Pod Insights Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks Tiger Shark vs. Roddy, The Surfer of Steel About this episode In 1993, Roddy Lewis went out looking for the perfect wave to surf off the coast of Maui but found much more than he bargained for below the surface of the water. The guys then wrap up with some talks about the start of a new year, which sees Jeff coming up with a novel but ultimately benevolent new year's resolution.
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Transcript 17,117 words · 5 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 to Tooth and Claw Podcast. We have our bear biologist Wes Larson, his field tech and brother Jeff Larson, and we got Mike Smith, who needs no introduction, because he doesn't really have anything worth mentioning.
0:30 Mike Smith? No credentials, no bona fides.
0:32 Wes Larson? Instagram famous Mike Smith.
0:34 Jeff Larson? Mike does probably have the biggest following on Instagram for someone who's literally never put out a single thing of content.
0:43 Mike Smith? Hmm, I'd be curious.
0:45 Wes Larson? No stories, no posts.
0:46 Jeff Larson? Our first episode ever with no Jimmy Carter in the world.
0:50 Wes Larson? Yep.
0:51 Jeff Larson? Still unclear if a bear got him, shark got him, or none of the above.
0:56 Wes Larson? Yeah, he probably OD'd, you know, on coke or something. Yeah.
1:01 Jeff Larson? Wow. Vax, vax.
1:03 Mike Smith? Too bad. Seemed like a good guy.
1:05 Wes Larson? Yeah, I don't, I think all presidents are bad, but I think of our presidents in our lifetime, he was one of the better ones.
1:12 Mike Smith? Hmm, I just kept seeing pictures of him building houses for people. I was like, yeah, that's a nice guy behavior, but I don't know, I'm personally.
1:20 Wes Larson? I kind of feel like, I read a tweet that I agree with. I feel like he was the president that tried to make up for all the bad stuff he did as president afterward, with all the Habitat for Humanity and like solidarity with different oppressed cultures and stuff. I thought he was great with that, but still, you know, if you're an American president, you're doing some bad stuff. You're just going to.
1:41 Jeff Larson? One less listener for us.
1:43 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:46 Wes Larson? We're gonna miss those, that data, those listens. Oh, Jimmy, RIP dude.
1:52 Jeff Larson? RIP. Shark attacks, Wes. I think you won the tattoo bet.
1:58 Wes Larson? Really?
1:58 Jeff Larson? I looked at what's called Shark Tracker website, and it said 76 this year and 83 last year.
2:07 Wes Larson? The thing.
2:08 Jeff Larson? Unless we're counting Jimmy, then I might get one.
2:11 Wes Larson? Yeah, we don't know yet if he was killed by a shark. I, we're not, we, when we made that bet, we said what the, the data is, and it's the International Shark Attack File. And they don't come out with their data until a few months out. So they, they have their 2023 data still, but not their 2024.
2:29 Jeff Larson? Oh, so I'm not done for yet.
2:31 Wes Larson? No, and I, I kinda think you're gonna win after looking at 2023 and what 2024 was tracking.
2:37 Jeff Larson? You're gonna pay up?
2:38 Wes Larson? Oh yeah, I'll get, I'll get it. I'll do it. Are you going to?
2:41 Mike Smith? On your face, right? That was the bet?
2:44 Wes Larson? No.
2:45 Jeff Larson? I'd go, I'd go like neck is the closest to my face.
2:49 Wes Larson? Neck tattoos are cool. I like neck tattoos.
2:52 Jeff Larson? There's that guy we saw in, on one of our trips that had like a tattoo on his head. He like shaved his head and had like a shark with a gun on it. You remember that?
3:03 Mike Smith? That was sweet. I remember that, yeah.
3:06 Wes Larson? I think we were in Africa when we saw that guy, somewhere in Africa.
3:10 Jeff Larson? Like South Africa, I think.
3:12 Wes Larson? Well, Jeff, you spoiled everything by saying it's a shark attack this week, but it is. Your pillow behind you also spoiled it.
3:21 Jeff Larson? Yeah, I mean, you have a shark eating a guy's arm in your background.
3:25 Wes Larson? I do. I do.
3:26 Jeff Larson? So I think that's a little unfair.
3:28 Wes Larson? We, that's a good point. You're right. I probably spoiled it first. It's been a minute since we've done a shark attack and I was kinda getting tired of talking about mammals. So I really wanted to do a shark to, to start out 2025. And when I was a kid, right before we went to, so we, me and Jeff have family that live in Hawaii. Our cousins are half Hawaiian. Our aunt moved there in college and just stayed, married a Hawaiian guy. And the first time that we went, my mom bought me a book right beforehand called Shark Bites by Greg Ambrose. And it's, has all these different shark attack stories and a lot of them are in Hawaii. And it was like a really good move on her part, but also a really bad move.
4:10 Wes Larson? Cause I was pretty terrified when I was in the water, but I also it fueled my passion for, for attack stories and for interactions and whatnot. So I picked a story from that book for today's episode and I'm excited about it. I think it's a fun one. It's going to be just kind of a pretty, just kind of like a classic shark attack story. There's nothing too crazy about it.
4:32 Jeff Larson? That is great. Kind of a crazy move by mom, isn't it?
4:36 Wes Larson? Yeah. Yeah.
4:37 Jeff Larson? Like you've been looking forward to going to Hawaii your whole life. And then like as you're going, she gives you a shark attacks book.
4:45 Wes Larson? Yeah, it is.
4:45 Jeff Larson? And like, we're from Montana, so we're not used to the ocean at all.
4:50 Wes Larson? No, but I, I still spent every second I could in the ocean while we were there, but I was kind of always looking behind me for tiger sharks. Yeah. So this, there is one kind of interesting twist to the story that we'll get to.
5:04 Jeff Larson? Are tiger sharks more tiger or shark?
5:07 Wes Larson? They're more shark than tiger. Yeah, for sure. We'll talk about that a little bit, but yeah, that that's pretty, pretty clear. Okay. So we're going to get into it. We're going to start, start off with a question for you guys. What do you guys think of windsurfing?
5:22 Jeff Larson? I kind of think it's cooler than surfing. Not cooler. I think surfing is like, if you want to just be cool, surfing is the best, but I think it seems more fun than surfing.
5:34 Wes Larson? Like just launching off a wave way up into the air.
5:37 Jeff Larson? Yeah. And like surfing, every time I go, it's just so hard to like find the right wave. There's a lot of just sitting on your board and paddling different places and windsurfing, like you don't really have to worry about that. You just need some wind and you can cruise around.
5:54 Mike Smith? I only ever think of the intro sequence to Miami Vice, the TV show where that guy does the sweet move where he dips his head back in the water while he's windsurfing.
6:04 Wes Larson? Oh, yeah.
6:04 Mike Smith? So sweet. I also think that it's one of those things where Jeff was saying you have to wait for good waves a lot, but when you're windsurfing, do you have to also be waiting for good wind at the same time?
6:15 Wes Larson? You do.
6:16 Mike Smith? I don't know how it works, but it seems like that's two factors you really gotta see a perfect marriage with.
6:22 Wes Larson? You don't need good waves though necessarily, because you can just do it in flat water if you want.
6:26 Mike Smith? Yeah, you're right.
6:27 Jeff Larson? Yeah, I guess it's comparable.
6:29 Wes Larson? For me, I think it's cool too. Our mom for a second tried to get into it and I remember it's really like, it's a lot of gear and it's hard to set up and it's kind of, for me to really enjoy a hobby, there has to be this perfect mix of ease and fun. And I think I much prefer, would much prefer surfing because I've only surfed a couple of times, so I can't say I'm a surfer at all. But like, it seems a lot nicer just to like grab your board and get in the water than to like rig your sail and deal with all this heavy equipment and everything with a windsurfing board. But that's kind of where I'm at. I do think it's cool. I think it's cooler to me than kiteboarding, although kiteboarding sometimes does seem
7:14 Wes Larson? pretty sick too. All right, well Roddy Lewis sure loved windsurfing. Roddy grew up in Oahu and he did a lot of the typical ocean stuff that a lot of people do when they grow up in Hawaii. So fishing, diving, surfing, swimming, all of that.
7:30 Mike Smith? Skipping rocks.
7:31 Wes Larson? Yeah, skipping rocks. Pretty much his whole life revolved around the ocean and the beach. But Roddy really hit his stride when he discovered windsurfing, or sailboarding as some people call it. And he really just loved getting air on waves, but the thing that was his favorite thing about windsurfing was just ripping across the ocean as fast as possible. So when he moved to Maui, he was able to find the perfect spot for windsurfing on the north shore of the island. And it's this little place called Kuau or Kuau. I'm terrible at pronouncing that, but it's K U apostrophe A U. It's a tiny little town that's essentially a blip on the Hana Highway and it's one that a lot of people would pass without ever even realizing it.
8:16 Wes Larson? But if you're a windsurfer, it's pretty likely that you've heard of this place because the wind hits the waves just right and these perfect conditions attract windsurfers from around the world. Plus, it's really beautiful. Jeff, we drove the road to Hana. Can you kind of describe it for our audience, what it's like?
8:34 Jeff Larson? Yeah, we found like these vines and I was swinging on them, having fun. And then Wes side swinging over the car. And then he's like, swing over car, Jeff. I was like, no. And he's like, do it, do it. It's fun. I was like, no. And then he's like, do it. And I did it. And then the vine snapped and I hit my head on the car and got a concussion.
8:57 Wes Larson? So if anyone's wondering what it's like, that's Jeff doesn't remember.
9:05 Wes Larson? No, it's beautiful. It's like a winding road.
9:07 Jeff Larson? It really is.
9:08 Wes Larson? Yeah.
9:09 Jeff Larson? Black sand beaches, which I always like.
9:12 Wes Larson? Yeah, cool. There's some white sand, black sand. It's winding road through jungle. It's gorgeous. It feels like very, just kind of primitive and beautiful. Mike, have you been to Maui ever?
9:24 Mike Smith? Uh, I don't think I've ever spent. No, I've been to Maui for very briefly when I was maybe 11. So I don't remember much of it. But yeah, I guess 11 year olds don't really have many memories.
9:38 Jeff Larson? I don't remember much of it either.
9:40 Mike Smith? Yeah. Maybe I got concussed. Maybe I went down that same road.
9:45 Wes Larson? Yeah, went on the same vine, swinging on the vine.
9:47 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
9:48 Wes Larson? Or not the same exact vine, same tree.
9:51 Jeff Larson? I'll say too, with our drive on it, we found like that app or whatever, where it tells you the history of what you're doing as you're doing it. And it like worked so perfectly for that road. It told us like Hawaii's King Maui and all this like different Hawaiian history as we were like driving through the sights. And it's cool. It worked really well.
10:15 Wes Larson? So like I was saying, we've been, we've been really lucky. We have family out there and, and we, that family is kind of spread out. So we have family in Hawaii and yeah, but I loved it too. I just thought it was Was gorgeous and Roddy loved it. And even though that area that he moved to was great for waves, his favorite spot was actually at Sprecklesville, which is a cool name.
10:38 Jeff Larson? The Hawaiians, I don't think named that with their Hawaii.
10:42 Wes Larson? No, not traditional. It was named after a sugarcane baron. And I tried to see if there was like a, an indigenous name I could use. I didn't find one, but I didn't look very hard.
10:53 Mike Smith? So with the sugarcane baron, his name was Spreckle?
10:56 Wes Larson? Spreckle. Yeah.
