The Crocodile Hunter with Brianna Bowman

Crikey! How does a man decide to wrangle giant reptiles for a living? For this episode, ocean correspondent Brianna Bowman shares the life story of Australian icon Steve Irwin, the beloved Crocodile Hunter who captured the slithering hearts of kids in the late 90s and 2000s. Starting with his lizard- and snake-laden childhood and his early work with “problem crocodiles,” Brianna takes Sarah through Steve’s romance with Terri, the equally animal-obsessed love of his life; their career together at the Australia Zoo and rise to TV stardom; and the shocking news of his improbable death. Digressions include sea anemones, Jurassic Park, and H2O: Just Add Water. More Brianna Bowman: http://www.briannabowman.com https://www.patreon.com/c/rewildingkeiko Produced + edited by Miranda Zickler: http://www.linktr.ee/mirandatheswampmonster Brianna recommends: Steve's papers that he coauthored: ⁠pone.0000949 1..5⁠ and ⁠Estuarine crocodiles ride surface currents to facilitate long‐distance travel - Campbell - 2010 - Journal of Animal Ecology - Wiley Online Library⁠ Steve explaining the research to Conan and other things: ⁠Crocs... IN SPACE⁠ His allegedly last show at Australia Zoo: ⁠Steve Irwin’s very last show at Australia Zoo, before he passed away. : r/interestingasfuck⁠ Some great Crocodile Hunter clips: ⁠Steve’s Wildest Croc Encounters | The Crocodile Hunter | Animal Planet⁠ His captures for Read's research happen at 10:18 His memorial service: ⁠STEVE IRWIN MEMORIAL TRIBUTE⁠ More You're Wrong About: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Bonus Episodes on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Buy cute merch⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YWA on Instagram⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Sarah Marshall?

  I think we really missed out by not being marsupials.

• 0:14Sarah Marshall?

  Okay, I'm gonna start us off, have a sip of tea, and then here's what we're gonna do. I wanna at 12, check in about how we're doing in terms of pacing.

• 0:25Speaker 01

  You know me.

• 0:27Sarah Marshall?

  It's like we worked together before.

• 0:28Speaker 01

  It's like I have unexpectedly dropped a three-part series on you before.

• 0:34Sarah Marshall?

  And we needed a three-part series, but Steve Irwin is a human-sized man, and so it must be shorter.

• 0:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think I could, well, maybe not three parts. I probably could make it two parts, but I'm not going to.

• 0:45Sarah Marshall?

  You could, but you shouldn't. We're gonna leave all this in, so people see what I have to deal with.

• 0:54Speaker 01

  Do you see, you're basically Pete from 30 Rock.

• 0:57Sarah Marshall?

  This is like, you know what this is? This is karma, because I used to freelance, as you know, when we were in our twenties. And I had editors being like, okay, I need this many words. And I was like, I can make it really long. And they're like, no. And now I'm the person who has to keep saying, no, it must be shorter. And I never thought that would happen to me. It's like parenthood, but editorially. Okay, well, anyway, Brianna.

• 1:22Speaker 01

  Sarah.

• 1:23Sarah Marshall?

  You're our ocean correspondent, and yet today we are going on land.

• 1:28Speaker 01

  We are. It's a little confusing.

• 1:31Sarah Marshall?

  We're gonna put on our khakis. We're gonna return to perhaps our childhoods.

• 1:36Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:37Sarah Marshall?

  And we are gonna talk about something I think people have been asking for for a long time, and that is the crocodile hunter Steve Irwin.

• 1:45Speaker 01

  Steve Irwin, the man, the myth, the legend.

• 1:49Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 1:50Speaker 01

  I don't know if he's really a myth, but he certainly is a legend to many people.

• 1:54Sarah Marshall?

  You know, yeah, what's the difference? I don't know, but definitely the legend.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58Sarah Marshall?

  And you talked to us at the start of this year about CAKO. And here we are, I guess, for another biography of someone who a lot of us bonded with in our childhoods, I wanna say. And I'm talking about millennials here.

• 2:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 2:16Sarah Marshall?

  Brianna, first of all, two questions in brief. Who are you? And I know that's a big one. And you can answer it however you want, truly. And B, for someone who, for example, says, I was born in October of 2006, who is Steve Irwin?

• 2:33Speaker 01

  Right. So I'm Brianna Bowman. I am currently a part-time host and reporter for my local NPR member station KLCC, based in Eugene.

• 2:46Sarah Marshall?

  You have the rom-com job of my dreams, and you are also, I will point out, much like Adrian Barbeau in The Fog, a coastal radio gal. What is that like generally, to be talking about sort of a facet of the science world, which famously is having kind of a rough time with regards to people being proud to believe that science does not govern them in kind of a, you know, pretty worrying way that has gotten more political traction than it used to have, I think it's fair to say. And also, like, the difficult thing of communicating fairly specialized knowledge to people when you only have, like, so much time to do it. What is that like for you?

• 3:24Speaker 01

  I do find myself struggling. I'm learning, you know, like, I was primarily trained as a scientist, and now I am learning on the fly on the job how to be a journalist.

• 3:37Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, and scientists do not tend to be rewarded for brevity, I would say.

• 3:41Speaker 01

  No.

• 3:41Sarah Marshall?

  And scientists would say journalism frequently miscommunicates or

• 3:45Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:45Sarah Marshall?

  overdramaticizes, or like clickbait's, or like simplifies an idea, or like makes little soundbites out of a complex interview in a way that like compromises the average person's ability to even try to understand what's going on. To a child, it's like, yeah, that is absolutely true.

• 4:01Speaker 01

  Yes. I also kind of struggle with this idea of how much do we need to simplify all the time? Like, I think the interesting part are the details. And I get it. It's a news outlet. It's a news organization, and we need to be able to engage with the most people possible in terms of our audience and our listeners and our readers of our web articles. But yeah, sometimes I've kind of struggled with the idea of like having to simplify things, because I am like, well, yeah, maybe for some people that would be too much. And then for others, they would find that interesting. Like, not going into details sometimes is maybe losing an opportunity to engage with people. But I'm still learning.

• 4:46Speaker 01

  And I think that's honestly the crux of a lot of discussion in the science communication field of, you know, how do we engage people and educate people without overwhelming them with information? Because it is a scientist's job to understand every little detail.

• 5:05Sarah Marshall?

  Right.

• 5:05Speaker 01

  But how much does the average person actually need to know?

• 5:09Sarah Marshall?

  And how much time are they gonna dedicate? Because this is my thing, right? Where like, here's an example, where I just got to visit Gettysburg this year, which was like really cool and amazing and great.

• 5:20Speaker 01

  Right.

• 5:20Sarah Marshall?

  And the thing is like, because I think it's probably even maybe a cliche at this point that Gettysburg is beautiful, but like, the thing is that it's so beautiful. And it doesn't feel haunted at all. And there's something about that. And it's also been like, you know, painstakingly preserved to look the way it did at that time. There's something, anyway, it's like a very powerful experience is what I'm getting at, you know, I won't talk too long about it. But also, they like show you this film, and then the cyclorama, which I guess is a phenomenon of the late 19th century of like this giant circular painting that's supposed to give you an experience of like, a period in history, sort of feel immersive. It's like pre IMAX or something, or like being inside a giant zoetrope.

• 6:03Speaker 01

  Or pre VR.

• 6:04Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, yeah. It's like Gilded Age VR. But they show this film, and it's like very good. And they have Sam Waterston as Abraham Lincoln, because I guess after Ken Burns, everyone's like, yep, he's Abraham Lincoln, all right. And they read the Gettysburg Address, which is famously probably like the shortest important speech in American history. Like, it's so short that you can like chisel it in its entirety onto like a piece of, you know, onto a monument in pretty large type. And they like cut it at a certain point. They like faded out and then faded back in, like they had cut out a part of it, I assume. I might be wrong, but it really sure sounded like that.

• 6:42Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 6:43Sarah Marshall?

  And I was like, I don't know. I feel like people should be expected to sit through the additional 20 seconds or whatever you're saving here. Like, why would you cut this of all things if that's what happened? So I think that like, there's this sense that like, we should make everything bite-sized, because the American people are so stupid and impatient that we won't sit through anything. And it's like, yes, kind of. Like, I can feel my attention span shrinking when I give in to my desire to consume, you know, the kind of like social media stuff that I want. But also, that is an excuse, I think, that media companies use to try and make their products more and more addictive, to try and increase screen time quarter by quarter.

• 7:23Sarah Marshall?

  In a very sinister attempt ultimately to milk us of more and more of our time every year until we spend every waking second looking at a screen or using technology of some kind.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:35Sarah Marshall?

  And it's not fair to blame a lazy people for the evil that corporations are doing to make us, I don't know, more addicted to this stuff on purpose. And I also think that like boring stuff can be really good, and challenging someone to like think a little bit longer, or like sit with something in order to think harder about it, like is worth it. And if not everyone wants that, then that's okay. But of course, that's not like a good approach capitalistically. Although, interestingly, like the capitalist model in the United States today in media is in all things, is to like execute a business model that doesn't have a chance of becoming profitable, suck it dry, and then abandon it after about seven years.

• 8:14Speaker 01

  I know. I never really understood that aspect of it. It's kind of the same idea. Like, I've never quite understood, or I have misgivings about the idea of the intention of like going into buying a home with the intention of selling it again one day.

• 8:32Sarah Marshall?

  Well, yeah, because it can get predatory pretty easily, I think.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  Right. What if you just like created the home you wanted and didn't care about whether or not someone, like the next buyer?

• 8:43Sarah Marshall?

  No, Brianna, we must always profit-max each activity. Have a hobby, make it a business. Buying a home, make it a business. Have a business, make it a bigger business. This is the American way.

• 8:54Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:54Sarah Marshall?

  Drop dead of a heart attack at 60 years old after not enjoying any of it because you made it all a business. Having a baby, make it a business.

• 9:03Sarah Marshall?

  Anyway, this is our State of the Union.

• 9:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's just, that's where we're at. But I will, I will, I will bring this.

• 9:11Sarah Marshall?

  What if you don't make it a business?

• 9:13Speaker 01

  What if you just live?

• 9:15Sarah Marshall?

  What if you just sat in the hammock and read something and then you didn't tell anyone about it?

• 9:20Speaker 01

  Right. Well, actually, this is a great segue, I think, to some of my feelings about Steve Irwin.

• 9:27Sarah Marshall?

  Tell me your feelings about Steve Irwin. That's what we're all here for.

• 9:31Speaker 01

  That's what we're here for. I will, first, I'll, I'll say that, you know, you're saying how all these media companies, they have this sinister idea of like, they're gonna try to figure out how to keep us on our phones and our screens 24/7. And I can tell you that in reading about and immersing myself in Crocodile Hunter media, ironically, on a screen, I get it. But I actually have felt more inspired to be like, you know what? I need to like, go outside and like, try to identify the plants and animals and things around me that I see every day, because that's probably what Steve Irwin would have done.

• 10:12Sarah Marshall?

  And the great state of Oregon that we should not build data centers in, nor anywhere, for the love of God.

• 10:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, for the love of God, please. But I, Steve Irwin was just like, in a way, I know he had, obviously, this very popular show that aired on a TV, on a TV channel, but he really, like, his life was really about being outside and getting, obviously, very up close and personal with wildlife, which is part of the sort of nuance to him. I, we started to say that, I think, whenever people, you know, they read the title of a You're Wrong About episode, and they're like, oh, no, what did, what did so and so do? I love that person. And I'm not here to take away anybody's feelings about Steve Irwin. I've come away still loving Steve Irwin.

• 10:59Speaker 01

  I think I just have a little bit more of a nuanced idea of him, like, he was a human being.

• 11:05Sarah Marshall?

  Well, and you're approaching him as an adult, you know, and that maybe is inevitable, we hope, yeah.

• 11:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, you know, I, none of us are above critique. Like, there was things about his approach to his work that people certainly were critiquing. But I think generally, you're gonna leave this episode still loving Steve Irwin. And I think he, he still has a, a net positive on, on the world.

• 11:32Sarah Marshall?

  Thank you for reassuring people if they're afraid of that. Can I tell you my like,

• 11:36Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 11:36Sarah Marshall?

  You're Wrong About mini-version of Steve Irwin, which we will then spend the rest of the episode complicating and correcting.

• 11:43Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah, go for it.

• 11:44Sarah Marshall?

  Okay, this is what I think I remember. In the early days of the show, we had a lot of reviews being like, I can't believe someone who doesn't even know anything about it is talking. And it was like, well, what's the point to not know about it originally? And we like, you know, have grown a lot around that. But it's to be like, oh, this is what I kind of remember. And then have someone tell you the correct version, which usually is pretty counter

• 12:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:04Sarah Marshall?

  to the, the fossil version that you get through VH1 countdown shows and so on.

• 12:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:10Sarah Marshall?

  So, okay, so here's what I kind of remember is that I think there was a show on the Discovery Channel, question mark, called The Crocodile Hunter. And I believe that like, the, I don't know, the promos and like, the, maybe like, the ads and the theme music for it. There was some element of crocodile hunter. Is that right?

• 12:30Speaker 01

  Something like that, yeah.

• 12:32Sarah Marshall?

  Don't make me look silly by saying I made that up by myself.

• 12:38Sarah Marshall?

  But it was just like, the, the show that was kind of like a phenomenon is, I guess, kind of an early reality show, because I want to say it was on in like, the late 90s into the 2000s, mid to late 90s.

• 12:47Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah.

• 12:49Sarah Marshall?

  But for like, quite a while. And then it was about this guy named Steve Irwin, who was Australian, and Americans love Australians because we love to do an Australian accent. Although we refuse to ever hire a real Australian to do the ads for Outback Steakhouse, please, for the love of all that is blossoming in onions. Why can't we just get any of the millions of Australians living in LA and winning all of the Oscars to do this job? I probably talked about this on my show before. It makes me, I have had a vendetta against Outback Steakhouse since I was 10 years old because of this. And to say my investment in this, I, my dad grew up in New Zealand and subsequently Australia when he was a little bit older. And I grew up going to the Gold Coast to visit my grandparents, which feels like several summers in a row when I was like, a tween.

• 13:33Speaker 01

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 13:34Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. And, but then like, not since then. So I have these like tween age memories of it.

• 13:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, so if you were there as a tween, well, that was like, right in the height of Crocodile Hunter.

• 13:47Sarah Marshall?

  Here's what I remember. I remember annoying my relatives by listening to an album by Aqua that Barbie Girl was on, but like, the whole album on like, the family stereo.

• 14:03Sarah Marshall?

  So whenever that was.

• 14:06Speaker 01

  But you don't have any memories of like, Steve Irwin while you were in Australia at that time?

• 14:11Sarah Marshall?

  Not that I can think of. I remember watching a lot of like, I mean, obviously, it was, there was a lot of neighbors happening.

• 14:19Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh, yeah.

• 14:20Sarah Marshall?

  I gotta get back over there. Um, because it's been this whole millennium since I've, and you have spent a lot of time in Australia and New Zealand as in your 20s, for various reasons, some of them science related.

• 14:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I lived in Australia for a little over a year and a half. I was first in Brisbane. That was my first six months. And then I actually went back to New Zealand for a bit. And then I went back to Australia. And I was working in central Queensland and living in a town called Blackwater. It was a very odd place for me to end up. This was all because of a relationship with my ex that I ended up there. He and a bunch of friends were working at a coal mine, so Blackwater's in the middle of coal country in Queensland.

