Citation Needed - Stranded with Dragons

Episode Date: May 27, 2026

Rinca[a] is a small island near Komodo and Flores island, East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia, within the West Manggarai Regency. It is one of the three largest islands included in Komodo National Park. The island is famous for Komodo dragons, giant lizards that can measure up to 3 metres (9.8 ft) long. Rinca is also populated with many other species such as wild pigs, buffalos and many birds.

Hello and welcome to Citation Needed. The podcast where we choose a subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia, and pretend we're experts. We use this to the internet, and that's how it works now. I'm Eli Bosnick, and I'll be plunging into the depths of this story this week, but I'll need some barnacles to cling to my sides. First up, two of the only men who have subjected themselves to more pain than the topic of this week's essay, the host of the No Rogan Experience, Cecil and Marsh.

Yeah, it's getting to a point where it's more painful to listen to George, than it would be to just get in a ring with him. Like, at least if he was picking me, he wouldn't be trying to explain to me how immigrants are trying to hack the congressional map. You don't know that. He might do both. Immigrants from the UK. And also joining us tonight,

two men way too shellfish to star in this story, Tom and he. Oh, geez. Terrible injuries like this make me so crabby, I feel like clamming up. Like Ben Shapiro's wife. Before we begin tonight, I'd like to take a moment to thank our patrons. Patrons, without you, we'd be lost at sea.

And if you'd like to learn how to join their ranks, be sure to stick around to the end of the show. And with that out of the way, tell us, Cecil. What person-place thing, concept, phenomenon, or event will we be talking about today? Today we're going to be talking about being stranded with dragons. And Tom, you found yet another story of daring do that ended in disaster. Are you ready to gloat? I am, although I am also worried I'm building like fate a bucket list for me at this point. I don't know how comfortable I am.

So tell us, Tom, what is stranded with dragons? You know, listeners may have noticed that, you know, from time to time, the subject of my rather less than ideal luck has occasionally come up, by which I mean to say that Eli revels daily in regaling everyone in shouting distance of the witch's curse that has been afflicting me. and it is true that perhaps the last half decade or so haven't been among my personal best. And perhaps that is why I have such a pension for finding stories of the hapless and miserable. Maybe by burying myself in these stories, I can find some way to gain control of my own narrative. Possibly in reading these moments of extreme hardship and misery, I can contrast and reorient myself against them and find perspective amidst the chaos of an indifferent and capricious universe. verse. But also, and I'm actually thinking this one might be it, when disaster strikes and it

misses me and my loved ones, reveling in the misfortune of others, in fact, makes me temporarily happy. Because as bad as shit is at times, so far, there have not been any surprise dragons. Tom, the way Tom winds down is to listen to Cormick McCarthy audiobooks and drink multiple shots of Mallory. That's how he spends one for the rules. Yeah. also for clarity tom you didn't have a bad decade you had one good year that lulled you into a false security that's fucking true that is mother fed you to a turtle i think it was like three good years though yeah yeah tom's life is so bad that going into business with eli bosnick doesn't even make the short list of worse things that have happened to it no man and now we will discover

the same cannot be said for Jim and Charlotte. Wish I had Tom's life. Manning. A Jim, a former combat green beret, met his girlfriend, Charlotte, while backpacking through Southeast Asia on leave. The two hit it off immediately, each one an adventurer and a free spirit, and both shared a love of diving. Oh, Jim left the army in 2006. He and Charlotte headed to Thailand, where they bounced around as scuba instructors, earning just enough money to finance their own dives all around the world. In a short period of time, the pair dived everywhere, from the Philippines, Australia, to New Zealand, as well as Malaysia, and frequently in Indonesia.

Now, the pair decided this time on a weeks-long dive trip in Indonesia, specifically the Flores Sea, which is one of those places that look so stunning, the pictures are probably bullshit. In order to see as much of the famed reefs as possible, Jim and Charlotte signed on with a bunch of other lunatics to do something called drift diving. Now, I had no idea what this was, probably because it is, fucking nuts. Basically, drift diving is going underwater, finding the strongest possible underwater current, and then just surrendering yourself to the whims of the ocean as it sweeps you along in whatever direction, at whatever speed, the ocean chooses. While on the surface, the support boat

tries to guess where you may pop up. And it does not always work out. What you are describing is American politics, but six billionaires are the current. That's what you're describing. Yeah, I just do not understand the appeal of any activity that involves guesswork on behalf of the thing that keeps you alive. There's a reason why the trapeze artists have a safety net and don't just rely on six clowns eyeballing it with a bedshed. Okay, they're saying like the famed reefs of the Flores Sea, very important. I just looked at so many parts of those famed reefs. I just looked it up on the fucking internet. I saw wet cactus and rocks.

