The Daily Zeitgeist - The Bear Episode 10.17.23

Episode Date: October 17, 2023

In episode 1565, Jack and Miles are joined by wildlife ecologist and conservationist, host of Going Wild, and co-host of Wild Kingdom, Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant, to discuss… All The Bear Questions and more! LISTEN: Iniesta Flow by namesblissSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Jess Casavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult. And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me for I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and Shekinah Church. Listen to Forgive Me for I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Keri Champion, and this is Season 4 of Naked Sports. Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry.

Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese. Every great player needs a foil. I know I'll go down in history. People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game. Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's sports. Listen to the making of a rivalry Caitlin Clark versus Angel Reese

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Presented by Elf Beauty, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports. I'm Carrie Champion and this is season four of Naked Sports. Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry. Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese.

People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game. Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's basketball. And on this new season, we'll cover all things sports and culture. Listen to Naked Sports on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio apps, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Black Effect Podcast Network is sponsored by Diet Coke. Hello, the internet, and welcome to season 309, episode two of Dirt Daily Zeitgeist, a production of iHeartRadio. This is a podcast where we take a deep dive into America's shared consciousness. And it's Tuesday, October 17th, 2023. Mm-hmm.

I don't know. Come on, Jack. Guess. Guess? Guess one of them. Yeah, guess one. Just one of the guess? One is something that is...

Seems like we're two full weeks out from Halloween. Yeah, but there's one food that gets a day today that is just like a food that everyone eats. It's a food. And it was stolen by the Italians from... Pasta. Yes. Okay.

It's National Pasta Day. National Mulligan Day. Let's see. Oh, no. Pro-life day of silence. No, sir. Not going to do that one. But we will do this.

Black Poetry Day. National Pharmacy Technician Day. Shout out to the homie at the pharmacy that cooks up their homebrew way govi for people in the community. And also National Edge Day, which I believe is for the straight edge people out there. Oh, okay. Not for people who are edging sexually. No, no, no. This is for straight

although you guys can always do your thing you know we're not we're not getting you don't need a day to do to do whatever you need to do to feel good whatever it is you do anyways my name is jack o'brien aka he got legs that it seems to me reminds me of childhood memories. Lying to my mom, that's not piss, it's Italian ice. Whoa, sweet Jack O'Brien. That is courtesy of Lacaroni on the Discord. How did you find out? Are you talking to my mom?

Water ice, ma. Water ice. It's just water ice, ma. It's melted. Yeah. I went on that roller coaster and came off, and it's just water ice on my pants. Dang, water ice all over my pants. Dang it. Anyways, I'm thrilled to be joined, as always, by my co-host, Mr. Miles Gray.

Miles Gray, a.k.a. You gotta Venmo me. You gotta Venmo me. When eggs ain't that cheap Just remember that I got you next week 20 bones would be sweet Cause you gotta I thought I knew the melody of this one

But it's just enough to get you started That you gotta Venmo me Shout out to Rando Dixon Art Because yeah, eggs are pretty They're kind of going up and down gas though yeah shout out to shout out to plug-in hybrid vehicles yeah save you that sweet sweet dough shout out to Randy Newman for being able to stay on is he still alive you know that's one where I'm like it could be a mulligan yeah or it could

go not a mulligan but it could be a push it could go either way with me truly could he's alive great alive in 79 good shout out to him i did not like when suzanne summers passed r.i.p i was like oh damn i thought never mind. Okay. Miles, we are thrilled to be joined by an acclaimed wildlife ecologist and conservationist who specializes in researching how human activity influences the behavior of wild animals. She's a TV host and the host of the PBS Nature podcast, Going Wild with Dr. Rae Wing Grant, which makes sense because she is Dr. Rae Wing Grant, which makes sense because she is Dr. Rae Wing Grant! Dr. Rae!

I'm here, I'm here. Welcome back. Thank you. What's happening? My favorite place to be. Oh, come on now. Really? Come on now.

Really? We love having you. So many memories. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We loved having you last time and we're like, now that we're talking to experts, let's talk to it.

Let's really dig in. Let's talk to a real expert. Yeah. Let's spend some time doing some research and like just, you know, really square up, make ourselves seem extremely smart. And that's what we're doing. brains together and have put together a list of some of the hardest hitting science based deeply researched yeah science-based questions in your area of expertise this is like my oral exams all over again yeah yeah it is exactly this is on and it's going to be on the record right right right the stakes are high yeah incredibly high so we're going to get to that in a moment. But before we do, we still like to ask our guests, what is something from your search history that's revealing about who you are or what you're up to?

I'm going to be the great equalizer, perhaps, because I'm a scientist. I'm an environmental scientist, a wildlife ecologist. I have all this expertise. And yet, every so often, I have to Google the simpler things just to make sure that I'm explaining it correctly. So two weeks ago, I was with a film crew. I'm filming a television show. It's called Wild Kingdom. It's great.

You can watch it. It's on NBC, streaming on Peacock. And I was with the crew. Amazing plug up top, by the way. I mean, you know, you gotta sneak it in. We were in Texas. We were in central Texas in a place that has dinosaur footprints, right? Like this part of central Texas used to be an ocean. And then at the point that there were these dinosaurs it was like more of a swamp and they sunk their giant feet into the mud and then it just like

there was a drought and they just solidified and they're still there it's amazing so i'm talking to the crew about dinosaurs this is just like rural central texas too and somehow we got into the topic of fossil fuels and one of the producers on the show didn't know where fossil fuels came from like she didn't understand the word fossil that's part of fossil right so fossil fuels are like you know the gas you put in your car is a type of fossil fuel right right it's what's contributing to climate change and so i was explaining to her like, girl, yeah, it's when dinosaurs lived and then they died, their bodies decomposed and sunk into the earth. But because it's been millions of years, those decomposed dinosaur bodies have liquefied because it's so hot down there and turned into essentially like oil that we drill up and use to put in our cars and use to power stuff. And we've contaminated the whole atmosphere because of it.

And her mind was blown to the point that I started getting a little bit concerned. I was like, am I lying about this? Is that right? So what we would sometimes call fossils, those slowly over a course of long decomposition became fuel? So let me just say I was right. I mean, I had to Google it because I was like, I mean, I study living animals, not the dead ones. But I mean, but that is accurate, right? So fossil fuels, like scientists throw that term around, politicians throw it around.

But it's literally fossils. We have them because it's decomposed dinosaurs from under the earth so like the gas you put in your car is dinosaur body gas right that we drive and it combusts and you know makes always dinosaur body like it's not it's not like plant body or something it's not plants it's like decomposed animal matter so it's like dinosaurs it's like all those old crustaceans. And I mean, it's it's a bunch of stuff that used to live. One day humans will be that same liquefied substance and people could use us to power stuff from oil to oil. say it's when are they wrong i think it's like they might be or i might be wrong but i believe it's like if it's plants it's from those like ancient oceans right that like right right like not like not like you know the grass that died yeah right it's it's like ancient if anything all prehistoric from before there were people to take down the data of like how it all started and

what decomposed it's just like organic matter right but it's a lot of it is like really big animals like dinosaurs that die okay so i have to apologize their bodies i have to apologize to the listeners i've been calling fossil fuels dinosaur farts that we're just cooking dinosaur farts for our guests so i cooking them i always said i said yeah what is that even cooking farts yeah yeah yeah we're cooking them to get our cars started, but yeah, it's the bodies, not the farts.

