- Greetings to you,
children of the world.
It is I, Duncan Trussell,
and tonight on "Drunk History,"
we're gonna talk about LSD and dolphins.
- Cheers.
So in 1961, Dr. John Lilly published an amazing book
called "Man and Dolphin."
He wrote, wow, these dolphins are smart.
They're not like what we thought.
They're not just sea rats.
They're talking to each other.
They're social, they're advanced,
and we don't even know it yet,
but I bet we could talk to these sweeties.
So yeah, there was a big dolphin boom.
Everybody's reading Lilly's book,
and Carl Satan--Carl--
Carl Satan is a cool name.
Carl Satan is so much cooler than Marilyn Manson.
- [laughs]
- I so hope someone watching this
starts a [bleep] bad-ass band
and renames themselves Carl Satan.
All right, Carl Sagan's reading this book,
and he's like, whoa.
If dolphins can [bleep] talk,
what the [bleep], man?
This book is blowing my mind.
So Sagan calls a meeting.
SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence,
their members before it even existed are like,
shit, we all wanted to talk to these [bleep] aliens.
And they're all like,
dolphins are these [bleep] mammals, man,
and they live in the sea, they can talk.
If we can figure out how to talk to them,
maybe we can figure out how to talk to aliens.
NASA's like, [bleep] man, let's do this shit.
NASA gives John Lilly a shit-ton of money.
So John Lilly starts a dolphin laboratory
in St. Thomas in the Caribbean in 1963.
It's called the Communicating--
Communications Research Institute, CRI.
So somehow John Lilly gets three dolphins.
And he's looking at them, he's like, all right,
I'm gonna name you Pamela.
I'm gonna call you Sissy.
And I'm gonna call you Peter,
and we're gonna teach you how to speak English.
So someone who works there,
her name's Margaret Howe Lovatt,
he says to her, listen, I wanna give you Peter.
You teach Peter how to talk.
Margaret says, I am going to teach you English.
He's like-- [imitates dolphin noises]
She'd be like, my name is Margaret.
And he'd be like-- [imitates dolphin noises]
And like-- - Doesn't sound like her name.
- No, it's a [bleep] dolphin. Give him a break.
Imagine if somebody took you
out of the Earth onto an alien spaceship
and they're like, hey, listen, talk with your ass.
- [laughs] - That's Peter's situation.
So--so she wanted to be around
the dolphin all the time.
Her bed is next to the dolphin aquarium.
She built her desk in a platform above the tank.
She basically moves into Peter's apartment.
So Peter seems to be learning,
and Lilly's like, shit man,
Margaret, I think you and Peter are hitting it off.
But here's the problem.
Dolphins are sexual creatures. - Uh-oh.
- So it's like rubbing up against her,
it's humping her leg.
He's like, look, look what's happening to me.
And--and she's like, oh, wow.
Like, he needs to [bleep].
So when Peter would get horny,
they would, like, lift him out of the tank
and put him in the tank with the two other girls,
dolphins.
- Nice.
- And sure as shit,
afterwards he started learning English better.
Margaret's like, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk time.
We can talk. Now you talk.
Peter's like, [bleep], I think they want me
to say their monkey talk.
[imitates dolphin chattering]
But I'm horny.
She's like, goddamn it. Here we go again.
But moving a dolphin sucks.
And she's like, I didn't know I was gonna become
a [bleep] Uber for dolphin [bleep].
And at some point-- [laughter]
At some point she's like,
listen, guys, listen, we can't do this.
We don't have the time.
I'll jerk him off. What's the big deal?
Margaret started jerking Peter off
in between lessons.
- Do you think the handjob had a special allure for him?
'Cause dolphins don't have hands.
- I think as a dolphin
Peter was not stuck on hands or no hands.
He was just like, I'm from the ocean.
You, I don't know what the [bleep] you're from.
You're some kind of monkey thing.
I think I know what will make you happy though.
That's making me [bleep].
[laughter]
- My career is over. - What?
- My career is over, tonight.
[laughter]
So where'd the drugs get into the story?
- Okay, so John Lilly's at a party.
He meets the wife of the producer of "Flipper,"
who gives him LSD.
Everyone's on acid.
John Lilly gets the idea,
if we start giving acid to dolphins,
I bet they'll talk to us.
[loud sigh]
- You all right? - I'm fine, man.
- You spinning? - I'm not spinning.
Yet.
I hate spinning. Is there--
Do you have a solution to spinning, Doctor?
- Vomiting.
- God, God, that's so evil.
So [bleep] up.
There's nothing else?
- Not drinking so much.
- Goddamn it.
- So the lab, so the LSD.
- [sighs] All right.
One of John Lilly's dolphins was traumatized.
It'd been hit by a spear gun,
and it was afraid of humans.
He goes in the laboratory with a bunch of acid.
This'll be great. We can talk to the dolphins!
Let's talk to dolphins!
He gives the dolphin acid.
The dolphin that was formerly scared of humans
swims up to him and looks him in the eye.
There's a moment where it's like,
wait, maybe this isn't about language.
Maybe it's something deeper than language.
And John Lilly realized, wow, this works.
- [bleep] this blowhole communication.
This is something bigger. - Exactly!
It's not just the guttural sound you make
out of your [bleep] hamburger tube.
[laughter]
So John Lilly starts giving the dolphins acid.
Margaret is like, hey, John,
do you mind not injecting Peter with acid?
That'd be awesome. I don't think he wants acid.
I don't want you to give it to him.
Margaret's like, I love this dolphin.
I don't know.
And Lilly's like, no, I'm gonna give Peter acid.
It makes them--it seems to make them a little more,
like, communicative, they're a little--
it seems to excite them in some way.
And he gave it acid.
So John Lilly is on acid.
So they're both tripping.
[psychedelic music]
So, ugh...
Eventually "Hustler" catches wind
of the fact that Margaret is, like, jerking off dolphins
and writes an article.
They made it like "Hustler" style.
- Yeah, yeah. - Someone at NASA opens it up
and they're like, what the [bleep]?
I paid a million dollars to that asshole,
and they're out there [bleep] the dolphins.
And so Carl Sagan comes in one day,
and he's like, uh, I'm Carl Sagan,
and I'm a very respected scientist.
I love space. You know that.
I think space is amazing,
but there's a couple of things I think are weird
that are now happening in the universe.
Number one, jerking off dolphins.
And number two, giving them acid.
And you know what, John?
When I said let's talk to [bleep] dolphins,
I didn't mean let's teach them to speak English.
Let's learn their language!
You don't go to Japan and kidnap a Japanese man
and start jerking him off and giving him [bleep] acid
and then ask him to learn English!
John, I'm sorry, I'm angry,
but really just think about it from my perspective, man.
The next time I go to [bleep] NASA,
they're gonna be like, oh yeah, sure, Carl.
Who you gonna jerk off in this experiment, aliens?
An owl? A partridge? What's it gonna be, Carl?
Oh yeah, sure, we'll give you money.
Get the [bleep] outta here!
[laughter]
So the lab shuts down, 1966.
Peter went to another laboratory.
It wasn't a lab like the one he was at.
This was just a [bleep] up basic, shitty,
goddamn dolphin lab.
Peter's heart was broken.
He loved Margaret.
So Peter swims to the bottom of the aquarium,
and he dies.
He drowns himself.
- Dolphins can choose not to breathe.
- Yeah, Peter, especially.
And Margaret's heart was broken.
She was so--she was really hurt by that.
This is like the important point, man.
- Hmm?
- John Lilly's work
led to a world-wide recognition
of dolphins and whales as intelligent life forms.
And thanks to his work, they passed
the Marine Mammal Protection Act,
which kept dolphins and whales safe.
- In spite of the peculiar twists and turns of this story,
why was this important history?
- I think Peter taught us that no matter how bad it seems,
like, you could make it better.
Right, like, he's like, if you believe in yourself,
if you truly believe in yourself,
you can get a monkey descendant
to make you [bleep].
[laughter]
Oh, God, I wish I was born in the '60s.