The Two Brothers and the Biscuit Basin Brown Bear Attack + Other Animal News Stories

On this edition of their animal news roundup, the guys discuss the efficacy of bear spray, a couple of unruly elephants, the real dangers that attend combatting poachers, and much more. Watch here: https://youtu.be/CvTH2i_SsQ4 ~ Ollie Pet Food - Go to https://ollie.com/tooth and use code tooth to get 70% off your first box! Smalls - For a limited time, get 60% off your first order, plus free shipping and free treats for life, when you head to https://Smalls.com/TOOTH Quince - Elevate your summer wardrobe—go to https://quince.com/tooth for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns, now available in Canada. Hims - To get simple, online access to personalized, affordable care for ED, Hair Loss, Weight Loss, and more, visit https://hims.com/TOOTH for your free online visit. ~~ To advertise on the show, contact us! Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/c/toothandclawpodcast ~~ Tooth & Claw is brought to you by QCODE. Support the show and get access to an extensive library of exclusive episodes like this by supporting the show on Patreon or joining the Grizzly Club on Apple Podcasts. For the latest updates on the show and all things wildlife, follow us at toothandclawpod.com and social: Instagram: @ToothandClawPodcast Twitter: @ToothandClawPod Wes: @GrizKid Jeff: @jefe_larson Mike: @mikey3ds Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:12Jeff Larson?

  Hello everyone, welcome to Tooth and Claw Podcast. We have Time Magazine named him "The Bad Boy of Bear Biology," Wes Larson. And I'm his younger brother, Jeff Larson, and then we have Mike Smith with us, who

• 0:32Mike Smith?

  What's up?

• 0:32Jeff Larson?

  He's, he, he likes us some.

• 0:36Wes Larson?

  Yeah, he's a good boy. Beautiful floral background today, Mike.

• 0:41Mike Smith?

  Thanks.

• 0:42Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 0:42Mike Smith?

  In another life, I was a floral, what do they call them?

• 0:45Wes Larson?

  Floral arranger. Yeah.

• 0:48Mike Smith?

  A designer, sure.

• 0:48Wes Larson?

  Florist or floral designer, yeah.

• 0:51Mike Smith?

  My aptitude test that I took in college, that was my, I was a hairdresser and floral arranger.

• 0:57Wes Larson?

  Really?

• 0:57Mike Smith?

  Were my top two career options, yeah.

• 1:00Wes Larson?

  Huh. One of mine said I was supposed to be a cop.

• 1:02Mike Smith?

  Whoa.

• 1:03Wes Larson?

  And I was like, nope, that's actually not true.

• 1:07Jeff Larson?

  His questionnaire, it's like, "Do you like using your power over people?" Wes is like, "Yes."

• 1:16Wes Larson?

  Of course.

• 1:18Mike Smith?

  Who doesn't?

• 1:19Wes Larson?

  I follow some floral designers and sometimes, like our friend Yasmin, sometimes they make things where it's like breathtaking. Like I'll see someone's, especially when they have the video of them putting it together and it's like, "Oh, that's so pretty," you know?

• 1:36Mike Smith?

  Stunning.

• 1:37Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:38Mike Smith?

  So they need like a British Bake Off competition show, but for floral

• 1:41Wes Larson?

  They have that. They have that.

• 1:43Mike Smith?

  What?

• 1:43Wes Larson?

  That exists.

• 1:44Mike Smith?

  Oh, really?

• 1:45Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:45Jeff Larson?

  I follow this account, what, dude, you guys gotta follow it. It's this AI florist design where it's all AI. The flowers are AI. The thing making the AI flowers is AI, and it's more breathtaking than even what Wes was talking about.

• 2:03Mike Smith?

  I don't want to follow that at all. Yeah, it sounds awesome.

• 2:05Jeff Larson?

  There's flowers that like, don't even exist in real life on there.

• 2:09Mike Smith?

  If you're using AI to arrange flowers, stop. Get help. Like that one Michael Jordan meme. Stop. Get some help.

• 2:16Speaker 03

  Stop it. Get some help.

• 2:20Wes Larson?

  Uh, yeah, I just say, you know, if you're using AI for anything, be real careful. Just use it only if you have to, but I would say maybe don't use it at all even. Uh, what else is going on? Not much for me. I'm about, I'm going to Yellowstone tomorrow to do a little bit of guiding. I think a couple of listeners on that trip is gonna be fine.

• 2:40Mike Smith?

  Watch out for that super volcano.

• 2:42Wes Larson?

  Oh, man, Mike, that's my fantasy that it blows up while I'm there. Just get vaporized.

• 2:47Jeff Larson?

  Watch out for that super pack of wolves.

• 2:51Wes Larson?

  I love those wolves. Yeah. Um, I will though. That's also a dream to see a super pack of wolves. But yeah, I would love to be there when it blows up. I think that's the best place in the world to be if that thing goes up.

• 3:05Mike Smith?

  It's a super pack of wolves. What are they lobbying the government for at this point?

• 3:12Mike Smith?

  More elk.

• 3:12Wes Larson?

  Something awful. Yeah.

• 3:14Mike Smith?

  Please ship more elk into Yellowstone.

• 3:16Wes Larson?

  Well, this is our news episode. So if you're a news, a new listener, this is an episode where we go over kind of the stuff that's happened in the news for the past five or six weeks. Things that maybe weren't big enough to merit a whole episode devoted to them, but that were, you know, interesting and newsworthy and that were sent to us by listeners. So each of us is going to go over a few of those stories. It's gonna be fun, guys.

• 3:42Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 3:43Wes Larson?

  And then we're gonna have some categories. All right. Well, do you, do one of you guys want to go first? Mine are kind of, I have, I have like really just one big story this time. So I can go whenever. Maybe I'll go in like the middle, but uh, and then I have a few headlines that I think are fun. Why don't one of you guys go first?

• 4:01Jeff Larson?

  I'll go first. Why not? Uh, did you guys hear about this millionaire big game hunter who got killed by elephants in Africa?

• 4:14Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 4:14Jeff Larson?

  Yeah. So Ernie Dosio, he's 75 and he was in a place that I actually had to Google. Um, called Gabon or I'm saying that with a weird emphasis, I feel like.

• 4:30Wes Larson?

  Gabon is how you say it. Yeah.

• 4:31Jeff Larson?

  Uh, in Central Africa, right? So I hadn't heard of Gabon before, but it's. This country in Africa where he he's like a trophy hunter. So um, he was looking for something uh called yellow backed duciers.

• 4:50Wes Larson?

  Yeah, species of antelope.

• 4:52Jeff Larson?

  Is it like a blue sheep situation where their backs aren't yellow enough?

• 4:56Wes Larson?

  I'm not totally sure. Let's look it up.

• 4:59Jeff Larson?

  Let's look it up.

• 5:00Wes Larson?

  No, it's got a pretty, a pretty yellow back.

• 5:03Jeff Larson?

  Cool. Well, something about Gabon is it's pretty heav- heavily uh forested area of Africa, right? Like, there's a lot of brush, there's a lot of trees, it's denser than most Africa what you like imagine seeing African wildlife in. And they're walking through this and they come up on a herd of female elephants with calves. So um, this calves with, yeah, that's what the article said, but that sounds weird to me, elephant calves.

• 5:38Wes Larson?

  That's right.

• 5:39Jeff Larson?

  Elephant babies.

• 5:40Wes Larson?

  Cabs is right.

• 5:43Jeff Larson?

  And I was kind of thinking, you know, the newest uh Jurassic Park movie with like Scarlett Johansson?

• 5:50Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 5:51Jeff Larson?

  You know where they like are walking through a field and then all of a sudden there's like fifty br- brontosaurus is that just come out of nowhere? It's just like, how did you not see those?

• 6:04Wes Larson?

  Like the biggest dinosaur that's ever exist.

• 6:07Jeff Larson?

  Right, that's gigantic. I was kind of thinking like it'd almost feel like that's like. Elephants seem like the hardest animal just to like sneak up on and like not, yeah, exactly. But like I said, it's dense forest, humans aren't super tall, you know, so they probably just didn't have a good eye line. And once they came up on this herd, like they were still like fairly far distance away. It was about a hundred fifty yards, which you don't want to be that close to a herd of elephants, but it's also not like. Oh, my God, I'm about to die.

• 6:43Wes Larson?

  On foot, on foot, though, I would definitely kind of be concerned if I surprised a herd of elephants.

• 6:49Jeff Larson?

  So they start backing away as they should and these elephants are like.

• 6:56Jeff Larson?

  No, you're on our turf now. You can't just, you can't step up on us and back off. So they, they charge, they stop, they charge again, they stop. And then they charge all the way, make contact with these hunters. And they injure Ernie and another hunter with him, like a brave hunter, drags him out of the way, but then this el- this elephant sees him and she is still enraged, you know, and she gores his, her tusk into him, killing him.

• 7:32Wes Larson?

  Jeez.

• 7:34Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, so elephants, like especially like, I don't think these elephants, they're forest elephants, which is more uncommon. And like, I just don't think they come in contact with humans as often. And they're just, can be really aggressive animals. Like they know how big they are, they had calves. So these elephants really wanna send a message and they ended, they ended up killing Ernie, which is really sad. It's unfortunate, but um, his family was quoted saying like, this is what he loved to do. So he at least died doing what he loved to do.

• 8:10Wes Larson?

  You know, we, we've talked about this before, but there's this myth out there that hippos are like the most dangerous animal in Africa, outside of crocodiles and snakes. But it's probably elephants. Elephants are probably the mammal in Africa that kills the most people. Because like you were just saying, Jeff, they're so big that they don't really have much they have to worry about. So they're pretty unafraid and pretty willing to try and, you know, get rid of a threat. And so that's what, that's what happened here. And um, yeah.

• 8:42Jeff Larson?

  And I think even worse is like, they do still have to be protective because of lions in a lot of these areas, you know? So even though they're so big and unafraid, they still are like defensive. Because they like do still need to especially protect calves, you know?

• 9:01Wes Larson?

  And people, like they, they have a fear of people now because they are hunted and they, you know, they get into a lot of conflict.

• 9:07Jeff Larson?