I mean, I feel like that's like clickbaity enough. Like a lot of people, you know, you just hear this word over and over and you're just like, I guess that just means like dirty gases that go into the atmosphere. But it's like, really?

I mean, it was interesting to make the connection while looking at a dinosaur footprint and like marveling at it to be like, oh, I interact with dinosaurs all the time. really i mean it was interesting to make the connection while looking at a dinosaur footprint and like marveling at it to be like oh i interact with dinosaurs all the time right and you're also like you will have your comeuppance dinosaurs you will help destroy our they remain relevant yeah dinosaur fart to dinosaur fart as the bible says yeah my i have my how i would have searched that what you were just talking about is how dinosaurs footprints texas because i only talk to google in the dumbest phrases possible but we were in glen rose texas if you ever go there you'll be astonished

because there are legit huge dinosaur footprints like and it's just this there's just out in the in the community it's just it's this rural rural part of central texas that is like you know kind of oh do they have like like dinosaur statues there too and stuff they have the other big statues like off the highway kind of statues but it is the country like it is like it is not urban it is a wild place but it's just very accessible so let me just say the dinosaur footprints are super excessively just like kind of walk upon them really i'm looking at a picture from the smithsonian magazine and it has the dinosaur footprints and then to make sure you know that it's Texas, somebody just dropped a cowboy hat on top of them. For scale?

Yeah. For scale. Gotta do that. Cowboy hat for scale. Yeah. How many cowboy hats tall are you, Jack, if we're doing the Texas measurement? That's right. What is something you think is overrated?

Oh, so this is an unpopular opinion, I think. Maybe not in this group but overrated especially right now like all the pumpkin flavorings that we see going on i i think okay i know this when i was a kid i ate an entire pumpkin pie one thanksgiving and i barfed everywhere and now i can't even think about a pumpkin flavor without like getting nauseous and so i can't i can't handle it so all the you know like no offense to all the pumpkin spice people and i love me some you know apple cider or whatnot but i just can't do the pumpkin flavor i can't i can't i can't overrated it's wild how like one bad experience can totally mess you up like some folks have that

with candy corn right like eat too much candy corn you can never eat it again i love i didn't even eat too much i just had one and i was like this is disgusting and a joke yeah like no need to eat wax yeah the hatefulness that anti-candy corn and i personally like candy corn and the little pumpkins because i like as much sugar i like a sugar dense treat and that that's just giving you pure sugar like sometimes you bite into it and it just like dissolves into a pile of sugar in your mouth yeah but the the hatefulness with which the candy corn people describe divisive yeah yeah i just have a very strong opinion about what I want for Halloween. And I'm only looking at it through that prism.

And I'm like, well, I hate this. So you're bad. You know, give me chocolate. It's like the people who hand out fruit or something. You're like, just don't open the door. Maybe just fight me instead. Yeah. If you're going to do that.

Oh, a fucking apple? Okay. Why don't you just why don't you just smack my mother that's with me and then we can just get we can just get there a lot sooner sir no i i do loose handfuls of loose candy corn in the kids bags every year that's just yeah just scatter it in sweaty with your sweaty palms and all. Some stick to them. Some don't get off your palms. My hands are bright yellow and orange by the time, by the after, by the evening. No, that, yeah. I never got candy corn in, like, that was not a problem for me, like, that people were giving out a significant amount of candy corn.

I always associate candy corn with, you know, just being places where candy wouldn't normally be. Yeah. Sure. I don't think it's an appropriate replacement for, like, Reese's Peanut Butter C wouldn't normally be. Yeah. Sure. I don't think it's an appropriate replacement for Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, for instance. No. No. Candy corn is the,

oh, I hit the CVS right before I came to your birthday. Yeah. Candy. It has that energy. It's like, man, you don't give a fuck about me. It's like at the secretary's desk, right? Like in the main office at school, they'll have a little dish of candy corn.

Yeah. I think my family just got like a bunch of candy corn and pumpkins one year and i was just feasting on them and just the pumpkins in particular they're filling they're actually they're filling it is like the most sugar that you can get in like a single piece of candy and wax like i keep saying i'm like it is made of wax i think is it i think it's like i mean there's dinosaur ear wax dinosaur ear wax tell your kids jack tell your kids yeah that's like the thing i mean yeah the whenever you have a bad experience and then you end up you know having to uh vomit after it does put you off like and i'm not trying to cast dispersions but one time i had like a somebody from firehouse subs i can't eat firehouse subs anymore and now we can't have them as a sponsor

sorry and here's another one jack i'm about to completely fuck us over with 99 bananas i drank a whole bottle of 99 bananas brain liqueur and vomited everywhere i can't even eat bananas anymore oh my god but a bottle though yeah yeah Somebody, some people said that was a mistake starting with 99 bananas, but I had to just, I had to know. But it's the quantity also. And I misunderstood what you were describing when you said you ate 99 bananas and it made you sick. And I tried it myself and just ate 99 bananas and it made me very sick. Not sick enough to not love bananas. I love them always and forever good for you dr grant what is something you think is underrated okay this is like this is a little

eye rolly but this morning okay so i have a girlfriend who has four kids shout out to dana if she's listening to this and she knows how to run a house like she is she's also an attorney like she's so skilled but she knows how to like run a house and Like she is, she's also an attorney. Like she's so skilled, but she knows how to like run a house. And I have two kids and I'm constantly like, feel like I'm a hot mess. So I reached out to my friend

and I was like, how do I not like lose control by the beginning of the day every day? And she's like, you have to wake up at 5 a.m. Like you have to. That's the only way. You wake up at 5 a.m like you have to that's the only way you you wake up at 5 a.m you'll have enough time for yourself imagine that like you can take

a shower and get dressed and be a person you can like get a head start on the day you can finish up any work you didn't finish the night before and then you can be ready for the kid chaos and then you can jump into your work day and i was like girl five though like that like like we're old now i don't know if i could do that anyway so i've been putting this off i've been procrastinating for weeks and this morning i set my alarm i woke up at five i only hit the snooze button one time yeah okay and i got up and so what i'm saying is underrated is sunrise right like watching the sunrise i'm kind of like this is underrated this is so peaceful you know like i'm like real groggy and not real happy but as soon as like i get to experience sunrise and dawn kind of like wow what a gift what a blessing you know so I'm a new person we'll see what happens tomorrow but essentially I'm a new person

yeah so I did that once and I did it I did it once and I'm here on your show to say yeah seeing the sunrise once yeah that sounds nice yeah it's just I I will get on a kick of like I gotta wake up before these kids because otherwise like they're just all over me. And I also have this thing. I tell myself that they like have a sixth sense that when I'm awake, they will also wake up. Right.

