Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - Tiger Shark vs. Roddy, The Surfer of Steel

Episode Date: January 6, 2025

In 1993, Roddy Lewis went out looking for the perfect wave to surf off the coast of Maui but found much more than he bargained for below the surface of the water. The guys then wrap up with some talks about the start of a new year, which sees Jeff coming up with a novel but ultimately benevolent new year's resolution. Watch this episode here: https://youtu.be/uY_gTAePR7c ~~ To advertise on the show, contact us! ~~ Tooth & Claw is brought to you by QCODE. Support the show and get access to an extensive library of exclusive episodes like this by supporting the show on Patreon or joining the Grizzly Club on Apple Podcasts. For the latest updates on the show and all things wildlife, follow us at toothandclawpod.com and social:  Instagram: @ToothandClawPodcast Twitter: @ToothandClawPod Wes: @GrizKid Jeff: @jefe_larson Mike: @mikey3ds Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Register today at Richfield, Utah.com. Hello everyone. Welcome to Tooth and Claw podcast. We have our bear biologist, Wes Larson, his field tech and brother, Jeff Larson. And we got Mike Smith, who needs no introduction. Because he doesn't really have anything worth mentioning. No credentials, no bona fide. Instagram famous Mike Smith. Mike does probably have the biggest following on Instagram for someone who's literally never put out a single thing of. content. I'd be curious. No stories, no posts. Our first episode ever with no Jimmy Carter in the world.

Yep. Still unclear if a bear got him, shark got him, or none of the above. Yeah. He probably OD'd, you know, on Coke or something. Yeah. That's my dog. Vax. Too bad.

Seemed like a good guy. Yeah. I think all presidents are bad, but I think of our presidents in our lifetime, he was one of the better ones. I just kept seeing pictures of him building houses for people. And I was like, yeah, that's a nice guy behavior. I don't know. I'm personally.

I kind of feel like I read a tweet that I agree with. I feel like he was the president that tried to make up for all the bad stuff he did as president afterward. With all the habitat for humanity and like solidarity with different oppressed cultures and stuff. I thought he was great with that. But still, you know, if you're an American president, you're doing some bad stuff. You're just going to. One less listener for us. Yeah.

We're going to miss those, that data, those listens. Oh, Jimmy. RIP, dude. RIP. Spike, you can't shark attacks, Wes. I think you won the tattoo bet. Really? I looked at, what's it called, Shark Tracker website.

And it said 76 this year and 83 last year. Unless we're counting Jimmy, then I might get one. Yeah, we don't know. yet if he was killed by a shark. We're not, we when we made that debt, we said what the data is and it's the International Shark Attack File.

And they don't come out with their data until a few months out. So they have their 2023 data still, but not their 20s. Oh, so I'm not done for yet. No, and I kind of think you're going to win after looking at 2023 and what 20204 was tracking.

Are you going to pay up? Oh yeah, I'll get it. I'll do it. Are you going to your face? right? That was the bet. No. I'd go, like, neck is the closest to my face. Neck tattoos are cool. I like neck tattoos.

There's that guy we saw in, on one of our trips that had, like, a tattoo on his head. He, like, shaved his head and had, like, a shark with a gun on it. You remember that? That was sweet. I remember that. Yeah. I think we were in Africa when we saw that guy somewhere in Africa. It's like South Africa, I think.

Well, Jeff, you spoiled everything by saying it's a shark attack this week, but it is. Your pillow behind you also spoiled it. Yeah. I mean, you have a shark eating a guy's arm in your background. I do. I do. I think that's a little unfair. That's a good point.

You're right. I probably spoiled it first. It's been a minute since we've done a shark attack. And I was kind of getting tired of talking about mammals. So I really wanted to do a shark to start out. out 2025. And when I was a kid, right before we went to, so me and Jeff have family that live in Hawaii. Our cousins are half Hawaiian. Our aunt moved there in college and just stayed, married a Hawaiian guy. And the first time that we went, my mom bought me a book right beforehand called

Shark Bites by Greg Ambrose. And it has all these different shark attack stories. And a lot of them are in Hawaii. And it was like a really good move on her part, but also a really bad move because I was pretty terrified when I was in the water, but I also, it fueled my passion for attack stories and for interactions and whatnot. So I picked a story from that book for today's episode, and I'm excited about it. I think it's a fun one. It's going to be just kind of a pretty, just kind of like a classic shark attack story. There's nothing too crazy about it. That is great. Kind of a crazy move by mom, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Like you've been looking forward to go into Hawaii your life and then like, As you're going, she gives you a shark attacks book.

Yeah, it is a little crazy. And we're from Montana, so we're not used to the ocean at all. No, but I still spent every second I could in the ocean while we were there. But I was kind of always looking behind me for tiger sharks. Yeah, so this, there is one kind of interesting twist to the story that we'll get to where this victim... Are tiger sharks more tiger or shark? They're more shark than tiger. Yeah, for sure.

We'll talk about that a little bit. But yeah, that's pretty clear. Okay, so we're going to get into it. We're going to start off with a question for you guys. What do you guys think of wind surfing? I kind of think it's cooler than surfing. Not cooler. I think surfing's like, if you want to just be cool, surfing's the best.

But I think it seems more fun than surfing. Like just launching off a wave way up into the air. Yeah, and like surfing, every time I go, it's just so hard to find the right wave. There's a lot of just sitting on your board and paddling different places and wind surfing, like you don't really have to worry about that.

You just need some wind and you can cruise around. I only ever think of the intro sequence to Miami Vice, the TV show, where that guy does the sweet move where he dips his head back in the water while he's wind surfing. Oh, yeah. So sweet. I also think that it's one of those things

where Jeff was saying you have to wait for good waves a lot. But when you're windsurfing, do you have to also be waiting for good wind at the same time? I don't know how it works, but it seems like that's two factors you really got to see a perfect marriage with. You don't need good waves, though, necessarily, because you can just do it in flat water if you want. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, I guess it's comparable. For me, I think it's cool too. Our mom for a second tried to get into it.

And I remember it's really like, it's a lot of gear. and it's hard to set up and it's kind of for me to really enjoy a hobby there has to be this perfect mix of ease and fun and I think I much prefer would much prefer surfing

because I've only surfed a couple times so I can't say I'm a surfer at all but like it seems a lot nicer just to like grab your board and get in the water than to like rig your sail and deal with all this heavy equipment and everything with the wind surfing board but that's kind of where I'm at

I do think it's cool. I think it's cooler to me than kiteboarding, although kiteboarding sometimes does seem pretty sick, too. All right. Well, Roddy Lewis sure loved windsurfing. Roddy grew up in Oahu, and he did a lot of the typical ocean stuff that a lot of people do when they grow up in Hawaii. So fishing, diving, surfing, swimming, all of that. Skipping rocks. Yeah, skipping rocks.

Pretty much his whole life revolved around the ocean and the beach. but Roddy really hit his strive when he discovered windsurfing or sailboarding as some people call it and he really just loved getting air on waves but the thing that was his favorite thing about windsurfing was just ripping across the ocean as fast as possible. So when he moved to Maui he was able to find the perfect spot for windsurfing on the north shore of the island and it's this little place called Kuau or Kuau. I'm terrible pronouncing that but it's KU a Pai'u a point. It's a tiny little town that's essentially a blip on the Hana Highway, and it's one that a

lot of people would pass without ever even realizing it. But if you're a windsurfer, it's pretty likely that you've heard of this place because the wind hits the waves just right, and these perfect conditions attract windsurfers from around the world. Plus, it's really beautiful. Jeff, we drove the road to Hana. Can you kind of describe it for our audience what it's like? Yeah, we found like these vines.

and I was swinging on. I'm having fun. And then West started swinging over the car. And then he's like, swing over the car, Jeff. I was like, no. And he's like, do it. Do it. It's fun.

I was like, no. And then he's like, do it. And I did it. And then the vine snapped. And I hit my head on the car and got a concussion. So if anyone's wondering what it's like, that's what you'll get when you go there at all. No, it's beautiful.

It's like a winding road. It really is. Yeah. Black sand beaches, which I always like. Yeah, cool. There's some white sand, black sand. It's winding road through jungle. It's gorgeous.

It feels like very just kind of primitive and beautiful. Mike, have you been to Maui ever? I don't think I've ever spent. No, I've been to Maui for very briefly when I was maybe 11, so I don't remember much of it. Yeah. I guess 11-year-olds don't really have many memories. I don't especially much of it either.

