Wild Times: Wildlife Education - How Brian Barczyk Got Banned From The LA Zoo - The Wild Times Ep. 126

Episode Date: September 4, 2023

This week we have Brian Barczyk joining us to discuss the new aquarium he's building, AnimalCon 2023, and building legacy as the Walt Disney of animals. Subscribe to The Wild Times Podcast on YouTube ▶▶ https://www.youtube.com/@WildTimesPod Get YouTube Membership Perks ▶▶ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVl7fHhUOpFK8Mpv-6DdoOg/join Get Up To 4 Bonus Podcasts Per Month ▶▶ https://www.patreon.com/wildtimespod Watch More Episodes Here ▶▶ https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLP... Visit https://thewildtimespodcast.com/ now! Join The Wild Times Discord Server: https://discord.gg/ytzKBbC9Db Get your Wild Times Podcast merch: https://thewildtimespodcast.com/merch Leave a review on iTunes Apple Podcast: https://thewildtimespodcast.com/itune... Follow The Wild Times Podcast on socials: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wildtimespod/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@wildtimespod Twitter: https://twitter.com/WildTimesPod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wildtimespod/ Listen to The Wild Times Podcast on: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2cbFBzf... Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... Google: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0... Anchor.fm: https://anchor.fm/wildtimespod/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@WildTimesPod Enjoy, brosteners! TWT 126 - The Breakdown 00:00 - Intro 01:30 - Brian Barczyk 02:15 - Legesea Aquarium 16:30 - Black Tip Reef Shark 18:40 - Building Ecosystems 21:20 - LA Zoo | Omaha Zoo 28:52 - Favorite Aquariums 33:00 - Octopus & Otters 39:35 - AnimalCon | Legacy 51:45 - Dealing with Fame 1:01:23 - Wrapping Up Jingles made by: www.soundcloud.com/mimmkey https://www.newbelgium.com/beer/fat-tire/ #wildtimespod #podcast

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Love that tune. What's up? Wild Times 126. I'm the producer. What's up? Professor, how are you? I'm good, mate. How are you doing?

Great. The broologist. A little different today. Just had a baby. So he is trying his best to hop on, but he's literally got a two-day-old. So we see. We'll just see if his little chipmunk face pops on. And we have an amazing guest that I'm way more excited to talk to than I am,

you or Forrest. Me too. He is. he's the only person I've ever met who is literally turning a giant grocery store into an aquarium every kid's fantasy

so I'm excited to dig into that you know what they sell at grocery stores oh you got a fatty irrit taff baby fat tire it is don't forget our fat tire sponsor I love them I got so they sent us this to New Belgium Oh, one of the IPAs, dude.

Vizu, is this going to, is this going to knock me on my keister? Listen, as good as the new fat tire is, they sent me a 12 or that. I drank three of them and I was tipsy. This one? I am a 40-year-old alcoholic. So it was, you've lived a lot of rough years. 7.1%. All right.

Let's welcome this guy to the pod. Kyle, bring on the guest, Brian Bar-check. What's going on, guys? What's going on, guys? Great too. I'm not as handsome as forest, so I'll do my best to at least raise the bar somewhere else, but I don't know what I'll do. Brian is a friend of the pod.

I'm trying to think, was it maybe, what, like a year ago that you were on? It's about a year ago. Yeah, it was actually, it's just almost exactly a year ago, to be honest with you. So, yeah, because it was right before last year's Animal Khan. So, yeah, that's right. Yeah, so it was probably, well, it was probably July of, last year. So, so yeah, almost a little over a year. But yeah, it's great to be back. Awesome, man. Well, how is the reptarian? Last time we talked, you were, you had some,

not renovations, you were expanding the reptarium, your zoo. Yeah. Yeah. So we did that. And then now we're, I tell you, I'm talking, I'm a glutton for punishment. Now we're doing, uh, I love it. You know, it's like my whole life is just about getting people to love animals, right? So, so like, The more I can do, the more people we can bring in, the more options. You know, it's just, so we're actually doing a, ah, man, it's, it's hard for me to even say this number. We're doing a $5.2 million public aquarium right now. Oh, nice. So, so that's, and we're hoping, I mean, if all goes well, which, you know, it's, it's a lot.

Trust me, is we're hoping to go by Christmas of this year. So where at in Michigan? It's in Utica, Michigan, literally directly across the street for me. for where the reptile zoo is now, the reptarium. And basically what happened was about, I don't know, maybe seven or eight months ago, maybe even 10 months ago. We were open one night, you know, and I was hanging out with people, playing with snakes and doing other stuff.

And I always love the building across the street because it used to be a grocery store. And the one thing that we don't have enough of that, our place, our parking is not very good. You know what I mean? Like you got to park like behind the gas station next door, you know, stuff like that. And because we're, you know, we're busy. And this has, you know, a grocery store has lots of parking. It's a big freestanding building.

It's all the things. And I remember it was Saturday night, you know, about 8 o'clock. And I remember seeing the people from across the street, like literally put, you know, pull up a sign. Like, we're moving. And I was like, what? You're moving. Literally the next day I was on the phone trying to find out who owned the building within about a week or so.

I'd say, well, within a few days I found out who owned the building through the mayor of the city. Yeah, called the mayor. The mayor gave me this information. Called the mayor. Yeah, I called the mayor and he gave me the information. Yeah, it's such a cool place. And got the guy on the phone literally within like a week we had a deal done and the building was ours. Nice.

It was very short period of time. And now we're building a big aquarium, which is insane. All right. So that's fascinating because I'm sure almost everyone watching or listening at some point when they were a kid was like, I'm going to build my own aquarium someday. All right. Let's go sort of rapid fire. I'm going to ask you a few questions. You got it.

It's the playbook for turning a fucking whole foods into an aquarium. What's the first thing? Besides the design, do you start getting tanks right away? Yeah, I mean, I think that to be asked, in the timeline that we wanted to do it in, which is, you know, eight, nine months, something on that lines. It's like, to be honest with, you're doing like 10 things all at the same time, right? You are buying tanks. So we use several different.

suppliers. And listen, you know, you know, really you think about $5 million, a lot of money, obviously. But to be honest with you, you know, it would cost a lot more if I would have not been real thrifty. You know, so I would like find these like obscure people through friends of mine that would like go and buy like when a rainforest cafe was shutting down, they would go buy the aquariums. And they would refurbish them. And then you got like a $300,000 aquarium for 50 grand. You know? That's great. But don't get me wrong. We have plenty of giant aquariums being built that we had to pay full price for, you know, brand new.

But we bought as many, like as a matter of fact, I don't even know if I can say this, but I'm going to because I don't care. But, you know, Anthony Davis from the L.A. Lakers was having this giant 16 foot by five foot by five foot tall bullnose tank built for his house. And so I know the guy that was doing it. And he like gave him whatever, 100 grand down or whatever. I don't know what he gave him down, but the point is, is he backed out. You know, he's like, I don't want it anymore. And so now this guy has this giant tank that $100,000 he's already has in it. You know, and it's probably a $200,000 tank, right?

