Introducing "Jaws Island"

Dun dun... This week, on Endless Thread... dun dun... something new is here... dun dun dun dun... a podcast mini-series about the 50th anniversary of the cinematic classic... DUN dun dun dun DUN dun dun dun..."Jaws!" Part 1 of this mini-series, Jaws Island https://www.wbur.org/podcasts/short-run, is right here, right now, and it's all about the "finatics" (yes, that's what they call themselves). WBUR arts and culture correspondent Andrea Shea https://www.wbur.org/inside/staff/andrea-shea takes us to Martha's Vineyard — AKA "Amity Island," where Jaws was filmed — for the 50th anniversary celebration of the film. Through conversations with "finatics," collectors, and cast members, Andrea learns how Steven Spielberg's enduring monster movie sank its teeth into us. Parts 2 and 3 are right around the corner, so follow Jaws Island https://link.chtbl.com/jawsisland in your podcast app! ("You're gonna need a bigger podcast library!")

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken?, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questram School of Business. A recent episode explores how AI is reshaping our schools. Stick around until the end of this podcast to preview the episode. Life is all about making decisions. Sometimes you make questionable ones, like buying a new TV that's too big for the wall because the electronics store employee was a little too good at their job. Then sometimes you make great ones, like protecting your home and auto with Progressive. You get customized coverage options so you can be sure you have the right coverage. Get your quote today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates and other insurers.

• 0:45Speaker 00

  Not available in all states.

• 0:47Speaker 01

  Hey, listen.

• 0:49Speaker 02

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  And harness the power of the Ocarina with the built-in microphone.

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  The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, a Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive. Game and system sold separately. Game rated everyone 10 and up.

• 1:17Ben Brock Johnson?

  Aimo.

• 1:18Amory Sivertson?

  Benjo.

• 1:19Ben Brock Johnson?

  It's a special Friday, baby.

• 1:21Amory Sivertson?

  Special Friday. It is special, not just because it's a holiday weekend during which I will likely toast the nearing end of summer with a veggie dog, a smore, I love a smore.

• 1:32Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah.

• 1:32Amory Sivertson?

  But also because instead of our usual holiday rerun action, we're doing a special drop from another WBUR project that's coming out right now.

• 1:41Ben Brock Johnson?

  Dun dun. It's about a movie, one of my favorites, to be honest, which I watch every summer. Do you? Do you watch it every summer?

• 1:48Amory Sivertson?

  At least, at least every summer, yeah. And today, we're giving you the first episode, which isn't expressly about the internet, but it is about the internet-fueled fandom for this great movie that 50 years later keeps chomping at us.

• 2:04Ben Brock Johnson?

  Hooper drives the boat, chief.

• 2:06Amory Sivertson?

  Hooper drives the boat, chief.

• 2:08Ben Brock Johnson?

  Take a listen, and if you like it, you should search a specific phrase that maybe gives this away more than we already have. Jaws Island. You can find Jaws Island wherever you get your podcasts. Just search that phrase, Jaws Island. And in the meantime, hey, come on in, the water is not fine.

• 2:27Ben Brock Johnson?

  Dun, dun.

• 2:36Speaker 05

  WBUR Podcasts, Boston.

• 2:51Speaker 06

  Hey. Hey, how are you doing? Good, how are you? I'm doing all right. How's your day going? It's going, it's going. How about you? This is me, Andrea, talking to my brother, Timmy. I called him because I'm trying to remember the first time I saw one of my all-time favorite movies. I know it was 50 years ago, with him and my dad. Well, so what I remember is I was 10, you were probably six or seven. We went to the old Downtown Theater 3 Theater, and we sat in the front row, because that was the only seats left in place. And Dad had no real understanding of how frightening

• 3:32Speaker 06

  something could be to a kid. And I just remember, really, the scene where the shark jumps out for the first time, and Roy Scheider says, You're gonna need a bigger boat.

• 3:50Speaker 06

  And I remember the entire crowd jumping back and being scared witless. Do you remember my reaction? You would have been sitting next to me and probably screaming the same way. I wonder if I was enjoying it. I will say, I do remember people walking out, and there was a certain exhilaration among the crowd of having seen that movie. I do remember that.

• 4:15Speaker 01

  There is a creature alive today who has survived millions of years of evolution without change, without passion, and without logic. When Jaws debuted in June of 19...

