Peter the Dolphin: A Love Story That Science Wasn’t Ready For

[00:00:00] Adam Cox: today we're talking about the time a government funded lab tried to teach a dolphin to speak English and accidentally created one of the weirdest romances in science history,

back in 1965, a young woman moved into a flooded apartment with a dolphin.

[00:00:18] Kyle Risi: Oh, did she leave a war running or something?

[00:00:20] Adam Cox: Oh no. It was purposely flooded. For the, for the dolphin.

[00:00:22] Kyle Risi: For the dolphin. She's living with a dolphin in her house.

[00:00:25] Adam Cox: Yeah. his name was Peter and her name was Margaret.

And that brings us on to John C Lily, the man who successfully got NASA to fund his language experiments with dolphins.

[00:00:39] Kyle Risi: Oh. Basically what you're saying is he just stepped over that fine line between kind of academic. Absolute nutcase.

[00:00:46] Adam Cox: But what started as an experiment in language turned into something else.

Something the scientific community wasn't ready for No one could quite explain. Not even Margaret, because Peter, the dolphin didn't just learn words. Kyle, . He fell in love

[00:01:00] Kyle Risi: He fell in love with her

[00:01:02] Adam Cox: and depending on how you look at it, Margaret May have loved him back.

Yeah, and in more ways than one Kyle.

I'm just gonna say it. She him off.

[00:01:11] Kyle Risi: No shit.

[00:01:38] Adam Cox: Welcome to the Compendium, an Assembly of Fascinating Things, a weekly variety podcast that gives you just enough information to stand your ground at any social gathering.

[00:01:47] Kyle Risi: We explore stories from the darker corners of true crime, the hidden gems of history, and the jaw dropping des of extraordinary people.

[00:01:54] Adam Cox: And I'm Adam Cox, your ringmaster for this episode.

[00:01:57] Kyle Risi: And I'm Kyle Reese, the escalation manager for ideas that got out of hand for this week.

[00:02:03] Adam Cox: I feel like that's a crucial role.

[00:02:05] Kyle Risi: Oh, oh my God, yes. It's come to the circus attention. Some of our side shows are now becoming a little bit too confusing for the audience to follow, especially after the knife thrower decided to build in a 23 minute montage how he was an 18-year-old girl arriving in the big city looking to make it as a dancer. And basically, yeah, the audience was just like, what going on?

[00:02:26] Adam Cox: the side story of this, uh, job role by the sounds of things.

[00:02:29] Kyle Risi: Yeah, that's a, it is an easy job though. Like mostly I just need to listen now for anyone approaching the stage director saying, just quickly, what do you think about X, Y, and Z?

[00:02:38] Adam Cox: just what? You just jump on them?

[00:02:39] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's me.

[00:02:41] Adam Cox: Okay. yeah, keeping yourself busy there. So guys, if you are new to the show and you want to support us, then the absolute best way to support the show and enjoy exclusive Perks is to join our Patreon.

Signing up is free, and you get next week's episode seven days early.

[00:02:56] Kyle Risi: But for as little as $5 a month, you can also become a fellow freak of the show, which will unlock our entire back catalog, including all of our secret episodes that aren't available on the main feed.

[00:03:06] Adam Cox: yeah. But let's be honest, the real reason to sign up is that certified freaks and big top tier members get our exclusive compendium key chain, so we can always be there, Kyle.

[00:03:16] Kyle Risi: Dang, they near your crotch.

[00:03:17] Adam Cox: Exactly.

[00:03:18] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:03:18] Adam Cox: Where else would you want us?

[00:03:20] Kyle Risi: Nowhere

[00:03:21] Adam Cox: exactly

[00:03:21] Kyle Risi: where else is there for us. And lastly, guys, please follow us on your favorite podcasting app and leave us a review.

Remember, we can't stress this enough. Your support really helps others find our show and keeps these amazing stories coming.

[00:03:35] Adam Cox: All right. Enough of the housekeeping because Kyle, today on the compendium, we're talking about the time a government funded lab tried to teach a dolphin to speak English and accidentally created one of the weirdest romances in science history, actually just in history.

[00:03:52] Kyle Risi: Okay. Hang on. between the scientists, trying to teach us dolphin how to speak English, uhhuh.

[00:03:59] Adam Cox: Any ideas what this could be about?

[00:04:00] Kyle Risi: I have a vague idea. Like I do know that there is a very famous story out there about some kind of talking dolphin, but I'm really interested about, like, you put a lot of emphasis on this romance, so I'm assuming it's less about the dolphin and more about these scientists.

[00:04:13] Adam Cox: Well, back in 1965, a young woman moved into a flooded apartment with a dolphin.

[00:04:19] Kyle Risi: Oh, did she leave a war running or something?

[00:04:21] Adam Cox: Oh no. It was purposely flooded. For the, for the dolphin.

[00:04:23] Kyle Risi: For the dolphin. She's living with a dolphin in her house.

[00:04:26] Adam Cox: Yeah. his name was Peter and her name was Margaret.

[00:04:29] Kyle Risi: Okay.

[00:04:29] Adam Cox: She wasn't a scientist.

She had no formal training, but she believed that if she spent enough time with Peter, if they ate together, slept beside each other, lived side by side, she could teach him to speak English.

[00:04:43] Kyle Risi: So she's sleeping inside the water. She's spending all this time in the water,

[00:04:46] Adam Cox: , pretty much all the time. She lives in this house.

[00:04:48] Kyle Risi: God, she must have like bath skin all the time.

[00:04:51] Adam Cox: Yeah. The worst prune fingers. Yeah. So NASA actually funded this project.

[00:04:56] Kyle Risi: Really?

[00:04:57] Adam Cox: There were labs, there were grants, there were tape recordings, the whole works. But what started as an experiment in language turned into something else.

Something the scientific community wasn't ready for No one could quite explain. Not even Margaret, because Peter, the dolphin didn't just learn words. Kyle, . He fell in love

[00:05:15] Kyle Risi: he fell in love with her

[00:05:17] Adam Cox: and depending on how you look at it, Margaret May have loved him back.

and in more ways than one Kyle.

I'm just gonna say it. She jacked him off.

[00:05:25] Kyle Risi: No shit. No she didn't. So this is relationship you're talking about?

[00:05:31] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:05:31] Kyle Risi: Between her and this dolphin.

[00:05:33] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:05:33] Kyle Risi: That is wild.

[00:05:34] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:05:34] Kyle Risi: I've not heard this before,

[00:05:35] Adam Cox: so we haven't covered bestiality before

[00:05:38] Kyle Risi: God.

[00:05:38] Adam Cox: so I thought why not?

Although in fairness, I dunno if it is bestiality, that is a very sweeping, you inject him off. She jacked him off. Yeah. It's a bit weird, but I just, you'll get into it. It's not quite as

[00:05:50] Kyle Risi: Yes,

[00:05:50] Adam Cox: it's not quite as, straightforward.

[00:05:52] Kyle Risi: you'll get into it. just go with it. It's yeah. Oh my God. I don't even know what to say,

[00:05:56] Adam Cox: there is some history and some science stuff in this too.

So if anyone overhears you listening to this podcast

[00:06:01] Kyle Risi: mm-hmm.

[00:06:02] Adam Cox: You can shout Blue Murder that it was all in the name of science.

[00:06:06] Kyle Risi: I've never heard this before and I'm actually a little bit dubious on whether or not it's even true.

[00:06:10] Adam Cox: Okay. But to understand any of this happened, Kyle, how the stars aligned on this surprising romance.

Mm-hmm. Why it was, taken so seriously and how it even allowed to happen in the first place. We have to go back because for over a century, scientists have tried to get animals to talk for some time, and that's just not mimicking words like a parrot, but actually talk.

[00:06:30] Kyle Risi: So understanding and having comprehension of what.

They are saying, but also what they're hearing.