  And like I was saying, Ernie, this is what he liked to do. You know, he has, he's gone out there. He's killed lions. He has like really big elk that he's killed where he's from in California. Um, and he's just kind of like later in life, started collecting more and more different types of species of animal and Africa's really good location for that. And I was thinking it's kind of like what mom says to me and Wes with tattoos. You don't actually like your tattoos because you keep wanting to get more, right? And eventually you're just bragging about how many tattoos you have of all different types,

• 9:47Jeff Larson?

  rather than just getting local tattoos and appreciating the beauty of your local tattoos. You're needing tattoos from all over the world. So I think that's kind of similar to what happened here.

• 10:02Wes Larson?

  Yeah, I, it's interesting. I think that's not a terrible comparison.

• 10:07Mike Smith?

  Good theory.

• 10:08Wes Larson?

  I, uh, when this happened, there's a lot of people online again that were just like, oh, he got what he deserved, yada, yada, yada. And I don't, I think it's a lot more nuanced than that. And I have a colleague that recently put out a, a full film on trophy hunting in Africa and how it actually is in a lot of ways, in a lot of the countries that it's done. It's a, a big boon to the economy. It funds a lot of the conservation work. Often, you know, some of the meat is given to local communities. So it is more complicated than just kind of good and evil. I, my personal feeling is just like, I think you have to look at your motivations and how you feel when you're hunting.

• 10:52Wes Larson?

  And if you are like killing something out of bloodlust or like collection or whatever, then maybe you're not doing it for the right reasons. But I do think it's kind of wrong to just jump in and say this guy was a bad guy. And he's a millionaire, not a billionaire. So we can't say that he's bad just by how much money he has.

• 11:10Mike Smith?

  Yeah, you're a millionaire, right, Wes?

• 11:11Wes Larson?

  I am not a millionaire. No.

• 11:16Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 11:17Jeff Larson?

  No, and I think where I've changed with that is just like, I, I just don't want people to be impressed by it anymore. Like I think it shouldn't be impressive that someone has like. So many different taxidermied animals from all over the world in their home.

• 11:36Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 11:36Jeff Larson?

  But that's just a personal opinion. Some people think it's impressive and you know, that's just how I feel about it now.

• 11:43Wes Larson?

  And I do think.

• 11:43Jeff Larson?

  It's impressive.

• 11:44Wes Larson?

  I think on the flip side too, when people are upset about this kind of thing, it's also like, you know what? This is part of the deal with hunting, like there's some danger associated with it, especially if you're big game hunting in Africa. That's part of the reason these guys like this is it feels like an adventure and there's danger. And that's just kind of something you have to accept. Mike, what are you doing with the spatula?

• 12:07Mike Smith?

  This is my mic set up for today. Sorry.

• 12:10Wes Larson?

  I should have led with that maybe. Yeah. Okay, interesting. Mike is holding a spatula with a tiny microphone connected to the end of it.

• 12:18Jeff Larson?

  Well, right after this, he's going on a cooking podcast.

• 12:23Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 12:23Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 12:24Jeff Larson?

  Do his favorite.

• 12:25Mike Smith?

  Flip some pancakes.

• 12:25Jeff Larson?

  What's your best dish if you got invited on one of those?

• 12:28Mike Smith?

  Uh, no, I make a mean, uh, bacon? No, hold on. Wait, give me a bit. Give me a second here.

• 12:38Mike Smith?

  I made a lemon velvet cake. That was real good. Oh my gosh, you guys, everyone's invited over. Come on over. I got something for you.

• 12:45Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Okay. Uh, Mike, you want to go next?

• 12:48Mike Smith?

  I do. So this is maybe a pretty good follow up to Jeff's story and um, I'm gonna get, do a little bit of a double header here. Uh, for a couple of different reasons, just because I wanted to shout out a group of people who are doing some like really awesome, albeit dangerous work. And also just as a bit of a, a warning in general, I guess. But I wanted to start with a stat, if you'll allow me.

• 13:15Wes Larson?

  Yeah, allowed.

• 13:16Mike Smith?

  So according to the Game Ranger Association of Africa, at least 384 wildlife rangers were killed between 2012 and 2020. And I wanted to talk about a couple that happened just within this past month. Uh, that are kind of, that are interesting and tragic to me all at once. So this was reported on April 19th. I got most of this information from a People Magazine article. They're doing good work sometimes. Uh, corroborated by many other sources, but I thought this one just gave the most insight into this person's personal life, which I thought was the most interesting angle of this article. So this is about 65 year old Gary Freeman.

• 13:56Jeff Larson?

  I got it mixed up earlier. People Magazine is the one that called you bad boy a bear biologist.

• 14:05Mike Smith?

  Time was the sexiest bear biologist.

• 14:07Jeff Larson?

  Oh, no, he was top 10 hottest bear biologist.

• 14:12Wes Larson?

  Bear biologist, they're just like us. They have photos of me like drinking a coffee and stuff.

• 14:17Mike Smith?

  Yeah. Do you know what my favorite sexiest man of the year photo is? Is when Harrison Ford won it in like 1999 or something and he was wearing all denim. And he had kind of a goofy little haircut and an earring in. It's just iconic. I love that picture. Man, I love Harrison Ford so much. Not even that, like even then I was still like, yeah, he's still the sexiest man. I think that's maybe what they were trying to do is prove that even through the

• 14:43Wes Larson?

  Doesn't matter.

• 14:44Mike Smith?

  The all denim. He had like a flat top. Just incredible work. Okay. Anyway, we're talking about 65 year old Gary Freeman. So he was leading a small group of tourists at Klasiri, private nature reserve. I believe that's how you say that, Klasiri. And this is in South Africa. And an elephant actually charged out of the bush towards him and his group too. So much like, maybe not all the way similar to what Jeff's story was like, but pretty similar here. So, he's a very experienced safari tour guide and he dedicated his whole life, like he spent every waking moment, it seemed to the protection of elephants. He loved elephants. He was just doing everything he could to make sure that

• 15:29Mike Smith?

  the poachers weren't getting at them, that they were being respected and still had their land to operate in and all that. And he would connect with these tour groups that he led, just to the point where like everybody loved him. They were inviting him to weddings, future family gatherings and stuff. They're like, we've known you for a day, but you want, we want you at all these things.

• 15:47Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 15:48Mike Smith?

  And he was actually quoted once ominously quoted as saying, he would rather be killed by an elephant than ever shoot one.

• 15:57Wes Larson?

  Uh oh, foreshadowing.

• 15:59Mike Smith?

  The six-ton elephant is what the size of this elephant was, started charging at his group, and he stepped in front of it to try to break this charge. He actually, he stayed true to his word. The elephant covered the ground quickly. He never fired a shot and it basically trampled him unimpeded at that point.

• 16:17Wes Larson?

  That's amazing. I like, I don't think I could do that. Even if it was an animal I loved that much, I think I'd shoot it, you know?

• 16:23Mike Smith?

  I know. Yeah, I was wondering maybe even just like a shot in the air or over the elephant's back or something, but the, the people in his group said, and the investigators afterwards were just like, yeah, never, the, all the bullets were still in the gun, like nothing, no discharge or anything. So the other people in his group, they tried to usher him to a safe spot so medical assistance could arrive, but by the time they did, he was just pronounced dead on the spot. So there's no real shot at surviving the encounter. So that's part one of what I wanted to talk about. The next one, pretty eerily similar, involving a different animal, also reported late April, this time by Outdoor Life.

• 17:05Mike Smith?

  And this one's about 58-year-old conservationist Schumann von Yarsfeld. And he was out this, in the Samara Karu Reserve in South Africa. So again, South Africa. And he was tracking a black rhino that he and his private security firm were trying to protect from poachers. And the team knew that they were closing in on it. It had an ankle monitor, a GPS tracker on it, so they knew they were close. So when the black rhino...

• 17:34Mike Smith?

  Show it off, dude.

• 17:35Jeff Larson?

  The ankle monitor?

• 17:37Mike Smith?

  How many days do you have left?

• 17:39Jeff Larson?

  Joey Chesna, he's competing this year with the ankle monitor.

• 17:44Mike Smith?

  Yeah, is he really? What did he do?

• 17:47Jeff Larson?

  He, he slapped someone at a bar.

• 17:50Wes Larson?

  Yeah. It's like the most American thing ever. He's wearing an ankle monitor at a hot dogging contest on 4th of July.

• 17:58Mike Smith?

  Yeah. Anyway, they knew they were getting close because of this monitor it was wearing. But when it suddenly burst out from the brush, Schumann didn't even have time to react and it actually gored him. Impaled him with one of its horns.

• 18:12Wes Larson?

  Wow.

• 18:12Mike Smith?

  Uh, before retreating back into the reserve. And again, by the time-

• 18:17Wes Larson?

  To have happen with them.

• 18:19Mike Smith?

  Either one.

• 18:19Wes Larson?

  That's the, the dangerous part, you know?

• 18:22Mike Smith?

  They have two horns, neither of them, of which you want to go through your body.

• 18:26Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 18:27Mike Smith?

  Unless you're trying to get your ear pierced and it goes through your ear lobe.

• 18:30Wes Larson?

  Just perfectly through your ear lobe, just the very tip, sure.

• 18:34Mike Smith?

  Right.

• 18:35Wes Larson?

  Just the tip.

• 18:36Mike Smith?

  So, again, no shots were fired, the rhino was left unharmed and it just retreated back into the safety of the reserve. And tributes came pouring in from friends and coworkers and everyone was just like, "This dude was awesome. He was such a good guy. He worked tirelessly to protect these animals from poachers." And he was really, really good at doing it. So, it's just one of those really like, kind of tragic ironies where two men who lived their lives in service of these animals were killed by the animals. And I think, I don't want to, you know, put words in the mouths of the dead, but like, maybe in some kind of way, there's a beauty in that, you know, kind of like-

• 19:16Wes Larson?

  It's kind of poetic.

• 19:18Mike Smith?

  A little bit, but, um, I just thought that these articles said something very, one of them said something poignant by the end where it was like, "This is largely thankless and often dangerous work that these anti-poachers and security firms are doing down there." It's like not the most financially rewarding job and it's dangerous on both sides, the animals and honestly like armed poachers, you know, they get in shootouts and armed conflicts with these people. So, it's just a scary situation to be in, but doing it for a good cause. So, I thought it was worth a moment to shout out the good work that they're doing.

• 19:54Wes Larson?

  For sure.

• 19:55Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, that sucks. I hope that rhino gets poached now.

• 20:00Mike Smith?

  Don't say that.

• 20:01Wes Larson?

