Pod Insights Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks A Grizzly Encounter in Yellowstone - A Roundup of Recent Animal Encounter News Including a Violent Bear Attack in Yellowstone, an Elephant Pants-ing a Tourist, Big Cats in Thailand, and More About this episode The guys each bring a handful of recent animal attack stories to the table to discuss with each other, and then get into the rarest bird Wes has ever een, Jeff's escape room escapades, and how much they like September.
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Transcript 16,613 words · 8 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:13 Jeff Larson? Hello, everybody.
0:15 Wes Larson? Hey.
0:17 Jeff Larson? Hi, Dr. Nick.
0:21 Wes Larson? That's what you're doing.
0:22 Jeff Larson? This is Tooth and Claw Podcast, and I'm our main host, Jeff Larson, and then I have my two helpers, Wes Larson and Mike Smith. And it's a podcast where we kind of just talk about anything and everything.
0:39 Wes Larson? That's not true. Well, it kind of is, I guess. This is a podcast where we talk about animal attacks and what people can learn from them and how these animals are often demonized in the news, which we'll be talking about today on our news episode.
0:55 Jeff Larson? That's a better job describing it.
0:57 Mike Smith? Thanks for helping Jeff out. We are his helpers after all.
1:01 Wes Larson? We are.
1:01 Mike Smith? I guess is what it turns out we are.
1:04 Wes Larson? You're the tech guy. I'm the science guy.
1:06 Jeff Larson? There's probably a better way to explain our dynamic, too.
1:10 Mike Smith? No, you were just shooting from the hip there. Can't blame you too much.
1:13 Wes Larson? Jeff, did you do an escape room last night?
1:16 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
1:17 Wes Larson? Did you get out?
1:18 Jeff Larson? It wasn't that good. I was wondering what they count as successful. Because the lady at the end, when we weren't going to make it, just kind of started walking us through everything. So technically, we made it out with like a minute left, but it's like a lot of help. It's kind of one where they assumed you just like know things and it's like if you don't, you just are stuck forever.
1:44 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:45 Jeff Larson? Like there's like music notes and none of us knew how to read music notes and you had to be able to read the music note.
1:51 Wes Larson? Yeah, that kind of throws you off, doesn't it?
1:53 Mike Smith? Yeah. You gotta know, what's the acronym? Every good boy deserves chocolate or whatever, like the notes ascending up there.
2:00 Wes Larson? There's some acronym for it. It's a very creepy acronym. I know. That's like a guy rolling down his window and saying that to some kids on the street. Plus, it's like not even true, because bad boys like chocolate, too. Or is it every good boy deserves choc- I don't know. Yeah, I think bad boys deserve a little chocolate. I think so, too.
2:17 Jeff Larson? I think I, I think I need to start going like regularly to escape rooms, though. Because like thirty minutes in, I started getting a really bad headache. And I was like, man, I must not be thinking enough in general.
2:32 Wes Larson? Just like, whoa.
2:34 Jeff Larson? I got the worst headache ever. So I got sunglasses on right now. I'm, I'm feeling it still.
2:41 Wes Larson? There's, there's other ways.
2:43 Jeff Larson? When you work out for the first time in forever, that's how my brain is right now.
2:48 Wes Larson? It's just like laying in a heap on the floor, breathing hard.
2:52 Jeff Larson? Oh, my God, what did you do to me?
2:57 Wes Larson? That would be kind of funny if you just decided the only way you can train your brain is by going to escape rooms. And there's like literature and puzzles and all sorts of fun things. Smart. He would have been doing E equals MC squared instead of that other guy. Yeah, that old guy. Einstein. Well, I'm glad you made it out, Jeff. This wouldn't be the same without you.
3:18 Jeff Larson? Would have been.
3:19 Wes Larson? Our main host. We need our main host here. Anything else you guys want to report before we get into our news stories for the week? No, I'm tired. I'm tired of bantering. I got nothing. I had to, I had to feed some pigs this morning because Jessie's gone, which was the one thing I said I'd never do, but I did it. You have pigs. That's right. We knew you had pigs. We haven't killed them yet. And I, I said I would never help with them because I didn't want to do anything with the pigs, but I also enjoy some time alone. From, you know, from time to time. And Jessie said she would leave for a couple of days, but that I would have to take care of the pigs. So. Smart move, Jessie. Yeah, it's a good, good exchange, it sounds like. Yeah.
3:59 Wes Larson? And they didn't eat me. They didn't kill me. I didn't trip and fall and they didn't kill me. So, day one.
4:05 Jeff Larson? That would have been, yeah, that would have been bad for us. It would have helped with one story.
4:10 Wes Larson? That's true.
4:11 Jeff Larson? We would have had like one episode's worth of story, but we would have lost a lot of credibility.
4:17 Wes Larson? Would have been a banger. We could have turned that into a two parter at least.
4:23 Jeff Larson? Give the background of him.
4:25 Wes Larson? Yeah, the whole life story. I would hope that you guys would make a two parter regardless of how I die by animal.
4:31 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
4:32 Wes Larson? Sure.
4:32 Jeff Larson? Bring Tom Smith on, be like, hey, Tom, tell us about Wes.
4:37 Wes Larson? Maybe bring your mom on.
4:39 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
4:42 Jeff Larson? She's just shouting out listeners the whole time.
4:44 Wes Larson? Yeah.
4:48 Wes Larson? All right, let's talk about them news stories, eh? Let's do it.
4:52 Jeff Larson? So for any new listeners, this is a news episode where we just cover recent attacks that have happened throughout the world. And you know what? Summer months tend to be the
5:04 Wes Larson? Productive.
5:05 Jeff Larson? Most, most attacks that we can find, so.
5:09 Wes Larson? They're not always attacks too. Sometimes we do some just interesting animal news stories too, but mostly.
5:14 Jeff Larson? Oh, that's a good point.
5:15 Wes Larson? Mostly.
5:16 Jeff Larson? That's a good point.
5:17 Wes Larson? Yeah, just wanted to make sure, you know, I kept you on your toes.
5:21 Jeff Larson? When we like to count them calm encounters too. So that's, that's on me.
5:25 Wes Larson? That's a good point. Yeah. Yeah. All right.
5:27 Jeff Larson? So Wes, what's our first encounter?
5:29 Wes Larson? Well, I'm gonna do one that kind of hits close to home. And when I started working at Yellowstone, I'm gonna be honest with you guys and just say something that maybe I might get a little flack for. Uh, part of me really wanted there to be a mauling while I was working with bear management at Yellowstone. Hmm. And it's because I have worked in bear conflict for so long and I've learned so much about all these stories. But I've never been like the first one on the scene or someone that's like responded to a bear that mauled someone. And that was just an experience I, I wanted to have.
6:05 Jeff Larson? Be careful what you wish for type of situation.
6:08 Wes Larson? Maybe, maybe, but I will say like, my colleagues that have done it, they always kind of talk about it in hushed tones. But you could always kind of tell it was like a highlight for them. And something they, it was like a story they liked telling, you know?
6:22 Mike Smith? You guys are sickos. Oh my gosh. These are the people in charge of keeping us safe out there? I don't know.
6:28 Wes Larson? Well, you know, Mike, I'm not out there anymore. So.
6:32 Mike Smith? Thank goodness.
6:33 Wes Larson? Yeah. Anyway, Yellowstone had averaged about one mauling per year for the last few decades. But then when I started, there weren't any maulings for a few years. And then I left Yellowstone.
6:46 Mike Smith? You were great. We need to get you back out there. No, quit the podcast. Get out there. You're better use.
6:51 Wes Larson? No, the drought would start up again. Yeah, true. That's, yeah, I guess that is a good thing. Anyway, the drought is over. On Friday, September 16th, a 29 year old hiker was attacked by a bear while walking the turbid lake trail near Mary Bay in Yellowstone National Park. This hiker had been hiking alone on this trail when he apparently surprised the bear. And he tried to use his bear spray, but the bear made contact with him first. And then I think he was able to successfully deploy some of his spray. So he sustained significant, but not life threatening injuries to his chest and his left arm. So basically this bear made contact, mauled him a bit. He managed to get some spray off.
7:34 Wes Larson? It ended the encounter. Then he was able to call for help and medical personnel responded, walked him out of the trail and got him to the hospital. So.
7:44 Mike Smith? You're right. That does sound fun.
7:46 Wes Larson? Yeah. Well, I, yeah, I mean, it would be more interesting to like investigate a fatality or something. But I don't want anyone to die. Yeah. But the, the more fun part of it for the managers, and I shouldn't say fun, but the interesting part, a thing that is interesting in these things is then responding to the situation afterward. Like, what do you do with this bear? If it is kind of something that seems like a, you know, behavior that's not normal, then you do have to do something. This seemed like very normal behavior. They actually found a carcass nearby. Lots of tracks. He thought it was a black bear, but this is like. If I were to tell someone one place to go in the park to see grizzly bears, I would tell them to go right where this guy was hiking.
8:30 Wes Larson? So it's almost certainly a grizzly bear. They found lots of grizzly tracks in the area. And there was a carcass near this trail. So almost certainly a grizzly. This is a like a pretty dangerous part of the park to be hiking around in. I probably wouldn't do it, especially alone. It's just prime, prime, prime grizzly bear habitat. He was flew, he was flown to a hospital. He was released this last Wednesday. And I'm just really happy he had bear spray because he avoided a more serious outcome. And I got to avoid some more FOMO for not being there when a fatality happened, you know? Sure.
9:07 Mike Smith? Good job. Good job on that guy's part.
9:10 Wes Larson? Thanks.
9:10 Mike Smith? Or bad job. I don't know. I'm not sure anymore.
9:13 Wes Larson? I think the last fatality was 2015 and we'll talk about that one at some point. But Yellowstone's on a good little streak with their, their conflict prevention. And I think a lot of that is due to some of the work that they do with bears, like hazing. Yeah, some of the stuff I did there, not me personally, but the bear management team. And then a lot of it is good education, too. There's a lot of, of signs and pamphlets and stuff telling people about the, you know, the risks of hiking and recreating in bear country. So.
9:44 Mike Smith? Are bears still the leading source of fatal encounters in Yellowstone?
9:50 Wes Larson? No, not even close.
9:51 Mike Smith? Not even close. What is that?
9:52 Wes Larson? So in the, in the whole history of the park, there's been eight fatalities from bears. There had been hundreds of drownings. I think that's number one. No falls. I think falls are number one, then drowning.
10:05 Mike Smith? But as far as animals are concerned.
10:07 Wes Larson? As far as animals, I would guess it's bison.
10:10 Mike Smith? Oh.
10:11 Wes Larson? I bet bison have killed a fair number more than, than bears. Um, bears are probably second though. Yeah. I don't think mosquitoes have killed anyone in Yellowstone.
10:20 Mike Smith? Elk.
