The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 701: MeatEater Radio Live! The Dinosaur Highway and 100 Humans v. 1 Gorilla

Episode Date: May 9, 2025

Hosts Spencer Neuharth, Ryan Callaghan, and Randall Williams touch on a primal fight against a primate, talk with Okaloosa County's Natural Resources Chief Alex Fogg about creating the world's largest artificial reef, get another round of turkey reports from the crew, cheer on Seth in 1-Minute Fishing, play show-and-tell, and hear from Duncan Murdock, a paleontologist from the University of Oxford Museum of Natural History about the newly uncovered dinosaur highway in England. Watch the live stream on the MeatEater Podcast Network YouTube channel. Connect with The MeatEater Podcast Network MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTubeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart podcast. You sailed beyond the horizon in search of an island scrubbed from every map. You battled crackens and navigated through storms. Your spades struck the lid of a long lost treasure chest. While you cooked the lasagna. There's more to imagine when you listen, discover bestselling adventure stories on audible. Steve Rinella here.

The American West with Dan Flores is a new podcast production on the meat eater podcast network. It's hosted by author and historian Dan Flores, who happens to be mine and our own Dr. Randall's former professor. By focusing on deep time, wild animals, native peoples in the West unique environments, Flores will challenge your understanding of the American West and he will help to explain why it is the way it is Today I count Dan Flores as a friend. We do not agree on everything, but he has had a massive

impact on my understanding of American history and I invite you To get challenged by him in the same way that I have. Catch the premiere of the American West with Dan Flores on Tuesday May 6th on the MeatEater Podcast Network. Subscribe to the American West with Dan Flores on Apple, Spotify, iHeart or wherever you get your podcast, listen to Dan and it will stretch your brain all out. And I mean that in a very good way. Smell us now lady.

Welcome to Meat Eater Trivia's Meat Eater Podcast. podcast. Welcome to Meat Eater Radio Live. It's 11 a.m. Mountain Time. That's noon o'clock for our friends in Quincy, Illinois on Thursday, May 8th. And we're live for Meat Eater Edge Q and Bozeman. I'm your host Spencer Neuarth joined today by Ryan Callahan and Randall Williams. On today's show, we'll interview Duncan Murdock about the dinosaur highway that was just discovered

in England, followed by a turkey report from the Meat Eater crew. Then we've got One Minute Fishing with Seth Morris. After that, we'll do Show and Tell. And finally, we'll interview Alex Fogg about constructing the world's largest artificial reef. Now, in case you don't think this is a live show, we just got breaking news that there's a new pope that's been elected. What's your insight on this, Randall? White smoke from the system travel. I just know white smoke. That's all. I watched Steve watch Conclave on a plane last week. So, okay

That's about all I had to offer All right, but but we're gonna settle an internet debate That's taking the internet by storm here recently every now and then some stupid thing on the internet achieves exit velocity and makes it out into the real world Like is a hot dog a sandwich or the hawk to a girl it happened again this week, and that was Ken 100 humans beat a gorilla a singular gorilla in a fight to the death Yes, I I have strong feelings about this randall What do you think randall has come today with a notepad that I believe contains notes on this on this subject

I do I I don't think it's a very interesting question I think the the numbers the sheer numbers and the fatigue factor but I'd like to just use this moment to to bolster that opinion with my qualifications as an all-around great ape enthusiast Phil will you pull up exhibit one, please? Whenever I'm at a zoo, I like to go visit the great apes. On the left is Gorilla World at Cincinnati Zoo. On the right, I don't even know which zoo I was at there. That was 2022. Wow. And I didn't go back to check my travel calendar. But as you can see there, it says test your Gorilla IQ. And I did rather well that day. How do we know?

You just have to trust me. Okay. Been to so many zoos and checked out so many apes that he doesn't even know what zoo he was at. Yes. Phil, if you'll pull up the next slide, please. This is a bizarre image. One of my favorite sort of freak discoveries

in the course of my dissertation research, this is an ad for the Ruger 44 Magnum carbine. It's like the 44 Magnum version of a 1022. And they thought the best way to demonstrate the utility of this is with an image of a man and a gorilla that he's killed. That's amazing. In somewhere in Central Africa. I had just took a picture of it with my phone and I've never had a chance

to display it to the world. So here it is. Just we used to live in a very weird place. Phil Exhibit three here. Oh, so this is a sequence of photos taken at the Cincinnati Zoo. That's not my child, but just a random child. A good friend's child. Oh, we're taking a

photo with this friend here and suddenly if only we'd been filming video because suddenly he charged us mmm and he slapped the glass in what might be the most frightening sudden surprise of my life it sounded like someone just shot a gun next to my head okay we're learning Randall is indeed a subject matter expert Yes, I've also read gorillas in the mist and then to prep for this segment I I didn't have time to watch the movie Congo. Oh, so I downloaded it on Kindle and I read 67% of it. Okay I shared some of my thoughts with Phil

But it is one of our culture's greatest meditations on the gorillas capacity for violence So I didn't really get anything out of that and then I brought this this t-shirt. Okay. This is from the San Diego This is all part of answering the question on if 100 humans could beat a gorilla in a fight Yeah, and I just think a gorilla, you know, it's five and a half feet tall 400 pounds it's got a powerful sagittal crest that allows its jaw muscles to Exert sort of unbelievable pressure on any sort of thing that finds its way into its mouth But yeah, I don't think you can do it. I think you just get tired. I Fully agree. I don't think it's even it wouldn't even be close to a fair fight 100 is such a big number. Yeah, 100 humans

It's not fun. I think the debate should be what's the number where it actually gets competitive? My guess is like 10 to 15 Do you think it doesn't humans? No, I Was gonna say 20 figure the reach a girl has got a wingspan of about 8 feet I mean you look at chimps. Mm-ps. I mean chimps just tear people apart Yes, I think what would be on our side is I can't imagine they have great stamina Also or and and but my problem with it would be I can't identify a weak point on a gorilla No, where do you go? You just got to punch him in the head over and over and they have extremely thick skulls

Their their brain case is not nearly as large as ours So there's a lot more bone around it and they don't have you know in a fight You're always talking about reach girls got us and they don't have chins Hmm, so okay, they can't have a you know like a box find the button. Yeah Do they do they have exposed testicles like that's probably not a weak point either for them, if you were really trying to think. Trying to picture the lower half of a girl. Oh, they're exposed.

They're just tiny. Sorry, yeah, I just didn't think it was that interesting with questions, so I just wrote down a bunch of gorilla stuff about my history. Oh, I also forgot to mention, when I was, I would have been nine years old, my parents adopted a zoo baby, you know, like adopting a star. It was an Eastern L and gorilla female adopted it for you at the Cincinnati Zoo

Yeah, right, or was it for them for me? Okay, is it birthday or Christmas gift? That's how much I love gorillas I also spent a good deal my younger years walking around on my knuckles and I can okay today pretty effectively Cal any any the clip any thoughts on 100 humans versus a grill in a fight to the death Yeah, I thought the movie Congo was great Probably underrated by a sin of files Amy you agree Amy all that stuff. Yeah Yeah, I don't but by the time I saw a lot of those movies They had already seemed kind of like outdated to me and not not in a great way

But yeah, they're entertaining for sure Okay, the biggest shock to me from revisiting the book is that it's set in 1979 So it's just you read it as a period piece and then you remember that he wrote it in 1980 and you think god It's it's it's actually very cutting-edge. So I think where anybody doing battle with the gorilla would really fall short is There's not a lot of like trained fighting sports where you're counting on somebody biting you Right. I mean that's a that's a big big part of the Yeah, yeah now as as this debate got heated up online

There was a tweet that went viral by someone. Phil is going to pull it up here. They built out their roster of 100 people of who they would want to fight the gorilla. Here's some folks that were on that list. This tweet got 16 million views. 50 cent in his prime. Turtle Man, I love Turtle Man. The Undertaker, the Rassler of course, Nikola Jokic's brothers, Jason Momoa, a random high school defensive coordinator slash history teacher, and at number 11 in this tweet was Steve Rinella. Steve Rinella made the roster. One ahead of Saquon Barkley. Yeah, I don't think he has the frame for it. No. No. Would you guys want Steve on your your team? This is just an ode to Steve. It's not Ability only if Steve was charged with wearing it down and some sort of okay chase through hilly country. Oh sure

Yeah, yeah, like if there was a debate at the beginning that Steve could engage the gorilla on yeah Yeah, possibly using the communication device and hand signals from the movie Congo it's not in the book in the book they're just doing old-fashioned American Sign Language that's a moment of authenticity to it. When I lived back in South Dakota I played town team baseball which is like from 18 years old up until whenever you retire some guys play into their 40s yeah that beautiful. There was a fan who would come to every game. And if he'd see you around town, he'd maybe throw you a compliment.