  I do not.

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• 20:52Speaker 04

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• 21:11Wes Larson?

  All right, are we ready for mine?

• 21:14Mike Smith?

  I guess.

• 21:15Wes Larson?

  So, yeah, they are kind of both, both a little heavy and a little bit of this is going to be a little repetitive, but we're going to have to talk about it. So there, there's been a lot of news about Grizzlies in, in the recent news. And a lot of kind of fear mongering too, which is something that hasn't really happened in a bit for Grizzlies. It's a little discouraging to see. But I want to talk first about the two incidents that have led to this fear mongering. And then we're going to go into it a little bit. We're going to go into bear spray a little bit because there's been a lot of chatter about bear spray as well. But first, let's talk about the incidents. So on May 4th, two brothers were hiking near the Mystic Fall Trails by Biscuit Basin and Yellowstone National Park.

• 22:02Wes Larson?

  They were attacked by what was most likely a female grizzly bear with cubs. I saw in some places, one of the brothers was reported as 14 and other places, he was reported as 15. And the other one was 26.

• 22:16Mike Smith?

  Where did this happen?

• 22:18Wes Larson?

  This was on this near Biscuit Basin on the Mystic Falls Trail.

• 22:23Mike Smith?

  That sounds so much like a Candy Land, like, you know, when you're playing the board game. It's like the starting zone is Biscuit Bay.

• 22:32Wes Larson?

  Yellowstone has some great names for their different, like, uh.

• 22:35Mike Smith?

  Soda River.

• 22:37Wes Larson?

  Yeah, the different like geyser basins and stuff. Okay. Anyway, uh, these two victims were found by a tourist from Maryland. This tourist was hiking on the same trail and they'd seen grizzly tracks on the trail. Then they stumbled on a bloody hat and a bloody watch. And then they heard one of the brothers calling for help.

• 22:58Jeff Larson?

  Having a watch like on the ground is kinda like watches are really fascinating to you.

• 23:05Wes Larson?

  Yeah, like if you know, if the watch got torn off, yeah, something bad happened. Yeah, a hat could just be like, oh, someone dropped a hat.

• 23:12Jeff Larson?

  Can fall off pretty easy.

• 23:13Wes Larson?

  Yeah, but if it's covered in blood, you kind of are like, this probably didn't just fall off. Anyway. At first he thought it was a prank, uh, this person calling for help, but when he got a better look at the victim, he knew that it was really serious. Uh, he called for help and then he stayed with this victim, put a T-shirt over him in an effort to help keep him warm. A helicopter arrived and it took both of the brothers to a hospital in Idaho where they, uh, at last I could see they're both still listed as being critical and serious condition. And, uh, the park has been really tight lipped about this encounter, this attack.

• 23:52Wes Larson?

  And for me, that makes me think that it was very serious, that these, these two got torn up really badly. Um, I've heard some things that have kind of trickled out and it does sound like a very intense, serious mauling. The entire area was closed to hikers and visitors until recently, those restrictions were lifted. Jeff, our family was hiking right, right in that area a couple of days ago. Uh, when they sent photos, I was like, oh, you were right by where those guys got mauled, but, um. I think the park probably has a pretty good idea of which bear was responsible. But I also think they probably aren't going to try and remove her or take her cubs or anything.

• 24:36Wes Larson?

  Because this feels like cub defense and something that's well within her natural behavior. It's definitely like an elevated response to a threat. This isn't usually what you expect, especially of Yellowstone bears that are somewhat habituated to people. But uh, still within her natural behavior. So I don't think they'll be killing her. But you know TBD on that. They haven't released yet whether or not bear spray was used. But speaking of that, a day earlier, that same week, a hiker disappeared while hiking the Mount Brown overlook trail in the Lake McDonald area of Glacier National Park. Mike, Mount Brown? That's like your favorite mountain ever.

• 25:15Mike Smith?

  McDonald's too.

• 25:20Wes Larson?

  On May 6th, a few days later, search and rescue found human remains about 50 feet from the trail in a densely forested patch of timber. The body was identified as that of missing hiker Anthony Polio, who was 33 and lived in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Again, it's thought that it was most likely a female with cubs that was involved in this attack. And on this one, they did find a fully emptied can of bear spray near the victim. Once again, the entire area was closed to visitors. I'm guessing it's been reopened by now, but I'm not totally sure. And this is actually the first fatality in Glacier National Park since 1998. So the first one in about 30 years.

• 26:01Wes Larson?

  So even though people are like getting pretty, you know, up in arms about this stuff, just like put that in context. You know, it has been a while since something like this has happened.

• 26:12Wes Larson?

  So we're going to have a little discussion. Apart from the obvious tragedy to these victims and their families. A big downside to these incidents happening so close to each other in the same week is that it's led to a lot of wind in the sails of people that think grizzlies both need to be delisted in the lower 48. And then people that think bear spray doesn't work. So let's talk about that second one first, and then we'll talk about the first one.

• 26:39Wes Larson?

  I think we do here on Tooth and Claw need to do a slightly better job about how we talk about bear spray. And the main thing I think we need to correct just a little bit is to make sure that people understand that this is not a perfect deterrent. Um, there are situations where it doesn't work. It should make you feel a lot more confident when you're in grizzly country, but ultimately you're still taking a risk if you recreate around grizzlies. If you have bear spray, if you have like a machine gun, if you have grenades, like it doesn't matter what your deterrent is, you're still taking a risk. There's always the chance that your deterrent won't work.

• 27:20Jeff Larson?

  You know Jake Gyllenhaal in the movie Bubble Boy?

• 27:23Wes Larson?

  Yeah, a big old bubble.

• 27:25Jeff Larson?

  That suit he makes where he can like go outside?

• 27:28Wes Larson?

  We've talked about the guy that made the bear suit, you know?

• 27:30Mike Smith?

  Troy.

• 27:31Wes Larson?

  It didn't work very well. Your risk would be lower in a bear suit or with a good deterrent like bear spray, but there's still a risk. That's just part of recreating around grizzly bears. But since these attacks, there's been people that have written these big essays that have gotten a lot of attention, unfortunately, uh, cause I think they're irresponsible about how bear spray doesn't actually work. They do a lot of cherry picking when it comes to science and quotes.

• 27:55Jeff Larson?

  They say it doesn't work, just like.

• 27:58Mike Smith?

  Blanket statement.

• 27:59Wes Larson?

  Um, or they say that it works like a third of the time, which is grossly like, you know, wrong. And they're picking a lot of this stuff from Tom Smith, my mentor, because Tom is very candid about how he feels and sometimes his quotes get misrepresented. If you were to ask Tom today, if bear spray will always work, he's going to be the first to tell you no, but then he's going to say for the vast majority of people, it's by far the best deterrent due to its ease of use and the margin for error that it allows. Like this is a product that you don't have to be perfect with for it to still work effectively. Um, and then the, the best part about it and the thing that Tom for sure would say is that you're not killing the

• 28:41Wes Larson?

  bear, you know, this bear is probably just acting naturally responding to a threat and it gets to leave the encounter as well. So the thing about. About this glacier one is people are saying that this can of spray was empty and that means that it didn't work. But no one was with this guy. We don't know what happened. There's so many things that could have happened that we don't know. He could have been attacked. And sprayed the can, you know, wildly up in the air or something. We just don't know. So an empty can and a dead body doesn't tell us if it was used properly and it's wrong to assume that it just didn't work. A little disclaimer, if you were going into grizzly country, you should use the deterrent that you feel most comfortable with.

• 29:20Wes Larson?

  If you think that's a gun, I would do a bit of soul searching and make sure that's not just like a power trip or an ego thing. Because guns do give you that feeling, you know, when you pick up a gun, it makes you feel powerful. And I understand that and I have, I have.

• 29:37Jeff Larson?

  That's why you want to be a cop.

• 29:39Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 29:42Wes Larson?

  Jeff, you're our gun guy. You're pretty good with guns. I'm pretty good with guns. What would you go to with, you know, in a bear encounter first?

• 29:50Mike Smith?

  Grenade.

• 29:50Wes Larson?

  If you had a gun on your hip.

• 29:52Jeff Larson?

  Bazooka.

• 29:53Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Okay. If you had a gun on your hip and a can of bear spray, which one are you grabbing first?

• 30:00Jeff Larson?

  Um, no, I would, I don't think I'd even think, I don't honestly think it'd even be a decision. I think I would just grab the bear spray. Me too. I think I'd forget about the gun. Gun would be more of a last gasp type thing where in the movies, the bear like forgets I have a gun and right before he gives this like speech before he kills me, I pull it out from under me.

• 30:25Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking too.

• 30:31Wes Larson?

  No, but I was thinking similarly, when I carried a gun in Yellowstone to like kind of high pressure situations. It was for if I was being mauled, I would use that gun, but not just like in my first line of defense. That being said, the most important thing, if you're recreating a grizzly bear country is to have a plan. Get in a group whenever possible, make noise, carry deterrent, know how to use it and just be smart. Pay attention to your surroundings. Don't take any chances that you need to take, that you don't need to take. Like, we talked about this last week with ravens. If you're walking and you see a carcass and there's a bunch of ravens around, don't go explore it. You know, just be smart in grizzly bear country. That's the most important thing. Next would be having a good deterrent.

• 31:16Jeff Larson?

  That's the thing I have the hardest time with.

• 31:19Mike Smith?

  Intelligence.

• 31:20Wes Larson?

  No, being smart. Yeah. All right. So quickly, I want to talk about the people, including the governor of Montana, who are saying that these attacks just go to show that grizzlies need to be delisted and that there's too many bears. And I'm not surprised our governor thinks that. He's a multimillionaire from New Jersey. No, it's Gianforte. He's not from Montana. Personally, I think having a healthy population of grizzly bears on the landscape is what makes Montana special. That feeling of wilderness is what brings people to western Montana to begin with. And a big part of that feeling comes from having grizzly bears around. If that doesn't appeal to you, maybe Montana isn't for you.

• 32:03Wes Larson?

  You know, maybe there's plenty of beautiful places that kind of look like Montana, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, that don't have grizzly bears. They don't have big predators that you really need to worry about. But, you know, lions make places in Africa feel wild. Tigers make India feel special. Great whites give the ocean this kind of beautiful sacred feeling. And grizzly bears are important to the overall spirit of places like Montana. Now, I want to read a quote from a colleague of mine, Casey Anderson, who has spent-

• 32:34Jeff Larson?

