How Three Bros in Their Thirties Turned Their Animal Obsession into a Binge-Worthy Podcast

When a British woman named Claire Bye plunged into the Yacuma River in the Bolivian Amazon last January to frolic with pink river dolphins, she couldn’t have conjured a more Disneyesque scene.

She was three months into a life-altering journey across Central and South America, and she found herself surrounded by tropical birds, humming cicadas, and swimming companions that seemed as dreamy as unicorns. It was heaven—until it wasn’t. Someone in her tour group picked up a baby dolphin, and the pod became agitated and commenced ramming people. Wisely, Bye climbed out of the water and watched from a pontoon. But when she jumped in later to retrieve a wayward water bottle, one of the creatures chomped her foot and held on. She started screaming.

“Oh, my gosh!” blurted out Mike Smith.

“Jeez!” said Jeff Larson.

“Man,” said Smith.

Smith and Larson weren’t watching this live, of course. They were four months and 4,739 miles removed from the attack, ensconced with snacks and sodas in a cozy, snow-covered mountain cabin outside Salt Lake City. More precisely, they were assembled around a coffee table arrayed with audio equipment, recording the latest episode of Tooth and Claw, the world’s most popular wildlife podcast.

Twenty-six minutes into the episode, Mike and Jeff were hanging on every turn of Bye’s dire situation, as described to them by Wes Larson, a wildlife biologist who is also Jeff’s older brother. Each week for the past three years, Wes has shared a harrowing tale of human-wildlife conflict, peppered with scientific insights, conservation intel, and tips on surviving dustups with nature’s scariest predators—or, in this case, predators the color of a Barbie Dreamhouse.

“What’s the tooth situation again with these dolphins?” Mike asked.

“They have 100 to 140 teeth,” Wes said, sounding like a human Wikipedia page. “And they have different types of teeth. The front teeth—what it used to grab her foot—they’re very sharp. They’re used for grabbing and ripping.”

With Claire now missing the top of her foot and spewing blood, it was not the time for Jeff and Mike to go full goofball, which is essentially their role on Tooth and Claw. But leading up to the attack, they’d been having a field day. Before Wes described the dolphins’ long snouts, bulbous heads, and chubby cheeks, he encouraged the guys to search for visuals online. The creature quickly drew comparisons to “a sausage seared on one side,” “genitalia,” and “your newborn nephew that’s just ugly.” Wes explained that the dolphins are born gray but become increasingly pink from abrasions sustained while fighting.

Wes: “Males are typically much more pink, because they fight a lot.”

Jeff: “Tough guys wear pink in dolphin world.”

Mike: “It’s like Seamus in WWE. You know who Seamus is?”

Wes: “No idea.”

Mike: “Super-pale Irish guy who gets slapped and turns bright pink.”

Wes then steered the episode safely through a discussion of the scientifically documented sexual positions of Amazon pink river dolphins, followed by a review of tribal myths involving the species, including one about the animal’s transformation into “a tall, handsome, elegantly dressed man” who hides his blowhole with a hat, charms village women, and then impregnates them. When he finally guided the episode back to Bye’s ordeal, we learned that she spent an agonizing amount of time in several inadequate Amazon medical facilities, and that her badly infected foot was saved only after surgery in London involving skin grafts from her groin.

Eventually, it was time for a segment called Ouchies, where the guys rate a victim’s ordeal on a scale of one to ten, one being a mosquito bite, ten being an enraged chimpanzee ripping off your face (a scenario featured in an episode from November 2020). Jeff figures it’s a six, based on the possibility that Bye might face lifelong health problems. Mike gave it a five—it’s not terrible, he said, compared to bears eating you alive (January 2022)—before acknowledging the trauma of enduring half-ass jungle medical care, and bumping it up to a six. Wes concurred: sixes all around. The show concluded with a discussion of conservation—pink river dolphins are endangered, largely because of encroaching development—and tips on avoiding an attack. For starters, don’t pick up baby dolphins. Better yet, said Wes, “You probably shouldn’t swim with dolphins at all.”

Over the past decade, podcasting has exploded into a multibillion-dollar industry, and one of its more popular genres can roughly be described as bros talking about stuff. Tooth and Claw fits that niche, and the reason for its popularity—nearly half a million listeners tune in each month, according to the hosts—is captured by a quote from E. O. Wilson that’s a favorite of Wes’s. “We’re not afraid of predators, we’re transfixed by them, prone to weave stories and fables and chatter endlessly about them, because fascination creates preparedness, and preparedness, survival,” Wilson said. “In a deeply tribal way, we love our monsters.”