But, you know, Anthony Davis already gave him $100 grand. Who's going to buy that? Right. You know, who's going to buy that tank? You know, there's a handbook. So, of course, I can swoop in and go, well, I'll give you $100,000 for that tank. And now I'm getting a $200,000 tank. So, yeah, buying tanks, you know, design work, you know,

obviously working on permitting, you know, working on contractors, you know, getting budgets together and stuff. So you have to do like 10 different things at once to bring it all together. And to be honest, you like right now as we speak, this is when it's coming together. So all these months of like, you know, purchasing and finding people and doing all this stuff. Now like as we speak, all of it is starting to come together and it's all starting to pop. And it's going to be pretty wild. I mean, And again, it's just, you know, it's my private playground, you know, don't get me wrong. I want people to come and I want people to have a great time. But to be honest with you, I would, I would be happy to just keep a close and just have it just for me.

You know, I find it, I find it pretty incredible that you, you must be one of the people that does the most shit ever at one time because you're also doing AnimalCon. And like, even just from what we're trying to set up there, which is two live streams. and the scheduling of all the guests and everything. It's like utter chaos. And it's like 20 times the size of that for the whole event. And meanwhile, you're over here building an aquarium across your street at an old Ralph's. Yeah. No, it is.

You know, it's crazy. Yeah. What's the process? So you're like, okay, we're doing it. We got the building. Yeah. Building my own aquarium. It's going to be open to the public, but this is my aquarium.

I'm assuming you just sit around with some buddies and get a case of beer and just start making list of what what fish you want in there. While you're in the building, you're on a couple of help crates. Yeah, exactly. I swear to gosh, you pretty much described what happened. I have a really good friend. His name is Steve Bashy. He's got a company called Bashy Aquatics, you know, world renown for life support system,

you know, like filtration. And we've been, this is what's crazy about this, is that I've known him since I was like 15 years old. Oh, wow. I used to work at a pet shop. And in the same plaza as the pet shop was a little Caesars. He worked at the Little Caesars. So he used on his brakes and after work, he would like come over and we'd just talk fish and we talk reptiles.

And I kid you not, not when we were 15, but when we're probably like 23, 24, we actually even designed on, like he did a CAD program. And we designed an aquarium and a reptile zoo. Nice. Like we're in our 20s. And we're like, you know, we're going to do this. And then, of course, I mean, that never came to thrish. And then, dude, I kid you not, the first call I made after obviously talking with my wife and everything like that was to Steve. And I said, Steve, guess what, man, I'm building.

And he has this, like, incredibly giant, like 30,000 square foot building that he, you know, full of acrylic building life support. And he's, you know, got laser machines and, you know, welders and all kinds of crazy stuff over there. And I said, Steve, guess what? I'm building an aquarium with my reptile zoo. You want in? And he was like, let's do it. And so this is crazy that 20-something years, almost 30 years after we thought about it, here we are partnered up to do it, you know. But literally, like you said, we sat in the building and the first thing was, yeah, it's like making a list of what fish we want.

Yeah. You know, hey, we want, you know, we want, you know, clownfish. We want, you know, more eel. We want blacktiff reef sharks. We want this. And we literally wrote down every single species marine, every species freshwater. And then back engineered it into, okay, well, what size tank? that we're going to need. And of course, you want, you know, to make a really cool public aquarium,

you want impressive takes, you know, you don't want, you know, I'll walk in and be like, yeah, I saw that at my buddy Bob's house last week, you know what I mean? You want to be like, holy cow, this is amazing, you know, and so, I mean, so that's what we did, you know, but it's, and that's why this is a funny thing. The, the initial budget was three million dollars. And, uh, and that's what, that's what I came up with, you know, that was the money I had available to me. And now we somehow, like, because of that, because you're like, well, we could do this, but if we did this, so much more present. But doing that cost, yeah, it costs $100,000 more. You do that enough times. And all of a sudden, next thing, you know, you're scraping, you know,

like begging for, you know, another couple million dollars to finish the project. It's funny when, it's funny when you start like a project. It's like when you buy a house, you start off with a budget. Okay, like, 500,000. By the time you buy the house, it's clearly a million. There's no other options. You're just like the realtor is only showing you stuff that's above 800. Yeah, yeah. It's just never is ever on budget ever, no matter what you do at that price point.

But it's interesting because like working as a TV producer, such the soul most soul crushing part of the job is reconciling your big ideas and your creative vision with the dollars. Yeah. Right. And so you go, we were going to go, you know, we wanted to go film this scene in Iceland. but fuck we just can't do it so we'll just pick that scene up whatever um was there like one fish or or or creature that you really really wanted but you just couldn't make the dollars work no it's it's it's it's it's kind of the opposite and like my banker just went crazy my banker

my banker has said that too uh which thankfully i found a a bank that would you know back some of this. And he says, so he's a great guy. His name is Mike. And Mike always says that he goes, you know, the thing that's I love about you, Brian, is that you never back away from it. You're always just like, well, we got to do this. You know, we have to have this tank. We have to have this. We have to have that. He said, rather than going like, hey, we don't have the budget for that. You're just like, we're going to have to five years. We're going to make it work. We've got to make it work, you know, because again, for me, it's like, you know, for me, it's like, you know, for me it's like, You want people to walk in and be blown away.

Now, I'm not the Georgia Aquarium. I mean, the Georgia Aquarium is, you know, I mean, there are a million gallon tank that costs, you know, a hundred million dollars for one tank. Right. Impressive, you know, I'm not going to be that impressive. But for like you said, for someone that's, you know, building a grocery store into an aquarium, it's going to be impressive. I mean, it's not going to be like you walk in and go, oh, you know, you know, it looks like a glorified pet shop. No, no, no, no, no. Right.

What's the aquarium situation like in? in Michigan. Like, what's the next closest one around your area? It's got to be pretty far. I'm not, I don't know. Yeah, there's actually just one aquarium. Well, theoretically, there's two aquariums in the state of Michigan. Both of them, one is about the same size as mine.

And it's a little bit of a distance for me. And I'd never talk bad about them because I think that their aquarium is actually a very beautiful aquarium. It's just, it's not super interactive. You know, I've been there probably, I love aquariums. So I've been to this aquarium probably 20 times. And it's like, you know, it's $29 to get in. And I can, I mean, I try to spend more than 40 minutes there and I can't.

You know what I mean? Like it's just the way it is. But it's still really cool. I mean, it's really beautiful, really well done, really themed well, everything. And then theoretically, we have the oldest aquarium in the country on Bell Isle, which is downtown Detroit, which is, you know, I mean, I'm in the suburbs about, it's about, you know, a half hour 40 minute drive to Detroit. Yeah.

But it's really, Bell Isle Aquarium is the, like it built in 1903. Oh, wow. And they just did a several million dollar renovation, not to bring it up to modern standards, but to restore it back to 1903 standards.

Oh, that's cool. So it's more, to me, it's not really an aquarium. It's a, it's a historic building. It's like a piece of history.

Like, I can tell you what, no one is going to that aquarium to look at fish. You know, I mean, because the fish tanks are 1903, you know, and don't get to, there, there it is, man. Super cool building. It looks like a haunted house. Yeah.

