Bertie Gregory: Saving the Animals (Even the Ones That Are A**holes)

Summary

---

What Now? with Trevor Noah

Episode: Bertie Gregory: Saving the Animals (Even the Ones That Are Assholes)

Date: January 29, 2026
Host: Trevor Noah
Guest: Bertie Gregory (Wildlife Filmmaker & Photographer)
Also Featuring: Eugene

---

Episode Overview

In this thought-provoking and humorous episode, Trevor Noah sits down with wildlife filmmaker Bertie Gregory to explore the realities, joys, and harsh truths of animal conservation in today's world. With characteristic wit and deep curiosity, Trevor (alongside co-host Eugene) digs into Bertie’s adventures, the surprising intelligence and personalities of wild animals, how nature documentaries can both help and hinder conservation efforts, and why "saving the animals" is more about saving ourselves. The discussion spans epic whale comebacks, "asshole" animal behavior, dangerous human encounters, and actionable optimism for our planet’s future.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Real Stakes of Conservation (00:04–07:19)

• Mass Extinctions & Human Arrogance:
  Bertie underscores that we’re living through a mass extinction event, but "the world will be fine" in the long run; it’s humanity’s survival and quality of life that’s at risk.
  Quote:

  "We often talk about wanting to save the world, when actually in the long term, world, the planet world is fine. It's just whether or not we exist...on a place that's actually, you know, nice to be."
  — Bertie Gregory (00:04)

• Messaging and Centering Humanity:
  Trevor critiques how environmental messaging centers human saviorism, missing the point.
  Quote:

  "Do you want to save the world? And it's like, alright world, if you need me, I'll save you...No, no, my friend, no."
  — Trevor Noah (00:33, 50:53)

---

2. Bertie's Work and Wonders of Nature (07:19–13:16)

• Bertie’s Introduction and Impact:
  Trevor describes how Bertie can "transform a room" with his films, revealing the interconnectedness of animals, ecosystems, and humans.
• Whale Comebacks & Conservation Success:
  Bertie recounts filming the largest gathering of fin whales ever and explains their role as "carbon-capturing giants," illustrating a tangible conservation win:
  Quote:

  "We managed to film the largest gathering of fin whales ever recorded. There were 300 of them together...one of the greatest conservation success stories of our time..."
  — Bertie Gregory (08:18)

• Whale Turds Fight Climate Change:
  He explains the "whale pump": whales fertilize phytoplankton with their poop, indirectly supporting broader life and capturing carbon.
  Quote:

  "They eat at depth...then come up to the surface and that's where they poop. They fertilize that surface layer. It kicks off the food chain..."
  — Bertie Gregory (11:03)

---

3. Animal Behavior: Assholes, Killers, and Misunderstandings (15:11–26:59)

• Are Some Animals Just Assholes?
  Trevor questions if certain animals act maliciously or if that’s just human projection. Bertie acknowledges animal personalities and "bad days," but emphasizes that most attacks on humans are provoked or misread.
  Quote:

  "Animals have personalities and some are incredibly intelligent and they do, like, have bad days."
  — Bertie Gregory (20:55)

• Orca ‘Boat Attacks’: Sensationalism vs. Reality:
  Bertie clarifies orca “attacks” on boats are rare, localized, and likely playful or learned behaviors, not global conspiracies.
  Quote:

  "I think the idea that it's like they're like killer whales trying to attack and kill people is just ridiculous."
  — Bertie Gregory (17:58)

• Anthropomorphism Debate:
  How projecting human traits onto animals helps audiences connect but misleads too.

  "Our job is to connect people with the natural world. So to a certain extent, you have to sort of make comparisons to our world to get people engaged."
  — Bertie Gregory (24:19)

---

4. Filming Wild Animals: Art, Ethics, and Survival (26:59–38:44)

• Disappearing into the Wild:
  Bertie explains how filmmakers minimize disturbance, the difference between filming habituated and truly wild animals, and how animals "read" human body language.

• Personality and Animal Relationships:
  From flirty leopard seals to sketchy companions, wild animal attitudes change day-to-day and in response to human demeanor.
  Quote:

  "You can read its body language, and even cooler, it can read yours. They often mirror your state."
  — Bertie Gregory (29:17)

• Most Dangerous Animal: Humans (38:44–44:05):
  Bertie's scariest shoot involved not animals, but a drug-addicted campmate in the Arctic, emphasizing that people, not animals, cause most trouble.
  Quote:

  "The most dangerous animal on every single shoot is humans. Boo. Yeah, every single time."
  — Bertie Gregory (38:50)

---

5. Myths, Biases, and the Paradox of Protection (44:05–56:55)

• Demonizing Animals & History:
  Most animal fears (e.g., wolves) are rooted in myths spread for economic or cultural reasons, not actual risk.
  Quote:

  "Why does our society have this incredible hatred, you know, Little Red Riding Hood, the Big Bad Wolf?...That is exactly why...because livestock farming is a huge part of our society and wolves do sometimes kill livestock. And it’s much easier to justify the killing of a wolf if everyone hates them."
  — Bertie Gregory (46:59–47:01)

• Flaws in ‘Save the Cute Ones’ Reasoning:
  Conservation isn’t about novelty or aesthetics—it’s about preserving crucial systems for human survival.
  Quote:

  "Nature provides so many things that we need from clean water, productive soils, the air we breathe, the regulating our climate...Selfishly, we should want to look after the natural world because it’s to protect ourselves."
  — Bertie Gregory (48:25)

---

6. Conservation, Evolution, and Canceling Nature’s Signals (56:17–66:20)

• Tourism’s Double-Edged Sword:
  Wildlife tourism can fund protection but, if unmanaged, endangers animals—too many Land Rovers for that perfect cheetah shot can be deadly.
  Quote:

  "We're loving these animals to death...in places where tourism is badly managed, they get surrounded by vehicles...the biggest challenge cheetahs face."
  — Bertie Gregory (56:57)

• Assigning Economic Value:
  In today’s world, placing an economic value on wild animals supports their survival.

  "Conservation is as much about the animals as it is about the humans that live in that place...incentivize protecting them."
  — Bertie Gregory (59:25)

• Disconnect of Nature Documentaries/Social Media:
  Easy animal access makes people forget "this isn’t a zoo." Wild places are fragile, and our actions have direct impacts.
  Quote:

  "Actions that you take will decide whether or not this animal lives or dies. Like, the stakes are that high."
  — Bertie Gregory (65:10)

---

7. Life Lessons from the Animal Kingdom (68:07–79:57)

• Empathy, Mastery & Resilience:
  Wild animals’ lives are "really, really hard," but they're incredible specialists.
  Quote:

  "What I take from that is...whatever I do, I’ve gotta do my best to get really, really good at it."
  — Bertie Gregory (69:15)

• The Emotional Rollercoaster of Predation:
  Trevor and Eugene react to footage of a puma taking down a guanaco, discussing who to "cheer for" and what emotional distance is—or isn’t—possible for wildlife filmmakers.
  Quote:

  "Often...when you spend all day, every day following an individual animal for a month or two and you know the stakes...you get emotionally attached."
  — Bertie Gregory (74:29)

• Empathy via Direct Experience:
  The closer we are to animals (or people), the easier it is to care about their fates.
  Quote:

  "If we just had a little bit of that in society...we might have a little more compassion for the situation that they're in."
  — Trevor Noah (75:55)

---

8. Conservation Ups and Downs & The Power of Hope (80:06–94:50)

• Fish Farming & Second-Order Environmental Harm:
  Attempts to "sustainably" farm fish often cause new problems—e.g., bluefin tuna ranching requires vast quantities of other wild fish, creating new ecosystem pressures.
  Quote:

  "We were catching fish to feed fish...hoovering up the ocean."
  — Bertie Gregory (84:03)

• Success Stories: Indonesian Coral Reefs:
  The creation of no-take zones in Raja Ampat led to a 600% increase in marine life biomass and thriving local economies.
  Quote:

  "Twenty years on...the biomass...gone up by 600% and it’s one of the only places on earth where biodiversity...is actually increasing."
  — Bertie Gregory (87:13)

• Choice & Optimism:
  Individual and collective actions—big or small—can yield "quantifiable positive change."

  "Everyone can have an impact...Do a thing, gets better."
  — Bertie Gregory (54:58)

---

9. Personal Connection: Do the Animals Know You? (91:08–94:50)

• Bertie Reunites with Pataka the Puma:
  Bertie shares the story of following a specific puma, Pataka, from cubhood to motherhood.
• Recognition and Animal Memory:
  The ongoing relationship between observer and observed—do animals "know" their documentarians? Bertie suspects perhaps, sometimes, yes (as with a manta ray).

---

10. Practical Tips: Getting Close to Wildlife (96:19–98:39)

• Advice for Aspiring Wildlife Observers:
  • Spend time outside.
  • Do your homework; know your animal.
  • Observe body language to avoid disturbing them.
  • Respect the animal’s comfort and agency. Quote:

  "Knowing your subject...just spending time outside...knowing the cues...make sure when we're watching animals, it's on their terms."
  — Bertie Gregory (97:05)

---

Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Doom and Optimism:

  "There are so many good news, conservation success stories...If we focus on when we've got it right, rather than going 'naughty, naughty'...it's a more positive, proactive approach."
  — Bertie Gregory (90:29)

• Trevor on Empathy:

  "If you spend time with them, you're just more likely to be concerned about their well being and who they are and how they are. And the further we are from them, the less we're likely to consider them and their survival."
  — Trevor Noah (75:56)

• On Storytelling & Conservation:

  "Our job is to connect people with the natural world. So you have to sort of make comparisons to our world to get people engaged."
  — Bertie Gregory (24:19)

---

Memorable, Humorous Exchanges

• Trevor, on conservation language:

  "It’s like, 'Alright world, if you need me, I’ll save you.' And it’s like, no, no, no, no, no, no, my friend, no." (50:53)

• Eugene, after a bear attack story:

  "Now it's a single elephant with a huge memory." (21:19)

• Trevor, about getting food:

  "I just wish it would be great if I walked into a takeout place and then immediately had to get into jiu jitsu hold...It would be good for society." (71:38–72:20)

---

Main Takeaways

• The long-term survival of humans is tightly linked to the health of wild systems; "saving animals" is also saving ourselves.
• Conservation works best when incentives align; economic value given to wildlife can paradoxically support their protection—if managed well.
• Animal personalities, intelligence, and complex social systems challenge reductionist thinking and demand empathy.
• Hope is tangible: from rebounding whale populations to flourishing marine parks, positive environmental interventions are possible.
• Everyone—CEOs, politicians, ordinary people—can effect change, from massive policy to planting pollinator-friendly flowers.
• To authentically connect with the natural world, spend time outside, do your homework, and respect the autonomy of wild creatures.

---

For more of Bertie's work (and those nature show sequences discussed), check out the "Up Close" series on Disney+.

---

Next steps: Reflect on your own connection to nature—be it a backyard, city park, or wildlife documentary—and consider what small action you could take to make the world a little wilder, and a little healthier.

---

Transcript

[Bertie Gregory]

In, in history there have been these mass extinction events and we're now in one. When the rate of extinction goes up incredibly high, there's sort of this big purge. And I think with with humans, we often talk about wanting to save the world, when actually in the long term world, the planet world is fine. It's gonna be just fine. It's just whether or not we exist or whether we exist or on a place that's actually, you know, nice to be, we're not just sort of surviving.

[Trevor Noah]

I think that's where the groups that do these things have done really well. They have sort of participated in making us think of it as save the world, which then arrogantly puts us at the center of it again in the wrong way. You know, it's like, ugh, do you want to save the world? And it's like, all right world, if you need me, I'll save you. And it's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, my friend, no.

[Eugene]

Yes.

[Trevor Noah]

Do you want to be alive? This is what now with Trevor Noah.

[Ad Voice]

Eczema is unpredictable, but you can flare less with epglis, a once monthly treatment for moderate to severe eczema after an initial four month or longer dosing phase. About 4 in 10 people taking EBGLIS achieved itch relief in clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks, and most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing.

Hempglus Lebricizumab LBKZ, a 250mg injection, is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema, also called atopic dermatitis, that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals or who cannot use topical therapies. EBGLIS can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you're allergic to ebglis. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with ebglis. Before starting ebglis, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection.

Ask your doctor about ebglis and visit ebgliss.lilly.com or call 1-800-lilyrx or 1-800-545-5979.

[Trevor Noah]

This message is a paid partnership with Apple Card. Imagine this. You're at a Checkout counter, you're ready to pay when you realize you don't have your wallet. Dun, dun, dun. You could drive all the way back home and you could get it. But you remember that you have your Apple card on your iPhone so you can tap to pay with Apple Pay. Imagine that. No need to carry a wallet. But, you know, one of the things I do like about having my card on my phone is we live in a world where you lose your card and then you don't know where it is. And then you're like, what do I do? Well, if your phone is connected to your card and your card is connected to your phone, you know what's going on. The best thing about having the Apple card connected to your phone is you know what every transaction is. You know, like, sometimes you're like, what did I spend this month? The Apple card will show you one month. I had spent an obscene amount of money ordering videos online.

[Eugene]

Just videos?

[Trevor Noah]

They were just videos.

[Eugene]

What kind of videos?

[Trevor Noah]

That's not the point. The point is, I knew that I didn't want to order those videos anymore because I'd spent too much money on was videos on how to not spend money online.

[Eugene]

I felt like I'd been duped.

[Trevor Noah]

Point is, Apple showed me what I was spending my money on, and I was able to change my spending habits. And you can do it, too. I earn up to 3% daily cash back on every purchase with my Apple card. That's unlimited daily cash back no matter where I shop. Apply for Apple card in the wallet app on your iPhone. Subject to credit approval. Apple card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch terms and [e-mail]. Oh, man. All right, so now I can ask you the question. So where are you coming from?

[Bertie Gregory]

Mexico.

[Trevor Noah]

All right. What were you doing in Mexico?

[Bertie Gregory]

So I was filming for a new project for Disney, which that one is under NDA, so I won't be allowed to tell.

[Trevor Noah]

So you can't tell that one.

[Bertie Gregory]

No, that one's a secret about cartels.

[Trevor Noah]

You have the most wholesome NDAs of anybody I know. By the way, like, other people who have NDAs is like, yeah, no, the drug cartel. Yeah. The settlement. This whole thing. And then with Bertie, it's like, I have an NDA. Oh, why Bertie? It involves penguins. It involves penguins.

[Bertie Gregory]

Penguin secrets. Yeah. We can't give away the penguins secrets.

[Trevor Noah]

And whales and cheetahs and just cute little animals. And I can't tell you their stories. So first of all, welcome.

[Bertie Gregory]

Thank you.

[Trevor Noah]

Thank you so much for coming Just to give people a bit of context, even Eugene, everyone. Like, Bertie is one of my favorite explorers in the world.

[Eugene]

You've been excited the whole day.

[Trevor Noah]

I genuinely have. I've been excited for a long time because when I first met Bertie, I met. I met him at, like, a conference type thing, and it was a room full of CEOs. You know, these are cold, heartless human beings who.

[Eugene]

Hold on there, Luigi.

[Bertie Gregory]

That was nice.

[Trevor Noah]

That was very nice. Yeah, it was cold. Like, I'm talking about, like, cold, calculated. Show me the. The KPIs and the. You know what I mean?

[Eugene]

And the.

[Trevor Noah]

The return on invest ROIs on the TLIIs. It's all of those things. All of those things. And then Bertie steps up on stage and he goes, I'm. I'm going to play you a little video. And all the other videos have been like, growth, numbers, expansion. And then Bertie comes up and he's like, allow me to play your video. And it's like. It's like animals. And you see people in the room start going onto their phones to check the stock market real quick. And then 10 seconds in, everyone's phones go down.

[Eugene]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

And I think the first one you played for us might have been the whales, or it might like the first one I saw of yours. And let me tell you something. I cannot tell you that I've had more experiences where I've felt like I've been transported to a completely different world than when I've watched the films that this man makes. Even snippets of them transform you to another world, make you think of animals completely differently. In fact, I would.

[Bertie Gregory]

How would you. The best thing is it is our world. And I think that's the coolest thing, is that maybe that's why you make it.

[Trevor Noah]

So how would you describe what you do? Like, do you think of yourself an explorer, documentarian? What would you say you do?

[Bertie Gregory]

I think my job is to get people excited about the natural world and aware of some of the challenges it faces. And I think, most importantly, understand that looking after wildlife isn't just something that's, like, a nice thing to do because, like, penguins are cute.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Bertie Gregory]

We need it for so many things we rely on. And if nature is not healthy, we're not healthy. So I guess trying to dispel the myth that, yeah, sort of, you know, looking after nature is at odds with.

[Trevor Noah]

Enterprise and all the money side of things. So. Okay, do me a favor. Actually play me any, like, an old video, anything that you have, just. Cause.

[Bertie Gregory]

Well, let's. Let's we started with Wales.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Bertie Gregory]

Oh, let me find Wales.

[Eugene]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

So, like, you know how, like, the best video on your phone is probably.

[Eugene]

Hey, yay. Hey, my man, he don't know my life. Two words.

[Bertie Gregory]

Okay. Tuck in.

[Eugene]

Dine. Cloaca.

[Trevor Noah]

All right, all right.

[Eugene]

So what is this?

[Bertie Gregory]

Animal reproductive systems. Really, Trick.

[Trevor Noah]

What is this?

[Bertie Gregory]

Okay, so what you're looking at here, this is a gathering of whales in Antarctica.

[Eugene]

What was the occasion?

[Bertie Gregory]

Each one at a big party. Each one of those whales is 25 meters long. So what's that we use?

[Trevor Noah]

Meters?

[Bertie Gregory]

Yeah, meters, yeah. Okay.

[Trevor Noah]

Just let everyone else figure it out for themselves.

[Bertie Gregory]

Very long. About double the length of a Greyhound bus. That's a nice one. Yeah, I'm thinking about it. Yeah.

[Eugene]

So every time you see this little fountain, the blowhole.

[Bertie Gregory]

So, yeah, each one. Yeah, these are fin whales. They're the second largest whale in the world. And we went down to Antarctica, spent a lot of time rolling around on a boat feeling very sick, but we ultimately managed to film the largest gathering of fin whales ever recorded. There were 300 of them together. And this was not only an amazing thing to witness because it's just loads of massive whales, but it's one of the kind of greatest conservation success stories of our time, because these whales were hunted to the brink of extinction during the whaling era, and now they're making this incredible comeback. And, yeah, that's exciting. Not just because, yeah, like, penguins are cute, whales are awesome, but because of so many other reasons. You know, the whales in Antarctica, that's not just a great thing, they're coming back for Antarctica, but new science is telling us that whales are really good at capturing carbon through a couple different processes. And so if we want to fight climate change, save the world, yes, we should plant loads of trees because they're good at capturing carbon. But we also need to help the whales come back.

[Trevor Noah]

Wait, wait, wait. I need you to explain this. Whales capture carbon, right?

[Bertie Gregory]

So, couple different processes. The first reason that whales are really good at capturing carbon is because they go around their whole life eating food, eating carbon, essentially. And then when they die, they sink to the bottom of the ocean and some of them get eaten at the surface. But a lot of their bodies, it traps that carbon deep down in the bottom of the ocean.

[Trevor Noah]

I've never thought of where whales die.

[Bertie Gregory]

Right, Yeah, they sink, whale fall.

[Trevor Noah]

No, but I never thought of. I don't know why, I never thought of, like, where.

[Bertie Gregory]

Where they go.

[Trevor Noah]

Whales deep.

[Eugene]

You've probably never seen a full episode of My 600 pound life n. I'm so sorry.

[Bertie Gregory]

All right, you're good. Should we just move on?

[Eugene]

I'm so so.

[Bertie Gregory]

But the second process, which is much more interesting, is this thing called the whale pump.

[Trevor Noah]

Yes.

[Bertie Gregory]

Okay, let me. Let me. Let me try and break.

[Eugene]

Okay, wait.

[Trevor Noah]

Activate worst part of Eugene's brain. Activate worst part of Eugene's brain.

[Bertie Gregory]

But it's nothing to do with reproduction. Okay, okay, okay. So in the ocean, in the deep, you have lots of cold, nutrient rich water. Okay? There's a lot of nutrients in the deep.

[Trevor Noah]

Okay, got it.

[Bertie Gregory]

Part of the problem is that at the surface, the place where the light hits, it's called the photic zone. So the light hits lots of microscopic plants in the water column near the surface. The light's hitting them, but they lack some really important nutrients in order to grow. Okay, so they have light from the sun, but they need these key nutrients. So what the whales do is, is that they eat at depth and then they have to come up to the surface to breathe.

[Trevor Noah]

Right?

[Bertie Gregory]

And when they're at the surface, they can't poop. When they're under pressure at depth, they have to come up to the surface, and that's where they poop. So they have been feeding in the deep, eating all those key nutrients that is missing in the surface. They then swim to the surface, breathe, take a big poop, and they fertilize that surface layer. So it kicks off the food chain, the photon zone in the photic zone. Exactly. So actually, you'd think, okay, if the whales come back, they're gonna eat all of the krill. But actually, it's kind of the opposite. It's like the krill. It's like this paradox in that the more whales there are, the more krill that they eat, the more they're coming up to the surface and fertilizing the surface layer. That creates more phytoplankton, the little microscopic plants. The krill eat the phytoplankton, so there's more whales, and it just goes on and on and on. So it's this amazing runaway train.

[Eugene]

It's amazing.

[Bertie Gregory]

And I could have explained that in much fewer.

[Trevor Noah]

No, no, no.

[Bertie Gregory]

But much better. But you get the idea.

[Trevor Noah]

No, you see, it can't be better. So this is what I think. This is what I think makes it exciting, is one, you're, like, really passionate about it, but two, you connect the dots between these worlds that don't seem connected in any way, shape or form. Like, for instance, the significance of the whales is something that I think Most people miss out on the significance of most animals, to be honest with you. You know what I mean? A lot of the, like, nature documentaries that I watched as a kid, they were just about an animal in isolation in a way. This lion is trying to hunt and it's going to go and get this zebra.

[Bertie Gregory]

Yeah, that's the story in a far away place. The end.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, that was it. That was it for me. It wasn't a far away place, it was like next door. But it's true though. It's just like, yeah, this is what they're doing.

[Eugene]

It's true. He grew up in the middle of the Serengeti.

[Trevor Noah]

No, hey, you know what I'm talking about. How far were lions from you?

[Eugene]

Very close.

[Trevor Noah]

Exactly. So my point, I'm not saying like, like next door, but relatively speaking, it wasn't like another world for us. It was like, yeah, oh, that's what's happening there. But, but, but what your work does is it's, it tells that story, but then it goes into the deeper layers that connect us to these animals and then how the environment is connected to them and how the environment connects to us and then how it plays back, like, why, why was it significant that those 300 whales were meeting?

[Eugene]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

And you were capturing that. What was the significance of that encounter?

[Bertie Gregory]

Yeah, I think the key thing was that, you know, during the whaling era, whales, as I said, were hunted to the brink of extinction. And I remember I visited this island in the South Atlantic called South Georgia, and that was sort of the epicenter for Southern Ocean whaling. So that was where a lot of the whaling ships were based. And that's where they brought a lot of the whales they hunted in Antarctica back to, to process the blubber and, you know, all that stuff. And I remember reading the logs from the whalers when they were there from the ships. Exactly. And they would talk about there being so many whales in these bays that they were hunting in that you could have walked across their backs just like mind boggling numbers of whales. And that got me thinking. I found that really depressing in that, like, oh, I'll, like that's all gone. Like, I'll never get to see that. But then, however many decades on, the world came together and protected whales in the 70s, and now what's that, 50, 60 years on from that ban, the whales are starting to make a comeback. And of course they're not even close to what their original numbers were. But the idea that you can now go to Antarctica and see these biblically large gatherings of Whales. I go around the world, I realize I'm super fortunate to see animals doing amazing things, but everywhere I go, the guide, the scientist, the local person, they always. What you've seen on this expedition you've just done is amazing. But you should have seen how much more AMAZING it was 10, 20, 30 years ago. But in Antarctica with the whales, seeing that gathering of 300 whales, no one's seen that for over 100 years. It hasn't been that good for more than 100 years. And isn't that so cool? The world is so full of doom and gloom that there's optimism we can get it right. And when we do, wildlife comes back on this mind boggling scale. And not only is it cool to look at, but it helps.

[Trevor Noah]

So wait, is that why whales turned into assholes?

[Bertie Gregory]

Break that down for me.

[Trevor Noah]

So, I mean, like, you know, we've been reading all these stories and seeing these things of.

[Bertie Gregory]

I think it's the orcas, the killer whales off the.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, just like going. By the way, why are they called killer whales? Is because they kill us. It's not because they kill us. Right.

[Bertie Gregory]

I think it's actually from the translation, it's sort of been mistranslated. It's actually whale killers. So some killer whales hunt whales and so they're the whale killers.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, damn. So they're not killer. They are the killers of whales.

[Bertie Gregory]

But I mean, they're killing, technically.

[Trevor Noah]

But everything is killing.

[Eugene]

But technically dolphins don't.

[Trevor Noah]

They kill fish? What do you mean they didn't kill Smiles, I'm glad you're here. We're going to have every argument Eugene and I have about animals.

[Eugene]

You're going to see about it. But the other thing is save chimpanzees. We'll save that for later.

[Bertie Gregory]

And the Kilowatt killer whale is actually the largest dolphin. They're a big dolphin. Well, they are toothed whale. The odontocetes is the Latin fancy word.

[Trevor Noah]

Everything I believed about anything is just going.

[Bertie Gregory]

But anyway, coming back to your question.

[Trevor Noah]

What I'm saying is like, do we know why they're attacking boats and why this is happening around the world?

[Bertie Gregory]

Yes, there's a couple different theories. The first thing I'd say that it's not happening around the world, it's happening in one place. It's one pod, I would say.

[Eugene]

So it's a gang.

[Bertie Gregory]

Yeah. It's one family. Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, okay.

[Bertie Gregory]

So there's a couple different theories. The first thing to say is if you actually watch most of the videos.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Bertie Gregory]

These killer Whales are just swimming up to the boats and being very curious and sort of bumping them. And it's not attacking, they're just being curious. However, there are some that they're actually sinking the boats by, you know, headbutting them. Yeah, I mean, they are, I guess, attacking them.

[Trevor Noah]

Now, do we know enough about the whales to know if, like, to your point, attacking, not. Could they be, like, playing a prank on us?

[Bertie Gregory]

Okay, so a couple theories. One that is quite interesting is that the killer whales there, some of them hunt bluefin tuna.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Bertie Gregory]

And they have basically learned that when they hear certain boat noises and fishing boats, they're like, ooh, dinner bell. Why would I chase one of the fastest fish in the sea when some dude over there is just caught a bunch on a hook and take out, you know, easy meal? So they came over and the fishermen in the past, I'm sure it still goes on, shoot at them. And so you could see how the steps would create whereby. Okay, you know what, one gets shot by, gets shot in the face, it gets angry. It rams a boat, it sinks and goes, huh, this is a thing you can.

[Eugene]

They're highly intelligent creatures.

[Bertie Gregory]

Yeah, they're also highly intelligent. So it could be that that's not true. And actually it's just that one time they accidentally bumped a boat and it sank and they went, well, that was entertaining. So let's do that some more. I think the idea that it's like they're like killer whales trying to attack and kill people is just ridiculous.

[Trevor Noah]

So this brings up another question that I've always had, and that is, can animals be assholes? Like when you. When you go and you. You track animals and you. You watch them and you are animals just being animals, or do you see some animals where you're like, oh, no, that one is being an asshole?

[Bertie Gregory]

I mean, I guess. Yeah, I guess. So. Skunks are.

[Trevor Noah]

Why would you say that?

[Bertie Gregory]

They're just defending themselves from.

[Trevor Noah]

From.

[Bertie Gregory]

From people and with their big thing.

[Eugene]

But with.

[Bertie Gregory]

Yeah, thank you. But why would you think.

[Trevor Noah]

I'll tell you. I'll tell you a story and maybe you can demystify this as well. So one of the stories where I started thinking there's a possibility that animals could be was there was a couple. There was a couple that was. No, there was a couple that was hiking in some way, I think in the US it was like, you know, off on one of those mountain trails, blah, blah, blah, and they got attacked by a bear.

[Bertie Gregory]

Right.

[Trevor Noah]

So they came across a bear and then, you know, it Was that whole thing like, play dead, whatever. So they like tried to play dead.

[Eugene]

Then the bear was like, Never worked in the revenants.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. Then the bear was like, not cool, guys, not cool. And then the bear started like mauling them, whatever. So they tell the story. So the, the husband was like, all right, go. Told the wife, like, run, run, run, I'll fight the bear.

[Eugene]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

And then. Yeah. And then the wife ran. Then the husband's like, wah, wah. Then you can't fight a bear. You can just like distract, I guess, whatever.

[Eugene]

Entertain it.

[Trevor Noah]

You can entertain it. You can receive and entertain. Yes, you can receive the punishment and you can entertain the bear. And this happens. At some point, he's basically knocked unconscious. The bear stops and is like, wait, where did that lady go? Then the bear runs off, attacks the woman, mauls her, mauls her, mauls her. Then when she's also like, sort of like passed out, then goes back to the guy, then like goes back and forth. And then luckily they survived, but, you know, like, the bear like mauled them. But I remember going like, that bear might be an asshole. Or is there something we missed?

[Bertie Gregory]

No, let's break that one down. So when you see in the news, a wild animal has attacked a human.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Bertie Gregory]

The vast, vast majority of the time it is because the human has done something wrong. So they have got in between a mother and its cubs. They have backed an animal into a corner. They have misread an animal's body language. They have done the wrong thing. So the first thing I'd say is it's very easy to kind of pin it on the animal and go, oh, the animal attacked the human. Yeah, yeah. Let's just clarify. There are a very small number of cases whereby it was wrong place, wrong time. And what I would say to sort of, I guess, humor your thing of, ah, some animals assholes. But animals have personalities and some are incredibly intelligent and they do, like, have bad days.

[Trevor Noah]

Okay, okay, I like this.

[Bertie Gregory]

So you can meet an elephant, for example, in the morning, and it's very polite and does its thing and you're there and it's there and happy days. And then this afternoon, you know, it.

[Eugene]

Might hook up with his girlfriend.

[Bertie Gregory]

Well, yeah, maybe it had his. Maybe it had his ass killed by a big elephant or whatever. And then, and then it's a completely different animal.

[Eugene]

Now it's a single elephant with a huge memory.

[Trevor Noah]

You, you, you know, you laugh about this, but, like, I remember going on a game drive and a friend of mine is a game ranger and he was telling me about how elephants display many of the similar characteristics that we do in our society. And one of them is if a group of young male elephants don't have like an older father figure elephant, they just get up to mischief. They, they destroy trees, they go like hunt rhinos, they just like, kill rhino. They, like, do. And then they had to bring in an older male elephant and then there was just order. And the older male was like, stepfather. Yeah, yeah, basically his stepfather. And he was like, you don't be doing that shit in his house, boy.

[Eugene]

You and your mom, your mom be.

[Trevor Noah]

Talking about your ex's boy.

[Bertie Gregory]

But yeah, they need like the wise old dude because, you know, elephants are famed as being this incredible matriarchal society where the female led herds. And we very often don't really talk about the social systems involved with the males. It's just this big bull that comes in all horny one day and has his way and then goes off and does male elephant, because he goes off.

[Trevor Noah]

By himself most of the time. Right.

[Bertie Gregory]

Well, the males have these bachelor herds and you're exactly right that, yeah, if you get these groups of young bulls, they're often the ones that are causing all the mischief, you know, crop raiding and all sorts of. You can see the cogs turning, can't you? Desperately whirring for an innuendo by themselves in the push.

[Trevor Noah]

You had me, you had me at hello.

[Eugene]

So what are they doing?

[Bertie Gregory]

But coming back to whether animals are assholes, I mean, again, this is a very anthropomorphic viewpoint, but like, some, you know, I've seen male dolphins go around in these, these male groups and they'll just go up to like a young male dolphin and do very naughty things to it. And you're like, was that really necessary? But they've got this incredibly complex social system. And I think trying to compare ours, if you look at their social system through our lens, it's very easy to go, well, you're being an.

[Trevor Noah]

But I, I have often thought this. I've often thought to myself, like, you know, like, people will say things about dolphins. They'll be like, oh, dolphins sexually assault and dolphins do all these things. That's what people will say.

[Bertie Gregory]

No, I mean, yeah, yeah.

[Eugene]

Hey, why do you defend him bit?

[Trevor Noah]

You've got to defend me, Bertie. This is, this is.

[Eugene]

Otherwise he was up there, a creek without a badly.

[Trevor Noah]

But then, but then I wonder, to your point, to your point, if you are observing something from your point of view and you don't have the full context, you don't you don't know what's happening. Right. So, like, if. If animals were to see us engaging in S and M, they would also go back and report and be like, yo, the humans, man.

[Eugene]

Absolutely.

[Trevor Noah]

I just watched this movie, Fifty Shades of Grey. It's terrible. It's terrible what they're doing to each other. You wouldn't. So maybe that's. That's like, an interesting place to delve into with your work. How do you discern between, like, the animal world and what the animals are experiencing and how we perceive what the animals are experiencing and what's going on in their world?

[Bertie Gregory]

Yeah, it's an interesting thing to think about because I guess one thing is nature documentarians were often accused of anthropomorphizing things. But our job is to connect people with the natural world. So to a certain extent, you have to sort of make comparisons to our world to sort of get people engaged.

[Trevor Noah]

So we feel connected.

[Bertie Gregory]

You find the underdog or the whoever. I think the other thing is when we're trying to get close to an animal without disturbing it, we want to film natural behavior. So we want to make sure the animal either doesn't know that we're there or that it knows we're there and it's kind of accepting of our presence. And a big part of that is being able to read animal body language. And just like we humans have a set of, you know, body languages, lots of animals do. I mean, we talked about crocodiles just before we started recording. They have, you know, very little body language. Their resting bitch face is very similar to their I love you face. So let's park those. But in the case of, say, sharks or. Or wolves, they're. They're a great one because, you know, that very closely related to, you know, our pet dogs. So we're very good at, I think, naturally interpreting wild wolf body language. But, you know, when we walk into a bar and we want to figure out, like, where to sit, you look around and subconsciously you're analyzing everyone's behavior. And, you know, if someone's, you know, bright red in the face and. And clenched fists or whatever, stay away from them. And then there's the smiley guy in the corner or whatever. I'm going to go sit next to him. Sharks, leopard seals, lions, they all have a set of body languages, you know, of cues. And it's our job to interpret those cues so that we can, you know, film them so that we're safe and they're safe and also try and interpret what they're gonna do next. And that's what I love, is that I found when I was starting out, I was crawling around. I grew up in Reading, near London, and it wasn't a particularly wild place. I lived near some farmer's fields. I used to go into the farmer's fields and kind of try and sneak up on deer and badgers and kingfishers and whatever. And everyone thought I was weird. I was like, you know, 13, 14, when you should be, I don't know, trying to talk to girls or something. And I found that because I was starting to sort of by accident, learn how to sneak up on these animals. I had my eyes open to this incredible world. All these dramas going on the whole time that everyone just walks past and has no idea. So it's, you know, it's not as far as sort of Dr. Doolittle being able to talk to the animals, but you sort of have, like, this ability to interpret animal behavior that most people don't have. And so you get this secret window into this other world.

[Trevor Noah]

So when you're out there, would you say you have an ability to disappear into their world? Like, is there? Cause I've always wondered this about nature documentaries is. I'm like. I've seen sometimes people just, like, lie in the same place forever. Sometimes you leave a camera behind. Sometimes you. How real, slash untouched is a nature documentary when you're making it, how much influence are you having over it? How much, you know, like, so, like, when the animal sees you or doesn't see you, or can you do something with your body language to let a lion know, like, we're cool. I'm just here to film you killing stuff.

[Bertie Gregory]

So what's really amazing about filming things like lions, sort of, I guess a safari setup where you're in a vehicle, is that we benefit from the fact that some very smart people have been habituating lions and wild dogs and cheetahs and all those savannah animals to a vehicle. And so they are completely aware that the vehicle's there. You know, they can see it, they can smell it, they can hear it. But because it has been in their landscape for their entire life and their mother's life and their grandmother's life, you are just part of the landscape. So someone has done a bunch of hard work that we're then benefiting from, often we go to places where the animals are, you know, have never seen people before. And so a big part of the shoot is not filming. It's either hiding from the animal, figuring out how to get close and hide or habituating the animal to our presence so that it knows we're there and is accepting of that. I mean, in the case of underwater filming, for example, it. You know, on land, often if you're hiding from the animal, you can be in a little tent and you can be a couple hundred meters away with a really powerful zoom lens. Underwater, you're limited by the visibility of the water. So if the water you can only see 20 meters, well, you're not doing any hiding. Like, the animal is going to know that you're there. So you need to figure out, okay, how do I behave so that the animal is relaxed with me? I mean, one of my favorite animals to film is the leopard seal. They're these. I mean, they look like dragons and they live in Antarctica. And they can be absolutely enormous. And they have a very similar skull to a grizzly bear. So they're just this amazing top predator. Well, not top predator. Killer whale can eat them. Because killer whales are.

[Trevor Noah]

Because killer whales kill.

[Bertie Gregory]

Yeah, they're badasses.

