Pod Insights Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks The Legend of History's Deadliest Whale: Porphyrios the Purple About this episode This is an upload of an old subscriber episode. If you enjoy it, consider subscribing to either our Patreon or Apple Grizclub!
In this one, Mike talks about a handful of animal attacks that happened long ago including a deadly case of baldness, dying of laughter, the ineffective bones of Saint Conleth, and more!
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Transcript 13,537 words · 3 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Mike Smith? Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Tooth and Claw. Not exactly a new episode of Tooth and Claw. Just want to get a quick little explanation of what this is before it causes any more misunderstanding like this is done in the past. This is actually an episode that until now has been exclusive to subscribers either over at our Patreon or on the Apple Grizz Club. So if you've heard this before, that'll explain it. You'll notice that we get a little looser on these episodes, a little weirder. Just a little more chaos in general. So if you listen to this and decide you like it, you'll find a lot of other episodes in our feed, just like it. I'm talking too much. Let's get to the episode.
0:48 Jeff Larson? Tooth and Claw Podcast. We have Daniel Radcliffe, Elijah Wood, and Emma Watson here today with you.
0:56 Wes Larson? I wish. Yeah, they'd be much better hosts than us. Even probably at our subject matter, they'd probably do a better job.
1:03 Mike Smith? Think of the stories they could tell.
1:05 Wes Larson? I know. Let's just quit. Let's quit and let them do it.
1:08 Jeff Larson? Who would be the biologist?
1:10 Wes Larson? I'd say probably Emma Watson.
1:12 Mike Smith? Yeah, Hermione. She'd go into like hippogriff biology and stuff.
1:16 Wes Larson? Yeah, like that one guy. What was the guy they tried doing the other series with? Fantastic Beasts? What's that guy's name?
1:23 Mike Smith? Kind of redheaded guy?
1:25 Wes Larson? Yeah, what's his character's name?
1:26 Jeff Larson? He won an Oscar.
1:27 Mike Smith? Newt.
1:28 Wes Larson? Newt. Newt Scarmander or something. I don't remember.
1:31 Mike Smith? Gingrich?
1:32 Wes Larson? Yeah, anyway, who cares?
1:35 Mike Smith? Now Hermione would just use her little time watch thing and go back in time and just learn everything that needs to be.
1:42 Jeff Larson? And one more class today.
1:43 Wes Larson? Cause that's all you can use that for.
1:45 Mike Smith? Hermione, maybe not that smart. Just throwing that out there. All right. Sorry, I'm sick today. If I, if I start coughing or fall asleep, that's on me.
1:55 Wes Larson? You're leading this episode.
1:56 Mike Smith? I am leading this episode, so it's gonna be pretty troublesome. I'm, I'm sure if I just zonk out, but.
2:02 Jeff Larson? We'll cut it. When you're like asleep, we'll cut that part out.
2:06 Wes Larson? Let's really put Braxton to the test on this one.
2:10 Jeff Larson? Like, I would just assume he fell asleep at least twice, but he probably won't notice.
2:16 Wes Larson? We recorded this over six days.
2:19 Jeff Larson? I'm a little sick too.
2:19 Wes Larson? Maybe it'll be like that one time that you just fell asleep and you wake up 24 hours later and you have no idea what happened.
2:26 Jeff Larson? He blinked.
2:26 Mike Smith? Yeah, it was a blink. It was crazy. I just, I know we kind of covered this last time we, we spoke, but I want to stress that it was really, really like a matrix moment. I, it felt like a blink and it was the next morning and I felt totally rested. It's the weirdest thing I think that's ever happened to me.
2:41 Wes Larson? That's like when you get a full body, um, when they sedate you, you know, like for a colonoscopy or something. That's what that feels like to me. Where one second you're conscious and then you're just like awake and it's over.
2:51 Jeff Larson? So I, the reason you said I was wrong when I brought that up, the way I brought it up, I don't know. It feels weird to say is a blink because you like laid down on the couch, right?
3:01 Mike Smith? Yeah, it was on the couch. Right?
3:03 Jeff Larson? So you like laid down and then you blinked and then you woke up the next day.
3:07 Mike Smith? I guess you could say over the course of one minute, probably all that took place. The 24 hours was really the, the one that you got a little bit wrong.
3:16 Wes Larson? Isn't that just, it's fine. Isn't that just kind of sleep in general? Like, isn't that what happens?
3:22 Mike Smith? Yeah. You know what? Never mind. It's totally normal to happen to me.
3:27 Wes Larson? Like dude, it was the craziest thing. I was awake and then I like lost consciousness and eight hours later I woke up. It was wild.
3:34 Mike Smith? Uh, you wouldn't believe it.
3:35 Jeff Larson? Yeah, I'm a weird sick though. It's just kind of like my nose keeps running.
3:39 Wes Larson? Yeah, we played golf last night.
3:39 Jeff Larson? But it's not like I have too much.
3:42 Wes Larson? I could hear it. He was snuggling.
3:43 Mike Smith? You're sick in the way that like Stephen King is sick. He has a bunch of kids, has sex at the end of a book. Sick and twisted. Gross dude, that's sick. Or sick in like Tony Hawk doing a 900. There's all kinds of sick you can be. You sound like you got the worst one.
3:57 Wes Larson? He contains multitudes. He's got that all wrapped up. But he's mostly sick like Tony Hawk, in my opinion.
4:04 Mike Smith? I would agree with that. Yeah.
4:06 Jeff Larson? Nah.
4:07 Wes Larson? You're mostly sick and twisted?
4:08 Jeff Larson? Probably more than Tony Hawk. Tony Hawk can do a lot of stuff I can't.
4:13 Wes Larson? How much time is Tony Hawk spent on the dark web?
4:17 Mike Smith? Yeah, that's a good point. Well, should I talk about some stuff I found on the web?
4:22 Wes Larson? Sure.
4:23 Mike Smith? We have some more stuff to talk about. I felt like there was some business we need to do attend to at the top of this, but maybe not.
4:29 Wes Larson? I don't think so.
4:29 Mike Smith? Thanks for listening, everyone. That's the business I want to attend to.
4:33 Wes Larson? It's great business.
4:33 Mike Smith? Thanks for being here.
4:34 Wes Larson? Yeah.
4:34 Mike Smith? So I wanted to talk a little bit about some animal attacks that happened in antiquity. I don't remember exactly what inspired this, but I know it was something that Jeff either did or said recently. So once again, all credit goes to Jeff.
4:48 Jeff Larson? This is my episode.
4:50 Mike Smith? Exactly. I'll prepare another one for next week. That's on me.
4:54 Jeff Larson? Yeah, I'm taking credit.
4:56 Mike Smith? I gathered up five or six, I think six stories. And actually, I've got some pictures that go along with what I'm going to be talking about. This is always fun when I screen share.
5:05 Wes Larson? I do like that.
5:06 Mike Smith? They all happened long enough ago. This is kind of a Hugh Glass situation where they happened long enough ago that all of the events aren't quite verifiable. There's a little bit of mystique to attend to each of them.
5:19 Jeff Larson? I like that.
5:20 Mike Smith? Do you?
5:20 Jeff Larson? Yeah. I just assume it's all even like less.
5:24 Mike Smith? Fake.
5:25 Jeff Larson? No, I assume it's even like a lesser version of what actually happened. I think it's all true, but I think even more happened, no matter what they're gonna say.
5:34 Mike Smith? You might be on to something with some of these, but um, yeah. So I gathered up six stories about some really interesting things that happened either centuries or even millennia ago. And I think you're gonna find some enjoyment in hearing me talk about these, especially you, Wes. You're a real nut for animals.
5:50 Jeff Larson? You're obsessed with horses, Mike, especially white horses.
5:55 Mike Smith? Do you want me to zoom in on this guy?
5:57 Jeff Larson? Your one map you chose.
5:58 Mike Smith? I hate that horse.
6:00 Jeff Larson? Ted's guy.
6:01 Mike Smith? Shadowfax horse. Okay, so the first one, this is kind of like the centerpiece of the episode. Not that the other stories are bad. Keep listening, please. Don't turn the podcast off. We beg you.
6:12 Wes Larson? We need those listens.
6:13 Mike Smith? It means everything to us. The metric to see how long people listen to our episodes, that's what really keeps us going. Okay, so the first one, it takes place in Constantinople. I'm not going to tell you the title of the article that I pulled the story from, because it's gonna kind of spoil it. But I will say that it came from GreekReporter.com, at least most of the information I gathered for this episode. That's where it comes from, written by a guy named Alexander Grail. But this is like a very widely disseminated story that is known mostly in conjunction with inspiring, in part, the events of Moby Dick. And it's not the one you're probably thinking of, Wes. This happened much further, longer ago than, what is it, the Essex? I forget what the book was.
6:52 Wes Larson? Wiltshire Essex, heart of the sea. We're gonna cover that.
6:54 Jeff Larson? There's two Moby Dick stories?
6:56 Mike Smith? Yeah, there's probably more. But this one, Herman Melville, actually, he did cite this as kind of a smaller inspiration. He mostly pulled from the Essex story, though. But this is still pretty cool. Do you want to hear me tell it or should we just shut it down?
7:11 Wes Larson? I want to hear it.
7:12 Mike Smith? Okay. So.
7:14 Wes Larson? My interest is piqued.
7:16 Mike Smith? As you know, at the height of its power, the Byzantine Empire had all kinds of problems to deal with. Just like any other, you know, like any other superpower, geopolitical superpower. People are kind of poking and prodding from every angle, seeing if they can make any headway into their defenses. In addition to all the Crusaders and the Ottomans and anyone else that was looking to loot or raid around the periphery of the city of Constantinople, there was one enemy that served as a particular thorn in the side of Emperor Justinian I. Now, I pulled up this picture of just kind of a stylized picture of what Constantinople looked like back in these days.
7:50 Wes Larson? It looks pretty sick.
7:51 Mike Smith? Notice, pretty cool river, lots of boats going on.
7:54 Wes Larson? Yeah.
7:54 Mike Smith? It looks like a pretty pleasant place to live.
7:56 Wes Larson? Remind me what the current name of Constantinople is?
8:01 Mike Smith? Istanbul.
8:01 Wes Larson? Istanbul, great city.
8:02 Mike Smith? Yes.
