Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex -- Part 2

Episode Date: March 16, 2026

In the aftermath of a strange and violent encounter with a sperm whale, the crew of the whale ship Essex are now left to brave the open ocean with nothing but a few small boats to carry them. Drastic and tragic measures were taken in their fight to survive. Watch here: https://youtu.be/KzlT5LOoyrM ~~ Mint Mobile: Get Mint Mobile's 3-month 5GB plan for $45 upfront ($15/mo.) as a new customer at https://mintmobile.com/TOOTH; taxes and fees extra. Ollie Pet Food: Go to https://ollie.com/tooth and use code tooth to get 60% off your first box! Rocket Money: Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Join at https://RocketMoney.com/CLAW Graza Olive Oil: Take your food to the next level with Graza. Visit https://graza.co/tooth and use promo code TOOTH today for 10% off your first order of olive oil! 3 Day Blinds: For their buy 1 get 1 50% off deal, head to https://3DayBlinds.com/TOOTH ~~ To advertise on the show, contact us! Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/c/toothandclawpodcast ~~ 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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Yes. That's a gosh dang fact. I'm Jeff Larson. And you may recognize me from Philson magazine in like 2000. 16 what 16 yeah yeah I had my picture I was writing an ATV on there you did you looked handsome you might recognize Jeff for that time he was up in a tree in that movie what's eating gilbert grape or rocket it just looks exactly like and that's like dude that was Leonardo DiCaprio that is a compliment Jeff there was a time in college where a friend tagged me in Leonardo DiCaprio in the tree with that smile. Yeah. And I thought it was a picture of me that he got from when I was younger.

Yeah. It's kind of half really compliment and half like big. I mean it purely as like you could be mistaken for an A list celebrity. That's all I'm saying. Yeah. I agree. I think either of you could. I think you're just a couple of handsome.

Who would you mistake Mike? Young men. Uh, I don't know. Mike, do you ever get a doppelganger? Yeah, all the time. What's the Baywatch guy's name? Haselhoff. Yeah, that's me, dude.

Really? Every day. Huh. That's a good one. You'd probably be huge in Germany. Well, we just got back for Antarctica. Wes forced some of our travelers to name a whale. Grizzan is crazy.

That's not true. So now there's a humpback whale out in the ocean named Grisgid. Is that true? Does your arrogance know? No bounds. The beginning of that was false. Such hubris. We were doing this thing called Happy Whale because we were doing citizen science on the boat. And we took pictures of a humpback whale's tail flukes.

And our scientist aboard gave us the good news that it was an undocumented whale. And because of that, they auctioned off the rights to name that whale on the boat. And two of our very generous travelers, Ruby and Jean, bought those rights. and they said that the group could decide what to name this well. And there were a number of entries and someone put in Gris Kid. Big Doc. And the group liked it and Ruby liked it. And that's what we settled on.

It was a little embarrassing when they asked me why it was Gris Kid. Explain it to a boat full of old Australians who had no idea who you were. That was amazing. Shout out Ruby though. And Gene, of course. But like amazingly generous. That was incredible. Awesome gesture.

We really appreciate it. To all our listeners, I think if you ever see a humpback whale, it's safe to assume it's Grizz Kid. Yeah, it's almost certainly the whale that's named after my Instagram tag. Honestly, if you see any whales ever, just like tag Grizz Kid in it. Right. When you post it. Watch the movie with Brandon Frazier. Also, let me know if you think I'm a tag West.

Let me know if you think I'm a good guy too. please. Sure. I can do that. About to get billions of tags. I don't even know how that started, but for some reason in a bunch of our episodes, people are telling me that they think I'm a good guy. And I think when you guys said something at some point, yeah, I can't remember.

Anyway, it's funny. It's a funny bit. It's true. All right. Well, I'm a tired guy. and the reason I'm tired is because this has been an episode that's required a lot of research and a lot of reading. And I'm excited to tell it because it's a fun story. And I think the second part of this story is even more unbelievable than the first part.

And the first part's pretty unbelievable. A whole ass ship getting sunk by a sperm whale. It's pretty crazy. You ever hear anything crazier than that, Jeff, in your entire freaking life? like that was verified as true. Yeah. Maybe just like all the celebrities and elites eating babies and stuff. Sure.

That is crazy. Speaking of eating babies, though, that's pretty much what we're going to be talking about. Anyway, so a little announcement, though, that I think is important is I pretty much am stopping this episode right when we get to some resolution. And then there's a lot that happens after that stopping point that. I think is very interesting. And so what we are actually going to do is a part three. But part three is going to just go to our subscribers. I want to do something special for our subscribers.

And there's a lot of meat that's going to be left on this bone. But this is going to be a long episode even without that extra stuff. So we're going to give that to our subscribers. It's going to be a special part three. Tough for Danielle from Antarctica. She's a subscriber, but she won't listen to subscriber episodes. Just sweet move. I wonder what she'll end up doing.

But, Wes, would you say, though, that if you just listen to these first two, you're going to get a pretty satisfying, conclusive end to the story, right? Yes, but I'm not going to tie up all the threads for those people. I'm sorry. But the main threads are going to be tied up. But what you're not going to get is kind of the consequences of this, of this story. And the story again... We love our subscribers.

We want to give them a little present. A little bonus. Yeah. Treat. The story is, I'm taking it directly from this book. It's called In the Heart of the Sea, the Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, which was written by Nathaniel Philbrick. He's an incredible author. This is a great book.

I highly recommend reading it because there's a lot that I'm not going to be able to talk about that is very interesting in this book. So check it out. All right. I got two quick corrections from part one. First of all, one of our listeners. In? The sperm whale. The survivors in the shit.

Yeah. No, one of our listeners did let us know that I had kind of mentioned that for a lot of black sailors, I think I made this more general. I said that black sailors were kind of stuck and they weren't able to climb the ladder so much in the whaling industry. And one of our listeners did let me know that there actually were a lot of black sailors that managed to become captains during this period of whaling. and I thought that was impressive and neat

that it wasn't kind of a ceiling for them. So that is a correction. Another correction is we were pronouncing amburgress. I was calling it ambergris, and it's actually pronounced ambergris, and that is that ashy substance that's found in the whale's intestines that is used for perfume and stuff,

and apparently it's still used in some perfumes today, and it smells quite nice. Oh, wow. Yeah. How nice I don't know I feel like people They get really into perfume

Start kind of For getting You know losing the thread a little bit If you know what I mean Yeah Perfume Somaliers Somalia I don't know about those people The thing about

If you're a Somalié Don't listen to what I just said Right there See to me it's like It's got to really turn Every person's head Man and female For me to justify

Killing a whale for it. That's what I was going for. Yeah. I think these days ambergris is harvested more from dead whales that they find, but I'm not, I'm not sure about that. Because I, from what I understand, whaling is dead in most of the world. There's really not much whaling going on anymore, aside from indigenous folks that are allowed to do it because they're doing it sustainably. Okay. Norway does. Yeah, Norway does do a bit. You're right. Part of this that I just wanted to make a note of, I was researching this part while we were on the Drake Passage coming from Antarctica back to Tierra del Fuego and Ushuaya.

It was really fun reading about this while we were passing through part of the places that these guys went. So that was just kind of something that I wanted to bring up because it was a nice moment for me, staring out of the water and reading about all this. Okay. On February 23, 1821, the Nantucket whale ship, Doffin, was sailing near St. Mary's Island off the coast of Chile, and the men aboard noticed something strange in the water in the distance. And these are whalers, so their eyes are really trained to just scan for whales to constantly be looking at the horizon for spouts, you know, from blowholes. But this dark shape they saw didn't seem to be a whale as it's bobbing along the surface of the water.

As it drew closer, the doffin crew realized that they were looking at a small boat that had makeshift sails, and as it got even closer, it became clear that this boat was actually a very damaged whale boat that seemed to be empty. But it was only when the doffin pulled alongside this whale boat that the men looked inside the small boat and got probably the biggest, most horrible surprise of their entire lives. This whale boat wasn't actually abandoned. Inside there were two almost skeletal and feral men that were lying on a bed of human bones. They had finger bones stuffed in the pockets of their pants

that hung on their sharp exposed ribs and hip bones. And their glazed over eyes met the eyes of the men of the dophin and they reached for the bones of their dead companions and started sucking on them. Like afraid that these guys might take away their precious bones. one of these men was Captain James Pollard of the whale ship Essex. Let's rewind to where we left off in part one. The whale ship had just been rammed by a sperm whale, and their whaling ship had been destroyed.

It was a totally unprecedented event and something they had never dreamed of happening to their beloved ship. At this point, they really just thought that whales were always afraid of them, and this whale had done the impossible. And they're now in three whale boats, each of them about 25 feet long, And two of these boats were in relatively good condition, while the third had been repaired multiple times during this long voyage. And they're staring in stunned silence at the wreckage of the Essex as she's floating on her side. And as we had said in episode one, Captain Pollard asked his first mate, Owen Chase, what had happened? I think he actually said, like, what's the matter? What is the matter?