And there was a turtle who was mad at me somehow. Done. I did it. No reason. Yeah. Podcast listener, Heath has included this turtle in our notes and he looks like someone who owes him money is trying to convince him to

buy Bitcoin instead of get paid back. It's pretty interesting. It's curious. On June the 5th, 2008 at 3 p.m., the group of experienced divers, including Jim and Charlotte were exactly where man has no fucking business being. Just deep underwater, body surfing, and undersea river with no control over where they are going. Despite the fact that scuba diving is spitting in the face of God, tempting faith,

and intruding on an alien world that does not care about you in the least, the dive portion of the program was going just fine. It wasn't until an hour later when the group surfaced that things began to go awry. The sky was gone. Completely gone. So the group congregates at the surface, they look around for their support boat, which they find only 100 feet away,

but moving away from them. Okay, please tell me it was ditching them for being fucking insufferable. Now, no one is worried, yet. They all thought the boat would just circle around the nearby island before returning, at which point they would just be able to signal to it.

And there's a whole process here to ensure that the boat finds you. There is a special inflatable orange buoy and whistles. That's the process, actually. That's the whole process. There's no GPS or waterproof sap phones. It's you versus Poseidon,

but you have a whistle. Okay, yeah, that's handy because the one thing we know about the high seas is that they're famously silent enough for you to hear. Okay, this instructor's giving out the safety stuff. That's one of those moments of like, oh, you're done? You're not. You're not done handing out safety devices.

You have to unveil something with like lasers and satellites and nanobots. Orrota a giant sheet. Well, you know, sometimes you often get like a very, very small flashlight as well. So, you know, you're well catered. Now, another problem with drift diving is that sometimes the same strong currents that are underwater are also present at the surface. We're getting ahead of ourselves. Another problem with drift diving is the very idea of drift diving. Also, I keep picturing the fast and the furious guys doing this.

The dive group popped up only 100 feet from the boat when they first came up, but just 10 minutes later, a strong. current was pulling them further and further away from the loop that the support boat was making. Jim had concerns. This is a quote of Jim's. Quote, the dive boat did like a lap of the island where we'd surfaced and hadn't seen us, so they must have assumed that we were underwater or something. And the dive boat did like a lap or a couple of loops around the island. It was a small island that we'd been diving. I'd done it a couple of loops and still not and not been heading in our direction.

So I'm starting to get concerned now that it's not, because it's not drifting with us. It doesn't know that we're not at the island anymore, you know? So I'm starting to think, hang on a minute. We're getting quite small now in terms of like a person looking for you and you're going to be quite a small target to look for on the surface of the water. Very well said, Jim. Well said. Wait a second. This is a terrible way to see facts.

Yeah, like you're a small target for the boat looking to find you. but silver lining, you're a pretty big target for anything in the water that might want to kill you. An hour later, and the quickly tiring group of divers watched as the dive boat in the distance completed its last loop before speeding off. Away from the now stranded divers treading water in the ocean that they did not even have to go into at all. For any reason. Now, for his part, Jim understands what's happening. The divers were a two and a half hour boat ride away from the marina that they had departed on Flores Island. The boat was certainly low on fuel.

It was also starting to get dark. And the dive group was starting to get separated as the powerful currents began to peel the tired group apart from one. This is like every Gen X's parent. I said I'd be there at seven. You weren't there. So I left. That's on you. That's on you.

Okay. But I feel like the current separating them, that's another one of those silver linings. because by that point, they must have been running really low on topics of conversation. I spy with my little I, something beginning with, oh,

yes, it was ocean again. Your turn. Marco. Nobody wants to play. Okay. Try with the whistle. It'll play better with the whistle.