  Wait, Mike, are you raising your hand on purpose?

• 32:37Wes Larson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 32:38Mike Smith?

  Yeah, I just, I was waiting for Wes to call on me.

• 32:40Wes Larson?

  No, no, go ahead. Mike, go first before I read this quote. Yeah.

• 32:44Mike Smith?

  I'll lower my hand real quick.

• 32:45Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 32:45Mike Smith?

  Okay.

• 32:46Wes Larson?

  Sorry.

• 32:47Mike Smith?

  So, what does it behoove people like the governor, or whoever this guy is? Like, why do people want them delisted? What does that, what benefit does that serve people in their position?

• 32:58Wes Larson?

  Just like everything, it's been highly politicized now, and they want to be able to hunt grizzly bears. Like, it's part of-

• 33:06Mike Smith?

  It's a hunting thing, then.

• 33:08Wes Larson?

  It's a hunting thing, and it's like a predator control thing. It's part of like ranchers and stuff that don't want to have to deal with grizzly bears. And it's part hunters that want to be able to kill them. And- It is politicized unfortunately, and that I think that's the reason why so many bear biologists, including myself, are really hesitant to push for delisting. Even though we have these really now healthy populations of grizzly bears in the Greater Yellowstone and the Northern Continental Divide, it's so politicized right now that if they're delisted, we're worried that it's going to be the same kind of view toward wolves where they're just gonna like allow people to kill 20 grizzly bears or you know, whatever they they decide to do.

• 33:50Wes Larson?

  So that's why there's so much hesitance among the scientific community to push for delisting right now is the political environment.

• 33:58Mike Smith?

  Gotcha.

• 33:59Wes Larson?

  Um, okay, so Casey Anderson is, um, he's not a bear biologist, but he has probably spent more time around grizzly bears than anyone I know. And he recently had a really good quote about the pushback on these attacks. And I did just want to read it verbatim because I think it's really beautiful and it really sums up how I feel. You can find him on Instagram at Grizzly Guy. Um, anyway, this is what he says.

• 34:24Jeff Larson?

  Who had their name first, Grizkid or Grizzly Guy?

• 34:27Wes Larson?

  Uh, I had mine first. Yeah. Yeah.

• 34:31Jeff Larson?

  Dude, props to you for being the bigger man.

• 34:34Wes Larson?

  He's, he's a good guy. All right. Um, so he's talking about these recent attacks. He says, "Every one of these situations is tragic, but we also need to ask an honest question. Why were those people here in the first place? Because they wanted to experience something wild. Montana, Yellowstone, Glacier, these places still hold something rare in the modern world. And part of the reason they feel different is because grizzly bears still exist here. They remind us that this land is not fully tamed, that nature still has teeth, that we are visitors, not controllers. There are plenty of beautiful mountain places with elk trails, rivers, and scenery that don't have grizzlies. But when you step into true grizzly country, you feel something different deep in your bones.

• 35:18Wes Larson?

  You feel alert, humble, alive. And there are a lot of people right now trying to dilute that wilderness. Let's stop trying to tame the West. Let's honor it for what it is, including its danger. Because that danger, that uncertainty, that ruggedness, that is part of what makes these places special. It's part of what regulates them too. Not every place is supposed to feel like a city park with a parking lot every hundred yards and zero risk." And the truth is, if grizzly bears disappeared tomorrow, the next complaint wouldn't stop. It'd become too many people at trailheads. Wildness itself is what limits saturation. Some people choose easier places, some choose wilder ones. That balance is natural, too. Not every landscape is supposed to be comfortable. Some places are supposed to remain truly wild.

• 36:04Wes Larson?

  And I agree with that, like full, you know, I put my full support behind that. We live in a world where you get to pick your poison when it comes to how you recreate outside. If you decide to share space with grizzly bears, you need to like prepare for the eventualities that come with that, the risks that come with that. And you need to have a plan and be properly prepared. So just one last thought before we go to our next one. This push for delisting is so the states can hunt and manage grizzly bear population numbers. Both of these attacks happened in national parks. So even if delisting happened, there would still be like parks aren't managed by hunting and stuff. So these incidents still would have happened.

• 36:49Wes Larson?

  Um, it makes that whole argument counterintuitive.

• 36:52Jeff Larson?

  National parks.

• 36:53Wes Larson?

  Yeah, exactly. Start allowing hunting in national parks. Um, it's just counterintuitive.

• 36:59Jeff Larson?

  It's sad, it's sad, it's always sad. All of our stories so far have been, you know, it's just too bad, but like,

• 37:07Jeff Larson?

  you know, that's what.

• 37:08Wes Larson?

  That's part of what makes having wild things beautiful.

• 37:10Jeff Larson?

  The world more exciting to have wildlife that can be dangerous, you know?

• 37:14Wes Larson?

  Yeah. All right, who wants to go next?

• 37:18Jeff Larson?

  Uh, I do.

• 37:19Mike Smith?

  I think Jeff better. Is the name Grizzly Boy taken, Griz Boy?

• 37:24Wes Larson?

  Probably. I feel like everything's taken at this point.

• 37:27Jeff Larson?

  Griz Baby?

• 37:29Mike Smith?

  Yeah. Griz Dude?

• 37:33Mike Smith?

  I'm the Grizzly Dude.

• 37:36Wes Larson?

  Griz Boy, yeah, Griz Boy is taken. Shoot. Yeah.

• 37:41Jeff Larson?

  I'll go, I'll go with this one. Let's get out of the death for a second.

• 37:46Wes Larson?

  Yeah. I think Griz Baby might be, might be available if anyone wants.

• 37:51Mike Smith?

  Jeff, it's all yours.

• 37:54Jeff Larson?

  Wes.

• 37:56Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 37:57Jeff Larson?

  You remember, so you're a bear expert, but you're also a bit of a celebrity expert. Like you, you know, a lot of pop culture facts and.

• 38:08Wes Larson?

  Yeah, I, I have.

• 38:09Jeff Larson?

  Trivia.

• 38:09Wes Larson?

  I like two things stick in my brain really well, and that's animal facts and like movie facts. So.

• 38:16Jeff Larson?

  Sure.

• 38:16Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 38:17Jeff Larson?

  So, um, hopefully you remember, you remember Will Smith when he slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars?

• 38:25Wes Larson?

  I watched that live. Yeah.

• 38:27Jeff Larson?

  What, what would have happened if no one stopped him and he is allowed to continue slapping?

• 38:33Wes Larson?

  I don't think anyone did stop him, but uh, I think he would have just kept slapping him based on what you're trying to, to get.

• 38:41Jeff Larson?

  And Chris would have eventually died.

• 38:44Wes Larson?

  Died. Yeah.

• 38:45Jeff Larson?

  If he got slapped for too long without.

• 38:48Wes Larson?

  Sure, like a few hours of slaps. Yeah.

• 38:51Jeff Larson?

  Right. Well, Wes, similar, similarly, um, there was someone named Kevin Deal and had he not stopped an attack by a mountain lion on his seven year old Akita dog named Sasha, Sasha would have died.

• 39:12Wes Larson?

  Yeah, I think that is, that's exactly the analogy I would have made too.

• 39:19Jeff Larson?

  So, so Deal was upstairs and I can only assume he was watching the game show, Let's Make a Deal because of his name. And he says he heard a scream that could have only been a dog that was under attack, right?

• 39:37Wes Larson?

  A scream?

• 39:38Jeff Larson?

  It was a piercing scream. Yeah, that's what he said. It's his quote, not mine.

• 39:42Wes Larson?

  Oh, interesting.

• 39:43Jeff Larson?

  You don't think dogs can scream, just bark?

• 39:47Wes Larson?

  I would have used just, yeah, that word bark, but no.

• 39:49Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 39:51Wes Larson?

  Howl. Sure. That's fine. I don't want to, yeah, this is his story to tell.

• 39:55Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, I think if a dog's getting attacked by a mountain lion, I don't know what noise that is, but it's not a bark.

• 40:03Wes Larson?

  The mountain lion could scream. Is that more of a screamer? Uh, yeah, they scream.

• 40:09Jeff Larson?

  Kevin runs downstairs, he runs outside and he opens the door and he's face to face with a large mountain lion that's pinning his ninety-five pound dog to the ground. The dog has like zero control. It's like one of the, the, what read, what am I trying to say? It's like one of the UFC fighters who just like tries to get someone on the ground and hold him there for all five minutes, you know?

• 40:37Wes Larson?

  Submission, right, yeah.

• 40:38Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, the dog just can't move at all.

• 40:41Wes Larson?

  Okay.

• 40:42Jeff Larson?

  And Kevin says its arms were wrapped around the dog's waist, around her belly, and Sasha's head was in the mouth of the mountain lion when he walked out.

• 40:52Wes Larson?

  Ooh, check engine.

• 40:54Jeff Larson?

  Right. So he starts yelling and kicking the mountain lion saying like, "Get the F out of here," is what he said to it, you know?

• 41:06Wes Larson?

  Verbatim?

• 41:06Jeff Larson?

  I think you can go ahead and use the full F word there if I'm in his shoes, but I don't want to nitpick. He successfully gets rid of this mountain lion with a really hard kick and saying, "Get the F out of here."

• 41:18Wes Larson?

  Yeah, whoa.

• 41:19Jeff Larson?

  Now, real interesting part of this is there's a picture of Sasha's head after the attack. Sasha got pretty, you know, beat up and one of the mountain lion's teeth was like stuck in the skull of the dog.

• 41:34Wes Larson?

  Wow.

• 41:35Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, it's like a pretty big tooth, dude.

• 41:37Wes Larson?

  It's a cool little souvenir though.

• 41:39Jeff Larson?

  Right. So I saw pictures, you know, it looks like Sasha's gonna be just fine.

• 41:46Wes Larson?

  Good.

• 41:46Jeff Larson?

  And probably have some battle scars now, but uh, yeah, kinda crazy.

• 41:51Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 41:52Jeff Larson?

  Gotta admit, that's kinda crazy, Wes.

• 41:54Wes Larson?

  That is kinda crazy, yeah.

• 42:00Wes Larson?

  Mike?

• 42:01Mike Smith?

  Yeah, I got you, Wes. So this is a real interesting one. I thought this one was pretty fun. Spoiler alert, no one dies. I wouldn't say it's fun if someone died, I promise.

