Our Shark Story starts in the late 1950s. Elvis Presley has just released Jail House

Rock. Jane Goodall is taking her very first trip to Kenya. His business is

willing to invent the laser sooner, although they don't quite know what to use it for.

And the space race is in full force. The Soviet Union has successfully launched

the satellite Sputnik I and the US is rushed to get their first satellite into

war. But they're not just looking at the sky. In August 1958, a Navy submarine

makes the first undersea journey to the geographic North Pole. The Cold War

scramble has the US looking for every available advantage. The military is

pouring funding into science like never before. They're even looking at the

animal world, which brings us to the sharks. The Navy is making a big effort to

understand more about these animals. In some researchers are pursuing projects

that shall we say are a bit more fringe. That's where you see a project that

hinges on sharks being the brutish, simple-minded killers people thought they

were. The Navy wants to see if they can take down an enemy ship using a shark.

Basically, torpedo the ship without a torpedo. It is using a shark. Shark Pito.

That was the hope. That's author Mary Roach. For decades, these shark

pito project records were classified. But Mary managed to get the records as part

of a story for Undark Magazine. Even though this project sounds like a wacky

historical footnote, the researchers had quite a plan. Strap explosives onto the

shark. The idea was to have a shark wear a kind of headset and carry a bomb.

And then come up with a way to guide them remotely to the ship that you want to

sink. The shark would have electrodes on the left and the right. Electrical

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