Right. That is a, that is a rough couple hours to spend with a wide awake five-year-old. What's going on? What's going on? What are you doing out here, dad? What's going on? Exactly. Just sitting there while I'm trying to catch up on emails and I'm

mad because the sun's not up yet. But yeah, it's just so hard. Little kids are so hard. Little kids are so hard. But there is something so stressful about the moment you open your eyes, you have to be actively parenting. And so this is like getting ahead of that. I'm like, even if I have 10 minutes before I'm like actively parenting, like my littlest is three and she is a complete maniac. Like she's the wildest kid. I never thought I'd have a kid so wilder than some of the beasts. Wilder than the beasts. Okay.

Do you sometimes say that? Yeah. You are wilder than these beasts. Okay. Do you sometimes say that? Yeah. You are wilder than these beasts I work with. Yeah. People are like, how do you like, you know, are you ever afraid? I'm like, I can't wait to get into the wilderness. Yeah. I would rather face a den of bears.

Oh my gosh. And I'm holding one of their cubs than waking up with a three-year-old. Yeah. Yeah. At least I know what to do. I've just come around to the idea of like, okay, so I am going to be more tired

at the end of the weekend than at the end of the work week. Yeah. And that's okay. That's how it was meant to be for a time. There's no TGIF. No.

That's not real no more. No. Yeah. No. And I think it took me a while. Like I was like, why are my weekend, why am I not like

loving these weekends? And it's like, and I do was like, why am I not loving these weekends? And I do in spots, but I am very tired. I'm so sleepy. It's exhausting. I'm so sleepy. Have you tried the Vietnamese coffee yet? Miles, this is not going to help me in the long run. It's just going to make me wired for three days.

I've been waiting to hear your report of how you had to chain yourself to a radiator in the basement because the caffeine was hitting too hard from the vietnamese coffee you can like sip it over the course of the day you i mean that is a good point like with one of those the vietnamese coffee with the condensed milk yeah sweet and delicious it's like it's easy to drink you sip it over the whole day yeah and you're you're totally it's like a sustained bacon wow okay i i do it in one go and then have an existential crisis for the next eight hours so you gotta pace sweat through your chair and then oh god yikes you're like it's damp in here oh it's my sweat yeah amazing all right well we're gonna take a quick break when we come back we're gonna get get into the hard hitting science. Yeah. And so we'll be right back. Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts.

When you're just starting out in your career, you have a lot of questions. Like, how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed? Or, can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job? Girl, yes. Each week, we answer your unfiltered work questions. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in experts who do, like resume specialist Morgan Saner. The only difference between the person who doesn't get the job

and the person who gets the job is usually who applies. Yeah, I think a lot about that quote. What is it, like you miss 100% of the shots you never take? Yeah, rejection is scary, but it's better than you rejecting yourself. Together, we'll share what it really takes to thrive in the early years of your career without sacrificing your sanity or sleep. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jess Casavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series, Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult.

And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me For I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and LA-based Shekinah Church, an alleged cult that has impacted members

for over two decades. Jessica and I will delve into the hidden truths between high control groups and interview dancers, church members, and others whose lives and careers have been impacted, just like mine. Through powerful, in-depth interviews with former members and new, chilling firsthand accounts, the series will illuminate untold and extremely necessary perspectives. Forgive Me For I Have Followed will be more than an exploration. It's a vital revelation aimed at ensuring these types of abuses never happen again. Listen to Forgive Me For I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Carrie Champion, and this is Season 4 of Naked Sports, where we live at the intersection of sports and culture. Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry. Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese. I know I'll go down in history. People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game. Every great player needs a foil.

I ain't really near them. Why is that? I just come here to play basketball every single day, and that's what I focus on. From college to the pros, Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's sports. Angel Reese is a joy to watch. She is unapologetically Black. I love her. What exactly ignited this fire?

Why has it been so good for the game? And can the fanfare surrounding these two supernovas be sustained? This game is only going to get better because the talent is getting better. This new season will cover all things sports and culture. Listen to Naked Sports on the Black Effect

Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Black Effect Podcast Network is sponsored by Diet Coke. And we're back. We are. and so we want to take this opportunity to check in with you dr grant about how you as a scientist perceive some of the news that we cover on a regular basis and that is entering the zeitgeist on a regular basis as the the sign in my front yard will attest, in this house,

we believe in science. Okay. No, but we do believe. We don't think COVID was caused by 5G. Okay. Speak for yourself. Speak for yourself. We don't think vaccines killed every celebrity who has died since 2019. Since before the pandemic. Yeah. Since before the pandemic. Okay. That's good. That's good. That's a good, solid take. So I guess you'll be shocked to know Miles is not a scientist, but I am also not a scientist. How do you think about communicating as a scientist to non-scientists? Like how strategic are you when communicating with those of us who may not, I'm not going to confirm that I

don't have a PhD in the sciences. Well, look, I think getting, I, I'm on Reddit r slash science. So I think I have a good grasp on things, but yes, how, how would you in a world of contentious information? What's, what's it like? What do you do? How do you speak to those of us? I got to say that I work really hard at it. And I am also gifted with a type of science that I do that is highly visual. Right? There are chemists out there, people who study microorganisms. It's harder for them to show the science as they're doing it. Right?

Or it might not be as interesting to look at. But I study large animals. I study large carnivores, bears, and lions, and mountain lions, and wolves. And the science behind studying them might be very technical or very mathy or very analytical. But kind of the basics of it are fun to look at and highly engaging so i just i get that benefit just automatically that like people might tune in if i show like a hibernating bear there's a huge science behind that but the visual also speaks volumes right so there's that and then i also want to just shout out how identity plays a huge role into how I approach science communication.

And I even think how I got into it. Because as a, you know, I almost said a young black woman, but I should correct that. As a millennial. No, no, we're still young. We're still young. That used to mean young. As a millennial black woman, I always was a part of my community, right? We're still young. We're still young. doing to my community, which is predominantly Black women my own age, right? Or maybe their brothers and their husbands or their boyfriends or, you know, my family. And so because there

was such a disconnect between like ecologists and the people I spend my free time with, without really trying, without being purposeful, I would talk a lot about what I do or where I'd been or why I was going these places or the cool stuff that I found. And so I found that just naturally storytelling or just science communication became a thing. And then, of course, I was also like growing up, I was such a nerd. So imagine me in college. I went to college in Atlanta and there was this wonderful black community. And I was the girl who was like obsessed with recycling right like environmental health like picking up litter I was the recycling coordinator for my dorm right and so I was also that person no matter what my identity was that was like knocking on people's dorm rooms and being

like it's recycling day like bring me all of your bottles of 99 bananas or whatever no I'm collecting all of your bottles of 99 bananas or whatever. No, I'm collecting them. I put them up on my cabinet. Gotta make a pyramid out of them. Put it next to my Grey Goose bottles. So they know I at one point could afford Grey Goose. I have class. Yeah. So I think that in so many of the ways that I've been involved in science, there's been also a practice to it that you can see, right?

