Pod Insights Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks The Worst Shark Attack in History, the USS Indianapolis Disaster - Part 2: The Ordeal About this episode After a torpedo sinks their ship, the surviving sailors of the USS Indianapolis now find themselves lost at sea and surrounded by sharks. With seemingly everything now working against them, a long fight to survive now begins.
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Transcript 18,773 words · 3 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:13 Jeff Larson? Hello everyone. Welcome back to Tooth and Claw Podcast. If this is your first time ever listening to us, stop.
0:21 Wes Larson? Stop right now.
0:22 Jeff Larson? Turn your phone off.
0:23 Wes Larson? Listen to what we're about to say. Yeah.
0:26 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
0:26 Wes Larson? Turn it back on. Go back, listen to episode one. Now turn it off.
0:31 Jeff Larson? Short introduction with Tooth and Claw Podcast. Two of us really love animals. Three, all three of us love sharks.
0:39 Wes Larson? That's true. Yeah. So let's go with that. I'm a wildlife biologist. Jeff helped me on my black bear project.
0:44 Jeff Larson? Yes.
0:44 Wes Larson? And yeah, we talk about animal attacks.
0:46 Jeff Larson? And the black bear project, we learned a lot about sharks, dude.
0:50 Wes Larson? Did?
0:51 Jeff Larson? I guess not. Mainly just black bears.
0:55 Wes Larson? Anyway, we're all here together in Montana. So, uh, recording in, in my parents basement, which is kind of fun.
1:01 Jeff Larson? Yeah. We're having great time.
1:03 Wes Larson? Did you guys see that tree on the way up? No, we took the other way. No, the Dr. Seuss tree.
1:08 Jeff Larson? Oh, yeah.
1:09 Wes Larson? No, just that one tree that you pointed out that once. That was such a nice tree. The Lorax would agree with me. That was the first time I ever really met you was on that trip.
1:20 Jeff Larson? He's talking about when you just pointed at a forest.
1:23 Wes Larson? A random tree and you were like, you see that tree? Yeah, the Dr. Seuss, the Lorax is gonna be like into that tree. Just like me. Okay. Yeah, that was 2012 and that was, I feel like I'd met you a few times, but that was the first time we really hung out.
1:37 Jeff Larson? Yeah. You weren't really getting his humor for a bit on that too, where he's.
1:41 Wes Larson? That one took me a second.
1:42 Jeff Larson? What tree?
1:43 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:45 Wes Larson? Well, that was around when Mike would just send me photos of like ugly rocks and rivers and be like, dude, Colorado is so much prettier than Montana. Yeah. I think a lot of our listeners are still trying to figure that sense of. Anyway, well, yeah, this is part two. It is a series of three. It's one that we've been asked to do for a very long time. Part one was harrowing. I, uh, almost got emotional a couple of times while we were talking about it. And I think it's just because when you read about this amount of like mass suffering for just like a week or two weeks straight, this is all I've been reading about. You you just kind of start to feel like you were there, even though I know I wasn't.
2:27 Wes Larson? And I'm never like not stolen valor, but like it's crazy how much this one has kind of gotten in my head. No, you you earned that valor, Wes.
2:36 Jeff Larson? Well, and like, part one was rough, so I'm just looking forward to like a nice pick me up for this.
2:44 Wes Larson? Part two is not that.
2:45 Jeff Larson? The rescue's on the way, I assume.
2:48 Wes Larson? Sounds like a lot of people are about to get rescued. Before we get into part two, I did want to do a quick correction corner. In my notes last time, I had both Haynes and Hines written down for the name of the doctor, and I couldn't remember which one it was. So I went with Hines. I got it wrong.
3:04 Jeff Larson? Oh.
3:05 Wes Larson? It was Haynes. Yeah, Dr. Louis Haynes. The other quick correction I had is in our sloth bear episode, I talked about bear's bread, which was that mixture that they made that they sometimes fed to their their cubs. I was talking to some of my sloth bear colleagues and they were curious about that because apparently like they didn't really know about that. And I found it online, but I'm gonna I'm gonna put a big question mark on that one. Just to go back, we're not sure if that's a thing. We're gonna look into it some more.
3:35 Jeff Larson? Mike, what do you choose to believe? Bear bread? Yes or no?
3:38 Wes Larson? I forget entirely what that was all about.
3:40 Jeff Larson? Yes or no?
3:41 Wes Larson? Yes.
3:42 Jeff Larson? I'll say no.
3:43 Wes Larson? I would lean no at this point. I'd lean pretty hard enough. I'm a gambling man. Well, to start us off, I'm gonna go back to the most famous telling of this story ever, which was Quint and Jaws. I'm gonna read just a little bit of his monologue and it's gonna give you guys a way to go.
3:59 Jeff Larson? You're reading it.
4:00 Wes Larson? I'm gonna read it. I'm gonna try and kind of do it a little bit like him, but it's gonna be hard. Very first light, chief, sharks come cruisin'. So we formed ourselves into tight groups. It was kind of like old squares in the battle, like you see on a calendar, like the Battle of Waterloo. And the idea was the shark comes to the nearest man and that man, he starts pounding and hollering and screaming. And sometimes that shark, he go away. Sometimes he wouldn't go away. Sometimes that shark, he looks right into you, right into your eyes. You know, the thing about a shark is he's got lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eyes. When he come at ya, doesn't seem to be livin' until he bites ya. And then those black eyes roll over white, and then all you hear that terrible high pitched screaming.
4:43 Wes Larson? The ocean turns red in spite of all the pounding and the hollering. They come in and they rip you to pieces. Alright, that's what we're gonna talk about today.
4:53 Wes Larson? I will say, this one, that part of it specifically I have a hard time with. Cause when you do get close to sharks, they actually have really beautiful eyes.
5:01 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
5:01 Wes Larson? It's just like.
5:02 Jeff Larson? I do.
5:03 Wes Larson? Yeah.
5:03 Jeff Larson? But they're pretty lifeless.
5:05 Wes Larson? I don't think they're lifeless, like for fish.
5:08 Jeff Larson? How close are you getting?
5:09 Wes Larson? Pretty close, like, like a lot of them look completely dark, but then when you get up close, you see like they're blue or they have like.
5:16 Jeff Larson? You're saying compared to other fish, their eyes are more full of life?
5:20 Wes Larson? Yeah, I think so.
5:22 Mike Smith? I would agree with that. When we had the shark, the great whites swim close up to us in the cage. When they got really close, and forgive me if I'm anthropomorphizing here at all. I kinda sensed the almost like.
5:33 Wes Larson? Higher intelligence?
5:34 Mike Smith? Yeah, a real essence of life behind the eyeballs.
5:37 Wes Larson? Sure. So Quint, we take issue with that.
5:40 Mike Smith? Yeah.
5:41 Wes Larson? That's all we're saying.
5:42 Mike Smith? Right.
5:42 Wes Larson? It was amazing.
5:43 Jeff Larson? I don't take.
5:44 Wes Larson? Yeah.
5:44 Jeff Larson? I, I think it's, I think it works.
5:47 Wes Larson? You think it's perfect?
5:48 Jeff Larson? I don't know if perfect's what I'm saying, but.
5:50 Wes Larson? It's pretty close to perfect. There's a few things he gets wrong. Like he said, that there was 1,100 people on the boat and there wasn't 11, there was 1,200.
5:58 Mike Smith? What'd you say to that, Jeff?
5:59 Wes Larson? A couple of other things that he got a little bit wrong.
6:02 Jeff Larson? Well, I don't think there's 1,200 exactly.
6:04 Wes Larson? There wasn't, there was 1,190.
6:07 Jeff Larson? Yeah, so round down.
6:08 Wes Larson? Alright, fair enough. Okay. Where we left off, the Indianapolis had sunk and roughly 300 men had died in the minutes between the moment the torpedoes hit and the ship disappeared beneath the water. So for this next section, for part two, I really struggled with how to tell it because there are so many books with so many good stories about different people that were involved in the tragedy. And I think we would have to do like a 10 part series to really get into the dynamics of everyone that was involved and to go over their individual accounts. So what I settled on is kind of more just giving an overview of what was happening in the water and the different things that were kind of affecting these men as they floated. It's not so much going to be like a story following our characters.
6:53 Wes Larson? It's going to be more like this is what was happening to these men with some little vignettes throughout.
6:59 Jeff Larson? I mean, an alpha male would have done the 10 part.
7:03 Wes Larson? Yeah, well, I guess I'm not an alpha then. I do want to get into our sources again. In Harm's Way, The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors by Doug Stanton. Indianapolis, The True Story of the Worst Sea Disaster in U.S. Naval History and the Fifty Year Fight to Exonerate an Innocent Man by Lynn Vincent and Sarah Vladek. And then Left for Dead, A Young Man's Search for the Justice for the U.S. Indianapolis. And I forgot to say that author's name when I did that last week. That author is Pete Nelson. So I used all three of these books pretty extensively, but then I also watched
7:43 Wes Larson? a lot of YouTube videos. I listened to some other podcasts, but these were my three main resources.
7:50 Jeff Larson? You think anyone's ever gonna like retell this story and be like, I listen to podcasts and it's you?
7:57 Wes Larson? Like that.
7:58 Jeff Larson? You listen to other podcasts, podcasts to get your information?
8:02 Wes Larson? Yeah.
8:03 Jeff Larson? You think someone's gonna do that with this?
8:05 Wes Larson? Probably.
8:06 Jeff Larson? At some point.
8:07 Wes Larson? I feel like we've had people with like YouTube videos do that.
8:10 Jeff Larson? Yeah. Sure. That's kind of cool.
8:13 Wes Larson? Yeah, we're sources now.
8:16 Wes Larson? I really love my cat, Toad. He's just so pleasant. He's nice to be around. He loves cuddling. He's just a very sweet boy and he really doesn't ask for much, but he is kind of picky and I can't blame him because I'm also kind of picky and that's why you have to try Smalls. Smalls cat food is protein-packed recipes made with preservative-free ingredients that you'd find in your fridge and it's delivered right to your door. That's why cats.com named Smalls their best overall cat food. The cats.com named Smalls their best overall cat food. And to get 60% off your first order plus free shipping, you can head to Smalls.com/tooth for a limited time only. And for me, I just love giving Toad Smalls. He likes all of the flavors,
8:58 Wes Larson? but I think his favorite is probably Smooth Bird and Fish Dish, which is kind of hard to say, but he does really like it. And the thing that I really love about Smalls is that I know I'm giving him fresh, preservative-free food that if I were a cat, I would want to eat. And actually, as a human, if I had to eat cat food, if you forced me to eat cat food, I would definitely pick Smalls over anything else. If you're worried that your cat just loves its kibble, Smalls makes a really good topper as you transition them into a fresh diet. And as you make the switch, you might find that your cat has fewer hairballs, balanced energy, a healthier weight, a shinier fur coat. There's lots of different effects you might see giving them fresh diet with Smalls. The team at Smalls is so confident that your cat will love their product, you can try it risk-free.
9:43 Wes Larson? That means they will refund you if your cat won't eat their food. For a limited time only, because you are a Tooth and Claw listener, you can get 60% off your first Smalls order plus free shipping when you head to Smalls.com/tooth. That's 60% off when you head to Smalls.com/tooth, plus free shipping. Again, that's Smalls.com/tooth.
10:07 Wes Larson? All right. So there's about 890 men that are left in the water. But I think that something a lot of people don't realize is just how spread out those men actually were. Because the Indianapolis was still moving as she was sinking. And these men are spread out over a distance of about two to three miles. So right when they go in the water, they're already way spread out. And it's dark when they went in the water. Most of them are covered in oil. So you can't really even see faces or anything. So it's really hard for them to find each other in the water. And a lot of the groups that we're going to talk about. They kind of formed over time, but a lot of these men, when they first went into the water, wondered if they were the only survivor of the ship, including the captain. Oh, that's crazy. Because they were so spread out. Yeah.
10:49 Mike Smith? Whoa.
10:49 Wes Larson? Yeah. Over the next five days, nearly five days that they would be adrift, they would spread out over a distance of more than 20 miles. Five days is crazy. Yeah. So I think we tend to picture this as this big group of like 900 men. It is a 20 mile stretch of 900 men.
11:06 Mike Smith? That's terrible.
11:07 Wes Larson? Yeah.
11:07 Mike Smith? Just to be isolated out there. Oh, man.
11:10 Wes Larson? And they're being acted upon by something called the leeway effect, which is basically the relationship between the exposed body surface, the ocean current and the wind. So what it means is that men that were floating and mostly underwater, like they just have life jackets, would be heavily influenced by the ocean current and not as much by the wind. People in rafts or on top of floater nets would catch more wind and less current. And because each group was affected differently by wind and current, they continued spreading out from each other. And it was thought that they drifted about 24 miles per day. It's like those TikToks that just say physics. And then show you a bunch of clips of like different things. So that's just physics. Yeah, exactly. It is physics.
11:54 Wes Larson? Something, just to like, kind of paint more of a picture for you guys, though. There were some really big groups, like the group that Dr. Haynes was in, was thought to have almost 400 men. So this was like, almost half of the men that went in the water were in that group. There's another group that probably had over 200. I'd want to be in the. Big root. That's what you think, but you actually might be wrong. Yeah. There's a lot of material that went into the water. We mentioned that briefly. So there's lots of flotsam. And if there's flotsam, I bet you can guess what else is in there. Jetsam. Jetsam. You nailed it. Yep. Actually, I learned the difference between that. Flotsam is stuff that comes off of a ship that's sinking and jetsam is like purposely chucked off a ship. Oh.
