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Two people claim to know everything about something, but only one knows anything.
President Roosevelt wore an anti-gravity belt.
Dinosaurs had two brains.
Lucky kids live on Mars and go to school in flying cars.
Or at least they will one day.
Believe me, I'm a historian.
An astronaut or driver, DeLorean.
Would I lie?
It's hard to say.
Can you spot the light?
The Big Fib!
Some pigs can fly.
The Big Fib!
But if you ask me why, can you trust the answer?
Ah, the Big Fib!
From Seahorse Key, Florida, this is the Big Fib.
And now, here's your host, Deborah Vogt.
Welcome to The Big Fib, the game show where kids choose between the prehensile and armored hippocampus of truth and the camouflaged and overfished brooding pouch of lies.
I'm your host, Debra Goldstein, and in the studio today is our sound effects robot Lisa, whose name is an acronym that stands for Live In Studio Audience.
Oh, I cannot get this jar of pickles open.
Why are you opening a jar of pickles when we have a show to do?
I just really need to open it right now.
Okay, give me that.
There you go.
Well, obviously I loosened it for you, Debra.
Now I can put a pickle in each ear.
Okay.
Why would you put pickles in your ears?
What?
I said, why would you put pickles in your ears?
I can't hear you, Debra.
I have pickles in my ears.
Hold on, hang on.
What were you saying?
I wanted to know why you were putting pickles in your ears.
Oh, well, everyone knows that pickles make the best earplugs.
And I wanted to make sure that these kosher dills were the right size for my ears.
You know, my state of the art microphone picks up every single sound in my vicinity.
And sometimes it's difficult to get to sleep because of all the noise input.
These should do the trick.
Why don't you just use earplugs?
Seems like pickles would be kind of messy and maybe a little smelly.
You can't eat earplugs, can you, Debra?
I don't think so.
Okay well, I don't think I'd want to eat anything after it's been in my ears, but I appreciate your dedication to sustainable snacking.
And pickles taste so much better with a little earwax on top.
Delicious.
Mmm.
Now that I've had my wax snack, I'm ready to answer a listener question.
Stand by for a voice memo.
Hi, my name is Bradley, and my question is, what was the first sound effect you ever made?
Great question, Bradley.
Let me see.
Let me scan my files here.
First sound effect.
First sound effect.
Is it maybe this one?
No, that's not it.
Nope.
Ah, an oldie but a goodie, but I don't know if that was the first one.
Let me just sort the search to focus on my own personal original creations.
Let's see, this one looks promising.
Okay, that may not have been the very first sound effect, but it was the first time my teacher bookmarked my sound file for the class to hear.
I was really proud of that one.
But this one yes yes, this one is one of my earliest sounds and it's the one that I still play when I just want to relax and tune out the world around me.
Oh, no, please stop that.
That is not a super relaxing sound for humans.
Humans are so weird.
Okay.
Well, I'm not sure that you found your very first sound effect, but those seem like good examples of your earlier work.
Oh, wait, I found it.
My very first sound effect.
And play.
This is my first sound effect.
Hmm well, that felt a little anticlimactic.
But Hey, Brownlee didn't ask for my most exciting sound effect, just the very first one.
And I delivered.
Yes.
Yes, you did.
All right.
Well, now can you deliver the sound of a robot telling everyone how our game works?
Okay, but don't be disappointed if I give you exactly what you want, Debra.
No bells nor whistles.
Just the facts.
Understood.
Every week we bring on two grown-ups.
One is an expert.
The other is a liar.
And it's the job of a human child to help us figure out who is who, because no one can spot a liar better than a kid, except for maybe one of those you know liar-smelling dogs.
You know, they're pretty good at it.
What are we lying about today, Debra?
We are lying about seahorses.
Fish with horse-like heads.
And we're going to learn all about seahorses along with our contestant today.
Who might that be, Lisa?
Our human child contestant is an 11-year-old who knows how to fire dance, Frankie Ogden.
