0:03

And

0:11

We are Ken Jennings and John Roderick.

0:13

We speak to you from our present which we can

0:16

only assume is your distant

0:17

past, the turbulent time that was the

0:19

early twenty first century. Fearing

0:21

the great cataclysm that will surely befall

0:23

our civilization, we began this monumental

0:26

reference of strange and obscure human knowledge.

0:28

These recordings represent our attempt to compile

0:30

and preserve wonders and Roderick that

0:33

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0:35

So whether you're listening from an advanced civilization

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0:44

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Omnibus.

1:13

You have accessed entry three forty two

1:15

dot PS10529,

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certificate number 41036.

1:23

The devil's whole Pupfish.

1:33

This continues my new series of

1:35

shows that are trying to connect

1:37

with young people by describing environmental

1:39

catastrophe. And then offering,

1:42

like, a weird Gen X, not entirely

1:44

Marxist take on

1:45

it. This is this is,

1:47

like, a series within a series you're doing. Mhmm. I'm

1:49

trying to do a podcast and you're, like, showing up and doing

1:51

a pop up.

1:52

Mhmm. Hey, during the day we have donuts now at omnibus.

1:55

Hey, buy these handmade bracelets. How can I make

1:58

to save the devil's whole pupfish? Devil's

2:01

whole pupfish. Pupfish. Jeff

2:03

oh, pup fish. A pupfish

2:06

is a little fish that lives in

2:10

freshwater or radish water. It's a little

2:12

because there's a kind of dog called the Pupfish, but

2:14

it's like a shark. There you go. Is it a

2:16

smaller dog? It kind of it

2:19

was named 538

2:21

the fact that the males of the species,

2:23

when they romp and play with

2:25

one another, these fish are one inch

2:27

long. They can't romp that

2:29

much. They romp and they romp. Pupfish?

2:32

Can you even romp

2:33

in water? You absolutely can

2:35

romp in water. Have you ever seen two golden retrievers

2:37

in a pond? You know, that's because they're standing up.

2:39

Then they can You

2:40

know, if you're if you're waiting, you can romp.

2:42

Feel like once you're swimming, let's just see if you're underwater.

2:45

The romp kinda

2:46

ends. One of these days, I'm gonna do that episode

2:48

on that bar in Montana that

2:51

has the the glass

2:53

view window into the bottom of a swimming pool

2:55

where aqua

2:58

hostesses

2:59

swim around. Oh, they

3:00

still have one of those in Montana? Well,

3:02

the last I checked, And You

3:04

won't see this Florida right now. Yeah. You'll see the

3:06

romping. You'll see how romping. That's a different

3:08

kind of

3:08

romp. That's like Emmanuel six

3:11

kind of romping. A manual fix,

3:13

the the the trip through

3:15

all the rail tunnels of I

3:19

I can I'm here to tell you that the pupfish

3:22

is named after the fact that they

3:24

they play with one another, and

3:26

it's hard to know what defines play. I know,

3:28

but They interact with one another

3:30

like puppies. They look and act like

3:32

puppies. They don't look like puppies because this

3:34

is cute. It's cute.

3:36

You know, I've had all manner of Pupfish,

3:39

and they were never doing anything that I could

3:41

describe as behavior in any way. Yeah. That's right.

3:43

I mean I mean, they're swimming back and forth, but it's

3:45

like nothing that was struck me is, ah, this

3:47

one this species has a very different personality

3:49

than that

3:50

species. Do you remember the down in

3:52

in Seattle's Chinatown International District

3:54

that restaurant that had the the the Pupfish

3:58

in the tank that was in the window

4:00

that Pupfish

4:02

had had to be four thousand years old. It

4:04

was covered with tumors. But I used to go down

4:06

there in the middle of the night when everything was closed

4:09

and stand out on the sidewalk and the fish and

4:11

I would look at each other. Did it tell you to kill people?

4:13

No. No. It was it was it had

4:15

a fairly benign. The thing is the fish was

4:17

the size of a of a like

4:19

an artillery shell and it was in

4:21

a a tank no Whoa.

4:24

Considerably less large than

4:26

this table. And

4:28

it had nothing to do, but

4:31

it did It did

4:33

make a human to fish eye

4:35

contact connection with

4:37

me. You felt like it knew you were there? Well,

4:39

I went often enough that the fish

4:41

and I couldn't

4:42

really see out. I thought the tank was kinda mirrored if

4:44

you were the fish. Well, that's what I always thought too,

4:46

but then, you know, I would go to the restaurant during the

4:48

day and I would look out and I know you can't. Not

4:50

duplicated. But I it's not like I tapped

4:52

on the

4:53

window. I sat there and just looked and it was

4:55

it it hovered in place.

4:57

Hey, John. Hey, beast.

5:00

This is a little parenthetical, but there was there

5:02

was briefly a place kind of between downtown

5:04

and belltown that was like a like

5:06

a Vietnamese restaurant, but

5:09

that the hook was that in their lounge

5:11

part, they had bunch of jellyfish in

5:13

tanks --

5:13

Mhmm. -- like that

5:14

you would just be surrounded by jellyfish as

5:16

you wait. Mhmm. But then I and I went there once and

5:18

I was like, this is kinda cool. I surrounded by jellyfish, but

5:20

I went back three weeks later and all the jellyfish were

5:23

gone. And I thought,

5:25

a terrible

5:26

ecological catastrophe. mass extinction

5:28

-- Mhmm. -- that's happened at this Vietnamese restaurant

5:30

and no one's talking about

5:32

Well, the temperature of the water probably went up

5:34

or down two degrees. That's exactly what happened.

5:36

Somebody came in one morning and, you know, forgot

5:38

to flip this switch. It came on one morning and there

5:40

was there was like a,

5:44

you know, a mass extinction event

5:46

of

5:47

jellyfish. I almost had six, like, very

5:49

offensive things there, and I changed it. I know you were

5:51

like,

5:51

uh-oh, no. Can't say that? Oh, no.

5:53

He probably knows me also not that.

5:55

Jeez, not that either. Let's just say mask

5:57

extinction again. It was

5:59

seven inches deep of slime across

6:01

the top of the

6:02

pond. You know, bad for whoever had to clean it, but

6:04

mostly for the jellyfish. Well, and

6:06

their next again. In this case,

6:08

Pupfish, it's gonna be

6:10

hard. I mean, it'll be interesting at the end. I'll check-in

6:13

with you to see how you feel about

6:16

the

6:16

Pupfish. How do you feel? I'm

6:18

enough to watch some videos. How do you feel on behalf

6:20

of them? That always depends on how cute the animal

6:22

is. You know? Well, let me describe

6:24

them. They're as I

6:25

say, they're small. The males

6:27

are bright blue.

6:29

Oh, yeah. Look at this. And the females are yellow.

6:32

And interestingly, they

6:35

do not have pectoral

6:36

fins, which is interesting only to ichthyologists.

6:38

Pectoral would be what the

6:41

side ones? What are yeah. Is that

6:43

right? They've evolved them

6:45

away. Wow. They

6:47

don't need them. Where they're living? Where they're going?

6:49

They're so advanced. Mhmm. Mhmm. That's

6:52

right. They're a future fish. They're fish into the

6:54

future. In

6:56

particular, the devil's Pupfish,

7:01

No one knows how long no one knows

7:03

who they were or what they were what they were doing.

7:06

No one knows how long they've been in devil's

7:08

hole. Some people say an hour.

7:10

Some people say it's been a

7:13

week. Longer than an hour, but but the

7:15

the range of how long the devil's

7:17

hold Pupfish has been an independent Wait.

7:21

So it's population. It's just its species that

7:23

only lives in one hole. How

7:25

big a hole are we talking? You have

7:27

you have cut to the chase, my friend.

7:29

The devil's Pupfish only lives

7:31

in devil's hole. Hence the

7:33

name and not only

7:36

only lives in devil's whole but only

7:40

lives in the top let's

7:42

say, twenty four feet

7:45

of the water column in devil's

7:47

hole. Why don't it be real for a second? If I was in the

7:49

devil's hole, I would also only want to be

7:51

in the outermost part of it. Mhmm.

7:54

Just that's just me

7:55

though. Yeah. You well, yeah.

7:57

Okay. The uppermost part of

7:58

it. The upper yeah. The upper gonna say. Because

8:00

that's where the fish live. They live up at the top

8:02

live at the top of the devil's whole

8:05

whole. The

8:07

devil, that's very heteronormative. I need to say that

8:09

about. About the devil's

8:11

hole, but How do you

8:12

mean? You know, I assume the

8:14

devil's a male. 000I

8:16

see what you mean. What if I can tell

8:18

you from personal experience. The devil is

8:20

not exclusively a male. Where

8:23

is devil's whole? Okay. Well,

8:25

good question. Devil's whole

8:28

is in an upper portion

8:31

of what we call the greater we don't call

8:33

it

8:33

that. I'm going to call it the greater Death

8:36

Valley environment. So

8:38

it's like it's in the desert, but just outside the

8:40

park boundaries? It's in the desert, but

8:42

it is twenty four hundred feet

8:44

above sea level. So if you think about

8:47

death valley

8:48

that one of things that makes it most famous

8:51

is that it's a valley that it's a valley below

8:53

sea level. goes all the way down

8:55

But if you head out of the valley, you head into some

8:57

hills. In either direction, if you go

9:00

east or west, you go up very

9:03

steep

9:03

mountainside. No.

9:04

This is true of many valleys, but if you leave in any

9:06

direction, you go up. I think

9:08

you can go north and south

9:10

North and south. Correct. Valley. And it's you spend

9:12

longer time down in the lows, but

9:15

you have to go up and over if you're going

9:17

east to

9:18

west. And twenty four hundred feet, that's

9:20

not nothing. That's higher than

9:22

we are here in the bunker.

9:25

So it's but there's a whole in

9:29

There's a cave. Oh, boy. What's

9:31

going on up there?

9:32

Yes. There is a cave. So, no, there were

9:34

caves around there. There are caves. And

9:37

in this

9:38

cave,

9:41

It is a it's

9:43

a limestone cavern that's

9:45

full

9:46

of Pupfish.

9:47

Well, not full of Pupfish. That would be nice.

9:49

It's full of geothermally heated

9:52

water. Mhmm. That is

9:54

a constant ninety one degrees

9:56

Fair enough. It's Nature's Tropical Tank.

9:59

That's right. It's and that for our listeners

10:02

around the world everywhere except Roderick, that's

10:04

thirty three degrees centigrade. So

10:07

nice and warm, not all the

10:09

way to, like, it's

10:11

not a hot tub and it's not even body

10:13

temperature, but it's warm enough for these

10:15

fish who like to live in a narrow temperature

10:18

range. They've evolved to live in a narrow temperature

10:20

range. Devil's whole

10:23

is In

10:25

one sense, in its surface

10:27

dimensions, pretty small.

10:30

It's only seventy so

10:33

feet long by eleven

10:36

and a half feet wide. That's

10:38

and so their whole ecosystem

10:41

globally is an eleven foot wide

10:44

by seventy foot long

10:47

pond. Eleven feet. Eleven

10:49

feet wide.

10:49

All the all Pupfish in the world live from

10:51

here to there.

10:52

Yeah. That's not even as wide as this room.

10:54

And not all Pupfish

10:57

in the world, but all the -- devils are thedevils

11:00

Pupfish. There are pupfish

11:02

elsewhere. It's interesting to think how they must

11:04

have. Evolved in parallel?

11:06

Did they was this all

11:09

when North America was underwater?

11:11

They got stuck there. So some people

11:13

say some people say that the Pupfish

11:15

have been in devil's hole for only a thousand years.

11:17

Some people do some old timers say that.

11:19

Some old timers do. Some people

11:21

say they've been there sixty thousand years.

11:24

Some people say they washed in

11:26

in some way, although

11:28

it'd be hard to wash in. I what I'm saying. They're

11:30

they're like a hill in Nevada. Some people

11:32

say that native Americans carried them there

11:34

in one of their inscrutable

11:36

journ. It could

11:37

have been aquaculture. Yeah. It could have been

11:39

that they briefly evolved feet

11:41

-- No. -- and or

11:43

maybe

11:44

feathers. And ran there from the Colorado

11:46

River. What

11:47

do you

11:47

are you serious? Because there's thousands of miles away. Miles

11:49

away. Well, there

11:50

are that will drag themselves over mud like

11:51

not these fish. Okay. It's a long

11:54

way to temporary. There is

11:56

some but if if if introduced in in

11:58

human history, they would have had to evolve into

12:00

a whole new species since that time.

12:03

Right. So which is unlikely. But

12:05

because it's such a tiny population

12:08

of fish in a tiny

12:09

area, I guess, they would evolve faster or

12:11

mutations would, you know, happen I'm surprised

12:13

that a hundred nuclear power yet.

12:15

Well, frankly, they they had to get rid of their pectoral

12:17

fins first. That's right. They were about to invent

12:19

the wheel and then they

12:20

were like, we don't need we don't need these fans.

12:23

I don't want to speak on behalf of Native

12:25

Americans, but I don't

12:27

think that what it would have

12:29

taken to get Pupfish there and introduce them

12:31

into this environment would have been worth it

12:34

for the local

12:35

people who probably you're just

12:37

putting yourselves into the head of some hypothetical

12:40

indigenous people, and you think it would have been

12:42

a drag.

12:43

Yeah. But you know how like how in every

12:46

dorm environment, there's gonna be one weirdo who's

12:48

really in the tropical fish. Mhmm. Imagine southwestern

12:51

tribe -- Mhmm. -- where there's, like, one weirdo

12:53

-- Mhmm. -- who's Always go to the tropical

12:55

fish store and saving up all his money for a new

12:58

weird

12:58

fish. Saw Pupfish in a in a different

13:00

pond. Are you saying that's his name? Sop in

13:03

a different pond? Hey. Sop up

13:05

fish in a different pond. Come over here and get

13:07

Pupfish. Yeah. He he

13:09

or she. Or

13:11

they would have had to have

13:13

admired these fish known about

13:15

devil's whole felt

13:19

that the one thing it was missing was fish.

13:21

And you'd also have to know that they could actually

13:23

feed and thrive there because gathered the

13:25

fish. What if they

13:26

eat? There must be Is there algae in

13:28

Well, so here's what they eat in devil's

13:30

whole. Everything else that's in

13:32

devil's whole. So they survived

13:35

by

13:35

eating, but they're

13:35

can't be that much in devil's whole. Well, there isn't.

13:38

You're it's a it's a hole in death

13:40

valley.

13:40

You're absolutely right. It can't be a teeming it's

13:42

not

13:42

an avatar movie in there. Right? No. They

13:45

eat They eat like

13:47

little beetles and they eat

13:49

algae and they eat snails

13:52

and tiny crustaceans, all of which

13:54

couldn't survive also

13:56

outside of devil's hole. But

13:59

they're very little. So, of course, little things

14:01

find food where

14:03

big things may struggle to find

14:05

food. On speaking again,

14:07

on behalf of Native

14:09

Americans. Native Americans. I'm really really sure

14:11

you'd stop doing this. getting very uncomfortable.

14:13

I don't think that a whole oh,

14:16

look at speaking of wild animals.

14:18

I'm being stalked

14:19

by a cat, and you are being stalked by a cat. What do

14:21

you what exactly do you think you're

14:23

doing, cat? Did

14:24

she think she blends in? She doesn't move? Well, I'm

14:26

I'm not a t rex. I'm not sure, but she's really giving

14:28

you them. I know. The cat eye.

14:31

Yeah. No. Jump at him. I wanna see

14:33

you

14:33

jump and attack him. From there, go.

14:36

She's like two devil's holes away

14:38

from me right now. That cat's name

14:40

is Aliesca. She does not respond

14:42

to that name or to any of the things

14:44

you would say to a cat.

14:45

Reading. Well, now

14:47

you're being nice and it's confusing her.

14:49

She did look like she was stalking me that she's you

14:51

know, I I outweigh her by roughly hundred and

14:54

seventy pounds. That never stopped a

14:55

cat. Beer.

14:57

This is fascinating audio. Yeah. Don't

15:00

cut any

15:00

of this out. There's a weird cat that

15:03

that if it were up to me would live outside. But

15:05

it doesn't. It lives here in this

15:06

house, and now it's eyeballing Ken in

15:08

a crazy way.

15:09

Well, maybe if I ignore her her,

15:11

I I say it, but but it's only

15:13

because she and I have a contentious relationship.

15:17

One based on love and mutual

15:18

admiration. I'm gonna play hard to get and see what happens.

15:20

Maybe she'll call me to die. If I

15:22

were a member of a tribe that was trying to eke

15:24

out a living in the upper devil's

15:28

whole area, already a tough ask.

15:31

I don't know how many one inch

15:33

fish I would need to eat in order to make

15:36

it worth bringing them there for any reason

15:38

other than like loll

15:40

why don't we bring these fish here? What

15:41

if it's spiritual? You've already said they're you

15:43

already said they had a good vibe. They got pretty

15:45

good vibe that it could be spiritual.

15:48

Who knows? I'm no I'm no expert on religion.

15:50

One of the things

15:53

one of the mitigating circumstances or

15:55

I'm I'm sorry. One of the variables

15:58

here is that although devil's hole

16:00

is seventy two feet long and eleven and

16:02

a half feet wide, it

16:05

does not have

16:08

a bottom.

16:09

That's impossible.

16:11

Is

16:11

it all living things have a bottom? Is it I

16:13

have a bottom?

16:14

You have a bottom? Yes. All the little crustaceans

16:17

that Pupfish, you're saying the devil

16:19

has a hole but not a bottom. This is

16:21

like how many angels can dance on the head of a

16:23

pin? How can the devil have a hold and not a

16:24

bottom.

16:24

The devil has a haircut? He does.

16:28

You mean it's never been found. So well,

16:30

it's never been found. So they they

16:32

they dropped a line down, what are you doing?