Look at this. Look at this. It's fucking cool. It's so cool. And literally, I was a kid. Now, I'll tell you a quick story. I was back when I was a kid, my mom took me there when she said I was two years old. And I, by the way, I have like a really ridiculous memory.

Like I remember, like my grandma that passed away when I was 20 months old. I remember her, you know? So I have just really blessed with like a memory to win. That was my earliest memory, was of my grandma. But my mom said I was two years old when she took me to that aquarium. And at the time they had one snake, it was a ball python in that aquarium. They no longer have any reptiles and saw fish. But that was what blew me away.

I remember that time going and seeing that snake and being like absolutely fascinated by that snake. And literally, ever since my entire life, I've been obsessed with reptiles. I've been obsessed with fish and all animals. That's cool. So that building there really is what started me to be who I am in my life. And so it's pretty cool. But like I said, competition-wise, I'm certainly not worried about that aquarium.

And the other aquarium is fine. You know, it's, as you guys know, it's rare to be in a major city like Detroit, you know, which is a huge metropolitan area and not have a public aquarium. Yeah, sure. And the Detroit Zoo tried to raise $100 million just before COVID to build an aquarium. And it totally got shot down. And so it's deep-six. Hey, guys, if you're enjoying, whoops.

Guys, if you like The Wild Times, check us out on Patreon. We put out four extra podcasts per month. That's one commute a week that you're just going to be laughing and learning the whole time in the car. I do something else. This is the late night content, stuff that we can't show on YouTube because they'll kick us off YouTube. It's the cinemax of podcasts.

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Hasbro is not a sponsor of this promotion. A single animal that's going to be in the aquarium that ended up costing the most between acquiring the animal and the tank and everything. This is our big ticket item. I think that the black tippery shark tank is going to be that way. You know, the black tipperies sharks aren't super expensive. Can you put one of those up, Kyle, black tippery shark? Let's see what these looks like.

They're super cool. They look like miniature jaws, you know, and they look as close to like a little great white shark as you can get that's not big. You know, it's a right. You know, they get like, you know, five, six foot type of size. So they're not giant. They're pretty big, though. Yeah, so, but the shark, it's, and it will also bonnet heads. We'll have a couple bonnet heads, sharks, too.

And what's nice about the bonnet heads is they look like hammerheads, but they stay small, right? They're like miniature, like those miniature huskies that I love. Yeah, there's a bonnet head right there, you know. So you can see they, you know, they stay small, but they look kind of like a hammerhead. So we'll have, we'll actually have black, white tips and bonnet heads in it, but it isn't the sharks themselves. They will be, they're not cheap. Bonnet heads are about $6,000 for small ones. but um uh and of course you want a bunch of them but the tank was how big i was yeah it's it's it's a 30

foot diameter six foot tall clear acrylic cylinder because you got it with sharks you got to have around they don't square you can have a square tank if it's ginormous if not they they bump into walls and you don't want that you know sure they need to swim in circles so so cylinder tanks are the best for sharks because they swim in circles and you have like really heavy air water flow Got to have super water flow in it. And so the tank itself, I mean, that's a, it's a, you know, $600,000 tank. Jesus. Brian, let me ask you a question about, I mean, because the animals are just one part of this.

You have the reptarium. You've got this aquarium you're building. The animals are the cool part, but the environments that you have to build to keep these animals is almost arguably a bigger part of what goes into something like this. Is that something where you're just like, you're like, I love constructing worlds that living things can live in? Yeah, I think you have to be like really passionate about, like you said, developing ecosystems. You know, like what does the animal need and what will look really cool? And then another thing that people don't, you know, private individuals that are doing what I do,

they don't think about a lot is it's not just about the enclosure. It's not just about the animal. It's also about everything outside the animals, cages. So, like, I always say, like, when you step into the reptarium, you're, like, stepping into a jungle. You know what I mean? Like, we purposely put, like, you know, these banyan trees, which are these, they're, like, fake, but they look like real banyan trees. We literally purposely put them, like, in the aisleways.

So you have to, like, duck underneath them to get to, you know, to the next thing. So you feel like you're in the environment, right? And so the outdoor theming, the theming, outside the enclosures is that's a whole new thing. And to me, that's what's important, just when you walk in that you're, you feel like you're part of the exhibit, you know,

it's not like, I think the old school zoo is like, aesthetic, like just walls, maybe there's some plaques on the wall that tell you something about the animals or something like that, but then the exhibit is what's, what's important.

And then there's this other side of it, especially with reptiles, because I'm really more of a reptile guy than anything. That's one of the reason why I brought Steve Bashian, as well as, you know, one of my main guys, my C-O-O to my company, was actually came from a chain of public aquariums. So, like, those are my fish guys. I always go to them and I go, like, okay, like they'll talk about stuff about fish

that's so far over my head. Like, I don't know what the hell they're talking about. You know, and so I'll be like, all right, talk to me like an idiot because I don't know what the hell you're talking about. Ask me something about a reptile, and I'll tell you everything about every reptile you can imagine. Sure. But I'm still learning a lot about fish, and that's why I brought these people into my life so that we do it well. But, but, you know, the point is, is that, you know, uh, uh, you don't

want to overdo an enclosure either. Like I, you know, there's a couple of zoos. I won't mention the name because I never bash anything that I've been to that, like have really cool reptile houses. But the cages are so planted and they look great. They look so natural. And I guarantee you, the animals are super happy because they're so planted. The problem is you never see the animal. You never see it. You never see it because there's all just plants and you're like, oh, there's a tail of a reticulate. There's a 17 foot reticulated python in this case. And I can see his tip of his tail right there.

Where the heck is the other, you know, sitting foot 90s. It's, it's, I have a contact that I'm working with who's, he's right now buying a bunch of like old, like, you know, local regional theme parks and trying to like redo them as a more of an experience. Because it's like, you know, you go to a lot like the theme park I grew up going up to. It was like there were rides where you go fast, but there was, there wasn't a lot of theming. Right. It wasn't like the magic of like going to Disney or whatever, right? And so he's trying to bring that in. And it's funny you say that because you don't bash anything, but I will bash the LA Zoo because it's, well, the L.A. zoo is.

I mean, it's the second biggest metropolitan area in the U.S. And it's the worst zoo I've ever been to. The zoo in Syracuse, New York is better. It's like the primate enclosures are cement boxes. Yeah. It's sad. It's old school. Actually, ironically enough, I knew Mike Dees, who was the director of the LA Zoo for many years.

But, you know, again, he was director. He passed away, unfortunately, about five, six years ago. But he was the director for probably about 30 years. And he talked about it a lot being just strapped for money. You know, I mean, the zoo is a old school. And a lot of schools, like the Detroit Zoo is this way, right? It had a lot of those old things. And slowly they're doing great job going back and redoing everything.

Right. To bring it to the modern world. Whereas like, yeah, some zoos like the LA Zoo, how in the world they don't have the funding, I don't know. People don't like, what are they? They just don't want to do it. It's local politics too, right? A lot of money in this city goes to stuff where it's like, whoa. Can I tell you a quick LA Zoo story?

