Lulu Miller: Three, two, one!

Jonny Moens: Imagine your flesh turns to poison.

(Crunchy, dark guitar music begins to play, the soundtrack to an underwater spaghetti Western–the kind of music that would play as one person says to another, “This town ain’t big enough for the two of us,” but if they were sharks.)

Lulu: And your eyes turn cloudy. 

Jonny: Your arms shrink into stubby fins.

Lulu: And you slip down into the deepest, coldest depths of the ocean.

Jonny: Swimming about, looking for something to bite.

Lulu: You are nearly invisible in the darkness.

Jonny: And then, suddenly, this little carcass–

(A ghostly fish-corpse, played by a theremin, drifts past.)

Lulu: –A corpse, a fish corpse, floats by.

Jonny: You sniff it.

Lulu: And instead of turning away from the stinking dead flesh …

Jonny: Chomp! 

(Bubbles rush by as you bite down.)

Lulu: You have become …

Jonny: A Greenland shark!

(The music fades away.)

Lulu: All right, now is the part where I make you sing–

Jonny: Oh no.

Lulu: –The theme song with me. [She laughs.] Oh, yes!

Songbud Alan Goffinski and Lulu: (Singing over the theme music.) Terrestrials, terrestrials, we are not the worst, we're the–

Jonny: (Uncertain.) The best?

Songbud Alan Goffinski and Lulu: (Singing over the theme music.) The bestrials!

Lulu: Yeah! You got it! Terrestrials is a show where we uncover the strangeness waiting right here on Earth. I am your host, Lulu Miller, joined as always by my songbud …

Songbud Alan: (Singing with autotune, as if a robot.) Woo–hoo–hoo!

Lulu: … Alan!

Songbud Alan: Going deep and dark with sharks!

Lulu: This season we’re looking at creatures that are usually–

Songbud Alan and Lulu: (Together.) Overlooked! [A beat.] Shh!

Lulu: And today's very special storyteller is …

Jonny: My name is Jonny Moens, I'm a freelance science journalist. And I have spent a lot of my time underwater.

(Magical, soft music plays, a blanket of water above you.)

Lulu: Johnny’s mom is from Eritrea, on the coast of Africa, and his dad is from Belgium, in Europe–and happens to love scuba diving! So when they traveled between those places and beyond, they’d often explore the oceans.

Jonny: One of my most beautiful memories is watching manta rays glide over like massive kites.

Lulu: As soon as he was big enough to put on a scuba mask, Jonny would go out scuba diving with his dad, spending hours swimming among all kinds of cool creatures, like …

(As each one gives another name, the creatures swim past, leaving bubbles in their wake.)

Jonny: Sea turtles.

Lulu: Clownfish.

Jonny: Eels.

Lulu: Sea urchins.

Jonny: Moonfish. 

Lulu: And …

Jonny: Whale sharks.

(“Dun-dun” goes Lulu in the style of the theme song from the movie Jaws.)

Jonny: White tip sharks.

(Dun-dun.)

Jonny: Leopard sharks.

(Dun-dun! Here comes something that could be scary … or scary beautiful!)

Lulu: All of which Jonny found, not terrifying, but …

Jonny: Beautiful!

Lulu: … Whereas Greenland sharks, even Jonny, a shark lover, admits … 

Jonny: They look kinda dead.

(A bell tolls as Lulu laughs at Jonny’s brutal assessment. The ghostly theremin returns.)

Jonny: So their eyes look cloudy, like, glassy. And they also have these pinkish worm-like parasites–

Lulu: (Grossed out.) Ugh … 

Jonny: –Dangling from their eyes.

Lulu: Wow, okay. But you have become utterly obsessed with this dead-looking zombie shark, because … why?

(The theremin exits out.)

Jonny: Because these sharks have a huge secret. They’ve got a secret power, if you will, that seems to let them break the harshest rule of life.

(As we move deeper underwater, new drums enter the scene, crawling along the deepest darkest parts of the ocean.)

Lulu: Hmm. 

(A beat.)

Lulu: Alright, well, to find out what rule they are breaking, we gotta start many, many decades ago, when one baby shark–

(Alan sings the “Baby Shark” doo–doo melody in the middle of the background music, just for a second.)