16:35

You crazy cat? She's getting closer. She

16:37

is. Every time I look, she stops, but she's

16:39

in a different place. At

16:42

first, they they dropped a line down

16:44

there. So the devil's hole was

16:47

first really

16:49

investigated it only

16:51

in nineteen thirty. And

16:54

in nineteen thirty, the devil's soul Pupfish

16:57

was first identified not

16:59

till the thirties in nineteen

17:01

thirty, so very early in the thirties.

17:04

An American histiologist by the name of Joseph

17:06

Wales found

17:09

the Pupfish. And

17:12

recognized that it

17:15

was a population that did not it

17:19

was a completely confined

17:21

population. Other

17:22

Pupfish live where in in lakes, in

17:24

ocean rivers, lakes, they're

17:27

not marine fish.

17:28

No. They can survive in, like, yuck

17:30

yuck water, but they but there's not ocean

17:32

fisses. But

17:33

they're, like, bottom feeders of

17:35

Yeah. Of of

17:35

America's various gross lakes. They do

17:37

Yeah. They do beetles and algae. Right?

17:40

Pretty I mean, thank goodness they're there.

17:42

Otherwise, can you imagine how

17:44

gross devil's hole would

17:45

be?

17:46

Right now, this kept licking part of itself that I would

17:48

not like. So

17:49

Mhmm. I know. Well, she's being very playful

17:51

all of a sudden. I know I've never seen this.

17:56

The the fish there

17:58

in the hole well, so they tried to measure

18:00

the hole. At one point,

18:02

they got First,

18:06

they they measured it. It was deeper than

18:08

four hundred feet. So then somebody dropped

18:10

a line and got down to nine hundred

18:12

feet still, dad and hit bottom. Somebody

18:14

got in a scuba gear and went down

18:16

and could not pay me

18:18

enough. They

18:18

drove eleven feet wide and the guy's going down

18:21

they they dropped another line from farther

18:23

down, and they got to

18:26

below twelve hundred feet still had not hit

18:28

bottom. And then I think people were just like,

18:30

no, thanks. Do I'm is this I guess the limestone,

18:32

Karen, if you got enough limestone, you know,

18:34

the the hole will just keep going

18:37

--

18:37

Yeah. -- to the to the depth that it

18:39

dissolved. So that could go down

18:41

aways. I don't wanna jump way ahead,

18:43

but but now we're talking about devil's

18:45

hole.

18:47

Here's one crazy

18:49

thing. In two thousand twelve,

18:53

there

18:53

was a seven point five

18:56

on the Richter scale earthquake in Oaxaca,

18:59

two thousand miles south

19:01

of Devil's Hall. Uh-huh. And

19:05

That earthquake was twelve miles

19:07

below the surface, below

19:10

Oaxaca in Mexico. And

19:12

it produced a four foot

19:14

tall undulating wave that

19:16

went back and forth inside of devil's

19:18

hole. Not

19:22

felt or perceptible

19:24

even by the most sensitive equipment?

19:27

In Death Valley.

19:30

Humans didn't know, but the pupfish knew.

19:32

Well, the the water in the

19:34

pond in the hole what?

19:36

Created I mean, if you could imagine a four

19:38

foot tall, it's a tsunami.

19:41

Tsunami. In an eleven foot wide

19:44

going back and forth, it's seventy two

19:46

foot length. So

19:48

that really spooked everybody.

19:51

And this Who's everybody? The fish? Well,

19:53

no. The fish just bear it with the

19:55

equanimity, but no. All the people that were

19:57

like, say what now? The

20:00

water in this bottomless

20:02

hole is deep enough

20:05

that it is registering earthquakes

20:07

and Wahaqa to such a degree

20:10

that it's creating tsunamis. So

20:12

that means so that's just the

20:14

tsunami. The waves weren't just propagating through

20:16

the round from Mexico and then bumping

20:18

the water and creating some kind of resonance effect. Something

20:20

actually happened to connect devil's hole

20:23

to an earthquake whose epicenter

20:25

was in walk, under walk. I

20:27

don't know another explanation. The water somehow

20:29

goes all the way to

20:30

Mexico. This is this is the the I'm worried

20:32

about the crisis on our borders. John. I'm worried

20:34

about entering America through Devil's Hole.

20:36

I know people are wondering

20:39

whether Devil's Hole connects to

20:41

the water table at

20:43

some

20:44

miles deep level that only

20:48

crustaceans and beetles know about,

20:50

where

20:50

you're gonna build a wall in devil's a

20:52

lot of people and and I I share your

20:54

feeling that I

20:56

I don't wanna go scuba diving in a big

20:58

open

20:59

shallow Hawaiian

21:02

beach.

21:02

I've never done it, and I'm scared to do that.

21:04

Really don't wanna go down into like

21:07

a water column in the middle of the desert

21:10

that potentially goes all the way to

21:11

Mexico. If there were like eleven Thai

21:13

boys on a soccer team, I would do

21:16

Would you though?

21:16

Yeah. Thank you. My help. You'd ask if

21:19

not my expert retirement to do it or It's true. I

21:21

would write a fireman a check. Nineteen

21:24

sixty five, a teenager by the name of Paul

21:26

Gikon Tieri

21:29

climbed over what at the time was a

21:31

fence that was built around the hole, and I'll

21:33

talk about that in a second. With his

21:36

scuba gear and some some

21:38

teenagers who were

21:40

both in Death Valley and also

21:42

had Scuba Who owns Scuba Gear in the

21:44

Mojave? Well, I'm not sure. They they were

21:47

they were, you know, rambunctious sixties teens

21:49

probably wearing white

21:51

peg leg corduroy jeans. And they were,

21:54

like, I know. Let's go up and take our Woody

21:56

Station wagon to devil's

21:58

hole. Paul jumped in with his Scooby Gear,

22:00

went down and didn't come back up. Oh.

22:04

So his friend David Rose put on his

22:06

scuba gear went down to fine Paul.

22:08

He never came back up. They

22:10

searched a team of scuba

22:12

searchers, went down and

22:15

searched and searched and searched are you

22:17

gonna say they did come back,

22:20

but they never found them. So

22:22

there's a secret secret world of

22:24

teens. There's the beneath

22:26

the waves there. That's right. Perhaps the the

22:29

the teams

22:29

found beautiful mermaid singing to them.

22:31

They evolved gills and they're living down there.

22:33

So they're living in Oaxaca, They've lost their

22:35

pectoral fins and eating delicious malaise.

22:37

So it's a spooky place and people have

22:40

been trying to discover

22:43

that to plummet's depths. And

22:46

have yet to find

22:48

really its depths or to know anything

22:51

more about it other than that it's very small

22:53

at the top end goes forever.

22:55

I like a good mystery hole. Yeah. And

22:58

also, the pupfish only live in the

23:00

top twenty four feet, but

23:02

it is possible that

23:04

rather than having been brought there by

23:07

by, like, pranking

23:09

Indian brains, that

23:12

somehow there was some groundwater

23:14

burp and they were sucked

23:17

in from somewhere else Yeah. Could there

23:19

be current down there? What what it could even

23:21

have happened? I don't know. And burped up and

23:23

it happened fast enough that they survived. I just hope

23:26

it's encrypted. Yeah. You I

23:28

mean, I don't know. After

23:30

the discovery in nineteen thirty, there

23:34

was then pretty

23:37

quickly, a recognition that this

23:39

was a weird little, cool little thing, and

23:41

they needed to be protected. So

23:46

in the late forties, a guy by

23:48

the name of Karl HUBs appealed

23:51

to president Truman. Pupfish loving

23:53

Karl HUBs. Karl HUB said, hey,

23:56

mister president, we need to we

23:59

need to protect devil's

24:01

hole and these these

24:03

rambunctious fish. And

24:05

so Truman made it part of

24:07

the the

24:10

Death Valley Park at that point. It

24:12

it had been outside of the park prior to that,

24:14

but he extended it to include

24:17

the pond. It's now

24:19

federal it's now national park service

24:21

administered? Well,

24:24

it

24:25

has a long and sorted history

24:28

from that point to the present.

24:30

So people wouldn't leave it alone.

24:33

Teenage boys and and local

24:35

heathogs wouldn't leave it alone. So in nineteen fifty

24:38

six, they put a locked gate. One

24:43

key factor in the geology of

24:45

the whole is that there is

24:49

in this space, the seventy two

24:51

foot long space. An

24:53

area that they call the shelf,

24:56

which is

25:00

Well, as we know, it's it's eleven feet wide

25:02

because the pond is eleven feet

25:04

wide. But

25:04

the shelf runs the length of the Yeah.

25:06

It runs the width of

25:07

the width. And then the shelf is sixteen feet

25:10

long. So of the seventy two foot length

25:12

of the pond, sixteen feet of it

25:14

is part of the

25:15

shelf.

25:16

I can make it into a tub with very little work.

