Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - Wolves & Werewolves - The Beast Within with Sammy Smart

Episode Date: October 28, 2024

Wes made sure to prepare another wild episode for guest host Sammy Smart's second appearance on Tooth & Claw. He details just how bloody things can get when humans channel their inner wolf, whether it's real or not. Check out Sammy's show Too Scary; Didn't Watch to get your fill of horror movie content! ~~ 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

Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of Tooth and Claw. On this one, we were lucky enough to get Sammy Smart from Too Scary Didn't Watch to come back on our show, which was really very nice of her to do for us after what we subjected her to last time with the whole Leach episode that we did last year. We wanted to give a quick shout out to her show, Too Scary Didn't Watch, which for our money is the best scary movie podcast out there. So check that out if it sounds interesting to you. Wes has made a couple of guest appearances on it.

And we love it. She's great. She's the best. Her and her two friends are great. Speaking of scary movies, Wes and I have actually been working on a small little project over on Patreon about all the scary movies that we've been watching. And we turned it into a little four-part video series that you can check out over there if you want to subscribe for that content. We talk about some of the best and some of the worst scary movies that we've been watching this Halloween season. And for you, Apple, Gris Club subscribers, don't worry. We're making a super cut of that. and we'll post all of that to that feed once we have everything finalized. And we had a lot of fun with it. And Jeff actually, speaking of guest appearances, Jeff is going to be on episode four of that.

But anyway, as usual, I've been talking too much. Let's get to the episode. Here we go. Hello, listeners. Welcome back to another episode of Tooth and Claw podcast. We have our wildlife biologist, Wes Larson. I'm here at producer, Mike Smith. What's up?

And I'm Jeff. Larson, also West's little brother. My littlest brother. Well, you're only little brother. So you're the littlest. Sure, yeah. And the biggest. And we have a guest, Sammy, with us.

Hello. Too scary. Did watch. Scream Queen, Sammy. That's me. I've had like three concussions in my life. And I know that we had you on once, but I kind of forget everything. So go ahead and let us know again what you do and who you are.

I host a horror movie podcast called Too Scary Didn't Watch. Wes has been a guest a couple times. We've covered cocaine bear. We covered Anaconda. And what was the one we just did? The Reef. The Reef. I'm a correspondent.

He's a correspondent now. That's the official title we give to guests that come three times. Nice. I like that. And yeah, we couldn't be happier to have you as a correspondent. Likewise on our show. I was here for the Leeches episode. I heard some very disgusting stories last year.

Oh, Sammy, I'm so sorry. I can't wait to see what you got in store for me today. We got another one. I was thinking about this all day because for whatever reason, both of the episodes that you've guessed it on have just kind of turned into my most horrific stories. You know, I feel good about that, to be honest. You're here for it. I'm for it. I feel prepared.

I honestly, wouldn't want it any other way. Okay, perfect. No, we appreciated. You kind of started leaning into the microphone when he started talking about leeches in the anus. You're like more into it than any of us. So we're glad you're back. Tented her hands. How far in the anus.

Okay. Correspondent is a good one for you today, Wes. Since you were on, weren't you on like Chicago news? I was on the Chicago Morning Show this morning, WGN Morning Show. They had some good questions. You talk about horror movies? Bears, sharks, no horror movies, unfortunately. Did you have that sexy werewolf background for?

I didn't actually sexy werewolf. Real missed opportunity. I really should have, though. I definitely should have had that and just never explained it. That would have been better. But no, I didn't have that, unfortunately. Sammy, I was going to say we've been doing these trips. with listeners, and a lot of them have said that they found us through Too Scary and

Watch, which is just great. Wow. That's really sweet. We love having buddies in the podcast world, so it's fun. As do we. I'm happy to have shared listeners with you guys. I'm sure they're all wonderful, beautiful people. Well, they were. I wouldn't go that by.

I bet you there's like a few really bad people who live. Probably. Yeah. To say all of them are really good? I don't know. especially the ones that are really into the leech episode. Definitely bad people. Well, great.

We might as well just get into it. It's kind of a longer episode today. And I'm just going to run you guys through what kind of happened with this episode. Around Halloween, we like to do animals that are kind of associated with Halloween. I said creepy for the Black Mob episode, and I immediately regretted that because I don't think they're a creepy animal at all. I think they're beautiful and wonderful. And snakes in general are. But they're associated with Halloween.

So that's why we said creepy. And this is another one. I wanted to do an episode about wolves. And then I thought, oh, last time we had Sammy on, we did leeches and we talked about vampires. So I'm going to talk about werewolves and then get into wolves. And this is mostly an episode about werewolves because everything I found just led me to another tangent.

And they are horrific things. And I learned that the lore and the actual clinical. stuff around werewolves is kind of crazy and pretty disgusting and like hypersexual and just there's like every trigger warning we could have we should probably

attach to this episode right yeah Mike we've talked about werewolves a little bit when you did your beast of how do you say that word Jaevodan yes we brought them up a bit that was an incident that's thought to be a werewolf very very sexual We had to pause a couple of times during recording, fan ourselves off a little.

Yeah. If we were getting, I don't remember, a little too worked off. Unbutton our shirt a bit. Well, just you wait. Yeah, anyway, so there are a few monsters that I think have been in just our collective consciousness throughout history. And werewolves are definitely one of them. And they can be found throughout different cultures. And I think in popular culture, they really hit their stride in the Middle Ages.

but there's records of werewolves that go far older than that. Indigenous cultures believed in like wear animals that were often the result of someone getting involved in witchcraft or the occult and they would terrorize people in the night. So there's like wear tigers in India, wear hyenas and wear lions in Africa, and then wear pumas and wear jaguars in South America, which is pretty cool. If you asked me, I like that there's so many different wear animals out there. I feel like True Blood kind of dipped into. that a tiny bit with like wear panthers or something.

I was going to say, I feel like I've been cheated of more kinds of where. Cheetah id, where cheetahid of different kinds of wear movies. This is interesting. Unexplored territory, fertile ground for. Yeah, I agree. People need to get into it. They all had their own unique names and different cultures. each came with its own history and folklore,

but they were people that had decided to align themselves with the occult and had traded some of their human soul for that of an animal. And it's really interesting me that the animal that's often associated with this is the one that was their biggest threat. Like in India it was tigers. In South America it was jaguars. In Africa, it's like tigers and hyenas. Or not tigers, sorry, lions and hyenas.

And this thing is called lycanthropy. Like canthropy is when you have this belief that you're turning into a different animal or you've turned into a different animal and it's a human transforming into it. This happens to Jeff when he's hangary. It happens to Mike when you shush him. These are things that we've seen happen between the three of us. Me when Jeff says he's a biologist. Anyway. I pretty much am.

You're doing those animal facts on TikTok. So that's close enough. Oh, yeah. They were pretty good. So I took like my first Adderall on four months and I was like, let's do a hundred TikTok now I'm stuck. Which I love. Yeah, I love it.

I've been having fun watching them, Jeff. I don't look at TikTok and I have been because I've enjoyed TikToks. I've been liking them. I've literally been liking them. Sammy, have you liked his TikToks yet? I'm not on TikTok. I have successfully managed to avoid it. And I feel like I want to preserve that for myself.

Stay strong. I'm really sorry, Jeff, but I'm not going to be liking them. But if I did have TikTok. You're probably a little too old for it. Whoa. Exactly. Thank you. Thank you.

I mean, I'm like, no cap. Jeff, yeah, Jeff uses Gen Z praising now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Young and spirit. Yeah, we all know what it means. We all know what that means. I also, I have a. TikTok, but I've never posted to it.

And I'm a very rare. I tried to make a TikTok once. This is when I was on TikTok. And a very on brand for me, it was about how much I hated mosquitoes. Yeah. Perfect. Oh, wow. It took me like four hours to make.

It was 20 seconds long and made me so mad. Probably like 55. Oh, man. I'm going to start sharing it. I like the idea of you leveraging your Too Scary Didn't Watch audience into just a social media platform solely to debate trash mosquitoes. Yeah. That's like all you use it for.

Yeah. I think you should start it up again. I'm really passionate about it. Someday I'm going to convince you that they're not all bad, but we'll get to that later. We'll have you on for our mosquito episode. Okay, great. Great. Some of the very first writings we have dealing with werewolves and lycanthropy are from the ancient Greeks.

Herodorus, who we all know and love. History. Herodotus. Thank you, Mike. He talked about a tribe in Scythia. that turned into wolves every year for a couple days and then reverted back to humans. And he was pretty dubious that this actually happened,

but he says everyone in that tribe swears that it did. And then there's a really cool story that I liked. It's about King Lycon, which I have to imagine lycanthropy comes from this king's name. Anyway, he lived in a city that Zeus visited, and Zeus showed up and was like doing all this godly shit, doing miracles and stuff. And this king Lycon was like, I don't believe that he's Zeus.

I don't believe that he's a god. And I know how I'm going to trick him. Kills a kid, a prisoner. That's a good trick. Great trick. Yeah, always gets guys. First thing that comes to my mind when I think about, you know. Yeah.

Tricks and pranks. And he tries to feed the flesh of this kid and this kid's entrails to Zeus. And Zeus is immediately like, no way, I'm not eating that. I'm Zeus. I know what you're up to here. I've seen this trick before. Yeah. You're not getting me with this again. And turns him into a wolf and scares him off.

So that was King Lycon. It's a cautionary tale. So if he ate the kid, then he's not. Yeah, because God's don't eat kids. Yeah, exactly. He knew that it was. Because God's don't eat kids. Yeah.

Yeah. Except for Jupiter. But people love eating kids. Well, yeah. I don't know. Anyway. It was like no one eats kids, but like a mere mortal wouldn't know it was a kid, but Zeus would. Honestly, I kind of think Zeus would have a better chance of eating a kid than just like some random person.

Fair enough. Yeah. I don't know. Like I don't know what Zeus is up to. I know what most people are. Yeah, that's a good point. There's other stories in ancient Greece of men that would turn into wolves because of misdeeds. but then if they refuse to eat human flesh while they were wolves,

they would be able to turn back into men after like nine years. And some of those men would turn into like Olympic athletes because they still had some of that wolves. Oh, hell, hell, yeah. Nice. Yeah, I'd do that. If they were like, hey, you just got to be nine years as a wolf and you'll be like super fast when you come back.

It'd be sweet. And we still had that like ingrained in us, too. And we just like thought LeBron James used to be a wolf or something. Yeah. Early Christianity also included myths about werewolves. They were almost always associated with witchcraft and the devil. But as I mentioned earlier, it didn't really become popularized until the Middle Ages. And then they really became a big thing for a while.

It was like a major threat to people. Throughout Europe especially, it was a great time. Like you were legitimately afraid of werewolf. Yeah. And when like people would turn up dead and maimed, they would just think, oh, this was probably a werewolf. You know? It was a time of great religious upheaval, mixing of different cultures, and the myth of wherewolves became a little bit more nuanced, too. For example, Viking cultures believed in berserkers that could take the skin of a bear and channel the power and ferocity of that animal in battle.

And then they also had people called Uf Hednar, which was the same idea but with wolves. So they'd wear wolf skins in the battle, and they thought they could channel the ferocity of like a wolf or a bear. Wear bear. Yeah, that's fun. Wear bear, exactly. So these ones weren't necessarily a negative thing. It was kind of like they were assuming their power. And there's also some other examples throughout the Middle Ages of like more romantic

werewolves, Jacobs, if you will. I will. I will, yeah. So this one I really liked. There's a popular poem written by Marie de France in the 1100s called Bisclarevette. In this poem, Bisclarevet is a baron in Brittany France that's well loved by the king and he disappears for three days every week and no one including his wife knows where he's going or what's happening and finally she breaks down and she like begs him hey where where are you going for three

days every week like why won't you tell me and he finally tells her and he says for three days every week he turns into a werewolf and he has to find a safe place to hide his clothes because he needs them to turn back into a human and she's disgusted yeah yeah i believe you She does. Oh, so you're not going out to cheat on me. Okay. No. Yeah, exactly.

She's like, that's why I have these claw marks all over me. She's disgusted because she's like, I've been sleeping with an animal. And there's this knight who has the hots for her. And she tells him about the werewolf thing. And the knight then goes and steals Bisclaret's clothes on his next transformation. So he never comes back. And people just assume that he finally like, left for good. The knight marries his wife and they become the new barons of this estate.

One day the king's out hunting and he's about to kill a wolf when one of them runs up to the king and starts licking his feet and acting really noble. So the king and all his buddies are like, oh, let's take this wolf home. Let's make a pet out of it. This is pretty cool that this wolf is so tame. And it's a feet licking like a sign of nobility? Yeah, dude. Come on. I'm not part of the aristocracy. It's the most noble thing you can do, Mike. Okay. That scene and talk to me all the sudden means something a little different. So this wolf is extremely well behaved until one day the king invites all his barons to come to his castle for a feast.

And when the wolf sees the knight, who's now the baron, he attacks him viciously. And because the wolf has never attacked anyone before, they're kind of like, there must have been something up with this knight and the wolf. So we're going to have like steak in his pockets or something. Yeah, or they had beef or whatever. Exactly. Not long after the king... Yeah. The king visits the area where Bisklervet...

I'm saying it wrong, but that's kind of how it's spelled. Used to live. And his ex-wife brings a bunch of gifts to the king. And Bisclarvette, the wolf, immediately attacks her and rips her nose off. And now people are like, we got to kill this wolf. But this wise guy's like, wait. He's only ever attacked her and her husband. So something fishy is going on.

So the king tortures the wife, which you do. and she confesses. So they then bring Biscarvette his clothes and he refuses to turn back into a man and then they will put his clothes in a room and so he goes and turns back into himself. And the king is really glad to see him. He gives him a bunch of kisses

and he restores his previous rights and the wife and the knight are exiled and all of their future children are born ugly with fucked up noses because she got her nose bit off. What? And it immediately becomes a genetic disorder. Yeah.

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aside from Twilight. But I can think of a few werewolves more romantic than that. I guess besides this, my background as well. You mean like the king and the guy at the end, kissing? It was just like a beautiful, it was a fairy tale. The feet licking. It was a beautiful fair detail. The werewolf wasn't bad in it.

Everything else the were werewolves were bad. All right. Well, fear of wolves and werewolves in Europe probably hit its peak during the 1300s and during the black plague. Bodies were littering the streets and it wasn't uncommon to see wolves, real wolves, in town eating dead bodies. And I think if you see enough of that, it's not a big jump to start hating wolves and coming up with myths about wolves, about diseases and curses. Some of the most horrific stories of wolves feeding on and attacking people in Europe came from the 1300s and the 1400s because of these diseases and the way they disposed of bodies. So wolves really had become quite the problem. Real wolves.

We're going to talk about that more when we talk about wolves in this episode. I was just curious what the difference of a werewolf and a real wolf is. Yeah, one's super sexy and the other one's an animal. Yeah. Okay. That's the main thing. One's totally jacked, just so swole. If you shoot one with a silver bullet, it'll die.

And probably also the other. So you can't really tell from that. That's not enough to distinguish the two. Yeah. Anyway, I want to do a separate subscriber episode about some of these clashes between like wolves and people in medieval Europe. But we're not going to talk too much about that today. In the 1500s, 1600s and 1700s, the fear of werewolves started to die down in parts

of Europe like France, but it was getting stronger in the Holy Roman Empire. Germany was part of that, and they were a hot spot for tales about werewolves. And one of the most famous werewolf stories, and one of our main stories today, happened in Germany in the late 1500s. It's wild. It's very graphic. It involves some really horrific human violence. So if you don't want to listen to that, we'll put a time stamp in for you to skip

too. Good boy. All right. So Peter Stubb or Stubb was a little bit of. was a wealthy farmer in the community of Bedburg, near Cologne, Germany. During that time, the Catholic Church and the Protestant Church were warring in the area, and there's a lot of hardship placed on rural people that were simply trying to just get by. These warriors would come by and raid their crops or kill them or kill their livestock or whatever.

It was a hard time to be a farmer. But Peter had seemed to rise above that. He had a good standing in town among his neighbors. He's a widower with two adolescent kids, and he seemed like a normal, nice, wealthy guy. that everyone liked. And his name might be recorded as Peter Stubb because he was missing his left hand. So everyone called him Stubb, which is really funny. Yeah.

Yeah. Even back then, the Germans had a cold sense of humor. So his kids are not going to have hands. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But Peter wasn't just a normal guy. He's a werewolf.

Oh. Since the age of 12, he'd been fascinated with black magic, and he had traded his soul to the devil in exchange for a belt made a black wolf fur. And when he placed that belt on his body, he would transform into a werewolf, he'd go out in the countryside, and he'd perform acts of violence that are extreme by any standards, even today's.

You gotta get more than that out of that Faustian bargain, I feel more than just a belt. I want to turn into a wolf. Yeah, the devil can give you anything, and that's what you decide you want. I don't know. He just really wanted to be a wolf, I guess. Or maybe that was like one of his only options.

Yeah, the devil just gave him like two choices. Oh, yeah. Multiple choice. You get to be a wolf or a snail. It's up to you, Peter. Yeah. Ooh, tough. Anyway, when he turned into a wolf, he described it as the likeness of a greedy,

devouring wolf, strong and mighty, with eyes great and large, which in the night sparkled like brands of fire, a mouth great and wide with most sharp and cruel teeth, a huge body and mighty paws. So first, local farmers started noticing missing livestock. They'd find cattle go. So he would get his hand back? He actually didn't, and we'll get into that. He got three paws, but not the other one.

Oh, I see. They would notice missing livestock. They'd find cattle, goats, and sheep out in their pastures, ripped open, and torn apart by some animal. And again, this isn't myth. This is like a historical record that they wrote and then was rediscovered in the 1920s about this guy. Wolves were the main suspect for these farmers,

but as people started to disappear then, many of the residents of Bedburg started to wonder if maybe a werewolf was actually terrorizing their community. Children would disappear from their homes and yards, young women walking alone were vanishing, sometimes the victims would be found, their bodies mutilated and hardly recognizable, and sometimes they disappeared altogether. So over a number of years, dozens of people in livestock fell victim to this werewolf, and no one but Peter Stubb knew the truth of what was happening. one day they found a number of human limbs in a pasture and the townspeople had had enough

and they vowed to kill any wolves that they found in the area. So they started this hunt and they hunted for days before they found a wolf that they thought was responsible for the killing. Took him a long time to find a corner this wolf and as they cornered it and rode up on it, they didn't find a wolf, but they found Peter's stubb. That's surprising. Yeah. So either he...

Yeah, yeah, anyway, they couldn't believe that he was a werewolf, so they marched him to his house thinking that maybe it was like a Peter Stubb impersonator or like an evil spirit that was pretending to be him. But at his house, they realized like, no, this is actually Peter Stubb, and he's this werewolf. So they were following him as a wolf, and then once they got him to a spot, it was just Peter. Yeah. So there's a chance that, like, he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Like the wolf disappeared and he was there.

Yeah. Yeah. But we're going to get into that. Or he was a werewolf. We don't know. Or they just, yeah. Or something weird happened. But they finally confirmed that it was actually him because they reported that the wolf they had been chasing was missing a left paw.

And Peter was missing his left hand. Oh. Compelling evidence. He was arrested and tortured on Iraq until he finally confessed his crimes. We're going to put a big old pin in that point. that he was tortured. What he confessed to was really horrific. And I'm not going to go into all of the details here,

but I am going to go over some of them. There is some sexual assault and some cannibalism, so just get ready for that. He confessed to the murder of 14 children and two pregnant women. The women he claimed to have ripped the fetuses out of their bodies, which he ate and called dainty morsels. He killed some of the children by bludgeoning them

and ripping out their throats, and it's thought that he consumed some of their entire bodies, and that's why they couldn't find some of these victims. He also confessed to killing his son while out on a trip in the woods, said he loved his son very much and he had resisted this werewolf urge to kill him for many years, but finally the werewolf won. He put on his belt and killed his son and ate his brains. He also confessed to an incestuous relationship with his daughter while he was the werewolf

and a relationship with another close relative. He told the court that he was a werewolf and he had been in league with Satan pretty much his whole life. And he told them where they could find the magic belt, but it was never found. He also confessed to having sex with the demon's succubus. Which, you know, if you're a werewolf, you might as well. It's like the, yeah. You've gone this far. Right.

He's convicted of all these murders as well as witchcraft, as well as incest. He's sentenced to death. You know, I don't really like this guy anymore. No. That sounds like a real jerk. Yeah, he's mean. I think we should rewind though. What's the sentence for sleeping with a succubis?

It's like, what do they care, you know? Yeah, you're going to see what a sentence is. It's not pleasant. Oh, boy. We're going to rewind, though, to that little tidbit that we had pinned, we'll unpin it. He was tortured for a long time on a rack, which is like very violent, terrible torture. It usually makes people tell the truth, I thought. Yeah, which means he told the truth.

100%. Kind of undeniably, they have to tell the truth and they're being tortured. Everybody knows that. Everybody, see, that's the thing, Sammy. Everybody knows that. So the second my skin touches the rack, I'm like, tell me what to confess to. I'll let you know. Here we go. God's truth.

I, like, have listened to enough podcasts, watched enough shows of people being forced into confessions just by being interrogated for like 24 hours by modern police. there's a lot that you can do to a person to make them to confess to just about anything and to me torturing on the rack seems like one of those things but who knows I also think there's a good chance this guy

was a serial killer and they caught him like I think it could be either or so we're gonna pretend that it's that he was a serial killer because his matter of death was terrible I like just the questioning like thinking of that like

hey admit that you were that wolf killing everyone. Yeah. And he's like, he's like, wait. What? And then they like stab him enough times that he's like,

I was the wolf killing everyone. What else did you do? I had sex with the succubes. Oh, well, that's not that bad. There was a little bit more evidence, too. There was one girl that had escaped this murderer. And she was wearing like a high collar.

And he had grabbed her by the neck and tried to rip out her throat. But the collar had stopped him. And then some cows that she had been guarding, like, stampeded and got in the way and he ran off. But she couldn't positively identify who this killer was. But it does at least show that there was someone out there that was killing kids. And it wasn't like a wolf man. Right, right. It could have been.

Yeah. You know, you never know. We're just going to say that's possibility. We're going to pretend he was a serial killer because on October 28, 1589, he was strapped to a wheel. and then 10 red hot pinchers were used to remove flesh from his body in 10 different places. His arms and his legs were broken with the blunt head of an axe. And then finally, mercifully in my opinion, his head was chopped off. Three days later, on October 31st, so Halloween, his daughter and his miss-

That's how he'd let the demons out of someone too. If he was possessed, you got to cut the head off so that the demon has like a way out. You are our resident demonologist. So three days later on Halloween, our modern Halloween, his daughter and his mistress were both burned at the stake along with Peter's body because they had been convicted of incest, which seems unfair to me. That's tough. That's not fair.

Super. A pole was erected on the spot and the wheel where he was killed was placed on this pole, a statue of a wolf on top of the wheel, and then his head on a spike on top of the wolf. It was a reminder to anyone like, hey, don't make deals with sake. It's kind of creative. Yeah. Yeah. And then they had 16 strips of wood for all of his victims too, which, yeah, they.

Wasn't that the nice artist? Vlad the Impaler move? He came later, right? Maybe you stole that move, putting the head on the spike. Was he 1400s? I can't remember. I'm not sure. Yeah.

I just watched Dracula. I should know. All right. So that's the story of one of the most famous werewolves in history. There were many others, including the Beast of Gurduvon or however you say it, Mike. I'm not going to go into those. What I am going to go into is very unfortunate. It's a quick discussion of clinical lycanthropy.

So clinical lycanthropy is a psychiatric condition that's often associated with... Oh, God. So it's worse than leeches. It's worse. It's like associated with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder or multiple personality disorder. It's in the DSM. They're making our guest uncomfortable. I know, I'm sorry.

It's back, guys. She's never coming back. I'm sorry, Sammy. I don't know why this happens. I didn't mean for this to be such a disgusting episode, but it is. It's a delusion that a person can transform into, has transformed into, or currently is an animal. It's a rare condition, but there are some interesting case studies of people with clinical lycanthropy. 49-year-old woman.

Because if there were, like, cases of them having that that weren't in general. Yeah. Yeah, this is a boring one. I think that's just what you call furries, right? Their therapist is like, whatever. Yeah, seriously. Just a wolf? Oh, okay.

There's a 49-year-old woman in one of these papers. It's called a case of lycanthropy by Harvey A. Rosenstock and Kenneth R. Vincent that suffered from lycanthropy in the 70s. And these are some excerpts from one of the papers they wrote about her. The following night, after a coyantrape, us with her husband, the patient suffered a two-hour episode, during which time she growled, scratched and nod at the bed, she stated the devil came into her body and she became an animal. Simultaneously, she experienced auditory hallucinations. There's no drug involvement or alcoholic

intoxication. It just sounds like you're having a good time to me, you know? It's got a little lot of it. Just gnawing on the bed. Who doesn't like the little gnawing on the bed here and there? Notching the bed post. That's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what this woman experienced, but she really fully believed she was turning into a wolf. There was a paper in 2004 that was a clinical review of over 30 cases of lycanthropy. They found that wolves and dogs were the most common animals people turned into,

but there were other animals too. Hyenas, cats, birds, horses, tigers, frogs, snakes, and bees were all animals that people claim they'd turned into. Turning into bees sounds crazy to me. Yeah, like, are you a group of bees or just like one? Yeah. Are you like buzzing around and collecting pollen? Like, what are you doing as a bee?

I don't know. Stinging people. Yeah. Well, there's that movie about it. B movie? Yeah. I think that's what that is. Isn't he pretty much just a bee that acts like a human?

Isn't it? Yeah, I guess. Like the sequel to Seinfeld where he just turns into a, a B. I don't know. I guess I need to watch that movie again. Again. I haven't ever seen it. At first, I didn't think it was real. I woke up to this blinding light and I was transported to another place.

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They actually did brain imaging on some of these people, and they found that the part of their brain associated with their body image was doing some really wonky stuff. So it's likely that the people with this condition actually perceive their body going through these changes. It's not just a delusion that's just, it is just in their head, but like your brain can make you see things and do things, and their brains are actually doing that. I hate that. There's two quick stories about clinical lycanthropy that I am compelled to tell, although I'd rather not, but I'm going to tell them.

Compelled? Yeah. By the devil. By the devil. The devil has entered me and compelled me to tell these stories. He must have had sex with a werewolf or something. Or that. What was the one?

What did he have sex with? The werewolf guy? A succubis. A succubis. He probably had sick. Yeah. Yeah, I'll just put on my magic belt here. So the first was on August 15th, 2016, just north of Jupiter, Florida.

Of course, this was in Florida. Authorities responded to calls from neighbors when they saw a man beating 59-year-old John Stevens and his wife, 53-year-old Michelle Mishkan, outside their home on southeast Kokomo Lane. When the cops arrived, this 19-year-old man, who was the perpetrator, later identified as Austin Haroof was sitting on the body of John Stevens while gnawing at his face, eating pieces of flesh, and making growling sounds. Even after they tased him, kicked him, and threatened to shoot him, he continued biting his victim.

They finally subdued him with the help of a police dog, which is kind of ironic, but I'm not going to get into that too much. After they subdued him, they found the body of Michelle in the garage. She had also been severely beaten and bloodied. both would die from their injuries. In the weeks leading up to this, Austin had been telling his family that he believed he was half horse or half dog,

said that evil spirits were trying to possess him, and that he felt superhuman strength and speed of animals. In the night of the attack, he left a bar, he was heading home when he thought he saw an evil spirit trying to attack him, and he saw Michelle and John's garage lit up, because Michelle would use it as like a space to entertain people. He ran there for safety.

When she saw him, She started screaming and he thought she was a witch and he attacked her. And then her husband John showed up, he'd been walking their dog, showed up to this violent scene and Austin began attacking him. When they arrested him and took him to the hospital, he complained his stomach was hurting and he said he'd eaten something bad and they asked him what it was and he said he needs. P.C.P. No, it wasn't. They actually found no drugs in his system and he was declared not guilty by reason of insanity. No way.

Yeah, he does seem like he'd gone insane. All right, sorry for this one. A 25-year-old was sent to treatment. I'm just going to read this one straight from Wikipedia. A 25-year-old man was sent to treatment during a period of excessive hand-washing, irritable behavior, decreased sleep, and acting like a buffalo. The patient reported that he had engaged in sexual activity with a buffalo, and believed that buffalo cells had entered his body and were transforming him into a buffalo, began obsessively. washing his hands and genitals in order to avoid the transition. He saw himself as having buffalo body parts and became preoccupied about his appearance.

He then began to act as a buffalo by nodding his head, crawling on all fours, and seeking out hay and grass to eat. He's ultimately diagnosed... So far it's kind of cute. There's one very uncute part in that story for me. He was ultimately diagnosed with obsessive, body dysmorphic disorder, and with delusional beliefs. He's treated.

After six months of pharma, co-therapy, his body dysmorphia and handwashing were reduced. Okay. That's all we're going to talk about werewolves for a little bit. We're going to talk about real, very persecuted, very misunderstood animal counterparts to werewolves, the gray wolf. Let's leave werewolves. I'm happy to leave them behind. Yeah. All right.

Yeah, I prefer my werewolves to just like play high school of basketball. Yeah, exactly. All right. So gray wolves are found throughout North America, Europe, and Asia, one of the most widespread predators on the planet. We have a complex relationship with them. Where are they? North America, Europe, and Asia. And throughout the Middle East, too.

We've turned them into our best friends, which we talked about recently and our lifelong companions. Yeah, pugs. But then they're also kind of seen as our greatest enemy in the natural world. world and our biggest threat. And that's kind of been throughout history. Wolves have kind of been the villain in the natural world. Like they're the villain in our fairy tales. They're the villain in a lot of our stories. We have had this very antagonistic relationship with wolves. And we've talked a fair amount about them on the podcast and how they really don't attack people much at all. And that's true, especially North America. And one fear of mine in this episode is

giving them the wrong name because we're going to talk about a scary story involving wolves. But they really don't do much. And I actually called my friend Kira Cassidy, who's one of the wolf biologists in Yellowstone, and talk to her because I want to do them justice. And she had a really interesting thing that she said to me that I agree with. And she said, of all the large animals in Yellowstone, this is the one she's afraid of the least. Like if she's out hiking alone and she runs into anything coyote-sized or bigger, this is the one that she'd most want to run into

because it's not much at all that these animals have done to people in North America. That's an important point to put on that in North America. How come you never call me when you have like a biology question? We'll talk about this after the podcast. Just kidding. I go, Jeff. Wes is turning into a werewolf.

Yeah. I'm so mad. No, we do have this complex relationship, though. And a lot of people hate wolves. A lot of hunters hate wolves because they compete for prey. A lot of ranchers hate wolves because they'll kill livestock. And people are genuinely afraid of wolves, too. They think that they're a danger and they're not.

Not in North America at least. Although sometimes they can be. So that's kind of the nuance of this whole discussion. But I found this really great paper. It's titled The Fear of Wolves, a Review of Wolf Attacks on Humans. It's by Linnell et al. It's one of the best attack papers I've ever raised. and they break down the frequency of attacks and reasons for attacks throughout gray wolf range

and their data goes all the way back to the 1700s. It's really, really good. There's some trends throughout the paper. Almost half of wolf attacks that were included in their record were a result of rabies, of rabid wolves. There is an extremely low incidence of rabies and wolves in the U.S. North America and now Europe has pretty much eradicated it, but there are places in the world where wolves still get rabies.

a lot. Places like Iran, Russia, they're still rabid wolves, and they do kind of go crazy and bite a lot of people. So that can happen. Yeah, and like back in Europe, when wolves are running wild, a lot of them were rabid, and they would attack a lot of people. Some of the other major trends they identified, though, were provocation, so where wolf is like chased into a barn or something and it's cornered, so it lashes out. And then a really big one that we're going to talk about in another episode is extreme socio-environmental situations. So in places like northern India, where a lot of the prey's been eliminated and there's a really high density of people and there's livestock involved and there's a lot of trash out and sometimes human bodies aren't disposed of completely or they're

half cremated, it's led to this pressure cooker where certain individual wolves will start to see people as a source of food and they can do a lot of damage. They can kill dozens of people. And there are spates where that starts to happen in India, in other countries too in Russia, Kazakhstan, some of the other stands have this problem. We're going to talk about that more some other time. Finally, habituation is another factor that can kind of, it relates to the last one. But if wolves are being fed or habituated to a high degree, if there were captive wolves that escaped, they're more likely to attack people as well.

All right. Finally, there are a few recorded cases where wolves that were healthy, not habibrated, situated in really good habitat, didn't have rabies, still attacked people. And this happened in Alaska in 2010. It represents the only accepted and verified case of a wolf killing a human in the United States, although there are certainly others back in like the 1800s. Maybe like Native Americans dealt with it a little before. For sure.

And like early trappers and there's people that have been killed by wolves in the U.S. before. but this is like the only verified one in the modern record. Wolves got to get those numbers. Yeah. And I promise you, I was trying to pick a wolf story that wasn't too dark. And somehow I settled on this one. And it's pretty dark. So this whole episode is just kind of a wash when it comes to how dark it is.

It's an attack that we've referenced multiple times on the podcast because it is this like one data point. And I think it's important that we tell it. So we're going to tell it today. All right, in March 2010, Candice Burner was teaching special education in the village of Perryville, Alaska. And part of her job is she would travel to all the little small towns and villages in the general radius. One of those was the tiny village of Chignac Lake. And that village initially started as a home to just one family, but then a school was built in the 1950s. It grew.

And in 2010, when this incident happened, there was about 75 people that called the village home. most of them being members of the Luktik tribe. 32-year-old Candice was originally from Pennsylvania, but she'd started her Alaskan adventure the previous year, just getting used to the large amounts of travel that she was required to do, and the tiny village of Chignac Lake was one of the only ones that had a schoolhouse, and it had about 17 students. Without a doubt, it's one of the smaller and more remote places that she was responsible for.

On March 8, 2010, she arrives in this tiny village, village, kind of on her rotation, still in the depths of Alaskan winter. There's long nights, freezing temperatures, and she teaches the children throughout the day. And then after they go home in the afternoon, she's stuck around for a bit. She finished up some work stuff. She's talking to her colleagues. And she tells some of those colleagues that she's planning on taking a little run that night. She says that she's going to run up the road that leads from town to the Bay of Chignickick Lake, or the Chichicknick River. and sometime around a little bit before 6 p.m., this 115-pound woman got on her running gear and started off into this darkness that's starting to surround this Alaskan road.

Chignac Lake has a healthy population of brown and black bears, but it's early March, so those bears should still be in their winter dens, and because of that, I don't think she was really thinking too much about running into anything that might hurt her. There's moose, there's wolves, but those animals generally aren't really messing with us too much. The residents of Chignac had said that they had seen some wolves in and around the village that winter, but nothing out of the ordinary. These wolves weren't attacking dogs, no one was feeding them. It just seemed like sometimes in Chignac Lake Alaska you see wolves, and that's what they'd done. But there really weren't any factors that led to this attack, but sometime on that March 8th night,

Candice Burner was attacked by wolves and she was killed by him. So not long after she left on her run, a group of four Chignac residents were returning from Dornar Bay on snowmobiles, and they're using that same road, and as they traveled the road, one of the men noticed some blood on the snow. And then he noticed more blood on the snow going down the hill. So he stops, he walks down the hill, and he finds a dead body.

He and the rest of the group speed off to Chignac Lake, and then they return with some other men from the community, and they report the body of a dead woman to Alaska State Troopers. Three men from the community decide to stay and guard this body, but two of them get cold, and they go back to Chignac Lake, and they leave their buddy with this dead body. Yeah.

Oh, no. And so what he starts doing is he's like doing circles in his snowmobile, in this clearing about 200 feet from the body, and he's doing that so the headlights will, like, illuminate all the forest around him. And he's doing that when a large wolf steps out into his snowmobile headlights and he's like, I'm out of here. It takes love.

Goes back to Chignac Lake. So the next morning, they go back to where the body had been. It had been dragged down the hill and consumed more. A lengthy investigation was launched. And after testing a lot of the evidence, they confirmed that she had been killed by wolves and they're able to piece together kind of what happened. So she hadn't been too far from the community when she ran into these wolves coming down the road in the opposite direction.

And it looks like from her track, she turned and ran and three to four wolves, is anywhere from two to four wolves, but they think it was probably three to four, chased her down. There was a large impression in the snow where she fell,

and they initially knocked her down and started biting her. Then she managed to get up and stumble about 10 feet down the road where there's another impression with a lot more blood. And then there's crawlmarked, away from that impression, and then drag marks down the hill.

So she crawled away, the wolves grabbed her, dragged her down the hill, and there was a lot of blood in that drag mark. And then down at the bottom of the hill in the small clearing was where the most blood was, and that's where they think the wolves had killed her. They do think just from the amount of blood that they found in these locations, that her death came pretty quick, that it wasn't a prolonged thing. And if there were three to four wolves, that would make sense to me. that would be a pretty fast thing.

There are dogs out there, like wild dogs in Africa, that go for the rump and kind of like take their time. Wolves tend to go for your throat and your face. So that does, like that's one positive thing about all of this, if there is a positive thing, which there's not. So following this, they did go out and kill eight wolves in the surrounding area over the next few months.

So they probably got the wolves that were responsible for this. It's the only recorded fatality from a wolf in the United States. States. We might get to these other ones that are like maybe fatalities in the 1800s at some point, but aside from it being the only fatality, it's crazy that there's no factors that really led to this. These were just wolves that decided to kill a person. And for me, I think that she was running at night alone. And when these wolves saw her, she probably took off and started running the other direction. And Jeff, what does that usually do to most predators? makes them make a decision.

Yeah, they're forced to make a quick decision. And what runs from them, Mike? Oh, man. Prey? What runs from predators? Yeah, prey. Prey. Exactly.

Yeah, when you run from a predator, you are doing something that they have hard-grained into their brain as a prey response. It was a lucky guess. I stopped listening like 30 minutes ago. Perfect. Good. But like what Jeff just said, they have they're forced to make a decision like this animal would typically kind of be like oh what is this thing oh it's a person you know I don't really know how to deal with it

this is a really remote area so who knows how much these wolves had interacted with people but then when it immediately starts running they're like oh that's what food does so I'm gonna chase it and that's likely what happened so in the movie the gray they just had to stop running and they can be fine yeah maybe that's easy yeah I did a subscriber episode a while ago about a gray wolf attack back in the 1800s. It ended up being a rabid wolf and it was solitary. What do you know as far as like, would rabid wolves, they wouldn't still be in a pack situation like this three to four group of wolves? They wouldn't have been rabid or do they still kind of group up like that when they are? Yeah, not necessarily. I think rabid wolves are much more

likely to kind of go out on their own and go on like a rampage. But I don't think it's unheard of that they would be in a pack either. So they definitely tested all of these wolves that they shot for rabies. And like rabies has a whole spectrum of its effects. An animal could be rabid and still be in their pack before that manic kind of violent part of rabies sets in. And so it's kind of, yeah, that's a tricky one to say. Okay. Sammy, I have a question for you.

Yep. So if you kill a wolf, but it's actually a werewolf, but it's just a wolf at the time you kill. it does it turn back into the human form i feel like yes yes it does so these we can be pretty confident they're not one of these wolves were werewolves yeah but does it turn back immediately upon death or do we have to wait for the moon to go down immediately it's immediate i think it does i think it does yeah they just have like a wolf on their autopsy table and suddenly it's a person when the moon goes down that's the ultimate prank that a werewolf can do all right so i do just want to stress one more time though this is a scary story but wolf attack rates are insanely low like when you

think about it we only have that one coyote fatality too in newfound newfoundland that we talked about and that was in canada and canada does have a wolf fatality now as well from 2005 but these animals don't have much higher of like a kill rate than coyotes and we're not afraid of coyotes at least we aren't on this podcast some people probably are these are not an animal that that see us as a prey species in North America. There are parts of the world where they're a real threat. We're going to talk about that some other time. But if you're in North America, you really don't have much to fear from wolves.

And that paper that I read, they did like a, it was published in 2002, and they did an extra part of it from 2002 to 2018. And there's a paragraph from it I really liked. And they said, in Europe and North America, we found evidence for 11 attacks. So this is an 18-year period, of which two. Two were fatal, and one of these is the one we just talked about, across a period of 18 years. Considering that there are close to 60,000 wolves in North America and 15,000 in Europe, all sharing space with hundreds of millions of people, it's apparent that if the risks associated

with the wolf attack are above zero, but far too low to calculate. So, yeah, so what would be a good, like, comparison, like, years likely to get killed by what's something else it was only happened once yeah like coyote that's the one I think of yeah I'm saying like a yeah I don't know like a like a like an anvil falling from this guy yeah exactly a 9-11

logs through the yeah well I guess I guess it's more than the one though yeah it was twice sure yeah I like Sammy's answer better I was just trying to think like what's like something Like, what's a crazy way just one person died once? I think we got some great ones there. I think we did good.

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Book direct. Choiceotails.com. See you on the roof. But no, it's very unlikely. And I do just, again, want to put that pin in there that this is a very different animal in other parts of its range. We are going to talk about that. And that's because of the specific conditions that it's found in some of those socioeconomic things and rabies. But in North America, we pretty much eliminated the threat of wolf attacks.

You still have to be careful. And during our categories, I'm going to briefly tell you what you should do. if you run into a wolf and it's kind of a scary encounter. All right. So that's it for werewolves and wolves. You guys have any questions before we get to categories? Just in thinking about coming on for this episode, I did have the thought that I was like not scared of wolves.

They're not an animal that I fear usually. But I'm really scared of mountain lines. Does that feel justified? I don't think you should be really scared of them, but I think you should be aware that they are a potential threat. Yeah. And you should prepare yourself for a potential encounter with one. Yeah. And bear spray works great on mountain lines.

Okay. They rarely attack people, though. They're a very misunderstood animal as well. We had one here in Los Angeles that died recently, P-22, rest of peace. Yeah. R-IP. I heard some fact about how L.A. is like one of the only major cities that has... Yeah, L.A. and Mumbai are like two of the only major cities that have like an urban, large predator that lives within the city.

So Mumbai has leopards. L.A. has mountain lions. I feel like two mountain lions are kind of like snakes where the idea of them is almost more scary than like actually facing one, right? Yeah. You're kind of thinking like one might be in the trees. One might be far. Like hearing like a twig break. If you actually like see one, it's kind of like, okay, like this thing's not going to do anything to me. But the idea of one following you is scared. Or if you see one, are you going to be pretty scared?

I think I would be pretty scared if I saw one. You'd be like more. Yeah, okay. But no, I think you're right. That's kind of like the same principle in horror movies. It's like scarier the anticipation leading up to something. And then once you see the thing, it's like, oh, it's not as bad. It's the like dread.

beforehand. Like I remember going on a hike once and there being a sign at the beginning of the hike like mountain lines spotted here and for the whole hike I was just like, well, I'm going to I'm going to die. You definitely shouldn't feel that way. But you still win on a hike. I still did it. Yeah. That's brave. And I didn't die. Mike, did you have something you wanted to say in there? Did I? I was just going to, I think I was going to talk about how most of the victims of these encounters are usually pretty diminutive, like pretty small people. Yeah. Maybe a good strategy is just to like, put on hell of weight, just keep eating and stuff. Or put on like a huge jacket. A ton of muscle. Man, I miss that jacket. That makes you look tiny. Fair enough, but not to a mountain life.

It does make your head look like the Gumbas and the Mario movie, the 90s Mario movie. Sammy, I will say just like a quick 10 second, 20 second like thing. If you ever do encounter a mountline and you don't have bear spray or deterrent, you just want to be as loud and as aggressive and as kind of dominant as possible. Great. And almost always that's enough to discourage that animal. They don't like taking risks. So you shouldn't have any problem with that, Sammy.

Yeah. Just dominating. Yep. Great. Bears all gone. You can call it on pussy. You can yell like pussy at it and get away with it because it's like a cat. You know.

It'd be like what? I know. All right. So we're going to get into our categories. Our first one, Jeff says we maybe have done before, but I think it might have been on the subscriber episode. But it is your favorite werewolf from pop culture. So I will go last.

Sammy, why don't you go first? I want to hear your favorite werewolf. You know, I'm embarrassed to say that I completely forgot that Jacob existed. When you mentioned Jacob earlier, I was like, oh, my God, Jacob, my guy. Wow. Yeah. But I didn't write down Jacob, even though I do love him very much. I wrote down Professor Lupin from the Harry Potter movies.

That's a good pick. And I think it's because it's a different werewolf than you normally see. He's very kind of sad and gangly and almost hairless. It looks a little more human-like than wolf-like. And I had never seen a werewolf like it. And, you know, it's just always stuck with me as a special werewolf. Love Lupin as a character. In general.

So, Professor Lupin, shout out. Is a good pick. Are you talking more like movie or book Lupin? I mean, I'm picturing movie Lupin. Okay. Yeah.

But yeah. It never made sense, too, because there was also the other werewolf, the bad one. Yeah. Fenrir, yeah. Yeah, Fenrir.

And like, he was always kind of like a movie werewolf. Yeah, he was more the stereotypical what you picture. Yeah. And I can't remember why. I haven't read the books in a long time.

there might be some reasons to why they look different ways. I'm going pure off just my memory of what they look like. Why is Peter Pedigrew stuck as like a rat and Lupin gets to be a wolf? It's different rules. I don't know. But I think he chose it. I mean, I love rats. They have their benefits.

They can sneak into small spaces. Yeah. Spread the plague. Jeff, Mike. What do you guys got for your favorite werewolf? Jeff, you go. Yeah. I mean, I'm going teen wolf, and maybe, I do feel like we've done this category before, but my explanation would be when he first turns into a wolf, it's like in front of the whole school, they're playing basketball.

Yeah. Everyone's going for the ball, and then he turns into a wolf, and they keep playing the game, like, just with him as a werewolf. And I just love that. I like, I won't pose the question. Is it like crazier that they let Airbud play basketball or like a werewolf? A werewolf. Yeah, I think the Werewolf is crazier. Yeah, I don't know.

Because he wasn't a Werewolf when the game started. You're going to throw the rulebook at a midgame? I don't know. I'm going, it's weird to airboat. Yeah, sure, but that's a different question. It'd be funny if there was just one character that was screaming absolute bloody murder. Just like so freaked out. One person in the crowd.

What the fuck is that? What's going on? It's like, why are we playing basketball? Stop. That's a great pick. That movie was important to me too because the scene with Pamela Wells, who was like kind of the mean girl in the closet was my first, my first romantic feelings I ever had toward a woman as a small boy.

I don't need to go into any specifics, but I felt. romantic urges toward her. Yes. Okay. I'm going with Bigsby Wolf from a game

called The Wolf Among Us. He's kind of like an investigator going around trying to figure out some murder mystery. Listen, I know,

I know I'm losing you guys, but I'll just end it with. It's really fun, kind of gritty retelling of some fables,

classic fables. It's really fun. It's great. Anyone into playing playing games? Check it out. I think I'm going to pick

the where from Underworld, which is kind of a silly movie. But I really liked the way they were designed and like how they were kind of being like picked on by the vampires. And they hated the vampires because they were like this kind of upper class. And then the were kind of like the working class guys, you know. Anyway. Yeah.

I just kind of related with them, I guess, back then. Routing for them. Yeah. And so and I liked how they were designed and how powerful they were. And yeah, so that's my pick is the werewolves from the movies, the underworld movies. Nice. I feel like werewolves are kind of a blind spot for me in my horror knowledge, to be honest. I haven't seen any of the things you guys just talked about.

And I haven't seen American Werewolf in London. I just haven't seen a lot of the classics. Seen dog soldiers. That's a good one. Kind of weirder one. The Wolf of Snow Hollow is another really good one. Oh, is that kind of a recent one? It is.

It's more recent. And it's kind of like horror comedy, but I really liked it quite a bit of a moment right now. There's like Nightbitch coming out and there's a movie called Wolfman coming out. And there's a movie, I think, just called Werewolves coming out. Perfect. Keep it simple. I feel like I haven't seen a lot of Werewolf stuff on the horizon. Yeah.

I think you're right. Maybe I'm going to get more into them. I feel like since we've kind of learned. not to be afraid of wolves and wolves aren't really around that much anymore. Like where wolves aren't as scary to people anymore. Yeah, they need to do something of the actual, like, what is it, like anthropy? Like, which I think is kind of more what nightbitch is. It's just someone that's like convinced themselves that they turn into a dog, which that's

scarier. Scary. Yeah. All right. Well, our next category is going to be a quick one. Just quick, whether you're Team Edward or Team Jacob. Easy, Jacob all the way 100%. Really?

I was trying to come up with reasons to pick Jacob and was kind of striking out. Wait, you should defend that, though, because I'm really interested. Well, we have covered all the Twilight movies on my podcast. I talk about it at great length. I will, I've never not been team Jacob. She's like, when you get my notes. Pulls out of board with the lines all connecting. It's, I think just because of how silly he is is really what it comes down to.

I watch the Twilight movies out of silliness and laughing. And I just think Jacob is sillier and he has such good lines. Bella, where the hell have you been, Loka? It's just absolutely iconic. Immediately bonding with their child. Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's so weird. Yeah, no, there's, I mean, he's problematic for sure.

But so is Edward. Sure. Yeah. I would say more so. I like the fact that the Twilight movies have been featured on a podcast about movies that are too scary to watch. I can relate. I guess I can kind of relate. Some people really avoid them.

Yeah, maybe it's too scary to watch because you could never be able to love just a normal person. You need a vampire or a war after. Yeah. Yeah, I started out Team Jacob because I thought it was hotter. but I don't know, Edward, too, like, he's been going to high school for, like, hundreds of years or something.

It's kind of weird. It is weird. Yeah, it is weird. Stop them. That is scary. Yeah. So I'll probably, I've probably, you know who I really like is the guy

who's trying to kill Bella in the first one? The guy from, like, the never back down movie. Or, like, that movie where he's, like, does the switching, but it's like, with the penis. That guy. What? Wait, hold on.

You just said so many things. Bad Johnson or stuff. There's a movie where it's like freaky Friday, but like just him and a penis. I feel like Cam Gigendette is the name that's coming to my. Yeah, never back down. Okay, hold on. I need to know what penis movie you're talking about. That's what it's called Bad Johnson.

It's like the freaky Friday situation where you like, switch, but it's like with a penis. So wait. So a penis turned into a penis. I think it's his. Like his penis takes over him. Gotcha. Well, isn't that kind of like, yeah, that's not the craziest.

I've just seen the preview, but like that's all you really need. And I just want to say too, I drove Kristen Stewart at Sundance Film Festival. And she's like, she's really cool. And she's like, after her movie, like, you know, she's trying to get away from Twilight. But every, all these fans were waiting outside forever to like meet her and there are all this twilight signs and like Twilight shirts. She went and like talk to them all and took selfies. So she's cool. It's nice.

Nice. Mike, where are you falling on this? Edward. Just seems like, I don't know. Seems like my speed a little bit more socially kind of thing. Yeah. I think Jacob's cooler. I do.

But I like, I think I'm too. Edward still. Yeah. Like, I think if Bella's going to end up with one, it's got to be Edward. Yeah, that's the thing is like, inarguably, Edward is the right match for Bella. And there's, I feel like never a moment in the series really where it feels like there's actually much competition. So I'm Team Edward. Yeah.

I mean, Team Jacob for me. Yeah. Team Edward for Bella. I think Jacob's the best in the first movie when he's got, like, long hair and he's just kind of a skater guy and, like, boyish. Yeah. That's when I think he's like. I kind of think the opposite of you. I feel like Edwards cooler, but Jacobs, like, hard.

Right. Takes his shirt off a lot. Doesn't sparkle when he does it. God, it's funny. All right. We got to stop. Sammy's getting that he is. That's so funny.

Sammy, I forgot to prep you on this one. But what animal would you want to transform into once a week for 12 hours? You have to transform into an animal once a week for 12 hours. What animal are you picking? Let's rule out birds Because I think that's too easy Damn it Like I want to turn into a bird

So I can fly for 12 hours I was gonna say whatever The bird that I A harpy eagle That I talked about last time That would have been a good one Okay You can have a harpy eagle

Whatever But the three of us can't say birds That's too easy We'll let you have it Unless you think of something else Yeah you guys talk And I'll think of a second thing Maybe maybe a shark

Yeah I can talk I looked it up The movie's called Bad Johnson and the description is A charismatic womanizer receives his comeuppance after his penis mysteriously leaves his body and takes human form. Mysteriously.

Oh. His penis is like a guy out there walking around. Yeah. Huh. Interesting. I haven't seen it, but the preview is great. That's a dilemma because like what do you do? You don't want it to get like taken in or arrested

and you don't want to kill him. Because you want it back, right? I think so. Yeah, that's a great idea for a movie. If it's turning into people, I don't know if I want it back. I think I would pick like some sort of, I think like a mountain lion. I think I would just want to know what it feels like to like be so powerful and like walk around the mountains and everything. And nothing really feels like energetically too taxing to you.

And you can just kind of, I don't know, I think they must feel, I bet they experience life. on a different level than what we're aware of. And so I'd love to feel that. I'm going to go with bumblebee. Nice. The transformer. Yeah. Oh, does that count?

Can we pick transformers? Can't pick transformers? Shoot. So bumblebee is cool because, like, you're small enough. You can kind of stealth your way into different places. And people like bumblebees. If you're like a spider or a fly or something, people are trying to, like, swat you or kill you. No one's trying to kill bumblebees.

So, like, I don't know, it feels like you could sneak in to, like, I don't know what you would sneak into a bank vault or an airplane or something. What are you going to do in there? That's true because you're going to need to get out. You just wait there until you're a human, but then you take it out. That's the thing. Then you get arrested. But for a second there, you had a lot of money.

Yep, yep, yep. And that's the goal. You just go hang out with the money and that'll feel like. You could like watch them put the code in and then the code. Yeah, now we're thinking. This bumblebee is hovering right in front of my What is this? What is this?

Why does it have a tiny notepad? They're like blocking the code from the P. Jeff, what's your answer? I mean, it's like some type of sea animal, I think. Sea otter maybe. Yeah. That's a great answer. I have a question, though, with if you did a shark or dolphin,

Sea otter seems. I wouldn't be very sexy. Maybe less of the risk, but like, do you know when it's going to happen or are you just like in your house and you turn into a shark because then that'd be really bad. That's a good point. If it's just like is always going to happen, I, yeah. I think you know.

Okay. So you can plan. You can like, be like, mark your calendar, go to the ocean. I got to get to the coast back right now. Yeah. That's a good point. If you lose track at time, you have to like find someone's pool or something to be close to you. Or just like every time I shower it starts happening.

Like I can't get water on me. No. That's tough. That's true. All right, briefly, because there wasn't like a good opportunity for what would Mike and Jeff do here. I just want to briefly go over what you should do if you see a wolf. These are straight from Kira, my friend. And Kira says you should make yourself as big as possible.

Make noises to communicate that you're human. So just like yell. You can make noises with anything metal. They don't like metal noises. Back away slowly. Don't turn and run. We talked about that already. You can throw things at the wolf to the,

turret and then if you have bear spray and the wolf comes too close you can use bear spray it will work on a wolf really well so those are the things that she suggests all right that's what she's nice yep that's what she said nice jeff do you have an animal fact for us yeah i'm just going to do one i learned from one of our guides when we're in borgia and so rhinoceros hornbills they'll sleep on the very end of branches in their trees and that's because there's clouded leopards that live there and they can feel the leopard like step onto the branch when the leopard's trying to kill them. So that way like they have some more space to like wake up and fly off. That's cool.

I'm glad they do that because they're a cool bird. Yeah, but the cloud leopard's probably pretty hungry. They are, yeah. And they're cool too. They are cool. I love clouded leopards. They have they have canines that are like the same size as a tiger's canine, but they're like a fifth the size of a tiger.

Ooh, that's a good bonus fact, man. Yeah, bonus fact. Yeah, West fact. Sammy, you host a horror movie podcast. I do. Along with your wonderful co-host, Emily and Henley. And me and Mike have been talking a lot about horror movies lately. Jeff is also dabbles in horror movies a bit.

And I'm sure a lot of listeners do. I feel like you're acting like I don't like horror movies just as like a way to say why I'm not on you guys horror movies. No, that's not it. Like, I like horror movies. Okay. But Sammy, I would say of the four of us has really, you know, you've dove into the most. So I'm curious to know your five current horror movie recommendations for this Halloween. And they don't have to be current.

They can be whatever you would just recommend this Halloween, five movies. Great. Most recently, I think this was two nights ago, I watched a horror movie that I hadn't seen before that genuinely really scared me, which doesn't happen a lot. it was called Audity. It is an Irish horror movie that I really knew nothing about going into it. I had heard some positive reviews, some negative reviews, and just was curious. It's on Shudder. Put it on the other night and was, had the experience of afterwards, like having to look all

around my house, checking to make sure all the doors are locked and the windows are closed. And I don't normally do that. Like I usually the second a movie ends, I'm like, okay, great time for bed immediately asleep. And I feel like this one really just creeped me out. It got me. It's a good one. I really liked it. Just watching the trailer, I saw the big wooden whatever.

Yeah. I don't know what you would call it. A mannequin thing. Yeah. There's an even scarier. I close my eyes and see its face. There's an even scarier guy in it. Oh, yeah.

Do you know what I'm talking about? Some ghouls. Yeah. And you just hate to see a scary guy, you know. Really well-designed scary guy. Oh, nothing scarier. So, audity, that's on shutter. Okay.

Knive it, like, a bear is scarier than a guy? Like a bear in the woods? This guy's pretty scary. Well, a scary bear. Yeah. Is he wearing a hard plastic mask or some sort of, like. Carrying a machete?

Yeah, it's the masks I feel like that really get me. Jets doesn't like masks. All right, what's next? Next, there is. This, I think, just came to Hulu. This is a movie from this year that I unexpectedly loved. The first Omen. I love that movie.

You know, usually a horror remake or sequel, they don't always go well. They can be, I mean, I think the Exorcist sequel came out this year. I didn't even see it. people really, really hated it. I think that is more common than this, which I think was just like an awesome sequel or prequel rather. I remember messaging you when it came out and being like, I really liked this a lot.

I'm so sad I didn't see it in in theaters because it was, yeah, it was really, really good. And that's on Hulu now. Next up, these are, I feel like just a classic. October Halloween vibe. I couldn't choose between them, but Hellraiser and Hellbound Hellraiser 2. It's because I prefer

Hellraiser 2, but it's like, you're going to watch. Don't skip Hellraiser one. You got to watch them both. They're weird, horny, violent, like the original name was Sado-Masicists from hell, so it's

just quite a vibe. Pinhead. Cenobites, lots of great Halloween costume ideas. I was someone from Hellbound Hellraiser 2 once. It was, I think, my finest Halloween costume I've ever done. So is that three and two? Or are you combining those? That's three and four.

Yeah. No, I'm combining them. I'm combining. Okay. It's three. It's three only. Okay. Next is Mandy.

It's just one of my all-time favorites, Nicholas Cage. One of his finest performances of all-time. crazy movie neon violent and drug-fueled motorcycle demon guys. I love it. It's a wild movie. It's the best to understand it. Excellent score. Johan Johansson's final score, I believe.

And sometimes I listen to it by myself in my house and it's really weird and creepy. And then finally. I was just going to say Nick Cage on cocaine is a match made. in heaven. I don't know what more you could ever ask for out of a movie. It's a, it's, it's, it's, you really can't go wrong. Really can't go wrong. I kind of like when they're like on cocaine, but you never see it. Like Al Pacino and heat. Just like this guy is like on cocaine, but there's never a scene of him taking cocaine. Like they do this sometimes and like, yeah, you're like, okay. Yeah, that's fun. That's enough. Yeah. And then my final one is just because I know Wes and I

love this movie and when I watched it for the first time, I floated around my house in Glee. It is the 2013 Evil Dead. The most fake blood ever used in a movie. Yeah. And boy, can you see it on the screen? Yeah. It's gnarly. I redid my annual watch of it not long ago.

And I remember just thinking, like, every time I watched that movie, I'm like, I forgot how hard this movie goes. It goes so hard. Yeah, it's just scene after scene and it's like gory but also scary and just balls to the wall the whole movie. Yeah, I think I was just like so filled with adrenaline by the end of it that I had to like run laps around my apartment. It's just like, who, who, who, who, who, whoa, whoa, whoa. Wes made me watch it. This is the first time I had seen it this year. He made me watch it for a little horror movie thing.

And there's like there's things, not just the blood and the gore, but like some things are said that like quite frankly cross the line. mine in like a really entertaining and like just shocking way. I had a great time watching it. But yeah, it's a lot more. It's a lot smarter than just like a haunted cabin in the woods kind of thing too. There's a lot more going on. So totally. I'm on board, all the way on board with that movie.

And I guess talking about remakes of classic movies, I feel like it did a, I had held out on seeing it for a long time because I feel like remakes at around the time, 2013, this came out, were like. like the Texas chainsaw remakes and Hills have, I guess that was a little earlier, but I had an image in my mind of like horror remakes are just like disgusting versions of the original ones. With like hot actors. Yeah. Which this one is, it is disgusting also, but in like, I don't know, just a better way, the right way.

And I think, yeah, some of the dialogue that you're mentioning just does feel reminiscent of the original movies, like there still is an element of the fun silliness of the originals, but then it is also like much gnarlier and more brutal and just balances it very well, I think. Yeah. So wait. In the movie The Shining, they like did the whole elevator of fake blood. Yeah.

And it has more than that. Yes, it does. I believe it was. Yeah. And I just found out that I believe the substance, which just came out, is now the second most fake blood ever used in a movie. So it goes 2013 Evil Dead and then the substance. I'd love to see a like a full ranking list. Like where does the shiny fall in?

Like the top 20. It's got to be top 10. It's a lot of blood. It's a lot. All right. Well, thank you, Sammy. So guys, if you're into horror movies, go check those out. Wait, I want to ask Sammy a question because me and you kind of have a,

a difference in opinion when it comes to jump scares? Where do you fall on jump scares just as a whole? I'm usually anti-jump scare. I don't like a jump scare unless it really catches me off guard. Like there's one in the nighthouse that got me so bad. And then it's like I'm, I can't help but be impressed. But I'm, for example, really dreading seeing Smile too, because I know that those movies are really filled with jump.

scares and so if I know there's going to be like jump scare after jump scare it's just like I can't I'm just tense for the whole movie in a way that's not like about the craft of the film it's just my own like I don't want to I don't I don't like a jump scare I don't like them when they're lazy but I like them when they're well done yeah yeah I like I do like a well done one all the ones that are the best are the ones that kind of defy like the convention of the jump scare you know like the Exorcist three one where the camera whatever we don't need to litigate this all right now. I just think they're so cheap, you know?

Yeah. I hate being startled. It makes me, it makes me really, makes me mad, Wes. They're getting smart with it now, too, where they, like, make you feel like there's a jump scare coming. Yes, the scream. No, and then it doesn't happen. And then you think, like, okay, I know this trick.

It's going to come right now. And then it doesn't happen. And then, like, a minute later, it happens. They did a great bit in the, uh, scream five that was just like kept not being a jump scare just over and over and you're like oh god like they open a mirror or they open a fridge yeah it was pretty funny all right let's go into a quick conservation corner so as i mentioned there's about 60,000 gray wolves in north America about 15,000 in europe I don't have numbers for the rest of their range but this is an animal

that's doing fairly well throughout its range they're really adaptable how many states they're in? They're in Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Washington, Colorado now, Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin. Is there like North Dakota? Like, is there a link between Minnesota and Montana? They're not, they're not in the, they're not in the Great Plains. So no, those populations are linked. And then there's like some wolves down in Arizona, I believe. There's some eastern wolves. They're in more states than you might think. But in the states, they're kind of, they're fraught still with a lot of uncertainty. There's a lot of hatred for wolves. There's a lot of litigation that's ongoing right now about wolf protection. So I do think they still are in quite the battle

for conservation in the states. Outside of that, though, they are doing quite well. They're very adaptable. They have a lot of pups when they breed. They're smart animals. They're good at kind of carving a niche in a new environment, they're great. So worldwide, their conservation status, I believe, is least concern. But in the United States, they were on the endangered species list and recently were taken off. And there's a lot of pressure on them right now, a lot of pressure. Anyway, in Yellowstone, the pressure does make diamonds. That's true.

You always say that. In Yellowstone, they had been extirpated or wiped out in the 1800s and early 1900s. They were reestablished in 1996, and since then, the changes to the ecosystem there had been really drastic. Everything from beavers to willows to cutthroat trout are doing better because of the wolf reintroduction. And a lot of that is because the elk and the prey species for those wolves are much more vigilant than they used to be, so they can't just sit and eat everything. They have to be more choosy about what they eat, and that allows plants to kind of regenerate. and it just creates this whole cascade of effects. And so they're really important for their ecosystem.

And they're amazing animals. I love them. Every time I see one, I just think that is the ancestor of my dog. And I get to see it out in the wild. And it's so special. There's a really beautiful part of Sand County Almanac, which Aldo Leopold wrote, where he talks about them killing a wolf and seeing this green fire and its eyes disappear. And that's like, it's this conservation message of like,

These animals have something in them that we can't understand. And I think a wolf is a really good representation of that. All right. So don't get me talking about them. I'll get emotional. Like having been to Africa for the first time this year and doing like safaris and stuff, they have a lot of predators in Africa. You won't ever see a place with more ungulates than Africa too.

Like, you know, having predators and having a lot of predators helps the ecosystem. It helps like wildlife. And hunters feel like they have it in their mind. Like, I don't know. They can't go like six years without. All you need to do is wait it out a little bit. And then the ecosystem will rebound. But when wolves like first get reintroduced, it does take a dip.

And people are like, see, we told you so. But they just wait a little bit. Yeah. And the elk you have in a couple decades are better. They're stronger. They're wilder. So for me, yeah. We could get kudos if we.

had wolves. That'd be cool. Do, why don't we have coos? Zebras. No, that's a good point though, Jeff. And Yellowstone's kind of like our little pocket of what the United States used to be like, where there are these huge herds of ungulates. There's lots of predators.

Like on a single day in Yellowstone, you can see a lot of bears. You can see wolf packs. You can see all these things. And we used to have that, but we kind of got rid of it when we got rid of all of our ungulates. And now there's this push and pull. between hunters and conservationists and it is really tricky, but I love wolves. I think a huge state should have them.

Yeah, I agree. Sure. All right. Except maybe Hawaii. Yeah. All right. Our final thing we're going to do today is our claw rating. I think we've done it for wolves before, but Sammy wasn't here.

So Sammy, this is just on a scale of one to ten, ten claws being like, this is a minted, one of your favorite animals, You absolutely just love this animal and zero claws being like mosquitoes for you. So why don't you go first? I'm going to say seven claws. Okay. Respectable. Yeah.

Pretty good. Yeah. Jeff? Yeah, I'd go, I think I'll go nine, put them at 43 overall. Wow. Yeah. I like wolves a lot. I would argue they might have like the best noise any animal makes.

Ooh, yeah. Like the wolf howl? I don't know if anything's like cooler than a wolf howl. Yeah. Like maybe a whale song are the two that I would like put. I don't like less. Yeah. All right.

What? Fair not. Okay. I think it's cool they sing. But when I like hear a whale song, I'm not like I want to keep listening to this. They do go on for like 30 minutes. Jeff's like hitting me out of the water. Yeah.

It's like I don't. I want my water empty. They are kind of like the Godspeed, you black emperor of the natural. world whales just like come on get get to the climax yeah to me like a lion's roar would be in serious contention yeah could you do that for us really quick the lion or the wolf yeah lion could you do a lion roar for us i'm like trying wow some interesting tones at the end there i liked it yeah he's good i'll go i'm gonna give them a seven as well i think they're really cool this is not fair but when people call them

wolves I start thinking less of them it's not their fault but you know the world's not fair but we're taking a claw off for that regardless I feel like their babies aren't as quite as cute as they should be wow that's a hard disagree for me I love wolf pups like I'm not saying they're not cute but I'm just thinking like I almost think like

golden retriever puppies are like a lot cuter than wolf puppy. Interesting. Well, I had to look at pictures in each. They're so cute. Am I wrong? I could be wrong. I think you might be wrong.

We need to do our cute animal babies, March Madness again. Did we have them on our list last time? Yeah. I think this year I'm going to go adult, cutest adult. Cuteest adults, okay. I'm going to give them a nine, and it's probably my closest to a 10 that I've done so far. I feel because of how much I love dogs, wolves are like such a, like I said, it's like you're seeing their ancestor out there in the wild. Question. Is it your favorite, like, wild dog species?

Yeah. Yeah, they are. And African wild dogs are like a close second because I've been able to work with them. But wolves are my favorite. Again, like the howl, the pack dynamics, just how successful they are. I just love so many things about them. Their eyes. I just think they're such a cool animal. It's a nine for me. So now success is like a measure of how much you like something. You hate billionaires though, right? Yeah. But that's so. What are we doing here?

I like millionaires. I think if there was a wolf that had slaughtered every single ungulate in the country and then like blamed it on other people, then I would hate that wolf. Yeah. And that's how I see billionaires. So, yeah. Yeah. It's an excess.

I was trying to find this photo I have like a million wolf. He's being a little hypocritical. I don't hate success. I hate when success is gained off the labor of others, and it's, you know, that kind of success. So wolves have never come and taken a kill from a ban. They don't scavenge? No, they do sometimes. And I put that qualifier on the end of that.

And it's that kind of success. All right, fair enough. I think it's actually not fair at all. If you want to say you like wolves, you have to like billionaires. No, that's not true. I love wolves. I hate billionaires. You have to choose one billionaire that you like.

Yeah. I could probably find one. I bet I could find a billionaire that I'm okay with. Kylie Jenner, I think she's out of the running now. Oh, self-made. Taylor Swift. I like Taylor Swift. Is Michael Jordan a billionaire?

Yes. Probably. MJ's a billionaire. Yes, he is. He's so crazy. I just watched the last dance. He's absolutely a lunatic, but I love him as well. He's out of his mind.

Yeah, but I like him. He's a good, well, yeah. I love him. I'm trying to see if I can find this photo of like a ton of wolf pups that were stacked on top of each other, but I can't. So you're just going to have to wait for that. I'm looking at wolf pups. I'm standing by why I said. Yeah.

Like I think like they're undeniably cute. Yeah. But like when I did the cutest baby animal bracket, I couldn't find like a picture of a wolf cub whereas like this is going to like go far in the time. I don't think they're like as cute as like domestic dog puppies. That's fine. Come at me. Fair enough. We're not going to come at you.

No. I'll drive up to your house later. Beat you up. All right. Well, that's it for the episode. Sorry, there was a lot of stuff in this one. But I couldn't help it. I too took an Adderall yesterday and went down some other changes.

Shoot. I need to get in on this. We're all on drugs, Mike. You know, it's weird. With me right now, it's like, it's like I just notice my tongue exists or something, and I can't, like, put it in a comfortable spot because I have taken Adderall three days in a row. I keep, like, mashing it against my teeth, and it just feels like it's too long, and it's because I'm on Addera. And it's driving me crazy. Yeah.

So this was something Kira showed me. This was a bunch of wolfpups one year that were all in, like, a big puppy pile in Yellowstone. Pretty cute. That's really cute. Very cute. All right. What would happen if you laid in the middle of that pile? They would probably be scrambled.

You'd try out of happiness, I think. Their parents probably wouldn't be happy with you. Yeah, but it'd be worth it. Well, next time, let's get, we'll talk about maybe like red pandas next time, Sammy. You got to come back. Yeah. I'll find something fucked up about red pandas. I want to hear their dirtiest, darkest secrets.

All right. Thanks so much, Sam. Sammy for joining us. Again, Sammy's podcast is Too Scary Didn't Watch, one of my all-time favorite podcasts. Give it a listen. We love it. And yeah, thanks for being here. Thank you guys for having me back. I always have a blast learning horrible things that I'll never forget. Perfect. All right. We'll see you guys. Bye. Good job, Wes.