Lulu: (Laughs.) –Is birthed into the frigid waters of the deep sea, where it is so dark–

(Bubbles flutter up towards the surface as we move underwater.)

Lulu: –It can’t see anything.

Songbud Alan: (As a Greenland shark.) Aha! But–who needs to see? I navigate the deep with electricity!

(Electricity charges up!)

Lulu: (Spoken.) That’s right, the baby shark can detect electricity coming from other creatures!

(Zap zap!)

Songbud Alan: Alone I prowl the ocean floor, I eat whatever I can find.

Dead whales and snails and flounder tails. [Crunch crunch!] Delicious! They’re all mine!

It’s nice for me down in the deep, where the pressure makes me hard to reach.

It’s home! It’s where I live and grow.

(Growing sound effects.)

Lulu: (Spoken.) And grow this shark does, scavenging the seafloor like a vulture.

Songbud Alan: Dead whales and snails and flounder tails! [Crunch crunch!]

Lulu: (Spoken.) Decade after decade, until …

Songbud Alan: I’m the size of a giraffe.

Imagine that!

Splish splash!

Imagine that.

(The music plays out.)

Lulu: And one day, this jumbo, death-breathed shark is swimming near the island of Greenland when, well, I’m sorry to say, it gets caught on a fishing line.

(An underwater struggle begins.)

Lulu: And is pulled out of the water.

(Whoosh!)

Lulu: Onto a fisherman’s boat.

(Thump!)

Lulu: And it is shortly after that that a jolly scientist named John Steffensen happens to pass by on another boat.

(Nautical accordion music plays.)

John Steffensen: Hello hello!

Lulu: And first glimpse this gray beast the size of a giraffe glimmering in the sun.

John: I just went, like, “Wow!” Just the size! That's kind of impressive animal. Nearly as big as the boat!

Jonny: And as he leaned in to get a better look …

(Songbud Alan, as the captain, laughs almost menacingly.)

John: The captain, he was laughing at me. 

Lulu: Saying, basically, “We Greenlanders don’t really like Greenland sharks, because there’s almost nothing you can do with ‘em.”

John: Everybody know Greenland sharks. They are poisonous!

Lulu: So you can’t really eat ‘em. Can’t even use ‘em as dog food!

John: If you’re out with your team of sled dogs …

(Dogs howl, but then the howling gets weird. These dogs must have had Greenland shark meat. They sound a little sick to their stomachs.)

Lulu: You must never feed raw Greenland shark meat to them, because …

John: They’ll get drunk.

Jonny: Meaning intoxicated on the shark meat. It makes them woozy and confused.

John: And they'll run in 12 or 16 different directions.

Lulu: Okay, that would not be good on a sled.

Jonny: Exactly.

(Another moment of dogs howling in confusion.)

Lulu: So, the question remains …

Jonny: Why try to learn more about this Greenland shark if it tastes horrible and no one likes it?

Lulu: Yeah, why?

Jonny: Well, his–his reason was because he heard this rumor.

John: The rumor is they get very old.

Lulu: How old?

Jonny: Potentially centuries.

(Mystical, dramatic music builds as Lulu speaks, eventually featuring an entire string orchestra.)

Lulu: Legends said they could get two or three–or even four–centuries old, which would be older than the locomotive [A train blows its whistle.] older than entire forests, older than the United States! 

That would make the Greenland shark older than any creature with a backbone. Older than whales and elephants or wizened old tortoises! Which, to John, just seemed …

Jonny: Really hard to believe.

Lulu: Because, you know, the end comes for us all–eventually! And for creatures like us, with a backbone–vertebrates–there seems to be a hard limit, a bedtime, for how late we can stay up living.

But if this rumor was true, then this stinky-breathed, cloudy-eyed, parasite-covered, hulk of a Greenland shark was shattering the limit to life.

Jonny: So he decides to do some digging.

(Detective music replaces the orchestra with a horn section, in the vein of the Pink Panther theme song.)

Lulu: Picture him picking up a magnifying glass and putting on a Sherlock Holmes hat! 

… I mean, he didn’t actually do that, but, after that day in the boat, he would spend the next few years as a professional Shark Detective.

John: Right? (Chuckles.)

Lulu: John wants to crack the case. He wants to find out if the rumor about the shark’s age is true. And he’s only got one clue to go on, which is that the Greenland shark–

John: –Never stops growing in length.

Lulu: So as they age, they just keep growing and growing and growing … (Lulu fades out.)

(The detective music fades out.)

Lulu: And with that one trusty clue, “Shark Detective” John Steffensen got to work.

Jonny: And he tried multiple methods. So the first attempt–

John: In some fish, you can count “year rings.”

Lulu: Did he just say earrings? Fish with earrings?

(Plucky jazzy music plays.)

Jonny: Sorta. A lot of fish have these things called “ear stones”.

John: … Which is part of the balance organ in the head of the fish.

Jonny: And those ear stones, a bit like trees, will have rings inside them that mark every year.

Lulu: Woah. So, okay. If you found a shark and you took out the ear stone, you could just kind of count the–the rings and find out how old it is?

Jonny: That was the theory, but it didn't work.

(The jazzy music winds down and falls out of tune.)

Lulu: Why?

Jonny: It turns out, Greenland sharks, they don't have them.

Lulu: So cross that off the list. So what's his next thought?

Jonny: X-rays!

(And we’re back! The jazz music picks up where it started.)

Lulu: Ooh.

Jonny: The actual bones themselves can tell you a lot about how old a creature is.

John: I called the local hospital. And kind of asked, “Can I come with a shark and we can try to put it in the x-ray machine?” The boss came on the phone and he said, “Sure, when are you coming?” [He laughs, remembering.] So I went to the hospital right away!

Lulu: Apparently they were so excited to have a shark coming in for an x-ray that–

John: They postponed an old man with a broken arm. He was sitting in the waiting room!

Lulu: Poor dude with his broken arm! (She laughs at just how weird that must have been for the dude.)

Jonny: Yeah!

Lulu: So John goes to the front of the line with his shark. Well, just the backbone of a shark.

Jonny: They fired up the x-ray machine …

(The machine whirrs to life.)

Jonny: Took photos of the backbone …

(Zap!)

Jonny: And that’s when they discovered …

John: It didn't work.

(The music winds down again.)

Jonny: Their bones were too soft.

Lulu: (Clearly disappointed.) Oh …

Jonny: So he tries to use what's known as a CAT scan, which is basically another machine for photographing bones–

(The music whirrs back to life for just one second before winding back down a third time.)

Jonny: –But that doesn't work either.

Lulu: I mean, that's like three strikes, usually you're out. Like, why–why is he so obsessed with this? Why does he want to know the shark’s age so bad?

Jonny: Well, John thinks …

John: For any biological question, there’s an animal somewhere that’d be perfect to answer that question!

(Low, slow music creates a bubble around Lulu as she explains John’s idea.)

Lulu: Huh. Meaning, any question about how life works, like, “Why do we sleep?” or “Why do we die?” or “Do we have to die?”–as long as the question is about biology …

John: There’s an animal somewhere that’d be perfect to answer that question.

Lulu: Do you believe that, Jonny?

Jonny: (Breathing in, thinking.) I’m not sure I do. But it doesn’t really matter what I think, because John was sure!

Lulu: So after trying the ears and trying the bones, he decided the next place he would try was …

Jonny: Eyeballs.

Lulu: Eyeballs. [She laughs a big laugh.] Why?

Jonny: Well, back in the late 1950s, humans were testing lots of big new bombs, which released a lot of a chemical called Carbon-14 into the environment. 

(Fwoosh!)

Lulu: Okay.

Jonny: And those chemicals can get trapped …

(Jonny continues to talk as Lulu narrates the shortened version.)

Lulu: Jonny explained that this chemical was absorbed into the bodies of the creatures alive back then … including baby Greenland sharks that were still in their mother’s womb. And it just so happens that eyeballs don’t change much over time.

Jonny: … Making the eye kind of like a time capsule. 

Lulu: huh!

Jonny: So if you could find a shark with a lot of Carbon-14 in the very, very middle of its eye, you would pretty much know when it was born!

Lulu: Whoa! Because it would’ve been born not too long after those bombs.

Jonny: Exactly! And, because it would take a lot of meticulous dissection and grueling math, well, John knew just who to rope in.

Kirstine Steffensen: Hi.

Jonny: You’re like sort of his Guinea pig. Is that fair?

Kirstine: Yeah, kind of. (She laughs.)

Jonny: His daughter, Kirstine. 

(The music changes tone, bouncing up and down.)

John: My daughter, she needed a project for her high school. So I suggested she would work on this, and she talked to the school master and he said, “Sure.”

Lulu: So he's going to make her figure it out. He's gonna make her do the hard part?

Kirstine: Yeah. (Kirstine laughs.)

Jonny: So her dad handed her a pair of shark eyeballs they had been keeping in the freezer.

Kirstine: I actually have the eye from the first shark in my apartment.

Jonny: What do you mean, you have it? [Chuckles lightly.] Like, where is it?

Kirstine: I have it on the–on the shelf. (She laughs.)

Jonny: You have, like, a jar with an eye?

Kirstine: Yeah. (She laughs.)

Jonny: (Jonny laughs right back.) That's not creepy.

Lulu: So Kirstine took these two frozen eyeballs her dad had given her. They were cold in her hands and they were pretty small.

Kirstine: Just about the size of a golf ball.

Lulu: Meaning they came from sharks that should be on the younger side.

Kirstine: Yeah.

Lulu: She put them on the table and sliced open each eye.

Kirstine: Cut open the eye lens and took out the nucleus of the eye, the very center of the eye.

(Pop goes the eyeball!)

Lulu: And then she sent them off to be analyzed for Carbon-14. 

John: This is where it starts getting weird.

(The plucky spaghetti Western music returns.)

Lulu: Weird because the math was saying these smallish sharks …

Jonny: They were at least 200 years old.

Lulu: (Surprised at the sheer number of years.) What? 

Lulu: Now, Kirstine had things to do, like graduate from high school, so that is when they brought in another scientist, Julius Neilsen, to head up the study. And he and the team spent years collecting way more sharks.

Jonny: 28 in total.

Lulu: Bigger sharks this time–sharks that had accidentally got caught in fishing nets or had died naturally. They analyzed them even more closely, they ran the calculations again, and finally they came to what they believed was the most accurate scientifically sound estimation of just how old Greenland sharks can get.

(The music speeds up, rushing around, and then freezes just as John shares the age.)

John: 272 to 512 years.

Lulu: Woah, so there could be sharks that are older than half a millennium down there?

(More low, slow music plays.)

John: It was, like, unbelievable!

Jonny: So this obviously is a shocking finding.

(A series of archived news clips play.)

Archival News, Today: … A jaw-dropping story this morning … 

Archival News, CBS: … Scientists have discovered some sharks older than the United States … 

Archival News, Global News: … For decades, scientists had suspected the Greenland shark was long in the tooth, but never realized they were ancient …

Archival News: … This means the Greenland shark lives longer than any known animal with a backbone. If we come upon a shark birthday party down there …

(The news stories fade out as Lulu returns to narrate what happens next.)

Lulu: This is when Jonny, our journalist, heard about the Greenland shark. He thought back to all those sharks he’d grown up swimming with as a boy and it never occurred to him …

Jonny: … That some of these sharks roaming around in the water had lived centuries and centuries. You know, back to medieval times, there was still this shark [Laughing.] in that same ocean!

Lulu: And when he looked around …

Jonny: It just seemed baffling!

Lulu: No one was talking about how–how the Greenland shark lived so long, how it seemed to break this sacred limit of life that applied to every other vertebrate on the planet! 

(The music pauses.)

Lulu: So, when we come back, Jonny’s gonna use his powers of journalism–

(Fwoo fwoo!)

Lulu: –To find out the Greenland shark’s trick for longevity. 

(Lulu takes a breath and the sound of something diving from high in the sky plays.)

Lulu: Catch ya after just a few more seconds of your life burn away. 

(A clock ticks as the ad break begins!)

Lulu: Just kidding! You’re young. You’re fine. See you in a sec.

Lulu: (Singing the theme of the movie Jaws over a few waves) Terrestrials is back, and we are gettin’ sharky with Jonny!

(Funky music picks up.)

Jonny: Hey!

Lulu: So Jonny was on a quest to figure out how the Greenland shark shatters the limit to life and outlives all other vertebrates on the planet, and …

Jonny: I did speak to a guy.

Steven Austad: Okay. My name is Steven Austad.

Jonny: He’s a biologist at the University of Alabama, Birmingham. 

Lulu: And while lots of other scientists all over the planet are racing to look at the Greenland shark’s blood or heart tissue to see if it has any secret chemical tricks that allow for its longevity, Steve looks more broadly at this group of creatures across the kingdom that are somehow able to live–

Jonny: –Way longer than everybody else.

(The music changes tone, taking us out to outer space. Stars twinkle around as Jonny and Steven introduce the oldest animals in our known universe.)

Lulu: Like the geezers of the animal–like, the super old ones?

Jonny: Exactly. The outliers–who happen to include … 

Steven: Bats.

Jonny: Clams.

Steven: Mussels.

Jonny: Tubeworms. 

Steven: Tortoises.

 Jonny: And he tries to figure out how they do it, and if there are any common strategies.

Lulu: Okay. How does he think the Greenland shark does it?

Steven: Okay. There are three things.

Lulu: Alright. I'm taking notes. (Lulu writes as Jonny talks.)

Jonny: So number one, be big and gross.

Lulu: (Laughs.) Okay, why does that help you live longer?

Jonny: So, big, because just generally big creatures don't get eaten up as much. 

Lulu: There's less things that can kill you, basically.

Jonny: (Agreeing.) Less things that can kill you. You're more intimidating to other animals.

Steven: Yeah, if you're the Greenland shark, then you probably don't have any predators except maybe whales.

Lulu: Okay.

Jonny: And gross because, well, if you're gross, then both creatures below and humans themselves won't eat you because you're disgusting.

Lulu: That's funny. It's like the–[Laughs.] it's, like, that yucky–the toxic meat, the yucky worm-like thing in the eye, all that–it's almost–all the stuff we were ridiculing about–making fun of it–is almost like a shield from death?

Jonny: Yeah, in a way.

Lulu: Okay. Number one, be big and gross. What is number two?

Jonny: Number two, be slow.

Steven: And the fastest speed that they've been recorded to swim at, uh, is slower than an 80 year-old walks. 

Lulu: No, no. Like a–like a sweet old man slowly shuffling across the street? That’s how slow they move underwater?

Steven: Yeah! [Both laugh lightly.] A healthy 80 year-old walks about one meter per second, and a Greenland shark’s top speed that's ever been measured is about two thirds of that.

Jonny: Wow. 

Jonny: And that’s why they are mostly scavengers. They’ll eat dead fish! And dead seals and dead–

Steven: –Reindeer and polar bears and–

Lulu: Reindeer?!

Steven: Yeah. 

(A beat.)

Songbud Alan and Lulu: (Singing.) Let’s take a break to consider that a shark can eat a reindeer! Let’s take a break to consider Santa’s fleet in a shark belly. Jingle jingle–chomp!

(Back to the interview.)

Lulu: (Still reeling.) In their shark stomach?!

Steven: Yeah. Probably they died and fell in the ocean.

Lulu: Okay.

Jonny: They didn't, like, chase after them.

Lulu: Oh, okay.

Lulu: But how does being slow actually help it live longer?

Jonny: Well this is where things get really cool. It’s not just that it’s moving slowly. Its heart is beating slowly.

(A heartbeat: Thump-thump, PAUSE, thump-thump.)

Jonny: Its belly is digesting super slowly. 

(Gurgling.)

Jonny: Which means, first of all, it doesn’t need to eat as much to power its body.

Steven: If there's a food shortage, you could probably go for years without eating. So I think …

Jonny: Years? Really, years?

Steven: They–they figure they can eat about one medium-sized seal a year.

Jonny: Oh wow.

Jonny: Which helps them cheat death, Because they can survive stretches of famine, or food shortages, that would knock out most other creatures. 

Lulu: Woah.

Jonny: Yeah! And, perhaps even more important, it turns out, the faster your body goes …

(The music creates a sort of heartbeat: Thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump, no breaks.)

Jonny: Eating, moving, getting stressed …

(The heartbeat music thump-thumps even faster.)

Jonny: The faster these not-so-great chemicals are released into your body …

Steven: Free radicals that damage everything they touch. 

Jonny: Heart tissue, bone tissue, brain cells …

(A beat without music.)

Jonny: But! If you live life in slo-mo–

(The heartbeat slows down again: Thump-thump, PAUSE, thump-thump.)

Jonny: –Like the Greenland shark, then those chemicals don't get released as fast!

Lulu: Weird. So the slower your body runs, the slower it wears down?

Steven: Yeah, that’s exactly right.

Lulu: Wow! Okay. So be–be big and gross and real slow–slow it down. 

Jonny: Yup. And the third thing is, be lonely. 

(Quiet music, long droning notes, play on a deep string instrument.)

Jonny: They live deep in the ocean, away from other creatures and–

(A storm brews.)

Jonny: –Storms.

(Thunder and electricity charges up.)

Steven: –Or a lightning strike.

(Whoosh!)

Jonny: –Or motorboats with sharp propellers zipping by.

(A motorboat revs as it speeds past overhead.)

Jonny: So they’re less likely to get killed by a freak accident. 

Lulu: Oh.

Jonny: And also … !

(A meandering drum line adds in to the music.)

Steven: They don't live in huge social groups.

Jonny: They don’t come together to interact much, but they’re less likely to catch viruses or diseases from one another.

Lulu: Hmm.

Songbud Alan: (Singing.) Alone I prowl on the ocean floor.

Lulu: So part of their sort of troll-like living deep in that lonely darkness, like, that's, that's kind of protecting them, too?

(The music changes direction. The percussion quiets as a soft flute melody plays underwater, shimmering through the blue.)

Jonny: Yeah. Being lonely and solitary actually decreases their chances of being hurt by all these different dangers in the world.

Lulu: There's something, like, a little sad to me about this–this bargain. Like, to live longer, you kind of have to opt out of the stuff of living, like, be away from adventure, be away from other creatures like you. You opt out a lot of … 

Steven: You have a really boring life.

Lulu: Yeah. Like, opt out of life kinda …

Steven: Well, I’ve been thinking about my clams. 

Lulu: Those old clams that Steve studies. 

Steven: There are clams that live 500 years at the bottom of the sea, opening their shell occasionally. 

(Bubbles burst towards the surface of the water all around you.)

Steven: You know, one of my clams, if I calculated, was born 65 years before Shakespeare was born. 

Lulu: Woah!

Steven: And it’s just been sitting there. I think, what a dull existence. (They both laugh quietly, contemplating.)

Lulu: Haha. Yeah, it does get kinda boring.

Jonny: I see your point, Lulu, but we just know so little about the true lives of these sharks. 

Lulu: Hmm.

Jonny: Maybe it’s kind of a party down there. Maybe it’s an adventure. [Lulu laughs.]Maybe they are doing things we haven’t even discovered yet. For instance, scientists only recently figured out that maybe these sharks can catch live prey.

Lulu: How?

Jonny: Using their electricity perception! 

(The sharks charge up!)

Lulu: Oh.

Jonny: And another recent study suggests that Greenland sharks don’t even start to have babies until they're over 100 years old! 

Lulu: Woah.

Jonny: Meaning they essentially get a hundred years to stay a kid.

Lulu: Like they’re little–they’re little Peter Pans down there? Forever young!

Jonny: Little Peter Pans, yep! Not forever, but for … long. Yes.

(Music plays.)

Lulu: (Laughing at Jonny’s technicality.) Alright. Well, touchée, Jonny, thank you for reminding us to keep our minds open! Especially in the dark.

Jonny: You are most welcome, Lulu.

Songbud Alan and Mike Kinsella: (Singing.) In the deep cold ocean we swim alone.

A little misunderstood, but we’re at home.

Yeah, we may seem gross

Oh-so-gross

On the deep, dark, and cold ocean floor

But what makes you think that you know?

(The instrumentation picks up.)

(Slowly.) We take it slow

You never tried to understand us

Seems like you can’t stand us

Steer clear 

Don’t come near us

You fear us!

You never really tried to get to know

But that’s fine, we’re loving life down below.

(Spoken.) Oh, and by the way–

(Singing.) We’ll never understand

Why you freaky finless weirdos 

Went and named us after land.

Lulu: (Spoken in a Valley Girl voice.) And we’re literally aquatic!

Songbud Alan and Mike Kinsella: (Spoken.) Weirdos!

(Slowly.) We take it slow,

We take it slow!

You never tried to understand us.

(The song ends.)

Lulu: Alan Goffin–[hehe fin]–ski, with special guest Mike Kinsella from the bands american Football and Owen! And that’s it. Terrestrials is over and there’s nothing else cool about to … 

(Suddenly, out of nowhere, trumpets … well, uh, trumpet! It’s The Badgers!)

Lulu: (Whispered.) What's that?

Badger #1: Excuse me, I have a question. 

Badger #2: Me too. 

Badger #3: Me three. 

Badger #4: Me four. 

Lulu: (Whispered, but somehow loudly.) The Badgers.

(The Badgers theme song plays underneath the questions.)

Lulu: Listeners with badgering questions for the expert. Are you ready? 

John: Yes indeed!

Cade: Hi, I’m Cade. I’m five years old. Is it true that when a mama shark is pregnant, her baby will sometimes eat each other in the womb? 

Lulu: Oh my gosh, I’ve always wondered that. Is that true that baby sharks’ll eat each other inside the mommy’s belly?

John: That’s true. 

Lulu: That’s true?!

John: Well, some sharks do it.

Lulu: Sand tiger sharks have definitely been found to do it. They will eat their brothers and sisters inside their mom’s belly! 

John: But we know very little about the Greenland sharks with–with the young ones.

(Chomp!)

Dr. Yvonne Tsu: I’m Dr. Yvonne Tsu,and I’m 35 years old. My question is: Why are they so ugly and did their ugliness help them survive?

John: I don’t know if they're ugly. [Laughs.] And–and–no–but no, it won’t help them survive, because if you are living down 2000 meters, it’s pitch black anyway. [Lulu laughs.] So nope, nope, it has nothing to do with that. They look like they look, and that’s it. 

Chris: Hi, I’m Chris, and I’m 77 years old. And my question is: Since they are so slow, would it actually be fine to swim with them? 

John: Well, I–I would never do it. [Laughs.] That’s for sure! They have, like, two sets of teeth: In the bottom they–they have, like, the cutting teeth, like a razor blade, whereas in the upper part it’s just spikes coming down.

(The Badgers theme music fades out and makes way for the swirling cloudiness of the credits music.)

Lulu: (Wincing.) Ooh!

John: So I would not go in the water with them, nope. Never.

Lulu: Okay, noted. I’m gonna leave it there with the Greenland shark and its Swiss Army Knife of teeth and not tell you that part of the reason their skin is so poisonous is because there is urea in it, A.K.A. the ingredient in urine, A.K.A. pee–there is pee in their skin. I’m not gonna tell you that, ‘cause I’m nice. 

Terrestrials was created by me, Lulu Miller, with WNYC Studios. This episode was produced by Brenna Farrel, and Mira Burt-Wintonick, with help from Alan Goffinski, Ana González, Tanya Chawla, Sarah Sandbach, Valentina Powers, and Joe Plourde. Fact-checking by Natalie Middleton. 

Support for Terrestrials is provided by The Simons Foundation, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, the Kalliopeia Foundation, and the John Templeton Foundation.

Thank youuu!

Big special thanks this episode to Dr. Julius Neilsen, he has done a ton of incredible work on the Greenland shark and was a huge help on this episode; also to Jan Hannemeier; Holly Shields; Grace and Charlotte Beckerman–and to you, for listening! 

Catch you in a couple spins of this watery ol’ planet of ours.

Woo woo woo woo woo! 

(Whispered.) Bye.

(The credits music plays out.)