Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - The Dire Wolf "De-Extinction" Situation - News Stories Including Dire Wolves(?), the Algae that Turns Sea Lions Violent, a Bear Swipe to the Face, and More

Episode Date: April 21, 2025

The guys talk about some of the more notable animal news stories to hit the mainstream during the past month or so. Watch here: https://youtu.be/YDW_wKFDRcI ~~ 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

Get ready to ride. The Rocky Mountain Jamboree returns to Richfield, Utah, September 14th through the 18th, 2026. Join hundreds of OHV enthusiasts for five days of guided rides through Utah's legendary Paiute, Gooseberry, and Great Western Trail Systems. Enjoy daily breakfast, prize raffles, a light parade, and a closing dinner with fellow riders. Experience Utah's trail country at the Rocky Mountain Jamboree. Register today at Richfield, Utah.com.

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Tooth and Claw podcast. We have our lovely wildlife biologist, Wes Larson, with us. Give me all your money. And then we have our provocative co-host, Mike Smith. Hey. And I'm Jeff Larson. Or wait, that wasn't provocative enough. Do you mean provocative, like, sensually?

No, like, you bring the heat. You do bring the heat. You stir shit up. What? Yeah. Sometimes I forget this is an audio format. I had my shirt over my nose. It was like a bandito. You looked like the, what was the friend's name in the Bazooka Joe comics?

He always had the turtleneck like pulled all the way up over his nose. That was always a weird look to me. I don't know, Mike. No one else is as tacked into 1930s culture as you are. Yeah, that's true. Wes is on a grizzly bear Facebook group? Bored. No.

Bored? I'm on the board of directors for the Grizzly bear Foundation. He met with like a bunch of ants yesterday. Sounds like that was the case. No. We're not, we're not kidding. We had our board meeting yesterday. And how long was it?

It's a great, it's a great board. It's really fun being in those meetings. But sometimes we get into stuff that I'm not that good at, which is more like discussing like budget and stuff like that. And in those moments, to me, a simpleton, it can kind of feel like the meeting of the ants in lower the ranks. My eyes go a little glazed over. But it's important stuff.

That's, that's what board members are. are four. And then when they choose to eradicate the entire bear population, Montana, you're like, how can that be your decision? And then they carry you off back to the shire. And then I trick them. I trick them. Yeah, you do. No, it's great. The mastermind. They more added me to the board to be a voice on kind of more on the ground kind of decisions. So the budget stuff sometimes is a little hard for me, but it's important stuff. So, you know, if you're looking for a good bear organization to donate to The Grizzly Bear Foundation is a great one. Well, it's our semi-annual.

Yeah, every six weeks, news episode. Buy monthly? Or would that mean twice a month? I always get that mixed up. I think that's twice a month. We don't do it that often. Semi-monthly? I don't know.

Anyway, it's kind of been a slow couple months for attacks. I feel like there hasn't been a ton, which is kind of nice. We definitely found some good stories, and there were some interesting science stories. and wildlife stories that people really wanted to hear us talk about. And I figure I'd lead off with one of those. They're dying to hear. They're dying to hear it yet. I don't think that's how that said.

Dyer is ready? Yeah, diering, like a dire wolf. You'll get it. Okay. Just wait one second. Oh, they're dying to hear. Okay, I see. Sorry.

Yeah, I'm a little slow. It was a multi-layered joke. Yeah. In your defense. expertly crafted. All right. So I'm going to call this segment, Welcome to Jurassic Bark,

the colossal sciences dire wolf story. You might need to explain that to Mike. Yeah. I think I need to trademark that because everywhere I looked for stories about this, no one was using that. And it's crazy to me that I hadn't seen it anywhere else yet. Maybe I did in it is incepted into my brain.

But I was thinking real hard about a good tagline for this. and that's what I came up with. All right. So this really made the news a lot recently, and it's because of a Time magazine cover that it said extinct and then it was crossed out. And it was talking about how this group called colossal sciences had de-extincted the dire wolf.

It was due to some crazy new technology that they had. They used CRISPR. They used a bunch of different things genetically. And they proudly displayed these three dire wolves, Remus, Romulus, and Colisi, and said that they had achieved de-extinction through genetically modifying the DNA of a gray wolf to change certain genes to those of a dire wolf. And I think for a lot of people, the most surprising.

My genes made out of denim. You don't want them made out of dire wolves. I think one of the more surprising things for a lot of people here was realizing that dire wolves are actually a real animal and not just like a George R.R. Martin creation. Yeah. They lived in the Americas during the late Pleistocene and the early Holocene. It's about 125,000 years ago to 10,000 years ago. They're roughly the same size as the biggest gray wolves.

So I think in pop culture, like in Game of Thrones, they've exaggerated how big they were. Yeah, so they're not even that big. They're not. They were bigger, especially like their skulls and their teeth. But they're as big as our biggest gray wolves. So this is a bigger wolf. But the biggest dire wolves are bigger than our biggest gray wolves. Yeah.

But it's like in golden eyes. when you turn on Donkey Kong mode and everyone's head gets huge. Their skulls were just giant. I don't think it was that. It's like lions and tigers. Yeah. Like lions get close to as big as tigers, but then some tigers get huge. It is a slightly larger canid.

And so, yeah, that has been a little exaggerating pop culture, which we love to do. And it's impossible to say exactly what this animal looked like. But a lot of paleontologists think they looked kind of like big dingoes. Had feathers. What? So in pop culture, like, if you were to ask someone, what does a dire wolf look like, just a layperson, what do you think they would describe it as? Odd job, dude, in Golden Night, you turn on Donkey Kong mode and his head gets all big. It's the only way you could kill him.

He was too short otherwise. I know. Whenever anyone picked odd job, I was like, okay, come on. Ridiculous. Yeah. Especially when they go slapping only. My gosh. Jeff, explain what a dire wolf looks like from the common pop culture perspective.

Yeah, just, well, I don't know. I don't feel like it's too different from what they are. Like, it just looks like a really big wolf. Right, exactly. So that's like in Game of Thrones, that's how they had them portrayed. It's just massive wolves. And really, from the paleontological record, they probably look different than that. And they probably looked more like...

Antological? Probably more like a large jackal or a really big dingo, something like that. But it's impossible to say. Back to the science project. It's a better description than what I've been trying to... I'll stop doing the golden eye thing. I don't think it's very helpful. Is it working?

Should we keep going with that? I'm done. Basically what they did here, though, is they analyzed the entire genome of dire wolf. They got this from a tooth that they had and an earbone, and then they looked at the entire genome of a gray wolf, and they looked for differences. There's about 1900 genes to compare,

and they made about 20 changes. in 14 different genes who essentially turn a gray wolf into a dire wolf. And the word essentially is really doing a lot of heavy lifting there. Because personally, what I think they're doing here is making a gray wolf look more like a dire wolf, but it isn't recreating a dire wolf or de-extincting a dire wolf.

Because from what I understand, doing a basic amount of research, to actually recreate or de-extinct an extinct animal, you need fully intact DNA. you essentially need like an embryo and they just don't have that. Like they had fragments. I read this article by an expert in this and he said essentially fossilization does like if you put DNA into an oven, a 500 degree oven overnight and then tried to use those fragments to create something. It just really degrades the DNA and you can't have a perfect copy from like fossilized DNA.

It's just impossible. Is that tooth in the earbone? Is that all they had of it? Or is that they just selected those for a specific reason? I think they selected those two fragments because they had the best material for them to analyze the genome with. Okay. Quickly, a lot of people wanted us to talk about this. A lot of people wanted my opinion as a biologist on this.

And I'm happy to give it. And I want to start with what I think is really cool about this. And what I think is cool is that companies are pushing forward this technology that in the future we could potentially use to bring back animals that became a extinct due to human factors. I'm glad we have that technology as kind of a fail safe. And unfortunately, I do think there's probably going to be a lot of practical use for this in the future. So I do think it's interesting technology. And I think they have some really talented scientists working for them. Yeah. The science behind it, it's really cool. From my uneducated view, really the issue is kind of like the sensationalization, sensationalizing of the story. And maybe a little bit of like ethical concerns, of course.

but I feel like the actual science and the people that are working on the project themselves, it's pretty cool. It's something that I can support and maybe you can help me feel one way or the other that way. But yeah, it's cool. I think it's great science and bad PR, essentially. And we'll get into that. Jeff, did you have something you wanted to say before I get into what I don't like about it? Well, I was going to say, like, with Walt Disney, he froze himself when he died, right?

Yeah. I think we should get some of these, like, critically. endangered animals and start freezing them. I think they should do it before they die. They're doing that, but not the whole animal. They're freezing their, they're freezing their intact DNA. Like, there's these storage places in, like, Norway and Svalbard, where they have, essentially every plant and a lot of animals' DNA, like, on ice as kind of a fail-safe.

That's cool. It is. How long do you think it'll take for Walt to just get canceled once we bring him back? Like, he had some pretty... Instooli beliefs. Didn't we just talk about it? talk about this. Did we?

I think so. Like before the rest of his body is even unfrozen, his mouth just starts like talking about how much he hates certain people. Like the first black person he sees, he's probably getting canceled. Yeah. All right. Let's freeze him again. Let's put him back in the freezer. He's like, you got rid of Splash Mountain?

All right. So here's what I don't love about this dire wolf story. I think a lot of time and energy and money that went into creating a gray wolf that resembles a dire wolf. wolf. And again, I want to say that's what this is. This isn't a dire wolf. This is a gray wolf that they tweaked to look more like a dire wolf. I think a lot of that money could have been better spent on coming up with ways to invest in current conservation crises. To me, it feels like people making plans to go to Mars when we already have a wonderful planet that we need to fix. And I've already seen posts from politicians that aren't very conservation friendly saying that this is the kind of technology

we need to make it so we don't have to worry about endangered species anymore because we can always just bring them back if they go extinct, which is terrible. It's a really bad way to think about this because when you lose a species over time, the ecosystem that it's in also gets degraded. You know, when you take out a key component of an ecosystem, a lot of other things start happening to that ecosystem. And it can be really hard just to plug that species back in and hope that things go well. They often don't. It's often really hard to reintroduce an animal. Well, like, even with this example of dire wolves. Yeah. Right. Like it is a gray wolf, but it's kind of different too, but it's like there's nowhere to really put them in the wild.

Exactly. Exactly. And that was my next point that this isn't an animal they're planning on like re-releasing onto the like plains of North America. There aren't mammoths and giant sloths for them to hunt anymore. This is an animal that was selected for extinction. And so these are going to be sideshow attractions in a zoo. That's what, that's what its entire life is going to be. And I would love to see them. Like, I think it's interesting. But that's what they're de-extincting, in quotation marks, these animals for as like, look at what we can do. They don't have any practical place in an ecosystem anymore. They've been extinct for 10,000 years. Also, I don't like, Mike, you kind of mentioned this earlier.

I don't like the click-baity kind of headlines that they're creating around this saying stuff like de-extinction because they know that's not true. It's not a true de-extinction. And it makes it harder for people to then trust science and scientists when they learn that. Because you see this on the cover of Time magazine and then suddenly you learn that's not true. It makes you kind of second-guess a lot of science information. And I think we really need concise-clear science information. Yes, you.

Because you're telling us it's not true, but it's like, I saw it in Time magazine. George was holding one. Yeah, that's fair. You know, I do think you have to figure out who you trust and then try and trust them. Yeah. You don't trust me. I'm like, it was in the news. What are you talking about?

Yeah. I trust no one. It's the extinct. You just said, like, George R. Martin was holding one. I think it was very tactful of them to make these wolves white. I think they had full control over that gene. and they said, yeah, we're going to make them white because the most famous dire wolf in Game of Thrones was white, and that's what people see when they see a dire wolf.

So they made three white dire wolves, and that just speaks again to me how this is kind of a big PR stunt in a way. All right, to sum up all my feelings, there's a great quote in Jurassic Park, Ian Malcolm's monologue where he says, your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should. and I agree that this is amazing technology.

I think it's cool they did this, but I don't really understand why make a dire wolf that just has to be in a zoo for the rest of its life. That's not actually a dire wolf. I will say I'm a hypocrite because if they had a real pathway to bring back dinosaurs, even though I think it would be ecologically wrong, I'd be all for it.

Like I would be reading every news release from this company. What is like our closest animal to, like a cool dinosaur. Like a cassware or a chicken. Dude, what if we just like juiced up cassoaries? I know. Like you make them look like an overrafter or something. They're probably going to do that.

We got to start juicing them. I don't think that's far. I know they're already talking about like woolly mammoths, the thylacine, which that one I'm really interested in. That's the Tasmanian tiger. That one was eradicated because of humans. And it would be interesting to see what they could do to bring them back.

Do you think there's a possibility that say we do bring those back and we just reinsert them into their old territory. Has enough time gone by that that would be kind of ecologically damaging as well? Or do you have any thoughts on kind of like the time that passes? I don't know enough about Tasmania to say for sure, but I think that's one you could probably reintroduce and it would be okay. I'm not really sure, though. And I don't know if we have intact genetic information for a thylosine anywhere either.

Like this might be, they might be going down the same path with that where they create an animal that's very similar to what a thylacine would have been like, but it's not a true thylacine. So I don't know. It's tricky, but I feel very conflicted about it. I wish their messaging was better, though. I feel like we could put them all in Florida since they already have, like every animal there is anyways. That's just a big, hard big testing area for any new animal now. That's a great idea, actually. I like that idea.

When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed sponsored jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsor job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. Yeah, so they did, I know they have a paper coming out, like a peer-reviewed paper that's going to talk about their whole pathway to doing this. And I'm excited to read that because I know some people that have seen that and they said that it's actually quite interesting and that the PR team didn't do a great job explaining the brilliance of the science behind all of this.

So, cool. When I lived in Georgia, I met a dog that had a really big head. Uh-huh. And that he was a mean dog. So that's what I'm imagining. these dire wolves were like, just like a wolf though with a big head, right? You really stuck on this big head thing. It's so funny a thought to me because this dog,

the head was like twice as big for its body than you would think it should be. And it was funny. It was kind of funny to look at it. I think their skulls and teeth were just slightly larger. Sorry to pop your massive head on this, but shoot, yeah. God, that dog. What a jerk. Who wants to go next?

Jeff, you want me to go? Yeah, sure. Okay, so this one, it's a little topical just because of what we all went through together recently. That makes it sound like something bad happened. Not really at all. Nothing bad happened to us. In fact, it was something pretty special when we were down in the Galapagos. We were seeing a whole lot of sea lions all over the place.

It was really fun. They're pretty cute, all things considered. They have some really interesting behaviors, especially when they're accustomed to humans being around. They'll just flop down anywhere they want and just lay there until they're forced to move. Yeah. People will just clap at them. It turns out that's like the sound that gets them going. You never.

They can clap too, right? I wonder why they don't ever clap back. Clap back, right? Well, I was reading a really interesting news report, and this is something we actually touched on in an episode. We talked about a long time ago in a bonus episode I did about pinnipeds, and it's about sea lions in this weird toxic bloom of algae that can get them misbehaving, we'll just say.

And I'll just relay a couple of experiences people have had with them recently, and then we'll get into maybe the science about what's happening. In San Diego recently, just these past few weeks, SeaWorld, their animal rescue team received a call about a sea lion that needed some help. It was kind of this thick, jiggly, waddly sea lion that made its way downtown into San Diego on like a four-lane highway. And it was looking pretty bad, and people were just like, that shouldn't be here. So let's get some people in here to maybe transport it to safety and see what its deal is.

And Jeff, speaking of us being around sea lions, what kind of sound do you think a sick sea line is going to be making? I feel like we heard a fair number of. Like we were watching a big colony of them and all of a sudden one would just be like, oh, geez, get rid of that one. It's like another vector for COVID or something. Well, anyway, so this was just another sea line on a long. list of sea lions that have been recently reported by people all over Southern California. This response team that I alluded to earlier, it's led by a woman named Jenny Smith. She works at the SeaWorld in San Diego.

And other reports include a sea lion that appeared dead in Coronado. There's a sick pup laying by a lifeguard stand in Encinitas. A couple in Pacific Beach in Oson Beach, like, you know, north of downtown San Diego. But it's become such a problem. And not just in San Diego, actually. There's been like a bunch of this happening up in the Los Angeles area as well. But roughly a hundred calls every single day for this past several weeks were made to this SeaWorld team about sea lions. Just kind of having seizures or exhibiting behavior that's just really, really abnormal.

So people have a lot of questions. And Jenny actually said about it that the team kind of went from zero to 60 in two seconds, which I thought was a pretty fun little metaphor. A quick aside, too. I think a lot of people out there that saw blackfish or whatever, when they hear SeaWorld, their hackles kind of go up. Yeah. And just so everyone knows, SeaWorld has probably the best marine mammal rescue team in the world. Like they do an insane amount of marine mammal rescue in the places where they have facilities. And they are very quick, like you said, Zero to 60, very quick to get out there and deal with this kind of situation.

Two seconds. Pinipeds, cetace. I guess Nick Cage was gone in 60 seconds. That's a little different. Anyway, sorry. So, yeah, just so, you know, they do a lot of good. They do a lot of conservation work, too. They do definitely have their skeletons, but.

I do, yeah, I wonder how the orcas feel about SeaWorld having, like, a great, like, marine animal rescue team. They're just kind of like, hey, guys, like, we're sitting here right next to you. I want to clarify that with, I don't think they should have orcas or dolphins in captivity. But that is slowly getting phased out. Big blind spot. Well, anyway, like I was talking about, this has also been a problem. And it's actually turned a little violent up in Los Angeles. So there was a surfer recently, R.J. LaMandola, he was out surfing when a sea lion lunged up and bit at him.

And he dragged him off his board. And he later described the animals looking possessed like nothing he'd ever seen. Quote, with a feral, almost demonic look devoid of the curiosity or playfulness, usually ascribed to these animals. That's what he said the surfer? He said the surfer. And he like kind of, see, a poet too? Like made his way back to shore and his wetsuit was all shredded up and he was all bloody and he had to go to the hospital, of course.

Yeah, it's crazy because I don't know if you guys, of course you have. I literally saw you do it. But you're swimming with these sea lions and they're really nice. They're really social. And I was never at any point like afraid that they would do anything to me. So to have that like flipped around real quick is a really scary thought. It's always like a little bit in my mind. Like, well if this thing just bit me right now.

Yeah, I think, and I think when people talk about that, like, there are certain colonies of sea lions that have become very used to swimming around people. And so there's that kind of habituation. But there are a lot of people that have gone bit by wild sea lions too. And they're probably in colonies where they aren't very, or rickories or whatever, where they're not very used to people. So, or they have this toxic algal poisoning. Yeah, and I wanted to talk about that a little bit. So according to the CEO of the Marine Mammal Care Center in Los Angeles, These sea lions are suffering from demoic acid toxicosis, which is a neurological condition that happens when these sea lions are eating the smaller marine life, who are in turn eating this toxic algae bloom.

And it's naturally occurring. There's not like a, I don't think we can totally say this is like caused by any malfeasance on the humans parts, although it could be exacerbated by things like climate change, stuff like that. But so these sea lions eat these smaller fish who are eating this algae. and they start kind of going into fits. They'll have seizures, or conversely, they'll turn, like, extremely lethargic and not move at all and just kind of, like, slump there and not move. And then there's, of course, like, disorientation generally

and a head-tilting behavior known as stargazing, which is kind of a nice term for something that's not super, super cool, I'm sure. It's like shoegazing. These toxins actually often lead to sea lions dying. So the Care Center has been admitting and caring for these sea lions. And the problem is this year it's been a lot worse than in previous years. Because again, this is something that annually occurs. But 47 sea lions and SeaWorld alone had been admitted this year.

While in the previous two years there were, I think, 11 in 2024 and like 13 or something in 2023. So it's a huge increase in number, a lot more sightings. And of course, it's hard to say exactly why it's so much. much worse this year so far. A lot of scientists are thinking maybe it's caused by the LA fires that occurred recently or generally just the climate change stuff. The fires didn't happen in the ocean.

That'd be super hard. I will. I'll say, I've read about this a fair amount and like this, like you mentioned, this is something that was natural to these systems, but the frequency that is happening and the extent to which it's happening is becoming much, like, more often and much larger and they do, I think most marine biologists or oceanographers or whatever do agree that that is because of changing climate and currents and whatnot. It's a warmer water for longer periods of time allows this algae to get a much bigger foothold than it used to have. And it's creating

a lot of problems on the West Coast, especially where entire fisheries are affected, marine mammals, all sorts of different animals are being affected by this. So it is a big The fires could have warmed the water up, too. They could have. That's true, Jack. Yeah, we need to get jet on the case. Well, and I think this is particularly interesting, just with the human element involved,

like people are getting attacked. That was one case, the surfer, but there was also a 15-year-old girl who was training to become a lifeguard. She got attacked. Like, this is something that is affecting humans, and it's becoming a pretty big story. So, like, I'm not trying to say, like,

it's more important that we care now because a couple more humans are being attacked but it is a thing that if it gets worse this could really turn into a weird situation happening all along the coast yeah right it could end up like Jaws where the mayor won't close the beach and San Diego it paints a negative

view of these animals too like when you look at the headlines about this story it's like demonic sea lion possessed sea lion you know and it's not these are they're wonderful animals so it I don't know it's yeah like sea lions I bond with them.

Yeah. I have a quick story on that about just how bullying every once in a while kind of works. So the surfer's name was RJ. When I was in elementary school, I thought the coolest kid in school, he was a year older than me. His name was RJ. So then I came home from school once, and I told my whole family, for now on, I want to be called BJ.

And Wes and Mike laughed really hard. Oh, I would have. I didn't say Mike. Wes and Cyrus laughed really hard at me, and they said, what's that stand for? Big Jeff. And I was like, no, it doesn't stand for anything. Yeah, we inadvertently saved you from a very embarrassing. They teased me out of going by BJ, so that's good.

I'm glad you brought that up. It's good that we have some pro-bullying content every once in a while. Yeah, my older brother definitely helped me out. It wasn't always nice, but I appreciate it. Maybe there's a better term for. Sibling, just teasing, I guess. All right, so I got a story. Okay.

Remind the actual attack happened last year, but the news stories are coming out very recently about it. Great. So, Wes, to star us off, what type of bear could do the most damage with a single swipe to a human's face? My guess would be, I would probably say a polar bear. Oh, you want guess once more? Grizzly bear. No, sorry. it ends up an Asiatic Black Bear can do the most damage with a single swipe.

I strongly disagree with that, but where'd you get that info from? Let me just tell you this story then. Okay, all right. So here, I'm going to share my screen. Look at this guy. Oh, that's a lot of damage. That's from one swipe. Look at this one.

That was right after it. Holy cow. His face is pretty much gone. Yeah, so. Like, not trying to be funny, but it looks like a Picasso. Like, that's how much damage has been done to the face. Yeah, that's funny. I didn't.

That says more about you than me, Jeff. I will, like, I'll admit that there's a five or six species of bear that a single swipe is enough to take off a face. Yeah. But they still wouldn't be my number one. Well, yeah, maybe you're right. But a 60-year-old still unnamed man in Thailand was fishing. Parents got to get on that. Taiwan?

You're going to live in Taiwan your own life? He was fishing when an Asiatic black bear went up, swiped him one time in the face, and it ripped off the top half of his lip, ripped off his nose completely, and really, really strongly damaged his eye. Then it continued to attack him and it got his throat and stomach a bit and he was in a lot of trouble. There is like a really good chance he's going to die, but he's rushed to a hospital that gave him life-saving care. But then where the story like reaches the United States is after that he was taken to a specialist for some pretty incredible facial reconstruction. And that was Dr. Akaroon chat, who kind of was able to puzzle his face back together.

Like Mike said, Picasso style. But yeah, it's always the thighs. They took a bunch of skin from his thighs, and the thighs went over, like, his forehead and a few other spots, and then they had to take. I think that's just kind of where you have the most extra skin that they can pull from. They took a little bit of something from, like, someone's rib, and then skin from his forehead.

Wow. To, like, reconstruct this person's nose that had been, like, completely ripped off. And pretty amazingly, two months later, he was able to breathe through his nose again. So also... Was he a woman then? Because they took from his rib, someone's rib? That's how God did it, yeah?

Yeah. Way to get the Bible in here, dude. Yeah. Good news. But also from the Thai news article I got this from, here's three paragraphs that they went like really hard. just a lot of adjectives for all of this and I just want to read straight from them a bit. Let's go.

So it starts out. Many fishermen cast their nets into serene waters dreaming of a bountiful catch. But for one 60-year-old Thai fisherman, a fishing expedition turned into an unimaginable ordeal, a harrowing tale of survival against the ferocity of nature itself. Picture a calm day that unexpectedly erupted into chaos. when the peaceful solitude of his fishing spot was shattered by an encounter, as chilling as it was unexpected. I like peaceful solitude.

Yeah. Not redundant at all. This sounds like a paper I wrote a lot in college. Dude, this is like one year episodes where you live. Like you have a pathosaurus in front of you. Yeah. A vicious attack by an Asiatic black bear, a beast known to wield fury when feeling threatened. Is that true, Wes?

