Andrew Schulz's Flagrant with Akaash Singh - Forrest Galante On Gay Dolphins, Deadliest Animals, & Cannibal Tribes

Episode Date: August 26, 2026

YERRR we are joined by the legendary Forrest Galante to talk all things nature: - Growing up in Zimbabwe - Becoming a refugee - Tropical surviving - Close calls with death - Australia's wildlife & Wallace Line - Psychedelics - Gayest animals - Why Dogs are Man's Best Friend and much, much, much more - CACAAAAW! Timestamps: 0:00 UCSB crazy dorms 1:52 Weird being in the city 2:50 Hard to find rats 3:41 Growing up in Zimbabwe + Tracking techniques 8:56 Humans hunters weren't good 10:22 Mugabe, Fleeing Zimbabwe + Oakland childhood 16:35 The norm + self-enforced segregation 19:16 Getting in trouble + Exploring nature 21:12 Mom waitressing + Being African American 23:01 Losing language skills, Xhosa + Fake Mandarin 29:58 Bricked up on Naked and Afraid 37:44 Finding food immediately + Tropical Surviving 43:07 Practising, Surviving + Find water 49:48 Extreme climates 51:59 Wildlife is incredible + Connection to nature 53:39 Closest to dying + Snake venom effects 1:01:08 Sucking "venom", Snake bites + Burmese pythons in FL 1:04:18 Inteferring w/ nature + Throw off balance 1:11:06 US Open predictions 1:13:27 Another close call + Breaking back in Thailand 1:20:23 Close calls with predators + YT people ish? 1:23:11 Logistics for conservation + Wildlife Board 1:25:18 Cone snails, Unassuming killers + Wallace Line 1:32:06 Conditioning lions + Wild animals are still wild 1:39:40 The Amazon, Jungle hunting = hard + Farming 1:48:21 Natural psychedelics + Toad venom 1:54:34 Spending times with tribes + Uncontacted 1:56:48 Cargo Cults, Colossal's work + Filling ecosystem holes 2:02:06 Anant Ambani's Conservation 2:04:48 Animals mourning, Elephants' EQ + Relationship wtih humans 2:10:36 Searching deep connection, AI + Assassinated spy whale 2:13:37 Cattle mutilations, Misconceptions + No Black Panthers 2:18:14 Would you hunt a Big Foot? 2:19:17 Animal Deathmatch 2:20:11 Smartest animals, Best mother + Praying Mantis! 2:24:10 Gayest animals + Dolphins pulling out 2:25:37 Loving Steve Irwin + Influences 2:27:50 Rescue animals + Mans' best friend = dog #wildlife #austraila #snakes This episode is sponsored by Kalshi. This episode is sponsored by Sesh. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up everybody? Welcome to the show. Today on the couch, we have indoors, a rare sighting, a rare sighting for this species. We have Forrest Galante in the building wildlife biologists, as he calls himself, Explore, extraordinaire. I mean, there's a lot of other things that we're going to label you, Survivor of UC Santa Barbara. That's right. I La Vista. With you apparently. Del Pliad Drive. There was a year of crossover where we were at school together. You were young and no. I was, yeah. Just a we were out. You were probably in the dorms, though. In Anacapa. You were Anacapa. Yeah. You was Santa Rosa. There you go.

Boom. Look at that. Yeah. You guys feel real left out right now. The swastika-shaped dorms. That's nice. Yeah, it's bad. It's really bad.

All the dorms at UCSB are in the shape of swastikas. No way. Yeah. If you get an aerial view, it's a mess. It's crazy. Who designed me? Good question. Oh, we've got an idea or two.

I mean, that must have been tough for you. You know what I mean? Yeah, being a Jew at UCSB. Well, I wasn't the only one, though, so we were okay. Yeah. Yeah, look at that. Oh. No, that's not.

No, that's not real. No, that's not real. Stop. Stop. Stop, Mark. What is he's cool that you guys? All right, hold on. It doesn't show me the aerial view, dude.

No, Anacapa, the dorm I was in was bad. Anaccapa, Santa Rosa, and then there was one other that they were just. They renamed them recently, too. Yeah, they had to. Gerbils. Yeah, they don't even have the aerial view. Yeah, they know. They know. Wiped it for the internet.

I'll go grab it. Oh, there it is, kind of on the top left. This one? Oh, yeah, there you go. That's what they all look like. That's real. I know, they put a little, little bridge in the middle. Does that really?

Anyway, dude, thank you so much for being here, man. Of course. Appreciate you. Yeah. Is it weird to be in the city? I love it. It's a whole different animal. I feel way more uncomfortable here.

Yeah. Like, like, I've just got a smooth. down the road right here. And there was some guy screaming at the curb when I walked through. And I was like, that's something you don't see in the jungle. But do you go up to them like a wild animal? Like, whoa. Yeah, I'll pin them down.

No, I like coming to the city. I mean, I get to come to New York like once a year or so. And I always enjoy it. I do the older touristy things, go to Times Square. You got to do it. Yeah, I think it's great. But it's very far and for, you know, what's weird is I, like, when I navigate through any wild environment, it's very observation-based.

It's like, oh, that tree looks unusual. and oh, I'll notice that pile of rocks, and then I can find my way back. Even in a grid like New York that's literally squares, I can't navigate. It's too overstimulating. There's too much. There's too many billboards and signs and noises. You can't navigate that way. There's wildlife here you probably don't see in the jungle, right? Like rats. New York City Rat tour. You never see a rat like out in the wild. Not often. You only see them here. Yeah. Is that true? I've never seen a rat in the woods. It's hard to find rats outside of city, like urban environments.

Why is that? They're just cryptic. underground animals, you know? But you get into a city and they're everywhere. They're on every dumpster. That's a great point. So you need a subway system for rats to thrive, I guess. You want to hear another great point? I was talking about buddy Ben Uyeda. He goes, do you think termite mounds are natural?

Like, are they a part of nature? Yes. If the answer is yes, then New York City is also part of nature. Why? Because the termites built it up. Humans just built buildings out of nature. So this is basically just nature. So you're in just a different jungle right. This is an ant colony.

Yes. Okay, we got to get into your backstory, and I know you may have talked about this on Paz before, but it is kind of wild. Sure. That you are studying extinct species and chasing them around the world where you were almost made extinct living in Zimbabwe.

That's true. You were the first version of that, right? In a sense, yeah. You grew up in Zimbabwe. Yep. Okay, where? So we lived in Shamba, which is just outside of Harari,

the capital city of Zimbabwe. and my family were farmers and safari business owners. Your mom was a guide? Yep. She was the first female bush pilot in Southern Africa. So she used to fly people into remote bush and then take them on safari. Is a joke there? I'm not going to say. Yeah, that's a lot of my tongue there. I appreciate that.

Mr. Galante might have been a bush pilot. Hey, hey! Okay. First time that one's been trying to do. Okay, so and then what the hell is going on with her, where she's a lot. like, I'm going to be the tour guide for just groups. I'm running out of the house. I have. How many brothers do you have? I have one little sister. One little sister. And she's like, I'm just going to go, because when you're a tour guide, you're not going for the day. No, yeah, you're going for weeks at a time.

Yeah. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. You know, I think much like myself, I'm probably where I got it from. My mom just sort of didn't like the traditional mold of jobs and careers and things you could do and was quite a free spirit, I guess. And she wanted to be a pilot and then she became a pilot. And then she wanted to be in the bush, so she became PH or a safari guide. And then she would just take people out. And yeah, that's how I grew up. I grew up in little tiny plains and all over Africa and living on our farm. And it was awesome. And would you go out with her on some of the expeditions? Yeah. At 14 years old, I guided my first safari, a canoe safari. Okay. At what age, I want to go get into Maghabi trying to like kill your whole family and take your farm. We're going to get there. Shout out Robert. But at what age do you think

what age did you feel comfortable going out in the woods and be like, I'm going to be good no matter what. Or the bush or whatever you call it. It's funny because I probably felt that way when I was seven or eight, but I was not that way until I was much older, if that makes sense.

14? When I was seven or eight years old, 10 years old, 12 years old, I'd go to camp with my family. And the second they'd go off on a walk or something or a game drive, I'd sneak out and go and try and catch stuff and find stuff, and sneak up behind termite mounds to stare at lions and all these things that I kind of necessarily

to say like nearly got me killed, but there were things that I definitely shouldn't have been doing. No six-year-old should be running around the bush of Africa by themselves, right? And so I felt very confident. If I'd get caught, I'd get a lashing and I'd be in big trouble. But I felt comfortable doing it very young. But I didn't really realize until probably like my late teens, maybe even early 20s, like, here are the things I actually need to know in order to not just like push the limits every day. Do you know what I mean?

So honestly, probably not until realistically, long after I'd left Africa and gone back and learned a bunch more in my 20s, was I really comfortable. Wow. Did you learn any like Bushmen hunting or tracking techniques? Tracking, yeah. Yeah.

So part of being a guide or safari guide is tracking, right? Like you read the sand and you look at the footprints and you look at the poop, the spore. Yeah. And you put a picture together. I've seen like videos of these Bushmen that are like, it almost looks like they're like mystics. Because like they're looking at like the tiniest little stick.

And they're like, oh, this means there was a gazelle here. That's right. And it's like, how do you know? Like, well, the wind is coming this way. The stick is this way. So it's pointing out of gazelle. Exactly.

And then they go and there's a gazelle. I think movies do a horrible job of explaining how they do this. Well, it's hard to because it's like watching, you know, Zach Alfanakis read cards in The Hangover. You know, when they do that depiction on screen of all the little numbers going through his idiot brain? It's like one of those, really. Because you look at the sand and you see, okay, there's two impolitical. tracks here and there's a weird turn to this one to the right here and then all of a sudden from

this side there's a lion track so that means the Impala was walking this way saw the lion turned and then the line came in pursuit and based on the way the lion's print is it had this much weight going into it that actually made the Impala run faster you know but all of this is just something that sort of happens in your mind you don't you kind of really and you're not always right either and anybody who pretends they are is lying to you and I'm 10% as good as the people that do this every day, but still, like, you paint a picture based on what you're seeing in the sand, you know? That's... Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Okay, are you looking at branches on trees that have recently been broken? Are you looking at, like, feeding areas? A little bit of everything. Whenever you've seen in a movie, it's a guy, like, picks up some sand, and he, like, looks at the wind, and he looks up at the sky, he goes, oh, there's the elk or something like that. Right. But it's not that. There's, like, guessing and you're wrong and having to recalculate.

That's right. Okay. Yeah, you think about the most successful. successful hunters ever have about a 30% success rate, right? African wild dogs, things like that. I mean, there's exceptions like literally dragonflies are the most successful hunters ever. But if you look at- We're including animals in the hunters here. Yes, yes. Okay. Hunters. Wow. So if you look at the most successful hunters ever, call it Africa, pack of African wild dogs. They have about a 30% success rate of making a kill. So basically one in three times they make a kill. Oh. So it's like a great baseball player. Sure. You're like 300. You're like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So if you think of that from a human standpoint, even with our advantage, which is intellect, right, of reading these scenes and putting it all together, we're still not nearly as good of a hunter as a lion. What are our percentage you, sir?

Well, hard to say with guns and bows and all these things. Take us back. Oh, probably less than 10%. You know? If you think about traditional human beings, like running around the bush or the ice age or whatever you want to call it, trying to make a kill, they go out and hunt every day. they'd maybe come back with a kill once every 10 days. Wow. Whoa.

Wasn't our advantage long distance running? In some cultures, yes. And that's really interestingly, it comes down to the type of prey. Like the Native Americans, the Indian Americans that used to live in North America. What happened? They used to pursue. Nope. They pursued deer to the point of exhaustion, which was incredible, because they could literally,

run deer down because deer were not long-distance runners, right? They're sprint athletes. Yeah. So if they could track a deer using this various methodology we just discussed for long enough, they could run it to the point of it collapsing from exhaustion. And a human can actually keep up for that many out. Because whatever their prey was before or whatever hunted them prior didn't have the cardiovascular ability that we do. Yeah, they're not endurance athletes or sprint athletes. Yeah. Oh, wow, wow, wow, wow. Okay, okay. So you tell me when, tell me, tell me what happens when you guys are about to get killed? In what regard?

In Zimbabwe. Oh, gotcha. Which time? No, not when you tried to get yourself killed. I mean, so when Robert Mugabe found out. So for those that don't know what happened was... But there was women flying planes in his husband. It was unacceptable.

Yeah, he needed to get in that bush. Sorry, Mom. So, yeah, during the Zanu P.F political party regime, which was, Robert Mugabe's political party, he was basically slipping from power, right? And so he needed a methodology to retain power because he declared himself president for life. So he turned a lot of negativity and focus on the white farmers, which were just the minority. We've seen this, Idi Amines done it. Hitler did it. You know, lots of people have done that. Like, I'm losing power. I'm losing control. I need to target hate towards a minority. I need a scapegoat. And so that's, you know, there are all kinds of racial contexts, all kinds of things you can talk about as to why. But regardless of he turned the focus on the white African farmers. Primarily they were English, some were Dutch, but white farmers in Zimbabwe. And so my family owned a tiny little farm, 200 acres, which sounds big, but it was tiny for our region, in amongst a bunch of really big, really wealthy, successful farms, huge tobacco farms, cattle ranches, and things like that. And so basically, all the farms around us

were slowly seized by, quote, war veterans who'd never seen a war because it was part of this whole political play and closed in on our farm until we were the last man standing. I could go into as much detail or as little as you want, but basically one night, so we got shot at a few times. They'd followed us to our gate. There were shootouts where my mom would pull the revolver out and be shooting out the wind. My mom was a single mother too. Why? Where was your dad? My parents split when I was eight and my dad moved away. So it was just my mom and the two kids on a farm in a country where culturally, the Shauna culture, women are valued the same as cows. So it's a very, very difficult place to be a single woman running a farm.

Holy. So at 14 years old, I could command more attention and respect than my mother could as an adult woman. So she would give me the orders for the day to give to the farm workers because they'd listen if I made the orders. And I didn't even know what I was talking about, but I'd say it like I did. Do you know what I mean? And so it was a whole weird dynamic. But basically, again, my mom was a single mother. we lived on the farm by ourselves. All of the farms around us got taken. A lot of our neighbors went through punguys, which was indoctrination through torture by the Zonuita political party.

So all kinds of things like burning their feet and dancing, all crazy, crazy stuff. Dancing? So they'd make them dance on like hot iron as a torture method. Holy. All kinds of horrible things. Is that where the jumping comes from? No, that's a whole thing.

Thank you, Ellen. That was good tension, Brady. The story's getting long, but basically one night after going through, everybody dug their heels in and it was like, this will pass because things have yo-yoed through the country of Rhodesia and then Zimbabwe since it's induction. And everybody's like, dig our heels in, these things will blow over and things will come right again. Anyway, they didn't for Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe's gone down the hole politically. But it's starting to bounce back a little now, actually. But one night, our farm was surrounded. Our security guard had actually been killed.

We had a security guard. He'd been killed. And they basically just said, you have to leave. If you don't leave, we're going to kill you. And because it was just my mom and two kids, you know, they didn't just come in and murder us. Like, they had done in other places. If there were men in the household, they might just come in. I think it would have been a different story.

So the sexism actually helped in that regard. I think so. I have nothing to support that theory. But I think you as a child. You're not an adult. There's two little kids, you know, 14. year old boy and a 12 year old girl and a single blonde lady in the middle of an African farm, right? So I think they said instead of kill or murder or rape or, and there was not all that,

some other people left without conflict, but there was a lot of that. They basically gave us a choice. So they came, our security guard had been killed, some of our farm workers had been through these punguys, this is indoctrination, and they just said, you have 24 hours before you're gone, you're dead. You pack everything up. And so I run into my room and I grab my bow off the wall, and I grabbed my little mass-sized sword that I had, and I said, bring it on. My mom fucking smack. We should go back in the suitcase.

Because I was a little shit at, you know, I was 14. I thought I was ruling the world. And so, you know, we packed up our suitcases and left. Do you have a passport? Yeah, we had passports. Yeah, we had Zabwean passport. I had American passport. My dad was American.

Okay. Yeah. Okay. So you leave. We bounced around a lot. So we went from living on a 200-acre farm in Zimbabwe to living on welfare in Oakland, California in the early 2000s. Oakland in the early 2000s, but not like hipster cool Oakland now.

Have you ever lived in a predominantly black hair? You think you guys... I live in Santa Barbara now. Yeah, you went to the album. I don't even think we haven't. I don't even think we got any anymore. It's funny that your mom's like, how can I make sure that my kids will feel acclimated to the new place? Yeah, she's like, the new jungle, baby.

There need to be black people all around. That's right. There'll be weirded out if they see too many white people. We cannot possibly take them to Connecticut. What's so funny? What's so funny is I got to Oakland, and most of, not most, but a lot of my friends growing up were black, right? And I got to Oakland, I was just a kid, you know, I was 14 years old. I had safari shorts that were above the knee and, you know, torn up t-shirt.

I, like, ran into, I still remember this so distinctly. You know, we went through a whole bunch of yo-yo and emotional, this, blah, blah, blah. But I remember we, like, finally settled in our government housing in Oakland. We were in a one-bedroom place, like my mom and my sister and I, and I run out, I see this basketball court where all these, these African-American kids are playing basketball, and I run out and fuck yeah, like some friends to hang out with. I'm like, grab the ball and I'm trying to play and stuff. This kid pulls out and I was like, oh God, this is different.

I've never experienced anything like this. And they're like, get out of here, white boy. I was like, where are you from? You're like, I'm from Africa. It did not land. Now, you were aware, though, that like being white from Africa was a rare thing. No, I wasn't. Not at all.