Yeah. Nothing. I'm chilling. These men are in disbelief for good reason. This kind of stuff really didn't happen to whaling ships, and the whaleboats were often damaged or even outright destroyed by panicked whales, but a ship had never been attacked. So really quickly, we're going to talk about why this happened.

I had you guys pin something in the first episode. What you may remember is that first mate Owen Chase had been repairing the whale boat on the deck of the S6 right before they were rammed, and what I had you pin is that he had been hammering a piece of canvas onto the whale boat on the deck of the Essex and that sound had been reverberating out into the water. Now, what do we know about large-toothed whales? What kind of noises do they make?

We learn this on our trip. Hammer and pounding. Baline whales make these really beautiful kind of like haunting songs that we've all heard. But toothed whales, so like dolphins. Yeah, exactly. Thank you, Mike. Clicking.

Dolphins, orcas, sperm whales, pilot whales, they use echolocation. So instead of these long, beautiful songs, they're making these very loud staccato-like clicks in the water. And they're doing that both for communication and for hunting. And sperm whale echolocation is incredibly fascinating. We're not going to go over a ton of biology today, but I did want to talk about this. So you may remember from part one, sperm whales have a huge cavity inside of the dome of their head. Do you guys remember what's in that cavity?

Ceremissettys. Yes, oil, specifically, spermaceti. And spermaceti is this really high quality, amazing oil that sits in that cavity. And for a long time, scientists had no idea what purpose it served. But now we have a pretty good idea, and it's actually echolocation. So when sperm whales bring in air through their blowhole, holes. It also enters a secondary passage where monkey lips is the term for these lips. They're like these little lips. Let that air through. When they do, they produce a clicking noise.

And that click is amplified through the spermaceti. It hits an air sack against their skull, which like rebounds it back through the spermaceti, rebounds it through this fatty area called the whale's junk, which is that Latin? I feel like scientists. just like, Ria ran out of names. Yeah. And this oil, the oil and this fatty junk

helped to amplify and direct the noise into the water. So essentially, this is like this big resonating chamber for this click that amplifies it and shoots it out into the water.

Which sounds impressive. But the most impressive thing about it is this is actually the loudest noise that any animal on the planet produces. Spirm whales have the loudest, noise of any animal. You just want to guess about how loud that is? 700 decibels.

Not quite. The IMAX movie. It's louder than that. When the THX thing comes on. Holy cow. Yeah. So they produce, this noise is 230 decibels. Holy me.

Which I'm trying to find something that sounds, that's 230 decibels. Yeah, let's play something right now. as loud as we can. Maybe like one of the YouTube ads when you're watching like a quiet video. Hi, Billy Mays here with an amazing new product. You gotta see it to believe it. It's called the ding king. It's hard to find things in our world that are this loud.

Like a jet engine at 100 feet away is 140 decibels. A chainsaw at 3 feet away is 110 decibels. So this is like this is double that. Spinal tap concert. And decibels from what I understand are kind of. on like a what's that called an exponential scale so 230 decibels it's really loud some people think it's loud enough that if you took it directly it could even kill you i've heard that yeah yeah it'll like explode your brain or your ears so violently you just die which is not a bad way to go it's not

there has been these theories that they actually use these clicks to stun or even kill their prey scientists have kind of refuted that. There are some that believe it, most have refuted it. But the main, okay, I like that. Scientists and Jeff have refuted that. So their whole, the important thing is that whole big head on the sperm whale is set up for echolocation. There's even an acoustic fat pad on their jaw that's used as another antenna. And their teeth are even used as receivers from clicks from other whales and whatnot.

So they're just this really finely tuned, impressive echolocation, you know, machine almost. Yeah, I'd say like to sum it up, just remember their junk runs on oil. Yeah, sure. It's all a lot more complicated than how I explained it, but their echolocation allows them to establish distance, depth, size, movement, and other variables of prey or basically anything else that might be underwater. So if something was making noises that kind of sounded a lot like their clicks, it would definitely make them pretty curious. And that hammer very well might have been doing that. So there is a theory that maybe this hammering made this whale curious enough,

that it kind of came and it bumped the ship. And then once it bumped the ship, it might have aggravated it. So it actually went in and rammed it. It's impossible to say why it happened, but it did happen. It got aggravated because it bumped into a ship. Seems a little crazy to me I mean I could see you doing that mic A whale shark did that to me

You get a great Swam into me and then got mad and hit me With its tail That's true That does happen with them sometimes But we were like following them Sometimes My mask got all messed up

So I surfaced and I was just like Floating on the water For like 30 seconds And then I saw a dorsal fin head It straight at me So I put my mask on And it was like two feet away. And I lift my legs up and it swam into me. So I guess I bowling balled into it though.

Yeah. That's what I would call that. Yeah. Mike, what were you going to say? I forget. That was an entrancing story. It's about you getting mad. Tell me. Oh yeah. No, well, sometimes I'll like walk through a door and like a wire that's hanging out of my pocket. This is so stupid. I don't want to talk about this anymore. It'll just get tangled on something and it'll like pull the headphones out of This stuff hasn't happened in a while since I've purely gone to Bluetooth technology at this point. But I just remember every single day my headphone wires get stuck on the doorknob and get yanked out of the phone. And I would get pissed like it wasn't my fault for just having wires flying around everywhere. That's a very specific example.

I like Jeff Story more. Yeah. At the airport, I was walking out of the men's room. And there's like this small guy, like adult man who just we were like walking through this hallway that. could fit two and a half people. Yeah. But he just refused to move over at all and took the direct center of it. And I had to like slide against the wall.

And then like I kind of looked back and I was like, man, that little guy just like bullied me. So maybe the whale felt that way too. So you would have been justified ramming your junk into him and sinking him. harvesting his spermaceti. That's okay to say it that way, right? Okay. I wouldn't phrase it quite like that. Okay.

Anyway, these men are there in their whaleboats, regardless of why this happened. It happened, and Captain Pollard took control this situation and ordered the men in the three whaleboats to do their best to scour the parts of the ship that they still had access to and bring back any materials and supplies that might be useful to them. They were able to gather about 600 pounds of hard-tack bread, some large casks of fresh water, boat nails, a musket and two pistols, some gunpowder and rounds for those guns. Several Galapagos tortoises also swam out toward the boat from the wreckage, as you remember they had these tortoises aboard, as well as a couple of skinny pigs. In the next morning, they built makeshift mass for each of these whale boats. They strip sails from the Essex to make some small sails for the boats. I bet the crew of Apollo 13 is hearing that list of supplies and being like, oh my gosh, if only we had all that. The difference is that these guys didn't have mission control.

So it's like a given a take. They had a lot of stuff on there, I feel like. Not pigs and boat nails. And Galapinos. Ice cream sandwiches. Ice cream sandwiches, they did. Kevin Bacon. I did have one of those.

So each of these boats, they ended up making two masks for them and then two sprit sales and a small sail in front. called a jib. So just picture kind of like little sailboats is what they're making out of these whale boats. They also use cedar from the Essex to build up the sides of the whale boats to prevent water from sloshing in when they're big waves. Because remember, these whale boats are really just used to get to and from pods of whales from the boat, and they weren't really built for long voyages across the ocean. So they need to do everything they could to make them more watertight. I would have used the pigs for finding truffles. I would have used. wouldn't have killed them and eaten them very quick.

Yeah. Because that's like unlimited food hack, right? Yeah, the book never brings up the pigs again. So I think they were really small and pretty worthless, but I'm not sure. Wow. You're just extrapolating that from the tech. Because it does bring up the tortoises. Yeah, sorry, I shouldn't say worthless.

I don't think they made a big difference for these people. Maybe they hadn't invented finding truffles with pigs yet. That's a good point. Yeah. When did they even listen to them? It could have been like a babe situation where it got them out of this whole mess. That hurted them to safety. Yeah.

It smelled a truffle so far away. Just you know. Yeah. Oh, that's so funny. Okay. Another thing that's really important is each of these whale boats also had a cubby, and they wrapped the bread up as well as they could, and they put it in this little cubby.

They had bread cubbies? That seems like a little pantry inside. Apollo 13 crew. I don't even have that. You might think this is unnecessary, but it is actually quite necessary. Once they're all settled, the captain and the two mates,

so Owen Chase and Matthew Joy, plus Captain Pollard, had a little meeting to decide where they should sail. And because their boats could only sail with the wind, they had really limited options. With a fully, like, decked out ship, you can sail against the wind.

You have a lot of different choices in the direction that you might go. But with these little boats, all they could really do is go with the wind. And basically, like the thinking, what you would think is just go where you came from. You know, go back to the Galapagos. They're not too far from the Galapagos at this point.

