FM Talk 1065 Podcasts
Midday Mobile - Ben Raines reacts to WSJ article calling The Clotilda a hoax - July 9 2024
There will be no personal nor direct attacks on anyone and I would ask that you please try to keep down the loud cheering and the clapping. There will be no booing and no unruly behavior. With that, this is painful and it will be for a long time. After all, these are a couple of high-stepping turkeys and you know what to say about a high stepper. No step too high for a high stepper. This is Midday Mobile with Sean Sullivan on FM Talk 1065. Well, Sean's a tough guy. I mean, I think everybody knows that. You know, Sean, he took some licks. He hangs in there. Yeah, what's wrong with the beer we got? I mean, the beer we got drank pretty good, don't it? Did you hear what I said? So, this is a bade council. I had no doubt about them. That doesn't stop. If you don't like it, you're bad. Last question. Were you high on drugs? Last question, kiss my ****. Right. Here we go. FM Talk 1065 Midday Mobile. Glad to have you here on this Tuesday. And as always, the phone number, the same as it ever was, like David Byrne said. 3430106. 3430106 for a phone call or a text. You may want to put that in your contacts on the phone, you know, right there because I mean 50 over 56 hours a week of live local shows that come from right here in the opulent FM Talk 1065 studios at airport and I 65. And so it may not be today, may not tomorrow over the weekend. We're live every day of the week. There shows you may want to check in with 3430106. If y'all are not from around here, we are in the 251. Also with the FM Talk 1065 app, which is like a multi tool for your phone. It's like a Leatherman or we get these arguments sometimes or a Gerber, your favorite multi tool. It does a lot of things, right? The same thing for our app. Of course, you can stream the station there. You get our social media feeds with breaking news on there as well as the first access to our podcast. We put up daily hourly throughout the week. Those are on the app and you can also check out the latest traffic information, weather information, all right there, plus the microphone icon on the front page. If you'll mash that, you can record a message emails to the show and we can play it back. Speaking of the weather app, it is now officially to me. It's now now this right here. This is July. This is summertime in Mobile at one point today, bouncing around here. It was pouring on Dolphin Street. By the time I got to airport, the sun was shining. I had to put my sunglasses back on, put the visor down. You know, it's that that is what I expect out of our summertime weather. Not that I love the humidity, but if you're trying to like encapsulate what July is on the Gulf Coast, it's happening right now. All right. I mentioned this yesterday in our conversation with John Sledge about the story that came out over the weekend, Saturday in the Wall Street Journal about the clotilda that we would also talk to my friend Ben Raines. So without further delay, well, we can delay a little bit. But hey, Ben, what's up? Hey, so how are you? I'm good. Filmmaker, writer, academic, Bon Vivant, guide, fellow speckle trout freak and all around good guy, boat guide to Ben Raines. Welcome back to the show. Well, thank you. It's good to be here. I'm glad you're pursuing this avenue. Yeah. Yes. And you're busy yet on another project, John. He's, he's phoning in because he's on another project, and we'll talk more about other projects and just a little bit. But I can only imagine what it was like for you, Ben, because it was Saturday. I was trying to do, I said this yesterday. I was trying to, Independence Day extended weekend stuff, you know, living on the boat, fishing, hanging out, you know, just goofing off. And my phone just gone, but dang, bang, bang, and social media stuff. I mean, Sean, have you seen this? Sean, have you seen this? You know, I've just inundated with this Wall Street Journal story. I'm like, well, I'm not working. What am I doing? So I opened this thing up, sitting there on the Samsung phone, reading this up under the hardtop of the boat and said, you got to be kidding me. Story comes out, it was the last slave ship to reach the US, or was it a hoax? That's a strong word, Ben. How did that hit you? Well, I kind of had a preview of what was coming in that I took both the guy who claims it was a hoax up to the Quotilda site about two years ago. And I took the Wall Street Journal reporter, Cam McSumpener, or other. - McQuarter, I think, said McQuarter. - Yeah, I know, I was just making a dig at him, not saying his name. - Mcdonald's. - I took him up there as well. And so I had heard all of these theories, which I will call conspiracy theories, that the Quotilda didn't exist. And dismissed them all as absurd to both of those guys, the guy who's making the claims. And I said, look, you just blew it. I am a reporter, I know what it's like. I have identified the wrong ship before, and that's what you did. The guy claiming it's a hoax, wrote a book in 2006, I think, about this other ship, which I wrote about in the last slave ship, called The Wanderer, and