Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - The Legend of History's Deadliest Whale: Porphyrios the Purple

Episode Date: September 1, 2025

This is an upload of an old subscriber episode. If you enjoy it, consider subscribing to either our Patreon or Apple Grizclub! In this one, Mike talks about a handful of animal attacks that happened long ago including a deadly case of baldness, dying of laughter, the ineffective bones of Saint Conleth, and more! Watch here: https://youtu.be/N6ldKWe1TpA ~~ Wild Alaskan: Get $35 off your first box of wild-caught, sustainable seafood—delivered right to your door. Go to: https://www.wildalaskan.com/TOOTH Mint Mobile: Get this new customer offer and your 3-month Unlimited wireless plan for just $15 a month at http://mintmobile.com/tooth Cornbread Hemp: Get 30% off at http://cornbreadhemp.com/tooth and use code TOOTH ~~ 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

If the world were like a sleep number mattress, everything would adapt for your comfort. Because as your life changes and your body changes, sleep number mattresses adapt and shift to give you personalized comfort night after night. And now everything's on sale during our Memorial Day event. Save up to $1,200 on mattresses for a limited time. To experience a whole new world of comfort, visit a sleep number store or go to sleepnumber.com. Sleep number to a good life sleep. Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Tooth and Claw. Not exactly a new episode of Tooth and Claw.

I just want to get a quick little explanation of what this is before it causes any more misunderstanding like this is done in the past. This is actually an episode that until now has been exclusive to subscribers either over at our Patreon or on the Apple Grizz Club. So if you've heard this before, that'll explain it. You'll notice that we get a little looser on these episodes, a little weirder, just a little more chaos in general. So if you listen to this and decide you like it, you'll find a lot of other episodes in our feed, just like it.

I'm talking too much. Let's get to the episode. We have Daniel Radcliffe, Elijah Wood, and Emma Watson here today with you. I wish. Yeah, they'd be much better host than us. Even probably at our subject matter, they'd probably do a better job. Think of the stories they could tell. I know.

Let's just quit. Let's quit. And let them do it. Who would be the biologist? I'd say probably Emma Watson. Yeah, Hermione. She'd go into like hippogriff biology and stuff. Yeah.

Like that one guy's things. What was the guy they tried doing the other series with? Fantastic Beast. What's that guy's name? Just kind of red-headed guy? Yeah, what's his character's name? He won an Oscar. Noot.

Newt. Newt Scarmander or something. Newt, Gingrich. Yeah. Anyway. Who cares? Now, Hermione would just use her little time watch thing and go back in time. and just learn everything there needs to be.

Good. And one more class today. Because that's all you can use that for. Hermione, maybe not that smart. Just throwing that out there. All right. Sorry, I'm sick today. If I start coughing or fall asleep, that's on me.

You're leading this episode. I am leading this episode, so. You can't do that. It's going to be pretty troublesome. I'm sure if I just zonk out. We'll cut it when you're like asleep. We'll cut that part out. Let's really put Braxton to the test on this one.

Listeners, like, I would just assume he fell asleep at least twice, but you probably won't notice. We recorded this over six days. I'm a little sick, too. Maybe it'll be like that one time that you just fell asleep and you wake up 24 hours later and you have no idea what happened. He blinked. Yeah, it was a blink. It was crazy. I know we kind of covered this last time we spoke, but I want to stress that it was really, really like a matrix moment.

It felt like a blink, and it was the next morning and I felt totally rest. did it's the weirdest thing i think that's ever happened to me that's like when you get a full body um when they sedate you you know like for a colonoscopy or something that's what that feels like to me where one second you're conscious and then you're just like awake and it's over so i the reason you said i was wrong when i brought that up the way i brought it up i don't know it feels weird to say is a blink because you like laid down on the couch right yeah it was on the couch right so you like laid down and then you blinked and then you woke up the next day i guess you could say over the course of one minute, probably all that took place. The 24 hours was really the one that you

got a little bit wrong. Isn't that just kind of sleep in general? Like, isn't that what happens? You know what? Never mind. It's totally normal what happened to me. Like, dude, it was the craziest thing. I was awake and then I like lost consciousness and eight hours later. I woke up. It was wild. You didn't believe it. Yeah, I'm a weird sick though. It's just kind of like my nose keeps Yeah, we played golf last night. But it's not like I have too much. I could hear it. You're sick in the way that like Stephen King is sick.

He has a bunch of kids out of sacks at the end of a book. Sick and twisted. Gross, dude. That's sick. Or sick in like Tony Hawk doing a 900. There's all kinds of sick you can be. Jeff's all of those, dude. You sound like you got the worst one.

He contains multitudes. He's got that all wrapped up. But he's mostly sick like Tony Hawk, in my opinion. I would agree with that. Yeah. Nah. You're mostly sick and twisted? Probably more than Tony Hawk.

Tony Hawk can do a lot of stuff. How much time has Tony Hawk spent on the dark web? Yeah, that's a good point. Well, should I talk about some stuff I found on the web? Sure. We have some more stuff to talk about. I felt like there's some business we need to attend to at the top of this, but maybe not. I don't think so.

Thanks for listening, everyone. That's the business I want to attend to. It's a great business. Thanks for being here. Yeah. So I wanted to talk a little bit about some animal attacks that happened in antiquity. I don't remember exactly what inspired this, but I know it was something that Jeff either did or said recently. So once again, all credit goes to Jeff.

This is my episode. Exactly. I'll prepare another one for next week. That's on me. Yeah, I'm taking credit. I gathered up five or six, I think six stories. And actually, I've got some pictures that go along with what I'm going to be talking about. This is always fun when I screen share.

I do like that. They all happened long enough ago. this is kind of a Hugh Glass situation where they happened long enough ago that all of the events aren't quite verifiable. There's a little bit of mystique to attend to each of them. I like that. Do you? Yeah. I just assume it's all even like less. Fake. No, I assume it's even like a lesser version of what actually happened. I think it's all true, but I think even more happened no matter what you're going to say. You might be on to something with some of these. But yeah, so I gather up six stories about some really interesting things that happened either centuries or even

millennia ago. And I think you're going to find some enjoyment in hearing me talk about these, especially U.S. You're a real nut for animals. You're obsessed with horses, Mike. Especially white horses. Do you want me to zoom in on this guy? Your one map, you chose.

I hate that horse. It has a big old horse. Ted's guy. Shadowfax horse. Okay, so the first one, this is kind of like the centerpiece of the episode. Not that the other stories are bad. Keep listening. Please don't turn the podcast off.

We beg you. We need those listens. It means everything to us. The metric to see how long people listen to our episodes. That's what really keeps us going. Okay, so the first one, it takes place in Constantinople. I'm not going to tell you this title of the article that I pulled this story from, because it's going to kind of spoil it.

But I will say that it came from Greek Reporter.com, at least most of the information I gathered for this episode. That's where it comes from. Written by a guy named Alexander Grail. But this is like a very widely disseminated story that is known mostly in conjunction with inspiring, in part, the events of Moby Dick. And it's not the one you're probably thinking of West. This happened much further longer ago than what is it, the Essex? I forget what the book.