8:03 Wes Larson? Loved it.
8:03 Mike Smith? Right, so this is, the Byzantine Empire is also known as the Eastern Roman Empire. Kind of one in the same, but also differentiated for historical purposes. But you can think of it just as an extension of the Roman Empire.
8:18 Wes Larson? Yeah.
8:18 Mike Smith? Whatever you call it, the thousand year.
8:20 Wes Larson? That big mosque up at the top.
8:22 Mike Smith? Oh, really?
8:22 Wes Larson? Yeah.
8:23 Mike Smith? What'd you do in it?
8:23 Wes Larson? Uh, I just sat quietly, was very peaceful. I really liked it.
8:27 Mike Smith? Reverently?
8:28 Wes Larson? Yeah.
8:28 Mike Smith? That's good. So Emperor Justinian I, he's, he's beset by enemies on all sides, but one particular one, he's, he's having a little bit of trouble with. Starting sometime in the 6th century AD, what's that stand for, Jeff?
8:42 Jeff Larson? Six?
8:44 Mike Smith? Yeah. Right. Yes, the numeral six is what I was referring to.
8:49 Jeff Larson? After Christ's death.
8:51 Mike Smith? More or less, yeah. Anno Domini, on the city streets, there began to be whispers. Anno Domini?
8:57 Jeff Larson? That's what AD stands for? It's after death, I thought.
9:00 Mike Smith? No, that's a common misconception. I thought that for a long time, too.
9:04 Jeff Larson? What's the word you just said even mean?
9:07 Mike Smith? Anno Domini is year of our Lord. So like zero B.C. is kind of like one A.D. is anno domini, year of our Lord, one.
9:14 Wes Larson? Otherwise, there's like thirty-three years.
9:16 Mike Smith? Thirty-three years.
9:17 Wes Larson? A limbo.
9:17 Jeff Larson? When did?
9:18 Wes Larson? Yeah.
9:18 Jeff Larson? When did A.D. start?
9:20 Mike Smith? Uh, the, I mean, historically, it's the day we thought that Jesus was born, the year of our Lord.
9:26 Jeff Larson? Oh, alright.
9:28 Mike Smith? Yeah.
9:29 Jeff Larson? Interesting.
9:29 Mike Smith? Learn something new every day, don't you?
9:31 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
9:32 Mike Smith? Alright, you know, I'm Finn, I'm fixing to learn you some more stuff here, so shut up, Jeff.
9:38 Jeff Larson? You asked me that.
9:40 Mike Smith? On the city streets of Constantinople, there began to be whispers and then stories, and then abject public fear of something mysterious and terrifying lurking in the waters of the Bosphorus, a strait in the northeastern portion of the Mediterranean, which is a pretty big deal for these people because that's kind of a major way in and out of this city at this point in history. So for the next five decades, sailors had a decision to make. They could either stay on dry ground, safe, or risk their ship being attacked and sunk by Porphyrios, a giant beast the likes of which had never been seen in these waters, at least not quite so violently. So Procopius, he's a historian, sixth-century Byzantine historian.
10:21 Mike Smith? He mentioned Porphyrios in two of his works, History of the Wars and The Secret History, in which he wrote that Porphyrios would attack all manner of sea vessels, from small fishing boats to large merchant vessels, and even the occasional warship was just not afraid of anything, whatever this thing was. I, I'm sure you guys are putting two and two together.
10:39 Wes Larson? I know this story now, I remember it. Cause they, maybe it's one that came in.
10:43 Mike Smith? Fill in some gaps.
10:44 Wes Larson? It's one, well, no, I'm not going to, but I was just gonna, as a hint, it's one that people started talking about it recently because of recent events, so.
10:52 Jeff Larson? Yeah. Wait, Wes, so tell us what ends up happening with it?
10:56 Mike Smith? I'm not gonna spoil it.
10:59 Mike Smith? So even though Porphyrios would disappear for a stretch here and there over the 50 years that he was active, sailors would still do really just whatever they could to avoid taking the waters they knew were inhabited by this beast. Whether, you know, that means going the opposite way extending to their trip time, just whatever they could in order to avoid this beast. What's your best guess, Jeff? What do you think we're talking about here?
11:23 Jeff Larson? Oh, man, that has to be a giant squid.
11:26 Mike Smith? Well, maybe this next picture will help illuminate a little bit.
11:32 Jeff Larson? Or sperm whale?
11:34 Mike Smith? Yeah, it's a good, yeah, sperm whale. How'd you know?
11:37 Jeff Larson? Because whales with teeth, I always think sperm whale.
11:40 Mike Smith? There you go. Yeah. See, now you're teaching me stuff. Okay. So no one is 100% sure actually what species of whale Porphyrios was, but Procopius left us some clues. So based on his accounts, it was recorded to have a length of 13.7 meters, 45 feet. Jeff?
11:56 Jeff Larson? Yeah, that's two buses back to back.
11:59 Mike Smith? Sure is. And a width of 4.6 meters, 15 feet. It's not really, Jeff. Well, buses come in different sizes.
12:06 Jeff Larson? Yeah, sure, you could figure that out somehow. You could find two buses that do that.
12:13 Mike Smith? Sure. So most people like Jeff, they seem to think he was probably a sperm whale because of his size and the lifespan. 50 years is kind of a long time for whatever else they were thinking. And also its temperament. But some other historians think it could have been, Wes, an orca.
12:29 Wes Larson? Yeah.
12:30 Jeff Larson? And that makes sense with how orcas behave.
12:33 Wes Larson? Yeah. I think it's more likely it was an orca.
12:36 Mike Smith? Right. Because they were, what are they doing? They're like ramming rotors on boats over on the?
12:40 Wes Larson? Rudders.
12:41 Mike Smith? And, and the thing-
12:42 Jeff Larson? Wreck them boats.
12:43 Mike Smith? Exactly.
12:44 Wes Larson? The thing about sperm whales is they're not, they're not an aggressive species. Like, we do have that history of the whale ship Essex, which was sunk by a sperm whale. But that was a whale that they had antagonized. They'd thrown harpoons in and chased and everything. On the other hand, orcas, we have very recent history of them sinking ships. And that's, again, it's probably not aggression. It's probably more play than anything. But there is context for that. So for a sperm whale, it seems off to me. I would, if I were betting on this, I would bet it being an orca.
13:16 Jeff Larson? Can I tell you why I think it was a sperm whale?
13:19 Mike Smith? Yeah.
13:19 Jeff Larson? So if you look at the drawing Mike has up, that looks more like a sperm whale.
13:25 Mike Smith? True.
13:25 Jeff Larson? So if they saw it and then drew that-
13:28 Mike Smith? So
13:28 Wes Larson? Yeah, but there are some explanations of it being black and white, right, Mike?
13:32 Mike Smith? We'll get to the coloration, actually. It's actually, it's pretty interesting. But also, if you're looking at this picture, Jeff, you, you see this whale 45 feet long, nose to tail. That would mean this boat's like 15 feet long. And that makes us a pretty small boat compared to the features that it's displaying, like three decks of cannons.
13:51 Jeff Larson? And it doesn't People would all be like little people.
13:54 Mike Smith? Yeah. They'll be like three inches tall.
13:57 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
13:59 Mike Smith? So take it or leave it, this picture, whether it's a accurate, verifiable account of what was actually happening in the waters here.
14:08 Wes Larson? If you guys know much about me, you know that I'm really passionate about seafood, but it might not be in the way that you expect. I really care about sustainability. A long time ago, I learned about overfishing and how much of a problem it is for the world's ocean and food supply, and it really affected me. So I'm very careful about my seafood choices, and I would never recommend a seafood brand to you guys if I didn't think it was a really good one. And that's why I'm so excited to recommend Wild Alaskan Seafood. Wild Alaskan Company is really the best way to get wild-caught, perfectly portioned, nutrient-dense seafood delivered directly to your door. And trust me, it is really, really good fish. Because it's been so long since I've really eaten seafood regularly,
14:52 Wes Larson? I generally don't even really like it that much, but I've been eating Wild Alaskan and I absolutely love it. The other day, we cooked some halibut, made a delicious pesto with it. It just was really, really tasty fish. The co-host salmon I've really liked. Pretty much everything I've gotten from Wild Alaskan, I've just really been a big fan of. And for me, the big selling point is their sustainability. It's 100% wild-caught, never farmed, there's no antibiotics, GMOs, or additives, just clean, real fish that supports healthy oceans and fishing communities. It's sustainably sourced, so every order supports sustainable harvesting practices, and your membership will deliver flexible shipments to you, expert tips, and truly feel-good
15:37 Wes Larson? Seafood. And for me, that's so important. I just think we need to be responsible in our food choices, especially when you're eating wild animals and fish are wild animals. So for me, again, I would not recommend a seafood company if I did not believe in them. And I do believe in Wild Alaskan Company. So not all fish are the same. Get seafood you can trust. Go to wildalaskan.com/tooth for $35 off your first box of premium wild-caught seafood. That's wildalaskan.com/tooth for $35 off your first order. Thanks to Wild Alaskan Company for sponsoring this episode.
16:16 Mike Smith? Okay. Like Wes was talking about, some other historians think it could have been just a massive orca, and it really would have been if it was actually 45 feet. That's about as big as orcas have ever been measured to get, I think, is what I read. And also because it's not very rare to see orcas in this part of the water world. Whereas sperm whales, they really have to navigate some pretty difficult straits and stuff to get up to where, yeah, I'll show you a picture. You guys are gonna be like, how would a whale even get there? You're gonna be dumbfounded. But Wes, what were you saying?
16:49 Wes Larson? With that size thing, like even on the leopard seal episode that we just did, there's historical reports of leopard seals up to 30 feet long. And there's no, yeah, there's no way they were that big. So people, when they see a really big animal.
17:05 Wes Larson? Yeah. When people see a really big animal, they often exaggerate. That's a very common thing. If it's bigger than like 15 feet, it's really easy to say 30, 40 feet.
17:16 Jeff Larson? Never, never trust a guy's measurements.
17:19 Wes Larson? No.
17:20 Mike Smith? Exactly.
17:22 Mike Smith? Actually, I had an interesting question I wanted to ask you. Maybe this would be the right place for it, Wes. But like, do you think that the average size of whales and orcas and stuff that lived in the water, would it have decreased in the modern day because of like?