I think they're about 1,500 miles to 2,000 miles away. But they can't go that direction. So when they look at the map, they notice that the Marquesas Islands are about 1,200 miles away. and in the direction of the prevailing wince. So it really wouldn't take them much more than a few weeks to get there. It's by far the closest option.

But there were stories about the inhabitants of these islands being cannibals and engaging in ritualistic homosexuality. So these like puritanical Quakers. Which is worse. I know. Both of them sound pretty sick. God's going to be like, you ate people around like that. but it's other stuff I really am mad about.

That's what they thought. One really clever gay guy in the past was just like, this is just ritualistic. That's awesome. Well, it probably was clever because it seems to stop these islands from being colonized as quickly as a lot of others. There you go. And these men were really too afraid to chance going to these islands.

It wasn't even really an option for them because they didn't want to deal with cannibals. Captain Pollard brought up the Society Islands, which is where modern-day Tahiti is found. and it was the next best option, not much further than the Marques's. But the men didn't really know anything about the indigenous people in these islands, and they assumed that they were also probably cannibals too and not worth the risk. So what these guys decide to do is that they would sail south for about 1,500 miles,

which is about the distance that they would need to go to get to these islands. And during that time, they expected they would hit some variable winds, that would then slowly push them back toward the shore of Peru or Chile, which is about another 2,000 miles. So they're planning on a total journey of around 3,500 miles, and they figure it would take them about 55 days to do this, and they have about 60 days worth of food and water. So they know it's doable, but there isn't a big window for error,

and a big part of their plan is just hoping they hit wind that's going to push them the right direction. and they're doing all of this to avoid potential cannibalism, which is really ironic that they were so nervous about cannibals. Because for starters, sailors had actually already established that both the people of the Marquesas Islands and the Society Islands were not cannibals, and actually very pleasant people, and colonial outposts had already been established in both groups of islands.

But the most ironic part about this is that this decision to avoid avoid potential cannibals would ultimately lead the men of the X-6 to become cannibals themselves. Are you like me and always looking to save a little bit of extra money where you can? Well, I don't know about you, but I like keeping my money where I can see it. Unfortunately, traditional big wireless carriers also seem to like keeping my money too. I'm fed up with the crazy high wireless bills, and that's why Mint Mobile is such a great option. Stop overpaying for wireless just because that's how it's always been. Mint exists purely to fix that.

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Taxes and fees extra see Mint Mobile for details. All right, so they split the men into the three whaleboats. They put Captain Pollard in charge of one of them, first May Owen Chase in charge of the second one. and then second mate Matthew Joy in charge of the third. Which boat you guys want to be in before you hear all the rest of the story? You want to be in Pollards, Chases, or Joy's? I'll tell you if you're right or wrong. Pollards.

Joy's. Wrong. Joy's is the one you do not want to be in because Joy is already pretty sick. He's not doing well when they even start their voyage. And he's the only one that isn't given any navigational equipment. both Pollard and Chase have navigational equipment in their boats, but they only had two sets. So really Joy has to do his best to stay with the rest of them. They also fill these boats kind of in order of their rank.

So Pollard gets first pick. He picks five Nantucketers in his boat out of the seven total men. Owen gets two Nantucketers, two white men from the coast, and a black man. Joy wasn't given a single of the Nantucketers, had four of the six black sailors in his boat. Thomas Nickerson, the 14-year-old cabin boy, was in Chase's boat. So we're talking about this kind of a little flippantly. The thing to remember about the Essex is that while their black sailors were treated as equals when it came to pay, they weren't necessarily traded as equals when it came to everything

else. And the important thing here is food. They weren't fed as well as the other sailors throughout this voyage. So they're kind of already starting at a deficit, which really doesn't bode well for them. And we'll get into that a bit in the future. So I would have got more food in Joyce boat. No. Well, you wouldn't.

They all get the same amount of food from this point on. But before this, they didn't have very much food. So you'll see. Okay. Do you know, I know you've already listed off some of the supplies they had at their disposal. Do you know what their rations per day looked like? Just about to say it. Each boat was captained by the individual boat.

now. So these are like each boat has its own authority structure. Captain Pollard for this, like for all intents and purposes, isn't the leader anymore. Each boat has its own leader. And each boat was given 200 pounds of hardtack, 65 gallons of water and two tortoises. And each boat captain also gets a gun. What is hardtack? Hardtack is this bread that's essentially just bread or of flour, water, and salt. It's very salty. It's really hard. That's why it's called a hard tack.

So it's kind of like a biscuit, but just without any kind of butter or shortening in it. So it's really, really hard. But it does have a lot of calories in it. They sail away from the wreckage of the Essex. They did everything they could to stay together because, again, there's only

two sets of navigational equipment. But they did later to decide that if someone got separated, they would not try to find them, as it might sacrifice the well-being of the entire crew if they spent too much time looking. They kind of at the beginning had a secret hope that they would maybe run back into a whaling ship in the offshore whaling ground, but the area of this whaling ground was more than twice the state of Texas, so it really wasn't very likely that they would bump into another ship.

And spoiler alert, they don't. I was kind of hard on him in the first episode, but after reading the rest of the book, Owen Chase was really the best leader among all of these men, kind of by a long shot. In his boat, he quickly established strict rationing of the hardtack in the water. So in his boat, men were given six ounces of hardtack per day, plus a half a pint of water. This was essentially less than a third of their typical caloric intake and less than half of their daily intake of water. So it didn't take long before the effects of extreme hunger and thirst took over in Chase's boat. but he was playing the long game,

and that's really important to remember. He knew that they were in for a very long journey. The first 30 days on the water would be a series of challenges and setbacks that came at a pretty constant clip. Waves soaked a good portion of their hard attack. That made it a lot saltier, a lot less palatable, and really increased their thirst. The constant waves led to damages on the boats that were really tricky to fix while they're afloat.

And Pollard's boat even got attacked by an orca, one night and it did enough damage that they had to abandon the boat in order to fix it. Wow. These dudes were not big fans of whales by the end of this trip. But you know what? They kind of deserved it. They weren't huge fans of them before it either. No, that's true.

The killer whale attacked it. It did a lot of psychic damage to these men too because at night they're just in the pitch darkness bobbing around on the ocean and just constantly waiting for any sound that might be an approaching whale that's hell-bent on sinking their little boats. Sounds like it's super effective damage. When you think about that, it is really scary. If your boat had been sunk by a whale and now you're just on the ocean every single night, pitch black, and if this boat gets sunk, you're just dead, you know, you're just going to be

floating and drown. That is really scary. I don't blame them for being pretty nervous at this point. I think the Titanic's still worse. I don't know. I don't think so. Ice in your drink. Ice in your soda.

When it gets cold outside on the street, there's just ice everywhere. Oh, so they're just terrified of ice for the rest of their lives? The iceberg sinks the Titanic and then you see icicles and they're just ice spears on your house. Right. Yeah, that's a good point. Think about that. All right. They were also covered in really painful.

ulcers from the seawater, the sun, and sitting on wooden seats all day. So they were constantly uncomfortable and in pain. They actually ate one of the tortoises around day 10. They drank its blood after slitting its throat. And the meat in the blood was really just a temporary reprieve from the hunger and the thirst. And plus, if you remember, they had been starving these tortoises already for like months at this point. So there really wasn't a lot of fat left on these tortoises. They're eating really lean meat that's not doing a lot to replenish what they'd lost. It's pretty small compared to the rest of the things they're going through, but the thing that you've said that's made me wince the most is that they're just sitting on hard benches this

whole time. That sounds terrible. Yeah, and they're just covered in ulcers from, you know, like their water soaked pants and like seawater. I think it's impossible to understand just how uncomfortable this would have been, you know? You never would have felt a moment of comfort. because of bad weather, they had a hard time using their navigational equipment to get an observation of their place on the map. But on December 9th, 17 days after leaving the Essex, they finally got the chance. And while their calculations showed that they had traveled almost 1,500 miles south, they had actually gone west instead of east and were no closer to South America than they had been when they started. But up until now, this was still kind of the plan.

head south, try and get into some of these variable winds. They were now at this point are quite close to the society islands and probably could have gotten there in less than a week, but they were still just like way too nervous about cannibals to even try it. Which is kind of crazy too, considering they had three guns. Do you think they'd just be like, let's just risk this? This is better than, you know, floating on the ocean and slowly dying. The ocean, it's also giving them precious little at this point.

This part of the Pacific is famous for being practically devoid of life because there's very change between, there's very little change between the cold and warm layers of water in this part of the Pacific. It's really just warm water for a good distance. And that change between cold and warm is what does all this upwelling of nutrients in the ocean. And when you have a lot of that turnover, you have a lot of life. But because there was very little turnover, there's hardly any life. This is essentially a big open desert. So aside from a few flying fish that happened to land in the boat one day and some goose-n-manana from heaven. I guess Chase just like ate the entire thing. It like scales, bones, everything, just like ate it. And they also got some goose neck barnacles

from their boat holes. But aside from those two things, they really weren't getting anything from the sea. You think, I bet you Zach Wilson could sit on the bench. He's been sitting on the bench for three or four years. He'd be good at that. The football player, yeah. Yeah, he'd be like, sure. I'd do this, four years.

I think he's allowed to get off of it, though, like after practice and stuff. These guys can't get off. He's been on the bench for four years straight. He lives on the bench. All right. Things start to get really dire on the third and fourth week. The wind stopped,

and they're just sitting and roasting in the sun, and the salt water on the hard tack had made their thirst really extreme. On Chase's boat, he started to realize that this journey was going to take longer than he had planned. So he cut their rations in half one more time. So they're getting half of like what was already a starvation diet. Yeah. And he just knew he had to plan for the future no matter how demoralizing it might be,

but he didn't cut their water rations because he kind of knew that if they, you know, didn't find some fresh water before then, they were going to die no matter what. Their thirst was so intense that their saliva was now thick and bitter tasting And their tongues were swollen and hard and difficult to move I actually want to read an excerpt directly from the book about this part Did you know you can't swallow your spit more than three times in a row? Huh Try is that

What I'm gonna go ahead spare our listeners the noise of me trying to do that Try it I don't know I feel like I'm out of spit after one time swallow is my problem. I don't have any more spit. I just did it. More than three times? Oh, more than three? You just drank. I just did three. Well, I didn't know there was conditions on it.

I said you can only get to three. Okay, here we go. So you gotta get to four. I'm like the Joey chestnut of saliva swallowing. This is easy. Watch. There I did it. Four. Wow. Okay. You're built different. Bebunked, Jeff. I'm good at swallowing. All right.

The Essex survivors had... I would love that island. That one seems chill as hell. The Essex survivors had entered what McGee describes as the cotton mouth phase of thirst. Slava becomes thick and foul tasting. The tongue clings irritatingly to the teeth and the roof of the mouth. Even though speech is difficult, sufferers are often moved to complain ceaselessly about their thirst until their voices become so cracked and hoarse

that they can speak no more. It's like me on Adderall. Yeah. It'd be nice if you couldn't speak anymore. Your mouth gets all, your mouth gets all like dry. A lump seems to form in the throat, causing the suffer to swallow repeatedly in a vain attempt to dislodge it.

Severe pain is felt in the head and neck. The face feels full due to the shrinking of the skin. Hearing is affected and many people begin to hallucinate. Still to come for the Essex crew, were agonies of a mouth that has ceased to generate saliva. The tongue hardens in what McGee describes as a senseless weight, swinging on the still soft root and striking foreignly against the teeth. Speech becomes impossible, although sufferers are known to moan and bellow.

Next is the blood sweats phase. Mone probably not in pleasure. Yeah, it's a bad moan. Involving a progressive mummification of the initial living body. The tongue swells to such proportions that it squeezes past the jaws. the eyelids crack and the eyeballs begin to weep tears of blood. The throat is so swollen that breathing becomes difficult, creating an incongruous yet terrifying sensation of drowning.

Finally, as the power of the sun inexorably draws the remaining moisture from the body, there is living death. So it's not a good time. That would be a really hard kink if that's your kink. Yeah, being like almost dying from thirst. Yeah. By the 20th of December, The men were essentially starting to die, and they had lost all strength.

They were all just lying on the floor of the boats, waiting for the sun to cook them to death, when one of the men stood up to stretch his legs and then screamed, There is land. The men were approaching a medium-sized, flat, densely vegetated island, with large 30-foot coral and limestone walls. The thing they were focused on was the vegetation. With so many palm trees and brush, and so much brush, there was bound to be water and they quickly sailed around the island to search for a beach that would allow a landing.

Looking at the map, they decided this must be Ducci Island in the Pitcairn Islands, which they actually weren't right about this. They're about 70 miles from Ducci, and they were landing on Henderson Island. They also didn't know that about 400 miles away, there was a thriving community that had been started by the mutineers from the bounty. Do you guys ever hear of mutiny on the bounty? It's kind of the most famous mutiny ever. Yeah. These mutineers had actually started their own community on these islands.

So they weren't far from that, but they never knew that. Sounds dangerous. Yeah, it wasn't actually. They would have been saved had they found the right island in these islands. Chase's boat went to shore first, and when they found tropical seabirds and signs hinting at a source of freshwater, Captain Pollard decided that they would all spend the night on the island, even though Chase really, just wanted to keep moving. Chase just is like a dog with a bone. He just wants to follow their plan. But this was a good idea. It was a really nice night. It was the first time they were

able to stretch out. They weren't anxious about the boats breaking apart or being attacked by a whale. So they all finally got a really good night's sleep. Yeah, it seems crazy to just not go to the island. Seriously. The first day they caught a bunch of crabs and birds and they had a big feast, but still no fresh water. Chase is getting really impatient to leave because he's really worried about their water supply, but Pollard pretty much said that if they didn't find water there the next day, they weren't making it to South America no matter what, and Chase agreed and said, okay, we'll spend the next day looking for water, and if we don't find any, we'll leave

the morning after. But the next day they found what they needed. Some of these men noticed a spring bubbling out of a long, flat rock at low tide, that had been covered by the ocean, and they were all thrilled to discover that this spring was fresh water. They drank out of it, they filled their casks, and the next morning they learned that the spring got covered in the tide and was only accessible during the extreme low tide. So now they have a decision to make. They're trying to decide do we stay indefinitely on this island and just hope for rescue,

and they're kind of going back and forth about this, but after about four or five more days on the island, they had pretty much killed every single seabird and crab that they could find, and they realized that this island wasn't going to be able to support him. So they make plans to leave on the 26th of December 1820. They fix up the boats, they get everything ready to go, they're about to leave when Thomas Chapel, who was the guy that lit that island on fire in the Galapagos, and two other men, William Wright and Seth Weeks,

stepped forward and said that they were going to stay on the island. They had been on Matthew Joy's boat, and apparently he was at this point about to die because he was so sick. And they decided they would rather take their chances with the island than with the slow death on Matthew Joy's boat, which ended up being a good idea. They gave these men some basic provisions to hopefully help them survive, and then they all loaded back into the boats. They kind of came up with the new plan at this point. They knew that they weren't too far from Easter Island. And they actually didn't know anything about the indigenous people of Easter Island.

But at this point, they had endured enough suffering in the sun that they were kind of like, we're just going to hope that it's okay. And we're going to sail for Easter Island. But Easter Island, they would have to kind of hit just the perfect winds to make it to Easter Island. But that was their plan. They're going to try and make it there. They don't. They miss it.

The winds change. By December 30th, they're already bailing on this plan. and again they're really their only plan is to try and find some wind that's going to take them closer to South America and they're hoping to hit some of these islands that are a few hundred miles away from the coast of South America okay this is where it starts to get a little bit more interesting Matthew joy continues to deteriorate and by January 9th 1821 he asked if he could be moved to Pollard's boat and then he dies that afternoon and they bury his body at sea so they just throw his body overboard. It's the first death. It hits them very hard emotionally, and Obed Hendricks was given

command of Joy's boat, and when he moves over to it, he makes a shocking discovery. Joy had not been rationing his hard attack at all, and there was only enough left to last them a couple days, which is a bum deal for this Hendricks guy who had been on a boat where they had been rationing. The next day, a big squall comes up, and it's blowing the boats in the right direction though, so they're pretty excited actually, and then something happens that makes them even more distressed. Owen Chase's boat becomes separated from the others, and they would never rejoin. Chase's boat was now alone, but it could not have happened at a better time. And that's because Hendricks' boat had run out of food. And Captain Pollard, who had moved Hendricks over to this

boat, felt a lot of pressure to share their stores with that boat, and so they did. And basically what this did was give both of these boats only a few days of hard tack and had chase been there, he would have felt a lot of pressure to also share his hard tack, which he had been strictly rationing and he probably would not have shared it and it would have turned into a really big deal. And luckily he didn't have to make that hard decision because he had already been separated. Little too convenient. Yeah. He had been really great about rationing, but he knew they still had weeks to go. so he once again cut the hardtack ration in half which meant that these men only got a tiny lump of hard tack each day

and some of them would just kind of nibble it and make it last a long time or some of them would eat it whole which gave them at least a momentary moment of feeling some satisfaction which way do you guys think you would go if that's all you got every day down like a horse pill just swallow it whole yeah i feel like i'd nibble half and eat the other half i'd kind of try to to do both, but I don't know. Yeah, that's hard. A big shark actually attacks chase boat in mid-January. They try to harpoon it because it's spending a lot of time, like, biting the wood of their boat. But they're all so weak at this point, they have a harpoon, but they're so weak that they can't pierce its skin. And after getting poked a few times, the shark gives up and leaves them. And based off their description, they said it was almost as big as the killer whale. I think it was either a large tiger shark or a gray white that attack their boat. But that's got to be frustrating.

Yeah. Dude. Tragic. Because it would have given them weeks, weeks of food had they been able to kill this shark. Around January 20th and their 60th day on the ocean, Richard Peterson, an old black religious man on Chase's boat, died of thirst and starvation. And once again, they bury his body at sea. On that same day, one of the black sailors on Hendricks' boat, Lassen Thomas, and,

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They next would have removed Thomas' heart, liver, and kidneys from the bloody basket of his ribs. They would then have begun to hack the meat from the backbone ribs and pelvis. In any case, Pollard reported that after lighting a fire on the flat stone at the bottom of the boat, they roasted the organs and the meat, and they began to eat. Instead of easing their hunger pangs, the first taste of meat only intensified their atavistic urge to eat. The saliva flowed in their mouths as their long dormant. stomachs gurgled with digestive juices, and the more they ate, the hungrier they became. Anthropologists and archaeologists studying the phenomenon of cannibalism have estimated that

the average human adult would provide about 60 pounds of edible meat, but Lawson Thomas' body was not average. Autopsies of starvation victims have revealed a dramatic atrophy of muscle tissue and a complete absence of fat, replaced in some instances by a translucent gelatinous substance. Starvation and dehydration had also shrunk Thomas's internal organs, including his heart and his liver. His body may have yielded as little as 30 pounds of lean, fibrous meat. So they're really not getting a ton from these guys. But two days later... 30 pounds is shockingly little. Yeah, I know. That's like what you'd think like a leg would give you, but that's really all they're getting. And two days later, Charles Shorter, another black sailor on

Hendricks boat dies and they ate him as well. Now you might be noticing a little pattern here and I mentioned this earlier. The black sailors had probably not been fed as well and they'd probably come onto these whale boats with a lot less fat than the white sailors and you know in this starvation game that's really all that matters is how much fat you had to begin with and your body size. But I do think it's really important to note and this is kind of a big asterisk on this whole story. every account we have of what happened on these whale boats comes from white sailors. So it is totally possible that something a lot more evil and calculating happened on these boats. Anything from them outright killing these black sailors to eat them or them refusing to share the meat of the other sailors with them.

Most historians don't think that was the case because Pollard was a really fair captain. the other men of these boats seem to treat the black sailors as equals. We just have to mention that like the fact that all the first casualties, aside from Matthew Joy, who was sick, were all black sailors, does kind of stick out. You know, that is something that could be explained a few different ways. Yeah. I thought the pattern was going to be that they're eating people that died. Yeah.

Yeah. I noticed that pattern. That is a pattern too. That was part of this pattern, but all of those first people were black. On January 27th... But we all look the same on the inside when you started drinking this. That's true. That's true. On January 27th, Isaiah Shepard died on Hendricks boat,

and on January 28th, Samuel Reed died on Pollard's boat. Both of these men were black. No. Both of them were eaten by the other sailors. We got to get a white guy. At this point, William Bond, the sailor that had saved the navigation, equipment was the last black crew member left alive. Without a doubt, he's getting a little nervous. What about the 14-year-old cabin boy? He's on Chase's boat. He's still alive. He's white. The only black sailor left at this point is William Bond.

Gotcha. The hero. He is a hero. Pollard had noticed a change that had been coming over the men. They're starting to act wilder and more feral. They're no longer cheery or polite. and it wasn't a great omen for how things were headed. On the night of January 29th, a big storm kicks up, and it separates Pollard and Hendricks's boats. It would be the last time anyone would see Obed Hendricks, William Bond, and Joseph West again. We will talk about in this third episode that we're doing for subscribers, a theory of what happened to these men,

but it is something unsubstantiated, but very likely. But they died. All three of them died. Okay, here's where things get pretty crazy in Pollard's boat. On February 6th, they had finished the last morsels from Samuel Reed's body, and now the four surviving men on Pollard's boat were just sitting in silence and staring at each other while their body screamed out for more food. All of them are thinking the same thing, but none of them are saying it.

And finally, 16-year-old Charles Ramsdell comes out and says it. He says they should draw lots to decide who should be killed so that the rest can survive. Both Owen Coffin and Barzley Ray, the other two teenagers on this boat, agree. And all three of these boys are close childhood friends. Pollard isn't having it. He says there's no way they're doing that. He pushes back. But when he sees that all three of these boys who are obviously starving to death are all in agreement, he finally relents.

So out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, bobbing around in a whale boat that's already littered with bones and remains of two other people they had just eaten, they wrote their names on slips of paper, and deep in Pollard's heart, there's only one thing that he's really afraid of. And that one thing was that when he had left Nantucket, he had promised his aunt, Nancy Bunker Coffin, that he would take care of her son. And now there's a one in four chance that he was going to be killing and eating that very same boy. Owen coffin. And as Owen dropped his slip of paper into the hat, Pollard said a silent prayer that they would choose any other name aside from Owens,

even his own name. But his prayers fell on deaf ears because they drew Owen's name. Immediately Pollard started screaming and he told Owen that he could back out if he wanted to and that Pollard would shoot anyone that tried to touch him. He even offered to trade places with Owen, but Owen who had resigned himself to his fate told his cousin to calm down and softly said, I like it as well as any other. Pretty much saying, you know,

all of us would have hated this had it happened to us. Next, they draw lots for who would pull the trigger and kill Owen Kaufman. And his best friend's 16-year-old Charles Ramsdell was chosen. He pretty much immediately says he won't do it, he can't do it, and for a while he completely refused to do it, but then Owen Coffin calmly reassures him that everything had been fair and that he needed to go through with it, and he gives in. Owen gives a parting message to his mother that he has

Pollard right down, and then he asked for a few moments of silence, and the 29-year-old captain and these three teenage sailors just sat in silence and stared out at the endless Pacific while the waves gently lapped at the side of their boat. Then Owen Coffin put his head flat against the boat gunwale, and Ramsdale put the pistol to his head and pulled the trigger. And by that night, they had consumed his entire body. Hundreds of miles to the north, Chase's boat is starting to run out of hard tack. He had done much better at rationing than the other boats, but they had been adrift for about 80 days now,

and they're pretty much out of bread. He hasn't eaten anyone, right? Nope, not yet, but that was a good segue. On February 8th, Isaac Cole in his boat starts a rancel. chanting and screaming and going into convulsions on the bottom of the boat. Then he sat up straight, asked for a napkin, and then slammed back down and started convulsing and screaming again. He went nonverbal around 10 a.m. and was dead by 4 o'clock that afternoon. The next morning, Thomas Nickerson and Lawrence were getting ready, were getting his body ready for burial at sea.

And Chase was like, uh, not so fast. and they decided to eat Isaac Cole. He'd already started to spoil by that point, so they worked fast, they ate all of his organs and some of his flesh, and they cut the rest into thin strips and either cooked it on the fire or dried it in the sun, but the next day the dried ones were turning green,

so they cooked them up really fast and ate them as quickly as possible. On February 18, 1821, 89 days after leaving the Essex, Chase, Nickerson, and Lawrence, had just finished eating the last of their friend, Isaac Cole, and little Thomas Nickerson had finally given up mentally. Chase knew that they had to be starting to get kind of close to some islands,

but the men were feeling so depleted and emotionally distraught that he wondered if he might be close to mentally breaking as well. That morning, Nickerson's essentially dead to the world. Chase is considering giving up as well, and Lawrence says the one thing that they had been waiting to hear since the first day that they left the Essex. He stood up and said, There's a sail.

There's a boat on the horizon, and after turning their sail into the wind and chasing the ship, they managed to pull alongside, and Chase uses the last of his strength to say three words to the men aboard, this boat, which was the Indian, out of London. He said Essex,

Whale Ship, Nantucket. The men aboard managed to get the three skeletal survivors aboard the Indian. Their eyes were dark and sunken in. Their ulcerated skin was hanging off their skeleton like rags, and the men aboard the Indian described them as the most deplorable and affecting picture of human suffering and misery. But they had been saved. To the south, Barzolai Ray had died five days after the death of Owen Coffin, and Pollard and Charles Ramsdale were the last two survivors on the boat. The boat is completely littered with the bones of their dead friends and family members, and the two men who are now almost completely feral, had kept some of the smaller bones

as remembrance of their friends, and were busy breaking the other ones open to suck out the marrow. It had been 12 days since Barzolai had died, and the two men were now so weak that they could barely lift their heads. They both just laid in the fetal position and sucked on human bones while going in and out of consciousness. And they'd been living in this perpetual state of horror and near death when they looked up to the stunned faces of the human bones of the human bones of the family. the men aboard the doffin. Captain Pollard and Charles Ramsdell had also been rescued. And if you want to hear about their journey back home and the rest of the story,

you have to listen to episode three on our subscriber channels. Oh my gosh. It makes me want to cry. Yeah, it's crazy. I can't. Like people that you know that you grew up with that you love, you have to eat, That's like it just doesn't even, my brain doesn't want to even like process that. And like, I don't, it's probably hard for us to even understand the bond that they have at this point.

You know, like they've been living on a whale boat together for two years. And now for 80 days they've been drifting in the ocean together, like completely relying on each other for their survival to have to kill and eat one of those people. This is why this is one of the stories I always wanted to tell that like drawing lots to decide who to kill. is just unreal. Yeah. It's going to have some pretty serious consequences for Pollard's future, especially. But for, you know, the main part of the story, they have been rescued. All five of these men would go on to survive.

Like, they all survived the trip home. And then the three men on the island were rescued as well. Oh, nice. Yeah, but there's a lot of details that go into all that that are pretty interesting. Maybe we'll get into it in part three then. but is there, so this story inspired Moby Dick, is there some kind of retribution tour that Pollard goes on in search of this whale, or do you want to save it, or is that just fabricated for a little teaser is he does actually like kind of remarkably get named the captain of another whale boat, and once again, things do not go well for him. Pollard. Yeah.

Oh, man. Anyway, the book is amazing. I really had to leave a lot of really interesting details out. So if you guys were interested in the story, I highly recommend the book. It's not a hard read. It goes pretty quickly, but it's definitely one of my favorite nonfiction books. Yeah, I'm going to read it. Cool.

All right. Any questions before we get into our categories? Yeah. What? Would you rather, it's like your childhood friends, right? Uh-huh. Or like your nephew. Yeah.

Would you rather draw that you die or that you shoot them? I would rather you eat me than I eat you. But you have to shoot me. Oh, wait. Yeah. No, I wouldn't. Not in that scenario. I have to shoot you.

Right. Yeah. I want you to shoot me and eat me other than the other way around. Yeah. If it's us three, I don't want to shoot you guys or die. I'll eat one of you, though. That's guy. Yeah.

Yeah, you just want to be a. an observer. Yeah. You know, I think like this heroic part of me says that I would like want to be the one that shot and eaten. But an interesting thing in the book is he goes into some of the psychology that was studied of Holocaust survivors and how they talk about how after so long of that, their only real will was to live. Like everything became secondary aside from the will to survive. And like one of the women, this researcher interviewed from the Holocaust said that she would have done anything to survive. Like would have sacrificed her kids, would have sacrificed anything because they had just been broken so fundamentally.

And I think that was kind of what was happening to the men aboard these whale boats that just every essence of humanity had been stripped out of them at that point. But obviously not all of it because Pollard had a really hard time and so did the rest of them. I mean, in Owen, and I'm sure he was obviously a person of outstanding courage and conviction. Owen, because he was, he had the wherewithal and the courage to, you know, go through with the plan and even encourage his friends to do it. So, I don't know. That's a really unusual show of conviction. It's not very good survival instincts by him. Right.

I think I would have just said like... Darwin would be like, well... Hey, let's just see who dies. You know, let's not shoot any of us. Let's just see what happens. I kind of get why they did decide to do that, though, because they kept atrophying to the point where, I mean, the meat that they were able to harvest from these bodies.

And that's a really weird way to put that. But like, it was kind of... Time was of the essence to get this food source while it was at its prime kind of thing. Well, there's kind of an interesting calculus at play, too, It's not really calculus. It's addition, but like, and subtraction, is that each man that dies and gets eaten,

there's less men that do the eating. So each meal is, like, more, you know. When you're only two people left and the other person dies, like, you might have weeks of food at that point. But at the beginning, like, these men that were being eaten went pretty quick because there was five or six people doing the eating. So it is kind of, but then also they're slowly starving, so there's less and less meat on them.

Was there anything in the book that told you? Yum, yum, yeah, what part of me would you want to eat west? Oh, that's what my categories. I have a category. Okay, so was there anything in the book that made it seem like the cannibalism became easier with each time they engaged in it? Or was it always just like? It kind of seemed that once they had broken that dam on each boat, then it kind of didn't matter after that. The Owen Coffin one was obviously the hardest because they had to kill him too.

But before that point, I think it was like the first time they ate someone on the boats was the hard one. And then it got a lot easier. Okay. Man. Yeah. This episode of Tooth and Claw is brought to by Graza, makers of crazy fresh olive oil. And therefore, a lot of other stuff that you make with that crazy fresh olive oil. Graza's got everything you need to roast, toast, grill, and garnish with a lot of flare and a lot of flare.

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Our first question is your favorite high stakes bet or game of chance in pop culture? I just thought of mine, but it's still good. Okay, I want to hear it. Fasten the Furious Tokyo Drift at the start where the one high schooler has like a brand new Dodge Viper or something. And then like the hero guy who's like 30 in high school has like an old beat up car.

Uh-huh. And the guy's like, you want to race. And then the other guy, the guy with the old car is like, I only race for pink slips. Yeah. And the guy's like, I have like a $100,000 car. And the guy's like, it's not my problem, you know. But then the prepy guy. with the nice car's girlfriend steps in

and it's like you guys can race for me and he's like, that works. That works too. Do you believe that Shane Black's character or no, that's not his name, whatever his name is. He only races for pink slips but he has the worst car so like he's just really, really bad at it? Or is that he win that car?

And that's like an upgrade from his last one even. I don't know because I feel like he loses a lot of drifting races later too. Right. And I don't think he gives up that many cars. That's true. Yeah, that's true.

Yeah, and isn't the jock guy, the guy from home improvement, one of the kids? Yeah, the oldest brother. Oh, that's right. He's kind of a burnout now, right? Didn't he get in a bunch of trouble? I don't know.

I think so. I know the kid from the wizard did with the power glove. It's so bad. Oh, he got in trouble too? It's so bad. Yeah, that's a dark little rabbit hole to go down. Sick.

I'm going to go with the end of Maverick, the Mel Gibson movie. Problematic. I know. I get it. First of all, James Coburn's character has like a pretty, he has four of a kind. So the stakes are high. And then Alfred Molina's, he's got a straight flush. And Mel Gibson the whole time, he's not looking at his next card. And he's like, just trusting, he's like Yugi, believing in the heart of the cards kind of thing. And then he's got all, everything he needs for a royal flush, except for the ace of spades. And he reaches for that last card, and he pulls it. And he, without saying anything, he, he's, flicks it onto the pile of chips.

Oh man, what a moment. That movie's, I don't know if it's even a guilty pleasure. I really enjoy that movie a lot. Yeah. All right, I've got two answers. One of them's more of a game of, yeah. So my first one is Phantom Menace, when Quigon's just like,

betting on this kid who's like never raced a pot race before and like betting like slavery on it too. Cheating on it too. And cheating. It's like, that's against the job. Jedi code, isn't it? You have to have enough money for these momings, boy. Right. Yeah, he's like, I can only take one of you. Take one of them. See you mom. Yeah. Slavery does for you. Uh, and then the other one I thought of, a movie that I brought up a lot on the podcast because it just lives rent free in my home,

or my home, my head. The last duel by Ridley Scott, where at the end they do like a fight to the death to decide whether or not the main heroine is going to be essentially burned at the stake. And it's like kind of the most I've ever been involved in like the stakes of a movie, the most I've ever gotten caught up in how big the stakes were. So yeah. Okay. We just got back from Antarctica, as we mentioned. It was a pretty unreal trip.

We had amazing weather. We had the Drake Lake on one way down. We had the Drake Shake the other way. just incredible wildlife, like an unbelievable group of people. So really quick before we get in the category, I just want to shout out everyone that was on the trip. We had Garrison, Jesse, Carla, Natalie, Katie, Danielle, Morgan, Krista, Sarah, Alex, Emmy, Angie, Michaela, Skyler, Mandy, Jen, Gene, Ruby, Keith, Sierra, Zach, Peter, Brianna, Alana, Jamie, Reese, Mike, Leah, and Erica.

Everyone was great, so much fun. But I wanted to ask you guys what your top three moments were from our trip to Antarctica, our seventh continent, together. Can I take the leopard seal and munch and the penguin before you guys? Can't, but I'm also going to take it. I know you. It was probably the prettiest place. That's not true. Everywhere we stopped.

That was one of our prettiest stops, for sure. Beautiful in their own unique ways almost. but yeah, we didn't expect it. And I even remember asking you and you saying, I don't know, it's not super likely that we're going to be able to see that. And it's like pretty quickly off the side of our zodiac. That was incredible. Just seeing it flay, I guess, is the term,

the penguin around on the surface of the water. It was amazing. Yeah. Since that was one of mine, I kind of want to add to that. But like, I had heard that we would be fortunate if we saw leopard seals in full view. Like often you just get a fleeting glimpse of them. So the fact that the first leopard seal we see is 20 feet in front of our boat catching, killing, and then flaying a penguin right in front of us and giving us like probably a 15 minute window or 30 minute window somewhere in between there, like of watching it was so far beyond my expectations of what we might see. And one of my favorite experiences for many of our trips.