10:59 Mike Smith? That doesn't last name.
11:00 Wes Larson? Anyway, so he loved this place Sprecklesville and the reason he loved it is the trade winds blew just right in over shallow water. And on the right day with the right conditions, Roddy could just absolutely rip across Sprecklesville beach. He could go really, really fast, which is what he loved to do. He's got the need for speed.
11:21 Mike Smith? Oh yeah. Quarter mile at a time kinda guy.
11:24 Wes Larson? If you've spent much time in the West, you know that every ski town has a brand that the locals are going to wear before the rest of the country catches on. In Jackson Hole, that brand is Stio. Stio is designed and tested in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, right at the base of the Tetons by locals who ski, bike, climb and fish there every day. I've spent a lot of time in Jackson Hole. I know that they deal with a lot of different weather there, a lot of different things. And so Stio really has to hold up in a ton of different environments and they've been at it since 2011. 15 years in, it's the real gear that locals live in. It's made for the whole mountain day beyond the summit, the first chair, the school run, dinner out, the dog walk when it's cold outside.
12:06 Wes Larson? It's just made for every moment of mountain life. And those are people that are living through Wyoming winters. So they really know warm. The hometown down jacket is 800 fill down, but it feels more like your favorite hoodie than it does a puffy. And for me, I am really excited about the men's Furnos Max Insulated Jacket. I'm constantly looking for a jacket that just ticks all the boxes and this one really does. It's stretchy, it's breathable, it looks great. It keeps me super warm. It's just amazing. I just absolutely love this jacket. So ski season's almost here. Gear up now the way that the locals do. Go to stio.com/tooth for 20% off your order. That's S T I O dot com slash tooth. Stio.com slash tooth. Stio, designed and tested in Jackson Hole.
12:55 Jeff Larson? When it comes to grocery shopping and meal planning, I have a problem where I'm just always end up taking the laziest route, which is actually not grocery shopping at all, but getting fast food, which is not healthy at all, but I love it. But I need to be eating healthier. I need to be getting more groceries. And that's part of why I love Hungry Root, because it's the easiest way to eat healthy.
13:20 Wes Larson? My favorite is when your meal plan for a little bit was influenced by something you saw a homeless guy doing at a convenience store near you. You got real excited about that snack.
13:31 Jeff Larson? Oh, yeah, that's so good. Dude, I still love that. Like lately, the McRib's back. So it's just like, yeah, I could eat a salad or I could eat the McRib before it leaves. But I don't need either of those because, well, salad I should still have. But Hungry Root is like having your own personal shopper and nutrition list all wrapped in one. They take care of weekly grocery shopping, recommended healthy groceries and meals tailored to your tastes, nutrition preferences, and health goals. I really love Hungry Root. I thought that the food was delicious. It made it easy. Nothing was like super complicated or hard
14:13 Jeff Larson? to prepare. I made some chicken tacos that were delicious and all I did was throw the chicken in the air fryer for a little bit and came out perfect. So you're gonna love Hungry Root as much as I do. Take advantage of this exclusive offer. For a limited time, get 40% off your first box, plus get a free item in every box for life. Go to hungryroot.com/tooth and use code TOOTH. That's hungryroot.com/tooth, code TOOTH, to get 40% off your first box and a free item of your choice for life. Hungryroot.com/tooth, code TOOTH.
14:55 Wes Larson? So Roddy would earn extra money working as a carpenter, selling fish that he caught spearfishing. And then he would spend literally all of his extra time windsurfing and surfing. He just loved being in the ocean. He got so good at just being hella fast that he started winning local windsurfing competitions. And there was talk of him even starting to do international windsurfing speed competitions. It's a pretty taxing hobby.
15:21 Jeff Larson? That is fast.
15:22 Wes Larson? Yeah. Like physically windsurfing is pretty taxing. And then all the, all the other stuff he was doing carpentry surfing is also like really physically taxing. So this dude is pretty ripped. The book described him as being a six, four pillar of steel. So just picture that, picture that, but don't picture it too long, Mike. Else I might have to go take a break.
15:46 Mike Smith? Yeah, give me a minute. I'm picturing the silver surfer now. You know, that old comic would go.
15:51 Wes Larson? Oh, yeah.
15:52 Mike Smith? Just on a surfboard, but metal.
15:54 Jeff Larson? Just picturing like a steel person.
15:57 Mike Smith? Right.
15:57 Wes Larson? But you know what can pretty much bite through steel? Tiger sharks.
16:03 Speaker 03 Yeah, but what kind? What kind of shark? Tiger shark. A what?
16:10 Wes Larson? A what? We're doing that every tiger shark episode.
16:14 Mike Smith? For sure.
16:15 Wes Larson? The northern part of Maui is prime tiger shark habitat. There's coral reefs with deep drop offs, strong currents, lots of streams and rivers that pour into the ocean and tons of turtles and other food. So it's also not uncommon that like dead livestock would get caught up in these rivers and wash out to sea. So there's just kind of a bonanza for tiger sharks in these areas. Lots of different food items that they might be able to eat. And if you do have like a dead cow or a dead pig or something wash out in the ocean, that's a really nice meal if you're a tiger shark. Are either of you tiger sharks?
16:51 Jeff Larson? No.
16:53 Wes Larson? Well, if you were.
16:53 Jeff Larson? I've also never had a dead pig or cow.
16:56 Wes Larson? If you were, that would be a pretty, a pretty nice meal for you, just so you know. We've talked about tiger sharks quite a bit on Tooth and Claw, but I did want to highlight a few facts about them. I think repetition is important to learning. So a few of these are things we talked about before. This is an animal I really want everyone to love as much as we do. They are one of the largest macro predatory sharks and there are certain articles you might read out there that say that they can actually be the biggest because there's records of tiger sharks up to 18 feet long and then there's these unsubstantiated records of more than 20 feet long, but the biggest macro predatory shark is a great white. They are on average
17:36 Wes Larson? longer and heavier than tiger sharks. Great hammerheads can actually be longer, but they are much thinner, slender sharks.
17:45 Jeff Larson? Greenland ones, there's like a little bit of, but they don't really.
17:48 Wes Larson? Yeah. So like Greenland, great hammerhead, mega mouth. A lot of those sharks are about the same size as tiger sharks.
17:56 Mike Smith? Mega mouth?
17:57 Wes Larson? Yeah, but mega mouth aren't macro predator sharks.
17:59 Mike Smith? How come? I've never heard of what? That sounds so sweet. They gotta make a movie out of that.
18:05 Wes Larson? They look like they have like a Pac-Man head. They look, they have this round head, like a huge mouth. Yeah.
18:11 Mike Smith? Cool. I'm gonna check those out.
18:13 Wes Larson? But I did, I brought up the term macro predatory again, which just basically means they're eating things like larger fish, turtles, birds, the occasional mammal, just bigger stuff. And it's a, it's a way to differentiate between these really big sharks like whale sharks, basking sharks, mega mouth sharks that are harmless and mostly krill, plankton and tiny fish. And then sharks like great whites and tiger sharks and whatnot that are big, but eat, you know, bigger things.
18:40 Jeff Larson? Big stuff.
18:41 Wes Larson? Yeah. So whale sharks and basking sharks are both bigger.
18:44 Jeff Larson? You'd think that'd make them big, the biggest, whatever's eating the biggest stuff.
18:49 Wes Larson? I know. It's weird that whale sharks get so big eaten.
18:52 Jeff Larson? But then like some of the competitive eaters are kind of small too. Like Kobayashi's not a big guy.
18:58 Wes Larson? He's a small guy. Yeah.
18:59 Mike Smith? Strong though. Very strong.
19:01 Wes Larson? Yeah. All right. When you research tiger sharks, the fact that often stands out, the first thing that you typically read is how variable their diet is. So they are really true generalists. They'll eat just about anything that they can find, even stuff that's inanimate. So, you know, we've talked about how they found like suits of armor and license plates and whatnot in tiger sharks' bellies.
19:23 Jeff Larson? Will they eat vegetables?
19:24 Wes Larson? Uh, probably. They'd probably try it, you know?
19:27 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
19:28 Wes Larson? But if they're eating armor and license plates, I don't see why not. But in places like Hawaii, really tropical places, sea turtles do seem to make up a pretty substantial part of the diet of adult tiger sharks. And a big reason they can eat something like a sea turtle and so many other things is their dentition or their teeth. Sharks that mostly eat fish, especially smaller fish, often have really slender, smooth, hook-like teeth because they bite into a fish and it catches, you know, the fish catches on those teeth, it's hard for it to get away. But sharks that can eat a lot of different things, especially marine mammals or turtles, sharks like tiger sharks or great whites are gonna have broad, larger teeth with a lot of serration.
20:13 Wes Larson? And they can use that, those serrations to saw through things like bone or turtle shell or whatever else might be hard for them to get through.
20:23 Mike Smith? I bet sharks look at turtles kinda like how I look at strawberry bonbons, a real crunchy outer shell, but then you get into the gooey inside and it demands so good.
20:33 Wes Larson? I love strawberry bonbons.
20:35 Mike Smith? Ah, so good, dude.
20:37 Wes Larson? Like, people call them grandma candy, but when I see them, I'm just like, oh, I load my pockets up with those things.
20:43 Mike Smith? Call me a grandma, then, I don't mind.
20:45 Wes Larson? Yeah, we'll do it. All right. So they use this saw-like technique for larger prey or prey with protection, like a turtle. At the root, their teeth are almost as broad as a great white shark's tooth, but they're shorter and more slender at the top. And each tooth is heavily serrated with a sideways pointing tip. So they, I think of all the shark teeth, they have kind of one of the more distinctive teeth. And those tips point different directions based on what side of the jaw they're on. So it really is like a saw, and they're really good at sawing through things with their teeth. So we've talked about this a lot, but when it comes to attacks on humans, they are in the big three of sharks. They're the number one or number two species implicated in attacks worldwide.
21:30 Wes Larson? And then I want to do a big disclaimer here, and I think we've done this with both our bull shark and our tiger shark episodes. I think bull sharks probably By more people than tiger sharks worldwide, but tiger sharks are a very distinctive looking shark. They have those stripes that give them their name. They have this really broad kind of square head. So often when someone gets bit by a tiger shark, they know it was a tiger shark. Whereas bull sharks are much more kind of classic looking requiem sharks. They just look like, you know, if you were to say, draw me a shark, like you're going to draw a shark that probably looks like a bull shark.
22:09 Wes Larson? And there are a lot of bites that people don't know the species, so they don't get attributed to any species. And I think a lot of those are probably bull sharks. So I think if those actually got put in the bull shark category, they probably take that number two spot, in my opinion.
22:25 Mike Smith? Hmm.
22:26 Wes Larson? Yeah.
22:27 Mike Smith? Controversial.
22:28 Wes Larson? It is controversial. Yeah. So we've done a lot of tiger shark biology, so I'm not going to go into too much more. But I do want to dive into a little bit of their importance to the Hawaiian culture, to Hawaiian theology and Hawaiian mythology.
22:42 Mike Smith? Oh, cool. I'm interested, Wes.
22:45 Wes Larson? Mike.
22:45 Mike Smith? Finally, you got me after four years.