Now, Evan, the dive instructor, is just losing his shit, but no one is losing their shit as badly as Charlotte. There's a quote. Sharr had, for one of a better word, a bit of a kind of meltdown panic attack, really. She was really hysterical. She started crying really loudly.

She was really upset. So I said to her, look, you know, you got to snap out of this, basically, because there's nothing we can do. You know, like crying isn't going to help. There's nothing we can do to help ourselves except swim and try and get some kind of land. So we can't, you know, just like waste our energy crying. you didn't tell me this episode also had amazing marriage advice, Tom.

This shows a bit of a two for everybody. Cool, Charlotte, you're being weird about this. Hey, instructor, guard, please tell Charlotte that we don't have time for me to watch my tone because, you know, drowning. That's why I don't have time to watch my tone. Now, Jim's suck it up buttercup, tough love pep talk strangely worked,

but almost certainly only because Charlotte wanted to keep as much presence of mind as possible to enjoy watching Jim get eaten by a shark so she could masturbate to it later. The rest of the group wasn't faring so well. And Evan, the dive leader, is berating himself and apologizing for probably getting everyone killed. I mean, like... Sure.

Yeah. All right. Guys, I just remembered aquariums exist. Fuck. God. I feel like such an asshole. Yeah, man. Also, Google, I just looked at this stuff.

But don't feel about it. We're out here like doing it for real. We're touching grass, right? Right. Like that's, okay, but seriously, we need to touch grass, like on land. It's like, the expression is like the opposite right now. You gotta stop crying. Jim decides the first thing to do is to make sure that no one drifts off too far and cannot be retrieved.

So he clips carabiners to link everyone up. And now it's time for another patented Green Beret Jim Pep Talk in which he sagely informs everyone who's also watched the boat drive away two hours ago that they will have to save themselves. Right, yeah, time to just pull yourself up by your flipper straps, like the American way. Luckily, they aren't really truly in the middle of nowhere yet. There's actually a bunch of little islands and other non-oceanic masses about, and they just have to get to one of them. This is quite a bit easier said than done.

They're caught in a powerful current, so I love this. Every time they see an island and desperately swim toward it, the current just sweeps them on past the island. And this happens over and over. Spotland, swim like hell, get dragged right past the island, and it's now full ass dark. Like, there's like five people swimming their asses off, like together with a rope and one guy in the back getting pulled,

lounging with an umbrella drink. Guys, it's like a Ouija board. Who is moving it left? Somebody is moving it. We're going right. Yeah, I mean, they're just lucky that there were all those little landmasses. there in the Flores Ocean because they were spat out by the nearby volcano, the Flores Lava. Amazing.

I could hear the smile in your voice. So good. Three sentences. So good. Bravo. Then they saw the shark. Which wasn't a shark. It was a log.

But Charlotte flipped the fuck out again. Because she thought it was a shark. Hey, you know where that never happens? Everywhere that's not the ocean, Charlotte. Yeah. And the thing is, that's awkward because now Jim has to correct her about the shark without making it seem like he's calling a stupid for thinking it was a shark. No, he didn't say it with a condescending tone of voice. Look, I mean, just not have this conversation under the other flotson.

We have to be able to just say things right now. Dr. Glover said it's the truth is important. This is like the most important truth moment. One doesn't matter now. Anyway, the group put the log in the center between them and then they all link themselves. around it. It's not been six hours since they surfaced, and this is the first time that they got to pause treading water, which is good, but they had no idea anymore where they were. The current was dragging them south past the rings of small islands and closer to the endless void of the

open ocean. If they could not find a way to get to land, they'd be in the middle of the Indian Ocean by morning. Guys, I know this looks bleak, but if we get swept out into the ocean and drown, So will Charlotte. Emotions are just as valid as the facts of not drowning Jim. Somebody tell Jim that. Also, it is... God, the couples fight that must be... Oh, God, 100%.

I would have just drowned. Imagine being one of the other guys. Uncliffing and just sliding under the water. Just two of the other people. So where did you go to college? Where did you go and just talk around them? Was brown fun? Now also, it is fucking cold.