17:37 Wes Larson? Not substantially.
17:37 Mike Smith? No, not enough to where it would be. If anything, maybe a couple of feet or something.
17:42 Wes Larson? Okay.
17:43 Mike Smith? But that, you know, I shouldn't say that with any like confidence, but I would be shocked.
17:47 Wes Larson? If whales had substantially decreased, something really quick. This is an interesting aside that you bring up that I just want to get into really quick. If humans put a lot of pressure on an animal, especially marine animals to get smaller, they can do it really quickly. Like a way that we've done that is with salmon nets because the smaller fish are able to get out of the net. And so we're selectively, yeah, we're selective selectively, you know, favoring those fish that are smaller. And then those are the ones that are left to reproduce, but we weren't really doing that with whales, pretty much like any sperm whale that was sighted was killed. So I don't think there was a lot of pressure on them to get smaller, if that makes sense.
18:28 Mike Smith? It does.
18:29 Wes Larson? But I, again, I'm not sure.
18:30 Mike Smith? No, that makes sense. So according to historians, C. And Lewis and Lloyd Llewellyn Jones, whales weren't super well understood at this time, as you can imagine. So you can just think about these people living by this water where they haven't really ever seen an animal behave like this before. It's pretty much a nightmare situation for them. It's like a story you tell your kids if they're misbehaving, like you're gonna get eaten by that, whatever that thing is out there. If you don't eat your
18:56 Wes Larson? What was his name?
18:57 Mike Smith? Porridge or whatever. Porphyrios?
18:59 Wes Larson? Porphyrios. Porphyrios is gonna get you.
19:02 Jeff Larson? Go to bed or Porphyrios will eat you.
19:05 Wes Larson? Yeah, picture little Byzantine children being like, no, Porphyrios.
19:11 Mike Smith? And also, like I was mentioning before, they don't see, they weren't seeing a lot of these kinds of animals in these waters, just because of like how difficult. And I pulled up this map just to illustrate. So you see the AGNC in the bottom left and that kind of feeds up off of the Mediterranean. So we're looking at a pretty small window and to get to where Istanbul, that's current day Constantinople, you'll see they'll have to navigate through this straight here and then up through an even smaller one where Istanbul is located. So like not super common to see huge animals making that kind of a trip is what I've read at least.
19:44 Jeff Larson? That's nothing.
19:47 Mike Smith? You don't think?
19:47 Jeff Larson? Nah.
19:48 Wes Larson? I think, I think more than anything like aside from size, you wouldn't expect to see highly migratory animals going in there because they're going to have to come in and out. But it, there's no, like a whale could go in there, any whale could make it in. But a lot of whales, like sperm whales can be really migratory. Whereas orcas sometimes will, resident orcas especially will just hang out kind of in the same waters. So that's another point for me that makes me think it could be, that's more likely it was an orca.
20:16 Mike Smith? All right, we're getting close to settling that case.
20:19 Wes Larson? Yeah.
20:19 Mike Smith? Well, so whatever the case is.
20:21 Wes Larson? Best minds on it.
20:22 Mike Smith? Whatever he, or I guess I should say he or she, whatever they were. Porphyrios is just going hog wild, just sinking all kinds of boats out there, you know? People were, people were freaking out. But why the name Porphyrios, you're probably asking yourself. Maybe like deep in your brain, that's a question that's floating around. Maybe not the first question you wanted to ask, but this is interesting. So I set it up with a segue in which I kind of assumed you were asking a question.
20:47 Jeff Larson? Now I'm asking it for sure. Yeah.
20:49 Wes Larson? Sounds like a job done. Sounds like a musketeer name to me.
20:53 Mike Smith? It does, the fourth or fifth, I guess. So why the name Porphyrios? One hypothesis suggests that it might come from the mythological giant Porphyrion. A fitting name for the whale's size and power attracts. But in the 1990s, a couple of other historians connected a few more dots and think that the name might have referred to the deep wine colored hue of the whale or the orca's skin. Since Porphyrios is pretty close to their, what their word was for purple. And I got, I got a picture to show you here. Purple boy. And that, here, I'll, I'll make that make sense real quick. The theory has since gained support from other historians of note such as John Papadoulos and Deborah Rosillo and another guy named Don, Daniel Ogden. Sorry, I don't know who you guys are. I'm sure you guys are beautiful, intelligent souls.
21:38 Mike Smith? But they believed Porphyrios simply means purple or purple boy. Specifically, they, they thought maybe it meant purple boy.
21:46 Wes Larson? That's what we'll call you when you finally dye your hair purple.
21:49 Jeff Larson? Oh dude, it's got to be. Yeah.
21:53 Mike Smith? Okay, so back to the story. Porphyrios harassment of ships became such a problem that Emperor Justinian the first was forced to address the issue. But no matter what they came up with, nothing was working. They couldn't capture it, let alone kill it. They just threw their hands up and they're like, well, how long could this animal really live? Honestly? And they got their answer 50 plus years. It sucked for them for that whole time. As the authorities ran out of ideas, they couldn't do anything. There's no recourse, but the situation ended up resolving itself and kind of a sad and sort of gross ending. When one day Porphyrios, and this is actually another point towards maybe it being an orca, but Porphyrios was chasing a group of dolphins, which is more orca behavior rather than sperm
22:37 Mike Smith? whale, I would guess.
22:39 Wes Larson? 100%. I'm convinced now.
22:41 Mike Smith? It beached itself at the mouth of the Black Sea. It started wriggling and writhing to free itself, but only succeeded in making things worse, sinking deep into thick mud on the coast. Word quickly spread that the legendary whale was stuck and knowing that there was an imperial decree to kill the beast, a mob ran out with axes and whatever else they had on hand to take care of business. They hauled Porphyrios further out of the water, farther, I should say, out of the water with ropes and wagons and then got to work. And for a long time, actually, they were just sitting there hacking it and it was like barely even breaking through the skin. It was just like such a gargantuan orca, I guess we'll call it now.
23:18 Wes Larson? Well, we, because again, here you have it depicted as a sperm whale, so.
23:23 Mike Smith? Right. I'm sure this was drawn many hundreds of years after the fact.
23:26 Wes Larson? Probably.
23:27 Mike Smith? But eventually they did get through the tough skin. They divided up the chunks of meat and they either ate it right there on the spot, which is kind of weird and gross, but like in a celebratory kind of revelry, they just started eating the beast right there. Or they stored it for later. I guess there was a method that they had to store that kind of meat for later.
23:47 Wes Larson? Kind of funny that this, this particular artist was like, I'm gonna have his dong out and it's gonna be way out.
23:52 Jeff Larson? And someone's gonna be climbing it.
23:54 Mike Smith? Yeah. Using it as a stepping stool. Poor guy though. Look at Porphyrios.
24:00 Wes Larson? Yeah.
24:00 Mike Smith? Man, not a great end for our, our guy.
24:03 Wes Larson? I will say like the other possibility here is that this was a sperm whale that like had some kind of mental illness. Or something going on that completely changed its behavior and that is possible. But they don't, they don't chase dolphins for what I know. They are a toothed whale, but they're mostly diving down deep to eat squid. And other things they're not chasing like marine mammals on the surface. So it really feels like an orca to me.
24:31 Mike Smith? Well, just one, one last twist. Go ahead, Jeff.
24:34 Jeff Larson? Possibility. So like orcas and sperm whales both breathe oxygen. They're not fish.
24:41 Mike Smith? Correct.
24:42 Jeff Larson? So maybe these people just were trying to keep it from drowning, pulled it out of there.
24:47 Mike Smith? Doing some CPR in the blowhole or something. You'd need someone with like a huge mouth to give like a blowhole CPR.
24:55 Jeff Larson? Maybe this is how humans started. It's these whales getting on land.
24:59 Wes Larson? This whale thing in Constantinople.
25:04 Mike Smith? We could have had the next stage of evolution.
25:07 Jeff Larson? Yeah, if they hadn't killed it.
25:09 Mike Smith? Right. Well, Procopius wrote, the historian, that the whale's death, orca's death, whatever it was, death was a huge relief to the people of the city. Finally, finally boats could come and go as they please without fear of their precious ship and cargo being sunk. Or could they?
25:24 Jeff Larson? Ooh.
25:26 Mike Smith? After it was slaughtered on the beach, there were some rumors that it had not been Porphyrios at all, but some other whale that had gotten itself beached and killed. So maybe, maybe we got like a Hugh Glass kind of situation going on here.
25:38 Jeff Larson? Yeah, maybe it could have been even that's the confusion. Like maybe they saw a sperm whale out more in the ocean. But it is like some orca smart enough to frame the sperm whale.
25:51 Mike Smith? That's true. Oh, you think Porphyrios maybe like nudged it up onto the beach to take the fall like a patsy?
25:56 Jeff Larson? He would just wait to like strike the boats until the sperm whale was up out of the water. And they would be like, oh, that's what just got us.
26:05 Mike Smith? Like that time when you farted in class and blamed it on that other guy?
26:09 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
26:10 Mike Smith? That didn't work very well. Porphyrios.
26:13 Jeff Larson? Too out of a fart.
26:14 Mike Smith? A little better.
26:16 Mike Smith? Okay, well, that so thus ends the story of Porphyria. So I thought that was really interesting. I love just hearing strange little anecdotes of like that from antiquity because you don't don't get stories like that all that often.
26:27 Wes Larson? Yeah.
26:27 Jeff Larson? No, it's interesting to think orcas have been sinking boats for a long time now.
26:32 Wes Larson? Yeah, something that I find like kind of weirdly heartwarming about this is that what year was this in again, Mike?
26:39 Jeff Larson? Sixth century.
26:40 Wes Larson? Sixth century.
26:41 Mike Smith? Sixth century AD.
26:42 Wes Larson? Yeah, so like that many years ago, they were sinking boats and people felt powerless. And now in like 2024, they're sinking boats and people feel powerless like there's very little we can do to stop these animals when they start doing that. I guess today they probably could have killed the orcas that were doing it.
27:01 Jeff Larson? Feel more helpless because of like laws nowadays.
27:05 Wes Larson? Right, that's true.
27:07 Jeff Larson? If we could have machine guns on our yachts, they would.