Yeah. Maybe I got Kinkuth. Maybe I went down that same road. Yeah, went on the same vine, swinging on the vine. We're not the same exact vine, same tree. I'll say too with our drive on it, we found like that app or whatever where it tells you the history of what you're doing as you're doing it. And it like worked so perfectly for that road. It told us like Hawaii's.

King Maui and all this like different Hawaiian history as we were like driving through the sites and it's cool. It worked really well. So like I was saying, we've been really lucky. We have family out there and we, that family is kind of spread out. So we have family. Yeah, we're out there for a wedding. And yeah, but I loved it too.

I just thought it was gorgeous. And Roddy loved it. And even though that area that he moved to was great for waves, his favorite spot was actually at Sprecklesville, which is a cool name. The Hawaiians, I don't think, name that with their Hawaiian. No. Not traditional. It was named after a sugar cane baron.

Okay. And I tried to see if there was like an indigenous name I could use. I didn't find one, but I didn't look very hard. So at the sugar cane baron, his name was Spreckle? Spreckle. Yeah. That does last name. Anyway, so he loved this place, Sprecklesville.

And the reason he loved it is the trade wins blew just. right in over shallow water. And on the right day with the right conditions, Roddy could just absolutely rip across Sprecklesville Beach. He could go really, really fast, which is what he loved to do. He's got the need for speed. Oh, yeah, quarter mile at a time kind of guy. This episode is brought to you by Netflix.

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Live only on Netflix. Saturday, May 16th at 9 p.m. Eastern Center time, 6 p.m. Pacific time. So, Roddy would earn extra money working as a carpenter, selling fish that he caught spear fishing. And then he would spend literally all of his extra time wind surfing and surfing. He just loved being in the ocean.

He got so good at just being hella fast that he started winning local windsurfing competitions. And there was talk of him even starting to do international wind surfing speed competitions. It's a pretty taxing hobby. Yeah. Like physically windsurfing is pretty taxing. And then all the other stuff he was doing carpentry surfing is also like really physically taxing. So this dude is pretty ripped. The book described him as being a six four pillar of.

steel. So, just picture that. Picture that, but don't picture it too long, Mike. I might have to go take a break. Yeah, give me a minute. I'm picturing the silver surfer now. You know that old comic would go? Oh, yeah. Just on the surfboard, but metal. Just picturing like a steel person. Yeah, right. But you know what can pretty much bite through steel? Tiger sharks. Oh. Yeah, well, but what kind? What kind of shock? It's a tiger shark. A what? A what? We're doing that every tiger shark episode.

For sure. The northern part of Maui is prime tiger shark habitat. There's coral reefs with deep drop-offs, strong currents, lots of streams and rivers that pour into the ocean, and tons of turtles and other food. So it's also not uncommon that, like, dead livestock would get caught up in these rivers and wash out to sea. So there's just kind of a bonanza for tiger sharks in these areas. Lots of different food items that they might be able to eat.

And if you do have like a dead cow or a dead pig or something wash out in the ocean, that's a really nice meal if you're a tiger shark. Are either of you tiger sharks? No. No. Well, if you were. I've also never had a dead pig or cow. Yeah. If you were, that would be a pretty nice meal for you just so you know.

We've talked about tiger sharks quite a bit on tooth and claw, but I did want to highlight a few facts about them. I think repetition is important to learning. So a few of these are things we've talked about before. This is an animal I really want everyone to love as much as we do. They are one of the largest macro predatory sharks. There are certain articles that you might read out there that say that they can actually be the biggest because there's records of tiger sharks up to 18 feet long

and then there's these unsubstantiated records of more than 20 feet long. But the biggest macro predatory shark is a great white. they are on average longer and heavier than tiger sharks. Great hammerheads can actually be longer, but they are much thinner, slender sharks. Greenland ones, there's like a little bit of, but they don't know. Yeah, so, like Greenland, great hammerhead,

Mega Mouth, a lot of those sharks are about the same size as Tiger Sharks. Mega Mouth? Yeah, but Mega Mouth aren't macro predator sharks. How come I've never heard of what? That sounds so sweet. They got to make a movie. out of that. They look like, they have like a Pac-Man head.

They look, they have this round head. Oh, really? A huge mouth. Yeah. Cool. Check those out. But I did, I brought up the term macro predatory again, which just basically means they're eating things like larger fish, turtles, birds, the occasional mammal,

just bigger stuff. And it's a, it's a way to differentiate between these really big sharks like whale sharks, basking sharks, mega-mouth sharks that are harmless and mostly krill, plankton, and tiny fish and then sharks like great whites and tiger sharks and whatnot that are big but eat no bigger things big stuff yeah so whale sharks and basking sharks are both bigger you think that make them big the biggest if whatever's eating the biggest stuff I know it's weird that whale sharks get so big eaten but like some of the competitive eaters are kind of small too like Kobeashi's not a big guy he's a small guy yeah strong though very strong is he yeah yeah all right when you

research tiger sharks, the fact that often stands out, the first thing that you typically read is how variable their diet is. So they are really true generalists. They'll eat just about anything that they can find, even stuff that's inanimate. So, you know, we've talked about how they found like suits of armor and license plates and whatnot in Tiger sharks' bellies. Are they vegetables? Probably. They'd probably try it, you know? Yeah. But if they're eating armor and license plates, I don't see why not. But in places. like Hawaii, really tropical places, sea turtles do seem to make up a pretty substantial part of the diet of adult tiger sharks. And a big reason they can eat something like a sea turtle

and so many other things is their dentition or their teeth. Sharks that mostly eat fish, especially smaller fish, often have really slender, smooth, hook-like teeth because they bite into a fish and it catches, you know, the fish catches on those teeth. It's hard for it to get away. But sharks that can eat a lot of different things, especially marine mammals or turtles, sharks like tiger sharks are great whites, are going to have broad, larger teeth with a lot of serration. And they can use those serrations to saw through things like bone or turtle shell or whatever else might be hard for them to get through. I bet sharks look at turtles, kind of like how I look at strawberry bonbons, a real crunchy outer shell. But then you get into the

gooey inside and it's man so good. I love strawberry bun buns. Uh, so good, dude. Like people call him grandma candy, but when I see him, I'm just like, oh, I blow my pockets up with those things. Call me a grandma then. I don't mind. Yeah, we'll do it. All right. So they use this saw-like technique for larger prey or prey with protection like a turtle. At the root, their teeth are almost as broad as a great white shark's tooth, but they're shorter and more slender at the top. And each tooth, is heavily serrated with a sideways pointing tip. So they, I think of all the shark teeth, they have kind of one of the more distinctive teeth, and those tips point different directions based on what side of the jaw they're on.

So it really is like a saw, and they're really good at sawing through things with their teeth. So we've talked about this a lot, but when it comes to attacks on humans, they are in the big three of sharks. They're the number one or number two species implicated in attacks worldwide. And then I want to do a big disclaimer here, and I think we've done this with both our Bullshark and our Tiger Shark episodes. I think Bull sharks probably bite more people than Tiger Sharks worldwide. But Tiger Sharks are a very distinctive looking shark. They have those stripes that give them their name.

They have this really broad kind of square head. So often when someone gets bit by a tiger shark, they know it was a tiger shark. Whereas bull sharks are much more kind of Classic looking Requiem sharks They just look like, you know, if you were to say, draw me a shark Like you're going to draw a shark that probably looks like a bull shark And there are a lot of bites that people don't know the species So they don't get attributed to any species

And I think a lot of those are probably bull sharks So I think if those actually got put in the bull shark category They probably take that number two spot in my opinion Yeah Controversial. It is controversial. Number two spot. Yeah.

So we've done a lot of tiger shark biology, so I'm not going to go into too much more. But I do want to dive in to a little bit of their importance to the Hawaiian culture, to Hawaiian theology and Hawaiian mythology. Oh, cool. I'm interested, Wes. Mike Perthoff. Finally you got me after four years. So one of the things we should talk about is the concept of Amakua. So Amakua is.

basically this idea that your ancestors or relatives may inhabit different living or even inanimate things from nature after they pass. So native Hawaiian families often have an amicua and then individual people sometimes have one too. So you might have a family amicua and then an individual amicua. And I might be like slightly mispronouncing that one, but that's one I at least looked up how to pronounce it. Amacua can be fish, reptiles, birds, plants. they can even be lava rock

and tiger sharks are actually a pretty common amicua for people in Hawaii. I reached out to our Hawaiian cousins to ask if they have an amicua and they said they didn't think they did but they might. I think they're kind of maybe a little bit more separated from the theology part of their culture

so that maybe wasn't a big thing for them. But I don't know. I don't want to speak to that too much. Jeff's would be a Mick Ribb. Yeah, do you think it Tiger Shark would eat a McRib with their variable diet? They probably doubt even though. They can't saw through it with those teeth. No, I guess they're not that hard.

They're just disgusting. Anyway, when a relative passes and becomes an amicua, they often can provide guidance or warnings through that living being. So, for example, this is obviously an example that's like disnified and in popular culture and not completely true to this concept. But in the movie Moana, if you guys have seen Moana, her grandma turns into like a manoray after she passes and helps guide her to her purpose.

And that was an example of the idea of an Amakua. That's cool. I like that a lot. I think it's a really beautiful thing to believe in. Having something in nature that's your personal guardian that's trying to help you through life, I really, really like that idea. I think it's really neat. It's interesting that they choose.

tiger shark so much though. Yeah. Because it's like they bite your arm off. Well, that's what I was just about to get into. Hawaiian gods are often, there's a lot of Hawaiian gods that are shark gods. Grandma bit my arm off. What the hell? Or they can shape shift into sharks.

And so because of that, there's, there has been a lot of like. What if Jimmy Carter turned into a Greenland shark? Yeah. And he went from being like a hundred years old. to like 300 years old. Yeah. I like that. He kind of looked like one at the end.

Anyway, because of this, there's so many examples of sharks woven through theology and deity and mythology, there is a really high level of respect and reverence for sharks in Native Hawaiian culture. And the most prominent of their shark gods

is Kamoho Ali'i. Kamoho Ali'i is a powerful but benevolent god. He was often seen as responsible for guiding lost ships back home after they provided him with some kind of offering, which was either like fish or kava or something. And it's often thought that he along with his sister, Pele, who is the fire goddess, were responsible for guiding the first Hawaiians from the mainland to the islands. So this is like in the pantheon of Hawaiian, of indigenous Hawaiian gods, like he's up there.

He's like one of the main gods. and like lots of gods and lots of different cultures, he'd sometimes turn into a human when he's feeling a little mischievous and he would go to shore and he would take a wife and bear children with them. But he would always warn his wives not to feed their children any kind of animal flesh

because if they did, they would turn into man-eaters. So it's kind of like a gremlin's situation. But part of the overall deal with Kamaho Alii is that people need to leave sharks alone in order to kind of stay in his good graces. And indigenous Hawaiians have always been on the forefront of shark conservation. And they understood that there was situations

that you could put yourself into where you're tempting that animal. And if you avoid those situations, they're not really that dangerous. They knew that. And they avoided those situations. There really weren't that many shark attacks. Like dressing up like a seal and swimming out in the ocean.

Yeah, exactly. They avoided doing that for the last part. Choice Hotels gets you more of what you value. Comfort in. It's calling your name. Save on the stay. Oh, and free waffles are yours to claim. Book direct at storeshoutels.com.

So one evening, Roddy is catching some waves on his windsurfing rig near a local bird sanctuary. He got pretty caught up on just how good the conditions were and didn't really even notice that the sun had set behind the big, steep green mountains that Hawaii is famous for. And it was starting to get pretty dark. He just launched his self way up on a huge wave. He's way up in the air. We know you're really in this zone. You don't even notice it's dark.

Yeah. But when he's way up in the air, he looks down and he sees this intimidating dark shape of a huge tiger shark, one that he thought was probably close to 20 feet long, which probably wasn't 20 feet long, but, you know, we've all been there with. It looked huge. Yeah. When you're scared and it's dark, I understand. Right. And his head was about the same width as his windsurfing board. So a really big shark. And he's actually on a trajectory back down to fall right on top of the shark. But he manages to do some like aerial acrobatics and miss it.

Wow. Sick. And he can no longer see it in the dark water. But it really hit him just how risky he was or how big of a risk he was taking. out that late all alone, and he caught a strong wind and raced back into the beach. It takes a few days. He's thinking about this shark, and he's trying to convince himself it's not as big as it was, or even convince himself it wasn't even there. But he's talking to a fisherman friend, and he kind of casually mentions the shark, and the fisherman says, oh, yeah, me and my friends, when we go out in that bay in our canoes,

sometimes we're shadowed by a huge tiger shark. So, you kind of, you know, cements that he probably probably. did see it. He's admittedly a bit jumpy for a little while, but it doesn't keep him out of the ocean. He and his friend even rode across the channel between the Big Island and Maui on their windsurfing ports, which is pretty nuts. But in March 1993, just mere months before Jurassic Park would arrive in theaters, Roddy has an experience that would deeply challenge his undying love for the ocean. Megalodon. Yeah, not a megalodon.

On that particular day, Roddy's out with his friend John, and they were looking just to do some normal surfing. So not when surfing, they're just surfing. And you guys, what excites surfers more than anything? What gets them super stoked? Swells. Swells. You nailed it. Dude, a sick swell is like, ugh.

It's like cocaine for Jimmy Carter. It's like the same thing. Dude. If you watch. If you watch. Watch a 100-foot wave on HBO Max. They don't travel the world for a sick swell. I love that documentary.

Philip Glass soundtrack. Ah, beautiful. All right. Well, it's not, it's like a TV show. It's a documentary series. Yeah. Okay, yeah. All right.

So, yeah, a big old swell. And there's a monster northern swell that's hitting the north shore of Maui. And Roddy and John pack up their boards, and they set out to try and find the best beach with the best waves. but as they go to spot after spot on the Hana Highway they find that trade winds are hitting these waves and they're making them really choppy and trashy. So they decide to head for Hono Manu Bay

where there's some big steep mountains that might block the wind and make the waves a little bit better. But they're still not finding the waves they're looking for. So they drive up further to Wailua Bay where they see some friends that are out surfing like five-foot waves. It's already three in the afternoon, so they just decide to take what they can get. They go out, they park the van, grab their boards, head out in the water.

But because this is really the only good spot that has waves that aren't getting destroyed by wind, there's a lot of surfers in the water. And after a little bit of surfing, both Roddy and John decide that they've had enough. But as they're talking, they're realizing that they had heard about this spot called Paradise, which was in the bay just to the side of Wailua Bay. And apparently at that spot, there was really amazing waves and also really amazing waves and also really incredible scenery. But the problem with Paradise, and probably the reason they hadn't been there, it's kind of difficult to get to. You either had to hike about 25 minutes through some

dense forest on this kind of old trail, or you could paddle around the bay around this point to get to the other bay in your surfboard. And the hike took about 25 minutes, the paddle took about half that long. So Roddy and John just decided, oh, we'll just paddle around this headland and get into this bay. So as they pass the point, they could see why it's called Paradise. It sits nestled up against these beautiful green mountains. There's two large waterfalls cascading down, these really steep, beautiful slopes, and there's this incredible valley that holds these two large streams that empty into the bay and crisscross a beautiful palm-line beach. And both Roddy and John agree this is the most incredible bay they'd ever seen

in Hawaii. To add to all this perfection, on the other side of the bay, they could see set after set, a beautiful perfect waves that pitched out into perfect tubes and would take the surfer all the way up onto the beach. It was just a heavenly spot. What they didn't notice, however, was that the handful of locals that had been surfing in Paradise were all standing on the beach rather than riding these perfect waves. Hmm. Maybe something in the water.

As they paddled toward the waves, they enter a part of the bay where these big rivers run into the ocean, and they're actually running really full from a recent rainstorm, and they're suddenly surrounded by murky water, floating sticks, leaves, and lots of other debris. And Roddy immediately knew this is really sharky water. The light's also kind of starting to fade, and he suddenly realizes that he and John are really tempting fate here. And the image of this huge shark that he had recently seen flashes through his head,

but he pushes it away. He had spent pretty much his entire life in Hawaiian one, waters. These waves are way too great for him to get paranoid now. So Roddy had just picked up his pace and was paddling harder toward the waves when something slams into his side in the dark water and his leg erupted in unbearable pressure and pain. Before he could even look back, he had the sensation of the tissue and the meat of his right calf being torn away from his body and he could feel teeth making contact with the bones of his leg. So as he looked back toward his leg, the shadowy tiger shark that had been haunting the back of his mind for weeks

suddenly was a very real animal. And I'm shaking its head back and forth, using those very specific, very saw-like teeth to saw through the muscle and the bones of his leg. SMHing. The shark is also pulling on Roddy, so he has a death grip on his surfboard, and he knew if he let go, the shark would pull him underwater, where he then has to struggle to breathe and also struggle against the shark. So he's grabbing his surfboard so hard

that he actually made dents into the hard material of his surfboard with his feet. Oh, that's crazy. He is a man of steel. All right, so the shark adjusted its grip and bit down further up on Roddy's leg and started shaking him violently

in an effort to remove his leg and dislodge him from the surfboard. And it was pretty close to doing both of those things. They, again, if your teeth are built for sawing through turdice, shells, we're not much compared to that. You know, it's not hard for a tiger shark to bite through our flesh, obviously, and then our bones aren't going to take them very long either.

But now, the shark's head was essentially in Roddy's lap, and this 35-year-old decided to put that 6-4 pillar of steel body to work. You channeled a lot of that fear and anger into a punch. I just think of, like, empowering up. What's the classic Dragon Balls? Yeah, the old Goku. Kami-ha. Yeah, no.

But he puts it all into a punch and he hits this shark so hard on the side of his head that he actually tore a tendon in his hand. Wow. But luckily for Roddy, this punch did the trick. The shark releases its grip and disappears into the murky water while he sat on a surfboard in shock, staring at the spot where this huge fish had just been. So Roddy's friend John had seen this attack and he had already started paddling for shore. And Roddy's now paddling behind him.

And he's really paddling fast in an effort to. to get away from the shark. And the thing that described in the book that it would be really scary is he had seen his leg disappear into the shark's mouth, but he hadn't really seen what had happened to his leg yet. And as he's paddling, he's just thinking, do I still have a foot?

Like, is my foot still there or did it eat my foot? And he has no idea. Yeah, that's crazy. And the tension and the, you know, not knowing gets to him to where he finally stops paddling for a second and pulls his leg out of the water so he can look at it. And he's relieved to see that he does still have a foot, but he's pretty nervous to see that his calf has just been absolutely shredded.

He can see the bone. He can see everything like it is shredded. So he knew the shark might still be behind him, especially because there's so much blood in the water at this point. So he starts paddling again, and he feels this incredible sense of relief when his board hits the sand and the rocks on the beach. He wasn't sure he'd be able to watch.

lock on his leg, but he gets up and he tries. And each time he takes a step, just a river of blood gushes out of his right leg. He can see his bone, you can see this ripped up calf, and he knows that he's going to lose too much blood if he keeps trying this. So he grabs his surf leash, and he ties a makeshift tourniquet above his knee to hopefully control some of this blood loss.

Oh, wow. And there's two local Wailua surfers that rush out to help him. One of them sees what happened. and he runs down the trail to call for help. And the other sits with Roddy and does something that's actually really smart that I hadn't thought about. He adjusted his tourniquet every so often, like about every 10 minutes, he lets a little blood into his leg. And that's just to make sure that that really damaged tissue doesn't just completely die when there's no more blood going in at all. Yeah, interesting.

Yeah. And I don't know if that's good medical advice or not, but to me it seemed smart. It takes the helicopter about 90 minutes to get to Roddy the entire time he's just pretext. and hoping that he doesn't die, they pick him up and rush him to the hospital where he would end up needing five surgeries, more than 200 staples, and lots of internal sutures

to repair two 14-inch gashes on his right leg and a 4-inch gash on his left leg. When you think about it, 14 inches, like that's a big gash. Huge. Yeah. Right now, everyone out there, put your fingers out to try and say

about what 14 inches is, and it's pretty big. I mean, that's not bad. Jeff, 14 inches should be pretty easy for you to figure out. I mean, it's about like one 500th of a bus. 500? No. It'd be a huge box.

And go up and down. Okay, I see it. Like if there's just a gash in a 14 inch gash in the bus, that takes out one 500th of it. You can keep going, West. I'm just going to pull up a calculator real quick. No, I, I'm, that would be like a, like a 550 foot bus. That's what I wanted to figure. No, I'm saying if it was just lengthwise.

A 7,000. Yeah, I think you did a good job clearing that up, Jeff. That's great. The bus, the bus category gets more and more convoluted now that it can be three dimensions. X, Y, and Z. Yeah. All right. I don't know.

It's pretty clear to me, guys. All right. There's a gash in the bus. It'd be one 500th. You operate on a higher level than us. He has a gash in his leg. So during all these surgeries, during all these surgeries,

doctors would actually pull a broken shark tooth, tiger shark tooth from his ankle bone, and they give it to Roddy after he woke up. Oh, nice. Which is a cool souvenir. Doctors gave me part of my ankle bone, which I was like, what do I do with this after?

Did they say eat it? Were they like eat it and it'll go back to where it's supposed to be? Didn't feel like throwing it away. So here you go. Yeah. You still have it? I think I lost it at my parents' house some way. Huh.

I bet you they threw it away. All right. So Roddy is in a lot of pain during his recovery in the hospital. But the thing that actually he said bothered in the most was that the, and this is where it kind of zigs a little bit from our typical attack story, the bite story. the thing that bothered them the most was that the state shark task force who was largely responsible for responding to shark attacks

had decided not to do anything about the shark largely due to pressure from locals that didn't want the shark killed and because Roddy had really ignored a lot of factors that can make a shark attack more likely but I think again where it differs is usually people are like oh this was an animal being an animal

don't do anything to it and he was like I want the shark dead And I think at the time, this was still a time where maybe a lot of shark biology wasn't very well known to the public. And surfers had heard about a number of bites in the area and they kind of thought that things were getting worse. And again, I think it's that phenomenon that you get where a shark bite story does some numbers for journalists. So they decide to keep reporting on them when it's not that the rates are. changing. It's that it's interesting news to people because it's already been in the news. And I think that's kind of what had been happening in the area. And Roddy felt pretty strongly that

there was too many sharks and that this shark was a menace. Well, and these experts. I think of our night of the grizzly episode a lot with this, whereas like they thought a grizzly bear might kill a group of 30 of them because it's like, they viewed it as one grizzly bear attacking someone. That's a bad bad. bear that just wants to kill people. Right. And that was like their mindset. This is like maybe he was thinking like this is a bad shark that just wants to kill people,

you know? Yeah. Like if we get rid of the shark, it's going to make things safe again. And we know that's not the case. And these experts pointed out that the water was murkier than normal because of recent storms. And Roddy and John knew that as they're paddling through it. Something they didn't know is that a dead cow and a dead pig had been washed out into the

which probably brought in a number of sharks. Both. Yeah. And they also pointed out that John and Roddy should have noticed that no one else was surfing. And that should have been enough to discourage them from going out. Because that often means that something is wrong. You know, someone saw something or their strong currents or something is off. Yeah.

If the waves are so good that they're just blown away by them, but nobody else is surfing them, something weird is going on. Right. Exactly. And finally, the shark attack force or whatever said that the ocean was too rough to go out to anyway and set hooks. And by the time they were able to go out there and set these hooks, the responsible shark could very well be miles away. You know, it could be the big island for all they knew. But in his mind, it's like the same shark that he's been seeing. And I think this was the right decision.

Personally, I think there's certain times where wildlife does kind of come into our space. and does something so out of the ordinary that removing that animal is probably the right decision or if you know like when a bear is predatory it creates a liability for further things but with sharks it's like we are going the New Jersey shark where it was like in the rivers it's like yeah yeah yeah that kind of makes more sense

but for the most part with sharks like we're going into an environment that we mostly don't belong in at all you know and I think that's just kind of the risk you have to take especially in places where you know there are sharks like tiger sharks. Like if a shark breaks into your house, by all means you can kill it or hurt it. So if we break into their house, like it should be the same rules. Right. Right.

That's really good logic. No, I don't disagree with that. I'm not being sarcastic. Me neither. So for me, I agree with what they said, but Roddy really didn't. He didn't think this was the right decision. and it seems like he did a fair amount of complaining about this, and he finally convinced one of the surfers that had rescued him,

as well as a local Hawaiian community leader, to go out and hunt for this shark. And this Hawaiian guy believes strongly in this concept of Amakua and that sharks were often Amakua, but he felt so confident that this particular shark was not Amakua, not a guardian, that he thought it was okay to remove it in order to appease Rottie and some of the other public that was paranoid after this attack.

So they went out and baited some floating lines with cow liver. And sure enough, the next morning, they found a dead 10-foot tiger shark on the beach tangled in these lines. And they hacked off the tail of the shark and gave it to Roddy. And he produced the tooth that he had had to. And doctors kind of somewhat matched this to the shark. But to be honest, like they have lots of different sizes of teeth in their mouths. and teeth break all the time.

It's pretty hard for me to say like, oh yeah, this is like a good way to match up a shark. It's not. I don't think you can say this was the shark is what I'm trying to say. It's possible. But with dead animals floating out there in the water,

there's probably half a dozen tiger sharks in the area, if not more. So yeah, I don't love this personally. And I think the Hawaiian guy kind of got convinced, but he did even say in the book, he's like, if this was the wrong move, it's going to come back to me. Kind of like a karma thing almost.

So a funny thing kind of to end this is when people got upset with Roddy and told him that killing a single shark wasn't going to change anything, he had an answer ready to go. And this is exactly what he would tell them when they said that to him. One day, Stormy sees toss thousands of starfish onto a beach. Later, a boy walking along the shore came upon the starfish and tossed one back into the ocean. No. An old man had been watching the deed, railed at the boy, telling him that he was wasting his time. There are thousands of starfish, the old man said, and you can't possibly make a difference. The boy calmly replied, I made a difference to that one.

Wow. So he gave him the starfish poem. The old Sunday school classic. If I was like, hey, man, you shouldn't have killed that shark and he told me that, I'd stop the argument. I'd be like, I don't really want to get into it. Yeah, that's true. I wanted to ask you guys if there's any explanation for how the Starfish story applies to this.

Like, I don't get it. Like killing the one shark made all the difference to Roddy? Is that what he's saying? I think it made the difference to the shark. Right? That's the one who underwent the biggest difference is now it's dead. Yeah, now it's dead. Like, my guess would be he's saying, like, even if he saves one person for,

the shark killing another person. I get it. Yeah, that makes more sense. I thought he was just saying, like, if you kill just one shark, it makes a difference to me, and that's all that matters. That's kind of how I was thinking about it. He was like a very narcissistic way of looking at this. But whatever it is, it's a stupid answer.

And if Roddy's out there, I can't imagine the trauma of being attacked by a tiger shark. I don't think any of us really can. I think you can't really put yourself in someone's shoes until you've had the same experience. I can't imagine it. Yeah, sure. But I mean, I can't know what it's like. You can also imagine a 600 foot long bus apparently.

So your imagination knows no bounds. So I'm not going to like, I'm not going to judge him too harshly. This is also a different time in the world where I think we viewed wildlife as more, a little bit more antagonistically than we do now, which is something I think is really changed for the positive. time. But I, yeah, I don't think, I think when we're attacked by animals and it's not outside their natural behavior, personally, I think we need to leave them because I think that's just part of the beautiful risk of being human in a world that's still wild. Those are nice sentiments to end that on with. Yeah. All right. So we'll move to our categories. You should have been wearing a turtle show. Yeah, maybe work out a little more, Roddy, actually be

steal next time. Yeah. I've been thinking a lot about the movie Saw this whole episode and how it would have been nice for those guys to have a tiger shark in that little bathroom with them. Yeah. Like if Jigsaw were a nice guy, he would have left a tiger shark in there to make things a little easier. He's like, my next, my next trap.

Did Rodney get back to windsurfing? Roddy. Roddy. That's a good question. So in the book, it actually said that he did, but that it wasn't near. as easy as it used to be for him. He didn't have full movement of his foot. And he still windsurfed.

And he kind of, it was really hard for him for a while. And then one day he saw a guy that was like on two crutches or something and could hardly do anything. And he was like, oh, I'm not as bad as that guy. And that made him feel better. I'm really harsh realities. Recapping that in like not a great way. But I think we could poke holes in that too.

But we probably have all done that. in our heads, so yeah. Lots of places can expose you to identity theft. Oh, no. That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats to your identity, which is way more than anyone can do on their own. If we find anything suspicious,

like new loans or changes to your financial accounts, we alert you right away, all through text, phone, email, or the LifeLock app. Get the alerts that could make all the difference. Save up to 40% your first year at LifeLock.com slash special offer terms apply all right well we'll move on to categories the first one that i wanted to ask you guys is your favorite media that's either set or filmed in hawaii and i think just for the sake of it let's get rid of Jurassic Park because we all know it's filmed there it's all of like it's all in our

top movies so maybe we don't count that so outside of Jurassic Park i'm going to go with leo and stitch i think it's really underappreciated animated film it's one of my favorite That was mine too. It's just so, it's all three of us are going Lilo and Stitch? Is that what's happening? I haven't even ever seen it. Oh, really? Oh, wow.

Yeah. It's fun. I like it too because the animation's really beautiful and it feels, for me, at least, my short time that I've spent in the Hawaiian Islands, it feels like it nails kind of the vibe of the Hawaiian Islands really well. So I think that's a good thing. Yeah. Yeah. Stitch it. Which one's the alien?

Lilo is Stitch. Stitch. Stitch. That makes sense. Stitch is it more alien name? Less Hawaiian than Lila, probably. Lila. Jeff, you can go next and I'll do a backup answer.

I'll go 50 first dates. What a wild idea by Adam Sandler there. Just like some lady forgets every single day and he still marries her. Yeah. And she just wakes up and doesn't know who he is. is crazy crazy plot real bizarre and he like takes her to like Antarctica too so it's like Alaska she yeah or yeah Alaska so she like she wakes up thinking she'll be in Hawaii and she's just Alaska which is like and it's just like watch this three minute video will explain everything right

that's crazy I love it is we were talking about that makes you want to go to Hawaii though we were talking about that movie the other day because Jesse rewatched it not long ago and she was like, ooh, this does not hold up well because there's the scene where he's, he's like, you don't understand. We've been like not having sex for like months and I've got blue balls or whatever. And he has to like convince her that she knows him. So she'll have like sex with him or whatever. And it's like, oh, I don't know.

But the Hawaii parts are cool though, right? Yeah, there's some cool Hawaii. The plot is cool. Oh, there's some really racist Hawaii parts in that. movie too. I love like a problematic plot. Yeah. Sure. They really win for it. Yeah. It's like such a crazy. The more I think about that movie, the more I'm like, oh man. Like Rob Schreter's role in that where he's like playing a Hawaiian. Oh. Yeah. All right. We'll go on to my

mind's way less problematic. I'm gonna pick. I'm more just wanted to talk about 50th. It is a crazy movie. I'm going to pick, have you guys ever seen the movie a perfect getaway? This is my backup. No. It's got like Timothy Oliphant, Steve Zon. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's kind of a crime thriller. Yeah, it's like a really, it's kind of a twisty crime thriller that's set in Kauai. And it's, it's really good. It's one of those movies from the 2000s that you forget about. But Steve Zon's really good in it. I really enjoy. it. Me and Jesse watched it recently and I was like, this is a fun movie. It's kind of stupid, but it's fun. So at the risk, maybe I shouldn't even say this, but it's one of those movies where there's a twist and it was so obvious to me that I was like, that cannot, that can't be what's happening here and that it ends up being exactly what's happening. So it's like a twist that goes all the way around in a full circle for me.

I agree with you. Yeah. It's like, no way. They really did just do that very obvious. thing, didn't they? I agree with you. I think when it came out, which I want to say it was like 2008 or 9 somewhere in there, it wasn't, I feel like we hadn't had enough movies like this yet where the twist was that obvious to me. So it was kind of fun still. But I think in 2025, if you watch this movie, there's a pretty good chance you'll see the

twist coming. But at the time when I saw it. Maybe not because it's so obvious. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It can't be. All right. My backup was Johnny Sunami.

Oh, Disney Channel. As far as just like nailing Hawaiian culture. Yeah. Throw a Hawaiian in some like snooty ski town. And he's just like so much cooler than everybody and like so chill. And then it really, it really gets good. Like they go in the wheel well of a plane and fly to Hawaii, like sneak into Hawaii, which insane move

and then someone in Chicago just tried to do that go in the wheel well to fly to Hawaii they died yeah that kills you whoa

yeah but Johnny tsunami did it and then they like taught his new Colorado friend how to surf it's just a great movie the grandpa

learned slang and stuff is that what happens that old guy so cool I love him all right I wanted to bring back anaconda scale

for this episode It's been a while since we've done this, but I wanted you guys to say who from the movie Anaconda, the seminal masterpiece, do you guys think is most like Roddy Lewis? I think I'm going to say John Voight. Okay.

A little bit of John Voight. Just like kind of holding a weird grudge at there trying to, after the fact, kill the snake. I don't know. I'm not going to cement that as my choice, but I'm going to kick off the conversation there. Yeah, I think I would go Owen.

Okay. What's your reasoning? Just kind of like, wants to have a good time. Yeah. Like that's his main goal in life is just have a good time. But I don't think Owen Wilson would have had any problem killing a snake that just bit him either. Yeah. Sure.

I went with the main scientist that gets bit by the wasp in his throat. What's that actor's name again? He was the guy that was supposed to be in back to the future. Stoltz. Eric Stoltz. Because I don't think Roddy obviously didn't have. have like bad intentions, I think he just kind of got in over his head in a bad situation and maybe should have been paying more attention to signs and stuff around him,

uh, ended up paying the price for it. The scientist got bit in the throat or stung in the throat by a bug. Yeah, because, um, John Boyt puts it in his regulator when he goes underwater. Oh, yeah. But that guy, he was also just kind of like, yeah, I'll do it. I'll jump in the Amazon and free the propeller. He was just a little overconfident, I think. And that's what I thought about.

Dr. Stephen Kale, that's your guy. Oh, yeah. Stephen Kale. Looked that up real quick. We got to do a screening of that, like rent out a theater hall. Invite everyone over. All right. New category alert.

This one's called Let's Argue. It's a category we came up with, where we picked something that a listener said and we argue with it. So after our year-end episode, listener and patron Jessica wanted to know what we thought

of the movie War of the Roherim or Roherom Jessica had seen it and really liked it so let's argue with Jessica about that movie

What did you guys think of War of the Roheum How do you say that Roherom? Roherom Yeah Roherom Rohan If you guys are going to go

after it I think I'll I think I would always take the other side is how I feel about it. Like if someone just loves it, I'll be like, I'll throw water on that. Like, I don't know if you should just absolutely love this movie. But then like if someone wants to complain about it, I thought it's good enough to exist, I guess is what I'm saying. I thought it was really boring was my problem.

I just, I thought the animation was boring. I thought the story was like really run of the mill. every medieval story ever. I just, there was nothing that interesting about it. And it takes kind of all the fun things of Tolkien's world for me, which are all these like different races and magic and everything and kind of removes them all for this really insular story about a clash in Rohan, which in my opinion is the most boring of all the kind of kingdoms in Tolkien's world.

And I just didn't really care for it. I just thought it was boring. Yeah, I didn't absolutely. hate it. And I'm not going to say anyone should change their mind because of what we're saying, but there was some just really strange things about especially the animation to me. I kept thinking about, and people who know are going to really understand what I'm saying here, but there are a couple of old Zelda games on the CDI system where it's this weird mix of overanimation and under animation, where it's like a lot of weird gesturing and movement, but to like not really any effect.

And sometimes there's weird stills and like lack of movement, but one central figure is like really going for it a lot. It was really distracting to me. And again, like Wes said, I think the story is just very rote. I think the characters had a lot of potential. I liked the main. Me too. I forget what her name was. I thought she was a really compelling character.

They just didn't really do anything interesting with her. Yeah. It kind of just felt like outside of expectations. Worse two towers. They like copied even like. Gandoff's saving the day type of thing. Like they just completely regained it. There was a lot of nods that were like very obvious.

Yeah. Yeah. I liked how the orcs looked in it quite a bit, even though they're small part. And then big spoiler here. So skip ahead if you want to watch it without any spoiler. But I was like pretty out on it and pretty out on the animation and everything. until both the sons got killed. And then I was like, oh, this is kind of interesting.

Yeah, sure. Because, like, they were cool and, like, they took them out pretty early, so it gave you reason to care, I feel like. Yeah, you kind of thought one of them was going to make it at least. Yeah. Yeah, I didn't, I didn't, like, hate it. It's not like I walked out of it being like,

that was a travesty, but it's not one I'm ever going to watch again. So, yeah. I like the moment where, uh, what's the king's name? where he died on his feet just frozen in a block of ice. That was sick, dude. I was like, oh, there we go.

That's like a cool moment of storytelling. If there was more of that, I don't know, it's like easy for us to say on the outside looking in, like, just do more cool stuff like that. It's kind of hard to do cool new stuff at this point, but it's just pretty uninspired. I liked it more than Rings of Power. I think I'll agree with you on that one.

I like Rings of Power a lot more than it. There's parts of Rings of Power. that I like find very exhilarating and fun. It's like real up and down for me. And I just, this one was just like a flat line. I just never really felt that engaged in it. Well, your theater probably didn't have any music.

It did. Yeah. The theater in Missoula is and always the best, but it was good on this one. All right. So next question, next category. We talk a lot about sharks on this podcast.

and I think we've talked a lot about our favorite species, but I'm kind of curious to hear your top three right now. And I think I can go first because I think mine are pretty, well, the first two are pretty obvious. It's a great white. I think I could guess yours. Okay. Oh, I don't think you'll guess the third actually.

But go ahead, try and guess. Okay. I'm going to go great white and then whale shark. Correct. And then great hammerhead shark. Oh, you did get it. Whoa. Nice.

Nice. Yeah. Is it because I just saw one in Cancun? Because you just saw one and then you wanted us to say, I taught three sharks. I was like, he's going to want to talk about hammering. That's so predictable. Yeah. Yeah, you got him.

Great Hammerheads number three right now. I've read you like a book, dude. I'm going to go Great White Hammerhead, and I can't get the Mako shark out of my mind, Maco, ever since you. We did an episode like a year and a half ago. They are cool sharks. And I just couldn't. I looked at pictures of them and I was just scrolling. and through Google images for like 15 minutes

just because I think they're so beautiful and sleek and almost metallic looking. I just think they're so cool. Big, cool eyes. What shark do you most want to see if you're diving or that you haven't seen? That I haven't seen? Both of you.

A tiger or oceanic white tip. One of those two. I guess, I don't know, if you don't count what we did in the cage in Australia, I'd love to see a great white shark just while diving, you know, out of constraints, but... I count that.

Okay, we'll go with that then. No, I count, well, I just count that we saw great white sharks. Oh, okay. That's not really diving, but whatever, I get what you're saying. Have you seen a great hammerhead mic? I have, yeah. Okay.

And I've seen White Tip. I'll just, I'll go with, I guess I'll go Tiger Shark. I've never seen one while diving. You haven't seen an ocean. I really want to see a leopard shark. Like, pictures of leopard sharks. They look so cool.

That's easy. We should just go. to La Jolla sometime and we'll find you a bunch of I've tried there. I didn't see shit. All right. I'm still mad about it. I would go whale shark number one, then Great White, and then Hammerhead.

So same as West, just different order. A lot of overlap. Cool thing about whale sharks. I've been telling people this on my cameos. I told a person this on my cameo, but they sleep upside down because Great White sharks will hunt them at night. and then when the Great Whites look up,

the spots on whale sharks will look like the stars. So then they sleep upside down. I don't know if that's a real one. I don't know if you should keep giving that fact to people. Yeah. Why do they have spots on them? Pretty sure that's not the case. I think it's for the dappled sunlight that's coming down from the top.

So if something's over them and it looks down, they're pretty hard to see actually. Yeah, I don't know, but it's not stars, it's not the stars, I'm sure of that. So yeah, don't give that fact to people as an actual fact. Yeah. All right. Next category, two New Year resolutions

that you guys have. I don't want to nuke anyone this year. Okay, that's not nuke in personally. Or just like my country, just like no nukes. whatever I can do, no nukes in 2025. All right. We'll check back in with you on that one next year, I guess.

Let's each do one and one. Swing back. Okay, I'll do. I want to write in my journal every night. I like that. It's a good one. One that I came up with is I'm going to really work on leaving my phone when I go into places this year. So like leaving it in my car or leaving it at home.

if I'm going like grocery shopping or if I'm going to a movie or whatever. I just, I really, I don't feel like I'm that attached to my phone as far as someone my age, but I want to become less so even. So I just kind of want to start leaving it a lot more. Nice. Mike, don't you like need to do stuff to be able to write in the journal? Oh, man. That's the great thing about journaling is that the less you do, the less you have to write.

And it makes it really easy. You're just like, I was on Twitch today And someone did like a pepper the frog I hadn't seen yet Exactly It's big Dude If someone, if we

You or our country Nukk somebody That's gonna be a real easy journal entry for me That's like Yeah Jeff didn't do his resolution I'm trying not to Yeah All right what's your second one

I like the idea that you have to restrain yourself from doing it like it's a real problem you have. Just this year. Yeah, right. You really struggled with that one last year. Yeah. What's number two for you, Jeff? I don't want to set too many goals for myself.

I'll do that. This year. Okay. That's a good one. Cool. Strong, strong year for Jeff coming up here. So a friend and I, Jeff and I, I guess you're kind of friends with them too but Nick he and I are going to get the N5 Japanese language proficiency test under our belts

I think that's going to be a fun little project to work on with him and then we'll go back and visit together since he married his wife is Japanese and they love traveling over there too and I want to go back so it's going to be fun cool I am going to try and swim a lot more so like go to the gym and swim in the pool because I think it's probably the workout that I feel the best afterward. Like, I feel like I just did something that really woke me up that makes me feel healthier, happier. So low impact on the joints too.

Yeah, low impact on joints. High impact on hair. Sometimes it can make your hair fall out a lot more, but, you know, can get a swim cap. You don't need to look cool. So just wear the swim cap. I'm going to. I bought one already. That's going to be my bangle.

People say that, but then if you watch. the competitive swimming. Like they all have pretty good heads of hair. Yeah. Phelps. Okay. Solid head of hair. Still. The Ryan Locky. That guy is hot. Lockty.

All right. Who's the new American guy? He has good hair. Yeah. The guy who kind of sucked this last year, but he's still our best guy. Oh, yeah. What is that guy's name? I forgot him since he underperformed so badly. And if Jeff doesn't keep his... He's awesome.

If Jeff doesn't keep his resolution. It won't matter if I have a good head of hair or not, you know? Yeah. All right. How many, yeah, radiation I hear is bad for hair, too. Yeah. So 365 days. How many days do you want to swim?

I don't know. I haven't gotten that into it yet. But, like, I just want to, I want to do it more. So I always set workout goals at the beginning of the year that I'm not the best at keeping. So I'm trying to figure out. way to do that better. And I think swimming would be... I would say, just saying I want to do it more as a bad start.

Okay, I would say not wanting to nuke people is a pretty poor resolution too. Yeah. That's fair. That's not living in a glass house over there, Jeff. Oh, Caleb Dressel. That's his name. Okay. Okay, yeah.

You guys both are nuke people, I guess. I'll accomplish my goal. Are you going to accomplish years? I came up with it this morning. And all I'm saying is I haven't figured out yet the best. way to keep myself honest with it, but I'm going to. I'm going to figure that out. I'm trying to help you.

I know you are. Keep thinking you're going to turn this around on us, Jeff. It's definitely going to happen for sure. What? Make us feel bad about our resolutions while you're sitting over there. That's not what I'm doing. Not wanting to make goals for yourself. To commit.

You want me to commit. I was trying to give them to put like a number of days to it so that it's like a real goal instead to just like saying. The really hard for me with, the hard thing for me with workout goals is like the amount of travel that I do. It's really hard to keep a routine. So I'm, I don't know.

I'm trying to wrap my head around that. If anyone listening has any good ideas for keeping yourself to a set routine, feel free to send them over, you know, post them in the comments of wherever you're, you're following us. No, my,

I mean, my real one is just to like get pain free, which is just doing a ton of physical therapy. Yeah, a ton of opioids. Getting nuked. Yeah. Mike, but you swam, didn't you, like, get way into swimming this year? Are you still swimming a bunch?

A couple years ago, I was going almost every day. I've stopped since just because, I don't know, I like to cycle through different. I just get bored if I do the same thing over and over and over again. So right now I'm back just to doing body weight stuff in my top floor. I might go back to boxing. Maybe I'll go to, yeah, my brother and I started doing movie tie for a little bit, and that was like really, really fun and hard. Boxing was like one of my favorite workouts ever. For like six years, I went to a boxing gym and really liked it.

But there's not a great one where I live now. Did outside magazine calling us beefy boys make you start doing all this night? That was your wake-up call. It lines up with him like getting act. No, I started swimming like right when we started the podcast almost. Yeah. I remember you were getting in pretty good shape when you were

swimming a lot too. That actually made me think like I need to swim a bit more. Get back into it. Yeah. All right. So from our patrons, from Pat and it's a treadwell question. Pat says, hey Wes, during the grizzly man documentary, there was a bear diving deep

into the river which Timothy labeled is something along the lines is playful. Could you dive a little deeper? into what that bear was actually doing. It could have been playing, but my guess is that where that was one of the last videos he took and it was toward the end of the salmon run. And what happens a lot is the salmon

where they were running up to that lake and then dying up there, there's probably a lot of dead salmon lining the banks of that lake. And bears have been known to actually dive down really deep. Like they can dive up to like 20 feet deep to go down and get those salmon cards. So it wasn't diving nearly that deep, but that's probably what it was doing was looking for salmon carcasses on the bottom of the lake would be my guess.

Okay, this one's from Shark Geek. This one says, hey guys, on many of your episodes, you say things like species, breed, families, subspecies, etc. I understand them on a basic level, but I'm not totally sure what each means and when each is appropriate. I'm wondering if you could give us a rundown of the difference. Do you guys know much about that? No.

I'm always happy to have you correct me because I always use the wrong term. Yeah. So basically when you're like looking at this, the taxonomic stuff, species is like the most kind of defined thing. So you start at kingdom and you go all the way down to species through these different groups. And so as you move up that ladder from species up, you're adding more animals, more species. to each group. So genus is the next one up. So like, for example, let's use a tiger shark as an example.

So humans are part of kingdom, right? That's just all. Kingdom is animals. Kingdom is animalia. So like an alien came to Earth, would they be in the animal kingdom? I don't know. Probably not. I don't think we would, yeah.

But they would probably... It's kind of crazy to not be in the animal. Yeah, that's a good point. It's a good point. All right. So for example, like sharks are, their class is con dictates, which is pretty much cartilaginous fish. So fish that have cartilage as their skeleton instead of bone. And then as you move down that, you get into like their subclass, their order.

For them, their order are these like big requiem sharks or ground sharks, which is about 270 different species of sharks. then their family, which divides it up even more, and their genus. And Tiger sharks are actually the only member of their genus. They used to be more, but now they're extinct, and they're the only surviving one. And then their species, which for them is Gallio Sardocuvier. So the one that gets a little confusing for people, like humans are Homo sapien. So that's our species, Homo sapien. What gets a little confusing is when you introduce this idea of breeds,

races and subspecies. So breeds are something that we do with domesticated animals where we take a species and we breed in certain characteristics or traits into them. So, you know, we have all these different breeds of dogs that are all genetically still the same species, but they have different phonology, different physical attributes of their genes. And then subspecies is when you have an animal of the same species that is genetically different enough that it can be considered a subspecies but it still can mate with other

members of the same species. So a good example of this like with grizzly bears we talked about how the only recognized subspecies in North America is the Codiac grizzly or the Codiac brown bear but if you were to put a Codiac brown bear with a coastal brown bear they can still mate

they're still like biologically compatible but because the Kodiak is just different enough, we say it's a subspecies. So that's the difference between species and subspecies. I'm kind of getting lost in the weeds here, but that's a basic difference, just so you can understand all of that. And then race is like a human kind of thing that we contrived.

It's kind of, it would be the most similar thing you would consider that. It would be like breeds and dogs where there are these. Well, you have race and bears. What do you mean? I mean you have black bears, you have brown bears. You have brown bears. You have black and white bears. Mixed race bears.

Those are all different species. And that's not the same. Like with humans, we're all the same species. We're all genetically the same species. We don't differ enough genetically to where you would separate us. But because of different, you know, geographical things, because of climates, because of lineages,

all these different things that have happened with us over time, we do look different. And that's more of like just kind of inological differences. It's like how you have black bears that have black fur. In the eastern U.S., that's pretty much all you ever find. But in the western U.S. in Utah, they typically have brown fur. That's just, you know, part of their genes expressing themselves. All right, Jeff, you got some questions from Instagram?

Yeah. E. Thompson 17 asks, what's your favorite episode from the office? Oh, man. I really like the one where Michael gets like brought into corporate and they read his journal entries. I don't remember. It just like kills me some of the stuff he wrote in his journal that they like read in front of everyone. Do you have a favorite, Mike? I don't.

That's just not my show. I never really got into it. I like the, I like the spilling the chili. That's always kind of funny. to watch out of context. I really like The Office, but I can't say I have a favorite episode. Like, I've only, I think I've watched it all the way through like one and a half times. And I think it's so funny.

And I think especially the early seasons with where Steve Corel's in, I don't know. I really like the one where he's pretending to be a prisoner and it's, and it's being like really racist. Prison, right? Yeah. It's great when he starts, like, talking about dementers, dude. Yeah, yeah. I do really like that one. But, yeah, I don't know.

I don't know if I have a favorite. All right. November botanical asks, number one animal you'd love to see in its natural habitat. Trying panda right now. I'd love to see a jaguar. I'm really looking forward to that. Man, panda's such a good answer. I always say tiger for these kinds of questions, just because I haven't seen one yet.

So that's going to be it. Taylor X. Wallington, would you rather fight a grizzly bear or a moose? So moose are like twice as heavy, right? But I kind of feel like this question's like, would you rather have like a grand piano or a car fall on your head? Yeah. Like it's not like you're winning to the fight. Yeah. I'd rather fight a moose too.

It's not going to, it's not going to want to try and eat me. It's not going to be biting and ripping flesh off of me. It's just going to like trample me. Hopefully one of those hooves just knock me out real quick. A blunt instrument I'd prefer over getting eaten and torn apart. I'd use a grand piano falling on my head because then it makes a noise on the engine. I do think if you survive, the grizzly's a better story. But I don't know.

I'm picking the moose. I think you could trip a moose probably and then you have a shot. In Maya Elements asks, do mountain lines ever attack people in tents like Bears will sometimes? Not that I've ever heard of. Yeah, I don't think so. Okay. So don't need to worry about mountain lines if you're camping. No, no.

Okay. Devon, E-L-T, asks, if you could pick any celebrity to come on the podcast, who would it be? It's a great question. Do you have an answer, Jeff? Oh, man, I want, like, the wicked girls. Ariane. What, I know Ariana Grande's name. Yeah. You just have them sing.

What are you, what are you trying to do with them? Cynthia Ereveos are their name. Yeah. Oh, are they? Yeah, they're just like getting like very emotional over like very silly stuff. But they're self-aware about it. But I just, I'd love to hear them talk about bears the way they talk about everything. That makes me think of Bill Scars Guard and Willem Defoe on their press junket for Nospheratu.

They had some really funny moments together, so I think they'd be really fun to have on the show. I'm going to steal Jeff's angle at answering that one. I, man, that's a hard question. Probably Keanu Reeves. Oh, yeah. Just be like, what do you think about Bears? Yeah, and he has such a distinctive voice, and he seems like such a different celebrity than most celebrities. I don't know, 2025 is kind of, I'm pretty out on celebrities this year.

So I think. What? I would love to have one on that I think has like a... Dude, you are a freaking celebrity. Dude, you're a big deal. You're at least a B-list celebrity. I'm not B-list. Maybe like J-M-M-A-List.

Maybe someone that... I really like Melissa Barrera a lot. Yeah, Melissa Barrera. From the screen movies. It would have been Jimmy Carter. Yeah. We don't take now. You know what would be big for us if we had a hawk to a girl on our show.

Oh, dude. Talk to it. For like our first first episode back. And like We do numbers, dude. Her like, her whole takes would be like the Jeff, what would Mike and Jeff do? But like, genuine.

Yeah. In a country bear voice. That sounds great. Yeah. We should make her. Why, y'all just camp in the lake? Yeah. Well, I'd say tuteloo to that, shark.

That's for sure. No, Melissa Brer is my answer. All right. Last one. Fox Tales asks least favorite thing tourists do. at National Parks and then she references tourons of Yellowstone's Instagram. This probably isn't actually my least favorite thing, but I'm going to say a least favorite thing. And it's making cairns. So stacking rocks into cairns. I think it feels like natural

graffiti to me. It's like saying like a person was here. And I don't like that. I don't think we need to mark things up and show that we were in a wild place. I think it takes away from the experience for me. I do think there's places where Cairns are necessary, like on really hard to find trails. But if you're on a like a good hiking trail, poorly run convenience stores. Yeah, exactly. Just like get some order. Go ahead. But the other thing that's bad about them too is like you don't really realize this when you're stacking big rocks. A lot of people might not. But they're their habitat. Like things

live under those rocks. Things use those rocks for shelter and whatnot. And you are moving habitat. So yeah, I don't like Cairns. You don't like Cairns? Dude, that's messed up. I don't like Cairns. That's messed up, dude. Oh, that was your joke. I didn't get it, but now I got it. Yeah, like, go to poorly rungs. Yeah. I think, I thought that's what you were getting at, but I needed to double down. I didn't pick up on it. It took me a second. Yeah, they'll talk to the manager. They'll get things in order. Yeah. Okay. My thing is a bit of a zag, I think, but it's actually more like the tour ends of Yellowstone Instagram. I understand that people do really dumb things in some national parks and get way too

close to bison and stuff. But I think there's become like way too much of a tattletale culture in national parks too where like if it's not like super serious, just like let people go off the path a little bit. I just don't like, my biggest complaint about tourists and national parks is when they try to like enforce rules on other people that are just kind of trying to have fun. It's kind of my biggest complaint about Rangers in National Parks too. Like just maybe don't be.

Like when I was on the bear team, I had the authority to tell people what to do. But if they weren't doing something that I didn't think was like that bad, I just kind of. Yeah. If it's not egregious, like, just let people try to enjoy themselves out in parks, you know? Yeah. Yeah. But if they're, like, putting a baby bison in their car to try to keep it warm, then yeah. You can tell on that.

Yeah. Mike. I don't know if I have, I don't go to national parks often enough to have any pet peeves like that. Maybe just like overzealous photographers. Yeah. There's always weird me out a little bit. Yours would probably be that their Wi-Fi signals aren't good enough in national parks. Why go outside, dude?

That's all I'm asking, why ever go outside? All right. Quickly, our last, I guess, kind of two categories. We'll do conservation really quick. This is a near-threatened animal. Like lots of sharks, it's really hard to know how many tiger sharks are out there. But we do know they're targeted by the finning industry. They're a common coastal shark that's caught by fishermen, sport fishermen,

and they're often caught as bycatch and commercial fishing operations too. So with a lot of these sharks, when you look at their IUCN status, it says near threatened because they can't put a total finger on it. But there are a lot less tiger sharks than they're used to be.

And that's largely due to the fishing industry. Is Hawaii kind of their number one spot to see tiger sharks? No, I would say the best spot in the world is probably Tiger Beach in the Bahamas. That's probably the best place you can go to see Tiger Sharks. called Tiger Beach because of Tiger sharks.

And you can dive with them there outside of cages, and it's a pretty cool spot. So that's probably the best spot. And then really quickly, just our claw scale. We've done it before, but we're going to do it again for tiger sharks. All these big macro predatory sharks for me are a 10-claw animal. I love sharks so much, so 10 claws. Yeah, I think last time I gave Tiger sharks at 9 claws, and they're probably 10-cloth. They're really cool.

Yeah. Mike? I'll give them a nine just because I really, really keep my 10 claw animals as a precious select few. But any shark, honestly, is going to be borderline 10 for me as well. Yeah. What are 10s for you, Great Whites and Tigers? Yeah, pretty much. I think they kind of have an argument that they're cooler than Great White's. The markings on their back are just so cool. The markings are really cool. And a cool thing about them is when their babies, they're more spots. and as they get older, those spots kind of blend into each other and turn into stripes. And as they get even older, they pretty much lose their stripes.

When I asked if they're more tiger or more shark, you said we'd get into that later. That was actually what I just talked about. They're spots and stripes. But yeah, they're much more shark than they are tiger. Much more. All right. So that's it for the story. Thanks guys for listening.

Thanks for joining us in 2025. We got a lot of good stuff coming for you guys. So we're excited for it. And a little bit of bad stuff, too. Yeah, there'll be some bad stuff too, for sure. Just set your expectations appropriately. Hopefully you won't be disappointed. All right.

We're going to episode a week. We've got to give you some bad stuff too. Yeah. It's a real dip in quality you can expect. All right. Love you guys. See ya.