#333 - Egypt’s Lost Creatures, Uncontacted “Skull” Tribe & Congo’s “Big Foot” | Forrest Galante

Summary

Julian Dorey Podcast #333 – Egypt’s Lost Creatures, Uncontacted “Skull” Tribe & Congo’s “Big Foot” | Forrest Galante

Release Date: September 5, 2025
Guest: Forrest Galante (wildlife biologist, TV host, adventurer)
Host: Julian Dorey

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Episode Overview

In this captivating episode, Julian Dorey sits with wildlife biologist, TV host, and adventurer Forrest Galante. Together, they delve into Forrest’s incredible journey from growing up on a Zimbabwean farm that was later seized during political turmoil, to becoming a biologist, accidental reality TV star, and world-renowned “extinct or alive” species rediscoverer. The discussion weaves through wild stories from Africa, tips on wildlife tracking, critiques of the science institution, conservation’s technological future, and extraordinary encounters with uncontacted tribes and controversial animal de-extinction projects.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Forrest’s Origin Story: Zimbabwe, Upheaval, & Wildlife Beginnings

• Childhood on a Zimbabwean farm: Forrest recounts a childhood packed with Zimbabwe’s bush and wildlife, surrounded by leopards, snakes, elephants, and more. His family ran safaris and farmed until forced to flee during land seizures brought on by Mugabe's regime.
• Violence and escape: Forrest describes traumatic events, including gunfights, having to hide in the house during sieges, and eventually fleeing to the US with just $400 and the clothes on their backs.
• Adjusting in America: The family landed in Oakland welfare housing; Forrest struggled with anger and fighting, before eventually moving to the small California town of Cayucas.

Notable Quote:

“I remember seeing my dog run down the driveway as we pulled out to never see her again... I was angry... I was an angry kid.” – Forrest (12:13)

2. Finding Purpose: From California Beaches to UCSB

• Wildlife itch remains: Forrest struggled to find stimulating wildlife in California until he discovered ocean free-diving, connecting with the wild below the surface.
• Academic struggles and a lucky break: Despite poor grades, Forrest got into UCSB’s College of Creative Studies by impressing the entomology dean with his insect knowledge (25:08).
• Meeting Jessica (now wife): A romantic subplot – following Jessica to UCSB, where he studied biology, dove deep into herpetology and fish biology, and ultimately transformed his life.

Notable Quote:

“There are two paths: hands-on with wildlife, or as a biologist. I was hoping to do the former, but it took me some time to figure out how.” – Forrest (29:20)

3. The Science Career Funnel & Breaking the Mold

• Early career: Forrest worked as a biology tech (biotech) – “a high-paid gardener” – on California’s Channel Islands, often counting ants, pulling weeds, and doing underfunded, unglamorous work (37:00).
• Flaws in academia & career progression:
  • The system rewards climbing the admin/lab ladder, taking people out of hands-on work – something Forrest sees as fundamentally broken (31:15).
  • Advocates for “renegade biologists” using digital platforms for education and outreach, arguing they have greater effect than an academic paper read by 200 people.
• Critique of science gatekeeping:
  • Social media can be a powerful tool for global wildlife education, and should be embraced rather than shunned by the “old guard” (33:33).

Notable Quote:

“If you get 10 million views on your TikTok video fiddling with a snake and you’re teaching the audience about that snake, you’ve done so much more than the scientist who published a paper that 200 people are going to read.” – Forrest (33:15)

4. TV Breakthrough: From ‘Naked and Afraid’ to ‘Extinct or Alive’

• Reality TV debut (Naked and Afraid): Forrest’s girlfriend encouraged him to apply; he thrived, jokingly comparing it to a "21 day paid vacation" (40:04). Showrunners worried he wasn’t dramatic enough, but audiences loved it.
• Leveraging media attention: Local news wanted to talk survival, but Forrest used the platform to pitch real wildlife discoveries, like the biggest lobster found in California.
• Pitching his own show: Over years of rejection, Forrest pitched “Extinct or Alive” everywhere until one New York production company took a chance. The show focused on rediscovering species declared extinct, pushing further and harder than the academic norm.

Notable Quotes:

“I created my own TV show... If this is the best they got—fucking bear dating shows?—I can do better!” – Forrest (45:45)
“We found eight species that had been declared extinct.” – Forrest (49:41)

5. High-Stakes Wildlife Rediscoveries

Zanzibar Leopard ([49:42–52:22])

• Method: Developing unorthodox tactics—using meat trees and scent trailing—for attracting rare species to trail cameras.
• Discovery: Captured the first Zanzibar leopard on camera in decades, leading to “chimp-out” style excitement on camera and, later, pushback from skeptical scientists.

Fernandina Island Tortoise ([53:39–61:41])

• Galapagos expedition: Dismissed by establishment scientists, Forrest followed evidence—old bite marks, tracks, and dung—and found the world’s rarest animal, a female Fernandina Island giant tortoise 114 years after the last sighting.
• Controversy: Pushback from other scientists over credit; Forrest dismisses the drama, caring only that the species was found and brought to global attention.
• Personal significance: “[I was] holding in my hand to this day the rarest animal in the world...” – Forrest (59:10)

Other Finds

• Multiple shark species, a primate, caiman in the Amazon, and continual work on lost species in the Amazon, India, and globally.

6. Gut Instinct vs. Scientific Protocols ([65:24–68:41])

• Field expertise: Forrest argues a biologist’s “gut” is an irreplaceable tool, one that AI and technology can't fully supplant.
• Modern techniques: Describes evolving use of drones, thermal cams, and AI for survey—but maintains that human instinct remains crucial for targeting rare finds.

7. Conservation, De-extinction, and Colossal ([68:53–82:12])

• Advising Colossal (de-extinction company): Forrest discusses his advisory role, weighing the risks and rewards of cloning and “resurrecting” extinct species (like woolly mammoths, dire wolves), and the immediate conservation impacts for living species (e.g., cloning red wolves, potential for rhinos).
• Ethical debate: Cautions about unforeseen consequences, but supports “using technology to right humanity’s wrongs,” provided the focus is on repairing human-caused extinctions—not halting natural processes.
• Inspiration from for-profit conservation: Praises business leaders like Ben Lamm and the prospect of making conservation profitable and impactful.

Notable Quotes:

“We’re not trying to stop extinction. That’s natural. What you want to do is stop what human beings have done—speeding it up.” – Forrest (76:44)
“We can save the planet and get rich doing it. Why is that a bad thing?” – Forrest (81:36)

8. Wildlife Crime, Poaching, and Local Nuance ([120:07–126:48])

• Poaching realities: Poaching is a multibillion-dollar criminal enterprise—third-largest globally—and impacts iconic species like rhinos and elephants.
• Economic drivers: Local poverty, lack of options, and foreign demand (especially for “medicine” and status) make fighting poaching complex.
• Moral and systemic struggles: Even if fake rhino horn is developed to flood the market, some buyers only value the “real thing” (124:09).

9. Human-Animal Conflict & Elephant Translocation ([128:13–139:52])

• Massive operation: Forrest led Mozambique’s largest elephant translocation project to prevent conflict and death—describing the harrowing logistics of sedating, moving, and safely releasing herds across hundreds of kilometers.
• Emotional connection: Detailed the extraordinary emotional intelligence of elephants, who remember traumas across generations and can die of grief.

Notable Quotes:

“I just watched elephants go out of a box, and I just sort of started weeping. ... Like, I can’t believe we did that.” (138:59)
“They feel happiness way happier than we’ll ever feel, and sadness way sadder. They can die of a broken heart.” (139:51)

10. Encounters With Uncontacted & Tribal Societies ([176:43–180:29])

• Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, and beyond: Forrest shares stories of blending in with tribes that balance traditional and modern life, and a particularly tense encounter stumbling across skull-caves in Papua—the “skull tribe”—and facing down armed warriors.
• Respect for indigenous practices: Expresses admiration for tribes that sustainably manage their limited habitat, while also drawing lines against poaching in protected areas (118:30).

11. Other Wild Stories & Memorable Moments

• Catching giant Amazon anacondas by spring-break student adventure ([100:59–106:27]): Lucky “premonition” from a local guide leads to wrestling a nearly 20-foot snake.
• Snorting monkey-bone powder in Colombia ([110:51–112:30]): Undergoing a spiritual “cleansing” to prove worthiness and avoid danger while searching for caiman.
• Insider tales (59:25): Handling tribal resentment, bartering with former FARC rebels, and realizing the unpredictability and lawlessness of the Amazon and Congo.

12. Inspiration, Motivation, and The Next Generation ([181:04–182:18])

• Forrest credits his grandfather, biologists like Dave Ebert, and even billionaire conservationists like Ben Lamm and Anant Ambani as deep inspirations.
• Reiterates: “Anyone can do it. That’s what I love about this country so much.”

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Notable Quotes & Moments With Timestamps

• On TV Survival:
  • “It was like a 21 day paid vacation for me... The producers were like, ‘everyone’s gonna hate you!’” – Forrest (40:04)
• On wildlife media vs. academic papers:
  • “If you get 10 million views on your TikTok video fiddling with a snake... you’ve done so much more than the scientist who published a paper... that 200 people are going to read.” – Forrest (33:15)
• On finding the Fernandina tortoise:
  • “Literally, at that point in time... I was holding in my hand, to this day, the rarest animal in the world.” – Forrest (59:10)
• On de-extinction:
  • “What you want to do is stop what human beings have done—speeding it up... If that technology can be used for that, I think it’s the most wonderful technology.” – Forrest (76:31)
• On elephant translocation:
  • “To save the largest animal... and literally, the bull... I put my hand on him while he was lying there...” – Forrest (138:59)

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Important Timestamps

• Zimbabwe, family escape: [04:06–08:53]
• Arrival & struggles in Oakland: [08:53–15:16]
• Schooling, UCSB application, “stick bug” office story: [23:16–26:25]
• Biotech career, flaws in the science system: [29:20–33:31]
• TV journey, Naked & Afraid story: [39:58–44:47]
• Formation of 'Extinct or Alive': [45:45–49:47]
• Rediscovering Zanzibar Leopard: [49:42–52:22]
• Finding Fernandina Island tortoise: [53:39–61:41]
• Gut instinct vs protocols in field biology: [65:24–68:41]
• Colossal, cloning, de-extinction ethics: [68:53–82:12]
• Poaching, conservation challenges: [120:07–126:48]
• Elephant translocation logistics & emotional impact: [128:13–139:52]
• Tribal encounters: 'skull tribe', uncontacted peoples: [178:29–180:29]
• Reflections on inspiration, next generation: [181:04–182:18]

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Episode Tone & Style

The episode is conversational, energetic, and speckled with humor, sometimes dark but with sincere awe for wildlife and global diversity. Forrest’s enthusiasm is contagious; Julian matches his passion as an eager listener and thoughtful challenger.

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Summary Takeaway

Forrest Galante’s life is an ongoing adventure at the intersection of wild animals, remote environments, institutional science, and mass media. He is both a critic of the conventional scientific establishment and a loyal “bush kid” whose intuition leads to world-changing discoveries. Whether wrestling anacondas, unmasking Congo’s “living dinosaur” legends, or helping shape the future of de-extinction, Forrest is intent on inspiring the next generation – and showing that, with passion and persistence, anyone can change the world.

Transcript

[Forrest Galante]

This is a crazy story, but we went to this volcanic island in the Galapagos, a place that the California Academy of Science had only ever collected one other individual of this species in history, 114 years prior. But I met a scientist who's like, I swear to you, Forest. When I was there, I found bite marks in a cactus. I found tracks. There's a tortoise on that island. So we found this. And I'm like, freaking out. I'm like, oh, my God, there is a tortoise here. I was holding in my hand to this day the rarest animal in the world, the Fernandina island tortoise. And we found eight species that. That had been declared extinct.

[Julian]

All right, what was the first one you found?

[Forrest Galante]

Weird story. Off the coast of Africa is the island of Zanzibar. We went there to look for a rumored leopard that had been extinct for 30 or 40 years. And in Papua New guinea, we're hiking up this river to look for this tribe that worships sharks. And I look up and there's a skull on a stick, a human skull. Let's go and check that out. And there's a cave opening. So we go in the cave opening and I'm like, oh, I don't think we're supposed to be here. And I come out and the tribe of warriors are standing there watching me. And they're like, why are you in our cave? It's really bizarre. So.

[Julian]

Hey, guys, if you're not following me on Spotify, please hit that follow button and leave a five star review. They're both a huge, huge help.

[Forrest Galante]

Thank you.

[Julian]

Man. You got so much going on. I've been listening to you for years. I'm a big fan of what you do, so I'm really glad we finally got you in here.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah, man.

[Julian]

But how did you get the name Forest, by the way? I always wondered that, Dude.

[Forrest Galante]

My mom's name is Jacaranda, which is a tree. My sister's name is Summer. I'm just lucky that my career coincided with the fact that my parents were hippies. You know, like, that's not a. It's not a TV name or a stage name or anything like that, which I often get asked. I'm like, no, just use my regular name.

[Julian]

It is a great name. Forrest Galante.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah, thank you. I'm just really lucky my parents were hippies.

[Julian]

Well, you grew up out in Zimbabwe. You were telling me since you were like, until you're about 14.

[Forrest Galante]

That's right. Yeah. So. So raised in Zimbabwe, actually. Born in The States, but flew over when I was a baby. My parents just did that so I'd have a US passport because my dad was American. And then flew over there, was there till I was 14. Family ran safari businesses, did a bunch of farming out in the Shamba district. It was, it was great, great childhood.

[Julian]

Yeah. What was that like? Were you totally. Was it completely rural or were you in like a town area? What was, what was growing up like there?

[Forrest Galante]

So I lived farm in a very rural area, but 45 minutes from the, the country's capital, Harare. So not, you know, not like we were in the sticks like growing up on a farm, but you know, it's not like being 45 minutes outside of New York. You're still, you know, in New York. Basically. This is like we were out there, but I'd go into school every day. You know, we had shops and stuff on the way. So Zimbabwe used to be the bread basket of Africa. It used to be very affluent, you know, country club lifestyle, farming, big farming culture, you know, different to the US but very, very safe, very stable politically. Everything else, well, I don't know if I'd ever say that, but more stable politically. And then it just went to hell. In the early 2000s, what happened? The Robert Mugabe regime. So the Zanu PF political party tried to retain power and they had the land reform campaign, which was where the president said that basically blamed all, all the white people that were in the country, some of which like my family were six generation for. It was a really like a hate campaign to keep power. And so he. It's similar to the genocide type of things that are happening in South Africa now. But he, you know, promoted the uprising of taking land back by quote, war veterans from the early Rhodesian wars, which these war veterans were 14 years old and had AK47 and had never seen a war. So it wasn't really war veterans. But yeah, there was just a lot of instability. The country went from the richest country in Africa to one of, if not the poorest country in the world in 10 years. So big, big turmoil, upset, gunfights, I mean everything, things got bad. Torture, all kinds of stuff and that.

[Julian]

That's what caused you guys to leave.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah. So we were one of the last farms in an area that was slowly seized by this land reform. And because our farm was so small, we only had a 2 acre, 200 acre farm compared to some of our neighbors, which were hundreds of thousands of acres. We were one of the last farms to get seized. And because my mom Was a single mother, and it was two kids. Instead of just killer, they're like, you can leave if you want, but if you don't, we'll kill you.

[Julian]

Oh, thank God. Yeah, she could leave.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah. So we did. It was violent. It was a crazy night. Everything else. But we got out of there, came to the States.

[Julian]

That's pretty traumatic at like, 14 to be like your whole reality just gets warped overnight.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah, it was definitely a big shift. Like you said, everything changed overnight. And I mean, I remember, you know, they came, like the war veterans, came up the driveway. We, like, lived on top of Copy, which is in Africa. It's like a granite hilltop, and our house was on top. And they came up, surrounded the house with guns and stuff. There'd been lots going on. We'd been in shootouts before that. Our neighbors had gone through punguis, which is political indoctrination through torture. I mean, all kinds of stuff. Yeah, there'd been a lot going on, so it wasn't, like, completely unexpected, but being Zimbabwean, we just dug our heels in and said, it'll never happen to us kind of thing.

[Julian]

Right.

[Forrest Galante]

Anyway, I just remember they came up, they gave my mom the ultimatum. She's like, go and hide in your room. Lock the door, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I, like, grabbed my knife and I had a bunch of guns. I was a kid, right? Like in Africa. And I was like, I'm going to go fight. And she's like, no, you're not going. Get in the car.

[Julian]

Oh, my God. So you guys had been in shootouts before that?

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah, we'd only been in one.

[Julian]

Were you doing the shooting?

[Forrest Galante]

Well, it's kind of funny because I was a kid, right? I was 14.

[Julian]

I don't know if it's funny, but.

[Forrest Galante]

Well, fair enough. But I was 14, and I had a pellet gun at the time. And there'd been a couple things. Like, I'd been shot at by our dam. I used to ride my little motorcycle down by the neighbor's fence line down by our dam. So I'd been shot at once there. And then one day, coming home from school, we got followed to the gate. Cause we had a gate, big farm. And as we were waiting for the gate to open, like, slow, automatic gate, we had two cars pull in behind us, start shooting. My mom pulled her revolver out, started shooting out.

[Julian]

Oh, my God.

[Forrest Galante]

Back window blew up. She started shooting out the back. And I grabbed my pellet gun and. And started shooting. Like that was going to do anything, you know? And then we like, drove off, and our security guard came out, started shooting, and they drove off. So we'd had, you know, I don't know if it was a close call, but closer than most people.

[Julian]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a little different than growing up in South Jersey, for sure, or Santa Barbara from. Or yeah, definitely Santa Barbara, where you're from, too. But I guess shit gets real fast and then, you know, you're growing up, though, in a country that had been doing well, but it's. It's out there. It's so different. It's not. You're not growing up in suburbia or something like that. You're growing up among some of the most amazing bush in the world, where you have creatures that, you know, most people will never see exactly in their lifetime. So when you were really little, did I imagine you had an appreciation of that pretty quickly?

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah, my whole childhood was spent. If I wasn't in school, I was in the bush. Whether that was just on the farm where we still had leopards and things like that. Coming to the farm all the time.

[Julian]

Coming to the farm?

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah, because we were just outside of the city, you know, like it out in Zimbabwe. It's not much different having mountain lions on your property here, you know, not here, but it's kind of funny.

[Julian]

I haven't seen one on. On the streets of Hobo.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah. Not on the fifth floor, but. But, yeah. But then when we weren't. When I wasn't on the farm, wasn't in school, we were in the bush because my family ran safari businesses. So we spent a ton of time in the bush in the Zambezi Valley and had, you know, the big five and all the snakes and all the spiders and elephants and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So it was. It was pretty awesome. And I had a deep appreciation for wildlife. So when I Left there at 14, that was the thing I missed the most. More than the big house or the dogs or the farm or the friends or anything. It was just the wildlife and the freedom of the bush of Africa.

[Julian]

So you left a lot of friends behind, too, who didn't get out.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah, I mean, almost everybody left. So now my friends are scattered across the planet. A bunch in Australia, a bunch in England, a bunch in South Africa, Botswana. I think we're the only ones who came to the US as far as I. One friend in South Carolina, but, you know, a couple people just. Everybody left, basically, like, the country collapsed, the economy collapsed. Everybody left. We were lucky. We got out as, like, refugees because my dad was an American, Right. But yeah, it was, it was not great. So everybody kind of took off.

[Julian]

Yeah. It had to be really hard for your mom too, because she spent, it sounds like most of her life there as well.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah. Oh, yeah, Sixth generation. Yeah, well, she was fifth generation, I guess, but yeah. No, my family had been there a long time. Didn't know anything else. Left there when the Zimbabwean dollar had already collapsed. So we had US$400 to our name when we left. So we literally left with nothing. Yeah.

[Julian]

What'd you do when you came to the US?

[Forrest Galante]

Went on welfare, went into government housing in Oakland, California. And Oakland in the early 2000s is not the trendy coffee shop Oakland that it is now. Yeah, it was pretty rough. So we bounced around welfare housing. My mom got really sick, probably from the stress and everything else. Got a pulmonary embolism, so we landed. She went straight into the hospital. Single mom, two kids. We were sleeping on the hospital floor. It was crazy. But yeah, went through it all and then came out the other side and started to build a life. And now I get to do what I love.

[Julian]

Yeah, yeah, it turned out great. But you have to grow up fast when something like that happens, you know.

[Forrest Galante]

Where I grew up, you had to grow up fast. Anyway, like I said, I was in shootouts. My mom was a single mother in a culture that doesn't value or allow women to have authority or leadership. So I had to kind of run the farm as a 14 year old. I didn't really run it. My mom would run it, but I'd give the orders and things so they'd listen. So, you know, I was driving to school when I was 13 years old. Yeah, not legally, but that's what you do in Zimbabwe, you know, nobody cares. So I had grown up a lot already. I was still immature, I was still 13, 14 year old, whatever.

[Julian]

But were you the older sibling?

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah, older sibling, yeah. So I, I, when I came to the United States, although I was weird and wore little cocky shorts and had a funny accent and a bad haircut, like, I was still much more mature than my peers, if that makes sense.

[Julian]

So you had a different accent than they do now?

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah, dude. I tried everything when I was 14, when I came over to lose my accent because I didn't like being made fun of for sounding different.

[Julian]

Were you, Was it like a British.

[Forrest Galante]

Kind of accent or Zimbabwean accent? It's just, if you've ever seen Blood diamond, it's Leonardo DiCaprio's accent. He's Rhodesian. Which is what? Same exact Act. I mean, his is pretty rough, but that's exactly what all my friends sounded like. All their. All their parents, so on and so forth.

[Julian]

They said that's one of the hardest accents to have to, like, for an actor to have to learn, apparently, perform in a movie, apparently.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah.

[Julian]

So unique.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah.

[Julian]

Yeah. I don't. I don't. You got rid of it? I don't.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah. I mean, I don't. I didn't try. I just wanted to sound like everybody else so that I didn't stand out. And 14 is right at that cusp, they say, where you either retain it or don't retain it. And I didn't. And in hindsight, I kind of wish I had, you know, or, like, tried to sound like myself. But at the time, I was like, I can't do this, because, you know, we don't say hard A's. And, like, I was trying very hard to blend in.

[Julian]

So what was it like, like, going to. Now living in Oakland, you're. You didn't just move to America. You moved right into a city, like, a completely different environment. What was school like? What was your life like?

[Forrest Galante]

It was all very, very shocking. Like, we came over, my little sister and I. My mom went into the hospital. We're sleeping on the hospital floor for a couple of weeks. Then we went into. Into welfare housing, you know, which was crazy in itself. And then, like, I remember one of the first days, I was kind of, like, allowed to, like, go run around, you know, I literally threw on my little khaki shorts and ran out to go check out the streets. And, you know, I was doing crazy stuff. Like, I was hanging out in Tilden national park, which is, like, a part. It's like. It's like, time. What do you call it? Central park, you know, but in Oakland, but much, much smaller. And I'm nipples deep in a pond catching newts while there's, like, people walking by, and they're like, North Face gear and stuff, you know, because I'm like, I'm a wildlife guy. I'm catching animals. And then I remember, like, trying to go and play, and, you know, like, I saw a bunch of, like, African American kids. I was like, I'll go play with them. Same as where I grew up, you know, A bunch of black kids in Zimbabwe, a bunch of African American kids here. Go, like, run over to play with them and, like, hang out, and, like, they're playing basketball. I'm like, yeah, how's it going? Can I. Can I have a Joel with you boys? And they're like, get the fuck out of here, man. I'm like, oh, shit, I'm sorry. Like, I'm so scared. Like, I wasn't trying to cause any problems.

[Julian]

You're gonna get another shootout.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah, dude, totally. So it was. It was very shocking in that regard. And I was an angry. I was angry as well. We'd lost everything. I, like, I remember seeing my dog run down the driveway as we pulled out to never see her again. You know, stuff like that. And. And so I got in a lot of fights, was going in a bad direction, I'd say, because I was getting in fistfights on the street all the time, causing trouble. Not really being a bad kid, but I was an angry kid. I was very aggressive, trying to stand up for what I believed in. Anytime somebody would make fun of my accent, I'd punch him in the face, which in Oakland is not a good thing to do. So my mom was like, we gotta get outta here. So she grabbed me and my sister and we flew down to Los Angeles to pick up my mom's sister's car. So she. My. My mother's sister had lived in LA for like six or eight years at that point. And we went to grab a. To borrow a car so that we had a way to get around. And on the way back, we drove up coastal California, up Highway 1, which is like that picturesque, you know, driving down the 101California, and we landed in a tiny little town called Cayucas, California. 4,000 people, tiny little town, no trouble to get in. And so my mom was like, we're gonna try and move here.

[Julian]

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[Forrest Galante]

Took the. Whatever it was like the, the welfare money that we got monthly. Rented a tiny little studio, moved to Cayucas, got out of Oakland, took a few weeks but, you know, got out of there as quickly as possible and then just started to rebuild a life, you know, just started to. My mom got a job as a waitress. My sister and I went into the public high school there. You know, just started to rebuild. Yeah.

[Julian]

Now are you. You obviously had the itch to be around wildlife and it's. You can't replace what you were doing in Zimbabwe. But at what point did. Outside of trying to catch some animals in the pond in Oakland, at what point did you start kind of dipping your toes in that again?

[Forrest Galante]

So straight away, like it never went away. So like I said, I was chasing animals in Oakland. I mean, I remember this probably illegal, but statute of limitations. Like I remember trying to catch seagulls on the beaches and you know, as soon as I got back to as soon as we were in Cayucas and all that.

[Julian]

You can't do that.

[Forrest Galante]

I don't know. Probably not legally.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Forrest Galante]

By the way, great trick. Probably shouldn't be promoting this. You put a towel down, you lay flat, put a towel down, put some breath on the towel and then the seagulls come to eat the bread and you jump up like that and you catch a seagull. Don't do it. Don't do it.

[Julian]

I'm going to try it out. Hudson, get some radioactive ways of Foods in my body.

[Forrest Galante]

But I. When we moved to Cayucas, K is really small. There's literally nothing but rugged coastline to the north, little town called Mar to the south. East is mountains, farmland, west is ocean. And straight away, I was like, all right, I'm here. Like, I was still pretty naughty. So I was skipping school. Here's what happened. To be honest with you, Julian, like, when you come to America and they don't beat you when you do something wrong in school, you're like, wait a minute. If I goof off, I get to go home for longer. Like, if I don't do my homework, they tell me to stay at home. So my grades plummeted, all that. The system didn't make sense to me. I grew up in a very strict school system where if you didn't turn in your homework, you got six lashings with a cane. Yeah, Very different.

[Julian]

Oh, wow.

[Forrest Galante]

Oh, yeah. Very different. So this was very, very different. So it was like, you didn't do your homework. Okay, we're gonna affect your grade. I'm like, a shit.

[Julian]

Like, go for it.

[Forrest Galante]

Sounds great. Yeah. Nobody's going to beat me. Like, that's awesome. So I'd skip in school, and I go, like, running up into the mountains above Cayucas, trespassing, hanging out on private property, like, on farmlands, trying to find mountain lions and catch coyotes and do all this stupid shit. And I found out very quickly that central California is very tame, boring. You know, like, a lot of trees have been cut down. There's a lot of, you know, happy cows come from California thing. It's just like rolling hills of grass and stuff. And, you know, there's a bald eagle once in a while, but there's, like, nothing there compared to the bush of Africa. So I wasn't at all, like, stimulated by the wildlife above the surface. But I was living on the beach in Cayucas. So one day I was skateboarding down through this tiny little town, and I saw a yard sale, and there was a little bucket out, and it was like honor system donation kind of thing. And I bought a pole spear and a mask and snorkel for a dollar. So I put a dollar in, and the guy was there. So he was cool with it. I wasn't like, I stole it for a dollar. But he's like, yeah, go for it, kid. So I took a pole spear, which, I don't know if you know that is, but it's like a stick or a Hawaiian sling. It's like a stick with a trident on the End a rubber band like a hand powered spear.

[Julian]

Oh yeah.

[Forrest Galante]

And a musk and snorkel. I bought them for a dollar and I grabbed, I grabbed, grabbed this musk and snorkel and this pole spear and a pair of board shorts in about 58 degree water because it's central California and hopped in the ocean and straight away I was hooked. I was there big sea lions and there were leopard sharks and swell sharks and horn sharks and I could hunt for fish and I could shoot lingcod and shoot perch and I just got hooked. And so that was, that became my new like wildlife addiction I guess is I just, I just, I found above the surface in California to be tame and then I found below the surface to be like wild and rugged and all the things like the Zimbabwe.

[Julian]

That's where I'm going.

[Forrest Galante]

Exactly. The Zimbabwe and bush had. So I was like, that's it. So I just started focusing all my free time on being in the water.

[Julian]

What do they have like in Zimbabwe? I mean you got a river there. Right. But you don't. There's no ocean.

[Forrest Galante]

No ocean landlocked country. But we have the Zambezi river which they say you can line head to tail with crocodiles on either side. We've got tiger fish there which are like a cousin of piranha, big crazy teeth.

[Julian]

Sounds awesome.

[Forrest Galante]

A beautiful fish, tons of other species. And then all the wildlife I mentioned, you know, the big five and blah blah blah. So it was just full of wildlife but no diving, no fishing. So the ocean was completely foreign to me. And I'd get out like this because I couldn't afford a wetsuit and I'd be in my board shorts as long as, you know. But when you're a kid you don't feel the cold. Right?

[Julian]

Fuck it.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah. And. And it was awesome. And I just fell in love with the ocean. So I just pursued that all through high school and I got pretty good at surfing and I dive and I'd just, just be a California boy, you know, Spend time in the ocean. Yeah, yeah.

[Julian]

I think like the adventurer side of you served you well to be out in California. It's a good place to have that trait.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah. If I'd moved in Nebraska, I'm not sure what would have happened.

[Julian]

Yeah, I mean there's a few cows out there.

[Forrest Galante]

That's true.

[Julian]

Horses, but not much else.

[Forrest Galante]

That's right.

[Julian]

But did you start thinking to yourself you want to be like a, like a scientist involved with wildlife or were you just like, I'm going to find my Way to wildlife, like as an adventurer. And we'll figure it out later. Was there any plan?

[Forrest Galante]

No plan. Well, I shouldn't say that I had a plan or rather a thought, which will was, okay. As soon as I graduate from high school, I'm going to go back to Zimbabwe and become a safari guy. Because the bush was still safe in Zimbabwe, right? Because there was no land to be stolen or political turmoil or whatever if you're out in the bush. So I always thought as soon as I turn 18, I'm. Let's say 15, 16 at this point in time. As soon as I turn 18, save up money. I was working odd jobs, mowing law and stuff like that. Go back to Zimbabwe, become a ph. Professional hunter, which is the. Not an actual hunter, but the accreditation you need to become a safari guide. Become a ph. Go live in the bush, run safaris.

[Julian]

How realistic is it to be completely out in the bush, though, 365 days a year?

[Forrest Galante]

Not at all. You can't do it. But I was 16. You know, you live in a little fantasy world. But I was doing that. I was chasing the ocean stuff. And then I met a girl. I met a girl. Yeah, that's what happens. And she's like, I'm going to ucsb. And I was like, what's ucsb? And she's like, it's the greatest school in the world, blah, blah, blah. Well, turns out UCSB has a great wildlife biology program or biology. Not really wildlife biology. And so a very long story. Cause I had terrible grades, as I mentioned. And we can get into it if you like. But I somehow, through amazing situations and events, got into ucsb. And then when I was there, she turned it around. I turned it around.

[Julian]

I need that story. How'd you turn it around?

[Forrest Galante]

Why not? So this girl tells me she's going to ucsb. Beautiful little blonde girl named Jessica, blah, blah, blah. She tells me she's going to ucsb.

[Julian]

This isn't your wife now?

[Forrest Galante]

This is my wife now.

[Julian]

Oh, it is your wife now.

[Forrest Galante]

It is. Yeah.

[Julian]

All right.

[Forrest Galante]

It worked out. Look at this. It worked out. Happy ending. It's my wife, mother of two kids, everything. And they're nice kids. I'd like to meet their dad. She's going to kill me. So where. So she tells me about ucsb. I go down there for a college tour. The high school counselor literally tells me. She's like, you shouldn't go for a college tour. You're never going to get into university. Like, you can't go to a four Year school. Like, your grades suck and you're an idiot. And I was like, okay. And I went anyway. And this is so iconically sums up how I was at that age. I'm 16, 17, whatever it is, years old when you go on college tour, you know, the only college I go tour is ucsb. And I'm, like, getting more and more bored walking around UCSB hearing about, you know, the whole of arts and lectures or whatever. So I fucking bail. I just sneak off from the tour group, and I just bail out from the tour group and start walking around, showing myself around. All of a sudden I'm like, damn, there's a lot of hot chicks here. Like, oh, cool. There's the rugby program. Like, I was a big rugby player, so I'm like, there's a rugby program? Sick. I could play rugby. And I'm, like, poking around, like, just. Just cruising by myself, being a little shit. And walk into this building. And I'm walking through this building, and all of a sudden I look through a window, and there's like a huge terrarium filled with stick insects.

[Julian]

A terrarium?

[Forrest Galante]

Like a. Like a reptile cage? Oh, God. Yeah, but this one was filled with stick insects. You know what those are?

[Julian]

No.

[Forrest Galante]

It's like a bug that looks like a stick. And so I see this.

[Julian]

I'll pull that up on.

[Forrest Galante]

Keep going. Yeah, go for it. So I see this. This big cage filled with stick bugs, and I'm like, oh, sick. I love stick insects. And I was always a nerd. Like, I tried to cover it up by playing rugby and, you know, being funny and cool and all that, but I was always a big nerd. They're huge, some of them. Yeah, that's the gargantuan stick insect. But some of them are small. There's a ton of species. And I see this terrarium, and I'm like, oh, fuck, that's cool. Like this at a ucsb, like, office. So I walk around from the window, where I spot it, open the door, let myself into this room, and it's some guy's office. You know, there's a desk, there's piles of papers and a computer and this terrarium filled with stick insects. And I'm, like, peeking around. I'm such a little shit, you know, I'm like 17 years old, peeking around. I'm looking, and this guy walks in, big burly guy, big beard, booming voice. And he goes, what are you doing in my office? And I was like, oh, I'm sorry, but did you know that you have a giganticus here. And there's also, you know, it's kind of interesting. This shouldn't be a mixed species habitat because these ones are more aggressive than these and bubble. And this guy just listens to me and he listens. He listen, goes, what's your name, boy? And I'm like, oh, my name's Forrest Galante, sir. Like, you know, still very polite and respectful, even though. Shitheads. I was raised in this very strict Zimbabwean school system. And he's like, what's your name, boy? And I'm like, oh, my name's Forrest Galante Surbal. He's like, you're in my office, blah, blah, blah. So he listens to me like, rattle off a bunch of facts about stick bugs. And I'm like, you know, you probably shouldn't mix ones from Asia with ones with Africa. These ones are more aggressive, you know, these ones are more dominant, blah, blah, blah. He's just sort of listening quietly. This big guy, booming voice, asked me for my name. I was, what are you doing here? I was like, oh, I'm on. He's like, whoa, what, what, what? You know, what program are you in? I was like, oh, I'm not. I'm in high school and I'm, you know, looking to go to like on college tour here. He's like, write your name down. Write your.

[Julian]

What's your gpa.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah, he asked all these things and so he didn't ask me about my grades, but turns out, long story made short, I was in the dean. I think it was the dean, but I was in one of the professors of the College of Creative Studies, which was like this experimental program. I was in his office. This experimental program for kids that had peculiar interests in a way, like almost advanced, like an honors program, but kids that were really special. There was a kid when I was there who was 13 years old who started at UCSB. There was a woman there who had won, like some crazy kid degree in physics and she was building rockets and shit. And just by pure happenstance, I snuck into this guy's office. He was the professor of entomology of insects. I started prattling off all these facts and he liked me because here was this 15 year old kid talking about stick bugs and teaching him a thing or two. I don't know if I really did, but he pretended I did about stick bugs. He contacted my high school and said, we want to get this kid in here. So they let me in on academic probation. Yeah. And it was the only school I applied to or anything. And they let Me into UCSB because I had shit grades on academic probation into this specialized school now. I had to write an essay. I'd explain I'd been a good student in Zimbabwe, but then I came over here and I was a shithead.

[Julian]

You guys didn't beat me with a cane, so I had to explain it all.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah. But it all kind of worked out, so I ended up going to ucsb.

[Julian]

Did your girl get in?

[Forrest Galante]

My girl got in. Yeah. Yep. So we were together and, you know, typical college relationship kind of thing, blah, blah, blah, but always good. And there is no. There are schools that offer this, I think Clemson and places like that where you can be hands on with wildlife, which is all I ever wanted. UCSB didn't offer that. And it was the only place I could go. So I went to UCSB instead of heading back to Zimbabwe to be a safari guide. Naturally, if I can't be hands on with animals, I'll be a biologist. Right. Like I get to work, be a wildlife biologist. So I went into the biology program. Had a roller coaster of college, but tons of fun. You know, played on the rugby team all four years, you know, was involved with a frat and chase girls around and all the stuff you do in college.

[Julian]

But she took a little break.

[Forrest Galante]

Well, not really, but you know, like college, you know, college. But no, no real break was taken. But you know, college, you know, I'm not gonna go into the unofficial break. Yeah. And you know, just had fun and loved, Loved being there. Settled in. By the time I was a junior, my grades had got really good. You know, like I sort of really did turn my life around because I was in. I was in a train wreck. Right. And it's really thanks to Jessica, my wife, who then was my girlfriend. She really did push me into it.

[Julian]

But you obviously enjoyed the study then, like, like there had to be a part of it that you're like, you know what? This is applicable. Well, what I want to do, it's crazy.

[Forrest Galante]

And I see these same traits in my older son. Now I would go in as a freshman in college and I'd go talk to the herpetology professor and I'd say, look, study your reptiles and amphibians. Like, I'm super into herps. Into herpetology. Can you please? I know, I know. Can you please? And he's like, oh, this is an upper level class. Like, you can only be in this if you're a senior. You know, I was like, can you please let me in? And I would end up being the number One student in the class knowing more than the teachers. I'd read through the whole herpetology manual in like a day or two. Like it sounds like a Beautiful Mind thing. But then I'd get like an F in like Biology 101 because I just wasn't interested in like how does the mitochondrial DNA affect a cell? And I just.

[Julian]

Right, right.

[Forrest Galante]

You know, so it was like I had these. My grades were fine in the end, whatever, but I just. The things I was interested in, I'd go just like you in podcasting. I just go nuts on it. You know, I'd just be. So it's the only thing I'd read about, the only thing I'd learn about, I'd focus on, I'd study it and I'd get straight A's in my fish bio class, my, my, my reptile class, whatever. And then, you know, Chemistry 101, I like would barely scrape by with like a D minus, you know, because I just didn't care. So I always was on this track of like, I want to work with wildlife. And I figured if I couldn't do it hands on as a safari guide, I do it as a biologist and I fix the world as a wildlife biologist. Turns out when you come out of college, you don't just save the world like you think you're going to. So that took a little figuring out.

[Julian]

Yeah, what is it? What are the common places you can kind of break in outside of, you know, somehow landing a TV show and all that? We'll get to that. But yeah, you know, you come out of college with a degree like that. What, what kinds of jobs are you looking to take as like the entry level?

[Forrest Galante]

It's kind of crazy because you think when you're studying that and you're in those programs that you're going to come out of college and get this awesome $100,000 a year job and write papers and save the planet and study animals. I came out of college broke, no job. I traveled for a while, whatever, but then when I got back, I went in as a biotech. So a biology technician. I was basically a high paid gardener. I was pulling weeds, I was killing ants, I was surveying habitat. But surveying sounds so sexy. It was literally like walking around in jeans getting stung by poison oak, going, oh, there's a weed, there's a weed. So those entry level jobs are rough and you're like in the field all day in the sun, cooking, studying things. But I love that I'll take that over sitting at a desk at A desk any day of the week. So I was thriving doing that. But it doesn't have a lot of long term potential. And this is one of the problems with the system. And the system is broken. If you're really good at that, if you're really good at field science and wildlife biology like that, then you progress to sitting in an office writing papers, having a team of biotechs under you applying for grants, and you don't end up doing the stuff that you're good at, which is being in the field. And it's a really messed up, broken system in wildlife biology. I'm writing a book on it right now actually. And it's. Yeah. And it's just on that. Yeah, I mean, it's on like renegade biologists and like conservation cowboys that kind of like break the mold and it's pretty cool. Like, I've interviewed a lot of really interesting people, but the problem is the system is flawed.

[Julian]

Yes. Yeah, it feels like. And this is just one example of many. But when you look at a lot of these, I mean, when you look at a lot of these different fields and how they were set up over decades and decades and decades, it's almost like we got to this point where, well, this is just the way things are done.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah.

[Julian]

And people would ask the question like, well, why do we do it? No, you don't ask that. You don't get that.

[Forrest Galante]

That's right.

[Julian]

So this is just what it is.

[Forrest Galante]

That's right.

[Julian]

You know, this is the system we have. And now, you know, in this era of having the Internet and being able to connect with people around the world and show people what you're doing, you have a lot of people like yourself, you know, like, to use your word, like a renegade kind of like, hey, I'm good at this thing. I don't know why people are doing this shit this way.

[Forrest Galante]

Right.

[Julian]

Here's another way we could do it. Doesn't even mean you're right about everything, but you can at least ask the questions and get attention for that. And maybe like, you know, everyone talks about breaking these systems, but maybe like just resetting them a little bit over time. Because I feel like as a country, like looking at this US centric, being able to have great academic institutions and great research centers and great ways to like kind of push the ball forward is very important, but we gotta get with the time.

[Forrest Galante]

That's right.

[Julian]

On so much of it. Right.

[Forrest Galante]

And not just that, but this is the United States where you can make a career doing anything you choose. If you give your all to it, right? That's what we stand for as a free nation, as a free country, as a free market and in the sciences, in academia, it's crazy because if you think that way, you're belittled and ostracized and probably not just the sciences. That's just what I know. And you have to follow the path. But we live in a place with freedom of speech. So as long as you're able to go out there and make your mark and you're doing it ethically and responsibly, I'm not saying, you know, go tiger king, but if you're working, if you're working with wildlife and you're doing it in a responsible way to educate people, you're doing that on Instagram or TikTok, I don't care. These people that like belittle TikTok, screw them, man. Like if you're getting millions of people to watch you kids, do some kids on TikTok to fall in love with wildlife, be a TikTok hero, be a TikTok biologist. Who cares like you're. If you get 10 million views on your TikTok video. Fiddling with a snake and you're teaching the audience about that snake or observation status. You've done so much more than the scientist who published a paper that he got a grant for that worked on it for six years, that 200 people.

[Julian]

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[Forrest Galante]

You were made to outdo your holiday, your hammocking and you're pooling. We were made to help organize the competition. Expedia made to travel and there's a place in the world for both. I'm not saying stop the real hard science, but the fact that it's belittling the people that are bringing exposure and love and passion to wildlife I think is nuts.

[Julian]

I was talking, I'm not gonna say who, but I was talking with someone recently who I wanted to have on the show who right now is not gonna come on. Great guy, but he's dealing with the same thing because he's extremely charismatic. He's very good in the field that he's in and he understands how to speak to the younger generations extremely well. Because he's a younger guy.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah.

[Julian]

But he's getting so much pressure behind the scenes from like the old guard to be like, well, you're gonna do a PhD program.

[Forrest Galante]

That's right.

[Julian]

Do this stuff. So this is what we do. We don't talk to those people. That's beneath us or whatever. And it's like to your point, you know, over in China, where TikTok is like, from.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah.

[Julian]

They have their kids because they're communist government. They get to like force what their kids do. This is the one good thing. Like, I'm not into communism, but this is the one advantage they have. They turn off TikTok at like 9 o' clock at night for their kids. So they go to bed and get a good night's sleep and their kids watch like fun science, nature and learning videos I've seen.

[Forrest Galante]

You know what I mean? TikTok is like an educational platform. China. Allegedly.

[Julian]

And they may. Allegedly. I haven't been over there. Check it out, but that's what I heard. So they make it fun. So, you know, we do have freedom here for kids to watch titty videos too. But if there's more forest galantes in the feed, actually like teaching them something and making, I don't know, science fun for them. Yeah, I mean, I think it would have been awesome if Bill Nye the Science guy had tick tock when I was growing up. You know what I mean?

[Forrest Galante]

Fantastic. Now all we need to do is bring the titties into nature.

[Julian]

Yes.

[Forrest Galante]

Like this. Combine them and then we'll get all the eyeballs. Yeah.

[Julian]

All right, so you, you start though, as you said, on these, like, you know, the lower entry level jobs, you're out there as a statistical surveyor.

[Forrest Galante]

Yep.

[Julian]

Or whatever.

[Forrest Galante]

Yep.

[Julian]

And then you ended up connecting with Discovery Channel, I think. Right.

[Forrest Galante]

Was that over a very long process?

[Julian]

How did that even happen? What was that first show you did too?

[Forrest Galante]

So I'm working as a biotech, mostly on the California Channel Islands. If you look at the California channel lines, aside from Catalina, they're all very wild and very rugged.

[Julian]

Catalina Winemix.

[Forrest Galante]

That's it. Yeah. Catalina's great, by the way. But I was working on the northern islands, San Miguel, Santa Rosa, Santa Cruz and Anacapa. And they're very rugged, very remote. I'm in hazmat suits, carrying tons of Roundup, which is like a spray pesticide chemical killing weeds. Literally, literally counting ants. Like to figure out how many invasive ants, like spending a day going, 100, 100, 143,000. I swear to God, 143,006, 143,700. Like literally this is what the kind of stuff I was doing in 100 degree heat in a base camp with no hot water. You know, we had electricity. This was pre Starlink. There's no Internet, no cell phone service, like grinding it out.

[Julian]

Oh my God.

[Forrest Galante]

So I'm painting that picture because one day I come back. So we go on two week stints at a time at the islands, right. And it didn't just work on the islands, but that was the hardest work. We go on these two week stints on the island where you're in a hazmat suit, you're carrying weeds, counting ants, trapping rats, like shitty stuff. Because I'm a low down biologist and I was doing really well. I kept getting asked to move into the office and like oversee a team. And I tried it a couple times and I was like, this sucks. I want to be back in the field. Like, I'll go back to counting ants before I sit in the air conditioned office and like put together grant proposals. Like, I'd rather count ants. Anyway, I was doing these odd jobs, biology jobs with a bunch of different companies, and I come Home one day, I'm fried. I've been on the channel islands for two weeks in 100 degree heat. Blah, blah, blah. Plop down on the couch. I'm exhausted. I'm filthy dirty. I'm just like, oh, Jessica, my girlfriend at the time, she's like. She's like, are you okay? Like, how's it going? Blah, blah, blah. I'm like, yeah, I'm just beat. And she's like, have you seen this stupid show on tv? That's. What is this? Yeah, and it's Naked and Afraid, which is a survival reality show if you don't know it. And this was early, early days. It was like second episode or something of the whole series. I was like, what is this? And she's like, oh, it's these people, like, trying to survive out in the bush. And they're like crying and whining and doing all this shit. And she's like, I've seen you do this stuff for fun. And like, you know, you just go out there, not the naked part, but like, you go out there and build a fire just to sleep in the hills of Cayucas, California for three nights just to look for bears that you never find, you know, and stuff like that. And I was like, yeah, yeah. So I didn't know this at the time. I've learned so much since then and started my production company, Everything. But TV shows are not made by Discovery Channel. They're made by production companies, right? And so the credits roll on the naked and afraid after watching this big burly marine guy ball his eyes out or whatever about his fire going out. And the credits roll and I'm like, I can do this so much better than these guys. So cocky still. And so I see that it comes up like the name of the production company, so I immediately reach out to the production company. I write an email, this arrogant pre. Chatgpt email that's like, I'm better at these things.

[Julian]

You guys suck. Let me in.

[Forrest Galante]

Exactly, dude. That was like the premise. And 10 days later, long story short, I'm on a plane to Panama to go jiggle my junk naked in the jungle for 21 days on naked and Afraid. I go down there and it is literally, and I was very lucky with where I got placed. I got placed in a tropical jungle that I understood the environment as being a biologist, understood the habitat, understood what plants were edible, what plants were toxic, understood the water from all my spear fishing days, how to dive, everything else. So it was like a vacation. It was like a 21 day paid vacation for me. I had fun. I was smiling, I was giggling. The whole thing was not serious to me at all. And the other survivalists are like, take this seriously. Blah, blah. I was like, I'm good. I got 30 pounds of jungle potatoes at the hut. Like, I'm good. I'm not taking this seriously. This is vacation. I gotta go home and work after this. And the producers are like, nobody's gonna like you. Like, they'd be like, how's it going? Like, my partner's name was Cassie and she was not very good, but. But the producers would be like, what's going on between you and Cassie? I'm like, oh, nothing. She's just hanging out and I'm over here fishing. And they're like, is she the worst person you've ever met or not? I was like, no, not really. You know, and they're just like, everybody's gonna hate you. Like, you gotta talk shit and you gotta cry and you gotta struggle.

[Julian]

You're not the reality TV guy.

[Forrest Galante]

And I'm just. That's not me. That's just not me at all.

[Julian]

How real was it, though? Like, you know, because some of these shows, it'll be like, it's highly produced and they're like, you stand there, you do this and they're not really doing this stuff. And then other ones, of course, they still have to do the reality stuff, but it's actually like you're in doing it. But how real was it as far as, like, you doing the thing?

[Forrest Galante]

When I did it, it was 100% real. Like, they left remote cameras at night, there was no one there. The cat, the audio guys were not like, nobody was allowed to talk to you, you know, nobody except for one producer who'd ask you questions. They had to be hands off, they had to watch from a distance kind of thing. It was like 100% real. I've heard since then. It's got pretty fake, but I don't know if that's true or not. I heard that from one guy who went on the show, but I just went and did this 21 day naked nudist colony at Vacation. And I broke all the rules and did all the regular shit I do and got in trouble and everything else and had a great time. And then I came out of there, went back to being a biologist. Didn't think twice about it. Just.

[Julian]

They were just cool with you going to do that for 21 days.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah, because I was a contractor. So I'd come in, I'd do a job for A week or two. Then I'd take two, three weeks off. Then I'd do another job because it's full on jobs.

[Julian]

It's like, where'd you go? I went to Panama to be on Discovery Channel. Yeah, I'm gonna go Consomance.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah, exactly. And they were just like, you're weird. But went back to being a biologist. Still thought that that was gonna be my career. And the show came out, like, six months later. And not only were the producers wrong about me being, like, disliked and nobody listening or small character or whatever, all the stuff they said that I just didn't care about, I ended up being the highest rated survivalist in the show's history at that point, because it was easy. Got tons of fun.

[Julian]

People looked at you like, this guy's a badass.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah. That's how the audience saw me. They were just like, this guy's just joking and. And piling up food and drinks and shelters and everything else. Anyway, that came out, and then I got this. This was back when reality TV was still important. Right. In today's world, it's like nobody even has cable anymore. But that came out, and, like, everybody that does Survivor, the Bachelor, Love island, naked and afraid. You get your five minutes of fame with your local press. You know, I don't mean, like, the New York Times was calling me. I mean, the Santa Barbara independent that gets 45 reads a day.

[Julian]

Hey, listen, they're important.

[Forrest Galante]

They are 100%. And they. This is my whole point. They helped launch my real career. But I got my five seconds of fame with the local press, and they call me and be like, tell us about naked and afraid. I'd be like, no, thanks. Like, what do you mean? Like, I don't really want to talk about that. That was just fun. If you want, I'll tell you about the largest lobster that I found that's ever been caught in the state of California. This hammerhead that I saw at the Channel Islands that hasn't been documented that far north in over a hundred years. And all these science things that I thought were super duper cool, and most of them were just like, no, thanks, click. And a couple of them were like, all right, tell me about that. And we'll kind of weave in the naked, afraid angle. And a couple of these stories, like me with the giant lobster, the hammerhead one I mentioned, they went viral. They got picked up by, like, the Daily Mail and places like that.

[Julian]

Wow.

[Forrest Galante]

And they, like, blew up millions and millions of views. This is a bygone era. We're talking 10 years ago when those things were really impactful, then I got calls from people going, hey, like, we saw your naked phrase. We saw your viral news stories in the Daily Mail about the giant lobster and about the giant. The hammerhead bite and blah, blah, blah, all these things. And do you want to host a TV show? This only happened twice. It wasn't. Like, a lot of people contacted me and I was like, yeah, I'd love to host a TV show. Like, you know, be a Steve Irwin and I tell people about snakes and shit.

[Julian]

Gotta throw the accent back on.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah, totally. And so they sent me stuff, and I remember one of them. I'm not joking, Julian, if I'm lying, I'm Dying was a bear dating show. So I was a bear dating show. So I forget how the show worked, but I was gonna be the host, and there was gonna be a bear, a male bear and a female bear, and then like a human male and female, and they were gonna compare. And I was just like, this is the dumbest thing I've ever seen.

[Julian]

They were gonna get the bears to date, apparently.

[Forrest Galante]

So obviously that never went forward. Right. And I didn't sign on to that. I just looked at it and thought, this is so stupid.

[Julian]

Oh, my God.

[Forrest Galante]

But I started to learn the inner workings of, like, you find a piece, you find a talent, which was me. You develop an idea, you write it all out, you put out episodes as an outline, you create a budget. And I had been working as a scientist. Like, I took the data, I analyzed it, and I was like, this is stupid. I can do. I can create a TV show. Like, if this is the best they've got, fucking bear dating shows.

[Julian]

That was the best idea, really, that.

[Forrest Galante]

I got presented with. There were better ones out there, I'm sure. But I just said no to all the production companies that reached out to me because I was like, this is terrible. This is garbage media. And I created my own TV show, which was Extinct or Alive, which is a show I did for a couple years.

[Julian]

Was that involving opening up your own production company?

[Forrest Galante]

That came later, Many years later, yeah.

[Julian]

Okay, so how did you get that made?

[Forrest Galante]

So I partnered with. So I looked at the process. I partnered with a guy named Patrick DeLuca, who has lived in LA, and we wrote out this extinct or alive TV show. Created this concept because as a biologist, as someone who spent his whole life looking for rare animals, finding these things, like I just mentioned, these giant lobsters, these hammerheads.

[Julian]

I want to come back to that.

[Forrest Galante]

By the way, but keep going Yeah. I said to Patrick, I was like, listen, people declare things extinct that aren't extinct like that. And once you declare something extinct, it doesn't mean hiding in a bush or around the next corner. It means eradicated from the planet. Like doesn't exist any longer. So once that happens, all hope is given up. Up funding dries up, conservation efforts go away. I was like, we should go find extinct animals, like prove science wrong. You could tell there's a theme with me. And so he's like, yeah, I love that idea, let's do it. So he wrote it out, came up with these ideas, and then I saved up all my money. My wife was working as a, on a part time teacher salary. I was doing odd biology jobs, odd boating jobs, things like that, taking people fishing, like whatever I could do to make money. And I'd save up money, save up money, drive down to la, because nobody would take a meeting with me. I'd literally knock on production companies doors.

[Julian]

Even after, even after the success, they wouldn't take a meeting with me.

[Forrest Galante]

But the success was minuscule. And it was fly by night. It was one naked afraid show and a couple like headlines in the news. And then it had all gone away from when that happened to when I got a production company which was here in New York. And I'll tell that story in a second. To agree took three years. So for three years, still, that's surprising. But okay, yeah, for three years. I like people wouldn't even take meetings with. I mean some would, but it wasn't like I could make a phone call and set a meeting. I had to literally go knock on production companies doors, including the production company that did Naked and Afraid and pitch them and they're like, nope, not interested. Anyway, one time I saved up for three months, came over to New York City, stayed in a hostel, walked into the office of my now business partner and said, hey, here's my idea for an extinct animal TV show. And after getting no, no, no for three years, he goes, yeah, let's do it. Get out of my office. And I was like, holy shit. Okay. Yes sir. Bye bye. And so that was it. And then we built that out, pitched it to Animal Planet. That took like another year until they said yes. And then it became a pilot, the pilot crushed it. And then it became a series, blah, blah. And then eventually I built my production company.

[Julian]

That's awesome, man. Yeah, yeah. I mean people are so fascinated with the unknown in anything, but you know, there's something about the fact that we have these huge biospheres around the world where we scientists can even say definitively, we have not even discovered x percent of species in here. And X is a big fucking number.

[Forrest Galante]

That's right.

[Julian]

Then you take into account species that like, as you say, we declare it extinct just because we haven't seen it.

[Forrest Galante]

Yep.

[Julian]

You don't know if they went into a different part of the environment or changed up where they were going. I mean, it's such a cool field.

[Forrest Galante]

Of study, especially because a lot of the times it's changed a little bit recently and it's created a larger field now, like a lost species de extinction field. But. But at the time it was like some stuffy ass guy in a smoking jacket in London was like, that animal is extinct, you know, and it wasn't that bad. But like, you know, some British dude would go on a survey for 10 days, stay in the four seasons and come back and be like, it's not there. And you're like, I don't know if this is correct, you know, but nobody was calling it out. And I'm being dramatic for the sake of being dramatic. But it was like, it's very, very hard to say something's extinct, you know, like, definitively after a short survey from. From some scientists that flew in to check it out. So we just pushed further and went harder and went deeper and we found eight species that had been declared extinct.

[Julian]

All right, what was the first one you found?

[Forrest Galante]

The Zanzibar leopard.

[Julian]

How did you. Like, how do you even do this?

[Forrest Galante]

You just go.

[Julian]

And you're like, all right, we're gonna start looking. Roll cameras.

[Forrest Galante]

It. Yeah, that's how I thought it was gonna go. Cause we started with a special for Monster Week, which used to be on Animal Planet. And that's how I thought it was gonna go. I thought it was gonna be like, roll cameras, let's go. But no, it's. Again, I'm lucky because I came up in the sciences, so I had surveys, I had processes, I bought trail cameras. I knew how to track stuff. Growing up in the bush in Zimbabwe, being the son of safari business owners, I had all this. These unique ideas of scent trailing things to bring them close to the camera. Like dragging a dead carcass to make a scent trail and spraying pheromones in the trees to get animals to come by. Like, I did all these weird things and that's what actually made the show famous. It wasn't really the discoveries which helped, but it was like the tactics. The tactics, yeah. And so the first one was. And to this Day, we don't know definitively that it was a Zanzibar leopard, as opposed to just an African leopard. But off the coast of Africa is the island of Zanzibar, off the coast of Tanzania. And we went there to look for a rumored leopard that had been extinct for 30 or 40 years. A smaller island leopard. Yes. If you zoom in way in, you'll see the island there. And so we went there. Long story short, we made a meat tree, which is a tree covered in meat. Like a giant cat's play toy. Like I said, unorthodox methods. And caught this leopard walking through the bushes on trail camera. And that was like our first big discovery.

[Julian]

Is that like a oh, yeah yourself kind of moment, dude? You're like, did I just see what I just. Just fucking. So.

[Forrest Galante]

So when I saw it. Because we go through hundreds and hundreds of trails, you know, a game, camera, clips. When I saw it, I was sitting on the back of the bus on the way back to the town. Cause we'd been in the national park for a few days, and we were like, we're gonna go to town, get a hotel, get a shower, blah, blah, blah. And I'm sitting on the back of the bus on my laptop going through clips. And I, like, played it. I like, looked up, like, played it again. Like, played it again. And then I just threw my laptop in the air. It's all on camera. Like, the camera started rolling. Cause they heard me start screaming.

[Julian]

I'm like, pull off.

[Forrest Galante]

Pull the bus over. I ran up. My guys are like, what's going on? What's going on? I grabbed my audio guy by the collar, pulled him in and headbutt him. Like, I just went nut, like. And he's like, why did you do that? I was like, I don't know. And I was like, showing them the laptop. It was just like. I just went apeshit. And they're like, what's wrong with you?

[Julian]

Like, look at the tape.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah. And then that was like our first big discovery. And that rolled into, you know, a second season with a little bit more funding and so I could get more better tools and go for longer. And yeah, we ended up finding eight lost species on that series.

[Julian]

Did you, on that first one, though, did you encounter, I imagine right away, scientists? Like, that's definitely not that, of course. Yeah. How do you even. It just seems like there's people and this relates to any field that just have a preconceived notion on stuff. And you could take them to that wall right there and have, you know, the ghost of Michelangelo come back for art and the ghost of Leonardo da Vinci for science and art, and tell them scientifically why it's white and they're gonna say it's black.

[Forrest Galante]

Correct? Yeah. Yes. We ran into lots of naysayers, lots of haters. I mean, not lots, because it was pretty. Like that one. Other ones. I literally held the extinct animal in my hand, you know, and there were still people that were angry. Like, I found this tortoise that was. It was in Time magazine and everything else. Like, I literally. I found it the Fernandina island tortoise.

[Julian]

But Fernandina Island.

[Forrest Galante]

And that was a big deal, and that came with its own controversies. But no matter what we did, there was always some people getting upset, mostly because we broke the mold. I don't think it really had anything to do with me. I don't think it had anything to do with the wall being white or black. You know what I mean? I think it was just. We broke the mold of how things are supposed to be done. And that comes with hate. Yeah, there you go.

[Julian]

So what was the story here with the. With the tortoise?

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah. So that was some years later on the season two, maybe a year and a half, two years later, we went to this volcanic island of Fernandina in the Galapagos, a place that the California Academy of Sciences had only ever collected one other individual of the species in history 114 years prior. And we went there, teamed up with the Galapagos Conservancy and the National Park System, and they. We didn't put any of this on camera because we didn't want to insult anybody, but they literally laughed at us when we said, we're gonna go look for this tortoise. They're like, you're wasting your time. It's so stupid. And then we went and found it, and then there was, like, a big upset of who found it and why was it me who just come in for four days after they hadn't found it in 114 years old as criticism, and I just didn't give a shit. And I still don't give a shit because we found the tortoise. All I care about is the tortoise. Yeah. I don't care about me finding the tortoise. There were two other guys, I won't name their names, who were like, we found the tortoise, not him. I'm like, yep, you did. Good job. Who gives a shit? It's all documented. It's all on camera. It was all on animal, plant, It. Whoever wants to take credit can take credit. All I care about is that we found the tortoise.

[Julian]

What made you want to find that tortoise, though? Because there's so many. I mean, there's millions of species that are cool, that you can learn about, that are extinct. Like, you know, you land on these eight, so what, right? What makes you go, this is the one right here. This is why I want to go to Fernandina and do this?

[Forrest Galante]

It's a great question. So I live in Santa Barbara, like I said, Ojai, California. Up the road from me, there's a place called the Turtle Conservancy. I'm just a nerd, right? Like I told you about reading the books and stuff. So I used to go up to the Turtle Conservancy, which is actually a guy from here, from New York, who started this, that used to run nightclubs, who's obsessed with turtles and tortoises.

[Julian]

Albanian?

[Forrest Galante]

No, he's not. Albanian? No, he's not. I don't think so.

[Julian]

You ran nightclubs in New York?

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Julian]

Wow.

[Forrest Galante]

The same guy who produced Tiger King, by the way. Yeah.

[Julian]

What a career.

[Forrest Galante]

It's a weird small world.

[Julian]

Yes.

[Forrest Galante]

But I used to go to the Turtle Conservancy and work with my friends up there, and they're like, you know, I was already aware of the Fernandina island tortoise as a lost species, and only one before 114 years, blah, blah. But I met a scientist who was a Turtle Conservancy scientist who's like, I swear to you. Forest. When I was there 30 years ago, I found bite marks in a cactus. I found tracks. There's a tortoise on that island. And I was like, oh, man. Like, look, I'm getting goosebumps talking about it. Yeah, you are. Because I got so excited.

[Julian]

Whoa.

[Forrest Galante]

And I'm like, no way, dude. There's a tortoise there. So we put this whole. Yeah, you can see my hair's all standing up. I get so excited about this stuff. And so anyway, I put together all the research, got the permits, got. Chartered the boat, got the agreement from the Colombian government to let us go to that. Sorry, Ecuadorian government to let us go to that specific island, blah, blah, blah. And then, yeah, just launch the mission. And then four days. Found it. Found it in two and a half, three days. Yeah. And then spend another day looking for a mate. But we're like, we got to get out of here. We got to. We got to. Because the tortoise, when we found her It's a female super. You kind of see it in, like, that far? No, you can't really see it. Super skinny, super sunken in eyes and stuff like that. So she was in pretty bad health. And the scientists I was working with from Fernandina, they made. Not from Fernandina, from the Galapagos. They made the decision. They wanted to take her into the rescue facility. They have, like a rescue center there and get her fat and get her hydrated and healthy and then try and find a male and breed them and mate them. Yeah. And save the species. So we moved her off the island, which it was the right thing to do. But at the time I was like, is this the right thing to do?

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Forrest Galante]

But it was a great discovery. And I don't care. I don't even want to harp on, like, the criticism and the negativity, because all that matters is that we brought millions of eyeballs, millions of eyeballs to the discovery of an animal that the world had given up on.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Forrest Galante]

And that's awesome.

[Julian]

How did you come up upon her, like, when you actually found her again?

[Forrest Galante]

So we. We spent the first day following the Galapagos scientists up to the top of the mountain because they had animals liked high veg, high elevation, you know, where there was more greenery, blah, blah. And then the second day, I led us to a lower elevation area that I saw more trees. And I was like, let's check that area. And as we got in, not to my credit to theirs, the other scientists first found scat or. No, sorry, I found the scat. I don't remember. Somebody found poop. And I started freaking out. I was like, this is tortoise poop. Because tortoise poop's like that. You know, the only other thing on the island is, like, iguana poop. And it's like that. That. So I'm like, holy, there's a tortoise here. And it was still kind of damp. So it's like this is within a week old, because. Boiling hot, rugged, gnarly environment.

[Julian]

You're saying the only other relatable thing would be iguana poop?

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah.

[Julian]

Because there's other types of animals.

[Forrest Galante]

Yes. But the only thing that could look anything similar would be an iguana. And it's half. It's a fraction of the size. Got it. So we found this. And I'm like, freaking out. I'm like, oh, my God, there is a tortoise here. This is tortoise poop. Like, holding it, screaming my head off, getting excited and then a couple seconds later, one of the scientists goes, there's a bedding. There's a den right here, like, where they bury into the sand, you know, to cool down. And you could see this, like, little bowl that it dug out to, like, rub its belly in. So the poop might have been a week old, but the dig, the little berry site's probably, like, a day old. And literally minutes later, somebody. There was, like, eight of us there. It's like a tortoise. A tortoise. And I, like, dropped my water bottle and dove into this bush like it was a fricking cheetah. It was a tortoise. It couldn't go anywhere but, like, dove into this bush and grabbed this tortoise. There's videos of it online. But I was just freaking out because literally, at that point in time, if you think about this, I was holding in my hand to this day the rarest animal in the world on planet Earth. The dire wolves, the colossal just brought back. There's three of them. This is one. One individual of the species in the last 114 years, period. The rarest animal, the crown jewel of rare animals. I was holding in my hand.

[Julian]

Definition of, like, grain of sand and sand.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah. I mean, it was awesome to find.

[Julian]

That's so cool, man. You ended up finding eight of these total.

[Forrest Galante]

Not tortoises, but eight different lost animals. Yeah.

[Julian]

Now, real quick on the torso, they brought it back out of the wild. And did they. Did they find the mate? Did you say?

[Forrest Galante]

No. So they brought it back. They took it to the fossil Lorena breeding facility, which is where that other famous tortoise, Lonesome George, was. I don't know if you ever heard that name.

[Julian]

I don't know. Lonesome George. No.

[Forrest Galante]

It was a Pinta island tortoise that was also the last of his species. And he spent, like, a hundred years as a. At this facility, and people could visit him and stuff. So they took Fearne to that facility, and they've launched, I believe, four return expeditions to look for a mate since then. Haven't found any. You know, they never found any before I came there. They've never found any since. I'm not saying I'm the only reason, but there's certain tricks and tools.

[Julian]

We gotta send the Galante back.

[Forrest Galante]

I didn't say that you did.

[Julian]

But I said it. We're doing it.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah. So, unfortunately, because they got upset about our finding and, you know, the sort of machismo around it, they. They haven't asked me to come back and Look. But I'd happily go look for a male.

[Julian]

Do we know how old she is approximately?

[Forrest Galante]

Somebody did some kind of like isotopic analysis. I think she's around 70 or 80 years old.

[Julian]

And how long would it, would that species be able to live? 150 years?

[Forrest Galante]

About 100. Yeah. Maybe a little over 100. Yeah. Like maybe 110. Something like that. She's healthy now though. I think if we left her. So what's crazy is Fernandina island, the island is one of the most volcanic islands in the world. World. So there's lava flows constantly taking place. And when you have a little patch of like jungle. Right. It's not really jungle, but like scrub land and bush and trees and stuff. Then all of a sudden a lava flow comes down. It just, just blankets that kills everything there and it's gone. And it doesn't exactly regrow through lava. So an island that used to be relatively green and have lots of patches of greenery, there's now like two patches of real greenery left. So it's a relatively confined area. There is another tortoise there. I saw tracks of it. I'm almost certain. It's just hopefully a matter of time until they find it.

[Julian]

But like a 70 year old lady, she could have kids.

[Forrest Galante]

Yep. So unlike humans and other mammals, they can reproduce almost up until the day they die.

[Julian]

Oh, wow.

[Forrest Galante]

And they even have sperm.

[Julian]

No menopause?

[Forrest Galante]

Nope, no menopause. And they even have spermal retention. So if she had mated with a male five years ago, she could have hung onto that sperm in her system and then laid eggs five years later.

[Julian]

Thank God humans don't have that.

[Forrest Galante]

Holy shit. Yeah, I know, right? Right. And think, I mean, think how many kids you'd have.

[Julian]

Said, I'm getting goosebumps now. That's also pretty cool though, that you found this one in the cradle of the evolutionary. Yeah, you know, invention itself. In the Galapagos Islands. That's a place I've never been. My parents went, I think like 30 years ago. But I mean that's. That's gotta be unlike anything else on earth.

[Forrest Galante]

No, that was my favorite discovery or find ever. We found four shark species, a primate species, a cayman, which is like a crocodilian.

[Julian]

Oh, yeah, Yeah. I went to the Amazon.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah, you know. Of course you do. Yeah. But that, that one, that specific one, finding that animal, that was that rare to me, that was the most incredible in, like you said, the cradle of our understanding of evolution. Yeah, it was such a cool thing.

[Julian]

Thing. Yeah. Where did you find the cayman again?

[Forrest Galante]

The Rio Apoporis area of Colombia.

[Julian]

Okay. Is that. That's not touching the Amazon.

[Forrest Galante]

It does, but much further down than where I was.

[Julian]

Okay.

[Forrest Galante]

It is Amazonian, though.

[Julian]

It is, yeah.

[Forrest Galante]

But doesn't touch the Amazon River. We were on a river called the Rio Apaporis River.

[Julian]

Okay, got it. Yeah, the.

[Forrest Galante]

The.

[Julian]

The cut. The. The whole trail cam thing and, like, tracking species is like, the coolest thing to me. I was down there with our mutual friend.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah, yeah.

[Julian]

Paul Rose. So obviously he does a lot of the same stuff. He has trail cams everywhere. Also trying to find species that we may have never even heard of.

[Forrest Galante]

Yes. In the Amazon, he's very likely to do so.

[Julian]

Yeah. There I remember we were looking at some shots they had that are, like, hard to see because they were close, but not quite close enough. And he's like, that's not a jaguar. That's not a such and such.

[Forrest Galante]

Something different.

[Julian]

So what the is that? Which is really cool, but we got to go out and actually lay a few new trail cams and, like, see the strategy of what it is. And we didn't even do any of the more complex stuff you were talking about, like dragging a dead trail or stuff like that. But it's really wild that you. That we can actually use this technology now to be able to just put it there, laying in wait. And you're gonna get animals who are just in their regular ecosystem coming by, and they're not suspecting anything. It's not just, like, a human sitting there or something like that.

[Forrest Galante]

It's an amazing development, and it's evolving at such an incredible rate. I was just working with a woman two weeks ago in Texas, and she's using drone surveys at day and night. So nighttime they use thermal ones, and day they use camera ones to film elephant herds. And then they take all the data of the elephants, and it's credible. It looks like something out of Iron Man. They take all these, like, points on the elephants. Heads. Heads. If the elephant moves its head to the left, it's telling these two animals to go this way, but this one to stay there. If it moves, its. You know, I'm making up the actual analysis, but it's like it's. It's. It takes all these shots, composes them into a database, then AI runs all these analyses on it and goes, yeah, yeah. If the elephant moves left twice, nods left twice, it means be careful. There's something in the bush over there, and it's literally decoding the way like. Like it can take a herd of elephants. Go. That one's the matriarch. That one's the beta. That one's the omega. These two are the babies. This one's this. This one's telling that one this. This one's saying, go over here. This one's pointing to water this way. And, like, it's breaking down language that we, as a human observer, can watch elephants our whole life and go, yeah, I think that one's leading them that way. But this is like, no, no, he's actually saying, there's water here and watch out for that bush. You know, it's like decoding the way they're communicating and. And, you know, like, AI is garbage. Still, we're at the tip of the iceberg for what that's going to be in 10 years.

[Julian]

Been able to actually interact with publicly.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah.

[Julian]

Who knows what they got privately.

[Forrest Galante]

True, true. Yeah. But, yeah, the technology and the data is far surpassing me dragging dead animals around in the bush. But I think one thing that we can never forget from a wildlife science standpoint, and this is something that's gone away and part of that book I'm writing, your gut instinct is so important, and we. Science denies that. Like, like, feverishly denies that. You should listen to your gut instinct, like, field stuff.

[Julian]

It goes against human nature, dude.

[Forrest Galante]

It goes against human nature. But they're like, follow a protocol. Create a grid. You know, so, like, if you're doing a camera, trap, survey for an animal, the scientific way, you build a grid, okay, Every hundred feet, 500ft, you put a camera here, 300ft this way, you put a camera and you do a grid in a square. Why? I'm a human being. I'm a biological creature. I can look at an area and go, that's a game trail. That's where the animals will walk. There's water here. I know that they need water. They're going to go to water. There's a food source here. See that beehive right there? We know that this animal eats honey. Okay, I'm going to put three cameras here, one here and five here. Not a square grid like that. Yes, you might cover more ground in your square grid, but. But use a combination of understanding and not just methodology, because just methodology is stupid.

[Julian]

Yeah, you answered my question for me. I was going to ask you, like, there's got to be room for both. Like, I'm feeling it could go there, but also, like, scientifically, we got to cover X amount of space to get something realistic. Data.

[Forrest Galante]

Right? But you got to rely on that instinct, like, when we went to that bush, that area, that was pure instinct. It went against what I was being told, which is gone up to the top where it's a little bit wetter and there's a little bit more greenery. Check the high elevation. I just looked at a map and went, trees there.

[Julian]

Y.

[Forrest Galante]

That's my instinct and brain going, let's go to where there's trees. If I was a tortoise, I'd want to be where there's trees.

[Julian]

Yeah, that's it. You have such a. Because you grew up among it as well. It's just second nature for you. You have that gene that you see when you go to some of these places. Like when I met some of Paul's guys in the Amazon jungle who had lived there their whole life.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah.

[Julian]

Where, like, they'd hear a bird two miles away and they'd almost be able to talk back to a. It. It's not. They didn't have to sit there and Google this stuff or read a book about it. Like, obviously, you've educated yourself over the years on a lot of different things, but, like, you were in it, you grew up among it. You can. Like not to be too meta here, but you can feel it.

[Forrest Galante]

Yes.

[Julian]

In ways that, you know, I can't. Anyone else listening pretty much can't.

[Forrest Galante]

Right. But you sitting here can tell when something's off with the audio in your podcast or, you know, I'm not in your space, but, you know, like, it's just different. It's whatever. You train yourself to have instinct in, you know, right now, whether this is a good conversation for your show or not a great conversation.

[Julian]

It's great.

[Forrest Galante]

By the way, that's good. I'm glad to hear that. But you know that because this is what you're trained in, the average person does not know that.

[Julian]

Sure.

[Forrest Galante]

Just like, I not like Paul's guys because I don't know the Amazon like they do. But I know big picture, if I work here, I'm more likely to find the animal or I'm. You know, and it's just. It's same if you're an investment banker, you know, like, this is the stocks we should trade. And trust me, I just. I got a feeling, you know, it's just human instinct is an incredible tool.

[Julian]

It's just cool when it overlaps with nature, I think. I think that's, like, the coolest vault.

[Forrest Galante]

I agree.

[Julian]

Real fast for us. I just gotta run to the bathroom, but we'll be right back. All right. We're back. So we. You and I were just saying this off camera, but by the way, alluding to it, so we might as well go into it. But you are an advisor for Colossal.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah.

[Julian]

Who? I had Ben and Matt James in here together.

[Forrest Galante]

Yep.

[Julian]

A few months ago. Fascinating stuff we're going to have. I know. At least Matt coming back Good. I think in the fall. I was talking to. He was here for, like, two days in July, so we couldn't make it work. But he's gonna come back because there was still so much more to go there.

[Forrest Galante]

But we're getting.

[Julian]

We're getting into weird territory here for sure. Yeah.

[Forrest Galante]

Colossal is weird. I mean, what they're doing is weird, but it's cool.

[Julian]

What made you want to be on it as an advisor?

[Forrest Galante]

Well, I. I found out about it very early on, you know, like, in the. Because everything I've done, like, what we've been talking about is in this. Not everything, but a lot of it is in the space of. Of looking for extinct animals. Right. And Colossal is literally a de extinction company. So Ben and Matt together, they reached out to me, and Matt's become a very good friend, but they reached out to me together. They both are, really. But they both reached out to me very early on when There was probably 25 people, like, brainstorming and working at Colossal, and just said, hey, with you being this kind of figure in finding extinct species, would you be willing to be a part of what we're doing? And I had my reservations, like I think anybody does when you hear about what they're doing. And I was like, is this real? Is this some Theranos thing? Like, what is this? Well, you know, it sounds crazy, like, now they've proven themselves, but at first it sounded crazy. And we just had a few conversations and I just said, I'd love to be an advisor. You know, I'd love to help you if you do make. Make woolly mammoths and dodos and thylacine and all these things. I'd love to help come up with the plans as to what to do with them from a conservation standpoint, so that it's impactful and has big purpose to the planet and something that I don't know if they talked about on your show or not, but they. They also do a lot of good conservation work.

[Julian]

That was the. That was the key for me, and that's what I want to continue to see moving forward. Because if. And we can get into nitty gritty with this, because you've been involved for a While.

[Forrest Galante]

But.

[Julian]

But if, in fact, trying to make a woolly mammoth and the work you're doing on just in gene sequencing before you even make a species can help solve the problem of. I forget what it's called, but like the elephants, herpes disease that kills 20%. Right. If it can help solve something that kills 20% of all current elephants, and regardless of what we figure out or don't figure out, with a woolly mammoth that research legitimately is able to do that and, and help such a magnificent creature in conservation right now, then to me, there's something that's very worth it there.

[Forrest Galante]

That's it. I mean, a good example is the direwolf news, right? You saw that. It all came out big, loud, splashing news, controversy, everything else. That's great. And I think it's really interesting. It's interesting proof of concept, whatever. Direwolves aren't going back into the wild. But the thing that didn't make the news, that should have is the same technology they used for that they used to clone red wolf, North American red wolf. And it sounds like you guys talked about, so I won't go into detail.

[Julian]

But like, no, please do, because people got to hear this. Who haven't heard that.

[Forrest Galante]

Sure. Well, just long story short, they. North American red wolf's the most critically endangered wolf species on planet Earth. And colossal use the same technology or some version of it that they used to make the direwolf to make, to clone red wolf. So no matter what happens now, will never lose red wolf. So as long as that company exists now, does that make sense?

[Julian]

It does make sense.

[Forrest Galante]

It's a huge win.

[Julian]

It I. It sounds like it's a huge win. The question that I still have on any of this, and I don't know, like, you know, people like to point fingers at this stuff because you're working on something so new and it's controversial or whatever, but, like, I want people working on things. Like, I think. I think it's cool to try to find something we haven't done before. That's how the human race moves forward. But, like, if you clone a red wolf, yeah, you're cloning its DNA, you're cloning its sequencing, so you're obviously cloning its looks, its features, all those things. But can you clone its evolution? Meaning, like, I'm gonna make something up right now. This isn't real, but let's say red wolves could. Could jump 30ft because they, you know, over millions of years, train themselves in their environment to be able to jump 30ft away from. From a bison that was chasing them or something. Can you really clone that trained behavior just by grabbing its DNA sequencing and saying, boom, we cloned?

[Forrest Galante]

My understanding of it, and I don't know, because I'm not a geneticist. I told you, I basically failed those classes in college. But my understanding of it is the hardware is the same, the software is different.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Forrest Galante]

So we can make another Julian. Not me. They maybe can make another Julian. Are you going to be a podcast host who has the same knowledge and skills and personality that you do now? I don't think so, because that's software. Right. So you could still jump as high as you can jump. You'll be the same height, same color hair, same eye color. But your software is completely pro. It's just different. It's open to interpretation. That's my understanding of it.

[Julian]

So does that mean, like, again, you and I aren't the science experts here, so just looking at it from like, like, what is this rather than the software that goes into it, does that mean that it's a new type of the same thing?

[Forrest Galante]

Oh, I see what you're saying. No, I think if you took that cloned red wolf and put it out with other red wolves, it would not stand out as any different. Does that make sense?

[Julian]

Yes.

[Forrest Galante]

It would just be another red wolf as part of. Now, the dire wolves, you know, they're genetically modified from gray wolf, blah, blah. That's different. And that was a. I think that was just a pretty proof of concept. That's my understanding. Yeah.

[Julian]

What do you mean that's different, though?

[Forrest Galante]

Because there's no other direwolves to put them out with. You've brought something back that wasn't there. You're starting from scratch. In a sense.

[Julian]

Yes.

[Forrest Galante]

Whereas cloning a red wolf is. You could take that red wolf and put it out with the pack, it'll get accepted by the others, it'll learn the same behaviors, it'll hunt the same way, howl the same way, den the same way, pup the same way. It'll be a red wolf.

[Julian]

Because they exist right now. We're working with things that actually we can quite literally copy and paste.

[Forrest Galante]

That's right. And to me, like, a very good example of that is the Northern White Rhino. There's only two females left of that species in the world. If Colossal and I think Biorescue, and I think there's a third partner, but forgive me if I'm getting them wrong, are working to clone that. If they can clone a male and they can use their Crazy genetic engineering stuff to add diversity to the species, the genetic diversity. They can save that species. To me, I'm getting the goosebumps again. Because that is the technology. That is what the technology is for. Like the fact that human beings have fucked up so badly. Do you care if I swear? Just make sure you're in New Jersey, bro.

[Julian]

You say whatever the fuck you want.

[Forrest Galante]

Human beings have fucked up the Northern White Rhino so badly, poaching them for literally fingernail keratin, you know, that's what ivory, that's what rhino horn is that. Now, in can come colossal. And Ben and Matt and all these guys with their big brains and their crazy technology, and they can go, hey, wait a minute. Before we lose this incredible thing, these two Northern White Rhinos give us some blood, some hair, some tusks, some whatever, some fingernails, and I'm gonna make a male, and then we can put that male back in, and I'm gonna make a female and put that female back in. And in 10 years, we can have 150 of these rhinos. Like, that's what it's all about. You know, it's like we're fixing, we're righting humanity's wrongs. Like the crimes we've committed against animals. It's not to stop. Extinction is a natural thing. We don't want to stop extinction. Like you don't want to stop it. What you want to do is stop what human beings have done. Beating it up.

[Julian]

Yes.

[Forrest Galante]

You know, and where it doesn't make sense, human caused extinction because we wanted a skyscraper where this frog lives or, you know, whatever it happens to be. We just want to mitigate that. And if that technology can be used for that, I think it's the most wonderful technology.

[Julian]

So you're in support of continued nature, survival level of the fittest. You just want to. Yeah, I just solve for 8 billion people in the world.

[Forrest Galante]

That's it. There's a perfect way to put it. Okay, yeah, got it.

[Julian]

Now, going back to the direwolf example, though, and let's even talk about the woolly mammoth, which is one they're. They're trying to bring back. In this case, you are bringing back something where it doesn't. It hasn't existed in thousands of years. We don't have, you know, the active DNA to be able to do it. So you're sequencing what you can to create it. Do you. Do you think that there is. There are potential downsides to trying to do something like that? Obviously we can look at the conservation of current species that it can help with. But do you think there's a downside to creating a woolly mammoth or creating a dire wolf and putting it out into the wild when it's not evolved from there 100%?

[Forrest Galante]

There are going to be unintended consequences, just like there are unintended consequences with AI or any new technology when we got cell phones. Now we're all addicted to cell phones. And we all hunch over staring at our cell phones phones. It still allowed the whole world to communicate, right? Same with the Internet. Now everybody's addicted to porn. Like, you know, like, these things come up and there are things that you weren't accounting for, you know, that happen. I don't know what that will be. But what I do know, at least from my experiences with Colossal, they're anticipating that there will be those consequences. And it's not like a, okay, we made 100 mammoths. Let's put them out in Alaska, see how it goes, you know, it's not like that. It's like, it's very controlled. That's why there's a board of advisors like myself. Scientific conservation, everything else.

[Julian]

You guys got a lot of advisors.

[Forrest Galante]

A lot. A lot. It's grown. When I was. When I. When I became an advisor, I think there were six of us advisors.

[Julian]

Yeah. Now there's like 6,000.

[Forrest Galante]

I know it's crazy, but that's a good thing. Yeah. There are these summits. Everybody talks. Everybody has a place to talk. But the point is, like, let's use a willie mammoth as an example. I don't know that this is what is Colossal is doing. That's not. I don't work with them day to day, but. But if they bring back one or five, they put it in a controlled environment and they study, like, what's happening in this control, you know? Okay, now we can expand it from 10 acres to 100 acres. Okay, now we can expand it from 100 acres to a thousand acres. You know, like, it's gotta be a very slow rollout. And that's, I hope, how we learn how to mitigate the bigger problems that it could cause. I hope.

[Julian]

Yeah. And, you know, the people have seen the movies, right?

[Forrest Galante]

Of course.

[Julian]

So we see where the. Where the one guy goes crazy, goes, let's do it with humans.

[Forrest Galante]

That's right. And you're like, all right, an island. Yeah, yeah.

[Julian]

Like, we gotta.

[Forrest Galante]

Right.

[Julian]

We gotta chill a little bit here. But maybe in our lifetime, I. I don't know if. If this is the case or if this is what you think but within our lifetime, you know, do you think we could have something like a private island? I don't want to go too far, but like a Jurassic park kind of thing where we've created things that they're, you know, they're recreations. But you could at least see how it might behave in the environment.

[Forrest Galante]

I think it's awesome. The little kid in me, if you could tell me I could go to Pleistocene park and see woolly mammoths and giant bison and all these Ice age animals or, you know, go to Jurassic Park. Of course I want to see that. Do I know if that's what they're going to do or if that's a good thing for the environment or anything else? No, probably not. You know, but the little kid in me goes, I can go to these places and see these things. Like, it would be insane to see. I don't think the technology is there yet. Maybe it will be.

[Julian]

It's not.

[Forrest Galante]

And I'm sure Matt and Ben explained that to you. Yeah, but I don't think we can make T. Rexes and titanoboas. You know, I don't think that DNA is too fragmented, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I just don't think that that's what colossal stands for. I think it stands for trying to put a band aid on the problem and right humanity's wrongs.

[Julian]

Yeah. And I hope that's what they continue to do because that was really, that was the bulk of our conversation was, I would say, a piece of it. This was episode 297 for people who didn't see it. But there was a piece of it that was, you know, certainly discussing like the scientific implications. Like, can you actually recreate this? What does it mean if you recreate it, what does a clone look like? Some of the stuff you and I just talked about. But a lot of it had to do with what it can. How the science can be used on current species. Like we obviously talked a lot about the middle of the sixth extinction. We're in the numbers.

[Forrest Galante]

But by the way, it's crazy of.

[Julian]

Like animals that are being declared extinct right now. It's like north of 50%.

[Forrest Galante]

Isn't it terrible?

[Julian]

It's insane, man.

[Forrest Galante]

Crazy.

[Julian]

So.

[Forrest Galante]

And that's why somebody's do and I what I think so great about Colossal is like there's this idea. I don't mean to interrupt you, but like.

[Julian]

No, no, not at all.

[Forrest Galante]

There's been this idea that like, if you're a biologist, if you dedicate yourself to conservation, you have to Be poor, you have to struggle. You have to give up everything to dedicate your life, life to saving the planet. Well, if you become a doctor, you, you know you're going to be rich, right? You know what I mean? Like, if you're like, I'm going to go to medical school and be a doctor, it's like, yeah, I'm going to get rich and I'm going to save people's lives.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Forrest Galante]

Like, colossal to me. And this is like a weird perspective, but they're a for profit company.

[Julian]

Yes.

[Forrest Galante]

They've come along and been like, we can save the planet and get rich doing it. And it's like, why is that a bad thing? Like, good for you, you know, who cares? I'm not getting rich, like, by me saying this. I'm not getting rich. I'm just an advisor. But like, good for you. Like, flip the conservation model on its head. Like, conservation is a battle that we've been losing since its inception. We lose more and more species every single year. The numbers are astounding. Like you just pointed out, these guys are like, we're gonna try something different.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Forrest Galante]

We're gonna break the mold. We're gonna make money off of saving species, like do some good for the world and, and make a billion dollar company. It's like, great. Like, why not try it? Because the other stuff's not working.

[Julian]

That was, that was probably like one of the funnier moments where Ben, I think he was talking, it was his first conversation with Matt when they were back talking about Matt being an advisor and obviously then eventually coming on.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah.

[Julian]

But Matt's whole life had been in conservation and specifically a lot of work with elephants. And so his big thing talking with Ben was like, look, if you're gonna do this, like, I really. We need help in the conservation. Here's all the statistics with elephants. Here's the problems we're having. And Ben was just like, so how much would you need to really make a big dent in this?

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah.

[Julian]

And Matt goes, it. $50 million would really do something. And Ben goes, you know, I'm a business guy.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah.

[Julian]

I've built a lot of companies. I'm a billionaire. He didn't say that.

[Forrest Galante]

But he is. But he is. Yeah.

[Julian]

I just looked at him, I said.

[Forrest Galante]

Oh, well, that's not much. Yeah.

[Julian]

So you need 50. 50. I'll just go get $50 million.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah. But to a wildlife guy like me or Matt, you're like, I'm sorry, what?

[Julian]

Yeah, it's like, so we'll just go make that yeah, no problem. I'm like, I need you to come do that here too. How do you just. Yeah, I'm gonna go make 50 million. Maybe I wouldn't have the studio in the master bedroom.

[Forrest Galante]

Dude, it's so crazy. Yeah. The world is changing. That dynamic is changing and it's, it's. Yeah. The fact that you can fix the elephant problem. Elephant problem for $50 million. And to some guys, that's their boat that they see twice a year, you know, it's like. And I love that, that Ben, who's I think is a really interesting guy, is just like, yeah, okay, let's do that. You know, it's like, fuck yeah, let's do that. Like, why not, man?

[Julian]

Yeah, yeah. Now I, he also. Ben hooked me up with Ken Lavara.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah. To come in. He lives here. No, Jersey, right. Yeah.

[Julian]

Yeah. So what's crazy is I was telling you the first three and a half years I did this, I was in my parents house in South Jersey, which is where I'm from.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah.

[Julian]

Had no idea this was in my backyard.

[Forrest Galante]

What he's doing the bone hub of.

[Julian]

The whole world in Mantua, New Jersey.

[Forrest Galante]

Underneath a Home Depot, under.

[Julian]

Literally underneath a Home Depot. Like the most insane thing ever. But I love that podcast we recorded. It's coming out really soon at the time of us recording this.

[Forrest Galante]

Nice.

[Julian]

The, the, the, the dinosaur thing is just like the, the little kid in me loves that because it's just like the coolest thing ever. But how much time have you spent, you know, like trying to find dinosaurs or you know, obviously they're gone, but they're gone. Unearth what they were.

[Forrest Galante]

I. Not a lot. I'm not an archaeologist. I haven't put. Or paleontologist. I haven't put a lot of time into digging that stuff up. I, I know Ken from the Explorers Club.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Forrest Galante]

And I think Ken is awesome. He's such a cool guy. And have you been to his place yet?

[Julian]

We're going to do it cuz my parents still live down there. So we're going to do like private tour.

[Forrest Galante]

I'll, I'll swing over. Cuz he's invited me too.

[Julian]

He's like, come over now. Now that's going to be a crew now.

[Forrest Galante]

Dude, I'm down. Yeah. Because I think what Ken's doing is so cool. But no, I mean, you know, there's some like crazy like I've spoken to Joe, Joe Rogan about stuff like this. Like you know these Mokola MBE, which is like this dinosaur of the Congo and There's like these rumors and things that float around out there. I've put no effort into looking for living dinosaurs. I've done some diving in the black waters of Florida to pull up fossils and shark teeth and stuff like that. But there are dinosaurs among us, you know, and this sounds cliche, but like chickens, Chickens are basically T. Rexes, you know, like crocodiles have been around as long as dinosaurs. Sharks have been on this planet since before trees were here here, you know, like, I find those things fascinating enough and my interest really is in being hands on with living stuff. So dinosaurs for me, my son absolutely loves them and I'm now getting into them again with him. But like, I like the tangible stuff. Like I wanna, I want to hold the tortoise, you know, not just look at the bones.

[Julian]

I feel you there.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah.

[Julian]

What was that, what was the story with the dinosaur? In the Congo, I think it's, I think it's called.

[Forrest Galante]

You could look it up if you want. Mokola membe or something like that. And it's, it's this. Good luck with your spelling there. It's, it's this rumor.

[Julian]

I almost got it. 100, right?

[Forrest Galante]

Nice. Yeah. So what does it say here? Legendary creature reported to inhabit the Congo river basin, described as a large sauropod, like dinosaur. Oh, I think.

[Julian]

You know what, Ken talked about this with me.

[Forrest Galante]

Oh, did he?

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Forrest Galante]

What did he say? What was his thought?

[Julian]

Can't remember. Dude, we went through a thousand dinosaurs. That was one of the coolest podcasts ever.

[Forrest Galante]

And that's the problem is Ken, Ken talks to you about dinosaurs probably the same way I do about animals. Like everybody, everybody knows a thousand dinosaurs. And I can name like six. But yeah, allegedly in the Congo, I.

[Julian]

Think he's found like Six himself.

[Forrest Galante]

Oh, I know, it's crazy. Including the largest one in existence.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Forrest Galante]

But yeah, so this Mokula membe is this rumored to be extant dinosaur living in the Congo. And it's rumored because it's, it's been reported by like hundreds and hundreds of people. Like they've all seen it, you know, allegedly, like, still living. Yeah, allegedly. I mean, I don't, don't imagine you're.

[Julian]

Just walking through the jungle and this thing walks up.

[Forrest Galante]

No, not really. I'd lose my, like if I got that excited about a tortoise. Imagine if I saw this thing.

[Julian]

We're in the simulation, if that's happening.

[Forrest Galante]

Dude, seriously, there's a glitch.

[Julian]

Yeah, he was telling me a lot about like the lost dinosaurs of Egypt. Oh, like More in Egypt. What else happened?

[Forrest Galante]

Right.

[Julian]

You know what I mean?

[Forrest Galante]

Totally.

[Julian]

But he's been all over.

[Forrest Galante]

It's just.

[Julian]

It's so cool.

[Forrest Galante]

I'm coming around on Egypt just being a complete alien experiment place, bro.

[Julian]

You know, you are not crazy to think that at all.

[Forrest Galante]

It's just everything there that comes out, you're just like, oh, now there's pillars going down 10,000ft into Wells. And you're like, wait, what?

[Julian]

Like, yeah, core of the earth.

[Forrest Galante]

Like, what else is there? Yeah.

[Julian]

And all these guys, you know, who studying inside now they got all these different theories and stuff. I'm like, it all sounds great, right?

[Forrest Galante]

Just put it all together.

[Julian]

Yeah. Just maybe there's some truth, like in the middle of all that podcasts are, bro. But what's the. The environment in Congo? I might be mixing this up, but I remember way back when the first podcast I did with Paul, number 124 a few years ago.

