Bittersweet Infamy - #17 - Dolphin House

Episode Date: June 13, 2021

Josie tells Taylor about the world's dumbest dolphin research facility. Plus: the true story behind the Streisand effect.

Welcome to Bitter Sweden for me. I'm Taylor Basso. I'm Josie Mitchell. On this podcast, we tell the stories that live on in him, shocking the unbelievable and the unforgettable. Truth may be bitter. Stories are always sweet. Your shirt sticks to your skin. The restless calls of seagulls echo over. In the distance, someone's moved their TV out to their balcony. This is the beginning of because it's hot as you know, it's old school. It's like 80s. Okay, you know You move your TV out to the balcony when it's hot. Just take your phone. Okay This is the beginning of let me let me do it

This is the beginning of bittersweet summer Summer has of course been scientifically proven to be the most bittersweet of all the seasons Multiple studies peer-reviewed reports There is a body of peer-reviewed literature and it all says that the bitter nostalgia of a summer romance clings to the bones like country cooking So from now until the end of July We will be coming to you weekly every single Sunday every Sunday. We're gonna be in your little earbuds We're gonna be like church

We're we're showing up regularly every Sunday. Yeah, and like do you like it or not regular church people? Not like the the people who show up like cafeteria Christians. Yeah, Christmas and Easter take what you want leave the rest We're coming coming to you every Sunday So this week Josie is about to tell you a story next week We will be joined by award-winning author Francine Cunningham. No big deal. It's fine. No big deal We have actually recorded that episode already. I'm in the middle of editing it. It was a lot of fun And it's dope. So we're excited to share it with you and After that, it'll be me and Josie trading them back and forth like usual till the end of July

Are you excited, I'm very excited. I think it's gonna be super fun. I'm a big Summer fan me too. I've been on a school system my entire life. I guess so At the summer that imprints freedom. It's deep in the bones. Yeah, it's a bit of narcissism Obviously because I'm a summer baby. I'm end of August. So I'm like smoldering embers of summer So hot so hot, but I'm really really a fan of the summer I think it's the most romantic of the seasons or perhaps just the most horny. I can't tell But sometimes those are go hand-in-hand sometimes those are two peas in a pod I gotta work on

What that sounds like should a are you reading our jingle the the summer jingle? Yeah, I mean melting ice cream That's it's happening. That's our shtick. Anyway, so it is that's true right on the box It is melting ice cream. We we do promise a little bit of that. Yeah in addition to all of that the summer is to me a time of nostalgia so For this week's minfamous I Went back into the archives. Oh, so stop stop me if you've heard this one before I Mean, I won't stop you. I want to hear it in 2003 The California Coastal Records project went about documenting coastal erosion in California

With the goal of influencing policymakers. Okay, presumably they're like anti erosion like stop the erosion, but maybe pro. I don't know I Photographer Kenneth Edelman took over 12,000 aerial photos of the coast Which were made publicly available on a website called Pictopia and one of these images number 3850 was thrust into the news When it became the subject of a 50 million dollar lawsuit against Edelman in Pictopia from world-famous singer and actor Barbara Streisand I told you to stop me if you'd heard it She alleged a violation of privacy as the image depicted her cliffside property

At the time of the lawsuit the image had only been downloaded six times Including twice by Streisand's attorneys. So four non-barber downloads. Was she in the image? No, it's her house was okay. We just got word from Friends of ours who recently lost their little puppy not little puppy Franklin was an older dog, but they lost their dog and BJ was on Google Maps like just kind of killing time and He saw that on the image the street view of their house Franklin was in the image. He's like in the little corner of the house. Oh

And he like screen-shotted and shared it. He's like, I found Franklin Oh, that's a sweet and then did he suit for 50 million dollars because of that? Yes I so I thought you were gonna say that this was a pet cloning story Like I was sure that's where that was going. No, dude, but no just Barbara Barbara and dogs It always comes together Barbara and dogs So to be clear if you've never listened to our beloved first episode Barbara Streisand's cloned dogs Josie tells the story of Barbara Streisand's cloned dogs and we talk about this the same case of

Barbara Streisand's house a little bit at the time of the lawsuit the image had only been downloaded six times including twice by Streisand's attorneys After the case became public knowledge the image was downloaded more than 420,000 times In the end the suit was dismissed and Streisand had to pay Adelman's legal fees which amounted to a little over 150 grand Well, I'm sure when Barbara Streisand takes you to court she fucking takes you to court True, very true

And to this day the act of accidentally attracting attention to something while attempting to censor it is known as the Streisand effect The term itself was first coined in 2005 by Mike Masnik of TechDirt in an article about a resort Attempting to have photos of its urinals scrubbed from urinal.net a website that documents urinals Okay, the internet is a beautiful place. There truly is an ass to fill every seat Quote how long is it going to take before lawyers realize that the simple act of trying to repress something They don't like online is likely to make it so that something most people would never ever see like a photo of a urinal in some Random beatry word is now seen by many more people. Let's call it the Streisand effect Yeah, dude, if you want some examples of the Streisand effect in action the Wikipedia page

Which is where I sourced all this from includes 28 examples of the Streisand effect in action Here's one in December 2013 a YouTube user uploaded video showing that his Samsung Galaxy S4 Battery had spontaneously caught fire. I remember those days dude for sure I feel like once every five years we get a good exploding cell phone infamy thing Yeah, yeah, so Samsung demanded proof that this had happened before honoring his warranty Which is why this YouTube user made this video and then once Samsung learned of the video it added additional Conditions to its warranty demanding the user delete his YouTube video Promise not to upload similar material officially absolve the company of all liability

Wave his right to bring a lawsuit and never make the turns of the agreement public and give his right thumb in addition Exactly and and like name naming rights to any future, right? Yeah. Yeah, you've got Sam and then you've got song. Yes, okay The user is like fuck no and shares the settlement proposal online Which drew 1.2 million views to the original video that week So that is the Streisand effect. Wow That's beautiful. I like that a little kind of like wormhole back to our first episode too Yeah, cuz we just talked so much shite and then we never stopped to follow up on any of it So, I know it just it's in the kind of me playing crime catcher. Yeah, I totally forget everything