Well, sort of. The water temperature is actually quite nice. It's 81 degrees. But the human body is supposed to be quite a lot warmer than that. So over enough time, bobbing around like assholes in the water, they're losing a tremendous amount of body. Oh, yeah. Cut to the survivors of the Titanic looking on as these assholes got to bob in the temperature of a slightly too tepid bath. I've been the ones to choose to do that in the first place.

Oh, and also it sucks ass to just bob at the surface of the water for hours. So a couple of them just started puking all the time. So now they were freezing and puking and the waves were picking up because the ocean wants to eat your fucking bones. That's what it's there for. And you know Charlotte is one of those other people throwing up makes me throw up drama queens like that. Don't, uh-huh.

Okay, I know we're not there yet, but we're eating Charlotte first, right? Like, we all agree. I'm logging that in. She's first to eat if we start eating a human. She's still crying and vomiting at the same time. Like, she's almost... She's too now. All right, now two hours later, the hydrated and exhausted, they spot Komoto Island,

which was the last major landmass between them and the hopeless vastness of the endless open ocean. Hope was dwindling until Jim spotted what appeared to be the silhouette of another island. in the darkness, and it couldn't have happened at a better time because the current they were in had begun to loosen. The group had a new target, some hope, and a lot of desperation. They began paddling their driftwood log as hard and as fast as they could muster. Just getting to land doesn't mean anything if you cannot get on the land. So the island just jutted up from the sea. It's far too pointy and vertical to make a landing until Jim spotted a portion of the island that appeared to be a bit lighter,

and which might mean that there was a beach he could use to scramble ashore. And despite the protestations of the group, Jim unclipped himself from the relative safety of the log circle took off swimming on his own. God, I hate him so much. I don't know why I'm married. He's about to say recon, by the way. He's going to say recon.

Go do some recon, babe. Okay, but I feel this is a win-win for the group because either Jim gets them onto land or they no longer have to put up with Jim. So very much a Jim, Jim, take Charlotte with you. Now as he nears the shore, the waves

batter him, pushing him down under the water, which I thought he was into. That's the whole reason that that. And raking him across hard rock and jagged coral, but eventually he makes his way to the island and finds a way on shore, whereupon he immediately begins flagging down the group so they know that he made it and to encourage them to

come themselves. He's a fucking green beret. If I could do it. Dude, stop doing burpees, okay? Diverle. He's about to say op-sec. He's going to yell opt-ex from all the way over there. I don't know how that's useful to us. There's a lot of obstet over here.

Maintain. A one-by-one. High school was hard for me. A one-by-one, the exhausted group are each washed ashore. They had just spent 11 hours. alone in the ocean, treading water and trying to stay alive without a drop of water to drink. And the group was elated to be out of the water,

which I should note would not have been a problem at all if they just stayed the hell out of it in the first place because they didn't need to get into this trouble at all. But all they had to do now was find food, water, and rescue. And it would help if they knew, you know, where the fuck they were. Another intrepid dive instructor thought they had landed on an island called PADAR. Now, Padar would be good news,

Although it's remote as fuck, it's full of dense jungle, and it's uninhabited, it had enough wildlife to sustain them, and it was visited frequently by local fishermen. So rescue is just a matter of time. They were not, it turns out, on Padar. All right. Well, unless you're listening to this podcast in the middle of the ocean, you are in a better spot than our subject. So we'll take a quick break for a little apropos of nothing. Introduce it, the realistic rescue crew. Realistic rescue crew round up.

What is it, Blaze? Kid Comet. A school bus got caught in a mudslide. I'm on it like comet. Awesome. Come in, Grumbles. Grumbles. Are you still stopping that earthquake in New Mexico?

Grumbles. Uh-oh. The danger alarm. Rescue crew, you've got to help. Some hikers got lost in the woods. No. Sorry, what? Sorry, ma'am, we're a realistic rescue crew.

If you got lost hiking and we save you, you're going to go hiking again. It's totally not worth it. Okay, but like, it is still an emergency. I didn't say it wasn't, but there's a finite amount of time and resources, man, so... Wow, you guys suck. No, your friends suck. Gumbles! The realistic rescue crew.

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Go to buy raycon.com slash citation open to get 15% off. Thanks, Raycon for sponsoring. Guys, I'm from the future. Don't let Nicola get groceries this afternoon. Again? Damn it! Hey, Elon, what's wrong? I just lost another sale.