12:39 Wes Larson? So like the rafts and stuff that they threw off would be considered jetsam, but everything that just kind of came off would be considered flotsam. So the door in Titanic is flotsam. Mm hmm. Flotsam.
12:50 Mike Smith? What about when Boba Fett follows the stuff out of the Death Star?
12:54 Wes Larson? Uh, I think that would be flotsam unless they kicked it out on purpose.
12:58 Mike Smith? Cause it's like garbage.
12:59 Wes Larson? Oh, then it'd be jetsam.
13:01 Mike Smith? Okay.
13:01 Wes Larson? This isn't that complicated.
13:03 Mike Smith? No, you're right.
13:04 Wes Larson? All right. I mentioned that 12 rafts had made it overboard, but not all of them had men in them yet. And then a number of floater nets had made it over as well. These floater nets are essentially just huge rope nets with big corks all over them. So they like float on the surface. And it can hold up to 50 men on top of it. Oh, wow. Yeah. But then when you guys are picturing these rafts, I want you to clear your mind when you're picturing a raft. Because this is not the big, kind of like Zodiac polyurethane looking raft that you would picture. They are these large balsa wood rectangles with a cargo net in the middle. So it looks like big. So like you're exposed to the water underneath.
13:48 Wes Larson? It looks like a bunch of boxes with like canvas over them forming a rectangle. And in the middle, there's just a cargo net and you would be in like a couple of feet of water.
13:57 Mike Smith? Yeah, that doesn't sound great.
13:59 Wes Larson? And then some of them would kind of break out and you'd be standing like five feet in like five feet of water. So you're still wet the entire time.
14:05 Mike Smith? And if you're not five feet tall, that's going to be problematic.
14:08 Wes Larson? Annoying. Yeah. All right. So Captain McVeigh, like I mentioned, was alone for a long time in the water.
14:14 Jeff Larson? Wait, I have a question. Sorry. Uh, is there still any threat from the submarine?
14:19 Wes Larson? Yes, they were really worried about the submarine coming back and just opening fire on them.
14:23 Jeff Larson? Like, what can they do?
14:24 Wes Larson? They have a mounted machine gun that they could just put on top.
14:27 Jeff Larson? Oh, really?
14:28 Wes Larson? And just shoot everyone. Yeah. They were really worried about that.
14:31 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
14:31 Wes Larson? The first few hours. In fact, they think they saw the submarine pop back up, but it went away.
14:37 Jeff Larson? Really?
14:37 Wes Larson? Yeah. They, that's, that's pretty like standard kind of thing in, in World War II is if you sank someone, you could then have like planes or submarine or whatever come in and just like.
14:48 Jeff Larson? Dude.
14:49 Wes Larson? Strafe them.
14:50 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
14:50 Wes Larson? Yeah. They were pretty worried about that. Captain McVeigh's alone for a long time, but then he finds two empty rafts and gradually picks up around a dozen or so other sailors. They were pretty lucky because the rafts had some provisions and some gear in them. Some of these rafts had a little bit of fresh water in wooden casks. I don't think his did, but some of the other ones did. So basically, if you end up in a raft, you were very lucky. Even though you're still in the water, you could like dry out your life jacket, you could put your body on top of these like boxes. And there was often some provisions for these men. The floater nets could fit a lot of men on top of them, but they were really ungainly. If you put too many men, they would sink. And everyone would fall off and they'd have to pop back up.
15:33 Jeff Larson? Imagine being like the last one getting on to you and everyone's like, sorry.
15:37 Wes Larson? There's a lot of stories of that, of like people pulling rank or people saying like, no.
15:42 Jeff Larson? I have a kid.
15:43 Wes Larson? Pulling out a gun or a knife or whatever and saying like, you can't come on here.
15:47 Jeff Larson? The Billy Zane.
15:48 Wes Larson? Yeah, it got a little crazy. People trying to figure out like where to go. But they slowly established these groups, lots of small groups and a couple of big ones. The biggest one that I mentioned had roughly half the men in it as well as Dr. Haynes and Father Conley. And that group was almost exclusively composed of men that were just floating in the water. No rafts, no floater nets. Um, so about 400 men that were just floating. Yeah.
16:13 Jeff Larson? I would have thought the big group had some rafts and stuff.
16:16 Wes Larson? No. So Haynes told these men in this group, what he told them to do, and it worked really well, I think, was to get in a big circle and get single file in the water and tie their life jackets kind of to each other. And then wrap your arms around the guy in front of you and lay your head down on the guy behind you. And that way they could like keep somewhat warmer and they could kind of float as a unit. And that way everyone would kind of rely on each other to stay afloat.
16:42 Mike Smith? That's like such a secondary danger compared to everything else that they're facing, but you get hypothermia real quick.
16:48 Wes Larson? We're gonna talk about that. Yeah.
16:49 Mike Smith? Oh, man.
16:50 Wes Larson? And not so much in this water, but like, what you just mentioned is really important, because you don't have this kind of ordeal with the Titanic or the Lusitania, because they all froze in like an hour, you know? So you don't have people that are floating for days that need to be rescued. And with this, like, they're in 85 degree water. So hypothermia is a real concern, but it was like very insidious and slow.
17:14 Mike Smith? Sure.
17:14 Wes Larson? What it was doing to them. We'll get into that. A lot of the men that were floating had no access whatsoever to any provisions or fresh water during the entire ordeal. So almost five days. I read a story from one of the survivors that talked about how the only fresh water he had the entire time was when a tiny rain cloud passed over and he's able to catch some raindrops in his mouth and his hands. But also, he talked about how that cleaned some of the oil into his throat and it made him vomit again and lose all that water anyway. So then there are lots of groups of just a dozen or a couple dozen men, and there are likely a fair amount of people that were completely separated from everyone during this ordeal. But probably all of those solo people died. And we're gonna get into why that is. Basically, I'm just trying to set up the scene for what's
17:59 Wes Larson? happening in the water. We have a couple really big groups, then lots of different smaller groups that are spread out over a huge distance. About half of these men have life jackets and a large percentage of the men are simply floating in the water or treading water. The rest are either on floater nets or rafts. And the experience in the next five days was really terrible for all of these men, but much worse for the men that were just floating and didn't have any provisions.
18:24 Jeff Larson? Yeah, I'd be toast without like anything.
18:27 Wes Larson? Yeah.
18:28 Jeff Larson? Like just treading water?
18:29 Wes Larson? And they would, they would just take life jackets off of dead people. So I think over time, a lot of these guys that didn't immediately drown were able to get a life jacket. But um, you had to go take it off of like a corpse.
18:42 Mike Smith? Ugh.
18:42 Wes Larson? Yeah. Okay.
18:44 Jeff Larson? I'd have no problem.
18:45 Wes Larson? Neither would I.
18:46 Mike Smith? You don't have, you would loot the dead like that?
18:48 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
18:49 Mike Smith? I don't know if that's looting. I think, I feel like.
18:51 Wes Larson? I think they would happily give you.
18:52 Mike Smith? Probably understand.
18:53 Wes Larson? Yeah. So pretty much right after they entered the water, men started dying. Many of them had terrible burns, broken limbs, broken backs, fractured skulls, lots of awful injuries from the sinking. And they maybe swallowed too much oil too and vomited until they passed out and sank. A lot of them, they think just bled out from their injuries from the boat. But it's thought that like dozens, if not hundreds of men died within the first hour or two of being in the water. And then those corpses would actually, a lot of them, because they still had life jackets and whatnot, would just float next to the living men throughout this entire ordeal.
19:30 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
19:30 Wes Larson? So they were pretty much constantly surrounded by corpses.
19:33 Jeff Larson? I guess that like being in war too, there's like a lot of emphasis on getting bodies back home to loved ones. So I guess that is a consideration in taking the life vests off a corpse.
19:47 Wes Larson? Dr. Haynes was collecting dog tags for a really long time.
19:50 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
19:51 Wes Larson? And then he had like a hundred of them and he couldn't hold them anymore. They were too heavy. So he had to drop them all.
19:56 Jeff Larson? Oh, man.
19:57 Wes Larson? Stanley Lipsky was one of the men that would die during the first night in the water. We talked about him in the first episode. He was the gunner, whose hands had burned down to just his tendons and his eyes had boiled in their sockets.
20:09 Jeff Larson? I was hoping he died alive.
20:11 Wes Larson? No. So men were actually holding him up out of the water. And Dr. Haynes found him and he knew there was nothing he could do for him. And Lipsky said, Lou, I'm dying. Tell my wife I love her and she should marry again. And then he died not long after and they took his life jacket and let his body sink down into the depths.
20:30 Mike Smith? I just can't imagine what that would be like, you know, a real conversation taking place like that.
20:36 Jeff Larson? The doctor didn't marry his wife, right?
20:38 Wes Larson? I don't think so.
20:39 Jeff Larson? Cause then it's like, I don't know if he really said that.
20:44 Wes Larson? That's true. He's like, I promise everyone I told you.
20:48 Jeff Larson? He's like, she said it. Don't let anyone marry my wife.
20:52 Wes Larson? He's like, what's that?
20:54 Mike Smith? It's like, what did she say? What did he say specifically? He's like, I want you to marry my wife when you get home. That's, that's what I want most.
21:01 Wes Larson? He gets there and she's like, did he have any last words?
21:03 Mike Smith? Yes. Like, well.
21:04 Wes Larson? He did.
21:05 Mike Smith? As a matter of fact. I don't like this anymore than you.
21:11 Wes Larson? All right. But the thing, I, I just wanted to include that story because that happened dozens of times that night. Men saying goodbye to their friends.
21:18 Jeff Larson? Lots of like injured.
21:19 Wes Larson? Yep. Lots of injured men that.
21:21 Mike Smith? That guy just married everyone's wives?
21:23 Wes Larson? Gave up. That didn't happen dozens of times. But lots of people that would literally just like put their face down in the water and die. Yeah. Because they didn't want to feel any more pain. So day one, as the sun peeked over the horizon, it almost immediately became intolerably hot. Temperatures would be in the low eighties during the night. But during the day, they're well over a hundred degrees or roughly 38 degrees Celsius.
21:46 Jeff Larson? That'd be so hard to like not be able to get any type of shading.
21:51 Wes Larson? Yeah. Be awful. I mean, all you can do is like continue to dip down under the water, but like. I will say though, that the oil that was covering a lot of these men was suddenly somewhat helpful because it served as a.
22:01 Jeff Larson? I was actually getting, I was wondering.
22:03 Wes Larson? Yeah. As a pretty effective sunscreen and the men that were covered in it were able to avoid some of the terrible sunburn that other people got. And there were even men that would like reapply it. Because they knew it was helping with the sun.
22:14 Jeff Larson? So if you forget your sunscreen, just get some oil out of your car.
22:18 Wes Larson? Yeah. Just go get some motor oil and rub it all over your face. Easy life hack.
22:23 Mike Smith? Or if you're like at the Trinity test, just like, oh shoot, I forgot my sunscreen. I'll just put some, some motor oil on my face. It's like everyone has sunscreen, then just one guy in blackface.
22:36 Wes Larson? And while you bring up the Trinity test, there's something I like a myth I wanted to spell really quickly. And it's also, we got a lot of questions kind of about the nuclear part of this. They had dropped off their, like, they were done. They had dropped off the bomb components. They knew that the Indianapolis was like out of it. So I think often with this story, we hear this narrative of like, oh, they were on a top secret mission. And that's why no one came to help them. That's not at all what it was. They like they, their top secret mission was over. No one came to help them because they got bungled up. Some of the, like on that first day, while they're in the water, some of the men that had been in the Radio Shack that had like tried sending out an SOS message were telling everyone around them, listen, that message got out. We saw the needle move.
23:21 Wes Larson? They have a little needle that if the message actually gets transmitted, the needle moves. And they all were like, that needle moved. Um, and they knew that they didn't have time to confirm the message or wait for a reply. But because it had gotten out, because there were so many different boats and operating bases and everything that could have picked up their message. They all just assumed that someone would come help them.
23:45 Jeff Larson? That they, people they reached out to didn't assume it was a prank.
23:49 Wes Larson? Yeah. Well, the crazy thing too is like-
23:51 Mike Smith? They went out of business.
23:53 Wes Larson? Not only had their message been received and filed away, but Commander Hashimoto, the guy that sunk them, had also reported to Japanese officials that he sunk an enemy warship in that area. And his message had been intercepted by US code breakers.
24:08 Jeff Larson? No way.
24:09 Wes Larson? But they didn't have a record of any ship being in that area because it had kind of gotten bungled. So when they intercepted that message, they thought that it was just the Japanese trying to draw rescue ships into the area so they could sink them. Yeah, that's kind of a prank, I guess.
24:25 Mike Smith? That's like a pretty deep prank. Like, let's hope they intercept this message. Hoping that, yeah.
24:31 Wes Larson? Well, they knew thi- this was something they would do and we would do too, is like false messages. Cause you know that code breakers are listening. And so they heard this and they looked and they saw, well, we didn't have a ship in that area. So this is obviously just them trying to get us.
24:46 Mike Smith? No wonder Mike Tyson liked those messenger pigeons.
24:49 Wes Larson? Yeah.
