@@captin3149yep. I have a cousin who, with my apologies, is not the sharpest tool in the shed, and she believed it for way too long. When a mockumentary is presented as factual in an educational channel, in the middle of educational content, it's straight up disinformation (not to confuse with misinformation). It was very irresponsible. Edit: made a couple typos.
we really are on the same wavelength 😂😂 awesome breakdown of the topic steve!! i wish i finished mine in time to put it out on the same day, that would’ve been iconic
To say Discovery, Animal Planet, History Channel and National Geographic have fallen from grace would be an understatement. You’re right, the late 90s-early 2000s was the golden age of those channels. Sure, they still had the occasional blunders ( *cough cough* Jurassic Fight Club *cough cough* ) But for the most part, those blunders were few and far between. Not these days.
nothing fell further than TLC (The Learning Channel). Back in the 90s and early 00s it was a major competator to Discovery. Then it introduced us to Honey Booboo
I know for a fact that people feel for the straight up lying by Discovery because I was one of them. As a kid, I was glued to Animal Planet so I developed a sense of trust in the credibility of the network. Then they started showing “Lost Tapes” which honestly didn’t bother me too much aside from the fear the commercials would instill in me. Then the ball started rolling for more fiction based shows. It honestly wouldn’t be a bad idea if these shows were marketed for what they truly are.
@@Thegrrog fair enough, though personally I think the death knell for animal planet wasn’t the shows about fictional animals, but the shows about humans. A trend started by shows like Pitbulls & Parolees and I Shouldn’t Be Alive (which are both shows I liked, but I wasn’t a fan of the “Surprisingly Human” trend it started for the channel around 2010)
@@katsarida But the tapes looked so realistic! Apart from in every single detail. Most of these programs make the classic mistake of horror content of showing the thing... at which point anyone with a keen eye can tell it is fake. With horror(or bs stories about animals still living or Bigfoot), less is more. Although, personally, I'm with Mitch Hedberg... maybe Big Foot is blurry, it isn't the photographer's fault. There is a large, out of focus monster roaming the countryside.
Well, that and you have the 2012 apocalypse hysteria documentaries that flooded the History Channel in the late 2000s, complete with unironic discussion of the Crystal Skulls and the Hebrew Bible being used as a crossword puzzle to predict the future (the most famous "predictions " incuded Watergate and a certain plane hitting skyscraper incident). I wish i was joking
@@ahniandfriends123I can't believe it was just okay to fear-monger that the actual fucking apocalypse was happening at the start of the 2010's. How is that not some sort of crime? Why is that okay? I get trends exist, but being child me and having tv shows and movies tell you that everyone is going to die in a year was fucking insane in retrospect.
@SherlandShrouht-esse around the time of the 2012 movie (released in 2009), there was a public fascination with the Mayan Calendar ending on December 12 2012. The calendar would measure time in days, months, years, decades, and baktuns (hundreds or thousand of years). December 12, 2012, was supposed to mark the end of the 12th Baktun. Instead of thinking that the calendar will just roll over to the 13th baktun, people thought that the world would end ala that 2012 movie with Earth crossing paths with Nibiru/Planet X. I remembered seeing a ton of documentaries discussing things like surviving the apocalypse, what the world would be like without humans, and why 2012 is definitely the end of the world (using sources like Nostradamus and the Hebrew Bible being laid out in a crossword puzzle). A lot of these documentaries were featured on the History Channel alongside channels like SciFi and Spike. They would constantly spam advertisements everywhere, making them seem more legitimate than they actually are.
I remember one of such channels did a show on if dragons existed and went extinct early in the age of man. It was actually pretty tasteful because they heavily emphasized the IF. Treating the whole idea as a thought experiment. There was a bit of dramatization, but they went to great lengths discussing the science and animal inspirations they drew upon for the proposed abilities of dragons. I could see that idea being taken to its most disgustingly profit driven extent, resulting in mockumentaries on mermaids and megalodon.
I do remember that! I appreciated the _almost_ scientific look at how a creature might breath fire or achieve flight with that weight. Like you said they emphasized the *if* and that made all the difference.