10:21 Wes Larson? Bears are probably second after elk probably have, but I guess grizzlies are number two after bison. Would be my guess, but like dozens of people have fallen into hot springs and died there. I mean, bears aren't even the top 10, I would guess for when it comes to fatalities in the.
10:38 Mike Smith? Imagine when the super volcano explodes, bears, their stats not going to look impressive at all.
10:43 Wes Larson? No, not at all. Versus a billion or whatever.
10:48 Mike Smith? Yeah.
10:49 Wes Larson? Yeah. Anyway, stay safe out there, guys. It is, it's fall. Bears are in hyperphagia, so they're trying to put on as much weight as possible before they den. So this is a high risk time if you're in grizzly country especially. So just make sure you have bear spray. Make sure you're making plenty of noise. Because this was a surprise encounter, the bear didn't do anything unnatural. They're not trying to do anything to this bear. They're just gonna leave it. This was very much natural behavior for this bear.
11:18 Mike Smith? Hmm. Gotcha.
11:19 Jeff Larson? Yeah. All right. Well, I have a grizzly bear one as well, so I'll just go. I was put on to this one from a listener named Scotty, and it's a friend's sister-in-law this happened to out in, um, Kenai. Is that how you spell it?
11:36 Wes Larson? Kenai.
11:36 Jeff Larson? Alaska.
11:38 Wes Larson? Yeah, this is where Tom has his cabin.
11:40 Jeff Larson? Oh, really? Tom Smith, Wes's, uh, mentor and professor.
11:44 Wes Larson? A fair amount of time in Kenai myself. Sure, master. Yeah.
11:49 Mike Smith? You guys basically just dogged Tom to all those bears listening out there.
11:54 Wes Larson? I'm the Igor to his Dracula, or no, is Igor a Dracula guy or is that a Frankenstein guy?
12:00 Mike Smith? Frankenstein.
12:01 Wes Larson? Frankenstein. What was Dracula's little, oh, Renfield. I'm the Renfield to his Dracula. Yeah.
12:07 Jeff Larson? Yeah, the worm tongue to his Sauron. Sauron.
12:10 Mike Smith? Sauron. Who's kind of the worm, Sauron is kind of the worm tongue to Sauron. It's a weird little daisy chain you can.
12:19 Wes Larson? And Sauron is kind of the worm tongue to Morgoth.
12:23 Mike Smith? Exactly.
12:24 Jeff Larson? Oh, wow.
12:24 Mike Smith? Geez.
12:25 Jeff Larson? So who's Tom's?
12:26 Mike Smith? How deep does this go?
12:27 Wes Larson? Uh, Tom Sauron is Steven Herrera.
12:33 Jeff Larson? Well, Scotty put me on to this story because there is an active GoFundMe. So it is Arian Fabrizio Colton is the GoFundMe.
12:46 Wes Larson? Is it, is that really Arian? It does look like Arian, A R I E A N. Okay.
12:53 Jeff Larson? So the Colton family, they just moved out to Alaska. I've thought about moving out to Alaska. I know Tom loves his little spot he has out there, Wes. And it just seems like a really exciting time in this family's life. We had to go back a little there. So I don't know if I said this, she's a mother of three, she's married, they're happily married. They're starting their family or like they're starting another chapter in their family's life out in Alaska now. It just probably had an incredible summer since that's the main reason you go to Alaska. The winters are probably a little rough to get through. Ms. Colton, she enjoyed running in the mornings.
13:35 Jeff Larson? And Wes, what's the worst time for a bear encounter?
13:39 Wes Larson? Early mornings or late evenings.
13:41 Jeff Larson? So she liked to run early morning and.
13:44 Wes Larson? I would say those, yeah, not the worst time, but that's like the highest probability time.
13:49 Jeff Larson? So why wouldn't you say it's the worst time?
13:52 Wes Larson? Yeah, because you said, what's the worst time for a bear encounter? And I just feel like any time's a bad time for a bear encounter. But your highest probability time of running into a bear is like early morning or. Yeah, semantics. He pwned you, dude, linguistically.
14:06 Jeff Larson? I was, you know? You got me.
14:12 Wes Larson? It was a riddle.
14:12 Jeff Larson? Starts, she starts her morning run almost six AM, still very early and makes it only about 50 yards from her house. When a brown bear that was on the neighbor's property just like ran straight over to her and mauled her. And it was mauling her on the property. She like got the wind knocked out of her, so wasn't like yelling actively. But the neighbor heard barking and wolfing sounds of a bear. So Wes, you're really good at the wolfing sounds.
14:47 Jeff Larson? Yeah, so he hears a bear out there. He thinks like, maybe it got a dog in the neighborhood, or maybe it has something. Didn't think too much of it, but then he kept hearing more and more. So he goes out and walks out and sees his female neighbor, just like in the woods on his property. And immediately calls for help, but they're an hour and a half from a hospital. So it takes her a really long time to get out to like actual hospital. But she's a loving wife, mother, three nurse, known for like being adventurous, having like a love of nature. And we just want to shout out her GoFundMe.
15:30 Jeff Larson? So she sustained multiple broken ribs, a scapula fracture, a hand fracture. And went through surgery, but she's going to require more. She's unable to see out of her left eye right now. And will continue extensive outpatient physical therapy. Uh, so that's Arian Fabrizio Colton's GoFundMe. If you want to go help out, Tooth and Claw donated some money to it. Go donate some money to it if you are able.
16:02 Mike Smith? Do you know what really sucks about, I mean, the unironically this sucks, you know? No matter what a bear encounter is going to be rough, but I hate the idea of like getting up early and going out to do something healthy. And then just the least healthy possible thing happens to me, you know?
16:17 Jeff Larson? Yeah, it's like now, now you gotta go through physical therapy forever, just to be able to like try to be healthy again.
16:25 Mike Smith? Right. I was just like out on a run. That's all I was trying to do.
16:28 Jeff Larson? At least like she didn't have to run for that long.
16:32 Mike Smith? That's true. I hate runs. Oh my gosh.
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19:02 Mike Smith? Is fitness uniquely a human endeavor? Are there any animals that work out?
19:07 Wes Larson? Like purposely try to get more fit?
19:10 Mike Smith? Yeah.
19:10 Wes Larson? I don't think so. I think they naturally.
19:12 Jeff Larson? I feel like wolves have like a lot of energy and kind of like run around a lot.
19:17 Wes Larson? I think a lot of animals have that, but like, I don't think they're like purposely thinking, man, I'm not feeling that great. I need to like, get stronger.
19:25 Mike Smith? Like doing pushups, pumping their chest.
19:28 Wes Larson? Yeah, there's no way for us to know that, but I doubt it. I really doubt it. Cause usually, so usually in like the, in the animal kingdom, what we think is most animals are doing their best to conserve energy whenever they can. You know, it's like their constant struggle is trying to get energy by way of food and conserve energy to survive. So it doesn't really make sense for many animals to like be wasting energy.
19:54 Jeff Larson? I think the argument I would pose though is that males especially need to get pretty big for mating purposes a lot of the time. Like the strongest, biggest males get the most mating opportunities. So maybe they're like seeking ways to get like bigger and stronger.
20:12 Wes Larson? Yeah, I don't, yeah, I think, I don't think they understand. No, I was just gonna say, I don't think that's like a conscious thing. Yeah, but I don't think they know like the relationship between like physical activity and putting on.
20:26 Jeff Larson? Eating protein powder.
20:27 Wes Larson? Right. Or like, or like working out, you know, I just don't.
20:32 Mike Smith? Right.
20:32 Wes Larson? I think that's kind of more of a genetics thing than anything. So.
20:36 Mike Smith? Well, I got a story if you guys don't mind. It's not a grizzly bear, but it's kind of like a grizzly bear. So this is a story about an elephant. Uh, this happened August 13th, 2025. I'm titling this one, "The Many Mistakes of Our Basaviraju."
20:52 Jeff Larson? Why is it kind of like a grizzly bear?
20:55 Mike Smith? Ah, they walk on four legs. I don't know. Kind of.
21:02 Mike Smith? So I'm gonna have you guys, as I read through this story, as I recount this story, just call out any mistakes you hear this guy make, Basaviraju. Cause he makes, he makes a handful. The incident began when Basaviraju, he was walking in a restricted forest area in Kamataka, state of southwest.
21:18 Jeff Larson? There's a mistake.
21:19 Mike Smith? Mistake, right? Even maybe even a criminal infringement. Yeah. Yeah. Restricted Forest, Kamataka. Yeah, thank you. Carnautica. Yep. Oh, is that R M? R N? Carnautica? Yeah. It's in India, right? Yep. It's, uh, yeah, southwestern India. So he came- I think I'm saying that right. He, as he was wandering around, he came upon an elephant. It was just munching on some carrots by the side of the road. And Basavrajju is like, hey, this is a pretty good photo opportunity. It's distracted by these carrots. Let's just, uh, let's just get one in real quick. So he got as close as he dared, pulled out his camera, and then he turned his back to take a selfie with the elephant. Ooh, that's not good. And mistake number two, probably, right? Okay.
22:01 Jeff Larson? I wouldn't say so yet.
22:02 Mike Smith? Not yet, okay. According to one of the bystanders, so a guy-
22:06 Jeff Larson? Distracted by the carrots.
22:07 Mike Smith? That's true. You gotta give him that, the benefit of that doubt. So Daniel Osorio was on the scene, witnessing this whole thing go down. The elephant was provoked by the camera flash, is what Daniel was saying, and it immediately just rushed directly, started charging right at Basavrajju. Basavrajju.
22:24 Jeff Larson? That's a mistake.
22:26 Mike Smith? I think so too, right?
22:27 Jeff Larson? When you're taking a selfie, if you want something in the background, you don't use flash.
22:33 Mike Smith? Yeah. And it was like, middle of the day. The sun was out. Not really, well, I'm not a photographer. Maybe there is a use for flash in that scenario, but that's what seemed to trigger the elephant. So Basavrajju started running away. Uh, when he lost his footing, he was, he ran kind of on the ditch by the side of the road, and as it went back up onto the tarmac, he slipped and face planted just right in the middle of a busy road.
22:56 Jeff Larson? Oh, no.
22:57 Mike Smith? The elephant just immediately was on top of him, trampling him, and thankfully missed most of his upper body and like the vitals, his head and stuff, but it did trample his legs pretty good. And now he's in the middle of the road getting trampled, and there's just a ton of people all around filming this event take place. I think I saw this video. The tough thing, well, I mean, it's tough, but to add a little bit of insult to injury, the elephant ended up ripping his pants and his underwear completely off. So he's just like, face down in the middle of the road without pants on, and people are just taking pictures and filming this happen. So mistake four, I'm gonna say is not having a better belt. After, so, um, he got stepped on pretty good, though. Thankfully, fortunately, he didn't die,
23:39 Mike Smith? but he did get rushed to the hospital with like some pretty severe injuries.
23:43 Jeff Larson? That's pretty crazy to get trampled by an elephant and not die.
23:47 Mike Smith? I know. Yeah, it like got pretty lucky. Yeah, when you see the video, you can see the elephant's feet just passing like centimeters away from his head and stuff.
23:57 Jeff Larson? I feel like you're giving him a lot of gruff, so I'm gonna say like, props to him for not dying.
24:04 Mike Smith? Sure, yeah.
24:05 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
24:05 Mike Smith? Good for, no, it's great that he didn't die. Uh, he did get fined, though, which I think is like another like, oh, man, that sucks.
24:15 Mike Smith? Uh, it was about $300 US dollars worth of fines for trespassing and provoking wildlife, which is like, it's not the worst, but like after all of that, plus you owe money, it's just like, oh my gosh, this is the worst, you know?
24:28 Jeff Larson? Like, it's kinda like, yeah, he kinda got punished pretty good for what he did.
24:34 Wes Larson? They're probably trying, yeah, they're probably trying to set an example, though, cuz this does, even though it doesn't maybe seem like it, this puts other people at danger too, because elephants do kind of enter, and we've seen this in some of our other stories, like, if they get mad enough, they can kind of go in on a rampage, and then a lot of other people can get hurt that are also around. So it sucks that this guy got hurt so badly, but also he was endangering other people's lives and this elephant's life by approaching it.
25:05 Mike Smith? Yeah, so some of the details in the video, after it just very briefly engaged with the man, ripped his pants off and then left, but it started like mounting up on trucks and like kind of getting, it got really close to a lot of other people, and it looked like it was maybe trying to push some cars around and stuff. It was a pretty agitated elephant, and it's, it's caused a little bit of community uproar because there's been a growing sentiment that tourists taking these kinds of pictures, engaging this kind of behavior, they need to be facing harsher penalties, like even criminal, uh, criminal offenses if they do this kind of thing, because I guess up to this point, that's not really been as big a legal issue as it is just kind of, uh,
25:47 Mike Smith? like a park infringement or something, but, you know, tried to get a selfie, but now he's, he's viral for a little bit of a different piece of content, I guess.
25:56 Wes Larson? He got pantsed. Got pantsed by this elephant.
25:58 Mike Smith? Yeah.
25:59 Jeff Larson? Huh.
26:00 Wes Larson? All right. Well, I've got another one that is pretty tragic, but also kind of, you know, these ones are always hard because it's kind of like the trophy hunter from last month where I don't want to say like the person should have seen this coming, but also it's like you're doing something where you're obviously accepting some very high risks. And this was, I titled this Tiger Prince Killed by His Trained Tiger. So we all remember the Tiger King. This is kind of the Tiger Prince, and I'll explain why. On September 20th, just a few days ago, 37-year-old Ryan Easley was finishing up a performance for a group of people with his pet cat when something went terribly wrong. Because this wasn't just any cat. It was a full grown tiger. And for
26:45 Wes Larson? whatever reason, on that particular day, this tiger had had enough. Toward the end of the routine, Ryan and the tigers had probably done this routine hundreds of times before. This tiger broke off from its training, and it bit Ryan on his shoulder and neck, briefly shook him violently, and he is thought to have died pretty much instantly from this bite. Oh, man. Whoa. His wife and daughter were unfortunately watching the show. When the tiger, yeah, when the tiger backed away from Ryan's body, his wife managed to guide the tiger into a safe enclosure, and he was pronounced dead thereafter, soon thereafter. So basically, just like a quick aside, what I think probably happened here, like, I think about Toad, my cat. This morning,
27:29 Wes Larson? I was like petting him with a brush, and he got so kind of overstimulated that he bit me quickly. And sometimes when I'm playing with Toad, there'll just be like this singular moment of frustration where he lashes out and like bites or scratches. And I think everyone that has ever owned a cat has experienced that before. And the same thing can happen with the tiger. I don't think this tiger was trying to eat Ryan, or even trying to kill him. I think it just had a moment of frustration and lashed out. And when it's a tiger doing that, it can be fatal. All it takes is one bite, and that's all this was. And I don't think the tiger even knew what it was doing when it killed Ryan. But apparently, Ryan and Joe Exotic, who we all know as the Tiger King, have a bit of
28:12 Wes Larson? history. Ryan had procured a number of his tigers from the Tiger King, as well as Doc Hentel, who was also in that documentary. And Joe was quick to make a statement from jail where he is, Joe Exotic. I think he's in jail for 20 something years, constantly asking Trump for a pardon and constantly not getting it.
28:31 Mike Smith? Worth a shot.
28:32 Wes Larson? Yeah, but he, in his statement, he pretty much immediately attacked PETA. And it was really interesting. He always, we've had a few people that pronounce PETA really weird, like Tanya Haddix. And Joe Exotic, in his statement, he capitalized the P and the T and the A, but the E was lowercase. And I don't know why.
28:55 Mike Smith? What's the acronym?
28:57 Wes Larson? It's People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. So it's not like the E is a smaller, yeah, anyway.
29:03 Mike Smith? Maybe he's taken a little bit of a, yeah, subliminal shot there.
29:07 Wes Larson? It was a really bad tweet because it's one where he could have just said, listen, I know Ryan. I really liked the guy. He had a wonderful family, all of that. But basically, he just used it as a way to talk about himself and attack PETA. He said, "Working with adult tigers takes guts and skill. So many people do things different when working with tigers. I choose never to make my tigers perform or even my camel because it takes losing that love bond between you and that animal. I sold tigers to Ringling Brothers and worked with just about everyone in the business. And you don't get a tiger to jump through a hoop of fire because they love you. When I knew Ryan in the early years, he wanted to be the one with the most tigers in the ring at one time.
29:49 Wes Larson? Myself and John Rinke both said, when he was at our place with his tigers, that he was going to get killed because some of his cats were crazy in the head. But it was about having the most performing at one time at all cost." Uh, not the best, like, statement from his buddy in jail, you know, just kind of saying like, well, he was asking for this.
30:09 Mike Smith? I called it.
30:10 Wes Larson? I called it.
30:11 Mike Smith? Yeah, exactly. I still sold him the tigers, but I called it.
30:16 Jeff Larson? LeBron is like, I knew he'd get killed by a tiger.
30:21 Mike Smith? He saw that coming 10 years ago.
30:23 Wes Larson? This PETA also did a statement where they're also just kind of trying to score points for their side. It all feels kind of gross to me because the big cat act was passed already. Like this is a dying industry where many of these people won't ever be able to have cats anymore. It seems like that victory has already happened. So like, we don't need to be trying to like score points off of something this tragic. But um, this is from PETA. They said, Ryan Easley, an associate of Joe Exotic, was killed yesterday by a tiger he owned at his roadside zoo. Easley had acquired tigers from Joe Exotic and fellow Tiger King Doc Antle for his business, Show Me Tigers. And for years, he hauled them around the country, forced them to perform in cruel circuses, and kept them trapped in cages for hours when they weren't performing.
31:09 Wes Larson? In 2017, he was caught violently whipping tigers during training sessions, one of whom was reportedly struck 31 times. When Joe Exotic was operating his Oklahoma roadside zoo, Easley boarded his tigers in cramped cages at the roadside zoo during the winter. It's kind of just like, they're just beating a dead horse at this point. Um, with Joe Exotic, not with Ryan, but it's like, it would suck to be this guy's family and see these two warring entities still like trying to just kind of get at each other using his death.
31:39 Mike Smith? Yeah.
31:39 Wes Larson? So, anyway. It, I do think like, if you're, if you're training tigers, especially to perform and you're touching them and stuff, it's hard to feel like this is unexpected, but um, you know, his family's still definitely suffering.
31:55 Mike Smith? Yeah, yeah.
31:56 Jeff Larson? Yeah. I do feel like the public narrative to has changed so much.
32:01 Wes Larson? Yeah.
32:01 Jeff Larson? That PETA doesn't really need to explain all of that to us. It's like, yeah, we know tigers in those shows are like, not fairly treated anymore. It's not just like, some crazy beast that wants to kill. It's like,
32:17 Wes Larson? Yeah.
32:17 Jeff Larson? No, like, we kind of get this guy was asking for it. We don't need to like-
32:21 Wes Larson? Saw the documentary. Yeah.
32:23 Jeff Larson? Have a statement the day after about how bad of a guy you were.
32:27 Wes Larson? Totally. Like, wait a little bit. Yeah.
32:29 Mike Smith? Yeah.
32:30 Wes Larson? I will just say to our listeners, as far as like, these kind of shows and roadside zoos are concerned. Just remember that any place like this, they all are going to say in their like their, their messaging that they're good for conservation, that they're sanctuaries, that they've rescued these cats from, from worse situations. Every single one of these roadside zoos is going to have that same message, all of them. But like just kind of a, a rule that you can use to know if you're at a bad place or not. If there's any kind of human interaction with these cats, if they're touching them, or if they're making them perform to do tricks or anything, that is
33:12 Wes Larson? not a true sanctuary, is not a true rescue. It is a for-profit roadside zoo where there's a very good chance the animals aren't being treated the way they deserve to be treated. So just stay away from those places. But this is obviously unfortunate.
33:27 Jeff Larson? So I have a question on that. Yeah. So like at the Hogo Zoo with the sea lion, they like have them do tricks for fish. What's the difference?
33:37 Wes Larson? Uh, that is an animal that responds very well to training. It's, that's more enrichment for them. And the people aren't like at the-
33:46 Jeff Larson? They more want to be trained than have to be forced to be trained type-
33:50 Wes Larson? Exactly. It's like, it's like bird training and stuff too. And also like at the Hogo Zoo, when they do that, they're not like hugging the sea lions and seals and stuff too. You know, there's not like a pay to play-
34:03 Jeff Larson? And it's not like that's their business. It's not like people like, yeah. Okay.
34:07 Wes Larson? There are animals like in these accredited zoos and rescues and stuff. There are animals that through decades or longer of like research and having them in captivity, captivity, we've learned do like enrichment where there's a human element, element involved. But like, big cats are too dangerous to do that with. They just like, it's just not an animal where you can do that and not have some serious risks.
34:32 Jeff Larson? Traveling show is just never going to be a good environment. Well, I have a follow-
34:38 Mike Smith? I did, just real quick, I wanted to point out, the logo for PETA is, has the lowercase e in there. So maybe that's what you're seeing people do with.
34:47 Wes Larson? Yeah, that's probably it.
34:48 Jeff Larson? So he's actually being very, he went above and beyond to get it right. Shout out Joe Exotic.
34:56 Mike Smith? Yeah. Dot, dots all of his Ts, crosses his I's.
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35:32 Speaker 04 Welcome to the 50th Hunger Games!
35:34 Speaker 05 Witness the beginning of the revolution.
35:36 Speaker 04 Hey Mitch, you've been trying to take down these games from Star.
35:39 Speaker 05 Filmed for IMAX.
35:40 Speaker 04 Make them remember you.
35:43 Speaker 05 The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Leaping, November 20, rated PG-13.
35:49 Speaker 06 Somebody asked me how I'd define myself, and I didn't know what to say. Because how can someone be defined when we're always evolving? I've been so many things. I'll be so many others.
36:04 Speaker 06 Because identity's not a performance, it's an exploration. Never the same, but always myself. That's the paradox. Paradox Intense and the new Sweet Chemistry by Prada.
36:17 Wes Larson? There's certain sponsors that when they come around, we get really excited, and Gooder was definitely one of those sponsors. All three of us love sunglasses, and we were already big fans of Gooder even before they signed up to be sponsors. They sell stylish sunnies that start at only $25 a pair. They come with a one-year warranty, and they have 30-day free returns. But for me, it's really just the variety of options that they have, how good all of them look. They're lightweight, they're comfortable, they're polarized, they don't slip around on my face or make the bridge of my nose feel weird. I just really like their sunglasses. Like I said, I was already a fan. We actually gave my dad a pair. He never, ever wears sunglasses. And the summer while we were fishing, he just wore them every single time. And multiple times, he talked about how much he likes them,
37:01 Wes Larson? how they've kind of changed his perspective on sunglasses, which if you knew my dad, you'd know that's pretty impressive. They have vibrant colors, sleek styles. There's a pair for every single personality, and they're designed for everyday wear or people that are really active and are hiking and biking, and people that are out all the time just doing lots of different activities. For me, I really like to just wear them when I'm out in the great outdoors, fishing, hiking. Or if I'm just on the beach, maybe I'm just trying to read a good book and enjoy a little bit of the sound of the waves and the sand. I just, I find that I tend to grab my Gooders regardless of where I'm going. I keep a pair in my car. I have a pair that I keep around the house. I'm just constantly with a pair of Gooders nearby.
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39:21 Jeff Larson? Well, Wes, I want you to take on this one because I was kind of wondering about this situation.
39:28 Wes Larson? Okay.
39:28 Jeff Larson? So this is a lion attack that happened in Bangkok, September 10th. And it was in Asia's largest open air zoo. How do you feel about like a?
39:40 Wes Larson? Safari park?
39:41 Jeff Larson? Yeah, so like, I know San Diego Zoo has something like that, right? And it's like one of those zoos, I think, where you kind of go on safari inside of a zoo. You're in a vehicle, but then there's no, you're in their enclosure. So there's no fence between you and the animals.
39:58 Wes Larson? Yeah.
39:58 Jeff Larson? So how do you feel about that?
40:00 Wes Larson? I think it can be done really responsibly and well, but then there's ones that aren't, you know, like, I think if you're going in there and you're able to feed these animals or interact with them, then it's probably not that ethical. But if it's like the one in San Diego at the Safari Park, it's really well done and it's a really cool experience for people. Or Alex, who just went on our Brazil trip, works for one in the Palm Desert where they have a safari element. And that one's a great one, too.
40:26 Jeff Larson? So this one, you pay $37 per person to go to the lion and tiger feeding trips?
40:34 Wes Larson? Mm hmm.
40:35 Jeff Larson? Which I don't know if that's too problematic if you're like staying in the vehicles and they gotta feed the cats anyways, right? I don't know.
40:42 Wes Larson? Yeah, I don't know either. I'd have to look into it.
40:44 Jeff Larson? But, so yeah, on September 10th, an employee who had been working there for over 30 years, he got out of the vehicle to like get some food to throw to them, which was like very much against policy and the rules of their employees. They're never supposed to get out of their vehicles. And then for whatever reason, a doctor who was on the trip as like a guest, Tavachi Kana Chirin, said that he stood there alone for three minutes outside of the vehicle, which they found very concerning and weird.
41:20 Wes Larson? Oh.
41:21 Jeff Larson? That the employee was just like standing there and didn't get back in the car. So then a lion walked up to him and just grabbed his leg and pulled him away from the car.
41:32 Wes Larson? Wow.
41:32 Jeff Larson? And then six other lions came up and they all started killing him as people are watching. And they said he like never screamed or anything, which is, I don't know. It's, it's an interesting situation for sure. Very tragic and the park's getting a lot of heat about just like making sure the lions were even licensed to be there. Because in.
41:59 Mike Smith? Thailand.
42:00 Jeff Larson? In Thailand, uh, I guess it's legal to have lions.
42:04 Mike Smith? Okay.
42:04 Jeff Larson? So I think there's a lot of licensing, like behind the scenes type of stuff going on where people don't go through the right paperwork and like the policies that they want them to to get lions a lot of the time. And there's a lot of breeding going on there and lions are just like a big issue in Thailand.
42:24 Mike Smith? Okay.
42:24 Jeff Larson? Yeah, so.
42:26 Mike Smith? That's really, that's, yeah, I don't mean to make light of the situation, but it almost seems like a possession or something came over him. Like he was just wasn't reacting at all. That's really spooky to me.
42:38 Jeff Larson? It's weird that he didn't like make noise once the lions started.
42:42 Mike Smith? Yeah, right.
42:43 Wes Larson? It was that that happens in that movie, The Happening. Maybe has anyone looked at the plants?
42:48 Jeff Larson? It could have been the plants.
42:51 Wes Larson? Someone better check that out. Where's Mark?
42:54 Jeff Larson? And I guess there's like five hundred uh zoos in Thailand with licensed lions. And then there's just a bunch of breeding farms and like, yeah, it's, it's a real thing out there. So also if you're going to Thailand, just be careful about what lions you go to visit.
43:15 Wes Larson? Yep, do your research, especially in other countries. In the US, it's pretty easy just to kind of look up the accredited institutions, but in other countries, you have to do a little bit more research.
43:25 Jeff Larson? And this one was, this one Safari World Bangkok, actually, I'd have to really dig in, but to me, it didn't seem too problematic where it's the biggest open air zoo in Asia. Like at least the animals have space. It sounded like they do have licensing for their animals. So like, it just was a unfortunate situation where a employee either got careless or just, I don't know, I don't want to speculate too much on what happened, but yeah.
43:53 Wes Larson? Could you find the video anywhere?
43:55 Jeff Larson? Uh uh.
43:55 Wes Larson? Yeah.
43:56 Mike Smith? Were lions ever living in Thailand, uh, indigenously or whatever the word is?
44:02 Wes Larson? I'm pretty sure, yeah.
44:03 Mike Smith? They've.
44:03 Wes Larson? Natively.
44:04 Mike Smith? Natively.
44:04 Wes Larson? Yeah, endemically. Um, I'm pretty sure they were.
44:07 Mike Smith? Hmm, okay.
44:08 Wes Larson? Yeah.
44:09 Mike Smith? Asiatic lions, I think, were pretty widespread back in the day. But now you can only find them in one little portion of India. Where they just pwned the tigers there. Yeah.
44:22 Mike Smith? Tigers are so scared of the lions in India. Yeah, let's relitigate that real quick. Let's not. Okay, I've got, I actually do have a bear story this time. This is a follow up in a way to a story we covered last time in our news episode about the the bear safety drill video that we showed. A little humorous, but in it was performed in the wake of some pretty serious bear encounters and fatalities even. So this happened near the end of August of this year, reported by The Independent, but several other sources I got information from as well. So Dyson, this is the Northern Akita Prefecture. And Wes, you'll know Akita because that's where a recent poll was taken. No, this is where the prettiest women of Japan live, it turns out, according to a vote.
45:08 Mike Smith? Interesting. Don't pretend you didn't know that, Wes. Oh. Yeah, shocking. Yeah. Anyway, so the police sent out a bear attack warning after, and it depends on what source you're getting information from, but he was either 91 or 93 years old, from what I found. So Fujioshi Shindo's wife called the police when he found her husband collapsed and bleeding on the floor with huge gaping gash wounds across his body. And like we reported in that last news episode, Japan's been saying pretty recently, they've always had a good amount of bear encounters going on, but especially recently, a lot of fatalities, a lot of unnaturally high amount of bear. Is the bear training the police did not working then?
45:54 Mike Smith? Must not be.
45:54 Wes Larson? Or that song, that song they created a few years ago.
45:58 Mike Smith? Yeah, so just last year, a record amount of people, 219 people were attacked by bears and there were six deaths. That's a lot. Which is a lot, it seems like to me, you know?
46:08 Wes Larson? I think, and I think the majority of them are Asiatic black bears, but there are a number of brown bear attacks too, especially in Hokkaido.
46:14 Mike Smith? Yeah, up in the northern parts, which is kind of where we're dealing. So Akita is like the north. Western, right before you get to Hokkaido.
46:21 Wes Larson? Oh, I know where it is.
46:23 Mike Smith? Yeah, you do.
46:24 Jeff Larson? I've heard that so many times and I still just like always kind of forget that Japan has brown bears. That's cool though. Like shout out Japan.
46:32 Mike Smith? Yeah, really cool.
46:33 Jeff Larson? They got robots, they got sushi conveyor belts, they got brown bears.
46:39 Mike Smith? A lot of cool stuff, yeah. Pretty women in that one part.
46:44 Jeff Larson? Sumo wrestlers.
46:45 Mike Smith? They got sumo wrestlers. Oh my gosh, dude. So, a bear alert was issued by the community of Dyson. People started freaking out because again, it's been a hot topic recently. And just a quick rundown of some events that have happened just this past few months, but in July, a newspaper delivery man was killed by a brown bear just in a residential neighborhood, which is a curious event to have taken place in this area. In June, an airport in Yamagata canceled 10 flights after a bear broke through the perimeter fence and was patrolling across the runway. And an interesting one to me, this did happen in Hokkaido in Sapporo. A bear was found running through the streets just of the city and they canceled school. It's like, I don't know, that just seems like an unusual thing for school to be canceled because of bear.
47:30 Wes Larson? I do, I think for being a country that has this amount of conflict, they still don't have like a great response for it, which is interesting. Like usually when there is that much conflict, you start having some really good management kind of, you know, techniques put in place. And I feel like Japan is still lacking that and I don't totally understand why.
47:50 Mike Smith? Yeah, it, it is curious to me because you guys, you grew up in bear, grizzly bear country even up in Missoula. Like ostensibly there are bears in the area, but was there ever stories about them like breaching into like the city center?
48:04 Wes Larson? Sure. Yeah, like every, every week there's like bears in Missoula. Especially in one little neighborhood of town, but like because they have such a good response system in place, you don't really hear about it because it doesn't cause like widespread chaos, you know? Cause we did that other story not long ago about the one getting into the grocery store. There's like a full SWAT team standoff with this bear, you know? And it just seems, I don't know, I need to look into it, but it just seems like they don't really have people there that know what they're doing when it comes to bear management.
48:36 Jeff Larson? Like that video where like. All the wildlife people and police put a trampoline under a bear that's in a tree.
48:46 Mike Smith? Oh, yeah.
48:46 Jeff Larson? And then they like dart it and it falls on the trampoline and bounces like even higher than it was in the tree.
48:52 Mike Smith? Ah, that's a sad one.
48:54 Jeff Larson? Yeah, that was in Missoula.
48:56 Mike Smith? Yeah.
48:56 Wes Larson? Oh, it was Missoula. Oh, wow.
48:58 Jeff Larson? It was like in the middle of the city.
48:59 Mike Smith? Oh, man. That video, that just makes me sad when I saw that.
49:03 Wes Larson? I want to alter what I just said and say, I don't.
49:06 Mike Smith? Yes.
49:06 Wes Larson? I, they definitely have some people there that know what they're doing when it comes to this sort of thing, but it feels like they don't have enough.
49:11 Jeff Larson? If you're in Japan, bring Wes out there to come.
49:15 Wes Larson? Yeah, I'd love to go.
49:16 Jeff Larson? Teach you guys a bit.
49:17 Wes Larson? Manage some bears in Japan.
49:19 Mike Smith? He, he accepts payment in ramen noodle pack.
49:23 Jeff Larson? If Japan is listening, uh, DM us.
49:26 Mike Smith? Yeah. Okay. Well, so there's a bit of a twist to the story. Uh, so authorities arrived on the scene. Again, 93 year old, maybe 91 year old Fujiyoshi. Dead on the ground, big, seemingly, at least according to his wife, it looked like wounds sustained from a bear attack.
49:41 Wes Larson? Yeah.
49:42 Mike Smith? Uh, in the aftermath of the investigation, the police actually found the wounds to be more consistent with knife, uh, like a knife attack. And prime, prime suspect, suspect number one is their son who was living with them, who's 51, is Fujiyoki. Fujiyoki Shindo, or Shindo Fujiyuki, Fujiyuki. I'm getting that backwards one of those ways. Anyway, they confiscated all the knives in the household. They're still trying to determine what exactly the weapon was that was used. Fujiyoshi or Fujiyuki's defense is that there's no motive as far as has been reported so far. That's probably what he's saying.
50:20 Jeff Larson? Maybe the bear had a knife.
50:21 Mike Smith? Yeah. But it is interesting because it's not the first time in recent memory that a bear has been blamed for a crime that it obviously did not commit. So it's an interesting little alibi people are trying to skate by on. Not that I think Fujiyoshi, I don't know. It's not like he planted, incepted the idea that it was a bear to his mom, but, uh, just kind of a weird coincidence, I thought.
50:41 Wes Larson? Yeah. Interesting.
50:43 Mike Smith? Yeah.
50:43 Wes Larson? Well, we'll wait to hear what happens out there. Hopefully they got their, their top dogs on that case.
50:50 Mike Smith? Yeah. Prime Minister. Let us know.
50:52 Wes Larson? I've.
50:54 Wes Larson? He got stabbed. Their prime minister did that once.
50:56 Mike Smith? Shot? Something happened to him.
50:58 Wes Larson? I thought he was stabbed, but maybe he was shot. Yeah, I can't remember. Alright, so I'm gonna do a quick two-parter on two stories that we've done and like kind of some follow-ups. One is a direct follow-up. One is more of a tangential one, and that one is Jeff's recent episode about a man in Australia who was attacked by a saltwater crocodile and used his dog to try and escape the jaws of that beast, his dog Dig Dig. So this one I call Justice for Dig Dig because it's a story from, from the US where it was a very opposite reaction. So when Danny Wright-
51:35 Mike Smith? Dog used a human as a weapon?
51:39 Wes Larson? Danny Wright is a Massachusetts resident who moved to Florida 20 years ago. Seems to be a pretty tough woman. And when she moved there, she knew that she might have to deal with alligators at some point, but she never imagined it would be in the way that she had to the other week. And this is what her, what she said to NBC 10 in Boston was, "I was like punch, punch, elbow, elbow, kick." So that was her quote. Five-hit combo. Yeah, but pretty much what happened is she was walking her dog Dax, who's a four-month-old Shih Tzu, along a creek when an alligator suddenly exploded from the creek and snatched her dog. And she heard the dog squealing and barking, and then she was pulled toward the creek because it was, the dog was on a leash.
52:25 Wes Larson? And she said, "I wasn't going to listen to my dog getting eaten and to see it and to hear it. I'd end up in a psych ward if I went through that." So they're now all three in the water struggling. And the alligator had actually grabbed the dog Dax by his air tag. So by his little like GPS air tag on his collar. So she won't be able to find him if he gets away? He better not get away, or else it's gonna be a whole other problem.
52:49 Wes Larson? But she was able to pull the dog away. And as she was doing this, the gator latched onto her arm. And this is when she was like punch, punch, elbow, elbow kick.
52:58 Jeff Larson? Which like shout out to her, but that is like why you don't in this situation. Why it would be acceptable to not save your dog is there's a good chance it will change its attention to you. And now you're in big danger. I'm not saying she did the wrong thing. I'm just saying like.
53:16 Wes Larson? You are putting yourself at risk if you try to save your dog.
53:19 Jeff Larson? I'm trying to say like shout out to her for putting herself at this risk because that's scary.
53:25 Wes Larson? Right. Yeah. So she was bit by the gator, but she credits her upbringing in Boston, Massachusetts for ability to.
53:33 Jeff Larson? Bar fights.
53:34 Wes Larson? I know why I'm doing a country accent all of a sudden, but to fight off this wicked gator. I don't know. How Jeff, how do you do your Boston accent?
53:42 Jeff Larson? Yeah. You just don't do the Rs. Shock, shocking gator.
53:47 Wes Larson? All right. Baya. Eventually this alligator did let go of her arm. It took a bit of a pounding and then it decided to let go. The dog wasn't hurt at all, but she did have some pretty big lacerations on her arm and had to go to the hospital and get treated for those, but she did manage to save her dog. So good for her and good for Dax. And then the other one I had.
54:08 Mike Smith? Do you know what they should call? If a dog, if a dog gets wounded, call them lassierations is what I would call them.
54:15 Wes Larson? Lassierations. I do like that.
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54:50 Speaker 04 Welcome to the 50th Hunger Games.
54:52 Speaker 05 Witness the beginning of the revolution.
54:54 Speaker 04 Hey Mitch, you've been trying to take down these games from the start.
54:57 Speaker 05 Film for IMAX.
54:58 Speaker 04 Make them remember you.
55:01 Speaker 05 The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, November 20th, rated PG 13.
55:07 Speaker 06 Somebody asked me how I define myself. And I didn't know what to say. Because how can someone be defined? When we're always evolving? I've been so many things. I'll be so many others.
55:22 Speaker 06 Because identity is not a performance. It's an exploration. Never the same. But always myself. That's the paradox. Paradox Intense and the new Sweet Chemistry by Prada.
55:35 Jeff Larson? This episode of Tooth and Claw is brought to you by Grazza. Everyone knows I love to cook for my friends. Well, actually, that's not true. A select few people know that I do actually really enjoy cooking for my friends. And lately, my favorite new addition to my cooking has been the easy-to-use Grazza Extra Version Olive Oil. I love how affordable it is, and it tastes amazing. Their Sizzle, their everyday cooking oil that's perfect for roasting, sauteing, and anything you cook. They also have Drizzle, a super punchy, flavorful finishing oil that's great for dipping bread, whipping up salad dressing. I made an Orzo pasta the other day, where I used some balsamic salad dressing, and then I used the Drizzle with that, and it was so delicious.
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57:48 Jeff Larson? It's so delicious. If you're like me and you like a carbonated drink, go get the Element sparkling right now. You won't regret it. Get a free eight count sample pack of Element's most popular drink mix flavors with any purchase at drinkelement.com/tooth. Find your favorite Element flavor or share with a friend. And please use that promo code. I've heard from a lot of people that listen to our ads and just order it without our promo code, but it helps us if you use our code, so please use it. Try Element totally risk free. If you don't like it, give it away to a salty friend and they'll give you your money back with no questions asked. They have a very low return rate and high reorder rate.
58:33 Jeff Larson? So that's drinklmnt.com/tooth.
58:37 Wes Larson? All right. So this one, a few years ago, we reported on this story in a news episode. And it was a woman who tried to take her kid's life by throwing it into a bear enclosure. And Uzbekistan. And unfortunately, so when that happened, this woman was put in a psych ward. She was under psychiatric observation for years and had been receiving treatment. And then just recently, on the second of August, 2025, she was discharged from the psychiatric clinic with a recommendation for outpatient monitoring. And this daughter that she had tried to kill in the bear enclosure, she ended up stabbing to death.
59:17 Jeff Larson? Oh my gosh.
59:18 Wes Larson? Yeah, pretty crazy. And yeah, it goes to show if someone tries to throw their daughter into a bear enclosure to kill them, maybe they need longer. Behind bars.
59:29 Jeff Larson? Maybe the daughter shouldn't be allowed to go back.
59:32 Wes Larson? Yeah, that's probably not someone that should ever have custody of their kids again. Exactly.
59:36 Jeff Larson? It's really sad.
59:37 Wes Larson? Yeah. All right, those are my two follow ups. I got more stories, but I'll wait for my turn.
59:43 Jeff Larson? All right, well, I'm gonna get all of my stuff out right now.
59:46 Wes Larson? Okay, do it.
59:47 Jeff Larson? So, uh, I just like being in Austria, you know, something about Austria draws me to it. I think the Austrian Alps, when I see pictures of it, and I'm not saying, I'm saying mentally, I like being in Austrian Alps. You know, like screensavers that show Austrian Alps, I think.
1:00:06 Wes Larson? They're beautiful.
1:00:07 Jeff Larson? Be cool to hike there and a retired couple.
1:00:10 Wes Larson? Good sausages.
1:00:11 Jeff Larson? From Vienna.
1:00:12 Wes Larson? There it is.
1:00:13 Jeff Larson? They also felt that way and they brought their dog out there and the eighty five year old hiker was just walking around in the Alps with his wife, just enjoying life. They walk up on a herd of nine cows. What would your panic meter be at, Wes?
1:00:30 Wes Larson? Uh, panic meter would be like a one.
1:00:32 Jeff Larson? Mike?
1:00:33 Mike Smith? I don't know, isn't that the nine cows, that was actually a good sign when Joseph in the Technicolor Dreamcoat saw the cows. That was like a good dream. It was like the season of plenty was coming for Egypt, so I'd be pretty stoked.
1:00:45 Wes Larson? You'd be like a negative.
1:00:47 Jeff Larson? Wes, what is the most dangerous animal in the Austrian Alps?
1:00:50 Wes Larson? Uh, like wild animal or animal in general?
1:00:55 Jeff Larson? Either.
1:00:55 Wes Larson? I mean, animals in general, I'd probably say cows.
1:00:59 Jeff Larson? Really? Is there no grizzlies or any like predators really out in Austria?
1:01:03 Wes Larson? I don't, if there are grizzlies, they're really just like passing through. I don't think they have like a real population there. They probably have some wolves, but I think it's mostly like domestics that.
1:01:14 Jeff Larson? Like cows are the only things that would really square up with a human.
1:01:18 Wes Larson? I think so, yeah.
1:01:20 Jeff Larson? Well, that's why this story really stuck out to me is just like a lot of our people who have encounters, when you put yourself in their shoes, it's like. It's really sad that happened, but this person should have put themselves in a better situation. And like, there's things you could do to avoid it. And this one, it's just like, man, like, that would have for sure happened to me too, you know? Yeah. So they see these nine cows, which three of the cows are calves and the cows just. Does that change your panic rating at all, Wes? A little, it makes it a little higher. Yeah, honestly. The cows decide to charge them. They knock them over and they start trampling them.
1:02:03 Jeff Larson? So there's some local people, they're, they're called huts. There's some local people in huts that hear the commotion. They see it happening. They immediately go start assisting them like in the best way they can. And then get emergency services there. They are taken to a hospital and the man died from his injuries before he could even get to emergency surgery. Wow. So I was just like, wow, a cow killing you in the Alps seems one in a million, right? Well, maybe I guess because there's nine, it's more than that because there's nine million people there
1:02:40 Jeff Larson? that visit the mountains. But in 2024, a woman with two small dogs was also hiking in the Salzburg region and was killed by a herd of cows that charged her. So they're telling people to be really careful when you're walking with dogs, which is something Tooth and Claws told people as well. Keep them on a short leash and they think maybe the dogs kind of provoked some attack. But that's not, I'm not reporting that that's what happened. That wasn't reported. But they did say like, make sure if you have dogs, keep them on a short leash because that can provoke a
1:03:18 Jeff Larson? attack. And I just think it's interesting that if you're in the Alps, you gotta watch out for their, because they do have free ranging cows. And like, I think it's a little different than our cows where our cows are just so, so controlled. And like, so their lives, these ones are just like out in the mountains and it's like, you know, it is a big animal that used to be a wild animal until we completely domesticated them. So I just feel like you do have to be careful of any big animals you see, even no matter how familiar you are with them. Especially in like a out in the open type of setting.
1:03:59 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:03:59 Jeff Larson? Um, and then I just wanted to give my honorable mentions real quick too. There's two fathers that recently have died from crocodiles. Someone was, uh, killed in South Africa and someone was killed in Indonesia and then.
1:04:13 Wes Larson? So the, the South Africa one would be a Nile crocodile, not a saltwater crocodile.
1:04:17 Jeff Larson? Okay. I said crocodiles.
1:04:19 Wes Larson? Oh, I thought you said saltwater crocodiles.
1:04:22 Jeff Larson? I'm good.
1:04:23 Wes Larson? Oh, cut that, Bill.
1:04:25 Jeff Larson? No, I wanted you to say what type it was, so don't cut it, Bill.
1:04:29 Wes Larson? Okay.
1:04:29 Jeff Larson? Uh, but yeah, so one was probably a Nile and one was probably a saltwater, right? Indonesia was saltwater and South Africa was Nile.
1:04:37 Wes Larson? Yeah, for sure. Those two species.
1:04:39 Jeff Larson? And then the South African one sounded a lot like the story I did too, where he was kind of slowly dragged in, but just wasn't, didn't have the mangroves to hold on to or a dog to hit it with or something.
1:04:52 Wes Larson? And a bunch of people were there and saw it, which is pretty terrible.
1:04:56 Jeff Larson? And then also, uh, bachelor party in South Africa. Someone went into his tent after like partying all night and they like left a little crack in the top. And two hyenas jumped in through the top of the tent. And there's like a big female that bit his legs and then a littler one that bit him on the face. And that is kind of just an interesting story.
1:05:20 Wes Larson? I was thinking about that one, like, imagine just going really hard at your buddy's bachelor party. And you're like, maybe not in a total, you know, sober state of mind in your bed. And suddenly two hyenas show up. It would be so weird, like you just wouldn't know what to do.
1:05:37 Jeff Larson? Especially if they were laughing. If they were like laughing, I'd be like, wait, this is a prank. This is my buddy's fault and a prank. All right, that's all I got.
1:05:47 Wes Larson? Great. It, a little weird to frame those as your honorable mentions to me somehow, but I get what, I see where you're trying to get at there.
1:05:55 Jeff Larson? I shouldn't have said honorable.
1:05:56 Wes Larson? Notable, notable headlines.
1:05:58 Jeff Larson? Notable.
1:05:59 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:06:00 Jeff Larson? Notable stories.
1:06:02 Mike Smith? Well, yeah.
1:06:02 Jeff Larson? Thank you for calling. No, I'm glad you called that out.
1:06:05 Mike Smith? Yeah, I didn't want to be Mr. Pedantic, but that's just kind of who I am. So yeah.
1:06:10 Wes Larson? Very honorable of that man to be attacked by those hyenas.
1:06:14 Mike Smith? Yes. Right. Okay. I've got just a quick one, then I'll pass it off for you to finish whatever else you've got, Wes. So this is a story kind of developing. We don't have a whole lot of information. More or less the headline will give it away, but recently in the Ivory Coast, a hippo capsized a boat. It was a pretty narrow canoe like boat. There were 11 people on it, including some children and at least one infant. Yeah.
1:06:40 Jeff Larson? Well, sorry, I read this one too, but it said, it said that 11 people went missing and three people survived. So I think there's 14 people on it.
1:06:50 Mike Smith? Okay. So 14 people total then, three survivors, but it is curious though that 11 people are just gone. I wouldn't expect that on just like a river. I don't know what kind of river it was. It doesn't sound like it was intense whitewater rafting or anything, but the fact that 11 people are not able to be found makes me think that there's something a little more at work than just drowning, but I could be wrong. I'm just, that's total speculation on my part.
1:07:14 Jeff Larson? I read it too, and I couldn't find any updated articles. I looked through like 30 that just said 11 people missing. But then like some spokespeople said, like, we condolences to the family. And like their speech was very much as if they think these 11 people are dead.
1:07:32 Mike Smith? Yeah, right.
1:07:34 Wes Larson? I think, I mean, I know that like some of these people may have been children and stuff too. Um, I think it's very likely that it was mostly drowning that happened. Cause I do think, you know, if a hippo, if a hippo capsizes your boat in the middle of the river, there's a lot of chaos. There's a lot of splashing and boat flipping or maybe hitting people. Who knows? So my guess would be it's probably mostly drowning that happened to these people. I don't think it was the hippo or other animals.
1:08:03 Mike Smith? Yeah. I wasn't trying to insinuate anything more than just like, that is a high number of people on that fatality list for.
1:08:12 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:08:12 Mike Smith? It's tough.
1:08:13 Jeff Larson? It's a lot of people for one hippo.
1:08:15 Wes Larson? Uh, it could be some crocodiles too. Yeah. Yeah.
1:08:18 Mike Smith? Over to you, Wes.
1:08:19 Wes Larson? Pretty sad. Uh, I have, I have a quick kind of funny one that is a bit of a chlamydia update. For koalas. Oh, nice. So. Oh, nice. As we've talked about a lot on this show, koalas are sick little bastards. And they're constantly giving each other chlamydia. And that's mostly through sexual intercourse, but sometimes it's also through the mom. White elephant gift exchanges. The mom like feeds her, her babies the stuff called pap, which is kind of a, like a fecal thing. Yeah, but they can get it from that as well. Oh. But essentially there's parts of Australia where like up to 90% of the koalas in those populations have chlamydia.
1:09:03 Wes Larson? And it does really affect them. It does kill a lot of koalas. It's a huge problem. So a regulator has approved a world first vaccine to try and protect koalas from chlamydia infections. This would be a one, a single dose vaccine that a koala would receive once and would make it so the symptoms of chlamydia didn't have any effect on them. It would decrease mortality from the disease in wild populations by up to 65% or at least 65%. So really the idea here is there's like probably somewhere around 100,000 wild koalas out in Australia, there would probably be teams that would go out and just vaccinate
1:09:44 Wes Larson? wild koalas, or if like a koala got hurt or something and ended up in a veterinary hospital, they would just make sure to give this vaccine to any and all koalas that they ever get their hands on. It's been a really big undertaking. Um, a lot of money's been sunk into doing this. There are some people that are kind of poking holes in this. Uh, Deborah Tabbert, who is the chair of the conservation charity, Australian Koala Foundation, says that these resources would have been much better spent on, um, saving koala habitat. And she says, at the risk of sounding flippant, how can anyone be so delusional as to think you can vaccinate 100,000 animals? That's ridiculous.
1:10:26 Wes Larson? I accept that chlamydia is an issue for koalas, but I also want people to understand that they're sick because they haven't got any habitat. And we've talked about this a lot recently in the podcast, but when animal populations become fragmented and when you have these populations where there's no animals coming in or out of those subpopulations, they often do get all the same diseases. And in this case, a lot of that habitat now is butted up against agriculture. And we do think these koalas are getting chlamydia as a result of being so close to agriculture and to livestock and whatnot. So I do think she's right.
1:11:05 Jeff Larson? Like a line of to get to other koalas, then won't they spread their chlamydia to all those other populations that don't have it as much?
1:11:13 Wes Larson? They all have it. There's no population in Australia that doesn't have at least some chlamydia now.
1:11:19 Jeff Larson? If I ever get it, you know what happened?
1:11:22 Wes Larson? Yeah, you got it from a koala. I don't know what happened.
1:11:25 Mike Smith? That'd be so far down the list of guesses of where you got it.
1:11:29 Wes Larson? I would hope it's very far down the list. Anyway, so I, I kind of find myself in the middle of these two camps. I agree with this woman. Like, yeah, you know, the best money that could be spent on koalas is protecting habitat. But I also think it's really cool that they have a vaccine for this now for koalas.
1:11:49 Jeff Larson? Feels like it would be one of the easier animals to vaccinate to just as far as like, they're not too good at escaping things.
1:12:00 Wes Larson? Do you think there's going to be a big culture war now in koala society about like whether or not they're vaxxed? Like when koalas die, are they going to be like vaxxed?
1:12:09 Jeff Larson? Was that vaxxed?
1:12:11 Mike Smith? What? So how is a koala's behavior gonna change once it no longer has chlamydia? Is it just gonna be more energetic or what?
1:12:19 Wes Larson? I think it affects them in a lot of different ways. I don't, I don't know fully how, but I do know that one thing they've tried to do is, is give them antibiotics to deal with it when they do find sick koalas. But those antibiotics make it so they can't digest eucalyptus anymore. So it really affects their digestion. So there's not like an easy fix for it. And the disease itself does have like some pretty pronounced symptoms in them. So it's a big problem for them. This isn't like a small problem. Yeah, they just, you know, they just gotta be a little safer. These little perverts. Yeah, exactly.
1:12:56 Mike Smith? All right. Save it till they're married, maybe. Yeah, save it for marriage.
1:13:01 Jeff Larson? I forgot one thing before we go to categories. Uh, I just wanted to do like, because these ones can get a little depressing. I feel like just how many people get attacked. So I want to do an uplifting conservation thing. Uh, I don't think we've ever talked about it. I'm sorry if we have, but the Iberian lynx.
1:13:19 Mike Smith? I don't think so. Yeah.
1:13:20 Jeff Larson? Um, so they live in Spain and Portugal. And in 2001, there were only 62 mature individuals in the wild. So they were like critically endangered and at the point of almost being extinct. And then, uh, they put a ton of effort into preserving them. So in 2022, they got their population up to 648. And then in 2024, there's estimated to be over 2,000.
1:13:52 Mike Smith? Wow.
1:13:52 Jeff Larson? And a lot of that was, they also put a lot of conservation into the endangered European rabbit. And that was like a big food source for the lynx. So be like having the rabbit go endangered made it so the lynx went endangered. So they got a lot more rabbits and now they're getting a lot more lynx. And it's just a really great, uh, success story that I wanted to shout out.
1:14:16 Mike Smith? Cool. Thanks. Nice. Good job, Iberian lynx. Uh, is that it? You got any more stuff, Wes? No, I'm, I'm done. I'm good. Sounds like Jeff and I are done too. So categories it is, right? Yeah. Let's go. You put them together today. I did put them together. Wes gave me the enviable task. It's always so fun just thinking of questions to ask you guys, you know?
1:14:39 Jeff Larson? Yeah. You went out of the box with it this week.
1:14:42 Mike Smith? You're always the best at it. I tried to make it more interesting than like, what's your, you like bears, right? That's my category is you like bears. What's your favorite bear that wears a hat in pop culture? Okay.
1:14:53 Jeff Larson? That's a good one. Paddington for sure.
1:14:55 Mike Smith? Well, we've done, I mean, yeah, everyone knows that. We don't need to deliberate. Okay. So this is something that's been kind of weirdly top of mind for me. Because September always occurs to me as to be, is like being such a tweener month. It's like, yeah, not really summer anymore, but it's not really quite fall either. So I'm wondering if you guys have September in your top half or your bottom half of favorite months out of the year? Top. Yeah. Why?
1:15:23 Wes Larson? So I'm gonna tell you my cons for September before I tell you my pros. My number one con is that in Montana, at least the nights get cold enough that the water starts getting really cold. So you can't really like swim or spend as much time in water as you were able to before. Like in August, it's just so nice going down to the river and swimming and stuff. But outside of that, I love September. I feel like it cools off a little bit. It's generally when our wildfire smoke starts to clear out. It's when our leaves really start to change a lot here. I just think it's like such a beautiful, nice transition month. And I really, I used to hate the fall, but I think a big part of that was because I hated because school started. And I've slowly gotten away from that.
1:16:07 Wes Larson? And now between like October being one of my favorite months because of Halloween and just the fall in general. I really, September's definitely top, top half month for me.
1:16:17 Jeff Larson? Okay. I think it's my favorite month. Wow.
1:16:20 Wes Larson? Really?
1:16:20 Jeff Larson? I think it's my number one. It's between that and October, but I think I'd give the edge to September.
1:16:26 Wes Larson? But you're a huge nine 11 fan.
1:16:31 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
1:16:34 Jeff Larson? Building seven, I don't know what happened with that. You gotta. Open your eyes, sheeple. But anyways, yeah, I mean, the fishing's still pretty good. The colors change. It's like warm, but, but not like too hot. And the summer drains me a lot. And I kind of start getting the wind under my sails a lot more in September. Yeah. Football's back. Mike, football's back.
1:17:01 Wes Larson? It's your, it's your birthday month.
1:17:02 Jeff Larson? It is. Yeah. I forgot.
1:17:04 Wes Larson? Happy birthday, by the way.
1:17:05 Jeff Larson? Wait, can I say, sorry, Mike, I don't want to like steal your thing right now, but. Yeah. It's Mike's birthday last time we recorded and me and Wes didn't know. And then I was just scrolling Reddit and on the tooth and claw Reddit, someone said like, I think it might be Mike's birthday today. And it's like, it's so happy birthday, Mike. And I went to Google and I Googled Bilbo Baggins birthday and it's September 22nd because that's how I remember Mike.
1:17:39 Jeff Larson? Then I was like, Mike, happy birthday. But that's the best present is to leave you alone on your birthday.
1:17:45 Mike Smith? It was the best birthday. Yeah. So I celebrated it with my family the day before. So we got all that out of the way. So the actual day itself was just me and a bunch of leftover cake due to it was so sweet. See that Reddit user, that was me actually. It was like, oh, no one knew that I gotta.
1:18:00 Jeff Larson? I need to prompt him.
1:18:02 Mike Smith? No, not really. Um, I don't, I didn't bother me at all. And I hope you guys know that. It's either six or seven for me. I can't decide on which side of the line it falls. Cause I definitely like October, November, December more. And I think I like April, May and June more as well. But April and May is a little forgettable too for me. So I don't know.
1:18:22 Jeff Larson? What's the month that it's like either six or seven with?
1:18:26 Mike Smith? May, probably.
1:18:27 Wes Larson? Oh, May. You like April more than May?
1:18:30 Mike Smith? I don't really think, not a whole lot's going on in May for me. I don't know.
1:18:33 Wes Larson? May is when it starts to get really green and pretty. So May is one of my favorites.
1:18:37 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:18:38 Jeff Larson? And there's that joke always where it's like, it's gonna be May. That's fun to see. I forget about it and then I'm like, oh, that's good.
1:18:47 Mike Smith? N Sync, not backstreet.
1:18:49 Wes Larson? I think I like May, June, July, October and December more than September. But then I think that September is next. So it's what?
1:18:57 Jeff Larson? Way too.
1:18:57 Wes Larson? It's six for me. Yeah.
1:18:59 Jeff Larson? The fall colors right now are so good.
1:19:02 Mike Smith? They're gonna be even better in like two weeks.
1:19:04 Jeff Larson? I don't know. They're pretty peak right now.
1:19:06 Wes Larson? This is kinda peak. I feel like, yeah.
1:19:08 Mike Smith? Anyway, that's a, good to get that out of the way. Okay.
1:19:12 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:19:12 Mike Smith? Now we know how we all feel about September. The people were asking.
1:19:15 Wes Larson? Wake me up when September ends.
1:19:18 Mike Smith? Exactly. We know how Billy Joe feels about it. Doesn't even wanna be awake for it. It's just sleepy. Okay. So Fat Bear Week just started. I think yesterday voting began. I was wondering if you guys were competing, what your strategy is gonna be? Like what food are you gonna eat? How, how are you gonna go about gaining the most weight for the winter season?
1:19:38 Jeff Larson? Am I a bear or am I myself?
1:19:40 Mike Smith? You're yourself.
1:19:41 Jeff Larson? I did it as a bear and my answer is just eating a bunch of salmon.
1:19:45 Mike Smith? Oh, that's a good strategy. It works. It's worked in the past for bears.
1:19:50 Wes Larson? Uh, as a person, I would say for me, like my, the thing I can just eat and eat and eat without ever like feeling like I don't want more is, is cookies. So I would just eat as many cookies as possible. I would make those like Hershey Kiss peanut butter cookies. I would eat a ton of those. I would have just packs of Oreos on hand and I would just go real hard on cookies. And I think I would, that would be my quickest way to gain the weight.
1:20:20 Mike Smith? Peanut butter is a good one. That stuff has so many calories somehow. I don't, I don't understand nuts. How that works.
1:20:27 Wes Larson? I do find that after Christmas is always when I'm like my, my beefiest and it's mostly because of cookies.
1:20:34 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:20:34 Jeff Larson? I'll stick with my thread, but give a better human answer too. Uh, one of the foods I can just keep eating forever is sushi. So maybe I'll just get like a bunch of salmon sushi.
1:20:46 Mike Smith? Oh, that could work with some rice for the carbs.
1:20:50 Jeff Larson? Cream cheese in there.
1:20:51 Mike Smith? Get some cream cheese. I, I think I'm on board with the Oreo idea, Wes, but I will say the most or the least healthy I've ever been was when I was working the night shift. And I've come to learn some science that like sleeping at night is actually incredibly important for regulating like hormones and insulin and stuff. And I think that really did a number on me. So whatever I'm eating, it's gonna be through the night. Man.
1:21:15 Jeff Larson? I'd rupture my patella tendon again. So I can't move.
1:21:20 Wes Larson? That works.
1:21:21 Jeff Larson? I used to be thin.
1:21:22 Wes Larson? You'll probably do that regardless.
1:21:25 Mike Smith? All right.
1:21:26 Wes Larson? With all your surgeries.
1:21:27 Mike Smith? Uh, next one. Oh yeah. So Joe, we brought up Jeff was in an escape room. If we keep that part in the intro. So what is the most dangerous animal? You feel like you could have completed that escape room? If it were in the same room with you guys at the same time.
1:21:41 Wes Larson? That we think we actually could have completed it though.
1:21:44 Mike Smith? Yeah. Like you're confident you're gonna complete it still.
1:21:46 Jeff Larson? It's me and Danielle and she's smart. It's like two brains, but I was like three fourths of her brain and she was like
1:21:54 Wes Larson? one and one fourth of a brain, you know?
1:21:58 Jeff Larson? And we couldn't get through. So I feel like I'd need a really smart animal. So I think like coyotes are pretty good at getting out of stuff. Like I can't, like you're putting it in as far as like, what could I escape from? But like, I'm gonna need this animal's help to get out. So I'm thinking like a coyote or dolphin or something like that.
1:22:18 Wes Larson? Uh, I think the most dangerous animal I could have in there and still make it out would be like a black mamba. Cause I feel like there's some real danger there, you know? But I could probably avoid it and still get through the room. But like I would, I think there's snakes that would be a lot easier to avoid, but then they're not nearly as dangerous. So I think that's like right at that line where it's super dangerous, but I could probably still do it.
1:22:44 Mike Smith? Yeah. So I actually, I did take the liberty of texting Danielle to ask her this question and she said,
1:22:50 Wes Larson? Great.
1:22:51 Mike Smith? I, I don't think I could have escaped the room without clues from the guide. And I hated it so much. I wish something really dangerous was in there. So it would kill me and just put me out of my misery. That was her answer.
1:23:01 Jeff Larson? She was getting real frustrated.
1:23:03 Wes Larson? That's a great time for Danielle.
1:23:05 Mike Smith? Yeah. It made me feel so justified because like I've been telling Jeff that I would hate it. I've never done it, but I am confident that I would hate it. And after last night's events, I'm like,
1:23:15 Jeff Larson? I'm really glad you didn't come because we were pressuring you. But like the first one we did was so cool and it was really fun because like, yeah, we like communicate a little bit, but you also just kind of work your, on your own thing. And it's like a really cool room. And then this one is like so dark. You couldn't like read the clues and it's just not great.
1:23:38 Jeff Larson? I think you'd like it, Mike. I don't know. Like if we got a good one.
1:23:41 Mike Smith? Mm hmm. Sure.
1:23:42 Jeff Larson? I don't know.
1:23:43 Mike Smith? So.
1:23:45 Wes Larson? Immediately dismisses.
1:23:46 Mike Smith? That was Jeff's category. We're going to West.
1:23:49 Jeff Larson? I was wondering, would you give a harder note if I invited you to play frisbee golf or go to escape room?
1:23:57 Wes Larson? Oh, I'd go to an escape room a thousand times out of a thousand. I truly despise frisbee golf. I think like.
1:24:05 Mike Smith? It's beyond.
1:24:06 Wes Larson? It's just funny. Cause it's such a stupid, simple little thing to like hate that. And it seems like something Mike would love too.
1:24:14 Mike Smith? Hate.
1:24:14 Wes Larson? I don't agree with that.
1:24:16 Mike Smith? Hate.
1:24:16 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:24:17 Mike Smith? I'm like.
1:24:17 Wes Larson? Love is too strong.
1:24:18 Mike Smith? I'm like AI and I have no mouth and I must scream when he gives the monologue. Hate, hate, hate, hate, hate. Um, okay, Wes, this is your category.
1:24:27 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:24:27 Mike Smith? Uh, birding, you're a big birder. Uh, it's kind of like collecting and I equated that to the one collection I ever really got started down when I was younger. Pokemon cards. So I want you to create a Pokemon card out of the rarest bird you've ever seen. Just what's gonna be like its stats, what's on the card, what's it look like, et cetera.
1:24:47 Wes Larson? Yeah, so I, I, I had a hard time thinking of like, what's the rarest bird I've ever seen? And that's because I'm not someone who really like keeps a list or it's hard for me to go back and like really think on it. But I did pick one that I know is, is like relatively rare, especially in parts of its range. That I think for being a rare bird, I had like such an incredible experience with. And that's the Andean Condor. It's one of the largest flying birds in the world. So that would be one of its stats. Its wingspan gets up to 10.5 feet.
1:25:18 Mike Smith? Probably has a lot of HP.
1:25:20 Wes Larson? Yeah, a lot of HP when it comes to flying especially. And I think its special power would be its ability to soar on thermals.
1:25:28 Mike Smith? Okay.
1:25:29 Wes Larson? For me, the, the coolest thing, the, the reason I picked this bird is there's a lot, there's places in South America where you can see them. But it's usually like you see a little soaring bird and you're like, oh, that's an Andean Condor. You know? But I, in Chile, I went to this place where I hiked up a mountain and there was a roost. And I had Andean Condors flying in front of me at eye level at like 20 feet away. And it was just such an incredible experience with a really rare bird. And yeah, so for me, like what other things are on Pokemon cards? I'm not a big Pokemon player.
1:26:02 Mike Smith? That's a good question.
1:26:03 Wes Larson? What else should I be assigning?
1:26:04 Mike Smith? Is it, is it gonna be holographic? Is it gonna be all shiny and stuff?
1:26:07 Wes Larson? It would be holographic. They have this really cool crest on their head, the males especially. They have a white collar that's really beautiful. Hillary Henke, who was on our Makai episode, our friend that does bird training. She's in the middle of training in Andean Condor. It's been really fun following her Instagram and seeing her progress with this just monster of a bird.
1:26:30 Jeff Larson? How much damage could it take?
1:26:32 Wes Larson? Uh, that's the other thing is I think they could take a lot of damage because it's a really big bird.
1:26:37 Mike Smith? Like a hundred twenty damage points?
1:26:39 Jeff Larson? HP.
1:26:40 Wes Larson? Is that high? Yeah.
1:26:41 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:26:42 Jeff Larson? Would it evolve into a bigger Condor ever?
1:26:45 Wes Larson? That's a good question. That's, no, this would be its final stage of evolution.
1:26:49 Jeff Larson? This is the final stage.
1:26:49 Wes Larson? Because this is a big, big ass bird.
1:26:51 Jeff Larson? What about that one we saw in the Himalayas with like red feet?
1:26:56 Wes Larson? That was a bill. A bearded vulture and.
1:27:00 Jeff Larson? The one in the river with the.
1:27:02 Wes Larson? Oh, yeah.
1:27:03 Jeff Larson? Wasn't that one super rare?
1:27:05 Wes Larson? That was, um, what was that bird?
1:27:07 Jeff Larson? Or something?
1:27:08 Wes Larson? It wasn't a plover.
1:27:09 Jeff Larson? Piping clover.
1:27:10 Wes Larson? Columbus. It wasn't a plover.
1:27:12 Jeff Larson? Red footed piping clover.
1:27:14 Wes Larson? That's not what it was. I can't remember what it was, but that's not it. But yeah, that was a rare bird. That, that bird's more just that it was migratory and we were kind of right at the end of it, I think. So we were lucky to see it. But yeah, I don't, I honestly was trying real hard to think on like the rarest bird I've seen and I really don't know. But Andean Condor is definitely rare.
1:27:33 Mike Smith? Thermal soar sounds like a Pokemon move. Like, oh, he's using thermal soar. I'm dead now.
1:27:39 Wes Larson? Well, it's cool because you'll see them just soaring and they're not flapping their wings or anything. They're just like riding these thermals and they can do that for a really long time. It's really cool.
1:27:49 Mike Smith? Yeah. How much would you buy that card for?
1:27:51 Wes Larson? Uh, I'd buy it for like $20,000.
1:27:54 Mike Smith? Oh, that's pretty good. Yeah.
1:27:56 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:27:56 Mike Smith? But Jake Paul spent two million on a Charizard, but like, that's not, that's abnormal. Yeah, Logan, that's right. So I got my paws mixed up.
1:28:04 Jeff Larson? Listen, the, make fun of the paws all you want.
1:28:08 Wes Larson? I will.
1:28:08 Jeff Larson? And I normally won't clap back at all. But I think the Charizard necklace is cool.
1:28:15 Wes Larson? It's leaf.
1:28:17 Jeff Larson? And it's like.
1:28:17 Mike Smith? Cool. Is it $2 million cool?
1:28:20 Jeff Larson? Well, that's the whole point of wearing like a blinged out necklace in the first place. It's to show your wealth, right?
1:28:26 Mike Smith? I get that that's the point. I don't think it's cool at all though. Yeah.
1:28:33 Mike Smith? Alright, you're the odd one out then Wes. Okay, I'm gonna do, so I gave myself a category because I've embarked on a pretty, like a couple month-long project at this point now. So I went back and I re-listened to all of Taylor Swift's album and I'm gonna do my report just real quick. Five things off the top of my brain.
1:28:50 Wes Larson? Which album, the new one?
1:28:52 Mike Smith? No, I, so, we did the listener songs. Yeah, we did the listener song bracket to great success. People seemed to really enjoy that. I was still a little hung up on the Taylor Swift and I was like, okay, I'm gonna do my homework. If I'm ever gonna criticize her again, I'll at least be able to say I did the work. So I went back, I've listened to every single, I think I've listened to every single thing that she has released, studio-wise. I haven't gotten into the live releases, but...
1:29:18 Jeff Larson? Did you like read about her dating history to like know the stories of the songs while you were listening to them?
1:29:25 Mike Smith? I tried to do as much work as I could, but at a certain point, stuff started just bouncing off my brain.
1:29:31 Jeff Larson? I mean, it adds context to it. But go ahead.
1:29:36 Mike Smith? So, yeah, that's a level 10 escape room for us. So, I should have trusted my instincts. So 1989's still my favorite album. I think despite having my least favorite song on it, it's my favorite, yeah, not ever of all time by anyone. It's my favorite Taylor Swift album.
1:29:54 Wes Larson? Emerge from this like a hardcore Swiftie.
1:29:57 Mike Smith? Yeah. So my favorite song, again, I should have just known, but it was All You Had To Do Was Stay. I think it's a perfectly constructed pop song. Blank Spaces, of course, great. But Bad Blood, I think, is my least favorite song that she's ever put out. I think it's like stripped down to the molecule to just be radio-friendly as possible. But anyway, still love the album. I like it more than her re-release. I like the original version of 1989 more than her version. But I do like her version of Red much more than the studio release originally. So, take that for whatever that means. Evermore, better album I gave it credit for initially. Not amazing, but a lot better than I was giving it credit for.
1:30:37 Mike Smith? Midnight's is my least favorite album, which has Jeff's favorite song on it, I think. The Vigilante, whatever that, that's a terrible song Jeff, I'm sorry.
1:30:44 Jeff Larson? It's a good song.
1:30:44 Mike Smith? Tortured Poet Society, I think is what it's called. Still a boring album. I apologize. And my last observation is that Travis Kelsey is washed, baby. Get him out of the league. He sucks. The Chiefs, oh man. Suck my dick.
1:30:57 Wes Larson? He's always mad. Now.
1:30:58 Jeff Larson? He's been yelling at the coaches.
1:31:00 Mike Smith? Wow.
1:31:01 Jeff Larson? There's like not, there's like.
1:31:03 Mike Smith? Catch the ball, how about before you start yelling Travis?
1:31:05 Wes Larson? Too big for his britches. Yeah.
1:31:07 Jeff Larson? So wait, did you come out of it liking her any more than when you started?
1:31:12 Mike Smith? Not really.
1:31:13 Jeff Larson? Or any less?
1:31:14 Mike Smith? Kind of solidify, probably a little more, honestly. And I've never said that she's bad. I just personally don't care for her music, at least recently. But she is working with Max Martin again for this newest album, The Life of a Show, whatever the album's gonna be called. So I'm excited for that because turns out all of my favorite stuff was produced in tandem with Max Martin by her side. So that's exciting to me.
1:31:37 Wes Larson? Great. All right.
1:31:38 Mike Smith? I think that's it.
1:31:39 Wes Larson? That's it.
1:31:39 Mike Smith? Right?
1:31:40 Wes Larson? Yeah. Yeah.
1:31:41 Jeff Larson? All right.
1:31:41 Wes Larson? Thanks everyone for recommending stories for us.
1:31:45 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
1:31:46 Wes Larson? We appreciate it. It is helpful. Thank you to our intern Bryn for categorizing them for us.
1:31:51 Mike Smith? Thank you Bryn.
1:31:53 Wes Larson? That's also very helpful. Thank you Bill for helping us. Thank you everyone. Thank you India. Anyone get that reference?
1:31:59 Mike Smith? For sure, India.
1:32:00 Jeff Larson? Thank you everyone's a little problematic.
1:32:03 Wes Larson? Sure. Not everyone, but yeah. Uh, all right. We'll see you guys later. Love you.
1:32:09 Jeff Larson? Love you guys.
1:32:10 Mike Smith? See ya.
1:32:11 Wes Larson? Bye.
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