Summary8 min read

You Made It Weird with Pete Holmes

Episode: Forrest Galante

Date: August 21, 2025
Guest: Forrest Galante, wildlife biologist, adventurer, and TV host

Episode Overview

This episode features real-life adventurer and wildlife biologist, Forrest Galante. Known for hosting Animal Planet’s Extinct or Alive, Mysterious Creatures, and frequent appearances on Shark Week, Forrest dives into wild stories from his global explorations searching for rare and "extinct" animals, human-wildlife negotiations, the future of conservation, personal tales of brushes with danger, and how our modern lifestyle disconnects us from nature—and from our own happiness. The conversation flows with Pete's trademark blend of earnest curiosity, humor, and philosophical reflection.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Who is Forrest Galante?

[01:47–03:41]
- Pete introduces Forrest as the first true “adventurer” on the podcast—“literally risks his life” on daring wildlife expeditions.
- [03:09] Forrest:
  
  "I think I’m a wildlife communicator or educator. I travel around the world, (work) in some of the most remote and hostile environments, work with indigenous and tribal people to expose incredible wildlife... any wildlife that needs exposure and needs help, I work on those projects."

2. Navigating Cultural Differences in Conservation

[03:41–05:18]
- Pete asks how Forrest navigates pushback from indigenous practices (e.g. hunting practices).
- [04:10] Forrest, who grew up in Zimbabwe, emphasizes universal negotiation:
  
  "We all want wildlife on the planet. Sometimes it takes education... Just say, look, I know you've been doing it a certain way for this long, but you want it to be sustainable. Here's a way to do that so that you can continue to grow your family, grow your culture...”

3. Interconnectedness of Wildlife & Humans

[05:35–06:55]
- Pete: “The planet as a body, and wildlife is almost like white blood cells…”
- Forrest explains the impact of shark extinction:
  
  [06:34] "If sharks disappear from the planet, you and I... our families—they’re gone. If sharks cease to exist on planet Earth, we’re dead...They’re bioregulators for the ocean."
- [07:01] “People forget that we’re killing sharks at a rate of... 8 million sharks a year or something like that.”

4. Food Chains, Conservation, and Indigenous Knowledge

[07:41–10:24]
- Discusses the global reliance on seafood (“91% of the world relies on the ocean for their main source of protein”).
- Connections drawn to survival shows (Alone), with insights that women on such shows "make life worth living" via art, joy, and homemaking even in survival.

5. Myth, Religion, and Environmental Impact

[10:42–14:01]
- Pete explores how ancient myths captured the idea of not over-exploiting resources—"leave some of these parts.”
- [12:04] Forrest critiques biblical concepts of dominion and how they influenced the Industrial Revolution’s approach:
  
  "… wildlife and nature and animals were here for our harvest dominion. Yeah, exactly… during the Industrial Revolution, it was like, how fast can we evolve technology to consume wildlife...”
- Conversation on modern meat consumption, invasive species (lionfish, wild boar), and sustainable eating.

6. Ecophobia & Optimism vs. Doom & Gloom

[16:34–18:41]
- Forrest denounces “ecophobia” (overwhelming fear narrative):
  
  [17:01] “It’s so demoralizing… let’s look for solutions and silver linings and ways to make things better as opposed to just doom and gloom.”
- He is "very optimistic," emphasizing the planet’s resiliency and the power of small proactive actions.

7. Proactive vs. Reactive Approaches to Environmentalism

[18:41–19:01]
- Cites Tony Robbins: Humans are more likely to act to avoid pain than to gain pleasure.
- [18:53] Pete draws a parallel to health checkups — we are preventative with Earth, too: “We should be getting checkups and then you’ll be alright.”

8. How Human Well-Being Links to Planetary Care

[20:11–21:56]
- Pete proposes: “If humans are happier and living longer, we might care more for the planet.”
- Forrest: “I think if you’re happier then it’s easier to contribute and to care about something outside of yourself...”

9. AI, Tech, and Conservation

[22:05–23:54]
- Forrest gives examples of AI drone analysis of elephant herds, interpreting animal “language.”
- Future prospects of AI in conservation—for example, learning shark body language.
- Analogies drawn to ancient myths—“we might literally talk to the cows" in the future.

10. Sentience, Lab Meat, and Food System Futures

[24:17–27:38]
- Thought experiment: If animals could express themselves (“If a pig could just look at you and say ‘Good morning’… you’d find a different breakfast.”)
- Forrest: “I think the Earth has a rhythm and a flow. When we try and print meat in a lab, maybe our bodies, our cells, will say, 'That’s not it.'”
- Both agree we need more connection to nature (“walk barefoot, eat some real food, get sun”).

11. Disconnect from Nature in Modern Life

[29:03–37:46]
- Forrest shares that being outdoors is “medicine;” modern artificial environments lead to “wilting.”
- Pete: “We’ve gotten so far from being on a log sharing food…it’s really fucking bizarre.”
- Both reminisce about the 1980s as a recent “peak” of human/nature balance—technology was handy, but human connection and need were stronger.

12. Modern Technology, Meetings, and Mental Overload

[49:00–51:34]
- Discussion on calendar overload, constant urgency, and burnout.
- [50:15] Forrest shares a tip from a friend: “I don’t take meetings anymore…I do a Loom video if I need something… Haven’t scheduled a meeting in two years.”

13. Presence, Nature, and Animal Behavior

[54:13–56:26]
- Forrest on being “present” when tracking wildlife—no distractions, necessity for survival.
- Pete: “Dangerous to not be present...those people did die. And now only the distractible people are breeding!”

14. Hope for the Next Generation?

[56:26–58:02]
- Forrest observes that younger generations, having grown up with tech, may be less addicted (“it’s boring now”).
- Pete compares it to how Europeans are less fascinated with wine since it’s normalized from a young age.

15. Forrest’s Near-Death Experiences

[58:02–77:57]
Plane Crashes
- Two crashes: one in Zimbabwe ([59:01] "Plane got struck by lightning. All the instruments went out. When we landed, hit a termite mound, plane spun around, things got ripped off... [but] we were okay.").
Animal Encounters
- Stung by man o’ war jellyfish ("like an acid burn"), mauled by a lion, bitten by sharks, nearly killed by a hippo ([63:04] "In February, I almost got killed by a hippo while we were working down in Colombia.")
- Hippo story: Hippos were released into the Colombian wild by Pablo Escobar—now a huge, dangerous invasive population.
  
  [64:20] "Hippos don’t have a fight or flight response. They have a fight response."

16. The Dragon and Cryptid Debate

[78:10–81:45]
- Pete asks about “dragon stuff.” Forrest clarifies a viral Rogan clip was taken out of context—he’s not a dragon hunter, but remarked on interesting cross-cultural dragon myths and fossilization chances.
- Explains what a “cryptid” is (Bigfoot, chupacabra, etc.)—reasons why some myths lack fossil evidence.

17. Most Misunderstood Animal

[81:45–83:54]
- [82:07] Forrest: "Pandas. They have the best PR campaign in the world. They’re dumb as dirt, the worst parents in the world…they’d hand you their baby for an apple."
- People want to cuddle them but they’re "vicious, defensive, territorial."

18. If You Could Witness an Extinct Beast

[84:01–87:22]
- Forrest would visit the Tasmanian Tiger (“thylacine”)—a marsupial wolf that “may still exist in New Guinea”—over dinosaurs for its mysterious evolutionary mix.

19. Strange and Dangerous Nights in the Wild

[87:44–94:51]
- Weird nights: bees invading tents, flooding, rebels (or, e.g., armed military) entering camp.
- [90:29] Forrest recalls being accused of spying on illegal logging, needing to bribe, hide footage, and eventually flee in a bush plane as “guys with machine guns” closed in ([94:51]).
- Emphasizes the value of “human connection” over confrontation to diffuse tension and build rapport, even in dangerous scenarios.

20. Happiness, Modernity, & Human Connection

[96:07–99:11]
- Forrest discusses seeing happiness in communities with "nothing"—no tech, comfort, medicine, but “nothing but smiles,” a deep sense of belonging and presence.
- Pete: "The secret to happiness is not meeting all your needs...it seems like what these kids you’re talking about have is an attunement with their environment, with their community...belonging, present."
- [98:36] Forrest: “These people that have nothing have happiness.”

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On Conservation:
“[We] all want wildlife on the planet… sometimes it takes education or figuring out very complex issues.” – Forrest [04:10]
Interconnectedness:
“If sharks disappear, you and I, our families…they’re gone. Sharks are bioregulators for the ocean.” – Forrest [06:34]
Optimism & Solutions:
“All hope is not lost. This planet is incredibly resilient…with small amounts of effort.” – Forrest [17:39]
Thrill of Animal Encounters:
“Anytime something like this happens with wildlife, I’m the one to blame, not the animals...complacency set in…. I duct taped [my shark bite] and went back to work.” – Forrest [76:08]
Pandas' PR:
“They’d hand you their baby to take the apple. These are animals that have been trying to head towards extinction for, like, thousands of years.” – Forrest [83:19]
On Human Connection vs. Technology:
“If you pulled up to me at a gas station…and said, ‘Hey, where am I going?’ I’d be like, ‘Google it.’” – Forrest [39:24]
On Happiness:
“These people that have nothing have happiness.” – Forrest [98:36]

Timestamps for Highlights

[03:09] Forrest defines his role as a “wildlife communicator.”
[06:34] Why losing sharks means losing humans.
[12:04] Critique of biblical “dominion” and industrial impact.
[17:39] Forrest’s optimism about the planet.
[22:05] AI’s use in conservation (elephants, sharks).
[24:17] Hypothetical: If pigs could talk.
[29:03] Modern life’s disconnect from nature.
[50:15] Forrest’s industry friend: “I don’t take meetings anymore.”
[58:20] Forrest’s plane crash stories begin.
[64:20] Hippos’ aggression explained.
[82:07] Pandas: The “best PR campaign in the world.”
[87:44] Dangerous nights: bees, rebels, machine guns.
[98:36] “These people that have nothing have happiness.”

Tone, Style, and Concluding Feel

With Pete’s blend of wide-eyed curiosity, self-deprecating humor, and philosophical musing, the episode is alternately hilarious, harrowing, and deeply thoughtful. It explores what we’ve lost as a society, what we might regain, and why wildness—both in nature and in ourselves—still matters.

Forrest signs off:

“Check out any of the stuff I do online. The YouTube channel. That’s new... and keep it crispy.” [99:11]

