Stuff You Should Know - How Shark Attacks Work

Episode Date: August 10, 2012

A shark attack is a terrifying experience for the victim -- but are sharks really man-eating monsters with a taste for human flesh? Join Josh and Chuck as they ask why sharks attack, how attacks occur and which sharks are most likely to attack someone. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to The War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always is Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And this is Stuff You Should Know. That's right. A Shark Week edition. Shark Week edition.

Happy Shark Week, Chuck. Happy Shark Week, John. In honor of Shark Week, I got you a little present. Wow. Yeah. What is that? It's the Jabberjaw DVD box set. That's awesome. Thank you. Yeah. I was going to get you speed buggy. If I am correct, then this should be coming out the Thursday before Shark Week. Oh, good timing.

Yeah. So Shark Week actually starts in three days on Sunday. I'm so embarrassed that I give you your present early. No, that's okay. Okay. We like to open on Christmas Eve here. Are you doing okay? You feeling good? Yeah. I thought that we wouldn't be able to find anything here to do on Sharks, but we never really covered specifically Shark Attacks. Yeah. I think it's high time we did because I think that thanks to a growing,

growingly, increasingly enlightened populace, sharks are losing a lot of the bad rap they had. Yeah. For many, many years. Since 1975. Yeah. And I feel like we're here to kind of hasten that along a little bit. And strike fear into your hearts. Well, yeah, it depends. This is going to be kind of a rollercoaster ride because this article is a rollercoaster ride.

We're talking about how shark attacks work. That's right. And we should say first and foremost right off the bat that you can make a pretty good case that almost all shark attacks are cases of mistaken identity. Yeah. I don't know if this is a real stat, but Gary Atkinson, who is a diver, says 90% or more are just big mistakes. 90% or more usually in the case, not a real stat.

Probably not. But I bet it's pretty high because... Especially when it's contained in a book that has an exclamation point in the title. Sharks don't like people. We're not fatty enough for them. They don't seek us out. They don't like the way we taste. Yep. And when they bite us, they probably think we are a big turtle or a sea lion. Yeah. That's what's going on.

And when you look at the photo, was it bioluminescence? We talked about looking up from the ocean. Yeah, it occurred to me too. And you see the silhouette. A dude on a surfboard or a lady on a surfboard looks an awful lot like a sea turtle or a sea lion. Yeah. If you're interested, go to howstuffworks.com and type in how shark attacks work. And on the first page, there's a pretty cool little illustration of how a surfer looks like a sea turtle or a sea lion.

Look at that. I wouldn't know what to eat. Spitting image. Yep. The point is, by looks, you may look like a sea lion. Once the shark figures out that you're not, however, it's probably going to leave you alone. The great white, we should say. Yeah. But of course, it may be too late at that point. In between those two points, the shark's going to bite you probably.

Probably. Yeah. Especially if it's a great white. That's pretty much the number one reason for shark attacks, like we said, is you are confused for another food source. And if it is a great white and you are bitten, it will probably leave you alone and not come back. Right. And depending on the severity of that first bite, that test bite, as they call it, which A, could be, I think, your food or B, apparently, there's a food chain of sharks even.

Well, they will bite another shark to say, get away from me. And I know I didn't hurt you that bad because you're a shark, but if you're human, all of a sudden, your midsection is missing. That's another explanation for shark attacks aggression. Yeah. If the sharks are, if they are just messing around with one another when they do it to you, that hurts. Confusion, aggression, hunger is another one, too.

And if you're, like, say, a spear fisherman and you're just laying waste to, like, a school of fish, and the fish are flapping around and they're bleeding, you have two huge stimulus. There's a stimuli. Yeah. Man, this whole bailout, just screw me up, man, that the sharks can pick up. That they are especially designed, if you believe in intelligent design, to pick up blood in the water. Yeah. And they can smell that stuff for miles, dude.

For miles. And I couldn't find any actual real stat on that. I think I've seen, like, another one of those shark stats, though, which are always a little hinky, which is like, they can smell blood, like a drop of blood for five miles or something like that. Right. Yeah. But they can, they can smell some blood. They can smell some blood.