A sale? On what? Let me see. This one is merch for Marsh did COVID.com. The stupid website shop didn't work. Yeah, those can be tricky, and you got a lot of websites. I really do. I can think of a solution.

Marsh! That's brilliant. Eli, you should use Shopify. What's? Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world, and 10% of all e-commerce in the U.S. From household names like Mattel and Skims, the brands just getting started.

I don't know, Heath. What if I've just got an idea? or like a sweet picture of a frog that I drew. Well, Shopify helps you get started with your own design studio. With hundreds of ready-to-use templates, Shopify helps you build a beautiful online store that matches your brand's style. Amazing, but I don't know if I can handle all the paperwork

and bookkeeping that comes with running a store. Well, don't worry, Shopify takes care of all that for you, from inventory to payments to analytics and more. No need to save multiple websites or try to figure out what platform is hosting the tool that you need. Everything is all in one place, making your life easier and your business operations smooth. Or you can just let people live their lives in peace. Already getting a lot of hate mail here.

It's time to turn those what ifs into with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at Shopify.com slash citation. Go to Shopify.com slash citation. That's Shopify.com slash citation. All right, Heath, thanks. Maybe do a bit more magic. Mars, you're interrupting the mandatory Shopify sound. Sorry.

There it is. And we're back. When we left off, everyone stranded on Gilligan's Island sucked. Especially Charlotte. Who I hate them. Jesus Christ. But the point was, they're not on Panda Island. They're not, but they don't know that yet.

And they're all just so relieved to be out of the water they hunker down on the rocks for the night to sleep, hoping the situation in the morning would seem less dire. The cove they found saved them from being swept out to sea, but it was bounded by steep cliffs and thick jungle. And while it was true that fishermen regularly visited Patar Island, they had no way to know if anyone ever visited this little cove of it. And they were going to need to do a bit of reconnoitering.

So Jim and Kath, the dive instructor, set off into the jungle in their rubber dive suits and swimsuits to help find food or water or help or fucking anything really. I feel like we should take off the flippers for this. I don't want to lose them. So what they found

were cliff faces, which are, it's not helpful, not helpful at all. Now, the only way to continue was to climb. But Kath was not about that life and turned back, leaving Jim to face the cliff faces alone. The climbing was not the only problem, though.

Quote, I put my hands on the top, and as I pulled myself up, I was literally about three or four foot away from this snake, and it kind of looked at me and then just disappeared back into the bush behind it. So I was like, God, that was lucky. That was in my head.

I was thinking, man, if I'd put my hand over the top and grab that thing, that probably would have been me. He taps the tiger sitting next to him. You see that fucking snake? Jesus Christ. Yeah, no, totally.

Good thing you're doing recon, man. That's smart. I'm a tiger. I do like the idea that Jim was planning on all the way of getting back to the group and then telling them, oh, you'll never believe how near I came to encountering a reptile guys. Oh, you'll never believe it. Now, meanwhile, back at the cove, Helena is sleeping. Lawrence is on lookout duty for boats, while Kath and Schar gather sticks in hope of making a fire.

Yeah, sure, Helena. Yeah, you take a nap. We totally don't mind doing all of the work of trying to keep us all along. Now, this is when they come to the realization that they are, as I mentioned before, not on Patar Island. Now, how do they figure it out? Well, Padar has zero Komodo dragons on the island. And this island had not zero Komoto dragons. And one of them was aggressively approaching the group.

I'd like to tell you about our Lord and Savior T.M.F. The five-headed dragon starts coming at him. twipped, arrowed by a guy from North Sentinel Island, everybody gets one. Okay, so is this where we find out that the whole dragon bit of Komodo dragon is, you know, it's actually something of a misnomer, they don't breathe fire or like hard gold.

They're actually more like big, scaly, friendly puppy dogs. Is that what we're going to find? Well, I'm glad you asked. A brief note on Komoto dragons. They are terrifying. They are the largest lizards in the world. They can run faster than you, climb faster than you, and they're

saliva is toxic. Okay, but FYI, those first two are not impressive boats. I'm a 42 year old podcaster. At this point, the running and the climbing claims, that's just resume padding by the dragon. Excel,

word. I can run faster than a podcast. All right, shuttle run, race, Komoto Dragon. Let's fucking go. All right, and they do. They do attack people from time time. And by from time to time, they are definitely not more afraid of us than we are of them.