It was fun when spec evo was talked about (especially when it's made clear that the topic is speculative). I found out about Spore, one of my favorite childhood games, because of the ads between The Future is Wild. It's a shame they take the fun concept of realizing a mythical/extinct animal in the modern day and just completely ruin it. The science is bogus, with the open ocean-specialized megalodon living unchanged in the deep ocean, or using the aquatic ape hypothesis as if it's remotely tolerated by the scientific community. Instead of leaning into the fun of embracing grounded fiction they try and ape real conspiracy theorist-type logic, and maybe priming people to look at the world the same way as qanoner isn't a good idea? It's really horrible that these two documentaries exist and that they haven't really addressed the fact that said info was complete nonsense. That's why, to this day, you'll see people insisting that megalodon isn't extinct.
I like the thought experiments aspect. The speculation and "what if". I've seen interesting stuff about how extinct or mythical animals & civilizations could have existed, exploring the biology and all. I hate how some mockumentaries present it and so many people take it as facts.
A lot of people don't understand why animals go extinct. A lot of documentaries talk about animals going extinct because they were outcompeted by a better adapted rival even though that isn't really the case most of the time. So people see megalodon and think it must have been "too strong and powerful" to be driven extinct by another species. But apex predators are actually extremely vulnerable to extinction. They depend on fragile food webs to survive, and even a slight change in the ecosystem can destroy that delicate balance. When their prey goes, so does the predator. People don't seem to understand that large predators, especially highly specialized large predators, are likely to starve to death if the environment changes even a little.
And yet we still have people that think that megs are living in the Marianas Trench like in those movies. Their premise is even wrong. They try to say that the meg simply adapted and evolved to live at those super deep depths rather than the areas they originally inhabited. Ignoring the fact that such a massive change in their biology would make them an entirely different creature all together so they would no longer be megs in any way shape or form. A massive change in enviorment requires massive adaptation's in biology which in turn means that it is 100 percent impossible for megs to exist because we would have known about them all along and this video would not exist.
That's something which both this channel's _and_ Linday Nikole's "History of Life on Earth" series _both_ point out: The Dominant classes and families of one Era get hit the hardest in the next mass-extinction _exactly because_ they're at the top.
I feel like baleen whales might have had a pretty good strategy, if it weren't for humans. They're big enough to be difficult to predate. And they're at a low enough trophic level not to be too vulnerable to disruptions in the food web.
@billberg1264 The sheer amount of food they require almost guarantees they won't make it through an extinction event. We have several such examples in the fossil record.
The misinformation related to this that gets on my nerves the most is the people who say that NASA was originally founded to study the ocean. It was not. It was founded so that the USA could catch up with civil space travel. The acronym is literally National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
I remember watching MEGALODON and having a bit of a freak out because I *knew* it couldn't be real but they were *very much acting like it was*, and felt immense relief and annoyance when I saw, buried in the end credits, a tiny "These events are fiction" disclaimer. Then, as my grade's resident biology nerd, I had to field questions for a LONG time about whether or not it was real.
I think one of the best people who clarifies the stupidity of the megalodon still existing, it would be AVNJ. He's a marine biologist and has gone into depth in many videos debunking the conspiracy - including Shark Week's fake show - and goes over every question and answers each.
The good news is that some of the science presenters from the golden age of educational TV are still active. My kids are addicted to the Kratt Brothers latest show on PBS Kids, Wild Kratts. It has a lot of scientific information in it despite looking really silly.
Yup😂😂 both of my youngest kids LOVED that show, which is awesome because I grew up with zobomafoo(also kratt bros) and I love the way they really get into the animals perspective and try to bust misconceptions for children.... I really admire that they've essentially spent their ENTIRE CAREERS educating children about animals and conservation.... One of the few Greats 👍🏽 still at it, even in their golden years (they've both gotta be in their 60s by now 🙄😂).
As someone else who grew up with the Golden age of educational TV and basically stopped watching TV completely for unrelated issues around the time it went down the toilet, I would LOVE to watch you go into the weeds on the topic. Even if it's just a video of you ranting for 30 minutes. It sounds great.
Technically MTV was the trailblazer for this when they decided that music wasn't something they wanted to include. And then I guess The Learning Channel turning into TLC and becoming all about house-flipping and midgets.
That mermaid "documentary" really pissed me off. I guess I never saw the megolodon show because I quit watching these channels after watching the mermaid thing..
I was reminded of this phenomenon when I told a friend about Dyatlov Pass, and he went “you mean the one that was caused by a Yeti?” Granted knowing him, he was absolutely joking, but for a brief moment I thought “THOSE MOTHERF***ERS DID THAT TOO?!”