Yeah. The other way that they're being attracted is the fish flapping around actually generates electrical impulses. Yeah. And the shark have an organ called the ampulee of Lorenzini. You should say this, Chuck. Ampulee of Lorenzini. Yes. Which is basically a series of tubes that are connected, that connect the exterior of the skin

with electricity or electrical sensing cells. Yeah. That basically it's another way of sharks detecting movement, prey. Yeah, it's on the snout. So when you have a bunch of fish dying, it's going to attract the shark. And if you're standing in the middle of it, the shark's not really going to care what you look like or what you're doing. It's just so worked up.

It's going to bite you. Yeah. And confused maybe. Yeah. What I learned from this article is you don't want to confuse a shark. No. And you don't want to be standing in the middle of their prey, like a big mass of their prey. Okay. And also too, I know we pointed this out before in the, I think how to defend yourself, but the Ampulee of Lorenzini, kind of botched that one, it's in the snout.

So that's why they tell you to try and headbutt or punch the shark in the mouth over in the snout. Can you imagine taking a sock right to the electrical cells? I can't imagine delivering that punch, like having the wear with all to be like, oh, I'm supposed to punch you now, but I'm missing an arm. I think you, I think you might surprise yourself. You just react? If you have a healthy ego, then you would, yeah, you'd probably punch that shark. I don't.

I don't, you can't say that. You just haven't been put in any life-threatening situations yet. Oh, okay. Yet. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana.

Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty.

It starts as guilty. Cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

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Hold on. There's another good explanation for why sharks attack. Why? Defense. Oh, they feel threatened. Yeah, by humans. Oh, divers that tug on the nurse shark. Yeah, the nurse shark's a big one that likes to attack

when somebody pulls on its tail. Yeah, and why people do this, I don't know, but apparently the nurse shark is kind of funny in that it sort of will be still at the bottom of the ocean. And it wears a wig in the old nurse's cap. But you're like, I got to push that thing around. Exactly. But apparently there are some divers who will tug on their tail

because they think it's just some harmless game. Right. And then they find out that it's not a hand. Because the nurse shark is generous with its bite. So because of jerks like that pulling on nurse shark tails, there is a division in the statistics of shark attacks. Yeah. Provoked and unprovoked.

Yeah. Jerks and what the heck happened. Or stupid people and what the heck happened. Sure. Why do you provoke a shark? So let's talk about what goes down with the shark attack. Okay, here's the fair warning part. We're going, we've just been climbing a hill.

Now we're about to go down the hill on our roller coaster ride. Okay. Okay. Well, yeah, this is when you'll have fear. Should I read the Jaws thing? If you want. I might as well. Okay.

All right. This is Quint from Jaws. The thing about a shark is he's got lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eyes. And when he comes at you, he doesn't even seem to be living till he bites you. And those black eyes roll over white and then dot, dot, dot. Thank you. You're the rich little of this podcast.

That was not a good Quint, but that's, it is in my top 10. Used to be in my top five all, all time movies. Jaws? Yeah. What knocked it out? I don't know. Just over the years, you know, things build up. Jaws falls behind a little bit.

Yeah. What, what knocked it out of the. I don't know specifically what knocked it out. I'm sorry. But Jaws. Jaws circuits was one of them, wasn't it? No. I mean, every time this movie's on, I will watch it and I do not get sick of it.

It's one of my favorites. Oh, so here's where we, we scare the crap out of you because usually you will learn that you are being attacked by a shark by getting run into by a car is what some people have said it feels like. It depends. Again, it depends on the shark. So we should point out the three most deadly sharks are great whites, tigers and bull sharks. Bull sharks are mean.

If you get hit by what feels like a truck, it's probably a bull shark. If all of a sudden you're missing an arm, it's probably a great white or possibly a tiger, but it seems like bulls and tigers are the ones that bump you first and the great white takes the test bite. Yeah. And bulls are known too for being one of the more aggressive as far as like usually a shark will bite you and then kind of leave you right in the bull shark. Well, is one of the only ones that'll come back.