22:49 Wes Larson? So one of the things we should talk about is the concept of amakua. So amakua is basically this idea that your ancestors or relatives may inhabit different living or even inanimate things from nature after they pass. So native Hawaiian families often have an amakua and then individual people sometimes have one too. So you might have a family amakua and then an individual amakua. And I might be like slightly mispronouncing that one, but that's one that I at least looked up how to pronounce it. Amakua can be fish, reptiles, birds, plants. They can even be lava rock. And tiger sharks are actually a pretty common amakua for people in Hawaii.
23:34 Wes Larson? I reached out to our Hawaiian cousins to ask if they have an amakua and they said they didn't think they did, but they might. I think they're kind of maybe a little bit more separated from the theology part of their culture. So that maybe wasn't a big thing for them, but I don't know. I don't want to speak to that too much.
23:52 Mike Smith? Jeff's would be a McRib.
23:56 Wes Larson? Yeah. Do you think a tiger shark would eat a McRib with their variable diet?
23:59 Mike Smith? They'd probably be grossed out.
24:01 Wes Larson? Yeah.
24:04 Wes Larson? They can't saw through it with those teeth. No, I guess they're not that hard. They're just disgusting. Anyway, when a relative passes and because it becomes an amakua, they often can provide guidance or warnings through that living being. So for example, this is obviously an example that's like disnified and in popular culture and not completely true to this concept. But in the movie Moana, if you guys have seen Moana, her grandma turns into like a man Ray after she passes and helps guide her to her purpose. And that was an example of the idea of an amakua.
24:40 Mike Smith? That's cool. I like that a lot.
24:41 Wes Larson? I think it's a really beautiful thing to believe in.
24:43 Mike Smith? Yeah.
24:44 Wes Larson? Having something in nature that's your personal guardian that's trying to help you through life. I really, really like that idea. I think it's really neat.
24:51 Jeff Larson? It's interesting that they choose tiger shark so much though.
24:55 Wes Larson? Yeah.
24:56 Jeff Larson? Because it's like they bite your arm off.
24:59 Wes Larson? Well, that's what I was just about to get into. Uh, Hawaiian gods are often, there's a lot of Hawaiian gods that are shark gods.
25:07 Mike Smith? Grandma bit my arm off. What the hell?
25:11 Wes Larson? Or they can shape shift into sharks.
25:13 Mike Smith? Hmm.
25:14 Wes Larson? And so because of that, there's, there has been a lot of like.
25:17 Jeff Larson? What if Jimmy Carter turned into a Greenland shark?
25:21 Wes Larson? Yeah.
25:21 Jeff Larson? And he went from being like 100 years old to like 300 years old?
25:25 Wes Larson? Yeah. I like that. He kind of looked like one at the end. Anyway, because of this, there's so many examples of sharks woven through theology and deity and mythology, there is a really high level of respect and reverence for sharks and in native Hawaiian culture. And the most prominent of their shark gods is Kamoho Alii, Kamoho Alii. Kamoho Alii is a powerful but benevolent god. He was often seen as responsible for guiding lost ships back home after they provided him with some kind of offering, which was either like fish or kava or something. And it's often thought that he, along with his sister Pele, who is the fire goddess,
26:07 Wes Larson? were responsible for guiding the first Hawaiians from the mainland to the islands. So this is like in the pantheon of Hawaiian, of indigenous Hawaiian gods, like he's a, he's up there. He's like one of the main gods and like lots of gods and lots of different cultures. He'd sometimes turn into a human when he's feeling a little, you know, a little mischievous. And he would go to shore and he would take a wife and bear children with them. But he would always warn his wives not to feed their children any kind of animal flesh. Because if they did, they would turn into man eaters. So it's kind of like a gremlins situation.
26:47 Wes Larson? But part of the overall deal with Kamahua Ali'i is that people need to leave sharks alone in order to kind of stay in his good graces. And indigenous Hawaiians have always been on the forefront of shark conservation. And they understood that there was situations that you could put yourself into where you're tempting that animal. And if you avoid those situations, they're not really that dangerous. They, they knew that and they avoided those situations. There really weren't that many shark attacks.
27:16 Jeff Larson? Like dressing up like a seal and swimming out in the ocean?
27:20 Wes Larson? Yeah, yeah, exactly.
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28:46 Wes Larson? Tooth and Claw is brought to you by Apostrophe. You know, I'm getting up there in years and I still have the occasional breakout. I also have noticed as I get a little bit older, I'm starting to have like bigger eye bags. I'm having, you know, more crow's feet. I'm having these things that, that are showing up more and more. And it has made me more cognizant of skincare. I do feel like I need to take better care of my skin. I'm out in the sun a lot. I need to do a better job, my skincare. And feeling confident in your skin really starts with getting expert care. There's so many products out there and you need to pick the ones that actually work. And that's why we're excited to partner with Apostrophe. So whether you're dealing with acne, aging, dark spots, Apostrophe helps you get access
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30:12 Mike Smith? You're looking good dude.
30:13 Wes Larson? Thanks man.
30:13 Mike Smith? You're looking good. Vibrant.
30:15 Wes Larson? All right. So we do have a special deal for our audience. You get your first visit for only $5 at apostrophe.com/tooth when you use our code TOOTH. That's a saving of $15 and this code is available only to our listeners. So to get started, just go to apostrophe.com. Slash tooth and then use our code tooth at signup and you'll get your first visit for only $5. You get to talk to an expert dermatologist for only $5. They're going to hook you up with a really good treatment plan and you don't have to go to a pharmacy or anything. Thank you apostrophe for sponsoring this episode. So one evening Roddy is catching some waves on his windsurfing rig near a local bird sanctuary.
30:59 Wes Larson? He got pretty caught up on just how good the conditions were and didn't really even notice that the sun had set behind the big, steep, green mountains that Hawaii is famous for. And it was starting to get pretty dark. He just launched himself way up on a huge wave. He's way up in the air.
31:15 Jeff Larson? We know you're really in the zone is you like don't even notice it's nighttime.
31:20 Wes Larson? Yeah. But when he's way up in the air, he looks down and he sees this intimidating dark shape of a huge tiger shark, one that he thought was probably close to 20 feet long, which probably wasn't 20 feet long, but you know, we've all been there.
31:35 Jeff Larson? It looked huge.
31:36 Wes Larson? Yeah. When you're scared and it's dark, I understand. Right. And its head was about the same width as his windsurfing board. So really big shark. And he's actually on a trajectory back down to fall right on top of the shark. But he manages to do some like aerial acrobatics and miss it.
31:53 Jeff Larson? Wow.
31:54 Wes Larson? Sick. And he can no longer see it in the dark water, but it really hit him just how risky he was, or how big of a risk he was taking staying out that late all alone. And he caught a strong wind and raced back into the beach. It takes a few days. He's thinking about this shark and he's trying to convince himself it's not as big as it was, or even convince himself it wasn't even there. But he's talking to a fisherman friend and he kind of casually mentions the shark and the fisherman says, oh yeah, like me and my friends, when we go out in that bay in our canoes, sometimes we're shadowed by a huge tiger shark. So he kind of, you know, cements that he probably did see it. He's admittedly a bit jumpy for a little while, but it doesn't keep him out of the ocean.
32:37 Wes Larson? He and his friend even rowed across the channel between the big island and Maui on their windsurfing boards, which is pretty nuts.
32:44 Jeff Larson? Wow.
32:45 Wes Larson? But in March, 1993, just mere months before Jurassic Park would arrive in theaters, Roddy has an experience that would deeply challenge his undying love for the ocean.
32:56 Jeff Larson? Megalodon?
32:58 Wes Larson? Yeah, not a make on time. On that particular day, Roddy's out with his friend John, and they were looking just to do some normal surfing. So not windsurfing, they're just surfing. And you guys, what excites surfers more than anything? What gets them super stoked?
33:14 Jeff Larson? Swell.
33:15 Wes Larson? Swells. You nailed it. Dude, a six swell is like, ugh. It's like cocaine for Jimmy Carter. It's like the same thing.
33:26 Jeff Larson? If you watch, if you watch a hundred foot wave on HBO Max, like they'll travel the world for a six swell.
33:36 Wes Larson? I love that documentary. Philip Glass soundtrack. Ah, beautiful. All right.
33:42 Jeff Larson? Well, it's not. It's like a TV show.
33:45 Wes Larson? It's a documentary series. Yeah.
33:47 Jeff Larson? Okay.
33:47 Wes Larson? All right. So yeah, a big old swell. And there's a monster northern swell that's hitting the north shore of Maui. And Roddy and John pack up their boards and they set out to try and find the best beach with the best waves. But as they go to spot after spot on the Hana Highway, they find that trade winds are hitting these waves and they're making them really choppy and trashy. So they decide to head for Honou Manu Bay, where there's some big steep mountains that might block the wind and make the waves a little bit better. But they're still, they're still not finding the waves they're looking for. So they drive up further to Waileua Bay, where they see some friends that are out surfing like five foot waves. It's already three in the afternoon. So they just decide to take what they can get. They go out, they park the van, grab their boards, head out in the water. But
34:31 Wes Larson? because this is really the only good spot that has waves that aren't getting destroyed by wind, there's a lot of surfers in the water. And after a little bit of surfing, both Roddy and John decide that they've had enough. But as they're talking, they're realizing that they had heard about this spot called Paradise, which was in the bay just to the side of Waileua Bay. And apparently at that spot, there was really amazing waves and also really incredible scenery. But the problem with Paradise, and probably the reason they hadn't been there, it's kind of difficult to get to. You either had to hike about 25 minutes through some dense forest on this kind of old trail, or you could paddle around the bay around this point to get
35:14 Wes Larson? to the other bay in your surfboard. And the hike took about 25 minutes, the paddle took about half that long. So Roddy and John just decided, oh, we'll just paddle around this headland and get into this bay. So as they passed the point, they could see why it's called Paradise. It sits nestled up against these beautiful green mountains. There's two large waterfalls cascading down, these really steep, beautiful slopes. And there's this incredible valley that holds these two large streams that empty into the bay and crisscross a beautiful palm line beach. And both Roddy and John agree, this is the most incredible bay they'd ever seen in Hawaii. To add to all this perfection, on the other side of the bay, they could see set after set,
35:56 Wes Larson? a beautiful, perfect waves that pitched out into perfect tubes and would take the surfer all the way up onto the beach. It was just a heavenly spot. What they didn't notice, however, was that the handful of locals that had been surfing in Paradise were all standing on the beach, rather than riding these perfect waves.
36:16 Jeff Larson? Maybe something in the water.
36:19 Wes Larson? As they paddled toward the waves, they enter a part of the bay where these big rivers run into the ocean, and they're actually running really full from a recent rainstorm. And they're suddenly surrounded by murky water, floating sticks, leaves, and lots of other debris. And Roddy immediately knew this is really sharky water. The light's also kind of starting to fade, and he suddenly realizes that he and John are really tempting fate here. And the image of this huge shark that he had recently seen flashes through his head, but he pushes it away. He'd spent pretty much his entire life in Hawaiian waters. These waves are way too great for him to get paranoid now. So Roddy had just picked up his pace and was paddling harder toward the
37:02 Wes Larson? waves, when something slams into his side in the dark water, and his leg erupted in unbearable pressure and pain.
37:11 Wes Larson? Before he could even look back, he had the sensation of the tissue and the meat of his right calf being torn away from his body, and he could feel teeth making contact with the bones of his leg. So as he looked back toward his leg, the shadowy tiger shark that had been haunting the back of his mind for weeks suddenly was a very real animal, and it was shaking its head back and forth, using those very specific, very saw-like teeth to saw through the muscle and the bones of his leg.
