This Past Weekend - Tiger King's Bhagavan "Doc" Antle | This Past Weekend w/ 271

Episode Date: March 30, 2020

Watch the “Tiger King and the Sting -Theo Von and Brendan Schaub Cover Tiger King” https://bit.ly/KATS62_TigerKingandtheSting    Bhagavan “Doc” Antle talks with Theo Von and gives his side of the Tiger King story. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------   New Merch https://theovonstore.com    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This episode is brought to you by…   Keeps Visit https://Keeps.com/Theo to receive your 1st month of treatment for free   Postmates Download the app and use code WEEKEND for $100 in free delivery ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Music “Shine” - Bishop Gunn http://bit.ly/Shine_BishopGunn    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hit the Hotline  [phone]   Video Hotline for Theo Upload here: http://bit.ly/TPW_VideoHotline  -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------   Find Theo   Website: https://theovon.com  Instagram: https://instagram.com/theovon Facebook: https://facebook.com/theovon Facebook Group: https://facebook.com/groups/thispastweekend  Twitter: https://twitter.com/theovon YouTube: https://youtube.com/theovon Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiEKV_MOhwZ7OEcgFyLKilw   -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------   Producer Nick https://instagram.com/realnickdavis    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Patreon Gunt Squad   Name Aaron Rasche Alex Bmayer Alex Hitchins Alex Mcminn Alex Person Amy Love Anthony Holcombe April Schultze Ashley Konicki Audrey Hodge Ayako Akiyama Ben Deignan Ben in thar.. Benjamin Herron Benjamin Streit Blake Thompson Brandon Woolsey Brian meek Chad Kleier Christopher Becking Christopher Burton Cody Anderson Cody Kenyon Crystal David Christopher Dentist the menace Dionne Enoch Dusty Baker Eric Tobey Gillian Neale Ginger Levesque Greg Salazar J Garcia Jamaica Taylor James Briscoe James Hunter James Schneider Jameson Flood Jayme Sta Jeremy Weiner Joaquin Rodriguez Joe Dunn Joey Piemonte Jon Blowers Jon Ross Jordan Josh Nemeyer Joy Hammonds Julie Ogden Justin Doerr Kyle Baker Lacey Ann Lawrence Abinosa Lea Rashka Leighton Fields LJ Logan Yakemchuk Madeline Matthews Matt Nichols Megan Price Mike Mikocic Mike Nucci Miles Sadler Mona McCune myinitialsareOKbutimnot Nicholas Leach Nick Roma Noah Bissell Passenger Shaming Qie Jenkins Raye Vella Roxy Deputy Ruben Prado Ryan Hawkins Sagar Jha Scott Turnbull Shane Pacheco Shona MacArthur Starvin Marvin Zamora Stephen Trottier Suzanne O'Reilly Tanner Marvel Taryn Feingold Theo Wren Tim Greener Timothy Eyerman Tito Liebowitz Tom Kostya Tugzy Mills Vanessa Amaya Vince Gonsalves William Reid Peters YardDart 11b Yvonne Zeke HarrisSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today's guest has made over a dozen appearances on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. He is the founder of the Institute for Greatly Endangered and Rare Species, TIGERS, in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and is the owner of Myrtle Beach Safari in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Today's guest from The Tiger King is Bhagavan Dak Anto. Hey Doc, can you hear me? I can, how you doing? Oh, wonderful. Thank you so much for joining me this afternoon, bro. Glad to be on. Glad we got to put it together.

Yeah, yeah. Thank you for your patience. Chatting here with Doc Anto from Myrtle Beach Safari, which probably, is it the premier cat visitation spot in the US, would you say? In the world, by far. There's no place like this, you know. We just have this fabulous location that people can have such a grand time at. It is really a palace for the wildlife and our care. And it looks really higher end. It looks more like the four seasons of Animalia over there by you, whereas opposed to, you know, you look at, you know, a place like Joe Exotic is running more of like a, still a beautiful place, but a little bit more, you know, something you'd see it like maybe like a rural carnival or something like that.

Yeah, I mean, you know, it's the opportunity of time and money for us. This is the going 39 years of doing this. I had the blessing of engaging in the biz and being around started working so heavily in the 80s and 90s work in Hollywood and doing stuff. And we made Ace Ventura and Jungle Book and Dr. Doolittle and 500 movie and television projects over around the world. And all that led me to a different vision of how to do it and the financial opportunity to create something that could have that five star appeal. Joe never had the time, never had the money. And I am in this glorious spot. It is one of the hotspots of tourism in the world here in Myrtle Beach.

Oh yeah, beautiful. 20 million people come here every year. So it's so filled with people looking for adventure and opportunity from all over the world. The middle of nowhere, Oklahoma is a hard place to do something. There's only three things that matter, right? Location, location, location. Location. Amen, man. You guys have a great location over there. A lot of people, when they watch you in the Tiger King documentary, they see not only a man that's able to really wrangle pets, but also a man that's really able to wrangle females.

You know, I think a lot of men were impressed. A lot of men, I'm a man, you know, for now. But I live in Hollywood. You never know what they're going to try to do to me. But a lot of men were just as impressed with your ability to attract females as to attract, you know, this sort of Tarzan atmosphere with the animals. Does the way you relate to women and the way you relate to animals, is there any, is there some similarities there? No, I mean, come on. I'm a single guy. I was married, you know, 25 years ago. But I'm a single guy. I've got girlfriends. They've come and gone over the years.

I mean, it can't be unique that I have girlfriends. It's just that they got put on a screen and said this and that. And then they included all of my son's fiance and my grandson's and my granddaughters and everybody else are like, look at that lineup of all those ladies. Those ladies are my relatives and or the significant others of my staff and my friends and stuff that are here helping me out. I see. So the documentary really, they tacked on a few extra ladies to your, to your tiger tail, I guess.

