WEBVTT - Eaten Alive! 0:00:03.080 --> 0:00:05.960 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:05.960 --> 0:00:14.319 Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:14.320 --> 0:00:16.400 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And 0:00:16.440 --> 0:00:18.320 you know, let's let's listen to a second for this music. 0:00:18.360 --> 0:00:32.400 That's it's playing here Staring Black and the Boar Thruthy 0:00:32.760 --> 0:00:49.960 Angry Jaws Giants. That is, of course the Mariners Revenge 0:00:50.000 --> 0:00:53.440 song by the Decembrist, just a little bit from that track, 0:00:53.479 --> 0:00:57.160 and that's off the album Picturesque. I highly recommend uh 0:00:57.600 --> 0:01:00.680 everyone go download the full song, the full album or 0:01:00.720 --> 0:01:03.280 whatever after the podcast. But it's great because it deals 0:01:03.560 --> 0:01:07.120 with the idea of being eaten alive, not only eating alive, 0:01:07.160 --> 0:01:12.280 but swallowed alive whole by an enormous whale, which I think, 0:01:12.319 --> 0:01:14.000 at the end of the day is sort of a 0:01:14.040 --> 0:01:16.479 primal fear that we have. And the reason I think 0:01:16.520 --> 0:01:19.679 that is because there are so much literature, children's literature 0:01:19.920 --> 0:01:22.679 that is concerned with this idea. And if you are 0:01:22.680 --> 0:01:26.000 a small child, you are also concerned with it, right 0:01:26.040 --> 0:01:29.040 because you know that to some extent you are defenseless. 0:01:29.360 --> 0:01:31.880 Well yeah, and certainly a small child is a more 0:01:32.040 --> 0:01:36.039 corrective snack to various creatures they would otherwise hesitate to 0:01:36.040 --> 0:01:39.880 praying a human. Certainly, anyone, anyone who lives in Florida 0:01:39.959 --> 0:01:43.039 knows that the rules concerning alligators that they are more 0:01:43.120 --> 0:01:46.679 likely to eat children whole as well as dogs and whatnot, 0:01:46.680 --> 0:01:49.920 then they are gonna eat the whole human whole. It's 0:01:49.920 --> 0:01:53.080 just a more attractive snack. Uh. And and again we 0:01:52.800 --> 0:01:56.440 we get back to the primordial mindset of humans that 0:01:56.520 --> 0:01:58.600 were not quite at the top of the food chain. 0:01:58.680 --> 0:02:01.559 There was the possibility things going to eat them. Now 0:02:02.440 --> 0:02:06.200 beaten whole, Well, that's a totally different scenario. And we'll 0:02:06.240 --> 0:02:09.360 discusses is this podcast rolls on. But but yeah, I 0:02:09.360 --> 0:02:11.639 could see, you know, definitely where that is. It's a 0:02:11.720 --> 0:02:14.919 very primal fear. It is a primal fear. You see 0:02:14.960 --> 0:02:17.240 it in Hansel and Gretel, you'll see it in Little 0:02:17.240 --> 0:02:22.400 Red Riding Hood. Um. Last year there were five hundred 0:02:22.639 --> 0:02:26.280 German fairy tales that were unearthed from the eighteen hundreds 0:02:26.400 --> 0:02:29.360 and um they are very dark, grim like. Actually in 0:02:29.400 --> 0:02:32.600 the same period that Grim wrote The Grim Brothers and 0:02:32.639 --> 0:02:35.120 when the stories that I think was really interesting U 0:02:35.440 --> 0:02:37.840 featured a tale of a maiden who escapes a witch 0:02:37.840 --> 0:02:40.560 by transforming herself into a pond. But then the witch 0:02:40.639 --> 0:02:43.440 kind of just slurps her up and the girl has 0:02:43.480 --> 0:02:45.520 to use a knife to cut her way out of 0:02:45.520 --> 0:02:49.320 the witch. So it's a survival story. And that's what 0:02:49.400 --> 0:02:52.360 I think is at the really the basis of this 0:02:52.520 --> 0:02:57.760 swallowed whole idea that death may be imminent, but maybe, 0:02:57.919 --> 0:03:00.560 just maybe you could escape it if you were whole. 0:03:00.800 --> 0:03:04.280 It's interesting. Uh, And and certainly it's it's again. It's 0:03:04.280 --> 0:03:06.680 a trope that comes back again and again in our 0:03:06.800 --> 0:03:09.880 myths and our fictions. Obviously, there's a story of Jonah 0:03:10.120 --> 0:03:12.560 who's ordered by God to go to the city of Ninevah. 0:03:12.800 --> 0:03:15.440 But Jonah, he was He's a free thinker and then 0:03:15.440 --> 0:03:16.720 a bit of a coward, so he decided to go 0:03:16.720 --> 0:03:19.440 a different direction and not do what God told him. 0:03:19.440 --> 0:03:22.280 So God sent a storm to destroy his boat, and 0:03:22.680 --> 0:03:24.799 just to make sure that that the deed got done, 0:03:24.800 --> 0:03:27.440 also sent a whale or a giant fish, depending on 0:03:27.480 --> 0:03:30.359 your you're reading, to swallow him whole. And then of 0:03:30.400 --> 0:03:32.359 course he lives inside the whale for a little bit, 0:03:32.600 --> 0:03:35.840 thinks long and hard about what he's done, and eventually 0:03:35.880 --> 0:03:38.560 the whale frees him. Uh. And then in fiction, we've 0:03:38.600 --> 0:03:42.040 seen various characters that either either wind up in the 0:03:42.120 --> 0:03:45.600 in the belly of a whale, or alive miraculously in 0:03:45.640 --> 0:03:48.680 the belly of another terrestrial creature or in an alien creature. 0:03:49.240 --> 0:03:52.280 You see, like, there's Baron von Munchausen, there's myth the Lean, 0:03:52.360 --> 0:03:55.640 There's Pinocchio, There's Little Red Riding Hood, There's Isaac Clark, 0:03:55.880 --> 0:03:58.560 There's Boba Fette, there's hand Solo, there's John Voight in 0:03:58.600 --> 0:04:02.520 the belly of the Konda. Uh. So many, so many 0:04:02.560 --> 0:04:08.480 great family moments of various characters either almost becoming digested 0:04:08.680 --> 0:04:11.840 or or being partially digested, or just kind of magically 0:04:11.880 --> 0:04:15.680 held in the stomach of a creature and then eventually escaping. 0:04:15.680 --> 0:04:18.960 Generally they escape either through the way that they came 0:04:19.000 --> 0:04:21.560 in or out the stomach well. And then there's the 0:04:21.600 --> 0:04:24.960 flip side, us as predators, right, we have a bit 0:04:24.960 --> 0:04:27.120 of an obsession with that, or we have in our 0:04:27.120 --> 0:04:30.440 our past cultural histories. And you had mentioned in the 0:04:30.520 --> 0:04:36.119 last podcast um Sideshow Carney's ingesting frog's hole as a trick, 0:04:36.320 --> 0:04:39.320 right to to show to freak out really the audience, 0:04:39.680 --> 0:04:42.080 and then that frog surviving because they can breathe through 0:04:42.080 --> 0:04:44.080 its skin, so it's got some oxygen along with that 0:04:44.120 --> 0:04:48.000 glass of water in the in the sideshow Carney's body, 0:04:48.120 --> 0:04:51.240 and it can then regurgitate it. Yes, all right, So 0:04:52.080 --> 0:04:55.560 that's just something that I think really arrests our imagination. 0:04:55.920 --> 0:04:59.919 But turns out that something called stomach frogs and boosom 0:05:00.040 --> 0:05:05.200 snakes and slugs and slugs were a thing back in 0:05:05.279 --> 0:05:08.760 the day, along the late eighteenth century. If you had 0:05:08.800 --> 0:05:14.920 a stray gastric symptom, like you know, flatulence or um, 0:05:15.800 --> 0:05:19.080 I must have stomach snakes lactose intolerance. Before you could 0:05:19.080 --> 0:05:22.960 even identify lactose intolerance, right, you would begin to suspect 0:05:23.000 --> 0:05:26.440 that you were harboring some sort of creature whole in 0:05:26.480 --> 0:05:30.640 your digestive system. And people began to have these ideas like, well, 0:05:30.680 --> 0:05:33.240 you know, I was walking home and there's this pond, 0:05:33.320 --> 0:05:35.720 and I was thirsty, and I took a drink from it. 0:05:36.120 --> 0:05:39.400 Surely I swallowed a frog unbannach to me, or maybe 0:05:39.480 --> 0:05:42.279 some frog eggs or some snail eggs or something, and 0:05:42.279 --> 0:05:44.120 then it ends up hatching in you and then they're 0:05:44.160 --> 0:05:46.799 causing turmoil. And then in some cases there were reports 0:05:46.839 --> 0:05:51.200 where people claimed to have um pooped out live creatures 0:05:51.600 --> 0:05:54.680 and in some cases they would actually have them um 0:05:55.040 --> 0:05:57.280 like in jars and whatnot. And it was it was 0:05:57.360 --> 0:05:59.520 quite a big, big idea and in the time to 0:05:59.560 --> 0:06:02.800 the ex it was creeping into actual medical medical literature 0:06:02.800 --> 0:06:05.720 at the time. Um I did a blog post about 0:06:05.720 --> 0:06:08.040 this and about one of the positions New York position 0:06:08.080 --> 0:06:11.839 who who actually experimented this by feeding force feeding some 0:06:11.960 --> 0:06:15.880 live slugs to a dog and then uh peeking inside 0:06:15.960 --> 0:06:18.880 and having a little rummage around via surgery to find 0:06:18.880 --> 0:06:21.200 out if this if the slugs were intact, and of 0:06:21.240 --> 0:06:23.360 course the slugs were being broken right, like the surgeon 0:06:23.360 --> 0:06:26.200 actually made a fistula in the dog's stomach to take 0:06:26.200 --> 0:06:31.960 appear into the stomach ak a whole stomach. Yes, yes, 0:06:32.040 --> 0:06:33.599 because the whole is a is a great way to 0:06:33.600 --> 0:06:36.240 find out what's going on inside of something, be at 0:06:36.680 --> 0:06:39.400 a house or a dog's stomach, or a cow's stomach 0:06:39.760 --> 0:06:41.840 or a human stomach. I mean, that's one of the 0:06:41.839 --> 0:06:43.680 ways we learned about what's going on in there. But 0:06:44.000 --> 0:06:47.279 but in reality, of course, these individuals were not um 0:06:47.400 --> 0:06:50.919 having slugs grow the maturity inside their their guts and 0:06:50.920 --> 0:06:54.520 then crawling out their poop. Shoot, No, they were They were, 0:06:54.560 --> 0:06:56.960 you know, probably they came home from the lake or whatnot, 0:06:56.960 --> 0:06:58.640 and they had maybe there was a slug or a 0:06:58.640 --> 0:07:01.640 lizard attached to their swimsuit or their clothing. They found 0:07:01.680 --> 0:07:04.599 it in the vicinity of their bathroom or their their garments. 0:07:04.800 --> 0:07:07.240 They put one and two together with this strange stomach 0:07:07.240 --> 0:07:10.640 ache they had. And and then if we've talked about 0:07:10.680 --> 0:07:13.360 with any kind of like paranormal experience, if the story 0:07:13.480 --> 0:07:16.320 is out there, if the storyline is established, it's easier 0:07:16.320 --> 0:07:18.520 to fall into it. So the first person in the 0:07:18.520 --> 0:07:20.880 world to think, oh, my goodness, I bet I swallowed 0:07:20.920 --> 0:07:22.560 some slug eggs and I just pooped them all over 0:07:22.560 --> 0:07:24.680 the place, that person may have been a bit of 0:07:24.680 --> 0:07:27.560 a nut But like the the the sixth person, the 0:07:27.960 --> 0:07:30.280 fiftie person, the hundred and fiftieth person to come up 0:07:30.280 --> 0:07:32.960 with that, they had the pre existing storyline to fall into, 0:07:33.160 --> 0:07:35.720 so it becomes less and less nutty. Yeah, And I 0:07:35.720 --> 0:07:38.280 was just thinking how that ties into some of the 0:07:38.720 --> 0:07:41.720 pathos that we've seen with witchcraft or some of the 0:07:41.760 --> 0:07:44.840 myth making that that comes out of that. So, yes, 0:07:45.160 --> 0:07:49.400 I fell asleep and an evil snake crawled into or 0:07:49.440 --> 0:07:53.960 slithered its way into my esophagus into my bowels. That's 0:07:53.960 --> 0:07:58.200 an example. I didn't really think that. Um. Yeah. But 0:07:58.280 --> 0:08:01.720 back to the idea of being swallowed whole um. It 0:08:01.840 --> 0:08:05.520 Also it also gets into this this idea of of 0:08:05.560 --> 0:08:08.400 almost a desire and a comfort, which I think is 0:08:08.440 --> 0:08:11.760 interesting too, because on one hand, primal fear, nobody really 0:08:11.800 --> 0:08:14.480 wants to be eaten alive. Nobody really certainly wants to 0:08:14.480 --> 0:08:18.840 be eaten whole and partially died, part possibly digested. Um. 0:08:18.920 --> 0:08:23.120 But you do have apparently this thing called voraphilia, which 0:08:23.160 --> 0:08:25.960 I was not aware of until I guess it was 0:08:26.040 --> 0:08:29.080 vaguely aware of it to via like the German cannibal trial, 0:08:29.160 --> 0:08:32.040 where we get one individual who was seeking looking for 0:08:32.120 --> 0:08:34.920 that special someone who might want to be eaten, might 0:08:34.960 --> 0:08:37.240 want to be eaten and would have this desire to 0:08:37.280 --> 0:08:39.360 be eaten. But then there's a whole side of it 0:08:39.480 --> 0:08:42.679 that I discovered when I was researching the the winged 0:08:42.920 --> 0:08:45.640 devour creatures from BeastMasters, the ones that wrapped their caps 0:08:45.679 --> 0:08:48.200 from people and melt them down, really cool monsters. Um. 0:08:48.520 --> 0:08:50.080 Check out the blog post on that if you want. 0:08:50.480 --> 0:08:53.320 But but I ended up finding that there there's like 0:08:53.320 --> 0:08:58.280 a whole section of the Internet devoted to fantasies about them, 0:08:58.360 --> 0:09:02.199 about people sometimes been sell being eaten generally whole by 0:09:02.240 --> 0:09:05.320 some sort of monster or a monstrous person. And it's 0:09:05.360 --> 0:09:08.560 it's very it's very strange. Um. But but so I'm 0:09:08.559 --> 0:09:10.760 trying to wrap my head around it, like, like what 0:09:10.920 --> 0:09:13.200 is it about that? And uh, And it never really 0:09:13.240 --> 0:09:16.000 made sense until I was reading this article that they 0:09:16.000 --> 0:09:18.080 We're going to get into a little more uh. Later 0:09:18.120 --> 0:09:21.000 in the podcast by Ben Shattuck for Salon dot Com 0:09:21.480 --> 0:09:24.840 titled Swallowed by a Whale A True Tale question Mark, 0:09:25.360 --> 0:09:29.240 where he says that he he says this regarding being 0:09:29.280 --> 0:09:32.520 swallowed by whale, says, still, you'd like to think it's possible, 0:09:32.559 --> 0:09:34.920 you want to believe in an animal that can fit 0:09:35.160 --> 0:09:38.439 you inside them, that you might be consumed, not piece 0:09:38.480 --> 0:09:41.160 by piece, mouthful by mouthful, as sharks and bears would 0:09:41.160 --> 0:09:44.679 eat you, but wholly, to be encased as your full 0:09:44.679 --> 0:09:48.240 self womb like, so returning to the womb. And it's 0:09:48.280 --> 0:09:50.800 kind of a return to the womb. It's kind of like, 0:09:51.720 --> 0:09:53.840 it's kind of like the idea of being eaten alive, 0:09:54.280 --> 0:09:56.720 eaten whole by a monster. He's kind of like a 0:09:56.760 --> 0:09:59.480 big hug. Now that's one of the types of for 0:09:59.640 --> 0:10:02.160 I feel you, that's the kind of the kinder, softer 0:10:02.280 --> 0:10:04.160 side of it. There are other types that aren't quite 0:10:04.200 --> 0:10:06.520 as Yeah, it's there's a whole l it's the Internet, 0:10:06.640 --> 0:10:10.160 so there's a whole dark corridor to vanish down if 0:10:10.160 --> 0:10:12.959 you so choose. But now that's that's not the reason 0:10:12.960 --> 0:10:15.080 why we wanted to take you here. We wanted to 0:10:15.120 --> 0:10:17.319 take you here because we do think that at the 0:10:17.320 --> 0:10:20.240 core of this idea is this interest in like, what 0:10:20.400 --> 0:10:24.839 about being swallowed whole? What about escaping death? What about 0:10:24.920 --> 0:10:27.360 returning to lum in a sense as well? And what 0:10:27.440 --> 0:10:30.720 extent is it possible? To what extent has it actually happened? Uh, 0:10:30.840 --> 0:10:35.160 it's fascinating, um, fascinating area of discussion. And of course 0:10:35.200 --> 0:10:37.920 we have to turn to animals that actually swallow their 0:10:37.960 --> 0:10:41.520 prey alive and in many times whole to actually get 0:10:41.520 --> 0:10:44.959 a beat on this subject. And that's the thing because obviously, 0:10:45.000 --> 0:10:47.840 when when you or I eat things, we tend to chew. 0:10:47.920 --> 0:10:51.520 We tend to We've just done an entire podcast about 0:10:51.960 --> 0:10:54.440 about smelling our food, tasting our food, and then chewing 0:10:54.480 --> 0:10:57.439 it up and transforming the food into uh, into a 0:10:57.480 --> 0:10:59.760 parcel that can be then sent through the rest of 0:10:59.760 --> 0:11:03.319 the justice system. So there are various creatures that don't 0:11:03.360 --> 0:11:06.440 do as much chewing. There are creatures that don't do 0:11:06.640 --> 0:11:08.960 you know, any chewing for the most part. But cows 0:11:08.960 --> 0:11:11.280 on the opposite spectrum, by the way, choose something like 0:11:11.480 --> 0:11:15.600 sixty shoes a day and have like three stomachs. Well, 0:11:15.600 --> 0:11:17.599 they've got the room in then yeah, I don't know, 0:11:17.640 --> 0:11:19.760 I didn't know. I didn't know research cows for this one. 0:11:19.800 --> 0:11:23.880 So if you're thinking, hollis, what is the opposite of 0:11:23.920 --> 0:11:26.960 swallowing something? Hole is a cow? Yeah it's steady, yeah, 0:11:27.400 --> 0:11:30.520 steady digesting and chewing and process that goes on there. 0:11:30.720 --> 0:11:32.800 But you look at some of these other creatures like 0:11:32.840 --> 0:11:36.240 snakes off and consume prey whole. Though, don't get your 0:11:36.240 --> 0:11:40.000 hopes too high, because pythons, for instance, killed before eating. 0:11:40.400 --> 0:11:42.880 There is an advantage to be had in killing something 0:11:42.960 --> 0:11:46.439 before you swallow it um and if nothing else, is 0:11:46.480 --> 0:11:51.640 just easier to the creature. Take like for instans, owls. Owls, 0:11:51.880 --> 0:11:54.040 you know they'll eat their prey whole, but they have 0:11:54.120 --> 0:11:58.680 these powerful beaks and uh, it's I'm quite a challenge 0:11:58.679 --> 0:12:01.600 to get past that powerful killing beak to make it 0:12:01.640 --> 0:12:04.920 down into the rest of the owl hole. Um Likewise, 0:12:04.960 --> 0:12:08.040 crocodiles may swell pray hole, but then they'll also chop 0:12:08.120 --> 0:12:09.880 them up pretty good. I was looking at some rather 0:12:10.200 --> 0:12:14.439 horrifying photos of of supposedly, Again you never know what 0:12:14.480 --> 0:12:17.080 the Internet, and certainly when you start looking into accounts 0:12:17.120 --> 0:12:19.920 of people being eaten by animals and being eaten whole, 0:12:19.960 --> 0:12:22.680 there's a whole world of hoax out there that you 0:12:22.720 --> 0:12:25.400 have to deal with. But I saw some some photographs 0:12:25.400 --> 0:12:29.480 supposedly of crocodile's stomach, a nile crocodile which do eat 0:12:29.559 --> 0:12:32.480 humans on a fairly regular basis, and they've cut it open, 0:12:32.520 --> 0:12:34.839 and there were some pieces of of what appeared to 0:12:34.880 --> 0:12:37.440 be human there, and it was not at one piece. 0:12:38.080 --> 0:12:41.600 Sharks obviously, as Mary Road points out in her book Gulp, 0:12:41.679 --> 0:12:45.280 they can and do eat like three turtles at once, 0:12:45.440 --> 0:12:48.680 it's possible. But they're also pretty famous for their smiles, 0:12:48.720 --> 0:12:52.000 and they're not above In fact, they seem to relish 0:12:52.120 --> 0:12:54.680 chewing up their food to some extent before it goes 0:12:54.720 --> 0:12:58.480 down the whole. But then there is the the big one, 0:12:58.520 --> 0:13:00.560 the one that of course has mentioned in the December 0:13:00.640 --> 0:13:02.400 song at the start of this podcast, and the one 0:13:02.400 --> 0:13:04.200 that we're gonna spend the most time with, and that 0:13:04.320 --> 0:13:06.719 is the idea of the whale. This is, after all, 0:13:06.760 --> 0:13:11.719 this is the creature that supposedly swallowed both Noah and Pinocchio. 0:13:12.320 --> 0:13:15.480 So it's kind of a big deal, especially when you 0:13:15.520 --> 0:13:19.760 consider the kind of food that are found in well 0:13:19.960 --> 0:13:23.079 whales bellies. I mean it's it's basically like a fish 0:13:23.160 --> 0:13:27.079 market in a belly when you cut these guys open. Yeah, specifically, 0:13:27.200 --> 0:13:29.480 um of the sperm whale is the big one here, 0:13:29.559 --> 0:13:33.679 because the sperm whale is eating fairly large prey. We're 0:13:33.679 --> 0:13:38.280 talking man size squid, we're talking sharks, we're talking bucket 0:13:38.320 --> 0:13:42.040 loads of fish, coconuts, what have you showing up in 0:13:42.080 --> 0:13:45.160 their stomach. And certainly the sperm whale exists on a 0:13:45.240 --> 0:13:50.080 scale that dwarfs human. We're talking like a male sperm 0:13:50.080 --> 0:13:56.200 whale may weigh up to forty five tons that's and 0:13:56.559 --> 0:13:59.719 it maybe fifty two ft or sixteen meters long. I mean, 0:13:59.720 --> 0:14:03.680 it's just a scale of a living creature that dwarfs 0:14:03.720 --> 0:14:07.120 us so enormously. Like the idea of being consumed by 0:14:07.120 --> 0:14:10.480 a whole is even more powerful, well, you know, especially 0:14:10.520 --> 0:14:12.520 when you when you consider like, you know, sixteen of 0:14:12.600 --> 0:14:14.880 us could just hang out in the mouth, you know, 0:14:14.960 --> 0:14:18.800 side by side, waving at each other. Um. And also 0:14:18.800 --> 0:14:21.120 if you consider that in nineteen fifty five, a four 0:14:21.240 --> 0:14:25.240 hundred and five pounds squid measuring six six six ft 0:14:25.280 --> 0:14:29.920 six inches minus the tentacles was recovered intact from a 0:14:29.960 --> 0:14:32.880 sperm whale. Yes, because look at that and you say, wow, 0:14:33.120 --> 0:14:35.760 like this, couldn't you just have a human in there? Yeah, 0:14:35.800 --> 0:14:37.600 because here's the thing with the with the with the 0:14:37.640 --> 0:14:40.440 sperm whale, as in evidence by the by that large 0:14:40.440 --> 0:14:44.880 squid whole in its stomach. They feed by suction a 0:14:44.880 --> 0:14:47.480 lot of the times there're sucking the food down. Now, 0:14:47.520 --> 0:14:51.800 they do have some jaws as well. We're talking to 0:14:51.880 --> 0:14:55.280 twenty six banana shaped teeth on the lower jaw to 0:14:55.400 --> 0:14:58.240 fit into sockets in the upper jaw and uh. And 0:14:58.360 --> 0:15:01.240 these things are used to choose some stuff up. They 0:15:01.240 --> 0:15:04.760 don't always always chew them up. And you have to 0:15:04.800 --> 0:15:08.040 consider too that the squid is a Bonleus creature, right, 0:15:08.080 --> 0:15:10.480 So that's what you see to swallow. The only thing 0:15:10.560 --> 0:15:12.640 be in the beak, which we'll get to, which is 0:15:12.680 --> 0:15:15.920 really interesting. Um. So yeah, let's get into this territory 0:15:16.080 --> 0:15:19.000 of what if what could you be swallowed by a whale? 0:15:19.240 --> 0:15:21.440 What would the conditions have to be in order for 0:15:21.480 --> 0:15:27.280 you to survive? Is it a myth? Or is it possible? Yes? 0:15:27.560 --> 0:15:29.800 Then this is this is uh. This topic has been 0:15:29.800 --> 0:15:32.160 explored both by Mary Roach and her book Goal, but 0:15:32.200 --> 0:15:35.880 also in this excellent Salon article by Ben Shattuck Swallowed 0:15:35.880 --> 0:15:38.560 by a whale a true tale question mark. And so 0:15:38.600 --> 0:15:40.600 there have been a lot of stories over the years 0:15:40.840 --> 0:15:43.680 about people being swallowed by a whale, particularly out of 0:15:43.720 --> 0:15:47.760 the period in um in particularly American history, where a 0:15:47.800 --> 0:15:51.600 whaling was big medicine. Because this is where and even 0:15:51.600 --> 0:15:53.560 looking back on it, you can say, if there's a 0:15:53.600 --> 0:15:56.880 potential for this animal to swallow a human hole, this 0:15:56.960 --> 0:16:00.440 is it. Because as we mentioned, UH, the m whale 0:16:00.560 --> 0:16:03.560 is not really interested in eating um, you know, hairless 0:16:03.600 --> 0:16:07.040 apes like ourselves as they fall off of ships. It's 0:16:07.080 --> 0:16:11.320 concerned with with eating deep and eating squid, eating sharks 0:16:11.320 --> 0:16:13.880 and what have you. We're not their food. But if 0:16:13.920 --> 0:16:15.920 you put you have an environment here where humans are 0:16:15.960 --> 0:16:19.880 actively hunting down sperm whales uh and trying to kill them, 0:16:20.000 --> 0:16:23.600 and then the whale retaliated is retaliating. It is and 0:16:23.680 --> 0:16:26.560 is no, slouch is quite a deadly creature, uh, in 0:16:26.560 --> 0:16:29.960 in these encounters. So you end up with these these 0:16:30.080 --> 0:16:32.160 encounters like you see and read about in Moby Dick, 0:16:32.280 --> 0:16:35.920 like you see in a thousand different whaling m illustrations, 0:16:35.920 --> 0:16:39.880 where you have men in boats just battling the sperm 0:16:39.920 --> 0:16:42.120 whale and you see people just falling all over the place, 0:16:42.200 --> 0:16:45.080 falling into the open mouths of whales. Well, you also 0:16:45.200 --> 0:16:48.320 have whales who are breaching the water and then you know, 0:16:48.440 --> 0:16:51.000 chomping down on the whole of a ship. Okay, so 0:16:51.040 --> 0:16:53.800 this is a possibility, and this this has happened. But 0:16:53.920 --> 0:16:55.880 of course, when you get these accounts, and let's say 0:16:55.880 --> 0:16:58.600 that you have an unlucky crew member who happens to 0:16:58.640 --> 0:17:01.160 be right there at that time, I'm that person is 0:17:01.200 --> 0:17:03.720 going to fall into the mouth right or or be 0:17:03.840 --> 0:17:07.840 part of just the wreckage and uh you know, maybe 0:17:08.119 --> 0:17:11.960 maybe they escape the mouth and they tell tale of it. 0:17:12.320 --> 0:17:15.880 But being in a whale's mouth is very different than 0:17:15.920 --> 0:17:19.119 being in a whale's gut. Yes, now, one of the 0:17:19.200 --> 0:17:22.560 more amusing stories, and this is bogus, by the way, 0:17:22.600 --> 0:17:25.159 but it made the rounds pretty big for for a 0:17:25.200 --> 0:17:28.440 brief period. As the star of the east. The sub 0:17:28.480 --> 0:17:32.520 vessels bothically sailing around the Falkland islands and uh, you know, 0:17:32.640 --> 0:17:35.520 some some bad stuff happens, and someone ends up falling 0:17:35.520 --> 0:17:38.480 into a whale's mouth it's from west mouth and uh, 0:17:38.560 --> 0:17:41.240 and ends up in the stomach, and then it then escapes. 0:17:41.280 --> 0:17:43.320 The stomach is eventually sped us spat out, and it's 0:17:43.640 --> 0:17:47.399 his skin is bleached white from the stomach acids, and 0:17:47.440 --> 0:17:50.320 he's he's somewhat horrified and shaken, as you might imagine, 0:17:50.359 --> 0:17:53.359 but he lives and everyone goes gaga over the story. 0:17:53.400 --> 0:17:55.040 But then it comes out that it was just it 0:17:55.119 --> 0:17:57.480 was made up. It was a hoax perpetrated by some 0:17:57.520 --> 0:17:59.840 whitlers well. And one of the reasons why we know 0:18:00.000 --> 0:18:02.639 as a hoax is because the four stomach does not 0:18:02.840 --> 0:18:05.520 have gastric juices lulling about it, or rather, there's some 0:18:05.600 --> 0:18:09.000 question about what to what degree there would be stomach acids. 0:18:09.040 --> 0:18:11.399 So this idea that he would be ejected from it 0:18:12.240 --> 0:18:15.919 bleached is pretty erroneous. Well, on that note, let's take 0:18:15.920 --> 0:18:18.359 a quick break and when we come back, more of 0:18:18.440 --> 0:18:27.800 this adventure inside of the whale's stomach again, we're talking 0:18:27.840 --> 0:18:31.119 about the idea Canna can a sperm whale swallow a 0:18:31.200 --> 0:18:33.679 human hoole? Can I swallow a man hole? If it 0:18:33.760 --> 0:18:36.040 was gonna happen, It was gonna happen during the heyday 0:18:36.040 --> 0:18:39.760 of whaling, when you had nine battling sperm whales to 0:18:39.840 --> 0:18:42.040 the death out in the middle of the ocean. As 0:18:42.119 --> 0:18:45.120 all the art illustrates, you have people falling into their mouths, 0:18:45.119 --> 0:18:47.400 falling into the water around them with his giant jaw 0:18:47.480 --> 0:18:51.199 thrashing about. Well in in his article for Salon Ben 0:18:51.240 --> 0:18:55.000 Shattuck he actually visited the new Bedford Whaling Museum research Library, 0:18:55.040 --> 0:18:57.439 and he was looking into all these accounts of whale deaths, 0:18:57.720 --> 0:19:01.040 situations where crew members died because of a whale, and 0:19:01.080 --> 0:19:03.720 a lot of these were caused by whale on boat 0:19:03.760 --> 0:19:06.639 ash action or especially the thrashing of the of the 0:19:06.680 --> 0:19:10.320 giants flukes the tail fins as they thrash out of 0:19:10.320 --> 0:19:12.679 the water. We've all seen pictures of the of the 0:19:12.680 --> 0:19:14.800 tail of the whale coming out of the water, and 0:19:14.800 --> 0:19:17.840 it's and this is a an enormous thing. Again, these 0:19:17.840 --> 0:19:22.359 are these things away tons, These are behemoths, these are 0:19:22.480 --> 0:19:24.920 well more to the point, these are le viathans and 0:19:25.040 --> 0:19:27.360 uh and they can and do crush boats when they're 0:19:27.359 --> 0:19:30.200 in close proximity to them when they're breaching the water. Well. 0:19:30.280 --> 0:19:32.280 Of course, you have the cartoons too of people being 0:19:32.440 --> 0:19:35.200 swallowed whole and then being ejected out of the blowhole. 0:19:35.600 --> 0:19:39.360 You know, there's this idea of just being sent through 0:19:39.400 --> 0:19:43.439 the digestive system of the whale is pretty deeply entrenched 0:19:43.520 --> 0:19:46.360 in our cultural fabric. Yeah. And then some people were 0:19:46.680 --> 0:19:49.440 chomped by these by by the job and the jaws 0:19:49.480 --> 0:19:52.000 moving on. The job does have teeth, And there's some 0:19:52.080 --> 0:19:55.520 pretty gruesome accounts of this, but one particular Edmund Gardner, 0:19:56.080 --> 0:19:58.760 and I'll try to include I'll try to put a 0:19:58.840 --> 0:20:02.960 photograph of this up on the website when this episode airs, 0:20:03.280 --> 0:20:05.760 because there's a there's a fairly famous photo of him, 0:20:05.760 --> 0:20:07.440 and he's sitting there in his black and white photo. 0:20:07.520 --> 0:20:09.760 You know, he's sitting there in his chair posing, uh, 0:20:09.880 --> 0:20:11.800 and you can clearly see that one of his hands 0:20:12.000 --> 0:20:16.320 is just a stump, like a just a mangled stump 0:20:16.359 --> 0:20:18.760 with no fingers on it, and that is due to 0:20:19.040 --> 0:20:23.440 a whale light he fell in uh and uh nearly died. Yeah. 0:20:23.560 --> 0:20:26.320 And again, you know, these stories get circulated as being 0:20:26.440 --> 0:20:29.520 swallowed by the sale and what we're talking about here semantics, 0:20:29.560 --> 0:20:31.920 because if someone were to be in the mouth, yes, 0:20:32.000 --> 0:20:36.800 they could escaped from the mouth, hopefully with their lives intact, 0:20:37.359 --> 0:20:40.000 but not again be digested. And that's where you see 0:20:40.080 --> 0:20:43.080 this idea being taken for granted, like you could be 0:20:43.200 --> 0:20:45.720 swallowed by a whale. Yeah. And again it comes back 0:20:45.760 --> 0:20:47.960 to this idea that it is such a compelling story. 0:20:48.040 --> 0:20:51.040 It's such a compelling idea. I was swallowed whole, and 0:20:51.080 --> 0:20:53.800 then I was in a way that you know, I 0:20:53.880 --> 0:20:55.879 returned to the womb, and then I was born again 0:20:56.200 --> 0:20:58.399 out of the whale stomach, out of the sharks by 0:20:58.440 --> 0:21:01.000 a whale. Yeah, because we both ran across this one 0:21:01.040 --> 0:21:03.000 story as we were researching this where of course we're 0:21:03.000 --> 0:21:05.920 doing all these Google searches and and uh and you know, 0:21:06.000 --> 0:21:09.280 academic article searches for swallowed alive by and then throwing 0:21:09.320 --> 0:21:12.200 in shark and whale and muskrat or whatever we happen 0:21:12.200 --> 0:21:14.440 to be looking for. And uh. And there was a 0:21:14.520 --> 0:21:16.439 story from a couple of years back. I think, um 0:21:16.880 --> 0:21:18.119 that made the rounds, I want to say, in the 0:21:18.160 --> 0:21:22.440 Telegraph or one of the major British guardian Guardian, I 0:21:22.560 --> 0:21:25.639 think and uh in the headline was something to the 0:21:25.720 --> 0:21:31.040 effect of man partially swallowed hole by shark, which which 0:21:32.040 --> 0:21:35.080 it was. You know, they at least knew better than 0:21:35.160 --> 0:21:37.160 to say in the headline that he was swallowed hole, 0:21:37.200 --> 0:21:39.359