“Survival” here means two things. The guys certainly want listeners to enjoy the wilderness safely, and they’re forever preaching the gospel of bear spray and wise backcountry decisions. But they also want the monsters to survive, and these days, all over the world, megafauna are running up against extinction. The show’s strategy to address this is simple: lure listeners with irresistible animal-attack stories, then emphasize conservation. If clowning around can attract an even bigger audience, so much the better.

For three years, the men have served up attack stories involving creatures ranging from beavers to grizzly bears. They’ve been so successful that QCode, a Los Angeles–based podcasting company that produces a sparkly lineup of shows by Hollywood A-listers, added Tooth and Claw to its roster in 2022. That same year, when The Atlantic needed a reality check on the hit movie Cocaine Bear, it called Larson. This year the show won a Signal Award for best road-trip podcast.

Fans of the show recognize the voices of Wes, Mike, and Jeff as, respectively, authoritative, circumspect, and, um, completely stoned. When you meet them, their looks don’t quite match those personas. Wes, 39, is the smallest of the three, whereas Mike and Jeff, both 34, are tall, beefy guys. And Jeff insists that his voice—with its slow cadence and trebly, nasal pitch—is not weed induced, even though “people always ask if I’m high during episodes.” Still, his timbral uniqueness enhances his role, which he describes as saying “the stupidest things I can come up with.” Wes’s job is to sound exactly like who he is: a scientist who earned a master’s degree in wildlife conservation and has done years of fieldwork with polar bears in Alaska, black bears in Utah, and grizzlies in Yellowstone. Mike, for his part, is the show’s everyman. A self-professed homebody, he represents millions of Americans who might venture into the wild, if only they had a bit more confidence.

Of course, not all episodes pack the comic potential of pink river dolphins, which means Jeff and Mike have to be opportunistic. Consider the episode from March 2021, on oceanic whitetip sharks, a large species found in warm seas. The show focuses on the five-person crew of a sunken yacht called the Trashman, who, in 1982, were adrift in a rubber dinghy in the Atlantic for days without food or water. Blood and pus from injuries they’d suffered were sloshing about at the bottom of their raft, mixed with urine and seawater. Everyone got staph infections, and hundreds of sharks, sensing an impending meal, began circling. Wes says that the crew members became frustrated when the Coast Guard failed to show up after three days, and then, Mike adds, “ ‘Frustrated’ isn’t the word.”

Jeff: “I’d want to talk to their manager once they got there.”

Mike: “I’d give them three more days, then I’d really lose my patience.”

Jeff: “I’d write them a strongly worded letter.”

After two crew members drank seawater and began hallucinating, one announced that he was going to find his car, while the other said he was headed to 7-Eleven for beer and cigarettes. Both stepped off the raft and were torn to pieces by sharks. Later, when a third died from her injuries, the remaining crew briefly considered cannibalism, then eventually rolled her body overboard to its gruesome fate.

The story ends with a cargo ship saving the two survivors, and only then do Jeff and Mike regain their mojo. During a segment called What Would Mike and Jeff Do?, Mike says, “I would establish the rule you don’t pee inside the boat.” In Cage Match, a segment about which of the show’s previously featured water animals could defeat an oceanic whitetip in a fight, they decide that orcas, great whites, and hippos could all take the shark, leaving Jeff to argue passionately for the inclusion of reticulated pythons—an almost-
water animal—to give the shark a chance.

Wes concludes with a blistering assessment of the media coverage of this tragic event, especially use of the term “shark-infested waters.”

“It’s their habitat,” he insists. “They live in the ocean. It’s not ‘infested’ with sharks. If anything, the ocean is infested with humans.” He notes that unethical fishing has made oceanic whitetips critically endangered, and encourages listeners to buy sustainable seafood. “Sharks are an animal that get a lot of hate from people,” Wes says. “I’m not one of those people. If you are one of those people, you should take a long, hard look at how you feel about the planet.”

For all the levity Mike and Jeff provide, it’s Wes, Mike told me, who “is the heartbeat of the show.” The main reasons: his knowledgeable storytelling and deep, sincere love of animals.

Wes grew up in Missoula, Montana, obsessed with wildlife and tales of wildlife. His bedtime books were nonfiction stories about animals, and by age three he was inventing elaborate yarns about apex predators. The family spent time camping, boating, and fishing, and wherever they went Wes spent as much time as he could looking for wildlife. He caught frogs and snakes at ponds near his house. Then, when he was ten, he discovered something disturbing. Over the course of a year, the critter Wes had captured most often, the northern leopard frog, vanished. He realized that nature’s bounty wasn’t infinite. The seed of a conservation ethic was planted.