• 4:31Speaker 00

  On more than 450 screens nationwide, it was a collective event. Audiences were primed for this new monster movie about a quaint touristy island and a massive, bloodthirsty shark.

• 4:48Speaker 01

  It is as if God created the devil and gave him Jaws.

• 4:56Speaker 00

  Jaws was billed as a horror movie, but for me, it's like comfort food. I watch it three, maybe four times a year, often while cooking because I just relish listening to the action, dialogue, and music. But this summer, the summer of Jaws 50th anniversary, I've been thinking about why this film resonates so deeply with me and so many other fans.

• 5:24Speaker 00

  So here I am, in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, about to board a crowded ferry to Amity Island, aka Martha's Vineyard. That's where Jaws was filmed in 1974, and super fans are converging for an island-wide, weekend-long birthday bash.

• 5:47Speaker 00

  The boat is packed, and I'm surprised to learn the first fan I meet was also introduced to Jaws by their parent.

• 5:55Amory Sivertson?

  My mother is a horror film fanatic, so somewhere along the line, when I was watching horror movies with my mother, I'm sure that's where I watched it.

• 6:04Speaker 00

  Andrea Pascal from Munson, Massachusetts, is here with her best friend and her mom, who crocheted cute little shark keychains. All three are decked out in matching Jaws 50 t-shirts. Andrea was hooked at...

• 6:18Amory Sivertson?

  You know, dun dun dun dun dun dun. Here it comes.

• 6:23Amory Sivertson?

  The beginning scene, when the woman's out there swimming, you just don't know what's gonna happen. The music playing, and then all of a sudden...

• 6:39Speaker 00

  Then there's the scene where the little boy, Alex Kintner, gets eaten while paddling on his yellow inflatable raft.

• 6:46Amory Sivertson?

  I guess he's gonna be there along with Richard Dreyfuss, so we're excited about that. I actually have a Sharpie in my pocket that we're gonna ask for autographs on our shirts.

• 6:55Speaker 00

  The trip is like a pilgrimage for Jaws fans, to visit iconic locations where the film was shot, to meet cast and crew, and to dive deeper into all things Jaws at screenings and panels.

• 7:08Speaker 06

  For all walk-off passengers, there will be a gangway, and the gangway's gonna be located on the starboard side forward, door number four.

• 7:15Speaker 00

  I feel like I'm in Jaws, walking down the ferry ramp with a few hundred people. It's like the scene where summer tourists stream onto the island for the Fourth of July, while a ravenous predator lurks beneath the waves.

• 7:32Speaker 00

  About a mile from the ferry landing is the Martha's Vineyard Museum. Dozens of hardcore early bird fans are already there, kicking off its amity homecoming weekend. There's a big Jaws exhibition and an open-mouth replica of the killer shark's head. People are taking pictures of each other, sticking their own heads inside its toothy maw, including Mark Schaefer and his partner Sheila Malicki of Bowman'sville, New York, near Buffalo. He remembers when Jaws got him for the first time.

• 8:03Speaker 05

  Eight years old, nine years old, something like that. My parents used to own cottages up on the lake, and we used to go down there. And I used to run down by the beach and tell people to get out of the water. Nobody ever listened to me. They just said there was no sharks in Lake Erie. And I go, "Well, you never know, it could be." And then I was like, "Okay, if you don't wanna listen to me, then..." And then we went to the drive-ins and the movie theaters almost every week. And I saw the movie probably 50, 60 times before I was even 10 years old.

• 8:34Speaker 00

  Sheila supports Mark's lifelong obsession with Jaws.

• 8:37Speaker 06

  We bought a house, he built a Jaws movie room. So, in the house, that was his move-in contribution to the house.

• 8:45Speaker 05

  Movie room, yeah.

• 8:46Speaker 06

  And we planned the trip to the vineyard here, because he just loves it, so...

• 8:51Speaker 00

  Mark is totally giddy, like a little kid. I feel that way too, but his... ...is next level, and he is not alone.

• 9:01Speaker 01

  It's the greatest film of all time with the greatest characters. I've gone to the theater three times in two days to watch Jaws by myself. I got the limited edition pinball machine that came out last year. I'll be buying whatever I see too, baseball caps and T-shirts and hoodies. And Jaws only turns 50 once. That's why they call these these super fans Finn Addicts.

• 9:23Speaker 00

  Finn Addicts, it makes me laugh.