He'd say, oh, Spencer, looking strong today. And I always liked that. That's a very nice compliment to give to another man. I gave that to Steve one day. I said, Steve, looking strong today. And he didn't care for it. He said, what do you want to arm wrestle me or what? So, you know, maybe the-

Wonder what Freud would say about that. If the gorilla can get Steve worked up, maybe Steve would be acceptable on this roster as number 11 in the gorilla fighting cage match. All right, we've determined that 100 humans would easily dominate that gorilla. And we think the number's closer to like 20 well sorry I know you're you're heading for a segue here Spencer. I'm gonna throw it off completely

Do you think how many humans would we lose in the process? Oh? I thought about this today a dozen. No, I think 30 30 30 30 30 I think you lose 30% of that roster At game time yeah, they just go lose 30% of that roster at game time. Like they just go, no, no, no, no, not, not going to do it. The initial 10 minutes. I just don't, I can't imagine what. I think it depends if, if the fighting happens, like a Jackie Chan movie where

the, the warriors come at them one at a time and they like wait their turn. Yeah. Uh, we'll lose 30 for sure, but we could probably suffocate this thing with like 15 people. Um, the strength is just, I don't think think he can't he can't punch 15 people at once I think he could I think he could just physically tear them apart. I think you could hook us. Oh, yeah I'm just saying I don't care who you are. Like you get in the in the cage with the gorilla You there's a large part of that roster that's gonna be like, you know what? Not worth it.

Not gonna happen. And Google says that their testicles and penis are quite hidden and small as far as primates go, so we can't count on that. Yeah, it's part of one of the issues with their genetic depth. Small wieners. Small wieners. All right. Moving on, joining us on the line first is Duncan Murdoch, a paleontologist from the University of Oxford Museum of Natural History. He's here to talk about the Dinosaur Highway that was just discovered in England. Duncan, welcome to the show.

Hello, morning. How are you? We're good. First thing, Duncan, tell us how these 200 tracks that came to be known as the Dinosaur Highway were discovered. Yeah, absolutely. So there's a quarry in the center of England near the city of Oxford, where I am, where they're removing limestone to crush it up to use as gravel.

And when they were removing that, they were slowly scraping off a layer of clay, and the bucket on the digger felt a series of little bumps. So they thought, oh, that's strange. So they called us in from the museum to have a look at them, and we verified that they were in fact dinosaur footprints. And then we mounted an excavation to uncover the whole site. And yeah, we found over 200 individual prints from probably five different individual animals. That's wonderful.

Now describe how big the tracks are and how long this highway is. So most of them are one kind of dinosaur. And they form these oval shapes that are about three feet long by about two feet wide and about Nine inches deep something like that But we see literally hundreds of these prints and they go The longest trackway is at least 150 meters long. So it's a huge area that's crisscrossed with all these individual tracks.

And how old are the tracks and what kind of dinosaurs made them? So the surface is from the middle part of the Jurassic period, which is about 166 million years ago. At the time, it would have been a kind of lagoon near the edge of a continent. We see two different shape footprints. So most of them, like the one you're seeing on the screen, are quite rare, but most of them are these kind of oval shapes that would have been from a large bodied four-legged long-necked dinosaur. I think something like a diplodocus or brontosaurus. neck dinosaur, think something like a diplodocus or brontosaurus. Yeah, just like that one there on the screen. And then we rarely see with these three-toed prints.

If you've ever seen footprints of a wading bird on a beach, you see these three-toed prints. We see exactly that. And they were from a very different kind of animal, this two-legged carnivorous meat-eating theropod dinosaur called Megalosaurus. And does this area in England have a history of dinosaur discovery? Yeah, absolutely. In fact, the first dinosaur ever named Megalosaurus, the fossils came from a little village called

Stonesfield just a few miles from where we find these footprints. In 1824, it was first named, so just over 200 years ago. So dinosaur science itself actually started here in Oxfordshire, and it was really exciting that 200 years later we're still finding evidence about these animals in the form of their footprints in this quarry. And how long was the excavation process and what did that look like? Okay, so we first discovered these prints a couple of years ago and we uncovered a small number of them, realized it was a much bigger undertaking. So we put together a team between the University of Oxford and the University of Birmingham.

So it was myself, my colleague Dr Emma Nich Emma Nicholls, my colleagues, Professor Kirsty Edgar, Professor Richard Butler in Birmingham. And we then put together a team of about a hundred people over the course of a week where we went out every day. Most of the time we were painstakingly removing a layer of clay that fills and covers these prints to uncover the hard limestone underneath. So carefully removing it with trowels and then sponging out the clay, eventually uncovering

the whole site. Then there's a process of documentation where we took literally tens of thousands of photographs to try and capture every single print as well as flying drones to capture the entire site and image the whole thing before it's then reburied Now you said that this area was a lagoon 166 million years ago talk more about what England as a whole looked like at that period how that's different from today Yeah, that's a really good question. So around from today? Yeah, that's a really good question. So around, let's say, 166 million years ago in the middle of the Jurassic, the continents as we know them today were starting to form. So there used to be this huge continent called Pangaea where pretty much all the continental land masses were together.

Through the early part of the Jurassic, these continents were breaking apart. So things like the Atlantic Ocean were forming. This created lots of volcanism, lots of volcanoes erupting in the rifting, and it created these shallow inland seaways that were forming in as this continent was breaking apart. So England at the time in the Middle Jurassic was underneath one of these shallow seaways. So if you imagine something like the Florida Keys today or the Bahamas Bank where you have these shallow seas with these beautiful clear waters with white sand being deposited and nearby you have rivers washing materially into kind of in mangrove

swamps producing these lagoons behind where you get these sheltered environments. And it's in one of these lagoon environments that these dinosaurs were walking along, walking along what would have been a coastline 166 million years ago. Okay, so there were multiple dinosaurs who created this dinosaur highway. Do you think those dinosaurs interacted or was, you know, these separated by potentially days or years? Yeah, so the conditions needed to form these prints are very rare. So you need the mud to be just right.

