Pod Insights Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks Brown Bear Attack - Olga, Igor, and the Kamchatka Brown Bear About this episode Olga and her step-father Igor were out in the Kamchatkan wilderness when they inadvertently committed the cardinal sin of recreating safely in bear country. The ensuing tragedy was captured through what might just be the most horrifying phone call a mother has ever received.
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Transcript 13,457 words · 3 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:13 Jeff Larson? Hello everyone, welcome to Tooth and Claw Podcast. We have our bear biologist, wildlife biologist Wes Larson.
0:21 Mike Smith? That's me.
0:22 Jeff Larson? We have our tech guy, Mike Smith.
0:24 Wes Larson? Hey.
0:25 Jeff Larson? And we have me, I'm Jeff Larson. Me and Mike are both beefy guys. Wes is a little bit small.
0:32 Wes Larson? Yeah.
0:33 Jeff Larson? According to Outside Magazine.
0:35 Wes Larson? I'm beefing up.
0:37 Jeff Larson? You're joining the club.
0:38 Wes Larson? I'm curious now, if that, if that article got written today, I don't know if he would describe me as that much smaller than you guys.
0:46 Mike Smith? Right.
0:47 Jeff Larson? Nice.
0:48 Wes Larson? Yeah.
0:48 Jeff Larson? All muscle.
0:49 Wes Larson? All muscle dude. I'm like 2% body fat.
0:52 Jeff Larson? Uh, you enjoying your Montana summer out there?
0:55 Wes Larson? I am. We're in like the prime of Montana summer right now. Longest days.
1:01 Jeff Larson? You think all the, everyone listening should move to Montana?
1:05 Wes Larson? I was about to say, it's full of bears, cold winters, uh, lots of just like rednecks that, yeah, don't move here, but feel free to come visit sometime. Bozeman's great.
1:15 Mike Smith? So wait, the rednecks are a mark against or for?
1:20 Wes Larson? Uh, it depends, you know, it just depends on your worldview, Mike.
1:25 Mike Smith? I wanted you to insult a whole swath of people there, but you didn't fall for it.
1:29 Wes Larson? I have a soft spot for rednecks and for just country living, you know?
1:35 Jeff Larson? When you visit, Wes is out in a little town called.
1:39 Wes Larson? No, no, no, no.
1:42 Jeff Larson? What's your street again?
1:44 Wes Larson? You're not doxing me on our show. Uh, not happening. Anyway, Jeff, you're in Maine. How was it? Is it amazing?
1:52 Jeff Larson? Just a business trip, meeting with some of our podcaster friends. Um, it's been fun. Yeah.
1:59 Wes Larson? Great.
1:59 Jeff Larson? I, you know what? It's really fun just living with dogs for a little bit when you don't have pets. So.
2:05 Wes Larson? Yeah, it's fun when you do have pets. Well, I think.
2:08 Jeff Larson? Sure. Yeah.
2:09 Wes Larson? Yeah. Have you seen Stephen King yet?
2:12 Jeff Larson? No, I, well, actually, maybe.
2:17 Mike Smith? Watch out while you're driving around. He's, he's known to be hit by cars up there.
2:22 Jeff Larson? There's some real.
2:24 Mike Smith? I'm not saying I want that. I've been telling Jeff to not do that. I don't want that to happen to him anymore.
2:30 Jeff Larson? There's some real old people here just creeping around.
2:34 Wes Larson? Yeah.
2:36 Jeff Larson? Maine feels kind of like I'm in a different country, honestly. Like there's no advertisements, like everything's still like mom and pop out here.
2:46 Wes Larson? Yeah.
2:46 Jeff Larson? You go to the ocean and it's like, you just see like a little river of water and it's like, that's not the ocean. And they're like, yeah, it is.
2:57 Wes Larson? Can you guys do the Maine accent, like the old guy in Pet Sematary?
3:00 Mike Smith? Nope.
3:01 Wes Larson? Like the Yankee accent? Yeah.
3:03 Jeff Larson? Nah.
3:04 Wes Larson? Can I? I kind of want to try, but I don't think I can come close.
3:08 Jeff Larson? Try one word. I can do the, it's funny. So like, I really like.
3:14 Mike Smith? The fastest bail on an accent, maybe.
3:18 Jeff Larson? I'm a big fan of clam chowder.
3:21 Wes Larson? Yeah.
3:21 Jeff Larson? And I like went to a local.
3:23 Wes Larson? Do a Boston accent.
3:25 Jeff Larson? Local spot.
3:26 Wes Larson? Yeah.
3:26 Jeff Larson? And ordered a clam chowder. And I was like, hey, I'll just get the small thing of clam chowder. And she's like, oh, a cup of chowder?
3:39 Jeff Larson? Like wanting me to say that. I was like, I can't.
3:43 Mike Smith? You did pretty good, I think.
3:44 Wes Larson? That was good. I feel like that, like the Boston accent is the easiest of the accents.
3:50 Jeff Larson? It's pretty strong in Maine, too.
3:52 Wes Larson? Yeah. I, or like a Fargo accent. That was what I was about to do when I was gonna try Maine. Anyway, well, we're all three in different places. We're enjoying our summers. We've been having a good time on this here podcast. So I wanna, I wanted to kind of do something like a little bit shorter today. It's not crazy short, but it's gonna be a touch shorter, the story.
4:15 Wes Larson? And it's, yeah, if it was up to Jeff, our episodes would all be three hours long.
4:19 Jeff Larson? I just like talking to you guys.
4:21 Wes Larson? I know. I like talking to you too, pal.
4:23 Mike Smith? I've been really getting into YouTube shorts lately. That's my ideal length is like 30 seconds. I think we should start doing that more.
4:30 Wes Larson? The funny thing too is I could watch like 20 YouTube shorts about the same topic. But if you wanted me to watch one three minute video about it, I couldn't do it.
4:40 Jeff Larson? You just like watch your movies and YouTube shorts now.
4:43 Wes Larson? Yeah.
4:44 Mike Smith? Wasn't that what Quibi was supposed to be?
4:46 Wes Larson? Yeah, it was. Quibi came like five years too early.
4:49 Mike Smith? Quibi, there was just too long. They needed to make their movies happen in 30 second chunks. That was.
4:55 Wes Larson? That's true. Like two minutes is too much.
4:58 Mike Smith? Right.
4:58 Wes Larson? So anyway, what I was getting to is this is a shorter story, but it's one I've wanted to do for a while. But it also is like a really dark one. We've been having some goofy, like really fun episodes. And I just thought I need to bring this down a little bit. That was a goofy ass episode. Maybe the act wasn't goofy, but that was a goofy episode. Anyway, I think we've been.
5:24 Jeff Larson? Funny. Can I just say a quick tidbit about that episode?
5:28 Wes Larson? Sure.
5:29 Jeff Larson? I, so I'm in Maine. I'm visiting Danielle with National Park After Dark. And I met her mom for a little bit. And I, her mom listens to Tooth and Claw. So I was like, oh, do you have a favorite episode? And she was like, huh, I really liked that penis episode. I was like, no way.
5:48 Wes Larson? Oh, that's so funny.
5:50 Jeff Larson? Anyway, sorry.
5:51 Wes Larson? Also, just so everyone knows, my Robin is back. You might hear it every once in a while in the background, but I just can't, there's nothing I can do about it. He's around.
6:00 Jeff Larson? I mean.
6:01 Wes Larson? Yeah.
6:01 Jeff Larson? You just made a rule. You can't kill bugs, right?
6:04 Wes Larson? No, I'm not killing anything, but trust me, if I felt okay killing animals, this Robin would probably be. Now, I mean, I can't say that even. That makes me sad to even think about. All right. Speaking of being sad, this is a sad episode. It is one that I think merits covering because we're gonna be talking.
6:23 Jeff Larson? Being sad?
6:24 Wes Larson? I just said it makes me sad to think about killing a robin.
6:27 Jeff Larson? Sorry, sorry, sorry.
6:27 Wes Larson? Catch up, Jeff.
6:28 Jeff Larson? I'll get in it.
6:29 Wes Larson? All right.
6:29 Jeff Larson? Get my head in.
6:30 Mike Smith? Lock in.
6:31 Wes Larson? Yeah. Lock in, dude.
6:32 Jeff Larson? Locked.
6:33 Wes Larson? Are you locked in?
6:34 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
6:34 Wes Larson? All right. Uh, it's a sad one, and I think it's one that I wanted to include because there's some pretty kind of a crazy thing that happens during this attack and it involves a part of the world that we haven't really talked about much yet, but we're not going to spend a ton of time on the story just because it is so dark. We're going to focus more on the second half of the episode, having a little bit more fun then. But so if you, nah, nevermind. I'm not going to do a trigger warning. That's enough for you guys to understand. This is a little bit sadder of a story than we often do. All right. You guys ready?
7:09 Mike Smith? Let's go.
7:10 Wes Larson? In 2011, Olga Moskolyova was an exceptionally bright young woman, growing up in the Kamchatka Peninsula in eastern Russia.
7:18 Mike Smith? Very strategic part of the board on risk. You want Kamchatka if you're trying to protect North America, you know?
7:26 Wes Larson? I was gonna ask you guys how much you know about Kamchatka.
7:29 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
7:30 Wes Larson? Kamchatka, however you say it.
7:31 Mike Smith? Yeah, that's about it. Yeah.
7:33 Wes Larson? I have a map of the the former Soviet Union behind me here with the wildlife that used to that existed there.
7:40 Jeff Larson? You gotta point with the other hand and put your head on the other side.