25:18

Well, and the shelf is only one foot

25:20

deep. The water

25:20

is only one foot Perfect. It's a jacuzzi waiting

25:22

to happen. Pupfish can only

25:25

breed in

25:28

by depositing eggs on

25:30

the shelf. So the shelf, which is

25:32

covered with kind of sand and debris

25:34

is where the fish do their fish

25:36

bits. This is like a dystopian future. Yeah. You

25:39

can only reproduce if you deposit your eggs

25:41

in the

25:41

shelf. They they have to be on the shelf.

25:43

The council has decided

25:47

because the rest of the pond is a bottomless

25:49

abyss. I changed my mind about making it a

25:51

hot tub because I don't wanna I don't wanna just be

25:53

enjoying devil's whole and just be sitting on

25:55

fishing.

25:55

Right. And this is the problem. People would jump in

25:57

like, Look at me. I'm in devil's whole.

25:59

So they're doing genocides every time

26:01

they switch flash. Yeah. They're screwing

26:03

up they're screwing up

26:06

the breeding grounds. Of

26:08

the pupfish. Can you cock block

26:10

a fish? You can if you get

26:13

down and kick all their eggs down into a hole.

26:17

So many attempts have

26:19

been made over the subsequent years to

26:22

protect devil's whole on

26:24

behalf of the fish. The

26:27

thing is that this environment was also

26:33

being developed by people as

26:36

as the west expanded This

26:39

isn't down in Death Valley.

26:41

It's up high in an

26:43

area

26:44

that's called the

26:47

ash meadows.

26:48

So this is not wilderness. I

26:51

was picturing wilderness. Well, it is wilderness.

26:53

But it somebody wants to

26:55

build a dam or housing development. So

26:57

in the sixties, a company

27:00

well, in the sixties originally, a family

27:03

by the name of the

27:05

the Capert family wanted

27:08

to ranch there. The

27:10

land was bought some

27:12

of a a big portion of the land was bought from the

27:14

Bureau of Land Management by a corporation called

27:16

Spring Meadows, and they

27:19

wanted to irrigate

27:22

eighteen miles of cropland and

27:24

grow, you know, what we all

27:27

should be growing in the deserts of California strawberries

27:30

and Perfect. Almonds, you

27:32

know, all the stuff that requires massive

27:34

massive ear gigs of water from every

27:36

other state. And what they were gonna do is

27:39

drill wells down into

27:41

the aquifer and pump the groundwater

27:44

up. This is, you know, shades

27:46

of the water wars episode we did very early

27:49

on in the program. And

27:51

and they did drill wells and they did start pumping

27:53

water and immediately the level of the water started

27:55

to drop in devil's

27:57

hole. And

27:57

there's only I know that's gonna happen. There's only

28:00

a foot of drop before the shelf is exposed,

28:02

and the Pupfish can no longer

28:06

propagate. You cannot drop the water

28:08

in devil's hole. There's

28:09

only a one foot margin

28:11

of error. I too am always maybe a one

28:13

foot margin of error away from having my sex life gone

28:15

for Yeah. I know. Well, and and your

28:18

sex life happens on a shelf, but that's part of

28:20

your your family tradition.

28:21

Sure. We always everybody has a shelf. For this.

28:23

Right? This

28:24

is me. Yeah. You're you're reproduction shelf.

28:26

We don't you don't have a reproduction shelf

28:29

at all. The

28:31

the government eventually told

28:33

spring Meadows that they couldn't

28:37

Roderick wells and take the water out within

28:39

an area of two

28:41

and then increasingly

28:43

a greater radius of miles around

28:45

devil's hole. But

28:46

we know the the sea level of devil's hole can be affected

28:48

by what happens in Oaxaca.

28:51

Yes. So Well, we found that

28:53

out only in two thousand twelve. At the time,

28:55

that's

28:55

new data. Yeah. At the time, it was

28:57

not clear that that was true, but we did know

28:59

that you couldn't

29:03

you couldn't drop the water by

29:05

much. And this was If you think

29:07

about the endangered species

29:09

act, it was passed in seventy

29:11

three, but there was

29:12

also a president Nixon. There was also a considerable

29:15

awareness of endangered species at this

29:17

point. And the the devil's

29:19

whole pupfish was declared an endangered

29:21

species. In nineteen sixty

29:23

seven, one of the first amyls

29:27

to to be an endangered

29:29

species. But and I I say this with the nicest

29:31

possible intention. Isn't it kind of a little If

29:34

it's like I'm I'm just

29:36

gonna die forever if my water

29:38

level changes by one

29:40

foot.

29:40

Yeah. And that's

29:41

not the hardiest of there's

29:43

only life forms. A couple hundred

29:45

of them and they live

29:47

in a tiny pond in the middle

29:49

of

29:50

absolute nowhere. But

29:52

that's exactly what we need to protect the most.

29:54

And they're one inch long. But

29:56

they're they're cute. They're cute. They play like

29:58

little puppies, playful and blue, and they're

30:00

not like other puppies. They're the Smurfs of the

30:03

of the caves. Ken,

30:06

we've got a new t shirt

30:08

design 538 all this time. It's about time.

30:10

Yeah. I know. It is about time. And

30:13

not only is our new t shirt design cool,

30:16

but it does not incorporate artwork

30:19

submitted by one of our fans. It is entirely

30:21

your and my idea. You wanted

30:23

a simpler look. You thought

30:25

maybe the big graphic keys were leaving out

30:27

an audience who wanted something

30:30

cleaner, smaller, prepier?

30:33

Yeah. That's right. I mean, I feel like if

30:35

you're gonna if you're gonna cover the front of a shirt

30:38

with a with a giant emblem, it should be

30:40

three wolves howling at the moon. A

30:43

hundred percent. Whereas if you're going to do

30:45

as we have done and release two

30:48

matching t shirts, a

30:50

match set, One in

30:52

black says over the

30:54

left pocket, left breast

30:58

compatible with Marxism. Mhmm.

31:00

And then a matching shirt

31:03

in gray, but that says,

31:05

not compatible with Mark

31:06

says, are you with me? Are you with me so far? In

31:08

hindsight, maybe we done Marxism on the left

31:11

and anti Marxism on the right. Oh, that would

31:13

have been smart. It didn't

31:14

occur to us. Well, next time.

31:17

But this is your chance to vote with your

31:19

dollars. Do you want the compatible with Omnibus

31:22

t shirt or the not compatible with

31:24

Marxism omnibus t

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shirt. We don't know. We won't know who won the cold

31:27

war until the numbers are in. So futurelings,

31:31

if you love talking about omnibus and

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love talking about politics with strangers

31:36

and economics, which I'm guessing

31:38

you all do in one form or

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fashion. These t shirts are real

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your house. You and your

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significant other or insignificant other

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depending on how compatible with Marxism

31:52

you

31:52

are. You can argue about the collectivization of

31:55

farms for days. Yeah. You can wear opposite

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shirts on certain days and let

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that, you know, ignite conversation

32:01

over the breakfast

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table. Go check out our friends

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at mediocrity own the means of production.

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So go to omnibusproject dot com slash

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store and follow the links to these

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cool new Marxist

32:13

themed t shirts. So

32:16

it becomes, in this part of California,

32:20

a big environmentalist versus

32:24

spotted owl thing but in the desert.

32:25

Yes. Versus ranchers and developers.

32:28

Because you can't do anything to the wells for

32:31

miles around because of this little blue fish.

32:33

You can't do you really can't do

32:36

anything, and they all hate it.

32:38

They all hate that fish. Well, the locals

32:41

and the yeah. The people

32:43

that that want

32:45

to destroy

32:49

things just because they're beautiful. They

32:52

want to destroy the pupfish just

32:54

as a matter of as

32:57

a matter of just political expediency.

33:01

But the hippies

33:04

and scientists which are, that's

33:06

synonymous at this time. They

33:08

decide that they need to take

33:11

drastic measures to preserve the

33:14

population of Pupfish because there are

33:16

so few of them and they are so vulnerable

33:19

to even tiny changes and the land

33:21

around them is being encroached

33:23

upon by all these new stresses

33:26

that that

33:28

they start attempting off-site

33:32

breeding programs

33:35

to -- Sure. -- just find a

33:37

shelf. Yeah. To make enough new

33:40

pupfish that either we

33:42

can let these ones die or

33:44

we can replenish Pupfish. Because

33:47

the pupfish in the summer

33:50

in the winter breeding season, I guess

33:52

they breed all year long, but in the winter their

33:54

population regularly declines

33:56

by

33:58

two thirds -- Mhmm. -- and then they have bunch

34:00

of new pupfish and they fill pond fills

34:02

up again. And I would

34:03

guess an individual pupfish probably doesn't live that

34:05

long. No, that's exactly

34:07

right. So

34:10

lots of attempts have been made

34:12

over the years to save

34:15

the pupfish by

34:20

off-site breeding of

34:22

the pupfish. So

34:24

one of the first things they did was they tried

34:27

to build an artificial shelf

34:30

in the pond. That was

34:32

lower. A little lower, but

34:35

the fish never

34:37

used the the art of fish. They didn't

34:40

make it sexy enough. Right.

34:42

If you had just found I mean, this is just a classic

34:45

DIY

34:45

project. Oh, I'll just build a second shelf,

34:47

but they forgot. The shelf had to be

34:49

sexy. Then

34:52

they took a

34:54

selection of pupfish from the

34:56

pond, and they took them to other nearby

34:59

hot springs that did not have Pupfish.

35:03

But those fish all died. So

35:06

then there were two separate attempts to

35:10

to breed pupfish in aquariums. And

35:14

in both those cases, all the pupfish

35:16

died.

35:16

Even in aquariums, they they're having a hard

35:18

time creating any environment where

35:21

these guys will live. Yes.

35:24

Not just having a hard time. They

35:26

are not at all succeeding. Something

35:29

magical about the devil's whole. In

35:32

nineteen seventy two,

35:34

a group of Pupfish

35:38

were And and

35:40

what they would do is they would go 538

35:42

the pupfish had laid their eggs. The

35:45

scientists would go in and collect eggs

35:49

that they knew, you know, of only a small

35:51

portion of the eggs that are because

35:53

they breed year round. They know

35:55

some seasons, the eggs have a much

35:57

greater chance of hatching than

36:00

other seasons, and they would go in and scientists

36:02

would take a group of winter eggs, and

36:05

then they would hatch them. And

36:08

so they took some winter pupfish

36:10

eggs down to the Hoover Dam Refugium

36:14

for endangered desert fish Hoover

36:17

dam has its very own refugee?

36:19

Yes. I wouldn't have thought so.

36:21

For endangered deaths I wouldn't have thought

36:23

Hoover dam's main job was to kill Desertfish.

36:26

In this case, as

36:28

part of their overall project to kill

36:30

Pupfish, they built a refugee to

36:32

It probably

36:33

gets it gives them broader latitude

36:35

to kill them elsewhere, presumably. Yeah.

36:37

Maybe so. If you can You can always move

36:39

them to the a few genes. You can take a a bunch

36:41

of VIPs through the refugee and say,

36:43

like, look

36:43

at what we're doing. Do you have a sense of the difference between

36:46

a refugee and a refugee? I

36:50

mean, I think the the proprietor of a refugee

36:52

him is probably wearing a top hat and spats.

36:54

Right? It does sound

36:55

fancier. Yeah. It does. It sounds

36:57

more sciencey.

36:59

They succeeded

37:03

in building a population of

37:05

several Pupfish,

37:08

double specifically devil's whole Pupfish in

37:11

the reef in the Hoover Dam Refugium for

37:14

endangered endangered endangered But

37:17

in nineteen eighty five, somebody

37:19

forgot to clean the filter and

37:22

water temperatures dropped by a couple of

37:24

degrees and all of the fish died

37:26

except one, just like my jellyfish. Yeah.

37:29

And they moved that that fish. I guess

37:31

maybe they took that pupfish back to be with the

37:33

other pupfish Another time they

37:35

tried to they built a

37:39

Pupfish Aquarium,

37:41

Refugem. They built a Refugem just for

37:43

Pupfish. The Amorgosa Pupfish station.

37:47

And at the Amorgosa

37:49

pupfish

37:50

station, they were they they got up to

37:52

a hundred and twenty one Pupfish. I would like to imagine

37:54

it's near the Améros Opera House. It's very

37:56

close. This is all this is all part and

37:58

parcel of the same area. You can finish seeing your

38:01

performance and then walk next door to the

38:03

refugee.

38:04

Now while they're attempting to build all these

38:07

or I'm sorry. Sustain

38:09

all these populations of pupfish. The

38:12

land itself is still very

38:14

disputed. In nineteen eighty,

38:18

Pupfish and wildlife designated

38:22

twenty one thousand acres around

38:25

the devil's hole as

38:28

a habitat, a

38:30

general habitat that needed to be protected

38:33

in order to sustain the pupfish

38:35

population which ranges

38:38

from in the best of times

38:41

three hundred fish in winter to

38:43

somewhere in the nine hundred fish

38:46

in summer zone. Okay.

38:48

Although over the years, it's gotten down

38:50

to as few as, like, a hundred fish

38:53

alive in the whole

38:55

It's an interesting ecological question because

38:57

normally you're thinking, hey, we're not going wipe

38:59

out the species whole habitat, but we want

39:01

to supplement that with zoos and and parks

39:04

and stuff. But in this case,

39:06

it seems like the whole habitat could be wiped

39:08

out so easily

39:09

because, again, it's eleven feet wide. It's the size

39:11

of your guest bathroom. Yeah. At one point,

39:14

there was a flash flood,

39:16

and the flash flood swept

39:19

all the scientists monitoring equipment

39:22

into the devil's hole

39:24

and on its way down to the endless

39:26

bottom, it killed eighty of the Pupfish.

39:30

Classic zoological blunder. Yeah.

39:32

Like Whoops. What

39:34

a nub see? For a pupfish expert.

39:38

But after Pupfish and wildlife designated

39:41

this twenty one thousand acres, that

39:43

same year, nineteen eighty, a giant

39:45

parcel of land was

39:47

sold to neighboring land, was sold

39:50

to the preferred equities corporation. Oh,

39:52

they sound naive at all. They're super

39:54

nice, and they had a plan, get

39:56

this. To build residential

39:59

neighborhoods, encompassing thirty

40:01

three thousand residential

40:04

properties, a giant subdivision

40:07

of houses carved out of the

40:09

nowhereville desert right next to

40:12

right next to devil's hole. Close enough to the devil's

40:14

hole that if they Because what

40:16

are they gonna do? Late water

40:19

pipes from Sacramento? No. They're gonna

40:21

drill down into the aquifer. Yeah.

40:24

And take this precious one foot of water

40:27

even though if it does

40:29

go Oh, and also it was then

40:33

we've now seen we

40:35

scientists who studied the devil's whole

40:37

pupfish. And you're

40:38

one of the good ones because you've never killed eighty of them with

40:40

a -- Not a single time. Dropping a camera. We've

40:42

seen that the water in the devil's

40:44

hole responds to earthquakes that

40:46

happen as far afield as Alaska and

40:50

not all the way to Uzbekistan,

40:53

but when big earthquakes happen, that's

40:56

so crazy. And the seismographs don't pick it up

40:58

at all. All of a sudden, there'll

41:00

be like this huge water event inside the

41:02

hole. And this is not a resonance thing that we've seen happen

41:04

in other other little caverns. Right?

41:06

It's it's something unique to the weird depth

41:08

of devil's

41:09

hole. It seems to be really, really

41:11

surprising to the people who are

41:14

who are crouching on that shelf collecting winter

41:16

eggs.

41:17

I can only imagine. In nineteen

41:19

eighty four, no less

41:21

an environmentalist than secretary

41:24

of the Then Secretary of the Interior

41:26

James Watt. Hey, miss Beach

41:28

Boys fan. James Watt. James

41:30

Watt, who at the time for those of you who were

41:32

not teenagers in nineteen eighty two,

41:35

James Watt was perhaps one

41:37

of the most reviled members

41:39

of Ronald Reagan's cabinet. Ronald

41:42

Reagan's cabinet being a true, like,

41:45

McCab, like,

41:48

Rogue's gallery of bad bad

41:50

dudes. But James Watt was one of the worst

41:52

dudes. He actually listed

41:54

two more species of pupfish

41:57

that exist in other ponds nearby

41:59

that are not as endangered

42:01

oh, he's on the good side of the pupfish issue. In

42:03

this issue, yes, he listed them as

42:05

endangered species really

42:07

putting The the final nail in

42:09

the coffin of the Ash Meadows

42:11

plan, which was preferred

42:13

equities corporations thirty three thousand

42:16

homes plan. James Watt. Thank

42:18

you. James Watt stopped it. And

42:20

then in eighty four, the nature conservancy,

42:23

which is independent environmental

42:25

nonprofit, put together five

42:27

and half million dollars and bought all

42:30

of what was going to be ash Meadows

42:32

and turned it then back over to

42:34

the government. And

42:38

I think in exchange for five and a half

42:40

million dollars from the government,

42:42

and they turned it into the Ashmeadow's

42:44

national wildlife

42:45

refuge. Mhmm. So now

42:47

there is

42:48

This is a Pupfish all the Is the whole

42:50

thing just exists for pupfish? Yes. I

42:52

mean, I mean, I'm sure there's jackrabbit hopping

42:54

around on top

42:55

that you can

42:55

walk around and stuff. But the main reason

42:58

is save our Save our Pupfish.

43:00

our save our

43:02

pupfish. Agreed. Let's save all the

43:04

pupfish.

43:06

It is though

43:09

still

43:10

by no means are the is the future

43:12

of Pupfish

43:15

Hold on. Hold on. Is the I was just gonna ask

43:17

if the future of the Pupfish was assured and Is it

43:19

like it's not? It's not assured. No.

43:22

Bummer. In two thousand five,

43:24

so much sediment had washed onto

43:27

the shelf, that

43:29

the shelf itself was

43:31

rising up into the into

43:34

the hot zone. Shelf was getting too tall.

43:36

So in two thousand five, the the well

43:38

meaning scientist went down and cleared

43:40

off some sediment from the

43:42

shelf. Yeah. Sweep the shelf, which helped

43:45

Mark onto that shelf. But over overall,

43:48

the population of Pupfish

43:50

still declined. In two

43:53

thousand six, they started to supplement

43:55

the food supply with more

43:58

crustaceans and algae

44:00

and so forth, didn't really

44:02

help. In

44:05

two thousand

44:06

sixteen, three local guys

44:09

ran their ATV into

44:11

the fence They tried several times

44:13

to bash in the way they were

44:14

trying to knock it over. They could beer is

44:16

amazing, isn't it? They couldn't get in. So

44:18

one of them took a shotgun and blasted

44:21

the lock off of the fence, at

44:23

which point they went over to the

44:27

the devil's hole, jumped down on the shelf, kicked

44:30

the dirt. Underwater.

44:32

Like, on purpose, this is, like, Pupfish, anti

44:34

cubism. That's right. Like, we're gonna kill

44:36

the pupfish because this is some

44:38

sort of hippie COVID

44:41

nonsense. And then I think one

44:43

of them vomited in the pool because

44:45

they were drunk. That was prior. Yeah. That was just the next.

44:47

That was like that wasn't the plan. That

44:50

hurt some pupfish pretty badly. Oh,

44:52

emotionally, I would I would guess.

44:55

Oh, forgot to mention In

44:57

two thousand and six, back, this would have been

44:59

ten years prior. They

45:02

tried again to develop

45:05

a breeding population of pupfish outside

45:07

of devil's hole by taking

45:10

seven pupfish from

45:13

a couple of them from the pond itself and a

45:15

couple of them from a different breeding program where

45:17

all the rest of them were dying. And

45:19

they put them in a big aquarium in the Mandalay

45:21

Bay Casino in Las Vegas,

45:25

where it was going to be like a very controlled

45:27

scientific environment where they were gonna

45:29

really try and figure out how to there was

45:31

a shelf and everything. The water was

45:33

ninety one degrees They found all the pupfish's

45:36

favorite algae's and

45:37

beetles. And

45:38

think about, you sent somebody to Vegas? All

45:41

kinds of reproduction might ensue.

45:42

Exactly. Think about the shelf there.

45:44

Yeah. It's a lot of shelves. But

45:47

in the following year, they all died. That

45:51

same year, they found twenty

45:54

four different pupfish that

45:56

they by cobbling together,

45:59

some pupfish from this failed experiment, some

46:01

Pupfish from that failed experiment, and

46:03

they took them to the Willow Beach National

46:06

Fish Hatchery. Where is that?

46:09

In Willow Beach? And

46:12

they tried to keep them alive, but

46:15

all twenty four of those pupfish

46:17

died of what they suspect

46:19

is fish leukemia. Wait.

46:22

Yeah. There's such a thing as Pupfish leukemia

46:24

-- Yeah. -- in this instance.

46:25

Yeah. This just seems like this

46:27

is cursed. Like, god does

46:29

not want the pup the devil's whole pupfish

46:31

to live. Well and

46:34

yet, they live on.

46:36

They the pupfish have survived all

46:38

of this indignity, and

46:41

there are still

46:44

enough pupfish

46:47

that we're talking about them. The Phyllis

46:49

Guardian can, are they still just as threatened

46:51

as ever, like any little Any

46:53

little thing going wrong with the devil's

46:55

hole

46:55

there? Is there existence precarious?

46:58

Well, here's a new wrinkle. I don't

47:00

know. In two thousand,

47:04

in devil's whole, a

47:07

predteous diving beetle was

47:10

first recognized

47:13

as having arrived. It's an who knows what?

47:15

An invasive species. An invasive, maybe

47:17

on those drunk guys, ATV wheels. And

47:20

the diving beetle is not big

47:22

enough to eat a one inch long fish.

47:24

It's just a beetle, size beetle.

47:27

But it does eat eggs.

47:30

Mhmm. And juveniles, and it also

47:32

outcompetes the the

47:35

devil's Pupfish for all the delicious

47:38

crustaceans, snails, and

47:40

algae. And the

47:42

prestigious diving beetle has not

47:45

they have not yet but we fans

47:48

of Pupfish have not yet figured out

47:50

a way to eradicate the

47:52

diving beetle. So the diving beetle is a

47:55

new wrinkle that is

47:58

imperiling the fish.

48:00

Although the fish the fish

48:02

are still fighting in

48:04

this increasingly quixotic quest to keep

48:06

this species that

48:09

doesn't seem to want to be alive alive.

48:12

So in two thousand in

48:15

the two thousand tens, a full

48:17

scale replica of

48:19

the top twenty two feet of

48:22

devil's hole. So

48:24

that's eleven and a half feet wide

48:26

by seventy two feet long by

48:28

twenty two feet deep,

48:32

Roderick of Devil's

48:34

Hole was built. They're gonna try to move

48:36

them and, like, let them not

48:37

know. Like, they wake up and they're like, yeah, this is probably

48:40

the shelf. That's right. They're they

48:42

built a one hundred thousand gallon

48:44

tank just to fool these pupfish.

48:47

At a new facility, the Ashmeadow's

48:49

Pupfish Conservation Facility,

48:53

including a spawning shelf

48:56

and they they populated it with

48:58

eggs that they gathered in the winter. They

49:00

treated the eggs with

49:03

several treatments, antifungalact, antibacterial,

49:06

antiparasite treatments, they

49:10

successfully hatched a

49:13

Pupfish here in the in

49:16

the forty million dollar Ashmetto's

49:19

Pupfish Conservation Facility or the AMFCF.

49:23

It's been very successful so far they

49:26

have more than fifty fish

49:29

as of two thousand twenty one living

49:31

now a a separate Two separate 538

49:34

Fifty they've only spent about a million

49:36

dollars for Fitch. In that instance,

49:38

yes. So the issue being,

49:41

I guess, not to both

49:43

sides, the pupfish story, the life of

49:45

the existence of pupfish. But a lot of

49:47

the people in Armigosa County have

49:52

spent the last fifty five

49:54

or more years

49:57

watching government

50:00

agents and

50:02

out of out of state can be

50:04

do gooders, do gooders, carpet baggers

50:07

go to increasingly great lengths to

50:10

save what has never been a population of

50:12

fish greater than eight or nine hundred

50:14

one inch long In a

50:16

place where now the area

50:18

is completely fenced off, so you can't go

50:21

see them.

50:24

One could one could argue, yes, that

50:27

the Christian ethos

50:29

requires one. Like, it makes you more

50:32

culpable for the life of a species

50:34

that is only eight or nine hundred

50:36

people. Yes. Although, I think

50:38

the people in in the in Parramp

50:41

they may be more of a prosperity gospel kind

50:44

of a town. Well, no, I think they would argue that the

50:46

government agents and carpet bangers aren't Christians.

50:50

Right? They're bunch of

50:52

god bunch of godless fishhuggers.

50:54

Yeah. Exactly. Like ivory tower.

50:56

I'm just saying they should the fish more than

50:58

anyone because they they shouldn't just say,

51:00

hey,

51:01

the fact that this is a small struggling species

51:04

means It's less important to

51:06

say than no.

51:07

Like,

51:08

what are the gospels taught us? The small

51:10

struggling species needs the most love.

51:13

Well, we northwesterners

51:15

All of this harkens back to the spotted

51:17

owl, controversy of the nineteen

51:20

eighties and nineties. Here

51:21

in the northwest a tiny tiny

51:23

owl which

51:26

was being out competed

51:28

by the Invasive Bartowell, which

51:31

required old

51:34

growth trees couldn't

51:36

couldn't nest in more recent

51:39

young growth trees. They have their own

51:41

shelf. They needed this special mating

51:43

shelf, the owls themselves were the

51:45

size of a Dr Peppercan. And

51:49

in order to protect this endangered species

51:51

of of micro alts. Basically,

51:55

to hear the loggers tell it, logging

51:59

was curtailed to the point that it was no

52:02

longer it ended an industry. Yes. And

52:04

it ended an industry and through thousands

52:06

and thousands of hardworking American loggers

52:09

out of work, you know, into into

52:12

poverty, and they all had to go get jobs at fulfillment

52:14

centers down in Salem,

52:16

Oregon where even now their

52:19

sons and daughters are or

52:21

sadly going to the yeah, like hucking Amazon

52:24

boxes onto conveyor belts. Instead of

52:26

living their tree their, you

52:28

know, true free lives as lumberjacks,

52:30

lumberjacks cutting down trees. Eating

52:33

their lunch, etcetera, putting on

52:35

women's clothing, suspenders, and a bra?

52:37

Hanging on. Hanging out in malls. Yeah.

52:40

So we spent a lot of time hearing the arguments

52:42

both pro and con for

52:45

tremendous effort and

52:47

economic disruption in order

52:49

to save an an endangered species whose

52:53

overall value to the ecosystem

52:56

is hard to

52:59

quantify. I feel bad for the

53:01

spot of our because it didn't it didn't do anything

53:03

other than that. Get killed and then it was demonized.

53:05

That's right. I mean, even

53:08

as we've been doing this show, probably fifteen

53:10

species that have never been invented, or I'm sorry,

53:13

never been identified, have been destroyed

53:15

in the Amazon rainforest. We just

53:17

watched four different kinds of frogs

53:20

and an awful lot follow

53:23

the follow these animals into

53:25

I feel for them for me. I make sure I have a little alderon

53:27

moment every day. And me too. I

53:31

for one scan

53:33

our pupfish

53:36

overlords. They're not really overlords. Well,

53:38

I don't know. They get more money than I have. The

53:41

the two hundred surviving pupfish.

53:43

You could move to firearms. Yeah. They're getting more

53:45

gumming money than me or mama ever did.

53:47

If you if you include interest, each one of them

53:49

is probably worth twenty million

53:50

dollars. I'm you know, I

53:53

support this kind of effort. I think

53:55

every every species

53:57

deserves a refugee. Yeah. And as as

53:59

as they disappears so to, you know,

54:01

but I also support relearning

54:04

dead languages. And I

54:07

believe that

54:09

No species is an island. That's right. Or a

54:11

shelf. Each each fish's death diminishes

54:13

me. That's right. Ask not for whom the

54:15

Oaxacan earthquake tolls. Listen, you're gonna

54:17

you're gonna quote kipling, you're gonna be in big

54:19

trouble with the anti kiplingists. No,

54:22

that's okay. This is John Dunn. I'm safe.

54:25

But but the controversy

54:28

continues. And as you know, in this

54:30

era of the great coming

54:33

together of all Americans, and

54:35

shared prosperity and

54:37

belief in the American system. It's amazing

54:39

how we did that. It's it's

54:42

a contentious

54:44

contentious and divisive enterprise

54:48

out in the middle of a desert that

54:50

recently no one is

54:52

there and Honestly,

54:55

no one cares. But

54:58

the two hundred people that are tilting at

55:00

one another across this Who will care for

55:02

the

55:02

Pupfish? Eleven foot what? I mean, you could literally

55:05

jump across the devil's hole. This

55:06

is why interstellar exploration is

55:08

so important. We must find a new planet.

55:11

That has an equivalent eleven foot wide

55:13

habitat where the pupfish can thrive.

55:16

No. I mean, I wanna find a water planet

55:18

where the water is always ninety one

55:20

degrees Half of the planet

55:22

is a one foot deep shelf that's a

55:24

huge pupfish sex party. Yeah.

55:26

Millions and billions of Pupfish. And maybe there's a

55:28

little eleven foot wide place where humans can and

55:30

they can argue about whether or not to execute us.

55:32

There's never not one of them has

55:34

ever had a pictorial fin. I

55:37

mean, I think not not a single pectoral

55:39

thin to offend the eye. I feel like

55:42

I could live in a in a

55:44

ninety one degree pond with a one foot

55:46

shelf, but everyone's while you wanna get out of the

55:47

water. Right? Even a even

55:50

a bather like you.

55:51

Yeah. I think I'm obsessed

55:51

to get up from yourself.

55:52

Would you know one foot deep you could get a lunch?

55:54

And

55:57

that concludes the devil's whole Pupfish.

56:00

Entry 342 dot PS10529

56:04

certificate number 51036

56:07

in the omnibus. Future

56:11

Linksys products have our time. The

56:13

Omnibus was found online at omnibus

56:16

project. Me and John were Sorry.

56:18

John and I We're at Ken Jennings

56:20

at John Roderick, respectively? We

56:22

are at Ken Jennings. No. Would

56:25

me be at Ken Jennings, Ken? I

56:27

feel like I spent so much of my life trying

56:29

to talk like other people and now I get weirdos

56:31

mad at me for talking like other people. That's

56:34

the the the perils

56:37

of assimilation. You

56:39

could email us at the omnibus project

56:42

at gmail dot com and send physical

56:44

items. I don't know what you would be sending us in

56:46

this

56:46

case. Pupfish related

56:49

gear of all kinds. I mean, I have

56:51

no doubt that there are hundreds

56:54

of ichthyologists listening to the show.

56:57

And some of them probably have very strong

56:59

feelings about the Pupfish.

57:01

And one of them at least is wearing pair

57:03

of Pupfish skinned cowboys. Send us your

57:05

local anti pupfish buttons

57:08

and banner. There you go. That's what

57:10

I

57:10

want. There

57:10

are kill the the the

57:13

bumper stickers. Is that right? Yeah. Do

57:15

you think that there are any kind

57:17

of like big game hunters

57:19

that, you know, in search of the world's most

57:21

exotic kills have now zeroed in on the

57:23

devil's whole pupfish? Are

57:24

you supposed to get there? Yeah. Yeah. They're hiding there with

57:26

little tiny harpoons. Like,

57:29

made out of made out of toothache,

57:31

like, they're they're like d and d figurines, but

57:33

you know, weapons for your for your miniatures

57:36

that they're trying to use to to

57:38

execute Pupfish. They land

57:40

in a in a all black helicopter

57:42

in the middle of the night and their and their assistant

57:45

in safari jackets cuts through the

57:47

fence? Exactly. And they jumped down

57:49

on that one foot ledge and to some wealthy

57:51

dentist and coral gables with

57:53

his miniature pupfish killing gear.

57:56

How I how I hate

57:56

him? It definitely is one

57:58

of the rarest foods, it's

58:01

true. Think about that. Think they're delicious. Think

58:03

about the people that are that are eating solid

58:05

gold ice cream in some New York

58:07

restaurant. That costs fifty thousand dollars.

58:09

Gotta have gold leaf on the burger. How are you gonna

58:11

get that foamed pupfish?

58:14

I mean, how many sardines are in a can? It's pretty

58:16

close to a refuse rheum, refugeeum full

58:18

of Pupfish, you know? Like, forty

58:20

would be pretty good breeding year for them and that's

58:22

like that's one can of sardines. Imagine

58:25

a little can of Pupfish. Delicious

58:28

salty pupfish. Blue

58:30

the bluish food. I wonder

58:32

if you pull a pupfish out of devil's hole

58:34

whether the blue goes away

58:37

and they just end up

58:37

being, you know, like, all the beautiful fish. They're

58:39

not pretty once they get out of the water. It's there's

58:42

a there's a message there at that. Did

58:45

I give the address p o box 55744,

58:47

Shoreline, Washington 98155?

58:51

Fellow future links can be argued

58:54

or commiserated with at the future links

58:56

groups on Facebook and

58:58

probably Roderick and that discord

59:00

about your

59:01

shows, whatever

59:02

it is, and discourse. Yeah. Discord.

59:04

Discord. There are Discord.

59:06

Above. But the the there's

59:08

discord on discourse and there's discourse on discourse.

59:10

So it's it's

59:11

hard to remember which is which for you. We try to

59:13

keep the discourse on the discourse down to a

59:15

think the people on the discord are keeping the

59:18

discourse

59:18

going. They're maximizing discourse.

59:21

Perfect. The

59:23

best way you can ensure the survival,

59:25

not of the devil's whole Pupfish, but

59:27

of this endeavor would be

59:29

to go to patreon dot com slash omnibus

59:31

project. And Peru's really

59:34

the remarkable unsubstantive awards

59:36

available to those who who

59:39

choose to who choose to donate

59:41

everything from bonus shows, to

59:45

video virtual content, to real life content,

59:47

exclusive t shirts that you can wear and Roderick.

59:50

Ken, I'd like you to know, today's show

59:52

was suggested by a Patreon

59:54

donor and omnibus future link

59:57

by the name of

59:57

Robert. As was his privilege for giving

59:59

at that level last year. That's right. Robert said

1:00:02

devil's whole Pupfish. And he gave

1:00:04

you quite an elaborate breakdown.

1:00:09

You did? Of how what the narrative arc

1:00:11

of the Pupfish might be. Right? You did. And then, you

1:00:13

know, the the devil's whole popfish is one

1:00:15

of those shows that even though it was

1:00:17

chopped of

1:00:17

information, I feel like I could go another

1:00:20

hour talking about the devil's

1:00:22

Pupfish

1:00:23

just based on Robert's notes. Just so much

1:00:25

additional information to to put in

1:00:27

there. But, you know, we have

1:00:29

to we have to keep it a listable

1:00:32

listable length. So Thank you for your

1:00:34

support, Robert. Thank you, Robert. I

1:00:37

mean speaking of reproduction shelf, think

1:00:39

about all the attention you will get from potential

1:00:42

breeding partners. When you're wearing

1:00:44

an exclusive Omnibus donor's t

1:00:46

shirt?

1:00:48

Possibly zero. But imagine, almost

1:00:50

certainly not zero. It's a it's a

1:00:52

positive amount. There's a love for everyone

1:00:54

and all you have to do is find your find your

1:00:56

shelf. You need to find someone else wearing

1:00:59

that same t shirts -- Mhmm. --

1:01:01

and run toward them in slow motion.

1:01:03

Mhmm. Carve out a little little

1:01:05

place in the sediment. It's good

1:01:07

to run at them in slow motion because then they can run away

1:01:09

from you at regular speeds. In

1:01:12

case that is not desired attention.

1:01:15

Do you remember when that was the most iconic thing,

1:01:17

the cherry it's a fire theme and people running on

1:01:19

a

1:01:20

beach? Zero cultural

1:01:22

memory of this. Do you accept

1:01:24

in the crowd? Yeah. That's right. When

1:01:26

when that scene came on the crowd, everybody

1:01:28

in sitting on the couch with me was like,

1:01:30

what? No. Like,

1:01:33

that's the reveal. The big reveal. Spoiler

1:01:35

alert. I mean, I think the same

1:01:37

producer, this is not in the crown, but the same producer

1:01:39

chair at the Tiger's next movie was local

1:01:42

hero, which is a movie I actually prefer.

1:01:45

I watched local hero. Two

1:01:47

nights.

1:01:48

No. Two nights ago. Had you ever

1:01:50

seen

1:01:50

it? I had never seen it.

1:01:51

It's fun. I mean, Bertland customers kinda

1:01:54

Yeah. He's Tammy. It was fun,

1:01:56

but again, I watched it with my

1:01:58

daughter. And she again

1:02:01

looked at me and said, are you kidding me?

1:02:03

Why does this exist? Why are we watching

1:02:05

these movies, I asked her to watch

1:02:08

going in style with George Burns.

1:02:10

Okay. Why are you recommended today? Why are

1:02:13

you recommending because I remember

1:02:15

when I was her age watching it in a movie

1:02:17

theater and thinking it was fun, but

1:02:19

now I realized that it's a movie for eighty

1:02:21

year olds. And And it

1:02:23

just recalled to me like,

1:02:25

oh, in nineteen

1:02:27

eighty, we thought a lot of things

1:02:29

were fun that aren't fun.

1:02:32

That's

1:02:32

just the only we have. We mistakenly believed.

1:02:35

Right. Due to a scarcity of options, George

1:02:37

Burns was in, oh god, And we

1:02:39

thought that was fun. And so We thought

1:02:42

John Denver was an

1:02:42

actor. Yeah. John Denver was amazing. That's

1:02:44

how blinkered we were. And so then

1:02:46

when when when going

1:02:49

to, you know, what

1:02:51

did I just say? Going

1:02:54

in style came out. We were like, a George Burns

1:02:56

movie. He's back. And

1:02:59

not it was not actually very funny. It's actually

1:03:01

pretty tragic. I will say that when I watched local hero

1:03:03

with my kids, I think they were they did kind of see the

1:03:05

charm. Well, yeah. And and

1:03:07

and did you know there's a Star Wars tie in for

1:03:09

your daughter? What was the star?

1:03:11

Did

1:03:11

you know that the local guy that works every job

1:03:14

plays x wing pilot wedge

1:03:16

antilles in every original Star Wars

1:03:18

movie into rest. You

1:03:20

know the guy who's the lawyer, but also the inn keeper.

1:03:22

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

1:03:23

That's wedge in his usual Scottish accent.

1:03:25

No kidding. You've

1:03:28

never seen him without a big helmet. No. I'll have

1:03:30

to I'll have to mention that

1:03:32

too.

1:03:32

To the child for your second screening. Yeah.

1:03:34

That's right. We're gonna have to watch it again. There's

1:03:37

there's subjects we missed. But yeah,

1:03:39

it was you know, it's also funny

1:03:41

how differently paced movies

1:03:43

were then because all of

1:03:45

these movies you're just like, oh wait,

1:03:48

we're already in the movie. This isn't just

1:03:50

ProLog. This is how it's

1:03:52

going. We're gonna It's

1:03:53

actually gonna be like this the whole time.

1:03:55

Yeah. We're gonna slow walk this movie.

1:03:57

It's very ironic you're complaining about this fifteen

1:03:59

minutes into the outro of this pop

1:04:01

show when we're talking about George Burns for no

1:04:03

reason. We

1:04:05

invented slow cinema here on the omnibus.

1:04:07

He's kind of you know, he's

1:04:10

kind of great George Burns. Well,

1:04:14

I mean, he's got fifty years, sixty years,

1:04:16

seventy years to perfect that timing. That's

1:04:18

true. Did you know going in style was remade

1:04:20

in in nine during

1:04:23

two thousand seventeen. What with whom?

1:04:26

Bear with me. Alan

1:04:28

Arkin which you can

1:04:30

imagine?

1:04:30

He's the George Burns of our room. Michael

1:04:33

Caine and Morgan

1:04:35

Freeman. With Anne

1:04:37

Margaret,

1:04:37

oh, I

1:04:38

saw a trailer for this. Yeah. I saw trailer

1:04:40

for this. Going in style, a Zach Braff

1:04:42

directed a high movie. But the incredible

1:04:45

thing about the original one is it has Lees

1:04:47

Drosberg in it and he was not

1:04:49

in that many movies. Just that and God a

1:04:51

father too. Right? So and Anna had Art Carney

1:04:54

doing a Wilfred Brimley where he's playing

1:04:56

a contemporary of these guys that fought in World

1:04:58

War one except he's, like, only

1:05:00

sixty years old, but he's, like, uh-oh, oh, my back.

1:05:03

It's, like, alright. You're not. Eighty

1:05:05

nine. I don't wanna break the Guyanstile was directed

1:05:08

by a guy who actually directed

1:05:10

me in a Domino's commercial. Martin Breast?

1:05:13

No. Sorry, the remake. Oh. Martin

1:05:15

Russ is friend not doing Domino's commercials and in

1:05:17

fact might be dead. But Theodore

1:05:19

Murphy, who later directed

1:05:22

him figures,

1:05:23

directed me in a domino's commercial before he was all

1:05:25

that famous. Well, no, the thing about Martin Breast is

1:05:27

he was super young. He was like, okay.

1:05:29

He's real life. Yeah. He was direct he's not only so

1:05:32

life. He's like our age. You know what I mean?

1:05:34

He was he was like thirty

1:05:36

years old or twenty nine years old and he's

1:05:38

directing all these octogenarians

1:05:40

he was in his, like, late twenties when he

1:05:42

directed going inside his studio debut. Yeah.

1:05:44

And then he went on to direct No Lessofil

1:05:47

than War Games, and then

1:05:49

topped it off with Beverly Hills cop.

1:05:51

He doesn't have a credit on warnings. It's a John Batten

1:05:54

movie. He must have been he must have been

1:05:56

fired. Oh, wait. He was

1:05:58

fired. Sorry. But then

1:06:00

he directed Rainman and midnight

1:06:02

run. Again, he gives pull from Rainman. It's

1:06:04

a very limited movie. Oh,

1:06:06

well He keeps getting fired from things. Wait

1:06:08

a minute. Mean, I like midnight run.

1:06:11

No. He got a he got a

1:06:15

golden globe for midnight

1:06:16

run. Oh, rainman, you're saying?

1:06:18

Yeah. Yeah. He

1:06:20

No. Midnight run his definitely on Martin Brests.

1:06:22

He did. Yeah. But then Martin Brests Mark

1:06:24

did a waste job. He did percent

1:06:26

of a woman, which I can't

1:06:29

really support.

1:06:31

Oh, and then Mitchel Black poof. And Julie,

1:06:33

he's on a he's on a hot streak. Well,

1:06:36

anyway, he's still out there and he's still cranking

1:06:38

him out. So highly recommended

1:06:40

that you go, take your Take

1:06:43

your elementary school age kids,

1:06:45

sit them down and make a watch going in

1:06:46

style. Great thing about Martin Brest is he's only

1:06:49

he's only directed his full

1:06:51

credit that Uvre is like eight

1:06:53

movies. Mhmm. And they haven't been very

1:06:55

good since midnight run, but you know you could watch you

1:06:57

could watch his movies on

1:06:58

weekend. Pretty

1:06:59

hot. We should have a film festival. And

1:07:02

oh, wait. And two of these are student films. Basically,

1:07:04

the guys made six movies. We

1:07:06

could watch him in a long day.

1:07:08

We could start right now. We'd be done by midnight.

1:07:12

Even though me Joe Black and Senatewoman are both

1:07:14

three hours or

1:07:15

something.

1:07:15

I guess I watched me, Joe Black, it wasn't

1:07:17

that bad. It's

1:07:18

famous now because it's got that scene where Brad Pickett said

1:07:20

by the car. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Somebody

1:07:22

else.

1:07:22

No, it's him. Right? He is an angel or the devil

1:07:25

or something. What is he? No. He's death.

1:07:27

Oh, he's death. Right? He's

1:07:29

death taking a holiday. Future

1:07:31

links from our vantage point in your distant past, we

1:07:34

have no idea how long our civilization survived.

1:07:36

We, until just a second

1:07:37

ago, had no idea how long. Marty. This out

1:07:39

so much.

1:07:41

Or this outro had survived. We

1:07:43

hope and pray that the catastrophe we fear may

1:07:45

never come. But if the worst comes

1:07:47

soon, this recording All our recordings

1:07:49

may have been our founder.

1:07:51

But if Providence allows, we hope to be back with

1:07:53

you soon for another entry. Give

1:07:55

you.