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The Origin of Moby Dick, Part One: Mocha Dick · Ridiculous History

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Oh boy,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: welcome back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: always so much for tuning in. We are coming to
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: you with a whale of a tale. Heads up that
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: this episode might contain some stories that are not for
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: everyone in the crowd, so do be aware before we
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: get into a bunch of moby dick jokes. Let's introduce
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: our super producer, Mr Max Williams. Give him up. WHOA, Yeah,
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: I'm not looking forward to this story. I've asked me
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: heart these taking a trip downed into Davy Jones as locker,
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: which is a thing. Um. I always confused Davy Jones
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: with Casey Jones from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. They're
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: not the same. Um, just f y I if anyone
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: else that same mistake. Uh. And then there and I
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: think it was a missed opportunity for them not to
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: call the guy Long Jones Silver instead of long John Silver. Uh.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: That's over there on the horizon as we record Scattered
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: to the winds. That's Mr Noel Brown. Hi. M Ben Bullen.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: We are using the theater of the mind to go
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: on a sailing sojourn today a maritime journey that's gonna
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: be a two parter, folks. This week we're looking at
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: the Brutal and all two true stories that inspired Moby Dick,
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: the the story canonical novel by Herman Melville, loved by some,
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: hated by many. A high schooler, right, yeah, uh, chat
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: GPT can knock that right out for you, high school
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: or is just kidding? Did you hear about that? By
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: the way, did you have heard about this chat gpt
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: is is putting in some guardrails to supposedly prevent cheating
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: using this chatbot, but apparently it's not even very good
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: at detecting whether or not something is AI or not,
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: and more likely will lead to students being accused of
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: using a I when they're actually writing just bad essays.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: And it's doing a great job with a continuing run
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: of Seinfeld. I don't know if you guys saw that,
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: but seven on twitch with even complete with poorly placed
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: laugh tracks. Yes, and there was a time when I
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: think there was a bit of a ghost in the
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: machine or a burp in the system, and the chat
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: GPT Seinfeld kind of stud and accidentally went into some
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: anti comedy and for ten minutes. It just stood there
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: in front of the microphone. It was great fun. Hey,
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: you know, they can't all be bangers. They can't all
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: be bangers. But Moby Dick certainly is a story full
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: of bangs and wallops and injustice and great hunts. Um,
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: it's about whales, Yes, the titular white whale Moby Dick,
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: which was actually named after a real creature. I didn't
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: know this thanks to research associate Zach Williams for hipping
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: us to Mocha Dick, which sounds like a cheeky name
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: for a coffee beverage. Um. Mocha Dick was the name
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  Speaker 1: that was given to a a cetacean that was sited
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  Speaker 1: off the coast of Chile near Mocha Island, and apparently
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: the dick part is thought to have been put there
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: out of a practice of giving whales deadly ones, in
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: particular names like Dick or Tom. You think those would
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: be the innocuous whales with the kind of more run
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: of the mill names like Dick or Tom. Yeah, maybe
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: it's like prison rules. The guys with the really innocuous
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: names are the ones you have to be the most
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: careful of. Yeah, like little John being the tallest, right, right,
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: like a guy named snake bite probably good dude, a
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: guy named Smurf watch out, Uh Papa Smurf or Smurfat
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: cower and terror. But yeah, we're talking about sperm whales.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: And back in the day, sperm whales were prized for
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: and they were killed by the whale load for their
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  Speaker 1: high quality oil that was used in a number of
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  Speaker 1: industrial applications. Uh. They were also because they were apex
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: animals of the sea in a very real way. They
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: wouldn't take this stuff just uh laying down doing the backstroke.
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  Speaker 1: They were very aggressive. And that's that's what a lot
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: of Melville's novel from eight fifty one is about. I
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: love that you're pointing out Mocha Dick so the first time,
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  Speaker 1: the first time he encounters whalers, the whalers unsuccessfully attempt
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  Speaker 1: to kill Mocha Dick. And what's strange about this is whales,
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  Speaker 1: like many other cetaceans, are incredibly intelligent animals. We know
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  Speaker 1: that they're able to communicate through multiple generations via the
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: whale songs, right, which are unique and are very much
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  Speaker 1: um akin to language. So and beautiful by the way,
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, there's sort of a bit of
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: a cliche of relaxing in a bath, you know, with
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: scented candles playing types of whale songs. I think that
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: was actually a scene in The Big Lebowski where the
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: dude is is really stressed out because of all the
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: crazy stuff going on in that movie, and then he's
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: in the bath smoking a j and listening to a
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  Speaker 1: cassette of whale songs. Yes and to the And we
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: know that these creatures, in addition to being huge and intelligent,
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: they're also very long lived in the wild. And so
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  Speaker 1: over the course of the next almost thirty years, this
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  Speaker 1: one whale Mocha Dick earns a reputation as one of
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  Speaker 1: the scariest folks on the maritime block. Uh. He has
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  Speaker 1: been spotted and attacked by at least one hundred different
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  Speaker 1: whaling ships, and he escaped everyone. He destroyed, like absolutely
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  Speaker 1: scuttled and sank twenty of those ships. And it was
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  Speaker 1: only the very last ship that put an end to
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: his life. And I'm gonna be honest just you know, folks,
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  Speaker 1: you can be mad if you want when I say it,
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  Speaker 1: But team Mocha Dick all the way here. I'm team whales.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, have you ever have you, either of you guys,
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: ever heard of the kind of b movie that was,
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: I think a response to Jaws, or might have been
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: just before Jaws, but it's called Orca. I've heard of it.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: I can't remember the specifics of the plot. Yeah, I
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: mean it's mainly just a revenge tale because this the
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: titular whale uh her her, you know, pups what do
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: you call whale babies? Um, are killed by a w
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: ship calves correct, and this whale seeks revenge on them.
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  Speaker 1: What did her wrong? Um? And it's actually pretty well shot.
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  Speaker 1: I think it's a seventies movie, nineteen seventy seven, so
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: Jaws having come out in nineteen seventy five obviously, you know,
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  Speaker 1: create a sort of a craze for unstoppable underwater creatures.
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  Speaker 1: I think they actually used real whale footage in the
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: film too. But I think it is actually true because
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  Speaker 1: of what you mentioned about the intelligence of these creatures,
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: and they don't forget, and that they can, in fact,
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: in the same way uh Corvid's target those that have
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: annoyed them or done them wrong. Uh. That is a
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: thing that could potentially happen, and it also a big
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: part of the plot of the new Avatar movie. Um,
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of whales, and you know, they talk
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: about the whales kind of having this magical secretion, which
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: is based on a real thing to something called ambergrease
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: that is a really stinky, kind of oily substance that
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: isn't the same as blubber and it is used in perfumes. Yeah.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: I know about that one because of Futurama exactly. I
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: know about that one because of research I did on
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: how messed up the cosmetics industry is. So I think
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: it's illegal though to use, you know, I mean, it's
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: it's a legal deep birdenest soup. But that hasn't stopped
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: a lot of people because people are again you know,
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: I'll just say it team whale. And there's some interesting
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: threads I want to sew in here as we go,
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  Speaker 1: So let's continue setting up this story. So very few
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: things occurred in a vacuum, uh Mocha dicks entire careers
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: is followed the way that some investigative reporters might follow
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  Speaker 1: the career of criminals today. There's a guy named Jeremiah
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: and Reynolds who documents the life and Times of Moka
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  Speaker 1: Dick in an issue of a magazine called The Knickerbocker
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  Speaker 1: in eighteen thirty nine. We know that Moka Dick is
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  Speaker 1: indeed a dude, a male, an old bull whale, and
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  Speaker 1: he was white as wool like he uh he was
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  Speaker 1: like a um, we're pulling some quotes here, but we
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  Speaker 1: also just summarized, uh. He looked like people weren't sure
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  Speaker 1: whether it was because he was so old, but he
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  Speaker 1: probably had Albanism. And he also was terrifying to witness
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  Speaker 1: if you're a human sailor, because out the horizon you
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  Speaker 1: see this roar, right, this expansion of water flinging from
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  Speaker 1: his uh flinging from this animal. And this guy even
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  Speaker 1: had barnacles apparently that had clustered around his head, which
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  Speaker 1: is very unusual. It looked like he almost had armor,
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  Speaker 1: if we're being honest. And no one was sure when
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  Speaker 1: Mocha had been discovered or like when Moco was born.
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  Speaker 1: They think that he had been sited, as we mentioned
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  Speaker 1: the top somewhere before eighteen ten, near the island of Mocha,
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  Speaker 1: but they just followed his his his wake of shipwrecks
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  Speaker 1: that he left, and then certainly in the eight, there
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  Speaker 1: would be some amount of cataloging of these type of
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  Speaker 1: creatures and a little bit more of a scientific approach
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  Speaker 1: to these large sea creatures. But some of these sailors
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  Speaker 1: may not have cared too much about that or had
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: access to and probably still thought these were demonic sea monsters. Yeah,
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: and and you know, it's something we talked about and
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: stuff that once you know, one thing you have to
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: realize when you hear stories of sea serpents or big
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: monsters from the sea demolishing ships. A lot of those
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  Speaker 1: ships were much smaller than they're they're depicted in fiction.
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  Speaker 1: So it's not outside the realm of possibility that something
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  Speaker 1: as big as a sperm whale could absolutely put one
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  Speaker 1: to ruin. Even the name of the ship in the
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: story Moby Dick the Peaquad, it just sounds like a
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  Speaker 1: little tiny key thing, doesn't it. Yeah. Yeah, And and
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  Speaker 1: of course that's not to diminish the Peaquad tribe which
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: the which is the namesake of the ship, at least
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: per Ishmael in the in the book. But speaking of names,
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: I do want to shout out how weird the English
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: language is. The study of set Asians broadly is satology,
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: so you would be a statologist, but you can also
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: go specifically to whales and uh. In the past you
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: would have been called a whaleologist or the inexpert in whaleology,
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: which sounds so very made up, like Tim and Eric
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: level made up. I'm a whaleologist in the institations are uh,
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: they include whales, dolphins, and porpoises, whales being obviously the
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: most massive of these three varieties. So and they are
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: also mammals because they do give live birth and they've
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: got they've got a lot of the same brain functions
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: that you would see in very intelligent mammals, um like
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: an elephant or uh, some primates, not all dolphins we know,
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: I mean all the dolphins studies, like some of the
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: experiments done by John C. Lily in terms of their
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: ability to communicate and even thought that they were potentially
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: like head telepathy or something. Right, A lot of a
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: lot of fuss made about the intelligence of dolphins. Yeah, yeah,
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: And that story is one that gets repeated on podcasts
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: of plenty for good reason. Not entirely family friendly, but
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: it shows you some of the bleeding edges of science
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: at the time. Max, your hand gesture is accurate and inappropriate. Yeah,
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: well it's not all the way dolphins sex. It's like
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: second base. Yeah, is that third base? I don't know, Uh,
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: you know, we're not we're not sports. Dolphins don't play baseball.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: Is the issue that that's actually one of the big
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: issues they're so from from the first time that people
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  Speaker 1: know of this Mocha Dick character, this this whale, we
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: we see that it has been actively hunted by this
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: very brutal whaling industry. And it's not a aping without
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: battle scars. This feels like a very heavy metal thing.
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: And he was carrying heavy metal. He would he was
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: hit by all sorts of harpoons that had chains attached,
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: and they dragged after him for up to a hundred
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: yards at least per the per the contemporary reports. And uh,
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: it's I don't know, I mean that must be so
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: traumatic to the animal. Yeah, And I mean obviously, um,
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: James Cameron is a you know, professed naturalists. He uh,
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: you know, has just done deep sea expeditions with his
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: you know, vast resources that even some scientists couldn't afford
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: to do. Um, and he is very you know, enamored
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: by sea creatures and the whales in Avatar to whatever
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: you wanted the with the Shape of Water. No, it's
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: a different movie, very similar. There there's you know, there's
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: battle scars. The whaling industry is very much paralleled in
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: this kind of future, you know, society in Avatar. And
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: I a should really like the movie a lot, And
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: I was very skeptical when he announced, you know, this
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: movie I made fifteen years ago or whatever, we're gonna
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: make like ten more. It is already, I think, in
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: on par with the grosses of the first Avatar movie.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: So Jay's camera man. He's a bit of a megalomaniac
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: and apparently a nightmare to work for, but he knows
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: his business, and thank goodness, he likes the ocean. So
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: Moka Dick becomes so famous that whaling captain's talk about
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: him as a way of greeting each other when you
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: see another ship going across the Pacific. One of the
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: things that you always say in your conversation with the
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: other captain is any news from Mocha Dick. Like every
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: whaling captain wants to nail this poor whale. The the
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: idea is that this is like the Golden Grail. This
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: is the ultimate huntsman's trophy. And the weird thing is
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: that if you didn't, if he didn't mess with this,
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: not in the natural wonder of the world, then he
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: would just swim by and probably be like, hey, thank
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: you for not inexplicably trying to kill me and giving
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: me these non consensual piercings. Well, that was a thing.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: I can't remember where I heard it, but it was recently,
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: maybe on NPR. I was talking about sea life and
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: mentioning the fact that in general, like, of course there's
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: a food chain and creatures eat other creatures, but there
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: are no like just agro species that are just like
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: trying to mess with other species just because um, it's
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: all very kind of carefully balanced sort of system, and
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: humans are just not like that. We go after things
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: because they freak us out and because we are made
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: to feel smaller by them, and therefore we want to,
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: rather than find out what their deal is, just you know,
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: murder them. It reminds me of one of the most
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: insightful far Side cartoons that Gary Larson ever made. It's
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: a caveman who watches a bird fly, then flaps its
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: arms and then builds a bow and arrow and shoots
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: the bird and that's classic human And with that, let's
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: talk about me, and let's talk about how Mocha Dick
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: met his his end. Uh. He went out like a
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: g he went out like a hero. Because according to
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: the story, Mocha Dick, after surviving all these attempted assassinations,
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: sees a mother whale and her calf, and the calf
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: has just been this juvenile well has just been killed
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: by whalers, so it went belly up. And when the
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: mother realized her child was dead, she turned on the
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: whalers and tried to destroy the ship. They harpooned her
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: and mortally wounded her before she was able to strike
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: this ship. Mocha Dick was in the area, saw this
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: and attacked the whaling ship directly. Uh. He destroyed one
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: of the smaller boats, but they have multiple boats. He
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: was injured by a harpoon. Yeah, and this is almost
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: exactly the plot of that that seventies movie Orca that
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: I was talking about. It's very much like a revenge tale.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: So again I mean this this. You know, Mocha Dick
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: was not operating on full capacity after numerous encounters with
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: with man uh and and all of man's implements of
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: you know, murder and and torture. So inevitably Mocha Dick
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: succumbed to his wounds. Yeah. Unfortunately, this this giant was
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: brought down by the Lily Putchin forces of man. Right,
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: is that right? The it's in Gulliver's Travels the Tiny Yeah. Yeah,
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: so so I think that's an accurate comparison. Um. You
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: can see the writing about his death, which is coming
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: to people's second hand in many cases, and is also
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: embellished a little bit as a modern myth with each retelling. So,
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: according to the story, he shoots up twenty feet above
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: the waves. Uh. He tries to dart away. They pursue
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: him through rough water for a quarter of a mile
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: because he's that big, and he's messed the surface of
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: the water up that much. Uh. He is quivering and twitching.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: He's under his death throws. The reporting uses the phrase
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: as if under the influence of Galvinism, which means it
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: looks like he's being elect tricute. It the waist twitching. Yeah,
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: And they came near him. They were able to get
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: close enough because he was weakened, and they started just
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: hacking at him. Uh. And he tried to he tried
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: to fight back, but he was just too They were
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: up on him, like stabbing him, and uh, he was
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: just too wounded to make to make an escape when
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: she was trying to do and uh, they killed him.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: Isn't it funny how oftentimes man thinks they're so great
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: and powerful, but it's totally cheating. You know, they're using
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: all these other implements and they have the deck stacked
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: in their favor. You know, this whale survived multiple encounters
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: and they just wore him down over time and then
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: finally just you know, dealt the death blow. But good lord,
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: what a fight, mocha Dick. But I think we're all
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: on team team Dick here, team whale for sure. Yeah.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: And it's weird because in this rewarding you will see,
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: you know, this is a story of adventure on the
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: high seat. So the UM it occurs in the larger
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: literary ecosystem of man conquering nature heroically. And that's how
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: all these things are, That's how all these adventure narratives
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: are depicted, just like UM thirty seven days apparel from ephemeral.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: That's that's one to one kind of encounter, right, except
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: in this case, the wild happens to be the whale
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: and uh, and here there is a kaiju story exactly.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: And it wasn't until later in America or in literature
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: or the cannon. I guess that you had folks like
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: Jack London who were more identifying with the animals, you know,
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: and it was more about how can we live in
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: balance with with these uh, with these creatures. And so
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: we say that because if you read the reporting of
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: the death of Mocha Dick, then you see that it
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: comes like gets depicted as the humans heroically getting so
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: close to death themselves. It's like UM on a much
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: larger mythical level. It's like if you've ever played tech
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: In or Street Fighter or Soul Caliber, and you get
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: to the point where if either side takes one hit,
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: the game is over. And the humans got that that
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: at last hit. So that's that's how it's depicted. Uh.
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: You can see UM. You can see the first first
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: person narratives where they're saying things like he's fit up
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: at last I screened at the very top of my voice, Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah,
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: And you know, they're literally throwing up their caps and
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: dancing around around the corpse of this whale and presumably singing,
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: presuming we singing, And so hilay around me, boys, and
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: let us set on him. I cried for I saw
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: his spirit was broken at last, But the lands and
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: spade were needless. Now the dying animal was struggling in
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: a whirlpool of bloody foam, and the ocean far around
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: was tinted with crimson. Yeah, and it just it just
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: goes on and this, and so we know that Herman
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: Melville what was aware of the story, right, it's this
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: albino whale that is captured global imagination. Mocha Dick, is it?
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, Moka Dick, Moby Dick. It's not too long
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: of a logical leap, but it is only part of
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: the inspiration for the novel Moby Dick. And in the
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: next like in part two, I think we're going to
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: talk about the crew. But before we end, I had
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: I had an update. I know you've probably heard this
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: story because we talked about it before at some point,
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: The World's Loneliest whale. Remember this guy who sung we
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: haven't Okay? So you know, all whale songs have some
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: stuff in commons so they can communicate with each other.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: There was one whale who was called the fifty two
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: Hurts whale because his song He's a blue whale, not
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: a sperm whale. His song, which are the bigger? Which
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: are bigger? Even? Right? Aren't the great blue whales the biggest? Art? Yeah?
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: And uh, the blue whales have a frequency of ten
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: to thirty nine hurts and this this guy's voice was
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: so so different that he couldn't really communicate with other whales,
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: and so he's called the loneliest whale. He actually inspired
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: a song by the K pop group BTS. It's called
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: Walian fifty two. It's like alien whale. And uh, I
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: just mentioned this because there's a happy ending with this guy. Apparently,
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: as of October of twenty twenty two, some stytologists or
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: who allologists, they prefer the term marine scientists. Uh, they
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: heard two different fifty two hurts calls within ten minutes
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: of each other off the coast of California. So finally,
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: our our poor buddy who is standing in the corner
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: of the ocean, uh talking to fifty two hurts, found
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: someone who heard him, who hurts him? If oh no, wait,
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: that's worth it? Yes, from the perspective to have an
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: audio nerd. You said ten to fifty two hurts, So
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: fifty two hurts is like sub base frequencies, like if
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: you think of, like, you know, a song, those are
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: frequencies that are gonna be like eight oh eight kick drums,
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: like in the lowest part of that. And ten isn't
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: even on the graph of what would you'd use in
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: an audio recording because it's outside of the realm of
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: of human hearing. Yes, so most blue whales again are
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: like ten to thirty die and hurts. So for some reason,
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: this guy is on his eight oh eights on his
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: fifty two hurts. But we wanted to uh, we wanted
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: to have at least one part of this of today's
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: story that wasn't us uh excoriating whalers of the past.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: It's like the part in the blind melon video or
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: the little be girl finds her people and then they
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: frolic gleefully together in the meadow. What a wonderful image.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: Now imagine that breaks me up every time with two
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: wheel two whales dancing, And that's gonna be part one
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: of our journey. But tune in in a few days
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: for part two, where we look at the story of
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: the crew that likely inspired the crew in Moby Dick.
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: In the meantime, thanks to our super producer call him
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: is Ishmael or call him Max Williams, just don't call
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: him during dinner. Yes, yes, uh. And also big big
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: thanks of course to Alex Williams. We have some breaking news.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: We might have our dear old pal Mr Casey Pegram
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: returning for an episode in the near future. Ah Casey
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: on the case indeed um. Also huge thanks to Christopher
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: hasciotis here in spirit uh he's Jeff Coades, Jonathan Strickland,
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: and and to you Ben for for for being my
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: uh my mate. I don't know anything about nautical terms
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: this ocean voyage and where is friendship found? It's not
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: down on any map. True places never are under the scene.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: We'll see you next time. For more podcasts from my
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast,
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.