he thought that was the last slave ship, but he was totally wrong. So, in fact, he's so wrong that even if the Quotilda never happened, the title of his book was still incorrect, because there were multiple other slave ships in the two years between The Wanderer and the Quotilda. - Yeah, he has a dog in the hunt. That's what I said yesterday to people. I don't know, and I'm still, I'm an open-minded guy. If they can come in and they want to do more investigation and show me things, and I'm not a close-minded person, but dude, what is the cliche everybody today? Full transparency, full transparency, dude. You've got a dog in the hunt, and you want it to be The Wanderer. - Yeah, and I told that guy to say, "Look, you just blew it, I'm sorry." Sometimes reporters make mistake. With Cam, the Wall Street Journal reporter, I went through every one of that guy's points, and it all boiled down to this one issue. To make the Wall Street Journal story work, to make this guy's hoax claim be true, you have to ignore all of the most important and best evidence in the Clotilda story, which is the human evidence. We actually have multiple firsthand accounts from people who were on the Clotilda, who were selected in Africa by Captain Foster, the man who built the Clotilda and sailed it to Africa, and who wrote his own firsthand account about doing it. So you have to ignore Barracoon by one of our most famous anthropologists, or Neil Hurston. You have to ignore Cujo's first person account, the tune he gave in multiple books. And to ignore these things is almost impossible if you're a rational person. What Eric Colonia, the guy who wrote the, who's claiming it's a hoax, what he said to me was, "Coujo was paid off." Those guys, they were in on the hoax. So his claim is that Cujo, Lewis, 30 years after Foster and Mare are both dead, tells Zora Neil Hurston the story in detail about being stolen from Africa at 19, being picked by Captain Foster, getting on the first ship he's ever seen, which is the Clotilda. Sailing to America, being enslaved by Timothy Mare, who owns a shipyard where the Clotilda was built, and then bought land from Mare after he was freed, he tells the story of going to Mare and saying, "Please, give us some land or send us back to Africa." Mare had talked about these things. I mean, it's just insanity that this article got published the way it is. It is journalistic malpractice to publish an article saying it's a hoax and leave out all of the evidence that proved it's not a hoax. It would, I get overwrought because I am a journalist. I would never have gotten this story past the editors of the Mobile Press Register. Not even the Wall Street Journal, you know? - Yeah, I'll put you down as undecided on that, Ben. (laughs) - Well, I will say, I wrote a text to the Wall Street Journal reporter, Cam McWhorter, after I read it, saying you have ignored all of this critical historical evidence, crap job, dude. And he messaged back, you do you. That's his defense. And I said, what about all of this historical evidence that he left out? No response, three days, going. I mean, you know, crap job, dude. - Yeah, I'm interested that talking to somebody who has, book that made the New York Times bestseller list and somebody who's working with the Wall Street Journal and it is crap job dude, you do you. I like the fact that regular speak actually exists out there. When I looked at him yesterday and talking about this, you're so involved, I'm semi-involved in this, just you're not talking for never did anything on it. But it seemed like the argument made in the Wall Street Journal story was like something I would have done in a freshman debate class, right? A straw mat where I'd find the two things, whatever, in an argument and just pick on those and just ignore all those things you just delineated. And that's what the thing in the story does. It's omission, right? There's commission, but there's also grand omission of those things you just detailed. Like, so somebody who's not us or not from around here reads that in Schenectady manner. Selena Kansas or something, they're left thinking that it's, it was a hoax. - And this was exactly my point to him. If you read that Wall Street Journal story, you're unaware of the mountain of evidence proving the Wall Street Journal story was crap. Proving Eric Colonius, the guy claiming it's a hoax, is full of crap. And that's the problem. And that's, you know, the Wall Street Journal was one, you know, a serious news entity. And this proves it's not. You know, if they would publish that, it was just designed to be sensational and get clicks. - Well, you know, they contorted the story to get the word hoax in the headline. - Yeah, I mean, that's the word that got me. Like, I was like, I am not reading something out here on the boat, oh, yes, I am, but I saw hoax. I was like, okay, yeah, it got me too. But the frustration is you could have Colonius doing what he's doing, but the author, you would believe would say, here's his theories of why it's a hoax. 