Welcome, Frankie.
How are you?
I'm great.
Thank you.
How are you?
Also great.
Thank you for asking.
I'm great as well.
Lisa is also great. so great.
What is fire dancing?
Is it actually dancing with fire?
So fire dancing is basically you have a stick and you spin it and you can do all these really cool tricks like spinning it above your head or under your leg.
And if you have more than one person, you can like do formations, which is where like, one person climbs on top of other people.
Whoa.
And so you can do it with real fire, but you don't have to if you don't want to.
I don't want to.
I don't want to either.
Have you done it with real fire?
I haven't, but I might do it soon.
Can you wait until after the podcast?
Yeah.
Yes.
Please be careful.
And where is it that people do this fire dance most of the time?
Well, it's like a traditional dance in Fiji.
So it's like if they want to perform something, they might do fire dancing.
And they do like a lot of things with fire.
Like they do fire walking as well.
Ooh.
Yeah.
It's like one of the traditional dances.
Whoa.
They just love the fire there, huh?
Yeah, they do.
Wow, that is super cool or hot, I should say.
Well, best of luck to you.
Try not to get burned, but it does sound super cool.
And if you ever do end up dancing with fire, snap us a pic, send it to us.
We'll share it on the socials if you would like to share that.
Very, very cool.
But we do want to learn a little bit more about you Frankie, and we're going to do it playing our game.
Two Truths and a Lie.
Frankie is going to tell us two truths and one lie, but we will not know which is which.
We'll have to use a bit of logic and maybe some intuition to figure out what is true and what is false.
So, Frankie, in no particular order, tell us your two truths and one lie.
I have scuba dived with bull sharks.
I have older brothers who are twins.
And I have lived in four different countries.
Oh, my gosh.
All over the place, which is good because it keeps us all guessing and all our fun things to talk about.
But there is a fly in there somewhere.
What do you think, Lisa?
Well, you know, she put one in here to try and trick me this thing about bull sharks, because I think she's thinking well, Lisa's going to say a bull is a land animal and it can't be in the water.
What happened?
Did they tie a bull and a shark together?
But I happen to know there is an animal called a bull shark.
So nice try, Frankie.
Now, the thing about lived in four different countries, that's possible because she's still alive.
So it's possible that in the past she could have lived in four different countries.
And it's very likely that she's in one country right now.
So that's only three other countries that she needs to have been to.
I think we have a classic situation of two facts and one fact.
The I have older brothers who are twins.
One of these things in here, the older brothers are the twins.
You may have older brothers.
They may be twins or maybe they're sisters or maybe they're not twins.
But either way, that's the lie.
Thank you.
Bye.
Okay, so trying to avoid the trap of semantics.
So Frankie, tell us which of those things is a lie.
The lie was that I have older brothers who are twins.
Oh, I told you, Deborah.
You got it, Lisa.
Okay, but what about that is a lie?
Is all of it a lie or just some of it?
I have older cousins who are twins, but they're not my brother.
But they're not your brothers.
Do you have any other siblings?
Yeah, I have a younger brother.
A younger brother who is not a twin.
He is just a younger brother.
Very good.
But Lisa was on to you.
But I thought that that was a very clever fib.
And something tells me that you will be able to spot other clever fibs that other people tell.
If you've been swimming with bull sharks, maybe you know a thing or two about seahorses.
Do you?
I guess.
So the only thing that I've really done with seahorses is I've been to a seahorse farm when I was younger.
Whoa, what a seahorse farm.
Yeah, it's a farm.
They just raise them there.
Is that what they do?
Yeah, like I can't really remember, but they had, like you know, all tanks with the seahorses and the baby seahorses and you got to like hold them oh my gosh, in the water.
I'm guessing.
Yeah,
Yeah.
And did you do this in one of the other countries where you lived?
Because you have lived in four countries.
Was that in another country?
That was in Australia.
Okay.
And what were the other countries that you lived in?
So Australia, Kenya, Austria, and Fiji.
Nice.
Oh, I heard they do fire dancing in Fiji.
You heard right.
I hope your travels continue, but not quite yet because we need to catch some fibbers.
So I think we are ready.
We are warmed up and ready to catch some fibbers here.
So, Lisa, can you play us some welcome music for our seahorse experts?
Yeah, I'm going to do it now.
You ready?
Yeah, I'm ready.
Well, we want C horses, not A horses, not B horses.
We want C horses to trot on in right now.
Woo!
Catchy.
Fun for the whole family.
Okay.
Our first expert is Erica Moss.
Erica, please introduce yourself to Frankie.
Hi, Frankie.
My name is Erica and I'm an aquarist that works at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, and my coworkers call me the mother of sea dragons.
Interesting.
Thank you very much.
That's what I call Deborah.
Our next expert is Peter Hartwig.
Peter, please introduce yourself to Frankie.
Hi, Frankie.
Very nice to meet you.
My name is Peter Hartwig and I'm a marine biologist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Research Institute, where I'm part of our biological oceanography team.
Thank you very much.
Drop it like it's hot.
Ooh, sounds like someone whispering, Lisa.
I hope they're not hoarse.
Not at all.
I'm just quietly easing everyone into hot seat time.
That's right.
You and eased we are.
It is hot seat time, and that is when we put our experts on the hot seat while they answer Frankie's questions.
Lisa, whom should we put on the hot seat first?
Peter Hartwig, because I'm a big fan of Harry Potter and I think it's so cool that he has the same name as Harry's school.
Oh, okay.
Didn't think of that.
Didn't make that connection.
Very good.
All right, Frankie, what is your first question for Peter?
What is your favorite type of seahorse and why?
My favorite type of seahorse, probably the big bellied seahorse for a few different reasons.
First of all, as the name suggests, it's pretty funny looking.
It's a really beautiful seahorse.
It's the biggest one, I believe, in the world.
And it has a really cool belly, really cute mating patterns between the males and females.
They're also kind of unique in that they make weird clicking noises with each other, especially when they're feeding and mating.
I really like them.
So that's probably my favorite.
We actually have a sound of that, Debra, if you want.
Do we?
Yeah, I could play this.
Hey, hey, you got food?
Yeah, I got food.
Yeah, you got food?
Yeah, I got food.
I got food.
They're really beautiful.
Hmm.
Yeah, I'm not sure how authentic that is.
But anyway, we'll move right on.
Frankie, did you want to ask Erica the same question?
Yes, Erica, could you answer the same question, please?
Sure.
My favorite seahorse, I've never seen it in person, but it's actually a zebra-striped seahorse.
Its species name is actually zebra.
You find them in Australia and they are black and white and actually do look just like a zebra underwater.
Cool.
Isn't Australia on land?
People keep saying there's seahorses there.
Well, I think in the waters surrounding Australia is what they mean.
Oh, that makes more sense.
Yeah.
Back to you, Frankie.
So this question is for both of you.
Can you describe a typical day at your job?
I could say I in the research group for biological oceanography.
We're collecting a lot of samples, either plants or animals, or sometimes just water samples, especially for like toxicology or if there's chemicals that are polluting the water, the ocean.
That's a big part of my job.
Especially as how that affects endangered species too, which are Pacific seahorse, and Monterey Bay is actually endangered.
So that's a big part of my job is collecting and analyzing those samples.
A typical day in my job.
If you think about it in terms of you have pets at home, like what you would do for a cat and a dog in your house, is the same thing that I do for seahorses in an aquarium.
I feed them.
I make sure that everything is clean.
I watch and make sure that nothing is medically or behaviorally wrong with them.
That's most of my day.
And then a little part of my day is spent actually growing and culturing food to feed the seahorses.
It's a little side part of my job, but that's a typical day for me.
How do you monitor them?
That is a very good question, actually.