[00:06:35] Adam Cox: Yeah, . Hold a conversation, answer questions to think like humans.

[00:06:39] Kyle Risi: Sure. They've done that with Coco the Gorilla.

[00:06:42] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:06:42] Kyle Risi: Famously, Robin Williams. he was like, there's footage of him

interacting with the, the, the gorilla.

[00:06:48] Adam Cox: Yeah. So cocoa does come up. there's a few other animals as well. It didn't start with Coco, in fact. so for decades the idea, pulled in like some of the world's smartest people, like psychologists, linguists, biologists, and as I mentioned nasa.

So before we land on dolphins, we need to go back to the start of the 20th century to a horse in Germany that seemed to be doing the impossible. , his name was Clever Hans.

[00:07:12] Kyle Risi: Okay. Clever, because he could speak, I'm assuming.

[00:07:14] Adam Cox: Yeah. People say he could do math, he could add, subtract, multiply, divide. Wow. Work with fractions. He could tell the time and he could even keep track of the calendar. So it's pretty impressive.

[00:07:25] Kyle Risi: yeah. Tomorrow's my birthday. I expect something good,

[00:07:30] Adam Cox: some presents. And whilst he didn't have the linguistics of a human in the traditional sense, he wasn't giving a lecture doing a

[00:07:36] Kyle Risi: Ted talk.

[00:07:37] Adam Cox: Yeah. But it was said he could answer questions by tapping his hoof.

[00:07:40] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:07:41] Adam Cox: So he could spell words and recognize musical notes and things like that.

[00:07:45] Kyle Risi: Wow. Okay.

[00:07:46] Adam Cox: So his owner, Willem von Alston, believed it completely and for a while. So did much of Europe.

[00:07:52] Kyle Risi: Oh, so this is a scam.

[00:07:54] Adam Cox: not quite actually.

and it even made the news of the New York Times in 1904. So this story did travel.

[00:08:00] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:08:00] Adam Cox: scientists, teachers and skeptics all came to see Clever Hans, and people were in disbelief for a while. They could witness Hans communicating back to them by tapping his hoof.

[00:08:10] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:08:10] Adam Cox: And no one could figure out how it worked. There was no sign of a trick or anything like that for this, or for many people it looked pretty legitimate. Then a psychologist named Oscar p Funt

[00:08:20] Kyle Risi: beautiful name.

[00:08:21] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:08:21] Kyle Risi: Great name. Funks.

[00:08:22] Adam Cox: Funks. It's a silent P, so it's probably Oscar Funt.

[00:08:25] Kyle Risi: okay.

[00:08:25] Adam Cox: Took a closer look. And what he discovered was Hans wasn't solving math problems, not quite as independently as people were led to believe What he was doing was reading people and more specifically his trainer, but the trainer wasn't trying to pull a fast one or anything. He didn't know that he was giving these silent clues subconsciously with his body.

[00:08:45] Kyle Risi: Oh, interesting.

[00:08:46] Adam Cox: that would make the horse react to whatever he said.

[00:08:49] Kyle Risi: Sure.

[00:08:49] Adam Cox: for example, a shift in, the trainer's posture or change in his face Or the way they hold their breath. These signals were so small that the trainer didn't know that he was doing it. But Hans had noticed, and in fact, anyone that asked Hans a question and that knew the answer

[00:09:04] Kyle Risi: mm-hmm.

[00:09:04] Adam Cox: That often he would get it. Right.

[00:09:06] Kyle Risi: I see.

[00:09:07] Adam Cox: But if you didn't know the answer, then he would get the question wrong.

[00:09:09] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Animals are really smart like that. Like Keith for example, he knows when we are going away just by how late we wake up and what we're doing in that morning. and sometimes he will start to hide because he knows that eventually we're gonna get the cat box out at some point.

And he's already on high alert.

[00:09:27] Adam Cox: Yeah. He just knows something's off.

[00:09:28] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Even sometimes when you pick him up in a, I just think I'm picking up, normally I'm taking him for a bath, but he knows, he knows the way I picked him up and when I picked him up that he's going for a bath and he starts freaking out.

It's bizarre. He's a

[00:09:41] Adam Cox: smart cat.

[00:09:42] Kyle Risi: So and I'm assuming other animals like clever hands, it's picking up on some of these cues, right?

[00:09:48] Adam Cox: Yeah, exactly. He's not necessarily a genius, but he's just extremely good at watching for those tiny signals in humans.

[00:09:54] Kyle Risi: got you.

[00:09:55] Adam Cox: Um, and basically this, research found that as the horse taps approach, the right answer, the question is posture, facial expression would change, to the point where there's almost this tension, which the person would then signal when the horse made the final answer that he would do.

Like he would stop tapping,

[00:10:12] Kyle Risi: essentially. Yeah. Like I always sense oh, he's, he's got the right answer. And like the, the eyes might light up. Yeah. And then the horse would pick up on that

[00:10:18] Adam Cox: . So it's still pretty impressive that the horse was able to pick up on this.

but he couldn't do it independently, of course. so clever Hans was just like average Hans. Not that clever.

[00:10:27] Kyle Risi: Okay. Average IQ for a horse.

[00:10:29] Adam Cox: But despite this, the discovery changed everything. 'cause psychologists realized that animals might look smart, not because they understand language, but because humans are always giving away the answers without meaning to, and this became known as the clever Hans effect.

[00:10:42] Kyle Risi: Oh wow. So this horse has got a whole phenomenon named after him.

[00:10:46] Adam Cox: He's got an effect.

[00:10:47] Kyle Risi: Is that what It's an effect. the Clever Hans effect.

[00:10:50] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:10:50] Kyle Risi: Amazing.

[00:10:51] Adam Cox: And so from then on, anyone who claimed an animal could understand human language, had to prove it without any hidden signals.

Sure.

[00:10:57] Kyle Risi: Ah, we gotta test this against the Hans effect.

[00:10:59] Adam Cox: Exactly that. so we made this whole study a lot more serious and people were like way more into it.

[00:11:04] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:11:04] Adam Cox: and so by the middle of the 20th century, psychology was then like focusing on the behaviorism of animals . And it taught that all learning came from rewards and conditioning. So if language was just a behavior, something learned through sound response, et cetera, then in theory animals should be able to learn that too.

[00:11:20] Kyle Risi: Sure.

[00:11:20] Adam Cox: And people in the past have tried to get animals to speak words.

unsurprisingly, that doesn't really work because animals have different voice boxes to humans.

[00:11:27] Kyle Risi: , I mean, you have difficulties with people even on the, of the homosapien species having trouble with certain kind of words. Like the Germans are very good at the glut kind of noises.

Like they're,

[00:11:37] Adam Cox: but I guess that's how you're kind of like brought up. Right?

[00:11:40] Kyle Risi: No, that's exactly what I mean. Yeah. So unless you learn them when you're early, when you're, when you're a baby.

[00:11:44] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:11:45] Kyle Risi: So I guess if you're gonna teach like a gorilla how to speak, you're gonna have to get them when they're young, right?

[00:11:49] Adam Cox: So researchers thought if speech was too hard for animals physically,Then why not use gestures or signs, or sign language? And who better do this than monkeys? Because obviously they have opposable thumbs and they already used gestures to communicate in the wild to each other.

Yes. So whilst cocoa was one of them, Washoe was a chimpanzee before cocoa. And they were born in 1965 and raised like a human child. She had her own, bed fridge couch.

[00:12:16] Kyle Risi: Her own fridge.

[00:12:16] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:12:17] Kyle Risi: I didn't have mow fridge when I was a kid.

[00:12:19] Adam Cox: Yeah, she, she was doing better than you. she wore clothes, she had books, toys, a toothbrush.

She,

[00:12:24] Kyle Risi: again,

[00:12:24] Adam Cox:

[00:12:24] Kyle Risi: I didn't even have clothes when I was a kid.