24:49 Mike Smith? Those guys, yeah, they never failed, right?
24:53 Wes Larson? This is all to say-
24:55 Mike Smith? Kurt, I mean, that one pigeon.
24:56 Wes Larson? You did an episode on that.
24:58 Mike Smith? Brave.
24:58 Jeff Larson? Must have failed at least once.
25:02 Wes Larson? This is all to say that no rescue was being mounted for the men in the Indianapolis, and no one on our side of the war had any idea that their ship had been sunk.
25:11 Jeff Larson? You don't think the Japanese would start sending their own pigeons with like fake notes?
25:17 Wes Larson? They might.
25:17 Mike Smith? Would they be like Japanese pigeons? Would you be able to tell the difference? I don't know.
25:22 Wes Larson? The note was written in Japanese.
25:23 Mike Smith? Oh, that's probably more of a giveaway.
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26:52 Wes Larson? As the men floated in the water that first day, they gradually cleared away from the biggest oil slick. Some of them did, and as they did, they got much better visibility into the water below them. They could suddenly see more than 50 feet into beautiful crystalline water, and that gave them a very clear view of the dozens, if not hundreds, of sharks that were now circling in the water beneath the men.
27:15 Wes Larson? All right, let's take a second to talk about these sharks before we keep going with their stories. We mentioned in part one and in our conversation with Dan, that there were likely a number of different species that were present as the men are floating in the water. So we have oceanic white tips. I think that's our number one offender here. I shouldn't say offender. I already take that back. That's our number one shark that's probably attending this feast. Tiger sharks, silky sharks, shortfin Mako sharks and blue sharks were all likely there. You wouldn't necessarily expect a tiger shark to be there, but some of the descriptions that the men had of one particular massive shark does make you think there was a tiger.
27:56 Jeff Larson? Well, Dan was pretty, that's one of the first ones Dan assumed would be there too, because they, he said they're like deep water sharks.
28:05 Wes Larson? Yeah, they're coastal, but they do go out into plagic areas. So, yeah. But again, most of the attacks on the living men were likely done in large part by the oceanic white tips and then maybe a few by tiger sharks. These other sharks like the silkies and the blue sharks, it's possible, but we don't really know. That's the thing. Like what we know is that a lot of men that were bitten or saw people get attacked said that they had a big white fin. So that's why we kind of assume most of them were oceanic white tips.
28:35 Mike Smith? What, what fin would that belong to? What species of shark?
28:38 Wes Larson? The oceanic white tip.
28:39 Mike Smith? But like, are there any other sharks that match that description?
28:42 Wes Larson? No, not that would be out there. So there are other white tip sharks, like the white tip reef sharks that we swam with in Galapagos and stuff.
28:49 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
28:50 Wes Larson? But they're, they don't attack people and this is the only one that you would see that has the dorsal fin sticking out of the water with like a big white section on it. Okay.
28:59 Jeff Larson? Yeah. If it was a white tip reef sharks, that's such a great frame job by them.
29:05 Wes Larson? Yeah.
29:05 Jeff Larson? Like, everyone's gonna think that's oceanic white tips, you know?
29:09 Mike Smith? Well, do you think a shark would want, would want the notoriety or would want to pass the buck?
29:14 Wes Larson? Yeah, I don't know.
29:15 Jeff Larson? Well, I mean, what you're doing better right now?
29:18 Wes Larson? The white, the reef ones.
29:19 Jeff Larson? So I'd, I'd assume you'd want to pass the blame on.
29:23 Mike Smith? There you go.
29:24 Wes Larson? I would say if you were just like a shark that always kind of wanted to bite a person.
29:28 Mike Smith? Yeah.
29:28 Wes Larson? But, and you never had the opportunity, this would have been a good opportunity.
29:31 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
29:32 Wes Larson? You could just go up and sneak a little bite and blame it on one of your friends.
29:35 Mike Smith? Right.
29:36 Jeff Larson? All you can eat buffet.
29:38 Wes Larson? So there's a big range reported when it comes to how many people were killed by sharks from the Indianapolis and that number is probably somewhere between 30 men and 150 men. Some of the groups that were floating in the water say they never saw a shark attack or even a shark. Oh. And some of the groups had pretty consistent attacks during really the whole ordeal. And the and most like all, every single interview I watched with these men, and I watched a lot of them. They all talked about sharks. There wasn't any of the interviews that I watched where they're like, no, I didn't see a shark. What group would you want to be in? Uh, with the captain and the two. Well, I'm saying like the groups that saw sharks or the groups. Oh, I'd want to see sharks. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
30:23 Wes Larson? Especially if you got on the, you get rescued and everyone's like, dude, how about those sharks?
30:29 Wes Larson? See a single shark? They'd be so mad at me. You'd do so good on that show on Netflix? They'd be every, all the other sailors would be so angry at me if I was like sad I didn't see a shark.
30:43 Wes Larson? I would be. They're like, can we go back? Yeah.
30:46 Mike Smith? All right. I hope a torpedo hits this boat.
30:52 Wes Larson? All right. For us to understand why there are so many attacks, though, we really need to understand the behavior of these open water pelagic sharks. Oh, wow. Specifically the oceanic. Getting in the mind of a shark. A little bit. So pelagic, I keep saying that word that really just means like deep open water. So when you're like away from the coast and you're in deep water. And basically, as we mentioned, these are sharks that exist in these large pelagic open areas of the ocean. And these are essentially nutrient deserts. There's not a lot of food for them. We tend to think of the ocean from like a perspective of the coast because that's where humans spend most of their time. There's tons of fish. There's these big continental shelves. Seals.
31:34 Wes Larson? There's reefs, there's seals, there's all sorts of stuff there, a lot of life. And when you get out in the open ocean, you can go a long time without seeing much. And because of that, if an oceanic white tip or any other pelagic shark hears or smells something that could be potential prey, they're going to investigate it because they're not really sure when they're going to get another chance. And we talked about this a little bit in a recent subscription episode. But sharks have this kind of like scale of senses that they use as they're detecting prey. And they go from one to the other and they do use them at the same time, but their longest range one and Dan mentioned this too. We tend to think of it as being smell, but it's actually probably hearing like they're probably going to hear things further away than they actually
32:19 Wes Larson? smell them. And so the sinking of the Indianapolis would have made so much noise and splashing.
32:26 Jeff Larson? They don't even have like ears though.
32:28 Wes Larson? They do. They have an inner ear.
32:30 Jeff Larson? Inner ear?
32:31 Wes Larson? Yeah.
32:31 Jeff Larson? That doesn't sound efficient.
32:33 Wes Larson? It is efficient. Yeah.
32:34 Jeff Larson? So what, what's our?
32:35 Wes Larson? Well, they also, they also have a lateral line and their lateral line, like if we can't look at hearing is just from a human context, like animals hear in different ways. So like they pick up the tiniest little minute vibrations in the water through their lateral line. And that's a part of their overall.
32:53 Jeff Larson? Vibrations count as hearing.
32:55 Wes Larson? Yeah. Okay. So that's going to be their first thing. They don't always.
33:01 Mike Smith? Maybe that's what that one chess player was doing with the vibrator.
33:04 Jeff Larson? Hearing is just listening.
33:06 Mike Smith? Yeah. I've always been wondering like, how could he understand like what a vibration is trying to tell him, but that's like, you're listening to the vibrator.
33:13 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
33:15 Mike Smith? It's telling you.
33:15 Wes Larson? That would be good.
33:16 Mike Smith? E5.
33:17 Wes Larson? Good pole. I think that one is touch, but uh, anyway, so we have hearing and then we move on to scent. They're going to pick up scent at a very long distance. And then once they get closer, we have those other senses that we talk about quite a bit, the ampule of Lorenzini and their sight. Their sight is probably like the next, and then the ampule of Lorenzini when they're really.
33:39 Jeff Larson? That's the spidey sense.
33:41 Wes Larson? Yep. And that's kind of how they um, really key in on exactly what they need to do at the very end.
33:47 Jeff Larson? So how much of a difference would it make for them sensing these sailors if the sailors are in the oil water compared to in the clear water?
33:57 Wes Larson? No difference.
33:58 Jeff Larson? No difference.
33:59 Wes Larson? I don't think so.
34:00 Jeff Larson? Wow.
34:00 Wes Larson? Yeah.
34:01 Jeff Larson? Because for me, it'd be easier to see the ones in the clear water.
34:05 Wes Larson? Yeah, the oil is staying on top of the water though. So like, that's not affecting the sharks at all. The oil, oil and water, you know, they don't mix. So yeah, yeah. So in 1945, we hadn't really killed huge number of sharks yet. Um, so oceanic white tips are really plentiful and Dan kind of talked about that last week. Um, this was probably like one of the most widespread and commonly encountered sharks in the world and definitely in the open ocean. The noises and the smells from the sinking of the ship and this two mile long line of men leaking their body fluids into the water would pretty much bring any oceanic white tip in a huge radius to the area. I don't know exactly what that radius is, but pretty far. I think
34:50 Wes Larson? within miles.
34:51 Jeff Larson? They're talking.
34:52 Wes Larson? They're not talking. Yeah. And while these are bold sharks, they would no doubt be a bit cautious around a potential food source that they don't totally recognize. And that's why the sharks likely circled and bumped for a very long time before they finally started attacking. And it's also probably why they went for dead victims first. And that's a side note I wanted to make.
35:14 Jeff Larson? Like if you bump and they don't react type of thing?
35:17 Wes Larson? Yeah, exactly. Just kind of, that's probably mostly it. Just bumping and realizing. And there's no, and there's no like electrical field like there is on living prey.
35:27 Jeff Larson? You think if they like just kept bumping you and not biting you kind of be like, oh, they just want to be friends?
35:33 Wes Larson? I'm sure some of these men probably thought that because they got bumped all the time and some of them didn't get bit. But I don't think they thought they wanted to be friends. Yeah. No, my side note was that the sharks almost certainly fed much more on corpses than they did on the live victims. I think most of the attacks that happened on the live victims probably happened due to the men like splashing or acting like prey or kind of drawing in the attention of the shark and making it click into that predator mode. But they're, they probably would have been pretty happy. Most of these sharks just eating corpses the whole time.
36:08 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
36:08 Wes Larson? But like, some of the behavior of the men probably drew them in to attack.
36:12 Jeff Larson? And probably a few men that handled it as well as you can still got attacked.
36:17 Wes Larson? Totally.
36:18 Jeff Larson? Like once, when we did the great white dive, it kind of seemed after a little bit, like they were eating some tuna and stuff.
36:26 Wes Larson? Yeah.
36:27 Jeff Larson? And after a little bit seemed like they were just gonna bite anything in the water for a sec, you know?
36:32 Wes Larson? Because they're just totally keyed in.
36:33 Jeff Larson? Yeah, they're like in eating mode.
36:36 Wes Larson? Yep. Basically, I just want to say all of this before we really get into the attacks because people need to understand that these are just animals operating under the rules of their own natural history and their environment. Pelagic sharks have to be inquisitive and they have to take advantage of any potential meals. That is like what they have evolved to be. And it, this wasn't bloodthirsty predatory. You know, they are predatory, but it wasn't like sharks that were hoping to finally get to eat people. This was just an animal being an animal.
37:10 Jeff Larson? Only need to be afraid of this if we're on a ship that gets sunk by torpedo.
37:15 Wes Larson? Floating in tropical waters for a long time, you should probably worry about the shark. Otherwise, and you know, we're going to teach you some of the stuff that you could do to where you're going to be a lot safer than you would otherwise. But I mean, that's all just to say, like, I think if we were to pump the smell of Taco Bell into Jeff's apartment for days, and then put a big old plate of Taco Bell right in the middle of his living room, you better believe our guy's eating that Taco Bell. He's eating.
37:42 Mike Smith? There's no way that lasts days.
37:46 Jeff Larson? I'll like bump into it.
37:51 Wes Larson? Checking it. And we wouldn't blame him for it. And that's, I mean, these sharks have been smelling all this crazy stuff for days, and now they're seeing it in front of them. A shark's gonna shark.
38:02 Mike Smith? Do you think sharks are similar to bears where something that's extremely calorie dense, or like a candy or a sweet? Are they going to be super into that? Or are they strictly just trying to get meat?
38:12 Wes Larson? I don't think they would be, but I don't know.
38:15 Mike Smith? Okay.
38:16 Wes Larson? I don't know if they have like, if they throughout their lives have the ability and counter such a variety of food to where they would kind of know, you know?
38:25 Mike Smith? Yeah.
38:25 Wes Larson? And I think bears are more intelligent, too.
38:28 Mike Smith? Okay.
38:29 Wes Larson? Yeah. All right. On the evening of the first full day, Cazell Smith was laying on a floater net. His hand was dangling in the water. He'd been gripping a life jacket all night, and he was finally getting used to the swells as they lifted and dropped the roughly 50 men on his net. The constant up and down motion had led to a lot of nausea, and many of the other men on the net had spent most of the day vomiting while being baked in the hot sun. But now in the evening, the temperatures were finally starting to drop a little. And as Cazell Smith dipped his hand in the water, he noticed something concerning. All day long, he had watched as dozens, or even hundreds of large sharks circled in the deep water far below their net. And now, as the sun was going down, they were suddenly much closer, within a few
39:14 Jeff Larson? Oh, that would be like, if you're seeing a ton of sharks under you and then like the sun goes down and you can't like see down as far anymore, that'd be scary. That could
39:26 Wes Larson? be And we've always talked about sharks, when are the two times you don't want to be in the water, dawn and dusk, they're highly crepuscular.
