Shadowing Practice: Save the Whales! | STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
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Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
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I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here too.
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And we are going crunchy, granola even today, talking about saving the whales, which, Chuck, I don't know about you,
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but for me, that was like a big part of my childhood.
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So this is a little bit nostalgic for me.
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Yeah, I mean, if you're insinuating I grew up under a rock in the 1970s, that is not the case.
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You did live on a gravel road.
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That's true.
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There were rocks involved.
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I lived among rocks.
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But yeah, I mean, I would go out on a limb and say that,
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well, this article says Save the Whales is one of the most successful environmental conservation movements in history.
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But from my mouth to thine ears, I'm going to say I think the Save the Whales campaign
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is one of the most effective marketing campaigns across any genre in history.
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Wow.
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Wow.
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It was that ubiquitous.
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Yeah, it was super ubiquitous.
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I think you caught more of it than me, even.
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Like, the stuff that I caught was a little bit of the after wash.
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I don't know.
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Like, remember that thing?
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You were living a—well, no, it was still a thing.
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Yeah, yeah.
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But I think the peak, I missed the peak and you were living right through it.
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Because the 70s were like when this really started to ramp up big time.
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And I'm sure plenty of people out there have heard Save the Whales.
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And it is like a pretty ubiquitous slogan.
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Used to be even more ubiquitous, like we're saying.
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But despite that, there wasn't like one person or group that you're like, yep, they started Save the Whales.
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It almost just kind of bubbled up into the collective consciousness.
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and a bunch of different groups kind of started doing the same thing, sometimes working together, other times doing it independently.
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But the whole goal was to preserve declining whale populations from extinction,
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and they all were kind of under the same banner of save the whales.
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Yeah, and we're going to talk a little bit about the actual saving of the whales.
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We're going to talk a little bit about that campaign slogan and how that was a thing.
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But if you want to talk about just the word, save the whales, that did not come about in the 1970s.
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That became a thing.
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And I mean, the phrase dates back to the 1800s, like the 1880s.
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But it really became a thing in the 1920s when whale conservation was first a little flicker on the radar of, I mean, what would be early conservationists.
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But in 1928, there was a mammologist group that had a Save the Whales meeting in Washington,
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D .C., and that's when it really kicked off as far as, like,
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you know, there were buttons and there was a satirical poem written about how ubiquitous it was in the 1920s and 30s.
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So it was definitely a big thing early on.
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Yeah, and in those articles, I think Anna helped us with this one.
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She dug up some articles from the 20s about those meetings, And they were likening saving the whales to the bison populations that almost went extinct,
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you know, just a few decades before.
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So the lesson was learned by some.
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And they're like, these whales aren't going to be around much longer either.
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And it wasn't just the U .S.
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It spread around the world like other countries started kind of their own save the whale initiatives.
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It was clear that we were over whaling.
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And yet, despite that, in the 1920s and 30s, whaling was still generally antiquated.
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It was still the kind of whaling that you think of like New Bedford, Massachusetts, like the salty old sea dog with the peg leg and a spear in his other hand,
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a pipe, maybe even a parrot, like out there whaling with a harpoon that he's using with his hands.
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They killed a lot of whales like that, but it was nothing compared to the industrial whaling that started in like the middle of the 20th century.
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Yeah, I mean, they started having, you know, literal cannons mounted on the side of a ship that would shoot exploding harpoons.
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And by the 60s, they were taking 80 ,000 whales a year.
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Blue whales neared extinction, plenty of others in like grave danger.
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I am taking my first trip to Nantucket this summer.
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And that is, they have a whaling museum there that I'm going to go to.
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I've never even been to that part of the country, really.
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So I'm eager to go and not to celebrate whaling, but just as a sort of historical museum kind of thing.
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Emily has already said that she won't be going.
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No, I can understand that.
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It would be kind of hard to take for sure.
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Yeah, but I mean, I imagine it's fairly interesting.
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It's just a blip in time.
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But it's not, I doubt if they're trying to sell you on whaling.
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Or at least I hope not.
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Right, right.
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Remember when.
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Yeah.
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That's great about Nantucket.
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That is like to dirty limericks what Enya is to crosswords.
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Wow.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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That's a nice pull.
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So a good comparison here is like, like I said, New Bedford, Massachusetts, that area, Nantucket, Cape Cod, I guess.
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Sure.
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They, they, this was like the seat of whaling internationally in like the mid 19th century.
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And over this, basically this decade of American dominance of whaling, they took 100 ,000 whales.
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Now, what you're saying is that by the 60s, they're taking almost that amount in one year, not a decade.
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That's how much it had gotten stepped up.
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And if the people in the 20s
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and the 30s were worried about whales going extinct before using the kind of antiquated original whaling techniques, this new stuff was really a threat to them.
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Yeah, for sure.
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And, you know, the 70s, it sort of merged with the post -60s crunchiness to really become a big thing.
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But going back to the 30s, in 1930, on the nose, the League of Nations got together and established the Bureau of International Whaling Statistics just
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so they could see if it truly was a bison situation.
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And a year later, they're like, yep, it's pretty bad.
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They're declining big time.
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And so 22 nations signed an agreement at the Geneva Convention that year for the regulation of whaling to put some limits.
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And that was kind of the first move was in 1931.
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You know what else I saw, too?