• 15:08Sarah Marshall?

  You know what I, I love about this show? Is that there is someone listening who also ended up living in a coal mining town because of a relationship that is now over, but probably a totally different coal mining town.

• 15:21Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah, yeah.

• 15:22Sarah Marshall?

  Because there's coal and exes all over the place.

• 15:25Speaker 01

  This is true. And every town, well, maybe not coal in every town, but there's certainly exes in every town. I was working as an environmental officer, an Enviro, at the mine for a few months. I also worked as a Gillaroo for like, a month. Gillaroo's a cowgirl. And, yeah, I mean, I had, I had amazing experiences there. It wasn't for me, for the long term. But I really valued my time there. And it was just interesting diving into the Steve Irwin stuff, because I was like, oh, yeah, I spent a lot of time in like, places that I know he and his team were, were in catching crocodiles. I mean, not in central Queensland, but in far north Queensland.

• 16:08Speaker 01

  And, and just being in that environment and the kind of wildlife he would encounter and, you know, just some of the wildlife encounters I had. It, it would just brought back a lot of memories, actually, of that time, which was actually kind of unexpected. And I think the other part of it, too, that I was not expecting to relate to so much, was the fact that Terry Irwin, his wife, I don't know if you know this or remember this, Sarah, but she is from Eugene, Oregon.

• 16:37Sarah Marshall?

  No, I didn't know that.

• 16:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:40Sarah Marshall?

  No, and I love finding out someone is from Oregon. This is amazing.

• 16:44Speaker 01

  She's from Oregon. She grew up in Eugene. And I just found myself relating to this story of her like, coming to Australia and what it was like being a girl from Oregon in Australia. And, yeah, there's a nice little tie in there.

• 16:59Sarah Marshall?

  So, yeah, I, I guess all that's to say is that I think, I think that hopefully less because of the way this show is, as because of the way media is generally. I do, I think you're totally right that people have that fear, that whenever we talk about someone on the show, it's like, oh, God, what did they do? And I think often what we're trying to do is to talk about someone and all of their complexity the best we can. And often we have the need to do that when someone gets flattened into kind of a media character, which can happen, not because you did something bad, but just because you had a lot of eyeballs on you and became like, a character in the bigger culture for a while, which means by definition, like, if you're an icon, an icon is like, something that's easy to recognize, that becomes kind of simplified, like a symbol or a hieroglyph, I think.

• 17:43Sarah Marshall?

  And so with Steve Irwin, the idea with him was that he just was like, Americans think of Australians as being a little bit brainless, which I think is a bit rich coming from us, let's be honest. But we underestimate people because of the accent. It's the same thing with southerners. And it's nice when, when no one can see you coming and when people underestimate you because of the way you talk in that sense.

• 18:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:04Sarah Marshall?

  And of, and a lot of other accents and dialects. And of course, the way that like, race and code switching play into all this, too.

• 18:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 18:11Sarah Marshall?

  Not to get too deep. But, but so I think we all kind of saw Steve Irwin as like, this happy-go-lucky guy who jumped around playing with large predators. And of course, he was called the Crocodile Hunter. And there is a South Park parody of him, as there is of every truly significant character of the 90s, pretty much. You know, him being someone, I think, who just liked to go bother large animals, but who also like, was this very beloved, very wholesome character who people liked to watch. And I think was someone who people like, felt was part of a new wave of a new kind of TV, but that didn't make you stressed about where all this was going. And then that he died, to me, very unexpectedly

• 18:53Sarah Marshall?

  and tragically, and also in a way that is, I think, extremely unusual and, and hard to foresee in 2006. And not to be so millennial that we make everything about ourselves, but I will point out that that was like, the first week or so of college for both of us. And I really associate that with that, like, transition into adulthood.

• 19:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, absolutely.

• 19:16Sarah Marshall?

  That was kind of unimaginable, you know, because he just seemed like, very in his element, doing this kind of thing all the time.

• 19:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 19:22Sarah Marshall?

  And then he died after an encounter with a stingray.

• 19:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it really, and I remember feeling very like, I mean, obviously shocked and then emotional about it, because my family loved Steve Irwin.

• 19:37Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, I didn't know this about you guys.

• 19:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think I got one of his DVDs for Christmas one year from my brother.

• 19:43Sarah Marshall?

  And what was the show like? Cause I don't think I ever watched it all that much. It was more like sort of when I was channel surfing kind of a thing.

• 19:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. Sometimes he's in Australia and he's maybe relocating a crocodile. So that was a big part of his career, actually, before he started the show. He was a full-time crocodile catcher for the Queensland department.

• 20:07Sarah Marshall?

  But of course, for American TV, we have to imply that he's killing them or else no one would be interested, as I assume the meeting about this title, right?

• 20:16Speaker 01

  Well, I think it's more exciting to refer to him as the crocodile hunter versus like catcher. It, it just sounds more dramatic and I, but I think also people tend to give the caveat of like, well, hunter can also mean you're just looking for something. It doesn't mean you have to kill it.

• 20:31Sarah Marshall?

  That's true. Right. Like I'm hunting for my glasses.

• 20:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 20:34Sarah Marshall?

  The glasses hunter.

• 20:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 20:37Sarah Marshall?

  However, I do think that that is like revealing of what we, we think people want.

• 20:43Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 20:44Sarah Marshall?

  It never to me gave the impression that he was safely relocating these animals. I mean, I didn't think that he was killing them either, but I understood that it meant he was like looking for them. And then he would find them and be like, hey.

• 20:53Speaker 01

  Right.

• 20:54Sarah Marshall?

  You know, but I didn't realize that there was, that we were helping the crocodiles. Why did he have to move them? How did they get where they weren't supposed to be? Are they just doing that a lot?

• 21:02Speaker 01

  So maybe it helps if I like, kind of take a step back in his life, if we like started at the beginning, a very good place to start and.

• 21:10Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. Just like in Dune.

• 21:13Speaker 01

  So he, he was born in 1962. He has two sisters and he, and his parents, Bob and Lynn. He was very close with his parents growing up. He, he grew up first in Victoria, near Melbourne. And he was born on his mother's birthday and he was always very, very close with his mom. And I think that kind of intensified, you know, how close they were was the fact that they shared a birthday. And his sisters, I don't know, he like, there's hardly any mention of them. They did come to work at the zoo later on, but otherwise I don't really find much about them.

• 21:50Speaker 01

  Mentioned anywhere. And then he and his parents were really passionate about reptiles specifically, like in the sense that they really, I guess at the time liked to collect them. And keep them as pets, sort of thing. This was just in their own home. They were, I believe, also rehabilitating wildlife as well. Steve Irwin talks about how his mom was always nursing kangaroo joeys. And that is quite a frequent thing in Australia is wildlife, like kangaroos or wombats. Marupials that are hit by a car and the joey survives, if there is a joey.

• 22:33Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, yeah.

• 22:35Speaker 01

  And so they, actually there is encouragement, if you hit and kill a kangaroo, to check the pouch and make sure that there's not a joey in there.

• 22:46Sarah Marshall?

  God, does this happen to people like on the way to weddings and stuff, you know, you're just minding your business and then are kangaroo like deer in, in this way?

• 22:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 22:56Sarah Marshall?

  Man, I didn't know that.

• 22:57Speaker 01

  That is my analogy.

• 22:59Sarah Marshall?

  I don't, well, why would I think I would know that? I wasn't driving when I was 11 years old, nor are there probably that many kangaroos on the Gold Coast and the part where all the slot machines are.

• 23:08Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. Yeah. No, it depends on where you are. There, you can certainly visit Australia and never see a wild kangaroo.

• 23:14Sarah Marshall?

  Right. Like if you're, if you're in New York City, you're not going to hit a deer. If you're in upstate New York, deer hit you.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  But I, yeah, they are very frequent.

• 23:25Sarah Marshall?

  Wait, but if you hit a kangaroo and you kill it and there's a joey inside, like, what do you do then? Do you like wrap it up in a towel and take it to a wildlife rehab center? Is there a plan?

• 23:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think generally that's the idea. And I believe you can also get certified to be like a wildlife rehabilitator in your own home too. Like through the government, you know, relevant government departments.

• 23:49Sarah Marshall?

  You can run a joey clinic.

• 23:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. I do remember looking into this when I was in Australia. I was like, oh, that would be, that would be cool. I would love to do that. And that's basically what, yeah, Steve Irwin's mom, Lynn Irwin was, was doing. She was sort of nursing animals back to health. And so it was just a family that was very passionate about wildlife.

• 24:10Sarah Marshall?

  What kind of animals does he grow up with around the house?

• 24:13Speaker 01

  Well, so a good story about this is Steve received his first reptile when he was six years old, like on his birthday. It was like a birthday gift.

• 24:25Sarah Marshall?

  That's nice.

• 24:26Speaker 01

  And you might think like, oh, his parents gave him like the Australian equivalent of a garter snake or something like that. But no, he got, in true Steve Irwin fashion, he got a 12 foot scrub python. Like that was what his parents gave him, but they had the sense to be like, you can't play with him. He is yours, but you like, can't play with him because he will probably actually eat you. Cause you're a six-year-old boy and you're actually smaller than him.

• 24:54Sarah Marshall?

  The ratio of snake to owner in pounds has to be really high.

• 24:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. Right.

• 24:59Sarah Marshall?

  And to be clear, like I, I love snakes and I think they're really cool and I.

• 25:04Speaker 01

  I do too.

• 25:05Sarah Marshall?

  Nothing against the Irwins. It's just, it's, these are animals that like you need to contain effectively and like, they definitely aren't harmless. And I, all that is to say that we're probably going to be spending a lot of time with this theme of like responsible interaction with potentially dangerous animals being about respecting.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 25:22Sarah Marshall?

  Who and what they are, and also not over identifying with them. And I, I feel, I have a sense that this is going to be a tale of someone doing that pretty successfully.

• 25:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. You're right on it, Sarah. That, that is basically the theme of kind of the nuance of Steve Irwin's life. Cause yeah, when I was reading about this, I was like, oh, that's interesting. Like I'm trying to think of like, if I met some people that were keeping a bunch of reptiles in their own home and other animals. There would be a part of me that'd be like, is this a good idea? Like, are you guys, do you guys actually know what you're doing? And I do think the Irwins, I think they did have a healthy respect for the predators that they took care of. So like another story that I guess is emblematic of this is when Steve Irwin was seven years old.

• 26:12Speaker 01

  He and his dad went out in Northern Victoria and they were just looking for snakes, as you do. And it was a little confusing to me as whether they were looking to, for snakes to collect or just to look at or whatever it was. But Steve was a little kid. He said he was playing war. He's like stalking his dad and like pretending a stick is a gun or whatever. And he's just being a little boy and he stepped on a snake and he pinned it down with his foot. And he was so excited. He called his dad over and he's like, look dad, I caught a snake. And the dad looks at the snake and he like pushes Steve, like really abruptly.

• 26:56Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, boy.

• 26:56Speaker 01

  Steve describes it as like, he like knocked him back with his forearm and also yells, you bloody idiot, which is like, oh, okay. Poor baby Steve. And I'll read a quote. He said, "The pain from my injuries from his dad knocking him over disappeared as the pain from his anger crushed me like a bug. But dad, I whimpered. My heart was broken. My pride had turned into an overwhelming sense of confusion and embarrassment. Bursting into uncontrollable state of crying, I ran off down the rocks. I ran and ran, bawling my eyes out. Finally I had to stop running as I was crying so hard. I couldn't get my breath. I was sobbing so much. My breathing was impaired and I didn't know what to do." Like, oh my gosh.

• 27:41Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  So I, I think the, you know, the way his dad reacted, like really scared him, obviously. But here's the thing, that snake was a brown snake. They are the second most venomous snake in the world. Can you imagine as a parent, if your kid's like, look what I found. And it's literally the second most venomous snake in the world. You might say something that you would regret later, but.

• 28:11Sarah Marshall?

  So yeah, at that point, like you're, you're not really thinking, your gut is sort of taking over and the phrase, you bloody idiot might come out of your mouth before.

• 28:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:20Sarah Marshall?

  You really are thinking about anything.

• 28:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I just thought those was a, I thought it was an interesting story. And then actually the sort of button to that story is that Steve runs off and he's, you know, really upset and he goes down to the river and he's like, I'm going to run away from home and I'm just going to live out here. And he finds a little cave and like, he immediately just starts looking for lizards.

• 28:45Speaker 01

  I think it just like immediately turns his mood around. And then he hears his dad calling for him out in the bush. And as he's like, okay, I gotta go. He says, goodbye, little lizards. And he went back to the car, which I just find really sweet.

• 29:03Sarah Marshall?

  I really like that.

• 29:04Speaker 01

  I know. Goodbye, little lizards. So he just always loved wildlife. And I think honestly, I mean, I think every kid loves animals and loves wildlife. And I, I'm sure Steve Irwin, like he had a very heightened kind of love of wildlife. But also his parents really encouraged it and nurtured that passion about wildlife from a very young age. But I think like him saying goodbye, little lizards to the, I think they were cunning them skinks is what he found. But he, I think that's the way that a lot of kids talk to animals.

• 29:42Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 29:42Speaker 01

  They talk to them in a very empathetic and caring and just warm way. And I think the thing that people love about Steve Irwin is he just never stopped doing that, like as he got older. I mean, he, obviously there was the crocodile catching aspect and it's very like. It's framed in the show very much as like, I'm a man off to catch this dangerous crocodile.

• 30:08Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. And it's, and so, and it's like produced and edited that way, I think. Cause I imagine, cause there's a sense of like, well, this is kind of, you know, yeah, what you're saying. The kind of like emphasizing the nineties masculinity of it, I guess.

• 30:22Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah. But you know, when he kind of takes a beat and he's kind of slowing down and he's just talking about an animal, he really does have that warmth and he just, you genuinely believe, and I think it is genuine on his part, that he loves like every animal that he encounters and thinks they're like the most amazing thing in the world. And he knows, you know, all these really cool, interesting facts. And I do like that part of him was very authentic. And I think that was part of his appeal was that he just brought that kind of childlike wonder through and shared it with people and people really

• 31:05Speaker 01

  responded to it. Anyway, so he like, he and his family, eventually they move from Victoria to Queensland and his parents buy a piece of property and cause they realize, oh, we have all of these animals. We need somewhere to keep them. Also, we're kind of interested in starting a zoo, basically. So they opened the Birwa Reptile Park, and this is along the Bruce Highway, along the Sunshine Coast. It's the same place that the Australia Zoo is today. They opened it in 1970, started with just four acres and they, I guess primarily had reptiles. I don't, they may have had like, I think maybe

• 31:48Speaker 01

  his mom was still like doing a lot of like kangaroo and wombat and other marsupials and other mammal rehabilitation, but primarily a reptile park. And his dad, Bob Irwin, he kind of built it from the ground up. And then in the 1980s, the family were still running this park, but it became the, the Queensland Reptile and Fauna Park in 1980. And about this time is when Steve and his dad, Bob, got serious about rescuing crocodiles. So crocodiles in Australia, and I just want to say, actually, I meant to say this at the top of the episode. I know you have a lot of really wonderful

• 32:31Speaker 01

  listeners in Australia and I am doing my best to like, you know, tell the story of what it's like to be in Australia as best I can. But you know, it's obviously from just my perspective and you know, I don't want to imply that I know what it's like growing up and living in Australia or Queensland or whatever. But as we mentioned, we did spend some time there. So there is some context.