• 9:25Speaker 05

  Exactly, that's what we are. We're crazy about Jaws. I'm a film critic. I see, you know, 50 movies a year. But ever since that day in 1975, I've never seen a film that has affected me like Jaws.

• 9:39Speaker 00

  That last voice is Michael Smith. He's co-creator of Let's Talk Jaws Live, a weekly YouTube discussion show and Facebook community for super fans and collectors. For those of you who have not seen the film, Alex Kitner has been eaten, and now there's a reward offered for him. But if you haven't seen the film, why are you here? So. Michael traveled hundreds of miles to the vineyard from Lee's Summit, Missouri, so he could commune with his people.

• 10:08Speaker 05

  It's like you found your lost brothers and sisters. It's just a gathering of fans from all over the world, like the Jaws Army, like Kiss Army, but I prefer to call us the Jaws Family.

• 10:19Speaker 00

  Michael compiled a book for the 50th anniversary that celebrates 50 passionate Jaws aficionados from all around the world.

• 10:27Speaker 05

  I've got fans from Serbia, Ukraine, Spain, the United Kingdom, obviously, America.

• 10:34Speaker 00

  Then his phone interrupts us.

• 10:38Speaker 05

  Oops, sorry.

• 10:40Speaker 00

  Yes, his ringer is that drinking song from another classic scene in the movie.

• 10:48Speaker 00

  Michael even proposed to his wife on the vineyard years ago. He says this anniversary weekend is like a homecoming for kindred souls he's met online over the years, the collectors, the people who know every line of the movie, the people like Michael who've taken planes, buses, and ferries, hundreds, even thousands of miles to celebrate Jaws 50th together.

• 11:12Speaker 05

  We're not all crazy.

• 11:15Speaker 05

  Indulge us, we're harmless, get to know us, and I think you'll like us.

• 11:22Speaker 00

  So that's exactly what we're doing. Getting to know the Jaws fanatics. Are they crazy? Am I crazy? Could I be one of them? I'm Andrea Shea, an arts and culture reporter in Boston. From WBUR, Boston's NPR, this is Jaws Island. The story of the first summer blockbuster and how it lives on in our collective imaginations, in our nightmares, and in our culture.

• 11:56Speaker 00

  There's no one way to be a Jaws fanatic. For Mark from upstate New York, it's having a room in your house devoted to Jaws. For main bass musician Judy Pankost, it's writing a love song for her favorite character, Deputy Hendricks.

• 12:28Speaker 00

  For those of you going, wait a minute, who is Deputy Hendricks? He's a smallish character with a big following. He's the cop who finds the first victim Chrissy's severed arm on the beach.

• 12:43Speaker 00

  Judy Pankost has had a burning crush on Deputy Hendricks since she first saw Jaws in 1975, and today, she can serenade him in person.

• 13:03Speaker 05

  She's a superfan. She always stuns me. She wrote that, sent it to me, played it for me. It was really something. It makes me, ooh.

• 13:21Speaker 05

  I am Jeffrey Kramer, and I play Deputy Hendricks in Jaws and Jaws 2. Daisy, Daisy, this is Hendricks. Anything? Thought I said- I saw Shadow over. Super fans, you must encounter a lot of them. No, nobody knows who I am. This is a 50-year-old film. I had hair, but I do wear my Amity police cap because I went to a stop sign. And the cop pulled me over. He goes, you know, you went to the stop sign. I said, oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't go over very far. He goes, why are you wearing that hat? I said, oh, I played the deputy in Jaws. And he goes, oh, I love that movie. Don't do it again.

• 14:02Speaker 05

  So now I wear it like it's going to save my life forever.

• 14:07Speaker 00

  And that's probably a safe bet because, as Jeffrey says, Jaws fandom feeds itself.

• 14:13Speaker 05

  They pass it on from generation to generation. I asked you and you said, your dad took you. You were six. Dad, that was a big mistake. Too young. And do you still swim the same? No. No, she's shaking her head. No, no, I get it. I get it.

• 14:36Speaker 00

  There's a scene in Jaws where Chief Brody, played by Roy Scheider, learns that most shark attacks happen in three feet of water. That stuck with me, and for years I was scared to go deeper than two. Same with a lot of fans.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I won't go in the water. I'm not going to water. Absolutely not. And when I went home in the night, I refused to get in the bath.

• 14:58Speaker 05

  Anytime I go in the water, I still am a little leery and I'm not in there very long. No, I will not go into the water. I know there's great whites out there.

• 15:06Speaker 00

  Fear seems to be part of the fandom. I grew up on Long Island beaches, scanning the sound for shark fins, but never deterred from watching Jaws. I lived in a tourist town with a ferry, not unlike the movie's fictional Amity. Amity in real life is actually Edgartown. And this weekend, it's teeming with collectors. A bunch of them are lined up outside Edgartown bookstore to get signatures from the movie's production designer, Joe Alves, and Michael Smith of Let's Talk Jaws Live. A lot of them are coming together in person for the first time.

• 15:43Speaker 05

  We've communicated for like five years, but we never met each other.

• 15:46Speaker 00

  This is Mark Fitzgibbons, talking about his collecting buddy from America. Mark, if you couldn't tell, is from England.

• 15:53Speaker 05

  I come from the second city.

• 15:55Amory Sivertson?

  Which is Birmingham, where Peaky Blinders comes from and Black Sabbath.

• 15:59Speaker 00

  Mark is decked out head to toe in Jaws, his shorts, shirt, and Amity hat. He buys memorabilia from the UK. His friend, you'll meet him later, hunts for stuff in the US. They buy two of everything and then ship heavy boxes to each other three times a year, which adds up.

• 16:19Amory Sivertson?

  I'm coming up to like 3,000 items of memorabilia now. I've got three storage units and I go and visit them to see all my toys.

• 16:29Speaker 00

  Mark was 10 when Jaws came out. His father got him all kinds of Jaws stuff, mugs, pendants, a game, on and on.

• 16:38Amory Sivertson?

  Sadly, he's no longer with us now. He died in October. So I'm doing this for the memory of my dad. My dad gave me the greatest gift. He gave me Jaws. He'll be looking down at me thinking, my boy got to Amity.

• 16:54Speaker 00

  This dad theme continues outside the bookstore, where I meet a father and son who traveled cross-country to be here. So I'm Samuel Dean from Washington State, local Jaws collector there. So what do you have? I've got a Ben Gardner head, Jaws barrel, the Quint fighting chair. Quint, the ornery shark hunter who captains the orca. He shoots floating yellow barrels into the shark throughout the movie's seafaring second half. Fisherman Ben Gardner's head pops out of his sunken boat's hull in an iconic jumpscare scene.

• 17:30Speaker 00

  Samuel's collectibles are replicas because he says he can't afford screen used. He wanted a barrel so badly, he asked his wife for permission to buy one as his wedding gift. Turns out Samuel inherited his obsession with Jaws from his dad, David.

• 17:47Ben Brock Johnson?

  I was born in 70, so parents just kind of drop kids off at the theater. Just, hey, just get rid of them for a while, for half a day, and not knowing that we're being traumatized for life, possibly.

• 17:58Speaker 00

  Traumatized or tantalized. In defense of all the parents out there, parents like my dad, Jaws was rated PG. Yes, just PG. We'll get there, I promise. David, the P following the Motion Picture Association's G, showed Jaws to Samuel when he was maybe five or seven. Samuel says being on the vineyard is inspiring him to. Think more deeply about why he and so many others worship Jaws.

• 18:29Amory Sivertson?

  When meeting other fans, it's almost kind of the same story about like connecting with your childhood nostalgia and just like maybe connecting with family.

• 18:38Ben Brock Johnson?

  And it's a movie too that shows humanity. It's not just, it's an action film, right? A little bit of horror elements, but within that is the father with kids, the wife.

• 18:50Speaker 00

  We all love the scene where Chief Brody is distraught at the dining room table. His youngest son sits there next to him, mimicking his dad's every move. It's ridiculously adorable, very Spielberg. Then Brody says, Give us a kiss. Why?

• 19:11Speaker 00

  Because I need it.

• 19:13Ben Brock Johnson?

  That's a winner scene right there, you know? You really feel for him as a, as a parent.

• 19:17Amory Sivertson?

  Going through a hard day and then his son's there to bring him out of it.

• 19:21Speaker 00

  Samuel is a dad now too and says his one-year-old daughter is already obsessed with sharks.

• 19:28Amory Sivertson?

  She's kind of watched the movie. I haven't, I'll probably wait till she's about like six or something, you know?