[Forrest Galante]

I like how you remember all the numbers off the top of your head. That's pretty impressive.

[Julian]

Thanks for, man. But he was telling me about how when the. When the continents were obviously like shaped differently and, and closer together originally the rainforest that is the Amazon jungle emanated, I think, from Congo, maybe I that up, but the con. The Congolese rainforest. And so now there's even like a. I forget the term for it, but you can run the tape on it. I think he talked about this like two hours and something into that podcast. But there's like a wind that comes off of the African continent emanating from Congo that still goes across the Atlantic over time and makes its way into the Amazon. Do you know what I'm talking about there?

[Forrest Galante]

I don't know about the wind.

[Julian]

I didn't make that up.

[Forrest Galante]

I'm sorry, I don't know about the wind. But if you look at, you know, South America and Africa, they. They, during Pangea, they fit together like this.

[Julian]

Yes.

[Forrest Galante]

And then they broke off.

[Julian]

That's right.

[Forrest Galante]

Right. And so what you have is creatures on both sides that evolved convergently, so called convergent evolution. Meaning, like, why does a dog here look like a dog here, even though they're not related? Well, it's because they both occupied the same niches in the environment. So they had to have four legs, they had to have a bushy tail, they had to have big canines, you know, whatever it happens to be. And then you get the variation, like, well, this one's a gray wolf or a white wolf because it lives in the Arctic and has a big shaggy Coat. Well, this one's a sleek little North American red wolf because it lived in the Florida Everglades, you know, and they're. They're like the same thing, but different, if that makes sense.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Forrest Galante]

So, yeah, I mean, that all those animals at one point in time stemmed off from the same route and then they.

[Julian]

I mean, it's like. It's like the simulation playing out in front of you. It's so crazy.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah, it's like the Sims or something like, you know, and it's funny because now with all the stuff we're talking about earlier with AI and stuff, we can sort of predict with a not very good degree of certainty, but predict. What is it going to be like in another several million years if we don't, you know, wipe ourselves out? Like, what animals are going to be? You know, for a point in time, insects were the biggest thing. Then it was reptiles, now it's mammals. You know what's coming next? Is it going to be giant birds? Are we going to have rats that turn into everything because we take over the planet and, you know, I've seen the rats here in New York. Like, they're huge.

[Julian]

They're no joke, dude.

[Forrest Galante]

They're like, bigger than my dog.

[Julian]

You ever see how they catch in New York now?

[Forrest Galante]

How do they do it?

[Julian]

They had. There was a Vice documentary on this a few years back. You can watch it. But like, they have like rat hunting.

[Forrest Galante]

Dogs that run them down.

[Julian]

So they send them out at night, they go like, tear them up.

[Forrest Galante]

Good. That's good. Yeah, there's too many rats and they spread disease. Yeah, but, yeah, it's just crazy. It's like, we think we live in this here and now. That is the way that things are and have always been. But the planet was so different. I mean, even human civilization was so different 100 years ago.

[Julian]

Oh, it's insane.

[Forrest Galante]

Imagine what it's going to be like in a million years.

[Julian]

Yeah, and it gets weird, though. Like you're saying when you can actually like, kind of use something like AI that's like a weed growing on itself and just like expanding into its own brush and forest to predict these things ahead of time and then be able to, like, I. I can't even conceive it because we don't even know where it goes yet, but. But then maybe be able to create it digitally, but also real, like, you know what I mean? It gets very bizarre. But hopefully, as with all technology that we do throughout mankind, it's used for really good things like this. And where it can actually help species or something like that. We do that.

[Forrest Galante]

I hope so. Yeah. As long, yeah, as long as we maintain good diversity on the planet. Yeah, like, as long as. Because things collapse when we lose diversity. That's when systems collapse. So an environmental system will collapse when you need a bug that feeds a fish, that feeds a bird, you know what I mean? That the bird dies and that creates soil, that creates plants, you know what I mean? It's like you need diversity, you need complexity. As soon as we eliminate that too far so that there's only one kind of bug, only one rat, only whatever it happens to be, you're fucked. That's when we're fucked. That's when we have system collapse.

[Julian]

Yeah, I mean, but it's even like, like sometimes it's something simple where you just look at you. You take one species and look at the environment and go, yo, we'd have a problem. People have talked in the past. I'm not the guy to ask on this. Maybe you would be, but, like, if bees went extinct, we'd all be like.

[Forrest Galante]

I've heard that one. Yeah, I've heard that. Because bees are our biggest pollinators and they create all the crops and the food and everything.

[Julian]

They carry stuff. They have, like, the things drop from them along the way. So all these biospheres around the world, they're basically, like, responsible for the, the seed that creates it.

[Forrest Galante]

And bees are massively declined. Like they're at like 70% decline since, you know, humans started farming or something like that. Yeah, so it's not a good, it's. There's all these things, man. I always describe it, like the world is like a big game of Jenga, you know? And it's like, cool. Well, you pull, you know, you pull the first few tiles out and you're like, this tower is great, man. This thing's going to stay stable forever. And then, you know, you remove the bees, you remove the clean water, you take away the swamps, whatever it happens to be, and the tower gets pretty wobbly. And I, I, I hate the doom and gloom thing. I don't think the tower is that wobbly yet. This is purely anecdotal. I don't think we're about to collapse the tower. But if we do keep pulling those tiles out, if we run out of bees, we kill all the sharks, we cut down all the Amazon. The tower will collapse eventually.

[Julian]

That's what I'm saying. There's a, there's an exponential point in the other direction. No return. This is what Paul about for years, because he's been yelling out about it. It's like you look at just the Amazon jungle, for example. Example.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah.

[Julian]

You're talking about 20% of the global supply of oxygen for the world on a piece of land that's a lot less than 20% of the world.

[Forrest Galante]

And we're burning it down.

[Julian]

We're burning it down. And it's like, Paul can't sit here and say, once we have depleted 37% of the Amazon, it's the point of no return. We don't know exactly where that point is.

[Forrest Galante]

Right. It's a sliding scale.

[Julian]

It's a sliding scale, but there is a point to which the slippery slope no longer has the physics to be able to get back up to the top if you want to.

[Forrest Galante]

That's right. Right.

[Julian]

So there's things that I feel like, especially with tools like the Internet now over the last 15 years, specifically being able to connect all of us. There's things that, like, as a human species all together, we should be able to, at least on a generalized level, come behind and be like, all right, well, that would be very bad. Right. We fight it. We make everything political. We fight over this and that. But, like, if you could be able to just educate people and say, hey, you know, if we lost the Amazon, here's legitimately what happens. So therefore, if everyone could just do this, we won't lose it then. You know, it's a small thing, but it can make a huge difference over the long term.

[Forrest Galante]

It seems like it, but the problem is our nature. Your nature, my nature. I mean, even on a granular level, we are reactive and not proactive.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Forrest Galante]

If my car is not going to break down, I'm going to keep driving it.

[Julian]

That's right.

[Forrest Galante]

You know, and only when my car breaks down, I'm like, oh, shit, I got to get to the mechanics. Mechanic. You know, I don't just take my car in to get checked. I mean, yeah, you take it in for services, but, like, you don't just take it to get checked when you hear a weird noise. You know what I mean? And that is just human nature. Like, we as a species are reactive. We're not proactive. And that's why. And I'm not saying Paul's falling on deaf ears. I love Paul. I think his mission is so pure and great. But, like, he. Probably not probably. I know this from talking to him. He feels like sometimes.

[Julian]

Absolutely.

[Forrest Galante]

He's preaching to a deaf audience. He's like, stop before it's too late. And people Are like, I will deal with it when it's too late.

[Julian]

That's right. Yeah, 100%. That's what I've been talking about with him since day one, you know, and it's like, God bless the guys like that who are out there, like living it and at least trying, you know.

[Forrest Galante]

And he is making a difference, let's be clear. Like, he's raised a bunch of money, he's protected a giant chunk of land over 100,000 acres. Yeah, I mean, he's an awesome dude and his mission is true. And anybody listening to this, I just say, go support Paul. Please do, like wholeheartedly, because he's awesome. But I know that he feels like he's preaching to a deaf audience a lot.

[Julian]

Have you been down there with him yet?

[Forrest Galante]

No, we've been talking about it for about a year now. So I need to find the time. I just, I travel so much for work and shoots and shows and YouTube and I need to prioritize going to stay with him for a week.

[Julian]

Yeah, I think, like, being in it with him just, I mean, you like to be detached and out there doing the shit. Like he's on the same page. It's so. It was. That was definitely a life changing experience for me to be out there.

[Forrest Galante]

Tell me a little bit about and if you've talked about too many times.

[Julian]

No, no, I haven't talked about it in a while.

[Forrest Galante]

Tell me about it because, like, I. I've heard Paul's take on it. He's like, come stay with me. Here's what we'll do. But as a guy from Jersey, like, tell me, what was it like going down there?

[Julian]

It was so I hadn't at the time I went down maybe 20, 24. I had been doing this podcast seven days a week since March 13, 2020, and never taken time off. So I was like, all right. This was over four years in. I'm like, I want to go down, not turn on a phone and just be in it for a while. Like, I grew up with a huge animal guy. I love nature. Like, that's certainly a side of me. So I'm like, this is the coolest thing. Like, the five year old me is pumped to do this. And obviously I'd known Paul for a couple years, had been nice to see him grow. So I wanted to go see for myself all the things he always told me about. But you go down there and it's. It's really hard to describe. It's not like this emotional, like, oh my God, it's more like, whoa. I'm so insignificant.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah.

[Julian]

This is like I'm living in at the time, 2024, you know, I'm coming from this place right here that we see on the wall and I'm going down here to where you are just this little speck in the middle of this just thing that you're like on top of itself.

[Forrest Galante]

Exactly.

[Julian]

But what really struck me is how safe you feel feel out there.

[Forrest Galante]

Right.

[Julian]

And I don't mean that is like to be like the. Is like nothing's gonna happen. I mean there's. That can kill you out there. For sure.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah.

[Julian]

But you feel all the animals, if you're not with them, they don't want to with you.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah.

[Julian]

You know what I mean? You are your own little thing. And the river we were on, obviously he's in Peru, towards the Brazilian border. Really beautiful area. And to see how he lives, you know, there's a lot of people and I'm sure you've seen this over the years and, and people you've come across. There's a lot of people who, who say they do things or say they're about this life or it's really like this. And then you see it and you're like, no, you're not.

[Forrest Galante]

Right.

[Julian]

You're living in like an Airbnb.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah, totally.

[Julian]

But I got to Paul's place and he's. He lives about 200, 200 yards back away from the research station into the jungle in a spot with no running water on a wood floor to where the way I describe it is like, you know how in college when you were. You'd put a sock on the door.

[Forrest Galante]

Sure.

[Julian]

Or whatever.

[Forrest Galante]

Don't. Don't disturb me.

[Julian]

Yeah. So he has to put like a 20 foot industrial towel over like the outside fence to make sure that it's actually enclosed in when he's. And it's just like, you see how legit it's been for at this point. It's right at about 20 years. Being down there most of the time. Most of the year. And I had a great. An even greater appreciation for just. How about that life quote unquote.

[Forrest Galante]

He is, he lives and breathes it, there's no doubt about it. Yeah, Yeah. I mean literally, like I'll be on a zoom call with him, you know, once in a while and he'll like, oh, I gotta go. We're hiking into the jungle. Like if you want to follow up, I'll be back in three days. I'm like, right, okay. Bye Paul. Don't Die.

[Julian]

Yeah, I'm not gonna tell the full story now because we'll be here for way too long. But, but I told on my friend John Rondy's podcast after I got back, but Paul almost got us killed by leaf cutter ants.

[Forrest Galante]

Oh, yeah, Yeah.

[Julian]

I, it's that, that was, that was the second to last day there and that was when I was like, you know, I, I think I'm ready to go.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah. You're like, okay, I've seen it.

[Julian]

This was my personal 911. Yeah, we're, we're gonna, we're gonna get past this. But he's just such a. And he's one of those guys that likes to touch the hot coffee just to see how long his fingers feel until they burn.

[Forrest Galante]

Well, you're preaching the choir over here.

[Julian]

I'm like, all right, dude, but you have spent a lot of time yourself in the Amazon previously.

[Forrest Galante]

Not nearly as much as Paul. Not like him, but yes, I've done multiple like three to four week long expeditions down there.

[Julian]

When was the first time you went?

[Forrest Galante]

First time I went, I went for spring break as a junior in college, you know. Yep. True story. Who'd you go with? My best friend from university, guy named Nick, and our friend who was working as a researcher down there named Mike. And we got together, we went out of Cocos, Ecuador, up the Rio Coco and then. Yeah, just camped. Lived out of the canoe. Caught a 19.8 foot anaconda. Which at the time, there's kind of a crazy like weird ethereal story around that, but I mean, you gotta tell it.

[Julian]

That's why you're here.

[Forrest Galante]

Sure. Yeah. But yeah, and just, we literally just a couple 18, 19 year olds just spent two weeks in the Amazon, took a week off of school and did a week of spring break and then just stayed there. That was instead of going to Vegas or Havasu.

[Julian]

Yeah, you did it the right way too. You were like living off the land.

[Forrest Galante]

Had to. We were so poor. I remember I found my headlamp that I see you've got one there. But I found my headlamp on the Amazon. Nice. I found my headlamp that I took there. This is how poor I was at the time. It was one from kmart that cost 12 bucks. That like, like I probably couldn't see that wall. And that was what I used as light at night, looking for snakes. Like, it was so crazy.

[Julian]

But you caught a 20 foot anaconda.

[Forrest Galante]

19.8 foot. And I've caught a lot since in Jersey.

[Julian]

That's 20ft.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah, I like that. Yeah, I've caught a lot since then. Never caught one that big again, even. Including the huge one we caught for our Animal Planet research stuff, but. Or discovery, whatever it was. But it's a weird story. So we're 18, 19 years old. We go down, we get in this boat. We're with this local. I think he's Sauni Indian is the name. Like the native tribes. I believe it's Sauni Indian guy. His name's Fausto. And Fausto can barely speak a lick of English. But there's a boat driver who can. So there's just me, Mike, Nick, the boat driver, and Fausto. And we go up, and the first day, he takes us to his home. And he's a native guy, so he has a home on the river that's like three hours from Coco. And you sleep in his home, and you sleep on the floor, and his wife cooks you a meal, and you swim and catch piranha and all the stuff I'm sure you do. It was epic.

[Julian]

I wasn't catching piranha, just to be clear.

[Forrest Galante]

No. Did you eat piranha, though?

[Julian]

I did eat piranha.

[Forrest Galante]

Good, right?

[Julian]

Fucking fire.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Forrest Galante]

Not good after 20 days of eating boiled piranha. But for that first week, it's pretty good. Anyway, so we tell Fausto, you know, we're all big nerds. We're like, we just want to catch a big anaconda now. It's like, a thing, right? You've got, like, Garrett Galvin and these kids, like, chasing anacondas. Back then, we were just weird kids who want to catch a big snake. And I'll be very clear about this. There was no research. There was no purpose, nothing. It was just like, I want to catch a big snake. And we tell Fausto, and he's like, ah, you know, maybe I've seen a few big ones. Like, we might get really lucky, go on this whole, whole, whole trip. And we're like, two or three days from leaving, and this big thunderstorm, lightning storm hits. And so we're in, like, a hut or tents, whatever we were in that night. And we're sleeping, and we're waiting for the rain to pass. And in the morning, Fausto comes up, and he goes, today, you will catch an anaconda. And we're like, wait, why, Fausto? And through the translator, he goes, last night, I had a dream of a woman in a white dress. So that means today you will catch an anaconda. And we're like, okay, Fausto. Yeah. And to this day, I don't know if he was, like, pulling our leg and had a spot or what, but it sure didn't seem like it. And so he told us he had this weird dream that he saw this woman in the white dress and so we'd catch a big snake. Sure enough, literally two hours later, we pull the boat into the. This random patch of bank. We're going to go on this hike through a game trail. There's, like an old abandoned, like, hut there. It's all fallen down and stuff from other. I think it's sauni, but sunny, Indian, native people. And get off the. Get off the canoe, walk 10ft, and I go this way. And I start fiddling with a little, tiny, venomous snake this big, like a type of viper. And then my buddy Nick just goes, get the fuck over here right now. We run around, and there's a snake, snake. And its coil is as big as you to me, just coiled up. And yeah, we caught it, whatever. We took photos, measured it, blah, blah, blah. But the point is, it was just so weird because the likelihood of us catching a snake was infinitely small. Fausto said, like, you're probably not going to catch one. You know, they're very rare. We only see the big ones once in a while. This isn't like a predictable place, like going into the Rio Bonito area where they see them and they dive with them and film them. And I've done that, and it's incredible. We saw like, four, five. This is like raw jungle, like where Paul lives, where you have no idea what you're going to see on any given day. And then he comes in and goes, I had this dream. Something to do with the weather, too. I don't remember. But he's like, I had this dream, and when you see lightning, plus the woman in the white dress, I don't remember that part. I just remember the woman in the white dress part. It was, today we'll catch a snake. And it was like. It was as if you had said, today we'll pick up a Starbucks latte. It's like, it wasn't like maybe, you know, it was like, yeah, yeah, we'll grab a coffee today, you know? And he was just 100% convinced. And three hours later, we found one.

[Julian]

And it was pretty quick to be able to. Because you found it coiled up. It was pretty quick to be able.

[Forrest Galante]

To actually get a. It was an old snake, really, like, sunken in eyes, a very old animal. And so my buddy Nick grabbed it by the head and then that we. We uncoiled it from his body as it tried to coil him, you know, because they try and wrap you up and stuff. And it was a, you know, probably an eight minute fight or wrestle, if you will. And then the snake relaxed and we could. He still had to hold its head, but you didn't have to hold it tightly. And we could, like, look at it and appreciate it. And it was just. Honestly, like, it's not good for me to even admit this, but it was just kids being kids. Like, we were 18 years old. We just wanted to catch big snakes. We'd saved up enough money to go visit our researcher buddy, and we just did it. And it was awesome. There was no purpose to it. It was just awesome.

[Julian]

Now, did you interact with any natives out there in the Amazon on any of your trips? I mean, obviously you're being taken around by some, but did you visit. Is it not necessarily uncontacted tribes? Because there's a reason they're uncontacted, but some of the tribes of the Amazon.

[Forrest Galante]

Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, we were with the sauni people there, Fausto. And we met his wife and his kids, and we bumped into a couple others that were canoeing and fishing in the area. We only saw like three people the whole time we were there, so it wasn't like we were out there. And then in the Rio Apoporis, we worked with former FARC rebel rebels so far.

[Julian]

Rebels?

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah. So the. The FARC controlled the Colombian Amazon and the cocaine and all that, and fought the government for like 30 years there. And then they finally reached a truce and we flew in on a. You might ask yourself why a World War II cargo plane used to fly in and out of the jungles of.

[Julian]

Colombia for nothing but sightseeing and tourism.

[Forrest Galante]

That's right. And had a lot of cargo hold for some very strange reason.

[Julian]

That's what you got to do.

[Forrest Galante]

That's right. And we flew in and landed on this very well manicured strip that happened to be near coca plantations for some weird reason.

[Julian]

Listen, it's a product that people need.

[Forrest Galante]

That's right. And you know, it was. It was interesting because on that one, we're going up the river with this guy and then the boat driver again, the boat driver, he goes. I was like talking to him, you know, in like broken Spanish and stuff. And I was like, so how are things here since, like, the truce and blah, blah, blah. Been like a 30 year on year, ongoing war, basically. He's like, oh, yeah, really good. Like, where everything's Calm now. Like, people can visit. Like, it's. There's no. No conflict anymore. And I was like, cool. Do you know any Fark rebels? And he's like, well, yeah, I was farc. I was like, oh, wow, that's cool. And then I go, so, you know, I was like, kind of joking, but I'm like, what would have happened if I'd come a year ago? He's like, I would have cut your head off. I was like, oh, right on. And I'm like, okay. And he was dead serious. So he was just like, yeah, I would have cut your head off. Like, you couldn't have been here a year ago. I'm like, cool.

[Julian]

It's a whole different reality down there.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah.

[Julian]

I mean, it's. But that's the thing. Like, you go into some of these places, the minute you go into the jungle, you go two miles in. That's two miles farther than anyone from the military or the police or what you may know is like, law and order, civilization would be willing to go.

[Forrest Galante]

That's right.

[Julian]

So there's no. You can do, like, it's a. It's a no man's land out there. You can do what you want. Which is kind of crazy to. To think about.

[Forrest Galante]

I think that's why Paul loves it so much. In addition to everything he stands for. It's just. He has complete freedom.

[Julian]

Right.

[Forrest Galante]

He is his own lawmaker. Where he lives.

[Julian]

Right.

[Forrest Galante]

There are no rules, you know?

[Julian]

But you went back. That was your spring break. You went back down there a bunch, like, in your adult life too.

[Forrest Galante]

Yes, I went there. Then I went to that Rio Apoporis thing where the guy said he cut my head off.

[Julian]

Oh, that was after.

[Forrest Galante]

That was later. Yeah, that was. That was a different. Different trip. And then I've been to the Pantanal, which is the big wetland that's in South America that's connected to the Amazon. I've been to Bonito, which is where they have that clear water where we caught a bunch more big anacondas and took isotope analysis, scale samples, blah, blah. Like, for purpose, not just for fun, like when we were kids. But. Yeah, I've spent some time down there. I love it down there.

[Julian]

Yeah, it's. It's really cool that, like, you know, a lot of places could certainly use western medicine to be able to heal normal afflictions that we have and stuff like that. But. But, like, Paul has a quote. We have a SAP for that.

[Forrest Galante]

SAP for that.

[Julian]

Yes.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah. All the tree SAP, right? Yeah.

[Julian]

Like, they have. They have Amazing innovations down there as well, to be able to heal, you know, common types, things that we deal with that might drag us down a lot longer than it does them.

[Forrest Galante]

Definitely not everything, though.

[Julian]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Forrest Galante]

Like when we did that Apoporis one where the Far Grebel guy was. This was like seven, eight years ago now. We got back from our trip, we found the crocodilian we were looking for. It was a huge success. And when we got back to the village that we're staying in, where the cocaine dealer's airstrip was, the plane couldn't come that day because we got in, like 3 o' clock in the afternoon or something, and the plane couldn't come, so they weren't going to come until the next day. And so we're like, oh, it's cool. We'll spend the night in the village. We stay in the huts. It's all good. We've done this before, and our medic was with us. Our medic, Josh. And this is a crazy story, but I did these, like, had to snort this powder out of a monkey bone to go up the river, blah, blah, blah, blah. But you had to.

[Julian]

Wait, you can't skip over. Hold on, let's get the exposition here. You had to snort powder out of a monkey bone to go up the river.

[Forrest Galante]

So the tribal leader at that village was a guy named Lorenzo, and he invited us into his maloco, which is a hut in the jungle. And he was also, like the shaman of the area. And he said, like, I told him we had to get his permission. This is all on our Animal Planet show, by the way, which is crazy. They let me put this on air. But he said to us, I said to him, we need to go up the river and look for the caiman, the yellow caiman, as they call it. And he's like, all right, well, if you want to go up there, it's very, very dangerous. There used to be fark up there. People die up there, blah, blah, blah. There's big snakes, there's caiman. I caught big snake on that one, too. And he's like, you have to have this jopu stuff, which. Jopu is kind of a generic term for a mix of powders and tobaccos and things. Things. Again, I told you where this was and what they had, so who knows what was in it, but it was green. It didn't. It wasn't purified white, that's for sure. It had. I know it had some roots ground up in there, all kinds of things. Anyway, we go around in the circle, getting the stuff blown up your nose by Lorenzo, the tribal chief. And, you know, like, I'm not a big drug guy. I've never done a lot of drugs. And it goes first, like, my sound guy, and he's like. He's like, oh, man, my brain. My brain. Oh, it hurts. It feels like chlorine on the brain. I'm like, oh, fuck. And I'm, like, getting all nervous and anxious and stuff. Then it goes to my camera guy, and he's like. And he's, like, doing it, you know? And then it comes to me, and I'm, like, about to have a panic attack because I, like, don't want to do this. I'm not a drugs guy, but I have to do it. You know, it's like, not just a when in Rome, but, like, if I don't do it, I'm not going to go up the river, blah, blah, blah. So I do it again. This is all on my Animal Planet show as a kids show.

[Julian]

I don't, like, forgotten content. Let's go, dude.

[Forrest Galante]

It's crazy. So I do it, but I'm like, hyperventilating race. So I'm like. So I, like, shoot it into my brain anyway. And immediately I turn pale white green, start projectile vomiting all over the ground, hands and knees, like, puking up fetal position. And Lorenzo, who's, like, super stern this whole time, like, cracks a smile. And our translator asks him, they're like, why? Why are you smiling? Why are you laughing? He's like, he's cleansing himself. And we're like, what do you mean? He's like, he was the one who was going to die. If he hadn't done this and had a cleanse, he would have died when he went up the river. I'm the one who dives in the river and catches the crocodiles, who catches the snakes, who's hands on with the vipers, you know, like, I'm the lead. Like, I'm the guy that does the hands on part. And I always thought it was interesting, not that I necessarily believe in this, like, the voodoo stuff, but of everybody that had to blow stuff up their nose, there's only one guy who's wading in the water and catching the snake, diving in and catching the crocodile. There's only one guy who's likely to die, and it's me. And I was the one that, when it came to, ended up cleansing all night and throwing up all night. And Lorenzo said, that's what made me safe. And then the next day, I could go Whoa. So when we got back to that village a week and a half later, whatever it was, we got back and Lorenzo said, my wife's sick. Can you. Can you please look at her? And so Josh, our medic, was like, yeah, of course, like, happy to look. And we were. The expedition was over. We were just waiting for the coke plane to take us out of the jungle. And so I'm like, josh, just, like, give him all the medicine we have. Like, do whatever you can. Long story short, this is a village of, like, 20ish people, 25ish people. Every single woman there had a yeast infection. And he said it was pretty gnarly. And so Josh, like, set up a little tent and, like, went in a hut and he treated every single woman. Doesn't seem like there was a SAP for that.

[Julian]

Yeah, yeah. To be clear, what I'm not getting at is that it can. It can heal all of nature.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah, whatever. Yeah, yeah.

[Julian]

But it's cool that there's some things that they can, like, take care of, and there's literally a tree SAP that has it, but they're still disconnected from the world in the sense that they don't have access to the Western medicine that we do.

[Forrest Galante]

Everything. I'm going to get a little grandiose here for a second. But, like, everything we do as human beings is, like, so pendulous. It's like, one side or the other, you're either Republican or Democrat or, you know, you. Hey, you're. You're left or you're right, whatever.

[Julian]

You're gray or you're blue.

[Forrest Galante]

You know, it's like. It's also divisive. Yes. There's always, like, a happy middle ground with these things.

[Julian]

Of course.

[Forrest Galante]

And medicine, just like I said, with science, it's like, yeah, you need technology, but you also don't have to follow every protocol, and you have to listen to your gut. I feel the same way about medicine. It's like, there probably is a SAP for that, but there also isn't a SAP for this. So use a little bit of Western drugs and a little bit of, you know, jungle medicine, and you put those together.

[Julian]

That would be nuanced, Faris. We can't have that in society.

[Forrest Galante]

It makes sense. So much sense. And yet it's like. It's so crazy that we think that that's, like, such a big. It's like, no, that stuff doesn't work, Only this works.

[Julian]

It's so dumb, man.

[Forrest Galante]

It's like, don't be fully homeopathic and don't be Completely reliant on your hospital. Like, just find something in the middle that works.

[Julian]

What was that old Bruce Lee quote where he's like, take what is good and discard what is bad? Right. There's. There's positives and negatives to everything, so try to find them and get on with life, though. Why?

[Forrest Galante]

It's that simple.

[Julian]

Yeah, man.

[Forrest Galante]

And it's in everything. I feel like politics, religion, medicine, science, like, it's just. Just be, like, rational.

[Julian]

I've probably. We're in episode 320 or 330something at this point. I. Because I don't know when. When I'm putting this one out, but it'll be in that area.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah.

[Julian]

And I've probably cited this over 125 times on my podcast before. It's not an exaggeration, but the universal law of physics says for every action, there's an equal but opposite reaction, which is to create equilibrium. And all I ever asked for in our world is that the actions are a little less violent and they're a little closer to each other. But we. What we seem to be doing with everything, to your point right now, is it gets farther and farther apart to where, you know, the violence to create equilibrium gets stronger and stronger. This is a lot easier than this.

[Forrest Galante]

This huge clash, right? Yeah.

[Julian]

And there's got to be a way to kind of. Of mix the worlds a little bit. And also, you know, you being a world traveler, going to all different cultures and whatever, let people do the things that are inherent to who they are and where they're from and what they're about. Like, we should keep.

[Forrest Galante]

We.

[Julian]

We don't want to be this homogenous society where everything's the same. I think the beauty of the world is that things are so different.

[Forrest Galante]

Totally.

[Julian]

But it also doesn't mean that you need to praise or. Or go after. After every single thing that, you know, another group of people in whatever the context is.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah, yeah. The live and let live thing. It seems like it's become so hard, specifically us here in the US I feel like as a society to just live and let live. Let people. Who cares? Like, if you want to kill yourself by only taking this medicine and not visiting a doctor, or you want to believe that nothing, don't get angry. Just let people do it. Just live and let live. Live. It's so weird.

[Julian]

Have you had some situations, though, where it's difficult for you to do that because you're like, man, we just do this thing, and you wouldn't have to deal with that?

[Forrest Galante]

I think so, but more for me because I'm not. And I've been criticized for this, you know, by my family and my friends and everything else. Like I don't really care what people do. Like there's, there's billions of us people in the world. I don't care what you as an individual do. I don't want you to hurt people or be violent or be rude or anything like that. But, but like the live and let live thing for me applies and this is where I'm my own hypocrite, but like it applies to people, but you have to also live and let live with the planet, you know, and like you can't. So if I, for instance, when I say I got criticized when I was working in Taiwan, there's one national park on the island of Taiwan, literally one. We get there, we meet some local hunters, some local guides and they're going to take us in to look for an extinct cat, the foremost and clouded light leopard, and go look for this.

[Julian]

Cat, Formosin Clouded leopard.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah. So like a clouded leopard, but it only existed on this one island. And we get there and we're, we're three hours into like a ten hour hike to get to where we're building base camp and these guys start pulling out rifles to shoot monkeys out of the trees to eat. It's the one and only protected habitat in the entire country. There's nowhere else in the whole country. And these are our guides assigned by like the government to take us in there. And I flipped out. I grabbed a guy's gun and broke it over my knee.

[Julian]

You broke the gun over your knee?

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah, I grabbed it and smashed. I was like, what the fuck are you doing? And then we had a local scientist with us and he's like, well these are their native lands, they've been hunting here for a long time and blah, blah. And like, I don't have sympathy for that because the rest of the entire country has nowhere else protected. This is the one little swath of land where animal and wildlife should be allowed to be at peace with people. And you know, that's why I said I'm my own hypocrite because I say live and let live. But I couldn't let those guys like live and let live because this is just the one. Go outside the park and shoot all the monkeys you want. You know, like, I don't agree with it, but I'm not going to stop you. You're within the laws, ethically, that's up to you. But if you're in this one little place and the law literally says you cannot kill here. Going under the guise of, of this is cultural and this is something they've been doing for a long time. Doesn't fly with me. It's like we need these little pockets of protection.

[Julian]

Yeah, there's a line.

[Forrest Galante]

There's a line.

[Julian]

I mean, you're also from Africa, where I don't need to explain to you how rampant the problem of poaching is there.

[Forrest Galante]

Terrible. And that's part of my frustration with it, is I've grown up seeing it. Yeah.

[Julian]

Oh, you grew up seeing that as well?

[Forrest Galante]

Absolutely. I mean, we'd come up on a carcass of an elephant with a tail, tusks cut off and stuff where poachers have come in and shot it in the head. And you know, those things used to happen all the time when we were kids and it's just, and it's illegal and it's poaching and it's, it's wiped out. That's why the Northern White Rhino that we talked about earlier is down to two individuals from poaching and those two have 24, seven security guards sitting with them. That's crazy.

[Julian]

The big issue, it's like everything else in the world, the big issue is the money. Right. You have a lot of, of in this case usually. And it's other places too, but Eastern Asian countries funding it and getting literal terrorist groups like Al Shabaab to do it.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah.

[Julian]

Or you know, bring on contractors they force into doing it. And it's worth a lot of money. So they want to take a, you know, a horn from a rhino, which by. This is also what bothers me so much. First of all, you shouldn't take a rhino.

[Forrest Galante]

Correct.

[Julian]

But it up all the evolution, everything, it's completely wrong on every level. But like you could do that and not kill the rhino, but they're so, they're, they're so savage that they go in there and they, if, I mean, you've seen it, but like they literally hack off its, its, its, its full horn and leave it there to bleed out an awful two hour, three hour slow death.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah. After they've shot it, you know, two or three times to stop it.

[Julian]

So terrible, man.

[Forrest Galante]

And they'll never just, even if we were like, okay, it's legal to harvest rhino horn, you just have to tranquilize them or whatever. They still wouldn't because there's a nub beneath the skin that's in the bone and every ounce is worth so much Right. It's, like, worth more than gold. So they need to get every little piece of it. So they literally have to cut its face out basically to get the horn.

[Julian]

That's horrible.

[Forrest Galante]

It's. Yeah, it's unreal. The poaching thing has become so problematic the world over. And the effort that we have to go to. To stop it now, the amount of guns and military training and fighting just to stop poaching, I mean, it sounds insane. Wildlife, I don't know if you know this, but wildlife trafficking, animal trafficking, is the third largest illegal trafficking ring in the world.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Forrest Galante]

Billions of dollars. Yeah. And it's. It's just crazy. Like, how is that even an industry?

[Julian]

How do you stop it when you do have something that is that large of a financial incentive?

[Forrest Galante]

I think you have to. Well, education is a big one, and that's why people talk about it all the time. And that's such a drab, boring answer. But just talking about, look, a rhino horn is literally the same thing as our fingernails or our hair. Like, it has no medicinal properties. That comes from education. And then I think the. The other way is to somehow change the market, you know, if you can. Rhino horn, tiger whiskers. The reason they're so valuable is because they're rare. Anything that's rare is valuable.

[Julian]

Wait, tiger whiskers. I haven't heard that one before.

[Forrest Galante]

Makes. Gives you a nice big dick, dude. Don't you know that's that.

[Julian]

Tiger whiskers.

[Forrest Galante]

Tiger whiskers. Yeah. Yeah. So if you. Again, Asian medicine, Eastern medicine, if you. Is it a tea or ground up? I don't remember. But something with tiger whiskers that you drink allegedly gives you virility. And so, you know, there's tiger whiskers, there's seahorses. There are all these things that have zero research to support that they actually help. Is there a way, like there was a group in San Francisco I know, that was making synthetic rhino horns. Horn. You know, can you flood the market with rhino horn so that it's. If it's accessible to everybody and you can't tell the difference between real and fake, then it doesn't have the appeal any longer.

[Julian]

Yeah. And I. And I would hope something like that actually could help solve it. Unfortunately, I think part of it is like, same kind of human concept in that people. Even though it's starting to get impressive, people aren't watching an AI movie right now because they know a human didn't make it.

[Forrest Galante]

That's right.

[Julian]

Right.

[Forrest Galante]

I do.

[Julian]

So when you have the rhino Horn. They're like, well, that. I know know that one was just a recreation. It's not the real thing. Yeah, there's something sick in the human spirit.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah.

[Julian]

For some of these people, that's like, oh, I want to be able to have a rhino horn on my desk when we do that business meeting. And no, it came from a rhino.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah, I think that's true. Yeah.

[Julian]

It's just, you know, when I've done a lot of research into this over the years, because it bothers me so much, but, you know, when you look at the numbers, I mean, you mentioned it with the white rhino example, but when you look at the numbers of how populations were just decimated in the 20th century, particularly as it went along, like, what happened, happened to elephants. It went from like a million one in Africa down to. At one point it was like 275. I think it's back up to like maybe 465, something like that right now. It's crazy, but, like, at least it's tr. That's trending in the right direction. But you still have that rampant problem, and you have to. You have to have people covering, as you well know, because you grew up in it, you know, hundreds of miles of land in some cases that they're responsible for, where it's like, like, yeah, an elephant's a big animal, but it's still like a needle in a haystack.

[Forrest Galante]

That's right. And. And those people that are tasked with protecting it are underfunded. They don't. They don't get the incentive. You know, if you're some local guy living in a hut who never, you know, the most money he's ever seen in his life is maybe a hundred bucks. And then along comes some mafioso Asian mafia guy and goes, I'll give you $100,000 if you give me a rhino. Horse porn. And you're like, my family will never need food again. They'll never need a house again. They'll never want for clothing again. You know, and literally, like, I have a kid who's dying of AIDS over here, like, I'd do that. I'd shoot a rhino. I wouldn't. But you know what I mean? Like, if my son was dying of AIDS and I. I was too poor to give him shoes or clothes or clean water or medicine or anything, and I lived.

[Julian]

You know, what's one rhino?

[Forrest Galante]

Like, I've just. I've just provided for my family for the rest the of life. And that's the problem. It's. And Those are the guys that end up in prison. You know, it's the guy who just got offered $100,000, not the guy who actually made the offer.

[Julian]

Yes.

[Forrest Galante]

And those are the guys that get shot and get in prison and everything else. And they're not all. They're not all completely innocent, but still, like they're. It's such a tough system to beat because they're just trying to support their family, provide. They're not trying to get rich or anything.

[Julian]

And it's a short term economic incentive for the minimal means for survival, like you said. Yeah, that's long term economically disincentivizing the entire continent. Continent. If you would lose something like that and the biggest industry.

[Forrest Galante]

And there's always another guy. Yeah, right. That guy gets shot, he gets killed, he gets, he gets busted by the cops. There's always the next guy.

[Julian]

Always the next.

[Forrest Galante]

Because if you're an impoverished nations where everybody's desperate and people are literally starving to death, there's always another guy.

[Julian]

Now, they made a really good documentary about seven, eight years ago on Netflix called the Ivory Game.

[Forrest Galante]

I remember that. I haven't seen it, but I remember when that came out.

[Julian]

Yeah, it was good. I think that was one of the ones Leonardo DiCaprio was involved with. But there was one thing in there where it's like, oh, you see how complex it is. And where I actually understood and it wasn't, you know, some dude being hired to like go kill an elephant or something like that. There was a situation where they show one of the scientists in the show and one of the conservationists with them meeting with local townspeople who live right outside the bush who were saying that the elephants are. Because they're free to roam, obviously, and they eat the vegetation. They were coming in and eating their vegetation over and over again. But they were in one of these, like, protected areas where the anti poachers are watching them. And the townspeople who were poor and relied on these crops to put food on the table were saying, not over a dead elephant body, over alive elephants. They were saying it to the scientists right there, like, if they keep doing this and you don't stop it, we're going to have to kill them because they're taking away our ability to put food on the table.

[Forrest Galante]

Table.

[Julian]

And I appreciate the fact that the documentary showed that because then it's not the elephant's fault they're doing what they're supposed to do. But it shows how complex it is when you have such, you know, the most powerful creature in the jungle living among where people have to live and try to thrive.

[Forrest Galante]

We, we conducted. My team and I conducted the largest elephant translocation in Mozambique's history.

[Julian]

Translocation.

[Forrest Galante]

Catching them and moving them to another location. Like a relocation, but it's called translocation, which you do it with animals.

[Julian]

Yeah, watch that word these days.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's funny. It didn't even register to me. Such a door. But yeah, so we did this big, this big elephant move with 24 elephants. We ended up putting 14 on the TV show, but, you know, that was enough. But in the situation we were in, very similar to what you just mentioned in Ivory Games, the elephants were coming into this area near the Maputo Special Reserve, outside of Mozambique. Mozambique, outside the capital, Mozambique, Maputo. And they were not only eating the crops, but because they'd been doing that and they weren't protected, they weren't regulated, like what you just mentioned, the farmers, and they're just substance farmers, you know, just subsistence farmers. They were shooting them and throwing rocks at them and throwing fire, you know, like fire on sticks at them and things like that. And so the elephants were now pissed off as well. So the elephants would come in sneakily, try and get, you know, some corn or something from the crops they're growing right next to their house. Houses. Then some guy would come out and shoot a.22 at him, put a bolt, put a hole into its trunk. Then the elephant would rampage through the village. When we got there three weeks prior, one of the elephants that we caught had run through the village, trampled a hut and killed a pregnant mother and her three year old. And it's so complex because nobody wanted that ivory, but they wanted the elephants gone. But the elephants were there long before they were, and now they had overpopulated that reserve to the point that they were pushing out of the, the park's boundaries and going into these villages. It's just like, it's, it's something I try and explain to people that humans tend. Everybody seems to have a hard time wrapping their head around is there is no blanket solution to conservation. Every single species, every single situation an animal is in is a unique problem that needs solving. And that's what's so hard. Like there can be a blanket economic solution, there can be a blanket political solution solution. There is no such thing as a blanket conservation solution.

[Julian]

Right?

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah.

[Julian]

Now, how did you, what does that full process look like when you're relocating elephants? Like, how do you really pull it off?

[Forrest Galante]

It's hard. I mean, we had 65 personnel on the ground, we had three semi trucks. Three, sorry, six semi trucks, three helicopters, a bunch of safari vehicles, five vets. I mean, the list goes on and on and on. And it was a big. To do that we put together, we funded it through Discovery channels. Like Discovery Channel doesn't pay for it. They love the credit, but they pay me to make a TV show. And then I, instead of taking a profit, pay for these conservation things. And I don't do it all the time, but when a situation like this comes up where it's like, literally I was talking with my contacts over there and they're like, look, either we relocate these elephants or. Or we're going to shoot them because they're killing people. And to me it was like, okay, what does it cost to shoot them? About 60 cents a bullet. Eight bullet bullets. All right, what does it cost to relocate them? About a quarter million dollars. You know, it's like. So the Mozambique government, which. Or Mozambique, like, looks at this as a financial problem. And they're like, well, it's pretty easy. We can solve the problem for eight bucks, you know, or you can do something for a half million, quarter million, but I'm not going to pay for it.

[Julian]

Ain't it horrible how the. How the moral solutions or the ethical solutions cost more? You know, I can go get a fucking burger that's giving me cancer and AIDS or whatever the fuck from fucking McFarlane McDonald's for a dollar. But if I want to buy, like good fresh fruit from the earth, it might be $4 a pound.

[Forrest Galante]

It's crazy. It makes no sense. It's absolutely crazy. Anyway, we fund. So I sold the show called Mysterious Creatures, the same one I caught anacondas on and some other stuff. And I took the. All the pro. Discovery will be so mad if they hear this. But basically I took the. I took like three of the episode's budgets and poured it into this. This one project to film it. And, you know, I put it out there, there and everything else, but we used. We actually paid for the conservation work. And that was a choice by me. You know, it's like Discovery can't do anything about it. But we did this unbelievable capture. And so, yeah, it's crazy. I mean, you. Things that people don't talk about. Like when you're capturing an elephant one, it's an elephant. So you have to herd them, moving like helicopters, working together to push them as close as you can to a road. And anytime one splits off, you have to send the helicopter out and try and like, herd it close Closer. Meanwhile, the helicopter is going down and almost hitting the back of the elephant with the skids. Because if you go up five feet, elephant are super smart. They just run under it.

[Julian]

Are they freaking out at all, too? When you're doing hugely, they got to be doing everything.

[Forrest Galante]

Not only are they freaking out now, they have more adrenaline in their system. Every different elephant, you have to estimate the amount of sleep drugs you're putting into them, and if you overestimate, you kill them on the spot. Like if I shoot a baby with a tranq rifle that has the amount for an adult in that, that baby's dead in five.

[Julian]

Whoa. I didn't know that then.

[Forrest Galante]

Then once you shoot them, you have three minutes from when you hit them to when they hit the ground asleep. Sorry. You have about 11 minutes from when you hit them with the dart to when they hit the ground asleep. But when they hit the ground asleep, when they fall over asleep, if they land on their trunks. Elephants can only breathe from their trunks. They can't breathe from their mouths. You have three minutes before they die of asphyxiation. So you have to go from darting an elephant somewhere in the bush in a helicopter. Helicopter. To on the ground pulling its trunk out from the. From. And you can't get on the ground before it hits the ground because it'll kill you because it's all upset and chaotic. So you have to wait till it hits the ground, then you have to literally find somewhere to jump out of a helicopter and get to that elephant in three minutes and pull its trunk out and monitor its breathing. Otherwise it dies of asphyxiation. And then wherever the elephant has hit the ground, you have to now cut a road in to bring a semi truck, because you can't just pick up an elephant to lift it with a crane onto the back of the semi truck where the road you've just cut. So this is all happening in minutes, and then you have to bring a crane in, lift this elephant onto a flatbed, move the elephant onto a flatbed, onto a conveyor belt truck, all custom built into a containment to then wake it up, because you can't leave them asleep for hours and then transport it a thousand miles. And we had to do this with.

[Julian]

24 elephants, and this only costs $250,000. That's what's crazy. Like, it seems like it would cost even more than it did.

[Forrest Galante]

There was. I paid for half of it, and there was a. A benefactor, or whatever you call it, a contributor from Texas who paid for the other half that didn't want the credit or anything. They just wanted to contribute.

[Julian]

Wasn't Tiger king.

[Forrest Galante]

It was not tiger King. I don't think he pays for anything but himself.

[Julian]

Yeah, I didn't think so.

[Forrest Galante]

Just gold pants. Wow. Yeah, that's.

[Julian]

I. I didn't know any of that, that you got to. How fast you got to get on the ground.

[Forrest Galante]

It's like that. And we didn't lose a single animal.

[Julian]

You imagine, like, and you don't hit one enough, and then you guys can get on the ground and just hear.

[Forrest Galante]

That happened.

[Julian]

It did.

[Forrest Galante]

So I was working with our vet, Zhao, and he shot the mom and the baby with tranq. And the mom went down, and the baby. Like, the needle hadn't gone in all the way. So we get on the ground, and we have to get on the ground because, by the way, a baby's still bigger than a bull. Like, I mean, a bull like a cow. Like, huge. So the mom goes down, and we have to get to her to pull her trunk out or she's going to die. And the baby's still standing, like, woozy. So we go shooting in, and the baby comes to try and attack us, you know, like, just trying to defend its mom. It's not really trying to attack us, but we pull the trunk out from the mom. Now the baby isn't going down because the tranq hasn't got enough. But we don't know how much of the serum's gone in. So now we're mixing more tiny micro doses of serum. So we mix, like, two more. Bonk, Shoot it. Nothing. Mix another one. Shoot it, bonk, nothing. Eventually I go, that baby is needs to go down. We cannot put any more fucking serum minute. So the guy I'm with is like, what are we going to do? I'm like, I'm going to fucking tackle it.

[Julian]

Because, oh, my God.

[Forrest Galante]

Because when their adrenaline's going, sometimes they don't. So I'll explain like this. When you have tranq in your system, if your adrenaline is cranking too high, it takes the blood flow of you tipping over to put you to sleep. But if you overdose it, you'll kill it.

[Julian]

Yes.

[Forrest Galante]

So we get in, we get mom's trunk out. It's this whole dance where the baby's trying to fucking kill us. Get the trunk out, hide in the bushes. Baby goes back to trying to, like, stand around mom, like, all scared, all confused, while. Boom, shoot it. Boom, shoot it. Not going down again. Shooting with tranq, not a gun. And then eventually I'm like, fuck it. Hold my gun. So I give the guy the gun. This is all on our Discovery Channel show. And I just run in, and it's too big for me to shoulder tackle it, so I just run in and double knee kick it and grab it like this and put my knees up and tip the baby over, and the baby hits the ground and goes straight out. But I think if we'd given it one more dose, it would have died. And it was fine. It woke up fine with mom in the containment box.

[Julian]

No hesitation. Said, I'm the Ray Lewis. And then halfway through, said, I'm gonna be Antonio Brown.

[Forrest Galante]

It was me. It was me or the elephant bro. If I didn't do it, it was probably gonna die. So we had to do something. Yeah. And that was like, one of the most intense moments of that whole thing. Yeah. And you just see me run up. It's like, it sounds very, like, athletic. It was kind of slow motion, but I kind of, like, run up, put my arms over it, and just jump up with my knees. And then the baby hits the ground, passes right out next to Mom.

[Julian]

Nuts.

[Forrest Galante]

It was crazy. Yeah. It's all. It's all on our show, too. It's wild.

[Julian]

But you move these things a thousand miles. And they stayed within the area, the new area that you put them.

[Forrest Galante]

So we moved them from this area called Maputo Special Reserve to a place called Zanav, which is a new national park. Mozambique was ravaged by war, and during the war there, all the animals got eaten and killed and poached because people were hungry and starving. So then they built this new national park called Zanaf, now that it's peaceful there. But there's no elephants left. So we took elephants from an overpopulated and moved them a thousand kilometers. So it's like 5, 600 miles, something like that, to Zav and then let him go there.

[Julian]

That's amazing.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah.

[Julian]

It's so cool that, you know, at the end of that, you have to feel not only like. Not only like you're. You're making a difference, but you just move the biggest Animal on Earth, 24 of them.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah. And save their lives.

[Julian]

Save their lives. Created a new environment. Like, that's got to be like a super superman kind of feeling.

[Forrest Galante]

It is. It is. I mean, like, I. I'm not like a very. I'm. I get very excited, as you can tell, but I'm not like a super emotional person. That was one of, like, two times working with wildlife in my life that I've cried and I, like, don't even know why I cried. I wasn't sad. I was happy. But it wasn't like. It wasn't the joy of finding that tortoise where I'm, like, holding this thing. Like, I just watched elephants go out of a box, and I just sort of started wishing, weeping, and I was like, I don't even know why I'm crying. But it was just such an intense couple days, and, like, so much adrenaline, and the adrenaline held with me until the last elephant went out of the box. And then it was just like, I wasn't, like, broken over crying, but I literally had, like, tears running down my face as the last elephant went out. And I was just like, holy, we did it. Like, I can't believe we did that. Like, we actually succeeded.

[Julian]

But everything that went into it, too, it's like, that was crazy. That's part of it.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah. And to save the largest animal, land animal in the world, and literally, like, the bull, this big, incredible bull that was in charge of the whole herd. Like, I put my hand on him while he was lying there, and you take the. When the elephants down, you take its ears and you cover its eyes to, you know, you want it less light, less stress, so you cover its eyes and I put my hand on it, and I just sat there. When we finally got the bull. We got the bull at the very end of the trip, I was like, holy shit. Like, not only is this the largest animal to walk the Earth, this is the largest one of this group. And the. The bull that is in charge of this whole group of animals, like, this is the leader. And now we've got him. And, like, with moving him. Elephants have such an intense EQ emotional intelligence.

[Julian]

Yes.

[Forrest Galante]

We can't even understand it. We really cannot. I'm such a. I'm Matt James will tell you the same thing. Like, you and I will never feel the emotions an elephant can feel.

[Julian]

It's that strong.

[Forrest Galante]

I believe it is. I believe it's. They feel happiness way happier than we'll ever feel. And sadness way sad. They can die of a broken heart.

[Julian]

Oh, I've seen. I've seen it. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure you've seen the video of, like, the mother weeping over her child. And as it's. As it's basically dying of dehydration. And then the videos, we. There's millions of them where they're. Where they're mourning one of their lost. And they have, like, a funeral.

[Forrest Galante]

Exactly. An elephant funeral. Yeah, exactly. So I believe that their emotional range is much larger than ours. So to have, we had to catch every animal, like we couldn't leave one behind from this family group because of the emotional tear and damage it would have done to them in addition to just the stress and the scare and being caught and moved and everything else. And anyway, when we finally caught that bull, like I just had this unbelievable feeling of accomplishment and this emotion. And then we let them all go. And knowing that we kept the whole herd together. And what's crazy is you think an animal is an animal, right? Like if you raise a dog one way, like you could get a dog that was a fighting dog, you know, in the illegal underground fighting ring and you could hand raise its puppies and that dog would probably love you, right. Lick you all over the face. Those elephants, from what studies have shown, it'll take six to eight generations before they forget what people did to them. So those elephants that we moved. Yeah, how crazy is that? Those elephants we moved to Zeno Knob, it's not like their babies are going to like people all of a sudden because it's going to be calm and people aren't going to be chasing them. They're still going to be, they're going to have that information passed down from their grandfathers, fathers, fathers, blah, blah, blah. And for six to eight generations before they start trusting people again and being like, okay, if I see a person, I'm either going to attack or run away.

[Julian]

Well, that's the thing. They're the, they're the largest creature out there. So by default, they're therefore the most dangerous. But they're not, not built to be that. They're built to be these fun loving creatures that just say, I'll do my business, you do yours. Don't with me. But people in certain environments like that have made them have to be like, yo, you.

[Forrest Galante]

That's right.

[Julian]

Now, when, when you grew up though, and were going out in the bush out there in Zimbabwe, did you ever come across, you know, like friendly elephants you could actually get close to and that you knew on a personal level, 100%.

[Forrest Galante]

And so my family, my family ran safari business in a handful of spots. But Mana Pool, Zimbabwe is in my opinion the greatest safari place on planet Earth. And I've been to a lot of them. And one of the reasons it's so fantastic is it's been a protected national park with very limited poaching for a very long time. And there the elephants, like you just said, they see you as you do your thing, I'll do my thing, and we won't bother each other once. One bit doesn't mean you can walk up and tickle an elephant. It's just like seeing a bison in Yellowstone. Right. Don't go. Try to take a selfie with it, but it's not going to attack you.

[Julian]

I can't believe people do.

[Forrest Galante]

That's wild, but that's how the elephants were in the place that I grew up. And one of my most. One of the things that was the most profound thing that ever happened to me was when I was a little boy, I was like 8 or 10 years old, we're fishing on the banks of the Zambezi River, My granddad and I, and this bull elephant came down. So there's like this bank and there's this little ravine. And we walk down the ravine and because it was the only way to get to the river, because otherwise it's like a sheer bank. So I'd gone through this ravine to the river and I'm fishing. And of course, the elephant also realized the only way to get to the river was come through the ravine. So all of a sudden, I'm standing in a ravine that's no wider than this table, fishing at the only spot you can access the water. And this elephant comes up behind me. Walls on each side and this long ravine. So there's nowhere for me. I can't go in the water. This is the Zambezi River. I'll be eaten by a crocodile in two minutes. So I'm standing there fishing, and this big elephant comes down, this bull elephant. And I actually have a photo of it from when I was a kid. My mom was watching and thought I was going to get killed up on the bank. She took a photo and this elephant.

[Julian]

He'S going to get killed.

[Forrest Galante]

Let's get a picture. Well, she was like screaming and everything, but she managed to get a photo.

[Julian]

Hold still.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah, but this elephant comes down and I'm with my granddad. My granddad goes, don't move for us. Don't move. So I just stand quietly sitting, like, up against the bank. This elephant comes from me to you, looks at me, goes, and then just puts its trunk in the water and starts drinking. And me being the idiot I was, I'm like looking at my grandbaby. My granddad's like, don't move, don't move, don't move. And I was like. And I cast my line and kept fishing. And the elephant, like, looked at me and just went back to drinking. We couldn't get in or out of the ravine because of where the elephant's body was. He just had his drink turned around and left. And it was I was you to me from the elephant. Completely wild animals animal. But I posed him no threat. He posed me no threat. We were just two beings living in the same place, occupying the same niche, Left each other alone, respected each other's space and went about our day.

[Julian]

And it was so cool.

[Forrest Galante]

It was one of the most profound things that's ever happened to me.

[Julian]

And you're like, you. You said you were 8 or 10.

[Forrest Galante]

Years old, something like that. Yeah, I look pretty.

[Julian]

You're even like picture way smaller. Like you're small now compared to an elephant. But back then it's like you're literally looking, looking at a giant.

[Forrest Galante]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Julian]

No, I mean, just move so majestically too.

[Forrest Galante]

And it's crazy because you think of an elephant, you think you're going to hear an elephant coming a mile away and stuff. They're silent in the bush. You don't hear them coming at all. They have those big pads on their feet, you know, we've now can't hear.

[Julian]

Like shit moving a little bit.

[Forrest Galante]

Barely. Barely hear them. Like maybe a little bit of lunch, like leaf crunching. But the way an elephant moves through the bush, you or I walking through the bushes. Louder than an elephant walking through the bush bush.

[Julian]

So how often, like, like when, when they go to make their noises? That's more during times of stress, right?

[Forrest Galante]

Not necessarily.

[Julian]

Like if they. When they make like a loud one or something like that where they really.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah, like a big trumpet or something. It can be a warning signal. I mean, they can also call miles apart to call another herd, you know, like, hey, we're going over here for water. Or where are you? Like a locator call, you know, but.

[Julian]

That doesn't necessarily mean danger or something's in the environment.

[Forrest Galante]

No, that. That can be a reason for them to make a loud sound, but oftentimes it's just communication. This place that I have been filming at a lot in India called Ventara. That's insane. They have a lot of Asiatic elephants, especially ones rescued from circuses and things like that. And they just, they have this. It's unbelievable. Doesn't make sense. The world's only elephant Jacuzzi. It's a giant. It's insane. Dude, you'll see it get showed you on my YouTube if you want. It'll blow your mind. Mind. It's the world's only hydrotherapy pool for arthritic elephants. Yeah. And it's all heated and pressure treated and crystal clear. And it's so bonkers. Nuts. Anyway, the elephants go in there and they just make the same sound you or I would. When you get in a hot tub after working out for really hard and you're just like, ah. And you see the elephants go into this hydrotherapy pool and they're like. Like, they just make this happy trumpet and you're just like. It's like this heartwarming thing to hear them just, like, give the sigh of excitement for getting in the hot tub. It's so nuts.

[Julian]

Forest Galante.

[Forrest Galante]

Elephant type in Forest Galante. Vantara. V, A N T A R A. And it should pop up.

[Julian]

Forest. What was that?

[Forrest Galante]

V, A, R. V A N T A, R A. It's this unbelievable place. The. The Anatom. Bonnie. The guy who had, like, Justin. It's. It's what? It's somewhere in there. But that guy who had Justin Bieber sing at his wedding, you know, the really wealthy Indian guy.

[Julian]

Yeah, like the fucking $40 billion wedding.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah, that guy. Is it this one? Sorry, go back to my channel. And it's. It's the second one down. This one, right? Yeah. I'll show you the elephant Jacuzzi in here. If you just scroll over. Go a little bit more. It's right. You're right there. Right there. That's it.

[Julian]

Throw this on camera F. Oh. How crazy is this volume pumped into this one? Got that one.

[Forrest Galante]

This the world's first elephant jacuzzi. It is.

[Julian]

World's first temperature control.

[Forrest Galante]

Hey, give me a hug. Give me a hug. Give me a hug. I love this. This is amazing. This is. This is blowing. I'm so. Dr. I'm so overwhelmed with emotion. Being here, knowing what these animals have been through and seeing. They're all rescues, these elephants. Paradise. So they were logging elephants, they were in the circus. Like, pretty rough lives in the conditions they come. This is unbelievable. Yeah, but. But if you think this is crazy, you know, let me show you some more stuff. Okay, let's go.

[Julian]

You know, you think this is crazy. That's so.

[Forrest Galante]

But it goes on and on. It's a long video. But it's so cool because this guy, that. That guy who had the $40 million wedding or whatever, it was anatom Bonnie. He's created this rescue center for animals in northern India. And everything's like that state of the art, top tier. It's like a paradise for animals. It's kind of crazy because the animals, animals, whatever's there, they have over 200 tigers and they have like, all the stuff that's been rescued and whatever's there has basically been through this, like, super hardship life and now lives a way better life than you or I or most billionaires. I mean, like, they are so pampered. Like, there's shots in here of them getting foot rubs and being fed grapes while the elephants lie on their back. I mean, it's crazy, man. It's like the level of respect and care. It's. It's. That's why I love filming at this place, because it's so cool. Yeah.

[Julian]

India's got a crazy biosphere. All kinds of different cool apps every there.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah.

[Julian]

I mean, spending a lot of time there, you said.

[Forrest Galante]

In the last year, I've started spending a lot of time there. I'd been twice before. But now, since meeting Anat and getting invited to this place, this Ventara place, he's like, it's open doors, man. Whatever you want to do, you know, within reason. It's not like I can go like, tickle the tigers. But he's like, you know, whatever you want to do, whatever you want to film. Like, we got nothing to hide. Like, come here and take a look and film it and share it if you want. And him and I have become pretty good friends. And so I go back and forth and I film there when I have free time and been putting out YouTube videos on it so people can see it. It's. It's really.

[Julian]

Yeah, your YouTube channel is great. Great content.

[Forrest Galante]

Thank you.

[Julian]

You've been doing that a long time. So if people somehow have not checked that out, we'll have that link down below. But are there. Are there any mysterious, potentially extinct species in India that you're interested in trying to find?

[Forrest Galante]

Oh, yeah, there sure are. There's a. There's a particular shark, the Ganges river shark that used to live. Yeah, river shark. Kind of like a bull shark here.

[Julian]

Yeah, they catch those right off the. Right off the Hudson Bridge. Right. Not the bridge, but right. Right on the. The front park here.

[Forrest Galante]

Well, I don't know if you know this, but they're the real reason behind Jaws. Do you know that?

[Julian]

The bull sharks. Yeah, I didn't know that. I've jumped over. Jumped over one and jumped right around one twice in my life. So I don't go in the water south of New Jersey now, but so.

[Forrest Galante]

New Jersey itself and bull sharks are the foundation for Jaws. Cause the movie, the story, everything. So most people don't know this, but there was an incident in a river where, two days apart, two kids were killed. You've heard about this. Okay.

[Julian]

Killed by bull sharks. That's where they had this in the Sopranos. That, what the is that river called?

[Forrest Galante]

Oh, I don't know the name.

[Julian]

It's by New Brunswick.

[Forrest Galante]

That's right. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And anyway, this, this one individual bull shark figure they believe figured out that it could eat people in this river. So it would come in out of the ocean and swim up and down this river and look for kids that would swim in there in the summertime and it killed two kids in like two days. And there was all these news headlines about, you know, Jaws, the killer shark, blah blah, blah. And that led to the author writing it and Spielberg making the movie and everything else.

[Julian]

Yeah, that story I remember, I didn't actually didn't know that was the basis of Jaws itself. But yeah, you're talking about the one in 1916, the Jersey Shore shark attack.

[Forrest Galante]

That's it, that's them.

[Julian]

They were a series of shark attacks along the coast of New Jersey between July 1st and 12th, 1916, where four people were killed and one was critically injured.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah.

[Julian]

Oh that bro. That's the thing. Like I do feel like a lot of my family's down in Ocean City, New Jersey, right down here. I do feel very safe swimming in Ocean City. I don't know why, maybe I shouldn't but like when I've had my run ins with sharks, they were when I was a kid. That, that's by the way, that's the, the bridge. Mad.

[Forrest Galante]

I've never seen that shark bridge. That's cool.

[Julian]

But there's, there were the ones that I had the run ins with were down in Florida and I remember the second time I was in there, it was like a calm day and then I, I was the only one in there. And then I'll know where I just hear my mom like come in and I was a swimmer. I was a year round swimmer at the time. I was probably like 11.

[Forrest Galante]

Uhhuh.

[Julian]

And so I was like, okay. So I turn around and you go to get one of those like jump starts.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah. Like jump off, kind of like start.

[Julian]

To dive and I get one of those jumps bumps and I jump up like into a full like kind of dive and the fin goes like no way.

[Forrest Galante]

Oh, that's crazy. I was like yo.

[Julian]

That it was only like 10, 12 yards to short. Yeah, maybe, maybe less than that because it was like a little gully.

[Forrest Galante]

Sure.

[Julian]

I got right in. I'm like, I'm retired. I'll go up to my ankles in Florida. I'm good.

[Forrest Galante]

There's so many sharks. I mean, we just put out a show last week on Shark Week about New Smyrna beach beach and why. I don't know if you know this, it's the shark bite capital of the world.

[Julian]

Yes.

[Forrest Galante]

There's more bites taking place on New Smyrna beach than everywhere else on the planet combined.

[Julian]

I taught Danny Jones likes to go surf there and I tell him not to do it.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah.

[Julian]

Because I'm like, this is Darwinism, bro.

[Forrest Galante]

You will get bitten eventually. Like, it's just a. It's like a statistical anomaly. Like you will. If you spend enough time in the water there, you will get bitten by a shark. It's not going to be life ending because it's typically smaller black tips and things.

[Julian]

Oh, that's. That's reassuring.

[Forrest Galante]

But it still hurts. You're still going to get stitches and might have a messed up flavor foot.

[Julian]

Yeah, no thanks. Yeah, but we were saying this because you're trying to find a potentially extinct shark in, in India.

[Forrest Galante]

The Ganges river shark is of great interest to me. I believe they're still extant, meaning they're still around. There's another species that it's such a difficult one, but I'd love to work on, I also believe is still around called the pink headed duck. That one's worth a Google.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah. Because it's the only duck that looks like it in the world. And it's in that, like Myanmar, India border area area, which is a giant soupy wetland.

[Julian]

This is real.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah. Yeah. Isn't that cool? Yeah.

[Julian]

Wow.

[Forrest Galante]

Oh, search gets underway in Myanmar. So funny. There are all these people now and like offshoots that have started doing the search for lost species. And it. I don't want to say we created it, but it definitely gained popularity when we made a show about it.

[Julian]

You inspired people.

[Forrest Galante]

You should feel great about that. I do. I love it. And the more people that find it, I don't want to be the one that. I mean, too old for that. I'd love it to be kids that are finding them and not me. Going into the swamps of Myanmar to search for a duck for six weeks. Sounds exhausting. I would love someone else to find.

[Julian]

There's also a lot of shit going down in Myanmar right now.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah. You won't be going. I won't be going back to Myanmar anytime soon. Yeah. It's gnarly, but yeah. I mean, that animal could easily be on the India side. It might also be on the Myanmar side. But I mean, look how Cool. That thing is.

[Julian]

That's amazing. Yeah, so they, so that's. Scientists have declared that extinct. But you think that still, what, what evidence, like are you going off of that makes you think it's still out there?

[Forrest Galante]

That one? Again, going back to my earlier point, it's gut feeling is one. But that gut feeling is a derivative of there's a ton of habitat. It's in an area that doesn't have a lot of western science, you know, because when we say something's extinct, that's just us, that's just the western world. You know, they don't guys there that are killing, eating pig headed ducks, they're just like, that's, that's just food. Like that's not a special thing. And then there have been a lot of sightings reported. You know, people that have come through the woodworks because, you know, this is what my team does. Like we dig into this data, but people that have come through the woodwork and gone like, yeah, I saw one of those when I was a teenager or you know, two years ago, I was sitting out in a canoe and one of those ducks flew by and I could, you know, it had a bright pink head and a brown body. It's like there's not a lot of other things. So if you look at all the factors, like where is, is it, how much science is going on there? Like you said, nobody's going to Myanmar right now. What is the habitat? Is there sufficient prey source, all those kind of things and are there sightings? It checks a lot of the boxes.

[Julian]

Now, are you. The book you said you're writing right now, we, we talked about that a couple hours ago. That was the one involving the, how they do science, right?

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah, I mean, renegade science, it's not really like belittling how science is currently done. It's more celebrating. Like renegade scientists, like people that break the mold. Old and usually have a ton of naysayers and people say like, you're crazy and like you shouldn't do that and then come out the other end of it, like rewriting natural history.

[Julian]

Reason I bring it up is because it's like how many times do you think you're gonna have to do something like this? Especially as a guy who's now been a very clear public figure for a long time. You're respected by a lot of people who, whose voice very much should matter on the issue around the world, like, how many times are you gonna have to find something before some of these fucking snobbed up people are like, you Know what? Maybe he's not wrong about everything.

[Forrest Galante]

Well, I think the problem that I'm a public figure, you know what I mean? Like, and it's not everybody, right? Like, I think the majority. Like, I think. And I don't know because I don't weigh myself against other public figures, but I think that we. I have a astoundingly positive, like, people like what I do a lot.

[Julian]

I agree.

[Forrest Galante]

You're a likable guy. Yeah, well, that's lucky for that. But I don't think it'll ever go away. Like, you know, I'm sure you have haters too. Like, everybody that's in the public light, everybody that's on social media or YouTube. YouTube. They find these people come out of the cracks that are just like, I hate them. And you're like, I don't even know who you are. And I don't know why you hate me, but congrats, I guess, you know, And I don't think I have very many of them, but whoever, they're definitely out there. I see the comments on YouTube and stuff like that here and there.

[Julian]

Yeah, you're. Listen, you're always going to have those where I worry about it more for a guy like you who's an expert in a field and literally a scientist is like, when people who have. Have. Not a YouTube commenter, but actual people who have pulled to do something about it, like in spaces like this or shutting you down because they're like, oh, well, he does YouTube or whatever.

[Forrest Galante]

Well, you.

[Julian]

I mean, we talked about this earlier, but, you know, like, how the else are you supposed to educate people these days and, and get the word out and get kids excited about this stuff?

[Forrest Galante]

I would say I don't actually get that, which is lucky. I like, if I reach out to a government or an organization or something, I want to work with them. They're all. They're usually like, oh, yes. Like, that would be awesome. Like, we love what you do. Or I've seen what you do, or let me look it up. And yeah, like, I'd love you to bring exposure to what we're doing, the pushback. I don't. I don't get a lot of, like, professional. I did in the early days. In the early days of like, hey, I'm gonna go look for an extinct leopard. They're like, okay, Tinfoil hat guy, you know, they're like, you're a lunatic. Like, have fun, buddy. But now, after proving myself, as you've said a few times, I feel like most of the time Time, like when my team reaches out to someone is like, hey, we'd love to come and, you know, work on your elephant project or film at Ventara or whatever it happens to be. They're like, yeah, that'd be great.

[Julian]

That's awesome.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah. So really lucky in that regard. Yeah.

[Julian]

Who. Who inspires you the most, like, in the conservation space? Even stuff from growing up, people you may have never had a chance to meet.

[Forrest Galante]

It's a good question. I mean, my biggest inspiration was my grandfather and he was a shopkeep in Harare. He wasn't exactly like a world renowned conservationist, but. But he was just someone who understood the bush, would spend a lot of time out in the bush, walk with elephants, learn, listen. Not like me, didn't just yammer all the time, he actually listened. And that was always a big inspiration to me. But there are other people, like unsung heroes. Again, what this book is about, David Ebert. He basically. I don't even know if he'll come up on Google, but his name's Dave Ebert and you might want to type in shop. He's basically the godfather of shark conservation. When Jaws and all these other things started. Yeah, there you go, that guy. I love that guy, man. The lost shark guy. Dave Ebert, such an unsung hero. Works in his little office. And I'm not trying to be belittling at San Jose State in his tiny little crammed office. And this guy's named more shark species than anyone else on the planet. He's basically the godfather of shark conservation. Ivan Carter, someone I've known since I was a little kid. Kid. Most people don't know his name. He was like a world renowned trophy hunter who one day I feel like he shot his last elephant and was like, well, I'm never doing that again. Like, broke his heart and he changed his mind.

[Julian]

Wow.

[Forrest Galante]

And I don't care. Like, I don't like, do I? Obviously I don't support that. He used to kill all these things.

[Julian]

You got to win people over.

[Forrest Galante]

But yeah, he did it himself. He literally just went, nope, not killing anything anymore. And now he's like the most outspoken, astounding conservation. And the list like this goes on and on and on and, and, you know, so I take inspiration. I take inspiration from Ben Lamb. Ben is not a conservationist. I'm sorry. Like, he is now by default. But he's a businessman, as you said earlier. He's a billionaire. He's a businessman. But like, I find the fact that he came in having truly no real interest in wildlife or conservation or anything as like a foundation. And now going, going. Yeah. 50 million to save to fix. EHV. Let's do it.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Forrest Galante]

That. I find that inspirational. I do, I do.

[Julian]

And that's the thing. Like, that's what I was really trying to get a read on when he was here. I'm like, is he just a business guy?

[Forrest Galante]

He is, but.

[Julian]

He is. But I. You. You feel like he's. He's really actually into it. His job is to go make money for the company. Don't get me wrong.

[Forrest Galante]

Like that.

[Julian]

That is the job.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah.

[Julian]

But like, this is a guy who's having fun at the Explorers Club. Light. And you can see when people, like, light up when you talk about things.

[Forrest Galante]

Totally.

[Julian]

Now Matt will light up on every thing I lived in in his whole life.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah.

[Julian]

But then you'll see those. Those. Some of those topics you get to with Ben and he's like, oh, bro.

[Forrest Galante]

Let me tell you, he freaks out. Yeah, he freaks out.

[Julian]

And it's like, all right, that's cool. Like, you need people like that. You need people who are fans that. That actually, like, can do something about it too. You know what I mean?

[Forrest Galante]

Oh, yeah, Dude. Not Ambani, the billionaire Indian guy. You want to talk billionaires like he's on another level of wealth. I will sit at dinner with him and we'll be talking, and it's like, I'm talking with. It's like I'm eight and he's eight and we're little kids and I'm like, did you see this one crocodile that has this. I remember I was sitting there and I was talking about Okapis with him, which is like a horse zebra looking animal. It's actually in that video too, but you can just google it. It's like this, this Congo zebra horse, giraffe looking animal. O K A P I. And I'm talking to him. Him.

[Julian]

This one.

[Forrest Galante]

Wrong.

[Julian]

Oh, copy.

[Forrest Galante]

That's it. Yeah, you're good. That animal. Beautiful creature. What the. They're unbelievable. Super shy.

[Julian]

This isn't extinct.

[Forrest Galante]

No, go actually go back to that YouTube video I was. I was in and just scrub forward and you'll see me playing with one, which is a very rare thing to do. But anyway, I've never heard of this in my life. Aren't they crazy?

[Julian]

Okay, Galante. What did we type in for that?

[Forrest Galante]

It's right there. About right.

[Julian]

Oh, I already got it up.

[Forrest Galante]

I mean, I don't want to take up your time watching this.

[Julian]

No, no, no, this is great.

[Forrest Galante]

If you just, like, go through that search bar. Somewhere in there is me feeding, hand feeding one, which is. You see how big they are next to me? Keep going, keep going. But a knot. My point is, like, I was sitting at dinner with him one time, talking. I go, oh, you know that albino okapi? And he goes, forest. It's leucistic. And I'm just like, you're such a dork. You know, he's just, yeah, there it is. Just like me. And I find that inspirational. This guy just spends hundreds of millions of dollars saving animals with no return. This isn't open to the public. No one can go there. This is just for him to save animals.

[Julian]

That's so cool.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah, I love that stuff, too. I find that inspirational. And then you've got this incredible creature. Look.

[Julian]

Are they endangered at all?

[Forrest Galante]

Like, you'd have to check their conservation status. They were at one point in time put on the endangered species list.

[Julian]

That looks like a fucking unicorn, isn't it?

[Forrest Galante]

Isn't that crazy? So they. This. They're really interesting. They had mythological status.

[Julian]

Mythological.

[Forrest Galante]

So to the point that when people, when Western, like I think it was Dutch scientists first went to the Congo, people would tell them about all these animals. They tell them about moko, lembe, moko, whatever that thing was, the dinosaur we looked at. And gorillas and all this. And they're like, okay, yeah, maybe. And then they found gorillas. Like, holy. Gorillas are real. And then they found, you know, whatever, the snake, and they're like, oh, that's real. And then there was like, oh, but there's also this animal, this okapi out there that has the stripes of a zebra and the body of a giraffe and the face of a horse. And they're like, okay, you're full of, like, you know, that's mythological. And then one day, sure enough, some dust, Dutch scientists found them, and they're like, oh, wow, this wasn't a rumor. This is a real one.

[Julian]

That's unbelievable.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah, but they were considered a mythological animal for a long time.

[Julian]

What? I don't expect you to know this off the top of your head, but what, like, ballpark. I can probably Google this after I ask it. But what ballpark percentage of species do we not even know about? Meaning not even ones that we knew and are declared extinct. But it's just like, we can estimate that X percent of the Earth, we don't even know this percent that actually exists.

[Forrest Galante]

It's such a boring way to answer this question. But the thing is, speciation has become such a weird field of science. Like, now if you want to make your mark as a scientist, you go and look at, at like, okay, there's squirrels here and there's, there's squirrels on the left side of the mountain and there's squirrels on the right side of the mountain. They look identical, but there's a mountain range between them. If we catch both squirrels and test them, can we actually show that they're different species? So you or I might be like gray squirrel, gray squirrel. But speciation in the sciences has become a way to like, make your mark.

[Julian]

Semantics.

[Forrest Galante]

Semantics. And they're dividing so many species up. So if you try to take that out of the question, because I just didn't want to give a blanket answer and just be like, how many animals are there, like okapi still ro roaming around that we don't know about? I think it's like above the water because the ocean's different above the water. It's like less than 1%. We've found most of the big animals. Like, we know most of the big things, but there are still so many. Like, every single biological expedition to Papua New Guinea, Western Papua, comes up with like 15 new species. And I don't mean gray squirrel that's different from the other gray squirrel. I mean, like, here's a deer we didn't know existed. Here's, here's a type of dog that we'd never seen before. I mean, there's like some big stuff there. But for the most part, humans have spread so far around this planet. I mean, you know what it was like staying with Paul and he probably knows all the animals, right?

[Julian]

Yeah. And that's the thing. Like the Amazon. I could see with your logic there how that's more of an outlier because it's, it's this actual one big congested of wildlife, just untapped area because it's almost a size. It's like 85% the size of the continental United States.

[Forrest Galante]

Exactly. So.

[Julian]

So yeah, when human beings being able to go that deep into there, where there's uncontacted tribes and isn't fully possible, whereas other places are more reachable around the world, it's a smaller actual distance to cover. So maybe if you go to like Sri Lanka and some of their, I think, rainforests and stuff there, like, I hope I'm getting like Indonesia or Sri Lanka, like it's smaller so it's more accessible to get everywhere. And let's find this.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah, and there's islands that you can trade but still, I mean, there's are undeniably big animals that we haven't described yet, but there's not like, it's not like 10% or something like that. It's a small amount.

[Julian]

Isn't it crazy, though, how we've only explored like 5% of the ocean, tops?

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah, it's crazy. And there's, there's a lot of spe. I mean, until. Think about this, until I want to say, 15 years ago now, and that number is probably wrong, we thought that the foundation of life, all life in the universe, required science. Sunlight. The foundation of our food chain was photosynthesis, and it came from sunlight. Then all of a sudden, we put an ROV or a submarine down in the bottom of the ocean. They're like, wait a minute, there's hydrothermal vents here and there's entire ecosystems of creatures, literally entire complex food webs that have never had a single thing to do with sunlight, that have evolved independently of sunlight. Like, oh, huh.

[Julian]

Maybe we should rethink science.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah, it's like we literally have to rethink how life works because we found that life can exist on hydrothermal energy. Has nothing to do with solar energy.

[Julian]

Yeah, that's crazy.

[Forrest Galante]

That was like 15 years ago. It's not like, you know, when Charles Darwin was cruising around, it was like, oh, wait a minute, we, we are 100% sure as science that all life requires sunlight. Oh, no, no, we don't.

[Julian]

And then you look at how they map what sums of some of the bottom of the ocean could look like and everything. It's mountain ranges and valleys just like we have here. Exactly by water.

[Forrest Galante]

Exactly.

[Julian]

It's like, what is even in those crevices? No idea.

[Forrest Galante]

No idea.

[Julian]

Yeah, crazy, man.

[Forrest Galante]

Giant squids and all kinds of stuff down there that we don't know about still.

[Julian]

Also, though, have you followed this whole thing that's going on with like, Paul Watson with the, with the arrest and finally they let him out and all that?

[Forrest Galante]

I'd love the Sparknose version. I know he did something. He got arrested for like a year, right? And then he got arrested, released, and now he's back on the boats creating conflict again.

[Julian]

That part I got to see how much he's actually doing. But yeah, he's. This is the guy who essentially like saves some of our whale species.

[Forrest Galante]

Whale war. Whale wars guy, like walk the talk.

[Julian]

With this whole thing. And I guess because of that he was like wanted in Japan or something, where they have some interesting practices when it comes to sea wildlife. And so maybe it was the Dutch. Please correct me in the comments if I'm misremembering all this, but it was the Dutch who like arrested him and were holding him on like an Interpol warrant or something like.

[Forrest Galante]

Something like that. Yeah.

[Julian]

To get him back. But now they, they got him out and all that. But it, it kind of disappointed me because it's like you literally have one of the true and blue clearest, like legit made a mark on the earth conservationists of the last century. Century. And what kind of message are we sending when the guy has to like, fight internationally for freedom to not be arrested and sent to jail for trying to protect some of these creatures and whatever. You know, it. That is where it gets weird. And you remember you got a bunch of different, totally different incentives around governments around the world, and yet we're all a part of the same populace. Where, you know, if we care a lot, for example, about the climate here in America, who's say China does.

[Forrest Galante]

Exactly.

[Julian]

It gets so weird out there. And that's a little bit disheartening when I see that.

[Forrest Galante]

Are we also get this because we do live in the United States and we get this sort of complacency about, like, that's what's important. Those are the laws, you know, that would never happen. And then you go to any of these places we've talked about today, and it's like their laws are completely different. Their incentive is economic. Like, they're still developing nations. They don't care if you, if you're a good at heart trying to save whales. If you slow down their economic development, which can be a whaling ship, they're going to kill you. And they'll either kill you by putting you in prison for the rest of your life or execute you or anything else. And like, you know, here we're like, that would never happen. Like, he's a hero to the whales. It's like, yeah, but that's not in Japan, not in China, not in wherever, you know, not in Denmark or Norway or whatever. It happens to be like, they'll. It's completely different.

[Julian]

Yeah. And then you have environments around the world where people have lived there for, you know, thousands of years, and they're outside of society too. And you go in there and you're like, hey, we. We can help bring you to the new world. You talked about it a little bit. Yeah, but it's like, they don't want that.

[Forrest Galante]

They don't want that.

[Julian]

You know what I mean? Like, you got to respect that.

[Forrest Galante]

And when, when you do bring them to tie this all together. Like when you do bring them into the new world, when you bring them cell phones and shotguns and TVs and all these other other things, that's when the habitat goes to shit.

[Julian]

Yes.

[Forrest Galante]

You know, that's what destroys the environment. There's a reason the Sentinelese don't want to be contacted, Right? They don't. They don't want to. They want to be left alone. These tribes in the Amazon, they want to remain uncontacted. They don't. Not that they know what a cell phone is, but they don't want the outside world to come in and ruin their way of life. And they've maintained that way of life for many generations. Which means they haven't wiped out all the animals. They haven't hunted it out. They haven't clear cut all the forests. They've kept things balanced.

[Julian]

That's right.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah. And it's only us with all our modern tech inconveniences and things that imbalance it.

[Julian]

What was the most fascinating, I guess like off grid group you've had a chance to spend time with?

[Forrest Galante]

Actually, pretty recently I went to Mota island in Vanuatu. I went there with.

[Julian]

I don't know where that is.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah.

[Julian]

So island in Vanuatu. That does not narrow down for me.

[Forrest Galante]

I doubt Mota island will even come up, but it might. It's in southern Vanuatu. And I went there because the Nelk boys reached out to me and said, we want to go meet an uncontacted tribe. Yeah. So this island right here is Mota Island. Yeah. So it's that remote. I mean, you are out there. Yeah.

[Julian]

So this is like way off the coast of Australia.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah. Yeah. In an island nation called Vanuatu. And there is not much there, but we've had some really cool experiences with, you know, tribal people in Papua New guinea and blah, blah. But what I. What I loved about Mota island, take out the Nelk boys and all that. And we had a good time. They're fun guys. But the tribe there is just there. They've managed to blend living a western style and a primitive style very, very well. Like they have T shirts and clothes, but they still hunt. There we are. First one. That's.

[Julian]

That's you guys.

[Forrest Galante]

Kyle. Kyle and myself. Kyle from the Nelk boys and myself with the Nelk boys. But yeah. And they still hunt bats and they still wear grass skirts. And yet they go back to their huts at night that have a little bit. Oh, that's my post. They have like generators for electricity. Like they've managed to keep it balanced. And that's why I found it so interesting. Like, I've been with other tribes that are completely remote, you know, and don't have any Western impact. All. I mean, some because I'm there, but like, these guys, I found really fascinating in the way they've balanced it and they've maintained an island which, you know, like Easter island syndrome. Like, you can collapse an island.

[Julian]

Can you explain that to people who aren't familiar with Easter Island?

[Forrest Galante]

Easter island is the island with the big heads off the coast of Chile, I believe. And Easter island syndrome is a thing where you're stuck on an island and your population grows. And so in order to sustain that population, you cut down all the trees, you eat all the fruits. Fruit. And because you're so isolated, once you do that, your civilization collapses. So that's what they believe happened in Easter Island. Basically, they cut down the last tree to make a canoe to go fishing because their fish were so far out, because they caught all the fish. And once you cut down the last tree, there was no coconuts, there were no more canoes. The whole population collapsed. So these guys, the reason you asked me what I found so fascinating, it's not just because of their remote lifestyle. Been with lots of tribes that have remote lifestyle. Lifestyle they have managed. They're like forest gardeners and ecosystem engineers. They're like, we live on a small island, Mota Island. We can collapse it. If we hunt every bat, if we cut down every tree. If we do that, our way of life will be gone. So instead, when they eat a mango, they take that mango seed and plant it back in the dirt.

[Julian]

Oh, wow.

[Forrest Galante]

Or when they go to kill bats, they don't. They look for a bat that doesn't have babies and they kill one bat and they eat that. That bat, you know, per family. Like, they're. They're constantly regulating the environment and managing their island so that they can maintain their way of life. And not one. I mean, I was only there for a few days, but at no point in time did I get the inkling that they're like, man, we would love a Chili's here. You know what I mean? Like, I don't think. I don't think you know what Chili's is, but you know what I mean? Nobody there was, like, wanting for, like, that Western lifestyle.

[Julian]

I don't think I've ever talked to someone who said, man, I'd really love a Chili's.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah.

[Julian]

To be fair, it's like saying, I really want a Long John Silver.

[Forrest Galante]

That's right. Yeah. Good filet.

[Julian]

I've never seen someone walk in there.

[Forrest Galante]

No, it doesn't. Who eats there? It's got to be a drug ring or something. No one goes to Long John Silver's, dude. It's like, what's the mattress store that's all over the country? Like Mattress Firm or something? It's in every small town America.

[Julian]

Okay.

[Forrest Galante]

No one's ever bought a mattress from that place, ever. It's got to be like a cover up for a drug ring or something. Like who's going to Mattress Firm? Nobody.

[Julian]

So you were with these guys for just a few days, you were saying?

[Forrest Galante]

I went with the Nelk boys for a few days and then I spent another two weeks there.

[Julian]

How did you meet after the Nelk boys left?

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah, right. On a neighboring island, but we went back and forth.

[Julian]

How did you make contact with them to, like, do this?

[Forrest Galante]

I met a guy named Brett. You know, you meet these people, traveling. Guy named Brett. White guy named Brett from Australia.

[Julian]

He's not in the tribe.

[Forrest Galante]

No, he was Vanuatu and. But he grew up in, like, the capital city and stuff. And then he. He lives on a neighboring island, has this tiny little eco lodge type thing. So I met Brett. Brett invited me and then he told me about Mota, about these people. And he's the only white guy that's ever been indoctrinated into the Mota tribe. So he speaks the language. The language is insular to that area. Not that island, but that area. He speaks the language. He went through a whole ceremony to be indoctrinated as a member of the tribe. Every. Everything. Only white guy that's ever had that. We. We. You know, I was just a visitor. And so he's like a part of the. Like, he's removed because he's a western guy, but he's like part of the tribe. So when he visits, he's welcomed and things. And so I went with him and that's how I found them.

[Julian]

What is it? What is their language sound like? Is it relatable to anything that we would know?

[Forrest Galante]

No, it's. It's like pigeon a little bit, you know, so pigeon, not the bird. Pigeon. Pigeons. Pigeon is like. Like a hodgepodge of languages.

[Julian]

Be careful. You're in Hoboken.

[Forrest Galante]

No, it's like a little bit pigeon, where it's like a hodgepodge of English and tribal language and all these other varying things. And, you know, they had missionaries go through that area, so a lot of people speak English.

[Julian]

Oh, that's Cool.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah. So, you know, it's like very. It's like, not great English, but it's English enough to get through. Yeah.

[Julian]

Have you ever been in a situation where you've been spending, you know, you're embedded with some sort of tribe and it's actually sketchy as. And it's scary?

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, not in an embedding situation, but like, in Papua New guinea, three years ago, we're hiking up this river to look for this tribe that worships sharks to try and find this type of epaulet shark. And we're walking up this creek. We get told in town, town is this tiny little town of like 100 people. They're like, oh, you need to go meet the tribe. People that come to town and trade with us, blah, blah. But you need to meet them and talk to them about the. The sharks. No problem. We'll go to tent, we'll go to the tribe. Like, how do you find them? It's like, oh, you take a canoe to the end of the creek, then you walk up the creek. It's like, okay, no problem. So we canoe up from the town to the. To where the creek starts. Go up the creek as far as you can. You know, certain times of the year you can go further. Right. When it's wet season, so we were there in the dry season, so the canoe doesn't make it very far. Then we get off the canoe and start walking along the creek. So we're walking along the creek, and I look up, and there's a skull on a stick, a human skull. And I'm like, holy shit, there's a skull. And me being me, I'm like, they do this in Popwood, to be clear. But me being me, I'm like, let's go in and check that out. So I climb up this little hill where the skull on the stick is, and there's a cave opening. So you go in the cave opening and there's a picture on my Instagram, I think. But I go into this cave littered with human skulls, like hundreds of them. Hundreds and hundreds of them. Real human skulls. And I'm like, oh, shit. I don't think we're supposed to be here, you know, because I just popped in to see what it was.

[Julian]

Oh, my God.

[Forrest Galante]

And I come out and the tribal warriors are standing there watching me with spears. And they're like, why are you in our cave again? Missionaries have been through there. So they speak English.

[Julian]

Oh, they're speaking English?

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah. Yeah. That's gotta be creepy. It's different, you know, tribal guys named John. John Dudley and things like that, because the missionaries have been through there. Yeah, it's really bizarre. Anyway, these warriors have watched me go in. Like, they've stalked us because they're like, what are these white boys doing here? They've stalked us through the jungle. Then they've watched me, basically. It's not like I peed on the skulls, but, like, desecrate their tribal burial site because I hopped into it to see what it was. It was. And I come out and they. They weren't angry, but they also weren't. They were just very stern. Like, they're like, why are you in our cave? To be honest, they actually didn't say anything there. They just took us to the village, and then the chief was the one who communicated with us.

[Julian]

You're not yourself when you're.

[Forrest Galante]

The whole time, like. Like. Like I had a pocket knife, like, on my back belt, and I, like, had. I remember I reached back and I put my hand on my pocket knife. Like I was going to do anything, you know, it was like a. Like a. Like a.

[Julian]

Well, you got to go down with a fight.

[Forrest Galante]

Exactly. And I remember my cameraman was behind me, and he literally swatted my hand away because there was a guy looking. Looking over his shoulder, and he saw me, like, reach back at my blade, you know, and so he's like, don't do. Because he didn't want. You know, we didn't want it to escalate. But, yeah, they took us in, and then I explained the whole situation. Like we were trying to find the village. So we came up the creek, I saw the skull, and I went in. And he's like, okay, you know, and then it was fine. It was like, yeah, you know, like, you weren't here to do any damage. I was like, I'm just here to talk about sharks. And he's like, yeah, what do you want to know?

[Julian]

Just like, I'm just gonna back away.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah, exactly.

[Julian]

Great day. Yeah, we're good. We got all the content we need.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah. So been in some weird situations like that where you just, like, you end up looking around. You're like, right, I'm in a cave filled with human skulls. I probably shouldn't have done this.

[Julian]

Well, minus. Minus the human skulls and. And happening upon some of those things. It does. It's very clear to me that, like, you're living out your dreams and actually doing the damn thing.

[Forrest Galante]

For sure.

[Julian]

There's a lot of people who never get to do that in their Life. So that's really, really cool that you've been able. Like you grew up among this and then you found your way back to it very quickly after you had to leave Zimbabwe, which pretty wild story, by the way. And you know, now you're, you get to travel the world and go find shit that other people think doesn't exist or go look at the shit that most people will go their whole lives without seeing. That's, that's fucking awesome, man.

[Forrest Galante]

Anyone can do it. That's the thing, you know, if a D student from Zimbabwe who came here as a refugee can do what I've done done, that's what I love about this country so much. In America, it really is the land of opportunity. If you are that passionate about something and that motivated about it, it doesn't matter if it's looking for animals around the world and filming them or studying or being a finance bro or golfing or. It just doesn't matter what it is. Being a podcaster, like, if you are that passionate about something, you can make, you can become an expert at it. And if you become an expert at it, you can make a career out of it. And I'm so fortunate that I've got to do that with my passion and I'm not here to be a motivational speaker, but I think anybody can do it.

[Julian]

Motivating though.

[Forrest Galante]

I think anyone can do it. I really do.

[Julian]

That's great.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah.

[Julian]

And is this something? Are your young kids already showing a little interest?

[Forrest Galante]

Like the dad I spent all day yesterday snorkeling for snapping turtles with my five year old there, he caught two big ones himself.

[Julian]

So he's pumped.

[Forrest Galante]

He's pumped. He loves it. He loves it. Yeah. And that's the future, man. The next those kids, not just my own kids, but the kids that we inspire fire with. The YouTube channel, the Discovery Channel shows, the, the, the media that we're putting out, that's the future of saving this planet, in my opinion.

[Julian]

Now you, you're writing a book, you've written books in the past. You've been on several shows at this point. You're traveling the world to do your YouTube channel. You also, you guys put out, I don't know where you find this time. You put out a podcast at least a couple times a month. Yeah, I've seen some of. That's really good. So we'll have that link down below. Like what, what else do you got going on coming up?

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah, Tomorrow night I have a new series launching on Discovery Channel called Animals on Drugs. She didn't even talk about that. But me catching animals on drugs, it's a real thing. It's a real problem with human. Global human wildlife conflict. Animals ending up intoxicated by human substances, meth getting flushed down the toilet. Bears breaking into houses and drinking white claws because they're full of sugar. Literally, me elbows deep. Doing hippo surgery in the field, castrating Pablo Escobar's wild hippos in Colombia. It's a crazy.

[Julian]

Oh, you went and did that?

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah, I got. I did the. I worked with the Colombian government to say. To solve that problem. To work on solving that problem.

[Julian]

Holy.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah, and that's all coming out on Discovery. And my main thing now is my YouTube channel. We only started YouTube two years ago. I'm new to it. I. I try and put out a lot of informational and fun, entertaining content there. And that's my main thing. I'd love people to check that out, if anything.

[Julian]

Yeah, we'll have that link below. You already got, like, damn near 2 million there, so I'd say things are. Yeah, things are going pretty good.

[Forrest Galante]

It is going well.

[Julian]

Yeah. When you say animals on drugs, though, I keep thinking, what was that movie that?

[Forrest Galante]

Cocaine.

[Julian]

Cocaine?

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah. Cocaine Bear. It's not. That is a bad Hollywood blockbuster. This is the real version of that. It's crazy.

[Julian]

That was, you know, that was just some dude sitting in a room going, samuel L did Snakes on a Plane.

[Forrest Galante]

Yeah, we're doing Cocaine Bear. Give that bear drugs right now. Make him kill. Kill people.

[Julian]

All right, man. Well, this was awesome. I'm so glad to finally get you in here. We gotta do this again when you're in town and we're going.

[Forrest Galante]

And we're going to Ken's place. We have to go to Ken's. Hell, yeah.

[Julian]

So when you come through to look at your office in. In Stanford, we should schedule that around time where you can just get a day. I'll take you down there. It's like an hour, 40 minutes.

[Forrest Galante]

Perfect, dude. Thanks for having me, bro.

[Julian]

Thank you. All right, everyone else, go subscribe the Forest Channel. Follow everything he's doing. Buy his book books. We'll do this again. All right, everyone else, you know what it is. Give it a thought. Get back to me. Peace. Thank you guys for watching the episode. If you haven't already, please hit that subscribe button and smash that, like, button on the video. They're both a huge, huge help. And if you would like to follow me on Instagram and X, those links are in my description below.