37:40 Mike Smith? Hmm, SMHing.
37:44 Wes Larson? The shark is also pulling on Roddy, so he has a death grip on his surfboard, and he knew if he let go, the shark would pull him underwater, where he then has to struggle to breathe and also struggle against the shark. So he's grabbing his surfboard so hard that he actually made dents into the hard material of the surfboard with this drill.
38:02 Mike Smith? Oh, man.
38:03 Jeff Larson? He is a man of steel.
38:06 Wes Larson? Alright, so the shark adjusted its grip and bit down further up on Roddy's leg and started shaking him violently in an effort to remove his leg and dislodge him from the surfboard. And it was pretty close to doing both of those things. They, again, if your teeth are built for sawing through turtle shells, we're not much compared to that. You know, it's not hard for a tiger shark to bite through our flesh, obviously, and then our bones aren't going to take them very long either. But now, the shark's head was essentially in Roddy's lap, and this 35-year-old decided to put that 6'4" pillar-of-steel body to work. He channeled a lot of that fear and anger into a punch. I just think of like empowering up. What's the, the classic Dragon Ball
38:52 Mike Smith? The old Goku.
38:53 Jeff Larson? Kami Kami, huh?
38:54 Wes Larson? Yeah. But he puts it all into a punch, and he hits the shark so hard on the side of his head that he actually tore a tendon in his hand.
39:01 Mike Smith? Wow.
39:02 Wes Larson? But luckily for Roddy, this punch did the trick. The shark releases its grip and disappears in the murky water while he sat on his surfboard in shock, staring at the spot where this huge fish had just been. So Roddy's friend John had seen this attack, and he had already started paddling for shore, and Roddy's now paddling behind him. And he's really paddling fast in an effort to get away from the shark. And the thing that described in the book that I it would be really scary is he had seen his leg disappear into the shark's mouth, but he hadn't really seen what had happened to his leg yet. And as he's paddling, he's just thinking, do I still have a foot? Like, is my foot still there? Or did it eat my foot? And he has no idea.
39:45 Jeff Larson? Yeah, that's crazy.
39:46 Wes Larson? And the the tension and the, you know, not knowing gets to him to where he finally stops paddling for a second and pulls his his leg out of the water so he can look at it. And he's relieved to see that he does still have a foot. But he's pretty nervous to see that his his calf has just been absolutely shredded. He can see the bone. He can see everything like it is shredded. So he knew the shark might still be behind him, especially because there's so much blood in the water at this point. So he starts paddling again, and he feels this incredible sense of relief when his board hits the sand and the rocks on the beach. He wasn't sure he'd be able to walk on his leg, but he gets up and he tries. And each time he takes a step, just a river of blood gushes out of his right leg.
40:31 Wes Larson? He can see his bone. He can see this ripped up calf. And he knows that he's gonna lose too much blood if he keeps trying this. So he grabs his surf leash, and he ties a makeshift tourniquet above his knee to hopefully control some of this blood loss.
40:45 Jeff Larson? Oh, wow.
40:46 Wes Larson? And there's two local Wailua surfers that rush out to help him. One of them sees what happened. He runs down the trail to call for help. And the other sits with Roddy and does something that's actually really smart that I hadn't thought about. He adjusted his tourniquet every so often, like about every 10 minutes, he lets a little blood into his leg. And that's just to make sure that that really damaged tissue doesn't just completely die when there's no more blood going in at all.
41:11 Jeff Larson? Yeah, interesting.
41:12 Wes Larson? Yeah, that and I don't know if that's good medical advice or not, but to me, it seemed smart. Takes the helicopter about 90 minutes to get to Roddy. The entire time he's just praying and hoping that he doesn't die. They pick him up and rush him to the hospital, where he would end up needing five surgeries, more than 200 staples, and lots of internal sutures to repair two 14 inch gashes on his right leg, and a four inch gash on his left leg. When you think about it, 14 inches, like, that's a big gash.
41:42 Jeff Larson? Huge.
41:42 Wes Larson? Yeah. Right now, everyone out there, put your fingers out to try and say about what 14 inches is. And it's pretty big. I mean, that's not bad.
41:52 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
41:53 Wes Larson? Jeff, 14 inches should be pretty easy for you to figure out.
41:56 Jeff Larson? I mean, it's about like one 500th of a bus.
42:03 Mike Smith? 500? No.
42:05 Jeff Larson? It's like circle around and go up and down.
42:08 Mike Smith? Okay, I see.
42:12 Jeff Larson? Like if there's just a gash in a 14 inch gash in the bus that takes out one 500th of it.
42:19 Mike Smith? You can keep going, Wes. I'm just gonna pull up a calculator real quick.
42:22 Wes Larson? No, I, I'm, that would be like a, like a 550 foot bus.
42:29 Mike Smith? That's what I wanted to figure out.
42:30 Wes Larson? No, I'm saying if it was just lengthwise.
42:33 Mike Smith? A 7,000, yeah, I think you did a good job of clearing that up, Jeff. It's great.
42:40 Wes Larson? The bus, the bus category gets more and more convoluted now that it can be in three dimensions.
42:44 Mike Smith? X, Y, and Z. Yeah.
42:47 Wes Larson? All right.
42:48 Jeff Larson? I don't know. It's pretty clear to me, guys.
42:51 Wes Larson? All right.
42:51 Mike Smith? Sure.
42:51 Jeff Larson? Just a gash in the bus, it'd be one 500th.
42:55 Mike Smith? You operate on a higher level than us.
42:56 Jeff Larson? He has a gash in his leg.
42:59 Wes Larson? So during all these surgeries, during all these surgeries, doctors would actually pull a broken shark tooth, tiger shark tooth from his ankle bone, and they give it to Roddy after he woke up.
43:11 Jeff Larson? Oh, nice.
43:11 Wes Larson? Which is pretty a cool souvenir.
43:14 Jeff Larson? They, doctors gave me part of my ankle bone, which I was like, what do I do with this after I didn't?
43:21 Wes Larson? Did they say eat it? Were they like, eat it and it'll go back to where it's supposed to be?
43:25 Jeff Larson? Didn't feel like throwing it away, so here you go.
43:28 Wes Larson? Yeah.
43:29 Mike Smith? You still have it?
43:30 Jeff Larson? I think I lost it at my parents' house somewhere.
43:34 Mike Smith? Huh.
43:35 Jeff Larson? I bet you they threw it away.
43:37 Wes Larson? All right. So Roddy's in a lot of pain during his recovery in the hospital. But the thing that actually he said bothered him the most was that the, and this is where it kind of zigs a little bit from our typical attack story or bite story. The thing that bothered him the most was that the state shark task force, who was largely responsible for responding to shark attacks, had decided not to do anything about the shark, largely due to pressure from locals that didn't want the shark killed. And because Roddy had really ignored a lot of factors that can make a shark attack more likely. But I think, again, where it differs is usually people are like, oh, you know, this was an animal, being an animal, don't do anything to it. And he was like, I want the shark dead.
44:18 Jeff Larson? Interesting.
44:20 Wes Larson? And I think at the time, this was still a time where maybe a lot of shark biology wasn't very well known to the public and surfers had heard about a number of bites in the area and they kind of thought that things were getting worse. And again, I think it's that phenomenon that you get where a shark bite story does some numbers for journalists. So they decide to keep reporting on them when it's not that the rates are changing. It's that it's, it's interesting news to people because it's already been in the news. And I think that's kind of what had been happening in the area. And Roddy felt pretty strongly that there was too many sharks and that this shark was a menace.
45:00 Jeff Larson? Well, and
45:00 Wes Larson? With these experts.
45:01 Jeff Larson? I think of our night of the grizzly episode a lot with this, where it's like, they thought a grizzly bear might kill a group of 30 of them because it's like, they viewed it as one grizzly bear attacking someone. That's a bad bear that just wants to kill people.
45:20 Wes Larson? Right.
45:21 Jeff Larson? And that was like their mindset. This is like, maybe he was thinking like, this is a bad shark that just wants to kill people, you know?
45:28 Wes Larson? Yeah. Like if we get rid of the shark, it's going to make things safe again. And we know that's not the case. And these experts pointed out that the water was murkier than normal because of recent storms. And Roddy and John knew that as they're paddling through it. They, something they didn't know is that a dead cow and a dead pig had been washed out into the bay, which probably brought in a number of sharks.
45:49 Jeff Larson? Both.
45:50 Wes Larson? Yeah. And they also pointed out that John and Roddy should have noticed that no one else was surfing. And that should have been enough to discourage them from going out because that often means that something is wrong, you know, someone saw something or there's strong currents or something is off.
46:07 Mike Smith? Yeah. If the waves are so good. That they're just blown away by them, but nobody else is surfing them. Something weird is going on.
46:17 Wes Larson? Right, exactly. And finally, these, the shark attack force or whatever, said that the ocean was too rough to go out to anyway, and set hooks. And that by the time they were able to go out there and set these hooks, the responsible shark could very well be miles away. You know, it could, it could be the big island for all they knew.
46:35 Jeff Larson? But in his mind, it's like the same shark that he's been seeing.
46:39 Wes Larson? And I, I think this was the right decision. Personally, I think there's certain times where, where wildlife does kind of come into our space and does something so out of the ordinary that, that removing that animal is probably the right decision. Or if, you know, like when a bear is predatory, it creates a liability for further things. But with sharks, it's like, we are going.
46:59 Jeff Larson? The New Jersey shark where it was like in the rivers. It's like, yeah.
47:02 Wes Larson? Yeah. Yeah, that kind of makes more sense. But for the most part with sharks, like we're, we're going into an environment that we mostly don't belong in at all, you know? And, and I think that's just kind of the risk you have to take, especially in places where you know there are sharks like tiger sharks.
47:19 Jeff Larson? Like if a shark breaks into your house, by all means, you can kill it or hurt it. So if we break into their house, like it should be the same rules.
47:30 Wes Larson? Right, right. That's really, really good logic. I know, I don't disagree with that. I'm not being sarcastic.
47:37 Jeff Larson? Me neither.
47:38 Wes Larson? So for me, I agree with what they said, but Roddy really didn't. He didn't think this was the right decision. And it seems like he did a fair amount of complaining about this. And he finally convinced one of the surfers that had rescued him, as well as a local Hawaiian community leader, to go out and hunt for this shark. And this Hawaiian guy believes strongly in this concept of amacua and that sharks were often amacua. But he felt so confident that this particular shark was not amacua, not a guardian, that he thought it was okay to remove it in order to appease Roddy and some of the other public that was paranoid after this attack. So they went out and baited some floating lines with cow liver.
48:22 Wes Larson? And sure enough, the next morning, they found a dead 10-foot tiger shark on the beach tangled in these lines. And they, they hacked off the tail of the shark and gave it to Roddy. And he produced the tooth that he had had to and doctors kind of. Somewhat match this to the shark, but to be honest, like they have lots of different sizes of teeth in their, in their mouths and teeth break all the time. So it's pretty hard for me to say like, oh yeah, this is like a good way to match up a shark. It's not. I don't think you can say this was the shark is what I'm trying to say. It's possible, but with dead animals floating out there in the water, there's probably half a dozen tiger sharks in the area, if not more. So yeah, I don't love this personally.
