Pod Insights Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks Braveheart and the Bat + More - The July 2026 Animal News Round-up About this episode The guys cover a bunch of notable animal stories and headlines that have happened over the past month or so, including a bunch of bear hijinks, petting a lioness into retreating, and many more!
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Transcript 15,078 words · 7 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:13 Jeff Larson? Hello and welcome to Tooth and Claw Podcast. We have our wildlife bear biologist Wes Larson.
1:21 Wes Larson? Heyo.
1:22 Jeff Larson? And I'm his younger brother Jeff Larson. And then we have Mike Smith, who's a man of few talents, but those talents are really good.
1:33 Mike Smith? Jack of few trades, master of absolutely none.
1:38 Jeff Larson? Mike, Wes, you want to hear the text Mike sent me?
1:42 Wes Larson? Sure.
1:43 Mike Smith? Wait, which one? Hold on.
1:45 Jeff Larson? He asked me what the coolest sword in Game of Thrones is, right? You have a good answer for that?
1:52 Wes Larson? In Game of Thrones?
1:53 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
1:54 Wes Larson? Um, Longclaw.
1:55 Jeff Larson? Hmm.
1:55 Wes Larson? Jon's sword.
1:56 Jeff Larson? Is it? I said Lightbringer, Stannis Baratheon sword that like light glows and kind of lights on fire sometimes, you know?
2:04 Wes Larson? That's a cool sword.
2:05 Mike Smith? Sounds cool.
2:06 Jeff Larson? And Mike said... Because it does light on fire. So Mike said, bro, if you got sliced by it, it would cauterize the wound immediately. Bad sword design. And then he said, it's so bad, I'm going to myself.
2:22 Mike Smith? Don't. This is a breach of trust.
2:25 Jeff Larson? So I was thinking about that. And it's like, do you think like if he did do that, but he left a note saying his reason why is the is the sword light bringer cauterizing a wound? That that would make big news and he would get to like George R R Martin and he would see that someone did that?
2:47 Wes Larson? Hmm. I don't know. I think 10 years ago it would have. I don't think it would now.
2:53 Mike Smith? I'm not sending you guys any more texts. You just air all my dirty.
2:57 Wes Larson? Hey, don't, don't roll me up into this.
2:59 Mike Smith? You're the worst.
3:01 Jeff Larson? I didn't do anything. Guy who lit himself on fire because he knew like all the stuff the American government is doing bad and all the bad stuff in Palestine.
3:11 Wes Larson? Yeah.
3:11 Jeff Larson? It's different, but similar.
3:13 Mike Smith? It made the news cycle.
3:15 Wes Larson? Are we going to be talking about these swords? Or can I say why Jeff is wrong?
3:19 Mike Smith? Go for it. No, you're fine to do that.
3:21 Wes Larson? Long claws Valerian steel. So like for the night watch or for like the the white walkers and stuff, you need that. That's the only thing that kills them.
3:29 Jeff Larson? Yeah, they die when they get like lit on fire.
3:32 Wes Larson? Oh, that's true. But not the not the white walkers, just the whites, right? Just they're like zombie people. The white walkers themselves, you have to use Valerian steel.
3:42 Jeff Larson? Grab this sword that lights on fire and he's using it against them when they went across the wall.
3:47 Wes Larson? Yeah. But do you do you know what I'm saying? The um, there's two different things. There's the white walkers, which are like the the guys with the blue eyes that are like controlling all the zombie people. And then there's the whites, like W I G H T S. And they're like the zombies.
4:04 Jeff Larson? The whites.
4:04 Wes Larson? And the whites you can kill with fire. But I think the white walkers, like the bosses you have to kill with Valerian steel.
4:12 Mike Smith? Having not seen Game of Thrones, your description of the Night Walkers, you might be one of those, Wes.
4:18 Wes Larson? I got bright blue eyes.
4:19 Mike Smith? Yeah, weird blue eyes, pale.
4:23 Jeff Larson? It glows blue when the orcs are close, dude.
4:28 Wes Larson? That's true. I do. My eyes do glow and I'm really excited about something. So.
4:32 Mike Smith? Right. Yeah.
4:33 Jeff Larson? They glow?
4:34 Wes Larson? They just get really bright. Like people, that's when I always like, people are like, whoa, your eyes look crazy. And I'm just like, cause I'm all freaking excited. I'm all amped up over here.
4:44 Mike Smith? Yeah. Or on meth.
4:47 Wes Larson? All right. Well, it's our news episode. Uh, if you're new to this here show, our typical episodes involve like one story, uh, with a narrative and a more kind of storytelling basis where we go over the story and then break down what happened. This episode, which is every fourth episode on average, is one where we go over the recent news stories that happened. And we talk about, yeah, what happened involving animals over the last probably like six weeks. And these stories might not be big enough to, you know, take up a whole episode, but we still want to talk about them. That's what we're doing.
5:18 Mike Smith? No less important, right?
5:20 Wes Larson? No less important. So who wants to go first?
5:24 Jeff Larson? I can go first.
5:25 Wes Larson? Okay. Yeah.
5:26 Jeff Larson? Oh, you were about to, huh?
5:28 Wes Larson? I was. I don't feel bad about it anymore. I used to feel bad about that when I got shamed for it, but not anymore.
5:35 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
5:35 Wes Larson? You just take the longest pauses sometimes. So I just feel like I have to fill the dead air, you know?
5:41 Jeff Larson? Mike, are you raising your hand?
5:42 Wes Larson? You got a question?
5:43 Mike Smith? I'll go first.
5:45 Wes Larson? Okay. Go first.
5:48 Mike Smith? So my story I'm titling the bat in the Braveheart sword is the first new story of the episode. Um, I kind of hijacked it from you guys. Okay. So I got this information primarily from NBC News. It happened on June 30th, about a week and a half ago as of the recording of this episode. The story pertains to one Cecilia Kale, which I think is just a sweet name.
6:12 Wes Larson? That is a good name.
6:13 Mike Smith? Sounds like a, not quite a Marvel hero name. Those are always like more alliterative, but it's close.
6:19 Wes Larson? Yeah.
6:19 Mike Smith? We're getting close.
6:20 Wes Larson? No, that sounds more like a Jane Austen name to me or something. Cecilia Kale.
6:25 Mike Smith? It sounds like someone.
6:26 Wes Larson? Was pining for her, you know?
6:28 Mike Smith? All right.
6:28 Wes Larson? I don't know. Yeah.
6:29 Jeff Larson? Sounds like Veggie Tales to me.
6:32 Mike Smith? Kale.
6:33 Wes Larson? Yeah.
6:34 Mike Smith? I don't have anything more to say.
6:36 Wes Larson? What were you gonna say?
6:37 Mike Smith? Jeff's was the best example.
6:39 Wes Larson? All right.
6:39 Mike Smith? How am I gonna top that? So Veggie Tales. Okay, so Cecilia Kale, she was playing out in her front yard with a couple of her brothers, just yucking it up in a small town called Tigerton, about 60 miles west of Green Bay.
6:52 Jeff Larson? Oh, I know where this is going.
6:54 Mike Smith? Yeah, you got a good guess. It's a bit of a red herring, the name of this town, because it wasn't Tiger that swooped down from above and got her on the left thigh. It was actually a bat, which is so ironic, you know?
7:09 Jeff Larson? Yeah, that is, that surprises me.
7:12 Wes Larson? Yeah, petition to rename that town, you know?
7:15 Mike Smith? Yeah, to what? Baton? Yeah, is that what Baton Rouge? Maybe that's how it will. Okay.
7:23 Wes Larson? Batburg.
7:23 Mike Smith? Unfortunately for this bat, though, two of her brothers, they've been watching a lot of Braveheart recently.
7:30 Jeff Larson? The Bats?
7:31 Wes Larson? A lot? What's a lot of Braveheart?
7:34 Mike Smith? I, that's all I, the information I didn't call, I didn't ask.
7:38 Jeff Larson? The Bats Brothers were watching it?
7:40 Mike Smith? That's what I mean, Jeff. Yes, the Bats Brothers were watching Braveheart a lot.
7:45 Wes Larson? What, Mike, what would you like?
7:46 Jeff Larson? He said.
7:47 Wes Larson? If someone were to say, I've been watching a lot of Braveheart lately, what would you think that means?
7:53 Mike Smith? I would say like, you know how kids are, like, on a daily basis, maybe it's like, whoa, this is getting a little weird here.
8:00 Wes Larson? Like, how many times would you have to, like, watch it?
8:02 Mike Smith? Four times.
8:03 Jeff Larson? That was our mom's favorite movie. And if it's ever on cable, it's like, yeah, we're watching it.
8:09 Wes Larson? We only saw it edited, though.
8:12 Mike Smith? This could easily be your mom in this story. So just like, imagine her instead of Cecilia.
8:16 Wes Larson? Watching a lot of Braveheart lately.
8:18 Mike Smith? Or the brothers. Yeah. Okay, so, again, unfortunately for this bat, these two brothers, maybe more of the family, this is actually a pretty large family, eight children total, but two of them were out with Cecilia in the yard at the moment, and been watching some Braveheart. And in fact, that very day, 11-year-old Nicholas, he'd actually made a replica of William Wallace's sword. You know how like, you grab a stick and you're like, this is Excalibur? And you like run around.
8:44 Jeff Larson? Oh, yeah.
8:44 Mike Smith? Hitting each other with it. And he'd been quoting lines from Braveheart nonstop. So you just, you know, he was all amped up to get some excitement out of his system. Like.
8:53 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
8:53 Mike Smith? I, uh, when I saw Tokyo Drift in theaters, however, long ago that was now, people were just peeling out of the parking lot. And it's like, you know, these guys are. Yeah.
9:03 Wes Larson? Any fast movie, honestly, when you leave the parking lot, you just wanna, yeah, slam that pedal down.
9:09 Jeff Larson? And you're just like, forget about it, cuz.
9:12 Mike Smith? Forget.
9:21 Mike Smith? Okay.
9:21 Wes Larson? I've been watching a lot. Been watching a lot of Tokyo Drift lately.
9:27 Jeff Larson? You're gonna have to peel out, forget about it, cuz.
9:31 Jeff Larson? That's what this is like.
9:33 Mike Smith? Uh, you're gonna have to vamp for a bit, like, control myself here, Jeff. Oh, man.
9:38 Jeff Larson? I, I'm just trying to think what quote he would say as he.
9:42 Wes Larson? Yeah.
9:42 Mike Smith? Free.
9:42 Jeff Larson? Swings at them. Because freedom is when he gets, like, killed.
9:46 Mike Smith? Yeah.
9:47 Wes Larson? So I don't think he'd say that whenever.
9:48 Mike Smith? Maybe not. Okay.
9:49 Jeff Larson? What does he say when he leads the charge?
9:52 Wes Larson? He does a whole speech.
9:54 Jeff Larson? Right.
9:55 Wes Larson? Yeah.
9:56 Mike Smith? Uh, this is the day, uh, they'll remember the Titans.
10:00 Wes Larson? Yeah. I think that was it.