39:32 Jeff Larson? Oh, yeah.
39:33 Wes Larson? There you go. So as he realized this, he started to withdraw his hand from the water, but in that instant, a large oceanic white tip shark shot through the water and bit into his left hand, ripping him off the net and pulling him underwater.
39:46 Jeff Larson? No way.
39:48 Wes Larson? His horrified fellow survivors watched as he was there one minute and then immediately gone. He was pulled 10 feet underwater by the shark, which was now shaking its head back and forth, trying to separate his hand from his body, and Smith suddenly realized that he was about to be eaten alive underwater by a shark. He held his breath and swung out with his right hand, doing his best to push and hit the shark in an effort to discourage it, but it only intensified the resolve of the shark, and it continued sawing its teeth back and forth on his hand, which now only the bone was keeping it connected to his forearm. But Smith's right hand suddenly caught at something softer as he was like trying to hit the shark. Then the rest of the shark, he pushed his middle finger in
40:30 Wes Larson? and felt it go deep into something soft. He'd found the eye of the Oh, okay.
40:37 Wes Larson? For a second, I was like, whoa.
40:42 Wes Larson? As I was reading that, I was like, okay, yeah. He'd found the eye of the shark and it released its grip and started thrashing around underwater. So he gets back to the surface, and he does his best to swim to the net with his mangled hand. He's holding his left hand up with his right arm. And the men on the raft saw the trail of blood he was leaving, and they wouldn't let him back on to the floater net. What? Because they were, they're afraid that he was going to attract more sharks. And if it was me, I'd be like, like the hundred below us right now?
41:11 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
41:13 Wes Larson? But his adrenaline was thumping, and he pulled himself up onto the net, even though the men were like kicking and hitting him and trying to stop him. And he landed flat in the middle of a bunch of these other men, and then one of them pulled out a knife and tried to stab him to death. So he decided to take his chances with the sharks and jump back into the water.
41:32 Jeff Larson? Geez.
41:33 Wes Larson? This guy did end up surviving. I did see a photo of him.
41:36 Jeff Larson? Oh, nice.
41:36 Wes Larson? Yeah.
41:38 Jeff Larson? Did the stabber guy?
41:39 Wes Larson? I don't know, probably not, because that guy's probably already losing his mind.
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43:01 Wes Larson? In a nearby group that evening, one of the men watched as a large shark shot straight up through the water column and attacked his friend right next to him. The splash was so large that a small wave broke over him and he instinctively ducked and closed his eyes to shield them from the spray. And when he opened them back up, his friend was completely gone, life jacket and all. In many of the groups, the shark attacks started at dawn on Tuesday. Men that were on the edges of the group or ones that decided to try and swim away from the groups were the first to be killed. And the other sailors huddled together and would hear screams that they all said were unlike anything they'd ever heard in their entire life and during their years of war. High pitched, blood curdling, unearthly screams of men being eaten alive by a wild animal.
43:46 Wes Larson? Some of the groups would hear these screams for the rest of their days in the water, and they'd be haunted by them for the rest of their lives. One group watched as a man was attacked by a particularly large shark and he was dragged through the water like a big fish dragging a bobber. He was pushed through the water at waist level while he screamed and tried to push away the mouth of the large shark. So just imagine that like he is moving through the water with just his waist at water level and the shark's just pushing his torso through the water as he's screaming. Ace Ventura.
44:17 Jeff Larson? Like trying to get started water skiing.
44:20 Wes Larson? Yeah. And I just, I think of that video from Egypt that we saw of the tiger shark keeping the guy and it kinda does that with him a little bit. And that, just that like 10 second video from like 100 yards away scarred me. Yeah. And these guys had to watch their friends like being eaten by these sharks. Yeah, from feet away. And this guy's screaming and then suddenly his screams are cut short as the shark pulled him beneath the surface. In Dr. Haines' group, there's a man who drifted away from the group and was starting to yell for help and they thought maybe he was starting to lose his mind a little. So they sent one of the other men out to bring him back. However, when that guy separated from the group, a large dorsal fin almost immediately popped up behind him.
45:04 Wes Larson? So he lost his nerve and went back to the floating group of men. Then a few minutes later, the man that was yelling out in the water went silent when he was pulled underwater. One man was sent out.
45:14 Jeff Larson? Pretty good idea to go back, probably.
45:15 Wes Larson? Yeah, yeah. I think that would make me go back.
45:18 Jeff Larson? They're still following orders at this point, too. It's like.
45:22 Wes Larson? If there's a guy 100 yards out.
45:24 Jeff Larson? You guys are like leading and you got us in this mess, like maybe I don't need to listen to you anymore.
45:30 Wes Larson? It definitely broke down in some of the groups, like the whole hierarchy and everything. But one man was sent out by his group to retrieve a nearby floating crate of potatoes and he'd made it 60 yards when suddenly he started screaming and a group of sharks tore into him.
45:44 Jeff Larson? Jeez.
45:45 Wes Larson? Men would wake up to their shipmates being completely gone or missing a limb and in the mornings or evenings, they would have to listen to the screams as shark took their friends and fellow sailors and all they could do is pull their legs up and hope they wouldn't be next. One man named Buck Gibson woke up one morning on a floater net and when he looked over at the young sailor next to him, he saw that his leg had been severed and a large bone was sticking out of it. He tried to wake the boy, but he was dead. One raft was being followed by a large tiger shark for days. The men even named it Oscar. And then one of the boys decided to stab it with the homemade pocket knife. He buried it an inch deep in the shark and it just casually reacted and swam away.
46:25 Jeff Larson? At least got like a touch of damage back to the sharks though.
46:30 Wes Larson? It's true.
46:30 Jeff Larson? Yeah, it's a fight now.
46:33 Mike Smith? One point of damage dealt.
46:35 Wes Larson? One sailor reported a floater net with 15 men on it was attacked by a group of sharks in a feeding frenzy. And that all 15 men were killed by those sharks.
46:43 Jeff Larson? Wow, in the raft?
46:45 Wes Larson? On a floater net. Some of these rafts too, there are stories of them like coming up through the cargo net on the floor.
46:51 Jeff Larson? Yeah, because he's like still in the water.
46:54 Wes Larson? Yeah. At one point, two friends were floating and one of the men, no longer able to handle his thirst, told his friend he was going to dive down and take a drink of the cooler water deeper down.
47:04 Jeff Larson? Hmm, that's interesting.
47:05 Wes Larson? Yeah, there's a kind of a delusion among a lot of these men once they started losing their minds. That the colder water down deeper was actually fresh water. So they would dive down and drink it.
47:16 Jeff Larson? Is there any like difference in depth for saltiness?
47:20 Wes Larson? No.
47:20 Jeff Larson? Like salt doesn't rise at all or anything?
47:22 Wes Larson? Not anything significant.
47:24 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
47:24 Wes Larson? His friend watched him swim down through the crystal clear water. And then a shark came out of nowhere and grabbed his friend and dragged him away while he struggled to escape.
47:32 Jeff Larson? I mean, that's probably actually good.
47:35 Wes Larson? Better than drinking seawater.
47:36 Jeff Larson? He's about to drink seawater.
47:37 Mike Smith? Just go insane from the solidity.
47:39 Wes Larson? And we're gonna talk about that.
47:40 Mike Smith? Yeah.
47:41 Wes Larson? Some men would go crazy or simply give up and they would swim away from the group and essentially commit suicide by shark. And all too often it went according to plan. There's a few stories of that, of them just being like, I'm done. And they just start swimming and a shark comes and kills them.
47:55 Jeff Larson? It's kinda messed up to make the sharks live with that though.
47:59 Wes Larson? Basically the most horrific shit you can imagine just happening day after day. And being forced to simply float in the water in the dark and hope your turn isn't next after you've seen dozens of your friends get killed by sharks. It's just gonna have. Like a huge effect on your ability to keep it together mentally. And I think something that's important to talk about is for a lot of these boys, sharks were just something they'd read about like once in a book, you know? Like they didn't, they haven't seen tons of shark documentaries. They haven't seen Jaws. Sharks were kind of just like a thing that existed out in the world that they don't really, they hadn't really seen much of, you know? And so they didn't really have any idea of how to react to these fish that were eating them alive.
48:42 Wes Larson? So when they'd come in close, a lot of them would just like scream and splash to try and scare them away. But really all that's doing is intensifying. Yeah. The shark thinking that it's. Bigger target now. Yeah. Well, that's, that's what prey does for shark is it like splashes in the water column? So for them, it's like, okay, yeah, this is food. I wouldn't move at all. I like. Well, actually, no, I'd move if they bumped me. The thing I just couldn't get over was thinking about how terrified you would be. Like you just, like, how could you ever not be afraid of the water after that? You know, like, and I know a lot of the survivors never would go back near the ocean even. Well, Quinn, he dealt with it by just killing sharks. Yeah, that's true.
49:27 Wes Larson? You can't blame him now, now that you know all about it. It's kind of like, all right, I get it. I mean, we got the last laugh, humans on white tips. Jesus, yeah, it's, anyway, we'll get into that too.
49:38 Mike Smith? Well, Brody's the one that killed the shark. Like, what was his beef?
49:42 Wes Larson? He just. That little boy. Brody doesn't like the ocean.
49:45 Mike Smith? I mean, it wasn't his.
49:47 Wes Larson? Sailors weren't queens.
49:51 Mike Smith? You didn't know that for sure?
49:54 Wes Larson? Right. But when it came down to it, the sharks likely killed far fewer people than the rest of the dangers that these men in the water faced. Most of the deaths that occurred to the men who successfully made it off of the ship and didn't die from their injuries during the sinking. Were chalked up to exposure and exposure is just kind of a catchall term for what the elements were doing to their bodies as they floated in seawater and burning hot sun for five days. Also, just like this is a little side note, some of them said that little fish would come up and nip at their flesh and stuff too. And because they'd been in the water so long, their flesh just kind of started like pulling away from their bodies. And some of them had like exposed finger bones and toe bones from little fish just nipping at them
50:39 Wes Larson? constantly. But floating in saltwater for that long is basically akin to taking a bath in acid, because the sodium in the water will slowly break down your skin and tissue. So like, being in saltwater for five days is going to affect you about the same as being in like sulfuric acid for a few seconds. Like they both get really bad. So much so that we're going to talk about some really terrible injuries that happen in part three when they're pulled out of the water. But for now, we're going to run through what these men were experiencing. We touched on this in episode one, but salt would be deposited on the skin when saltwater evaporated in the heat. And then it would be ground into their skin through the constant rubbing from life jackets or clothes or whatever else. And this led to these huge open wounds or ulcers
51:24 Wes Larson? all over their skin that become infected. And they would scream out in pain every time they got splashed by saltwater. It felt like acid hitting these ulcers. So they were just like constantly, you know, in pain from that. The sun was a huge factor. Skin above the water would not only be hit by direct rays of the sun, but also the rays reflecting off of the water. A lot of the men suffered second degree burns from the sun and their exposed skin, their saltwater ulcers, and their lips and eyes all received serious sunburn. Eyes. I'm glad you said that. That's perfect segue because that was the next thing I was going to talk about and one of the hardest things to read about. The men were almost always eye level with the water and they got a ton of glare from the sun all day. None of them had sunglasses
52:07 Wes Larson? or anything to protect their eyes from the water and from the sun. This led to sunburn corneas and this thing called photophobia, which pretty much means any light exposure to the cornea causes intense pain. So like for me, After I got Lasik, I had photophobia for like a little bit.
52:25 Mike Smith? Sure.
52:25 Wes Larson? And any light, just like really, really, really hurt. Did you have that at all, Mike?
52:30 Mike Smith? I did, yeah, for thirty six hours, maybe.
52:33 Wes Larson? You watched Lord of the Rings, man.
52:36 Mike Smith? Moments.
52:36 Wes Larson? I only had it for like two hours and some people have it for a really long time. But I can't imagine having that pain and then like not having a way to stop it.
52:48 Mike Smith? Yeah.
52:49 Wes Larson? Many men would cut makeshift blindfolds out of their clothes or they'd place their socks over their eyes to try and block the sun. But blindfolding yourself when there's sharks that are killing people all around you led to some like pretty intense fears and panic.
53:03 Mike Smith? I'm sure, yeah, like, I mean, it doesn't really change the fact that the sharks are out there, but not really being able to monitor your situations on another level to add on to that. Yeah.
53:14 Wes Larson? Hypothermia is also a huge issue, even though they're in eighty five degree water and it was super hot during the day. It would cool off quite a bit at night and eighty five degree water is still much colder than the human body. So it would still cause your core body temperature to drop. Many of the men would immediately begin shivering as soon as the sun went down. And while it would take probably longer than five days to kill them from hypothermia in that warm of water, it was causing some really big issues like decreased mental function. And it led to more dehydration. Because when you're becoming really hypothermic, what your body does naturally is it diverts blood flow from your extremities toward your core. And then because your body is suddenly like, oh, there's a bunch of extra fluid in your core.
53:58 Wes Larson? It makes you start peeing a lot.
54:00 Mike Smith? No.
54:01 Wes Larson? So even though they were completely dehydrated, the hypothermia would make them have to pee like pretty constantly.
54:08 Mike Smith? Yeah.