'Cause I'm not against, you know, there doesn't have to be any kind of uniformity of speech. Here's what this guy is saying. And then he should go, and then these paragraphs, well, this information came out in the last slave ship or in this history and give the other side of it. I mean, that's journalism. - Yeah, you know, he makes no mention. He mentions the hoax guy's book. He makes no mention of my book. He makes no mention of Sylvie A.N. Dukes, excellent book, Dreams of Africa and Alabama. You know, these are books that go into the story in detail. And he just doesn't mention them to make sure nobody looks at almost, you know? - Yeah, it was, yeah. And that's why it was, you said, crap job. I said, you know, it sounded like freshman debate class, but that is the problem. So that gets out there. And even if there's a retraction, you know, we've talked about this in the old days of print, you know, the wrong thing would show up top of the fold. The retraction would be somewhere back by Marmaduke or something in a printed paper, you know? - And, you know, I thought of writing a letter, but nobody's ever gonna see that. You know, this thing has gone out to millions and millions of people across the nation. It was on Apple News, outside of the Wall Street Journal. You know, so the damage is done. The trick now is keeping the true story out there because this is the most incredible record we have from the entire era of enslavement. This is the only story where we have the people who were enslaved, telling what happened to them. And we have 10 of them in the first book about this, which was Historic Sketches of the South by Emma Roach, whose family owned the big funeral home in Mobile. And she grew up with these people. They were grave diggers for her father in the funeral home. And so she befriended Kujo when he got hit by a train. She's the person who found him in the street and got a doctor and everything. And then she became friends with him as he conned the left and she started coming to visit him and she got to know the others. And so in 1912 to 1914, she interviewed the last 10 of them who were still alive. And they talked about the Coachella. And they talked about Captain Foster and they talked about being on the ship. You know, for the hoax guy, Eric Colonius, for his story to be true, you have to ignore all of this stuff that all these people say. And what he says is, oh, well, these people were on this other ship that came in in Georgia, the wanderer two years before. They arrived in Mobile by Train. Well, nowhere in the story do any of these 10 people mention a train. They mentioned being on a boat. They mentioned arriving in Alabama. They mentioned being towed up the river. They mentioned the ship burning as they're hauled away on another steamboat. Then they were forced to walk around in the swamp for two weeks. They all tell the same story. So, you know, the Wall Street Journal has ignored 10 real life people and their stories who all happened to be African American to take this, you know, old man from South Carolina's story about it being a hoax. I mean, it's really a stunning thing to do. And then, you know, and for him to have told me, well, they were paid off. They were saying they were paid to tell this lie. And I mean, the point these books were written, the only person who would have paid them, Timothy Mayer, had been dead for 25 years. You know, it's just absurd. - It is. We're running the news break coming right back. We're with Ben Raines. And I got some questions coming in on the text line for Bennett 3430106. We'll get to those when we return right here on Midamobile. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - This is Midamobile with Sean Sullivan on FM Talk 1065. - By 1222, FM Talk 1065 and Midamobile. 3430106, thank you on the text line too. Who was it? Bob sent me a screenshot of where he has our contact in on his phone. Good, good work. Nice, Bob. I appreciate that. Continue your conversation with Ben Raines. And Ben, did you notice, you know, I mentioned how you could tell it's for sure summertime where it's raining on, you know, one street and dry on the other. It's also just as things you and I are into. Dude, we're like just two weeks in change away. I mean, get the Roy Martin coming up this weekend and the big rodeo the next. I mean, I don't know if it's just me, but time flies these times. I don't know, it's like an older man. - I mean, I thought it was still April. - And here it is. It's a rodeo time. So in this, can you see me? - This is my year. - Huh? - This is my year for the rodeo. - Okay, we'll tell you what. I'm gonna, we'll talk, I'll text you later. We'll talk strategy. - I've never even made the board. So, you know, I've got to play. I've got to plan, it all revolves around white trout, but we'll get to it. - Oh, I like it. Maybe fish is a wild side, right? - Yeah, but here's the thing. I've done the, I did the, we had a whole plan on Ladyfish one year, and we were like on the board, like maybe even Friday and Saturday. And then Sunday people came in just obliterated us. So, oh well. - Yeah. - You mentioned this, but several textures are asking the same thing. Why doesn't Ben sent a rebuttal letter to the Wall Street Journal editorial board, and you're saying