[00:12:27] Adam Cox: she would sit at the dinner table and the idea was simple. If you raise a chimp like a human child Could they learn to speak like one,

[00:12:34] Kyle Risi: And,

[00:12:34] Adam Cox: and she went on to learn around about 350 signs. Wow. Um,so she essentially learned by watching humans.

So when researchers were signing toothbrush to each other, whilst brushing their teeth nearby, she didn't copy them in the moment she just watched. But later on, when she saw a toothbrush again, she made that same sign.

[00:12:51] Kyle Risi: Wow. That's incredible. And 350 words is a lot, right? They say something ridiculous.

And please, I hope someone quotes me here, but like the top 100% of the words that we use as humans make up like something like 80% of all the words that we use.

[00:13:07] Adam Cox: Yeah. Like, we only use a very small portion, right?

[00:13:10] Kyle Risi: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So being able to sign 350 words, that's pretty impressive to me.

[00:13:13] Adam Cox: Yeah, that's probably like basic foreign language or something that you could learn

and they're probably all based on like her needs. Like I want that banana, or I want those ants I want those answers. she could even combine signs as well. so for example, if she saw a swan, she would combine the signs for water and bird.

[00:13:31] Kyle Risi: Nice.

[00:13:31] Adam Cox: so yeah, she could ask for things, label objects, and even express some basic emotions. Apparently when her caretaker lost her baby Waso reportedly signed cry and hurt. So it seemed like a proper understanding between a human and a chimp.

[00:13:45] Kyle Risi: Yeah. That is sad actually. So she could convey that grief.

[00:13:49] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

But here's the thing, WSO never developed grammar. She didn't create full sentences.

[00:13:54] Kyle Risi: Stupid,

[00:13:55] Adam Cox: communication stayed at the level of basic nouns and verbs and requests, which I, I still think they're pretty good.

But anyway,

I barely even know what an adjective is, wow. And so therefore, critics argued that her trainers were interpreting too much meaning into random or inconsistent signs. Mm-hmm. So while Wau proved that Apes could mimic human signs, she didn't prove that they could use language the way that we do.

And so that brings us onto Cocoa, the gorilla that you brought up. So she was born in 1971 and became, famous. Now she apparently knew a thousand signs.

[00:14:28] Kyle Risi: Wow.

[00:14:29] Adam Cox: Yeah. So she was really smart. she can understand concepts such as being good, being bad,

[00:14:33] Kyle Risi: mm-hmm.

[00:14:33] Adam Cox: And so Coco actually changed the public image of gorillas, who before then, I think people thought they were a bit brainless or they were quite violent.

[00:14:40] Kyle Risi: Sure.

[00:14:41] Adam Cox: So she showed these emotions and she even seemed to understand humor and grief. And in 1978, Coco became a household name. When she appeared on the cover of National Geographic, she had taken the photo herself looking into a mirror.

[00:14:54] Kyle Risi: No.

[00:14:54] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:14:55] Kyle Risi: That's crazy.

[00:14:56] Adam Cox: And then she made the cover again, but this time with her new kitten called All Ball, I think it was.

[00:15:00] Kyle Risi: Oh, they gave her a cat.

[00:15:01] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:15:02] Kyle Risi: That's cute.

[00:15:03] Adam Cox: Did you know that she had a,a bestselling children's book?

[00:15:05] Kyle Risi: No.

[00:15:06] Adam Cox: About her and the cat.

[00:15:07] Kyle Risi: How did they make this? Did she make the story up basically?

[00:15:10] Adam Cox: Yeah. She sat down with a load of riders. Um, the

[00:15:13] Kyle Risi: brainstorm, they say if you get enough monkeys in a room, they can write Shakespeare.

[00:15:15] Adam Cox: Yeah. I think the book was called Cocoa's Kitten and it described how cocoa had asked for a pet, chosen a kitten, and then grieved when it died.

[00:15:23] Kyle Risi: That's sad.

[00:15:23] Adam Cox: so the book used cocoa signs like cry and sleep and cat to show, that kind of death and I guess to teach children as well.

[00:15:29] Kyle Risi: Yeah. I also think that she did something quite interesting in that I think she broke a sink.

[00:15:35] Adam Cox: Oh, really?

[00:15:35] Kyle Risi: And when they came in, they were like cocoa who broke the sink. She blamed the cat. And that was quite an interesting piece of kind of understanding that apes were capable of lying

[00:15:47] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:15:47] Kyle Risi: But also understanding the consequences of their actions to the degree that they would want to evade that punishments.

[00:15:54] Adam Cox: Yeah. They knew they were gonna get into trouble

[00:15:56] Kyle Risi: if She blamed her child.

[00:15:58] Adam Cox: In fairness, cats are pretty mischievous, so

[00:16:00] Kyle Risi: to break a whole sink.

[00:16:02] Adam Cox: True. so behind that fame though, scientists had questions because, cocoa was taught by researcher Francine Patterson, who claimed cocoa, had learned all these signs and, was doing really well and communicating.

But, because gorillas can't move their fingers like humans, Patterson called it gorilla sign language. And she said that Coco even invented her own words, like signing for finger bracelet instead of ring. and that's when I guess scientists were like actually going, are you just reading into this?

How do you know that that's actually what she's communicating? Mm-hmm. And I just think that there's no, there's no peer reviewed proof that Coco understood grammar. And so therefore, I guess people start to then question how. They weren't as confident that Coco was really interpreting human language.

[00:16:45] Kyle Risi: Sure. And like I just feels like people are criticizing this and like really picking holes in it. But what she's able to do is really incredible. She is able to, she is communicating?

[00:16:54] Adam Cox: I think so.

[00:16:55] Kyle Risi: Yeah. She's pointing at things. She's not doing it randomly. She's doing it for a reason as she wanted a kitten that wasn't just random.

[00:17:01] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:17:01] Kyle Risi: Do you know what I mean?

[00:17:02] Adam Cox: Yeah. I just think like you can't do that with a dog.

[00:17:05] Kyle Risi: Yeah. And what do these scientists expect from these animals?

[00:17:07] Adam Cox: I dunno, they expect them to be like, I dunno, they come home from work and like, how was your day darling? And all

[00:17:12] Kyle Risi: that sort of stuff. Yeah. It's like you are not up to scratch.

We need you to do a TED talk next week. And this is poor performance cocoa.

[00:17:19] Adam Cox: You can't even open a banana.

[00:17:20] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Well, I mean I think they can open bananas is probably the one thing they're really good at.

[00:17:24] Adam Cox: True. But that's what I mean. So I guess there was just a lot of criticism or people were interpreting maybe the understanding, but I think it's true.

I think they did have a basic understanding of human emotion.

[00:17:34] Kyle Risi: It sounds like it. So when are we getting onto the dolphin jacking off?

[00:17:37] Adam Cox: So I will come onto the dolphin

[00:17:39] Kyle Risi: because that is what all of our listeners wanna know.

[00:17:41] Adam Cox: That is, I'm just giving you like a little why we're here.

[00:17:43] Kyle Risi: Yeah, yeah. Context back, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[00:17:45] Adam Cox: so yeah, by the time that cocoa passed away in 2018, she was beloved by many, but I guess people still found her legacy a little bit murky. It wasn't clear cut. So the common belief that, animals could communicate or express some level of actions or how actually autonomous they were, was unclear.

And that brings us on to John C Lily, the man who successfully got NASA to fund his language experiments with dolphins.

[00:18:09] Kyle Risi: Okay. Why dolphins specifically?

[00:18:11] Adam Cox: Well, we'll come onto that. But it's down to, their brains and how they communicate in water. So he Okay. Whilst other people were looking at monkeys, he was like, actually we should be looking at dolphins.

[00:18:22] Kyle Risi: That answers nothing, but we'll get to it

[00:18:24] Adam Cox: guys. We'll, we will do, so he was born in 1915 in Minnesota.