27:10 Wes Larson? Fair enough. They probably could have killed this orcas. That's a good point, but I do, I do love it.
27:16 Jeff Larson? It's a good point, though. I hear what you're saying.
27:18 Wes Larson? Yeah, that that they do hold some power over us. Yeah, I don't know.
27:23 Jeff Larson? We still have fear of them sinking our boats even today.
27:26 Wes Larson? Yeah, I'm pretty convinced it's an orca. I really am.
27:30 Mike Smith? Feels right to me after hearing what you said and reading over all this stuff.
27:35 Jeff Larson? It was.
27:36 Mike Smith? I want that to be the case.
27:37 Jeff Larson? If you were an orca, what would your strategy be to take down a destroyer, like a US destroyer?
27:43 Wes Larson? Oh, yeah. Hmm, I'd wait until they're about to launch a torpedo and then swim up the torpedo tube.
27:50 Jeff Larson? That's pretty good.
27:52 Wes Larson? And be like a suicide attack, but it would blow them up too.
27:55 Mike Smith? That's probably the best way, right?
27:58 Wes Larson? Or just chuck a dolphin in there.
28:00 Jeff Larson? Just keep hitting the rudder.
28:01 Wes Larson? Yeah, just hit that rudder. Sure.
28:04 Mike Smith? I think those rudders would, I don't know. I'm not, I'm not an authority on. Destroyers or aircraft carriers. It seems like they wouldn't be able to do that, but.
28:13 Wes Larson? Mike, and one thing you kept saying like a whale or an orca. You can call them whales.
28:18 Mike Smith? Yeah, right.
28:19 Wes Larson? I just wanted to clarify that for our audience because we kind of confused that once.
28:23 Jeff Larson? It's kind of confusing.
28:25 Wes Larson? Big circle. Yeah.
28:26 Jeff Larson? Can't you like say dolphins are whales?
28:29 Wes Larson? Dolphins are whales. So anything that falls within the cetacean family can be considered whales. So dolphins are whales, orcas are whales, pilot whales, and then you have your big baleen whales too. So you have like, you know, humpbacks, gray whales, right whales, those kinds of whales. They're all whales, but then dolphins is a subgroup of whales. So orcas are dolphins. Dolphins are dolphins. They're all still within that larger group, which is whales.
28:57 Jeff Larson? Humans.
28:57 Mike Smith? Did you call that parking ticket I got on my windshield a cetacean?
29:03 Wes Larson? No.
29:03 Mike Smith? It was a whale of a fine. I'll tell you that much.
29:09 Mike Smith? That's not a good joke.
29:10 Wes Larson? Jeff, you were about to say humans and there is a good like primates and humans, like apes.
29:16 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
29:16 Wes Larson? Are a smaller subset of primates. Yes, apes would be the dolphins of humans, well of primates. Humans would be the dolphins of primates or apes. Sure.
29:27 Mike Smith? Clear.
29:27 Wes Larson? Yeah, I don't know. I.
29:28 Jeff Larson? Or like I was gonna say, if we're snorkeling, we're pretty much whales.
29:32 Mike Smith? Some of us.
29:33 Jeff Larson? We got like our blowholes. We got.
29:38 Mike Smith? Yeah, we do, don't we?
29:39 Wes Larson? I don't have a great argument.
29:40 Mike Smith? Our blubber.
29:41 Jeff Larson? We're mammals.
29:44 Mike Smith? Next story. You guys ready to move on? Are you, any, any final words in reverence for Porphyrios?
29:49 Jeff Larson? Porphyrios, good. Yeah, a good story.
29:52 Wes Larson? Good run. Good run.
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31:19 Mike Smith? plan. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. Okay, next story. You guys have heard of the band The Tragically Hip, right? Canadian superstars?
31:29 Jeff Larson? No.
31:30 Mike Smith? Well, this story is called The Tragically Bald. Look at this guy. I just got a picture. His name is Iskolas. You guys may be familiar with him. Classical Greek playwright. Really made his bones writing tragedies. He really kind of elevated the art form of the tragedy in the poetry and theater world. One of the three greats, along with Euripides, and I forget the other one. Sorry, I'm not a Greek. I'm not a classical lit whatever nerd.
31:58 Jeff Larson? Bald people are like the last group of people you can still make fun of without too much pushback.
32:05 Mike Smith? I know, it's not fair. They didn't choose anything, you know?
32:08 Jeff Larson? Yeah, it sucks to go bald, I think.
32:10 Mike Smith? Some of them do choose, but.
32:12 Wes Larson? You can just go to Istanbul and get some, you know, hair.
32:16 Mike Smith? Just watch out for orcas.
32:18 Jeff Larson? Doc Rivers, because he has a hairline but is bald. Or Chris Paul, where he was like bald but he has like a bald spot.
32:27 Mike Smith? Under the lighting of the NBA arena, his head, you can see hair on it, but there's also a glint, like it's shining off.
32:33 Jeff Larson? It's like shinier than a bald head.
32:36 Mike Smith? It's really cool. Good job, Doc. Okay, Iskolas. Athens great dramatist made his bones writing tragedies Jeff you'd like this guy he was all about writing I don't know if you're familiar with like Agamemnon Clytemnestra like a lot of revenge a lot of payback a lot of
32:50 Wes Larson? Nice.
32:51 Mike Smith? Yeah getting getting even you know.
32:53 Wes Larson? Yeah.
32:54 Mike Smith? So he wrote about 80 plays we know and only seven still exist and thankfully one of them is the complete trilogy the Orestes that's Agamemnon on through the three which is great because it'd really suck if we had like the first two parts but then we didn't get that finishing trilogy part it's like not having Return of the King.
33:13 Wes Larson? Yeah.
33:13 Mike Smith? That tragic. Talk about tragedy you know.
33:18 Mike Smith? So with all the cockamamie he's got this his whole shtick is writing these crazy weird ways people are dying or being killed so it almost seems fitting that he himself would die in a fairly tragic way so this is kind of a tough picture to make out exactly what's going on but in 455 B.C. he was outside probably just minding his own business and the story goes that an eagle carrying a turtle spotted his bald head somewhere far below probably like a glint of sunlight bounced off his shiny head and the eagle was like oh there's something I can break the shell of this turtle on because that's the thing eagles do right they like drop
33:57 Wes Larson? Yeah some of them do.
33:57 Mike Smith? Turtles and tortoises on rocks.
33:59 Wes Larson? Uh huh.
33:59 Mike Smith? So he mistook Aeschylus's head for a rock and dropped a turtle right on top of him and it killed him. And this picture is great because you can see like in the air there's one turtle falling but also you can see there's already a turtle hitting his head so this eagle's dropping two turtles on this guy that's amazing.
34:18 Wes Larson? And he just looks sad like unbothered but still gonna keep reading.
34:22 Mike Smith? Yeah right it's like the pictures you see of people like a water balloon has hit their face but they haven't quite physically registered it yet so their face is still completely
34:32 Wes Larson? Like a slow mo right before.
34:34 Mike Smith? Yeah right anyway so that thus ends the tragic life of Aeschylus.
34:39 Jeff Larson? Do you give that like credit to the eagle or turtle?
34:43 Mike Smith? Yeah who gets that kill?
34:44 Jeff Larson? Like is that death by turtle or by eagle?
34:47 Wes Larson? I'd say eagle.
34:48 Mike Smith? Yeah me too.
34:49 Wes Larson? To the eagle.
34:49 Mike Smith? The guns don't kill people Jeff.
34:51 Jeff Larson? Here's the thing I think a few eagles have killed people in history this might be like our only turtle we can take for like
34:59 Mike Smith? I should have saved this story yeah we could have built a whole episode out of this.
35:03 Wes Larson? Yeah I'm with Mike on that I think the guns don't kill people is imperfect. Analogy for this.
35:10 Jeff Larson? Well, in that case, it'd be a bullet is the turtle, though.
35:13 Wes Larson? So what's the gun? His feet?
35:15 Jeff Larson? Well, I don't know. Bullets kill people.
35:17 Wes Larson? But like, the argument isn't like-
35:19 Jeff Larson? You don't think bullets kill people?
35:20 Wes Larson? Yeah, but who pu- like, who pulls the trigger?
35:23 Mike Smith? Who's pulling the trigger, dog?
35:24 Jeff Larson? The eagle's the gun, but the turtle's the bullet.
35:27 Wes Larson? No, the eagle's the person.
35:29 Mike Smith? Who's using the eagle? Because someone needs to be using the eagle.
35:33 Jeff Larson? Sometimes guns just go off.
35:35 Mike Smith? That's true.
35:36 Wes Larson? Then in that case, guns do kill people, but outside of that.
35:41 Mike Smith? All right, we've lingered on East Glis enough. Let's go to our next one.
35:43 Wes Larson? Just our gun guys, so we can't, we can't make fun of guns.
35:46 Mike Smith? We can't disagree. So this is Saint Conleth of Kildare, Ireland. We're going to Ireland. Conleth was the head of the Kildare School of Metalwork and Penmanship and one of the three chief artisans of Ireland. Upon meeting him, renowned Irish abbess Brigid invited him to become the governor bishop of her double monastery at Kildare. She was just so impressed with his art. She was like, you gotta be a person of influence and of note and help me out here. And he agreed. After about 20 years of serving as the bishop, Conleth set out on a pilgrimage to Rome to buy new vestments and an altar plate to replace the ones that Brigid had just sold for money to help the poor and the needy, which is a worthy, you know, that's a great thing you did, Brigid. But Conleth is like, we also still need this ritual stuff that we use at the church.
36:31 Mike Smith? So I'm gonna go get some from Rome. But he was old at this point. He was a little old. And Brigid was like, you're not gonna make it, dude. You should stay here and let someone else take care of it. He was like, no, no, no, I got this. And then she received a premonition from God. It just so happens. Quote, "You shall not arrive at Rome and you shall not return." That premonition may very well have been real. That God said that through Brigid is how the story goes.
36:55 Jeff Larson? Okay.
36:56 Mike Smith? I saw those spellings. Brigid and-
36:57 Wes Larson? We're back to the weapon slash user of the weapon, though.
