The Cage

Speaker 1 Introducing Fidelity Trader Plus with customizable tools and charts you can access across all your devices. Try our most powerful trading platform yet at fidelity.com slash trader plus.

Speaker 1 Investing in false risk, including risk of loss. Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC, member NYSE, SIPC.

Speaker 2 We all take good care of the things that matter. Our homes, our pets, our cars.
Are you doing the same for your brain?

Speaker 2 Acting early to protect brain health may help reduce the risk of dementia from conditions like Alzheimer's disease.

Speaker 2 Studies have found that up to 45% of dementia cases may be prevented or delayed by managing risk factors you can change. Make brain health a priority.

Speaker 2 Ask your doctor about your risk factors and for a cognitive assessment. Learn more at brainhealthmatters.com.

Speaker 3 This is a real good story about Bronx and his dad, Ryan, real United Airlines customers.

Speaker 1 We were returning home, and one of the flight attendants asked Bronx if he wanted to see the flight deck and meet Kathy and Andrew.

Speaker 3 I got to sit in the driver's seat.

Speaker 4 I grew up in an aviation family, and seeing Bronx kind of reminded me of myself when I was that age.

Speaker 3 That's Andrew, a real united pilot.

Speaker 4 These small interactions can shape a kid's future.

Speaker 3 It felt like I was the captain.

Speaker 1 Allowing my son to see the flight deck will stick with us forever.

Speaker 4 That's how good leads the way.

Speaker 3 Wait, you're listening. Okay.

Speaker 3 All right.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 3 All right.

Speaker 3 You're listening

Speaker 3 to Radio Lab. Lab.
Radio Lab. From

Speaker 5 WNYC.

Speaker 6 This is Radio Lab. I'm Lulu Miller.

Speaker 7 I'm Loftif Nasser.

Speaker 3 And I'm Rachel Kusick.

Speaker 8 We're here with day two of our week of sharks inspired by the 50th anniversary of the movie Jaws.

Speaker 9 And today, we're going to jump in the water with them.

Speaker 3 Well, I am. You two get to just sit in your cozy little offices and hear about really ever.
Fair point. Fair point.

Speaker 3 But before we get into the water, I think we should actually start with the onslaught of shark movies that were inspired by Jaws. All right.

Speaker 10 So there are 180 or so monster shark films.

Speaker 3 Wait, 180? With our monster scholar from episode 1.

Speaker 10 There are at least 180 that are listed on the internet movie database.

Speaker 3 Jeffrey Cohen. I definitely know Sharknado.
What else is there?

Speaker 10 You know Sharknado, but do you know Sharknado 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6? Oh, my God. We are in part 6.
They return back in time to Sharknado 1.

Speaker 3 Well, of course.

Speaker 10 So, I mean that deep blue sea

Speaker 3 open water. How big is that thing?

Speaker 10 The meg, followed by a cheap remake called Jurassic Shark, which is not nearly as good.

Speaker 10 The reef, ghost shark. In that one, even if you kill the shark, you're not done because its ghosts will come back and get you.

Speaker 3 They've tasted human flesh.

Speaker 10 Two-headed shark is exactly what's advertised.

Speaker 3 No. Double the trouble.

Speaker 10 Followed, of course, by three-headed shark in 2015, five-headed shark in 2017, and then six-headed shark in 2018, at which point it looked like a starfish with all kinds of shark heads on it.

Speaker 3 Oh my God.

Speaker 10 There's almost every kind of shark movie, and what I love about the whole shark genre is that it looks to free the shark from the constraints of being underwater so that sharks can be everywhere.

Speaker 10 There's sky sharks,

Speaker 10 avalanche sharks, They swim through the snow like other sharks move through water.

Speaker 3 Beat?

Speaker 10 This is about sharks in a supermarket.

Speaker 3 Where are they in the supermarket?

Speaker 10 Well, the supermarket does flood.

Speaker 10 It's just movie after movie like this.

Speaker 3 So Jaw has like kicked off this world, like this universe of shark monsters, taken them out of their world and like dragged them into ours.

Speaker 3 And I kind of just wanted to go do what Rodney told us to do yesterday, like go and see it for myself.

Speaker 7 I mean, I know this worked for your guy, that seeing it made him less afraid. But like, I mean, I think you're going to go down there and see like, oh, this thing is bigger than me.

Speaker 7 It is capable of completely tearing me to shreds. Like, like, there is a possibility that you're going to get down there and

Speaker 7 just be more afraid of it.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 3 I think I actually want to know. So,

Speaker 3 I hopped on a plane to this town in South Australia called Port Lincoln, informally known as Tunatown. It's this little fishing town, and that's where Rodney's cage-diving boat leaves from.

Speaker 13 Okay, we got the shark on the side and everything.

Speaker 3 Got to the dock, we drop our bags, we do some paperwork,

Speaker 3 basically like sign away our lives, and then we

Speaker 3 set sail

Speaker 3 where we will spend the next four days

Speaker 3 looking for great white sharks.

Speaker 3 Is there a lesser white shark? Well, so this is exactly it's a good question. No, there's not.

Speaker 3 It used to be like the white shark all along, and then once they started becoming scarier and scarier around the era of jaws, we started calling them great whites to add fear to them. Yeah, what?

Speaker 8 They just added, it's not like actually the scientific name.

Speaker 3 Yeah, no, so all the scientists now, you'll hear them just say white shark because it's like rebranding the shark. Huh.

Speaker 7 Okay, so you're on the boat. Yep.

Speaker 6 And how many people are there?

Speaker 3 I think there's like 15 passengers plus the crew. Okay.
I come from France, Paris. These people are from all over the world.

Speaker 5 New York City, best place on earth.

Speaker 3 I'm from Japan. And they're all so excited to see a white shark.

Speaker 15 I want to see the great white shark.

Speaker 3 Which was just like a fascinating little world for me to drop into.

Speaker 16 I'm passionate with sharks.

Speaker 3 Because, you know, like most people hope they never see one.

Speaker 16 I want to meet the apex predators in their natural state.

Speaker 3 There were these two brothers.

Speaker 3 They were competitive about it. I love them but he adores them.
The other one said that when he was in kindergarten he did a presentation about sharks.

Speaker 5 And I even wrote it wrong on the board with a CH. So the

Speaker 9 sharks.

Speaker 5 Because I didn't know English, but I knew a lot about sharks.

Speaker 3 And he ended up getting in trouble because he had taken these books out of the local library.

Speaker 5 And I was so amazed by the shard pictures in the book, so I cut out the pictures with the scissors. And I was like looking at the pictures in my room and being so obsessed with them.

Speaker 3 That's amazing.

Speaker 13 You just picture like the exact silhouette.

Speaker 3 Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 So from Port Lincoln, we sailed for hours, like four, five, six hours, to this remote group of islands called the Neptune Islands.

Speaker 5 There's a wild, rough sea bumping against the rocks.

Speaker 5 I will describe it as rough.

Speaker 15 Yeah, very rugged, like dark blue water, dark grey rock.

Speaker 5 It seems sort of barren, but you feel that there's something around here.

Speaker 5 It's a feeling, you know?

Speaker 3 As soon as we anchored there, we noticed this intense smell, which is actually coming from us.

Speaker 9 I think that's called channel. It's like minced up bits of fish guts and skin and heads and stuff.

Speaker 3 The crew is throwing like buckets of fish parts off the back of the boat.

Speaker 14 I have a hat with a ribbon on it that says Master Baita.

Speaker 3 And I just see that white thing. Oh, is that?

Speaker 3 All of a sudden, these colors start flashing across the water. What? White and gray and silver.

Speaker 15 And they look like little sharks if you don't see their mouths.

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 3 they're not sharks. No shark, we're sharkless.
Which is kind of the point. The bait is supposed to attract the smaller fish, which attract the sharks.

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 3 a day went by. Are Are we seeing anything?

Speaker 12 No, no kids, not yet.

Speaker 3 And then another day. I see literally nothing.

Speaker 3 And there was just nothing.

Speaker 8 It's wild to me. You're pouring like blood, meat, flesh, fish, corpses, all this stuff in.

Speaker 6 And it's like days.

Speaker 3 Days.

Speaker 18 I would be like, oh, they'd be there.

Speaker 3 They'd go doot, doot, doot exactly.

Speaker 18 You know, and they'd be there within 34 seconds.

Speaker 3 I know, I know, but that's not what happened. So two days have passed out of four, and we haven't seen a single shark.
Wow. And so, there's just this cloud like looming over the boat.

Speaker 3 And so, we go to bed that night and we're like, We really hope that tomorrow, like, we'll see one.

Speaker 18 No, I'm sorry, though. I'm sorry.

Speaker 8 I need, I need for the rest of us who aren't in this deranged epicenter of the world where you want to see sharks.

Speaker 18 I love knowing that you poured gallons of blood into the water and didn't see the sharks.

Speaker 3 Yeah, this is the best. It's ever great news for you.
Yeah, it's really, it kind of is like you're in the sharkiest waters of all waters and they're not coming.

Speaker 3 And so like the next day, bright and early, the first cage goes down because they send the cages down even if they don't see a shark on the top, just in case there's something down there. Yeah.

Speaker 3 So I'm up on the top of the boat next to the skipper because he's the one that controls the crane.

Speaker 3 And then suddenly

Speaker 3 he pauses.

Speaker 5 I don't know. She just said five pulls there.

Speaker 3 He feels five pulls on this string.

Speaker 5 Oh, I thought it was five.

Speaker 3 The string that runs down to a cage they've lowered 60 feet to the bottom. And the people down there, they'll pull on the string to communicate with the surface.

Speaker 5 Five pulls for a shark, so hopefully,

Speaker 5 it is one down there.

Speaker 3 And eventually,

Speaker 3 the skipper winches the cage up.

Speaker 13 Okay, guys, can you report back?

Speaker 9 We did. We saw a white shark.

Speaker 3 And they had actually seen the shark.

Speaker 3 They were so excited.

Speaker 3 And then all of a sudden it was my turn. Like the crew was like, get your stuff on.
We're going to start getting ready. We're going to do it, okay? It's go time.

Speaker 19 Okay, and how does that feel?

Speaker 3 I'm a little bit confused. I'm a little bit like, I'm so happy that we finally have a shark around.
Like, it had been so long. But then I'm also kind of nervous when the reality of it set in.

Speaker 3 Like, oh, it's actually down there.

Speaker 3 It kind of feels like what you're in a lion to just go on like a terrifying roller coaster and you've just seen all of these people with like shocked, smiley faces like tumbling off, and then you get buckled in and there's like no turning back.

Speaker 3 Like it feels both exciting and terrifying.

Speaker 3 Okay, guys, welcome to the cage.

Speaker 12 Is anyone in the cage with you?

Speaker 3 Four people fit. One of them is a dive master.
So you're with someone at all times. All right, regulate to them, leaning back, then we face what you hold along.

Speaker 3 And once the four of us settle into the corners of the cage, our dive master signals to the skipper.

Speaker 3 we're ready to go down.

Speaker 3 So we get dropped down like we're taking an elevator deep into the ocean.

Speaker 3 And as we go, it gets darker and darker and darker. And you can see less and less because you're getting further away from the sun.

Speaker 3 And eventually we get down to around 60 feet and the cage stops moving.

Speaker 3 And all I can see is this barren sand of the ocean floor. And above it is just this abyss of blue.

Speaker 3 I was bracing.

Speaker 3 There was just like so much fear building of what's going to come out of that blue.

Speaker 3 And like, when is it going to come out? And which direction is it going to come from?

Speaker 3 All I can hear is the sound of my breath, which was very heavy.

Speaker 3 And then I hear this scraping sound.

Speaker 3 And it's the dive master scraping this little metal knife against the side of the cage.

Speaker 3 And the sound is supposed to get the sharks interested to come closer, but it kind of feels like a dinner bell.

Speaker 3 And then I feel a tap on my shoulder, and I like look over to the left, like behind my shoulder, and it's the dive instructor.

Speaker 3 And she just puts her hand in the shape of a fin on top of her head, kind of like to signal shark, and then points into the corner.

Speaker 11 And as I turned, I remembered this thing Rodney had told me: Don't just look at their heads, at their teeth, because everybody's frightened of their teeth.

Speaker 11 Look at the rest of the body.

Speaker 3 And then, out of the darkness, it comes truly out of the darkness,

Speaker 3 swims this white shark.

Speaker 3 It was a young one, so smaller. Six and a half feet, gray top with this scraggly white line and belly halfway through it.
Little black tips on the front fin.

Speaker 3 But the thing that's most striking about it is the way it moved.

Speaker 3 No thrashing or darting like in the movies.

Speaker 3 Just sort of floating.

Speaker 11 You know, they fly like aeroplanes, or aeroplanes fly like great white sharks.

Speaker 11 They have to dip a wing to turn.

Speaker 21 And their moves seem to be incredibly deliberate and relaxed.

Speaker 3 White shark researcher Greg Scomall.

Speaker 21 They don't do anything that's going to waste their time.

Speaker 3 The shark, it kind of felt like it was orbiting us.

Speaker 3 Like kind of fades in and out of your view and goes in and comes out and goes beneath you and then it kind of comes towards you.

Speaker 1 It's just like, wow.

Speaker 3 It's beautiful.

Speaker 21 You're looking at a prehistoric beast millions of years old.

Speaker 3 Like it was carved by time to be exactly where it is.

Speaker 17 Sharks, they're 465 million years old. You know, they've been on Earth for such a long time.
This is John Long, strategic professor in paleontology at Flinders University in South Australia.

Speaker 3 Now, that amount of time is hard to wrap your head around, but John helped me.

Speaker 17 They're more than twice as old as dinosaurs.

Speaker 20 They're way older than trees. Flowering plants.

Speaker 3 They were around before Everest was even a mountain. All of the continents that we live on today, they looked nothing like they do.

Speaker 17 They're even older than the rings of Saturn.

Speaker 3 And I mean, over these eons, sharks had to survive all five of Earth's major mass extinctions.

Speaker 17 Volcanic eruptions, a massive asteroid, ice ages, out-compete other major predators. Gigantic pliosaurs with banana-sized teeth and walking whales.

Speaker 17 And along the way, they just absolutely exploded in diversity.

Speaker 3 So that today, sharks fill so many different niches. According to Jade Elcock, a shark researcher at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, they are all over the place.

Speaker 15 There's sharks in the tropics. There's sharks in the Arctic.
I mean, a bull shark was found so far up the Mississippi River, it was in Illinois.

Speaker 3 And there's all these different versions of sharks, carved in their own bizarre ways. It almost makes the white shark seem boring.

Speaker 15 If you love the white shark, no hate to you. I also love the great white shark, but sharks are incredible.
They are diverse. I'll just go through a bunch of them.

Speaker 14 Take it for the top.

Speaker 15 I mean, some sharks only get to be about eight inches long. Well, the largest whale shark was almost 62 feet long.

Speaker 15 So just the sheer difference in the size range, we have glow-in-the-dark sharks, like lantern sharks, that glow on their bellies.

Speaker 15 There's a shark species that spews bioluminescent goo from pockets near its fins, likely for avoiding and confusing predators.

Speaker 3 No way.

Speaker 15 The rig shark can snap its teeth together to make kind of a clicking sound,

Speaker 15 while the swell shark will swallow a bunch of seawater, blow up like a big sharky water balloon,

Speaker 15 and that makes it more difficult for predators to eat it.

Speaker 15 And of course, the Greenland shark can live literally hundreds of years.

Speaker 15 I'm sure there are Greenland sharks in the ocean right now that were alive during the time of Alexander Hamilton and the time that the musical about his life was written.

Speaker 12 Isn't that wild to think about?

Speaker 3 Yeah. Hundreds of years.

Speaker 3 And there's even a shark that might help us survive one of our greatest threats.

Speaker 3 That's tomorrow.

Speaker 13 Okay, we just got back and we saw our first sharks.

Speaker 7 This episode was reported by Rachel Cusick and produced by Rachel and Simon Adler. It was edited by Pat Walters and fact-checked by Natalie Middleton with mixing help and sound design by Jeremy Bloom.

Speaker 10 And one more thing.

Speaker 8 We want to give a huge thanks to everyone who supports Radiolab, especially right now.

Speaker 8 Everyone Everyone who's a part of the lab, our membership program. Your support makes big projects like this possible and we are so grateful.

Speaker 7 And if you aren't a member yet or are thinking about giving more,

Speaker 7 this is the perfect time to take the plunge. Because if you join or re-up now, you will receive a really cool gift.

Speaker 8 A limited edition Week of Sharks hat designed by the awesome Maine-based artist and surfer Ty Williams.

Speaker 8 It's so beautiful and fun and it gives you a chance to show the world you support public radio in the form of Radiolab and support sharks.

Speaker 7 It's available to everyone who joins the lab this month, even for as little as seven bucks a month.

Speaker 8 You can join at radiolab.org/slash join. Existing members check your email for details, and thank you so much.

Speaker 7 Day three of the week of sharks coming up tomorrow.

Speaker 3 See you there.

Speaker 23 Hi, I'm Jamie, and I'm from Minneapolis. Here are the staff credits.
Radio Lab was created by Jad Abumrad and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts.

Speaker 23 Dylan Keith is our director of sound design. Our staff include Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, W.

Speaker 23 Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Rebecca Lacks, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Sindhu Nyana Sambunda, Matt Kielti, Annie McEwen, Alex Neeson, Sara Kari, Sarah Sandback, Anissa Vitza, Arianne Wack, Pat Walters, Molly Webster, and Jessica Young, with help from Rebecca Rand.

Speaker 23 Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, Anna Puvos-Manzani, and Natalie Middleton.

Speaker 24 Hi, I'm Daniel from Madrid. Leadership support from Radiolat Science Programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Telberto Foundation.

Speaker 24 Foundational support from Radiolat was provided by the Alfred P. Islam Foundation.

Speaker 22 Radiolab is supported by Capital One. With no fees or minimums on checking accounts, it's no wonder the Capital One bank guy is so passionate about banking with Capital One.

Speaker 22 If he were here, he wouldn't just tell you about no fees or minimums. He'd also talk about how most Capital One cafes are open seven days a week to assist with your banking needs.

Speaker 22 Yep, even on weekends. It's pretty much all he talks about in a good way.
What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See capital1.com/slash bank, capital One N-A, member FDIC.

Speaker 19 Radiolab is supported by the National Forest Foundation, a nonprofit transforming America's love of nature into action for our forests.

Speaker 19 Did you know that national forests provide clean drinking water to one in three Americans? And when forests struggle, so do we.

Speaker 19 The National Forest Foundation creates lasting impact by restoring forests and watersheds, strengthening wildfire resilience, and expanding recreation access for all.

Speaker 19 Last year, they planted 5.3 million trees and led over 300 projects to protect nature and communities nationwide. Learn more at nationalforests.org/slash radiolive.