Pod Insights Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks Manatees & Mermaids About this episode Mike explores just how manatees ended up in Florida and then tells the strange tale of P. T. Barnum's Feejee Mermaid.
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Transcript 16,746 words · 4 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Wes Larson? Hey everyone, it's Wes. Really quickly, just wanted to let you guys know, we did a bit of a switcheroo this week. We had recorded this episode as a subscription episode, but we all thought, you know, it's been a minute since Mike has done a main feed episode. Let's make this a main feed one. We all really like the episode. And then the one that I recorded for a main feed, it's about a shark attack in 2019, a girl who was 17 and lost her leg. And her dad actually is quite the hero in that story. We decided to push to our subscription channel. So they're both really fun episodes. We recommend both of them. You're going to hear Jeff introduce this as a subscription episode, just so you know. But yeah, if you haven't subscribed yet, might be a good time to check us out on Patreon. We post especially a lot of extra content.
0:43 Wes Larson? I recently shared a playlist on there of songs I've been listening to lately. Usually our Patreon listeners are the first to access to our trips. There's a few other benefits to Patreon subscription. You get to interact with other listeners. And then if you really just like getting your subscription episodes in your Apple feed, we have our Apple Grizz Club too. Both are great options and both, if you decide you don't want it, you subscribe and you don't like it, you can always cancel. We won't hold it against you. All right. I think that's it. With no further ado, here's the episode.
1:27 Jeff Larson? Hello subscribers and welcome back to another episode of Tooth and Claw Podcast. Jeff, Wes and Mike, we're all here and
1:36 Wes Larson? Heyo.
1:37 Jeff Larson? Do we have anything to say or should we just get into it?
1:40 Wes Larson? I got nothing to say. I'm not saying a single thing. Uh oh.
1:44 Jeff Larson? We got fire truck on my street.
1:46 Wes Larson? Uh oh. Is your house on fire, Jeff?
1:48 Jeff Larson? I don't know.
1:49 Wes Larson? Did one of those birds get stuck in a tree?
1:51 Jeff Larson? What?
1:52 Wes Larson? You know, firemen are always rescuing things out of trees.
1:55 Jeff Larson? Birds?
1:57 Mike Smith? Sometimes.
1:59 Jeff Larson? That's where birds belong.
2:01 Wes Larson? Yeah, well, maybe one got stuck. Jeff, I'm a biologist.
2:04 Mike Smith? A woodpecker's beak just stuck in the bark.
2:07 Jeff Larson? Thinking like cats.
2:09 Wes Larson? Yeah, I guess.
2:10 Jeff Larson? Mike, you want to get into your episode? Are we doing the second part of your last subscription episode?
2:16 Mike Smith? Yes, I would like to get into the episode, but no, we're not. I'm weird. This is a.
2:23 Jeff Larson? You're saving that?
2:23 Mike Smith? I teased it, I know. I really did plan on finishing off that duology today with the lowest altitude attacks, however you want to say deepest, I guess. But for some reason, it's stuck in my brain. Last episode, we brought up manatees and I couldn't stop thinking about them. I don't know why. It was just in my brain and I was like, I think it's time to do a manatee episode. So that's what I prepared today.
2:46 Jeff Larson? Nice. I like it. That could be a joint thing because they're pretty low altitude.
2:52 Mike Smith? It could be if manatees ever attacked anybody. They're so nice. And I, this is, I had a real journey preparing this episode because I was looking for any kind of, not even attack story, but any kind of encounter that could be classified as even interesting between humans and manatees. And they're so peaceful and kind and innocent. There's just nothing. So I was like, I kept kind of branching off down different paths. And at the end of the day, I was like, no, we need to make this about manatees. And so I did.
3:23 Jeff Larson? That's why you're telling people to fall asleep right now?
3:26 Mike Smith? Yeah.
3:27 Wes Larson? Close your eyes. I'm sure you're going to get into this, but I feel like some of the historical interactions with manatees were pretty interesting.
3:35 Mike Smith? Oh, yeah. We're not going to get too graphic, but I'll, I'll leave it to your imagination exactly what's going down. We got Christopher Columbus. He's, he gets involved, your guy Wes, Chris Columbus.
3:48 Wes Larson? That piece of shit. Yeah.
3:50 Mike Smith? Anyway, I wanted to start this off by, and I promise this is going somewhere, but I wanted to just gauge your excitement level for Christopher Nolan's next movie, The Odyssey. Where are you guys at? Are you excited yet? Are you getting there?
4:04 Wes Larson? I'm very excited.
4:05 Mike Smith? Hmm, okay.
4:06 Wes Larson? Cause the last one I saw was the like. Made for TV one with, I forget, he's like an Italian actor and then there's really bad CG, but it was really fun. Like I remember when it came out, just really loving it.
4:20 Mike Smith? Yeah.
4:20 Wes Larson? And I've never read The Odyssey, but I have a goal to read it before the Nolan movie comes out.
4:25 Mike Smith? Okay. Jeff?
4:27 Jeff Larson? Yeah, I'm excited.
4:28 Wes Larson? Alright, he sounds like it.
4:30 Mike Smith? Yeah. Last year I did reread The Odyssey and a lot of new things really stuck out to me. And the one scene that really kinda got lodged in my brain, you know, the genesis of the mythos of sirens, right? Like the, the call of the siren, if you hear it and heed its call, it'll lead you to your demise kinda thing.
4:50 Wes Larson? Yeah.
4:51 Mike Smith? Odysseus, he's on his boat with all of his men and he had been warned, I think it was Circe that warned him and like kinda giving him some directions as to how to resist the temptation of these sirens. And what his plan was is to lodge some wax in his ears and then have his men tie him to the mast of the boat, which is like, really couldn't control himself, otherwise I guess.
5:14 Wes Larson? Pretty horny if that's what you have to do. We've all been there though.
5:18 Mike Smith? Oh, I mean, come on.
5:19 Jeff Larson? Wait, why did he have to do that?
5:21 Wes Larson? The siren's call is like so, it's such a huge lure for these men that they like can't resist.
5:27 Mike Smith? Yeah.
5:28 Jeff Larson? I don't know what the sirens call.
5:30 Wes Larson? Do you, have you seen, do you know, "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou"?
5:33 Jeff Larson? Okay.
5:33 Wes Larson? You remember that part where there's the three women in the river that are like washing their clothes? And like they, they can't resist themselves, the men?
5:40 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
5:41 Wes Larson? Those are the sirens.
5:43 Jeff Larson? Okay.
5:44 Mike Smith? There's a common misconception.
5:45 Jeff Larson? It's just horny.
5:47 Mike Smith? That's the misconception I wanted to get into. Somewhere along the line, sirens became conflated with mermaids, but they're actually more like birds. They're half-human, half-bird figures. And they weren't actually violent. All they would do is they would lure that you in with their sweet singing, tell you prophecies and all of these things that were like so pleasing to the ear that you never wanted to leave their presence. So you just like sit on the ground and literally starve to death and die, just because you liked listening to them sing so much. But why do I bring this up? I know it was a bit of a roundabout way to get to the Order Cyrenia, or, you know, we take that word from the Greek mythology of the siren.
6:29 Jeff Larson? I don't know any of this, but yeah, sure.
6:31 Mike Smith? And the Order Cyrenia is what the manatee belongs to. Manatees and dugongs are of the Order Cyrenia. So that's kind of the genesis of where we began thinking of manatees, at least historically, as being mermaids. It's a real weird.
6:48 Jeff Larson? Pretty much like, people who used to be at sea for like, half their lives, would just, any living organism they saw is like, let's turn this into like, half-woman and think about having sex with it.
7:02 Wes Larson? There's a reason they get it with manatees, though. Yeah.
7:05 Mike Smith? Yep.
7:06 Wes Larson? Manatees, it goes a little further than that, but Mike's can explain it.
7:10 Mike Smith? Oh, it does. So, manatees, we're gonna get, just right up front, Mike's big ol' manatee fact right out there, just to set the stage. So, manatees belong to the Order Cyrenia, like I said, and the Order Cyrenia took their name from those sirens of Greek mythology. And so, the beginnings of why people confusing manatees from mermaids starts to take shape. And one notable instance of this, I alluded to it earlier, so in 1493, Wes, your guy, Christopher Columbus.
7:35 Wes Larson? He's not my guy.
7:36 Mike Smith? Love that guy.
7:37 Wes Larson? Do not.
7:38 Jeff Larson? He's an Italian-American hero.
7:40 Wes Larson? Tony Soprano.
7:42 Mike Smith? So, he was sailing down by the Dominican Republic and saw what he thought were three, quote, "mermaids." And he later documented in his captain's log, what became the first written record of manatees, at least by, like, European, white European explorer folk. I'm sure there was probably some documentation by indigenous people, First Nations people.
8:04 Wes Larson? I think, I think written record kinda covers your bases there a little bit.
8:08 Mike Smith? Yeah, I just wanna make, make sure, though. But, he was quoted as writing in his log that they were, quote, "not half as beautiful as they are painted." Again, he was thinking these guy, these, uh, manatees were mermaids, and he's like, huh, well, that's a little underwhelming.
8:24 Wes Larson? They're a lot less hot than I remember.
8:26 Mike Smith? Yeah. It just makes me think, like, if manatees were twice as attractive, would he be like, oh, now we're talking?
8:33 Wes Larson? He just writes in his journal, "Bo-yo-yo-yo-yo."
8:39 Jeff Larson? It's funny he even because his paintings of like mermaids that he was comparing him to.
8:45 Mike Smith? Yeah, right.
8:46 Jeff Larson? It's funny that he even was like, yeah, this is them.
8:49 Wes Larson? That's what, that's what this is.
8:52 Mike Smith? Yeah.
8:54 Mike Smith? I just like that being the first written record of manatees was just like, these aren't that hot. First thing anybody ever wrote about. So I'm doing a lot of setting the stage here, but so for today, I'm doing kind of a two parter thing. We're going to get smart and interesting about manatees first. And then on the back half, we're going to get a little dumber, but still interesting about mermaids. Mostly because they're like not real as far as I know, there's a lot of anecdotal people out there or evidence out there from people who seem to have had mermaid encounters. We're going to talk a little bit about that.
9:30 Wes Larson? Very much in the cryptozoology.
9:32 Mike Smith? Yes.
9:32 Wes Larson? Category.
9:33 Mike Smith? Right. So we're doing real science first half, a little bit of pseudo-science cryptozoology in the second half.
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11:25 Mike Smith? But first off, I just want to dip our toes in the water, see what the temperature is like. What do you guys think of manatees? Off the top of your head, what are your feelings about them generally?
11:34 Jeff Larson? I would agree with Columbus's take. They're not, they're not like that hot. Yeah, but I do think they're very cute, like.
11:44 Mike Smith? Beauties in the eyes of the holder.
11:46 Jeff Larson? I think like I could stare at a manatee for a long time just because their face is like very cute.
11:54 Jeff Larson? And I don't know, I they're like one of the animals we have in the United States I'd most like to see that I haven't seen yet.
12:03 Mike Smith? Yeah.
12:04 Wes Larson? For me, this isn't an animal I've seen a lot in the wild. I've only seen him a couple of times and it was like pretty fleeting from the top of a boat. But I kind of feel like they're one of those animals that the first couple of times you see him, it's really magical and cool. But then if you've seen them a lot, they would get to be really boring. Cause it's just kind of, they kind of just like sit there in the water and don't do anything. So I feel like people that are around them a lot, they really lose their kind of.
12:30 Jeff Larson? Feel like most animals kind of just stand there when you see them though.
12:35 Wes Larson? Yeah, but for me, like I never get tired of seeing grizzly bears because they can be so dynamic. Or like predators, you never know what could happen with them.
12:44 Jeff Larson? Grizzly bears are like the very top.
12:45 Wes Larson? Yeah, no, like a mountain lion for me would be higher than a grizzly bear even for like excitement and seeing. But a manatee, yeah, but like a manatee, an animal that just literally like sits underwater and like eats underwater vegetation.
12:59 Jeff Larson? Seeing deer or something.
13:01 Wes Larson? Yeah, like, there's just not much that's gonna happen.
13:04 Mike Smith? I kinda get that. Like, when we were in the Galapagos, that first night when we saw sea lions all over the beach and everywhere, it was really, really fun. But then by day two or three, we were all kinda just walking right by them without even sparing a glance, kinda thing, you know?
13:19 Wes Larson? Yeah.
13:20 Mike Smith? But that doesn't change the fact. So, I, when I was little, we moved to Georgia, and I remember we drove to a beach about a half hour east of Savannah, or Richmond Hill, I guess, is where we lived. And that's where I first learned about manatees. I have this weird concocted memory of seeing them. I probably didn't, but I do know that I learned about them there and was just like dumbfounded that this weird, huge, like sausage-looking animal was just like there in the water. And they're really peaceful and nice. Like, I didn't have to even worry about them. But when I think about manatees, I have this really kind of involuntary spike of empathy in my heart, because like,
13:59 Mike Smith? they are so innocent and docile. It almost seems like some weird magical creature from a children's book like tumbled off the page and into the ocean. And now they're just part of like the real world that they're not. They shouldn't have to deal with all of our messed up stuff we're putting them through. And we're gonna get into all the danger and all of the injury that they go through because of humankind and some other factors, too. But like, I don't know, I just feel really, it's almost like an Eeyore kinda thing. I look at Eeyore and I'm like, man, I just wish he could like, yeah.
14:30 Wes Larson? Cut him some slack.
14:32 Mike Smith? Yeah, right.
14:33 Wes Larson? It doesn't surprise me that you feel a connection to them, too, because they're called like sea cows, and you love cows.
14:40 Mike Smith? Love them cows, yeah. So, we're gonna be specifically talking about the West Indian manatees. Those are the ones that have made their home in and around Florida. And this is something that's maybe a little obvious to everybody else. I'm, I lag behind when it comes to like, just generally pondering the animal kingdom, but I get surprised when I'm preparing these kinds of episodes, because I just always forget how fast things can and do change for some of these animals. Like, I always contextualize the animal. Kingdom is having kind of sorted and figured itself out over thousands and even millions of years with like evolution and where their domain lies and all of that.
15:21 Mike Smith? But this new research that I found about manatees has me thinking outside that little box I always put myself in. So this is a relatively new study that was
15:29 Jeff Larson? Thinking outside the box.
15:31 Mike Smith? A little bit outside the box.
15:32 Jeff Larson? Wow. You would do great in like the office setting like for a big firm. That's what they're always looking for is someone who will look outside of their box.
15:42 Mike Smith? Or like Taco Bell commercial.
15:43 Jeff Larson? Except for they actually don't want you to.
15:46 Mike Smith? Do great in a Taco Bell.
15:48 Jeff Larson? They just want you to do exactly what they tell you to do.
15:52 Mike Smith? I was always really, I was great in long business meetings because they're like, all right, folks, let's think outside of the box. And I'd like stand up and kind of face the window and put my hands behind my back all pensively and make it look like I was like, let's figure this out, guys. But I never really contribute any, anything meaningful to the team.
16:10 Jeff Larson? You're like, instead of trying to just like make as much profit as possible, let's try to help people and they'll be like, you're, you're fired.
16:21 Mike Smith? No, I mean, like, it was just an idea. It was just, I don't really want to help people. I was just spitballing, you know? So anyway, this is a study that was published in the Smithsonian Magazine. It was an article written by Sarah Kuta in 2024. So just a year ago from when we're recording this. And it's titled Archaeologists piece together the origin story of Florida's manatees, revealing they were once tourists. Real catchy title.
16:46 Jeff Larson? Do you think she's related to Bear Kuta's?
16:49 Mike Smith? Sarah Kuta?
16:52 Wes Larson? Her name is Sarah Kuta?
16:54 Mike Smith? It's S A R A H. Last name Kuta is K U T A. Kuta?
17:00 Jeff Larson? That's a great name.
17:01 Mike Smith? That's sick. Yeah, that's great. I do think she is probably a distant relation.
17:06 Jeff Larson? Mermaid?
17:07 Mike Smith? Yeah. It's gotta be.
17:09 Wes Larson? It's a great mermaid name.
17:10 Mike Smith? Her headshot, I mean, it was just like the top half of her body and she might have a fin for legs. I don't know. It's hard to say one way or the other. This study suggests manatees were not permanent residents of Florida until about the middle of the 1900s, which is again, very recent. And you're not gonna, Wes, you're not gonna believe the reason, Jeff, you might not even believe the reason why. Oh, maybe I'll have you guys rate the believability at the end. There'll be a little believability score you guys can give. So over the years, archaeologists haven't traditionally found very many manatee bones around Florida. And that was one of the first things that had archaeologist, Thomas Plucan. He just started to scratch his head a little, you know, and you're a little like, what's going on?
17:54 Mike Smith? You scratch your, your head starts to itch a little bit for some reason.
17:57 Wes Larson? Yeah.
17:58 Mike Smith? Where do you?
17:58 Wes Larson? It's because there's an idea back there.
18:00 Mike Smith? Is that what it is?
18:01 Wes Larson? Or something's wrong. Yeah.
18:03 Jeff Larson? I don't believe that.
18:06 Mike Smith? You don't think that's why your head starts itching?
18:08 Jeff Larson? I don't think you read that he scratched his head.
18:11 Mike Smith? Well, I'm editorializing a little bit.
18:16 Mike Smith? Syracuse is a much better writer than me, it turns out. She doesn't really inject little details like into that.
18:22 Jeff Larson? Is that the part you thought we wouldn't believe?
18:24 Mike Smith? Yeah, do you believe that?
18:25 Jeff Larson? You nailed it.
18:28 Mike Smith? Do you think geniuses are just never scratching their head because they always have the answer to everything?
18:33 Jeff Larson? Like Ken Jennings?
18:34 Mike Smith? They don't have to wonder about anything?
18:36 Wes Larson? Ken Jennings does. They see someone scratching their head. Look at this idiot.
18:41 Mike Smith? We should go back to. Every episode, Ken Jennings was on Jeopardy and see how many times he scratched his head is probably zero. So they're obvious, they're like, so obviously manatees live here in Florida. Do they, are they not dying here? Like what's going on? Why are we not finding like historical evidence of manatees existing here in Florida? And so Thomas and a team of researchers, they got to researching and found out that outside of the rare instance in like historical documents, no one is really making any reference to manatees until well into the 1900s, which by itself maybe isn't the most compelling evidence that they didn't live there. But then there was a newspaper in 1893 that
19:26 Mike Smith? wrote a report about a dead manatee that washed up on a Florida shore, saying that, quote, "It will no doubt attract thousands of spectators as soon as its presence becomes generally known." So that like, if they were a normal thing, that wouldn't be such like a big news story. It wouldn't attract such attention, you know? It wasn't until about the 1920s or 30s that newspapers started regularly reporting manatee sightings on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. And a decade later in the 1940s, manatee sightings became so common that the word got out and tourists started rolling up to the Everglades National Park, uh, just to like, check them out. So that's when they, their presence started being announced as like Florida, full-time Florida residents, you know? So what's the deal? Where were they before? And why all of a sudden are
20:11 Mike Smith? they showing up and then staying full-time in Florida? This is, I got a couple of real interesting things here that neither of them had occurred to me and both were, this is, if I were gonna give a believability score, it'd be higher.
20:23 Wes Larson? No state tax.
20:24 Mike Smith? No state tax is a big one. Yeah, that was like the third, that was a footnote. That was the third reason. So smart, man. Why don't we move to Florida?
20:33 Wes Larson? That's what, what state, oh, they have no state income tax?
20:37 Mike Smith? No.
20:38 Wes Larson? Ah, no wonder there's so many Florida men living there, you know?
20:42 Mike Smith? Right.
20:43 Jeff Larson? There's like basketball players, I'm gonna play there too.
20:46 Mike Smith? Right.
20:46 Jeff Larson? Texas.
20:47 Mike Smith? Texas, Washington. So, the first reason why manatees weren't living in Florida until the 1900s. So this is an interesting thing I'm learning about, like, basically as of two days ago, when I started preparing this. Did you know about the Little Ice Age? Have you heard about that, Wes?
21:04 Wes Larson? Yeah.
21:04 Mike Smith? So that's not a thing that was ever been inside of my brain at any point, I don't think. The Little Ice Age.
21:11 Wes Larson? Yeah.
21:11 Mike Smith? Yeah, so.
21:12 Wes Larson? When you first read it, were you like, scratching your head?
21:15 Mike Smith? Dude, I was like, both hands, like, all 10 fingers, just like, what?
21:20 Wes Larson? Yeah.
21:21 Mike Smith? Yeah, really going to town on my scalp. So, starting in the 1300s and lasting until about the year 1800, there's a climate epoch known as the Little Ice Age during which manatees likely found Florida's waters to be too cold. They really like warm water. Cold water is quickly can kill manatees off just within days. If it's like degrees of Celsius too cold, they really just struggle and have a bad time, often dying. So when the Little Ice Age came to an end and the Florida waters started climbing in temperature, manatees who are coming up from the south of waters around Cuba or other spots in the Caribbean, they're like, hey, the water is actually pretty nice here. Why go back at all? So that was one reason. But maybe more interesting, this is the second reason, at least to me.
22:04 Mike Smith? This study's authors think that in conjunction with the end of the Little Ice Age, all of the power plants that were getting built along the coastline during like the Industrial Revolution. I don't know if you guys have ever swum in waters near power plants, but like it makes the water really, really like it can discharge extremely warm water, like to the point where it's almost uncomfortable.
22:26 Wes Larson? Yeah.
22:26 Mike Smith? It feels weird. I don't know if you've ever done that, but it's cool.
22:29 Wes Larson? I haven't, but I, I know like crocodilians often nest near power plants because of that reason. Like they produce warmer water and there's often like a higher level of biodiversity in the water too because of that. If it's not too warm, it's too warm, then everything just dies.
22:45 Mike Smith? Right.
22:45 Wes Larson? Yeah.
22:46 Jeff Larson? Mike, have you done that?
22:47 Mike Smith? Oh, I had, yeah. So there's actually a cool spot in Hawaii. I've been to a couple of times where there's like this weird big pipe that just pushes out. It's almost like hot tub level warmth of water. If you like, get right up close to it. But that's, so that's actually a thing that manatees are really attracted to, especially during like the colder times of year, the winter, they'll all congregate. Now there's about 10,000 full, I don't know, it's weird to call them full-time Florida residents, but 10,000 manatees more or less that are all living and often can be seen congregating around these power plants in the water just to stay warm. And it's like a really weird conundrum because we're always about, let's get to renewable energy. Let's shut down these coal power plants and like all the, the gas and coal stuff. Let's get rid of it and switch to renewable.