Of course. All right, cool. So I, you know who Vern Troyer was? Yeah. So Vern management reached out to me and he loves animals. he's from Detroit, you know, he lived in L.A., but he was from Detroit. And so they reached out and said, hey, are you going to be in L.A. sometime? And would you take Vern on an animal adventure? And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, mini-me, yeah. And I was like, oh, my God, I'd love to go hang out with Vern for the day.

So at the time, Mike Dees was still alive. And he was no longer the director of the L.A. Zoo, you'd retired. And so I called Mike up and said, hey, can we do like behind the scenes tour? I've got, you know, Vern Troyer with me. They're like, absolutely. And so, you know, I said, yeah, I'm going to film it for my vlog. No problem, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so sure enough, we go there. They treat us great. They take us behind the scenes.

Vern has a great day. He's a great guy. Just super, super nice guy. And we're filming the whole thing. And finally, you know, we leave. Everything's good. They do a bunch of promo shots with Vern, you know, like for whatever their promotions are. And so I released the video, like, the next week or two weeks later or something like that.

And literally their PR department calls me and says, you need to take the video down. And I go, what do you mean? I need to take the video down. Like, what does it mean? And so they said, yeah, we, we didn't know you were going to post this online. And I said, I go, I have two camera guys with me. Yeah. I'm a YouTuber that has millions of followers.

Three million. What do you think I was going to do with this footage? And so they literally banned me from the zoo. Whoa. No shit. Yeah, I'm no. Wow. To be at the LA Zoo.

And you still wouldn't talk shit about it. It's funny because I started feeling bad after I talked shit about it because Brian's so nice. And now I feel great. But, I mean, I still had a great time. And I'm not trying to like, I mean, if someone wants to go to a zoo, go to support any zoo, you know. I mean, that's the zoo you're going to if you live in L.A. Unless you want to go to like San Diego. It doesn't matter.

It's not like it's going to draw people in from a different state or anything. Well, I think that is the difference, right? Is that like, you know, you want to create a zoo. That's a great. You couldn't have nailed it any better. you want to create a zoo that isn't just local that people want to travel to. So L.A., no one's traveling to the L.A. Zoo probably, except for people in the SoCal area. People are traveling to the San Diego Zoo from all over the world.

Absolutely. You know, and rightfully so, because it's one of the nicest zoo. It's top. I think it's probably the top zoo in the country. You know, I like, believe it or not, I love zoos, by the way. And so, like, have you ever been to the Henry Doyley Zoo in Omaha? No. No, no, Nebraska.

Do yourself a favor. I mean, I don't know if you'll ever bring Nebraska, but go to that zoo. I drive through there on the way back to Chicago the very few times I drive. But Omaha, Nebraska is one of the places, no offense of Nebraska where I'm just like, there's absolutely nothing here. It's like nothing. It's a tough state. It's a tough state. But I'm telling you what, I think it rivals San Diego.

No kidding. I think it rivals San Diego. And what it is is they have the. mutual of Omaha money. All the insurance. And so, I mean, they, this zoo is, I went there behind the scene. Actually, not even behind the scenes. Actually, got a, we did an event there where I was a keynote speaker for something.

And we actually got to just hang out afterwards, like after it was closed till like midnight, just, you know, drinking beer, hanging out with the animals with the zookeepers. And, and going behind the scenes and just hanging out. But that place is ridiculous. I'm talking about Yeah, Mutual of Omaha has been, because they did Wild Kingdom for like the sponsored Wild Kingdom for like 30 years or whatever.

Yeah, yeah, they did. Yeah, as a matter of fact, they still do. It's now, well, I don't know if it finally stopped. But another story I'll tell you is that they were starting Mutual of Omaha online. They were going to do an online thing and they were looking for a host, right? And so this is again,

10, 12 years ago, something like that. And so I jumped in. And it was supposed to be, it was supposed to be like how many votes you get type of thing. I'm talking like, and again, I just had a lot of following at the time,

you know, so, so, yeah, I had like, like, let's say I had 35,000 votes. The next person had like 1500 votes,

you know, and they were going to pick the top, what was they were going to pick the top three based on fan votes. And then you fight till death. Right. Exactly. Exactly. They were going to do. And so then they were going to fly you out. You were going to audition for the event. And it was supposed to, again, they were going to do Mutifoma online. And they did.

And I think her name was Stephanie Arno or something like that, something on that lines. She ended up getting the gig. And, you know, they didn't even get me in the top three. They didn't even get me in the top three. They didn't even invite. How did that work? I don't know what happened. You know, I think it was, to be totally honest with you, I think, rightfully so. I get it. You know, like, you know, I, I, I, at the time, I was breeding and selling snakes and stuff like that to the pet trade. And I think it kind of went against the mutual of Omaha kind of, you know, conservation type of thing. And by the way, I mean, Stephanie did a great job. I mean, it lasted for, like I said, it might be done now because I haven't heard about it in the last few years.

But, you know, they were, she was traveling around the world doing, you know, mutual Omaha, but for their YouTube channel. And she did it for a number of years. but yeah, I mean, I used to, I grew up on mutual of Omaha. I mean, come on. Yeah, Wild Kingdom was great. Wild Kingdom was fantastic. All right. So Omaha's your number one zoo.

I would say San Diego, but I haven't been to a ton. I've not been to Omaha. I would say one A, one B. All right. You know, I can't say San Diego is not one because it's, you know, you can't say San Diego is not one. What about, let's start with Peter? What's your favorite aquarium that you've been to? Oh, I mean, I've been.

to few and it's going to be the shed aquarium because I've been there the most and it's a good it's like a very solid aquarium and yeah it's just it's an amazing place and I love you know it's funny I would say uh the shed is is definitely nostalgic wise my favorite uh because it's an older aquarium although they're doing some major renovations to it right now look it how beautiful that right right on Lake Michigan I mean I mean, it's absolutely a wonderful place. I, that's, it's my favorite place to go. But, but then, of course, Atlanta is the, you know, that's the Georgia's, it's the Georgia

aquarium is the, you just can't touch it. No, but I will, I take that back. I'm going to take this back. We didn't say, uh, out of the country, right? So I'm going to say. No, anywhere. Anywhere. Yeah.

The Beijing aquarium then. Oh, you got to pull this up, Kyle. I got to see what they're doing over there. Beijing aquariums, whatever it is, but let's see what it is. I mean, they're pulling, you know, stuff out of the wild. They're pulling, you know, great white sharks and putting them in, you know, take, really? No, they're not doing that.

But I'm sure that, you know, China does things different than everyone else. But, but yeah, if you pull up something, I mean, like, I'm telling you what, their jelly breeding facility, which is off. It's not, you know, it's off public. We did a tour of it. It's got to be 200,000 square foot. Just their jellyfish breeding facility. And they supply jellyfish to people all over the world.

And, but they had, you know, they had whale sharks. They had, I mean, it's just, it was a crazy cool, cool aquarium, you know, probably my favorite aquarium I've ever been to. What about you, Pat? I mean, so I've never been to Atlanta. I was wondering if that's what he was going to say because I've wanted to go to the Georgia aquarium. I've seen all the videos of, you know, people, you can go in the tank and swim around with

the whale sharks and stuff. It's obviously the scale is insane. Wow. I don't know because I haven't been to all of them, of course. Baltimore Aquarium is where I used to go when I was a kid. Yeah. And so everything seemed so huge. But I'm like curious to go back as an adult now and see Baltimore Aquarium.