• 42:14Wes Larson?

  Yeah, I'm done with ones where people died too.

• 42:17Mike Smith?

  Yeah, unless it's someone I like knew and hated, and there's only one of those people.

• 42:21Wes Larson?

  In the world?

• 42:22Mike Smith?

  Nolan, if you ever die by an animal, I'm gonna call it fun.

• 42:28Mike Smith?

  I hope he listens. Okay, so this was reported on April 22nd by Surfer Magazine. And this concerns one 30-year-old Sydney native, Guy Rowells. His name is Guy.

• 42:43Wes Larson?

  Love that name. It's a great name for a guy.

• 42:46Mike Smith?

  I, or a gal.

• 42:48Wes Larson?

  Sure.

• 42:49Jeff Larson?

  That's confusing.

• 42:50Mike Smith?

  Right.

• 42:51Jeff Larson?

  It's a great name for a guy. It is his name.

• 42:54Mike Smith?

  Yeah, it's quite literally, right? Guy was out on a surf trip with his dad down in Fiji. They went to a famous surf spot called Cloud Break. Maybe the surfers out there will be familiar with that.

• 43:05Wes Larson?

  I've heard of that one, actually. It's like one of the ones that's like way out in the ocean, but it's like a perfect,

• 43:11Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 43:12Wes Larson?

  There's just perfect sets and beautiful waves out there.

• 43:15Mike Smith?

  That's actually a pretty important factor in this story, Wes. So, good job.

• 43:20Wes Larson?

  Thanks.

• 43:20Mike Smith?

  Keep contributing with good things like that. Good interjections. Jeff, you can try. Okay, so 30 minutes into their first day out in the water, he suddenly feels this zap on his arm, like an electric shock, almost. And when he looked down, he saw several long pentacles wrapped around his arm. You would, you might think with the way that was worded. That was one of those unhelpful interjections, Jeff, but keep trying.

• 43:51Mike Smith?

  He looked really fast.

• 43:54Mike Smith?

  And then he heard the thunder immediately, since it was so close.

• 44:02Mike Smith?

  Okay. So, instinctively, you know, you just try to rub, brush whatever's on your arm if it's causing you harm. And that's what he did, just instinctively tried to brush it off. And he said as soon as it did, it felt like he had poured hot boiling oil all over his whole body. Wes, you probably know. Jeff, you could probably even guess what we're talking about here, huh?

• 44:23Wes Larson?

  I know what it is, yep.

• 44:25Mike Smith?

  So, he paddled over to his guide, who immediately identified it as?

• 44:30Wes Larson?

  Box jellyfish.

• 44:32Mike Smith?

  Box jelly, box jellyfish sting. And he rushed Guy back to the boat, and they set out for the nearest hospital as quick as they could. And Wes, like you said, they're pretty good ways away from land at this point. So, 40 minutes at the very fastest just to reach land, and then probably another 20 minutes there from there to get to any meaningful care. So, we know from box jellyfish stings, we've done stories on this before. Things are looking pretty grim for a guy here.

• 44:58Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, it sucks too, because I don't, I think it stays like intense that entire boat ride, right? Like even like if a shark bites your leg off, I feel like you get waves of pain and stuff. And this one, I feel like you just stay in pain.

• 45:16Wes Larson?

  It it gets worse and worse. And that that's like the the baseline for these are like terrible pain, like you're gonna get that almost no matter what. But then you can also have like systemic reactions where organs and stuff start shutting down and breathing is difficult. So.

• 45:31Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 45:31Wes Larson?

  There's a lot that can happen.

• 45:33Mike Smith?

  Usually when stings have this much coverage area on even just in extremity, like an arm, it can be a death sentence, like pretty quickly it can lead within minutes to death. And sure enough, this guy was riding back on the boat. He started, he said he felt like he was breathing through a straw at first. He started convulsing and sweating profusely. His heart was beating out of control. All the while his arm just felt like it was on fire, you know? So once they reached land and got connection, guy called his mom, told her that he loved her, and then was admitted to the hospital. And the doctors just went pale when they had heard what had happened, probably were shocked that he was even still alive with like how bad a shape his arm was in, like sting marks all coiled around his whole arm.

• 46:19Mike Smith?

  And he was actually Googling while he was being admitted to the hospital, like what is the prognosis here? Uh, what should I do? What do we do? And it's like, you should probably be dead is what he learned. Um, and he was just like freaking out and he was like, dad, am I gonna die dad? Like what's happening? And the dad just was so clutch, the whole experience stayed right by his side, kept him calm and was like, you'll be all right. You'll get through this. You'll be all right. You'll get through this, kind of just repeating a mantra almost just to keep him calm and give him hope, you know?

• 46:51Mike Smith?

  This was an interesting part of the story. So Guy's dad was just like pleading with the doctors to administer antivenom. And the doctor at this point said, it's too late for that to even be effective. So all we can really do is douse his arm in vinegar and load him up with some morphine and just hope for the best. I was under the impression that like, no matter when antivenom would probably be helpful. But I guess these doctors, I mean, obviously, they know better than me. But

• 47:23Wes Larson?

  Yeah, I, you know, with snakes, I think that might be the case. But with, um, with box jellies, I do think it has to be like, pretty quick, because I think it affects like, the, the tissue. And if it's already like, entered into like, the lymphatic system, or the blood, or whatever box jellies do. Um, I don't think it really works that well anymore. But I'm not sure.

• 47:46Mike Smith?

  Hmm. Okay. Well, that's what, that's what Guy was quoted as saying in the article that the doctors told him. So, uh, apparently, that's just what they thought was best, was just to get him all loaded up on morphine. His dad, again, right by his side. It was kind of like a trip sitter. When you're having a bad trip, you're like, this is gonna pass, you'll be okay. It's just really nice to have someone there. Yeah. To like, keep you anchored to reality, kind of. Yeah. And that's, that's what he'd said his dad was for him. He wouldn't have made it without both the doctors. And he just, he said the people of Fiji were so amazing. And the doctors, of course, were life-saving. And that he's gonna keep going back there for the rest of his life. But

• 48:22Jeff Larson?

  Were the doctors life-saving? They sound like, didn't they just give him morphine?

• 48:27Wes Larson?

  Yeah, but if they're, I mean, I think the thing with these two is, if you get to the hospital in time, that's what the biggest thing, because then the doctors can treat any like, systems that are failing, you know? So if like, he suddenly has like, trouble respirating, they can put him on a respirator. If, you know, if whatever happens, they can treat that thing. So I, I think it's fair to say the doctors helped save his life.

• 48:52Jeff Larson?

  Yeah. I'm not trying to be funny, even. I'm just like, they couldn't even give him the antivenom anymore. So it's like, yeah, I was wondering, like,

• 48:59Mike Smith?

  You might be technically right. But I do also think the vinegar that they put on his arm, that's, that'll get the rest of the Whatever the stingers, the barbs will come out and release. Anything that's remaining from the jellyfish will be shed off because of the vinegar. So maybe there was a life-saving component there. Either way, he was just incredibly grateful. And shockingly, he was actually back in the water the next day.

• 49:24Wes Larson?

  That's crazy.

• 49:25Mike Smith?

  He was right back out there and he was like

• 49:26Wes Larson?

  Yeah, that is crazy.

• 49:27Mike Smith?

  A little anxious, but he was like, this is my happy place. This is where I feel safe. Like even despite what just happened, nothing will ever keep me out of the water. So the very next day he was back out surfing with his dad, which I thought was pretty incredible.

• 49:39Wes Larson?

  That's always so admirable. Like I can't, just loving something that much and having it be that important to you where that trauma doesn't ruin it. That's pretty impressive.

• 49:50Mike Smith?

  Cool. All right, I got a couple of short ones.

• 49:53Jeff Larson?

  I have a question with that real quick. So like in a perfect, perfect scenario, once the jellyfish was on his arm, should he have done anything differently? Because I know you're not supposed to swipe it off. That's where you got all the pain.

• 50:09Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 50:10Jeff Larson?

  But would the jellyfish like detach itself eventually? Like what do you even do?

• 50:15Wes Larson?

  Yeah, I think, I think you wanna like get the jellyfish off as carefully as possible. Like you could just grab it and pull it off. You don't wanna, like you were just saying, you don't wanna rub where it stung you because often those, those barbs are still attached and they can continue to inject venom when you rub. And so that, as hard as it might be, you don't wanna do that.

• 50:38Jeff Larson?

  Like it's almost like when you get stabbed with a knife, like you don't pull the knife out type of thing, like just.

• 50:46Wes Larson?

  You do wanna take the jellyfish off, but you don't wanna like rub it off necessarily, you know?

• 50:51Jeff Larson?

  But isn't it kinda hard to take a jellyfish off your arm?

• 50:55Mike Smith?

  So if you, in the unlikely scenario, or maybe likely, if you take the moral of the story to heart, if you do have vinegar close at hand, that for whatever reason, there's an agent in vinegar that makes jellyfish release along with their barbs. That just cleans them off, I guess. So yeah, that's, I guess, best case scenario, you just have some in your swim trunks. A little bottle of vinegar.

• 51:20Wes Larson?

  Or you're surfing in vinegar.

• 51:21Jeff Larson?

  For surfers.

• 51:22Mike Smith?

  Yeah. Oh yeah. Vinegar surf spot.

• 51:26Jeff Larson?

  And then some guy would write an article. It's like, no, that doesn't work.

• 51:30Wes Larson?

  Doesn't work. Not effective.

• 51:34Wes Larson?

  To get him off your arm.

• 51:35Jeff Larson?

  Here's why I use my gun when I serve.

• 51:40Wes Larson?

  All right. I got a pretty annoying one. A punch the monkey update. So two, two US nationals were arrested after one of them jumped into the enclosure of punch, punch the monkey at the Japanese zoo while the other one filmed. Uh, one of the men was a 24 year old college student. He was the one that actually jumped into the enclosure. The other was a 27 year old singer. They denied the allegations, even though they were like filming it as they jumped in.

• 52:11Mike Smith?

  Caught in 4K.

• 52:12Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Other people filmed it as well. And the person that jumped in was wearing a costume, carrying a stuffed toy, jumping over the fence and the costume was promoting a cryptocurrency. So they're being held by police. I think they should be executed. I am all for that. This sounds like, uh, you know, I just think these are people that probably should be removed. Kind of like how we remove bears that give all the other bears a bad name. We probably should just remove these two people that are giving all other Americans a really bad name. So.

