Wild Times: Wildlife Education - Extinct or Alive Behind the Scenes Banter, Carole Baskin, Swimming with Anacondas

Episode Date: April 14, 2020

Forrest's goes foraging in the forest. The chaps discuss a spicy Chinese remedy for COVID-19 (hint: it doesn't work). The Battle Royale involves a fight 'til death with an animal friend and medieval weapon.   Forrest Galante interviews one of the cameramen from Tiger King and much behind-the-scenes dirt is spilled. It's a bonanza of spicy gossip including a secret note from Carole Baskin.    Forrest details a dream vacation swimming with anacondas. Patrick gets furious at employees of the "quiche shop" showing up late to work. Forrest has the biggest mishap of his career while describing an extinct slug. Some behind-the-scenes on Forrest's discovery of the extinct Fernandina tortoise.   AND an Exclusive look at the original Tiger King sizzle reel.  Nico Intro music by humanoide9000 (https://freesound.org/people/humanoide9000/sounds/466133/)

You guys, we're back. It's the Wild Times podcast. I'm joined with Peter and Patrick, and we are here to talk some wild times. Oh my goodness. Wild times. Forest, I've seen you dance. And it's like a very large bird with broken leg. Are you guys staying wild? Try it. As much as possible indoors. You got a funny message on Instagram as we were recording the last episode. I could not believe it. Um, guys, I had a guy named Nico reach out to me on Instagram and he said, hey, have you seen Tiger King on Netflix? I was one of the cameraman on there. And I was, I lived at the compound for 10 months. I have some crazy stories to share with you guys. And, uh, I was stoked. So straight away, I, uh, I message back, Nico, I message you guys and said, Nico, you got to get on the show. So he's going to call us in in, what, about 15 minutes?

Yeah. Yep. Perfect. And we're going to get some behind the scenes. scoves from Nico on what it was like hanging out and living with Joe Exotic himself, the Tiger King. Well, and I will tell you this. The Tiger King. I will tell you this.

He's already sent us a private message that he has from the crazy lady, the crazy cat lady, Carol, that is a bit of a bombshell. Yeah, it's huge. So we're going to get into that for all of you fans, something that is in the show that is not real. and I'm pretty excited to expose it. We're going to make the news. Peter, are you excited? I'm excited about anything that involves something to do

other than sitting around by myself, pretending to work. So I tried to get outside yesterday. It's been a nice wet winter up here in Santa Barbara, California, and a couple buddies and myself decided to go mushroom farging yesterday. We went looking for mold gold, golden chantrells, up in the mountains above Santa Barbara. Did you keep distance? Did you keep six feet away from them? We did. We took three cars. It was super wasteful.

Yeah. We took three cars, pulled into this parking lot in the middle of nowhere, and hiked for about two hours up into the mountains and into these canyons. Straight away started finding beautiful giant golden chantrells and got so excited by it that none of us made a GPS point as to where the parking lot was or where we had left the trail. Smart. And picked and picked and picked until we each had about 30, 40 pounds of mushrooms.

Damn. And the sun had gone down, and we had no headlamps and had no idea where the trail was. So I got home around 10.30 last night because I was rooting around in the dark up in the mountains for a couple hours trying to find my way back. Was it easier or harder than being naked and afraid? Oh, no. It's much easier. We were joking around and goofing off. It wasn't that bad. Wait, so how the fuck did you get out if you didn't have headlamps? That would be tough. I could see that being more of an overnight situation. Yeah, it was an iPhone light kind of thing. It was not going. Little tiny flashlights.

You must have felt like quite a dick. Yeah, no, we were silly. We felt real silly. But we made it out. Got a bunch of mushrooms, made it home. And I feel way better today. Just spending like six hours hiking around in the woods. It's so essential.

I'll tell you guys what. I think a lot of people are going to be feeling a lot better because the Chinese government is now recommending a COVID-19 preventative technique. Ooh, a technique. That they're saying works. Yeah. And the government's saying. it so it's not just some quack, it's the, it's the Chinese government. What is it? So it must work. It must work. And if I'm not mistaken, Patrick, you are talking about using bear bile. I am very much so. Yeah.

No, this is good. Wait, what? The bile from a bear's stomach, you mean? Correct. From its gallbladder, if you will. Yeah. Oh, man. So here we are on the... Isn't this how we got here to begin with? Very good. You've come full circle, Peter. Well, well, a valuable insight. Oh, boy, it's, this is bad. I mean, it's insane. So China is literally the government. is promoting the use of bile from the gallbladder of bears. Through injection, it's literally a greenish brown fluid that aids in digestion that's secreted by the liver. It's all the toxins pushed to the side, if I'm not wrong. That's what bile is.

So you're just injecting yourself with all of the shit that a bear has filtered out through its liver into your own body. I've been around a lot of bears. They love eating garbage. No animal in the world. enjoys garbage more than bears, you're eating like a frito's bag. You're having that injected into your body. Boy, boy. It obviously, there's no way that it works. Of course not. Well, they're also killing bears. Yeah. No. So eat a bat, create virus, cure virus by killing lots and lots of bears and shooting more toxins into your thigh. Right. And they're saying that this might not go away.