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It's something else that saved the whales in the first, I guess, first half of the 20th century was the invention of the light bulb
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because people didn't need whale oil for lamps anymore.
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Yeah.
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I mean, I guess we should say that they whaled because that blubber was oil for lamps and people also ate it.
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And also, you know, we're not going to not talk about indigenous populations where it's, you know, they depended on that stuff for sustenance and some still do.
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So, yeah, that's why they whaled.
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Well, also, that's why some of these early, I guess, international agreements on conserving whale stocks were created,
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not because they're like whaling's wrong.
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They were like, we need to be able to keep whaling in the future.
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So let's not overdo it now.
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Now, let's figure out what is a sustainable amount.
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That's what the earliest agreements were for.
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Yeah, let's stop whaling some so we can keep whaling.
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Exactly.
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So that was the first one, 31.
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37 came along and 10 nations signed on to another one called the International Agreement for the Regulation of Whaling.
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Also put some more limits.
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It banned blue humpback, fin, and sperm whales under certain lengths.
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But it was still declining.
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So in 1946, the International Whaling Commission, they just keep starting these commissions and getting member countries on board.
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And it's really not making much of a difference.
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Right.
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And they did that in 46 again with 14 member nations.
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But the 46 one, you know, aligned or I guess the 37 aligned with World War Two.
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So they they were like, we can't go without this oil like at this time.
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So it just it didn't really have any teeth.
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Yeah.
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Not not only that, they needed like meat.
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So they they weren't in a position in the world wasn't in a position after World War II to be like, no, let's not let's stop taking this meat like like whale
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meat fed a lot of people who didn't have access to other kinds of protein from World War II.
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So, yeah, those agreements were kind of like, no, this this isn't going to work right now.
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And then as things started to ramp up, because now there was a much bigger market that hadn't been there before for whale meat, like a global market.
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That's why it became this industrial factory farming, like, version of whaling, right?
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So, because there was just a lot more money to be made.
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So the people who finally started the Save the Whales campaign of the 70s had a really huge hill to climb.
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The biggest hill anyone who was against whaling itself ever had to climb in the history of whaling.
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Yeah, for sure.
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But it was, like I said, kind of the right time coming out of the 60s.
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There were a lot more just sort of environmental concerns popping up.
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The EPA was a little more in the limelight.
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And it was just there was more awareness of that kind of thing.
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And there was a big perspective shift that happened that was much, much different from those earlier ones, like you were saying, where it was like, let's conserve so we can keep whaling.
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Like, this was a legitimate like, hey, these things we're realizing are intelligent.
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And that started happening in the 1950s, like finding out that whales were smart.
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Yeah.
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Thanks to a Navy engineer named Frank Watlington was a really big change.
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Well, yeah, he he liked to I almost have the sense that it was in his spare time record with a hydrophone,
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the underwater sounds of the Navy like shooting off bombs.
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And he accidentally caught some whale songs of some baleen whales.
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And he was like, this is I've not heard stuff like this before.
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It seems like there's a pattern to it or a rhythm or they keep coming back to like a chorus.
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I don't know.
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So he gave it to some marine biologists who actually took it and released it as an album in 1970, Songs of the Humpback Whale.
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Have you listened to it?
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Oh, yeah.
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Like most of my adult life.
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Yeah.
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It's just so mellow.
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It's so ambient that you're like, wait, did they add some synth here?
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And no, it's just nothing but whale songs, right?
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Yeah.
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Brian Eno had nothing to do with it.
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Right.
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So I can't imagine this was released in 1970.
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I can't imagine between 1970 and 1980 how much acid was dropped listening to the album songs of the humpback whale.
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Man, it was like made for it.
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So maybe I think this has got to be fair use.
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We can just play a short snippet just so people can hear a piece.
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Yeah?
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Okay, sure.
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Let's give it a shot.
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All right, here we go, everybody, with Songs of the Humpback Whale on SYSK.
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Here is part of the same song played at its natural speed and pitch, just the way other whales hear it.
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All the sounds are made by one whale, both the high squeaky tones and the low rumbly ones.
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wow what an album right yeah i mean it's uh the only multi -platinum album of Animal Sounds, which is completely believable.
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Yeah, I can't imagine there's too many more.
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Yeah, I mean, it actually became a huge hit.
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It's the only multi -platinum album of Animal Sounds, which I guess now they think about it is completely believable.
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Right, but if you just go listen to it, it's only like a half hour or so long.
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I think it's a, it says Songs of the Humpback Whale, but there's so many different songs that I'm like, there's gotta be different species involved.
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It's just neat, just go listen.
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Yeah, it's super cool.
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And the whole point of it all was is that it raised awareness.
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People were all of a sudden like, wait, these like scientists said, I think they're communicating here and they're super smart, like Chuck would later say in a podcast.
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And so Save the Whales campaign all of a sudden had a had a kind of different rallying cry, which is like, hey, we're you know, these aren't just big, dumb logs floating around in the ocean.
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These are really super smart animals to be protected.
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Right.
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And so in environmental ease, they became ambassador animals for the ocean as a whole.
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This is now an animal that you can make people care about.
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And now we have to go get the word out.
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And by saving whales, you're also going to save everything else in the whales ecosystem that you're working to preserve.
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That's right.
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Should we take a break?
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Yeah, I was about to say the same thing.
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So Jinx, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.
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You owe me nine Cokes.
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Oh, gosh.
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All right.
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I'm going to go to the store and we'll be right back.
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all right we're back everybody after a delay that you don't need to even know about, right?
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It's our business.
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Yeah, none -ya.
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So Save the Whales is kicked off in the 70s, and I think you mentioned earlier on, it's, you know, sometimes it was in parallel with one another.
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It wasn't like just one group doing this, but everyone got on board with those same three words because it was a very unifying thing.
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And this is sort of a loose timeline of how it started, And it kicked off in 1971
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when the Animal Welfare Institute got together with the Fund for
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Animals to officially launch the 1970s version of the Save the Whales campaign.
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And they started doing things like, you know, going to teachers' conventions, you know, sending out, you know,
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information and mailers and placing ads and saying like, hey, maybe we should boycott whaling nations, that kind of stuff.
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Right.
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Yeah.
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In just a few years, they started a pretty big boycott.
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I think in 1974, they said no Japanese goods, no Russian goods.
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Yes, we're even talking about vodka.
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They had to say that a lot.
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Yeah.
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And I think 18 other groups signed on.
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And I think five million Americans said, yes, no Russian goods, no Japanese goods.
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Let's save the whales.
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Hot damn. For real.
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They got benefit concerts together.
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I know David Bowie in 1972, he headlined a very famous Save the Whales benefit concert.
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You know, of course, Greenpeace would get on board early on, although they would get on board two years after it started with their Project Ahab, which was a little surprising.
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They're like, no, wait, what about the panda?
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I thought we were all doing the panda.
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They're like, that's later.
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We'll do the panda next.
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We're going to save the whales now.
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Finally, Greenpeace came around.
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Yeah.
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And, you know, a lot of this early stuff was very just sort of local roots oriented, like in the mid 70s,
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the Connecticut Cetacean Society just like literally went from town to town in Connecticut with Save the Whales events.
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And places like Mendocino, California had the Mendocino Whale Festival and founded the Mendocino Whale War.
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So it's like, you know, and this is where whaling is taking place, mainly in these like sort of little small coastal towns.
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So it wasn't like, you know, we're going to go to New York City
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and have this big event like they were doing it where it was going on.
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Yeah.
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And there were like different ways of doing this some were
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like we want to go like basically confront whaling ships where
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they're whaling other people are like let's just we just need to raise awareness
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and raise money and um all like it wasn't like this this thing
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that i'm doing is the right way to do it it was like okay you're going to do
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that i'll handle this over here
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and all together we're going to save the whales even though
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there wasn't like necessarily a lot of coordination going on it
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was just you know you kind of look to your left and see somebody like trying to save the whales with you.
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And you just kind of give them like a finger gun and a wink and be like right on.
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Yeah, for sure.
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I mean, they proposed moratoriums and stuff like that.
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And we'll get into the weeds about how that actually went down in a little bit.
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But one of the big things that happened in the 70s was that t -shirt.
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In 1977, there was a woman named Maris Seidenstecker, who had been selling these shirts for like three years, like really successfully since I think 1974.
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And she was 16 years old and in 77 founded, because of the success of these t -shirts, founded her own conservation group called Save the Whales.
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Yeah, she had a small ad in Rolling Stone, just this recurring ad, and that's how she got the word out about the t -shirts.
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And then one other thing I saw about her, she was named Maris Seidenstecker II because her mother was Maris Seidenstecker I.
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That's unusual, but pretty cool.
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Yeah, usually that would be Junior.
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Well, you just don't usually see that with women.
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It's mostly men, you know?
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Well, it's because men are the only people who think their name means something.
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Well, sure.
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The Seidensticker women stuck their thumb in the eye of the patriarchy is what they did.
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You put it on this building or on my parking spot.
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So let's talk about some of the tactics they took.
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Like I said, you'd look to your left, look to your right.
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All these people are taking these different approaches to it.
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It's all about saving the whales.
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One of the easiest ones is to just kind of go to the kids.
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Because as we'll see, if you can go to the younger generation, that's like the long game that you're playing.
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But it's also the one that's more likely to pay off.
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If you teach little kids that whales are smart, that they live in families, that they care about their babies just like your mom cares about you,
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those kids are going to grow up to see whales as not something that you kill for blubber or meat,
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but something that you need to protect from people who want to kill them for their blubber or meat.
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Yeah, for sure.
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So that was, you know, that's kind of the starting point, I think, is just educating the children, the children's.
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We already talked about, obviously, you know, public events like concerts and protests and boycotts.
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The merchandising, like the T -shirt, like that's that's not just like, hey, let me make this shirt like bumper stickers and shirts
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and buttons are a big part of any kind of movement like that.
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Yeah.
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One thing, you mentioned that Bowie concert.
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I saw somebody was writing about it, and they said, like, this was the concert that made David Bowie like a superstar.
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Like, he was on the rise, and that concert was where he turned the corner.
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Hmm.
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What year was it?
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72. Okay.
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It was supposedly a pretty good concert.
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He had Lou Reed on stage, and they played Sweet Jane and, like, two other songs I've never heard of.
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Yeah.
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It seemed like it probably was pretty cool.
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I wish I could have been there.
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That's a big regret for me is Bowie.
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He's on the short list of dudes I never got to see and had a chance to, you know.
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He's on the Time Machine list?