37:02 Mike Smith? Right. So somewhere along the journey from Ireland to Rome, Conleth was attacked and killed by wolves, which at the time lived in the woods in the mountains of Linnster. His remains were transferred to a Church of Ireland cathedral and killed Aaron 835 AD in order to protect from the invading Vikings of Denmark. They thought, you know, bringing in some saintly bones, some remains would grant an aura of protection of
37:26 Wes Larson? How'd that work?
37:26 Mike Smith? protection. It didn't. It worked. It worked quite poorly. The Vikings, they, they really got up to all kinds of nonsense and
37:35 Wes Larson? They didn't show up and they were like, oh, wait, are those bones? We're out of here.
37:41 Mike Smith? Yeah. So, uh, many, many, many attacks from Vikings later. Ireland kinda got run rough shot over for a while there, just like, you know, no shame. And I want to personally apologize. All of my ancestors are Danes, so that's my bad, I guess.
37:56 Wes Larson? We had Norwegian ancestors, so we're in on that too.
37:59 Mike Smith? Right. But even those bones weren't very effective. All kinds of people were killed, like the, I think the monastery itself where he was buried was like stormed and pillaged by the Vikings. So like these bones were really ineffective.
38:11 Wes Larson? Yeah.
38:12 Mike Smith? But he was still made the patron saint of the Roman Catholic Saint Conus Parish and is still celebrated on the 4th of May with a feast every year. So like, you try, it's kinda like, thanks for giving it your best, but. And honestly, if anyone from Ireland is listening by any chance, I'd love to hear more if like, this is actually a day that's celebrated and upheld to this day, kind of what's, if I got anything wrong even.
38:36 Wes Larson? Has Star Wars Day choked it out at this point?
38:39 Mike Smith? That's so true.
38:40 Wes Larson? May the 4th?
38:41 Mike Smith? Oh, my God.
38:42 Jeff Larson? I feel like Ireland's rebounding a bit though, like just in general. Maybe just the bones took a long time to work.
38:51 Wes Larson? Yeah, that's true. His bones are finally coming to fruition.
38:56 Mike Smith? Yeah. Good work. Good work, Conus. He's a great artist.
39:00 Wes Larson? I love this, this picture.
39:01 Mike Smith? Say whatever you want about him. He's good at art. I know. He's very.
39:04 Wes Larson? He looks like he's like very nonplussed. Like you just told a joke that he thinks is stupid. I like it.
39:10 Mike Smith? He's so powerful.
39:11 Wes Larson? Yeah. He looks like Sora.
39:12 Mike Smith? Okay. So next story, let's go on to, this is Chrysippus of Solis and a fig-loving donkey. You can kinda see when I, once I lay out the title of this story, what's going on in this picture. So, "A Greek philosopher from the 3rd century B.C. named Chrysippus of Soli once spotted a donkey eating his figs. Seeing the perfect setup for a joke, he quipped to anyone nearby enough to hear him that someone ought to give that donkey some wine." He joked that someone should give that donkey some unmixed wine, Wes.
39:49 Mike Smith? So.
39:53 Mike Smith? Uh, this is fitting, actually.
39:56 Jeff Larson? Like, let the donkey keep eating his figs so he could get that joke off to like as many people as possible.
40:03 Mike Smith? So.
40:05 Wes Larson? The expression on his face is so good, too.
40:09 Mike Smith? This is this man, this story is about to repeat itself, but a Reddit user actually helped me put together this joke. So credit goes to user Iphicretis. I think that's how you would say that.
40:19 Jeff Larson? Like, you talked to the Reddit user?
40:22 Mike Smith? No, I just saw a post from years ago, whatever. So figs and donkeys are symbols of Dionysus, the god of wine, fertility, and theater. So basically what happened is Chrysippus saw two things that reminded him of Dionysus and couldn't pass up on the opportunity to finish the scene by invoking Dionysus himself by giving the donkey some pure wine to wash it down. It's starting to get funny now, right? Well, whatever you guys think, he thought his own joke was so funny that for, quote, "for that seeing his ass eating his figs, he told his old woman to give the ass some unmixed wine to drink afterwards, and then laughed so violently that he died."
41:06 Mike Smith? See? It was funny after all, right?
41:09 Jeff Larson? That is.
41:13 Jeff Larson? He laughed so hard that he gave the donkey wine that he died.
41:25 Mike Smith? Okay, we're gonna get through this. We'll make it together. Please don't turn it off. We're finishing this, I swear.
41:32 Wes Larson? So stupid.
41:37 Jeff Larson? So you're counting that one for the donkey killing him?
41:41 Mike Smith? I'd give it to the figs, I think.
41:45 Mike Smith? Okay, next story. We gotta move on. This is holy cow. Okay, this is about Milo of Croton, also killed by wolves, much like Conliffe, two stories ago. So this guy, he was a six-time Olympic wrestling victor, and loved, he just loved strutting his stuff. He loved showing off how sick he was. Diodorus Siculus wrote in his history that Milo commanded the Cretonian army, which defeated the Ciberites in 511 B.C. while wearing his Olympic wreaths and dressed like Heracles in a lion's skin and carrying a club, which is pretty sick. You go to war like in lions clothes, just with a club, and then he wins? That's rad. But if there's anything Milo loved, it was showing off how strong he was.
42:25 Mike Smith? And a few of his go-to moves were these. He would hold out his arm with fingers outstretched and challenge people to bend his little finger. Which is like, pretty impressive if he was actually strong enough to like-
42:39 Wes Larson? If you can stop someone from doing that, that's-
42:41 Mike Smith? It's amazing.
42:41 Wes Larson? Pretty amazing.
42:42 Mike Smith? Okay. The next one, you guys will be impressed by this. He would stand on a greased iron disc and challenge people to push him off of it.
42:50 Wes Larson? Alright.
42:50 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
42:51 Mike Smith? That's pretty impressive.
42:52 Wes Larson? Yeah.
42:52 Mike Smith? This next one, this one's cool too. He would hold a pomegranate in one hand and challenge others to take it from him. Nobody ever could, and despite him holding the fruit very tightly, it was never damaged. So he would create like a loose cage with his hand around the pomegranate.
43:09 Wes Larson? Wow.
43:09 Mike Smith? I don't know. It's pretty impressive, right?
43:12 Jeff Larson? Pomegranates, I feel like are kinda hard to damage though, right? If you're just squeezing them.
43:17 Mike Smith? Yeah, I think if you're like squeezing, I don't know. That's just-
43:20 Jeff Larson? It's a good, it's a good tidbit. I just, it makes sense to me.
43:24 Mike Smith? Oh, I gotta, let's see if, pull up this next one maybe? Oh, shoot. That's a little too early, but we knew where this was going, so. He would train in his off-years by carrying a newborn calf on his back every day until the Olympics took place. By the time the events were to take place, he was carrying a four-year-old cow on his back. He carried the full-grown cow the length of the stadium, then proceeded to kill, roast, and eat it. And that's like, that's pretty, that's good intimidation, you know?
43:51 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
43:52 Mike Smith? Can you ima- Wes, you wrestled in high school. What if you saw some dude just bring a cow in and then like eat it right in front of you?
43:58 Wes Larson? I wouldn't want to wrestle him, for sure. I would be intimidated.
44:02 Jeff Larson? Especially because Wes wrestled at like 95 pounds.
44:11 Mike Smith? So Milo's final test of strength came when he was traveling to the countryside and met a villager trying to split a stump with a hammer and wedges. Milo excitedly asked the man if he could attempt to split the wood with the strength, not using any tools at all. So he'd like put both of his hands in the stump where the split already was.
44:26 Wes Larson? We're like Captain America.
44:28 Jeff Larson? Oh, cool.
44:28 Wes Larson? Yeah.
44:30 Mike Smith? The villager, honored by Milo's offer, he knew who Milo was, of course. He went off to fetch food while Milo worked on the stump. Milo immediately tried to pull the stump apart by inserting his fingers into the crack where the villager had driven the wedges. As he pulled the stump open, the wedges fell out and the stump quickly snapped in on his fingers, trapping him on the spot. There he waited for the villager to return with the food and to help him out. Legend then says that Milo met his end when wolves, or maybe a lion, took advantage of his predicament and descended upon him. This event turned into a favorite subject in art for Italian Renaissance sculpture. And if you look this up on Google Images or wherever, you'll see a lot of images of like, it really looks like lions are just eating his butt.
45:12 Mike Smith? There are like many different depictions of the same event and they all kind of look weirdly sexual.
45:18 Wes Larson? Like eating his butt or eating his ass?
45:20 Mike Smith? You know what I meant.
45:24 Mike Smith? But I like this one. I like the wolves because it isn't quite as, I don't know.
45:28 Wes Larson? Yeah.
45:29 Mike Smith? I just like the wolf version for more than the lion for some reason.
45:32 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
45:32 Mike Smith? But there you go. He's a tough guy. Look, the stump caught him.
45:36 Wes Larson? That'd be, that'd be kind of embarrassing to be that tough. Yeah, and then get killed by a stump.
45:42 Mike Smith? Yeah. Well, again, what really killed him?
45:45 Wes Larson? What killed him here? Who do we give the credit to? I think the wolves.
45:48 Mike Smith? The wedges?
45:49 Jeff Larson? Seems like if he had his hands, those wolves were toast.
45:54 Mike Smith? True.
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47:01 Mike Smith? Next, this is the final story. We're going all the way back to 1,000 B.C. It was like a million years ago, Jeff. This is King Parakshit. So, King Parakshit toiled alongside his son to consolidate and unify the Kuru states around what is modern-day Delhi, India. For those who, you guys probably all put that together. It is said that his Kuru kingdom flowed with milk and honey and that everyone lived happily and he became known as the Rajah Vishvajinina. I think I'm saying that right. Vishvajinina. That's how it's spelled. The universal king is what that means. One day, King Parakshit set out on a bear hunt and he spotted one, but before he could take it down, the beast took off on a run.
47:42 Mike Smith? The king chased the animal, but in vain. In due course, he got lost in the forest and became very weary and very thirsty. He then came to the hermitage of sage Samika, who was meditating. The king pleaded the sage to quench his thirst, give him something to drink. However, the sage, deep in meditation, he didn't move. He didn't even like acknowledge that the king was there. He was just sitting there. And the king was like, "I'm the king. What's going on here? This is, you should respect me," kind of thing, you know?