7:44 Wes Larson? No, this this works. That's the peninsula right there. That's the Kamchatka Peninsula. It's hard for me to say that for whatever reason, but it is the long peninsula that sticks out of far eastern Russia, and it is an incredibly beautiful place. There are huge swaths of beautiful forests, productive coastlines, surrounded by these massive volcanoes. Like, picture Katmai, Alaska. That's what Kamchatka looks like. It's very just wild mountains, forest, coasts. It's gorgeous.
8:20 Jeff Larson? And if you don't know what Katmai, Alaska is, just picture Kamchatka, Russia.
8:28 Wes Larson? Perfect. I think that covers all of our bases.
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10:10 Wes Larson? A lot of the articles that I read about this story, and I didn't really focus on one, so I'm not gonna give a source, because I probably read 20 different articles, and they all essentially said the exact same thing. A lot of them reported this attack as being in part of Siberia, which is a huge stretch. I think Western media loves to say Siberia for pretty much any part of Russia, like outside of Moscow or St. Petersburg. And that's not the case. Like Siberia is constrained to some geographical borders. Kamchatka, as far as I know, is not considered Siberia. It's far eastern Russia. It's not Siberia. There was even some of the sources like saying that this happened in Amur,
10:51 Wes Larson? Russia, which is kind of more down by the China border, closer to North Korea and China. That's where you're going to find more tigers and more leopards. There are brown bears that live there. Asiatic black bears live there. This is not in the Amur region either. Yeah. Basically, I just want you guys to picture this place as the Russian equivalent to coastal Alaska. And one of the things that it shares with coastal Alaska is a really large number of rivers that have amazing salmon runs and a very robust brown bear population as a result. There's thought to be about-
11:26 Jeff Larson? When we bought Alaska from Russia, they like really didn't need it anymore because they already had it.
11:31 Wes Larson? They already had their own version of it. They were like, hey, we got two of these. We might as well get one of these.
11:36 Jeff Larson? For super cheap.
11:38 Mike Smith? Do you think they have their own version of fat bear week? They probably don't.
11:41 Jeff Larson? I bet you they do.
11:42 Mike Smith? You think?
11:43 Wes Larson? Yeah, they probably do.
11:44 Jeff Larson? I bet you in Russia, like without like cancel culture, I bet you they have a fat guy week, you know?
11:53 Mike Smith? That's where we should be making our bones, Jeff.
11:57 Wes Larson? All right. So I know I'll bring that up actually a little bit about kind of the differences between these bear populations. But basically there's thought to be about 12,000 brown bears on the Kamchatka Peninsula and the surrounding islands, which makes it one of the most densely populated brown bear spots in the world. Um, so again, when we're talking about brown bears, this is the bear that in North America, we often call a grizzly bear. That's kind of the North American nickname for a brown bear. These brown bears in Kamchatka look very much like the coastal brown bears you would find in Alaska. So picture like- The Kodiak grizzlies, or the Katmai grizzlies, or anywhere else that you're gonna find these
12:39 Wes Larson? big coastal browns, even in like coastal British Columbia, that's very much what these bears look like in Kamchatka, Russia. They also have grizzlies that look very much like our inland grizzlies that live in more inland Russia. These coastal ones are very big. Yeah, eating salmon all the time. Yep, it makes sense. They have great resources there. They have pink salmon, berries, pine nuts, mollusks, sedges, dead marine mammals that sometime wash up. It's a bonanza for food, a lot like you'd see in coastal Alaska. So like Jeff just mentioned, when you have that much food, what does that mean for the bears? Chowda. Yep, it means chowda. Exactly. Mike, if there's a ton of food, what happens to your bears?
13:22 Mike Smith? They get to be big old bears after.
13:25 Wes Larson? Big old bears. They get very large. What else happens when there's lots of food for those bears? They get that. I know. No, either of you.
13:34 Mike Smith? Less incentive to like, yeah.
13:36 Wes Larson? Yeah, less aggressive.
13:37 Mike Smith? Try to eat humans.
13:38 Wes Larson? More, I would say even like the better way to phrase that is they're more tolerant. They just. I like how Mike phrased it. What did Mike say? Incentive to eat humans. Yeah, it's kind of true. It's more that often when there are a lot of bears over a food source, they've just learned to tolerate the presence of other bears, because there's enough food for everyone. There really isn't a reason to fight. Everyone is being well fed. There still are going to be some scuffles over like mating, over a few different things, but not nearly as much as you would see with like Yellowstone bears, or glacier bears, or inland Alaska bears. These bears on coastal resources just tend to be more tolerant. And
14:19 Wes Larson? that that tolerance for other bears kind of gets extended for other animals too. And we fall into that category. So again, if you are watching like Instagram videos or TikTok videos, and you see someone often kind of in these big open grasslands, or on a tidal flat, and they're right next to a really big grizzly bear. It's probably in coastal Alaska or coastal Russia. These bears just tolerate people being very close. Doesn't mean you should approach them that closely, especially without a guide. But You can't. They do tolerate it. Yes. You could, but we're going to talk about how, you know, even these bears can be incredibly dangerous. Okay, so we said they're really big. These are some of the biggest bears in the world.
15:04 Wes Larson? They're equal to like what you'd expect in Kodiak. They top out at about 1,500 pounds, which is about what the biggest bears in the world top out at. Even like big polar bears only get about that big. So these are really large animals. As a small teaser, there was a Russian equivalent to Timothy Treadwell that lived among these bears in Kamchatka. And he had similar results to Timothy where he could get really close to these bears and even touch them at times. He treated them kind of like they were friends. And this guy also flew way too close to the sun, kind of started drinking his own Kool-Aid as a bear whisperer and ended up getting killed by a brown bear. And we will do his story at some point.
15:47 Mike Smith? Is his name like Timofey Treadwellov or something?
15:51 Wes Larson? Tredalaskov.
15:54 Jeff Larson? I'm gonna have to do a lot.
15:56 Mike Smith? Treadwell-Oskovich.
15:57 Jeff Larson? Corrections to what I've been telling a lot of people behind the scenes.
16:02 Wes Larson? What have you been doing? Telling them to touch those bears?
16:05 Jeff Larson? That you didn't think Timothy Treadwell had a very good idea of touching bears. But I didn't think there's enough evidence to say that yet.
16:13 Wes Larson? And then Oh, there is. You have two data points now.
16:18 Wes Larson? Yeah.
16:19 Mike Smith? When was this guy active?
16:21 Wes Larson? It was very like close to the time that Timothy was active too. I don't remember the exact dates, but they were, they were almost, I think they were active at the same time, like early 90s. Cause I do think that was kind of when people started to realize like, oh, bears can actually be quite tolerant of humans. Yeah. All right. But he flew too close to the sun. He got killed. He died in a terrible, a terrible way. What do you guys think the Russian equivalent to Kool-Aid is? I just said he was drinking his own Kool-Aid.
16:51 Mike Smith? Oh, I don't know. Vodka?
16:53 Wes Larson? Yeah.
16:53 Mike Smith? Like flavored vodka?
16:55 Wes Larson? Vodka with like some cherry flavoring in it.
16:57 Mike Smith? Blue raspberry?
16:58 Jeff Larson? Well, I was thinking too, they were really, they were like the number one competitor in the space race. You think they have a Russian tang? Because that was like for astronauts, right?
17:08 Wes Larson? Yeah, also vodka.
17:11 Mike Smith? Vodka flavored tang.
17:12 Wes Larson? Yeah. So the whole background here is basically to say that while these brown bears are absolutely massive, they are in general, some of the best tempered bears in the world, brown bears, and ones that often exist close to humans and other bears. But like all bears, they can be totally unpredictable at times, and that makes them animals that deserve our respect and the appropriate amount of distance. Fortunately, in late August 2011, both Olga and her stepfather Igor would mistakenly invade the allowable distance of the worst kind of brown bear to surprise, which is? You guys know what the worst brown bear you could surprise is?
17:54 Jeff Larson? Hmm, is it a mother with cups?
17:56 Wes Larson? Exactly, a mother with cups. All right, let's rewind a tiny bit.
18:00 Jeff Larson? How long of a bus would the appropriate distance be?
18:05 Wes Larson? A hundred yards is what we would always say in Yellowstone. That's what I would recommend.
18:09 Jeff Larson? Bus?
18:09 Wes Larson? Yeah, so a hundred yards is what?
18:12 Jeff Larson? Turns.
18:12 Wes Larson? Three hundred feet. A bus is like forty feet long, so what is that? That's like eight buses?
18:21 Mike Smith? Oh, Rain Man. We got Rain Man on the show.
18:25 Jeff Larson? More than that.
18:26 Wes Larson? Yeah, more than that. It's like nine buses. Yeah. All right. Yeah, not a very smart Rain Man. The Rain Man that immediately loses all his money in the casino.
18:37 Mike Smith? Right.
18:39 Wes Larson? Let's rewind a little. Olga's growing up in this.
18:43 Wes Larson? We don't need our time machine. We just need Superman to fly around the earth like four times. Okay. Olga's growing up in this really beautiful and unique part of Russia. And in 2011, she's a 19 year old psychologist in training, and she's also done extensive schooling for music. Kind of seems like she's a bit of a proto-J. One of those people that as soon as they graduate high school, they're already like so far ahead of all their classmates. And just a person that you know is going to go really far in life.
19:12 Jeff Larson? Like you with bears.
19:14 Wes Larson? Uh, I wouldn't say that.
19:15 Jeff Larson? You were a bear proto-J growing up.
19:18 Wes Larson? I loved bears. That's.
19:19 Jeff Larson? All the bear scientists would come to our house and look at you.
19:23 Wes Larson? Yeah, we had bear scouts coming by.
19:27 Mike Smith? First overall pick in the biologist draft.