23:32 Mike Smith? The manatees are on the other side. They're like, no, let's keep this, let's keep this rolling. We like this.
23:37 Jeff Larson? Yeah. They're like, who cares about polar bears? Let's get those ocean temperatures rise a little chilly today.
23:47 Wes Larson? Man, manatees are selfish.
23:49 Mike Smith? Oh, man.
23:49 Jeff Larson? No wonder Wes hates them.
23:52 Wes Larson? I don't hate them.
23:53 Mike Smith? It is weird.
23:54 Wes Larson? Kind of boring.
23:55 Mike Smith? That dude, have you seen the video where the manatee like squashes its face up against the aquarium glass?
24:01 Wes Larson? Yeah.
24:02 Mike Smith? You don't like that?
24:03 Wes Larson? That's its best move, though. Like, that's the best thing it can do.
24:07 Mike Smith? Eh, they're pretty agile swimmers, it turns out.
24:10 Jeff Larson? Mike, have you ever seen a grizzly bear doing anything but just kind of stand in there?
24:16 Mike Smith? Never once. It's either standing there or sitting there.
24:20 Wes Larson? You've seen like three grizzly bears? All right.
24:24 Mike Smith? I've never seen one squash its face adorably against the glass in an aquarium. I'll tell you that much.
24:30 Jeff Larson? I've seen them do some.
24:31 Wes Larson? I'm not getting into this argument.
24:33 Mike Smith? All right, okay.
24:34 Wes Larson? I don't, yeah, it's, yep, you guys won.
24:37 Mike Smith? All right.
24:37 Wes Larson? Manatees are just as dynamic as grizzly bears.
24:40 Mike Smith? I forget why I asked you to rate any of that on the believability scale, but are, where did, do you believe that?
24:47 Wes Larson? Yeah, I rate it pretty high.
24:49 Mike Smith? Okay, so on like you, you would believe that if you were told. You're like, yeah, it's very reasonable to believe that that's what's happening. Okay.
24:57 Wes Larson? Yeah, I was just told it and I believe it.
25:00 Mike Smith? Great.
25:01 Wes Larson? So 10 out of 10 for me.
25:03 Mike Smith? That's, that was a bad, that was a bad little impromptu category I had.
25:07 Wes Larson? No, I like it.
25:08 Mike Smith? Okay.
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27:02 Mike Smith? I can see why someone would be like a little underwhelmed, you know? Cause rhinos, they're not, they rarely ever charge anything with their horns.
27:09 Wes Larson? Yeah. I would agree with that. Yeah, they're not that dynamic either, but every once in a while they're like super dynamic. Every once in a while.
27:17 Jeff Larson? Like when Ace Venture came out.
27:19 Mike Smith? Yeah. Dynamic.
27:23 Mike Smith? Let's get to some facts about manatees. This is one that's maybe commonly known, but I wanted to touch on it. So they're actually distant relatives to elephants. A manatees along with dugongs are descendants of a common ancestor as elephants, woolly mammoths and mastodons. It's really, yeah, it's really, it's interesting, you know? It's, it seems unlikely, but there's some similarities like nursing mothers, their nipples are like kind of close to their armpit area. They have like toenails that are reminiscent of that common ancestor. There's some, some giveaways if you are an attentive, if you're a disciple of the manatee, I guess we'll say.
28:01 Jeff Larson? They're both hot.
28:02 Wes Larson? That's what you said.
28:04 Mike Smith? Yeah.
28:05 Wes Larson? Disciple.
28:06 Mike Smith? So manatee brains are relatively small, but they're smart. They're still pretty smart. They're about the same level of like cognitive ability as dolphins. And the Wikipedia article says they're capable of understanding discriminating tasks. It just doesn't sound very good, right? Discrimination?
28:28 Wes Larson? I don't think that's what they meant by that.
28:31 Mike Smith? I don't know. They're able to discriminate. That's uh.
28:38 Mike Smith? No, like it's clear they're like they're able to like problem, like basic problem solving, recognition, long-term memory. And it actually kind of, that's another similarity. Maybe they have the elephants is their long-term memory is pretty, it's like a pretty robust.
28:51 Wes Larson? Yeah.
28:51 Mike Smith? System of like neural links going on in their tiny little brain.
28:55 Wes Larson? We talked about that in an episode, how like brain size isn't necessarily indicative of intelligence. It's more like the spindle neurons that they have and the like density of neurons and a bunch of other things. So.
29:08 Mike Smith? Right.
29:08 Wes Larson? That's interesting. Yeah.
29:09 Mike Smith? Yeah. Here's a weird one. So they only have one kind of tooth. They're all molars and they have like four rows of molars, like two on each side on like top and bottom. And they're kind of like conveyor belts where they'll move forward as like the front one gets worn down because they're always chewing on sea grass and stuff under the, under the water. So they'll wear down their teeth and once the one gets to the very front, they'll absorb the roots back up into their body and then the tooth will kind of just dislodge and fall out. And then the teeth behind it will move forward and a new one will kind of drop in at the back. And it's like a really interesting system where it really is just like a slow-moving conveyor belt of molars.
29:51 Wes Larson? That's another connection to elephants too, because elephants have the same.
29:56 Mike Smith? Oh, is that true?
29:57 Wes Larson? Yeah.
29:57 Mike Smith? There you go.
29:58 Jeff Larson? That's very cool.
29:59 Mike Smith? They average a swim speed of about five miles per hour, moving slow, a little, a little slow there.
30:04 Jeff Larson? So we can now swim.
30:06 Mike Smith? It's our best. Well, their average, they can, if they put their minds to it, they can really get jetting, but their average speed is about three to five miles per hour when they're just kind of, they don't have any natural predators, so they don't really have much reason to ever swim very fast. So rarely do they go faster than that, but they can. They live to 60 years old or older and kind of a nice way to identify when manatees are around. If you're kayaking on the surface or like looking from the shore, they leave these, they were, they're referred to as footprints and they're oval markings on the top of the water above where they're swimming that are very distinct. So if you see kind of like a ring of ripples, you can tell that's where a manatee is swimming underneath the surface.
30:51 Wes Larson? That's a long time to live, just to like float in the water and eat grass.
30:56 Mike Smith? I know.
30:56 Wes Larson? That's a long life for a manatee.
30:58 Mike Smith? 60 years.
30:59 Wes Larson? Yeah.
31:00 Mike Smith? Dude. Yeah. Well, I made this its own little section because I found this part of their anatomy to, to be the most interesting. So they're breathing. Unlike other mammals, their lungs stretch pretty much the length of their back. They're like really long, thin lungs. And if you can, we're all scuba divers now, so you can kind of tell why that would be a nice thing to have is just for buoyancy control. Able to inflate the lungs all across the length of your body. So you're not, you know, tipping forward or backward. It's just, you're finding equilibrium a lot easier that way. And when they breathe, the amount of the air exchanged in their lungs is higher than any other mammal. So when humans breathe, we're actually replacing anywhere from 10 to 15% of the oxygen content in our lungs.
31:45 Mike Smith? Unless we take like a really deep breath, just those shallow breaths that you're taking through your nose or your mouth right now, if you're a mouth breather, that's like 15% maybe.
31:54 Wes Larson? Yeah. You know, that reminds me of is, uh, in Rogue Nation, the Mission Impossible where he
32:00 Mike Smith? Oh, yeah.
32:01 Wes Larson? Has the little oxygen meter on his arm. Somehow it's like telling him exactly how much oxygen is left in his lungs.
32:09 Mike Smith? Yeah. It's very sophisticated piece of tech.
32:12 Wes Larson? It's great. When it hits zero, all of a sudden he's like
32:15 Mike Smith? How long is he under there for? It was like three minutes?
32:18 Wes Larson? He was supposed to be under for three minutes, but he goes, it's longer than that. And I just recently watched it. I'm like, I'm going to try and hold my breath as long as he's under there.
32:27 Mike Smith? Yeah.
32:27 Wes Larson? And I made it like 30 seconds.
32:31 Mike Smith? Yeah, you can't. Well, you you're not trained. You're not.
32:35 Wes Larson? No, my oxygen meter just went. Immediately.
32:40 Mike Smith? So humans replacing 10 to 15% of the content oxygen content in their lungs. Manatees, every breath they take, and they only breathe through their nostrils, never through their mouth. They replace 90% of the oxygen content in their lungs. So it's like they bled it all out and then basically fill every last little bit of it in again. And that's just, it's very unusual for mammals, especially one that just kind of like comes up very briefly, takes a quick breath through its nostrils. But somehow their system is so open and like can ingest so much oxygen so quickly. I don't know exactly what all the mechanisms mechanisms are that allow for that to happen. But I just thought that was like a really cool thing that.
33:21 Wes Larson? That is cool.
33:21 Mike Smith? They're so such efficient breathers, which makes sense for mammals, but like even dolphins and other animals like that. They're not doing that as well as manatees are able to.
33:30 Wes Larson? It makes you it makes you wonder like what their experience is like underwater too. Like if it feels like they're holding their breath or if that oxygen is kind of just like dissipating. And it doesn't really feel like, you know, like they have the urge to breathe even for a while. I don't know. It's just interesting to think about like what that experience must be like.
33:49 Mike Smith? Yeah. So how long do you think they'd be able to hold their breaths breath Jeff? Yeah, I want Jeff to I want to see what his ability to discriminate is.
33:59 Jeff Larson? How long did David Blaine do it?
34:01 Mike Smith? What was it like?
34:03 Jeff Larson? 11 minutes or something?
34:04 Mike Smith? Was it 11 minutes? I think that's about what it was. Yeah.
34:08 Jeff Larson? So I'll say 23 minutes.
34:10 Mike Smith? Wow. Yeah. So 20 minutes is kind of the upper limits of how long they can hold their breath. I wanted to play a little game here. We're calling it stings every breath you take scale. So I want you guys to guess if these animals can hold their breath for a longer time or a shorter amount of time than manatees. First up is the dolphin. Wes, do you think manatees can hold 20 minutes?
34:33 Wes Larson? Uh, I'm gonna say less for dolphins.
34:37 Mike Smith? Yeah, you're right. So dolphins are they're topping off at about 15 minutes. Jeff, sloths.
34:44 Jeff Larson? Let's.
34:45 Mike Smith? Yes, so they're about 15 minutes, which that's less than 20, right?
34:50 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
34:51 Mike Smith? Wes?
34:51 Jeff Larson? Exactly.
34:51 Mike Smith? Scientist?
34:52 Wes Larson? Yeah, that is, that is less than 20.
34:55 Mike Smith? So there's, this is a weird little tangent I went down. There's a weird myth out there that sloths are actually able, 15 minutes for a sloth is still like, pretty unexpected.
35:05 Jeff Larson? Why are sloths even holding their breath that long?
35:07 Mike Smith? I don't know. It's a weird thing, but there's a, like, kind of a widespread myth out there that they can hold their breath up to 40 minutes. But it's something about their metabolism, their metabolic rate is so low that they just don't need to breathe, I guess, is kind of the science.
35:23 Wes Larson? That makes sense, but I also, this seems like a thing that would be really hard to test in an ethical way, too.
35:30 Mike Smith? There's some bad studies happening.
35:31 Jeff Larson? I mean, for ocean animals, it's like, yeah, when does, how often do they breathe?
35:35 Wes Larson? Right.
35:36 Jeff Larson? But like, for sloths, it's not.
35:39 Jeff Larson? What do you mean?
35:40 Wes Larson? Yeah.
35:40 Mike Smith? Well, that study was conducted back in the 1940s.
35:43 Jeff Larson? The Nazis did it.
35:44 Mike Smith? A little, yeah, fast and loose with the rules back then when it came to ethics and animals and stuff.
35:50 Wes Larson? When they all showed up over here, they're just like, let's hold these animals underwater.
35:55 Mike Smith? Okay, next one. The Couvier's, Couviers' beaked whale. Wes?
36:02 Wes Larson? Similar to a dolphin, so I'm gonna go ahead and say less, but I feel like it might be more.
36:09 Mike Smith? So, this is actually the world record holder for mammals holding their breath. I don't know exactly why they're so good at it, but one was recently recorded as having held its breath for 137 minutes.
36:22 Wes Larson? That's impressive.
36:23 Mike Smith? It's crazy.
36:24 Wes Larson? Yeah, Tom Cruise can't do that.
36:26 Mike Smith? Right? 137 more or less than 20 minutes, Jeff?
36:31 Jeff Larson? That's more.
36:32 Mike Smith? Okay, hippo is the next animal.
36:34 Jeff Larson? That's what, the one I was wondering. I'm gonna say more.
36:37 Mike Smith? More hippos can hold longer than 20 minutes?
36:40 Wes Larson? Yeah.
36:40 Mike Smith? They're, they're like five minutes. They're not doing great.
36:43 Wes Larson? Yeah.
36:44 Mike Smith? They're a weird, I know they're not like technically an aquatic animal, but they spend so much time there that you'd think maybe they'd be better at it, but no. Uh, I don't know who we're at, but Emperor Penguin?
36:56 Wes Larson? Uh, I think it's my turn. I'm gonna say less.
36:59 Mike Smith? Emperor Penguins can hold their breath for up to 27 minutes. It's been found.
37:04 Wes Larson? Okay.
37:04 Mike Smith? It's weird.
37:05 Wes Larson? Pretty comparable.
37:06 Mike Smith? It's weird how, um, there is a rhyme and reason. I'm not a scientist. I don't take this the wrong way, anyone out there listening, but like, I just couldn't really pin down a great rhyme or reason why some animals are so good at it and some are not, you know?
37:20 Wes Larson? Yeah. I, I think like probably a big part of it is energy expenditure underwater. But that's why I thought it'd be less for Emperor Penguins, cause they're usually like zipping around. Yeah.
37:32 Mike Smith? Uh, the wolf spider. Jeff?
37:35 Jeff Larson? More.
37:36 Mike Smith? Yeah. 40 hours, dude? Are you kidding me? They're like, they enter a suspended animation is what it's called, which is like, sounds nice to be able to just do. I'd love, I'd love to just like for 40 hours be like, I'm, I'm just gonna suspend animation for a little bit.
37:54 Mike Smith? I don't wanna die. I just wanna take a break. And that sounds, it just sounds really nice. So this is one I didn't find enough hard, reliable science for. But apparently there, we were just talking about scorpions in our last main episode. They can be submerged up to six days under the water. They have some weird, almost akin to gills, the way they breathe. They're called book lungs or something like that.
38:21 Wes Larson? It's like a, it's like a mix between normal lungs and gills. It's a weird middle ground.
38:26 Mike Smith? Yeah.
38:26 Wes Larson? Yeah. I, I think with some of these arachnids too, it's kind of like a bit of a caveat is that they, some of them bring a bubble down with them and they like are just siphoning air off of that air bubble.
38:38 Mike Smith? Yeah.
38:39 Wes Larson? It's almost like they're scuba diving, which I think is really cool.
38:42 Mike Smith? Right.
38:42 Wes Larson? Yeah.
38:43 Mike Smith? No, it's sweet.
38:43 Jeff Larson? Cheating.
38:44 Wes Larson? It is cheating. Yeah.
38:45 Mike Smith? It's, well, I don't know. The Harry Potter kids could do that in Goblet of Fire. They just put a bubble on their head.
38:50 Wes Larson? And gillyweed or whatever.
38:53 Mike Smith? Yeah. It's like, I don't know. I like, who's the guy that turned his head into like a shark head? That was the best one, one.
39:01 Wes Larson? That was Cedric, wasn't it?
39:02 Mike Smith? Was it Cedric?
39:03 Wes Larson? Or was it Kronk?
39:04 Jeff Larson? No, that was Kronk.
39:05 Wes Larson? Yeah.
39:07 Mike Smith? Yeah.
39:09 Wes Larson? Of course he did.
39:10 Mike Smith? So let's get in. Jeff, go ahead. Sorry.
39:12 Jeff Larson? When you, when you would do like breath holding competitions in a hot tub, did you ever think like, oh, I'll just like use the jet for more air?
39:21 Mike Smith? I did.
39:25 Wes Larson? Oh, that's so funny.
39:27 Mike Smith? It's probably so good for us. Geez. There's gotta be some study done on kids that did that. Some brain cell count or something. I don't know. This episode is brought to you by Miracle Made. The weather's heating up and your nighttime bedroom temperature has a huge impact on your sleep quality. If you wake up too hot or too cold, I highly recommend you check out Miracle Made's bed sheets. Miracle Made sheets are inspired by NASA and use silver infused fabrics that are temperature regulating, so you can sleep at the perfect temperature all night long. And here's the thing that convinced me. So traditional bed sheets can harbor more bacteria than a toilet seat. It can lead to acne, allergies, and stuffy noses, and it's just generally disgusting.
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41:37 Mike Smith? mitigate this, but it's been found that only 4% of adult manatees are devoid of boat strike or watercraft related scars.
41:45 Wes Larson? That is crazy.
41:46 Mike Smith? Only 4% of adult manatees have not been hit by a boat or a propeller.
41:51 Wes Larson? Yeah.
41:51 Mike Smith? It's crazy to me. And on any given year, 20 to 25% of reported manatee mortalities or fatalities are attributed to getting hit by boats. And it's this weird combination of like, they're a little slow, slow moving, not very agile. They're not like quick reflex animals. They're pretty curious. So they're very willing to get close to these watercraft. And they also have these very dense bones that don't have any marrow in them. That also helps for like water orientation, buoyancy control. And that's helpful for that reason, but it also means that their ribs are really brittle. So if they get hit by a boat, they're
42:32 Mike Smith? not very resistant to like bone fracturing. And when a sea creature, like there's not really a good, healthy way to deal with broken ribs, you know, when you're under the water and you're relying on, you know, it sucks. It just really sucks.
42:46 Wes Larson? The part of the water column they hang out in too, is just like prime for getting hit by propellers and stuff. It's not like there are stingrays that are, you know, plastered to the bottom of the, the sea floor. They're like hanging out within a few feet of the surface usually.
43:00 Mike Smith? Another danger they face, and this is something that was a little new to me as well. Have you heard of red tides?
43:06 Wes Larson? Mm hmm.
43:06 Mike Smith? Wes? Yeah. So we've talked a little bit about this before with sea lions being infected by toxic algae blooms. The same thing is happening over on the east coast in Florida where they're called brevotoxins. They happen when an algae bloom, there's just an explosion in algae population, small critters like shrimp and shellfish, they eat. All of this toxic algae and then bigger critters are eating those smaller ones and bigger animals. It's just kind of a chain reaction where large animals are being contaminated with, they're called brevitoxins, which attach to neurons, which causes loss of motor function and control, paralysis, spasms, and even death. And this isn't limited to just animals either, who are feeding on this.
43:51 Mike Smith? Like manatees, they're eating all of this algae and grass and stuff. So of course they're being affected and dying. But these toxins can actually become aerosolized and airborne in humans. While they're not dying because of this, are, can still be pretty drastically affected to the point where they have to go to the ER. So it's, it's kind of a wild situation. We're not really sure exactly what causes it. Pretty sure humans are.
44:14 Wes Larson? They think it's warming.
44:15 Mike Smith? Yeah.
44:16 Wes Larson? Warming waters, like make it much more common than it used to be.
44:19 Mike Smith? Yep. Yeah. So humans definitely not making it better by any of the stuff we're putting the world through, but.
44:25 Wes Larson? Like, I know, I think it was last year Florida had, I mean, there's parts of Florida that were having like 90 plus degree water days, which is just insane when you think about it. That's, that's like a swimming pool that's a little too warm to like swim around in and for too long. You know, you like start to sweat in that kind of water. So it just makes you think like, of course you're going to start to have new types of algae spring up and all sorts of huge effects to coral reefs and all of that. So it's not a surprise.
44:52 Mike Smith? Well, I guess on that downer of a note, we're done with manatee. Any final thoughts you want to talk through about manatees before we move on?
45:00 Jeff Larson? So Wes would have that as believable?
45:03 Wes Larson? Yeah, it's believable to me. Yeah. So far, nothing that you've said has been very unbelievable when it comes to your facts. Yeah.
45:11 Mike Smith? Okay. Well, we'll see if we can rectify that in the second half of this episode. Jeff, are you believing everything? Are you, are you a doubting Thomas?
45:19 Wes Larson? Jeff loves being devil's advocate, so I'm curious to hear this.
45:23 Jeff Larson? I think Christopher Columbus thought they were hotter than what he said.
45:29 Wes Larson? He's like, I am not attracted to these at all.
45:34 Wes Larson? I promise.
45:37 Mike Smith? Whatever dude, you know, he was retiring to his captain's bunk. You know what he was doing.
45:42 Wes Larson? It's just negging manatees up there.
45:46 Mike Smith? Okay, so let's get into the mermaid mythos. This is cryptozoology. This goes some interesting places and I found some, it's kind of dumb. It's, I don't want to call it dumb or anyone that believes, like, this is kind of a Bigfoot situation. It's not as robust a community of mermaid believers as there seems to be around Bigfoot, but it's pretty similar where there's a lot of fun stories about people feeling strongly compelled to like run and swim in the ocean because they're hearing the call of the siren, or they found women's bodies washed up on beaches who claimed to their dying day that they were mermaids and they were like sent to the shore, whatever,
46:25 Mike Smith? you know, it's like, it's fun to get into. Some people believe it. I'm not, I'm not personally there yet, but you know, there's no river long enough that doesn't contain a bender to you. Maybe someday I'll be convinced. Today's not that day.
46:39 Wes Larson? Whenever I find a dead woman on the shore, I just think, oh, cool, a mermaid.
46:44 Mike Smith? Well, I mean, if she insisted she were a mermaid till like for the rest of her life, I'd be, I don't know, maybe a wall or two would be broken down in my brain.
46:53 Wes Larson? She's alive in these scenarios?
46:56 Mike Smith? Well, there have been accounts of women who claim to be mermaids after they've been like, I don't know how true any of, any part of that story is for any of these women, but that's just what I've read on forums online, which nobody lies on the internet. I choose to believe everything.
47:14 Wes Larson? Yeah.
47:14 Mike Smith? Okay, let's get into this. A solid community of mermaid believers. Some very high-profile hoaxes about mermaids that have really shifted public consciousness one way, one way or the other about mermaids. Do you remember about 10 years ago, there was an Animal Planet mockumentary called Mermaids? The Body Found?
47:31 Wes Larson? No.
47:32 Mike Smith? It was like this highly publicized, and it was fake, and what Animal Planet did was at the end of the documentary in the credits, like very briefly for a couple of seconds, they're like, this footage is not real, mockumentary, et cetera, et cetera. Don't believe this, but like- They presented it as if it were fact.
47:49 Wes Larson? Yeah. So I mean, I feel like that is that a mockumentary or is that more just like they created something that they wanted people to believe was true, you know?
48:00 Mike Smith? That's probably more accurately put, but yeah.
48:02 Wes Larson? They do that a lot with like the Megalodon ones and stuff too, where like they.
48:06 Jeff Larson? What do you think a mockumentary is?
48:08 Wes Larson? A mockumentary to me means like the, the audience is like, kind of supposed to be in on the joke. Like you kind of know they're like making fun of something like.
48:16 Mike Smith? Yeah.
48:17 Wes Larson? The, what's that documentary now? Or Spinal Tap? Yeah. All of the Christopher Guest movies and like documentary now, it's like, you know, going in that it's not supposed to be actual fact. But to me, those Animal Planet and Discovery Channel ones are more like, we're trying to trick the audience into believing these things.
48:35 Mike Smith? Right. Yeah. It's a, it's a real shame that we can't tune into the History Channel or Animal Planet and trust things anymore, you know?
48:45 Wes Larson? Yeah.
48:46 Mike Smith? The damage is done and it's a real shame because I don't know, we're just being conditioned to like not believe things.
48:52 Wes Larson? Yeah.
48:52 Mike Smith? And I, that's a, just a dangerous place to lead people down.
48:55 Wes Larson? There should honestly be like a, a third party regulatory thing that like assigns a grade to it beforehand. It's like scientific accuracy, you know?
49:06 Jeff Larson? You don't even believe in the Holocaust happened.
49:10 Wes Larson? Who are you talking to right now? Cause if you're talking to me, you're wrong. Yeah.
49:13 Mike Smith? Well, I mean, like, I can't even pretend. Not gonna even pretend.
49:17 Wes Larson? Nope. We all believe in that strongly in this podcast. Yeah.
49:21 Mike Smith? Okay.
49:22 Jeff Larson? I've just been watching a bunch of Norm MacDonald clips where he's been saying his co-host is a Holocaust denier.
49:30 Mike Smith? Just incredible bit. Gosh. Anyway, so mermaid, mermaid mythos. Almost worldwide, every culture has their version of a mermaid, which makes it, maybe that's why there's such an intrigue surrounding them globally. Like people aren't conditioned to believe per se that they are real, but we're all growing up hearing stories about them at least, you know? And it's kind of fun to imagine that there's stuff. Out there, Bigfoot, the Yeti, Nessie, et cetera.
50:00 Wes Larson? Yeah. When you think about it, like Bigfoot and mermaid are the two lowest hanging fruit when it comes to cryptozoology. Like they're close to humans, but they've like kind of turned into part of the animal that we associate most with like that terrain. You know, Bigfoot's kind of like half bear, half human or half ape, half human. And mermaids are like half fish.
50:19 Jeff Larson? I don't know vampires. It's just like they have two teeth that are a touch longer than ours.
50:25 Wes Larson? Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I think, I think it doesn't, to me, it's not crazy that every culture has like a mermaid and a Bigfoot. Like those are the two that seem the easiest to come up with.
50:36 Mike Smith? I don't think vampires are cryptids, are they?
50:39 Jeff Larson? Werewolves?
50:40 Wes Larson? I think you can make an argument that they are.
50:41 Mike Smith? Maybe they are.
50:42 Wes Larson? Yeah.
50:42 Mike Smith? No, but I think.
50:43 Wes Larson? Werewolves is another one. That's another good one, Jeff.
50:46 Mike Smith? It's, it's because I think another big reason is there are so many creatures out there like manatees or like a bear standing on its hind legs. It's like you can kind of see where someone saw something and they're like, whoa, what was that?
50:57 Jeff Larson? I don't get it with manatees.
51:00 Mike Smith? Well, okay, Christopher Columbus, he was, he was unimpressed, but he was still like, I guess.
51:06 Jeff Larson? I don't think I would ever see a manatee and be like, is that half woman?
51:11 Mike Smith? Yeah, but like, yeah, I think you're, I'm not going to play devil's advocate too hard on that one.
51:17 Wes Larson? No, but I can see being like, oh, there's probably people out there that are half fish, you know, like their tail, they have tails. And then you would be like, oh, a manatee kind of looks like that.
51:27 Mike Smith? Right. A big one.
51:29 Wes Larson? A really hot one.
51:31 Mike Smith? Right. A really hot one. And some of us are into that. So the one we're going to focus today on the mythological mermaid story is the Japanese legend of Ningyo. Uh, also known as the Fiji mermaid. Maybe you've heard of it, maybe not. Uh, and it's actually documented in one of the oldest books in Japanese history, which is kind of a funny little detail to this story. Like these things are from the start for Japan. It's like, these are things people have been talking about. So it's a genderless, human-like monkey fish hybrid that was said to taste delicious and protect their owners from illness, which is a real struggle because it's like. I'd wanna be protected from illness.
52:12 Wes Larson? But it tastes so good.
52:14 Mike Smith? I'm so tempted to eat this thing.
52:18 Mike Smith? So I don't know. I don't know how long I could hold out without eating my Ningya or my Fiji mermaid. It's like, I don't know. Being sick's not that bad. Sometimes it's kinda nice to take a day off.
52:30 Wes Larson? The juice is worth the squeeze sometimes, you know?
52:33 Mike Smith? Right. So, um, also, when dead Fiji mermaids washed up on shore, it was seen as a sign of impending oncoming disaster. So, as the legend of the Fiji mermaid grew, fake ones would start being made by Japanese fishermen. And what they would do is they would sew the head of a monkey onto the body of a fish. That was the extent of it. And they would put it on display at Japanese carnivals. And one day, the head of the Dutch trading colony, his name was Jan Kock Blomhoff. That's just incredible. The meter of that name is so pleasant to me. Jan Kock Blomhoff.
53:12 Mike Smith? He offered to buy one of the Fiji mermaids that he saw. And from that day, enterprising Japanese sailors saw a new global business opportunity.
53:21 Wes Larson? They're just cutting monkey heads off everywhere they go.
53:23 Mike Smith? Yeah, so.
53:24 Wes Larson? Sewing them onto fish.
53:26 Mike Smith? One of these Fiji mermaids ended up in London after a Japanese fisherman sold it to a sailor, who in turn sold it to an American captain named Samuel Eadie, who spent 6,000 of that day's dollars on it, or nearly $100,000 of today's money, which is crazy.
53:42 Wes Larson? Imagine his wife when he comes home and he's like, "Listen, well, I promised I wasn't gonna buy another Fiji monkey. Mermaid."
53:52 Mike Smith? He, so he had a lot more than his wife to worry about because he didn't have that money. He like embezzled it from his ship's account. Cause he was like, "I'm gonna put this on exhibit in London and earn that money back and put it back into the ship's coffers before anyone notices the balances are out of whack," you know? So, he took it back to.
54:13 Wes Larson? Entrepreneur.
54:14 Mike Smith? Right. He was like leveraging, he was risking it all because he believed in this little Fiji mermaid.
54:20 Wes Larson? Watched a motivational video that day. It's like.
54:26 Mike Smith? Yeah. Fortune favors the bold. And he's like, "You know what?" Hundred thousand dollars, I think I see a future. So he put it on display in London at a place called Turf Coffee House. And it was said that hundreds of guests came to view the mermaid each day. But when one of the royal surgeons caught wind of what was happening, he was like, that sounds interesting. I'll go check it out and just like, check the veracity of what's going on. And he immediately identified it as a fake and he shut the operation down. And the public was like, oh, I don't know. Like, what do you think gave it away? And he was just like the crudely sewn on head of a monkey on a fish. Yeah. So the public, they lost interest quickly and he kind of dwindled into obscurity. But this mermaid's,
55:11 Mike Smith? its story is far from over because when Captain Edes died, he actually bestowed this mermaid to his son as his inheritance. And he was just like, I don't, I don't want, I don't want this. So he got in contact with a guy named Moses Kimball, who I think was some kind of curator at the Boston Museum, who just so happens to have a contact named P T Barnum, P T Barnum. Yeah. One of the founding members of the Ringling Bros, P T Barnum and Bailey Brothers, et cetera, et cetera. And he was all in on this thing. The moment he saw he's like, I need that. I can, I can, I can make some moves with this mermaid. So he bought it and he showed it to a naturalist ahead of time, just to like, you know, check
55:54 Mike Smith? out exactly what he's got. And again, it was immediately identified as like, this isn't real on the basis that mermaids are not real.
56:02 Jeff Larson? Wait, can you explain what it is a little bit more?
56:05 Mike Smith? It's a fish with the head of a monkey sewn on, like the, the fish's head is chopped off and the monkey's head is sewn on to the body of the fish.
56:15 Jeff Larson? So how's it lasting this long?
56:16 Mike Smith? It's, it's some kind of-
56:18 Wes Larson? Like formaldehyde or-
56:19 Mike Smith? Formaldehyde. It's getting gross, though. We're getting like, it's getting disgusting.
56:23 Wes Larson? Right now, Jeff. Just Google Fiji mermaid and hit images and you'll see some interesting-
56:27 Mike Smith? It's really, really gnarly.
56:29 Jeff Larson? This is what protected them from getting sick.
56:31 Mike Smith? Yeah.
56:32 Wes Larson? And it also tastes delicious.
56:34 Mike Smith? Yeah.
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58:51 Wes Larson? I will say, like, looking at these Google Images, if I were living in the 1800s or whatever, and I saw this in a, like, little traveling freak show, I would think it's pretty convincing for a little mermaid. Like, I would be like, wow, that actually is a mermaid. So, yeah.
59:08 Mike Smith? Yeah. You know, if you don't know better, it's like a weird little raisin of a fish monkey.
59:13 Wes Larson? I don't think I would pay a hundred grand for it.
59:16 Jeff Larson? This one has a mustache.
59:19 Mike Smith? The mustache one. Dude, you can buy them still. There's one on sale on eBay, or I think, like, Etsy or something for $8,000. I was like, oh. I mean, that's a pretty good deal, considering.
59:29 Wes Larson? Well, and if you're not gonna be sick the rest of your life after you buy it, too.
59:33 Mike Smith? Right. Yeah. So, anyway, Barnum, he bought this off of Moses. He was told it's not real by some kind of scientist. He was like, but Barnum, he didn't care. He was like, he was never one to let the truth get in the way of making some money or putting on a good show. In fact, he stretched the truth even further by advertising it as having long, beautiful, flowing hair and kind of a sultry, seductive look on the posters that he was, like, hanging up. Now, remember, like we've said, this thing is just like a weird little wrinkled monkey head on the body of a fish. So, you can imagine the public walking into this exhibit expecting to see a beautiful mermaid, and then they're just seeing this weird little, whatever, whatever this thing is.
1:00:15 Wes Larson? A Christopher Columbus effect.
1:00:17 Mike Smith? Yeah. Yeah. But despite that, and maybe even because of that kind of shock, this turned into a sensation. People were flocking to see this thing. And it was just making him money hand over fist. The story kind of...
1:00:30 Jeff Larson? What a world.
1:00:31 Mike Smith? Yeah, I know.
1:00:33 Jeff Larson? Because they probably are, like, being introduced to animals that actually exist that they didn't know existed, like, all the time. So then, like, they just throw this in the mix, and they're like, holy shit, look at this one.
1:00:47 Wes Larson? It is, it's kind of the, the NFT of that time period.
1:00:51 Jeff Larson? It's Reddit, it's Reddit, someone just throwing in a made up story to throw everyone off.
1:00:57 Mike Smith? Dude, there's some, people are getting real creative with the combinations. I heard one about an orangutan head on the body of a salmon and I was like, okay, this is, we're getting too deep into this. Like, there's all kinds of combinations you can be playing around with. Anyway, the story supposedly, the story ends when the original Fiji mermaid owned by Barnum was said to have been destroyed in a fire that burned down the museum in 1865. Although, many institutions still claim to have this original mermaid. No one can prove anything. It's not a real mermaid to begin with, so whatever. But they're still kind of in the public consciousness in their own niche little way. Fiji mermaids are still like, Rob Zombie, I think, bought one or used one in some films that he made and he has it on display in his house.
1:01:43 Mike Smith? It's still like a thing for cryptozoologists or like cryptid chasers believers that, I don't know, I just thought that was like a really interesting historical account of a mermaid.
1:01:54 Wes Larson? They look like something that would haunt your house if you owned it.
1:01:58 Mike Smith? Yeah. Breathe in that weird like musty rotten scale skin. Ugh. Eight thousand dollars. We could pool our money together.
1:02:07 Wes Larson? We could buy one.
1:02:08 Mike Smith? Buy one.
1:02:09 Jeff Larson? He's spent so much money on that.
1:02:12 Mike Smith? Hundred thousand dollars, dude. And then his son, he just gave it to his, you can tell, I'm sure he was on his deathbed, just like, thinking it was such a magnificent gesture to like, give this to his kid as he was dying and the kid's just like,
1:02:27 Wes Larson? damn it. Fiji mermaid.
1:02:32 Mike Smith? Okay, so that's, that's the second half of the episode done. Any closing thoughts before we get into categories? Did we get all our feelings out about mermaids and manatees?
1:02:41 Wes Larson? I feel like we skipped something like pretty big here, which is, I think part of the reason manatees were associated with mermaids is that early sailors like thought they could have sex with them.
1:02:53 Jeff Larson? Wasn't there a fact that like their vagina is the most similar? Similar to like a woman, human woman's vagina.
1:03:00 Wes Larson? I've read that and I don't know if it's true or not, but.
1:03:03 Mike Smith? Maybe we'll do that in episode two. That never came up in my, I read a lot of accounts and I never heard any vaginal.
1:03:11 Mike Smith? Details.
1:03:12 Wes Larson? That at least was a myth that used to get passed around.
1:03:16 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:03:16 Wes Larson? Um, and that's like, that was supposedly linked to their mermaid like myth too.
1:03:22 Mike Smith? Oh, I'd never heard that actually.
1:03:24 Wes Larson? But that very much could have just been again, like a Reddit myth or something that just kind of popped up because they were associated with mermaids. People like.
1:03:32 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:03:33 Wes Larson? You know, created that, but I had always heard that, that they were like an object of lust. For some of these sailors that had been at, at sea for too long.
1:03:43 Mike Smith? For so long that there's just anything that looks even remotely human like that.
1:03:49 Wes Larson? Yeah, well, anyway.
1:03:54 Wes Larson? Too deep into that.
1:03:55 Mike Smith? Science is primarily observation, right? So maybe we just take a little field trip and start peeping under their skirts.
1:04:01 Wes Larson? I definitely don't need to do that.
1:04:03 Mike Smith? All right, well.
1:04:04 Jeff Larson? It's like Wes always says, you know, if you have enough beers, a three becomes an eight.
1:04:10 Wes Larson? I don't always say that.
1:04:11 Mike Smith? Dude, you say that.
1:04:12 Wes Larson? Never said that once in my life. All right.
1:04:16 Mike Smith? Cool.
1:04:16 Wes Larson? Let's go to categories.
1:04:17 Mike Smith? Let's go to categories then. Uh, the first one, Wes is going first of course, so.
1:04:22 Wes Larson? I'm not.
1:04:23 Mike Smith? Favorite case of something that sounded or looked way more amazing than it actually ended up being. Do you have, you have an answer for that one, Jeff?
1:04:32 Wes Larson? Wes. Go first.
1:04:33 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:04:35 Wes Larson? One, one that I thought of was electric vehicles. Cause I feel like for so long, it was like, man, when are we going to have electric vehicles? Like, when are they going to be launched? You know, they're going to change the world. They're going to make everything so much better. And when they were finally created, now that they're, you know, like much more commonplace. There seems to be such a huge trade off in the energy requirements to produce the batteries and produce the actual vehicles. To the point where they're like not, you have to drive them for so long to where you break even on like your, your energy consumption on an electric vehicle. That they're really not what I always pictured them being as far as like saving us from our energy crisis.
1:05:16 Mike Smith? Right.
1:05:16 Wes Larson? And I just wanted to quickly say like the opposite of that, something that I think we view as being really bad, but it's actually really great is nuclear power. Where there's this huge public sentiment about how bad it is because of the disasters we had in the past. And how hard it used to be to clean up the toxins from producing nuclear power. And it's so clean now and it's so efficient that it could literally like change the way that we use energy. But because of that negative stigma that we already developed. It isn't used, you know, at scale and it really should be. So anyway.
1:05:50 Mike Smith? Every day gets harder for Jeff not to nuke someone.
1:05:54 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:05:55 Mike Smith? It's becoming much more available.
1:05:58 Wes Larson? That seems to be a common sentiment in the world.
1:06:00 Mike Smith? Manatees, dude, manatees are pissed. Any manatee listening right now, it's like, we want those coal power plants still. We don't like that nuclear.
1:06:08 Wes Larson? But they, they have that tight little window because if it gets too warm, then they get all that red bloom and
1:06:13 Mike Smith? True.
1:06:14 Wes Larson? Then they're pissed about that too.
1:06:16 Mike Smith? They're just mad.
1:06:18 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:06:19 Mike Smith? Jeff, you find something good?
1:06:20 Jeff Larson? Yeah. So wait, so it's the, a case of something that sounded and looked way more amazing than it is?
1:06:27 Mike Smith? Than it ended up being, yeah.
1:06:29 Jeff Larson? So the, I thought of like fast food because they always do such a good job advertising and making you want something. My number one all time was when Krispy Kreme brought out shakes. Cause like at that time, Krispy Kreme was like my number one favorite doughnut. And then like, it was still like relatively new, especially when it came to Montana is like exciting. So then I was like, oh my God, they're making shakes. That has to be like the best thing ever made. And it's just way too sweet and so gross. And as a backup, I also had, this is just a guess, but I think sex robots.
1:07:09 Jeff Larson? I don't think people actually, like the idea of a sex robot, I can see how some people got sold on that, you know? But I don't think it like adds up to what they wanted.
1:07:20 Mike Smith? You saw Companion, right? That does not end well.
1:07:24 Wes Larson? Yeah, it didn't.
1:07:25 Mike Smith? And Jack, he was being, he was a good owner.
1:07:27 Wes Larson? He was.
1:07:29 Jeff Larson? Ex Machina.
1:07:30 Mike Smith? Owner is a bad word.
1:07:31 Jeff Larson? It's kinda like that.
1:07:32 Wes Larson? Ex Machina was another one.
1:07:33 Mike Smith? Ex Machina is great.
1:07:34 Wes Larson? Yeah, there you, you know, there hasn't been a real positive sex robot.
1:07:37 Jeff Larson? Troy Doris?
1:07:38 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:07:39 Mike Smith? Yeah. We need to change that narrative, I think. I'm gonna go with, uh, Michael Phelps Racing the Shark. That was, that was nonsense. I got excited for that, too.
1:07:49 Wes Larson? Yeah, was it?
1:07:49 Jeff Larson? You did?
1:07:50 Mike Smith? And in a similar, similar vein, any Floyd Mayweather fight, but specifically the Manny Pacquiao one. Like, I hadn't been interested in a boxing match since, like, Lennox Lewis. And that one pulled me in. I was ready to pay money to watch it, and it was just the worst fight, maybe.
1:08:05 Jeff Larson? That's how I am with like every Jake Paul.
1:08:07 Mike Smith? Jake Paul, yeah.
1:08:08 Jeff Larson? Although, he hasn't knocked a few people out.
1:08:11 Wes Larson? Yeah, I wanna see him get knocked out, though. That's why they're always so disappointing to me. Like, I thought he was gonna get his ass kicked by Tyson, and it was so boring.
1:08:19 Mike Smith? Tyson's like ninety years old.
1:08:20 Wes Larson? I know.
1:08:21 Mike Smith? It's such a racket.
1:08:22 Wes Larson? I had a runner-up, too, and it's, it's one that's gonna betray my age a little bit, but, uh, the Nintendo Glove.
1:08:28 Mike Smith? Oh, the Power Glove, yeah.
1:08:30 Wes Larson? The Power Glove. Like, in the movie The Wizard, when the kid used it, it was like, this is the sickest thing Nintendo's ever done.
1:08:37 Mike Smith? It's so bad.
1:08:38 Wes Larson? And it ended up just being like, a total flop and impossible to use, but it seemed so cool.
1:08:44 Mike Smith? Bill, put that sound cl- sound clip in.
1:08:46 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:08:46 Speaker 03 I love the Power Glove. It's so bad.
1:08:50 Mike Smith? It's so bad. Next category: Your favorite pop culture manatee, dougong, or mermaid?
1:08:55 Jeff Larson? I really wanted to find a manatee for this one, but I just, like, couldn't think of one.
1:09:01 Wes Larson? Hmm.
1:09:02 Jeff Larson? So, I don't get the thing with mermaids. I know they're really popular. I, I think a hundred percent woman's a lot hotter than fifty percent woman, fifty percent fish. So I don't really get the hype. Uh, so, I just went with the movie Nice Guys. When, like, Ryan Gosling's at the party, all drunk, and at the bar, they have, like, the fake mermaid, and he keeps, like, talking about it, and he, like, goes in the tank with them and stuff.
1:09:30 Mike Smith? Right. Oh, man.
1:09:31 Wes Larson? There was one that I came up with for manatees that I liked, uh, which was South Park. And I actually, I, my feelings for South Park have really decreased. Like, I used to really like it, but it's become like way too of a, kind of like a serbic, just like, I think they'd, it's one of those shows where it's like, they make fun of everyone, so it feels like they don't believe in anything. And I think it's had kind of a negative effect on people. But they had an episode, I think it was like a multi-part episode where it was like very anti-family guy. And they learned that the way that Family Guy creates their jokes was manatees just randomly selecting like a noun and a verb and a situation and combining them.
1:10:14 Wes Larson? And that was like how Family Guy produced their humor. And like, you know, no, no, like hate to people that love Family Guy. I never got into that show or any of the Seth MacFarlane stuff really. Because the humor was always just like too like random and meaningless for me. And so really that one like really scratched a spot for me where I was like, yes, this is exactly how I feel about this show. So that was my pick. I had a, I had a runner up too, but I'm gonna let you go first, Mike, in case you took it.
1:10:44 Mike Smith? Probably not. So there was, my sister used to be really into Veggie Tales. So every once in a while, my mom would play like the Veggie Tales CD in the car. And there's a song called Barbara Manatee. And I, I mean, it's just like a kid's song, you know? But for some reason, it made my mom laugh so hard. And she wasn't someone that ever really laughed with any real mirth, but this cracked her up. And I was watching it this morning before we started recording. And it's like, it's pretty, it's kind of a funny ludicrous kind of setup. It's about like a weird special agent that has to like go off and do something. And he's leaving his manatee girlfriend behind because she can't speak French.
1:11:24 Mike Smith? But then she learns to speak French, but she won't go with him unless he comes to the ball with her. But he can't dance. So it's, it's so stupid. But it really is just like a silly little thing that made my mom laugh so hard.
1:11:38 Wes Larson? Your mom's.
1:11:41 Wes Larson? Is Fidget Tail's the one that has like the kind of like Christian slant to it?
1:11:45 Mike Smith? I think it was, yeah. I didn't learn that till like much later, but I think it was like a, yeah, they tried to backdoor in a lot of Christian, and maybe even front door a lot of times. I don't know. I never watched it, but silly songs with Larry. I think he was like a pickle or a cucumber or something. He was singing.
1:12:00 Jeff Larson? You think you, do you think he could backdoor his manatee girlfriend?
1:12:06 Mike Smith? I think he, they've got the anatomy.
1:12:07 Jeff Larson? Is that just front door?
1:12:09 Mike Smith? I think it's very similar, their backdoor to a humans.
1:12:12 Jeff Larson? Interesting.
1:12:13 Mike Smith? Right?
1:12:14 Wes Larson? Those backdoors are pretty similar.
1:12:18 Mike Smith? Okay, so this is one I just.
1:12:21 Wes Larson? Wait, my runner up?
1:12:22 Mike Smith? Oh, yeah, runner up.
1:12:23 Wes Larson? It was the mermaid from Cabin in the Woods, which like I thought that payoff was great. It's one that you kind of wait the whole movie for, and then there's a great.
1:12:31 Jeff Larson? Merman, right?
1:12:32 Wes Larson? Merman payoff.
1:12:32 Mike Smith? Merman from Zoolander?
1:12:34 Jeff Larson? Um, Zoolander's a good one.
1:12:35 Mike Smith? Yeah. We didn't do any dougong stuff, and maybe that's for another episode, but I did think of the Kung Fu dougongs from One Piece, where Luffy's like teaching them all how to fight.
1:12:45 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
1:12:45 Mike Smith? Those guys are so good.
1:12:47 Wes Larson? For people who don't know what a dougong is, it's essentially like the Australian version of a manatee. They're a little bit different, but they.
1:12:53 Mike Smith? Yeah, they have a fluked tail, whereas manatees have like the paddle tail. That's like the big differentiator, but they are different. Yeah. Okay. What musical instrument do you think this animal would play if they were in an orchestra or a band or whatever?
1:13:07 Jeff Larson? I want to hear your answer since you came up with this question. I feel like you have something.
1:13:14 Mike Smith? I, I envisioned them on the turntable, you know, with their flippers on like the two records. And they don't really have a neck, and I always envisioned like Mix Master Mike with the Beastie Boys.
1:13:24 Jeff Larson? Sunglasses on.
1:13:25 Mike Smith? Yeah, doing his little turns. So yeah, I, I think they're on the turntable. I think every band could use one.
1:13:31 Wes Larson? I, and I'm gonna try to say this as sensitively as possible. I think there's an instrument out there that is often played by, by like more rotund people, and it's the tuba.
1:13:42 Mike Smith? Tuba.
1:13:43 Wes Larson? I can't picture a tuba player and not picture them being like on the heavier side. So I very much. Think that a manatee would play the tuba plus that lung capacity. They gotta be on a woodwind.
1:13:55 Mike Smith? That's a good point.
1:13:56 Wes Larson? Capacity like that.
1:13:57 Mike Smith? Yeah, like a bassoon or something.
1:13:59 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:14:00 Jeff Larson? That's a good point. I went with the.
1:14:02 Wes Larson? Yeah, tubas aren't woodwinds.
1:14:03 Mike Smith? The recorder. That's actually great. That's almost perfect. That's better than mine, I think.
1:14:09 Wes Larson? That is good.
1:14:10 Jeff Larson? Is back when I thought they were kinda dumb though.
1:14:15 Mike Smith? They still kinda look a little dumb. So like with a recorder, it just the image works perfectly. Okay. Um, great. We should, we should make a, a manatee band. Turntable or recorder in a tuba.
1:14:28 Jeff Larson? A harmonica would be a good answer.
1:14:30 Mike Smith? I thought of harmonica because they kinda have like the big mustache looking.
1:14:33 Jeff Larson? The lungs.
1:14:34 Mike Smith? Yeah. Okay, last category. Uh, this one I just kinda left open to you. Who do you think someone that's gotten the sauce right now? I'm not even gonna explain what that means to me. I just want you to tell me who you think's got some sauce on them right now. Who's got the sauce, Jeff?
1:14:49 Jeff Larson? You want me? I got a, I got a few.
1:14:51 Mike Smith? Okay.
1:14:52 Wes Larson? Jeff's got his finger on the pulse too.
1:14:54 Mike Smith? Let's go.
1:14:54 Wes Larson? So I, yeah.
1:14:55 Jeff Larson? Yeah. First I'll go with that company Panetier, the like CEO of that.
1:15:01 Wes Larson? No.
1:15:01 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
1:15:02 Wes Larson? I can hate Palantir.
1:15:05 Jeff Larson? Because like if they met me like at a, if I was like going to the bathroom and that guy like comes up to me, he would know, he would probably have like glasses. Tell him everything about me. He would like know I had a disorderly conduct in college. He'd know I've had two ass surgeries. You know, I'd watch like seven thousand hours of One Piece. So we'd be like instant friends.
1:15:27 Wes Larson? Cause they're surveilling all of us.
1:15:29 Jeff Larson? Information already. Yeah. Uh, so that's sweet. He's got some real.
1:15:35 Mike Smith? He's got some sauce.
1:15:36 Jeff Larson? Caitlin Clark.
1:15:38 Wes Larson? Is this like Satan that's saying he has some sauce?
1:15:41 Jeff Larson? Caitlin Clark.
1:15:42 Mike Smith? Jeff.
1:15:42 Jeff Larson? Growing up, you know, bad taste, but all the sports stuff I'd watch WNBA was always like the butt of everyone's joke, right? The W one NBA is more entertaining than the NBA right now. And like I give Caitlin Clark, they all deserve credit for it, but. Katelyn Clark is like to me, like watching Steph Curry, who's my favorite athlete I've ever watched. It's just like you have to tune into every game because you don't know what's gonna happen and it's so much fun. So I think she's got a lot of juice right now.
1:16:14 Mike Smith? She got in a fight. Did you see that yesterday?
1:16:16 Jeff Larson? In fights because like all the other, well, not all the other, but like a lot of the other players are kind of mad that she's getting so much attention. So then I think they like go extra hard at her and then she doesn't stand. It's it's been entertaining.
1:16:30 Wes Larson? I also feel like it's so rare that a college athlete that has that much hype, like lives up to it when they go up to pros. And she she like has, yeah.
1:16:40 Mike Smith? For sure.
1:16:40 Jeff Larson? And then I also want to go with the Rizler.
1:16:45 Mike Smith? He's got some sauce.
1:16:45 Jeff Larson? Rizler's got a lot of juice. I think he's I think he's at peak juice. I don't think he can like age into it very well. I think he's got to milk it. You know, big justice and AJ, the boom guys.
1:16:59 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:17:00 Jeff Larson? I think they're falling, they're going down and Rizler's still going up. Yeah. Rizler's finding out like, you know what? I don't need to hang out with this 55 year old dad I'm not related to. Like I'm famous enough as it is, but he was like getting invited to the Knicks games. Just all he has to do is like rub his chin like.
1:17:22 Mike Smith? So I've done a pretty good job of avoiding any kind of, I didn't know who this kid was. I had didn't know what he looked like, how old he was. I like this YouTube channel. It's like the sneaker shopping on complex where rappers like go and buy shoes or athletes or whoever. Uh, just it's a fun series to me. And recently I watched the one where the Rizler showed up. He was sneaker shopping with complex. He's eight years old. He's like an eight year old kid. He wears size three. I was like, what is this kid doing?
1:17:51 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:17:52 Mike Smith? How is this happening?
1:17:53 Wes Larson? Where are his parents?
1:17:54 Mike Smith? It's so crazy. Yeah, he's got it. Yeah, he is electric. He's got the sauce.
1:18:00 Wes Larson? I picked uh, I picked Timmy Chalamet. Every movie he's done recently, he is just nailed. His performances are great. His interviews are like so good and he seems like a normal person that hasn't just like completely detached from reality. It's not just like movies, like the music that he's produced for these movies. Everything I see from him, it's like, this is just one of those people who is good at everything he does. And that, it's kind of annoying in a way, but also I feel like the way that he was kind of launched to us over time, like doing lots of art house movies and now bigger budget. It's easy to kind of embrace him and be like, yeah, this is our guy. He's got the sauce. We love him.
1:18:41 Jeff Larson? The Knicks games really like showed how famous he is, I think, because it's just like, everyone was just like Timothy Chalamet's courtside. And like, he was literally sitting next to Miles Teller one game. And they like, would cut him out of the frame when they were like showing like Timothy's reaction and everything.
1:19:01 Wes Larson? But there was a, there was a game too where they won.
1:19:03 Jeff Larson? He really is the Moab, Mozam, what, the Moab Beeb. What is it?
1:19:09 Wes Larson? Yeah. Yeah. There was a, one of those games where he went out afterward and was like celebrating with everyone, like let them pull him out of his car. And to me, I just, I can appreciate that. Like that's someone that still understands human connection and they're not just, they don't feel like they're above it. So for me, he's got the sauce.
1:19:30 Mike Smith? I all, I'll always, no matter what happens, I really like him, but uh, he won my heart. When years ago I learned he started a business when he was younger of customizing Nintendo 64 controllers. And I was like, man, if I were cooler, I would have done that. Yeah. I just, I thought that was a really endearing kind of business venture to go on.
1:19:49 Wes Larson? I feel like I would have hated him in high school, but like, but I like him now. Yeah.
1:19:54 Jeff Larson? You've always been a huge Kendall Jenner fan ever since she like stopped the protests, Wes.
1:20:00 Wes Larson? Touching the Pepsi thing. Not that that is that is one mark against him, but you know.
1:20:08 Mike Smith? Everyone has their Kardashian.
1:20:10 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:20:12 Mike Smith? It's his turn. I'm I'm just gonna do a quick little sauce alert. I'm not saying he's got the sauce all the way yet.
1:20:18 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:20:18 Mike Smith? But yesterday, Clips, they reformed Pusha T rapper.
1:20:22 Wes Larson? Ooh, yeah.
1:20:23 Mike Smith? Might have just started the next big rap beef with Travis Scott.
1:20:27 Wes Larson? Okay.
1:20:27 Mike Smith? We're not sure. All I know is that when Pusha gets involved, he's not playing. When he he he released maybe the most scathing diss track since Ether. Uh, on Story of Adedon Drake before Kendrick was even in the picture, really. Uh, dissing on Drake. Pusha killed him. He just annihilated him. So now Travis Scott's up next, maybe. See if he he said Travis, he's like, we got the boys jacking. That's what he responded by saying. He's the boys are jacking. I don't know what that means, but.
1:20:57 Wes Larson? So you're saying Pusha Pusha T has the sauce? I would. Yeah.
1:21:01 Jeff Larson? You think their beef's bigger than MGK and Eminem?
1:21:04 Mike Smith? I think that was. I think so. I do. No, well, mostly I'm just excited Clips are back. Uh, Pharrell's producing again. It's been like 15 years since their last album, and I just love those guys. Malice. I think he's back to Malice. He's not no Malice anymore. He's malicious again, I guess. Uh, but for me, real sauce. I think Ryan Coogler's got the sauce, at least for me.
1:21:27 Wes Larson? Oh, yeah.
1:21:28 Mike Smith? I think after Sinners, I don't care. He's gonna have to put out like six or seven bad movies in a row before I stop being excited to see whatever he does next. Cause he's just been, he's been killing it. So Ryan Coogler's my guy for now.
1:21:40 Jeff Larson? Didn't he do the Creed movies?
1:21:44 Mike Smith? He.
1:21:44 Wes Larson? He did the first one.
1:21:45 Mike Smith? He did the first one, the one that's worth watching. Not my favorite, but.
1:21:49 Jeff Larson? Well, that's an interesting, that's interesting, cause you don't like Michael B. Jordan.
1:21:54 Mike Smith? I know, he keeps using.
1:21:55 Jeff Larson? That's Coogler's guy.
1:21:57 Wes Larson? It's like his muse.
1:21:58 Jeff Larson? He's gonna be in all of his movies.
1:21:59 Mike Smith? It's Black Panther. It's like awesome. It's every Killmonger I think could have.
1:22:02 Jeff Larson? De Niro and Scorsese.
1:22:04 Mike Smith? Yeah, I'm just saying, I think he's got a vision that is both accessible, but also artistic in a way that's not normal and that's enlightening and important in our day and age. And that's just what I've got to say about old Coogler. I think he's dope. Okay. Uh, I think that's it for categories. Do we have any listener questions?
1:22:24 Jeff Larson? Yeah, I got a couple.
1:22:25 Mike Smith? Let's do them.
1:22:26 Wes Larson? Thanks everyone for sending them in. I think you all know, like, our, mine and Jeff's mom has been helping us organize Patreon inbox, so thanks for being so nice to her and...
1:22:35 Jeff Larson? I was thinking, now that we can have like little threads on Patreon, we should just do a questions, like, right? Where we can just have it on Patreon and you guys can resubmit your questions on there.
1:22:47 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:22:47 Jeff Larson? Easier for us to just scan through that.
1:22:50 Wes Larson? I believe I already set up a, like, a thread for questions, but if not, I'll do that right after we're done recording. Just so, but that's a good thing to let everyone know exists. Thank you.
1:22:59 Jeff Larson? So Kylie wanted to say, "Hi there, do you apply the same rules of anthropomorphizing wildlife to orcas? It's been proven that they have emotional and intellectual intelligence, and that they do things like play with food and exact vengeance. Do you think that that means they deserve a different level of understanding and respect when it comes to anthropomorphizing?"
1:23:24 Wes Larson? Uh, no.
1:23:27 Jeff Larson? You don't think intelligence has to do with it?
1:23:29 Wes Larson? Like, if they can have, because like, the more intelligent they are, they probably have more concepts of emotions. Yeah, but like, we're still using words like "probably" and like "they may", you know, like, I think just because I-
1:23:43 Jeff Larson? I think they do.
1:23:45 Wes Larson? I don't think saying "because an animal plays" means we can anthropomorphize it, because like, most animals play, we know that, but we don't know necessarily like, the like, dopamine and every, like, the feelings they're getting from that play is what we can't ever say, like, that's, that's to me where the line has to be drawn, is like, we can never say what is happening to that animal emotionally because of its behavior. Like, no matter what.
1:24:11 Jeff Larson? Devil's advocate, don't we think animals who are closer to human intelligence probably have like, more similar emotions to humans than like-
1:24:22 Wes Larson? Sure.
1:24:23 Jeff Larson? Some dumb ant or something?
1:24:24 Wes Larson? Yeah, I think, I think that's totally, I think that is totally okay to say, like, these animals are probably experiencing life in a more similar way to us than a, than an insect. Sect, but you can't, that's not anthropomorphizing. Anthropomorphizing is when you say, oh, that that orca is super happy right now because it's playing with that salmon.
1:24:45 Jeff Larson? Yeah, but like, I guess like, it, wouldn't it be more correct to say like, an orca is like, really angry at some specific boat as to like, a spider is really angry at like a book or something? You know what I mean?
1:25:00 Wes Larson? Newspaper roll. I think, I think we can take better guesses at mammals that have like a higher level intelligence and stuff at what they're feeling. I think you're right in that those guesses can be made more accurately. But we can never fully say what they are experiencing. We can never fully ascribe our emotions to other animals because we never know. And like, for all we know, bees are experiencing heightened emotions and love and all these different things, but we don't know, like, we just don't know. So that's what I don't like about anthropomorphizing.
1:25:31 Jeff Larson? All right. No, great answer. I was just, you know, I thought it was a good question.
1:25:35 Wes Larson? It is a good question, for sure.
1:25:37 Jeff Larson? All right. So Alley Cat asks, I have a question for Jeff. Would you rather never see any sports ever again, or never see any animal in the wild like ever again? I do watch a lot of sports. I would probably never watch sports again though. Sports are getting, losing it a little bit for me. I feel like it's becoming less about like, proving you're the best and more about just like gaming the system. And then there's like digital advertisements all over everything and like so many commercial breaks. Like I'm getting way more into like continual sports like tennis or like, I even liked watching hockey.
1:26:16 Wes Larson? But you know, unfettered capitalism just slowly ruining everything in our lives. Yeah. I will quickly, sorry, just to go back on something very quickly. Just so everyone knows, I don't think it's wrong to anthropomorphize if you're just like talking about animals. I think it's wrong for like researchers to do it, but I don't think it's wrong for people to do it. So I don't want people to think that that's like bad.
1:26:38 Jeff Larson? I think too, like, I don't wanna speak for you, but I do think you kind of agree with what they were saying. I just don't think you like the word anthropomorphize. Because like, I think it is better to anthropomorphize smarter animals than like dumber animals.
1:26:55 Wes Larson? What I agree with-
1:26:56 Jeff Larson? It makes more sense to do it.
1:26:58 Wes Larson? What I agree with is that if you're on a boat and you're just a person enjoying a boat ride and you see an orca and it jumps through the air and does a flip, you could say like, man, that looked really fun, you know? But like, if you're a researcher and you're researching orcas and you say, this orca has a little salmon hat because it thinks it's cute, then like, you aren't doing a good job of, of like, creating science, you know? And so that's, I just think there's a line for how much we can anthropomorphize within science and research.
1:27:29 Jeff Larson? That's true. I'll agree with that. Okay?
1:27:32 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:27:33 Mike Smith? Cheers to that.
1:27:34 Jeff Larson? Yeah. Alright, so Max Jones Gardner wants to know, it's a Wes, Western.
1:27:40 Mike Smith? Oh, I like that.
1:27:41 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:27:41 Mike Smith? Oh, Western.
1:27:43 Wes Larson? Five years later, we came up with that.
1:27:44 Jeff Larson? And me and Wes can, or me and Mike can answer too, if we have an opinion. But he's from Australia and he says that they have the bad puss, which has long been considered one of the, one of Mother Nature's like most oddball animals. So, in North America, what's our most oddball animal?
1:28:05 Wes Larson? I'd say opossums, for like, well-known animals. They kind of just are like a weird animal that doesn't seem like they really fit in America to me. It's, they seem much more like an Australian animal to me, like a marsupial, naked tail, weird face, just like, I don't know, let me think a little bit more.
1:28:24 Jeff Larson? Do they have like a shell that protects them, kind of like a pangolin or?
1:28:28 Wes Larson? No, so like, another good one would be an armadillo. Armadillos are really strange.
1:28:33 Mike Smith? That's a good one.
1:28:34 Wes Larson? That's a strange oddball animal. Uh, man, I, there's one that I'm forgetting that it's gonna, later, like in, in two hours, I'm gonna be like, damn it, why didn't I say this?
1:28:42 Jeff Larson? Manatees are honestly not that good.
1:28:44 Wes Larson? Manatees are weird, yeah.
1:28:45 Mike Smith? Manatees are a real weird thing.
1:28:46 Jeff Larson? I don't think moose are, like- They have that dangly thing on their neck.
1:28:50 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:28:51 Jeff Larson? Like a turkey.
1:28:52 Wes Larson? Ball sack.
1:28:52 Jeff Larson? And then they have like, they're just like a little bit weird.
1:28:56 Wes Larson? I will, I will say this though. I think um monotremes, which are like platypus and echidnas, mammals that lay eggs. I don't think there's anything weirder than them. Like I think the platypus is maybe the weirdest animal on earth.
1:29:11 Jeff Larson? Yeah, we don't have like anything.
1:29:13 Wes Larson? So it's a high bar, but we have some weird ones. Yeah.
1:29:17 Mike Smith? I think alligators, if you really are just objectively taking a step back, it's like kinda crazy that those exist.
1:29:24 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:29:24 Mike Smith? They're just like big, chomping, scaly, hard dinosaur animals. It's pretty sweet.
1:29:29 Wes Larson? Yeah. I would probably say armadillo though. Armadillos are are pretty weird. Yeah.
1:29:33 Mike Smith? I like armadillos.
1:29:34 Jeff Larson? The thing about alligators, like I agree, but like there's just so many crocodilian that it kind of bled in.
1:29:40 Mike Smith? That's true.
1:29:41 Wes Larson? And they've been around for so long. Good question.
1:29:43 Mike Smith? True that.
1:29:44 Wes Larson? Max.
1:29:44 Jeff Larson? That's all I got.
1:29:45 Wes Larson? All right.
1:29:46 Mike Smith? Thanks for the questions. Thanks for listening to me talk about stuff.
1:29:49 Wes Larson? Thanks, Mike. That was a fun one.
1:29:50 Mike Smith? Sure.
1:29:51 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:29:52 Mike Smith? Oh, sure bud.
1:29:53 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:29:54 Mike Smith? Oh, sure, sure there bud.
1:29:55 Wes Larson? The Fiji mermaid thing to me is very fascinating. I gotta spend some more time on that for sure.
1:30:01 Mike Smith? Spend some money on it, maybe even.
1:30:03 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:30:04 Mike Smith? Yeah. Get you one for your birthday.
1:30:06 Wes Larson? We should raise some money to buy one. We don't need to raise money for for animal conservation. Let's buy mermaids.
1:30:12 Mike Smith? Right. Uh, yeah, no, this was a fun one to put together. I've been been thinking about manatees a lot, so I'm glad to share a little bit of knowledge about them.
1:30:23 Wes Larson? Great. Thanks, Mike. We'll see ya.
1:30:26 Mike Smith? See ya.
1:30:26 Jeff Larson? Love it.
1:30:27 Wes Larson? Love you guys.
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