Off-the-Record: Neil the Seal’s Whole Deal

0:00Happy Friday Slatesters. This is the time we go off the record just for you our Slate plus friends and neighbors. this week was kind of a rough one we were tasked with explaining the absolute mess up in Maine where Graham Plattner finally dropped out of his senate race yeah so a ton of unanswered questions out there but we have a few more and that's why Lizzie and I are here to let you inside our brains after a week of absorbing the news environment and Lizzie we're gonna start somewhere I gotta say I think the listeners are gonna be surprised

0:36with a 2 ,000 pound seal in Tasmania. Lizzie, I mostly keep tabs on this seal because of your Instagram. So I'm going to demand that you explain to the people why we are discussing Neil the Seal this week. Neil the Seal is my id. Neil the Seal is everything I want to be. disrupting town infrastructure, lying on a beach in Tasmania. Neil is a young 2 ,000 pound elephant seal who has basically been terrorizing the beaches of Tasmania. Why? What is his motivation? Okay, so it's very complicated, but... He's a complicated seal. He's a complicated pin-a-ped, and no one understands him like his woman.

1:25Pinn-a-ped? Excuse me, what? Yes. Hi. You brought the vocab. Hi. I'm a nerd out today. Okay. So elephant seals molt. Yes. Like snakes? Like they like lose a full layer? They lose a full layer. And so a lot of what - I wish I could molt. Can we just have that moment? I mean, you probably could. You just have to pay a dermatologist a lot of money. Go to the Korean spa and have them scrub you. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So Neil was born in October, 2020. He's a pandemic baby, much like my child. And my dog.

2:02He gained notoriety four years ago in 2022. He just kind of like rocked up to Hobart in Tasmania. And so he like rubs against infrastructure. You can't see me if you're listening to this podcast, but I'm like rubbing my body against a chair. You're actually kind of like dancing. You're like undulating. Yeah, he's I don't know if you have watched the show Deadlock, which I highly recommend. I started watching it because of you. Neil the Seal-esque character. Shirley? Is that the name of the seal? In the first season. I'm now in the second season. But he's kind of amazing. I don't know if you've ever seen an elephant seal in person.

2:40Unclear. I don't remember. I have. Yes. Again, I love a pinniped on this island off of Baja where there's like this huge beach of elephant seals. They're amazing. They're also kind of terrifying because they are enormous. They could sit on you. Yeah. Yeah. They could squish you easily. Neil is exceptional. I love Neil. Neil is the only thing keeping me going in this week of news derangement. Because he's just as deranged as the news. Neil don't care. Did you know that environmentalists call seals charismatic megafauna? That makes so much sense. Because of their big brown eyes because they're so adorable.

3:19Anyway, I've been following you on Instagram because you've been posting Neil content and you may be curious about Neil. I got to say, I actually have a favorite Neil video. Ooh, tell me. My favorite Neil video is him at a bus stop. I don't know where, but he's literally at a bus stop by the side of the road. And there's like a post there. And he just keeps like rubbing against it. It's like he's trying to get a crick out of his neck. Or like if you have one of those like massage sticks, he's doing that. And it's so relatable. That's it for now. And if you want to hear the rest of this episode, the way to do it is to subscribe to Slate Plus.

3:58Unlock Slate Plus now by going to slate.com forward slash whatnextplus.