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Ellen jaws away about the great white shark. We discuss making our own planetary rings, performance-enhancing Speedos, how sharks sleep, the White Shark Café, IRL baby shark, and so much more. Works Cited: “Shark evolution: a 450 million year timeline” - Josh Davis, Natural History Museum “SPEEDO FASTSKIN – A HISTORY OF THE WORLD’S FASTEST SWIMSUITS” - SwimSwam.com, November 2023 “White Shark Bite Kinematics — Preliminary Exploration of a New Aspect” - R. Aidan Martin, ReefQuest Centre for Shark Research “An electrophysiological correlate of sleep in a shark” - John A. Lesku et al., Journal of Experimental Zoology Part A: Ecological Genetics and Physiology, July 2024 “For five days in 1980, a great white shark named Sandy lived in Golden Gate Park” - Peter Hartlaub, San Francisco Chronicle, June 2024 “The Great White Way” - Pete Thomas, Los Angeles Times, September 2006 “White Shark Café: The mysterious meeting spot for great whites in the middle of the Pacific Ocean” – Sascha Pare, LiveScience, September 2024 “First-ever sighting of a live newborn great white” - Jules Bernstein, UC Riverside, February 2024 “Shark Management Laws” - NOAA Fisheries Links: Support our podcast by joining the Maximum Fun network at maximumfun.org/join For more information about us & our podcast, head over to our website! Follow Just the Zoo of Us on BlueSky, Facebook, Instagram & Discord! Follow Ellen on Instagram or BlueSky! Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/joinjustthezoo

It's MaxFunDrive. And here, for the first time, we give you an exclusive look (well, listen) at the craft of podcasting: presenting Casters on Casters. In this episode, Teylor Smirl (Still Buffering) and Ellen Weatherford (Just the Zoo of Us) bond over the media they consumed that shaped who they are today, and how that media informs their perspectives on their shows. Plus, each host reveals their dream guest. If this glamorous, in-depth journey into what makes your favorite hosts tick inspires you, support them by joining as a member at maximumfun.org/join. Edited by Laura Swisher and Produced by Hannah Muroz for Maximum Fun. Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/joinjustthezoo

Join Ellen & special guest, co-founder and CEO of conservation organization Wildlife SOS Kartick Satyanarayan, for a review of Asian elephants. We discuss the harm caused by wildlife exploitation, how they protect animals by uplifting human communities, how education can help tourists make more ethical choices, and of course our guest shares some stories of what it’s like living and working alongside these beautiful giants. He’s got feel-good conservation success stories, workplace comedy, an adorable baby elephant, truly what more could you want from a podcast episode? Links: Learn more about Wildlife SOS's work on their website! See Baby Bani and more on Wildlife SOS's YouTube channel! Learn more about ethical tourism on RefuseToRide.org For more information about us & our podcast, head over to our website! Follow Just the Zoo of Us on BlueSky, Facebook, Instagram & Discord! Follow Ellen on Instagram or BlueSky! Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/joinjustthezoo

Follow Ellen down the jackrabbit hole. We discuss facial tilt, satellite dish ears, evolutionary ghosts of predators past, touchdown dances, jackalopes, Easter, and so much more. Works Cited: "A Field Guide to Jackrabbits" - Matthew L. Miller, The Nature Conservancy, Nov 2022 “Ecological correlates to cranial morphology in Leporids (Mammalia, Lagomorpha)” - Brian Kraatz et al., PeerJ, Dec 2014 "Jackrabbit Gets a Touchdown!" - YouTube “Celebrating Easter, Christmas and their associated alien fauna” – Malene Lauritsen et al., World Archaeology, Oct 2018 “The Shifting Baselines of the British Hare Goddess” - Luke John Murphy & Carly Ameen, Open Archaeology, August 2020 “What Do Eggs Have To Do With Easter?” - Encyclopedia Britannica "Meet Jack" - City of Douglas, Wyoming's website Links: Check out your local MaxFun Meetup Day - Ellen will be at the Seattle meetup! For more information about us & our podcast, head over to our website! Follow Just the Zoo of Us on BlueSky, Facebook, Instagram & Discord! Follow Ellen on Instagram or BlueSky! Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/joinjustthezoo