• 19:34Speaker 00

  It's actually comforting to talk to other fans who see Jaws as a family movie, which might seem odd to some, but I'll find more of them on the island. My next stop is a bus ride away. All right, Oceanside, Oak Cluffs. Oh my God, I love your T-shirt. Oak Cluffs is totally packed. There's a harbor festival going on. Richard Dreyfuss is there and there's a big, long line.

• 20:01Speaker 00

  Where he's signing autographs, right next to the replica of the orca, which I really hope I can get onto.

• 20:09Speaker 00

  Meet the man. The man is Mike Sterling, an English marine carpenter who painstakingly built and crafted every inch of a floating homage to Captain Quinn's orca.

• 20:22Speaker 01

  When you come through the door, we've got a original bronze porthole, which you really had to find. That's as close as I could get, but it's very close. You've got to remember that this is all from stopping the movie. And like looking, zooming in, but it's very fuzzy.

• 20:40Speaker 00

  Who knows how many times Michael paused the movie to study the orca so he could get every prop just right. Michael even found a period perfect radio, like the one Brody uses to call the Coast Guard. Coast Guard, this is the orca, do you read me? Coast Guard, this is the orca, do you—

• 20:57Speaker 01

  Then Quint gets the baseball bat, which is back here, and smashes it. Nobody's going anywhere near that radio with a baseball bat, because she can't find them.

• 21:11Speaker 00

  Excuse me, chief. Sterling looks like Quint, sitting at the table inside the cabin, down to the sideburns and can of Naraganset in his hand. He says people think he's making money off his orca, but he hasn't made a dime, so why do it?

• 21:28Speaker 01

  That's the golden question you've just asked, right? People can't understand and comprehend that, like, why would he do that? Because the movie touched me so much, right? And I've used the quotes through my life, like saying to people, like when somebody, when you're in trouble and you're annoyed and you're with somebody else, you go, "He made me do it. He made me do it." He made me do it. He told me to do it. There's been a lot of people who've told me that I don't know what I'm doing, I'm doing it wrong, and I just say to them, "Where's your orca?"

• 22:07Speaker 01

  Welcome aboard, sir. Do you know who this is? Hang on, hang on.

• 22:10Speaker 00

  I get to ring the orca's bell before climbing up the ladder back onto land. Richard Dreyfus is sitting at a table under a tent, signing autographs. He played marine biologist Matt Hooper, who set out with Quint and Chief Brody to kill the murderous shark. The line is long, but I've heard he'll be at a fan event back in Edgartown at a restaurant called The Wharf, so that's where I'm going next, and I'm taking you with me in a minute.

• 22:55Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken?, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questrom School of Business. How should employers measure real skills in the age of AI?

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• 24:05Speaker 00

  Wait the crowd. I'm scoping out the line of fanatics outside the wharf in Edgartown. They know who's inside, but this passerby, not so much.

• 24:16Speaker 05

  Is Quinn in there? No, he died. All right. He died right after the movie. What about Roy Schneider? Is he in there? Nope, he's gone. What about? Cooper's in there. I don't remember which one was Cooper.

• 24:29Speaker 00

  Cooper's Richard Dreyfuss.

• 24:31Speaker 05

  Oh, oh, he is. The geologist, young biologist. What's he doing in there, boozing? Yeah.

• 24:38Speaker 00

  One fan sports a gray blazer awash in anchors, like the mayor's in the movie. And here I am, not even wearing a Jaws t-shirt. I feel a little like a fish out of water, especially when I talk to a fanatic named Jamie Saunders, who wears his love for Jaws on his forearm. He's got a big tattoo.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  It's the poster. Roger Costello was the man that designed the poster. Covers my whole forearm and then it's got the title, the logo at the top. And it took about nine hours.

• 25:08Speaker 00

  Jamie tells me his Jaws obsession started when he was just three years old. That's when his parents took him To see it at a drive-in in Ontario. But instead of scarring him for life,

• 25:23Speaker 00

  Jaws soothed him.

• 25:26Speaker 01

  I remember as a little kid, eight years old, I had a little flat candle tape recorder. And I set that tape recorder up beside the TV. And I recorded the movie audio. And then I would sleep with it every night underneath my pillow for years.

• 25:40Speaker 00

  Jamie didn't start collecting Jaws memorabilia until 2014.

• 25:45Speaker 01

  My wife and I lost her son. And, um, uh,

• 25:48Speaker 00

  I'm sorry.

• 25:49Speaker 01

  Thank you. It was a distraction from the sadness. And then the, the collecting became an obsession. I think I have pretty much the biggest collection of Jaws stuff in Canada. I'm very, very proud of it.

• 26:00Speaker 00

  Jamie says it's always on in his home.

• 26:03Speaker 01

  It's like an old friend. It's comforting. I watch Jaws when I'm happy. I watch it when I'm sad. I watch it when I'm anything. I just, every time's a good time for Jaws.

• 26:13Speaker 00

  This is what makes me feel like maybe I could be a fanatic, just without much stuff to show for it. No posters or shark tattoos. In my own quiet way, usually alone, I've been calling on our old friends several times a year. And for decades, many of these fans have done the very same thing. Until, Jamie says, along came the internet, ushering in a new era of Jaws fandom and community at conventions and other events like this.

• 26:45Speaker 01

  Only in the last 20 years or so have they started doing these kind of things because fans want to meet the people in the TV shows and the movies that made a difference in their life. I've been saving for this for a few years. I've had my Airbnb booked in Martha's Vineyard for two years for anticipating this.

• 27:02Speaker 00

  Jamie says he was the first in line outside the Wharf event. I'm not even sure I'll get in. I've never been to a horror convention or a shark con, and I don't even have a ticket. These people are clearly on a mission.

• 27:16Ben Brock Johnson?

  I think you're good. All right, thanks. Cool. Thanks.

• 27:18Speaker 00

  But so am I. And the organizers were kind enough to let me in.

• 27:24Speaker 00

  It's a scene to behold. Tables line the perimeters of two rooms. Actors, designers, authors, and a few locals stand behind them wielding Sharpies. The music is pumping, and Jaws is on the television screens. Fans swirl around like a school of fish engaging in a feeding frenzy. Then I see Mark Fitzgibbons, the collector from Birmingham, England. He's been busy getting autographs and says while Jaws collectors are serious and determined, they're also super nice.

• 27:58Speaker 05

  You hear all the Star Wars collectors, they're quite patty. You know, "I've got this, you haven't got this." Whereas the Jaws community, all they would do is like, "Oh, you haven't got one? You know, do you want me to get it for you and send me the money?"

• 28:16Speaker 00

  His American collector buddy Eric Augustine walks up and says he's arranged to pay cash for some Jaws artifacts, including a pile of rubble.

• 28:26Speaker 05

  At the end of the day, it's bricks from a lighthouse that fell over at the last seconds of the movie Jaws. Worthless to most people. They hauled it away in dump trucks. I'm going to be buying it tonight and I don't even know how much. It's a sickness. I need help.

• 28:44Speaker 00

  Eric assures me Richard Dreyfuss will be making his big entrance soon. Fans are lined up at his table. They're holding up their cell phones, ready to get shots of the 77-year-old actor, the last of the three main characters from Jaws who's still alive. Then the room erupts.

• 29:12Speaker 00

  They're saying- Hooper drives the boat, chief. A fan favorite from the movie. I can barely see Dreyfuss through the sea of adoring fans. Gray hair, blue sweatshirt, no bucket hat like in the movie. I don't know if I'll get to talk to him this weekend, but I do know what he said in the past about why Jaws endures. In the introduction to Michael Smith's book, Fanatics: 50 Years of Jaws, Drivas said the fans are the secret sauce that keeps the movie alive. Stacy Davis from Columbus, Ohio, said she watched the movie for the first time as a kid, all by herself. I had the remote control. I was left alone. And back then, it's like

• 29:56Speaker 00

  there was only one show on at a time. And it was Jaws. And that was, I was hooked. I saw stuff I should not have seen. Decades later, Stacy is making new Jaws memories. And this time, she's not alone. I jumped off the Jaws Bridge today. I mean, it was on my bucket list to do it on the anniversary. Jumping off the Jaws Bridge is a rite of passage for fans. It's in that scene where the hippie girl yells, "Shark!" as an ominous gray fin glides silently through the water. The iconic location is a few miles away. But will I be brave enough to jump?

• 30:38Speaker 00

  Oh, no. Oh, no. Nope, that's not me. But fans of all ages are taking the plunge. 74-year-old Conrad Watson jokes he's the oldest jumper here. He's with his granddaughter Elle and daughter Kate, who's from Golden, Colorado.