54:09 Wes Larson? And there's also something called immersion diuresis, which is what happens to you when you're scuba diving, actually. And it's just the same thing, like the pressure of the water causes blood to move inward. And then your body again tells you, oh, we need to get rid of this fluid. So you're peeing a lot. That's like when you scuba dive, you pee more than you typically would. Yeah.
54:30 Mike Smith? Oh, yeah.
54:30 Wes Larson? But it's hard to pee. It is hard to pee.
54:33 Jeff Larson? Because of the pressure and it's cold and you got like suits on.
54:36 Wes Larson? I have a hard time peeing scuba diving.
54:38 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
54:38 Wes Larson? It's a problem for me, actually.
54:40 Mike Smith? Uh, is it?
54:41 Wes Larson? Yeah.
54:42 Mike Smith? And just get what like?
54:43 Wes Larson? Like, there's been dives that I've been on where I have to pee so bad.
54:46 Mike Smith? But can't?
54:47 Wes Larson? And so I have to like, put my knees in the sand and like, think about peeing.
54:53 Mike Smith? That's like Bear Grylls worst nightmare.
54:55 Wes Larson? Yeah. Yeah.
54:57 Mike Smith? Why? He's gotta drink that pee, but he can't.
54:59 Wes Larson? He wants to drink it. He wouldn't be able to drink it scuba diving, though.
55:02 Mike Smith? No. See?
55:05 Wes Larson? Alright.
55:05 Mike Smith? Double whammy for Bear.
55:07 Jeff Larson? You think?
55:07 Mike Smith? Poor guy.
55:08 Jeff Larson? I don't, I don't bet you you could. Take the regulator out?
55:13 Wes Larson? Maybe. You'd get a lot of salt water.
55:16 Mike Smith? Fill his oxygen tank full of urine instead of oxygen.
55:20 Jeff Larson? You think the pee would?
55:21 Mike Smith? Straw right into your mouth.
55:22 Wes Larson? He just has like a, what are those called in backpacks?
55:25 Mike Smith? Camelback full of urine.
55:26 Jeff Larson? Would the pee make it more or less salty?
55:29 Wes Larson? You could drink your own pee and we're gonna talk about that, actually.
55:32 Jeff Larson? But I'm saying.
55:32 Wes Larson? All of this we're talking about.
55:33 Jeff Larson? Under the ocean, less. Okay.
55:36 Wes Larson? Yeah.
55:37 Mike Smith? So like, Bear would wanna put some element into his pee before he drinks it.
55:41 Wes Larson? You could.
55:42 Mike Smith? Cause it's not got any like salts or electrolytes?
55:45 Wes Larson? I don't know if it doesn't have any.
55:46 Jeff Larson? Flavor list, though.
55:47 Wes Larson? I don't know if urine doesn't have any salt or electrolytes. Yeah, he just wants it straight.
55:53 Mike Smith? Yeah, pure. Yeah, I agree.
55:56 Wes Larson? Oh, like seawater has much more than our pee does, without a doubt.
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57:29 Wes Larson? Dehydration was really one of the biggest problems these men were experiencing.
57:33 Mike Smith? I'm surprised anyone's living. Well, they, some of them had provisions, but it seems like after two days, you're done, right?
57:39 Wes Larson? No, seven days, I think.
57:40 Mike Smith? Oh, is that what it is?
57:41 Wes Larson? Without water.
57:42 Mike Smith? I've been misinformed.
57:43 Wes Larson? It might be five, actually.
57:45 Jeff Larson? Well, I mean, Jesus did 40.
57:48 Mike Smith? Forty, but he was an exception.
57:50 Jeff Larson? Did he drink? Was it just food or was it food and water?
57:55 Mike Smith? Forty days and forty nights.
57:56 Jeff Larson? Church.
57:59 Jeff Larson? Are you looking it up?
57:59 Wes Larson? Three to seven days without water.
58:01 Jeff Larson? No, look up Jesus.
58:02 Wes Larson? I'm not looking up that.
58:04 Mike Smith? I've always thought it was 48 hours without water and you're toast. But that's like, this is a whole food pyramid thing.
58:10 Wes Larson? But there are people that die after like three days. Some of these men did have like a little bit of fresh water that like tidied them over this four days, four and a half days. Some of them only got a little bit from the cloud. And I do think water was probably the number one factor that would decide whether or not you survived. Their mouths, so like just to describe kind of what this was like for them. Their mouths became unbearably dry, just felt like total cotton. Their saliva turned thick and bitter. Their tongues would dry out and swell up and it felt like this thick, huge, dry worm that was blocking their airway. And that would make it.
58:50 Jeff Larson? I get that on Adderall. It's the worst.
58:52 Wes Larson? Right. Times that by a hundred.
58:53 Jeff Larson? The million times.
58:55 Wes Larson? Like you have, they had not a drop of moisture in their mouth. So it make it impossible to talk. And this feeling of a lump in their throat would make them unconsciously swallow. And that only increased the intensity of the dry mouth. Oh, really? You're not supposed to swallow with a dry mouth? I just think they just wanted to try and swallow away this lump, but like they didn't have anything to swallow with.
59:18 Mike Smith? You can relate though, Jeff. That's wild. You should write a monologue like Quint.
59:23 Wes Larson? I was just saying that feeling like your tongue is huge, it sucks.
59:28 Mike Smith? I'm sure.
59:29 Wes Larson? Yeah. Their lips would crack and the skin around their mouths and noses would pull back and shrivel like a corpse. And their kidneys are working overtime to flush toxins. So what kidneys will do in that kind of circumstance is they take water from any place they can get it. And your body essentially starts drinking from itself. So it depletes like water from every other metabolic process. And every cell in your body is just screaming out for water.
59:56 Mike Smith? Dude, the cramps must have been unbelievable.
59:59 Wes Larson? They have some terrible, terrible cramps. And your brain needs water too. So being severely dehydrated messes with the electrical activity in your brain. And causes a wide range of effects, including poor judgment and hallucinations. So they had a ton of hallucinations. Every book talks about that a lot. They would see islands with dancing girls. They would think that they were like headed to a hotel. Headed to a hotel with a soft bed. And they would start swimming for these things and then they'd either drown or get killed by sharks as soon as they left the group. Yeah. And sometimes the screaming of the people that swam away would like kind of break the delusion for everyone else. But a common one too is they saw the Indianapolis.
1:00:42 Wes Larson? And some of the men that saw it said they could see it underwater and that it was fine. And so they would dive down to try and like get into the mess hall to get food and stuff. I mean, they were just completely losing their minds and they would drown. But lots of different, lots of different hallucinations about anything you can imagine.
1:01:01 Jeff Larson? It is interesting because like you think of the desert as the hardest place to get water, but really it's being stranded in the ocean.
1:01:10 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:01:10 Mike Smith? What if you hallucinated like a shark and that made you stay on the raft? That'd be a pretty useful.
1:01:20 Jeff Larson? Or if you hallucinate the shark as a beautiful dancing woman and then you go.
1:01:25 Mike Smith? There you go.
1:01:26 Jeff Larson? Dance with the shark.
1:01:27 Mike Smith? And you stick your finger in its hole or whatever you said earlier. Yeah.
1:01:32 Wes Larson? And I will say their hallucinations are gonna get a lot worse and they're gonna turn violent. We're gonna talk about that in a minute. First, we're gonna do seawater. So this impaired judgment of just being dehydrated in the first place made a lot of the boys think they could drink seawater.
1:01:48 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
1:01:49 Wes Larson? Like I said, some of them thought the cooler water at their feet was something they could drink, or they thought they could hold water in their hands and the salt would evaporate out and then they could drink it. But everyone like that still had their brain was telling them, no, no, no, don't do that. Don't do that. And some of them just couldn't stand having like the swollen tongue thing going on anymore. And they just simply put their heads down and started drinking. And drinking seawater when you're already that dehydrated is a death sentence.
1:02:17 Jeff Larson? Like, does it feel good for a sec?
1:02:19 Wes Larson? Yeah, cuz it like, it was liquid, you know, like it, yeah, for sure it does. And that's why a lot of them keep drinking it.
1:02:26 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
1:02:26 Wes Larson? But it killed every single one of them. Anyone that drank seawater died. It's like pouring gasoline on a fire to try and put it out.
1:02:34 Mike Smith? I can't believe any of these guys survived.
1:02:36 Wes Larson? I know.
1:02:37 Mike Smith? Unbelievable.
1:02:38 Wes Larson? The raft guys though were in a much better, but yeah, especially the guys in the water.
1:02:41 Jeff Larson? You said a couple of rafts had fresh water, right?
1:02:44 Wes Larson? A little bit, yeah. When you drink seawater, your cells will literally explode in an effort to give your body extra water, but that's still not enough. Your kidneys start taking water from any possible place. And then you get hypernatremia, which is an excess of salt in the body. And basically, any excess water in your entire body and all of your cells will be sacrificed as your kidneys scramble to try and like clean your blood and remove these toxins. So blood vessels will tear, fluid builds up in brains, it causes seizures, cramps, insanity. They vomited uncontrollably, they foamed at the mouth, they died of kidney failure amongst other things.
1:03:26 Wes Larson? One survivor was so dehydrated that his eyes bulged from his sockets and it was impossible for him to close his eyelids around him. And like he was getting just like sunburn and seawater on his eyes all the time too. So just like terrible, terrible stuff. Yeah. Dr. Haynes watches some of the boys drink seawater. Even after he pleads with them not to, and he sees them experience like severe muscle cramps, intestinal cramps, convulsions. He also watches them foam at the nose. And then he said like brown fluid, the color of root beer started dripping down from their noses and mouths. And they went completely crazy. Just thinking you probably don't have any fluid for tears either. You have nothing. So your eyes are just sandpaper. Oh.
1:04:11 Wes Larson? Some of them screamed as they clawed at their throats in the desperate need for water. Some of them spun in the water or went into violent fits. All of them eventually either slipped into comas and died, drowned themselves in their mania, or attracted sharks from all the splashing and were torn to pieces. But even men that weren't drinking seawater were completely losing their minds. They would suddenly see their fellow sailors turn into Japanese combatants. They would like be talking to them and all of a sudden it'd be like, they would say a slur. And then they would pull out knives and start stabbing each other. Geez. So now you gotta be worried about like the other people too.
1:04:50 Wes Larson? So in Haynes's group and Dr. Haynes's group, all the floaters, they experienced a shared delusion that enemy soldiers were among them. And they started stabbing and drowning each other. And Haynes watched all of this in horror and he saw one of the men actually gouge out the eyes of another shipmate. And in a matter of 10 minutes, 50 of the men were killed in this violence.
1:05:10 Mike Smith? Oh my gosh.
1:05:12 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:05:12 Jeff Larson? And it's bad too, because it's like the crazy people aren't the ones dying as much. Like they're the ones killing.
1:05:20 Wes Larson? Right.
1:05:21 Jeff Larson? So then they're still around too.
1:05:22 Wes Larson? Well, yeah, I'm glad you said that because in some of these other groups and like these groups weren't communicating between each other, but they all experienced kind of similar things. On like one of the other groups on a raft, they just decided, once people start losing their minds, because I think they saw it happen a little bit, we're just killing them. So they would put the guy in a headlock and they would stab a knife through his armpit into his heart. And that hap- as soon as they started to break mentally, they would just do it.
1:05:50 Jeff Larson? Geez.
1:05:50 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:05:51 Jeff Larson? Is that the best way to place?
1:05:53 Wes Larson? That's what they decided was like the best way to do it.
1:05:56 Jeff Larson? In the armpit?
1:05:57 Wes Larson? This like most humane way. Yeah.
1:05:59 Mike Smith? Hmm.
1:06:00 Wes Larson? I don't know.
1:06:01 Mike Smith? There, it's just death from every side. Like there's not even Pete, the your shipmates, you can't even.
1:06:09 Wes Larson? Like listening to all the interviews, these like old, sweet men, and they're all wearing their like Indianapolis caps and everything. They would just be like, yeah, but the sharks would stop, but then we started killing each other, you know, or like, oh, the oil, the oil sure did help with the sun, but boy, did it make you vomit. Like everything was bad.
1:06:29 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:06:29 Wes Larson? There was nothing that was good, you know? On the la- we're almost done with the suffering. Uh, on the last full day in the water, cannibalism was reported and men watched as sailors cut into the wrists and necks of the dead men in the water and drank their blood to assuage their thirst, which honestly, I would do that.
1:06:47 Mike Smith? Sure. Yeah.
1:06:48 Wes Larson? The scene had become a complete and total hell and rescue had to come quick or every, every single man in the water would die from one of the dozens or so ways that people were dying. But no rescue had been launched. When the Indianapolis was sunk, their SOS message got out and they were received in three different places. On Laity, so the island they were sailing to, Commodore Jacob Jacobson, terrible name.
1:07:15 Mike Smith? I like that name, actually.
1:07:16 Wes Larson? Was woken up just after midnight and after he read the SOS message, he pretty much told the people that woke him up. If you get another message, let me know. I'm going back to sleep. Another office received the SOS and they actually dispatched tugboats to go inspect the site of the sinking. But the guy that dispatched the tugboats, uh, his commanding officer, Norman Gillette, got mad at him that he hadn't been consulted first and he told the tugboats to come back, even though they're already a third of the way there.
1:07:46 Mike Smith? Dude, Gillette.