Join Ellen & the Cryptonaturalist (Jarod K. Anderson) to talk about the ways that nature and wildlife can inspire our creativity and shape our stories, particularly the enticingly unknowable cryptids. We discuss being raised by a witch, the natural poetry in scientific facts about starfish, the value of enthusiasm, caked up Mothman and the tragic Squonk, getting emoted on by skunks, the surprisingly complicated history of dandelions, a vulture named Potato, and so much more. Links: Learn more about Jarod's work on his website Find Strange Animals and Jarod's other books on his Bookshop Follow Jarod as The Cryptonaturalist on Instagram Follow Jarod on Bluesky or Substack Check out The CryptoNaturalist Podcast For more information about us & our podcast, head over to our website! Follow Just the Zoo of Us on BlueSky, Facebook, Instagram & Discord! Follow Ellen on Instagram or BlueSky! Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/joinjustthezoo

Don't call it a comeback, coelacanth's been here for years. We discuss life on Earth 400 million years ago, a military escort mission, our own fish ancestors, five year pregnancies, underwater handstands, an unnecessarily complicated puzzle in the third generation Pokémon games, and so much more. Works Cited: “The Coelacanth” - Knysna Museum “The Discovery” - UC Museum of Paleontology’s website “Earliest known coelacanth skull extends the range of anatomically modern coelacanths to the Early Devonian” - Min Zhu et al., Nature Communications, April 2012 “Animated Life: The Living Fossil Fish | HHMI BioInteractive Video”  “The coelacanth rostral organ is a unique low-resolution electro-detector that facilitates the feeding strike” - Rachel M. Berquist et al., Scientific Reports, March 2015 “New scale analyses reveal centenarian African coelacanths” - Kélig Mahé et al., Current Biology, August 2021 “Neurocranial development of the coelacanth and the evolution of the sarcopterygian head” - Hugo Dutel et al., Nature, May 2019 “Buoyancy and hydrostatic balance in a West Indian Ocean coelacanth Latimeria chalumnae” - Henrik Lauridsen et al., BMC Biology, August 2022 Links: Come hear Ellen talk about dragons LIVE at Nerd Nite Seattle! https://seattle.nerdnite.com/ For more information about us & our podcast, head over to our website! Follow Just the Zoo of Us on BlueSky, Facebook, Instagram & Discord! Follow Ellen on Instagram or BlueSky! Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/joinjustthezoo

Join Ellen & Dalton Mason, creator and bird parent behind Apollo and Frens, for a look into life alongside the world-famous African grey parrot. You may have seen their videos on social media showing off Apollo’s incredibly impressive vocabulary, answering questions and even speaking in full sentences, which have earned the bird a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records in 2025 - on top of all the pistachios, of course. We discuss animal cognition and what makes parrots such great models for animal intelligence, the brain soup machine, bird-proofing a home, parrots video calling each other, and so much more. Works Cited: "Birds have primate-like numbers of neurons in the forebrain" - Seweryn Olkowicz et al., PNAS, June 2016 "Birds of a Feather Video-Flock Together: Design and Evaluation of an Agency-Based Parrot-to-Parrot Video-Calling System for Interspecies Ethical Enrichment" - Rebecca Kleinberger et al., Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, April 2023 African Grey Parrot flight calls: Peter Boesman, XC719450. Accessible at www.xeno-canto.org/719450 Links: Learn more about Apollo and Frens on their website: https://apolloandfrens.com/ Follow Apollo and Frens on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok! For more information about us & our podcast, head over to our website! Follow Just the Zoo of Us on BlueSky, Facebook, Instagram & Discord! Follow Ellen on Instagram or BlueSky!   Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/joinjustthezoo