Wilship Essex. Heart of the seat. We're going to cover that story. There's two Moby Dick stories? Oh, dude. There's probably more. But this one, Herman Melville, actually, he did cite this as kind of a smaller inspiration. He mostly pulled from the Essex story.

though. But this is still pretty cool. Do you want to hear me tell it or should we just shut it down? I want to hear it. Okay. So my interest is peak. As you know, at the height of its power, the Byzantine Empire had all kinds of problems to deal with. Just like any other, you know, like any other superpower, geopolitical superpower, people are kind of poking and prodding from every angle, seeing if they can make any headway into their defenses. In addition to all the crusaders and the Ottomans and anyone else that was looking to loot or raid around the periphery of, the city of Constantinople, there was one enemy that served as a particular thorn in the side of Emperor Justinian I pulled up this picture of just kind of a stylized picture of what

Constantinople looked like back in these days. It looks pretty sick. You'll notice. Pretty cool river, lots of boats going on. Yeah. It looks like a pretty pleasant place to live. Remind me what the current name of Constantinople is. Istanbul. Istanbul. Great city. Yes. Love it. Right. So this is the Byzantian. Empire is also known as the Eastern Roman Empire. Kind of one in the same, but also differentiated for historical purposes. But you can think of it just as an extension of the Roman Empire. Yeah.

Whatever you call the thousands of year. That big mosque up at the top. Oh, really? Yeah. What'd you do in it? I just sat quietly. It was very peaceful. I really liked it.

Revereately. Yeah. That's good. So Emperor Justinian I first. He's beset by enemies on all side. But one particular one, he's having a little bit of trouble. with. Starting sometime in the 6th century AD, what's that stand for, Jeff? Six? Yeah.

Right. Yes. Numeral 6 is what I was referring to. After Christ's death. More or less, yeah, Anno Domini. On the city streets, they're Gnodominy. Anno Domini? That's what AD stands for?

It's after death, I thought. No. That's a common misconception. I thought that for a long time, too. What's the word you just said even mean? Anodominy is Year of Our Lord So like 0 BC is kind of like 1 AD is Anno Domini

Year of Our Lord 1 Otherwise there's like 33 years 33 years A limbo year Yeah When did AD start The I mean Historically it's the day we thought

That Jesus was born The year of our Lord Oh All right Yeah Interesting Learn something new every day Don't you

Yeah All right I'm fixing to learn you some more stuff here, so shut up, Jeff. You asked me that. On the city streets of Constantinople, there began to be whispers, and then

stories, and then abject public fear of something mysterious and terrifying lurking in the waters of the Bosphorus, a straight in the northeastern portion of the Mediterranean, which is a pretty big deal for these people, because that's kind of a major way in and out of this city at this point in history.

So for the next five decades, sailors had a decision to make. They could either stay on dry ground, safe, or risk their ship being attacked and sunk by Porfirius, a giant beast, the likes of which had never been seen in these waters, at least not quite so violently. So Procopius, he's a historian, 6th century Byzantine historian. He mentioned Porfirius in two of his works, history of the wars and the secret history, in which he wrote that Porfirios would attack all manner of sea vessels, from small fishing boats to large merchant vessels and even the occasional warship was just not afraid of anything, whatever this thing was.

I'm sure you guys are putting two and two together. I know this story now. I remember it. It's one that came in filling some gaps. Well, no, I'm not going to, but I was just going to, as a hint, it's one that people started talking about it recently because of recent events. Yeah. Wait, Wes, so tell us what ends up happening with me.

I'm not going to spoil it. So even though Porfarius would disappear for a stress. here and there over the 50 years that he was active, sailors would still do really just whatever they could to avoid taking the waters they knew were inhabited by this beast, whether, you know, that means going the opposite way, extending to their trip time, just whatever they could in order to avoid this beast. What's your best guess, Jeff? What do you think we're talking about here?

Oh man, that has to be a giant squid. Well, maybe this next picture will help illuminate a little bit. Or what sperm whale? Yeah, it's a good, yeah, sperm whale. How did you know? Because whales with teeth, I always think sperm whale. There you go, yeah. See, now you're teaching me stuff.

Okay, so no one is 100% sure, actually, what species of whale, Porphyrios was, but Procopius left us some clues. So based on his accounts, it was recorded to have a length of 13.7 meters, 45 feet, Jeff. Yeah, that's two buses back to back. Sure is. And a width of 4.6 meters. 15 feet. It's not really. Well, buses come in different sides.

Yeah, sure you could figure that out somehow. Yeah. You could find two buses that do that. So most people like Jeff, they seem to think he was probably a sperm whale because of his size and the lifespan. 50 years is kind of a long time for whatever else they were thinking. And also it's temperament. But some other historians think it could have been Wes. An orca.

Yeah. And that makes sense with how. That's kind of what I think it was. Yeah, I think it's more likely it was an orca. Right. Because they were, what are they doing? They're like ramming rotters on boats over on the rudders. And the thing.

Them boats. Exactly. The thing about sperm whales is they're not, they're not an aggressive species. Like we do have the history of the whale ship Essex, which was sunk by a sperm whale. But that was a whale that they had antagonized. They'd thrown harpoons in and chased and everything. On the other hand, orcas, we have very. recent history of them sinking ships.

And that's, again, it's probably not aggression. It's probably more play than anything. But there is context for that. So for a sperm oil, it seems off to me. I would, if I were betting on this, I would bet it being Orica. Can I tell you why I think it was a sperm whale? Yeah. So if you look at the drawing, Mike has that looks more like a sperm whale.

True. So if they saw it and then drew that. So. Yeah. But there are some explanations of it being black and white. white, right, Mike? We'll get to the coloration, actually. It's actually, it's pretty interesting.

But also, if you're looking at this picture, Jeff, you see this whale 45 feet long, nose to tail. That would mean this boat's like 15 feet long. That makes this a pretty small boat compared to the features that it's displaying, like three decks of cannons. And it doesn't... People would all be like little people. Yeah. They all be like three inches tall. Yeah.

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Get seafood you can trust. Go to wild alaskan.com slash tooth for $35 off your first box of premium wild caught seafood. That's wild alaskan.com slash tooth for $35 off your first order. Thanks to Wild Alaskan Company for sponsoring this episode. Okay. Like West was talking about, some other historians think it could have been just a massive orca. And it really would have been if it was actually 45 feet. That's about as big as orcas have ever been measured to get, I think, is what I read.

And also because it's not very rare to see orcas in this part of the water world. Whereas sperm whales, they really have to navigate some pretty difficult straits and stuff to get up to where, yeah. I'll show you a picture. You guys are going to be like, how would a whale even get there? You're going to be dumbfounded. But West, what are you saying? With that size thing, like even on the leopard seal episode that we just did, there's, historical reports of leopard seals up to 30 feet long.

That's a huge one. Yeah, there's no way they were that big. So people, when they see a really big animal. I mean, it's historical. Yeah. When people see a really big animal, they often exaggerate. That's a very common thing. If it's bigger than like 15 feet, especially dudes.

It's really easy to say 30, 40 feet. Never trust a guy's measurements. No, exactly. No. Actually, I had an interesting question I wanted to ask you. Maybe this would be the right place for it, West. But like, do you think that the average size of whales and orcas and stuff that lived in the water, would it have decreased in the modern day?

Not substantially. Not enough to where it would be, if anything, maybe a couple feet or something. Okay. But that, you know what, I shouldn't say that with any, like, confidence. But I would be shocked if whales had. substantially decreased. Something really quick. This is an interesting aside that you bring up that I just want to get into really quick.

If humans put a lot of pressure on an animal, especially marine animals to get smaller, they can do it really quickly. Like a way that we've done that is with salmon nets because the smaller fish are able to get out of the net. And so we're selectively, yeah, we're selectively, you know, favoring those fish that are smaller. And then those are the ones that are left to reproduce. But we weren't really doing that with whales Pretty much like any sperm whale that was cited was killed So I don't think there was a lot of pressure on them to get smaller

That that makes sense It does But again, I'm not sure No, that makes sense So according to historians, C and Lewis and Lloyd Llewellyn Jones Whales weren't super well understood at this time, as you can imagine So you can just think about these people Living by this water where they haven't really ever seen an animal behave like this before

it's pretty much a nightmare situation for them. It's like a story you tell your kids if they're misbehaving. Like you're going to get eaten by that, whatever that thing is out there. If you don't eat your porridge or whatever. Porphyrious. Porphyrious. Porfirius is going to get you. Go to bed or Perfierius will eat you.

Yeah, picture little Byzantine children being like, no, porphyrious. And also, like I was mentioning before, they weren't seeing a lot of these kinds of animals in these waters. just because of like how difficult. And I pulled up this map just to illustrate. So you see the AG&C in the bottom left, and that kind of feeds up off of the Mediterranean. So we're looking at a pretty small window. And to get to where Istanbul,

that's current day Constantinople, you'll see they'll have to navigate through this straight here, and then up through an even smaller one where Istanbul is located. So like not super common to see huge animals making that kind of a trip is what I've read at least. That's nothing. You don't think? No.

I think more than anything, like, aside from size, you wouldn't expect to see highly migratory animals going in there because they're going to have to come in and out. But there's no, like a whale could go in there. Any whale could make it in. But a lot of whales, like sperm whales, can be really migratory. Whereas orcas sometimes will, resident orcas especially, will just hang out kind of in the same waters.

So that's another point for me that makes me think it could be, that's more likely it was an orca. All right. We're getting close to settling that case. Yeah. Well, so whatever the case is. We got our best minds on it. Whatever he or I guess I should say he or she, whatever they were, Porphyrios is just going hog wild, just thinking all kinds of boats out there.

You know, people were freaking out. But why the name Porfirios you're probably asking yourself? Maybe like deep in your brain, that's a question that's floating around. Maybe not the first question you wanted to ask. But this is interesting. So I set it up with a segue in which I kind of assumed you were. We're asking a question. Now I'm asking it for sure.

It sounds like a job done. It sounds like a musketeer name to me. It does. The fourth or fifth, I guess. So, why the name Porphyrius? One hypothesis suggests that it might come from the mythological giant Porphyrian, a fitting name for the whale's size and power. It tracks.

But in the 1990s, a couple of other historians connected a few more dots and think that the name might have referred to the deep, wine-colored hue of the whale or the orca's skin. since Porfirios is pretty close to what their word was for purple. And I got a picture to show you here. Purple boy. And that, yeah, I'll make that make sense real quick. The theory has since gained support from other historians of notes such as John Papadoulos and Deborah Rosillo and another guy named Don Daniel Ogden.

Sorry, I don't know who you guys are. I'm sure you guys are beautiful, intelligent souls. But they believed Porfirio simply means purple or purple boy. specifically. They thought maybe it meant purple boy. That's what we'll call you and you finally dye your hair purple. Oh, dude, it's got to have. Perferios. Yeah.

Okay, so back to the story. Porferius harassment of ships became such a problem that Emperor Justinian the first was forced to address the issue. But no matter what they came up with, nothing was working. They couldn't capture it, let alone kill it. They just threw their hands up and they're like, well, how long could this animal really live, honestly? And they got their answer, 50 plus years. It sucked for them for that whole time.

The authorities ran out of ideas. They couldn't do anything. There's no recourse. But the situation ended up resolving itself and kind of a sad and sort of gross ending when one day Porfirios, and this is actually another point towards maybe it being an orca, but Porfirius was chasing a group of dolphins,

which is more orca behavior rather than sperm whale. Definitely. I would guess. 100%. I'm convinced. now. It beached itself at the mouth of the Black Sea. It started wriggling and riding to free itself, but only succeeded in making things worse, sinking deep into thick mud on the coast. Word quickly spread that the legendary whale was stuck in knowing that there was an imperial decree to kill the beast,

a mob ran out with axes and whatever else they had on hand to take care of business. They hauled Porphyrios further out of the water, farther, I should say, out of the water with ropes and wagons, and then got to work. And for a long time, actually, they were just sitting there hacking it. And it was like barely even breaking through the skin. It was just like such a gargantuan orca, I guess we'll call it now. Well, because again, sure you have it depicted as a sperm whale. Right. I'm sure this was drawn many hundreds of years after the fact.

Probably. But eventually they did get through the tough skin. They divided it up the chunks of meat and they either ate it right there on the spot, which is kind of weird and gross, but like in a celebratory kind of revelry, they just started eating. the beast right there. Or they stored it for later. I guess there was a method that they had to store that kind of meat for later.

Kind of funny that this particular artist was like, I'm going to have his dong out and it's going to be way out. And someone's going to be climbing it. Yeah. Using it as a stepping stool. Poor guy though. Look at Porphyrios. Yeah.

Man, not a great end for our guy. I will say like the other possibility here is that this was a sperm whale that like had some kind of mental illness. or something going on that completely changed its behavior, and that is possible. But they don't chase dolphins, for what I know. They are a toothed whale, but they're mostly diving down deep to eat squid and other things. They're not chasing like marine mammals on the surface. So it really feels like an orca to me.

Well, just wait for this one last twist. Go ahead, Jeff. Possibility. So like, orcas and sperm whales both breathe oxygen. They're not fish. Correct. So maybe these people just were trying to keep it from drowning, pulled it out of there. Doing some CPR in the blowhole or something.

You'd need someone with like a huge mouth to give a blowhole CPR. Maybe this is how humans started. It's these whales getting on land. This whale thing in Constantinople. Yeah. We could have had the next stage of evolution. Yeah, if they hadn't killed it. Right.

Well, Procopius wrote, the historian, that the whale's death, orca's death, whatever it was, death was a huge relief to the people of the city. Finally, boats could come and go as they please without fear of their precious ship and cargo being sunk. Or could they? After it was slaughtered on the beach, there were some rumors that had not been Porfios at all, but some other whale that had gotten itself beached and killed. So maybe we got like a Hugh Glass kind of situation going on you. Yeah, maybe it could have been even that's the confusion. Like maybe they saw sperm whale out more in the ocean, but it is like some orchid smart enough to frame the sperm whale. That's true.

Oh, you think Porfirios maybe like nudged it up onto the beach to take the fall like a patsy? Or he would just wait to like strike the boats until the sperm whale was up out of the water. And they would be like, oh, that's what just got us. Like that time when you farted in class and blamed it on that other guy? Yeah. That didn't work very well. Porfirio. Too out of a fart.

A little better. Okay. Well, that, so thus ends the story of Porfirius. I thought that was really interesting. I love just hearing strange little anecdotes of like that from antiquity because you don't get stories like that all that often. Yeah. No, it's interesting to think orcas have been sinking boats for a long time now. Yeah.

Something that I find like kind of weirdly heartwarming about this is that what year was this in again, Mike? Sixth century. Six century. Six century AD. Yeah. So like that many years ago they were sinking boats and people felt powerless. And now in like 2024 they're sinking boats and people feel powerless. Like there's very little we can do to stop these animals when they start doing that.

I guess today they probably could have killed the orcas that were doing it. feel more helpless because they're like laws nowadays. Right. That's true. Like if we could have machine guns on our yachts, they would. Fair enough. They probably could have killed this orcas. That's a good point.

But I do, I do love it. It's a good point, though. I hear what you're saying. Yeah, that they do hold some power over us. Yeah, I don't know. We still have fear of them sink in our boats even today. Yeah. I'm pretty convinced it's an orca.

I really am. It feels right to me after. hearing what you said and reading over all this stuff. Hey, what was? I want that to be the case. If you were an orca, what would your strategy be to take down a destroyer, like a U.S. destroyer? Oh, man. Hmm.

I'd wait until they're about to launch a torpedo and then swim up the torpedo tube and block it. That's pretty good. It'd be like a suicide attack, but it would blow them up too. That's probably the best way, right? Or just like chuck a dolphin in there. Just keep hitting the rudder. Just hit that rudder Sure

I think those rudders would I don't know I'm not I'm not an authority on Destroyers or aircraft carriers It seems like they wouldn't be able to do that But Mike and one thing You kept saying like a whale or an orca You can call them whales

Yeah right I just wanted to clarify that for audience Because we kind of confused that once Whale is big It's kind of confusing stuff Yeah so for these guys D dolphins are whales D dolphins are whales

So anything that falls within The cetacean family can be considered whales. So dolphins are whales, orcas are whales, pilot whales. And then you have your big baleen whales too. So you have like humpbacks, gray whales, right whales, those kind of whales. They're all whales. But then dolphins is a subgroup of whales. So orcas are dolphins.

Dolphins are dolphins. They're all still within that larger group, which is whales. Humans? Did you call that parking ticket I got on my windshield, a cetacean? There's a whale of a fine. I'll tell you that much. That's not a good joke. Jeff,

you were about to say humans, and there is a good, like, primates and humans, like apes are a smaller subset of primates. Yes, apes would be the dolphins of humans, well,

of primates. Humans would be the dolphins of primates or apes. Sure. Clear. Yeah, I don't know. Or, like,

I was going to say, if we're snorkeling, we're pretty much, whales. Some of us. We got like our blowholes. We got Yeah, we do, don't we? I don't have a great argument. Our blubber. We're mammals.

Next story. You guys ready to move on? Any final words in reverence for Porfirios? Porfios, good. Yeah, good story. Good run. Good run. All right. This episode is brought to you by Mint Mobile. You know what doesn't belong in your epic summer plans,

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Look at this guy. I just got a picture. His name is Iskolis. You guys may be familiar with him. Classical Greek playwright really made his bones writing tragedies. It really kind of elevated the art form of the tragedy and the poetry and theater world.

One of the three greats, along with Euripides. And I forget the other one. Sorry, I'm not a Greek. I'm not a classical lit, whatever. Bald. Bald people are like the last group of people you can still make fun of without too much pushback. I know. It's not fair.

They didn't choose anything, you know? Yeah, it sucks to go bald. Some of them do choose. But you can just go to Istanbul and get some, you know, get some hair. Just watch out for orcas. Doc Rivers, because he has a hair line, but is bald. Or Chris Paul, where he was, like, bald, but he has, like, a bald spot.

Under the lighting of the NBA arena. His head, you can see hair on it, but there's also a glint. Like it's shining off. It's like shinier than a bald head. It's really cool. Good job, Doc. Okay. Eastcalis.

Athens great dramatist made his bones, writing tragedies. Jeff, you'd like this guy. He was all about writing. I don't know if you're familiar with like Agamemnon, Clydenestra, like a lot of revenge, a lot of payback, a lot of life. Yeah, getting even, you know. Yeah. So he wrote about 80 plays we know.

only seven still exist. And thankfully one of them is the complete trilogy, the Arrestes, that's Agamemnon on through the three, which is great, because it really suck if we had like the first two parts, but then we didn't get that finishing trilogy part. It's like not having Return of the King.

Yeah. That tragic piece. Talk about tragedy, you know. So with all the cockamamie, he's got this, his whole schick is writing these crazy weird ways people are dying or being killed. So it almost seems fitting that he himself would die in a fairly tragic way.

So this is kind of a tough picture to make out exactly what's going on. But in 455 BC, he was outside probably just minding his own business. And the story goes that an eagle carrying a turtle spotted his bald head somewhere far below. Probably like a glint of sunlight bounced off his shiny head. And the eagle's like, oh, there's something I can break the shell of this turtle on. Because that's the thing eagles do, right? They like drop turtles and tortoises on rocks. Uh-huh.

So he mistook Iskolis's head for a rock and dropped a turtle right on top of him and it killed him. And this picture is great because you can see like in the air there's one turtle falling. But also you can see there's already a turtle hitting his head. So this eagle's dropping two turtles on this guy. That's amazing. And he just looks sad, like unbothered but still going to keep reading. Yeah. Right.

It's like the pictures you see of people like a water balloon has hit their face, but they haven't quite physically registered it yet. So their face is still completely like a slow-mo right before. Yeah. Right. Anyway, so that thus ends the tragic life of Eastcalis. Do you give that credit to the eagle or turtle? Yeah, who gets that kill? Like is that death by turtle or by eagle?

I'd say eagle. Yeah, I mean, too. The guns don't kill people, Jeff. Here's the thing. I think a few. have killed people in history, this might be like our only turtle we can take for like I should have saved this story. Yeah, we could have built a whole episode out of this. Yeah, I'm with Mike on that. I think the guns don't kill people is a perfect analogy for this.

Well, in that case, it'd be a bullet is the turtle though. So what's the gun in his feet? Well, I don't know, bullets kill people. But like the argument isn't like... You don't think bullets kill people? Yeah, but who pulls the trigger? The person. The eagle's the gun, but the turtle's the bullet. No, the eagle's the person. Who's using the eagle? Because someone needs to be using the eagle. Sometimes guns just go off.

That's true. Then in that case, guns do kill people, but outside of that. All right, we've lingered on East Galis enough. Just so we can't. That's true. We can't. We can't disagree. So this is St. Conlith of Kildare.

Ireland. We're going to Ireland. Conlith was the head of, of the Kildare School of Metalwork and Penmanship and one of the three chief artisans of Ireland. Upon meeting him, renowned Irish abbess Bridget invited him to become the governor bishop of her double monastery at Kildare. She was just so impressed with his art. She was like, you gotta be a person of influence and of note and help me out here. And he agreed.

After about 20 years of serving as the bishop, Conliff set out on a pilgrimage to Rome to buy new vestments and an altar plate to replace the ones that Bridget had just sold for money to help the poor and the needy, which is a worthy, you know, that's a great thing you did, Bridget. But Conlis is like, we also still need this ritual stuff that we use at the church. So I'm going to go get some from Rome. But he was old at this point. He was a little old. And Bridget was like, you're not going to make it, dude. You should stay here and let someone else take care of it.

He's like, no, no, no, I got this. And then she received a premonition from God. It just so happens. Quote, you shall not arrive at Rome and you shall not return. That premonition may very well have been real. That God said that through Bridget is how the story goes. Bridget. I saw those spellings.

We're back to the weapon. Slash user of the weapon though. Right. So somewhere along the journey from Ireland to Rome, Conlith was attacked and killed by wolves, which at the time lived in the woods in the mountains of Linster. His remains were transferred to a Church of Ireland Cathedral and Kildare in 835 AD in order to protect from the invading Vikings of Denmark. They thought, you know, bringing in some saintly bones, some remains would grant an aura of protection of how'd that work. It didn't. It worked quite poorly. The Vikings, they really got up to all kinds of nonsense and they didn't show up and they were like, oh wait, are those bones?

Yeah. We're out of here. Yeah. So many, many, many, many attacks from Vikings later. Ireland kind of got run rough shot over for a while there. Just like, you know, no shame. And I want to personally apologize. All my ancestors are Danes. So that's my bad, I guess. We had Norwegian ancestors. So we're in on that too. Right.

But even those bones weren't very effective, all kinds of people were killed. Like the, I think the monastery itself where he was buried was like stormed and pillaged by the Vikings. So like these bones were really ineffective. Yeah. But he was still made the patron saint of the Roman Catholic St. Connless parish and is still celebrated on the 4th of May with a feat. every year. So like you try. It's kind of like thanks for giving it your best. And honestly, if anyone from Ireland is listening by any chance, I'd love to hear more if like this is actually a day that's celebrated and upheld to this day, kind of what, if I got anything wrong even.

Has Star Wars Day choked it out at this point? That's so true. May the 4th. Oh my God. I feel like Ireland's rebounding a bit though, like just in general. Maybe just the bones. took a long time to work. Yeah. That's true. His bones are finally coming to fruition. Yeah, good work. Good work, Conlith.

You're a great artist. I love this picture. See whatever you want about him. He's good at art. I know. He looks like he's like very nonplussed. Like you just told a joke that he thinks is stupid. I like it.

He's so powerful. Yeah. It looks like Sora. Okay. So next story. Let's go on to this is Cresipus of Solis. and a fig-loving donkey. You can kind of see once I lay out the title of the story

what's going on in this picture. So, a Greek philosopher from the 3rd century BC named Cresippus of Solai once spotted a donkey eating his figs. Seeing the perfect setup for a joke, he quipped to anyone nearby enough to hear him that someone ought to give that donkey some wine. He joked that someone should give that donkey

some unmixed wine, Wes. So, this is fitting, actually. Like, let the donkey keep eating his figs so he could get that joke off to like as many people as possible. So the expression on his face is so good, too. This is this man, this story is about to repeat itself. But a Reddit user actually helped me put together this joke. So credit goes to user efficities. I think that's how you would say that.

Like you talked to the Reddit user? No, I just saw a post from years ago, whatever. So figs and donkeys are symbols of Dionysus, the god of wine fertility in theater. So basically what happened is Chrysippus saw two things that reminded him of Dionysus and couldn't pass up on the opportunity to finish the scene by invoking Dionysus himself by giving the donkey some pure wine to wash it down. It's starting to get funny now, right? Well, whatever you guys think, he thought his own joke was so funny

that fur, quote, for that seeing his ass eating his figs, he told his old woman to give the ass some unmixed wine to drink afterwards and then laughed so violently

that he died. See? It was funny after all, right? That is. He laughed so hard. They gave the donkey wine that he died. Okay, we're going to get serious.

We'll make it together. Please don't turn it off. We're finishing this, I swear. It's so stupid. So you're counting that one for the donkey killing him. I'd just to give it to the figs, I think. Okay, next story. We got to move on.

This is, holy cow. Okay, this is about Milo of Croton, also killed by wolves, much like Conliff. Two stories ago. So this guy, he was a six-time Olympic wrestling victor, and he just loved strutting his stuff. He loved showing off how sick he was. Deodorus Sickles wrote in his history that Milo commanded the Crotonian army, which defeated the Cyberites in 5-11 BC while wearing his Olympic wreaths and dressed like Heracles in a lion's skin and carrying a club,

which is pretty sick. You go to war like in lions clothes just with a club, and then he wins, that's rad. But if there was anything Milo loved, it was showing off how strong he was. And a few of his go-to moves were these. he would hold out his arm with fingers outstretched and challenge people to bend his little finger which is like pretty impressive if he's actually strong enough to like stop someone from doing that

that's it's amazing pretty amazing okay the next one you guys will be impressed by this he would stand on a greased iron disc and challenge people to push him off of it all right yeah that's pretty impressive yeah this next one this one's cool too he would hold a pomegranate in one hand and challenge others to take it from him. Nobody ever could, and despite him holding the fruit very tightly, it was never damaged. So he'd create like a loose cage with his hand around the pomegranate. Wow. I don't know.

It's pretty impressive, right? Pomegranates, I feel like, are kind of hard to damage, though, right? If you're just squeezing them. Yeah, I think if you're like squeezing, I don't know. It's a good tidbit. It makes sense to me. Oh, I got to, let's see, pull up this. next one maybe. Oh, shoot. That's a little bit early, but we knew where this was going. So

he would train in his off ears by carrying a newborn calf on his back every day until the Olympics took place. By the time the events were to take place, he was carrying a four-year-old cow on his back. He carried the full-grown cow the length of the stadium, then proceeded to kill, roast, and eat it. And that's like, that's pretty, that's good intimidation, you know. Yeah. Can you, Matt, Wes, you wrestled in high school. What if you saw some dude just bring a cow in and then like eat it right in front of you. I wouldn't want to wrestle him for sure. Exactly.

I would be intimidated. Especially because Wes wrestled at like 95 pounds. Yes. So Milo's final test of strength came when he was traveling to the countryside and met a village or trying to split a stump with a hammer and wedges. Milo excitedly asked the man if he could attempt to split the wood with the strength, not using any tools at all. So he'd like put both of his hands in the stump where the split already

was, we tried to rip in America. Oh, cool. Yeah. The villager, honored by Milo's offer, he knew who Milo was, of course. He went off to fetch food while Milo worked on the stump. Milo immediately tried to pull the stump apart by inserting his fingers into the crack where the villager had driven the wedges. As he pulled the stump open, the wedges fell out, and the stump quickly snapped in on

his fingers, trapping him on the spot. There he waited for the villager to return with the food and to help him out. Legend then says that Milo met his end when wolves or, maybe a lion took advantage of his predicament and descended upon him. This event turned into a favorite subject in art for Italian Renaissance sculpture, and if you look this up on Google Images

or wherever, you'll see a lot of images of like, it really looks like lions are just eating his butt. There are like many different depictions of the same event and they all kind of look weirdly sexual. Like eating his butt or eating his ass? You know what I meant.

Okay. All right. But I like this one. I like the wolves because it isn't quite as, I don't know. Yeah. I just like the wolf version for more than the lion for some reason. Yeah. But there you go.

He's a tough guy. Look, Stump caught him. That'd be kind of embarrassing to be that tough. Yeah, and then get killed by a stump. Yeah. Well, again, what really killed him? What killed him here? Who do we get the credit to?

I think the wolves. The wedges? It seems like if he had his hands, so those wolves were toast. True. It may not always seem like it, but I can get pretty high-strung, and nothing feels better to me than just being able to chill out a little bit, but in a completely natural way. And that's why I love cornbread hemp CBD gummies. Also, I've been flying a lot recently. I've been getting aches and pains

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I think I'm saying that right. Vishvaginina. That's how it's spelled. The universal king is what that means. One day, King Perichite set out on a bear hunt, and he spotted one, but before he could take it down, the beast took off out of run. The king chased the animal, but in vain. In due course, he got lost in the forest and became very weary and very thirsty.

He then came to the hermitage of sage Samika, who was meditating. The king pleaded the sage to quench his thirst, give him something to drink. However, the sage deep in meditation, he didn't move, he didn't even like acknowledge that the king was there. He was just sitting there. And the king was like, I'm the king, what's going on here? This is, you should respect me kind of thing, you know? Yeah. So he played a little prank on this sage.

He picked up a dead snake that lay nearby and placed it around the sage's neck and left the place. Sage Shringen, the son of the sage Samika, came home to the hermiton. permittage and was shocked to see the desecration and placed a curse upon the man who had so disrespected his father. Quote, that sinful wretch of a monarch who hath placed a dead snake on the shoulders of my lean and old parent, the insulter of the brahmanas and tarnisher of the fame of the kuru's shall be taken within seven nights hence to the regions of Yama, death by the snake of Tokshaka, the powerful king of serpents, stimulated thereto by the strength of my words. It's a pretty serious. One week from now, the Tokshaka

the demon king snake being he's going to get he's going to get you king yeah that's crazy he like has the authority to do that curse yeah yeah i don't know anyone personally that would be cool they could pull that he was like in your inner circle yeah so when shemika this he's the sage who had the snake placed around him when he learned about the curse that his son had given he was disappointed he was like you know i get why you would be mad but like let's forgive and forget. Shamika ordered his disciple Garmuka to go to Parakshit and tell him everything about his incoming death. When Parakshit heard about the curse,

he actually was just accepting of his fate. He's like, you know what, I deserve that. I shouldn't. I was kind of being a snot there. I should die. Wow. But the ministers, they had different ideas. They created a mansion that would stand on a solitary column and remain well guarded. But. I was so kind of like a Rapunzel situation or, I mean, a sleeping beauty. Get rid of all the potential dangers. Right.

Like Edipus. Run away from home. I don't want to have sex with my mom is what he was probably saying. So he ran away. Ended up doing it. Oh, talk about tragedy. Those Greeks had a lot of ideas. Okay. But the curse of a stage never fails. The great snake Tukshaka disguised as a worm in a

basket full of fruits laid in wait for the opportune moment. The king reached forth his hand for some of that sweet, sweet fruit and got bit and died, exactly seven days later the curse came true. Oh man. It's like the ring.

Right. It's too bad because like it seemed otherwise he's a pretty good dude. He made a pretty sweet kingdom for everyone to live in. Yeah. It's not even like that bad of the prank. Yeah, he's just playing a little prank. It was a dead snake. Wasn't even the live one.

Right. Yeah. These sages need to lighten up. It reminds me that time when I pranked the guys in college. Like they pranked me. And then I just went like so much harder at them. That's kind of a desert. There's like they wrote my phone number on like a hundred cars.

That sucked. So I got like a ton of like that's a bad one. Texts and calls and like people being like you want to go on a date. People being like, why is your car? Why is your number on my car? Are you selling this car? So then I went to a butcher and I bought a pig's head and I stabbed a note in with a nice. that was like threatening.

Which is a Larson tradition. Myers did that first, then me, then you. And then my friends, my friends who like did the prank to me, football players, got in a huge fight with them that night. And they were like already on edge. And then I put this pig head in their apartment. And I threw the smoke grenade in there. Like I threw a huge smoke grenade.

And the next day I like went over there and they had called the cops and they all had like guns and stuff. And I was like, oh. All right. Call it off. I'm just going to go silent for like a week here. It's a great way to end a breakwater. Kids got pulled out of like football.

If you need a pig's head, any Latin meat market near you will probably have one. So it works really well. You were like in the, you were Kendrick in that beef and those roommates were the drakes. Yeah. I was like, I'm putting it into this. Yeah. Okay, well, if that ends, I think that was six stories of animal attacks. antiquity. Hopefully that was

illuminating or fun or both. That was great. I liked the guy who laughed so hard he died. Me too. That's so stupid. It was a good joke though. It's so good. It's crazy that like it was a joke that you yourself told.

I feel like that's but then when he saw it carried out he was like oh it was funnier than I ever could have imagined. It's so good. Okay. Let's move on to categories. Seems like his wife didn't really get it. Because she just watched him laugh himself to death, right? Because she lived. Obviously, she didn't get it. She would have died. That's what I'm saying. She didn't get how funny it was.

Okay, let's go to categories. What's your favorite tragic movie? Wes, I'm calling on you. Yeah, I was thinking about this one. My knee jerk was to go with Atonement, which I brought up not too long ago on the podcast, but I just think it's like a really beautifully made movie. And it's one where just like the tiniest little mistakes end up in huge tragedy for the people. And it's one of those movies where you want to like shake someone in the movie and be like, no, don't do this. I also like a runner up for me was American History X. I honestly haven't seen it in so long. I don't know how well it would hold up today.

but that was one where any movie about brothers always hits me a little harder since we're all brothers in the family and then it I always thought it was poignant because it was like the main character is trying

to make up for his terrible choices and his like racist life and he's trying to do better but so much momentum has already gone into his little brother that it's too late to kind of stop those chickens from coming home to roost

and I really I don't know That one always kind of hit hard for me, but that was my backup. It's crazy when he dunks, reverse dunk backwards in Jam. Yeah. Yeah, one of the most athletic things you'll ever see. And it happens in that movie, of all movies. Wild. I'd probably go Manchester by the sea.

That one's just like, they kind of just wrote a movie to be as sad as they possibly can. Yeah. And then, like, Casey Affleck just has really good sad eyes. He does. Perfect in that movie. Yeah. Runner up would be Legends of the Fall because of brothers. Yeah.

That's a good one. I haven't really ever fully stopped thinking about Grave of the Fireflies ever since I saw it for the first time. Studio Ghibli, World War II, Fallout kind of just devastating. Another tale of siblings and just, you know, unadulterated view of the horrors of war and the effects that it has long after it's, quote unquote, ended. And then I'll give a backup too. Why not? Just because you guys did.

But another movie that's like that for me is Requiem for a dream. It's a tough one. Just so sad. And anyone that's had someone that deals with addiction in their life, kind of you probably know what that feels like. It sucks. My number one tragic movie that, like, shouldn't feel as tragic as it does is the six man.