• 32:54Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. But yeah, right. I think the context is that we're doing our best with like a limited framework, but with like enough of one to maybe like understand how much complexity we don't get, hopefully.

• 33:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:07Sarah Marshall?

  Although we still do like to say clear the water. The condensation clear.

• 33:14Speaker 01

  The condensation.

• 33:16Sarah Marshall?

  Not happy Jen.

• 33:20Speaker 01

  Kather. It's like Keith with an A.

• 33:23Sarah Marshall?

  That's your favorite.

• 33:25Speaker 01

  That's what it is.

• 33:26Sarah Marshall?

  That's for all our Kiwis. Yeah, Kather.

• 33:32Speaker 01

  It's like, hey, with an I. It's literally the only thing I can say in an Aussie accent. And so I, I promise to all your listeners, I am not going to attempt Australian accent from here on out.

• 33:42Sarah Marshall?

  That's your one.

• 33:43Speaker 01

  That is my one thing. I cannot for the life of me do an Aussie accent. I can't do a Kiwi accent.

• 33:48Sarah Marshall?

  Well, cause like, you know, Australians are like, where's the car?

• 33:51Speaker 01

  And we're like, where's the car?

• 33:55Sarah Marshall?

  The thing is in the show, I can hear the difference.

• 33:58Speaker 01

  Can you? Cause I can't.

• 34:00Sarah Marshall?

  I feel like I can. It's not, it's a demeanor thing to me more than anything.

• 34:07Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 34:07Sarah Marshall?

  At least the way he does it. You say it with, with 40% less optimism. Yeah.

• 34:16Speaker 01

  If we kind of jump ahead a little bit in his timeline that they had the reptile park in Queensland and then, you know, around that time, they were, he and his dad were catching crocodiles to like rehabilitate or relocate because they're problem crocodiles.

• 34:30Sarah Marshall?

  And what is a problem crocodile? I feel like we should maybe establish this now. Is this like you, a crocodile is in your yard and you're like, oh, I'd like you to take it away. Okay.

• 34:39Speaker 01

  Well, I'm not so, I mean, maybe not in your yard, though I think that would probably constitute a problem crocodile, I'd imagine. But it's a crocodile, kind of like bears here in the US. If they're getting too close to people.

• 34:52Sarah Marshall?

  Like, like they have like black bears that are just like eating your trash all the time.

• 34:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. If they're, so in parts of, of Australia where crocodiles are present, if people are out fishing and this crocodile is just like hanging out too close, or maybe even like bumping the side of a boat, trying to investigate the boat or whatever. And.

• 35:12Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. God, that's scary.

• 35:14Speaker 01

  It would be scary. I'm not gonna lie. That would be very, especially, you know, imagine these crocodiles. They get up to like, you know, like 12 feet long or maybe, maybe even longer. It would be really scary. And so some of the approach with, well, again, like predators here in the US, you know, ranchers, farmers will kind of take it into their own hands, take the situation in their own hands, and they may shoot a crocodile. And that happens a lot, or has happened a lot in the past, and I'm sure it still happens. But the Queensland National Parks and Wildlife Service, they hire people, and I'm sure other states too, to capture problem crocodiles and relocate them, which is something that they have done with bears too.

• 35:59Sarah Marshall?

  And then they send them to the reformatory.

• 36:03Speaker 01

  Well, I know. And actually, another thing that happens occasionally is there's crocodile farms in Australia, and sometimes these crocodiles are sent to the crocodile farms. So eventually maybe, I, I mean, crocodile like.

• 36:18Sarah Marshall?

  Is that like for handbags and stuff? Oh, meat.

• 36:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and their skin too. And I know that there's also like programs to not just catch crocodiles and relocate them, or possibly send them to crocodile farms, but also to collect crocodile eggs to like, kind of as like a predator management sort of thing. And those eggs will be.

• 36:39Sarah Marshall?

  To devil and send to Jeff Bezos from his party.

• 36:43Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. Oh.

• 36:46Sarah Marshall?

  But anyway, okay. So there, so there's crocodile farms. If you're, if you're a problem crocodile.

• 36:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:52Sarah Marshall?

  It feels kind of like a kid's movie. You could be sent to the crocodile farm.

• 36:56Speaker 01

  I know. Right? Yeah.

• 36:57Sarah Marshall?

  So it's, it would be good to be relocated.

• 37:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, relocated. Or if it's like they're too much of a problem, then they might take the crocodile back to the zoo.

• 37:07Sarah Marshall?

  Is this like if they keep bothering people? Is that what makes them a problem crocodile? Okay. And why do they bother people? Are they bored? Do they want food? Do they want to eat us? Are we on their territory, perhaps building ranch houses on it?

• 37:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. If you're in their territory, especially saltwater crocodiles, I think there is a high risk of if you're swimming in crocodile territory. I don't want to say crocodile infested, because I know that's a thing with like, people say shark infested waters. And it's like, they aren't infesting the waters. They live there.

• 37:38Sarah Marshall?

  God, what a good point, Brianna. My God. I've been taking part in anti shark rhetoric without realizing it.

• 37:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's an important thing to know. They don't, these animals don't infest their own habitat.

• 37:49Sarah Marshall?

  It's actually human infested. We're the ones who aren't supposed to be there from the shark's perspective. And look, not to take, obviously I'm not on the side of the sharks. But when you think about it, the sharks are, are the ones who were more surprised than anyone to, to find that, that we're there all of a sudden, I bet.

• 38:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, yeah. And it's the same with crocodiles. Like, and to be clear too, like, I think Australians, for the most part, like, understand to not swim in certain areas.

• 38:17Sarah Marshall?

  Well, unlike Americans, you know, here's something Americans have never had, and I bet you know what I'm going to say. We've never had a leader of our country who went for a swim and disappeared in a way that caused people to reasonably theorize he might've been eaten by a shark.

• 38:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think there, that if you grow up in Australia, you just understand that you have a healthy respect for crocodiles. I'm sure there have been cases of Australians being attacked, but it certainly seems to be like tourists or people that don't quite understand the danger of swimming in a crocodile's habitat.

• 38:54Sarah Marshall?

  Right.

• 38:55Speaker 01

  If you go to like far north Queensland, there's beaches with netting out in the water for the purpose of keeping crocodiles out of the water by the beach.

• 39:06Sarah Marshall?

  But you better hope that netting holds.

• 39:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. And there's some nuance to that too, because the netting can also like, you know, animals get entangled in it. So it's also like causing some ecological harm locally. There's mixed feelings about it, but it helps protect people from being attacked by crocodiles.

• 39:26Sarah Marshall?

  Well, that seems good. But all that's to say that crocodiles are sort of like a thing that you have to deal with potentially.

• 39:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:33Sarah Marshall?

  Um, in your day to day life and, you know, and also like living with, with any other dangerous thing. You know, like people who live where there are a lot of tornadoes, you know, you, you adapt to it to some extent.

• 39:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. You just, yeah, you adapt and.

• 39:45Sarah Marshall?

  You know, I think that the Jurassic Park movies, even the really terrible sequels that I enjoy so much, all have a good lesson that will help us survive. Because in those movies, the people who want to cynically profit off of dinosaurs are the ones who get eaten by dinosaurs and the ones who are in awe of dinosaurs and like, respect them for what they are, are the ones who look less yummy to dinosaurs, apparently. It might not work that well, but you know, they know how to keep a distance and not try and have dinosaur auctions in their basement.

• 40:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, I, I mean, I think having a healthy respect of any predator is just a good, good way to move about in, in the world.

• 40:23Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. Or any animal. Cause a deer will also really, really mess you up potentially.

• 40:29Speaker 01

  Yes. Yes, exactly. But, uh, so Steve and his dad had this job and they were working as croc catchers for the Queensland National Parks and Wildlife Service.

• 40:39Sarah Marshall?

  When Steve was how old? Was this like an after school job?

• 40:43Speaker 01

  It was, you know, I don't know about when he was in school, but it was certainly during his like early twenties. And he didn't go, he didn't go to uni. He didn't go to university. So he was just working at the reptile park and also working, he says, working full time.

• 41:02Sarah Marshall?

  It's just like a family job, I guess, right? And kind of what he grew up with.

• 41:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. But he has, like, I know, like the things we see on The Crocodile Hunter, some of the stuff he does, like on camera, is pretty incredible still. Like, it is actually really fun to watch The Crocodile Hunter still.

• 41:20Sarah Marshall?

  Should we watch like a little clip or a promo or something of it?

• 41:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, let's do that. I did pull up some stuff.

• 41:26Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, nice.

• 41:27Speaker 01

  Let's see. I'm gonna pull up.

• 41:31Speaker 01

  My favorite one that I found, this is a clip from The Crocodile Hunter. I forget which season it was, but they went to East Timor, actually. So later on in the show, they were, well, even early on in the show, they were like traveling around too. But definitely later in the seasons, he was doing a lot more traveling. But he went to East Timor and there were two crocodiles that were held in captivity in a zoo, but they were in like really poor condition and the conditions they were in were really bad. And I think it was like the Australian Army had people stationed there. They contacted Steve and his team to come over and help with these crocodiles.

• 42:13Speaker 01

  And they actually, while they were there, built an entirely new enclosure around the corner from where these crocodiles were, and then moved the crocodiles to the new enclosure.

• 42:24Sarah Marshall?

  Crocodile movers.

• 42:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, this isn't like in the wild necessarily, but I thought it was actually one of the more kind of intense ones that I watched.

• 42:35Sarah Marshall?

  And also I should say, I guess I said it was on Discovery Zone, but I was wrong about it. And the show was on Animal Planet, a wonderful channel.

• 42:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I was good. Yeah. I can't remember if it like started on Discovery or if it always was Animal Planet. But anyway, I mean, Animal Planet is like a subsidiary of Discovery or was at the time. So it was, they're definitely linked to each other. But he was more highly associated with Animal Planet as time went on. So he was definitely like a part of their, their brand.

• 43:07Speaker 02

  Brian is our curator of crocodiles. And not only is he cutting and opening-

• 43:11Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, they have a curator of crocodiles.

• 43:13Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. It's Brian O'Colter, I believe.

• 43:17Speaker 02

  Rocks, glass, wire, everything must be removed so that-

• 43:21Sarah Marshall?

  So they're making their crocodile enclosure?

• 43:24Speaker 01

  They're, I think, moving stuff out of the way to move her out of the enclosure.

• 43:29Speaker 03

  I'd say we get two on. You guys are the first two on, followed by Bruce and Kevvy behind you. But just watch out for an over each other. Cause she's still big enough and ugly enough to break your leg. She probably, and a few stitches, but not too bad.

• 43:45Speaker 01

  So that's Wes Mannion. He's Steve's best friend and still works at the Australian Zoo.

• 43:51Sarah Marshall?

  Right. He's kind of, he's kind of lassoing her, huh?

• 43:53Speaker 01

  So he's putting on-

• 43:54Sarah Marshall?

  The crocodile, to be clear.

• 43:56Speaker 01

  A top jaw rope.

• 43:57Sarah Marshall?

  Okay.

• 43:58Speaker 01

  Top jaw rope is key.

• 44:00Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, tell us what he's doing.

• 44:01Speaker 01

  So yeah, he's, yeah, it is like a lasso or like a slipknot kind of. And he's putting that around her top jaw. So this is like the main way that they can control the crocodile. So this is like, one person will put tension on one and then another person will put tension on the other. It's just a way to like control the crocodile.

• 44:23Sarah Marshall?

  And these are like not thick ropes either. I'm sure they're like sufficient, but they're just like regular, like Indiana Jones kind of ropes.

• 44:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:32Sarah Marshall?

  I've seen pasta thicker than this.

• 44:36Speaker 01

  But I think a detail that I loved actually from watching this episode is, you know, he's using a stick to like, kind of nudge the slip over the top jaw of the crocodile. And you might think like, oh, it's just because that's the easiest thing on hand. But he does that also so that if they bite on it, it won't damage their teeth.

• 44:55Sarah Marshall?

  Oh.

• 44:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. So he's, he is really like trying to make sure that animals are-

• 45:00Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. And not that I think that's above and beyond. I guess sort of the, the amount of kind of knowledge and experience. Yeah.

• 45:08Speaker 01

  Right. So now they just dragged her out of the water. So this animal has been in this pool for like years and years.

• 45:17Sarah Marshall?

  And another, a bunch of guys have jumped on top of her and are holding her jaws closed with their upper body strength.

• 45:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. So then this is like the approach. So they'll like jump on top of a, on top of the crocodile, keep their jaw closed. And then they'll tie a rope around the jaws to then keep the jaw secured. Then they put a blind around the eyes. A blindfold keeps them calmer, like a lot of animals. It just seems to reduce their stress slightly.

• 45:42Sarah Marshall?

  Like when at the vet, they wrap my cat in a towel to give it a shot.

• 45:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. So now the team is carrying this crocodile, which I'm-

• 45:52Sarah Marshall?

  Yep.

• 45:52Speaker 01

  I think is like well over, it's like 10 feet long at least. Looks like a dinosaur.

• 45:57Sarah Marshall?

  A real dinosaur. Yeah, exactly. Just a total dinosaur. Oh, and now she's thrashing a little and they're just loading her into the back of a pickup truck.

• 46:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. So they're going to, what they're doing, they're going to take her down to the ocean first because she's been in this like really gross pool for a long time. There's lots of bacteria and they said there's like, just like smell and like, they're just afraid that they want to wash away some of the dirty water off of her before they put her in her new enclosure.

• 46:28Sarah Marshall?

  Nice. Oh, they're going to give her a bath. They're taking her for a little spa day, if you will.

• 46:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, basically.

• 46:36Speaker 01

  Now they're loading her back into the truck.

• 46:40Speaker 01

  And this poor crocodile, like she really has been in that pool for years and years. Can't remember if it was this one, they're gonna help another one. But she was, one of them was in the pool for like 13 years or something crazy.

• 46:58Sarah Marshall?

  Oh my gosh.

• 46:58Speaker 01

  And like barely enough room to turn around and really bad conditions. So they literally came here and like built her a new pool, like, and did it. I'm sure it took a longer than how it looks on the TV, but it, it looked like they did it in a day.

• 47:15Speaker 01

  I'm sure it wasn't quite that.

• 47:17Sarah Marshall?

  They've got an audience of people cheering as they're bringing this crocodile back in.

• 47:21Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah. They, they're all the people, these people are around. They're like up in the trees and sitting on top of the, like the, the walls and watching them put this crocodile back.

• 47:34Speaker 04

  Crikey, we've gained quite an audience. The local peoples have come in their droves.

• 47:40Speaker 04

  They love their crocs.

• 47:42Speaker 01

  But yeah, it's, I, I think I just, I love, I love this one because there was just so much like care given to this animal. And you can just feel the love that Steve Irwin has for, for this animal.

• 48:01Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 48:02Speaker 01

  So now they're gonna, they put her back in her pool, tell the first team to go, and they leave, get off the tail, second team gets off the rest of the body.

• 48:12Sarah Marshall?

  And then the moment comes when you have to like release your hands from her jaws and just like, beat it out of there.

• 48:26Sarah Marshall?

  Wow.

• 48:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. So she was by the water, but she's stressed and disoriented. So she's, she's whipped around and she has like a little sandy area and all the crowd is screaming and-

• 48:45Sarah Marshall?

  She's got her, her mouth is opening. She's got a sassy little look on her face.

• 48:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:50Sarah Marshall?

  And Steve is hanging out in the enclosure with her.

• 48:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. He's trying to direct her back to the water.

• 48:55Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, and there she goes.

• 48:56Speaker 01

  But he's like saying she's blind in this eye. So she's like, he's trying to like be aware of like, okay, she can't see us. And like, we need to be aware of that.

• 49:05Speaker 04

  I die defending crocodiles and I'll use my body wherever I can for her best interests. I love her.

• 49:16Speaker 01

  And then he like kind of scoops up her tail and like pushes her into the, into the pool.

• 49:35Speaker 01

  That's one I just really enjoyed.

• 49:38Sarah Marshall?

  It's like a home renovation show. They built her a new house. They're like, what do you think?

• 49:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 49:44Sarah Marshall?

  I really liked that.

• 49:45Speaker 01

  I know.

• 49:46Sarah Marshall?

  I also, I think that when we talk about taking care of wildlife on the terms that they require, I think to me it's a big mark of distinction to be able to offer all this time and energy to a species of animal that you can't really project gratitude onto.

• 50:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:02Sarah Marshall?

  And that would bite your arm off if it felt like it.

• 50:05Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 50:06Sarah Marshall?

  You know, because that's like, I, I, I respect that quite a bit.

• 50:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think it's something that I respect about Steve Irwin. And we can get into now some of the, like around this time, if we're following the timeline. Well, first he like meets his wife, Terry, and actually for their honeymoon, that's when they filmed like one of the first bits of footage for The Crocodile Hunter. Yeah.

• 50:32Sarah Marshall?

  It's like how Stevie Nicks wrote, "Stand back on her honeymoon."

• 50:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:35Sarah Marshall?

  Although that marriage did not last.

• 50:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. But so then in this period of his life with Terry by his side from day one, they start filming for The Crocodile Hunter and obviously it's a huge success. Not so much in Australia, but definitely in the States and other countries. And when I say successful, like I think people just didn't feel as strongly about The Crocodile Hunter, about Steve Irwin as like Americans did, like he was much more popular in the States.

• 51:04Sarah Marshall?

  Right. Cause it's like much less of an everyday thing for us, let's say.

• 51:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:09Sarah Marshall?

  And also Americans loved Crocodile Dundee and we really needed another one of those.

• 51:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. And they definitely, I mean, some of the like, the branding and the vision, I guess of the show was, I think, kind of leaning into that kind of story, I guess. But people in Australia were generally not as like, they, they didn't get as excited about Steve Irwin as like Americans did. And generally the feeling was that he was just kind of cringe. You know, they felt like he was really putting it on and really exaggerating.

• 51:44Sarah Marshall?

  Which I can imagine an American producer in this time being like, Steve, I need you to crank it up like 80%. Okay. 80% on top of that. Even more.

• 51:53Speaker 01

  Right.

• 51:53Sarah Marshall?

  More.

• 51:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:54Sarah Marshall?

  You know?

• 51:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I, I mean, I think a lot of people that have interacted with him and even someone I was talking to the other day, uh, someone that had worked with someone that had worked with Steve said that, yeah, okay, there was a bit of a showman persona that he put on for the camera.

• 52:10Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 52:10Speaker 01

  Obviously.

• 52:11Sarah Marshall?

  Well, and I will say like, this is why I envy like, I don't know, like Norwegian slow television because I wish that we could have more American TV personalities who are like, hello, we're going to talk today about this thing.

• 52:24Speaker 01

  Yep. Or just three hours of a train ride through Sweden or something. Yeah. I love those so much.

• 52:31Sarah Marshall?

  I love to be bored.

• 52:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:33Sarah Marshall?

  There's one thing about me. I would like everything to be quieter and take longer.

• 52:38Speaker 01

  But yeah, so I, I think Australians were sort of, they were like, oh, you're, you're a little much. But yeah, of course he was dialing it up for a camera.

• 52:49Sarah Marshall?

  I mean, we can't, no one really thinks that he was like this every second of his life, right? Like you can't be like, I'm gonna buy a huge hot dog at this Wawa and a giant soda. You know, like to yourself.

• 53:03Speaker 01

  Right. No, I don't think so.

• 53:05Sarah Marshall?

  Not that buying that is unbelievable, but narrating it to yourself in that tone is, is what I'm saying. That's what my order would be.

• 53:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course. But yeah, he, he definitely in earlier episodes, he seems a little more

• 53:18Sarah Marshall?

  subdued.

• 53:18Speaker 01

  grounded. Yeah. The enthusiasm and the warmth is still there, but it's definitely not as exaggerated as it is later on. And I think another part of why I like that clip that I just showed you is that there's very little of him like narrating to the camera. So it is him just like doing his job, which I found interesting watching that. It felt like, oh, okay, this is like what he does. This is what he's good at. He's directing the team. You can hear him like shouting, you know, directions to his team. He's obviously a very good leader.

• 53:52Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, certainly in this footage, which I don't remember, you know, being part of kind of the, I don't know, just the simplified version of it. And that's really cool to see.

• 54:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and from what I can tell that people that worked with him really loved working with him. There was that enthusiasm, but it's sort of like, I think the best description I saw was that, you know, behind the scene, he'd be like, oh, crikey, isn't she beautiful or whatever. But then in front of the camera, it's like in all caps, where it's like, crikey, isn't she beautiful? Like, so.

• 54:25Speaker 01

  And you can see like early episodes versus later episodes, like he's just learned to like, ham it up for the camera because he was taking off in the States and that what, that was what we loved about him. And so they learned like, oh, people love seeing you like this. They love seeing you using, you know, the Aussie slang and really like.

• 54:47Sarah Marshall?

  When you crikey it up.

• 54:52Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. But I do think, and a lot of Australians have said, they found it again, a little cringe. They were just like, this is, okay, this is the guy who's representing us. We don't all talk like this. We're not all wrestling crocodiles.

• 55:06Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. And in the nineties, I think there wasn't so much of a sense of like, like, I think the internet has helped Americans to like, understand or at least be exposed to the cultures of different countries more. But like, we were really going on peer stereotypes for our relationships with

• 55:20Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 55:21Sarah Marshall?

  every other country at that time.

• 55:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I do think at that time, Steve Irwin was the cultural ambassador for Australia, for better or for worse.

• 55:32Sarah Marshall?

  He was one of the main ones. I mean, who else was there? Toni Collette?

• 55:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. I don't know, but no one, no one on the level of Steve Irwin.

• 55:42Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. Well, and how did this TV thing get started?

• 55:46Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, he was recording footage of himself out doing his work, like even when he is by himself.

• 55:54Sarah Marshall?

  He was aware that this was like a cool thing to see.

• 55:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and in that sense, I do think that it wasn't just like someone stumbled on Steve Irwin and was like, oh, like this is ripe for TV. It was.

• 56:06Sarah Marshall?

  Crikey, it's a Steve Irwin.

• 56:09Speaker 01

  I think he knew, he was like, and I think that in that way, Steve Irwin has always had a bit of media savviness and knew that like media could be used as a tool for conservation work, which was his main passion. I think he also just knew like, I have a very unique job and I want to share it with people. And I think people will think it's cool.

• 56:29Sarah Marshall?

  Did you think that crocodiles and big predators like that were getting a bad rap? Was that part of it?

• 56:35Speaker 01

  Yes. And so that was like part of the, when he started with his dad, with the crocodile catching a relocation and re, and that sort of stuff. Their mission then, as it was throughout Steve's career, was that they felt that crocodiles were, were unfairly maligned.

• 56:53Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, they're blind women.

• 56:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, they are. And so they, they just felt like crocodiles, you know, Australia's crocodiles are really special and unique. And we need to care about them and we need people to love them. And so part of that was they wanted to catch and relocate them. So not using any kind of like lethal method of getting rid of a problem crocodile.

• 57:19Sarah Marshall?

  Is this like how I feel about coyotes, you know?

• 57:21Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 57:21Sarah Marshall?

  How they're just kind of like at large in my neighborhood and they definitely eat small house pets. But they're also really cool and neat and I want them to be safe.

• 57:30Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. Or wolves.

• 57:32Sarah Marshall?

  And for us to, you know, be able to set things up in such a way that they're not able to eat our small house pets.

• 57:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 57:38Sarah Marshall?

  Generally.

• 57:39Speaker 01

  Bob and Steve wanted to, and Lynn too, they all wanted to educate people about how to peacefully coexist with crocodiles rather than having this antagonistic relationship with crocodiles.

• 57:51Sarah Marshall?

  Right.

• 57:52Speaker 01

  Uh, so that's been like the mission of the Irwins, you know, from day one. They've just loved crocodiles and wanted to help and, you know, save crocodiles where they can. And I believe that's, you know, some of the impetus of The Crocodile Hunter as a show.

• 58:07Sarah Marshall?

  Which ironically we have to sell to American TV by implying that we're decreasing the crocodile population to get people to change the channel.

• 58:15Speaker 01

  I, right. I don't know. I, yeah, I'm not sure why exactly they landed on that.

• 58:21Sarah Marshall?

  You know, it's just, I just think that it, it sounds better, it plays better. And my conspiracy theory about American culture, if you will, is that we are more inclined to tune into anything if it involves violence. I mean, that's not even totally American, right? If it bleeds, it leads.

• 58:38Speaker 01

  Right. I think you're absolutely right.

• 58:40Sarah Marshall?

  If it was called The Crocodile Rescuer, we'd be like, no, thank you.

• 58:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 58:45Sarah Marshall?

  Although rescuers do indeed tend to work down under.

• 58:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:51Speaker 01

  The thing with, um, I think like, as you anticipated early on, one of the main critiques, criticisms of Steve Irwin's Crocodile Hunter is of course that he is doing like some really exceptionally dangerous things with dangerous animals.

• 59:06Sarah Marshall?

  Sex has.

• 59:07Speaker 01

  Picking up venomous snakes for one.

• 59:09Sarah Marshall?

  Hmm. Which again, I get that like there are jobs where you, where you interact with them and you know what you're doing, but.

• 59:16Speaker 01

  Right.

• 59:16Sarah Marshall?

  I guess the thing is that like, there's an inevitable margin of error, right?

• 59:20Speaker 01

  Right.

• 59:21Sarah Marshall?

  And also the average 11 year old kid maybe doesn't realize that, you know, and I'm sure they've got disclaimers, right? But is there a worry that like, kids are gonna try this at home?

• 59:31Speaker 01

  Yes. And the other concern, well, okay, so there was the concern that people would be trying this at home. And he does literally verbatim say that many times throughout the show. He's like, don't try this. I'm an expert. I've been doing this my whole life.

• 59:45Sarah Marshall?

  And the problem is no matter how many times you say that, people will still try it at home, I think. You know, you can't account for free will.

• 59:54Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. And I think maybe less so when it was first airing, cause it was still traditional cable television at the time. Right? That was our main media.

• 1:00:06Sarah Marshall?

  By which you mean like broadcast TV, nothing was streaming. It was like, it was on when you happened to catch it. We had a lot of reruns. Yeah.

• 1:00:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. This was definitely way before any social media. And there is an element of critique around Steve Irwin that this kind of wildlife media that he created of having these really up close, like really up close, like literally handling a wild animal on camera has, uh, perhaps allowed other people to think that that's okay to do. And it's been a few years, obviously he died in 2006, as we mentioned. But it could be like this continuing legacy of that style of a wildlife documentary of, you know,

• 1:00:56Speaker 01

  instead of standing back and allowing an animal to exist as they are and watching more sort of natural behaviors from a distance, we have this person who is really getting up in there and like chasing down an animal and grabbing it and holding it and the animal is stressed and you know, and Steve Irwin always is like, oh, she's really grumpy. She's really grumpy. And it's like. Yeah, maybe.

• 1:01:19Sarah Marshall?

  Right. And the joke at the time was like, maybe she'd be less grumpy if you weren't grabbing her.

• 1:01:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:25Sarah Marshall?

  And, you know, dragging her around or whatever, you know, that was at least the stereotype.

• 1:01:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:30Sarah Marshall?

  He sort of was going, I think that was like the joke on South Park, that he was going around pissing off animals.

• 1:01:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And I don't think that's incorrect, you know, I do think that that is worth criticizing from a science communication standpoint of like, if we're trying to educate people about wildlife and how to interact with wildlife, we don't want to encourage people to like, walk up to animals and we certainly don't want to encourage people to touch them. As I mentioned, Steve Irwin did say many times in the show, don't do this. But you know, there's a difference in saying, don't do this, but you know, people seeing you do it and being like, well, that looks cool. Like, I want to go grab that raccoon and see what happens, like that sort of thing. And to be clear, absolutely clear,

• 1:02:16Speaker 01

  it is not allowed to do that in Australia now. Like, I think at the, I believe at the time, you know, even they would need permits to do this sort of thing. There is also kind of rumor that sometimes, and I'm not with all of the animals, but that, you know, maybe some of the animals were staged in some way. I don't know in what way, but like, that it wasn't totally just like, oh, I'm just rolling up on this snake and grabbing it.

• 1:02:46Sarah Marshall?

  I mean, yeah, I'm very willing to believe that, just based on what we know of how, how American reality TV is made. And that we are like in the reality TV wheelhouse and there is always going to be like a combative relationship between reality TV and truth telling.

• 1:03:03Speaker 01

  Right. Yes. And just like a combative relationship between what the goals are of conservation and education and media, you know, like what makes a good TV show may not be what's best for animals. Because honestly, the best thing-

• 1:03:20Sarah Marshall?

  I believe frequently, that's the case. I'm going to go out on a limb even, yeah.

• 1:03:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I think this came up, you know, when we talked about CAKO, that, you know, the best thing for a lot of animals is for us to just leave them alone.

• 1:03:31Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, right. And I guess like, the difference is that like, sometimes the cat's already out of the bag, you know, like animals have already been caught up in like, the human world in ways that couldn't be helped or weren't helped at the time. And then I think like, the question of human intervention often maybe comes up when humans have already intervened negatively in a wild animal's life and then have to try and correct that as best we can. But I feel like that might even, you could even make the argument that that's like, the only appropriate time for human intervention.

• 1:04:01Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:04:02Sarah Marshall?

  Or, you know, if there's like, you know, you have like, an animal with an injury or something like that, something non-human caused. But it does feel like a lot of the time, like, we're just trying, we're doing our best to, of course, correct something that people already did.

• 1:04:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. But in saying that too, I think there's this interesting discussion around Steve Irwin's legacy, that the reason he was so successful, and actually that he may have made a big difference in people's attitudes towards animals like crocodiles, is because he had this really engaged approach of like, I'm gonna go and like wrestle with this crocodile, basically, that caught people's eye. And so I actually had an interesting conversation with a researcher here in Newport that studies, maybe the opposite of a crocodile, sea anemones.

• 1:04:59Speaker 01

  And actually, the stuff he's studying about them, his name's Nate Kirk, is really cool. There's just like, really interesting things about anemones that I never knew. And he was saying that, we're talking about him, because we want to, with a group that I work with here, wanted to maybe get some of his grad students out doing tide pool tours. He's like, yeah, you know, it's great to talk to people in like, a lecture, or a video, or show pictures, but really how you get people to care about the environment and wildlife is to get them out there and actually, he used the words like, touching it, you know, like actually touching these anemones and, you know, see what they're like. And I think that's true. I think we have like, really strong-

• 1:05:42Sarah Marshall?

  Touching anemones has been a meaningful part of my life as an Oregonian, I'll say that. And as an Oregonian child specifically. Because at the Oregon Coast Aquarium, you and I both grew up with this, they have the tide pool exhibit, and where you can touch anemones and stuff. And you learn that you have to be very, very gentle when you touch an anemone. And that makes an impression on a kid.

• 1:06:03Speaker 01

  It does. And I think we all, as human beings, I think we have really like, core memories, not just from childhood, but throughout our life, like just really standout memories where we had a wildlife encounter. It could just be like, oh, you got really close to a raccoon or something like that. It doesn't mean you have to like, you know, be like, touching them, but just like, having-

• 1:06:28Sarah Marshall?

  You really shouldn't.

• 1:06:29Speaker 01

  You really shouldn't. Do not, do not. Let me be clear.

• 1:06:32Sarah Marshall?

  Because rabies vaccines are hard to get in a hurry, and that is what you will be doing, chances are.

• 1:06:38Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah. You know, as much as we all love Jimothy, don't try to-

• 1:06:42Sarah Marshall?

  Do not approach Jimothy.

• 1:06:44Speaker 01

  Do not approach Jimothy. But, you know, I think there is something kind of wired in our brain, that if we have an encounter like that with an animal, with a wild animal, it really sticks with us. And it can lead to a lot of empathy for an animal. And I think that Steve's approach was like, okay, well, I can't, obviously, you can't get a bunch of people out here wrestling crocodiles with me, so I will show people. I mean, overall, I do think in this regard, that Steve was like, a very positive force and a role model. Like, again, like, I think he had a net benefit on the world. But I do think it is worth kind of calling out this approach of like, okay, is there a place for this, especially

• 1:07:26Speaker 01

  now? Like, is there a place for this style of, you know, wildlife documentary? I don't think, A, I don't think it would be even like, approved in most, I know there are some people still doing this sort of thing, but I think it's generally kind of frowned upon. But especially in this day and age of social media, because I know a lot of wildlife management agencies are constantly dealing with people that are approaching wildlife and trying to get videos and selfies and whatnot, and putting themselves in danger, putting the wildlife in danger. And it is an issue. And so, we want to discourage that

• 1:08:08Speaker 01

  kind of behavior in people. It is a good thing to remember that, especially if we go to a new environment, there's just things that you obviously won't know, and you won't understand. And I think that is some of the role of like, wildlife documentaries and media to like, educate people. But there is still that distance of like, well, I just saw this through my TV, or on a screen in some way.

• 1:08:31Sarah Marshall?

  Where it's something you encounter mostly as entertainment.

• 1:08:34Speaker 01

  As entertainment, exactly.

• 1:08:36Sarah Marshall?

  As opposed to the world you're in.

• 1:08:40Sarah Marshall?

  How did Steve get on TV?

• 1:08:43Speaker 01

  Okay, so I think the best way to start with how Steve got on TV is actually to start with Terry.

• 1:08:49Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:08:49Speaker 01

  Because actually, they got on TV at the same time. Steve was never by himself on The Crocodile Hunter.

• 1:08:56Sarah Marshall?

  And how did they meet?

• 1:08:57Speaker 01

  It's like a key part of his story and his life. He just loved, he loved his wife so much. And Terry loved him so much. And their love story is just really a key part of who they were.

• 1:09:12Sarah Marshall?

  I can tell you're gonna make me cry.

• 1:09:13Speaker 01

  Oh, no. I know. There's a good chance I'm gonna cry too, so.

• 1:09:17Sarah Marshall?

  You're definitely gonna cry, and I probably will too.

• 1:09:21Speaker 01

  I cry very easily these days, clearly. Okay, so Terry Irwin was her married name, obviously. Her original name was Terry Rains. She's actually from Eugene, Oregon. She grew up in Eugene. And she is kind of a wildlife badass in her own right. She was running a rehabilitation facility for predatory mammals in Oregon at the time that she and Steve met. And she got started with her wildlife rehabilitation facility when she came across a ad in the Oregonian, our, you know, biggest newspaper, for mountain lion cubs for sale.

• 1:10:05Speaker 01

  And she was like, what the heck? And-

• 1:10:08Sarah Marshall?

  Ugh.

• 1:10:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know. This was back in, I guess, late 80s. And she went to this guy and she was like, wow, these mountain lion cubs are not in a great situation.

• 1:10:20Sarah Marshall?

  Was she like, hello, I will take them all?

• 1:10:22Speaker 01

  Basically. Or I guess it was just one at the time. And she took it home, she bought it and raised it. Her name was Melina. And Terry cared for Melina for most of her life. And that's where Terry started this wildlife rehabilitation center. And so she started, she got actually like, certification from Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. There's some sort of certification you can get, that you can still get, I believe. I was looking into it. And it's like, huh, put a pin in that for a later day.

• 1:10:56Sarah Marshall?

  Very few joeys, if any.

• 1:10:59Speaker 01

  Not, not so many joeys, except for maybe opossums, opossum joeys.

• 1:11:03Sarah Marshall?

  Do we have the marsupial kind of opossum? Or is that like, aren't there like, different kinds of opossums?

• 1:11:09Speaker 01

  Oh, opossums are marsupials, I believe.

• 1:11:11Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah?

• 1:11:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. They're our only marsupial, I'm Googling it right now. This is not off the top of my head, but-

• 1:11:18Sarah Marshall?

  Please.

• 1:11:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's our only marsupial in North America.

• 1:11:22Sarah Marshall?

  I didn't know we had a marsupial.

• 1:11:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, we do. Oh, opossums. And they're so cute.

• 1:11:28Sarah Marshall?

  And to be a marsupial, is it basically that you have a pouch where you keep your little babies?

• 1:11:33Speaker 01

  That's my understanding. I don't know a lot about marsupials, but I think one of the key things is that they have a pouch. So you're, so the baby like, only develops part of the way, you know, they're not like, other mammals where a baby is mostly fully formed, more or less. And they can be teeny tiny.

• 1:11:55Sarah Marshall?

  It's actually pretty clever. I would like to have a pouch.

• 1:11:58Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:11:58Sarah Marshall?

  Because you put your teeny tiny little, you know, like your little naked moor rat looking baby in there, and then you can just keep opening it up to take a little peek every now and then, and then-

• 1:12:07Speaker 01

  And make sure they're okay.

• 1:12:09Sarah Marshall?

  And then when the baby's fully baked, you just have like, a big, like a Gap hoodie pocket sized open.

• 1:12:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:12:18Sarah Marshall?

  Which I think is much better than the current system. Well, I think we really missed out by not being marsupials.

• 1:12:25Speaker 01

  I know. I think, uh, I think they figured something out that's a little better than childbirth.

• 1:12:31Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:32Speaker 01

  I learned in the process of researching this show that Tasmanian devils, which are another marsupial, they give birth to actually up to 40 young at a time.

• 1:12:44Sarah Marshall?

  Well, that's kind of a lot.

• 1:12:46Speaker 01

  But then, I mean, this is a little sad, but I just thought it was interesting. Then they only have four teats. So.

• 1:12:52Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, no, Brianna. Is this like a battle royale of baby Tasmanian devils?

• 1:12:59Speaker 01

  I don't know, but they're like the size of a grain of rice when they're born, apparently.

• 1:13:03Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, gosh.

• 1:13:04Speaker 01

  I know, right?

• 1:13:05Sarah Marshall?

  Nature is over the top.

• 1:13:08Speaker 01

  Jinx. Yeah.

• 1:13:10Sarah Marshall?

  Anyway, um, okay. So Terry starts off as a, an actualist in her own right.

• 1:13:16Speaker 01

  Yes. And she's doing some pretty like out there stuff too. Like she, so Melina became kind of an ambassador animal and Terry would bring Melina to court hearings for poachers.

• 1:13:29Sarah Marshall?

  For like a victim impact statement.

• 1:13:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, yes, exactly. And she has this kind of crazy story where there was this one poacher guy who did something awful. I, and I won't repeat what it was because it was just awful. And he got convicted and the judge was going to sentence him to some community service. And Terry was like, how about this guy comes and works for me at my wildlife rehabilitation center? Like her whole thing was like, maybe I can try to change this guy's attitude towards wildlife. And I mean, she says she's not sure if she did, but that was her philosophy and mentality. So you can kind of see where she wasn't just on a trip to Australia doing, you know, just being like, oh, who's, who's this crazy crocodile

• 1:14:14Speaker 01

  guy that I've bumped into? Like she had her own wildlife conservation and communication kind of history prior. And it's what connected them.

• 1:14:22Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. Well, and it seems like they both have in common, maybe a philosophy of like, if you see an ad for a mountain lion, you get that mountain lion. And if you see a crocodile who's in a really bad enclosure, you, you take that crocodile to the beach and give it a spa day and then you put it in a new enclosure. Yeah. Take it one crocodile at a time.

• 1:14:45Speaker 01

  That's really on the nose. Um, she has some story in her book where she kind of learned this from her dad originally, uh, cause her dad loved wildlife too, that she learned at an early age, like if she comes across an issue with an animal, to always stop and fix it. Like, don't just like keep walking by. So that was really a part of her internal compass throughout her life. I'm sure it still is part of her, her philosophy. So that's kind of who she was before she goes on this auspicious trip to Australia with

• 1:15:26Speaker 01

  a girlfriend of hers in October, 1991. She was kind of scoping out some zoos to potentially send Melina, the mountain lion to, cause she was like, well, Melina probably can't stay here with me forever. I mean, she had built like an enclosure and everything, but she was like, zoo would probably be a better fit. She's not going to be released.

• 1:15:46Sarah Marshall?

  Picturing them like Laverne and Shirley, they're in like twin beds.

• 1:15:52Speaker 01

  Turner and Hooch, but it's.

• 1:15:54Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:54Speaker 01

  Terry and Melina. I'd watch that movie.

• 1:15:56Sarah Marshall?

  So would I.

• 1:15:57Speaker 01

  She goes to Australia with a girlfriend and like I said, she's kind of scoping out some zoos and she sees this reptile park, Queensland reptile park. And she's like, ah, I don't know. It's probably just some tiny little park, like probably nothing, but I'll go check it out. And then while she's there, Steve is giving a crocodile demonstration. She's like, oh, who's this guy? And, uh, also from her description is just very appealing to her, how much he obviously cares about the crocodiles and talks about them in very like warm and loving ways, while he's also like dangling like a giant piece of meat in

• 1:16:39Speaker 01

  front of them and trying to jump out of the way. And they are really fun to watch. Like I highly recommend looking up the crocodile demonstrations at the Australia Zoo and especially the ones with, um, with Steve Irwin.

• 1:16:54Sarah Marshall?

  Should we watch one?

• 1:16:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally. I have one pulled up here. Let's see. Supposedly this is the last one. I mean, this is, this is from a Reddit thread, so it's not a reliable source, but the headline says that it's, um, or the subject line says that it's his last show at the Australia Zoo before he died.

• 1:17:16Sarah Marshall?

  A subject line has alleged.

• 1:17:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. Just want to make it clear. I'm not positive it is, but it could be.

• 1:17:31Sarah Marshall?

  Jumping in the water.

• 1:17:34Sarah Marshall?

  Splashing, splish splash it around.

• 1:17:36Speaker 01

  Splish splash it. And there's a crocodile coming towards him. Monty.

• 1:17:41Sarah Marshall?

  Swimming towards where he gets splashed. He's gotten out of the water and the crocodile swimming towards where he just was.

• 1:17:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. The crocodile looks very active, right? Yep.

• 1:17:49Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, yeah. Yep.

• 1:17:51Speaker 01

  He's got his mouth open.

• 1:17:53Sarah Marshall?

  Hello.

• 1:17:54Speaker 01

  Kind of chasing Steve around a little bit.

• 1:17:56Sarah Marshall?

  Steve is just kind of like dancing around like a boxer. He's got like a little knee brace on.

• 1:18:02Speaker 01

  He has a support crew. He has a pit crew behind him, basically.

• 1:18:05Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:06Speaker 01

  That I'm sure they're partially, if anything goes wrong.

• 1:18:09Sarah Marshall?

  I mean, that's only the smart thing to do.

• 1:18:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. So now he's got a piece of meat that's like attached to a piece of rope. And now he's basically like, the crocs grabbed it and now they're basically playing tug of war. Terry's narrating the whole thing.

• 1:18:49Sarah Marshall?

  So yeah, it's like very entertaining and kind of like showing off what the crocodile can do. And like, I, I mean, are there people, I have to assume that someone somewhere is like, hey, don't do that with that crocodile. You know?

• 1:19:04Speaker 01

  I think a lot of people have found this kind of approach that Steve has had very silly and very, uh, yeah.

• 1:19:14Sarah Marshall?

  Well, it is a bit silly, but you know, it's, it's also for, for kids partly, I, I have to think.

• 1:19:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:21Sarah Marshall?

  Cause part of this is about just showing off a wild animal to, to chill. I don't know. I, cause it's like, we talked about SeaWorld and that being, um, a problem. I think maybe mainly because it's impossible to like humanely have a captive orca.

• 1:19:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:19:38Sarah Marshall?

  And I'm sure people would argue that you also can't do that with large reptiles, but I tend to think that it, the bar is a lot lower.

• 1:19:46Speaker 01

  Well, I think the thing with these crocodiles is that they're taking crocodiles that were slated to be removed anyway.

• 1:19:55Sarah Marshall?

  Right. Crocodiles from the reformatory.

• 1:19:58Speaker 01

  They were problem crocodiles and like relocation, for whatever reason, isn't a possibility. Um, cause you could, you could possibly relocate them. I would imagine that there's not a ton of facilities in Australia that can take in like fully grown crocodiles. So it's not like common for them to be in captivity like this, but I think that probably Steve and his team, more than most people were equipped to do that. And yeah, they weren't just taking like, oh, let's go catch a random crocodile we find and put them in.

• 1:20:31Sarah Marshall?

  Right. It's not like the purpose is not like to exhibit them commercially. The purpose is like last stop show business. Yeah. I see. Mm hmm.

• 1:20:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. Actually, he wrote in his book. So there's a book called The Crocodile Hunter by Steve and Terry Irwin. Uh, and then he said, "The Queensland Reptile and Fauna Park", which is what it was before it was Australia Zoo, "was not about catching a bunch of crocodiles and sticking them in cages for people to look at. No way, never, not on your life." That's what he wrote.

• 1:21:01Speaker 01

  So I know. His voice comes through very strongly in his book. Like I have, I have a scene that hopefully we can get to, to read.

• 1:21:11Sarah Marshall?

  Unbridled enthusiasm.

• 1:21:12Speaker 01

  Unbridled enthusiasm.

• 1:21:14Sarah Marshall?

  So Terry sees him doing the crocodile show. She's like, I like the way that man shows a crocodile.

• 1:21:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, basically. And after the demonstration, I believe, this video we just watched, the facility that was built many years later, that facility is called the Crocassium, of course.

• 1:21:37Sarah Marshall?

  Oh.

• 1:21:38Speaker 01

  And they didn't have that before. I get the impression before it was really just like, there was a pool and there was a crocodile and people could like watch maybe at like the fence or something. Yeah. The Crocassium, that was one of Steve's big ideas when he was at the Australia Zoo. But anyway, uh, Terry talks to him after the show.

• 1:21:58Sarah Marshall?

  She's like, how long have you been in Crocs?

• 1:22:02Speaker 01

  I think so. I think they basically immediately hit it off talking about animals. And what's really a cute detail about their love story is someone took a now kind of famous picture of the two of them when they were having their very first conversation with each other. Like basically the moment that they met each other. There's a picture of them, which I think is very, I don't know, just really sweet.

• 1:22:29Sarah Marshall?

  Show me.

• 1:22:30Speaker 01

  Oh, okay. Sorry. Um.

• 1:22:34Sarah Marshall?

  Should be.

• 1:22:37Speaker 01

  Okay, here we go. And of course he's wearing like an Akubra hat and wearing his khakis.

• 1:22:43Sarah Marshall?

  Wow. He looks exactly like on his show and they both are like, I don't know, I guess like very young and healthy and sunny and have kind of like curly sandy hair and are smiling really big.

• 1:22:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:56Sarah Marshall?

  And the caption is, "I was never one for Sheila's."

• 1:23:01Speaker 01

  I haven't come across that quote anywhere else, but.

• 1:23:05Sarah Marshall?

  Well.

• 1:23:06Speaker 01

  So who knows?

• 1:23:10Sarah Marshall?

  Maybe AI was like, "I was never one for Sheila's."

• 1:23:16Speaker 01

  I mean, I think it, it sounds like Steve was very smitten immediately and Terry says that she was-

• 1:23:22Sarah Marshall?

  Be by a woman who understands your love of the main thing you love, you know? Except for men who are weirdly competitive about it and hate it when they meet a woman who's good at something they value.

• 1:23:34Speaker 01

  Right?

• 1:23:35Sarah Marshall?

  We don't care about them.

• 1:23:36Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:23:37Sarah Marshall?

  We're talking about Steve.

• 1:23:38Speaker 01

  We're talking about Steve here. And yeah, I think they bonded immediately because she was like, hey, I run a, I run a wildlife center and like my best friend is a mountain lion. And I'm sure Steve was like, wow, you're the perfect woman.

• 1:23:52Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. So they just hit it off immediately and they immediately spent like a lot of time together. I think that she ended up going back to Brisbane with her friend and then talked to Steve again on the phone and he was like, do you want to come back out to the zoo? And she was like, sure. So she came out and like, he like booked her a hotel. They didn't stay there together apparently, but that's what she said. And she like spent the whole weekend at, at the zoo. And then the part that I was like, wow, they were really into each other immediately. So she, Terry goes back to Oregon. This is like early November in 1991 and Steve calls her in Oregon and it was like,

• 1:24:35Speaker 01

  hey, uh, how about I come visit within like 10 days of her getting back to Oregon?

• 1:24:42Sarah Marshall?

  And that's like, and, and as Brianna, you know, that's like kind of a huge hassle to get all the way over here.

• 1:24:51Speaker 01

  Exactly. I would like, reading this story, I'm like, I can't imagine what it was like in 1991 to fly between Australia and Oregon, like-

• 1:25:00Sarah Marshall?

  Well, I guess at least maybe they, at least you could smoke.

• 1:25:06Sarah Marshall?

  Probably not by then. I think actually you could less smoke on a plane and like sometime in the eighties.

• 1:25:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:11Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. More food, we hope. I guess they feed you still on international flights.

• 1:25:16Speaker 01

  More food, but less, uh, in-flight entertainment. But okay, back to Terry. So-

• 1:25:21Sarah Marshall?

  So he comes to Oregon, right?

• 1:25:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. So he comes to Oregon. The first time he comes up, he's like, it's November. He's like, I'll come visit you in 10 days. And she's like, you realize-

• 1:25:30Sarah Marshall?

  The weather is great where I am and not so much where you are.

• 1:25:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. And she's like, you realize that there's this holiday called Thanksgiving? And he's like, yeah. But he obviously actually doesn't know or hasn't heard of it. So he ends up coming over for Thanksgiving and meets Terry's whole family and spends Thanksgiving with them. They go and like hike around the coast range. He goes and skis on Mount Bachelor. Like he has his little Oregon holiday when he's over here and they go look for wildlife, of course. Then Terry visits Steve again in January in 1992. So just like a month later, she comes over for a second time. She spends like four weeks there and they go out in the bush and out on the Burtican River.

• 1:26:15Speaker 01

  Um, and she kind of gets exposed to Steve's life of living out in the bush with his dog, Sui. And, um, kind of gets the full Steve Irwin experience in that way. Like prior to all the crocodile hunter stuff. And on that trip, like actually I, she phrases it as like one night when they're camping. He kind of says, as they're like, you know, about to fall asleep. He's like, is this still tradition for the guy to ask the girl's dad to like marry her? Like, is that still a thing? And she's like, uh, I think so. And at the end of the trip, he asks her if they want to get married and she says, yes. This is within four months of them meeting each other.

• 1:27:01Speaker 01

  They got married in June. So nine months after they first met, they got married. They got married in Oregon. Terry says 400 people showed up to their wedding, which I think is crazy, but it was only like eight of Steve's family from Australia, because it was like really hard, obviously to get people over. Anyway, so they have this whirlwind romance. Terry then moves basically to Australia immediately after they get married. What she like explains was full of mixed emotions because she said even at the time, she knew she was basically saying bye to her life here in the States.

• 1:27:40Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:41Speaker 01

  Um, which again, like I came back to the States, but I, I relate to that feeling. Because Australia and New Zealand are very far away and it would have felt even farther away at the time. And it's just, um, it's, it's hard. You can't really continue your life back home in that, in that same way. So she had to hand over her wildlife rehabilitation center. But she actually had plans to bring Melina, the cougar to the Australia zoo. And at first I was like, what? That's weird. And I was like, wait a second. Zoos always have animals from all over the world, like, so I guess it would kind of make sense to have a mountain lion in a zoo in Australia.

• 1:28:23Speaker 01

  Um, that was the plan anyway, but I guess Melina, there was, you know, quarantine issues and just like permits and all the things. And by the time they got all that done, Melina, I guess, came down with like a kidney infection and ended up passing away before they could bring her over, which-

• 1:28:40Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, poor Melina.

• 1:28:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. And really upset Terry quite a bit.

• 1:28:44Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, that's awful.

• 1:28:45Speaker 01

  She was able to bring over her dog, Shasta, over to Australia. And Shasta lived out the rest of her days in Australia. So she was also involved with her family's construction business. And this is also something I think is kind of key to knowing about Terry is that she says that she's very entrepreneurial and very business minded as well as being like a wildlife lover. So I think that kind of is important for understanding like their life in the media and also running the zoo eventually. But after they get married, they go back to Australia after she ties up loose ends here in, in Oregon. And they go on their honeymoon, or they almost go on their honeymoon.

• 1:29:30Speaker 01

  So I don't know where they were planning to go originally. Steve had become friends with this guy, John Staten. And John Staten was an award-winning documentary filmmaker in Australia. John got his start making commercials originally. How he and Steve got connected was that John would film a commercial and he needed like a lizard or some sort of zoo animal in it. And so he would contact Steve and be like, hey, I, I need a, a gecko or something like that. Do you like have a gecko I could use?

• 1:30:06Sarah Marshall?

  Sometimes you need a gecko, you know?

• 1:30:09Speaker 01

  And they filmed a, a beer commercial that involved a crocodile. And that was kind of the first glimpse John had of Steve's potential like star power, I guess, in that he wanted to film a commercial where someone was throwing a beer can to someone else and a crocodile comes out of the water and like almost grabs the beer can or grabs the beer can. I can't quite remember. And Steve was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that all sounds great, but I have to be like the stunt guy. Like I have to be the person like throwing the beer and like having my hand basically in front of the crocodile. And John was like, yeah, sounds good. And so when they're filming this, John is sort of like, huh,

• 1:30:53Speaker 01

  I feel like there's something here with this guy.

• 1:30:57Sarah Marshall?

  But he's like there to support the crocodile initially, which is funny.

• 1:31:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And to be fair, this wasn't like his first time in front of a camera. Like when he was catching crocodiles with his dad in Queensland in the eighties. His dad actually got a camcorder, which I think was like this huge honking thing that you had to like rest on your shoulder and they would bring it with them when they were out catching crocodiles. And they play some of the footage on Crocodile Hunter. Like Steve will introduce it and be like, back in the day when, before Crocodile Hunter. And I don't, this is obviously not an Australian accent.

• 1:31:36Speaker 01

  I don't know what kind of accent I'm trying to do. But anyway, so John films this commercial with Steve. And I guess sort of like behind the scenes, he starts shopping around an idea to different TV producer stations, whatever in Australia, being like, hey, there's this, this crazy guy who catches crocodiles. And it's not just that. He is really charismatic. So the timing just happened to be that when John Staten convinced programmers to let him film a documentary about Steve. That's when Steve and Terry were meant to go on their honeymoon.

• 1:32:15Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, god damn it.

• 1:32:16Speaker 01

  And John calls up Steve and is like, hey, there is a crocodile that we've heard about somewhere in northern Queensland, I can't quite remember, near Ingham on Cattle Creek, which like Steve knew very well. And he's a big crocodile, he's like 14 or 15 feet. And we have heard that people are taking, they're using him for target practice and he's probably going to get shot any day.

• 1:32:44Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, god.

• 1:32:45Speaker 01

  Would you be interested in catching him and like relocating him?

• 1:32:51Sarah Marshall?

  Never hear of cans?

• 1:32:55Speaker 01

  I know. It's, uh, yeah, it's sad. I don't like to hear it either, but they, he's like, we could catch him, relocate him. Also, we would love to film you doing it and make a documentary about it. And Steve was like, sure, let me ask my wife, who I literally just married and see if she's cool with it.

• 1:33:20Sarah Marshall?

  Good instinct.

• 1:33:21Speaker 01

  And apparently, by all accounts, Terry was like, yeah, let's do it. So yeah, they, they go on this trip. They go look for this crocodile and Terry's kind of like introduced to this crew who she'll end up spending so much of her life with, especially her life with Steve. So there's John Stanton, he's there filming. Wes Mannion, who is Steve's best friend and who is still like part of the management team at Australia Zoo today. He's like a bit younger than Steve. Steve was like his mentor for a long time. And

• 1:34:03Speaker 01

  they go up to Cattle Creek. And one story that like kind of irritates me a little bit from Terry's perspective is a lot of these times, I am very aware that Terry is like the only woman on these crews. Like she is spending a lot of time with a lot of guys and which is in the, they seem like great guys, but still, it's just like not the same. Terry says they're on this trip to catch this crocodile. And she says, at the end of the, of an exhausting first day, the six of us, Steve, myself, Wes, John, and his two-person crew gathered wearily around the fire. I looked up and realized that five

• 1:34:43Speaker 01

  pairs of eyes were looking at me. Wait a minute. Oh, I get it. I'm the only woman here. I'm supposed to be cooking dinner. And she doesn't elaborate on that. She's just like, oh, that's how this works. I guess this is what I'm doing. And she starts trying to, but like the camp gear is stuff she's not used to. So to Steve's credit, he jumps in and he's like, how about I cook from now on? And she's like, yeah, sounds great. So he like takes over cooking from Terry, which I'm like, okay, that's, I'm glad you did that. And

• 1:35:21Sarah Marshall?

  I like that too.

• 1:35:22Speaker 01

  I know, right? And there's like a sweet story too, where like they went on their first camping trip together and she like offered to help him cook. She was like, hey, do you need help with dinner? And he's like, no, no, no. Like my trip, my treat. And he like cooks their meals the whole time. I'm like, okay. I like, I like Steve. He just like where his head's at. So they're looking for this, this crocodile and they think they spot him on the river. And they're like, oh, he's sitting in the water weird. Like what's going on? And they realized that this crocodile has been shot already. And so they

• 1:36:01Speaker 01

  got there too late, essentially. And Terry wrote in her book, Steve was beside himself. He felt as if the croc's death was a personal failure. We filmed the croc and talked about what had happened, but eventually Steve simply had to walk away. When I went to him, there were tears in his eyes. His death wasn't abstract to Steve. It was personal, as though he had lost a friend and it filled him with anger towards the poachers who had killed such a magnificent animal. So Steve writes like that in his book and Terry writes about Steve in the same way that a lot of animal deaths to Steve, like he took very personally

• 1:36:43Speaker 01

  and he would like grieve for a very long time. Terry says how his first dog Chili was unfortunately shot by a farmer, I think. She said like years later, he would still like cry about Chili and just be so sad about losing her. So he just had this great well of love and empathy for animals. And I mean empathy in the true meaning of like, he felt this level of connection, like emotional connection with another being. Yeah, I just

• 1:37:23Speaker 01

  think this is one of Steve's most endearing traits. But, so they weren't able to save this one crocodile. They heard about a couple other crocodiles. Actually, I think there were some fishermen that approached them or something. We're like, hey, there's these crocodiles that are like hanging around the boat ramp. Like, can you help us out? They catch those and relocate them. And John Stanton and the crew, they film this whole thing. So when this trip finishes, John Stanton pulls together the footage and this trip, their quote unquote honeymoon is the pilot episode of The Crocodile Hunter.

• 1:38:02Sarah Marshall?

  Oh.

• 1:38:03Speaker 01

  I know. I just love this detail.

• 1:38:08Sarah Marshall?

  It's nice to consolidate your anniversaries, you know?

• 1:38:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, true. I never thought of it that way. Like, oh, it's like these two big momentous things that happened in their lives kind of happened at the same time. So yeah, they began filming Crocodile Hunter technically then in 1992. And then it was first released. So they finally pulled together the footage and, you know, shopped it around or whatever. First release in Australia in 1996, and then it was released in 1997 in the States. And the pilot was first on Discovery Channel. The rest of the episodes were on Animal Planet. But actually, I skipped over an important detail that when they got back from this trip, after they filmed the first episodes of The Crocodile Hunter, Terry and Steve, that's

• 1:38:54Speaker 01

  when they officially took over the Australia Zoo. So another big moment in their life.

• 1:39:00Sarah Marshall?

  It's all happening.

• 1:39:01Speaker 01

  I know. It's like the big things in their life. I think all but happened within a year. Like they got married. Actually, they met each other. And then, and then they filmed the first episode of Crocodile Hunter. And then they take over Australia Zoo, which is, yeah, that's a lot for one year. And it's basically been their life's work ever since, essentially. And Terry talks about how Bob and Lynn Irwin, Steve's parents, they officially handed over ownership of the zoo to Terry and Steve. And apparently, Steve just immediately dived in like he does with everything. And that's when they actually

• 1:39:41Speaker 01

  renamed it. So it was the Queensland Reptile and Fauna Park, and they then officially renamed it Australia Zoo when they took over ownership. Terry says about Steve in her book, she says, he worked from dawn until well after dark, when he rigged spotlights to be able to keep working. I'd never seen anything like it. He was a machine. He would go past human endurance. Often I'd catch him throwing up behind a tree out of sheer physical exhaustion. Don't worry about it. I just drank too much tea this morning, he said.

• 1:40:15Speaker 01

  After, I knew you'd like that.

• 1:40:19Speaker 01

  After one such incident, when I expressed my concern, he continued with the job.

• 1:40:25Speaker 01

  I love it too, because there's this like famous clip of him on some talk show and the host, it's in like the UK or something, and the host says, do you ever drink coffee? And Steve Irwin's like, no, the top of my head would blow off.