[Trevor Noah]

We got this.

[Bertie Gregory]

So, yeah, so with them. I mentioned that all animals have personalities and they have different days. It's sort of like a lucky dip. When you get in the water with a leopard seal, you see this leopard seal and you're like, okay, I'm going to get in. And very quickly I'm going to learn whether this is. Is a leopard seal that is friendly, is not pleased to see me. You know, you just never know. And you learn very quickly. And sometimes you get out immediately. Cause you're like, okay, that one didn't like me here. And some start very shy. And then in the space of an hour, you can sort of kind of flirt with them and get like, sort of pretend you're not interested in them sort of. They know where you're looking, so you kind of turn away and face you back and they come sneak up on you and then you go, boo. And it's amazing that you can have this interaction with an animal that, you know, may never have seen a human being before. But you can read its body language, and even cooler, it can read yours. You're not just a weird alien human. It's like, oh, no. It knows where you're looking. It knows whether you're. They often mirror your state. So it's really important that you're really chill. So they're really chill if you get in the water. I've been in the water, taken other people down there that have, you know, never seen a leopard seal before. And I take them in the water and they're really on edge. And I hate it because the leopard seal's really on edge.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, wow.

[Bertie Gregory]

And then that person. You get them out of the water, and it's just me and the leopard seal. Suddenly, leopard seal's a different animal. It's like, oh, yeah. Sketchy Steve is out of the water now. We're cool. You can't trust Sketchy Steve.

[Trevor Noah]

So, yeah, I think I've been a Sketchy Steve.

[Eugene]

Hey. Been.

[Trevor Noah]

I've been. I'm still a Sketchy Steve.

[Eugene]

Thank you.

[Trevor Noah]

No, because, you know, I can't. I can't just find myself. So I'm always stuck in the loop. People will be like, just relax. Then I'm like, I would be relaxed if there wasn't this wild animal here. Then they're like, yes, but you relax. And then the thing is, I then remember videos I've seen of people who were too relaxed and didn't notice a shift in something, and then all of a sudden, life is not going well for them. Do you know what I mean? Yeah.

[Eugene]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

So I. I don't know. Like, are you comfortable around animals?

[Eugene]

Like, fully party animals? A bit sketchy.

[Bertie Gregory]

Never trust the party.

[Eugene]

Never trust a party animal. But I've always been. I love animals, but from a distance. But I've always been fascinated by animals that res. That come close to resembling human beings. So gorillas, chimpanzees. And I've often wondered, because I've once seen this video of chimpanzees hunting monkeys. That, for me, was the scariest thing ever. I've never. Have you ever had an experience like that?

[Bertie Gregory]

I've never seen that. Yeah, there's a very famous troop. Yeah, it's the. I think it's called the Ngogo troop. And, yeah, there's. I'm not sure how big it is now, but at a time it was this enormous troop of chimpanzees. There was, like, 50 or 60 chimps living together. And, yeah, they'd go and set very clever traps to eat colobus monkeys. Wait, wait, What?

[Trevor Noah]

See, those are assholes. Surely they're assholes.

[Bertie Gregory]

Well, I mean, why monkeys make. Why does that make the difference?

[Trevor Noah]

Okay, why are the. Why are all the other monkeys not doing this? Why are all the other chimpanzees not doing it is my question rather well.

[Bertie Gregory]

So it's really interesting because they don't do it all the time. It's sort of. Okay, yes, it's a very rich source of protein that they do, but most of the time they're Eating fruits and things. And I think it's actually a huge sort of. It's almost a ceremonial thing for them. Like, they get so amped and excited that it's a true bonding exercise. It's not just, we're gonna go out and get some food.

[Eugene]

Designated roles. There's some who go and chase, shake down the tree, and some who wait for the monkey to fall down. Then also when the monkey falls down and gets killed, there's also pieces that get divvied up and who gets what first.

[Bertie Gregory]

It's, you know, they're giving out favors.

[Trevor Noah]

Why are you like that? When we go out to, like, restaurants and stuff, are you part of the ngongo?

[Eugene]

Then you're like, Eugene will be like.

[Trevor Noah]

Trevor, you shake the table, and then Ryan's gonna order, and then someone's trapped. I'm gonna eat the first piece. I've always wondered where you got that from. Okay, don't go anywhere because we got more. What now? After this. This episode is brought to you by our friends at SurveyMonkey. You know, there's a very specific kind of bravery in business. And by bravery, I mean terrifying uncertainty. Think about it. Right now, there are people making massive, life altering decisions based entirely on a vibe, just a feeling in their gut. But what if you actually knew the truth? What if you knew your direct reports weren't just nodding along, but actually had thoughts they were too polite to say? Or that your best customers were already halfway out the door to a competitor? Because, let's face it, we'd like to say follow your heart. But in business, ignorance is just a very expensive hobby. SurveyMonkey takes the fear out of asking and the doubt out of deciding. It's the difference between walking into a meeting with a hunch and walking in with 500 validated opinions, which mathematically is much better for your blood pressure. The truth might hurt for a second, but it's a lot cheaper than being wrong. So let's get you a survey and some actual answers. Sign up for an annual [e-mail] whatnow and use code whatnow for two months free. That's two months free with code. What now? @surveymonkey.com whatnow you know, Eugene, I don't know about you, man, but sometimes planning a romantic evening is one of the most stressful things. Because there's that specific type of performance art that comes with a romantic night out. You know, it's like you're sitting in a restaurant and you realize you've just paid a premium to have a Room of strangers watch you eat bread while you try and have a private conversation. It's exhausting. You know what I mean?

[Eugene]

It is.

[Trevor Noah]

But I realized recently, if you want to skip the theater and the crowds, Whole Foods Market is the place to plan the perfect indulgent and romantic evening at home. Picture this. You see you skip the extra trip to the flower shop and instead you explore the Whole Foods Market floral department full of gorgeous quality flowers with large blooms, vibrant colors and strong stems. Bunches, bouquets and even vase arrangements are available. Why stop there? We can also skip the dinner reservation, start our sizzling hot evening in the kitchen. Just us. We could serve a surf and turf made with quality, no antibiotic ever stakes. Plus seafood that must be sustainable, wild, caught or responsibly farmed. We'll then pair that dinner with a bottle of wine from the incredibly in depth Whole Foods Market selection. Say cheers with a sparkling. Or choose Ready to drink Cocktails. Must be 21 or older. Please drink responsibly. Taste the love all month at Whole Foods Market. By the way, that wasn't our date. I just got carried away and then your hand was there and then I totally understand.

[Eugene]

But you know, like they say, there's no free dinners. Clearly.

[Trevor Noah]

No, you don't owe me anything. We didn't even have the dinner.

[Eugene]

I'm 41.

[Ad Voice]

If you, your parent or spouse served in the military, you could join our family. Our members saved an average of $70 a month on auto insurance when they switched. Tap the banner or visit usaa.com. join today to check your eligibility restrictions apply.

[Trevor Noah]

Do you, do you ever, do you ever find like, human world just becomes like blah because of the world you live in?

[Bertie Gregory]

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I, I have what I, I describe as post, post shoot blues.

[Eugene]

Yeah.

[Bertie Gregory]

So I, I, I come home from, you know, Antarctica or whatever and I always, it's usually the first couple days when I'm sort of readjusting to a different world. Well, I mean, for me, what I struggle with is my normal life is expeditions and being far away.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, it's being out there.

[Bertie Gregory]

And so, yeah, I'll be like stood in a, in a supermarket deciding what kind of salad I want to buy. And I'm looking around being like, what about penguins and icebergs? Can I just go back to doing that? It just seems so sort of insignificant.

[Trevor Noah]

In comparison to the, in comparison like.

[Bertie Gregory]

This whole world, the significance. And there's these dramas going on. So yeah, it's really tricky to make that adjustment.

[Trevor Noah]

What's the worst experience you had like, you know, when you're on a shoot, you're trying to do something. Things did not go according to plan. An animal or, like, was there ever a moment like that? I'm sure in all the years. Cause how long have you been doing it now?

[Bertie Gregory]

Just over 10 years. Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

So, I mean, surely in that time, something has happened to you where you've gone.

[Bertie Gregory]

Oof. Well, the most dangerous animal on every single shoot is humans. Boo. Yeah, every single time. You know, the times that I have been, you know, in danger is because of a human, that it's either directly from that human, or the human has misinterpreted some anim. Body language and has put us in a dangerous situation.

[Trevor Noah]

Like you've been attacked by humans on a chute somewhere.

[Bertie Gregory]

That has. Yeah, that has happened.

[Trevor Noah]

Damn.

[Bertie Gregory]

Yeah. Yeah, that was quite scary.

[Trevor Noah]

What happened?

[Bertie Gregory]

We were in the Arctic, and we were in a very remote camp, and one of the people we were working with, we didn't realize was a drug addict and not really sure what he was addicted to, but we were. Basically, because of a storm, our supply boat was cut off. So every few days, we were meant to be getting supplies with food and fuel and all kinds of things. What we didn't realize is that that boat was also delivering his drugs. And while he was on the drugs, he was actually pretty functional, and he didn't get those drugs and started to go, damn scary.

[Trevor Noah]

This is in the Antarctic.

[Bertie Gregory]

It was in the Arctic.

[Trevor Noah]

In the Arctic, yeah. So you're like, you're. This. There's nowhere to go. There's no this. This seems like, you know. You know those movies. This. This seems like a perfect thriller horror movie scenario where you'd be like, it's unrealistic. Explorers. The movie starts, they off to see the animals, you know, the whole thing. And then they're exploring. They're exploring the animals. Then they're like, oh, there's a storm. There's a storm. We're hunkered down. Oh, the boats are not coming in, Bertie. The boats are not.

[Bertie Gregory]

We'll be fine.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, supplies running low. And then all of a sudden, someone's just like, ah, yeah.

[Bertie Gregory]

And. And it. And it started out sort of of, oh, that was a weird thing that he just said. And then it kind of escalated, and he started making threats, and then he snapped and jumped on one of our team and was trying to strangle her. And, yeah, another one of the team managed to get her off and get him off. And we were in polar bear country, so we carry shotguns. So there's just a lot of. You know, I remember at one point looking at this situation with, yeah. Him trying to get to her. And at my feet there was a shotgun for the polar bears and a paddle for a stand up paddle board. And I was like, okay, what am I gonna pick here? And then I was like, I'm just gonna use my words. And yeah, it all got very, very scary. And I ended up. Well, we ended up managing to distract him. Get her away. I won't name her. Get her away. And sort of separate the two of them. And then my job was basically to distract him long enough for the rest of the team to make a plan to find a way to get evacuated from this remote place. So I. The reason we were out and away from the camp was we were trying to collect fresh water so we needed to go up the river. So I, yeah, we basically both went up this river into the.

[Trevor Noah]

Just the two of you?

[Bertie Gregory]

We were with another guy as well. And yeah, we were distracting him and sort of. Yeah, trying to keep him occupied. And he would. What was most scary about this was he would flip flop between being this crazy, really scary person and then being absolutely lovely with not really any recollection of what had happened. It was sort of Jekyll and Hyde. And I remember we'd filled up the water jugs. You know, I'd managed to stall him for about an hour. And I was on the stand up paddle board that we were using to transport the water jugs. And he was walking on the riverbank next to me and I was paddling along just like, yeah, trying to keep him calm. And I remember he suddenly got really on edge and was rummaging around in his pockets. And I was like, oh, God, what's he got in his pocket? Is it a gun? A knife? What is it? He looked really on edge. All of a sudden he pulls out his phone and he's like, oh, I just set up a TikTok account. I'm gonna take a video of you on the stand up paddleboard for my TikTok. Is that okay? I was like, this is a very strange situation to be in.

[Eugene]

Sketchy Steve.

[Bertie Gregory]

Yeah, Sketchy Steve. And by the time we got back to camp, yeah. The rest of the team had managed to make a plan that there was a research plane in the area and they were able to actually land on the beach that we were on. And yeah, we got our team out and we actually made the decision to take the guy with us because at the point that the plane arrived, he was in the good mood. So it was like, we don't want to leave him here.

[Eugene]

Did you guys warn the pilot at least?

[Trevor Noah]

Because this is really like a movie.

[Bertie Gregory]

No, no.

[Trevor Noah]

On the plane, it's like, oh, man. Next thing you know, it's Bane.

[Eugene]

Yeah.

[Bertie Gregory]

And then. Yeah. So we sort of chat to him, and then we got. Got him. Yeah. Got him back to the town and. Yeah. And then went. Went our separate ways.

[Trevor Noah]

And it makes. When you tell a story like that, it makes me wonder, like, how did we. You know, because you. You work in this world now. How did we get to the place where. I think I'm. I'm safe in saying that more people in the world are terrified by animals than by, like, people 100%.

[Bertie Gregory]

Whereas I am completely the opposite.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, but how did. But how did we get there? Like, where do these myths come from? Where do they. I mean, clearly, we spoke about one earlier where I was talking about, like, the. The. The killer whales. And you're like, oh, they're attacking the. And everyone thinks this. I think a lot of people think this. And then you're like, no one area.

[Bertie Gregory]

Well, classic. Classic example is human fear of wolves. Okay, so, you know, there's lots of movies, yeah. Hollywood movies about wolves eating. Eating people and all this stuff. But. Okay, in North America, how often do you think someone gets killed? Killed by. By a wolf?

[Trevor Noah]

True.

[Eugene]

Maybe once a year.

[Trevor Noah]

One time a year.

[Eugene]

Yeah.

[Bertie Gregory]

I'm gonna say sharks is. Is between 5 and 10 a year, globally. Then I'm gonna say with wolves, what do you think?

[Trevor Noah]

Wolves, I'm gonna say attacked 20 times a year.

[Bertie Gregory]

Actually. Fatal.

[Trevor Noah]

Fatal attacks. Oh, no, no, no. Fatal attacks. I'm gonna say seven per year. Yeah. Seven. Eugene.

[Eugene]

I say one.

[Bertie Gregory]

Wow.

[Eugene]

Yeah. One attack a year.

[Bertie Gregory]

What if I told you that in recent history. So in the last few hundred years, that number's actually more like two total.

[Trevor Noah]

What do you mean?

[Eugene]

In how many years?

[Trevor Noah]

Not over. Not average.

[Bertie Gregory]

No, no, no, no, no. Total, since.

[Trevor Noah]

No, come on, Bertie. Come on. Now. You're telling me we've made all these movies about a thing that happened two.

[Bertie Gregory]

Times, and in both those times, if you actually read about them, it is not conclusive that the wolf actually did it.

[Trevor Noah]

Ah, ah, ah, ah.

[Bertie Gregory]

So then you ask the question, why? Well, who done it? Yeah. But why do we have. Why does our society have this incredible hatred, you know, Little Red Riding Hood, the Big Bad Wolf? Why? Why, as a child, are we taught that wolves are so dangerous when at the same time we keep their closest living relative in our home?

[Trevor Noah]

So I have a theory for this. Okay. But I don't know if it's right or it's wrong. When I. When I read through, like, old historical accounts of, like, explorers and travelers, people who are going around the world hunting, one of the things I've learned is whether they were colonizers or whether they were just, like, hunters, one of the most powerful tools they used to justify what they were doing was turning the. The subject of their action into, like, a dangerous villain. Yeah. You get what I'm saying? And so it's a lot easier, I think, to have people not judge you for killing wolves. And you know what I mean? Taking their furs, if you tell them that you're protecting them, you have hit.

[Bertie Gregory]

The nail on the head.

[Eugene]

Yeah.

[Bertie Gregory]

That is exactly why our society has this hatred towards wolves, because livestock farming is a huge part of our society and wolves do sometimes kill livestock. And it is much easier to justify the killing of a wolf if everyone hates them.

[Trevor Noah]

Okay.

[Bertie Gregory]

Just like, you know, with sharks, it's only very recently that everyone's sort of waking up to the fact that sharks might actually be really important to healthy oceans. And we need healthy oceans.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Bertie Gregory]

But prior to that, you know, with Jaws and our fear of sharks, no one really cares that sharks were getting. Getting killed. Yeah. So, you know, why would you want to, you know, protect something that you're terrified of?

[Trevor Noah]

What do you think people don't get about conservation? Cause you've said it a few times. You know, it's like, not just because they're cute, not just because they're nice. Like, when I was growing up, that's all I watched in most nature documentaries. It was sold as, like, this idea of, like, they won't be here anymore. That's why we need to protect them, because they won't be here anymore. And then it almost seemed like it's the novelty that justifies us protecting an animal.

[Bertie Gregory]

It's just the right thing to do.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, it was just like, it's the right thing to do. This is a cute animal that you'll never get to see. That's why you need to protect it.

[Bertie Gregory]

Which I think is a bad argument.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. Tell me more. Tell me more.

[Bertie Gregory]

Well, because I. Okay. So nature provides so many things that we need from clean water, productive soils, the air we breathe, the regulating our climate. You know, we're part of this incred life support system that's free and it provides us with all these ecosystem services that we completely take for granted. So selfishly, we should want to look after the natural world because it's to protect ourselves. If we can look after the environment and make sure that wild systems are healthy, we make them more resilient, they can then better protect us from, you know, the effects of climate change or, you know, whatever the thing may be.

[Trevor Noah]

Even, like, disease, is what I've learned on some of these things. Okay.

[Bertie Gregory]

Look at all of the big sort of pandemics that have happened. Most of them come from the mistreatment of domestic animals or wild animals, or it's us being very naughty.

[Eugene]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

But.

[Bertie Gregory]

And unsurprisingly, bad things happen when you're naughty.

[Eugene]

Because I love nature documentaries, I often, often wonder to myself, aren't we getting in the way of evolution? Because sometimes you have those series where they show you the prehistoric relative of a certain creature.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Eugene]

But because conditions change, humans interfered. They invaded Satan's spaces. The animals evolved to something else. Aren't we right now standing in the way of evolution of certain creatures? Because we just want to conserve the way they look now for our own selfish reasons, because we just like what this bird looks like now. But the dodo bird, you know, was something else. And it became something else. And it became something else because life and the climate and the conditions around it changed.

[Bertie Gregory]

Yeah. It's an interesting perspective. I guess what I would say is that evolution happens on very slow timescales. And what is different about what we are doing now? We are in, you know, in history, there have been these mass extinction events, and we are now in one when the rate of extinction goes up incredibly high. The sort of this big purge. And I think with. With humans, we often talk about wanting to save the world, when actually in the long term, world, the planet, world, is fine. It's gonna be just fine. It's just whether or not we exist or whether we exist on a place that's actually, you know, nice to be. We're not just sort of surviving.

[Trevor Noah]

I think that's where the groups that do these things have done really well. They have sort of participated in making us think of it as save the world, which then arrogantly puts us at the center of it again in the wrong way. You know, it's like, ugh, do you want to save the world? And it's like, all right, world, if you need me, I'll save you. Then it's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, my friend, no. Do you want to be alive? Do you get what I'm saying? Do you want to be able to go outside and not have a summer that is literally unlivable do you want to be able to grow food? Do you not want an animal to come hunt your dog? Cause like, that's the thing I think is so amazing when you watch these documentaries and you go, oh, you know why this animal is here, like hunting your dog or like catching your cat, it's because where it was supposed to be, there's no more animals, there's no more prey. Do you get what I'm saying? Like polar bears I've seen are like coming further and further down as the, as the, the ice melts. Right. They're just like coming more into like brown land territory, I think.

[Bertie Gregory]

Well, I mean, yes, they're spending more time, you know, many polar bears spend the, you know, part of the year on the sea ice, on the ocean that's frozen. And then in the summertime when the ice melts, they spend the time on land sort of hanging out. And if they haven't managed to get enough calories during that important time when they're on the ice, they need to go looking for stuff. And so, yes, they will come into contact with, with humans. They live in a very sort of inert, smell less environment. And then you have a human settlement, suddenly that's like, ooh, opportunity. And they'll come into that. So, yeah, when we mess with wild systems, that's when you get more human wildlife conflict. But I think kind of sort of taking one step back, you talk about saving the world and that idea, I think one of the biggest communication failures in history is that we have, you know, we've been led to believe that, you know, climate change is about, it was just about temperature and carbon emissions, these kind of abstract terms.

[Trevor Noah]

Right, Right.

[Bertie Gregory]

So I can say, oh, 400 parts per million, or, you know, it's gonna go up by three degrees. Like, okay, I sort of get it, but, but that's basically, if you ask someone on the street that isn't a climate scientist, what's climate change about, they're gonna tell you probably about carbon dioxide and temperature, but they're not actually the problems they are proxies for. What the actual problem is is that those two things, when they go up, lead to the destruction of nature. So I feel like rather than talking about climate change and how we need to fight that, we should just be talking about the destruction of nature. Yeah, because I feel like everyone can get on board with the fact that if you cut down a really big old tree, that is a bad thing. And so if you also approach it in terms of the giant climate change and it's such a massive problem and requires so much global cooperation. In our broken, divided world, it's very easy to just throw your hands up and go, go, well, nothing we can do. What am I meant to do?

[Trevor Noah]

What am I meant to do as an individual?

[Bertie Gregory]

Whereas if you talk about the destruction of nature, suddenly you as an individual, whether you're the CEO of a huge company or a politician or just someone with a little apartment down the road from here, you can do, you know, okay, they're on different scales, but you can do your bit to make the planet wilder and healthier, whether that be, you know, plant some plants in your garden that are insect pollinator friendly to help local bees, or. Or choose to protect a huge area of ocean if you're a politician. And the thing I love about that is that it's actionable and you will see quantifiable positive change. If you plant a bunch of wildflowers in your garden, you will see a bunch of insects coming to those that weren't there before. And isn't that cool, the fact that.

[Trevor Noah]

Everyone can have an impact, even on the tiniest part?

[Bertie Gregory]

Exactly. We talked about those CEOs, they're interested in ROIs. Well, there you go. Do a thing gets better. That's the problem with. Yes, of course, we need to look at our individual carbon footprints or changing our diets to consume less or no meat. All these things you can do. It's very hard to quantify the impact of those things. If you choose not to fly tomorrow, well. Well, the global temperature isn't going to come down because of your one action. You should still think about doing it. Whereas when it comes to rewilding the planet, you will see a quantifiable positive change. And people don't like being told to stop doing things.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, that's true.

[Bertie Gregory]

But what about if you do a thing and then it makes a better thing? You know what I mean? I just think it's a much more positive, proactive approach.

[Trevor Noah]

It is, actually. It is a proactive approach.

[Eugene]

But here's where I'm often conflicted when it comes to conservationalism and nature documentary makers is, for example, you'd go to the Ngorongoro crater, shoot a bunch of animals, right? Put that out on television. People all of a sudden are interested in going and seeing these animals. Now all of a sudden there's 50,000 Land Rovers there disturbing the exact same thing that you try to do.

[Bertie Gregory]

Yeah, yeah, it's a great point. So I'm really glad you point this up. Bring this Up. So in my new show on Disney, Cheetahs Up Close, we filmed cheetahs in the Serengeti.

[Trevor Noah]

And because cheetahs are going to be extinct, right?

[Bertie Gregory]

Cheetahs are.

[Trevor Noah]

They're pretty much gone.

[Bertie Gregory]

Not doing well.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Bertie Gregory]

So there's, you know, there's less cheetahs in the wild than there are lions, less cheetahs in the wild than there are rhinos. You know, it's not good. Yeah. But for some reason, I think maybe because they're really, really fast, everyone thinks they're okay. Yeah. But the metabolism.

[Eugene]

Slim waste.

[Bertie Gregory]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Eugene]

Would gain you a lot of enemies.

[Bertie Gregory]

Because they're fast, they're ok. And, you know, David Attenborough summarized it really well that we're loving these animals to death because where they are, you know, people wanna go see cheetahs. And, you know, in places where tourism is badly managed, they get surrounded by vehicles. They can't sneak up on their prey, they can't see bigger predators coming for them and their cubs, the hyenas, the lions, which is actually the biggest challenge that cheetahs face. And so what I would say to that is wildlife tourism is an amazing thing if managed correctly, because it gives a value to those animals alive. If you look at it in many places where. Well, as an example, I did a show that came out on Disney a few months ago called called Dolphins up Close in the Azores Islands, which is a group of islands off Portugal. Portugal, exactly. In the Atlantic. And, yeah, that community used to thrive on whaling. That was their big industry. And interviewed this amazing whaler called Daniel. He'd spent his life whaling and spotting whales. And, yeah, him and the community realized, actually people wanted to go see these whales and they are worth more alive than dead. And so he now it's also more sustainable. Well, he now spots the whales and instead of calling a whaling boat onto them to harpoon them, he calls in a boat full of tourists to go in and take pictures. Now, of course, there is the potential for that boat to be disturbing, but if managed correctly, it's a much better thing. Cause I feel like in an ideal world, okay, maybe you could say that, that, well, we should protect these places and then leave them alone and keep all the people out. But conservation is as much about the animals as it is about the humans that live in that place. And those animals, sadly, in our capitalist world, have to have an economic value to everything in the world to incentivize protecting them. So, of course there's the intrinsic value of looking after these animals. They're cute. They're wonderful. It's the right thing to do. But we need the extrinsic value, which is the, the economic one to, to make it, you know, ironically sustainable in, in the long term.