Not at all. So do you learn that when you come to America, to the perception of Africa, is there not that many white people there? Very much so. Yeah, very much so. Because where I lived, or where I lived in Zimbabwe, it was just like, everybody knows there's still white people there today, you know? And in every country in Africa, there's a white population. And I had just thought that was known, I guess, you know, because our vacations were to Mozambique, where there were other small white communities or South Africa, where there's a large white community. Like, I just sort of assumed... It was the norm for you. It was the norm. You

don't think about it. Also, like, kids' idea of race is so different, right? It didn't exist. Like when you're eight years old, you're like, yeah, we're all just Zimbabwe. I distinctly remember when I was still in school, a school called St. John's in Harari in Zimbabwe, and this was during the height of all the political turmoil. And I was an equivalent of a freshman. And one of the prefects, you know what prefects are? Prefects are like schoolheads that are boys. They're in Harry Potter.

They're like the oldest kids, like the seniors. Sure, sure. That is the best chess player, the best rugby player, the best mathematician they're They get called their colors and their prefect. They're kind of in charge of the little kids. It's a very antiquated system. But I remember I was the equivalent of a freshman in my new high school. And my best friend since I was five years old was Malusi's Wangobani,

black guy in case you couldn't tell. And Malusi was like my best friend since I was like five years old. And we were sitting together at lunch. And one of the prefects came up. I don't remember who it was. But he just came up and he's like, you go sit over there and you go sit over there. And this was during all the conflict. And I was like, what's happening?

And he's like, you're not sitting with Malusi anymore. I was like, I've sat with Malusi every day. I said I was six years old for lunch. You know what I mean? Like, this is bizarre. And they were trying to, because it was coming from the governor, from the president, they were like trying to create. Instill this like racial separation.

And obviously there's more black people and white balloons in a bobway. It had never even crossed my mind. It was just one of my best friends, you know? Yeah, yeah. And then there was this thing coming from an 18 year old to a 14 year old being like, you guys don't sit together. Like, you guys aren't friends anymore. I'm like, why am I not friends with, you know, like it just, you're talking about your like a kid's

perception of race. Like it just, it blew my mind because I just didn't understand it. What's your friend say? Same thing. Like, we were just so confused, you know, and he went over with all the black kids and I went over with the tiny little group of white kids. And it was like, yeah, at least my perception of prison. And it was just like, and then school ended and I was like, you good?

He's like, yeah, you good? I was like, yeah, that was weird. You know, but those things just sort of like kept happening and it just got worse and worse. And it just showed how ingrained it was throughout the culture at the time. Yeah. Okay, so you come to America. You're 14 at this time. Do your survival skills start to wane?

It became a very different sort of survival skill. I mean like Bush survival. I mean, being out in nature. Like, do you have opportunities to go do that? It's not like you're camping, I imagine. Like you're trying to survive on welfare in America. So we came to Oakland. We had all this, like I said, I was like getting in fight.

in the streets and like trying to make friends. And I was just this weird kid in safari shorts who like nobody understood. And I just had a funny accent. And I ended up getting in trouble a lot. Yeah. Like a lot, a lot. Like a lot. Like knife point and problems with older kids and all kinds of things.

So my mom realized that there was an issue. And I think it was because of me. So she got us out of Oakland as fast as possible. So we spent about six months in Oakland. Yeah. And then we ended up in a tiny little town called Cayucas, California. Okay. Which is its own story.

But 2,000 people surf town in California. in a tiny little central coast town. And I think she did that intentionally because she could see the trajectory things were going in a big city like Oakland. And the reason I tell you that is because here I was a kid who'd always grown up in the bush. It wasn't like Tarzan.

Like I still, you know, it was a normal kid, but like I had all these passions for wildlife and the outdoors. And then we moved to this tiny little central coast town that's surrounded by mountains on one side and ocean on the other. And I would just take off for days and trespass onto farms and up into the mountains

and go diving and go up to Big Sur, which you probably know Big Sur, camp up there. And so I just sort of had, I just channeled it into a new thing. And the main thing I found then was the ocean, because I'd never had ocean growing up. And all of a sudden, I lived on the ocean in California. And I was just so into diving and fishing and spear fishing and learning about new to branks and sea stars and all these weird ocean animals that I'd never been exposed to. So I just channeled it into a different thing. Yeah.

Yeah. So to answer your question, I don't think it went away. I just changed my interests. By going to Cayucas, you could continue to explore this passion. What does your mom do when she comes over? Does she take up new work? Yeah, she was a waitress. Wow.

Went from running a huge safari business and 200 farm workers to being a waitress. Was that dinner for her? Oh, my God. Like that transition, like she's so committed to freedom and doing what she wants and being on her own accord to now just like serving coffee. Serving drinks. Because, you know, we were refugees, right? Like, what else can you do?

Did you talk to her about that at all? as an adult. You know, Africans are funny. They don't like to talk about it. Like, I'm a hybrid, right? I'm going to have African-American, whatever, hybrid. If I try to have this, you're laughing at me. Shut up, bro.

You know, he's so much more African. I know. It's just so funny here. He had a whole bro back here. Come on, dude. Stand out for me. But my point is like, nah, it's crazy.

He's calling your white mom African. Yeah. It's crazy. It's crazy. Like, I couldn't talk my mom about it. She would just brush it aside. Like, it's not... Why is it? That is so funny. It's like, because, like, if I was born in China, there's no way you guys refer to me as Chinese. Right? Like, there's no way.

Don't bust that out of a little Mandarin. Yeah. You would think I was being racist until someone told you was actually Mandarin. Yeah, that's probably true. A little. That's probably true. Yeah. Okay. All right. So you're saying she's a little bit reserved. She's not talking about her emotions and what she was dealing with and the different

culties surrounding it. She's just like, listen, I had to do what I had to do survive. You know that like memory bias thing? Like we all put the bad memories aside and focus on the good ones. Otherwise, we'd all be miserable and depressed all the time. I know if you've heard of that. But like I feel like she has that more than anybody. Like her memory bias. Like she knows it happened, but she doesn't want to talk about it. She doesn't want to bring it up. Doesn't want to address it. You know what I mean? She'd rather talk about how great breakfast was, you know? I love that. Yeah. Did you pick up any like a Zulu or COSA?

No, I used to speak relatively fluent. I wouldn't say perfect Shauna, which was the native language of where I lived, which was decent, you know, like more than survival, Shauna. But you realize, because I was just back in Zabwe earlier this year, it goes away quickly. Yeah. You know, like I can still understand 25% of it, but I can speak like 2% of it. You know, it just goes away. And you have those few words that are like ingrained, but otherwise, like, the ability to communicate is pretty much gone. Can you say a few words?

Because he thinks all they do is click. Who, why would you say me? No, I'm just kidding. Why would you say me? You're more racist than me. No, so like in Shauna, like, if I said to you like, good morning, how are you? The greeting is Manguananinim, Mamukase. Manguananin, Mamukase.

So that's like, good morning. How are you? Yeah. Yeah. Mamooka se. Mamukase. And then the traditional response would be Mamuka and demukau. So it's like, I'm good.

How are you? Mamma. Damuca. Mamma. Mamma, demucca. There you go. And you speak, Shana, just like that. Yeah.

Stop. I still can't say it. I tried learning how to say like a few words in Kosa. Because there's a DJ from Zim. That's what the locals call Zimbabwe. Oh, yeah. And I talked to him and he tried to like teach me some of the words. It was like with the click.

That's rad. Here? In New York? Yeah. No way. And it's a wild thing because I didn't realize the clicks are a part of the word. In some of the other. Yeah. Like it's not just like a bunch of clicks on their own. That's like kind of how we're told in America. But like COSA would be like, COSA. That's right. And like you say like in your throat. Yeah. And so it's like embedded in the like sentence itself. Yeah. It's unbelievable hard to do. Yeah. Like I don't know if you can just tell someone how to do it. It's like you're born knowing how to do it. You have to grow up. It's like the same thing they say with like learning Mandarin, right? As like an adult.

It's nearly impossible. I feel like I could do it, dude. Because my fake Mandarin is good. Sometimes I'll do my fake and I'll listen to real Mandarin and I'm like, I'm there. Yeah. Like there's a guy I follow that just speaks to people in their language, but he fakes it. Oh, nice. He's like, he just walks up to him in the street.

Yeah. And he'll just speak fake. Whenever the language is looking at him, like, bewildered. Now they're like, they're trying to, like, the reason I know is close is because they're like trying to sound it out. Yeah. Because he's a white guy, so they're like, oh, he's trying. Yeah. You know?

But he's close. I think that's the key. Like, when I go to Mexico, my Spanish is terrible. Yeah. It's like survival Spanish, but my confidence is through the roof. So if you sit down and just spit, you know? Go to Japan. I swear to go.

Have you been to Japan? Yeah, I love Japan. Okay. You know how like all the taxi cabs that got like white gloves? It's like beautiful. Yeah, it's amazing. It's awesome. Spotless, yeah.

But they're not going to speak any English. No. And, but if you say where you're going in English, but with a very, very strong Japanese accent, 100% of the time, they know exactly where you're going. They're respected. Yeah, they're like, I don't know if they're respected. Okay. But in their brain, that's how it sounds in English. It's the accent in it. I know. It sounds crazy. Yeah. But if you say it, it works. It's Starbucks. They'll take you to the Starbucks. And listen, you can judge me, but when you're there and you need to go

somewhere, you're going to try it. That's how you say Starbucks. Ice cream. Ice cream. Yeah. Ice cream. That's literally how you say ice cream in Japanese. Yeah, exactly. It's almost like, is there a language Japanese? It's just an accent. I think it's an action. I really do. Okay, what do we got right here? This is, I've never seen this video, but apparently it's good.

Our P, it sounds like... Columbia, Canada. Calabula. You just said Canada and Coca-Cola. Can you get that? Coca-Cola? Our X, it sounds like Coca-Cola. Like the name.

makes it like cool too. Yeah. It's fine. Yeah. Our cue, it sounds like, Allah, Eko,

the equal, color, it's incredible. It's incredible. Like this guy rapping? It's also not, it's not so different than like,

you know, Arabic where you have like a ha. Yeah, these other sounds. It's just another sort of mouth sound. Exactly.

Like, we make it seem like there's this like obscure, it's this obscure sound and no other language has it. It's like us saying like the hard letter R. Do you know what I mean? Like, there's a lot of Asian cultures and things that can't do.

Jesus, I'm really digging myself to a whole over here. You know what I'm saying? Come on. I'm looking at you, bro. I'm fucking killed myself. Do you want to know how to pronounce it? I'm not sure what you're going to say next. Oh, least a garante.

See, no, no, I'm not going to say it again. No hard are, though, right? No, definitely. You're not allowed to say a hard art. Yeah. You might be. I'm really, I'm drowning over here. You might be allowed to say the A.

I don't know. We got to go to that. We got to go to the board. We got to go to the prefix. What is the prefix? But, okay, all right. It gets mystified in America. People are like, yeah, they speak like an alien language

where they click all the time. It's like, no, they just have tones that are different than ours. Yeah. Everybody has their weird. I'm trying to think what ours is in English specifically. Well, it depends on what region you're comparing it to. Like, if you come from like an Asian dialect,

doing L is difficult in English. Bro, if saying the letter R after a consonant is nearly impossible for anybody outside. That's what I'm trying to articulate without being racist. I mean, to Europeans that don't speak English. Andrew is an impossible. That's right. It's squirrel.

Unle do. Yeah. Squirrel is like, have you seen Europeans trying to pronounce the word squirrel? Have you seen Japanese people do it? Because that's the most fun. Get that video up immediately right now. All right, guys, new dates announced. We're getting ready for the hour this.

I'm coming to Stress Factory, the 11th and 12. Thank you guys for selling that out. I'll update you guys on adding more shows. Houston, September 18th and 19th. West Niagara, New York, 25th and 26th of September. Helium in Indianapolis, Indiana, the 23rd and 24th of October. Alabama, Stardone, November 6th and 7th. Hilarities in Cleveland, the 13th and 14th of November.

Good nights in Raleigh, December 4th and 5th. Funny Bone in Columbus, December 11th and 12th. Those are all the shows for the fall while we get this hour together, man. I can't wait to see you guys out there and see the new stuff. The Andrew Shultz.com for tickets. I'm also doing a bunch of shows. I'm going to be with my good pal, Andrew Shultz. For many of these dates, as well as some of my own headlining shows,

I'll be in Plano, Texas, Chandler, Arizona, Pasadena, San Diego, Detroit, and Salt Lake City all through the fall and winter. If you live in any of those places, go to Mark Agnon Live.com. You can check out tickets and dates right there. Sometimes the hardest part of car shopping is knowing where to start. I remember the last time I was looking for a vehicle. It didn't take long before I was comparing specs and prices and wondering if I was actually looking at a good deal.

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naked and afraid. Yes. Now, have you already started your career before that, or is this your first, like, for entertainment? No, so I went to UCSB for biology. Yes. And I love doing biology, and that's all I wanted to do. And I knew nothing about entertainment. I thought Discovery made shows for Discovery Channel.

Like, that's how TV works. Like, I just knew nothing, nothing about it. Yeah. And then I went on Naked and Afraid, literally, because we were super poor and I was a biologist making 12 bucks an hour. Yeah. And I just wanted a cool vacation. Yeah. And did it and did really well on the show and all of that. But it was really, there was sort of a light bulb moment for me, which is when I looked at the ratings that the Naked and Afraid show got. This was back when TV was huge still, right? Like cable. And that got four million live viewers. And I looked at a, I looked at like a published paper that I'd worked on

with elite scientists. And that got 400 reads. And I looked at the two. And I'm like, all I really want to do is communicate how amazing wildlife is to people because that's what I love. That's where I grew up in the bush of Africa, tracking. Like we're talking about, I love wildlife. That's what I want communicate. Now look at these two things. Here's saying that the lead biologist worked on for two and a half years. I worked on for about a year that got 400 reads by like-minded scientists who already knew the subject matter. Here's me jiggling my junk naked in the jungle. Got four million views. I'm like, I know which one of these two can make a bigger impact. So that was like my light bulb moment was after naked and afraid when I was like, now I can make shows. Okay. For me, for me,

Making it afraid, for the people who don't know, it was a show where you would basically have to go survive in some remote area. I think you went to Panama. Panama, that's right. Is that where all the episodes are filmed? No, all over the world. Got it. And like, for whatever reason you're naked, it didn't need to be. And it's you and a chick. That's right. Right. Yeah. And she's also naked. That's right. Very awkward. Well, I mean, in the morning when you're bricked, what is that like? It's only morning one. I'll tell you that. Why? Why? I don't know, man. It's something biological. happens out there where you're after morning one you're like, that's not going to happen anymore. I got

other stuff to worry about. But like, okay, do they start getting funky? Like, is it like, I believe some of them have. No, not like, like there must be, you're in the most primal setting. You're just here to laugh in the back quarters. You're not thinking about that? You're not thinking about that. This guy is

right out of UC Santa Barbara. Okay. It's a wild party. It's insane. Okay, so he's coming there all sorts of venereal diseases. This is a fact, yeah Okay, okay We went to the same school by the way

We lived right across from each other Randomly and Okay, so you're there You meet the girl She's naked immediately Yeah And you have to present yourself for TV Like yeah

But you also have to work out Like warmth and mosquitoes and stuff Does she kept well She, my partner was kept immaculately Really? She was very attractive Yeah Do you have a girlfriend at the time?

I did have a girlfriend at the time. And you were to explain you, I'm going to be with this naked chick who shaved up. Worse than that, it was my girlfriend's idea that I go on the show. I swear to God. She was into that. Who knows what was going on when I took off. And how would be introduced to a stranger just on soft is crazy? Were you on soft or did you fluff for like a second?

Dude, I wish I had done a little tug. It would have been a little more impressive. Were you fully, fully soft? I was completely naked. There was nerves going on, which means I was probably about, you know, Like a raisin. Like it was, yeah, it probably wasn't a good vibe at all. I was overweight because I was like, oh, I'm going to survive.

I need to eat more. I got bulk up. So I was fatter than ever. It was not. Hindsight being 2020, I would have trimmed up a little. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe just done a little rub to go in, you know, just get a little something going on. Yeah.

And not been so fat, you know, like it would have been a little better. But does she start vibing as you started being like her protector and provider? Oh, no, she hated me. Really? Really. Yeah. Oh, I tell you. So that's her.

She's quite pretty. I shaved, which is a mistake. I was chubby, which was a mistake. And, yeah, no, it wasn't good, bro. Yeah, you got a little bit. Keep the beard. Keep my eyes. I was like 30 pounds heavier, dude.

Give me a little slack there. Go back that first. That was not bad. That was towards the end of the whole thing. Go back to the first one. No, let's not. You look like a Pixar villain. I know, dude.

It's really bad. But she's a piece. It's beautiful girls. That's what I'm saying, dude. I blew it. But, yeah, and she was pretty, but, so I think Okay. So, hold on.

Today one, you show up your butt naked. Butt naked. Dick and balls out. Do you catch her peeping? Do you catch her, like, looking down? If anything, she caught me peeping. You were definitely peeping. You had to.

You had to do. What are you going to do? You got to get it out of the way. You got to get a good look up and down. So you go up and down, get a good look. Get a good look. You hug? You have to.

Whoa. And you felt them? You felt the nips? Yeah. Come on. I'm just saying what I was saying. This is a colleague. This is his work colleague.

No, I know, it's his work colleague. I understand, but they're in a survival situation, and part of survival is reproduction. That's a good point. Not usually in 21 days. That's true. That's true. But did she throw any rhythm? Like, when you came back and you had, like, I remember you were shucking clams or whatever, you had an oyster.

What was that? When you brought her that aphrodisiac and I know you were searching for it for that reason. Dude, I was trying. Yeah. I was fishing, but I wasn't catching. No rhythm. She was giving you no rhythm. Nothing, dude.

I got no love out there. No, she was like, I think they did this on purpose. The producer, that show, really clever. by the way. They looked at me and were like, here's a chubby white boy who's got like a lot of good skills. And here's like a hot idiot who's got no skills. And they're like, we're going to put these two together and see what happens. She's going to hear this and it's not going to go well. But, you know, I think I think they just were like, we're going to put these two together surviving. Terrible. Really? Terrible. Like, admittedly at this point. When it got cold, would you guys have to, you know,

body heat? Night one, we cuddled all night. Dead serious. We got there like, like, poking her in the bag of a little. Yeah. I had to roll over in the morning. She's like, are you okay? I was like, yeah, yep. Just a little uncomfortable had to roll over to go to the other side. Yeah, because night one we got there. It was the producer's fault.

They got us on the beach like late. So we only got started at like 4 p.m. Oh. So you don't have time between 4 p.m. and sundown to build everything. Yeah. So we started to build a really crappy little shelter and it got dark. And then it rained and it was cold. And we're both lying under a banana leaf shaking.

And I forget if it was her or me, but one of us, probably me, was like, hey, we got to just, you know, scoot together and share some body warmth for the first night. And that was the only night we had to, like, cuddle, basically. Yeah, yeah. And it did help. And then, yeah, and then I had to roll over in the morning, and that was it. Then we built a proper shelter. The camera guys are just there, like drinking smoothies all the time? Dude, no, they, um, oh, I'll tell you a story. I've never told them a pot if you want. Yes. I've never told publicly at all. They were not there. So they leave set up cameras overnight, like security cameras, basically, like just GoPro's with battery packs and IR cams and stuff like that.

but they have a strict rule. I've never told the story publicly in anyway. They have a strict rule that the camera guys cannot have food on them. They kind of have smoothies. It kind of anything, right? Because, you know, these people are more or less starving. It must have been like day 15 or 16 or whatever.

And I see the audio guy has got a cliff bar in his audio kit on the front. And I just see the corner of the rapper, you know, a little like blue and black, like outline or whatever. And I don't remember his name. Let's say it was John. And I walk over and I'm like, hey, John, what's going on, buddy? Boom. And I just grab it. And I start peeling it and eating it.

He's like, whoa, give me that back. Give me that back. Give me that back. I'm like, nope, I'm not going to. And he's like, dude, you're going to get me fired. I was like, I'm not going to tell anybody if you don't. And I give him back the rapper and I smash the whole bar. Wow.

You didn't even share it. I scoffed that thing on the spot. He's a bushman. He can tell when there's audio guys nearby. It's like there's a cliff bar near this. Okay. Is it true? I heard a rumor that you,

found food unbelievably fast, and then they kind of made you hide the food? Multiple times. Really? Yeah, yeah. Okay, can you tell us about that event? So the funniest part of that whole thing was, you know, they want you to suffer, right? Because that's good to show, right? They want you to struggle and have to find food and fight and help each other and all these things.

So unlike day four or five or whatever, we were walking through the jungle and keep in mind, I'm a biologist, so I recognize the botany, the plants and things. And I look and I'm like, wait a man, that's yucca, which is, you know, it's like a jungle potato, basically. And you can see that in this area of secondary forest, not primary, that it'd all been regrown, there's a whole patch, like a almost perfectly square patch of yucco, which is a potato. And so I, like, stop and take out my machete and start digging and dig up the root, the potato. And then I'm like, holy shit. And I realize this is like a grove of it. And it's like a five-minute walk from where we're camped. And so I dig up 30 pounds of these potatoes.

Like, I'm talking like, you know, mountain of potatoes. Take them back, build a little. little hammock so they don't get sit in the water next to my camp and I'm like we're good I'm done three weeks you can live off that eat potatoes eat some oysters in the morning like I got protein I got carbs I'm good and the producers just pulling their hair out you know they're like this fucking guy like he doesn't want to fight with anybody like he's he's not being argumentative he doesn't have to work very hard he's got 30 pounds of fucking potatoes in his camp yeah and then they come over and they're like look we we got to take the potatoes away I'm like go for it I'm just going to go get more. And they're like, you can't do this. I was like, yes, I can. Like, this is a simulated

survival situation. I'm going to get as many potatoes as I can get. So they took them away the first time. And that night, as soon as the camera guys left and set up the cameras, I walked five minutes up the hill. I brought back another 20 or so pounds, put them in the sling. And they came back in the morning and there was a pile of things. And the producer was like, off the record, like, okay, if you just keep them hidden and off camera, you can keep your potatoes. And I was like, I don't care how many times you take them away. I'm going to go and get more. And so they let me like keep them off So would you have to cook them at off-camera hours, or did they just edit you cooking them out? They just edit around it, yeah.

Wow. You're the only person going on the show and gain weight. Thankfully not. Look at that photo, but thankfully not. But yeah. So then what happens? You and the girl are eating good? Are you sharing the potatoes?

We shared everything. Yeah, I caught some fish. I caught some lobster. I got oysters. I killed an ant eater. We got potatoes. Like, we weren't struggling. Yeah.

So it was easy for you. I mean, it goes back to what we were talking about before we came in here. If you're in the tropics and you have a good understanding of how to do these things, you can live indefinitely. I asked for us before we were doing the pot. I was like, okay, let's just say, like, could you just walk out anywhere and then just survive? Like, what is the scenario? And you said, if you put me on an island, where, what did you say? I said Fiji or Vanuatu or one of those tropical places.

You'd be fine for 30 years. Easy, man. Easy. Because there's so much life. You know, and everything grows in the tropics. right like whether coconuts obviously grow naturally but you plant potatoes or you get mangoes or whatever everything just grows and it fruits and then you have so much stuff in the ocean right in those places you can eat all the shellfish we've just been talking about you can spear you can do these things

some tools would help right like some fire making tools and some spears and stuff but like that's why tropical living is so good right because you don't evolution is a derivative of necessity right we change and evolve and develop things when we have to. And if you look at, it's actually really interesting, if you look at the planet and you look at cultures and civilizations, the most advanced ones, meaning the cultures and civilizations that built the biggest cities and had boats and sailing ships and all these things, they're not so extreme in the North Poles that you can't survive and they're not so comfortable in the equator where it's life so easy.

They're somewhere in between, where it's just life easy a little bit, but it's hard a lot. The Mediterranean. You have to build things. Yeah. North Africa. Exactly. They can just live out there untouched for

forever. Thousands of years and just like be chunged. Exactly. Because life's good. They've got everything they need. There's no need for the innovation. That's it. You're not forced to innovate.

Whereas you're in England in the wintertime. You've got to figure it out. We've got to get some goats in here. We've got to plant some corn. Exactly. And you've got the short window, right? The summer window of two, three, four months, whatever it is to make things happen.

And so you use that time to develop and build and grow and store for a long winter ahead. But explain then Egypt. Explain Sudan. Explain these places that had like these immense, you know, technological outbursts. Well, I mean, nobody can explain Egypt, right? That's one of the phenomenal things about it.

But I think those things are, like Egypt, for example, are less about global expansion, right? They had amazing technologies and incredible architecture and pyramids and things like that within their system. I can't explain. I'm not an anthropologist, but they built these things because they had the resources to build them locally. And we're now learning that there were civilizations in the Amazon similar to that, right? Yeah. But again, that wasn't about like England or the Vikings or places like that. The Romans were like, we have to go places to get resources.

We have to innovate and travel and move and conquer. And make a trade route and get a disease and all those things. Wow. You go to school for biology. and I know you were in Zimbabwe, like, out in the bush till like 14. Yeah. But then you go on this show, how old were you when you went on the show? 26, I think, something like that.

So, like, you're out of, like, the jungle wild for a long time. Like, how do the survival skills just come back? So, yeah, so, I mean, I always really just cared about wildlife and conservation. And survival for me was never a passion and still not. I would practice survival or will. wilderness craft or whatever you want to call it as a means to stay out in the wilderness longer and see animals. So even between, I guess, ages, you know, 18 or so, whatever, 14, whatever you want to call it, 14 when I came to the U.S. and 25 or 6 or whatever I was going to do this, I was still

constantly, I was working on the California Channel Islands as a biologist. I was going into the back country. I was traveling as much as I could. It's all I really do is a passion. So it's not like you're just going out, exploring and then coming home for the day. Like you would just be out there. I was out all the time. Yeah. I mean, I used to have a 15-foot center console boat, like a tiny little boat, that I would spend four or five nights at a time on. It doesn't have a cabin. It's like the boat's about as big as these two chairs, you know, and I would just sleep on the deck of the boat and just be out in the ocean, exploring the Channel Islands, you know, in Santa Barbara. Yeah. Yeah, you know, and then same thing in the back country. I'd just

take a backpack with a tarp, you know, and a bag of salt and a pocket knife and a lighter and just be like, I'm going to head out and figure it out. Why a bag of salt? Oh, you can save anything with salt. You can preserve it. You can cure it. Salt's like an essential survival food. Right? If I catch a trout this big and I'm out there for three days, if I just leave the trout, it goes rotten.

But if I eat half the trout and pack the other half in salt, it's totally fine. He was a survivor day. I'm kind of obsessed with this stuff. Like all the videos I watch from, you know, I'm sure you know the Outdoor Boys channel. Yeah, I love outdoor. I've seen so many of your videos.

But like, I think it's because I've never gone camping. Ever? No, I'm like, we gotta fix that. I would love to do it. Yeah. I'm a real, like, city boy. Okay. But there is something that I, I don't know if it's a primal connection.

I don't know if it's the idea of like when you're stressed with things in your life, watching somebody complete a task, execute a task, and like create homeostasis for them in like a really difficult environment. Maybe there's something that is like stress relieving to that. I got to do more like psychological research as to why I'm so interested about it. But there is a part of me and now that I have you here, I really want to know. Sure. The four of us are put in an area.

You choose. Just put us somewhere in the world. Right now. Right now. Okay. Let's say Costa Rica. Okay. I love Costa Rica.

There you go. Jungley. Very. What it is, it is 10 a.m. Yep. We have to survive. Nobody's coming to get us for a week, two weeks. Yep.

What is number one thing that we do? Drinkable water. Potable water. How are we finding it? So luckily in Costa Rica, high rainfall, almost everywhere. All of us. Right? So what I would do, you don't want to drink the groundwater anywhere in the jungle, period, because of pathogens and bacteria. Groundwater could be rivers as well. Streams and water and rivers and things like that. Yeah. So you can either purify that or you can collect rain water, which you know is safe. So you got two options.

So let's say it's not raining. Hedge our bets, you do both, right? So you cut some bamboo and you make some cups and things to catch rain just in case. Okay. The second thing we do is figure out how are we making or starting a fire. And I, like, yes, you can rub sticks together. I don't like doing that. I just bring. lighter, right? I don't like survival for the sake of it. I just like doing it. So I would create a fire, and whether we had pots, believe it or not, you can boil water in a plastic cup. There are many ways you can purify water, but your safest way to do

it is to boil it. Okay. So figure out how to boil water, that can be in rocks, that can be in leaves, believe it or not, that can be in a plastic. There's a million ways to do it. So you get your water, you purify your water. Once you know you have a sustainable method of safe drinking water, everything else is secondary. Interesting, because whenever you see these shows, the first thing

they do is shelter. Shelter, yeah. But I'm watching a lot of like cold weather shows. That's exposure related. Yeah, that makes more sense. When you don't have to worry about the elements as much in terms of freezing to death. Right. Water is crucial. That's number one. Also because in those cold environments... There's snow everywhere. There's water. There's water everywhere. Great point. Okay. So, okay, we get some water. We have this mechanism for maintaining water. Yep. Okay. Next

is shelter. That's right. Yeah. Next would be exposure. What are we building? Well, in the jungle, it's, yeah, that's what I was talking about boiling with a leaf. Oh, wow. It's really cool. So next thing would be your shelter. In a place like Costa Rica, you can get large leaves like banana leaves or those elephant ears, you know, those big fight. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so you'd use those to create a shelter.

So you'd cut down sticks. Luckily, in jungles, the wood is soft generally, right? So you can very easily cut down, like even in that picture. What if we didn't have anything to cut? Yeah, you can make stone tools. You can break it. It doesn't have to be. That's the other thing too is like you see like something like that, right?

That's beautiful. That looks amazing. It doesn't have to be like that. Don't get me wrong. That's probably that. You and I can make that right now with this one. The other one that's all perfect and meticulous, that's hard to make. Like shelter does not have to be perfect.

Do you know what I mean? The best thing you can do, if you're in it for the long term, you build a temporary shelter that's quick. It gets you out of the element. So in the midday heat or whatever, you can rest, you can sleep. You have fire to get rid of mosquitoes. Then you focus on building something that's more like more long-term, comfortable. I was talking to, do you know Donnie Dust? Yeah, I do know Donnie.

He's the man. Good dude. He was explaining to me, he was like, you can basically just make like a sleeping bag. That's it. So like in a pinch, it's just like one stick that's like two feet tall. Yep. Covered with banana leaves. It's not something you can like sit in.

You literally just like shimmy into it and lay there and sleep. Called a lean to. A lean to. A lean to one side, right? Yeah. And then you can get out that way. Yep. Wow.

And that's enough. And the main thing there is almost mental sanity. Because if you're sleeping in the. rain, you're not sleeping. If you're exposed the elements, you're miserable. So if you just give yourself that a little bit of mental reprieve so that at night you can rest and you can recharge, then you have all the time in the world to find food and build shelter and these kind of things. But if you're not sleeping, you're not resting, you're not recovering, you go downhill quickly. You think we would be living comfortably within a week?

Yeah. When you say comfortably, not what you and I think of as comfortably. Not a AC, et cetera, but like we're not worried about food. We're not worried if it's raining. No way. Within a week. Waking up with the sun. Yeah. It's quiet. You're not on your phone. But that's not the case for, you know, these guys that go on alone in the Arctic Circle.

Very different situation. Very different situation. Now, can I ask you that, like kind of as a detour question? If you were to get dropped right now either into Alaska in the wintertime or like the Mojave Desert in the summer. Oof. Two extreme climates. Yeah. Which one would you rather take to survive for a week?

Well, just because of my knowledge base, and this is, it's all personal. It's one of the reasons I make fun of naked and afraid, the show that I did myself. And I will get back to your question, is the guys that live in those environments, like, I'm talking about the local people that actually live there, the native tribes, the local Panamanians and stuff, they do the stuff that we're crying and windy and misery about as part of their daily life. Tasha's a joke about this. He's like, we do a show called Survivor in a place where people already live. Yeah.

And they're just like, this is just life to them. And for us, it's like, oh my God, it's so hard. I can't find food. And they're like, yeah, welcome to the fucking jungle, bitch. You know, like, and so, you know, to answer your question, it's all about where your skill set is. If you took that same incredible survivalist from Panama and put him in the Arctic, he'd be dead in a day. Right. For sure.

He doesn't know it. He's not a trained survival expert. He just lives in the jungle in Panama. Yeah. So my skill set, I do better in the Mojave than I would in Alaska. What do you do in the Mojave? You find water. You find moisture.

And that comes from cactuses. And it's awful and it's bitter and there's ways to refine it, but you have to get the moisture first. First thing you're doing is looking for a giant cactus. That's it. And then you, what, cut it open? You tap it, yeah. Oh, like a rubber tree or something? Basically, yeah, basically.

And then you can get a slow drip out of it, and that liquid is absolutely horrible, but it can keep you hydrated. Better than nothing. And then how do you create a shelter in the Mojave? I mean, it's not easy. The best thing out there is to get under rocks because there's a lot of rocks and natural jagged areas, and then you need to move with the sun. And the biggest thing in a desert environment is never work during the heat of the day. So you are down from, say, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. every day. You're just resting. Because it's just too much caloric expenditure.

Yeah, it's just your likelihood of exposure, death, like overheating, exhaustion, dehydration, just sky rockets. And Alaska in the winter, there are people who are very skilled at that. I'm not one of them. Like, I would not do well. I could do Alaska in the summer. Sounds lovely. But, yeah, Alaska in the winter, no way. Yeah. For me. Let's get to the animals. Why are you not afraid of animals? I'm a city boy I don't touch them I don't like a dog a cat

I'm cool with that anything more than that it's nah I just think wildlife is the most incredible thing that we have right I think a lot of people forget that if we destroy any group of animals like if we kill all the fish in the ocean

we all die everybody every human on this planet goes away if we destroy the oceans right if we get rid of all the snakes we probably all die and I know not everybody in this room probably loves snakes, but snakes control the rodents that control the diseases. Do you know what I mean? Like the rodent outbreak means disease outbreak. So all these things, the world is like a giant game of Jenga,

you know, and every piece needs to fit in that game. And animals to me are the most important piece of that. I'm not really answering your question directly, but the point is like they're all fantastic and amazing. And I've had really close calls with some animals. I've been scared by animals plenty. It's not like I'm so stupid that I think no animal can hurt me or anything like. that, it's just these are the risks that I'm more than willing to take in order to have these amazing intimate interactions. And I also believe that we are hardwired as human beings, whether you're from the city or not, to have a connection to nature and animals. Like, it is in our DNA. I'm telling you, man, we get you out of the city. I'm not saying you would be in your comfort zone, but you would find some, like, inner peace if you spent time out there and you got connected to animals. You don't need all

this stimulation and all this technology and stuff, you find a sense of calm when you spend time around animals. What's the closest you've been to dying on the job? The one that I thought was the closest is actually a pretty crazy story. You know what a sea snake is? No. Snakes that live in the ocean. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It looks like an eel. Yeah, a lot of them, yeah. So if you look up like an elegant sea snake, this is the species we were working on. So I was in Western Australia and we were milking sea snakes, which means taking the venom out of them. And you do that by taking a tiny little pipette, like a little syringe, and you put it over the fang, and you pipette it, and you pump it, and the venom comes out. I've milked a snake before, and I don't mean that as a

euphemism. I've actually done it, and the way that the guy did it was the snake bites onto a jar with some, like kind of silicone rubber cut thing. Why not do it like that? Because the sea snakes don't have big fangs, like whatever you milked, a rattlesnake or something. Interesting. So those types of snakes, viparids, snakes with big fangs, have a... venom delivery system from two giant fangs. So it bites into the cup, the plastic sheath holds the fangs in place, and the venom drips out. Sea snakes have tons of tiny little. And each one of them?

And each one of them, yeah. Now, they still have fangs, you can get into the minutia of it, but basically they're tiny, tiny little teeth. Like, to the point you can barely see them. So in order to milk a sea snake, you have to actually pipette it, like I was explaining. So I was milking venom from a sea snake, barehanded, I didn't have gloves on, and one drop of sea snake venom can easily kill you. It's very, very potent, but they don't usually bite people.

They're not aggressive, and they're pretty limp on land. They're adapted for the sea. And so the time I thought I was the closest to death was I was milking a sea snake, and I noticed that I had pushed the pipette the wrong way a little bit, and the venom was running down over my fingers. Right? And I was like, ah, shit. And I adjusted and I kept pipetting and got all the venom, put it in the vials and all of that. And then I was arguing with my cameraman, because I was doing this for a Discovery Channel show. And he goes, you got to get his drone shot.

I go, come on, man, just stop it. And I did this with my fingers in my eye ducts. And then I was sitting there, and I just, I remember this distinctly. I went, fuck. And he goes, what? And I go, I think I just killed myself. And he goes, what did you say? I was like, ah, nothing, nothing, nothing.

I just whispered it under my breath. And so the problem with the sea snake venom from an hell again sea snake is you have almost no symptoms for five or six hours. Then you feel very fatigued. Then your heart stops. And that's it. And it just quag. It's your blood. Exactly.

Duff. Fuck. Here I was thinking, and I was like, was it my left hand? Was it my right hand? Did I rinse my hand? Did I rinse my hand? And I just couldn't remember because it was all happening. You've been on set. Like, it's all happening and stuff going on.

So I thought for six hours that I had rubbed sea snake venom into my eyeducks. You were waiting to die. And I was waiting to die. So much so that, you know, we finished out the shoot. Like, I was going on with its own mental battle, but I didn't want to take it to my crew, my team, because I was like, there's nothing can be done. It's too late. Yeah.

You know, we're too remote. There's nothing that can be done. So I had this inner monologue with myself. I was like, right, just don't say anything. Don't know for sure. Just get on with the day and just keep your head down. So we finished up. We were right at the end of our day anyway. Okay, I got the venom. Everything's good. Let's go home. And I've started a timer because I was like I between six and eight hours if I've done it. We got back to the town we were staying in, which is a tiny little town called Carl Bay in Western Australia, where we had a rental house. And I wrote a note to my wife and my kid at the time. I only have one, I have two kids now. I wrote a note to them, put it down next to the bed just in case I never woke up. And of course, it was a super long day, so I was feeling incredibly fatigued. I've been out in the sun all day, so I didn't know if that was sea snake venom or just exhaustion.

Why not tell someone? Why not try to get some sort of cure? There's nothing I could do. There's no cure for it. One, there's no anti-venom for this because it's incredibly rare to get bitten by one because they're not aggressive. And two, we were 12 hours from Perth, which is the only city that you could get treatment. Oh, my God. There was just no way. There was no time, amount of time.

There was just no way. Do I mean? And we were out on the boat two hours from where the dock was. Like, I did all that calculation in my head. Like, is there anything that could actually be done? And the answer was no. So what are you thinking in those last moments? I just was really thinking about, like, my family.

And like, fuck. And I even wrote at the bottom of the note, P.S. to the crew, sorry you have to deal with my body. Oh, Jesus. So I was like, it's going to be a pain in the ass for everybody. Is there like an acceptance of death that you have based on these? I don't think so. I don't want to die. I'm not looking for it. I don't want something bad to happen.

I understand the risks that I take. But I also understand that it's something stupid like that. It's not the charging elephant that's going to kill me. It's me putting my fingers in my eyes with potential venom on it. And those things are hard to people that die from wildlife. And it does happen. Like, you know, influencers will get bitten or, you know, Steve Irwin's or whatever. It's usually from complacency.

It's because you get so comfortable with the venomous snake or the tigers in the Sigfried and Roy case or whatever it happens to be that you become complacent. I try and remind myself of that all the time. Don't become complacent. And then it's the small mistakes like rubbing your fingers in your eyes. So I wasn't like I've accepted this. I'm going to die. I was like, fuck, I really, really hope this doesn't happen. And this is a contingency.

Like, here's a letter. And like, I don't want to make a big deal out of this. How do you feel when you wake up and you look at the letter? So good. Here's what's so stupid. I was so dramatic. I was like a movie in my own mind. I went to bed like this.

Like the undertaker. And I woke up on my side with my hair mess. I was just being so dramatic, you know. And then I looked and I was like, ooh-hoo, I'm good. Crumpled up the letter. You know, chucked it in the trash. I was like, let's get on with our day. Oh, you got to frame that letter.

Yeah, you got to keep that. You're right. I should have. I was so happy that it did you kick in. Tell your team the next day? I told them all the next day. Yeah. But, you know, I intentionally went to bed early because I didn't want to be awake if the process happened.

Oh. But, yeah. And anyway, nothing happened. What was the purpose of working with that steak? So why milk the venom? At that point in time, there was mysterious strandings of tiger sharks on the beaches in that part of the world. And I had a hypothesis that the reason that the tiger sharks were dying was because they were trying to eat sea snakes. Oh.

And sea snakes can't bite a tiger shark because their skin's too thick. Okay. But my hypothesis was that... They were digesting. They were digesting. They were digesting. Yeah. And so the only way we could test that was to get sea snake venom and get tiger shark tissue and run tests.

So I went to collect the sea snake venom. Yeah. Wow. What did you? We found out that tiger sharks are fully susceptible to venom. They do not have an immunity. Some fish do. Some fish actually do have an immunity to snake venom.

Some mammals have immunity to cobra venom, blah, blah, blah. Tiger sharks do not. It kills the tissue in the cells just the same as any other fish. Wow. So it may be why those tiger sharks, which they had plenty of autopsies on, but they could never find any harm. I think that's what was happening. Have you seen what snake venom does to blood? Yeah. Like this video, I saw it years ago, but it's like literally just a jar of blood

and then they drop like some snake venom into it. Play, play. And it coagulates. Like it's just a regular little cup of blood. Turns into jello. Turns into jello. Yeah. Within like a couple of minutes. Yeah. It's bad. And there are multiple types of snake venom. Wow. Wow. And that gross. How the sound effects they've added. Yeah. And that's just happening in your, in your vein. your body, yeah. And that's, you know, there's hemotoxic, cytotoxic, and neurotoxic venom. And then various snakes have various cocktails of those three. So, you know, some will rot tissue

at the site. Some will shut down your organs. Some will do this to your blood. It's crazy. Snakes are terrifying. The sucking the venom out thing that you see in movies, where like you got bitten and then somebody like sucks it out. Is that not true at all? Complete waste. Complete waste. Yeah. Got it. Because, you know, your blood

pumps around your body. What, you've sucked for no reason? Yeah, dude. My boy's like, yo, my balls got pit by this snake. I got to shave, you, dude. Damn. Okay, so that's complete bullshit.

It is, yeah, it is. Apparently, it's like the number one nightmare around the world. Is snakes? Yeah. Like, there's, like, dream studies across cultures. And, like, in America, it's like your teeth falling out. Yeah. And then, like, through all of Asia and Africa, it's just snakes.

Well, it makes sense. I mean, you know, in India, there's 60,000 snake bite deaths a year. Yeah. That's a huge number. 60,000? That's a, I mean... And so you're not worried about that when you're sleeping outside,

even though you have shelter, a snake can easily come in while you're sleeping just like... But they don't. It doesn't cross your mind. They don't, you know what I mean? Like, you don't... Snakes aren't coming into your tent.

They don't want anything to do with you. They bite 60,000 people, so they clearly do some time. Yeah, because they're doing a flu on the street with them. It's like... That is in some cases. They're not going to make them dance for no reason.

No, but don't they defang them? For those, yeah, for those snake shows and things. But a lot of those snake bites are usually, you know, collecting wood or working in tea farms or stuff like that. These things do happen, you know. Could I stand on a snake and it bite me? Absolutely.

That's what I think would be most likely. That's more scary. You accidentally, you stand on it. And then they reactively try to bite you. Because they're not going to hunt, right? That's it. It's defensive. It's not aggressive.

Oh, yeah. Have you seen any of the, what is it, anacondas and the Everglades? The Burmese pythons. Or the Burmese pythons. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's crazy what's going on down there. I mean, those Burmese pythons have,

led to a, I believe it's 80 or maybe 90 now percent reduction in the mammals in the Everglades. Yeah. Like they've taken 80 to 90 percent of the mammals out of the Everglades. Is it an invasive species? Yeah. They're just released by like private collectors, right? Yeah. So Hurricane Andrews in, I want to say 94, but you'd have to fact check me, hit South Florida.

Okay. And there was a facility that had a bunch of these snakes, these Burmese pythons from Myanmar, from Burma. And they got out into the Everglades. And now they're just, they're rampant. Is there any way to control that? So the state of Florida has a bounty on their head where I'm making up the number, but you get 20 bucks a snake or something like that if you turn them in. So there are these guys, like there's a guy named the Python Cowboy and stuff on Instagram and they go out and they collect these snakes and they turn them in for 20 bucks a piece or whatever. That worked out horribly in India.

Yeah, with the COBRA collection. Have you heard about this? No, tell me. So I think it was, like I was the Dutchy Cindia trading company or something like that. They basically were trying to solve a cobra problem. It was the English, I think. It was the English, right? And they were trying to solve a cobra problem in England,

so what they started doing is putting a bounty on the cobras. Oh, interesting. And Indians are smart, shrewd people, so they started breeding cobras. Yeah, there you go. There you go. So it is this weird thing where it's like, okay, we can make 120, whatever it is per snake. Yeah. Well, why don't we just start a farm a snake.

And then they stop the bounty system and all these farms were like, well, well, now we got all the snakes. Yeah. And then they probably just released all their snakes. And they, like, even made the snake problem way worse. There you go. That's people for you. Every time we interfere with nature, whether that's introducing

invasive species to control other species, trying to eradicate something, we throw the thing off balance. There's no, we've never once been like, okay, let's add this animal or remove this animal and it hasn't had a big trickle down. But I've heard some good things about like introducing beavers to certain areas and they've like revitalized river systems. A hundred percent because that's not an introduction. That's a rewilding.

Oh, that's right, it's like the beavers weren't there because they had been like, was it. It's not the term they used you, basically hunted out. And then they reintroduce them and then they like, it's not just the river. It's also the plains. Everything. It's like there's amazing video I saw. I'm not doing a good job describing it.

Maybe you could do better. It's so cool because like if you think of a beaver, what a beaver does, right? It makes dams. And if you go to say the Dakotas, right, South Dakota. And you see this creek and you look at the creek. And from the outside perspective looking in, you're like, okay, look at this. We've got mountains on either side. this beautiful grassy valley and this little creek going down the middle.

It's perfect. It looks amazing. But then you add a beaver into the equation. The beaver comes along and he builds a dam in that creek. Now all of a sudden that grassy plane that you're looking at is flooded with water. So now you've got a whole wetland. Within a wetland, you get baby frogs, which lead to baby snakes, which lead to more birds, which leads to blank, to blank, to blank, to blank. So you build a whole ecosystem.

And a beaver is what we call an ecosystem engineer or a keystone species. And so by adding a beaver into that, it affects the entire environment, including all of the animals that live in it and brings those numbers up. Without it, to the naked eye, you go, it's perfect here. But you realize it's actually not perfect. The system that you're looking at is broken. It's based on that animal a lot of ways. Yeah. So what happens when they were hunting these beavers?

Because what, they were making like, they were using their skin, right? Yeah, fur. And this was like popular in Canada, North America. All over. All over. Because beaver fur is the highest. fur density. So beaver skin never gets wet

because their fur is so dense that you can put it under water and the water doesn't penetrate through the hairs. Wow. That's incredibly valuable. You think about it at the time before raincoats you're like,

that's right. I need a beaver skin coat. Oh, interesting. Okay. So they start, what do you say, expatriating them? Expatriating, yeah. Okay.

And then what happens to these different areas at that time? We're talking about this, like, 1600s. This is happening. So what ends up happening is at first nothing, because you're like, everything's still the same because beavers build dams.

Those dams last for a year or five years or ten years or fifteen years. Oh, interesting. But then slowly the dams begin to break down. And as the dams break down, all that water recedes, as that water recedes, an area that was a wetland now becomes dry. All the things that use that for seasonal reproduction die off. So it's like a slow burn. And now you don't know what the catalyst was because it was 15 years ago. Exactly.

And who came up with this idea to reintroduce them? That's brilliant. I don't know. but do you know how they first did it? How? Parachutes. You got to look this up. Parachuting beavers.

No fucking way. You think I'm joking and I am not. Why would they use parachutes? Why not just simply place them in there? Because a lot of the systems they'd hunted them out were very remote. So in order to put a lot of beavers back into the environment quickly, they put parachutes on beavers. I'm not joking in these little boxes and dropped them out of airplanes all throughout the area.

This is not a gag. This is the real deal. Dude, biology used to be wild. I wish I'd been a biologist 40 years ago. I'd be like, because I'd be like, you know what we're going to do this week? We're going to parachute some beavers. And nobody would have looked at you finding it. But like, let's do it.

Let's build some parachutes for some beavers. 1948, Ohio Department of Fish and Game program to relocate beavers from northwest Idaho to the Chamberlain Basin and Central Idaho. Yep. 76 beavers just by paratroopin. By paratrooping. Wow. Isn't that cool?

And it worked. And it worked. Yeah. They said a lot of the beavers died. Go figure. But it, yeah, it 100 percent worked and kept some of it. of them in the environment. Yeah. Wow. Crazy. All right guys, take a break for a second. It's time to take control of your mental health. The world may feel uncertain and out of control at times,

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week for you. I know you're coming over off of injuries and all the other stuff, but this is the U.S. Open that takes place in New York City. New York City. I'm excited. Your boy Carlos is back. Yeah. Four months off. So you don't think you got a shot?

So you're not putting your money on Carlos? I'm not putting my money on Carlos. You're not putting money on the best player in the world? I think an American's going to take it. I'm going Ben Shelton. Give me a, what does Kousy have? an American.

Calcy's got Alcraz at 29%. They got Ben Shelton at 8%. The highest ranked American on Caltech. I'm telling you. What about the other guy? What's his name? Medvedev or whatever? Taylor Fritz is at 4%.

No. And then Medvedev is 3%. Who's the... Sinner, you're thinking of it. Sinner, sinner, yeah. He's injured. Oh, he's out. Injured, yeah.

Oh, so this is... It's wide open. It's open for anybody. Alcraz coming off injury. Yep. We might have an American ticket. I know. The last.

American to take it was Brotic? Andy? Oh, three. Wow. Okay. That's wild. It's been some time. But imagine if Niff and Novak did it. I mean, all-time legends. He got enough. He got enough. The fact that he's this old and still cooking motherfuckers is awesome. Because he's nasty

and also tennis isn't a real sport you can play until your 40s. It's not a real sport you can play into your 40s. Federer is going to do a little exhibition I saw at 45. And I saw he was, he's nervous. He hasn't played singles in like months or even years. Oh, really? Yeah, so that'd be a fun.

U.S.O. is fun. I'm not going to lie. Are you going to go? Yes, but God damn, these ticket prices are crazy. It is? Are they gouging? Yeah. They're gouging?

Yeah. You think it's World Cup? Like, on the edge of the World Cup? Like, people are paying crazy money for tickets, so they just bump it? Yep. It's data centers, bro. It's data centers. It's billionaires.

It's capitalism. It's AI. Yeah. That's really what it's private equity. Yeah. Yeah. They're increasing the payout, though. Zohon's got to bump it down.

Yo, man. Everyone's going to go in there and be like, yo, let's cut these down. Yo, freeze the tennis prices. Yeah. Shout out data centers giving Jews a break. Jews were blamed for absolutely everything until data centers came around. Yeah, they're going to figure out a way to tie it.

Yeah, well, who owns the data set? Guys, guys, stop it. Let's get back to the show. Let's get back. Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar rate. matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research.

Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca.com.com. Okay, I need another death story. Another death story. Okay. Because I've seen a few, and I'm sure you probably told them before, but that's okay. I mean, they're all fun. I was thinking of one that I don't think I've told, which is, it's not me, it's my cameraman, but it's a good story. We conducted a huge elephant translocation. So we captured conflict elephants and moved them to a national park. So in southern Mozambique, there was an area where there are 24 elephants that were killing people, the elephants were being killed, the whole thing, like bad conflict, right?

The elephants would come into a village to raid a cornfield. The villagers would throw sticks and rocks. ox at them, the elephants would get in rage, run through the village, flatten a hut, kill a person, that kind of thing. Yeah, it was gnarly. So we performed this big elephant capturing trends, like a huge ordeal, three helicopters, five semi-trucks, 65 ground personnel, you know, darting, capturing. It's crazy, big, big production. And you're coordinating all this with the local government. Everything. This is beneficial to everybody. Exactly, yeah. And it's a big effect. It takes a lot of people. I was just one of the players, not the whole, not the whole picture. But

But anyway, so we went to capture these elephants, and we caught all the elephants except for the bull, like the big main male, right? Huge tusks, big head, like huge, huge animal. And at the very end of the second day, and we catch him finally, right? We dart him from the helicopter. He goes down. We land the helicopter, run in, pull his trunk out so he can breathe, cut the road in, lift him up with the crane onto the semi-truck. It's a huge ordeal. And long story short, we get him onto that flatbed. And then what you have to do is once you crane them onto the flatbed, you then move them to a transport truck, which is basically like you have a conveyor belt that move them into a transport crate, and then you wake them up, you know, with a reversal, drug reversal, and they

stand up, and then you ship them out because you can't keep them asleep. It was like a 16-hour drive. You kind of keep them asleep that whole time. So we finally get this big boy. He's huge, like so big that the, you know, if he moves, it's going to rock the whole truck around, the whole kind of thing. and we put him on the conveyor belt and he moves into the wake-up box we hit him with the drug reversal so he starts to pop up but the back of the semi-truck

so think of the semi-truck with a big container on the back has these two doors that come together like this and those doors are held from not falling out the backs by a little chain with a latch somebody had forgotten to latch one of the chains and my cameraman sitting here

like shooting up at the elephant as he's waking up and we're about to close the doors and the elephant gets up, but he's so big. Like I mentioned, he rocks the semi-truck, and the door goes shooting open, and the chain's not there to catch it. And these doors are 15 feet tall,

six inches thick steel. They weigh as much as a car, each door. And this door comes crashing down, and my cameraman's standing right underneath it, and as the door falls, literally something miraculous, the cable that, as I mentioned, was not latched, hooked on to the little latch,

just out of pure luck, that it caught it for just a half second. Well, my cameraman saw it went shit and moved out the way. Boom. And then this thing hit, and it hit like this far from his foot. Like literally as he jumped out of the way, this whole door and this elephant's rocking around in the truck. This door's coming down. There's people everywhere.

We're scrambling because the elephant's about to come out of the thing. And my cameraman missed getting flattened by an inch. Dead guaranteed. Guaranteed. Yeah, it's like dropping a Honda SUV on top of you. You know what I mean? Like these doors, 20 people can't lift one of these doors. You know, it's like that.

And where were you? Mozambique. Wow. That was crazy. Because we've had other stuff where animals have charged and stuff like that. But that was one of those instances where literally if anything had gone differently, if that little corner latch had not hooked just the way it happened to as it fell, just for that half second to slow it down, my cameraman right in front of me, who's one of my best friends.

I literally spoke at his wedding, would have been flattened right there. in the field, in the middle of the bush, inside of a road in Mozambique. What about when you were jumping through the waterfall? Yeah, that sucked a lot. That was, we were in Thailand, and I was showing off for a bunch of girls, and so I decided to climb up inside of a waterfall

and jump through, like a veil curtain of water instead of jump off the top of it. And, yeah, it turns out the physics of jumping through 10,000 pounds of water. Real dumb. It's not the way you see it in a Marvel movie. I'll tell you that. Yeah.

So push me down onto the rock. and I broke my back. Oh, sure. I landed right here on my spine. I went paralyzed from the neck down. And I was like this. Concussed? No, I wasn't concussed.

I broke a little piece of my spine right here, right below my, I forget the T number, the vertebrae. Yeah. And I was actually drowning because I hit the rocks and then the water pushed me off the rocks and I was sinking, but I couldn't move my hands and legs because of the little break in my spine. Fucking terrifying. So you're aware of it. I'm totally aware.

anything. I felt it. I was like, oh, that hurt, you know, when I hit it. And then I'm just, like, sinking into the water. And the water was clear because it was in this beautiful river in Thailand. And I'm like, swim, swim, underwater. And it's like, not rapids, but, you know, like flowing water. And all of a sudden I saw my girlfriend's hand, who's my wife now, my hand come down and grab me, and she pulled me out because she saw the whole thing happen and then never saw me surface. But the water was clear so she could see me. So she pulled me out. And I was, at that point in time, I was ready to die because I was like, I'm paralyzed from the neck down. It's over.

And they built a stretcher out of bamboo because we were in the jungle, carried me out. There was somebody had a sap phone, I think, because they had a pickup truck waiting for me. And they put me in the bed of the pickup truck. And it was a three or four hour drive, I forget. And somewhere along the drive, I started to be able to wiggle a toe again. And I was like, it was like a sigh of relief, but still panic. But like, I wasn't completely paralyzed. It had just pinched a nerve or something like that.

and shut everything down, and it took a few days for everything to come back. Yeah. Wow. Fuck. But that feeling of like... Slowly slipping into the water with no ability. It couldn't move. And I'm telling, it's the weirdest thing because, like, I can swim, you know? And I'm like, swim. Like swim. And my body's just like completely non-responsive. Yeah. Yeah, that sucks. And how are those days recovering? Like, you go to a hospital, I presume, and you're just laying there, like, am I ever going to move again?

Yeah. So I went to the hospital in Chang. my in Thailand, which is actually a really nice hospital. And, you know, I got x-rays and all that stuff. And I was in the hospital bed for three days, I want to say. And by the end of the second day, I was back to fully moving. You know, it just, I don't really understand it. But basically, the ability to move kind of came back from my feet up. And even by, like, the next day, I could move my hands and eat and drink. But they wanted to keep me very still with the little fracture in my spine and just make sure everything was okay. And then they basically released me and were like, here are your painkillers, good luck.

But I just spent three days in a very boring hospital in Thailand, wishing I hadn't jumped off that stupid waterfall. Whoa. Anything close with one of the major predators that we'd be familiar with? I mean, I did this thing with crocodiles in a cage recently that was nuts. In fact, actually, this was kind of wild. If you check out my Instagram real quick, Mark, you'll see a thing I did with L. So I've been working on this show for the last about a year and a half for Discovery Channel

that I'm not really supposed to talk about, but we're going to talk about it. Yeah. It's, so the show is about, yeah, that one, that little like ATV thing, one over. Yeah, if you pull that up. So the show is about putting yourself in the perspective of predators. So we were building these contraptions. This looks like you're in the perspective of prank.

That's the plan. Yeah, that's the plan. Looks like jackass. Yeah, exactly. It's like a scientific jackass. Yeah. But, yeah, we built these various contraptions like this. And so this is obviously with an average.

and lion and hung meaddle over it and made it look like a zebra. And then I was running this ATV with the lions. I did one with crocodiles. I got in a chain mail suit with piranhas and giant squid. That was wild. Two different locations. Not the same place. So yeah, this last year has been pretty nuts doing some of these experiments.

Why? Well, for ratings, obviously. You know, I mean, look, it's a discovery show. So it has to be loud. The height of what we call white people shit. It really is. And I think there's about eight comments on that that say that. All from my black friends, by the way.

You're an idiot, bro. But yeah, no, it really is. I think this is my version of a midlife crisis. It's, you know, it is a discovery show, so it has to be loud and get attention and all those things. But the idea is human beings that are usually in the perspective of prey don't get to survive. And it's not just about being a human being. It's about what would it be like to be the zebra and the serengeti? What would it be like to be, you know, a wildebeest getting attacked by crocodile?

So we try to build all these contraptions, which on paper, when we put the show together, was like, this will be sick, this will be awesome. And then when you're sitting there in the ATV with the lion trying to eat you, you're like, this was not a good idea. Yeah. It also isn't just white people's shit. There's this guy, caveman wildlife. Oh, I love this guy. I know him. He's great.

He's the best. Yeah, he's awesome. But he's fixing the stereod. He's going out there and just full on just catching just wild crocodiles. He's also super knowledgeable. He always tells you the Latin name of the animal, which I appreciate. You know, he knows the natural history. He's just great.

He's just a great dude. Nah, that's great. That's awesome. That's awesome. He's like the Jackie Robinson of snakes. No, he's awesome. That's awesome. Y'all could have that.

Wow. No, that kid's awesome. These are going to be your kids, Alex. I'm telling you. Dude, go for it, man. I'm curious, when you were saving the elephants, like what is the organization? Like who's sponsoring these trips? Like who calls the group of people that came to rescue these elephants?

Yes, it's good question. So basically what happened was we knew these elephants were conflict elephants. Okay. And I sit on a board of a wildlife trust in Africa that gets calls when there's a lot of different conflict things. And that board called me and said, hey, Forrest, like, there's this herd of elephants that are going to be, euthanized, going to be killed, if we don't step in, we need X dollars in order to save them. Cost of a bullet, 60 cents. Cost of moving an elephant's 100 grand. It's a huge difference, right? And the Mozambique government goes, we don't have, you know, $2.4 million to move elephants, right?

And that wasn't what it cost, but that I'm giving you generals. And so I actually, and this is one of reasons I do this, to answer your question, what you're seeing on screen, I use, and my company uses our production money to fund conservation work. Get the fuck. Yeah. So instead of taking a salary, I mean, we still pay ourselves, but instead of taking a big salary out of my productions, I take the money that I get from Discovery Channel or

Netflix or Animal Plan, or whatever it happens to be, and put it into conservation work. So we funded 60% of the elephant move, I believe it was, and then another 40 came from various other sources. And then there was Mozambique government. There was the board that I sit on, because

Ivan Carter Wildlife Foundation, There's about 10 other organizations that all came together to put this work together. That's great. Yeah. Did a great work with. Oh, thanks. And I love it. And that's the point of doing this stuff, right?

It's not just for me to get a thrill, which I do, but to fund conservation work and bring awareness to the animals and talk about elephant conservation and talk about lions. And, you know, even when you watch these shows, you go, oh, my God, Forest is doing jackass stuff with animals. But if you learn, if you listen, we're actually telling a story of the conservation throughout each show. You know about cone snails? Yeah. These are the most terrifying.

things to me because predators like we're talking about are scary because they look scary. Yeah. But you also know to stay away from like a bull shark. That's right. This is the most terrifying thing. That's right. Cone snails. Very nondescript. Are so scary to me because they don't look like any. It looks like a shell. Yeah. That'll kill you in a couple seconds. Yeah. So what other animals and you can even talk about coaxails for a little. But what other animals are unassuming that you, like an average person be like, oh, this is cool that could kill you in a day? Great question. It is a good question. I mean, so cone snails are a good example, which they've got a little venomous barb that they use for defense, that they can put venom into you and kill you very quickly.

There's probably the blue-ringed octopus you've probably heard of. Tiny little octopus, beautiful. If you look it up, got little blue spots on it, one bite, you're dead in 10 minutes, I want to say. I mean, don't quote me on that, but it's... I'd almost rather not know about these things. I'm like, ignorance is bliss, because now I'm going to be looking for an octopus anytime I go. Luckily, that little thing can kill you in a few minutes. But where does that live?

Only in Australia. So as long as you're not picking up. They develop venom there. So as long as you're not picking up tiny little blue spotted octopus in Australia, you're good. Wait, why do they develop venom there? Something about Australia as a continent doesn't have a lot of big predators. There's no tigers. There's no lions.

There's no. So instead, they're all at biological warfare with each other. So that's why their snakes are more venomous. Their octopus are more venomous. Their jellyfish are more venomous. Instead of having standard defense mechanisms like we think of, like I'm faster and you're stronger. They have biological warfare.

Wow. So instead of a big bad guy that they all have to worry about, they have to worry about each other. That's right. So they have to, oh, that's interesting. And then the geography makes it weird in Australia too because that's why there's so many marsupials, right? Yeah. And like why kangaroos exist there and only there. Yes, so there's this

amazing thing called the Wallace. I was going to ask you about that. There you go, go, go, go. Yeah, we have a YouTube video coming out on it either this week or next week on my YouTube channel, by the way, because I find this so fascinating. So the Wallace line is this invisible line that nobody understands. Get the map up with the Wallace line. Yeah. So it's this invisible line that nobody, we sort of understand it, but you don't really understand because in some places, two islands are only six or ten or twelve miles apart, and yet there's this line. And animals have never

crossed this line in the sense of, if you're looking at this map, on the left side where you see Southeast Asia and Borneo and Sumatra, you have all the animals that. You have all the animals that that we think of as animals. And when I say that, I mean we have tigers and we have bears and we have deer and we have all these normal things. And on the right side of the line where you see New Guinea and the Sundar Islands and Timor,

you have all these marsupials and there's no tigers and there's no canines and there's no cats. And there are birds that exist on that left side of the line where you see Java by lesser Timor and that don't exist six miles away on the other side. And we've never really. really understood why until very, very recently, when we understand that basically the land masses

moved like this, if that makes sense? So instead of the landmass, splitting like this and being like, oh, all these animals just split, they moved like this and came all the way around. So they're ecologically distinct. So they're so diverse. So they couldn't be further apart. That's right. And over millions of years, they were brought back together, even though they're only six miles apart. Oh, what an unbelievable. Because that is crazy, especially you look down by Java. Six miles. It's like six or 12 miles at one of those islands. Completely distinct biology in those areas. And do they still not cross to this day, or are they now crossing because of proximity?

So, fascinatingly, they're still not crossing outside of a few birds and things, because where the Wallace line is, there's incredibly deep sea trench. And you can see it right there. And you see, this is a very good map because you see rhinos and elephants on one side and dingoes and kangaroos and koalas on the other. And it's literally just like that. And so there's a very deep trench that runs through there. and the currents absolutely rip through there. So usually when animals go to colonize a new area, whether they're drifting across on some bamboo

or they're swimming that gap, because tigers can swim six miles, they just swim across and then they colonize a new area. But because of this deep, deep water environment and these massive currents, nothing can make it across without drowning. So they're still not mixing. And it's because of the geography

and because of the way things split and they came together that it's created this sort of perfect storm where to us an imaginary line exists. Imagine being an explorer or a sailor who's come all the way from England and gone all through Asia, through Southeast Asia and India and everything, and you've seen rhinos and elephants the whole way

and you get to the edge of that and you're like rhinos and elephants, then you just paddle your little boat across Six miles and you're like, you're like, New Planet, what are these things? Wow. Yeah.

It's amazing. The loss line is so interesting. And when did they figure this out about how the plates moved? I don't know. It's a good question. It's probably in my video that I don't remember stating. But I know the scientist who did it was, I believe it was David Wallace, who's the one who wrote, who figured it out.

I just don't remember the date. Yeah. Unbelievable. Yeah. It's really cool. Okay. Wait, any other little animals that you wouldn't suspect that can kill you? Blue Ring octopus is fire.

It's cool, right? I mean box jellyfish? Box jelly, stonefish. Do you know what they are? What's that? Yeah, look up a stonefish. So it's a fish that looks like a rock. So it's perfect for stepping on.

And highly, yeah, that guy right there. highly, highly toxic venom in their spines. And they love to sit in tide pools in shallow areas where people like to play. What a creepy looking thing. Look at that guy. Yeah. I'm not going in the water. So you step on one of these fines.

This is why we don't swim. I mean, there's treatments and things, but yeah, they have highly toxic, highly venomous spines. Yeah. Really painful. Whoa. Yeah. I mean, growing up in Florida, we were always scared of amoebas. Yeah.

Amoebas are like the worst. Like it's like crawl up your nose. That's so funny. Because as a kid, it's like, my mom would tell me about the amoebas. Like, it'd be a hot day. She'd be like, fucking with me. No, no, she's really real. I don't really know all the science behind it.

I'm sure you could explain better. But like, the way that the lore works is like, it's a tiny little, like, basically single-cell organism you can think of. And if you jump into, like, still water, like a pond in the heat of summer, they can go up your nose and kill you in like three days and you have no symptoms. You just die. And there's no cure for it either. Right. Yeah. And every year, there's like, one kid in Florida that dies of an amoeba.

So that's an important point, though. It's very, very rare. It doesn't happen often. But in certain stagnant bodies of water where there's not enough water flow and stuff, you get these rare brain-eating amoebas and there's no cure for it. So if you happen to snort that water by mistake, you know, because your nasal pastures are connected to your brain, if you happen to get water in your nose, by mistake, these brain-eating amoevas that look like that little splat of nothing there can get into your brain and there's nothing you can do about it. But it's incredibly rare, to be clear. I think it's good that parents are telling their kids to be careful and not go in disgusting water, but it is very, very rare. Yeah.

Yeah. There was a guy I saw in one of your videos, I think it was at the Embani Reserve or whatever. What is it called again? The Embani? Dude, Ventara. It's unreal. We can talk about that all that. I want to talk about that for sure.

But he's a guy that I've seen with a pack of lions, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, Dean. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Could someone with that type of expertise, with lions, introduce himself to a new pride and develop that relationship? Or is that something you can only develop with like little, little, little ones? And then... So there's two guys that do that. Dean Schneider is the one that you're thinking of. And he's hand-raised these lions and they have accepted him very much so as a member of the pride.

Got it. And Dean, who's a very close friend, so I don't want this to come off the wrong way. I don't care who you are. I don't care if you're Dean. I don't care who you are. You cannot just go make friends with a new pride of lions. It doesn't happen, you know, because you're a prey species. And they're a predator, you know? And what Dean has done is he's made himself a member of their pride by never presenting himself as a prey species. And these are not wild lions.

They live in a semi-wild environment, a big open enclosure, but he's never been seen as prey. He's the guy who brings them food, but he's not on the menu item. But he is distinct. Like, their relationship with him is distinct from other humans. 100%. If I tried to walk in there, they'd kill me in two seconds. So they become wild lions once you're there. Yes, absolutely.

So regardless of the environment they're in, they still see you as prey, but they don't see him as prey. That's right. And what is that? Is that smell? Is that visual familiarity? It is psychological conditioning. He has taught them over time, and he's done that by, like, here he is, they're eating a zebra in this video, right? Or a second ago they were.

And he still taught them, you cannot hurt me. And he's done that by probably positive and negative reinforcement. Got it. Meaning he'll smack one on the nose, not going to hurt it. But be like, no. Like, you know, pray doesn't do that. Pray doesn't stand up to you. Pray doesn't present themselves as,

don't come at me or I'm going to come back at you. That's not what pray does. Pray goes, don't hurt me. Right. So he's used his body language and his ability to understand their body language to assimilate. Right. He couldn't go walk up to wild pride of lions and try this. They'd kill him.

And I couldn't go to his lions and try this. Even if I did that body language. They'd probably still kill them. But I've seen you with like panthers at that reserve where like you felt very comfortable holding them, touching them. Are these domestic, can you domesticate a fucking panther? No, so that video of me swimming with the jaguars and- Yeah, jaguar. That's the thing, right?

Yeah, it depends on the vernacular. Yeah, it's all fine. But what you don't see and what I've never told anybody is five minutes after that video, the black one turned on us and charged me. And if I had, if I had turned and run instead of going, hey, it would have. killed me. For sure, like that. Five minutes after that video was done. It just snapped. Like, it just changed its entire modality. It didn't know me. So those were young jaguars, to be clear. My friend Tiago hand raised them. So they were used to people similar to Dean, but they were much younger and younger animals don't have that disposition as much. They're only two-year-old

jaguars. And he said, let's try this. If the jaguars give us biological cues, they don't want it, they don't want to come in the water, they don't like you, we're not doing it. I said, of course. I'm not going to force anything to do anything. So we jumped in the water. Jaguars came to Tiago, my buddy in the video, who hand raised them, then said, oh, we liked this guy and came over to meet. We swam with them for 10 minutes. It was amazing experience.

It's a really good place. Not a Tiger King place. World's leading biologists in Jaguars. Really, really tremendous place. And then we're like, okay, the Jaguars are starting to be a little standoffish. Let's get out. What are the cues for that? Just the ears are starting to pin back a little bit.

So he's clocking these things. 100%. Everything's. watching the whisker movement, the tail flicks, the ears. Got it. The full body, just like you have a dog and you're like, 100%. You know, that dog's hungry. That dog's sleepy.

That dog doesn't want to be pet right now. You know your dog. I don't know your dog, but you know your dog. And so, yeah, he goes, look, these jaguars are starting to have enough. And I was like, let's get out of here. We get out of the water. I'm on the riverbank about to pick up my shoes. I wasn't going to tie my shoe lace and make myself small nothing,

just about to pick up my shoes and leave. Because I still have more knowledge than your average person about their body language. so I know not to turn my back on them, not to crouch down, tie my shoe laces, nothing. I'm just about to pick up my shoes. This one just goes, and I heard it coming, so I turned and went, ah! You know, and the Jaguar stopped in its tracks

and turned and ran around around. If I had just jumped like that, or ran out of instinct, it would have nailed me, for sure. Bro. I mean, why? And that's not a wild cat. Here's an image of it, right? Yeah, I think the last video I posted on Instagram

is a video of us swimming with them. I mean, but that knee-jerk instinct most human beings will not have. They will have. No, most, I think your instinct to turn around, get big, and yell at this Jaguar as it's approaching you ferociously. It's a learned instinct. Yeah. Yes. And you have to practice it.

And in that moment, were you cognizant of the decision, or was it so reflexive for you that that's just how you operate with the animals? It was reflexive because the whole time going into it, I told myself, don't act like prey. Don't ever, no matter what happens. Like in this frame, if he had just dug my claws in, if I'd gone, stop, stop, stop, he would have gone worse. If I gone, hey, you know, he probably would have stopped. So I'm telling myself this. The whole time, if I'm having fun, I'm thinking about how, how am I conducting myself. This is crazy, rough. But that's what animal people do. You learn to speak animals to the best of your ability. But some animals understand human better than others, you know. Like, we swam with the Gator Boy Chris.

Oh, yeah. Shout out of Gary Boy, Chris. I love Chris Gillette. Yeah. He's one of my close friends. I love Chris. He was great. We went down to South Florida and we swam around with some gators. Yeah.

Unsettling. And he speaks alligator. He does. But I don't trust the alligators are the same. Like, like, Jaguar, I can be like, yeah, that's like my cat. Like I can understand when they're whiskers. Like a gator, that's a dinosaur. Yeah.

It is. And their brains are wired differently. So it's like, I don't really trust a gator to be cool. But the same thing. I agree with you, by the way. It's Steve Irwin who said You know, crocodiles are easy They always want to kill you

People are harder because they pretend to be your friend first You know what I mean? And that's it, dude Because every animal And every individual animal Of that species is different You can't trust people You know what I mean?

Like you can't go to a bar Be like, I trust every guy in here Doesn't mean one guy isn't going to stab you And take your wallet when you leave the bar That's an individual These Jaguars are the same That golden colored one I felt like

And I'm probably wrong I could have stuck my finger in its butt and it wouldn't have done anything. That black one there, this is going to come out wrong, here we go again. But that black jaguar? Violent, right?

Yeah, yeah. Wow. Yeah, it had dad issues. But it, no, it had... I was like a jaguar with the hard arms. It had some kind of like a... You could see it switch could flip, you know? Yeah.

Yeah. And so it's just, it's individuals. And they're the same species raised the same way, you know? And so it just, That one had like a tick to it and the other one didn't. You know, so not just the species, because I agree with you on the gators. The gators will eat you at the first chance they get, no matter what, but the individuals of that species. Can you talk to, can you?

Sorry, bro. Can you take this into the Amazon for a second? Sure. Okay. Can you first explain why the Amazon is so sensational? Like there's a lot of talk about the Amazon rainforests and it's so big, whatever. But I don't think, at least definitely I don't, but I think many people don't understand why it's distinct from other forests, other places. Like, what is so special about the Amazon?

Well, the main thing is it's the lungs of our entire planet. The Amazon jungle is the largest next to the ocean CO2 sequestering body on Earth. So it takes in carbon dioxide and spits out oxygen, which makes it the lungs of the entire planet of Earth. So that huge mass of trees that we just think of as wild place is the reason we're sitting here breathing comfortably right now, or at least one of the top reasons. And so that's the most important thing about that, right? And then if you understand that the Amazon is shrinking at a very vast rate, even though we still look at it like this and go, wow, there's a lot of Amazon, it's getting shrunk from the outside in. You might be able to find like a map of the Amazon over the last 20 years or something. And you see how the roads are cutting through it and the developments shrinking and stuff.

So the most important message I want to say is that the Amazon is incredibly important. Outside of that, from an exciting and discovery and entertainment and all those other things standpoint, it's just incredible. It's hugely diverse. People like to think of the Amazon or the Arctic or the Sahara as one thing. The difference between the Ecuadorian Amazon and the Brazilian Amazon or Surinam or Guyana or Venezuela, any of these places, completely different. Well, we're talking about the Amazon, and we're talking about the untouched parts of the Amazon. I'm not saying there aren't like some, maybe some roads, but like really untouched. The size of it is equivalent to the entire United States?

I believe so. I believe that's about right. So you're telling me there's an untouched forest that exists on planet Earth, the size of the United States, more or less. No. And it's good that you bring that up because the Amazon is the size of the United States. There are cities in the Amazon. Like there's Manow, which is a big city in Brazil that has four or five million people in it. At one point in time, it was the richest city in the world because the rubber trade.

Yeah. But there are chunks of the Amazon that are probably the size of New England, you know, not the size of the United States. I'm making this up. But there are chunks of the Amazon that are the size of U.S. states that are untouched. Completely untouched. Yeah. As far as we know, there's probably native tribes and uncontacted people and stuff. And then there are probably chunks that people themselves have never been at.

Holy shit. What do you think is the most misunderstood part about the Amazon? I think it's that it's this sort of wild, expansive, impenetrable thing. You know, we think of the Amazon like that. That's kind of what I think about it, yeah. But it's not. And that's what's sad is like we could cut down the Amazon if we wanted to. We could build highways through the Amazon if we wanted to.

We could get to every corner of the Amazon if we wanted to. We haven't because we haven't needed to because it's the size of the United States and we can go from the outside in. We haven't had to go to the center of it. But it's by no means this thing that we can never get through or never destroy or never explore. It's very obtainable to humans with our technology if we want to. My perspective on the Amazon is that it's incredibly difficult to live and survive and thrive.

Is that completely wrong? You know, there are better people to answer this question than me, but it is more difficult than some of the tropical places we talked about, beach-type places, but certainly not easy. And mostly because of the parasitic load, you know, there's a lot of parasites there. There's a lot of water amoebas, not the kind of eat your brain, but stomach ones and things like that. And then in a lot of places in the Amazon, food is scarce. You think food is abundant in the jungle.

It's not. And a lot of places in the Amazon, food is quite scarce. If you can't kill a river turtle, you're not going to eat. You know? Yeah, it's not like there's fruit trees growing everywhere. You know, like there are a lot of places in the Amazon where you, if you're living as an on-contacted tribe, you have to hunt to survive and you have to be successful. And hunting in a jungle is much harder than hunting in certain other ecosystems. Why is that? Anywhere where you have high species diversity, meaning a lot of different types of animals, you have lower abundance of each animal. So here in North America, you got shoot a deer. We got tons of deer. We don't have a million different kinds of deer. We have four. kinds of deer, right? Not really, but basically. So there's a lot of those four kinds. When you have 10,000 species or 10 million, like in the Amazon, there's only small populations of each of those because there's so many different kinds. So anytime species diversity goes way up, abundance

goes down. So that makes hunting harder because in the Amazon, you don't have 100 kinds of deer. You have five, I'm making, you don't actually, but you have, say, 50 kinds of things that you can eat, but each kind of thing that you can eat has small populations instead of four kinds of things that you can eat that have huge populations. So you learn like tracking patterns and all of a sudden it's gone and then you have to find another way to hunt or another. Or it's just hard to find because there's not that many of them. Naturally, not because of humans interfering. People often think like all wildlife is the same, right? Like it is a sense of like there's 10,000 lions, there's 10,000 tigers, there's 10,000 deer. It's not like that at all. You know, the predator prey equation balances

and moves, populations. And in the Amazon, you have a lot of different kinds of things. So you have smaller amounts, regardless of human imprint, of those things. And there's only so many of those things you can eat, right? The Amazon's probably home to the highest bug diversity in the world. Well, every ecological niche that a bug takes, meaning every leaf cutter bug, means there's no rabbit that takes that place. And a rabbit's a great human food source.

Does that make sense? So, like, you can't eat the bug, but you can't eat the rabbit. You go to England, there's rabbits everywhere. They don't have bugs. You go, at the Amazon, there's bugs everywhere. They don't have rabbits. So when you have that kind of makeup of species, there's not a lot that we can eat. So then how was it so that there were these flourishing societies that existed throughout the Amazon?

And now they've all gone away to disease or to whatever else happened. But like at one point in time, I think I was reading that like there were millions and millions of people living throughout the Amazon with like sophisticated roadway structures and pyramids. and they've done those LIDAR scans to show these things. So if there isn't the diverse, well, there is tons of diversity of the things that you can consume, but not much of it, how could they thrive in that environment? Well, what we have been learning, I believe, is that a lot of the Amazon and a lot of the Amazonian people and societies that you just mentioned were actually horticulturists. They were growing things. Oh, so interesting.

Yes, they were farming. And there's even a theory out there. I forget his name. The guy went on Joe Rogan. I think he's a member of the Explorers Club right here in New York, by the way. Which is great if you guys haven't been. Are you a member? I am, yeah.

It's awesome. If you guys ever want to go, definitely go check it out. There's a theory of one of these pretty famous scientists in the Amazon. I'm blanking on his name right now. It does the LiDAR scans and everything that a lot of the Amazon was planted. He actually believes that a large chunk of the Amazon, whether was it inadvertently or inadvertently, was cultivated to have more food. Like they found fruit trees, not fruit like you or I are thinking, not a plum tree, but like, oh, here's this weird little seed, nothing that we can. It's not indigenous to the Amazon at all. Or it was from one part of the Amazon, but they spread it as much as

possible. So there was more food availability. Is it Charles Clement? That sounds right. Yeah, that sounds right. But yeah, so there are now, and there's more, you know, we used to think that there were no, no longstanding societies or cultures in the Amazon. There was no food availability, really, and that's why there was no population. And now we're starting to learn there was a decent population. And there's actually a lot more food availability, potentially because people made that way. Wow. Yeah. He associated with the strong version of the idea that much of the Amazon rainforest we see is not pristine wilderness, but a landscape heavily engineered by indigenous people. Yeah. And argues that pre-Columbian Amazonians deliberately encourage and planted useful trees,

fruit, nut, and palm species. Yeah. Isn't that interesting? Wow. There's a really interesting kid, and I definitely won't remember his name, who's a member of the Explorers Club, that's where I met him, who is trying to bring all of these various fruits, nuts, and seeds from the Amazon into, like, mainstream fruit markets and things. Because if you ever go to the Amazon, they'll hand you this orange thing like this that you've never seen or heard of before. And it's got some crazy name. And you eat it and you're like, this is better. This is like a mango meets an apple, you know, or this is a kiwi mixed with a grape or I'm just making it up. But, you know, these fruits that you've never heard of or seen of. And they're so delicious, but they only exist in the Amazon. So there's this guy who's trying to

bring these fruits and like make them more mainstream and bring them into the U.S. That's kind of the story with psychedelic mushrooms. Like there was, like it was kind of unknown. to Americans for like basically up until like the 50s. Like there were stories of like Jesuit priests that talked about these like psychedelic things, but they didn't really know exactly what it was and it was kind of contained to like certain parts of Mexico. And then Maria Sabina was a woman that like Harvard researchers and like potentially the US government like found and got in touch with that preserved like the historical like mushroom

psilocybin culture. Oh wow. And then introduced it to like the academic world in America that then populated throughout like the hippie movement. But it was the mushrooms themselves were still growing and just nobody was aware of the compound. Yeah, exactly. It was like specific like kind of shaman sort of medicine women in Central America that were aware of like what they were, where they grew and like how to actually cultivate them to my understanding. Dude, I just saw this thing on my podcast recently. One of the guys brought it up of this guy taking Toad Venom.

Oh, gum. I've ever seen this? I'm not sure what it's called. Oh, as a drug. As a drug. He's down by a creek. He's down by a a river and he ingests this toad venom. And he just, he rolls into the river and he's screaming. And it's, this is a thing that exists in nature that's coming off of frogs in the Sonoran desert. It's unbelievable. Yeah. Some of these things are so potent. Cambo Toad Venom. That sounds right. I think it's like an initiation right for like some tribes. Yeah, this is Mike Corey right here. The legend. Do you know him fearless and far? I don't. He's awesome. What does he do? He tries all these things. He basically is just an explorer adventure that like documents his travels. around the world.

Oh, cool. But I need to get more, like, wired into those people. I'm so, like, focused, singularly focused on the wildlife stuff that I can. Look at that guy's lips. I'm so, like, singularly focused on the wildlife stuff. I miss out on meeting a lot of these really interesting people. But, like, I'm pretty sure it's the poison dart that, like, they would make weapons out of. Yeah.

In the right amounts, it basically puts you into, like, a near-death state where you hallucinate, like, crazy. And release DMT? I think so, yeah. And I think, like, West African, there's some, specific West African tribes, they do it as like an initiation right, I think. I'm, I believe that. If someone can fact-checked that. If only someone out of a computer. I've seen when I've been in the Amazon where they catch the poison darfrogs and they rub their arrows on them and then they shoot things out of the trees and the animals drop dead.

So it's more about darting the animal with the poison and it's about killing it with the arrow. Right. All right, let's take a break for a second. We're all trying to feel healthy, right? Drinking more water, getting steps in, taking our vitamins, but here's what most people miss. Your liver health. It affects everything. Your energy. skin, even your metabolism, it's time we show it some love. That's where dose comes in. It's a clinically backed liver supplement, but not a pill. It's a two-ounce daily shot that tastes like fresh orange juice, zero sugar, zero junk, zero calories. Your liver handles 500 plus functions a day. It's your body's filter. And when it's overworked, you feel sluggish, tired off. Dose helps

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FDA? Yeah, one of them. They should probably look into that. But, yo, Neuro, whatever you guys put in the energy and focus sour berries, the sourberry energy and focus. It's just caffeine and altheon. And illegal. This guy, something illegal in here. So shout out you. You guys are absolutely crushing it. I heard they got into Costco. Okay, so you're going to have all the moms hopped up on sourberry neuro. Okay? Costco. These are illegal. Okay? There's definitely something illegal in these. You're going to have a lot of moms walking around at Costco, and if you're giving these out with the ladies with the aprons on their head,

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flavored cocaine in a pill that we can say, hell over the counter. God bless you all. I love you at Nuro. You guys are the best. Let's get back to the show. Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help

create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcf walk.ca. Have you ever met any of the, I guess they're not uncontacted tribes, but any of these tribes, have you ever spent time with them? I spent time with some very interesting tribes, including some that have never seen white people before, but not like totally uncontacted. Like even, you know, we went to a place called Ramri Island in Myanmar that I don't think there have been any, any European. Europeans there since World War II. And all the kids, when I say kids, I mean like 16 and down, would run out and like touch our hair and touch our skin and stuff because they'd never seen a European person. And then, yeah, I guess that's probably the most remote.

But, you know, it's interesting. Even like I went to a village in Columbia that had never seen European people in the Amazon and Columbia. And they still had cell phones, you know. Like they didn't have service, but they, somebody had brought them cell phones and things. and they were playing snake or whatever on them, but they've never seen a European person in person. So I've never been with those tribes that are so remote that they didn't know we existed kind of thing.

But yeah, that's the modern world though, isn't it? Are there any that are really uncontacted? People talk about the North Sentinelese, but are there any that we have no idea about? In the Amazon, yeah. And I think also in like Deep New Guinea and Papua New Guinea, there are small tribal communities that are just completely isolated from the rest of the world.

Wow. Yeah. I mean, if you think New Guinea is a good example, there's 800 languages spoken in New Guinea. Why would you have 800 languages? Because you don't get along. Do you know what I mean? You formulate your own language and you keep it to yourselves because you're a tribal culture that goes to war with all the other cultures. Can you bring up New Guinea on a map?

Like, how big can New Guinea be? Oh, it's huge. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. Type in Papua New Guinea on the map. I mean, it's that whole giant island above Australia there where those red dots are. Oh, wow.

Yeah, yeah. It's a really big landmark. 800. 800 languages spoken there, yeah. Wow. Wow. That's a lot of languages. Yeah.

But that's because the environment is very difficult to navigate, and they're culturally are a very warring society and people. So you keep to yourself, you speak your own language, and if you encounter another tribe, you kill them. Immediately. You know, more or less, I mean, that's a oversimplification, but yeah. Have you looked in a cargo cults? Cargo cults?

Yeah. What's that? It's like a weird, like, post-World War II. It's a very specific thing that happened in one place. I don't remember the exact island. But it was a rose in Melanesia during the 19th the 20th centuries where basically World War II

ships would come by and they like docked. So like American soldiers like came or maybe it was British soldiers. They came to like around Oceana. And there were these sort of like uncontacted tribes that had never really seen ships or planes or anything. And they just kind of showed up. They were like, hey, we're going to use this as like a landing strip to like bring in import, export,

and we'll give you guys like some food and we'll just call it even, right? And they kind of brokered this deal and these people were like, okay, we don't know what's going on. And then they left. And then the people sort of natively built like a religion around

these people coming over being like, okay, they showed up. Yeah. And there was like a prophecy that existed on the island from like their own indigenous religion. Uh-huh. And then this kind of like fit the religion. So like different priests were like,

no, this is because we were doing things. And so then as a result, They developed like a lore around it. I feel like a TikTok video on this. And they now sort of prey to those people, right? Are they making pretend satellites? Yeah. And they were like, they're sort of reenacting the technology that they saw as a way to try to bring back.

Oh, look that fake plane. And the grass plane. Top right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And so like they would kind of make this stuff based off the technology that they saw trying to understand. And they sort of created like this cult of like John. from and they think the name comes from this guy being like yeah i'm john from england yeah like oh it's

john from yeah and so they built like sort of this like ideology it's not as simple as like indigenous people see planes and they're like wow it's god like that's an oversimplification yeah but they develop this philosophy like okay if we do certain marching rituals they're going to come back with another ship and bring us more technology wow yeah it's south pacific islands is that right i think i'd have to double check exactly where but yeah yeah yeah i'd have to double check exactly where. Yeah, it's really interesting. It's wild. And if you get from their perspective, you're like, yeah, it makes complete sense.

Yeah, these people come in with all these things. They leave them here and you never see them again. You're like, please come back. Yeah. Like, we're going to, that fits our lore, like, we're going to pay tribute to it. Yeah, exactly. Especially with all these cool things, right? Like, they'd probably never seen metal before. Yeah. And metal's useful for so many things. Yeah. Yeah. I met a guy named Ben Lamb that you know.

Yeah, colossal. Yeah. And you work with them if I'm not a mistake? Yeah, I'm on their board. Yeah. And I met a guy. advisor's board. With this conference, we were talking about what Colossal is doing, and he actually showed us at the conference the woolly mammoth mice. Yeah, the woolly mice, which was crazy. Pretty wild, right? Big furry mice, yeah. And it is like a very interesting concept, which is, and there's more to the business that exists for this, but like, is it easier to maintain the 12 white rhinos that we have, or is it easier to breed thousands more into existence? And, and

And they actually have this technology, they're developing this technology. Right. And I'm sure that there's going to be conversations around like, well, is it actually a white rhino or is it just a genetically modified regular rhino to be that? Right. Which, one, I'm curious what, or maybe you could describe better what exactly. No, I think you summed it up pretty well. But, you know, so Colossel tries to re-engineer extinct animals to fill holes in the ecosystem.

Because as we talked about with the beavers, once you remove something, the system changes. And, you know, I think the argument that you see, and even I get this as somebody who sits on their advisors board, it's like, how can you support this thing? You know, they're making genetic freaks and these resources should be going back into other conservation. Why not do both? Do you know what I mean? Like, why not? That's not what they do. Colossil does do some conservation work, some very nice conservation work that I'm proud to say I've had a light, light hand in. But they also do this amazing genetic engineering thing. And the point is, if it looks like a mammoth, walks like a mammoth, talks like a mammoth, is it a mammoth? Yeah. I don't really know the answer. I'm not a geneticist. But if it fills the same roles as a mammoth, meaning it engineers the ecosystem like our beaver we were talking about, then it is a mammoth. Because that's the important thing is keeping the system healthy. Yeah.

Right? And that's what they're trying to do. Yeah. They've had some success with the dire wolf and building woolly mice and they've announced all these various animals that they're working on. I think it's great. Is it going to come without flaws? Of course not. There's going to be problems. There's going to be missteps. There's going to be everything. But so does every technology. I mean, I think it's brilliant. I mean, the woolly mammoth mouse thing I think is maybe is a bad example of what they're trying to do. Like it's a fun pop example of look what we could do. But in terms of reintroducing an existing species, like if it costs $100 million a year to conserve 14 animals or whatever, as I'm using round number. But in terms of reintroducing an existing species, like if it costs $100 million a year to conserve 14 animals or whatever is, I'm using round number. Yeah. But for $20 million, they could make a thousand more of them. Isn't that a better act of conservation for those animals? And also, like I said before, do both. Yeah, yeah. On the flip side of that coin, we briefly touched on it, is Ventara. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And not Ambani. Ambani is the Indian billionaire family. That's right. And they built, I don't even want to call it a zoo, man. It's not. It's not. It's nothing like it in the world. Describe the scale of this thing.

Yeah, so first of all, Anadabani himself, which is one of the sons, who's my very close friend, has built this thing himself. And we've only become friends over our mutual dork out nerdness over animals because we both just love animals. And this is a guy who's got unlimited resources financially. And he said, I want to commit to trying to save the world's animals. And the reason I bring it up when you talk about colossal is it's the other side of that coin. Right. He said, I don't care if it costs $100 million a year to save those four rhinos. I will.

And it's amazing to see both at play, right? And so he has built in Jamnagar, India, which is where these aerial photos are, this place called Ventara, that is this unbelievable wildlife rescue facility. You've got to describe the scale of this thing. The stat is it's something like 13 times the size of Central Park or something like that. I mean, it's unbelievable. They've rescued over a million animals in total, not just in Ventara, but they do stuff outside all around the planet. now. And he's such a humble guy. He like doesn't really make a big thing out of it. You know, this is me making a big thing out of it. But the facility itself is unlike anything you've ever seen.

I mean, they give, they give elephants oil massages. And they have Barack, oh, this is a true story, Barack Obama's personal chef is now their head elephant chef. He's just there mixing fruit salads for these elephants, changing it up so that they don't get bored and making new concoctions. And the list goes on and on and on. They build the world's only hydrate. therapy chambers for elephants. They have saunas. They have spas. This guy, like Ana, he'll get a call that, and this is a true story because I was there for it, he'll get a call, hey, this elephant, this is actually really powerful stuff. These elephants saw these chains because they come from a life of abuse, logging elephants and circus performers and stuff. And I took them out for a walk in the forest, threw the chains down, and the elephant stopped. And you see their body language change? See how they get nervous. And they're weird. And then they start picking them up and throwing them and trumpeting. Because they never want to be in those chains ever again. It's powerful stuff, man. But this guy with his resources and his care for animals, he'll get a call.

Hey, this elephant has a kidney stone and we don't have a probe long enough to get there. It'll cost us $2 million to build one, but we can get it done in a week and he'll go build it to save an elephant. Not an endangered one, nothing. Just like they have a never say no policy, whatever they can do to rescue it because the guy's got unlimited resource. It's a beautiful thing. Wow. Yeah. On the elephant thing, not to divert too much.

No, no, you're good. But are you familiar with elephant funerals? Yeah, where they all come together and they mourn, yeah. Have you seen this? I've seen it. Can you tell me about that? So many more animals do it than you think, too. Yeah, so basically an elephant funeral, so elephants are a matriarchal society. They're run by a big female, right?

She's the boss of the group. Different for different species, but we'll generalize here. To find boss. Like, she is the head of the household. So she's the one who all the other elephants listen to, and respect, all the other females, do what the matriarch says. If she says it's time to leave this watering hole and go look for food, they all leave and go look for food. If she says everybody wait here, you know, the babies are, the babies, there's some danger.

All the elephants stand in a circle and guard the babies. And the big, like, bull males are paying attention as well. Absolutely. Oh, yeah. They'll come and go sometimes. Again, depends on the elephants, but they'll come and go. But the matriarch, the big female, she's the boss. Yeah.

And the bulls will come in and out of the herd and things. like that. She runs, she's the CEO. And so an elephant funeral, I often say this and I have nothing to support this because it's really just a theory. I believe based on their brain size and what I've witnessed myself, that elephants have an EQ, an emotional intelligence

way greater than anything you or I or any human has. I believe they feel much greater. Their happiness are much happier and their sads are much sadder than we feel. They can die of a broken heart. If your wife dies, you don't die of a broken heart. You can get sick, whatever, but they can literally die of a broken heart.

And so that's from their emotional intelligence. So elephants, and I was saying, many other animals do this than we give credit for, they will have a funeral. So here you've seen an elephant die, and these other elephants, through the matriarch, most likely, have come in to mourn this elephant. They'll stop eating for several days. They'll spend four or five days sleeping around the carcass of the dead one

to sort of pay tribute to it as it leaves. we don't understand what they're doing societally, but there is some sort of elephant society where they're giving it a funeral. That's amazing. It's really tragic to see videos, like the mom basically carrying, like, her dead calf around like a savannah for days at a time.

Just kind of like holding on to it, like... Come back. Like in pain, it seems like. And it is one heartbreaking to see like sort of the natural progression of death, but then when you put like the poaching element on top of it, Yeah, you're like, I mean, what the fuck are we doing? It's hard.

It's really heavy stuff. Our ability to communicate with elephants, would you say it's like on the level of a dog? Yeah, I would say it's about right. Got it. Just like you can have a dog at home and you can tell when he's hungry, you can tell when he's sad, you can tell when he's depressed, you can see when he gets sick. There are people that spend their lives with elephants. In India, it's called a Mahout, blah, blah, blah, that can read those same body cues and languages. from an elephant. And will they take commands? Yeah, absolutely. You can make an elephant sit,

you can make it stay, you can make it stand. Well, they communicate things to the Mahoot. Would they say, not say, well, but they will show that they're hungry. Will they show that they want something? Absolutely. Absolutely. In a different way to your dog, you know, my dog jumps up on my leg when it wants breakfast. The elephant will shake his head a certain way or move his trunk and put it on his shoulder or whatever it happens to be. There's that video, I'm sure you've seen it of like there's an elephant, I think cub, are they called cubs? Coth. Coth. calf. I'm a calf that's like stuck in like a ravine

or something. I forgot exactly what it was. And the video makes it look like the mom comes and grabs some humans to get the baby out. Now, how realistic is that scenario? I think in like a semi-captive environment where like in India where they use the elephants as

vehicles and things like that, absolutely. Could easily go and get a human. If it was a wild elephant, it would never just come into town and get people to help. Obviously. Yeah. But a semi-captive one would be like, hey, you guys are the helpers, can you do this? Totally. And if this is the one you're talking about where the mom's trapped and the baby goes. Oh, maybe that's it.

Okay, so two things. Just pause it for one second, if you don't mind. So that is an Indian elephant or Asian elephant. Yeah. So Asian elephants and humans have a very different relationship to African elephants and humans. Asian elephants and humans live side by side. They work side by side. People ride these elephants.

They use them for logging. They use them for begging. All kinds of things. They use them for agriculture. So these elephants in the daytime are probably kept and looked after by people. When I say kept, they might have a chain on them. It might be terrible. It might be somewhat free roaming.

That's a gray area. But they're kept by people and fed by people. And then they'll go out and roam and go into the jungle, walk around the village and come back, kind of like a village dog. Not you or my dog that lives in our house and never does anything on its own, but like a village dog. Yeah. Sleeps in the hut at night and then it goes out into the village during the day. The elephants do something very similar. in these situations.

So here, with the mom being trapped in mud or whatever the scenario is, it's completely believable to me that that mom gave birth to that cough that we saw in the video in this community. The community knows the cough, the cough knows the people. The mom gets stuck.

The baby goes wondering, and people go, there's something wrong with that baby. It's distressed. It didn't go and say, hey, come with me. It's just a distressed, lost-looking baby that runs back to mom,

and then the people go, we got to get the mom out. Yeah, yeah. It's so hard to believe. these videos sometimes, because I've gotten got by people hodgepaging videos of animals. Have you seen these? I'm an expert, quote-unquote, and I get God all the time. I'll look at AI ones and go that. Dude, it's crazy.

But it's like, look at this little, like, baby cat that we found. And then, like, it actually wasn't a cat. It was a... Panther. Yeah, panther. And then, like, but it's, like, five different animals that, like, they put into, like, one narrative. And then it's playing drums at the end. And you're, like, something's not right here. But we do have this obsession with communicating with animals, right? Like, obviously, you've dedicated a portion of your life to this. But we love these videos where, I don't know if you saw that one where what's the name of the, it's like a white small whale that exists in the Arctic. Beluga?

Yeah, the beluga is like somebody's throwing a rugby ball off of God. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've seen that one. Is that real or is that? Yeah, that's real. And like, I think for whatever reason we deeply wish that we could connect with these animals. Absolutely. Somewhere on our course. So when we see it look like this beluga is seemingly plain catch with these fishermen.

I don't know what they are. Yeah, no, I think this is totally real. Belugas are amazing. They're super playful. You know, I think a lot of people hate AI, right? And for the most part, I tend to dislike it a lot, too. This is one where AI can become so useful as a tool to us. Pattern recognition. That's what AI is. If you upload 10 billion whale songs, it's going to start to decode whale language.

If you upload 10 billion elephant sounds, it's going to start to decode elephant patterns. You seem they're starting to use this for like bird chirps? I believe it. I was reading the thing. Again, I don't know how accurate this is, but they were able to upload different bird chirps to a language model. And it was able to discern that motherbirds are talking to their chicks in a baby speak. There you go. Yeah, like in the way the humans work.

Hey, buddy. Yeah. And like, it just, I don't know, I hear it and I kind of get a little sad. Why? Oh, my God, that's so cute. Yeah. Yeah, I mean. You ready for some throw up? Yeah.

Have you seen Valdemir, the spy whale? No. So one of these beluga whales appeared in Norway or one of those countries covered in Russian spy gear. True story. It was a trained whale. Yeah, you can find this. It was a trained whale that the Russian Navy had brought in, put spy gear all over, and it had escaped or got lost or something like that. And the plot thickens because they took his spy gear off or whatever it happened to be.

The whale was lost and following people around. and there became a whole movement to protect Valdimir, this whale, with his spy gear, and all of a sudden he washed up with a bullet in his head. He was assassinated. No way. Bro. You've heard of Acoustic kitty? Oh, is that the operation where they put cats in to listen?

In the 60s, the CIA put listening devices inside of cats in Russia, and we tried to send them into Russian embassies and stuff to handle it. And the first cat went in the building, got sort of distracted, came back out, got hit by a car. Yeah, that's right. Damn. But why did they have to take the whale out? Like, the whale didn't do anything. He knows things, Mark.

He knows things. He doesn't have trade secrets. That's what you think. Something's going on. We're going to torture the whale to get to speak. Something's going on. And I'm like, I'm not a huge conspiracy nut, but that's pretty bizarre. Damn.

Give me some fun. Who iced that whale. Yeah. They already have blow holes. That's two holes, dude. Give me some fun. Like, I saw you and Joe talking about the pandas. Like, what are some other, this is feelings, no facts, which is the section we do on the show.

Okay. We're not talking a fact right now. This is completely feelings of, what are the fun, like, animal conspiracies that exist in your world? Fun animal conspiracies? Yeah. They don't even have to be fun. Oh, man. I got to think about this for a second.

Again, this is not rooted in anything. I can think of a couple. I mean, you know about, like, cattle mutilations? No, what's a cattle mutilation? Brother. I mean, I get what it sounds like. Welcome. Cattle mutilations is this weird sort of high.

strangeness phenomena where a farmer will walk out to his farm and see one of his like goats or maybe his cow or something and they have bizarre predation marks. So it'll be like all the blood will be drained out. Oh yeah. Like the chuba cobra came and got him or something. They're like, they'll just find it where the jaw's missing but no other part of it is taken or like it's like, it's like brain will be taken out and people are like, well, what's going on? I mean, I can find you like specific cases. Okay. But they're like, what kind of animals coming in here just like only taking these parts? Like are Are they like, are they rabid, like predators that are coming in doing this, like coyotes and stuff? And there's all the speculation.

Of course, people are like, maybe aliens. Yeah. But, yep, yeah. It's some type of weird predation where, like, they're taking, like, elements of these animals that are not typical. Interesting. Yeah, okay. I get what you're saying. I mean, there's a few really interesting one.

Like, they're mostly based in, like, a lore that doesn't exist, right? So, like, the idea that coyotes will come and attack people. Coyotes don't attack people. We all think like, oh, a coyote's dangerous, right? So it's a wild dog. Coyotes don't attack people. But even people who work with animals think, well, not people that work with animals,

like ranchers and stuff like that, think the coyotes are going to come in and eat their kids or take their cows or whatever. Doesn't happen. Interesting. Yeah. Same thing with killer whales, right? Totally.

Like they don't attack human beings outside of the sea world. Never been a single recorded death in the wild, ever. There's been sea world deaths and stuff, but in the wild, a killer whale, orcas never killed a person that we're aware of. What are some other animals that? aren't actually dangerous to human beings that we are afraid of? Well, rattlesnakes.

Really? Rattlesnakes are not dangerous to human beings. If you get bitten by a rattlesnake, absolutely. But rattlesnakes are not trying to bite people ever. They're sitting a coil. They're sitting in predation mode. If you step on it, yes, it's going to bite you. But I promise you, if you've hiked around L.A. or Santa Barbara or San Diego or anywhere

out west, you've hiked within 20 feet of a rattlesnake and you have no idea. They are not a danger to people. If you look up where do most people get bitten by the rattlesnake, guess where they get bitten? What part of their body? Leg. Their hand. Because they're trying to fucking grab a rattlesnick. Oh.

Yeah. Almost nobody just gets bitten by a rattlesnake. Yeah. So that's one where, you know, and it's funny, like you watch Yellowstone and Costner or somebody throws a rattlesnake on a guy and he dies immediately and stuff. It just doesn't work that way, you know? Man, what are some other funny? There's just so many interesting ones.

There's legends of black cats all over the world. Here's the perfect one. Black Panthers. Heard of them. Seeing the movie, been to Wakanda, you know what I'm talking about? They don't exist. There's no such thing as a black panther in North America. There are black jaguars, like the one I showed you.

There are black leopards, a panther, which is a mountain lion, a cat we have here in North America. There has never once been a recorded case of a melanistic, aka black panther. High school mascots, NFL mascots, movies, tattoos. That is funny because it's Florida Panthers, but they're sort of like gray or golden. They're not black. Yeah. I got buddies who I trust, who swear up and down they've seen them. Never been one single confirmed documented case.

So where does it come from? I mean, like I said, there are black other cats, but there's never been a Panther that's been black. So I don't know if it's just started in movies. I don't know if it started in the Marvel Comics. Panther organization, of course. Yeah, right. I don't know if that was the foundation. I have no idea where it came from.

Weird. Yeah. What about the John Lilly dolphin experiments? Have you heard of these? Is that the guy trying to talk to dolphins? It had him in his house. With LSD? Oh, yeah, with the LSD.

Yeah. He tried to unlock it with the LSD. He's a neuroscientist, psychonaut philosopher, and he combined work that he was doing with, like, isolation tanks. To communicate with dolphins, he studied how bottled nose dolphins vote. vocalize and he later began experiment with psychedelics, including LSD, while floating in isolation, trying to talk to dolphins.

Yeah. I don't think it worked. No, but I bet he had a good time trying. Question, you might have been asked this before. You see a Bigfoot. Yeah. You have a weapon on you. Do you shoot it to prove that they exist?

Why do you think I've been asked that before? I don't know. It seems like something that like an explorer would be asked. You think bullets work against his big foot? I mean, because you're never good, if you can't take a picture of me. I don't have my phone on me, whatever. Even if you do take a picture, people are going to say it's AI. You have to do it.

You have to shoot it. And then what happens if it's just a guy in a costume? Then you bury it and you get to have real quick. Real quick, yeah. Okay, more feelings of fact. You have to do it, you got to prove it. It's right there. You have to prove it.

Otherwise, you're crazy. Otherwise, you're crazy. And believe it or not, for the good of the species. Because? Once you've shown the dead body, you've proven they exist. You can then actually put something into preserving them. Whatever's left, even if there's only two others out there. All right, ready?

This is feelings, no facts. You don't have to back this up with anything. Love it. Okay? Yep. Gorilla versus Grizzly. Grizzly. Every day.

Every day. Every day. Not even close. Even the big silverback? Dude, you're talking about 300 pounds versus 1,000 pounds. One of them has fucking Wolverine claws, has a way stronger. bite force, not even close. Hippo versus Rhino.

Rhino. It's a hippo with a tusk, with a horn. Yeah. I know people think hippo. But they're softer, their skin is softer. So once that tusk goes, it's over. It's over. Yeah.

Saltwater crock. Is that the most dangerous crock? Yeah. Vers great white. Great white. Every day. It's just too agile. It's too maneuverable.

It's too agile. Well, saltwater crocodiles are an ambush predator. They just lunge and nail you, and then you're fucked. Hand-to-hand combat, they're not doing it. Not even close. Okay. The smartest animal, outside of human beings. In the world?

Yep. Orcas. Really? Yeah. They speak their own languages. They have their own diets, just like we do. They can travel wherever they want. They have their own social dynamics.

They're just trapped in a whale body. They can perform surgery, true story. What? What? What? What? What? When an orca makes a kill during a time of abundance, meaning it wants to, like, it has tons of food and it doesn't really care, it will kill a great white shark just to take the liver out, which will surgically remove with its teeth, just to eat the liver and leave the whole white shark.

And why? What is so special about the liver? High nutrients, delicious. So it's like, I already have enough food. This is good nutrients. I don't need to eat all this thing. It might even be as simple as I want a cupcake, and that's the cupcake. A treat.

A treat. So Killer Whale takes out gray white every single time. Every time. Nothing close. Nothing close. Not even like is there going to be combat. Like it kills. Great White sees the killer whale and dips.

Out of there. So much so that the entire area of Cape Town lost its ecotourism trade around it. Because the orcas moved in. Two orcas moved in. Port and Starboard, a pair. Moved all the Great White's out. Killed a few and the rest left. That's right.

Great White Shark sightings in South Africa were huge, specifically Cape Town. Why, I remember that. Yep. And the killer whale thing is a misnomer, right? like the name yeah yeah it was whale killer in Spanish that's right right that's right okay okay are corks teaching each other how to sink boats remember that story yeah and the gibraltar straight is that true yeah oh yeah 100% but still never kill anybody taking some boats down still never killed anybody they're doing it for fun that's my theory best mother in the animal kingdom

best mother in the animal kingdom has to be a gorilla or a chimpanzee or an orangutanang one of the great apes because they'll take care of their baby for two years, sometimes more. They'll feed it day and night. They'll cradle it. They'll never let it touch the ground. They'll teach it to be a gorilla or a chimp or an orangutan by teaching it how to climb, teaching it how to feel. They'll protect it in a social fight.

They will be fiercely loyal to that baby so much so that they won't mate during a lot of that time. They're basically a human, you know, and we're very good parents. And is there a relationship that exists after that two-year-old becomes like a fully grown chimp? Like, do they still have a love and protection for their mom? Absolutely. Until a certain point, you know, kind of like a kid hitting maturity or something and being like, I'm going out to find my own girlfriend and then the bond starts to separate. But they will always, always have a maternal relationship.

So even when they're fully grown, they have their own family, they still recognize that ape is their mother and their affectionate. never mate with their mother or anything else, which a lot of animals, your dog will, you know? Like a lot of animals will, but they never will. Yeah. Which animal would terrify the most if it's suddenly developed human level intelligence? Praying mantis. Why? Take over the world.

Bro, you think I'm joking? Not even. Octopus, maybe, but praying mantis. Have you ever seen Starship Troopers? Yeah. Remember that movie? Great movie, by the way. Yeah.

That's what it would be like. Like, if a praying mantis got human level intelligence, You know, even though they're this big, I'm assuming they scale with this intelligence, which you didn't say, but I did in my brain. They would take over the world. They're massively opportunistic killers. They can kill anything, like, for their size. There's nothing like them. They're vicious. I mean, they're just, like, look at them. They're just super gnarly. They have these crazy spikes, these claws, these unbelievable mandibles. Like, looking at that one, eating the lizard there. I mean, if you had a spraying mantis with a society, We'd be in big trouble. Just because they're devastating killers. Yeah, I mean, again, I sort of, in my brain, I scaled it to them being the size of a human, which I wasn't the question. But I think, yeah, if they were bigger, like, they would just be so ruthless.

What's the gayest animal? Dolphins. Really? Yeah, because only chicks like them, for one. No, but they have a lot of gay sex. Every cute girl thinks they're amazing. Gay guys like them. They have a lot of gay sex again

They're just the gayest animal So wait dolphins have gay sex? A lot of gay sex How common is gay sex in the animal kingdom? Not very I mean there are instances of Like these two male lions will hump or practice or whatever Practice

But yeah But then there are dolphins that will literally Just male on male Female on female sex a lot And dolphins are one of like four or five animals That have sex for fun Most animals don't have sex for pleasure at all They only say

How do we know they're doing it just for fun? Because there's no outcome. They're not getting pregnant. They're not fertilizing the female. Dolphins are pulling out. Yeah. Get out of shit. Word of God.

There's no way a dolphin is pulling out before a bus. Yeah. It's a true story, man. They're doing it just for fun. They're doing it to not reproduce. Yep. Really? Really.

And it's just pleasure for pleasure's sake. If it's a dude, if it's a girl, it doesn't matter. That's it. Wow. Yep. which is pretty gay pulling out is kind of gay actually

holy out of gay oh god any other questions before Forrest gets out of here yes Miles I have two quick ones you're obviously with discovery

and all of those things you're similarly aged to me did you watch any of the Discovery survival shows growing up and did they influence you in what you do now so like Survivor Man

or Manverse Wild? Yeah, I watched a few of them. I mean, I love Steve Irwin growing up. Go figure, right? That was my second question. Yeah, I love Steve Irwin growing up. I thought he was amazing. You know, what's funny is, I don't think he'd fly in today's world.

He's gone down in history as the greatest, like, animal presenter guy ever. You couldn't do it. You couldn't be Steve Irwin today. Wait, why? Steve Irond just fiddled with animals for the sake of fiddling with him. Do you know what I mean? Oh, you think that there would be like animal rights people saying, hey, he's not treating this animal property.

Could you imagine if you just grabbed a crocodile for the sake of, of grabbing it and we're like, check it out! You know, you couldn't do it in today's world. And it's great that in that time and place, he set the gold standard. Yeah. You know? And so he's definitely my number one. I watched some Bear Grills and some West Stroud.

I enjoyed all those guys, but to me, Steve Irwin and Jeremy Wade and David Attenborough, of course, right? Like, those are the goats. Yeah. Yeah. And did you remember guy named something Corbin? Do you remember him at all? Jeff Corwin?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I know Jeff Corwin. Oh, cool. Yeah, not very well. but yeah, he's cool. He's kind of like an American Steve Irwin, like that era. Yeah, Steve was number one for you.

To me, yeah, but David Attenborough was number one for me. But those guys, I thought were all awesome. Yeah. Cool. Anybody. I don't care who you are. I don't care if you're on Instagram or TikTok or Discovery Channel or anywhere else. If you're influencing people to care about wildlife in an ethical way, you're not just putting them in chokeholds for the sake of it.

If you're doing it and making people be like, man, that thing's awesome, that snake's cool. That kid you pulled up, right? The, what was his name? Caveman Wildlife. Caveman Wildlife. The kid's awesome. He's awesome, dude. Because he's making people care about snakes that don't otherwise care about him.

Like, it's great. And, like, I don't care who these guys are. I don't care if they have a name or don't have a name. Anybody that's doing it the right way is great. Do you bring your love of animals back home? Like, do you have a ton of different species of animals? Bro, I wish I didn't. So we have 91 rescued animals on my property.

Most of them are like turtles and fish and shenanigans things. I have no pets except for my one fish tank in my office that are pets, except for a dog as well. But the rest are all things that somebody calls me and goes, we need a home for this tortoise. We found this raccoon or I don't have any raccoons, but whatever it happens to be. And so, yeah, we've ended up with at one point in time it's way down now, 91 rescued animals. Yeah. Last question. Can you explain the importance of the relationship between humans and dogs?

I don't think anybody can explain that. But I think that throughout human evolution, since humans first came around, there's only been one creature that has truly become a companion to people. And that's the wolf that turned into the domestic dog. Going back hundreds of thousands of years, we started feeding these furry pack animals that we thought were a foe, and they became a friend. And over generational time, we turned them into these weird, short-faced, stumpy-legged, overweight, whatever they happened to be. And they are truly more than anything a companion to the human species.

That is incredibly important. And were they responsible for our evolution in any way? Maybe not our evolution, but is responsible for innovation, protection. Absolutely. Yeah, like, can you go into that? We had dogs during times of war. We still do. We have dogs for security. We have dogs for hunting. We have dogs for farming.

We have dogs for pest control. I mean, the plague probably would have been a hundred times worse if it wasn't for Yorkshire Terriers, those funny little fluffy Paris Hilton dogs. Yeah. Taking out rats. You know what I mean? Wow. Cainines, dogs have influenced human civilization in society since their inception. I read something.

I forget where it was. is about, like, they created a layer of protection, and you need an amount of security and downtime in order to innovate. If you're constantly worried about, this is like one of the issues with chimps and why it's harder for them to innovate in the way that human beings can. It's like, they're always worried about the lead dude

and the tribe fucking is. Right? So there isn't that downtime where you can just think about, all right, how do we make a TV? And before it's TV, it's like, how do we make fire a little bit better? How do we make shelves a little bit better? And this idea that there are these pack animals

that were protecting us because it was easier for them to get food from us and get food out there. But now all of a sudden, you had a layer of protection where you had the downtime where you could think of ideas and actually execute on them. It makes perfect sense.

When your brain is not on edge thinking about how to survive, you have time to innovate. I've never heard that theory, and it makes perfect sense. Because it does seem we have a special relationship. Horses too. Yeah.

But with dogs, it seems more unique. Horses are utilitarian. We use a horse as a tool, whereas a dog we have as a companion. Truly as a companion. They offer nothing, especially now, like most dogs are not doing security in the United States of America.

My dog is useless. I love him to death, but he could not guard the house, he can barely swim. He can't even go outside and poop by himself. He is useless, and I love him to death. But is this maybe like the karma that they get? For attaching to us?

For like billions of years of supporting human existence and like protecting us. And now they do nothing for us. And we're like, all right, we got you for a few million. That's a free ride. Yeah, like you earned it. But that's still such a tiny minority of dogs globally.

Yeah. You know, the way dogs are treated in other places in the world is crazy. Really? I mean, you go to some of the meat markets in Indonesia and you can buy, they will torture the dog in front of you to increase the amount of, what's the chemical response? Oh, with the baby blood. Like adrenaline?

Adrenaline, thank you. Adrenaline. Yes, Adrenaline. Yeah. They will torture a dog in front of you in order to increase the amount of adrenaline in the meat to change the flavor and then kill it and serve it to you. No, I'm good on that. I did a whole show on that on Vice or an episode of a show on that on Vice, and it's the most

gut-wrenching, heartbreaking thing you can ever see. Why do we have such a visceral reaction? I imagine you have a strong reaction to when any animal is treated poorly, but the average human being in the West, when they see a dog being treated poorly, has a visceral reaction to it. I think, again, it's because for generational time, our great, great, great grandparents had dogs. You know, it's their like our children, in a sense. They're our companions.

It's the same as if I saw you get hurt or you get hurt. Like, you're my companion. You're my species. You're my species. The dog isn't, but you're my companion. I don't want to see you get hurt. And I think it's the same for dogs. Yeah.

It's like, we'll watch a horse race, and then the guy riding the horse is just smacking the ass of the horse with a whip. And we're just like, I got money on that. Yeah. But with a dog, no way. The dog, don't you dare. Yeah. People call a police some people

for mistreating their dogs. My wife, I live in Santa Barbara, which as you know, it's 72 degrees every single day. My dog could spend six weeks in the car

and it wouldn't overheat. She won't leave the dog in the car for five minutes because she's like, somebody's going to call the cops on us. They're going to smash our window. Like, it's 68 degrees outside. What are you going to happen?

The dog's going to take a nap. She'll leave my kid in the car. She won't be dead. I like when people leave notes. Like, you don't see that. It'll be like, hey, I'm going inside for five minutes.

Just don't call the cops. That's right. Yeah. Or my Tesla's on dog mode. Don't worry about it. Yeah. There's like a donkey that's just like carrying shit up a fucking mountain all day long. Nobody leaves a note.

Nope. No notes. Yeah. Yeah, we do have a special relationship with dog. I mean, in New York City, you're more likely if you see someone pushing a stroller, more likely than a kid. Yeah. 100%. Now we've gone.

The pendulum swung too far, man. But you do feel like the relationship is justified. Absolutely. Yeah. I think all animals, you know, you see these weird. nuts that want to have all these snakes. I have two snakes at home, but they want to have all these snakes and want to have all these things. You can have

a companion with any animal. They might not love you back the way your dog does, but I think it's totally justified. So is that the difference? Is the difference really they'll love you back more consistently? I think so. And I think that's a really interesting difference between dog and cat people too. Because your cat can love you, but still be a total asshole to you.

If your dog loves you, he loves you. And you know what I mean? You're like, he's all up in my business. Like, this dog loves me. Dogs also evolved to have facial mimicry. Yeah. So like they're able to mimic our facial features. Oh, interesting. And so like, dogs will look confused and you're like, oh, you're confused. Yeah. And I've heard it said that like cats haven't developed the same mimicry. So your cat might also feel happy when you're there, but they're not panting, they're not licking your face, they're not raising their eyebrows. Yeah.

And so as a result, it's harder for us to connect. Whereas like with a dog, you kind of know what it's feeling just by looking out. Interesting. Once you have kids, you really get a sense of how loyal dogs are. Because you don't have the same time for that dog. No. And they don't stop dogging. Nope. They stay by your side.

They are excited every single. I feel guilty. Yeah. You know what I mean? I got two kids. I want to give them both time. And that dog is like, if there is three minutes to throw a ball. It's thrill.

Same exact energy. Yeah. Yeah. When they were getting all the attention when I had no kids at all. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's really amazing species. We did a good job curating that one.

I agree. I agree. Dogs are the best. Ben Lamb, get on it. Yeah, make us some more. We need a rhino that does this. That's true. I want a tiny woolly rhino that does that.

Dude, dude, for us. Thank you so much for being here. This is awesome. What a place. I appreciate you guys. Thanks for that. This is awesome. Thank you guys.

Thank you so much. Anytime. Anytime. Two and five Canadians will hear the words you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends and family, walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world

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