10:02 Mike Smith? Or something.
10:04 Jeff Larson? I'm Maximus, father of a.
10:08 Mike Smith? No, I am your father.
10:09 Wes Larson? Forget about it. Forget about it, cuz.
10:11 Mike Smith? Forget about it.
10:13 Mike Smith? Yeah. So, um, their mother actually later, when talking to reporters, she gave a bit of a play by play afterwards, saying, quote, and here comes Camden. He's like, no. And he's got this pole and he just knocks the bat off of Cece and then Nicholas grabs it. And he just starts killing the thing.
10:29 Wes Larson? Yeah.
10:30 Mike Smith? Nick made the homemade sword. We love Braveheart. End quote.
10:33 Wes Larson? Hmm.
10:34 Mike Smith? So.
10:34 Wes Larson? Okay.
10:35 Jeff Larson? That's pretty good.
10:36 Wes Larson? Just like pretending.
10:38 Jeff Larson? I don't know, that's pretty hard to hit the bat off your sister with.
10:42 Wes Larson? That is, yeah.
10:43 Mike Smith? Yeah. Which, and like, maybe it, it sounds a little cruel, you know, like two young kids just going to town on this bat. But it actually ended up being the best thing. Because since they still had this bat's carcass, they could send it in to get tested for rabies, right?
10:59 Wes Larson? Yes. You want to keep that bat if you've got it, access to it.
11:03 Mike Smith? And it did turn out that it was rabid. So Cece is now in danger.
11:08 Jeff Larson? Oh, so it's definitely good they killed it.
11:12 Mike Smith? Yeah, right. The family did, actually, they came out and stated pretty firmly that they were opposed to mandated vaccinations. And like not passing any judgment on that, but it makes it an interesting confrontation when there are health officials. Kind of explaining the risks of these kinds of scenarios to people who may be a little bit resistant. But for rabies, like, this is not, it's kind of like not really a question. Yeah. So like, once you, what, and maybe Wes, you can explain the prognosis of rabies, like what, what it means and how dangerous it is.
11:44 Wes Larson? Yeah. I mean, if you don't get it treated in time, it's a death sentence. You know, like you, I think you, I forget how long it is, but it's a matter of days for you to start your, your treatments, your, um. Cause a vaccine is something you take before. I forget what it's called when you've already been bitten. I can't think of it, whatever, for whatever reason, but, um, yeah, it's a very serious disease. Uh, you like, you have to take it very seriously. And just to talk on what Mike briefly mentioned earlier, the reason it's a really good idea to have the bat. Is because it is a lot cheaper to test a dead animal than to test a person. And like, if you can prove that that bat didn't have rabies, then that person doesn't have to go through the entire.
12:25 Wes Larson? You know, expensive and painful rabies procedure to like prevent it and the vaccine and everything. Inoculation, I guess. So that's why you want to keep it if you have access to it.
12:35 Mike Smith? Yeah. And like you said, it's basically a death sentence if you don't get the shots. But in, in contrast, if you do get these shots, it's basically you're guaranteed to survive. And like, the symptoms of rabies, it's basically every single bad thing that can happen to you does eventually, you start. Getting a fever and then vomiting and then like just general confusion, insomnia and anxiety. And then like the one that always gets me is like not being able to swallow water. The hydrophobia aspect to me is just like, I don't know what all is happening in a brain for that to happen. But like, as soon as that virus touches your brain, it's over. You know, like you don't even have to start manifesting these symptoms before it's too late.
13:19 Mike Smith? And then like, you know, afterwards, it is too late.
13:22 Wes Larson? Yeah, we did that episode where there's like that one girl out there that survived it post symptomatic. Yeah, survived, but it's like the one out of however many cases that's, yeah. Yeah, you gotta take it seriously.
13:34 Mike Smith? And interesting to note, so like I said, this is kind of a big, more traditional family. They have eight children, they're, you know, against the mandated vaccines, whatever that, I'm not extrapolating that to mean anything more than just what that says, but all of these kids are homeschooled, which again, I was homeschooled.
13:52 Jeff Larson? Opinion on that, Mike?
13:53 Mike Smith? Look, yeah, like how I turned out, I was briefly.
13:55 Jeff Larson? No, the vaccine part.
13:57 Mike Smith? Uh, I get them personally.
14:00 Wes Larson? How long were you homeschooled for?
14:02 Mike Smith? Like a year-ish, like when in between like a bunch of moves and then we ended up in Colorado. I don't know, my dad was like fleeing the, the federal BI.
14:10 Wes Larson? Counts, does that count if you're homeschooled for a year?
14:13 Mike Smith? I don't know.
14:14 Wes Larson? Can you say I was homeschooled? Sounds like stolen valor to me.
14:18 Mike Smith? It's mine. I claim it. But anyway, so another quote from the mother that I found was kind of interesting was that they wanted to live out there on the land, homeschool and raise their kids like it was the 1850s. As in like the year, the year 1850. So this is just like a very unusual family circumstance, you know?
14:38 Wes Larson? Watching Braveheart all the time too.
14:41 Jeff Larson? I mean, that, that took place before 1850.
14:45 Mike Smith? Yeah, that's true. It's history.
14:48 Wes Larson? So it was available to them in 1850.
14:50 Jeff Larson? I like to think that kid is probably that part where like his wife got killed for not doing the prima nocta. Yeah. And then he gets his revenge on that local king or whatever.
15:03 Wes Larson? Yeah.
15:04 Jeff Larson? That's kind of with the bat, he got the revenge, you know?
15:08 Wes Larson? Yeah, right.
15:09 Mike Smith? Yeah. Don't you guys have a prima nocta agreement between the two of you?
15:13 Wes Larson? I feel like you do. Like a smash batters.
15:17 Mike Smith? Oh, that's right. We're not allowed to consummate. I think I'm down two nights. I can't consummate my marriage.
15:22 Wes Larson? Oh, yeah, that's right.
15:23 Mike Smith? And I can't explain to my-
15:24 Wes Larson? I can't consummate it for you. Okay.
15:26 Mike Smith? Right. Yeah.
15:27 Wes Larson? That's the next step.
15:29 Mike Smith? Anyway, again, just an interesting case where some health officials had to just gently explain the dangers of rabies and a family relented in the face of logic. And I think that's just kind of a an interesting angle to this story I hadn't encountered before is, yeah, 1850s style of it. And then a bat gets you.
15:49 Wes Larson? Yeah.
15:49 Mike Smith? And then you kill it with the Wallace sword.
15:52 Wes Larson? All right.
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17:26 Mike Smith? Jeff, you want to go next?
17:27 Jeff Larson? Okay. A three-year-old boy in Cambridge, Shire, England, was attacked by crocodiles. And get this, they weren't at a zoo or anything. They were wild crocodiles out there in England. And get this.
17:43 Mike Smith? What?
17:43 Jeff Larson? They probably didn't even attack him.
17:47 Mike Smith? Okay.
17:47 Wes Larson? You're gonna have to explain this.
17:49 Mike Smith? Yeah.
17:50 Jeff Larson? Oh, wait, no, it was at a zoo.
17:52 Wes Larson? Okay.
17:53 Jeff Larson? That part is wrong.
17:55 Mike Smith? But they didn't. So wait, I'm confused. What happened and where?
17:59 Wes Larson? Yeah, I don't understand this bit, but go ahead.
18:02 Jeff Larson? Well, good news. The next note I have here is tell story.
18:06 Wes Larson? Okay, good.
18:07 Jeff Larson? So you're about to find out.
18:09 Wes Larson? All right.
18:10 Jeff Larson? So there's, there's a boy at this zoo area that had a bunch of crocodiles, like a lot of Nile crocodiles, a few salties, you know? I got a lot of this information from Gator Boy Chris, who Wes dated for a little bit.
18:26 Mike Smith? I remember that.
18:27 Wes Larson? Didn't date him, but I do know.
18:29 Mike Smith? Yeah.
18:30 Jeff Larson? Or you did a show with him.
18:32 Wes Larson? I did a show with him. Yeah.
18:33 Jeff Larson? Okay, yeah.
18:35 Wes Larson? Not a dating show.
18:36 Jeff Larson? Uh, the boy was kinda lost and a thirty-year-old man, he wasn't lost, he was just separated from his dad, and a thirty-year-old man grabbed the kid and threw him over the edge into the crocodile pit.
18:49 Mike Smith? Whoa.
18:50 Jeff Larson? Just like no reason, just a random kid threw him in there, let his impulses take over. Turns out, the man was pretty mentally challenged. I don't know if he'd be on like...
19:02 Wes Larson? He had some, so he was neuro, yeah, he had some mental challenges. Okay.
19:07 Mike Smith? Okay.
19:08 Wes Larson? Some mental health issues.
19:09 Jeff Larson? But the, the zoo owner, or it's like kind of a fake zoo, I think. It's like a crocodile exhibit place, but the, or like Andy Johnson's wife, Tracy, so Andy owns it, and his wife Tracy saw it happen, jumped into the enclosure to try to help the boy. Chris was saying that like, had a crocodile gotten a hold of him, it probably wouldn't let go. And the injuries were like a broken femur and more in line with a big fall onto concrete than a actual crocodile attack.
19:43 Wes Larson? Yeah, a crocodile didn't get him.
19:44 Jeff Larson? Uh, I'm gonna just do one more because that one's pretty short.
19:47 Mike Smith? Okay.
19:48 Jeff Larson? Have you guys seen the snakes in China?
19:50 Mike Smith? No.
19:51 Jeff Larson? So in Hen Gazu, a southern Chinese city, uh, there's about like a million residents there and they're having huge floodings right now, like typhoons, this dam broke, so it's really, really bad.
20:08 Mike Smith? Those are always like crazy footage when dams break. Just like biblical level floods.
20:14 Jeff Larson? And this was real recent, it's the sixth of July.
20:17 Wes Larson? There's something like 300,000 people displaced from it. It's a big one.
20:22 Jeff Larson? You remember that movie Crawl? Where there's like a huge flood and then the alligator farm floods and they get into the towns? It's kind of like that, but with snakes, because there's like this huge, uh, just snake breeding place by the town. And that flooded, so all these venomous snakes got washed down into the town. And like, they were just getting washed until they were hitting these houses. And then they wanted to latch on to whatever they can. So they're like really coming into close contact with all the residents of this city, right? One woman has died from snake bite. Most likely a cobra, they had a lot of cobras. And, um,
21:07 Wes Larson? Snakes in a drain.
21:12 Mike Smith? Shut it down. It's over. We're done here.
21:16 Jeff Larson? At first, it was funny, Chinese authorities were like, no, like worry about the flooding, don't worry about snakes, we're not worried about snakes. And then people were getting bit and they're like, all right, everyone worry about snakes too. And started taking
21:30 Wes Larson? Snakes are a problem.
21:33 Jeff Larson? Getting antivenom to the hospitals. Uh, a few other animals are on the loose. There's two zebras, one humpback.
21:41 Wes Larson? Hmm. Humpback whales. Okay, I was gonna say that's a weird one.