You can see someone collecting recycling, right? But there's like a science behind why that's important and how it works. And you can see someone like hiking in the wilderness looking for a bear and there's a science behind that. So, you know, I think that I might've been super challenged in other ways, but I've just had this amazing benefit of what I do or what I care about and how visual it is and how a person can kind of symbolize a lot of that. And so I haven't struggled too much. You know, I do get like I do get the like comments on Facebook. I got I recently got an email through my website about someone like kind of threatening me to tell a story the right way right it was really interesting what does that mean there's a bird called the atwater prairie

chicken in central texas it's a highly endangered bird it has this terrible name because the word chicken is in it right but it's actually one of these like remarkable birds in the sage grouse family so it has these like yellow cheeks that puff up really big and they do like one of those mating dances that you'd see in all the natural history shows it's like an incredible bird and this guy sent an email and he was like you better like if your show does a story on the atwater prairie chicken you better do it right because so many other people have done it wrong you know that's what those things are it's like you don't even know what we're doing. You know, like, like there's no context here, but he was like threatening me, like little old me about this prairie chicken, you know? And so it's just very interesting that I do get

people who don't like my communication. You know, I do get people who have, find problems in it, usually for no good reason, but I don't get a lot of deniers when it comes to what I'm communicating. And that is special. To continue down this, because I think this is that's relevant, right? Because we're such in an era, too, where it's people are like, I got to see it to believe it for a lot of scientific stuff. Like they're like, I don't know how a vaccine works but then like and i remember like the like like what was it the cdc's like here's a fucking video man yeah i'm not gonna watch that that's fucking nonsense but like for things that are measurable right and like for people like if

seeing is believing a lot of times how i guess in that sense how are you seeing climate change because this is another thing that people are like, it's cold today. Therefore, like, fine, shut up. But how are you seeing that sort of manifest in the physical world that of like these environments of the species that you study? Because that's one thing, like, obviously, you're not like an atmospheric scientist, but you very much do understand how climate is impacting animals. So in that sense, how are you seeing this play out like at that scale? Because I'm sure that's indicative to like the sort of chain reaction that could happen with our environmental systems. Right. And, you know, it's really interesting that you bring that up because I kind of want

to put this disclaimer out that climate change impacts wild animals tremendously in a way that's not OK. But I think that we need to solve the issues of climate change to help people first. You know, there's a lot of people who kind of care more about animals and people or they might be more convinced to care if there's an animal story rather than a like, oh, people in this developing nation are suffering kind of story. But do you see how emaciated their dogs are? Exactly. No, exactly. Exactly. So I always want to point out, like, I live and breathe wild animals every day.

I've dedicated my life to saving them and keeping them on this planet. And I think people are more important and more urgently need saving, right? Because climate change is devastating entire communities of people right now. With that said, bears, right? Bears are a perfect example. I've been studying bears for 13 years and we're seeing how climate change is impacting all different kinds of bears. So one of the things that we love about bears as like Americans is that they hibernate in the winter. It gets cold and they go into their den and they hibernate and they sleep for, you know, two, four, six months at a time. Well, they actually need all kinds of environmental cues to enter hibernation, right? So it's not like they

just like look at a calendar and say like, oh my gosh, it's November 15th, like time to go, right? It's like their ecosystem has to signal to them winter is coming. The temperature drops, maybe precipitation increases, maybe get some snow, right? The trees stop producing food. The other animal species they eat, whether it's fish or deer, go away. Everyone is locking down and there's nothing to eat. That's when bears' chemical balance changes and hibernation starts. Their metabolism slows down, right? That's like body chemistry within them. But that's not going to work if it stays warm, right? If the trees keep producing, if the bunny rabbits keep hopping around, that doesn't happen. So in some of the places that

I've studied black bears in the Western United States, there have been these winters recently where the temperature hasn't dropped and the snow hasn't fallen until like February. And so the bears have remained active, but then when February comes and in one week, it's three months of snow and everything shuts down, they're not hibernating already. Their bodies haven't gotten into that hibernation state. They might not be able to get there in time and they may starve or they may freeze to death or they may die or they may come into your garage and look for a warm place and some food. So we're finding that climate change not only impacts like the bear's perception of what season it is and whether or not it's time to hibernate, but it could also

increase conflicts with people, right? Because they kind of freak out. They're like, all I need is some food. It was available last week. It's not this week. So where can I find it? In your trash can. And that is also a problem. It's got to be hard just like on their natural, like if they're not getting the rest that they had in the past, right? Doesn't that affect them as well? Are they cranky? affect them as well? Are they cranky? They are cranky. Bears are a lot like us. They're hungry. They're hangry, I should say. I need my three months of sleep in the winter. They're hangry. As do I. There are bears in warm places where they never hibernate. So there are bears in Florida, right? Like in the Everglades, it's swampy, it's warm, and they don't hibernate in the winter.

But let me clarify that setting up a hibernation den is the most important and the most critical for surviving periods where there's no food, right? So like classic winter when there's no food. And female bears give birth in hibernation. They need to set up a hibernation den. They need to slow down their metabolism. They need to go into a hibernation state in order to give birth. Because when they do, they give birth every January.

Every bear that's ever lived in the history of North American bears has given birth in January. Every single one. It's the most, it's like my favorite fact. I'm going to have to fact check that. Fact check it. No, go, like you have my, you have my permission. They're born in January. Let me call Tim Ferriss really quick. Do they realize how much better they'd get at hockey if they were born a little bit later? Oh, just slightly later.

Oh, wow. You're really going to Malcolm Gladwell, aren't you? When I was doing my PhD research in the Lake Tahoe area on black bears, we would just give every bear a January 1st birthday. It was more about it was less about when they were born and more about what year. Right. As opposed to like what day or what month. Just January. So mama bears like have to stay in their den for, you know, 16, 20 weeks because they give birth to these one pound, like hairless, kind of blind little cubs. Right. Like they're they're they're little. Bears are huge. Right. Bears are bigger than people and they give birth to these tiny little like fist sized cubs. Right. I mean, I personally am jealous. Human beings should be able to do that. We are

smaller and we give birth to these enormous babies and it tears us apart. So bears, they have these nice little births. The babies just slip out, right? And then they just nurse from their moms and the protection of this hibernation den for a couple of months, like two or three months, and then they emerge from the den altogether so the mama bear needs to prepare for hibernation by packing on the pounds getting as fat as she possibly can in order to not eat not drink not urinate not defecate and just birth and nurse some babies for several months and if the climate is not giving her that signal that it's time to do that, then she won't be ready. And if you play it out to the worst possible outcome, it's that the cycle gets

disrupted to the point that the population just begin dwindling. That's right. We just stop having births, successful births. So it's less about, sometimes people are worried about hunting them, outright killing of them. And it's more about sometimes people are worried about like hunting them, right, like outright killing of them. And it's more about like females of reproductive age, like having successful births over and over. That's if we don't have that, then we don't have a future of the species. You said something really interesting earlier that I wanted to touch back on. They don't. And I was always curious about this. They don't poop or pee that whole time. Yeah. Isn't that crazy? they don't poop or pee that whole time. Yeah. Isn't that crazy?

I always wondered how that, I don't know. I remember as a kid hearing that, I'm like, they got to poop a little bit, probably. They, they, so,

okay. Okay. So let me just say, cause scientists are always going to give a good, like, it depends. Right. So here's my scientist.

It depends for accuracy. There haven't been a lot of studies done on hibernating bears. You can imagine why, right? Like it is very hard to study these animals. Yeah. Oh, it seems so cozy in there. I would be all about that. If you need somebody to go in there. You peeing? Nah? All right, cool. I'll be back in a couple hours. Yeah. Like it's just, it's like pretty dangerous and like they don't want to be bothered. Oh, sure, sure, sure.

A lot of these things are very important. And then it's hard to study hibernation in captive bears like at the zoo because, again, their food source doesn't go away in the wintertime. And so they often don't hibernate because they're like, I'm cool. I'm chilling. I have like a heater and a person who brings me food. So there aren't a lot of studies on this. But what we found is that in this metabolic state that they enter, they recycle all of their waste and urine. So that's why they don't drink anything. And the liquid in their body is being recycled like over and over.

It's fascinating. And there's a lot that we can learn about human health and, you know, biomedicine from studying hibernating bears. In fact, there are some hypotheses that they're plasma changes. So we can detect the chemical changes down to the blood and the plasma level, and their organs are actually preserved because the molecular components of their plasma changes. I've had a researcher come to the field with me in Minnesota who was a cardiologist and was studying human hearts. And the idea was that they wanted to take a blood sample from a hibernating bear, which we were able to do,

not without drama, but we were able to do it. And they wanted to see if the blood of a hibernating bear could preserve human organs. Because we need a way to make organ donors' organs last longer. Rather than like that very narrow donor. Organ donor and there's a recipient somewhere in a hospital waiting for a lung or a heart or a kidney. recipient somewhere in a hospital waiting for a lung or a heart or a kidney, often the organ will die in transport because we don't have a good way to keep them alive. But apparently, bare blood, hibernating bare blood might be the thing we need to, like, if we can replicate it, to figure out how to preserve organs for double the amount of time so that more lives can be saved by organ donors. Right.

That's incredible. See, this has been learning new stuff, too. I'm going to start going poop and pee in the recycling can. Yeah. Right. I mean, that's what I'm saying. That is, I think we got what you were saying. Recycle your waste to live longer.

I mean, you know, talking about the vaccine and, you know, the, like, there's a lot of people who had some ideas about how you could recycle your own to help protect you from. Jack, why don't we. I think you just endorsed that, right? So we can just move along. Yeah, that's basically. Let's get past the joke stuff, Jack. You want to ask a serious question? Yeah.

Okay. So you wake up and you're a bear. I have an answer to this that I'll give first. But like, what's the first thing you're doing? I personally feel like showing the other bears water slides would be high on my list. They're going to love it. I feel like bears would love water slides. And I don't think I've seen a bear. I've seen them enjoy a pool.

I've seen them enjoy hammocks. Yeah, love a hammock. But a water slide park like me and my bear friends go ride on water slide park yeah it sounds pretty fun what would what would yours be other than that obviously that's number one i guess realistically yeah sure that i do as a bear i mean you know they're just so motivated by hunger as am i so i think the first thing I might do is like hit up like a buffet, you know, like, like a good, like what's a good buffet. I mean, Sizzler is classic in my family. Pizza Hut salad bar.

Oh, from the nineties. Yeah. Pizza Hut salad bar. I think Ruby Tuesdays used to have one yeah okay time machine yeah yeah you know like a solid buffet i think would be what i do but i might also like you know what's funny is that what people talk to me about bears all the time right and so often they'll bring up like yogi bear right the cartoon and they'll talk about like picnic baskets and like going for a picnic and all that kind of stuff and i'm'm like, maybe that would be cute. Maybe if I woke up as a bear, I might be like, hey, let's actualize this. Let's go for a picnic at a picnic table in a public park and blow people's minds. Let's just screw with people and make this whole Yogi Bear story real.

And do that. Play the part. I like that. Sorry, we're just furiously crossing off the five Yogi Bear questions. Yeah. Not that one. Those might come off as hack now. What's another one? Oh, OK. So to that point, right. About, you know, bears taking a pie off a windowsill and things like this. So we constantly read stories or I'm constantly seeing stories of like, you know, black bear shows up in a backyard and, you know, the species are increasing. The BBC over the summer was like, bears are returning to the Alps. Here's what you need to do to avoid, you know, having a horrible encounter. We're in how to stay safe in bear territory.

Some things feel, and then other things I've read about how I think Louisiana may have a bear hunting season for the first time in a long time, and that populations are rising to levels where before it seemed like it was pretty fraught with potential extinction. Are these stories, are they part of a bigger picture? Are there people who are just looking at these bear communities being like trying to other the bears and make them feel like a threat and how we have to control them? Or is it something that has to be hunted? That's one thing I'm seeing constantly. Aside from also locally, especially in like L.A., people who live near the Angeles National Forest, increased anecdotes and like local news about bears like showing up.

And I'm curious from your perspective is it like this is a good thing like right like like conservation's working and we're able to like help repopulate or this is or it's it's it's fine lines where where are we at with all the bears so much to say about this i'm gonna save the hunting stuff okay because i have a personal opinion about hunting and I have a professional opinion and they're different. Okay. But to answer your first question, I just want, here's a little anecdote. When I was in grad school, my advisor said to me, he had been studying carnivores for his whole professional career. And he said to me, when it comes to

carnivores, people think there's either too few or too many. They never think there's the right number. And man, oh man, does that ring true? Because when bears are on the endangered species list, like people are like, save the bears. We love bears. We got to get more bears, bring them back by any means necessary. And once we get like a good number of bears around and they're like, oh, look, my ancestors used to live here. I'm going to come back to this space all of a sudden. Right. Like people are bringing the alarm like bears are everywhere. They've returned. Like, what are you going to do? They're eating your puppies. I would call on everyone listening to really think about, like, where do you fit in this? Like, you do care about wild animals and you care when there's not enough of them. But when there's, like, plenty or when they're doing well and when you see them, does that mean there's too many or does that mean you're uncomfortable?

Because I think that's a huge, huge difference. Because, like, on one hand, when it comes to black bears, like we've been doing conservation on them for several decades, it's been working pretty well, and black bear populations are rebounding. But there's not like so many black bears, right? I mean, considering how many there used to be before, like, you know, the colonization of North America, there's a fraction of that number here today, right? There's no habitat for them. I mean, like, you know, you look at New York City, New York City used to have bears before it was New York City, and now you're not going to find a bear anywhere near there. So, you know, like San Francisco, Los Angeles, grizzly bears, like walked in those spaces, you're not going to find grizzly bears in California. So I have such a strong pushback on people who are like, there's so many, they're everywhere, they're in my backyard. Because it's like, well, it's their backyard, actually. They're in their backyard. They're at their house. It's like they came first. Bears existed in North America. From what we can tell from like the evolutionary timeline

they were here before people before indigenous people before any human beings walked on the continent of north america as far as we know black bears were here first and so this is their land and we need them right like they help to control the herbivore population what helps control the vegetation community and that gives us deeper roots in the soil and that prevents erosion. And that's a really big issue. I mean, there's a lot of reasons we need these predators. Okay. The next thing I'll say is that COVID, man, oh man, COVID actually plays into this. Because when the world shut down and everyone had to start working from home in 2020, we started like

noticing shit. Like people started like looking out their window and be like, oh my gosh, there's a coyote out there. Oh my gosh. Have you seen how many raccoons are in the trash? Oh my gosh. The combination of people being home and being able to notice what happens in and around their home and also like not going out at night, right? Like we're not going to the club. We're not like going to places. We're just like around. Yeah, we're on bear watch.

We're on bear watch. We can hear, we can notice people spending more time in wild places, right? Like when we were able to travel again in COVID, it was safer to be in nature than other places. And then technology, everyone has like a ring camera, right? Like you used to have a doorbell and now you have a camera at your door. Everyone is able, and they have a camera at the front door, at the back door, all around the house. The doorbells have cameras. The doorbells have cameras.

Like there's so much monitoring. There's also like, I'm flashing my iPhone at y'all because when I first started studying bears, we didn't have cameras with phones or phones with cameras. You know what I'm trying to say? Camera phones. And now we do. So like the amount of bears that I can show that I'm working on today when I do field work is an order of magnitude bigger than before. So anyone who interacts with a bear in 2023 can prove it, can show it, can put it on the internet, can spread this information. Whereas 10 years ago, 15 years ago, you just had the story to tell and it didn't get very far.

I didn't believe it existed. It was like Bigfoot to me. I didn't think they were real. It was Yogi Bear and that was it. No, that's a cartoon, you fools. Right. And then, sure enough, you were real. It was Yogi bear. And that was it. That's a cartoon, you fools. And then sure enough. And then I got attacked. Sure enough, it was one of those real ones that I was talking to. There's like this combination of things, right? There's just a combination of things. Like, yes, there are more bears. There's not very many more bears. Like, it's going well. It's going well. There's more coyotes. There's not very many more bears. Like it's going well. It's going well. There's

more coyotes. There's not that many more coyotes. There's more coyotes caught on your nest camera, right? That's what it is. Like you just didn't know that coyotes are minding their own business on your property, you know, five years ago, but now, you know, and now you have a feeling about it. And so there are so many scientists, a lot of folks, especially I have to highlight, like UC Berkeley has this incredible lab, the Shell Lab, S-C-H-E-L-L, run by a Black man who's a wonderful wildlife ecologist. And they primarily study like urban carnivores, and they are actually using data from Nextdoor. You know, that terrible like app where people are racist? Yeah, yeah.

What kind of data are they getting? How those people are selling stuff outside on the corner again. Oh my gosh, so like filter out all of the discriminatory like posts on racism and anti-homeless rhetoric and you get people talking about animals. And they're actually using data from next door to kind of measure like are people reporting seeing wildlife more often than before and the answer is yes so we have like a few more animals but a lot more reporting a lot more discussions a lot of people sharing it and seeing it and i think that's good i think it normalizes wildlife being around but people got

to like stop worrying that they're not gonna be okay because it's like when was the last time a coyote like killed somebody we don't have that like that doesn't happen a bear dingo ate my baby you know yeah like it's not like you're okay like you're safe you just might not feel comfortable right yeah I mean it gets to your point about awareness like the more I I see it, the more I'm like, I actually see more videos of bear encounters where people like successfully are just like, who know what they're doing. And like the bear leaves. And that's actually given me a little bit more being like, okay, they're not out here to fucking eat our pies. You know, they're just doing their thing. And if you if you happen to have an encounter, there is a way to exit. I mean, like, get your fucking gun, Tom. All this bear pie fear mongering is getting out of hand. It's unbearable, actually. We need to wage a campaign.

Yeah. We need to take a quick break. And then we're going to come back. And I want to ask about bear videos just generally. Because I think you've mentioned it a couple of times, but bear videos rule. They probably make your job a little bit easier. So we're going to talk. We'll be right back.

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like is it annoying to you as somebody with the superior animal to cat yeah like are you like uh enough with the cat videos have you seen these russian guys whose best friends are literally a bear i have to say i have to say i don't want to offend anybody who's listening oh boy but like i get sent so many bear videos and And you're like leave me alone. I get so every day. Like whether it's like people I know on text, DMs. Sure, sure. Hold on.

Have you seen this one though? Check this one out. This is one where the bear catches bread. Yeah. Catches a piece of bread. Have you seen this one? Look at this. Have you seen this one?

So first sits back. Sits back. Oh, so impressive. So good. And this is probably not advisable. Hello. Hi. Bears start waving. Throw a slice of bread.

No look catch. No look catch. So you've seen that one? No. How about this other one? That was so impressive. That was impressive. The catch was impressive. I'm that was impressive. Thank you. The catch was impressive.

The catch was impressive. I'm never going to champion captive bears in a questionable facility. I study wild bears. Okay. That bear was behind the smallest fence I've ever seen. It was like chicken wire. I was like, I'm sorry. Okay, sure.

That's an extremely tame bear yeah right okay got it like i i love watching bears enjoy a hammock i particularly feel like that is like because that they are perfectly physically expressing the weird unstable feeling of getting in a hammock for the first time like that if you like had a genius comedic actor like doing a routine with a hammock this is kind of like this so this one is two little baby cubs doing it says woman records rowdy bear cubs they're so rowdy they look half like you know they're perfectly inhabiting the weirdness of being on a hammock and half they just look like if you gave my kids a little bit of sugar and let them and they flipped over that's so real yeah no you're right that's so real like hammocks are

super awkward and they're just having the weirdest time and it's like who really spends that much time in a hammock because they're like it's just so awkward and you never feel totally stable. But then sometimes they get in there and they're really soaking in it. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Bears love to play, especially the cubs. Baby animals love to play, but the cubs are so much like human beings.