it's just not gonna get attention, or why not do it just to say you did it? - No, I'm still contemplating it. What I'm also contemplating is an article in a different publication, something better than the Wall Street Journal, like the New York Times, you know, something like that. And, but I don't know if they'll run an article attacking an article in another publication. I'm still sort of game planning out what I think I should use my bullet. I will do something. I've just been kind of wrestling with it. I know that ail.com and Lanyon for both tackling it and doing stories, which is good. So, I don't know. I mean, you're probably right. Your callers are probably right. I probably should do that. So, I've got to make a decision about which way to go. - And speaking of what folks are saying, this came up yesterday as well when I was talking to John Sledge, but Jason said a couple of things here, I want to get you an answer to the last one first. He said, Sean, set up an on-air debate between the two and let's first, which I'd love to do. I don't think that's going to happen, but I know Ben would be in. If we can get this colonias in, I will give you this studio. We'll do an on-air discussion with the two of you, see if we can get that booked. But he said, what happened to the people, what about the people in the community that say it never happened? That's quoted in that story. I think Darren Patterson said, people in Africa town. - I don't know what Darren's talking about that, talking about with that. I mean, I know there are some non-descended people who have not liked all the attention. The Clotilda gets versus resurrecting Africa town gets, but I don't know, I have not encountered people who say it never happened that are from Africa town. And Darren, I'm sure he had. But Darren is another lifelong journalist. He worked, his career started at the press register, in fact, back in the '80s. And then he worked for the Detroit Free Press. And he, I think, feels like I do, that this Wall Street Journal article was just absurd from a journalistic perspective. The efforts the guy went to ignore evidence and present this one-sided story to promote this hoax narrative is really out there. One thing that's interesting is Clonias, the guy claiming it's a hoax. He certainly never tried to get anybody to listen to him in Mobile. And I think he might find himself in an unpleasant situation if he got up in front of a room full of people here and presented his side of this, his case. I think there would be a lot of people who took great offense that he was ignoring these first-person accounts, that, you know, I mean, Zorno Hurston is a famous anthropologist and historian for a good reason. And to ignore these accounts, including this woman, Hannah Durkin's book, she tracked down the life stories of the survivors and their descendants and just published a book, an excellent book. It's really, as a journalist, it's hard to see what's happened to journalism and it's harder still to see what should be flagship papers in our country, you know, stooping to this kind of work. - Yeah, I mean, it does. Listen, on the periphery, if I'm trying to get attention, I don't work for the Wall Street Journal. I'm not already part of the big machine that gives me some backup here, then I might try some kind of clickbait to get some attention. But once again, you're talking about the Wall Street Journal and he goes through the editors, they go, okay, that's okay, let's move on, that, it published, that's fine. - Well, you know, the Wall Street Journal is not the organization we grew up with, like many things, like National Geographic is not, you know, and the Wall Street Journal is owned by Rupert Murdoch and their journalistic standards have changed over time and, you know, you could say the same of many other-- - Washington Post. - Media outlets. - Yeah, you know, they, but I can't imagine the Post having, would write this story-- - I don't know, the Post wrote that. - The historical evidence. - Bisa, you know, as he, you know, he has, there's some stuff that comes out there that I can't believe passed editorial, Buster, but we'll discuss that another day. - Well, sure, sure, no, no, I agree, I agree. I'm not, I'm just saying, I'm talking about journalism writ large, it's sad to see that this kind of thing can squeeze through and it's because they don't, you know, in the old days, even at our lowly press register before they destroyed it, every story, before they fired everybody, every story that went in the paper had to be signed off on by three editors. You know, so three people in the editing ranks had to sign off on a story before they put it in the paper. By the time I left that company, no editors read the story, they said they would try and read it once it was online and if there's a problem, they'd come to you. So, you know, we've gone from before we put something out to the public, we make sure it's legitimate and balanced to, we just throw crap up and hope, you know, nobody complains and if they do, we'll look into it. - Hey, coming right back, more with Ben Rains, we're gonna get to some good news here and maybe my friend Ben has gotten Washington to have something that can create some bipartisanship on a bill. We'll talk about this when we get back. (upbeat music) - This is Midday Mobile with Sean Sullivan on FM Talk 1065. - Right, 1235, FM Talk 1065. Midday Mobile, glad to have you along on this Tuesday. This segment of the show, and yeah, Ben will like this. This segment of the show brought to you by Bluewater Got Sales and Service. I actually just saw my man Forrest this morning. We were both stopping for breakfast items at a store and got to talk about selling boats and what's going on right now. And he said he's still got the incentive prices. 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So you want to check out the boats, check out the inventory, you can do that online, Bluewater Got Sales.net. Or more fun, I guarantee you this, more fun is to go see them in person on the East I-65 belt line or at Orange Beach Marina, go see my buddy Forrest at Bluewater Got Sales and Service. All right, continue with my friend Ben Raines. And we talked about this Wall Street Journal story, so that's in the rear view. You sent me this. How long have you been on this? How long have you and I been talking about this protection for the underwater forest? When did this start? So about 2012, I think, is when we, you know, I worked with the Alabama Coastal Foundation, and that's when we started trying to get it named as a marine sanctuary, a national marine sanctuary. It's about 2012. Well, things take time. Yes, sometimes more time than they should. And this one was hamstrung and slowed down by Bradley Byrne. He refused for eight years to put a bill in, because he said, no, no, they'll blame me for giving away the federal government. It's like, Bradley, it's in federal waters. There's no debate. You know, let's protect it. So anyway, that's the big thing. But he did end up putting the bill in, right? Didn't he put the bill in before he left office? In the last month before he left office. You know, lame duck, end of the session. There was no way anything was going to happen. To propose a bill in the last month of Congress, there's just no way it's going to happen. It's taken three years since this bill was proposed to get to this vote. And it gets for people who haven't followed all the conversations we've had about it or read about it. This idea for protection, this is the underwater force. These are these cypress tumps that get exposed and covered there, 10 miles out in the Gulf, that are how old, you keep the age, keep moving. 70,000 years. I mean, I was stuck on 50,000 for a while. Now you're saying 70,000 years old? 70,000. Well, the science gets better and they've honed in on it more directly. And so we're at 70,000 years. And by the way, we all do have a dog in this hunt, because as soon as there's protection, you're going to post the numbers, right? No, yeah, absolutely. And so, you know, the news, which we haven't shared with the people is last night, the U.S. Congress, the House voted and they passed it overwhelmingly. It was, there were 19 votes against and I think 373 votes for. So it was a bipartisan bill. There was only three yes votes difference between the Republican and the Democrat side. So the whole nation, you know, representatives from all over the country got behind it, which is beautiful to see. This is how Congress is supposed to work, especially with something that's not contentious. You know, this is a natural wonder and it's so good to see the House get behind it. Now we got to get the Senate motivated and get our senators rolling in the right direction and put a bill in the Senate before the term ends. Yeah, it's okay. And for people to understand this too, this is a, you've said before, it's like, you know, like the Grand Canyon protection. We can raft in the Grand Canyon. We can catch trout. I got a two, three years ago when I went, we got a bunch of trout. We got fish. You could raft. You could do all these things. Same thing for the underwater force. We can fish it. We can dive it. It's just to say, Hey, y'all can't come out here with salvage rights and dig up these 70,000 year old cypress dumps and go make guitars and coffee tables and stuff out of something that belongs to the people, right? Yes. Yes. This is just to protect the wood. But you can do anything at this spot that you can do anywhere else in the Gulf of Mexico. And so that's kind of the beauty of it. And, you know, one of the cool things is if it passes, then it becomes eligible for funding, research funding from the federal government, from NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. And that means that our local universities, Auburn, the University of South Alabama, all the schools in the CLAB consortium, the 22 of them, they can all start doing marine sanctuary research with federal funding. Right now, the two closest marine sanctuaries, the only two in the Gulf of Mexico, one's in the Florida Keys and one is the Flower Garden Banks off Texas, which is 100 miles off short. And so our research institutes are basically cut out of the National Marine Sanctuary game. They don't get to do that federally funded research. And here, if this gets protected, suddenly our universities are eligible for millions and millions of dollars in funding. That's already approved. It's already in the federal budget. And so this would be a real windfall and boon for Alabama universities, too, to have this thing open and set up for research like that. I can't believe, and thank you, Adam, for the text. I can't believe I've never asked you this. On air, I'm just jawing with you. What would the penalties and consequences be for someone if they were to pillage into wood from the forest? Yeah, we're the teeth in this. I never thought about asking that. Well, you know, and I don't know the answer to that. I would come with the full protections of the National Marine Sanctuary Act. And so I'm sure that the penalties in there are probably involved federal prison time and fines. Now, with most marine sanctuaries around the country, you're not allowed to fish in. And so part of the reason this has taken so long is because the state very much wanted to make sure people could still fish there. And so we had to go a slightly different route than other marine sanctuaries. So the two routes, you can go to the, you can petition online like the public. And we started this route originally, and you go to the National Marine Sanctuary's office and they take these public suggestions and pursue them. But if they make the sanctuary designation that way, then you're not allowed to fish there. You're not allowed to anchor there and all that stuff. So I actually presented to them in Galveston a decade ago, showed them the underwater forest film and then had this discussion about the path forward. And they said, well, I think we think you should go the congressional route. And that route is you get Congress, you get it proposed as a bill in Congress because then you can design the rules. And so that's what we've done. So I don't know what the penalties would be. I know if you shoot a bird, you know, a migratory bird, you're in violation of the federal migratory bird act. Yeah, if you're on a refuge. Well, no, if you shoot, if you shoot a non-game bird, I thought you said migratory birds, you know me long enough. I'm thinking you shoot a corner. Right. Right. Those are migratory birds covered under the migratory bird act. $5,000 fine and five years in federal prison. And so, you know, that's we have game laws for the animals that are allowed to shoot, you know, right? And seasons and all that. So I bet you the penalties are something like that. I don't know. That's a good question. I'll have to try and figure that out. It's good for, I mean, if they did it this way, I mean, because it'd be tough to me, it wouldn't be tough, but sometimes Washington brain doesn't get the fact that what is being protected there are 70,000 year old cypress stumps, not a dang snapper. The time cap. Yeah, the time cap. It's not a sanctuary for the snapper. I mean, hopefully it's good for me to go catch a limit, but, you know, it's not that. That's not the, yeah, the sanctuary is protecting the stuff, the stumps, not the... Yes. This is a natural wonder like Yellowstone National Park where the Grand Canyon. This is something you can't see anywhere else in the world, and it's in America. It's the only known spot where we have these, you know, primordial forests where the stumps are intact in the mud they were growing in way back in the beginning of the ice age, you know, 70,000 years ago. That's really cool. And so that's what we're trying to save. And, you know, the other side of this, as far as getting our senators on board, is this is nothing but a wind for Alabama. This will be a tourism windfall. People, you know, divers will flock here from all over the country and to be honest, the world to dive on this thing. And that will be a huge tourism boost. And, you know, unlike opening a new national park, there's no garbage cans in the underwater forest that need to be empty. There's no gatehouse that has to be staffed. You know, there are no campsites that have to be mowed. This thing, once we set it up, it takes care of itself. It's on the bottom of the ocean. You know, there's nothing to be done. So it's just, you know, from a state perspective, this is a money maker for the state. It's a prestige bringer and it's a tourism and just, you know, driver. Yeah. And the oh well factor, you know, that people have heard us talk about it, but I'm just going to let you riff on this for a minute here. Y'all, when we talk about that, you pull up, they took a core sample of one of these cypress dumps, more than once. But I remember you telling me years ago, take the core sample and you can see it in the movie. The sap is still in there. It is, it's cypress like if you and I just went and log. If we just log some cypress up on the river, it's, it's the same thing. It's 70,000 years old. And to me, it just excites me to think about that. You get a, you get a fresh piece. You know, they get, they age as they get uncovered, but there's still plenty that hasn't been uncovered. So you get a log that's just been uncovered. You take it up on the deck of the boat, 70,000 years old, and you saw into it, just with a hand saw, like you're sawing a log in your yard and you smell that fresh, piney scent and you let it sit there in the sun and you actually watch the sap booms out of it. You know, it's like Jurassic Park stuff. It's really cool. And also you said, as this is what I can't wait to do, and I've needed to go dive this with you and we will get there. You said not only do you see the stumps, but you can see the tracks of the bayou. You know, you could see, because obviously they're growing on the edges of the waterway. And so you can track what the old waterway looked like. Yeah. That's the river bed. It really is. It really is. And so that's what I mean when I say this is like Yellowstone. This is like the Grand King. You know, it's cool. And, and, and it's, it's unique. And, you know, that's the thing about Alabama is nationally, we're, we're kind of everybody's, you know, everybody loves to pick on Alabama. And, and they pick on us because the public perception of Alabama is, you know, civil rights protests, steel mills, cotton fields, and football. But that's not Alabama. That's stuff we've done in Alabama. You know, Alabama, the landscape is one of the most spectacular in the country. You know, we've got the mountainous top part of the state all the way down here to the Gulf Coast. We've got incredible diversity. And, and this is part of that. You know, Alabama used to be in 1800. It was a place people came to to see things they couldn't see anywhere else in the world. You know, that's, we need to get back to that perception of Alabama in the public mind. Because that's, you know, that's the treasure of Alabama is its landscape. Absolutely. As we talk about what you do here with these films, you are working on a new project right now. Anything can you give us a tease that's anything coming out? Well, this is the last estuary. I'm hoping to have it done and ready to go on TV around New Year's. It is a film about Mobile Bay and Alabama's coastline. And the premise is basically Louisiana is washing away. There's nothing to be done about it. It's happening so fast. It's blowing everybody's predictions away. So we're going to lose all of that coastal marsh, which is the biggest chunk of marsh on the Gulf Coast, the boot of Louisiana. It's almost gone if you look at satellite images. So then we got Mississippi. Well, Mississippi destroyed all of their marsh with the longest fake beach in the world. With a bunch of Alabama sand with a bunch of Alabama sand. Exactly. And it, but it is the longest fake beach in the world. So they destroyed their, their marsh engine that could power the Northern Gulf of Mexico. So that means Alabama's marshes, you know, stretching from, from over on the edge of Pascagula, you know, going through biobaturing, code in all the way over through Wolf Bay, all the way to the Florida line. Those marshes are going to be the marshes that power the Northern Gulf of Mexico ecosystem in terms of nursery habitat for everything. If you go out in our grass beds and our marshes and do a trawl survey, you know, toe a net, like a shrimp net kind of thing, you, you will catch six inch long cobia. You'll catch three inch long grouper. You will catch speckled trout one inch long. You'll catch mangrove snapper, you know, the size of your thumbnail because this is where they live. This is the habitat for all those baby creatures, shrimp, all that stuff. And so as we lose all this other grass bed and marsh habitat around the coast, what little we have left becomes incredibly important. And so that's what that's what the last estuary is about. And it's trying to bring this idea home to those of us in Alabama that, hey, we've got to protect this because it's going to keep the Gulf of Mexico functioning like we wanted to function. Absolutely. And a great day. I can't wait show around the new year. Do you think it's? Well, that's not a promise that the hope that's an aspiration. I hope I get there. Okay. All right. Thanks. Keep getting in my way. Yeah. Well, we'll keep cheering. The coast of the Alabama Coastal Foundation has funded this. They helped me get the grants to make it just like they did for the carnivorous kingdom, which the porch Creek helped fun. And I just, you know, and the Alabama Coastal Foundation got me the funding to make the underwater forest documentary. So, you know, support your local groups. They're out there doing good work. And in the meantime, if you had extra time, I know you're doing your tours and Delta tour. You were doing recently, like the Lotus tour. And I saw you put some pictures of lovers, man. Some lovers up on Facebook. So the lovers are big. I actually have a Lotus trip Friday that has three spots left on it. You can go online to benrain.org to book them. You know, I've got two biminis on the boat at this point, because it's so hot and it's wonderful. It looks, you know, it looks a little Beverly Hillberry, but boy, when you're under the tops, you don't care. You know what? You look a little Beverly Hillbillies, too, as do I. So, I mean, we fit in. Yeah. Well, that was my role models growing up. You know, that was my favorite show. You and I both been as always, man. I appreciate our conversations. Great work. I'm glad this has moved on on the underwater forest. I can't wait for those numbers to get published and we'll get out there and get on them. All right. And remember, the Clotilda is not a hoax. That guy just sucks as a reporter. Put you down as undecided, brother. All right. Talk to you soon. This is midday mobile with Sean Sullivan on FM Talk 1065. By 1254 FM Talk 1065, midday mobile Tuesday style. Let me get some text read here and coming back after the news. April Marie Fogle joins me lots more on way hour number two of midday mobile. All right. Irish Indian. Great job, Ben. Thanks for what you bring history and journalism. Yes. Some people would ask me about something about the book here on the text line. There may be more coming out on Ben's book, The Last Slave Ship, that is his account of the Clotilda. Let's see. Now, this is funny. I don't know who you are, but I get you halfway said just what we need. More people from around the world coming to the beach said no one ever agreed at the same time. We got to get the protection on those stumps down there so we can all go dive and fish. That spot is pretty darn cool. Let's see. John says, where's the underwater forest located exactly for heaven's sake? Let's make it a tourist attraction. Yeah. It's about 10 miles south of Gulf Shores ish. I don't have the numbers. I've asked Ben. I said, well, I just don't. I'm going to go with him the first time then, you know, they'll publish and I do not have the numbers. So don't people like, hey, man, Ben gave you. I don't. I do not have the numbers. I know there's a lot of people that do. I say a lot of people handful of people that have the numbers to the. And it's not just one spot. It's not like a, you know, we're fishing a pyramid or a chicken coop or a tank or something. It's a whole area out there. All right. Texas says, how can we see the film? If you go look on YouTube for Ben Raines and you can look for America's Amazon or the underwater forest or the carnivorous kingdom and all those will come up on YouTube and anything more for Ben. You finally, after years of me cajoling him, other people really, more importantly cajoling him. He has Ben Raines.org. You can go there and get all the information there. But if you YouTube those Ben Raines and the movies, you'll find them there and can watch them. This texture says, Ben, don't throw your sucker in the sand. The facts are irrevocably on your side. You should submit a rebuttal piece to the Wall Street Journal as a first step. You have the credibility whether we like it or not. It's part of Ovil's heritage. The New York Times has corrupt. Rag that would never give you the benefit of the doubt, properly done. The Wall Street Journal will. Good luck. C.B. Carl said they will be building a subdivision over on our side of the Delta. I don't think people are going to come move here because of the underwater forest. I mean, I went and ran after the Grand Canyon. I didn't want to move to Page Arizona, but I sure as heck enjoyed being in it and hopefully get to go back soon. How big is the underwater forest? You know, Ben is it. I don't want to screw this. 30 acres, although more gets on. You know, it's like every time you get a storm, like some of the wrecks on the beach, they're covered up, they're uncovered, they're back, they're gone. It's like, it's like that. Is there anything on the internet about it? If you look for underwater forest, you'll find all the stories. There have been Billy, that's Billy from Fall River. There have been a lot of stories published on it about that. And you go watch Ben's movie on YouTube and it kind of encapsulates everything that he was just talking about and a whole lot more. Let's see. Adam said we're so incredibly lucky to have been rained. He is a treasure. I don't inflate his head. Don't get him. I got to deal with him. Jerry and Morgan said he's forgetting about how the ship channel is going to kill what the sewage overflows don't get. Well, Jerry, you and I have been on that same page, right? And I'm not letting up there. I'm going to get Chris Blankenship on, director of DCNR back on the show because it was last year I was ripping, like I do, about sewage overflows. And I said, you know, with the money we got from the BP disaster, there should have been money there to not just do boat ramps and economic incentives and those things are good and planting, you know, sea grasses and bringing oysters. But we should do something about keeping the blank out of the water. And so Chris Blankenship and I have known each other a long time. He called me and said, hey, Sullivan, you're getting it wrong. There is. The state has money. And the money is waiting for these utilities to ask for it. And he said, some are, but a lot aren't. Like there's money for relive pumps and infrastructure to keep them out of the water. I'm going to get an update from Commissioner all that, maybe in the next week or so. We'll talk about it. All right, our number two of mid-day mobile, April, February, focal and a whole lot more right after the news.