That's true. You know? The result of this encounter was both horrific and life-altering, with a single swipe that bear clawed away not only the fisherman's peace of mind, but also most of his face, nose, and upper lip, leaving him grotesquely disfigured. An animal attack of this magnitude would spell doom for many, yet this courageous man defied the odds to survive such a devastating mawling.

His neck and stomach bore testament to the bear's wrath, yet his spirit remained unbroken, like that book. Yeah, I remember that book. And then I'll skip ahead a little bit to when they put his face back together. The next phase was a testament to both medical ingenuity and sheer tenacity. The intricate rebuilding of a functional nose composed partly by rib cartilage from a donor using a forehead skin flap, it was science and art merging in to resurrect life, aided by the industrious resolve of Dr. Acheranchat,

who revealed a tale of indominal spirit matched by unparreled scale. So, yeah, this person... Did the surfer from Mike's... Went real hard in the article. It was like every paragraph was like that, so it's pretty good. That's amazing. That is amazing. I wish, if I ever get mauled, I hope that guy writes my story about it.

That's crazy. Not only did his face get horribly disfigured, he lost his peace of mind. His piece of that's wild. First thing it stole from him. This episode is brought to you by Redfin. You're listening to a podcast, which means you're probably multitasking. Maybe even scrolling home listings on Redfin, saving homes without expecting to get them. But Redfin isn't just built for endless browsing.

It's built to help you. Find and own a home. With agents who close twice as many deals, when you find the one, you've got a real shot at getting it. Get started at redfin.com. Own the dream. Hey, you, feeling hungry?

Run the Denny's four. The new attorney's denny's slamming meal deals. And see the new Masters of the Universe movie, only in theaters June 5th. We'll share at least one of those photos to Patreon. We'll see about Instagram, but Patreon people will get it. Since this happened in Thailand and White Lotus, which we referenced there, just finished up. I want to ask you guys, which White Lotus Hotel of the three locations would you most want a week vacation to?

A week vacation? I really love Hawaii. But I'd say Thailand. The Thailand one really. I don't know, though. The Italy one's probably the one that's like worth the most. Like you're probably getting the most expensive stay there. It's kind of cool, like in the cliff side.

Yeah. I think I'd take it. Italy. I've only seen season one, so I guess it'll be. It'll be like, look, Hawaii. Hawaii. It looks pretty nice. All right, my next one's titled Hawk Run Amok or a Mock, if you want to try and get that to rhyme.

I do. All right, a trained Harris Hawk got loose in Flamstead, Hurtford Shire, which just based off that name, where do you think that little village is located? Middle Earth, West Side. Pretty much. It's in the rural. UK, place where, you know, it immediately threw the town into total chaos because that's what happens when you live in a place where there's no dangerous wildlife and there hasn't been

dangerous wildlife for 500 years. This hawk, which had probably been loose for years, it was a captive Harris Hawk. They don't live in the UK. They're more like southern U.S., South America. It had taken up residence in the small village and it started swooping down on people and using its talons to rake their heads. It swooped on about 50 people over the last few weeks. weeks.

Oh, jeez. And he even drew blood on a couple of them. One of these people who had blood drawn was super bald. And there's lots of pictures of him with blood running down his face and him saying stuff like, I'm not going to get beaten by a poxy bird. And he was the only confirmed bald victim that I could find. That didn't stop the New York Post from running this headline. Hormonal Hawk terrorizes bald men for weeks in English Village.

Which is funny, even though the New York Post. is a worthless rag in my opinion. This bald guy got owned. People were afraid to walk the street or let their kids play in their yard. They weren't delivering mail. People were on hawk alert. And the town was pretty fed up.

And I just imagine they were like, Harris Hawk, you say. Well, we've got a guy named Harris. This 40-year-old guy named Steve Harris somehow becomes the like hawk catcher for the village. And I honestly wonder if it's just because his last name was Harris. And he started following this Harris-Hawking around with the big trap he borrowed from a falconer, which is also funny to me because it means

there was falconer living there. But this Steve Harris guy was like the guy that was going to catch this hawk. Yeah. Like with all the other guys that quit me. Yeah. So finally one day it landed on his shed and he managed to like use this trap as protection, throw it over the hawk. He called to the falconer who was nearby and he came and secured this hawk.

Experts think that maybe it was hormonal and that's why it was so aggravated. But I think it's also really important to note that while they're trying to catch this hawk, they were feeding it a lot. And it had likely become very confident and kind of associating people with food, food conditioned. So I think that's probably a big part of the reason it was swooping on people as well. Nice one. Ball of people. It's nice they're only drawing blood on those guys, though.

It's not like real blood. All right, who's up? I'll go. So this happened in Suriname. You guys are familiar with that, familiar with that country. Yeah. Down in South America, a surname? Yeah, that's, I don't know how to pronounce the country's name, and I know even less about it right.

Is it serenom? I didn't say it. Serenom. Yeah. Okay. Well, there's a city in Suriname. I also don't know how to pronounce. Right.

Rajdik, I don't know. So, Suriname's a little interesting. They've got some, I mean, they speak Dutch there. They used to fly the Dutch flag, uh, Netherlands. I'm not sure exactly what all that's about, but it made a little more sense to me this story when I learned all that, because this actually happened to a 63-year-old tourist from the Netherlands. And he actually was attacked by a jaguar recently. Wow.

Which is really, really abnormal. Yeah. So it took place while he and his wife. And just this is a translated article. I'm guessing there was some kind of like automated or even AI involved in translating this to English. It was written a little weird, but I tried to sort through it and I get to the bottom of exactly what all was being said.

But I bring that up because I don't know exactly what this means. and maybe you'll help elucidate, but the attack took place while he and his wife were laying tracks in the forest to lure wild animals. Is that a phrase that makes sense to you? Laying tracks? That's what I saw in all the aggregated articles about this. It could have been traps, maybe? Camera traps, too. They might have been, like, putting out remote cameras to get photos of wild animals.

Sure. It also could have been someone that was poaching. Who knows? Yeah. Okay. Well, whatever the case was, he was jumped out of nowhere, by the Jaguar on the Day of the Attack at 1.30 p.m. who wanted to bite him from behind, is how the article reads.

And what do we know? We know very little about Jaguars, right? West, there's, they're a huge mystery to us still, right? No, we know quite a bit about jaguars. Yeah, they're a pretty well-street animal. Yeah. But particularly, I think the one thing that people probably associate with them, other than the spots is their jaw strength, right?

Yes. That is a commonly associated fact with them. Right. They can crack skulls. I kind of forget what we decided or determined the skull-cracking capacity of their jaws when you did that episode, West. Do you remember? Yeah, we really got into like the difference between total bite force and bite force quotient. And there's an argument that this cat, a jaguar, has the strongest bite force quotient of any cat.

But like a big African lion is going to have a stronger bite. pound for a pound. Interesting. You choose lion and not tight. Yeah. I should have said tiger. That was interesting. It was interesting.

Well, this article speculates that this man was actually he was tall enough that the jaguar wasn't quite able to jump up all the way to his head to bite it, which pretty lucky. I don't know how tall he was. Untrue. It seems like jaguars can jump pretty well. It easily could have gotten up to his head. Unless he was like 30 feet tall.

We don't know much about it. Adam, man. Was this slender man? Yeah. So, anyway, maybe because the man was tall or maybe the jaguar just had bad aim, it actually missed the man's head and instead started biting on his shoulder and his arm and digging its claws deep into the flesh all over, kind of like his torso area. He started screaming, which lured his wife over to the scene, and she picked up a gun and started just kind of firing into the air to scare away the predator, assumes she didn't want to take the chance and hit. her husband on accident. So I think that's the right move. And it worked. The Jaguar took off.

And the guy, he thinks that if the fight had lasted long enough for it to go to the ground, the Jaguar would have killed him. I agree with that. You do. Okay. Yeah. I think too, like biting its shoulder, cats will do that with deer and ungulates sometimes to like make them fall down.

So it's what maybe. Yeah. That's what I was about to say that like their first bite isn't always their kill bite. Like sometimes they kind of just grab on and then. situate a kill bite. So I don't think that was like the jaguar missing. It was more just like it jumped on him and was probably about to try and kill him. Like an animal that walks on all fours that would like knock it down if you bite their shoulder

a bunch, you know? It might right. Yeah. I don't think he was on all fours. I think he was doing the two-footed walk thing. Yeah. Yeah. That's why I failed.

That's why I'm saying. Right. That's why he didn't follow. This happened recently, right? Very recently. Not a few million years. ago. No, right.

Yeah, then he was probably walking bipedal. Yeah. Yeah. So he was taken to a nearby hospital as quickly as they could manage to get him there. And this is an interesting part. After assessing the wounds, the doctors concluded that no damage had been done that would require any major operation or specialized treatment. So they just, they're like, you're good.

No way they have the strongest bite there. Or these are really bad doctors. Can't even like give this guy stitches. Maybe this is like a baby jag. I don't know. I could bite someone hard enough they need like stitches. Maybe it was an awesome lot. So I think the point of this little part of the story is that there was a pretty major

dereliction of duty on the part of these doctors. Because what do we know about animals who are exhibiting strange behavior, especially mammals, like what could the aftermath of this attack actually be? Ravies. Exactly. Yeah. But they're like, no, you're getting a big cat, though. Not likely at all.

Sure. But it's still something you'd want. investigate. You'd want to check for it. And the son of, well, this is a funny detail too. So they just left the hospital. They're a little non-plus. They're like, well, I guess if the doctors say it's cool, then I guess it's cool. So

the wife went to a store and bought like a bunch of iodine and bandages. And she dressed the wounds herself. Like, they didn't even do that for him. They're, like, looked at him and they're like, you're good. That's insane. Go. And the pictures of this attack are actually, it's not the worst attack you'll ever see, but there's some good, a good amount of

lacerations and like bite wounds on this guy's arms and body, you know? Yeah. So she dressed the scratches. His wife dressed his scratches and bite marks according to, quote, Dutch standards. I don't know how that's different from other places, but it makes me kind of interested to see what that's all about. Yeah. She dressed them with tulips. Right.

Is that the Netherlands? That's Netherlands? I think so. Yeah. Okay. And like a little windmill pattern bandage. Their eldest son picked up on what had happened eventually. And he's like, well, hold on.

Maybe the chances are low, but we should probably get you checked for rabies. So a second visit to the hospital in Cernom showed that rabies vaccination wasn't available there, which is maybe why those first doctors were like, can't really do anything for you anyway, so maybe just get out of here. So they contacted the couple contacted their travel insurance agency. And they actually arranged for them to get back to the Netherlands quickly in order to get that side of the equation addressed just in case, you know. Yeah.

So thankfully the sun. and this travel insurance agency, they were putting two and two together for them. And it looks like this incident is going to get closed without any major complications post the attack, but still just a really strange. I'm guessing it tested negative for rabies. That's what we're guessing too. There was no follow up on this. I think we would have heard about it.

A rabbit jaguar would be a really crazy thing. Yeah, right. It's kind of like when jaguars attack someone. Me too. It's really interesting. When you said you were doing a Jaguar story, I was excited to hear it. Less excited now that it's over. Yeah.

It's crazy she just had a gun. Yeah. Was she American? Was she American? She'd be hard to, like, get a gun, right? She might be. Yeah. She must have been American.

We know he's from the Netherlands, but we don't know specifically where she's from. When we were in Ecuador, Jeff just asked every single person that we met if they owned a gun or if they'd ever shot a gun. For some reason, I couldn't stop thinking about guns. You're a gun guy. Yeah. All right. I got a story. I took this from our guide when we were in India, Nahal. Just his Instagram story he shared the other day. All right. Digging deep. But in Corolla Village in India, there was a sparrow that was freed from a lockdown textile store.

And the building was locked down on court orders due to like a legal dispute between store owners. And it had been locked down for like six months. when a sparrow went down a pipe and got trapped inside of like this clear box inside of the store. So then the next day the villagers could see the sparrow stuck in like this clear box in the store, but the store was locked down so there's no way to like release it. So they could just like see this bird trapped in there trying to get out. And it really like pulled on all their heartstrings and they felt really bad. and they contacted authorities,

but no one had legal precedents to, like, open the store that was judge's orders closed down. So they started dropping in water and bird food through the pipe to get it to the bird to keep it alive. And it went on for three days of them just feeding this bird that was, like, stuck on display for everyone to see until it finally got to the local judge Nasar Ahmed, and he had to tell two judges above,

him that like hey we got like big trouble down here in this town we got a bird we got to get so the judges told him like they honestly told him to do whatever is needed to get the bird out so then the next day he traveled all the way to the village it was like 50 kilometers away to like oversee it himself that he's there that it's going to like open this door up and we'll get the bird out and they got it out and it flew off in the whole town like rejoiced so oh no I love that that's a nice story it's a good one of just showing you know we should have compassion for all living things and that they were quoted saying that a lot you know even if it's something as that seems as insignificant as a sparrow like nothing should be trapped and tortured and all living things should be treated with

respect. Yeah, like ants or beetles or whatever. Yeah. Yep. All right. We all have that dream trip. We've been wishing we could go on. But too often life or usually price gets in the way. That's why price line is here to help you turn your dream trip into reality. With up to 60% off hotels and up to 50% off flights, you can book everything you need for your next adventure. Don't just dream about that next trip. Book it with Priceline. Download the Priceline app or visit Priceline.com and book your next trip today.

Go to your happy price. Priceline. I got one more. This one I titled April Fool, a circus worker loses arm to a white tiger. This happened on April 1st. Something that I know Jeff and Mike already know, but a lot of people out there might not. There are no white tigers in the wild.

A white tiger in the wild would be a leucistic tiger. It is possible. So there's a difference between that and albinism. When you're lucistic, it's like you are missing melanin. I forget what it is exactly how to explain it. But those two things are different. Albino things usually have like pink eyes. They're completely white.

Loicism or when you're lucistic, you're still going to have like normal eye color and stripes and stuff. I don't know. Yeah. Again, I'm stumbling. They're not albino. They're just like white. Yeah. Exactly.

So while it is possible. That's interesting though because all the dire. wolves in the world are white. Yeah, they're all lucistic. While this isn't impossible for it to happen in the wild, having that trait would be really disadvantageous to a tiger because it would make it far less camouflaged. That tawny, like, orangish color of their coat really helps them camouflage into their

environment and a white tiger would stick out much more. So that's my guess. Bright orange sticks out. When we watched them in the bush in India, they were like, they were hard to see. I thought personally when they're like in the grass and stuff. And that's my guess is for why this hasn't been selected for more often and why you don't really see them in the wild. So there are a lot of them in captivity and that's because breeders think they look cool. So while I'm not trying to paint with too broad of a brush here, if you go to a zoo or something that has white tigers, there's a pretty decent chance it's not a very responsible zoo.

Your alarm bells should go up. Okay. It's a short story, but basically during a circus performance in this. city of Tanta, Egypt, a worker put his arm through the bars of the performance area while the Big Cat performance was ongoing. One of the white Bengal tigers immediately broke off, bit his arm, and started pulling him through the bars. There's a video of this, and the tiger's going really hard trying to rip this guy's arm off, and it's not even registering that there's people like hitting it with whips and stuff trying to get it to stop. Wow. The video is pretty

crazy. And at some point it does release the arm. The man was taken to a nearby emergency hospital, but his arm was so shredded and destroyed that it had to be amputated above the elbow. I've always thought that sounded bad. Yeah, it's not. That's not good. Yeah. What part of it? Like a tiger bites your arm and they have to amputate. I just, I've always felt like that's like something I would not want to have happen. I think you can trust your feelings on that one. You feel vindicated? Yeah. Well, I want to hear what this guy has to say.

Yeah. Before I make out my mind. And even then, that's like a sample size of one. Exactly. Because sometimes it might be like, you know, I was in sales and I was doing bad. But then when the tiger bit my arm off, I like refocused me and I became the best salesman in the office. Yeah. Yeah.

Or like that Harrison Ford movie where you're. A bullet gets launched in his brain and he turns into like a whole different person. He's like a way better guy after the bullet. Maybe he used to like hit his kids and he can't hit his kids anymore. Yeah. Right. I played a guy in basketball who only had one arm and he was like better than everyone. Maybe you get good at basketball.

See? You know what? You guys have convinced me. I'm going to chop my arm off after this episode. I will just say and I think this probably goes without saying at this point. we've talked a lot of about a lot of the good that, you know, accredited good zoos can do. Circuses are a whole different animal. If you have, if you go to a circus where they have like trained animals that are performing,

it's very, very likely that those animals are being abused, that they're not being treated well. You should avoid circuses with animal performers unless domestic animals are kind of a different situation often, but wild animals are not treated well in circuses. So don't give them your money. Don't go to them. That's my last story. Yeah. What else do you guys have?

That's all I've got. I saw a couple interesting headlines. Nothing. I don't know. I thought it was really, really interesting and kind of cool, if I'm being honest, that there's that huge pot of killer whales that killed a pygmy blue whale recently. I didn't know that was a thing that could happen. Yeah, it was like 60 killer whales all teamed up.

Yeah. You think about blue whales, even the pygmy. I know that word's like kind of a misnomer sometimes in nature, but that's a pretty wild thing that a bunch of killer whales just coordinated. that kind of an attack. I have a few headlines. Okay. This one is just, it's the news needs to do a better job.

In Colorado, a woman died like a few months ago, and it was, like, reported a bunch of times that, like, they didn't know what it had killed her. It could have been a wild animal. They think it's some type of canine, and it's like this big ongoing thing. And it turns out it's just like her neighbor had, like, a ton of really vicious dogs,

and one of them killed her. But, like, they just reintroduced wolves to Colorado, and they're doing this whole, like, wolf thing. Like, wolves might have killed this lady. And it's, like, pretty obvious they hadn't. Yeah. So, do a very job news. I have a couple other headlines. An orangutan bit worker in the Seattle Zoo this March.

Been really hard. They had to go to the hospital. So, you know, whenever I see an orangutan bit someone, I'm going to bring it up. A Cody Mundi. Quadimundi. Quadimundi. Mundy's Bewe Island. They attacked someone in Tucson, and he went on a little hike, and then when he got back to his car, it was just, like, waiting on the hood of his car.

They're really cute little animals. Yeah, raccoon family. Koda Mundi. Kada Mundi. Kada Mundi. But if you want to spell it the way it's... People often call him Kowadis, if that's easier for you. But when he got back to his car, it just, like, tore his windshield wiper off of his car.

I'm thinking maybe it had some road rage. Like maybe this person like cut it off or something because that's a total road rage move. And then it like scratched and bit him and he had to get rabies shots. Well, aren't they just like raccoons kind of a little bit? They're very similar. Like a raccoon with a long nose and a skinny tail. Yeah. Yeah.

So that's my headlines. I think next news episode I want listeners. If you see any send him to me. but I think it'd be funny to have one where it's just like complete fake news, how like social media has been doing that a lot recently. Just like the fake news, Creighton sent me one of like a turkey that it said traveled from Colorado to Alaska. And then he's like, oh, sorry, that's fake.

Yeah. I'm happy to do that. But we are going to let you know which ones are fake. Just so everyone knows, you can trust us with that. All right. You guys good? Should we move on to our category? Let's do it.

First one is your favorite mad scientists from pop culture because of those crazy mad scientists that colossal bio labs. I'm going to go with Victor Frankenstein. I know it's probably a little predictable and boring, but it's one of my favorite books. I think he specifically as a character in that book. Like it's very romantic, not like love. But there's some love going on in that story, but like romantic era kind of overly emotional outbursts from Victor himself.

And it's just a really fun read if you kind of put your. get yourself into the mood of like people just being overly dramatic about everything. But again, timeless tale, all kinds of philosophical, religious themes going through all that text. It's just, it's beautiful. It's great. I love it. Okay, I'm going to go with Seth Brundel from The Fly, played by Jeff Goldblum and the Kronenberg masterpiece. That's so sad. Probably the best body horror movie in my opinion. But yeah, he, you know, he creates this teleporter and then a fly gets in there with them and things go really really poorly for him and and his love interest so jean a great movie yeah and a great mad scientist yeah somehow

i prepped for these and i forgot to do this one it's for the first person that came to mind was boris from golden eye allan coming yeah where he's like always like i'm invisible yeah uh clicking the pen yeah i don't know if he counts as a scientist he's He's more of like a programmer or a coder. He's like more of a code. Yeah. Computer scientist, well, we could say. We'll count it.

Wait, throw out a couple others that you thought. Pinky. Or the brain, I mean the brain. Yeah. Dexter from Dexter's lab. Yeah. Is there any in one piece? That's always like a...

Vega punk. Vega punk is the guy. I don't really know him enough yet. I haven't watched the newest ones. Is Frankenfurter from Rocky Horror Picture Show? That's always fun to think about. I have a lot more fun thinking about that movie than watching it personally. That might be blasphemous.

but Dr. Moreau, Dr. Heckel. Sure, I'll just take one of those. Dr. Heckel. Dr. Heckel. Is there any for the Simpsons? Dr. Evil? Oh, yeah. Dr. No. Dr. Frank from the Simpsons. Frank. I take the doctor. Yeah, I'll take that guy. That's a great pick. I like that.

Good job, Jeff. All right. Next one is just a pretty open-ended one. Something you recommend this week. You know, I think sometimes it's just fun to be able to recommend something we're liking. I'll go first. I have been watching the newest season of The Righteous Gemstones, which I kind of think might be the funniest show ever. It just really gets me on so many different levels.

It's just like no one's ever talked that way, but it kind of works. It's so funny. And the more it goes on, the more I like the characters. Like, Jeff, I think it was last season, it was like Judy Gemstone is the funniest. And I didn't think so. And now that I think about it, like she really is. She's so funny. And it's just a great show.

So I'm going to recommend that. Oh, I had one that's more like a, I don't recommend doing this actually. Yeah, that's good. The Blue Origin space trips. Yeah. Like if you're a celebrity looking for some buzz, I think it's a bad idea, actually. You know, Katie Perry's getting a lot of hate right now. She like made it a whole marketing thing too where she revealed her like set list for her tour.

And then kiss the ground right when she got down and stuff. And you know what? I would just recommend not going into space if you're off it. Because like it's kind of, it's kind of cringy. Yeah. Have you guys read that William Shatner quote? No, what is it? So when he went to space with Blue Origin and it just made him insanely depressed

because he just was like, I expected it to be this beautiful thing. And it was just this massive void that felt cold and alien. and it made him realize like how wonderful the earth is and how like poorly we're treating the earth. He said it was among the strongest feeling of grief I've ever encountered. The contrasts between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness. Every day we're confronted with the knowledge of further destruction of earth at our hands. And he goes on and on. That makes me think we should all go.

I know. Yeah, seriously. Anyway, I like that one. It's a good one, Jeff. It's a little cringy. I'll agree with Jeff on that. Go on his face. It's cringe.

Kind of cringe, dude. I don't know. I'm going to go with a YouTube channel I discovered recently. Stivo, what is it? Steveo 32 drums. It's the original drummer for Sum 41 made his own YouTube channel. And he does a lot of cool song breakdowns and he plays along to the old songs and just does like a ton of fun stories.

And I know I think we're all three real big things. fans of the band. I'd recommend anyone else who is. I think a lot of our listeners are too. He's just a funny dude. Anyone who knows, like, he's watched a single music video from them. He's the guy you think is the funny one. And he just hasn't lost a step since. Are you still practicing drums, Mike? Not actively. Not as much anymore. I'll sit down at the kid every once in a while. After your concert, you retired. Yeah, I got embarrassed by a bunch of seven-year-olds. I did pretty good. But those guys, they were like a prodigy in that group. I didn't, it was crazy.

This is a Bose moment. It's 10 blocks from the train to your apartment door. 10 basic, boring city blocks until... The beat drops in Bose clarity. Streetlights become spotlights as you strut down the sidewalk, your own personal runway. With Bose, you get every note, every baseline, every detail, just as you should. Those 10 blocks, they could be the best part of your day. Your life deserves music.

Your music deserves Bose. Find your perfect product at Bose.com. All right, next we got sports with Jeff. Jeff wants to talk about sports. Ba, blah, blah, basketball. Give me, give me, give me the ball because I'm going to do it. All right. All right.

So, yeah, I just want to do a quick minute on sports because I think it's interesting right now. This is kind of getting to the dead season a bit, but, you know, the Warriors just won their playing game the other day. And Steph Curry is just so fun to watch. and I'm going to have a hard time watching NBA once he's done. Yokic has made like three four court shots this year, which is always fun. And it's just, I don't know, NBA is going to be fun. I think it's like the first time in a long time where like nine teams could win the championship. So that's always fun.

We got F1 going. I love F1. F1 and McLaren's dominating for the first time in a while. So that's kind of interesting. Is that expected? I haven't been following really at all. I don't know. I don't think they're expected to like dominate until like right before the season.

And then Mike, your favorite team is like leading baseball. My guys, the pods, I didn't want to talk about it, but we actually lost last night. So I feel like I'm not jinxing anything. We're back on the uphill climb right now. But we are somehow like our division, Padres, Giants and Dodgers all have the three best records in the league right now. And it's really stressing me out. But it's fun. I'm going to enjoy it while at last.

I love the team. drinking that toxic algae. Yeah. I hit dinger after dinger off that. I got to get some of that algae. Make me a better podcaster maybe. Oh, and also Rory McElroy won the Masters. And there's like,

golf clap for Rory. He became like the fifth golfer ever to win all four majors. And it's just like. Sixth. One of the biggest like monkeys off, monkey off their back moments in sports. So that was kind of fun. He saw he was like yelling at the ground as loud as he could.

Thank you for catching my golf balls. Is that what are you saying in the ground? You got anything, Wes? From sports? Yeah. Thanks. I saw Steph Curry got on stage with Paramore the other day. That was cool.

That's it. What did he do? He's saying part of a song with Haley. Oh, Steph Curry did? One of my top celebrity crushes. Yeah. Yeah. He's really pretty.

All right. I gotta check that song out. I want to know if he hit those notes. Haley's a singer, she's got a voice. She's good. She's good. Yeah. Do you have a favorite NBA player less?

Currently, probably Donovan Mitchell. Oh, no. Speaking of big ads. Number one in the east. Yeah, good guy. I like Curry a lot. Curry's probably number two. His head's not that big.

It's like a dire wolf. It's like a little bigger than usual. Okay, let's do an old favorite of mine. We're going to do truth and flaw, which was renamed. Thanks to a great suggestion by a listener. This is a category where one of the boys has come up with a true truth about an animal, a fact, and the other one has a fake fact that's been cleverly disguised to look like it's true. And I have to suss out, which is the truth and which is the flaw.

Okay. Do you want me to kick things off, Jeff? I'm ready. I got to look mine up again. Okay. So common knowledge, starfish, they have eyeballs at the end of each of their arms. They also have primitive smelling olfactory senses at the base between each of their arms as well. Look at their shoulders.

I guess you could call them shoulders, yeah. Stems. Turkeys, so they're not known for like being able to fly much, but the furthest they can fly before they just get like way too tired out is like about 1,320 feet. A 1,320 feet? Yeah. I know Starfish have like olfactory organs or like receptors at least

but I don't know exactly where they are but I would guess they're on their feet so I'm going to guess that Mike's is true and Jeff's is the flaw We got it on record yeah Shute base palm What was yours Mike? Turkeys can fly a quarter mile

Which is 1,320 That's a good way to Yeah Throw them off with a specific number Did you look up to make sure yours isn't also true, Mike? Yeah, they don't have noses. They don't have smelling sensors at all. Okay.

But they do have receptors, right? I'm going to type this. Not from, if you, I'll wear this gladly if you can prove me wrong. But in any case, that's not where they're located. They have specialized receptors primarily on their tube feet to detect chemicals in the water. Okay. All right. So you lost West.

It's pretty close to true, but yeah. I lost. I lost. I'll take my L. Thank you for truth and flaw. And let's do some listener questions. I've got some from Patreon here. First of all, this one's from Abby Rose. Who would each of you be in the Jedi Council? P.S., I like how Jeff and Wes say grandma instead of grandma. Do you like that, Mike? How we say grandma? I think that's a pretty normal thing, right? Grandma? I think so too. Yeah. I think that's how I say it. Grandma? People say grandma? I guess. I don't know. Who's in the Jedi Council? You know what's weird about Grandma and Grandpa, and then you pronounce that one city, Tulsa, even though it also ends in a?

Why don't we say Grandpa or Tulsa? I'd be that dude with the big cone head or the super long neck. Yeah, I want the cone head guy. He seems like he's kind of... Actually, he seems like he's a buzzkill. I'll take the really long neck guy. That's who I want. He's the only one I could think of that isn't Yoda and Mace Windu.

I'll just go cone head guy He's just chilling Yeah There's one of the ones that has like the little Things the little tubes on the side of their head Can you pick Anakin? Because he's on the council But he's not granted the rank of master

I'll pick Anakin You want to kill some younglings Right Oh yeah I do There's that one kid in Ecuador Oh my gosh There's a kid that cried for like 10 seconds It wasn't even 10 seconds

So annoying Jeff You got to pick or you just... I'll have a couple. Someone on the Jedi Council that you would pick. Oh, yeah. One of the ones with, like, the big, long, like, tentacles for hairs. Yeah, I like those.

Those guys are cool. Okay. This one's from Ali. Ali says, question, I think I remember at one point hearing West collected bones. How does that work? Is any dead thing fair game? Like vultures specifically? No.

You have to be very careful when you're collecting animal parts of any kind. certain animals you can collect their bones, their hides, whatever, without any kind of repercussions. But anything that's protected, you can't. So if you found like a grizzly bear skull out in the wild, you can't just take it home and keep it. And then they said vulture specifically was in this question. Birds, you really, there's very few birds that you can collect anything from because they're

protected under the migratory bird act. So you can't collect feathers from most birds. You can't collect bones, any kind of parts whatsoever. you're not allowed to collect unless you have a permit for it. So you need to be really careful with that. Okay. This one's from Dylan. Dylan says,

I love the crossover episodes. Just curious to hear what kind of podcast you guys listen to. What kind of podcast you guys into? Yeah, I mean, I think we've done this a few times, but it's always nice to shout them out. I mean,

I love National Park After Dark. They have a new one that's called Watcher Cook. That's great. All about like women history. And then one that all three of us love is the rewatching. Yeah, great show. I feel like I usually listen to podcasts only on long road trips, and I tend to go for ones to have a really strong story and are often true crime. So the one that I've shouted out a lot on the podcast is in the dark, just one of my favorite long form ones. Another one I want to shout out, though, is blowback, which is a podcast that's all about kind of, like, this is going to kind of show my leanings again, but just kind of like messed up stuff that the U.S. has done in interventionism. Like, the Iraq War, a few things like that, where they really dig into kind of the history behind those conflicts and how, like, the CIA's involvement and all those kind of things. So blowback is a

really good, interesting pod that I recommend for everyone, especially the season on the Iraq War. I've been getting into more long-form video essay content on YouTube as opposed to podcast recently. A couple of like really good video game ones, you don't necessarily need the visual element too. You can just listen to it from a action button. has some amazing stuff. Toki-Mecke Memorial Retrospective is maybe the best long-form video I've ever seen on YouTube, just incredibly entertaining and just a fun thing about something I'm not really that interested in, but you know, you hear about something and you get interested in. And that's what learning's all about, you know. Another guy I like is your favorite son. And there's another

content creator. She's a trans woman named ContraPoints. I don't know. She just gets me thinking about really interesting new things that I would never otherwise have like a good perspective on, if not for someone like that who has a completely different point of view on life than me. And I think she's done a pretty amazing job of just uncovering and talking about sensitive things in a way that really works for me. So, yeah. We definitely need that more than ever right now. So yeah, that's great. All right, I got one more from a patron.

Mike, this one had picked specifically for you. You might want to pull up your list of things you hate. Oh, no. This one's from Abby. Abby asks, what's something you hate where you feel like your hate is very justified, but other people don't understand or don't think it's justified, like a hot take, but specific to hating something. Mine's golf.

That's not mine. Golf. Yeah. Interesting. Something that I hate that I feel is actually justified. Yeah, that you feel is very justified, but you think maybe other people won't understand. I mean, golf works for Mike. Yeah.

Or disc golf. I like watching golf a lot. Okay. So one, this is maybe a little too specific, but I genuinely hate the song. I love the band MGMT, one of my favorite bands. I hate the song kids. I can't stand it. I freaking hate that song.

It's dinky little like lead synth line. It's so basic and it's so dumb. It sounds like a two-year-old wrote it. And I actually think that's kind of the point, the two musicians, Andrew and Ben, and they just kind of happen to have one of the biggest hits of the 2000s kind of thing. All of their other music is incredible, especially their second album, Congratulations. One of the greatest albums ever put to wax. But that song specifically pisses me off.

The way his voice strains when he says, take only what you need from it, oh my gosh, please, take me now. I hate it. People love it, too. That's like everyone knows that song. That's like their song, you know, and it's easily their worst. Kind of like Marcy Playground and Sex and Candy, their worst song. I can't stand that song. The rest of their catalog is great.

I love that song. Jeff, what's something you hate that a lot of other people might like? I think maybe texting as like the main form for like an actual conversation. If it's like something you like need to kind of work out a bit with someone and have like multiple things said back and forth, texting I just kind of hate. I much prefer a phone call. And I think most people prefer texting. That's a good one because I know you're right and I still disagree. I know.

Yes. I was thinking about picking phone calls for my answer because I just really don't like talking on the phone. I'll go with actually now I'm drawing a blank on what my answer was. I've got a good one that is a recent thing for me. And ever since kind of having pets that I really care about, I hate personal. I really like a good fireworks show when you go to like a place where it's been planned and everyone knows there's going to be a fireworks display and everything. I really don't like when people in their yards do a ton of fireworks for the 4th of July or whatever because it really really stresses out animals a lot. And don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those people that hates fireworks.

I actually really enjoy a good fireworks show. But I think personal ones are just never fun enough or good enough to like justify. the stress that we're giving animals and the fire danger and all of that. So it kind of makes me feel like a cremogen, but I don't like personal fireworks anymore. I have one that I don't know if it works or not, but I want to say it. Yeah. The TSA. I feel like most people are glad it exists because it's like, remember like 9-11 and stuff.

Yeah. But for me, it's like, whenever someone's like, let's get rid of TSA, I'm like, yes. I hate all of that. It feels so fake to me. and you can't have like a travel-sized anything. My sunscreen every time gets taken away. All right. Jeff, you got a couple listener questions for us?

I do. So this is from our Instagram, and I just asked it. So I'm going off the cuff a little bit here. Okay. From... Okay, from Vanilla Bryce 98. Scariest face you've seen.

I did it face-themed. I don't know. I was kind of just like, what did I theme this? and just went with faces. Scariest face you've seen? Yeah. Maybe should we do like animals or just ever?

Just from anything. One that stands out for me is a horror movie face. Can I do that? Can it be a fake face? Or does it have to be a real face? There's this series on Netflix that I don't think many people watch. It was French. It was called Marianne.

And there was a jump scare in that of like a woman that turns over and she had a horror movie like face unlike anything I've ever seen and it really really got me and I think about it all the time still is a really scary costume and that's one of my scarier ones shout out to the movie smile too no no it doesn't get me the movie smile too had a really scary like demon face too so yeah uh for me it's a rattlesnake if i stare at a rattlesnake too long i get freaked out This is a really personal one. It's a little weird, but I had a dream when I was little

that I walked in on my sister who had died from drowning and her face is all like contorted and like discolored and stuff. And that, her face stuck with me for years after that and I had nightmares about it for like, probably for five years after having had that dream. So that's like a weird specific one to me.

Yeah. Your sister's face in your dream. Yeah. Scary. You should have seen it. But here's one you guys can't check. It's a Degoya painting Saturn devouring his son. I just think that's a really haunting scary face.

He was so hungry. Just had to eat his own son. Just eating him. It's bad to do. I've always thought that that's bad. Andrei Ellis asks, what's your favorite face feature? I can start us off. So we're just in Galapagos.

And I really liked with the Marine Aguanas. They have a little thing inside their face that just like stores up the salt from when they're diving. And then they sneeze it out. And I actually saw a couple of them sneeze and is really cute. So I like that facial feature. I like noses. I feel like more and more I've come to really appreciate how unique noses can make people really beautiful in a very distinct way. And it's always...

Did you like Michael Jackson's nose? More like his fake nose. I like his early nose. I was about to say, I think it's kind of a tragedy that a lot of people with really unique noses feel like they need nose jobs because I think I appreciate a nice nose. Don't change that nose. It never works out. Like the dirty dancing girl? Jennifer Gray is that way?

Or Barbara Streisand. Don't do it. We like you. We like you just fine. Keep that schnauz. Yeah. Your shnaz. Your original schnauz.

I like teeth. Especially sharp teeth. I like a good canine. When humans have like some vampire teeth going on, Wes has got some good bottom ones. especially, those are great. That's exactly the kind of teeth that gets me going, Wes. Thanks for showing me those. You're turned on. Sick. But yeah, I don't know. I think not abnormal is a weird word to use, but just unusual teeth are fun for me to look at. Our brother's a dentist and I asked him how much I'd have to pay him to shave my teeth into points and he said he wouldn't do it. But then I found his number. He was lying.

So he would do it. 30,000. That's not bad. Yeah. All right. Last one. From Kate D. Polio. Pollyo. Probably not polio.

That's an interesting last name, but I won't say anything. I thought we got rid of polios. I don't know if it's supposed to be Kate or Kate D. Or Katie or Kate D. Because it's like Kate D.E. Just say every depolio. It's probably like an Italian name. Kate DePaulio.

Best facial scar in pop culture. For me, it's Omar from the wire. Oh, that's a good face guy. Man. His real scars, too, which makes it even cooler. Yeah, that's a good one. I have a hard time not doing one piece. I'm going to have to say Zoro.

His eye scar is so cool. Oh, you think that's cooler than Shanks, though? Shanks is his cool, too. Sweet. Mine's from an anime, too. It's Tokiko from Bouser Rankin. She's got, like, a perfect scar right across the bridge of her nose. I just think those are so.

cool. Like that perfect, I kind of want one. If anyone wants to give me one, I give you permission. To see row. Yeah, I want like a cat. I want a shanks scar for. We should give each other the scars we want. Because I think it's lame if you do it yourself. Yeah. We should start doing physical scars instead of emotional ones. Exactly. By that bear costume that they like destroyed their car with and give yourself the face scar with it. Just perfect. Four lines. I can't really think of. Luke's is interesting in Star Wars

where he, like, crashed a car in real life. Yeah. And then they, like, had to make that scene with the Yeti so they get to face scar. I like how they, Harrison Ford scar on, like, below his lip. They gave that a backstory in Last Crusade when young indie whips himself in the face.

Oh, yeah. That is cool. All right. Is that good? We good with listener questions? Okay. One thing I just wanted to add to these news episodes, since we don't have like a conservation corner for these,

I just thought it'd be kind of fun to bring up a nonprofit that we really like. I already brought up Grizzly Bear Foundation earlier. But we recently were in the Galapagos and we toured the Charles Darwin Research Station where they're doing a lot of cool work with giant tortoises, with trying to figure out different ways to fight invasives. on the Galapagos. It seems like kind of a one-stop shop for doing a lot of different research

and conservation around the Galapagos, which are such an amazing, pristine set of islands with so many interesting wildlife species. And I was really impressed by their work. So I think if you are someone who is interested in maybe donating some money toward something like that, Charles Darwin Research Station gets my stamp of approval. They're looking to, like, make their,

they're looking to improve their, set up right now. So it'd be like a good time to donate. And tooth and claw, how much are we going to donate, Wes? I don't know. How much? 2000? Sure.

I'll match you anywhere up to $50,000, Wes. We're coming up with the better way to do this. So, yeah, I think we're going to donate a couple, or $1,000, $2,000 as well. I think the best way for us to do it, too, is we might be doing like matching donations. We're working on the best way. way to do this. But I think we'll probably do a matching thing where we'll match donations. Thank you to our listener, Molly.

Yeah, for help us. Molly sent us some money to help us, like, with donations. And, like, we've been giving money to attack victims. We can increase that and probably start doing some more to get them help with medical bills and stuff. So, yeah. Yeah. But personally, I'll send them a hundred bucks.

Mike, what we're going to say? I'll give what you give West because you seem to have good, a good tag on that. And then tooth and claw, we'll get that sorted out. I think we really like the idea of donating to places that we visited, places that we've taken trips to. We're going to come up with a really good way to do that. And Jeff, I think your number that you threw out is definitely fair. And we'll figure out a way to motivate people to also donate. Cool.

Great. All right. Thanks, guys. Thanks for listening. Thank you, everyone for listening. If you want to subscribe, Mike just did an Eagle Ray episode that, you know, it was pretty good. Yeah. It gets good by the end. I'll say that. It was a really fun ending, I thought. A really fun game we played at the end. It is a great episode. We have a lot of fun on those. So, you know,

if you like having fun, join us for as long as you can. And if you run into financial troubles, just cancel it, you know? Yeah. It's 10 bucks a month. You'll get access to a lot of extra content. I think over 100 episodes at this point, probably well over 100. A quick note that we've said this in the last few episodes. If you are signing up, do it on your browser, do it through Google or wherever, and then download the app. Because if you sign up through the app on Apple's App Store, they're going to charge you an extra 30%. Okay. All right. Thanks, guys. Love you. Bye. See ya.