Everything it's true. Yeah, I like crammed for the test and then after the test. I'm just like Barbara's Yeah Cool, and I have to say I mean thinking about coastal commissions Researching the coast and houses on the coast. It's kind of a nice little lead into the story that I'm very excited to tell you today Taylor I can't wait to prepare. I got out our kiddie pool We don't have a pool or really any pools near us

So every summer we fill up a kiddie pool in the backyard We used to so the Surrey special that we had we had a giant orange Sundance trampoline like proper nice big bougie trampoline canvas my brother and I used to wrestle on there you'll be shocked to hear and What we would do is we would put one of my dad's cinder blocks in the middle of the trampoline And we would use that as the weight to use a hose to fill it to the bottom And then you take the cinder block out and you have a trampoline pool. Oh my god, you geniuses

Truly the way to live life. Oh my god I would love that. No, we just have like a kiddie pool that I bought at Crocker. Yeah, what are you gonna do? But I've set that up. I'm sitting in a pool of water to tell this story The story of the dolphin house. I feel like you might know this story. I know of it. Okay, but I don't know the details Okay, I know there is a dolphin house I've seen the I've looked at other YouTube videos and podcasts We're like, hey, you want to hear about this fucking weird dolphin house and I've always been like not right now So this is my time to hear. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, you were just waiting for this moment. I was waiting for your version. Yes

So the dolphin house also known as a dolphinarium was a building. Yes, but yeah, okay. I know but I'm also known as a dolphin abode or dolphin home. This maze on to doll. Yes It was built specifically for researching dolphin communication It's it was located on the shore of an American Virgin Island to the island st. Thomas It was a white concrete bungalow that had one upper floor of labs And then below that there was a saltwater tidal pool habitat That was cleaned and cleansed out by the by the tidal action by the ocean water Okay, and the lab was specifically built by American neuroscientist John C. Lily

To study communication with bottle-nosed dolphins as you do as you do as you do Yeah, Lily was born to a wealthy family in Minnesota in 1915 he was 1515 1515. Yeah, okay He was fascinated by science from a very early age and he wanted to go into science, of course But his dad rich dad, of course wanted him to be a class succession. Yes. Yes, exactly Wanted him to go to an Ivy League University and be a banker But Lily says fuck that and he gets a scholarship to Caltech in Pasadena Where he studied biology

So at Caltech, he's the president of the ski club and he's a member of the drama Do you mean that as a euphemism because president of the ski club could just be like a big cokehead? You're so right. Well, well, you'll see you'll see how Perhaps president of the ski club It wasn't in quotes of the Wikipedia president of the ski club, but maybe wink-wink and then a nose emoji and a snowflake emoji. Yeah, I got you So after a year Caltech administration learned that Lily was from a really wealthy family and so they Cantled his scholarship. They're like you don't need this. So

It seems to me like most Universities would be like putting their beaks even further up that rich kids ass if he's got a wealthy family Well, that's what ended up happening. So I guess there was some type of Thing because what happened was that his dad set up a trust fund to pay the tuition and eventually became a benefactor of the college There's somebody at Caltech knew Okay, so I was worried there because I was like I feel like I know how capitalism works and it's not this Yeah No, and so throughout Lily's career. He does pull on his family money to do his research

Okay, in 1934 Lily reads Brave New World. Oh God. Yeah, it's this story ain't going anywhere good All the pharmacology and all of that stuff the control methods and the link between the physical chemical You know, whatever whatever the experience of the mind and Lily gets really really Interested by it. And so originally he was studying physics, but then he switches majors and studies biology focusing on neurophysiology, okay, brain stuff brains so World War two comes around and He goes into the army, but he studies. He's not like infantry or anything like that

Instead he conducts high altitude research on pilots. Yes, and he becomes a trained physician Okay, and at this point he kind of has like right stuff high and tight kind of vibe around him You know what I mean? Like military, but science. Yeah Yeah, sure. Okay. Yeah. Yeah kind of like a very kind of 50s science man You know what I mean? Does he have like some like a horn rim glasses? I think only wears in the lab Yeah, and very like short-sleeved shirts with ties. I think that's kind of the vibe. Yeah, so He continues his research and he goes a little bit more into like psycho psycho analytics and in the 1950s he's working for the National Institute of Mental Health and while he's working with them he develops the isolation tank

So like where you go in water and like yeah Like yeah, yeah, yeah, I have a way to stimuli and the brain. Yeah sensory deprivation Yeah, the brain does weird cool things So he studies that and he invents the isolation tank. Okay, so this guy's legit. He's got some legit stuff Under his belt. Yeah, I'm just so used to all of them being quacks on this show And I'm sure this one's gonna turn out to be too, but you know, you're always just waiting for the other penny to draw Of course, of course, but so far he seems like he's on the up and up He read Brave New World, but so did every dude at my high school. Exactly. Yeah, let's let's find out

Later this idea of the brain and the way that we control brains and that kind of stuff It develops into how we can communicate, but he's also through this study of the brain He's really really attracted to studying Dolphins, so he has the strange kind of encounter with a beached pilot whale on the coast near his home in Massachusetts And we love strange encounters with beached whales exactly always very foreboding always very Questioning your own humanity. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's no way to get out of that one an unchanged person So let's go. Mm-hmm. He's blown away by the size of the animals brain Yeah, he's like holy shit how he can see the animals brain concerns me a little bit

I'm thinking that he like brought a saw down or something to the beach, but I don't know Wait, he's talking about the litter I thought you I assumed you just meant like whoa that whale's got a really big head Imagine the brain kicking around in that coconut. No, I believe he but no He's literally just like this is he's got just handfuls of brain under his arms I think it might be like bales. Hey, got you. Yeah. Yeah, just total brain man So he's really fascinated by this and he's like these these fuckers are smart. We should be studying So him and his wife they charter boats in the Caribbean and they try and study dolphins in the wild

but it's really tricky as you can imagine and It takes a lot of time and then he finds marine studios in Miami, Florida, Florida Florida Miami, Florida They should rebrand. They need to I think you're right Yeah, yeah, and Marine studios is the first place where they keep dolphins in captivity In fact, the dolphins that were at marine studios

