Loading summary
Transcript814 lines
- [00:01]
A
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians.
- [00:10]
B
These are things people say about drivers.
- [00:12]
A
Who switch their car insurance to progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see if you could.
- [00:18]
B
Save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations.
- [00:28]
A
Today's guest is an outdoorsman. He's a master of animalia, or animals. Means animals. He's known for his focus on animals close to extinction. He's a host on Discovery. He's been to some of the most insane parts of the world. I'm grateful to get to know him and learn about his life. Today's guest is Mr. Forest Galante.
- [00:55]
B
And I will find a song I've been singing.
- [01:06]
A
Yeah, that's the best, dude. Forest Galante. Thanks for coming in, man.
- [01:10]
B
Yeah, dude. Dude, thanks for having me. Yeah, we made it work.
- [01:13]
A
Yeah, I really appreciate it. I'm excited, dude. I'm excited to talk about animalia and a little bit about your life. So. So our listeners know who you are.
- [01:21]
B
Sure.
- [01:22]
A
Yeah. I was complimenting those shoes, dude. Those things are nice, dude.
- [01:25]
B
The Gorucks is this company that's all about putting heavy weight on your back and training. You know, I spend a lot of time in a backpack, so I'm a big fan.
- [01:32]
A
Yeah, they look pretty springy, dude. I went with the boots.
- [01:35]
B
How do you like the cowboy? Is that your. Go to your cowboy boots guy?
- [01:38]
A
About two days a week now.
- [01:39]
B
Two days a week, yeah. Trying to quit, though.
- [01:41]
A
Yeah. You have none of these six milligrams.
- [01:45]
B
Yeah, There you go. That's. That's a heavy dose of boot right there, dude.
- [01:50]
A
What if they do come out with boots? Like, what if Zen or Alp comes out with a boot that has, like, nicotine in the rim of it, so.
- [01:56]
B
Like, soaks in your body, into the feet? Yeah. Getting that little head buzz. Yeah, I buy them, dude.
- [02:02]
A
I would put them on if I had to do one of those field sobriety tests.
- [02:06]
B
There you go. There you go. Yeah. You're like, I'm good from the knees up. Yeah.
- [02:11]
A
Good to see you today. You were. You grew up in. I mean, you were kind of born into animalia there in, like, on the edge of. Of Africa, in Zimbabwe. That's where you grew up.
- [02:22]
B
Yeah, exactly. Right. So son of safari business owners. If I wasn't in school, we either lived on a farm or my family ran safaris. So I was out in the bush. So I've just been around wildlife my childhood.
- [02:33]
A
Oh, wow. That's you right there.
- [02:34]
B
Yeah. Look at them teeth right there. Oh, yeah.
- [02:37]
A
I wouldn't want to get bit by that.
- [02:38]
B
No. Yeah. I was part beaver growing up. Yeah.
- [02:42]
A
Take me into some of that. Like what it's like growing up on. In, like a safari land. Does it give you a different appreciation of animals? Does it make you more fearful of animals?
- [02:51]
B
It's a good question. I mean, I think anything you grow up with, you become used to, right. It's like this is the norm when you're a kid. You just expect that that's the norm. So I grew up, you know, I'd come home from school, kick my shoes off, run out on the farm, try and catch snakes or be looking for jackals or all these, you know, just like a coyote, all these kind of things. That sort of is parallel to if you grew up on a farm here. Right. If you're a farm kid here, you go out and, you know, you're from Louisiana, maybe you see a cottonmouth or coyote in the bush or whatever, Right.
- [03:17]
A
Just tickle a chicken or tickle a chicken, you know?
- [03:19]
B
Yeah. That meant something else when I got to high school, but, you know, I grew up thinking that was the norm. And then I'd go out into the bush on safari with my family and. And it would be like, don't leave the tent after dark and stay here. And, you know, there were rules, but as long as you didn't break the rules, you were pretty safe. And what I saw throughout my childhood was like a decline in animals. You know, the same camps we'd go to where there used to be huge herds of elephants, there's now two or three elephants, or big wild spaces, there's now farm fields. So I didn't really realize it as a kid, but as I got older, I was like, I don't like that. Like, I don't want it. I don't want all that wild stuff to go away. And so I didn't really realize it when I was young, but over time, even as a child, I was like, this is something that I would like to dedicate my life to, is making sure that all this wild stuff, spaces, animals, all of it doesn't go away.
- [04:08]
A
So I'm guessing you're thinking then along the lines of, like, conservation, like that, did you come out of your youth just feeling inspired towards that?
- [04:14]
B
That's a very nice way to put it. It starts by breaking a lot of rules, bending the laws a lot, and just being, you know, you know those kids, Right. You're the yoink kid. On Instagram, he's catching all the snakes and stuff. You're one of those kids.
- [04:28]
A
Got it.
- [04:28]
B
You know what I mean? And so in the US There's a lot of laws against, you know, don't harass us and don't do that. In Zimbabwe, there's fuck all for laws. Right. So it's just kind of do whatever. So I think that love and that appreciation came from fiddling with everything, catching it, trapping it, working with it. But ultimately, as you grow, as you fall in love with something, you want to protect it, and that's conservation.
- [04:50]
A
And so what. What was. What was thinning the herds there?
- [04:54]
B
People just mostly encroachment, A little bit of poaching, you know, ivory poaching and stuff, hunting elephants, but more like habitat encroachment. You know, villages popping up, big trees getting cut down for farm field goats and things getting moved in. You know, stuff like that, like grazing and so pushing the animals out.
- [05:11]
A
And was it affecting, like, were you guys on a bigger piece of, like, nature reserve or the safari camps were.
- [05:18]
B
They were all out in the bush. But it still, you know, you still would just see a general impact, like. Like a thinning of animals. Okay, yeah.
- [05:26]
A
So did your family continue the safari business in Zimbabwe or how do you get from there, sort of to here.
- [05:34]
B
Into the U.S. yeah, so we tried to. But during the early 2000, Zimbabwe was under something called the land reform campaign, which was President Robert Mugabe at the time, who declared himself supreme leader for life. He did this thing where.
- [05:50]
A
Like a boss, huh? Like Birdman.
- [05:52]
B
Yeah. He came in hard. Yeah. And he. He made it. This land reform, made it so that it was very, very hard. Like my family's six generations, Zimbabwe. But basically it was a. It was a race war. And if you were white, you weren't supposed. You. There was a. A land reform campaign passed that meant that. That if you were black and you had heritage, you could come and take that land away because, you know, of colonial settlement and things like that. Obviously, I grew up long after any colonial settlement took place, but, yeah, we had gunfights and we had, you know, neighbors murdered and punguis, which is indoctrination through torture into the political party, the ZANU PF political party. There was some crazy political turmoil.
- [06:31]
A
Zimbabwe's land reform refers to a controversial program that began in 1980 and escalated in 2000, redistributing farmland from white commercial farmers to black Zimbabweans. So your family was.
- [06:43]
B
We were farmers.
- [06:44]
A
So you were farmers. And this happened as you guys were.
- [06:47]
B
There so when I was a kid, I mean, it says here in 1980 is when it started, which it may have, but when I was a kid, we never locked our doors. There was no, we didn't have barbed wire fences, nothing. It was very safe, very peaceful country. But in like two 99, 2000 and then 2001 when we left, it got really bad really quickly. And it was sort of an attempt by Robert Mugabe to can. To retain power for his party, the ZANU PF political party.
- [07:12]
A
Oh, I see. So his party would feel like maybe they were going to be pushed out. And so he's like, I need to do something drastic.
- [07:16]
B
Exactly.
- [07:17]
A
In order to stay in.
- [07:18]
B
Exactly.
- [07:18]
A
So I'm going to return this colonialized.
- [07:23]
B
Land to the people.
- [07:24]
A
From whites to the black to the black people.
- [07:26]
B
Exactly. Got it. Yeah.
- [07:27]
A
And so, but you saw that, like in neighbors, you saw people's lands being taken over stuff.
- [07:33]
B
Oh, I saw a kid get shot in the head. We saw everything. It was crazy. Yeah. I mean, there were gunfights there. We had these war veterans settling on the fence lines. We were the smallest farm in the Shamba district. That was where I grew up. And so we were the last ones to get taken because we had the lowest political incentive or financial incentive. Right. So you look at the area where we lived, there were all these huge farms, Right. Million dollar a year plus tobacco farms and things. We were a tiny little Ulstrom area, which is an exotic flower farm. And so we were the last ones to get grabbed because why bother with us? Right.
- [08:03]
A
We'll get them at the end.
- [08:04]
B
Exactly. So we saw neighbors get murdered, these punguis, like I said, which is indoctrination through torture, crazy war chants, shootouts, everything. It was nuts for a little while.
- [08:14]
A
And would these groups just kind of come like in just trucks like, and sort of, would they come in like force? Was it?
- [08:21]
B
Yeah.
- [08:22]
A
Was it the government coming or was it just like citizens?
- [08:26]
B
It was pretty much just citizens, like unemployed citizens, basically. And for the majority it was kids with guns. Wow. You know, you're 14, 15 years old, you grew up maybe on the streets of Harare, and all of a sudden you have this dictator like president going, hey, those rich white guys over there, go get them.
- [08:41]
A
Right.
- [08:42]
B
You know, and they're like, okay. You know, you know, they call it war veterans that survived the war. There were no war veterans. It was just kids with guns, like 14 to 20 year old kids. Wow. And that's, that's what, you know, shootouts and all this. But all that being said, I want to paint a bad light on. It was incredible childhood. There was just a couple rough years there. Yeah.
- [09:00]
A
Well, one thing that's fascinating about Africa, even, like, places that I've been there, is you see the race, like, the racial colonial. You see that. It's very evident in a lot of places. You also see a lot of, like. Like black leadership that comes into power and gets very desperate and will try to own everything themselves as well. It's a.
- [09:21]
B
It's a tribal mentality, right? It's like, I. I come from this culture, whether it's Shaa Zulu, whatever it happens to be. And that tribe is like, the way that I've been a dominant tribe is I dominate another tribe, right? And this is not a racial thing. It's just. It's a cultural thing. And they're, you know, they. They get leadership, whether that's being a president or being a minister or whatever it is. And then how am I going to retain it? I'm going to dominate another tribe. Doesn't matter if they're white, black, Zulu, Shawnee, whatever. You know, it's just I'm going to dominate. And that's. It's a. It's a crazy thing. I'll tell you a crazy story. I don't think I've ever told anybody this publicly. I grew up on a farm. 200. 200 employees that worked on our farm, right? Like, 200 people that pick flowers, blah, blah, blah. My best friends were all black China kids, Zimbabwean kids. And I remember one day going to school, I was 14, so I didn't really understand what was going on other than it was. Stuff was going bad. And my best friend, who had been my best friend since we were, like, seven years old, we went to lunch that day, like a random Tuesday. And the prefects, like, the older, like the seniors, right, they come out and they're like, you two come over here. Like, Forrest, go on that side. And I'm like, at school. At school. Like, proper school, you know, like, button down, like, in a very formal school. Like, Forrest, go over here. Melusi, go over here. Melusi was my friend. Melusi's black. And they're like, go on this side. And I was like, why are we getting split up? And they're like, we're having a fight. Black versus white at school. And my best friend, who was felt as shocked as I would, he got, like, moved by the seniors to the other side of the rugby field to have a fist fight with us. And I was just like, why are we doing this, you know, it was, like, so confused because we didn't understand it. We were just little kids. But this racial tension got insane. And, yeah, it just. It boiled over. And you've seen, like, Donald Trump, you know, just called out the South African president around it. But that similar sort of thing is taking place in South Africa now with.
- [11:07]
A
The same type of energy. Like, let's take the land back from.
- [11:10]
B
Yeah.
- [11:10]
A
The white owners.
- [11:11]
B
Exactly.
- [11:12]
A
Well, I think it's the same thing sometimes when you look at Hamas in Gaza.
- [11:16]
B
Yeah.
- [11:17]
A
It's like a lot of people believe that Hamas was elected because they felt no other way to try and stop Israeli people from coming and just taking over their homes. That's a lot of what I hear from friends on both sides of it that, like, they just. They needed to do something drastic. Right. So they elected the most drastic element that they could.
- [11:39]
B
And I think that's a sign of desperation. Right. Regardless of the situation, it's like, if you're desperate, you do something drastic. It's a Hail Mary.
- [11:46]
A
Yeah.
- [11:46]
B
Right.
- [11:46]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think some of that's even. It's human nature.
- [11:50]
B
Totally. I do it myself. Right. You're like, shit, what do I do? Let's just send it, you know?
- [11:55]
A
Oh, definitely. When it's getting late at night and your wife left you or whatever, and you just text some girl that you knew from a couple years.
- [12:01]
B
Yeah, let's go. Yeah, yeah.
- [12:05]
A
So I think that happens a lot.
- [12:06]
B
You.
- [12:07]
A
You saw someone get shot?
- [12:09]
B
Yeah, one of the neighbors. We were riding our motorbikes, and he got shot. Yeah. Wow. Yeah.
- [12:15]
A
I mean, so these groups, they come, and then would they kind of kick people out of their homes? I mean, was that sort of how it was happening? And then how did you guys end up eventually leaving?
- [12:23]
B
Yes. So basically, they'd come, they'd surround the property or the farm, but. But white Zimbabweans, similar to, like, white South Africans or whatever, they're pretty hard people. Grew up farming culture, you know, so they dig their heels in and say, bring it on, and they're ultimately end up being a sh. Out or something like that. And so what happened to us? And I can't speak for every farm, but a lot of our. Our friends, like, a lot of our dads got murdered and all this other stuff. But what happened to us is my mom was a single mother with my sister and I on the farm at the time. And they came. They surrounded our farm, and they came and they said to my mom, they're like, we'll give you 24 hours to leave or we're going to kill you and take everything. And so my mom and I remember I was 14. I ran upstairs and I grabbed my gun and I grabbed a. A knife, and I was like, bring it on. And my mom, like, hit me, and she's like, go, get in the car. Pack your shit and get in the car. And I was like, yes, Mom. You know, and so we laughed. So nothing bad happened to us physically, but it was. It was just a very, like, ripped from everything overnight kind of situation.
- [13:19]
A
Wow. So Mama Galante had the sense, huh?
- [13:22]
B
Yeah. Thank God, because I didn't. Still don't. Yeah.
- [13:24]
A
What happened to your dad? He wasn't there?
- [13:26]
B
No, they split up when I was pretty young, and he moved into town and remarried and all of that, and he just didn't want to have much to do with it.
- [13:32]
A
And your mother ran a botanical farm out there?
- [13:34]
B
Yeah. Yeah. Ran the flower farm. Flowers and oranges.
- [13:37]
A
Was it pretty beautiful out there with the flowers?
- [13:39]
B
So beautiful. So we had these big Massasa trees. We lived on a copy which. Like a granite mountain with the house on top.
- [13:44]
A
Massasa tree, it's called.
- [13:45]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [13:46]
A
I want to see it.
- [13:47]
B
It's really. Yeah. Like your iconic African tree. Yeah.
- [13:51]
A
Dude, there's something so amazing about being in Africa.
- [13:55]
B
Where'd you go when you went to Africa?
- [13:56]
A
We've been to Kenya, to. Oh, Mombasa.
- [14:01]
B
Oh, Mombasa. Yeah, on the coast there.
- [14:04]
A
Oh. I'll tell you, this is just a funny story. It's different, but so we went to some bar there. It's called Florida. It was like, they give it, like, an American name because they know that, like, Americans are going to come in.