The brothers play basketball. And then one of them dies, but then his ghost helps his brother play basketball. That one, I was a racket. Requiempern's also tragic because Jared Leto's in it. Let's not forget that. He was good in it, though. What happened to him? Maybe he was already, whatever.

Yeah, I liked Young Leda. They should make a movie out of East Glit just getting domed by a tortoise. That would be, I guess that's more of a comedy, also in the Greek tradition. Most of these things were pretty funny. Yeah. Yeah, maybe we could make an anthology. Okay, next category. What would you say is one thing that you're cursed with?

Do you have a specific thing you feel like is particularly just a bee in your bonnet, Achilles heel of sorts? I'm like really bad about losing stuff. Probably would be my number one. Like the second I set something down, it's outside out of mind situation. That's a good one too because there's all kinds of stories about little house elves that run around like misplacing your stuff. Maybe it really is just like an actual curse. Oh, yeah. Nomes.

I've been told I have ghosts where I live, so it could be ghosts. That's right. And you've pissed them off, too. You flipped off those ghosts. I was asking for you. Several times. I pick something that I kind of feel stupid about picking now, because it kind of sounds like a good attribute.

I guess I didn't really, like, think about this very well. No. Sultry baritone voice. A good memory. I feel like I have. That is a great. A good memory. I do have some blind spots.

Like, don't get me wrong. There's definitely things that I don't remember well. But there's certain things that I just remember crystal clear. And it really bothers Jesse, actually, because sometimes I'll remember things so well that it feels like I'm weaponizing it, you know? And I probably do that sometimes, to be honest. And so I do, I feel like that's a hard thing when you, when you know you remember something clearly.

But it's impossible to, like, tell the other person. I remember this better than you, you know? Anyway, that's something that I... But I'm not saying I feel that way about everything. I definitely have some blind spots where I don't think I have a good memory. That sounds like the kind of curse that'll get better as you get older. You'll starve again. And it's a curse and a blessing.

It's one of those things that I also am really happy I have, but... Cursed with a huge penis is what I don't have that either is. That's tough, dude. So my curse is, I feel like whenever I'm trying to be... be extra careful to not let something happen, that care that I'm going to such great lengths to take is what ends up actually causing me to do the thing that I was trying to avoid in the first place. Like, you know, just talk about sunglasses. I try never to touch the lenses or, like, put them in any kind of place where they could get dinged up.

So, like, handle them very carefully. And then they'll just slip out of my fingers and hit the gravel on the ground. And it's like, well, I might as well have just grabbed them and handled them like a normal person. I don't know. This is going to sound stupid, but this is something that happens to me almost daily where, like, I try to handle my phone very carefully and I'll just fling it across the room somehow. And it's so stupid. It always happens. It's a curse.

Can I tell you what I think your curse is, Mike? Yes, please. It's that, like, you're a very likable person that people want to be around. And that's, like, your worst case scenario for what you want in life. that's true that's a good that's a manhole yeah that's guy I can change in my answer to that well I guess I shouldn't because that's a little

self-aggrandizing but no yeah I would choose a self-aggrandizing it's not what I was trying to do Wes and I feel stupid I know big penis Larson over I didn't say the big penis thing Wail all should you want to see that picture that's like dude that's what you've got that's not compared to Wes

it does a little drawing of a tiny man crawling up my penis. Okay, next, this is about Conlith. We all like Conlith, I feel like, after that little story we told of him. So if there was a yearly feast held in celebration of your life, what would be served and what date would you want it to be on? I mean, I'll go first since you guys is my prerogative, you know. I'll set the stage.

This is going to be a bad one, but I love fruit, so I just want a giant buffet of every kind of fruit available. and I want it to happen on the day after Halloween. Just one last fruit hurrah of the year. Because I feel like fruit isn't really incorporated into much afterwards. Like Thanksgiving is not really a fruit kind of a thing or Christmas. Cranberries, I guess. Yeah, I'll have one huge table of cakes and then one huge table of ice creams.

You can only pick one. No, it starts out as like two desserts, but then you grab one from each table and make your own single. dessert. Yeah. It's great. Right. I love it. Wait.

When are you doing it? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Christmas. Great. Yeah. Just double up. Mike, I actually, I picked a buffet of fruits as well.

Just because I think. Really? Yeah. I just think there's something so nice about just having a ton of different types of fruit to choose from. And you can kind of go, you can be a glutton and not feel bad about it. You know? Yeah.

And the day I picked was summer solstice because I think it's my favorite day of the year. I think it's just a time of like general peace for me. I really like just that's like the longest days. You have most of the summer still ahead of you. Things are really green and beautiful. The days are warm. I just like the summer solstice. Do you think you can have dinner that's just obviously you can,

but like do you think it counts as like a dinner if it's just fruit? I mean, I wouldn't probably count it. There's people out there that would. But I get point taken. Yeah. You didn't say dinner though, right? Or did you? No.

I just said feast. Like a feast. I'm not even trying to say you guys are wrong in your answer. I just feel like, I don't know. Are we having the cream with the fruit? Is there anything? Is it just fruit? There should be a bowl of cream.

I want some cream in mine. Okay. You can be different, Wes. You can have the fruit. Yeah. And then fruit. Fruit, are we, like, count, like, all the stuff that isn't actually fruit, but we think of as fruit, right? Like what?

Like tomatoes? I don't want tomatoes. Avocados? Is berries or fruit? Yeah. Maybe I'm thinking of vegetables. I'm pretty sure berries are fruit. I'm not sure.

I will say this, though. In the quos, the quosal. Kiwis are keeping skin. You're not taking that skin off those kiwis, not at my feast. You guys are weirdos that do that. They're so healthy and good. I like that. I think that'd be a good switch up because like every meal is so like centered around me just to have like a fruit feast.

It just sounds like kind of fruit medley. Breezy and nice and on summer solstice it just sounds very like refreshing and warm and good. So that's what I want. Yeah. Yeah. Great. I'm glad. I'm happy that we aligned on that.

That's nice. A bit of synchronization there. Okay. Final category before we get the heck out of here. I know you guys are hovering over that stop button. right now talking about Kiwis and shit. You're not here for that. Okay, so this is yet another charity quiz

is what I called this one. Two subscription episodes in a row. We talked about Kiwis. Oh, we did. Oh, man. Okay, so $10 goes to charity for every question you don't get right, but for every question that you do,

I'll give $20. So this is going to go, I'm going to alternate between you both. If I get every question right, I want it to go to me and charity doesn't get anything. Deal. Okay. You're not going to be asked all of the questions, which is a real...

Yeah, but if I go 100%. Okay. You'll have to let me know if you do. So each of you... So we talked about four countries or four empires' geographic locations. We got Byzantine Empire. You have Ireland. You have Greece.

What was the other one? Istanbul. Oh, yeah. India. Kind of like the India. The Vedic. Vedic era, I guess is what it was calling back then. But I'm going to ask you each to tell me in which of those regions the following eight things were invented. And you each get one 50-50,

like who wants to be a millionaire rules. You can each ask each other for help once. Or you can ask for the clue that I have and can provide for one. So you each get three kind of lifelines, if you will. So we have the Indian one, the Byzantine, Greek. And the Irish? Ireland. Yep. Okay. And it's either someone, it was invented there or by someone from there.

Okay. This is going to get a little, this is going to be fun. Trust me. Wes, you're the first one to go. The fork. Fork. Classic dinner fork. Breakfast fork.

I don't know, lunch. All of them use fork sometimes. I'm going to say the Irish. Nah. Okay. Byzantine, dude. The Byzantine Empire, the fourth century. $10 to charity.

So you each are going to get asked four questions. So you have three lifelines left to use. You can use them on the same question or spread them out. What are the three lifelines again? 50-50, so I'll narrow it down. Yeah. Ask each other for help. Or you can have me read the clue that I provided.

Okay. Shoot. So Jeff. Next one. Used one. Where was democracy invented? And what are the four choices again? You got Byzantine Empire, ancient Greece, India, Ireland.

You got it. Okay, so we're up to $30. Wes, back to you. So far, it's going to me, too. Yeah, so far, Jeff's getting all of it. He needs it. You need it. Where is chess invented?

Yes. Uh, man. I'll do my 50-50. Okay, there's either Byzantine or India. I'm going to go with India on this one. Oh, you got it. You got it. It was originally called Chaturanga.

That would have helped. That's like a pose. That's a pose. Yeah, the yoga pose. Okay. Jeff, back to you. Chocolate milk. Yeah.

Where was that invented? Or someone invented that from this place. So, who or where? I can't remember all of them. Ancient Greece is Brisbane. Brisbane. Yep.

So you got ancient Greece, the Byzantine Empire, India, Ireland. It's cut mine in half. Okay, so it's either Ireland or India. I'm going to go to Ireland. Oh, you got it. I stalled a little bit too long on that, maybe. So apparently, this is just an interesting thing.

This would have been the clue, but he went to Jamaica, this guy, Hans Sloan from Ireland. He went to Jamaica, and he had this drink where they would just put like a bunch of cocoa in water, and he was like, this sucks. But then he added milk to it, and he's like, this is it. It's collapse. Nice. Probably. Yeah. Right.

It's slapped. It is. It holds up still. It's still good. Yeah. It was right. To this day. Submarines, Wes.

Where were those invented? Do you think? Hmm. I want your hint. I want the extra hint. It was invented by a man named John Philip Holland. John Philip Holland. That sounds more Irish to me than anything of all those places.

So I'm going to go with Ireland. Yeah. That's it. That was kind of a dead giveaway if you really start thinking about it. I didn't do a good job on that one. Okay. Plastic surgery, Jeff. Where was that invented?

I'm not going to say ancient Greece. The island, Brisbane. Give me your hint. Invented in 600 BC by the man known as the father of surgery. 600 BC. Yeah. Think about that. Brisbane.

That's not an answer. Byzantine. Byzantine. Nope. Probably Byzantine wasn't around by then. It was India. It was crazy. The first, like, rhinoplasty, they would do, like, skin graft and transfers.

This should have wrote his name down. It's, like, Shutra or something. But, yeah, he was, like, the largely credited with inventing plastic surgery. I know that was really cool. Oh, man, this one. Wes, the Olympic Games. Ancient Greece. Oh.

Dude, the Olympic games were so cool. I wish we still had it a section like that. Just naked dudes wrestling. Yeah, it'd be like the 100 meter, but they're all. naked and it's like full contact. Like people die every Olympic games. Yeah. Okay, this is the last one.

This one goes to you, Jeff. The grenade. Where it was invented. Yeah. I think you've still got two life, no, one life. I'll ask Wes. Okay, Wes. I'm going to guess.

I'm going to guess, Jeff, and this is to you. This isn't the answer. I'm going to guess the Byzantine Empire. A good locker in Byzantine. Oh, nice. Nailed it. So ceramic jar is full of incendiary liquid. They'd use it in naval warfare. They used it to rebuff the Arab fleets that were besieging the city.

That's like a Matoff cocktail. That's not a grenade. They say that it's the military history dictates that they were the ones who invented the grenade. I mean, you got it right. There's not really a whole arm. I'm arguing on it. So we got all of a bit of two. Chesty Polar.

Yeah. So that means eight, so six times. Would you have gotten mine with? The rhinoplasty? No, I would have guessed by Zantine as well. I would have gotten yours, but it would have been a guess. $140 to charity. I never choose a charity to go for.

Yeah, you guys want to come up with them? Yeah. Yeah, the Gates Foundation. Let's not do that. Let's do a wildlife charity. Let's do wildlife SOS since we talked about India. we're going to India. They're an Indian wildlife rescue organization I've worked with a bit.

They're great, so we'll do wildlife SOS. You don't sit on the board. There's no conflict of interest on this one. I don't sit on the board there. And there's no conflict of interest with me drumming up donations for places I sit on the board. Well, great. Good work, guys. You guys are like the anti-Stef Currys.

You raise some money for charity. I'm proud of you. I think that just about does it for the episode. Any final thoughts? You do the fork invented in fourth century AD? That's like, I would have thought that a fork would have come about a little earlier than that. But I don't know. I'm not, I'm not a cutlery guy.

What's your opinion of forks? I'm a fan. I love them. I'm positive. I'm pro fork. Oh, man. I think they're too good at what they do. Huh. I think like, I think eating has become like too easy.

So it's almost like too boring now. Like in Japan, you got to use freaking chopsticks. and it's hard so then you're like earning your meal a little bit more. It's hard for us. They would argue that it's better though. Right. It's what they wrong. The thing I like about a fork is that you can also cut with the side of it, you know?

It's a really versatile little instrument. I mean, I could be a fan. Maybe kill someone with one. I'm sure someone has at some point. Yeah. For sure. I think so. So yeah.

Chalk to keep a kill for for forks. There's a few different things you could do with them. Sure. Good call. I just watched something with it. Cone. You could use it as a comb. All quiet on the western front.

A guy kills himself with a fork. Yeah. There you go. Or in Pirates of the Caribbean, that one dumb, zombie pirate gets it in the eyeball. Yeah, that would have killed him maybe. He was alive. Yeah. That was a fun scene.

Mike, that was a really fun episode. I enjoyed it. Yeah. Good. Yeah. I don't know. I don't think I'll ever tell a joke that good. I know. Those are the best jokes, like the ones that, like, make you laugh, like, yourself.

That's, like, when you know you got a good one. It's, like, when you can't stop laughing at your own joke. I like to imagine he, like, he couldn't even get the joke out. He was laughing so hard already, so no one could understand him. I love that. His joke still hits. Today, too, like all three of us couldn't stop laughing. Mike does that more than listeners realize.

I think we're going to, like, say something that cracks himself up, and they just has to, like, leave the mic for a bit. It's so stupid. I'm never changing, though. Okay, well, thanks for listening. Thanks for, I'm glad you knew enough about that story, that first story that you could kind of shed some light on. What may or may not have been happening.

I've done the most cursory little glance at it. Because it came up when people were talking about the recent orca incidents that I did some research into it. And that was like something I was directed to. But I'm really glad you dove into it because it was really fun. Thanks everyone for listening to. And that's it for me. You guys want to, you guys probably want to say bye and I love you and all that stuff. Love you.

Fuck off, Mike. See, yeah.