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Yeah, like a really regrettable one because he was around and playing shows that, you know, I never was like, no, I'm not going to go to that.
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But it wasn't like, you know, Queen stopped playing shows.
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That's another one on my list.
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But they stopped playing shows in Atlanta when I was, I don't even think they played there after I was like seeing concerts.
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So, you know.
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I see.
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I see.
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So that's not as regrettable as Bowie.
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Yeah, because I had the chance to see Bowie and did not take it.
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I understand.
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I was like, he's never going to leave us, is what I thought.
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Right.
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Bowie will never die.
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Bowie rules.
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Bowie lives.
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Yeah, very sad.
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So one of the tactics that actually kind of emerged from this Greenpeace is like, we need to catch up.
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We got to come up with our own kind of brand of doing this.
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And they came up with a term for it.
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They called it the mind bomb.
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Yeah.
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Which is basically like...
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Now, yeah, it is very corny.
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Nowadays, you're like, well, yeah, that's of course you're going to do something like that if you're you're an activist campaigning, you know, to say save an animal.
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The mind bomb was basically like showing people unfiltered photographs of what is actually going on.
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Yeah.
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And that's what they did.
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They released a lot of photographs to the press internationally of whaling in action
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so that people could see how brutal it was.
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They made it no longer just a concept that people heard about, save the whales, save the whales.
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Now they could see for themselves why people were saying save the whales because they were being brutalized by humans.
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Yeah, and there was one particular adventure that they went on
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that kind of started it all and was in newspapers all over the country.
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It was in April of 1975 aboard the Phyllis McCormick boat.
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Twelve activists got on that boat, and they spent a couple of months out at sea trying to find some whaling boats.
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Finally, in June, they caught up with a Russian fleet off the coast of California
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and just kind of followed it around for a little while, like using bullhorns and loudspeakers in Russian to beg them to stop killing whales,
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play like blast music at them and stuff.
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And that wasn't working.
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So eventually they were like, all right, we need to step it up just a little bit.
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And so they got it on those little rubber speed boats, like the little raft boats, and followed it around like a lot closer
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that you could do in those boats and like took some pretty horrifying pictures that, like, made a, like, these close -up pictures of harpooning whales made a big, big difference in the campaign.
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Yeah, I saw just, like, that Bowie concert being where he turned the corner, supposedly.
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This is where the Save the Whales effort really turned a corner, too.
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Like, it was, again, international news.
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There were plenty of newspapers that put some of the pictures on their front page, and, like, it just really kind of captured people's attention.
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And so that whole mind bomb idea really kind of took off and spread, not just from Greenpeace, but, you know, to other groups, not just animal conservationists.
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And Greenpeace continued on.
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The ship that I grew up with that they used to do this with was the Rainbow Warrior.
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Remember that one?
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Oh, yeah.
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And by the way, for a second there, a minute ago, I thought you were going to say, like the Bowie thing, this is where photography really took off.
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Right, exactly. In 1975.
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Yeah, I was like, oh, man, is that what's coming?
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Yeah, Yeah, I totally remember the Rainbow Warrior.
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I didn't know you grew up on that boat, but that's pretty cool.
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Yeah, yeah.
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My dad was a mate.
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He was a matey on the Rainbow Warrior for many, many years.
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We had to basically peel him off of the deck and be like, go get a different job.
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So he became an HVAC engineer eventually.
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We need to shout out Australia because they had a Greenpeace affiliate called the Whale and Dolphin Coalition that was, like you said, kind of doing the same thing.
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They were like, hey, this is a really effective deal.
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So let's get out there.
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And we didn't say why I thought it was corny.
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Mind bomb is because they would blow people's minds.
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Exactly.
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With their pictures. For sure.
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And they did.
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But again, it is a very corny way to put it.
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That's right.
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But that would be stepped up even more because, you know, Greenpeace gets a little more aggressive.
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And then there's always one more like the Brad Pitt group in 12 Monkeys.
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It's like, no, they're not even taking it far enough.
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If we need to actually, well, I guess sort of engage in sabotage.
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Yeah, this this one I associate with the 90s, the Sea Shepherd.
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They were a conservation society founded, I think, in 1977 by a guy named Paul Watson, who had been a Greenpeace member.
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It was like, you guys are corny.
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I'm out of here.
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I'm going to do something like like actually significant, not just follow whalers around and take pictures.
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He followed whalers around and tried to sink their boats by ramming his own boat into him.
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And he was so successful, Chuck, that I propose we do a short stuff just on the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society itself.
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They have sunk a lot of boats.
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Yeah.
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He said, mine bombs are effective.
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Real bombs are more effective.
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Pretty much.
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I mean, they used at least one bomb on, I think, a ship called the Sierra, right?
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Yeah.
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Well, they rammed the Sierra a couple of times with their boat and damaged it.
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And then a few years later, or no, I guess one year later, that was 79, in 1980 is when they planted an underwater bomb and sank that thing.
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And like you said, many others.
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Yeah.
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And just to be clear, Paul Watson and the Sea Shepherd Society, they've never injured a single person.
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Right.
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They've never been indicted for breaking any law.
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These are pirate whaling ships.
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They're operating completely outside of the bounds of international like agreements.
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Right.
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Where they're hunting endangered species that are off the table they're taking whales
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that are young
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that shouldn't be taken um they're like taking more than they're supposed to like it's a it's a big deal
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that these people are out there and that's that's why he's targeted them
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and um he said that in an interview he's never lost a lawsuit that's been brought against him either.
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So he's feeling pretty good about what he's doing.
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Yeah, and this wasn't like, hey, we're going to...
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I mean, it was definitely awareness, but it put an actual dent in the whaling industry.
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They sank two of Spain's only five whaling ships.
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And if I had a better math brain, I could figure out the percentage, but that's probably 40 -something.
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So, yeah, another thing that he did, He would put out bounties on other pirate whaling ships.
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There was one called the Astrid, and the owner of the Astrid eventually just sold it because he couldn't trust the crew anymore, that they weren't going to sabotage it and take the $25 ,000 reward,
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because he definitely wasn't paying them $25 ,000, right?
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And then there was one other thing that had this direct impact on whaling as an industry.
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Just him being out there sinking ships made whaling ships' insurance rates go sky high.
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So there were some that were like, I can't afford the insurance anymore.
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I'm going to stop doing illegal whaling.
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That's right.
408
And he also had that great line about mine bombs not being as effective as real bombs.
409
He also had one about loose lips.
410
And I think you can just fill in the rest.
411
That's right.
412
So they're making a lot of headway, you know, sinking these ships and raising awareness.
413
But, you know, we mentioned early on, like, just how big of a ubiquitous thing this was in the 70s.
414
And it was like a legitimate pop culture phenomenon.
415
I mean, it was it was right up there with like, where's the beef in the 1980s, ironically, as far as like slogans that people knew and wore on shirts
416
and put in songs like Judy Collins and Kate Bush both sampled that songs of the humpback whale as, you know, awareness.
417
And because it sounded cool, there was a Save the Whales board game in 1978.
418
And we can tell you firsthand if you have made it to board game territory, then you're part of pop culture.
419
Yeah.
420
Apparently, I was reading about the rules.
421
Players are, they cooperate rather than compete with one another to save the whales.
422
I like cooperative games.
423
I mean, that's definitely like difficult gameplay to come up with, I would guess.
424
Yeah, they couldn't be like, all right, who's going to play the whaler?
425
Right, exactly.
426
Everybody hates me.
427
Yeah.
428
What was the pinnacle of the whole thing, though, Chuck?
429
It came in 1986.
430
Oh, yeah.
431
Yeah, as everyone who's listening to the show knows, I know nothing of Star Trek, but I did know the plot, at least, of Star Trek,
432
what is that, 4, The Voyage Home, which is when the crew, Captain Kirk and his crew, went back to save the whales.
433
Yeah.
434
So that's, I mean, yeah.
435
A board game and a Star Trek, not a Star Trek episode, an entire Star Trek movie dedicated to saving a whale, saving the whales.
436
That was a pretty big deal.
437
So, yes, this thing spread, grew, metastasized, became part of just the regular culture.
438
There were comic strips that mentioned it.
439
Just the casual mentions of it, the way it came up, when you look back at it, you're like, yeah,
440
this was everywhere wear um i remember there's a simpsons where lisa develops a crush on nelson months
441
and she goes to visit him at his house
442
and he has a poster on the wall it says nuke the whales yeah
443
and she goes nuke the whales he's like gotta nuke something
444
save the news touche yeah i remember wearing uh we had
445
hippie day in high school uh once a year where you you know pretty self -explanatory
446
And there was a picture of me, I believe, in the yearbook wearing my little hippie outfit.
447
And my prop was a little Save the Whales sign.
448
So it was, you know, I wasn't stepping out and trying something original by any means.
449
It was like super.
450
And this was the mid to late 1980s at this point.
451
Right.
452
Underneath it said, Charles W.
453
Bryant shows off his hippie outfit.
454
Also, he's the best all around boy.
455
It probably said something like that, except for the last part.
456
Yeah, that was a big surprise for you.
457
Man, those yearbook captions.
458
They were pretty bad.
459
I remember we had a yearbook in high school where they misspelled tomorrow on the cover.
460
Did it say tomorrow?
461
It said T -O -M -M -O -R -R -O -W.
462
It's a too many M's.
463
Too many.
464
Yes, too many M's.
465
I have my hands over my eyes right now because I'm just cringing thinking about it.
466
Like, they were, this was printed, distributed before anybody noticed.
467
Like, they were done.
468
That is on the editor -in -chief.
469
And on the teacher advisor, too.
470
Yeah, the school sponsor. So, okay.
471
So, I think we've established Save the Whales, it spread throughout pop culture.
472
People's sympathies, like, definitely started to go toward the whales.
473
But where the rubber meets the road, is whaling going to stop?
474
You need to go to the people who oversee stuff like this, like entire governments and national bodies.
475
And just like they did in the 30s, they went back to the International Whaling Commission and said, hey, guys, what do you think about just stopping this?
476
And the U .N said, great idea.
477
And the IWC said, no. Yeah.
478
I mean, I think the first try was they proposed a 10 -year moratorium on whaling.
479
What year was that?
480
I don't have that in front of me.
481
It was 1972.
482
72. Okay, yeah.
483
So that was 72.
484
The next year in 73, the UN Conference on Human Environment basically said, yeah, 10 -year moratorium.
485
The IWC rejected it.
486
And then the next year in 74, the AWI called for a boycott of Japanese and Russian goods.
487
And that same year, 18 other conservation groups got on board with that boycott.
488
But again, it would take, I think, until 1982 before they got back to real like voting on moratoriums yeah um
489
so basically uh in 19 yeah in 1982 the IWC the
490
International Whaling Commission basically said let's take up this vote again I could not find what prompted this
491
so I just have to assume it was just general awareness of saving the whales
492
so they voted again on a moratorium and it actually passed this time.
493
And so they said, well, we'll give everybody four years to get ready.
494
But in the 1986 season, the quote was that the catch limits for the killing for commercial purposes of whales from all stocks,
495
any kind of whale, that's just me adding that parenthetical, shall be zero.
496
No whales going to be killed in the 1986 whaling season.
497
And it passed.
498
25 nations said, yay.
499
Seven said nay.
500
Yeah.
501
And it came into effect in 1986.
502
And the thing was, Chuck, it was originally just going to be a temporary measure.
503
And just like in the tradition of the IWC and other whaling commissions, the point was to allow the whale stocks to replenish themselves so you could get back to whaling.
504
But they never lifted the moratorium.
505
It's just continued indefinitely.
506
Yeah, for sure.
507
Should we talk about some of these stats and then take our second break?
508
Oh, my gosh.
509
We haven't taken our second break?
510
We have not.
511
Okay.
512
Yeah, definitely.
513
All right.
514
So it had a big impact, obviously, these moratoriums.
515
At its peak in the 1960s, I think I mentioned they were killing about 80 ,000 whales a year.
516
In 2023, the IWC estimated that 825 whales, down from 80 ,000, were killed by,
517
you know, obviously only nations that object to the moratorium.
518
And we'll get to those after the break.
519
And also, we should point out, this doesn't include sort of the indigenous subsistence whaling that continues.
520
Or I think kind of leaving that alone, right?
521
Yeah.
522
I mean, that only totaled 368 across four different indigenous groups in three different countries that year.
523
So all told, there was about 1 ,200 whales killed.
524
And like you said, down from 80 ,000.
525
Yeah.
526
And since 1978, blue whale populations have increased about 8 .2 % per year.
527
Bowhead about 3 .7 per year.
528
So humpbacks I mentioned in Act I were close to extinction.
529
I think in the 1960s, there might have been as few as 5 ,000.
530
And those babies are back over 80 ,000 now.
531
Yeah.
532
So let's take our break, Chuck, and we'll come back and talk about how whaling still continues, unfortunately.
533
All right.
534
We'll be right back.
535
All right, we're back.
536
And I think we've kind of alluded to it a couple of times, but we are not indigenous whaling using traditional methods for subsistence
537
is in no way in the crosshairs of basically anybody who is opposed to whaling right?
538
They don't even have crosshairs.
539
Like people actually use the whales that they kill to feed themselves throughout the winter and stuff like that, right?
540
Nobody's really got problems with that.
541
It's commercial whaling, the industrial whaling.
542
That's what everyone has a problem with.
543
And it's still going on.
544
Some stocks that actually did come back have started to become depleted again.
545
And the way that it's going on is because some countries said, we're lodging an objection, and we aren't going to comply with the whaling moratorium.
546
Those countries were Iceland, Norway, and Japan.
547
I should say are, because they're all still doing that.
548
And rather than Japan saying, we're just going to whale for commercial purposes, they, for some reason, hid behind this one exception that was made in the moratorium,
549
that you could kill whales for scientific purposes,
550
ostensibly to study them to help preserve the whales basically right and japan's like yeah every whale we kill um
551
using all of our commercial fleet.
552
We're just studying that for science.
553
And that's just not what they've been doing.
554
No, which is super shameful.
555
And here's the other thing is there's two big points we're going to kind of hammer home here is in 2026,
556
not many people at all are eating whale meat and they aren't making a lot of money doing this.
557
So they've done studies.
558
Only 2 % of Norwegians reported eating whale meat at least once a month.
559
Consumption of whale meat in Japan is 1 % of what it was from its peak in the 1960s.
560
And so in 2006, Greenpeace was like, we need to get some independent research together.
561
So they commissioned from the independent Nippon Research Center a study
562
that found that 95 % of Japanese people very rarely
563
or never eat whale meat
564
and their stockpile they have a stockpile of uneaten frozen whale meat
565
and it doubled between 2002 and 2012 so like it's this old it seems like it's this older generation of nostalgia
566
kind of digging in
567
and all of this younger generation is just like just you
568
know once they die out like no one's eating this stuff
569
anymore yeah they probably won't be whaling in 20 years is one way to look at it.
570
Unless there's some weird revival of a taste for whale meat among younger generations, which doesn't seem likely, there's really the younger people are not into whale meat.
571
The older people are because it's nostalgia food
572
that takes them back to their childhood and post -World War II when people ate a lot of whale meat.
573
Norway is basically the same way.
574
Norway, so few people eat whale in Norway that basically 100 percent of Norway's whale catch is exported to Japan.
575
And like you said, they're not even really eating it.
576
Right.
577
And Japan is like they have that stockpile.
578
The reason they have a stockpile is because the Japanese government
579
subsidizes its whaling industry to the tune of 50 million dollars a year.
580
So that means that if you whale, you have a total guarantee that the Japanese government will buy the whale meat that you come and sell them.
581
And the Japanese government just basically puts it in a freezer.
582
So those whales died for nothing except for a handful of people that make some money.
583
And like you said, the amount of money
584
that we're talking about is relatively paltry when you're talking about an entire global industry.
585
Yeah, there was in 2018, the U .S.
586
Naval Institute put out an article that said the global revenue, like the entire world whaling industry revenue is about 31 million bucks.
587
And in 2012, and this is really going to drive it home, Norway's largest whaling company made a gross revenue of $1 .3 million.
588
And they, along with the lobby and the government, spent about four times as much on campaigns to try to
589
get people to eat whale meat than they even netted with their nation's largest whaling company.
590
Right.
591
So, and it's not like
592
if they were making 31 billion that'd be a different thing forget the whales are making a bunch of money
593
but like this should be
594
so easily overcome any reasonable person it seems like who cares
595
about animal life would be like guys what are you doing
596
you're killing whales for 31 million dollars a year just stop we can't find anything else to do right
597
and japan seems to oppose it
598
because they resent the international pressure that's been put on them over the years yeah norway seems to oppose
599
because they have some non -indigenous coastal communities who have a tradition of whaling
600
that they're just basically trying to keep this custom alive for these small coastal communities.
601
And again, like I understand some people make their living like this, but it's not like this is an amount of money
602
that could be subsidized in other ways by the government
603
that could spare the whales' lives while also employing people at the same rates that they're being employed by the whaling industry.
604
Yeah.
605
And Japan, spite is not a good reason to keep whaling.
606
It's true.
607
Like, oh, we don't like this international pressure.
608
Everyone's trying to get us to stop that.
609
So we're not going to stop it just because you want us to.
610
I know Norway, I think they eventually stopped in recent years subsidizing the whaling industry.
611
And I think in past years, that was about half the entire value of the annual catch.
612
So it's going to definitely be going down in Norway
613
and you know you got enough in your freezer japan so like if you want to eat it eat that
614
right yeah i mean it's just it's bizarre
615
and it doesn't seem like the japanese it doesn't seem like something they would do
616
but it is an interesting uh conundrum from what everything i know about japanese culture
617
and people but you know i guess this is you know a small part of that culture, you know?
618
Yeah.
619
Everybody's got a little spite to them, right?
620
I mean, I know I do.
621
So, unfortunately, even if we just completely eradicate whaling, which, again, I predict is going to happen in 20 years, within 20 years.
622
God, I hope I'm right.
623
There are other threats to whales that have become, like, even bigger.
624
Like, global warming's a big one.
625
Bycatch.
626
So, like, a lot of whales die because they end up in nets that are meant to catch other stuff, like tuna.
627
So, I think a lot of them die that way more than are hunted.
628
And then, um, ghost fishing.
629
Remember we did an episode on ghost fishing.
630
Um, that's a big problem for whales as well.
631
You know, ordinarily in the past, Josh, I would have said, well, in 20 years, we'll let you know.
632
But if I'm still doing this show at 75 years old, then I'm not going to say something has gone really right.
633
That means something has gone really wrong.
634
Okay.
635
Officially.
636
Fair enough.
637
I'm with you on that one.
638
I'm not announcing my retirement
639
but i'm not gonna do this till i'm 75 okay all right i'll hold you to
640
that 72 73 no no one wants to hear abe simpson um
641
so i guess that's it one one challenge for conservationists now
642
chuck i have to say is um like you can't just
643
say stop global warming stop bycatch stop ghost fishing there's all these different things with before it was stop whaling
644
and it was very successful.
645
Like you said, it's often compared to the ozone layer being tackled.
646
The whales were definitely saved, but there's still now other problems that we have to work on too.
647
Yeah.
648
I mean, if you had, you'd have to have a t -shirt collection about bycatch and global warming and everything else.
649
Save the whales really just encapsulated everything nicely.
650
Or yeah, or you could put it all on one t -shirt, but you just walk around with a magnifying glass a hand to people
651
so they could read your t -shirt yeah
652
or maybe it just says equals
653
and then on the back save the whales nice nice um
654
i think that's it chuck just kind of dropped his mic you couldn't hear it
655
because jerry edited it out but i heard it uh and that means it's time for listener mail
656
all right we also took another break while i reattached my mic uh and i'm going to read this one.
657
Hey guys, near the end of your recent middle class episode, you discussed greenwashed recycling programs.
658
And Chuck, I'm sad to say and confirm that your instincts regarding car battery recycling are correct.
659
I've sent you an investigative piece by the New York Times, which uncovered the reality of the recycling of batteries, namely that they are collected, shipped on freighters to another continent,
660
and then manually broken down by an exploited workforce rather than
661
tree recycling it seems more of a resource harvesting where many of the components are smelted down in ways
662
that pollute the surrounding area and cause a lot of illness
663
sadly i'm not sure where this leaves any of us as to a better alternative
664
when replacing our batteries that is from gabby who says thanks for many years of learnings and companionship
665
man why is everything so evil i know it's sort of sort of not a great time to be alive You know, I've kind of come to the same conclusion, Chuck.
666
Very interesting time to be alive, but I think I would trade interesting for stable and calm and happy and not so evil.
667
Yeah, that's the t -shirt.
668
Equals save the Josh.
669
That's right.
670
Well, if you want to be like Gabby, thanks a lot, Gabby.
671
If you want to be like Gabby and send us an email that's a total downer,
672
we're open to those kind of things you can send it off to stuffpodcasts at iheartradio .com
673
Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio For more podcasts from iHeartRadio visit the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts
674
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 674 sentences and 7656 words to shadow. The speech runs for 44:10. The speaker talks at a natural 173 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 82% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| whale noun | /ˈweɪl/ | Any large cetacean, usually with the exclusion of dolphins and porpoises. |
| chuck verb | /t͡ʃʌk/ | To playfully give a light touch, stroke, tap, etc., to someone, especially under the chin. |
| awareness noun | /əˈwɛɹ.nəs/ | The state or level of consciousness where sense data can be confirmed by an observer. |
| conservation noun | /ˌkɑnsə(ɹ)ˈveɪʃən/ | The act of preserving, guarding, or protecting; the keeping (of a thing) in a safe or entire state; preservation. |
| sink verb | /ˈsɪŋk/ | To descend or submerge (or to cause to do so) into a liquid or similar substance. |
| indigenous adjective | /ɪnˈdɪd͡ʒənəs/ | Native to a land, especially before colonization. |
| boycott noun | /ˈbɔɪkɑt/ | The act of boycotting. |
| ghost noun | /ɡoʊst/ | A disembodied soul; a soul or spirit of a deceased person; a spirit appearing after death. |
| decline verb | /dɪˈklaɪn/ | To move downwards, to fall, to drop. |
| coastal adjective | /ˈkoʊstəl/ | Relating to the coast; on or near the coast; longshore. |
| preserve verb | /pɹəˈzɝv/ | To protect; to keep from harm or injury. |
| extinction noun | /ɪkˈstɪŋkʃən/ | The action of making or becoming extinct; annihilation. |
| panda noun | /ˈpɑndə/ | A brahmin who acts as the hereditary superintendent of a particular ghat or temple, and is regarded as knowledgeable in matters of genealogy and ritual. |
| sudden adjective | /ˈsʌd.ən/ | Occurring quickly with little or no warning or expectation; instantly. |
| regulation noun | /ˌɹɛɡjʊˈleɪʃən/ | The act of regulating or the condition of being regulated. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| come up with verb | To manage to produce, deliver, or present (something) by inventing, creating, thinking of, or obtaining it. |
| go back to verb | To stem from; to originate in. |
| come back verb | To return to a place. |
| figure out verb | To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce. |
| get back to verb | Return to (an activity) |
| put out verb | To blind (eyes). |
| step up verb | To increase, augment, or advance, especially by one or more steps. |
| take off verb | To remove. |
דקדוק בסרטון הזה
המבנים שהדובר משתמש בהם הכי הרבה, עם המילים המדויקות מהסרטון:
| מבנה | בסרטון |
|---|---|
| “Used to” used to + verb — הרגל או מצב שהיה נכון בעבר וכבר לא קיים | Used to be · used to do |
| הווה מושלם (Present perfect) have/has + past participle — פעולה שקרתה בעבר ועדיין יש לה חשיבות או השפעה עכשיו | have heard · I've never even been · has already said |
| סביל (Passive voice) be + past participle — הדגש הוא על מה שקורה, לא על מי שעושה את הפעולה | was learned · were created · be made |
| משפטי זיקה (Relative clauses) who / which + clause — מידע נוסף על אדם או דבר | people who didn · people who finally · anyone who was |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 161 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, they're, we're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: mathematics /mæθ(.ə)ˈmæt.ɪks/, underneath /ˌʌndɚˈniθ/, rhythm /ˈɹɪð.əm/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: conservation /ˌkɑnsə(ɹ)ˈveɪʃən/, extinction /ɪkˈstɪŋkʃən/, regulation /ˌɹɛɡjʊˈleɪʃən/, gosh /ɡɑːʃ/, sabotage /ˈsæb.əˌtɑʒ/
- Long words — get the stress right: conservation /ˌkɑnsə(ɹ)ˈveɪʃən/, indigenous /ɪnˈdɪd͡ʒənəs/, regulation /ˌɹɛɡjʊˈleɪʃən/, legitimate /lɪˈd͡ʒɪt.ɪ.mət/, supposedly /səˈpoʊ̯.zɪd.li/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like whale, chuck, awareness.
מהי טכניקת השאדואינג?
שאדואינג היא טכניקת למידת שפה מבוססת מדע שפותחה במקור להכשרת מתורגמנים מקצועיים ופופולרית על ידי הפוליגלוט ד"ר אלכסנדר ארגואלס. השיטה פשוטה אך עוצמתית: אתה מקשיב לאודיו באנגלית ילידית וחוזר עליו בקול רם מיד — כמו צל העוקב אחרי הדובר עם עיכוב של 1–2 שניות בלבד. בניגוד להאזנה פסיבית או תרגילי דקדוק, שאדואינג מכריח את המוח והשרירים בפה לעבד ולשחזר דפוסי דיבור אמיתיים בו זמנית. מחקרים מראים שזה משפר משמעותית את דיוק ההגייה, האינטונציה, הקצב, הדיבור המחובר, הבנת השמיעה ושטף הדיבור — מה שהופך אותו לאחת השיטות היעילות ביותר להכנה לIELTS Speaking ולתקשורת באנגלית בעולם האמיתי.