• 30:57Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. It was like the pinnacle of our childhood was watching Jaws, you know? And coming here and jumping off the Jaws Bridge. For who? This is three generations right here.

• 31:07Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, yeah. We've been doing this for, well, even before you guys were born.

• 31:14Speaker 02

  Have you seen Jaws? Yes. Does Jaws scare you?

• 31:19Speaker 05

  Um, no and yes.

• 31:21Speaker 00

  Then I discover Conrad first saw Jaws where I did, 50 years ago.

• 31:27Speaker 05

  Port Jefferson?

• 31:28Speaker 02

  I'm from Port Jefferson.

• 31:29Speaker 05

  No way.

• 31:30Speaker 02

  Yes, way. And you saw it in the theater downtown?

• 31:32Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 31:33Speaker 02

  That's where I saw it.

• 31:34Speaker 05

  Wow, cool. You're too young.

• 31:37Speaker 02

  No, I was, well, I was too young.

• 31:38Speaker 00

  I was six. Oh, OK. But you know what? Maybe I wasn't too young. Seeing Jaws as a child left an indelible imprint on me. It's part of my core. It has become an old friend. And now, it's opened my eyes to a jawsome community I barely knew existed. The fanatics welcomed me, shared with me. Heck, Mark and Sheila even offered to drive me around the island, making me feel like one of their own. But, as a woman in the movie says, "When do I get to become an islander?" Ellen, never, never. You're not born here, you're not an islander. Maybe. That's it.

• 32:20Speaker 00

  You're not born here, you're not an islander. There is a difference between the Jaws fans who made a pilgrimage to where the movie magic happened and the people who've been on the Vineyard all along. We land lovers can only understand so much about how the islanders and the island itself made it through the making and aftermath of what became one of the greatest and biggest monster movies ever made. The island had never experienced anything like this and was learning, as it went along, about what the rules were supposed to be. And also bear this in mind. Nobody expected this movie to become the most successful movie of all time.

• 33:01Speaker 00

  Next time, we'll get to know the place and the people who made Jaws.

• 33:09Speaker 00

  Jaws Island is a production of WBUR, Boston's NPR. It was written and reported by me, Andrea Shea. People saw a shark.

• 33:19Speaker 00

  I am definitely not jumping off the Jaws Bridge. It was produced by Amory Sivertson and edited by Tanya Raleigh, Ben Brock Johnson, and Amory Sivertson. Mix and sound design by Emily Jankowski and Paul Vikes.

• 33:35Speaker 00

  Sumata Joshi is our managing producer.

• 33:39Speaker 05

  Director of Digital Audio is Ben Brock Johnson.

• 33:45Speaker 05

  Do you know what my most obscure piece of memorabilia is? You'll be shocked. It's a Jaws panty liner.

• 33:55Amory Sivertson?

  And that's it. Episode one of Jaws Island. And a reminder that if you want more of this very limited series that Ben and I both actually worked on, you can find it wherever you find Endless Thread. Just search Jaws Island in your podcast app.

• 34:12Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken? A podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questrom School of Business. Follow Is Business Broken wherever you get your podcasts and listen on for a preview of a recent episode featuring Janet Kang, Executive Director of the Just Horizons Alliance, on who stands to benefit from AI in education.

• 34:35Speaker 06

  I am absolutely in favor of AI in learning in the right context. And just to explain why you're excited about it. Oh, my gosh. Individualized support, right? Personalization and to be able to scale quality education in places where it was historically impossible. So for certain kinds of learners with different kinds of learning styles and disabilities. For example, speakers of different languages. There are amazing ways AI can boost learning. It just has to be with the right context. And age appropriateness is something we do a lot of work in because it is very different depending on where in that maturity cycle you are in terms of how your brain develops.

• 35:13Speaker 00

  Find the full episode by searching for Is Business Broken wherever you get your podcasts and learn more about the Marotra Institute for Business, Markets and Society at ibms.bu.edu.

• 35:32Speaker 00

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• 35:59Speaker 02

  Hey, listen! Power up your play with Nintendo Switch 2 and experience Link's legendary adventure, now reborn in vibrant detail on our fastest and most powerful system yet.

• 36:12Speaker 02

  And harness the power of the Ocarina with the built-in microphone.

• 36:21Speaker 02

  The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, a Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive. Game and system sold separately. Game rated everyone 10 and up.