49:04 Wes Larson? And I think the Hawaiian guy kind of got convinced, but he did even say in the book, he's like, if this was the wrong move, it's going to come back to me. Kind of like a karma thing almost. So funny thing kind of to end this is when people got upset with Roddy and told him that killing a single shark wasn't going to change anything. He had an answer ready to go. And this is exactly what he would tell them when they said that to him. One day, stormy seas tossed thousands of starfish onto a beach. Later, a boy walking along the shore came upon the starfish and tossed one back into the ocean.
49:38 Mike Smith? No.
49:39 Wes Larson? An old man had been watching the deed, railed at the boy, telling him that he was wasting his time. There are thousands of starfish, the old man said, and you can't possibly make a difference. The boy calmly replied, I made a difference to that one.
49:54 Mike Smith? Wow.
49:55 Wes Larson? So he gave him the starfish poem.
49:57 Mike Smith? The old Sunday school classic.
50:00 Jeff Larson? If he, if I was like, hey, man, shouldn't have killed that shark. And he told me that I'd stop the argument. I'd be like, I don't, I don't really want to get into it.
50:13 Wes Larson? Yeah.
50:16 Wes Larson? I wanted to ask you guys, if there's any explanation for how the starfish story applies to this. Like, I don't get it. Like killing the one shark made all the difference to Roddy? Is that what he's saying?
50:29 Mike Smith? I think it made the difference to the shark. Right? That's the one who went underwent the biggest difference is now it's dead.
50:37 Wes Larson? Yeah, now it's dead.
50:38 Jeff Larson? Like my guess would be he's saying like, even if he saves one person from the shark killing another person.
50:46 Wes Larson? I get it. Yeah, that makes more sense. I thought he was just saying like, if you kill just one shark, it makes a difference to me. And that's all that matters.
50:54 Mike Smith? That's kind of how I was thinking about it.
50:55 Wes Larson? Which seems like a very narcissistic way of looking at this. But whatever it is, it's a stupid answer. And.
51:05 Wes Larson? If Roddy's out there, I, I can't imagine the trauma of being attacked by a tiger shark. I don't think any of us really can. I think, can't really put yourself in someone's shoes until you've had the same experience.
51:16 Jeff Larson? I can imagine it.
51:17 Wes Larson? Yeah, sure. But I mean, I can't know what it's like.
51:21 Mike Smith? You can also imagine a 600 foot long bus, apparently. So your imagination knows no bounds.
51:28 Wes Larson? So I'm not gonna like, I'm not gonna judge him too harshly. This was also a different time in the world where I think we viewed wildlife as more, a little bit more antagonistically than we do now, which is something I think has really changed for the positive over time. But I, yeah, I don't think, I think when we're attacked by animals and it's not outside their natural behavior, personally, I think we need to leave them because I think that's just part of the beautiful risk of being human in a world that's still wild.
52:00 Mike Smith? Those are nice sentiments to end that on, Wes.
52:02 Wes Larson? Yeah. All right. So we'll move into our categories.
52:04 Jeff Larson? Been wearing a turtle shell.
52:06 Wes Larson? Yeah, maybe work out a little more, Roddy. Actually be a seal next time.
52:11 Mike Smith? Yeah, I've been thinking a lot about the movie Saw, this whole episode, and how it would have been nice for those guys to have a tiger shark in that little bathroom with them.
52:21 Wes Larson? Yeah.
52:21 Mike Smith? Like if Jigsaw were a nice guy, he would have left a tiger shark in there to make things a little easier.
52:28 Wes Larson? He's like, my next, my next trap.
52:31 Jeff Larson? Did Rodney get back to windsurfing?
52:34 Wes Larson? Roddy.
52:35 Jeff Larson? Roddy.
52:35 Wes Larson? That's a good question. So in the book, it actually said that he did, but that it wasn't nearly as easy as it used to be for him. He didn't have full movement of his foot. And he still windsurfed and he kind of, it was really hard for him for a while. And then one day he saw a guy that was like on two crutches or something and could hardly do anything. And he was like, oh, I'm not as bad as that guy. And that made him feel better.
53:02 Mike Smith? I'm really harsh realities.
53:04 Wes Larson? Recapping that in like, not a great way, but I think we could poke holes in that too. But we've probably have all done that in our heads. So.
53:12 Mike Smith? Yeah.
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56:40 Wes Larson? All right. Well, we'll move on to categories. The first one that I wanted to ask you guys is your favorite media that's either set or filmed in Hawaii. And I think just for the sake of it, let's get rid of Jurassic Park because we all know it's filmed there. It's all of like, it's all in our top movies. So maybe we don't count that. So outside of Jurassic Park. I'm going to go with Lilo and Stitch. I think it's really underappreciated animated film. It's one of my favorite. That was mine, too. It's just so, it's all three of us are going Lilo and Stitch? Is that what's happening?
57:13 Jeff Larson? I haven't even ever seen it.
57:15 Wes Larson? Oh, really? Oh, wow.
57:17 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
57:17 Wes Larson? It's fun. I like it too, because the animation's really beautiful and it feels, for me at least, my short time that I've spent in the Hawaiian Islands, it feels like it nails kind of the vibe of the Hawaiian Islands really well. So I think that's a good pick. Yeah.
57:33 Jeff Larson? Stitch it. Which one's the alien? Lilo or Stitch?
57:37 Wes Larson? Stitch.
57:38 Jeff Larson? Stitch. That makes sense. Stitch is a more alien name.
57:43 Mike Smith? Less Hawaiian than Lila, probably.
57:45 Wes Larson? Lila. Jeff, you can go next and I'll do a backup answer.
57:49 Jeff Larson? I'll go fifty first dates. What a wild idea by Adam Sandler there. Just like some lady forgets every single day and he's still marries her.
58:03 Wes Larson? Yeah.
58:03 Jeff Larson? And she just wakes up and doesn't know who he is. It's crazy. Crazy plot.
58:09 Mike Smith? Real bizarre.
58:10 Jeff Larson? And he like takes her to like Antarctica too. So it's like.
58:14 Wes Larson? Alaska.
58:14 Jeff Larson? She.
58:15 Wes Larson? Yeah.
58:16 Jeff Larson? Oh, yeah, Alaska. So she like, she wakes up thinking she'll be in Hawaii and she's just in Alaska, which is like. And it's just like, watch this three minute video. We'll explain everything.
58:27 Wes Larson? Right.
58:27 Jeff Larson? That's crazy. I love it.
58:30 Wes Larson? We were talking about that.
58:31 Jeff Larson? Go to Hawaii, though.
58:32 Wes Larson? We were talking about that movie the other day because Jesse rewatched it not long ago and she was like, oh, this does not hold up well. Because there's the scene where he's, he's like, you don't understand. We've been like not having sex for like months. And I've got blue balls or whatever. And he has to like convince her that she knows him. So she'll have like sex with him or whatever. And it's like.
58:58 Wes Larson? That's, I don't know. It's pretty.
59:00 Mike Smith? But the Hawaii parts are cool though, right, Jeff?
59:02 Wes Larson? There's some cool Hawaii part.
59:03 Jeff Larson? The plot is cool.
59:04 Wes Larson? There's some really racist Hawaii parts in that movie too.
59:07 Jeff Larson? I, I love like a problematic plot, you know? Just like they really went for it. Yeah. It's like such a crazy.
59:17 Wes Larson? The more I think about that movie, the more I'm like, oh man. Like Rob Schreider's or Schneider's role in that where he's like playing a Hawaiian.
59:25 Jeff Larson? Oh.
59:26 Wes Larson? Yeah. All right. We'll go on to mine. Mine's way less problematic.
59:32 Wes Larson? I'm more just wanted to talk about fifty first stage.
59:35 Mike Smith? Yeah, I get it.
59:36 Wes Larson? Movie.
59:37 Mike Smith? It's nuts.
59:37 Wes Larson? I'm gonna pick, um, have you guys ever seen the movie A Perfect Getaway? This is my backup.
59:41 Mike Smith? No.
59:42 Wes Larson? It's got like Timothy Olyphant, Steve Zahn, uh.
59:46 Mike Smith? Oh, yeah, it's. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's kind of a crime thriller.
59:49 Wes Larson? Yeah, it's like a really, it's kind of a twisty crime thriller that's set in Kauai. And it's, it's really good. It's one of those movies from the two thousands that you forget about. But Steve Zahn's really good in it. I really enjoy it. Me and Jesse watched it recently and I was like, this is a fun movie. It's kind of stupid, but it's fun.
1:00:11 Mike Smith? So at the risk, maybe I shouldn't even say this, but it's one of those movies where there's a twist. And it was so obvious to me that I was like, that cannot, that can't be what's happening here. And that it ends up being exactly what's happening. So it's like a twist that goes all the way around in a full circle for me. I agree with you. Yeah. It's like, no way. They really did just do that very obvious thing, didn't they?
1:00:36 Wes Larson? I agree with you. I think when it came out, which I want to say it was like two thousand eight or nine, somewhere in there. It wasn't, I feel like we hadn't had enough movies like this yet where the twist was that obvious to me. So it was kind of fun still, but I think in twenty twenty five, if you watch this movie, there's a pretty good chance you'll see the twist coming. But at the time when I saw it.
1:00:56 Jeff Larson? Maybe not, because it's so obvious.
1:00:59 Wes Larson? Yeah, exactly.
1:01:00 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:01:00 Jeff Larson? It can't.
1:01:02 Wes Larson? All right.
1:01:03 Jeff Larson? My backup was Johnny Tsunami.
1:01:05 Wes Larson? Just like Disney Channel.
1:01:08 Jeff Larson? As far as just like nailing Hawaiian culture.
1:01:12 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:01:12 Jeff Larson? Throw Hawaiian in some like snooty ski town. And he's just like so much cooler than everybody and like so chill. And then, uh, it really, it really gets good. Like they go in the wheel well of a plane and fly to Hawaii, like sneak into Hawaii, which insane move. And then someone in Chicago just tried to do that. Go in the wheel well to fly to Hawaii. They died.
1:01:42 Wes Larson? Yeah, that kills you.
1:01:42 Mike Smith? Whoa.
1:01:43 Jeff Larson? But Johnny Tsunami did it. And then they like taught his new Colorado friend how to surf. It's just a great movie.
1:01:52 Mike Smith? The grandpa learned slang and stuff. Is that what happens?
1:01:55 Jeff Larson? The grandpa's so cool.
1:01:57 Mike Smith? I love him.
1:01:59 Wes Larson? All right. I wanted to bring back Anaconda scale for this episode. It's been a while since we've done this, but I wanted you guys to say, who from the movie Anaconda, the seminal masterpiece, do you guys think is most like Roddy Lewis?
1:02:15 Mike Smith? I think I'm gonna say John Voight.
1:02:17 Wes Larson? Okay.
1:02:18 Mike Smith? A little bit of John Voight, just like kinda holding a weird grudge out there trying to, after the fact, kill the snake. I don't know. I'm not gonna cement that as my choice, but I'm gonna kick off the conversation there.
1:02:32 Jeff Larson? I think I would go Owen.
1:02:34 Wes Larson? Okay.
1:02:35 Jeff Larson? Just kinda like wants to have a good time.
1:02:38 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:02:38 Jeff Larson? Like that's his main goal in life is just have a good time, but I don't think Owen Wilson would have had any problem killing a snake that just bit him either.
1:02:47 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:02:48 Mike Smith? Sure.
1:02:48 Wes Larson? I went, I went with the main scientist that gets bit by the wasp in his throat. What's that actor's name again? He was the guy that was supposed to be in Back to the Future.
1:02:57 Mike Smith? Uh, Stoltz.
