Surfing legend Kelly Slater talks about breaking his foot in South Africa and the long recovery from the injury. Kelly talks about the process of recovery and how he was able to get back on the waves after the break. He also talks about what it's like to be a pro surfer and how important it is to be able to walk again. Kelly is a world-renowned surfer, and one of the best in the world at what he does. In this episode, we talk about his injury and how it affected his surfing career. We also talk about the importance of a good recovery from a major injury, and what it takes to keep going in the wake of an injury like this. It's a must listen for all surfers out there who are looking to break their foot or have a broken bone in their foot. Thanks to Kelly for coming on the pod and sharing his story. This episode is brought to you by Patagonia Surf Shop. Learn more about your ad choices. Rate, review, and subscribe to our new podcast! Rate/subscribe in Apple Podcasts! Subscribe, comment and tell a friend about this episode! We're listening to your favorite podcaster! and we'll be looking out for you in the next episode next week on next week's episode of SURFING WEEKEND! Thank you for listening and supporting the show! and Good Luck Out There! Timestamps: 4:30 - 5: 0:00 - 6:15 - 7:00 | 8:15 | 9:40 | 11:10 | 14:20 | 16:30 | 17:00 17:30 18:20 19:20 - 18:40 21:15 22:00 / 22:20 / 24:30 / 25:40 / 26:15 / 27:35 27:30 // 27:00 +28:30 +33:00 ? 35:30 & 35:00? 36:30 ? 36:10 35:40 ? 37:40 & 37:00 & 39:40? 39:15 ? 40:40 +36:00 # 41 & 45:44 45:15 & 45 47:45 46:00 , 47:00 = 48:00 etf Theme song by 48:20 ?
00:00:29.000I was surfing in South Africa about 15 months ago, and I was just on a wave that I wouldn't consider a very big wave.
00:00:37.000Nobody would really consider dangerous.
00:00:40.000And it all kind of closed out, which is, you know, when it all breaks at once, I just pulled in the thing because I was going to sort of wash in on the rocks right where that was and change boards.
00:01:51.000I think that was the person that did the original surgery, which when you used to break your foot in a stirrup back a hundred years ago, they used to cut your foot off.
00:02:00.000Yeah, so that was kind of how this sort of joint got famous.
00:02:07.000But normally what happens is those toes...
00:02:10.000Those two bones right there, the first and second metatarsal, can either spread or converge one way or the other, and that's usually what a Liz Frank fracture is.
00:02:18.000I had the best of the three, which is I had a crack.
00:02:21.000You can just see on the right side of, yeah, if you go down with the cursor right there, just a little lower, there's a little crack right there.
00:04:55.000I don't know how well-versed you are in surfing, but when I'm tube riding, and usually with my back to the wave, which has happened two or three times, so I'm in the wave, the lip pitches over and lands, but when that lands, it sends a shock back into the wave.
00:05:10.000Like, you know, when the lip hits flat water, that lip...
00:08:04.000Some people believe magnets help increase the circulation and thus, especially a rotating magnet because it kind of creates a force field around your foot.
00:08:25.000Well I'm just saying what I've heard people believe.
00:08:27.000So the first time I broke my foot, a chiropractor guy I had gone to, he's like, when you go to sleep it's not going to hurt you, just put it on your foot.
00:08:37.000And I was actually competing five weeks after I broke that foot.
00:08:41.000So I don't know if it helped or not, but I just sleep and it was near my foot and maybe it helped.
00:10:28.000I mean, can you turn into them a little?
00:10:30.000The problem is when you get hit, just getting hit once by a guy who's really good, like a Peter Ertz or someone who's like a really good leg kicker, they hit you once and you're not even gonna lift your leg upright.
00:10:42.000Well, think of a charley horse a guy gives you in school when you're a kid.
00:10:50.000Ernesto Hoost is probably one of the greatest, not probably, definitely one of the greatest leg kickers of all time.
00:10:56.000And there's a video called The Perfect Leg Kick by Ernesto Hoost, and it just shows you like a compilation of him landing leg kicks on people.
00:11:04.000And you just see like, they're like, ah!
00:11:06.000You see their leg buckle, and he would...
00:12:12.000The thing I didn't realize, because I had watched the fight before, and I didn't pick this up, I wasn't very well versed at that time in watching fights, but he goes, Kelly, you know the thing was, I put him to sleep in the fight before that, and I let him go, and I told the ref, he's sleeping, he's sleeping,
00:12:27.000and he goes, and then he woke back up, and the ref kind of, when you go watch it, and the ref touched him and goes, okay, keep fighting.
