Joe Rogan Experience Review podcast - A Review of 1240 Forrest Galante

Episode Date: February 9, 2019

Forrest works for Animal Planet as an animal expert. He grew up in Africa and has been on many safaris exploring and learning about different habitats. His conversation with Joe is very enlightening. To see the world through the eyes of an animal biologist is really cool. They had a great conversation and it was a pleasure to review it. Enjoy my review folks! Please email me with any suggestions and questions for future Reviews: [e-mail]  

Hello and welcome to another episode of the JRE review. Today I am reviewing podcast 124Z Forest Galante. This conversation was really interesting. Another survival expert type biologist in a wild animal expert works for the animal planet and originally born in Africa. So he's like a safari expert and his conversation with Joe, Forest, talks about a lot about what it was like growing up in Africa in a very different lifestyle than what it was like to move to America young and that culture shock. But also his expeditions now to go find rare and dangered species, species that were thought to be extinct.

And it's pretty fascinating to know people are doing this. So anyway, without further ado, let's start the review. Welcome to the Joe Rogan Experience Review! Where each week I review every single episode of the Joe Rogan Experience. What more do you want? So when Forrest was young and Forrest is a great name to have for anyone ever since Forrest Gump, I think that there should be more forests out there. When he was a little kid he used to go on safaris all the time so this is kind

of what his mother would do and when she wasn't taking people on safaris she had a little plane and she would take forest out and they would kind of fly all over Africa checking out new spots and going to different places. So he had a very wild life, very different wildlife, very different upbringing than most people. And then when he was 14 he moved to America and came up with his mother and had to deal with that whole culture shock. So you could imagine how difficult and different that was for him. He actually moved to America about the same time I did and I moved from England and even my transition was very different. You know you think, oh we're speaking the same language, everything would just be the

same, you'll figure it out. When you're young you're a little insecure and you just kind of want to fit in and not stand out and it's a little bit difficult to do when how you understand the world is quite a lot different than the people around you and So so yeah, I could only imagine one incident that for a city had was he was a school When he got to America first off and he took out a knife to cut his apple, because that's all he knew to do. Everyone in Africa did that where he was from, and the idea that that would be a problem was just impossible to him, and he ended up getting arrested.

So that's just one example. Imagine how shocked that would have been at 14. It talks a little bit about what it's like when you're out on safari, what you do, when you're around certain animals. He does a lot of walking safaris. So very dangerous, you know, you're taking elephant gun on us, big caliber gun, keep yourself safe from a lot of their creatures out there. You don't go at night, he said, stick to the day time, lots safer that way. And you know, if any animals fast chasing you, you want to zigzag because

almost everything runs faster than you. And that was something they went over on the podcast and it was quite a funny part of the conversation, is seeing how like fast all these different types of animals run. I think even the hippos like faster than human beings. Like you just don't have a chance and all these big things are out there to, you know, knock you over if they feel threatened by you. They're going to have no problems stomping you to death if you're in their way. Not their elephants go out of their way to hunt humans, that's not happening, but if they feel threatened, they're massive.

They're going to have no problem just smashing you. That's just how it goes. It's dangerous out there. He actually said that the thing that he scared of the most is mosquitoes. He said that's the worst thing because at the end of the day, malaria is killer. Joe referenced the stat that he likes to throw out, which is that malaria has killed more people than anything else that all combined or the walls or whatever. Something big. Malaria has killed a ton of people. Joe loves bringing that

start up and I think it's somewhere in there true. Malaria's a huge problem. If we had had it in America, it would be a disaster because Mosquitoes are everywhere. You just can't get rid of them. One cool thing that Forrest does now is he likes to go looking for now is he likes to go looking for endangered or thought to be extinct species. Now I didn't know people even did that. I thought once something becomes extinct, you know, just the reason people understand that it is because it's straight up has got extinct. But I guess you can never really know. So there are biologists that will go out there looking for them. One thing that they're, that he's been looking for is this some kind of Tasmanian dog called thylacine. And it's thought to have been

extinct, but people have seen him. There's people who have taken pictures of them. And so he goes out to see him. Now he prefers to have some eye witness reports before he goes looking for something. For example, he thinks there is a giant sloth that exists in Peru in a very remote area. And he was talking about some sort of moose that was thought to be extinct in New Zealand, but now that's been seen.

He said the real problem is, when it comes to tracking these things down or like proving that they're real, photos and videos are not enough because they could be doctor, they, you know, they could be changed, photoshopped, whatever. Whereas if you get DNA samples and these things, then that's proof, right? Well, little tricky, I think in some ways, to get DNA often, uh, a thought to be extinct creature, like, what do you do to prove it exists? Shoot it,

and then get it? You might be killing the last one. I think that's kind of a problematic, um, way of going about things. But who knows, maybe not, maybe there's other ways that you can get to just get some hair or something like that, get some feces and the improve that exists. It's kind of amazing though really that like how elusive these creatures are and during this conversation, Joe and Forest talked a lot about this. You know, there were stories they gave about how a mountain lion can be really close to a population of people and never really be seen. And they'd set up some cameras that were like night vision and people would walk by and

after the people leave, the lion would pop out of the bushes and do some things and then a hide again as soon as they were coming. And it was just, you know, the people walking by just had no idea that there was a mountain line in there. But the mountain line was very sure where the people were at all time, like very much on top of it, registering threats constantly and never putting his guard down. And in the same way, they were talking about these moose in New Zealand, how they exist, and even though moose are massive, people didn't know that they were there, and they might be, so they've caught

some pictures of them, but they haven't entirely proven that they exist. But that's kind of how it goes. For us, it was saying that 2,000 new species have found every year of different creatures. Not often very large creatures, but still creatures are found and it's pretty impressive. There was a tribe he talked about called the Kiyosan, I think it was called, and they are like a native people, tribal, primitive type people, tribal primitive type people and back in the day they would get hunted by men Western men so the key or some were like a short people kind of like Pigmy style and these Westerners would just go hunting them and that's crazy to think that humans would hunt other humans. Now and and not all that long ago, he was saying it was something like the 70s or the 50s in the podcast,

but then towards the end of it, Forest said, I don't think that's right, I think it's longer ago. I'm sure it is, I'm sure it's probably like in the 1800s and things, but it's still, that's not that long ago. You know, that's your great, great grandfather or something like that. I think that he'd be out hunting humans is pretty horrific. That's pretty scary. He had a cool story about Easter Island and how it collapsed just that they ran out of resources. They cut all the trees down because it's only 63 square miles

large. So they basically extinguish their own resources and wipe themselves out. extinguish their own resources and wipe themselves out. And he forested is also doing some work in the Galapagos island. Now that's a unique set of islands. They're the islands that Darwin went out to do his evolutionary research on. And they're untouched. And he said something really cool that he's not allowed to eat seeds for two weeks before he goes because obviously a ship would contain seeds and he could like plant new bushes and whatever out there, there'd be a real problem and then also he does a quarantine for 48 hours. I don't know if they feed him a special to a diet while he's out there, but but that's something that He has to do which is which I thought was really cool Also up in Canada they were talking about how there's actually a lot of mammoth tusks and

You know if you found one would you keep it? What is the moral? Kind of end to that, you know having a mammoth tus. Or do you give it to a museum or the declared, or what do you do with that sort of thing? And along those same lines, they brought, they talked about shipwrecks and treasure hunters. And there was somebody that found a whole bunch of gold, but he declared it and the government took it all away. So again, what would you do?

Would you keep it? Would you tell anyone? Would you declare it and possibly lose it? It's an interesting question to ask. I mean, it would be brutal in a lot of ways to put a lot of work into finding a bunch of gold treasure and a boat and doing tons of research and getting all the equipment only to have it kind of all taken away from you. equipment only to have it kind of all taken away from you. That would be really rough. Back to Forrest's knowledge of animals, he talks a little bit about addictations, how animals have changed, you know, through millennia, through thousands of years to adapt to their environment, and animals do it really

well. And like giant bears on Kodiak Island because they're always hunting you know big elk and moose and things. And how do these things evolve like this? You know it's wild the kind of adaptations that they get. And is it that animals just get lucky? You know but it is in a sense. It's just a mutation, like they, something changes just a little bit and they live longer, eat more, fuck more, have more offspring, you know, it's a statistical advantage, you know, over time, if it was like a slight color, um, alteration, like the ones that have the more favorable color, um, statistically more likely, the breed better, even if it's only like a one or two percent chance.

Given enough time, that line of coloration is going to win out on top of any other statistical advantage. And you know, we've just been on this planet so long evolving billions of years that it's just enough time to like make these changes, right? I mean, it seems logical to me. One of the last things that Forrest talked about was kind of a spiritual event, and definitely check it out in the podcast.

I really liked it because him being a scientist, not really religious man, to have this moment that affected him so profoundly and talk about it is really something worth listening to. So before you went on this kind of expedition in the Amazon, he was with a group of his people and one of these like Charmin guys from the village said, look, I got to like blow this powder up your nose and it's going to kind of cleanse you for the the challenges and adventure ahead. So they

did everyone everyone nothing happened and when they got to Forrest he had a massive reaction. He was vomiting, eyes went red, light headed, felt of the ground, massive pains and the shaman said, oh this is good, this is because you had a demon inside you and you needed to get it out. So Forrest couldn't help but like associate the rest of the good luck on that trip as coming from the fact that he got this evil thing out of him. And it was it was something that was really interesting because even though he's not a religious man or a superstitious man that it was kind of like the placebo effect, he believed he'd be safe and

therefore he was safe. And it it it's just hit him really profoundly. So I found that fascinating that you know these ancient cultures exist with their traditions and ways of doing things and oftentimes we look at it maybe like it's a silly thing but maybe the effects of it are really powerful and I don't know. I got a lot out of it see what you think listen to this podcast if you're one of those nature lovers outdoor type guys you're gonna love just the idea here and start to follow forest on Instagram he's got a fantastic Instagram with a lot of cool stuff thanks for tuning guys I really appreciate it we'll talk soon.