• 52:49Jeff Larson?

  Yeah. It's interesting because it's honestly like at the heart of it, it's pretty harmless. Like I even saw the video and like all the monkeys just kind of moved away from them. And then the workers took them out of the enclosure. But then it's just like, I don't care what hap- like, I don't care if they get life in prison in China. Just.

• 53:11Wes Larson?

  Once I, once I heard it was to promote a cryptocurrency, I was like, okay, whatever, throw the book at them. Yeah. All right. I had another

• 53:20Mike Smith?

  How's Punch doing by the way?

• 53:22Wes Larson?

  Uh, I think Punch is doing okay. There wasn't much info in this about Punch himself, but

• 53:26Jeff Larson?

  That's what always happens with bullies like Wes, Mike.

• 53:31Wes Larson?

  What?

• 53:32Jeff Larson?

  You think you hear about it once and you're like, oh, this, that's so sad. He's getting bullied. And then you never, you're just assumed they stopped bullying him.

• 53:41Wes Larson?

  Wait, am I a bully now? I can't, I have, I haven't really traced this thread.

• 53:44Mike Smith?

  Yeah, I didn't. So wait.

• 53:46Wes Larson?

  Okay. Okay.

• 53:48Jeff Larson?

  But I would assume he's still getting bullied.

• 53:51Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 53:52Mike Smith?

  Well, I'm just gonna do, I'm gonna hit Wes with a do better, I guess, and we'll move on.

• 53:56Wes Larson?

  I'll do better.

• 53:57Jeff Larson?

  Better, Wes.

• 53:57Wes Larson?

  Okay. All right. So another quick one here in Bremerton, Washington, where MXPX is from. If you're a pop punk fan, uh, there's a family that's gonna get a $350,000 settlement. And can you guys guess why? It's animal related. I doubt you can.

• 54:19Mike Smith?

  Oh.

• 54:21Wes Larson?

  I'll tell you why, because you're not gonna get it. Their child was attacked by an otter at a marina and pulled underwater by this river otter, bitten up pretty badly. And they ended up suing this marina and the state because they didn't put up the proper uh, warnings and whatnot. And they knew this otter was there and was being pretty aggressive. So they're gonna win a $350,000 settlement. And the reason I wanted to include this one is because we talk about this sometimes on the podcast, like why problem bears and stuff have to be removed sometimes. And part of it is because we are in such a country where you can sue for just about anything. And there's a liability with leaving those animals. And this is a good example of that.

• 55:05Wes Larson?

  So had they done a better job with signage and stuff, they probably wouldn't have lost this court case. But um, yeah, that's, that's kind of the world that we live in, unfortunately. But this kid did get pretty bitten up, apparently.

• 55:19Jeff Larson?

  All right. So as we said last news episode, I think Wes said this, but

• 55:27Jeff Larson?

  Uh, the year 2026 is the summer of the snake.

• 55:34Wes Larson?

  Right? I didn't say that, but yeah, there were some, we did talk about rattlesnake bites. Yeah.

• 55:41Jeff Larson?

  So another death happened. It's the third death in California this year. This one happened a little bit more north. There was in a rural area in Redwood Valley out in California. And this was a 70 year old or 78 year old lady who was just hiking in the redwoods. You know, beautiful day, such a beautiful part of the country. And she's bitten three times by a rattlesnake on her hike, which, you know, uh, normally I feel like it's just one bite. And this one got her three times.

• 56:18Wes Larson?

  So three different times or was it all one snake?

• 56:22Jeff Larson?

  It was all one snake.

• 56:23Wes Larson?

  It was all one snake, three bites from one snake. Yeah.

• 56:26Jeff Larson?

  Right?

• 56:28Wes Larson?

  That would have been crazy.

• 56:29Jeff Larson?

  So she was taken by family to the hospital and according to their sheriff's office out there, she succumbed to her injury after two days in the hospital. And, you know, I don't want to make any assumptions, but I hope they gave her enough antivenom because we have seen and had even someone on who like, is like, I really had to fight to get more antivenom. But yeah, third person killed by a rattlesnake in California this year. And, uh, if you guys, listeners, I'm going to have some euphoria spoilers. So skip ahead if you don't want that spoiled.

• 57:16Jeff Larson?

  But honestly, might even have a fourth death by rattlesnake in California this year.

• 57:23Jeff Larson?

  Cause Nate Jacobs was killed by one in the show Euphoria.

• 57:27Wes Larson?

  Pretty, pretty bad way too.

• 57:29Jeff Larson?

  And really bad way, but also like, I thought it was like really egregious that they had like a rattlesnake up on top and then in the coffin, they just have a gigantic python on top of uh the actor Jacob Elordi.

• 57:49Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 57:50Jeff Larson?

  And then they just like CGI'd a rattlesnake tail onto this python. So like, I went to Twitter like looking for people to be like, look at this and not a single peep. So then I felt responsible to make a tweet about it. And I was like, this is gonna pop off. And then I was like, actually, it probably won't. And I never tweeted about it.

• 58:11Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 58:15Jeff Larson?

  But it, it was disappointing to me because it kinda took me out of what I think would have been like just so much scarier had I like not been so focused on their just.

• 58:29Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Shape shifting snake. This is how I felt pretty much my whole life, watching movies and stuff. Uh, there are, there's a lot of articles now that are saying, you know, what's going on in California? What's happening with our snakes? Kinda like Jeff just said, like summer of the snake. And there's the one reason that I've been seeing over and over again is just a really early season warmup. Might be responsible for these bites. And we talked about this last news episode. That things got real warm, real quick in California this year, and that might've caused for, you know, snakes to be active a little bit earlier than normal. But I think the other part of that, the other side of that equation is it caused people to be active normal or earlier than normal too.

• 59:12Wes Larson?

  Like it was really warm and nice out early in the year. So you had more people out and more snakes out. So I think that's part of the reason, but I also think it might just be just kind of a fluke that this many people are being bitten and, and because of it, they're reporting on it, you know, it's become kinda like that whole thing with the sharks where once those stories kind of start getting some traction, then other news agencies are gonna report on them too. And it becomes a bit of a frenzy.

• 59:39Jeff Larson?

  I also saw the heavy rains and then it dried up. So like the rain kind of drove them out of the grounds a bit more, but I don't know.

• 59:47Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 59:48Jeff Larson?

  Yeah. Stay safe out there hiking around California.

• 59:52Wes Larson?

  Or wherever. Yeah.

• 59:54Jeff Larson?

  That's true.

• 59:55Mike Smith?

  Is that all you got, Jeff?

• 59:57Jeff Larson?

  Yes.

• 59:58Mike Smith?

  I got one more. Apparently, I thought this was pretty important to bring up since we just did an episode about them, but Kyle Rittenhouse got bit by a brown recluse.

• 1:00:08Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:08Mike Smith?

  Recently.

• 1:00:09Jeff Larson?

  No way.

• 1:00:09Mike Smith?

  Did you see that?

• 1:00:10Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:11Mike Smith?

  And he, he said, "The communist didn't get me, neither will this spider." So comparing the brown recluse to communist and

• 1:00:18Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:19Mike Smith?

  The article, well, the article was unclear, but he didn't, it didn't say whether he shot the spider or not.

• 1:00:24Wes Larson?

  Yeah. He probably tried to.

• 1:00:27Mike Smith?

  So communist couldn't get him, dude.

• 1:00:29Wes Larson?

  All right. I have a quick correction. I kept saying Brodus instead of Brodus for the town in Montana last week, and I really should have gotten that one right because we have family that lives in Brodus. But I just kind of got in my own head about it. So sorry. All right. Should we move on to our categories?

• 1:00:47Jeff Larson?

  Bro, this is embarrassing.

• 1:00:49Wes Larson?

  Brodus.

• 1:00:51Mike Smith?

  Bra.

• 1:00:53Wes Larson?

  Uh, yeah, that works either way. Brodus. Brodus bear is mauling me.

• 1:01:02Wes Larson?

  So we're doing categories a little bit differently this week. Each of us picked two or three that we asked the other two. And, uh, who wants to go first with your categories?

• 1:01:14Mike Smith?

  Jeff does. Jeff, you do.

• 1:01:15Jeff Larson?

  Oh, with all three?

• 1:01:17Wes Larson?

  All right. Yeah, let's just do it that way.

• 1:01:21Jeff Larson?

  Yeah. Uh, first is what are you deeming this the summer of? So like, call your shot. You know, I think Chet Hanks did the white boy summer.

• 1:01:31Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:31Jeff Larson?

  And then there's always like a summer of the shark.

• 1:01:35Wes Larson?

  Charlie XCX brat summer.

• 1:01:37Mike Smith?

  Brat summer.

• 1:01:38Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:38Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, there's summer of the snake, but we're each going to do our own summer of the what?

• 1:01:46Jeff Larson?

  I'm going to say French summer. This is French summer. I think. They got a chance of having Wimby win a NBA championship. And they have a really good chance of winning the FIFA World Cup. Which is kind of like the two most universal sports is basketball and soccer. And like if France wins at both of those, it's kind of like, that's saying something, you know?

• 1:02:14Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:15Jeff Larson?

  And then french fries, never been bigger than right now.

• 1:02:21Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:21Mike Smith?

  Yep. I just had a french dip.

• 1:02:24Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, oh, my god, I had a french dip sub for the first time in a while. Wes, you got it. And it was so good. So, summer of French.

• 1:02:37Wes Larson?

  I like it.

• 1:02:38Mike Smith?

  French kissing is probably the best kind of kissing, right?

• 1:02:42Wes Larson?

  Hmm. It depends, I think, on how good.

• 1:02:46Mike Smith?

  Yeah, I already think that.

• 1:02:47Wes Larson?

  Yeah. I picked the summer of class consciousness. Because I've been really encouraged, all these data center projects that are being announced. It's been really encouraging seeing people on kind of, in every political spectrum in the US. Say no, like, we don't want this. This isn't something we want in our communities. It's happening in Utah. It's happening here in Missoula. People are uniting to, to say no to billionaires. And even if they get pushed through.

• 1:03:18Jeff Larson?

  Even like, people I know from college who were completely different politically, they're like, this is bull honky.

• 1:03:27Wes Larson?

  Yeah, exactly. And for me, that's been really encouraging. I think it's a step toward people realizing that. Our neighbors aren't our enemies regardless of their political affiliation. That our enemies are the people that are trying to make life worse for us to, to profit off of us.

• 1:03:44Mike Smith?

  Was the person you knew in college Joe Biden by any chance, Jeff?

• 1:03:47Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:49Mike Smith?

  This is bull honky.

• 1:03:51Wes Larson?

  Bull honky, malarkey. So yeah, summer of class consciousness is what I'm deeming it.

• 1:03:57Mike Smith?

  I'm going with summer of the psy-op because it turns out everything you don't like apparently is just a psy-op. It turns out, if you don't like the band Geese, they're a psy-op. If you don't like Dubai Chocolate, psy-op. Uh, it's starting to get under my skin a little bit, but I just keep hearing it. I keep seeing it and that's what I'm deeming this, the summer of.

• 1:04:17Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:18Jeff Larson?

  Um, okay. Next one is what's some good news that you've seen?

• 1:04:23Wes Larson?

  I can go first. Uh, I read recently that Texas's solar grid now outpaces its coal power grid. And I think, um, a kind of silver lining to the weird energy struggle that we're seeing going on in the world right now with the Iran war and whatnot. Is that people are realizing this reliance on fossil fuel is a dead end. And it's, it's too easily controlled by these global powers and whatnot. And alternative sources of energy are, are burgeoning and becoming much more popular because of that. And I think that is some really good news. I think it's something that needed to happen and we're seeing it happen, which is great. Don't forget about nuclear power too, guys. It's a good one.

• 1:05:09Wes Larson?

  Check it out.

• 1:05:09Jeff Larson?

  I only paid attention to a little of that, but you said the Iran war?

• 1:05:13Wes Larson?

  Yeah. I said Iran war. Yeah.

• 1:05:16Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:16Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:18Jeff Larson?

  Uh, I can go. Angelina Jolie, she, um, purchased a huge 60 acre span of hunting ground in Cambodia and made it like wildlife preserve and is just like making this huge section like, uh, sanctuary for ele- wild elephants and tigers and different animals. And it's pretty cool.

• 1:05:44Wes Larson?

  That is cool.

• 1:05:44Mike Smith?

  That's great.

• 1:05:45Wes Larson?

  I like her.

• 1:05:45Mike Smith?

  Good job. Good job, Angelina. I've always wanted to go to Cambodia.

• 1:05:50Wes Larson?

  Me too.

• 1:05:51Jeff Larson?

  Bill, cut less in that he likes her so that Jesse doesn't get mad.

• 1:05:57Mike Smith?

  Oh yeah. Well, I'm editing this one, so ask me.

• 1:06:02Mike Smith?

  Do I have to raise my hand again?

• 1:06:04Wes Larson?

  Okay.

• 1:06:06Wes Larson?

  I picked a different tack. I just saw Naoki Urosawa's manga Billy Bat finally getting officially licensed English translation, and that's exciting, since he's the goat. He's the goat. That's why he's the goat. Oh, man, I'm so excited. I mean, unofficial translations for everyone's work exist out there, but I like supporting my artists officially when I can. So Billy Bat. Good job, Naoki. Naoki Urosawa, he's one of those guys who makes stuff that I don't really have to give too many caveats about. It's like, uh, no, he's just a great storyteller. Really distinct art style. That's why he's the goat. Great.

• 1:06:44Jeff Larson?

  All right. My last one was, what's the quickest? What's the quickest you've ever given up on something? Mike, why don't you start this time since you keep going last?

• 1:06:55Wes Larson?

  Yeah, so my job at State Farm, I gave up before I even went in the first day.

• 1:06:59Jeff Larson?

  I got that.

• 1:07:00Wes Larson?

  Oh, one of the best days of my life was when I quit and I felt just the weight of the world lifted off my shoulders and I ran away to Texas for a summer.

• 1:07:11Jeff Larson?

  My boss was just like, so Mike's not coming now. I'm like, what?

• 1:07:16Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, he just called me and said he's quitting.

• 1:07:18Wes Larson?

  I love that. So awesome. Uh, mine's also a job and I couldn't think of some, I'm sure there's things I've quit faster than this, but this was something I think about how quickly I left. For, for a minute I did this job that was, you talk to people that are in debt and you try to sell them a debt relief program. And you could, you could sell it to them for as much as they're like willing to pay. So it was really predatory and terrible. And you're supposed to try and get them to pay like up to $10,000, but you could give it to them for like 2,000. And I never sold a single plan because when people would start asking about it, I'd just try and give them the cheapest

• 1:07:58Wes Larson?

  one and then my boss would get mad at me. Never made a single dime and I quit after two office days because I realized that it was the most soulless awful thing that I could possibly be doing. And so I'm glad I didn't make any money from it because I would feel like I'd have to give it back or put it into something good. And I quit. Yeah.

• 1:08:20Mike Smith?

  God forbid you put your money into something good.

• 1:08:22Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:23Jeff Larson?

  Mine was a job too. I was got a job that I think I kind of almost lied to get the job even. I said I had like experience serving and I got a job as a server at a Marriott. And

• 1:08:38Wes Larson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:08:40Jeff Larson?

  They made it so like you had to stand at this like little whatever they're called a kiosk thing. You had to stand and you couldn't look at your phone. And one lady came in the entire shift. So it's the most bored I've ever been. And then the next day that I like just didn't go in and they're like, hey, where are you?

• 1:09:06Wes Larson?

  I love the Irish goodbye to a job.

• 1:09:09Mike Smith?

  Yeah, that's pretty tough.

• 1:09:10Wes Larson?

  Good.

• 1:09:11Mike Smith?

  Yeah. Oh, man.

• 1:09:14Wes Larson?

  Mike, you want to do yours?

• 1:09:14Mike Smith?

  I'll do mine. Yeah, sure. So a time when your dad helped you through something tough. And bonus points, I'm giving you bonus points. We're keeping track of points all of a sudden if he was there physically with you in person to help you through it.

• 1:09:28Jeff Larson?

  There's one night where he just did my homework for me.

• 1:09:34Jeff Larson?

  It took a while, but I I was on like Adderall and it wasn't like the long lasting stuff either. And then like, I would have to get up like super early for family scriptures, reading and all this stuff. So then

• 1:09:53Jeff Larson?

  by the time school was over, I was just like mentally exhausted, you know? And there's this one day where I literally just could not think at all. And I just sat there looking at my math homework for maybe an hour and a half without solving one single problem. And my dad just ended up doing it all.

• 1:10:14Mike Smith?

  That's nice.

• 1:10:16Wes Larson?

  Our, our dad, like shout out dads, we, we got Father's Day coming up, which we never do a Father's Day episode, but shout out dads. And I, I feel really, really lucky. Not all dads, not all dads are good, but I was about to say, I feel really, really lucky that we did get a really good dad. And the thing about my dad that I think makes him special, among other things, is that he is one of the most willing people I've ever met to help someone that like needs help. And he's really capable of doing most things and just really generous with his time and whatnot. And a thing that I thought of was in college, my freshman year, I was getting

• 1:10:56Wes Larson?

  a ride from my friend to Montana and then he continued up to Canada for Thanksgiving. And then he was going to pick me up on the way back down and we're going to drive back to, to Utah. And he flipped his car in the middle of nowhere, Montana on some ice. And my dad drove me out there. We helped get his car like pulled out of this ditch. He took us to the auto shop where they fix things. They put like snow tires on the car, which my dad helped pay for. He put us up in a hotel and then he helped us like on our way out the next day. And it was just him going above and beyond for someone that he'd never met and to help me out too. And it was

• 1:11:38Wes Larson?

  just one of those things where I just realized, you know, I'm very lucky to have such a generous dad.

• 1:11:43Mike Smith?

  Dads are pretty great when they're good.

• 1:11:45Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Sometimes they can be real bad.

• 1:11:48Jeff Larson?

  You guys freaking love Nick Cannon.

• 1:11:53Mike Smith?

  He's got a lot of kids. He's got a, yeah. Um, no, my dad also, just the best person I know. He's the best I could ever hope for. It's actually his birthday yesterday. So happy birthday, dad. Shout out dad.

• 1:12:04Wes Larson?

  Happy birthday, Chris.

• 1:12:06Mike Smith?

  Chris, uh, the best. He's the best. He's so emotionally supportive and just so encouraging. Whenever I have an idea, no matter like how dumb or inane it sounds, he always just was so encouraging to pursue all of my interests and dreams and stuff. So just wanted to say that. But there was a time when I was really little. I was, I think I was like four years old and I hit my head. I was playing on the monkey bars with my, just me and my mom at a little play place. And I hit my head really hard on a metal bar. And I started crying and I don't like, this wasn't really a thing. I never like, asked for my mom or my dad when I was in trouble or in pain. I just kind of like silently suffered through it.

• 1:12:48Mike Smith?

  But this time, for some reason, I just like needed my dad to be there. And it was in the middle of a workday. So my mom called him at his job. And he immediately left the office and came over to like this stupid little playground place at the, at the school I was at. And just like hung out with me for a little bit. And like, for a kid that just like made sense that he would do that. But as I grow into adulthood, I'm like, I don't know how many, I don't know. Maybe that's a thing all dads would do, but it was just a normal, everyday occurrence that my dad would do something like that, that maybe I'm realizing he's a pretty special guy.

• 1:13:22Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:23Mike Smith?

  After all.

• 1:13:23Wes Larson?

  Tall, tall as shit.

• 1:13:26Mike Smith?

  Pretty tall guy.

• 1:13:27Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:27Mike Smith?

  I know. Why didn't he give me some of that? It all went to Nate. What the heck? Nate's like 14 feet tall.

• 1:13:35Wes Larson?

  You're pretty tall, Mike. You, yeah, you can't.

• 1:13:37Jeff Larson?

  I lie about my height and say I'm your height because you're tall.

• 1:13:42Wes Larson?

  Yeah. I think if I were to be taller, I think the tallest I'd want to be is your height. So.

• 1:13:49Mike Smith?

  So I'm the, I'm the sweet spot for you?

• 1:13:51Wes Larson?

  I think so. Yeah. I, I love how tall I am, but I, but if I were taller, I think I'd want to be like 6'2".

• 1:13:59Mike Smith?

  6'1". Come on now. Hold on.

• 1:14:01Wes Larson?

  Sure. 6'1".

• 1:14:02Mike Smith?

  Yeah. I'm not, no stolen valor from me. I'm like Jeff.

• 1:14:08Wes Larson?

  What's your other category, Mike?

• 1:14:10Mike Smith?

  I don't know. It was probably some stupid one. Hold on.

• 1:14:14Mike Smith?

  Oh, if you were to die right now, unexpectedly, from a score of zero to 10, what do you think your associates and friends would score you? Just on average, what do you think they'd give you?

• 1:14:25Jeff Larson?

  Yeah. I'm going to go quick, but I'll go through it. Uh, Shanks, I think is giving me a 10.

• 1:14:31Wes Larson?

  That's nice.

• 1:14:31Jeff Larson?

  I think.

• 1:14:32Wes Larson?

  Very sweet.

• 1:14:33Jeff Larson?

  Wes would give me an eight and I think Mike would give me an eight. I think. My mom and dad would give me like a six because I got tattoos.

• 1:14:46Mike Smith?

  Hmm, it's troubling.

• 1:14:48Jeff Larson?

  Cyrus would give me a seven.

• 1:14:52Mike Smith?

  What's Danielle giving you?

• 1:14:54Jeff Larson?

  Oh, business partner.

• 1:14:56Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:57Jeff Larson?

  Um, probably eight.

• 1:15:01Mike Smith?

  Okay.

• 1:15:02Jeff Larson?

  Wow, pretty good.

• 1:15:03Mike Smith?

  That's good. That's pretty good. Yeah. Nothing to sneeze at.

• 1:15:07Jeff Larson?

  I'm trying to think anyone under five. I don't think anyone's giving me under a five.

• 1:15:13Mike Smith?

  Okay.

• 1:15:13Wes Larson?

  There's probably some people.

• 1:15:14Mike Smith?

  No, I liked how you did that. Yeah. I thought you were just gonna give one average number from everybody, but I liked that you did everyone individually like that.

• 1:15:22Wes Larson?

  Yeah, I I just came up with an average number and I settled on like seven point five, but honestly, I think it'd probably be higher than that. I just didn't want to seem I like that was kind of some false humility. I think I'd probably get an eight from my friends and family combined.

• 1:15:38Jeff Larson?

  Tom, you're his favorite student ever.

• 1:15:40Wes Larson?

  I, yeah, I think Tom would give me a nine or a 10. I think, uh, I think Jesse would give me a nine or a 10. I think you guys would be a little bit more, uh, complicated in your answers, but.

• 1:15:52Mike Smith?

  What do you think the lowest number someone would give you would be? Like, think of the person that hates you the most.

• 1:15:58Wes Larson?

  Yeah, I think that that person's given me like a two or a three. But I don't even know that person. I just think it's like some unknown hater out there that would probably give me that.

• 1:16:08Jeff Larson?

  With Mike, like he would give Nolan like a two.

• 1:16:12Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:13Jeff Larson?

  And then Nolan would probably give Mike like a seven.

• 1:16:17Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:18Wes Larson?

  Yeah, he'd be a lot more generous towards me than the other way around. That person that said I have the personality of a cardboard box would probably give me like a two or a three, I feel like.

• 1:16:29Jeff Larson?

  Cardboard boxes are great.

• 1:16:30Wes Larson?

  Sure. So neutral, five?

• 1:16:33Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:35Mike Smith?

  Um, I'm gonna go with, uh, I you're not baiting me into that, Wes. I'm going with a six overall for me. And listen, this isn't, I'm not trying to be humble. I'm taking like true, honest inventory of myself. I spend a lot of my time trying to like not be available for people.

• 1:16:53Wes Larson?

  It's true.

• 1:16:54Mike Smith?

  You know, I'm a pretty solitary creature and it's not like I'm, I, I'm useless or like a net negative.

• 1:17:00Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:01Mike Smith?

  But I could be a lot better, I think. And I'm talking about like all associates, all coworkers, not like friends and family, of course, are going to raise the average pretty well, but like, I don't know. I just think about all the people I've ever worked with and like, yeah, it was fine to have around the office, but man.

• 1:17:17Wes Larson?

  I think, I think your score that you get given while you're alive is different than your score you are given while you're dead too.

• 1:17:24Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:24Wes Larson?

  Cause I think there's a certain glossiness that comes over after someone dies where you really just remember most of the good stuff. So.

• 1:17:32Jeff Larson?

  Yeah. Like if I'm being honest and I'm getting a nine or 10 from like family and associates, they all love me.

• 1:17:39Wes Larson?

  Yeah, right.

• 1:17:40Jeff Larson?

  Yeah. Give you guys nines and tens. I'm not going to dock you very much.

• 1:17:46Wes Larson?

  Right.

• 1:17:47Jeff Larson?

  You know, I could maybe dock you for something small, but.

• 1:17:50Wes Larson?

  That's how we should do funerals from now on. Just at the end, everyone, you get a score.

• 1:17:55Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, right.

• 1:17:56Wes Larson?

  And they, they carve it into your.

• 1:17:57Jeff Larson?

  You guys are getting tens.

• 1:17:58Wes Larson?

  Tombstone. All right. Uh, my two categories, the first one was a pop culture one and it was pop culture or a media that makes you feel the most peaceful and relaxed. I don't remember why I picked this. Um, I think it had something to do with one of my stories, but, uh, yeah, pop culture that makes you feel the most peaceful or relaxed. There's, it's hard times out there. People need to know some things that are going to make them feel good.

• 1:18:26Mike Smith?

  Enya.

• 1:18:27Wes Larson?

  Hmm.

• 1:18:28Mike Smith?

  For me.

• 1:18:28Wes Larson?

  Interesting.

• 1:18:29Mike Smith?

  And Winter Came is the album of choice, but like honestly, put on any song by Enya and I'm in a great place emotionally. Yeah. I just, I unironically unabashedly am her biggest fan. I love Enya so, so, so much. Love her.

• 1:18:43Jeff Larson?

  This one doesn't apply as much right now in my life because I have a great job I love. I work with my best friends and our listeners are awesome. But, uh,

• 1:18:56Jeff Larson?

  Office space back in the day when I would have to work like a nine to five was just like, at least someone gets how I feel.

• 1:19:04Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:05Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:06Wes Larson?

  That movie really tapped into some feelings.

• 1:19:08Mike Smith?

  It's the best.

• 1:19:09Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Yeah. That is a great movie. Uh, I also picked a, a visual media. I picked, um, the show Great British Baking Show. I think that one for me just puts me in a good mood, no matter how I was feeling before turning it on. It just makes me feel cozy and happy. And my favorite moment in that show is after the finale, when they show how everyone is friends still and they're all hanging out with each other. It's like the only show that makes me cry like real tears, not just get like choked up. Like I fully cry when I see that because it's just so affirming to see these people that are in a competition show, become like lifelong friends and have this deep love for each other.

• 1:19:54Mike Smith?

  So nice. That's great.

• 1:19:57Wes Larson?

  All right. And my second category is a pretty serious one. It's a would you rather? Uh, would you rather all of your farts for the rest of your life are going to be completely odorless, but incredibly loud? Like very loud. Picture the loudest fart you've ever had in your life. Or they're going to smell terrible, like the worst smelling fart you've ever had, but be totally silent.

• 1:20:20Mike Smith?

  This one's actually pretty easy for me. I want to hear you guys answer.

• 1:20:23Wes Larson?

  Uh, I'm picking the smelly ones.

• 1:20:26Mike Smith?

  Wrong, wrong, loud.

• 1:20:29Jeff Larson?

  I'm going loud too. Because loud farts are funny and then they don't smell too. So it's like, win, win.

• 1:20:37Wes Larson?

  Yeah. I, I think that's, I don't think that's wrong. And I just feel like the smelly ones, you could get away with people not knowing it's you, which I know is sneaky and not the answer is very.

• 1:20:51Jeff Larson?

  Where you're going to be in a car and you'll do one and then everyone be like, who farting? You're like, wasn't me?

• 1:20:57Wes Larson?

  The other thing is if I knew that guy, if I knew that I, they were that bad, I would just hold them until I'm not around other people. But yeah.

• 1:21:05Jeff Larson?

  Here's the problem.

• 1:21:06Wes Larson?

  I think you guys make a good, a good argument.

• 1:21:08Jeff Larson?

  We're going to eventually figure out that you're, like, people have brands of fart.

• 1:21:14Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:14Jeff Larson?

  And it. We'll figure, yeah.

• 1:21:17Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Well, and sometimes you fart in your sleep, like Jeff on in Antarctica, that first night, you had the worst parts ever. And I literally couldn't sleep because our room was so toxic from your farts.

• 1:21:31Mike Smith?

  But if they're so loud, you're not sleeping either.

• 1:21:33Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:34Mike Smith?

  Either way, I'm picking loud.

• 1:21:36Wes Larson?

  I think you guys are right. I think I might switch to loud.

• 1:21:39Mike Smith?

  And you can do that trick where like Jeff did in school that one time where you like pin the blame on someone else.

• 1:21:46Wes Larson?

  That's not easy with a loud fart. That's easy with the smelly one.

• 1:21:50Jeff Larson?

  So funny.

• 1:21:52Mike Smith?

  But at least you have the the chance.

• 1:21:54Jeff Larson?

  It was like, it was like a four seconds fart. And then I was like, you farted. The whole, I sat by myself in one half of the class for the rest of the class and the entire rest of the class was on the other half. And I wasn't a confident kid. Like it started funny to me and I was traumatized by the end.

• 1:22:17Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:19Jeff Larson?

  But like, it's still really funny. Like I did it on purpose, you know, to be funny.

• 1:22:27Wes Larson?

  All right. That's all I got.

• 1:22:30Mike Smith?

  Me too.

• 1:22:31Jeff Larson?

  Me too.

• 1:22:31Mike Smith?

  I'm done.

• 1:22:32Wes Larson?

  Thanks, everyone for sending us stories. We appreciate it.

• 1:22:35Jeff Larson?

  Stay safe out there, you know?

• 1:22:37Wes Larson?

  Stay safe out there. Be smart. Have a plan. And we'll talk to you soon.

• 1:22:43Jeff Larson?

  Love you.

• 1:22:44Wes Larson?

  Love you.

• 1:22:44Mike Smith?

  See ya.

• 1:22:45Wes Larson?

  Bye.