- [14:12]
B
Yep, totally.
- [14:13]
A
Get off of cruise ships and stuff. And I was there. I was on a thing called Semester at Sea. It's like a floating university.
- [14:18]
B
Oh, you went as a kid?
- [14:19]
A
Yeah.
- [14:19]
B
That's cool.
- [14:20]
A
Yeah. And so it was pretty impressive. I worked in the bookstore on the ship. And you got to. And. And that worked as my tuition, so I got to go on this crazy adventure. But we're there, and one of my buddies, this little Jewish guy, he, like, got a beat. He got a blowjob from a local. Possibly a prostitute or just a, like, gray area.
- [14:39]
B
Yeah, from a.
- [14:41]
A
A nice gray area. Woman. Cute girl. And he said that while he was taking his wiener out of his pants that it cut on his zipper. And so now he's scared the whole time. He's like, we're in Africa. He's like, what if I Catch something.
- [14:53]
B
Aids. He's getting aids.
- [14:56]
A
He's like, d, dude, I'm getting aids. He's like asking people. He's like trying to nonchalantly ask people about AIDS at the bar and stuff.
- [15:02]
B
So, dude, at Florida, he was so.
- [15:06]
A
He was so neurotic. He ended up ordering a glass of vodka. And it was like three hours till our ride was coming. And he literally stood over in the distance and put his wiener just into a glass of vodka and held it in there.
- [15:18]
B
I like the resourcefulness, though. I feel like that would work. That might be the cure.
- [15:22]
A
Shout out to my buddy Michael from South Florida. Dude, he was. And he was an awesome guy. But anyway, that was one place that we went.
- [15:29]
B
Africa is a great place, man. It's. It's wild. There's no political stability anywhere on the continent, in my opinion. But it's a great. It's just such a great continent. There's so much wildlife, there's so much freedom. There's nothing you can't do there. You know what I mean? If you can dream it, you can do it. It's. Which isn't always a good thing, because if you can dream of taking over people's houses, you can do it. But it's. It's. It's a crazy cool place. Yeah.
- [15:52]
A
So you grow up in this wildlife. I mean, everything about Africa, it's so per. Like, even I remember there. And like, we would sleep at night with the mosquito nets. Like, nature was just right there. Like, it was like, you know, so much so that, you know, I mean, I grew up in Louisiana. We have mosquitoes, but we didn't have the nets. Like, you had to keep these things. You know, you. I mean, if some of them were big, you almost needed the Brooklyn Nets standing there to block them off. You know what I'm saying? Like.
- [16:17]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [16:18]
A
But just the fact that nature's right there. You can feel it breathing in the distance. It always feels like there. So you grew up in that, like, dedicated, like Im, like, immersed in wildlife. When did you kind of feel like you wanted to have it as a career?
- [16:32]
B
Not until I'll tell you. Can I tell you a quick funny story about mosquito nets?
- [16:36]
A
Yeah.
- [16:36]
B
So I grew up in this farmhouse, right? Like all open windows, no air conditioning or anything like that. Big open verandas and balconies and stuff. And we were plowing a field when I was probably 9 or 10 years old. Found a baby monkey in the field, a little vervet monkey. Vervet vervet monkey? Yeah. They call them vermin. Monkeys. They're like pest monkeys. And I scooped him up, was like, what's wrong here? That little guy right there.
- [16:57]
A
Oh, yeah. Blackface, too, first of all.
- [16:59]
B
Yeah, yeah. He's got to do something about that.
- [17:02]
A
Well, he may. He may just be lashing back at Drew Ski, who just did White Face.
- [17:06]
B
Dude, I saw 200 million views or something. It was funny, though. I don't know if it's bad or good, but it was funny.
- [17:12]
A
I think it's great.
- [17:14]
B
Dude. When he's driving around, he rolls down his window, he's like, you lost, boy? The guy's like, no, sir. It was so bad. We rescued a spit.
- [17:23]
A
And the funny thing is he has a big hat on, so he has to like, kind of.
- [17:26]
B
He moves his head out the window. Dude, it's too. It's too much. I literally saw it this morning. I couldn't believe it.
- [17:32]
A
But take me through your story. I'm sor.
- [17:34]
B
Man. No, you're good.
- [17:35]
A
Mosquito net.
- [17:36]
B
Long story short, I rescue this baby monkey. Turns out, and monkeys do this. Her mother. His mother abandoned him because he had a heart murmur, like a bad heart condition. So he got dumped in the field, right? Because they do that. Then they can have another baby. And it takes a long time to raise the baby, blah, blah, blah. So I scoop up this little monkey named Chippy and bottle feed him till his eyes open, the whole thing. And he ends up growing up. And he's my bunk bed mate. So he'd sleep on top of my mosquito net. You know, there's like a round coil and it comes down on a mosquito net. He'd sleep up there, and every morning as I get out of bed, he'd jump down off of that onto my shoulder. We'd go down to breakfast, then he'd scamper off into the trees. And like, you know, that's a good depiction of, like, how I grew up wild wise. Like, I had a monkey sleeping in my mosquito net with me. You know, like, it was. It was an awesome, awesome childhood. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [18:22]
A
There's just something about being there, especially when you're in a safari house.
- [18:26]
B
Like.
- [18:27]
A
Like one of, you know, you get out into the bush and then sometimes you'll. You'll stay at kind of like a. It's kind of a hotel in a way. It was like kind of lodge. A lodge, yeah. And some of them would be nice and someone would be very bare bones, but it was like, you know, you'd have the animal skin rugs and you'd have the nets and you Just have a. A silence that was loud but completely. It was like. God, it was like the thickest silence that ever was made.
- [18:53]
B
That's such a good way to put it.
- [18:54]
A
It was so fascinating. And your story reminds me of this guy. They had this guy. I want to say his name was Marco. Oh, I'm thinking of a guy. Dr. Wiggins. There was a guy. Dr. Wiggins, maybe John Wiggum. He. He had his child. He raised his child with a monkey.
- [19:10]
B
Oh, whoa. That's cool.
- [19:12]
A
Oh, this is it. Sorry. Winthrop Kellogg.
- [19:15]
B
Oh, boy.
- [19:16]
A
Winthrop Kellogg's experiment, commonly known as the Ape and the child, involved raising a baby chimpanzee named Gua alongside his own son Donald under identical conditions to study the effects of environment versus hereditary on development.
- [19:28]
B
That's crazy.
- [19:29]
A
Yeah. In 1931, Kellogg and his wife bought Gua, then seven and a half months old, into their Florida.
- [19:35]
B
Florida. It's always Florida. There's nowhere else. Where else are you raising a monkey and an ape and a kid together? It's got to be Florida. It's not like this happening in London. You know what I mean? It's always Florida.
- [19:47]
A
It's all right. That's our Africa.
- [19:48]
B
Yeah, it's our Africa.
- [19:51]
A
He into their Florida home to grow up with Donald, their 10 month old son. Both children were given the same care and subjected to daily scientific observations. Can we see a video of it?
- [20:00]
B
There's no way this kid grew up normal. Oh, no. Look at this. Look at little shoes on them.
- [20:13]
A
I know. They put shoes on the chin.
- [20:15]
B
Kidding me. Do you ever just think I was born in the wrong era? Like if I was born in the 30s, I'd do this.
- [20:19]
A
Oh.
- [20:19]
B
First I'd have nine kids and five chimps. No problem. And I live in Florida.
- [20:24]
A
Oh, it was a different time. Look at them right here trying different stuff with them.
- [20:28]
B
That's crazy.
- [20:29]
A
Trying to put a hat on each of their head and then teach the monkey to keep it on its head. And he just keeps pulling it off the kids.
- [20:34]
B
Tickling. Oh, man. That's nuts.
- [20:37]
A
And they're just tickling both of them? Yeah, if you guys get to watch on the YouTube. I mean, this is absolutely ridiculous.
- [20:43]
B
I've never heard of this. That's crazy.
- [20:44]
A
What were some of the findings? Can you go back? Oh, here we go. Gua learned many human behaviors. She dressed in clothes, walked upright. Ooh. Used a spoon.
- [20:54]
B
That's crazy.
- [20:56]
A
Drank from a glass, open doors and imitated gestures of affection, sometimes outperforming Donald in motor skills and tasks. The Kellogg's Concluded that there are definite limits to how much non human species can be humanized. Towards the end, Donald began imitating gooa's chimpanzee vocalizations, raising concerns about potential language delays for the human child. Wow. So the human also ended up becoming more. More like the chimpanzee. Why did they end it? Did they say why?
- [21:25]
B
Because the chimp ate the kid's face. I mean, that's what all. That's how these things always end.
- [21:33]
A
It really is, dude.
- [21:34]
B
It's like there's no good coming to this.
- [21:36]
A
Look, it's the same reason why we ended the pit bull circus that we were doing in our backyard.
- [21:42]
B
Yeah, right. Yeah. Ends one way.
- [21:45]
A
Winthrop Kellogg concluded that while Goa behaved like a human child, in many ways, her physical and brain structure limited how human she could become, Confirming the experiment's demonstration of hereditary limits. After the experiment, Ghoul was returned to a primate center and sadly died less than a year later. Donald's later life was marked by tragedy as well. Dying by suicide at 43.
- [22:04]
B
God, that's not good.
- [22:06]
A
In short, the. The experiment ended due to concerns about Donald's language development. Goo is increasing strength and behavior. Yep. And the practical and ethical difficulties.
- [22:14]
B
I mean, it's just there's a whole argument for nurture over nature, but at the end of the day, chimpanzee is incredibly strong. They get violent. They're. The best way I think to describe it is when a chimpanzee sexually matures, it doesn't mentally mature past that of like a toddler. So when a three year old throws a temper tantrum, it's like, be quiet, you know, and you restrain them or whatever. When a full grown chimpanzee throws a temper tantrum, it rips you to shreds.
- [22:40]
A
Right.
- [22:40]
B
And it might not hate you or anything else. It's just a temper tantrum. The same as a two or three year old does. Right.
- [22:45]
A
Oh, it's fascinating. Yeah. I kind of interrupted you though. You were gonna. You were talking about. We were going into.
- [22:52]
B
Oh, well, you know what you were saying. Sorry, I don't want to interrupt you, but you were talking about that thick silence that you get in Africa. Yeah. When you and I were texting last week and you were like, dude, I'm. I'm overwhelmed at the moment. To me, that is the most like, ground, that silence that you're talking about. That's what like, brings me back, you know, Like I'm on my phone all day too. I'm sure you are working and texting and emails and blah, blah, blah. That feeling, though, that you just described, that thick silence that being out in the bush, you don't have to be in a tent in the middle of nowhere. You can be in a lodge or whatever. But being a little bit disconnected from modern civilization and more connect, more plugged into the bush and the wildlife, I think that's the most grounding thing, man.
- [23:28]
A
Yeah. And I think Africa, I do believe it feels like, makes like the purest form of it. I can't explain it. I've tried to. Yeah. I mean, you know, it just, I mean, they say it's the birthplace of civilization, I'm sure for a reason. Right now, I'm gonna look you straight there in your two eye holes right there, and I'm gonna tell you honestly, I've been taking Armra Colostrum. Our health has become the punchline. From seed oils to stress, from toxins to pollutants, the modern world is screwing with our health at the cellular level. But here's the thing. You don't have to settle for feeling like garbage. 24.7 armor Colostrum is nature's original health hack. Packed with over 400 bioactive nutrients that fortify gut integrity, strengthen immunity, revitalize hair growth, fuel stamina, elevate focus, and help you function like a human again. Welcome back, buddy. We've worked out a special offer for our audience. Receive 15% off your first order. Go to tryarmora.com theo or enter Theo to get 15% off your first order. That's T R Y A R M R A.com T H E O I put armor up, put it right in my smoothie. Bam. Daddy's doing good. What does the future hold for business? Well, if you ask nine experts, you'll get 10 answers. Bull market, bear market, raccoon market. Inflation's up, rates will rise. Fall her God, bury it in the yard. Can someone please invent a crystal ball? Until then, over 42,000 businesses have future proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one AI Cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory and HR into one fluid platform. With real time insights and forecasting, you're peering into the future with actionable data. And when you're closing the books in days, not weeks, you're spending less time looking backwards and more time on what's next. If I needed something like this, I would get this. Speaking of opportunity, download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning at netsuite.com Theo the guide is free to you at net suite.com/t h e o netsuite.com Theo so when did you know that it was kind of a career calling for you to work with animals and to work with nature so closely?
- [26:17]
B
I don't know if there was an exact moment. But you know, we came over to the States, we got kicked out of Zimbabwe, like I mentioned, came over here, went on welfare, bounced around. I got in trouble a whole bunch. Like, I felt very confined coming to the US because I'd grown up on a farm, 200 acres, barefoot, guns, motorbikes, freedom. And then I came to central California, or actually start in Oakland, California, which is the. Went into wealth, government housing, you know. And long story short, I felt very, like, trapped, I guess. Got in trouble a bunch. My mom moved us out of Oakland before I got in really bad trouble. Went to a little town in Central California called Cayucas. And it was great, like surfer town, 2,000 people. And I used to go diving and fishing all the time because that felt like the wildest place to be. Like, kind of connected me sort of a little bit back to Africa. And I think, long story short, I met a girl, I went to college, blah, blah, blah. But at some point, I. Wildlife. I'm one track mind. It's the only thing. Wildlife and rugby are the only two things I've ever really, really cared about. So I was like, so passionate about it. And then I was like, well, I'm not gonna be a safari guide in Cayucas, California, so I'll go to school to be a biologist. And that was sort of the next best thing is like, I'll. I'll become a scientific animal guy instead of a physical animal guy. And then ended up coming back to being a physical animal guy.
- [27:33]
A
Yeah.
- [27:34]
B
Yeah.
- [27:34]
A
Well, I'm glad you did, man. You have a new show that definitely, like, sparked me up. It's Animals on Drugs.
- [27:42]
B
That's right. We're texting. When I was in Columbia. That's right. Yeah, yeah, it's on hbo, Max. As of like yesterday, I think.
- [27:48]
A
Oh, yeah, dude. I was just like, dude, send me a gift from Columbia so I can snort it, brother. But take me through this show, Animals on Drugs, because, you know, they had like the cocaine bear.
- [27:59]
B
Huh? Cocaine bear.
- [28:01]
A
The cocaine bear. And then they have. I was trying to think of some. Oh, crackoons would be good.
- [28:06]
B
Raccoons. How did I not think of that as a title? Come on, Crackoons.
- [28:10]
A
What is, bro? What's in.
- [28:12]
B
That's a no brainer.
- [28:13]
A
What's that in your recycling bin?
- [28:15]
B
Yeah, you See a little bit of.
- [28:17]
A
Smoke coming up from the recycling bin.
- [28:19]
B
Yeah. The bins vibrating. Yeah. He's, like, smiling. Yeah.
- [28:27]
A
So, yeah, I was thinking of Crackoons. I'm trying to think of what.
- [28:29]
B
Oh, that's actually a movie. I didn't even know that that's a movie.
- [28:32]
A
You're lying.
- [28:33]
B
2024 official trailer. Crackoon.
- [28:35]
A
Oh, my God.
- [28:37]
B
I mean, look. So for that show, we capitalized on this. This hilarious thing that we're talking about. But the show is legit. It's. The reality is animals are getting into, like, human substances across the world, right? Whether that's bears breaking in to get on booze and getting hit by trains and stuff, because they're licking up booze off train tracks. Just a whole story. I can tell you. The cocaine hippos in Colombia, like Pablo Escobar brought hippos over. They escaped. Now there's 200 of them. They're going crazy because hippos are not native there. In Florida, we found an alligator that actually tested positive for having meth in its system because it was living in the cesspool behind a meth house. So that's what the show is about. It's about. It's really, at its core, it's a show about human wildlife conflict, but you don't get people to watch a show called Human Wildlife Conflict, but you do get them to watch a show called meth gator. You know, so that. That was kind of what it was.
- [29:24]
A
Oh, yeah. Or ketamyce. That's.
- [29:26]
B
I was thinking Ketamize. There we go, man. We need. We need like, four. You're like the chat GPT of drug animals over here.
- [29:31]
A
You're like, oh, you see a. Mice go in a hole. What about a K hole?
- [29:34]
B
Okay.
- [29:36]
A
He's just all, yeah, he's surrounded by cheese, but he can't even swallow. No. Well, take me through some of that. Like, so. So take me through the Escobar. When is that? When I was texting you in Columbia.
- [29:47]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [29:48]
A
What was that trip like down there?
- [29:49]
B
Sure. So, I mean, I had this idea to do that show a long time ago. And really originally, I just wanted to go work on the hippo problem in Colombia. So for context, Pablo Escobar brought hippos to his personal zoo called Hacienda annapolis in the 90s because he just wanted Nice.
- [30:04]
A
He just wanted big animals.
- [30:05]
B
Yeah. He built this insane place down there. And so he brought in giraffes and elephants and lions and all this stuff. When he died in 99, 90, 93. When he died in 93, the Colombian government came in and they're, you know, they had a shootout, he died, whatever. Then they came in there like, we'll take the lions, we'll take the, the giraffes, we'll take whatever. Oh, we can't do anything about these hippos. Like, hippos are gnarly. People think of hippos like fantasia, happy, whatever. Hippos are gnarly animals. And so the hippos, they angry. Super, super hungry angry. I say, no, they are, they're just very territorial, very defensive. I think on my Instagram there's clips of them charging me at the fence and stuff. But anyway, these hippos got out four of them. Now there's over 200. There's no predators because Colombia, not Africa, there's no lions to eat them, there's no crocodiles to eat them. There's unlimited food and they're killing people and injuring people. And, and so, and.
- [31:00]
A
But some of them have also ingested cocaine.
- [31:02]
B
Well, there was a rumor that Pablo Escobar used to feed them coca leaves to make them more aggressive to kill his, his enemies, which is a really cool legend. Whether it's true or not, I have no idea. But anyway, the Colombian government and I have been. So, you know, I work on these kind of large scale animal projects. So I, I started speaking with the col about this when there was like 100 hippos like four, five, six years ago. And they're like, please help. We're underfunded, we're understaffed. We need whatever help we can get to help mitigate this problem. So people, Colombia don't want to kill the hippos. They like them. They've created a tourist, like a tourism industry around them. There's like, kind of cute, the whole town there, where Hacienda Napolis is, I'm blanking on the name of it now. It's like hippo theme. There's like hippo statues everywhere. They've created like a thing around them.
- [31:45]
A
But so they're dangerous, but also it's part of the culture now.
- [31:48]
B
Yeah, exactly. So it's a weird thing where it's like, okay, there's this huge invasive species that's super dangerous, but the average people love them. Like, the people from Medellin will take weekend trips to go see them. And they don't want to kill them, but they don't want them to get worse because they'll hurt people. So what do you do? So we went down there and worked with The Colombian government, with Cornare, which is the organization down there. And we came up with this sort of threefold approach which doesn't kill them. So it's castrating them. Chemically castrating them, sterilizing them and relocating them. So I went down there with tranq rifles and chemicals and vets and all these things. And cotton. Cotton snip nuts off of hippos.
- [32:23]
A
Yeah, chemically castrating. So take me on that. Are you finding them in the wild?
- [32:27]
B
Yeah, yeah. So we build bomas, which are like giant, like funnel traps, basically, and then we bait them in with giant bags of carrots and beets and things like that.
- [32:36]
A
Boma, it's called.
- [32:37]
B
Yeah, there might be one on my Instagram.
- [32:40]
A
Do y' all sneak up on them?
- [32:41]
B
Yeah, yeah. So you. You sneak up on them. You find. Yeah, that's like a boma, that second picture there.
- [32:46]
A
So a boma trap. It's kind of like a kennel.
- [32:48]
B
Exactly. Okay.
- [32:49]
A
You put a lot of good snacks in there.
- [32:51]
B
You put all the goodies in there. And you make a trip wire so that when they go in, the door closes and then they go nuts, you know, and they start banging against the fence and blah, blah. So we're catching these hippos. It's super fun. And the little ones you can chemically castrate with a chemical called gonacon. Meaning, basically, you shoot them with this dart and the chemical goes in and it stops them from ever sexually maturing. So they grow up, but they don't. If you go to that one on the far right there, down. Oh, there's me doing surgery in the middle of the night. Yeah.
- [33:18]
A
Is this a castration surgery?
- [33:20]
B
Yeah, castration surgery.
- [33:21]
A
So this is her right here. So you guys have a hippo here that's been sedated?
- [33:24]
B
Yep. So this was a large female. She had four offspring with her. We chemically castrated all the four offspring with the gonacon, that chemical.
- [33:32]
A
Okay, so gonna khan. You inject it. So now.
- [33:35]
B
Sorry.
- [33:35]
A
Are those asleep as well?
- [33:37]
B
No. So them you can do awake. But the gonacon only works if you're pre sexually mature. Once you hit adolescence, it's too late. It just. The effects would just wear off. So that's me darting them there. I kind of saw it for a split second.
- [33:48]
A
Okay, so you. So you can dart them with the gon and it doesn't hurt them?
- [33:51]
B
No, it's just like. It's just like getting a shot.
- [33:53]
A
And then they can't have children.
- [33:55]
B
They can never have children. They care.
- [33:56]
A
They're okay with it.
- [33:57]
B
They. I don't think they know. Yeah. To be honest, I think they still get all the fun.
- [34:01]
A
Okay, okay.
- [34:02]
B
And. And then, but then the adults. That doesn't work on. So we have to go into the bush and catch the adults and then actually perform surgery on them, which is what that video was, which is much harder to do.
- [34:12]
A
What do you have here? Pause it for me.
- [34:15]
B
So that's the mouth of a hippo held open with a piece of like metal pipe between the tusks.
- [34:21]
A
Oh, my God.
- [34:21]
B
And then a breathing tube going into its diaphragm.
- [34:24]
A
So can you smell their breath while they're breathing?
- [34:26]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [34:26]
A
Is it pretty intense or is it okay?
- [34:28]
B
And they mostly eat veg? Well, they primarily eat vegetation, so it's not too bad. But it's kind of like a salad bar.
- [34:33]
A
Like being at a salad bar or something.
- [34:34]
B
Yeah. You know, they got some stuff in their teeth. It's hot. Like you get, you get your head up in there. It's like with this big, hot, sticky breath coming out. Yeah.
- [34:42]
A
That's crazy. And so you have their mouth prior to open. They're asleep.
- [34:47]
B
Yep.
- [34:47]
A
And so what do you do then? In order to. Because you can. You have to castrate them a different way.
- [34:54]
B
Yeah. So the males are easy. You just grab the nuts, lop them off, sew it up. Right. Takes a few minutes from when they.
- [35:00]
A
Reach in through their mouth to do it.
- [35:02]
B
No, you just go down downstairs.
- [35:03]
A
Why are y' all doing this then?
- [35:05]
B
That's just to keep them breathing and alive. So see, there's a pipe in the bottom, bottom right there, bottom left. That's a breathing tube. So that's just keeping them breathing. But this is a female, so females are way harder. You have to make an incision that's like this long reach in there. Feel for the gonads, snip them, quarter eyes them, pull them out and then close her back up. And if you don't close her up perfectly, one stitch breaks, water floods in there, get an infection and die. So it's got, it's a, it's like a 12 hour process per animal.
- [35:31]
A
Really?
- [35:31]
B
Yeah, it's a big. And you have to do it at night because it's so hot. If you do it during the day, they overheat in the sun because it's Colombia. So like you catch them, keep them as calm as you can until like 9pm Then you start putting them to sleep and work all night and release them at like, like 4 or 5 in the morning.
- [35:46]
A
Wow. And so how many people does it take to really pull this off? Honestly?
- [35:50]
B
Honestly, we probably had a team of 30. Yeah. It's a big to do.
- [35:54]
A
Is it exciting?
- [35:55]
B
So exciting. I mean, I get goosebumps talking about it, because it's just like. It's high adrenaline. The hippo's trying to kill you. You're. You're racing the clock before the sun comes up. You can't over anize the hippo because then it dies. And if we kill one, the freaking Colombians are going to kill us. You know what I mean? Not really, but they'll be so upset. My career is over.
- [36:12]
A
Yes.
- [36:12]
B
If I kill a hippo, giving certain. My career is over.
- [36:15]
A
Right.
- [36:15]
B
I'm canceled across everything. So it's like. It's like all this action and adrenaline, it doesn't sound exciting because you're spending 12 hours, like, with your elbows deep in a hippo, but it's. It's really exciting.
- [36:24]
A
Yeah, I think it's. It certainly seems high energy, especially since there's other people there and you guys are all locked in with this one mission. Oh, yeah, it seems like that game. Remember that game Operation you played as a kid? Yeah, it seems like that, but like. Like the highest level.
- [36:37]
B
That's right. Yeah, exactly. Right? It's fun, man. It's cool.
- [36:40]
A
Wow. Dude, that's incredible. So. So that was the experience of going down there, and. And those animals, the drug relationship was that Escobar brought them over, and so that's why they're there. And so that gets you into that whole universe of hippos in Colombia.
- [36:55]
B
Exactly. It's not that the hippos are doing lines, you know, it's just that they got brought here through the drug trade, and it's like a vessel to tell that story. Yeah, yeah. And that's network tv. That's. That's cable, Right. I'm on Discovery. That's how you do it on Discovery.
- [37:06]
A
Oh, it's exciting.
- [37:07]
B
Yeah.
- [37:08]
A
And it's, you know, it's cool.
- [37:09]
B
It's cool, man. Nobody else is doing that stuff on tv, you know, like, get to catch hippos and show the world how you cut their nuts off. And. And, like, this whole, like, backstory on Pablo Escobar. And I mean, it's like. It's like a rodeo, you know? It's cool. Yeah, I like it. Anyway. Oh, dude.
- [37:23]
A
It's fascinating to me. And do you get to keep any of the animals nuts or not?
- [37:27]
B
Dude, I wanted to, but in order to travel with animal parts, you have to have cites, permits, which is this international conservation thing.
- [37:35]
A
Oh, yeah.
- [37:36]
B
I wanted a jar of hippo nuts on my shelf so bad. So bad. But I left them all in Columbia.
- [37:40]
A
Oh, yeah, dude, you can't even fly out of Hawaii with an avocado.
- [37:44]
B
Nope, nope.
- [37:45]
A
So it's like, same thing.
- [37:46]
B
Yeah. So imagine trying to explain, especially in Colombia, you know, I got them like wrapped up, a little bit of paper towel tucked under my dirty underwear. They're like, what's that? It's like, yeah. That's gonna be hard to explain, but.
- [37:58]
A
Hey, I think they'll be glad that it's not okay. They'll be like, oh, dude. Yeah. He says there's a couple kilos of.
- [38:03]
B
Yeah.
- [38:04]
A
Of hippo.
- [38:04]
B
It's bam bam. But a different kind. Yeah, dude.
- [38:08]
A
I remember we went on a. I remember in South Africa, we had. We met. I was there doing. Performing one time with some really good.
- [38:15]
B
I bet you're huge in South Africa, dude.
- [38:17]
A
We actually did really good there.
- [38:19]
B
Yeah.
- [38:19]
A
I haven't been there in forever. I need to go back.
- [38:20]
B
That's. That's being very familiar with that culture. Your style of comedy is so on brand for that South Africa, like, audience, I think. But. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you.
- [38:29]
A
No, I need to go. I. And it's. I think it's been my favorite country that I've ever been to.
- [38:34]
B
Let's go, man. I'll take you around. I'll show you the bush side of it. It, dude, let's go. You do it, you do a show and then we'll go out into the bush, catch some animals, work with some creatures. It'd be rad.
- [38:44]
A
That would be really cool.
- [38:46]
B
Yeah, man.
- [38:46]
A
Do. One of my goals, I was even going to say I was thinking about this yesterday, is I want to get more involved with nature, like fishing, hunting, just learning how to be able to survive myself out in the woods over the next two years.
- [38:58]
B
It's such a grounding thing, Theo. I'm telling. I don't want to be all ethereal, but it's. It makes you so connected to the planet. It's such a good feeling when you feel self sufficient out in nature.
- [39:08]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I want that. I think it would just allow me a different level of peace, you know, and a different level of like, I don't have to be so attached to like these more worldly things because I know that I would be okay, you know, like a. A level of like confidence.
- [39:24]
B
You. You get confidence. You get such natural confidence and you. The outside. I don't know if you're like this, but, you know, I'm also not to your degree, but I'm in the public light as well. I read these, like, negative comments on YouTube or whatever, and I, like, get in my own head, and I'm like, that sucks. Like, why do these people not like this? Or whatever you got in nature. There's no time for that.
- [39:43]
A
Yeah.
- [39:43]
B
You know, you're there. You're. You're working on the fish you're trying to catch or the bird you're trying to hunt or the animal you're trying to save, and that's what you're on. You're not checking your phone. You're not looking at tweets or YouTube comments. You're just there.
- [39:55]
A
Yeah. Yeah. There's not, like, some little, like. Like a bear cub in the distance.
- [39:59]
B
On his phone losers trying to hunt me. You don't know. Yeah. You're like, I'm trying really hard now.
- [40:06]
A
That would be cool, actually, if animals were like, these. Look at these, trying to hunt us.
- [40:11]
B
You're, like, sitting in the blind, he's behind you taking a photo. He's like, look at this loser.
- [40:15]
A
That would actually be awesome, dude. But no, I do. I just. Yeah. I think I'm missing out on a piece of existence.
- [40:22]
B
Yeah.
- [40:22]
A
And I can kind of start to feel that. I didn't realize it for a long time, but I can start to feel.
- [40:26]
B
It more and more. I like that.
- [40:28]
A
But that would be great, dude. I'd love to put a show up over there, and then we go do something cool.
- [40:32]
B
Let me know, man. I'm gonna be in Zimbabwe at the end of October doing a big animal rescue. I don't know what your schedule's like. I'm sure that's pretty soon, but, you know, let me know.
- [40:40]
A
But I could try to put a show up because I wanted to go to, like, London anyway to interview this. There's a guy. There's a professor who specializes in genocides.
- [40:52]
B
Okay, that's. That's deep. Yeah.
- [40:55]
A
Yeah. And it's kind of just interesting, you know? So I just wanted to learn about why that happens over time. And because you would think that after a while in existence, we would get past that, you know?
- [41:06]
B
Yeah, right. The modern brain is like, we can't wipe out a group of people. Yeah, apparently not. Yeah.
- [41:12]
A
Yeah. Like, every article is always like, you can never do this again. And then it's like, hey, but we can do.
- [41:16]
B
So we're working on it. Yeah.
- [41:21]
A
But then it's like, you know, in the End you come back to some sort of survival. And sometimes survival is a sickness, I think, in people too, in a way, you know.