He came from a wealthy, conservative family. He was the kind of child who took things apart just to understand how they worked. like toys, he'd break them open. understand the wires, the engines and chemistry sets. And so that's what kind of spurred him to really kind of undercover.

I guess I wanna open up

[00:18:43] Kyle Risi: a dolphins what's inside?

[00:18:45] Adam Cox: And so where most kids reached out to others, John Lily turned inward, he learned about what thinking or just like going into the mind and what his mind could come up with.

[00:18:54] Kyle Risi: Introspective, I think is what they call him,

[00:18:56] Adam Cox: introspective and introvert.

Yeah. He is a bit like that. during World War ii, he worked in a military research lab. His job was to figure out how much stress the human body and brain could handle. And he thought of, the brain a bit like a machine with circuits and wiring. And he treated the mind a bit like a system, something you could study, decode, and control.

And by the late 1940s, his question started to change. he wasn't just interested in how people think. He wanted to know where thought came from and what is a consciousness.

[00:19:24] Kyle Risi: Wow. And did he get the answer to that?

[00:19:26] Adam Cox: I don't think he did, but he did try.

[00:19:30] Kyle Risi: Ah, you gotta give him credit for trying.

[00:19:33] Adam Cox: And he began experimenting with sensory deprivation. He built a seal tank full of warm salt water where the body would float. Weightlessly. Mm-hmm. Where there's no sound and light. So basically those floating tanks that were all the rage a few years ago.

[00:19:45] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Yeah. He

[00:19:46] Adam Cox: came up with them.

[00:19:47] Kyle Risi: Wow. He invented them

[00:19:48] Adam Cox: pretty much.

[00:19:48] Kyle Risi: Wow. Because they was a lot of study, at one point where they wanted to see what the effects of sensory deprivation would have on the human body. And actually it's awful. Like we can't handle it really. we start to go insane. Yeah, so they've even created like rooms, one of the quietest rooms in the world where people say that they can't even bear to stay in that room for longer than 20 minutes before they start going mental.

They start hearing their own heartbeat because there's just no sound. Because we rely on information coming in. And when that is gone, especially when you take away all the sensors, it just too much for us to handle.

[00:20:23] Adam Cox: Yeah. that's interesting 'cause he thought the opposite when he first designed these tanks, he thought the brain would shut down.

[00:20:29] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:20:29] Adam Cox: but then when he went in the tank, thinking it would avoid him of any kind of sensations instead he found that the mind came alive. Yeah. He saw shapes and patterns.

[00:20:36] Kyle Risi: Exactly. He starts to hallucinate, don't you?

[00:20:39] Adam Cox: Yeah, . And so that's when he started to think, okay, am I witnessing what consciousness is in its rawest form?

and that changed everything for him because he found that if mind could function without the senses. could it create meaning from nothing? And if that's the case, then maybe intelligence wasn't bound by, maybe it didn't even need a body.

[00:20:59] Kyle Risi: Okay. Wow.

There's something very poignant in there and I can't quite work it out.

[00:21:02] Adam Cox: I know. I couldn't either,

[00:21:04] Kyle Risi: but it sounds, do you know what, Adam? It sounds smart.

[00:21:06] Adam Cox: It does sound smart. That's what he is trying to get at, basically.

[00:21:09] Kyle Risi: he's like, Hey, I'm smart. Listen to this line.

[00:21:12] Adam Cox: This is where his, legacy stops. 'cause at this point he's still a really well regarded scientist.

[00:21:18] Kyle Risi: Oh. Basically what you're saying is he just stepped over that fine line between kind of academic. Absolute nutcase.

[00:21:25] Adam Cox: Yeah. So by the time he encountered dolphins in the fifties, he was already carrying a radical idea.

Intelligence wasn't specific to humans. Uhhuh intelligence could take many forms.

[00:21:36] Kyle Risi: Sure, I get that.

[00:21:37] Adam Cox: And so with dolphins, they had giant brains, they had complex sounds, kind of an alien way of life. And so maybe they were the perfect minds to talk to next.

[00:21:46] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:21:46] Adam Cox: So in 19 61, 10 scientists gathered in this near secret , event in West Virginia.

the meeting wasn't advertised. The topic for discussion was risky

[00:21:54] Kyle Risi: mm-hmm.

[00:21:54] Adam Cox: They were there to discuss the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

[00:21:58] Kyle Risi: What out in space?

[00:21:59] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:22:00] Kyle Risi: So this is interesting. He's doing anthropology slash kind of biology, animal kingdom, but now looking out into the stars.

[00:22:07] Adam Cox: Yeah. And so at this, event, there were like the. The biggest kind of minds of that era. you got the guy who created the Drake equation, which is a way we calculate extra terrestrial civilizations in the galaxy. a physicist from the Manhattan Project and someone else that won a Nobel Prize. So they're kind of like big.

deals.

[00:22:26] Kyle Risi: Okay. it is weird that you don't have an identity for the guy who's physically won the Nobel Peace Prize.

[00:22:30] Adam Cox: Oh, his name was Melvin Calvin. But I thought people go like, well, I could list some names if people could go, like, um, and what

[00:22:38] Kyle Risi: is it? Is it Melvin, Kelvin,

[00:22:40] Adam Cox: Melvin, Calvin.

[00:22:41] Kyle Risi: Wait, what I'm trying to say, is it the guy who came up with Kelvin, like the measurement for temperature?

[00:22:46] Adam Cox: I do. That's not the point, Kyle. We're just trying to get to the dolphin jacking,

[00:22:51] Kyle Risi: moving slowly towards a jacking

[00:22:53] Adam Cox: off. Basically you've got these really well-regarded people. And then you've got John Lily, he shared an unusual experiment with the group.

He described his work with a bottle nose dolphin named Elvar. Now supposedly this dolphin was the closest he had found to mimicking human words. he also had another talent, though he was able to retrieve a rubber ring. Not with his nose or his flipper,

[00:23:15] Kyle Risi: Uhhuh,

[00:23:15] Adam Cox: as you might think.

Instead he was training the dolphin to use his erect penis.

[00:23:20] Kyle Risi: His erect penis. This is the thing though, the more you say, everyone who's listening is going, what's it gonna say? And it is, it's something worse and worse. yes, So he discovered that this dolphin can basically put a cock ring on.

[00:23:34] Adam Cox: Yeah, essentially. I had to google what a dolphin's penis looked like. And, and I'll be honest, um, is it

[00:23:39] Kyle Risi: impressive?

[00:23:39] Adam Cox: Well, look, my first thought wasn't Wow.

[00:23:41] Kyle Risi: oh,

[00:23:42] Adam Cox: personally, I didn't feel like there was a good,

[00:23:43] Kyle Risi: it's a good place to hang your hat.

[00:23:44] Adam Cox: My first thought that, it wasn't a good place to carry some cots

[00:23:48] Kyle Risi: to what,

[00:23:49] Adam Cox: when you play a ring toss kind of game,

[00:23:50] Kyle Risi: but you, what did you call it?

[00:23:51] Adam Cox: Cots.

[00:23:52] Kyle Risi: I've never heard of that in my life.

[00:23:53] Adam Cox: Oh yeah.

[00:23:54] Kyle Risi: Cots. Yeah.

[00:23:54] Adam Cox: It's like a game.

[00:23:55] Kyle Risi: It's a good place to. What?

[00:23:57] Adam Cox: Hang a ring on a penis? I don't know.

[00:23:59] Kyle Risi: Okay. I'm gonna Google dolphin penis real quick. Is that okay?

[00:24:02] Adam Cox: Yes.

[00:24:03] Kyle Risi: Oh, interesting. It, it is magnificent. It also looks a bit like a flower.

Oh, do you know what it looks like?

[00:24:13] Adam Cox: What

[00:24:13] Kyle Risi: do you know when you see clams

[00:24:15] Adam Cox: Uhhuh

[00:24:15] Kyle Risi: and they're like, stick out in the little tongue.

