Green Light with Chris Long - Paul Nicklen! On Living Life In Nature, Close Calls With Wildlife & Saving The World Through Photography.

Episode Date: September 22, 2021

(1:51) - Paul Nicklen Talks Adventure Photography, Growing Up Among the Inuit, Hospitable Leopard Seals, Aggressive Elephant Seals and Wildlife and Nature Conservation. (1:00:39) Chris and Dr. Fax Receive The First Present in the Green Light PO Box, Send Happy Retirement Wishes to JJ Redick, Talk Interactions with Dead Heads, Review Rolling Stone's Top 500 Song List and Argue Over the Tesla's Autopilot Reliability. Paul Nicklen's Organization SeaLegacy: https://www.sealegacy.org/ Green Light Spotify Music: https://open.spotify.com/user/951jyryv2nu6l4iqz9p81him9?si=17c560d10ff04a9b Spotify Layup Line: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1olmCMKGMEyWwOKaT1Aah3?si=675d445ddb824c42 Green Light with Chris Long: Subscribe and enjoy weekly content including podcasts, documentaries, live chats, celebrity interviews and more including hot news items, trending discussions from the NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, NCAA are just a small part of what we will be sharing with you. http://bit.ly/chalknetwork Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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sign up today to receive a special offer, risk-free, $500 sports bet. download the win bet app now or visit w-y-n-n-n-bett.com. Download the app, bet big win-bigger. And let's get after it. Terms and conditions apply must be 21 or older and present in state where win-bet is available. Gambling problem, call 1-800-2707117. The scariest one on that trip was when I was in the outhouse and it was minus 30 and I was at night

and there's no door on the outhouse. You're just sitting on a styrofoam lid on an outhouse. and then I had a bear come and sit right at the door. So you're sitting there with your pants around your ankles with the bear sitting there. And you don't know if you know the bear or not. Happy Wednesday, everybody. I want to keep it quick in the open today.

We got Paul Nicklin. I've talked about this pod a little bit. I've teased it out a little bit. Legitimately one of my favorite interviews I've had the privilege of doing Paul Nicklin, biologist, National Geographic photographer. That's how I know Paul Nicklin. from his Instagram and his books,

which are picture books, which are the easiest way to get my attention, which is why Paul Nicklin is so needed when it comes to telling stories that he's telling. He started Sea Legacy. Sea Legacy aims to pave the way towards a greener planet by bringing together the world's top photographers, conservationists, scientists, storytellers,

and strategists to lead a bold new movement to engage one billion people in ocean conservation. Like I said, it's about the pictures. If you want to get a point across, you send somebody with a really good camera. And listen, not all of what he does highlights heavy subjects

such as climate change. He also does narwhals and shit like that. So he knows how to keep it light, which is part of the appeal to me is like the message has to be delivered the right way if you want to get people's attention, whether that's right or wrong. And we do hit on that in this interview.

So listen, the interview is not about climate change, the whole thing. We're not going to beat you over the head with heavy topics. Half of it's about him surviving near-death experiences at the hands of like enormous animals in the Arctic. Guys are a total badass. Aaron Donald, Howie Long, Paul Nicklin. Those are kind of the three most foremost badasses I've ever met. And I met Paul Nicklin in New York City a couple years ago before the, the Pandy and wanted to do some content with him. And he was like, yeah, come out on one of my boats.

I'm like, where's the boat going? And he's like, well, it's going to like Antarctica for a couple months. Like you could come out and just kind of hang out and jump in the water with some orcas and shit like that. I was like, come on, man. I don't even go swimming at the beach, not the beach. So Paul said he would come on and he did not disappoint. So sit back, relax, enjoy some Paul Nicklin, a nice break from the 24-hour news cycle. That is the NFL season.

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Cut your wireless bills to 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com slash greenlight. All right, so here's a guy that I admire greatly. I've always loved looking at his pictures and I didn't know who he was. I didn't know the man behind the camera. And then I got to meet him in New York City. It's Paul Nicklin, done extensive work with National Geographic.

His C-Legacy stuff is awesome. But I thought we'd start here, Paul. How long have you been doing what you're doing and what is it that you do for people that haven't seen your work? Chris, first of all, it's a real honor to be on your show and it was a real privilege to give you a hug in New York City and have my head lean calmly against your big chest. you are a big big big man I'm glad I'm a photographer not a football player looking at you on the

other end but um so yeah I was real privileged to meet you a big fan and so you know that's a great question it's it's been an evolution to get to where I am I grew up in the Arctic with the Inuit and then became a biologist worked on polar bears and grizzly bears and different species across the Arctic and then uh got into journalism photography shot for national geographic for 20 years and then And then the last five years started the own, as you already mentioned, Sea Legacy, our nonprofit, Sea Legacy doing ocean conservation work around the world. So your upbringing around the Inuit happened by chance. I mean, I've heard that you moved there at a young age, but I don't know the backstory.

I do know how rewarding it sounded to grow up in an environment like that juxtaposed to like, hey, us down here, we don't live in harmony with nature. I feel like Inuit people are probably resourceful and respectful of what's around them. How did that shape kind of the way you do things now? Yeah, no, good question. It's, it really was important. My mom was a school teacher. My dad was a heavy-duty diesel mechanic.

He went up there to keep all the equipment going in the small northern community. The one community we lived in was Lake Harbor at the time. Now it's called Kimmerut, some of the biggest tides in the world, 42-foot tides. Just, but very special to grow up in that environment with 190 Inuit people. We were one of two or one of three non-Inuit families. You know, we didn't have a radio, we didn't have a telephone, we didn't have television, we didn't have anything to keep us inside the house. So all of my time was outside playing with the Inuit kids and learning to speak in noctitude,

learning sort of survival skills. But the most, the best part for me was the visual, the artistic side of the culture, telling their stories through soapstone carvings, lithograph paintings, through oral. tradition, the folklore. It's just you were immersed in this artistic scene, even though you didn't know about it. And you were just learning to become tough. Like I think I've had frostbite over 30 times, you know, frozen my face and my ears and my nose. And it's just kind of part of it. And it doesn't scare me. And it's, it's, you know, so I was, yeah, learning to get tough in the,

in the polar regions and just sort of developing the creative side of my brain. So it was a very influential time in my life. What do you think gives you a more accurate picture of what the world is out there like living in it or studying it and living in it because the Inuit people don't have like a scientific process per se I would assume but their process is very like I'm entrenched in the world I live in and now you're a biologist you've been all over the world like is there something too you can't get any better understanding than like when you're living in it you can't just study it yeah yeah when I travel around the world you know the first people If I really want to go get the hard, cold truth of where things are at, I go, not the first

people you meet in the airport when you land somewhere. You know, those are people who are, you know, posturing to work with you or whatever it is, but if I can go find that quiet 80, 90-year-old elder who's sitting there quietly in the back and get time with them and learn from them, then you are gaining more insight. You're basically getting, you know, hundreds of years of knowledge passed down to you in in one evening and it's extremely powerful. And then obviously you cross-reference all that you learn with the scientific facts. And when you talk about things like climate change, if you have 99% of the scientists and they're aligned with what the Inuit elders are saying, then you have a really

darn good snapshot of where we're at in this world. But a guy in Kentucky told me it's not real. So I, I'm sorry. Yeah, I get that a lot as well. And it's great. I mean, I love it. It's a great debate. I love it when people like show it to me, prove it to me. It's not real. And I'm, you just bring up a graph with 800,000 years of data. I was up on the dome sea ice shells in Antarctica photographing the Italian base, the Russian base, the American base. They're all pulling out these core samples that go down miles deep in the ice shelf. And they're analyzing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere over 800,000 years. And you see the rise in the fall. And a long time ago, sort of was the highest and then it dropped and then now in the last 300 years it's a hockey stick.

It's just has gone off the charts compared to say, okay, tell me that that's a fluke. On four billion years of evolution, if you put that into a 24-hour time clock, humans have been on the earth for the last three seconds of that, of that time scale. And then to think of the last few hundred years that we've been here to see the amount of carbon dioxide for this thing to go off the charts. I mean, I've shown that to, you can go onto the NASA website and just type it in to say NASA, NASA 800,000-year-old climate change model, and you'll see it. And it's just sort of slaps you in the face when you look at it. So it's a powerful, it's a powerful image. We'll get into climate change in a bit because I think it's really interesting kind of your role. You know, like graphs and charts, they don't work for me either.

I mean, I want to talk to people on the ground. I want to talk to people who can show me and tell me that story. The icing on the cake is your work, in my opinion. you know like bringing something to life you know somebody who we have this conception where we put everybody in these bubbles like or we we try to define people based on where they sit on the political spectrum or god forbid they believe in something like climate change you got to be this this this nerdy liberal with an agenda i mean like you're that one of the toughest people i've ever had the privilege of meeting and i know that because i know i know where you've been so you would think a lot

of these hardy folks would would believe you when you had to say what you've had to say and i want to wonder if there's a messaging problem because I know the problem is the receiver of the message or the lack of having a recipient, but there has to be an at large messaging issue because we don't have another choice. Like we either have to get the message across or we give up, right? How do we fix the messaging part of this whole thing? Well, you know, I think the thing that really works well for me, Chris, is that I, through time of, you know, speaking for National Geographic and big public venues for the last 20 years, you know, in the beginning, you're going up there on stage and you're a little angry and you're like, you do this and you are part of the

problem and you can turn off an audience in two seconds. And what I like about is sort of having the credibility of being a scientist, a biologist, working with other top scientists in the world, having connections to cultures around the world and just being a translator for what they're doing. And when I go on stage now or when I do an article or a social media post, I'm like, hey guys, you know, so this is what, this is what we're seeing. And I think when you, I don't care who you are, if you're left or right, if, If people are allowed to form their own conclusion, if they sort of, if you're constantly presenting them with a little fact here and there, little sound bites, little tidbits.