1:07:48 Wes Larson? And another boat on La Ti had heard the message too, but when it's relayed to command, it was ignored. So three messages, three people heard this message, all three of them. Mainly like the upper people too. And this is all going to be really important for part three. This is pretty much because they never got a confirmation message from the Indianapolis. But there's also other things that went wrong. So furthermore, when the Indianapolis didn't arrive in La Ti, they still marked her as arrived. Because there was a lot of traffic and ships were just marked as arrived unless they heard differently. That guy, that's me at that job. Like, I'm just like, yeah.
1:08:30 Wes Larson? There was one guy whose job was actually to physically check to make sure ships were arriving. And when he saw that the Indianapolis hadn't arrived, he marked her as overdue. But everyone just kind of shrugged and assumed that she had been diverted for some reason. Or, you know, for whatever reason, she wasn't there. And it would be at least another five or six days before anyone really noticed her absence. And by then, all of the men in the water would be dead. So as men died from saltwater poisoning, or went crazy and killed each other, or drifted away from the group and were killed by sharks, all of them continued to pray and hope. They pleaded for someone, anyone to notice them down there in the endless Pacific.
1:09:12 Wes Larson? For their God to send an angel that would pull them out of hell and send them back to their families. And it just so happened that on Thursday, August 2nd, that very angel was flying toward them in a Lockheed bomber. And that'll be part three.
1:09:27 Mike Smith? God's got Lockheed bombers on his side. All powerful.
1:09:33 Mike Smith? No wonder he beat Satan, cast him out.
1:09:36 Wes Larson? I don't know, though. Satan has a submarine.
1:09:41 Mike Smith? Yeah, thanks, Bill.
1:09:43 Wes Larson? All right. You guys have any questions about part two? Pretty harrowing.
1:09:47 Mike Smith? Yeah, I didn't. I didn't. I feel like it's important to have heard that story, but.
1:09:52 Wes Larson? Yeah, I will say like, I really recommend these books because in the books, you hear about like individuals and their groups and kind of what these individual groups were going through. There's much more of kind of like a narrative because there's characters you've been following the whole book. It's impossible to do that with our time constraints. It is. The books really paint it much better than I do. I kind of just told all the terrible stuff.
1:10:19 Mike Smith? Sure.
1:10:19 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:10:20 Jeff Larson? There's some really good stuff that you left.
1:10:22 Wes Larson? There's nothing that good, but there were like moments, you know, where they like joked around with each other or where they kind of were just like, you know, boys in the water.
1:10:32 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
1:10:32 Wes Larson? But um, but it was pretty terrible.
1:10:36 Mike Smith? Is there a good reason to believe that this is an isolated incident? Because a lot of ships were getting blown up and sunk, right? In this theater of war, were there, is there any good reason to believe that there were other attacks? A shark?
1:10:49 Wes Larson? Oh, there for sure were. Yeah.
1:10:51 Mike Smith? Really?
1:10:51 Wes Larson? There for sure were. I think this one, though.
1:10:53 Jeff Larson? Took the longest to get.
1:10:55 Wes Larson? Yeah, the fact that they were floating for so long.
1:10:57 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:10:58 Wes Larson? Is what made it so unique and it was a big ship, you know, where a lot of people went into the water. But there's, I like just learning about this. I stumbled on a story about another one off the coast of South Africa where a thousand people went in the water and only like 200 came out.
1:11:14 Mike Smith? Whoa.
1:11:14 Wes Larson? And they think the Oceanic White Tips took a lot of those people too. And that was during World War II as well. So, yeah.
1:11:21 Jeff Larson? Yeah, I know. I kind of feel like I need something like this to happen.
1:11:26 Wes Larson? To you?
1:11:27 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
1:11:28 Wes Larson? Hope it doesn't.
1:11:28 Jeff Larson? Just so like, I don't take anything for granted.
1:11:32 Wes Larson? Just so when you're like, yeah, if you ever have grandkids, they like look in your eye and they know there's something you're not telling them.
1:11:38 Jeff Larson? Or just like every cup of water I drink, I'll be like, man. Remember when I was in the ocean and I didn't have this?
1:11:45 Wes Larson? Boy, I sure hate this one. It's salty.
1:11:48 Mike Smith? You don't think your anal cyst helped you appreciate life anymore, once you got it removed?
1:11:56 Jeff Larson? It wasn't a cyst.
1:11:58 Wes Larson? Yeah, what was it?
1:11:59 Mike Smith? An anal polyp.
1:12:00 Wes Larson? No, not a polyp.
1:12:00 Jeff Larson? It was a abscess.
1:12:02 Wes Larson? Abscess and then a fistula.
1:12:04 Mike Smith? That's right.
1:12:04 Jeff Larson? Oh yeah, I did have a fistula.
1:12:06 Wes Larson? Yeah. Do you have a new outlook on life?
1:12:08 Mike Smith? What else do you have in there?
1:12:13 Jeff Larson? No, that's a good, that's a good point. Maybe I wouldn't have a better outlook.
1:12:17 Mike Smith? Yeah, I'm just saying, I'm not like, I don't wanna.
1:12:21 Jeff Larson? Yeah, no, that's a good point. Maybe that's a good point. Yeah. Good. Yeah. I wouldn't have a better outlook. I don't want this to happen.
1:12:29 Mike Smith? Exactly. Yeah. I think humans are adaptable in strange way. Getting serious for a second. I think going back to those older men later in life who did go through this, it's kind of amazing the resilience that humans can exhibit.
1:12:43 Wes Larson? Dude, just like hearing them talk about it and seeing that a lot of them like went on to live like normal lives. And I know like, I know every generation has its like problems and its issues. I do think that generation was better at just kind of putting stuff behind them. Just kind of being like, this awful thing happened to me. I'm gonna have nightmares about it the rest of my life, but I'm not gonna let it.
1:13:09 Jeff Larson? I'm not gonna talk to a therapist.
1:13:10 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:13:12 Mike Smith? Well, can you imagine some of those, some of those young soldiers or older soldiers, they, they lived through the depression and then all of a sudden they're just like, you know, they're born in the depression, then they get just like drafted into a war and it's like.
1:13:24 Jeff Larson? I mean, we lived through Y2K.
1:13:26 Mike Smith? That's true. We did. All our, all our calendars rolled over and.
1:13:32 Jeff Larson? Uh, your dad had to work a whole year extra or something.
1:13:36 Mike Smith? That was like, well, yeah, we don't have to get into that.
1:13:38 Wes Larson? Also, I do wanna say.
1:13:39 Mike Smith? My dad's a hero.
1:13:41 Wes Larson? That guy's finger found the shark's eye, just so everyone's clear.
1:13:46 Jeff Larson? You said.
1:13:47 Mike Smith? Oh, that's right. I, I got them mixed up. I apologize.
1:13:51 Wes Larson? All right, let's move on to our categories. First category, I wanted to ask you guys, your favorite survival movie ever, or just like a memorable one too, if you want it just to be a memorable one. Can be a true story, it can be fiction. Feel free to run with it.
1:14:05 Jeff Larson? Yeah, I mean. Favorite would probably be Jurassic Park, but we don't need to mention that.
1:14:10 Wes Larson? And that's loosely a survival movie, I'd say. It is survival.
1:14:14 Mike Smith? Yeah, they survive.
1:14:15 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:14:16 Mike Smith? I would. Some, some of them.
1:14:18 Jeff Larson? I was thinking Cast Away.
1:14:19 Mike Smith? Yeah, that's a great one.
1:14:21 Wes Larson? It's a good pick.
1:14:21 Mike Smith? Yep.
1:14:22 Jeff Larson? Like survival. Maybe my favorite Tom Hanks performance.
1:14:27 Wes Larson? Yeah, it's, yeah.
1:14:28 Jeff Larson? You know, and yeah, just a lot of what ifs.
1:14:32 Wes Larson? Yeah, that movie makes you so sad when a volleyball floats away from him.
1:14:36 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
1:14:37 Wes Larson? Like, they did a good job on that.
1:14:38 Jeff Larson? I was mad at him for not.
1:14:40 Wes Larson? Me too, you gotta swim for that.
1:14:41 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:14:42 Jeff Larson? But then I read about it and it's like, oh, okay, he had to let it go.
1:14:46 Mike Smith? Yeah, gotta leave Wilson behind or else you'll.
1:14:49 Jeff Larson? Be a crazy person.
1:14:50 Mike Smith? You'll be on that island mentally for the rest of your life, yeah.
1:14:54 Wes Larson? Mike, what's yours?
1:14:55 Mike Smith? So I actually, another Tom Hanks movie came to mind, Apollo 13. They're up there surviving, solving problems, but that got me thinking. I don't know if you're familiar with the, the show Firefly? Have you seen Firefly Nathan Fillion?
1:15:07 Wes Larson? I saw one of the movies.
1:15:08 Mike Smith? Serenity?
1:15:09 Wes Larson? Yeah, I saw Serenity. I never saw the show.
1:15:11 Mike Smith? The show's still worth watching. It's really, really good, but especially, I think it's like the eighth episode of the only season that ever aired. It's called Out of Gas and the, some power converter or something on board goes down. All the power's off. They have no more oxygen. It's running out. And so Nathan Fillion's character sends everyone off. And he's kind of going through that lack of ox, uh, like oxygen deprivation psychosis.
1:15:34 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:15:34 Mike Smith? And he starts recalling all of these moments from the past. It's really like emotional, really, really well done. And I honestly think just that episode alone warrants a watching of that show if you're interested in like, science fiction, space stuff.
1:15:46 Wes Larson? Josh Sweden?
1:15:47 Mike Smith? Oh, yeah, is it?
1:15:48 Wes Larson? So.
1:15:49 Mike Smith? Well, you know.
1:15:50 Wes Larson? Is he canceled?
1:15:51 Mike Smith? I think he is, and he's.
1:15:53 Wes Larson? I still watch Buffy though.
1:15:54 Mike Smith? Sure.
1:15:55 Wes Larson? All right.
1:15:55 Mike Smith? Dollhouse.
1:15:56 Wes Larson? I picked the movie The Impossible, which is about the, um, the tsunamis.
1:16:01 Jeff Larson? That's a good one.
1:16:02 Wes Larson? The like 2004 tsunami.
1:16:04 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:16:04 Wes Larson? And it's Naomi Watts, Ewan McGregor, and Tom Holland's like first performance, I think. I I watched this not that long ago. I think this movie, if I just like needed to cry. Like if I felt like it's been a while since I've cried and I just like really wanna cry. This would be the movie I'd put on. Cause it just has so many scenes that are like tear jerkers where they're finding each other. And like getting separated and just like them, just what they had to experience. In like in the water of that day and you know, trying to find each other. I think it's an amazing movie.
1:16:39 Jeff Larson? You know, it's another good one.
1:16:40 Wes Larson? What?
1:16:41 Jeff Larson? USSS Indianapolis Men of Courage.
1:16:44 Mike Smith? Three S's on that. Is that like the sequel?
1:16:48 Wes Larson? We're gonna watch that soon. I have not seen it, but okay. What character from Jaws do you relate to the most? And I actually saw on our listener question, someone said, what characters would we be? So this is kind of getting two birds with one stone.
1:17:03 Mike Smith? I would say Quint for me.
1:17:05 Wes Larson? Really?
1:17:05 Mike Smith? Just because I'm more or less a solitary and sort of a
1:17:10 Jeff Larson? But like
1:17:10 Mike Smith? Irrascible character, a little grouchy.
1:17:13 Jeff Larson? When you get in public, you make a scene.
1:17:15 Mike Smith? I scratched the chalkboard.
1:17:16 Jeff Larson? You need all the attention on you.
1:17:18 Mike Smith? Right. What does he have on the chalkboard when he scratches? Does he just have like he wrote the shark?
1:17:23 Wes Larson? There's a drawing of the shark eating someone.
1:17:25 Mike Smith? That's right.
1:17:26 Wes Larson? Yeah. And it's so goofy. I love it. Yeah.
1:17:30 Jeff Larson? We need to sell merch of that.
1:17:33 Mike Smith? We really ought to.
1:17:34 Wes Larson? That would be good.
1:17:36 Jeff Larson? That I don't think they'll catch us for that.
1:17:38 Mike Smith? No, that's not. Public domain, maybe.
1:17:41 Jeff Larson? I would say for me, it's the shark Jaws.
1:17:44 Wes Larson? No.
1:17:44 Jeff Larson? I relate to the most.
1:17:46 Wes Larson? Okay.
1:17:46 Jeff Larson? You know?
1:17:47 Wes Larson? Sure. I, why? You wanna explain?
1:17:51 Jeff Larson? Uh, I just really wanna eat everyone I see.
1:17:55 Wes Larson? Okay.
1:17:56 Mike Smith? Really? You think you're thinking of that first scene probably most, right?
1:18:02 Wes Larson? All right.
1:18:03 Jeff Larson? Yeah, the first person to most wanna eat.
1:18:07 Mike Smith? For some reason, she's just so like.
1:18:09 Wes Larson? I'm gonna say Matt Hooper. So he's a, he's a biologist, like.
1:18:13 Mike Smith? Dreyfus?
1:18:14 Wes Larson? Yeah, Dreyfus's character. He's kind of like a little wormy in the movie. Like, sometimes he's a little too like, I'm smart and I.
1:18:22 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:18:22 Wes Larson? Yeah, he's a bit of a weasel.
1:18:23 Jeff Larson? You kinda do that sometimes.
1:18:25 Wes Larson? I do that sometimes. So, yeah. Yeah, I'll pick him. I wanted to say Martin Brody, but I can never be a cop. And I just, I, there's a biologist in this movie. I have to kinda say that.
1:18:36 Mike Smith? That's true.
1:18:37 Jeff Larson? Yeah, maybe I should have said Brody and we could have had the three people, but I'll stand by what I said.
1:18:43 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:18:45 Jeff Larson? I couldn't give you a great reason besides eating people, though. Cause that's all the shark does.
1:18:51 Wes Larson? Speaking of eating people, my next question, would you guys eat someone if you're in this situation?
1:18:56 Jeff Larson? Uh.
1:18:56 Wes Larson? I would, without a doubt.
1:18:58 Jeff Larson? Like if I.
1:19:00 Wes Larson? I wouldn't even think twice about it.
1:19:02 Mike Smith? I drink the blood, no question.
1:19:04 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:19:04 Mike Smith? I think that's a, that's a mental hurdle. I think eventually I would have no.
1:19:10 Jeff Larson? How would you make, how would you choose your body? Like, would you choose?
1:19:15 Wes Larson? To get the freshest one.
1:19:16 Jeff Larson? Like you would wait for someone to die?
1:19:19 Wes Larson? Yeah, like the sharks just ripped his leg off. And so I just like squeeze.
1:19:23 Mike Smith? Kind of float over.
1:19:24 Jeff Larson? I would feel really bad if they weren't actually quite dead.
1:19:28 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:19:28 Mike Smith? Right.
1:19:29 Wes Larson? Then it's a problem.
1:19:30 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
1:19:30 Wes Larson? But if someone's dead, I'm thirstier than the human, like you're on the edge of dying from thirst. You're also super hungry. Yeah, I think I would do it.
1:19:40 Mike Smith? That's why you gotta take a chomp out of like in the ear lobe before you really go to like somewhere real important.
1:19:47 Wes Larson? Really?
1:19:47 Mike Smith? Yeah. Cause what if, if they're still alive, they're like, ow, that's my.
1:19:50 Wes Larson? I feel like, and this is, we're probably going way into way too much detail about this, but there's like some ragged corpses around, I'm sure. And I would just like grab a handful of that and just eat it. And then I would, yeah, I would drink blood too.
1:20:04 Jeff Larson? Yummy.
1:20:04 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:20:05 Mike Smith? Yeah. Anthony.
1:20:07 Jeff Larson? See, I, I don't know. I just think sharks have a really hard time. So I wouldn't wanna take their food.
1:20:13 Mike Smith? Oh, you could take a bite. They'll understand.
1:20:16 Jeff Larson? Anything?
1:20:16 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:20:17 Jeff Larson? Alright.
1:20:17 Mike Smith? Especially if I had, if I had a knife, oh, I don't want, this is like weird. I don't know. I'm done thinking about this.
1:20:24 Wes Larson? Yeah. Alright. So are you guys doing it or no? Yes or no answer?
1:20:27 Mike Smith? Yes.
1:20:28 Wes Larson? Okay.
1:20:28 Mike Smith? Eventually I feel like I'm gonna.
1:20:30 Wes Larson? After four days is what I said. Yeah.
1:20:32 Jeff Larson? You know what? I really. Think I just have to be in it to know for sure. But I won't, I won't say no.
1:20:40 Wes Larson? Okay, I've got a would you rather for, for you guys. Would you rather be lost in the middle of the Amazon rainforest?
1:20:46 Jeff Larson? Hmm.
1:20:47 Wes Larson? On a raft in the South Pacific with a week's worth of fresh water and a way to catch water? Or in the middle of the Sahara Desert with a week's worth of water and a way to catch water? You could pick any of those three scenarios. What are you picking?
1:21:00 Mike Smith? Taking the jungle.
1:21:01 Jeff Larson? Yeah, I think I am too.
1:21:03 Mike Smith? Feels like the best way to stay out of the sun and that's gonna be a real problem, right?
1:21:08 Wes Larson? Especially for you.
1:21:09 Jeff Larson? And like drinking water.
1:21:11 Wes Larson? I think, I think I picked the jungle too. But I will say I've always kind of been so fascinated by people adrift in the ocean. That I think it's like the ultimate test of survival. And it would be kind of like that ever since I read the book about the guy that lasted like 400 days. I'm just like, maybe I could do that.
1:21:32 Jeff Larson? That's what I was gonna ask is like, what book do you think you would make the most money with afterwards?
1:21:38 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:21:38 Mike Smith? Ooh.
1:21:39 Wes Larson? Probably any, probably not the Sahara. I bet the Amazon or the raft you could.
1:21:44 Jeff Larson? I'd wanna make the most money from it as I could.
1:21:47 Wes Larson? Okay. I bet the Amazon.
1:21:48 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
1:21:49 Wes Larson? Yeah, cuz you could just, they all make up that they're like attacked by Jaguars and stuff and no one can say anything. Yeah.
1:21:55 Jeff Larson? Nice.
1:21:55 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:21:55 Mike Smith? Who's gonna refute it, you know?
1:21:58 Wes Larson? Next category, where Mike and Jeff paying attention? Quick one. Who wants to go first?
1:22:04 Jeff Larson? What's, what's on the line?
1:22:05 Wes Larson? Oh, uh, we're probably gonna see a movie while we're here. The winner, I will buy any, like any one item at the movie, I will pay for your ticket and I will buy you a drink.
1:22:18 Mike Smith? Ooh.
1:22:18 Jeff Larson? Okay.
1:22:19 Wes Larson? So like the one item can be like a candy or a popcorn or something like that. Get a drink and you get the movie ticket. That's like 30 bucks.
1:22:26 Mike Smith? Can I get one of those jumbo buckets?
1:22:28 Wes Larson? You can, if you want.
1:22:29 Mike Smith? Sweet. That's like a hundred dollars.
1:22:31 Jeff Larson? Loser has to stand up the entire movie.
1:22:33 Mike Smith? That's a good, yeah.
1:22:36 Mike Smith? I tried doing that once in our Lord of the Rings marathon. You guys got mad.
1:22:40 Wes Larson? Okay, who's going first?
1:22:41 Mike Smith? I'll go.
1:22:43 Wes Larson? Mike, roughly how many people went into the water after the sinking of the ship?
1:22:48 Mike Smith? 900.
1:22:49 Wes Larson? Correct. Jeff, roughly how many of the men had life jackets when they went into the water?
1:22:57 Jeff Larson? Wasn't it forty percent or three hundred?
1:23:02 Wes Larson? No. Mike, do you want to steal? A hundred fifty? Half, roughly half.
1:23:07 Jeff Larson? I was gonna say half.
1:23:09 Wes Larson? Doggone. Mike, what was the name of the island where the USS Indianapolis was supposed to arrive? Leyte. Correct. I didn't think you'd get that one. Good job. Jeff, name three species of shark that likely showed up.
1:23:23 Jeff Larson? Tiger shark?
1:23:24 Wes Larson? Yep.
1:23:25 Jeff Larson? Blue shark?
1:23:26 Wes Larson? Yep.
1:23:26 Jeff Larson? Oceanic whitetip?
1:23:27 Wes Larson? Good job. Okay.
1:23:29 Jeff Larson? And?
1:23:30 Wes Larson? Going for a bonus? Ooh, this is a bonus point. Will you give him a bonus point if he gets it? I mean.
1:23:36 Jeff Larson? Oh, man, I forgot it.
1:23:38 Wes Larson? If you can do it in five seconds, I'll give you a bonus.
1:23:40 Jeff Larson? I forgot it.
1:23:41 Wes Larson? Okay, never mind. All right. The other ones I said were silky and short fin mako.
1:23:46 Jeff Larson? Hmm, I was gonna say mako, but I didn't say.
1:23:48 Wes Larson? All right, um, so we're two one right now. Mike, what is hypernatremia? Uh, too much salt. Correct. Jeff, what is photophobia?
1:23:59 Jeff Larson? Hold on, I know. Oh, you just said too much salt.
1:24:03 Wes Larson? Yeah, photophobia.
1:24:04 Jeff Larson? Photophobia is when you're, or your eyes are from the light.
1:24:08 Wes Larson? Yeah, nice. Okay. Mike, in what year was Jaws released? Nineteen seventy four. Jeff, would you like to steal?
1:24:18 Jeff Larson? Nineteen seventy five.
1:24:20 Wes Larson? Correct. Really? I'm pretty sure. How am I wrong about that?
1:24:23 Jeff Larson? I had no idea.
1:24:25 Wes Larson? Jaws. Oh, my gosh. I think you're right. Yeah, cuz the fiftieth anniversary is this year. Yeah, you're right. Yeah. I'm a real. Okay, we're tied up. I'm a dork. Uh, Jeff, in what year was the Indianapolis sunk?
1:24:38 Jeff Larson? What year did this story happen?
1:24:39 Wes Larson? Mm-hmm.
1:24:41 Jeff Larson? Was World War Two.
1:24:42 Wes Larson? Okay.
1:24:44 Jeff Larson? Nineteen forty eight.
1:24:47 Wes Larson? Mike, do you want to steal? Forty five. Correct. Okay, so we're going into the last question, uh, with Mike. You know what's crazy? So Jaws was made thirty years after this event took place? Which is. And we're fifty years away from Jaws. What the heck? Yeah. I don't like that. All right. Mike, what is the last name of the Japanese commander that sunk the Indianapolis?
1:25:11 Mike Smith? Hashimoto.
1:25:12 Wes Larson? Wow.
1:25:12 Jeff Larson? He's so good with like any Japanese.
1:25:15 Wes Larson? Five points.
1:25:17 Jeff Larson? It's incredible how much like in an anime, he'll know every character and they're like dad's name.
1:25:25 Mike Smith? You're like, you might think you're making me sound like smart or cool. You're doing the opposite. You're making me sound like a huge nerd right now.
1:25:32 Wes Larson? I remember when we would play like Super Smash Brothers and he'd be like, oh, it's Dichu Su. Oh, neat.
1:25:37 Jeff Larson? How many, how many like sumo wrestlers could you name?
1:25:42 Mike Smith? Right now, just off the top of my head?
1:25:43 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
1:25:44 Mike Smith? Um, not many. I don't know. I didn't really study their names very much.
1:25:48 Wes Larson? All right.
1:25:48 Mike Smith? Me and Brent like Caio, he's doing real bad right now though.
1:25:51 Wes Larson? We're five, three. Jeff.
1:25:53 Jeff Larson? He just won, right?
1:25:54 Wes Larson? No, because we had that bonus question.
1:25:56 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:25:57 Wes Larson? Jeff.
1:25:57 Mike Smith? We always do.
1:25:58 Wes Larson? What killed Robert Shaw in real life? The guy that played Quint?
1:26:03 Jeff Larson? A shark?
1:26:03 Wes Larson? No. Mike, do you know what it was?
1:26:08 Mike Smith? Alcohol, heart attack.
1:26:09 Jeff Larson? Would have been a real good trivia question.
1:26:14 Wes Larson? That actually, it's really sad. He just like had a heart attack, got out of his car and like fell over dead.
1:26:18 Mike Smith? Oh, really? I know he had like some real bad alcohol issues, but.
1:26:22 Wes Larson? All right. So it's five, three. This bonus question is worth 30 points.
1:26:27 Jeff Larson? I'll give Mike first go at it.
1:26:29 Wes Larson? I was gonna give Mike for first shot. Mike, and I think you're actually gonna get this. What is the name of the prop shark from Jaws?
1:26:37 Mike Smith? Oh, I do know this. Bruce.
1:26:39 Wes Larson? Correct.
1:26:40 Mike Smith? Oh.
1:26:40 Wes Larson? Okay. I owe you?
1:26:43 Mike Smith? I'm getting a huge bucket, Wes.
1:26:45 Wes Larson? That's fine. They have a, they have a Jaws 50th anniversary cup right now.
1:26:48 Mike Smith? Do they?
1:26:49 Wes Larson? You should definitely get that.
1:26:50 Jeff Larson? I'm gonna stand up in front of you.
1:26:52 Mike Smith? No, that's fair.
1:26:54 Wes Larson? All right. Let's do some listener questions. I've got a few. We asked for some specific ones.
1:26:59 Jeff Larson? Hey, that's my job.
1:27:03 Wes Larson? Okay. Uh, favorite, this one's from Piper, right? Favorite boat? You guys got a favorite boat?
1:27:09 Jeff Larson? Titanic.
1:27:10 Mike Smith? Black Pearl.
1:27:11 Wes Larson? Titanic's your favorite. Black Pearl. I think for me, it's the Galaxy Diver 2. That we went to Galapagos.
1:27:19 Mike Smith? That's a fun boat.
1:27:20 Wes Larson? The dive, I mean, no one knows what you're talking about. It was the dive boat we just took to Galapagos. I was gonna explain it. Yeah. Yeah. I was setting you up to. I just loved it. It was so fun. It's pretty nice.
1:27:32 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:27:33 Wes Larson? I didn't think it was like that nice of a boat, but I just had such a fun time on it.
1:27:36 Mike Smith? It was nice and comfy.
1:27:37 Wes Larson? Yeah. All right, uh, this one's from Sophia Marie. Sophia Marie. If you were on the ship, would you rather go down in the wreck or survive at all? I'd rather survive at all.
1:27:50 Mike Smith? Wait. So like die immediately or survive the whole ordeal?
1:27:54 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:27:55 Mike Smith? I guess survive.
1:27:56 Wes Larson? Live with the trauma for the rest of your life. I think I'll go down.
1:27:59 Mike Smith? I think I would.
1:28:01 Mike Smith? I think I would rather.
1:28:02 Wes Larson? Not even joking.
1:28:03 Mike Smith? I'd go down instead of die like four days later to a shark, I think. But if I were gonna survive, I'd pick.
1:28:09 Wes Larson? Yeah, that's what it says.
1:28:11 Mike Smith? No, you're, I mean, Jeff, there's no wrong answer, I guess.
1:28:16 Wes Larson? This one's from Evan Heronimus.
1:28:19 Mike Smith? Heronimus.
1:28:20 Wes Larson? Heronimus.
1:28:21 Mike Smith? Oh.
1:28:22 Wes Larson? What is the typical?
1:28:23 Mike Smith? Descendant of Heronimus Bosch, probably. Garden of earthly delights. Triptych, beautiful. Go for it, sorry.
1:28:29 Wes Larson? What is the typical prey for oceanic white tip sharks? What?
1:28:33 Mike Smith? You not heard of the Garden of earthly delights, like the three, the tri- yeah.
1:28:37 Wes Larson? Yeah. Sorry. It's fine. I just felt like I needed to acknowledge that. The typical prey is fish and cephalopods, so squid and then just, yeah, fish. That's mostly what they eat. For sharks? For oceanic white tips. Yep. Squids, huh? Squid rig? They do like squid.
1:28:56 Mike Smith? You think they'd like calamari?
1:28:58 Wes Larson? Yeah, probably.
1:28:59 Mike Smith? You think?
1:28:59 Wes Larson? Yeah. This one's from Nikilda's. I don't.
1:29:03 Mike Smith? See?
1:29:04 Wes Larson? Nikilda says, were any bite forensics done? Or sharks dissected to confirm oceanic white tips were involved?
1:29:13 Wes Larson? No, they didn't do that. I don't think they really even had the science to really do that at that point to say, oh, this was for sure an oceanic white tip. They, the testimony of these men are mostly what they used. And just now we know that's the shark that shows up.
1:29:30 Jeff Larson? I feel like today's day and age, there's people that'll be like, I don't believe that there are sharks.
1:29:35 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:29:36 Jeff Larson? You know, conspiracy theory.
1:29:38 Wes Larson? Yeah. Uh, Ruby Barrett writes, says, can Jeff, please guess how many buses long the USS Indianapolis was? Please, Jeff. I did the math.
1:29:49 Jeff Larson? Okay, just length?
1:29:51 Wes Larson? Yes. And do you want me to tell you how long it was?
1:29:54 Jeff Larson? I'm just going to go average school bus. Um.
1:29:57 Wes Larson? Not the one you rode on?
1:30:02 Jeff Larson? Let's go with forty-six.
1:30:04 Wes Larson? Ooh, no.
1:30:07 Jeff Larson? Why'd you make that noise?
1:30:08 Wes Larson? Fifteen and a half. Cause I wanted to trick you. Not even.
1:30:12 Jeff Larson? Fifteen is on?
1:30:13 Wes Larson? Fifteen. There, so, school buses are about forty feet long.
1:30:16 Jeff Larson? Titanic was that big?
1:30:18 Wes Larson? Yeah, Titanic was bigger than the Indianapolis.
1:30:20 Jeff Larson? What?
1:30:20 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:30:21 Jeff Larson? Oh.
1:30:22 Wes Larson? Bruh. Yeah. Uh.
1:30:24 Jeff Larson? You can't even land a plane on the Indianapolis.
1:30:27 Wes Larson? Let's see, Indianapolis was six hundred and ten feet long. They landed a torpedo underneath it. Titanic was eight hundred and eighty-three feet long.
1:30:35 Jeff Larson? It's how long?
1:30:36 Wes Larson? Six hundred and ten, the Indianapolis.
1:30:39 Jeff Larson? And you said fifteen? So each bus is like fifty feet?
1:30:43 Wes Larson? Each bus is forty, each bus is on average.
1:30:46 Jeff Larson? They're like thirty feet.
1:30:47 Wes Larson? No, I looked it up. On average, they're between thirty-five and forty-five feet. So I did forty.
1:30:52 Jeff Larson? Okay.
1:30:53 Wes Larson? Okay, all right. This one's from Sarah Betas. If you had to be eaten by a shark, what species would you prefer eats you? I'm just going gray white, so it's quick. That's gonna be the quickest.
1:31:06 Jeff Larson? Huh, I think I'll go with a guitar shark.
1:31:09 Wes Larson? Guitar shark.
1:31:10 Jeff Larson? They ever eaten anyone?
1:31:12 Wes Larson? I don't think so.
1:31:13 Jeff Larson? So I'd be a first.
1:31:14 Wes Larson? Yeah, you would be. You could write that book.
1:31:17 Jeff Larson? Why couldn't?
1:31:19 Mike Smith? Whale shark?
1:31:20 Wes Larson? Yeah, you'd be the first there too.
1:31:21 Mike Smith? Just re- get regurgitated? Since they're not probably not like chewing me up.
1:31:25 Jeff Larson? No, I like that.
1:31:26 Wes Larson? Yeah. All right, this one's from midsize sedan and I midsize sedan oh one. I wanted to include this one. Yeah.
1:31:34 Mike Smith? Yeah, I like that.
1:31:35 Wes Larson? Cause we've gotten this question a lot lately. So there's, there's a documentary on Netflix right now called Shark Whisper. It's about Ocean Ramsey and Juan Sharks. They're kind of like influencers that have become really famous for swimming with sharks. And I think her fame especially exploded after they swam with that huge white shark by Hawaii. Like the biggest one ever filmed and there's all these videos and photos of her like holding on to the dorsal fin right next to it. And I will say, so people ask us about her a lot. I think they've done some incredible like mobilizing to get people to care about sharks.
1:32:11 Jeff Larson? They have the right attitude about saving sharks.
1:32:15 Wes Larson? Yes. She in a lot of ways reminds me of like the Timothy Treadwell of sharks.
1:32:20 Jeff Larson? Oh, like asking for it.
1:32:22 Wes Larson? Well, like she has to like touch them and be really close to them and all of that. And for me.
1:32:28 Jeff Larson? And she gets mad at all the little fish.
1:32:31 Wes Larson? And I, I.
1:32:32 Jeff Larson? Like the fox.
1:32:33 Mike Smith? That steals your hat.
1:32:34 Wes Larson? She doesn't. I understand that like that's those images are the ones that are going to get people to pay attention. And when you do see like this pretty girl holding on to a massive great white, you're kind of like, oh, you know, they aren't the killers I thought they were. I can't believe people can do that.
1:32:49 Jeff Larson? Oh, you know what? I never really considered that as like a fantasy, but I kind of was.
1:32:57 Mike Smith? But it's kind of like April O'Neil and the Ninja Turtles.
1:33:00 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
1:33:01 Mike Smith? You see a pretty girl with like a bunch of turtles. You're like.
1:33:03 Jeff Larson? I'm better than them.
1:33:05 Mike Smith? Yeah, right. It's like, oh, if a turtle can pull April, think about what I could do.
1:33:11 Wes Larson? I have read some things where she kind of talks about how scientists aren't as impactful as her and like this other just a few things that have kind of made put my hackles up and then the touching and stuff is I think a little strange, but that's how I feel.
1:33:25 Mike Smith? Good intentions, but you know what the road to hell is paved with.
1:33:29 Jeff Larson? We're not gonna tell you how to feel, but.
1:33:32 Wes Larson? I think she will do more good for sharks than I could ever hope to in my entire life.
1:33:36 Jeff Larson? Unless she gets eaten.
1:33:37 Wes Larson? Then yeah, maybe not.
1:33:39 Jeff Larson? Then I'll kill a bunch of sharks.
1:33:40 Wes Larson? They might.
1:33:41 Mike Smith? And we bring this up sometimes, but it's not so dissimilar from what Steve Irwin was doing. And he's a hero of all three of ours.
1:33:48 Wes Larson? Yeah, totally.
1:33:49 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
1:33:49 Wes Larson? It does. I think in our modern age, it's hard to not see this grifting sometimes.
1:33:53 Mike Smith? Sure.
1:33:54 Wes Larson? You know?
1:33:54 Jeff Larson? But I mean, we need more women in that male dominated area of grifting.
1:34:03 Wes Larson? I will say there are a lot of women.
1:34:05 Jeff Larson? It's overrepresented by males right now. I think.
1:34:08 Wes Larson? Right.
1:34:08 Jeff Larson? It's good to have a few female Steve Irwins, you know?
1:34:12 Wes Larson? And she's not a scientist, but there are actually like a lot of women that have gotten into shark science. I think it's an area of like wildlife science that has been very open to like having many more women scientists, which I think is great.
1:34:23 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:34:23 Wes Larson? All right. Quick thing about conservation. So we talked about this with Dan a little bit, but oceanic whitetips are IUCN critically endangered. They're on the endangered species list as threatened. They have lost, we think probably up like up to 98% of their population over the last 30 years.
1:34:42 Mike Smith? Wow.
1:34:43 Wes Larson? So this used to be a very common shark, but the problem is they are a shark that really likes to hang up, hang out at the surface. And so pretty much every method of catching fish could potentially catch these sharks. They're so inquisitive that they'll actually like, you know, approach boats and stuff. They just get caught a lot by a lot of different
1:35:06 Jeff Larson? Well, it's kind of messed up too, because like they really helped out the Japanese in World War II. And like, I think Japan's one of the worst offenders for killing sharks.
1:35:17 Mike Smith? Betrayal.
1:35:18 Wes Larson? Their and their names, actually, the Japanese name for oceanic whitetip, they don't love these sharks. So they're caught globally as targets and as bycatch. They've been really popular for the finning industry because they have really big fins. They were once the most abundant pelagic shark species in tropical seas worldwide, but now they're rare in some regions. Like I said, the estimate is that they've undergone a reduction of 98%.
1:35:45 Jeff Larson? That sucks.
1:35:46 Wes Larson? Which is pretty crazy. So.
1:35:48 Jeff Larson? Super sad.
1:35:49 Wes Larson? Um, when Jeff mentioned earlier, we do a lot worse to them. We definitely do. You know, and, and we've talked about this before, just in the time that you guys have been listening to this podcast, something like 12,000 sharks have been killed. So it's pretty.
1:36:02 Jeff Larson? They won the battle. We're winning the war.
1:36:04 Wes Larson? We are devastating them in the war. All right. So that is kind of a depressing note to end this on, but, um, we're going to be back on part three and part three is about rescue. So.
1:36:17 Jeff Larson? Well, good job, Wes. I'm enjoying this one.
1:36:20 Wes Larson? Good. I'm glad you guys are liking it. Everyone out there, if you're liking it and you want more, the three of us are together right now and we're actually going to watch that Nicolas Cage movie together and do a review. So if you want to hear us review USS Indianapolis, Men of Courage, subscribe to the Patreon.
1:36:37 Mike Smith? You'll get a lot. It's not just that, that you get.
1:36:40 Wes Larson? There's a lot of other stuff on there too.
1:36:42 Jeff Larson? And also Mike just put together a music bracket of our listeners voted on Patreon and Discord.
1:36:50 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:36:50 Jeff Larson? And then we're going to put together our own afterwards too. So.
1:36:54 Mike Smith? Yeah, we got a lot of comp, a lot of bonus and supplementary content.
1:36:58 Jeff Larson? You know what? Sign up. Try us out. Cancel if you don't like it.
1:37:01 Wes Larson? Exactly.
1:37:02 Mike Smith? Right.
1:37:02 Jeff Larson? But I've heard from people that have done that and just forgot to cancel. So.
1:37:06 Wes Larson? Well, don't do that. Said a reminder, get rocket money.
1:37:10 Jeff Larson? That's how we get you.
1:37:12 Wes Larson? And just a personal plea too.
1:37:14 Mike Smith? Three more male grifters.
1:37:17 Wes Larson? A personal plea. I've put a lot of time into this one. I'm really, I can't think of anything else. And if you guys are enjoying it, share it.
1:37:25 Mike Smith? You can't think of a single other thing.
1:37:27 Wes Larson? I can't think of some other things. Yeah. Sorry to call me on. I'm sorry.
1:37:34 Wes Larson? No, but I'm just saying, if you guys are enjoying the series, share it. Share it with your friends. Post it on your story. Let people know about it. Cause that's really the main way that Tooth and Claw has grown has been through word of mouth. So we really appreciate it. And if you guys are enjoying this one specifically, let people know.
1:37:52 Jeff Larson? And to your credit, I asked you for like your 16 favorite songs to put into our bracket today. And you were like, I'm working on the shark episode. I can't think of anything else right now.
1:38:02 Mike Smith? There you go. Yeah.
1:38:04 Wes Larson? Mike.
1:38:05 Mike Smith? I'm sorry. Just asking questions.
1:38:07 Wes Larson? All right. Bye guys. Love you.
1:38:09 Jeff Larson? Love you.
Previous The Worst Shark Attack in History, the USS Indianapolis Disaster - Part 1: The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis Next The Worst Shark Attack in History, the USS Indianapolis Disaster - Part 3: The Rescue and the Trial Page updated November 1, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated