Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - Bull Shark Attack - Jessie Arbogast and the Sensationalized Summer of the Shark

Episode Date: July 1, 2024

When 8-year-old Jessie Arbogast was bit by a bull shark in in the shallow ocean waters near Pensacola, Florida in 2001, the media ran wild with the story and others similar to it, proclaiming the summer of 2001 to be "The Summer of the Shark." But how bad was that summer really, and what are the consequences to those most effected by these events? Watch this episode here: https://youtu.be/qy69t_5QXz8 ~~ To advertise on the show, contact us! ~~ Tooth & Claw is brought to you by QCODE. Support the show and get access to an extensive library of exclusive episodes like this by supporting the show on Patreon or joining the Grizzly Club on Apple Podcasts. For the latest updates on the show and all things wildlife, follow us at toothandclawpod.com and social:  Instagram: @ToothandClawPodcast Twitter: @ToothandClawPod Wes: @GrizKid Jeff: @jefe_larson Mike: @mikey3ds Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And because you're a listener, you get 20% off your first order. Just head to mood.com. That's M-O-O-D.com to get started. Hey, everyone, Wes here. I wanted to do a quick plug for both of our subscription channels. If you're new to the podcast, you probably don't know we have two different subscriptions. channels, but they both get the same content. We have our Apple Gris Club, which is great for our Apple listeners, because those new episodes and bonus episodes just show right up in the same feed. You're

able to listen to them seamlessly. And then we also have our Patreon, which is its own feed, same episodes, but it's its own thing. And you get to listen there, ad free, you get early access. And personally, my favorite thing about Patreon is that we get to post on there. So we get to have a little bit more interaction with listeners, with everyone. But if you want those bonus episodes, either of those systems work great. We've had some really fun ones recently. Mike did a pigeon episode. Jeff did a really good orangutan episode.

Mike did what I'm out of meme that kind of led him down a weird wormhole. It's been really fun. Another thing I just wanted to bring up quickly was if you are a Patreon member, you're also going to get some early access to our trip details. And often our Patreon members are the people that will get to fill out the trip information first. So they'll have the kind of earliest chance of getting in on those trips. It's just kind of the only way that we can do that seamlessly and give our subscribers first crack at that. So if you're thinking about either or and you might want to go on a trip with us,

I do recommend the Patreon because we just have that platform to be able to talk to you guys and get those details out early. We have an India trip coming up this week that we're going to be posting there first. So if you're interested in that trip, now is a really good time to sign up for Patreon. If you don't like it, you can cancel it. You'll only be out $10. Anyway, I think that's it. Hopefully this all made a lot of sense.

If it didn't, I totally understand. Don't worry about it. Just skip this and listen to the episode. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Tooth and Claw podcast. We are Wes, Jeff, and Mike. That's the three of us. We are one entity at this point.

We are Legion. Wes is our wildlife by all. A.k.a. smart guy. Real brainiac. Mike's, you're both pretty smart too. Oh, you were going to say, Mike. You are both pretty smart, just in different ways. Mike is both smart way.

Oh, man, that is great. Jeff is very clever. You're smart, Jeff. You are. That's not what I meant. It really isn't. No, that's great. I think that sums up perfectly.

It's hard to wake up today because my eyes hurt from allergies. I can tell you sound a little groggy still, but pal. I hope my get a nose whistle just because Mike's been making me mad. I've got... So I'm... This is my first time recording in my studio that I built, and I'm staring at our horses right now. They're out in the yard, and our sprinklers are going, and I have kind of a funny story about me being forced to be a farmer, which I like to tell the stories every once while, because more and more, I'm being,

like forced to do all these farm chores. Anyway, Jesse was gone and we turned our sprinklers on about a month ago, a month and a half ago. And when we turned them on, the water just smelled horrible. Like it smelled like sewage. And we have a septic system. So we were really worried that something had happened to our septic and that had leaked into our irrigation well.

That is funny. It's not. We're not to the funny part yet. It gets funier. For weeks when we, when we would turn our sprinklers on, it would smell like sewage, but then it would kind of go away after we ran them for a little bit. But during that time, I'd get, like, sprayed with them or, you know,

like you get wet when you're turning on irrigation sprinklers. Oh, yeah, that's funny. We're not there yet. Hold on, Jeff. ruining my story. Anyway, Jesse went out of town, and I turned him on once when my dad was over and he smelled really strong, and I tried, he has a terrible nose. He couldn't smell it.

But I was like, there's something wrong here. So we went over and opened up the well and I looked down there. And there was like three dead marmits in our well just rotting and like covered with maggots and gross. And I then had to fish them out. I had to like, I built this weird little grappling hook on an extender that we had for a paint roller and spent an hour like fishing these rotten dead rodents out of our irrigation well. And it was just miserable. And it was probably the worst thing I've had to do on our little farm so far. And it was just one of those moments where it's like, what am I doing?

This is funny. It was funny just in the, how am I doing this right now? I see what you're saying. But I was thinking it was going to be like taking Jesse's responsibility. And if that's just like, Jesse, you have to do all of that. That would be crazy. I wouldn't do that. This is not a Jesse thing.

It's more just, oh, I have to do farm chores. Either way, it's hilarious. Your little studio is cool, though. I like the part where he got wet with the sewage water. Yeah, we've just been spraying ourselves with this, like, rotten rodent water for weeks. Well, let's give, anyway. Let's give listeners. I think I'm behind you, Jeff.

Sorry. No, you're all right. I stopped talking so you could finish. Okay. No, I was just going to say, we're going to have to wait a couple of minutes for listeners to stop laughing before we can keep the episode going. You guys you guys torpedoed that story as soon as it started. That is not the story. No, we added to it. All right. It's a good story. I liked it. Yeah. Did you make it so nothing can get in there anymore? Uh, yeah,

kind of. I need to do a little bit better job of that. But we had we had critters living in there all winter. We had raccoons in there. We had marmots in there and ground squirrels. In the water? In the well shed. Oh, wow. A couple of them managed to fall in, which sucks. That's a terrible way to die. Yeah, I don't like that. Yeah. Mike, you think if you were like drowning in water and a horse came and grabbed you and pulled you out, how much would that change how you feel about horses?

I'd have to be like, I don't like you, but I respect you is what I'd probably say. I think you'd like horses after that. I'd probably have to, yeah. Like Aragon. Eragorn. Yeah. Eragorn is the one. Yeah.

Aragorn. You got it right that time. And then I corrected myself. Yeah. If it wasn't for that damn dragon book, Jeff, you wouldn't ever have this problem. You know? Or that Spider and Harry Potter. Dragon.

Yeah. All right. Well, should we talk about the Dragons of the Seas today? Oh, yeah. Locknest monster. No. No, we're going to do another shark episode. Shark Week is coming out.

A lot of people are going to be thinking about sharks. And this is actually a summer where a lot of people are. It's John Sina this year, right? Is it? You did the ad read? Yeah, I can't remember if he was in that ad read or not. It's a weird pick to host the show because no one will even be able to see him. But that's their decision, I guess.

And there's sharks are going to be too afraid to show up, too. True, yeah. There's been a lot of talk about sharks lately in the news because there's been a handful of bites recently. And there's been kind of a media. And Trump was talking about sharks. Yeah, Trump hates sharks. He wants to get rid of them.

Which doesn't surprise me. That guy loves getting rid of things I love. That's directly contradictory to the platform you're running on, Jeff. So you probably don't. You're opposed to Trump, at least on that one thing. I'm trying to get the pro-shark voters. So there has been a lot of talk around. them and it made me think about it quite a bit and it made me remember other summers where this was going on.

And this happens actually quite a bit where a few people get bit by a shark and then they start to report on it and then they just start reporting on every single bite that happens. And it makes it seem like it's happening a lot. And this is one of those summers where we're hearing a lot of stories about people being bit by sharks. and the one that it really made me think of was summer of 2001. And the reason it made me think of that particular summer is because there was a really interesting bite that happened that got reported on a lot.

And that's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about Jesse Arbogast and the summer of the shark. So summer of 2001 started like any typical American summer around the turn of the millennium. There's a lot of American kids that are getting out of school And like a lot of them, Jesse Arbigas couldn't wait for all the adventures that he's about to go on that summer. It made me think about how that is probably the happiest any of us will ever feel in our lives is when you're in that age range and you get out of school. The last day of school is the most pure form of happiness that I think exists on this planet.

Back then, it's like Y2K didn't happen. So we're golden. It's pre-9-11. It hasn't happened yet. Yeah, pre-9-11 post-Burlin Wall. I do, I do, though. I remember watching Dazed and Confused not long ago, and they have that really good sequence at the beginning of the movie

of everyone getting out for summer. And it just made me realize, I'll probably never feel that level of happiness ever again in my life. And I don't know. Anyway, so Jesse's eight years old. He'd just finished second grade, and he's particularly excited about the trip that he's going to be taking around Independence Day or the 4th of July. He's traveling with his brother Vincent, his sister, Maddie, his two cousins, and his uncle and aunt, Vance and Diane Flazanzzer.

I'm not going to say their name again because I don't know how to say the last name, but that's close enough. Vance and Diana. And they live in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, and they're going to be traveling to the Pensacola, Florida area. And so for like someone that age, I remember when I was that age, like thinking about Florida, it just kind of feels like a dream location. You've got these long sandy beaches, blue water, rolling waves, interesting wildlife, just this really amazing feeling of optimism at that age going to a place like Florida, like seaside Florida. And I'm sure that's what little Jesse was feeling. Whatever, you were watching like MTV Spring Break and you're like, I want to go to Florida. Yeah. I need to get to Florida, ASAP.

No, but in all seriousness, I was pretty obsessed with the idea of Florida as a little kid because of like alligators and the Everglades and swamps. It just seemed really exotic. Carson Daily. Yeah, Carson Daily, boobs. Penny Hardaway. I did, I would sneak away and watch spring break late at night and stuff. Yeah. Pre-internet days, like that was gold.

Yeah, that's all we had. So two days before the 4th of July, the family's spending a near perfect evening at Santa Rosa Island. It's a beautiful barrier island with crystal white sand, warm, sparkling blue Florida panhandle water. This is just kind of one of those idyllic beaches that you dream about. It's around dusk, and Vance and Diana, the aunt and uncle, are relaxing on the sand while four, the kids were playing in the water. So Jesse and his brother were playing in these gentle rolling waves about 15 feet from shore in water that went to their waist, so about two and a half to three feet of water. And Jesse's sister and their cousin were a good distance further out in the water,

and they're playing in like slightly deeper water out away from the shore. So it's about as idyllic of a scene as you can imagine. It's these young kids around the 4th of July playing at dusk in this beautiful water on this amazing beach. But it's about to turn into a blood-soaked nightmare for the entire family. Oh, not nearly perfect anymore. What do you think it wasn't nearly perfect even before that, though? I think they saw some like the naked guy running down the street or something. Like sand in their claws.

It's much more like Fourth of July now, though. You need a little blood for it to be Fourth of July. That's true. That's very amazing. Yeah. something. So Vance had been periodically checking in on the kids in the water as they swam. Not only is his daughter out there, but also his two nephews and his niece.

And he and Diana are responsible for all of these kids on this trip, so he's being really vigilant. But his attention was away from the water when suddenly his 10-year-old son on the beach next to him started screaming. And the word he was screaming cut through the air like a knife. He was screaming, shark. About 30 seconds earlier, Jesse and Vincent had been playing, that's his brother, playing in the small waves, when suddenly Vincent felt something large and rough swish past him in the water.

He looked up and in horror he sees a large fin and the back of a shark protruding from the water and hitting towards his brother. Remember, they're only in like two and a half feet of water here, so a lot of the shark was actually sticking out of the water while this was happening. Oh, low. So Jesse sees the fin also cutting through the shallow water and heading toward him. He barely has a moment to register what's happening before the shark takes an exploratory bite on his arm. And then the shark immediately decides, oh yeah, this is food. I'm going to go ahead and eat this. And it takes a full bite out of his leg, removing about two thirds of the mass from his thigh in a single bite.

Jeez. It's a pretty small kid. Like it doesn't take much to like an eight-year-old kid to eat a little. It's probably still hungry either. It is. Yeah, don't downplay it, Wes. It's still a bad thing to happen, you know? That is a bad thing to happen, yes.

Jesse starts screaming, he's got me, he's got me, get him off of me. And Vance on the shore can see blood coloring the ocean around the thrashing shark, and he starts sprinting toward the water. And the children in the water are screaming, and the shark could focus his efforts on eight-year-old Jesse. and the 7-foot 200-pound bull shark was halfway out of the water when Vance and another passerby sprint into the surf. This isn't something Vance had ever really prepared for. Like this isn't necessarily something that you've like gone over in your head a bunch of times.

And he didn't really know what he was going to do as he sprinted in the water. But he knew he had to do something. And he's 6'1, he's 200 pounds, so he's about your size Mike. Jeff, you're a little shorter. Beefy. That's me. He's a beefy guy. Just look at my dating profile.

Look at Tinder. But he sprints in and this big sandpapery tail of the shark is thrashing in front of him so he just does what comes easiest and he grabs the tail of the shark and he starts trying to pull on it to get it out of the water

but the shark doesn't budge. And in the meantime, the shark had switched its attention back to Jesse's arm. So it had taken this massive chunk out of his leg Two thirds of his leg is gone And it starts fighting down on his But it's a small child though

So it's like not that big of a deal Right Wes? It's a big deal I'm just saying it's not like it Yeah that's not what I was saying The shark's still hungry It's a bigger deal because he's a small child That's what I was trying

Well whatever We'll agree to disagree I guess Wes We'll agree to agree How about that? Sure So the shark bites down again And they think it's probably because as it was biting his leg, Jesse was trying to push its mouth off of his leg.

But the shark bites down again on his arm between his elbow and his shoulder. So his upper arm on the right side. And Vance starts tugging on the shark again, trying to get it to release his nephew. And as he does, he finally gets some purchase and pulls the shark. And it bites down and completely severs Jesse's arm, like a little bit, about four inches below his shoulder. shoulder, it's just gone.

No way. Yeah. But it's a small arm. All right. We've lost Mike. It's not funny. I mean, he loses his arm. He's screaming.

He's in a lot of pain. And he falls back into the water. I don't want anyone to think that we're laughing at that. No, not at all. That's a nightmare. So Diana, the mom, the aunt, she rushes into the water. And with this help of this passerby that had also rushes. in she pulls Jesse onto the shore and by the time she has his like little body onto the sand

his screaming had stopped he's unconscious and she immediately begins CPR meanwhile vance is still holding onto the shark in the water his daughter and his niece are still out there so he doesn't want to let the shark go because he's worried that it'll then go and attack them so he summons all this all happened really fast because this is fast they would have gotten out by now yeah this is what this is all happened within like 30 seconds from what I can understand and they're out far enough and they're like younger girls that I think it's taking

them a little bit of time to get into shore and they also don't want to like swim straight they were like directly behind these boys they don't want to swim straight in because all of this is happening like right next to the shore so he summons all his strength he pulls on the tail of this thrashing

bull shark and he drags it all the way up onto the beach I think with some help right near where Jesse was laid out on the sand and the last of Jesse's blood is coming out of his system. It did make me think like, what if he woke up and the sharks like right next to him on the sand? Yeah. But luckily that didn't happen. Yeah.

Or the shark just like swam into the sand. Yeah, I don't think that would happen either. But luckily as well, that didn't happen. But once the shark's out of the water, Vance runs over to Jesse and Diana. He takes over on CPR compressions. and breaths. And this crowd is gathered around the boy and they're shocked to see that he no longer has a right arm and that a huge bite out of his thigh is visible. They can see the white bone of his leg bone. They can see all this red muscle and tissue that's clearly visible. And there

was even one passerby that said it looked like a drumstick that had a giant bite taken out of it. They also talked about how there was really like not much blood because almost all of his blood was in the water. It had spilled out really quick because when the shark bit both arm and leg, it severed a lot of, it severed his main arteries. So his blood pumped out really quick. And they could still see

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So Jesse's eyes are open, but they've rolled back into his head. He's as white as a sheet. And his uncle and his aunt and some other tourists are fighting furiously to keep him alive. They wrap him in towels. They keep him warm. They titernic hits around his arm.

And again, like completely gone four inches from his shoulder. And Vance had used his cell phone to call for help and he told the dispatcher that Jesse's right arm was completely gone. His right leg was almost gone and that he wasn't breathing on his own and didn't have a pulse. So not good. It's not looking good for Jesse Arpagast. When the helicopter from Baptist Hospital arrives and as they're landing, they could see the

gray shape of the shark on the beach, they can see the crowd surrounding this tiny lifeless body. they quickly assess the situation they find that pretty much all of his blood have been drained from his body and for them typically for a medic that's like okay this person's dead or going to die I think I read somewhere that it's like 1% of people that have lost this much blood

are able to come back from it and the main reason there is just that there's nothing left to pump like you can't you can't get the heart started back up again because there's no pressure there's nothing left to pump And also there's no oxygen going to the brain. There's no oxygen going to any of your organs because blood that transports our oxygen. So everything is kind of starting to shut down at this point.

But they decide not to pronounce him dead. They scoop them up and they rush him into the helicopter. They continue CPR and they hook him up to a breathing tube. And as they're closing the door to the helicopter, they ask the beach rescuers where the arm was. And everyone's like, we don't know. So meanwhile, this is the crazy part of the story for me. Jared Klein, who's a National Park Service law enforcement ranger, was thinking the same thing.

Like, where's this arm? He had walked over to investigate the shark, and he used his baton and kind of pried the shark's mouth open. And this shark's still alive. Still alive. It's still, like, thrashing and stuff. And he managed to see inside of its mouth, and he can see Jesse's arm lodged in the back of its throat.

No way. Yeah. So he tells everyone to back up. He pulls out his service weapon and fires four shots into the head of the shark. And it kind of made me think like when he pulls out the arm, it would really suck if it had like four bullet holes in it after that. But luckily he didn't hit the arm. And then they pried the mouth open again with his baton. And there was a lifeguard that wrapped his arm in a towel, put his arm halfway in and then had like some medical tongs.

chemistats and grabbed the arm and pulled it out of the shark's throat. Wow. So they wrapped it in a towel, they put it on ice, and they put it in an awaiting ambulance that rushed it to the hospital. By the time the chopper landed at the hospital, Jesse had gone without blood and his organs without oxygen for about 30 minutes. Do you think they charged them full price for the ambulance? I was wondering that myself.

If there's like an arm, just the arm. I bet they did. Come on, it's like 10% of me. Yeah, just based on our system, I really bet they did charge him. I know. Like the full ambulance, right. The dad's like, no, I'll take it myself. I've got it, I've got it.

Yeah, this one did really make me think about the cost because as you guys are about to learn, there's a lot of medical stuff that had to happen in this. And I'm guessing his parents must have just had really good insurance because they never really brought it up in the story. But anyway, they put him on a gurney. They take him four floors down to a trauma room at the hospital. They're doing CPR the whole time. And doctors and nurses put an IV into his arm. And they start pumping O negative blood into him.

Because at this point, they haven't really had a chance to talk to his parents or like pull up his medical records. So they have no idea what his blood type is. So O negative is the universal blood type. That's why it's so precious. And that's why if you're O negative, you should try and donate blood. because they can use it in these kind of scenarios. And they're just pumping it into his body. They pump nearly 1.5 liters of warmed blood into his body,

which is about half of the normal volume for a kid his age, like his entire blood volume. And finally his wounds begin to ooze blood, but his heart still isn't beating. So they continue CPR, and they pause, and they're searching for a pulse. And finally, after a while of doing this, One doctor felt a faint carotid pulse.

I always want to say the wrong way to say that. And then another felt a faint femoral pulse. And then the blood began to flow on its own. Yeah, Jesse. He's doing it. He's doing it. Outside the ambulance. Like weakly like weak listening to all this.

Yeah. It's a lot. I mean, who's Todd Endress, the guy that the dolphins saved. He was another one where when they showed up, they're like, oh, there's way too much blood. that this guy's lost and then they managed to revive him. So it is always a miracle when they can do this. Right when that happened,

the ambulance showed up with his arm and his heart started beating right when that kind of all came together. So when he was stabilized, the doctors called down some surgeons and they debated what to do next with this boy. And they were kind of shocked by how surgical these cuts were.

And these are doctors that had seen shark bites before. but they said, you know, usually there's a lot more tearing and ripping. And with Jesse, his bites were so clean that they were like, this shark could have been a doctor. Yeah. Someone find this shark and put a scalpel in its pin. And then that ranger was like, oh, I got some bad news for you. No, but they saw this cut and they're like, I think we can do this.

I think we can reattach his arm. So they worked for 12 hours and I read through the whole description. It was really fascinating, learning about how they reattach these tiny little veins and vessels and everything. But they managed to reattach his arm after 12 hours of surgery. And blood was once again moving through his shredded veins and arteries. Oh, that's awesome. It's like nothing you had happened. We'll get to that.

Oh. Yeah, we definitely, a lot happened. His parents, though, David and Claire Arbigast had been called by Vance. Because remember, his parents weren't there. This was his uncle and aunt. And they're now at the hospital waiting to see their son. Jesse's eyes were open. He responded to pain stimuli, but it was clear that the loss of oxygen to his brain had caused

some pretty serious brain damage. It would take months to learn how extreme that damage actually was, and his parents spent months with them there at the hospital. And it was really touch and go for a while. There was times when his organs looked like they were about to shut down again. They had a really scary first month in the hospital, but his parents were really tough were there when he moved his reattached arm for the first time. They were there when he first wriggled his fingers on his own. It was really touching to read about just like them sitting at the

hospital and seeing these tiny signs of life start to come back in their son. That's amazing. And apparently they'd had an older son who had a really serious accident not long before and they had to spend some time in the hospital with him too. So these are parents that have been through a lot and that were really strong and had like put a lot of their kind of goodwill toward their kids so that's awesome it was this was like a really it was a touching one to read about i always wonder about that phrase i hear it every so often like responding to pain stimulus and i always wonder exactly what that looks like what they're doing this this kid just got like attacked by a shark are they like pinching him a little bit it's like come on they must be through enough but yeah get that shark back in here anyway

While when all this is happening, the media is having an absolute field day with this story. Because the story that they're running is this kid got his arm bit off. The uncle pulled the shark out of the water and retrieved the arm, you know, which I remember hearing about this and thinking, this is the craziest shark bite story that I've ever heard in my life that this happened. And because of this, they start then, they're getting a lot of people listening to this story. So they then start reporting on other shark attacks. And pretty soon 2001 was starting to be called the summer of the shark because it really felt like people were being attacked left and right. So rather than go into much biology on bull sharks, which we've done before, I just kind of want to talk about this phenomenon that happens every so often.

And it does happen where the media suddenly decides, okay, we're going to report on shark attacks. They're biting both arms now. They are. You said left and right. Left and right. I was wondering what that was. Yes. They will bite both arms.

But were they really going crazy? Was this really a feeding frenzy of sharks? Or was it more a feeding frenzy of media? So we're going to go through this similar media blitz on sharks right now. But it's not quite as in your face as it was in 2001. Because we today get our news and media from so many different sources that it's hard for one story to really stick in the collective consciousness unless it's something really big.

Any more, we're just bombarded with so much information all the time that I think shark attacks can't really get inside our collective consciousness like they could in 2001. In 2001, this was really one of the main things that people were talking about that summer was all these shark attacks.

And I do kind of remember that. But it is kind of starting to sound like that this summer again with everything that's been going on. So I just wanted to talk about this phenomenon. So was 2001 really an exceptional year for shark attacks? And we're going to look at data that's collected by the international shark attack file, which we brought up a lot on this podcast, which is operated by the Florida Museum of Natural History and the University of Florida. So almost any time we talk about shark bites. You have heard about it.

But I'm not surprised that you don't remember. It is, it's kind of the premier spot for data on shark attacks worldwide. And that's why we tend to go to it. It's operated by this guy George Burris, who's the lead kind of scientist in this shark attack file. And the data that I could find showed that in 2001, worldwide, there were 76 unprovoked shark attacks. In 2000, the year before, when no one was really talking about this, were 84. So there was more in 2000 than there were in 2001. In 2001, 55 of the bites occurred in the US, which was one higher than 2000. And of those 55 bytes, 37 occurred in Florida, which was one

less than the year 2000. For some more recent context, the average number of worldwide unprovoked shark bites from 2013 to 2022 is about 74 per year. So about the same thing that we saw in 2001. There's a bit of fluctuation year to year, but each year we tend to see somewhere between 60 to 85 shark bites worldwide. This is like the entire world. And roughly 30 to 55 of them happen in the U.S. So we are number one.

Yeah. Yes. USA. But something to remember when we're looking at this is a lot of underdeveloped countries don't really report the same way that a lot of the countries that are reporting do, and a lot of those countries do have higher rates of shark bites. So the numbers are higher than this,

but this is what we have. This is the data that we have that we can conclusively say this is how many happened. So some years have a few more, some years have a few less, but they're really, at least since the year 2000, what I've found, there haven't really been any statistical outliers that can be comfortably called the summer of the shark. But that didn't stop talking.

magazine from running a cover story that said Summer of the Shark in 2001. And Jesse's story really had all the elements that news outlets absolutely love. And lucky for them about every two weeks that summer, they had a new story to fuel the fire. And George Burris called it a media feeding frenzy because they just couldn't get enough of shark bites. The media are the real sharks, huh? They are. We always knew that, you know? Or the sharks on that show.

people that play billiards all the time. Those are some real sharks in there. Yeah. At the poker tables, you know all about that. Jeff, you're a bit of a card shark yourself, right? Dude, I did. I had a good day in a casino. What'd you put it on?

Oh, you put it on green, huh? Green on roulette. I won a bunch of money on the Boston Celtics, and then I lost most of it in Blackjack, and I was completely defeated, and I put it all on green, just so I could leave and I won and I have won like $800.

You just got to bet on green from now on. Yeah. Don't gamble. It's a bad, you know, but it was pretty electric. It's fun when it... I am a shark.

When it works, you feel awful when it doesn't. You just feel like so defeated and gross. I could have. I could have. What I'm trying to say here is that the same thing is happening this year where we're not seeing... And you know, the numbers aren't in for the year yet,

but my guess, I'll bet that they fall within the normal bell curve like the median and mean of shark attacks where we're going to have a pretty normal year, but because there's been some like interesting ones, the media is going to report on it and make it seem like sharks are absolutely swarming our shores and that if you get in the water, you're going to get bit by a shark. I bet you're going to take some. Okay. You think we're going to have more this year? Yeah. I bet we'll have less than we had last year. What do you want to bet?

Uh, tattoo. Uh, tattoo. Shark tattoo. A shark tattoo? A shark tattoo? Deal. The loser has to get a shark tattoo. I'll accept that bet.

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slash special offer. Terms apply. All right. Usually something has to happen to like shift the media's attention. And in 2001, something happened in the late summer that brought a quick end to all of the shark reporting, even though bites were still happening.

Do you guys remember what it was? 9-1 summer 2001? Yeah, well, I was going to say it was George W. Just like reading those books to those kids. But yeah, also 9-11. Yeah. Yeah, it completely shut down any reporting on anything else. And sharks were still biting people, but the media definitely wasn't talking about anymore.

All they were talking about was 9-11. Which, you know, that's still all they talk about these days, right? 9-11. All right. Let's get back to Jesse. Jesse left the hospital in December 2001. So he was in the hospital from July to December. He was there a long time. His parents had become his main caretakers. They had to lift him in and out of his wheelchair. They needed to do essentially everything for him and for quite a while, actually. They did everything they could to stay out of the media for a while, but about eight years after the attack in 2009, they finally did a couple interviews to let the world see how Jesse had recovered.

He was still in a wheelchair. He's mostly nonverbal, but it was evident that he's a happy 16-year-old kid that loves superheroes. He was really into blondes on TV. He spent a lot of time with his family. We were watching the same shows back then. Yes, we were.

And his family really thought, he's mostly nonverbal, so it was hard for them to communicate. But they really felt like he was taking everything in. it was just really hard for him to get information out. And they learned to communicate with him through his eyes, through facial gestures, through his hands, and this really limited verbal communication. Sometimes when he gets really excited about something,

he would be able to say, yeah, or something like that. But really limited kind of verbal back and forth. That's tough. I wonder why his vocal cords or something, was it maybe mental? It's not physical damage. It's brain damage. He was pretty severely bring damage from the lack of oxygen to his brain. He wakes up every morning with a big smile on his face,

and then he always takes time to hold his loved ones' hands, to give them hugs. He's a very sweet boy. And from what they saw, like, he had no real trauma from the bite. Like, they would be watching TV, and there'd be a shark, and it wouldn't affect him at all. But it did really traumatize his brother and sister who were in the water with him. So in 23 there was a spate of videos on TikTok

That used AI This is when AI was really starting to become Something that creators were using That retold his story But pretty much got everything wrong Like saying that he was a 13 year old Australian boy That was dragged underwater by a great white shark I watched a few of these videos

They're terrible I still hate AI But this is like early AI People using AI in video So it's that really disconcerting, like the mouth is moving differently from the eyes, really weird videos. I hated watching these videos. And it was really gross, to be honest, like most things that use AI. And it reignited a bit of interest in Jesse and in his story.

And once again, his family found themselves in the news. And they're talking about this incident. He's now 30. And from what I can tell, he's in about the same condition as he was when he was. He spends his weeks in a care facility for other special needs adults, and then he spends his weekends with his family. I really think the main lesson to learn from this story is the role that the media has in bringing interest to these kinds of stories, and what a huge responsibility that is. And I don't think that we're separate from that.

I feel that really strongly for the show, and I think, you know, if you tell these myths or if you tell outright lies about these stories, it can really traumatize these people. It can really make them have to relive this sort of thing by having to talk to the news and clarify these things that were told wrong. And it results in a lot of negative repercussions for the species that are implicated in these attacks as well. So I don't know.

I feel like sensationalizing, doing bad research, using lazy tools like AI really can lead to a lot of extra trauma, and pain and heartbreak. And I promise that we're never going to do that here. If we ever mess up, we're going to correct what we get wrong without hesitation. We're going to do our best to not be lazy because it is lazy to do that sort of thing. And you do traumatize people and I hate that.

Like that's not our purpose here at all. Plus it's no secret that we really care about the animals. Like we care about the animal side of these stories. And I do think we should talk about that really quickly with this story. like what they might have been doing wrong. Do you guys have anything that you would guess that might have been like wrong about this scenario? I mean, I wouldn't call it wrong, but you're more likely to get bit if you're in the water at dusk. That's the only thing I had.

Yeah. So really the only and I'm with you there, Jeff, too. You're smart, Jeff. You can, yeah, you are smart. You are. Despite what West would have you believe. I think he really is. I constantly am telling Jeff that he's smart.

Yeah, when you remember. Yeah, off air, but when we're recording, that's when it comes out. That was a slip. That's all that was, and it's not how I actually feel. I would never tell people like, you can't swim at dusk, because you can't. You know, like 999,000 times out of a million, you're going to be fine. But it is, it does increase your chance. chances slightly of being bit by a shark if you swim at dusk or dawn. This is a time when sharks are

more active. It is a time when they tend to hunt a little bit more. Sharks, especially a shark like a bull shark, they're ambush predators. So if they can get that edge of having slightly murkier, harder to see through water, it allows them to sneak up on their prey a little bit better. And for bull sharks, that's typically fish. It can be sea turtles. It can be a lot of different things. This is a very opportunistic shark. And so hunting at dawn or dusk is slightly more productive for them. And so that's the one thing that I would say they maybe could have done a little bit better outside of that.

They really didn't do anything wrong. What if you're trying to get bit by Salma Hayek? Dusk and Don, probably a pretty good time to be out. That would be the best time. Do you want to get bit by the human form of her or the vampire form of her? Because I want the human form. All right. So when they're counting the shark bites, like does this one count as two because it bit him twice?

No. I'm trying to use bites instead of attacks more and more with sharks because I do, the more I think about it. Like, this is a fish. This is something that is just checking out food, you know? It's the same as if you had a fish tank and you chuck something that may or may not be food into your tank. And the fish goes up and pecks at it a couple times. That's what the shark is. doing. It is just investigating something and biting it.

And there's no malice. There's no malice. There's no, it's not angry. It's just trying to feed itself. That's it. So it is a bite. You know, it's not an attack. What about when Joey Chestnut goes after those hot dogs? Because like he's attacking those dogs. Yeah. That's like two. That's two bites, but it's like the hot dogs gone after two bites. Nothing left. No, if like his leg had it taken another bite, it would have been gone too. So I think that's a good. Chestnut.

Representation. Yeah, this shark was the real Joey chestnut of bull sharks. So bull sharks are found in coastal waters throughout the Gulf Coast. I can't believe that that's where we ended up at the end of this story. The rest of Florida has bull sharks. The eastern seashore has bull sharks. They're one of the big three of shark species. implicated in bites around the world.

And of those three, they are the species most likely to investigate humans as food in very shallow water. So, like, these boys were in two and a half to three feet of water. That's really shallow. That's water that you feel pretty safe in. And they got attacked by a shark in that, you know, shallow water, a bit by a shark. Schools of fish will come into the shallows for protection and food, and they'll be followed in by bull sharks. They're an incredibly opportunistic shark, and sometimes humans get bit as a result. There are a lot of bites to go underreported and undeveloped countries, like I talked about.

A lot of those bites could be attributed to bull sharks. Also, Great Whites and Tiger Sharks, the other two of the big three, are very distinct looking sharks. Like, great whites have that really distinct bicoloration, that pointy nose. Like, people know what a great white shark looks like. And then tiger sharks are really distinct too. Can you, can one of you guys describe what a tiger shark looks like? Do you remember? It almost to me looks like the reflection of the water on the back, but it's like permanently on there.

Like it has the stripes and like really cool coloration. And how about their like face, how their face is shaped? Kind of like flat and broad a little bit. Just think of a tiger and put it on a shark. I don't know if that's a great description. But yeah. They have a very like flat, broad face. They're like you said, Mike, like box like with a really sharp edge to the front of their nose that's like horizontal.

They're distinct looking. Both of those species are. And bull sharks kind of look like a lot of other species of Requiem shark. They have just a really distinct or not distinct, a really general appearance. So the reason I'm bringing all that up is there's a lot of attacks. or bites that get reported that people don't know the species. And a lot of those are probably bull sharks, but they're not assigned to bull sharks because we can't say for sure. So there's a decent chance that this is actually the shark responsible for the most bites in the world,

but we can't say for sure. Right now that award still goes to great whites, but there's a chance that it's bull sharks. So there's an argument for this being the most dangerous shark in the world, especially because they're in shallow waters. All right. So we've gone over the biology of these guys in depth in some of our other bull shark episodes. If you want to learn more about bull sharks, listen to our 20, 21 episode titled Bull Shark.

What's the Spanish word for shark? It's about a bite that happened in Cancun. Great title, Mike. Good job. What is it? That's a good question by me. Tiburon. Tiburon.

Remember in that episode, they were like, yelling Tiberone, but they didn't like know what that meant. That's right. She didn't, yeah, she didn't know what it was. Anyway, today, rather than going into all the biology, I mostly just wanted to talk about that media, feeding frenzy and how there really aren't summers that are much more dangerous for shark bites than others. Even if you're hearing about it in the media, just be careful if you're swimming in those places where it's happening, Florida, the Carolinas, but you're not any more likely in any given summer to be bitten by a shark than others.

All right. What about killed in a terrorist attack? 2001 was a bad summer for that. Yes. That's the worst one for that. That one was a real outlier. We do much, much, much more harm to this species than they could ever do to us in a million years. And we're going to talk about that briefly in conservation.

We obviously have drilled that to death on this podcast, but we're not going to stop because we love sharks here. All right. let's do our ouchies for for jesse i think this might be a 10 even i know i we usually reserve these tens for people that like die in really awful terrible drawn i don't but no jeff you're a little more cavalier with your numbering systems no i think jeff's smarter about how he does his you think i do i think you're smart oh wow that's news to me i think the worst attacks are the ones I'm not too smart, so I just process that. But the ones where they have to, like, live their whole life with the,

with, like, the ramifications of the attack. For me, not only was this one a horrific attack in the first place, horrific bites, like, you know, he lost a lot of his thigh, which he, they weren't able to, like, he still has really reduced mass in his right thigh. He lost his right arm. they reattached it but it never went back to like full use again and a lot a lot of that's because of the brain damage he had really bad brain damage and his life has been changed forever and i think it's a testament to how strong he is that he's still able to be like a really happy person

yeah and have a really meaningful life but yeah for me this is a 10 out of 10 i don't think it gets much worse than this yeah strength of the family too like the parents sound like they went through a lot even before this event and they've been yeah what i assume that seems like they've been like incredibly caring and loving parents as well which is always really nice to hear they seem like good people even when they talked to about these AI videos the mom was just like listen we don't have any energy to put toward that we just love our son and we want to make sure that he continues to have a good life you know so that's good plus salt water in the wound followed by sand in the world.

Yeah, you got sand again. Yeah. Also, one other thing that I think I should just bring up really quickly, even though I hesitate to do it. When the story first came out, there was a lot of bad reporting around it, and someone came up with this rumor that his uncle had been fishing for sharks, and that's why the shark was in the, like, shore in the first place, and that's why it bit the kids. Completely false.

If you read that about this anywhere out there, that's completely fabricated. he was not fishing for sharks. So just so you know. And that caused them a lot of pain too, to have to kind of fight that rumor, even though there's no truth to it. Okay, that's it for the story. This is one I wanted to do for a while.

It's crazy to not be fishing for sharks, and he, like, literally caught a shark. He did catch one. Yep. Yeah, he pulled one out of the water. Yeah. Pretty insane. Yeah, I wonder what they did with it,

like with its jaws and stuff. I feel like they should have given those to his uncle. If he'd want him. Or to Jesse. Yeah, probably not. All right, you guys have any questions about this one before we get to our categories? No.

All right. Okay. Not very smart. No. I never claimed to be. Just kidding. All right, so I got a couple categories for us. First, your coolest possible replacement for a lost limb.

If you guys lose either an arm or a lost limb, leg or any limb, I'm just going to open that up. What would you, what do you think would be the coolest thing you could replace it with? Well, you said that they were attacking right and left. So if it was both my arms, I would want like those water jets that you can like use at the lake and you can like float around. That's my exact answer. If it's just one arm, I'd want like a giant Pez dispensing.

you would want huge pez or like a giant one that shoots out tiny pez yeah that's that's what i wanted to ask maybe i could have both like when it that's too hard to decide yeah huge pez i would never want a pez it's like a brick sized i just want like a ton of tiny ones yeah i think i would get tired of pez yeah but i love pez what model would you have like what would the head piece be well that's the cool thing with pez i think i would have a lot of different Oh, you'd like make it modular. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I do like that. Or just like the normal size ones, like standard size. Dude, you should like make a head piece of your head. So you just have like your head as the Pez dispenser. Oh, I wonder if I could have two heads. And then you could you could kiss it sometimes too. Or maybe a shark, a shark would.

That'd be weird if you like, you know how like subconsciously you kind of like start, you know, like sometimes you just put your. hands down your pants. You don't do that, Wes? No, I do. Sorry, I didn't know what you were trying to say, but now I get it. You could have just like said like going pee. Well, that's even weirder because there's no pee involved with the way I was saying it. Mike, what's your answer?

Jeff kind of took mine so I'm trying to think of something else. So I got a little confused because there was a little bit of back and forth about this category. I thought we ended up somewhere more like. the most useful. So I came up with like a USB charger. Okay. That's what I would want. With like the nuclear codes. Oh yeah. You know I'd have the nuclear codes for some reason on my USB charger. Yeah. If it's most useful for me, it would probably have to be like a hook to fish dead animals out of my well. But I yeah, I don't know. I, Jeff, Jeff, threw me off. Maybe just like a big old spoon because I'm constantly using spoons for things.

Yeah. I would, I would suggest a spork if you're going that route. I hate, I kind of hate sporks, to be honest. I know it makes more sense, but yeah. Yeah, you're probably right. I just think no one's, no one's manufactured a spork to their full potential. They're always kind of flimsy and like weak and stuff. I think if someone made like a real solid spork, we'd all change our tunes. Okay. Yeah. All right. The spoon's just never like spoony enough and the prongs on the fork are never prongy enough.

Right. It's just like a lot of concessions. But you think there's a route to getting both of those? I do. Yeah. Just make the spoon a little like more bowl so it like actually will hold liquid. Make maybe one or two of the prongs a little longer so they actually work like a fork. I don't know.

People are just so dead set on making them bad that whoever owns sporks. Jeff on this one that they've like that's fair I was just trying to play and devil's dude if it's both your arms you could do chopsticks oh that's true I would not want that I'm terrible with chopsticks uh even though I've like used them a ton I'm not good with them all right well I you know my first answer was the the water jets so I'm just going to stick with that and I'll go with the best one all right I want your favorite beach scene from a movie This was a really idyllic beach scene to start. So what's your favorite beach scene from any movie?

And I restricted this to movies because I didn't want a one-piece answer. But I guess there are one-piece movies. There are. Yeah. It seems like you guys are still thinking so I can go. Yeah. I went with the scene at the beginning of the Lost World, Jurassic Park, where the little girl is feeding the compis on the beach.

I like that. I like that scene because you see the tension kind of ramp up, but then it cuts away when the actual attack happens. And you have to imagine what happened to that little girl. And for me, it was really effective. I really like it. And then there's the cut of the mom screaming and it cuts to Ian Malcolm, like, yawning on the subway with the tropical scene behind him. I think that's such a genius cut. So that's my scene on the beach in Lost World Jurassic Park.

Well, she, the little girl, like she survived. grew up and was in another movie. Oh, yeah. Yeah, she was in a few movies. She was in a scary movie about like a phone, like someone calling her on the phone. That was scary. But she made it.

That's all I'm saying. Scream? He didn't die. I forget that. She was in Scream. That's what they do in scream. That is what happens in scream. Oh, the phone calls.

Yeah, you're right. All right. Other beach scenes. Do you guys have any? Yeah, so I recently watched the 400 blows for the first time, finally got around to it. And the end scene is one of the most. famous shots in cinema history. And it really resonated with me very emotionally. It's about a little

kind of a troublemaker, ragamuffin kid in France, finally escapes all of the people keeping them in class, keeping him in the house, keeping him in his room. He goes to the beach. He runs around. Then there's that famous, like, quick zoom in, freeze shot on his face. It's a really powerful movie. It's one of those things where I went into it thinking, like, this is an old movie. It's not going to be as good as everyone says and it really worked for me really emotionally resonated for me on a some profound blows yeah i'll add it to the list i'll go my like gut reaction was pirates to the caribbean but which scene i'm going that's that's the problem there's not like a beach that quite sticks out as much as the water in general yeah i'm going to go with shashank redemption okay

The very end scene, you know, it's just like they did it, you know. They're in Mexico. They got some money. He's got his old boat he's working on. Who knows what they're going to do the next week? Yeah. Just hang out on the beach. I guess they just live on a beach now.

Yeah. It's better than prison. Yeah. Yeah. It's a good pick. I like that. All right. Your favorite jessies from all time.

Favorite jesse. I this was such a hard one for me so yeah my it's jesse owens is where i landed jesse owens 1936 olympics you're big olympics like i love the olympics yep 45 minutes broke like four world records often cited as like the greatest hours in athletics in history or something i don't know he just single-handedly you're hero hitler um he uh basically Mike's hero. Hitler was in attendance and Jesse Owens was like, well, let's just disprove this whole Aryan master race theory real quick.

And he did. Jesse Owens is the best. But I had a real hard time picking him over Jesse from Team Rocket and Pokemon because she's just such a babe. I love her. They're huge hair. I mean, I love our guest Jesse who comes on. But I'll go with. I'll go with Jesse Pinkman.

Yeah. I'll go with Jesse Pinkman from Breaking Bad. Oh, it's a good pick. I'm going to pick my partner of six years, Jesse Hulstrom, who I love. That's a good pick. And even though I was complaining about farm stuff earlier, every night that I like look out over our little couple acres here, I just feel very satisfied. And a lot of that is because of the effort that Jesse has put into it. So she's good for a lot of reasons.

That's just one of many. But she is my favorite Jesse. You got to watch out for bites from her, too. She's a little bitey sometimes, yeah. You're like your limbs are safe. My limbs are okay. She's not biting off any of my limbs, I hope, or appendages. I would say my runner-up, Jesse is Jesse Watson, who works for Hawkwatch.

Good friend of ours has been just like a constant good biologist friend. So shout out Jesse Watson. Hi, Jesse. I want to do What would Mike and Jeff do? And just all you other Jesse's listening right now Shout out to you Great name.

Yeah. Specifically. Yeah. All right. What would Mike and Jeff do? I'm going to let you pick any aspect of this story, run with it. Man, I just think pulling that shark on the beach was so crazy. Are you beefy enough to do that?

I think so. I think I could do that. I think I would do that same thing. I would go grab its tail, pull it in, but I would just like jump on it, like flip it over, jump on its stomach and the arm shoots out. That's the only difference. Do the heimlich do it? So you try to like keep the shark alive, but still get the arm out.

And then I'd put the shark. I'd get my kids out, let the shark go, you know. I like it. It's a good answer. Great answer. This is a hard one because we kind of all decided together. that there wasn't really a lot more, like, other than not swimming when it's getting dark out, I would take my kids to the fireworks show instead.

Make your kids swim in five inches of water. Yeah, right. I will say for like the what would Jeff and Mike do, this is a bad one for my answer a lot of the time of just shoving your arm down its throat. Yeah, this isn't the right one for that. Yeah, it didn't work. It sure didn't work for him. did it. All right. Well, I'm going to say what you actually should do. The number one thing, of course, and we've talked about this with all of our shark episodes, is prevention. So first of all,

you want to be really careful when and where you swim. Like we mentioned earlier, dusk and dawn are times when shark activity might be a little bit higher. Also areas with murky water, areas with increased sea life activity. So if you see, there's like a lot of fish, a lot of stuff happening, you might want to be a little bit more cautious about going in the water. Or places where people have intentionally or unintentionally been baiting sharks. So recently in a news episode we talked about that pier in the Bahamas where they were throwing fish parts into the water. Those are places you'd want to avoid swimming. Also, just pay attention to signs.

If there has been sharks spotted, they often put up signs on beaches to let you know that there'd been potentially dangerous sea life spotted. So just pay attention to all that. If you are in the water and you see a shark approaching, you want to do whatever you can to stay calm because the more splashing you do, the more you look like prey that's trying to escape. Keep your eyes on the shark, even if you have to put your head underwater and do anything you can if you have something to keep something between you and the shark. So if that's like a boogie board, if you have a GoPro on a stick, anything that you might have to put in between you and the shark. that's really important. And you don't necessarily, I think the temptation would be to try and push the shark away with it. That can trigger them to be a little bit more defensive and can actually cause them to rush in and bite.

So really all you want to do is keep that object in between you and the shark. If it does come in, it'll run into it on its own and that's typically enough to discourage it. And then as you're doing that, you just want to stay calm and do your best to get out of the water. If someone's been bitten by a shark, you want to help them. need to respond. There is data out there that shows that when people intervene, it often stops the attack. There are times when people are bitten as they're trying to help, but it's really, really, really rare. And the quicker you can get that person out of the water and stem the bleeding, the better chances they have of surviving, of not having these kind of long-term effects from the

bites. What would you say with like the uncle in this story? I think he did a great job. I think Everyone in the story did the best they could to respond to this. They put turnicets on. I think the problem was just he was small and the shark got him in the two places that are worse. You know, it got two of his major arteries. So I shouldn't say that the worst. Like his head would be the worst. But like these are two really bad spots to get bit by shark because your blood comes out really quick.

So and he didn't have much blood. I mean, it's a small kid. So I think people did the best they possibly could. with this and I think the reason we like the thing that shows they did is that he's still alive like by all means he should have died there on this beach and because they were so quick acting he's alive and his arm got reattached yeah I was really surprised when you were telling the story that like the shark didn't disengage when the uncle grabbed its tail yeah and we've seen that before like in our 1916 attacks there was the I think it was Charles van Sant as they were pulling him up

onto the shore, the shark came back in and they played like Tugawar with them, which is crazy. Man. All right. So our next category, Jeff, do you have an animal fact for us? No, I forgot. Okay. All right. We'll skip that one this week.

Wait. Do you have... I can come up with it. I have to have. Let's go. Have I done pycas collecting flowers in front of their dens ever? You have? They'll like collect flowers and they'll put them in front of their little like.

rock burrows that they have and I think that's really cute yeah pica's for people that don't know are are like a relative of rabbits people want to think they're rodents but they're actually lagmorphs they are in the same family as rabbits they live in alpine environments very cute little animals oh wow good fact too west fact I don't have I don't have one they all right spell like pika so I think pika and they kind of look like pika yeah yeah peek atchoo yeah yeah piquish all right Do we have any listener questions? I'm sure we have. I can't do that easy.

Okay. Okay. This one's from Therese. It's kind of a heavy question in a way. Teresa says, hey guys, I have a question. With the podcast being successful, has it changed your world slash idea of yourself? Or maybe your personal experience of life? Were there any side effects that you did not anticipate?

I don't, I mean, I think it's changed my world in that it's given me, like, a nice way to communicate stuff that I would care about deeply with a lot of people and make some money doing that, which is like always been my dream. So in a way, it's made life a bit easier for me. Outside of that, I don't think, I mean, I think the other thing that it's done that's been really nice is it's strengthened my friendships with like two of my favorite people in the world. So who? Or you and Mike. Yeah, I do think, you know, the tricky part of it has been making sure that we are always on the same page and that we always put our friendships above everything else. But I think we've done a good job of it.

So for me, I don't know, I think that would be the side effect I didn't anticipate as like the amount of kind of little things that have come up with the podcast. But overall, it's been a really amazing thing for me personally. Yeah, no, it's like it's a dream job situation. Like work with your friends. It's not like super demanding. It gives us a lot of freedom to explore the world. So like it's hard to be anything but grateful for where we are. And like we owe a lot of that to the listeners.

I'd say like all of it. Yeah. Well, I would give myself some credit. Yeah, but like it's because of them that we're able to do any of that. Yeah. I'm not giving them all the credit. Okay. No, I'm just kidding.

But I think negative, the only thing I'd really say is just like, you always feel like you could be doing something with this job. And, like, we all, it's hard to, like, completely ever get a break, I guess. Yeah, we never get to, like, clock out. Yeah. We always have, like, people we can respond to and more that we could be doing. But, like, that's a good point. It's, it's way better than the alternative. And like I enjoy speaking with people.

It's just that's. Yeah. I do sometimes. Even last night I was like, man, I wish sometimes I just wish I was doing something where I could just leave it at the office. Like the second I leave the office, I don't have to think about it.

And for us, we constantly have to think about this. But yeah, that's a good point. Mike, do you have anything? Yeah, just how much closer I feel to you.

you too and how I really feel like I've turned into much more of like a ride or die kind of person, kind of a friend, or at least that's what I want to be. Because whenever I hear negative feedback, and this extends to any of our guests, it's just like, I just want to reach through the computer screen and like shake whoever is saying something mean about any one of us. And it's like, yeah. That old lady, you would have shook her? Oh, I would have tossed her off.

Thrown her through the wall. No, but for me. One thing that's really changed in my life, just like how I communicate with people, every time I say something when we're not recording, sometimes I get the thought, would I say that when we are recording, when other people can hear me? And it just, I think it's turned me into a bit of like a softer communicator. And it's a change for the better. I can be pretty abrasive and kind of prickly. That's just kind of my nature. It's something I've really tried to work on.

So yeah, but yeah, you always hear never meet your heroes, but no one never said anything about podcasting with them. And that's you, Wes. Jeff, sure, why not? Well, I'm not as smart as Wes. Yeah, you are. We just have different, it's different types. I will say, like, one other thing I wanted to add, the question was like, how is your self-image kind of different? For me, it has been a little tricky to go from being a full-time field biologist to mostly not.

Like I don't really don't get out in the field that much anymore. I'm still working on research, but it's mostly at home. And that was such a big part of my identity. And the podcast just takes up enough time and effort that I can't really have both of those jobs at the same time. And so that has been a little tricky to wrap my head around. But yeah, anyway, thank you for the question. Hard hitting question. Yeah, good question.

Okay. This one's from O-I-S-I-N-O-Y-S-N. Hey, guys, I have a strange question based. on a funny story from high school. One time in geography class, we ended up in a class discussion about wolves. Whilst this discussion was happening, one of the girls in my class interjected and exclaimed that wolves weren't real, and this was a silly discussion to be having. At first, we thought she was joking, but no, she was being completely serious. She believed wolves were in the same category as werewolves, as in pure mythology. I think back on that

story and get a good laugh. So my question for you guys is, what's an animal that took you in embarrassingly long time to realize actually existed. For me, I didn't realize the Fossa from Madagascar were 100% a real animal until I saw them in a lemur documentary. Do you guys have any animal that you thought was like a fake animal for like an animated show or something that you then realized was real? Randere for me took me a real long. Well, I knew that like, that's a good one. Yeah. I mean, I guess I knew caribou exist and they're kind of the same. Maybe that's not like totally accurate but i thought reindeer were just a totally Santa Claus Christmas thing yeah yeah they are the same but yeah are they the exact same their reindeer is what they call

caribou in scandinavia but they are different it's like a different subspecies of the same animal I don't know the best i can think of off the top of my head is just like seeing how many Pokemon just look like animals because like when as a kid i didn't like i was just like oh this is like the most unique creation I've ever seen. And then it's like, oh, wait, that's actually, like, based off of something. And so is this. And so is this. I definitely knew who Sandhru was before I knew what a pangolin was.

Yeah, exactly. I think mine was, like, a secretary bird. They're a bird that mostly is ground-based. They have really long legs. They kind of look like dinosaurs and they eat snakes and stuff. And I had seen them in like the Lion King and other stuff. And I thought it was kind of just a bird that someone had made up. And then when I saw one in real life, I was like, whoa, this is an amazing animal and really cool.

They're cool. I think I kind of knew. A kicker. Oh, yeah. That's right. Jeff and one of Jeff and I made our football teams out of animals. All right. Jeff, do we have any listener ones or?

Yeah, I can pull out a couple. J. Rock 41. Is Mike really a master diver? I couldn't tell. Yeah, he is. No, I'm not. I should, I should, I should interview that every time. My bad.

No, I'm, I'm like, I'm one step above the very most basic beginner open diver, so I'm on my way, I guess you could say. But no. Yeah. Hannah Boyd 99. Are there more doors or wheels in the world? Oh yeah, we talked about this once. Did we? Have we? Yeah, it was a long time ago.

I think, but I brought it up because I'd seen it. And it really made me think for a long time, which it was. And we kind of got into what you define as a wheel or a door. And that's where it got really complicated. Like, is like a desk drawer a door or is it not? You know, or are the little wheels on a desk, on the little wheels on a desk drawer? Are those considered wheels? They are.

So for me, I'd say it's wheels, but I'm not sure. Yeah. I'm going to go doors. Because you think cars have four doors and four wheels. Yeah. Yeah, but you think about like apartment buildings and how many doors there are. Or a semi. All right.

Canona Shoa. Scuba master Mike, will you teach me your underwater ways? I am in need of an aquatic master. Let's just figure out a time and place to meet. Make sure there are a lot of witnesses there. Bethany Alisa. Jeff, my husband is from Guatemala, so we visit yearly. What do you miss the most?

I'd say, like, one thing I really loved about Guatemala was, like, every block or two, there were people in, they're called, like, Tipica clothes or, like, Mayan clothing. Sometimes they didn't even, like, speak Spanish. They spoke, like, a Mayan language. and they were making corn tortillas on like this big fire burning grill and they were just the best tortillas when you bought them fresh so I would say I miss that the most yeah having those windows into the past like that are so cool like I remember when I went to India I was shocked by how many people there especially women wear really traditional clothing and it really I think it really

adds a lot to culture so I don't know I agree with that Yeah. Do you miss feeling like a giant while you were there too? That was pretty cool. Just being like a celebrity for no good reason. That's kind of how I feel as a podcaster. Yeah. Roco Katie. No, Rokoko Katie.

If you had to pick one of the three animals from the Genesis arena to fight from attack of the clones, which would you fight? You're going to have to. Oh, that's a good question. So there's like the big one that looks. like a praying mantis. You remember attack of the clones when they're like chained up on the towers?

Yeah. Padmey looks all hot. There's one that looks like a bearded dragon kind of I think. That's right. There's one that's like a panther that kind of has a bearded dragon face. There's one that's like a big like praying mantis type dragon thing. And then there's like a bull, like a rhinoceros type one. Which I would pick the rhinoceros because it seemed like all you had to do was kind of to jump out of the way as it was charging over and over again.

The praying mantis to me was the scariest one. Me too. And the panther, like Padmey like drops a rock on it or something and it immediately dies. I feel like it was, yeah, I don't know. It seemed the scariest, but I would, for me, I'm picking the bull. She probably used the force to drop it. Yeah, she probably does rock. Who?

They're midichlorians. Yep. Yeah, I'll go with the mantis. You want the mantis? You want to fight the mantis? Yeah, I'm taking the mantis. Okay. Just have sex with it and then it'll bite its head off.

It doesn't bite its own head off. That's not how it works. Yeah. So what's it? I don't know. I'm not sure. I've been trying so hard to forget about everything that movie offered me. Well, we're going to do your rewatch sometime soon.

Let's do Avald 17, favorite actors to see work together. Like a combo team. Oh, yeah. Okay. Russell Crow and Ryan Gosling. That's what my brain immediately went to. It's just the one movie. But man, they had the best chemistry in that movie.

It was so fun. Nice guys. What's that called? Nice guys, yes. I'll go Godzilla and King Kong. Oh, the suplex. Wes. Come on, dude.

It was so awesome. I did not like the second one. I'll try to watch. it again sometimes. My, my brain went to Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke from Training Day. I really liked how they played off each other, but I was trying to think of like, who's like a pair that just is in a lot of movies together? Like Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore.

May Ryan and Tom Haleck Clooney. Yeah. Oh yeah, Brad Pitt George Clooney is a good one. Yeah. Who are the guy that DiCaprio's in a lot of the same movies with people? Him and, yeah, I don't know. Rob Schneider and Adam Sandler. Classic, yeah.

Ethan Hawk and, oh, what's her name from the before trilogy, Delpy? Julie. All right. We're going to move on to Bob Hope, Bing Crosby. Sure. Bull sharks are listed as IUC and vulnerable. They aren't necessarily one of the sharks that are being targeted by these fisheries at a really high rate, but they are often caught as bycatch, especially in long-line fishing industries.

Their meat is consumed. Their fins are shipped to the Asian shark fin industry. Their leather, their skin is sometimes used as leather. They are just like every shark species, pretty much every shark species in the world, extremely vulnerable right now. And that's just because of how good we have gotten at catching fish. Our fishing industries are way too technologically advanced to where we're just too good at it. We're too good at catching fish.

can radar where fish are and like what type of fish they are. Yeah. And the methods that we use for catching them are extremely effective. So we are losing bull sharks, just like pretty much every shark species in the world. So they are, right now they're listed as vulnerable. It's hard to get a good number on sharks. It's hard for the IUCN to say,

we used to have this many and now we have this many, but they know they're decreasing. But bull sharks are very opportunistic. They have a lot of flexibility for food sources and environments. So I do think this is a shark we'll have for a long time. But I think they're amazing. I've freed dove with bull sharks in Florida.

So I was like in the open water swimming around probably 20 bull sharks. And they're amazing. They're incredibly graceful animals. They're beautiful. It was one of my favorite wildlife experiences I've had. So I really do love this shark. Okay. I don't think we need to.

We've done claws on them before. We can do it. Why not? I'm going to give them nine claws. There are sharks, they automatically are top-tier animal for me. They're not one of my favorite sharks, though. So I'm going to give them nine. Same.

Exact same reasoning as you, Wes. Yeah, I'll go eight for the same reasoning. Just, I got, you know, I don't think they're in my top. They're like around like six or seven for sharks. Yeah. Do you guys want to go to Florida sometime and swim with them? Yeah, I'd love to. We should just do it.

That's not that expensive. And I think we can figure that out. Let's go now. We could go. Let's wrap this up. During football season and see the Jacksonville Jaguars play, too. Yeah. I think there's this season for swimming.

Another animal to go check out. Guy, Guy Pearce in space prisons, you think that can't? As two actors working together? No. Oh, if it does, that's my pick. All right. Thanks, guys, for listening. As always, I hope everyone has a really fun July.

It's my favorite month of the year. I hope it's great for everyone. And if you guys are looking for more content, check out our Patreon. Mike, what was the most recent one you just did again? Wolves. It was, uh, wolves. Yeah. Gray wolves.

Yeah. Gray and gay wolves we talked about. Oh yeah. It's kind of a pride month episode. It was a fun one. I really liked that episode. And Jeff, your most recent one was also a real winner. I'm trying to remember what it was because you did some main episodes.

I can't remember what your last one was. It was fun. I remember like it. Pigeon one. Yeah, Mike did a pigeon one in the mix too. Anyway, it's been really fun. If you want more content, it's 10 bucks a month. We're not changing that price. So we're like Costco hot dog. If you don't like it, you can cancel it. Get on there and listen to what you want to listen to and then cancel. We don't care. All right. Love you guys. We'll talk to you later. Love yet. See ya.