Loading summary

Transcript1,148 lines

[00:02]
Forest Galante
Lemonade.
[00:18]
Pete Holmes
You made it weird with Pete Holmes. What's happening, weirdos? This is Forest Galante. Galante. Who is Forrest Galante? Well, you probably know if you clicked on this episode or maybe you don't. I didn't until I heard him on another podcast and I thought he was fascinating. He's an American outdoor adventurer. He's our first adventurer. He literally risks his life. He goes on these. We're going to hear about a bunch of them. Daring expeditions, seeking out primarily almost near extinct animals. I should have just said near extinct, not almost near extinct, near extinct animals. He's also the host of Extinct or Alive on Animal Planet. Mysterious Creatures with Forest Galante. And he's also on Shark Week, which is something I just did, which is how we thought it would be fun to connect. Now, is it still Shark Week? I don't think so, but anyway, here's Forest Galante. I'm so glad you guys are here. I'm currently touring. Go to PeteHomes.com for tickets. The next shows are Washington, D.C. boston, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Washington state, St. Louis, Cleveland, Florida, Florida, just all of Florida. Dorel, Florida at the Miami Improv, Chicago, Pennsylvania, New York, New York at Town hall on November 14th and then November 15th in Atlantic City. And I hope to see you guys out there. It always means so much to have weirdos out there supporting on the road. So hope to see you. In the meantime, enjoy this wonderful chat, chat, chant, chat with the wonderful Forest Galante. Get into it.
[01:47]
Forest Galante
Good. I'm stoked to be here.
[01:48]
Pete Holmes
Well, great. Okay, now we can start. That's our natural intro.
[01:51]
Forest Galante
Oh, sorry. Yeah, I was just saying thank you. In general, I'm glad you're here.
[01:54]
Pete Holmes
It's really nice to meet you. I've never met a real life adventurer. Yeah, isn't that what you are? I mean, you're like, what is that video game? My favorite video game. I can't remember it. It's called, you know, it Fuck My Face. Indian Jones.
[02:10]
Forest Galante
Oh, like Unchart. Uncharted?
[02:12]
Pete Holmes
Yeah, I always want to call it Fallout, but you're like real life uncharted.
[02:16]
Forest Galante
Thank you, that's an honor. I mean, I get all kinds of titles. Biologist, wildlife enthusiast, expert, adventurer. I don't know.
[02:24]
Pete Holmes
The last one was the most interesting though. Biologists, people go like, oh, this guy's looking at cells under a microscope. Nobody likes that.
[02:32]
Forest Galante
Totally. And I don't know anything about that.
[02:33]
Pete Holmes
Wildlife enthusiast. Now I feel like. I feel bad because there's thing the world is so. The environment is so screwed and you probably know exactly why. Yeah. And then adventure. I'm like, okay, he's running around with dust on his leather jacket.
[02:47]
Forest Galante
That's true.
[02:48]
Pete Holmes
Let's go with that one.
[02:48]
Forest Galante
Yeah. Do you really A lot of that.
[02:51]
Pete Holmes
Okay. So I was listening to you on another podcast and what I was craving was like, I don't normally do this is, will you tell us who you are and what you do? Because I was looking for my footing. It took a while to figure it out.
[03:05]
Forest Galante
Yeah. My wife never knows how to answer that question. Yeah.
[03:08]
Pete Holmes
How do you answer it?
[03:09]
Forest Galante
Well, I say I'm just a lowly wildlife biologist, but the reality is, at this point, I think I'm a wildlife communicator or educator. So I like to travel around the world, work in some of the most remote and hostile environments, work with indigenous and tribal people to expose incredible wildlife. And it doesn't matter if it's human wildlife conflict, whether we're working on mitigation methods, looking for extinct species, working on translocations or relocations. Basically any wildlife that needs exposure and needs help. Yeah, I work on those projects.
[03:42]
Pete Holmes
Okay, thank you. Got it right off the bat. I'm like, how difficult is that to navigate when you're dealing with, like an extreme cultural difference? Like if they're like, we eat dolphin fin or whatever, and you're like, hey, stop doing that.
[03:56]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[03:57]
Pete Holmes
How do you, as an American, like, navigate that? Seems like it could be politically very touchy.
[04:02]
Forest Galante
It can be. And there have been people that have been, like, upset and offended by things that I've done. I mean, pretty small, not really, like, broad things.
[04:10]
Pete Holmes
Yeah.
[04:10]
Forest Galante
But I grew up in Zimbabwe in southern Africa, so I learned how to work with indigenous people, with tribal people. The far. As far as the cultural customs go, I think one thing that we can all agree on, I don't care what side of the political coin you fall on, social coin, you fall on whatever it is. Whether you're left, right, red, blue, it doesn't matter. We all want wildlife on the planet. Right. It makes us better, makes the planet healthier, makes everything better. So sometimes it takes education or figuring out very complex issues, whether that's governmental or conservation based or whatever it is, and going, hey, I know you've been killing X for this many years, but just don't do it here. Like, if you just leave this one little patch of forest alone, then all the animals, once they reproduce, will breed over and right outside your village, you'll have more things to hunt. And if you can educate people that way and just Say, look, I know you've been doing it a certain way for this long, but you want it to be sustainable. You want to be able to hunt or kill or eat or fish or whatever it is forever. Here's a way to do that so that you can continue to grow your family, grow your culture, grow everything. Just do it this way as opposed to a blanket. Like, we can kill everything anywhere.
[05:19]
Pete Holmes
I'm already so interested. That was really. We can end the podcast here.
[05:23]
Forest Galante
Okay. No, that was good to see you, Pete.
[05:26]
Pete Holmes
All this way. No, I'm just like. It was very interesting to hear you say, you have to think, just basic negotiation, like, what does everyone want? We want wildlife.
[05:36]
Forest Galante
Right.
[05:36]
Pete Holmes
It's interesting to think of the planet as a body. And wildlife is almost like white blood cells or red blood cells. It's like, good for the whole system.
[05:44]
Forest Galante
Them very much so, which is tricky.
[05:46]
Pete Holmes
Sometimes I do that. I'm like, the planet smokes, you know, the rainforest is like our smoking cigarettes all day. Like, we're not a very healthy planet if it's a body.
[05:58]
Forest Galante
And it's a good way to think about it. It's very intuitive of you to realize it's a body. But everything on the planet is connected. A mosquito in the Arctic, a lot of people think there aren't mosquitoes in the Arctic, but a mosquito in the Arctic is somehow connected to the air in. In the Amazon. You know what I mean? And everything is connected. And I think we all understand that we need all these things, like one thing that people never think of. Pete, you just did Shark Week promo, right?
[06:20]
Pete Holmes
Yeah. Yeah.
[06:21]
Forest Galante
So I just did a couple Shark Week shows. If sharks disappear from the planet, you and I, your producer over here, our families, they're gone. Really gone. If sharks cease to exist on planet Earth, we're dead. What? Yeah.
[06:34]
Pete Holmes
Why?
[06:35]
Forest Galante
Because sharks are bioregulators for the ocean. They have what's called a trophic cascade. They control the ocean.
[06:40]
Pete Holmes
I know how. Trophic cascade.
[06:42]
Forest Galante
Pardon me.
[06:43]
Pete Holmes
No, keep going, Keep going.
[06:45]
Forest Galante
But if sharks cease to exist, the oceans become imbalanced. The ocean is our largest producer of oxygen on the planet. It's also our largest producer of food on the planet. Those two things go away, we go away.
[06:56]
Pete Holmes
Wow.
[06:56]
Forest Galante
You know, and people forget that we're killing sharks at a rate of fact, check me on this. It's like 8 million sharks a year or something like that. Right?
[07:02]
Pete Holmes
Because of accidental, like, tuna poles? No, no, because we're just killing them.
[07:06]
Forest Galante
We eat them. The shark fin soup's a big trade in Asian countries.
[07:10]
Pete Holmes
I'm sorry, it's just no soup. No soup can be worth this.
[07:14]
Forest Galante
Especially when you think about shark fin soup. As might as well be human ear soup. It's just cartilage.
[07:20]
Pete Holmes
Oh, really?
[07:20]
Forest Galante
That's all a shark fin is.
[07:21]
Pete Holmes
It's just same stuff.
[07:22]
Forest Galante
Same exact stuff.
[07:23]
Pete Holmes
Yeah, brutal. Yeah, brutal.
[07:25]
Forest Galante
But isn't that crazy to think we're that connected to a shark?
[07:28]
Pete Holmes
Which, I mean, see, I knew that about, like, bees.
[07:31]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[07:31]
Pete Holmes
No, bees know these. That's the T shirt and it's plants.
[07:35]
Forest Galante
Yep.
[07:35]
Pete Holmes
But I never thought of oxygen. And seafood is like so much of our diet. Is that what it is? Or is it algae or what?
[07:41]
Forest Galante
No, it's something like 91% again, fact check. That number of the world relies on the ocean for their main source of protein.
[07:50]
Pete Holmes
Wow.
[07:51]
Forest Galante
You know, so. Yeah. So seafood is the majority source of protein. The majority of the world.
[07:55]
Pete Holmes
Yeah. I've watched. What's that alone?
[07:58]
Forest Galante
Yeah. Yeah. What's great.
[08:00]
Pete Holmes
They're always going to the. To the river. The river pays out. So the people that are chasing the land animals, I'm like, that's really cute, bro. Like, good luck.
[08:09]
Forest Galante
They spend a month, like, lobbing arrows at things and some guy goes down the river and catches eight salmon and you're like.
[08:14]
Pete Holmes
Or you just have a. There's just a net in a current and they check it and they're like, there's all these fish in it. And the dumb guy that wants to be the hero chasing the boar.
[08:23]
Forest Galante
Right.
[08:23]
Pete Holmes
I'm like, first of all, something's going to steal it.
[08:26]
Forest Galante
That's right.
[08:26]
Pete Holmes
You kill it.
[08:27]
Forest Galante
Yeah, that's.
[08:28]
Pete Holmes
It's the dumbest. Look, I would last half an hour on that show, but I know my strategy would be go to the ocean.
[08:35]
Forest Galante
Go to the water, and you need.
[08:36]
Pete Holmes
The fat and all that sort of stuff. Like, it's good.
[08:38]
Forest Galante
Exactly.
[08:38]
Pete Holmes
It's a good livable thing.
[08:40]
Forest Galante
You're underselling yourself. I think you'd last a good. Good 24 hours.
[08:44]
Pete Holmes
You know, my. I think I'd be good at keeping myself safe. Insane. Like, I wouldn't be good at all the survival stuff, but I'd be good at being alone.
[08:51]
Forest Galante
Are you good? Are you good in that kind of environment? Like, I don't do well when I've got no one around for a long period of time.
[08:57]
Pete Holmes
I. Maybe I'm flattering myself. Maybe I would go absolutely nuts.
[09:01]
Forest Galante
Yeah, more.
[09:02]
Pete Holmes
More nuts. I actually now. Sorry. I want to get back to your fascinating life. But I think I would go. The castaway approach I would make a God. I would talk to it.
[09:12]
Forest Galante
Start talking to inanimate objects.
[09:14]
Pete Holmes
I would build, like, a universe. I'd be like, well, I have to talk to this guy. Like, just pass the time.
[09:18]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[09:19]
Pete Holmes
Like, I'd have a rich culture, dude.
[09:21]
Forest Galante
I could just imagine. I could just imagine you, like, throwing jokes at a volleyball. And it's just. And you're like, I told you that was a good. Worse.
[09:28]
Pete Holmes
Yeah. I would do little shows. You'd have to. The people see that there was a guy on a loan that was like, figured out, like, how little he could move. And he was like, because if you move, you burn calories. So I'm just going to stay still. I was like, you're not going to make it.
[09:42]
Forest Galante
No way.
[09:42]
Pete Holmes
The women have a. So beat on. I'm saying, including you as a guy. It's not like, been on that show.
[09:48]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[09:48]
Pete Holmes
But the women murder on that show because they understand. Like, I'm gonna make a beautiful place to be. Like, you have to want to live.
[09:58]
Forest Galante
That's right. That's right.
[09:59]
Pete Holmes
And that's what art is, too. It's like, why do we make art? It's so you don't just jump off a cliff. I'm not even trying to be funny. It's like, people lose hope if there's not something to, like, look at and enjoy. And historically, on that show, it's always the women that are like, I made a sauna.
[10:16]
Forest Galante
Exactly.
[10:16]
Pete Holmes
You know what I mean? And the guys are like, don't move. I'm like, no, you'd be useful in a hunt. But, like, you're not good at making life worth living.
[10:24]
Forest Galante
You. You have to. You're 100% right. And that's why, you know, women, for the most part, make better homemakers and everything else. Because you need to live in that joy.
[10:32]
Pete Holmes
Yes.
[10:32]
Forest Galante
Otherwise, what are you living for?
[10:33]
Pete Holmes
And that's been. Yes. Encourage. I'm certain men can and could do it. And there's got to be more of that. For sure.
[10:42]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[10:43]
Pete Holmes
You know, it's interesting when you were talking about the balance of. Of sharks and. And don't hunt over here. I'm. I'm a Joseph Campbell person. I like myths, and I'm always. There's so many myths about equilibrium.
[10:58]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[10:58]
Pete Holmes
Whether these are ancient myths.
[11:00]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[11:00]
Pete Holmes
Where there was an intuitive understanding. They're always like something like a buffalo. A hunter falls in love with a buffalo, it turns into a woman. They get married. But it's about. It's about. It's a way of understanding an alliance between humans and animals. And the buffalo says the buffalo's okay. I'm losing it. But the woman who was a buffalo, her father, who is a buffalo, says, you can get married.
[11:25]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[11:25]
Pete Holmes
Because they're in love, but you have to, like, spare a certain number of us every year. It's exactly what you're saying.
[11:32]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[11:33]
Pete Holmes
With data.
[11:33]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[11:34]
Pete Holmes
Don't kill this. And then you can have buffalo all year. Native cultures had stories that said the.
[11:40]
Forest Galante
Same thing, and we've always understood that until industrialization, which is crazy. And then it was like, just take, take, take. And also, not to dig at any one religion or nation or anything else, but part of the Bible. And I haven't read the Bible since I was very young and forced to in school, but part of the Bible says that wildlife and nature and animals were here for our harvest dominion. Yeah, exactly.
[12:05]
Pete Holmes
Yeah.
[12:05]
Forest Galante
Yeah. And so during the Industrial Revolution, it was like, how fast can we evolve technology to consume wildlife, consume animals, consume the planet?
[12:15]
Pete Holmes
Yeah.
[12:15]
Forest Galante
And it was under the guise of, well, Christianity says, this is put here for us, buddy.
[12:20]
Pete Holmes
Look, I don't think we're dragging Christianity. It's fair game.
[12:23]
Forest Galante
No, I'm just saying what was fact.
[12:24]
Pete Holmes
I'm letting you off the hook. Don't feel weird about that. Because the same thing was done with slavery. There's just dodgy stuff.
[12:31]
Forest Galante
Yeah, yeah.
[12:32]
Pete Holmes
Because it was a long, long, long time ago.
[12:34]
Forest Galante
Right.
[12:35]
Pete Holmes
But there are these. These. You know, you got to leave some of these parts, the slavery parts, obviously. And I don't think we had that nuance with the animal parts. We just used it as a trump card to just do whatever we want.
[12:47]
Forest Galante
Well, and think about it. Because, yes, certain native peoples appreciated in things, but when the Bible was written and those times were written, the human population was minute. We didn't even think. Extinction wasn't even a word that was known at that point in time. Do you know what I mean?
[13:01]
Pete Holmes
We didn't have a concept for that.
[13:02]
Forest Galante
No. How could human beings ever kill the last bird or kill all? It didn't make sense. It felt infinite. So in order to expand and grow, which is what a lot of Christianity stood for, having good ethics and good morals and good values. Take those things that God has put on your plate and use them so that you can expand and grow. That was great to a point. And then it's like, well, wait a minute. We need to adapt, you know, like, we need to adapt our approach so that we can continue to expand. Yeah. Way too good at it.
[13:29]
Pete Holmes
I don't know where you're at. But, like, should you be eating four different animals every meal?
[13:35]
Forest Galante
It's a good question, you know, if you know where those animals come from.
[13:39]
Pete Holmes
Yeah.
[13:39]
Forest Galante
And it's like, you should eat all the wild boar that's harvested in America. You can. All the lionfish, all the iguana, if you want to be adventurous. You know, all those things are picking these because these are invasive species. So these are species that have been brought here by us, released, shouldn't be here, and are harvested or taken. And every time that happens, that actually helps native animals.
[14:01]
Pete Holmes
Oh, wow.
[14:02]
Forest Galante
So there is a balance. You know what I mean? Everything. That's what's so great about what I do. Yeah, that's it. I'm not even kidding. Go out and get them. Yeah.
[14:09]
Pete Holmes
Why doesn't McDonald's have a boar burger then?
[14:11]
Forest Galante
Because it's expensive. Way more expensive to go out and hunt down a boar, a wild boar that's, you know, causing billions of dollars of agricultural damage than it is to farm a cow.
[14:21]
Pete Holmes
I mean, doesn't that seem like the government could incentivize it? I mean, like, aren't we making, like, corn? Super. Like, I think I'm going to. We're going to fix this.
[14:28]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[14:29]
Pete Holmes
Just like, couldn't you somehow. Isn't that what subsidies are? I don't know.
[14:33]
Forest Galante
It's a good question. It's starting to, you know, like, in the state of Texas, they have eradication efforts to shoot the boars. They fly helicopters. It's like a video game.
[14:42]
Pete Holmes
Yeah.
[14:43]
Forest Galante
And mow them down and stuff. So they're starting to do that. Other states, they'll give you $5 a carp, which is another invasive species, so on and so forth. So it's starting to come around. Yeah. But it's like. I guess my point is you can make your cake and have it and eat it too. You know, you can.
[14:57]
Pete Holmes
Your whole thing.
[14:57]
Forest Galante
You can eat 10 times of kinds of meat a day. Just eat the right ones. Or you can be a vegan or, like, there are good ways and bad ways to do all of these things.
[15:06]
Pete Holmes
Yeah. Yeah. It is troubling. And I have. I've actually. I'm not a vegan anymore. I eat a lot of vegan food, but I can't call myself a vegan anymore. My wife was just like. She just. She's with me all the time and she's like, pete, stop saying you're a vegan.
[15:21]
Forest Galante
Yeah. She's like, we literally just left in and out for, you're not a vegan. You're Out. Yeah.
[15:26]
Pete Holmes
And I was like, damn it. But I am still sensitive to factory farming and, like, the way we're doing it. And it seems like that would be in line with everything I've heard you say so far, is like, okay, you want to eat pork? Can we find a better way to do it? Like, I don't know if you watched any of those really haunting Netflix things where it. The neighborhood and, oh, yeah, what to do. I don't even want to talk. It's too. It's depressing. But that's like, if you live near where they're farming pork, you're in trouble.
[15:56]
Forest Galante
Totally.
[15:56]
Pete Holmes
And that's just like a. Forget the pigs. I mean, we can talk about the pigs, too, but it's like the whole community talk about being interconnected. It's not just, like, happening in some magical bubble. It's hurting all of these people around as well.
[16:12]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[16:12]
Pete Holmes
Pollution, Unhealthy. Yeah. Pink sludge and spraying the feces everywhere. And people are getting sick. It's like Erin Brockovich shit. It's like, oh, this is killing this whole community. And we're like, yeah, but bacon is good. Like, it's really fucking nuts.
[16:28]
Forest Galante
It's crazy. But my whole thing. And we got straight into the heavy stuff out the gate, which I love. Like, but, yeah. Is.
[16:34]
Pete Holmes
It's heavy.
[16:35]
Forest Galante
Is this stuff doesn't need to be depressing. Like, I hate ecophobia. You know, I hate the idea of waking up, opening the newspaper, and it's like, the world is ending. Global warming. The icebergs are melting. You know, we're all going to go underwater. The storms, it's like, we get it. It's a page turner. I don't want to read it. I don't click on it on Instagram like, it's a page turner. It's instead. Oh, sorry, go ahead.
[16:56]
Pete Holmes
No, I was just. I was agreeing with you. It's clickbait. It gets you engaged.
[17:00]
Forest Galante
Maybe, but it's so demoralizing.
[17:02]
Pete Holmes
It's not true. I'm saying it's more sensational.
[17:04]
Forest Galante
It's very sensational. But it's so demoralizing, and it. It puts a message of, like, all hope is lost out there.
[17:10]
Pete Holmes
Yeah.
[17:10]
Forest Galante
You know, global warming. We'll all be underwater in 10 years and can't go outside. And it's like, enough already. You know? It's not that some of that isn't true. It's just, let's look for solutions and silver linings and ways to make things better as opposed to just the doom and gloom of like, new study says icebergs will all be gone tomorrow. It's like, yeah, okay, so how do we not do that? You know, as opposed to just putting out all of this negativity, which seems to be like this vicious media cycle that we're stuck in.
[17:38]
Pete Holmes
So you're optimistic.
[17:39]
Forest Galante
Very, yeah. Very. Yeah. All hope is not lost. This planet is incredibly resilient, incredibly beautiful, and with small amounts of effort. Here's the thing, Pete. Like, I don't want to sound too grandiose, but we as a species, human beings, we're reactive. We're not proactive. We wait until the car starts making a weird sound and start clicking and breaks down before we take it to the mechanic.
[18:02]
Pete Holmes
Right.
[18:02]
Forest Galante
We don't just take it to the mechanic, because. So if we can be proactive in helping with these problems, and that doesn't mean changing your whole lifestyle, never having a burger, never using a plastic bag. It doesn't mean anything like that. Be realistic. You know, don't. Don't be this, like, grandiose. Like, I can. I have to ride a bike, you know, across the country because I don't want to drive my car. That's silly. But if we can be a little bit proactive, we don't have to be reactive. We don't have to wait until the sky is falling to try and fix things. We can just do little things every day now.
[18:33]
Pete Holmes
Yeah.
[18:33]
Forest Galante
Whether that's around conservation, environmentalism, it doesn't really matter. That can make such a big difference that we don't have to do this doom and gloom stuff all the time.
[18:41]
Pete Holmes
Right, right, right. Yeah. That's interesting. It reminds me of the. I think Tony Robbins talks about this. We'll do more to gain. We'll do more to avoid pain than we will to gain pleasure.
[18:51]
Forest Galante
Absolutely.
[18:52]
Pete Holmes
That sounds like what you're saying.
[18:53]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[18:53]
Pete Holmes
It's like, we. I don't want to just get a checkup because I'm fine. You wait until something's wrong.
[18:58]
Forest Galante
Exactly.
[18:58]
Pete Holmes
But we should be getting checkups and then you'll be all right.
[19:00]
Forest Galante
Exactly.
[19:01]
Pete Holmes
I mean. I mean, that's.
[19:02]
Forest Galante
That's the metaphor anyway. Yeah, exactly.
[19:04]
Pete Holmes
We're back to the Earth being like, a body.
[19:06]
Forest Galante
Yes.
[19:07]
Pete Holmes
Which also brings me back to, like, I wonder if we can really dramatically increase human lifespan if people will start caring about the planet more. Because I think there's, like. When I see politicians being reckless.
[19:19]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[19:20]
Pete Holmes
They're usually like old white guys, and I'm like, yeah, they're on their way out.
[19:23]
Forest Galante
Right. They've got 20 years of life left.
[19:25]
Pete Holmes
They're putting their dick on everything they can while they can. They're like in a falling elevator.
[19:30]
Forest Galante
Totally.
[19:30]
Pete Holmes
And it's hard to get someone to really. It takes a certain kind of intelligence to go like, no, you will die and we won't.
[19:38]
Forest Galante
Right.
[19:38]
Pete Holmes
You know what I mean? Like, I kind of think they're solipsistic and they're like, no, when I'm dead it's over.
[19:43]
Forest Galante
Right.
[19:44]
Pete Holmes
Or they're narcissistic or both.
[19:45]
Forest Galante
Or they just don't care.
[19:46]
Pete Holmes
Or they don't care.
[19:46]
Forest Galante
Right. They just want to make their mark.
[19:48]
Pete Holmes
Yeah, exactly.
[19:49]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[19:49]
Pete Holmes
But it. So when I think about a more. Let's think of our Star Trek future where AI is coming up with, let's say, or we are with solutions that are helpful. One of the things that we need to do is get human beings happier and better, taken care of and living longer. And then I think you'll see, you know, I mean, when do you quit smoking?
[20:12]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[20:12]
Pete Holmes
So the, the rainforest is being burned down at an alarming rate and has been pretty much our whole lives, but it's to get cattle, right. It's nuts. We're burning down our lungs, so we're polluting our air and burning down the thing that creates our oxygen.
[20:28]
Forest Galante
Yep.
[20:29]
Pete Holmes
It's literally something an alien would go like, but that a Vulcan would be like, but that is illogical. Makes absolutely no sense. But like, oh, I'm losing my train of thought. I'm saying we want to stop that. I think when someone quits smoking it like if someone wins the lottery. Right. I give you $10 million. Better chance you'll quit smoking because you'll be like, I like this. I want to go like when I, I'm not dragging or making fun of Larry David, but when you hear Larry David eats like three cashews a day and only has wheatgrass, I'm like, yeah, he's got a dope ass life.
[21:07]
Forest Galante
Yeah. He's trying to keep it going, he's trying to maintain. Yeah.
[21:09]
Pete Holmes
And again, I'm not trying to put anyone down, but somebody that's like really lost hopefully.
[21:14]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[21:15]
Pete Holmes
Probably eating whatever they want, probably drinking, probably smoking because they're not doing so well. They're feeling depressed.
[21:21]
Forest Galante
Right.
[21:22]
Pete Holmes
So if we can get humans happier, I think we'll see more care for the planet. That was a really long way to make a pretty basic point.
[21:29]
Forest Galante
I think it's true though. I mean, I think if you're happier then it's easier to contribute and to.
[21:34]
Pete Holmes
Care about something outside of you.
[21:35]
Forest Galante
That's right.
[21:36]
Pete Holmes
We're just like, great. Like the joke of, like, yes, save the whills, save the humans.
[21:41]
Forest Galante
Right.
[21:41]
Pete Holmes
That was the comedy take through all of the 80s.
[21:44]
Forest Galante
Totally.
[21:45]
Pete Holmes
We were just like, what about the guy I just saw?
[21:47]
Forest Galante
Right.
[21:48]
Pete Holmes
And you're not wrong.
[21:49]
Forest Galante
Right.
[21:50]
Pete Holmes
We can get that, right? Yeah, but, like, then more people will care about the planet if we can get them in that Larry David lifestyle.
[21:57]
Forest Galante
I think that's true. Yeah.
[21:58]
Pete Holmes
Maybe artificial. Where are you on artificial intelligence? Do you think it'll help the environment? Do you think it's possible to come up with some good solutions?
[22:05]
Forest Galante
Oh, I mean, some of the tech that's coming out in AI. Like, I was just working with this woman who I'm friends with and bragging, well, yeah, yeah, she's awesome.
[22:15]
Pete Holmes
I have female friends.
[22:17]
Forest Galante
I hope everybody heard that. No. And she's doing this. So she'll take drone analysis of herds of elephants. And then it looks like something out of Star Trek where they're analyzing each head movement, each step, each shoulder position, and going, well, this one's the matriarch, and she's saying that there's water, four clicks this way. And this one's a beta, and this one's an omega. And it's all done through AI, Right. It's basically interpreting elephant language. And so I think that there are going to be just like, everything. Just like cell phones. When cell phones came out, it was like, oh, this is awesome. Now we can all talk to each other. Yeah. But we're now also all addicted to porn and social media, so, you know what I mean? It's like, there's good and bad with all these things. So, yeah, I think AI is going to be the same.
[22:58]
Pete Holmes
It's like there's going to be elephant podcasts now the matriarch has her own.
[23:02]
Forest Galante
Show, and that part will be good, but then there'll be bad parts, too.
[23:06]
Pete Holmes
Yeah, yeah, that'll be excellent. Oh, I see what you're saying. So we are going to unlock stuff, but there's always going to be some fallout. Yeah, but that's fascinating. I mean, that was one of the early things I would hear about, is the potential of, like, translating whale language or dolphin language. But it sounds like they're doing it with movements.
[23:25]
Forest Galante
Lots of things. Yeah. Head movements, shakes. I've. For Shark Week, I probably shouldn't even talk about this, but next year, one of the programs that I want to work on is using AI to analyze how hammerheads speak to each other because of some weird new observations about the way Hammerheads flick their heads. I actually think there's body language in the way they talk.
[23:45]
Pete Holmes
Wow.
[23:46]
Forest Galante
Yeah. And that would be on an AI program. Because humans can't do that observationally. Because if you're in the water staring at the shark, it's changing its behavior.
[23:55]
Pete Holmes
Okay. This is crazy. So we started by saying that Native American cultures have myths about buffalo talking to us and being like, let's make a deal.
[24:04]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[24:06]
Pete Holmes
We might be approaching a future where literally we talk to the cows.
[24:09]
Forest Galante
I think so.
[24:10]
Pete Holmes
And they're like, we get it. We're delicious.
[24:13]
Forest Galante
Right.
[24:14]
Pete Holmes
But let us have Arizona.
[24:16]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[24:17]
Pete Holmes
If you give us this, we'll give you our most annoying, our worst cows. We'll give you the worst. Like there are implications if we start. And again, keep in mind, I had chicken yesterday. This isn't a vegan agenda. I'm just saying one. One of the things that's fascinated me is why we eat animals. I've done a lot of jokes about it. They never make a special because they always end up being too preachy.
[24:41]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[24:41]
Pete Holmes
But it's because we think they're fucking stupid. Like a chicken is a dumb bird. It's staring at the sun. We can't discern what it's doing.
[24:49]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[24:49]
Pete Holmes
And having been a vegan for so long, I'm aware of the arguments. Like cows have friendships. Elephants. We talked about them.
[24:57]
Forest Galante
Will mourn.
[24:58]
Pete Holmes
They have at funerals.
[24:59]
Forest Galante
Big time.
[25:00]
Pete Holmes
They'll go back to the site of a dead person that they loved every year on the anniversary. But like, if you get them talking like the fucking dog in up.
[25:11]
Forest Galante
Yeah. Right. With the little translator. Hi.
[25:13]
Pete Holmes
If a pig could just look at you and say good morning.
[25:16]
Forest Galante
Right.
[25:17]
Pete Holmes
You'd find a different breakfast.
[25:19]
Forest Galante
Probably.
[25:19]
Pete Holmes
You would. I mean.
[25:20]
Forest Galante
Or accept it. Or just accept it.
[25:23]
Pete Holmes
Be like, I don't know, man.
[25:25]
Forest Galante
You don't think so?
[25:25]
Pete Holmes
If a pig was like, oh, no, come on, man.
[25:29]
Forest Galante
Come on. As he's going into the conveyor belt. Yeah.
[25:33]
Pete Holmes
Or are we so still like Old Testament?
[25:40]
Forest Galante
Sure.
[25:40]
Pete Holmes
That we're okay with would be hard.
[25:42]
Forest Galante
I don't know. I mean. And I, I. So I've never been a vegan. I literally had a steak for dinner last night.
[25:49]
Pete Holmes
You've been a vegan the whole time you've been here.
[25:51]
Forest Galante
That's true, actually. Yeah.
[25:52]
Pete Holmes
Yeah. And a non smoker drinker.
[25:55]
Forest Galante
Yeah. But I don't think it's that. I think you're right. And I appreciate that argument. I appreciate that side of the side of the story. And I think the more people that choose not to eat meat, the better. I also think it's okay for people to choose meat. Like I was saying earlier, it's just be aware that these are. They're not sentient beings. They're not all. You know, and they're not idiots. Like, they're just. Some animals are more intelligent.
[26:18]
Pete Holmes
You don't think they're self aware?
[26:19]
Forest Galante
Yes, I agree with that.
[26:20]
Pete Holmes
A chicken wouldn't be like, I am a chicken.
[26:23]
Forest Galante
I think, I think that's true.
[26:24]
Pete Holmes
I think they're more simple.
[26:25]
Forest Galante
Well, maybe they will be.
[26:26]
Pete Holmes
I mean, maybe they're more simple than that.
[26:29]
Forest Galante
But that's true.
[26:30]
Pete Holmes
Look, don't we. We know that pigs are like three year old children.
[26:32]
Forest Galante
That's right. Yeah.
[26:33]
Pete Holmes
That would mean they're sentient.
[26:34]
Forest Galante
Yeah, that's true. Actually.
[26:35]
Pete Holmes
I don't know, man.
[26:36]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[26:37]
Pete Holmes
And I don't mean to put you on the hook.
[26:38]
Forest Galante
No, I don't like.
[26:39]
Pete Holmes
Yeah, yeah. I think we're just two dudes talking about 100%.
[26:42]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[26:42]
Pete Holmes
What I'm interested, I'm interested in seeing like what will happen. Do you think there's a way around this? Do you think the Earth, like almost in a science fiction sort of way, could we clone meat? Could we somehow find a way around it?
[26:56]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[26:57]
Pete Holmes
Synthesizers.
[26:58]
Forest Galante
I think so.
[26:58]
Pete Holmes
Do you think the Earth would allow it almost in a mythological way?
[27:01]
Forest Galante
And I don't know, would you start.
[27:03]
Pete Holmes
Getting like, sick in some way? Because we belong?
[27:05]
Forest Galante
I think so.
[27:06]
Pete Holmes
We're eating something printed molecularly.
[27:08]
Forest Galante
I think we'll get sick.
[27:09]
Pete Holmes
You think so?
[27:10]
Forest Galante
Yeah, because I mean, they're already making lab meat. Right. You can grow meat in the lab in some of these places. And I think that every time we come up with that, there's a positive and negative reaction. You know, it's like, oh, cool. Like the planet. Now we don't have to farm cows because they're being created in lab, they're being printed, whatever it is. I think our cells will be like, no, that's not it. We've evolved evolutionarily to need to eat meat in a certain capacity, get enough protein. You know what I mean? It's like now we're getting some other.
[27:37]
Pete Holmes
To the Earth.
[27:38]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[27:38]
Pete Holmes
There's like a flow and a rhythm to it.
[27:41]
Forest Galante
I believe that. I really do. And I'm. I come from a science background, but I believe in, I guess like we're saying earlier, that connectedness.
[27:47]
Pete Holmes
Yeah.
[27:48]
Forest Galante
You need to walk barefoot, you need to eat some meat. You need to get some real sun.
[27:52]
Pete Holmes
You grounded, guy?
[27:53]
Forest Galante
Not, not hugely, but I never wear shoes, so. You know.
[27:56]
Pete Holmes
Oh, is that right?
[27:56]
Forest Galante
Yeah, pretty much. Yeah.
[27:58]
Pete Holmes
Is that a Zimbabwe? I. I'm not trying to be funny. It sounds like something maybe you picked up in Zimbabwe.
[28:02]
Forest Galante
I mean, I grew up on a farm, so. Yeah. Maybe just growing up on a farm anywhere. Yeah. I mean, and I live in Santa Barbara on, you know, a medium sized piece of property, so I never have shoes on at home, so I just never wear shoes. But it's not that I'm grounding or I worship the sun and I want to, you know, tan my gooch or whatever people are doing nowadays.
[28:20]
Pete Holmes
Tan that gooch.
[28:21]
Forest Galante
I just think that you need to have connection to the natural world and that makes you healthier.
[28:26]
Pete Holmes
I agree.
[28:26]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[28:27]
Pete Holmes
And I used to be, before I had kids, way more into like, grounding, like, sinks you. And now I'm just like. It feels good in the morning.
[28:35]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[28:36]
Pete Holmes
Stand barefoot on grass, looking at the sun.
[28:39]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[28:40]
Pete Holmes
And then you look into the science of it and it's like good sleep actually starts in the morning.
[28:45]
Forest Galante
That's right. If you look light exposure. Yeah.
[28:48]
Pete Holmes
You'll sleep better that night.
[28:50]
Forest Galante
It's.
[28:50]
Pete Holmes
And how many things like that are happening that we're completely including what you're eating, including your relationship with everything.
[28:57]
Forest Galante
Because with our technology, like we talked about earlier, we have evolved. We think we're above that.
[29:04]
Pete Holmes
Right.
[29:04]
Forest Galante
We're sitting in a completely artificial environment right now. Everything. No, including me. Including you. Sorry. Yeah. You're a simulation.
[29:12]
Pete Holmes
No, but we have air conditioning.
[29:13]
Forest Galante
But that's what I mean. The lighting is artificial. The paint on the walls was artificial. Like, and it's no different in my.
[29:19]
Pete Holmes
Radiation in here that are completely freaky to our ancestors.
[29:24]
Forest Galante
Totally makes no sense.
[29:26]
Pete Holmes
They probably. Sorry, I'm trying to cut you off. I'm trying to load you into that thing.
[29:30]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[29:31]
Pete Holmes
Like a prehistoric person in this room would be deeply uncomfortable.
[29:36]
Forest Galante
Oh.
[29:36]
Pete Holmes
Like panic.
[29:37]
Forest Galante
Lose their mind. This would feel like a trap. Right. You feel like you're trapped in a cave of things you don't understand.
[29:42]
Pete Holmes
Yes.
[29:43]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[29:43]
Pete Holmes
Right.
[29:43]
Forest Galante
Be crazy.
[29:44]
Pete Holmes
Which reminds me of psychedelics. When you're on psychedelics, which is so, like ancient, they're like, see the horizon, right? Like, be able to see where you are because you go into like a prehistoric part of your brain.
[29:55]
Forest Galante
Yes.
[29:55]
Pete Holmes
Don't be trapped.
[29:56]
Forest Galante
Yes, exactly. Exactly. See where water don't feel closed in.
[30:00]
Pete Holmes
Don't feel closed. Don't feel trapped because that part of your brain gets lit up and it'll go like, there's a bear after me.
[30:05]
Forest Galante
Exactly.
[30:06]
Pete Holmes
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So go on what have you got?
[30:09]
Forest Galante
I don't. I just. I was. What I was gonna say is, do you follow Gary Breca at all?
[30:13]
Pete Holmes
No.
[30:13]
Forest Galante
So Breca's awesome. He's like a big biohacking health and wellness guy. Really nice guy, too.
[30:17]
Pete Holmes
I'm a huberman man.
[30:18]
Forest Galante
Oh, I'm a loyalist. Same world. Same world.
[30:21]
Pete Holmes
I got that stuff from huberman. But tell me about. Bend it like Breckham.
[30:24]
Forest Galante
Yeah, that's it. Gary Breca, he says nature is medicine. I think that's his saying, or connectedness is medicine or something like that. And again, I come from a science background. Like, I'm not all hippie dippy, you know, like into all that kind of connectedness stuff. But I have never had to seek that out because my job and my career and my lifestyle is outdoors, barefoot, in the sun. Usually I'm trying to get out of the sun or I'm trying to avoid the mosquito bites or cover up, not go out and expose myself to. Because I'm on the opposite side of the coin. But I could tell you, as someone who does live on that opposite side of the coin, when I come home or I go to my office, I was just in my office this week in New York, and I sit inside in air conditioning, in light, staring at a computer screen all day, you start to wilt. I wilt. I totally do. And you see it. It's like a physical manifestation. Like your skin gets pale. That's not a good sign. You get bags under your eyes. Your eyes turn bloodshot. You know, you. You get back aches from crunching over the computer. Like our body's telling us, like the planet is telling us. This is bad. Go back to the other thing. And we're like, no, no, no. Look what we've built. This is great, right? It's crazy.
[31:30]
Pete Holmes
Pardon the interruption, weirdos. Obviously, I am not in my house. This is a hotel room. And obviously I brought my ritual for men, my multivitamin and my symbiotic probiotic. Symbiotic plus, pre, post, and probiotic. Also by ritual. Because I am absolutely obsessed. I see so many supplements when I'm scrolling, claiming some weird proprietary formula that's just like a super secret bullet to good health. But they do not tell you what's in it. They don't tell you where it's from, they don't tell you how it's sourced. That's why I love ritual. It is essential for men 18 and over. It's a multivitamin with science backed with traceable and bioavailable key ingredients. They share the source, the supplier and the scientific research backing each active ingredient. So you know what you're putting in your body and why. And bioavailable is key because it has a delayed release. So many people that I talk to say you take a multivitamin, you can see it turns your pea bright green and it just flushes out of your system. Ritual is different. Breaks down in your lower intestine where it can actually be absorbed. So that delayed release is good for two reasons. It gets into your body for real. For real. And two, it doesn't upset your stomach if you take it without food, which is huge. It has science back. Multivitamin, like I said, omega 3, DHA, vitamin D3. So many people are deficient in vitamin D 10 key nutrients and two delayed release capsules. So essential for men is a quality multivitamin from a company you can actually trust. You can get 25% off your first month for a limited time@ritual.com weird that's ritual.com weird for 25% off your first month. I swear by it. Get it in your life. Also, I'm in a hotel, but you can see here. This is my modern mammals. These are modern mammals ketchup packs. These are their trial packs, their travel packs. I love modern mammals. It's the only thing I will use to wash my hair. I call it the non shampoo shampoo that washes, that cleans your hair like shampoo but won't dry your hair out like shampoo shampoo. And that's exactly what it is. For years if I wanted my hair to look and feel good and have just a little bit of hold, the secret was to not wash it. That way the natural oil would stay in there and it would have the look that I wanted. But of course after a few days of that gets disgusting. Your hair turns into like a grease trap from an Arby's. Enter modern mammals. The non shampoo shampoo that cleans it but doesn't strip it of all of all of the oil, leaving just enough to make it look perfect in about six seconds. So I don't even put product in my hair anymore. Modern mammals. It's a six second solution to perfect hair. It has that hold, it has that flow. It is an absolute, absolute game changer. And you can try both of their products, the magic mud which is what is in this pouch and also their bar which is amazing. For daily maintenance go to modernmammals.com weird and you can get a special combo deal and Try both the bar and the bottle for 44 bucks. Lasts a really long time. Go to modernmammals.com weird. It almost seems like. Well, I'm sure it has been sort of like sold to like slowly. Like boiling a frog. Slowly is like. No, it's good. Get money so you can go on vacation and get these micro doses of like the beach.
[34:45]
Forest Galante
Right.
[34:46]
Pete Holmes
Or sunlight or rest.
[34:48]
Forest Galante
Right.
[34:48]
Pete Holmes
It's like, when did we get so far from being on a log sharing food? I'm not. I'm not saying every lo fi human system is good. They were warring and all that sort of stuff. Of course, saying we've lost is that connectedness. The Louis ck. But where he's like, why? We're talking to God and we're like, well, we had to go to work all the time. He's like, why? To get money. Why? To get food. And God goes, I left that shit on the ground.
[35:14]
Forest Galante
Yeah, exactly. There was food exactly everywhere.
[35:17]
Pete Holmes
What are you doing?
[35:18]
Forest Galante
Yeah, why are you doing that?
[35:19]
Pete Holmes
And we have just kind of made this system of keeping it over here and letting you have a little bit.
[35:24]
Forest Galante
Totally.
[35:24]
Pete Holmes
Send me on vacation.
[35:25]
Forest Galante
That's right. Yeah.
[35:26]
Pete Holmes
Really fucking bizarre.
[35:27]
Forest Galante
It makes no sense. Again, if aliens, like you said earlier, look down at us, they'd be like, what's wrong with these people?
[35:33]
Pete Holmes
It doesn't make any sense.
[35:34]
Forest Galante
Yeah. They're like, they're doing it all wrong at all. Yeah.
[35:36]
Pete Holmes
And then even camping kind of seems like, really, you're gonna go be in the woods? Like, even more than it used to be.
[35:45]
Forest Galante
Totally.
[35:46]
Pete Holmes
I feel like in the 80s people were camping all the time.
[35:48]
Forest Galante
More. Yeah.
[35:49]
Pete Holmes
And now it's like, there's no WI fi.
[35:51]
Forest Galante
Well. Right. And now you need to have your Starlink on the roof of your million dollar rv, you know, with. So you're sleeping inside and temperature control.
[35:58]
Pete Holmes
Right.
[35:59]
Forest Galante
You know, with your sleep eight mattress. And it's like, wait a minute, this isn't. You should just be on the ground over there and you'll be happier.
[36:04]
Pete Holmes
Right?
[36:05]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[36:05]
Pete Holmes
I. I'm reminded of like some Amazonian tribes that will, like, if you're really depressed.
[36:11]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[36:11]
Pete Holmes
Will bury you in the earth and like, talk about grounding. Like, really, just literally. Literally. And also like kind of like a weird. Not weird, but an unusual death ritual that really makes you face these things psychologically and maybe gives you some zeal afterwards. I don't know. But what happens? So that person that is in. In the office, which is millions of.
[36:34]
Forest Galante
Us, most with the bags, myself included.
[36:36]
Pete Holmes
Yeah.
[36:37]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[36:37]
Pete Holmes
What. What are some Strategies to get around that, obviously.
[36:41]
Forest Galante
Well, okay, so first of all, I want to answer your question, but I don't think we should also only glamorize. You know, it's not like every tribe in Africa or the Amazon or, or wherever is living this beautiful, stress free, healthy life. It's a balance.
[36:54]
Pete Holmes
Yeah.
[36:54]
Forest Galante
You know, I don't think we should be in an office all day in artificial light. I also think if you live in a famine area, in the desert, in a hut, getting sun all the day, that's bad too. You're gonna have other health issues.
[37:07]
Pete Holmes
Of all people. Bono was like, I'm not anti capitalism. He's like, I go to parts of Africa where I'm like, let's get some capitalism right.
[37:14]
Forest Galante
Bring it over.
[37:15]
Pete Holmes
He's like, let's get some of the balance. We don't have to go the full extreme, but we could use some commerce. We could use some money coming into this area and, and self sufficiency or whatever. I'm trying to get what he was saying.
[37:29]
Forest Galante
I think. You know, it's funny you said like the 80s, I, I feel like. And look, I was born in the 80s, so I feel like that was like the peak of Western humanity, or at least American civil. Yeah. Because like we weren't staring at a device all day long. We had a little bit of technology to help us get stuff done.
[37:45]
Pete Holmes
Oh, my God. This is a great theory.
[37:47]
Forest Galante
It's. I, I'm making it up as I go here.
[37:49]
Pete Holmes
It's great. But like, you, you could have a car phone.
[37:51]
Forest Galante
Yeah, you could have a car phone.
[37:53]
Pete Holmes
But its battery life was very short and you couldn't really talk for very long.
[37:57]
Forest Galante
And you were a big deal if you had one.
[37:59]
Pete Holmes
Right. But if you really needed help.
[38:01]
Forest Galante
Right. You could get it.
[38:02]
Pete Holmes
You could get it.
[38:02]
Forest Galante
That's right. So it's like, it was right there, but we were still connecting with people on a personal level. We're going to the bar, going to the restaurant, going to picnics, going with you so hard.
[38:11]
Pete Holmes
One of the things that's weird is as I found more success in my life, I needed less things.
[38:18]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[38:18]
Pete Holmes
Obviously you're taking care of yourself, so I feel like, oh, I feel sufficient right then. I noticed so much of my early, like my 20s, I was desperate. I needed people.
[38:28]
Forest Galante
Right.
[38:29]
Pete Holmes
I didn't mean to, like, use people, but I needed to make alliances and.
[38:32]
Forest Galante
Yeah. Contacts. Yeah.
[38:34]
Pete Holmes
Who books that and all this stuff. Now I'm at a cruising altitude. I love it.
[38:38]
Forest Galante
Right.
[38:38]
Pete Holmes
But when I was younger, I had more relationship that's right. Because I had more need.
[38:42]
Forest Galante
Right.
[38:43]
Pete Holmes
So in the 80s, we had more needs.
[38:45]
Forest Galante
That's right.
[38:45]
Pete Holmes
And then we were forced. I still remember, look, it sucks, but it also. It's your life being lost. And who helped me? Like, going into a gas station and someone helped me. It was great. Still have, like, a vivid memory. And what I got from that was so much more than the directions. It was like, there's a person. We recognized each other's humanity and need. He felt useful.
[39:09]
Forest Galante
Right, Right.
[39:10]
Pete Holmes
He was probably like, I helped that young man today.
[39:12]
Forest Galante
Exactly.
[39:13]
Pete Holmes
And I felt helped. He got to help, and I felt helped. And now fuck off.
[39:20]
Forest Galante
Yeah, totally. Personal connection over help. Like that.
[39:24]
Pete Holmes
Yeah.
[39:24]
Forest Galante
If you pulled up to me at a gas station and I like to think of myself as friendly and helpful, we're like, hey, where am I going? I'd be like, google it.
[39:30]
Pete Holmes
Yeah, look it up.
[39:31]
Forest Galante
Like, why would you. But that's.
[39:33]
Pete Holmes
Sometimes people say, what's your favorite restaurant in town? I'm like, yelp.
[39:37]
Forest Galante
Yeah. Like, why are you asking me this?
[39:39]
Pete Holmes
I don't know what you like.
[39:40]
Forest Galante
Yeah, there's a million. And you can look at. Look it up and type in your preferences.
[39:43]
Pete Holmes
Right.
[39:44]
Forest Galante
And now what I think is even crazier, and I had a terrible experience with Uber last night. You rate people.
[39:49]
Pete Holmes
Yeah. You know what I mean?
[39:50]
Forest Galante
Like, your Uber, that's who you're rating? You're rating the guy?
[39:55]
Pete Holmes
Yeah. Yeah.
[39:55]
Forest Galante
And, like, I got out and I called my wife when I got. I went from LA to a hotel. So I found this out. I'm being insensitive here, but I got in the car. I usually. I sit like this a lot, Pete. That's, like how I'm comfortable sitting. I got in the car. Very nice car. Like, nice. Uber, Tesla, whatever. Sat down like this, and the driver was here, and I'm in the backseat here, and he turns back to me and goes, are you uncomfortable? In, like, a very heavy Middle Eastern accent. And I was like, no, I'm fine, thank you. Like, cars. Lovely. And then three minutes later, he goes, why you sit like that? You know? And I'm like, just comfortable. Like, it didn't even register in my brain. Two, three minutes later, he pulls over. He goes, you must find other cars. And I was like, why? What's wrong? I was like, is it because of how I'm sitting? He goes, yes, get out the car. And so I got out of his car, and I was like, sorry, Take care. Turns out he. I told my wife about this, and she's like, you're Something's up. Let me figure it out. So she Googled it.
[40:49]
Pete Holmes
And I guess.
[40:50]
Forest Galante
Yeah, please.
[40:51]
Pete Holmes
Because when I went to Israel, I read a book about culture. It's like, don't show someone the bottom of your bottom of your feet.
[40:57]
Forest Galante
You got it. You figured it out.
[40:59]
Pete Holmes
I human Googled it. But I. I can't believe he didn't just. Well, I guess maybe he could have said, you're showing me the bottom of your foot. And that's rude to me.
[41:08]
Forest Galante
I had obviously insulted him. And of course, I'm just sitting here like this, being like, how did I upset this guy? And then, you know, I wasn't gonna fight him and be like, no, I'm staying in your car. I was like, okay, sure, I'll grab another car. And then I stood on a crappy part of LAX, like, curbside for 30 minutes, waiting for another. No, we were like, two minutes out of the Uber lot there. And anyway, I obviously offended him by showing him the bottom of this very shoe that I'm currently wearing. And. And so he kicked me out of his car. And my instinct back to our point was to pull out my phone. I didn't do it in the end, and be like, this effing guy kicked me out of his Uber. Blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm glad I didn't, now that I know it was a cultural thing at the same time. We're in the U.S. we're not in Israel or wherever he's from.
[41:50]
Pete Holmes
It would have been nice to explain it, but maybe the language.
[41:53]
Forest Galante
Yeah, there was definitely a limited language.
[41:55]
Pete Holmes
How sensitive we're both being.
[41:56]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[41:56]
Pete Holmes
If this were the 80s, we'd be.
[41:57]
Forest Galante
Like, and this piece, this f. Yeah. So mad. Yeah.
[42:01]
Pete Holmes
Oh, I. I think this is great. Maybe he didn't know how to explain it. Maybe he didn't want to explain.
[42:06]
Forest Galante
I think he didn't want to. Oh, really? Yeah. That was the impression I got. But regardless of that, the fact that I could then go and rate a human being on a phone and potentially ruin his business.
[42:16]
Pete Holmes
Right.
[42:17]
Forest Galante
Do you know what I mean? Like, he was rude to me, and I was upset, but if I gone and give him a one star review, it's. That's like crazy.
[42:24]
Pete Holmes
I don't want a virtue signal, because maybe I'm just an idiot. I had a guy falling asleep while he was driving me and Val. And Val was pregnant at the time.
[42:33]
Forest Galante
Oh, no.
[42:33]
Pete Holmes
We ended up ending the ride early. We're just like, we'll go here.
[42:36]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[42:36]
Pete Holmes
He was so tired. I felt bad for Him I was like, please go and get some sleep.
[42:40]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[42:40]
Pete Holmes
I still gave him five stars. I've never. Not I've. But that, that's like a share of the wealth. My life is so good, you know what I mean? And so nice. And I'm not gonna go like you guy, you know.
[42:55]
Forest Galante
Right.
[42:55]
Pete Holmes
So overworked that he's asleep.
[42:58]
Forest Galante
Totally.
[42:58]
Pete Holmes
But I mean I. I could hear someone in my mind my friend going like yeah, but he needs to learn that he needs to get rest. So you should punish him. Yeah, I don't know. I can't do it.
[43:08]
Forest Galante
I left no rating. But my. I was angry enough that I was about to because I didn't have an explanation. I didn't understand. I didn't know about the cultural thing. Don't look at the bottom of the shoe. And it's just crazy. Like that never like you said in the 80s probably would have been like a yelling match between me and that guy.
[43:24]
Pete Holmes
That's right.
[43:24]
Forest Galante
He would have been like, put your foot down. It would have fine. And he would have driven me on. Do you know what I mean? And nobody would have rated anybody.
[43:30]
Pete Holmes
You're right. It wasn't even confronted.
[43:32]
Forest Galante
No. It's all non confrontational.
[43:34]
Pete Holmes
When is a behind screens that are like, don't show me the bottom of your foot. And you're like, I didn't know, I didn't know.
[43:40]
Forest Galante
And it would have been over.
[43:41]
Pete Holmes
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You get to go where you're going.
[43:43]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[43:43]
Pete Holmes
That's so funny. I just brought my daughter. We were gonna do a staycation because my wife had a bunch of people at the house and she's six and I took her to this hotel in town and we're so excited. I kept telling her, daddy, daughter, hotel date. It's nice, so fun.
[43:58]
Forest Galante
Pool.
[43:59]
Pete Holmes
Check in. Pool. Yeah. We check in, we're going up the stairs. The manager starts running after us. She wasn't there when we were checking in. And she goes, Mr. Holmes, Mr. Holmes. And it makes the story better. I thought she recognized me and was gonna upgrade us.
[44:14]
Forest Galante
Yeah, totally. Like, yes, that's me.
[44:16]
Pete Holmes
That's important story. If someone in a hotel goes, Mr. Holmes. Mr. Holmes. Yeah, I'm sorry. Conditioned. I'm. I'm about to get a cheese plate.
[44:25]
Forest Galante
Oh, totally. You're like, yes, that's what I thought.
[44:28]
Pete Holmes
I was like, oh good. I'm showing all my cards here. My daughter's going to be like, daddy's the coolest. I'm about to get some sort of. We have a special room for you.
[44:36]
Forest Galante
Totally.
[44:37]
Pete Holmes
She goes, the hotel is 18 and over, and so we had to leave.
[44:41]
Forest Galante
Oh, no.
[44:42]
Pete Holmes
And my daughter immediately starts crying. She's embarrassed and rejected. And I'm holding her and she's. And we just had to get our car that we had just valeted. Leela's crying and they're like, you can come for dinner. This is as angry as I got. I was very like, it's not your personal policy.
[45:00]
Forest Galante
It's the policy.
[45:01]
Pete Holmes
It's the hotel's policy. I understand. She's like, you can have dinner on me tonight. And I was like, no.
[45:06]
Forest Galante
Right? You're like, absolutely. No.
[45:08]
Pete Holmes
We're not coming back.
[45:09]
Forest Galante
I will never set foot in this establishment ever again.
[45:13]
Pete Holmes
Are you a dad?
[45:13]
Forest Galante
Of course.
[45:14]
Pete Holmes
You're completely reading my mind. In my mind, you hurt my daughter.
[45:19]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[45:19]
Pete Holmes
I'm not gonna come have zucchini fries. We will never be here again. And we left. But you have that impulse. If I'm being honest, it gave me understanding to all these. Sometimes I read 1 star Yelp reviews of Starbucks.
[45:34]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[45:35]
Pete Holmes
Just to laugh.
[45:35]
Forest Galante
Yeah. Sure.
[45:36]
Pete Holmes
Always they're. And they're always personal respect issues.
[45:40]
Forest Galante
Yeah. This barista blank. Yeah.
[45:43]
Pete Holmes
And. And what it said about them and how they felt in their value.
[45:46]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[45:47]
Pete Holmes
And I was like, what idiots. And then when that happened, I had to do all this, like, ego repair.
[45:52]
Forest Galante
Totally on me.
[45:53]
Pete Holmes
To be like, it's okay. I'm not.
[45:55]
Forest Galante
It's fine.
[45:55]
Pete Holmes
It's just a play. My daughter got over it way faster than I did.
[45:59]
Forest Galante
Oh, yeah. You're still talking about it.
[46:01]
Pete Holmes
Exactly. It did happen like two days ago, but I did. Okay. It was on Thursday.
[46:05]
Forest Galante
Look.
[46:08]
Pete Holmes
I couldn't believe how sensitive we all are anyway in the 80s, but I didn't leave any review.
[46:14]
Forest Galante
Yeah. Well, that's good. So you're a better.
[46:17]
Pete Holmes
No, no, no, no.
[46:18]
Forest Galante
You.
[46:18]
Pete Holmes
You did it too.
[46:19]
Forest Galante
I didn't leave it. But I thought about it and it's just crazy to me that that is even a thing. And that's why I say, I think the peak of Western of America.
[46:27]
Pete Holmes
Well, we had penicillin. We had like. You know what I mean? Like, we were pretty good. Medically good.
[46:33]
Forest Galante
Medicine, good enough. Technology good enough. Still had human connection.
[46:37]
Pete Holmes
Yeah.
[46:37]
Forest Galante
Still had better economy and lived better as a general rule. Bigger middle class.
[46:42]
Pete Holmes
I'm going to say it, man.
[46:43]
Forest Galante
Let's go 80s.
[46:44]
Pete Holmes
No email.
[46:45]
Forest Galante
No email.
[46:46]
Pete Holmes
No email.
[46:48]
Forest Galante
Chef's kiss. I hate email.
[46:51]
Pete Holmes
I feel like, you know Your birthday is one day after your March 31st.
[46:55]
Forest Galante
March 30th.
[46:56]
Pete Holmes
I'm not like an Astrology person. But I was like, maybe we'll have some sympathetic feelings.
[47:01]
Forest Galante
It's over. Emails.
[47:02]
Pete Holmes
I hate emails. I hate texts.
[47:05]
Forest Galante
Me too.
[47:06]
Pete Holmes
I hate all of it.
[47:07]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[47:07]
Pete Holmes
I only reply to texts when I'm in the bathroom. And my daughter will come in the bathroom, as little kids do.
[47:14]
Forest Galante
Yep.
[47:14]
Pete Holmes
And I don't like her to see me on my phone. I feel like you, like, hide it immediately.
[47:18]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[47:19]
Pete Holmes
So I hide it and I just don't reply to text. I'm like a terrible text. All of my tech, I've said this a million. But they all start with, sorry for the delay and I can't stand it. I'll say this in defense. Two things in defense of technology. We could say a million. One is my dad. I can see his picture over there on the wall. Used to just write in a notebook what he had to do.
[47:41]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[47:42]
Pete Holmes
And I think he's like me. I think he might have some ADHD kind of stuff. I'll just do it. I'll go like, fuck. I gotta tell my team this.
[47:51]
Forest Galante
Right?
[47:52]
Pete Holmes
Email right now. Done. That's pretty dope.
[47:56]
Forest Galante
Moment.
[47:57]
Pete Holmes
You're scattered.
[47:57]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[47:58]
Pete Holmes
You don't have to write it down. He couldn't read his writing later. Like, he didn't know what was going.
[48:02]
Forest Galante
To remember what it was.
[48:03]
Pete Holmes
Led to a lot of stress.
[48:04]
Forest Galante
Yeah. But it didn't matter because it was the 80s. He was doing a bunch of coke. He was partying. It didn't matter. And he was that human connection and.
[48:10]
Pete Holmes
Everybody else was as fucked as he was.
[48:12]
Forest Galante
That's right. That's right. Yeah. Now, if you. If you don't respond to it. I had this experience literally 4 days ago where one of the guys that works with me comes into my office and goes, so and so didn't respond to an email. And I'm like, oh, when did you email him? He goes, this morning. And that is.
[48:28]
Pete Holmes
That's insanity.
[48:29]
Forest Galante
That's not about Jimmy who came into my office and said that. That is the place that we're at.
[48:33]
Pete Holmes
That's where you are.
[48:34]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[48:34]
Pete Holmes
Oh, I've had people follow up on a text and they wrote me at 10am and then they're writing me at 3pm and it's not time sensitive.
[48:43]
Forest Galante
No. And you're like, sorry, this is not that important.
[48:46]
Pete Holmes
I don't know why Tony Robbins is on my mind so much today. I think it's because he brought that thing up about avoiding pain instead of getting. Or that's how I heard it.
[48:53]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[48:54]
Pete Holmes
Two things. If you had a day planner in the 80s. You were kind of a psycho. Like, you had a calendar.
[49:00]
Forest Galante
Totally.
[49:01]
Pete Holmes
You were a psycho. Like, what are you, a goody two shoes?
[49:03]
Forest Galante
Yeah, exactly. You're writing down your homework. Dork. Yeah.
[49:07]
Pete Holmes
We had to wait until, like, Christmas to get our calendar for the next year. The wall calendar.
[49:12]
Forest Galante
That's right. That goes on the fridge. Yeah.
[49:14]
Pete Holmes
And if someone in November wanted to make a plan for the new year.
[49:18]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[49:18]
Pete Holmes
You'd be like, I'll write that down after Christmas when I get my new calendar. You're talking nut job.
[49:23]
Forest Galante
Exactly, because that's.
[49:24]
Pete Holmes
And I have stuff in my calendar from three years out. Like some sort of, like, don't forget to replace this filter or something. It'll be in my calendar. You couldn't do that in the 80s.
[49:34]
Forest Galante
No, forget about filter.
[49:36]
Pete Holmes
Just didn't get changed.
[49:37]
Forest Galante
They didn't even know what the days were for that year yet because they hadn't made the calendar yet.
[49:44]
Pete Holmes
It's absolutely true, by the way. How close? Oh. What Tony Robbins says is, the main thing with scheduling is discerning what is important.
[49:54]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[49:55]
Pete Holmes
And nobody cares anymore.
[49:56]
Forest Galante
No, it's not everything important.
[49:57]
Pete Holmes
It's just everything.
[49:58]
Forest Galante
It's just everything goes on the calendar.
[50:00]
Pete Holmes
Everything is red.
[50:01]
Forest Galante
Yep.
[50:01]
Pete Holmes
Urgent.
[50:02]
Forest Galante
This 30 minute, this 30 minute, this hour, this 30 minute. Block, block, block, block. Yeah. All terrible.
[50:07]
Pete Holmes
Bright red in your calendar. And you're like. He's like, you can liberate yourself very quickly by just going like, this doesn't have to happen.
[50:15]
Forest Galante
Well, you know. So here's an interesting thing, which is crazy, by the way. Our mutual friend, James Peshara. Yeah. I spent a weekend at his place, like, maybe six weeks ago. My wife and I and our. Our kids and his family. And he told me something, you know, pretty successful guy. And he goes, I don't take meetings anymore. I was like, what do you mean, James? Like, you're running a big business. Like, you're busy. Busy as anybody. He's like, I don't take meetings anymore.
[50:40]
Pete Holmes
Yes.
[50:40]
Forest Galante
Like, that's. You're lying to me. He's like, no, if I need something, I do a loom, which is like a recorded. You know, like, here's what's going on. Like, on a computer. And then he sends off a video. He goes, I haven't scheduled a meeting in almost two years. He's like, if I want to do something, I'll reach out, but I will not take a meeting. I won't take a phone meeting, a zoom meeting. I don't do meetings. And I was like, you're nuts. And he's like, try it. So I tried it for two days. I couldn't do it because of the industry I'm in, but I tried it for two days. And there's something very freeing about opening up this thing that we just talked about not doing, but opening up your phone, looking on a calendar, and you got nothing on a Tuesday. You know you got nothing on that. And you're like, whoa.
[51:18]
Pete Holmes
It's funny that you picked Tuesday. Tuesday is my nothing day.
[51:21]
Forest Galante
Really.
[51:21]
Pete Holmes
I'm in a very, again, very fortunate place. Monday, we'll do these podcasts.
[51:26]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[51:26]
Pete Holmes
Tuesday is always my. Like, if there's some dumb thing I don't want to do, do it on Tuesday.
[51:30]
Forest Galante
Oh, nice.
[51:31]
Pete Holmes
And kind of have nothing. But. Yeah, you got that sensation.
[51:34]
Forest Galante
It was crazy.
[51:34]
Pete Holmes
And you loved it.
[51:35]
Forest Galante
I loved it. I kind of live that way right now because it's. It's not conducive to the industry I'm in.
[51:40]
Pete Holmes
I still don't quite understand. We gotta. I'm gonna follow up with him on that.
[51:44]
Forest Galante
Ask him about it. Ask him how he doesn't take meetings. I don't get it. It's crazy. Like, Forrest said, you don't take meetings.
[51:52]
Pete Holmes
Should we FaceTime him and ask him?
[51:54]
Forest Galante
You could try. Let's see if he picks up.
[51:56]
Pete Holmes
Let's see if he picks up.
[51:56]
Forest Galante
That'd be hilarious.
[51:57]
Pete Holmes
We need more detail on how you're not.
[52:00]
Forest Galante
Let's try.
[52:01]
Pete Holmes
This will be a podcast first.
[52:03]
Forest Galante
Yes. This is great.
[52:05]
Pete Holmes
He is the kind of person that might answer.
[52:07]
Forest Galante
Yeah. If he sees it. I bet he'll answer.
[52:09]
Pete Holmes
And he probably won't.
[52:10]
Forest Galante
Yeah. And this is going to be interesting. We're gonna be like, we're making fun of you on air, James.
[52:16]
Pete Holmes
Yeah, that's right. He's not gonna. He would answer it right away. He's probably in a meeting.
[52:22]
Forest Galante
Yeah, right. The meetings he doesn't take. And no luck. No, I think he keeps his phone on do not disturb.
[52:29]
Pete Holmes
Me too.
[52:29]
Forest Galante
So do I. Yeah.
[52:31]
Pete Holmes
I think that's just a dude that might be so high up. Like, there are people that need an answer from you.
[52:38]
Forest Galante
Yeah, that's probably the difference. Like, my whole business would cease to function if I didn't take meetings or send meetings.
[52:45]
Pete Holmes
Yeah, I think we'll get more. We'll get an update on that.
[52:50]
Forest Galante
I still appreciate it. I think it's really cool.
[52:52]
Pete Holmes
And I don't see a lot of people making that effort, even, like, having my phone. This is the hot tip. I. I share as much as I can. You can put your phone On Do Not Disturb, then you can make a group. Like, I have a group called Family. It's Val.
[53:05]
Forest Galante
And then you turn notifications on for that.
[53:08]
Pete Holmes
For Val.
[53:09]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[53:09]
Pete Holmes
So even if it's on Do Not Disturb. So if I'm talking to you and I feel a vibration, I know it's Val.
[53:14]
Forest Galante
It's important.
[53:15]
Pete Holmes
And if I hear. If it's going, like, three, four times or she's calling.
[53:18]
Forest Galante
Right.
[53:19]
Pete Holmes
She's locked out of the house or something's wrong with the dog or whatever it is. So you answer it.
[53:23]
Forest Galante
Yep.
[53:24]
Pete Holmes
But the rest of the time, everything else can wait.
[53:26]
Forest Galante
Exactly.
[53:27]
Pete Holmes
Everything else.
[53:28]
Forest Galante
Exactly. And it used to. Back in the 80s, back when we had motherfucking 80s, dude, it used to wait.
[53:34]
Pete Holmes
I think you're right. What?
[53:36]
Forest Galante
It's a hot take.
[53:38]
Pete Holmes
It is a hot take. But I mean. And I haven't. I'm not the first to make this. But, like, it's not the movie. We live in a time now where we think it's the movie. We want the movie to be amazing. In the 80s, we knew it was like, who am I gonna watch this movie with? We're all gonna go to Blockbuster together. I know we sound like old guys. We're gonna look for it. We're gonna be disappointed that Terminator 2 is out. All 50 copies are rented.
[54:03]
Forest Galante
That's right.
[54:03]
Pete Holmes
And then that's only gonna make us even more desirous of seeing it.
[54:08]
Forest Galante
That's it.
[54:08]
Pete Holmes
And that next human experience, the human experience that we don't get anymore, that's stopping for directions.
[54:13]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[54:14]
Pete Holmes
And you must see that in the natural world, when you're, like, stalking an animal, you're living in the real.
[54:21]
Forest Galante
You live in the now. I think that's the difference. Right? Even going back to, like, James not taking meetings and whatever. We live in my opinion, yourself as a successful guy and myself running a small business and everything, we live in the. What's coming next. Okay. I finished that meeting. What's next? What's my next trip? What am I planning for? What's my next conservation mission, Whatever. But when you're on that. And I'm just talking from personal experience, when you're on that trip filming crocodiles, catching hippos in Colombia, whatever I happen to be doing, you're. When you're tracking that animal, like you said, you are only living in the now.
[54:56]
Pete Holmes
Yeah.
[54:57]
Forest Galante
There is no cell phone. It doesn't matter if your wife's car is broken down. It doesn't matter. You know? And I love my wife. I want to help her.
[55:03]
Pete Holmes
Car breaks down in a certain. In a manner of speaking. You're free of all of that.
[55:06]
Forest Galante
You're free of it. Yeah, you're free of it.
[55:08]
Pete Holmes
You.
[55:08]
Forest Galante
You have one thing on your mind.
[55:10]
Pete Holmes
Yeah.
[55:10]
Forest Galante
You can, you know, meditate or think about whatever you like. You could think about, I hope my wife's okay. But you are focused on following those tracks, looking for that history.
[55:19]
Pete Holmes
It's dangerous to not be present.
[55:20]
Forest Galante
And you're in the present. You're living in the present. And something about society, whether. I don't know if this was the case in the 80s or not, but now you are always living in the next thing. You're always thinking about what's coming next. What's my next phone call, my next meeting, my next appointment. But not when you're in nature. Not when you're focused on something in the wild.
[55:38]
Pete Holmes
And you could die if you're thinking about something.
[55:40]
Forest Galante
Definitely.
[55:40]
Pete Holmes
In fact, those people did die.
[55:42]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[55:42]
Pete Holmes
And now only the distractible people are breeding.
[55:47]
Forest Galante
That's right. Isn't that crazy?
[55:48]
Pete Holmes
We're thriving the most.
[55:49]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[55:49]
Pete Holmes
Because we have seven businesses. Because we have.
[55:52]
Forest Galante
That's right. Because you're pulled in all these directions.
[55:54]
Pete Holmes
And our culture rewards. That's right. You're less present, less present. Less present, Less present, less present.
[56:00]
Forest Galante
And I don't know what the solution to any of this is. These are just observations. As someone who studies animal body language and behavior for a living. Yeah.
[56:08]
Pete Holmes
But it's interesting to think. I mean, there might. I hold out hope that my daughter's generation, maybe the one after it, I don't know, will kind of go like, oh, we're starving, we're deprived of something, and there might be a resurgence in like, nature stuff.
[56:26]
Forest Galante
You know what I've seen that I think is interesting? Our generation, we are old guys at this point in time. I said, blockbuster, I'm gonna speak for myself and not you here, but I'm definitely addicted to my phone. I wake up, I grab my phone, I see what's on my calendar. Bo. I have coached rugby. I didn't get to do it last year because I was traveling too much. But up until last year, I've coached youth rugby for 10 years. So I've seen kids grow up. They start at like age 7 or 8 and they go till they're 18, and then they go on to college and stuff. And what's so interesting is when I started coaching rugby, all the kids had phones. Okay. I'm talking 8, 10 year old kids had phones. And that first generation, they'd you know, get a water break. They check their phones. They'd walk onto the field checking their phones like you and I probably do. If you're walking to Starbucks, you're on your phone. Right. But the new generation, the kids now that have grown up with it, they're callous to it a little bit. I feel like their brains have not got. Oh, shiny new thing. I'm sure you remember a time before social media. I certainly do.
[57:21]
Pete Holmes
Yeah.
[57:22]
Forest Galante
And now social media is like, ooh, this new shiny thing. But I think maybe if you grow up with exposure to it.
[57:28]
Pete Holmes
It's boring.
[57:29]
Forest Galante
It's boring. It's not as like. I gotta be honest, I gotta check it. I gotta look. Exactly. It's wine in Europe. That's a wonderful analogy.
[57:36]
Pete Holmes
Yeah. You know, we always had that. Who cares?
[57:39]
Forest Galante
Yeah, exactly. You're slamming as many drinks as you can get. But you grow up with wine in Europe, it's like, yeah, I might have one with dinner, but.
[57:45]
Pete Holmes
Right.
[57:45]
Forest Galante
Whatever.
[57:45]
Pete Holmes
Oh, I hope that's true.
[57:47]
Forest Galante
I hope so, too. Yeah.
[57:48]
Pete Holmes
Because we were the. We're the generation. God, I hope we're not the most obnoxious generation for talking about this, but we lived a lot of our lives without it.
[57:57]
Forest Galante
Right.
[57:57]
Pete Holmes
And then we got it.
[57:58]
Forest Galante
Exactly.
[57:59]
Pete Holmes
And now everybody, from now on will have had it.
[58:01]
Forest Galante
That's right. Yeah.
[58:02]
Pete Holmes
That's a different experience.
[58:03]
Forest Galante
But where. That one little in between where we went from not having something to now having it. Unlimited.
[58:08]
Pete Holmes
Right.
[58:09]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[58:09]
Pete Holmes
Right. I hope. I hope people do. Tell me about your experiences. I imagine you've almost died a bunch, unfortunately.
[58:16]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[58:17]
Pete Holmes
What's. What's the time you almost died? That was something I was excited to ask you.
[58:20]
Forest Galante
Oh, man. I mean, I've been in two plane crashes.
[58:23]
Pete Holmes
What?
[58:23]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[58:24]
Pete Holmes
What happened?
[58:25]
Forest Galante
Okay. I was going to do a whole prattling list.
[58:28]
Pete Holmes
You can do a list.
[58:28]
Forest Galante
I'm glad we stopped, but go ahead. Well, I mean, look, I've been in two plane crashes. I've been a big car wreck. I've been stung by a man who wore jellyfish, mauled by a lion, charged by hippos, stung by stingrays, bitten by sharks. Twice. I thought I rubbed snake venom in my eye once, and I didn't, thankfully. Yeah.
[58:46]
Pete Holmes
And you still do Shark Week?
[58:47]
Forest Galante
I love it, man. I got a new scar from Shark Week on my hand this year.
[58:52]
Pete Holmes
You got mauled? Okay, we. We should have just only done this.
[58:56]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[58:59]
Pete Holmes
Okay. The plane crashes. Small planes. Big planes.
[59:02]
Forest Galante
Small planes.
[59:03]
Pete Holmes
Like four seaters.
[59:05]
Forest Galante
One was a 12 seater, the other was a six seater.
[59:07]
Pete Holmes
Wow.
[59:07]
Forest Galante
And where One was in Zimbabwe, Northern Zimbabwe. And the other was in Panama.
[59:12]
Pete Holmes
Okay, so you've been in two plane crashes. So the second one where you were like, I remember this.
[59:18]
Forest Galante
No. So were you looking around, going like, first timers? Yeah, here we go.
[59:22]
Pete Holmes
Yeah, this is fine. We'll be fine.
[59:25]
Forest Galante
No, the first one was much worse. We got hit by lightning. All the instruments went out. Then when we came down to land with no instruments.
[59:32]
Pete Holmes
In a storm?
[59:33]
Forest Galante
Yeah, in a storm.
[59:34]
Pete Holmes
It didn't like sneak up on you. Did you take off in a storm?
[59:37]
Forest Galante
No, it was a long flight. Took off, you know, back in the days before a lot of good high tech radar and all that. My mom was a bush pilot, so I grew up in Zimbabwe. So we were always flying into the bush to run safari businesses. And first one was literally over the limp. We're over the Limpopo. I don't know. In that region. Got stuck. Plane got struck by lightning. What is that, 310? What's that?
[59:59]
Pete Holmes
When it gets struck by lightning?
[60:00]
Forest Galante
It happens all the time.
[60:01]
Pete Holmes
But what is it like as a passenger?
[60:03]
Forest Galante
Loud and bright, but it doesn't really. Yeah, exactly. Whoa. And planes get struck by lightning a lot, actually. People don't realize that, but in this instance, in our old bush plane, everything went out. Power went out, instruments went out. And so we came down to land.
[60:18]
Pete Holmes
But you're gliding.
[60:19]
Forest Galante
Yeah, exactly. And the plane restarted, but the instruments were all out.
[60:23]
Pete Holmes
Okay.
[60:23]
Forest Galante
So we couldn't find the Runway or whatever else. So my mom went down. My mom was the pilot. I was. I was sitting in the passenger seat. Yeah, exactly. And we went down to land.
[60:33]
Pete Holmes
But she's just finding it with her eyes, basically.
[60:35]
Forest Galante
In a storm. Yeah, exactly. What went down? Landing.
[60:39]
Pete Holmes
This is Sully.
[60:40]
Forest Galante
That's right. Yeah.
[60:41]
Pete Holmes
Your mom is Sully.
[60:42]
Forest Galante
That's right.
[60:43]
Pete Holmes
She found it. I've been in a plane where you can see the windows.
[60:47]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[60:47]
Pete Holmes
And I'm like, I. You see nothing.
[60:49]
Forest Galante
You don't understand what you're looking at from that.
[60:51]
Pete Holmes
She was probably like standing up, peering out. That's an uncomfortable feeling when your pilot.
[60:55]
Forest Galante
Is like, yeah, where are we going? Exactly. Yeah, she did it. She more or less did it. But then the plane crashed when we hit the ground because. Hit a termite mound. Plane spun around. Things got ripped off. Yeah. But we're okay. A couple. Couple bruises, broken ribs, stuff like that.
[61:11]
Pete Holmes
So after her most amazing moment, she hits a termite mound.
[61:15]
Forest Galante
Well, yeah, because there was no Runway to see. So we just went down to where we thought the Runway was. I was 14 so I hope I'm retelling this exactly right.
[61:24]
Pete Holmes
Holy smokes.
[61:24]
Forest Galante
But she. Yeah, she hit a termite mound. You know, in Africa you have these big like 6 foot tall termite mounds. Whoa. And you hit one of those going 100 miles an hour landing. It's. It creates some damage.
[61:34]
Pete Holmes
Wow.
[61:35]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[61:36]
Pete Holmes
So let's clear out these termite mounds even near the Runway.
[61:40]
Forest Galante
That's right. Yeah.
[61:41]
Pete Holmes
That's my policy. Get them all out of here. That is crazy. And it was your mom okay?
[61:47]
Forest Galante
Yeah, everybody was okay. I'm a little rattled up. Plane was not okay, but we were okay. It was just my mom and I in the plane at that point in time.
[61:53]
Pete Holmes
Just you guys?
[61:54]
Forest Galante
Just us, yeah.
[61:55]
Pete Holmes
Oh, my God. She must have been terrified.
[61:58]
Forest Galante
She was. Yeah.
[62:01]
Pete Holmes
Oh. As a parent, I can't. Did she resume flying?
[62:06]
Forest Galante
Oh, yeah. Plane got a new plane or that one fully fixed up. I don't really remember. And back to work. You know, it's part of her job. Yeah.
[62:14]
Pete Holmes
Okay. This is the bad part of the 80s.
[62:16]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[62:17]
Pete Holmes
Nobody knew. You've been traumatized. We're not gonna process this.
[62:22]
Forest Galante
No such thing. Yeah.
[62:23]
Pete Holmes
Your mom just got a tic that's like started smoking.
[62:25]
Forest Galante
That's it. Back and on to the next thing. Yeah. But, yeah. Short answer is I've had a few near death encounters. That one was not my fault. A lot of them are close to wildlife. Like bad animal interaction. Just got stung by a man O War jellyfish. It wasn't like I didn't go into coma or anything, but it was a lot of toxin. A lot of pain. Yeah.
[62:45]
Pete Holmes
Hurt muchos.
[62:46]
Forest Galante
Oh, yeah, it hurt a lot.
[62:48]
Pete Holmes
Shock or a burn?
[62:49]
Forest Galante
No, it's more like, like, like. Feels kind of like an acid burn. Like it just doesn't go away, you know, it lingers for a long time.
[62:54]
Pete Holmes
Whoa.
[62:55]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[62:55]
Pete Holmes
And what were you trying to do?
[62:56]
Forest Galante
Swimming. Mozambique. Yeah.
[62:58]
Pete Holmes
Just hanging out.
[62:59]
Forest Galante
Just hanging out.
[63:00]
Pete Holmes
Not even for work?
[63:01]
Forest Galante
No. I was also pretty young when this happened. Yeah.
[63:03]
Pete Holmes
Oh, my God.
[63:05]
Forest Galante
But I mean, literally, like in February, I almost got killed by a hippo while we were working down in Columbia.
[63:11]
Pete Holmes
The secret killers, man.
[63:12]
Forest Galante
Yeah. Hippos are gnarly hippos.
[63:14]
Pete Holmes
I mean, the Hungry Hungry Hippos franchise.
[63:17]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[63:17]
Pete Holmes
It's just because they're kind of cute. But those are sharks.
[63:20]
Forest Galante
Fantasia. Remember Fantasia the movie?
[63:23]
Pete Holmes
Yeah, yeah.
[63:23]
Forest Galante
They had like the happy dancing tutu hippos. And so people thinks they're like these cute cuddly things.
[63:28]
Pete Holmes
Murder people every year.
[63:30]
Forest Galante
The most dangerous large land animal in the world.
[63:33]
Pete Holmes
I'm sorry.
[63:34]
Forest Galante
The most dangerous large land animal because mosquitoes are more dangerous. You know, things like that. But the hippo kills more people.
[63:41]
Pete Holmes
A mosquito is more dangerous because, like, malaria. Exactly. But a hippo will eat you.
[63:46]
Forest Galante
It won't eat you, but it will bite you in half, trample you, kill you. I mean, so one of the shows.
[63:52]
Pete Holmes
That I have coming up, Altoid teeth.
[63:54]
Forest Galante
Yeah, those Altoid teeth are like this big, around in this long. Don't be fooled. I thought they were Altoids. No, they'll smash you up. Oh, no.
[64:04]
Pete Holmes
Oh, no. And why will they kill you for being in their spot?
[64:08]
Forest Galante
So people often ask me that. I don't think hippos are aggressive. They're just very, very nervous creatures. And hippos don't have a fight or flight response. They have a fight response.
[64:20]
Pete Holmes
Oh, wow.
[64:20]
Forest Galante
So if you corner a hippo, if you trap a hippo, if you get a hippo in a situation where it can't sink under the water and be. Be nervous and scared, it just attacks.
[64:29]
Pete Holmes
I've always related to a hippo.
[64:31]
Forest Galante
Yeah. I don't feel sinking under.
[64:33]
Pete Holmes
I just like how they just kind of want to sink and relax. Seems like pretty much left alone.
[64:39]
Forest Galante
Pretty much. They just want to be left alone.
[64:41]
Pete Holmes
But they seem like deeply traumatized creatures.
[64:43]
Forest Galante
They do.
[64:44]
Pete Holmes
They really do it. It'll just overreact 100% every time.
[64:48]
Forest Galante
It's crazy.
[64:49]
Pete Holmes
Wow.
[64:49]
Forest Galante
So we were working in. In February this year and last year, too, but we're working with Cornare, which is the government institution in Colombia in charge of mitigating the hippo issue. Do you know about that? Like, Pablo Escobar brought hippos to Colombia.
[65:02]
Pete Holmes
Oh, yeah. What was his. He used to feed his enemies and stuff.
[65:06]
Forest Galante
They say that. I don't think that's true. We dig into that in the show, but.
[65:10]
Pete Holmes
Oh, really?
[65:10]
Forest Galante
Hacienda annapolis was his 5,000 acre private zoo estate that Pablo Escobar had. He brought in all these animals, including four hippos. He was gunned down. They moved all the animals out to various zoos except for the hippos, because they're too dangerous, too difficult. Everything we just talked about. So they're just like, yeah, off you go. They let them out. Those four hippos are now over 200 and they're killing people. They're 200 hippos.
[65:33]
Pete Holmes
200 hippos.
[65:34]
Forest Galante
They've bred to be over 200 hippos. Yeah.
[65:36]
Pete Holmes
Horny, horny hippos.
[65:37]
Forest Galante
Horny, horny hippos. That's right. Not hungry, hungry hippos. God, I wish I had that line when we were filming that show. That's a good line. Horny, horny hippos.
[65:44]
Pete Holmes
It's my pleasure.
[65:45]
Forest Galante
That's really funny.
[65:46]
Pete Holmes
Drop it in adr.
[65:47]
Forest Galante
I wish. That's a good line. I'm stealing that one, Pete. But, yeah, so they're. They're a huge menace down there. And hippos aren't supposed to be in Colombia. They're from Africa.
[65:56]
Pete Holmes
Oh, no.
[65:57]
Forest Galante
And so, yeah, we've been working on catching them, castrating them, chemically castrating them, relocating them, all kinds of stuff. Yeah.
[66:05]
Pete Holmes
And you're doing that without anesthesia, I'm guessing.
[66:08]
Forest Galante
No, no, we put them under. Yeah, you put them under. It's very dangerous, though. You got to catch. Catch a hippo, put it to sleep, open it up, cut its nuts off, take its ovaries out, sew it back up, wake it up and let it go. Wow. Yeah.
[66:19]
Pete Holmes
It's hard to catch a predator.
[66:20]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[66:21]
Pete Holmes
That's crazy.
[66:22]
Forest Galante
It's nuts.
[66:23]
Pete Holmes
It is literally nuts.
[66:24]
Forest Galante
Yeah. Not anymore.
[66:27]
Pete Holmes
It was nuts.
[66:28]
Forest Galante
It was nuts. Yeah.
[66:29]
Pete Holmes
And that's to let this generation live out, but then be done with it.
[66:32]
Forest Galante
That's what we're trying to do. Yeah. Because they've become a bit of a cultural icon because of their past with Pablo Escobar, because they've created a tourism industry around them. Oh, people going to see them.
[66:42]
Pete Holmes
They want some.
[66:44]
Forest Galante
They want some.
[66:44]
Pete Holmes
But the government's, like, leave us enough for people to take pictures.
[66:47]
Forest Galante
Exactly. And it's created a whole financial industry, like, around tourism. And if you go to Hacienda now, it's like a theme park. It's like going to Six Flags. It's all hippo themed. It's like dancing hippos everywhere. So they don't want them gone, but they're legitimately out of control.
[67:02]
Pete Holmes
Oh, my God.
[67:03]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[67:03]
Pete Holmes
Who knew?
[67:04]
Forest Galante
Yeah. It's crazy.
[67:06]
Pete Holmes
Can you eat hippo?
[67:07]
Forest Galante
You can eat hippo. I have had it. I'm sorry to say you could kill these hippos, but that's not what people want.
[67:15]
Pete Holmes
Right, Right. I'm not in favor of that, but I'm like, there's overrun with this delicious animal.
[67:21]
Forest Galante
It may. I don't know that they're delicious, but it may get to the point where they have to shoot a bunch of them. They're not there now, but it may get to that.
[67:27]
Pete Holmes
Oh, my gosh. I have no idea. I'm in the dark on hippo news.
[67:31]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[67:31]
Pete Holmes
So a hippo attacked you.
[67:33]
Forest Galante
We. So. Because they're in this cr. There's, like, one rule in the bush in Africa. Again, I grew up on safari that there's a few rules, but there's one big outstanding rule, which is never walk in thick bush with a hippo. Because if they hear you, if they smell you, if they see you, boom, they go for you. Guess what? In Africa, you have these big open flays, you know, like big grasslands and savannas. You don't have that in the Colombian Amazon. You have jungle.
[67:56]
Pete Holmes
Yeah.
[67:56]
Forest Galante
So we were tracking hippos on this island in the middle of the Rio Magdalena basin. And it's like you can't see from meteor wall right there because of how thick it is.
[68:05]
Pete Holmes
Yeah.
[68:05]
Forest Galante
And sure enough, we pop out into this one area, and there's a hippo wallowing in a pool right there. And it can't submerge because the pool's on, like, three feet deep. So it just comes charging up at us, and we scattered. And the one good thing about being in thick bush is when you scatter, they don't know where to go because you just scatter in every direction.
[68:21]
Pete Holmes
Yeah.
[68:21]
Forest Galante
And it charged towards me and the guy that I was working with, of course, always. And the guy in the front, me and Alejandro, the guy I was working with. And then it turned off and ran into the bush. But it was. It was like, I'm getting the heart palpitations now just thinking about it. It just. It sucks. Hippos suck. Every time I work with hippos, something bad happens. Like, hippos are so scary.
[68:42]
Pete Holmes
You're like Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park. You're the one going like, we should be going after these hippos.
[68:47]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[68:48]
Pete Holmes
You're the guy that's saying we shouldn't be doing.
[68:50]
Forest Galante
That's right.
[68:50]
Pete Holmes
The same.
[68:51]
Forest Galante
But we do it anyway. Yeah. And then I also lead the mission, so I don't know if I'm quite. Yeah. I'm unhinged. Yeah.
[68:58]
Pete Holmes
This episode is brought to us by our friends at dad Grass and the official beverage of my summer, dad Grass leisure drink, which, if you're 21 and over, should ships legally to all 50 states. You gotta check it out. Dad Grass was founded by two bros. Two bros. Two guys who feel like. I feel weed is too damn strong. It hits you too hard. It sends you into outer space like a chimpanzee, exploring things you don't understand. You can't follow the plot of a movie. You eat an entire pizza just trying to regulate and come back to Earth. And you can't even follow the Plot a parent trap. So what they did was they made leisure drink which is delicious. It's a yuzu flavored which I don't know why we don't have more yuzu flavored drinks. It's sweet, it's bubbly, it's goodness that finally offers a casual, light hearted way to have fun and relax your body and mind with friends and keeping you on the earthly plane but still feeling great. I've been putting them out at parties, I've been enjoying them on family movie nights because it's just, it's just that takes the edge off. It's 3 milligrams of THC, 6 milligrams of CBD and 2,200 milligrams of Lion's Mane which I find balances out the whole experience. So it's a mild dose but it's also sessionable. You can, you can stack them if you want to have a bigger buzz. You stack them. It hits really fast because it's a liquid which means like you'll know how you're going to feel in about 10 to 20 minutes. Get leisure drinks and all of dad Grass's amazing products including their joints and their gummies by going to dadgrass.com weird and use promo code weird for 20% off. We're also brought to us by our friends at Apollo. My Apollo is charging. Usually I hold it up at this point. Apollo. I'm never without it, I'm always wearing it. Why? An Apollo Neuro is a piece of wearable technology that sends almost sub perceptual vibrations directly into your nervous system. You can wear it on the inside of your wrist, wrist. You can wear it on your ankle. I wear mine on the inside of my wrist. And what it does, it's like finding the fuse box to your nervous system. It can energize you, it can help you focus, it can most importantly help you relax. The setting I have it on most often is either calm or unwind. And when I'm traveling I have it running on unwind the entire day. When I'm going to bed I put it on a setting called good night and when I'm in bed going to sleep, I put on setting called sleep. It gently talks to your body in the language that your body speaks and can understand. Reducing stress, improving sleep, boosting focus, helping with recovery. It's drug free obviously it's a topical thing. It's a, it's on your body non invasive and it's science backed. It's developed by a neuroscientist and supported by clinical research. Try the Apollo with rising demands. Now is the perfect time to buy. Go to ApolloNeuro.com weird and if you apply the code weird, you'll get 60 bucks off and a free sleep band. That's Apollo Neuro A P O L L O N E U-R-O.com weird use promo code weird for 60 bucks off and a free sleep band. Back to the episode. So you, for a very real moment, thought you were definitely dead by Hippo. Hippo.
[72:07]
Forest Galante
I mean, you don't think that way, you just react.
[72:09]
Pete Holmes
Right.
[72:10]
Forest Galante
And then after you go, that was close. Like, you know, I. I don't think in that specific situation there was never like. I had one other hippo charge many years ago in Mono. Monopol, Zimbabwe, where I felt its breath. It was that close to me. This wasn't like that, you know, it was still probably 25ft away from me. But it was one of those situations where I was running without looking back, you know, it was just like, just absolutely just go. Like don't think. Go. And nothing bad happened. But I just. You just. Adrenaline takes over. You do what you think is right and you hope for the best. And in that situation, nothing happened.
[72:42]
Pete Holmes
But it's crazy that that's one of the ways that we are so wildly an animal. It's like adrenaline and our fight flight program.
[72:51]
Forest Galante
That's right.
[72:52]
Pete Holmes
And when they kick in.
[72:53]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[72:53]
Pete Holmes
Like slow motion, like when time slows down or, you know, you just have these instances. Instincts.
[72:59]
Forest Galante
Totally.
[73:00]
Pete Holmes
So happy to be an animal. When we're an animal. When you need to be an animal, you're so happy you're an animal.
[73:05]
Forest Galante
That's it. Yeah. You know, no rationale or thought or anything is going to save you in that situation.
[73:11]
Pete Holmes
Floods you with a. I guess a hormone. Adrenaline. Is it?
[73:14]
Forest Galante
Yeah, yeah.
[73:16]
Pete Holmes
That you have.
[73:17]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[73:17]
Pete Holmes
Or that it can make. It's insane.
[73:20]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[73:20]
Pete Holmes
Body chemistry is insane. You could probably illuminate me on this. But it's like, give him this.
[73:24]
Forest Galante
Yeah, yeah. Boom. From where it's like, it's in you. It's Captain America's super serum. It's right. Boop. You know, like.
[73:31]
Pete Holmes
And you had it.
[73:32]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[73:33]
Pete Holmes
And it's just not giving it to you.
[73:34]
Forest Galante
Right.
[73:35]
Pete Holmes
Because it like has only a limited amount, I guess.
[73:37]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[73:38]
Pete Holmes
So the body's intelligences go. We have this like Batman gives himself that adrenaline shot in the new Batman.
[73:44]
Forest Galante
Yep.
[73:45]
Pete Holmes
We have that.
[73:45]
Forest Galante
Yep.
[73:46]
Pete Holmes
But it's smart enough to know, well, don't just give it to him when he's Watching a movie. Like, this is fake. Yeah, this is fake. Like hippo real. And it gives it to you. And now you could climb a tree.
[73:56]
Forest Galante
That's right. Kick into overdrive. I mean, there's been instances of women like lifting cars off of their children and stuff. And you're like, where did your super strength come from? And she's like, I don't know.
[74:06]
Pete Holmes
Right.
[74:06]
Forest Galante
You know, my kid was under the hood of the car or whatever.
[74:09]
Pete Holmes
And the less romantic answer is your brain was like, this is a five alarm fire.
[74:15]
Forest Galante
That's right.
[74:16]
Pete Holmes
Everything we got.
[74:17]
Forest Galante
That's right. Put all systems go.
[74:19]
Pete Holmes
It's crazy.
[74:20]
Forest Galante
It's crazy.
[74:20]
Pete Holmes
Yeah. Humans.
[74:21]
Forest Galante
And then you feel this crazy rush after you get like. I get. And I'm not, I don't think I'm an adrenaline junkie. But you get this crazy endorphin high afterwards. We're like, that was so nuts. That hip almost fucking killed me. Yeah, you're giddy, you know, and you're like, and you're like, your hands are like this and you're like, what just happened? Like, why do I feel good now?
[74:41]
Pete Holmes
You had to trick. That's why the adrenaline junkies are tricking the brain to give it the thing.
[74:45]
Forest Galante
That's right.
[74:46]
Pete Holmes
Designed for trouble.
[74:47]
Forest Galante
Yep.
[74:47]
Pete Holmes
But we're like, oh, we'll find a way around that.
[74:49]
Forest Galante
That's why you skydive or bungee jump or whatever because it kicks. That adrenaline kicks in and then you get that rush afterwards.
[74:55]
Pete Holmes
Wow.
[74:56]
Forest Galante
Yeah. And I do get that with wildlife quite often. I'm fortunate in that regard.
[75:00]
Pete Holmes
Yeah.
[75:01]
Forest Galante
So maybe I am an adrenaline junkie. I just hide it by saying I'm doing it for the greater good of wildlife. You're in.
[75:06]
Pete Holmes
You're an adrenaline recreation connoisseur. Yeah. You're a connoisseur.
[75:10]
Forest Galante
That's right.
[75:10]
Pete Holmes
You'll indulge from time to time.
[75:12]
Forest Galante
Yeah, I have a nice. A nice glass of adrenaline.
[75:15]
Pete Holmes
And what was the shark one?
[75:17]
Forest Galante
I've been bitten by lemon sharks twice, so once on my arm right there.
[75:21]
Pete Holmes
What is a lemon shark?
[75:23]
Forest Galante
Right there? Yeah. A lemon shark's like a yellowish colored shark. They get that name from their yellowish complexion.
[75:30]
Pete Holmes
Okay.
[75:30]
Forest Galante
Very common in the Caribbean.
[75:32]
Pete Holmes
But it's not like a sand shark. Are these little sharks?
[75:34]
Forest Galante
No, no. They get like 11ft long. They get pretty big.
[75:37]
Pete Holmes
It's a big ass shark.
[75:38]
Forest Galante
Yeah. It can do some real damage. Look.
[75:40]
Pete Holmes
You bit by any shark. Good story. I'm just wondering how scary and big this shark is. Big, Bigish.
[75:46]
Forest Galante
Neither one was like, you know, I Was swimming at night and it dragged me under or anything like that both times. And this was the point of why I even brought this up is anytime something like this happens with wildlife, I'm the one to blame, not the animals. I put myself into this weird situation. Feeding sharks, darting hippos, whatever it happens to be. And the animals are reacting defensively. They're not like, oh, I'm gonna get.
[76:07]
Pete Holmes
That guy you were after. It's nuts.
[76:09]
Forest Galante
Exactly. Yeah. But, yeah. So I was feeding lemon sharks and one got me there. And then another time, one bit me on the foot. So I've had these stupid things that I've done, but I've put myself in those situations.
[76:21]
Pete Holmes
More like a sting or a grab with the shark. Yeah.
[76:25]
Forest Galante
Well, this one was a slice. That was a single tooth where I pulled my arm back as it went for me. And so it just sliced me right there and that.
[76:32]
Pete Holmes
Well, I think most people are like, doesn't that lead to a frenzy? There's all your blood in the water.
[76:36]
Forest Galante
No, no, There's a little bit of blood. I closed it up. I duct taped it closed and got right back to work. So it didn't.
[76:42]
Pete Holmes
You're like your mom. I crashed the plane.
[76:44]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[76:44]
Pete Holmes
Next day, I'm up in the air.
[76:45]
Forest Galante
Yeah, you gotta keep going. Yeah.
[76:47]
Pete Holmes
Just duct taped it underwater.
[76:48]
Forest Galante
No, we were. I was on the back of a boat working, so I like came in from the boat. We were feeding the sharks is what you do to get a lot of sharks around and study them. And again, I. My fault. I wasn't paying enough attention. Complacency set in. This happened and we had plenty more to do. So I duct taped my arm and went back into it. Yeah.
[77:05]
Pete Holmes
Wow. When I'm swimming in the ocean, do I have to worry about sharks?
[77:10]
Forest Galante
Where are you swimming?
[77:12]
Pete Holmes
Well, I just was swimming well up. Up in Ventura?
[77:15]
Forest Galante
No, not really.
[77:15]
Pete Holmes
Not really.
[77:16]
Forest Galante
I mean, we have like. I live in Santa Barbara. Right. Just north of Ventura. We have tons of sharks at Padaro Lane, which is like this one little beach where there's a white shark nursery for juvenile sharks. That that same exact beach is where my son, this next summer. Not this summer. Cause he was too little, will go to lifeguard camp. They're literally swimming in the water with juvenile white sharks all around. Oh, wow. But it's just. Just sharks. And I know you've heard this doing Shark Week press and stuff. They're not out to get you. They don't choose to attack you. When they bite you, it's because they've Made a bad choice. You've probably made a bad choice in where you're swimming and what you're doing. And it's a sort of confluence of situations that leads to a negative encounter.
[77:56]
Pete Holmes
Right, right.
[77:56]
Forest Galante
Okay. All right.
[77:57]
Pete Holmes
Good to know.
[77:58]
Forest Galante
So for the most part, you just live your life. Don't worry about it.
[78:01]
Pete Holmes
I like that. I will. And forgive me if this is like a topic you, you're tired of talking about, but is there some dragon stuff we're gonna talk about?
[78:10]
Forest Galante
Some dragon stuff?
[78:11]
Pete Holmes
Is our dragons real?
[78:13]
Forest Galante
Oh, are you thinking about that Joe Rogan clip thing?
[78:15]
Pete Holmes
I didn't see any clip.
[78:16]
Forest Galante
Okay.
[78:17]
Pete Holmes
I remember when James put us in touch. He was like, he's done a lot of interesting work with dragons.
[78:23]
Forest Galante
No, I have not.
[78:24]
Pete Holmes
No dragons?
[78:25]
Forest Galante
No, I think so.
[78:27]
Pete Holmes
There was a clip.
[78:28]
Forest Galante
There's a clip that went viral. And then was it Joy Behard or one of the women on the View? I don't remember who. It was like, made fun of Joe Rogan over the clip. So it went even more viral because it was taken out of context. And the context is this. I haven't done a lot of dragon work. I really don't even know what I'm talking about. But the context is this. Joe and I were talking about, you know, Bigfoots and all these, these cryptids and mythological things. And he's like, which, which of them do you think?
[78:53]
Pete Holmes
Cryptids. What's a cryptid?
[78:54]
Forest Galante
Cryptid is a Bigfoot or an alien or a Sasquatch or a yeti.
[78:58]
Pete Holmes
Chupacabra.
[78:59]
Forest Galante
Chupacabra. It's something that hasn't been proven to exist. Yeah, that's a cryptid. And there's, there's so many of them. And my. What I said to Joe is, here's something I heard that I thought was kind of interesting. Think about dragons, right? Dragons popped up during the same general time era across the planet. The Chinese have dragons, the British had dragons fighting knights fighting dragons. In Africa, there's stone paintings of these fire breathing giant reptiles on the wall, blah, blah. So around the same, like 200 years, there were dragons painted and depicted throughout human culture. Every corner of the planet, basically. Now, why is that significant? Well, first of all, these cultures couldn't communicate. They didn't talk to each other, yet they all had similar renderings and drawings. Secondly, when you think about fossil records, what is the hardest thing to fossilize? It's bird bones. Why is that? Because bird bones are hollow to make for flight. Right. So these things didn't fossilize. So if there were Dragons out there. There really wouldn't be very many fossils because their bones wouldn't fossilize. Yeah. So I basically said that I might have explained one or two other things.
[80:04]
Pete Holmes
About this is why we wouldn't have evidence for.
[80:07]
Forest Galante
Yeah, exactly. But it's not like I'm saying there's dragons out there or there ever was. I don't know, and I highly doubt it. And I certainly don't think they were ever fire breathing. There may have been flying lizards, but they weren't fire breathing, in my opinion. And then that. That clip got taken out of context. And again, Joe got made fun of by someone on the View. And then he. He literally changed his, like, Instagram or Twitter or something to be. It's a Joe Rogan dragon believer. And, like, he texted me, he's like, look at this. And I like, we made fun. You know, we laughed at it. So it really blew up. And all of a sudden I really didn't know about. No, it's fine. But I became like the dragon guy on the Internet. And I'm like, I don't know anything about dragons. I don't. I just presented something that I thought was crazy.
[80:46]
Pete Holmes
Dude, I'm glad, because I was talking to Katie. I was like, I don't know if I care about dragons, like, even if they did exist.
[80:52]
Forest Galante
I'm like, all right, I don't know anything about dragons. I just found that one sort of tidbit of information.
[80:57]
Pete Holmes
I do find stuff. I find when cultures are. Well, there's a lot of, like, spacemen. This is very Joe Rogan experience area. But, like, when you see it in the art of cultures that couldn't communicate.
[81:08]
Forest Galante
Right.
[81:08]
Pete Holmes
Reptile people.
[81:09]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[81:09]
Pete Holmes
That's fun stuff.
[81:10]
Forest Galante
It's interesting.
[81:11]
Pete Holmes
Get like, that ghost story kind of feel.
[81:13]
Forest Galante
Yeah, of course. It's. I mean, look, they've. How many Bigfoot shows have they made?
[81:17]
Pete Holmes
Yeah.
[81:18]
Forest Galante
Hundreds, Thousands of episodes. How many Bigfoot have they found?
[81:21]
Pete Holmes
Zero.
[81:21]
Forest Galante
Zero. Yeah.
[81:22]
Pete Holmes
Well, that's the old Mitch Hedberg bit.
[81:24]
Forest Galante
What's that?
[81:24]
Pete Holmes
Or maybe it was Kumail. It was like, you're watching. It's like 1am and you're watching the History Channel.
[81:30]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[81:30]
Pete Holmes
And it's the Search for Bigfoot. And you're like, I don't think they're gonna find him.
[81:34]
Forest Galante
Right.
[81:34]
Pete Holmes
I think that would have been on the news.
[81:36]
Forest Galante
Yeah. I think someone would have said something if. I don't think it'd be airing at 1am on the History Channel on a Wednesday if they had actually found Bigfoot.
[81:44]
Pete Holmes
Exactly.
[81:44]
Forest Galante
Yeah.
[81:45]
Pete Holmes
What is the most Misunderstood animal. That was a question for you.
[81:49]
Forest Galante
The most misunderstood animal.
[81:51]
Pete Holmes
And it doesn't have to be the most. But what is an animal that people think about incorrectly? We already covered hippos.
[81:56]
Forest Galante
I think everything. Every animal, to some degree. I think we understand our dogs really well and things like that. But I'll tell you what animal has the worst slash best PR campaign. How about that?
[82:07]
Pete Holmes
Tell me. Yeah.
[82:07]
Forest Galante
Pandas.
[82:08]
Pete Holmes
Pandas.
[82:09]
Forest Galante
What do you think of when you think of a panda bear?
[82:11]
Pete Holmes
Japan.
[82:12]
Forest Galante
Okay. They're from China, but that's good.
[82:13]
Pete Holmes
Oh, no, but I'm thinking of, like, cute. Japan. Culture. Total anime.
[82:17]
Forest Galante
Totally.
[82:18]
Pete Holmes
A girl dressed as one.
[82:19]
Forest Galante
Yep. Black and white.
[82:20]
Pete Holmes
I'm embarrassed.
[82:21]
Forest Galante
Huggy. That's okay. Cuddly beer.
[82:23]
Pete Holmes
Cuddly bear don't mate. Sorry. But that's where I would go that. We have a hard time getting them to mate. But cuddly.
[82:28]
Forest Galante
Cute, right?
[82:29]
Pete Holmes
Magical. What did I just. Oh, I just watched Chad did my Largo the other night and he had a line. Everyone gets a panda within the joke.
[82:36]
Forest Galante
There you go.
[82:37]
Pete Holmes
So it's like, like the best thing. We all get a pet panda.
[82:40]
Forest Galante
They're vicious, they're dumb as dirt. They're the worst parents in the world. The worst. They will literally, if you go to a panda in the zoo. Pete. Pete. You go to a panda in the zoo and you go, you've got a baby. Say you're a mommy panda and this is an apple.
[82:54]
Pete Holmes
Yeah.
[82:54]
Forest Galante
You. If I give you this. No, no. You'll hand me your baby to take the apple. These are animals. This is why I say pandas have the best PR campaign in the world. Yes. I swear to God, Google it. You'll see all these images of this, this. Videos of this. Because we. Everybody on the planet thinks pandas are so great. They're cute, they're cuddly, they're fun, they are beautiful. I'll give you that. These are animals that have been trying to head towards extinction for, like, thousands of years.
[83:19]
Pete Holmes
Running towards.
[83:20]
Forest Galante
Running towards.
[83:21]
Pete Holmes
Let us go.
[83:22]
Forest Galante
Yeah, that's what they're saying.
[83:23]
Pete Holmes
Let us go. And we're showing them panda board.
[83:25]
Forest Galante
Yes.
[83:26]
Pete Holmes
To get them down.
[83:27]
Forest Galante
Exactly.
[83:28]
Pete Holmes
Maybe.
[83:28]
Forest Galante
Exactly.
[83:29]
Pete Holmes
Maybe. We were just lucky to be here for the brief panda time.
[83:32]
Forest Galante
And by the way, I'm pro panda conservation. I want to keep them here. I don't want them gone. But they're are. They have the best PR campaign in the world because they are so dumb and so vicious. Vicious.
[83:43]
Pete Holmes
And they'll kill people.
[83:44]
Forest Galante
Oh, totally. Yeah. I mean, they're not like a super they're not like a grizzly bear aggressive or a polar bear. They're not out hunting meat. But they, they are a very defensive, territorial animal and we just like.
[83:54]
Pete Holmes
Unless I'm an apple.
[83:56]
Forest Galante
Yeah, yeah, totally. And I think people think, like, I'm going to go see a panda. I'm going to walk up to it and hug it and kiss it on the nose.
[84:01]
Pete Holmes
Yeah, yeah. What about if you could travel in time to see an extinct species? Is there one that you would have loved to see?
[84:08]
Forest Galante
For sure.
[84:08]
Pete Holmes
Obviously dinosaurs.
[84:10]
Forest Galante
No, I.
[84:11]
Pete Holmes
And yes, you go to a more interesting place.
[84:13]
Forest Galante
Well, like T. Rex. So, I mean, yes, I would love that. To go back into the Cretaceous and see dinosaurs wouldn't just be T. Rex.
[84:19]
Pete Holmes
Would be everything but giant bugs would freak me out.
[84:22]
Forest Galante
That would be so cool.
[84:23]
Pete Holmes
Huge, huge bugs.
[84:25]
Forest Galante
Oh, was it Glyphodons, the giant armadillo creatures? Oh, my God. Oh, my God. There's incredible animals. Mosasaurs. But my.
[84:33]
Pete Holmes
My thing doesn't seem chill.
[84:34]
Forest Galante
No, my thing. And it's funny because people would be like, why would you want to do this? But have you ever heard of a thylacine?
[84:41]
Pete Holmes
Thylacine? Is that a thyroid issue?
[84:43]
Forest Galante
It sounds like one. It's called the Tasmanian tiger, is a marsupial wolf. Basically lived in Tasmania.
[84:49]
Pete Holmes
Marsupial meaning pouch, like animal. Okay. It has a pouch.
[84:53]
Forest Galante
So all kangaroos, koalas, wombats. Those are all marsupials.
[84:56]
Pete Holmes
Any wombats had pouches? Keep going.
[84:58]
Forest Galante
There you go.
[85:00]
Pete Holmes
So he has a pouch but he's a tiger.
[85:02]
Forest Galante
Yes.
[85:03]
Pete Holmes
Okay.
[85:03]
Forest Galante
And. And it evolved from marsupials. It didn't come from our regular land mammals. Oh, wow. So this is an animal I've been obsessed with for a long time. It's one of the things that I'm known about, known for is like being obsessed with this creature because we drove it towards extinction in Tasmania not that long ago by hunting for them, blah, blah, blah, blah. But in the Hobart Zoo, there was an animal named Benjamin, I want to say 70 years ago now I'm getting the numbers mixed up in my head. But that we had them. We even had them in captivity. We had them on the island of Tasmania, people. There was a bounty placed on their head because they'd kill sheep. They actually didn't, but they pretended they did. That's a story for another time. If I could just go back a hundred years.
[85:42]
Pete Holmes
Wait, they were framed?
[85:44]
Forest Galante
Yeah, they were framed. Yeah.
[85:45]
Pete Holmes
Because they wanted an excuse to kill them.
[85:47]
Forest Galante
Pretty much. So they were a predator and they probably would take a calf or Something like that, you know, like a newly born sheep or something like that. But the Tasmanian government put out a whole campaign on, you know, five shillings for a Tasmanian pelt or whatever to eradicate them, to promote farming. This goes back to the beginning of the pod. We were talking about industrialization.
[86:07]
Pete Holmes
Yeah.
[86:08]
Forest Galante
And this was one of the things. But this was an animal that was very delicate. It wasn't used to human pressures and thus got hunted out very, very quickly. I'm very fascinated by this animal. I think that there's a tiny, tiny, tiny remote chance that they still exist. Probably not in Tasmania or mainland Australia, but up in New Guinea, Papua New Guinea. That area that's neither here nor there. The answer to your question, if I could go back 100 years and see a living thylacine, that would be the animal I'd pick.
[86:35]
Pete Holmes
What. What do you think would be cool about watching it? It's. Do you. Are you curious about its behavior? Like, are you uncertain about how it behaved or is it just to see its beauty?
[86:45]
Forest Galante
All. Both. So everybody is somewhat uncertain about its behavior. Behavior. Because everything we have is completely anecdotal and based on what we think they did. I think they're behaved. I think they would have behaved similarly to like a jackal or a coyote. But they had this incredible. Like they had the gait of a kangaroo, meaning they walked like a kangaroo. They had this big stiff tail. They had the striped bum, you know, this crazy stripey pattern. They could open their jaws wide like a snake with these unbelievable jaws. They had pouch, like little tiny pouched young. I mean, it was just. It's like a hodgepodge of creatures.
[87:19]
Pete Holmes
Somebody hit shuffle on nature and that's.
[87:21]
Forest Galante
Why I'd want to see one.
[87:22]
Pete Holmes
Yeah.
[87:22]
Forest Galante
Good choice.
[87:23]
Pete Holmes
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mine's a koala bear.
[87:25]
Forest Galante
Oh, really? You could still see those.
[87:26]
Pete Holmes
Yeah, they're all riddled with. What is it? Herpes.
[87:29]
Forest Galante
Herpes? Yeah.
[87:31]
Pete Holmes
They have the worst pr.
[87:32]
Forest Galante
And they stink.
[87:33]
Pete Holmes
Yeah, they stink.
[87:34]
Forest Galante
They smell so bad.
[87:35]
Pete Holmes
And they claw you up. And they have herpes.
[87:37]
Forest Galante
Yep. This is all true. They're really cute, though. They really are cute when you see one. Even if they're smelly and have herpes.
[87:45]
Pete Holmes
Tell me about. Have there been nights that were weird when you're doing what you're doing? I have to imagine it's not super relaxing to make camp and sleep in some of these situations. Have you had like a weird night?
[87:59]
Forest Galante
Hundreds. Hundreds and hundreds of weird night nights where bees get into your tent and camp floods and the rain won't let up. And all your equipment goes down or rebels come into camp, or. I mean, the list goes on and on.
[88:12]
Pete Holmes
Rebels come into your camp.
[88:14]
Forest Galante
Yeah, it's happened multiple times.
[88:15]
Pete Holmes
You've just been camping. See this. See, this is how I relate to this. In red Dead Redemption 2, sometimes you'll make a fire to save and then a cut scene where these, like, dangerous guys come in.
[88:25]
Forest Galante
Yeah, that's pretty much how it's.
[88:27]
Pete Holmes
I was expecting you to be laughing because that's such a stupid way to relate.
[88:30]
Forest Galante
Nope.
[88:30]
Pete Holmes
But you're not expecting it. And it's a great gameplay mechanic. This happens to you in real life?
[88:35]
Forest Galante
It's happened several times.
[88:36]
Pete Holmes
What does it look like?
[88:38]
Forest Galante
You wake up, you're sitting around the fire, you're hanging out, and guys with machine guns walk out of the bushes. Or, you know, guys with machetes are like, what are you doing here? Or a truck. You know, like, in Papua New guinea, we came out of a cave and try. And warriors with spears were like, why are you in our burial cave? And we're like, oh, I don't know. So these things happen.
[88:55]
Pete Holmes
They don't say that in English.
[88:57]
Forest Galante
It depends. Yeah, it depends. I mean, in Papua New guinea, they had a lot of missionaries, so they. There's. There's guys covered in body paint with tribal paint and a spear named John Dudley, you know, because. Wow. The missionaries went through there. Yeah.
[89:11]
Pete Holmes
Oh, my God.
[89:11]
Forest Galante
So you just never know. Yeah.
[89:13]
Pete Holmes
And what is the flavor? Because obviously, similar age. I'm Indiana Jones. I'm like, they're going to kill you. They're going to chase you in a delightful romp, and you're going to get to your seaplane and escape. What is the tone in which they're saying, what are you doing in our burial case?
[89:27]
Forest Galante
So we've had one of those, but for the most part, a run the Indiana Jones Runaway and Fly Away. What? But what's that?
[89:36]
Pete Holmes
What happened?
[89:38]
Forest Galante
I don't want to say what country, because I still work with their.
[89:41]
Pete Holmes
Ireland.
[89:42]
Forest Galante
Yep, Ireland. And it's bad.
[89:44]
Pete Holmes
What are you doing in our fields? Pitchforks.
[89:47]
Forest Galante
And it's bad press for them. And I still work with their government on conservation.
[89:50]
Pete Holmes
Okay, but country.
[89:52]
Forest Galante
I was working in a.
[89:52]
Pete Holmes
South of the equator.
[89:54]
Forest Galante
Yes, south of the equator.
[89:55]
Pete Holmes
Okay.
[89:55]
Forest Galante
I've actually had two sort of similar instances to this, but the one, the one in Africa that took place was we were there filming something with crocodiles, and they thought that we were there exposing an illegal logging operation that was paid for by Chinese mafia. And the Chinese mafia had the government in Their pocket. So they paid the military to come and seize our cameras and potentially do away with us. We found this out through a back and forth, an overnight thing. It was a whole shuffle. So anyway, we ended up having to run to our bush plane, not our seaplane.
[90:29]
Pete Holmes
So wait, tell me how they presented themselves.
[90:32]
Forest Galante
Well, first, they just came out of the bush, surrounded us, day or night. It was like 4 o' clock in the afternoon. Yeah.
[90:37]
Pete Holmes
And we were done hanging out.
[90:38]
Forest Galante
We're hanging out. We're actually having a beer. We're just celebrating the capture of this animal and relocation.
[90:43]
Pete Holmes
And you hear a twig snap?
[90:45]
Forest Galante
No, we were at like a very lovely camp, like a bush camp, and these guys just walked in with military uniforms and guns and they're like, what are you doing here? We, you know, we need to see your cameras, blah, blah.
[90:55]
Pete Holmes
And what is their tone still? Or is there a guy going through your stuff? Whoops, I broke your lens like that. Are they mild, intimidating?
[91:03]
Forest Galante
Mildly aggressive, but also more questioning. Not like, we're here to kill you because then they just shoot us.
[91:11]
Pete Holmes
Right.
[91:11]
Forest Galante
This is more just like, hey, where are your cameras? And I'm not asking twice. And it's like, oh, shit. So I grew up in Africa, like I mentioned. So I was like, hey, sit down, have a cold Coke. That's on me. Would your guy over there like a beer? Let me get you the cameras. You know, and so you have to going back to human connection. You have to connect with people and be like, look, shared interest, solve the problem here, you know? Don't just get all angry and upset and uptight. It's not. It's hard to explain because in America, if the special forces or the military, the police or whatever are assigned to do something, they come in with, like, aggression and authority and, like, do this now, you know, and that's what we see. Yeah. And that's what we see in the movies. And I think that's how you know, for the most part, even when you get pulled over on the highway.
[91:56]
Pete Holmes
Yeah.
[91:56]
Forest Galante
Nine times out of ten, the cop comes in with a shitty attitude, right? He doesn't come in like, hey, man, like, you're speeding, you know, Come on. You know, he's a License and registration now.
[92:04]
Pete Holmes
Yeah.
[92:05]
Forest Galante
And you're like, okay, don't be a dick. You know, like, yeah. So these guys came in not being dicks. They came in like, we're not gonna ask twice. Get us this. And I'm like, listen, no problem. Like, listen, nobody wants problems here. Sit down. Let me get you a nice Cold Coke and a beer and some snacks. And you've just walked through the bush all day to get here, you know, just relax. And I look at my guy. We've worked together a long time, my guys now.
[92:27]
Pete Holmes
So he knows your high footage face.
[92:29]
Forest Galante
So I go, you know, go get the cameras. So he runs upstairs and gets two GoPros and a Handycam. Meanwh. Red cameras are going under the pillows and stuff, you know, and comes back, hands over the footage. They take off to review it. The story gets really long and it's complex, but basically they show back up. Their bosses go, no, that worked.
[92:48]
Pete Holmes
Yeah, that's how good Coca Cola is.
[92:50]
Forest Galante
Yeah, it worked.
[92:51]
Pete Holmes
Ooh, that was a treat.
[92:53]
Forest Galante
But then they take off and their bosses go, no, they're lying, they're hiding stuff. They really are here to expose this illegal activity. And then I'm trying to be vague and not. Not get in trouble because I actually once shared this story and then I pulled it down off the Internet because the government contacted me. I was like, you can never work here again if you're saying this right. So I apologize. And it sounds made up to the.
[93:12]
Pete Holmes
People of Alberta, Canada.
[93:14]
Forest Galante
That's right, yes. The Winnipegians listening. But no, I apologize for being so vague, but I feel like I have to be an interesting.
[93:22]
Pete Holmes
Absolutely. But there was a chase.
[93:24]
Forest Galante
Yeah. So long story made short, they went back with those cameras that we turned over, and their bosses, who are higher up in the food chain, said, this is bullshit. They've given you fake footage and fake cameras and all that, which we had, but. So they thought we were hiding this illegal logging operation, which we weren't. We didn't even know about it until finding out through what was going on. So they sent the same guys back and they said, this time, make the problem go away is what we heard. We sent our cook with them. It's a whole complex thing. But our cook, Rick, called us and said, hey, thank God I had my starlink. Thank God I had technology at this point in time. Our cook called us and said, hey, they're coming to get you, you know, And I don't know if that means they're going to take you in or you're going to disappear because we're out in the bush.
[94:07]
Pete Holmes
Oh, my God.
[94:07]
Forest Galante
So we ended up like, it's two in the morning. I get knocks on the doors like, we got to go, we got to go. So we're like throwing cameras in bags. Like, no. You know, usually we break down all our gear and put in nice pelican cases you've been on sets, you know what it's like, we're just like as quick as you can. It's all like, grab that bag. No, leave it, we don't need it. Blah, blah. And a car to a boat to a car to a plane. And as we're getting on the last plane, literally throwing stuff in, in panic because our cook's with them coming back and he's like updating us as to what's going on. They're like, they're getting closer. They're getting closer. And we pull off the Runway like, yes. As the cars are pulling on with guys with machine guns, like screaming and shaking their guns kind of thing. So, yeah, we've had a couple of crazy instances like that.
[94:52]
Pete Holmes
Yeah, I knew you were the kind of guest that. I'm like, if I don't ask the right thing, I'm going to kick myself. I'm so glad we got to.
[94:58]
Forest Galante
I just have so many stories.
[95:00]
Pete Holmes
I know, I know. That's why I was trying to be like, what's crazy?
[95:03]
Forest Galante
Yeah, that was crazy.
[95:04]
Pete Holmes
What happened? That was crazy. But amazing.
[95:07]
Forest Galante
To your main point, I'm like the opposite. I sleep better after 12 hours on my feet, trekking through, up a mountain, setting up a tent, sleeping on a, on a, on a thin little mat than I ever do at my home in my beautiful king bed with a sleep 8 temperature controlled mattress. Blah, blah, blah.
[95:25]
Pete Holmes
Like I, I would say Casper Mattress, please.
[95:28]
Forest Galante
Sure.
[95:29]
Pete Holmes
I'm just.
[95:29]
Forest Galante
Sorry, I don't know if they're your sponsor. That's the one I got recently. My wife loves it, so they're not a sponsor of me either. I just like that. And I never knew there were temperature controlled mattresses until recently.
[95:40]
Pete Holmes
Yeah.
[95:40]
Forest Galante
But my point is simply like I do better. I sleep more peacefully out in the bush than I do at home.
[95:48]
Pete Holmes
Well, that's one of the things, you know, this has kind of been. I've been so delighted that so much of our conversation has been about what we're missing. And like, it seems like human beings in these settings are far more human and like we're built to be doing those things that we're doing now.
[96:07]
Forest Galante
And you know where you really see it, Pete, is you go to some village in Zimbabwe, which is where I grew up, or Botswana or whatever, Myanmar, Thailand, it doesn't matter where, the Amazon. And you see these kids that have nothing, and I mean nothing, like one or two pairs of shorts, no cell phones, no tv, no Internet, no real roof over their head, a thatch roof over their head, and they are nothing but smiles. And you walk in and they grab your hand, they take you to swim, and they feed you a banana off the tree and they show you the fruit and they show you the bugs, and they're smiling and they're happy. And half of them are sick as shit too, by the way. Like, they don't have modern medicine. They don't have what we have. And you get this sense of community and human engagement and just happiness. And this sounds so silly and grandiose, but you get the sense living in this tiny little village in the middle of nowhere with no modern amenities and everyone's happy, and maybe it's ignorance is bliss situation, I don't know. But everyone's happy. Then you come back here, you land at lax, we have everything, and the woman behind the counter at TSA is an absolute bitch to you. And then the Uber driver is a prick, and you get home and the ungrate. And I'm not talking about my kids, but the kids are mean and, like, you know, and they've got everything. And you're like, what is wrong? Yeah. Why is the system so broken that everyone that has everything is unhappy and miserable and. And addicted to technology and addicted to dopamine hits from social media and these kids over here that literally. And again, maybe it's ignorance is bliss. I don't know. And I don't want to go noble, savage or anything else. I'm just depicting my experiences. These people that have nothing have happiness.
[97:48]
Pete Holmes
Yeah.
[97:49]
Forest Galante
It's so interesting.
[97:49]
Pete Holmes
It's something. It took me. It's still taking me all this time to figure out the secret to happiness is not meeting all your needs. Because again, we're back to like. Like, what next? This is a Ram Dass thing. We're pretty much out of time here, unfortunately. But, like, he's like, you know, you eat ice cream, then you want water, right? Then you need the bathroom, then you're bored, you need tv, now you need food. So the answer can't be taking care of your to do list or, like, meeting goals or meeting needs. What it seems like, what these kids you're talking about, they seem to have an attunement with their environment, with their community. So belonging, present, you know what I mean? And also a lifestyle that. That nurtures that presence and being present together.
[98:35]
Forest Galante
I think so. Yeah.
[98:36]
Pete Holmes
It's. That's a really nice note to end on. You've given us a lot of wonderful stuff. Thank you very much for us.
[98:43]
Forest Galante
Yeah, thanks for having me.
[98:44]
Pete Holmes
What a. What a banger.
[98:45]
Forest Galante
Yeah. Great to sit and chat with you. Yeah. I loved it.
[98:47]
Pete Holmes
I loved it. Yeah. Thank you for making sure it happened because I fell off there for a minute and you guys followed up, and I'm so glad you did.
[98:54]
Forest Galante
Well, I'm glad to be here.
[98:55]
Pete Holmes
Yeah. Anything to plug? We'll plug up top. But you can say keep it crispy is how we end the show. It's just you sign off by saying, keep it.
[99:03]
Forest Galante
Oh, got it. Yeah. Check out any of the stuff I do online. The YouTube channel. That's new. We just started doing YouTube and keep it crispy.
[99:11]
Pete Holmes
Yeah. Dude, thank you so much.

You Made It Weird with Pete Holmes

Episode: Forrest Galante

Episode Overview

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Who is Forrest Galante?

2. Navigating Cultural Differences in Conservation

3. Interconnectedness of Wildlife & Humans

4. Food Chains, Conservation, and Indigenous Knowledge

5. Myth, Religion, and Environmental Impact

6. Ecophobia & Optimism vs. Doom & Gloom

7. Proactive vs. Reactive Approaches to Environmentalism

8. How Human Well-Being Links to Planetary Care

9. AI, Tech, and Conservation

10. Sentience, Lab Meat, and Food System Futures

11. Disconnect from Nature in Modern Life

12. Modern Technology, Meetings, and Mental Overload

13. Presence, Nature, and Animal Behavior

14. Hope for the Next Generation?

15. Forrest’s Near-Death Experiences

Plane Crashes

Animal Encounters

16. The Dragon and Cryptid Debate

17. Most Misunderstood Animal

18. If You Could Witness an Extinct Beast

19. Strange and Dangerous Nights in the Wild

20. Happiness, Modernity, & Human Connection

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

Timestamps for Highlights

Tone, Style, and Concluding Feel

You Made It Weird with Pete Holmes

Episode: Forrest Galante

Episode Overview

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Who is Forrest Galante?

2. Navigating Cultural Differences in Conservation

3. Interconnectedness of Wildlife & Humans

4. Food Chains, Conservation, and Indigenous Knowledge

5. Myth, Religion, and Environmental Impact

6. Ecophobia & Optimism vs. Doom & Gloom

7. Proactive vs. Reactive Approaches to Environmentalism

8. How Human Well-Being Links to Planetary Care

9. AI, Tech, and Conservation

10. Sentience, Lab Meat, and Food System Futures

11. Disconnect from Nature in Modern Life

12. Modern Technology, Meetings, and Mental Overload

13. Presence, Nature, and Animal Behavior

14. Hope for the Next Generation?

15. Forrest’s Near-Death Experiences

Plane Crashes

Animal Encounters

16. The Dragon and Cryptid Debate

17. Most Misunderstood Animal

18. If You Could Witness an Extinct Beast

19. Strange and Dangerous Nights in the Wild

20. Happiness, Modernity, & Human Connection

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

Timestamps for Highlights

Tone, Style, and Concluding Feel