• 1:40:42Speaker 01

  It's like, I drank a cup of coffee once years ago and I'm still recovering. So yeah, I mean, it might very well be true. But they take over Australia Zoo. Then a few years later, in 96, 97, that's when Crocodile Hunter first debuts. And it didn't quite take off in Australia like it did elsewhere. But eventually, like Crocodile Hunter, as we know, was like a really big hit. It was broadcast in 130 countries, I believe, estimated to reach 500 million viewers at its peak. It was Animal Planet's highest rated series.

• 1:41:25Speaker 01

  And yeah, it was just kind of a pop culture media sensation, as you and I are both very familiar with. I mean, like, it was one of those shows, like, if you're just channel surfing, and you see that it's on, you're like, oh, we'll watch Crocodile Hunter.

• 1:41:42Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, and it was that TV that I feel like we don't have as much of now that was kind of like, good for any occasion.

• 1:41:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:48Sarah Marshall?

  You know, like, in a waiting room, in a hospital.

• 1:41:52Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:41:52Sarah Marshall?

  On a good day, on a bad day, you know, it's like, a pretty good vibe. And you're gonna learn something, but you're also not gonna be bored.

• 1:41:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:00Sarah Marshall?

  And it was just like, I don't know, it was just good TV.

• 1:42:04Speaker 01

  It was, it still is. I've been watching a lot of Crocodile Hunter recently. And I'm like, man, this show is really entertaining.

• 1:42:13Sarah Marshall?

  It's so nice that it holds up.

• 1:42:14Speaker 01

  It does. And like, everything, there's parts of it that I'm like, oh, I don't love that. But then there's other, a lot of it is like, oh, this is awesome. I love watching this. I think Steve Irwin has a great message and a great intention behind it. Whether or not you agree with all of his tactics, I, you know, that's, that's definitely up for discussion. But I think one of the few scenes that I was like, oh, I don't love it, is I understand why it was like this. But so, feral pigs are a big issue in Australia.

• 1:42:49Sarah Marshall?

  I think they're a big issue here, too. That's something we have in common.

• 1:42:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. So the, I never like, came across anything saying that Steve Irwin or his crew would like, hunt feral pigs. I mean, they would have pig meat to use as lures for crocodiles. So I'm assuming, I mean, they would have hunted them at some point. I don't know in what manner.

• 1:43:12Sarah Marshall?

  Or at least had a guy.

• 1:43:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. I would think that Steve Irwin would have the mindset of like, I am doing this as pest control, and I am, we are doing this to help the, you know, native Australian ecology and the environment. I don't argue with that. I think the part where I got a little bit like eh about it was the episode where they are actually trapping feral pigs. It's a little rough to watch. And I don't think it's probably anything worse than what you would see on a pig farm. But that being said, it is still a little rough to watch. Like, they're manhandling these pigs, like, in a way that's a little, for me, a little upsetting. And I'm sure someone listening is gonna be like, well, okay, well, if you

• 1:43:58Speaker 01

  feel that way, then, you know, how do you feel about meat in general? And the question, and the answer to that is, I don't know. I have lots of feelings about it. And I'm still figuring it out. So.

• 1:44:10Sarah Marshall?

  I appreciate that perspective.

• 1:44:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. But that being said, you know, and then there's obviously like, the showmanship thing that some people don't really, aren't drawn to with, with Steve Irwin. But obviously, it brings a lot of people in. And he had, I personally think, and I also think, a lot of his fans do feel like he had an effect on people in changing people's attitudes towards wildlife, and especially predators. Because he spoke about top predators with so much respect and love, in a way that I don't feel like we've come across that frequently, if at all, in

• 1:44:48Sarah Marshall?

  No, right.

• 1:44:49Speaker 01

  major mass media.

• 1:44:50Sarah Marshall?

  No, because you tend to be able to make more money being like, look at this big scary shark, as opposed to look at this endangered shark.

• 1:44:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's, but he's just so passionate. And his whole attitude is really about conservation. And he, I think the, the goal, the whole entire time is like, we're going to use this to our advantage to put as much money back into the zoo with the intention of conservation programs. So we're going to purchase land in Australia and turn it into conservation parks. They would purchase land and plant a bunch of eucalyptus trees and try to build up, you know, koala habitat after it'd been, you know, farmland for a long time, or something

• 1:45:36Speaker 01

  like that. So there is always this goal of putting it back and trying to improve the environment and wildlife habitat as best they could, or put it back into the zoo. And they were expanding the zoo, too. So the Australia Zoo has grown quite a bit since it was the Queensland Reptile and Fauna Park. And part of that was from the success of the show and money being put back into, into the zoo, which was their, you know, Steve and Terry's, it was their shared dream to like, do what they could for conservation

• 1:46:15Speaker 01

  and wildlife in this aspect. So, Bindi, their daughter, was born in 1998. Robert was born in 2003. And by all accounts, Steve was also like, a really wonderful dad. He just like, loved being a dad and spoke effusively about it. Like, he seems like to be very, I mean, it's hard to tell, but like, it seems like he really was very active and present in his kids' lives. And I think it kind of speaks to, Bindi was very, very close with Steve as a young girl, like.

• 1:46:53Sarah Marshall?

  Which, you know, it should be a given that a kid would be with their dad. And yet, you so rarely honestly hear about it. It's always pretty exciting.

• 1:47:01Speaker 01

  I know. That's actually, it was one of the things I was excited to share with you. It was like, did you know, I mean, it tracks, but also that Steve, like, he like, loved his wife, and he loved his kids. And somehow, that's like, not something you come across very often.

• 1:47:19Sarah Marshall?

  That's like, the best legacy you could have as a person, really, is to, you know, because I feel like there's this, like, there's such a thing in history, and with the sort of like, alleged great men of history of like, well, he was actually like, pretty horrible to be around, and he abandoned his family, but he discovered this polymer. So, it's probably worth it. And you're like, maybe that made it harder to discover the polymer. You know, I guess this idea that like, or, you know, that historically, that like, love and relationships and marriages and children are the things that you sacrifice on the altar of achievement.

• 1:47:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:56Sarah Marshall?

  But at the end of the day, like, no institution will remember you. Not really. Because it's just, it's just a collection of buildings and the people who happen to work there right now. And the letters they'll put after your name to get you to do stuff, sometimes. But like, the relationships that you're sacrificing for what you think is your legacy are your legacy.

• 1:48:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:18Sarah Marshall?

  So just a thought.

• 1:48:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think his legacy is continuing, partially because his family, his wife and his kids have this unending love for him, even though like, Bindi was eight years old when he died. And Robert was only two. And they all just speak so highly of him still. And I think that speaks to why we continue to love him. Because it's like, oh, he was, he was a guy who wasn't ashamed of, like, speaking really highly of his wife in public. Like, that was something that really struck me. There was one of his clips of him on Conan O'Brien, like, in the early days. And he's bringing on some animals. You know, he brings

• 1:49:04Speaker 01

  on a snake, he brings on a lizard. And in the end, they actually bring out a crocodile or an alligator. And Terry helps to bring it out, I believe. At some point, oh, no, she helps bring out a big snake. And Conan's just sort of focused on the snake, because it's huge. It's, you know, it's like, wrapped around Terry's body. He's like, holy crap, what's that? And Steve is like, isn't my wife amazing? Isn't she incredible? And Conan's just like, yeah, that snake, though, that thing, I don't know if I really want it out here. And Steve's like, yeah, but, oh, my wife, she's just the best. And like, and he talks about her like that all the time. Like, he just adores her. And you can just

• 1:49:47Speaker 01

  see it. And like, everything else, it's very genuine. I don't, it's not like, oh, he does this on camera, and then as soon as the camera's off, he like, ignores her. I think they genuinely had a very good marriage. And Terry, to this day, is like, yeah, he was my soulmate. She calls him my prince. And many people have asked her, like, are you planning to date again? And she's like, um, who am I gonna date after Steve Irwin? Like, how am I, how is anybody gonna come close to that for me? She was like, I, I found my guy. And that was, that, and he was, he was it for me. So I think that's like, something

• 1:50:32Speaker 01

  to really land on with, with Steve. It's just like, how much his family meant to him, and how we could all feel that, and how admirable that is, for a man to like, to publicly love his family, in that way.

• 1:50:49Sarah Marshall?

  And how he's part of what we may be sensed about him that made us elevate him into sexy celebrity, is that he just really loved all these animals. And the twist is that he also really loved his family.

• 1:51:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 1:51:03Sarah Marshall?

  What a twist.

• 1:51:04Speaker 01

  What a twist. And Steve and Terry were bringing Bindi along.

• 1:51:09Speaker 01

  You see her on The Crocodile Hunter. She's like a little baby, like on, in like a little backpack on Terry's back and they're like out in the outback somewhere and Steve's like catching lizards and whatnot and Bindy's like there the whole time. Or they'll be on like a dinghy out on a river at night or whatever and Bindy's with them. And I guess actually, maybe this is like a good time to pivot into like one of maybe the bigger controversies that Steve ever had during his career. And I think part of this was the fact that he was so big at this

• 1:51:52Speaker 01

  time. And I think that he was starting to experience backlash.

• 1:51:56Sarah Marshall?

  Mm hmm. As all overly popular things do.

• 1:51:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. So when Bindy was born, there was an instance where Steve took Bindy as a baby into a croc demonstration with him at the Australia Zoo. And

• 1:52:14Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:15Speaker 01

  And here's the thing, here's the thing, that this was when she was a baby, but no one said anything about that, I think, because it was still kind of early-ish in the crocodile hunter days. And there was just wasn't so much media focus on him. So this like came and went without any fanfare.

• 1:52:32Sarah Marshall?

  Right. Local man takes baby near crocodiles.

• 1:52:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I only found out about it, reading Terry's book. And I was like, huh, I didn't realize he did this with Bindy. Because a few years later, in 2004, like not long after Robert was born, he was very young, he was only like a few months old, he did the same thing with Robert. And I don't know if you remember that?

• 1:53:00Sarah Marshall?

  Vaguely, as you're saying it, but like not in a Michael Jackson dangling a baby over a balcony kind of a way.

• 1:53:06Speaker 01

  Well, it's interesting because people think, I guess the Michael Jackson incident happened not long before.

• 1:53:14Sarah Marshall?

  Where we were like, oh, my God, it's an epidemic of people holding their babies in the wrong place.

• 1:53:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it was seeing Steve with baby Robert in his arms and like a piece of meat in his other hand in front of a crocodile. It literally reminded people of the Michael Jackson incident. So Steve got a lot of heat for it. I think it was one of the first times where he had received such negative media attention. And it really hurt him a lot. But it wasn't just that the negative media attention, Terry says in her book, they had Child Protective Services called on them about the incident with baby Bob, as they call him, and kind of like, being questioned of like whether or not he was a fit parent, and whether they

• 1:54:04Speaker 01

  were putting their children's lives in danger. And as we just talked about, Steve being a very proud, very loving, very present father, this really, really deeply bothered him, as you can imagine. But I don't know, I'm curious what your thoughts are on that incident.

• 1:54:25Sarah Marshall?

  I realize as a non-parent, I really don't have a leg to stand on, but I would prefer to not do that with my baby. I'm not saying I never would, because I can see things getting out of hand. But yeah, I think it's good to not put the baby near the crocodiles. And even if you know all about crocodiles, and it probably maybe isn't as bad as it maybe looks to the untrained eye, it's just, you know, this is why we cut grapes in half.

• 1:54:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54:51Sarah Marshall?

  It's the kind of thing where I can see the public being like, hey, don't do that. That makes me nervous. But also, the point at which we try to intervene in people's lives as parents, especially by calling local authorities based on something we saw on TV or on social media at this point in time, like, that's when we start getting into like, kind of the vigilante justice area. And that makes me also as nervous, sometimes more nervous than the crocodiles.

• 1:55:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:55:20Sarah Marshall?

  So, you know, it's a tricky area, but I suspect that it was done, you know, with, with no ill intent.

• 1:55:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:55:27Sarah Marshall?

  Maybe not with as much forethought as would be good, but you know.

• 1:55:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:55:32Sarah Marshall?

  I can see also, if you are putting yourself next to dangerous reptiles all the time, that you might get overly casual about it with regards to other people.

• 1:55:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. I think Steve had a very skewed idea of what was dangerous. I mean, on one hand, he was aware, like, okay, crocodiles are dangerous. He would, and always said, like, you know, don't try this at home. I am a skilled expert. I know what I'm doing, blah, blah, blah. But I still think it was skewed based on his experience. I mean, with his dad, he jumped on his first crocodile. And I mean, like, jumping out of a boat into a river on top of a wild crocodile when he was nine years old.

• 1:56:14Sarah Marshall?

  Right. That does give you confirmation bias, right? Where you're like, well, I survived doing that. So probably anyone else would.

• 1:56:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, he probably just didn't think, like, him holding the baby was that big of a deal in comparison to the other crazy stuff he does on a daily basis.

• 1:56:31Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. And you could also say, you know, because we're around cars all the time, we don't register them as as big of a threat as they are. And, you know, that's also true.

• 1:56:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56:41Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, it doesn't make the crocodiles any less scary to make that comparison, really, just brings up another threat.

• 1:56:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Our idea of, and this is also a theme in Steve's life of, you know, he was, he was doing crazy stuff all the time, like stuff that is hard for us to fathom. I mean, yeah, I think there was, like, Steve Irwin probably had a very different attitude towards risk in general. And this is actually, I'm glad we're talking about this, because basically, this is going to lead us into, unfortunately, the final part of Steve's life. I guess one, actually, one positive thing, or a couple of positive things before

• 1:57:28Speaker 01

  we get into it, is that right before Steve died, he was like getting a lot more involved with scientific research and actually collaborating with researchers in Queensland. And in particular, with a couple of scientists named Mark Reed and Craig Franklin. And they were involved with putting satellite tags on crocodiles to trace their swimming patterns and behaviors and to understand, like, how far they would actually swim, especially if they were relocated. Because there's this idea that, like, as we talked about with relocating nuisance animals like crocodiles, there is this thought that, well, they'll just go back to where

• 1:58:13Speaker 01

  they came from. And people will be like, well, if you relocate them far enough, they won't swim back. And they were actually able to show through this scientific work with the satellite transmitters, that there was one crocodile that flew, or flew, that swam, that swam completely around Cape York in Australia. And if you're thinking of the country of Australia, and it's got like, kind of those two, like, rabbit ears at the top, is how I think of them. And one of those ears is the Cape York Peninsula. Crocodile swam around the entire thing after it was relocated. And this was 400 kilometers, 250 miles.

• 1:58:56Sarah Marshall?

  That's a lot of miles.

• 1:58:57Speaker 01

  It's a lot of miles. And

• 1:58:59Sarah Marshall?

  Someone with short little legs like that. Although I guess they're probably not using their legs primarily to swim, question mark?

• 1:59:06Speaker 01

  No, they use their tail, actually.

• 1:59:08Sarah Marshall?

  Hmm. Right. Well, the tail is a lot stronger, I would imagine.

• 1:59:12Speaker 01

  Well, I guess supposedly, when they're going like full sprint with their tail, they can go as fast as a dolphin. I don't know. I know, Steve

• 1:59:22Sarah Marshall?

  Don't tell me that.