48:10 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
48:10 Mike Smith? So he played a little prank on this sage. He picked up a dead snake that lay nearby and placed it around the sage's neck and left the place. Sage Shringan, the son of the sage Shamika, came home to the Hermitage and was shocked to see the desecration and placed a curse upon the man who had so disrespected his father. Quote, "That sinful wretch of a monarch who hath placed a dead snake on the shoulders of my lean and old parent, the insulter of the Brahmanas and tarnisher of the fame of the Kuru's, shall be taken within seven nights hence to the regions of Yama. Death by the snake of Takshaka, the powerful king of serpents stimulated thereto by the strength of my words."
48:50 Mike Smith? It's pretty serious. One week from now, the Takshaka, the demon king snake being, he's gonna get, he's gonna get you, king.
48:58 Jeff Larson? Yeah, that's crazy. He like has the authority to do that curse.
49:03 Mike Smith? Yeah, I don't know anyone personally. That would be cool.
49:07 Jeff Larson? That could pull that off.
49:08 Mike Smith? He was like in your inner circle.
49:09 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
49:10 Mike Smith? So when Shamika, this, he's the sage who had the snake placed around him, when he learned about the curse that his son had given, he was disappointed. He was like, you know, I get why you would be mad, but like, let's forgive and forget. Shamika ordered his disciple Garmuka to go to Parakshit and tell him everything about his incoming death. When Parakshit heard about the curse, he actually was just accepting of his fate. He's like, you know what? I deserve that. I shouldn't. I was kind of being a snot there. I should die.
49:38 Wes Larson? Wow.
49:40 Mike Smith? But the ministers, they had different ideas. They created a mansion that would stand on a solitary column and remain well-guarded.
49:48 Wes Larson? But it's so kind of like a Rapunzel situation, or I mean, I guess Sleeping Beauty, get rid of all the potential dangers.
49:55 Mike Smith? Right, like out of piss, run away from home. I don't want to have sex with my mom is what he was probably saying, so he ran away. Ended up doing it. Oh, talk about tragedy. Those Greeks had a lot of ideas. Okay, but the curse of a sage never fails. The great snake Takshaka, disguised as a worm in a basket full of fruits, laid in wait for the opportune moment. The king reached forth his hand for some of that sweet, sweet fruit and got bit and died exactly seven days later. The curse came true.
50:23 Jeff Larson? Oh, man.
50:24 Wes Larson? It's like the ring.
50:25 Mike Smith? Right. It's too bad because like, it seemed otherwise, he's a pretty good dude. He, he made a pretty sweet kingdom for everyone to live in, but.
50:33 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
50:33 Mike Smith? You know?
50:34 Jeff Larson? It's not even like that bad of a prank.
50:36 Wes Larson? Yeah, he's just playing a little prank. It was a dead snake. Wasn't even a live one.
50:40 Mike Smith? Right.
50:41 Wes Larson? Yeah, these sages need to lighten up.
50:45 Jeff Larson? It reminds me that time when I pranked the guys in college, like they pranked me. And then I just went like so much harder at them. That's kind of a desert. There's like, they wrote my phone number on like a hundred cars.
51:01 Wes Larson? That sucked.
51:01 Jeff Larson? So I got like a ton of like
51:03 Wes Larson? That's a bad one.
51:03 Jeff Larson? texts and calls and like people being like, you want to go on a date, people being like, why is your car, my, why is your number on my car? Are you selling this car? So then I went to a butcher and I bought a pig's head and I stabbed a note in with a knife. That was like threatening.
51:23 Wes Larson? Which is a Larson tradition. Cyrus did that first, then me, then you.
51:27 Jeff Larson? And then my friends, my friends who like did the prank to me, football players, got in a huge fight with them that night and they were like already on edge. And then I put this pig head in their apartment and I threw the smoke grenade in there. Like I threw a huge smoke grenade and the next day I like went over there and they had called the cops and they all had like guns and stuff and I was like, whoa.
51:53 Wes Larson? Call it off.
51:55 Jeff Larson? I'm just gonna go silent for like a week here.
51:58 Wes Larson? It's a great way to end a prank.
51:59 Jeff Larson? Kids got pulled out of like football.
52:02 Wes Larson? If you need a pig's head, any Latin meat market near you will probably have one. So it works really well.
52:09 Mike Smith? You were like in the, you were Kendrick in that beef and those roommates were the Drakes.
52:13 Jeff Larson? Yeah, I was like, I'm putting it into this.
52:16 Mike Smith? Yeah. Okay. Well, that ends, I think that was six stories of animal attacks in antiquity. Hopefully that was illuminating or fun or both.
52:25 Jeff Larson? That was great. I liked the guy who laughed so hard he died.
52:29 Wes Larson? Me too.
52:32 Mike Smith? That's so stupid. It was a good joke though.
52:35 Jeff Larson? So good.
52:37 Mike Smith? It's crazy that like it was a joke that you yourself told. I feel like.
52:41 Wes Larson? Right. But then when he saw it carried out, he was like, oh, it was funnier than I ever could have imagined.
52:50 Wes Larson? So good.
52:52 Mike Smith? Okay. Let's move on to categories.
52:54 Jeff Larson? Seems like his wife didn't really get it.
53:00 Jeff Larson? Cause she just watched him laugh himself to death, right?
53:03 Mike Smith? Because, because she lived.
53:05 Jeff Larson? Right.
53:05 Mike Smith? Obviously she didn't get it.
53:07 Jeff Larson? That's what I'm saying. She like, didn't get how funny it was.
53:12 Mike Smith? Okay, let's go to categories. Uh, what's your favorite tragic movie? Wes, I'm calling on you.
53:19 Wes Larson? Yeah, I, I was thinking about this one. I, my knee jerk was to go with Atonement, which I brought up not too long ago on the podcast, but I just think it's like, a really beautifully made movie and it's one where just like the tiniest little mistakes end up in huge tragedy for the, the people. And it's, it's one of those movies where you want to like shake someone in the movie and be like, no, don't do this. I also like a, a runner up for me was American History X. I honestly haven't seen it in so long. I don't know how well it would hold up today, but that was one where any movie about brothers always hits me a little harder since we're all brothers in the family. And then it, I always thought it was poignant because it was like,
53:58 Wes Larson? the main character is trying to make up for his terrible choices and his like racist life and he's trying to do better. But so much momentum has already gone into his little brother that it's too late to kind of stop those chickens from coming home to roost. And I really, I don't know, that one always kind of hit hard for me, but that was my backup.
54:21 Jeff Larson? It's crazy when he dunks, reverse dunk backwards to Jan.
54:25 Wes Larson? Yeah.
54:27 Mike Smith? Yeah. One of the most athletic things you'll ever see. And it happens in that movie of all movies. Wild.
54:32 Jeff Larson? I'd probably go Manchester by the Sea. That one's just like, ugh, they kind of just wrote a movie to be as sad as they possibly can.
54:41 Wes Larson? Yeah.
54:42 Jeff Larson? And then like Casey Affleck just has really good sad eyes and.
54:47 Wes Larson? He does.
54:47 Mike Smith? He's perfect in that movie.
54:48 Jeff Larson? Yeah. Uh, runner up would be Legends of the Fall because of brothers.
54:53 Wes Larson? Yeah.
54:53 Jeff Larson? And Montana.
54:54 Mike Smith? I haven't really ever fully stopped thinking about Grave of the Fire. Fireflies ever since I saw it for the first time. Uh, Studio Ghibli, World War Two Fallout, kind of just devastating. Another tale of siblings and just unadulterated view of the horrors of war and the effects that it adds long after it's quote unquote ended. And then I'll give a backup too. Why not? Just because you guys did. But um, another movie that's like that for me is Requiem for a Dream. It's a tough one, just so sad. And anyone that's had someone that deals with addiction in their life, kind of, you probably know what that feels like. It sucks.
55:32 Jeff Larson? My number one tragic movie that like shouldn't feel as tragic as it does is The Sixth Man. The brothers play basketball and then one of them dies, but then his ghost helps his brother play basketball. That one is a wreck.
55:49 Wes Larson? Requiem for a Dream is also tragic because Jared Leto's in it. So forget that.
55:54 Mike Smith? He was good in it though. What happened to him? Well, maybe he was already whatever.
55:58 Jeff Larson? Yeah, I liked young Leto.
56:01 Mike Smith? They should make a movie out of Aeskalus, just getting dome shotted by a tortoise. That would be, I guess that's more of a comedy, also in the Greek tradition.
56:09 Wes Larson? Most of these things were pretty funny.
56:11 Mike Smith? Yeah. But yeah, maybe we could make an anthology. Okay, uh, next category. What would you say is one thing that you're cursed with? Do you have like a specific thing you feel like is particularly just a bee in your bonnet? Achilles heel of sorts?
56:27 Jeff Larson? I'm like really bad about losing stuff. Probably would be my number one, like the second I set something down, it's out of, side out of mind situation.
56:39 Mike Smith? That's a good one too, because there's all kinds of stories about little house elves that run around like misplacing your stuff. Maybe it really is just like an actual curse. You got little gnomes.
56:50 Jeff Larson? I've been told I have ghosts where I live, so it could be ghosts.
56:53 Mike Smith? That's right. And you've pissed them off too. You've flipped off.
56:57 Jeff Larson? I was asking for it.
56:58 Mike Smith? Several times.
56:59 Wes Larson? Uh, I picked something that I kind of feel stupid about picking now because it kind of sounds like a good attribute. I guess I didn't really like think about this very well, but. Uh, no.
57:11 Mike Smith? Uh, sultry baritone voice.
57:13 Wes Larson? A good memory. I feel like I have.
57:16 Mike Smith? That is a curse.
57:16 Wes Larson? A good memory. I do have some blind spots. Like, don't get me wrong. There's definitely things that I don't remember well. But there's certain things that I just remember crystal clear. And it really bothers Jesse, actually, because sometimes I'll remember things so well that it feels like I'm weaponizing it. You know, and I probably do that sometimes, to be honest. And so I do, I feel like that's a hard thing when you, when you know you remember something clearly. But it's impossible to like, tell the other person, I remember this better than you, you know? Uh, anyway, that's something that I, but I, I, I'm not saying I feel that way about everything. I, I definitely have some blind spots where I don't think I have a good memory.