If you have mud that's too wet, then when you pull your foot out, it's just going to fill back in that hole. If the mud's too dry, then even a 10-ton animal like a C.t.osaurus can't make a lasting impression. So we think these surfaces were only just right for probably a matter of weeks, maybe months, certainly within one season. So what we do find is lots of, most of the prints are from the same kind of dinosaur, but we find lots of different sizes. So there's potential evidence

that these animals were moving in herds, showing a kind of herding behavior with different individuals of different ages moving around. Then the theropod prints, these meat-eating megalosaurus, they cross where we see these larger herbivorous animals walking along. Although we don't see any direct interaction between them, it's pretty safe to assume that if you're a big meat eating dinosaur, you're going to look for big plant eating

dinosaurs to prey upon. So there's a potential that we have Interactions between predator and prey, but we can't be sure because all we're seeing are these these individual prints Well, what we can say is each one of those footprints is a single moment in the life of an extinct animal So we get this this amazing unique window into into that very moment when that animal put that foot in that exact location And you can go and put your foot in exactly the same place. It's absolutely thrilling to do. So from that brief window, what sorts of things can paleontologists learn? So we're able to do things like reconstruct the environment that these animals are living

in. So as well as the dinosaur footprints, we find smaller fossils, we find seashells, we find bits of wood. We can also do things like work out how fast these animals might have been moving. So most of them seem to be moving at a kind of average human walking pace. So none of them are going very fast. We can estimate body sizes from the spacing of the prints within the biggest individuals of probably about 16 meters long for the herbivores and about eight or nine meters for the carnivores. And we can also observe these interactions between species. So we know that these two different species of dinosaur were in the same place at roughly the same time so we can start to build a more complex picture of the

whole environment that they lived in. Duncan this is a active quarry. That's right. What's the fate of these tracks? Yeah so it's still an active quarry they're still extracting limestone. It's worth saying that if they hadn't been the It's no good. It's too soft a material. And so they aren't being damaged or destroyed in any way by the action of the quarry. Have you ever heard of the Meat Eater Land Access Initiative, where we provide access to more outdoor activity on land here in the States primarily? What are the chances that we don't need one of the fancy three-toed ones, but one of the oval? Tracks getting shipped over here so we can auction it off for public access So there's a there's a few problems one is if you try and actually cut out the the prints

You they basically fall apart you can only really see them in the field The prints they basically fall apart. You can only really see them in the field and So right now and they're not accessible and they're getting recovered with clay to actually protect them That's the best thing to do But we're working very closely with the quarry and natural England who are the body that oversee these kinds of things here in the UK For plans for potential in the UK for plans for potential future access. What you can do though is you can virtually visit this site. So we've created a 3D model of the whole area and on every single individual print. We're currently working up publishing that and we're going to make that publicly available to anyone in the world to download so you can virtually visit so hopefully that will

Yeah satisfy the other thing you can do is come to Oxford come to the Museum of Natural History and we have casts replicas of the of the prints on display at the moment, so if any of your Your listeners are in the UK. Please do come to Oxford. You can get up close and personal with a replica of the print Very exciting stuff. Thank you for joining us Duncan and congrats on that discovery No problem. Thank you very much. I Liked how there is a clear Convergence of trails there. Oh, yeah, like the the ancient Version of a whitetail hunter had just post up right there. That's right. Yeah, you'd call that a pinch point.

Right here along this lagoon, we've got the shallow water ends. Obviously dinosaurs like crossing this spot. That's a long way. That was sweet. You sailed beyond the horizon in search of an island scrubbed from every map. You battled Kraken's and navigated through storms.

Your spade struck the lid of a long lost treasure chest. While you cooked a lasagna. There's more to imagine when you listen. Discover bestselling adventure stories on audible. Steve Rinella here. The American West with Dan Flores is a new podcast production on the Meat Eater podcast network. It's hosted by author and historian Dan Flores,

who happens to be mine and our own Dr. Randall's former professor. happens to be mine and our own Dr. Randall's former professor by focusing on deep time, wild animals, native peoples in the West, unique environments. Flores will challenge your understanding of the American West and he will help to explain why it is the way it is today. I count Dan Flores as a friend.

We do not agree on everything, but he has had a massive impact on my understanding of American history. And, uh, I invite you to get challenged by him in the same way that I have. Catch the premiere of the American West with Dan Flores on Tuesday, May 6th on the meat eater podcast network. Subscribe to the American West with Dan Flores on Apple, Spotify, iHeart or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to Dan and it will stretch your brain all out. And I mean that in a very good way.

All right. Next up is the turkey report. Oh, gee, there's sound for this. I don't have a sound for the time. I'm sorry. I thought I heard a sound last week. Oh, well, you know what? I played I played this. Here we go.

Yeah, everybody's looking for the turkey report. Randall's is better. Today, we've got updates from Seth Morris, Max Barta and Tony Peterson. Take it away, Phil. All right, Seth Morris here coming at you from region one in Montana with your weekly turkey report. It's been a tough weekend of hunting. The birds are the most henned up that I've seen so far this season. It's even tough to get a bird to break around that you know 10 to 2 time period which is usually some good killing hours but I've been seeing gobblers with hens all day long. They're just not leaving them. And so that's made the hunting real tough,

but kind of got to do what you can to get a bird on the ground. Sneaky, sneaky. I killed this one because I finally was able to call the hens in and he came in with the hens, but I couldn't get him to break from the hens. So the only way I could do it was getting the hens to come in.

And my wife, Kelsey, who's with us too, she killed a bird yesterday morning. So that's your report. Good luck out there. Hey guys, Max Barta here. Central Tennessee hunt report. Things are weird right now. It's the first week of May.

I feel like the birds have gone past their prime time breeding cycle and they're kinda on the down slope of things. Birds are gobbling on the roost a couple of times but not much. And then, yeah, I feel like once they hit the ground and they're just not too keen on coming into hen calls so um yeah things are tough but um I feel like if you stick it out and work some ground you'll find

a bird that wants to gobble you only need one gobble and like you're in the game so that's That's what I did here. This bird came about 1030 and Yeah, it was it was a great hunt And yeah, it's been raining the last couple days, too. So I don't know if that's got the goblin all mixed up or anything like that. So Yeah, beautiful day Happy camper. Happy hunter Springs a beautiful thing Hey everyone, Tony Peterson here

with a little turkey report. I just got back from Kansas, had an amazing hunt down there in public land, killed a bird, and I just spent today drying out some beards, drying out some tail fans from my daughters, have killed a few birds. I've killed a few in different states.

The hunting has been really good, but it has been kind of a weird year and I'm starting to see a little transition right now where a lot of these birds are switching to eating a lot of bugs and the hens are starting to nest. My whole drive home from Kansas, all the way back here to Minnesota, there were lone hens all over the place in the afternoon.

And when I see that, I don't know if you can hear this or not, but there's a whole bunch of frogs calling in my backyard pond. This is the time where if you've been dealing with hend up birds, which a lot of us have, should get really callable now. Maybe not right off the roost yet, they might fly down and strut for those hens for a while,

but those hens are gonna eat some bugs, they're gonna scratch for some grain, whatever, eat some fresh greenery. They're gonna lay down and these toms are gonna start cruising. And they're gonna scratch for some grain, whatever, eat some fresh greenery. They're gonna lay down, and these toms are gonna start cruising. And we always think that we're gonna hit that a little bit earlier this far north. Down south's a different story,

but right now is the time where if you have the ability to hunt all day and work some setups through and fire up that gobbler sometime in the midday or toward the evening This is the time when it matters a lot and it can get really good So I think I think they're gonna be super callable from here for the next I don't know ten days or so Probably two weeks maybe so it's a good time to be out there. Good luck Wow, three big-time turkey killers there in Tony Maxx and Seth we got a global show today

We got dinosaur tracks from the UK turkey reports from Middle Tennessee Got everything I was dying to ask our dino guy if he was a feather guy too like are they just big turkeys? mmm, I was I was dying to actually ask him if the long neck dinosaurs He was referring to our sauropods just to test my knowledge, but I didn't want to sound like an idiot so You boys both had a chance to ask him those questions. I didn't think you have so many questions University of Oxford I Was shaking in my chair. What's your favorite dinosaur? Yeah? Oh, you know what that would have been a good question They could run fast. I'm sad. I think a hundred velociraptors could kill a gorilla Shaking in my chair. What's your favorite dinosaur? Yeah. Oh, you know what that would have been a good place They could run fast. I'm sad. I think a hundred velociraptors could kill a gorilla

He's all of Timmy's bad dinosaur jokes from another my Michael Crichton joint Jurassic Park do you source I wasn't on last week's episode But I heard Phil give himself an invite to Randall's turkey hunt are you aware of this Randall? yeah vaguely I've tried to invite Phil to turkey hunts that other people have invited me on there isn't really a Randall turkey hunt yeah that's the thing I wasn't inviting myself to any sort of pre-planned hunt I said you know I think it'd be fun if Randall wanted to go turkey hunting yeah that I joined him I didn't invite myself Spencer that was some rude

phrasing and I won't stand for it. Phil you should invite yourself. That's exactly what you should do. I just tried to invite myself on the Max's turkey hunting calendar for next week so okay if Max fits me in Phil clear your calendar. All right you would so you'll invite me to max's yes, and we won't we just won't tell max no No, I'll tell max, but he's pretty easy going okay That'd be wonderful. That sounds like a blast. I just like the vibe of max's video. It sort of started out I wasn't sure where it was going, but these turkey guys loved the reveal where they can just Twist their body is getting a little corny change the alter the angle of the camera

Not a lot of guys could do it brand of the same thing last go outside But this guy made a mistake Guy of max's size can pull that off with the turkey, but not like a bull moose I'd like to just see how large of an animal I can hide With my torso in a video No, yeah, Phil did not invite himself, but that's me telling Phil he should invite himself. That's your way into a turkey hunt. Great. All right, we're half way through the show. Let's get a break for some listener feedback. What do you got? Sure, let's start out with the big one.