• 1:59:24Speaker 01

  Steve said this in one of his interviews with Conan O'Brien, which I think is one of my favorite clips of him, actually, explaining this research project. And he was so excited about it. And I think he was just like, so, I mean, he had collaborated with researchers over the years, but this work that he did, he was a co-author on a couple of papers about it. So if you go to Google Scholar and type in Steve Irwin, he comes up a couple of times. There's one, satellite tracking reveals long distance coastal travel and homing by translocated estuarine crocodiles. And he's one of the co-authors on that. And

• 2:00:06Speaker 01

  then the other one is, I can't say this word, estuarine, estuar, like an estuary, estuarine.

• 2:00:13Sarah Marshall?

  That's gonna be the new trendy name, estuarine. It's like aquamarine.

• 2:00:18Speaker 01

  Right. Estuarine crocodiles ride surface currents to facilitate long distance travel. So he's a co-author on both of these papers. I think one or both of them were published right after he died. He's a co-author. And then, like, in that first paper, they acknowledged the croc team from Australia Zoo for their support and their assistance in capturing crocodiles. And they filmed some of it for Crocodile Hunter episodes, too. So, yeah, he was like, getting into this, which to me is like, oh, I think this was like, kind

• 2:00:58Speaker 01

  of the direction he was wanting to get more into of like, this collaborative research to understand crocodile behavior better, so that they could better steward crocodiles in the wild and contribute to the body of knowledge about, about crocodiles. So he was still filming Crocodile Hunter, though he had gone away from like, seasons of like, oh, here's, you know, 10 episodes or whatever, to specials. So kind of like little mini documentaries, but they were still in the Crocodile Hunter brand. And in 2004, or sorry,

• 2:01:35Speaker 01

  2006, he was up north in Queensland, off of Port Douglas. And he was filming for one of the specials called Ocean's Deadliest, which is an unfortunate name. But he was there with Philippe Cousteau, that was the co-star, or like a co-host, I guess, of the specials. So Philippe Cousteau is the grandson.

• 2:02:03Sarah Marshall?

  Is that Jacques Cousteau's grandson? Okay.

• 2:02:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:07Sarah Marshall?

  And the Cousteaus are an ocean dynasty, I guess you could say.

• 2:02:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, Jacques Cousteau, one of the original kind of nature filmmaker personalities, though obviously focused more on the ocean. But Steve and Philippe were filming for the show. Terry and the kids were in Tasmania at the time.

• 2:02:30Speaker 01

  And Terry always, I don't know. I mean, it's one of those things when you're looking back on someone after they've died and your interactions with them. And Terry says in her book many times that she and Steve said they always had this feeling that when they were apart, bad things would happen, but if they were together, they would be okay. But um, so he was out filming on, I believe it's called Bat Reef, which is on the Great Barrier Reef. And they had just finished like some segments and I think they were diving and then Steve put on snorkel gear and got back in the water. And he found a stingray, believe it's called a short-tailed

• 2:03:15Speaker 01

  stingray. And they're huge. These stingrays are like, they can get enormous, like a meter across, like three or four feet across. I don't know how big this one was. But he asked one of the cameramen to get in the water, said, hey, I found the stingray, like, let's check it out. He's approaching it. And the theory is that the way that Steve's shadow kind of hit the stingray, made the stingray feel defensive. And the stingray then did its defensive maneuver, which is to basically stab with its stinger. And it is so extraordinary to me how much of

• 2:04:00Speaker 01

  a freak accident this is. I cannot stress enough. So like, so the stinger, the barb of the stingray, it hit Steve square in the chest, in the heart. And I called my friendly neighborhood shark scientist here in Newport, Taylor Chapel, to talk to him about this. And I asked him, and I said, how many people died from stingrays? Like, how, how often has that happened? And he wasn't, to his credit, entirely sure, but he thinks it's somewhere like around 20, 20 people ever. Like, you think of how astronomically low it is for someone to be attacked by a bear,

• 2:04:43Speaker 01

  or a shark, or get hit by lightning. And then this is even smaller than that. People get stung by stingrays all the time. I mean, this was a large stingray for one, but

• 2:04:56Sarah Marshall?

  But it also seems like the kind of thing where it's like, I don't know, having a fatal accident with a vending machine. And then you're like, well, how was I to anticipate that from a vending machine?

• 2:05:08Speaker 01

  Exactly. And the reason I'm stressing this is because a lot of the rhetoric around Steve Irwin, even now, especially right immediately after he died, there was kind of this sentiment of like, well, he was asking for it. Like, he's always like antagonizing animals. He's always getting right up in their business. Like, it was only a matter of time. And I get it, like, that's not entirely untrue, that like, looking at some of the stuff he did, again, talking about the risk-taking behavior. I mean, he has said on his show that he, he should have died like a few times over. Like, he's just been in so many situations that are so dangerous. But that's

• 2:05:53Speaker 01

  why I'm like, but this instance, I don't even know if this would be because of his risk-taking behavior. Personally, I just think this was just a truly freak accident. But the thing that Taylor told me that I thought was interesting, because I was like, so stingray barbs have venom in them. It hurts to get stung by one. I was stung by a very small stingray in California on my foot once, and it, it hurts. And I don't even think I got like a full sting from it. I think it just kind of glanced me. And it really hurts. I was like, is it the venom that like has killed people? Do you think that's what happened with Steve? And he said that what he understands is that some

• 2:06:36Speaker 01

  of the other people that have died from stingray stings, is that they actually die from like a secondary thing, like an infection. So it's not actually from the stinging event itself. So it's like, even within the 20 people in all of history, like recorded history that have died from a stingray, even a smaller number that I don't know what that number is, died in the way that Steve Irwin died. And that was that he got the barb directly into his heart. And he pulled it out, the barb out, I'm sure because it had venom, it was, and it hurt, and it probably was like, well, you know, you just, you're not sure what to do. And I think, you know, the people

• 2:07:21Speaker 01

  that were there, I mean, I can't even imagine what that would have been like to be there with him, like this superhero kind of person, who seems like he's cheated death a million times before. And then you just think you're going for a quick snorkel. And it was in like chest deep water, like, it was just the most unassuming way.

• 2:07:47Sarah Marshall?

  But it feels like it was like, sort of, that maybe the like, thing you're wrong about of all this is that it was kind of seen at the time as like, you know, man who loves donuts slips on a donut. And actually, it's like, man who loves donuts dies in a car accident, you know, that just there's, well, I don't know if that's

• 2:08:06Speaker 01

  Or like

• 2:08:07Sarah Marshall?

  Quite right.

• 2:08:07Speaker 01

  Struck by lightning or something like, yeah.

• 2:08:10Sarah Marshall?

  The odds of everything lining up the way they did were so bizarre that like,

• 2:08:15Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:08:15Sarah Marshall?

  Probably the worst way to try to honor his legacy would be to take it as a cautionary tale against being with wildlife and in nature.

• 2:08:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think he nailed it. And other thing to add to just how bizarre this it was for him to die in this way is that it could have been a matter of like centimeters, like if, if this stingray had stung him, like, almost anywhere else, he, he might have lived. I mean, who knows? It's a lot of hypotheticals, but it really was just a like a one in a, I don't know, one in a billion or something kind of situation. It was so shocking. And there was this kind of discourse around it. As I mentioned, some people had some really negative takes on it in that like, well, yeah, he was kind of asking for it. I feel for Terry and her kids at the time, because there was

• 2:09:08Speaker 01

  so, as you can imagine, you know, he was really at the peak of his career. And then for him to die in this way. And then they just had cameras on them all the time. You know, she made her way back from Tasmania with, with the kids. And there's just like this moment where they're in like a, a car. And she's talking with Wes Mannion, I believe, like, this is like their first kind of download of what's going on. And the kids are in the car. And Wes suddenly just like turns off all the lights in the car. And she's like, what are you doing? And he's like, oh, you know, the

• 2:09:49Speaker 01

  cameras are over there. And they can like, see, see us talking and they can see the kids. And like, he's just like, he was just like trying to protect their privacy. Recently, like, I've just had, I don't know, a very, been very close or witnessed, you know, very sudden tragic losses of people that seem kind of larger than life in my, in my own life. And it's, it's a very particular type of grief to just suddenly lose someone out of the blue. And someone that you thought was, you know, indestructible.

• 2:10:24Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:24Speaker 01

  I'm getting emotional talking about it. And it's a little, I'm a little embarrassed, but it's okay.

• 2:10:32Sarah Marshall?

  It's no, it's very embarrassing to have emotions on this show. You're actually the first person who's done it here.

• 2:10:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:10:39Sarah Marshall?

  Kind of a gas.

• 2:10:41Speaker 01

  I know. I know. And that's the thing. Steve wouldn't care. Steve like

• 2:10:45Sarah Marshall?

  Steve would be so into it.

• 2:10:46Speaker 01

  He would. He cried on camera many times. Like, I forgot to mention that in 2000, he lost his mom in a car accident. And it really, really devastated him. I mean, and he would, you know, in interviews, talking about his mom, he would, he would cry about her. And he would, he's just very, he's a very emotional guy. And I mean that in all, the full spectrum of his emotions. Though I can't say that I feel like I've seen or come across many stories of him being like, really angry. I mean, I've heard of him being frustrated, I guess, you know, but we, and I'm sure he was angry at points. But he had so much, so much patience, which I think you have to have if

• 2:11:31Speaker 01

  you're working with animals, like, because animals don't understand you. And you can't communicate with them.

• 2:11:37Sarah Marshall?

  Especially big, strong ones whose jaws you have to hold shut while you give them a bath.

• 2:11:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you have to be able to think from their perspective of like, they're just, they're scared. They don't know what's going on, you know, they just think I'm trying to hurt them. So you have to have like, an extraordinary amount of patience. And I think that's, from what I can see and what I, what I've read, like, I just haven't really come across. Anything where Steve has gotten like really angry, other than like directing anger towards poachers? I mean, that seems to be like the main thing that pisses him off is poaching.

• 2:12:17Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, fair enough.

• 2:12:18Speaker 01

  But the world was shocked, obviously.

• 2:12:22Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. And also, there's a sense of it being someone who you had a bond with as a, as a child, potentially. It would be like, you know, losing Bill Nye or something. Somebody check on Bill Nye.

• 2:12:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. Someone that is beloved. And like I said, like, peak of his career. So all of a sudden, he's, he's gone. And I think immediately, people, I mean, besides a few people, I guess, Jermaine Greer published something like the day he died, basically saying like, he was an awful person, which is quite the thing to read.

• 2:12:57Sarah Marshall?

  Did she have like, evidence? Or was it more of a cultural analysis?

• 2:13:02Speaker 01

  It was more a cultural analysis. Yeah. It was more of that. It was more like watching a show. It wasn't anything like, oh, he did this and said this out off, you know, backstage or whatever. It wasn't that. It was more just.

• 2:13:13Sarah Marshall?

  Fair enough, Shemai. You've given us your two cents.

• 2:13:16Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:13:17Sarah Marshall?

  Now step to the side.

• 2:13:18Speaker 01

  Wild that she literally published it the day he died, from what I can tell. I'm like, whoa, okay.

• 2:13:25Sarah Marshall?

  I mean, like, this is the industry that I used to be in, where everyone's trying to make the same $300. And when somebody dies, everybody pricks up their ears.

• 2:13:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:13:34Sarah Marshall?

  It's like, how can I say something?

• 2:13:38Speaker 01

  Right. I will just say, so Steve Irwin had this memorial service, which I highly recommend watching. Yeah, it's very sweet and very Steve. There's lots of animals. There's lots of, so he had a, there was a private ceremony. They actually, there was an offer from the Prime Minister, John Howard. They were like, hey, we want to like, have a full statesman's, you know, memorial service for Steve. And his family was like, no, we're going to have a private service, but we will have like a public facing one, too. And it's going to be at the zoo. You know, like, we're going to do it the way Steve would have wanted. It's very sweet. I do, I mean it. Like, I really love the memorial. I think there

• 2:14:20Speaker 01

  is this kind of element of the memorial that is kind of like Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, you know, it's, there's, it's kind of this particular lens of Australian culture. And I mean, I think some people really embrace that. And then, again, I think some people, maybe they would find it a little cringe. Or be like, well, this isn't the only thing that Australia's about. It's not like, it's not like we're all, yeah, wearing khaki and catching crocodiles and.

• 2:14:49Sarah Marshall?

  Every man, woman, and child in Australia is wearing a hat with corks on it.

• 2:14:56Speaker 01

  I feel like there was, maybe some people felt like that. But in general, Steve Irwin's legacy was like, from then on, has just kind of grown in this really positive direction.

• 2:15:08Sarah Marshall?

  I mean, if the worst you're guilty of is fostering a bit more of the stereotype of white Australian men, I don't know, we can probably live with that.

• 2:15:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I guess I'll say, like, as a true button to this episode, that researching Steve Irwin and researching his life and his motivations, I have felt very inspired. And like, I have found myself wanting to, you know, we're stuck on our computers for work so much. And I just feel like Steve Irwin was the antithesis of that. He was, he was outside, literally in the mud, in the sand, in the water, climbing trees.

• 2:15:51Sarah Marshall?

  Brianna, no one is stopping you from joining me on your next show while standing in some mud.

• 2:15:59Speaker 01

  Well, I know. And actually, well, so.

• 2:16:01Sarah Marshall?

  Got a rechargeable battery.

• 2:16:06Speaker 01

  Well, and like, I don't know, I just have found myself being like, what am I doing? I live in like, a beautiful place. I need to just, I need to get away from my screen and like, engage with what's around me more. And I really, I'm not trying to be cheesy. Like, I really am thinking of Steve Irwin. I'm like, this is what Steve would do. And I, I think he, you know, we'd just all be a little bit happier and healthier if we observed our surroundings and really appreciated the flora and fauna around us, even if it's like, a squirrel. Like squirrels are.

• 2:16:44Sarah Marshall?

  Crikey. Look at that squirrel.

• 2:16:47Speaker 01

  The squirrel hunter. There you go.

• 2:16:51Speaker 01

  But I do think he has influenced me, even just like, researching this episode. And I think I would be a happier person if I, you know, took my binoculars out and looked for some animals outside my front door.

• 2:17:07Sarah Marshall?

  I think your dogs would like you to just look at them more often.

• 2:17:13Speaker 01

  Murphy certainly would.

• 2:17:14Sarah Marshall?

  Like, pardon a moi.

• 2:17:17Speaker 01

  Mother, please, please take us to the beach again, mother.

• 2:17:25Speaker 01

  So, yeah, that's what I've come away with, Steve Irwin.

• 2:17:29Sarah Marshall?

  That's your crocodile hunter.

• 2:17:31Speaker 01

  That's my crocodile hunter. He's a, he's a pretty good guy. He's a pretty good bloke.

• 2:17:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:17:39Sarah Marshall?

  Let's go get outside.

• 2:17:40Speaker 01

  Yes. Yep. Let's step outside.

• 2:17:43Sarah Marshall?

  But don't put the baby by the crocodile, because that's not good for the baby.

• 2:17:47Speaker 01

  No, no, no. Not good for the baby.

• 2:18:00Sarah Marshall?

  And that was your episode. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you to the people who make this show. Miranda Zickler is our producer and editor. Nicole Ortiz is our administrative assistant. And our lovely guest this time was Brianna Bowman. Brianna Bowman also wants to give a special thanks to Natalie Hill, Wildlife Manager of Nature World in Tasmania, for helping to give an Aussie perspective on Steve Irwin and the zoological and conservation fields. You can see Natalie with cute pictures of Tasmanian devils on Instagram, at Nat Hill Wildlife Adventurer. Enjoy the marsupials. We'll see you in two weeks.