Very well put! I also remember when Discovery came to the dark side and it was before 2013. I can't remember which year - properly between 2005 and 2010. I phoned the company (in Scandinavia because I'm Scandinavian) and scolded them. I spoke to the manager and he apologised. He told me that they were just showing what were put in front of them of shows. He also mentioned that I were not the only one "angry caller" that week. I have never seen Discovery Channel since them.
I remember when the Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, and History Channel were good channels. Shark Week was one of the many flagrant misinformation shows now they are stuck with mockumentaries and other junk TV shows. Glad to find that you are one of the smart people here on RU-vid. Thank you for your content.
Jeff Corwin mentioned! Steve was the greatest, and Nigel & the Kratts are incredible, but Jeff was maybe the one that was the most influential on me aside from Steve. He doesn't seem to be as frequently brought up as the others so I'm happy to see him highlighted. Shark Week was my favorite "Holiday" until this happened. When it was airing I knew it was fake but I was really enjoying it because I assumed it was obvious that it was fake. It wasn't until the next day that I learned that everyone else apparently thought it was real. At first I Mandela Effected myself into thinking there were way more disclaimers and that they were very clear about it being fake. So I went back and rewatched it and was shocked to learn I was wrong about that. I had hoped that the next year would be better but it obviously wasn't. I stopped watching Discovery Channel except for Mythbusters. After that ended I stopped watching and haven't gone back.
Discovery, Animal Planet, History Channel, Science Channel… these were all channels that ignited my curiosity, it’s such a shame that they all fell to conspiracies and fabrication. PBS is still going strong but it doesn’t have the budget or quality of programming it once had either. Educational programming funding is vital.
Yup, almost as if there's an attack on actual education. After all, democracies only function if the voting public is educated and uses their heads for something other than a hat-rack. An ignorant voting public is an easily-manipulated voting public, and democracies with an easily-manipulated voting public historically turn into oligarchies, then dictatorships.
Hey guys, shark here, and I can't overstate how much i agree with everything stated in this vid. Shark week sucks, meg is gone, and sharks are awesome. All except when you mentioned that sharks mistake humans for prey. That simply is not the case. Sharks don't mistake a floundering swimmer or surfer for an agile seal or other prey, which sharks have been designed down to the teeth on their skin to hunt. You can see they know the difference simply by observing how they interact with humans in the first place vs how they interact with prey. A shark hunting a seal calculates the seal's trajectory, surprises the seal, explodes into brutal thrashing (often clear out of the water) and dealing as much damage to its body as possible for it to bleed out so that it can eat the entire thing. Total confidence, it's like clockwork save for the odd miss or escape. Sharks almost always preferring to ignore and avoid humans, and biting people is the last thing on a shark's mind in most cases. When bites do occur, they are typically gentle exploratory bites that are performed with intent to investigate rather than incapacitate. When the fish figures out that humans are way too thin and bony to be worth eating, they leave for other prey. When violent attacks occur, it's almost always provoked in one way or another. Many of these are a case of the shark perceiving the person as a threat or competition for resources, territory, or its own safety. A shark will treat a threat as threats are to be treated if you're a 1 ton muscle torpedo with the mightiest jaws in the animal kingdom: with incredible acts of violence and intent to kill or at least seriously injure. Sharks know that humans aren't their normal prey, and a meg would know that a big noisy boat is not a whale, but that wouldn't (and doesn't) stop these animals from investigating foreign objects in their environments or deterring potential competitors.
Thank you, some shark, this was the one thing in the video where information was lacking. It's quite interesting, and also devastating that a gentle bite can still cause so much damage to us fleshy apes. Devastating to us humans, but even more devastating to sharks since us humans are so dangerous destructive, especially when we want to be.
I too want to see a vide on the fall of good educational TV content. I grew up during the same timeframe and was so disappointed, and the fall of those channels was indeed a reason we stopped paying for cable. The dragon and mermaid mockumentaries confused and fooled me for a bit of the watch. I don't think I tuned in for the Meg one at all-though that would at least partly be because I'm a scaredy cat who doesn't like suspense and horror.
Can't believe we have been graced by an actual shark. Yeah it's just _some shark,_ but still! 🦈 Now that I'm meeting an actual shark, i can't think of any shark related questions I always wanted to ask! 😂
Considering that sharks also bite when having sex you can't really blame them for exploratory bites, to them this is very gentle. It's not like they really have any other options. Also when a shark comes at you for an exploratory bite you can apparantly just push them away gently and they'll sometimes take the hint. You can tell it's an exploratory bite because the shark is swimming towards you slowly with an open mouth.
I'm writing a series of fiction novels where the characters travel to alternate universes which are experiencing different periods of earth's history. Each universe came into being because of a difference in an extinction event. So there are animals that are anachronistic for the period that universe's earth is in, and even I don't have megalodons surviving past the pleistocene. 😂
Aaaah I have never felt so vindicated- I used to love, love, love Animal Planet as a kid , I ate up all of the educational documentaries, and I even liked the sillier stuff like The Most Extreme and Meerkat Manor. But then they started airing shit like... Treehouse Masters, which had precisely zero to do with animals, and Whale Wars, which glorified a bunch of idiot pirates who thought throwing stink bombs and shooting fire hoses was going to overturn the Japanese whaling industry. So much of their educational programming was being discontued in favor of sensationalist reality TV schlock. That is a big part of the reason I too stopped paying for cable.
I was 16 I think, and this mocumentary fooled me for 1-4 months, kind of embarrassing. For the mermaid one I had recently finished reading Hunt for Red October and stopped suspending all disbelief when they started talking about the Navy having a secret sonic weapon capable of puncturing a submarine's hull. Anti-Submarine Warfare is based on sound, a weapon based on sound would just give away your location whenever it is fired. This weapon would also be useless against anything outside the water so there would be nothing stopping the myriad of ASW aircraft from suddenly dropping torpedoes or depth charges on you and sending you to Davy Jones' Locker. I had a full blown argument with a 15 year old in the lunch line who believed both mocumentaries.
What's sad is that mockumentaries have the potential to be great, some good examples being 'The Future is Wild', 'Alien Planet' and 'Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real', but all of those came out when the stations still cared about scientific inquiry and were exercises in spec evo for fun. I think that Animal Planet and Discovery channel kind of 'lost their soul' when Steve Irwin passed, and despite the efforts of other naturalists like him, none of them were influential enough to keep the channel from drifting away from actually good programming and into sensationalism and trite daytime television nonsense little better than soap operas.
Yeah, those kind of mockumentaries that were upfront about being purely speculative were really neat. Also gets you thinking what WOULD aliens look like?
This trend with the Discovery Network actually started in the mid 2000's. In 2004 they made a documentary about Dragons much in the same vein as their later Mermaid show. It was called Dragons: Fantasy Made Real. It also posted disclaimers (More frequently than the later shows) but still did some damage as tanks to it I had several people come up to me about it over the years.
Yes, I would say it wasn't necessarily as damaging as you thought.But yeah creationist and dummies will go on and on all day about how multiple cultures around the world have their own dragon myths.
Idk I think most people understood that it was speculative and it's generally held in high regard. You can't really prevent people from being idiots sometimes.
The saddest thing is I remember the _good_ shark programs that were on in the early years. One that stuck with me was one about prehistoric sharks I saw when I was very small, I still hadn't mastered tying my shoes yet and I was telling my mom and dad about Helicoprion (who was thought to be a shark at the time) and pronouncing it properly! I learned how sharks used to live in fresh water and be as common as bony fish today with ground breaking (at the time) CGI footage of the sharks swimming.
I absolutely love seeing you with new content again! You had less than a thousand subscribers when your videos popped up in my feed and I think that you’re one of the best palaeontology science communicators out there. Topic request: this may be more anthropology, but I’ve always found Neanderthals fascinating, particularly in the context of a world shared by multiple human species. I would love to see a video about that.
Historian and Anthropology student here: yeah. I stopped watching Shark Week that same year because I saw it doing more harm to sharks by BS’ing on Megalon through sensationalized content. There was good that it brought for awareness and appreciation of sharks, but once Horror Films entered without a good documentary on shark horror movies, I was done. I would love if Dr. Z, who runs Monstrum on PBS It’s Lit to step in and do an amazing job on this subject.
As a young lad of 11 with an interest in cryptozoology I fully admit that I almost bought into that mermaid documentary. Obviously I know better now and said cryptozoology interest has turned more into a case of “yeah I know that kind of stuff isn’t real, but wouldn’t it be neat if was?” Make no mistake, I recognize such things don’t make sense, but I can’t help but to still find it interesting.
I’ve always liked the Kratt Brothers and their Wild Kratts series (except for that grasshopper episode that seems to exist only to demonize entomophagy), though I was too young to grow up with Zoboo or Kratts’s Creatures (or indeed Irwin or the original Walking with Dinosaurs for that matter). I’d never watched that much Discovery, Animal Planet, or the like (though I can’t believe they have completely lost all high-quality programming at this point); I do recall seeing some very good documentaries on orangutans, owls (featuring instances of siblicide), and ratites (an Attenborough feature, complete with moas, elephant birds, and even the phylogenetic reassignment of tinamous) in my childhood (I think these were all PBS Nature shows, if I recall correctly). I’d like to know what you think of some newer Shark Week content not related to celebrities, attacks, or fake rediscoveries, in particular the more science-based feature on epaulette sharks. I also find it hard to believe that you completely “hate” Shark Week as a concept; it is the only reason educational outlets come out with so much high-quality content on these animals this time of year. Long story short, I believe you did well. At this point it should be clear and understandable that claims about the current existence of O. megalodon and indeed of similar“prehistoric monsters” (such as “big dinos” or Titanoboa) made by mockumentaries, cryptozoologists, young-earthers, and (ahem) Wicken’s Wicked Reptiles can be safely dismissed based on simple logistics. At the end of the day, these are animals, not infinitely adaptable monsters. The fact that some people talk about still-living megalodon (an incredibly specialized evolutionary oddity, quite as you describe) without even considering the possibility of surviving insular multituberculates or Northern Hemisphere mousebirds should speak volumes. To paraphrase E. O. Wilson, the big, slow, and picky are invariably the first to go in a major extinction event.
I’m writing a novel about Megalodon set 5 million years ago. So the information here is very valuable and helped me get some more inspiration for the conflicts in the book. Like maybe the young Megalodon being followed accidentally gets beached and needs to try and get back into the ocean. It would be written in the spirit of the classic Walking with series. I hope to publish it as a book someday. And I would love it if you dove deeper into the downfall of golden age of documentary content on Discovery and Animal Planet
I would love to see you do a video on the general category of falsehoods masquerading as "documentaries" or other factual shows. When I was a child, my parents taught me to play "spot the loophole" for TV commercials. We would talk about the claims being made for a product, and they would point out what wasn't being said, what was being said without proof, and what was being said using mushy language that could mean anything. I have found that early training invaluable to this very day for everything, not just consumer items being hawked in ads. We live in a world up to its neck in BS, which is quite literally killing the planetary ecosystem and will kill us as well. Giving a quick lesson on how to distinguish BS from fact might help stem the tide.
I might be the minority who was spared from the whole Discovery Channel shenanigans as I never I never saw the documentary, "Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives." Instead, I watched the collaboration episode of Shark Week and Mythbusters where Adam Savage and his crew reconstruct the jaw of Megalodon along with an inflatable Megalodon. Then the jaws crushed various items including a speed boat. So because I was spared from the shenanigans, I had a great time...I still cherish that memory, but I wouldn't have cherished the memory of watching, "Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives," especially if I were to have believed what the show said back in the day.
Yay, Steve and TimTim are back! The Megalodon is such a fascinating creature, because people fear sharks, for many different reasons, warranted or not. Combine the thought of a boat sized shark, with the very real fear of the depths, and you have a combination made in heaven for TV show producers. No way in hell they didn't want to capitalize on that as well
I remember that program that disillusioned you. Young as I was at the time, and having trusted shark week for actual marine biology, I believed it for a while. But then the years following got crazier and crazier and ,worse of all, started to demonize sharks. So I realized that discovery channel had just gone to shit.
I got into paleontology because of the Midwhich dinosaur specials staring Gary Owens and Eric Boardman. So I knew what I wanted to do long before cable was a thing. But I respected and liked the educational material made during the "golden age" as you called it. If you don't mind my asking, for all the hatred that the Meg and mermaid shows got, why is there not equal revulsion for the one that started that whole series of shows: the dragon special. It was narrated by Patrick Stewart on the TV release, and also was one of these mockumenataries.
@@PaleoAnalysis Did you ever see them on DVD? If you didn't catch them on the DVD release, they just released a 2 disk special on Blu Ray if you want to add them to your personal collect for a nostalgia trip. Look forward to the next video and please keep up the good work.
@@PaleoAnalysis Glad I could brighten your day. Yeah I helped fund the second DVD release on Kickstarter over a decade ago, so I got to star in it, meet the producers Richard Jones, met Eric Boardman, got to talk with Gary Owens (on the phone as he was in the hospital at the time). But yeah this year they released the Blu Ray copies on the The More Dinosaur Store. And as you got inspired to make RU-vid videos, I became a geologist and have been working on getting my MS in paleontology along with published my first book. So it is awesome to think how TV was used to inspire people to learn at one time.
I remember that special, I was thinking it would be about the origins of the myths, and instead they’re talking about how they mated while diving from the sky like eagles 🫠
Nicely done. I remember that golden age which also included The Learning Channel and The History Channel. It all became indistinguishable in the rush to put out garbage reality and conspiracy shows. Hitler is alive and hiding out among the dinosaurs which survive in certain remote places. And he's raising Megalodons in very large aquariums. Aided by mermaids and mergentlemen.
I would like to see how many of the mockumentaries that were treated like they were real up until the end have contributed to the various conspiracies about whatever they were covering. Side note: why do a lot people who talk about Megalodon still being alive bring up it perhaps living in the Marianas Trench, do they they not know how deep sea ecosystems work? That is literally the WORST place a Megalodon could be, those places are like deserts, there is no way there would be enough food for it there. I feel like the Marianas Trench is just used as a crutch for people arguing that large extinct species still exist, it's basically the pseudobiologist's equivalent of saying "A wizard did it."
Imagine, just IMAGINE, working in a national park as a science educator in the years following these specials. We have deer, canyons and mountains, and every other geology question was if megalodon is still alive.
No reasonable person with an interest in paleontology or even a slightest bit of common sense should believe that such a giant animal could still survive in today’s ecosystem.
Honestly the Megalodon stuff aside, it’s nice to see the Kratt brothers mentioned alongside Nigel Marvin and the Irwin’s, I definitely would credit Zaboomafoo alongside the Discovery Kids cut of Walking with Dinosaurs and Walking with Beasts (The latter of which is sadly lost to time) for my life long love of animals both living and prehistoric. Personally I would love to see a video on the golden age of educational programming, mostly because I have had a similar thought that after Prehistoric park, Dino docs sort of went on a small downward spiral until the 2010’s and even then it wasn’t as good as what came before until around prehistoric planet.
The closest I think we'll ever come to find a living meg is perhaps finding some much smaller descendant that is nowhere near as cool as the meg and will disappoint everyone with how goofy it had to look in order to adapt.
I have so much appreciation for the Kratt brothers I grew up on zaboomafoo and wild kratts so I was the obnoxious 4 year old who wouldn’t stop trying to tell you that alligators and crocodiles have different snouts. But I mean having a four year old who knows the difference between warm and cold blooded animals and can tell you at length the differences between skin, scales, scutes, and denticles You absolutely did something right!
We humans used to hunt whales on an INDUSTRIAL scale. If Megalodon was around and also feeding on whales during that period, there's no way 1800's whalers would not have noticed a freaking 60ft monster shark directly competing with them for their kills. Hell, Megalodon liver oil would probably have been turned into a commodity.
Nah, the Megaladon def still exsits deep in the MarinARa trench; that's the reason we haven't had any Loch Ness monster sightings of late - because the Loch Ness montsner was eaten! By the... Megqaladon!
I like Shark week as a concept. There are alot of obscure shark trivia and types. If I wasn't bound by my current video series I'd make a video but man the way they do it now is so awful
I don't understand why these people have such a fascination with megalodon. Out of all the species why this one in particular? It honestly makes way more sense that like a bottom feeding slug from that time period or something would be alive, but none of them seem to care about any other creature other than the giant shark even though there are vastly cooler animals
I share your pain. I didn’t even finish the show after the first couple of segments. I recalled the crap they pulled with the mermaids. I swore off Shark Week from then on, and pretty much stopped watching most Discovery-related channels shortly after.
Sweet! 60+% of Americans believe in angels, so perhaps believing Megalodon still exists is better? No. The shot of the guy operating Jaws' jaws was hilarious btw, never seen that before 😂
I remember a 'mockumentary' that explored what it would've been like if dragons evolved alongside dinosaurs - it was advertised all over Neopets at the time. Oddly enough though, even me in the single-digits of age knew from the trailers that it was all "what if". Why that couldn't be more obvious for these other shows other than desperation for eyes on the screen is beyond me.
If Megalodon is still alive, where are all the fresh Megalodon teeth? There should be many more fresh teeth available than fossil teeth, and I've seen plenty of fossil teeth, but no fresh ones.
Look, I'm just a stoner History academic with absolutely zero freaking formal knowledge about ANY of the stuff you talk. So yeah, I might be talking gibberish BUUUUUT Dude, I can see how critical you are - in the best possible academic and scientific way possible. It's undeniable how you try your best to communicate and bring a connection between actual developing science works and public accessible media. I don't know if my opinions come across well enough, yet I hope you take this as a serious compliment. You always make my high late nights or sometimes early mornings much brighter and with actual decent knowledge involved.
It makes me happy seeing that others have acknowledged this about Discovery and educational programming as well. Stuff like that LAAAAME program about individuals trying to get an anaconda to swallow a guy in a suit, the overplayed shark week programs full of bologna, and the loss of individuals that actually got people excited about learning about the natural world has been too noticeable to ignore. It's a bummer.
I was just having this conversation a day ago about what a farce Shark Week has become. I remember a time when Shark Week (I was 7-10 years old) offered comprehensible, engaging science designed to help demystify sharks and help us understand them rather than fear them as aquatic monsters. What we have now is reality television designed to entertain without regard to the didactic possibility, even responsibility, of such programing.
I remember the golden age of info tv. MTV was about music, History channel was about history, the learning channel was about learning and Discovery was about science and culture. Now we have shows about pawn shops, 600 lb people, cross dressers, etc etc. In other words total crap I wouldn't let my kids watch
The problem is people *want* to believe these conspiracy theories, so trying to convince them that they're wrong is like trying to convince a child that the Tooth Fairy isn't real.
Hi Paleo Analysis! I've been watching you ever since you uploaded you history of the earth video covering the Devonian Period. I am almost halfway through this video, and ive gotta say. Me, and deffinately many other people would love to see you make a rabbit hole/iceberg video disgussing the rise and fall of educational programs! People would love that kind of content.
I would love to see you do a deep dive on the paleo side of debunking the fictional uneducation networks of Discovery, Animal Planet, History Channel, etc. I watch miniminuteman debunk a lot of the "ancient aliens" and to see a paleo side of it would be also amazing.
ya I remember that time, I was 14 y.o and had this very long pose and was like "this is cgi. this whale is cgi" and my brother was like "what?" and I was like, "this is not real. look at it up close" and yes. very obviously cgi. the power of seating too close to the tv I guess. also actually having the opportunity to see actual dead whale that got washed to the shore
It still surprises me that people still belive that megalodons, mammoths or Plesiosaurs (nessi) still exists after millions of years. What do people learn in biology and history? Do they not know that things like inbreeding exists and even if those animals would have survived until now, a population needs at least over 50 units in a shorter term (still couple hundred years) and arround 500+ units in the VERY long term we are talking about. But its ALWAYS a single animal that got struck by immortality and survived until today. This always blows my mind.
They "learn" it from internet memes that are brainlessly parroted by people who also "learned" it from said internet memes. Memes that were initially created by people who embody the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Also worth mentioning, baleen whales were generally smaller in the Miocene than today, as krill populations were smaller and couldn't support the absolute giants of today. Between the extinction of the majority of baleen whale species _and_ the ballooning of the remaining species in size thanks to the bounty that is Antarctic krill blooms, the megalodon found its prey simply gone.
in my opinion, the biggest piece of evidence against the idea that megalodons are extant is the teeth. sharks shed teeth so frequently, & we have many megalodon teeth, but all of them date back at least 2.5 million years. if megalodons were still around, we would have new teeth.
To me 70's and 80's were the golden age. I live in Australia and we had a lot of BBC documentaries with a few US documentaries. It was obvious the BBC was of a higher standard. In th 90's the BBC standards declined and they became more like ones from the US. I never much cared fot US documentaries.
BBC feels stuck in the Planet Earth mold, every documentary they make just seems to be a variation of that based on whatever the theme is. Like have a bunch of pretty footage with occassional comments by a breathless narrator. That worked with Planet Earth because the footage spoke for itself but it kinda falls flat when talking about Astrophysics. I find that today the best documentaries are being made in France and Germany.
Excellent points! I shall refer to these while beating sense into the people that still think meg is here and the earth is flat. Honestly, I miss real science shows and I'm truly grateful to have channels like yours that fill the gap. Its always a good day when you upload.
The subtitle here should be "Shark Week and the downfall of educational TV". I don't think I saw the Megalodon "mockumentary", but I did see the Mermaid one. Or at least, I saw enough to get a good laugh, and to recognize the beginning of the end of the golden age of Discovery Channel when I saw it. And I can proudly say, I did not believe it for one second, even though I'd never seen a mockumentary before and I was used to Discovery Channel only showing legitimate science.
I feel exactly the same way about the loss of the Discovery Channel and the other fallen giants of that era. Thank God that we've got so many of you terrific independent creators taking up fallen banner of real educational documentaries.
megalodon actually ascended to a higher plane of existence and became the god of sharks. Shark pray to megalodon hopefully taking revenge or salvation on humans/homo Sapiens.
Discovery Channel was a fantastic channel with so much educational content. Sometime around 2010 or so was when Discovery, TLC, and The History Channel turned into a reality based TV garbage only.
Please talk about the rise and fall of educational programming! I, like yourself, was glued to my TV for the Discovery Channel; Wild Discovery was my favorite program, and Animal Planet was my favorite channel when that one came around. I cried the day Steve Irwin died, and I think my love for these channels went with him, because that's around the time these fake shows would become prevalent, and slowly start to shift to a more human focused programming, which was entirely against the point!
Discovery channel has been doing this for ages. I remember the Living with Tigers documentary talked about releasing tigers in Africa. They were never released in the wild. They were kept on a preserve! I also grew suspicious of many animal documentaries that followed random animals on their lives because I realized that they weren't collared, so it was often different animals being filmed, like they weren't following one wildebeest or seal, they put together videos of different animals to make a compelling story.
I am 3 minutes into this movie and I know and remember EXACTLY what you are going to talk about. Oh man, I specifically remember that exact teary/show. I was so pissed I personally went on my on my own mini-crusade trying to tell everyone on all my social media and at work/home/friends how they outright lied to us and faked that footage of Megalodon being alive now. So thank you so MUCH for making a video on this. No one seemed to be as upset as I was and come to think of it I never seen a video on it until now. This is a long time coming. (Lol ok now if I'm wrong about the moment I guess I'm an idiot. But I have a feeling I'm not going to have to edit this...)
So I actually watched the video now (lol.) Although it was the same topic, my experience was slightly different and I think it was a different "documentary." For me, I already stopped watching Discovery for a few years but for some reason I skipped to it mid-show. At that point they showed a 50+ foot shadow in the water. I think they were trying to give hints but not outright animate the thing. But for a moment, still trusting them for some reason, I started thinking "omg a shadow?! That's fricken *proof*!!" ...it only took a couple Kore commercial breaks after some bad cgi to realize I had been fooled, but they had me for a moment there, and to this day I still feel betrayed and will never trust (or watch) anything they put out.
I remember the good old days of Shark Week. George Burgess was my favorite part. I loved every time he came on. I hung on every word. I could have listened to him talk for hours. I hate the megalodon thing and what the discovery family did to that rumor. I have shown so many people the PBS Eons video on this. Thank you for giving me another thing to show PT Barnum's marks. Yeah, I'm fun at parties. But I may be amongst my people lol. Also feel free to make more shark videos. I'm obsessed with carcharhinus leucas. Bull shark. I love how sharks have evolved so many wild and cool things to thrive in their environment. I wish people talked about ancient sharks other than megalodon (not this video, this was important). Since I'm having a fun incoherent rant, I'd like to say that is another beef I have with shark week. It's mostly white sharks. They will sometimes do tigers and hammerheads. Bull sharks get mentioned. They will occasionally do episodes of rare sharks. But i want more rare sharks. I want to know if the glyphis sharks still exist. I want to see more bull sharks in the Zambezi. I want to see more about the Greenland shark, the sleeper, porbeagle, the frilled shark, and so many more. I'm just tired of the great white shark attack porn. I'm also not a fan of chumming and feeding the sharks. But I'm from Colorado and we don't feed the bears or mountain lions for very good reasons.
I’d love to see more content like this! I recently discovered your channel through Lindsay Nikole and it’s now one of my favorite paleontology channels, your sense of humor is awesome, and I love the way you lay out your content. Keep up the good work!
Happy to see this video! It's crazy how many horrible ai videos are out there now focussing on things like "the red megalodon". That itself is a whole rabbit hole, lol.
Honestly, the Meg novel was basically Patient Zero for the idea of megalodon surviving to the present, I don't think it ever really came up in remotely mainstream circles before then, and a lot of people's ideas on the subject are blatantly taken from the book (like megalodon living in the deep sea). And then everything came full circle when the success of the mockumentary was probably what finally got the movie adaptation out of development hell where it had been stuck since the late 90s.
It's really pathetic how many people will tell you they know Hollywood is fake, then believe that everything they see in movies is real anyway. See also, the JFK "magic bullet" bullshit.