For Jeff, it was hard not to get sucked into his older brother’s wildlife infatuation. More so than Wes, he enjoyed playing sports and had a collection of Brazilian soccer jerseys. But he ended up playing predator-prey with Wes and catching creatures with him at the ponds.

After studying biology at Brigham Young University—the brothers were raised Mormon but no longer practice—Wes began graduate studies with Tom Smith, a leading expert on human-bear conflict. Bears, especially grizzlies, are dear to Wes. For him their presence in the Montana wilderness demands a hyperawareness that enhances the experience—colors are brighter, smells are stronger. Smith dispatched Wes to Alaska to monitor polar bear dens for signs of adverse effects from the oil industry. Later, he sent him to Utah’s Bryce Canyon National Park to put radio collars on campsite-raiding black bears.

Wes published scientific papers, but he also began growing his Instagram presence with tales from the field. Once, during a season in Bryce when Jeff worked as his assistant, Wes shimmied into an 80-foot-long den to tranquilize a half-awake, 350-pound black bear. Jeff thought this was totally insane but followed along anyway. When Wes jabbed the bear in its shoulder, the drug was slow to take effect, and the beast gave chase. The brothers reverse-wiggled in high gear. Once outside the den, Wes tackled the woozy animal before jumping on its back and dosing it again. A National Geographic photographer was with the brothers that day, part of a story on millennials working in national parks, and he took a hair-raising pic of Wes and the bear inside the den. The image went viral.

In 2018, Wes’s gifts for science and storytelling landed him a gig as host of a web series launched by CNN called Mission Wild. The program focused on the fieldwork of wildlife scientists, and for two years Wes bounced around the world doing shows on everything from pangolins in South Africa to sea turtles in the Bahamas. Then COVID-19 struck and Mission Wild was canceled.

Jeff also attended BYU, and while there he befriended Mike Smith, an introvert who enjoyed reading science fiction and watching movies. The two stayed up late discussing pop culture and playing Super Smash Bros. on Nintendo. Wes was pulled into their orbit. The trio established an annual tradition of watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy straight through in the mountain cabin outside Salt Lake City, which was built by Wes and Jeff’s great-grandfather in the 1960s. They traveled to Mexico’s Sea of Cortez to snorkel with whale sharks.

Like most bros of a certain age, they thought about doing a podcast. Mike had created a YouTube channel for reviewing video games, so he had some production experience. Wes had been approached previously about hosting a wildlife podcast, but the premise was never quite right. And besides, if he was going to do a podcast, why not create his own concept and do it with his pals? The three settled on a true-crime approach, but with a twist. The “crimes” would be animal attacks, and there would be
a conservation message.

Wes researched an incident in British Columbia in which a hunter was badly mauled by a grizzly. In the summer of 2020, the guys recorded an episode and aired it, with low expectations. They were thrilled when 2,000 people downloaded it. The next show was about a tiger that escaped from the San Francisco Zoo in 2007, later attacking three men. This was followed by episodes involving black bears, an alligator, and a great white shark. With each one, their audience grew.

Then came a kick in the stomach. The niece of the hunter mauled in Canada contacted Wes. She was livid. The episode had gotten several facts wrong, and the tone was too flip. Her uncle had lived a difficult life with disfiguring facial scars, she said, and he deserved better.

Wes listened respectfully as the woman berated him, deciding she was right. He began fact-checking the hell out of his stories. The guys moderated their tone. They’ve since talked about all this on the show. “An important thing through this process has been complete transparency with people,” Wes says. “I think we’ve created this trust relationship with our listeners where they know we’re trying to give them the best possible information.”

When the guys signed with QCode, they retained control of every aspect of the show. They do all research, fact-checking, and production themselves, and the bulk of their revenue comes via the same $10-a-month membership offered through Apple Podcasts and Patreon that they’ve earned from the start. They currently have about 3,500 paying subscribers. QCode arranges advertising from companies like Kroger, Progressive Insurance, and Vuori, the clothing brand.

The schedule and pace fit their lifestyles pretty well. Mike, who lives in Utah, is a bachelor with few financial obligations, and he recently quit a job in the crypto industry, living comfortably on podcast income. Jeff is in a similar situation, although he continues working seasonally as a fly-fishing guide near his home, also in Utah. Wes just bought a house outside Missoula with his girlfriend, Jessie, and he continues to have other gigs, like guiding clients to see jaguars in Brazil for an ecotourism company. He also remains a wildlife biologist. He’s currently working on a paper about interactions between tigers and sloth bears in India.

The show’s expansion has been steady and word-of-mouth, with new listeners attracted by the material and the guys’ endearing banter. A friend of Wes’s, a raptor scientist named Steve Slater, summed up the feelings of several listeners I spoke with. “What I really like is the clear friendship of the three hosts,” he said. “I find myself getting jealous of their warm interaction.”

Some listen for practical advice; a few claim that the show has helped them avoid backcountry danger and even saved their lives. One fan in Southern California, a snakebite victim, said she was given more antivenin in the emergency room after she insisted that Wes had said to take more until she felt better.

Last spring I joined the guys at the Larson family cabin, where they sometimes record episodes. Our agenda called for staying up late and watching something like Anaconda or Snakes on a Plane. But record snowfall in Utah had knocked the chimney off the cabin and cracked sheetrock inside. Staying overnight was out of the question, so we headed back to town for plan B: hanging out at Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City.

Which was fine with me. What better place was there—other than the actual wilderness—to watch Wes, Jeff, and Mike riff on animals in real time, to sample their secret sauce of education, terror, and abject buffoonery? Going to the zoo with the Tooth and Claw team would be like playing Putt-Putt with Tiger Woods.

Somewhere between the lions and the elephants, Wes sang the praises of zoos. They contribute significantly to conservation, he explained, and inspire concern for wildlife. Plus, most animals don’t need a ton of space. Take bears, he said. You put a bear on a salmon stream, give it shelter and a bear to mate with, and its range suddenly shrinks to a few hundred yards.

“Lots of animals are happy with food, safety, and mating opportunities,” he said. “Zoos often give them all three.”

“You give me food, a place to sleep, and mating opportunities?” Mike said. “I’m so down.”

The one species that requires significant space is the elephant. Hogle has been keeping elephants for 100 years but will soon relocate the two we were watching to a zoo with a larger enclosure, which makes for better breeding odds. As Wes launched into the ethics involved in such a transfer, Jeff asked: “Where would elephant be on your list of animals you’d get a tattoo of, Wes?”

“Oh, uh, top 30?” said Wes. Jeff conceded that elephants were pretty cool, but what he wanted was a sloth tat on his right leg. He already had a cheetah on his left.

“I ruptured my patellar tendon in my right leg,” he said. “It’ll never be the same, so I’m going to have a fast leg and a slow leg.”

At the gorilla habitat, Wes talked about the species’s incomparable strength. Jeff was more interested in the time Mike Tyson offered a Bronx Zoo attendant $10,000 to let him fight a silverback male. “He would have gotten killed for sure,” Jeff said.

The show’s strategy is simple: lure listeners with irresistible animal-attack stories, then emphasize conservation. If clowning around can attract an even bigger audience, so much the better.

We moved on to grizzly bears and saw three siblings dozing beneath a log shelter. “Their mom killed a guy in Montana,” Wes said. “Pulled him out of his tent, and they all fed on him.” This happened in 2010, when they were cubs. Officials killed the mother and would have killed the cubs too if a zoo hadn’t stepped up. “There’s a risk releasing them back into the wild,” Wes said. “If they kill another person, the family has pretty good grounds for a lawsuit.”

Later, at the big zebra pen, Jeff declared that one of life’s great mysteries was why Mike loves zebras but hates horses. “It’s obvious,” Mike said. “Look how cool zebras are. The sweet mohawk, the stripes.” He then revealed a deep trauma from his childhood in Reno, Nevada. Many of his friends had horses—he didn’t—and they spent their time grooming and feeding the animals instead of playing with Mike.

Mike: “It was pointless. They never rode them.”

Jeff: “Do you ride your dog that you feed?”

Mike: “I don’t have a dog.”

Jeff: “You don’t have to ride every pet.”

Mike: “But you’re not socializing with a horse like you would a dog.”

Wes: “Jessie full-on socializes with her horses.”

Mike: “That’s different. Does Jessie curl up on the couch and watch movies with her horse?”

Near the end of our trip, inside an atrium full of colorful birds, Mike became transfixed by an especially glorious pink resident, and I caught a glimpse of another reason listeners find Tooth and Claw irresistible.

“What’s that bird, Wes?” he asked.

“Roseate spoonbill,” he said.

“They’re such amazing-looking creatures,” said Mike. “They have no idea how cool they are. I wish so badly we could communicate with them, tell them how unique and beautiful they are.”

Wes, not missing a beat, added: “Tell them how much we love them.”

Contributing editor Paul Kvinta wrote about managed retreat from coastlines due to climate change in December 2021.