Yeah. Repeatedly or someone's trying to save you. They might attack them. Yep. They'll, they'll hang around a little more than I'm comfortable with. One of the other big problems with the bull shark is that they attack in shallow water. Yeah. So if you see a bull shark just run.

So what's going on here with the test bite? Well, A, it could be a test bite. B, when they feed on like a sea lion, they don't just go in there and like feed on it like a frenzy until it's all gone. They bite it and then let it bleed to death. And then once the animal is dead, then they'll go in and chow down. Yeah. So pretty frightening if you're a person.

It is. So you're saying that it's like getting hit by a truck. Let's say it's a bull shark attack. That's a quote from Don Shalman who was pregnant as a lifeguard when she was attacked in Florida in 1993. And she survived because she wrote a book about it. Another person who wrote a book, I believe, is surfer Kenny Dute, D-O-U-D-T, Dute. Sure. And he was doing a surfing thing in 1979 in Oregon.

I didn't know you surfed Oregon. Yeah, sure. Surf Oregon? Well, I mean, you got to have the wetsuits. It's cold out there. Man, I'll bet. But it's cold in Southern California, too. Sure.

Pacific states are pretty cold. Geez. Anyway, Kenny Dute was surfing and all of a sudden he was a shark. This is probably a great white because all of a sudden he was in the jaws of a shark. Right. And it had him and his surfboard in its bite. And the surfboard probably saved his life. Yeah.

Because that shark was originally trying to, like that because he couldn't get that full bite down, he's apparently very determined. Yeah. And he kept trying and trying for about 20 seconds by Dute's estimate. Dute was totally out of the water. He was pulled under the water and the shark couldn't get him under because, again, the surfboard. And so he lived another day, he lived to see another day, although he said that the doctor who fixed him up stopped counting his stitches when he reached 500, which is a pretty patient doctor.

But also kind of lazy. Like, why do you get there and just be like, oh, you know what? Forget it. Yeah. He took them all out at about 250 because he forgot where he was and started over. And this is the guy that said he heard his like ribs breaking, right? Yeah. All right.

We have to remember people, roller coaster. This is extremely rare. Chuck, we talked about how like the great white feeds bite, leave you to bleed to death, come back and feed on you. Yes. We talked about the bull shark, it hits and then circles, hitching in circles, then eventually it's going to bite you. And like you said, like it'll attack somebody, come in and try to rescue you.

Yeah. The tiger shark is one of the deadliest ones, especially in the deep sea. Apparently they like to pick off the weak and the wounded. Like, and they'll circle for a while and they'll bump and then they'll bite. And there's this very famous story of the USS Indianapolis that was sunk in the Pacific in 1945. The story Quint tells. Oh, yeah. He was one of the dudes.

Oh, OK. Yeah, that's a character. OK. Not Robert Shaw. Right. Although, man, that would have been some serious. Would that be method or character? I don't even know.

Who knows. Real life. Yeah. And what's that? I guess it's not even acting. No. So in 1945, the Indianapolis sank and a thousand crew members survived the sinking. But by the time the rescuers showed up a few days later, there were only 317 men left,

thanks to shark attacks. Yeah, and these tigers were just circling them in like according to Quint's story, which is pretty accurate. Just like, you know, you'd be talking to a guy and all of a sudden he's gone. Yeah. And you're just waiting. And it didn't get called in because it was, wasn't it, they were delivering the bomb. Oh, right?

Yeah. Is that right? Uh-huh. They were delivering the bomb, which is why it was such a top secret operation. And because it was top secret, it didn't get called in and reported missing for like a couple of days even. Wow. So it was pretty scary stuff. Geez.

All over. So that means that there's a undetonated nuclear bomb at the bottom of the Pacific? Actually, I don't know that part. Oh, I guess. I mean, if they were delivering it and it was sunk, I'll have to look into that. Or maybe though, I don't think Steven Spielberg made that up. I think that's real. Yeah.

It's definitely in the movie now. Steven Spielberg is not known for making things up. What? There's like aliens? ETs? So you did say something kind of important here about, um, Finally. Tiger sharks out in the deep sea are a little more dangerous.