Jody says, can Cal expand on the late-night amendment to sell public lands in the House budget package? And in parentheses it says in under two minutes, I think. Okay, yeah, okay, very, very quickly. Reconciliation is super scary because there is a process, a public process that allows for the sale of small parcels of public land to address all the needs that these people are saying they're land to address all the needs that these people are saying they're trying to address such as public housing infrastructure restraints on

rural communities etc in reconciliation they're trying to push this through under the normal process sorry to back up one second under the normal process which would be like flip-fuh and flip-muh Lots of acronyms in the government game We can deal with giving up some parcels of public land because That cash then goes towards the purchase of lands of greater value for the American people. So it's kind of built on a win-win system. The municipality that's constrained gets a little more space for water projects or housing in this case, and we the American people get a quote unquote better chunk of ground. It's a square fair deal this reconciliation BS

I'm being frank Is not going to ding our national debt at all There's absolutely no guidelines that say this is how it's going to address the sale of land the staking of our federally managed public lands with a big for sale sign, there's no guidelines that say this is how it's going to alleviate housing or provide any value for the American people. Add some context, Cal. Explain.

And that sale will go into the treasury. The dollars from that sale will go into the treasury. There's no public process. Go ahead, Spencer. Explain what happened last night at midnight as to why this is being brought up. Basically, there's a very short timeline to get this budget through. Memorial Day weekend is like the goal, the stated goal from the outset. So folks are starting to scramble.

And when you're scrambling, there's opportunities to slide in things, say, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll totally give you what you want, but here's this thing that you gotta sign off on. And so at 1130 last night, Arizona and Utah slid in this provision for the sale of public lands. Right now there's no context as to how many acres that is, but we're hearing numbers as

high as 650,000 acres, which is something that you can't do under the FLEPMA process. And we don't know how these lands have been selected, what they're trying to address. All we know is this is a major opportunity for folks that wanna get this done. And by and large, the vast majority of the American public do not agree with this. So this is a very small group of interests

being prioritized over we the American people people and nobody should stand for this. You should need to get on the horns with your senators and Representatives in the house and I've been doing this all morning and all last night it's not that hard but you need to send your emails your phone calls and Talk to staffers and say hey, I do not like where this is headed. And for more on this, we've got coverage on the meateater.com. We just published an article, Republicans Vote to Sell Public Land in Midnight Amendment. You'll get a fuller story there.

And it's like we're selling things that can make us money. And when you're trying to dig yourself out of debt, that not what you do. Phil what else you got? McKenna says let's go Oklahoma City. What do you think about that Spencer? It was just an ass-whooping of epic proportions last night. Yeah that Mitchell follows up with what do the Nuggets need to do to make the fix from last night. Rough loss. I'll be real quick Michael Porter Jr. Is not good enough He's way too hurt Jamal Murray is has not been a second fiddle lately. He's good enough to be a third fiddle He's not been good enough to be a second fiddle and we have too shallow of a bench

So a lot of issues that can't be fixed. What sport is this basketball? Nicola yokic To go god mode that's a big Westbrook energy. That's right Russell Westbrook has been phenomenal good on Ross Fundancy rust anything else Phil from Dan pooper real name a question for the lads Do you guys have a vintage piece of gear you prefer or think is superior to modern or current? It's DB pooper When I was at the when I was at the Blazers game I don't remember the guys initials one of the one of the rotation guys for the for the Blazers his initials are DB and when it's gore they go DB Hooper and they had like a

Sketch, you know of DB Cooper, but it was the players face in there. I thought it was very clever Oh, yeah, cuz he landed not not too far from back to mr. Pooper here Cal any vintage piece of gear that you really really like knives Hatchets axes all those things can be multiple lifetime pieces of gear I think everybody's got something that they're attached to in that lineup also Can't beat just cannot be a good pair of wool pants for outdoor activities. Yeah knife is a good one Dutch oven too. Oh yeah there

you go cast iron. Mm-hmm got an old Dutch oven that I really love and that's the Dutch oven I'll own for the rest of my life I think. Randall anything to add? I think the closest thing I have to a vintage piece of gear that easily comes to mind is just an old-ass grum and canoe. Just a timeless piece. Craig's the score. Yeah it will serve you well. Phil let's do one more and then now we're gonna move on. Sure cuz we got Cal in the room not that you two are you know flying taco moose says he's making or they're making gruyere stuffed bread

today any suggestions for what dish to pair it with I don't think guessing wild game we're talking here whoa man stink oh yeah that's stinky cheese and he any sort of any any sort of a pairing you'd yeah media I mean just medium rare cut against the grain meat That sounds delicious Maybe a little fresh onion on there Like that too. There you go make it extra stinky All right. Our next segment is one minute fishing

Do I feel lucky? Well do ya punk? Go ahead, make my cast. One Minute Fishing is where we go live to someone who's fishing and they have one minute to catch fish and if they're successful, we'll make a $500 donation to a conservation group. This week our angler is Seth Morris who's at the Meat Eater HQ pond and he's fishing for a donation to Walleyes Unlimited. Good to see ya Seth!

Hey guys, how we doing? We're doing good Seth, give us a little scouting report on the Meat Eater pond today. Alright, so I came out earlier, I made a couple casts, I had one swipe at it which was ideal because I didn't actually want to catch one. Okay. Casts I had one swipe at it which was ideal because I didn't actually want to catch one Okay, and that told me all I need to know so there's some water flowing into this pond It seems like they're stacked up over there in the current. What's the water clarity like today? It's pretty good. I'd say three feet four feet. Okay, and I will say that we just talked to a youngster that was Fishing in the same spot

When we came out here and he said he had not caught anything. Oh, no But did you brush off where you're like, oh, yeah, there's nothing in there beat it Maybe you thought you were a chump When you get a few more years of experience under your belt like I have What what are we using today Seth? I see you got the spinning rod in your hands. Oh yeah, spinning rod as always. Number four, Panther Martin. My go-to for trap. Every child needs one of those. That's right. We have not had a successful angler on the Mead Eater pond yet, and this

is our first one-minute fishing of the year since the ice is melted. So maybe this is our chance Seth Yeah, I would say this is the best time to fish this pond. Oh Here my experience. We'll see a little tip off. How's the garbage situation down there good flow? Well, I noticed over here is a pile of plastic bottles. Yep. Yep Well, I noticed over here is a pile of plastic bottles. Yep, yep. Which isn't great. Yeah, we're gonna do a cleanup on that on Monday as an office. Uh-huh, and we've got, I think we've got as many employees here as there are pieces of trash out there, so maybe leave some garbage while you're out there, Seth. Dump over the dumpster so we have something to clean up next week.

Well, there is a garbage can t tipped over over here, so... Okay, perfect! Kick that thing into the water for us. Alright, Seth, your one minute of fishing starts as soon as you make your first cast. Go ahead. Alright, here we go. Seth has made his first cast right towards the current that he thinks the fish are hanging in. God, new music, Phil?

Oh no, it just starts off really silent and then gets way too loud. Beautiful day here in Bozeman. the current that he thinks the fish are hanging in. Got new music, Phil? Oh no, it just starts off really silent and then gets way too loud. Beautiful day here in Bozeman. We've got green grass, no wind, and glassy water. Alright, Seth is on to cast number two. He's got 20 seconds into his one minute. Somehow he managed to avoid casting it into that tree where I casted. Seth, 30 seconds to go. Come on Seth. He's making his third cast. He might be able to get one more cast in here.

Do it for the memory of Chester. RIP. Chester's still very much alive. Just a few states away. Basically dead. Alright, you have 10 seconds to go Seth. Oh, he's taking a few steps away. Basically dead. Alright, you have ten seconds to go, Seth. Oh, he's taking a few steps with that cast. Yeah, that's a tournament angler cast right there. Oh, your time is up, Seth Morris. I still can't do it.

Tell us what happened there, Seth. Well, you know, the cast were in the right spot. The technique was there. Just I don't think the fish were there. The fish were on. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right.

We might need to rethink our spot. Or we need to stock that pond. Maybe that's what we got to do. This segment continues to just produce. I think next time we need to go with a bobber and a nightcrawler. Or yeah, do one of each. Have that, have a bobber and a nightcrawler out there and throw your Panther Martin. Well, I don't know if he's in a two rod zone. Check the regs. We'll see what the regs say about the the meteor HQ pond alright Seth Thanks for joining us. Good luck with your day of fishing out there at the pond. See you a little bit. Thanks guys. See ya

All right our next segment is show and tell hmm Oh No Is that that Steve Wynwood it is indeed Steve Wynwood I Love your love back in the high life again if I owned a yacht. I play yacht rock all day Steve Wynwood. I love this song, uh, back in the high life again. If I owned a yacht, I'd play yacht rock all day. Steve Wynwood, he would have rock all day in my Hyundai Santa Fe Spencer. Do you have serious XM? No, I just use Spotify playlist. Yeah. I loved when I did have serious though.

Uh, I, I would yacht rock was one of my five presets on there. Um, I love the yacht rock and Steve and Steve Winwood he would have some prime real estate in that Yacht Rock playlist for certain. All right Randall let's start with you what did you bring to show the classroom today? I brought one item from home and then when I got to the office today I thought I'd add another item to that and I figured the Cal didn't bring something so I thought I'll just do two. Wow presumptuous for Randall. Let's see what you brought and then we'll find out if Cal did bring anything. The first thing I brought is a rare limited edition. You know we've been hearing from the fans that they needed a book version of This is just some bootleg thing that a guy produced with chat GPT and a and a

Print as you buy okay system, so I saw this on Amazon and before the lawyers could take it down I ordered a copy for $11. Oh wait, this guy didn't do this is like a favor to us. He was trying no no legit This just showed up showed up on her on our audio book thing. Whoa. Yeah, and so it doesn't have a back cover and it's very strange. There's like- So it's a create your own back cover. Yeah, and clearly they fed.

So the one troubling thing, and maybe this is my big takeaway, is you hear how artificial intelligence is getting so good and it's just like, it can do is is look at text and predict what text there should be you know and I read this and it's horrible oh and so I got your words that are right they fed our audio into chat GPT and then had it make something that sounded like that and so this is so bad it's making me sort of rethink my own

abilities as a writer sorry to interrupt I just got word from Cory Seth caught one on the next cast. Oh We need to make it 90 second fishing So guys if you see if you see any print versions of our audiobooks, they are in fact illegal Pirated versions and don't buy them unless you just want a funny keepsake which I did so you should have got how what was that guy charging for that 12 bucks yeah yeah the next thing I brought is the oldest the oldest and most celebrated freeze-dried meal in my pantry this is a Cincinnati style chili backpackers

pantry that I purchased at the Bozeman REI I believe in like 2016 oh when did it expire the expiration date was in May of last year oh and You can see some of the labels are peeling off of it and I've always saved this for a real special occasion, okay, and You're gonna eat it right now the time is never right So it always goes into my backpack when I'm going out on a hunt, where I think I'm gonna have a memorable moment

that I want to celebrate with a fake version of Cincinnati style chili. What would it take, you think, for you to open that up? Big old bowl. But then I get into a rush. I get an animal down, I start cutting it up, and then I start thinking about how I can get it out of there. So it's really like I'd have to be trapped on the mountain with the an animal of a lifetime For me to actually tear the seal on this because I don't think they make it anymore

How does the seal feel on that thing? It's eight years old. Oh, that's a good question pretty good you know, it doesn't like balloon out when I Yeah, I don't think it's airtight. Okay. I'm just, I hadn't really thought about it. I've rolled it up and put it in my backpack a lot over the past 10 years. It's gone with you on a lot of trips.

Yeah, it's kind of like an old friend now. Was it saved for a special occasion the day you bought it or did that recently change where it's like, okay, now? I was, I mean, I was thrilled when I found it and I should have bought a lot of them. It wasn't, no, I didn't like buy it with the intention of saving it But it just never felt right to break into it and then over time it was like I've got to pick the right occasion. So probably three years after this went in and out of my backpack

I I decided it's a real thing to actually eat it someday and To be honest, I don't know that I ever will. I think my best days are behind me and I also lack the courage of conviction required to do something like you know take in a moment and celebrate my accomplishments so I hope it happens this fall. Does that mean you killed something big? I'll tuck this under my armpit when I'm heading six feet under. Okay that's good. Cal what'd you bring today for Show and Tell? Prove Randall wrong.

Oh, he's taking his shoe off. All right, what do you got here? Just incredibly on brand. Do we have a QVC style? Just imagine we're playing the music from the countdown. Just some soft. Exactly. Lots of folks are into Crocs. I discovered these Birkenstocks versions of a croc.

You can call them a Birkencroc. Oh, lighter weight. I'll be the judge of that. Oh, yeah, jumps out of your hand. It does. Later weight. Obviously weight class here a great camp shoe backpack and shoe uh-huh and

You know it's rhodo molded doesn't stink Wow super comfy good art Holder guys smell it Randall see if it smells or not No, you got to smell the inside. Yeah, we Yeah, it's good. Let Randall be the joke. I'm not No, it smells like feed. It literally just smells like a shoe. I highly recommend they were 30 bucks. Uh-huh. Cal's show and tell item where the shoes on his feet. Yeah that's good. Grant asks is it breathable? No. No. Well you can't have it all. It's not much of a qvc segment. All right my show and tell item Well, we'll get better Phil and and listeners listeners if you're out there

But wait, there's more chime in with your thoughts on whether or not Cal intended to use his shoe for show and tell today Why don't you show us that hoodie you were in? Maybe maybe the Yeti mug you're drinking out of next time Oh, yeah, no problem. Yeah, I was gonna do this Talk about this program that pheasants forever quail forever puts together. Well, you gotta save something for more showing tells Yeah, hopefully that show tell is is in the wintertime again when he has as many layers as he needs to come up with a good item Hey, I'm providing value to our audience. They like it my show and tell item I'm friends with the fossil dealer in Utah visiting Iraq great visiting his shop

And I had $200 cash in my pickup and I said Seth Seth What's the coolest thing I could get for $200 and he pointed to what I have here This is one. I only have like three rocks that I've ever bought the rest that I found I only have like three rocks that I've ever bought, the rest that I've found. And this, in honor of today's show, is a dinosaur track that he sold me. Far, far, far under value. This is worth way more than $200.