So that was my top one too. Yeah. Yeah. Me too. Cool. So that's one for all three of us. My video got on Nature's Metal from it. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. Shoot, you're a huge deal. I almost said you're huge, but that's, I mean. That's Garrison. That's Griskeed, the whale. Yeah, that's true. I'm going to go with the caldera that we pulled up on. It was kind of like walking around a Star Wars planet with all these weird abandoned big metal structures.

That was kind of just an otherworldly experience to me. It was a really foggy day. I felt kind of like a dream walking around it. Really beautiful, though. Oh, haunted. Yeah. Very haunted. And then Katie vomiting up her drink in the middle of one of the lectures is probably my third choice.

So funny. Just during such a quiet moment during a serious presentation, she just hacks up a whole gut full of juice. I don't even know what she was drinking. It was so funny, though. She's okay. She was laughing too, but it's, yeah. Yeah. I sure got the giggles when that happened.

I could stop laughing for a bit. Oh, so funny. Jeff, what are your other two? Man, we had a really good, like, worst date night where someone wrote some, what's it called? Smuck? Smut. Smut? Smut for someone after a first date, and we read it all.

It was just so funny. And then, yeah, kayaking with Alana was great because we got really, like, some humpbacks came up right next to us and that piece of ice fell into the ocean like off an iceberg right when its tail came up so that was awesome just getting out into the ice and like seeing penguins diving I couldn't get enough of it I saw penguins are so funny they're so silly like the way they run just always doing the Naruto arms just so funny and like it was unique too because it was like one of the first places we've been where it just felt like as soon as you're on shore you're just surrounded by wildlife and they don't really care at all that you were there where they just kind of like you became one with them you know it was really yeah it was great my second best was the orcas we had a moment where a big pot of orcas approached our boat and continued to kind of swim all around it and under it and the staff all got really excited all of us were like running back and forth on the boat it was just a really it was one of our our first big wildlife encounters and it was just really special. And then another one that I loved is

one night we were in this really beautiful bay and there was this gorgeous sunset that just had this beautiful pink and peach glow on all of the ice. And we had a barbecue on top of the boat and everyone was dancing and it was just like a really fun, beautiful vibe. And that was such a nice moment. But like you guys are saying, there were so many good moments on this trip. I got to kayak with Brianna and we had a leopard seal following us, which was really cool. You're surprised I didn't pick polar plunge, Jeff? Yeah. Yeah, that's my fourth.

No, I did. Mike was so mad he had to puller plunge. He was like, couldn't get over it. No, I do want to say my fourth if I had to pick one. Those moments when the night started getting really late and things started calming down a little bit. And like the whole group starts talking. I don't know.

You just start connecting in those late night moments. when you're up late playing cards together and like connecting over small conversations. Those were just the most memorable moments to me in a way. I was connecting with the toilet most of those kinds. Intimate with it. My least favorite. A little stomach bug moment was when Angie shoved me into the wall as hard as you could. Shoulder check to you under the wall.

Thank you everyone for coming who came. Honestly, I'm just constantly amazed by how kind. everyone is on these trips and how amazing all of our listeners are. So thank you again. It was a trip of a lifetime for us, as I think it was for everyone aboard. Cool. What do you guys think is the funniest thing that Gris Kid the humpback could do to solely my name? I got a good one for this.

Do it. Say it as like a news headline. I think this is actually like complete. possible. Okay. I think there's a really good chance Griskid the whale has or will visit Epstein's Island. So Griskid has been to Epstein. Speedy had little St. John's.

Griskid has been to Epstein's Island. I'm putting that out there. I simply can't get this whale to leave this area. Scientists are reporting after sinking a boat of refugees, Griskid was spotted three miles off the coast of Epstein Island. That was mine. Like the whale sinks just a boat of refugees trying to escape. That wouldn't be funny though, which is not this category. No, that's what I'm saying is like the worst thing it could do to sully my name.

Mike, what's yours? Maybe it flies a plane into a building maybe. I don't know. Depends on the building if that would bother me. I was thinking it'd be really funny. Like scientists say that whale gris kid has reportedly the smallest whale penis in the history of whale sighting. microscopic they are saying the first whale micropenus didn't know that micro penises existed among whales but this one sure blows that theory out of the water he seems to be an in sale whale that we didn't know it was a thing in whale oh yeah what if it's like that whale 42 or whatever Jeff did an episode on just can't have and no one likes no one likes him at all

can't find a sexual partner or anything well one of those is bound to happen All right. What part of your body do you think would be the tastiest? Your specific body. I'm picking my thigh. And the reason I thought about this for a while, I don't have the biggest legs. But my legs are like kind of strong, but not like crazy strong. So I think they probably have just the right amount of like fat and marbling that you want in like a good piece of meat.

You know, like some good muscle, but like not too much. So I just think, I think my legs are pretty tasty. I think my thighs are going to be pretty good. Yeah. I was thinking maybe your right forearm, Wes. Okay. That's not, I don't have very big forearms, though. I don't feel like it would be that great.

Oh, dude. That looks good. Yeah, it does. Not your left one, just your right one. I would eat Mike's calves. Oh, yeah, Mike's calves would be hella good. Except there's no fat in there. There's pure muscle.

I wish there was like, man, I wish we could do that. Maybe we try ourselves. Yeah, I wouldn't want to try myself, but I'd like for you guys to try a calf. What do you think on your own body, though? I picked mine. What's your answers? Don't people think there's like the cheeks of certain animals are really good? Yeah.

Oh, you eat your own ass? Oh, dude. That adds up. Are you saying butt cheeks? Yeah, that's what I was saying. The cheek, though. I'm not trying to get in anywhere. Yeah.

Oh, man. You love eating ass so much that you. You dude. You remember that old cartoon cow and chicken they'd always eat? Or was it Ren and Stimpy? Who was always eating like the butts? There's just like a big plump butt. I think that was probably run and stumpy.

Ren and Stimpy? I forget. It made it pretty tasty. Story made me kind of want to try some fingers. Yeah. I kind of like sucking on like chicken wings and stuff. Oh yeah, like pulling the skin off would be kind of nice. Sure.

Yeah. All right. We're going to do a quick cage match for sperm whales So we didn't do it last episode And that is kind of even though we didn't talk about biology much This is the main animal here I think I think orcas would kill sperm whales

I think they probably have I don't I think sperm whales Their jaws aren't as powerful as an orca's jaws I think you know for what I understand They mostly kill squid and stuff that they don't need to like tear big chunks of meat off So orcas can kill sperm whales. And I think a great white would also be an interesting challenge.

Like a big great white and a big sperm whale, I'm not really sure how that one would go. Interesting. It does seem like one-on-one that could possibly be like the number one animal. Yeah, I still think one-on-one and orca is taking it. But I think a great white has a chance. Orcas have been known to kill and eat sperm whales. But I think sperm will has a chance.

Sure. Well, no, but it's like a group of orcas always. Not always. With the sperm whale? You know, I shouldn't say that, but I would assume so. I'd assume not. But they usually do attack either calves or female sperm whales. As we know, the males get a lot bigger.

But I think if we put our biggest sperm whale and our biggest orca in a tank together, my money's on the orca. and I'm putting a pretty hefty bet on the orca. The Great White and the sperm whale, I probably, I don't know. I honestly don't know. I just don't know if the sperm whale has the weapons to really kill either of those animals. So that's the issue there. They are the largest toothbreadder on Earth.

If you put an orca in a cage or a tank or something, their little dorsal fin always flocks down, that's going to hurt its chances. That's true. That's so sad. Yeah. Oh. Yeah, but they can like flip. It is sad.

That's true. Yeah. Like when the sperm whale comes at them, they'll just backflip out of the way. Do orcas do that? Or is that dolphins that you're thinking? Frickas can jump and flip, I think. I don't know if they jump. Do they flip?

Yeah. That's sweet if they can. A cool thing about sperm whales, I don't know if you have seen this, but humpbacks kind of do like, sorry. Sometimes they sleep vertically underwater. Yeah, that is cool. That's awesome. There's cool photos and videos of.

like whole pods of sperm whales that are suspended vertically underwater. What if that's just someone like turning regular footage sideways, so we're not looking at it, right? I don't think that's how it looks because you can see the sunlight coming in from the top. Yeah. Sounds like AI. Humpback whales, they kind of are like the people who want to do a backflip but then get scared like as they're jumping and land on their back.

They're kind of like me. There's always a twist in their flip. trying their hardest to do backflips. Christian on our Komodo trip. Yeah. Yeah. He's got like eight videos of himself just eating it. Yeah.

I always put a little twist in my backflip. I just can't help it. All right. I'm going to do a quick. It came from Quora. So if you look up sperm whale stuff on Quora, the number one question you're going to find is whether or not someone can be eaten by a whale

and survive. It's all over the place. That's just like a question that everyone wants to know because of the Bible. But the one that I asked and tried to find a good answer to was whether or not you could be shot out of a whale's blowhole. And now we're talking. Yeah, yeah. I knew you guys would want to see whether or not that was possible. So the question that I found is how big is a whale's blowhole? if I were swallowed by a whale Could it blow me out of its blowhole And allow both of us to survive And everyone was very scientific

For the most part saying First of all, whales can't swallow you Their esophages aren't big enough They can like mouth people But they always spit people out But you can't be swallowed by a whale Sounds kind of pleasant I'd grab the uvila

Yeah, sure I keep myself from going down There was an answer from Zanthi Jacobs who apparently studied marine biology in marine studies, who said, we know blue whales are huge, but their blowholes alone can reach up to 20 inches in length. That's big enough to squeeze a baby through. Now we're talking. Now we are talking.

So hypothetically, you could squeeze a baby into the blowhole and then maybe it could be shot out. Maybe one of these like starving sailors, do? They seem pretty thin. Yeah. And then Scott Richards, whose tag says, Former Bringing Animals to Christ, says, Few People know that whales are hollow. He's not doing it anymore, I guess.

Yeah. Few people know that whales are hollow. The blowhole is quite small and higher than all but the tallest people's heads, though it is possible for a very tall, thin person to escape through the blowhole. The best option is to walk around a lot until you get pooped out. So if you happen to be very tall and skinny It doesn't sound right But yeah

All right Do we have any listener questions You gotta be careful when you get out of them though too Out of whales Because like if they dive too deep Once you get out You're gonna get crushed by the ocean pressure That's true

I don't think you get crushed inside of them Yeah That's good to know I didn't get listener questions Okay I'll grab I'll grab a couple from our Patreon real quick. This is from LLB. Question for all of the guys,

have you ever drank milk from a non-traditional animal? So like not an ungulate or anything other than a cow or a goat, really. Has Griskid tried bare milk? You guys ever tried any non-traditional milks from animals? He said not goat, but I think mine still counts as being worthy. Because it was a guy in Guatemala with 10 goats. on the street in the middle of like tons of people like in the middle of guatemontas city and he

milked them in front of me and gave me a cup it's pretty unusual it's pretty unusual i agree that goat milk should be included in that list um i actually haven't ever tried bare milk and i'm i'm really picky about milk i consider myself a fairly adventurous eater but milk like kind of grosses me out when it's not just like cold one percent milk so i haven't tried any weird ones Yeah. Do you know what I think whenever someone says milk, I make it into an acronym and it's mother I'd like to kill. Is that weird? Sure.

Yeah. It's a little weird. Do you have one of those? No, she's already gone. Man, why'd she die now? There's some questions surrounding that. Cut that out. Slice it out, Bill.

Wes always like really salivates and talks a lot about the green milk from, uh, The Last Jedi. Yeah, I don't actually. That scene actually really grosses me out. Okay. Mom used to make our milk green on St. Patrick's Day. That's true. She did do that.

I loved that. I always thought it tasted weird because of that. This one's from Madeline. Wes, what's your travel camera setup like? What gear would you recommend for wildlife photography? I have an A7CR. It's a Sony camera. It's a little bit more compact.

and then I take my big lens with me, which is a 400 to 800. It's not that great. It kind of sucks to travel with. It's a pain. It fills up like my whole carry-on pretty much. So I don't have a great answer for that, aside from bridge cameras are pretty nice for travel wildlife photography. So maybe look into one of those.

Okay. Either of you see that Netflix documentary, The Dinosaurs, yet? No, I heard it was really good. I heard it got a 15-month. minute standing ovation in France. Really? At the canes. I just said it, Jeff.

Nah, I just always hear that. I just said the word. Rachel Lern asked if we had opinions on it. I watched the first episode last night. I quite liked it, but it didn't really stand out from the other dinosaur docs that have been produced lately. But I thought it was fun. Okay, one more. This was from Chloe.

What's your favorite music video of all time? For me, it's got to be weapon of choice by Fat Boy Slim. Nothing beats Christopher Walken dancing and flying around with a serious look on his face. It's a great pick. That's so good. Yeah, that's good. Spike Jones. You guys have a favorite music video? Yeah.

I mean, I was just thinking of all the Spike Jones videos, like Bjurks, so so quiet is a really fun one. Undone by Weezer, the sweater song, where they slow it down and then speed it up in this weird way and then the dog start running around. That's great. Song 2 by Blur is a great music video. Just like really high energy and fun. Oh, you know what? Yeah, I'm going to go. Sorry, I just totally.

I owned you right there, Wes. But I'm going to do it anyway. I'm going to go with the Clint Eastwood video from Gorillas. I remember that like was making the rounds on early internet, like before there were like video hosting sites. So you had to go like these weird little hosting places. And I remember the URL was Sputnik7.com. And they had that video and Frontier Psychioteer. by avalanches.

And my brother and I would sit there all day and watch both of them back to back to back. And we're like, I can't believe we can just do this as many times as we want on the internet right now. Plus it's like a great video. The original guerrillas website too was this weird like puzzle box that you had to navigate to figure out like videos and stuff. And I spent so much time on there. That video is so good. That's amazing. My answer is shoot, I just had it.

What was it? Oh yeah. This is a weird one. Corn? follow or what's that uh the what's the one with the bullet freak on a leash that that video with the bullet like going through everything and then dancing around in the room while he's doing that whole part like it that video had a hold on me when it came out and you know I dabbled in new metal I still do from time to time and it's just like a really fun to watch video so that's my

pick corn freak on a leash I'll go taking back some day louder now, just like in front of a giant fan and then there's videos of animals. Yeah, I like taking down prey. Just kind of like simple, but really works for me. I always like Britney Spears toxic, where he rides a motorcycle. Dude, Lincoln Parks with all the CG before its time. Oh, yeah. Flying whales.

Oh, my gosh. Do you know who's been doing a great job as ASAP Rocky? this he's always done great but like a single the single taylor swift that music video is like super fun everything he's rolled out this latest album cycle helicopter it's all been just like really artistic creative like really ambitious videos you just don't see that very much anymore so i really appreciate that i try out okay go because i don't even think their music was good and their videos made it like rub gulberg machines and stuff yeah all right i actually gonna i'm gonna do one more because we've done precious little wildlife stuff on this episode.

This one's from Christastic 7567, and they asked, not sure if this has been addressed already, but how quickly and effectively do animals adapt to using wildlife pathways over freeways and busy roads? So you very likely have seen these before in the news or in person, but a new strategy for helping wildlife navigate freeways and whatnot are building these overpasses that are like,

vegetated and kind of offer them a safe way to cross. And they are successful, but it really depends on putting them in the right spot, making sure they're already in natural corridors where the wildlife wants to cross. But what you may not know is that the ones that are even more successful are the underpasses. So what's having a lot more success even than the overpasses are these big culverts that you can dig underneath the freeway, allowing wildlife to go through. And those animals seem to be even more comfortable to use those. Everything from bears to ungulates to meso-carnavores, all sorts of stuff will use them.

So it is a really good solution to a huge problem. Wildlife can be totally fragmented by busy highways, and it really stops a lot of gene transmission and big things, big important things for wildlife populations. So we'd love to see more of those in the future. for sure. That is like a good argument too for just individual jet packs. Yeah, for animals? Yeah, you wouldn't hit animals.

No, those whales can finally do that 9-11 that we've been talking about. Or in the end, if we gave whales jet packs? Yeah. Okay. We shouldn't get Griscape, the whale. He's going to get into some trouble. You know he's been to the high. Island. He was just friends with Epstein, Jeff. He wasn't doing anything bad. That video with its fins around his shoulder.

Yeah. Just disregard that. Yeah, that he was photo bombed by Jisleine Maxwell. All right. That's all I got this week. Thanks to everyone for listening. Again, this one was Labor of Love. These were, this was a story. I really wanted to to tell. It maybe feels a little unfinished because we are going to do that third episode for our subscribers. So if you've been considering a subscription, it's the same price it's always been. Ten bucks a month. You can find us on Patreon. We're really pushing our Patreon because it is a more kind of robust platform where we're able to do a lot more listener interaction. We're able to sell our trips on there, do a lot of different things. So find us on Patreon, 10 bucks a month.

If you don't like it, you can cancel, you know? Sure. Yeah. I did. I did. Right now before you even start. Yeah. Right.

That's the easiest way to cancel something is just never even sign up for it. But that episode will be coming out soon. We actually have one in the pipeline for this week, which is a fun episode. And then wait. Chimp Wars? It just came out. Yep. Just came out.

So. To critical acclaim. Part three might even come out this week, and that'll get us back on the schedule we want to be for our subscriber episodes. I got a message from a subscriber saying she was busting up at me saying giggy.

Giggy. That's incredible. Multiple times, too. Actor corrected. Yeah. All right. Well, that's all. We'll see you later.

We love you. All right. Love you. Bye. Bye. Thank you.