It might lessen in severity, but it might be one of those flu, cold things that comes around every season now. Thanks, China. That's why I was drawn to you forest to begin with because of, you know, you're active in the conservation circles. Pornhub. Oh, oh. He's very active in porn. Yeah. Extremely. Sorry. Sorry, Retef. Go on. Keep giving him compliments, Retepe. He wants more. No, yeah, I'll kiss your ass some more. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm just saying, though, you know, you're very passionate about these types of things. I don't know, man. I am too. I mean, I like dogs more than I like either of you. That's for sure. It's so fucking great having a dog, man. So I went and rescued a little puppy.

eight weeks old. And then named it after yourself, by the way. Yeah, let's get it. Let's, let's touch base on, on its name real quick here. His name is Luke. You named it after yourself, mate. First of all, she named it. My fiance named it. So its name is Luca de Luca. It's a fucking great name. Everyone knows it's a Paisan. The rescue place was like, yeah, it's litter of German shepherds. So we're pretty stoked. I see on Instagram, one of the people that adopted one of the pups got its DNA tested. This litter is actually a cangle. What's a cangle?

Oh my God. Are you serious, dude? I got a cangle. Retef, a cangle is a Turkish guard dog that they are absolutely massive. But their distinct feature is the size of their head. And the bite force of a cangle is three times that of a pit bull. It's the strongest known bite force of any dog in the world.

They will crush your head like a skittal if they want. And I think she's going to want to. But Luca's so nice, man. She's four months old. Wait till she's, you know, three and she's crushing heads. Oh, my God. You better train that dog well, man. That's the thing.

I don't feel sorry for you. I feel sorry for somebody that tries to break into Lucas home. Oh, dude. Yeah, totally. The thing is right now, she's as terrified as you can imagine of our seven-pound cat. And she's already 30 pounds. So I think she's going to be a sweetheart. But when I looked at the bite force comparison,

A pit bull can execute a maximum bite force of 256 pounds per square inch. A cangle is almost 800. It's more than a wolf. That's insane. They're just bred for these massive faces and jaws. Glad you got one, man. I'm sure that's going to work out well. They pulled the wool over our eyes.

And now I've got something that's going to be the size of a brown bear living in my condo, by the way, which is just four flights of stairs. I don't even think it's going to be able to fit in the stairway. She's more skittish than you are, though, man. She's really sweet, nice. I've never been skittish once. You're like a baby kitten, man. I'm steadfast like an alpha male wolf. I don't know.

I disagree. Dude, so Forrest, so what do you do with 30 pounds of Chantrells? So I spent half of my day cleaning and processing them. So it's actually my birthday in a couple days. So we're going to do a big mushroom dinner for my birthday. Nice. Make some pasta. make some mushroom chowder.

And then they saute and freeze in a vacuum seal bag really well. Patrick, you know and Retepe, just so you know, like I kind of hoard my wild foods. You know, I go out and get 30 pounds of mushrooms and that'll last me a year. I'll freeze a couple bags and you guys definitely have one each coming your way. Nice, man. Didn't you trade Joe Rogan some shrooms for some elk or something? Sure did. Yeah, last time I saw Joe, I took him a couple California lobster tails and some chantrilles and some

Porcini, which totaled maybe four pounds of food, and in return he gave me 60 pounds of elk meat. Wow. Oh, my God, dude, I'm jealous. Have you had an elk steak, Retech? What did we eat when we were at Forests? Was that, uh, that was elk, wasn't it? That was chicken, sir. I feel like we're getting so many goodies from Forest.

We're getting the shrooms. What is this booze that you sent us? Yeah, you know, this Wild Tonic, it is absolutely delicious to be getting sauced up on kombucha, you know, good for the old stomach bacteria. It's fantastic. And let me just add that whoever votes on our Battle Royale for the night, we are going to pick one lucky winner at random, obviously the person that votes for me. No, nope.

And that person will receive a case of a wild tonic kombucha. That's a big get. Yeah, it's big. Yeah, so leave us a comment on iTunes. Let us know who you think has won this Battle Royale. And Forrest is going to hook you up with a case of this delicious hooch. And Patrick, what is the Battle Royale for tonight? The three of us are going to fight till death like we're in the Coliseum, the Roman Coliseum.

You get to pick one medieval weapon and one perfectly trained animal that will do whatever you say and whatever you want it to do. You're hooked into it like an avatar. And you have to fight the other two people till death. But here's a note. You can't just like pick a bow and arrow and suddenly know how to use it perfectly. It's like you right now pick your weapon and an animal that will do whatever you want. Got it. Fight till death.

Got it. Okay. I was envisioning the animal using the weapon. Which was nonsense. No, can't do that. It's you using the weapon with an animal who will do your bidding. Great. Retap, take us away.

Here we go. You guys always put me in the spot. But okay, I've had a good 30 seconds to think about this. He's riding around on an octopus with a hatchet. So it can camouflage. So I learned that a lion is a killing machine more so than a tiger. So I'm going to go with a standard lion. Exactly opposite, but sure, you've already locked in lion, even though tigers are much scarier.

It doesn't matter because my weapon is definitely, it doesn't even matter what animal. It could be a slow lorice. What's your weapon? What's your awesome weapon? My weapon is a trebusier. I'm going to load my lion into the trebusier and launch him right into the two of you from afar. It's, you know, like catapult. Do you know what this is for?

You see it. Only because I just used Google, it's a catapult. I don't know why he's using fancy words. Trebusier, baby. There's a whole subreddit just about trebuschets that I follow diligently. So I know that catapult. It's a catapult, yeah. A catapult that I'm going to launch my lion at you two from a,

far and then if need be i'll just beat you with my fists but you won't get close enough so you're claiming that you have quite a bit of experience running catapults with 800 pound loads man i've seen dozens of pictures of trebuchad let me ask you this um just because you know you're the wildlife expert would a lion falling from 40 feet high in the air to its feet would that be very healthy after that you don't know anything about about it you don't know how how what kind of arc my lion's going to have. I could launch it like a fastball. This sounds good for the lion. Yeah.

You're just using your lion like a rock. Why didn't you just pick a rock and a kettle? He is a perfectly trained lion, meaning that he will know exactly how to deal with being launched from a catapole. This is a fantastic combination. You picked

a B grade animal and a B grade weapon with zero knowledge base. With zero that's what I'm here for. I would guarantee. I would bet 50% of my net worth that if I gave you a catapult and an infinite amount of time, you would have zero successful launches. This should go on the Wild Times Instagram, obviously, because I'll definitely do it. The day after the quarantine is over, I'm on it.

All right. Forrest, you're next. What are you doing? I'm up. Literally anything should be okay in this situation. Well, an inoperable weapon and a mediocre animal. So sure. Yeah.

I am going to go, oh, man, I'm going to go real traditional back to the days of Indian warfare and pick an elephant. But it's not an Indian elephant. It's an African elephant. So bigger, tougher, meaner. Just stole my animal, you fuck. Really glad I went second and not third. Good strategy. African bull elephant.

I am going to ride on top of said African bull elephant with a bow and arrow. And I am pretty good with a bow and arrow. Are you really? I am, yeah. I do a lot of bow fishing. I'm pretty good with a bow and arrow. terrified of this. I, and can I call an audible?

This is, this is terrible because if you had a trained African bull elephant, there's almost nothing that could do anything against it. That's my feeling. A bat with a rat's needle tail could. I'm in big trouble, because you just, I was going to do that. Did I leave room in this that I could have a whole herd of the animal or no? Weird, you only brought that up now. Shoot.

All right, and I can't take the same animal, obviously, right? I don't believe so. Nah. Okay. Got to be unique. Well, since we're going to, since it's going to, like, I'm going to be inside the animal's mind and he's going to be inside my mind, I'm going to go with a very, very large saltwater crocodile. All right. Good animal.

Which I will immediately instruct, since Retepp will just be over there fuddling with his catapult, I'm going to instruct to bite at the knees of the elephant. Yeah, from 600 yards. yards away, but yeah. Sure. Yeah. We'll come get you shortly after I dispose of Forest. You'll be long dead. I'm going to have the crocodile and a samurai sword.

And we're going to sort of operate as a unit of two. We're not going to be together. I'm going to send it off to go after Forest and the elephant while I come decapitate Retepe. Now, first of all, you with a sword, you have zero coordination. I've seen you dance. And I think your legs are made out of wood. So I'm pretty sure you're going to take off one of your own limbs before you get anywhere near me and my lion.

First of all, legs made of wood, they call me gumby legs, man, because I'm all over the place. They call you stiff hips for stiff hips. Forrest, have you seen me dance? In many a country and many a time. So it's mesmerizing. That was not my first word of choice. No, no. Stiff.

Stiff was the first word. You're clearly upper middle class. That's white guy. Like, you dance like an upper middle. You have a great sense of self-entitlement. You know, you're not concerned with who else is around. The beat doesn't matter. You know, the rhythm's unimportant, but you're doing it.

It's like a frat party at the University of Georgia. Forrest, I've seen you dance. And it is, it's a sight. It's like a very large bird with a broken leg. Sort of trying to do something. All right, guys. So I think it is that time. I've got Nico on the line.

He lived with Joe Exxonaut. for 10 months, was a camera guy for him. Forrest, I know you want to dive right in. Nico is on the line. So, Nico, I don't know if you saw this, but Tiger King today officially became the most watched thing on Netflix. I knew it was ranked number one, but I didn't know it went to this crazy level

where everyone's watching it now. Yeah, it's huge. I mean, there's memes about it. It's viral. I mean, it's all over the place. Yeah, I've seen some of the memes. They're pretty funny. They are hilarious.

So walk us through, Nico. I'm super curious. How did you get a job with Joe Exotic? What was your job? Give us the rundown, man. Yeah, so I applied for a camera operator position. It was probably like a week later, the producer who was working there at the time, his name was Mark.

He told me everything about Joe that he's gay. He has two husbands. He's crazy. He's extravagant. He's trying to get a reality show. He told me about there was a person who got their arm ripped off by a tiger. And at the end of the conversation, he said, you still want to work here. And I said, yeah.

And so, like, three days later, I was in Winniewood, Oklahoma, you know, ready to meet Joe Exotic. What was your first impression? Walk me through, like, lay it on us. Like, give me your feelings. What did it look like? What did it smell like? I want to hear all about this. Yeah, so from the moment you, you know, like, we've all been to zoos, and when you walk into a zoo, it's all about the animal.

When you walk into Joe's zoo, it's about Joe. So you walk into the gift shop that leads into the zoo. the zoo, you were just immersed with Joe Exotic. You kind of get a feeling that this guy's a big deal here. There's Joe Exotic blankets. His face is on blankets. There's Joe Exotic T-shirts, hoodies. There's the Tiger King underwear, Tiger King Water, Tiger King Candy. His his candy was just like Sour Patch Kids. He even had Laffy Taffy still in the rapper, but he said Tiger King Candy. Sounds like Joe. And his his music is playing, his music videos are playing, and this is all before you even get to see the animals.

So, like, you kind of got that feeling that Joe at least thought of himself as a big deal. What's it like the first time you meet him? You know, when I first met him, he kind of, he asked my producer, he said, who the hell is this guy? And my producer said, Joe, this is Nico, your new camera guy. He said, we'll see about that. He may be waking up in my bed in the morning. Oh, boy.

And did you? No, I didn't. I did not. No, but some of the animal trainers, handlers, they were asking me if I was going to be the next Travis. What do you mean by that? And they said, you know, Travis was a camera guy here for a couple weeks before he lived with Joe. And I was like, oh, I was like, oh, okay. He's one of the two husbands, the one that killed himself.

I told them, you know, I'm not gay, so I don't see why I would do that. They were like, neither is Travis. I was like, oh, man, what did I get myself into? Oh, God. The exotic has that power, it seems, over people. Well, here's my sort of, the question that I think is on the most people's minds that are going to be listening to this. Is that Joe's real voice singing in the country music? No.

The important questions coming from Patrick DeLuca. And wait, he said no. No, no, it's not him. Wait, wait, what? It's too good. Okay, well, give us the lowdown on this. We all kind of knew it wasn't him. It just doesn't, it doesn't make sense.

I mean. No, his voice, his speaking voice and the voice you hear are not of this. same creature. Yeah, I mean, even, even like, you know, like, Aussie Osbourne, like, you kind of hear him talk and then you hear him sing, but it's still, you know, like, that's Aussie singing. But with Joe, it's like, that's not you singing, man. A band had asked him to sing happy birthday to their kid. He was like, oh, I don't know, my throat's been kind of messed up, and then he starts singing, and it was so on a tune, it was bad. We're like, oh, okay.

Am I the only idiot that had absolutely no clue that this wasn't Joe Exotic singing? That was his one redeeming feature was that he had an amazing voice to me and that's just, the rug has been pulled from under me now. Now they've got nothing from Joe. Now you hate him. Nothing.

Oh, God, what an idiot I am. Patrick, how did you know this? It's funny, Christina actually, I said, you know, I told her we were going to be interviewing Nico. I said, let me know if you have any questions. And she said that her and all of her friends, they're doing like these Zoom hangouts where 10 of them get together and drink Rose.

And that was the question that they all had was whether or not it was really him singing. I believe he wrote the lyrics because there's no way that any legitimate artist would just write three albums of songs about tigers. No, he didn't write the lyrics either. Oh! Yes. No! This is great. I love the story that he tried to sing Happy Birthday and he was all in a tune.

And then it was like, oh, I got a little touch of the laryngitis. Yeah, that was basically it. Yeah, he said he had laryngitis. You were spraying some spray in his mouth to help him loosen his vocal cords up. Yeah, it was bad. Oh, man. He was like an odd-a-tune. He was like an odd-a-tune Elvis Presley.

Man, I wish that was on tape. I think I recorded it, but I don't know where it is. Oh, my God. I'm sure Joe fucking smash the tape to bits on the hard drive. Nico, if you find Joe Exotic singing Happy Birthday, you're going to have to send that our way. Oh, yeah, for sure. Please, you'll be selling it to TMZ for a 50K. So, Nico, what is this screenshot you sent us?

It was a comment from Carol Baskin. Tell us about this. Yeah, so a friend of mine that I used to work with at the zoo, someone had sent him that screenshot. Rick Kirkham, who was the second producer I had, he was in the documentary. He had a post up on Facebook talking about how he was proud of the Netflix series Tiger King, that he was in it and he was thankful for everyone that, you know. And then like one of the first few comments was from Carol Basque and saying that he did a great job. And the producers didn't reveal that they paid Joe for all of your footage that Joe claimed burned in the fire.

So that was kind of interesting. But when we were there, I remember Rick getting an email, bringing an email in from Carol Bass to Joe, showing Joe that Carol has reached out to him, wanting him to basically be like a double agent and tell her every. everything that was going on. So towards the end, before I left, Joe was getting kind of paranoid about maybe Rick did talk to her. He's playing both sides of the fence. Yeah, I think that was covered in the documentary. But I mean, what's interesting is that, and a lot of people have said, wow, imagine if all that footage that burned in the fire didn't burn because they had all this great footage. And here, Carol's clearly indicating that she knows that Rick's footage didn't get burned up in

that fire. Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy. And to me, it makes sense, right? Because if you watch Tiger King, they have so much content. Like, how did they get that stuff? You have to ask yourself, how did they get so much stuff of him doing shady things, yelling at people, the, you know, the guy who accidentally killed himself. To me, it makes sense that that footage didn't burn up in the fire and somehow it got handed over to the Netflix team. When I was there, we did Joe's web show. So he had like a YouTube live show. And we would post the episodes we would make. it'd be two minutes to 10 minutes long depending on how much footage we had. So we put all those on YouTube, and when we left, someone had taken them down.

So we thought they deleted them. But the sizzle reel that I sent you guys, that was put up on YouTube and taken down after we left. But then if you look at the date, it says like five years ago that was put up. For our listeners, are you happy sharing that incredible sizzle that you sent me that was not part of Tiger King so that we can post it on the wild timespodcast.com. Yeah, go for it. Awesome. Very cool. Well, go to the website and see Nico's handiwork of the sizzle reel that did not sell, but has some footage that's not seen on the Netflix show. So Nico, you know, so I'm an executive producer on Forrest Show, Extincter Alive and his other projects. And he puts our

cameraman in bad situations all the time. It's true. Climbing trees. Going down into caves, he's riding tiger sharks, doing a lot of things that me as the producer, I'm like, oh my God, these guys, did these guys know what they signed up for? You're in a similar situation when you're down there. I mean, did you know that you were going to be, first of all, I'm assuming that you were interacting with the tigers, walking around, you know, Joe is walking around shooting guns constantly. That's a pretty sketchy camera job. Oh, yeah, for sure. I didn't know the full extent of it.

I definitely wasn't aware that there were guns there. Yeah, and then, you know, you see Joe with a gun on his hip, and you're like, okay, this is kind of serious. But yeah, I mean, there were at least two or three times where I was walking around with some other people and noticed that the cage is open or something, you kind of freak out a bit. There was one instance where we were walking around with a guided tour. And we get to the back part of the zoo where the general public's not allowed unless you're on one of these tours. We noticed that a tiger walked out of the cage 20 feet in front of us, walked right into another cage, and luckily one of the animal handlers saw it, ran over to the cage and locked it.

And then, you know, called Joe and Joe came running down there. You know, there was a group of about 20, 30 people on that tour, and it could have got bad. Forrest, how dangerous would that have been, you know, based on what you've seen from those tigers? It definitely could have been devastating. Like, I don't think the tiger would have killed 20 people, but it certainly could have mauled or injured or killed, you know, a handful of people, three or four people, especially unsuspecting tourists that startle it and see it there and think, oh, this is a tame animal, this is a domestic animal, you know, I'm going to yell at it, I'm going to grab my phone and take pictures and do sharp erratic motions.

The tiger could absolutely freak out and go for them. You cannot just have unchained tigers walking around random people. It just doesn't work that way. Joe, man. So let me ask you this. He's in prison now. He's in there for 22 years, so likely, most of the rest of his life. Having spent 10 months, you know, 16 hours a day with this guy,

are you sad? Do you feel bad for him or do you feel like he got what he deserved? You know, there's times where I kind of, and the thing is, I've been thought about Joe Zodic in a long time, but then this documentary came out. It's like all I can think about now. There's times where, you know, I do feel bad for him, but you can't feel bad for him because he was going to end up there regardless. I mean, they showed him embezzling money, which he definitely did. He told a lot of people he had cancer and he never did. I went to the hospital. Yeah. Yeah, he told people he was dying of cancer. He told his mom he was dying of cancer. And he wasn't. For what purpose? Just for attention? To get attention for people to give him money. Right. That was the whole, that was the whole thing.

And so he took a lot of people's money telling them he was dying of cancer when he really wasn't. I went to the, you know, quote unquote hospital with him. It was just a plastic surgeon's office. And the guy comes in and goes, Joe, you ready to get these benign tumors removed from your leg? And then... Oh, my God. Yeah, he gets those removed, and then he got Botox. And then we went furniture shopping. Yes.

He also had... There were people who sponsored animals. They'd give him money, you know, every month to take care of the animals. They'd ask other animals for doing, and Joe would tell him they're doing great, you know, even though they might have died or he sold them. He still took their money. So I don't feel bad for it. Joe. I hope no one else feels bad for him. He's entertaining to a lot of people, but at the

day, he wasn't, he wasn't a good person. That's fascinating. That is fascinating. A lot of people have likened the vibe there to a cult. Did you get that vibe while you were there? Oh, yeah. I mean, like I said in the gift shop, you walk in and it's Joe exotic everywhere. And when you're around that zoo for, I was there for 10 months, everything's about Joe. You listen to him talk all day, his music, you're hearing everything. So it's definitely like a cold. atmosphere. And the people there, they actually, they allude to the fact that he lures them in with the care for the animals. But then, like you're saying, then they get there and it's all about Joe. So these people like actually look to him as a cult would look to a cult leader.

Yeah, exactly. Interesting. He's just a huge narcissist, right? Like outside of the fact that he clearly wanted to be famous, he's just absolutely in love with himself, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah. And what do you think, Nico? Did, did he do it? Did Joe hire a hitman? to take out Carol or was he set up? I have no clue. It looks like he was set up, but again, you know, you can't trust whatever Joe says. I mean, I don't know Jeff Lowe. I never met him.

For people that still work at the zoo that work there when I was there and they say Jeff's awesome and then there's other people who stayed a little bit when Jeff was there and they say Jeff's the worst. So he kind of looks like he was saying. He seems like it. I mean, Jeff Lowe ultimately to me comes off. creepier than anybody. Yeah, he does. That guy is a disaster. Yeah, agreed. I got that vibe 100%. So you were already gone before Jeff came in. Yeah. So why is that? Why'd you leave?

A lot of us left after we didn't get the reality show. It wasn't a whole lot to do with Joe. It was more Rick. You know, Rick kind of, he kind of just kept telling us the entire time we were kind of getting ready to make this sizzle real and start doing the reality stuff that, you know, it was a for sure thing. We're getting this reality show. You guys are going to be famous. You're going to make money. And then when it didn't happen. We all just said, you know, it was just under the next thing. Were you there for the fire? No, that happened like a month or two after I left. I remember seeing it on the news. I was still in Oklahoma. I was in Purcell, Oklahoma. Wait, that's really interesting because in the Netflix series, it's portrayed like

the fire is the end, right? Like, that's where everything goes tits up for the reality show, but you're saying that you guys had word that the reality show wasn't happening, and then a month later it all burned up. Yeah, yeah. Because they really portrayed the fire as if that was the big falling out between Joe and Rick, but it sounds like Rick may have sort of moved on already at that point. There was a falling out way before that. You know, that's why

Joe had us sitting in his house with him watching reality shows so we could make a Sizzle reel that was better than the one Rick made, because Joe didn't like the one Rick made. They were just, they were at odds for at least like three months before we even knew that we weren't getting the reality show. I have

said one more question. Was Joe still married to the guy who only had the one tooth when you were there? Yeah, he was with John when I was there. And that was the weird thing in the documentary where John was saying he wasn't gay the whole time. Kim and Joe definitely had like a bond, you know, like you could tell. John would also like come up to me like Joe would do this too. They would try to grab like my nipple or they go and like try to grab my crotch, you know. Yikes. Right. Standard workplace behavior. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And Joe was HR so you know, You had to complain to him.

Perfect. I mean, by the end of the show, John, he really hates Joe by the end of the Netflix series. If you had to guess what that falling out was about, what would you imagine it was? John cheated on Joe with the cashier in the gift shop. Who was a woman? Yeah. I was there when Joe found out about that, and it was crazy. Like, there was a fight between the two of them.

Like, I think John hit him a few times, and Joe had him arrested. Joe had him arrested for assault. Oh, boy. Yeah, they didn't show that. Yeah. Yeah. Who do you think would win in a fight between Forrest and Joe Exotic? I knew you were going to ask that.

As soon as you started saying it, I was like, why had he paid me against Joe Exotic? Just if they had to fight. I'm going to go with Fores. Woo! Take that, Patrick. I'm not a soft enough to think. Nico, thanks so much, man, for joining us. I can't tell you how much I appreciate you reaching out to me on Instagram and agreeing to come on the Wild Times podcast.

Thanks for having me on. Thanks, Nico. Wow, that was absolutely crazy. I've got to go back and rewatch the whole series now. Oh, totally. You know, I've been just thinking about dinner as we were just wrapping up that. I'm thinking, Jesus, I have nothing left in my fridge. How are you guys' fridges holding up after two weeks of quarantine?

Very well. Jeez. Didn't expect that. That's because you don't follow the quarantine and go out every day to walk your dog and go to the grocery store and infect others. I do sort of think I already had it. because my immune system is 10 out of 10.

Because you hit me up when you were trying to avoid one of the responsibilities that we had together. And you panicked and you started texting me all types of excuses. And then you said, I just wanted to let you know that I do have coronavirus. Swear to God. Okay. You had no actual coronavirus symptoms. All right.

I will say this. I am known by all who have encountered me to have a immune system that is mind-blowing. So I had a two-day period where I had a slight tickle in the throat, and when I would walk from the first floor up to my bedroom on the third floor, I was feeling like a little out of breath, and I think that was... And it has nothing to do with the 18 donuts you're eating per day or the case of butt-heavy that you're guzzling, I'm sure. I drink two bud heavies before I switch.

This has to. That's like when I went to the ER when I was 20 because I was having a panic attack and thought I was having a heart attack. It's all in your head and you're very skittish. That's the truth. I'm glad I think you admitted that you went to the ER for a panic attack. We'll revisit that. He's on heavy drugs, I'm sure. So what have you got in the old fridge for us?

Just a bunch of elk meat? My stores are good. I've got elk from Joe Rogan, fish from spearfishing trips, and a bunch of mushrooms from yesterday's foray. So I'm not doing bad, but, you know, no breads. I'm out of basically all perishables. So I'm just going to go hard carnivore diet pretty soon. So, look, this is going to end eventually. That's the good news.

We all know this. Forrest, you're very confident that in the summer months we'll see a big decline. I am. I think it's a great. opportunity for people all around the world to embrace their desire to travel and have adventures and take a trip on their bucket list. Forrest, you go first. What is your next bucket list trip? Not for work, for just vacation. You know, what a time we've had of being like, wow, if everything came screeching to a halt right now, I haven't done this one thing that I've always wanted to do.

And for me, that one thing is go to the pontonol. So the pontonol is a massive wetland in South America. It spans over multiple countries, but it's primarily in Brazil. And what I find so fascinating about it is that in the wet season come like September, it floods. And this entire rainforest ecosystem, the Amazon jungle, goes under crystal clear water. And you can dive through the jungle and see anacondas underwater. Jaguars are hunting Cayman. Oh, man, it sounds cool. That's number one. So this is in the summer months or winter? It's around. September is the peak travel time there. So don't, if I see all of you people there in September that are listening to this podcast, I'm going to be very annoyed. But look it up, the Pontinal,

look up Bonita, as in like beautiful in Spanish. And it's, I mean, it literally, it gets crystal clear, 50 foot deep, full of fish and mammals and everything free diving through the Amazon jungle. That is the number one trip on my bucket list. I feel like I've seen you doing that, like swimming through crystal clear water with deadly animals. Yeah, no, look, I've had a lot of great opportunities. Patrick and I dove with sharks in the Bahamas. I've spent some time in the water with crocodiles, and I've dove in flooded lakes and things, but the idea of diving through a rainforest, I don't think you can do it anywhere in the world but the pontonol, and that's what's so attractive. That sounds awesome, man. Bertep, what's yours? I've actually been thinking about this because

after this whole ordeal, I kind of just, I want to leave Los Angeles. Back to Chicago? Well, I mean, maybe, but that's not my. My destination would be like Amsterdam. And I kind of want to go in winter when it's like snowy and Christmasy. Yeah, I did that two years. Not this past New Year's, but the one before we went for about eight or nine days. And it was really my first time in Europe.

I'm 100% moving there. Dude, I've already designed my little cafe slash keesh shop that I'm going to open. It must be a cat cafe knowing you. There's plenty of cats. Yeah. There's a bunch of cats. It's a good time. Dude, Amsterdam is unbelievable, and it's funny because that sort of takes me in my mind,

which is like I've always prioritized like adventure trips, nature, like I want to spend a lot of time in like Greenland or let's go to Iceland to see the northern fjords or whatever it's been. After that Amsterdam trip, I'm like, oh my God, like old Europe is the shit. That's the vibe I'm talking about too. Old Europe. Yeah. That's what I want to go see. Dude, cobblestone streets. The thing in Amsterdam that was so crazy is like we would be like sitting.

eating like a piece of delicious quiche for breakfast with a glass of wine every morning and you would just see workers coming in. And the owner of the shop would just be like, hey, how are you? Right. And I'm like, okay, it's 918. What time was she supposed to start?

Is her start time 918? Because she's late and no one cares. Yeah, yeah. I like the vibe of that. There's a lot of cats on the street. So I think I'm torn between I've got that wild hair for Patagonia. I want to do the big Patagonia trip,

but also just seeing, I've never been to Italy, and my family's from Italy, so I think gunned ahead, once this is all done, I think a good Italy trip would be mine. Mostly for the food. Tuscan countryside,

some pizza. I've never met anyone in my life that appreciates pizza as much as you. Am I weird with it, honestly? Because people give me that feedback. It's not that you're weird with it. I've just never seen anyone more obsessive about it.

Like, how many hours did we walk around the shut down streets of New York City that night that we got in for that meeting until we found a piece of pizza that you agreed with. Sure, that's fair. It was about two. But that said, once we sat down and got our pizza and our glass of red wine, we were both grunting like apes at how good it was. Nice. It was the best piece of pizza I've ever had because I was starving, called, and dragged through freezing New York City for two hours at one in the morning. But it was good. That was also after the flight attendants gave us 30 free drinks eat.

on the fight. Yeah. Forest, can you find us an extinct animal that we might be able to find in Italy? Yeah, it's the extinct Italian grapevine worm, and we're going to have to sample all of the vineyards. Understood. Yeah. Hopefully known from Animal Planet's listening. That's right. So all jokes aside, actually, this is kind of funny. There is one animal that I was curious to go look for, which is called the German beer slug. and this is a real animal that had been extinct for 35, 40 years, and it was a slug that only ate bruce. Wow, I'm drunk. Those kombushes are really kicking in.

Pat's Mike just fell over. Microphones down. Christ. Oh, I don't know what that noise. What was that noise? That was me hitting puberty. That was amazing. That was the best thing you've ever done.

Thank you, Forrest. Did it? No. I'll kill myself if you edit that out. But this slug eats brewer's yeast and nothing else. And they found one recently. I think last year they found one during October Fest in some beer cellar underground. And I was very bummed because I wanted to go drink all the German beer and look for blood.

Oh, that would have been so good, man. I know. An extinct slug. So this is how you guys actually come up with your. ideas, isn't it? You just sit around bullshit and you're like, I want to go to this place. Let's see if there's an animal that we can find. The only one

that we ever did that for was Forrest and I, we got on the phone and we were talking about, you know, season two. And I said, well, let's start by, you know, we've got like five or six that you are like, these are my must do's. And I was like, all right, we're considering these other ones. What's the number one place on your bucket list?

And he said, Galapagos. And for me, it was also Galapagos. match made. And it happened to be one of the animals on your list who are like, so we're doing this. Right. And it's probably our most scientifically important discovery that you've ever made. Forest,

that was amazing watching that. Thanks, man. I mean, and you could just see the emotion, man. You were so happy. I don't think I've ever seen a happier person for us. Oh, man, I was on cloud nine. I mean, the fact, it was such hellish conditions to being on that island. It was so hot and jagged and just cooking us constantly and finding that

Florida. Like Patrick said, it started with the two of us both having the Galapagos on our bucket lists and ended with one of the most notable scientific discoveries in a century. Yeah. And it was, I mean, you know, for all of that to come to fruition the way that it did, I don't, you know, you see me because I'm the one on camera, but I don't think the thing that most people realize that I've never really talked about publicly is that everybody felt like that. Patrick felt like that. The crew felt like that. The cameraman felt like that. Like it was just, I'm getting goosebumps talking about it right now because it was just an overwhelming feeling of success.

And it wasn't easy, man. Pat told me a little bit about it. And you guys were for days and hours. First of all, you basically had to be in quarantine to even go on this remote-ass island that humans can't go to. That's exactly right. Yeah. When you land in Santa Cruz, which is kind of the main hub in the Galapagos, you have to spend

48 hours in quarantine while all your clothes go into giant freezers and get sprayed down so that you don't bring in any invasive. species, any seeds on your shoes, anything like that, and then start the long-ass boat ride to the incredibly volcanic island that's 122 degrees that you then have to hike up and camp on. I mean, it was nuts. That said, though, oh, man, the chance to go back to find the mate, which they still haven't found a mate, right? Nope, nope, they found evidence.

I've been consulting on that. You know, I honestly, I'm not trying to dig at anybody, but nobody was successful for 114 years. I think that we applied some tricks and techniques that nobody else had considered, and that's why we were successful. And I've tried to relay those over the phone, but I think without being there, it's really hard to do. So I think we've got to go back and look for the mail. I think if we went back, because when we were there, so, Peter, you know, we found the female Fernandina tortoise, which had only ever been seen once, had been thought extinct for, what, 90 years? 114.

114 years. Founded on the second day. Yep. this island erupts all the time so it cuts the lava cuts these areas off so they're segregated by these craggy impassable rocks so you have these green spaces that just are on their own and they're dotting this big fucking terrifying volcano you're right yeah so in other green patches that weren't the one that fern lived in we found scat which is shit that was within a month or two old. So it was definite evidence of other tortoises. We need to find a male for her to breed with to continue the species. We know they're there. We just need to get the permits and the money and the time. You guys have already proved that you can find this animal. It makes complete sense that you

would go and try and find another one because you already did it once. I mean, you know what works. We're very fortunate being the group that gets called in. We're kind of like the mercenaries or I We're the hide and seek champs, right? Because we're the people that get called in to do this thing that other people have really, really been struggling with. And it's a real honor to be considered that group. I mean, it comes with its own woes. You know, there's people that are naysayers and there's a lot of difficulties and a lot of permits and a lot of paperwork and everything else. But at the end of the day, it's such an honor to be the group that gets called in to look for these things.

Oh, totally. No doubt. You're like the young Steve Irwin now. Steve Irwin had a much smoother penis. Just better hung in general. Yeah, much more lotion. You guys have steamed Steve Irwin's penis? Steen?

You really are on top. Dude, this kombucha is really affecting our speech. Look, I've got to go to a three-way Zoom couple's date where we're going to do some painting and drinking of Rosea. Well, I'll be continuing at the kombucha train. Nobody cares, dude, about your bullshit. Relationship nonsense. Dude, he is. Rude.

All right, all right, teeth. Rude. What a blast. Can you believe it? We got the Tiger King Expozze. This is obviously the best podcast on Apple iTunes. It's great. Leave us a review.

Win some Wild Tonic. Hang out, and we will be back for the next Wild Time. See you guys next time. Good night, everybody. See ya. You suck. Enjoy your date. Fuck you.

Shut up. Good night. Wild time.