And I protested for a second. I says, Seth, you can't give me that thing for $200. And he said, sure I can. And so I didn't argue anymore. I just took that thing, track Track this is 200 million years old. It's from a delufasaurus Delufasaurus delufasaurus. It's found in Connecticut from the Portland formation This dinosaur was made famous in Jurassic Park, but they depicted them way way wrong a lot of creative liberties

Mm-hmm. Yeah, so in in Jurassic Park they had them as like a smaller Dinosaur that had frills when it would get angry you would pop these frills on this bit an acidic venom That's a Dennis Nedry when he wrecked his Jeep Trying to make that way to the last ferry. He had it come to Costa Rica Uh-huh. He needed that it did spit venom in the movie. These dinosaurs, they do not believe spit venom. They don't think there was any dinosaurs that even possessed venom. So that, those were a lot of creative liberties. The reality is... Well, actually it wouldn't be venom though, right? It's just like an acidic phlegm, which would be something that reptiles, some reptiles

these days have, right? It's just an acid to digest food. But paleontologists don't, they have no evidence that any of these dinosaurs had any kind of venom or any sort of biological function. Crichton was just going wild with that. But that's the fun part is we don't have that much evidence as to what exactly we're dealing with. What they do think they know about these dinosaurs This is one of the first large meat-eating dinosaurs that existed They stood about six feet tall 20 feet long weighed 900 pounds and at the time

This was the largest land mammal in North America that made this here track This is one of my favorite rocks put your hand next to that thing. Yeah Yeah, that's what's funny about Jurassic Park is that he makes the The Dilophosaurus a small sort of cute dinosaur and then the Velociraptor they make much larger way larger Than it was so you know Do your research kids? That's right. This is one of my favorite rocks I have. One of the few rocks that I've purchased.

I asked Seth, I said, Seth, you ever sold stuff to anyone really famous, like A-list celebrity or big politicians? And he says, yep. Carl Malone. And I go, who are they? Was that Leo? He says, I can't tell you.

And then I'm like, I begged him. I said, will you give me a hint? Can I make some guesses? He goes nope So if you're looking to if you're famous, what's the deal? I mean just between the the movie prop that they know we can't say what it's from Why are all these people so secretive about this? Just tell us. Yeah, we're in showbiz. We can take it Yeah But if you're looking if maybe if you were like a star on parks and rec and you consume meat eater content You're looking for a fossil for your own home Seth Sorenson from the fossil shack He could I saw him up and he is that some inside knowledge is that from Spencer's Hollywood reporter beat?

What's that somebody from parks and rec in? There's a few characters from that show. I don't know that they're interested in fossil. Oh you're just profiling they've consumed me Deter content in the past. So maybe they're listening right now Maybe they're a male cast member from Parks and Rec maybe two of them Roughly in the age of right. I'm re-plaza never misses a show Yeah, and and maybe they're interested in having some fossils for their home the fossil shack. He'll keep your secret You won't tell me or anyone else that you sold him some big beautiful fossils. Get after it Roblo. You searched for your informant who disappeared without a trace. You knew there were witnesses but lips were sealed.

You swept the city driving closer to the truth, while curled up on the couch with your cat. There's more to imagine when you listen. Discover heart-pounding thrillers on Audible. Joining us on the line last is Alex Fogg, the Ocaluza County Natural Resources Chief in Florida. He's here to talk about turning a retired ocean liner into the world's largest artificial reef.

Alex, welcome to the show. Hey man, how's it going? We're doing good. First thing, tell us about the SS United States, which is the ship at the center of this story. Yeah, man, so it's a big old ship. When I first saw it, I thought I was looking at the Titanic. It has that old ocean liner look, it was built back in the 1950s,

sailed all across the Atlantic, made the fastest crossing from the United States over to England, and then broke its own record coming back. Still the record that it holds today. While it still doesn't have that fresh coat of paint on her anymore, you could certainly see how she was quite magnificent back in her heyday. Yeah, it's funny you compared it to the Titanic because this ship is bigger than the Titanic slightly and I've seen the images comparing the sizes of the SS United States to the Titanic.

Now, how did Ocaloosa County acquire the ship? Yeah Yeah, it's been a heck of a process. We found out about it maybe three years ago. I had a contractor that we'd work with on some other artificial reefs, reach out and say, hey, you know, you should look at the SS United States. So I went down the Google rabbit hole, started looking at, you know, what what story this had. And there was some conflict between the old owner and the dock that it was at. So it was coming to a point

where the vessel is either going to be sold for scrap or it was going to have to go to some other purpose. And really the only economical option was to create an artificial reef with this vessel. We've deployed hundreds of artificial reefs, dozens of wrecks, large vessels, not as big as this one, but large ones in the past. And it just, it seemed like the right option for us to move forward with negotiating with the previous owner. Uh, and then we took ownership back in October, um, which was a big deal. A small County in Florida owning a thousand foot ocean liner that was in Philadelphia at the time. Can, can you tell us what you guys paid Alex?

Yeah. So we bought the ship for a million dollars, which is about the price of scrap. If it were to be scrapped, there's about a million dollars worth of steel on board. Wow. And then it's a bargain. Yeah. How do you, like the tug service to get that sucker down there? And then I imagine you got to do it quite a few man hours to make sure you're putting something not all that god awful in the water, right? Yeah, exactly. So this is built in a time when they didn't really have many rules as to what was going into paint, what was being burned for fuel.

So there's a lot of that that's still on board, even though a lot of it was gutted when it got brought overseas to Ukraine and Turkey. A lot of the asbestos is gone, but there's still a lot of lead, a lot of PCBs that are in the paint, a lot of fuel oil, all that has to be removed to ensure that we're not hurting the environment that we're hoping to benefit.

Now I've been surprised to read that it seems like a lot of the decision making is done at a very local level. In this case, Ocaloosa County, would I'd expect there to be involvement from NOAA and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and maybe even like the state of Alabama. Can you talk about the red tape involved with a project like this and how much or how little power Ocaloosa County has? Yeah, fortunately, we planned way ahead. And the way artificial reef construction works is you actually get permits way ahead of time

for a certain area to allow you to deploy artificial reefs whenever you want. So we have a permit that's good for 10 years. It was actually initially obtained back in the 90s and you know it's still active today and we can deploy wrecks tomorrow if we want to. So we've already gone through all the consultation with Army Corps of Engineers, Fish and Wildlife, NOAA, all those folks. The people that we I guess had the most red tape that we had to cut through just to get out of Philadelphia was the US Coast Guard. So the Coast Guard was very very nervous about a vessel that hadn't moved in 30 years,

looking the way that it did. They were worried about its ability to make the tow from Philadelphia all the way down into the Gulf and eventually into Mobile. So it was a hell of a tow, but after a lot of tests and a lot of surveys by all sorts of different people in Philadelphia, it was determined to be okay. There were some water bottles and some cups and things that were left sitting on tables. When we left Philadelphia, it arrived in Mobile with those cups and bottles still sitting in the same place that we left them. It was a very stable boat, no issues, didn't take on any water.

Now is the process of getting her all cleaned up and we'll have to go through similar hurdles when we tow her from Mobile to south of Destin, Fort Walton Beach to deploy as a reef. I've seen some online resistance to this project and there was a recent headline that said campaigners appealed Trump to save the SS United States. Why are some folks against this? Yeah, so this is one of the last vessels of its time. You, you know, essentially a hand built vessel that carries our nation's name. Um, a lot of people are very passionate about this vessel. What the people that are so negative about this project don't really know, or maybe can't wrap their head around is how much it costs. Was that is fishing.

They don't know fishing. There's fishing. Totally. I mean, there's, there's a ton of money in fishing and diving and they probably aren't fishermen and divers themselves, but they can't wrap their head around what it would cost actually restore this I mean, we're talking a billion dollars to get this vessel to a point to where it actually be used again Not to me. I don't know where the heck you would put a thousand foot ship for a long period of time I mean, it's had in Philadelphia for a long time and they essentially got thrown out

So there's just way too many logistics. I understand that there's historical value to that's where we're going to try and honor its legacy through a land-based museum. So there's a whole bunch of artifacts that have been collected over the years. We're going to actually remove the funnels, the big stacks on the top, and those will be retained for the museum. Um, and, and allow folks to come and learn about it, even after it's gone to the bottom and if you aren't a fisherman or a diver then you know you can go there.

How deep are we looking to sink this baby? Yeah, it's a massive ship so it's gonna be out in 180 feet of water with the top decks the whole top decks gonna be at 55-60 feet of water. Oh beautiful! Yeah, yeah very accessible to the beginner diver but then if those technical folks want to go down to the bottom or go penetrate and check out the engine room that's that's all on them. Oh, that is cool. Have you thought about putting, oh, I love to dive.

Yeah. Have you thought about putting like some mattresses or old couches on the deck to get people's speed jigs and stuff, and then you can go down there and collect them? I'll tell you, I think the wreck itself is going to be a magnet for all those, all those hooks and line and jigs and everything. It's, it's amazing how, how smart the fish are and nowhere to go to get you hung up. I love it. So there's about a year of prep work before you can sink this. What all happens in that time period?

So once we got to Mobile, we got to Mobile in what early March. So we've been there about two months now. Um, they've been removing 120 tanks worth, so millions of gallons of fuel oil that's still on board. They're removing all the glass, removing all the hazardous paint. All of this has to come off. And for a thousand foot ship, that's a lot of material

and a lot of manpower as you implied earlier. So once she gets cleaned up, we'll have EPA and a bunch of other regulatory agencies on board to come take a look and make sure we did what we said we did. And then we'll get that clearance to go deploy it in one of those permitted areas that I mentioned earlier. So it's exciting times on the horizon, but still a ton of work that needs to be done to try and get this thing down in 2025.

Yeah. So the day comes where you're ready to drop this thing to the bottom of the ocean. What is the process actually like of sinking the ship? Yeah, back in the day, they used to use bombs and explosives to blow holes in the bottom of the ocean, what is the process actually like of sinking the ship? Yeah, back in the day, they used to use bombs and explosives to blow holes in the side of it and make it go to the bottom really, really fast. But they determined that that's not good for dolphins

for this environment. Oh. So no dramatic explosions, but there'll be holes cut throughout the ship right above the water line to where when it's go time, you can open up through holes inside the ship to allow water to flood control. And then once those holes that are cut on the exterior of the vessel, uh, sink below the water line, it'll be gone in 40 minutes.

It's a very, very quick process once you get to that point. What kind of sea life is going to like this new artificial reef? You name it, everything. So this is, it's such a large vessel being placed in a location where there's really no Reef material natural or artificial existing at this time. So it's gonna be an oasis You're gonna have your reef fish species your snappers and your groupers. You're also gonna have your pelagic So it's gonna be you know, tunas wahoos billfish other things swimming by I mean, it's such a large vessel It's gonna be a magnet for everything including humans

Alex it's been a while since I've been in the ship sinking game. So I'm curious, you, you guys ended up with a ship. Were there other localities competing with you for it? And then along those same lines, is there like a top 10 list of ships like this sitting around the country that, that folks in your line of work are eyeballing and waiting for it to go on the market? Or sort of how does that shopping process look like? Yeah. Yeah. To start with the first question about other communities. Yeah, there's,

there are other communities that were certainly looking at this, but they didn't have the total project costs is right around $10 million. So they didn't have $10 million to commit to a project like this. We fortunately have leadership in the foresight to be able to obligate those funds and then find partnerships on the backend. So we've been working to find a number of partnerships to alleviate that total cost,

including partnering with some neighboring communities that we're also looking at getting this vessel. So it's a win-win for everybody. Those partnerships haven't been formalized yet, but I suspect it'll be in the coming month or two. As far as selecting vessels, a lot of it's a case by case basis. Sometimes a vessel catches fire and they can't put it back into operation, so they give us a call and see if we'd be interested in taking it as an artificial reef. Sometimes it's an

old vessel that has no other opportunities. Like the SS United States, there's really no other option, so we worked with them to keep it from going to the scrap yard and turning it into the world's largest artificial reef. There are some large vessels out there that we're certainly keeping our eye on, but it's not something we're actively pursuing until something hits the fan. Fascinating. Have you thought about the merch opportunities here? You know, there's so many boat cliches, like t-shirts that say the two best days of boat ownership, the day you buy it and the day you sink it. Oh, man, no, that's a great point. So there's a lot of examples of where large vessels have been deployed and they are visited by people from around the world. The amount of merchandise that pops up is incredible.

In the age of social media and digital media and podcasts like this, it's amazing how many people have learned about this. And I suspect that the returns in the form of merchandise and visitation and all that stuff is going to be significantly more than anything that's ever been done before. So we're really excited to see what look at, we're really excited to see what pops up from this, but we're not in the, we're not in the business of

merchandise. So I think that's probably going to come down to the dive shops and the, the fishing shops and stuff like that. Uh, how quickly will fish start using this new reef? Yep. There'll be fish there probably the day after it's been deployed. There'll be a bunch of bait fish. Now they aren't going to be established.

They're not going to be sit there reproducing and eating and all that stuff. They're more of just there because there's some new thing that's on the bottom. It'll take a year or two before it's a functioning system. But there will be things to see immediately after it goes to the bottom. And how do you envision sportsmen using it? Oh man, the amount of early on when, you know, there maybe aren't enough fish there to really sustain a fisherman or, you know, make for a good day of fishing. It's gonna be heavily dived But once it's become that established system, there's gonna be fishing people fishing it every single day And then there's gonna be people spear fishing on it every single day

So it's gonna be hammered by the sports fisherman But the good news is there's a lot of other fishing sites and diving sites all around this vessel So if there's a bunch of people there, they can go to one of those other sites and wait their turn. Well, thank you for joining us, Alex. Congrats on the record breaking reef and good luck with the project. Yep. Thank you. You guys have a good one. Thanks you too. Cal's going to be there in a few years. Oh, I love that. Love it. Yeah. You look at the map that Ocaluza County has of all the artificial reefs they created It's like reefs on top of reefs at this point. Uh, I think they got it figured out over there

Yeah, alabam's kind of an overlooked gulf state too. Cool All right, that brings us to the end of this week's show phil. Let's get some final feedback from the chat Brent would just uh like to set the record straight that he did the turkey reveal thing first So that's it's fine when he, when he does it. Spencer, your holy grail for rockhounding. I would say it's a rock that probably doesn't even exist. I would want a rock that has multiple bits of history. So if I got to pick one rock to find, it would be a meteorite that hit earth.

And then that meteorite was eaten by a dinosaur because dinosaurs had gizzards just like birds so people will find or claim to find it's not always confirmed a rock that was a dinosaur gizzard stone and they're very smooth and round gastrolyte Nick that's a it's a gastrolyte they guess our lift is on the ground gastrolyte is on the ground. Gastrolyte is in the bird. Is that right? Well, I think- Well, it would be stone.

Yeah. When I, when I hear it referred to as the fossil version, it's a gastrolyte. So I'd want a meteorite that hit her that was then eaten by a dinosaur and was used as a gizzard stone becoming gastrolyte. And then maybe some ancient human picked it up and used it as a pestle with a pestle and mortar. That's that's my holy grail I want it's a small ask something that came from outer space that was in a dinosaurs

Gizzard that then some ancient human used to crush acorns two weeks ago I basically stayed at the site of the Jones diamond. Are you familiar with that one? No, it's the largest Specific kind of diamond that's blanking on me right now is found in West Virginia and a creek. Mm-hmm But it's like a giant mystery stone You would love this because it the formation it comes out of is in Brazil And so there's a theory that it was traded Over and over and over and over and over again and eventually got dropped in this Creek in West, Virginia That's perfect largest alluvial diamond ever

discovered in North America. That's got all the ingredients of a holy grail. It kind of brings us full circle because diamonds are, and the search for them, particularly in alluvial flood plains, is a key plot element of the film and book Congo. Yes, exactly right. Full circle. For the blue diamonds though, because they wanna use those in some sort of primitive microprocessor. In the book, yeah, in the movie it's a laser weapon.

