vampires and the Nazis as heroic werewolves. It's fucking Nazi Twilight. Apparently the woman who wrote Twilight is a Mormon. I just googled, how does Twilight relate to Mormonism? And apparently in an interview she says that it links to the Mormon belief that humans can become divine wrote twilight is a mormon i just googled how does twilight relate to mormonism and apparently in an interview she says that it links to the mormon belief that humans can become divine and live in a resurrected condition ah so the cullens the vampire family represent humans quote in that

22:35state since they were once human and now live without death there you go i reckon we could do a whole shorthand on that anyway that's not what this episode is about no i'm reading just one more um sidebar i'm reading a book called hitler's people and they make a really interesting point about all of like the occult stuff is that in germany there was a bit of a crisis of faith because jesus is jew yeah so a very christian country kind of had nowhere to go so himmler was like, I've got an idea. Yeah. Everyone talks about how challenging it is to raise kids. But what about protecting them? Outlet covers, kitchen cabinet locks, baby gates, where do you even start? Well, protecting your home and auto is a great place to start. Progressive offers

23:24customised coverage options so you can be sure that you have the right coverage for you and your loved ones. They're basically the outlet covers, kitchen cabinet locks and baby gates of insurance. Don't wait. Get your quote today at Progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company. Affiliates and other insurers. Not available in all states. Who here picked a bank at 16? Probably because it was the one that their parents used and then never looked back. I know I did. I didn't really think about what I wanted my bank to do for me or what they could offer me that other banks couldn't. That's where Chime comes in. Chime is changing the way that people think about banking. Chime offers the most rewarding fee-free banking, all with no overdraft

24:06fees, no monthly fees, no minimum balance fees. You get 5% cash back on Chime card in a category of your choice, like gas or groceries, all while building credit through regular everyday spending with no credit check. You can also grow your money faster with a savings rate that's nine times the national average. And if you're ever in a pinch, Spot Me lets you overdraft up to $200 fee-free. Join the millions who are already banking fee-free with America's number one choice for banking. Head to Chime.com slash red-handed. That's Chime.com slash red-handed. Sign up now. It only takes a few minutes. Chime is a fintech, not a bank. Banking services and ChimeCard provided by Chime's bank partners. Qualifying direct deposits

24:50required. Terms and limits apply. Go to Chime.com slash disclosures for details. Everyone talks about how challenging it is to raise kids. But what about protecting them? Outlet covers, kitchen cabinet locks, baby gates, where do you even start? Well, protecting your home and auto is a great place to start. Progressive offers customised coverage options so you can be sure that you have the right coverage for you and your loved ones. They're basically the outlet covers, kitchen cabinet locks and baby gates of insurance. Don't wait. Get your quote today at Progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company. Affiliates and other insurers. Not available in all states. Who here picked a bank at 16? Probably because it was the one that their parents used and then never looked back.

25:34I know I did. I didn't really think about what I wanted my bank to do for me. Or what they could offer me that other banks couldn't. That's where Chime comes in. Chime is changing the way that people think about banking. Chime offers the most rewarding fee-free banking, all with no overdraft fees, no monthly fees, no minimum balance fees. You get 5% cash back on Chime card in a category of your choice, like gas or groceries, all while building credit through regular everyday spending with no credit check. You can also grow your money faster with a savings rate that's nine times the national average. And if you're ever in a pinch, Spot Me lets you overdraft up to $200 fee-free. Join the millions who are already banking fee-free with America's number one choice for banking.

26:21Head to Chime.com slash RedHanded. That's Chime.com slash Red-handed. That's Chime.com slash red-handed. Sign up now. It only takes a few minutes. Chime is a fintech, not a bank. Banking services and ChimeCard provided by Chime's bank partners. Qualifying direct deposits required. Terms and limits apply. Go to Chime.com slash disclosures for details. So interestingly, this whole Nazi werewolf vampire hunting situation is one of the earliest examples of werewolves and vampires being pitted against each other as mortal enemies. A trope we've rammed down our own throats for years now. And while modern law leads us to believe that werewolves versus vampires is an eternal beef, it's actually pretty modern.