Ellen falls in love with the Mandarin duck. We discuss why waterfowl's webbed feet don't freeze in the winter, the evolutionary arms race between male and female ducks, New York City's local celebrity Hot Duck, your new favorite coffee order, and more. Works Cited: "Countercurrent Exchange" - Dr. Roger Lederer, ornithology.org “Coevolution of Male and Female Genital Morphology in Waterfowl” - Patricia L. R. Brennan et al., PLOS One, May 2007 "Ducks, Geese, and Swans" - Ivan Phillipsen, scienceofbirds.com, December 2020 “Conspecific Brood Parasitism and Nesting Biology of Mandarin Ducks (Aix galericulata) in Northeastern China” - Qiu-Ziang Deng et al., The Wilson Journal of Ornithology, September 2011 "Molecular Evidence for Interspecific Brood Parasitism and Successful Hatching by Mandarin Duck (Aix galericulata) on the Scaly-sided Merganser (Mergus squamatus)" - Shu Liu et al., BMC Zoology (under review Feb 2026) "Will You Still Love the Hot Duck When He Looks Like This?" - Andy McGlashen, Audubon Magazine, February 2019 Links: For more information about us & our podcast, head over to our website! Follow Just the Zoo of Us on BlueSky, Facebook, Instagram & Discord! Follow Ellen on Instagram or BlueSky! Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/joinjustthezoo

Join Ellen & special guest, science communicator and Certified Bug Friend Emily, for a review of the tiny little bugs that fly around your nearest kitchen sink. We discuss what Big Pest doesn’t want you to know, convergent evolution between bugs and fish, the drain gods, secret spy languages that only bugs can read, and so much more. Links: Follow Emily on Instagram, YouTube, and more! Learn more about the Entomology Box! For more information about us & our podcast, head over to our website! Follow Just the Zoo of Us on BlueSky, Facebook, Instagram & Discord! Follow Ellen on Instagram or BlueSky! Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/joinjustthezoo

Ellen goes on a journey through time and space with Triops, the tadpole shrimp. We discuss book fairs, vernal pools, whether saltwater or freshwater came first, trips to space, prehistoric scampi, surprise guests at Burning Man, and so much more. Sources: "Ontogenetic sequence comparison of extant and fossil tadpole shrimps: no support for the “living fossil” concept" - Philipp Wagner et al., Paläontologische Zeitschrift, August 2017 “Survival of dormant organisms after long-term exposure to the space environment” - N. Novikova et al., Acta Astronautica, June 2010 “From antibiotics to yeast: Latest student science heads for space” - NASA, Science Daily, July 2014 “Hundreds of three-eyed 'dinosaur shrimp' emerge after Arizona monsoon” - Laura Geggel, LiveScience, October 2021 “What are the three-eyed ‘dinosaur shrimp’ resurfacing after Burning Man?” - Faiza Saqib, The Independent, September 2023 They Might Be Giants song “Triops Has Three Eyes” “Adult Triops cancriformis (Pancrustacea: Notostraca) mediates the hatching rate of its resting eggs” - Alžbeta Devánová et al., Hydrobiologia, March 2022 “Tadpole Shrimp Are Coming for Your Rice” - PBS Deep Look Links: For more information about us & our podcast, head over to our website! Follow Just the Zoo of Us on BlueSky, Facebook, Instagram & Discord! Follow Ellen on Instagram or BlueSky! Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/joinjustthezoo

Join Ellen & special guest artist and reptile keeper Lyn for an up close and personal look at a little snake with a big appetite. We discuss how it feels to handle a snake, stress dreams specific to pet owners, gastoning it, spine teeth, snacktivities, how snakes flirt with each other, and so much more. Links: Check out Lyn's art and comic on Instagram! Denver folks, check out Lyn's upcoming snake shed jewelry & painting workshop!For more information about us & our podcast, head over to our website!Follow Just the Zoo of Us on BlueSky, Facebook, Instagram & Discord!Follow Ellen on Instagram or BlueSky! Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/joinjustthezoo

Ellen takes things slow with the iconic banana slug. We discuss mobile slip 'n' slides, recreationally poisoning yourself, liquid crystals, oobleck, robosnail, slime trains, moisture farming, apophallation, college mascots, and so much more. Works Cited: "Banana Slugs: Secret of the Slime" for Mallory Pickett, KQED, February 2015"Mechanical Devices for Snail-like Locomotion" - Brian Chan et al., Journal of Intelligent Material Systems and Structures, February 2007"Tough adhesives for diverse wet surfaces" - J. Li et al., Science, July 2017"Emerging biotechnology promises to transform the materials we use to work and live" - L.G. Blanchard, University of Washington Magazine, September 1993"She studies slug sex by the seashore: UCSC researcher works to unlock secrets of banana slug sex" - Elise Overgaard, Lookout Santa Cruz, June 2023"Our Mascot: Sammy the Banana Slug", UC Santa Cruz (uscs.edu)Links: For more information about us & our podcast, head over to our website!Follow Just the Zoo of Us on BlueSky, Facebook, Instagram & Discord!Follow Ellen on Instagram or BlueSky! Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/joinjustthezoo

Join Ellen & special guests, power couple Shannon Hackett and John Bates from the Field Museum, here to talk about the intersection of science, history, and of course, birds in a love letter to the natural history museum. We discuss working alongside SUE the T. rex, specimen pickles, harlequin romance novels, and explore bigger questions like how museum collections can reveal evolution happening around us right now in real-time and help us look into the future, what the average everyday person can learn about themselves and what science actually looks like from a museum, and the hotly contested debate as to whether grey vireos are interesting or not. Links: Check out Birds of a Feather Talk Together on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Instagram!Learn more about the Field Museum on their website!For more information about us & our podcast, head over to our website!Follow Just the Zoo of Us on BlueSky, Facebook, Instagram & Discord!Follow Ellen on Instagram or BlueSky! Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/joinjustthezoo

Ellen sets the record straight on Norway lemmings, busting over 400 years of myths. We discuss rodent audacity, ecological impacts that can be seen from space, spontaneous generation, Ole Worm, Atlantis, a Disney lie, and so much more. Works Cited: “Genome analyses suggest recent speciation and postglacial isolation in the Norwegian lemming” - Edana Lord et al., PNAS, June 2025“Aposematism and crypsis in a rodent: antipredator defence of the Norwegian lemming” - Malte Andersson, Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, April 2015"Vole and lemming activity observed from space" - Johan Olofsson et al, Nature Climate Change, May 2012"Ole Worm (1588-1654) - anatomist and antiquarian" - Rafael Romero Reveron & Luis A Arráez-Aybar, European Journal of Anatomy, July 2015"The Norwegian Lemming and its Migrations" - W. Duppa Crotch, Popular Science Monthly, August 1877"Lemming Suicide Myth: Disney Film Faked Bogus Behavior" - Riley Woodford, Alaska Department of Fish & Game, September 2003"Falling lemming populations" - Chris Smith, ScienceNorway.no, July 2012"Lemmings’ loss is bounty for moss" - Bjørnar Kjensli, ScienceNorway.no, March 2012Links: For more information about us & our podcast, head over to our website!Follow Just the Zoo of Us on BlueSky, Facebook, Instagram & Discord!Follow Ellen on Instagram or BlueSky! Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/joinjustthezoo

Join Ellen & special guest comedian, writer, and nature enthusiast Vinny Thomas for a review of some of the furry, feathered, and scaly neighbors making themselves at home right in our very own cities. We discuss domestication, dogs with human feet, inflatable snoods, ostriches for self-defense, kaiju battles at the park, life in a shipwreck, and so much more. Links: Follow Vinny on Instagram, Threads, and TikTok!For more information about us & our podcast, head over to our website!Follow Just the Zoo of Us on BlueSky, Facebook, Instagram & Discord!Follow Ellen on Instagram or BlueSky! Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/joinjustthezoo