It's good aquarium. It's actually a really good aquarium. I've been there a few times. Monterey's good too. Yeah, Monterey. Yep. I mean, there's a lot of great ones, right? You know, I mean, it's hard to really quantify.

Like, because each is a different experience. You know, Chicago has that nostalgic, beautiful thing. Georgia Aquarium has all, I mean, it's just the biggest, craziest. aquarium in the country. And then like you said, you just go through. And there's so many that are amazing. I know Forrest went to that one that was like owned by like the Bass Pro Shop guy or what was it?

That aquarium looked dope as heck too. I'd never been. Oh, yeah. I didn't even know that thing existed. It's like, yeah, the Bass Pro Shop's headquarters. That was somewhere in the Midwest, right? Springfield. Yeah, Missouri.

Yeah. It's funny because we go to the Monterey Aquarium like once a year. It's right out on the wharf. It's nice. But when you watch kids, you know, of course, they're excited about the shark. And the way they do the shark thing is like you kind of, you stand on one of those like escalator type things that's just going straight and you kind of go through it. That's cool. But you see kids group up at the otters and just will watch the otters.

And they're just kind of, you know, enjoying and smiling and laughing. And then they have a giant octopus and a tank. And you see kids around that. And they're all just, you can just see what in their head. They're just like, this thing's an alien. It is. It is an alien. I mean, it really, I mean, it has eight brains.

Well, and the otters, too, are just, you got, you got the octopus that are alien and you got the otters that are just like these social monkeys that, that like hold hands. Social water monkeys. Yes. Like, they're just chilling. Except recently, there's been some otter attacks that. Did you look into, Brian? Sorry, we didn't mean to make, we didn't know what this podcast was going to be. No, I'm not having a blast.

If you're building an aquarium. Did you look into trying to get a big old octopus in your aquarium? Yeah, so, so the, the, you know, Pacific octopus is the big ones, right? There's a couple problems with them. And we did, you know, when we sat down and made that list, it was on the list. You know, it was on the list. Because, I mean, gosh, an octopus, so good. So it's a couple of problems.

One is the fact, well, there's probably three problems. One is the fact that they're skateboard. I mean, they're smart. Yeah. So you literally have to lock them in. Like a jail. You have to have like security. So that's one.

Two, because they come from the Pacific Northwest off of Seattle and Oregon and stuff like that, you have to have the water really cold. You know, so you have to cool it down to about 50 degrees. But you've got chillers. You can do that. You run into some issues with like condensation and stuff like that. You have to worry about like ventilation. and stuff like that so that people can see in.

But the biggest issue that I had with it, and there was two issues I had with it. Number one, they are so smart. And I have a little bit of a problem with putting super smart animals into small and, you know, smaller than they, you know, dessert. I mean, the fact that we eat octopus is weird to me. It is, I've never had one in my life and I never will. I never will.

I've always said that, you know, I'm not a vegetarian or vegan. And, you know, we won't get into the topic of farming and stuff like that because that's a whole other thing. But I've never eaten a reptile because I love reptiles. I'm not against it. I'm not against you having crocodile if it's farmed and alligator, if it's farmed, go for it. No problem. It's just me. I personally don't.

As a matter of fact, they're great conservation stories, quite frankly. You know, if it wasn't for, you know, the skin trade and the eating, you know, the alligator tail trade, alligators might be extinct right now. So it's a great conservation story. Oh, shit. I didn't know that. Oh, yeah. Back in the 70s, they were critically endangered. Critically endangered back in the 70s. Yeah.

Because they're like the, well, crocodiles are like the, just, they're such a perfect animal. Dude, 200 million years on earth. Well, we're talking to alligators, crocodiles now, but still, the fact that even alligators were almost extinct is just, I've never heard that. I didn't know. Yeah, just in the 70. Same thing with saltwater. They were, you know, porosis.

they were not critically endangered but endangered. And now they're like a nuisance. You know, now they issue, you know, license to kill them, you know, during hunting seasons. And it's all because of the skin trade and the meat trade. So I'm not against it at all. I think it's a great concentrate. I just personally, because I love reptiles, don't eat reptiles. And I don't eat octopus because just like I wouldn't eat dolphins or whales or something like that.

I just think there's some animals I personally held at a level where I don't eat. I'm like, I'm not going to eat this thing. But an octopus is smarter than you. You don't want to eat something that's smarter than you are. Yeah, yeah. It will rise up and kill you. And most people don't know. Like I said, they literally, you know, octopuses have, in each tentacle, there's a brain.

Right. In every tentacle, it's really crazy. So then the last thing I was going to say was that, and this is probably the big thing that caused me to say, I could overcome the other things. I could say, all right, I can put this octopus in there. I can keep the tank cold and worry about it. This is the part I don't like is that most octopus live. less than a year. Oh, right. So, yeah. So I was going to guess they're very short-lived. It's like crazy. And by the way, that is, you know, when I think about why we eat them,

that's why. It's just like, boom, they're gone so fast anyways. I feel like people don't care how smart they are. If they lived any longer than they did, they would take over the whole world. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, you're 100% right. But, yeah, most, most octopus are six, six to 10 months is their lifespan. Even the really big ones. Even the really big ones. Yeah. So most aquariums are replacing that exhibit once a year.

I had no idea. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Had you heard the story about the, I don't know where it was, but the aquarium where fish were going missing from a tank. They couldn't figure out which fish it was. I think it was somewhere in Europe. But they were like, who the fuck is eating these fish? Who is it?

And then they weren't finding bones. And so they rigged up cameras. And at night, when it was closed, the octopus was getting out of its tank, going into the other tank, taking a fish back to his original tank, and, you know, and eating it and then having a nice meal, a slow, delicious dinner. Sneaky meal. Yeah, you just think how smart that is, you know, for an hour. And, you know, you talk about otters.

You talk about otters. Yeah. Way, super smart animals. Love it. I have friends at the Columbus Zoo. I used to be, you know, good friends with Jack Hanna. And now I'm still friends with the people that were in his department there. And as a matter of fact, I was just there, you know, a few months back.

And a while ago, they actually had surveillance footage of their otters. These are, you know, river otters that what they were doing was, you know, they would have the shifting, you know, the cage would come down and up to feed and stuff like that. And what they were doing was they, the otters, when the keepers, would put the cage up, the otters would take a rock and put it underneath the cage so it wouldn't lock. And at night they would get out. They would run around at night and then go back in the morning and no one knew they were loose.

The going back is the most brilliant thing I've ever heard. Well, it's literally, so apparently an otter has the same personality as an 11-year-old boy to sleepover. We're like, wouldn't it just be fun if we did something we're not supposed to do at night? Man, animals are. are just incredible. I want to shift gears maybe, but not really. So you're doing the aquarium.

You've got the Reptarium and Animal Cons coming up. Hey, Broussner, thank you for being loyal subscribers. We appreciate everything that you do. And now we have a membership offer for you. I think you can get ad-free episodes, I heard. That's pretty big. Ad-free's big, but you can also get your comments looked at so we don't have to sift through the millions.

