Why It's Now Illegal to Give Dolphins Acid (For Science)

This is the story of two scientists who pushed the envelope of both good taste and morality as they experimented with dolphins. The idea was simple. Give dolphins LSD and then see if we can teach them to speak English. The results were not so simple or clear-cut. But they were certainly ridiculous... and criminal. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous crime. It's a production of iHeartRadio and there.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
She is missed the Lizabid I go gonna save the day.
How are you doing there?

Speaker 3 (00:11):
Pretty well? Consider my day saved.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
I saved the day for pretty much everybody.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
You do for me, I mean, my day is already
looking up and now it's saved too.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
If it's not comfortable, this is true. Yah, you make
the call.

Speaker 3 (00:23):
I got a question for you over there, save her
and destroyer of worlds?

Speaker 4 (00:27):
Uh?

Speaker 3 (00:27):
Do you know it's ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
I do know it's ridiculous.

Speaker 3 (00:31):
Share it with me.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
It has to do with ranch dressing. You fan a
ranch dressing?

Speaker 3 (00:37):
Yes, breathe through it. Okay, here's how I put it.
I never had ranch dressing until I went to UH
college and then and then I had it. And then
I was like, oh, okay, and really the only thing
I ever eat it with, But it's not true. I
eat it with pizza because that's how I learned it.
And then I tried to put it any on salads
when it was the only dressing and I didn't want
to go with like blue cheese or something, and I

(00:58):
was like, huh yeah, Because I grew up my father
there was just oil and vinegar or Italian dressing, and
then my mother had like Catalina in French dressing, so
I never saw.

Speaker 2 (01:06):
Yeah, we never had ranch at Woodstocks Pizza in Davis, Californy.

Speaker 3 (01:11):
That's where I learned.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
That's where I learned. They give you ranch with the pizza.
And I was like, what the h am I supposed
to do? Exactly what the h E? Double hockey sticks
is this?

Speaker 3 (01:20):
And you're not supposed to drizzle, You're supposed to dip
dip yearned And then.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
I was like, this is kind of great if the
pizza is like not not like sparkle tacular anyway. But yeah,
I can't put it on a salad. I can't go there.
It's two thicks anyway. Ranch dressing, that's one thing. Put
that put a pin in that pen stuff. Have you
ever been to Great Wolf Lodge? Do you know what

(01:44):
that is?

Speaker 3 (01:45):
It sounds familiar. I don't think I have.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
It's my understanding that it is like an indoor water park.
Oh yeah, no, I've seen ads just like kids pee
in the water. Sure, I think they encourage it. They're
probably signs.

Speaker 3 (01:57):
They give rewards, little stickers.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
Yes, yes, there's a rewards program. They have this list
of where they are located all across the USA. My
favorite is there's a location in San Francisco slash Mantica, California.

Speaker 3 (02:13):
I'm going to tell.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
You something right now, y'all. Mantica is nowhere near San Francisco.
But let's you know, don't stop believing anyho So Mountain
Range Valley. All right? Anyway, what was I saying? Great
Wolf Lodge Ranch Dressing and you know what I'm going
to go to now, milkshakes Because the Great Wolf Lodge,

(02:38):
in honor of Ranch Dressing Day, which was March tenth,
they started selling a ranch milkshake. It is blended with
vanilla ice cream and ranch dressing, garnished with Crispy chicken,
so like little Chicky Nuggies. So like is that like

(03:00):
on the rim of the glass, Well, it's a salty
lime rim. But then on little skewers there's Chicky Nuggies, carrots, celery,
whipped cream in my shake, in your shake, and so
it's eight bucks. You can get it at Great Wolf
Lodge until they're not they're going to stop this madness

(03:22):
May twentieth, So get there beforehand. The thing is is
that they've been like wilding out on social media because
everyone's talking about how disgusting it is. Sure on Twitter,
but then Great Wolf Lodge, which is on Twitter, which
makes me highly suspicious, they get on there and they
respond to this stuff. So someone's like getting ready to
puke now, and Great Wolf Lodge responded with the laughing

(03:46):
emoji and said that rant shake will do that to you.
Vibes alone are enough to flip a stomach.

Speaker 3 (03:52):
So it's kind of like milkshake duck.

Speaker 2 (03:54):
But it's I think that's the new era that we're in,
is that you're supposed to come up with the most
disgusting things possible to go viral.

Speaker 3 (04:03):
It's the attention economy.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
The attention economy. They also someone just kept asking why,
and then the Lodge responded, honestly, that shake feels like
chaos in a cup. Why is the only correct reaction? Okay,
cool kids, I.

Speaker 3 (04:20):
Just come on now, this is what we're gonna do.

Speaker 2 (04:24):
But you know who has the final word on this?

Speaker 3 (04:26):
Not I, not you, No producer, No.

Speaker 2 (04:29):
Not not you.

Speaker 3 (04:30):
I know it's not me.

Speaker 2 (04:31):
R and b Legend Dion Warwick.

Speaker 3 (04:33):
Yes, this will be good.

Speaker 2 (04:34):
She commented on the post and she said, quote just
in the kitchen wasting food.

Speaker 3 (04:40):
Thank you, Dion.

Speaker 2 (04:41):
She knows God bless So that is ridiculous.

Speaker 3 (04:45):
My god, it's so ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (04:47):
The end goodbye.

Speaker 3 (04:49):
Now that you cleared the end day ruined, I got
something ridiculous for you. It's way more fun than that.
Good Yeah, giving dolphins LSD because you know science.

Speaker 5 (05:01):
Oh, this is ridiculous Crime, A podcast about absurd and

(05:26):
outrageous capers, heists and cons.

Speaker 3 (05:29):
It's always ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred
percent ridiculous murder was the case they gave you free, Elizabeth,
I got a wild one for you about dolphins and
crime and psychedelics.

Speaker 2 (05:46):
If I could do that dolphins sound, I would do it,
but I can't.

Speaker 3 (05:51):
Something like that, Yeah, the clicking and the whistle, Yes.

Speaker 2 (05:54):
That just summons the interns.

Speaker 3 (05:56):
Before we get into this, the folks who gave us
dolphins on l because science. I want to set the
stage with a different and bizarre story about dolphins. To
wet your beak, so to speak. It comes to us
from Florida, so you know it's good. As the local
news outlet CBS twelve reported earlier this month, on March six,
twenty twenty six, dateline Lee County, Florida and I quote,

(06:20):
dolphins are back in the headlines, and this time they're
being accused of running Florida's most bizarre development project. Wait, yes,
so the news stories what they were referring to had
the following headline update mysterious dolphin kidnapping case takes bizarre
turn as victim's background raises new questions. That's just got
so much.

Speaker 2 (06:39):
In it, right there, there's a lot going dolphin.

Speaker 3 (06:41):
Kidnapping, suspicious victims, background, new questions. Anyway, the story was
from a different new story. It's reportedly shared by the
Associated Press out of Fort Myers, Florida and I quote
and a story that has captivated local residents and gone
viral on social media. Thirty three year old man found
disoriented and sunburned on the Santa Belle Causeway early Monday

(07:02):
morning claimed he was abducted by a pod of dolphins
and forced to labor on an elaborate underwater construction project.
Wait right off bed, we have outrageous claims.

Speaker 2 (07:14):
Let's let's go back and let's do some Let's do
some point by point on here. Sure, so we got
a sunburned guy on a highway and then he.

Speaker 3 (07:24):
Says, abducted by a pod of dolphins.

Speaker 2 (07:26):
And forced to do like water welding.

Speaker 3 (07:29):
Correct, so I got more for Elizabeth. Back to the
ap story. Out of Fort Myers, Florida, Lee County Sheriff's
Office deputies responded to a nine to one to one
call it approximately five forty five am from a passing
motorists who spotted Ricky James Hallowell standing barefoot on the
shoulder of the causeway, drenched in seawater and frantically sketching
diagrams in the wet sand. Hallowell, a resident of nearby

(07:51):
Cape Coral, was clad only in faded blue swim trunks,
with severe sunburn covering his upper body and what appeared
to be minor abrasions on his hands and feet. Consistent
he later claimed with quote handling coral and structural materials underwater. Okay,
so now we're getting into some real details.

Speaker 2 (08:08):
They still sell bath salt.

Speaker 3 (08:12):
I went immediately wint to that, but he wasn't eating faces. Now,
buckle at Buttercup, because I have a bunch more for you.
Back to the ap story. According to the official incident
report obtained by the AP. Hollowell recounted being approached by
a group of bottle nosed dolphins while swimming recreationally off
Fort Myers Beach on Friday afternoon. Quote they surrounded me
like a security detail, Hollowell told deputies. It wasn't aggressive

(08:34):
at first, but they nudged me deeper away from the
shore before I knew it. I was at a site
about forty feet down in the gulf, helping them build
what looked like a full scale aquatic habitat.

Speaker 2 (08:46):
Okay, right, So at this.

Speaker 3 (08:47):
Point I hope alaren bills are going off for you.
The questions like how the hell can this be true?
Or do dolphins construction workers have unions and protections like
osha but for the ocean too. Well, before we answer
these questions, I have a few more details. Where are
you from the AAP. Hallowell learned to communicate with the
dolphin overlords who would have taken him hostage. Quote. Hallowell

(09:07):
describe the dolphins communicating via a complex series of echolocation
clicks and whistles, which he said he quote picked up
on after a few hours. It was like learning a
new language on the fly. He identified the apparent leader
of the pod as Gerald, a large male dolphin with
distinctive scarring on his dorsal fan, whom he referred to
as the project Foreman.

Speaker 2 (09:27):
Wait, did Gerald the turkey right have a cousin? I
have a cousin Gerald or morph?

Speaker 3 (09:32):
Yeah? Oh I like that reincarnated maybe. So now we
have a leader of a dolphin construction crew, aka Gerald,
the alleged Foreman.

Speaker 2 (09:40):
So he's such a task master.

Speaker 3 (09:42):
Oh, hard, hard boss. But you also may have other questions,
like how the hell did Hallowell survive underwater for days
without needing access to air food?

Speaker 2 (09:50):
Oh? I'm Jared. I like to have logic and reason
in my story.

Speaker 3 (09:55):
According to Hallowell, and I quote, when pressed by deputies
on how he survived on water for three days without
oxygen equipment, Hallowell replied, cryptically, quote Gerald handled the breathing part,
some kind of bubble system or pressure adaptation. I didn't
ask too many questions. You don't question Gerald. He's got
that authoritative vibe.

Speaker 2 (10:16):
I just he kissed Gerald.

Speaker 3 (10:19):
Make them kissing now. I don't know about you, but
I really hope that you do question Gerald, and more
generally questioned anyone with what some might cally an authoritative vibe. Right,
Please just question authoritative vibes. It's usually a front a lie. Meanwhile,
the Lee County deputies, they did have some questions, even
if they weren't about Gerald, leader of the dolphins. The
deputies were more focused on what Hallowell did once he

(10:41):
re emerged on land. Notably, they were curious about the
symbols he was drawing in the sand. I remember that part,
so back to the age.

Speaker 2 (10:47):
But a guy can't scribble in the sam on the
side of the highway.

Speaker 3 (10:51):
Is he making diagrams?

Speaker 2 (10:52):
What is this? So?

Speaker 3 (10:53):
According to the AP story out of Fort Myers, Florida,
and I quote, deputies noted that Hallowell's sand sketches are
remarkably detailed, spanning roughly ten feet across and including scaled
blueprints for what resembled a submerged community, multi level condo
structures made from natural, coral and synthetic like materials, a
central town square with gathering pods, and even a recreation

(11:16):
center featuring what Hollowell described as dolphin friendly obstacle courses.

Speaker 2 (11:21):
Wait wait, and he was just scratching this into the
dirt apparently wanted to get it down. I guess you
know they do those fine sand.

Speaker 3 (11:29):
Beaches down there, white sand beaches.

Speaker 2 (11:31):
Because I'm just I can't understand how you're getting so
much detail in this, You know what I mean?

Speaker 3 (11:38):
If like me and apparently you, you're astounded to learn
that dolphins are building multi level condos from coral with
rec centers and obstacle courses.

Speaker 2 (11:45):
Gerald is a developer. I mean, what kind of lovely
farmland down there did he buy up?

Speaker 3 (11:50):
That's exactly destroyed the Florida condo communities continue now. The
Lee County deputies, they had questions. For instance, Deputy Sean Oakley,
are reputed eleven year veteran told the AP, I've seen
my share of oddities in Lee County, but this guy's
diagrams had zoning regulations penciled in, setbacks, load bearing specs,
even environmental impact notes. It was detailed enough to make

(12:12):
you wonder if he wasn't onto something.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
Way, what right?

Speaker 3 (12:16):
So as for how Hollowell survived the strange ordeal and
managed to get back to land to share with all
of us these developmental plans of our underwater mammalian cousins,
According to Hallowell, he was released from his captivity and
his indentured servitude to Gerald and once he was free,
he swam ashore. Then he crawled out of the surf.
His feet touched dry sand. He was like, oh, thank god.

(12:36):
He was all exhausted, confuse, wondering what he just experienced,
and brother, I've been there. But once he could stand
and eventually walk, Hallowell walked until he found the causeway.
That's where he collapsed and was eventually discovered by the
deputies responding to the nine to one to one call.
Yeah right, so, according to the AP story, emergency responders
transported Hollowell to Lee Memorial Hospital for evaluation, where he

(12:58):
was treated for dehydration and sunburn. No drugs or alcohol
were detected in his system.

Speaker 2 (13:04):
Saren what if he's telling the truth?

Speaker 3 (13:06):
Right? How about that aliens and dolphins working together on
some abyst level thing?

Speaker 2 (13:12):
What I've come to learn, Yes, is it? You hear
all these conspiracy theories, believe and you think, oh, it's crazy,
and then you find out, oh god, they're real. And
so now I am just like I'll buy any.

Speaker 3 (13:27):
I'll buy that for a doll.

Speaker 2 (13:28):
I'll buy that for a doll. Yeah, I've been taught recently.

Speaker 3 (13:32):
Recently, same I'm right there with you.

Speaker 2 (13:34):
Go with it, you know, so now I believe them all.

Speaker 3 (13:36):
Tell me about the nine different types of aliens we
were in contact, Yes, exactly, so we've basically rolled out.
He wasn't high on basalts, he wasn't tripping on magic mushrooms,
no LSD. He's stone cold, sober. So how can this be? Like,
you know, I'm also glad that you're kind of questioning
yet also willing to accept this story because it gives
me hope. Kind of. Anyway, back to the story, because
there were some updates. Okay, once Halliwell was under medical

(13:59):
supervision in the hospital setting, more tests were run. The
doctors discover that Well it was. One of the medical
professionals is doctor Elena Vesquez. She's credited as an attending pulmonologist, right,
so she shares her opinion in the release of the
findings of what happened to Hallowell and I quote, this
isn't consistent with a brief drowning incident or aspiration from swimming.

(14:21):
It's as if his respiratory system was exposed to seawater
for an extended period, yet without the expected inflammation or damage.
We're consulting marine biologists for further insight. But it's puzzling.
This is all odd, right, Yeah, Elizabeth, I'm glad to
hear that you do have some questions and some doubt
for this story.

Speaker 2 (14:40):
That's important.

Speaker 3 (14:40):
I have more details for you, ones that may confound
your lead to more questions. Apparently, the Lee County Sheriff's
Department looked into Hollowell's background, and the deputies found that
demand's a scientist. He'd gone to MIT, worked for Lockheed
Martin and later NASA. According to AP story, Hallowell quote
holds a master's degree an aerospace ructures from the Massachusetts

(15:01):
Institute of Technology. Previously worked for a decade at Lockheed
Martin in Orlando, where he specialized in advanced composite materials
and submersible vehicle designs for deep sea exploration projects funded
by NASA and the US Navy. So Jaron is like
a headhunter. I mean, he got the.

Speaker 2 (15:18):
Right he really did.

Speaker 3 (15:20):
So this all gives credence to why Gerald, you know,
picked him to join his construction crew. But one of
Hollowell's former supervisors was quoted saying that Hallowell was and
I quote always talking about bio inspired engineering, mimicking marine
life for better tech. If anyone's story about building for
dolphins could have a kernel of truth, it's his.

Speaker 2 (15:41):
Oh right.

Speaker 3 (15:42):
So at this point, I still hope that your questions
are multiplying and growing. I'm talking like exponential progression. I
want you like going, wait, what the hell is thereon
telling me? How could any of this be true even
with all these like corroborations from doctors and former supervisors. Well,
to answer that fundamental question, I returned to the Lee
County Sheriff's Office. Okay, and the story from March sixth

(16:03):
that I mentioned up top from the local news outlet
CBS twelve, Yeah, yeah, so, and I quote the Lee
County Sheriff's Office is setting the record straight. On Friday,
after an outlandish online rumor claimed marine mammals were behind
an underwater construction operation off Florida's coast. The story gained
traction after a widely shared social media post reference to

(16:23):
Florida resident who allegedly reported being quote kidnapped by dolphins
and forced to build an underwater city. The Sheriff's office
responded with a tongue in cheek statement assuring residents that
the region's real estate market had not expanded below sea level.
So the Lee County Sheriff's Office did indeed have fun
debunking this viral news story. The deputies. They put out
a statement that said, and I quote consulted their fictional

(16:44):
underwater construction investigation team to look into the claim. According
to the agency, the dolphins that inhabit Southwest Florida's waters
quote deny any involvement in the supposed deep sea development.
So what was up with all the AP news story stuff?

Speaker 4 (16:58):
Right?

Speaker 3 (16:59):
Yeah? That may Your source for this alleged AP story
was a website called Scottprentice dot com, And in his
reporting on Gerald and the underwater Dolphin construction crew, he
wanted to point out the gullibility of online news stories.

Speaker 2 (17:12):
Oh my goodness.

Speaker 3 (17:13):
Yes, so he also has his own agenda by conspiracies
and whatnot. So I'm not exactly recommending anyone visit his website.
I just wanted to cite all my sources to make
it all obvious.

Speaker 2 (17:22):
Now the local news AP all draws back to this cast.

Speaker 3 (17:26):
The only story that is true is the CBS twelve
local news outlet that debunked it. Everything else, all that
AP stuff he was. He was just putting that in
the news. He's like, yeah, AP story didn't have links
to it, just an AP news story. Wow, that is right. Yeah,
because the AP Associated Press is cited throughout the story,
it clearly is not an AP news story. How they

(17:47):
don't sue, I don't know. But the sheriff's deputies were like, yeah,
and the medical personnel, all that stuff is made up
and it's all all lies essentially. So I will return
to Scott Prentice for one quote, because he did make
a good point. This isn't about dismissing humor or creativity.
It's about discernment. When fake or satirical stories spread like
wildfire and drown out verifiable warnings, we all lose. The

(18:09):
dolphin kidnapping might be harmless absurdity, but the pattern is dangerous.
Distraction wins clicks, truth gets buried. Well, thank you, Scott Prentiss,
who is doing the very thing anyway. Now that my
public service is over and done with, Next up, Elizabeth,
I have another dolphin story for you, but one that
will also have you asking questions, one that will also

(18:30):
sound out landish and possibly made up. But I promise
you this next dolphin story is one hundred percent true,
one percent factual. But before we get into that, let's
take a little break. Listen to some ads, and when
we're back, we will get wicked with some LSD AND's
our mammalian cousin goodness. Yeah. Also we have unexpected celebrity
appearances like Alan Ginsburg and Carl Sagan.

Speaker 2 (18:50):
Love it.

Speaker 3 (19:11):
We're back, Elizabeth. Hell, now up top. I promised you
a story about scientists giving dolphins.

Speaker 2 (19:16):
You made that problem.

Speaker 3 (19:17):
Right, which does sound ridiculous and contract it's criminal. So
as I promised, this story is one hundred percent true.
No no wool pulling here.

Speaker 2 (19:25):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (19:26):
So I got to ask you, Elizabeth, who is your
third favorite dolphin?

Speaker 2 (19:30):
My third favorite dolphin?

Speaker 3 (19:32):
Like to give you a couple of ideas, Like, there's
obviously Flipper. There's the mascot for the Miami Dolphins. There's Tua,
who's just been released from the Dolphins.

Speaker 2 (19:41):
So you should just stop altogether. Yeah, there's that's like
the extent of my knowledge of football should stopper.

Speaker 3 (19:51):
There's free Willie, although he's an or you know what,
Killer whales are the largest dolphins, so he counts. Really.

Speaker 2 (19:57):
I love when they takeout ships yachts.

Speaker 3 (20:02):
Yes, I like.

Speaker 2 (20:03):
The lease of frank dolphins on the stickers.

Speaker 3 (20:06):
Nice there you go. Well, keep those in mind as
I start this story. And Elizabeth, i'd like you to
meet John Lily.

Speaker 2 (20:13):
Hi. John.

Speaker 3 (20:14):
He was born in nineteen fifteen, the son of wealthy parents.
His father was the president of a local bank in
Saint Paul, Minnesota, where he grew up. His mother's family
they owned a stockyard company, so she also came from
wealth and his well to do existence as a child.
It allowed him like a life of exploration, right, he
could make mistakes and it didn't cost him any but

(20:34):
a luxury totally. He was also the middle child in
a family of three boys, so you know that he
made him a little little competitive, little rough and tumble
and kind of the bad boy.

Speaker 2 (20:44):
He's the forgotten child.

Speaker 3 (20:46):
Early on, it was clear that John Lily was a scientist,
like he had this burning curiosity. For instance, when he
was thirteen, he built his own chemistry lab in like
the basement, I'm assuming yeah, that's where he conducted all
kinds of experiments. And his love of science was such
a motivating force in his life even from an early
age that his fellow students at school, they called him
Einstein Junior.

Speaker 2 (21:06):
Oh, look at that baby Einstein right now.

Speaker 3 (21:08):
Around the same time, in nineteen twenty eight, at the
age of thirteen, John Lily asked a question that would
beguile him for the rest of his life. The question was,
how can the mind study itself?

Speaker 2 (21:21):
Well, pretty easily, that's.

Speaker 3 (21:23):
Kind of the whole deal all we do. So at
age sixteen, he penned an essay for school that he
titled reality.

Speaker 2 (21:29):
Right, how old is he?

Speaker 3 (21:30):
Sixteen? He later said that particular school essay quote laid
out the trip for the rest of my life.

Speaker 2 (21:37):
You know. The teacher who read it just like hurt herself,
rolling her eyes sprained something.

Speaker 3 (21:43):
Oh I bet. Basically, this guy he's like a psycho
knot before we had a word for him. And he's
also definitely full of himself too. Nineteen thirty four, Lily,
he's now nineteen years old. He reads a book that
would change the course of his life. Right. This book
was Brave New World by Aldus Hucks. Oh yeah, right,
early sci fi book. It features like lab grown babies

(22:06):
and it's got like, you know, there's the five cast
systems of which type of people you're in Alpha beta,
gamma delta or absalon. Right. So this is also the
big part of the book is to maintain social cohesion.
People constantly consume the mind soothing drug soma right right, Okay,
so it's basically all about how powerful social paradigms control
people of the world. Right. This book inspired obviously like

(22:28):
later sci fi like The Matrix. Yeah, and it definitely
inspired John Lilly. So for young John Lily, Brave New
World inspires this fascination with controlling the human mind via pharmacology,
drugs and whatnot. So it led him to pursue neurophysiology
as his focus of studies. Good for him, Good for him, right,
you know? For college, My boy Lily, he attended Caltech

(22:50):
here in California, Right, But he had a tough go
of it. He was a sensitive lad. By his junior year,
he was engaged to be married and his future was
fast approaching and seemed to be taking shape. But then
he began to suffer from nervous exhaustion. That's what it
was called back then. Yeah, now to call him his
racing mind, his restless soul. Before he gets married, before

(23:10):
he graduates, he takes the sabbatical from school. He travels north,
like Jack London, up to lumber Country in the Pacific Northwest,
and he starts working as a lumberjack. But he wasn't
particularly cut out for swinging an axe because one day
he missed his mark and instead he put the acts
right into his foot. Ohow, that sent him to the hospital.
While he's laid up in the hospital having his foot

(23:31):
be repaired, he decides, you know what, I'd like to
be a doctor. So he changed his career paths. He
enrolls at Dartmouth Medical School to make his new dream
a reality. And he was an eager student, curious as ever.
Remember total great scientists, So like, there was one time
he was performing a dissection of a cataver that I
read about. He decided, how long are the intestines? And

(23:53):
so what does he do? He unwinds the intestines from
the cadaver and just stretches out. He just unspools the
intestinal track all across this room. Right, He's got it's
like thirty eight feet.

Speaker 2 (24:04):
Yeah you read it, but you're like, is that true?
Verify always verify.

Speaker 3 (24:10):
Trust, but verify. So this is the kind of scientists.
He was very hands on, right, he was willing yeah, exactly,
he'd reach in there, get up in them guts. Now,
while he was at Dartmouth, he found the medicool school
Dartmouth wasn't a right fit for him, so he transferred
to the University of Pennsylvania. Yea, more it's more of
a research school than Dartmouth. Dartmouth was more about like treatment, right,

(24:31):
So he wanted to be into research. So during his
time at penn he took a class and the class
was called how to build an Atomic Bomb.

Speaker 2 (24:40):
Oh.

Speaker 3 (24:41):
At the time, this was like, you know, right before
World where it's like, you know, early World War two,
before War two, so this is a brand new idea.
He and his fellow students are so geeked about what.

Speaker 2 (24:49):
They're learning in medical school.

Speaker 3 (24:51):
Though, yeah, it's just a science class.

Speaker 2 (24:54):
I was like that, so messed up medicals.

Speaker 3 (24:56):
You know, all the other students they start compiling their
notes and write a book with the title how to
build an Atomic bomb? Okay, Now, obviously that would be
a major interest to a lot of people who are
not going to the American universities. Yeah, naturally, this catches
the attention of the director of the Manhattan Project. He's like, Nay,
what are you doing boys. So the leading physicist they're

(25:16):
all trying to make a real atomic bomb for the
first time and they have not done it yet. They
know the theory, which is what these students learned. So
he demands that the students not publish their book. And
he's like, this is a highly classified subject.

Speaker 2 (25:27):
Know that it was a race against time because Saren,
I saw Oppenheimer.

Speaker 3 (25:31):
You know, I was there. So the director of the
man hadn't project. He can't stop the publication because Lily
and his student co authors, they didn't include any classified materials.
Are just all the theory.

Speaker 2 (25:43):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 (25:44):
My point is Lily was a true iconoclast and a
hands on scientists. Right, he didn't care. He felt that
science was bigger than the aims of any one nation. Right.
In fact, he believed science is bigger than the concerns
of humanity. It was like a set of cosmic mysteries
to be solved.

Speaker 2 (26:00):
Then hip hop, right, you know you know what I'm saying.

Speaker 3 (26:04):
So, after World War two is over, Lily returns to
his prior fascination with neurophysiology. Nineteen fifty three, he joins
the US Public Health Service Commissioned Officers Corps, and he
goes to work for the National Institute of Mental Health,
grand fit for him. This is where he comes up
with his first big contribution to science. He invents the
isolation tank aka the sensory deprivation tank. He invented the

(26:28):
sensory deprivation tank.

Speaker 2 (26:30):
That's sick.

Speaker 3 (26:32):
For those who may not know, Century deprivation tank. It's
a small chamber. It's filled with salt water that's about
the same temperature as the human body. As Lily said,
you can't tell where the water ends and your body begins.

Speaker 4 (26:44):
Right.

Speaker 3 (26:47):
The tank is windowless, so it's totally dark inside. It's
also sound proofs and no outside noise can interfere. Once
you're inside the Century deprivation tank, the subject you you
float in the salty water, the darkness and the sil
they wash away your normal existence. Your interiority starts to emerge,
and all of a sudden you're like, whoa, this is
who I am? What am I? Right? Yeah, Elizabeth, quick question,

(27:09):
would you ever want to float inside a center of deprivation?

Speaker 2 (27:13):
No? I In addition to being afraid of heights, I'm
also terribly claustrophobia.

Speaker 3 (27:19):
Oh so that would trigger claustrophobia. Yeah, interesting, Like I
also suffer from claustrophobia. But like if I'm making a
fissure of rock where like I'm sliding across a mountain,
then I will have that experiences of it. But like
I think I could do a century deprivationion tank because
it's black. You can't see that you are.

Speaker 2 (27:37):
You know, and you know, I mean, I guess for
me it would be like I can I can do
like a cat scanner an MRI because I can visualize
like the rest of the room and know that it's
not going to trap me totally per se. But with that,
it's like, well, they shut you in this tank, what
if they can't get it open again? And this is

(27:58):
your life forever? Swimming never had that thought swimming in
your own ways. I always have to take it back
to that, of course, But or then then running out
of air and screaming and no one hearing you.

Speaker 3 (28:11):
Yeah, no, I definitely want there to be like an
easy way to push open the century deprivation. You could
not like turn knobs from the outside that I can't reach.

Speaker 2 (28:19):
Yeah, they they just like they lock you in there. Yeah,
maybe they don't, but.

Speaker 3 (28:25):
I think I want like like velcrow latching something easily.
Just stand up and push out.

Speaker 2 (28:30):
Got to be sealed to be sound prooved.

Speaker 3 (28:32):
Hey, get some rubber. I don't care. We're not We're
not doing class.

Speaker 2 (28:35):
So you would do it?

Speaker 3 (28:36):
You feel about it as long as I can push
push it open.

Speaker 2 (28:39):
Now, see when they have those things like the quietest
room in the world or whatever, and you could hear.

Speaker 3 (28:44):
And all that.

Speaker 2 (28:44):
I think I could do it.

Speaker 3 (28:45):
I think you could do I think I could do
that one pretty much standing on my head like on
Polly Walnuts.

Speaker 2 (28:49):
I could. I feel like I'm maybe just a little
bit away from being able to hibernate like a bear.

Speaker 3 (28:56):
You definitely have bear energy.

Speaker 2 (28:58):
I do.

Speaker 3 (28:58):
I do so John lily as I said first person
to play around the idea of what happens when your
mind and body are so quieted, denied any stimulus, that
you float free of your day to day life. He
finds that this lucid state emerges from inside of you
and it just takes over your full consciousness. And some
of his research subjects, like the secondary people he had
tried you gotta try my tank. They had out of

(29:20):
body experiences. Others had lucid dreams. So at this point,
Lily he loves being inside his sensory deprivation tank. Right,
He's just like, oh, floating there, like this is my
new home.

Speaker 2 (29:30):
Right.

Speaker 3 (29:31):
He tried to spend more and more time there, like
it was like a second womb, and he's like, can
I get in my tank?

Speaker 4 (29:36):
Right?

Speaker 3 (29:36):
He told one friend, wouldn't it be great to float
like this twenty four hours a day? So well, I
mean you could, Oh yeah, I mean you definitely, cud.
I wouldn't recommend it. You're going to be you know, pruney,
pruned all up. Yeah. Well, his friend, hearing that, right, replied,
you should look at dolphins. So this was a poignant comment.
It would change the whole trajectory of Lily's life, just

(29:57):
like that acts and the trip to the hospital did,
except for this time He's like, where can I be
your around dolphins? And his friend's like, they're available. Go
down to the marine studios in Florida, And so that's
what he did.

Speaker 2 (30:08):
You know, the universe laziest things at your feet.

Speaker 3 (30:11):
Pay attention, Yeah, serendipity and all that exactly. So remember
Lily trained medical doctor, right, he knows about physiology. So
when he goes down to the Marine Studios in Florida
to study dolphins. He's overcome by the size and the
complexity of the brains of dolphins, and he's comparing to
the human brain, which is like the one of the
most complex, if not the most complex. He's like, dolphins, man, there,

(30:32):
this is wild, right, So this becomes his next major fascination.
At the US Virgin Islands, he found this new lab
to study dolphins and particularly dolphin communication. Now his lab
was rather unique. It was built on the coast, and
in order for humans and dolphins to be together, he
created the Dolphin House by flooding a section of the building. Right,

(30:52):
they waterproof the floors of the lab, then they flood
the rooms inside the lab, which kind of has like
a a connection to the sea, right, come in and out,
and this gives the scientists a way to like live
with and study the dolphins for months at a time. So, Lily,
he works from the inside out, you know, classic doctor.
He to understand a dolphin's brain, he focused on their
language skills. He's like, what are they thinking? I want

(31:15):
to I'll listen to them, but I'll listen for that
way it'll tell me how their brain works. Yeah, he
quickly discovers dolphins speaking coherent clicks and whistles. It very
much is a language, so he starts to record it.
He starts to analyze it. What was wild is if
you listen to dolphins speech underwater, right now, not in
the air, but underwater, the frequency of dolphins speech underwater

(31:35):
matches the frequency of human speech in the air, really, right.
He also finds that the dolphins could nearly imitate human speech,
which leads him to this conclusion that dolphins speech is
essentially the same as human speech. His whole theory about
their brains turns out to really bear fruit. So, but
dolphin's speech is like just human speech, just much much

(31:56):
much faster. Right, So he's like, well, how could I
understand what dolphins are saying? Because I don't obviously speak Dolphinese.
So he was like, how do I come up with
an interspecies like communication? Bridge? Now, do you remember that
meme of Milania Trump and the beluga whale?

Speaker 2 (32:14):
That is exactly what went into my head when he said,
what do they think?

Speaker 3 (32:17):
What is she thinking? Right? So that's John Lily.

Speaker 2 (32:20):
He's basically, you know, explain it.

Speaker 3 (32:24):
Oh yeah, so it's a picture of a bluego whale
breaching the surface of water, and Milania says, what is
she thinking? Right? And it was something she posted, so
she posted it that that was the only line she
had is what is she thinking?

Speaker 2 (32:36):
Like?

Speaker 3 (32:36):
So she wanted to know what does a beluga whale thinking?
And John Lily is like saying, but dolphins. Now, Elizabeth,
knowing you as I do, I guess at some point
you've wanted to speak the language of an animal. So
I gotta ask, of course, which animal would you want
to be able to understand and like communicate with, like
your doctor Doolittle dogs dogs interesting specific but your dogs?

(32:57):
Oh yeah, but any dogs?

Speaker 2 (32:59):
Any dog?

Speaker 3 (33:00):
Huh? So I think cats would be funny because they're
just such jerks.

Speaker 2 (33:03):
Oh they're total jerks, right. I don't need to hear
them insult me.

Speaker 3 (33:08):
I don't even worry about that.

Speaker 2 (33:09):
I don't want to hear that part.

Speaker 3 (33:10):
If a dog, I want to hear them insult other people.

Speaker 2 (33:14):
And I want to know, like, when my dog is
yelling at people across the street, what are you saying?
I mean, I have my notion what if it was
just like, hey, hey, I think that's what it is. Well,
that's how I love that thinging up with Dug the collar.
My nephew and I used to watch those Doug shorts
on the you know Disney Pixar thing. Oh my god,

(33:37):
I love those and I really want one for the
for the dogs.

Speaker 3 (33:40):
That's a good use of AI, by the way, which
they did start like years ago. You would see when
AI was becoming a new thing, people talk about, Oh,
we're going to be able to understand specifically dolphins and dogs, right.
I haven't seen an update on that in years.

Speaker 5 (33:52):
No.

Speaker 2 (33:52):
But the closest we get is when you put those
buttons on the floor that a dog push to talk totally.
And I really want to teach my dogs to do that,
but they're so wilful and they're just like, yeah, what's
in it for me?

Speaker 3 (34:03):
He's a lot of treats and then well, and then.

Speaker 2 (34:05):
The button would just get warned out.

Speaker 3 (34:08):
You have to get anyone. Get a couple of there,
Diamon bulk Yeah.

Speaker 2 (34:12):
Aggressive.

Speaker 3 (34:12):
They find a lot of dogs refer to dogs that
are smaller than them as cats. When the people who
use those buttons like, really, what's up with cat? Every
dog that's smaller than them is cat? Anyway, So when
John Lily sets out to understand and translate dolphin speech,
he's certain it is more sophisticated than human speech, so
he would need a powerful tool to decode it. Enter NASA.

Speaker 2 (34:35):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (34:35):
In nineteen sixty three, NASA pays for Lily to set
up a new laboratory dedicated to researching dolphins. The reason
NASA was interested in this is famous scientists like Carl
Sagan believe that Lily's work to decipher dolphins speech could
one day help us communicate with aliens.

Speaker 2 (34:51):
Yeah, exactly. This is back when NASA had fundings.

Speaker 3 (34:53):
Oh yeah, nineteen sixty three. I mean they are super funded, right,
I mean this is like JFK is like, here's a
blank check, just write whatever you want. So when NASA
here's at Carl Sagan's down, they're like, how much money
do you need? They cut him like the super large
lottery winning check. At this point, John Lily's working in
his new NASA funded laboratory in the Caribbean, trying to
like talk with and two dolphins in their language. And

(35:15):
this is the same time when he starts taking acid.

Speaker 2 (35:18):
We don't why not. It was the sixties, baby, totally.

Speaker 3 (35:22):
And I doubt. He told NASA that he was gobbling
down LSD in the hopes that he would have a
breakthrough an unlocked dolphin speech. But I don't think DASA. Basically,
I don't think NASA was down with LSD. But that's
what they were paying for, is an LSD dolphin study.

Speaker 2 (35:37):
You know, as long as you get the results, I
don't care how you get there.

Speaker 3 (35:40):
Well, no, this is when things go sideways. Lily had
been taking LSD for a while, dating back to his
earlier experiments with sensory deprivation tank, so at the time
it wasn't illegal for him to do this, right, Okay,
they hadn't been rescheduled yet as a drug. But being
a good scientist, he recorded his experiences taking acid in
his sensory deprivation tank, and as he wrote in his notes,

(36:01):
I left my body and went into infinite distances, dimensions
that are inhuman I traveled through my brain, watching the
neurons and their activities.

Speaker 2 (36:11):
Oh yeah, homeboys, right.

Speaker 3 (36:12):
How crazy be doing taking acid? If you're taken acid? No, okay,
well it would be wild. I'll just trust me on
that centry deprivation tank sounds I think.

Speaker 2 (36:22):
If I didn't have a panic attack because of claustrophobia.
If I were in it, I would one hundred percent
lose my mind. And and then you know, that's why
I've told you before why I don't haven't taken acid,
and I will break my brain. It's already CAUs a
couple of threads at this real fed braain to keep

(36:44):
it real, calm, slow.

Speaker 3 (36:46):
As we've covered before in our story about Kerry Grant
taking a ton of LSD in the nineteen fifties. At
first LSD was seen as this like better living through chemistry,
And it wasn't until Timothy Leary gets involved and he
starts feeding acid to the early hippies and he kicks
off this counterculture revolution with like Cankesi and the Grateful
Dead and their acid test house parties. That's when the
US government's like, let's make this illegal, ye. So, But

(37:10):
after LSD was scheduled as a drug and made illegal,
Lily was still given a license to use it for research.
So he's still in the clears to the good. Yeah,
And so as it's part of his research, he starts
injecting liquid LSD into dolphins because he's convinced this will
unlock the secrets of dolphins.

Speaker 2 (37:26):
Speech, there's not there's not a lot of consent dolphins
can give. Zero.

Speaker 3 (37:32):
Can you imagine giving a bunch of dolphins LSD just
to see what happens? Oh right, like cosmic secrets and.

Speaker 2 (37:39):
Their dogs drunk?

Speaker 3 (37:40):
Yeah, because now you're doing it like all the time.
People will get their dogs drunk. It's like maybe on
one weekend. He's doing this Monday through Sunday. I mean,
just like come in for your tail.

Speaker 2 (37:49):
We wouldn't do that to a human being.

Speaker 3 (37:51):
No, we wouldn't do it to like a kid. Would
probably even do it to a chimban. He did, Yeah,
who knows? So what did they What did he find
when the dolphins got sick and twisted on at question?

Speaker 2 (38:01):
So I am the one who asked what.

Speaker 3 (38:03):
The dolphin research is that Lily's Dolphin has lab discovered
is that dolphins were roughly seventy percent more vocal when
they were tripping on acid. They just started gibber jabbering
like you know, human beings on cocaine. All right, But
as Lily wrote in his notes, the important thing for
us with the LSD and the dolphin is that what
we see has no meaning in the verbal sphere. We

(38:25):
are out of what you might call the rational exchange
of complex ideas because we haven't developed communication in that
particular way as yet. So basically they're talking more, we
still don't understand a word. Sure, So, as a veterinarian,
this guy Andy Williamson said he was summing up the
experience of giving LSD to dolphins, and he pointed out

(38:46):
that different species react to different pharmaceuticals in different ways.
A tranquilizer made for horses might induce a state of
excitement in a dog. Playing with pharmaceuticals is a tricky
business to say the least. So basically, dolphins didn't get
off on acid the same way human beings do. So, oh,
I guess this is not the universal key. So after
injecting the dolphins with liquid LSD for a while, Lily

(39:07):
finds it's not helping him understand the dolphin language. It
doesn't seem to be helping the dolphins themselves.

Speaker 2 (39:13):
Their minds are already expanded.

Speaker 3 (39:15):
Yeah, no, exactly, there's no cosmic mysteries to unlocked because
the dolphins maybe on a higher level road. That's not
to say no lessons were learned, because meanwhile, one of
his friends said he watched Lily transform from a scientist
with a white coat to a full blown hippie. Oh right. So,
by the mid sixties, as the acid counterculture starts taking
hold of the public's imagination, they see how scientists, like

(39:37):
the scientist views of Alstee change because of society. Right.
So the director of his lab, he's had enough. Right,
He decides this is a waste of my one wild,
precious life. He doesn't want to be associated with any
hippie dippy science, so he leaves a project, and by
nineteen sixty eight the lab loses its NASA funding. The
Dolphin House Lab is closed. Lily is like, I don't care.

Speaker 2 (39:58):
Man, and all these burnout dolphins are left just to
go out and fend for themselves.

Speaker 3 (40:03):
Part of the rainbow family now following the dead around
the country garbage can. So Lily keeps after his dream
though of unlocking dolphin speech. He moves on from acid
and he starts finding private funding. He expands his toolkit
with new money, and so instead of injecting dolphins with LSD,
he moves on to telepathy.

Speaker 2 (40:20):
Man, Oh, it's the logical next step.

Speaker 3 (40:23):
In seventy seven, Lily wrote that I have explored and
voluntarily entered into domains forbidden by a large fraction of
those in our culture who are not curious and are
not explorative and are not mentally equipped to enter these domains.
All right, Timothy Leary's brother. But at this point Lily

(40:44):
is considered a cautionary tale that this friend radical scientist
most famous for dosing dolphins with LSD yeah and doing, oh,
how's your psychedelic tower babble going? Lily? Right, So he
spends the seventies in his sensory deprivation tank, just getting
high on ketamine and chasing like new mysteries of human consciousness. So,

(41:04):
thanks to his ketemine induced titan state, Lily claims that
he made contact with aliens. Oh and in one of
his visions, aliens revealed to him that humanity would one
day create our own doom, which he described as solid
state systems which would later evolve and take on the
form of an an autonomous biological state. So basically, this
thing that we would create would try to eradicate humanity.

(41:26):
So he is he no, No, it's more like he
gets high on ketamine and he's like, one day we
need to worry about the plot of the Terminator movies.

Speaker 2 (41:34):
Oh, I do worry about that.

Speaker 3 (41:36):
But I don't want you to worry, Elizabeth, because Lily
also said there is a group of benevolent aliens which
he called the Earth Coincidence Control Office aka Echo, which
hearkens back to his times with dolphins, obviously, and this
group of benevolent aliens promises to guide humanity's progress so
we can avoid our terminator future and help us develop

(41:56):
a higher level of consciousness.

Speaker 2 (41:58):
I'm bum that the aliens showed up and they talk
to him.

Speaker 3 (42:01):
Always they picked the word Jackie Gleeson pointed that out
when he used to talk. He's like, why if aliens
want to believe, do they always pick kooks to talk
to deliver their message? Now, Honestly, when I was reading
about this guy, I kept thinking about Douglas Adams, the
author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which I
read all those books as a teen, and I absolutely
loved him. And in one of the books Dolphins, they
saved themselves from the imminent destruction of Earth by fleeing

(42:23):
the planet for some alternate dimension, and their final message
to humanity when they leave the planet is so long
and thanks for all the fish. Back to Lily in
the nineteen eighties, he's still had it trying to communicate
with dolphins. He's moved beyond LSD ketamine. He's now working
with computers. He creates a new lab that's essentially a
submerged living room with dolphins and humans communicating. Freaking yeah exactly.

(42:46):
His new idea is that they humans and dolphins, maybe
they could learn to create a hybrid language like Spanglish
based on dolphin and human speech. This also failed, but
over the years in his varied pursuit of cosmic mysteries,
he did start enjoying visits from liminaris like Alan Ginsburg,
Timothy Lary, Richard Feyneman, the physicists.

Speaker 4 (43:06):
Ye.

Speaker 3 (43:06):
In fact, Ginsburg loved to take dips in his sensory deprivation.
Of course, right, He's gotten to the point now if
I hear Ginsburg visited, I'm like, oh hanky. So in
the end, Lily came to the conclusion that quote guides
at each level above ours pretend to be God as
long as you believe them. When you finally get to
know the guide, he says, well, God is really the

(43:28):
next level up God just keeps retreating into infinity.

Speaker 2 (43:33):
He actually got to talk to my manager. You got
to talk to my man.

Speaker 3 (43:36):
Well, it's kind of when people talk about we live
in a simulation and I wass asking him, Okay, well
then who created the universe where they created the simulation
And people are like, I don't have an answer for that,
and I'm like, of course you don't. So Lily did
leave us with one scientific maxim I'd like to share
about exploring unknown realms. In the province of the mind,
what one believes to be true either is true or

(43:57):
becomes true within certain limits. These limits are to be
found like experimentally and experientially. When so found, these limits
turn out to be further beliefs to be transcended. In
the province of the mind, there are no limits. However,
in the province of the body, there are definite limits
not to be transcended.

Speaker 2 (44:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (44:21):
Yeah, let's take a little break and when we're back,
we will dive back into this pool and discuss one
of the Lively's most promising researchers and hear about where
she took his work and her attempts to communicate with dolphins.
It's also ridiculous and criminal, Elizabeth.

Speaker 2 (44:55):
Yes, we are dip.

Speaker 3 (44:57):
Back in the pool and get down with some.

Speaker 2 (44:59):
Dolphins for our next watering.

Speaker 3 (45:03):
They look nice, by the way, for our next bout
of magical thinking with science, I'd like to introduce you
to Margaret love It.

Speaker 2 (45:09):
Hello.

Speaker 3 (45:09):
She worked at Lily's dolphin lab on the US Virgin Islands,
and she was this volunteer naturalist.

Speaker 2 (45:14):
She loved it. She was a nature Margaret loved it.
She Margaret love It.

Speaker 3 (45:19):
Yeah, hold that thought, natural born nature lover right as
a child. Her future interest in science was also inspired
by a book she read. The book was called Miss Kelly.

Speaker 2 (45:30):
Those islands are the blue dolphins close?

Speaker 3 (45:32):
No? Miss Kelly is about a cat who could speak
with and communicate with human beings. That sounds awesome, right,
So this dream stayed with young Margaret, and so when
she got older she wanted to learn to speak with animals.
He's like, what do you want to do for a living?
I want to learn to speak with animals?

Speaker 4 (45:44):
Why?

Speaker 3 (45:44):
And then she finds this book by John Lily called
Man and Dolphin, which he'd published in nineteen sixty one.
It was a popular book, It was a bestseller. It
captivates Margaret love It's imagination. In his book mannon Dolphin,
Lily described how dolphins could imitate human speech, and he
wrote about his hopes to one day teach dolphins to
speak English, and if he's successful, dolphins would be able

(46:05):
to then use their new voice to advocate for themselves.
And one day Lily opined that dolphins might have their
own seat at the United Nations. Oh no, they can
help the shape world share knowledge.

Speaker 2 (46:17):
That sounds great. Did she come from money too.

Speaker 3 (46:21):
No, not so much. She's I can't say bold to.

Speaker 2 (46:23):
Be like, what do you want to do for a living?
I want to learn how to talk to animals. Were like, well,
that's great.

Speaker 3 (46:29):
But I think she's she's like bouncing around and like willing,
like hey can I like, you know, stay here for
free and I'll donate my time like that. So when
she sees the book Margaret love It, she gravitates to
doctor Lily and his work with dolphins. She travels down
to his lab. As I said, she volunteers. She works
with him for two years at Dolphin House. In fact,

(46:49):
it was her idea to waterproof the lab and make
it an aquatic lab where dolphins could live indoors and
outdoors and be studied. So she first arrives in nineteen
sixty four. Lily it was deep into his l the
experiments at the time with the dolphins. She immediately embraced
his whole mission, if not his methods. She wanted to
help teach dolphins to speak English too. She's this kind heart,
natural m path like very well suited for the work,

(47:12):
like early hippie. But I forgot to mention where John
Lilly got the idea to give LSD to dolphins. Turns
out it was suggested to him by the producer of
the Flipper movies.

Speaker 2 (47:22):
Oh. I thought you're gonna say the Nazis.

Speaker 3 (47:24):
No, no, no, not not in this case, a man
named Ivan Tors. He was like, that's it is great.
You should give it to dolphins and see what happens.

Speaker 2 (47:32):
Right. So the guy, this guy is the producer for Flippers.
He just goes around being like, let's give does he
have a dolphin issue?

Speaker 3 (47:41):
He also did Sea Hunt with Lloyd Bridges, which is
like he plays a frog man and like he was
all about that underwater, Like.

Speaker 2 (47:47):
I I'd like to unpack that with him someday.

Speaker 3 (47:49):
Yeah, we should always we could find ivan tours.

Speaker 2 (47:51):
He's probably rip, but that's cool.

Speaker 3 (47:53):
I can't I tell you Frans, you know what.

Speaker 2 (47:55):
I'll telekinesis my way into a conversation.

Speaker 3 (47:58):
Now, Margaret love Its on things, use your telepathy. She
was not so charitable as to be like, let's give
LSD to dolphins. She was concerned about animal welfare. Remember
she's an mpath so she was against giving LSD just
to see if they would learn English by making psychedelic
with her. So she kind of deal with Lily. He

(48:18):
had three dolphins he was working with, right, but he'd
only give an LSD and speech lessons to two of them.
So she asked that the youngest one, the third dolphin,
who was named Peter. She's like, let Peter be my
research subject that I work with, and I'll try to
teach him to speak English. No LSD, And Lily's like, okay,
you got to do yeah, right, this makes sense. So
no acid for Peter. He's like the control dolphin. And

(48:40):
but he would you know, he would keep giving it
to the other two dolphins. Now, meanwhile, working with Peter
all the time caused love It to cross some ethical
boundaries of her own. As she put it that relationship
of having to be together sort of turned into really
enjoying being together and wanting to be together and missing
him when I wasn't there, Like she gets becomes obsessed. Right,
I'm making a f I know you are now. As

(49:01):
she later recalled, leaving Dolphin House was really difficult for her,
Like each day when she would go to leave work,
as she put it, every night we would all get
in our cars and pull the garage door down and
drive away, and I thought, well, there's this big brain
floating around all night. It amazed me that everybody kept leaving,
and I just thought that was wrong. So Sam, she
petitions Lily to let her stay there round the clocks,

(49:24):
seven days a week, twenty four hours a day. Ma'am
hanging out with the dolphins, and that way she can
focus more intently on teaching Peter how to speak English.

Speaker 2 (49:32):
That's not healthy, Peter tell her this isn't healthy.

Speaker 3 (49:35):
She made the argument that it's like how a mother
teaches a child to learn to speak Okay, she reasoned,
maybe it was because I was living so close to
the lab. It just seems so simple, like why let
the water get in the way. So I said to John, Lily,
I want to plaster everything and fill this place with water,
and I want to live here. So that's how they

(49:55):
came up with that we should turn the inside into
the outside.

Speaker 2 (49:58):
Because she wanted to cohabitize.

Speaker 3 (50:00):
She made like a dolphin living room, so lily, she seventies,
so lily. He loves her commitment. He's like, oh, right,
he loves her idea of an underwater lab inside the building, right,
So he's high. So he approves her plan to waterproof
the floor of the lab, flood the indoor area, invite

(50:21):
some dolphins in, and that's how she starts living with
Peter the dolphin six days a week, just the two
of them, practicing English, cohabitating like roommates, like mother and
dolphin child, however you want to describe it. But then
on the seventh day of each week, she would rest no,
but Peter would swim back out into the pool that
was connected to the Caribbean Sea and he would then

(50:42):
spend time with the other two dolphins who are getting
injected with liquid.

Speaker 2 (50:46):
LSD talking smack on her, just complaining about her.

Speaker 3 (50:50):
So she's like, oil, I'm telling you, I don't know
what it is, like what dog so they were both females.
The other two right, They were named Pamela and Sissy,
and as love it remembers them, Sissy was the biggest,
like pushy, loud, she sort of ran the show. Pamela
was very shy and fearful, and Peter was a young guy.

(51:11):
He was sextually coming of age and a bit naughty.
You hear this a lot with dolphins. They apparently love to, like,
you know, rub themselves on stones, and they're just frisky
and naughty, and so she's like, oh, yeah, he's our
bad boy. Now. Being a human unsuited for living in
water for six days a week, Margaret required some space
that wasn't underwater. So she had a desk built that

(51:32):
was attached to the ceiling and suspended for there, so
she'd keep her notes and do her paperwork on that
desk that's suspended from the ceiling. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (51:39):
Interesting.

Speaker 3 (51:40):
And she also needed a place to sleep, so since
she was in the lab for six days a week,
twenty four hours a day, so that's where she would sleep,
was on this raised platform that she created out of
the water, so she didn't get pruned up. Yeah, can
you imagine that.

Speaker 2 (51:54):
She didn't even want to be like in the next room.

Speaker 3 (51:56):
No. Yeah, she wanted to be like mother and child like,
so she can honly be telling him.

Speaker 2 (52:01):
Did anyone ever tell her that moms sometimes get their
own kids in the other room? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (52:06):
So, But can you imagine that? Like laying on a
platform looking around, You're like in this little room with
just you and a dolphin. I can't well, don't answer that, Elizabeth,
because I want you to close your eyes. Say it,
and I want you to picture the eyes a closed

(52:26):
It's a calm night at the dolphin house. The set
of pumps that errate the water hum as they work.
The echo of the water lightly splashing against the walls
is a soft comfort. And you, Elizabeth, are a water
skimmer insect. With your long, lean legs, you balanced gingerly,
held up by the surface tension of the water. At
the moment, all is still in the lab. The only

(52:47):
other intelligent creatures in the dolphinarium are Peter the dolphin
and Margaret, the human scientist. Peter is asleep, so he
occasionally surfaces for a breath of air, but he doesn't
swim around much. However, the human Margaret, she can't sleep.
You really wish she would, because you'd like to settle
into some rest of your own instead. You keep hearing
her speak aloud to herself. She must be recording herself

(53:11):
for notes. It's something she does often. You're used to
it by now. As she prattles on, you remind yourself
that you should find a better place to sleep. But
the protection from predators is hard to beat. At the moment,
you hear Margaret as she narrates her existence and her
doubts about her life choices. It seems difficult being human.
Then she starts back up again. You hear her click
on her recording device and she says human people are

(53:34):
out there having dinner or whatever, and here I am.
You sigh to yourself and think, girl, please go to sleep.
It is late, but in said, she crattles on. There's
a moonlight reflecting on the water, this fin and this
bright eye looking at me. Wow, Why am I here?
You roll your eyes. It's another one of her existential nights. Perfect.

(53:59):
You hear her and record some more of her thoughts.
What am I doing here? I guess you could say,
I'm just like trying to find out what Peter's doing here,
and then what we can do together? As if on cue.
Peter resurfaces, takes a deep breath through his blowhole, and
then stas back into his sleep. Underwater. You use your
long legs to run across the surface of the water.

(54:20):
Maybe she won't be so loud on the other side
of the dolphinarium and you can finally get some sleep too.
But just as you get comfortable against a far wall,
you hear her speak up again. This is the whole point.
Nobody has done this before. You think to yourself, yeah, girl,
you're a pioneer. Please shut up and just go to sleep.

(54:42):
So there you are, Elizabeth. That's an example of shared
aquatic life for Margaret love It and her dolphin roommate Peter.

Speaker 2 (54:49):
Oh it sounds fabulous, Sign me up.

Speaker 3 (54:51):
The larger question remains, was she successful? Did she ever
get the dolphin to speak English well? Over time? She
tried to teach Peter to greet her each day and
to say her name like through his whistles and clicks,
And there's audio recordings of her trying to get him
to say hello, Margaret or whatever. Right as she tells it,
em was very difficult, my name Hello, Margaret. I worked

(55:16):
on the MMM sound and he eventually rolled over to
bubble it through the water, and that he worked on
so hard.

Speaker 2 (55:23):
He's like, I don't have less.

Speaker 3 (55:25):
Yeah, exactly. So, Elizabeth, you're spending six days a week
with a dolphin living together, one might lose sight of
what makes you and the dolphin different as you focus
on what makes you the same. Well, one thing about
dolphins is, as I said earlier, they are a very
horny creature. And Peter was young, so he was horny
like a teenage boy.

Speaker 2 (55:44):
Ye.

Speaker 3 (55:44):
Margaret didn't really consider that night at first, but Peter
made his interest obvious. As she recalls it, we had
nothing to do was when we did the most. He
was very, very interested in my anatomy. If I was
sitting here and my legs were in the water, he
would come up and look at the back of my
for a long time. He wanted to know how that
thing worked, and I was so charmed by it. So

(56:06):
naturally their relationship progresses and begins to blur the boundaries
that nature had erected to keep the species separate. As
love It tells it, Peter liked to be with me.
He would rub himself on my knee or my foot
or my hand and at first, I would put him
downstairs with the girls. Now, I notice that she said
at first, which implies that things change, which they did.

(56:27):
Remember how I said dolphins are extra horny. Just keep
remembering that.

Speaker 2 (56:30):
Well, I don't want to remember.

Speaker 3 (56:32):
It got in the way of their work together. It
would take her too much time to transfer Peter to
go spend time with the two female dolphins, and he
can relieve his natural urges. So Margaret love it just
started letting him relieve his urges on her stock. Don't
be gross, Elizabeth. They didn't have sex.

Speaker 2 (56:46):
I don't care. I just boundary.

Speaker 3 (56:48):
But like with Bill Clinton, it depends on what the
definition of these is or In other words, while she
did not have sexual relations with the dolphin, Peter did
enjoy sexual stimulation. Margaret let the dolphin get off on
her life leg course. O, my god, I allowed that.
I wasn't uncomfortable with it is It wasn't.

Speaker 2 (57:06):
Rough she is unwell, she is unwell.

Speaker 3 (57:09):
Yes, it would just become part of what was going on,
like an itch. Just get rid of it, scratch it,
and move on. That's how it seemed to work out.
It wasn't private. People coulds observe it. Oh, she was
doing it in front of it because they haven't observed race.

Speaker 2 (57:23):
This place needs to just be leveled, flood the whole joint.
They have real you got the leader of it is
just out of his mind on drugs, floating in the
sensory deprivation.

Speaker 3 (57:36):
Tank, trying to unlock cosmic She's.

Speaker 2 (57:38):
Romancing the dolphins and oh my god, these people.

Speaker 3 (57:43):
Remember there's also people who like to watch it. I
do like to watch, but they're scientists who are like
documenting all of this.

Speaker 2 (57:49):
Right, this is why, this is why we have to
fight for funding for science.

Speaker 3 (57:54):
Now.

Speaker 2 (57:56):
They make everybody look like a ding dog.

Speaker 3 (57:59):
Agree now to be crystal clear love. It articulated what
exactly happened in the waters of the dolphin area. Peter
was right there.

Speaker 2 (58:06):
I don't need to hear.

Speaker 3 (58:07):
He knew that I was right there. It was sexual
on my part, sensuous perhaps it seemed to me that
it made the bond closer, not because of the sexual activity,
but because of the lack of having to keep breaking.
That's really all it was. I was there to get
to know Peter, and that was part of Peter.

Speaker 2 (58:26):
She is unwell.

Speaker 3 (58:28):
Unfortunately, the rest of the world finds out what's going on. Oh,
that's fortune at the Dolphin House. When the magazine Hustler
publishes a story Margaret and Peter, and this catches love
it totally, by surprise, she doesn't know. They don't come
down an interviewer. They just apparently see some stories coming out.

Speaker 2 (58:44):
Some one of the other scientists was like this and
tried to write like a Pehouse Forum letters. They wouldn't
take it. He goes to Hustler, Bob, let's do this.

Speaker 3 (58:56):
I think Larry Flint's Hustler. I think he's Pehouse's Penhouse,
one of those Yeah, let's do it, let's do it.
So she tells it. I never even heard of Hustler.
I think there was two magazine stores on the island
at the time, and I went to one and I
looked and I found this story with my name and
Peter and a drawing. So when she sees the story

(59:17):
in Hustler about her and Peter, she buys up all
the copies of the magazine that are for sale, right
but she can she can't afford to buy all the
issues ever published. So the story gets out there and
I love it, puts it to this day. The Hustler
story still exists online. You can still find a story. Yeah,
and she told The Guardian in an interview, it's a
bit uncomfortable. The worst experiment in the world I've read

(59:40):
somewhere was me and Peter. That's fine, I don't mind.
But that was not the point of it, not the
result of it. So I just ignore.

Speaker 2 (59:47):
It, ma'am, ma'am. If you're doing something and you feel like,
uh oh, if everyone else in the world finds out
about this, this is bad businesses stop usually right now.

Speaker 3 (59:59):
If you're wonder what happened to Peter the dolphin after
Lily lost his funding for the Dolphin House lab because
I remember his director left, Robin said, I couldn't keep Peter.
Has he been a cat or a dog then maybe,
but not a dolphin? No kidding, she had. They sent
him to a private lab in Miami, where Lily opened
up his private lab him go no, no, he can't

(01:00:20):
at this point, he's way too captive. So thanks to
research like this, in nineteen seventy nine, the United States
passed new legislation to protect dolphins from humans from Lily
and Margaret Love It specifically, it's the Animal Welfare Act.
It outlines laws that govern the care for captive dolphins
and other cetaceans used for research. There are also state laws.
For instance, I found in Texas it's illegal to speak

(01:00:42):
to a dolphin. Really, you can't even don't talk to
that dolphins.

Speaker 2 (01:00:45):
And they were like, oh, this is a gateway.

Speaker 3 (01:00:48):
Like if you're in Texas and you're on a boat
or on a dock and you see a dolphin, you
speak to them, you just broke the law. Wow, is
the Houston Chronicle put it. In Texas, where dolphins are
regularly spotted in your shorelines, peers and tour boats, especially
around Galveston and Surfside Beach, it's against the law to
try to interact with them anyway. That includes feeding, swimming alongside, touching,

(01:01:08):
or even attempting to get their attention. So under federal law,
according to the statutes of the Marine Mammal Protection Act,
if you violate that law on harass a dolphin, you
can get jail time and be fined up to one
hundred thousand dollars. That's good, there, he goes. This is
all thanks to, as you pointed out, a few well
meaning scientists, and it's now illegal for you to speak

(01:01:28):
with a wild dolphin alone. It's definitely illegal to give
a dolphin LSD. So there you go. What's your ridiculous
takeaway here?

Speaker 2 (01:01:36):
A little wild, be wild? Stop with this. I mean,
I understand that there are things that we need to investigate.
There's research that has to be done. But you know,
when you get someone who is unwell, both of those
you know, bozos, they bring their own issues to it,
that's not real research, that's just tainted.

Speaker 3 (01:01:58):
It's you know, just like religion. By the way, just
like with the religion, scientists can also suffer from righteousness
to pursue something with the zealotry of a religious you know,
pursuit and they go like, I want to find I
want to unlock you. I can teach dolphins to speak English,
and all of a sudden, you're giving them LSD. You're like, okay,
maybe across the line.

Speaker 2 (01:02:18):
Well, and everyone has an agenda, yes, but you know
a lot of times you can separate that out or
acknowledge it. But when your agenda is your own mental instability,
that makes it.

Speaker 3 (01:02:31):
If someone else is giving you money and you have
to use it up and you got to show results,
you're a little more likely to do insane things windows.
You know, what is a publisher parish it All of
a sudden you're like, how do I get liquid LSD
in the same in the Virgin Islands? All right, Elizabeth,
you're in the move for a talk bang alway produce
a D Can you hit us with one?

Speaker 4 (01:02:54):
Oh god, Hey guys, I've been enjoying your show for
many years, and I swear my IQ goes up every
time I press play. I also have a podcast and
named Arguing ever After, and I've learned how much extra
work you all are putting into making your show great.

(01:03:16):
I love recommending your show whenever someone asks what I
listened to, and I know I can rely on you
all to make me laugh and give me some fascinating
nugget I can talk about to impress my husband with
how cultured and knowledgeable I am. Keep up the brilliance.

Speaker 2 (01:03:31):
Wow, thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:03:32):
Praise that is.

Speaker 2 (01:03:33):
I'm usually told that people's IQs drop after talking to me,
So that felt really good and I thank you for that.

Speaker 3 (01:03:41):
Yeah, that was great, And we will go and check
out your podcast definitely. And yes, as you su see,
there's a lot of work behind the scene, Buddy y well,
as always, you can find us online Ridiculous Crime on
social media that would include what is it Blue Sky
Blue sel in stockgram And we also have our count
Ridiculous Crime pod pod on YouTube. Go check it out

(01:04:03):
if you like getting your podcasts there.

Speaker 2 (01:04:05):
If you buy a pair of metaglasses and you hit
it five times on the side, we appear on.

Speaker 3 (01:04:09):
The ones Oh I did not know that, look at us?

Speaker 2 (01:04:11):
Yeah, try it.

Speaker 4 (01:04:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:04:12):
Also, we have our website, Ridiculous Crime dot com. That's
where you can find merch and gifts and some award
winning paintings made by Elizabeth. No not really. We also Hello,
we love your talkbacks the iHeart app. Go find it,
download it, leave a talkback. We'd love to hear your voice.
Maybe you'd like to hear your voice here, so do it.

(01:04:34):
Do it. Also email us if you want a Ridiculous
Crime at gmail dot com. And if you email us,
please start the email. Dear producer d thanks for listening
and we will catch you next crime. Ridiculous Crime is
hosted by Elizabeth Dunton and Zaren Burnett, produced and edited

(01:04:55):
by our shop Steward and Union rep who negotiates with
our alien overlords, Dave Kustin and Star bring Annalys Rucker
as research is by the best minds Allen Ginsberg ever
saw who were not destroyed by madness, Verissa Brown and
Jabarry Davis. Our theme song is by the first band
to write dolphin music. For your next underwater dance party,

(01:05:15):
Thomas Lee and Traps. Doug host Wardrobe provided Ipody five hundred.
Guest Harra macup By Sparkles and mister Andre. Executive producers
are the co presidents of the Free Willie Fanclub, Ben
Bolin and Noel Brown.

Speaker 2 (01:05:36):
Why Say It One More Time?

Speaker 1 (01:05:38):
Geek cr Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio four
more podcasts. My heart Radio visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
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