27:09And we can thank Hollywood for that. Aunt Stephanie Meyer. Meyer. Don't know, don't care. While the creatures do have minor clashes in golden age flicks like The House of Dracula and Supernatural soap opera Dark Shadows, which aired in the 60s, the rivalry was truly cemented in the early 2000s film series Underworld, where vampires and werewolves are locked in an all-out war. And, of course, obviously, then Twilight happened and all of our lives were over overnight. But it doesn't have to be this way. Both werewolves and vampires represent kind of the same thing the intersection between human and beast and how we're all quite unhappy all the time so whether you're team edward or you are team jacob maybe

27:59vampires and werewolves have more in common than they might like to admit. As we look over their bloodstained history, one thing jumps out at us. Of all the things we take for granted as part of werewolf lore, most actually took their cues from the movies. The majority of tropes we associate with werewolves today, such as their transformations only on a full moon, their weakness to silver bullets, and even their troubles with the incurable curse of lycanthropy, all bear little resemblance to the way they were presented back when people actually believed in them. Classic horror movies such as 1941's The Wolfman, 1981's An American Werewolf in London, and The Howling, and modern takes such as Underworld, The Twilight Saga, and Teen Wolf,

28:44have all contributed to the shifting face of werewolves across pop culture. But despite these changes, one thing has remained constant. Werewolves are almost always male. But why is it such a boys club? For a start, the phrase werewoman would literally translate to man woman. Oh yeah. Which just wouldn't make any sense. For a start, the phrase werewoman would literally translate to man-woman. Oh, yeah. Which just wouldn't make any sense. And admittedly, werewolves aren't really the epitome of the feminine ideal. They're hairy, they're aggressive, and they're just pretty gross. And I know this is something we've talked about. I think people look at cats and they always think they're female because they have quite a feminine energy.

29:20And people always look at dogs and think they're all boys. Like, good boy. Like, it's just baked in you might argue that a woman could fit right into the lycanthropic lifestyle because we are begrudgingly beholden to cycles of our own there have been some attempts to portray female werewolves uh like a 2000 film called ginger snaps uh which conflates the horrors of female puberty and girlhood with the brutal transformation into a werewolf it's not rocket science is it? But for the most part female werewolves just don't really exist. And maybe the key to that can be found in the middle ages where anti-werewolf persecution came into its own. Society already had a way to get rid of all of the women they were calling as witches instead. So there you have it, the whole

30:12glorious history of werewolves from antiquity to the present day. Quite literally an underdog story from persecution to adulation, obscurity to hysteria and then back again. In the 21st century, the rise of shows like Teen Wolf has led the vanguard for a renaissance of all things lycanthropic, with the motto basically being, make werewolves sexy again. But when you next see a 35-year-old actor playing a teenager with his pecs out under a full moon, take a moment to think of those who came before him. The ones who felt the wrath of gods were burned at the stake, and those who were just a bit nuts. Happy Halloween! Hi, this is Gemma Spegg. I've been approaching my health really differently this year. I used

31:23to be really focused on maximizing and doing more. And now I'm just realizing that if I listen to what my body needs, I perform way better. And that's why I am obsessed with my Whoop. Truly, you guys, you know, I'm such a data and information driven person. And I love opening my Whoop app and seeing how my sleep, my stress, my strain is correlating with my mood, with my running performance, with how I'm just feeling day to day. I'm not an elite athlete by any means, but I do really benefit. And I also just really enjoy knowing more about my body. And Whoop also gives me these actionable, personalized insights that have made me more intentional and meant that I make smarter decisions day to day about what I need rather

32:10than just putting my foot on the gas and just going, going, going, going. New members can try WHOOP with a 30-day free trial before committing to a membership. That's join.whoop.com slash psychology for your free month of WHOOP. When it comes to accessing your home's value, what you don't know might be the only thing standing in your way. I don't understand. Exactly. Huh? An HEI from Splatero will give you a lump sum of cash up front in exchange for a share of your home's future value. An HEI? What's the difference between that and a HELOC? Everything that matters. A HELOC is a loan with variable interest rates that often have DTI requirements and monthly payments. With a Splatero HEI, there is no DTI requirement, and most importantly, no monthly payments.

32:54Oh, I like that one. The no payments one. Of course. You're smart. And check this out. A HELOC has strict income and credit requirements. A Splatero HEI requires only a 500 minimum credit score and no income requirement. So much better. It seems like the only reason to confuse them is that they both start with H. Just remember Splatero. HEI means Splatero. Visit splitero.com today and access your home's equity. No monthly payments, just cash in hand. Splatero. Quick break from the case. If there's a kid on your gift list this year, here's one you can close fast. Guardian is the number one kid's bike on the market with over 1 million happy riders and the easiest way to learn. They're lightweight with a wide wheelbase, so kids ride in just one day.

33:47No training wheels needed. Designed and assembled in the USA and named Wirecutter's top pick four years in a row. Save over 40% now, plus get over $120 in free accessories with every bike. That's GuardianBikes.com.