And that's why I think my social media works as well is because it's, I call it, you know, it's like boxing jab jab punch. I jab with a beautiful picture, an interesting picture, a little tidbit, a little fact. I'm luring people into my world. And then once in all bang, I hit them with, you know, something that's a hard fact, to hard truth, something that's tough to look at, whether it's a starving pole affair. And then all of a sudden, these people are on this journey with you. I know, like, during the whole, all the Trump shenanigans and the whole thing going down,

if I ever made a little negative comment, I was always shocked to find out how many Republicans follow me. And I'm kind of proud of that, that I have found a way to not be too political, to just be talking about the things that I'm passionate about. I want a diverse, broad audience. I'm excited when Eddie Vedder and Pearl Jam want to put my image on the cover of their album. That was so cool. I found that out today.

I've looked at that album for the better part of a year. I know your work. It should have dawned on me. Yeah. So yeah, when they called me, the band called and just said, hey,

we want to put that on the cover. And it's called Gigaton as there's a measurement for the loss of sea ice in Antarctica and Greenland as it's melting so fast. I just thought that was really damn cool. I'm like, wow. For me, it's like I love them as a band. I love it better.

I love all that stuff, but I really love it that I'm getting to tap into their demographic. I mean, that is a really cool base that they have. And that's what it's about is for us, is just getting that message out. Well, you tell great stories with the work you do. And, you know, photography, I wonder about this because I'm sure when you started, you know, the tools and the toolbox were much different. And now, you know, decades later, it's accelerated this thing where I see guys on the side of guys and gals on the side of an NFL field.

with these three foot lenses and all types of gadgets. Where is like photography as a medium going? And do you ever think about like, hey, in 20 years, what am I gonna look like in the field? Yeah, I mean, it's involved so quickly that I could look back to it. In 2004, I was one of the first people at Nat Geo. I was having an assignment that I was shooting on the fastest ocean currents in the world that go 24 knots.

And I was having a really tough shoot. It was really hard diving. It was extreme. It was dangerous. And I just wasn't coming back with the results that they needed for the magazine. So I bought a digital camera just to shoot some like test shots underwater to make sure my lighting was right. And I never ever shot another film camera ever again.

And a year later, everybody at Nat Geo had pretty much switched over except for a couple of the diehards. You know, and then do you think just a year after that, I was doing the leopard seal story in Antarctica. And when you've got a leopard seal feeding you penguins, now instead of having third, you 36 pictures of film in a camera. If I shot 36, got out of the water, swap the film, got back in, that's going to end that encounter with that animal. But to have 2,000 pictures on a card, you know, you could just go.

So we shot that entire assignment in probably the first three days of being in Antarctica. And that was because we had access to digital. And it's changed that fast. And you think of what I went through, you know, in years of trying to film narwhals, trying to find them, trying to get into position to to dive with them and photograph them to photograph from the air. I had to buy an ultra light airplane. We ended up crashing that plane. We ended up having some pretty close calls with that little airplane living on the sea ice, towing it around by snowmobiles for a whole season, three months of living in these little

tents. You know, and now you can just kick a drone up in the air and go find them, photograph them, photograph them at an iMacs quality video quality or you can film them for stills that can make big fine art prints. The technology is changing so fast. Now I can go down diving and do live streaming to a classroom in Mumbai. I can be diving with tiger sharks on a live streaming head, full face comms underwater and 50 feet of water talking to a school of Mumbai live streaming content. I mean, it's, uh, we're, we're kind of like Jacques Cousteau 2.0 now with really exciting

technology all around us. And we're very excited to put all that. You got a cool fucking life, man, because you just go through. like, ah, the ocean currents were 24 knots. That would be like the subject of my, of my discussion. But you're like on to the next thing. First, let me stop you. How fast is 24 knots without saying it's 24 knots?

Because I have no idea. It's scary to the point that world pools that are 60 feet wide open up that go down from the surface down to 50 feet deep down to the bottom. And that 100 foot barges have flipped and sunk in there. So, I mean, you really have to have your act together. Like, I'm down there with a Danforth anchor into the sediment, and the currents may be going five, six knots. Your snorkels almost beating you to the death against the side of the head.

You lose control of your legs at that speed. So you can't be down there at 24 knots. It's just, it's too crazy. But I was trying to show the kinetic energy of how much ocean current force feeds life up and down this BC coast and why everything is big here. how do you get a 20 foot wide octopus? It's just because it's so nutrient rich. And we were talking about energy ocean crins for that.

That's so damn cool. 20 foot wide octopus. Tip to tip. That's putting out his tentacles. No, I know. It's not his head. But like, damn, that's a big animal. And then like just the fact that it is kind of like this Eden.

Yeah. Where it is so nutrient rich, everything does get bigger. And this 24 knots is right off the coast of BC, you said? Exactly. it's called Nicaraco Rapids up in the north end of Vancouver Island yeah water scares me I love water more than anything I'm more of a river than an ocean guy because you know like I'm not a beach guy but also just the sheer humility that the ocean can I mean I guess my question would be like give me the one thing or the one moment in the field where you were like the power of this thing is just makes me feel like an aunt I mean I get that feeling every day in nature. I mean, you feel the power of whether you're in winds of, I think in Antarctica, you know, seeing the wind, catabatic winds where it's glassy calm. It's a beautiful, nice day and it's Antarctica. It's like beautiful meaning it's probably, I don't know, 45 degrees

Fahrenheit, but then you can hear, it sounds like a jet fighter coming over you, but it's the hot, it's the cold air sitting on top of the ice cap of Antarctica. And as it falls, you're within minutes into 120 knots of wind and where you can't stand up. And it's flipping over all your boats. And that's where we can't even fathom the power of Mother Nature. And I think, you know, whether it's a big tree falling in the forest or getting caught up, you know, I was in a dive at it was about 30 feet deep. The current was picking up. It was picking up. I lost control of my legs. Pulled me off the wall. I got sucked down to the bottom at about 160 feet deep. And I'm bounce along the bottom and I got spat out into an eddy. So that's, you know,

lucky. And I knew I'd done the math before I went down like worst case scenario is I could end up at 160 and it happened. But, um, yeah, it's just, it's just really awesome. It's just powerful and humbling, uh, every day. I mean, but I mean, if you put me on a football field, are you just see me crying in the corner? That's how I would be sitting on a, on an iceberg the size of a small city. And that's another thing is like, I always wonder about the scale of what you photograph because there are no, like, if I were to take pictures of a grizzly in Montana, there are these big trees. If I'm hiking in the backcountry up there, I can kind of gauge like the scale of like a peak or I can gauge like the distance. You're just looking at oftentimes like a sheet of ice or a giant iceberg that might be hard to kind of wrap your head around.

Like, can the scale be tough where you are and how big of those icebergs really get? Yeah, really good question. You know, I think that's the closest I've come to ever dying from a polar bear. And it was because I made a bad judgment call and I lost all sense of scale. I was working with scientists and they, I came up behind them. I was photographing. It was like two in the morning. It was minus 40.

And we're up and up by Greenland. And I said to them, you know, what do you got? And they said, well, we just drugged a mother bear and she's with her cub. And it looks like maybe a two-year-old cub, which is a pretty big cub. It's like a 200-pound bear. And you've got to be careful around that. So my job was to photograph males from females to help the hunters better select to shoot male bears instead of females to affect the quota. Anyway, so I drove up alone.

They were mixing drugs. The bears were a couple miles away. I just drove up to them, looked at them very quickly, jumped off my snowmobile and walked right up to them, knowing that the mom was sleeping, but her cub was not been drugged yet. and the cub charged me and I'm like that's a really big cub that's probably a three year old cub and they don't usually keep their cubs for four years but I'm like that's a 400 pound bear I mean that is a big as it kept charging me it's probably 10 feet away for me it's coming after me and I'm talking to her talking or working my way back towards my snowmobile I got on my snowmobile and I drove off and they came in and

we darted the cub and it turned out it was a thousand pound breeding male and a 700 pound female So I just walked up to a really upset, frustrated, 700-pound female without, you know, any gun, any backup, any bear spray. And just, but that was my own fault. That was just, but you are right. It's about the scale of the landscape. And I've seen 3,000 polar bears. I should know better. I just didn't, didn't take the time as tired and didn't take the time to look at the situation.

But that is a product of the landscape that it's just so vast and so big and you just don't have anything for reference out there on the ice. Well, it happens to the best of us, Paul. You know, sometimes we misjudge the size of a 700 pound. I mean, like, it just goes to show just how dangerous your work is that, you know, I mean, it's not like you get a head count when you roll up. That's crazy. And the thing about bears, I think, is so interesting. You know, everybody knows your spirit bear shot, and I want to get into that.

But I think that the bears are a really cool conduit to this discussion we have about climate and about, you know, the health of these species, because we all love bears. I mean, we humanize these things. I mean, as we should. And the polar bear is such a majestic, like, dominant creature. And to see it hurting, you've seen starving bears in the wild. Like, do you feel like people get that when you show them that?