Yeah. I mean, the count was just like going up like bodies hit the floor. They're like, oh my God, there's seven, nine, 11. It's up in there. It's crazy land. You know, that's not how it goes by any means, you know, and the tales of woe that somebody wants to say or just the judgmental insanity of people. Oh my God, this guy's got girlfriends. What on earth that that is part of Americana for me. Amen. No, I agree.

Look, I think a lot of men, a lot of people were probably jealous if even at the, the assumption of it, did you get a lot of people reaching out saying that's wrong. You couldn't have that type of lifestyle. Like, did you get a lot of lifestyle judgment? Lifestyle judgment stuff. And just somehow that the ladies are very young and are taking advantage of all from the, the drither that was coming out of the one unique character's mouth that talked on there. The girls that are here, these are women in their 40s, you know, rolling up on 50.

Those are the key characters that help run the preserve. The teenagers that are walking around here, granted, some of them have been here for decades, but these are girls that operate this facility that are kick-ass lion tamer girls who hold their own and have been doing so and operating the facility. Autonomous from me. I don't even have to be here and they can make it roll along and have everything work out. Oh, that's impressive. Yeah. No, it definitely seemed like a lot of tough women there.

A lot of, you know, confident, confident ladies. What is it about a cat that women love a cat? What is it about a cat? I mean, it just is this incredible symbol of beauty, power and grace. A tiger is the sexiest thing in the world. It's covered in that incredible primordial calligraphy. Those amazing stripes against that super orange background. It's like an unreal superhero character.

Everybody's kind of got a vibe of loving tigers. And when you see one in person, it just carries forward. It makes people excited. People want to get their hands on them. And when you get the incredible opportunity that I've gotten and some of the senior staff that are here where you have great big 600 to 922 pound tigers, come up and lay their neck on you and rub, rub, rub. And you can walk with them.

You know, there's the girls that jump on their back and they run off and they ride them. This is an unbelievable privilege. It's just you are communing with a slice of nature in its greatest. It's a reflection in a tiger's face. There's like a reflection of nature at its purest. You're looking out at the eyes of God in a way when a tiger is staring into your face. It is what I call God's greatest paint job. Just a fabulous kid.

And they're incredible when they're little because they're just miniature tigers. They look just like big tigers, which is so unique. You know, not a lot of little things look just like the big things. Oh, yeah. It's got that super appeal when they're young and people have the opportunity to meet them and interact with them. And it's a bucket list with so many people. But right up, I want to see a tiger and they want to see a big tiger.

A lot of them think, man, I want to pet a big tiger. Now, you know, I've heard you talking a little bit watching your show. I've been watching, you know, the King of the Sting. Oh, yeah, King of the Sting. You know, some people are a little hesitant. They think that a tiger is going to do something incorrect. But our big tigers are fabulous guys. You know, we did it.

We made Jim Carrey look like the pet detective. We made Eddie Murphy look like Dr. Dolittle. It's that we have a great relationship with these unbelievable big predators and we're able to have them interact with us and act as though they are tame. They're not. I certainly don't think anybody should take one home. They do not make pets. They're not something that I think the untrained should do anymore and you should be out doing,

you know, driving a race car 250 miles an hour like the pros do. It's something that takes time to learn how to do in decades of devotion and understanding, which most people never gather. Yeah. And most people don't have the opportunity to, you know, and yeah, it's definitely like, I think that's one of the most fascinating things about Tiger King Documentary and just learn for a lot of the nation to learn about you kind of, you know, cat liaison men who are able to really interact with these animals is that so many people just don't have that

opportunity to be that bridge between humans and just cat them, you know? Yep. And it's just something that is very complicated, right? It's not something simple to do. I mean, you see people like Carol, who's a fool with her cats. She got out there. She tried to hug and kiss them and play with them. It all fell apart.

That's the normal story. Joe certainly has had a bunch of big cats around, but as they matured and became older cats, almost all the relationships have fallen apart. The rest of the characters on the show, none of them have those great relationships with big adult cats outside of enclosures where they're freely interacting and doing what they do. Do you see my son Cody? I think you have seen him at modern man that's out there with gigantic adult Tigers wrestling,

riding, swimming, playing the same as I did for my whole youth. And I still do all the time. Now he's just the flash and the beautiful guy out there making it like it's so simple, but that is super rare. He's one of a kind left in the world. 13 million people following him on social media. He has such a unique presence and such a fabulous thing going on that's different than anybody else.

Yeah, he's able to really get out there and interact with those cats. I mean, I definitely noticed that. I was checking out some of his YouTube videos yesterday. When you look at the documentary, do you see like where did they go wrong? Are there things that obviously they blew out of proportion? I mean, obviously they tried to classify or make it just vaguely look like your granddaughter could be a woman you're dating or something, but what else did they do? What else did they capture wrong or what else did we not get the true story on when you look at it?

I mean, the huge line they stepped over was there at the end, bringing up on the black screen that they have asked me about some inappropriateness with Tiger Cubs and I haven't answered. But in fact, these guys talk to me for maybe five full days of filming and three or four half days. They asked me every question in the world. 99% of them had nothing to do with anything that was going to become Tiger King. And they just pick and chose little pieces. Of course, I run this incredible world-class operation. I have Tiger Cubs that live with me, cradle to grave.

No Tiger babies are ever going to be euthanized or ever going to be pushed out of the way. They're incredibly precious to us all the way from what they provide us to just their very nature. Do they have hyper value? They're super rare. We are reproducing Tigers that have all been genetically tested from the time they're young and from their grandparents and great grandparents. And we genetically test them to know that these are some of the most genetically diverse Tigers on Earth. The old ones left on the planet with this genetic makeup. We've done through world-class genetic that continue to work with us.

And those guys have been able to see this incredibly rare opportunity that we have. And this is a bank against the potential, eventual extinction. Tigers are super rare. Oh yeah, I never see a Tiger. You can go buy a Tiger. Well, that's just a complete joke. I cannot go buy a Tiger. I know everybody that's ever been around. 99% of everyone who ever used to do it is gone.

There is no one that has a Tiger for sale that you can solicit and find. It is a felony. You can buy some heroin, I guess, somewhere, but it's a heck of a step to go and illegally be involved with whoever it is to move and sell any kind of super illegal product. And that's what a Tiger would be. Is there a black market? Is there a black market for them? Not America.

There's a black market in Laos or Cambodia or places in Southeast Asia where people still readily consume Tigers. The greatest threat the Tiger has is being consumed by people who think that the incredible power and grace of the Tiger will be given to them somehow by eating its parts and pieces all the way from its testicles to its whiskers, a different part, a different vibe and fix you up. But in America, a Tiger Cub is precious and amazingly rare.

There is no surplus of Tiger Cubs in North America. There's virtually no one doing anything with Cubs except the characters on the film of which most of those people are out or on their way out. They no longer have a license. There is no more Tim Stark. There is no more of a number of those characters and if they're not, they're right on the precipice of falling off. We've never had a single violation of any kind.

And at the end, they also said we were raided. Yeah, you guys had that raid. In December, they said you guys had a raid that came through there, Doc, for the cats. We had an inquiry from Virginia Magistrate there who wanted to get some DNA from some lion cubs that we had. What are they doing with the DNA, do you think? Somebody in Virginia is having a meltdown case with them about an animal rights thing and a small hometown zoo

that they don't like and they want to close it down. They have closed it down. He didn't explain to them in some capacity what they wanted to hear about some baby lions that were born there. Lions were born there. He called me and said, I have lions I can't take care of. Would you take them? I would be happy to give them to you.

He said, yes, my daughter got in the car, picked him up and brought him back. Completely legal transaction. Everything's itchy. He didn't tell anybody what he did. He didn't explain it right. He got some beef with them and they came down here to say, do you have those lions? And I said, yes.

He said, we believe you, but we have to have in, equipable proof. We've got to know that that's the lions. Let's take DNA from those lions and we'll be on our way. I was never found or even questioned of doing anything wrong or having stepped over any line of any kind. We're just here with our wildlife having this amazing setup go on and just trying to make things smooth so that guests can see us

and everybody have the greatest experience. It seems wonderful. It seems beautiful. We're toasting up a little bit because of the COVID. It's like everybody. We're waiting for that. Is it affecting you guys' business? Say again?

Is that affecting you guys' business right now, the COVID? We're 98% down. There's no doubt. The whole thing is definitely shifted in a capacity because the town of Myrtle Beach, which can have 150,000 hotel rooms, you can't rent a room. It's closed up. You can come here, Cody.

Oh, Cody's there? Cody was walking in. I know he was out taking a walk. He was going to come say hi and see what was happening. What's happening? He's got some big footsteps. Give me a while, man. Who's this?

Oh, come here. Yeah, looking good. Looking good. Who's that? That right there. What's up, dude? What's up, Cody? Gang, bro.

Oh, that's a beautiful animal right there. What is that? This is Vali the Chimp, one of Cody's brothers that hangs out with us here and is hanging around. He just goes out and plays. He comes in every evening and has a big dinner party with us and hangs around, has a lovely time doing that stuff. Yeah, yeah.

Wow. How long is he? How long is his body? Oh, he's got a nice hand. He's a big guy. He's well over 100 pounds. He's about four feet tall. He's going on nine years old.

And Cody and Doc, do you guys interact with animals so closely, especially here like Vali? Do they make you feel more like evolution, or do you still think that there's a religious element? Like what kind of comes into your soul when you're this close to animals? I mean, I think that there is potentially a creator to the universe, right? I believe that there's some kind of divine fingerprint that helps organize us all out. I don't know that anybody's down there doing day-to-day calls on how we behave,

but I think that there is something spectacular in what was made up and how it all happened. What do you think? What do you think? Yeah? I think so. I got a question. Vali, do you think that Carol Baskin had anything to do with her husband's disappearance?

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Why? Why is the Cub so valuable? Why is it all about the Cubs? Everyone's always like the Cubs, the Cubs, the Cubs. Why is that? The real reason is it's just they know it's going to hit the heartstrings of people, so they want to create drama, unfounded, unprecedented, endless drama. People like Carol and Peter just trying to make up a story. Of course, the Cubs are super valuable to us as individuals, as characters that hold vital genetics to our ongoing program.

We have almost 40 years where we've been holding these family of tigers together. I've known several hundred tigers in that time trying to have them hold up that genetics, which may, in fact, save the tiger. And through that, they get that there will even be tigers on the planet in time to come. A baby tiger needs TLC around the clock. You just can't rough them and handle them in some way that's inappropriate. They are cared for around the clock, handled super minimally. You know, they pretend like we're passing them off in a line. Twenty minutes, people come, they get a 20 minute interaction, three days a week.

That's it. One hour. And what about when they age out of kind of that sugar realm where people are loving them and, you know, like they start to become, you know, hit the terrible twos, you know, like even like children do? Do you guys, is there, is there an underground railroad or something where you guys get rid of tigers at that point? Or is there, you know, what's the real deal? You see all those guys that are with Cody, those are Cody's, you know, brothers and sisters that he's out there with all day. He's got every color, every size, every shape, boys, girls. We continually have a relationship with those guys throughout their life, cradle to grave.

They're important characters that on the preserve. We swim with them in the huge pool. They got to be great big guys for that. We have a big tiger run where we have a tiger chase high speed lures. We have 10 tigers that are set up to go and chase that lure system and be part of the whole interactive part of the tour. And big tigers come out, 22 adults are on our big night safari dinner party. Every tiger has a vital importance to us and is like critical characters. Plus this idea that someone would do that, taking a tiger and killing it, taking a tiger and getting rid of it.

I wouldn't do it. It's a crime. I wouldn't do it unless the tiger attacked me or something. I probably wouldn't do it. No, it's immoral. It's no purpose to it. And it's not going to be something that creates a benefit of business. You need this tiger to be there for his genetics, for his beauty, for what he's going to be able to do later.

And as an individual, he's a highly important, loving, caring character. A girl, a boy, sat there holding and loving and giving it a bottle round the clock and always being with it. So these are our imprinted fur children in their own way as they are family members. The world's oldest cat was here. The world's oldest bear was here. Oh, really? Retirees here that are decades old ready to step off the edge. And we modeled them along so that they'd cross the rainbow.

Is Joe Biden there? I feel like Joe Biden should be in there as well, kind of. I wouldn't be surprised if he qualifies in that group, maybe. So, yeah, obviously, if you guys were doing anything harmful to animals, it would really harm your business. But why is there such venom between different cat camps where they're like, they're doing this, they're doing this? Why? Why isn't there more of a unified group that we're all doing the right thing, do you feel like? There's a couple reasons. One, those guys are out there running a gigantic fundraising business to get people to send them money to rescue something in need.

So they have to create drama. They have to say, these animals need our help today. You give us a dollar. We'll help make this change. Whether the change is real or not has nothing to do with the equation. That's those guys who are pretending to be rescue. You look at my place, it's Shangri-La. Huge open forest habitats.

Beautiful waterfalls and ponds and space everywhere. Yeah, it's beautiful. I've seen the video online. Yeah, some of y'all's videos online, man. It is really, it is beautiful. I feel like I went to like one of the covers on. Remember, the Joe was witness, they give you that cover of the pamphlet. And it would have, yeah, yeah, it's beautiful, man.

You know, and you look at Carol's place, holy cow. Oh. A dungeon. It is so low. It's like white slavery over there too. It has a very white slavery kind of vibe. She's making $4 to $5 million a year according to her taxes. But it's all donation.

Is that right? What's that? But her money is, they're able to earn money through donation, right? And the other camps don't do that. Is that correct? Right. It's a totally separate thing of how they raise that money and what they're doing with it. You know, I mean, you got the activists that are like Peter,

the society of the United States who are a vegan world order. They want everybody to be forced vegetarian. They want every human animal interaction to stop. And they say that all zoos are bad. And of course, you can't ride a horse. You certainly can't go get a puppy. Doesn't matter if you stick with a pound. Every animal's better off dead.

The head of Peter has said that, you know, a world without puppies would be just fine. I love a puppy. I've had him next to me and with me my entire life. And I think it's essential to get that love and understanding and connection to ourselves and animals to have puppies and to have things around in our life. And they're living on another side. We really also work heavily as a wild that conservation education organization. We have, we have our own camps in the deep jungles of Sumatra that we hire the rangers for.

We built the stations. We have guys out every day picking up stairs, chasing poachers. We deliver drones around the world to anti-poaching teams to fly drones and find poachers. We put millions of dollars into programs like this. Those characters have never even considered doing things like that. It's completely outside of what they're up to. We're on a different page. But then you got this other side that is the American Zoo Association, the city zoos.

They're running a program where everybody's equal and everybody can care for it. No one there needs to have their hands on a tiger. So they say anything that puts their hands on a tiger is wrong. And they need to be right. More people go to zoos in America than all professional sports events can find. People don't realize there's billions of dollars at stake in zoo visitation. I didn't realize that at all. It's huge.

The big zoos are raking in phenomenal money. San Diego Zoo keeps money in reserve of over half a billion dollars just to keep things running. Their overhead is hundreds of millions of dollars. And it looks from the public pouring money into it. Because most of the public loves wildlife and wants to see it from afar. They really wish they could hold it. But most of them don't even realize it's possible to do it. Saves it securely and beneficially somewhere.

Doing it here creates a big multi-sided benefit where you get to see the animals and pay for their wild project restoration so that they have a place to live. Hopefully they can move forward as we all make up our mind whether we're going to hold the world for wildlife or if we're going to hold the world for these people. Because we've got to come up with a decision there for the wild world to be left alone a little bit. Now everybody wants their slice of it. Everybody wants that piece. It's a valuable asset.

Everything's an asset. If I were an animal, I'd rather live over there with you guys. I feel like because a lot of the zoos are real shithole, honestly. Yeah, they can be. This is Paulie's brother. Cody went out and he wanted to make it fair. So he went and got Paulie's brother here and brought Sugriva. And how are you doing Sugriva?

How are you doing? Yeah, I look at those guys right there. What's up Sugriva? Sugriva is watching you all the time. Oh, thanks Cody. Yeah, I was just looking at some of your videos yesterday. I got nervous sometimes, man. You and those cats seem real.

I mean, it got a little WWE in some of the videos. You guys really are having a good time, you know? Oh, yeah, man. I've been doing it since I was a baby. I've been doing it since I was a little kid. That's so brave, man. I got attacked by a couple of animals on my birthday once when I was young. And that really set me on a bad course with animalia.

But it's coming around more. I dated a girl that had two cats. There you go. Working it up. Working your way up. Yeah, maybe one day I'll be able to come there and see you guys. I have a question. How is the documentary, do you feel like...

I got scared at the end of watching Tiger King that I thought to myself, man, this is really going to put a damper on this kind of like wild experience that you could have with cats or the most like innate experience you could have with cats. Do you feel like that at all? Or at the end, did you feel like this is going to inspire more people to come to these experiences? I hope it lets people think they can experience it and create the benefit for the animals in the wild and for the animals that are here with us. But it is very rare in America.

There's very few places that are left doing it. It's very expensive even to consider how it flows and how to start it and operate it. And people don't even have the knowledge of how to go about it. So it's disappearing. We are an endangered species ourselves right now. The whole thing is slimmed way up. The opposition is being vicious. They wish to pass laws.

It would say no baby Tiger could ever be touched by anybody ever again. They want to take your right away. Not your right to scuba dive or parachute or go 80 miles an hour downhill on skis. It should be your right to interact with wildlife in any way that you see fit if you're doing it beneficially for the wildlife. If you're doing it in a safe manner for both yourself and the wildlife. It should be a free choice that everyone has. They want to take it away because it would disenfranchise someone like myself.

There would be a change in how we went about raising money for the conservation projects overseas. And their ideas of what's right would be better financed. There's a war out there. There's a silly thing called the big cat safety act which is just a ridiculous law that fits private owners from public ownership where they say oh the big public zoos can have big cats. Nobody private can have big cats anymore which is an America. It's just like any other business. It sounds like any other business business realm. It's like trying to try to kill out the little man.

I did feel like that at the end of the documentary. I worried I said man is this going to kill the little man or the middle man. Because I remember when I was growing up we had a guy by us that had a couple of animals. I don't even know what one of them was and we go over there and pet him. And you could see the animals and stuff like that. And I felt like it at least gave me at least an experience with animals that was close to me. So we had by us we had a wildlife refuge when I was in junior high and you go there and they got a like a camel or something and all kinds of long animals giraffe and everything. And I'm assuming that once these kind of things move forward that a lot of a lot of you guys and those sorts of things would be shut down.

That would be the idea right because the opposition ultimately wants to say that you can't have a goldfish. You can't have a leather shoe. You can't you can never have a turkey dinner. You know it's all the way to the extreme. The big money powerful organizations like PETA and Humane Society United States are anti all human interaction or entertainment for pets or for food. I'm a vegetarian but I don't think you're supposed to be a vegetarian. You have to make that choice yourself. I can't impose upon you my own concepts of thinking. It's everyone has to make their own free choice.

I think that those ideas of somebody trying to legislate a what they think is a moral choice for you is wrong. And that's what a lot of this boils down to is them saying we know what's best. You know there's a whole concept of we know how you should really behave and be treated. Let us tell you what it is. You can't decide big government. Right. I like having animals in the wild. I like animals. Look if I go outside I like having to stay on a swivel not knowing what's over there.

What's over there. You know it could be an animal could be a falcon could be anything. I like I like that that you know I like the I like there to be some risk involved in my life. You know sometimes everything just becomes this bumper lifestyle. That's just too much. You know it's just it's just everything's just so I like a little bit of freelance opportunity. You know I always have. That's what we're founded on is people you know we're rolling by the seat of their own pants as they see fit so long as they're not harming others and that they're doing things.

If there's rules sure there should be rules but the rule says you can't. Well that's not part of the game. It has to be you can but you've got to do it in a thoughtful right way. Yeah. I have a question going back to the documentary. Where do you think that Joe Joe exotic would be if it weren't for Carol Baskin today. I think that he's had a lot of difficulties that have come up. I think there was other difficult things besides Carol.

I think that he was a real difficulty and a thorn in his side. I think that Joe was too big and imploding in his own way. I think he was taking on so much responsibility of so many animals and I think that that is just a difficulty in itself. There's a certain point that you have to stop. You know if you can properly care for 100 chickens then you've got 100 chickens and you built a barn farm and that's how it is. If you add 10 more chickens to there you start reducing the quality of all 110 chickens now. I think he was piling it on and that was causing a lot of pain and suffering for him and that potentially that was going to expand into the staff and to the animals and to other things. It all became tragic in its own way and it's incredibly difficult to find people that want to help you.

I think he had very difficult staff problems. He was really scraping the edges sometimes to find people that he could have do the work there. To try and have the food it cost me a fortune to feed my cats. I have to be a thousand pounds of food out every day and if it's not that I would eat or I would expect my children to eat I wouldn't expect a tiger to eat it. But they're grabbing all that old funky meats and second hand deliveries and things and that also creates an implosion. Things are unhealthy. Things can't reproduce. Things can't live their best life. Everybody needs care and quality in their life. When you reduce the care you reduce the quality of the opportunities for them to eat to sleep for where they can stay. Everything chips off the edge. So Joe was imploding in his own way and I spoke to him a couple of times saying Joe you've got too many parts here.

You've got too much going on. You need to worry about the care and the center point here. And was he able to hear that? Like he referred to you or in the documentary at one point he referred to you as a mentor and somebody he really looks up to. Was he able to hear that when you were talking to him when you kind of when you guys checked in with each other? He was like a sneeze. Okay. He was able to hear some of it but hearing it and enacting it are two different things saying try and find some better quality help. Shoot many restaurants in America that serve fine food cannot find fine servers. You know many people that have great businesses have the most difficult time with staff. Joe was at odds trying to have staff and then he just wanted to be famous.

You know he got his wish this way. Everybody always even think of careful what to wish for. Joe is more famous than he's ever going to be right now. You know for him this is the crowning moment in his career. And he's oddly not even free to see it which is which is such a wild thing. On the documentary a lot of there seems to be like a lot of like drug use and behind the scenes drug use and I've used drugs so I know what it's about. But did you feel like that had a lot to do with some of the things falling apart over there in Joe's world? Yeah I think when you're using drugs it's much harder to focus. And at times throughout Joe's life he used enough drugs that he overdosed on a number of occasions you know and that he was looking at some pretty hard stuff to be recreational.

Recreational hard drugs that's a very difficult thing. There might be some recreational alcohol or maybe people have recreational marijuana in their life but recreational meth man you're stepping over the line. Meth is a full season game you can't yeah meth is a full season it's not a pickup game you know. Meth is yeah that's a million quarters dude. That's a lot of over times man. And a lot of people coming to work with him falling into the same trap. How can they possibly provide the care that you would hope and the people that are continuing in that kind of shadier side of wildlife. That part of it is probably the most detrimental thing that can go on.

You need that clear head sharp thinking and focus to make this work out right. Would you ever be able I would be I would be scared to be on drugs around a big cat. I would be scared to be on drugs around a big cat. How do you feel about that. I'm scared to be around big cats if I have allergies going on. I'm certainly not going to go out there and have a few drinks and see what's happening. That just doesn't matter. This is this is on your toes ready for the serve.

I tell people if you don't feel like you're in a tennis match and that other guy's getting to throw a hundred mile an hour ball at you right now. But you're not ready for that tiger to open that door. If you open it we open a door we say here you go we open the door right up and we say how you doing there tiger boy come right here. Come to me hold we put them together with us we say let's follow walk. We have very organized very specific relationships that we nurture from the time they're very small. We're the last ones doing this kind of action in America it's just faded away. Joe was doing it different. He was looking for a tiger that didn't like to bite very often.

It's a different thing. Cody has not been chewed up. I've never been chewed up in my life. We have not been harmed on our facility. We've had bumps and scratches and fall down. But we've certainly had far more trouble with people tripping and falling with no cats around than any time a cat hurting somebody. It's just not there. That's not part of what goes on.

Yeah I know. Yeah Joe's over there. He likes cats that like to listen to AC DC and smoke cigarettes. Some of that stuff blew my mind like they I even saw a cat putting a Copenhagen in his jaw. You know it definitely gets a little more risque over there at his camp. But it seemed like it was just an every his his whole tiger complex that GW spot was just an example of him. It was just it really is it behaves the way the owner does. It seems like like each one of you guys is camps kind of follows the owner.

Very erratic behavior. You know and very very much behavior of somehow me me me and and how it's going to reflect look and be about me. Not about the animals and certainly not about the big picture that wild desperately needs. The big picture of what are tigers doing in the wild and how are you personally trying to help. I talked with Joe about that a couple of times trying to get him on that vein. One time he got some money and raised it I think selling prophylactics he told me and he raised money for rhinos. And he made a donation to International Rhino Foundation so that he could help save rhinos. But it was a one off he couldn't keep the momentum.

He needed the money for other activities in life I guess and he just didn't hold it together. And he got you know some unscrupulous buddies to come along and I think they tore him down hard. As he got more diversified and who is helping him run the park. I think that was probably the most dangerous thing he ever did was bring on more people that were from other partners is trouble. Trouble. Now he also was Joe when you where did you first meet Joe. I first met Joe at a feline conservation federation meeting about people that have animals and how they're going to care for them and what they're doing. I was trying to get that organization to be able to experience the wildlife and activities that I have here.

Maybe 15 years or so ago he visited because that group was here visiting and he came through the facility and he got to see what we're doing and what was happening. And he made application to try and ask the organization to improve his place give him tips of what could happen. So because of that I sent him some notes and letters and things about what I thought he should do to improve the facility and make a better life for the animals and better life towards the conservation movement. So you guys developed a relationship right then. It seems like obviously once he got once he got his own thing going yeah there was a lot of ego involved in it. And then it also you know he said he had a couple of boyfriends over there who didn't seem exactly to be homosexual which is fine dude who knows what anybody's doing you know like. But do you think that oh yeah look man I grew up right down the street from the fair they used to come to our town so I used to hang out with a lot of Wildcats like that. But do you think that Joe was really there's a lot of drug induced homosexuality that occurred over there.

And sometimes I personally wonder if Joe was really homosexual. Do you think that he was man he seemed that you know more hard like a million. But he had that edge where like you know every man that walks by it's that exaggerated thing you know every guy that walks by they're just like oh yeah look check him out look at that guy. Look at those jeans look at that look at those shoulders. He was on that vibe you know just kind of like you were when you were 14 checking out girls and talking the inappropriate smack. He was yeah that pretty much as a regular thing I think Joe had a very difficult childhood. And it's just those guys that rolled out of childhood in his own traumatized way and that he found solace in being an outrageous gay character. And he did that finger snapping outrageous kind of stuff.

But on the side man he seemed like cuddling up with boys was his thing and I don't mean underage boys. I just mean the younger pretty guys that were around him. He liked those guys. You know I saw you talking a little bit about Travis. Travis was like a big giant teddy bear guy. He did not seem like a gay guy. He seemed like a guy that was just like missing love and peace and understanding in his life and had come from a broken home. Things weren't right.

And Joe filled that space with all kinds of parts and pieces and made it made it work out. Yeah it's a little bit of the dark arts man. It's like you know a lot of times I do you know I think I blame Joe a little bit like oh man you really it seemed like he took advantage of these of this of that young man. But then somebody at some I mean but then it's all a chain of events. Somebody took advantage of Joe or treated him wrong. It's just that kind of stuff just goes on and on as big choices. I mean there's at the time you say hey I'm going to have a relationship with this man. You've crossed the line.

Yeah well and I don't think he held anybody down. Travis was a man mountain. No one was forcing that guy what to do. He crossed the line and said I guess I'll hold on to that for you. Yeah I guess I guess I'll hold on to that for you with my mouth brother. That's what they're saying a lot of times. Here's how it goes down. What what about the filmmaking.

That's one thing that we don't see that we're not able to get an insight from as a viewer of you guys's documentary. What about the filmmaker Eric good about the production group. Did it seem like they came in with one agenda and serviced a different one or what were your thoughts about them. For that for them right now I have been advised to not talk about them because it's gotten to that point where it may get litigation or something going on. So they said oh don't don't don't give any what abouts what ifs about that whole situation. I see that Joe is suing for ninety four million dollars in the New York Post today right from times. I don't remember which one ninety four million. That might help get him out of the clink.

Yeah man. What if isn't that the perfect Joe amount though ninety four million. Ninety four million. That changed everything for Joe. We're so few years. You know Joe kind of reminds me of like kind of like a gay Wyatt Earp kind of like a get like there's there's such a. He first of all he for me he like reclassifies what a gay man could be like it's like OK now a gay man has guns. He's like you know he's got this kind of like Clint East like really busted kind of Clint Eastwood vibe.

What are a few things that you that you admire about Joe or things that we see in Joe that we don't that we don't get exactly from the documentary. Where did you grow up. What state were you in. I grew up in Louisiana. Louisiana. So maybe maybe it was different there. I grew up in Arizona on the Mexico border. You know and going between Mexico and the South and being a cowboy in California.

And there were gay cowboys around. You know they were hardcore gay cowboys that look like cowboys like Joe. And there were some guys that just had that edge to them where they just swung both ways. I think that Joe kind of is emulating that because he's 55 or so. So he's from a little bit old era before. I think Joe had good intentions of what he was doing. I think Joe loved the party and I think Joe was looking for a party where he could be the king of that party. And there is no doubt that having exotic animals even just from a little monkey to a big old tiger with you creates a something flashy that will draw someone to you and makes a great icebreaker for that situation.

Now the responsibility that comes with it is so great that it will wash it all away. But a lot of times it takes people a long time to figure out the flash of the tiger comes with a massive amount of responsibility and time. And the tiger is not going to act like a dog unless you become a world class trainer which then requires thousands of hours and then takes away the party again. So I think he was just wishing. But you know what I think Joe wished the most and did the most is Joe wanted to be Siegfried and Roy. That's his mentor in his mind I would say far more. I think he wanted to be Siegfried and Boyz I think. Yeah just to have that wow factor. That's why he did the magic and did other things and I think that all of that was part of what he was chasing.

You know he looked like a really hard worker though Doc I will say that and that's just the perception I get. Was he a hard worker. I think he was I think he was working very hard at a very difficult thing that would not he could not keep that ship going. I think that he's got a nice ship. They poked a bunch of holes in it and goes the one back there with the bucket slinging water out as fast as he can. That ship is going down. He's working his ass off to sling the water out. He's got people right next to him that are drilling holes. People on the other side drilling holes. He is on the other side and then the animal people that he met and the other con men shysters and losers that got locked up.

They're drilling holes and Joe's back there going can't be that bad. He's got a bucket. He's going crazy slinging it over the side. He doesn't even realize that it's song until they close that big metal door behind him to change you know. Should he should Joe exotic be in prison. I would guess that certainly a portion of the stuff that they say he did wrong. He did some of it. I would not have been shocked if they gave him time served right. So I thought well might even be there because he sat there for a long time being locked up without being guilty of anything which always seems strange when that happened.

So he's locked up all that time. He's suffering. He's not the healthiest guy and he's feeling bad in there and I thought something would go. I'm shocked that he got 22 years. I think it's a sign of the times of just you know people saying that he's gone really too far. That the things that he did wrong are too big but I'm really not sure that they were near as big as other criminals in our system. Many of whom are even our politicians. We elected and put an office that I think cross the line far more anus than anything that Joe's done and they all they float by. So legal systems really hard. I think if Joe was had top notch attorney to spend a few million dollars on his defense his sentence would have been far lighter.

When when you look when you look back at your time obviously as a as a cat owner as a you know an animalologist. I don't know all the best words a lot of times but when you look back at your time you know you know interacting with wildlife. What is something that you want to be remembered for when your time here in this realm is done. How should we remember that we can have the our place that we're trying to hold in Sumatra declared a national park. Hey Doc. Yeah there you are. Okay great we just have one more minute and we'll be all finished thank you so much. I'm all good I got all the time in the world.

I'm sorry to be. I don't know what's happening on your end and my end. It's gone both ways. It's probably the government. It could be the government doesn't want us talking. Who knows. It's Carol. It's Carol.

That's what the hell it is. Hey big. Hey cat. Hey cats and kittens. It's Carol from Big Cat Rescue. Oh my God. Spooky isn't she. Every time I hear it.

Did you ever meet her husband that is that is deceased or previous husband. No sir. Never met him. I'm not not there and they were in such a different strange world of buying and selling pets. You know I was a zoo guy. They're out there in the pet trade and they just took their pet trade and flipped it into rescue. Took all the animals that they already had. We rescued these and just made it all part of a big old scam that ran along.

And I think they picked up a few animals in need here and there. But I think a whole lot of it is a massive misrepresentation. There's 12 animals there. 12 cats. 12 big cats. It seems like it's interesting. Yeah. Like since they run on donation instead of selling with the service.

They're able to provide the donation. I guess the service for free because they run on donation. And they run as a zoo. I mean you can pay 30 40 bucks an expensive zoo. You can pay 30 or 40 bucks and go through there. Tens of thousands of people visit the facility every year and pay. The ads often say the world's greatest collection of big cats when it's it's not 10% of what happens here. It's not even close. We have all of the big cats here.

She has just a couple lonely tigers and a lonely lion and just a few things. Yeah. And a donkey. Somebody said one of them is a donkey in a costume. I heard so a lot of fictional animals there. Who's the real Tiger King Doc. Well if there is a Tiger King you know I don't know who he is. You know I mean I am a Tiger guy and I've always been the Tiger guy trying to keep these incredible creatures at their peak of health to be a baseline to save them as the future is coming along because they're just none left.

I virtually don't know anybody left that I could have any relationship with even barter sell borrow move Tigers back and forth with that business has faded in America. And even in the zoos it's not profitable. It's not there and Tigers are really on a crash course of not enough genetics and not enough places to go even in North America. And that incredible blither that there are more Tigers in America than there are in the wild is a hundred percent alive. Really. There may be a thousand or so Tigers in America but there are certainly not five thousand. There are hundreds of Tigers in private zoos. There are maybe dozens of people in the entire country that would have a tiger somehow and not have a federal oversight USDA zoo license called an exhibitors license.

It's unheard of. So a lot of misleading information a lot of misleading information in the documentary. Oh endless misleading information about the stats of big cats and how where they are and that there's that there's somehow a risk to first responders. Where the heck is it. There's 10,000 of them hidden out there. You'd hear about it all day long. You know if they were really out there and you'd know people still especially in rural the rural south and places that would have a tiger. Yeah.

I passed a law in South Carolina preventing people from having big cats great apes and bears just because there was such a hassle. Everybody always said man that state is wide open they spine and selling trading Tigers. We passed the law to get complete exemption to everybody to be able if you had one your exempt you got to register if you got grandfathered in with that animal. You can keep it until it dies. You can't ever get another one went to every share of every law enforcement person all across the state. We passed that law in January of 18. I mean Tigers Lions bears showed up zero. There was at least one somewhere of course there isn't because no one does that.

Oh yeah. It was more popular in the 80s and 90s but by the new millennium it's faded. It's all over Texas. Absolutely not true. Big Cat Census was done about 14 years ago. I may only found 17 unregistered Tigers in the state of Texas. I believe that. That sounds more realistic.

You know thousands is a crazy thing. They eat a lot. I think a thousand pounds every day. You need at least 10 to 15 pounds of good meat every day. That's a burden. That's a hell of a freezer. That's all kinds of things. Doc and I appreciate it so much.

I feel like I learned a lot about exactly kind of what's going on in the Tiger community. I definitely get a stronger perception of the business of how you guys are more of like a small business. Across all facets of business in America a lot of small businesses are really being shut down or being cornered in by laws and this and that. One last question. Do you have to spend a lot of money in attorney fees every year to kind of keep yourself open? I would say I don't spend near as much in attorney's fees as we do in people helping us talk to decision makers, policy makers and lobbying.

Trying to get people to understand. You could call it that. Trying to get out there, make the message happen. I go to Washington numerous times. It was right there in Tiger King because I go and I hold meetings and I go to benefits and I go places and I speak to people about incredible importance of Tigers being alive into the next century, into the next millennium, you'd hope. I'm there.

When Carol was on there going, yeah, he'd feed us to the office. Those people don't want to see her walk through the door and hear some whiny baloney about her version of Big Cat. It's a great big misrepresentation. I'm there to tell you the truth. This is an incredibly precious character that needs to exist. Your right to touch him is incredible. Here you go. I brought Tigers to Congress.

I had him walking through the hall of Congress meeting everybody. The congressmen were so excited. They had 700 people in line one day. They said, did you ask Big Bono Cain? Bono didn't get a fraction of the blast that Tiger Cubs got because everybody is in love with them by just contact, by idea. A Tiger is a blessing. It's an incredible character. If somebody wants to change anything about it, change something about how the regulations are about care and what happens to them. You could enforce different rules.

But because of that is exactly how the other wild character that you see in Tiger King, Tim Stark, he's in love with them about care. They say his care wasn't proper because they say his care wasn't proper. He doesn't get to have Tigers anymore. That's not uncommon. It's far more common that they take people's right to have a Tiger than that they somehow say, oh yeah, those guys just can keep them. It's just not done. But the crazies are trying to say that they're everywhere.

They're hiding out in there. They always do that about everything. They're everywhere. They're everywhere. It's everywhere. It's in your house. Yeah, there's sex trafficking in your backyard. I'm like, no, they're not.

I don't have a yard. It's always, it's everywhere. People love to be fanatic, right? They really do, man. It's a popular notion. And that extremism was focused on us a bit throughout the show. If there's somehow, some way, something inappropriate going on, that's the fastest of the silliest dang fronts that somehow it's got something to do with a cult.

There's no ritual here. We're not out there doing anything. There's no one applying to work in some way that's inappropriate or unique. The only thing that I'm culty about is I believe I stretch and do yoga and I get hurt less. And when I have a giant tiger jump on me, if I have stretch that morning, it hurts a lot less than if I haven't stretched that morning. The edge of the cult there is yoga for impact of tigers climbing on you. That's it. And Cody does the same thing.

You want to be warmed up and ready. Going out and having a great time with a tiger is still a boxing match. It is very extreme. So it's just that crazy stuff. Look, I appreciate the time and I hope as soon as America's back up and running and I'm over in South Carolina, I want to come through and take a tour of the facility and get to meet you guys in person. I appreciate the behind the scenes. This gives me a better interpretation kind of of what's going on over there and just kind of a little bit more knowledge

or your point of view of what's happening in the tiger world. And I just want to thank you and thank Cody as well. All good stuff. Yep. And Bali and Sugriva, the chimp brothers, to come out and say hi. Oh yeah, definitely, man. I think you got a couple of chimps waiting on dinner. So I don't want to keep you guys all night, but I'll certainly encourage our viewers and listeners to get over there

and check out your facility when it's back open. And thank you guys for taking care of those animals over there. Thank you very much. Coming here is like no place on earth. Love to see you. Come on. All right. We'll do it.

Cody, be good, bro. Gang man. Thank you. Cheers, man. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.