Orca Party

Episode Transcript
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(00:03):
You're listening to Why we Do whatwe Do? Welcome to Why We Do
what we Do. I am yourblack and white host, Abraham, and
I'm you are not quite a whalehost. Shame where a psychology podcast.
We like to talk about what peopleand animals will sometimes do and why they

(00:27):
do it, and how they doit and none of the circumstances circumstances under
which they do it. Said thatright, kind of yeah, mostly,
and yeah, we've covered I meanso many topics. This is just so
much fun and we just keep goingand it's great, and we're here now
to talk about something that's been happeningrecently in the news. This is sort
of a like developing story type story, but also it stretches back further than

(00:50):
people might think. Yes, andso today we are talking about orca behavior.
Now. As somebody who grew upin Florida, I have a particular
fascination with sea life and biology.I was going to be a marine biologist
before I got into behavior analysis.Well you know, see rolls right down
the road. I live near thebeach. Like I was always kind of
thought this stuff was really fascinating.But one thing that always kind of put

(01:11):
me on edge was Orcas because theywere so big, sure, and this
episode didn't do them any favors.I mean, they make them likable,
but also they're still very scary.Sure, yeah, I can see that.
And before we get into talking aboutOrcas, I would like to let
everyone know if you finish this episodeand you like what you heard and you're
like I would like to support thisshow, then one thing that you can
do is you can just subscribe.You can leave a rating and review.

(01:34):
Those are easy, cheap, relativelynot time consuming things that help us out
and we appreciate them so much,so please go do that. Other things
that you can do include that youcan join us some Patreon where you get
access to behind the scenes content andnug overall of that. Toward the end.
You can also pick up some merchat our merch store, which only
helps us out. We got shirtsand beanies and all kinds of things.
And then of course you can startan organization to help save the Orcas and

(01:57):
call it why we Do what wedo ORCA Saviors or something yeah wwd wwds.
Yes, And we'll talk more aboutall of those things at the end
of today's discussion. And another importantthing to note before we get into it.
So just we're just kind of teasingall the things, all the orca

(02:17):
things that we'd like to talk about. Is that this episode comes out July
nineteenth, yes, and so welike to celebrate. And today is National
hot dog Day, so or aveggie dog day. Go celebrate a veggie
Doggins said, there you go.It's also a National Daciri Day. Would
you compare with hot dog Day?I suppose that sounds tasty. It's also
National Urban Beekeeping Day, so that'sfun. Put bees in your apartment.

(02:40):
Is air conditioning Appreciation Days, whichis kind of I think the months of
June, July, August, andmaybe September and much of the United States,
but you know, yes, yes, yes, yes. Also in
a surprising a bout of serendipity,synchronicities, all that fun stuff. It
is Shark Week. Yeah, thisis shark week, so you know,
go protect sharks. In relation tothat, I guess is that everybody deserves

(03:04):
a massage week by a shark.Maybe yeah, yeah, yeah, be
careful. It's also National zookeeper Week, which is really nice for the folks
that are taking care of those animals. For those of you who are celebrating
hot dog Day. It is horseradish month, and some people like to
pair those. That's a long timeto celebrate that condiment. I feel like
it does feel like you would havethose switched. Yeah, you shouldn't.

(03:25):
It be National hot dog Month andin horse Radish Day. I don't know.
It's also National Bison Month. Awesomeand wild about Wildlife Month, as
you can tell, because there's alot about animals. I feel like,
yeah, in this month and inthis episode, we're celebrating all the things.
So I guess you can go geta hot dog with some horse radish
in your air conditioning if you areoutside, get a Dacris to cool down

(03:49):
once you come back inside into yourair conditioning after you've gotten your massage,
while Shark Week plays in the background, and then you do some kind of
activism around bison to protect them frompeople going to touch them and mauling them.
Yeah, while hanging out with yourbees. Yeah, your bees.
Don't forget the bees. Get getyour bees some Dacris. They might enjoy
that to some extent. Delis.Yeah, I'm not sure how bees do

(04:12):
with alcohol in general, but thesugary part of it, they'd be all
about it. I can almost guaranteethat there is a study somewhere where bees
drank alcohol. That is a goodpoint. I know that that's happened the
scientists. Scientists some scientists was like, you know what, we should get
bees drunk and then that turned intoa research question. Yes, scientists love
to get animals drunken high. Thatis definitely a thing that has happened in

(04:32):
the past and continues to happen andcontinues to happen. And speaking of animals
getting drunken high, we are talkingabout this amazing, gigantic black and white
creature that lives in the ocean thatyou've seen on the news that was the
star of a movie called Free Willieand a documentary called Blackfish. And these

(04:54):
are the illustrious orcas. Yes,so in this episode we are going to
you figure out what hats, burping, gray white sharks, and menopause all
have in common. To love thatand this is partially inspired by the fact
that orcas have been in the newsa lot lately because in the past few
years they've been attacking boats and itmade us wonder about other orca behaviors and

(05:19):
the boat attacking behavior and what doesorca behavior actually look like? Yeah,
so what you're going to discover inthis episode, I think is that orcas
are really complex and unique social creatures. And I had a lot of fun
putting the notes together for this one, because I know, you think you
know some things and then you learnthe whole bunch of new things and it
changes your worldview. It's wonderful,absolutely, and I do think this one

(05:42):
is going to be on the shorterend just because I think there's fairly straightforward.
We know the things that we know, and there's a lot that we
unfortunately don't know. But it'll beinteresting and fun to unpack these because there's
a lot of new stuff in herefor me, and I always love learning
new things. That's why I liketo host a podcast. Yeah, it's
why we do what we beautiful.We didn't we said the thing. Let's

(06:03):
go in and dive in a littlebit of background about these these majestic creatures.
Now, the killer whale, theOrcanus orca, is a toothed whale
species that is actually more closely relatedto dolphins and other whale species, and
if sometimes referred to as the blackfishor as grampus, though grampus is not
used quite as often, so it'sactually a dolphin and not a whale,

(06:23):
which I think is really kind offascinating, and that's mind blowing fact number
one. Orca whales are not whales. Yes, yeah, exactly right.
So the term orcanus means the kingdomof the dead actually, so that's in
their name, the Orcanus orca kingdomof the dead and there which is kind
of crazy, so crazy, soscary. So for those unfamiliar with the

(06:45):
species there are characterized by their blackand white patterning, which is what I
was describing as why I'm your blackand white host, which is especially helpful
for hiding in the ocean. Theirdorsal or back patterning is a deep black
that is very very black, whiletheir ventral part of their body, which
is their belly, is a brightwhite, and this actually serves to make
them difficult to see from above becausein contrast with the water on the ocean

(07:08):
floor, having them be black meansit's difficult to see them, and then
from below it's difficult to see thembecause of the white contrasting against the bright
white that is the surface of theocean and the sky and the sun and
that sort of thing. So it'skind of almost like a natural bit of
camouflage in a way, right,which is you know, really fascinating to
think of something so large having camouflage. I think that's really what kind of

(07:30):
unique thing. Now, there aresome orcas that are classified as a type
CE type of patterning that have grayscaling which is slightly different than what you
are used to or what you normallysee, and they look really really cool
when you can look them up andsee them. It's it's a very unique
look. It's kind of jarring ifyou're not if you're used to the kind
of black and white patterning that yousee with orcas already. And then you
know, one of the things thatalways strikes me is they have the sort

(07:54):
of one of the white spots that'skind of around where their eyes are.
It almost kind of looks like they'relike cut outs for eyes. If you
feel like they're wearing a big blackmask or something that happens to cover their
whole body, yeah, cowl ifyou will. Yeah, it's they're really
they're really cool looking. Yeah.Now regarding their size, they arrange anywhere
from twenty to twenty six feet inlength, which is around oh seven to

(08:18):
nine ish meters for our metric friends, and they can weigh up to six
point six short tons or American tons. Yeah you will, so over twelve
thousand pounds. I learned something duringthis episode that there are short tons and
long tons. Huh, who knew? Yeah, didn't like that. They
also have really good eyesight above andbelow water. They have great hearing in

(08:39):
a good sense of touch, sothey're incredibly sensitive creatures as well, and
they have they have an incredibly sophisticatedecholocation sense even compared to other dolphin and
whale species. So they are essentiallyprimed to be able to be the best
hunters of the ocean. That they'reset up to have really great touch,
really great eyesight, really great echolocation, really great hearing. I mean,

(09:01):
everything works really well for them.Yeah, and most of the ecosystems where
they exist, they seem to beapex predators, meaning that nothing hunts them.
They hunt everything else that even includessharks for a reason we'll get into
a little bit later. Yeah,but yeah, they are they're huge,
they're fast, they're very smart.They're very well equipped to dispatch with foes
and food alike. Very quickly.Yes, So they have evolved to fill

(09:26):
a niche very particular, a nichevery very well. And so they are
really not there's not a lot ofmatches for an orca out in the water
when you're out there, right,So most of the species lives in the
southern Ocean where the water is coolerand dense with other species that they hunt,
including seals and penguins. That's mostlythat's their primary food source. They

(09:46):
have a wide range in terms ofgeographic location compared to other species. However,
what we find is that they arethey are actually found all over the
world, not just colder waters,but mostly colder waters is where they are,
like, that's where you're going tofind them. Majority of these the
pods that exist, so as we'resaying, because they are these expert hunters
and these apex predators, they aresometimes called the wolves of the sea because

(10:09):
of how they hunt, and forthose who are familiar with wolves, wolves
hunt in packs, and so orcaswill often hunt in these pods and they
can swim at about thirty five milesper hour in these little packs that they
hunt in, and their techniques includea variety of really interesting behaviors such as
beaching themselves and their prey safe haven. They'll go up onto beaches like they'll

(10:31):
they'll even chase their prey onto beachesbecause oftentimes the prey will think, like,
just get out of the water andthen it'll be fine, and then
the orca just comes right out ofthe water with them, which is got
to be horrifying. Imagine like beingchased by something that's only in the water.
You get up on land and you'relike, good, I'm safe,
and it walks out of the waterafter you, like no, thanks,
Yeah, exactly, that's what thisthun does. Yes, And I'll actually

(10:54):
I have a little bit more onthat. I hope I remember to come
back to. They also will circleas surround their prey. And then because
we mentioned they often swim in colderwaters and they are often one of the
things they really like to eat asseals is they'll break up ice sheets where
the prey may be hiding, sothat then sort of forced them into the
water. There are some really coolvideos that you can see of a pack

(11:15):
of orcas chasing this one seal andthe seal is on like kind of an
ice sheet like in the Arctic,and you see these four orcas swim in
a line underneath the sheet and justwreck the entire sheet. They just break
it up into small chunk so theseal basically has nowhere to go but into
the water where they're at. It'sreally impressive to watch. It's like an
aerial view of it, and itlooks really really I mean, it's it's

(11:37):
nature, so you know, it'sbrutal, but it is a really really
interesting thing to see these four orcastogether just say hey, guys, okay,
we're gonna we're gonna mess this up. Here we go and just like
just demolish the sheet that the sealson. Wow, it's scary. I
mean, it's it's it's scary towatch, you go. I'm so glad
that they don't eat humans because ifthey did, we wouldn't have we wouldn't

(11:58):
stand a chance. There's no way. Yeah, which we'll get to you
later. Now. There are aboutfifty thousand orcas worldwide according to best estimates,
and with more recent conservation efforts,it is expected that the population will
continue to climb, which is,you know, that's one thing that we're
going to come back to see worldmultiple times. One thing that see World
did was they brought a lot ofawareness to orcas that exist in the wild
and conservation efforts, and they kindof helped lead a lot of charges around

(12:22):
that and helped with that kind ofmovement towards building that population. Again.
Yeah, it's controversial place for sure, but I think looking at it's one
of those things that just requires anuanced look for all these things that it
did. Yes, but yeah,I mean fifty thousand maybe sounds like a
lot, but for a species,that is a very very low number.
Yes, if you can imagine there'sbeing only fifty thousand humans in the world,

(12:43):
that would be like it would looklike the apocalypse here because there would
be so few people left. Yeah, that would be half of Daytona.
There you go, and everybody wantsto save half of Daytona at least half.
At least half. The other halfcan go kick rocks. All right,
Well, we have some orca socialmedia to talk about here in a

(13:05):
second. But first we're going tofeed our listeners to the advertising killer whales.
Okay, let's talk about the influencersof the animal world the orca.
Yes, so we've talked about thembeing scary, but orcas are incredibly smart,

(13:30):
and they have really complex behavior repertoiresthat are worth kind of diving into.
And for the purposes of this episode, that's what we're gonna focus on.
We're gonna focus on all these differentthings that orcas do. And one
of the most important things, themost unique things they do, is they
engage in a lot of play behavior. Because remember I brought this up earlier.
They are a dolphin species. Theyare the largest dolphin species. They
are not really a whale species,and so one characteristic of a lot of

(13:54):
dolphin species is they tend to engage. It's really complex social play and orcas
have of a rye play behaviors.They engage in and they teach their young
these play behaviors and they really haveno functional kind of benefit except for to
engage in social norms, right likeit's like to engage with other members of
the pods. They don't feed them, They don't really do. I mean,

(14:16):
they some of the behaviors can kindof like generalize into that, but
you'll find that some of it's justreally kind of like it seems like a
useless behavior, but it's actually sociallyimportant, kind of like TikTok Before we
go into some examples, a realquick note, when you used to go
to see world and go to seeperformances, when if anybody ever did that,
you went to go see whale showsor dolphin shows or anything like that.

(14:37):
The tricks that they would engage inwere actually behaviors. They were reinforcing
play behaviors. They were rewarding playbehaviors most of the time. And there
were a lot of different examples ofyou know, an orca breaching the water
and then you know, splashing everybody, you know, using their tail to
splash the crowds and all that.Those were examples of play behaviors that were
naturally occurring in the orca, arepertoire that they figured out how to reward

(15:01):
and turn into a shell. Yeah, and I think when we were talking
about play is thinking about there you'llsee other whales and other sea creatures that
will breach. They basically come jumpingand they swim so fast they break the
surface of the water and they'll jumpout of the water and catch some air.
And most of the time when wesee that in animals, when we
say that this doesn't have a functionalpurpose for orcas, is because they are
chasing prey, they are escaping predators, or there's some other like reason for

(15:26):
them to be doing it. Likethat we can sort of link back to
something that has like immediate survival valuein some sense or another. Right.
I've also seen some whales who dothat to protect their young. They'll like
if they breach, then basically theycan they can hide their young on their
bellies because apparently a thing that they'vedone, which is kind of cool.
But these orcas will do it whennone of those things that are present.

(15:48):
They're not avoiding attacks, they're nottrying to get food. They seem to
be doing it just for the sakeof doing it, which is kind of
how we would define play right right, And as you said, that includes
things like doing these back dives,belly flops, and reaches. Apparently,
one that they're somewhat known for isburping flowing bubbles, which is really cute,
and they'll chase each other. They'lldo these like fin slaps that sort
of seem to be like high fivesor just bumps that sort of thing,

(16:12):
fluke lifts and waves, and someother really fun trends. I'll let you
take the next one. Yeah,So one thing they do is this thing
called kelping, And what they'll dois they'll gather seaweed and different types of
kelp and they will drag it around. They'll swim with it on there in
the notch of their flukes, sothey'll swim with it like in they're basically
like what you would imagine like theirarmpits or on the back of their necks,

(16:33):
and if you want to like kindof compare it to human anatomy.
And that's what they do. Theyswim around with this stuff kind of like
like almost like costume jewelry. Yeah. Yeah, it's so funny, it's
so cute. It's this idea andlike it's it's clear that they're doing it
for fun because they would easily getit off them if they didn't want it
there, you know, right right, they seem to be trying to keep
it in place to like wear itfor a little while, right. Another

(16:55):
thing they do is they mate forfun. Orcas similar dolphins have sex for
fun. Like they're one of thelike the dolphin species is the only other
species on the planet that just hassex for fun. So they do mating.
They roll, So that's a thingthat they'll do. They roll and
then they also do this thing calledspyhopping, and spyhopping is basically they use
and they generalize us for hunting aswell. But basically they just kind of

(17:15):
if you ever see a video ofan orca just popping their head up up
out of the water just a littlebit so their eyeball can see above the
surface, that's spyhopping. And they'lldo that to kind of be like,
oh, there you are seals,Oh, penguins, there you are value,
and then they'll go murder all ofthem for food. How insidious,
right, So that's what I'm saying. It's like all these behaviors are taught

(17:36):
as play behaviors, and some ofthem do turn into functional like survival skills.
I do see a potential future episodefor us called Sex for Fun where
we talk about this, how dowe know that animals are having sex just
for fun? Yeah? Yeah,absolutely, and like which animals do it?
Uh huh? That would be afun episode. Literally. Another thing
that orcas do is foraging, Sothis is kind of interesting. I didn't

(17:57):
know that they do this. Accordingto rite in colleagues in twenty seventeen,
orcus engage in these minor forging behaviors. Does this mean that they're going into
the forest and getting mushrooms. Ofcourse not, so that's not what they're
doing. That would be so scaryif they did, though, I would
be I don't know, confused formultiple reasons. But what researchers have found

(18:21):
is that smaller groups will break offfrom the larger pod in this exploration for
food sources. They might dive deeperor swim further away to see if there's
more available and densely packed food thanwhere their pod currently is. They send
these little scouting expeditions. But apparentlydolphins will also do something similar as this
sort of scouting thing where because theyalso tend to travel on these pods.

(18:42):
Yeah, and so then what they'lldo is they'll basically like they'll scout out,
they'll find like a food source,they'll come back to the pod and
then bring the entire pod to thisnew food source. And again, their
geographical locations are really they have areally wide range, like a specific pod
will cover quite a lot of ground, but they will kind of stay in
that same area. They'll return tothe area after they've kind of depleted a

(19:04):
food source. Wow, super interesting. Now they also have really unique social
structures and unique parenting behaviors. Sobecause they are highly social in nature,
and I think this is going tobe an important point that we come back
to, especially with the controversies thatgo along with Sea World. They are
incredibly social, and this is actuallyone of the biggest arguments about kind of
the current behaviors around Sea World andwhat they were doing. Socialization can occur,

(19:27):
but it's limited because the tanks areso small and there are only there
are so few of these animals inthose tanks. You know, they consider
pods between two and fifteen orcas.That's kind of like the general range.
But much of their social interaction reliesheavily on finding food sources. So if
there are kind of ongoing food sourceswithout having to find them, then that

(19:51):
eliminates like almost an entire subset ofsocial behavior for them. Sure, and
most of the pods are matriarchal,so which is really really interesting. The
older females tend to lead everything.The pods themselves put a lot of emphasis
on raising calves, so again that'sanother social set of behaviors that gets eliminated
if there's only one calf and there'sno need to teach the calf's survival if
it's in captivity. And there areseveral subgroups within a pod that exchange members

(20:15):
to aid in breeding, so likemultiple pods will get together and they'll switch
members to be able to help withbreeding processes. So super fascinating stuff as
far as that goes. Yeah,absolutely, Yeah, And then thinking of
them as being organized in these sortof matriarchical societies is kind of unique.
It feels like not a lot ofanimal species or organized that way hyenas are
actually, yeah, but yeah,that's kind of fun. And so now

(20:37):
getting into I think what is partof the impetus for wanting to do this
episode in the beginning, which isthat orcas seem to pick up fads from
one another. Yes, so it'sclear if you have some scouts and like
someone comes back and they're like,dude, we found a bunch of fish,
and then the whole pod goes thatway, there's some meaningful communication that's

(20:59):
happening there. And I'm not sayingthat it's anywhere near as complex or the
level that humans are. Maybe itis, but we don't know, and
there's just there's no definitive evidence tosay that it definitely is, but it
is definitely some kind of functional communicationthat results in one orca's behavior changing the
whole pod of orca's behaviors to thenlike change direction, go find a particular
set of fish. So if theycan do something like that, it does

(21:22):
stand to reason that we would beable to observe them doing other things like
picking up these sort of fads ortrends in their behaviors among those in a
pod, or even across some podswhere you have those subgroups to sort of
cross pod lines, if you will. And scientists have actually found that these
pods might actually have unique cultures withineach pod that again extend their play and
engagement, which then they sort ofshare with these other pods. And so

(21:47):
let's let's go through some of theinteresting things that they've found in these pod
cultures, inter pod relations, podcast, more pod words, as many pod
words that we can put on apodcast, asked, I think podception we're
all for. So one of thethings I found really fascinating, and I

(22:07):
always find languaging really fascinating, likehow dialects and accents and stuff like that
work, especially being from the South, and how you know it's called soda,
right, and people say y'all andthen everybody else has it wrong.
I always kind of really appreciate that. And then one of the things they
found was that pods will have varyingcommunication. The communication can change across the
regions, and they suggest that podsmight actually have unique dialects and accents,

(22:30):
which makes me laugh so hard thinkingabout like an Orca, it's got like
a real Southern accent, like areal deep Southern drawl. It's like,
hey man, that panguin that Ihad today was delectable. Wait, like,
I just want to see an Orcatalk like that, And I love
that idea, right. I heardthem sort of describing that in all these

(22:52):
different pods, you'll hear these sortof clicks and whistles and these sounds that
they make that it's really unique thatthey do through their nasal cavity, interestingly,
which is part of why it hasa sort of squealing tone that it
has. But if they go toanother pod, they might hear similar sounds,
but they have what they described ashaving an accent to them, just
as you were saying, And theydirectly compared it to like regional accents in

(23:14):
the United States, like a sortof New Yorker accent versus a Southern accent
sort of thing, which sounds veryfun. It's so fun. Another thing
that they do in these groups isthey may share meals, but because they're
the sort of eating pods, theymight also have certain food preferences. So
for instance, some orcas may prefersalmon or chinook depending on their region.

(23:36):
And another one will get too isthey might instead be passing around something like
a shark and they'll they'll take abite and then pass the carcass to the
next one and they'll take a bite, and they just like they share food
in this like assembly line buffet thing. Super fascinating. Another thing they found
was the orcas near British Columbia beginengaging in a behavior called rubbing beaches.
And they would actually find certain likepebbly beach terrains where they would go and

(23:59):
they would just rub their bellies alongthe beach. And it only happened with
this one particular pod. They didn'tthey haven't seen this across other pods.
They found this one group that wouldlike scratch their bellies along the beach like
almost got scratching post. Yeah right, yeah, So this one's really fun.
In Puget Sound, a female orcabegan carrying a dead salmon around on
her nose. And because these arematriarchical societies, a lot of times the

(24:21):
sort of lead female in the groupwill start the trends like she. If
she starts doing it, then therest of them will start doing it,
and so this one was really fun. I believe this was in around nineteen
ninety six or so that they wereobserving this in Puget Sound, and there
was no as far as a gudelland no reason for it. She just
like put a dead salmon on herhead and would just swim around with it.

(24:41):
And within five to six weeks otherorcas from her own pod started also
carrying around dead salmon on their heads. They just wear them and just swim
around with them. And then otherpods that they would interact to us started
just wearing dead salmon on their head. So it seemed to be almost like
a fashion trend that they started doingit. Again, didn't seem to serve
any additional purpose. They just likesalmon on head just from around. They're
like, hey, I like yoursalmon had Yeah, it's I thought that

(25:03):
was so fun. When you toldme that, I was like, we
gotta we have to talk about this. I need to know about this salmon
hat thing, Yeah, which wasjust so ridiculous. And the fact that
it I think, I think it'sone thing when it's like, Okay,
maybe it's like the behavior of aparticular organism within the pod and that's that's
Maybe that's the thing, and likeit's just kind of something they observed.
But the fact that it like developedwithin the pod, yeah, and generalized

(25:26):
to other pods makes me so happy. Yeah, that was so great.
The simple fact of learning by observationis not something you always consistently find in
a lot of other species. Alot of them need direct experience to learn
from a particular circumstance. So thisis taking learning by observation to a whole

(25:47):
new level because it's not only learninglike an important survival skill. This one
seems to be learning a nonsense playlike skill. Yeah, And it's just
totally unique. So I just thinkthat's sort of fascinating. Do you think
that maybe one of the members ofthe pod saw like the Kentucky Derby and
was like, humans wear silly hats. We can do that too, Probably,
Yeah, I hope. So thisis something I didn't include the notes,

(26:08):
But around nineteen ninety nine as well, they found that orcas in the
New England that were kind of likein the northeast of the United States,
in those areas where it was alittle bit colder, started wearing jinkos and
wearing backwards red hats and got reallyinto limp biscuit for a minute. Oh
no, it was a real strangetime, which leads us to actually the

(26:30):
orca's near Spain and Portugal, whichis the whole Like you mentioned, this
was like one of the things thatmade me want to look at orca behavior
is these orcas near Spain and Portugalactually started attacking boats, or as Fred
Durst puts it, they started breakingstuff. And with these attacks increasing over
the past several weeks, we thoughtit would be really fun to kind of
dive in to this particular fad,this new fat around orcas, which is

(26:52):
these boat attacks. Yeah, andthey really hadn't been attacking boats before,
so this seemed like the reason wasmaking the news is because people were like,
why is this happening all of asudden, and why does it keep
happening, and why is it happeninglike and these specific places, and that
seems to be spreading and all that. And so let's hear the advertisers try
and sell you a boat that mayor may not get attacked by orcas.

(27:15):
Maybe it's an orca proof boat.And then we'll come back and talk about
what's going on with these boat attacks. Welcome back. If you would like
orca proofing for your boat, pleaseuse the code why we do what we
do boat safe and you can makesure that the orcas don't reach your hull.

(27:38):
Yeah, somebody letters somebody, OhGod, but it's worth it.
It's worth it. The savior hide. Yeah, you know that five percent
discount that you get from using orcaproofing for your halls. So this is
a this is a question that's beenasked, is why the boats. Why
of all the new fads, doesthis like kind of new aggressive behavior seem

(28:00):
to be kind of picking up andon an increasing trend over the last over
the last few years, even solet's talk about this. And this is
actually really fascinating. So this isnot a new thing. This has been
happening for the past three years,but it's been increasing over the last several
weeks at the time of this recording. Yeah, orcas in the Iberian Peninsula
have been attacking many boats, rammingthem and breaking off parts of their boats,

(28:22):
like their motors and their rudders.And if you know anything about boats,
these are important for steering and movingif you're in water, if you
don't have a rudder, and ifyou don't have a motor, you might
have a hard time getting around.Sales are great, but most of these
boats don't have sales. Yeah,you're mostly just floating there. Yes,
they've had to rescue missions, they'vehad to send people out to get tow

(28:44):
boats in like to bring them backin. Yeah. And so when I
said this is new, what Imeant is and the history of relations between
humans and orcas. They're not knownfor attacking boats storically, but in the
last few years this has been happening, and as you said, increasing in
the last several weeks relative to thedata this recording at the time. So
everyone's sort of wondering, why,why are they breaking these boats, Why

(29:04):
are they attacking these boats? Andat the time that we're recording this,
no one's really been able to determinewhat the purpose may be. Scientists really
haven't been able to figure this out. Doesn't seem like it is related to
hunting or mating behaviors. There's beenseveral hypotheses that have been floated out unintended
about what might be going on here. One is that it's been hypothesized that

(29:29):
this may be a play behavior,and one specific source that I saw suggested
that it's possible. What they weretrying to do is they're trying to hitch
a ride on the boats, andthat's why a lot of the rudders and
the things are breaking. Is they'retrying to bite on some so they can
get pulled along like a skateboarder holdingonto the back of a pickup truck.
What would you call that skitching?Skitching's skitching? Yeah, yeah, which

(29:51):
is my favorite orca skitching is mynew favorite behavior. I hope it's that
wholesome and fun. I really do, right, Yeah, So it's possible,
Like one pothesis is that they're skitchingthey're trying to catch a ride,
but many believe this is due toretaliation for traumatization that may have happens to
one single belonging to a pod.The most interesting part of all of this

(30:12):
I think is, you know,we know, humans do horrible things and
all that, and that's not reallythe interesting part here. The interesting part
is that we talked about fads andhow within pods, within these social structures,
these orcas will teach these fads toother people. We talked about the
matriarchal systems and how like the olderfemale in the pods started wearing a dead

(30:32):
salmon and teaching all this stuff.It appears at orcas in these pods in
particular, are teaching each other howto attack these boats, and they're getting
better at it. This is wild. Yes, So at the time of
this writing, they have sunken threeboats, but have encountered at least five
hundred and five separate vessels in thearea since twenty twenty. Just so you
all know, it's like this isthis is how big this thing is.

(30:55):
The attacks are increasing rapidly over thepast several weeks, and there are no
signs of the slow going down.This is not something that has like they're
like, okay, it's kind ofthere's a lull here. It's not really
happening yet. They're just getting started. They're just getting started. The party
is just starting. And as wesaid, because this seems to be learned,
and they tend to be learned withina group. Observers have been able
to identify two primary groups who havestarted to take this on after the initial

(31:18):
trend began. One pod made upof juveniles and another of varying ages and
one adult. It does seem tobe that it's largely juveniles who are attacking
these boats, which maybe makes thesketching make more sense, but that is
something that they're doing, just likewe've got going on and the humans.
So these orcas they're on TikTok,they picked up this boat attack challenge from
TikTok and so now the adults areinvolved, it will probably start to die

(31:42):
down. There'll be less less boatattacks because they don't want to the old
people around. It's gonna go theway of Facebook, you know how Facebook
is, So now, yeah,kind of where they all to start.
The one adult that's involved in thislovingly named White Gladys, which is great
because orcas are mostly black color pattern. Yeah. White Gladdis maybe the orca

(32:02):
that started a trend to begin with, and it's currently believed that White Gladdis
was entangled in a fishing net orsome type of or had some type of
negative counter with a boat. Theydoesn't believe that these are revenge orcas per
se, but they're highly protective orcas, so it's not that they're like seeking
out justice and revenge and retribution.But what they're seeing is kind of this
danger and they're going nope, notagain, we're protecting white Gladdys and the

(32:27):
juveniles are going on attacking. Andso basically what they're saying is the boats
are a danger to them, sothey're getting rid of the danger. And
I think from like a logical standpoint, that makes sense. Reasonable hypothesis.
Yeah, probably more evidenced for thatthan the skitching. But I would love
it to be the skitching. Youknow, I really hope it's a skitching
like that. I hope it's thatsimple, I really do. Yeah.
It's currently believed that at least fifteenseparate orcas are involved in the attacks,

(32:51):
and again these are from the twogroups above, or about six subgroups across
those pods, those main pods.But here's an important thing. Remember orcas
live anywhere from fifty to ninety years, so they're not terribly far off from
more humans, are right, Andso if this behavior continues and as taught
across pods and to younger generations.This could be something we are seeing for

(33:15):
a very long time if they justkeep attacking people's boats. And I do
think it's worth pointing out that itdoesn't seem like orcas are doing this to
deliberately hurt humans, partially because,as I heard someone else putting out elsewhere,
humans would be very easy prey fororcas, Yes, like very easy.
We can't swim fast, we can'tsee them coming, we're really bite

(33:38):
size for them, Like, we'reactually pretty much exactly the right size for
a meal. So if they ifthey were out there trying to hunt us,
like they would be very easy forthem to do that, and they
don't. So it doesn't seem likethey're trying to do this too specifically harm
humans, because they would do thatthing if they wanted to do that thing.
I have not, at this pointin time, seen any any evidence

(34:00):
that orcas have ever like decided toeat a human. I think that the
situations that they have like involved humandeaths have been a whole number. There's
a whole host of reasons. Butin each of those situations, especially the
ones that happen with the trainers atsea, world, like the orcas didn't
eat them. Yeah, so we'renot like a tasty treat for them,
and which is actually kind of niceto think about that there's a lot of

(34:21):
animals out in the world that don'twant to eat us, right, since
everything in Florida wants to kill us, all the animals that is, yeah,
and the politicians, I guess,yeah, alligators, de santists,
same thing. I think it's worthkind of diving into a little bit of
science here, and we've shown someof the behavioral science around this, but
there's a lot to unpack within this. And we are not marine biologists,

(34:43):
despite the fact that I wanted tobe one, because this is a developing
story. The thing that it comesback to is that scientists cannot agree on
why this is occurring. They knowthat behavior gets taught. They know enough
about orca behaviors to know that theyattack, and they work in pods,
they work in groups. They arethe wolves of the sea. We know
that stuff. We know they're powerfulcreatures, we know they play, We
know all of those things, butwe don't know why this is happening.

(35:07):
And from a parsimonious standpoint, itmakes sense that an organism can observe another
and discover new skills in this observationallearning piece. But it makes sense,
but it doesn't happen very often inthe animal world. That's what makes kind
of humans stand out compared to otheranimals in the world. But I think
it's just really fascinating right now thatlike scientists are like, we have no
idea why this is happening. Yeah, But another thing that we can sort

(35:30):
of speculate on here that does makesense within the context of how we understand
the behavior to occur, is thatif we think of the hypothesis that perhaps
what's happening here is that boats arejust seen simply as a threat. If
an orca got tangled up in anet or it's hit by a boat,
or whatever was the situation that mayhave triggered this, and then boats immediately

(35:51):
become symbolically representative of danger. Thenit makes sense for that image of a
boat then to be sort of ageneralized que for danger for orcas. They're
not necessarily distinguishing like that one boatdid this, but that boat belongs to
a class of things that all lookvery similar that we should now regard as
being a threat. And it's wellwithin reason to think that an organization that

(36:15):
can recognize danger, and you know, an organization in the pod in this
case, a group of animals orindividuals, if they can recognize danger,
then'll do what it can to eliminatethat danger. So, given that orcas
are these apex predators, danger issomething that they would not be used to
and likely would just not tolerate.As soon as there is some kind of
queue of danger, they're going toorganize around eliminating that threat, particularly if

(36:38):
it's an area where they are currentlyrelying on food, an area for mating,
an area where they hang out withour other homies, like they're going
to protect that space. If youwant to get into like some of the
other ways to think about this too, boats, a queue for certain behaviors
could exist for rewards as well.If there if you're talking about sketching and
then hey look here there's the likethey're scopings. It's like surfers finding those

(37:00):
tasty waves. Man, Like youknow the cues for it, right,
Like you know the waves that aregoing to be good and the ones that
aren't. Like I know that Ican hit your ride on this boat,
and there's sometimes where I can't.And that's kind of another thing to think
about too, is that basically what'shappening is whether these are attacks, these
are aggressive attacks, or these areplay attacks, whatever it is, the
boats are serving as a queue forthis behavior to occur in this particular area.

(37:22):
And it's not across every single pod. It's across these pods within this
particular region of the world, right, yeah, again, making it sort
of these unique almost cultural thing thatthey do. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
it's the fat they're the trend setters. And we'll see if if it
transfers over. I mean, there'sonly fifty thousand orcas and the first one
that makes a viral on TikTok isgoing to really mess up a lot of

(37:44):
boats, that's right. But they'llbe rolling then in those in those advertiser
dollars. So hey, and soare we. We have some more other
interesting sort of tidbits going on here. According to Science focused dot com,

(38:05):
a single orca would win a fightwith a great white shark. Why because
orcas are bigger, faster, andsmarter and they hunt in packs. It's
kind of difficult to understand why we'reso afraid of sharks when these orcas exist.
They actually scare great white sharks,so you'd think that they should be
more scary to people, and theyare very scary to me, to be
fair. But one of the thingsthat I saw relevant to this is that,

(38:28):
yeah, one of the trends isthat certain pods will hunt these great
whites. And as I was saying, the great white sharks tend to their
loaners, they tend to sort ofgo out on their own and they you
know, they basically eat anything thatthey see rather than working together cooperatively.
I can say that word orca's worktogether. As we're saying, they're very
social, and so they hunt inthese pods. Then they'll they'll surround sharks,

(38:52):
they'll screw with them, you know, toward them a little bit.
And then I've even one of thething sources that I found on is they
were describing, as I mentioned earlier, this thing where if they caught a
great white, they would like takea bite and pass it to the next
orca, who'd take a bite andpass it to the next orca. And
they'd have this they'd share their food, this big sort of cherry festival of

(39:13):
eating shark guts that they that seemedto be this like social affair and Jared
food is also kind of a veryunique thing that you don't see all that
often. The animal kingdom accept themon like parents and they're young. Yeah,
sometimes just like hang out in agroup, Sharon Emile is not something
that you see very often. Sothat was kind of astonishing, and you
were saying too, like one ofthe things they do is they figured out

(39:34):
basically, like it's not that they'relike ramming the sharks and doing that.
One of the things they figured outhow to do is like roll the shark
over. Oh yeah, that's right, Like they weren't they doing that.
They were rolling them over and likedoing like all kinds of stuff to really
like to really mess with the sharks. Yeah, they'd force it into sort
of when the shark got flipped over, it seemed to trigger some kind of
paralysis like state, making it easyfor the orcas to tear into it,

(39:58):
which seems terrifying from the point ofview of the shark. Yeah. Also
just mean the other thing that Iforgot to mention was that they would do
these things where they would like karatechop the shark basically, so their tails
if you see them, are flatlike a whales. Yes, as you
imagine them. I mean they layhorizontally, so they would turn them sideways
and they would like get like anangled dig at the shark and like puncture

(40:21):
a hole in it. And therewas even like I saw some pictures of
people where they had a shark bodythat washed up on shore and specifically the
orcas had taken out the liver.They were like Hannibal Lecter on the shark
and they were eating their livers,which they apparently really like. Is shark
livers a thing? This is whatI'm saying. They're so scary. Orcas

(40:42):
are so scary. Yeah, there'sa really cool study. Mckeller at All
in twenty twenty two published a studythat focused on using behavioral skills training to
teach trainers that worked with orca's skillsto improve orca attending behavior basically attending to
a task, attending to a stimulusand stuff like that. And in the
study, they were actually doing discretetrial training with orcas. They were running
trial after trial after trial with orcasand getting them to attend to certain queues

(41:06):
and attend to certain trainers during thesetraining sessions. And we're highly successful during
this time. Wow. Yeah,that's cool. I've got to ask about
this one since you put this together, What is going on with orca's experiencing
menopause. They actually go through aperiod of menopause, so as they get
older and they age, they gothrough similar kind of like reproductive cycles that
humans do. Their menstrual cycles andall that are a little bit different.

(41:28):
Their pregnancies are a little bit differentand all that. But their mammals and
they do experience towards the end oftheir life cycle, they do experience menopause.
Wow. Yeah, I thought thatwas super fascinating. They start drinking
wine and picking out their favorite newsanchor host. Watch. Yeah. I
would imagine that the hot flashes areprobably really helpful for like being in cold
waters. They're probably like, okaywith that. Sorry, I don't mean

(41:49):
that's to be a sexist comment,as mostly joking about people that I know
who've experienced menopause, and that seemsto be a thing that happened. Yes,
yes, yes it could be anybody. Anybody could get this way,
That's what I'm saying. So SeaWorlddiscontinued its orca breeding program as of March
seventeenth, twenty sixteen. This wasfollowed on the heels of some controversy surrounding
the death of some trainers as wellas the documentary Blackfish that we mentioned,

(42:14):
and so there was definitely some thingsthat indicated that I mean, as you
were sort of saying, for orcas, this is like being kept in a
very small prison where they have almostlike they're being kept in solitary confinement because
they have so little opportunities to interactwith others, even though these very highly
social creatures. So while this mayhave seemed like a good decision after the
deaths of trainers, some are concernedthat it will severely limit research opportunities to

(42:36):
learn more about the species because,as we said, although there were these
considerations around how the orcas were treatedalso see World did fund these efforts that
led to research and awareness and generallylearning a lot of important things about orcas.
And so many folks don't realize thatSeaWorld is active in many conservation and
research areas while simultaneously trying to engagein entertainment opportunities. And so I do

(43:00):
understand the concern about exploitation. Ido understand I think the treatment of these
animals and what that meant for themas a species. I also think it's
it's just it's not as black andwhite as the orcas are. It's more
like a type C orca. It'smore of a type C orca. Yeah,
there's just some grain here because it'slike, yeah, we don't have
to agree with everything that they've doneto agree with some of the things that

(43:22):
they've done, you know what Imean, we don't have to disagree with
all the things that they've done.To agree with some of the things that
they've done, we aren't defending CWorld. Good on them for making change
because that was something we can hopefor, and when we know better,
we have to do better. Sothere's just as nuance, you know,
that maybe missed opportunity for some morelearning to happen on our end, and

(43:43):
that maybe had to come at thesacrifice of them giving up their breeding program,
which was not something that we shouldhave done anyway. And that's kind
of like a thing that I wantedto really emphasize here, is that,
like, you know, the programsthat C World. I would argue that
C World's programs for conservation and someof the work they're doing were better than
a lot of the other programs,at least like some of the things that
they were doing and trying to putout Because you had other programs, like

(44:05):
other aquatic theme parks that did nothave the same protections, that have the
same research opportunities, there was alot more exploitation on a lot less of
a grand scale. And so you'refinding that, you know, ceworld is
kind of now hopefully leading the chargefor changing those conditions and working and improving
those conservation efforts and getting creative withthose research opportunities that are sorely needed to

(44:27):
protect the species because again, thereare only fifty thousand of them in the
world, and we need to makesure that those populations continue to bloom.
So again, it's nuanced, it'sa it's a larger discussion for what this
means overall for the species and forhumans working with the species. Absolutely,
I do have a few more funlittle things that I found. One was
that as we sort of talked aboutthem going on to beaches to hunt as

(44:51):
a thing that they do, apparentlythis is something that they specifically teach their
young in many instances, is thatmothers will push their calves onto these beaches
so that the calves start to learnhow to sort of flop and wiggle to
get themselves back out into the water, because that's what they have to do
once they've gone on to shore tocatch their prey. They'll get up on
these beaches, they'll grab their prey, and then they'll basically sort of flop

(45:13):
back out into the water. Andso they start teaching that from an early
age, yes, so that theyhave it as a hunting technique, which
I thought was kind of wild.Have you ever seen videos of that?
Have you ever seen that? Likewhat like what that looks like? I
saw like a thumbnail of a video. I didn't actually end up watching the
video. It is really impressive,but it's very scary, like like it's
basically they charge at the beach.They're not like they're not like creeping up

(45:37):
onto the beach. They are theyare like flying at this beach. Yeah,
it's like they come bursting out ofa wave and then just grab a
seal and then like flop back intothe water and that's when they start sharing
their food. It's it's really it'sintense. Man. Another one that I
found that was kind of interesting isthat orcas have what looked like reunions,
and there was actually just at atthe time of this recording. A few

(46:00):
weeks ago they reported the largest reunionthey'd ever seen that lasted longer than any
reunion they'd ever seen. They callthe reunions because these are pods that they'll
come into contact with each other afternot having seen each other for a long
time. And according to this oneresearcher I was reading, they said that
essentially they'll lineup, they'll create aline facing each other across like a three

(46:22):
hundred foot stretch of water. They'refloating in this formation sort of elbow to
elbow, if you will, peckto peck, and they just hover there,
not making any sounds, just likeare sort of looking at each other
like they're greeting silently or something.And then after a few minutes then they
basically party. They swim at eachother, they're flopping around, they rush
and break rank and swim around eachother. They're slapping their tails together,

(46:44):
they're jumping out of the water breachand rolling around. And again it doesn't
seem to have any other function otherthan this social engagement piece. And the
one that I saw on the newssaid that like sometimes they'll do this,
it'll go on for a few hoursand it's a couple of pods. But
this they saw like six pods cometogether and they went for like twelve hours,

(47:04):
basically having the biggest Orca party ever, like a rave. You know.
They were just playing and playing andplaying for so long. They said
they've never seen anything quite like it. It's really It's so fun though,
Like I feel like that's such afun thing to think about that they're like,
right, they're getting together and they'relike, hey, this is you
get like and just really like enjoyingtheir company. I love that. Yeah,

(47:28):
super fun. So anyway, thoseare some of the interesting things I
saw about orcas. But anything elseyou have to say about orcas, I
think they're incredible creatures, and Ithink I'm really excited to see what they
discover about this kind of new thing, these boat attacks, and what it
means for kind of understanding our placein the world and how impactful we can
be with these species that we areco existing with. I think that's just

(47:52):
a it's just a really fascinating thingto me. Yeah, I mean,
I think if we use humans allwe really have as ourselves as a template
against switched to compare social behavior,although we've seen social behavior or another species,
of course, but we are oftenlooking at does this look like something
we do, and therefore is itsomething unique? Because humans do a lot
of things that are very unique relativeto other species of animals, And so

(48:15):
we look at this and this like, this looks closer to what humans do
than a lot of what other socialbehaviors we see across other species. Where
I'm going with this, I think, is that understanding like why they do
this? We kind of have tospeculate a little bit because we just don't
see other creatures who are as sensitiveto social circumstances as humans are, and

(48:37):
as these orcas seem to be,where what their behavior is motivated by is
social interaction, right, Like,that's a huge amount of what humans do.
We have these traditions. We haveour groups, our little tribes,
we have our families, we havefamily structures, we have societal roles that
we all play and has gotten incrediblyincredibly complex among humans. But orcas also

(48:59):
seem to have have this. Theyhave these little tribes, they have their
families, they have their hierarchies,they have their roles, and then they
hang out with other tribes and theylike party and they have fun together,
yeah, and they like interact andlike this this social world seems very rich
and fulfilling for them, and it'skind of, you know, fun to
think about, Like, well,when we have people who go to parties,
what's going on with their behavior?Why are they choosing the things that

(49:22):
they choose? And a lot ofthat we can understand relatively easily, Like
we can break down a lot ofwhat's going on because we can ask people,
we can talk so much, wecan like directly going there. But
then we see these sort of similarthings with orcas, We're like, man,
what is going on for that?What do they get out of this?
You know, it seems like wehave to assume, at least on
the surface, some of it issimilar. Like there's some amount of like
I imagine there's some like I'm gonnahook the old orcas, like I'm gonna

(49:45):
hook up my daughter with this thisuh this good orca sun over from this
pod and like they're gonna yeah exactly, and trying to set each other up
or just play and just have funand all that. So anyway, without
speculating too much on the specific topographiesof their behavior and the functions of those
behaviors. I think it's suffice itto say that we sort of look at

(50:07):
humans as a bit of an analogjust because we can by not necessarily because
it's the most accurate, but itis still really fascinating none nonetheless, just
because it's it's so uncommon in manyother species. Yes, absolutely, I
think, and I think it's thebest way to put out. I couldn't
I couldn't have summed it up bettermyself lovely. Well, in that case,
if you're joining us for the firsttime, one of the things that

(50:29):
we do when we're wrapping up anepisode is leave you with something actionable that
you can do, and that isto check out something that we found fun
and enjoyable and think that you mightalso find fun and enjoyable, and we
call that recommendations. But before weget to recommendations, it's important to acknowledge
that if you would like to supportthe show, you can, as I
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(50:50):
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(51:14):
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(51:34):
and acknowledgement from us every show.And so I'd like to thank Mike,
m Megan, Layla, Mike t, Justin, Kim, Joshua, Brad,
Stephanie, Olivia and Brian for allof your support. Thank you so
much. We really appreciate having youhere with us and all that you have
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patreon dot com slash WWDWWD podcast andcheck that out there. Yes. In

(52:00):
addition, I need to thank theteam of people who help make this show
happen. Writing research and fact checkingby Shane Jess and myself, Production editing
by Justin and then our social coordinatoris Emma Wilson. Thank you all very
much. Thank you for recording withme today, Shane and all you do,
Thank you, Thank you. Thiswas a lot of fun. I'm
glad. Yeah, this was fun. Anything that I missed or anything you'd

(52:22):
like to add before we get tothose fun fun recommendations? No, I
think that covers it. Awesome recommendations. I discovered documentary on Netflix, and
you know, I feel like,I'm not going to say this is the

(52:43):
greatest documentary ever. However, Ifeel like it's very particular, and I'm
somebody who is just like very reallyfascinating, like very very particular things,
and this was one of them.It's called Muscles in Mayhem, an unauthorized
story of American Gladiators. Did youwatch American Gladiators growing up a little bit?
Yeah, I don't remember it.Very well, though it is a

(53:04):
wild time. So most of whateverybody remembers is like you had these big,
like athletic people that had like verylike one syllable names like Blaze and
Sky and all that stuff, right, Sure, and then you had a
couple that head too Nitro Laser,and they were all like really tough sounding,
very nineties names. Sure. It'sa six episode series that interviews the
original Gladiators and like some other folksthat came up, and how the show

(53:29):
came to be, how it becamekind of this like weird nineties like phenomenon.
It kind of dives very briefly intocrash TV, which was like kind
of in the nineties, was likeall the stuff that where Reality TV was
like really terrible and all the thingslike that's what it was basically just like
not just in the nineties, Yeah, yeah, exactly, it's kind of
continued. And they were saying,like it's just all the criticisms and stuff

(53:51):
around it and how unsafe it was, and when you really think about American
Gladiators, you're like putting people whoare not athletes up against people who are
athletes on activities that are not wellthought out and people were getting hurt all
the time. It's really fascinating,kind of like like glimpse into the nineties.
It's from like nineteen eighty nine forseven seasons up through like ninety five,

(54:12):
I think it was is when theyfinished it up, And it was
just a super interesting, unique lookat this time frame that I remember so
fondly because I was so obsessed withI was like, I want to get
in one of those steel balls androll around. I want to do the
Eliminator. I wanted to do thosethings. And it's super super interesting and
also just a really interesting glimpse intoHollywood and how terrible it is. Sure,

(54:34):
so yeah, it sounds like fun. Yeah, it's great, all
right. And you said the documentaryis a like six episode series. You
were saying, it's a six episodelimited series on Netflix right now? Got
it? Okay? Yeah? Fun. I'm also recommending a TV series.
I don't know if this is goingto get a second season, kind of
hard to imagine how it could.But it's a series called Jury Duty.
This is from free V and ison available on Amazon Prime for those of

(54:58):
you who like to watch that.It's sort of like reality DTV meets prank
show meet sitcom in a way.Sure, well a lot of improv comedy
the premise of the show without givingreally anything away, because I think you
need to know this going in otherwiseyou may like it. You might think
this is you know, not asfunny as it is, or it's crazy.
I don't know. Anyway, isthat a bunch of actors and improv

(55:21):
comedians get together to basically stage atrial, and they get a guy off
Craigslist for jury duty for this trial, and so he shows up thinking it's
a real trial and it's real juryduty he's doing because he's been summoned for
jury duty or like has been askedto come to for jury duty. Sure,

(55:42):
and specifically the recruitment was like,oh, we're filling this documentary about
how juries work. I think washow they just fined having all the cameras
there and everything, and so he'ssort of showing up thinking, well,
this is going to be, youknow, a really boring thing. But
they'll be all these cameras and they'rejust shooting like what it's like the new
jury duty. And so that that'swhy he sort of volunteered for it,
I think is what happened. Anyway, so they set up all these beats

(56:05):
and skits they wanted to have happenedalong the way. Then they'd engage him,
this guy who is unsuspecting, thinkingthis is all real, and they
go through and they said they specificallyhad to arrange days where like almost nothing
would happen. They'd show up andthey'd just be like eight hours of very
little going on, because that's whatJerry Duty can be sometimes, right,
right, And so they'd only keep, of course the parts they filmed that
were meant to be sort of funfor the show. But they had scripted

(56:29):
in all these interactions to take place. But if the guy, like they
couldn't predict what he was going todo necessarily, so they had some sort
of if this happens, then dothis, but if this happens, then
do this, And then sometimes theyjust had to go completely off script and
make it up as they went,and includes some very eccentric characters in it,
And anyway, James Marsden is init. He plays sort of a

(56:50):
very Hollywood elite douche version of himself, and so anyway, again don't want
to give it too much away,but the show is just absolutely hilarious.
It's so funny, it's so welldone, it's super engaging. So what
you might hear about this and maybemaybe not wanting to watch it's like prank
shows can be really hard to watchbecause you're like watching someone like have a
bad day and get upset and likethat can suck. Anyway, they really

(57:15):
don't. They handle it very nicelyin this one. They when they do
the big reveal and they're really like, they're really kind, you know,
they really treat the guy like,hey, you are such a good sport
about this, you know, thankyou really for being along here. So
there's a big reveal which I thinkis actually again, I don't want to
spoil it, but you need toknow that going in otherwise you might be
like this poor guy that they didthis too. It's not like a mean,

(57:36):
like heartless prank, right, yes, it is not mean anyway,
I strongly recommend go check out DurryDuty. I love that. That's so
good. I spent as much timetalking about that as I did talking about
why it's interesting to learn about whales. But that's where we're at, all,
right, Well, if you'd liketo tell us about TV shows that
you are watching that are like documentarieson various streaming platforms, where we're always
open to hearing those things. Ifthere's something you'd like to add about orca

(57:59):
behavior, what we missed, orwhat you'd like to comment on, or
just tell us how great of ajob we did, you should certainly do
that. You can reach out tous directly by emailing us at infoll at
WWDWWD podcast. We're active on allthe other social media platforms and we want
to hear from everybody who is whois there. So I think that that
is all that I have anything thatI missed or anything you'd like to add
before we wrap up here, No, I think that covers it perfect.

(58:21):
All right, then, thank youfor listening. This is Abraham and this
is Shane. We're out see ya. You've been listening to Why we do
what we do. You can learnmore about this and other episodes by going
to WWDWWD podcast dot com. Thanksfor listening, and we hope you have
an awesome day

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