You know, do the bears help kind of break through and reach people? Yeah, I mean, what you were saying earlier, Chris, about, you know, graphs and graphs and charts and not really doing it for you. And it's failed us. I mean, we have all the science. We have all the data. That is failing us in, in the communication game of getting people to wake up and go, holy shit, we really are in trouble. So I always look for, you know, I call it the charismatic sexy megafauna, those big, powerful charismatic species. If it's a, if I want to talk about salmon and drought and rivers, you know,

if I take a picture of fish and say, you should care, it's not going to work. But if I get a 1,400 pound brown bear, you know, just this most impressive animal you've ever seen. And I'm shooting it at 1,000 frames a second in slow motion. And you're looking into his eye and you're connecting with the soul, that animal. That's a good thing. If I'm talking about sea ice, I'm using polar bears. You know, if I'm talking about oil pipelines coming across and ships and oil tankers off the coast of British Columbia, I'm going to use a spirit bear.

So it's just a really great conduit. It's a great conversation starter to start off as something as amazing as one of these charismatic bear species. Yeah, like appealing, you shouldn't have to appeal to the, I mean, we're centering ourselves, calling it the humanity of these species.

But, you know, that's the way we think. So, you know, I've seen your posts on the, I think you called it the beholder, the juvenile gorilla in Rwanda. Where was that? You post. Yeah, that was Rwanda. You know, and the question,

is at its core. It's like how bad does it, you know, how much do you have to see something you recognize in these. Right. I mean, we are, we are a very narcissistic species. And when you can sort of see a bit of yourself and that animal, it's, it's pretty, it's pretty powerful. I was just diving in Mexico on a rebreather. We were going down to 200 feet deep in these caves. It would be like a quarter of a mile in a cave system down to 200 feet. and 20,000 years ago, there was a big drought going on and all these animals were walking in there to be in Mexico looking at a gompathier elephant. There's an elephant in the bottom of this cave.

There were 20 grizzly bears that were 20,000 years old. There were, and there was a girl there. The girl was aged at 13,000 years old. The oldest knowing, they call her the first American. I just had an American asked me how I knew she was American. but um so anyways we checked your passport but uh yeah it's just pretty amazing to be in these cave systems and seeing that it's just it just sort of really you're looking at evolution unfolding you're looking at sort of this whole process of it's just powerful to be a witness to a lot of those

situations i mean sometimes i think if we just framed it as like hey the world's not ending like this rock is going to keep spinning for a while like we're actually fucked. Like that might work. Yeah. It's just how much are we going to take down with it? The fact that we've lost half the species on the earth in the last, you know, a couple hundred years. Yeah. And we're just at the top of the chain and the fact that that we're sort of ignorant to it all. But I mean, I have to, I have to agree with a lot of people that when I meet people who don't want to believe in climate change, people who, you know, say everything's fine. And I kind of get it. It sucks to care right now. Like you're on the earth for a short time. You're here for 60 to 90.

years, whatever it is, 100 years, you kind of want to just enjoy it sometimes. And I get, when I really look into people and they, people are most intrinsically or generally good people. And it's hard to care. Like it's, why do you want to take on? Once I started caring and I started getting involved in this conservation work and trying, you know, being a journalist and telling these stories and looking at the data and the scientists and talking to the elders and realizing that we probably, you know, very likely could be fucked because of the species or, you know, we're going to ruin the planet in the process. It's a lot, it's a hell of a burden. carry around. It's it's sometimes I wish I didn't care so much. And then all of a sudden you

have a conservation win where the team gets together. We get a million signatures or a million and a half signatures right now on Antarctica. It feels good. And you know, if you're not active, you're inactive. And if the only emotion greater than fear is hope. And it's just, so we have to keep painting a hopeful path for people, A, to help them with modern day anxiety. I mean, your kids, you know, are going to go through this anxiety of, it's scary, you know. It's become existential. And I look at, you know, your line of work as requiring a real patience that in sports, you know, you talk about baseball players. If you hit 400, you're your God. Okay. Yeah. Like, you're going to fail at what you're doing over 90% of the time.

waiting, right? I think about nine. I figured the map. I did the map one day. It's kind of like somewhere between 95 and 98 percent of the time. And you wouldn't want, you wouldn't be in baseball very long if that's what you're hitting. Or football or anything. But like the payoff of what you do is so incredible. And I think no anecdote, at least to me, resonated more than your TED Talk story that I heard from about 10 years ago, where you were talking about the spirit bear and how long that process took. Yeah, that's, I just did. There's all, I have, every story I tell is kind of,

people like, really, is it really like that where you fail, fail and you finally get the image on the last day. It sounds like, you know, a movie. And I'm like, it kind of, well, it's not always like the leopard seal assignment. I got that shot in the first four days of six weeks shoot, but that's really not normal. But the spirit bears, yeah, I sat there in the rainforest on this creek. We would hike in basically naked under Gortex closing because you,

sweat so hard in the pouring rain, you'd just be soaked with all your equipment. You get to the site after an hour and a half of hiking through this forest, like crawling over big logs, under big logs, crossing rivers. You get to your location. You take off all your wet clothes. You dry off. You put on your dry clothes. You put your Gortex back on. You set up your blind. And that's all in the dark. And you would sit there. You'd sit there till dark. And then you would do the same thing. You'd hike out of the bush to do that every day for a month and not see the bear you're looking for. It gets, it gets old. And, you know, the good thing is I love what I do.

It's very meditative to sit by a river and listen to the Ravens and see a black bear walk by. And then it just, I think when you fail so much, imagine being a baseball player and you've, you've not touched the ball and 99 times of bat and all of a sudden you smoke a 400 footer out of the stadium and it's going to feel pretty sweet. So I think, you know, that's kind of what it's like. you all of a sudden you see that bear, but all of a sudden your editor is like, yeah, it's not quite sharp enough.

I don't like your exposure. I don't like, it's just not a good image. And that happened to me. I want to shake my editor. No, I like, I'm like you're right. It's just the first year of shooting the spirit bears. I didn't get a publishable image. And I went back the next year, worked with a friend of mine, Marvin Robinson, a first

nation elder in his community, a wonderful guy. And he stuck me on this secret river where nobody else was going. And I finally had this big male bear on. the last week of a 12-week shoot come down and just, we hung out. Like, we were buds for two days. He'd sleep in the forest. I'd sleep next to him in the forest. He would go into the river, and I'm, you know, two, three feet away from him with this bear.

And I'm in his face. And he's just doing his thing. And he let me into his world. And I just, it was just tasted so good to get those images. The only time he got mad at me was he crawled up underneath this big old growth cedar tree and he went to sleep in the moss. And I sort of forgot that he was a bear. I mean, he was just this amazing subject that I was using to talk about keeping oil off this coast.

And I shove my camera at his face on wide angle. And I'm shooting 10 frames a second. And he finally sort of looked at me and he got up and he smacked my camera, smoke the camera. And then I backed off a bit. And then he just went back to sleep right in front of me. And I'm like, you know what? You're right. I'm done.

I put the camera away. And that was the last I shot of him got on an airplane, flew to Vancouver and turned in the whole story for a big campaign that my partner, Christina was leading. And we ended up winning that. So I love it when the First Nations, you know, that's the biggest honor when the elders come up to me and say, we still have your cover story and the Spirit Bear. And it was such a crucial sort of documentation of our culture, our world, our life that you got to help us. And that's, that's the biggest badge of honor, I think, when you, when you do this work. Oh, would the Spirit Bear be like your Super Bowl? Like your, that was up there for you? Or no, I think my Super Bowl is, I guess, I mean, the thing

that's, yeah, I guess if you look at it like that, the Super Bowl is about the win, right? Yeah, it's a win. It's a win. And I think whenever I have, you know, when we were called in, I know, I think my bigger Super Bowl is orcas, you know, jumping in the water with 50 orcas at night in a feeding frenzy. And you've got orcas all around you and they're eating herring. And it's just a real rush to be around these 12,000 pound males that are doing 15 knots,

you know, three feet away from you. And they're just charging through the bait ball. You got humpbacks coming up through you. And to do that story for National Geographic was awesome. But then to go back with our Sea Legacy team. And then the win for me was I was in St. Petersburg, Russia a couple of years ago at the big climate summit that Putin had put on. And to have the oil industry from Norway basically glaring me down, I'm on stage with them in front of all the press. And they just hate me because we've had this win.

We have kept big oil out of the Lafoten region at the cries of most Norwegian people. most people didn't want it, but oil is powerful in Norway. So I think that was, you know, oil, we obviously, we use fossil fuel still. We still, you need oil. But in that case, it's like the one of the most beautiful, richest spots where 2,000 orcas come to feed. We don't need to already a country that's the richest country in the world per capita, you don't need the oil from this spot.

And to have everybody rallied together, come together was a great feeling. And that was a good win. So that was probably my Super Bowl, moments like that. And spirit bears were really good. It's all great. Spirit Bears is like a championship game to get to the Super Bowl or something like that. Like, man, I just got to say, when we met, I remember you talking about like, I was like, so you like hang out with the bears and you just kind of mentioned it with the bear thing a few minutes ago.

Is there a trust you got to build or do you just know the environment? Like for instance, I know that in certain areas bear have enough to eat that you're not as worried about it. Like maybe if you're up north somewhere. but if you're in certain areas in Montana, I don't want to run into a grizzly bear. And the bear doesn't know that you're Paul Nicklin. So like how does this work? How does this transaction of trust work?

Imagine how scared that bear would be meeting you. I mean, what are you like, eight foot six? He'd be like, this is just going to be a little bit more of a pain in the ass. It'll take two points. Exactly. I'm going to have to spend two more seconds on this guy. Yeah, no, bears are just, they're just incredibly intelligent. They're very charismatic.