That is not true of Komoto dragons. These are not the sort of critters anyone is glad to see lumbering towards them. Because if they are lumbering towards you, they are trying to eat you. Non-sexily, they are trying to eat you non-sexely. Gee dog, I checked with the internet and there's no way to get eaten by a dragon that is an extremely sexy to some people. Okay. In fairness, though, Komoto dragons look like Dwayne the Rockies. Johnson was a dinosaur. And Eli, I told you that in confidence. So the group spots the dragon

coming at him and they all throw a bunch of shit at it, like dive belts and boots and sticks. And presumably a sleeping Helena because she's got a stupid use. And the dragon, it slows down, but it doesn't stop. There's over a thousand hungry Komodo dragons on this tiny

island. Like, pretty much the whole island actually is just Komodo Dragons. Eventually, this one gets tired of being pelted with random shit and it lumberes off, which means you've got about 999 of these things to go. That was pretty lucky that the pelting with objects worked. It really is. So I was reading about Moto Dragons. They can swallow a goat hole in like 15 minutes.

And they actually try to speed that up by grabbing the goat in their giant loosely articulated jaws that can, again, eat a goat hole, and then they smash the goat against a tree to force it down their throat faster. I've seen Tom do that with a standard.

Yeah, Tom does that with pizza, man. Is there a different way to eat? Yeah, I don't. It's weird. Tommy has his own eating tree. He just stands by. He's got one inside, too, next to the dining table. I know. It's crazy. He just smashes against the ficus. I don't have a whole tree.

in the house, it's just a stump. He's empty. He's a pan of food in his mouth and smashes his face against the tree. Meanwhile, Jim has no idea that he's on a dragon infested island, but he's running into a rough patch himself.

After climbing a bunch of dangerous shit, he finds himself stranded with no way to keep going forward to cross the island in a straight line. So he's then forced to climb back down the vertical rock face. And now he needs a new plan. So he then climbs out onto the rock

of the shoreline. It begins picking his way carefully around the outer edges of the island navigating from sharp rock and massive waves to the next sharp rocks and massive waves until Jim gets to a much much larger cove where he decides to wait out the night and hope for fishing boats

in the morning. There are no fishing boats, but there are boats. There's lots of them, actually. And they're in the distance. Probably heading to the island they think they're on that they are definitely not on. So Jim yells and waves and jumps up and down,

but none of the boats in the distance can see him. Did he try blowing his whistle? I don't know if he brought it. He didn't say. I'm making his noise. No, I'm not. Why can't I do it?

It would be funny if it was a carnival whistle. You know, like a little Yes. Why would you give us a slide whistle? That's funnier. It says a funny rescue. I got a kazoo. That's crazy.

Now then miraculously, a boat stops being a giant cocktees and it starts heading toward the island. This is not a fishing boat. This is a speedboat and is also very clearly a rescue boat. And waving back at him from that rescue boat is Charlotte. And sitting next to her is an angry Cromoto dragon complaining about the eminence on the island. See Charlotte on the boat and he's like, no, I'm good. I see, back at cove number one, the group had laid out their orange buoys

in the shape of a cross in the hopes of attracting help. And they were also... From Jesus. They were also just fighting off more and more Komodo dragons. Like, while Helena was sleeping, a dragon emerged from the jungle.

And it grabbed her wetsuit hood and started dragging her by the hood back into the jungle. And then another emerged. Okay. So she'd slend up. through the first dragon attack by this point.

That happens sometimes, Marsh. Yeah, people don't sleep through them. You can sleep through fires, anything. Yeah, she's on a weird sleep schedule, lots of things. Like, it does actually sink up occasionally when the day cycles around, but it takes a while to cycle back around. Tom not included, because he has smush,

smur, smearst strength. How many Komoto dragons do you think we could fight off? Oh, zero. Negative one. Yeah, I don't. Pass. Cecil Joyce,

the dress. Caesar just gets to the sense of which way the wind is going. I'm on the dragon side. All the dragons

start answering to Cecil. He becomes their leader now. He's wearing one of their skins within an hour. Now,

Helena managed to get to her feet and grab a large rock which she smashed down on the lizard's head. Jesus Christ. made it run off while the others pelk it third dragon with stones until it

retreated to the edge of the jungle. Now, remember when I said there's like a thousand of these things on the island, that's bullshit. I was lying. It's more like there's about 1,500. There's about 1,500 on this. No, I look this up. There's 1,500 minimum. I went to a smaller number. They managed to scare off

three. They got to scare off three. So it's just a matter of time before their luck would run out. Guys, we got to hurry. The dragons are starting dude bro podcasts about the great human replacement theory? It's like a whole thing. Did you know that the stranded divers? They're actually counted as part

of the census. It's all just a big con so they can redraw the voting maps for Dragon Island. Now, thankfully for everyone, a massive search and rescue operation was in full swing. And not long after fighting off their third Komoto dragon, a speedboat appeared. And the group quickly flagged it down

and clambered aboard. Okay. The group of divers, not the group of dragons. to be clear. I do like the idea of the dragons leaving because now that all these white western free divers have moved in and gentrified the neighborhood,

they want out. My tree is $1,500 a month. What does that even mean? And I love this next part because now, now they had to go rescue Jim. Who had left them to rescue them? But who did not accomplish

fucking anything? And as I alluded to earlier... A dude recon! The boat reconnoitering. It's confusing. A tiger told me it's actually it's reconnaissance, but not reconnoitering. But I was doing both.

Fuck you guys. I didn't tell him that. He said he was going to make up that I told him that so that he could correct himself later. Get out of the sketch, Tiger. I'm a metaphor for Dharma that's actually deeply problematic if you look into it.

Jesus Christ. It's going so badly for me. As I alluded to earlier, the boat spotted him picking himself for cariously from outcropping to outcropping and waiting to be hit by a wave to be swept out to sea. And very sadly, everyone ends up pretty uneventfully making their way to dry land. But I do want to end it with this. There are only five islands in the whole world that have Komodo dragons five.

And that is out of nearly 17,000 that make up just Indonesia. And they washed up on one of them. Jesus Christ. All right, Tom, if you had to summarize what you learned in one sentence, what would it be? My luck is bad, but it is not surprise Komodo Dragon Bad. Yet. And are you ready for the quiz? Absolutely.

All right, Tom, who should do the soundtrack or the movie? A, outcastaway. B, the drifters, obviously that would be a good one. C, marooned five. Amazing. So good. Imagine Komodo Dragons. I love it.

Imagine Komodo Dragons is fucking great. That's it. You nailed it. Okay, Tom. What do we know about the video game adaptation of this story? A, the genre won't be a padar PG. B, the worst bit won't be the underwater level. C, it will only be available on the Komodo 64.

or is it D it'll definitely have a Dragon drop Dragon drop Dragon drop is amazing it's got to be D dragon drop That's right All right Tom

What's the travel website For the Dragon Island called A gack.co.uk U.K B basilisk serve C Gila monster.com or D

Christian Science Monitor Christian Science Monitor. I don't know how these are good. But I feel like Basilisk serve. Correct. It takes it back in the night. I'm going to Baselisk. You are incorrect.

It is Christian Science Monitor. I'm sorry. All right. Well, it looks like Cecil's the one to stump our essay is this week, which means Cecil, you are this week's winner. I will choose Marsh for next week. Okay. Excellent. All right.

Well, for Tom, Marsh, Cecil, and Heath. I'm you labosnik. Thank you for hanging out with us today. We'll be back next week. And by then, Marsh, be an expert on something else. Between now and then, you can listen to our podcasts

and the podcast places. And if you like to help keep this show going, you can make a per episode donation to patreon.com slash citation pod or leave us a five-star review everywhere you can. And if you'd like in touch with us, check out past episodes,

connect with us on social media, or check the show notes. Be sure to check out citationpod.com. Oh, really? Well, maybe you'd like to check out, I don't know, every Pokemon ever? well then call me back when you're feeling reasonable. Whoa. Who's that?

It was Clip-Cop Tom. He says Grumbles is derivative of his brand and he wants an apology. Grumble! Yikes indeed, Grummels. Yikes indeed.