So you use all of your senses, actually, when you're in my job.
So your eyes are going to be the biggest thing.
You see your animals every day, so you know when something's a little off, their behavior is a little off.
When you're monitoring the equipment that's keeping their habitat running, you can hear if a pump is making a weird noise that you know that that's off.
We're taking temperatures.
So like air quality samples, we just do that with the water.
So there's a lot of different senses that we're using to be able to make sure that our animals are okay.
Peter, this question is for you.
Can you have a seahorse as a pet?
And if so, how can you take care of it?
Yes, the short answer, yes, you can have a seahorse set of pet.
And they're pretty popular in the US and I'm sure in Australia too.
I will say there are more difficult pets than like a standard aquarium fish.
They do have very specific temperature and salinity needs in their tanks, but they definitely can be.
And they're also, as I said, a lot of the species are endangered.
So I would say you have to be careful of where you're buying or adopting them from.
Usually more captive breeders are some more ethical and more safe way to do it to ensure you're not harming the ecosystem.
But yeah, if you love seahorses, definitely a great pet to look into.
They're really fun to ride, too.
No, I don't recommend that.
What am I thinking of?
An actual horse.
Oh, a real horse.
Oh, I just realized I'm on the wrong podcast.
I'm sorry.
Okay, Frankie, what's your next question?
This one's for Erica.
Can you tell me your funniest, scariest, or most interesting thing that has happened at your job?
Okay, so this is a really good question.
It's not about seahorses, but it's going to be about a seahorse cousin, the sea dragon.
And at my work, we've just had 112 baby sea dragons born, which is the first time that it has happened in the history of our aquarium.
Wow.
So that is a really cool thing that just happened.
What's the difference between a seahorse and a sea dragon, Erica?
So seahorses and sea dragons are both in the same group.
They're based on the group by how their mouth looks, so that tube mouth.
But sea dragons live in colder waters and they swim in a different way than seahorses do.
Like seahorses swim with their tail down and their head up.
And sea dragons swim with their body parallel to the bottom of the water.
There's more differences like size and all that, but that's going to be the main difference.
So my next question is for both of you.
What is something a lot of people don't know about seahorses?
I have one I love here is that seahorses can actually do simple arithmetic like addition and subtraction.
At least, at the very least, the pot-bellied seahorse that I really told you I like, and the Pacific seahorse out by me.
They actually.
When I said they use that clicking mechanism, sometimes they'll reply based on the amount of clicks.
They heard in the first place, which is really interesting to me.
So they can tell if they'll add one click if there's food or they'll add two if there's danger.
So I think that's a really interesting, kind of strange fact that goes beyond what a lot of people know.
But they're wonderful animals.
One thing that I think people don't really know is that seahorses tend to make monogamous pairs.
So they stay with one other seahorse throughout their entire life.
They will find another mate if something happens to them.
But every day they do a little dance to kind of get reacquainted with each other.
And I think that's a really cute thing.
And most people don't know that.
I like all this clicking and dancing and talking and adding and moving.
Fun.
Love it.
This is for Peter.
What is the biggest threat to seahorses?
Yeah, that's a very good question, and a sad question.
I told you I do a lot of work with the toxicology and kind of how humans and climate change are affecting the seahorses.
The short answer, yeah, climate change.
I would also say that seahorses are heavily fished, in the Pacific Ocean at least, and they are popular to be eaten to in kind of strange dishes like ceviche in Mexico and California.
Unfortunately for us, that's a threat to the Pacific seahorse and I think overfishing is a threat globally.
Good to know.
Thank you so much.
Those are excellent questions.
I learned a lot and I questioned some things, but truth will be revealed later on.
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The Big Show!
It's time for the Shorts on Fire round, when our experts have to answer as many questions as they can before time runs out.
Lisa will set a timer for the first expert, and then Frankie will ask questions until Lisa's timer sounds.
Then Lisa resets the timer for our next expert to do the same.
Experts, we want to see horsepower here.
Okay, Frankie, you can start with Erica and ask her shorts on fire questions now.
What do you call a baby seahorse?
You call them a fry.
How many baby seahorses can one seahorse have at a time?
Around 1,500.
What do seahorses eat?
Tiny shrimp called mysis.
And pizza.
Seahorses have to eat all the time because they don't have what to help them digest food.
Name one difference between sea dragons and seahorses.
The way that they swim.
What do seahorses use to swim?
Their small fins.
Which international agreement protects seahorses from overfishing?
Cites 2.
In Greek mythology, which god uses seahorses to pull his chariot?
Ooh, I don't know.
Fact or fib?
Seahorses sleep with their eyes open.
Fact.
What is the term that describes a seahorse's ability to move each eye independently?
I don't know.
How many teeth do seahorses have?
None.
And that is time.
That's all the time we haven't anymore.
Well, we do have a little more for Peter, don't we?
Oh, update, we have some more.
Very good.
All right.
If the timer is set.
Yes, Lisa?
Yeah, I did it.
I did it.
Yeah, I did it.
Okay, great.
Frankie, you can ask Peter your shorts on fire questions now.
Instead of scales, what do seahorses have on the outside of their bodies?
Cartilaginous plates.
What is a scientific name for seahorse that comes from the ancient Greek word for sea monster?
Mm, hippocampus.
Name one way that the seahorses defend themselves from predators.
They can fire ink like a squid.
Karate.
How do seahorses greet each other in the morning?
With a unique dance between the mates.
For which animated movie did marine experts help design the seahorses to make them as close to real life as possible?
Shark Tale.
The sea dragon is the marine emblem of which region?
Pass.
Don't know.
What do we call the crown-shaped spine on the top of the seahorse's head?
The corona.
Fact or fib?
There are no freshwater seahorses.
Fib.
We have coattails in the Mexican lakes.
What is the name of the seahorse in Pokemon?
Horsey?
Seadra?
And that is time.
Time.
Bye.
Phew!
Good questions, Frankie.
Love those.
Let's see how many of those answers were actually correct after we reveal who our fibber is.
It is decision time, so time to get serious.
No horsing around.
Frankie, who is our seahorse fibber?
I think that Peter is the fibber.
Oh!
Why do you think Peter is our fibber?
Because he was talking about how seahorses have ink, like squid, and that doesn't sound right.
And also he said something about toxicology, and that doesn't sound right either.
Okay, fair.
I like your thinking.
All right, it is time.
Will the actual seahorse expert please say, I am the seahorse expert?
I am the seahorse expert.
You did it, Frankie.
That is correct.
Erica Moss is a senior aquarist at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, who is now known by her coworkers as the Mother of Dragons.
So cool.
Love it.
We do have some facts to clear up, some fact checking to do here.
But before we do that, so explain to us Erica, you are the mother of dragons because sea dragons are your specialty.
Is that the deal here?
Seahorses and sea dragons are my specialty.
And we did just have over 100 fry born.
So it was just everybody's a Game of Thrones fan.
So Mother of Dragons just kind of worked its way in there.
I love it.
And so can people see these fry?
Is that how you say it?
Plural fry?
Or is it fries?
No, it's Fry can be single or plural.
Okay.
And can they see all of these fry at the Shedd Aquarium?
They're not on display yet because they're still too small, but we have put up pictures of them on our social media page.
So you can check Facebook and Instagram.
Oh, great.
And that would be at?
At Shedd Aquarium.
And that's two Ds, S-H-E-D-D, aquarium.
Very good.
All right well, let's do some fact-checking now, just to make sure nobody got the wrong idea about anything.
Erica, did you hear a plankton of misinformation?
I wrote down a few.
Yes, I did.
Okay, what did you hear?
So the first one that I wrote down is that all species of seahorse are endangered.
And that's not actually true because there's not enough information to classify them as endangered.
So that's the first kind of fib.
Seahorses are not endangered. eaten in ceviche in Mexico.
That's good.
They are used to make tea, though, as like medications in China.
They do use them for that purpose, but they don't eat them in ceviche.
Like, how do they use it for medication?
They dry the seahorse and then they soak it in hot water and then they drink the liquid.
Okay.
Another thing they have, seahorses are not covered with cartilage.
That's sharks.
Seahorses are covered in armored plates, which are made of just bone.
Got it.
They defend themselves not by squirting ink.
So you were correct on that.
They camouflage.
So they don't swim very fast.
So they rely on blending in with their surroundings.
Okay.
Very cool.
Which obviously isn't helping them very much if they end up in somebody's teacup.
No.
Got it.
We'll give Peter a shot here.
Peter, can you tell us about all the ways in which you try to camouflage the truth with lies?
I love the Monterey Bay Aquarium, actually.
I've been there one time.
So I was like, I was just kind of relying on that.
And then my research on seahorses.
I mean, it's no shed aquarium, but OK.
It's true.
It's true.
Yeah, the pets one.
I remember I had a friend or something a long time ago that had a seahorse as a pet.
And it was very difficult to take care of.
I did some research on that.
And I feel like when you said confidently that it's a very common pet, I was like that doesn't sound right.
Yeah, that sounds seaspicious.
The shorts on fire one.
I tried to like take things that were true and then make it a little different.
Like, yeah, the cartilaginous plates or they don't have cartilage.
Or the coronet is the corona.
I think I said corona.
Right, you said Corona, but actually the spines on the head are called a coronet.
So close, close.
And also, was it true, Erica, is it a fact or a fib that there are no freshwater seahorses?
That is a fact.
Okay, there are none.
Peter said there was one, but he is incorrect.
He was correct about the Pokemon, though.
That is horsey.
There's a sea dragon one now, too, actually.
I'm a Pokemon nerd.
Oh, really?
I thought about adding Dragelge as a sea dragon Pokemon.
Oh, cool.
Wow, Erica, did you know that?
I did not know that.
I don't know anything about Pokemon.
Okay, well, this might help talking to the kids.
I think the movie also.
I think I've seen Shark Tale.
I think the answer was Finding Nemo, but I was fibbing again.
Finding Nemo, yes, they actually used marine experts to design the seahorses.
Very cool.
And the sea dragon is the marine emblem of southern Australia.
Beautiful emblem there.
For Erika's benefit, in Greek mythology, Poseidon is the god who uses seahorses to pull his chariot.
I was thinking, who is the dad from The Little Mermaid?
Because he had them.
Oh.
I know, we can learn so much from Disney.
And the term that describes a seahorse's ability to move each eye independently.
Monocular vision is what we've identified.
Like the chameleon, the chameleon also is able to move its eyes independently of each other, which is pretty cool.
There is such a thing as toxicology, though, Frankie.
There is?
That is a real thing.
Sometimes fact is stranger than fiction.
That is a real thing.
But that's OK.
That didn't throw you because you still got it right.
So I did want to mention that just in case anybody was questioning that.
Science, it is a real thing.
Very good.
Well, Frankie, you are amazing.
You did such a great job.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
And thank you so much.
All right.
Hold your horses, everyone.
We've come to the end of the show.
Thank you to our upright contestant, Frankie, and to our expert and liar, Erica and Peter.
Snout out to Lisa for this swimmingly satisfying sound.
And, of course, many thanks to our listeners tuning into The Big Bib, where we put lies to seabed and the truth lives happily ever after.
The Big Fib is a production of Gen Z Media.
For more great shows, visit gzmshows.com.
While you're there, you can find out how you can become a contestant on The Big Fib, or you can send questions for me to answer on the show.
You can also follow us on social media at The Big Fib Podcast for behind-the-scenes photos and more true facts.
And now, I'm going to ride this seahorse off into the sunset.
Bye now.
Oh no, don't ride seahorses.
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