I've seen 3,000 polar bears, probably 2,000 brown or grizzly bears, and a thousand black bears and some spirit bears. I'm sure I've had some moments with them, but I've never had to kill one. You know, and it's just by moving slowly, moving cautiously, let them dictate the encounter. I sort of have a story that sort of tells that narrative of how I work around bears, but I was working up in the fishing branch river in the Yukon. It's minus 15. It's fall. The river's starting to freeze up. up, the bears are in hyperphasia where they have to eat as much fish as possible. They're

panicked to eat fish because they're about to go in their dens for the winter and it's cold. I'm up there with Christina and a friend of mine, Phil Timpany, this great bear guy. And we sat there every day in one spot. There were about 20 bears on the river. And every day, we would go sit in the exact same spot, not six feet away or 10 feet away in the exact spot. The bears get really used to you being there. And you let them dictate the encounter. If you're always in the same spot, they'll start to relax around you. They see you, they can smell you, they can hear your camera clicking, they can see your motions, and they get really used to you.

But we had this one bear. We called Morris. He was the biggest brown bear on this section of the river. Not huge like Alaska, but like six, seven hundred pounds. Pretty big still. What do you weigh? I weigh about 250 currently. So two and a half of you.

Yeah, much more powerful two and a half of me. And so this. This bear got so fixated on a salmon. And Christine and I are on the edge of the riverbank with our boots in the water. And this bear chases the salmon up the river and Morris. And then the salmon's between our feet. And all of a sudden, Morris is on us. Like he's within three feet of us looking at the salmon.

And then he woke up and he's like, holy shit, I made a mistake. He was really uncomfortable. And we're looking up because we're sitting down and we're looking up at him. He's huge. And we're like, it's all right, Morris. It's okay, buddy. It's okay. It's all right.

You know, it's just like calm, calm, calm. And he went broadside to us, like, thinking we're going to attack him. Like, if you're going to attack me, it'll hit me in the shoulder. So he's like, he's kind of all nervous. And we're like, it's all right, Morris. And then, but it's funny. After that, he walked away and made, realize his mistake. And then after that, he realized that we were a safe bet.

So he was coming by about 10, 15 feet from us all the time. And that was fine. But it was on the last day of the trip, all the bears had gone into hibernation. It's about minus 20. I poured myself a big scotch. and I went and sat down on the river and I'm just sitting there sipping scotch knowing all the bears are gone

and not paying attention and I hear noise behind me and I'm thinking that's Christina's coming down and say hi and it was Morris. He hadn't gone in the den yet. He came down, walked right beside me, went into the river and grabbed a big chum salmon and sat probably within three feet of me

and he just sat beside me in the river and I'm sitting there with my scotch and I'm drinking it and he's eating his fish and we're just both looking up and down the river watching life go by and you know it's all you would just never end up in that situation, but that took three weeks of being with that bear every day and knowing you to end up there. So if you just told that story without any reference, people would think you're nuts. But it was completely a relaxed situation. The scariest one on

that trip was when I was in the outhouse and it was minus 30 and I was at night and there's no door on the outhouse. You're just sitting on a styrofoam lid on an outhouse. And then I had a bear come and sit right at the door. So you're sitting there with your pants with your pants around. your ankles with the bear sitting there and you don't know if you know the bear um or not but is that you morris hey morris i hope that's you i feel a little vulnerable right dude oh does the scotch knock the edge off in situations like that i mean like i always wonder about what the most isolated you've ever felt like out there doing what you do because of the the length of the weights and like maybe where you are that's the thing i would struggle with i think like i love being in nature but

I would maybe after a while feel a little bit isolated. Yeah, you know, it's so funny because I was after my government biology career, I was a little frustrated. I was 26 years old. I was trying to sort out my life. What did I want to do? Do I really want to work for Nat Geo? What was next? And so I hired at Sesta 206 and I had them drop me off on the barrenlands in the middle of the Arctic as far as away from human civilization as possible. And I just live there for three months alone with the bears and the animals and the wolves and nobody to talk to. And I think that the first two weeks were really lonely. Like I got really down and out, kind of down like I miss family. I miss our culture. And then it was funny

after something clicked after about three weeks where I became panic that I was running at a time. And it's after about a month of being on the tundra alone, it was the most euphoric I've ever been. I was hiking 50 kilometers a day sometimes. I was paddling great distances on rivers. I was in the best shape of my life. I lost 40 pounds. Just hiking and carrying these heavy packs. and every day there's bears in your camp and there's wolves and there's muscocks and you know that's so it's funny I have done the isolation tests and I I'm actually kind of craving to go do it again I would love to go just imagine being in like a meditative state except for three months it was a good feeling I couldn't do the Arctic but if you dropped me maybe some hospitable place in the Appalachian mountains around here maybe I could do a week or two for sure for sure Are you a mountain man or a water man?

I like it when the mountains meet the water, as they often do here in this gorgeous area of the country. But I don't know, man. I'm like looking at you and I'm saying, okay, he's not afraid. Well, he might be afraid of animals. He's not really afraid of isolation. Like, what does scare you? People, crowds. I'm really scared of people.

And I don't mean that to be dismissive or condescending. I mean, I really am terrified. of big crowds. I mean, people, you have to think of animals. Their world is pretty consistent. You may have a bear that's been hurt

or it's got a chronic pain and he's grumpy. You know, I've been head faked by big male orcas underwater who were just playing games with me. I was playing hide and seek with a big orca. But, you know, the only time I've ever been really attacked in my life or really scared or hurt was in the,

you know, subway station of New York or I've been held at knife point. I've been bullied, you know, that stuff. Because when people are on drugs, they're angry. or, you know, whether it's racial, I've had knives pulled out me on the sea ice.

I've had, you know, that's, I really, that's the most inconsistent thing. Like, it's so funny. I work with bears all the time. I almost never have anything on me like a gun or bear spray. But every time I'm in my truck, if I'm around people, like my trucks all have bear spray and I'm for road rage. I have bear spray in the back of my camp or if somebody were to come after me in the night. I have bear spray in my house, you know, so I have all these cans of bear spray that are

only set up for humans if I were ever to be attacked. But I am, yeah, I really, but most people are wonderful. Again, most people are wonderful. But as soon as you add drugs, road rage, you know, are tempers, people are down their luck. It's, it's, it's, it's a much more unpredictable world for me to manage than, than a wildlife world. Yeah, I always wondered, like, I, I had a couple of the guys and girls from alone. I don't know if you've seen that show before. Which is like incredibly entertaining to me. Like, I had them on the show and I was kind of asking them about the, that period when you get out of that blissful state of I'm alone and you go back to like New York or something where

we met. And I kind of wondered when I was sitting there talking to you, like, is it just like a heightened sense of get me out of here when you're in a big city? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I was in, I recently came off a shoot. I went into New York to do a wolf fundraiser. are for friends of ours who have the Wolf Conservation Center. And I had, I had to go up town to get a tuxedo, which, first of all, why in the hell

am I getting a tuxedo? I don't like wearing suits to begin with in the traffic. It was 5 o'clock. And I couldn't figure out the subway station. And then there were no taxis to be had and I was going to miss the event. I actually had an anxiety. I've never had an anxiety attack. But I just sat on the street.

I was just like, somebody even stopped and said, are you okay? I'm like, no, how do I? And they helped me get to the subway station. He was like, I had a panic attack and it's only happened in New York. So that was after coming out of the calm of being in nature, it was sitting with spirit bears and wolves. And man, that just, it's a, it's a big transition. But I also have great moments in places like New York.

The, the animals that you encounter, there's so many interesting ones that look like, they're like dinosaurs or their, you know, fantasy animals like the narwhals, that shot that you got. You mentioned that plane earlier that crashed. I'll assume the shot on your. Instagram that I've seen before with like 5-6 narwhal, which look huge to me. I'll assume that that was from that plane. You know, yeah, the narwhal thing was again, that was probably the hardest. When you talk about 98% failure, that one was probably 99.6. I mean, it was going up at the end of it every

year, you know, learning from the elders where they were and they're telling me that the narwhals of the big tuss were way out in the rotten ice. It was never going to happen. So I go back the next year. one situation it was starting to be a really good situation and a hunter my my guide who I was paying to guide me started shooting narwhals over my shoulder they all took off and there went that whole season and then you know I think on year four or five I finally said to my buddy like if I bought an ultralight airplane and we put it on floats can we take off from the sea ice with teflon bottom floats and get this sort of lawnmower up there in the air and photograph from it and he was a my best friend from high school, a 40,000 hour twin otter captain pilot.

And yeah, off we went. And just amazing to be surrounded by good people. This airplane on the way to the site caught on fire. He was able to rebuild the plane, get it ready to get there. We shifted it up to the Arctic. We got it assembled. We took off. The engine quit while we're taken off.

We're able to land it, tweak it, get it out there, get it out to the sea ice. And then we just had bad weather the whole season. And we just could never fly. And then finally near the end of the trip, we were able to get up in the air and the engine quit because of carb icing. We had a crash landing, damaged the plane. I got a new engine, put the new engine in the airplane, got that working. And then we're on the last day on the ice. And all the hunters had left the ice because it was so rotten.

We were able to take off. And that's where we landed out on the pack ice by all these narwhals. We got that entire assignment in five years of trying in the last couple days. and I, we flew back to camp to put more fuel in the plane to go take another crack at it. I fell through the sea ice, which I do all the time. It's not a big deal. But in this case, the ice was rolling. I was going to go underwater.

I reached up, grabbed the rope dislocated on my shoulder. So now I'm lying in the ice with a dislocated shoulder. Nobody can see I'm there for a fair bit. I had actually a friend come and drag me out of the water. Took them two hours to reset my shoulder. And then, you know, then the shoot was over. I had to, I was done. for that assignment because of that shoulder but which probably be nothing for you in football but

yeah but like much like the shoulder might be nothing for me uh the fuel gauge on my land cruiser broke last week and i just fucking stared at it i don't know what to do you rebuilt like three airplanes again like yeah that's the enuit can fix anything man we've been on with the enuit on the ice where your rack and pinion steering system when the snowmobile goes down they go back to the walrus carcass on the back of the sled they cut out the joint and they go back and they skews in you and they sold the whole thing together, freeze the metal into the walrus joint,

and then you've got your rack and pinion steering to go home. I've seen seal membrane used to fix a fuel pump, a membrane on a boat engine. I mean, so these guys can fix anything. And my dad was a mechanic, so you just learn in that world to adapt and be able to fix and keep moving. I've heard you talk about your dad and how industrious he was.

And, you know, like I think dads like that are going by the wayside, the way things are now. So that's pretty damn cool. The narwhals, to me, they shocked me how big they were. And I think getting above them was like the key to being like, holy shit. These aren't like pony size animals. Like these are. And I wonder, we talked about scale earlier.

What's the animal that you were most shocked to see at first? Just the grandeur, the scale of an animal that didn't come across in photographs. I think even just, I'd seen a lot of polar bears. But as a biologist, when we darted, a 1,200-pound male to walk up to them. And three of us were not able to pull his paw out from underneath him. Three men, grown men, grabbing that, the paw is this big. It's, you know, bigger than you, if you took your whatever size, 14-foot boots,

you can stand inside the paw print of that bear. And just to see that bear, those are big feet. Air 14. To see that bear, you know, running across the sea ice at 20 miles an hour. and just start digging down through this to a smell to sealhole, digging out like concrete size chunks of firm snow and just these, these power. And then to drug it so we can do our data collection on them.

And just to see this animal, how everything was big. You always have these theories of how you might deal with an animal like that if it ever came after. And when you see it, you're like, yeah, nothing. So this inner dialogue going on with you from time to time, what is the inner dialogue as you're being attacked by? Was it an elephant seal? Like, did you fend off an elephant seal one time? Or is that myth?

No, that's probably when you say what animal really surprised me, like, how big do you think an elephant seal is? How much do you think they weigh? Oh, man. If I had to guess, like, and I have no, if a big breeding bowl, big breeding bowl. I'm using a 700 pound bear. I'd say it's like 1,600 pounds maybe. So they're 11, 9 to 11,000.

pounds and they're 18 feet long. And so I swam up to a big beach master. I thought it was a sub-adol elephant seal in the water. He thought he was a submarine. Yeah. And he was trying to get up on the beach. I thought it was a sub-dial trying to get up on the beach to go because the big beach master breeds up to 300 males at once. That's his harem on that beach. And this guy was so overworked and so tired from breeding so much. He was in the ocean cooling off. I swam up to him and he saw me as an instant threat. And he stopped what he was doing and he came after me to kill me. And I was only in four feet of water.

And when they rear up on their back to crush and bowed chest, they're 10, 11 feet high in the air. So as I got there, all of a sudden I look up, he's 11 feet high in the air and he throws his 8,000, 10,000 pound body at me. I dodge and then he hit me. And his head alone probably weighs 2,000 pounds, his neck and head. And he's lunging at me. And I just keep shoving.

The only thing I can do, there's nobody else around me, my assistance way down the beach, I keep shoving the dome in his mouth. And I just keep letting him hit the camera and hit the camera. And my arms were swollen after from just all the blows of him hitting me. And he was trying to crush me. I was watching these guys crush and drown 1,500 pound females in the shallows. I mean, for me, it was like, it was actually kind of cathartic.

I've always been curious how I was going to die. And I was like, oh, so this is it. It's just an elephant seal. And I thought it would be more glad. But I wonder about that sometimes myself. And I'm not doing dangerous shit like you. So you were, go ahead. You were saying also something.

Yeah, every time you drive your car, man, it's way more dangerous than anything I do. Yeah, exactly. When we dive in the caves, like we're doing these long penetration dive deep, you know, underground in Mexico and Bahamas. I mean, we always see the most dangerous part is the drive to that dive site. So that's where we're at most risk. But yeah, something like that. And then finally my assistant saw I was in trouble and he came running.

made a big scene, the elephant seal turned for a second. I went up up on the shore and dropped my camera and just swept like a little boy. But it was just pretty, yeah, just the adrenaline going so hard. Yeah, I mean, how many hours does it take to stop shaking after something like that? You know, you sort of, like from my one airplane crash, I've had PTSD for probably two years where I'd wake up every night where I remember where my landing gears down and about to hit the water. I crashed upside down in an Arctic lake and was trapped in the cockpit it for a while. That stuff stays with you for a while, you know. And so moments like that elephant seal bothered me for a few months where you'd wake up just like as if your adrenaline sort of spikes again.

But again, it's nothing to compare it to playing football. Like it's, oh, please, but I do get the wakeups. I wake up like I'm like dying sometimes in the middle of night, like gasping for air. And it's not apnea. It's like my adrenaline at one in the morning. It makes no sense. And I can only imagine I have 10 of those if there was a fucking elephant seal after me. Well, then that begs the question. How do you, this is a morbid question, but do you want to die in your bed at 100 years old or do you want to die at like, um, like Leo and the revenant? Yeah, I just worked with Chivo, the, um, director of photography on that. He just did a shoot with him last month. What an amazing guy who filmed the Revenon. Oh, it's so gorgeous. One of the most gorgeous. Yeah.

And you know, I really do. I think I often think, how do I want to die? And it's, I want to die of a peaceful death. I don't care about money or awards or, you know, magazine covers. You want to be surrounded by a few families and friends, but mostly I want to be surrounded by deathbed or by calm deathbed memories that just things are so exceptional like that leopard seal or the spirit bears, you know, but I think most of all, I just want to close my eyes for the last time and just knowing that I've left the legacy of, and hopefully in millions of square miles of green protected areas or protected habitat or where you've just left a mark on this planet, you tried, you know, And that's that's kind of how I want to go down.

So yeah, I don't want to go down in a ball of flames or drown somewhere. I want to be a positive experience and just, um, just know that I tried my best and we did some good work together. I don't want to end on your, uh, prediction for your demise. I want to end with this story because I think it's very, um, important to hear. It was the, uh, the leopard seal story that I got to hear you tell. Um, for anybody who has it. heard it. I thought that was really interesting because I didn't know where you were going with it

and it ended up proving a very important point. Yeah, you know, if people want to see it with the visuals, it's better to see it with the pictures. But if you go watch my TED Talk, I think it's called Icebound Wonderland, I remember right? And it was a few years ago. There's some other stuff on YouTube, what have you. But, you know, it's, again, you have that fear of failure with every story you do for National Geographic and leopard seals have always had a really bad reputation from the time of Shackleton to tragically a scientist taken down and drown and killed in 2003 by a leopard seal. And that's right when my proposal to go film them underwater and photograph him and die with them right around that time is when that proposal was accepted.

And then I became a little nervous. Like, you know, I usually give animals the benefit of the doubt, but I'm like, maybe this one is a gnarly animal. And so I went with my friend Gora and Elma from Sweden and who has experienced being in the water with them for BBC and we went down to Antarctica and right away when we arrived we found this massive female leopard seals. She was, you know, for a leopard seal she was huge.

She was over a thousand pounds. Nothing like an elephant seal, but these things were all head and teeth. They're all evolved to kill and chase and kill penguins. And, you know, she grabbed the penguin, came up and killed it under the hull of our zodiac. and she was bigger than our 12 foot zodiac. There's blood and guts in the water. She's doing that death shake.

And, you know, you had onset to me, it's time for you to get into water. Yeah. So I, you know, I had to, like, seemed like a really bad idea. You know, when your guts telling you not to do something, we all get it. Your body's just like, don't do it. Yeah, yeah. And you have to ignore it. You're like, well, I'm going to go.

It just feels like you're sort of jumping into your death. And I had that, you know, when you're nervous, you get those numb legs. I had like no feeling in my legs. I had dry mouth, put on my dry suit, jumped in. the water and things appear 30% bigger underwater. So if she's 12 feet long, she looked like she was 15 feet long. She was massive. She was fat. And so she dropped her penguin and she came over and she just took my sort of camera and her teeth were up here and she's lunging at me and lunging at me and I'm staring down her throat. And she's doing these threat display, but it never felt like

she was trying to attack. She was just really establishing her dominance. And I just stayed there. she relaxed eventually. She went off and I thought the encounter was over and she came back. She had a penguin in her mouth and she tried to get me to eat this penguin. She kept releasing it in front of me and I'm like, nah, I don't want to be too anthropomorphic here. You know, it's just, I don't know what's going on, but the fact that she did it over and over. I'm like, she really is releasing this in front of me. And the more I ignored her, the more crazy she went.

Like she just became OCD hyperfocused that she was determined to feed me a penguin. And this went on for four days. She would sleep outside by our sailboat at night. You could hear her breathing. And I would get in the morning. She'd be out there like a big dog and she would follow us over. I'd jump in the ocean. She'd go get a penguin and feed it to me.

And so she started to feed me sort of like weekend penguins. And then she started to bring me dead penguins. At one point I had five dead penguins floating around my head as she's just trying to get me to eat a penguin. And then at one point, you know, she was getting really kind of annoyed with me that I was just absolutely useless. Inept predator in her ocean who was going to starve to death. And then another, you know, she strolled on her back and she did this, she blew bubbles in my face and then she did this big guttural jack camera sound. Her head would be, you have a big head, Chris, but her head is five times bigger than your size of my dad's head. Exactly.

So times three. That's a lot of brains. Yeah. And then, yeah, so then she, when she did that noise, I saw something move out of the corner of mine eye and another leopard seal had snuck up behind me. And that's what she was putting this threat display on was another big feat. So she chased her away and grabbed that one too, had a penguin, grabbed its penguin, brought it back and gave me that penguin. And then, you know, so it's, but every animal is different.

You know, fast forward six years after that story, I'm on another story in Antarctica and I got attacked by a leopard seal and I got hurt. I got, it was a mistaken identity. It flew out of the water thinking I was an emperor penguin and it steamrolled me and knocked me down, knocked the wind out of me. I got banged up and bruised a bit, but drank a lot of scotch again that night. and next day we got back in and finished the shoot. But yeah, so they're amazing animals.

I'm happy to take you down someday. I'm happy to go in the water with you. Dude, I told you. I mean, I'm game. I don't know that you throw me in the deep, deep end first, but you and I in New York, we tossed around some like training wheels type expeditions. You could take me on.

Talk to me about Sea Legacy real quick before we go. How can people help? How can people get involved? How can they educate themselves on what you guys are doing in the problem at hand? I think there's two things I'm really proud of, is that we have two organizations now. One is Sea Legacy. It's sort of the expedition,

visual storytelling branch that gets the visuals that brings people into the conversation. So we have the 62-foot catamaran that we're going to next week in Panama to get on that to go keep filming a bunch of conservation stories. Then we have only one, which is the platform. And that's where people come along. They can join the tide.

People can join for a buck, two bucks. You know, people make donations. But what happens is that people get to make a donation to the organization. And, you know, philanthropic dollars are great, but it's really neat to have a massive movement of people who are involved. Every time they give a buck, they get to see where that dollar is given. Of all that, I think right now we have 8,000 Tide members giving something about around $2 million a year. And almost all that money, we give away to every other nonprofit that we meet on our way,

though enable them and empower them to do their work. And then we film stories about it and we do coverages about it. So I think just C Legacy for the expedition, the exciting, the visuals, the fun, the importance of the work we're doing, but only wanted to join the movement. And it's called just join the tide. You can see it through C Legacy. You can go to only dot one and join and join there. But I think that's probably the best entry point into that stuff. But it's fun.

Like you think Greta Thunberg, she had that movement. She gets a whole world to wake up and care. They're all following her. She's great stuff. But then what do people do? where do they direct their energy. Now this becomes a landing point where you can now be involved in one initiative after you get to pick and choose.

It's like Patreon for the planet. And it's a model that's working and we're really proud of it. There it is. There's your actionable item here, Greenlight listeners. And definitely follow my man, Paul Nicklin, amazing work. I'm so glad he does it. And please come back for round two, dude. We could go for a while.

So I'll give you a break and then come back again another day. Well, I'm again, a huge fan. and I was super starstruck to meet you and it's a real privilege and thanks for doing this with your show and it's pretty cool that you're doing this and I'm really, really proud to be on it. The respect is mutual.

My man, I'll catch you soon. All right, Chris, talk soon. Tick Pick should be your first choice to buy football tickets because they save fans money by never charging any service fees ever. Visit Tickpick.com slash Greenlight today and use the promo code Greenlight

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and use the promo code Greenlight to save $10 on your first order of NFL tickets. Nate, man, I know you're busy doing your bets, which are dynamite. I love watching you bet and gamble on football. But you should take some time out of your day to listen to that fucking interview. Yeah? Yeah. It was good? It was good.

I walked out here feeling good. I was like, damn, dude, that was a, that was legit. I mean, he's awesome. You got to have him back. The guy's swimming with whales, right? Yeah, dude. He's swimming with all types of things. And he's just like living it to the full.

list. Yeah. I mean, he's got this Stan's dad, South Park, Ball's wheelbarrow. You know a whale wouldn't fit in this room? Depends on what kind of whale, buddy? Yeah. What if it was a calf? Oh, gotcha. Where there's a calf, there's probably a bigger whale

very close by. That's true, and she's not getting in this room. You're right about that. There also is no water in this room, so they wouldn't survive. No, yeah. Even though they're mammals. No, I know. I'm just clearing that up for people at home. Just one interview and you're a whale expert now. Pretty much. Okay.

Pretty much. Paul Nicklin told me. Okay. Yeah. They can't survive out of water for very long. That is. Hey, some housekeeping stuff here. Got a package from the post office, legitimate package.

We got a package, man. We just got a letter. We just got a letter. We just got a letter. Now tell me who it's from. Yeah, it's from. That's from Nathan Craig. That's great.

All these years, you were like a huge blues-clus fan, and now there's a segment for you. Look at that. Look at that. Yeah. Loving the shirts. Yeah, this is the Nathan Craig pack. It's not a Nathan Craig package.

It's not a Nathan Craig. Shelby Whippet football T-shirts. I guess Whippet is the mascot. Debo Samuel. Remember Debo, the band. They're number one. hit was whip it whip it good whip it's is actually a drug whipits is a drug term it describes nitrous oxide but in this case i think they're talking about the medium-sized breed of dog

oh okay and that is dr kingston's first that's his first appearance on the mic yes read his first appearance on the mic dr kingston thanks thanks for clearing that up i was like what are they doing with that mascot like i have no idea but it's a medium-sized dog i want to google this the dog real quick. And I can't wait to get this shirt. They're t-shirts. I really don't explain things well. The guy sent t-shirts. Yeah, we're wearing them. The t-shirts are awesome and we're wearing them right now. Nate and I have a confession. I can't wait to get this signed and put it on eBay because I'm going to get it signed by one of the best quarterbacks in the country right now and Brendan Armstrong. No, no. Dr. Fax, we can't. I just caught up to what you were saying we can't, we can't do

that we can't put things on ebay that come in the mail from greenlight pod fans bro you can't tell me what to do with my gifts from the fans if they sent it to us bro if i want to do that i can do it you can't be like you can't tell me what they do with with with the stuff if they're giving it if they're gifting it i'm gonna call my i'm gonna call my talent agent like making wasn't this the whole point of getting a PO box. Exactly. No, no, no. So people who asked us for stuff

and would put it on eBay, couldn't do it. Yeah, kind of. No, no. Reed, stop. You don't stop, Reed. You don't know how it is, Reed. You're super bummed out about not being able to put things that people send on eBay.

No, people did it to us for all the time. All those media days, all those stupid autographs, all that stuff. You're getting back at them. You go and see. It's not getting back. It's full circle. You know?

This will be really cool for the college Hall of Fame. When they want to buy it back for me, when I have it signed by Brendan Armstrong. Brennan Armstrong, of course, the Virginia Cavalier quarterback, who is the best quarterback in the ACC. That's not a shot at Sam Howe. That's a compliment aimed at Brennan Armstrong. So, yeah, we got one of Brennan Armstrong's high school t-shirts here, and Nate's going to put one on eBay, I guess. of facts. You.

Just to clarify. Nothing off the top. Any items, any items sent to the Green Light podcast PO box is property of the Green Light pod and chalk media. Therefore, any proceeds from a sale

of said items. Now I'll go to the Chalk Media bank account. You hear that, Nate? Yo. Hey, Nate. Hey, Nate. So I can't make extra money for the pod.

Hey, Nate, jokes on you, Batman. Yo. I can't make extra money for the pod guys. Oh, no, he's making money for the pod. Oh, my goodness. If the item is said specifically to you, maybe we'll talk about a rev split. Here's a way we can get, here's a way we can get Nate some revenue. If there's a fax machine company out there or something like that, call us.

Fax us even. I might float it out there. See where a big goes. Don't be like people might be sending us nice stuff, you know, like handmade shit. And then don't put it on eBay. Like, you know, if people are giving us like Etsy type stuff, let's just like be appreciative and get a cupboard or something. And put, you know what I want?

I do want a dresser here because then I can just come to work not worried about what I'm wearing. I got a ton of cool shit that people send us. No. Like I got a dresser full. Like this is basically like my high school bedroom. Like, yeah. I have a bedroom in home.

I share it with my lovely wife. That's awesome. But this is like my bedroom. dude, I can do whatever I want in here. And to be honest, you can play my music loud, I smoke weed in here, I fucking,

I got my clothes in here. Whatever I want, I lay them out on the floor. Yeah, send us more clothes. Yeah, for sure. And to be honest,

I'm joking about selling this shirt. No, because I'm going to keep it because this is the first official shirt that's sent to us. So it's kind of cool, kind of sentimental.

It is sentimental. So you're saying the second one you're going to sell on eBay. It all depends. Like, you never know. So that P.O. Box is 52,

267 Charlottesville, Virginia, 22905. Packages, 2150, Y Street. 5267 is the number. Charlottesville, Virginia, 22905. Send us some shit. Help me fill that dresser. Might wear it on the air. Little housekeeping.

JJ Reddick retired. JJ. Our guy. Old man in the three. It's like a friendly pod. Friend of the program. Also shout out to Tommy. and they kill it.

JJ is one of the most incredible basketball players I've ever seen because he went to Duke and I found a way not to hate him. You know what I mean? I think that's the appeal of JJ besides the fact that you could shoot the fuck out of the basketball

and seemed like a great teammate, got tattoos late in his journey, definitely took a dark turn, moved to Brooklyn, wore Chelsea boots everywhere, leatherbound books, but he could shoot the fuck out of the rock. The reason people like J.J. Reddick so much and they don't know it is that he went to Duke and somehow he's not

hateable. So, you know, happy trails to J.J. Reddick, our friend. Absolutely. Happy trails. Great career. Who did you hate the most that played at Duke? Let's make a hard. Let's go straight from like talking about JJ's legacy to like, let's just use this opportunity to shit on Duke. It's bad to say it. It might be it might be JJ. Really? Wow. We need to have JJ on. and get this ironed out. Yo, he was... Hey, Jay, congrats on the retirement.

Can you come on my podcast? The guy that I have on the pod sometimes says he hates you more than somehow. Kyle Singler, Carlos Boozer, Jay Williams, even. You know why I hate Jay Williams? And I like Jay Williams, but I hate him too. Because every fucking time somebody sends me that half-court shot video that ended up on SportsCenter, like I've never seen it before. Like, it happened three years ago.

I get that text once a week. Somebody's like, ha-ha, ha. The basketball player made the half-coach shot. You didn't. You weren't close, though. No, I had fucking Chelsea boots on. I had JJ Redick shoes on. That's why you never wore JJ Redick shoes,

just in case somebody asked you to take a half-court shot. It's all slippery on the floor, dude. It's hard. I was more worried about slipping and falling. Like, a win for me was to not fall, have the shot online, maybe hit the room. But I didn't need to make the shot. The only reason that that fucking thing ever saw the light of day

was because Jay decided. to hit a half-course shot, dude. Like, right there in front of me. And I'm like a background guy, like, have to act excited and dapp him up. Oh, like everybody else. I'm like, fuck this shit. Just have another half-core contest with them.

If I could wear sneakers, I would definitely beat him in the next one. It was all because of the boots. I don't want to make excuses, but it was all because of the boots. Challenge. Layup line. We didn't do it in the open because I wanted to clear the dance. dance floor for um for our boy paul nicklin that's it's the 21st night of september so

fuck it earth wind and fire it is but my dad used to to dance to earth wind and fire so i hear which is an interesting uh you think you dance better than your dad no no i think he's very athletic so you know he can dance i can't dance at all you don't want to see it either What was the song? He, Let's Groove was the song, evidently that my dad especially was into in the 70s and 80s.

Fucking guy used to rock a Canadian tuxedo on the regular white t-shirt tucked into it, like belt the whole nine yards, bro. I would pay to see you and your dad in a dance battle. Like people around you guys in a circle, a disco light floor and just like,

like, just how he does get in there and just. I don't do dance battles. No dance. I'm a solo wedding dancer. That's the only time. Another thing, hey, cowboy and of course Dr. Kingston, I am, I started Long Strange Trip. You guys know that.

I am really interested in this documentary. I'm a late life. I wouldn't say I'm a dead head. I'd say I'm a dead fan. And this whole docuseries is like six parts, I guess. It's about Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead. and so last night i had done episode one last week and it's been like a week and i took a week off and i've been thinking about it a lot and i was so into it and i'd go to turn on my fucking

roku or hulu or whatever it is stupid-ass smart tv and i just and i mashin buttons and i start it and i watch like 45 minutes and i'm like holy shit man they're they're doing a real boomerang thing aren't they they're doing a whole skip ahead to the end of the story and thing and then they're going to come back around like if they could land this this is incredible but they got to get in and get out if you're doing the boomerang thing you can't spend too much time there and I'm like man it's the late 80s you know it's uh days between they're talking about days between they're talking about the dead's resurgence these guys are writing letters to their fans telling them to chill out the dead heads to like stop smoking weed for a square mile around the

stadium. And I'm like, man, they are flirting with this heroin overdose, man. Like, they're getting close. And I clicked the little pause thing to see how much time's left in the whole thing. And I'm on episode six. So I had skipped all the way to the six episode from the first episode in the most grateful dead set of circumstances because I'm stoned out of my mind. So that's how the long strange trip is going. And you can expect a podcast. with a special guest to break that thing down coming up this fall. We actually have it on the books. I can't say who it's going to be.

I don't want you guys to go wild with speculation. It's not Bob Weir. Although that'd be cool. So if Bob Weir would like to come on the show anytime. I have a confession. Yeah. I've had interactions with deadheads. That's the fan group, right?

Of the, yeah. You sure you want to do this on a moderately successful podcast? A big confession. Yeah, why not? So like when we were in college, Grateful Dead came to UVA, and this was literally the, in the only time, no, we've had, we had practice canceled two times my entire time in college. And one of them, the reasons why was Grateful Dead was playing at JPJ. And whenever they book concerts, the concert venues have to make space for their roadies, aka. They have to make space.

I love it. A.k.a. The deadheads. Yeah. And so Armacue parking lot center and the U. Hall, the old U.S. were filled with roadies, which they survive off of selling drugs. Oh, my God, Nate? Dude.

Like, it was like a farmer's market with RVs, with RVs with Grateful Dead stickers, hippies, people doing whip it out of balloons. This is the first time I ever I've ever seen this in real life. I had, I forgot. You're just the kid.

Bro, we're in college. We were just drinking 40s. I was just... Dude, and Coach Grow canceled practice. And while we're walking back to dorms, me and a group of guys, we walked through this farmer's

market of deadheads and proceed and realize, yo, they're selling weed brownies, weed cookies. There's people with weed on their table. We're on the tables. And I proceeded to purchase. Oh God.

Purchase from a few. Statue of limitations is not passed. And I tell you, I don't want to outgrow hearing this. I mean, like, he felt probably to this helpless. To this day. Cancel practice. Dude, dude. I had bought like, like probably four to five different types of weed.

and to this day a couple of those weeds. Me and another teammate, we talked about this recently. That was some of the best weed that we've had like to date. Yeah, it's called Shake Down Street. That's what they call it in popular dead culture. So that's pretty dope like for them that, hey, they're big enough that they can be like, hey, we're going to do this concert, but you got to let our fans set up this.

shakedown street anywhere and that anywhere was Charlottesville Virginia listen Bravo Coach Groh has allowed like you know lightning would hit right nearby

and we were going to practice you know like a train could derail and crush the third team defense and we just practice you know like move the drill was like the famous but a dead

concerts what got him like any situation we would practice him, but a dead concert is what got outgrow. By the way, the Superdome, speaking of like inclement weather and disaster, super domes on fire. Did you see that a couple hours ago? Due to what? Due to fire.

Like the Superdome where the saints? Due to flames erupting out of the roof. Where the saints play? They get that under control. I mean, is there anything flammable in that whole thing? It's concrete, right? It's just a big concrete block. How many domes do we have?

Is it about to be over for domes? No, it's just beginning for domes, unfortunately. You think so? Oh, yeah. But are these old? Like, how long has this one been up? This could be dome arson. This could be Tom Brady.

Could be Tom Brady. I just want to throw that out there. The consment outdoor quarterback. He doesn't like the way the game's going. He's looking ahead 10, 15 years when he wants to retire. A crew was pressure washing the roof when the fire started. I don't know how water makes fire, so that's not checking out. Yeah.

Is water wet? No. No, water's not wet, Nate. The fire got under control shortly after it was, it had started 12.30 p.m. Crazy week. Crazy week for the Saints. Lose to the Panthers by a lot, and then your stadium catches on fire. the Buddy Lee of stadiums though it's been through you ever see Buddy Lee

commercials crack me up a little doll lighting him on fire getting run over by a car falling down the stairs oh that's like the Dunger Reeve commercial yeah the jeans the jeans yeah it's been through a lot yeah that's the same has been through a lot

Nate the Rolling Stone the magazine came out with an updated best 500 songs of all time list and that's from 2004 I think it was when they made their last last one. And I think, you know, how big is this list? I think the list sucks. Oh yeah? Yeah, I do think the list sucks, dude. I think the list sucks. I mean, like, I'm just, okay, kind of an adjacent

pathway for me, semi-adjacent, although I've been a dead fan longer than a Beatles fan, and I like really didn't like the Beatles, and now I like the Beatles, healthy, like of the Beatles. Strawberry Fields Forever is your seven? Never heard of it. Well, it's number seven on this list, and there's 15 better Beatles songs than Strawberry Fields Forever. The top 10 representative from the Beatles was in 2004 was number eight, Hey Jude. Which, listen, I don't think it's the eighth best song of all time, but it's a good song. And, but at 15, I think it's, I want to hold your hand here. Like, I don't need the boy band Beatles shit at all. I don't need it at all.

And, you know, when you have, listen, I know it's a list made by a bunch of white people in a boardroom trying not to be white and trying not to tell you that they're white. They have white influences, but they put Hayah at 10 by Outcast. I mean, that's the out. That's the outcast entry. I mean, there might be another. Just looking at some of the songs that I do know on the top list. Yeah. I feel like the reason why they're there is maybe because of how mainstream and they're in big time movies.

It's impossible to make this list. But honestly, it's not impossible if they charge people to get on this list. If you think about it like that, even if you did the minimum of $1,000 to be in this list, that's a quick half a mill. 500 people. Is that the right math? Maybe. There's a conspiracy that people are paying to be on this list.

This list is new. They have Bad Bunny on the list. Lizzo's on the list. I know. Little Naz-X. I think it's more what you just said. Like, listen, if I were to make a list of my 500 favorite songs, That would be easy because they're my 500 favorite songs.

The problem with making one of these lists is inherently that you're trying to speak for everybody. And like nobody can agree on anything, let alone subjective music. It's tough. It's tough deal. So hats off. I just shit on the list, but hats off for even taking it on. It's like one of those things. Stairway to heaven plummeted to 61.

It's going the other way on the old stairway, isn't it? Dr. Kingston. We've got Tracy Chapman in the top 100, which is great. Tracy Chapman should just be grandfathered and that motherfucker. I don't care how many times you change the list. Keep fast car on the list. What are your opinions on Daddy Yankees, gasoline being in there? So I forget what number he's at, but that was a big time song.