Yeah. Most people get attacked closer to shore. And that doesn't mean you should be afraid because close to shore is dangerous. It's just because that's where the people are. Yes. You know, so most people don't swim out, you know, in the middle of the deep blue ocean. Yeah. This guy wouldn't.

No. Well, that's the, that's part of the point. Um, so, um, back down another, uh, another hill. It's a little bit, uh, a little bit scary now because we're going to talk about what happens during the shark attack or what the shark attack does to your person. Well, one surgeon who operated on a teenage surfer in Australia said that when her leg was lopped off, he's destroyed his, uh, guillotine like. So it can be very swift in the case of a limb and very clean.

And all of a sudden there's just no arm there anymore, uh, 40,000 pounds of pressure per square inch with these teeth, the size of a shot glass. Yeah. If you listen to Richard Dreyfus, that's what he says in the movie. I know. Okay. Have you ever seen Jaws? Sure, I have.

Okay. I don't know if I, if it was ever in my top 10, it's like up there for sure. It's such a great movie, but I don't. Okay. I can recognize when you say things like Quint and. Size of a shot glass. Shot glass and, okay. Hooper and all that stuff.

Do you remember what Roy, uh, uh, what's his name? Shiter. Yeah. What his character was. Chief Brody. Okay. Very nice. Adrian Brody.

Uh, no, not Adrian Brody. So if you don't lose a limb, you're probably going to get like a large piece of your flesh removed, like from your thigh or from your midsection or something like that. Yeah. Usually if you're getting attacked by a good size, great white, it's going to get you in your midsection, like you said. Yeah. Uh, and, uh, you may end up like a guy named Rodney Fox, who was a spear fisherman who

was attacked near Adelaide, Australia in 1963. And basically he was bitten from shoulder to hip. Yeah. And a lot of him was missing after that. Have you seen pictures of that guy? Yeah. I did when I researched the shark stuff a couple of years ago. It's like a shark bite missing from him.

Yeah. Like a little crescent. Yeah. And out of the side of him. I don't know if little's the right word. Well, yeah, it's not little. Yeah, that's a pretty startling time life photo, I think. You're probably going to die by bleeding to death because you're going to be suffering

from massive amounts of blood loss at this point. And by the time you get into shore and get someone there to help you, it's maybe too late. Yeah. So having someone on shore that can stop the blood is like really key to your survival. Yep. And there's a kid who was attacked off Cape San Blas in 2005 who was saved because a doctor and a nurse happened to be on shore on vacation and they stopped the bleeding by putting pressure on his leg, which I assume was where the shark bit him.

Yeah. But if you're in cold water, you actually have something in your favor in that the cold water is going to slow down your physical processes. Yeah. So including your blood loss so you won't waste as much time in the trip to shore. Right. So I guess the Pacific Ocean would be a little better. Yeah.

In Oregon, surf Oregon. Yeah. And then another thing you're going to run into is infection because you just got bitten by a shark and you rolled around on the beach and people were touching you and their teenagers and lifeguards and stuff like that and they're all dirty and you might get an infection from it. I know this seems like it'd be the least of your worries. But can you imagine though like surviving the shark's bite but then dying from an infection from it? I cannot imagine that.

Especially in this day and age. Very sad. Okay. So we've got the, we talked about the three deadliest types of sharks. Yeah. The tiger, the bull and the great white. Why are they so deadly? Well, there's a reason and they're actually like they kind of fly in the face of the idea

that they're deadly because they want to kill you and your whole family and they would come into your house at night if they could, which is the prevalent view of sharks or it wasn't at least until about five years ago. But these things are extremely widespread. You can find them all over the world. They're big enough so that a human, which is a pretty good sized animal itself, sure, ourselves can look like prey, which is something they're interested in. They're powerful enough so that that initial test bite can kill you.

Even though the shark was like, oh, this is gross. Like a little reef shark. You're going to have a little bit of troubles, but you know, you could probably get over that. I think the worst thing that can happen to you underwater besides losing your life is one of those little fish swimming into your urethra. What? Yeah. That happens?

Yeah. What? Yes. All right. I'll show you later, man. Really? Yeah. Man.