00:12:34.000Yeah, what did he catch him with, a triangle or something like that earlier?
00:12:36.000He caught him with some kind of a triangle, yeah.
00:13:58.000I follow this guy, this yogi guy, and I think, this guy named Goku Lakhandra or something, and he puts these poses up, and I think if this guy did jujitsu, there's no way somebody could tap him out, because he...
00:14:16.000I've never seen somebody put their body in these contortionist positions, and you just wonder if somebody who's a real, true contortionist, if they knew jujitsu and how to escape things, if they could ever really get tapped with, like, arms.
00:14:27.000I'm sure necks or guillotines or whatever.
00:16:28.000You know, most people when they're tired, you're like, ah, ah, ah.
00:16:31.000But he was always about control, controlling your breath.
00:16:34.000Yeah, and he was like, you know, prior to Wim doing his thing and becoming sort of well-known, you know, Hickson would go sit in ice-cold streams and just breathe real calm through the nose and control the, you know.
00:18:30.000Like, the dexterity they have with their feet, where they're whacking the ball over, and then the other guy on the other side is whacking it back, and it's like they're catching it with their foot.
00:19:02.000And then you have to fall on your hands, and I hope you don't break your wrists.
00:19:06.000I wonder if they got kind of a padded floor, like a mat on Dojo.
00:19:12.000This is pretty impressive stuff, but Jamie, see if you find that video that I posted on my Instagram page, I reposted somebody else posting it, and it's fucking bananas, because these guys are using this little shitty ball in the jungle, and just the ability that they have with their feet is just out of this world.
00:19:29.000You ever hear of a guy named Sir Donald Brad...
00:20:49.000If you can get good at doing that, I guess it is Thai, because those are Thai writing, but if you could get good at that, man, I mean, there's certain guys that just, when you see them in Muay Thai, they have, oh, that's what it's called?
00:21:21.000There's a famous highlight reel of him where he throws this, like, fake knee off the right and then jumping roundhouse kicks this guy in the face and KOs him with his left.
00:21:31.000And it's just the ability that he has to place his foot like anywhere he wants.
00:21:36.000His dexterity is just out of this world.
00:21:39.000His range would just be otherworldly, right?
00:24:21.000You would think though that those guys would, even the theatrical wrestling, they would go and Work on the skill day in, day out.
00:24:28.000That's all you have to be as a wrestler, right?
00:24:30.000There's such a difference between working on the skill day in, day out, and then working on the skill when someone doesn't want you to do it to them.
00:26:00.000He really has a background in fighting.
00:26:02.000How does that dynamic work with you and Dana?
00:26:06.000Where, you know, with something like that, that could be seen, if somebody's a little triggered or a little sensitive, they might get a little bit angry at you saying something like that.
00:26:16.000Dana's the easiest going guy ever with that kind of shit.
00:27:56.000That was a big thing in the fight with Stipe Miocic and Daniel Cormier.
00:28:00.000Dominic Cruz was explaining how important it was that Cormier kept pummeling.
00:28:05.000He kept shifting positions and pummeling for underhooks, and that was one of the reasons why he was able to land that big right hand, because he was never static.
00:28:12.000He also had to wear some to get in there, too, didn't he?
00:28:14.000I mean, he was right in Stipe's face, and Stipe was like, I mean, that was such a great match, even though, obviously, it didn't last very long.
00:29:57.000I also think that he is the toughest test for Khabib because of his cardio and because of his versatility because he could fight really well off his back.
00:30:05.000I mean, he submitted Kevin Lee off his back to win the title.
00:30:08.000He's got a fantastic Darce choke and his ability to hold guys in his guard and recover if he gets clipped.
00:30:16.000I mean, he's the most dangerous guy at lightweight for Khabib, I think, in my opinion.
00:30:57.000I think I mean Gilbert Melinda said that once too that it's a Mexican thing is cardio because Gilbert's always been known for his crazy cardio I really wonder if there's like certain ethnicities that have an advantage or at least a Better starting point and then it's all hard work from there.
00:31:13.000Yeah, the most maybe there's some Jeanette thing You can prove from the way the blood holds oxygen.
00:32:51.000And then I got, then I needed, like, a, you know, we scored a 10 points, and I needed, like, a 9. I got, like, a 9.4 with 30 seconds to go or something.
00:33:53.000And by all accounts, John wasn't in shape.
00:33:55.000By all accounts, John really didn't train for that fight and didn't take Gustafson seriously and kind of half-assed his training camp and still pulled it off in the championship rounds.
00:34:30.000And for John to be his comeback fight, and for Gustafson to be the rematch he's asking for forever, and it will be for the light heavyweight title.
00:37:37.000I think he thought he hit so hard that Stipe was going to be in front of him, he was going to hit Stipe, he was going to be the heavyweight champ.
00:37:44.000I was going to ask you, do you have your absolute dream job I mean, you do a few things, but you get to talk UFC. You're a black belt under Eddie, right?
00:38:18.000Look, I've been on a pro tour pretty much since I was 19. I'm 46. I took about three years off, but I would still compete a little bit those years.
00:38:27.000What's the high end of the age limit in terms of when a guy can really compete right now?
00:39:27.000The oldest people in the world weren't athletes.
00:39:30.000They're kind of people who didn't burn themselves out too much.
00:39:34.000My theory on longevity is don't overdo it.
00:39:38.000I don't need to necessarily be overtrained for what I do.
00:39:41.000A lot of the winning that I do competitively is from a skill.
00:39:47.000It's not so much from being super strong, having crazy cardio.
00:39:51.000It's making a choice about which wave, how I'm going to approach and ride that wave, and I have to get two scores every 30 minutes when I compete.
00:39:58.000So it's like I got this 30 minute window I need to be ready for.
00:40:01.000I don't need to be like in crazy, crazy shape.
00:40:04.000So what is it that held other guys back in the past?
00:40:06.000I think there's a number of factors I think you have to naturally be really competitive like in your when you were born in your home somehow you had to maybe you needed something to prove you know I I was kind of like Growing up, I sort of looked back at it and kind of laughed.
00:40:23.000Maybe I couldn't get the girl I liked because she liked an older guy.
00:40:27.000We didn't really have any money in my family, so I wanted to make some money.
00:40:31.000I had an older brother who kind of picked on me, but I hung out with him and played football with his friends that were all three years older than me, so I had to be tough and fast.
00:42:27.000And, you know, shortboarding is just, you know, you're going for aerials and lots of different sort of fast maneuvers, really riding in the pocket of the wave.
00:42:36.000Whereas longboarding, you're looking for a different kind of, you ride a different kind of wave altogether.
00:42:40.000You really don't, most of the waves we ride for modern shortboarding and competition aren't waves you would ride on a longboard because they're too hollow, they're too quick and fast, and you can't fit a longboard in the same way.
00:42:51.000So your brother just kind of took it up more for the fun of it and the aesthetic of it?
00:43:33.000And Stephen said, oh, yeah, I'll watch it.
00:43:35.000And the guy said, you can go use it if you want.
00:43:37.000And he paddled out and caught a few waves.
00:43:38.000And he just sort of fell in love with that minute with surfing.
00:43:41.000and it was something unique for him because we didn't longboard so it was like it was that beach life and thing we love but it was different you know right he got his own thing yeah yeah and then me and my brother we you know I got more and more into competition and getting sponsored and stuff and and he sort of he he just kind of started fading out of doing competition full-time and stuff and and And then when I was a teenager,
00:44:08.000when I was a freshman in high school, this guy moved into town, this kid named Drew, and he had sort of got kicked out of a couple schools elsewhere and got himself in some trouble.
00:44:20.000And when he came over to the beach, he was kind of in these inland schools.
00:44:24.000But he was good at football, good at baseball.
00:44:29.000He became the quarterback on our football team.
00:44:31.000He was a baseball player, all this kind of stuff.
00:44:34.000So he was a total jock, not a surfer at all.
00:44:36.000And somehow he and I became best buddies.
00:44:39.000And, you know, I liked all the sports.
00:44:41.000I grew up playing football, basketball, baseball, a little bit of tennis.
00:44:46.000And he and I, ultimately where we got to was he sort of became my big brother competitively.
00:44:52.000And we used to battle, and it didn't matter whose feelings got hurt.
00:44:57.000We competed at absolutely everything from horseshoes to bowling to pool.
00:45:02.000On my birthday, every year on my birthday, we made it a pact where we'd go play every kind of game we could possibly, and we'd keep a tally of who won what.
00:45:33.000When it came down to actual money, then it was like five bucks.
00:45:38.000At one point, he got really into horseshoes and he called me out one day and he's like, you meet me at the beach, we're going to play some horseshoes.
00:49:34.000He also had that weird sideways stance, where he had kickboxing skills, boxing skills, Muay Thai skills, but he also had a traditional karate and kung fu background, so he'd stand sideways on you.
00:49:46.000And you didn't know what was coming at you then, right?
00:50:10.000Yeah, he was part of this group, and they talked about like, you know, if you're gonna teach a woman something, kick the leg, because that's the biggest target, you know?
00:51:04.000Well, I mean, I guess you would build it, it's all about how often you use it, right?
00:51:08.000You use your legs constantly, you don't use your arms constantly, but if you did, and you built up over years of time, I would imagine, I mean, obviously there's gymnasts.
00:51:16.000And it can happen quick, too, you know?
00:51:18.000I mean, I started doing hand, actually, right before I broke my foot, I started, when I was a kid, I used to be able to Pretty much walk endless on my hands.
00:51:25.000So were you walking on your hands while your foot was broken?
00:51:27.000No, but that week I was like, you know what?
00:51:29.000When I was a kid I could walk for minutes at a time on my hands.
00:52:53.000I mean, it depends on how long the wave lasts and what size wave and how fast and all that kind of thing, but our wave's pretty easy to learn on.
00:53:00.000But our wave lasts, on the low speed for a beginner, it lasts like over a minute long.
00:53:04.000That would seem to me that that would be a great way to, like, just get your feet wet.
00:54:13.000Sometimes you'll see in the back behind the wave, not there, but to the left side more, you would see this thing.
00:54:18.000It's basically a super inefficient boat hull, and it pushes through the water, and so it's pushing water instead of planing on the water like you would want a boat to.
00:54:26.000So it's pushing all the water sideways, and it's just this foil shape.
00:54:30.000It's almost like the shape of a fin or a wing.
00:54:58.000This was just about six weeks ago in September.
00:55:04.000And so, yeah, I mean, I designed the technology with a scientist and then designed the actual reef bottom or concrete bottom that makes the wave break.
00:55:14.000Yeah, because this seems way more advanced than the ones that I've seen.
00:55:58.000Gabriel Medina is one-time world champ from a few years ago, but I thought he was just going to win year after year after year after his first title.
00:56:06.000I don't know if he got complacent or what happened.
00:56:26.000You know, the judges are all good surfers, relatively good surfers, maybe not ex-pros, but, you know, guys who know what is possible on a wave.
00:56:35.000And it's pretty easy for them to compare apples to oranges, a different person's skills over the other one.
00:56:42.000But it would be interesting in UFC, you know, if you had judges subjectively judging.
00:56:47.000Not necessarily like, who won the round or looking at strike counts, but like, whose style did I like?
00:56:51.000How fast and how much power did he have?
00:56:53.000How did he link his, you know, strikes together?
00:56:57.000There's definitely a subjective element to it, but unfortunately, unlike surfing, the UFC is not, the judges, it's not comprised of former fighters or people that really know a lot about martial arts.
00:58:32.000Well, if it's early, there's a lot to it.
00:58:36.000You know, like if it's early in a heat...
00:58:38.000And a guy gets a 9 or a girl gets a 9 and then you think that there's a lot more that could have been done either on that day in those types of waves or on that wave specifically.
00:58:48.000Like occasionally you see somebody get a 10. Perfect ride as good as you can possibly do.
00:58:52.000It's the ultimate you should remember that wave forever kind of thing, you know?
00:58:58.000But then they'll kick off the wave when there's more to ride or they'll fall and they still get a 10. So sometimes you'll see somebody get a really good score and you know a lot more could have been done.
00:59:08.000They could have been deeper in that tube.
00:59:09.000They could have been higher in that air.
00:59:11.000They could have rotated more in the air.
01:01:55.000Okay, you're going to have to go off-road, or you'll die.
01:01:58.000But so that energy, all that energy is in where the lip...
01:02:00.000If you're in the center of that, you're pretty safe.
01:02:03.000But as soon as you get sucked right into the wall of that, and you get pitched in the lip, that's when the lip spreads the water that it hits, and it sends you right down to the reef.
01:02:11.000Especially in a place like this, where it's...
01:02:13.000When you see a wave that's real hollow, it's generally a lot shallower than it is high.
01:02:18.000So the wave will be 15 feet and the water might only be 5 or 6 feet deep.
01:02:41.000For the most part, you can tell up and down.
01:02:43.000I mean, sometimes you lose your equilibrium a little bit underwater, but for the most part, you can tell what is up and down, so you can feel it coming.
01:02:50.000I mean, I'm going to put my arms there before I take it on my head.
01:03:52.000But having something, you know, an extra, say, inch around your head or half inch, it's like it changes your judgment a little, so you've got to be used to it.
01:04:05.000Yeah, so it would mess with me when I tried to wear them.
01:04:07.000And that extra weight and, like, when we're trying to, on a critical wave, we're trying to pull in the barrel, we are dealing with, you know, percentages of inches, like, just tucking your head under that lip.
01:04:18.000And so you've got to kind of be really aware of your range and your ability to, like, tuck your head at certain places.
01:04:25.000And I was never comfortable with it, but I was surfing with Tom, and he wiped out, and his board speared him in the ear.
01:04:30.000And it broke the helmet and broke his eardrum.
01:06:13.000And then we think, you know, the guys who were out there think that he popped his eardrum because they said they saw him hit the surface and start, like, his feet were coming up and his hand was coming up.
01:06:22.000And, you know, he was kind of just floundering around.
01:06:24.000And then the next wave hit and they never saw him again.
01:06:27.000But he was only in surf trunk, so they didn't ever find the body because he didn't float up.
01:06:32.000But if he just had even just a wetsuit, just some neoprene.
01:07:11.000Well, so Greg Long, he drowned actually at a place called Cortez Bank, which is about 120 miles off the coast of Dana Point.
01:07:18.000It's basically the top of a mountain on an island that never hit the surface.
01:07:23.000And it was discovered when I think it was a nuclear ship actually grounded itself on that reef back, I don't know, 30 years ago or something and caused tens of millions of dollars of damage to the Navy ship.
01:07:38.000And yeah, I don't know if they had sounded the bottom by then.
01:07:41.000They must not have known it was there.
01:07:43.000But anyways, this wave breaks when it's really big.
01:07:49.000Shane was actually, I think Shane was out there this day.
01:07:53.000Not positive, but I'm pretty sure Shane was out during this session.
01:07:56.000There's about 15 guys out, a dozen guys out, and Greg took off on a wave, and somebody was in front of him on the wave, which kind of changed his angle a little bit.
01:08:07.000I don't think he would have made the wave anyhow, but it just put him in a little bit of a precarious situation.
01:08:13.000And he ate it and was down a long time.
01:08:15.000This wave has just so much energy in it because there's nothing between where the wave started and this break.
01:08:22.000Like, it's thousands and thousands of feet deep that, you know, over the whole Pacific.
01:08:26.000So there's no continental shelf to slow the wave down.
01:08:29.000You know, if you can imagine the East Coast, We have small waves.
01:08:33.000A big part of that is because most of the storms go west to east and they don't come towards us.
01:08:39.000But even on a hurricane, our surf's not that big because we have a continental shelf that goes...
01:08:44.000You can go out 20 miles and it's 70 feet deep some places.
01:09:46.000So you don't want to have to go change your canisters over.
01:09:49.000So if you think you're going to make that, you're going to get back to the surface, or you're okay, you can handle it, and you've got a good breath, you're like, I'll just, I won't pull it.
01:09:56.000But he pulled three times, and then he blacked out.
01:09:59.000And luckily they had a really good water safety crew.
01:10:05.000I don't know that it was his brother that saved him, but a couple of guys went and grabbed, dove in and pulled him up by the leash.
01:10:11.000Luckily, he was to the leash because he wasn't floating because he didn't have the CO2. He had taken a lot of water.
01:10:19.000They had to airlift him off the boat in big seas that night after dark and got him back to the mainland.
01:11:32.000I didn't want to go around him and try to look.
01:11:34.000I'm like, okay, let's get him into the beach.
01:11:36.000Luckily, we had a jet ski because we were about a mile offshore.
01:11:39.000And I just, I held on the jet ski and kind of, I just squeezed on, we have a sled on the back of the jet ski, like a body, big giant body board with handles.
01:12:06.000Yeah, but he spent two or three days in the hospital because they were worried about secondary drowning, which I don't exactly know what secondary drowning means, but I guess when you have water, salt water in your lungs, it can, I don't know, maybe from the way you lay down or, I don't know.
01:12:19.000I should probably be super schooled in this stuff.
01:14:19.000And, you know, the big wave guys are a tight, it's a tight bond of camaraderie with these guys because, I mean, yeah, everyone wants that big wave.
01:14:29.000They want something they've never had, but they want to, they're all really close friends.
01:14:32.000Like, they know that there's life and death having each other's backs.
01:14:36.000Does pretty much everyone know CPR? Yeah, most everybody does.
01:14:39.000There's courses that the Big Wave guys run every year.
01:14:42.000They put these courses together a couple times a year, specifically to train for the situations that we could be in.
01:14:49.000And yeah, so it's really great because they bring in a lot of, you know, breath-hold, deep, free-diving people and the best CPR and lifeguard guys in the world.
01:14:59.000A lot of the best lifeguard guys in the world are already surfers anyway, on the North Shore, around Oahu and Maui.
01:15:08.000I mean, those are the guys you want to have your back when they're in the surf zone.
01:15:12.000Some guy in the Coast Guard is probably not going to be able to do the same.
01:15:15.000Like, they might help your boat, but they're not...
01:15:18.000And I'm not trying to put Coast Guard guys down at all in any way.
01:15:21.000I'm just saying, like, these guys train specifically in the whitewater, in big surf.
01:15:26.000You know, they train the SEAL Team 6 guys in Hawaii every year.
01:15:59.000So when I first started making money, I thought it would be cool to have a little place in each place I go that I kind of base out of so I can be feeling like home.
01:16:43.000Australian, which was like $100,000 U.S. at the time.
01:16:46.000So I bought, I owned half of that for about 15 years and then I sold that and I bought another place up near on the Gold Coast in Australia.
01:16:54.000Well, Australia has a lot of dangerous shit, right?
01:16:57.000They have every dangerous shit, you know.
01:18:29.000This one was like, these two guys were going to do a first descent down this thing, and they were contacting another guy who had done that river, an American guy.
01:18:36.000And the American guy was like, I can't miss this descent.
01:18:41.000And then the three of them got into this zone where there was just crocks everywhere, and the river was real slow and wide.
01:18:47.000And as soon as they got there, all the crocs came off the riverbank, and they were like, oh shit, there's like tons of them.
01:18:53.000And this guy's theory was to take his helmet and throw it off to the side so it would be like movement and distract them, and they'd attack that and he'd paddle up to the shore.
01:19:01.000And all three of them got together, and the American guy was on the right side, and the other two guys were together, and they were so close, the guy in the middle couldn't really paddle.
01:19:09.000He was just kind of like, you know, trying to move along with them.
01:19:12.000And so they figured the bigger we are, the bigger we look and more intimidating, like maybe we'll be okay.
01:19:18.00015, 18 foot croc comes up, grabs the guy, takes him out of his, pulls him out of his kayak, disappears, they never see him again.
01:19:26.000And then as stuff's floating downstream, the other two guys get out of the water, and I think I'm telling this story pretty good because I read it like five times online, too.
01:19:35.000And they got out of the water, and then there was a little village just down, and there was a little bridge over, and there were some boats, and the boats were all dry docked.
01:19:44.000And they went down, and in broken English, there was one person that could talk to him or whatever, and they said, you know, our boats are not in the water because there's too many crocs here.
01:20:44.000I think there's a misconception about the Crocs, and they actually talked about this, because I used to be friends with Steve Irwin before he passed away.
01:20:54.000He actually had me hand feed a 13-foot croc.
01:20:57.000Scariest thing I've ever done in my life.
01:23:26.000You know when people go into panic mode, like when people are drowning and they're panicking, they say, you've got to punch him in the face and try to knock him out and call him down.
01:23:34.000They were trying to get him to calm down, and they had to get him all the way to the back of the boat because they had to get him up the transom.
01:23:40.000And they said from there they could get leverage and lift him, and it wouldn't flip the boat or whatever.
01:23:44.000But he said, this guy was in the water for a couple minutes, and he's like, at any time, there's a crock that's big enough to eat you within sight of us here at all times.
01:23:52.000But this guy said that, he said that the biggest, you know, I said, what's the biggest one you've ever seen?
01:23:56.000Because we've seen 15-foot Crocs like every 20 minutes, every half an hour.
01:24:12.000And so we're fishing for a bear on Monday, and I keep thinking, like, I don't know, when you got one in line, it's like a shark, will it bite that thing or whatever?
01:24:20.000And anyways, we start asking the guy, what's the biggest one you ever saw?
01:24:23.000And he said, Mike, the biggest one I ever saw was about 28 feet.
01:24:57.000He said if it was under our boat, it would be sticking out about four to six feet on either side across its back sideways, and we're in a six foot wide boat.
01:25:05.000So he said it'd be like 15 foot across its back.
01:26:43.000Because if that one is 28 feet 4 inches, the thing about that when they said 28 feet 4 inches, that's like back when people were full of shit.
01:26:51.000Yeah, I mean this guy who told me, this Aussie guy might have been trying to freak me out too.
01:26:55.000Puerto Rico, look at that one right there.
01:26:57.000That thing's 20 feet, and it's not 20 feet across its back or 12 feet, you know what I mean?
01:27:01.000Yeah, but another 8 foot long is a lot bigger and wider.
01:27:05.000Well, you see, when you see like a 5 foot alligator, and then you see a 10 foot, the girth relative to the length changes at that point.
01:27:13.000He's talking about the ratio and the size.
01:28:01.000I had a friend who was a commercial fisherman in South Africa, and he told me, he's like, bro, the biggest sharks are way bigger than you think.
01:34:16.000I mean, I guess I understand because I was a kid once and I went there, but I don't understand how a rational, logical thinking adult could take their kids to SeaWorld after all the information that's out there about the social behaviors,
01:34:52.000I think I have a pretty good heart, and I feel bad for animals that are locked up that need to travel 100 miles a day in their social packs.
01:35:01.000And they need to have interaction with other animals.
01:35:03.000And they need a certain amount of space.
01:35:06.000You think about solitary confinement for a prisoner who's in a room that's no wider than they are tall and maybe twice as long as they are tall.
01:35:18.000And there's no interaction with other people.
01:36:01.000I'm going to have to hold my breath against my will when I don't know what's going to happen.
01:36:05.000A friend of mine used to work at Marine Land in Canada, my friend Phil, Phil Demers, and he was an ORCA trainer, and he's trying to get Marine Land closed down.
01:36:15.000There's this big lawsuit with them, and he's been involved in a lawsuit with them for over five years now.
01:36:20.000I was just hanging out with him in Toronto.
01:36:38.000The whole business is so dark because, you know, a lot of them say, oh, we won't take any, you know, orcas or dolphins from captivity.
01:36:46.000But they'll get them from people that stole them from the wild.
01:36:50.000And they breed, you know, I think there's no more breeding allowed in America.
01:36:54.000Yeah, but they'll get them from someone that bred them in Canada, or Russia, rather, or China, or someplace where there's not as many rules.
01:37:01.000You know, John Lilly, who was the guy who actually invented the isolation tank, he was a pioneer in interspecies communication.
01:37:49.000Yeah, I mean just he and I I agree with him.
01:37:52.000I think there's just a level of communication There's a way that they have of communicating that we don't understand but it's super complex their own dialects They have they they have this crazy social code.
01:38:05.000I mean they they have something like incredibly dynamic about their their environment and their They're, you know, they're social groups.
01:38:13.000To be able to speak a language, you need to know like 150 words.
01:38:19.000There was a dolphin that knew like 700 words or 300 words.
01:38:38.000Stop giving me macro and let me loose.
01:38:39.000They're like, they don't know we're making fun of them for hundreds of years.
01:38:42.000I don't think they know what to do with them.
01:38:44.000Well, one of the things that Phil was working with was...
01:38:47.000There's a group, what was that group where they're trying to, they're going to create a boundary out in the ocean and slowly release these dolphins and orcas out into this boundary and then, you know, and keep feeding them, but then slowly release them out to the real world.
01:42:38.000Got there, get on the boat, and you go out, and you don't want to, I didn't want to bring my own wetsuit, because I didn't want all this fish slime all over it, you know what I mean?
01:42:44.000It's like, I want to go back surfing the next day at some, back at Jeffrey's Bay and smelling like fish, yeah.
01:42:49.000And, uh, so, um, Get on the boat, go out there, and where they feed them, there's like these couple of little rock islands that stick up right there, and they just park the boat.
01:43:00.000As soon as they park the boat, boom, the sharks are on you.
01:43:02.000Sharks are pretty inquisitive anyways.
01:43:05.000Even when I've been on boats out in the ocean, fishing or diving.
01:43:08.000I was in Papua New Guinea one time, and we pulled up, and everywhere we anchored, immediately there'd be three to five, maybe more sharks on the boat.
01:43:14.000They just come up from the deep, check you out, what is that?
01:43:16.000Boom, and then they kind of disappear.
01:43:18.000Then they're probably watching, because they know what's going on.
01:43:39.000And then there's a couple other spots, a couple friends of mine, like, grew up in that area, and they surf these reefs that are, like, right back where we came a mile from there in the boat, just on the outside of this harbor.
01:43:50.000And There's kind of two ways of thinking.
01:43:55.000Number one, the thing that bothers me with it is that sharks know where they got a meal.
01:44:11.000So, like, September, October, they're, like, here on the coast of California.
01:44:16.000So they have some sort of internal clock.
01:44:17.000Yeah, and then they go down to Guadalupe Island, and then they go out about 1,000 miles off the coast, and they believe they breed out there.
01:44:23.000And then a lot of the females will go to Hawaii, and the males will come back and kind of do that route back up the coast.
01:44:29.000But the craziest thing about these animals, they know how to just free swim.
01:45:26.000So what I don't like is that sharks, I believe, are equating, okay, I see a boat, I see a person, whatever that thing is, and he's got food.
01:45:49.000And it's not necessarily the person's food, but they have food, and if they don't give it...
01:45:52.000It's like a spear fisherman shooting a fish.
01:45:54.000If you don't give up your fish, a shark will bite you sometimes.
01:45:56.000Well, you know, that's the case in Kodiak Island with grizzly bears.
01:45:59.000They said the grizzly bears have gotten so used to the sound of a gunshot, meaning a deer's dead, that they'll run towards the sound of a gunshot.
01:46:26.000My friend Adam, Adam Greentree, that we were just talking about, who shot that water buffalo above my head, just shot a giant moose and a grizzly bear stole it.
01:48:32.000You ever hear that story of the kid who was getting attacked by the bear, the grizzly, running down a hill and his dad was looking up with a bow?
01:49:09.000And as the bear is, like, getting to him, the kid kind of sidesteps, and the dad lets it fly, and it hits the bear in the heart, and the bear falls on the kid and starts ripping at him and dies.
01:50:01.000I was talking about this with a couple friends of mine that you are exposed to probably more information and people and all that and more walks of life than maybe anybody in the world.
01:50:14.000Because you get such a diverse group of people to come talk to you, from politicians to chemists and scientists and athletes, and you just know so much information about so many topics.
01:50:25.000I know like little scattering little things that I can pull up.
01:50:28.000Well, you know a little bit about everything, sort of.
01:51:20.000I look forward to meeting interesting people and meeting people like you and people like Neil deGrasse Tyson or Graham Hancock.
01:51:29.000There's so many different people that can come on and talk about so many different fascinating things that maybe a lot of people just weren't exposed to the information before that.
01:51:40.000Just to wrap up that foot thing because I didn't and it'll be super short.
01:54:43.000This year's way more of a pain in the ass.
01:54:45.000This year we're doing this crazy fitness competition where we're wearing this MyZone heart rate monitor and you get a certain amount of points for every minute you're in, you know, like 80% of your max heart rate, 70% of your max heart rate is less.
01:56:12.000And I'm just trying, right now, I'm trying to literally kill my friends that are trying to compete with me.
01:56:18.000I want them to regret getting into this competition with me.
01:56:21.000Because I don't think they totally understood how fucking crazy I am until this thing started heating up and I told them I'm going to do 929 points every day.
01:57:19.000And it is like 20, 30, 40 years of stuff built up from the mucus.
01:57:24.000Your body creates when it doesn't like what you're eating, and that goes down and it gets stuck on the walls of your intestines, and it's like tire rubber, and you poop it out.
01:57:32.000It looks exactly like the shape of your intestine.
02:00:05.000But I got these guys I follow online that do water fasts like every month, and they're doing a five to ten day water fast coming up this week.
02:00:13.000I don't think I'm participating in that one, but I want to do a fast soon.
02:00:16.000So how much did you look forward to that drink, the tea with the lemon?
02:00:20.000I mean, if you're not having any calories.
02:01:30.000Are you just circuiting the whole time?
02:01:33.000Well, I ran the hills, I ran two miles with my dog in the hills, which, believe it or not, you don't get that many fucking points for it, because this thing sucks.
02:01:41.000It's way harder than the other things that I'm doing, because it's basically straight up.