Were the ones that were used for the filming of flipper the that's old school very old school. Yeah. Yeah so like the Film the old film flipper and the TD series that was in the 50s and 60s Can I just do a quick time check and see when are we that they've acquired this studio? If you know well, it's not his studio per se, but he kind of he gets to visit and work there So I think it's probably like mid 50s. Thank you. Okay late 50s. I'd say right. Thank you. Okay So up until this time Dolphins are kind of seen as just like big dumb fish a lot of fishermen in the US and particularly saw them as kind of vermin like and

They would do whatever they could to kind of get rid of them Right the cockroaches of the sea dolphins Which is wild. I mean, I feel like I grew up on smart dolphins We grew up at a time like Lisa Frank. Yeah, and it's just like dolphin rainbow peace power, right? Like We live out the other end of dolphin free tuna and blah blah blah blah blah the dolphin PR machine Has been greased since the 50s. Yes. Yes, and so Lily's there at Marine Studios and It's clear

Just very apparent that dolphins are fucking cute as fuck. Yeah, they do little tricks. They wave at you Yeah, they're fun. They're fun cool Hang and Because they're in captivity Lily is like this is so great. I can study them even closer What that means for Lily is he does? Mapping of the dolphin brain on live dolphins with these probes that he has developed to study monkeys I knew when you said dolphin house, I was like man some bad shit's gonna happen to a bunch of dolphins, isn't it? It's okay, it's rough. Well the thing though is

Cuz Lily had been studying with some other animals and he could sedate those animals But the dolphin you actually can't sedate because then it will stop breathing. Okay, so He was still jamming probes into a live dolphin brain, which sounds horrific Not good things were happening with these dolphins But they were still working away because it was in the mid to late fifties and whatever animals and ha ha and then in 1957 Lidley's research reaches a massive turning point. Okay, so

He's working at Marine Studios doing some of his tests and his wife Mary Notices that as he's running a test with his research assistants They're communicating and like swapping reports and swapping, you know observations or whatever it is and she notices that the dolphin that they're working on is making noise and That that noise is similar to Lily and his research assistants speech patterns Interesting so essentially she like taps John on the shoulder and is like, you know that dolphin is mimicking you, right? And he's like What what do you mean?

So horrible. Yeah, it's like stop poking their brains and just fucking listen to them. Why don't you so all of his focus? Goes to Communication with dolphins because now he's like holy shit. I know they're smart But maybe there's some like communication stuff that we can really really unpack so he publishes a book called man and dolphin in 1961 and it Redefines the dolphin as this highly intelligent species with a

Huge ass brain like way bigger than our brain and way bigger than our brain has been for I thought you were gonna say with a huge ass proceed Just this Yeah, and that's why he's so excited this is I assume the beginning of the PR renaissance for the dolphin That we were just discussing. Yeah, by the way, sorry. I just want to put it on record I have a theory of where this story might be going. I don't want to say it out loud But I'll let you know if it happens. Okay. Okay, if you could maybe like maybe a big siren noise

I'll give you I'll give you a big siren if my if my fears turn out to be true All right, so in this book man and dolphin he extrapolates from what his wife initially observed with the mimicking of human voices and So he discusses that but then he moves right through to this idea of teaching them to speak English teaching Dolphins to speak English and ultimately he puts forward this idea that Eventually there could be a chair at the United Nations Specifically for dolphins or whales. Okay, let's get this story going

Yes, we're all marine mammals would have an enlightening input into world affairs Widening our perspectives on everything from science to history Economics and future affairs. So a utopian World Semi-populated by marine mammals. Yeah, dude and in the let's not even say domestication Independence and the liberation of these dolphins. Yes, this just magically will fix the world's else if we can get dolphins talking to each other in English Okay, thank you. Okay, so I was I was waiting for the base to drop on this story and I feel like it has that's interesting

Let's go. Okay. Okay. How this would be arranged. There would have to be some tanks at the UN But I don't know. I mean obviously John Lilly was game and obviously NASA was fucking game NASA I mean us NASA. Okay. Uh-huh. Uh-huh This is he publishes the book 61 NASA is Jammin into space and of course there's all this like Push and excitement and everybody at NASA is like well obviously we're in space now

So we're gonna encounter intelligent life and like any time now It always comes back to the space race with you. I know, right? Oh space city Maybe the space race is an interesting hub for a lot of infamous like I have the dog in space You know, I feel like yeah, there's something so Weaponized science via global dick measuring. It's it's an interesting concept, right? Mm-hmm. I agree. I totally agree and Carl Sagan actually the American astronomer and astrophysicist who is fascinated by extraterrestrial life He helps Lilly pitch this idea to NASA. Okay, and the idea is that dolphins are the optimal test species

To discover how to communicate with Extraterrestrial life. They're kind of equating the dolphin is like it's already Species that is alien to us so if we can learn how to communicate with a dolphin then we can extrapolate all that information and apply that to communication with a Extraterrestrial being counterpoint. You're kind of just colonizing dolphins. Yes Yes Why do you need to teach them English? Why aren't we learning dolphin if you care about it so much? Why are you learning dolphin?

Exactly. Oh gosh, I'm so glad you picked on up on that right away If we dress them up and make them look and walk and talk and act like us wouldn't that be great? That's that's fucking colonialism. Why don't we go to this place where we don't know anything about the local inhabitants and make them? Worship our gods totally and pledge allegiance to our king. Yeah, it's that exact thing, but with dolphins but with dolphins NASA goes along They're stoked NASA and the US Navy give him thousands of dollars to set up the dolphin house and Conduct this research and it's funny that you were talking about yeah going into like a remote society or something like that because he also Gets an anthropologist on board, which like anthropology is kind of the definition of colonial scientific study

No, no for sure for sure. This guy's name is Gregory Bates in okay, and he's a world-renowned anthropologist with a speciality in linguistics So he on his own is really fascinated with interspecies communication And he does a lot of work even before he gets to the dolphin house with otters and with Octopuses octopuses so smart scary smart so fucking smart so so not smart and then also like kind of bitchy as a default mood Octopuses are always kind of just sneaking around and sabotaging things just because they feel like it and a part of me respects that smart But bored, you know, yeah, we've all been 17. Oh totally 17 years old so sassy Just like

Smoking a cigarette with one of its tentacles. Maybe it was eight Who knows changing its color to match the background because it can like it's Love an octopus otters. I love but I have this thing. I only love sea otters river otters. I don't care for oh Interesting, but sea otters are cute. Huh? They always look surprised. Oh, you know, that's a good like get to know you question Prefer sea otters or river otters that like reveals a lot about you'd have to be crazy to prefer So Bateson this anthropologist with a focus in linguistics. Yes, he's interested in

Observing how animals speak to each other and he's not so into the let's do my fair lady on a dolphin But Lily is still so convincing he has all this money and Bateson is like well I could work with dolphins and so he up and moves his wife and his stepson to st. Thomas to conduct his work Okay, loving this Caribbean ambiance for our summer. Thank you, right? Yeah, exactly. I'm wearing a bathing suit this whole time I just want you to know that I am naked And that's why we podcast And so they have three captive dolphins sorry sorry concept nudist podcast The podcast that's always naked, but you just don't know because it's a fucking podcast

Okay side project, I like it All right, so they have three dolphins the first one is sissy. She's the biggest of all three She's a little bit older. She's kind of pushy loud. Just kind of bitchy runs the show, right great great hang Okay, you think sissy would be a good time. Hey, I think so tough but fair. I think so yeah tough but fair Okay, then there's Pamela another female She's really shy and fearful and she takes a really long time to get close to anybody takes like a year For some Even touch she reads those comics about introverts online big time. Yeah a lot of online friends though

Yeah, for sure. It's different When she's surfing the world wide web Oh The third dolphin is named Peter. Okay that name Peter He is this young bad boy of a dolphin. He's hot Sexually maturing That they're working with working with him. He really likes sissy. So he's always trying to like rub up on her and she's like Get the fuck away. Yeah, I hate you. Yeah, so, you know, you gotta love sissy

Yeah, sissy will come out as gay later in the story. I'm sure don't take away the surprise Damn Now in her Margaret how love it love it boom As a kid Margaret was given a book by her mother called miss Kelly and it's a story about a cat Who can talk and understand humans and it's stuck with her all through her life or at least until she was 20? Because at the age of 20 she drops out of her first year at Tulane University in New Orleans And she moves to the island of st. Thomas. Okay, because an Amelia Badelea book told her to you basically I think

I think got it had a real big impact got you got you on love it and yeah, exactly You know what there's something in sweet about that sure. Mm-hmm. I'm sure I'm sure nothing bad will come of it No, and she gets a job at this hotel So she's wiping down menus checking people in blah blah blah and she hears about this House on the other side of the island where they're working with dolphins and she's like well, I mean, I loved miss Kelly So I'm gonna go check this out and everyone's like no, no, no, no, no don't there it don't go No, don't no Don't do it. Don't do it. There's signs everywhere. They say keep out done it up

But she's like well, whatever she knocks on the door and she's like hi I'm I'm here because I think what you're doing is really interesting and I'd love to help in any way shape or form and Who answers the door is dr. Bateson. He's their academic. Yes forget what is he is exactly? But he's some kind of linguist anthropologist. There you go. Yes. Yeah. Yeah exactly exactly and so He opens the door and he's like well Okay Here's a notepad Just sit here and watch the the tank watch the like habitat area and take notes

Tell me, you know in your notes Tell me what you see and so she sits there for about an hour and she watches the dolphins and how they're moving and how They're moving beside each other and sometimes above each other and how they like, you know flap their flippers and da da da da da and so she's kind of making notes and All her notes are focused on their behavior and she kind of makes these hypotheses about like well I think this one is more dominant, you know, whatever and Bateson is impressed. He's like, okay. All right Yeah, you are understanding that they are intelligent beings and that there is there's a social dynamic happening here There's a social dynamic going on like it would be great to you know come by whenever you want

We can't pay you but you know, whatever come by whenever and she's like dope and so in the next morning 6 a.m She's there. She's constantly there Yes Yes, you can never get away from the sound of a woman that loves you Exactly exactly I kind of wonder a little bit about this situation too because She's 22 at this point. Yeah, and she's not an Unattractive young woman, so I'm wondering if

Dolphin House was like have a pretty young thing around that's not a bad idea son blah blah blah I I'm getting a little bit of that But she does Stick around John Lily meets her and he's really impressed with her work ethic at the time Lily is actually not at the Dolphin House very often because he's out traveling and Sharing research and trying to secure more and more funding. He's out on a promo tour for the Dolphin House exactly and so What he does is he asks Margaret? He asks love it to be in charge of

His mimicry experiments with the dolphins, which is essentially build as teaching the dolphins English yes, okay, and she's like awesome. I love it. I'll be there teaching Dolphins. Yeah, I'm game. I'm living the dream. Amelia Badelea look at me now Exactly exactly and it's just like English has one of the most expansive repetitive vocabularies one of the most like neurotic Grammars famously difficult to learn. Yes. Yes. It's just like What and the answer of course is colonialism. Yeah, it's just like fucking shit, dude So, yeah, no, it's a weird call

so Margaret is in charge of the project now and she decides that she specifically wants to work with Peter the male dolphin Because he hasn't had any other Training with the mimicry Sissy and Pamela apparently have with Lily So she thinks you know what we bet this would be a better candidate for this experiment because we can start from zero and really Track the whole entire progress. Yeah in her work with Peter She concentrates on single words not sentences and in particular inflection apparently and of course his enunciation isn't very good because he's trying to

You're accent is really strong today, Peter. I'm gonna need you to work on that Margaret starts painting the lower half of her face with white thick makeup And she outlines her lips. I love this face So that he can see her mouth very Specifically and he's watching her very carefully. She teaches him the vowels She teaches him how to count. Does she teach him this or is she just saying it at him? T there's a lot of at him. Yes. Yes She at him's

She's a volunteer dolphin clown. That's what she is. She's painting her face She's not getting paid for it and she makes noises at dolphins to amuse them. She's a volunteered dolphin clown This is her big work opportunity that she stoked about Just you wait Apparently the M was very hard for Peter Because he's a fucking dolphin He would make a sound and then he would turn on his back So the blowhole would be somewhat muffled and the bubbles would create more of an M sound and M was important because it was Margaret's name

I'm glad I waited for you to tell me this story. Oh, yeah Lily was Delighted by Margaret's progress. I apparently the face painting just sent him over. He was super enthusiastic about the project and She felt super encouraged. Yes, and like she's like this young 20 year old She's like I have no scientific training, but I think I have a good I have a good I read a book when I was five and So she she suggests a more

Expansive way to conduct this experiment She notes that at the end of the day all of the researchers get in their cars and they drive away They lock up the dolphin house and they drive away and she thinks my gosh There's these three big brains just swimming there all night and we're wasting that precious time and this precious opportunity No, there's dolphin labor law sweetheart Shirley, right? That's what I kind of thought about like they need a little alone time from you lady You're just yelling vowels with them all day Like you know these dolphins if you get these dolphins as smart as you think they can be they are going to unionize on you

Mm-hmm true very true so she rigs up plans to plaster and Waterproof the entire upper floor of dolphin house. This is such a bad idea Okay, and she Floods it. I won't say she I'll say they because Lily is like you goddamn genius. I love it So they flood the upper levels. Why are they letting this woman do all this? She doesn't even work there

So that Peter can be in this space with her and it comes up like maybe like the top of her thigh Like she's always wading in water But he can also swim as well and it's the entire space Including the balcony they flood the balcony and I have to say this is why I chose this story because the idea of Like a flooded Indoor space. I am totally game. This is achieving so many of my childhood goals To just live in a pool all day. Yes, it sounds amazing. I forget you're a water, baby I'm total water, baby. I for Cali girl. Of course. You are a pool balcony. San Diego, of course

I'm not let me come at it from another way and I feel like you can always count on me to give like the most neurotic harrowing take on any story So here's mine. I'm very much an earth baby. I love to be in the woods I love to be like with feet firmly planted on the ground. I like to hike. I like to walk I like to be in and amongst, you know what I mean? Yeah water. I'm only okay in I didn't learn to swim until later So I I'm not I'm even still not the strongest swimmer. So to me. This just reads as like dank amateur You're not supposed to fucking waterproof and flood at the top like have you looked at the fucking floor? What is the structural integrity of the building mold?

It leaked a lot whatever beautiful visionary endless Swim you have in your mind to me This is literally like yeah, you could get athletes foot so easy is what I think like just that kind of thing pops Yeah, I definitely I have grown as a person since I was a small child and thought I could flood the house and live there I definitely had the thought okay. She's wearing a wet bathing suit 24-7. There is some bad Yeah, cootie rash for sure, but whole rough. This is really rough fucking beat like died like Like fucking probably just a permanent imprint in your skin of this And you're peeling it off. Yeah, dude. Yeah, and you're swimming around in like a dolphin is pissing and shitting in there

Oh, of course big time. Yeah, they don't chlorinate the dolphin pool. I'm pretty sure although these guys might I Chlorinate the pool so the dolphins can be clean. You're a cheese Another great idea from Margaret She designs this whole space so that there's like a suspended desk Where she can sit in the water But then like have access to like a typewriter and telephone. This is the dumbest shit I've ever heard there's another cantilevered Workspace where she has like a hot plate because she makes tea she drinks tea

And so there's a little like stove area for her. Why are we introducing a hot? That's right beside the tank That she's and then she just like put a pad there and she sleeps there every every night. She does not go home She moves in to Peter's apartment. She got lost. She got lost in the dolphin research man The dolphin house. It is she got it. She's spiraling. This is an addiction wild so wild She decides to just buzz all her hair off because it's constantly getting wet. Should we check in on this woman? You shaved your head and moved into a 24-hour dolphin research facility. Yeah You okay like

That's new. That's all new. I know I'm actually like meeting your high school friends. I mean like hey, what are you doing these days? Oh, I'm just living with a dolphin named Peter to make a long story short. I read this great book when I was five Like fucking come on It's wild and it's six days a week six days not the entire time But six days a week Peter is in this flooded lab space with Margaret like she's sleeping in her bed and he's sleeping beside her. He'll sleep as long as she sleeps Sometimes apparently she or he would wake her up and like splash water on her and get her up so that they could like play and chill He has two lessons a day for his English lessons and then all the other time is like they're just chilling

I literally had to comb through my mind be like which of the researchers is Peter and I was like Oh my god, Peter's in the fucking no dude. The Dolphin Yeah She says that when she would be sitting at her desk working on something and they weren't having a lesson or whatever Peter would come by and gingerly Take her foot and put it in his mouth and just sit there Just to be connected to her. He's essentially just like falling in love with her. Yeah Wow

Truly, this is a not a summer fling that is gonna work out. I don't think No, no, so the Bateson's the anthropologist So he has his wife and his steps on there and they're doing their work in the the title habitat That's below. So they're working with Sissy and Pamela. They're like that English language instruction is dumb and They had no ill will towards Margaret They just thought it's that that work was not as important as observing the communication between the Dolphins. Yes, I

Agree. I agree. I agree as well. I have the benefit of hindsight and common sense. So The summer of 1965 Carl Sagan who like I said before is really into speaking to aliens He gets sent down to the dolphin house so that he can report back to NASA. Oh my god, right? NASA is involved in this In my head, this just turned into weird dolphin screwing oddballs. I didn't I didn't know that this was I didn't Forgot there was government money involved in this the NASA officials were like well actually we think it's kind of important that we maybe learn And I'm quoting from Frank Drake the founder of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence Who's linked to NASA? Drake can be quoted as saying we thought that it that it was important to have the dolphins teach us

Dolphinese if there is such a thing so they're not so stoked with what's being done at the dolphin house and They specifically ask Lily. Yeah, cuz it's stupid. Oh It's so obviously stupid. Okay. Yes. Yes, I was playing Paper Mario last night and there was this quote in there that really got to me It was about how if you turn your back on a young dreamer It invites someone else to do the same to you. Hmm. So I don't want to turn my back on these heinous dolphin folks and they're dumb dream. No No, but we'll see but even these NASA folks were like hey Lily Can you can you try something for us?

Could you do an experiment where the dolphins have to talk to each other like teach one dolphin how to do something and see if It can teach the other one, you know, like they give him parameters, right? And instead Lily just instructs Margaret to continue her lessons with Peter This is partly because Lily's interests are shifting at the time. It's the mid sixties Okay, Lily is hanging out with the producer of flipper because you know Shit, yeah wife

Introduce Lily to a new drug that has been recently created LSD Lily is It was the brave new world Thing it really stayed with me. I was like she didn't mention brave new Someone's gonna give a dolphin acid was my thought. Oh Yeah, yeah, so Lily is fascinated because it's a mind-altering drug, right? The CIA believed the drug could be used for mind control. So they were testing it on people at the time

Lily is designated by the US government to do experiments with it Oh my gosh, because young dreamer never turn your back on a young dreamer. I think that might be it. Yeah He experiments with LSD on himself and at this point He kind of turns a corner and becomes like just a full blown kind of a classic story Like I'm hippie, right? And it's no surprise when Lily floats the idea to give the dolphins at the Dolphin House LSD to see how they react because he thinks maybe it'll open their minds and help them learn English better Margaret to her credit For bids Lily from administering LSD to Peter. She's like no no no no no no no

She doesn't want it to be administered whatsoever, but she has some control over the project with Peter So she's like no no no class, but that's also like a classic like don't give my boyfriend acid man. Yeah, exactly There's some other problems happening at the Dolphin House and One of them is the fact that Peter is Horny as fuck Peter the dog don't it's not another researcher. Peter's a dolphin remember that no kidding. Yeah kidding. He is a Teenage boy. He's got his girlfriend there, but they can't bang because you know well

Wow Wow Peter is so horny all the time He like rubs up on Margaret as always kind of like nudge and nudge in her She sustains minor, but injuries on her legs because Peter is keeps pushing and pushing and pushing his Sexual appetite is distracting from his lessons. So every time that he would need to Jerk off more or less, right?

They would have to transfer him be an elevator down to the tidal Habitat with sissy and Pamela so he could you know get his rocks off and concentrate again on the lesson Eventually it got so time-consuming because dolphins fuck Constantly is that so that is so they are one of the few mammals on earth including us and bonobos Shouts to a friend of the podcast Ashley judge. Yeah, so true Okay, Ashley But they are Mables who derive sexual pleasure from the act of sex. Okay, so that means that they do it

Even when procreation is not the end result. Sure, right? Sure. So a k a dolphins fucking constantly a ka Peter's horny Constantly and it gets to the point where it is so distracting from the lessons having to move him via the elevator is so Time-consuming that Margaret just decides, you know what? We're just gonna scratch that itch and we're gonna get back to the lessons. I'm gonna take one for the team

She would jerk them off. She says Peter liked to be with me He would rub himself on my knee or my foot or my hand. I allowed that I wasn't uncomfortable with it as long as it wasn't rough It would just become part of what was going on like an itch just to get rid of it Scratch it and move on and that's how it seemed to work out. It wasn't private people could observe Aka we like it when you watch Peter was right there and he this is this quote is just like oh my gosh Melt's my summer ice cream. I love it. It's such a bittersweet summer quote Peter was right there and he knew that I was right there. It wasn't sexual on my part

Sanctuous perhaps it seemed to me that it made the bond closer Not because of the sexual activity, but because of the lack of having to keep breaking and that's really all it was I was there to get to know Peter. That was part of Peter Sensual perhaps. Oh, yeah, no that was How can you say that your love for this dolphin was strictly platonic when that is like the type of sensual prose That you're writing about You jerking him off between lessons. That's from an interview 50 years down the line, too So who knows what those emotions were in that moment? My goodness

Yeah, I don't I I'm truly I'm truly at a loss for words. I'm truly at a loss for words I'm so into the idea of a young woman doing research like this. I love the idea of Fucking the institution and just you know, but not the dolphin How could you approach that and not have the idea that this would be detrimental to the experiment? This is adding a variable to the experiment. I mean, I guess when your experiment is teaching English to a dolphin You've thrown all scientific research out the window anyway. So why not just jerk the dolphin off? I don't know Have they given the dolphin acid yet? That's coming up. Don't worry

The baitsons the anthropologist and his family. Yes, the baitsons are starting to feel Like this is a super Circus tricky thing. They're even more confused why lily is allowing the English teaching to go on especially after nasa said like Hey, why don't you adjust the experiment so that we can actually learn something funders are also starting to fall away the work with dolphins is time-consuming and super expensive And lily is losing the funding to actually do any of the work that really needs to be done But in order to combat that he's like, okay, we need something kind of like big and showy So we can we need a we need a hail mary. Yeah, I want everyone to think big this brand is tanking

But we can bring it back up. We're literally tanking. We turn the second floor into a tank literally tanking exactly lily solution is We got to give these dolphins drugs. It's got to happen So His thinking is that by giving them a mind-altering drug It will open these pathways in their brains that might have been previously undiscovered learn learn more about them and It's very clear that he's obsessed with lsd. He's taking it regularly for himself And experimenting on himself. He wants to give the dolphins lsd

But then he also wants to be on lsd to see if they can like somehow commune Right margaret again is adamant that you can't do it on peter. Please don't do it on peter and he does acquiesce lily does not Inject peter with lsd, but he does Sissy and pamela. So the vet who was on staff at the dolphin house Did not recommend doing this of course He said is dumb lily, but he also said different species react differently to different pharmaceuticals So you could give he had an example like a tranquilizer made for a horse Might induce a state of excitement in a dog

The unpredictability of that is another reason that you shouldn't even do it lily even was wondering Hey, you know, he wrote this to baits in in a letter. So it's documented proof He was like, I wonder if this will make the dolphins stop breathing. Huh He gives it to them anyway. So yeah Yeah, that's that's awful. Yeah, these dolphins can't consent to this. They don't know what what's happening That's horrible. So margaret is his research assistant for this And I I'm so confused where the rest of their staff is. I don't get it margaret's like full-time volunteer. I don't Whatever because I'm a big dummy when you said we're giving the dolphins acid

I didn't think about injecting it and I thought like how many of those little papers did they have to put on their huge tongues No, I thought just like dump in the tank And it was just like liosmosis dissolve into the water. Yeah Oh, whoa, what a fountain. Yeah, I know Damn Again things like that prove that I am not a trained professional, which is why I don't do dolphin research Right. Yeah, although some of the trained professionals in this story. I wonder about as well Exactly. He injects pamela and sissy 10 minutes go by and nothing observable really happens

They're just kind of swimming chilling chilling swimming then 20 minutes go by still nothing Lily is Obviously annoyed. He wants some type of result. And so he starts thinking, okay Well, dolphins have the sonar Connection their brains are kind of wired differently for the sonar. So Maybe The lsd is activated with sound. So he trumps over to a nearby jackhammer

Gets the jackhammer and starts Jack hammering the concrete near the pool hoping that the vibration Would trigger something so stupid in the dolphins And of course, it's just incredibly loud and annoying to the dolphins They kind of swim away, but there's no discernible difference. Okay, and then the experiment ends Nothing comes of it. Which thank god nothing comes of it Because okay, the most likely thing to happen is that they would just drop fucking dead. They die. They die They die in a very distressing way likely. Yeah, thankfully that can not happen

Okay, big breath so dolphins didn't die. Okay around this time as well So this is his hail mary that completely falls flat I guess it could have fallen flatter because they could have just died, but yeah for his purposes nothing at this time hustler releases an article called interspecies sex humans and dolphins hustler that's that's a black eye And it is breaks the story an eroticized

version of an encounter between Margaret how love it. They use her name and the dolphin house between her and a dolphin It's accompanied by an illustration of a woman with her legs wrapped around a dolphin as if to fuck. Yes. Yes. Yes And it's total just kind of porny porn writing Okay, I don't know. I don't think there was any Breaking of the story because all of the masturbation that

Margaret did of Peter was observable and above board and da da da da da. So somebody on the island heard about it It was like, well, that's kind of weird. And then somebody from hustler heard about it. And it's just kind of like Right and appear someone phone a phone a friend kind of shit. Yeah Yeah, this attracted a lot of attention as you could probably imagine The Dolphin fucking? Yeah. Dolphin fucking. Yes. Yes. In hustler. So as you can also imagine the US Navy and NASA who are backing this experiment are not too fucking thrilled about what's happening. Oh no about hustler breaking the dolphin fucking story. No they wouldn't be would they? Bateson and his family are that it's just like you injected the dolphins with LSD.

We're in hustler. No thank you. The funding is completely turned off. There's no money. Of course. And in 1966 the project has these huge debts that they can't pay off. Lily is so LSD fueled that he can't concentrate on any of any of the things that are happening at the dolphin house and everything just falls apart and it falls apart quickly and pretty badly. They have to find a way to decommission the whole project which means rehoming the dolphins. Yeah of course. So they find a lab outside of Miami. They fly the three dolphins there. Margaret and Peter spend their last night together. Bittersweet summer. And Margaret knows exactly what's happening. Peter of course has no idea. Margaret describes it as kind of a misty eyed

night. Breakups are hard. And they're so hard. You know what? Do you know what I literally thought today? I thought isn't it just the saddest thing when love is not enough? Sorry Margaret we'll always have the dolphin house. She said that relationship of having to be together sort of turned into really enjoying being together. This is with Peter and wanting to be together and missing him when he wasn't there. I did have a very close encounter with and I can't say a dolphin. I had a close encounter with Peter. She says that there's no way that she could really keep the dolphin. Of course a direct quote was we couldn't elope. No I love it. I love it. Hook it to my veins. Don't have sex with animals folks but other than that it's not ethical.

Just a story to hear it. Damn what a woman. What a woman. Vet on staff at the dolphin house Andy Williamson. He noted that it's like this is he was never on board I believe with the masturbation because it created this very strange relationship that Peter wasn't fully aware of of course. Margaret was. Yeah how do you explain a concept as complicated as friends with hand jobs to to a dolphin? Exactly. Humans can set that boundary over the phone. With English. Yeah. This is why we need to teach the dolphins English. This is why so we can have to acquire consent apparently. Yeah friends but benefits consent exactly. All three of the dolphins are shipped to this facility quote unquote outside of Miami. It's a complete shithole. It's an old bake. They fled that

too. No they put up portable plastic tanks. They put up kiddie pools more or less for the animals. The bank is. Disaster. There's not a lot of light. It's an old you know they're in like a fucking vault or whatever. Yeah. The water is chlorinated here. I did find that out. They chlorinate the water. Horrific. Margaret did not know about these conditions nor did the vet neither of them signed off on this. It was John Lilly who orchestrated it. Just a few months following the transfer John Lilly calls Margaret to tell her that Peter has committed suicide. What? Yeah. So dolphins unlike us dolphins have to make a conscious effort to breathe. They don't do it automatically. Oh my god he chose not to breathe. So they can make a conscious