- [41:30]
B
What do you mean? Like, how is it a sickness, Sickness in people?
- [41:32]
A
Well, just the fact that you would, you would. Throughout history, there's been genocides and the people have annihilated other cultures. I mean, it used to be of like a flat, a badge of honor.
- [41:45]
B
Totally. Like, look what I did, right?
- [41:47]
A
Like conquering and stuff like that. And that's kind of, who's to say that that's right or wrong? I'm judging it through my perspective today, but at the time, it was probably the most regal thing, you know.
- [41:59]
B
But doesn't it go back to. And I, this is not my area of expertise. I'm not an anthropologist. But didn't. We're Homo sapiens, right? Didn't ho. Homo sapiens wipe out like the two other hominids? You know what I mean? If, I don't know if you can fact check that, but I think there was Homo sapiens, Homo Florencius, and Homo something else. And Homo sapiens were like, nah, we got to get rid of these other guys, you know? And that's like what we stemmed from. If I'm not, you know. Yeah, what is it with Neanderthals and. I don't know.
- [42:28]
A
Let me see what it says. Oh, the din. Oh, we were just talking about this the other day. The Denisovans were out competed by Homo sapiens, but proof of a direct wipeout is absent.
- [42:37]
B
Okay, there you go.
- [42:38]
A
So instead, limited resources and climate change has played significant roles. But who knows? I'm sure people got super tribal back then. One person could have had fire and they're like, we got, we got to kill these people before they come in, burn them.
- [42:51]
B
They're going to take our fire, right? We, we cannot let them take our fire. Yeah, totally. Yeah, I, I, but there you go. I'm wrong. So I, I, I didn't know that, but I thought there was that competition at play, at least.
- [43:02]
A
You were wrong. I don't even have a shot at that information.
- [43:04]
B
So at least you're firing off.
- [43:08]
A
You've had, you've had some. Thanks so much for coming, dude. This is awesome, bro. It's so much fun.
- [43:14]
B
Yeah, it's great. I want to get you out there, or at least see you go out there into nature and get connected with it.
- [43:19]
A
I would love to. It's really the South Africa thing is the thing. Let's do it, dude. I think it's big and I love South Africa, and I would love to go over there for a show and just get to have a new experience there. And then just thinking, what type of thing would I want to do? I did get to swim with sharks there once was nice, which was pretty cool.
- [43:34]
B
Hunsbuy up, like, Seal Island. Yeah, that's cool.
- [43:37]
A
Yeah.
- [43:38]
B
Yeah, that's a good experience, bro.
- [43:40]
A
It was super scary. It almost felt. It was just unbelievable. We laid out there in that sun, dude, I got the craziest sunburn.
- [43:49]
B
Got crisped. Yeah.
- [43:50]
A
I mean, like, colors of, like, fluid.
- [43:53]
B
Were just, like, purples and. Yeah, I know what you're talking about, man.
- [43:57]
A
What lagoon? It has been launched by the sun on my face because we went out with, like, some dude who. I think he was just a mechanic who had, like, a couple hours on his lunch break.
- [44:06]
B
Yeah. He's like, yeah, we'll make it work. That's South Africa for you. Yeah. He's like, I got a boat. Yeah, we'll figure it out. Yeah, dude.
- [44:14]
A
I mean, there was no cut. We're just lay. I mean, in the boiling heat.
- [44:18]
B
Yeah.
- [44:19]
A
But we got in those cages in the round circular cage, and we got in and some sharks came. One of them got stuck between two cages.
- [44:25]
B
Oh, no way.
- [44:25]
A
In the boat.
- [44:26]
B
And it was cool. That's rad, dude.
- [44:28]
A
It was hairy. I got to reach through and touch one of them.
- [44:30]
B
I can see you getting fired up on it. That's the best thing about, like, an adult reconnecting with nature. Not to say you're totally disconnected, but you get this kid, like, enthusiasm and sense of wonder that's been gone since you were, like, 7 years old. Looking at earthworms, you remember when your kid. You flip over log, you're like, whoa, dad, look at this earthworm. You know? Know, that goes away because you become an adult, and then you get back into it, and you're like, oh, that never really went away. I just, like, went a different direction. Ah. Yeah. I don't know. Sorry. What were you saying, dude?
- [44:58]
A
No, that's such an important thing to say. That never went away. I just went a different direction.
- [45:01]
B
Yeah.
- [45:02]
A
Because. Yes. Sometimes I think I even romanticize it. Like, so much of, like, childhood stuff is gone, but it's. But there's ways that it's still there. It's just like, yeah, you went a different direction, and that's okay. Okay.
- [45:14]
B
Yeah.
- [45:14]
A
But you can always go right back.
- [45:15]
B
That's the best, I think. That's what I think. Yeah. Soon we'll get you cutting off hippo Nuts. Yeah, dude.
- [45:21]
A
Oh, the thing I was going to tell you was we went on a safari one day. This. There was like some diamond miner, right? Like some very rich guy. Like some guy who was just being rich or whatever. Like, I tapped him on the shoulder. I was like, are you do. What are you doing? And he's like, being rich. He like, he could. He couldn't even, you know.
- [45:40]
B
You don't even know, dude.
- [45:41]
A
I him yawn once and he had $40. Right after he yawned, he had $40.
- [45:46]
B
It just fell out of his mouth. He's like, oh, that's where I put that.
- [45:49]
A
He had just that kind of wealth. But he took us to. He had his own animal sanctuary somewhere.
- [45:56]
B
Oh, interesting.
- [45:57]
A
And they took us there and we got to just go see a lot of endangered species, like the big five.
- [46:03]
B
Oh, sick.
- [46:03]
A
And a lot of endangered species. We just got to go look at them. And then, then six weeks later, in my inbox, in my email, I get an email from him. He goes, oh, that's it. That's it.
- [46:14]
B
Oh, that's brutal. Oh, the rhino. Yeah.
- [46:16]
A
And this. I cannot believe you just found this. And. And this. And he sent me this picture and he goes, the rhinos that we. That you guys went and saw too, a few weeks ago, poachers came in night and cut their horns off.
- [46:29]
B
It's so brutal, man. It's. It's an ongoing war over there for the rhino ivory thing. Yeah, it's brutal. But things like this are important. You posting it, you know, to an audience that's not tuning in for animals that goes, holy shit, that's bad. That. That's really cool. It's really important that people realize that it's shock.
- [46:45]
A
I. Because you hear about it.
- [46:46]
B
Yeah.
- [46:47]
A
But then I was like, oh, my God. The ones that we were looking at that we were so, like, enthralled by.
- [46:51]
B
Yep.
- [46:52]
A
And they were. Their whole body is left there in this one piece of them.
- [46:55]
B
Cut their face off. It's crazy. Yeah, yeah. That's a bummer, man. Good for you for sharing it, though. I really think that's great.
- [47:01]
A
Well, yeah. If you hadn't been here today, I don't even think I would have thought about it, man.
- [47:04]
B
Man.
- [47:05]
A
Is pornography causing a problem in your life? Do you find yourself watching porno for longer periods of time and having trouble stopping? Is porn affecting your relationship or dating life? Well, you're certainly not alone. Watching pornography has become so commonplace today. And oftentimes men use porn to numb the pain of loneliness, boredom, anxiety and depression. Shame and stigma prevent men from talking about these issues and getting help for them. I want to introduce you to my friend Steve. Steve is the founder of valor recovery, a program to help men overcome porn abuse and sexual compulsivity. Steve is a long term sexual recovery member and has personally overcame the emotional and spiritual despair of abusing pornography and has dedicated his life life to empowering men to do the same. Steve is an amazing person and he is a close friend of mine. I mean that Valor Recovery helps men to develop the tools necessary to have a healthier sex life. Their coaches are in long term recovery and will be your partner, mentor and spiritual guide to transcend these problematic behaviors. To learn more about valor Recovery, please Visit them at www.valorrecoverycoaching.com or email them at adminallor recovery coaching.com thank you. What are some close encounters that you've had with animals out there, man? That. That almost sometimes you're like, oh, you know, man, that gets that childhood engine, like, you know, just really revs it into the red area.
- [48:51]
B
Yeah, I'm not an adrenaline junkie, or at least I like to pretend I'm not right. But I get that rush when something like that happens. Literally. The hippo thing, I had a hippo charge me out of the water there. That was crazy. And everybody scrambled. I had an instance where a cease. One of the craziest ones. I never forget the one that always comes to the top of my mind. We were in Australia and we were interviewing people in this aboriginal village, like way up north in far north Queensland. And as we're talking to people, I hear people screaming, shouting. I look over and there's this guy holding a cinder block over his head like this. And he's about to throw it. I'm like, wait, wait. And I run over and there's a coastal taipan, which is one of the most venomous snakes in the world. Big brown snake. And he's about to smash it with this rock. And I'm like, wait, wait, wait. I'll catch it and move it for you. This thing right here, it's a big one. It was like five, five, six feet long. And. And so the guy, this original guy's about to smash it. I'm like, wait, wait, like, I'll catch it and move it for you. And he's like, okay, whatever. And the snake disappears under the house, right? This is like a house on like, like kind of like Louisiana, where they elevate the houses a little bit, you know, down south there, Satan's Right under them. Yeah, exactly. And so there's, you know, they're up on, like, cinder blocks or posts or whatever.
- [49:59]
A
Dude. It makes me so scared of snake under the house.
- [50:02]
B
So the snake disappears under the house, and the guy's, like, kind of mad at me. He's like, what the fuck, man? I could have killed the snake. Now it's in the neighborhood, you know, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, let me handle it. Like, I'll take care of it. I'm sorry. And it all happened really quick, so I grabbed my flashlight and I. It grabbed. Grab. Grab my snake hook, whatever, and I go looking for the snake. And my camera guys are filming. We're filming a show of Extinct or Alive, which show I did on Animal Planet a while ago.
- [50:21]
A
Yeah, we're getting into that in a minute.
- [50:23]
B
Yeah, yeah. And. And my camera guys are filming. I look from one side of the house. Not yet, but I'm looking. I'm like, crouch down, looking. And I see the snake in, like, the far back corner. And I'm like, oh, he's right there by the stairs. Come with me. Like, we'll go get him. So I grab my light and I jog around the side of the house, and I stick my head through the, like, slats in the stairs. They're like, this far apart, right? So I can just kind of wiggle my head and shoulders in. And I know the snakes over here because I've just seen him from the other side of under the house. I'm like, he's right over here. So I wiggle in. I turn my light on my headlamp, whatever it was, and I turn to the side, and I'm like, fuck, where's that snake? I can't see him. And all of a sudden, I just feel like this on the back of my neck. The snake has gone around to the other side. He's moving around. These snakes are fast. And he's literally licks the side of my neck. You know how snakes stick their tongue out like that? And then he starts crawling over my neck. And I just freeze. And, like, you see the hair on my arms right now? Like, it rattled me. Because one bite, I was like, 14 hours from a hospital, from one of the most venomous snakes in the world, a relatively aggressive snake. And I just freeze. I just stopped moving.
- [51:21]
A
One bite. Everybody knows the rules.
- [51:22]
B
That's right. That's right. Thanks, Dave. And, yeah, so I just. I freeze while the snake fully slithers up over my neck and then comes and coils up, like, three Feet from my head over here and then I like slowly back out. We ended up catching him 10, 15 minutes later, moving it, blah, blah, blah. But that moment where the snake like licked my neck right behind my ear there and then I started to feel like the underside of his mouth go on my neck. I was like, that's it. Like I can't move, I can't do anything. I'm dead. Like it's gonna realize it's sitting on top of a warm human and that it's been chasing him and just go. And that's it. I'm finished. I was, I was the most rattled I think I've ever been coming out of that. Yeah, I was just so like on edge while that snake was crawling over me.
- [52:06]
A
Well, as you're saying that I can feel my glands almost like just like tighten up.
- [52:11]
B
Yeah, dude. It was a horrible, horrible feeling. And that, that's my fault.
- [52:15]
A
You know what it is? And it's so. The fact that it's something so subtle, it's almost like a Dracula just being right there.
- [52:22]
B
And the hardest part was my stomach dropped. And your instinct is like, pull out, you know, like panic immediately, get away. And if I had done that, if I had even jolted, I think it would have just been, you know. And so I just had to try. Like it felt like like 10 minutes. And it was probably 10 seconds that it went over my neck for. But I was just sitting there like, please, please, please, please. And then it went over. It was crazy, man. It was terrible, terrible feeling. And it was very like novel, naive of me to go in and just stick my head in and like be like, I'll be your hero, I'll help. It was stupid, you know, it was just stupid. And I learned from that experience. So much so that I've done it again a dozen times. But like, I try not to be that stupid anymore, you know?
- [53:03]
A
Yeah. It's funny how sometimes ego and even knowledge can become a little bit of ego. Like enough knowledge makes you think, confident, you know, confidence can just teeter over the edge of, of wisdom in a way.
- [53:17]
B
Totally.
- [53:18]
A
You know, the fulcrum of that is so fine tuned that. Yes. It's like, it's almost like when you're like, I know what I'm doing and immediately you get checked by just by existence.
- [53:28]
B
Well, confidence is complacency, right. So you're like, I got this step aside. That means I'm complacent. If I even have that attitude going into it, it means I'm not fully focused, right? Like, and. And that time and time again, every narrow miss I've ever had, which is not that many, but there's been a few, is because I've been. First of all, I've put myself in that scenario. It's not the animal's fault, right. This wasn't the snake's fault that I stuck my head under the. The. The house. But it's always because I'm overly confident to the point of being complacent. Like, yeah, I can stick my head in here. I'll find the snake. You know, it's.
- [54:00]
A
Right.
- [54:00]
B
It's stupid, right?
- [54:01]
A
Yeah. Like, let me show. Like, it's not even. Like, let me show off. There's a part of you that gets so comfortable, right, that it almost just shows off because it's.
- [54:09]
B
Well, can I show you something?
- [54:11]
A
Yeah.
- [54:11]
B
Do you mind. Sorry to ask you to do this. Do you mind pulling up the last YouTube video I just posted on my YouTube channel? I don't want to dog leg us too long, but I'll show you where the snake almost got me recently. And again, it's a. It's a result of love. Sorry, it's the one with the. That silly crocodile thing. Yeah, right near the end, maybe the last two or three minutes there. Yeah, right here. So look. So I'm holding the snake. This is a fer de lance, the deadliest snake in. In the Americas. Killed, responsible for more deaths than any other snake.
- [54:37]
A
Now, where did you find this at, brother?
- [54:39]
B
Costa Rica. Oh, yeah. And so I'm holding this snake.
- [54:41]
A
This is the deadliest snake in South.
- [54:43]
B
America, in the Americas total. Across all Canada, United States, South America, Central America, too. Huge one. Biggest one I've ever seen. Seen. And for no reason at all, because It's a stupid YouTube video. He's peeing on me. I'm like, I'm gonna pin it and hold it behind the head. Now watch here. I'm holding it and I'm. I'm showing off like we just talked about telling the camera all about, you know, this is this deadly snake, and don't this many people a year die from it. And you got to be careful because of how they hide. Blah, blah, blah, blah. And I start to loosen my grip here. See how I'm looking to the side and I'm jabbering to the camera. So my grip's starting to loosen now. Watch what the snake does when he feels my grip loosen. It's coming in the next few seconds. I don't want to bore you, but you can almost see him he's ivy, he's side eyeing me right now. And this is complacency because I'm busy presenting to a camera like an idiot, talking about how deadly the snake is. And I'm adjusting my grip. I'm not, not paying attention. Here it comes. Any second here. Look at that. So he starts to open his mouth. See how close that is? That was me. Boots are up, dude.
- [55:41]
A
I'm ready for the coffin.
- [55:42]
B
Look at that. Look at that. Oh, that is so close to my hand with that fang. Those fangs are two and a half inches long. So he was maybe a quarter of an inch from getting me. And that would have been my hand gone.
- [55:52]
A
Play that one more time. Play that strike.
- [55:54]
B
There's that slow mo strike just a few seconds back here. Look at this. Boom.
- [55:59]
A
And what, what method did he use to be able to make himself have the torque to do that?
- [56:05]
B
But it's me. So if I had been holding the snake perfectly right, he couldn't have done that.
- [56:10]
A
Right.
- [56:10]
B
But I'd been holding him for two or three minutes, talking to the camera, showing off. Because it's stupid YouTube, right? And I had loosened my grip and slowly slipped down so much so that he had leverage in his neck. So that was the problem. It's not, it's. It's my game.
- [56:24]
A
His ground game.
- [56:25]
B
His ground game was strong. He would have whooped me. Yeah. And it was close, man. If I hadn't dropped him right there, I'm talking another half second. And that would have been just one nick, one fang into the hand. That's, that's definitely the finger gone. Maybe my hand.
- [56:37]
A
You know, when a snake bite happens, what is like. And especially when it's one that's as venomous as this?
- [56:42]
B
When you're saying, yeah, highly venomous, how.
- [56:45]
A
Quickly can someone really lose, like an appendage or something from that or potentially die? Like, how, how real is that?
- [56:50]
B
But all depends, right? It's, it's, it's like saying, what happens if I get stung by a bee? Well, are you allergic to a bee? How much venom did the bee put in? You got it. If you and I get stung by a bee, we're going to react completely differently, right? My hand might swell up like a balloon. You might have a tiny little mosquito bite, itch. So every human body responds differently to venom. Venom. And then there are multiple types of venom and then there are cocktails of venom. So there's, there's cytotoxic, hemotoxic, and neurotoxic, like brain location. Organ failure different. And then there's cocktails. So some snakes have a cocktail of like location venom and organ venom and some have respiratory venom. And so it's, it's just crazy. That's why anti venom, such a difficult thing because there's so many different kinds of snakes, so many different cocktails of venom. People all react differently to an allergy to venom. Means you're gonna die almost no matter what. Like, it's just, it's a crazy like variable of things. Yeah. Wow. But in that case, I would have been in big trouble. Yeah.
- [57:46]
A
God, dude.
- [57:47]
B
So don't do that. When we go back to the cool animal stuff. Don't do that stuff. Yeah.
- [57:51]
A
Are there moments where you feel like some animals are of God and some animals are of Satan? Do you ever feel like that hippos are of Satan? Really?
- [58:00]
B
They're such angry freaking animals. And there's a few animals like that, like cassowaries, if you know what they are. Big vulture, velociraptor looking birds. There's a few animals that just, you know, I'm not very religious so I'm using that term as jokingly. But there, there are some animals that just have terrible attitudes. Scroll down real quick. Check out that one where he's kicking. I saw it a second ago. He's kicking the guy's board. Like, look at that. You know, these things just come at you. They've got, they've got these talons, this head. Hippos are the same. If a hippo sees you, it's going to chart a Cape buffalo, like in Africa, the, they call them the black Death. Death because when they smell you or see you, they don't think about running, they just think about charging. And it's just some animals just have this attitude and I don't think it's, I don't think it's an ethereal thing. I think it's that hippos and cape buffalo and cassowaries, they've grown up with tons of predators. Historically they've been hunted so they're defensive instead of their fight or flight is just a fight response.
- [58:57]
A
Got it.
- [58:57]
B
Do you know what I mean? Like that's the only other choice, right? Yeah. And that is, that is just scary to work with those animals because at any given time they're going to turn on you versus run away from you. Yeah.
- [59:10]
A
Have you encountered like, I'm sure whenever you get out into these worlds of animalia and some of these worlds where you probably don't even speak the language, have you encountered People that are as dangerous as the animals, way worse people are always.
- [59:22]
B
Every close call we've ever. I mean, you know, not including those snake things or whatever, but every time that I've really felt threatened, which isn't like an instant spur of the moment, when you feel threatened from an animal, it's like, okay, it nearly bit me, that's over. When you feel threatened on a whole, it's because humans are so unpredictable. A good example is you're working in a country that has political unrest and they know that you've got money because you've got cameras or whatever. And now the government's got to get you. The mafia is going to get you. They've sent. You know, we had this instance in Myanmar where the government wanted to get us for having a drone and we had to flee. And like, those are the scariest things is the human element. And of all the places I've ever been, and I know this is an anomaly, but of all the places I've ever been, been Papua New Guinea. The last time I went to Papua, I've only been once. But the time I went to Papua New guinea, in 14 days, I saw two people get hacked by machetes. I was only there for two weeks. I mean, that's how, like, violent that society is. And it's a very tribal culture and things. One was in the capital of Port Moresby. The other was actually near to this place in a place.
- [60:23]
A
This is a real picture here.
- [60:24]
B
Yeah, real picture.
- [60:25]
A
And what's the place called? I'm sorry I stepped on you.
- [60:26]
B
This was near to Tufi. An area called Tufi. Yeah.
- [60:29]
A
So how do you know when you're meeting? I mean, this is a tribe, right? Right.
- [60:32]
B
And they were lovely. Little bit scary at first, but it was the town people that were. That were the problems, that were high on beetle nut and been drinking and fighting and those kind of things. But this was a. A tribe. You see the guy on the left of me that has the. The shark mask on? So this was a tribe that had a very special. That's shark jaws on his face.
- [60:52]
A
Wow. It looks like Otis Nixon a little bit.
- [60:55]
B
A good athlete too, but yeah, Otis was great. Yeah. So this tribe had a special relationship with shark fishing, so we went to seek them out to try and find these sharks. And we went and like got in this burial cave where they kept human skull. It was a whole thing. But then they took us to the village and we sat with this guy. The craziest part is these guys names are like John Thomas And. And Thomas Johnson and. Because the missionaries have all been through there.
- [61:22]
A
Like Collier Anthony.
- [61:23]
B
Yes. It's insane, dude. They all have these, these. These, like, British.
- [61:27]
A
Dear William.
- [61:28]
B
Yeah, it's. So you, like, meet this guy and he's like. Looks all intimidating and stuff. And then he introduces himself as, like, Paul Johnson, and you're like, okay, yeah, yeah.
- [61:38]
A
His name is Philip Banks.
- [61:39]
B
Yeah. It's so strange.
- [61:41]
A
Fresh Prince of Bel Air. You're like, that's a crazy name.
- [61:44]
B
Yeah, yeah. There you go.
- [61:47]
A
There he goes.
- [61:47]
B
Yeah. What a happy looking dude, though.
- [61:49]
A
Oh, he was, man. He definitely was a happy. That guy was a great character. He passed away a few years back.
- [61:53]
B
Oh, shame.
- [61:54]
A
Yeah.
- [61:54]
B
Yeah.
- [61:54]
A
I. Wow, dude. Yeah. So that would just be the scariest thing. Like, have you ever. Have you. Have you gotten into a situation where you had to pay to get out of it?
- [62:05]
B
Yeah, many. I try not to, like, advertise that because it's truly bribes. It really is. Like, there's no other way to put it. And it's so funny, dude. I've never shared this. When you get back from a shoot, right. Usually my. My expeditions are funded by like, Discovery Channel or. Or Animal Planet or something. Something. And then you submit like a cost or an expense report, and they're like, what's this $4,000 for? And you're like, groceries.
- [62:27]
A
Yeah.
- [62:27]
B
You know, you, like, handed somebody a stack of 4,000 bucks cash to not, you know, take your car tires or something, and you're like, yeah, I just got to lie about that. You know, like, there's. You can't write bribe money on the invoice. Yeah.
- [62:41]
A
It just goes to show that at every level of existence. Right. Whether it's like, like first world, third world, 50th world, there's this. There's a checks and balances system of capitalism. So often, for sure. And it's. And that doesn't even change. You can be in the shittiest place in the world. You pull up, you park your car, There's a guy that's gonna walk up and he's like, for $4, I'll make sure your car is there when you get back.
- [63:05]
B
Yep.
- [63:06]
A
And it's just. That's the cost of doing business.
- [63:09]
B
And if you don't pay the $4, you better believe your windows are getting smashed, you know? And you, you, you, you. It's funny because you talk to these guys in these offices at the networks or whatever, and they don't get what you just said. And you're like, no, no, I had to do that. Otherwise there'd be no. Like, they would have smashed the windows, taken all the cameras, you know, and it's like, oh, well, why did you have to bribe them? It's like, how do you not understand this? Like, it's, it's commerce, you know, like, this is how the world works outside of la.
- [63:34]
A
That's perfect, man. You mentioned a little bit ago one of your shows, Extinct or Alive or Alive.
- [63:43]
B
Yeah. What.
- [63:44]
A
What was one of your most surprising discoveries while shooting Extinct or Alive?
- [63:48]
B
Yeah. The tortoise in that cover image from season two. That was probably the biggest one. It was crazy. We went to this island in the Galapagos that basically nobody goes to, called Fernandina. That species of tortoise hadn't been seen in 114 years, and only one specimen in history had ever been recorded 114 years prior to. By the California Academy of Sciences. So to date, that animal that I'm holding in that picture, which has been doctored for the, the, like, trailer poster thing, is the rarest animal in the world. There's only one known individual of that species, and that's her right there.
- [64:23]
A
Damn. And it's a woman, huh?
- [64:25]
B
It's a girl. Yeah, her name's Fern.
- [64:28]
A
Some. Yeah, women. They, they, they. They're survivors.
- [64:31]
B
Yeah, yeah, they. Dude, chicks are like, we're talking about survival and stuff. Stuff. Girls are so much better at it than guys. It's not even close.
- [64:38]
A
Is that in animal kingdom as well?
- [64:40]
B
I mean, I was talking about humans, but yeah, probably in the animal kingdom, too. I mean, like, I feel like females, girls, women, whatever, they have more to fight for because they have kids to protect, you know, Whereas a male, I'll just make more kids, you know what I mean? Like, I'm not investing all of my body energy into raising this one young. Like, I'll just go find another mate. Yeah, I'm talking on, like, a very base evolutionary level. Like, it's just like I'm going to spread my seed feed, whereas I. It's incredible how, like, tenacious and hardy female animals, women, everything are. It's crazy.
- [65:11]
A
Oh, dude. I think. And also. And also men have that. They have testosterone in them that, like, you know, it's. That I'm gonna put my hand in the fire.
- [65:19]
B
Exactly.
- [65:20]
A
Right there. You're gonna lose 30 of dudes right there because they're trying to taste a car that's going by that's, you know.
- [65:27]
B
Stick my tongue out. Yeah.
- [65:29]
A
Let me look right here. In the animal kingdom, are females generally better at survival than Males. We looked at it on perplexity. That's what we like to use. Females in the animal kingdom are generally better at survival than males. In a large scale study of 101 wild ma' am wild mammal species, females lived an average of 18% longer than males. And more than 60% of those species. For most mammals, including species like elephants, lions and seals, females surpass males in longevity. The difference in lifespan between the sexes is often more pronounced in the animal kingdom than in humans, where women live about 7.8% longer than men.
- [66:05]
B
We're expendable.
- [66:06]
A
Yeah.
- [66:07]
B
Like, think if there's, if there's one guy and a hundred girls, you're repopulating the planet, right? If there's a hundred guys and one woman, you're not. You know what I mean? Like, we are expendable. Males across all species, for the most part, are expendable. Sorry, bro. No, I just.
- [66:25]
A
I felt something was. I knew something was off.
- [66:27]
B
Yeah. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. Damn. It should have been a check.
- [66:30]
A
I know, I just gotta. I gotta wander around with a. I gotta get some new knee pads. I'm gonna get some protective armor.
- [66:39]
B
I get some new knee pad.
- [66:41]
A
I gotta get some protective armor, dude. That's for sure. The idea that you're gonna find like extinct species is such, like, it's a. It's a cool sport, right? Because it's like, it's chasing this Atlantis in a way, kind of.
- [66:56]
B
It's the most ultimate hunting form of hunting. You're looking for the rarest thing in the world. So much so that the whole world thinks it doesn't exist anymore. Yeah, yeah.
- [67:05]
A
I'm thinking about, just thinking about extinction and stuff. It's like, where's that last day where people are just standing there with the clipboards and they're just waiting for the last like one of a species to die off.
- [67:16]
B
And then it'll like, there it goes. Yeah, yeah.
- [67:19]
A
It's like, like, yeah. What classifies something as extinct?
- [67:21]
B
That's a great question. And that's part of the premise of, like, why we made that original show Extinct or Alive is like. It's some, for the most part, and I'm oversimplifying, but it's some stuffy dude, British dude in a smoking jacket going, no, yes, I believe this is gone. You know, and then he like, checks a box. And the problem with that is, from a conservation model, the second you check that extinction box, that's it. There's no funding, there's no effort. It's gone extinct. Doesn't mean hiding or around the corner or there's a few left. Extinct means means give up and move on.
- [67:50]
A
We're out 86 the dodo bird.
- [67:52]
B
That's it. Yeah. And so I think it's super arrogant for humans to come in and go, that's extinct. I mean, not to. I don't want to belittle extinction. It's a very severe thing. But oftentimes we give up too quickly. We go, it's extinct. It's not here. Or now it's sort of been reclassified as, like, lost to science. But for a long time it was just like, up. It's extinct. Science hasn't seen it in 20 years. 30 years. 100 years. Used to be 30 years was the benchmark mark. And it's just sort of an arrogant thing to come in and say, like, you know, oh, I went to Borneo for 10 days. I promise you it's not there. It's like, shut up, dude. You know what I mean? What the are you talking about?
- [68:26]
A
It's not a game of a clue, you idiot.
- [68:27]
B
Yeah, exactly. And I'm oversimplifying it, but I think that's what ended up happening a lot is all this information. You know, there's millions and millions of species of animal out there, tons and thousands of scientists and things, and they're like, oh, that one's gone. Move on. You know, And. And what I like to do is be like, well, hold on, let's give the little guy a second shot here, you know, And I think why we were successful, why we found eight animals that were previously lost to science, was because we didn't give up after 10 days. Like, some of those expeditions were two months long, you know, living in tents, filming every day, like, setting camera traps, going out, baiting stuff. You know, it's. They were. They were hard work. I love the work, but they were hard work. And then it's like, oh, there it is. We found it, you know, and the first time was, like, utterly shocking. But then we did it seven more times, and it was like, oh, wow, there is a pattern here. And I don't want to say it's just like our show and the work I did. But between that and some of the conservation organizations and stuff, there was a little bit of a mentality shift of, oh, wait a minute, it's not extinct. It's like a lost species. It's been lost to Western scientists studying it or finding it. So now we'll put in campaigns to find lost animals as opposed to just decide they're extinct and move on. And that sort of changed things a bit.
- [69:35]
A
It's kind of like cold case files of animals. Animals.
- [69:37]
B
Yeah, totally. It's like go back in, you know, check, check the records. Yeah, yeah.
- [69:41]
A
It's like I don't think we had a. Let's see if we have a better DNA sample now.
- [69:44]
B
Yeah, exactly. And the technology's come so far.
- [69:47]
A
Dude, this sounds just like cold case.
- [69:49]
B
It is, it is, man. It's the same thing. It's forensics. It's animal forensics.
- [69:52]
A
Yeah.
- [69:53]
B
Yeah. Wow, that's cool.
- [69:54]
A
Are there animals out there who are. That are almost extinct? Like do you believe or we get like, does extinction happen every week on the planet and we just don't realize it? How common is it?
- [70:05]
B
3,000 species per year here.
- [70:07]
A
Nah, you're lying.
- [70:08]
B
You're lying. That's the estimated number. Yeah. And a lot of things, a lot crazy, right? What? Bro, a lot of things are going extinct before we've even described what they are. Like in the Amazon where there's all this clear cutting and stuff. Yeah, there are little species of. And I'm not saying they're. I'm not talking about a buffalo, you know, I'm talking about a bug this big or a little orchid or something. But before we've even described what it is or looked into the medicinal properties of it or tried to conserve it, it's gone. Because we wipe out that chunk of habitat. There you go.
- [70:38]
A
The estimated number of species that goes to every year ranges from about 2,000, over 100,000, depending on which scientific estimates and total species counts are used.
- [70:45]
B
Yeah, we, we, we. I know this is the chat GPT answer or whatever, perplexity answer, but we dug into this pretty heavily across a bunch of organizations and we estimate it was close to about 3000. Now most of that as in like 2500 are plants, but the other 5 to 700 or so are animals that are going extinct every year.
- [71:04]
A
But to think that we're losing plants, which are, I mean, unbelievable. Just the things that they're. The medicine and stuff that they're finding in plants, the possibilities.
- [71:14]
B
And it's, it's again going back to the technology standpoint. The more that we advance our technology, the more we use that technology to realize that old ancient ways of medicine and herbal medicine and stuff actually is really effective. Look at the subs game now, right? Like you go on. It's like supplements.
- [71:32]
A
Oh yeah.
- [71:33]
B
Every supplement's like, oh, this is. I'm making all this up. But like berberine which is a derivative of an almond shell or whatever, you know, and it's like beetroot. Beetroot. You're like, that's medicine.
- [71:42]
A
Yeah.
- [71:42]
B
You know, we, it's so crazy because I think medicine swaying, swung so far away in the pendulum where it's like it has to be fully synthetic and it's like, oh, wait, half the shit isn't working, giving you terrible side effects. Well, look over here. Beetroot actually is a great detoxifier. Why don't we just do that? You know, it's like, it's like the pendulum swung too far and now it's swung back a little bit bit where it's like, yeah, all these, all these natural things actually help us. And when you're losing 1500 species or so of those a year, I'm not saying any of them are going to cure cancer, but they might, you know, who knows? Like, we haven't tested it.
- [72:14]
A
Yeah, it's fascinating. It's crazy to think that that's, that, that that's where we are. And, and, and how much of that is just evolution and how much of that is man made, do you think or man like involved that the, that, that we, that species become extinct?
- [72:34]
B
It's a little bit of both. And I think the pro. One of the things that we see a lot is people are like, oh, it's all humans fault. That's why everything's going. Extinction's been around forever. You know, like extinction's not like we're not going to get rid of extinction and we shouldn't, but what we shouldn't do is accelerate it. And that's the problem.
- [72:49]
A
Yeah. You know, extinction been around, dude, I've been getting rid of these hoes forever. You feel me?
- [72:54]
B
That's it.
- [72:55]
A
Dude, I'm just joking. Hoes.
- [72:58]
B
Sorry, hoes. I'm very respectful. Yeah. But it's, it's, it's interesting because I think man made extinction. So they say that we're in the sixth great mass extinction event right now. There's been five others throughout history. Like when the dinosaurs went extinct, when the, when the earth froze over the grape freezing or whatever it's called. I don't, I'm not an anthropologist. Paleontologist. I don't really understand that as well. But they say right now we're in the sixth great mass extinction event. And that is, that is directly caused by human beings. So my thing is like, we shouldn't end extinction. We shouldn't stop extinction. We just shouldn't be like racing towards it as Much as we can. And when you're killing like, you know, a million, 8 million sharks a year or whatever it is, we're fishing and cutting down a thousand acres of rainfall. I'm making all these numbers up. A thousand acres of rainforest a day. We're like racing towards extinction. We're like, how fast can we get rid of these things? You know, and that's the problem. Like that's where we need to just reassess success. I'm all for human growth and development and everything else. We need it like we need to make the planet sustainable, but we got to do it in a way that's also fair to all the species, you know what I mean? So that we don't collapse kind of.
- [74:04]
A
On this topic, I have a question about extinction, like, and the idea that I know there's companies now that are bringing back or attempting to bring back extinct species. Right. That's been something that I know you're kind of close to.
- [74:16]
B
Yeah. De extinction.
- [74:17]
A
De extinction. But first I was wondering, do you think that after a lot of your time being in nature and spending time around nature and animals, do you feel like humans are supposed to be here? Or do you feel like, do you feel like we are an additive or.
- [74:37]
B
A deterrent where it's, it's really interesting question. What we should be as humans is docents of this planet. We're the smartest creature on this planet, bar none.
- [74:48]
A
Docent. What is it mean?
- [74:49]
B
The guardian of the planet. We should be the ones cultivating this garden that is planet Earth and taking care of it instead. And I don't know when this happened or how this happened and, and this may be a weird take on it. It almost feels like we're like a, like an ant colony, like a parasite on the planet where we're just like over expanding and just sort of taking over this whole thing. And I don't think we intend to do that. And I don't think there's a single human being on this planet that's like, like we should wipe out everything. We should take over. But everybody like running on their hamster wheel of survival and needing to eat and needing clean water and needing new shoes and blah blah, blah. It ends up being this sort of almost like parasitic thing on the planet. And instead what, what I think we need, and this is such a weird answer, but is this sort of mentality shift of like, okay, there's a lot of us, there's 8 billion people here, or 10 billion, whatever we're up to now, how do we Take care of the planet so the planet takes care of us instead of. Of how do we industrialize as much as possible and take from the planet. Now, I don't think people want to take from the planet. I don't think generally they do. It's just. I believe we should be here. We're supposed to be here. But I think we've lost sight of the fact that as the most. What's the Peter Parker quote? With great power comes great responsibility. We have that power. We need to be responsible for that planet.
- [76:06]
A
Yeah. Yeah. I almost wish there was, like, a breathalyzer for people that were in power.
- [76:12]
B
Interesting.
- [76:13]
A
So you could just see if they're like, dude, like, all right, just blow in here. Make sure you give a about.
- [76:18]
B
You good? You good here? Blow. Yeah.
- [76:20]
A
Have you watered your plants at home today?
- [76:22]
B
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. You good to drive this planet or not? Yeah.
- [76:27]
A
Yeah, dude. Hey, I'm gonna need you to pull this planet over to the side of the road for a second.
- [76:30]
B
Yeah, let's take it. Let's take a quick look at you.
- [76:32]
A
Yeah, dude, that's hilarious, bro. Thank you, bro. That's. That's so funny. But, yeah, I don't understand why, if we can tell if somebody's drunk, we can't tell if they have a moral compass when it comes to trying to be ethical or, you know, trying to. Yeah, try, I guess. Trying to care about things outside of themselves, you know? But maybe that's coming.
- [76:56]
B
I think it's coming. And I also don't think, like, I hate the idea of me sitting here and going, theo, don't. Don't use a plastic bag at the grocery store. Come on, man. And, like, guilt tripping you? I use plastic bags at the grocery store.
- [77:09]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [77:09]
B
But you know what I mean, it's like that. What's the bigger offset? It's like, okay, you know, like, fine, we shouldn't be using as many plastic bags. But also, like, let's just choose. Make smaller choices that add up that don't impact us. You know what I mean? It's like, don't be preachy. Just care a little bit.
- [77:26]
A
Yeah, that's it.
- [77:26]
B
It's not that hard. You know what I mean?
- [77:28]
A
Yeah. And I think also that I think some, you know, we're all at such. The whims and responsibilities of so many bigger corporations, not to put it onto them, because we all play a part in our own governance as humans and just governing ourselves. But the fact that, you know, that we live in societies that have dirty water just the things you're like, what are we doing right? Like, we could be doing so much better than this.
- [77:55]
B
I think so many of these things are becoming cool and mainstream, though. I just saw a thing from Mr. Beast a couple days ago where he got, like, I don't know the number, like, a million people. Clean water. That's as mainstream as it gets, man. He's the biggest YouTuber on the planet, and YouTube's the biggest medium on the planet. Like, I think that's awesome.
- [78:11]
A
Yeah.
- [78:11]
B
You know, like, if you're making clean water for people that don't have clean water mainstream, how cool is that?
- [78:17]
A
Hell, yeah, dude. Yeah. I've been hearing about this initiative for a while. Let me see. Mr. Beast launched his Team Water campaign in August 2025 to provide 2 million people with clean water.
- [78:26]
B
Two million people?
- [78:27]
A
Heck, yeah.
- [78:28]
B
That's so cool. Like, how much cooler is that than, like, you know, like, watch me drive my Lambo or whatever, you know? It's like, this is mainstream now. Now, bro.
- [78:36]
A
100. Especially the fact that everything is becoming privatized. The fact that the government of Michigan couldn't do this for their people.
- [78:44]
B
Right.
- [78:45]
A
But here he, you know.
- [78:46]
B
Right. And individuals doing it as opposed to a nation or a government. That's. That's badass. And I think I really. I mean, I'm always an optimist, but I think the world is going to, like, follow suit. Like, I feel like people. When people like Mr. Beast are leading the charge, everybody else can be like, yeah, this is rat. This is awesome. Awesome.
- [79:02]
A
Well, it's funny that somebody who had to come along to take care of, like, healthy environment was. Had Beast in their name, you know.
- [79:08]
B
It'S kind of badass. It is pretty cool. It's pretty cool. Yeah. Especially for a vanilla white guy like. Like Jimmy.
- [79:15]
A
The campaign's core promise is that every dollar donated provides one year of clean water for someone in need.
- [79:20]
B
That's so cool.
- [79:21]
A
Yeah.
- [79:21]
B
Yeah. And I think, you know, like, not that I'm anywhere near a Mr. Beast level, but, like, this is what I hope to do one day. Day is to make wildlife conservation and science mainstream and cool.
- [79:32]
A
Yeah.
- [79:33]
B
You know, it's like, if it's cool, people will do it.
- [79:35]
A
Yeah.
- [79:35]
B
You know?
- [79:37]
A
Yeah, I agree, man. I think I. I think you're right. I think having the attitude that that's where we're headed, that let's take some of this stuff out of the government's hands. Let's put it into people's hands, because a lot of government has gotten so Corrupted and can be so corrupted even going back to like, what you're talking about in different countries and, and where you grew up in. And like the influence of government can get so. It can get so desperate.
- [80:00]
B
Definitely.
- [80:00]
A
Whereas hopefully the heart of an individual human and, and individual humans overall can. Can hopefully remain. Can. Can remain more hopeful and uncompromised, you would hope.
- [80:14]
B
No, in no organization, government body, NGO is going to have the passion and the drive of an individual. Obviously, Mr. B's thing is clean water for people.
- [80:23]
A
People, right.
- [80:24]
B
Nobody. I don't care if you're the government of the United States. You don't have that same passion that that individual has. You know what I mean? And that's where impact comes from. It comes from that, that passion.
- [80:33]
A
It's so true. And you start to realize that sometimes too. Like, you're like, oh, I see how some. Somebody cared.
- [80:41]
B
Yeah.
- [80:41]
A
And they just kept caring and they.
- [80:42]
B
Just kept doing it.
- [80:43]
A
Yeah.
- [80:43]
B
They just kept hammering it until we.
- [80:45]
A
All cared and it started to figure things out.
- [80:47]
B
Yeah. It's radio.
- [80:49]
A
I want to talk about the de Extinction, Right, sure. So take me into some of that world. There was a company, there's a company, Colossal.
- [80:56]
B
Colossal Biosciences.
- [80:58]
A
Colossal Biosciences, who recently they were in the press with recreating the direwolf.
- [81:03]
B
That's right, yeah.
- [81:05]
A
Was it actually recreated?
- [81:06]
B
Yeah. So there's some interesting stuff here. So I, you know our buddy Joe Rogan. I connected him with Ben Lamb, the CEO of Colossal, and they went and spoke about it. And I'm a. I'm a conservation advisor to Colossal. So I don't. Can't tell you much about genetics because I don't know much about it, but I know a lot about conservation. So I help say here's where we should put the dire wolf if we release them, that kind of thing. You know, the conservation side of it. Not going to release direwolves, by the way, but that's, that's the role that I fill there. So I'm luckily on the inside of this de Extinction thing. The direwolf's interesting. There's a woman named Beth Shapiro who's in charge of it and she can explain the. The genetics wholeheartedly. What my understanding of is it or isn't it a direwolf, which is your main question, is Colossal found through. They did more genetic sampling than anyone else has ever done, and they found that the dire wolf was actually closely related to a gray wolf, which is what they built their direwolf after, or they mod they built it from rather versus the people who got upset and said, this isn't a dire wolf is because they thought dire wolves were originally more closely related to jackals, which is a different kind of camp. So my understanding, which is very limited because I'm not a geneticist, is that they did make basically a giant white gray wolf, which is what a direwolf was, according to the most varied genetic sampling that's ever taken place. Not an expert, but I think the thing to think about is not the minutiae, at least for me, of is it a direwolf, isn't it? What genes does it have? It's like saying, are. Are you a human? Am I a human? Well, but Theo's got long brown hair and Forrest has short brown hair. This guy has a beard and that guy's a goatee. It's like, wow, they're not the same. It's like, right. But we walk the same, we talk the same, we eat the same, you know, we fill the same ecological niche. And I think that's the point of what the science is.
- [82:49]
A
Okay.
- [82:50]
B
Putting dodos back in Mauritius is going to help the forest. Putting thylacine back in Tasmania is going to help with the overabundance of all these macropods, which are like marsupials. And that's what Colossal is trying to do with the de. Extinction, at least as I understand it. And I think that's awesome.
- [83:05]
A
Okay, so. So do you think that they. So they're kind of creating something as close as possible?
- [83:11]
B
That's right. Right, yeah.
- [83:12]
A
Okay. And by creating something as close as possible and putting them back into animal society, basically, it will help fulfill a space that could help nature be more robust.
- [83:24]
B
Exactly. That's. That's a perfect way to put it. A good example is like, imagine aliens came to Earth and they found a tribe in the middle of the jungle and the tribe had jaundice and they're like, oh, all humans are yellow right now the aliens think humans are yellow. That's how humans are, are. That's how we look at, say, Tasmania. We go, oh, Tasmania is an island nation that just has a. Tons of roadkill and a bazillion macropods. Well, it actually shouldn't. It's very unhealthy. Just like our, our tribe with jaundice. Right. Like, it's a very unhealthy population because it's lost that little niche, that thing. And in this case, we're talking about a thylacine, which. Like a Tasmanian tiger. So if they bring that back or Something very, very close and similar. Looks like it walks, like it talks like that, acts like that. And it's not like they're just gonna be like, all right, we brought them back. Chuck them out there. You know, it's gonna be a slow thing. And that's the part that I like to help with. But if they're able to put that back into the ecosystem, they're gonna balance out that ecosystem. And that balance creates health, gets rid of diseases, gets rid of over overpopulation, all the things that throw a system off balance, which I think's cool. And that's why I love it. Like, I love the idea that we can right humanity's wrongs. Like, where we've taken to the stuff with, like, dire wolves and mammoths are less for me, but the stuff where they're like, here's where humans took an animal, killed it till it was completely gone, and here's where we can come in and go, we can fix it. Then I'm like, let's go, let's go.