I kind of understand that. That's super dope for them. But that's also something that is just like 50 is maybe a little high. but that was a huge, huge genre song. Maybe a little bit. Because like it broke a whole genre of music like what making reggae tone popular. So I can kind of understand that.

Three songs that are lower than gasoline. The Weight by the band. I don't know what that is. Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin and Jolene by Dolly Parton. Yeah, I mean, not to mention like any Pink Floyd song, any Willie Nelson's song. any Chris Christopherson song, any Neil Young song.

And by the way, Powderfinger was an interesting entry. Your homework is to go listen to Who? The Red-Headed Stranger. It's possibly the best album of all time. Best album all-time? Like, how? Like, you mean just... Like, for this year?

Subjectively. Okay. I'm talking about my brain. The last item before we let you guys go is when you're out driving around, maybe don't be out driving around Tesla doesn't work autopilot not working shocker hey I want to put this out there before we go on this segment Elon if you ever want to give me a Tesla I will support it and give it good reviews my co-host here so he so earlier I'm like I want to talk about the Tesla's running amok and Nate's response is like

bro you're definitely gonna fuck up the chance of them ever giving me a free car in like the most serious tone i've ever heard and i was like you got excuse me dude like you gotta speak some things to existence man yeah and i really like teslas bro like chill out well keep your teslas away from me just just because that motherfucker goes on joe rogan doesn't mean that his cars work bro just like the guy that went on joe rogan and says that like heroin should be recreational i'm sorry Sorry. All Tesla's since 2020 have the self-driving computer and Tesla has admitted they won't be fully self-driving. Like there's a lot of accidents and the NHTSA, which is of course the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, has investigated numerous incidences. So Nate, you might want to look into that before you try to get a new car. Listen, quick story. I went to Baltimore this weekend to see Kat Williams and on the way up, seeing two people. in Teslas being very irresponsible

for what it looked like using the autopilot in the HOV, it wasn't the HOV lane at the time, but they were in all way in the left lane. And I promise you, I've seen one dude he was dozing off.

It was an older gentleman. He was in a red... Yeah, see, that scares me. And no, it, it, it, I nudge my girlfriend to be like, Like, is this dude, am I crazy? Like, or is this dude falling asleep? And she's like, he's definitely falling in a sleep. That's so troubling.

You, I hate people that abuse the HOV lane, dude. I hate that. Is that not the most annoying shit in the world? It is. I'm being obtuse on purpose. I just, uh, I hate that for real. Like by the way, the HOV lane thing, uh, Taylor on the way to your date, I think you could probably use the HOV lane with your blowup doll.

No, that's illegal. That's a big thing that people actually do. I know. And they get in trouble for it. But in this situation, you get pulled over and you're like, Mr. Officer, are you anti-doll? And then you're like, you just hold the camera and, like, agitate the officer. But, hey, Taylor, you have birthday coming up? Yeah, I do, actually.

I do. Oh, happy birthday, Taylor. How many years you've been on this rock, dude? On Friday, I'll be hitting 29. All right. So we'll sing to you on Friday. He would have a really nice birthday, but you're making him pop Cassandra. Reed, you're making him pop Cassandra.

You and your Broncos. But anyways, yeah, like, don't, you know, if you don't believe in the NHTSA, maybe you should listen to the NTSB. That, of course, the National Transportation Safety Board. All the acronyms are like DP and Tesla right now, dude. So what you're telling me is if so... Let me tell you what they're saying. Okay.

They're suggesting, and this is probably the most damning one to me, the layman reading an article online. The company has serious safety deficiencies in its technology. They suggest they shouldn't be on the road, essentially. So if I'm driving next to you in your Tesla, I'm a little bit nervous. So if someone gave you a free Tesla, you wouldn't take it, huh? You wouldn't take it? Fuck no. You know what I would do?

I'd sell it on eBay. What? You wouldn't give it to be? I'd sell it on eBay. Bro, Teslas are. lit. You're crazy, bro. You're crazy. Yeah, they're lit because I'm seeing videos of people that are like, oh, let me test out the new beta mode, which by the way, they have beta modes. It's like, they just upload, like, you know how they upload stuff on your phone? You open your phone,

all of a sudden things are different. Imagine getting in a car and things are just different. And it's not just like the stereo system. It's how the wheels move. It's where, how the steering wheel drives. I see people testing this beta shit out. Don't you have new cars that like park itself? What's the difference? I don't have a self-parking car. You don't drive. A tonne. Okay. So all the people who have self-parking cars, how many fender benders are, are you getting into? That's just not perfect.

No, it's not perfect. But imagine if everyone had a Tesla, Nate. That's what's going to happen. I know. And then we'll really be like, damn, this is really not perfect. It's going to work better because the cars can talk to each other. And right now, like dolphins or some shit. And right now, the cars can't communicate with all the other cars.

Cars communicate with it. Yeah, bro. You don't get it. They don't. You don't get it. You don't get it. You're also not a Bitcoin guy. No, no. You know, like you don't get it. It's being autonomous, bro. It all works together. Yeah, it all works together. It's symbiotics too, huh? It's all right. You'll see. Another big acronym, MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said that Tesla's technology is not safe. Yeah, so when MIT says something, then I just say fake news.

Yo, you can get anyone to say whatever nowadays, man. Right, exactly. Because like, yo, people are still, bro, like, they're still, people are still buying Tesla. You're so Tesla thirsty, it's ridiculous, bro. You want Tesla to pull up with like a ribbon like somebody's husband or wife on Christmas getting a free car, like for a present. You think Tesla is going to do this like handout thing because we talked about it on a podcast. Sorry, man.

I know this is deep in the podcast. I got bad news for you. Not that many people are listening to this motherfucker. Some are. But I don't think Mr. Tesla. All it takes is one person, bro. That's the thing about it. When you have an optimistic mind, it only takes one person to hear it.

I have an optimistic mind that at some point human beings will realize that robots are going to fucking kill us all, dude. At some point, I'm optimistic that will put this cat back in the bag. Well, I don't think it's a cat. I think it's like putting, it's closing Pandora's box. We've opened it, dude. We've opened it. There's people driving down the road sleeping.

People are sleeping on the road. Operating like two-ton machines. People are sleeping. I don't want to go through the stage where a bunch of people are just getting torpedoed on the sidewalk because somebody was looking at porn inside their Tesla and it has a fucking virus. You don't think there's...

It's a computer. computer man it's a computer bro I don't trust computers I'm sorry I'm not at the point where I'm trusting computers for everything I do like when will it stop dude when will it stop are you team sex doll for real like Taylor he's getting an inflatable doll we're fucking around here but pretty soon that's all people are going to be doing no that's that's not my that's not my cup of tea and let people do what they want to do man like yo it is what it is right yeah until there's like a fucking

an ugly sedan draped all over me. I'm trying to walk to dinner. Like, sorry. Who pays when the Tesla runs into me, man? Who pays? Your insurance company? No, but like, who's held accountable? The head robot needs to be accountable, man.

And the head robot is the person in the seat who has to abide by the beta warnings that they are given before they agree to you. use the autopilot. It's plain and simple. You can't trust human beings to get in a car that is advertised as being self-driving. And then like for a period of months, they work bugs out. Sorry, we're just working some bugs out. You want to take your SIM card out.

Your phone's not working. Like, it's not the same in a motor vehicle, dude. What are, what are Q-tips meant for? Q-tips? Yeah. They're meant to stick them in your ears. Are they? Look what people do.

But not all the way in, dude. not all the way in and people will just just abuse those motherfuckers it's one thing if it's cue tips in your ear drums but people are just going to do the max and when they hear they have a self-driving car they're going to fucking lay back and go to sleep or jack off or get a blowjob or so are you just saying all self-driving cars or are you just trying to throw shade at my man elon and tesler bro is it just tesla i don't care about elan musk bro i don't understand Elon Musk. I don't understand Bitcoin. I don't understand like all this like kind of pseudo white guy woke shit that goes on and like you're kind of into the pseudo white guy woke shit.

Me? Yeah. No, I'm not. You're going to get a don't tread on me license plate. Yo, you, you're the one who has, you have a house in Montana and no one knows what the hell goes on in Montana. So if anyone. Well, there's no self-driving. cars, that's maybe where I'm going to move. I guarantee you that most of the Teslas are probably in Montana. All the people there, they have fucking Teslas. Are you crazy? They don't, dude. Yes, they do. They're earth friendly and they're earth friendly. Earth friendly. Yeah, bro. Electric cars. If they got to, if everybody has to drive an electric car starting tomorrow, sign me up. They can't be self-driven, dude. Model X me. Everybody who owns a Tesla should move to a separate state. And you guys,

can just run into each other. Like everybody else, everywhere else, but it's just, it's more palatable to me to think that if I, if I fuck myself up driving my car, it's bad I'd be way more mad as a ghost if it was a Tesla. That's the best way I put it. You know, I think we should close the show.

I hope you enjoyed Paul Nicklin and then this wildly different second half of the pod. Get you a podcast host who can do both. Twitter, we got her shit together. Okay? We got a real handle reflective of the name of the podcast guys we did it applaud and now go follow us at green light

twitter is at green light we also have a new youtube channel name as well green light tube hope you guys like that hey we got a really exciting event coming up in philly on october third i'll be hosting a legend's tailgate party that you don't want to miss there'll be food drinks and music le garrett blunt is going to be there. Brent Selleck's going to be there. I'm going to be there. It's from 9 to noon on Sunday, October 3rd at the Navy Yard in Philadelphia. The best part is that all proceeds go to Philly Youth and towards ending water insecurity. Get tickets today at waterboys.org slash events.