57:58 Mike Smith? That sounds like the kind of curse that'll get better as you get older.
58:01 Wes Larson? Yeah.
58:01 Mike Smith? Start forgetting.
58:02 Wes Larson? And it's, it's a curse and a blessing. It's one of those things that I also am really happy I have, but.
58:07 Jeff Larson? Cursed with a huge penis is what it is.
58:09 Wes Larson? I don't have that.
58:12 Mike Smith? It's tough, dude. So my curse is, I feel like whenever I'm trying to be extra careful to not let something happen. That care that I'm going to such great lengths to take is what ends up actually causing me to do the thing that I was trying to avoid in the first place. Like, you know, just talk about sunglasses. I try never to touch the lenses or like, put them in any kind of place where they could get dinged up. So like, handle them very carefully and then they'll just slip out of my fingers and hit the gravel on the ground. And it's like, well, I might as well have just grabbed them and handled them like a normal person. I don't know. This is gonna sound stupid, but this is something that happens to me almost daily where like, I try to handle my phone very carefully and I'll just sling it across the room somehow. And it's so stupid. It always happens. It's a curse.
58:57 Jeff Larson? Can I, can I tell you what I think your curse is, Mike?
59:02 Wes Larson? Yes, please.
59:03 Jeff Larson? It's that like you're a very likable person that people wanna be around. And that's like your worst case scenario for what you want in life.
59:14 Wes Larson? That's true. That's a good, that's a good pull. Yeah.
59:17 Mike Smith? That's, I can change in my answer to that. Well, I guess I shouldn't because that's a little self aggrandizing, but.
59:23 Wes Larson? No.
59:23 Jeff Larson? I try hard. Self aggrandizing.
59:27 Wes Larson? It's not what I was trying to do. And I feel stupid. I know.
59:31 Mike Smith? Big penis Larson over here.
59:32 Wes Larson? I didn't say the big penis thing.
59:34 Mike Smith? That whale. Also, you wanna see that picture? That's like, dude, that's what you've got.
59:38 Jeff Larson? That's nothing compared to Wes.
59:40 Wes Larson? Does a little drawing of a tiny man crawling up my penis.
59:47 Mike Smith? Okay, next, this is about Conleth. We all like Conleth, I feel like, after that little story we told of him. So if there was a yearly feast held in celebration of your life, what would be served and what date would you want it to be on? I mean, I'll go first since you guys, it's my prerogative, you know, I'll set the, set the stage. This is gonna be a bad one, but I love fruit, so I just want a giant buffet of every kind of fruit available. And I want it to happen on the day after Halloween. Just one last fruit hurrah of the year, because I feel like fruit isn't really incorporated into much afterwards, you know? Like Thanksgiving's not really a fruit kind of a thing or Christmas, cranberries, I guess, but.
1:00:25 Jeff Larson? Yeah, I'll have one huge table of cakes and then one huge table of ice creams.
1:00:33 Wes Larson? You can only take one?
1:00:34 Jeff Larson? No, it starts out as like two desserts, but then you grab one from each table and make your own single dessert.
1:00:41 Wes Larson? Yeah, it's great.
1:00:43 Mike Smith? Right?
1:00:44 Wes Larson? I love it.
1:00:45 Mike Smith? Wait, when do you want it to happen?
1:00:47 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:00:47 Jeff Larson? Oh, yeah. Um, Christmas.
1:00:51 Wes Larson? Great, yeah.
1:00:52 Mike Smith? Just double up.
1:00:55 Wes Larson? Mike, I actually, I picked a buffet of fruits as well, just because I think, yeah, I just think there's something so nice about just having a ton of different types of fruit to choose from. And you can kind of go, you can be a glutton and not feel bad about it, you know? And the day I picked was summer solstice, because I think it's my favorite day of the year. I think it's just a time of like, general peace for me. I really like, just, that's like the longest days, you have most of the summer still ahead of you, things are really green and beautiful, the days are warm. I just like the summer solstice, so.
1:01:31 Jeff Larson? Do you think you can have dinner that's just, obviously you can, but like, do you think it counts as like a dinner if it's just fruit?
1:01:38 Wes Larson? Uh, I mean, you, I wouldn't probably count it.
1:01:42 Mike Smith? Yeah, like a breakfast.
1:01:43 Wes Larson? There's people out there that would.
1:01:44 Mike Smith? Be like a, yeah.
1:01:45 Wes Larson? But I get, point taken.
1:01:47 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:01:47 Jeff Larson? I'm not, I'm not saying.
1:01:49 Wes Larson? You didn't say dinner though, right? Or did you?
1:01:50 Jeff Larson? No.
1:01:51 Mike Smith? I just said feast.
1:01:52 Jeff Larson? Like a feast. I'm not even trying to say you guys are wrong in your answer. I just feel like, I don't know, are we having like cream with the fruit? Is there any, is it just?
1:02:01 Wes Larson? There should be a bowl of cream. I want some cream on mine.
1:02:04 Mike Smith? Okay.
1:02:04 Wes Larson? You can be different, Wes. You can have.
1:02:06 Mike Smith? I just want the fruit. Yeah.
1:02:07 Jeff Larson? And then fruit, are we like, we're counting like all the stuff that isn't actually fruit, but we think of as fruit, right?
1:02:15 Wes Larson? Like what?
1:02:15 Mike Smith? Like tomatoes?
1:02:16 Jeff Larson? Or like berries?
1:02:18 Mike Smith? Avocado?
1:02:19 Jeff Larson? Is berries fruit?
1:02:20 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:02:20 Jeff Larson? Maybe I'm thinking of vegetables.
1:02:22 Wes Larson? I'm pretty sure berries are fruit.
1:02:24 Mike Smith? I'm not sure. I will say this, though.
1:02:26 Wes Larson? In the colloquial.
1:02:27 Mike Smith? Kiwis are keeping skin. They're not taking that skin off those kiwis, not at my feast. You guys are weirdos that do that. They're so healthy and good.
1:02:37 Jeff Larson? I like the idea of, I think that'd be a good switch up, because like every meal is so like centered around meat, just to have like a fruit feast?
1:02:46 Wes Larson? It just sounds like kind of.
1:02:48 Mike Smith? Fruit medley.
1:02:48 Wes Larson? Breezy and nice. And on summer solstice, it just sounds very like refreshing and warm and good. So that's what I want. Yeah.
1:02:57 Mike Smith? Great. I'm glad, I'm happy that we aligned on that. That's nice. A bit of synchronization there. Okay. Final category before we get the heck out of here. I know you guys are hovering over that stop button right now, talking about Kiwis and shit. You don't want to, you're not here for that. Okay, so this is yet another charity quiz is what I called this one.
1:03:15 Jeff Larson? Two subscription episodes in a row, we talked about Kiwis.
1:03:19 Mike Smith? Oh, we did. Oh, man. Okay, so $10 goes to charity for every question you don't get right. But for every question that you do, I'll give $20. So this is gonna go, I'm gonna alternate between you both.
1:03:35 Jeff Larson? If I get every question right, I want it to go to me and charity doesn't get anything.
1:03:42 Mike Smith? Deal. Okay. You're not gonna be asked all of the questions, which is a real.
1:03:48 Jeff Larson? Yeah, but if I go 100%.
1:03:50 Mike Smith? Okay, you'll have to let me know if you do. So each of you, so we talked about four countries or four empires geographic locations. We got Byzantine Empire, you have Ireland, you have Greece. What was the other one?
1:04:03 Jeff Larson? Istanbul?
1:04:04 Mike Smith? Oh, yeah. India, kind of like the India, the Vedic, Vedic era, I guess is what it was called back then. But I'm going to ask you each to tell me in which of those regions, the following eight things were invented. And you each get 150 50, like who wants to be a millionaire rules. You can each ask each other for help once, or you can ask for the clue that I have and can provide for one. So you each get three kind of lifelines, if you will.
1:04:33 Wes Larson? So we have the Indian one, the Byzantine, Greek, and the Irish?
1:04:39 Mike Smith? Ireland. Yep. Okay. And it's either someone, it was invented there or by someone from there.
1:04:45 Wes Larson? Okay.
1:04:46 Mike Smith? Now, this is gonna get a little, this is gonna be fun. Trust me. Wes, you're the first one to go. The fork.
1:04:54 Wes Larson? Fork.
1:04:55 Mike Smith? Classic dinner fork.
1:04:57 Wes Larson? Hmm.
1:04:57 Mike Smith? Breakfast fork, lunch, all of them use forks sometimes.
1:05:01 Wes Larson? I'm gonna say the Irish.
1:05:04 Mike Smith? Nah.
1:05:05 Wes Larson? Okay.
1:05:05 Mike Smith? Byzantine dude, Byzantine Empire, the fourth century.
1:05:09 Wes Larson? Well, dollars to charity.
1:05:11 Mike Smith? So you each are gonna get asked four questions. So you have three lifelines left to use. You can use them on the same question or.
1:05:18 Wes Larson? What are the three lifelines again?
1:05:20 Mike Smith? Fifty fifty, so I'll narrow it down.
1:05:22 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:05:22 Mike Smith? Uh, ask each other for help, or you can have me read the clue that I provided.
1:05:27 Wes Larson? Okay. Shoot, I forgot.
1:05:29 Mike Smith? Sir Jeff, next one.
1:05:30 Wes Larson? Used one.
1:05:31 Mike Smith? Where was democracy invented?
1:05:33 Jeff Larson? And what are the four choices again?
1:05:35 Mike Smith? You got Byzantine Empire, ancient Greece.
1:05:39 Jeff Larson? Ancient Greece.
1:05:40 Mike Smith? Ireland. You got it. Okay, so we're up to thirty dollars. Wes, back to you.
1:05:44 Jeff Larson? So far it's going to me, too.
1:05:46 Mike Smith? Yeah, so far Jeff's, Jeff's getting all of it. He needs, you need it.
1:05:51 Wes Larson? Where's chess invented?
1:05:53 Mike Smith? Yes.
1:05:54 Wes Larson? Uh, man, I'll, I'll do my fifty fifty.
1:05:58 Mike Smith? Okay, it was either Byzantine or India.
1:06:02 Wes Larson? I'm gonna go with India on this one.
1:06:04 Mike Smith? Oh, you got it. You got it, dude. It was originally called Chaturanga. That would have helped.
1:06:08 Wes Larson? That's like a pose. That's a pose.
1:06:10 Mike Smith? Yeah, the yoga pose.
1:06:12 Jeff Larson? Hmm.
1:06:12 Mike Smith? Okay, Jeff, back to you. Chocolate milk.
1:06:15 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
1:06:17 Mike Smith? Where was that invented? Or someone invented that from this place?
1:06:21 Jeff Larson? So, so.
1:06:21 Mike Smith? Who or where?
1:06:22 Jeff Larson? It's, I can't remember all of them. Ancient Greece is Brisbane.
1:06:27 Mike Smith? Brisbane. Yep. So you got ancient Greece, the Byzantine Empire, India, Ireland.
1:06:33 Jeff Larson? Um, it's cut mine in half.
1:06:36 Mike Smith? Okay, so it's either Ireland or India.
1:06:39 Jeff Larson? I'm gonna go with Ireland.
1:06:41 Mike Smith? Oh, you got it. I stalled a little bit too long on that maybe. Uh, so apparently this is just an interesting thing. Uh, this would have been the clue, but he went to Jamaica, this guy, Hans Sloane from Ireland. He went to Jamaica and he had this drink where they would just put like a bunch of cocoa in water and he was like, this sucks. But then he added milk to it and he's like, this is, this is it.
1:07:03 Wes Larson? It slaps, is what he said, probably. Yeah.
1:07:06 Mike Smith? Right, slapped.
1:07:06 Jeff Larson? It is, it holds up still.
1:07:09 Wes Larson? It's still good.
1:07:10 Mike Smith? Yeah, he was right to this day. Yep. Uh, submarines, Wes, where, where were those invented, do you think?
1:07:16 Wes Larson? Hmm. I want your hint. I want the extra hint.
1:07:19 Mike Smith? It was invented by a man named John Philip Holland.
1:07:23 Wes Larson? John Philip Holland. That sounds more Irish to me than anything of all those places. So I'm gonna go with Ireland.
1:07:30 Mike Smith? Yeah, that's it. That was kind of a dead giveaway if you really start thinking about it. I didn't do a good job on that one. Okay, plastic surgery, Jeff. Where was that invented?
1:07:39 Jeff Larson? Uh, I'm not gonna say ancient Greece. The Ireland, Bris- give me your hint.
1:07:48 Mike Smith? Invented in 600 B.C. by the man known as the father of surgery.
1:07:53 Jeff Larson? 600 B.C.?
1:07:55 Mike Smith? Yeah. Think about that.
1:07:57 Jeff Larson? Brisbane.
1:07:59 Mike Smith? That's not an answer.
1:08:00 Wes Larson? Byzantine.
1:08:02 Jeff Larson? Byzantine.
1:08:03 Mike Smith? Nope. Um, probably Byzantine wasn't around by then. It was India. It was crazy. The first like rhinoplasty, they would do like skin graft and transfers. This, ah, should have wrote his name down. It's like Shutra or something, but yeah, he was like the largely credited with inventing plastic surgery. Uh, that was really cool. Oh, man, this one. Wes, the Olympic Games?
1:08:23 Wes Larson? Uh, ancient Greece.
1:08:25 Mike Smith? Oh.
1:08:26 Jeff Larson? Dude, the Olympic Games were so cool. I wish we still had it.
1:08:30 Mike Smith? Naked dudes wrestling?
1:08:31 Jeff Larson? Yeah, it'd be like the 100 meter, but they're all naked and it's like full contact.
1:08:37 Wes Larson? And like people die every Olympic Games?
1:08:39 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
1:08:40 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:08:42 Mike Smith? Okay, this is the last one. This one goes to you, Jeff. Uh, the grenade.
1:08:47 Jeff Larson? Where was it invented?
1:08:48 Mike Smith? Yeah. I think you still got two life. No, one life.
1:08:52 Jeff Larson? I'll ask Wes.
1:08:53 Mike Smith? Okay, Wes.
1:08:56 Wes Larson? I'm gonna guess, I'm gonna guess, Jeff, and this is to you. This isn't the answer. I'm gonna guess the Byzantine Empire.
1:09:03 Jeff Larson? Yeah, I could block it in Byzantine.
1:09:05 Mike Smith? Oh, nice. Nailed it. So ceramic jars full of incendiary liquid. Uh, they'd use it in naval warfare. They used it to rebuff the Arab fleets that were besieging the city.
1:09:16 Jeff Larson? That's like a matoffe cocktail. That's not a grenade.
1:09:19 Mike Smith? They they say that's the military history dictates that they were the ones who invented the grenade. I mean, you got it right. There's not really a whole.
1:09:28 Jeff Larson? I'm arguing on.
1:09:29 Wes Larson? We got all of it with.
1:09:31 Mike Smith? Chesty puller. Yeah, so that means eight. So six times.
1:09:35 Jeff Larson? Would you have gotten mine with?
1:09:37 Wes Larson? The rhinoplasty? No, I would have guessed Byzantine as well. So.
1:09:41 Jeff Larson? I would have gotten yours, but it would have been a guess.
1:09:44 Mike Smith? Hundred forty dollars to charity. What? I never choose a charity to go for. Yeah. You guys want to come up with them?
1:09:50 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:09:51 Jeff Larson? Yeah, the the Gates Foundation.
1:09:54 Wes Larson? Let's not do that. Let's do a wildlife charity.
1:09:58 Wes Larson? Let's do. Let's do Wildlife SOS. Since we talked about India and we're going to India. They're an Indian wildlife rescue organization. I've worked with a bit. They're great. So we'll do Wildlife SOS.
1:10:10 Mike Smith? You're not on. You don't sit on the board? There's no conflict of interest on this one?
1:10:13 Wes Larson? Sit on the board there. And there's no conflict of interest with me drumming up donations for places I sit on the board.
1:10:21 Mike Smith? Well, great. Good. Good work, guys. You guys are like the anti Steph Currys. You got you raised some money for charity. I'm proud of you. I think that just about does it for the episode. Any final thoughts? Did you do the fork invented in fourth century AD? That's like, I would have thought that a fork would have come about a little earlier than that, but I don't know. I'm not. I'm not a cutlery guy.
1:10:43 Jeff Larson? What's your opinion of forks?
1:10:45 Wes Larson? I'm a fan. I'm positive. I'm pro fork.
1:10:47 Mike Smith? Oh, man.
1:10:48 Jeff Larson? I think they're too good at what they do. I think like, I think eating has become like too easy. So it's almost like too boring now. Like in Japan, you gotta use freaking chopsticks and it's hard. So then you're like earning your meal a little bit more.
1:11:05 Mike Smith? It's hard for us. They would argue that it's better, though.
1:11:08 Wes Larson? Right.
1:11:08 Jeff Larson? Well, they're wrong.
1:11:10 Wes Larson? The thing I like about a fork is that you can also cut with the side of it, you know? It's a really versatile, a really versatile little instrument.
1:11:20 Mike Smith? I mean, I'm a fan.
1:11:21 Jeff Larson? Maybe kill someone with one.
1:11:23 Wes Larson? I'm sure someone has at some point.
1:11:25 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:11:25 Wes Larson? For sure.
1:11:26 Mike Smith? I think so.
1:11:27 Jeff Larson? So, yeah.
1:11:27 Wes Larson? Chalked up a kill for forks.
1:11:30 Jeff Larson? There's a few different things you could do with them.
1:11:33 Wes Larson? Sure.
1:11:33 Mike Smith? Good call.
1:11:34 Wes Larson? We've. I just watched.
1:11:35 Jeff Larson? Something with it?
1:11:37 Mike Smith? Like comb, you can use it as a comb.
1:11:39 Wes Larson? All Quiet on the Western Front, a guy kills himself with a fork.
1:11:43 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:11:43 Jeff Larson? There you go.
1:11:44 Wes Larson? So.
1:11:44 Mike Smith? Or in Pirates of the Caribbean, that one dumb zombie pirate.
1:11:48 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:11:48 Mike Smith? Gets it in the eyeball.
1:11:50 Wes Larson? Ah, that would have killed him, maybe, if he was alive.
1:11:53 Mike Smith? Yeah. That was fun. That was a fun scene.
1:11:55 Wes Larson? Mike, that was a really fun episode. I enjoyed it.
1:11:57 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
1:11:58 Mike Smith? Good.
1:11:59 Jeff Larson? Yeah. I, I don't know. I don't think I'll ever tell a joke that good.
1:12:07 Jeff Larson? Those are the best jokes, like the ones that like make you laugh, like yourself. That's like when you know you got a good one. It's like when you can't stop laughing at your own joke.
1:12:19 Mike Smith? I like to imagine he like, he couldn't even get the joke out. He was laughing so hard already, so no one could understand him.
1:12:27 Wes Larson? I love that. His joke still hits today, too. Like, all three of us couldn't stop laughing.
1:12:34 Jeff Larson? Mike does that more than listeners realize. I think we're gonna like say something that cracks himself up and he just has to like leave the mic for a bit.
1:12:48 Mike Smith? So stupid.
1:12:49 Wes Larson? Oh.
1:12:50 Mike Smith? I'm never changing, though. Okay, well, uh, thanks for listening. Thanks for, um, I'm glad you knew enough about that story, that first story, that you could kind of shed some light on what may or may not have been happening.
1:13:01 Wes Larson? I've done the most cursory little glance at it, because it came up when people were talking about the recent Orca incidents, that I did some research into it and that was like something I was directed to. But I'm really glad you dove into it, because it was really fun.
1:13:16 Mike Smith? Thanks, everyone, for listening to, and, uh, that's it for me. You guys wanna, you guys probably wanna say bye and I love you and all that stuff.
1:13:24 Jeff Larson? Love ya.
1:13:25 Wes Larson? Crack off mate.
1:13:26 Mike Smith? See ya.
1:13:27 Wes Larson? Yeah.
Previous The Dangers of Hunting Cape Buffalo - A Roundup of Recent Animal Encounter Headlines Including a Really Dumb Tonia Haddix Update, the Japanese Bear Safety Drill, and More Next Crocodile Attack - Todd, His Dog Dig Dig, and the Saltwater Crocodile Page updated November 1, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated