The Revenge of the Whales
Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford
Pushkin Industries
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 7 June 2024
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In the middle of the Pacific Ocean, in 1819, Owen Chase is standing on a slowly sinking ship. It's just been headbutted by an 85 foot whale. It's taking in water. And now the creature is coming back for another go. This is a whaling ship, and Chase is convinced that he observes "fury and vengeance" in the animal.
In 2010, an orca is performing for a crowd at SeaWorld - but he misses his mark and so he doesn't get his reward. That's when he grabs hold of his trainer, Dawn Brancheau, and pulls her under water. By the time he's finished, her savaged body has multiple fractures and dislocations. And her scalp has been ripped off.
To some observers, these whales were surely out for revenge. But how much is what we think we understand about the natural world shaped by human guilt?
For a full list of sources, see the show notes at timharford.com.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Pushkin. |
| 0:07.0 | Can. |
| 0:09.0 | Can. Can you hear me now? |
| 0:10.0 | I'm |
| 0:11.0 | and I'm devoting the new season of my podcast The Happiness Lab to topics that are dear to my heart with people dear to my heart like my mom. |
| 0:18.3 | Wait a minute let me put the TV up. |
| 0:19.9 | I'll be finding out why I personally struggle so badly with perfectionism, stress, |
| 0:24.3 | and even sitting still in doing nothing. |
| 0:26.0 | But I feel like I'm bad at boredom because you're bad at boredom. |
| 0:29.2 | Yeah, no, I didn't do well with doing nothing. |
| 0:31.3 | And once I find out why these things affect me so badly, |
| 0:34.4 | I'm hoping to do something about it. So join me on my journey, wherever you get your |
| 0:38.2 | podcasts. 1819 the Pacific Ocean. The Pacific Ocean. The Pacific is pretty big, so let's narrow it down. |
| 0:54.0 | We're close to the equator, 3,000 miles one way, lies Ecuador, |
| 0:59.0 | 7,000 miles the other way, Papua New Guinea. Your nearest land is a small volcano in what's now French |
| 1:07.5 | Polynesia. When I say nearest, I'm talking 1500 miles. You get the idea. We're a very long way from anywhere. |
| 1:21.0 | Twenty men are on a wooden ship, Perched at the top of the mast, one man is scanning the horizon for the tell-tales |
| 1:29.0 | spout of water from a whale's blowhole. When he spots one he'll shout, |
| 1:34.6 | there she blows! The men will split up into smaller, lighter boats |
| 1:40.6 | and row towards the whales. |
| 1:43.0 | They'll throw a harpoon, a kind of barbed spear attached to a rope. |
| 1:48.0 | The harpooned whale will thrash or dive or swim away dragging the boat behind it. The men will keep hold of the rope |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Pushkin Industries, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Pushkin Industries and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.