21:45 Jeff Larson? One humpback ox. Three miniature horses and two donkeys, among others. Kind of sad, but I guess at a zoo, the staff risked their lives to go in and kind of make sure the animals drown. Instead of getting loose. So, uh, like the lions drown. And they were quoted saying, we could not allow predators to escape during the flood and create additional public safety risk.
22:13 Wes Larson? Hard, hard choice to make. Yeah. All right. Um, I got one that is a little, a little longer, but I thought
22:20 Mike Smith? I have a question, Wes.
22:21 Wes Larson? Yeah.
22:21 Mike Smith? Just real quick. So with snakes, when they get washed away, snakes that aren't typically found uh in water, are they able to swim like any species of snake and they survive?
22:33 Wes Larson? I think just about any, any species of snake can swim as far as I know. Um, there's some that are like highly aquatic that like swim underwater and spend most of their time in li- in, in water. Most of their, most of their lives in water, like an anaconda or, or a water snake or a number of others, water or like sea snakes too, obviously. But most snakes, if not all snakes can swim.
22:57 Mike Smith? Huh, that's interesting. That'd be scary.
23:00 Wes Larson? Yeah. All right. Um, you both have been to a, a Mexican resort town before, haven't you?
23:07 Mike Smith? Sure have. Yes.
23:09 Wes Larson? Cancun or Cozumel. You guys enjoy it? It can be a nice time.
23:13 Mike Smith? Love it.
23:13 Wes Larson? Even when it's a little touristy. Yeah. Um, have either of you been to Puerto Vallarta before?
23:20 Jeff Larson? No, my parents love it.
23:23 Wes Larson? Yeah. I've been there once. I took a bus down there. That's when I had my, my famous uh
23:28 Mike Smith? diarrhea.
23:29 Wes Larson? Vallarta bowel story. Yeah.
23:32 Mike Smith? Sweet.
23:33 Wes Larson? But it was beautiful. It's like a beautiful place, albeit a bit touristy. But when I remember, when I was there, there's two things that I remember very clearly about the beach right next to town. First of all, the water was about the warmest ocean water I'd ever swam in. And second, it was very murky and brown right by town. And I remember that because I remember thinking
23:54 Mike Smith? Cause of your diarrhea.
23:55 Wes Larson? Cause of all my diarrhea.
23:59 Wes Larson? I remember getting there and thinking I was gonna see this like beautiful blue crystalline Mexican ocean that I dreamed of and it was brown. Cause of my diarrhea, Mike.
24:10 Mike Smith? I knew it. Uh, the truth, five comes out.
24:13 Wes Larson? Uh, no, the actual reason for this, the actual reason for this is Puerto Vallarta is surrounded by jungle. And the rivers that carry a lot of that rain runoff and sediment from the, the surrounding forest, empty right into the ocean right next to Puerto Vallarta. So right in town, the water really isn't that clear. Um, definitely not what you would expect from like a tropical Mexican resort place.
24:38 Wes Larson? What do we know about murky water that we've learned on this here podcast?
24:42 Mike Smith? Predators like it in there.
24:44 Wes Larson? Predators like murky water. I'm glad you said predators, Mike, because this one may surprise you guys a little bit. It's a place where large predators like to hunt. All right. Now, since you both have been to a Mexican resort before, I just kind of want to set the scene. Let's imagine you're staying at the Marriott in Puerto Vallarta. You just finished a nice beach walk with your partner. You're headed to the hotel pool. It's kind of early evening. You're excited for the night ahead of you. You maybe drank a margarita or two. You're, you know, looking forward to going out and getting some good food on the town.
25:17 Mike Smith? How many sets of footprints were on the sand after they were done walking?
25:21 Wes Larson? Well, there was, there was two and then just one. And I'm going to get to that because they're, yeah, God was also there. Right. No. So you're just kind of having this nice night and you're talking to your partner about where to eat that night. And you're listening to the sound.
25:38 Jeff Larson? Killing himself today.
25:41 Mike Smith? Stop.
25:43 Wes Larson? All right.
25:44 Mike Smith? It's not funny.
25:44 Wes Larson? You're listening to the sound of the, the crashing waves, all these people kind of chattering around the pool. And then something cuts through that sound. And it's the sound of someone shrilly, unmistakably screaming. You immediately run out to see someone struggling in the water. You assume that they're likely caught in just like a rip current or something like that. You run out to help. But as you sprint into the water, something feels wrong. You see the outline of a large animal in the water right next to this screaming man. You instantly know what it is. It's a crocodile. The water is so murky that you can't even see your feet and you start looking for something to throw to this struggling man. There's a nearby lifesaver or life preserver. You throw it out to him, but he's already in shock.
26:27 Wes Larson? So he doesn't even respond to this life jacket landing next to him. And then in an instant, as you're yelling and trying to help this person, they're ripped underwater and you can't see anything. Seconds later, you see the rolling body of a huge crocodile. And you kind of get glimpses of this person and then everything is completely still. You hop in a nearby kayak, you paddle over to the exact spot, but you can't see anything in the water. You can't even see a foot down and you know it's over.
26:57 Wes Larson? This is exactly what happened to Chris Burry and Jamie Yetter, who are a couple from San Clemente. They were vacationing in Puerto Vallarta on June 26th. The victim was a 28-year-old from Mexico City who is only identified as Irving. His remains would be recovered in the early hours of the next morning, and an American crocodile thought to be responsible would be killed. In interviews that I watched with this couple, they did kind of, they were obviously very shaken, and this is insanely traumatic experience. Super tragic for the victim, obviously, but they also seemed pretty angry. And the big part of their anger was directed toward, I think, this hotel. And they said that there needed to be better warnings.
27:39 Wes Larson? But in the same video, it did show the signage that the beach had. And there was a pretty clear warning about crocodiles on this sign. The couple said they mistook the croc drawing for an iguana, maybe. But I think it's on them because I'm going to show you guys this sign real quick. It's pretty clearly a crocodile. Next to like a jellyfish and a stingray. The stingray looks like a manta ray, so I don't love the manta ray. But the crocodile one, I think that's hard. And then it says, warning, you know, use caution because of dangerous marine life such as crocodiles, stingrays, jellyfish, or turtles may be present. I do think they should get rid of turtles. Yeah.
28:19 Jeff Larson? It's a lot of words.
28:20 Wes Larson? It's a lot of words. And also, like, if a sign had turtles on it, I would kind of be like, I don't know how seriously I should take this, you know? But I will say, and this is something that I don't typically say about wildlife in general. You need to take crocodile warnings and signage extremely seriously.
28:39 Jeff Larson? American crocodiles?
28:41 Wes Larson? Yes, any, any of the large crocodile species. So, American crocodiles, Orinoco crocodiles, Nile crocodiles, saltwater crocodiles, black caiman. Those are all alligators, American alligators. They all grow big enough that they're easily capable of killing a human being. And they will do it. Like, this is an animal that sees us as prey. They're one of the few animals out there. When I say that that's like not something I usually say about wildlife, that's what I meant. This is one of the very, very few that does eat us and they like see us as normal prey in a way. And so you need to be extremely careful around crocodiles specifically.
29:23 Wes Larson? If you see a sign warning about crocodiles in a place that you're thinking about swimming, I wouldn't swim there. Same with alligators. I just wouldn't do it. It's just not a safe place to swim. Uh, especially like early morning, late evening or in murky conditions. It's just not a good idea. So. Yeah. Anyway, what can you do if you do run into these animals? The main thing is prevention, avoid murky water, avoid swimming in lower light. Make sure you pay attention to signs like this and do your research. You people swim with American crocodiles in really crystal clear water and it's relatively safe. But in murky water, they're a completely different animal and they're incredibly dangerous. So make sure you take that seriously, those kind of warnings. All right. Questions, Jeff? You look like you might have a question.
30:09 Jeff Larson? Uh, well, I guess my question would be, isn't this like one of the only reported American crocodile kills?
30:17 Wes Larson? No, there's been.
30:18 Jeff Larson? Like in Mexico, there's not the.
30:20 Wes Larson? Just in Puerto Vallarta.
30:21 Jeff Larson? Cancun has a ton.
30:23 Wes Larson? Multiple. Yeah. Um, and but Cancun again, like generally when people are around them in Cancun, it's in much clearer water.
30:33 Wes Larson? And they don't, yeah, I don't know why Puerto Vallarta has specifically an issue with them. I'm 90% sure they're American crocodiles there, but I guess I should probably look.
30:44 Jeff Larson? I think they are.
30:44 Wes Larson? Really quick. Uh. But yeah, they different or the same species can act very differently. Yeah, it's American crocodiles. They can act very differently depending on habitat and like murky water, murky coastal water is just a bad place to be around crocodiles. You should just be very, very careful in those kinds of situations, obviously.
31:07 Mike Smith? It is interesting. I've heard a lot of people talk very highly of going down. And like you said, the waters, the circumstances are a little different down near Cancun, Cozumel, but I've always heard that it's incredibly safe activity to go scuba diving with these crocodiles, but which maybe it is.
31:25 Jeff Larson? Incredibly.
31:26 Wes Larson? Yeah, incredibly safe might be a stretch.
31:28 Mike Smith? I just like maybe alluding to what Jeff was saying. I've just never heard of anyone being attacked by them. But yeah, scuba diving is a much different kind of activity in different scenario. So.
31:38 Wes Larson? It definitely happens. It doesn't often happen to like people that are intentionally swimming around them. Because those are generally like crocodiles that are habituated to people and it's in clear water.
31:49 Mike Smith? Incredibly safe, Jeff.
31:51 Jeff Larson? The safest you can be is scuba diving next to them.
31:55 Mike Smith? Yep, that's what I said. The safest anyone has ever been is scuba diving with a crocodile.
32:01 Jeff Larson? Like it's an activity that it's safe enough people do it, but it's not like a safe activity.
32:07 Wes Larson? Inherently, there's some danger. Yeah.
32:10 Jeff Larson? You, I mean, you were wrong. It's not incredibly safe.
32:13 Mike Smith? That's just what I've heard.
32:16 Wes Larson? All right. Who's next? Mike?
32:18 Mike Smith? I'll go. Uh, this one is from the BBC. Got most of my information from there in the Gateway Pundit. This happened on July 9th, but we're going to go back in time a little bit, about a week and a half ago to June 18th. So in the Bhavnagar district of Gujarat, India, the body of one Nogja Bai Gujaraya was found in a bush near his house in Gada village. The family reported that it was a lion that had attacked and killed him. So I'm sure for the people of this village, it's never too far from their mind, just the potential possibility of being attacked by a lion, but like especially starting a week ago, I think they're kind of on especially high alert.
33:00 Mike Smith? Fast forward a week and a half later to just yesterday as and you've seen that meme. It makes the rounds every once in a while where it's like, if a bear is attacking you, might as well sneak in a pet. You know, just
33:12 Jeff Larson? I'm so glad you're doing this story because I felt like
33:15 Wes Larson? I saw this one too.
33:16 Mike Smith? Yeah. Turns out, maybe that's not just a meme. It's maybe a viable survival tactic.
33:22 Jeff Larson? It's a good, it's smart.
33:24 Mike Smith? Yeah. So Kula Bal Gamaro, he was out feeding his cattle when he was attacked and pinned down by a lioness. And for the next 30 minutes, he lay injured and pretty much helpless at the mercy of this cat.
33:36 Wes Larson? It's a long time.
33:38 Mike Smith? Two, 30 minutes is like, like I would get bored after a while.
33:42 Jeff Larson? Yeah. It's like, are you gonna eat me?
33:44 Mike Smith? Right.
33:47 Mike Smith? Anyone out there, just sit there for 30 minutes with your thoughts.
33:52 Jeff Larson? Not incredibly safe to be.
33:55 Mike Smith? I would say, I would say, well, statistics show that what happened here, just as safe as the crocodile diving. A crowd gathered around and the onlookers started throwing rocks at the lion from a distance. She was more or less unaffected and that actually got me thinking like, why, you know? Throwing rocks wouldn't, were they just like missing her? Or were they not big enough rocks? I don't know, but it did make me think like, if I saw one or the other of you getting pinned down by a lion, like how big of a rock would I be willing to throw at this lion?
34:30 Jeff Larson? Because the smaller, the further you can be.
34:33 Mike Smith? Well, that and also like, if it's a huge rock and I accidentally hit you and like, I just crush your skull or something. I feel like, well,
34:42 Mike Smith? that's a, didn't go exactly how I wanted it to, but um, it's just a little thought experiment.
34:48 Wes Larson? They throw big rocks in Braveheart. Remember that part where there's chucking big old rocks?
34:52 Jeff Larson? Well, the big rock doesn't hit anyone.
34:55 Wes Larson? Yeah.
34:56 Jeff Larson? It's the little rock that does all the damage.
34:58 Wes Larson? That's true.
34:59 Mike Smith? Anyway, so after this lion knocked Gamar down, uh, down, she kept him pinned beneath her massive front legs. And gave him a pretty good thrashing and he ended up actually needing to be taken to the hospital after all was said and done. But anytime during this 30 minutes, he tried to escape, she would flash her teeth, thrash him around a little bit more before just kind of like putting her weight on him and keeping him in place. And so as a last resort, Gamara, and there's actually a video of one of these moments where he reaches up and just gives her a nice stroke or two on her fur. And it's like, watching the video is really interesting, just how calm everything was. The lion wasn't really moving and he was just kind of like laying in place.
35:42 Mike Smith? And then he reached up and just scratched her neck a couple of times. And I don't know exactly why, but shortly after he stroked her fur like that, she got up and left. She retreated into a nearby forest. So maybe she was a little like, this isn't how I was expecting this to go, or I don't know. But she disengaged.
36:02 Wes Larson? There's a fair amount of videos out there of lionesses attacking, or not even attacking, but like pinning down baby gazelle or like baby animals from other species. And then just kind of like hanging out with them for a while. And they do usually end up eating them, but maybe like in this case, that's kind of what she was doing. And then the pressure just got to be too much from all the, the other people. But um, yeah, it's weird. I saw this one too, and I was just like, that's strange. These, and like these Asiatic lions out there are constantly close to people in those areas. It's like the only place in the world that still has Asiatic lions. And there's a lot of human wildlife conflict right in there. So it's just, it's an odd one.
36:44 Mike Smith? Yeah, no, I don't quite get it either. Cause it seems like why, just the 30 minute duration of the encounter is what is most curious to me. Because it's like, what, what's she trying to do here? It seems like the threat's been neutralized, but she also doesn't really seem to want to eat him. So what's going on?
37:02 Jeff Larson? It seems like a playful cat, kind of that just wasn't expecting to get pet. And was like, oh, I kind of like that. If I, if I'm not careful, I'm going to get domesticated.
37:16 Mike Smith? The danger they all face.
37:21 Mike Smith? Uh, that's it for that one. He did. Uh, so I can't tell for sure, but it seemed like he made it out. Okay. According to the villagers, they took him to the hospital.
37:30 Wes Larson? Punctures and broken bones and stuff like.
37:32 Mike Smith? Yeah.
37:32 Wes Larson? He, he definitely got beat up pretty badly, but he wasn't, it wasn't, nothing was life threatening.
37:37 Mike Smith? Okay. As in, he made it through alive. Sorry. I'll be a little more careful with my words from now on.
37:42 Wes Larson? Yeah. Incredibly healthy.
37:44 Jeff Larson? It's not incredibly safe.
37:45 Mike Smith? I would dive. Oh, I would dive there so fast with a crocodile.
37:49 Wes Larson? I would dive with one of those crocodiles. Yeah.
37:51 Mike Smith? It'd be so fun. The danger is what would make it so exciting though. I'd be like, any moment now, one out of a billion times, someone's gotten bit by a crocodile.
37:59 Jeff Larson? Well, you'd be safer diving with them than just not, I think. It's incredibly safe.
38:06 Mike Smith? Such a weird way to extrapolate how like the words that I said, oh, I'm going to do a back watch. I'll do it to you.
38:12 Jeff Larson? You were, hey, you were being dramatic. So, so was I.
38:16 Mike Smith? I wasn't being that dramatic. I was just saying it's an incredibly safe activity. Well, I guess I should have been like, I thought context clues would have led you to believe like relative to.
38:24 Wes Larson? Let me play, let me play judge here for a second. I understand what both of you are saying. Like Mike, by saying incredibly safe, you're saying like, it's crazy how safe it is to actually dive with American crocodiles. It's like much safer than you would think. And so therefore incredibly safe. What Jeff is saying is like, it's obviously more dangerous than diving with like angelfish, you know? So it's not incredibly safe. It like, it is, there is an inherent danger to diving with any large predator.
38:56 Jeff Larson? Well, yeah, I've looked into it and like diving in Cancun. I mean, you gotta fill out a lot more liability stuff when you dive with the crocodiles than just like out in the open ocean in Cancun.
39:09 Mike Smith? Yeah.
39:09 Jeff Larson? So like, I just felt like you're being defensive and that's why I pushed back. If you were just like, you're right, probably not.
39:16 Mike Smith? Tell your next story. I'm gonna, oh, I'm gonna get you so good. Watch.
39:22 Jeff Larson? Well, I have a really, I have two left and there's, this one's pretty sad. So a thirty one year old Florida woman was killed by an alligator. And it had some real Cynthia Dustin Baker vibes to it.
39:41 Wes Larson? Dussel bacon.
39:42 Jeff Larson? Um, so Brittany was hiking with her boyfriend Chance and her best friend. And they went to Big Ecos State Forest. They went on a hike, but like Florida in the summer, super humid, super hot. So they, she loves swimming in the water. So they all go in the water and they don't even go very deep. They just go like a few feet into the water and they're on their knees cooling off. When about thirteen foot alligator comes up and attacks her, bites her arm. So.
40:15 Wes Larson? Bites both of her arms, right?
40:16 Jeff Larson? So it bites her arm and then her and her boyfriend are just like trying to free her arms. But yeah, somehow it gets both of her arms. It wasn't clear if it was like she was trying to get the mouth off of her original arm. I feel like that would make more sense than it just biting both arms at once.
40:37 Wes Larson? I could see though, like if it was coming and she put her arms out to stop it, it could snap down on both arms. That's kind of how I pictured it when I read it.
40:45 Jeff Larson? Um, either way, both arms get seriously bitten by this alligator. So there's a crazy nine one one call that I listened to where the best friend's on the phone with nine one one. And she's like, it's really serious. My friend just got attacked by an alligator. Please like send help right away. And the nine one one dispatcher is having a hard time understanding what exactly is happening. Because the alligator at the time they called is still biting, is still biting Brittany, which is like crazy. So they're on the phone, the alligator is biting her. So then the alligator finally like, let's go and they shoo it off. So the nine one one operator is just like, what's going on?
41:30 Jeff Larson? Like all she's hearing is like screaming and like, get out of here and like all this stuff. She figures out it's a gator and the friend's like, yeah, bit off her arm and her other arm's barely hanging on. And a part where it's kind of, I mean, it's not funny, but the nine one one operator goes. Is there serious bleeding? And the friend's like, um, what? And she's like, is the bleeding serious? And she's like, her arms are bitten off. And it's like, really? Yeah, so then they're just like waiting for help to get there. Unfortunately, Brittany died. Help got there, but she never made it to the hospital. So, super sad.
42:14 Wes Larson? Yeah.
42:15 Jeff Larson? Had a cool job. She was like a bulldoze driver. Everyone just loved her. Really unfortunate situation.
42:23 Wes Larson? Yeah. All right. You want me to go?
42:26 Mike Smith? So.
42:26 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
42:27 Wes Larson? Okay.
42:28 Mike Smith? Did anyone else in that story? It seems like no one else.
42:31 Jeff Larson? No.
42:32 Mike Smith? They just got off like without.
42:33 Jeff Larson? Was like, I know the boyfriend was really active in trying to rescue her, but there was no reports of him being wounded at all.
42:41 Wes Larson? That's so crazy. It like again, you know, with same thing. Like this is another large crocodile. Once they, once they've bitten, once they're latched on, there's very, very little that you can do to stop them, especially in the water. Like, the whole thing is prevention. And the reason we say that and like, Chris, that you brought up earlier, says this all the time. You have no options. Once, once you're in its jaws, there's a very good chance that you're not going to be able to stop it. Your options are like last ditch kind of things. So it like even had the boyfriend been in there just like hammering it and walloping on it, there's a good chance that she still is losing her arms and dying.
43:19 Jeff Larson? Well, and to go with what you were saying, Wes, had it gotten like both arms at once, there's a good chance it just never let go. And it's just one big bite.
43:29 Wes Larson? It tore free.
43:30 Jeff Larson? So then, even if the boyfriend was as in there as possible, it's still like never bit again. It's just one, yeah.
43:39 Wes Larson? Yeah. Yeah. All right, um, I'm gonna do a grizzly bear one. This has been a busy summer for bear stories. I do think we're having kind of a summer of the shark thing happening here in the US, especially where there was a couple early in the season, bear stories that like really grabbed the national attention. And because of that, every single bear incident is being reported, including a number that don't seem that, that like kinda crazy to me, but they're still being reported on as if like something is up with our bears. This one isn't one of them, though. This is like a pretty serious one. It happened in Glacier. It happened not long after the fatality that happened in Glacier this year. So it was newsworthy for sure. On May 28th, 32-year-old
44:23 Wes Larson? Daniel Crago is finishing the last hike on a week-long trip to Glacier with some of his friends. Daniel Crago, it's the Italian Daniel Crago.
44:34 Mike Smith? James Bond.
44:38 Wes Larson? He's on the Grinnell Glacier Trail, which is the same trail where our daddy-daughter grizzly episode happened. It's also a trail that we've hiked a lot. We're probably gonna hike it this upcoming week. Jeff, you wanna explain what the top of that trail looks like when you get to the end of the Grinnell Glacier Trail?
44:53 Jeff Larson? Yeah, there's a lake and some mountains.
44:56 Wes Larson? Yeah, it's gorgeous. Jeff's underselling it a little bit. Uh, I would say it's incredibly gorgeous. There are like, there's the remnants of the Grinnell-
45:06 Jeff Larson? I agree.
45:07 Mike Smith? Jeff made it. Yeah, he did a good job. We can all see it.
45:10 Wes Larson? The, the remnants of the Grinnell Glacier there, there's this beautiful glacial lake. You're surrounded in this big cirque with like wildflowers and beautiful everything. It's just, it's really idyllic. Uh, Lower Grinnell Lake is below you in this beautiful valley. It's, it's a really pretty place. It's one of my favorite hikes in the world. But like a lot of these alpine lakes, especially in the summer, there's a lot of snow melt happening. And there's an outlet coming out of this lake, which is a creek. And in this time of year, that creek kind of turns into a raging torrent. And it can make a lot of noise. So what had happened is Daniel had been hiking with his friends. They got to this large snow field about a hundred yards before the end of the trail.
45:52 Wes Larson? And his friends decided they weren't going any further, which is crazy to me. You're a hundred yards from the lake and you decide you're done. So Daniel follows some other hikers.
46:01 Mike Smith? I respect it.
46:02 Wes Larson? Yeah.
46:03 Jeff Larson? Mom tried to do that once.
46:05 Wes Larson? Yeah, really?
46:06 Jeff Larson? She hiked up all the elevation and then wasn't going to go to the lake. But then we swam and she ended up going there.
46:14 Wes Larson? Okay. Yeah. So he decides to follow some other hikers to the lake at the end of the trail. He takes some photos. He absorbs this beautiful sight. And then he's heading back to his friends. But as he's crossing the snow fields, he sees a small brown colored bear run across the snow in front of him. He immediately recognizes it as a grizzly bear cub. And he turns to look for the mom. And sure enough, his eyes meet hers where she's standing above him on the mountainside about fifteen feet away. He makes a loud noise. Yeah. Makes a loud noise to alert the bear. And as soon as he makes this loud noise, she charges. This defensive bear covers fifteen.
46:54 Jeff Larson? Made a noise.
46:55 Wes Larson? We're gonna talk about that. The defensive bear covers fifteen feet in pretty much one lunge. Daniel only has time to throw up his arms in front of his face. And luckily he does this because she bites down into his forearm rather than his head or his neck or something. Her bite easily crushes both the ulna and the radius bones in his forearm. He screams and then she drags him about twenty feet away from the trail, but then drops him and runs away to join her cub. His entire encounter is over in a matter of seconds. But she'd done some pretty serious damage to his forearm. He also has some scrapes from being drug. His, uh, his friend and his other, and some other nearby hikers hear his screams. They come to help.
47:39 Wes Larson? Luckily, one of those hikers is a pediatric doctor that makes a tourniquet and stabilizes them and gets them ready to be airlifted out. What if they were like, you're not a kid. I can't, I can't help you.
47:51 Mike Smith? A little too old.
47:52 Wes Larson? Yeah.
47:53 Jeff Larson? What if they're like a surgeon? And they just did surgery on him?
47:57 Wes Larson? Yeah. He's like scalpel.
48:02 Mike Smith? His assistant was up there walking with him. Wearing their gloves, just walking like this.
48:10 Mike Smith? Non-contaminated gloves on. So lucky.
48:14 Wes Larson? EMS arrives in a helicopter. They get him out. He's had at least three surgeries. Probably is gonna need more. Uh, there's a GoFundMe for him, his medical expenses. Uh, when I checked though, they had ma- pretty much made his goal of $60,000, which is really good to see.
48:29 Mike Smith? Nice.
48:30 Wes Larson? Uh, but I did want to talk about this really quickly because there's a couple really interesting lessons from this story. I brought up that there's this loud rushing water coming out of the lake right around where he was attacked. And if you are in grizzly bear country or a place where there's large predators that are defensive like this, you really don't want to be in places where sounds are obscured because then the bear doesn't hear you coming. You don't hear the bear coming. It's like everything is obscured by this rushing water. So those kinds of places are especially dangerous. Next.
49:04 Mike Smith? Maybe that's why the, the quiet place a little bit.
49:06 Wes Larson? I was thinking that too.
49:08 Jeff Larson? It's the exact opposite though. That's where it's like, if you want to stay safe from those, you might have to deal with grizzly bears.
49:18 Wes Larson? It's true. You might bump into them.
49:20 Jeff Larson? Pick your poison.
49:22 Mike Smith? You would think that there'd be a lot of monsters by the waterfall since they're attracted to sound. They'd just be just teeming with the.
49:28 Wes Larson? They'd just be like all over there.
49:29 Mike Smith? Quiet places.
49:30 Jeff Larson? Freaking crazy. That's a good point.
49:35 Wes Larson? All right. So another thing that we've talked about a lot on the show, and I think people will be like, wait, he made a noise. Isn't that what he's supposed to do? Making noise to alert bears of your presence while you're hiking is a great idea because if you, if the bear hears you coming from a ways out, then you don't surprise it. You know, you avoid that surprise. The bear has plenty of time to run away rather than engage. And that's the reason you make noise while you're hiking is to give bears like in blind spots or whatever, time to hear you and time to just get out of there. Now, if you have already surprised a bear and you know it sees you, you do not want to make loud noises at that point. At that point, you are being quiet and you are backing away as quickly as possible.
50:20 Wes Larson? Yes, because you, that bear might be thinking like, do I engage? Do I attack? What do I do? And the second you make a loud aggressive noise, it's like, okay, this is a threat. I'm gonna neutralize it. And that, so that is a very different situation. If you've already surprised a bear, you don't want to be loud and aggressive. Unless it's a bear that's like following you or stalking you or not leaving you alone, then you're loud and aggressive. But if it's a surprise encounter, that bear's like taking a split second to decide whether or not to charge. You making a loud noise might convince it to charge. And that might have been what happened.
50:57 Jeff Larson? When we were sneaking up on that black bear at its den and then we were being real quiet and then you fired it really loud and it ran away.
51:05 Wes Larson? It's not what this is like and that also didn't happen.
51:08 Mike Smith? Do you know what's interesting about all that is like, so ice cream truck drivers?
51:13 Wes Larson? Uh huh.
51:14 Mike Smith? They're making sound, but they're also like going fast, which will trigger their predator response. So how do you think a bear would deal with that?
51:21 Wes Larson? I think, I think, um, you know, I don't think we really have to worry about that too much is what I think.
51:28 Mike Smith? Not enough data points, maybe?
51:29 Wes Larson? Yeah, not enough data points.
51:31 Jeff Larson? You think a thunderstorm would kill a bunch of those aliens from a quiet place? Cause they would run towards the sound and then they're in like the lightning range.
51:42 Mike Smith? The thunder comes, yeah, no, that's actually a really good point. I can't poke any holes in that. I was gonna try. I was trying to get you back, but that's, that's foolproof.
51:52 Wes Larson? Just leave your wood chipper running. Ever think about that, John Krasinski, dumbass?
52:00 Wes Larson? Uh, he did have bear spray, but he didn't have time to use it. Yeah, this thing happened in like a couple of seconds. Uh, I, you know, I'm just gonna finish mine up really quickly while we're on the topic of bears. There's been a number of videos sent to me a lot recently of people having these really close encounters that are really scary with bears. There's one that I'm sure you guys saw where this woman is being chased by a grizzly bear like in a parking lot. And it just keeps coming in really close. And it was incredibly scary. And then her camera pans down and what does she have with her? Her dog. Her dog is barking. Her dog is like really loud. And then there's another one with the black bear where the same thing is happening and then suddenly you see the dog. And I do want to reiterate that dogs are
52:45 Wes Larson? kind of a weird variable in interactions with bears. I think in both of those videos, the bear wanted to kill the dog and that's really all it was interested in was killing that dog. And the person was just like, happened to be connected to the dog. Luckily, both of them, the, the dog was on leash, which does make it a bit safer. But um, just remember, if you have a dog in bear country, I wouldn't even consider going out there without bear spray. Both, both of the ones I saw could have easily been ended with a good shot of bear spray. So just keep that in mind. Your dog is going to introduce some weird variables that are hard to control. So you need to have a deterrent.
53:25 Jeff Larson? I have a bear one.
53:27 Wes Larson? Okay.
53:28 Jeff Larson? The smartest bear in Japan.
53:31 Wes Larson? Alright.
53:31 Mike Smith? Oh, I was hoping you'd talk about this.
53:34 Jeff Larson? So we're gonna go to Fukushima, Japan.
53:39 Jeff Larson? Uh, Mike, you like this one?
53:41 Mike Smith? Yeah, I was just hoping someone would talk about a bear. Hopefully that was intelligent.
53:46 Jeff Larson? Uh, and police and hunters are searching for an extremely intelligent bear, right? And this happened about a month ago.
53:55 Wes Larson? Get him on that mic. Extremely intelligent.
53:59 Mike Smith? No, I'm gonna be the bigger man.
54:02 Jeff Larson? Well, that's a quote. That's not me saying it.
54:04 Mike Smith? Yeah, that's just what I had heard about crocodiles too. So that wasn't just me.
54:08 Jeff Larson? You were quoting it?
54:11 Mike Smith? I have no personal experience. You know, who told me was Wes. Wes is the one who's at fault here.
54:17 Wes Larson? That's not true. You're just trying to throw me under the bus now.
54:20 Mike Smith? Dang it.
54:20 Wes Larson? You don't remember that at all.
54:23 Jeff Larson? The thing is, you're right. It's just like you made it sound like it's like.
54:27 Mike Smith? The safest thing you could possibly do. I stand by it.
54:29 Jeff Larson? Alright.
54:32 Jeff Larson? I want to play you guys a little clip.
54:34 Mike Smith? Good.
54:34 Jeff Larson? Before I get into this. So this is the start of this whole incident with a black bear and bears in Japan. They have not slowed down since Wes's whole Japan bear attack incident. Like they're, they're going for it recently. Something's in the water out there.
54:52 Mike Smith? Isn't it nuclear waste in the water? That's what Godzilla.
54:55 Jeff Larson? Fukushima.
54:55 Mike Smith? Happened from it.
54:58 Wes Larson? Oh, this is in Fukushima.
54:59 Mike Smith? Oh, my gosh. Sorry. That's kind of an insensitive joke, but um, I apologize.
55:04 Jeff Larson? Here you go. See this guy?
55:06 Wes Larson? Yep. There he is. There's the bear.
55:09 Jeff Larson? Bear's chasing him. He does a juke. The bear ride on him. He does a wide circle. Bears aren't that fast, Wes.
55:21 Mike Smith? Oh, he's out of there.
55:22 Wes Larson? This isn't a full sprint to that bear.
55:24 Jeff Larson? And then a car comes in and scares the bear off of him.
55:28 Wes Larson? Wow.
55:29 Jeff Larson? So the dude does a pretty good job of avoiding this bear right behind him for a while.
55:34 Wes Larson? Yeah.
55:34 Jeff Larson? Just like running in circles and stuff. And then bear finally tackles him and a car sees it, drives up, scares the bear off, right?
55:42 Mike Smith? Yeah.
55:43 Wes Larson? Yeah.
55:43 Jeff Larson? End of story?
55:44 Mike Smith? No, not even close, I bet.
55:45 Jeff Larson? No way. So it's escaped by running inside the office building where it attacked another man. And then it ran away again. So after injuring two more people, so it's at four people. It's injured now. This black bear we just watched. It entered an electronics factory where the workers saw it using pop, its paws to turn on a tap to like drink water.
56:13 Mike Smith? Really?
56:14 Jeff Larson? So then this electronics place calls the police. They're like, hey, we got a bear in here. The police, some hunters come and they set four traps all around, like all these entrances and exits for the bear. Right?
56:29 Jeff Larson? So the bear ends up unlatching a locked window, opening the window and crawling out and escaping. And then it like starts and it finds another faucet, turns it on and starts drinking water. And as it's drinking the water, they trink- they like shoot it with a tranquilizer dart. It doesn't react at all. And doesn't care, doesn't fall asleep.
56:54 Mike Smith? I love when that happens.
56:55 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
56:57 Mike Smith? Ineffective trank. It's great.
57:00 Jeff Larson? The mayor says, uh, I believe it's, I believe it was an extremely intelligent bear. So local schools were closed, but then reopened and the whole city is just on bear alert right now for a real smart bear that likes turning on water fountain and drinking from them, water faucets. You could have got me there, Mike.
57:23 Mike Smith? Shoot, I keep missing my chance. Now I can't.
57:26 Jeff Larson? I saw a headline that I, I wanna share just a headline or two, two. So there's a dog rescued from a Florida canal and they rescued it and ended up being a coyote. So that's your coyotes be wild. And then 12 people camping in Israel got injured by jackals, which was kinda crazy.
57:49 Mike Smith? Wow. Oh, mackerel.
57:51 Wes Larson? You know that video Jeff just showed of the guy being chased around by the bear? What's that old theme song from that like TV show that's like?
57:58 Mike Smith? The Benny Hill?
57:59 Wes Larson? Thank you. And it's the one I always, whenever I'm like sleeping in the same room as someone, I always say, hey, do you mind if I turn on some white noise? And then I just turn on Benny Hill like as loud as possible. My favorite joke ever.
58:12 Mike Smith? Good joke. Maybe that's a good one.
58:18 Wes Larson? All right. Are we done with stories?
58:20 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
58:21 Wes Larson? Should we go to, are you done, Mike?
58:23 Mike Smith? I think so.
58:24 Wes Larson? All right.
58:25 Mike Smith? Yeah.
58:25 Wes Larson? Should we go to categories?
58:28 Mike Smith? I don't know.
58:28 Wes Larson? No, we've never asked Mike if he's done and him not say yes, no matter what.
58:34 Jeff Larson? He has another story prepared for sure.
58:37 Mike Smith? Well, it kind of pertains to a category. Let's just go to categories and maybe I can touch on it there.
58:41 Wes Larson? Okay. All right. So our new, our new strategy with these news episodes is we each bring a few of our own categories. So Jeff, why don't you do yours first?
58:52 Jeff Larson? Okay. Because that three-year-old just got thrown in by a complete stranger, I said, an example of a stranger getting pwned.
59:02 Wes Larson? I had a really hard time with this one because I know that I've seen people recently get like, get pwned in different ways, but I just couldn't think of one in my own life. So the other day I was just on Twitter and I read this thing from one of those looks maxers talking about how like one of his looks macking, looks maxing colleagues died. And Jeff, I blame you for knowing anything about what looks maxing is because you brought up what's his face on our show. But apparently one of these guys got really fixated on, on gold, clavicular. Yeah. This wasn't clavicular. This one of those guys, he got really fixated on gold.
59:45 Wes Larson? And he thought that like, this was this gate kept secret that like, people have been using gold to make themselves more beautiful. And that like, they've been keeping that from the masses. And so he started injecting himself with gold, like molten gold, where he was injecting it in like powdered gold into his veins. And he ended up getting like discoloration from blood poisoning. And then like went crazy and ran around his own neighborhood covered in blood. And the police like chased him down and then I guess he drowned, I think in a lake or something.
1:00:19 Jeff Larson? What the heck?
1:00:20 Wes Larson? Yeah. So apparently that guy got, he got pwned by himself.
1:00:26 Wes Larson? Cause you got two in the looks maxing.
1:00:28 Jeff Larson? I'm confused why this question took you so long and then you you just did a story about anyone is how you interpreted it.
1:00:36 Wes Larson? Well, yeah, it was just a stranger that got pwned. Yeah.
1:00:39 Mike Smith? He didn't know who he was, I guess.
1:00:40 Wes Larson? Yeah, I don't know who that person is. I never heard his name before.
1:00:43 Jeff Larson? Mine was mine was in the movie Big Daddy when they would go to the park and just throw a stick down and trip the rollerbladers. Cause that's just them like poning a complete stranger for no reason.
1:00:57 Wes Larson? I was gonna say people that like shanks meets on your walks.
1:01:01 Jeff Larson? Oh, yeah, nip in their hands.
1:01:07 Jeff Larson? They're all bad people.
1:01:10 Mike Smith? Have to be. Dogs can tell.
1:01:12 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
1:01:12 Mike Smith? They know. I was just gonna go with the movie The Strangers. They get pwned.
1:01:18 Wes Larson? Yeah, they get pwned pretty hard. I hate that movie.
1:01:20 Jeff Larson? By strangers.
1:01:21 Mike Smith? I think I do too, but I did recall.
1:01:23 Wes Larson? That movie. Yeah.
1:01:24 Mike Smith? Recently, I saw a couple of people kayaking in the local pool. I think they were just like practicing or something. And one guy flipped the other guy over and kind of paddled away to make an escape. I think they're just like playing around.
1:01:37 Jeff Larson? That's a good one.
1:01:38 Mike Smith? But I was watching from like the second level behind a wall and to like go down and do anything to help, I would have had to like run down. And it was just like taking way too long. And the person that got flipped wasn't able to get themselves back upright. So they're just under the water. And I was kind of like panicking a little bit just by myself up on the upstairs floor. And the other person wasn't noticing what was happening. And I was just like, is I'm watching someone die right now, I think. But eventually they did like get close enough to the wall that they pushed themselves back upright with their paddle. But fraught with tension there a couple of minutes.
1:02:14 Jeff Larson? You think they were strangers?
1:02:16 Mike Smith? They were strangers to me. I guess I'm taking Wes's interpretation.
1:02:20 Jeff Larson? Other, I mean.
1:02:21 Mike Smith? Probably knew each other.
1:02:23 Jeff Larson? You guys didn't interpret my question.
1:02:25 Mike Smith? I didn't. Yeah, I'm sorry.
1:02:29 Jeff Larson? Just like a complete stranger to someone else getting like.
1:02:32 Mike Smith? So stranger poning another stranger.
1:02:34 Jeff Larson? Not just like a person you don't know.
1:02:36 Wes Larson? You didn't, that's not your interpretation. I'm gonna say exactly how you wrote it really quickly.
1:02:41 Jeff Larson? I said exactly.
1:02:43 Mike Smith? Is Jeff getting defensive?
1:02:45 Wes Larson? He said, "An example of a stranger getting pwned."
1:02:49 Jeff Larson? Right, but before the episode, you guys asked me to clarify and I did.
1:02:53 Wes Larson? No, you didn't.
1:02:54 Mike Smith? Not really. You just said do, ah, whatever. Doesn't matter. I'm gonna choose to be the bigger man.
1:02:59 Wes Larson? Yeah, I'm sticking with my answer. Alright, what's your next one?
1:03:03 Jeff Larson? Um, an example, an example of someone who had that dog in him. Because this bear kinda had that dog in him.
1:03:13 Mike Smith? Joey Chestnut, dude. Had like seventy of them in.
1:03:16 Wes Larson? Seventy dogs. You know what? I went with kind of a literal answer too. Ernest Shackleton.
1:03:23 Mike Smith? He ate them dogs.
1:03:24 Wes Larson? He ate them dogs and he had that dog in him. Like that guy did not want to die. And did not want to let his men die. So he, he had it in both, in both ways. I'm trying to work on that mic just to make you happy.
1:03:36 Mike Smith? I don't want you to anymore. I like Wolf.
1:03:39 Wes Larson? I've been noticing it though.
1:03:41 Mike Smith? Sorry.
1:03:41 Wes Larson? But he survived, you know, whatever, like two years on pack ice or whatever it was before he finally got to help with his men and none of them died. But they did eat their dogs. They had to eat some of them. So you got that dog in him.
1:03:56 Jeff Larson? I went with the movie The Furious. There's a bald, big bald character and he's just got that dog in him. He gets.
1:04:06 Wes Larson? Do I need to see that movie?
1:04:07 Jeff Larson? He gets pretty much killed in the first half and then in the final seat, fight, he's just back and it's crazy.
1:04:14 Mike Smith? You do need to see that movie.
1:04:15 Wes Larson? I'm gonna watch it. Yeah.
1:04:17 Jeff Larson? Also the beekeeper, he is that dog in him too.
1:04:19 Wes Larson? He does. Uh, something interesting you've learned recently.
1:04:24 Mike Smith? Oh, this is, can I do my thing now?
1:04:27 Wes Larson? Mm hmm.
1:04:27 Mike Smith? Sure. So, um, first attack, a bison attack, I guess, if you even want to call it an attack from a bison, happened recently. Twelve year old boy got pwned. He was a stranger.
1:04:38 Wes Larson? What do you mean first?
1:04:39 Mike Smith? That maybe is, the first of the year, sorry.
1:04:41 Wes Larson? Okay.
1:04:42 Mike Smith? I think.
1:04:42 Wes Larson? That's the animal that attacks the most people in Yellowstone.
1:04:45 Mike Smith? That's just what I read was the first attack of the year, the first bison attack of the year happened recently.
1:04:50 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:04:51 Mike Smith? And I was just up there and I heard a lot of talk about how, I actually thought bison had a pretty universal approval rating, but there turns out that there's a lot of people who don't care for bison at all. In fact, like they hate them.
1:05:03 Wes Larson? Especially people that have worked in the park for a while.
1:05:06 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:05:07 Wes Larson? Uh, yeah.
1:05:08 Mike Smith? That, and also ranchers, nearby ranchers, because when bison leave the land, bison actually have this, uh, it's called brucellosis. And it's really, really, it's so bad for ranchers cattle to come in contact with these bison that the government basically is just like, you have to kill your entire herd. Cause if that meat, the cattle meat gets, you know, shipped to humans, that has a real terrible, like it can be like a feverish, like symptoms that can, mad cow.
1:05:36 Wes Larson? Yeah. The, the thing though, I, and I'm pretty sure about this, I'll need to fact check myself. I'm fairly confident that there's never been a recorded transmission of brucellosis between the Yellowstone bison and the local herds of cattle. So it is kind of a boogeyman that they're using.
1:05:53 Mike Smith? Um, sure.
1:05:54 Wes Larson? But, yeah, bison, when you are in the park a lot and you have to like, get in your 50th bison jam of the year and wait for hours for bison to clear the road, you start to kind of hate them a bit. Like you get a little tired of bison. Yeah.
1:06:09 Mike Smith? I like them still though.
1:06:11 Wes Larson? Yeah. What was the, the category again? I have a good, oh yeah, yeah. The, something interesting you've learned. So I was just in the illusions. And I knew that like there had been a battle in World War Two that happened in the Aleutians. But I didn't know much of the history and especially the impact it had on the local people. And so basically after Pearl Harbor, um, the US then bombed Japan and Japan decided like, we need to then go, you know, trade eye for an eye kind of thing. And the Aleutians were so close to Japan that they decided to go bomb Dutch Harbor. Which they thought was like kind of a military stronghold, but it wasn't. It's like a fishing port. But anyway, they bombed it. They took over some of the islands.
1:06:53 Wes Larson? And there was this big battle in the Aleutians, which is like kind of the forgotten battle of World War Two that happened on American soil. And you, um, Unangan people, which are the native people that lived on the island. They were pretty much sent to an internment camp in Southeast Alaska. They were taken from their homes, sent to this internment camp while this battle was happening. And they were forced to just live in like the worst possible conditions. And then a lot of them weren't returned back to their islands afterward. They were like stopped from even returning on their own. And then some of those people were also taken as prisoners of war in Japan, which is crazy.
1:07:31 Mike Smith? Wow.
1:07:31 Wes Larson? But really the, the like most interesting thing that I got out of all that is these people in the Aleutians, there are no trees whatsoever. And the Unangan people, when they were sent to Southeast Alaska, were surrounded by trees and they hated them. Like in my mind, I was like, well, at least they're in a place where there's like beautiful trees and stuff. And they hated trees. They would write about how they like got in their way. They called them sticks with leaves. They like really disliked having trees around, which I thought was really fascinating.
1:08:02 Mike Smith? That's so interesting.
1:08:04 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:08:05 Mike Smith? Man.
1:08:06 Jeff Larson? I went with, do you guys know who Claudette Colvin is?
1:08:10 Wes Larson? No.
1:08:11 Jeff Larson? So she she kinda inspired Rosa Parks to do what Rosa Parks did. She's like a fifteen year old black girl who got onto a bus and refused to move to the back of the bus for a white girl. And she got in trouble for it. She got arrested for it. But anyway, she she met with Rosa Parks after getting in trouble for it. And then like this whole group of people met and they talked and they're like, well, we should make this the movement. And then Rosa Parks went on the bus and the same type thing happened, but all spawned from this person originally doing it, which is cool.
1:08:51 Wes Larson? That is interesting.
1:08:52 Jeff Larson? And I learned on Drunk History, which was a really good episode of Drunk History.
1:08:57 Wes Larson? It's a great show.
1:08:58 Jeff Larson? I don't know her name. She's the cop in Detroiters.
1:09:04 Wes Larson? Oh, yeah.
1:09:05 Jeff Larson? Really, really funny.
1:09:06 Wes Larson? She is funny.
1:09:08 Jeff Larson? I can find it if you want to do your category snacks.
1:09:10 Wes Larson? I'll do mine. So something you disliked recently?
1:09:16 Mike Smith? I have been, it's been an ongoing experiment, testing all of these gas station snacks that I've never seen anyone buy or eat. And really to great effect, I've been having so much fun doing this. Maybe the worst thing I've eaten in a good, long while, though, is a Zero Bar. You ever had a Zero Bar?
1:09:35 Wes Larson? Yeah, they're gross.
1:09:37 Mike Smith? At first I was kinda having a good time because they're kinda like, they have a nice tactile density to them. But they're just, the white fudge is just so gross and it left the worst aftertaste in my mouth for like forever. It's like a Costco dog, you know?
1:09:50 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:09:50 Mike Smith? Just lingers for days. Something about the Zero Bar stayed with me and it was bad.
1:09:55 Wes Larson? I kinda need to feel like I need to try one again now. Okay, I like that. I like that you're doing that, too. You're doing the Lord's work.
1:10:03 Mike Smith? So fun. Abba Zaba, bad.
1:10:07 Wes Larson? Yeah. The green Abba Zabas are good, though, the apple ones. I remember liking them. I recently had this weird recollection of watching the movie fourteen ninety-two in like middle school or high school. My teacher showed it to me and remember thinking like it was a really good movie at the time. And I decided to rewatch it. It's directed by Ridley Scott. So I was like, okay, you know, bad rotten tomatoes score, but I don't always agree with those and I love my guy, Ridley. It is a god awful movie. That movie sucks so bad. It is just bad. And he uses this French actor Gerard Depardot or whatever his name is as as Christopher Columbus.
1:10:50 Wes Larson? And he's unintelligible. The entire movie like you cannot understand what he's saying and he's speaking English. It is like, it's crazy. You guys need to watch this movie because it is terrible. Actually, you shouldn't because it's not like a fun watch either. So yeah, bad movie. Really disliked it.
1:11:09 Jeff Larson? And her name was Amber Ruffin, the person, the person who did it. But I'm gonna go with VAR or VAR in World Cup. Just feels like they can use it to whatever rules they want and they'll use it in situations where they want to use it, but then not use it in situations where they don't want to. And it feels like they're controlling the outcome a little bit with something that's intention is to make the game more fair. Also, just like some of the coolest goals have been taken back from like someone slightly being off sides or like a foul that happened a minute before the goal. So to me, it's kind of ruined the World Cup.
1:11:56 Wes Larson? Yeah. All right. I'm gonna do a quick let's argue. And we'll see if we're actually gonna argue about this or not because I don't know where you guys stand on this. But it's ice cream season. There's many different forms of ice cream. There's like soft serve. There's scooped ice cream. There's custard. There's Dippin' Dots. And I want to know what your favorite form of ice cream is and why.
1:12:20 Mike Smith? Dipping dots are kinda underrated.
1:12:23 Wes Larson? Hate dipping dots.
1:12:24 Mike Smith? I kinda, they're not my favorite. I kinda like them though.
1:12:27 Jeff Larson? I think they've gotten worse.
1:12:29 Mike Smith? Have they? I haven't had them in like 20 years.
1:12:30 Jeff Larson? As a kid, they were my number one.
1:12:32 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:12:33 Jeff Larson? Now it's like they're a little too frozen.
1:12:37 Wes Larson? They're so gross. They get all slimy when they start to thaw. They're just like, it's like you're eating just little like bits of freezer burn. They're disgusting.
1:12:46 Mike Smith? Blizzard's? That's my number one. I love a Blizzard.
1:12:51 Wes Larson? Who? Blizzard's are good.
1:12:53 Mike Smith? I used to be a Butterfinger Blizzard, like for life.
1:12:55 Wes Larson? I live close to a Dairy Queen. I tried the turtle pecan one recently and it was really good. I loved that one. So that's actually really similar to my answer. My answer is like hard ice cream that has like softened and that you stir with spoon until it's like soft. And that's kinda what a Blizzard is. Like it's not a milkshake and it's not like soft serve. It's kind of like hard ice cream that's like softened. And that is how I like ice cream. Like I'll scoop a few scoops of ice cream and then just like stir it until it's like in between soft serve and hard ice cream. And I know that's weird, but that's how I like it. And then I'll like crumble some cookies or something into it too.
1:13:34 Mike Smith? Guess that is what you would call it. If not soft serve, it's hard to serve, right?
1:13:38 Wes Larson? Yeah, it's kinda hard serve. Yeah.
1:13:40 Mike Smith? Yeah, I just don't hear people call it that.
1:13:42 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:13:44 Jeff Larson? Yeah, I, I just didn't have a strong opinion on the type of ice cream, like soft serve or, but I do think the ingredients is what matters the most to me. And I like ingredients that are separate from the ice cream. Like I really like Cold Stone where you can like mix in pie crust and cookie dough.
1:14:04 Mike Smith? Gummy bears.
1:14:05 Jeff Larson? It's kinda warm. Cake?
1:14:06 Wes Larson? Peanut butter.
1:14:08 Jeff Larson? Cake with it. I put, I'll buy, instead of buying like a chocolate peanut butter ice cream, I'll buy just chocolate and then I get a jar of peanut butter. So that, you know, it's not frozen peanut butter. And or like hot fudge, the stuff mom makes. Just on some vanilla. Like, I like hot with cold.
1:14:27 Wes Larson? Slaps. Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, we didn't really argue much, but that's okay. We did plenty this episode.
1:14:34 Mike Smith? How are you envisioning an argument to ensue there?
1:14:37 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
1:14:38 Wes Larson? I don't know. Sometimes people have really passionate feelings about this, especially with Dippin' Dots. I feel like there are people that just ride so hard for Dippin' Dots. And I'll fight them because I think it's like, it's trash. They've convinced themselves that they like a trash food.
1:14:52 Mike Smith? Whatever. I bet it's.
1:14:53 Jeff Larson? It's like Reese's for me where it's like, it used to be really good. So I still really like it. But then it's like, it doesn't taste good anymore.
1:15:02 Wes Larson? But here's, here's why I think people like Dippin' Dots is because you only get Dippin' Dots when you're having a good time. Like you only get Dippin' Dots at like arcades and like carnivals and circuses and shit. Like that's where you get them. You don't buy them in the, in the store. So there's like these positive.
1:15:20 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
1:15:22 Wes Larson? There's these positive associations with the, the Dippin' Dots and they're not good.
1:15:27 Mike Smith? Hmm. Okay.
1:15:29 Wes Larson? It's like in a vacuum, a lot of the food you get at Disneyland is gross, but at Disneyland, it tastes great because you're.
1:15:34 Jeff Larson? You would like cartons of ice cream more. If it wasn't like what you eat after you get broken up with or something.
1:15:43 Wes Larson? Yeah, sure. Yeah.
1:15:45 Mike Smith? It's a good point.
1:15:46 Wes Larson? I don't eat when I get broken up with. I just stop eating altogether.
1:15:49 Mike Smith? Yeah, but you've never gotten broken up with. Who would have the audacity?
1:15:53 Wes Larson? You see these?
1:15:55 Mike Smith? I do. Hard to miss.
1:15:56 Wes Larson? All right.
1:15:57 Mike Smith? Uh, is that it for all your categories, Wes?
1:16:00 Wes Larson? Yeah, I'm done.
1:16:01 Mike Smith? Okay. I got, I just had a little activity planned because I got excited about Wallace's sword, William Wallace sword. So we're going to do a little mid mini madness is what I'm calling it. Uh, just eight team bracket. And we're going to figure out what is the coolest sword in pop culture history.
1:16:17 Wes Larson? Okay.
1:16:18 Mike Smith? According to me. I didn't really, I should have pulled you guys a little better. And if you have any.
1:16:22 Jeff Larson? Eight teams.
1:16:23 Mike Smith? If you have honorable mentions, feel free to shout them out.
1:16:26 Wes Larson? Okay.
1:16:26 Mike Smith? But we're just going to do this real quick. Okay. So the first seed. Uh, these aren't really seeded in any particular order, but, uh, we have lightsaber.
1:16:35 Jeff Larson? Lights, laser sword.
1:16:37 Mike Smith? Laser sword. So free.
1:16:38 Wes Larson? Hard to beat, honestly.
1:16:40 Mike Smith? And Sting is the first round matchup.
1:16:45 Wes Larson? Made in gondolin, glows, yeah.
1:16:48 Mike Smith? When bad people are nearby.
1:16:50 Jeff Larson? Sting's the best sword in Lord of the Rings.
1:16:53 Mike Smith? Which one do you think?
1:16:55 Jeff Larson? I like Aegon's.
1:16:56 Mike Smith? Ooh.
1:16:57 Jeff Larson? Arsal. Um, yeah.
1:16:59 Mike Smith? I'd accept that if you knew the name.
1:17:01 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:17:02 Jeff Larson? How it's like broken and they forge it, it's cool.
1:17:05 Mike Smith? Alright, so you're going lightsaber then?
1:17:07 Wes Larson? I gotta go lightsaber as well.
1:17:10 Jeff Larson? Yeah, lightsaber.
1:17:12 Wes Larson? I think Sting is the coolest sword in Lord of the Rings personally, but I still am gonna pick a lightsaber.
1:17:19 Mike Smith? Okay, I think I will too. It is kinda cool though that it glows when bad people are close by. I am just left to wonder, like, what is the threshold for badness? Would it glow if I was close?
1:17:30 Wes Larson? It's not bad, it's orcs. It's orcs.
1:17:33 Mike Smith? Oh, is it specifically orcs?
1:17:34 Jeff Larson? You think Sting's better than Aegon's sword, Mike?
1:17:38 Mike Smith? I think it's easily more recognizable.
1:17:42 Wes Larson? Doesn't break.
1:17:43 Jeff Larson? It's like so cool when Aegon brings his out though.
1:17:46 Mike Smith? It's like three miles long and the camera like slowly pans up for a couple of minutes.
1:17:51 Jeff Larson? Sting's just all tiny.
1:17:52 Mike Smith? He's tiny. Okay, next matchup, we have the master sword from the Legend of Zelda series. Always a different link, always the same master sword though. Uh, it's pretty sweet. And Hattori Hanzo's steel katana from Kill Bill.
1:18:08 Wes Larson? It's easily Hattori Hanzo for me. I didn't, I never played Zelda really, never got into Zelda that much. But that Hattori Hanzo.
1:18:16 Mike Smith? Huh. Jeff, you're going Hattori Hanzo?
1:18:19 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
1:18:19 Mike Smith? Oh, it's so cool.
1:18:20 Wes Larson? It is. Sucks that he's such a douche now. He's always been a douche, but he's like crossed the line for me, you know? Quentin. Alright.
1:18:29 Mike Smith? Hattori?
1:18:32 Jeff Larson? Dude, when he code switches, it's so funny.
1:18:38 Mike Smith? These are a couple you probably aren't very familiar with, so just go like with aesthetic, basically. We've got the Buster Sword, Cloud Strife Sword from Final Fantasy VII, versus the Dragon Slayer, Guts Sword from Berserk. Oh man, they're both so huge and so powerful.
1:18:55 Wes Larson? I'm picking Final Fantasy, because I remember when that, that, those images came out originally, and I was like, really into broadswords, and I thought that sword just looked so rad, so, yeah.
1:19:06 Jeff Larson? Yeah, I'll go with that one too, because the Dragon Slayer is a little too big.
1:19:10 Mike Smith? It's ridiculous.
1:19:11 Wes Larson? And he's like, holding it easily with like, one hand.
1:19:14 Mike Smith? It's guts, Wes, you wouldn't understand.
1:19:17 Wes Larson? Alright, I wouldn't, you're right.
1:19:19 Mike Smith? Next matchup, we have, uh, Green Destiny from Crouching Tiger: Hidden Dragon, just a beautiful sword, and a major plot device for the movie, versus, I guess this is Lightbringer from Game of Thrones. Maybe it should have been the other one Wes is talking about, but Jeff made the call.
1:19:35 Wes Larson? I went first last time, I'll go last this time.
1:19:38 Jeff Larson? I'm going Lightbringer.
1:19:40 Mike Smith? I'm going Green Destiny.
1:19:41 Wes Larson? I'm going Lightbringer.
1:19:43 Mike Smith? Oh, she over Green Destiny? You guys.
1:19:48 Wes Larson? I've only seen Crouching Tiger once, and I, I like hardly remember it.
1:19:52 Mike Smith? Okay.
1:19:52 Jeff Larson? Wait, so that's all your swords?
1:19:54 Mike Smith? That's, yeah, that's.
1:19:55 Jeff Larson? I feel like my 1-1 might not be on there. Excalibur?
1:19:59 Mike Smith? Oh, Excalibur. What, I just don't know what it looks like.
1:20:02 Jeff Larson? From like, King Arthur, where they pull it out of the rock?
1:20:06 Mike Smith? I know. I was kinda thinking more just like, along the lines of like, if you saw a silhouette of this sword, you would know what it is, kinda thing. I just don't know, Excalibur would do that for me. Next matchup, we have Lightsaber versus Hattori Hanzo's Katana.
1:20:20 Wes Larson? Lightsaber.
1:20:22 Jeff Larson? I'll go Katana. I think Samurai sword's the coolest sword ever.
1:20:27 Mike Smith? It is so freaking cool. Have you seen the new cut where they do that fight in color now?
1:20:33 Wes Larson? I need to watch it still.
1:20:34 Mike Smith? It's amazing. It's so good. Uh, I'm gonna go, this is actually really close for me, because lightsabers were kind of inspired by katana, katanas.
1:20:45 Jeff Larson? They just don't feel enough like a sword to me. They might be cooler, but like, if I'm doing Best Sword, I don't think it's like, I don't think it should. Win.
1:20:56 Wes Larson? I don't think there's a more iconic sword, though, like in all of pop culture history than a lightsaber. But that's just me.
1:21:03 Mike Smith? I think I am ultimately gonna go lightsaber, even though Star Wars is dead to me. Still just so cool.
1:21:09 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:21:10 Mike Smith? Buster Sword versus Lightbringer. Look at that sword, Wes.
1:21:14 Jeff Larson? I'll go Lightbringer.
1:21:16 Wes Larson? You're gonna lose me on this one. Lightbringer. Yeah.
1:21:19 Mike Smith? Why? What's so cool about? So I'm not a Game of Thrones guy. I just don't really know the lore. Is it like?
1:21:24 Wes Larson? Like, there's-
1:21:25 Jeff Larson? I like a sword with just a little bit of magic to it, but not like a ton, you know?
1:21:30 Wes Larson? Yeah. There, like, he, in, in Game of Thrones, like, there's this kind of, like, almost evil, tangent evil religion, but also kind of good religion. That's all about sacrifice. And they, like, use their own blood to light these swords and, like, they light them on fire. It's just, a flaming sword is cool. So it's gotta be Lightbringer for me. Yeah.
1:21:52 Jeff Larson? A lot of it's like a intimidation type thing, too. Like, Stannis has a claim to the throne. So then when he goes to war and has, like, his flaming sword, it's just like, man, maybe that guy should be king.
1:22:04 Wes Larson? Right.
1:22:04 Mike Smith? It is pretty sweet. I'm not gonna fight it. I just needed to know.
1:22:08 Wes Larson? Okay.
1:22:10 Mike Smith? Uh, final matchup. Uh, lightsaber versus Lightbringer. It's all about that light.
1:22:14 Jeff Larson? I go lightsaber on this one.
1:22:17 Wes Larson? Lightsaber. Yeah.
1:22:18 Mike Smith? Thank you. I think we ended up at the right place.
1:22:21 Wes Larson? What's your favorite color of lightsaber?
1:22:23 Mike Smith? Oh, Mace Windu's is good. Purple. So cool.
1:22:26 Wes Larson? I like green. When Luke has his green lightsaber, that's my favorite.
1:22:30 Mike Smith? Red is pretty awesome, too.
1:22:32 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:22:33 Mike Smith? Just like the classic evil Sith red.
1:22:35 Wes Larson? Jeff, no, no input.
1:22:37 Jeff Larson? I mean, I thought it was cool in the prequels when Mace had the purple one. But I think that's because the traditional ones had been established already. So it's like, oh, that's cool.
1:22:48 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:22:48 Mike Smith? Well, any honorable mentions you need to shout out?
1:22:52 Wes Larson? No.
1:22:54 Jeff Larson? Braveheart Sword?
1:22:55 Wes Larson? I would probably just like the, I would have just included Excalibur as well. But that's probably it. Yeah.
1:23:03 Mike Smith? Gryffindor, that one Gryffindor sword?
1:23:05 Wes Larson? Oh yeah, Sword of Gryffindor. Kind of a, kind of like a weak little sword, to be honest. It looks like a little fencing sword or something. Like a lance, or what do they call those?
1:23:15 Mike Smith? Epe.
1:23:16 Wes Larson? What's?
1:23:16 Mike Smith? Rapier.
1:23:18 Wes Larson? Rapier, that's what I was thinking of. Yeah.
1:23:20 Mike Smith? Well, that's my category. Thanks for playing, guys. Lightsabers forever.
1:23:25 Wes Larson? That's our episode. Thanks for listening. Uh. If you guys are looking for more content, Jeff just did a really fun Hippo Attack episode. It was actually a story that I thought I would tell at some point as a main feed episode. I think Jeff did a better job with it. Uh, on our subscriber channel. I thought it was a really fun episode. We got a little giggly a few times. It's a good one. So. Uh, check it out. Our Patreon's still 10 bucks a month and you get access to our whole back catalog of content.
1:23:54 Mike Smith? Billions of hours, I think, we're up to at this point.
1:23:57 Jeff Larson? You can find the link on our Instagram bio, right?
1:24:01 Wes Larson? Yep. Or just Google Tooth and Claw Patreon. And there, we do have a free membership, but you don't get access to anything. So we really recommend the one that gives you access to the bonus episodes. That's where you get the most bang for your buck.
1:24:14 Jeff Larson? Did you, did you used to, because now everyone's webpage just opens with Google, you know? But it used to be you have to type in Google, then it takes you to Google and then you search for something? And for a long time, I just kept doing that on Google. I would Google, Google and then click it.
1:24:33 Wes Larson? Even though you didn't have to.
1:24:35 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
1:24:38 Jeff Larson? Alright. Wes, you've been frozen for like two minutes for me. Is he frozen for you, Mike?
1:24:43 Mike Smith? No one's froze for me.
1:24:44 Wes Larson? That happened with you. Weird. Alright, well that must mean it's time to go. Love you guys.
1:24:50 Jeff Larson? Love you guys.
1:24:52 Mike Smith? Bye.
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