[00:24:17] Adam Cox: Yeah,

[00:24:18] Kyle Risi: it looks like that. It comes out like a little bit of a clam.

[00:24:20] Adam Cox: Yeah, it's weird, isn't it?

[00:24:21] Kyle Risi: It is strange. It's not what I expected and it doesn't. Make me wanna jack it off

[00:24:27] Adam Cox: it. No good.

Uh, I think you're probably like most people listening, I hope. But to John Lily. This was serious. It framed as a behavioral experiment. A study in intelligence or conditioning, a response. I don't get it, but apparently he says that dolphins could use every part of their body in clever and surprising ways, even carrying tools, with their penis.

Yes. So this was him basically saying, you know, they're intelligent

[00:24:52] Kyle Risi: and what's your sources for this?

[00:24:54] Adam Cox: Um, the internet,

[00:24:55] Kyle Risi: it just sounds so weird.

[00:24:57] Adam Cox: I did double check my research multiple times of going, this can't be true.

[00:25:02] Kyle Risi: You're making this up. John Lily.

[00:25:03] Adam Cox: So as you can imagine, these other guys, they were a little taken back.

[00:25:06] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:25:07] Adam Cox: These guys were scanning this guys

[00:25:09] Kyle Risi: and he's talking about dolphin dong.

[00:25:12] Adam Cox: Yeah.

Anyway, the conference moves on. the bit that people did take Lily seriously was the bit around his work with bottle nose dolphins and the way that their brains were larger than ours and just as densely packed with neurons.

And so they thought that actually maybe there is something in there that they were very intelligent.

[00:25:30] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

I wonder if his work inspired Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, because in that, one of the big themes is that the dolphins were essentially experimenting on us. Or was it the mice, the dolphins and the mice were experimenting on because in the film, just before the Earth is destroyed, the dolphins get beamed off the planet and they leave a parting message that is basically, so long thanks for all the fish.

[00:25:51] Adam Cox: Oh, really?

[00:25:52] Kyle Risi: And then they, yeah, disappear. It's because they were, I think, an alien species, really highly intelligent, that had been observing us for millennia.

[00:25:59] Adam Cox: When was that book written?

[00:26:01] Kyle Risi: probably in the seventies. It feels very seventies.

[00:26:03] Adam Cox: Do you know what? There might have been some connection.

It didn't come up in my research, but you never know. Mm-hmm. . So anyway, these people, they got together and they called themselves the Order of the Dolphin.

[00:26:12] Kyle Risi: Sure. Appropriate.

[00:26:14] Adam Cox: And so Lily continued to believe that dolphins were so intelligent, they should be treated like people. He even wrote, a whole manifesto about it. he said they weren't just animals, they were intelligent life forms, and they deserved to be recognized. he was convinced they had these complex brains, in some areas, more development humans.

In fact, he was championing dolphins so much that he predicted in his 1961 book called Man and Dolphin, that one day a dolphin may sit as a delegate at the United Nations.

[00:26:42] Kyle Risi: Okay? He's actually crazy. He is absolutely nuts.

[00:26:46] Adam Cox: I don't wanna completely poo poo the idea, but it does feel like an episode of Futurama.

[00:26:51] Kyle Risi: It does. Yes. And it's difficult to take you seriously when you start the sentence with, I don't wanna poo poo the idea, but yes, it does feel like an episode of Futurama.

[00:26:59] Adam Cox: Yeah. So who's gonna really believe this guy? He's a bit of a nut job.

[00:27:03] Kyle Risi: But we do have the sense that dolphins are extraordinarily intelligent anyway, right?

Mm-hmm. And they do have real, intricate social dynamics between people in their pod. Yeah. Moms and dads all have roles. .

So I appreciate that he is right, that they are super intelligent.

[00:27:18] Adam Cox: Yes. Agree. And he's not the only one because NASA also thinks that, do you know what? What you're saying, there's some legs in this.

[00:27:25] Kyle Risi: Yes.

[00:27:26] Adam Cox: And so that is why they gave him funding because

they were thinking that if we could understand how to talk to dolphins, we could then use that same methodology to speak to extraterrestrial life.

[00:27:35] Kyle Risi: Sure.

[00:27:36] Adam Cox: And even, the US Navy chipped in to fund Lily's experiment.

[00:27:40] Kyle Risi: And do you know why?

[00:27:41] Adam Cox: No, I have no idea.

[00:27:42] Kyle Risi: I know the Army at one point they tried to do some research into seeing if they could use dolphins for various missions. Mostly classified as like spying missions. Where they would equip sensors to dolphins and then send them over enemy lines to spy on submarines and things like that.

[00:27:57] Adam Cox: Ah, no way.

[00:27:58] Kyle Risi: Yeah. So I'm wondering like if, obviously they're probably not interested in whether or not the dolphin can actually say, Hey dude, what's up? They want to kind of like send them off to just plant a bomb or kind of plant a listening device,

[00:28:09] Adam Cox: I guess. Or maybe they wanna find a way to communicate to the dolphin

to do the spying?

[00:28:13] Kyle Risi: Possibly, yeah.

[00:28:15] Adam Cox: Wow. .

[00:28:15] Kyle Risi: But how does it all fit into dolphin jacking?

[00:28:18] Adam Cox: Okay. So with the money from nasa, John Lilly, he buys some land on a Caribbean island. he wants to build a custom lab for dolphins and it would be called dolphin house.

Mm-hmm. And it's designed so that ocean water flows straight into the building and then the lower levels with flooded with natural ocean water. And then upstairs would be other rooms which humans could then use.

[00:28:38] Kyle Risi: Sure. So like a symbiotic kind of environment where dolphins and men come together to live in harmony.

[00:28:47] Adam Cox: Exactly. And there'd be other rooms where, the humans and the dolphins could share, the room. So like a dining area, for example.

[00:28:53] Kyle Risi: Okay. So what? The dolphin is sitting at the table.

[00:28:56] Adam Cox: Yeah. So those shout dinners ready and they all come round and

[00:28:59] Kyle Risi: They're ready, strapped into the little high chair

[00:29:01] Adam Cox: Anyway, so it sounds a bit crazy.

And if you're thinking

[00:29:04] Kyle Risi: Yes,

[00:29:04] Adam Cox: is John Lily a bit high?

[00:29:06] Kyle Risi: Yes.

[00:29:06] Adam Cox: You'd be right.

[00:29:07] Kyle Risi: Okay. Why he like high in LSD or something?

[00:29:10] Adam Cox: Yeah. We'll come onto that.

But for now, he had NASA's backing. but things start to change. And this is when Margaret, how Lovett enters the story.

Now she is 23 years old. She's living on the island and she's working at a local restaurant when she first hears about the project. She's always been fascinated by animals, especially with the idea that one day you might be able to talk to them.

[00:29:31] Kyle Risi: Okay. Wasn't sure where that was going.

[00:29:34] Adam Cox: she visited the lab. She asked questions, she showed interest, and eventually she was invited to volunteer. Her only required reading for the role was Planet of the Apes. that was it, because apparently that, I don't know, it's a serious experiment. So that's all she needs.

So it's

[00:29:47] Kyle Risi: also fiction.

[00:29:50] Adam Cox: It'll give her a gist of what

[00:29:54] Kyle Risi: I am really questioning all the scientists validity and credibility.

[00:29:59] Adam Cox: so yeah, Margaret, she's given a notebook, a small salary and a role in one of the strangest experiments of the 20th century.

[00:30:06] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:30:06] Adam Cox: At the time, there were three dolphins at Dolphin House.

There was Pamela, sissy, and Peter. All three had previously been trained Dolphins and worked on the show Flipper. But when that show ended, they were sold to the lab. And I guess it's a bit like a child actor, when career is over.life isn't quite as glamorous as it once was.

[00:30:22] Kyle Risi: No, I, I mean, they're animals.