How do you do that? Is there some sort of badge system? There's a badge system, a loyalty badge. Boom. Shows up next to your name in the comments. Boom. We read the comment. All this badge talks make, I'm going to the badge store.

He's going to get a badger. He's going to buy one. He's going to buy one. He did a fake leave. I assumed Kyle would know to cut on the motion. All right, let's cut now. That's our ad. Bonjour, compadre.

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And while we can't help you find the perfect volume for your presentation video, LinkedIn can help you find the perfect audience for your business. Grow your small business on LinkedIn. Learn more at LinkedIn.com slash small business. I haven't even talked about it. We're more than halfway through the podcast. 15th and 16th of September. 15, 16, 17th, 17th of September.

Yep, in Orlando, Florida. So this is a... Second annual, right? Second annual. Yep. Bigger than ever from... It is. You know, we went from 93 influencers last year, you know, from all over the place, you know, the biggest, you know, the names in animals and wildlife.

Went from that to 137 this year. So we've got 137. I think that when I added it up, it was something ridiculous, like 350 million people outreach. If you added up, everyone's follow. together. So it's really crazy to get all these people that, you know, it's an interesting thing, right? Because you're getting people from different, you know, reptile people,

fish people, you know, bird people, all this type of stuff. So you have like these different, you know, genres. But then you also have like a lot of personalities, as you can imagine, right? Yes. You know, when you get people that are TikTokers or YouTubers, typically they have a big personality and if they're successful. And so, and sometimes, you know, I had a conversation today with a couple guys that are going to be there that hate each other. I'm talking like online, you know, hate each other.

And I have to have a talk. And I said, hey, listen, you guys don't have to play nice, but you can't fight. You know, I said you can't. I go there. You should make it a thing. Make it a boxing match. Yeah, yeah. That's a good idea.

Yeah. I mean, that's been popular, right? Look at the Paul brothers. Yeah, exactly. But, so it's interesting to juggle, like, to keep everyone happy, to keep everyone happy. to keep everyone coming in. But to me, it was just, so it's all based on the fact that for the last 12, 14 years, whatever it's been, I've been going to Playlist Live in VidCon, right,

which are YouTuber, well, now they're social media, you know, events. They used to be YouTube events. And, you know, you would get all these, like, big YouTubers from all over the world would come in and their fans could meet them and their panels and there's all kinds of things like that. And I always thought to myself, I go to, you know, VidCon and there'd be, you know, 10,000 people would come through the gate and there's all these amazing, but there was like five animal guys or three animal guys and the whole thing. I thought like, could we do this where it's just animal people, like nothing else, you know?

And so the thought was, to be honest, it was like two years before COVID hit is when I kind had the light bulb went off and I started planning for it. And we were going to launch in 2020. And then, of course, it happened. And that was like, okay, well, that's not going to work. And so we pushed it off to last year, 2022. And, you know, I mean, the first one was good. It wasn't great.

I won't like it was, it was good enough to do number two. Sure. And now I think this year we're trending pretty good. And I think it's going to be a much, much bigger and better event this year. It was still a good event last year. I mean, we had like 1,200 people or something like that come through. This year, I think we'll get quite a bit more than that. Nice.

Oh, sure. And that's the way that those things, that's the way those things work. too. I mean, you can't, you can't expect it to be huge the first year. But once that word of mouth spreads and the influencers are talking about it, they're going back telling their people, it's, it's boom, like exponential growth the second year. I mean, our first podcast, I think, like, 34 people listen to it. Nice. You know, it's like, you just got to like put a product out there and let people find it. What's your, what's your vision for it? Is it like, you know, there's a certain vision for Comic-Con, which it's going to be crazy. People are going to get drunk. It's going to just be

fucking crazy fun. What's your sort of like, you know, year 10, it's crushing. How do you want it to look? So I think that, you know, listen, you know, you guys probably know this by talking to me that I don't do anything that I want this to be the largest animal event in the country. The largest event in the country in the next 10 years. We do have plans to have dog and cat, maybe as early as next year. You know, we're talking to some big influencers on the, on the, uh, the dog and cat side. Um, and, and if we can secure them, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, you know, expand. I'd like to have all, that'll be huge. Yeah.

Who you're talking to? You're talking to Doug the pug? Uh, I don't want to say the people, but, but, Doug the pug himself. I can guarantee, I can guarantee you that. I can guarantee you would know some of the names because they're pre-household names. Uh, on the, on the, the dog and cat side. But anyways, um, uh, uh, So that's, but to me it's about, and you brought up something earlier that I wanted to touch on.

You said Disney. And I always, so I'm a huge Disney fan, not because I like Mickey Mouse, which I think is cool and stuff like that. Sure. I like Walt Disney's vision, right? The fact that not only was his vision so incredible and so inspiring, you know, you got to remember, this guy was in his mid-40s and had a job and lived in an apartment. That makes me optimistic. Yeah, I mean, just think about that. And he created an empire out of just like his brain.

But the thing I'm the most impressed with is, and I'm not talking about Disney, like, with the studios and Marvel. And I'm not talking about that types. I'm talking about, you know, Walt Disney's vision with the parks and the experiences. And still, he's, I don't know when Walt Disney died, but it's been, you know, 40 years or whatever. The interesting thing I think about it is 40 years after, they're running Disney land and Disney World exactly with Walt Disney's vision today.

And I know people that work at Disney and literally they still have the same policies and the fact that like, did you know and your audience, I love this? Did you know if you go into a store on a Disney property and steal something, an employee can't stop you? They have to call the Mickey House police. What are you saying about our audience? Yeah. But they're not allowed to ever confront no employee. If an employee confronts anybody in any way, no matter how rude you are to one of their employees, they can't be rude back to you or they're immediately terminated.

You know, it's just my point is, and this is what I've said. Disney, to me, at least, is the only place on the planet that I know of that you can go and they will drain every penny out of your pocketbook. Yes. And you will leave and cannot wait to go back. to do it again. Right. Absolutely.

And I'm not talking about the financial side. I don't care about, you know, the first thing from my mind is money. I could care. I don't spend money on myself on anything. So I just want more cooler animals. But my point is that I wanted, I always talk to everybody in my crew that I want to be the Disney of animals, right? Like that's the idea.

The Walt Disney of Animals, like where I'm creating experiences, whether it's in the Repterum, the Aquarium or AnimalCon, I'm creating experiences that you can't get anywhere else. So animal con 10 years from not only do I want to be the biggest animal event in the world, but I, and that's not from narcissism or anything like that. It's just because I think it has the ability. It's the most unique. There's reptile shows. There's fish shows. There's dog shows. There's cat shows. There's cat con. You know, it just happened just recently. But there's not like an animal con type of a Comic Con type of thing where you have all the influencers and then you start bringing in manufacturers and start bringing all that stuff,

which again, you know, we're slowly building that, right? Like from last year to this year, we still don't have a ton of manufacturers, but we doubled the manufacturers that we had last year. And I think we'll double again next year as the proof of concept. But more important to me, and you guys will see this when you're at the event. And Forrest knows this. And we're so thankful that you guys are coming. We're stuck, man. I can't wait.

But it's about the experience. I want two things. I want one, the people that are paying to come through the door to have a great experience. You know, give them things to do, give them things to look at, meeting people, meeting the people that they follow online and look up to and, you know, creating an experience for the people walking through. But just as important to me is creating an experience for the people like you that are creators that are coming through the door, right?

You know, you're coming to support my event. So I want to create an experience. And that's why we have, you know, VIP after parties. That's why we have, you know, like we've got Gatorland, which is my favorite place in Florida to go. You know, I mean, I love Gatorland. I go there every single time I'm in Florida. And literally they shut the park down for just us.

Oh, wow. So Sunday night, we go to Gatorland for the after party. We have a Friday night after party, a Saturday night after party. And then we actually this year even have a Saturday night after party. After the party, there's a pool party after the after party. And then Saturday night. Sunday is an after party that is like I said is at Gatorland where they shut the park down. We go there.

We can do feed alligators, you know, hold on to stuff, you know, look around. And it's a giant park, you know. And we get the park to ourself. That's real fun. So it's about experience for me. We definitely have been, I mean, we've been planning this with you guys for a couple months now. And we've been talking about how we, when we do the lives on the 14, 15, we like how we can make it not just a podcast like we've been talking about how we can bring the experience to the live event we want like the background noise we want it like people to be there like this is big for us and I'm like this is one of the visions we had for wild times when we first started this three and a half four years ago whatever it is now to do like these kind of live events so it's like really fun for us to

get our toe in there right now and be like, right, like here it is. Like here's our event. Let's, let's, well, I'm also, I'm excited because we,

we're only working for four hours a day. And then we get to walk around and check it out. Because I, obviously I didn't get to go last year. So I'm excited to. Yeah. And just meeting, yeah.

And I think for you guys meeting, you know, future guests of shows and like, like, you know, like last year was interesting. Like, you'll meet people this year that have a hundred thousand followers that

that next year will have a million followers. For sure. Yeah. And that's what happened last year to us. We had a lot of people that came in with 100, 150,000 followers. And now this year they're at 1.5, you know, 2 million followers. And they really blew up. And it's cool to see that exposure.

And so these are going to be future people that you guys are going to want to want to have on your podcast. And you guys, it's going to be fun. I mean, you know, you guys will have, you know, you'll be up on a stage, you know, in the main room. You'll have people can sit down and chairs in front of you guys. and watch and stuff like that. So, so, so, you know, hopefully people will wander over and, you know, enjoy the podcast. I think, I think at least four will. Yeah, four to ten.

I'm not, not going to ask you. I would never ask you for a name, but was there anyone who you, you approached who had a list of demands that was so extreme that you're like, never mind. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, a ton of them. You know, I mean, as a matter of fact, not a ton, I shouldn't say a ton. there were several last year that this is the funny part is the bigger the following the typically the more easygoing people were you know like yeah let's do it this sounds like great let's do

whatever it was the guys that had the hundred thousand followers that were demanding things that were just impossible you know what I mean really if I do this for you I have to do this for all hundred creators and then it was you know I would lose it's $250,000 doing the show like that. Right, right. And I mean, I had guys that the day before, you know, we're like, so you're going to pay for my gas money coming up there, right? And I'm like, what the what are you talking about? Why didn't we talk about this before? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, this is before. And then they literally were like, well, if you're not paying for my gas, I'm not coming.

And I'm like, it's funny, man. Okay. See you. People are the worst. I think as people are like ascending into something is maybe when they're at their worst, when they're getting a modicum of recognition sometimes. Because like I've seen it in TV, sometimes you'll have like a reality person who's like going into the second season of a show on a cable network that barely anyone watches. Yeah. And you see them change from season one to two. And now they've got a huge list of demands.

And like last year I did a wildlife series with the big A list movie star. And like we were like, can you send us like his requests and stuff? And it was just like, yeah, he likes burgers and meatloaf and like this flavor of powerade. Other than that, we're good. We're like, okay, cool. Yeah, if you could have some chips on set, that'd be helpful. We're like, yeah. Well, you can say it.

It's Kevin Costner. Yeah. By the way, didn't have any, just like normal guy. Just Kevin Cousner would be good. We mentioned it on the pod before, but yeah, he was a cool guy. Really? Yeah. I just started, I literally just started watching Yellowstone.

I, I miss the boat, man. I missed the boat. I just started watching. I'm just. I'm jealous. I wish I could go erase it and go back and do it for the first time. Yeah. Now you get to enjoy it from the story. I'm hooked. I'm hooked. But I think that just like you guys knowing celebrities and successful people, I've been, which by the way, I think is sometimes I think is so bizarre that I'm just a YouTuber. You know what I mean? I mean, I mean, I don't. YouTube's the biggest thing now, man. Yeah. It's bigger than TV. So it's like it's just crazy. It's just crazy. It's crazy that, you know, I get to hang around the people. I get to hang around because I'm a YouTuber is what I'm saying. And it doesn't make sense to me sometimes. You know, it's like, you know, it's like, what?

You know, like I can do this. This is crazy. But so I've been around a lot of celebrities ever. And like you were saying, I think that when people are ascending, when you get to a certain point, it sometimes goes to their head. So like with me, what was great with me why my humility state forever was that I didn't have a meteor rise. You know, I've been doing this since 2008 and just steadily like chipping away at it.

Right. And so there was never that point where, because I know. a few people also. So I think that when you start to get that rise, it goes to your head a little bit. The other thing that happens is when, especially YouTubers and social media guys, because usually they're not my demographic.

They're not in their 50s. They're usually in their teens and 20s. And I have several friends, good friends of mine that I've seen go through it where they went from like nothing, literally like working for, you know, $12 an hour to all of a sudden like 6 million followers in six months. because World Star started posting about them or whatever.

And then now of a sudden they're hanging out with, you know, ditty and stuff like that. Right. It's so weird. Yeah, it's crazy. And that, I think, is almost the worst scenario. Because, you know, when you're 21 years old and you were literally living in a one-bedroom apartment and now of a sudden you're doing brand deals for $250,000.

Yeah. You know, I've yet to know one of those people that didn't lose their mind. You know what I mean? Sure. They always seem to come back, but it takes a while, right? You know, I mean, all of a sudden they think that they're bigger than life and they start believing that they're something they're not and their humility goes away. I always say success breeds two things, right? Either brings ego or humility, right?

Right. And I've seen both, you know, and the egos get so crazy that you're like, you're not even a shell of the person that I met when you had no following. But like I said, at least the people I know that have had that happen. they've all come back to the, you know, eventually, you know. I've got a service to offer those people that I think will really help them stay grounded. Because this is what I do and it helps me stay grounded as we have this meteoric rise over the past four years. That's, it's cool. But just I will go on to all of your YouTube videos if you're out there and you're having a meteoric rise.

And I will get all of the negative comments and I will email them to you every three days. Yeah, perfect. And that might see how great. But it is like nobody's really cut out for that. And it's, you know, all you have to do is have a dog, get a puppy or have a kid. And you see it's just the nature of being alive is you're just testing boundaries. And so that the expression, if you give someone an inch, they'll take a yard. That's just what we're programmed for.

Yeah. Like it's just to just grab that next thing. So if you have people kissing your ass and catering to. to your every need. It's going to feel awfully weird. Nobody's, nobody's cut out to be famous or suddenly important overnight. It just doesn't have sense.

It's hard. I think the younger you are, too, the harder it is to deal with it. Of course. Yeah. If I had a thousand followers when I was like, 21,

I'd be like, oh, dude, like, yeah, Facebook page. Like, are you kidding me? Your MySpace was blowing out.

Yeah, your mice is fun. Yeah. Brian. We are excited. I have not met you in person. We're in two weeks. We'll be shaking hands in Orlando.

Oh, love it. I can't wait. It's going to be really cool. It's going to be good. And again, you know, we'll see what the future brings. But,

you know, we'll try to, you know, the idea is, is that, you know, we continue to have that Disney mentality and everything we touch,

whether it be the reptarium, whether it be the aquarium, whether it be AnimalCon, in all the other businesses that we run, you know, and I'm very fortunate that, you know,

I have a staff that believe in me. As a matter of, but going back to the Yellowstone thing, my headkeeper for reptiles at my zoo,

he surprised me yesterday with the new legacy because the aquarium is going to be called the Legacy Aquarium. And so we have a logo that a legacy aquarium and reptarium.

And he got a tattooed on him. And I said, and he was one of the guys that like really loved yellow. stone, right? And so, of course, I said, I go, there it is, man. Everyone's getting branded now. Yeah, it's the brand. Everyone that's here is here in life or I go, you're a lifer now. Oh, yeah, here's the legacy of clear. And so he tattooed the stingray and frill dragon on his, on his arm. So, wow.

That's baller. So, and then I had a whole bunch of other employees that came and said, I'll do it too. Let's all do it together. So, so I, but I'm not going to push, you know, anybody to do that. Did you do it? Are you going to do it? I am going to do it. I am going to do it. Nice. Which is a little bit weird because, I mean, it's hard for you guys to see or something like that. But I have like, you know, there's like, I can't see in this. You don't have much. I saw. You don't have much real estate left.

Yeah, there's not. There's not. And everything I have is animals and done by one guy who is a guy named Bob Tyrell, who is one of the, you know, he's one of the top famous black and gray artists in the world. Yeah. And, you know, he's an absolute legend. And thankfully, he's a friend of mine. again how that happens i don't know but uh i mean he's one of those guys again that if you want to get tattooed by him good luck because there's probably stance he's ever going to you know respond

to anything you you ever give him and actually how i i got friends with them is that uh i'm friends with not gosh i feel like i'm name dropping now um i'm friends with carry king from slayer you know and so so whenever carry was in town we'd just go hang out with carry and be backstage and all that type of stuff and bob was friends with carrie as well. He did tattoos for Terry. So I met him backstage one day. And I remember him like saying like, I had no tattoos at all, not even one tattoo. And I've always been wanting to get sleeves and like realistic animal sleeves like as realistic as I could black and gray, no color. And sure enough, Bob, like, you know, we're talking backstage. And he's like, yeah, I'm a tattoo. And I'm like, oh, I've been wanting to do this, you know, sleeves and stuff like that. And he's like, oh, here's my info. Give me a call sometime if you're interested. And I didn't know who he was, you know. And so I went home and I googled him. And I was like, like, oh my God, this guy's like been on the cover of like 50 magazines. Oh, that's cool. He's been, you know, he was a guest judge on Inkmaster.

And, and, you know, he was actually on the Inkmaster version. He was a judge on Inkmaster version in the UK. And so, so he's just a legend. But so it's going to be a very, everything is realistic and everything's animals. So it's, it's Africa on this arm and my chest, Australia on this arm in my chest. And then my legs are, you know, when I'm. I finish it will be all my animals, you know, stuff from here. And I want to do Asia on my back.

What about your booty? I'll probably leave that go. I'll probably leave that go. Holy Peter. Yeah, yeah. No one will see it. You know what I mean? I don't.

It's true. What's the point? I don't whip my butt out ever. Your wife's just going to be like, what the fuck is this? I've known you for 30, 35 years. No, my wife doesn't even see my bare ass. I'm so ashamed. Yeah, exactly.

I back away. Yeah. Brian, thank you so much for the time, man. Really appreciate it. It's been a blast. It's been amazing. I can't wait to see you guys in a couple weeks. Oh, hell, you had it.

You know, and I'm so thankful to become friends with you guys. And really seriously, congratulations on the continued success. I know you guys are modest, but you guys are crushing. And I know it would be huge. So keep it going, man. Thank you so much, man. Cannot wait to meet you. Have a good night.

Have a good night. Take care, guys. All right. See you. All right. Peter, I'm hyped. Yeah, man. I got it.

He has great energy. He's got so much energy. That was one of those guys who probably never just lays in bed looking at his fun. Yeah, I need, I want him to replace Forrest on the podcast. It's, it's much easier. I can actually get a word in edgewise. Yeah, that's true. But now I'm starting to get pretty hyped about AnimalCon.

I mean, it's, it's weird. And I feel like it's one of those things because here's, here's the thing. When you have a family, a trip out of town with your bros is a vacation, even though we're working. That's right. So I'm really picturing it's going to be a lot of fun, but I'm also picturing the late night pool party, man, having those cocktails. When he said that there was a party after the party on Saturday, I was like, oh, my God, like my wife, I'm not even to tell her. She'll be mad at me if I tell her there was two parties. But I'm going to say this.

it's our last hurrah. Forest's hurrah is over. He had it. He went to that rugby game, whatever he did, but his life is over. It's our last hurrah is coming up. It is animal cun.

So, I mean, we're going to get wild. Whether it's on air or off, come, come out there, watch us live. I'm probably going to jump in a pool naked or something.

I think you will. I must, but I'll have my fat tire hat on. That is a, that's a ghastly vision. You're you as pale as I know you're going to be. Cheers, mates. Listen, it's going to be fun.

Should we get spray tan before this pool party? I don't need to. I look at how tan I am. I've been hiking every three days. Look at me. I'm bronzed. All right. All right.

Let me do the thing. Thank you, everybody. Yeah, do the thing. He forgot. Wowtimes. combe forward slash info for all the podcasts. And when I say all the podcasts, I mean not just the two that come out.

on YouTube every month. There's four more per month. Pat, have you ever listened to these podcasts that we put out every month? There's four more. It's insane. I listen to our podcast as one of my podcasts because I don't remember anything. So I still laugh and enjoy it. The last one we did, it's very intimate.

Forrest was talking about the birth of his child. There was a witch doctor involved, all kinds of crazy shit that, you know, we just can't expose the public to. But wild times. dot club forward slash info. Check out the subscriptions for this on Spotify and Patreon. And you know, just I love you guys. Are the hats ready?

The hats are, they'll be ready by the time we go to Animalcom. We'll have new Wild Times hats. No, these are like legit hats. Oh, people want. Sweet. Like they'll be in like REI soon. Yeah. I mean, I went to a physical store to get these.

Designed by Kyle. Yes. Yeah, they're pretty fucking sweet. I just really want my hat. Yeah, well, you'll get it soon. Fuck off. Feels like every product claims real protein these days. But real doesn't start on a label.

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