1:02:58 Wes Larson? Eric Stoltz. Yeah, Eric Stoltz. Cause I don't think Roddy obviously didn't have like bad intentions. I think he just kind of got in over his head in a bad situation. And maybe should have been paying more attention to signs and stuff around him, uh, ended up paying the price for it.
1:03:15 Jeff Larson? The scientist got bit in the throat or stung in the throat by a bug?
1:03:20 Wes Larson? Yeah, cuz um, John Voight puts it in his regulator when he goes underwater.
1:03:25 Jeff Larson? Oh, yeah.
1:03:26 Wes Larson? But that guy, he was also just kinda like, yeah, I'll do it. I'll jump in the Amazon and free the propeller. And he was just a little overconfident, I think. And that's what I thought about.
1:03:35 Mike Smith? Doctor Stephen Kale. That's your guy.
1:03:38 Wes Larson? Oh, yeah. Stephen Kale.
1:03:40 Mike Smith? Look that up real quick. We gotta do a screening of that, like rent out a theater hall, invite everyone over.
1:03:46 Wes Larson? All right. New category alert. This one's called Let's Argue. Um, it's a new category we came up with, where we picked something that a listener said and we argue with it. So.
1:03:56 Mike Smith? All right.
1:03:57 Wes Larson? After our year end episode, listener and patron Jessica, wanted to know what we thought of the movie War of the Rohirrim, the Rohirrim. Jessica had seen it and really liked it. So let's argue with Jessica about that movie.
1:04:15 Mike Smith? Oh, man.
1:04:17 Wes Larson? What'd you guys think of War of the Rohirrim? How do you say that Rohirrim?
1:04:21 Mike Smith? Rohirrim?
1:04:22 Wes Larson? Yeah, Rohirrim, Rohan.
1:04:24 Jeff Larson? If you guys are gonna go after, I think I'll, I think I would always take the other side is how I feel about it. Like if someone just loves it, I'll be like, I'll throw water on that. Like, I don't know if you should just absolutely love this movie. But then like if someone wants to complain about it, I thought it was good enough to exist, I guess is what I'm saying.
1:04:48 Wes Larson? I thought it was really boring was my problem. I just, I thought the animation was boring. I thought the story was like really run of the mill, every medieval story ever. I just, there was nothing that interesting about it. And it takes kind of all the fun things of Tolkien's world for me, which are all these like different races and magic and everything and kind of removes them all for this really insular story about a clash in Rohan, which in my opinion is the most boring of all the kind of kingdoms in Tolkien's world. And I just didn't really care for it. I just thought it was boring.
1:05:25 Mike Smith? Yeah, I didn't absolutely hate it. And I'm not gonna say anyone should change their minds because of what we're saying, but there was some just really strange things about, especially the animation to me. I kept thinking about, and people who know are gonna really understand what I'm saying here, but there are a couple of old Zelda games on the CDI system where it's this weird mix of over animation and under animation, where it's like a lot of like weird gesturing and movement, but to like not really any effect. And sometimes there's weird stills and like lack of movement, but one central figure is like really going for it a lot. It was really distracting to me.
1:06:07 Mike Smith? And again, like Wes said, I think the story is just very rote. I think the characters had a lot of potential. I liked the main.
1:06:14 Wes Larson? Me too.
1:06:14 Mike Smith? I forget what her name was. I thought she was a really compelling character. They just didn't really do anything interesting with her.
1:06:20 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:06:21 Jeff Larson? It kinda just felt like-
1:06:22 Mike Smith? Outside of expectations.
1:06:23 Jeff Larson? Worst two towers. They like copied even like Gandalf's saving the day type of thing. Like they just completely redid it.
1:06:32 Wes Larson? There was a lot of nods that were like very obvious. Yeah.
1:06:36 Jeff Larson? Yeah. I liked how the orcs looked in it quite a bit, even though they're a small part. And then big spoiler here, so skip ahead if you wanna watch it without any spoilers. But I, I was like pretty out on it and pretty out on the animation and everything until both the sons got killed. And then I was like, oh, this is kinda interesting.
1:07:03 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:07:03 Jeff Larson? Because like they were cool and like they took them out pretty early. So it gave you reason to care, I feel like.
1:07:08 Wes Larson? Yeah, you kinda thought one of them was gonna make it at least. Yeah.
1:07:12 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
1:07:12 Wes Larson? Yeah, I didn't, I didn't like hate it. It's not like I walked out of it being like that was a travesty, but it's not one I'm ever gonna watch again. So.
1:07:19 Mike Smith? Yeah. I liked the moment where, uh, what's the, the king's name? Where he died on his feet, just frozen in a block of ice? That was sick dude. I was like, oh, there we go. That's like a cool moment of storytelling. If there was more of that, I don't know. It's like easy for us to say on the outside looking in, like just do more cool stuff like that. It's kind of hard to do cool, new stuff at this point, but
1:07:44 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:07:44 Mike Smith? It's just pretty uninspired mostly.
1:07:46 Jeff Larson? I liked it more than Rings of Power.
1:07:49 Mike Smith? I think I'll agree with you on that one.
1:07:51 Wes Larson? I like Rings of Power a lot more than it. There's parts of Rings of Power that I, that I like find very exhilarating and fun. Um, it's like real up and down for me and I just, this one was just like a flat line. I just never really felt that engaged in it.
1:08:08 Jeff Larson? Well, your theater probably didn't have any music.
1:08:11 Wes Larson? It did. Yeah, the theater in Missoula isn't always the best, but it was good on this one. All right. So next question, next category. We talk a lot about sharks on this, this podcast, and I think we've talked a lot about our favorite species, but I'm kind of curious to hear your top three right now. And I think I can go first because I think mine are pretty, well, the first two are pretty obvious. It's a great white.
1:08:35 Jeff Larson? I think I could guess yours.
1:08:37 Wes Larson? Okay. Oh, I don't think you'll guess the third, actually, but go ahead. Try and guess.
1:08:41 Jeff Larson? Okay, I'm gonna go great white. And then whale shark.
1:08:45 Wes Larson? Correct.
1:08:45 Jeff Larson? And then great hammerhead shark.
1:08:48 Wes Larson? Oh, you did get it.
1:08:50 Mike Smith? Whoa.
1:08:52 Wes Larson? Nice. Yeah. Is it because I just saw one in Cancun?
1:08:55 Jeff Larson? Because you just saw one and then you wanted us to say I taught three sharks. So I was like, he's gonna want to talk about hammerheads.
1:09:04 Wes Larson? Yeah, you got him. Great Hammerhead's number three right now.
1:09:06 Mike Smith? Did you like a book, dude? I'm gonna go great white, hammerhead, and I can't get the Mako shark out of my mind. Mako, ever since you, we did an episode like a year and a half ago.
1:09:18 Wes Larson? Cool sharks.
1:09:19 Mike Smith? And I just couldn't, I looked at pictures of them and I was just scrolling through Google Images for like 15 minutes just because I think they're so beautiful and sleek and almost metallic looking. I just think they're so cool, big, cool eyes. Yeah.
1:09:33 Jeff Larson? What shark do you like most want to see? If you're diving or like that you haven't seen?
1:09:39 Mike Smith? That I haven't seen?
1:09:40 Jeff Larson? Both of you.
1:09:41 Wes Larson? A tiger or oceanic white tip, one of those two.
1:09:44 Mike Smith? I guess, I don't know, if you don't count what we did in the cage in Australia, I'd love to see a great white shark just while diving, you know, out of constraints, but.
1:09:54 Jeff Larson? I count that.
1:09:55 Mike Smith? Okay, we'll go with that then.
1:09:57 Jeff Larson? No, I count, well, I just count that we saw great white sharks.
1:10:02 Mike Smith? Oh, okay. That's not really diving, but whatever. I get what you're saying.
1:10:05 Wes Larson? Great Hammerhead, Mike?
1:10:07 Mike Smith? I have, yeah.
1:10:08 Wes Larson? Okay.
1:10:08 Mike Smith? Um, and I've seen white tip. I'll just, I'll go with, uh, I guess I'll go tiger shark. I've never seen one while diving.
1:10:14 Wes Larson? You haven't seen an oceanic.
1:10:15 Jeff Larson? I really want to see a leopard shark. I like pictures of leopard sharks. They look so cool.
1:10:21 Wes Larson? That's easy. We should just go to La Jolla sometime and we'll find you a bunch of.
1:10:24 Jeff Larson? I've tried there. I didn't see shit.
1:10:27 Wes Larson? All right.
1:10:27 Jeff Larson? I'm still mad about it. Uh, I would go whale shark number one. Then Great White and then Hammerhead. So same as Wes, just different order.
1:10:37 Wes Larson? A lot of overlap.
1:10:38 Jeff Larson? Cool thing about whale sharks. I've been telling people this on my cameos. I told a person this on my cameo, but they sleep upside down. Because great white sharks will hunt them at night. And then when the great whites look up, they're like, the spots on whale sharks will look like the stars. So then they sleep upside down.
1:11:00 Wes Larson? I don't know if that's a real one. I don't know if you should keep giving that fact to people.
1:11:07 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:11:08 Jeff Larson? Why do they have spots on them?
1:11:10 Wes Larson? Pretty sure that's not the case. Uh, I think it's for the dappled sunlight that's coming down from the top. So if something's over them and it looks down, they're pretty hard to see, actually. Yeah, I don't, I don't know, but it's not stars. It's not the stars. I'm sure of that. So yeah, don't, don't give that fact to people as an actual fact. Yeah. All right.
1:11:34 Wes Larson? Next category, two new year resolutions that you guys have.
1:11:37 Jeff Larson? I don't want to nuke anyone this year.
1:11:40 Wes Larson? Okay, that's not nuking. Like personally?
1:11:44 Jeff Larson? Or just like my country, just like no nukes. If whatever I can do, no nukes in 2025.
1:11:52 Wes Larson? All right, we'll check back in with you on that one next year, I guess. Let's each do one and then we'll swing back. Okay, I'll do, I mean, I want to write in my journal every night. I like that. It's a good one. One that I came up with is I really, I'm gonna really work on leaving my phone when I go into places this year. So like leaving it in my car or leaving it at home if I'm going like grocery shopping or if I'm going to a movie or whatever, I just, I really, I don't feel like I'm that attached to my phone as far as someone my age. But I want to become less so even. So I just kind of want to start leaving it a lot more.
1:12:30 Jeff Larson? Nice. Mike, don't you like need to do stuff to be able to write in the journal?
1:12:35 Wes Larson? Oh, man, that's the, that's the great thing about journaling is that the less you do, the less you have to write. And it makes it really easy.
1:12:44 Jeff Larson? You're just like, I was on Twitch today and someone did like a pepper the frog I hadn't seen yet.
1:12:52 Wes Larson? Exactly. It's big. Dude.
1:12:55 Mike Smith? If someone, if we, you or our country nuke somebody, that's gonna be a real easy journal entry for me. That's like-
1:13:04 Wes Larson? Yeah, Jeff didn't do his resolution.
1:13:08 Jeff Larson? I'm trying not to, yeah.
1:13:09 Mike Smith? Alright, what's your second one? Like the idea that you have to restrain yourself from doing it, like it's a real problem you have.
1:13:15 Jeff Larson? Just this year.
1:13:16 Mike Smith? Yeah, right.
1:13:19 Mike Smith? You really struggled with that one last year.