I doubt their life is glamorous. Being in, you said like a show, is it like a TV show or a

[00:30:28] Adam Cox: Yeah. Flipper. Never heard of Flipper.

[00:30:30] Kyle Risi: I have, I thought it was a film.

[00:30:32] Adam Cox: I think they had a TV show.

[00:30:33] Kyle Risi: Ah,

[00:30:33] Adam Cox: and a film.

[00:30:34] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:30:35] Adam Cox: Maybe both.

[00:30:35] Kyle Risi: Interesting. So they're all retired now, and now they're, uh, they're, they're science dolphins.

[00:30:40] Adam Cox: . So Margaret was assigned to work with the young male dolphin named Peter. The setup was

[00:30:45] Kyle Risi: assigned or volunteered,

[00:30:47] Adam Cox: I guess that was the one that she would be focusing on rather than the other two.

[00:30:50] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:30:50] Adam Cox: The setup was unusual. He was young, curious, and just reaching maturity.

Fuck me. Margaret didn't want to leave at the end of the day. So eventually she convinced Lily to let her live at Dolphin house. So a room in the lab was converted into a shared living space where she would be able to, sleep there, eat there, everything essentially.

[00:31:11] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:31:11] Adam Cox: she also convinced Lily as something else, she asked him to flood the upper floor with water as well, so dolphins could live up there too.

And the idea is that she said it's very similar with the way that children learn language just by being surrounded and immersed the whole time. And so she wanted to live intensely with Peter.

[00:31:29] Kyle Risi: I just, just everything that you are saying to me. In the back of my mind has some innuendo there or is leading somewhere.

I just, I can't, I'm so distracted.

[00:31:41] Adam Cox: Okay. over time Peter became the only dolphin allowed upstairs. The other stayed below, and Margaret believed that was necessary because it reduced distractions and helped her focus on teaching him English.

[00:31:54] Kyle Risi: Adam, this is a groomer.

She is grooming him,

[00:32:00] Adam Cox: and just like that, she moved in. She was sleeping, she was eating, she was working in the same place as the Dolphins. She was teaching Peter English how to shape the sounds, how to connect them to meaning.

[00:32:09] Kyle Risi: Oh yeah. Shit. I completely forgot. All this is about teaching him how to speak.

[00:32:12] Adam Cox: Yeah, that's right.

[00:32:13] Kyle Risi: Okay, sure.

[00:32:14] Adam Cox: But meanwhile, John Lily, he was becoming more and more distant with the project. He was spending hours floating in his isolation tank, experimenting with telepathy and LSD. And at one point he told Margaret he was trying to communicate with her, through thought alone while she was in one of the dolphin tanks,

[00:32:29] Kyle Risi: right?

So I'm not giving the silent treatment. I've just been communicating with you. If you could just channel that please, Margaret.

[00:32:35] Adam Cox: I'm fairly confident. She was like, yeah, sure. I heard you said take out the VINs.

[00:32:38] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:32:39] Adam Cox: So while Lily was floating in silence, high on LSD, Margaret was downstairs alone in the water whispering words to a dolphin.

And somehow it started to work. 'cause there's all these recordings of their sessions that you can listen to some of them. And if you listen closely, you can hear Peter mimicking human sounds.

[00:32:55] Kyle Risi: Really?

[00:32:55] Adam Cox: It's kind of clumsy. A bit gurgled, but there is like some similarity there.

[00:33:00] Kyle Risi: What's he saying?

[00:33:01] Adam Cox: in one of the clips.

so this is a documentary, back in 2014 by the BPC. you can hear, Peter responding to Margaret. So she's going to him, she's counting one.

[00:33:11] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:33:11] Adam Cox: Two. Mm-hmm. 3,

and then Peter responds me, ma me

[00:33:19] Kyle Risi: what?

[00:33:20] Adam Cox: Basically that, yeah. It sounds like he's counting 1, 2, 3.

[00:33:23] Kyle Risi: Oh, I see.

[00:33:24] Adam Cox: Yeah,

[00:33:24] Kyle Risi: I see. I thought you were saying, what about me?

[00:33:29] Adam Cox: So there's something there, but it's not really that clear. So to help with Peter's pronunciation, mark.

[00:33:34] Kyle Risi: Oh, it's a pronunciation problem. The same thing that we suffer from

[00:33:40] Adam Cox: So, um, to help with Peter's pronunciation, Margaret would paint thick white makeup around her lower face and then a black line, or I dunno, eyeliner around her mouth.

And so when she was talking and teaching him, he could see her blow hole as it were to try and emulate the same mouth movement.

[00:33:59] Kyle Risi: Interesting.

[00:34:00] Adam Cox: And to be honest, , when I looked at this clip, I was a bit like, this answers the who came on to who situation to me.

[00:34:06] Kyle Risi: Tell me.

[00:34:06] Adam Cox: So she has always said that Peter tried it on with her, which we'll come onto, but to me this is the equivalent of I was backpacking across Western Europe, story from friends.

She wanted Peter,

[00:34:17] Kyle Risi: so she told him a sexy story in order to seduce him just like Rachel did with Ross and friends.

[00:34:23] Adam Cox: no, she didn't actually do that, but just the way that she was putting makeup on and getting him like riled up,

[00:34:28] Kyle Risi: drawing attention to her lips.

[00:34:30] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:34:31] Kyle Risi: Yeah. No, that's the first thing I thought of.

That's, like I said, I don't know if it's just my dirty mind leading us down this path, 'cause I know what's coming, but I'm just like, everything you're doing, you are essentially grooming the sport often.

[00:34:41] Adam Cox: It feels that way. But she's just, she's adamant, that's all in the name of science, that part of it.

Anyway, around this time things get a little strange. Margaret and Peter were living alone together on the flooded top floor of Dolphin House when there's no other dolphins or people around, just the two of them for months. And she says that Peter was young, he was coming of age, and like most animals, when he hits puberty, his behavior begins to change.

He would start rubbing himself on Margaret's knee or hand. She admits she had allowed it as long as it wasn't too rough. but then Peter starts to become distracted during the English lessons and according to her, he was very interested in my anatomy.

[00:35:17] Kyle Risi: What the fuck, what about her anatomy?

Uh, blow hole.

[00:35:22] Adam Cox: Well, she was saying if I was sitting here and my legs were in the water, he would come up and look at the back of my knee for a long time. He wanted to know how that thing worked. And I was so charmed by it.

[00:35:33] Kyle Risi: Wow. So he's a knee guy,

[00:35:35] Adam Cox: a back of knee guy.

[00:35:41] Kyle Risi: This is wild.

[00:35:43] Adam Cox: But the thing is, every time it happened, the session had to stop. At first she would have to send him downstairs. 'cause that's where the female dolphins were. And so therefore, he could release Any sexual frustration there. And he was

[00:35:53] Kyle Risi: interested in Pam and Izzy.

[00:35:55] Adam Cox: I guess he probably did okay.

But, he was still interested in Margaret, obviously.

[00:35:59] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:36:00] Adam Cox: I guess the idea is he'd do his thing and then he could come back upstairs and carry on with studying.

[00:36:05] Kyle Risi: Sure.

[00:36:05] Adam Cox: But this back and forth would take time and stop their very important English as a second language lesson. So

[00:36:12] Kyle Risi: she's like, Ugh,

[00:36:13] Adam Cox: don't pause again.

[00:36:14] Kyle Risi: Fine. Come over here.

[00:36:16] Adam Cox: she had an idea for a more efficient solution. She says,

[00:36:19] Kyle Risi: go on.

[00:36:20] Adam Cox: Well, she jacked 'em off.

[00:36:22] Kyle Risi: That is it.

[00:36:26] Adam Cox: She describes the encounters as very precious and then quickly adds. It wasn't sexual on my part. Sensuous perhaps, but not sexual

[00:36:35] Kyle Risi: sensuous. Mm-hmm. Those things are so connected.

[00:36:38] Adam Cox: They found some kind of joy with that.

[00:36:39] Kyle Risi: Exactly. She found some kind of emotion attached to it. And that is wrong.

If I could get it. She was like, do you know what? We just needed to get out of English class and I had to wank him off, which is what happens in schools.

[00:36:54] Adam Cox: I dunno if it does.

That's allegedly maybe.but no, they obviously, like in farming and stuff like that, people might have to, do this to animals when they're trying to get them to mate and things like that, haven't they?

They've got,

[00:37:06] Kyle Risi: tell, tell me about Adam.

[00:37:07] Adam Cox: I don't know. There is something about someone doing that to a horse who, for the name of breeding,

[00:37:12] Kyle Risi: I dunno if you, you're on a stud farm and the business is literally getting horse semen.

[00:37:17] Adam Cox: Exactly. That's, so people do this. But

[00:37:18] Kyle Risi: that's for a practical reason.

this is just so she can continue with English.

[00:37:22] Adam Cox: Yes, that's right. And so when Peter would be,

[00:37:24] Kyle Risi: hang on. Are you defending her?

[00:37:26] Adam Cox: I'm not defending, I'm just saying.

[00:37:28] Kyle Risi: You get it.

[00:37:28] Adam Cox: I get it.

Look, it's a distraction. She's busy. she's on the clock right now.

[00:37:32] Kyle Risi: Okay.

[00:37:33] Adam Cox: And so when Peter would become aroused, she would relieve him with her hands. And not only did it mean that they could get back to work quicker, it meant that they could bond more

she compared it to scratching an itch, something that just needed to be dealt with so they can move on.

[00:37:45] Kyle Risi: Oh, okay. I get it now.

[00:37:46] Adam Cox: Yeah. she believed it, brought her and Peter closer. Not in a romantic way, but a way, I guess just trust. And eventually she said it just became a normal part of their routine. Sure.

[00:37:57] Kyle Risi: I'm so speechless. This is amazing.

[00:37:59] Adam Cox: but when this part of the story became public, she seemed somewhat surprised.

It shocked people. Other scientists and the media responded with disbelief and in many cases anger. I mean, is it consensual? Is it bestiality?

[00:38:11] Kyle Risi: It's 100% bestiality. I cannot believe you're even remotely trying to defend this.

[00:38:17] Adam Cox: I don't, I don't see her as a predator or anything like that.

[00:38:20] Kyle Risi: really,

[00:38:21] Adam Cox: I don't think you should be doing that to a dolphin.

[00:38:24] Kyle Risi: I'm so stuck for words right now.

[00:38:27] Adam Cox: John Lilly, his focus had shifted. He was paying less attention to dolphins, and he is more interested in LSD and how it affected the brain.

It turns out he was introduced to the drug at a Hollywood party by the wife of the man who produced the movie Flipper.

[00:38:40] Kyle Risi: Oh,

[00:38:41] Adam Cox: really? So maybe this is where his whole dolphin obsession kicked in. Uhhuh. but from there, Lilly changed. He went from being a traditional scientist to becoming fully immersed in psychedelic research.

And friend said he no longer focused Yeah. On the dolphins. He was just taking LSD himself.

[00:38:54] Kyle Risi: that's probably why this escalated to what it escalated to, probably because the lead scientist in this was just like, do you know, I'd rather take some right. LSD.

[00:39:02] Adam Cox: Maybe he saw what happened and was like

[00:39:04] Kyle Risi: Clearly imagining this.

[00:39:05] Adam Cox: Um, but he'd also, which I think is really sad, he would give, LSD to the Dolphins.

[00:39:09] Kyle Risi: Oh.

[00:39:10] Adam Cox: he was one of the few scientists legally allow from the US government to do that at the time, which is wild to me because. I guess what, you shouldn't be really experimenting on animals with drugs.

[00:39:22] Kyle Risi: again, I'm gonna call into question that there is an ethical line where legally there's only one person allowed to give LSD to a dolphin. ,

[00:39:31] Adam Cox: You're right. That pretty much sums it up.

[00:39:35] Kyle Risi: Wow.

[00:39:36] Adam Cox: so from his testing, he said the result was strange, that dolphins didn't seem to learn more, they just swam around and acted a bit odd. nothing psychedelic, no dolphin breakthroughs. but I guess he was trying to use this to try and work out

How he could communicate with dolphins.

[00:39:50] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:39:50] Adam Cox: But like I say, he's he's clutching at straws a little bit right now, I feel.

[00:39:53] Kyle Risi: think so. Yeah.

[00:39:54] Adam Cox: NASA, of course, wanted to check in on their experiment.

[00:39:57] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:39:57] Adam Cox: And essentially just found Dr. Lily High on LSD while Margaret was shacked up with a dolphin. Margaret insisted that Peter was saying her name by blowing bubbles, but was just having trouble with the letter M. but it was too late. Funding had slowed down and NASA pulled the plug on the experiment.

[00:40:12] Kyle Risi: I walked in there and it was a whole house.

[00:40:16] Adam Cox: And so Margaret, she had to say goodbye to Peter and she wanted to stay with him. She did her best to, but he was moved to a much smaller lab in Miami where there wasn't much space. There was little sunlight, and it was quite sad kind of hearing about that because despite the weirdness of his relationship with Margaret, he did seem happy.

The reason I say that in his new environment, he didn't have the same care, love, or affection, and. After a few weeks that they were separated, Margaret gets a phone call from John Lilly saying that Peter had died and that he had taken his own life.

[00:40:48] Kyle Risi: He had taken his own life.

[00:40:49] Adam Cox: According to a dolphin expert, they said that's possible.

He explained that dolphins don't breathe automatically like we do. they decide when to take a breath,

[00:40:57] Kyle Risi: so he just went to the bottom of the tank and just let himself. Die. Basically

[00:41:03] Adam Cox: he decided not to breathe.

[00:41:04] Kyle Risi: And it's because of course he was depressed, but how much of that depression was because he missed Margaret

[00:41:10] Adam Cox: and, I guess just the whole surroundings.

Right. He's aokay. A tank that's probably not as nice.

[00:41:15] Kyle Risi: Sure.

[00:41:15] Adam Cox: And he's not having the same care and interaction hand jobs aside. Let's just think about it from the connection with the human.

[00:41:21] Kyle Risi: Yes.

[00:41:22] Adam Cox: I think he just,

[00:41:23] Kyle Risi: he's lost his lifestyle.

[00:41:24] Adam Cox: He's just, yeah. He was depressed.

[00:41:26] Kyle Risi: That's really sad, actually.

and I mean, we are anthropomorphizing these dolphins, so obviously they clearly think differently to humans. So maybe it's just not the right thing to to do that.

[00:41:37] Adam Cox: Yeah. Good, good point. . Margaret later said in an interview, that Peter, he wasn't mine. She couldn't keep him, we couldn't elope, we couldn't just rush off into the sea and disappear, which I think is an interesting choice of words.

[00:41:49] Kyle Risi: Exactly. She's indicating that there was something sensual

[00:41:54] Adam Cox: there's a romantic element for sure. it wasn't just in the name of science, something clearly developed,

[00:41:59] Kyle Risi: which is completely unethical.

[00:42:01] Adam Cox: Still life went on after the lab shut down, Margaret stayed on the island. She married a photographer who documented the project. So he must have known where her hands had been. And get this.

Years later, the couple moved back into the dolphin house. By this point, the tanks had been drained and it was converted into a livable home.

[00:42:17] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:42:18] Adam Cox: And they raised their three human children there, for about a decade.

[00:42:22] Kyle Risi: Okay.

[00:42:23] Adam Cox: So she moved back?

[00:42:24] Kyle Risi: She moved back because It meant something to her.

[00:42:26] Adam Cox: yeah. She said it was a good house. she described her time with Peter as a very close encounter, and in her words, I'm a human. I married a human. I had human babies, but I did have a very close encounter with one dolphin, and I was very, very lucky.

[00:42:42] Kyle Risi: Fuck me.

[00:42:45] Adam Cox: Yeah. That's Margaret. As for Lilly, as I said before, he was losing the respect of the science industry, dabbling a lot more in drugs. He believed these experiences connected him with higher intelligences and open access to other realities.

[00:42:57] Kyle Risi: He just fallen off a cliff man,

[00:42:59] Adam Cox: pretty much. his colleagues no longer respected him in the same way.

He did write some books on consciousness and drugs which made him a bit of an icon and apparently, he inspired the film Altered States in 1980

[00:43:10] Kyle Risi: mm-hmm.

[00:43:11] Adam Cox: And helped populize the use of float tanks. but he died at the age of 86 in 2001, he's still remembered for the pioneering, of consciousness research, but also a cautionary tale about how drug obsession and isolation can distort once grounded scientific work.

[00:43:28] Kyle Risi: Yeah. And distracts you from keeping an eye on Margaret.

[00:43:32] Adam Cox: On Margaret. Yeah. and finally, whilst years have passed since this experiment, the idea of talking to dolphins has never completely gone away. In 2023 researchers announced an AI model called Dolphin Gemma.

[00:43:45] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:43:45] Adam Cox: It was built to study dolphin sounds and find patterns to look for the meaning in their noise.

it's open source, Which means scientists everywhere can help and input, and they believe they're making progress. And that's not the only thing. There's also another project called, SETI a group using underwater microphones and machine learning to study sperm whales.

And the goal is the same, to finally understand how another species might talk to each other.

[00:44:08] Kyle Risi: Wow. Okay. Interesting.

[00:44:10] Adam Cox: Yeah. So they're still adamant, obviously there's this communication that they have between each other. they whistle to each other. They recognize who each of them are.

They solve problems together. They have relationships over a number of years. So I think there's probably is a lot to be learned from dolphins.

[00:44:24] Kyle Risi: Yeah, for sure. That sounds fascinating.

[00:44:27] Adam Cox: So maybe the future isn't about teaching them to sound like us.

Maybe it's about learning to listen better.

[00:44:32] Kyle Risi: Yes.

[00:44:32] Adam Cox: And who knows, maybe one day we'll finally understand what they've been trying to say all along. But I reckon they're still,

Dana

[00:44:38] Kyle Risi: was great.

[00:44:40] Adam Cox: I reckon they're still gossiping. I reckon it's passed down through generations and generations about Peter and Margaret.

[00:44:47] Kyle Risi: Oh my God.

[00:44:49] Adam Cox: And so that's the story of one of the weirdest scientific experiments of the 20th century by John c Lilly, Margaret, how Lovett and her love for Peter the Dolphin.

[00:44:59] Kyle Risi: Wow. That's crazy.

[00:45:01] Adam Cox: Yeah. I just, you watch her and she's just an old lady at this point. You just think she's like , you know, just sweet old lady.

And so I don't have any bad feeling towards her or anything. But it is odd ethics, I think is the big thing that you mentioned there, the ethics of. giving drugs to a dolphin.

[00:45:17] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. Yes.

[00:45:18] Adam Cox: Letting a relationship with a human and a dolphin get to that stage,

[00:45:22] Kyle Risi: or letting another human being allow a relationship between her and a dolphin.

Get to that stage, I don't think,

[00:45:31] Adam Cox: but he seemed happy. he seemed very happy.

[00:45:35] Kyle Risi: Well, of course he's getting his jollies off.

[00:45:37] Adam Cox: Yeah. She's got sexy back of his knees.

[00:45:39] Kyle Risi: That's crazy.

I'd never heard of that story before, actually.

[00:45:42] Adam Cox: Well, there you go.

[00:45:43] Kyle Risi: Mm.

[00:45:43] Adam Cox: feel informed and educated.

[00:45:45] Kyle Risi: I do, I do feel very informed and very educated.

So Adam. Yeah. A great story, but do you fancy doing some member shout outs?

[00:45:52] Adam Cox: Let's do it. as you all know by now, HR has been hard at work, assigning the ideal job roles to all of our certified freaks and big top tier members.

[00:46:02] Kyle Risi: The only problem is, while we know what your job title is, we don't actually know what your job description entails.

[00:46:08] Adam Cox: So when you hear your name, take note of your job title, then using the link in the show notes, submit your official job description to hr,

[00:46:15] Kyle Risi: And of course, the best ones we will read on a future episode.

What HR wanna know is what your duties involve, who you report to, and of course, any major incidents that have happened under your watch.

so this week we'd like to extend a very big welcome to Lindsay Ray, our carousel rotation ethics compliance monitor. this is what Peter needed in his story. An ethics compliance monitor.

[00:46:41] Adam Cox: True. And then we've got Anne. She's our shadowy archivist of Unreturned key chains.

[00:46:47] Kyle Risi: Yep. People have been sending the key chains back. Quality control, you know?

[00:46:51] Adam Cox: I see.

[00:46:52] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. We have,

Ola ni Kra. She is our clown nose glow intensity regulator.

[00:46:58] Adam Cox: Mm. Too much glow.

Then we've got Kerry Armstrong. She's our acting supervisor of Misfiled Circus. Blessings and Curses.

[00:47:06] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:47:06] Adam Cox: I don't think there's any blessings.

[00:47:08] Kyle Risi: The curses man.

[00:47:09] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:47:09] Kyle Risi: We we're hoping to get more blessings and less curses.

[00:47:12] Adam Cox: That's what she's there to do

[00:47:13] Kyle Risi: with Katie Sanderson. Monitoring lead for mildly concerning audience gasps.

[00:47:19] Adam Cox: I like that one a lot.

[00:47:20] Kyle Risi: Ooh, they gasped in the wrong place there.

[00:47:22] Adam Cox: Yeah. What's that

[00:47:22] Kyle Risi: about? That's, that's mildly concerning.

[00:47:25] Adam Cox: Not seriously. Just mildly. Just

[00:47:26] Kyle Risi: mildly.

[00:47:27] Adam Cox: And then lastly, we have Eliza Gilliam. She is our ringmaster gesture standardization reviewer. Mm-hmm.

Wow. Yeah, I guess we're the ringmasters, so she makes sure that we follow suit every week. We're

[00:47:37] Kyle Risi: standard.

[00:47:37] Adam Cox: Yeah, just standard.

[00:47:39] Kyle Risi: And guys, remember, if you are a certified freak or a big top team member and you didn't hear your job title this time, then don't panic because your role does exist somewhere in Sue's deep, wide filing cabinets.

and we will read more of them on a future episode, but if you want yours now, then all you need to do is just message us on Patreon or Instagram and we'll dig yours out so you can get cracking on your job descriptions.

[00:48:04] Adam Cox: Right? Then shall we run the outro for this week?

[00:48:07] Kyle Risi: I think I'm ready to go.

[00:48:08] Adam Cox: and that brings us to the end of another fascinating foray into the compendium, an assembly of fascinating things.

[00:48:14] Kyle Risi: if today's episode sparks your curiosity, then please do us a favor and follow us on your favorite podcasting app. It truly makes a world of difference and helps others find the show

[00:48:24] Adam Cox: and for our dedicated freaks out there.

Don't forget, next week's episode is already waiting for you on our Patreon. It's completely free

[00:48:31] Kyle Risi: but if you want even more, then you can join our certified Freaks Tier and unlock our entire archive, delve into some exclusive content and get a sneak peek of what's coming next. We would love you guys to be part of our growing community.

[00:48:45] Adam Cox: We drop new episodes every Tuesday. So until then, if your boss is taking LSD and asks you to speak to dolphins, then just quit.

[00:48:53] Kyle Risi: Yeah, just, just quit.

[00:48:55] Adam Cox: Yeah. See you next week.

[00:48:57] Kyle Risi: See you next time.