19:31 Wes Larson? All right. So her mom, Tatiana, had been divorced from Olga's dad, and she remarried a man named Igor Saikunakov. I'm sorry, I'm bad with Russian names, but I'm pretty sure that's close at least. I'm just gonna call him Igor from now on. And this Igor guy, he really loved nature and the great outdoors. Kamchatka is just a wonderful place to like fish, to hike, to explore. And him and Olga had that in common, and they shared this bond where they would spend a lot of time in the wilds of Kamchatka, fishing, foraging, recreating, and just enjoying these really beautiful surroundings. It's like, this is on the top 10 list for me of places I would
20:13 Wes Larson? love to visit. It just seems like a wilder version of Alaska, a place that used to exist in the US, but we don't really even have anymore. It's truly gorgeous. Olga and Igor spent every minute they could enjoying it. And Tatiana didn't seem to be quite as into these adventures, Olga's mom, but she loved that they could bond over the natural world. She was really happy that her bright, warm, friendly daughter had this new father figure that she could rely on. And in August of 2011, Olga and Igor decided to go on a camping trip. And they're also retrieving a fishing rod that Igor had forgotten near a river close to the small village of Termaleni on the peninsula. Now, again, a couple of sources reported this in a different spot,
20:56 Wes Larson? but this did happen near this village. There's not a ton of information about exactly what happened the day they were attacked, because they're both alone out in the wilderness. But while they were retrieving this lost rod, or maybe fishing or walking alongside the river, they surprised a female brown bear with three cups. The bear ran at Olga and Igor and immediately grabbed Igor, knocking him to the ground. It's impossible to say exactly what happened to him, but he was found with his neck broken and his skull, and his whole head had been completely crushed.
21:31 Jeff Larson? Wow.
21:32 Wes Larson? Yeah, so I can't find any other reports of injuries or anything. But from my experience, what that means is that when that bear knocked him on the ground, she immediately just jumped on his head and his neck. Because we've seen that happen before, like the woman in Romania. Sometimes they'll literally just jump on something that they're trying to neutralize and put all their weight on their front paws. And that would have just immediately killed him. I mean, I think Igor, in a way, was spared a long death in that this bear crushed his head in almost instantaneously.
22:07 Jeff Larson? You're saying he's lucky?
22:09 Wes Larson? Uh, yes. Compared to Olga, he is, unfortunately, yeah. So after she saw this large female brown bear almost effortlessly kill her stepfather, Olga, in a blind panic, turned and ran. And she made it about 200 feet when she felt the bear bite into her back of her leg and pull her to the ground. She immediately started trying to fight back, but this bear was on top of her, biting her and raking her with its claws. And for whatever reason, unlike with Igor, this female bear didn't try to immediately crush her, but instead it continued to bite and pin her to the ground. And Olga, who had just seen her stepfather die in seconds, probably thought that she was about to
22:53 Wes Larson? suffer the same fate. And in a last ditch effort to escape this bear, she pulls out her cellphone and she calls her mom. So imagine you're her mom. Yeah, you pick up the cellphone call and this bear is actively mauling Olga. And her mom answers and she hears the screams of her 19 year old daughter and the huffing and grunting of the bear. And Olga says, Mom, the bear is eating me. Mom, it's such agony. Mom, help. And the bear shaking her around and occasion, I guess, like occasionally she would play a practical joke on her mom. So her mom initially thought that this was just a prank.
23:34 Wes Larson? And then immediately after that recognized like the actual fear and pain in her daughter's voice and realized like she's getting the most like unimaginably horrific call from her daughter.
23:47 Mike Smith? Dude.
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25:58 Wes Larson? The call cuts out, and Tatiana tries to call Igor, not knowing that he had just been killed by the bear. She then calls police in the local area and some family members in the town closest to where she was, where Olga was, to try and get someone out there to help them. And then her phone rings again, and she answers to hear her daughter screaming again. And Olga says, "Mom, the bears are back. She came back and she brought her three babies. They're eating me." Call cuts out again. Oh, my God. Yeah. So Tatiana again tries to call people to help them, you know, get out there. And she finally, she gets ahold of the police and some of Igor's family, and they're en route. And she just keeps trying to call Olga again and again and again, but she's not getting
26:42 Wes Larson? any answer. And then about an hour after the initial call, she gets a final call from Olga. And the bears had left her, and they were now feeding on Igor's body. And she called her mom, and she said, "Mom, it's not hurting anymore. I don't feel any pain. Forgive me for everything. I love you so much." And the call cut out and those would be the last words that Tatiana would ever hear from her daughter. Igor's brother showed up with some police at the scene and the bear was still feeding on Igor. Unfortunately, I don't think they were like prepared to deal with these bears and immediately rush in. But they could tell that both Igor and Olga were were dead. So they called some hunters. I think there were six hunters they called.
27:27 Wes Larson? They came in and killed the female and the three cubs. So ultimately, there were six lives lost as a result of this surprise encounter. So pretty, pretty terrible.
27:38 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
27:39 Wes Larson? It's one. Yeah, just absolutely devastating. Um, I can't imagine like Tatiana, how she ever, you know, really comes back from that. That would be such a horrible thing to have to deal with. But also in a way like to have that closure too, to know exactly what happened, you know, in a way might help too, rather than just like.
28:00 Jeff Larson? That's tough.
28:01 Wes Larson? You know, spend, yeah, like spending weeks before you like find their bodies out in the wilderness. You know, I don't know. It's a tough one.
28:07 Mike Smith? The opportunity at least to speak or to hear from her daughter. I mean, that's like.
28:15 Wes Larson? Yeah.
28:15 Mike Smith? That's the two worst things to have to choose between.
28:18 Jeff Larson? I think it'd be better not to like, at least you like have, I guess, in your mind, like at least.
28:24 Wes Larson? They died quickly.
28:25 Jeff Larson? She was able to like, talk to me while she was going through that, but like.
28:30 Wes Larson? Yeah.
28:31 Jeff Larson? It's a hard one. Sounds stay in your head.
28:34 Wes Larson? Yeah, yeah. And I, I do think like she had to get some peace from the last call at least. Like at least she got the last one where her daughter was like, I don't, I'm not in pain. I love you, you know? Rather than like the, the last call being like, they're eating me, which would be the absolute worst note to end on. But.
28:54 Jeff Larson? If I were Tatiana, I would have asked to speak with the bear, like mother to mother.
29:00 Wes Larson? Put me on, put me on the line. Yeah. Anyway, um, this kind of feels like a weird one for me to pick for a story. It. There are a lot of stories out there and I, I think the reason I picked this initially is because I thought it was interesting that she was able to call her mom while this was happening. I don't think we've ever had someone that has been able to kind of describe in the moment, you know, to someone else what's going on. But also, it was kind of one that I started down the path in midway. I was like, oh, this is heavy, but I, I feel like I should just, we should report it, you know?
29:37 Mike Smith? Yeah. No, I'm glad you did. I think it's, we've had, we have so many stories of heroism and making it out, et cetera, et cetera. But I think it's important also to have the frame of reference that like, this isn't just a fun story to be told at the end of the day, most of the time in these encounters. It's something to seriously prepare for and to, yeah, have in the back of your mind.
29:58 Wes Larson? That's exactly what I was about to get into. The main reason I wanted to do it is like, almost everything I read about this one said, oh, well, there's a lot of hunting pressure on these bears. That, you know, the salmon were down that year. There's a poaching happening. There's resources extraction. There's all these things happening. And from what I understand from this one, I don't, I think this bear was in pretty pristine habitat. I don't think this was a stressed out bear. I don't think she was underweight or there were any kind of like conflicting factors that led to this. This was a surprise encounter at close distance and it really highlights how unpredictable these animals can be. It doesn't, they don't,
30:40 Wes Larson? there don't need to be other factors for a bear to maul a human being. There doesn't need to be like at the, the Sperry Shale or the Granite Park Chalet and Glacier where they're feeding them like for nights and nights and nights and nights or the Trout Lake bear, you know?
30:56 Jeff Larson? I think the devil's advocate would be it had three cubs.
31:01 Wes Larson? Yeah. I mean, that's a factor without a doubt.
31:03 Jeff Larson? Then the devil's advocate to that would be it ate them. So it's kind of predatory.
31:09 Wes Larson? Well, yeah. And I was going to talk about that, that this is not, if you were to put the reason for this attack, it would be a surprise encounter of a female with cubs. And then I would say she opportunistically fed after she neutralized these threats. And that does happen sometimes. It doesn't always happen, but more often than not, it doesn't because the female's just trying to get out of the area. But in this area where she neutralized both of them, and then there's no other kind of surrounding threats. It like it doesn't, it's not unheard of that she would then feed on these people. So I don't, I don't, I really don't think this was motivated by predation. I think it was motivated by it, the desire to protect her cubs.
31:54 Wes Larson? And then she opportunistically fed on these two essentially carcasses.
31:58 Mike Smith? What is the difference in behavior, if you know, between North American grizzly bears, brown bears and Russian? Is there vastly differing data on like, okay?
32:09 Wes Larson? So really, I mean, these bears, these coastal ones, you would think would act kind of like our coastal brown bears in Alaska. So there's plenty of videos of people getting very close to these bears and them just running away. But even a really tolerant, well-fed brown bear. If you are in thick brush and it has cubs and you come around a corner and you're right there next to it. There's a very good chance it's going to come at you because they just don't like surprises at close distances. It's just, that's like, that paper that I constantly quote, that's a worldwide perspective of brown bear attacks. By far, the most attacks start from this exact scenario, a female with cubs and a surprise encounter.
32:52 Wes Larson? So the whole lesson here is that no matter how prepared you are, no matter how tolerant the bears are. No matter, you know, how much experience you have in the outdoors, you need a deterrent. If you're in brown bear country, you just do, it can stop it. I don't think Igor would have survived this, but Olga might have had she had a deterrent.
33:12 Mike Smith? Sure.
33:13 Wes Larson? Yeah.
33:14 Mike Smith? With brown bear and bear cubs generally, is there a time of year that's their most, the mothers are most protective? Like, I, I'm, maybe you're trying, you understand what I'm trying to ask here, but like,
33:26 Wes Larson? Yeah.
33:26 Mike Smith? Is there like a less safe as opposed to a more safe time of year when it comes to like running into mother bears with cubs?
33:34 Wes Larson? Not really. They're like, they're, I would say the whole first year when their cubs are born, when they're called Cubs of the year, they're pretty, like the moms are pretty on edge. The next year, I think they kind of let them wander a bit more and they're not quite as, you know, like a helicopter mom. But when those cubs are small, the, the moms tend to stay really close to them. They tend to be very defensive because they don't really have any kind of, the cubs don't have their own defenses. They're not like black bears. Well, they'll climb up a tree as fast. They, they really rely on their mom to protect them at that age and they're very good at protecting their cubs. Right?
34:11 Jeff Larson? Yeah, like even once they seem pretty big to us, it's like, you gotta realize these moms are worried about male grizzly bears and stuff like,
34:22 Wes Larson? Right.
34:22 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
34:22 Wes Larson? They have.
34:23 Jeff Larson? They're still.
34:24 Wes Larson? Yeah.
34:25 Jeff Larson? They're like Mike when you try to.
34:27 Wes Larson? Eat his lasagna.
34:28 Jeff Larson? Eat his lasagna.
34:29 Mike Smith? You come for my lasagna. You, you should, oh man, you should have known.
34:33 Jeff Larson? Your mom hadn't passed away yet, so it was reasonable at the time that I wanted some of that lasagna.
34:40 Mike Smith? You came into the kitchen and kind of just stood there. You didn't even ask. You wanted me to just offer you some of this lasagna?
34:46 Jeff Larson? That's a normal thing to do.
34:48 Mike Smith? No, it's not, dude. It was not that much lasagna. It was not much. It was one servings worth.
34:54 Jeff Larson? It's four.
34:55 Mike Smith? No way, dude. I still have the little glass, little casserole dish you made it for me. I'll show it to everybody. That'll be my first ever post on Instagram.
35:08 Mike Smith? Um, one thing stuck in my brain, Wes, I wanted to talk about. So we were talking just briefly about prodigies earlier. Is there such a thing as a prodigy bear cub? Is there, are there bear cubs that are just like obviously better at being bears? From a young age?
35:23 Wes Larson? Not that I know of.
35:24 Mike Smith? You haven't ever seen one that's just like moves better, climbs faster?
35:28 Wes Larson? It's like brand new and it goes out and just catches the biggest salmon. No, I mean, there are definitely like prodigy bear moms, I think. I think there are like female bears that are just really good at protecting their cubs. And keeping them safe. Like 399 was famous for that. She was just really good at raising her cubs. But I don't know about cubs. That's a good question.
35:52 Jeff Larson? Maybe like for chimpanzees, like where they're always riding on typewriters.
35:58 Wes Larson? Yeah.
35:59 Mike Smith? Yeah, that one writes Shakespeare.
36:01 Wes Larson? Always doing that. Yeah. It's just that one. Yeah. You just gotta find that one.
36:06 Mike Smith? Harold Bloom Champ.
36:08 Wes Larson? All right. So, um, the last like kind of justification for doing this story is a lot of the stuff I read. Said like, uh, you know, a bear that was stalking them, a predatory bear, whatever. That's not the case here. I really don't think so. We mentioned this already, but this is a defensive bear. This was not one that was motivated by predation. So I'm going to say that almost like definitively, there's, I'll leave the tiniest room for like, it could have been motivated, motivated by predation. But I really don't think that was the case.
36:43 Mike Smith? No way dude, you put your stamp on it or you don't Wes, it's one or the other.
36:48 Wes Larson? All right, I'm stamping it then. It's defensive bear attack. Okay. So that's it for the story. You guys have any questions about the deaths of Olga and Igor?
36:57 Jeff Larson? Mike, do you have a favorite prodigy? Like a child prodigy?
37:02 Mike Smith? Child prodigy? I was gonna say.
37:05 Wes Larson? Prodigy?
37:05 Mike Smith? Yeah, band prodigy, firestarter.
37:07 Wes Larson? So good.
37:08 Mike Smith? Maybe.
37:09 Wes Larson? Keith.
37:10 Mike Smith? Oh, Freddie Adoo. He was like seven and he's getting scouted by the MLS and stuff. And then he just like, wasn't that good?
37:18 Jeff Larson? Wes, you got one?
37:20 Wes Larson? A child prodigy?
37:21 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
37:22 Wes Larson? Doogie Howser? Doctor Doogie Howser.
37:24 Mike Smith? That's a great pick. Bobby Fischer. That's gonna be mine, Bobby.
37:27 Wes Larson? Oh, that's a good pick. I don't, I can't think of any like real ones.
37:31 Jeff Larson? Funny one.
37:32 Mike Smith? He must've had so many vibrators in his butt, dude.
37:36 Jeff Larson? The girl who just went number one in the WNBA Paige Buckers or something. There's a, there's a clip of someone like 12 years ago when she was like playing like seventh grade basketball. That's like, she's gonna be the number one pick in the WNBA. She's gonna, yeah, is a good call by him.
37:57 Wes Larson? That's cool. That's kind of how I feel about young LeBron too, honestly.
38:02 Jeff Larson? Oh yeah, he lived out to it.
38:04 Wes Larson? Yeah, Greta Thunberg in a way. I don't know.
38:07 Mike Smith? She's still doing her thing. Yeah.
38:08 Wes Larson? But she is still doing her thing. Good, good on you, Greta.
38:11 Mike Smith? Yeah.
38:11 Wes Larson? All right. So we'll move on to categories. First category is something that makes you really, really happy lately. Cause I just want to bring up the mood a little bit.
38:21 Jeff Larson? I can go first. I, I love a good cheesecake ice cream, like ice cream in the summer. It's hard not to be happy when you're eating it.
38:29 Wes Larson? Yeah.
38:30 Jeff Larson? And the last time I had cheesecake in it, I know I would kind of like fallen off the cheesecake ice cream trend. I was like, I should try this again. Pretty good stuff.
38:42 Wes Larson? Yeah.
38:42 Mike Smith? You know what? You've just made me really unhappy right there. So thanks for.
38:47 Wes Larson? Why you don't like cheesecake?
38:49 Mike Smith? Here's the, I've always heard, so like sometimes later on in life, you can develop a lactose intolerance. I think that's happening to me. Like every time I eat it, I feel a little bad and I get a little puffy and it's really like.
39:00 Wes Larson? That might be happening to me too.
39:02 Mike Smith? It sucks because I've never been allergic to anything. I've never had any kind of like dietary restrictions. And then all of a sudden there's like this whole category of food. I'm kind of like now at this point, subconsciously avoiding that I've loved my whole life.
39:15 Wes Larson? It's probably, it's probably like Havana syndrome or something, you know?
39:20 Mike Smith? You think?
39:21 Jeff Larson? It's because you hang out with our, our audio producer so much.
39:25 Mike Smith? Dude.
39:27 Wes Larson? Braxton's lactose intolerant?
39:29 Mike Smith? Gluten intolerant.
39:30 Wes Larson? Oh my God. And we hired him?
39:33 Mike Smith? I know. It's crazy.
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40:18 Jeff Larson? to say, they just sent me their seltzers and I absolutely love them, so check those out, too.
40:25 Wes Larson? What's yours, Mike? Obviously not cheesecake ice cream.
40:28 Mike Smith? It's not cheesecake. I messaged you about this. Miley Cyrus's new album just like overcame all the odds and really blew me out of the water this past week. And I've been spinning it front to back, back to front, over and over again. I just think it's really like artistically, I mean, it's still pop music at the end of the day. I'm not trying to oversell this, but Miley's really got something to prove still, and I really have a great time listening to that album.
40:53 Wes Larson? She has it to prove, or she's proved it?
40:55 Mike Smith? She's proved it, but she still has more to prove, I guess.
40:59 Wes Larson? She's got more in the can.
41:00 Mike Smith? She's kind of creatively flexing again. I really appreciate that.
41:03 Wes Larson? Her brother listens to us.
41:06 Mike Smith? Really?
41:06 Wes Larson? Yeah, not Trace, uh, Brayson.
41:09 Jeff Larson? Brayson.
41:10 Mike Smith? Who's the one that was, had that one song, the Shake Shake Shake? Oh, okay. He doesn't listen? I want him to listen.
41:17 Wes Larson? No. I like Brayson, so.
41:20 Mike Smith? Okay.
41:20 Jeff Larson? You got no love for Brayson, Mike?
41:22 Mike Smith? I don't know. I've not heard any of Brayson's music.
41:25 Wes Larson? It's good. It's more like folksy. I really like, check out Brayson Cyrus.
41:29 Jeff Larson? Brayson, if you're listening, if you could get your brother to listen for Mike, that would be great.
41:35 Mike Smith? That would be my answer for next time we do this category.
41:38 Wes Larson? All right, so, what am I gonna pick? I don't, you know, I personally, I tried listening to that album. I didn't love it, Mike. Sorry.
41:45 Mike Smith? Whoa, that's fine.
41:47 Wes Larson? What I decided.
41:48 Jeff Larson? Each kind of knocking down each other.
41:50 Wes Larson? Well, I'm curious if you guys won't like mine, because I think you will. So lately, we've been having really long nights in Missoula, and really just like nice afterglow kind of lighting to the sky. And I just find it really beautiful, but the thing that I think really adds a lot to that are like some well-placed bistro lights. Like, you know, like the little cafe, the little round lights in a string.
42:15 Mike Smith? Yeah.
42:15 Wes Larson? I just think when you place those well in like a yard or an outdoor setting and then you also have this really beautiful ambient light, it just creates a very nice atmosphere. So bistro lighting recently has been a thing that's made me very happy.
42:28 Mike Smith? I tried sitting outside with bistro lighting and I didn't care for it all that much.
42:32 Wes Larson? All right. Yeah, cool. So.
42:35 Jeff Larson? I like bistro lights. I used to make them.
42:39 Wes Larson? You you made bistro lights?
42:40 Jeff Larson? Yeah, when I worked at the Alpine event, those we'd make some.
42:44 Wes Larson? Oh, you like hung them up?
42:46 Jeff Larson? No, like I like I bought like electric wire.
42:50 Wes Larson? Oh, yeah, that's.
42:50 Jeff Larson? And then we would like get a like box cutter and split it and then we put light bulbs in it and it's like, can't believe I did that.
43:00 Mike Smith? Made that.
43:01 Wes Larson? Now you can buy a strand for like $20 on Amazon, so.
43:06 Mike Smith? I will say.
43:06 Jeff Larson? Or I could just make you.
43:08 Mike Smith? Yeah, just hire Jeff. If I go to a wedding and there aren't bistro lights somewhere, I'm gonna be a little disappointed.
43:16 Wes Larson? Yeah, like, how are you supposed to feel cozy and nice?
43:19 Mike Smith? Right.
43:20 Wes Larson? There's no bistro light.
43:21 Mike Smith? Yeah, it doesn't have to be like a centerpiece of the aesthetic, but like just a little corner or outdoor porch area.
43:27 Jeff Larson? Just one light.
43:28 Mike Smith? Yeah, just one bistro light.
43:29 Wes Larson? Would you say you were a prodigy, Jeff, at making bistro lights?
43:33 Jeff Larson? You probably would like that, just like one.
43:36 Mike Smith? One dangling bistro light. Yeah.
43:38 Jeff Larson? No, I wouldn't say as a prodigy. I think I was a work in progress.
43:43 Wes Larson? A work in progress, WIP. All right.
43:45 Jeff Larson? Um, I want to shout out to just NBA draft happened and Utah draft, the Utah Jazz. Everyone's like, they had a great draft and it's funny because the player they drafted was like, I'll play anywhere but Utah. And they were like, welcome to the NBA, buddy.
44:05 Wes Larson? Yep.
44:06 Mike Smith? Don't get a call your shots. You haven't scored a single point in the league yet.
44:09 Jeff Larson? We got swig soda out here. You're gonna love it.
44:12 Mike Smith? Mormon housewives all over the place.
44:15 Wes Larson? It's gonna be great.
44:17 Jeff Larson? Hey, they're swingers. I'm sure you will like that, but.
44:22 Wes Larson? Okay, the next category, a favorite example of a movie or TV show where a Russian
44:27 Mike Smith? Hold on.
44:28 Wes Larson? Character.
44:29 Mike Smith? Sorry, Wes. I just like, this Mormon Housewives thing has really crept up on me. This is not the kind of thing I usually engage in, but I saw a picture, kind of like, uh, like a splash screen or some kind of a tractant for the show.
44:41 Wes Larson? Yeah.
44:41 Mike Smith? And I think, like, literally, they all, and I'm, this, this is gonna sound bad, no matter how I say it.
44:47 Wes Larson? Yeah.
44:47 Mike Smith? They all look exactly, almost literally, the same to me. It's crazy.
44:51 Wes Larson? Cause they all got the same, like, extensions and stuff.
44:54 Jeff Larson? Well, you know, it's funny, is, you know that movie Megan with like, the doll that looks like a little girl?
45:00 Mike Smith? Yeah.
45:01 Jeff Larson? They all did a promo for it, where they like, dressed up like dolls.
45:04 Mike Smith? What the heck?
45:05 Jeff Larson? And it's like, so weird, because they don't look like, they almost already don't look like real humans, you know? And then it's like, oh, man.
45:13 Mike Smith? I think we're, like, in 50 years, we're gonna look back and see this Mormon Housewives show, whatever it's called, as like, a pretty significant step towards the dystopia which we will, by then, be living in.
45:26 Wes Larson? Yeah, I think it's just another big step in like-
45:29 Jeff Larson? You're giving that a lot of credit.
45:30 Wes Larson? All of the other reality shows that have been out beforehand.
45:34 Mike Smith? You know, anthropologists will be digging through the silt and the ash and be like, what the? This is where everything started going terribly wrong.
45:41 Jeff Larson? Like Frankie Paul.
45:42 Wes Larson? When Taylor and Dakota started, yeah. Or, what's her, is that her name? Taylor?
45:46 Jeff Larson? Yeah, yeah, you nailed it.
45:49 Wes Larson? All right, um, yeah. The funniest thing for me is, like, when you're driving around Utah and you see these huge billboards that say, Jay-Z Extensions?
46:00 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
46:01 Wes Larson? Like, Jizz Hair is what it's called.
46:03 Jeff Larson? Jay-Z Styles.
46:05 Wes Larson? Yeah.
46:05 Jeff Larson? Jizz Styles.
46:06 Wes Larson? All right. All right, so the next category, a movie or a TV show where the Russian character is not the bad guy.
46:15 Mike Smith? I had a real tough time. I have two strong picks, so maybe you guys go first, so I don't take it.
46:21 Wes Larson? Jeff, why don't you go first? I think I know who Jeff's gonna pick.
46:24 Mike Smith? Okay.
46:24 Jeff Larson? Uh, I had a hard time thinking of any other ones. Uh, The Man from Uncle Armie Ham.
46:31 Wes Larson? Oh, okay. I thought you would say Armageddon.
46:33 Jeff Larson? Oh, no.
46:34 Mike Smith? Yeah.
46:35 Jeff Larson? I didn't even remember the Russian in that, but- Oh yeah, that guy is great.
46:40 Mike Smith? He's awesome.
46:40 Wes Larson? Yeah.
46:41 Mike Smith? Yeah.
46:41 Jeff Larson? But yeah, I loved Army Hammer and Man from Uncle. I love that movie. I don't know, you guys could probably say that pick doesn't count because he actually is a bad guy, but just in real life.
46:54 Wes Larson? Yeah, I haven't heard anything bad about Army Hammer.
46:57 Mike Smith? I separate the art from the artist.
46:59 Wes Larson? Yeah. Yeah, that's a good pick. Mike, what are yours?
47:03 Mike Smith? Well, so Storm Arrow was my first pick from Armageddon, but I'm gonna go with Igor from Enora. I just, I, he kinda stole the movie for me.
47:11 Jeff Larson? Yeah, that's a good pick.
47:13 Mike Smith? Yeah, he kinda like showed up halfway through and you're like, who is this dude? And then by the end of the movie, you're like, this movie was kind of about him, actually.
47:21 Wes Larson? Yeah.
47:21 Mike Smith? It's so good. Not really. It's about Enora, but he-
47:24 Wes Larson? Was he Russian or like Czech-ian?
47:27 Mike Smith? I'm not sure. I probably should have checked.
47:29 Jeff Larson? I think he's probably Russian because the-
47:32 Wes Larson? Okay.
47:32 Jeff Larson? The main, or the oligarch's son is a Russian.
47:36 Wes Larson? Yeah, okay. I think you're right. Yeah, he was great. I think that's a great pick. Yeah, a Russian henchman played by Yurub Borisov.
47:44 Mike Smith? There you go.
47:45 Wes Larson? Great. I picked like pretty much all of the, uh, the protagonists in the movie Enemy at the Gates. So we got Jude Law, we got, um, what's her face? That's married to Daniel Craig, Rachel Weisz. Beautiful. And then, yeah, some other characters in that movie, but anyway, that, that movie's all about like, uh, the fighting in the late stages of World War II, uh, in Stalingrad. And I think it's in Stalingrad where that happened. And pretty much like the Russians keeping the Nazis at bay. And I do think in, you know, in, in Western culture, we, we don't really give the Russian forces the credit that was due-
48:29 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
48:29 Wes Larson? Um, for stopping World War II.
48:31 Mike Smith? For sure.
48:31 Jeff Larson? No.
48:31 Wes Larson? For the Soviet, the Soviet forces.
48:33 Jeff Larson? Trump just said that too, actually.
48:35 Wes Larson? Yeah, I'm not, I'm not a fan.
48:37 Jeff Larson? Trump was like, why do we, why do we like Germany and Japan so much? Russia's so, and helped us.
48:43 Wes Larson? Yeah, well, the Soviet Union, yeah, I mean, they fought back the Nazis, so credit, credit where credit's due. Okay, our next one, the national anthem that goes the hardest in your opinion. So I thought of this because the Russian national anthem goes pretty freaking hard.
49:00 Jeff Larson? Does it?
49:01 Mike Smith? It's so good, dude.
49:02 Wes Larson? Yeah, so I'm curious what you guys think as far as national anthems that go really hard.
49:07 Mike Smith? So I had a couple, a couple of them came to mind, but they're more like context based, like the Marseillais in Casablanca, that scene is a classic. Or, oh, what's the guy's name? The, the guy that sings the national anthem at Blackhawks games, the NHL, where the crowd is just going nuts. The whole, like, usually during the singing of the national anthem, the crowd stands up, they're all quiet.
49:28 Wes Larson? Yeah.
49:28 Mike Smith? Very respectful. But for some reason, the tradition started that when this guy is singing, Jim Cornelius or something.
49:34 Wes Larson? Okay.
49:35 Mike Smith? He sings it.
49:35 Wes Larson? I'll look it up.
49:36 Mike Smith? And the crowd is just going insane the whole time he's singing and it's just a really fun environment. I'm actually not like a crazy huge fan of the anthem itself. It's a little weird.
49:46 Wes Larson? Cornelius and Jim Cornelius.
49:48 Mike Smith? Yeah.
49:48 Wes Larson? Yeah.
49:49 Mike Smith? So I settled on Brazil, I guess, all that, just to say Brazil.
49:52 Wes Larson? Has a wonky, fun national anthem.
49:55 Mike Smith? It's so good.
49:55 Wes Larson? It's great. I used to sing it when I was there and it, yeah, it's a fun one.
50:01 Mike Smith? Yeah.
50:01 Wes Larson? That's a great pick. Jeff, do you have an answer?
50:04 Jeff Larson? I mean, honestly, I like the United States just because I don't even know if it's particular to the actual anthem. But I think we have like the most change up on our, on our anthem, like the most variations.
50:19 Mike Smith? It is like sicko mode.
50:20 Jeff Larson? Most countries, it could just be me thinking this, but like, I feel like most countries, when they play their national anthem, it's like pretty much the same thing every time.
50:29 Wes Larson? Yeah.
50:30 Jeff Larson? And with ours, it's like you can bet on how long it will take them to sing it. You can like do all these different things. So I, and then like sometimes you get like, uh, what's her name? Shakira.
50:42 Wes Larson? Yeah.
50:42 Mike Smith? Oh, Fergie.
50:44 Wes Larson? Rosalia?
50:45 Jeff Larson? Fergie, who just completely botches it and it's like.
50:49 Mike Smith? It's such a hard one to sing.
50:50 Wes Larson? Roseanne Barr?
50:51 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
50:53 Mike Smith? It's a fun song, but like the octave changes are vast. Like you gotta be able to hit high end low notes.
51:00 Jeff Larson? I gotta shout out Guatemala. They have a great one, especially for being like such a small country. It's like always ranked one of the best national anthems. So good job Guatemala.
51:10 Wes Larson? Good work. I spent, I spent quite a bit of time listening to different national anthems to prepare for this. Yeah. So I'm going to give you a few that rose to the top before I give you my number one. Uh, South Africa has a great one. I like that they incorporate a lot of the different kind of dialects of the native peoples.
51:27 Jeff Larson? Shakira.
51:28 Wes Larson? Uh, she's not from South Africa.
51:29 Jeff Larson? No, but she sings their national, she's the.
51:34 Wes Larson? That's not their national anthem.
51:37 Mike Smith? Is that the World Cup song?
51:38 Wes Larson? That was the World Cup anthem from 2010.
51:41 Jeff Larson? That's not the same thing, huh?
51:43 Wes Larson? No, it was that guy from like Somalia that made that song. What was his name?
51:47 Jeff Larson? Shakira did one, did you?
51:49 Wes Larson? Yeah, but she did a version of his song that he created.
51:53 Jeff Larson? Okay.
51:54 Wes Larson? Uh, so South Africa was great. Um, Brazil was on my list. Bangladesh has a really good one. Uh, the former Soviet Union, I think, has a really good national anthem. But my favorite of all the ones I listened to was Nepal. Nepal has a really good national anthem. It's like very melodic. It kind of goes all over the place. It sounds like peaceful and meditative, but also really beautiful. Um, maybe I'll put a little snippet in. I'll have Braxton cut some in, but it is, or he can play it while I'm talking about it. It is just really, really good. So good job.
52:31 Jeff Larson? Do you have a least favorite national anthem?
52:34 Wes Larson? Uh,
52:37 Wes Larson? probably ours, honestly. Yeah.
52:39 Jeff Larson? I would probably say Canada's. I feel like it starts off like just putting.
52:44 Wes Larson? Canada.
52:45 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
52:46 Wes Larson? Our home and native land. Yeah. Yeah, theirs is worse than ours. I, the only reason I would say ours is because I've heard it like 10 billion times. So I'm just like tired of it.
52:56 Mike Smith? I want to know just for, I guess I could look this up, but maybe I'll just have our listeners write in and tell us, um, do you play your national anthem before literally every single event of note in your country? Because we do, and I'm so tired of it. I like our anthem. I think it's a pretty cool song, but do.
53:13 Wes Larson? Me too. But I hate when I'm like settling into my seat and I like, people are going to stare at me if I don't stand up and put my hand over my heart.
53:22 Jeff Larson? In international sports, it is kinda cool like when you see Italy or someone like Spain or whatever, I think Germany, all of their players are singing every single word of their anthem as it plays and we don't get that. They go like full into it.
53:39 Wes Larson? I think, I just think we play it too much. I think it's overkill.
53:43 Mike Smith? Yeah.
53:43 Wes Larson? If I heard it once a year, I'd probably be like standing up and you know wiping my eye. But anyway, alright.
53:51 Jeff Larson? You just do that with, uh, what's his Toby, Toby Keith's song now?
53:55 Wes Larson? No, I hate that song so much. We'll put a boot in your ass.
54:03 Wes Larson? Alright, okay, uh, quick, quick question for you guys, cuz there's a new season of Alone. I'm pretty into it already. They're in Africa, which is a really fun change up. So I'm curious for you guys, do you think you would make it longer in a season of Alone that's set in Africa? Or one that's set in kind of their more traditional locations like Vancouver or Alaska or Northern Canada?
54:27 Jeff Larson? I would say like Alaska.
54:28 Wes Larson? Yeah.
54:29 Mike Smith? Me too.
54:30 Wes Larson? Any reasons?
54:31 Mike Smith? The climate mostly for me.
54:33 Jeff Larson? I don't like hot and then seems like there's, I don't know, I haven't been watching it, but just Africa in general seems like less water sources than Alaska.
54:45 Wes Larson? Yeah, they're all camp, they're camp near a lake, but it's dirty water. They have to purify their water very well.
54:52 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
54:53 Wes Larson? For me, just because I have watched it, I kinda think Africa because there's just wild game everywhere where they're at and they all have bows and I think there's gonna be a lot of like success when it comes to hunting this season. Um, and that's always been the-
55:08 Jeff Larson? There's like a rule of like, if like three people make it like 300 days, they're just like, okay, you all three win.
55:16 Wes Larson? I hope so. Yeah, cuz it, I think the things that are gonna be hard this season is shelter seems to be a lot harder to build cuz there aren't like trees or anything nearby. So they're gonna have to be a lot more creative about their shelters. Water's gonna be a little bit harder and trickier. I think that they could very easily get sick from drinking water and then it's gonna be hot, but I think I could last longer in hot than I could in really, really cold. So, I don't know.
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57:07 Wes Larson? Okay, uh, next one is gonna be listener questions. So, uh, Jeff brought this up recently, and this mostly goes out to our patrons. It really only goes out to our patrons, I guess. But for our Patreon subscriber listener questions, we have a thread on Patreon now that I think Jeff created or Mike created, it was a great idea. There's a thread in there for listener questions. It helps us keep them a little bit more organized. So if you have a question you're hoping to have read on the show, the best chance of getting us to notice it is putting it on that thread on Patreon. So if you're not a Patreon subscriber, you will have access to that thread if you do end up subscribing. Um, and that's what we're gonna be pulling most of our Patreon questions for.
57:52 Wes Larson? If you have any other kind of question... First, think whether or not you need to ask it. Second, if you do, send us a DM on Patreon. But listener questions, you can add to that thread. So I'm gonna pull some from that. This one is from Hanny Benanny. Great name. How many coyotes could you fight off at once? No weapons allowed.
58:12 Mike Smith? Ooh.
58:13 Wes Larson? What do you guys think?
58:14 Mike Smith? At once. How big are coyotes?
58:17 Wes Larson? Uh, like, average, I'd say like thirty, forty pounds.
58:20 Mike Smith? Hmm.
58:21 Wes Larson? Like, I would, I would picture, like, what kind of dog would I say? Like, smaller than a golden retriever, slightly smaller than a golden retriever.
58:30 Jeff Larson? Yeah, I think, well, so is it like, if it's cage match, it's gonna be less than like, if it's just trying to fight off wild coyotes? Because like, fighting them off in the wild, it's like, you just need to get them to want to give up.
58:45 Wes Larson? Yeah.
58:46 Jeff Larson? So with that, I would say like, four, but in a cage, I'd see three.
58:52 Wes Larson? Okay.
58:53 Mike Smith? I have a reach advantage on them. That's gonna be big. I'm gonna go with eight.
58:57 Wes Larson? Wow.
58:58 Mike Smith? I could take him. Yeah.
59:00 Wes Larson? I'm gonna say three. Like, I think realistically, if they were, if they were like cooperating and attacking me, I don't think I could handle more than three. So. And sometimes they do cooperate. Sometimes they hunt in little packs. It's a great question. All right, this one's from Nicole. Nicole says, uh, what's the best breakfast carb? Pancakes, waffles, or French toast?
59:22 Jeff Larson? We should rank them.
59:23 Wes Larson? Sure.
59:24 Mike Smith? Go for it.
59:25 Jeff Larson? I would go French toast, waffles, pancake.
59:29 Wes Larson? French toast, waffles, pancakes. Okay. Mike?
59:33 Mike Smith? I'm gonna go waffles, pancakes, French toast, I think. Waffles are always, whenever I see a waffle, I'm always like, oh, what's the occasion? You know?
59:41 Wes Larson? Yeah.
59:42 Mike Smith? I don't really get that from either of those other two.
59:44 Wes Larson? Yeah.
59:44 Mike Smith? I love them all, though. I love, I very much could eat all three of those every day for the rest of my life and be happy.
59:50 Wes Larson? This is kind of a hard one for me, because I feel like these all vary very much by like how they're made and prepared. Like, if a French toast is too eggy or sloppy, I just like hate it. But if it's done the way I like it, I think it's my favorite. And same with waffles. But if I just had to rank them, which we're doing, I would do waffles, pancakes, French toast.
1:00:11 Mike Smith? There you go.
1:00:12 Wes Larson? Yeah. All right. Uh huh. This one's from Sarah. Cage match. Wes and Jeff's older brother versus Mike's oldest brother. Who wins? I'd say definitely Mike's oldest brother.
1:00:24 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
1:00:25 Wes Larson? Cyrus is tough. Like, he's surprisingly tough, but Mike's older brother's like an ex-marine, Green Beret or whatever.
1:00:33 Mike Smith? Yeah, I think he would be the overwhelming favorite, but you never know. Yeah, everyone's got a punch or two in them that will catch you off guard.
1:00:42 Jeff Larson? Say we know.
1:00:43 Mike Smith? Okay, I'm just trying to be diplomatic here.
1:00:47 Wes Larson? Yeah, I would.
1:00:48 Mike Smith? What would the odds be, do you think, Jeff?
1:00:50 Wes Larson? If I put.
1:00:52 Jeff Larson? If I was making the odds.
1:00:54 Mike Smith? Minus 700? I don't know.
1:00:56 Jeff Larson? Yeah, more.
1:00:58 Mike Smith? Really?
1:00:58 Jeff Larson? I'd go like in the thousands.
1:01:00 Mike Smith? Sure.
1:01:01 Jeff Larson? And I will field those bets. Like, I'll do the payout.
1:01:05 Mike Smith? Let's see if we can set this up.
1:01:07 Jeff Larson? So it's not like, it's not like he's like a pushover.
1:01:10 Mike Smith? No.
1:01:11 Jeff Larson? He's not a Marine. Yeah. I don't know, though. Marines are kind of soft, actually.
1:01:18 Mike Smith? I'll let him know.
1:01:19 Jeff Larson? They're just using like, especially nowadays, dude, our Marines nowadays just using freaking robots and stuff like.
1:01:27 Mike Smith? Flying.
1:01:27 Jeff Larson? I don't know about that.
1:01:29 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:01:31 Wes Larson? Cyrus is a hiker, you know?
1:01:33 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:01:34 Jeff Larson? Yeah, that's true.
1:01:35 Wes Larson? You know, he's got three kids. That's not easy. All right. Uh huh. Jeff, this one's from Hannah. She says, what's your ADHD superpower? Hannah can sense minor shifts in people's energy, like a platypus seeing in water and can do, and Hannah can do ridiculously hard things first try, but can't do simple things without restarting them at least twice. Do you think you have an ADHD superpower?
1:01:59 Jeff Larson? I actually think it helps me in interviews or like conversations or something where like, if something's going on too long, I'm very good at like stopping it and like changing the subject.
1:02:13 Mike Smith? Keeping it fresh.
1:02:14 Jeff Larson? Like, yeah, like I'll key into something and I'll be like, well, let's talk about this. I think I'm good and like on a phone call, I'm pretty entertaining because it's like, we cover a lot of topics in.
1:02:29 Mike Smith? You gotta-
1:02:29 Jeff Larson? In that phone call.
1:02:30 Mike Smith? When Jeff calls you, you gotta be prepared for at least three different goodbyes to be said. But you know the conversation's not even close to over. Like, we're halfway there, maybe, by the first time we say bye.
1:02:43 Jeff Larson? It's very true.
1:02:44 Wes Larson? Yeah, it is. All right, that's gonna be it for patron questions today. Just so everyone knows, after we read these, I am gonna be deleting them off the thread. So if you log on there and you're wondering where your question went, it's because we read it.
1:02:59 Jeff Larson? I have a few more 90s themed ones.
1:03:01 Wes Larson? Yeah, let's do it.
1:03:02 Jeff Larson? Speaking of 90s theme, I'm like 10 minutes away from where Ninja Turtles was created.
1:03:08 Wes Larson? Oh, that's cool.
1:03:10 Jeff Larson? Okay, so this one-
1:03:11 Mike Smith? Go ninja, go ninja, go.
1:03:13 Wes Larson? Like where they made the ooze?
1:03:15 Jeff Larson? Where the writers wrote Ninja Turtles. And then I was like looking at the manholes-
1:03:20 Mike Smith? That's New York, dude.
1:03:21 Jeff Larson? Manholes look the same.
1:03:23 Wes Larson? Okay. Sorry, Mike, I interrupted you.
1:03:25 Mike Smith? I was just gonna say Vanilla Ice had more than one hit. Technically not a one-hit wonder.
1:03:30 Wes Larson? No.
1:03:30 Mike Smith? The Ninja rap was technically a hit.
1:03:33 Wes Larson? That's two more hits than I've had.
1:03:34 Mike Smith? Right?
1:03:35 Jeff Larson? This one, sorry, are you guys-
1:03:37 Mike Smith? We're done.
1:03:39 Wes Larson? I'm not.
1:03:41 Mike Smith? Robert Van Winkle, whatever his name is.
1:03:44 Wes Larson? Rip Van Winkle, right? No, that's the-
1:03:46 Mike Smith? No, that's the-
1:03:47 Wes Larson? The guy that fell asleep.
1:03:51 Mike Smith? No relation, as far as I'm aware.
1:03:53 Wes Larson? Shug Knight, like, almost killed him for some reason?
1:03:56 Mike Smith? Oh, yeah. Shug Knight almost killed a lot of people.
1:03:58 Wes Larson? Yeah, and actually killed some people, too.
1:04:00 Mike Smith? Actually, literally, killed.
1:04:01 Wes Larson? Yeah. All right, Jeff, I think we're finally ready.
1:04:05 Jeff Larson? I don't know, that's pretty good where it ended up. Yeah, so Stuart, he DM'd me saying he really liked the 90s themed questions and wanted to get our thoughts on Crystal Pepsi, which-
1:04:20 Wes Larson? I can't even remember what it tastes like. I think it's cool, though.
1:04:23 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:04:23 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:04:24 Jeff Larson? They re-released it when all of them were good, because they made a ton and weren't selling it enough. So they just had it, like, in some warehouse or something. They re-released it right before it all expired, what, like, eight years ago or something?
1:04:40 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:04:40 Jeff Larson? And I didn't really try it in the 90s, but when they re-released it, I was, like, pretty addicted to it.
1:04:46 Wes Larson? You were on board. That's a bad thing to get addicted to.
1:04:49 Jeff Larson? I thought it was-
1:04:50 Wes Larson? Something you know is gonna end.
1:04:52 Jeff Larson? Better than like brown colas huh? And then I think the brown in cola is like one of the things that makes it the least healthy thing too, right?
1:05:02 Wes Larson? I don't know. Yeah, maybe.
1:05:04 Jeff Larson? Haven't you heard that Mike?
1:05:06 Mike Smith? It's like it's bad. Yeah. For your teeth and it like dissolves nails and stuff. Yeah.
1:05:12 Wes Larson? Have you tried Zima yet, Jeff?
1:05:15 Mike Smith? I think you froze.
1:05:15 Wes Larson? An ice called Zima? Who froze me?
1:05:18 Mike Smith? Jeff, right? I was just gonna say, maybe that's the best thing to get addicted to though, because like there's a cutoff date.
1:05:24 Wes Larson? Like, that's a good point.
1:05:25 Mike Smith? If someone was like crystal heroin, here's some crystal heroin. It's only around for like three days. I'd be like, you know what? Maybe, maybe.
1:05:32 Wes Larson? I'll give it a shot. You will only be addicted to this and it is gone soon. Yeah, that's a good point.
1:05:39 Mike Smith? Crystal meth, maybe.
1:05:43 Wes Larson? Jeff's frozen, so me and Mike are just gonna keep going.
1:05:46 Mike Smith? Land this plan on our own.
1:05:48 Wes Larson? Uh, Jeff, if you can still hear us. Oh, he's gone. He's gone.
1:05:51 Mike Smith? He's completely gone.
1:05:53 Wes Larson? I never tried Crystal Pepsi. I don't think I got on that quick enough, but for everyone else, something that was really hard for me is that in the nineties, they made a Jurassic Park themed candy.
1:06:05 Mike Smith? Jeff's calling me.
1:06:06 Wes Larson? Okay.
1:06:06 Mike Smith? Hey.
1:06:07 Wes Larson? Put him on speaker.
1:06:08 Jeff Larson? Plugged my laptop into charge and it was a different cord.
1:06:12 Mike Smith? Oh, did you die?
1:06:13 Jeff Larson? It just died. I think you guys should just close it out.
1:06:16 Mike Smith? Okay, you're on speaker right now. Um, do you wanna say any last words?
1:06:21 Jeff Larson? Crystal Pepsi's great.
1:06:23 Mike Smith? Okay.
1:06:23 Jeff Larson? And love the listeners. Thank you so much for listening. Sorry, my laptop just died.
1:06:30 Mike Smith? There it is. Jeff's final words. Uh, see you, Jeff.
1:06:34 Wes Larson? Yeah. So anyway, uh, they had these two dinosaur jaw breakers that came in the skinny box. I might've talked about this on the show. But, um, the spitters and the raptor, whatever cherry bites or something.
1:06:48 Mike Smith? I think you gave me one.
1:06:49 Wes Larson? Yeah, I was about to say, I finally found some on eBay and I bought them thinking I'm gonna be able to relive this wonderful childhood memory of this candy that brings back, it'll bring back this rush of nostalgia for me. And it was just disgusting, like so bad.
1:07:06 Mike Smith? I've never tasted candy that I'm pretty sure was rotten somehow. I don't know how that happens to a hard candy, but that was, it was foul.
1:07:14 Wes Larson? It does. So apparently it doesn't have the shelf life of Crystal Pepsi. Yeah, uh, well, you know, Jeff had those nineties themed questions and he's gone.
1:07:24 Mike Smith? Yep.
1:07:25 Wes Larson? So let's just do one more patron question and then, um, yeah, and then we'll go, we'll say goodbye. We'll do a little conservation too.
1:07:33 Mike Smith? Great.
1:07:34 Wes Larson? All right. This one's from Doodle P. They say, I started the podcast from day one this January and finally caught up and became a patron. Thank you. I wanted to ask, what's y'all's favorite thing to learn about? Like your Roman Empire or like something in history or something that you always go back to learning about. Mine might be Diane Fossey and what happened to her, a famous guerrilla researcher. What do you think happened to her? P S. You should do an episode on the three grade eight women scientists. I'm not like as familiar with the story. I'll look into it. I'm not sure what happened to her. I'll have to read about it. But, um, that's a great question. Mike, what's your Roman Empire? Is it the Roman Empire?
1:08:11 Mike Smith? It's not, not quite. No, that's a really good question. I like, I mean, the Revolutionary War for American history is definitely where my heart is as far as like American history is concerned.
1:08:23 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:08:23 Mike Smith? Um, globally, yeah, I don't really have anything that like is my singular focus of attention. So I guess I'll just go like George Washington, basically is my guy.
1:08:34 Wes Larson? George Washington.
1:08:35 Mike Smith? Yeah, I know. I know. There's always some history and I'm aware of it all. So you don't have to bring that up, but.
1:08:41 Wes Larson? I'm not bringing, I'm not bringing up, I was just gonna say.
1:08:43 Mike Smith? Not to you, but to the listeners. I just wanted to make sure people are aware that I know.
1:08:47 Wes Larson? Those, those ones are hard.
1:08:49 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:08:49 Wes Larson? Because the more you learn, the more you're kind of like.
1:08:52 Mike Smith? It's tough.
1:08:54 Wes Larson? Yeah, but for me, I honestly think it's like survival stories where it's not an animal, like it's against the elements. And the one that really just grabs me unlike anything else is people adrift at sea. Um, I just, for whatever reason, stories of people like floating at sea for months or even years is so fascinating to me and I just can't consume enough of that. So that's like, yeah, that might be it or like, um. Kind of tied to that like early naval or whaling disasters. So like the mutiny on the bounty or on the bounty, the wager, the ship that crashed, you know, in Patagonia.
1:09:38 Wes Larson? Or the story that we're definitely going to tell at some point, like the inspiration for Moby Dick, which was the, um, shoot, the whale ship Essex. So anyway, okay.
1:09:48 Mike Smith? Maybe the Chicago Bulls. I don't know. I can't ever consume enough content about like the Michael Jordan six championships.
1:09:55 Wes Larson? Yeah. Okay. Quick conservation corner. Trophy hunting is a problem for the bears in Kamchatka. There is a fair amount of hunting there and it's not super well regulated. So that is something that they are facing. There's also a lot of resource extraction in the area, including mining, commercial fishing. Um, a lot of activities that directly affect the habitat and the food sources of these bears. So I do think it's safe to say they don't really have the same celebrity and protection as the coastal brown bears in Alaska. And those bears too are often a threat for like mining development and stuff, other things that are happening in Alaska.
1:10:35 Wes Larson? But they, they have earned this kind of protection from ecotourism, both like fat bear week, which we mentioned earlier. Or just people wanting to travel to Katmai or Kodiak or Lake Clark or wherever else to see wild brown bears. I think a lot of people in those areas have realized that there is a better, stronger, more ethical economy around keeping those bears alive rather than killing them or, or reducing their habitat to a habitat where they no longer can thrive. And I think that's still unfortunately the case in Russia where the resource extraction is kind of outweighing the, um, the protection for the animals. So they are, I think they're doing well, but they are probably facing more threats than our coastal brown bears.
1:11:20 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:11:21 Wes Larson? Luckily there's a lot of places there for them. So. All right. Uh, yeah, you got a question?
1:11:26 Mike Smith? No, I was just gonna say, if you're like in a real I R L risk game, which I guess you just call war. Like, it's pretty nice to have bears up there in Alaska protecting that border for us, you know?
1:11:37 Wes Larson? Yeah, yeah.
1:11:38 Mike Smith? That's pretty good.
1:11:39 Wes Larson? I, I think you're right. There's a lot of bears and.
1:11:42 Mike Smith? We don't even pay them or anything.
1:11:44 Wes Larson? If we could just figure out a way to militarize them.
1:11:47 Mike Smith? We got a like Jurassic world.
1:11:48 Wes Larson? Any country is gonna figure that out. It's us. Yeah.
1:11:52 Mike Smith? You know, there's some kind of MKUltra nonsense going on where it's like, ah, there's gotta be something we can do with these killer whales. You know, Department of Defense, somewhere in there, someone's like, they got killer in their name.
1:12:05 Wes Larson? That's the Roman Empire?
1:12:06 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:12:07 Wes Larson? Like figuring out how to make killer whales kill people in the global south?
1:12:11 Mike Smith? Exactly.
1:12:14 Wes Larson? Yeah, or figure out how to make them push buttons for drones. All right.
1:12:18 Mike Smith? That's great. So we don't take, we don't have to feel guilty. It's like they're the ones that, yeah.
1:12:25 Wes Larson? All right.
1:12:25 Mike Smith? Blame the whales.
1:12:29 Wes Larson? That's a good point.
1:12:32 Wes Larson? We could just do that and they could just be like, I didn't do it. It was the killer whales that pushed the drone buttons.
1:12:37 Mike Smith? Right.
1:12:38 Wes Larson? Um, all right. So behind me in my studio, some of you keen eyed listeners may have noticed at some point, I have a map of, I mentioned this earlier, it's of the former Soviet Union. And it's not because I was like a huge fan of the former Soviet Union, but it's because the amount of wildlife that you could find is insane. There was tigers, there's leopards, there's polar bears, there's Asiatic black bears, there's brown bears, there's hyenas, there's just so many different things that existed within the former Soviet Union. And this map has all of that wildlife on it. So I just really liked it. Um, it's a really old map. But what I wanted to do for our claw ranking this episode, I'm bummed Jeff isn't going to get to do this.
1:13:21 Wes Larson? I want you to give a claw rating to Russian wildlife. So in the, in the current, in Russia as it exists, we're talking about more tigers, more leopards, brown bears, Asiatic black bears, polar bears. There's a number of ungulate species. They have moose, they have red deer. There's a lot there.
1:13:42 Mike Smith? Reindeer.
1:13:43 Wes Larson? Lynx, reindeer. Yeah, there's quite a bit of different, of variety, Wolverine.
1:13:49 Mike Smith? I know we talked about Siberia a little bit earlier. Would you say there's like an animal that you associate with Siberia first and foremost?
1:13:58 Wes Larson? Wolves.
1:13:58 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:13:59 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:13:59 Mike Smith? They're sweet. Well, so just by virtue of having more tigers, like tiger's my favorite animal. So it's going to be high. It's going to be really high.
1:14:07 Wes Larson? It's kind of like, it's like if you were looking at North American, like the Rocky Mountains, but you add in leopards and tigers, you know?
1:14:16 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:14:16 Wes Larson? It's pretty sweet and polar bears.
1:14:19 Mike Smith? Yeah. So for Russia overall, I mean, just as far as wildlife is concerned, probably 10. Like I don't, there's not like many more places that would have animals I'd be much more interested in seeing. Maybe I need to think about that more, but it's like, yeah.
1:14:36 Wes Larson? No, it's 10 for me too. I think Russia and India are two countries that get 10 for me because they're just like, there's such a wide variety of crazy, charismatic wildlife. So. All right. Well, that's it for the story. Again, sorry. It's kind of a bummer of a story, but it's one I have had on my list for a long time. And I figured this was the week to tell it because we've had a lot of, um, kind of more lighthearted episodes in a row. So I wanted to just bring everyone down.
1:15:03 Mike Smith? Thanks for bringing us back to Siberia.
1:15:04 Wes Larson? Yep.
1:15:05 Mike Smith? Sadness.
1:15:07 Wes Larson? All right. And as always, a quick pitch for our Patreon. We mentioned it earlier, but it's a fun community where you get to ask questions. There's a lot more interaction with other listeners with us. You get access to a lot of bonus content. How many episodes would you say we have on there now?
1:15:22 Mike Smith? 130, 120, 130?
1:15:26 Wes Larson? Yeah. And I think when we started it, we were like, oh, these will be mini fun episodes. And they're just as long as our normal episodes. They're long, they're fun. They're often led by Mike or Jeff. So they tend to be a little bit more off the wall, which I really enjoy. So check this out on there. It's 10 bucks a month.
1:15:43 Mike Smith? Do it.
1:15:43 Wes Larson? If you sign up through your web browser, which you should.
1:15:46 Mike Smith? Yes.
1:15:47 Wes Larson? All right. We'll see you guys. Love you.
1:15:49 Mike Smith? See ya. Thanks.
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