But yeah, go ahead. Oh, and we were talking about the legislation in DC. Max brought up the fact that Cal and Mark both dropped a podcast today about their recent trip to DC. Cal, I don't know if you want to just talk briefly about what you did over there and what kind of shows you'll be dropping

in the Cal in the Wild feed next week. Oh boy, Phil and I were just crying over the news cycle moving way too fast for our pace here. Yeah, we did some lobbying on the hill in Washington, DC. We attended the Teddy Roosevelt Conservation Partnership Capital Conservation Awards, and basically just rubbed elbows with some newly appointed Trump appointees in different offices, like National Resource Conservation Service, and some folks in the Ag department, and then tried to hit as many Senate and House

offices as possible to ask them to join the brand spickety new released Public Lands Caucus led by Gabe Vasquez out of New Mexico and Ryan Zinke out of Montana. I saw Congressman Mike Simpson was in line up with that too, but we need more of that. And that's what we're really encouraging people to do. We also talked about mineral withdrawal in the boundary waters. We talked about active land management and not selling off our Public land especially doing it in a way that avoids all the things that the public has come to trust which is Knowing what we're giving up for what we're getting quite simply so

Phil what else you got? Let's see here. Oh, yeah, you're playing trivia at the BHA Rendezvous, Rendezvous, correct Spencer? I won't be there, but Randall will be. Randall is going to be leading trivia and the BHA Rendezvous for the second year in a row. Saturday night, I believe it starts at 8 p.m. June... Juneteens. The mid-teens. Whatever the Saturday is. Yeah, I think it's the Tuesdays the 17th, so going backwards and carry the three. Yeah, and while you're there. So it's the weekend of the 13th. So it's Friday the 13th, Saturday the 14th, and then we're gonna have a big public lands rally on the 15th there in Missoula.

Yeah. Which is also Father's Day. We'll make up a plan here soon. I think it'd be fun to get some audience participation in that game, but I haven't yet sat down to think through the logistics. But rest assured, Leland, we will be playing trivia and it will be a wonderful time in support of a good organization. And if you see Randall there, go ask him about the drunkenness he's ever been in his life and he'll have a good story to share with you. Nope.

We'll go there. He won't share that story with you. So ask him anyway. Jacob's going on a four day paddle trip in the Midwest. It's kind of a big area, Jacob, but he's asking for recommendations on scenic rivers with decent fishing. There's a lot of four. Four days of paddle. Four days if you're straying together four days like camping along the way you're probably limited. Go to the boundary

waters. Yeah go to the boundary waters. You could paddle for months up there it's plenty scenic and some of the finest fishing in North America. Any other recommendations? It's gonna be totally different when there's an open pit copper sulfide mine. I've only done one night, two day trips on the little Miami River. And I don't think it's sort of attracting visitation of out of state, so maybe look elsewhere. Okay, there you go. Randall, tell you where not to go. What else you got, Phil? Kevin says, it's a really great fossil, really happy for you, but what the people really need to know is what shoe you're wearing right now. Oh, I've got just some Nike tennis shoes on today.

Great. Yeah, Kevin. I mean, he's a man of the people. Uh-huh. I'll do my own audience. There's a couple silly questions, but I feel like I've done a lot of silly questions. Well, let's get a couple more.

I'll do my own audience call out. I saw questions right after we finished our discussion of the gorilla battle battle and someone pointed out that they don't believe that that many humans would be killed Just very badly injured and I actually I'd like to go back on my statement about 30 to 40 being killed That is unless the gorilla had time to go around and sort of finish off his victims I think it would just be a lot of maimings. So yeah, whoever that was point well taken He'll put him in a coma. Yeah, make him make him on bed rest. Yeah, anything else Phil? Marty says inquiring minds wants to know who's in charge of bumping into the giant foothold trap behind Spencer every week. It's You know, the thing is is it's not the person who's actually bumping into the trap who's responsible.

It's the person who sits in Spencer's seat. You see, I think in the event of a fire, everybody on this side of the table would be dead because there's not a lot of clearance between the tripods and that host seat. And so if someone is sitting in that seat and not paying attention to those around them, they oftentimes will force those of us with larger bodies to sort of push up against the wall, which wasn't as hazardous until that foothold trap was in place.

So it's not the guy bumping the trap, it's the guy he's trying to avoid. And I will say, for being such a respected hunter and personality in the industry, Stephen Rinella has very little awareness of what's happening around him. So I'll walk, I didn't want to name names. He'll be in the chair leaning back. You're just fine. That's his right. But then I come up next, some kind of, I don't, he's usually on the phone or sending an email. I'll kind of try to squeeze through and then I'll finally just have to say, excuse me. Hey, Steve,

excuse me. I'm behind you. Yeah. And then he'll move about an inch and then I'll finally just have to say excuse me Steve excuse me behind you yeah and then he'll move about an inch and then I'll still bump which works which works for some folks in this office yeah you you have to make him acknowledge you to get behind his chair and Marty and everyone else listening to this if you really want to help out Phil if you're a Philistine what are your what are your fans called oh well there's a question about that apparently people don't like Philistine because they think it's rude, but I'm embracing it. Let's call it a spade of spade.

And my favorite one that I've seen is the Kalmudgins. That's the other tribe. Someone came up with Kalamanders in this show today. Oh, that's good. If you're a Philistine, the thing that you can do to really prove that you're a Philistine is write an email to themedeater at the meat eater comm and say hey I think you guys need a bigger studio

Because we have multiple walls here We could knock out and we could make a bigger space for you and boy if you think we're podcasting at a high level now Just wait until this room has like an extra. We're gonna be throwing our limbs all over the place 60 square feet of gonna get lively. We're not gonna bump any more tramps. Quiet air circulation would be great. Yeah, Phil would be in a great mood. HVAC. So write an email to themedeater at themedeater.com and say hey I think you guys need to make your podcast studio a little bigger. Spencer said it, I didn't. Yeah, I did say. All right, next week's show we've got a very exciting exciting meat eater radio live It's dedicated demands best friend because it is dog week here at meat eater We got special guests joining us and a meat eater movie club Randall. What are you gonna be reviewing?

Yes, I'm pleased to announce that the meat eater movie club is returning by Popular demand and next week in keeping with the theme of dog week We're gonna be reviewing where the red fern grows 70 my heart out and I perfect for dog there aren't that many good like I was I was gonna go with Balto. No if I have to watch air bud I'm gonna instead watch Dunstan checks in because it's the same thing but with an orangutan We didn't have white Fang. I thought about White Fang but then he did the old one or the or the the remake. What was the

Stephen King movie with Kujo? Yeah that one there you go. We're gonna go with Where the Red Fern Grows. Nobody wins. It's available on Tubi, Roku, Fandango at Home, Plex, Peacock, Amazon Prime, YouTube, YouTube TV and then you can rent it on Google Play movies and Apple TV, but don't rent it. Just find it free. There also seems to be just like some bootleg version of it on YouTube, so I don't endorse, as we know, I don't endorse the infringement of intellectual property, but check it out on YouTube before you go renting it. What movie did you tell me you were considering doing, but it didn't really do it for you? Didn't really get you revved up

Old yeller old yeller. Yeah, dad doesn't do it for Randall. So I mean that's the thing. There's just like sad movies We're the real homeward bound Maybe maybe we'll just show up next week and I'll talk about homeward bound instead to myself one more important detail for next week We want a hot tip. I'll show down dedicated to dogs So send your hot tip to radio at theeedeater.com with the subject line, hot dog tips. We'll have a great prize for the winner. That's the end of this week's show. We'll see you guys back here next week for dog week.

Thank you so much. Thanks everybody. Steve Rinella here. The American West with Dan Flores is a new podcast production on the Meat Eater Podcast Network. It's hosted by author and historian Dan Flores, who happens to be mine and our own Dr. Randall's former professor. By focusing on deep time wild animals native peoples in the West's unique

environments, Flores will challenge your understanding of the American West and he will help to explain why it is the way it is today. I count Dan Flores as a friend. We do not agree on everything, but he has had a massive impact on my understanding of American history. And, uh, I invite you to get challenged by him in the same way that I have catch the premiere of the American West with Dan Flores on Tuesday, May 6th on the MeatEater Podcast Network. Subscribe to the American West with Dan Flores on Apple, Spotify, iHeart, or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to

Dan and it will stretch your brain all out. And I mean that in a very good way. You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.