I believe the Amazon. What does it do? Exactly what I just said. Yeah, but I mean, after that, feeds. Once it's in there, it feeds. Yeah. Good lord. All right.

I have a new thing to be terrified of. The other factor that makes those three of the deadliest sharks is that they're at the top of the food chain, which means that they're not afraid of humans. Yeah. If it knows you're a human, it's not going to be like, oh, God, a human. It'll be like, you know what, I'm feeling a little hinky today. So those are the why those three are the most dangerous. But like we said, hammerheads, makos, nurse sharks, reef sharks, black tips, they can

all bite when threatened or by mistake, it happens. I remember when we swam in the Georgia Aquarium, hammerhead sharks were in there. Yeah. And I wasn't super worried because people do this all the time, but it's still at one point I did look down and see that hammerhead shark, you know, 10 feet from me and think, all right, well, there's a shark. Yeah. And this is as close as I've ever been to one.

And it is so weird looking. Actually, not as close as I saw one in a wave one time when I was in the ocean. A hammerhead? No, just a shark like jetting through a wave that was crashing over me and he just flew by. I saw like the silhouette. A wave is like nature's aquarium. Yeah.

And I told the guy the lifeguard, I was like, dude, I just saw a shark like really close to me. He said, how big was it? I said, about three feet long. He's like, what was he doing? I said, he's sort of just surfing through the wave. He's like, yeah, it's fine. He's like, we see him out here all the time.

And he was probably saying it's fine because the shark was probably long gone by the time he talked to the lifeguard. It's a good point. They don't like to stay in one place for very long. And there's even a school of thought that multiple shark attacks in the lifeguard are not the result of a single shark. Yeah. They are pretty much coincidence.

Or there's something that's going on around there that we're not aware of that's attracting sharks. Right. But it's not just one shark, a rogue shark. And I just made air quotes, which may or may not exist. Yeah. They have a couple of shark myths in this article. And the human, I desire human flesh, rogue shark.

They think, I mean, they can't prove that that is not true. But they certainly think that's definitely not the case. You know, like they can't say there are no rogue sharks anywhere. But it's, it's not like it is in the movies where there's like this one shark named Jaws. And he just loves people. And he loves hanging out in the same spot and just feeding on folks. Yeah. Because he's taking off idiots.

Yeah. Keep coming out here. Why wouldn't I? But they do do weird things. Like go way out of their range, like as far north as New England or way up river to like Chicago. Yeah. That's crazy.

And they said if a shark was like, sick or injured, you might could get some pretty unpredictable behaviors. Yeah. Well, that's true. If any, a cow, you don't want to be around a sick or injured cow. You know, that's just sad. It's a big animal. You know, it could do damage to you.

That's true. So shark attacks, like we said, there, there are statistics and actually the University of Florida is the keeper of shark attacks statistics. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Which is just like boo. I know. But there's between 30 and 50 unprovoked attacks every year.

Worldwide. Worldwide. The United States has the most typically in Florida. Has the most typically in Florida has the most. So Florida is the shark attack capital of the world. But even still, we're talking about 37 a year maybe. And that's at the top end. Yeah.

10 to 37 and millions and millions of people go to these beaches. But these statistics show that shark attacks are increasing. And it's because of what you're just saying. Millions and millions of people go to these beaches. Yeah. And more people are going to the beaches. So they don't think that sharks are getting any more aggressive. They're just more people out in the ocean.

Yeah. Makes sense. It does make sense. And this is kind of supported in a certain way by, if you look at San Francisco, right? Yeah. There's tons of sea lions. There's sea lion habitats in San Francisco. Oh, yeah.

Which means there's tons of great white sharks in San Francisco. Yeah. But there's not a tremendous amount of shark attacks in San Francisco because people stay away from the sea lions. Yeah, and I don't think San Francisco Bay is like, not a lot of people are swimming in that on a regular basis. That's true, too. Yeah.

That's the other way you can look at it is be like, well, nobody's getting in there. So how can there be shark attacks? Plus people in San Francisco are just smarter than most people. But that kind of, that raises a, that raises a pretty good point. If you ask me, like when you look at shark statistics, when you hear about a shark attack in the media, it's just by nature, it's sensational. Yeah. And the author of this article, The Grabster, took pains to point out that there's this

thing that happens when something sensational is reported in the media. It becomes, it seems to be much more prevalent than it actually is. What that's called an availability heuristic. Oh, yeah. And that is basically surmising that something is prevalent around or exists just based on limited available data rather than all of the facts. Right. So a good example is like this idea that you are more likely to be struck by lightning

to be attacked by a shark. Yeah. But the thing is, is if you are anywhere or a thunderstorm is, you can be struck by lightning, but you have to go to the ocean to be attacked by a shark. So it's a terrible comparison. It is. Like my grandmother went to the ocean for the first time when she was like in her 80s, the probability of her dying from a shark attack was zero.

Exactly. She never touched the water. But have she had your grandmother read a newspaper report about a shark attack? She probably felt like that was a threat to her. Yeah. Even though she had a zero chance of being attacked by a shark. Or if my grandmother was a surfer in Florida. Yeah.

A, that would have been pretty cool. And B, her chances of a shark attack would be much greater than like dying from a coconut hitting your head. Which apparently does not happen. Yeah. Go ahead and spill the beans there. Well, that's another shark myth that one of the media reports, shark attack frequency is often compared to death by coconuts dropping from trees.

I've heard that. Everyone's heard that, right? I had not heard that one. Oh, you hadn't heard that? No. I think they knew it was so asinine they didn't try that out on me. Okay. But apparently there is out of all reports of coconut injuries, there's never been a

coconut fatality and there's like been maybe a couple of reported coconut injuries, not a year like ever. So this whole statistic about coconut deaths is totally made up. Urban legend. Totally urban legend. Yep. But the point is that yes, there are sharks out there. Most likely they're not going to attack you.

But if you are in the ocean where sharks are, your chances of being attacked are increased. So just take some precautions if you are a salt life person, salt life person. Plus we should also point out that even if you do get attacked, chances are you're going to live like how many fatalities out of the, what was it, out of the 30 to 50 unprovoked attacks this year, 10 are fatal. That's statistic five to 10 statistically speaking to five to 10 worldwide a year people die from shark attacks. That's way, way low.

And another way to point this out too about how there lies, damn lies and statistics is that most shark attacks take place in shore, within 100 yards of shore. Like you were saying, it's because it's where everybody is. Like if everybody swam 200 yards offshore, maybe there'd be more shark attacks, maybe there'd be fewer. That's true. We don't really know because this is all very limited data. Well yeah, they're really hard to study in the wild, like as much as we know about sharks,

there's a lot we don't know. Right. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute a 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that.

And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting?

Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Where were you in 92? Were you bouncing your butt to Sir Mix-A-Lot, wondering if you, like Billy Ray Cyrus, could

pull off a mullet? Yes. 1992 was a crazier for music and a crazy time to be alive. And now iHeart has a podcast all about it. I'm Jason Launvie, and on my new show, Where Were You in 92, we take a ride through the major hits, One Hit Wonders, and irresistible scandals that shape what might be the wildest, most controversial 12 months in music and pop culture history. They were angry at me.

They thought I was uncontrollable and wild. I wanted to burst open. The president came after me. Everybody, I'm Warner with madness. Imagine trying to put a record like that out right now. We canceled before it made it to the post office. Featuring interviews and special guests like Sir Mix-A-Lot, Ice-T, Tori Amos, and Vanessa Williams, this podcast poses the question, what was it about 1992 that made it so groundbreaking

and so absolutely fabulous? So buckle up and tune in to Where Were You in 92. New episodes drop every Wednesday. Listen and follow on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. All right. So we tell people how to not get bitten by sharks? Yes.

Yes, we should. And the experts don't swim at dawn or dusk. They feed more and the water might be a little harder to tell what you are during the dimly lit hours. Right. For that same reason, you shouldn't swim in murky water. Yes. And don't just stay out of murky water.

That's my advice. Really? Because there's a lot of murky water out there. Yeah, but why do you want to get in it when there's nice, clean, clear water? Not all of us have the time or the money to go to like sugar beaches, Chuck. Okay. Don't swim with open cuts and some people say even that menstruating women probably shouldn't swim in the ocean.

Yes. That might be taking a little too far, but avoid sandbars and sea mounts and drop offs because this is where you're going to find a lot of wildlife, marine wildlife, which might mean there might be sharks nearby. It definitely means there's sharks. Don't wear contrasting colors. Yeah. This can confuse a shark and a confused shark is not good to be around.

Not just contrasting, but really bright ones too. That's beachwear, man. I know. I remember when we were training to scuba dive, my sister and my dad and I, the guy was talking about how sharks love really bright colors and like it's almost impossible to find. Like a black bathing suit. Right.

And they call it yummy yellow. Yellow is called yummy yellow because apparently sharks like that one more than others. I'm looking for some taupe swim trunks. Can you help me out? Some drab olive green woods. Really short ones. Don't wear shiny jewelry. You shouldn't have your jewelry in the ocean anyway.

Sure. If you ask me, but that reflection can like, might look alluring to a shark. You never know. Yeah. Which is why you want to swim in murky water. That's a good point. Don't swim with a bunch of sea lions and seals. Pretty brainless right there.

Don't you think? Yeah, totally. I'm surprised that was even on the list. Don't thrash around. I think even in the movie Jaws, they talk about how that kind of thrashing and splashing that you get on the 4th of July might attract sharks. So don't listen to thrash metal in the water. Don't think you're safe just because you're like knee deep in water.

Yeah. Those bull sharks like shallow water and they're aggressive. So yeah, just be terrified in shallow water too. And finally, if you're fishing while in the ocean, standing up to your waist, don't have your bait in a little sack tied to your waist floating there next to you. That's a bad idea. That's a really bad idea. You want to keep your bait out of the water.

Yeah. You want to keep it in, I would imagine, some sort of drift proof container so that there's not blood just dripping into the water right by the water. And even if you're taking those precautions, you don't want to stay in the same place or too long. Yeah, I would fish from the beach. That wasn't the last one. The last bit of advice is don't swim when there are sharks in the water.

Yeah, because you can see them sometimes. Yeah. And if you do see them, don't go swimming. That's what I would do too. But if you are ever in a shark attack, fight back. People who punch the shark in the old ampulee or bite the shark or headbutt the shark or do anything they can to beat the shark up have been successful in chasing sharks off. Especially, I get the impression great whites are kind of wusses.

That's, grabs are called them wimps. Yeah. Like they don't like to fight back or I guess they don't like to get punched in the ampulee of larancini. Yeah. So, I guess since we've mentioned jaws a few times, we should finish up with the famous jaws effect as it's known, which was a big deal in 1975 with the book first and then the movie about A, people being scared of the ocean for the first time and B, these rich

jerks all of a sudden going out with high-tech equipment and like killing as many sharks as they can. Right. Just so they can have a big jaw to hang on their wall. They had like whole trophy tournaments called monster fishing, I think is what it was called, where you just catch and kill as many sharks as you could and they still have these tournaments. They're all at catch and release now. But before there, it was unfettered shark slaughter because directly because of jaws.

Yeah. So much so that I think Peter Benchley even expressed regret later on that something he wrote led to this slaughter of these innocent animals. He actually became a conservationist. Did he? Yeah. I'm not surprised. I wonder what Spielberg thinks about all that.

I don't know, but you did find this article written by a marine biologist who said, yes, this is true, jaws did have this terrible effect. But it also had a really positive effect in that it totally opened people's eyes to sharks. Yeah. And even the ensuing slaughter that came afterward woke the shark community, people who were studying sharks up and said, whoa, whoa, whoa, we don't know enough about these animals for everybody to just be running around killing them. We need more funding.

So funding went into it because there was public interest and there was a whole generation of shark biologists that were inspired to become shark biologists thanks to Matt Hooper. Yeah. And this guy himself said that he wanted to be Matt Hooper. It's like the only guy in JAWS that was really smart and really knew a lot about what he was doing. Brody, obviously, was a sympathetic character, but he didn't. Adrian Brody.

He didn't even like being in the water. But Hooper comes along and with his shot glasses and his beard and all this high-tech equipment, the shark, you go in the cage, the cage goes in the water, sharks in the water. So great. Plus, he looks so cool with his rolled-up jeans and his blue kens. Yeah. Go, Matt Hooper. What a great money.

If you want to learn more about sharks, we have a ton of stuff on this site. And you can type sharks into the handysearchbar at HouseToForks.com. Don't forget to type in how sharks work. And on page zero, it'll bring up that cool image that shows what you look like to a shark when you're in surfboard. You look like a sea turtle. Yeah. I said search bar, didn't I?

You did. Yeah. You just typed in a listening mail. That's right, Josh. I'm going to call this – but what do you know? We have French listeners. Oh, yeah. I'm going to read one and then I'll read off the names of the other Frenchies who

wrote in because we mentioned in a recent show that we never get e-mail from French listeners. I did. And we got e-mails from French people and then we got angry e-mails from people saying, whoa, are they supposed to learn English just so they can listen to your show? Yeah, yeah. And I was like, damn, that's not what I meant. Take a chill pill.

All right. Everybody's listening to some draft metal. Yesterday, I was heading back home after work. I listened to one of the latest episodes about les mosquiteurs, I guess it's the musketeers in French. Yeah. I was joined listening and all of a sudden out of the blue you mentioned that you wondered if there were any French fans.

Voila, which means here I am. Mevoila. Oh, sorry. Mevoila. My name is Sylvain and I'm a French fan. My brother Pierre Yves? Yeah. Y-V-E-S?

Like Yves Saint Laurent? Wow. Thank you. It is. I'm surprised we don't have more French listeners with that beautiful accent of yours. We first listened to the zombie podcast a couple of years ago in the city of Lyon and he and I were simply amazed by this awesome technique of yours to spread knowledge through legitimate data while still having fun.

Sure. That's kind of our show. That's what we do. We have told many friends to listen to your brilliant podcast and they did. As far as I know, Pierre who now lives in Paris or Paris, make sure to check out every new one that comes out. As for me, I first moved to New York a year ago as an exchange student and recently moved to Minneapolis after graduating and got married to my lovely wife Jill.

The old Paris to New York to Minneapolis transition. Exactly. He met Jill in France, but he points out that Jill is American. I had the privilege of introducing her to your podcast and we've been following you guys ever since. Anyways, thank you guys for all the hints to French things throughout your podcast. It's delightful to hear you try and pronounce these difficult French names, but you are doing fantastic.

I never thought that I would actually write in, but it would be a privilege if you read this out loud. Wow, privilege. That's right. The French know how to talk to us. I know, man. In short, Josh and Chuck, you are great. You made my transition to living in the U.S. a new and different country much easier.

Avec tout l'affection de mon coure. To you with all the affection in the world. Oh, really? Yeah. Could you look this up? No. That was from Sylvain Pestier. We also heard from Sophie and Amandine and Yves and Pauline, and some were French Canadians,

some were from France, living in America, and I think a couple of them were from France proper, like living there, and they just know English and think we're pretty good. Awesome. Thanks for listening, guys. Thanks to everybody for listening, but right now, thanks especially to all of you Frenchies for listening to us. Viva la France. Yeah, nicely done.

Let's see, if you want to send some sort of information to Chuck and I, it can be information about anything, secret information, public information, a recipe for something. Flat out lies. No, okay. No. If they're good. Only Whoppers and Humdingers accepted. You can tweet to us at SYSK Podcast.

Seriously, what are you doing? Go follow us. It's awesome. Agreed. Facebook is awesome. Facebook.com. Stuff you should know. Yeah?

Yes, and before you give our email address, we finally want to encourage you to go check out Shark Week. Yeah. Oh, nice, Chuck. You know. Company guy. Yeah, that's why we did this. Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, they've all got some good stuff going on.

Yeah. Thank you, even our beloved scientists. It's Shark Week. Yeah. Yeah. Let's see. Yeah. Okay.

Well, then you can email us too, right? Right. At StuffPodcast. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff.

Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast or wherever

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