We can just see it. And when a bear is good and full, it has time to play. And so we get a lot of those videos of like bears splashing around people's swimming pools or like sitting, you know, in their hot tubs or like, you know, playing on the hammock or going on the swing because they're curious and they like to play. And that is one of the reasons that they show up in the other kind of video, right? Like where they're trained. That's the reason that like we used to see bears in the circus, right? All the time. It's like they are easily trained.

They're really smart animals. They are very agile, right? Like their bodies work in ways a lot like ours. And so they have fun. As long as their belly, I'm going to say it again. As long as their belly is full, honey, like then they they have fun as long as their belly i'm gonna say it again as long as their belly is full honey like then they can have a good time and i think that is just so endearing about by the way it's right like relatable relatable yeah i want to i want to show you this other one how to i haven't seen the video but as a really freaky title it says 85 bears

destroy patriots oh my god it's a it's apparently a group not on my watch a group of like 85 bears destroy patriots. Oh my god. It's apparently a group of 85 bears. I don't know. Have you seen? Do you know of these specific bears? There's 85 of them. Apparently one of them is called the refrigerator and another one is called Walter Payton. By any chance.

Yeah. A sports team. Yes. Oh shit. No. Okay. This is the Super Bowl. Cut this. Never mind. Yeah. A sports team. Yes. Oh shit. No. Okay. This is the, this is the Superbowl. Cut this. Nevermind. Okay. Cut that one. You gotta cut that one.

Cause I don't want to look stupid. I just, I just want to point out, I think it would be amazing one day to like work with athletes to see what in fact they know about the animal they're representing. Cause like mascots are always animals. It's like the timber wolves or the eagles or the bears. Right? But it's like, do these people have any knowledge

of the animals? I should be a consultant. I should just go to all the NFL games. I clearly don't. Yeah, you could just live in Chicago. The bears, the cubs. Do a little science communication because everyone comes to a football game for science. You know? It would just be a perfect fit. Yeah, absolutely.

I thought you were going to say it would be fun to one day set 85 bears loose against 85 self-described patriots because that would be, I think we'd have similar results. Yeah. 85 feral hogs. Yeah. On your property. Oh my gosh. Do you think the Christmas episode of The Bear needed to be a full hour? Oh, I haven't seen The Bear.

Oh, okay. Okay. Wait, wait, wait. This is what I wanted to say before when I was like, I don't want to offend anybody out there because people send me bear stuff all day long. Like, mostly people that I'm friends with. Like, people, my friends and family send me bear stuff constantly. Like, for gifts, I'm always getting, like people, my friends and family send me bear stuff constantly. Like for gifts, I'm always getting like bears as gifts. Right.

Like I want folks to know, like, I care about bears so much. It is my life. But like after like 5 p.m., like I care way less about what bears are doing. Like it's like it's like a nine to five and like maybe a little bit on the weekends. Like I can't be obsessed with bears constantly. Like I, like I, I can't, it's not my identity. So it sounds like we only have four and a half hours left to keep asking you these questions. Yeah. Okay. How about, how about this though? Considering the fact that, you know, bears occupy your nine to five, what's something scientifically, because you do have, you know, you're around other learned scientists. What's like a scientific breakthrough that has caught your attention from, you know, like what's got you excited when you're around these other scientists, science in and of?

Oh, oh, my gosh. I have so many friends doing so much work. Oh, oh my gosh. I have so many friends doing so much work. Okay, here's something. Here's something. Just as a brief departure from bears, wolves are doing some amazing stuff. And I'm friends with some of the researchers who are studying the wolves that are coming into California. So the state of California hasn't had wolves in 100 years or something like that, or maybe over 100 years. And wolf conservation has been going on in Oregon. And naturally, like without anyone helping or tempting them, they are coming into California. And some of them are traveling down south. We had a wolf two years ago that made it all the way to L.A. County.

Wow. From Oregon. That went on his own. He had a GPS collar on on and then it died like around the central coast. And unfortunately, the reason we know he got so far was because he was hit by a car down at LA County. Also a car was the undoing of that. Oh, what a journey. Yeah, hit by a car after that huge journey. But it looks like wolves are repopulating where they used to live in California on their own.

Conservation has done like a little bit in Oregon, but not a lot in California. And it's a powerful story to me because it's this like triumph and perseverance and like, you know, a reclamation of like land. Right. Once there is that they were literally killed off of. It's not like people removed them and took them somewhere else they were shot to death and killed and they just kind of innately figured out like this is the spot this is where we belong yeah and you know they're not going to be again they're not going to be like in your backyard but they're going to be in these forests and in these mountains and in these landscapes where they used to once live. And to me, that's just so special. So I'm following that closely. And there's some

colleagues of mine here in the California kind of academic space that are doing that work. And I'm a big fan. That's cool. Do you have a favorite real bear? Like, is there a big old 2A5 guy or girl out there who you're just like every time i see their tracks or their leavings yeah just like doing something cool with being a bear yeah well like i'm i'm basic like this is how i'm like basic i don't know are we allowed to curse on the show yeah okay so this is where i'm like a basic bear bitch right it's like there's a bear called 399 and she's the famous bear. If you know of individual bears in America, then you know who 399 is. If you've never thought of this before, I suggest you look up bear 399. She lives in the Tetons in Wyoming and she's super old. She's fabulous.

She's super old, but she keeps having litters of cubs and people keep waiting for her to die, but she keeps showing up with babies. And she's just like this incredible mom. She's given birth to, she's a grizzly bear, I should say. So it was also extra special. Grizzly bears are an endangered species. So she's a grizzly bear. She's lived in Wyoming for many, many years, 399. She just keeps having babies, honey. She is fertile and fabulous and super old. So she's my favorite. And if anyone has a favorite bear out there, it's probably 399. That's so wild. There's an IG account called GrizzlyBear399. She's fabulous. I am telling you, fabulous. Get into 399. Okay. Because yeah, out here, everybody was all about P22.

You know what I mean? Which is a mountain lion. Like, he was wonderful. May he rest in peace. Yeah. Yeah. So now we can shift our focus to 399. 399.

Yeah. Do we want to probably ask one of our, probably, like, more serious questions before we sign off here? Yeah. Do you have one that you're trying to get in there? Okay. Yeah. I figure while we have you here dr ray like what's like the worst dump you ever seen an animal do a poop yeah oh

i spend so much time with animal poop right right so like what's the worst one through it with my hands like dr grant in jurassic park right see meant. Exactly. Shout out for that synchronicity. There you go. Although it was Laura Dern who really went up to the hilt, up to the arm, up to the shoulder. Yeah, but she had that glove on. Remember that scene? Laura Dern, if you're listening to this, I'm your neighbor.

We live close to each other. Come find me. Let's talk. Let's talk about sticking our whole arm into Big Pile. Let's talk about Oh, yeah. Let's talk about sticking our whole arm into Big Pile. Let's talk about how I will never not be rich. The most iconic lines from Big Little Lies. So, okay. So, I just sent a whole bunch of bear, mountain lion, and bobcat poop off to a laboratory to get it analyzed to see what these animals are eating.

Right? poop off to a laboratory to get it analyzed to see what these animals are eating right because a really good way to figure out like what the bears and the lions i'm studying are eating is to like look at what's in their poop and if i can't tell you send it to a lab and they tell you like what's in it so i'm actually like hoping to find some interesting information that like my bears are eating like a lot of wild pigs or like deer, you know, like the big awesome stuff. So honestly, like I just am so desensitized to giant like piles of poop from large animals. Yeah, you just get excited to see them. I also have a toddler at home.

Right, yeah. So it's like it's at work, it at home like poop has become my life yeah i okay but like what's the worst i'm sorry to get keep talking what's the worst have you ever like sent it off to the lab with just like a nasty written next to it yeah it's like nasty so the thing about bears again they're like a lot like people maybe this is tmi but like depending on what bears eat it just shows up in their poop right so like bear poop can look super different it could be like it could be full of like berry seeds right like just like totally full of seeds you could get a big pile and it's like

red in color because it's like they ate all these berries and there's all these seeds in it big pile or maybe a bear like went into a beehive, right? And like ate a whole bunch of honey and honeycomb. Then you're going to get a big pile of poop that's like a darker color and it has bees in it. Like the actual insects are like dead. They just eat the damn bees. And then sometimes bears eat a lot of fish, right? Like let's say there's like a river or a stream and it's fall and the salmon are spawning. And that's when it's super gross because it's just like this black, tarry poop. And it has this like fishy smell and it's more liquidy, right? Like you'd think because it was protein, it would be firmer, but it's not. Because they eat like the fat, like they eat like the brains of the fish. So it's all like loosey black like yeah like gross yeah super gross okay so the worst kind of poop is a bear

that's been eating a bunch of fish yeah all right i told you man yeah the gross okay all right yeah you're right jack i i was gonna say it was if they've been eating candy yo me yo yeah because that's kind of like me yeah all right And the poops you find in woods. Like people sometimes are like, does a bear poop in the woods? And I know the answer to that. And I don't quietly have a panic attack because I don't know the answer to that. And everybody else seems to. But just like in your professional.

Yeah, if you had to guess. Does bears do poop in the woods? Bears poop wherever they are. Yes. Good. That's what I thought. Bears poop wherever they are. Yes. Good. That's what I thought. That's so good to have confirmed. I mean, I've always known that.

I've always known that. And I was not just being falsely confident. Now you can say that to your kids with confidence, Jack. Finally. Dr. Ray Wingrant, thank you so much for joining us, for putting up with us. My pleasure. What a pleasure. Where can people find you,

follow you, hear you, see you, all that good stuff? Oh, follow me. I'll talk about bears amongst other things. I love a good social follow. So all my handles are the same at Raewyn Grant.

That's R-A-E-W-Y-N-N-G-R-A-N-T. Check out my website. It's new or it will be new in like a week or two. So that's raewyngrant.com. And check out my website. It's new or it will be new in like a week or two. So that's raywindgrant.com. And check out my podcast, Going Wild with Dr. Ray Wind Grant. It's for PBS, Nature. You can get it wherever you listen to podcasts, whatever app you use, that's where you can find it. And check out my new television show, Wild Kingdom, which is on NBC every saturday and streaming on peacock every single sunday nbc i've heard of them they're uh yeah they're one of the channels you know notable yeah yeah they have snl and they have my show so yeah that's that's all you need yeah and is there a work of media that you've been enjoying uh i really love my podcast and my TV show.

But I will just say, I mean, like, if you want to know, like, who I am after hours, I have been loving this show on Netflix. My husband and I watch it, like, together. And maybe this is how I'm just like a bear that I'm constantly hungry. But it's called American Barbecue Showdown. And like you never knew a show about meat

like could be so entertaining. So like my husband and I stay up late and we watch American Barbecue Showdown on Netflix. And that is a piece of media that I'm enjoying. So I guess I'm just like a bear. I just can't get enough food. There you go. Amazing.

Well, thank you so much for joining us. Miles, where can people find you, follow you, work in media you've been enjoying? At Miles of Gray. All over the place where you got them. In the Angeles National Forest. Looking for the grossest animal poops imaginable. For my other Instagram, at worst nature poops. And then you can find us on our basketball podcast, Miles and Jack got mad boosties where just the preseason delivers.

I don't know why people are getting mad that people look this great in preseason. We're seeing something really cool. There are people being like, calm down. It's preseason. It's like, I don't care.

This guy's so fun. Freaking giants out here, windmilling on us all. And then you can find me on my 90 Day Fiance podcast for 20 Day Fiance and also The Good Thief. That's a true crime one, but it doesn't have any killing. It's only about kidnapping millionaires and giving the money to poor people. Pretty cool. Let's see.

A tweet I like is from Ron Iver at Ronui, R-O-n-n-u-i underscore tweeted twitter ads in 2021 try drinking a refreshing pepsi when you see a movie smiley face twitter ads in 2023 my name is mike the rap man and i discovered the real pizza hut it's so fucking true so i just love the tone of that so fucking real amazing tweet i've been enjoying mert at mert century tweeted hitting a vape that's attached to a desk by one of those chains they have on the pens at the bank you can find me on twitter at jack underscore o'brien you can find us on twitter at daily zeitgeist we're at the daily zeitgeist on instagram we have a facebook fan page and a website dailyzeitgeist.com,

where we post our episodes and our footnotes. We link off to the information that we talked about in today's episode, as well as a song that we think you might enjoy. Miles, is there a song that you think the people might enjoy? I think you're going to like this one. This is from a UK rapper in it. Name's Bliss, N-A-M-E-S-B-L-i-s-s uh and a really cool i just first of all i got attracted to the the track it's called iniesta flow obviously a reference to the great spanish

footballer andres iniesta uh but the lyrics are great and sometimes hearing rap in that beautiful uk accent this is like it's like an entirely new genre uh but the the beat on it is really dope too so for you know geriatric millennials of a certain age you're gonna like this one it's called iniesta amazing well we will link off to that in the footnotes the daily zeitgeist is a production of iheart radio for more podcasts from iheart radio visit the iheart radio app apple podcast wherever you listen your favorite shows that's going to do it for us this morning we're back this afternoon to tell you what's trending we We will talk to you all then. Bye. Bye. Bye. I'm Jess Casavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series,

Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult. And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me For I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and Shekinah Church. Listen to Forgive Me For I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Keri Champion, and this is Season 4 of Naked Sports. Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry. Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese. People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game.

Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's basketball. And on this new season, we'll cover all things sports and culture. Listen to Naked Sports on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio apps, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Black Effect Podcast Network is sponsored by Diet Coke. I'm Keri Champion, and this is season four of Naked Sports. Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry, Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese. Every great player needs a foil. I know I'll go down in history. People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game. Clark and Reese have changed the way

we consume women's sports. Listen to the making of a rivalry, Caitlin Clark versus Angel Reese on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Elf Beauty, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports.