The Great White Shark Bite Heard 'Round the World

In what might just be the most-seen video ever filmed of a great white shark encounter, 19-year-old Heather Boswell suffered a devastating bite to her lower body. That moment turned out to be just the beginning of an excruciating life-or-death fight for the young galley worker. Watch here: https://youtu.be/fA4vqfPo0pM ~ Mint Mobile - Get Mint Mobile's 3-month 5GB plan for $45 upfront ($15/mo.) as a new customer at https://mintmobile.com/TOOTH; taxes and fees extra. Hims - To get simple, online access to personalized, affordable care for ED, Hair Loss, Weight Loss, and more, visit https://hims.com/TOOTH for your free online visit. ButcherBox - Get your choice of chicken breast or top sirloin for a year OR ground beef for life, plus $20 off your first box and free shipping when you go to https://ButcherBox.com/tooth. 3 Day Blinds - For their buy 1 get 1 50% off deal, head to https://3DayBlinds.com/TOOTH Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:13Jeff Larson?

  Hello, everybody. This is Tooth and Claw Podcast. We have the king of bears, Wes Larson. I'm sticking with it. You are the king of bears.

• 0:25Wes Larson?

  I'll be an honest king.

• 0:27Jeff Larson?

  Particularly black bears?

• 0:30Wes Larson?

  Uh, sure. Yeah.

• 0:33Wes Larson?

  I, I, and you know, polar bears are the bear I've spent the most time working with.

• 0:37Jeff Larson?

  Oh, king of polar bears, but.

• 0:38Wes Larson?

  King of the north. Yeah.

• 0:40Jeff Larson?

  Not doing such a good job as king.

• 0:43Wes Larson?

  No, I'm not.

• 0:45Jeff Larson?

  You know, people keep saying

• 0:48Jeff Larson?

  they're in trouble.

• 0:50Wes Larson?

  Okay, yeah. Who else do we have?

• 0:53Jeff Larson?

  I'm Wes's younger brother, Jeff.

• 0:57Jeff Larson?

  Let's see, what's some of my accomplishments? I made two shots out of five at the fair and won a big stuffed animal once.

• 1:06Wes Larson?

  Okay, that's good.

• 1:08Jeff Larson?

  We have Mike Smith. He broke Colorado's long jump record, but then he foot faulted, but then he might not have foot faulted, but they said he did, so he didn't break it.

• 1:18Wes Larson?

  It's, it's still under review. I, yeah, I appealed it. It's been 20 years.

• 1:23Mike Smith?

  No one's beaten you since. It stands.

• 1:26Wes Larson?

  Not in my record book.

• 1:28Jeff Larson?

  And then we have a special guest.

• 1:31Wes Larson?

  We do?

• 1:32Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:33Wes Larson?

  Who is it?

• 1:34Mike Smith?

  A ghost?

• 1:34Jeff Larson?

  It's, uh, yeah, a ghost.

• 1:37Wes Larson?

  I wish.

• 1:38Jeff Larson?

  The ghost of Timothy Treadwell is with us today.

• 1:42Wes Larson?

  He probably is.

• 1:43Jeff Larson?

  And he's just gonna be listening in. He's not gonna talk at all.

• 1:48Wes Larson?

  All right. I'm excited about today's episode. Because it's one of our favorite animals. It's an animal we all got to see together in Australia. You got any guesses what that might be?

• 2:00Jeff Larson?

  Koala.

• 2:00Mike Smith?

  Casawary.

• 2:01Wes Larson?

  It's neither of those.

• 2:03Mike Smith?

  Kangaroo. How did we not see a kangaroo? Isn't that like the craziest thing that's ever happened to anybody?

• 2:09Wes Larson?

  We saw wallabies, which is kind of similar.

• 2:12Mike Smith?

  How do you go to Australia for like a week and a half and not see a kangaroo?

• 2:17Wes Larson?

  Focus on wildlife too. Like pretty much everywhere we went, we were trying to see wildlife.

• 2:22Mike Smith?

  I don't understand.

• 2:22Wes Larson?

  But we did see an animal that not many people in Australia see. Uh, you have to travel to see it. It's not easy to see. And we almost didn't even get to have the experience we had because of some weird complications that we ran into. But that animal is the great white shark or in Australia. We almost didn't get to see it in the cage because we were the first group in and the shark didn't.

• 2:49Jeff Larson?

  They were always getting.

• 2:50Wes Larson?

  It didn't really show up. Yeah, but I mean, it could have like disappeared after a few more groups and then we never would have seen it. So I was really happy with our experience. Beautiful animals. I think a top, definitely a top 10 animal for all of us, I would say. Is that right, Jeff?

• 3:07Jeff Larson?

  No.

• 3:08Wes Larson?

  I'm not sure about you. Okay. For me, it's a top three. Mike, it's top three for you.

• 3:13Mike Smith?

  Top. It is number three for me. Yeah.

• 3:15Wes Larson?

  Okay. It's number two.

• 3:16Jeff Larson?

  Not top ocean animal for you, Mike. And it's top three.

• 3:21Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 3:21Wes Larson?

  Wow. Ocean animal for Mike is.

• 3:24Mike Smith?

  Holy cow, you're probably saying.

• 3:26Wes Larson?

  I don't know. What's your top ocean animal? Spotted eagle?

• 3:29Mike Smith?

  Orca.

• 3:30Wes Larson?

  Orca. Okay.

• 3:32Mike Smith?

  I do love spotted eagle rays.

• 3:34Wes Larson?

  Yeah, but I was thinking, you know, when I was trying to think of the, the subject for this, this episode, I was thinking, oh, we should do a shark. It's been a minute since we've done a shark. And I was thinking back, it's actually been a while since we've done a great white story. I can't even think of our last one. Can you guys?

• 3:51Mike Smith?

  Ooh.

• 3:52Jeff Larson?

  Was it the Jaws three parter?

• 3:55Wes Larson?

  I mean, yeah, like the 2016 one, or I mean, 1916 three parter one.

• 4:01Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 4:01Wes Larson?

  It could have been.

• 4:02Jeff Larson?

  Like two years ago.

• 4:03Wes Larson?

  Last one. Yeah. So it's been, it's been a minute. This is one of our favorite animals. It is the shark responsible for the most bites on people and the most fatalities on people. So this is our top dog. When it comes to shark bites. Uh, probably, yeah, I would say without a doubt, it's responsible for the most bites on seals because most of the other sharks don't eat seals. So, yeah.

• 4:26Mike Smith?

  That's like, wow, that's an interesting, because I didn't have anything interesting to say. Continue us.

• 4:33Wes Larson?

  To a lot of seals in the world, this is like enemy number one, you know, this is their biggest threat is great white sharks. So uh, we're lucky. We're not seals is what I'm trying to say, but not so much our victim in this story.

• 4:48Mike Smith?

  Do you think on the board? So you know how you always pin up like the pictures of the top 10 most wanted? For the seals board, do you think it's a profile shot of a shark on the picture? Or is it straight on face first?

• 5:00Wes Larson?

  Hmm. I think profile. I think they look cooler as a profile and a little scarier.

• 5:05Mike Smith?

  It's a little scarier. Yeah. If you have like a straight on shot of a shark, the seals are probably just like when you see a bald eagle straight on, you're like, that's kind of a goofy looking animal. But then you turn it sideways and you're like, that's the symbol of a nation.

• 5:19Jeff Larson?

  I bet you nine of the 10 are all just different great whites. And then there's like one really bad seal in there too.

• 5:30Wes Larson?

  Like the Epstein of seals.

• 5:32Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 5:35Wes Larson?

  Well, when I was looking into the story for the episode today, I actually stumbled on another story that happened recently. It is very similar to our main story. I'm going to start with it because there's some interesting parallels and I think it'll set the scene nicely for our main story today. So you guys ready?

• 5:55Jeff Larson?

  Yes.

• 5:55Mike Smith?

  Yes, sir.

• 5:56Wes Larson?

  All right. In 2024, a German tourist was aboard a United Kingdom flagged catamaran. So this is like a German person, but on a British boat. And she was enjoying the beautiful weather and clear blue seas south of the Canary Islands and directly to the west of Western Sahara, which is a country in Africa. A few days prior, she and her companions had left the almost unbelievably idyllic town of Las Palmas on Grand Canaria. And I did look it up. It is a gorgeous place that is now on my radar for places I'd love to visit. And they're headed south in their catamaran. They're straddling the western edge of the African continent. It's a particularly hot day.

• 6:38Mike Smith?

  Big legs.

• 6:40Wes Larson?

  Uh, straddling. Yeah, that's not, that doesn't need to mean that you're straddling with legs, Mike.

• 6:46Mike Smith?

  That's what it means to me.

• 6:47Wes Larson?

  Yeah. It's a particularly hot day on September 16th, 2024.

• 6:52Jeff Larson?

  Africa's got some nice humps, you know?

• 6:57Mike Smith?

  Oh, yeah. You squeeze right in because you know it has like the big bump on the western edge. You sit right in the saddle there. Oh.

• 7:04Jeff Larson?

  Oh dude, that dump, that dumper on Africa.

• 7:07Mike Smith?

  Big old giga dumpy.

• 7:10Wes Larson?

  As they're sailing, they decide to come to a stop and they take a quick dip in the ocean to cool off. And what they didn't know is that they're actually sharing that particular patch of water with the ocean's most refined and most feared predator. Both of our stories today are going to be stories of people getting in water quickly in places where there shouldn't be a great white shark, but they just have the bad luck to finally decide to jump in the water in a place where there's a great white. And as this German woman dove into the cool water, she's splashing around. This commotion and vibrations are traveling through the ocean and they pique the interest of a large great

• 7:53Wes Larson?

  white shark. It's open ocean, food is scarce, and any potential meal needs to be investigated. So the shark slices through the water effortlessly, picking up a bit of speed as it approaches the sound and these vibrations.

• 8:09Wes Larson?

  The woman swimming right next to the catamaran and staring up into the clear blue sky. When suddenly something large bumps her from below and tugs on her leg. She hardly has time to scream before she's pulled underwater. And then another tug on her leg. She's once again above the surface, reaching for the boat and babbling in fear. And as she comes out of the water, she looks down in horror to see that her leg is missing. And there's a huge amount of blood that's already coursing from the stump where her leg had just been.

• 8:38Jeff Larson?

  Man, that'd be so crazy, just like in seconds, your leg is just not there.

• 8:44Wes Larson?

  Yeah, an emergency call is made. She does her best to stem the bleeding. But she would have to wait almost six hours before the helicopter would arrive. And by the time she's loaded into this aircraft, she's already on the brink of death. She would end up dying from heart failure on the way to the nearest hospital.

• 9:03Jeff Larson?

  Hearts need blood.

• 9:05Wes Larson?

  Hearts do need blood. They need pressure. Uh, you need to have enough blood in there to pump that heart.

• 9:10Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, and so do legs.

• 9:12Wes Larson?

  So do legs. Yeah.

• 9:14Jeff Larson?

  When your leg comes off, a lot of blood falls out.

• 9:17Wes Larson?

  It keeps that pressure in there. That's true. That's some good medical insight there, Jeff. If your leg comes off, a lot of blood falls out.

• 9:26Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 9:26Mike Smith?

  You've probably been watching the pit, haven't you, Jeff?

• 9:29Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 9:29Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 9:29Mike Smith?

  That's how I learned about how you need a leg. Or at least that it's like actually pretty useful. Yeah.

• 9:35Wes Larson?

  Yeah, they are useful for a lot of things, but that's actually not our main story for the day. It's just one that's very similar to the one I'm going to tell, but ours has a better ending. Uh, we're going to call that a sad first course.

• 9:47Jeff Larson?

  So you know the Olympic divers?

• 9:50Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 9:52Jeff Larson?

  You think that they could like dive into the ocean and the shark doesn't sense it?

• 9:58Wes Larson?

  Just because they make such a calm, nice splash?

• 10:01Jeff Larson?

  Like they don't splash at all.

• 10:03Wes Larson?

  It, I, I know you're kind of saying that as a joke, but it's true. Like the, the less splashing you do.

• 10:09Jeff Larson?

  I'm kind of serious.

• 10:09Wes Larson?

  Yeah, like the less splashing you do in the water, the less commotion you're making. The less you sound like potential prey to a shark. Hmm. So yes.

• 10:20Mike Smith?

  It's interesting because I think Greg Louganis, that's how he got hurt was a shark.

• 10:23Wes Larson?

  It's not. He actually hit his head on the, on the diving board. He also got hurt from AIDS.

• 10:30Mike Smith?

  That's true.

• 10:32Wes Larson?

  All right.

• 10:33Jeff Larson?

  I don't know that reference, but it's still funny.

• 10:35Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 10:38Wes Larson?

  All right. So for our story, we're actually going back to 1994. And I just want you guys to know, when we started the podcast, this was one of the two great white shark stories that I had top of mind. The other was Rodney Fox. This, this one was the other one. So this is a very famous great white shark incident. It is one that a lot of people know about, and there's a good reason for that, and we're going to get to it. But, uh, we're in for, we're in for an interesting story today.

• 11:08Mike Smith?

  All right.

• 11:10Wes Larson?

  All right. So March, March 1994 was a hard time for a lot of people. Do either of you have any guesses why that might be?

• 11:18Mike Smith?

  I mean, it's been a whole year since Jurassic Park came out. Like, what are we, what are we all doing out here? What's there to do for fun?

• 11:25Wes Larson?

  That's right, Mike. Jurassic Park was no longer in theaters and the home VHS wouldn't be in stores until that fall. So there really wasn't much to do in March of 1994.

• 11:36Jeff Larson?

  Except for they did play it in theaters a lot in 1994.

• 11:41Wes Larson?

  I don't, they didn't. It's the theatrical run was over. I don't think they did.

• 11:46Jeff Larson?

  I promise you.

• 11:47Wes Larson?

  Okay. All right.

• 11:48Jeff Larson?

  Because you have a category coming up and I was looking what all was in the theater and Jurassic Park was in the theater.

• 11:55Wes Larson?

  All right. Okay.

• 11:56Mike Smith?

  That's not totally shocking. Big movies back then would just go for a year.

• 12:00Wes Larson?

  I, I remember this time pretty well though, because I remember there was this big, long period in between the theatrical run and the home VHS where I was like, starting to kind of forget the movie, even though I'd seen it five times in theaters. And it was in mid 1994.

• 12:19Mike Smith?

  That's probably your dad was tired of taking you there. So he just told you it was no longer in theaters.

• 12:24Wes Larson?

  That could be true. I was only nine, so I would have been pretty dumb.

• 12:30Wes Larson?

  So Heather Boswell might have been bored in March 1994, I don't know, but she decided to join earlier than that the NOAA National, oh, what is it? Oceanograph, uh, anyways, NOAA, N O A A Oceanographic Research Vessel, Discover, for a six-month stint at sea.

• 12:50Wes Larson?

  Heather's job is in the galley, which is essentially the kitchen of the ship. She's 19 years old. It's not necessarily the most glamorous job aboard the Discover, but she's gaining valuable experience. She's seeing parts of the world that not many 19-year-olds, especially in 1994, had ever seen. This ship like went around through Antarctica, up through the Chilean coast. It was a really interesting route that she got to see some really cool places. She'd graduated high school in 1992. She's now on the adventure of a lifetime before heading back to normal life and kind of starting her adult life. She straddled the coast of Chile? She straddled the coast, yeah. And then you guys are gonna have to get over that term. Nice.

• 13:33Wes Larson?

  Uh, however, in March of 1994, a few months into the journey, her adventure would turn into a nightmare that would change the trajectory of the rest of her life.

• 13:47Speaker 03

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• 14:16Speaker 04

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• 14:44Jeff Larson?

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• 16:01Wes Larson?

  It all started on a hot afternoon on March 23rd. The crew aboard the ship had been working all day. It's midday, stifling heat and they beg the captain to take a break so that they can swim in the ocean. So the captain and the crew decide to slow down the ship, they discover, to a stop and they allow the crew to take a dip in the clear blue South Pacific Ocean. The water's about 80 degrees, so it's just kind of one of those days where it's super hot outside and you're jumping into the water to get, you know, a break essentially. You guys know what that feels like, getting a break every once in a while from the heat? For sure.

• 16:38Jeff Larson?

  Not with you in charge.

• 16:39Wes Larson?

  Yeah, right, fair enough.

• 16:42Jeff Larson?

  Listeners, you have no idea, Wes, oh my god.

• 16:45Wes Larson?

  Not a good guy. Holds your feet to the fire.

• 16:47Jeff Larson?

  He's just like, "Do you check your emails?" I'm like, "No."

• 16:53Wes Larson?

  I think my like bar is check your email twice a week or something. All right. So hard.

• 17:00Wes Larson?

  We've talked a bit about the open ocean and how you really don't find a lot of life in these big stretches of warm ocean water. We talked about it as recently as the story of the Whaleship Essex. When you're in especially warm, big, open, pelagic ocean, there's not much life there. It's kind of considered a desert. And that might have been the thought process for the people in charge of the ship when they decided to stop in this spot. But what they might have not known or understood was that they were actually in one of the most biologically significant areas of the entire Pacific Ocean. Because actually extending from the coast of Chile and running for over 2,000 miles, there are two large underwater

• 17:45Wes Larson?

  mountain ranges called the Salas y Gómez and Nazca ridges. And these mountains have hundreds of peaks that either come very close to breaking the surface, or actually break the surface and are important habitat for tons of different animals, including corals, whales, turtles, and roughly 25 species of shark. So it's kind of this big oasis in this huge expanse of marine desert. And it's also where Easter Island is found. It's found in these ridges. Cool. What do you guys know about Easter Island? Them big old heads? Them big old heads. I want to see those. I like those heads. It's cool. There's all sorts of conspiracy theories about them too, Jeff. So you'd be into them. Like, did aliens put them there?

• 18:31Wes Larson?

  I'm not into alien stuff. That's stupid. Yeah, okay. All right.

• 18:38Wes Larson?

  So maybe the crew knew that they were in this biodiverse hotspot. Maybe they didn't. But honestly, even if they did know that, they probably assumed that there wasn't any real risk in swimming in the ocean. Because honestly, 9,999 times out of 10,000 times, there isn't going to be any risk when you enter the ocean. We all know that. It's probably a much bigger number than that even. You can, you know, I wouldn't think twice before jumping into this water if they wanted to stop and go for a swim. But this day was actually an exception, and it was a really big exception at that. And that's because the boat had happened to stop in the same general area as an especially large and especially curious great white shark.

• 19:24Mike Smith?

  Uh oh.

• 19:25Wes Larson?

  Uh oh. So just what the heck is this great white doing so far from shore and out in the middle of the ocean? Well, we've talked about this before, but basically even though the majority of great white sharks are going to be found relatively coastal and in, you know, straddling the coast, you guys.

• 19:46Mike Smith?

  What?

• 19:46Wes Larson?

  Uh.

• 19:47Mike Smith?

  They don't have legs.

• 19:48Wes Larson?

  And even though.

• 19:49Mike Smith?

  How would a shark straddle something, Jeff? Hold on.

• 19:53Jeff Larson?

  I definitely straddle the African coast.

• 19:55Wes Larson?

  I know, you've said that. Uh, but basically, even though they're mostly found coastal and in areas that have these good feeding opportunities, like lots of marine mammals, lots of fish, they are a migratory species and you could essentially find a great white shark just about anywhere in the ocean outside of the Arctic and Antarctic waters.

• 20:18Jeff Larson?

  Oh God, don't start with this.

• 20:21Wes Larson?

  With what?

• 20:22Jeff Larson?

  First dinosaurs, now great white sharks are birds?

• 20:27Wes Larson?

  I'm not saying they're birds. The other animals can migrate. Yeah, not, birds aren't, birds don't own migration. Humans migrate.

• 20:36Jeff Larson?

  Where?

• 20:37Mike Smith?

  To the McRib at McDonald's in your case.

• 20:43Mike Smith?

  Is that an annual thing still? That doesn't happen like everything does.

• 20:45Jeff Larson?

  New York City to Florida.

• 20:47Wes Larson?

  Aren't they done with the McRib? Isn't that over?

• 20:50Jeff Larson?

  They said that. Then they brought it back again. I'm done with it.

• 20:55Wes Larson?

  Are you?

• 20:55Jeff Larson?

  Mike ruined it for me.

• 20:57Wes Larson?

  Oh.

• 20:58Mike Smith?

  I apologize for nothing. For nothing.

• 21:02Wes Larson?

  All right. So we've talked about this a little bit, but um each year great white sharks will leave their relative hotspots. Uh these hotspots include places like the western coast of the US, the eastern coast of the US, southern Australia, South Africa, and they travel long distances before returning to their original locations. And there's still a lot that we don't know about white shark migration, but the discovery of the White Shark Cafe really helped Shark Biology just start to put together some of these puzzles. And we've talked about it even a little bit. Do you guys remember what the White Shark Cafe is?

• 21:40Mike Smith?

  No.

• 21:41Wes Larson?

  Basically, it's a spot between the western coast of North America and Hawaii, where adult white sharks congregate and they do these really deep dives every night. And we had no idea that this existed before they started tagging and tracking white sharks. And then they saw that a bunch of these white sharks were going out in the middle of the ocean. There's a big group of them out there and they're doing these deep dives. And researchers were kind of like, you know, what the heck is going on? And they've have since done research expeditions to this area to kind of figure it out. And they think that these white sharks are actually taking advantage of a really exceptional ocean oasis where

• 22:24Wes Larson?

  there's lots of fish and squid and maybe mating opportunities as well. So it's kind of like a spot where they can get some different types of food and maybe even mate. And a cool thing about great whites-

• 22:36Jeff Larson?

  What's like the human equivalent of that?

• 22:38Wes Larson?

  Um Las Vegas, maybe?

• 22:41Mike Smith?

  Yeah. I was gonna say like cafes aren't usually where you go to just like find, well, I guess to find opportunities to mate, but you're not mating in the cafe, usually.

• 22:51Wes Larson?

  No. But you might go there to meet, like, you might go there like, hey, maybe I'll bump into someone that I think is cool.

• 22:59Mike Smith?

  Like in the drama.

• 22:59Wes Larson?

  Exactly.

• 23:00Jeff Larson?

  Lou Williams, when he like left the NBA bubble to go to a strip club and he said they have really good chicken wings.

• 23:08Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 23:08Jeff Larson?

  Something like that.

• 23:10Wes Larson?

  Yeah. So basically, the mating thing, though, is more of kind of a hypothesis. And that's because, and this is one of my favorite things about white sharks or great whites, is that we really know nothing about their mating behavior. It just has never, it doesn't happen in front of us. We don't know where it happens. We just don't know about it. And I think that's so cool that they've been able to keep that secret from us for so long. It reminds me of the Lord of the Rings, like, oh, go ahead, keep your secrets, Frodo, you know? I just think it's neat that this is such an iconic animal that's so studied around the world. And we still don't know anything about this really important part of its life.

• 23:55Jeff Larson?

  Kind of cool, too, that they mate under intense pressure.

• 24:00Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 24:01Jeff Larson?

  You know, and they can still perform.

• 24:03Wes Larson?

  Yeah. What do you mean, intense pressure?

• 24:05Jeff Larson?

  Well, then you say they go deep in the ocean.

• 24:08Wes Larson?

  We don't know if that's for mating. That's probably to get squid and stuff. Yeah. But it could be for mating, but we have no idea.

• 24:16Jeff Larson?

  Hmm. Because the deeper you go, the more pressure you get.

• 24:19Wes Larson?

  That's true. Yeah. But they think that's probably them looking for food and most likely squid. But they're very private, kind of like Mike. We don't know anything about Mike's reproduction either, do we, Jeff?

• 24:31Mike Smith?

  You don't.

• 24:32Jeff Larson?

  I know a little bit.

• 24:34Mike Smith?

  I think it's, I mean, I leave it to you guys' imagination because in that scenario, I am whatever you want me to be, rather than the disappointing reality.

• 24:43Wes Larson?

  You kind of are the premier Mike researcher, too, Jeff, out there.

• 24:47Jeff Larson?

  Let's just say, like, as far as eating and mating goes, he's good at, like, eating and mating at the same time.

• 24:56Wes Larson?

  Okay. Oh, I get what you're leading toward. We're just gonna leave that, though.

• 25:01Mike Smith?

  Thanks, Jeff. That's like awesome wingman behavior right there. That's so good.

• 25:08Wes Larson?

  A similar thing happens with white sharks on the eastern coast of the US, and many of them leave their summer hunting grounds in New England and travel all the way to the Gulf of Mexico during the winter. Again, researchers think this may just be the sharks following productive food sources, potentially looking for mating opportunities, or even just trying to stay in their preferred water temperature range. So, basically, the important thing here, to sum this all up, is that we know we have these robust populations of white sharks around the globe, like the ones off the coasts of North America. We know they travel long distances, and we think that a big reason for those migrations is feeding opportunities.

• 25:52Wes Larson?

  But up until somewhat recently, we kind of just thought white sharks were coastal, and now we know that they're highly migratory.

• 26:00Wes Larson?

  Gotcha, like birds. Like birds, exactly. All right, so the whites and maybe dinosaurs, yeah, that's probably true. Maybe paleontologists know that, I don't know. So the white sharks on the western coast of South America are pretty understudied because there isn't like a large reliable group of sharks that you might find there, like you'd find in California or Cape Cod. But there are white sharks that do call that coast home, and they're likely to be migratory as well. And to me, it makes sense that a shark leaving the coast and heading out into the open ocean might want to follow an undersea range of mountains that have higher productivity than the rest of the surrounding ocean.

• 26:43Wes Larson?

  So basically, what I'm getting at here is that while you really are very unlikely to run into a great white shark in this part of the world, if you were to find one, it would likely be in an area similar to the one that these people are about to swim in.

• 27:00Wes Larson?

  And you know what? There was a white shark there, and she was huge. Yeah. We don't know the sex of this shark, but we do know that it was about five meters or 15 feet long. And that's a really big great white. So therefore, in my opinion, this is probably a female white shark, because they do get quite a bit bigger than the males.

• 27:23Wes Larson?

  And as this big shark cruised through the cooler water, a few dozen meters below the surface, her highly tuned sense of hearing picked up on the splashes and vibrations a few hundred meters away, she gradually started to climb up through the column of water toward the sounds. We really can't undersell the importance of sound for sharks. When you guys learned about sharks growing up, what was the sense that people always talked about with them, like their famous sense? Blood in the water. Yeah, blood in the water. And if you guys remember, we talked to Dan in one of our Indianapolis stories, who was on All the Sharks and is an amazing shark guide and cameraman and stuff.

• 28:06Wes Larson?

  And he mentioned that human blood doesn't really even have any biological significance to sharks, so they tend to ignore our blood. So that whole blood in the water thing is kind of overblown in media. But the thing that we probably should talk about even more is how important sound is for sharks. Essentially, their whole body is set up to detect and analyze vibrations in the water. And without going too much into the physiology of it, a shark kind of experiences sound in the way that you feel the bass vibrating from a big amp at a concert. You actually feel it in your body, like, you know, kind of buzzing in your body. And they can, they can sense vibrations like that.

• 28:48Wes Larson?

  Their whole body is tuned to pick up on those vibrations. So I'm really oversimplifying that, but basically you just should understand that the sensitivity to vibration can help them pick up on sounds that are especially interesting. And the splashing and thrashing and generally kind of erratic sounds that an injured, like an injured or incapacitated fish or marine mammal might make are really similar to the types of sounds that people make when they jump and swim in the ocean and they're trying to cool off. Hmm. I think especially if you're just kind of chilling in the ocean and like splashing each other and just kind of having a fun time relaxing, we tend to make a lot of those really erratic types of sounds.

• 29:33Wes Larson?

  Dunking each other? Dunking, if you dunk someone.

• 29:38Wes Larson?

  It's weird how if you get dunked underwater by someone like in two seconds, you feel like you're about to run out of air. But if you just like put your head under and try and hold your breath, you can go for like a minute and a half or whatever. You know, isn't that strange?

• 29:54Jeff Larson?

  Very strange.

• 29:55Wes Larson?

  Pretty strange, huh?

• 29:59Mike Smith?

  It's worth thinking about more.

• 30:00Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 30:01Mike Smith?

  Imagine how much trouble you'd be in if there was a great white shark in a dunk take at the county fair. You'd be, oh my gosh.

• 30:09Jeff Larson?

  You know what? I don't think I'd throw the ball at the target.

• 30:13Wes Larson?

  Yeah, I don't think I would either.

• 30:15Mike Smith?

  What if Epstein was sitting on that little? Well, then I'd.

• 30:17Jeff Larson?

  Then I'd maybe. Maybe I would because I'd just assume like they knew. Like something I didn't know.

• 30:26Mike Smith?

  That they mean they put that person up there for a reason.

• 30:28Jeff Larson?

  Like I would assume that like they didn't think the person would get killed by the shark. So I'd throw it at the target and then he'd get eaten.

• 30:37Mike Smith?

  I wonder if you could request that's your method of execution. You want to die by if they'd honor that. Cause like, you know, sometimes you'd be like, I want, I want firing squad.

• 30:47Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, but like 20 people throw the ball at once. So no one knows.

• 30:52Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 30:54Wes Larson?

  They famously don't do well in captivity. So you have to have like a pretty fresh shark in there or else it wouldn't probably bite you even.

• 31:01Jeff Larson?

  They got Ace Ventura.

• 31:03Wes Larson?

  That's true. He just wanted to go to the bathroom or no, someone else wanted to go to the bathroom. Right? I can't.

• 31:08Jeff Larson?

  He was spying. He said he's going to the bathroom.

• 31:10Wes Larson?

  That's right.

• 31:11Mike Smith?

  Right. And he's like, do not go in there.

• 31:13Wes Larson?

  All right. So the discoverer had lowered a cargo net into the water and they also launched a Zodiac skiff. Uh, to provide support to any of the swimmers in the water that might get tired or for whatever reason need their support. They also had people up on the deck, watching the swimmers. And I think that's mostly just because ocean currents and waves can be really unpredictable. Um, and even though the water was pretty calm on March 23rd, 1994, they really didn't want to take any chances. So as Heather Boswell jumped into the warm water of the South Pacific with her shipmates, she feels immediately refreshed and totally alive. And I know that feeling like jumping off a boat into a big body of water on a hot day.

• 31:56Wes Larson?

  It really hits like nothing else like that is a top 10 sensation, I think. And her and her newfound friends are really just like splashing and yelling and having a great time as they swim around the ship. And they're shadowed by these people in the skiff and up on the deck. And they spend about an hour in the water total. So they're in the water for quite a while. You don't think that's a top 10 sensation, Jeff?

• 32:21Jeff Larson?

  I'm just thinking

• 32:23Wes Larson?

  Cold water on a hot day?

• 32:24Jeff Larson?

  Sensations now, you know?

• 32:26Wes Larson?

  We have this little, I've talked about it before, but we have a little swimming hole in the creek near us. And on like a 90 degree day here, walking over and jumping in that little swimming hole is like maybe my favorite thing to do all year long.

• 32:40Jeff Larson?

  You know what made it seem like it would get top 10, but then wasn't, wasn't any different? Those advertisements for Five gum, just those whole commercials. There's all these like sensory things and like

• 32:53Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 32:54Jeff Larson?

  blue colors and stuff, you know?

• 32:56Wes Larson?

  That's true. It's just normal gum.

• 32:58Jeff Larson?

  But then you just eat it and it's like, whoop.

• 33:00Wes Larson?

  Yeah. As the 15 foot gray white neared the splashing, the sensitive lateral line running down the length of her body helped her to more fully pick up the vibrations and understand that they were unique and interesting. She's now only a few meters away from the splashes and almost all of her senses are firing. Smell, sound, sight are all sending the exact same message that there's something struggling on the surface and that it might be food. But she really only has one way to know for certain if this is actually worthwhile food. And her mouth opens as she approaches the closest of the crew of the Discover swimming in the water. It's gotta be a top 10 sensation for sharks.

• 33:46Wes Larson?

  Mouthing something new? Sensing food on splashing? Yeah, it probably is. Probably number one, or probably number two. Mating is up there, I bet. Yeah. Orgasm.

• 33:57Mike Smith?

  We don't know. We have no idea.

• 33:59Wes Larson?

  We don't, but we can guess.

• 34:00Mike Smith?

  Really painful.

• 34:01Wes Larson?

  Yeah, that's true. So these nine swimmers have been swimming for quite a while, and one of the people up on the deck that was watching them had a camcorder, which he had already turned off. He had kind of filmed some of their just roughhousing and whatnot. But then suddenly someone on the deck is yelling and screaming shark and pointing toward the water near the swimmers. The swimmers and the safety team kind of laughed nervously, thinking it has to be a prank. And then the person yells, no, I'm serious. There's a shark. And as these people are pointing toward the water, this crew member turns on the camcorder, points it out towards the swimmers and presses record. Oh, wow. So there's a video of the shark bite.

• 34:47Wes Larson?

  And I want to play it for you guys. It's probably the most famous video ever captured of a shark bite. And really up until the death of Simon Nellis a few years ago, it's probably the only time a white shark bite had been captured on video.

• 35:03Wes Larson?

  So I'm going to play it quickly. Our audio audience is going to be able to hear it. Our video audience will be able to see it. That's how that works.

• 35:14Wes Larson?

  And after we play it, I'm going to break down exactly what happened in the water. So we're going to play it first and then we're going to go through what happened. And I I'll warn you guys, there's a little bit of graphic language and then obviously a little bit of graphic imagery in this. Nothing too insane, though, as far as the imagery goes. The F word comes up a couple of times, though, so just be ready for that. Yep. Word. One other thing, I could not find the original video anywhere. I searched Noah Archives. I thought about doing like a FOIA request for it. I could not find it. So every single one of them I found had some sort of narration and music overlay on it.

• 35:53Wes Larson?

  This one was the best one. It's the least offensive and it plays the most of the video. I think it's probably from the 90s. So here you go.

• 36:02Speaker 05

  To a different kind of predator. Seven miles off the coast of Chile, oceanic research students enjoy a dip in the ocean to cool off. Unfortunately, they weren't alone.

• 36:54Wes Larson?

  Alright, so that's the video. It is one I've probably seen a hundred times. This was on a lot of like animal attack shows back in the 90s, early 2000s. It's very famous because even though the cam, the camera person kind of loses the, you know, like drops the camera during the most intense part of this. He's no Spielberg. You do see a large great white shark bite Heather. And you see blood in the water and it's pretty nuts. Alright, so we're gonna go through what actually happened. So what a lot of people don't know is that Phil Buffington was actually one of the swimmers in the water.

• 37:35Wes Larson?

  He had been treading water near the whole group with his girlfriend when the massive shark materialized out of nowhere and bites into both of his legs with a single bite. This bike, this bite was so quick and initially painless that Phil is just kind of in a bit of a daze before he starts yelling shark along with the people up on the deck. And the shark swims away from him, I think because of all the commotion and the fact that there's other people right around him. And at this point, the panicked swimmer starts swimming toward the cargo net that's dangling in the water. And the three people on the Zodiac are pushing in closer to try and help pull people out of the water. You also can hear the boat horn like firing because they're trying to just get everyone

• 38:19Wes Larson?

  out as quickly as possible. Nineteen-year-old Heather Boswell had been swimming a bit separated from the rest of the group and was about 25 feet or around eight meters away from the nearest swimmer when the shark turned toward her and focused in on the only isolated target. Heather immediately understood that she was most likely about to be bitten by the shark, and she had this certainty of this realization and it gave her actually a strange sense of calm. And you see her in the video flip over onto her back and she's kind of doing this calm backstroke toward the ship. When the shark gently bites into her right ankle and lower leg on her right side, pulls her beneath the water while shaking her back and forth.

• 39:03Wes Larson?

  And I say gently because that's how she described the bite. She said it was gentle, kind of like a puppy mouthing you with its teeth. And from what we've learned about great white sharks on our show is that's exactly what they do on these exploratory bites. They don't have hands, they don't have something that they can reach out and touch and decide, oh, you know, is this food, whatever, they actually do that with their mouth. So that's what this first bite is. It's probably what the first bite on Phil was too, and I'm guessing the first bite on Heather was that too. Just the shark kind of deciding, is this worth eating? But for us, that can be devastating. And horrified friends are watching from all angles as Heather's blood starts spreading

• 39:45Wes Larson?

  through the water as she desperately tries to swim away from the shark. In the video, the white shark then releases her leg. That's the part that you actually see the shark like in the water biting her and it bites her right leg and then releases it. That's when the camera drops. And what we don't see is her swim frantically toward the Zodiac while the crew is holding out a wooden pole for her to grab onto. But as she grabs onto this pole, the shark bites into her left leg, once again pulling her under the water. Two of the crewmates on the Zodiac reach down, grab her under the arms, the third is hitting the shark with the pole, and they have this brief moment of a tug-of-war with a 15-foot great white shark. And then Heather feels a pop in her leg.

• 40:30Wes Larson?

  Suddenly, the people on the Zodiac say she was incredibly light and easy to pull out of the water and into the boat. And that was because the shark had bitten her left leg completely off at the lower thigh. She's in shock as she looks down in the Zodiac and sees that her left leg is completely gone.

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• 43:14Wes Larson?

  The shark is probably now convinced that this is a feeding opportunity. I think the second bite on Heather was it actually trying to get some food? It turns and heads towards the swimmers that are scrambling up the ladder. But on the deck, it just so happened that one of the crewmen had checked out their pistol that day and was going to do some target practice. And he had this pistol and he starts firing it at the shark and it is enough to deter it away. And then it's kind of swimming right alongside the ship and he runs alongside and starts firing more rounds at the shark, hits it, and they think he killed it because it actually flips over and sinks. Which is a pretty good hint that he killed the shark. Yeah.

• 43:57Jeff Larson?

  Wouldn't it float though?

• 43:59Wes Larson?

  No, it would probably sink. Yeah.

• 44:02Mike Smith?

  Where, so would that be in the brain? Where would the bullet have to hit probably to kill the shark like that?

• 44:08Wes Larson?

  Yeah, yeah, probably in the head. Yeah, who knows? And I think it's unfortunate.

• 44:13Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 44:13Wes Larson?

  Actually, that that happened because they had had pretty much everyone out of the water at this point. And it's not like the shark's ever going to see another person.

• 44:20Jeff Larson?

  I feel like if it floated, they could have maybe got her leg.

• 44:23Wes Larson?

  That is, I did have that thought too. Like if the shark had been on top of the water, they might have been able to retrieve her leg. Yeah.

• 44:29Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, just sew it on real quick.

• 44:32Wes Larson?

  So meanwhile, both Heather and Phil are pulled aboard the ship. They're taken to the med bay for emergency care. Phil had a lot of puncture wounds and cuts on both legs. He would ultimately require 50 stitches on his wounds, but Heather's in much worse shape. The ship had like pretty extensive medical equipment and professionals on board. So they immediately start working on Heather. They do a tourniquet above the stump of her leg to stem the bleeding. And her really big lucky break is that her femoral artery had been severed. But I think this has happened in some, in some of our other stories. Either the shark closed it when it bit, or it kind of snapped back and closed itself.

• 45:14Wes Larson?

  But it did close and she wasn't losing blood out of her femoral artery. And had she been, she almost certainly would have died. But the majority of her bleeding was from other veins and vessels and her blood loss had been extensive, but it wasn't enough to kill her yet. Her blood pressure was really low though, and her heartbeat was slow and thready. So one of the first things they had to do was just start an IV and put a lot of fluid into her system to try and keep her blood pressure up.

• 45:41Jeff Larson?

  And what, why is that Wes? I told you earlier.

• 45:44Wes Larson?

  Yep. If your blood falls out of your leg, then you die.

• 45:48Jeff Larson?

  Because your heart needs blood.

• 45:51Wes Larson?

  It needs blood and that's blood pressure. Yeah. But they were putting so much fluid into her blood that was just to time that, like the point of that was to keep her blood pressure up. That toward the end of this ordeal, her blood platelet, like her red, red blood count was so low that it was like a third of what it should be. Because her blood was mostly just this IV fluid that they were putting into her.

• 46:15Jeff Larson?

  But she's like a third of what she was too.

• 46:19Wes Larson?

  No, I think she's like probably five sixth of what, I don't know. I don't know how much your left leg is of your total.

• 46:28Mike Smith?

  How much blood?

• 46:30Jeff Larson?

  She's five.

• 46:32Mike Smith?

  Yeah, no, you're right, Jeff.

• 46:35Mike Smith?

  A third seems like too much to survive through. That's.

• 46:39Wes Larson?

  Yeah. The thing I've learned is that obviously like red blood cells and white blood cells are really important for carrying like oxygen and nutrients and whatnot through your body. But in a, like in a trauma situation like this, the main thing is keeping your blood pressure up. Because otherwise your heart fails and you go into cardiac arrest. So like, they mostly just needed fluid in there to keep the pressure up. And then later you can worry about it actually being blood. Because they're able to give her oxygen and stuff, so they aren't too worried about oxygen transport and whatnot. Does that make sense?

• 47:16Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, it still just seems like

• 47:21Jeff Larson?

  bad.

• 47:22Wes Larson?

  Yeah, and it is like you can't do that for very long, but it is a good way to keep someone alive in in a situation like this. They're also doing the best to keep her calm because she is going through some like big mental struggles too. Uh, and the crazy part about all this is that they had to get the ship all the way back to Easter Island in order to get her to real help and that's a twenty hour journey.

• 47:45Jeff Larson?

  Oh, wow.

• 47:46Wes Larson?

  So they just had to keep her stable during that twenty hours, like manage her fluids, her blood pressure, her pain, her mental state. She was really starting to like, think about all the things that were going to change in her life. And it was really important that she keep fighting because she had this long journey ahead of her. And Phil, we shouldn't leave Phil out of this.

• 48:05Jeff Larson?

  Right.

• 48:06Wes Larson?

  And they're also worried about the the tourniquet killing important tissue on her stump. Because you need a stump to have a good prosthetic, like if you lose your leg, like right at the place where it joins your body. Uh, it's hard to to have a prosthetic, but if you have a decent stump, there's a lot more that you can do. So they really didn't want her to lose her stump. So what they would do is they would take the tourniquet off for a little bit, let blood like push back into her stump and then they'd reapply the tourniquet and they just had to keep doing that. Yeah, over and over and over again. And I think someone told us once that you shouldn't do that. But maybe on like a twenty hour journey, it was worth it. And this was a doctor.

• 48:48Jeff Larson?

  I wonder how close to dying she was though.

• 48:51Wes Larson?

  Yeah, they think that she lost.

• 48:52Jeff Larson?

  Letting out a lot of blood to do that.

• 48:55Wes Larson?

  Well, they would stop it before it would like start to ooze out of the end again.

• 48:58Jeff Larson?

  Okay.

• 49:00Wes Larson?

  But yeah, who knows? Uh, at one point they turn her onto her side and she almost goes into cardiac arrest, which just goes to show you that she's really just holding on by a thread this entire journey to Easter Island. When they get closer to Easter Island, a med vac team arrives on the ship and this team takes over her care. At the island, they keep her on the ship until they're absolutely ready to transfer to the aircraft. Both she and Phil are flown to the hospital in Panama, where they finally receive full medical care to try and clean and stabilize their wounds. And Heather's family was actually waiting for her there in Panama.

• 49:38Jeff Larson?

  Oh, wow.

• 49:39Wes Larson?

  I wanted to read a quote from one of the medics that worked on her leg in Panama. He said, when we got the bandages off, there was about two and a half to three inches of her femur sticking out that was prominent. The rest of it was just like ground hamburger meat in a fish mouth type of configuration. So just picture that, a fish mouth type of configuration.

• 50:01Jeff Larson?

  It's gonna be hard for her to straddle any more coastlines.

• 50:05Mike Smith?

  If there's a stump in the prosthetic, no. She, I mean, they could give her an even bigger leg and it'll be easier.

• 50:11Wes Larson?

  That's true. Or like one that is like real grippy, you know?

• 50:14Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 50:15Wes Larson?

  Or straddling. After a few days in Panama, she's transferred to a hospital in her hometown of Seattle. And one little footnote is just about every article or video that I read or watched made no mention of Phil. And it kinda sucks to get both legs chomped by a great white, get 50 stitches and still be a footnote. Like, that kinda blows. Yeah. But.

• 50:41Mike Smith?

  Real Togo Balto situation.

• 50:44Wes Larson?

  Yeah, that is a Togo Balto situation. It's a good point. So a tricky thing about Heather's injury was that the exposed femur was really valuable for a prosthetic, but it was just this chunk of bone sticking out and she needed to have tissue and skin over that bone in order to use it. So what doctors did is they put her stump in this torsion device for like 15 to 20 hours a day that basically pulled on her skin and stretched it out so it could finally be pulled over the end of this femur stub.

• 51:17Mike Smith?

  Jeez.

• 51:17Wes Larson?

  Mike, you have a device that you use to stretch something out, right?

• 51:22Mike Smith?

  I was gonna say it's good thing they didn't put her testicles in the torsion device.

• 51:26Wes Larson?

  She doesn't have testicles. I don't, yeah, I.

• 51:28Mike Smith?

  What?

• 51:29Wes Larson?

  That would have hurt. I had no idea they could do this, that they could just like over a matter of days or whatever. I don't know how long she was in this device, but they could stretch your skin that much.

• 51:40Jeff Larson?

  Did you just say how long she was?

• 51:42Wes Larson?

  Yeah, I said how many hours per day, but I don't know how many days total. But yeah, so anyway, that's something they can do.

• 51:48Mike Smith?

  It could still be going on now, you think?

• 51:50Wes Larson?

  Yeah, it still might be happening.

• 51:52Jeff Larson?

  I would keep it going till I was like 12 feet tall.

• 51:57Mike Smith?

  Wemby.

• 51:58Wes Larson?

  Yeah, it would just be skin, though. You'd have to like fold the skin up into long legs.

• 52:04Mike Smith?

  They'd be like, now just tell us when you're back to like your original length and be like, no, I was a little longer before. Like, really? You're 12 feet tall. I don't know.

• 52:16Wes Larson?

  Uh, so it was actually, one of the sources I used was this show from like the very early 2000s called Did You See That? Which is a great name for a show.

• 52:28Wes Larson?

  Yes, I just watched it on your show. Um, but I actually, I think this clip is going to be helpful to explain what this looked like. And it's, it's kind of an interesting animation from this time. So I'm going to share this clip too.

• 52:41Jeff Larson?

  I mean, I guess it makes sense in that like, you see it with people that have extreme weight loss. Like people who get up to 600 pounds and then get down to 200.

• 52:52Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 52:52Jeff Larson?

  They have like a lot of excess skin that had stretched out.

• 52:56Wes Larson?

  Yeah, and they just had to force the skin to stretch a few inches, I think, in like, in pretty minimal time. So this is, this kind of shows how that happened.

• 53:07Speaker 06

  Dr. Smith wanted to close the wound as soon as possible, but the nature of the amputation caused a problem.

• 53:17Speaker 06

  When Heather was attacked by the shark, it tore through the flesh of her left leg at mid thigh. As she struggled to pull away, it bit all the way through her femur, leaving the bone sticking out a little beyond the muscle and skin. With the wound still exposed, Heather's skin was pulled and stretched until it could be sewn together over the end of her femur.

• 53:41Speaker 07

  She was in an awful lot of pain, especially undergoing the surgeries. It almost caused lame pain.

• 53:49Wes Larson?

  All right, so, pretty crazy, something I didn't know that was possible before we did this story. But, like her dad said, incredibly painful. She's released from the hospital after three weeks. She's confined to a wheelchair. And once she's fully healed and her stump was strong enough, she is fitted with a prosthetic leg and she immediately starts the process of relearning how to walk with this prosthetic leg. I assume Heather Boswell is still around. She was only 19 in 1994. I couldn't find anything recent from her, though I think the last shark attack show I saw her on was like 2017. So I figure she might just be done being in the public eye.

• 54:31Wes Larson?

  It's totally understandable, so because of that, I didn't really dig into what she's up to these days. All right, pretty crazy story.

• 54:40Mike Smith?

  The skin stretching, I mean, I just didn't think about that quite properly until I saw the little animation. That would be awful.

• 54:50Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 54:50Mike Smith?

  That'd be absolutely terrible. And like, however many hours for however many days, that just seems like, ugh, chills down the spine.

• 54:59Jeff Larson?

  Getting your leg bit off, dude?

• 55:02Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 55:02Mike Smith?

  Both of those sounded bad.

• 55:03Wes Larson?

  Don't sound great. Yeah, the 20 hours in the boat before you get to like real intensive care is pretty insane, too. All right, I did want to talk quickly about the motivations of this shark. It's impossible to say for sure, but kind of from what we've learned about great whites, what I've learned doing a few episodes about them. Um, one kind of, I don't want to call it a myth, but a common thought for people with great white shark attacks is that that's mistaken identity. And we've talked about this a bit where they think that something might be a seal or whatever. And once they realize it isn't, they stop attacking. And I really don't think that could be the case

• 55:45Wes Larson?

  here. This is clear water. The shark, I think we need to give sharks more credit than that. You know, that they know that this thing that they're approaching isn't their typical prey that they've already seen like a thousand times in their lives. So I don't really buy the mistaken identity thing that often. I think maybe in really murky or low light water or whatever, it's a possibility. But what I think the shark was doing was investigating. It just decided, you know, this might be food. I'm going to check it out. Maybe the first bite on Phil, it still didn't know. The second bite on Heather, it still didn't know. And then when it got into something like a little bit more meaty, like the upper thigh, it was like, you know what, this actually is going to work. Because great whites really

• 56:29Wes Larson?

  need like fat, dense, like meaty, blubbery kind of food. And I'm not saying that like Heather's thigh was blubbery, but I'm saying it probably felt a little bit closer to food than like an ankle or a lower leg, you know?

• 56:43Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 56:44Wes Larson?

  And that's why generally when people say, oh, like a shark was trying to eat them, if a great white shark is trying to eat you and it's already decided that, do you guys remember in Australia, when we saw the shark actually really go for the bait that they were trying to bring it in with? What did that look like?

• 57:02Jeff Larson?

  It went hard, like jumping out of the water.

• 57:05Wes Larson?

  Yeah, it was fast and hard. Exactly. It wasn't slow and methodical. It was like fully committed. And if that's how they were attacking people, we would have a lot more fatalities.

• 57:18Jeff Larson?

  Cankles.

• 57:20Wes Larson?

  They would. What do you mean?

• 57:23Jeff Larson?

  Well, you're saying you wouldn't want to bite ankle because it's too bony, but cankles, maybe they would.

• 57:29Wes Larson?

  Yeah, cankles, they might be a little bit more into it. Might they might bite off your legs with that bite then. But um, every once in a while, you see an attack where it it does seem like fully predatory. I brought him up already, but Simon Nellis, who died a few years ago in Australia, there's a video of his as well. And it's explosive. It's not like a slow kind of bite. And then the shark comes back in. There's a lot of splashing. And it just seems like a shark that decided it was going to eat someone. Um, we talked about um, a woman in Australia, I think in the 80s that was like bitten in half by a great white. And that's a shark that's probably predatory. So I don't think.

• 58:09Jeff Larson?

  It kind of feels like to like

• 58:12Jeff Larson?

  those two people, obviously, I still think they should have done it. But those two people trying to help her into the raft, like provided resistance against the shark and what it was doing, and made it have to like bite harder into her to keep a hold of her and keep investigating, you know?

• 58:30Wes Larson?

  Yeah, you might, you might be right. And I had that same thought. And I also agree with you that they still did the right thing. Because it might have already decided at that point that it was going to try and eat her. And had they not pulled her out of the water, it might have killed her.

• 58:44Jeff Larson?

  Or maybe investigates her head next, you know?

• 58:47Wes Larson?

  Yeah, exactly. You never know. But I do think that was the motivation of the shark. I think initially, it was investigating. And I think by the time it took her leg, it was probably in full predator mode. And the other reason I think that is because after it left her, it still went to check out more swimmers. So I think it was really considering feeding at that point.

• 59:12Speaker 03

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• 59:42Speaker 04

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• 1:00:10Wes Larson?

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• 1:01:38Wes Larson?

  Plus $20 off your first box and free shipping always. That's butcherbox.com/tooth. And don't forget to use our link so they know that we sent you. I've shared a lot on this show. I'm very open on the show. You guys have heard about some of the most embarrassing parts of my life, but off the air, I really do value my privacy. We live in a rural place. We have a lot of space, but it's really important to me that I have some privacy. And that's why I want to tell you guys about Three Day Blinds. They're the leading manufacturer of high-quality, custom window treatments in the US. And right now, if you use our URL, three day blinds.com/ tooth, they're running a buy one, get one 50% off deal. And for me, I think blinds have always been something

• 1:02:23Wes Larson?

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• 1:03:30Wes Larson?

  All right. You guys have anything you want to add? Any questions? Do you think the jaws in, or the shark in Jaws was a female shark then? Because they get all big? I do. So Bruce is kind of a weird name. Bad name for that shark. Yep. Yeah.

• 1:03:48Wes Larson?

  All right, I want to do ouchies for this story. There's no sand in it, Jeff.

• 1:03:53Jeff Larson?

  No sand.

• 1:03:54Wes Larson?

  Sand free. Just keep that in mind.

• 1:03:57Jeff Larson?

  Huh. Yeah.

• 1:03:58Mike Smith?

  She didn't die.

• 1:04:00Jeff Larson?

  Maybe got seasick a little bit, though.

• 1:04:02Wes Larson?

  Yeah, got a little rumbly tumbly. Could have been seasick. Yeah, when someone, actually, someone asked her if she'd ever go out to sea again, and she brought up like thirty foot swells is one of the reasons she wouldn't. So.

• 1:04:13Jeff Larson?

  Really?

• 1:04:14Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:15Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, I'm gonna give it an eight.

• 1:04:17Wes Larson?

  Eight out of ten.

• 1:04:18Jeff Larson?

  I think there's a little bit more room for more pain, but I think it's pretty bad.

• 1:04:23Wes Larson?

  Yeah, and she actually didn't feel any pain in the bite. Like, once they pulled her onto the boat and everything, she wasn't feeling any pain. It was only once she was in the med bay that it really started to kick in. And then they had, they had morphine for her.

• 1:04:37Jeff Larson?

  The crazy thing with, we've, I've said before, but with like losing a limb is like the phantom pain where like, you're missing your entire foot and it will still like tickle at night or whatever.

• 1:04:48Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:49Mike Smith?

  I've heard breaking your femur is the worst kind of break you can experience. I wonder how this, I, it's somewhat comparable. I guess it is just in a technical tur- aspect, like it is a broken femur.

• 1:05:04Jeff Larson?

  Break it, yeah.

• 1:05:05Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:06Wes Larson?

  And like a bad way to break it, yeah.

• 1:05:08Mike Smith?

  Yeah, so I might go with a nine with like all the post-attack recovery stuff, and then that twenty hour ride, it just seems like about as bad as things can get as far as recovery. Well, not as bad as things can get possibly, but pretty close to as bad as things could get. I'll go with a nine. Yeah, I don't feel bad about that.

• 1:05:29Wes Larson?

  I think I'm going with a nine as well. I think, uh, the torsion machine, like having to learn how to walk again, all the mental anguish, like being a nineteen year old and losing your left leg has to just be so devastating. And I know she was talking to one of her friends saying like, I don't know if anyone's ever gonna like me again, I'll never be able to dance again, all those kind of things were running through her head. So yeah, I'm gonna give it a nine. I think, I think like short of. You could do the worm. Well, yeah, you probably could do the worm. That's true. It's a good point. Someone should, that's what her friend should have said immediately. Uh, alright. Okay.

• 1:06:11Jeff Larson?

  Wait, what, what's the guy's name?

• 1:06:13Wes Larson?

  Phil.

• 1:06:15Jeff Larson?

  I'll give Phil a 10 because he got both legs bit.

• 1:06:18Wes Larson?

  Both legs bit and just was like a footnote forever.

• 1:06:21Mike Smith?

  And no one cares.

• 1:06:22Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:22Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:23Mike Smith?

  That's pain. That's true pain.

• 1:06:26Wes Larson?

  All right, I'm gonna give Phil a six.

• 1:06:30Mike Smith?

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:06:31Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:31Mike Smith?

  Okay.

• 1:06:34Speaker 03

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• 1:07:03Speaker 04

  This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything. You can go deep, keep it on the ground, or draw up something nobody sees coming. And whether you want to run a flea flicker or the tush push, you need a plan to fit your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you, so they can help personalize coverage for your life and budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

• 1:07:31Wes Larson?

  Uh, well, with no further ado then, we're gonna go ahead and get into our categories. So the first category I had for you guys, because this happened in 1994, I want to hear your favorite movie from the year 1994.

• 1:07:46Mike Smith?

  Was this the year Forrest Gump won the Oscar for Best Picture? Was that the next year?

• 1:07:50Wes Larson?

  Is it? I don't know.

• 1:07:51Jeff Larson?

  It's this year. There's so many good movies for this year.

• 1:07:55Wes Larson?

  Yeah, Schindler's List won for the movies that came out in 93.

• 1:07:59Jeff Larson?

  No, there's like, I was looking it up, there's like, posts about how Shawshank Redemption, Pulp Fiction, Forrest Gump, and Jurassic Park were in theaters at the same time.

• 1:08:11Wes Larson?

  Wow. Yeah, that's crazy. But Jurassic Park came out in 93, so we're not counting that in this discussion.

• 1:08:19Jeff Larson?

  I I have a few to shout out, but

• 1:08:22Wes Larson?

  Do it.

• 1:08:22Jeff Larson?

  My favorite, I would have to just go Shawshank Redemption.

• 1:08:25Wes Larson?

  Great movie.

• 1:08:26Jeff Larson?

  Like it's it's a top five movie all time for me. I love just like the idea of someone who's in prison for life, but then spoilers. But then he's actually not guilty. And then he's able to still find a way out of it is just so cool to me.

• 1:08:44Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Great. He gets to have a good time in prison first too, you know?

• 1:08:48Jeff Larson?

  He makes his best friend ever.

• 1:08:50Wes Larson?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:08:51Jeff Larson?

  And he there's romance, there's all sorts of.

• 1:08:57Wes Larson?

  That's a good pick.

• 1:08:59Mike Smith?

  I I don't know. This this such a long list of incredible. I mean Chung King Express is probably my favorite, the Wong Kar Wai. Three Colors by Kozlowski, the blue, white and red. Liberté, Galilea, Fraternita. Check it out. It's good. Uh, The Crow. How about The Crow?

• 1:09:17Wes Larson?

  My pick, I actually zagged a little on this and decided to go with my favorite movie. When I was like, what, ten? Ten and eleven that came out in nineteen ninety four and it was Dumb and Dumber by like a long, a long.

• 1:09:34Jeff Larson?

  No, it's a great pick.

• 1:09:35Wes Larson?

  Yeah, I don't. I don't think I ever laughed harder than when I saw that movie in theaters with my friend Adam Swartley.

• 1:09:42Jeff Larson?

  Probably a top five comedy for me. I love it.

• 1:09:44Wes Larson?

  It's so funny.

• 1:09:45Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:45Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:46Mike Smith?

  I think that's when the.

• 1:09:47Wes Larson?

  My real pick.

• 1:09:48Jeff Larson?

  Jim Carrey came out with Dumb and Dumber and The Mask in ninety four.

• 1:09:52Wes Larson?

  Yeah, that's a big year.

• 1:09:53Mike Smith?

  Ace Ventura two, right? If not, it was just like very slightly before.

• 1:09:58Wes Larson?

  I think it's peak.

• 1:09:59Mike Smith?

  Cause all three movies he got paid like a billion dollars.

• 1:10:02Wes Larson?

  I. Peak Farrelly Brothers.

• 1:10:03Jeff Larson?

  I think if I had to pick like like Desert Island type thing and I can pick all the movies for one year. I think ninety four is in the running for what I would pick. There's like three in my top twenty, which is Shawshank Speed. And then Lion King. I love Pulp Fiction. Uh, there's Legends of the Fall.

• 1:10:28Jeff Larson?

  And then there's like some lesser movies that I really love too, just like not as big, but I love the movie Above the Rim. I think it might have the my favorite soundtrack of any movie. And then like Tupac's just so good in it and the plot is so ridiculous, but it's like fun, you know? And then Drunken Master Two is one of Jackie Chan's best, like.

• 1:10:50Wes Larson?

  It's a great year for movies.

• 1:10:51Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:52Wes Larson?

  Yeah. I feel like there's like a five year stretch from like ninety three to ninety eight, maybe even ninety nine. Where like a lot of my all time favorites are from that stretch. Yeah, for sure. All right.

• 1:11:05Jeff Larson?

  Just crazy people were just like going to the movie and seeing Forrest Gump and Pulp Fiction and like ignoring Shawshank Redemption.

• 1:11:15Wes Larson?

  Yeah, I know. Okay, uh, bringing back an old category because of another movie that came out in nineteen ninety four. The movie Speed came out in nineteen ninety four. So let's pretend that this animal is the bus from Speed. Are we surviving?

• 1:11:34Wes Larson?

  How did we ever get rid of this one?

• 1:11:38Wes Larson?

  Uh, this animal is the bus from Speed. We don't die.

• 1:11:42Jeff Larson?

  It can't get to sixty.

• 1:11:43Wes Larson?

  Cause the bomb never triggers at fifty five. Yeah.

• 1:11:47Jeff Larson?

  Or it can't get to fifty five miles an hour?

• 1:11:50Wes Larson?

  Great white sharks top out at about thirty five miles per hour underwater. And that's when they're launching like a sneak attack. So we do not blow up if this animal is the bus from Speed and we're aboard it. Yeah. That's really interesting.

• 1:12:05Jeff Larson?

  Michael Phelps could outswim a great.

• 1:12:08Wes Larson?

  No. He swims at what, like? Eight? Eighteen miles per hour or something. Yeah, not even that. Yeah. Not even. Yeah, you're right. It's like five or six, I think. Yeah. All right. There is a species of shark that we would blow up with. Do you guys know what species that is? If we're the bus from Speed?

• 1:12:26Jeff Larson?

  Thresher.

• 1:12:26Wes Larson?

  Mako? It's a Mako, shortfin Mako. Yeah.

• 1:12:29Jeff Larson?

  It's a Mako, Mike.

• 1:12:32Wes Larson?

  I'm curious, and I asked Jesse this question too. What reward would you have to get to wake up with no left leg tomorrow? And we'll say that you have a stump, but you have no left leg. What would you have to get?

• 1:12:46Mike Smith?

  Dude, it'd be so freaking sweet to not just get, you get a right leg prosthetic on your left leg. So then you have two right feet and you're like the most coordinated person in the world. Think about that. You could be a professional soccer player. I'd give up every, so like my left arm, I'd give that one. My left eye is a little worse.

• 1:13:08Wes Larson?

  So you would like trade something to be missing your left leg?

• 1:13:11Mike Smith?

  Right. Yeah, I'd pay money.

• 1:13:15Wes Larson?

  You'd have a good excuse for the rest of your life. Like if you didn't want to do something.

• 1:13:19Mike Smith?

  Dude, having good excuses to get out of stuff. There's like no, that's a top 10 sensation in the world, right? Oh my gosh.

• 1:13:27Jeff Larson?

  The soccer one's interesting. Like if you just had a huge fake prosthetic leg. And you could like put the entire ball in your leg and then just like shoot it like a cannon at the goal.

• 1:13:40Wes Larson?

  Like Planet Terror where she has a machine gun as a leg.

• 1:13:44Mike Smith?

  That'd be good in the MLS.

• 1:13:46Jeff Larson?

  That's why I'd want like a billion dollars so that I could do all that stuff too.

• 1:13:50Wes Larson?

  Yeah, I think, I think my honest number is like 20 million dollars. I think if someone came to me tomorrow and said, I'll give you 20 million, but you're not going to have a left leg. I would think about it.

• 1:14:01Jeff Larson?

  Where do they cut it off?

• 1:14:03Wes Larson?

  Like mid thigh.

• 1:14:05Jeff Larson?

  Mid thigh?

• 1:14:06Wes Larson?

  And you don't have any pain.

• 1:14:07Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, to me, it's like all about value. It's not, there's not too much like material things I would do for it.

• 1:14:16Wes Larson?

  Yeah, maybe this is an insensitive question.

• 1:14:18Jeff Larson?

  Huge house. It's like you still got to pay the bills for it and stuff.

• 1:14:22Mike Smith?

  Yeah, I'd do it if I got first class flights for free everywhere I go for the rest of my life.

• 1:14:28Wes Larson?

  Okay.

• 1:14:29Mike Smith?

  How about that?

• 1:14:30Wes Larson?

  Okay. First class or business class? Just the nicest, like the nicest seat on the plane?

• 1:14:36Mike Smith?

  Yeah, that's the one, the pilot seat.

• 1:14:38Jeff Larson?

  Somehow I misread what you gave us though.

• 1:14:42Wes Larson?

  Uh huh.

• 1:14:43Jeff Larson?

  And I just read, would you trade for waking up for like a left leg tomorrow?

• 1:14:49Wes Larson?

  Uh huh.

• 1:14:49Jeff Larson?

  So I was thinking like, what, what would I give up that I have to be able to keep both my legs?

• 1:14:56Wes Larson?

  Oh, that's a better.

• 1:14:58Jeff Larson?

  I answered it that I would give Shank's other front leg up too. So he has no front legs. He's just got to just scoot with his back legs.

• 1:15:10Jeff Larson?

  It's like.

• 1:15:11Wes Larson?

  Could get a little cheer.

• 1:15:11Jeff Larson?

  The most I would give up. Yeah.

• 1:15:13Wes Larson?

  Yeah. I think I'd give up just about everything I own to not lose my left leg.

• 1:15:18Mike Smith?

  Hmm. Yeah, I don't know.

• 1:15:20Wes Larson?

  Okay.

• 1:15:20Mike Smith?

  I'm not too attached to it. It's different in a literal sense.

• 1:15:24Jeff Larson?

  Would you give up the podcast?

• 1:15:26Mike Smith?

  Oh yeah. Are you kidding me?

• 1:15:27Wes Larson?

  Probably, yeah.

• 1:15:28Mike Smith?

  In a heartbeat.

• 1:15:29Jeff Larson?

  I don't think I would.

• 1:15:31Mike Smith?

  Huh? Wow, you're. That's like the one thing I would.

• 1:15:33Wes Larson?

  Mike would do that to like not get hit in the left leg hard. Uh, I got a couple of just quick, it came from Cora's. Uh, one question I found mostly just these are questions, not so much responses. If a shark had human teeth, could it bite someone's leg off just as easily? Uh, what happens to a human leg when it is bitten off by a shark? Why are great white sharks considered dangerous? And there's an answer to that one. And this guy says, I watched a great white bite a guy in half when I was just a little kid, jump ahead 23 or so years when I was in the Navy and watched through the ship's big eyes binoculars as a great white took off a surfer's leg, killing him.

• 1:16:19Wes Larson?

  Don't believe me? Go to YouTube in quotation marks where there are at least three videos documenting a particularly nasty attack on a young woman enjoying a swim party at sea. Heather Boswell. The short answer is they are considered dangerous in quotations because they are dangerous. Funny how that works out. This guy's seen two people get killed by red sharks. Yeah, I believe him 100%. Okay, uh, new category I came up with.

• 1:16:48Jeff Larson?

  Look at that YouTube link.

• 1:16:50Wes Larson?

  Yeah, it wasn't a link, but there's only at least three videos of this.

• 1:16:55Jeff Larson?

  He just said YouTube?

• 1:16:56Wes Larson?

  He said YouTube in quotation marks. Go to YouTube. Um, all right. New category that came up with, I want you to rate the top song that came out on the date that this incident took place. And the top song on March 23rd, 1994 was Ace of Base, The Sign.

• 1:17:16Mike Smith?

  Oh, that's a 10 out of 10. That was almost on my, I agree. That was almost on my last, my 16 favorite songs list.

• 1:17:22Wes Larson?

  Yeah, me too. I think it is on mine. Yeah.

• 1:17:25Mike Smith?

  It should be. That's a 10.

• 1:17:26Wes Larson?

  Jeff, do you know the song? I saw the sign and opened up my eyes. I saw the sign. You know that song?

• 1:17:34Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:17:35Mike Smith?

  That's a 10.

• 1:17:36Jeff Larson?

  I'm like, I'll give it five.

• 1:17:38Wes Larson?

  Five out of 10. Bad. Perfect song.

• 1:17:41Mike Smith?

  It's incredible.

• 1:17:42Wes Larson?

  It was also the first song in my life that I felt like I found it before my friends did. And so I was like very proud of it.

• 1:17:50Jeff Larson?

  Mike, you just won the argument though about five being completely neutral because Wes just said bad when I said five.

• 1:17:58Wes Larson?

  Yeah, because it's not a neutral song. It's a bad choice is what I'm saying.

• 1:18:03Wes Larson?

  I'm not saying that's a bad rating. Well, it is a bad rating for this because this should be a positively held song.

• 1:18:09Jeff Larson?

  He's saying I rated it as a bad song and I was just rating it neutral.

• 1:18:13Wes Larson?

  No, I'm saying that neutral is a bad rating for this particular song.

• 1:18:18Mike Smith?

  Right, because it's incredible.

• 1:18:20Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:22Mike Smith?

  Yeah, thanks for, yeah, thanks for that, though, Jeff.

• 1:18:24Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:25Mike Smith?

  Appreciate that. Cause Wes is ultimately still wrong in that argument.

• 1:18:29Wes Larson?

  If I'm not wrong in that argument, five is neutral, five is zero, that's the baseline. But it depends on how you're talking about it. Okay, another new category I came up with for this one. How hot is this animal? How hot do you guys think great white sharks are?

• 1:18:45Mike Smith?

  Very. I think they're physically fit. They are very confident and skilled at what they do, which is an attractive trait, I would say.

• 1:18:54Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:55Mike Smith?

  Great set of teeth.

• 1:18:57Wes Larson?

  Beautiful teeth.

• 1:18:58Mike Smith?

  Good teeth.

• 1:18:59Wes Larson?

  Okay.

• 1:18:59Mike Smith?

  A little dangerous. I don't know, I like, I like a little streak of danger in a girl.

• 1:19:06Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:06Mike Smith?

  One that could beat me up in a fight. I've said that before, I kind of like, I like that.

• 1:19:12Wes Larson?

  I also agree. I think this one of the hotter animals out there. Sleek, beautiful, confident, perfect little color pattern. One of the animals that when I saw in real life, I was like most taken aback by how beautiful it was. It's a hot animal.

• 1:19:27Mike Smith?

  Me too.

• 1:19:28Jeff Larson?

  I put, so I don't think they're one of the hottest animals. I put that they're similar to Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dothraki and like that guy from the Green Mile, the big.

• 1:19:40Mike Smith?

  Dothraki?

• 1:19:41Jeff Larson?

  What's the guy?

• 1:19:42Mike Smith?

  Dolph Lundgren?

• 1:19:43Jeff Larson?

  Dolph Lundgren.

• 1:19:45Mike Smith?

  Sounded like a Sith Lord.

• 1:19:46Jeff Larson?

  The big, huge guy from like Dodgeball and Green Mile and stuff.

• 1:19:50Mike Smith?

  Michael Clarke Duncan?

• 1:19:51Jeff Larson?

  It's just like someone's so big and strong looking that like you have to stare at them and it's like, they're not like bad to look at, but I also don't think they're like, you know, cover hottest, people's hottest man alive type of thing, material.

• 1:20:10Wes Larson?

  I feel like they're so like sleek and sexy, though, too.

• 1:20:13Jeff Larson?

  Oh, no, I think a tiger shark's hotter than a great white.

• 1:20:17Wes Larson?

  Huh, really? Interesting. Yeah, I think a great white's hotter for sure. I think they're the hottest shark, personally.

• 1:20:23Mike Smith?

  You think you might be right?

• 1:20:24Wes Larson?

  Mako, a short fin Mako's up there, but their teeth kind of, they lose some points with those teeth that jut out. Blue sharks are pretty hot.

• 1:20:32Jeff Larson?

  I just don't think, I think you have to have some handsome in you too. I don't think that they have any handsome in them. I think they're just like physically overpowering.

• 1:20:43Wes Larson?

  Okay.

• 1:20:44Mike Smith?

  Ah, okay.

• 1:20:45Wes Larson?

  Huh. It's not what I expected, but you know, that's why.

• 1:20:48Jeff Larson?

  I'm not saying they're ugly. You think Arnold Schwarzenegger is ugly?

• 1:20:51Mike Smith?

  That's what.

• 1:20:52Wes Larson?

  No, but I don't.

• 1:20:52Mike Smith?

  Sounds like.

• 1:20:53Wes Larson?

  I think, I think that he is like a rough looking person and I don't think sharks look like rough and tumble. I think they look like sleek and beautiful.

• 1:21:02Jeff Larson?

  Looks rough?

• 1:21:04Wes Larson?

  No.

• 1:21:05Mike Smith?

  Not really, no.

• 1:21:06Wes Larson?

  I think it looks like.

• 1:21:07Jeff Larson?

  These are all crazy and shit.

• 1:21:08Wes Larson?

  Really sleek. I think it looks like fluid.

• 1:21:13Mike Smith?

  When I think of a rough animal, I'm thinking of like a wart hog. Those look rough. Like if I touch it, that's a rough sensation, bottom type sensation.

• 1:21:21Jeff Larson?

  Maybe they're like one of those people where they're like really hot, but then have just like a really ugly smile.

• 1:21:29Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:30Jeff Larson?

  You know, like when they open their mouths, they look like way scary and like.

• 1:21:35Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:36Jeff Larson?

  You know?

• 1:21:36Wes Larson?

  Uh, I, I like Arnold for me is like a rhinoceros or like a Cape buffalo. That's Arnold Schwarzenegger. For me, this is like.

• 1:21:44Jeff Larson?

  Handsome for that.

• 1:21:45Wes Larson?

  This is maybe if I had to do like a big buff guy, it'd be like that Alan, what's his face or Henry Cavill?

• 1:21:52Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:53Wes Larson?

  Yeah, Reacher. Like they're both very handsome, but they're also like big and strong.

• 1:21:58Jeff Larson?

  Jason Momoa.

• 1:21:59Wes Larson?

  I'm getting worked up talking about how hot these animals are. Uh, I want to hear a spring gripe from you guys, something that you just, I think spring is generally considered one of the better seasons. What's something you don't like about spring?

• 1:22:15Wes Larson?

  I'll go first. Those come trees. I know we talk about them sometimes. I hate the smell of, I think they're called Bradford pears. I, I like hate that smell. I think it smells disgusting.

• 1:22:28Mike Smith?

  It's bad.

• 1:22:29Wes Larson?

  Come trees are something I don't like about spring.

• 1:22:33Jeff Larson?

  It's not calorie. It's the one that Max named his Instagram in his band after.

• 1:22:38Wes Larson?

  Pears, but I'm not sure.

• 1:22:40Jeff Larson?

  Calorie, yeah, calorie pears.

• 1:22:43Wes Larson?

  Oh yeah. Okay. It's also known as the Bradford pear.

• 1:22:46Jeff Larson?

  Okay.

• 1:22:47Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:47Jeff Larson?

  We're both right. Look at that.

• 1:22:49Wes Larson?

  That's fine.

• 1:22:52Jeff Larson?

  For me, it's like, once it starts getting hot, I really get the itch to go fly fishing.

• 1:22:59Jeff Larson?

  And then it happens to be when like all the rivers are flooded. So the fishing's like at its worst. And it's like frustrating to me that I can't fly fish well yet.

• 1:23:10Wes Larson?

  That is annoying.

• 1:23:12Mike Smith?

  For me, baseball season starts and there's always that glimmer of optimism that your favorite team is gonna do well.

• 1:23:18Jeff Larson?

  Padres won nine straight.

• 1:23:20Mike Smith?

  They're doing great, but it's a it's a retroactive bad thing about spring because by the end of the year, the Dodgers will win and it'll just be like, sweet. There was like a two minute window there where some hope.

• 1:23:32Jeff Larson?

  Pirates are doing good, too.

• 1:23:35Mike Smith?

  Good for them. Shout out Pirates. Gotta go to that ballpark. It's on my list.

• 1:23:39Wes Larson?

  Rather than do listener questions, we're gonna do some nice advice would suffice. Jeff asked our listeners to give us some advice, or no, for us to give them some advice. So Jeff, what do you got for us?

• 1:23:53Jeff Larson?

  Okay, from Beth E S K X, going to have my third daughter next week. We have no idea what to call her, so open to suggestions.

• 1:24:05Wes Larson?

  Penelope.

• 1:24:06Mike Smith?

  Ooh.

• 1:24:08Wes Larson?

  Uh, Junebug. First name June, middle name Bug.

• 1:24:12Mike Smith?

  I like, yeah, I like Junebug.

• 1:24:14Wes Larson?

  What's your name, Jeff?

• 1:24:16Jeff Larson?

  Let's go with the first girl I dated, Mi Young He.

• 1:24:21Wes Larson?

  Mi Young He. Loved him.

• 1:24:22Mike Smith?

  Good name.

• 1:24:23Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Hopefully she's Korean, but you know, we should be able to name whoever, Korean names.

• 1:24:31Mike Smith?

  Should we?

• 1:24:32Jeff Larson?

  Okay.

• 1:24:32Wes Larson?

  I don't know.

• 1:24:34Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:36Wes Larson?

  Would be very confusing.

• 1:24:37Mike Smith?

  I'm not, I'm not ready to.

• 1:24:39Wes Larson?

  Yeah, that might be appropriation, huh?

• 1:24:41Mike Smith?

  Yeah, I don't know. I just don't know.

• 1:24:43Jeff Larson?

  Brianna Cooney says, how to get over an ex who initiated the breakup but also won't leave you alone now?

• 1:24:50Wes Larson?

  Restraining order.

• 1:24:52Jeff Larson?

  Just block them. Gotta beat them to it.

• 1:24:55Wes Larson?

  I think it's hard to be more like more willing to use the block button on social medias. Just block them.

• 1:25:02Jeff Larson?

  I think the problem is a lot of times when you were broken up with, you still wanna be with the person. So like when they message you, it's really hard not to respond.

• 1:25:12Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:12Jeff Larson?

  My method was to just torch it all down, go crazy. It worked for me.

• 1:25:18Wes Larson?

  Like really just lose the thread and yeah.

• 1:25:21Jeff Larson?

  Like it's like, all right, I'm gonna make it so you don't wanna talk to me anymore.

• 1:25:25Wes Larson?

  That is a good method. You were pretty good at that for a while.

• 1:25:29Jeff Larson?

  Especially just one time.

• 1:25:31Wes Larson?

  Yeah, so try that out.

• 1:25:33Jeff Larson?

  All right, so I I had to ask for more detail here and I'm gonna actually leave the name out. But it it it starts out, I found out my mom almost or did bone my 18 year old crush when I was 16.

• 1:25:52Jeff Larson?

  So let me start from the beginning. So when I was 16, I had a crush on a boy. Who was 18 or 19, let's call him Ty. And I know he liked me too, because he would text me every day, compliment me, etc. Our parents were friends, so we would always hang out and be at his house. But for whatever reason, he wouldn't settle down with me. In like 2021, Ty's old friend ended up working with my husband at the time, let's call him Dan. Dan told my husband, Ty had sex with blank's mom, but you can't tell anyone.

• 1:26:26Wes Larson?

  Imagine not telling anyone that.

• 1:26:28Jeff Larson?

  Let's say, I'm gonna change her name to Daisy. I'm Daisy, but to keep it private, you can refer to me as Marie.

• 1:26:42Wes Larson?

  All right, so the friend said, the friend said Ty had sex with Marie's mom, but you can't tell anyone.

• 1:26:49Jeff Larson?

  Right, to to her husband.

• 1:26:51Wes Larson?

  Husband, right.

• 1:26:52Jeff Larson?

  But so then, of course, her husband told her.

• 1:26:55Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:56Jeff Larson?

  But I re- re-ated or reiterated that I couldn't tell anyone.

• 1:27:02Jeff Larson?

  I being completely freaked out called my mom and confronted her. She denied it, of course, so I brushed it off as Dan was being weird and lying. Years later, literally yesterday, I messaged another old mutual friend of ours and asked about it because he and her were best friends at the time. And I knew he'd be reliable source because I trust him even all these years later. And he said this, I actually do remember he is talking to her a lot. And at one point he said he is going to meet up with her, but they didn't go through with meeting up at that time. So Mike, what's your advice there?

• 1:27:40Mike Smith?

  I don't understand, like, what is she trying to accomplish? Like getting her mom to apologize? I don't, I don't really understand like what the, the

• 1:27:51Wes Larson?

  Dealing with that?

• 1:27:51Mike Smith?

  Like I see what the problem is.

• 1:27:53Wes Larson?

  How do you deal with that? What would you do?

• 1:27:55Mike Smith?

  How do you deal with it? I actually would just be like, you know what, mom, props and move on.

• 1:27:59Jeff Larson?

  Well, we all know what you did with your mom.

• 1:28:01Wes Larson?

  Yeah, just kill her.

• 1:28:05Wes Larson?

  No, that's, that's pretty messed up.

• 1:28:09Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:10Wes Larson?

  To have your mom like hook up with your crush. But also it's not like it was her boyfriend. You can't call dibs.

• 1:28:17Jeff Larson?

  It's kind of crazy too, because if he had gotten with her, that would be illegal. But him getting with her mom is legal.

• 1:28:24Wes Larson?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 1:28:26Mike Smith?

  That is.

• 1:28:26Wes Larson?

  Yeah, maybe her mom was just saving her from an illegal situation.

• 1:28:32Jeff Larson?

  I think it's the same advice Wes just gave. Just use that block button, you know?

• 1:28:37Mike Smith?

  On who, mom?

• 1:28:38Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:39Wes Larson?

  Yeah, probably.

• 1:28:40Jeff Larson?

  It's like you've moved on already. Your mom gave you this crazy story. He doesn't seem like he would have been that great of a choice, considering what happened.

• 1:28:51Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:52Jeff Larson?

  Like flirting with someone's daughter and mom at the same time is not the best behavior.

• 1:28:59Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:59Jeff Larson?

  So maybe it is just like, uh, you know what? Props to those guys for doing something crazy in their life.

• 1:29:07Wes Larson?

  Yeah, it's funny that like she wasn't supposed to tell anyone and now we're telling hundreds of thousands of people.

• 1:29:14Wes Larson?

  Also, who is the basketball guy that slept with LeBron James mom?

• 1:29:20Wes Larson?

  Barnes?

• 1:29:20Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, Devante West.

• 1:29:22Wes Larson?

  Oh, Devante West, that's right.

• 1:29:24Jeff Larson?

  He's homeless now.

• 1:29:25Wes Larson?

  Yeah, and he's going through it. That's not cool, but it's cool that he slept with LeBron's mom. Uh, all right. So we're gonna move on now to our final quick category, which is conservation corner for great white sharks. Uh, one of our favorite animals. They are listed as IUCN vulnerable. They're not quite as at risk as some of the other species of shark. Um, but we really don't have a good idea how many are left in the world. Uh, scientists think there could be anywhere between 6,000 to 20,000 great white sharks in the world. And their biggest threats are bycatch in fishing nets. So like, they have, they happen to get tangled up in a fishing net. Uh, some of the nets that keep sharks off of beaches in places like Australia.

• 1:30:10Wes Larson?

  They get tangled up in those too. That's the way that they die. And then probably their biggest threat is just loss of food sources through overfishing and poor um, management of, of different marine places. So like, places where seals are dying off or fish that they eat are dying off will then end up having an effect on great white sharks. So as the ocean changes, we would expect to lose more of the shark. But most of the places where they used to be fished or hunted or whatever else, there are now moratoriums where you can't kill great white sharks. In the US, they are illegally protected species. You're not allowed to fish for them on purpose or, or kill them or anything.

• 1:30:51Jeff Larson?

  You're only really allowed to kill them if they kill a person?

• 1:30:55Wes Larson?

  Yeah, I think if one was killing a person and you had a gun and you shot it, you'd be okay. But you're not allowed to like target them fishing.

• 1:31:02Jeff Larson?

  Or I mean, like if one kills a person, we, people can go out and try to kill it.

• 1:31:06Wes Larson?

  I don't think so. Not in the US. Yeah, because there, you're probably not gonna get the right shark. It's very unlikely that you'd get it unless you can kill it right then and there and save the person.

• 1:31:17Jeff Larson?

  I kinda don't think they got the right shark in the movie Jaws.

• 1:31:21Wes Larson?

  Yeah, they must not have, cuz he comes back.

• 1:31:24Jeff Larson?

  They just got the big one.

• 1:31:25Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Sure. All right.

• 1:31:28Jeff Larson?

  The did kill Quinn, but yeah, I mean, at that point, they were messing with it.

• 1:31:33Wes Larson?

  Been a different shark.

• 1:31:33Jeff Larson?

  Self-defense.

• 1:31:34Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Uh, all right. Well, that's it for the story. This is one that I've wanted to tell for a long time. So I'm glad we got to, to tell it. Heather, if you're out there, I hope you're living a wonderful life and Phil, you too. I hope you guys are both doing well and able to get past the trauma of this incident. And don't, don't forget guys, uh, be really careful about your seafood choices because a lot of sharks die to go into the seafood industry. So you, you really have to be careful about it. Look for sustainable seafood that's harvested ethically, or else you are really contributing to, um, to shark depopulation.

• 1:32:13Jeff Larson?

  Yeah. All right. Um, and Jeff's random animal fact is great whites can swim 35 miles an hour.

• 1:32:21Wes Larson?

  Perfect. Where'd you hear that? Very germane to the.

• 1:32:24Jeff Larson?

  See you guys. I had it prepped. You just happened to say the one, say.

• 1:32:28Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Mike just did a fun episode on moths too, on our Patreon channel, if you want to check that out.

• 1:32:34Jeff Larson?

  Like that doesn't sound exciting when you say it, but like.

• 1:32:37Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:38Jeff Larson?

  I thought it was such a fun episode.

• 1:32:39Wes Larson?

  It was great.

• 1:32:40Jeff Larson?

  Vampire moths. Have you guys ever heard of that? You better subscribe if you.

• 1:32:44Wes Larson?

  Mothman? Did you know Mothman's all caked up? You better listen to our episode. Shapely rump. That's a fact. Oh, I'd straddle Mothman. All right.

• 1:32:55Jeff Larson?

  How many monarchs could beat one Atlas moth?

• 1:33:00Wes Larson?

  I mean, we get really do the hard hitting science on that one. Uh, Jeff did.

• 1:33:07Wes Larson?

  Love you.

• 1:33:08Jeff Larson?

  Love you.

• 1:33:09Wes Larson?

  Bye.