effort not to breathe as well. So Peter took one last breath swam to the bottom of his tiny tank. And never came up for air again. A dolphin dying of a broken heart. Yeah dude. That is some bittersweet shit. Yeah. Oh man never fall in love at the Jersey Shore Peter. No never. Poor little guy. Poor little horny guy. Poor horny Peter. Yeah. We've all been that confused horny dolphin. I know. Okay. Yeah. R.I.P. Peter. So of course many viewed this project as just a very expensive fuck up. The whole idea of teaching in English nobody really thought that was ever a good idea. I mean even NASA was like um what about dolphinese. It's like okay but still what about dolphinese. So there was no discernible way within the experiment itself

to establish that Peter was understanding the language. He was just always copying back what Margaret said. Right. He was never actually. And we already knew that their skill mimics. Yeah exactly. So it's like they really proved nothing. For Margaret even to this day she says that the project just needed more time. She felt that Peter was learning language faster. More time to do what. To masturbate the dolphin. Play. She felt that the dolphin that Peter was learning the language faster than a human child could. So she just thought you know what we need a little bit more time and we could figure this out. Whatever. But based on what. Based on what does she say that. She knows nothing. This deep, sensuous relationship with Peter. Right. She

dated the guy. Right. Exactly. She knows. Right. Right. There's was a connection of the heart. Right. Right. And sadly because all this research around dolphins it was some of the first that was happening it was so wackadoodle that a lot of researchers who came after Lily could not secure funding because everyone was like oh you know. You just want to fuck that dolphin. Yeah. This is a really good idea. Just say it buddy. Yeah. Exactly. And Lily he continues his research with dolphins and it's completely at odds with the other research around animal communication. Now it's pretty much exclusively focused on animal to animal communication and us learning how to mimic what they say. But how is he able to secure this funding? I think some of it might be

personal funding from his wealthy family. Right. I guess probably we thought differently about animal abuse in the 70s than we do now. But it seems to me all these stories about just willy-nilly injecting drugs into dolphins and masturbating them a few times a day. Keeping them in a fucking hollowing out the second floor. Like it's all very loosey-loosey-goosey. And working with them 24-7 or 24-6. Yeah exactly. It's all very loosey-goosey and it's abusive in a lot of ways and I wouldn't want to put money to that. But I guess it was probably just seen more as like a curio, a wacky thing, a weird thing as opposed to like yo this is animal abuse. He was putting things into their brains. Yeah. I'll also say like his continued research involves communicating via musical tones

with dolphins but also which sounds like that might be kind of interesting but he's also interested in telepathic communication with dolphins. Okay so more wackadoodle shit. He befriends actor Jeff Bridges. We love a cameo. We love a cameo. Jeff Bridges calls him an explorer of the mind. That's not untrue. I mean I'm just imagining that in the voice of the dude right? Yeah. You know he's an explorer of the mind. Yeah I feel that. But the good thing that comes out of it is that with time, with reflection, Lily realizes that the dolphins are so intelligent and he shouldn't be keeping them in captivity. No shit how you didn't realize at the beginning. I don't know. So he kind of switches his thinking about what the dolphins can offer him and instead thinks about

their welfare. How novel. Lily is the first person to apply for and utilize a permit to release dolphins into the wild. He becomes a spokesperson for protecting dolphins in the wild and in captivity based on his work and through his activist work. I don't know if that's really the word but the US does pass the Marine Animal Protection Act. Is that dolphins and tuna? Dolphins and tuna. There we go. Even though he did all these bad things he does recognize it as being bad and through that recognition at least some good could come of the horrible experiments. Okay. Our girl Margaret. Yeah that's the real star of the show here for me. Yeah. You can find an academic on acid in the 60s if you chuck a rot. I know. Margaret's one of a kind I think.

She really is. She is really bummed to hear about Peter's death. Yes. Of course shortly after everything was disbanded she married the photographer of the experiments. So the guy who was there taking pictures of the masturbation sessions became her husband. Tell me his name is Peter. No I don't know. Oh tell me it's Peter. Tell me his name is Peter. It's Peter. It's Peter. I'll just it's Peter. I'll take it. I'll take it. Or she definitely calls him Peter. Yeah I was gonna say. They have three beautiful girls and they refab the dolphin house into a habitable home for their five person family. What? And they live in the dolphin house for 10 years. This story has everything. Anything and everything you could ever dream and want. Okay. Acid check. Dolphin sex check. Check.

This is crazy. And then and then they come and they do they flip it. They flip the house and live there. They flip the house. I would definitely watch that show. Flip my dolphin house. Yeah dude that is the story of the dolphin house. It is now totally in disrepair. It is being eaten away by the tide. Just a shell of of what it once was. What was it once though really. But what was it once. I don't quite understand. Research facility yes but only because it does the most with the fewest words but there really was a whole lot of nothing. Weird nothing happening in that house. Wow. Yeah I know. Though I don't know a pool on your balcony. I'm still like I'm so in love with it. That's still the dream. The story hasn't talked you out of that. Still the dream. No it's

still the dream. All the yeast infections. I don't care. Still the dream. Scratch that itch. Move on. Live the dream. Fair to use as you do as you do. Thanks for tuning in. If you want more infamy go to bittersweetinfamy.com or search for us wherever you find podcasts. We usually release new episodes every other Sunday. You can also follow us on Instagram at bittersweetinfamy. If you like the show consider subscribing leaving a review or just telling a friend. Stay sweet. The sources that I used for this episode were the 2014 BBC4 documentary The Girl Who Talked Dolphins directed by Christopher Riley. He also wrote an article for The Guardian in June 2014 called

The Dolphin Who Loved Me the NASA funded project that went wrong. I listened to a radio lab episode entitled Hello published August 20th 2014 where they interviewed Margaret Howe Love It and then of course I looked at the Wikipedia's for Margaret Howe Love It and John C. Lilly. The song that you are now listening to is Tea Street by Brian Steele.