- [84:45]
A
Do you know if you. If we would ever be able to create, like, you know, create the woolly mammoth, create dinosaurs, you know, do you know that? If that. If that's possible.
- [85:02]
B
What I know is that if you take something that has really healthy, intact DNA and has a close living relative, for instance, you take the mammoth, because mammoths only died out 10,000 years ago. And so there's lots of fresh DNA frozen in ice and tusks. And you know, that guy John Reeves up in Alaska, you know, that is. This guy's got this crazy place where he gets all these tusks and mammoth chunks, stuff. He's even eaten mammoth. Crazy dude. He's super cool.
- [85:27]
A
Oh, really?
- [85:27]
B
Yeah. This guy, guy. So he's constantly getting mammoth parts, right? So there's really good DNA. Now you take. You take that and you take an Asian elephant, an Indian Elephant, and they're 99.6% related to a mammoth, okay? So now you've got really good DNA. You've got an animal that's 99.6% related. All you've got to do is combine those to get that.04% and you've made a mammoth, essentially, dude.
- [85:52]
A
And then you've made a movie called Mammoth Maths, ma'.
- [85:54]
B
Am. Maths, math. Mammoth Math. Math myth.
- [85:58]
A
I don't know the math.
- [85:59]
B
The math myths. That's hard to say.
- [86:01]
A
And they all have lists and.
- [86:03]
B
Yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah, dude.
- [86:06]
A
Being met on meth and having a list would be the worst.
- [86:09]
B
Boy, that'd be hard to follow. Wow.
- [86:14]
A
So. So that's what you're saying. So it's like we're gonna get. So you're getting as close as you can get.
- [86:18]
B
Yeah.
- [86:19]
A
Do you think we could get into, like, actually increasing the scale then over time? I mean, do you think some of those. Those things are possible?
- [86:24]
B
I do, yeah. I think with technology will be. And that's why I don't think a dinosaur is possible. As dinosaurs died out millions of years ago.
- [86:30]
A
It's too far.
- [86:31]
B
That DNA is just shattered. You know, it's like the puzzle's too hard to put back to. You take an egg, you crack it, it's like, oh, these cracks goes back together, you smash it, you're like, I can never get that egg back together. You know, it's like that. That's how I see it. Yeah.
- [86:43]
A
Now, how interesting would it be then, though, that if certain companies own the DNA or own this genetic mapping that's able to put these things back together, then now animals would in some way become kind of privatized in a weird way?
- [86:59]
B
I think it could. I really do. Like, you know, I don't know what, how that would work, but imagine you're this crazy billionaire and you're like, all right, the technology's there. I know it's gonna cost $500 million to bring back a. I'm making this up. Titanoboa. I don't know if you know what that is. Giant, 50 foot long anaconda.
- [87:19]
A
Bring them back.
- [87:20]
B
Right. So there's probably no such thing as healthy titanoboa DNA. But what we could probably do, I'm making all this up as we go with the technology, is take a regular anaconda, take out its growth restrictor through genetic engineering and make it 50ft. And this guy's like, I want. I want the titanoboas and I have 500 million now he's just privatized this mutant creature.
- [87:43]
A
Probably Nicholas Cage would do it.
- [87:45]
B
Yeah. You think?
- [87:46]
A
I think.
- [87:47]
B
Seems like a Nick Cage kind of thing to do.
- [87:49]
A
Yeah, I think it would just be cool. You know, you teach a titanoboa to just get. Bring you some. Bring you in your date, some almonds or something while you're watching Shane Gillis's tires on Netflix or something. That'd be crazy.
- [88:02]
B
That's just the weirdest image I just painted in my head as you said that.
- [88:07]
A
Let me bring up the information on the titanoboa. Let me just rattle it off so we know what it is.
- [88:12]
B
That's Pretty. Pretty. It's just watching Shane Gillis's tight bears.
- [88:16]
A
Titanoboa is an extinct genus of. Of giant boid, the family that includes all boas and anaconda snake that lived during the middle and late paleocene, was first discovered in the early 2000s by a tropical research institute. Is the largest snake ever found at the time. Titanoboa could grow up to 42ft long, perhaps even to 47ft long and weigh around 1600 to 2500 pounds.
- [88:44]
B
That's crazy. Man. Man. Like imagine. Imagine a snake that was eating full grown horses.
- [88:52]
A
Yeah.
- [88:53]
B
You know what I mean? That is so crazy to think about. Yeah. But I don't know. Yeah. To your point, I think they could privatize these things. I. I certainly know that that's not what Colossal's goal is. They're just trying to fix the ecosystem and get carbon credits and whatnot. But it's a crazy thought. It's a crazy thought. Nick Cage, don't do it. It. Yeah, yeah, dude.
- [89:15]
A
It would probably be like some of the richest people ever would be doing it. Probably Nick Cage. Sam Altman would probably have some, you know, like a beautiful parakeet or something that's never. That makes a sound that only he can hear.
- [89:29]
B
What would you have?
- [89:30]
A
O. Oh, I'd have probably one of the most famous. Probably. Probably I would have a hamster or a girl gerbil.
- [89:38]
B
Okay. A giant one or just standard?
- [89:41]
A
Pretty big.
- [89:41]
B
Pretty big. I like that. Like you ride it to town.
- [89:44]
A
I mean, I would at least break it out to show the ladies at night.
- [89:47]
B
Yeah, that's smart. Yeah. Pick up gerbil.
- [89:49]
A
Yeah. What is that?
- [89:50]
B
Yeah. Trying to pick up Richard Gere or what are you doing over there?
- [89:54]
A
They're like, oh, is that a French bull gerbil?
- [89:56]
B
A French bull gerbil? No, I just breathe funny. Yeah.
- [90:02]
A
Dude, that'd be so great if you had a French bull gerbil. You would get all of the girls.
- [90:06]
B
Yeah, yeah. Nothing gets pussed like a French bull gerbil. That's a fact.
- [90:11]
A
Oh, it would be wet watching a French bull dribble get out of the pool and then shake itself off after.
- [90:16]
B
Yeah.
- [90:17]
A
Yeah.
- [90:18]
B
The girls are just like, oh, Theo, I'm yours.
- [90:21]
A
Brassieres are just landing on it.
- [90:23]
B
It's like. It's like a rock concert.
- [90:27]
A
Are there any species that you think should go extinct?
- [90:32]
B
I don't think. I mean, there's invasive species that need to go locally extinct. Like, we shouldn't have Burmese pythons in the Florida Everglades, right? I don't know if you know about that. The big snakes in the everglade. Yeah, they're a problem. Like that's localized extinction that should happen. But that's again, because we've caused a problem. There are other animals, and this is a very unpopular opinion. They're trying to make themselves extinct. Panda bears. Panda. If you, Theo, if you're at a zoo and you go to a mama panda bear and you offer her an apple, she will hand you her baby for that apple. True story. You can literally find a video what I just said. I mean, these things are trying to go extinct. I don't want them to go extinct. They're incredibly cool, but they are so dumb. Like, look at them us. Give mama an apple and you can just take her baby away. I mean, that should not be. You know what I mean?
- [91:18]
A
Because they're just so. They're just addicted to the food.
- [91:21]
B
They're food motivated. They're bad parents. They're. They're sort of a creature that. And I again, I don't want to see them go extinct. I think they're super cool, but they're sort of a creature that naturally was probably edging towards extinction before humans intervened. Another good example is the great auk. So this is a bird that once had colonies of millions and millions.
- [91:40]
A
The great auk.
- [91:40]
B
Great auk. It's like basically. So penguins are from Antarctica, the south. This was kind of our version, the northern version of a penguin. Yeah, yeah, Northern penguin.
- [91:49]
A
Let's go.
- [91:50]
B
And they had these huge colonies of millions of birds. But during the. When, when down feathers became a thing, we drove them to extinction. Humans did. But had we not done that? Had humans not done that? They probably were on their way towards extinction anyway because their numbers had shrunk and shrunk and shrunk. Their colonies had shrunk and shrunk and shrunk trunk. There was only 10 or 12 or whatever colonies of these birds left. So they were like on the road to extinction anyway. And then humans came in and put the nail in the coffin. Got it. So naturalized extinction does happen. And it's a normal thing, but it's probably not good when industrial consumption, like I'm going to take every feather from every auk I can, comes in and speeds up that process. And the reason I say it's not good is because nothing else can adapt. All the animals that would eat great auk that relied on great auk, all of a sudden they're gone overnight. Whereas if they slowly die out over time, nature is Such a complete system that something else comes in to take its place. The animals find a new food source. A different bird comes in and starts nesting there. You know what I mean? Like, it adapts. Whereas if we just come in and drop the knife, it's like, oh, shit, like the whole thing's broken.
- [93:01]
A
What's the greatest example of that? Where humans have come in and affected an ecosystem so much with kind of like leading to the extinction or loss of an animal that you believe has had the largest effect?
- [93:13]
B
Probably a combination of things in Australia. Like, in Australia, we came in, we brought cane toads, which is a big frog from South America, that we brought them in because we started farming sugar cane in Australia. And then they got cane beetle, which is a parasite. So they're like, hey, let's get cane toads in to eat the cane beetle. Well, the problem is these giant ass toads that you're seeing here. They came in, they have these venom sacs. See those big bulbous things behind its eyes that's full of venom. Yeah. And nothing in Australia has ever been adapted to. To tolerate that venom. So they brought these cane toads in. Cane toads, everything would try and eat them, all the goannas and the snakes and stuff, and they'd be dropping dead. And so this single frog, this act of bringing in these frogs to help combat the cane beetle has probably had one of the greatest ecological disasters in history. And, like, the country of Australia is at something like a 70% red in animals because of these things.
- [94:08]
A
Wow.
- [94:09]
B
Yeah. It's crazy. And that's a huge straight human fumble. Like, we're gonna put. We're gonna bring. It wasn't a removal. It was bringing something in, but it. Same. Same effect.
- [94:17]
A
Who brought them there?
- [94:19]
B
Sugarcane farmers? I don't know who specifically. Yeah.
- [94:23]
A
God, that's wild.
- [94:24]
B
Dude. We were crazy.
- [94:25]
A
We. We were doing a two. We were doing some shows up in. I want to say it was Maine or New Hampshire, right along the coast. And we went down, but by the docks because it was beautiful down there to see in the boat. It was like a kind of like all like about an hour before sunset. And we had a show nearby, and we just stopped in this little town, and some of the guys who were. They were bringing in lobster traps, and they all. They had all these things on them called sea squirts.
- [94:54]
B
Okay.
- [94:54]
A
It was a plant. See if you could bring it up.
- [94:56]
B
It's like a. Like a sponge, right? Right.
- [94:58]
A
Yeah. It was like a thing that it got. It looked hollow. It almost looked plastic. Sea squirts, also known as acidians or tunicates, are marine filter feeders with a sack like body covered by a tough cellulose based tunic. Yet they almost look like it was a candy or something. It was just full of like kind of water. They filter bacteria and plankton from water drawn through their siphons. And their larvae possess a primitive backbone, making them a part of the cordofile. Them. What does it say that they. How did they get to America?
- [95:30]
B
Are they invasive?
- [95:32]
A
This, this, these, these guys were saying these were all invasive. They all came from Asia.
- [95:36]
B
Oh, really? Oh, that's interesting. Oh yeah. They're invading Long Island Sound, attaching the hulls of commercial recreational ships being transported in their ballast water, a process known as hull fouling.
- [95:48]
A
They also could have been introduced via odd aquaculture shipments such as oyster seed, or by hitchhiking or fishing equipment.
- [95:55]
B
There's another huge example of that called a zebra mussel or zebra mussel, which is in all the lakes across the US and they get so bad. See how they grow on everything that like your boat engine and stuff gets filled with them. And it's crazy because all you have to do is run your live well, you know, to go bass fishing or whatever. And the fry is microscopic. So then you have one drop of water with a little bit of fry in it and you take your boat to another lake. Lake. They're all over the lake.
- [96:20]
A
What does fry mean?
- [96:21]
B
Like the larval stage, the baby. Wow. Yeah.
- [96:24]
A
God. I know. And that's man. That's man doing that probably most of the time.
- [96:30]
B
And oftentimes like the cane toad was an intentional. This is completely unintentional.
- [96:34]
A
Yeah.
- [96:34]
B
And we've done that over and over, like taking rats to New Zealand and Hawaii and blah, blah. And it's just humans doing what humans do, you know, just traveling and learning. Crazy thing, you know. Dingoes. We brought dingoes to Australia. Humans brought dingoes to Australia 4,000 years ago when aboriginal people came across from, from Indonesia, New guinea, into Australia. They brought dogs with them. And those dogs were dingoes. They're like the OG invasive species and they're like a national treasure in Australia. But they've been there 4,000 years, but humans actually brought them there.
- [97:05]
A
Yeah, they weren't even supposed to be.
- [97:06]
B
No, dude.
- [97:07]
A
That's the kind of shit that happens, dude. My step grandmother, she brings her fucking cat over to Thanksgiving and everybody's fucking pissed. That thing is a piece of.
- [97:17]
B
Most cats are. I hate cats, but yeah, I feel you peeing everywhere. Yeah, yeah.
- [97:24]
A
What is One of your biggest like sleeper creatures. Like a creature that we are all kind of sleeping on, that people don't know how awesome it is or that just doesn't get the, the acclaim that it should. You think?
- [97:36]
B
You know what I think is a good one? Soft shelter turtle. A turtle with a soft shell. Why? It's so crazy.
- [97:42]
A
Very brave.
- [97:43]
B
It's brave. It's nuts. These things evolved away from having a hard shell.
- [97:47]
A
It's like a gay dude in the military kind of, you know.
- [97:51]
B
No, I don't. Please explain.
- [97:53]
A
I don't know how to explain. I'm just guessing.
- [97:55]
B
Fair enough. Yeah, fair enough. It's just brave. It's just brave. Yeah, yeah.
- [97:59]
A
Never mind. Thank you for your service. Don't ask, don't sell.
- [98:04]
B
Don't ask, don't shell. I don't know. I think these things don't get enough credit. You see them on highways in Florida and stuff.
- [98:11]
A
So they're really. The shell is soft.
- [98:13]
B
Soft. It's like, feels like leather.
- [98:14]
A
No.
- [98:15]
B
And it's just such a weird. Like if you think about a turtle, you think about this, this like living rock flippers. Its head, its feet, whatever. Then you got this guy like, what the hell is this guy doing? He's got this leathery shell. There's soup. They get like this big. There's certain species that get. If you look up the Rapha, this, they get massive. Like I'm talking about the size of a car. Soft shell turtle. Talk about an animal that just doesn't get enough credit.
- [98:39]
A
A turtle is just crazy, isn't it?
- [98:41]
B
Yeah, they're insane. They're weird. Look at these guys. Look at these penis headed things.
- [98:45]
A
It's nice to have like you're kind of to go home on your back or whatever, but it's just crazy.
- [98:50]
B
Yeah, they're insane. They're such weird cool animals and don't get enough credit. Hmm.
- [98:57]
A
I think because they feel so. I wonder, are they nervous? That's why they pop back in their.
- [99:01]
B
Shell or they called out, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean their, their defensive mechanism is to go into their shell. Unless you're a soft shell. Then it's being fast. Yeah, they've. They've evolved to be faster instead of retreat.
- [99:18]
A
Oh, that's a large one you showed right there.
- [99:20]
B
Yeah, the Rafa. Yeah. And they get huge. So there. This is an animal that there's currently believed to be three left. One male with a broken penis and two females.
- [99:31]
A
Nuh.
- [99:33]
B
So.
- [99:33]
A
So they gotta fix that wiener on him.
- [99:35]
B
So yeah, it's it's pretty sad. So we went and did a show on these guys. It's crazy. It's a whole political turmoil, everything. So the male. There were two males and two females and one of the males died because a kid dropped a brick on its head from the enclosure in a, in a zoo in China, in Shuzu. I know, I believe. So now there's one male and two females. That's an op then. Yeah. Then the male, they tried to try to breed it or something. Broken down dick, legit broken dick. Yeah. So now they've got two females in this lake in Dong Mo in Vietnam and one male in China. I believe that's where the current numbers are. And neither country is willing to give the other their turtles, but it wouldn't really matter anyway. He's got a broken dick. So the whole thing's kind of, kind of fucked somebody.
- [100:18]
A
So Trump needs to arrange a meeting between all these people, I think, you.
- [100:21]
B
Know, I think he should sit down and be like, all right, how are we fixing this dick? You know, I know we got some other stuff going on, but how are we working on this? Wow.
- [100:29]
A
The most widely cited figure. Figure is two confirmed individuals, both male. One in Suzhou Zoo, China, and one in Dong Mo Lake, Vietnam. Dang.
- [100:38]
B
I thought one of those males died like I was talking about. I'm not sure, but. Oh yeah, last known female died. I don't. It's. Yeah, hard to track. I think it's one male and two females that we know of.
- [100:48]
A
The. The future of the species now depends on last ditch conservation and breeding efforts as well as the possibility of verifying additional individual turtles. Wow.
- [100:57]
B
So we went out to Dongmo Lake and we ran Edna and got samples and even filmed one of these anim animals. And this is where like Colossal Biosciences, right? Like if they could get an X and a Y chromosome, a male and a female, they could make those turtles and that would be awesome. That's where like that technology, to me, there's no ethical concern, there's no moral concern. It's like, hell yeah. Like we went and got these samples, male and female chromosomes, tissue built, new turtles ground up, good to go.
- [101:26]
A
Are they out there? Are they searching for these things and how are they doing it? How are they trying to get, get DNA or genetic material so that they can create or recreate or re establish species?
- [101:39]
B
Well, I don't think. Oh, you mean how's Colossal doing it? Yeah, they're going all over the world, they're digging up stuff like that guy John Reeves, that place in Alaska they're getting samples from. They've been on multiple digs in Mauritius getting dodo samples. Yeah, they're, they're collecting all that kind of stuff.
- [101:55]
A
How much more animals existed at one time, do you think? Like, what percentage are we down to right now?
- [101:59]
B
Oh, that's a good question. We have a lot of diversity in this era. More so than like when there were dinosaurs and stuff like that. That's really, that, that's, I mean, fact check me on that. But yeah, it's mammalian diversity is higher than when like reptiles were at their peak. And yeah, there's a lot of metals. It's really good. Yeah. But you know, we have eliminated a lot like we talked about, but we're still, and I don't believe in this whole like we're thing. Like we're still in the planet's incredible, wildlife's resilient. Like we're not down that much. Yes, we've known, knocked huge populations down, meaning we've knocked down, you know, shark species to 10% of what there were. We've populations, we've knocked down certain mammal species to 5 or 10% of what they were. That's all it takes to bring it back. You know what I mean? Like, you just back off a little bit, they'll, they'll bounce right back.
- [102:45]
A
Right.
- [102:46]
B
There's a study that got put out a few years ago. I'd be curious if anybody's done a study since that said if you didn't, if we as human beings didn't fish the ocean for seven years, it would be back to 99% fullness of what it's at now. That's at seven years is all it would take, allegedly. That's not very low long. We can't do that because 99% of the world's protein comes from the ocean or something like that. But that's all it takes for nature to like build, fight its way back up, you know.
- [103:10]
A
Do you think there's a certain country or certain part of the world that they, you find that they have it right when it comes to nature and to Animalia?
- [103:20]
B
No, I think there's lots of places that are trying. You know, the Galapagos has done a really good job of like really taking care of their islands. Like you go through quarantine when you go there and blah, blah, blah. And there are other places like Palau, which is a tiny little island nation. I think it is either the only or definitely the first country in the world that said no commercial fishing it's like, go out and kill your own fish all you like and eat them. But we're not doing any commercial fishing. Yeah, that's awesome. You know, it's like, you want to go out and shoot a fish, go shoot a fish. But, you know, you're not buying it from a purse saner who's killing dolphins and wiping out coral reefs. Like, that kind of thing's awesome. But, you know, we wouldn't be having Nobu in Tennessee if that existed. So, you know, it's a trade off, right? Yeah.
- [104:01]
A
Yeah. And whoever brought no Boo to Tennessee is out of their mind.
- [104:05]
B
I don't know if there is one.
- [104:06]
A
But I think there is, actually.
- [104:08]
B
I don't know.
- [104:09]
A
Every time I see somebody going to something where it's like they're trying to put it in Nashville, I'm like, what are you doing?
- [104:13]
B
You know, Dude, Nashville's. Nashville's wild. I. I got to walk around today.
- [104:16]
A
It's fun.
- [104:17]
B
It's cool, man. It's busy. I'm gonna go out this evening, check out Broadway, Right?
- [104:21]
A
That's the friends here or.
- [104:22]
B
No, I got a friend here. Yeah, he's gonna meet me. I mean, you're welcome to join, but we're go check it out. Yeah.
- [104:27]
A
Might try to come say hey or go get a snack with you or something.
- [104:29]
B
Mm.
- [104:30]
A
Anything else you want to chat about for us? I think this has been good first episode so far. Do you think?
- [104:34]
B
Dude, I think it's great, man. I'm just like, if you're. If you're interested, I'm interested. My thing is, like, I want to love it. I'm into it.
- [104:41]
A
I want to go to south. I want to do that South Africa thing.
- [104:43]
B
Let's do it, man. I'm happy. And if.
- [104:46]
A
If, you know, October maybe too soon.
- [104:48]
B
Sure.
- [104:49]
A
But I could always do it in the spring or something.
- [104:52]
B
If you're planning on going, let me know and I'll try link with you, and then we'll go do some really cool, like a safari thing for a few. You did, but I'm talking not like, hey, let's go on safari. I mean, like, hey, Theo, let's go catch giraffes and put radio collars on them. No, like, something that people don't get to do that we'll do through the conservation groups that I work.
- [105:10]
A
That house arrest bracelet on your neck.
- [105:12]
B
Yeah. Take that, boy.
- [105:13]
A
Yeah, he's just showing up to his. To his po.
- [105:17]
B
Dude, the ladies are like, that's a bad giraffe right there. That's A bad giraffe right there.
- [105:24]
A
Is there an animal that you wish could speak up for itself?
- [105:27]
B
Ever better, man. That's a good question. An animal that could speak up for itself. Yeah. You know what the vaquita is?
- [105:35]
A
The vaquita?
- [105:36]
B
Yeah. Ever heard of that?
- [105:37]
A
No, but I. Damn, I'd put some damn cheese on one of them.
- [105:40]
B
Sounds pretty good, doesn't it? Yeah, well, it's Mexican, so that makes sense.
- [105:44]
A
Oh, it does?
- [105:44]
B
Yeah.
- [105:45]
A
I keep it with the verde sauce.
- [105:47]
B
Yeah, no, that makes sense. But these little guys. Smallest porpoise in the world. There's now estimate. Estimate between 9 and 11 of them left on the planet, which is the worst.
- [105:56]
A
To have nine, 11 of them left sounds like bad luck.
- [106:01]
B
That's a bad sign. Yeah. I wish these guys could speak up for themselves because they're. They're just these crazy cute little dolphins. They're driving towards extinction. There's not a lot that can be done based on how things are going. They. They need a. They need to flipper up to somebody and just be like, help. And we'd be good.
- [106:19]
A
Vaquita.
- [106:20]
B
Yeah.
- [106:21]
A
Oh, they look like the quokkas of the sea.
- [106:23]
B
Yeah. Nice. Good pull.
- [106:25]
A
Where their smile is kind of built on. It's funny how some animals. God, kind of put a smile on them so you would just see that they're okay, you know?
- [106:32]
B
I mean, you look at a quokka and you're like, right, well, we're never letting that thing go anywhere. It's too cute. You know, if everything was cute, we'd be good. Yeah.
- [106:40]
A
Why are some animals only in one spot? Because aren't the quokkas only native to an island off the coast of Australia?
- [106:46]
B
Yeah. Near to Perth. Yeah. Yeah.
- [106:49]
A
That's crazy to think on a whole planet.
- [106:50]
B
Yeah.
- [106:51]
A
That they're that specific of a place. I mean, that's wild, isn't it?
- [106:54]
B
It's crazy. Yeah. So they get there as something else, like as a small wallaby or whatever. And then like with a quokka, for instance, they're like, oh, wait, having tails doesn't help us. So year after year, shorter tails. Shorter tails, Shorter tails. Hey, wait. Having this big goofy smile on these big fat cheeks, that's actually good because we store food. I'm making the stuff up. But you. You know, and then they breed more and more and more. And then before you know it, you've got its own species that's stuck here that's completely different from these guys because their environment dictates that these characteristics make it useful for this place. Only Yeah, I don't know if that makes sense.
- [107:27]
A
Yeah, it does. Well, I think it shows also why humans have adapted and become different ways. Because they needed to become fit for their territory.
- [107:36]
B
Exactly. Yeah. You look at. What is it? The Sudanese. South Sudanese. The tallest people in the world. World. Like, why are those guys so tall? You know what I mean? And it's obviously genetic and cultural and everything else, but these guys are all over seven feet. Like that's incredible that that only takes place in that one area.
- [107:51]
A
Why, why did they need to be so tall, do you know?
- [107:53]
B
I don't know. I. I would like to know.
- [107:55]
A
Let's look it up right now and see if we can get a little bit more information.
- [107:58]
B
I'd like to go there. Wouldn't you like to stand around with seven foot tall people? It sounds so interesting.
- [108:02]
A
Yeah. Until you freaking, you know, until you hit your head on something and realize that it's like, oh God, it wipes.
- [108:07]
B
You across the face. Oh boy. That's not what I wanted. Yeah, then you and your from Florida high school are sharing the same problem.
- [108:15]
A
Yeah, it's like, like you see that person that's blindfolded in the pinata hit. Someone is swinging around.
- [108:20]
B
Yeah, Danglers get you.
- [108:24]
A
South Sudanese people, particularly the nearly Nilotic groups like the Dinka and the newer, are among the tallest in the world. Largely due to a mix of genetics, natural selection and nutritional factors. The tall lean bodies of the South Sudanese nilotes help with thermoregulation in a hot, dry climate. Yeah, longer limbs facilitate heat dissipation, supporting survival in tropical conditions, a phenomenon aligned with the Bergman's and Allen's rules in biology.
- [108:52]
B
How crazy is that? It's so damn hot here that we're gonna make you taller so that you can off gas more and stay cooler. And by the way, you're all gonna be 7ft tall. Like, that's so cool.
- [109:04]
A
That's fascinating.
- [109:06]
B
Is that wild?
- [109:07]
A
Well, yeah, it's just fascinating how. I mean, I mean, I mean, it's all just fascinating. To exist is fascinating to me.
- [109:13]
B
Yeah. And we're lucky we live on this planet, man. I mean, not that I know where else we'd live, but there's just so much cool stuff here.
- [109:20]
A
Yeah. And I think that's one thing that's just nice to even get to talk today, man, is just a reminder of that, you know? Just a reminder of it.
- [109:26]
B
Dude, I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on, man. It's really cool. Oftentimes when I talk, do podcasts or Whatever. I talk to guys that, you know, we have similar interests. We talk a lot about, you know, I know they know a lot of, like, even Joe, right? Like, when I do Joe's show, he knows a lot about animals.
- [109:42]
A
Oh, yeah.
- [109:42]
B
He's an animal nut. But to talk to you who, no offense, but maybe knows less or has less connection. You see that, like I was saying earlier, that child sense of wonderment be like, no way, you know, like, that's so cool that you can bring that back.
- [109:56]
A
Yeah. Thanks, dude. Well, I just. Yeah, I feel lucky to get to talk to people. I feel lucky to get to learn. I mean, I feel like, you know, like, even just to be inspired today that I want to get. Go back to South Africa, you know?
- [110:04]
B
Yeah.
- [110:05]
A
And that it would be neat to go do something there, you know, One of my friends said yesterday I was talking to him. I don't know if I was talking to him on the phone. Let me think about who it was really quick. Damn. Can't remember. But he goes, man, you know what's crazy to think? He goes, if you think about your life, think about how many summers you have left.
- [110:26]
B
Yeah, it's not that many.
- [110:27]
A
And you're like, whoa, whoa, yeah, What?
- [110:30]
B
We got 20, 30 summers left.
- [110:32]
A
You know, it just starts to put the perspective of your life. You know, if even, you know, if you're 25 and say you have, you know, until you're 65, you can kind of do whatever you want. You have 40 summers left. Right. That's a lot of summers. But that's not that.
- [110:47]
B
But it's not that many summers, dude. And if you think, like, I think of my this past summer, like, I basically worked all summer. I was on the road. I barely had a time to hang out with my kids or go. Go to the lake or do any of the summer days things. That's it. I lost one of those. Never getting that back. That summer's gone. It's gonna be cold when I get home now, you know, like, that sucks.
- [111:06]
A
It's cool.
- [111:07]
B
Yeah.
- [111:07]
A
But it's nice today to be able to be reminded of that and just be reminded that nature's out there waiting for us, that there's a lot of things that are happening out there and that we're lucky to exist and be a part of them, man.
- [111:17]
B
Yeah.
- [111:18]
A
For. Thanks for so much for coming in. People can check out drug animals and drugs.
- [111:22]
B
Animals on drugs.
- [111:23]
A
Animals on drugs right now. And I challenge you guys in the comments of this episode if you can think of any good, good names for drug animal.
- [111:33]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [111:34]
A
Crossovers. We need them.
- [111:35]
B
We need more crackoons. Yeah.
- [111:37]
A
We need more raccoons. Thanks.
- [111:39]
B
For us.
- [111:40]
A
Now I'm just floating on the breeze?
- [111:42]
B
And I feel I'm falling like these leaves? I must be cornerstone?
- [111:50]
A
Oh, but when I reach that ground?
- [111:53]
B
I'll share this piece of smile I found I can feel it in my bones? But it's gonna take.
- [112:06]
A
Mike and Alyssa are always trying to outdo each other. When Alyssa got a small water bottle, Mike showed up with a 4 liter jug.
- [112:14]
B
When Mike started gardening, Alyssa started beekeeping.
- [112:17]
A
Oh, come on. They called a truce for their holiday.
- [112:20]
B
And used Expedia trip planner to collaborate on all the details of the trip.
- [112:24]
A
Once there, Mike still did more laps around the pool.
- [112:27]
B
Whatever.
- [112:29]
A
You were made to outdo your holidays.
- [112:31]
B
We were made to help organize the competition. Expedia made to travel.