[Trevor Noah]

It's the paradox of everything these days. You, if you don't have an economic. Like have you seen how if they try like a program, let's say in Scandinavia, so they, you know, they were piloting a four day work week and whatever people in the US were like, we'll never do that. In many places are like, this is stupid. And then someone wrote a paper about the economic benefits of it. And then all of a sudden companies were like, yeah, we're gonna try this, we're gonna try this. They're like, oh, you'll actually get.

[Eugene]

Cause there's a financial incentive.

[Trevor Noah]

But look, that is the world we live in now. You have to show the economics something. Traffic doesn't get dealt with until somebody shows a politician how much a city is losing because of that traffic.

[Bertie Gregory]

But you can get very sad and cynical about it. But actually it's like, well, let's just play the game by their rules. Yeah, exactly. And then we can all agree.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, you just go like, for every cheater that dies, this is how much money you are losing. How much money you will lose in this is how much money you will lose. This is. You know what I mean?

[Bertie Gregory]

So when it's really interesting if you.

[Trevor Noah]

Find the right incentive.

[Bertie Gregory]

Totally. When we were there with the cheetahs, you know, the reason that that national park exists and isn't just a giant cow farm or cow pasture is because of the money being brought in from each of the tourists that goes there. Now we saw that in some places it is badly managed.

[Trevor Noah]

Right.

[Bertie Gregory]

So. And actually a, a study came out that showed that cheetah cub survival was much lower in places that had a lot of tourism.

[Eugene]

Yeah.

[Bertie Gregory]

Oh, wow. Badly managed tourism. So this isn't just like, oh, I feel like this is a bad thing when that cheetah family gets surrounded by cars. No, it's been proven so therefore it's really important that we do it correctly. And so that is, it's on the guide, but I think also it's on us as people that go there and again, guests in these places to ask questions because the guides are under huge amounts of pressure there. Safaris, for various reasons have traditionally been incredibly expensive and so very exclusive. Whereas now mass tourism, cheaper tourism is becoming possible. And it means that just to make the economics of the trip work, if you're Selling it for cheap. People will go on safari. Not for a week, they will go for one day. Now, the guide, he will get a really big tip if he manages to find all five of the best animals, right? So he's just gotta rip around. And for some reason, now that we all have a phone and not, you know, rather than bringing a normal camera, we now expect to get really close to everything to get a good picture of it. So we saw, we, we would follow these cheetahs from a distance. And then over the radio, we were a filming car and they knew what we were doing, so they always knew, ah, filming car. They're good at finding the cheetahs. We had the.

[Eugene]

They'd follow you.

[Bertie Gregory]

We had these amazing guides that would find stuff. All the vehicles would come to us and we've created this horrible problem where now this cheetah family is surrounded by cars very close and the cubs can't hear their mom's call, all that stuff. So we'd watch and, and people would be, they'd drive rather than sitting, you know, 100 meters away, 50 meters away, like we would with our really powerful technology. They would drive all the way up. And so that the guide got a tip, they want to be in a good position. They'd lean out and take a picture on their phone of the cheetah right there. And so actually, yes, you could blame that on the guide. Okay. It's his, you know, he needs to sort of feed his family. Well, yeah, but he needs to educate the tourists on, you know, da, da, da. But actually, I think it's equally as much our responsibility to go. Hang on.

[Trevor Noah]

I blame the phone companies. Why aren't they making better cameras that.

[Bertie Gregory]

Can make longer zooms? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

But make more wildlife zooms so that people can zoom in. We need longer telephoto lenses, so get on it. Phone companies.

[Eugene]

It's amazing how, you know, we should also.

[Bertie Gregory]

It's a good point.

[Trevor Noah]

You know, we should also do is you should start making like, I don't know how we'll do this ethically. We'll figure it out. We make like scam nature documentaries where you just tell people there's animals but there's nothing there. And you just go like, ah, welcome to the jungles of Long island where we found. And then you just, just, just diffuse people, you know what I mean?

[Bertie Gregory]

All right.

[Trevor Noah]

Some people are gonna get bamboozled. You know, you don't have to put those out because Disney won't buy those, but just put them out online and it can just be like, spread the humans out.

[Bertie Gregory]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

You know what I mean? And just like make a thing and be like, guys, I found this place where you can see cheetahs for really cheap. And then just send them somewhere random.

[Bertie Gregory]

Spread them all out. This is.

[Trevor Noah]

You know what I mean?

[Eugene]

I think.

[Trevor Noah]

I think those things, we diffuse the thing.

[Eugene]

Those cameras work just fine. I've seen them being used at Beyonce concerts. People are sitting way at the back at the nosebleeds, but they're able to zoom in.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, they do make it seem like they're in front of us.

[Eugene]

But all of a sudden, when there's a cheetah, you need to get closer and closer and closer.

[Bertie Gregory]

I think the other thing that seems to be a disconnect, I think, especially in our sort of, you know, I think it used to be that when you watched, you know, BBC Planet Earth documentaries, that was kind of the only sort of. Well, relatively. Yeah. The only sort of huge, amazing way to see a video of a whale. Right. Whereas now, you know, you scroll through Instagram, you're just bombarded with everything. So I think we sort of normalized it. And so now when lots of people do get to go to these amazing wild places, which I think is a great thing for all the, you know, reasons we talked about, they sort of forget that actually this is a wild place and all these animals, this isn't a zoo. It's not this abstract world that's in your phone. Like it's a real thing. And actions that you take will decide whether or not this animal lives or dies. Like the stakes are that high. And I think it's sort of reminding people to that. That you've gotta have this respect.

[Eugene]

I think it actually might sound very trivial, but you are at Disney and Disney has made a lot of cartoons. I think animating and giving animals personalities are sort of skewed. The way people should look at animals and not try to find out what the animals personalities are like. You're explaining.

[Bertie Gregory]

But I would argue in a way, though, that that is sort of a traditional sort of documentary approach is look at the grandeur of this amazing place. And isn't it whereas cartoons. Well, or even now, I guess, more recent nature documentaries, we do try and personify the characters. Yeah, they're fully characters and I think it's probably gone too far. But it is a way to sort of engage people and get people to fall in love rather than just it being this like beautiful wallpaper.

[Trevor Noah]

We'll be right back after this short break.

[Ad Voice]

Eczema is unpredictable, but you can flare less with ebglis, a once monthly treatment for moderate to severe eczema. After an initial four month or longer dose of about 4 in 10 people taking emplis achieved itch relief and clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks, and most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing.

Emplis Lebricizumab LBKZ a 250mg per 2ml injection is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema, also called atopic dermatitis, that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals, or who cannot use topical therapies. EBGLIS can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you're allergic to ebglis. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with ebglis. Before starting Ebglis, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection.

Ask your doctor about ebgliss and visit ebgliss.lilly.com or call 1-800-LilyRx or 1-800-545-5979.

[Trevor Noah]

The 2026 Chevy Equinox is more than an SUV. It's your Sunday tailgate and your parking lot, snack bar. Your lucky jersey, your chairs and your big cooler fit perfectly in your even bigger cargo space. And when it's go time, your 11.3-inch diagonal touchscreen's got the playbook, the playlist and the tech to stay a step ahead. It's more than an suv. It's your Equinox Chevrolet. Together, let's drive.

[Bertie Gregory]

Well, the holidays have come and gone once again. But if you've forgotten to get that special someone in your life a gift.

[Trevor Noah]

Well, Mint Mobile is extensive.

[Bertie Gregory]

Their holiday offer of half off unlimited wireless. So here's the idea. You get it now. You call it an early present for next year.

[Trevor Noah]

What do you have to lose? Give it a [e-mail] Switch limited time.

[Ad Voice]

50% off regular price for new customers. Upfront payment required $45 for 3 months, $90 for 6 month or $180 for 12 month.

[Bertie Gregory]

Plan taxes and fees.

[Ad Voice]

Extra speeds may slow after 50 gigabytes per month when network is busy. See terms.

[Trevor Noah]

What do you think we could take from the animals? I often wonder. This, like that. Like that dolphin bachelor crew that you're talking about.

[Bertie Gregory]

I knew we were gonna circle.

[Eugene]

Why do you choose bachelor instead of good?

[Trevor Noah]

That's what he said.

[Bertie Gregory]

Yeah. He said it's a technical term.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. Don't try that with me. Hey, buddy. Hey, buddy. I already have a rap sheet with you. Don't add more things. Unnecessary. Hey, no, like, I remember seeing that and I found myself wondering. I was like, are there any things we could tell. Take from nature? Do you ever see things where you're like, oh, yeah, this. This could probably work for us as humans. We should. We should be doing this. This could be like a. A way of life. This could be a. You know what I mean?

[Bertie Gregory]

I don't know if this answers your question, but it's just popped into my mind that wild animals lives are really, really hard.

[Eugene]

Yeah.

[Bertie Gregory]

But they are really good at doing what they do. And that's how they thrive. And so hard. They're really hard.

[Trevor Noah]

They're really good at what they do.

[Bertie Gregory]

Right. They like, they're. They're. They really focus. So what I take from that is okay. For whatever I do, I've gotta do my best to get really, really good at it.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, okay. I like this.

[Bertie Gregory]

And I'm not saying that.

[Trevor Noah]

No, no, no. Specialize, like, really go into, like, go into something. Get good at it.

[Bertie Gregory]

Yeah. Try and do your best to try and become like a master of it, because that's how you. That's how you. I'm not saying.

[Trevor Noah]

Eugene, what would you say you are master at if you were to say one thing? You. And you can't pick comedy. It has to be something else.

[Eugene]

I'm gonna ref sheet with you, my friend.

[Bertie Gregory]

And then actually, I want to show you a video to show you how hard some animals lives.

[Trevor Noah]

No, show. Show us what you got. Show us what you got. Okay. You have the most wholesome folk, like, camera roll of any human being.

[Eugene]

I know.

[Trevor Noah]

You can get any girl, like, just any. There's no one.

[Bertie Gregory]

Okay, so this is a female puma. Mountain lion puma. And she is hunting a guanaco. Okay. Which is like a wild llama. She is so close. She's got to be within 30 meters now. I think she's gonna go. Yep, here she goes. She's going. Who are you cheering for?

[Eugene]

The llama?

[Bertie Gregory]

No, the mountain lion.

[Eugene]

Really?

[Bertie Gregory]

Yeah. No. Go, pataka, go. Oh, my God, what a fight. She's got it. She's got it. The guaca is still Fighting. It's trying to buck her off. So my point is, animals have really hard lives.

[Trevor Noah]

Whoa. But you can't just go and say, my point is after that. There's so many thoughts I had after that video. Eugene will ask his questions, and then I'm gonna ask my questions.

[Bertie Gregory]

Okay, break it down.

[Trevor Noah]

First of all, mine's not really. It's a question for society, really. Why don't we make that the experience when we're getting like takeouts, you know.

[Bertie Gregory]

Imagine having to do they have to do that once every time their whole life.

[Trevor Noah]

And I'm saying this selfishly as somebody.

[Eugene]

Once a week. Week.

[Bertie Gregory]

Who. You know once a week.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. Cuz like, sometimes I'm like, hey, man, it's so easy to eat the foods that I'm eating. And then I'm just putting on weights and I'm like, ah, man, I just wish it would be great if I walked into a takeout place and then immediately had to get into jiu jitsu hold.

[Bertie Gregory]

Can I get the.

[Eugene]

The chef two piece?

[Trevor Noah]

You want four? Four pieces. Bring out more. Can I get fries? Bring another one.

[Bertie Gregory]

Get kicked in the face. Y.

[Trevor Noah]

I mean, it would be good for society.

[Eugene]

So unprofessional.

[Trevor Noah]

It would be good for society.

[Eugene]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

You know what I mean? And then at the end of when you're eating your fries and then everyone's there bleeding and stuff, and they're like, how the hell is it? Fear and it's dope.

[Bertie Gregory]

Really, really good fries.

[Trevor Noah]

But you, you would. You would eat less of it. You know what I mean? Like, that animal looks like it's crazy in shape. How many times does that. That hunt have to happen for that animal to survive?

[Bertie Gregory]

So that's an individual called Pitaka.

[Trevor Noah]

So she's like a man. So for that puma to survive, how many times does Pataka have to do that?

[Bertie Gregory]

So she had her and her two cubs. She has to take down a guanaco. Yeah. Sort of a big wild llama like that. Maybe every once every seven to 10 days.

[Trevor Noah]

Yo.

[Bertie Gregory]

Every single guy. Every single guy.

[Eugene]

Struggle. Every.

[Bertie Gregory]

And what's. What's crazy?

[Eugene]

The local bar as a kwanyaka. It's been. How long has it been lubricated? Oh my. We can relate to this.

[Trevor Noah]

I love how you also cheering for. So how do you. Wait, how do you choose which animal to cheer for?

[Bertie Gregory]

Well, that's a tough one because, you know, as a wildlife camera person, we are, you know, we. We can, you know, never get involved. And so, you know, it's important to not to Try to. I guess we're normally told to not get emotionally.

[Eugene]

You were really involved.

[Trevor Noah]

You were screaming.

[Bertie Gregory]

What I mean by him killing. I was very emotionally killing dead lives.

[Eugene]

Don't.

[Bertie Gregory]

I know. Sticking a leg out, trying to trip it up.

[Eugene]

You sounded like Joe Rogan in ufc.

[Trevor Noah]

Get him.

[Bertie Gregory]

So what I was going to say if I was allowed to finish was we are normally told to not get emotionally attached, but often when you spend all day, every day following an individual animal for a month or two and you know the stakes because you know it's cubs that it has to feed.

[Eugene]

Yeah.

[Bertie Gregory]

I feel like often people want to choose the side of the prey. Cause that's the thing being attacked. And I think that's often because, you know, prey is very cute. But my point often is, well, okay, if we're gonna play by those rules and based on cuteness, baby predators are usually the cutest. Like a baby mountain lion. Oh my God, they're so cute. So, yeah, I don't think that's good logic, but that's sort of a side note there. But my point is with Pitaka, her life is incredibly hard, but she is so good at doing that. She has mastered that. She's like an Olympic athlete.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, I really like that.

[Bertie Gregory]

Yeah.

[Eugene]

She a single black mom.

[Bertie Gregory]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

That's fighting hard.

[Eugene]

My two cubs.

[Trevor Noah]

And I'm going, I'm going in there. Two cubs going, going in there, doing it. Can I say, like that also is a, is a valuable lesson for life.

[Eugene]

Though, is don't be a single black mom.

[Trevor Noah]

If. I mean, that one's the hardest thing to be sure. If you are, if you are going to, or rather if we lived in a world where we were more able to see and spend time with other people, we might have a little more compassion for the situation that they're in. Because think about it, this is a random puma. And then just because you spent time observing her and her life with her cubs, you now had a vested interest in her survival and success.

[Bertie Gregory]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

And I almost feel like if we just had a little bit of that in society.

[Bertie Gregory]

Just think it's empathy, isn't it?

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, but it's contact. And I mean, we've talked about this, you know. You know, I'm a big believer in this part of why I love pickleball. And I always tell you these things, but like, if you meet people and if you spend time with them, you're just more likely to be concerned about their well being and who they are and how they are. And the further we are from them, the less we're likely to consider them and their survival.

[Bertie Gregory]

But bring it back to the wolves we talked about, about if you actually spend time with wolves in the wild, which I've been very lucky enough to have done.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Bertie Gregory]

You very quickly realize that they are not these sort of mindless man eating killers. They have these amazing social systems and they are so stoked to be alive and in a pack and they, they love communicating, they love, oh my God, they love each other so much. It is so lovely. You know when like if you have a dog and you come home and the dog, they do that, but there's like 10 of them and there's no humans and they're just having a great party with each other and sniffing each other and having an awful pickleball. That's pickable. Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Is it true that one of the greatest threats to these wild systems is how we expanding farming?

[Bertie Gregory]

I mean in the case of wolves, yeah. I mean conflict with livestock. But I guess it comes back to that empathy of if we just, if we don't, if we don't spend time with them, documenting their lives, showing how amazing and awesome that they are. But they're not individuals, they're just wolves at a faraway place. It's very easy for someone to go along and be shooting them and going, ah, terrible, evil wolves. Again, it's that it's a double edged sword. Right. You need that view into their world.

[Trevor Noah]

So what were your questions about the video?

[Eugene]

That video, that video was heartbreaking for. Why? I mean when the person shooting the video has clearly chosen a side.

[Bertie Gregory]

And.

[Eugene]

As the llama you're hearing, you're fighting for your life, there's a guy there in the north face jacket shouting for your death while your own llama kids are watching.

[Trevor Noah]

You.

[Bertie Gregory]

Feel like most of it, it's kind of fair. Yeah, it's kind of fair. I guess, I guess if you would like the context, I can make a. Okay, sure. I can make a shameless plug. If you watch the whole episode, it's part of a series, Animals up close on Disney, you can meet Pataka. You can see her cubs. You can see the stakes, the challenges that she faces and why. Hunting guanaco is very challenging and far more often the guanaco wins.

[Trevor Noah]

I mean when the guanaco wins, that's.

[Bertie Gregory]

Stamping off far more often.

[Eugene]

Far more often.

[Bertie Gregory]

Most of the time the pumas fail. They get bucked off and have terrible.

[Trevor Noah]

How many pumas are there and how many guanakas are there?

[Bertie Gregory]

There's a lot More guanakas.

[Trevor Noah]

That's what I'm assuming. Yo, did you see how the thing was stamping on it?

[Bertie Gregory]

Yeah, they've got the crazy neck dip. Yeah, yeah. I mean, what a strategy. Yeah, yeah. You want to jump on my back and crawl on my neck? I'm gonna neck dip you.

[Eugene]

You know what, actually you brought up farming and I think farming has done a lot for conservation as well. I was watching this one piece about sturgeon and how wild sturgeon had almost become a fish.

[Trevor Noah]

What is sturgeon?

[Bertie Gregory]

As in the fish?

[Eugene]

The fish that they use for caviar.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, okay, okay.

[Eugene]

So they, they, they.

[Trevor Noah]

I'm not familiar with fish.

[Bertie Gregory]

Oh yes.

[Eugene]

Prehistoric looking fish.

[Bertie Gregory]

Amazing animals.

[Eugene]

Gigantic.

[Trevor Noah]

What? That one with the face like that?

[Eugene]

Okay, then what face was this? Now what face was this?

[Trevor Noah]

Was it wrong?

[Bertie Gregory]

No.

[Eugene]

Was it right?

[Trevor Noah]

I don't know. Because I don't.

[Eugene]

I'm asking, I'm looking at it. Mean now here, was that the one? You've seen wild animals before? What is this? Do it again.

[Trevor Noah]

Is it close?

[Bertie Gregory]

Are you sure? Yeah. Oh, it's fine. Anyway, I'm just trying to clarify which fish. Keep going.

[Trevor Noah]

Sorry, sturgeon. Carry on.

[Eugene]

That sounds like a prestigious person than a sturgeon.

[Bertie Gregory]

So every time he says the word sturgeon from. Now we're going to do sturgeon.

[Eugene]

So what they've realized is sturgeon was almost extinct.

[Trevor Noah]

Don't do that.

[Eugene]

Was. Was almost extinct because obviously they were being killed for their eggs. But it actually takes very long for a sturgeon to reach full maturity. So it can bear eggs.

[Trevor Noah]

It can bear the eggs, yes.

[Eugene]

So they were getting extinct. So in the EU they said no more wild sturgeon. So most of the caviar that you see now comes from farmed.

[Bertie Gregory]

Oh, as in fish farming.

[Eugene]

Fish farming, yes.

[Bertie Gregory]

Right.

[Eugene]

So it's not a lot obviously for, for nature conservation. They do it with lots of counter conservation though.

[Bertie Gregory]

Back it up. Why? Well, I would say that I, I don't know specifically a huge amount about the particular example with sturgeon, but if you look at other systems, for example, farmed salmon or even tuna, which is ranched, it's often used as a way to say, oh, this is much more sustainable because we're not affecting wild stocks, we're raising them in captivity. But actually the reality is that it's complete and utter bs. Okay, you take tuna, for example. So bluefin tuna, previously, let's take the Mediterranean, for example. They would go on this. They go on this crazy migration in the Atlantic and then some of them come into the Mediterranean Sea to breed. And so they would go past certain European countries a couple times a year on their way into the Mediterranean on their way out. So these countries would get two chances to fish them each year when they.

[Eugene]

Swam past on their way in and their way.

[Bertie Gregory]

And what would happen was they would fish a huge amount during that period. They would sell them mostly to the. The Japanese sushi market. And it's classic supply and demand. You sell lots of tuna, you flood the market, the price drops. So what they realized is, instead of fishing them and killing them, what if they ranched them? So they would go catch a whole bunch, they would put them in these huge nets, and they would keep them alive in these nets throughout the year. So then they could sell them when the price was right.

[Eugene]

Right.

[Bertie Gregory]

And it was often said, oh, well, you know, this takes pressure off of hunting more from the wild.

[Trevor Noah]

I mean, that seems right.

[Bertie Gregory]

Well, there's two flaws to this. One is if you're catching a huge, huge amount, well, you're still removing them from the wild. You're not actually farming those. But the bigger issue is, okay, I visited one tuna ranch, okay. And they had 24 nets in each net. They had 1,000 bluefin tuna. And these bluefin tuna can.

[Trevor Noah]

Those things are massive.

[Bertie Gregory]

They can be 2 to 300 kilos, these fish. They're enormous. Yeah. So a thousand fish in one net, Guess how much food you have to feed 1,000 bluefin tuna per day.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, shit.

[Bertie Gregory]

And cons, I'm sure six to 10 times of fish per net. This one ranch had 24 nets. That means they are feeding that farm up to 240 tons of prey fish per day.

[Eugene]

That has to come from somewhere.

[Bertie Gregory]

Where does that come from? It comes from anywhere in the ocean around the world. So once a week, this enormous ship would turn up with herring from Norway, anchovies from the coast of Chile, sardines from the coast of South Africa, wherever it was cheap. And these fish would get poured into these nets. We. We were catching fish to feed fish.

[Trevor Noah]

You know, the worst thing about.

[Bertie Gregory]

So we're just hoovering up the.

[Eugene]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

The worst thing about learning is that it can make you very depressed.

[Eugene]

Yeah. 100.

[Trevor Noah]

No, genuinely. Because I think there's a lot of people out there, myself included, who food go like, oh, this is much better. Yeah, because, you know, you're farming it and now. And then. Now you're telling me, oh, yeah. The second system effect of doing this has far more detrimental effects on the food supply and on the ecosystem than we thought previously. So then. So Then, okay, then what, what do we do? I mean, that, that is part of the reason I've always liked your work as well, is every time I've seen you, every time I've watched your video, you'll always offer a solution. You'll always, you don't just go like, man, that's all, folks.

[Bertie Gregory]

It sucks, you know, because there's enough depressing stuff in the world. Yeah, yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

What are some of the success stories that you've come across or you've been a part of? Where you go, oh, look, this is, this is like an achievable difference we can make. It's not big, it's not monumental. It's not like shutting down industries. It's not. What are some of the totally.

[Bertie Gregory]

Well, I mean, a really. Staying with the theme of the ocean, the really amazing thing about the ocean is that if you give it the chance, it comes back on an unbelievable scale, the speed. So a really awesome conservation success story. There's a place called Raja Ampat in Indonesia, this amazing archipelago. It looks like something out of a storybook. It's all these little islands covered in green jungle. And around those islands, underwater, is some of the most amazing coral reef. But in many places in Raja Ampat, you dive on those places and it's just a rubble field because they've been dynamite fished. So that's when fishermen would come along. They would chuck a stick of dynamite into the water. It goes bang.

[Eugene]

Stunned the fish.

[Bertie Gregory]

All the fish come up to the surface, you know, dead stunned. You get a quick, easy catch. But of course, the fragile coral reef is left destroyed. That coral reef is the basis of the whole ecosystem. And so once you've trashed that bit of reef, well, it's gone. You have to move to the next place. Now, if you're doing that on a very small scale, okay, maybe that could work. But there's lots of people and it's. Yeah, so it's trashed. So about 20 years ago in a place called Missoul, the community came together and they were backed by pretty significant private philanthropy. They came together and they said, enough is enough. You know, the ecosystem is dying. And as, as a fishing community, we are really, really struggling. So they basically just set up a no take zone. You're not allowed to fish in it. Many of the fishermen became kind of rangers. You know, some of them became dive guides. And 20 years on, they, you know, they've made this. This place has made an extraordinary comeback. And in that time, the biomass. So that's the weight of Living things at some of the key locations. It's gone up by 600% and it's one of the only places on earth where the biodiversity, so it's the number of different species is actually increasing and they're also replanting the coral reef. And so the coolest thing about that is that, okay, nature's thriving, humans are directly thriving because they're being paid to be rangers and dive guides and all that stuff. Stuff. But the best part is that the marine life doesn't understand the borders that we draw. So it moves outside of those protected areas into the take zone. And so the local fishing community actually gets, is actually doing really well.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, it, it's, I mean it's, it's so trivial to say, but it really is, it really feels like everything you say is just us not having a wide enough aperture to actually understand time.

[Bertie Gregory]

Well, often and the benefits of things, you have to make a small short term sacrifice.

[Trevor Noah]

Yes.

[Bertie Gregory]

For a long term massive gain.

[Eugene]

Yeah.

[Bertie Gregory]

Not just economic, you know, it's all become extractive now.

[Trevor Noah]

That's, that's the issue is like we live in a world where companies want to extract as much as possible from everyone all the time, as much as possible.

[Bertie Gregory]

And now, now, now, now, now.

[Trevor Noah]

And so growth has no longer been something. And you see, you see that it's not one way or the other. By the way, there are many companies out there, especially like companies that haven't gone public where they, they make a shit ton of money and the product is still good and the customer is still served and they treat their customer because they get to define their own growth. Do you know what I mean? They don't have to just, just like.

[Bertie Gregory]

Vacuum up shareholder value.

[Trevor Noah]

Everything. Yeah, shareholder value. Like where's more, more, more, more. It's like, yeah, you, it can be more sustainably, but sustainably.

[Bertie Gregory]

I do wonder if in X period of time, 10, 20 years, we'll look back on this time. You know, we now we look back on certain things that we've done in the past that we were like, those people were really bad. That was really bad. And when we look at things like slavery or colonization and I wonder if in the future we're going to look back on certain things that we're doing to the environment now and go, oh yeah, what do you mean you did that for shareholders? What do you mean? Shareholder value? Yeah, like what's going on there?

[Trevor Noah]

I think you're assuming we'll still all be around for that. Because this is the weird thing, you know, the other Day I started like reading about extinction level events. One thing that's most terrifying about them is how they. It's just like a tipping point, you know, it's just like one thing that tips and then all of a sudden it unravels. Yeah, it just unravels. It's like, oh, you lost this much forest or at a certain time this changed in the atmosphere and then all of a sudden all the trees died and then that caused the thing and this caused. But it's just like, it's just a tipping point. And then the world has to go to sleep for a few hundred years or thousand years.

[Bertie Gregory]

And then this got very dark and depressing. And so what I would say is that, yes, we obviously have big challenges, but there are so many good news, conservation success stories.

[Trevor Noah]

Now you're gonna see why I love birds.

[Bertie Gregory]

There are so many. And not. Not to say that you. We should, you know, bury our heads in the sand and ignore the rest of the. No, no, no, no. But if we focus on when we've got it right, rather than going naughty, naughty, this is what you did wrong. I feel like it's. Yeah, it comes back to that thing of, yeah, if you're told not to do something, you will do it. Yeah, you're going to do it. Whereas if you're told what can do, inspire and celebrate the wins.

[Trevor Noah]

So what's the thing that's, that's inspired you most recently where you've gone like, oh, this. What are you working on right now? Actually, like, you always, every time I see you, you're working on something more crazy and more interesting and it just goes in the most random directions.

[Bertie Gregory]

So I'm working on a couple different projects with Disney. It's really exciting continuing my Up Close series. Yeah. So in each episode we go.

[Trevor Noah]

Do animals ever recognize you? By the way?

[Eugene]

That's funny. Aren't you that guy?

[Trevor Noah]

No, I'm being serious.

[Eugene]

Was cheering when my mom.

[Trevor Noah]

Are you the Pataka guy? No, what I mean is, I mean this genuinely because you go back to some places, I'm assuming. I wonder if you've ever encountered any animal that has in some way shown you like a familiar, like, Cause you know the animals is what I'm saying.

[Bertie Gregory]

Right.

[Trevor Noah]

Have you ever had that encounter where an animal has sort of like gone like, oh, shit, obviously not going like Birties.

[Bertie Gregory]

Well, so in the case of Pitaka, so the reason that I know her is that that when she was a cub, when she was six months old in 2017, I filmed her for a BBC David Attenborough series called Seven Worlds. And I was filming her mother, Sarmiento. And Sarmiento was fighting to protect her cubs and feed her cubs and raise her cubs. And one of those cubs was Pitaka. She was six months old. She was this little fluffy.

[Trevor Noah]

This is the context you should have given us earlier. We thought you were just out here cheering for a murderer. You've known her since she was a child.

[Bertie Gregory]

So then I went back, yeah. Four or five years later. And now she has not only survived, which is a big deal for puma cubs, cause they don't have great survival rates, but she was. Now this. Her mother had passed away semiento. And now she'd taken over her mother's territory and was raising her own cubs. Now it felt like going back to see this long lost friend. And obviously she was just like, I don't know you. Who are you?

[Trevor Noah]

I think if you do it long enough, it'll happen. I genuinely do. Here's what. And maybe it's the types of animals, don't get me wrong, I'm not expecting a crocodile to be your friend. But I do think like an elephant, maybe a whale. I'm willing to.

[Bertie Gregory]

We'll.

[Eugene]

We'll.

[Trevor Noah]

We'll have this conversation.

[Eugene]

Why not a crocodile?

[Bertie Gregory]

Okay.

[Trevor Noah]

I don't think crocodiles roll like that.

[Eugene]

Why?

[Bertie Gregory]

I recently.

[Trevor Noah]

I just don't.

[Bertie Gregory]

I was recently on a project that hopefully Disney will be okay with me talking about it because it's not the main focus of the show. But I did meet a manta ray. Okay, wow. Like huge, giant oceanic manta ray.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Bertie Gregory]

Five meter plus wingspan.

[Trevor Noah]

Five meter? Oh, yeah. I don't think they could get that big.

[Eugene]

Yeah, Moana's grandmother did.

[Bertie Gregory]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

That was beautiful imagery, Eugene. I hate it when you do that to me. But I haven't.

[Bertie Gregory]

Manta rays have, relative to their body size, the largest brain of any fish. They're actually incredibly intelligent and they pass the mirror test so they can recognize themselves, which is pretty mind boggling. But this particular manta ray, she came over to us on our first dive at this particular location. And she was really friendly and she sort of parked over our heads. And I won't tell you what she did because that will be giving the game away as what the episode's about. We'll park that down the road. But what was amazing was the. That for the rest of the five days that we were at this location, every single time we got in the water, she would come and find us.

[Trevor Noah]

See, this is what I was asking.

[Bertie Gregory]

Now the question Is okay. They are technically capable of differentiating between humans. So was she just a massive attention seeker and went to go and be really nice to everyone, or was there something special about us and she wanted to come home?

[Trevor Noah]

I think we know the answer.

[Bertie Gregory]

I hope it's the latter, but I think it's.

[Trevor Noah]

We know that she had a Disney plus subscription. She was like, that's Bertie. And then she was like, you know, let me go say what's up?

[Bertie Gregory]

She's like, I want to be a natural.

[Eugene]

Moana is on Disney.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, yeah, Moana's also on Disney. Look at this.

[Bertie Gregory]

It's a collaboration, cross pollination.

[Trevor Noah]

We've done. Huh? This is what they call synergy in the corporate world.

[Bertie Gregory]

Synergy.

[Trevor Noah]

Eugene, you. They'll love you. And you must go to corporate one day. You gotta go and do it. But this has been amazing, man. Thank. I'm. I'm really excited for, like, everything. I. I just, like, you know, because I'll. I'll tell you why. Because you've helped me and I think millions of other people who've watched the shows understand the link between the worlds. And not in, like a cheesy way, just genuine, in like a, you know, like, ROI kind of way. You've really helped people go like, oh, wow, all right. We need that, that. That animal. We need those. We need all of these animals. We need these creatures to survive life so that we can get our food, so that we can live our lives, so that we can. You know what I mean?

[Eugene]

Yeah. No, I love. I love the fact that you emphasize that because, you know, humans always think they can go elsewhere. Like, if things don't work out in this reef, they can go somewhere else. And then Planet B, this guy.

[Trevor Noah]

But, sorry, carry on.

[Eugene]

But now you've made it possible, or for me, to even imagine that we must coexist with the animals that we've displaced. We don't have to be away from the Ngorongoro crater to be close to the animals or to love them even. You know, we can be there. We can't love them to death. But I think you've done a lot, man. And I hadn't known much about you until we spoke today, and I see your passion and I see why my friend here loves you so much.

[Bertie Gregory]

Oh, well, thanks very much for having me, guys.

[Trevor Noah]

Thank you.

[Bertie Gregory]

Good to chat and getting people to care about animals in the natural world. And I would encourage people wherever they live, even if it's in the middle of a city, even if it's like, here in New York. There are. This city is home to the. The fastest animal on earth. Peregrine falcon that will be hunting off the skyscrapers not far from this very room. So it doesn't matter where you live.

[Trevor Noah]

I've always wondered if I was really seeing those.

[Bertie Gregory]

It doesn't matter where you live. There is amazing wildlife.

[Trevor Noah]

I was like, that looks like a falcon. Then I was like, trevor, it's a pigeon. Clearly it's a pigeon. You can't just see a falcon in New York City.

[Bertie Gregory]

Yeah, you can.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, but you can.

[Bertie Gregory]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, give us a tip for how to.

[Trevor Noah]

You sneak up on animals as you depart. Like. Like in a. In a good way. Because when you said that, I was like, I want to. I want to get close. And like, they've. What are the do's and don'ts.

[Bertie Gregory]

Well, the most important thing is knowing. Knowing your subject. Knowing. Yeah. The animal. And, and. And I think just spending time. Spending time outside.

[Trevor Noah]

I know that sounds outside.

[Bertie Gregory]

Be outside. First rule. Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Be outside.

[Bertie Gregory]

Go look.

[Trevor Noah]

And.

[Bertie Gregory]

And yeah, knowing the animal. And. And you want to know as much about it. Do as much homework as you can about it.

[Trevor Noah]

Okay.

[Bertie Gregory]

Research about it.

[Trevor Noah]

So don't just go out. Don't learn on the job.

[Bertie Gregory]

No, no. Learn on the job for sure. But the reason that it's good to know things or be with someone that knows things is because one. That means you've got a greater chance of actually finding it in the first place and understanding what the heck it's doing when it's flying around or doing whatever. But the other thing is coming back to that. Loving them to death. You make sure that. That you can understand the cues that it gives off when it's, you know, comfortable with you being there. Uncomfortable. So that we make sure that when we're watching animals, it's on their terms. And they are.

[Trevor Noah]

This is. This is. This is exactly why I only go to like a nightclub or a bar with Eugene, because then he can help me spot the situations. And then Eugene will be like, he's interpreting the wild. Yeah. Eugene goes like, ah. Don't say hi. Calm down. Don't. Don't make eye contact with that guy. Absolutely shake your hips here, Trevor. And then, you know, that's how.

[Eugene]

Because before me, you used to just feed on carcasses.

[Bertie Gregory]

Sort of works as an analogy.

[Trevor Noah]

I made a terrible mistake engaging you at all.

[Bertie Gregory]

It was nearly really wholesome. Thanks so much.

[Trevor Noah]

No, man, but thank you. Thanks for. Thanks for indulging.

[Eugene]

This was fun, man.

[Bertie Gregory]

Appreciate it.

[Trevor Noah]

Thanks.

[Eugene]

Oh, man, this is Great.

[Trevor Noah]

What now with Trevor Noah is produced by DayZero Productions in partnership with SiriusXM. The show is executive produced by Trevor Noah, Sanaz Yamin and Jess Hackle. Rebecca Chain is our producer. Our development researcher is Marcia Robiou. Music mixing and mastering by Hannis Brown Random Other stuff by Ryan Hardooth thank you so much for listening Listening. Join me next week for another episode of what Now.

[Ad Voice]

Eczema is unpredictable, but you can flare less with Epglis, a once monthly treatment for moderate to severe eczema. After an initial four month or longer dosing phase. About four in ten people taking ebglis achieved itch relief in clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks and most of the so those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing.

Hemglus Lebricizumab LBKZ a 250mg per 2ml injection is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema, also called atopic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals or who cannot use topical therapies. Ebglis can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you're allergic to Epglis. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with Ebglis before starting ebglis, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection.

Ask your doctor about ebgliss and visit ebgliss.lilly.com or call 1-800-lilyrx or 1-800-545-5979.

[Trevor Noah]

USAA knows Dynamic Duos can save the day like superheroes and Sidekicks or auto and home insurance. With usaa, you can bundle your auto and home and save up to 10%. Tap the banner to learn more and get a'@usaa.com bundle restrictions apply.