1:13:22 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
1:13:23 Wes Larson? What's number two for you, Jeff?
1:13:26 Jeff Larson? I don't wanna set too many goals for myself. I'll do that.
1:13:30 Wes Larson? This year?
1:13:31 Jeff Larson? Okay. That's my resolution.
1:13:34 Mike Smith? Cool. Strong, strong year for Jeff coming up here.
1:13:39 Mike Smith? So, a friend and I, Jeff and I, I guess you're kinda friends with him too, but Nick, he and I are going to get the N5 Japanese language proficiency test under our belts. I think that's gonna be a fun little project to work on with him. And then we'll go back and visit together, since he married, his wife is Japanese and they love traveling over there too. And I wanna go back, so it's gonna be fun.
1:14:01 Wes Larson? Cool. I am going to try and swim a lot more. So like go to the gym and swim in the pool. Cause I think it's probably the workout that I feel the best afterward. Like I feel like I just did something that really woke me up, that makes me feel healthier, happier, so-
1:14:23 Mike Smith? Low impact on the joints too.
1:14:24 Wes Larson? Yeah, low impact on joints. Uh, high impact on hair. Sometimes it can make your hair fall out a lot more, but you know-
1:14:31 Jeff Larson? Well, it just-
1:14:32 Wes Larson? Can get a swim cap.
1:14:33 Jeff Larson? You don't need to look cool, so just wear the swim cap.
1:14:37 Wes Larson? I'm going to. I bought one already. That's gonna be my main goal.
1:14:41 Jeff Larson? People say that, but then if you watch the competitive swimming, like they all have pretty good heads of hair.
1:14:48 Mike Smith? Yeah, Phelps, solid head of hair, still.
1:14:51 Jeff Larson? The Ryan Lochte, that guy is hot.
1:14:54 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:14:56 Jeff Larson? Or the, who's the new American guy? He has good hair.
1:15:00 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:15:00 Jeff Larson? The guy who kinda sucked this last year, but he's still our best guy.
1:15:04 Mike Smith? Oh yeah. What is that guy's name? I forgot him since he underperformed so badly.
1:15:09 Wes Larson? If Jeff doesn't keep his-
1:15:11 Mike Smith? He's awesome.
1:15:12 Wes Larson? If Jeff doesn't keep his resolution, it won't matter if I have a good head of hair or not, you know?
1:15:16 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:15:18 Jeff Larson? How many, uh, yeah, radiation I hear is bad for hair too.
1:15:23 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:15:25 Jeff Larson? So 365 days, how many days you wanna swim?
1:15:30 Wes Larson? I don't know. I haven't gotten that into it yet, but like, I just wanna, I wanna do it more. So I, I always set workout goals at the beginning of the year that I'm not the best at keeping. So I'm trying to figure out a way to do that better. And I think swimming would be-
1:15:46 Jeff Larson? I would say, just saying I wanna do it more is a bad start.
1:15:51 Wes Larson? Okay, I would say not wanting to nuke people is a pretty poor resolution too. But I'm like-
1:15:57 Jeff Larson? That's fair.
1:15:58 Mike Smith? Not living in a glass house over there, Jeff. Oh, Caleb Dressel, that's his name.
1:16:02 Wes Larson? Okay.
1:16:03 Jeff Larson? Okay, yeah, you guys both wanna nuke people, I guess. I'll accomplish my goal.
1:16:07 Wes Larson? I came up with it-
1:16:07 Jeff Larson? Are you gonna accomplish yours?
1:16:09 Wes Larson? I came up with it this morning and all I'm saying is I haven't figured out yet the best way to keep myself honest with it. But I'm going to.
1:16:17 Jeff Larson? Right.
1:16:17 Wes Larson? I'm gonna figure that out.
1:16:19 Jeff Larson? I'm trying to help you.
1:16:20 Wes Larson? I know you are. Alright.
1:16:21 Mike Smith? Keep thinking you're gonna turn this around on us, Jeff. It's, you're definitely gonna happen, for sure.
1:16:27 Jeff Larson? What?
1:16:28 Mike Smith? Make us feel bad about our resolutions while you're sitting over there.
1:16:31 Jeff Larson? That's not what I'm doing. I was just trying to get them to-
1:16:33 Mike Smith? Not wanting to make goals for yourself.
1:16:35 Wes Larson? To commit. You want me to-
1:16:36 Jeff Larson? I was trying to get him to put like a number of days to it, so that it's like a real goal, instead of just like saying like, I'm swimming.
1:16:43 Wes Larson? The really hard for me with, the hard thing for me with workout goals is like, the amount of travel that I do. It's really hard to keep a routine. So I'm, I don't know. I'm trying to wrap my head around that. If anyone listening has any good ideas for keeping yourself to a set routine, uh, feel free to send them over. You know, post them in the comments of wherever you're, you're following us.
1:17:06 Jeff Larson? No, my, I mean, my real one is just to like, get pain free, which is just doing a ton of physical therapy.
1:17:15 Wes Larson? Yeah, a ton of opioids.
1:17:16 Jeff Larson? Getting nuked.
1:17:17 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:17:18 Jeff Larson? Mike, but you swam, you, didn't you like get way into swimming this year? Are you still swimming about?
1:17:24 Mike Smith? A couple of years ago, I was going almost every day. I've stopped since, just cause, I don't know, I like to cycle through different. I just get bored if I do the same thing over and over and over again. So right now, I'm- Uh, back just to doing body weight stuff in my top floor. Uh, I might go back to boxing. Maybe I'll go to, yeah, my brother and I started doing Muay Thai for a little bit. And that was like really, really fun and hard.
1:17:48 Wes Larson? Boxing, boxing was like one of my favorite workouts ever. I did, for like six years, I went to a boxing gym and really liked it. But, um, there's not a great one where I live now.
1:17:59 Jeff Larson? Did Outside Magazine calling those beefy boys make you start doing all this?
1:18:04 Wes Larson? That was your wake up call.
1:18:06 Jeff Larson? That's about, it lines up with him like getting active.
1:18:10 Mike Smith? No, I started swimming like right when we started the podcast almost.
1:18:15 Wes Larson? I remember you were getting in pretty good shape when you were swimming a lot too. That actually made me think like, I need to swim a bit more.
1:18:22 Mike Smith? Get back into it.
1:18:23 Wes Larson? Yeah. All right. So from our patrons, from Pat, and it's a treadmill question. Pat says, Hey Wes, during the Grizzly Man documentary, there was a bear diving deep into the river, which Timothy labeled as something along the lines as playful. Could you dive a little deeper into what that bear was actually doing? It could have been playing, but my guess is that where, that was one of the last videos he took. And it was toward the end of the salmon run. And what happens a lot is the salmon, where they were running up to that lake and then dying up there. Uh, there's probably a lot of dead salmon lining the banks of that lake. And bears have been known to actually dive down really deep.
1:19:04 Wes Larson? Like they can dive up to like 20 feet deep to go down and get those salmon carcasses. So it wasn't diving nearly that deep, but that's probably what it was doing, was looking for salmon carcasses on the bottom of the lake would be my guess. Okay. This one's from Shark Geek. This one says, Hey guys, on many of your episodes, you say things like species, breed, family, subspecies, et cetera. I understand them on a basic level, but I'm not totally sure what each means and when each is appropriate. So wondering if you could give us a rundown of the difference. Do you guys know? Much about that?
1:19:40 Mike Smith? No.
1:19:40 Wes Larson? Species and.
1:19:41 Mike Smith? I always, I'm always happy to have you correct me because I always use the wrong term.
1:19:46 Wes Larson? Yeah. So basically, when you're, when you're like looking at this, the taxonomic stuff, species is like the most kind of defined thing. So you start at kingdom and you go all the way down to species through these different groups. And so as you move up that ladder from species up, you're adding more animals, more species to each group. So genus is the next one up. So like, for example, let's use a tiger shark as an example.
1:20:14 Jeff Larson? So humans are part of kingdom, right? That's just all.
1:20:17 Wes Larson? Kingdom is animals. Kingdom is animalia.
1:20:20 Jeff Larson? So like a alien came to earth, would they be in the animal kingdom?
1:20:26 Wes Larson? I don't know. Probably not. I don't think we would. Yeah. But they would probably.
1:20:31 Jeff Larson? Crazy to not be in the animal.
1:20:33 Wes Larson? Like it's a good point. It's a good point. Alright, so for example, like sharks are, their class is condicthrees, which is pretty much cartilaginous fish. So fish that have cartilage as their skeleton instead of bone. And then as you move down that, you get into like their subclass, their order. For them, their order are these like big requiem sharks or ground sharks, which is about 270 different species of sharks. Then their family, which divides it up even more. And their genus and tiger sharks are actually the only member of their genus. There used to be more, but now they're extinct and they're the only surviving one.
1:21:16 Wes Larson? And then their species, which for them is Galio sardo cuvier. So the one that gets a little confusing for people, like humans are Homo sapiens. So that's our, that's our species, Homo sapiens. What gets a little confusing is when you introduce this idea of breeds, races and subspecies. So breeds are something that we do with domesticated animals where we take a species and we breed in certain characteristics or traits into them. So, you know, we have all these different breeds of dogs. That are all genetically still the same species, but they have different phenology, different physical attributes of their genes.
1:21:57 Wes Larson? And then subspecies is when you have an animal of the same species that is genetically different enough that it can be considered a subspecies, but it still can mate with other members of the same species. So, a good example of this, like with grizzly bears, we talked about how the only recognized subspecies in North America is the Kodiak grizzly, or the Kodiak brown bear. But if you were to put a Kodiak brown bear with a coastal brown bear, they can still mate. They're still like biologically compatible, but because the Kodiak is just different enough, we say it's a subspecies. So that's the difference between species and subspecies. I'm kind of getting lost in the weeds here, but that's
1:22:39 Wes Larson? a basic difference, just so you can understand all of that. And then race is like a human kind of thing that we contrived. It's kind of, it'd be the most similar thing you would consider that. It would be like breeds and dogs where there are these-
1:22:54 Jeff Larson? Well, you have race and bears.
1:22:55 Wes Larson? What do you mean?
1:22:56 Jeff Larson? I mean, you have black bears, you have brown bears, you have black and white bears, mixed, mixed race bears.
1:23:05 Wes Larson? Those are all different species. And that's not the same. Like with humans, we're all the same species. We're all genetically the same species. We don't differ enough genetically to where you would separate us. But because of different, you know, geographical things, because of climates, because of lineages, all these different things that have happened with us over time, we do look different. And that, that's more of like, just kind of phenological differences. It's like how you have black bears that have black fur. In the eastern US, that's pretty much all you ever find. But in the western US and Utah, they typically have brown fur. That's just, you know, part of their, their genes expressing themselves.
1:23:50 Wes Larson? All right, Jeff, you got some questions from Instagram?
1:23:52 Jeff Larson? Yeah. E. Thompson 17 asks, what's your favorite episode from The Office?
1:23:57 Wes Larson? Oh, man.
1:24:00 Jeff Larson? I really like the one where Michael gets like brought into corporate and they read his journal entries.
1:24:08 Wes Larson? And I don't remember.
1:24:09 Jeff Larson? It's just like kills me some of the stuff he right wrote in his journal that they like read in front of everyone.
1:24:17 Wes Larson? Do you have a favorite, Mike?
1:24:19 Mike Smith? I don't. I that's just not my show. I'd never really got into it. I like the I like the spill in the chili. That's always kind of funny to watch out of context.
1:24:30 Wes Larson? I really like The Office, but I can't say I have a favorite episode like I've only I think I've watched it all the way through like one and a half times. And I think it's so funny. And I think especially the early seasons with where Steve Carell is in them. I don't know. I really like the one where he's pretending to be a prisoner and it's and is being like really racist.
1:24:53 Jeff Larson? Prison Mike. It's great when he starts like talking about dementors, dude.
1:24:59 Wes Larson? Yeah, yeah, I do really like that one. But um, yeah, I don't know. I don't know if I have a favorite.
1:25:04 Jeff Larson? All right. November Botanical asks, number one animal you'd love to see in its natural habitat?
1:25:11 Wes Larson? Giant panda right now.
1:25:14 Jeff Larson? I'd love to see a jaguar. I'm really looking forward to that.
1:25:17 Mike Smith? And panda is such a good answer. I always say tiger for these kinds of questions, just because I haven't seen one yet. So that's gonna be it.
1:25:25 Jeff Larson? Taylor X. Wallington, uh, would you rather fight a grizzly bear or a moose? So moose are like twice as heavy, right? But I kind of feel like this question's like, would you rather have like a grand piano or a car fall on your head?
1:25:42 Wes Larson? Grand piano.
1:25:42 Jeff Larson? It's not like you're winning either fight.
1:25:44 Wes Larson? Yeah, I'd rather.
1:25:46 Mike Smith? I think I'm gonna pick moose too. It's not gonna it's not gonna want to try and eat me. It's not gonna be biting and ripping flesh off of me. It's just gonna like trample me. Hopefully one of those hooves just knock me out real quick.
1:25:57 Wes Larson? A blunt instrument I'd prefer over getting eaten and torn apart.
1:26:01 Jeff Larson? I choose a grand piano falling on my head because then it makes a noise on your head.
1:26:07 Wes Larson? I do think if you survive, the grizzly is a better story, but I don't know. I'm picking the moose. I think you could trip a moose probably, and then you have a shot.
1:26:15 Jeff Larson? In Maya Element asks, do mountain lions ever attack people in tents like bears will sometimes?
1:26:23 Wes Larson? Not that I've ever heard of. Yeah, I don't think so.
1:26:27 Jeff Larson? Okay, uh, so don't need to worry about mountain lions if you're camping.
1:26:31 Wes Larson? No, no.
1:26:33 Jeff Larson? Okay. Devon E L T. asks, if you could pick any celebrity to come on the podcast, who would it be?
1:26:40 Wes Larson? It's a great question. Do you have an answer, Jeff?
1:26:43 Jeff Larson? Oh, man, I want like the wicked girls. Uh, Ariana.
1:26:49 Jeff Larson? Well, I, I know Ariana Grande's name, the other.
1:26:52 Mike Smith? Yeah, you just have them sing. What are you, what are you trying to do with them?
1:26:56 Jeff Larson? Cynthia Erro's her name. Yeah.
1:26:59 Mike Smith? Oh, really?
1:27:01 Jeff Larson? Yeah, they're just like getting like very emotional over like very silly stuff, but they, they're self-aware about it, but I just, I'd love to hear them talk about bears the way they talk about everything.
1:27:14 Mike Smith? That makes me think of, um, Bill Skarsgård and Willem Dafoe on their press junket for Nosferatu. They had some like really funny moments together, so I think they'd be, they'd be really fun to have on the show. I'm gonna steal Jeff's angle at answering that one.
1:27:30 Wes Larson? I, oh, man, that's a hard question. Probably Keanu Reeves.
1:27:35 Jeff Larson? Oh, yeah. What do you think about bears?
1:27:38 Wes Larson? Yeah, and he has such a distinctive voice and he seems like such a different celebrity than most celebrities. I don't know, 2025 is kinda, I'm pretty out on celebrities this year, so I think.
1:27:50 Mike Smith? What?
1:27:51 Wes Larson? I would love to have one on that I think has like.
1:27:53 Jeff Larson? You are a frickin' celebrity.
1:27:55 Mike Smith? Dude, you're a big deal.
1:27:57 Jeff Larson? You're so, you're at least a B-list celebrity.
1:28:00 Wes Larson? I'm not B-list, maybe like J-list. Maybe someone that, I really like Melissa Barrera a lot. Yeah, Melissa Barrera from the Scream movies.
1:28:12 Jeff Larson? It would've been Jimmy Carter.
1:28:14 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:28:15 Mike Smith? You know what would be big for us? If we had a hawk to a girl on our show for like our first, first episode back.
1:28:24 Jeff Larson? And like.
1:28:24 Mike Smith? We'd do numbers, dude.
1:28:26 Jeff Larson? Her like, her whole takes would be like the Jeff, what would Mike and Jeff do, but like genuine.
1:28:34 Wes Larson? In a country bear voice.
1:28:35 Mike Smith? That sounds great.
1:28:37 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
1:28:37 Mike Smith? We should make her.
1:28:39 Jeff Larson? Why don't y'all just camp in the lake?
1:28:41 Wes Larson? Yeah, well, I'd say toodleoo to that shark. That's for sure. No, Melissa Barrera is my answer.
1:28:46 Jeff Larson? All right, last one. Foxtails asked, least favorite thing tourists do at national parks? And then she references tourons of Yellowstone's Instagram.
1:28:56 Wes Larson? This probably isn't actually my least favorite thing, but I'm gonna say, uh, least favorite thing. And it's, it's making cairns. So stacking rocks into cairns. Uh, I think it, it feels like natural graffiti to me. It's like saying like, a person was here. And I don't like that. I don't think we need to mark things up and show that we were in a wild place. I think it, it takes away from the experience for me. I do think there's places where cairns are necessary, like on really hard to find trails. But if you're on a, like a good hiking trail.
1:29:28 Jeff Larson? Poorly run convenience stores.
1:29:30 Wes Larson? Yeah, exactly.
1:29:33 Jeff Larson? Get some order.
1:29:36 Wes Larson? But the, the other thing that's bad about him too is like, you don't really realize this when you're stacking big rocks. A lot of people might not. But, um, they're, they're habitat. Like things live under those rocks. Things use those rocks for shelter and whatnot. And you are moving habitat. So, yeah, I don't like cairns.
1:29:52 Mike Smith? You don't like cairns? Dude, that's messed up.
1:29:56 Wes Larson? I don't like cairns.
1:29:56 Jeff Larson? My joke, dude.
1:29:57 Mike Smith? That's messed up, dude.
1:29:58 Wes Larson? Oh, that was your joke. I didn't get it, but now I got it.
1:30:02 Jeff Larson? They like go to poorly run.
1:30:05 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:30:05 Mike Smith? I think, I thought that's what you were getting at, but I needed to double down.
1:30:08 Wes Larson? I didn't pick up on it. Took me a second.
1:30:10 Jeff Larson? Yeah, they'll talk to the manager. They'll get things in order.
1:30:13 Wes Larson? Yeah. Okay.
1:30:15 Jeff Larson? My thing is a bit of a zag, I think, but it's actually more like the tourans of Yellowstone Instagram. My, I understand that people do really dumb things in some national parks and get way too close to bison and stuff. But I think there's become like way too much of a tattletale culture in national parks too. Where like, if it's not like super serious, just like let people go off the path a little bit. Or I, I just don't like, my biggest complaint about tourists in national parks is when they try to like enforce rules on other people that are just kinda trying to have fun.
1:30:58 Wes Larson? It's kinda my biggest complaint about rangers in national parks too. Like just maybe don't be like when I was on the bear team. I had the authority to tell people what to do, but if they weren't doing something that I didn't think was like that bad, I just kind of.
1:31:13 Jeff Larson? Yeah, if it's not egregious, like just let people try to enjoy themselves out in parks, you know?
1:31:19 Wes Larson? Yeah, yeah.
1:31:20 Jeff Larson? But if they're like putting a baby bison in their car to keep, try to keep it warm, then yeah, you can, you can.
1:31:27 Wes Larson? Tell on them. Yeah. Mike?
1:31:29 Mike Smith? I don't know if I have, I don't go to national parks often enough to have any pet peeves like that. Maybe just like overzealous photographers. Those, those always weird me out a little bit.
1:31:42 Jeff Larson? Yours would probably be like that their wifi signals aren't good enough in national parks.
1:31:47 Mike Smith? Why go outside, dude? That's all I'm asking. Why ever go outside?
1:31:52 Wes Larson? All right. Quickly, our last, I guess, kind of two categories. We'll do conservation really quick. This is a near threatened animal, like lots of sharks. It's really hard to know how many tiger sharks are out there. But we do know they're targeted by the finning industry. They're a common coastal shark that's caught by fishermen, sport fishermen, and they're often caught as bycatch in commercial fishing operations too. So with a lot of these sharks, when you look at their IUCN status, it says like near threatened because they can't put it a total finger on it. But there are a lot less tiger sharks than there used to be, and that's largely due to the fishing industry.
1:32:29 Jeff Larson? Kind of their number one spot to see tiger sharks?
1:32:33 Wes Larson? No, I would say the best spot in the world is probably Tiger Beach in the Bahamas. That's probably the best place you can go to see tiger.
1:32:40 Jeff Larson? And it's called Tiger Beach because of tiger sharks?
1:32:44 Wes Larson? Hmm. And you can dive with them there outside of cages and it's a pretty cool spot. So that's probably the best spot. And then really quickly, just our claw scale. We've done it before, but we're going to do it again for tiger sharks. All these big macro predatory sharks for me are a 10 claw animal. I love sharks so much. So a 10 claws.
1:33:02 Jeff Larson? Yeah, I think last time I gave tiger sharks at nine claws and they're probably 10 claw. They're really cool.
1:33:09 Wes Larson? Yeah. Mike?
1:33:11 Mike Smith? Uh, I'll give them a nine just because I really, really keep my 10 claw animals as a precious select few, but any shark honestly is, is gonna be borderline 10 for me as well.
1:33:23 Wes Larson? Yeah. What are 10s for you? Great whites and tigers?
1:33:26 Mike Smith? Yeah, pretty much.
1:33:28 Jeff Larson? I think they kind of have an argument that they're cooler than great whites. The markings on their back are just so cool.
1:33:35 Wes Larson? The markings are really cool. And a cool thing about them is when they're babies, they're more spots. And as they get older, those spots kind of blend into each other and turn into stripes. And as they get even older, they pretty much lose their stripes. So.
1:33:48 Jeff Larson? When I asked if they're more tiger or more shark, you said we'd get into that later.
1:33:55 Wes Larson? That was actually what I just talked about. They're spots and stripes. But yeah, they're much more shark than they are tiger. Much more. All right. So that's it for the story. Thanks, guys, for listening. Thanks for joining us in 2025. We got a lot of good stuff coming for you guys. So we're excited for it.
1:34:12 Jeff Larson? And a little bit of bad stuff, too.
1:34:14 Wes Larson? Yeah, there'll be some bad stuff, too, for sure.
1:34:17 Mike Smith? Just set your expectations appropriately. Hopefully you won't be disappointed.
1:34:23 Wes Larson? Yeah. All right.
1:34:24 Jeff Larson? We're going to episode a week. We gotta give you some bad stuff, too. Sorry.
1:34:29 Mike Smith? Yeah. Real dip in quality, you can expect.
1:34:34 Jeff Larson? All right. Love you.
1:34:35 Mike Smith? All right. Bye.
1:34:36 Wes Larson? See ya.
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