Wild Times: Wildlife Education - TWT #43 - Bradley Trevor Greive, Penguin Bloom, World's Smallest Chameleon

Episode Date: February 1, 2021

Bradley Trevor Greive joins Forrest Galante and the Wild Times Crew to talk about his time in the special forces, his body of work, and of course, his #1 AU box office hit, Penguin Bloom. BTG is full of hilarious stories and his Battle Royale team may be one of the best ever created! You don't want to miss this one! We love y'all! Join our Discord @ https://wildtimes.club Listen anywhere @ https://thewildtimespodcast.com/info

Ladies and gentlemen, brosners alike, welcome back to the Wild Times. This is episode 43. As always, I'm your host, the broologist Forrest Galante, joined by the ever-hansom broducer, Mr. Patrick DeLuca. How are you, Pat? Usually you call Retepe handsome, so I'm great. I wasn't that good, and now I'm great. Feeling flattered, yeah, see? Every now and then I'll just throw a switch up in, and you'll be like, whoa, I'm the handsome guy.

The slightly less attractive, but much meaner. Uh, brofessor, Mr. Peter, Retep. How are you, Retep? Fuck you, Forrest. Thanks. Hmm, that's rude. And, uh, finally, the person that I'm, by far the most excited to talk to, New York Times mega-selling author, special forces soldier, adventure, adventure sportsman, champion strongman, qualified cosmonaut, I don't know what that is, renowned wildlife expert.

He makes me look like a dumb, dumb, international conservation leader, and TV host, someone I've been super excited to talk to for a very long time, the one and only Mr. Bradley Trevor Greve. Mate. So lovely to be here, gentlemen. It's a pleasure to varying degrees. Wonderful. That was a hell of an intro. I was trying to memorize all that was quite something.

But BTG, how are you, man? It's so good to finally, like, connect with you. Like I said, your name has been said to me thousands of times, and I've always been excited to, like, connect with you. I am actually just shocked and mildly offended that we haven't crossed paths until this moment. Doesn't seem right. I'm from Tasmania. You've been there many times.

I've spent a lot of time in Cape York. You've been there many times. I would say that we've been in many of the same countries maybe weeks or months apart. So if I'm grateful for the pandemic, it's for two reasons. One, that I've been nurturing this false head of hair now. Beautiful. Yeah, thank you. You know what it's based on?

You've seen the Mary River Turtle, you know, the... Of course. Yeah, the little green algae mohawk that floated around Instagram that was so popular. Precisely. And that's what I have... I have a Mary River Turtle kind of wispy skull-merkin that I've nurtured now for 11 months. And the fact that now, at least digitally, I've been able to track you down. So I'm very grateful for that.

You know what? I'm going to have to just go back on something I said. We might even need an edit because I called Patrick Hansom. And now that I've compared you to the Murray River Turtle and the green... It's like, it's the wrong guy. I used handsome in the wrong place. It's just, it's you. You fucked it up.

I did. It's unfortunate. Forrest, last time we were in Madagascar doing a little look around for a hippo. Bradley, I think you were like landing in Tanna the day we left or something like that for little giants. I remember you telling me that. Yeah, that's right. I called you and asked for some tips on some local guides and experts because we hit a snap. And you actually texted me back some really valued information, so you kind of saved our asses.

And you predicted that every member of my thing would have some sort of gastrointestinal distress before the tour was out. And we did. Oh, my God. We were turtling and mud budding through almost every show. Dude, it's not Madagascar without it. Yeah. Yeah. If you don't poop the bed, you're really not visiting Madagascar.

That's just the truth. Something we've discussed on this show quite a few times that experience. Way too much. Yeah. What were you doing? What were you looking for in Madagascar? I remember you were going a place that I'd never been there for Little Giants. What were you doing?

Yeah, so we were looking for Little Giants. We had several, actually, some that we didn't manage to get to, just purely because of the distances, relatively speaking, are not that great. But as you know, travel is extremely difficult. And so we really hope to get up north to some of these tiny chameleons. so to see the pelican spiders, and I was speaking to some of the experts at the Smithsonian about them, and I bought myself a pooter. You ever use a little pooter to catch the tiny spiders?

It's basically like a turkey baster, but you just puff the air out of it. Because these spiders are only about the size of a grain of rice, or maybe a grain of wheat. If you're going to be a grain Nazi. And so there I was in finally, you know, on the ninth largest island in the world with my pooter. and couldn't get those fighters. But we got some of the smallest, or one of the smallest of the mouse lemurs. Oh, cool.

And we also got, we were looking for a lot of the 10 wrecks, but specifically I really, really wanted to capture good footage and get a hold of some of those lowland striped 10 wrecks. And you know the ones that have the little knitting needle send before on their butt, and they can send out those subsonic. They make sound with it.

Yeah, we actually encountered one on our first trip to Madagascar, believe it or not. It was running around outside of our lodge, and I flipped over a palm fron, and it was there with a whole family, and we picked it up and did a whole beat on it. It was incredible. And it was something you could have never planned for. You know, like, we could have looked for two months and never found one, and one was scurrying around in front of the lodge. Oh, love that. But you know what, Bradley, that, you know, I don't want to jump into just everything that we do on the podcast straight away because I've got a million questions for you. But one thing that came up that's super relevant to what we're talking about,

did you see that this week they named the new smallest Berkizia species in the world? The new smallest chameleon species was identified this week. I read that. I read that. And I was so excited. I mean, these things, do you want to talk about that now? Yeah, let's dig into it. It's in the news.

What's in the news? I love this so much. So the smallest, the smallest, not just the smallest chameleon, but the smallest lizard. Yeah. And knocking on the door of the smallest reptiles, certainly by weight. And what I love about these guys is, and the big fact, and I'm sure you know this, because this is a phallic-centric show, is their disproportionately large member.

Oh, yeah. Wow. But isn't that exquisite? Is that on someone's finger or is that its own penis? Oh, shit. All right. That's a good one. But the thing that I love about it for all these tiny species of chameleon is that their penis is inversely proportional to the size of their tongue.

Right. They have a relatively speaking, even though they still have the hydrostatic projectile that is a chameleon's tongue, it's actually much more attached and doesn't go out very far. And this relates back to both howler monkeys, as you recall. Howler monkeys that call the loudest have the smallest testicles. And of course, FDR, you know, speak softly carry a very big stick. Just to illustrate the penis size of this thing, I'm reading here on the show doc, it's 18.5% of its total body size. That's the equivalent of me having a 14.5 inch dick. I'm just saying. Did you actually do that math?

Will did the math. Producer Will did the math. Okay. I don't do the math. Well, good for that chameleon. Jeez. But, you know, just like a human with a 15-inch penis. maybe makes it a little harder to reproduce, and maybe that's why they're just getting discovered in 2021.

That's a hell of a concept, yeah. My question is this. Penis size and mating competition are usually related. You know, the more, and you want a longer penis to get further inside the females so that your sperm gets ahead of the competitive sperm, et cetera. What is happening for these tiny guys that travel about four or five inches a day on the ground and nest, you know, two inches up a, plant, what kind of mad bacchanalian sexual festival is going on there that they need this outrageous

jousting stick of the pants? It's like they're whiskers. You're supposed to answer that. Do you not know the answer? You're a herb guy. Yeah, it's a, it's a phenomenal question. It's interesting. I've never seen Peter take notes before, but he's very invested in this point. But no, I mean, you know, Bradley really summed it up. It's, you know, it's that competition as far as, as he said, penetration to make sure that your sperm is the one that gets you know, replicated and turns into offspring. And you just, there's, it's like a peacock's tail, right? It never ends. It just gets bigger and bigger and bigger as evolutionary time goes. You know, we're only a million ways, we're only a million years away from this chameleon being

nothing but penis. It's just going to be a penis with four legs. Yeah, that's all it's going to be. I got a question. So, you know, Bradley, I've been out with you. Bradley and I worked on a documentary in Admiralty Island in Alaska filming bear. We didn't use any, there were so many bear there, we didn't have to use any sort of bait whatsoever. You know, we didn't put any meat out or anything like that on our camera traps. Obviously, Forrest, you know, we built an entire tree out of meat in Zanzibar. Of the Lepin? Yeah. Yeah. It was super fun. When you were looking for predators, you know, there's certain things you can do. What? Bradley had a show.

show on Animal Planet that went the same way as extinct or alive. I don't think COVID helped either of us out too much as far as filming a big international show. But when you're looking for tiny insects for a TV show, how do you start by going, I want to find this one centimeter long spider? Bradley, you should really weigh in on that. I mean, so I love Little Giants. I was very disappointed when that didn't continue because I thought, and for anybody listening to this, Bradley had a show on Animal Planet called Little Giants, where what they would do was they would go and find these incredible tiny animals like the brachisia, the tiny chameleon we were just talking about, and they would blow them up to the, you know, larger proportion so that you could understand their superpower, so to speak, their relative strength, their relative size, you know, their relative speed, et cetera, et cetera. That's super cool. Yeah, and so that's the show that Bradley did with a co-host. I'm blanking on his name right now.

Billy Amin. Billy With Billy. And it was super fun and very, very, very. very educational. Now, I want to let you talk here in a second, Bradley, but when Patrick and I pitched animal plant and go, hey, we're going to go look for this extinct three-foot-long snake, they're like, oh, it's only three feet? No, you can't do that. That's stupid. Nobody's going to watch that. Meanwhile, Bradley, you successfully had this show where you guys were looking for things the size of a pinhead. So yeah, tell us about it. Well, the funny thing is that the way that it came about

was not just due to my natural passion for tiny extraordinary creatures, but to the fickleness of television executives. So Patrick and I did a two-hour documentary on these gigantic bears on the island of Kutsnabu in the Alexander Archipelago. And long story short, we helped identify this gigantic subspecies that was a hybrid species from the Ice Age. They love this so much. They said, can you get this same basic recipe and do it all over the world?

find these huge specimens that are relics of a lost time and explain that, you know, get the DNA sample and break it down for us. And so we put that together. Then there was a huge culture shift and they fired everybody, as happens in TVE every two years. And then you guys go, yeah, we don't want big and scary, which was my brand. We want small and cuddly. And I go, oh, so instead of finding giants, how about little giants? Love it. So off you go.

So for five seconds, we had this mandate to do these extraordinary little animals. But as we got deeper into it, they're, yeah, we wanted to be scarier. So then we have to keep adding venomous, dangerous, creepy things to make it just the nature of the beast. But how do we find them? Well, that's the trick. A lot of what we do is look for conditions that would force them to be in one place over another. So, for example, when we're looking for sonorine centipedes, let's do it in the middle of the day when it's so hot in the desert that they have to find sanctuary in the shade. So that concentrates them together.

in the same way that you look for animals during a drought at waterhole. Similar principles. But with the really tiny ones, and the hardest one to find, was the Devil's Manches in Mozambique, which was already at the southern end of its range. I mean, literally, we just checked a million leaves. I thought so.

Oh, God, that must have been tedious. I'm sure you were in heaven, but good Lord. The producer, I'm sure, was there just like, my God, more leaves today? And I'm one of those people that I'm a good person and a noble entity, but the suffering of others delights me. So I actually didn't mind that at all. Wonderful.

Hey, Will, Google Devil's Flower Mantis, because that's the one we're talking about, and you'll find a better picture. They're incredible animals. But Bradley, so you guys did find one. How many days did it take? So I've been to Madagascar a number of times, as we discussed. I was there a day before you landed last time. And one of the animals that we look for were leaftail geckos, right?

And you know what they're like, right? I mean, they blend in. You could be a foot away from one staring at it and you can't see it on the trunk of a tree. And I'm sure these mantis are the same. I've never targeted them. But how long did it take? How happy were you when you found one? Like, tell us a little bit about it.

Well, we actually did it in three days. We were pretty lucky. And... Fuck me, then. But we... But we, I had to say, we had about seven people. I mean, that's the myth. That's, look, obviously in these TV shows,

obviously we edit them to be more exciting. Right. I will sometimes capture several specimens and then we'll just film the best one or the most active one or whatever we're doing. So we definitely play with reality a little bit in order to communicate the larger points of the story more effectively.

But, you know, I was trying to explain to the team the principle of staring through things. So when you're in a military operation, You need to learn to look through trees and to look for certain signature shapes. So if you can program your brain to look for certain triggers. And so obviously the raptoral arms are a great giveaway. The lozen shape head is a great giveaway. And I said, look for a movement that is slightly out of sync with the movement of the leaf.

Because, of course, all these mantis, all the mantas in general and the phasasmas, they start to sway. And sometimes they're just slightly out of sync with the breeze that's happening. And let me tell you, we found a metric shit ton of dragonflies and butterflies and beetles. And it wasn't even like a seventh instar. It was like a third instar. It was tiny. It was about the size of a dime in terms of height.

It was very, very hard to find. And a beautiful purple color, but exquisite little creature. And you literally feel like you're holding a living gem. Right. Yeah, that's amazing. I remember when we were in Zanzibar, Patrick, and we were walking through the far Just thinking about it. About the slap neck chameleon.

Yeah, tell the story. Because from your perspective, it's probably funny. When you said, see through things, it made me think immediately of it. You know, I like to make fun of Forrest. I give him a lot of shit. Really? So that people don't think I'm just blowing him when I give him a compliment. But there were times where he would see something in the dark and say, you see that.

And I would look and he'd be like, look. and I would be looking and I couldn't see it and then he would shine his flashlight on it and I still couldn't see oftentimes you know it would be a chameleon pretty far away the chameleon and then what were the other the little little

primates that we were seeing all over the bush babies? Yeah yeah Bush babies. Oh Bush babies Gallagos or whatever yeah I don't understand is that so that ability to see through things and and spot animals is that just

from repetition? Do you think there's some genetic component to just, I don't know, your peripheral vision being different? Like, it's clearly a talent, you know, Michael Phelps swims really fast. I don't. Yeah, it's a learned skill. I mean, I'm curious, sorry, Patrick, I'm interrupted. I'm curious to hear what you think, Bradley, but I think it's just, I think it's repetition and it's a learned skill. It's, it's looking to see an abnormality in a landscape. You look out, you know, and you're looking for this abnormality. In the case of a chameleon, I remember with that one flapneck that I was talking about in particular, I saw his, his, tail curl, right? And it was just too perfect. It was too symmetrical. It didn't match the ferns

that had that curl. And I was like, oh, that's a chameleon, right? And I could just tell by the shape of the tail curl in the way it was curled up that that was a chameleon and it stood out. I mean, what do you think, Bradley? I think that the evidence suggests that visual acuity is inversely proportional to masturbation. So I think that explains Patrick's deficiencies. I think I read that But no, I agree with you, Forrest, and I would just expand that thought one more. It's practice. It is a learned technique. It is experience.

It's having seen that animal. And from a computer point of view, it's called fuzzy logic, being able to understand how it would look from different angles. But when I was at Jungle Warfare School, they used to talk about the sixth sense as a very tangible thing. Not as some spiritual hokey-pokey ghost thing, but merely as a. infantismally small registration on any of the other five senses. So small that you can't necessarily pin it down. You can't say that's that shape or that's that sound or that's that smell or that texture. But just enough of one or more of your five senses that it's informing you that you have registered something you can't quite ascertain.

And so they used to teach us in the Jungle Warfare School that if you feel someone is watching you, someone is watching you. and that's just six cents letting you know. And so I feel that exactly what you're saying, it's the technique, it's the experience, but you do it so much that you learn to trust that little inkling, and that's how you get good at it. That double take, right? You like do that double take,

where you scan through it, and then there's something that brings you back, and you don't even know what it was on the initial scan, right? And it brings you back to that point, and then you can start to register the information as to what that little thing is, whether it's someone looking at you or, etc., etc., right? Chamele and Curr, all of a tail, etc. Right. But here's one of the things about that, particularly in our business, is you can get too good at it.

And what that happens then is that you're so good at focusing on particular visual, audible, or sent cues that you're oblivious to a lot of other things that should really tell you to look around. Give me an example, we used to do these anti-hally objects, so Burby-Trap Lane, looking for. for things. And in your mind, you're so used to looking for these tiny drab, matte olive-painted wires, a little tiny elevations in bark and things like that that might mean there's a booby truck there or a lambie. This is in the military, right?

You're saying? Right. Yeah, in the military. And so you wouldn't actually see anything significant. So you could put a red handkerchief or, you know, a hamburger on the ground, and I wouldn't see that because I'm looking for these things. And so sometimes we get ourselves in trouble. We're

so dialed in, particularly for tiny creatures, such as insects and small reptiles, that we don't see a giant snake curled up necessarily or, yeah, big pile of lion crap. And so it's important to balance that technique with general awareness in order to have optimal efficiency in the bush. Bradley. You know what I find, Bradley. Oh, sorry, go ahead, Peter.

I have a dog leg from this. Yeah, I was just going to ask, what's like the, you're in the special forces, man. Special Forces is like intense. As a layman on this podcast, I'm like, we have somebody on the podcast who's in the special forces. What's like the craziest fucking thing you experienced in the special forces? Well, I remember doing, and this isn't a, I have a couple of low lights and highlights that come to mind immediately.

One was just miserable when we're doing a rehearsal operation in Northern Australia near the RFURAC. And I was a night insertion on carrying my own body weight. gear and I go through a tree and it goes you can't see the ground and I land on my backpack and fracture my ankle and then I have to hump it 50 miles with that ankle. Oh man. And I didn't even bother look at it. I just gaffetate the outside of my boot and off we went because you're leading a platoon and you got to do the thing. I remember that being miserable and hating it at the time and now just loving that I used to be someone who could

do that. Looking back and being like, wow, I was really capable. Another time, another time, Another time I remember, I remember we've been doing a jungle warfare school, was a couple of them in Australia, but one, it just rained the entire time. And someone trying to help everybody give them a bit of a morale boost, because it was freezing cold in the middle of winter, and yet raining the whole time. It was very strange conditions. And we had some strange mishaps. Like one day, I only covered 100 yards a day because it's this greasy red mud up this hill through the rainforest. us and we covered in a whole day of patrolling about 110 yards. I mean, that's how awful

it was. Just slipping backwards the whole time. It's like when you guys were crawling around trying to find the Fernandino Turtle or whatever it's called, just every day incrementally moving, but he's way cooler. You guys are cool. And so, anyway, they went to a non-tactical state

and let everyone light fires for the first time. That was step number one, and that was a bad call because some guy, you know how when you, you ever seen those old army rations and you've got the cans of things like cans of cheese and whatever. Yeah, the MREs. Right. Well, this is pre-MRE, but yes.

And so what you do is you grab the can, you hit it on the side of your boot to form indentations all the way around. You put it in the fire, and then when that expands, it means it's cooked. And you can notice it expanding, right? If you don't do that, you never really sure how big... Anyhow, some guy doesn't do it to a little thing of cheese. It blows up, slices his carotid.

Now there's a many back. Yeah, so now the guy's going to be, you know, cheese murdered in the middle of the rainforest. And then, and then someone trying to help us go, you know what, these boys have been out there for a long time. You know, they're all cold and wet and covered in fungus. Let's give them a hot meal. And so they brought up this army catering unit

and they put in a, they grilled these steaks and whatever else. So we hump it in. By the time we get there, all the Baymaries are full of water. The steaks are floating. We eat them anyway. We've been eating rats for six weeks. Damn. Now we're eating steak.

and immediately we're just crapping ourselves, and I couldn't make it into cover. So I just get out of my killing knife, and I'm cutting my underwear off, and my pants up. And just like, that's a battle, that's a battle casualty. Is that a lot of a highlight?

It's just, it's a great lesson, okay? And that was the night you about your wife, right? She found the underwear, and had my name and a phone number on it. She texted me. No.

Happily married. beautiful dog. Are you kidding? The lesson there, the lesson there, Brosner's, if you're listening, is if you've been eating rats in the jungle for six weeks, don't eat a steak. Yeah. That's it. Two different. Don't eat a steak. And the border thing is, don't

go soft. Don't think you deserve a reward for suffering. Just suffer and enjoy the fact that you're able to suffer. Embrace the suffering. Embrace the suffering. Don't ever think you've earned a fucking day to relax. Everybody hear that? Everybody just

He needs hot cheese. Would you rather have hot cheese or would you rather be not being dead? Personally, I'd have hot cheese. It depends. If I'm in a baseball game, I want that cheese pretty hot. Lane in bed, I'd just rather be dead. Fuck it. Bradley, I want to go back to something we were talking about earlier because with your formal

training, you might have an answer to this. And it's something that has always, I've never understood it. So I grew up in Zimbabwe, right? I grew up learning to track in the bush and read tracking signs and spot animals and all the things that we just discussed. Anywhere I go, I think that I take in pretty much most of the information, right? I'm walking through the woods and I go, oh, there's this kind of trees and it's this kind of soil and the weather's doing this and the wind's blowing that way. I'm sure you were trained to do the same thing, right? So you just take in all this information. I never get lost in the bush,

and Patrick can attest to that. We'll be 40 miles out and I'll be like, turn around, we're going south, and we're back, right? I literally don't think I've ever been lost outdoors. If you put me in New York city. And I'm serious. I'm not saying this for the humor. If I turn left once, I'm completely lost. And there's this flood of information because there's all these flashing lights and these signs and these stores and these high rises and these street colors. And there's all this information. And I'm very serious. I'm really curious about this, that I cannot take in. Like, it's like an overload of information when I go to a city. And instantly, I'm lost. And I don't just say that to be like cute or funny. Like, I cannot navigate my way around a city. I can't navigate my way around big, big development, like all these things

where there's so much overstimulation of information that I just, I lose it straight away, whereas you can drop me in the middle of absolute nowhere and I know exactly what I'm doing. So you're saying, forest, that you can't function in regular society, but in a forest, you're good. Basically, yes. That's basically, I think, but I'm serious, man. I just can't, like when I go to New York for meetings and stuff, if I don't pull out my, phone and look at the maps, I cannot do it. It's too much information. I can't walk down a street and come back

and recognize points that allow me to get back. It's like I'm trying to take in every single street sign and every single name and every single window reflection and I just kind. It's an overload of information. So basically what you're asking is, does Bradley equally as non-functional

and quite pathetic? Are you inside of a jungle side? That's my question. I look, I'm not a city person. In fact, I would never have met Patrick and spent all those years with a clingate and then met Patrick if I hadn't hated the city so much. So I came out here on a sabbatical and fell in love with love my life and now my wife, mother, my beautiful daughter. And I love her and I hated being in Los Angeles. I mean, there are more people, and not to denigrate Los Angeles.

I mean, I'm not saying it's just a shithole. Sure. I'm not saying it's a work bubble of vapid vegans, but what I am saying, there's more. people in this city than my entire country. I'm from Tasmania. Yeah. Right. I live on the east coast of Tasmania where there's nothing there. Yeah. In the course of

an entire summer, there was six people on my beach, and four of them were penguins. So, L.A. was doing my head and I was so miserable, and I just said, I can't, I'm just too much all the time. And so I started researching VERS and the Klinger people and went to Alaska

and the rest of they say. But I'll ask you, let me ask you a question. Have you formally studied navigation or have you self-taught? Self-taught. I've never had any formal training in navigation. So there's several aspects to what is causing this phenomenon for you, and there's an easy way to fix it. Sure. The first is, the first is what you're relying on are two different things. Firstly, is an incredible memory of objects that mean something to you, and you're navigating by memory. And that's great while your memory's so, sure.

sharp, but they'll come a time for various conditions and aging, and you will lose that. And my dad is a very smart man, and he's a gifted search, and he's retired now, and he navigated by memory when he was younger, and then as he got older, he started getting locked. So,

first is, it's memory, because objects, you lock them in because you care about them. The other thing is, is subconsciously, even though human beings don't have that penny a lie, that third eye, that a lot of fish, and a lot of marine animals, reptiles have, which is a very ancient form of navigation as well as a defensive system,

we are still attuned to the sun. And so the sun is acting as a compass for you, even though you don't consciously acknowledge it. So for example, when you are, you can make an easy compass with a stick in the sand, but on the equator, and I'm sure you've been to the Amazon at least as many times as I have, if not more. And I remember doing a tour with the Amazon Rangers who were we were basically trying to recapture, you know, poached parrots and primates. And they would just do the simplest technique of all, which is remember where the sun is on your way out, on which part of your shoulder, and then flip it be on, yeah, flip it on the way back. So that's a simple, an ancient method.

You're doing that subconsciously by knowing where the sun is into relation with your moving. So in other words, it's the acuity of your brain. allowing you not to make mistakes, even though you're not using formal navigation tools. Interesting. And one of the easiest ways for you to get around anywhere. And remember, I'm a little bit older than most of the people on this podcast. So I still wear an old watch. And I recommend if you don't want to carry a compass, and obviously I find is a garbage

once you get out in the sticks because it just basically paperweights is right. I carry a watch. You learn how to navigate by your watch. You know how to do it. You know, you put the one of the easy hour hand and then. Peter and I don't. How do you navigate with the watch? It's really very easy. You point the...

The other hand is for any way. You point the 12. You point the 12 at the sun. Yep. Okay. There's the hour hand. Halfway between that is north. Right. Okay. Now that, I used to use that.

When I first started coming to Los Angeles 26 years ago, and you had paper maps, and that's it. Wow. And you're folding out, basically, this picnic blanket in the car. The Thomas guy? I crashed into a Volvo on. the 405 doing that many years ago. Now I just go, okay, I know where I'm going is west, here's north, and I'll gradually

get there. So I would say that if you don't want to rely on a smartphone, just learn how to navigate with your watch. That's kind of cool. I didn't know you could do that. It's anywhere in the world. That's why these old timepieces never go out of stuff. I got a question for probably Forrest and BTG.

I've heard mixed reviews on this factoid or whatever, but I've tried. tried to use it when I've been in the woods. And that's that the moss will always be on the north side, growing on the north. And then I've been told it's bullshit. And like, I'm out there, like, okay, like, in the woods, it's not like it's on the north side. We're going north. Like, I know we are.

And so that's bullshit, yeah? Well, Bradley, go ahead. But I'll explain some of it. There are some very rare occasions when that is absolutely true. Yeah. But by and large, you have to remember that moss isn't caused by the absence of something. light. It's caused by other atmospheric conditions of moisture and

nutrition and a whole bunch of different things. Plus, the wind and the light get altered coming through the trees. So no, no, if you do that, you will end up living on moss. You'd just be walking in circles, because every single tree will have its slightly different

angle, and you'll just be going in circles around all the trees following the moss forever. An old wives' tale. Now, here's a question, Bradley. So typically when Forest is in New York, we're together, because we've gone to, you know, have some meeting or whatever, when I make him go search for a suitable slice of New York pizza at 2 a.m., and the sun's not up, now what are we doing? Well, and that's particularly hard because you've got cloud cover and no access to the stars.

Right. I think... Pay attention to the street signs, you fucking idiot. Smell the sewers. Go by the sewers smell. There is a technique specific to you. New York, and that is, you bump into anybody and you say, I want to go, what's the name of that famous pizza, the original race, right?

You say, I want to slice, I'm going, so you see two people walking down the street in the middle of the night, and you say, where is the original raise? And they will immediately start arguing over which one was the original. And from a series of those arguments, you will ascertain where you are in New York City. There you go. It's the same thing in Chicago. You asked somebody where, like, Giro, down. And they'll be like, oh, no, you don't want to go there.

You got to go to Juno's East. Like, everybody's got the opinion. But you'll get to a fucking pizza place eventually. And no matter which one you go to, you'll get fat and it's disgusting because Chicago Deep Dish is revolting. Oh, fuck off. I've never gained a pound from Chicago Deep Dish because- I don't understand it.

I don't understand it. It's like lasagna. Do you understand lasagna? Come on. It's not like lasagna. It's just a brick of cheese with carbs under it. It doesn't make any sense. It's just because you've been working out.

Now you're just like, I don't eat fucking pizza. I love this. Fuck off. There are so many great places to eat. I remember going to a place called Girl and Goat in Chicago. Some of the best food I've ever had in my life. Some of the best restaurants in America.

Yes, absolutely. Remember that was the home of Charlie Trotter, the world's first, you know, what do they call it? Heston Blumenthal is another one. All these science-y, chefy things with the phones and the gels. Gastroquiz. I know what you're talking about. Where they mix the science and all the small. and everything while they're making your food.

Yeah. I've got kind of a funny. Oh, sorry, go ahead, Bradley. Molecular astronomy. You don't want a home dog. You want a lavender and sheepshank enema. And it's like, and this deep dish thing, it's like a shortbread bucket full of sadness.

Ah, fuck off. It's the original. You guys, you get, so you're a New York pizza guy, Pat. Pat, you live in New York, and I've heard you talk about how much you love a Chicago deep dish. I've also heard that you ordered one in the hotel room and didn't eat a single bite. I was with you that, man. I think if you're not from America, you don't understand it.

I think, you know, I get that. I'm from Africa. Bradley's from Australia. We just don't understand it. So when Bradley and I were in Alaska, we went up for a scout trip, right? Before the crew, it was about a week before. I had to come back for something. And basically, in the time that we were getting ready to shoot, several days before,

for essentially. The network was like, we'd really like to have a co-host just so that Bradley has someone to talk to. And so there was this feverish. Let me just interrupt for a second. That's never the most irritating thing that a network does ever.

When you're like, you're super invested in something, you've worked on it for yours, you've been researching the topic, you know, it's your entire field of study. And they're like, hey, why don't we just find someone, I don't know, kind of funny, you know, so tall, this ethnicity. And they could be your co-host.

You know, they'll know as much as you. I'm so hateable. I mean, Bradley had spent years up there just getting access, had become a brother in the Klingat tribe or a member of the Klinget tribe. This was just to get access. And then several days before, they're like, you know, let's give him someone to talk to. So it ends up being a great guy. We're friends with him now, but I'm going to make fun of him for a second.

So we love him. Yeah. So this guy, Johnny, comes on. And he just was game. He showed up. He had done some travel adventure stuff. He shows up and he very quickly, within about a day or two, earns the nickname Johnny Inches. So Peter and Forrest, I'm going to give you each a guess as to how he got the nickname Johnny Inches.

And Bradley will tell you how he got that nickname. Peter, you go first. All right. Well, like our small lizard friend, but the opposite, he had a tiny dick that he navigated the area with outwardly. And it was the first thing you noticed about him. so you started calling him Johnny Inches. Good guess. It's a good guess.

I'm going to guess that he, although was an outdoorsman, fun guy, really into adventure, was a little nervous around the Bears. So when you were out and about, he'd just start kind of inching up to Bradley a little bit for us. You know, maybe just like, hey, Brad, what's up? I'm going to stand right by you over here. Okay. That's a genius answer. Right.

But that's a great answer. Bradley, how did he get the nickname Johnny Inches? So first of all, I would say, Peter, Johnny is a ladiesman of some renown. So I don't think he's lacking in the highway department at all. And there were times, look, he was out of his comfort zone for us, and there were times when he was happy to, we would keep him in the safety sandwich.

You know, Alvin Johnson, my Klinger brother, would go at 12 o'clock, and I would go to Thailand Charlie at 6, and we'd keep him in the middle. So I think he was happy to be there. But, in fact, He had a reverse problem. We'd see a big bear. We saw some very big bears there.

We saw it 8 foot sow. We saw a 10 foot bar. And it was only just across a small waterway. Like, you know, like two tennis courts. And he starts going forwards. The bear had already dropped down flat on the ground. So the bear was like, I don't like this. I'm going to watch you and start.

And he was, you know, basically uncertain. And Johnny would actually inch towards the bear to get a reaction. And I had to break cover and come down and go, Johnny, mate, nothing good you know four giant paws huge jaws you are five ways

fuck please stop doing that so he no he definitely wasn't scared no he got the he got the title because he was game for anything and he hosts his own show the roadless traveled on travel channel and he's fearless he's up for anything

but he didn't know anything about bears and he came in the short notice that he became the designated measurer of things and everything we saw however in constant sequential, a fecal sample, a scratch on a tree. Those were good things. We had just ridiculous, and he'd be just measuring it, and he was so serious. I mean, he lived it. I love, and just remember,

we love this guy. Yeah, and no one, of course, taking the piss. He has a master's degree in linguistics, okay, he's no idiot. Right. And, but he just, he went, okay, if that's my role, I'm doing that role. He's committed to the cause. Yeah. That's the best. I call it. I call it. I call him Johnny Inches to this day. So he's in my phone as Johnny Inches. I love him. I love him. I went into him on the street, BTG. I ran into him on the street in West Hollywood, not long ago. And we were just crossing the streets and I was like, Johnny Inches. And in classic Johnny Inches style, I was like, what do you do? You don't live over here. What are you doing? He's like, oh, there's like a girl that lives up there. I was like, okay, Johnny Inches. Take your inches somewhere else. Get out of my neighborhood.

He lives the dream. I don't know where he's living now. It's somewhere in Central America or somewhere in South America. But last time we spoke, he'd just come back from Ukraine and we were thinking of doing something on all of the, we're looking for evidence of some of these mutated species out of Propyat and Chernobyl following the nuclear meltdown. And it was interesting for us as science nerds

because really the only species to have that kind of mutation live long enough to be second generation are bats over there. But everything else is many. generations down and they're being irradiated now, but they didn't get that crazy dose early on. But yeah, he'd just come back and would you believe he met a beautiful girl there? And he just, wherever you want to go, Johnny's there and he's got a great plus one. Wow. Yeah.

What's done? I just tried to find Johnny Inches, the Instagram account, doesn't exist. But there is one, Johnny Inch's photography. I really hope it's him. I don't think that's our boy. I don't think that's our point. So for us, you, oh, go ahead, Forrest. No, I was going to start talking about some stuff that I saw in the news.

But what I was going to say, you've got a new desk this week. What's it made out of? Yeah. Yeah, it's a Brazilian teak. It's beautiful. Yeah, smells very nice. You guys know quite a bit about wood. I'll tell you that much.

Yep. Yep. We learned everything we know from Johnny Inches. How big is your, your new Brazilian teak desk this week? Yeah, so there's, yeah, you know, let's get into it. What's in the news? My favorite thing that I found this week is California, the state that we all reside in, except for W.T. Willie, state that we love to hate and make fun of and talk about the terrible roads and, you know, the governor and everything else is doing something good for a change.

California is set to build the largest wildlife crossing in the world. Wow. This is a good thing, guys. This is a very good thing. And of all places, it's happening right by Euritep in Agora Hills, right in the valley. I saw this. It's big news. Isn't this great?

The bridge is set to be completed in 2023. It's been mostly funded by private donors, which I think is awesome, right? Like the state didn't pay for it. The government didn't pay for it. So a bunch of private people were like, you know what? Let's save the animals. The idea is to reconnect natural habitat so the coyotes and bobcats and mountain lines, etc. can cross over giant freeways.

I'm guessing the 101. And it's going to be the largest wildlife crossing in the world. And I just think, good for us, you know. Good for you, California. Way to set an example. Well, I mean, I agree, but it is California, so there's a good chance they're going to fuck it up. But it is a great thing. Well, also, how about the fact that we have, in California, we're 50th out of 50.

We have the highest state income tax. We have the highest corporate tax. And yet, individual don't. had to pay for them to do one fucking thing. To build a bridge. That's like that we like. So kind of, in my opinion is fuck off California, but at least they allowed it. So I think it's really cool.

Bradley, I am so negative about the state right now. I'm trying to move to Montana. I want to get the fuck out of here. I look, I get that. I think Montana's gorgeous and I think we should all move there. Although if you move there, then I will revise that opinion. Same. So I went to, so I went to, so I

actually went to the launch of this in 2018 at the Arroyo and Foothills Conservancy event at the Wisconsin Gardens and I was staggered by the scope of this idea and the cost. Yeah. And I

couldn't believe it. I remember that this is, this, this animal crossing is part of what will one day be one of the largest wildlife corridors in the world, not just North America, but in the world. And I'm just like, you know, I don't know, I mean, you know, DeLuca's, one of many DeLuca's homes that I've been to is in Hollywood.

I don't have you tried to buy a house in Hollywood lately. It's not cheap. How are you going to, Agura Hills is the, okay, arguably the cheapest side of the valley van on the other side at Calabasas where, you know, Will Smith and everybody, Justin Bieber. Yeah. But it is still incredibly expensive. And the fact that they raise billions of dollars to do this, I just, I'm just so impressed. At the time I was staggered by it.

And I say that, and here's why it touches me personally. I come from Tasmania, one of the great wonders of the world, and we have extraordinary wildlife. We have the highest roadkill. I've never seen anything like it. Sorry. You've seen it, right? It's a fact. It's a fact.

And I like to talk about it. It's the highest roadkill per mile on the planet. Now, part of that is that it's, even though it looks small compared to Australia, it's still a very large island. And it's largely unpopulated, doesn't have a huge tax base. The terrain is unforgiving. So we do not have a lot of wildlife crossings of any kind. Just now we're insisting the government investigate this, and they're finally putting real money into it and try a new technology.

But it is horrific. And I'll tell you, one of the bizarre things, it became this really ugly way of measuring the health of wildlife populations, because you used to find dead devils several per mile. And then I lived in an area we had the highest population of devils in Tasmania, and over a period of nine years went to virtually none. So it's an interesting measure of wildlife population's roadkill. It's more than just dead carcasses on the road.

But it is hellacious. So I salute anyone coming up with a big solution. Tasmania, this is specific to Tasmania, right? You guys have the worst roadkill. We have the worst. And it's because we have a lot of nocturnal animals who have no traffic sense and we have tiny roads. Sorry.

We have tiny, we have our free, it's like I lived on the Tasman Highway, right? That's a one lane highway and in name only. And people are doing 80 miles an hour and these animals come out and they get killed. Wow. It's horrific. So I want to try and change this. Sorry, sorry, I don't want to dog like it. To think that Tasmania is worse than New Zealand is shocking.

Well, New Zealand has no mammals. It's just the amount of possums you see on the road. The invasive stones. They're ours. They're cows. They're coming to have possums that we gave them. Right, right, right. Sorry for us.

Yeah. I was just going to explain. It's, you know, Bradley's probably callous to it because he grew up with it. But I've traveled many, many places around the world and seen incredible wildlife and seen terrible things dead on the road and everything in between. One of the most shocking things that I have ever witnessed in the world. my life is the amount of roadkill on the roads in Tasmania. I mean, someone like myself who's so passionate about animals and hate seeing them suffer or die, I mean, when we landed, we landed in Hobart, got in the car to drive to whatever the area we were going to go to

was, within three minutes, I made them pull over the car because there was a roadkill, right? I was like, pull over, pull over. I want to see what it is, right? Sure. After doing that 19 more times over the remaining half mile, the driver was like, can we stop this now, you know, and it was, I'm not kidding, I've never seen anything like it. You're parked at a roadkill, and as you look down, not a very straight highway, you can see 40 or 50 more dead animals looking down the road, just as you stand there, parked in the car. I mean, it's, it's, the road is literally red with the blood of animals that have been hit, and it's, it's

unbelievable, it's wombats and wallabies, and I mean, the list goes on and on and on, and it's just, you've never seen anything quite like it. And one of the reasons something I love to talk about, as we all know, is, you know, the predators are gone. So the thylacine is gone. The, um, the, the devil's population has been driven to, you know, near extinction in many places, one because of people, two, because of herpes, blah, blah, blah. But, um, you know, it's just, it's unbelievable. So the, the populations of all these, uh, you know, non-preditary animals are just exploding. And I mean, they're just, they're, I grew up in Africa, right? I've stood on top of granite copies looking over the great migration,

and you see, you know, a hundred thousand animal, wildebeest and zebra, etc., etc. When I was in Tasmania, and we went up on a hill at one night, and I used my thermal goggles to look out. It looked like I was on the plains of Africa. I mean, there was just the thermal signatures of the amount, the bioabundance of mammals was unfrikin believable. For anybody that wants to envision that, I'm assuming it's what was in the Lion King, correct?

Sure. Come on. The Lion King. It's been a wild. It's up there. He's holding the Lion Cup. It's, look, Tasmania is one of the great wildlife wonders of the world. And if you don't go there, you are wasting your life.

It's one of those must-see places. And you're right. It's a place of, yes, it's part of the, part of Australia, in terms of the political border, but it is neither Australia. Nor is it New Zealand. It is its own little thing. We have unique plants and animals. You won't find anywhere else in the world and the great majority of them are nocturnal and they are very weird and absolutely wondrous. And you're right. I mean, I remember there been this explosion in the number of crows coming to eat all these dead creatures on the side of the road because the devils, as you say, would diminish in some areas, including where I'm from, by over 90%. Glad to be part of a number of breeding programs both on the island and on the mainland. where the recovery program, at least in terms of the scientific recovery, in terms of breeding insurance populations, is going very, very well. But we are still not to the bottom of devil facial tumor disease.

So it's a big, big deal. But yeah, crazy. And only now we're getting the kind of outcry that the government has to invest in new technology to try to keep out. Because you can't just put fences up everywhere. That makes it worse. You get what we have on the Atlantic Forest in Brazil. You get these pockets in between the favelas and the various glacial abodes.

You get these pockets of ecosystem that are cut off from others. And so it's an extended death sentence. Exactly. So we cannot cut it up. We've got to connect them in a safe way. As a Tasmanian, I am ashamed of our track record of roadkill. I applaud people trying to make a difference. And that's why, unlike you cynical pricks, I salute the engineers and donors who are building the world's largest

largest wildlife bridge in the Gurah Hill. We're just cynical about California. VTG, I have a question for you. It comes up from time to time on this podcast. You know those horses that have stripes on them? Yes, I'm aware of them. Well, the horses, but yes, equids, yeah. What's the common name for those?

Those black and white ones? You want me to say, you want me to say zebra, right? I just want you to naturally say whatever you'd say. me a part over this. I'm from where the animal is from. I pronounce it correctly. Not you. How do you say, Forrest? Zebra, of course. So, the reason I'm having whiskey and lemon is my throat's gone from doing this, I'm doing an animated show called Adventure Beast on Netflix. It's an animated show inspired by some of my wildlife adventures that will be out in July. Yes. I'm not, I've done a few voiceovers. I did some for finding Nemo, but that's not who I am. I spend weeks without

saying a word. And now I'm talking all day. I'm losing my voices as you can hear. But But they just, they have made me go back and re-record the word zebra as zebra. Oh. Because they don't believe Americans will understand me. I'm thinking how many other animals sound like that. Right. If you hear the word zebra and you don't equate it with zebra, give your fucking head a shake. You really have something to think about.

Right. Right. I mean, really. All right. So I got, I have to jump in because Forrest and I have spent an enormous. amount of time, just while drinking late at night, talking about the thylacine. We've done two expeditions, one in Tasmania. And you know a TV schedule, Bradley.

I mean, you have two weeks, if you're lucky, to look for something. So we did Tasmania. We did Australia. We've talked about it a huge amount on this podcast. A disproportionate amount of our listeners are Australian. That's true. As a TASI, and I'm sure someone who's very interested, is the thylacine extinct,

or is there a small pocket somewhere in the world where it's alive? This is from the mouth of a biologist from Tasmania. This is important. So I would say there's what I believe and there's what I want to believe. What I want to believe is that there is a small, remote population that has just enough size to be, to be able to maintain itself.

I would say that it's functionally extinct and that we haven't seen evidence of one, as you know, since 1936. We know they used to be on the mainland. I've known on a previous episode you talked about how the dingo out-competed the slower-moving thylosine. You could argue that the thylacine was to the dingo

what the dire wolf was to the grey-wolf. Exactly. It's a bigger, more powerful animal, but it's slow and it's predominantly a carrying. need it. Right. So, yeah, I don't think it's likely that there is a viable population anywhere. All the evidence that I've seen, though tantalizing, has never convinced me. Like you guys, I put out, I remember, you remember on our Bears show? I was up there three or four weeks ahead of everybody,

just putting out camera traps and bringing them every three days because the bears rip them off the trees and put them back out. So we know what camera trap footage looks like. So when I can see a tree and a wallaby incredibly clearly down to the finest follicle and they go that smudges a thylacine I'm not buying it yeah I'm with you there all the new footage I'm calling bullshit but I hope that there's out there now the idea of what they're calling the moon tiger up there in Cape York that's an exciting thing as well but I've spent a lot of time up there and never seen any evidence of it either but sort of the program that you were involved with I know you got in touch with the team from Cooktown University correct they have got more camera traps out there than any

other program I've ever seen. So we'll see. And there's two sides to that coin, right? Bradley, not to interrupt you, but what spurred this massive? And I'm not a conspiracy nut. You know, I don't believe in cryptids or anything else. But isn't it interesting that all of a sudden James Cook University put in so much resources to put out this massive grid pattern of camera trapping, right? I'm not saying it's not important work. And I'm not saying that they're not going to get incredibly valuable data, but I do find it very interesting that there was this surge in curiosity that led to this massive amount of camera trapping. Right, but I have some inside information because I spoke to the head of the program. I ran into him in Malaysia, and I asked him

what was going on. We spoke on the phone. Sure. And we both happened truly by coincidence to be in Kuala Lumpur at the same time. And the truth of it is this. The aim of their program is not to find the moon tiger. That is an ancillary aim. It's to document the collapse of small mammals in that ecosystem. That's what they told us as well when we were there. Yeah. So that number of traps for small mammals, that makes sense. You want to find a small anything, and obvious little giants, that's what we did a lot of. We've got camera traps up the wazoo constantly in order to just get a little bit of movement. Right. And then the next day, we recalibrate all the cameras and hope to get a clean shot,

and then the third day we put out the traps and hope to capture one and film it. That's how we do it. So when you say small mammals, you go camera traps, you've got to have them exponentially large number of them. And they very cleverly use the moon tiger story in a couple of, quote, eyewitnesses, close quote,

to get interest and hopefully generate funding. So I don't think that was ever therein, but I would say to you this, if there is a collapse in small mammals, does that tell you of an abundance of predators? I think it tells you that it's the exact opposite. in the same way that the mega, mega carnivals died off when the megafauna gone, so to these smaller predators disappear when the small prey go.

Exactly right. No, exactly. It's the opposite of what people would think. Let me ask you this, Bradley, the number one place on my bucket list. I've planned three different expeditions there, all that have been canceled, one by which you may remember the largest cyclone that ever hit, which hit cans. I was there when that happened and got it. I was on the last plane out.

We lost our car and everything. And the very next day, before I got evacuated, I think it was three days prior to when we were supposed to go to Papua New Guinea. Have you been? How was it? You haven't been? I have not been. I've come close. I've traveled up the islands that historically connected Australia with PNG. So I've done that. But I haven't gone there. I'm actually looking to plan a trip there down the road. I really want to get close to some of these poison birds. You've seen them. You're the ones that have the same toxin on their wings

as you often see in various reptiles and stuff. I'm very excited about seeing the poison birds. I haven't. Again, like you, got friends who've been there, I've planned it. One of my best friends where I was in the army, his brother was a photojournalist who was murdered there in his body not recovered. by the group that's called The Rascals,

which sounds like a really friendly Wes Anderson. It does. It sounds like they're a good time. A comical movie title. No, they're monsters. They're these roving gangs that in some cases do carry bows and arrows and machetes, but now for various reasons, they're armed with, you know, Vietnam-era military hardware.

Yep. And it's really sad. So one of the guys I went through the Royal Military College with, which is like your West Point, is that I called Beldenama. and he got into special forces in New Guinea, very colorful history. Look at it up on Wikipedia,

and now he's a minister in the government. Again, a very colorful fellow. But he is someone that I've connected with because of our shared past. And for all my supposed hard man adventuring in various qualifications, I would not go to Papua New Guinea unless I had the protection of an authority figure like that

that put me, didn't put a target on my back. It's very dangerous. I mean, it's, you know, Bradley, it's something we've never talked about because I always talk about, you know, the fauna there and how exciting it is, biologically speaking. It is, I too know someone who was murdered there, you know, through someone else, but same sort of story. And, I mean, it's just the amount of violence that takes place within the, you know, the gangs and the communities between each other is unbelievable. I mean, it's extremely dangerous place. Oh, it is. And what you have to remember, and this is what makes it exciting,

both from a adventurous point of view and travel point of view, as well as from a biological point of view, is that you remember back in the day, and we started coining the phrase islands and highlands as hot spots for conservation? Of course. And Papua New Guinea was emblematic of that, because the highlands are so high, they effectively become islands.

Right, yeah, sky islands. A mountain is its own little island, its own little ecosystem of plants and animals. So, yeah, it's right at the top of my heart. wish list too, but as a husband and a father, you know, I did my time, you know, and now I have a general aversion to being shot at. And so... Why do you live in L.A. then, dude? What are you doing?

Let's all go to Montana. We can just be neighbors. It'll be great. We'll each have our own ranch. We'll have our own lake. Let's go. I'm buying into that. Anyway, I'm going to get there too. Whoever gets there first, give the other guy some tips. 100%. Because I will go there. I'll share my contact with you. And let's get there.

But I want to do it safely. And I've spent a lot of time not dying. I want to maintain that. There you go. I would love to go. I think the two of you guys, I mean, Retepe and I will go. I'll help produce it.

We'll film it. Not to Papua New Guinea, right? I think we all go. No. I'm out. And look for a thylacine there. That's what I'm thinking. That was the.

That was the circleback. But Retef, you're only coming as the human sacrifice, right? When the rascals do capture us, you're obviously the guy that we hand over. Take Mitch, man. He survived the fucking rhinoceros attack. He did. I don't see why we have to go to PNG to sacrifice that. I mean, we go to Tom and I think we do.

If we go to Montana and we're just shooting at each other, I'll happily do the duel if you guys want. We're going to be so thrilled when we all sell our properties in L.A. and then realize what we can get in Montana. We're not going to even need guns, man. No? I got to tell you, in terms of a sexy storyline, though, and PNG is right on the edge of it, to me, the most unexplored,

unplumbed riches of the natural world are on the Wallace line. So separating Asia from Australasia. I mean, that is the sexiest place on the planet, Walasia. And, you know, if we're the guys to do it, That's great. But someone's got to go there, spend some real time on the ground.

And not just the ground, in the trees, in the water. The Wallace line, Wallachia. Wallacia is the new Atlantis. That's what we got to get. I know nothing about this. Insular endemism there is unbelievable. Like the amount of, you know, you go five miles from one island to the next, and it's completely different species.

I mean, it's just mind-blower. Wait, so, wait, can you set this up a bit better for us? Because I've actually never heard of this. Well, it's kind of an archaic term because it's based on one of the imperial European explorers. But basically, you have this Wallace line. So let me phrase it another way. Sure. You know what Thrace is, right?

You know that the bridge between Asia and Europe, which is extensively straddled by Turkey. And you cross the Dardanelles and suddenly you're in Europe or in Asia or whatever. That is what the Wallace line is ecologically. So making the bridge, physiological bridge from Asia to Australasia is the Wallace line. And you have this extraordinarily fusion of the two different continents

and the two different regions and all this stuff that doesn't exist in either. So it's just embarrassment of riches. No shit. It's like a diamond mine and a gold mine in the one place. And the reason no one goes there, is there are very few amenities.

It's largely lawless. And it's very difficult to get to one place to another. The resources are poor. That's exactly where people like us should be going. Agreed. It's interesting to hear things like that as a guy who lives in L.A. Like, people don't realize how difficult it is to get around places and logistically do things that you guys do.

That's just super interesting. So I looked at doing an expedition through there, And the easiest way to get there, and Bradley, tell me if you found something different, is to get to Raha Ampat in Indonesia and then take a boat from there basically south, weaving through all these islands and et cetera, et cetera. And even that, I mean, to get to Raja Ampat, just to get there. This is before you get a boat that's capable of you living on it for a month and traveling without any contact or resources is like 70 hours. Right? You fly like four different flights, then you get on a boat, then you get to Raja Ampat, where you then,

charter another boat that comes from likely Australia to jump. It's just like it's a nightmare. This sounds awesome by the way. We're definitely doing this. And you've got to go heavy because you're in one of the most pirate infested waters on the planet. The most,

I think. Yeah, that's why we need a guy who used to be in the Tasmanian Special Forces to organize a crew of stout gentlemen and females. A guy who fucking cut his underwear often met his wife. I'm just saying it's not a small undertaking. You want at least three boats to have backup to backup to backup,

and you've got to have an arm component. And it's, look, we do that in Alaska all the time. You've been there, Patrick. You know, I never, look, I choose personally not to carry a gun, but that's for practical reasons. While I'm making notes and taking photos, I'm as, I'm as likely to shoot one of my nuts off as I am to actually, you know, slow down a 2,000-pound bore because I'm just, you know,

So I have a Klinget brother who also happens to be a former airborne U.S. Army sniper. I'm covered. I'm good. So I will do it in the context of protecting myself from dangerous wildlife. Obviously, it would be devastating to me if we actually had to shoot a bear. I would consider that a massive personal professional failing. But now we're talking about defending yourself from lawless people. And however modest our budget is, because let's be honest, wildlife television is the bottom of the barrel in terms of budgets on mainstream American television.

We are effectively billionaires compared to the people that are living out there so we've got a big target so you really have to share the wealth, build the relationship and get that cultural protection

as well as calming yourself. So it's not a small undertaking. Someone's got to go in there early and build those relationships and I choose Peter. Yeah. I think that's smart, man. He's charming.

Look at those blue eyes. Yeah, they'll love that and they'll love my crash Chicago. accent and constant swearing, they'll love all that. As long as you just don't crap on about Chicago pizzas, you'll probably do okay. What the fuck is that? I remember

when I was in an Angoon, I think I told you this, DeLuca. When I was in Angoon, the first season I was there, no one spoke to me. No one spoke to me. It wasn't until the second season and I found out my military background and there are people who believe that every

young man and woman should serve in the military. And suddenly I got that cultural respect. and we had the conversation. But by the time you went there, we'd been there for four or five years, and that relationship, I was adopted into the Deschatan clan, we had access.

That's the kind of thing you have to do, except here, the danger stakes are not giant bears, they're pirates with assault rifles. Which scares me much more. I mean, I would much rather deal with the wildlife. It's predictable, you know, versus the people.

Well, for, I mean, so Bradley, I don't know if you, how many episodes have extended, Sincter alive you've watched, I assume all of them. Otherwise, fuck off. Yeah, thank you. But so there was, Season 2, Forrest had an

idea that he really wanted to go to this particular part of the Amazon to look for a particular Cayman. Rio Appapaparous Cayman. Yeah, the Rio Appaparos Cayman. And so we started researching it, and Stephen the Rock Rock Mail, who's our line producer

who handles getting people in and out of places, he's fucking great. He wears Hawaiian shirts every day. He immediately keyed in on the fact that most of the groups of Westerners that had recently been in there

had been kidnapped and held for ransom. And so, you know, I tell Forrest this is the situation and, you know, then over the course of six to eight months, this is what we did. We started making contacts with people, meeting locals who would then go in

and, you know, our dollar goes a long way in these areas, but we had to ultimately make the call to not send a full crew, right? It was just going to be Forest and two other guys. And they went in and they were able to get the access, and most of that was by being all of the things that happened in advance, playing nice with the people that could kill you. It was FARC rebel controlled. The whole part of that jungle was controlled by cocaine and the FARC rebels.

And they couldn't have been nicer, you know. It took a little coaxing, but they couldn't have been nicer people to deal with at the end of the day. Shit. I think we got to go. We got to go, guys. That's something. So Bradley, I know you mentioned being, you know, father and a husband now. Let's say that we were able to organize some sort of expedition there.

It was there was some contacts made. You felt good about the local contacts. Is that something you would still do to go to this place? Yeah, he would. I know what Bradley's like. He would. I don't care how much he nods his head. He'd go. I know the type because I am the type. I'm on that plane. I'm on that plane. Yeah. I don't, I don't want to go. I have to go. Yeah. You know, so it's a, it's a compulsion. It's a, no, that is, you know, we all of us have our wish lists and certain things. And I think we want to see before we die. And we're lucky enough to have been to and seeing many of them. And there's only a couple.

that really stand out for me. And one of the animals I want to see that I've never seen is not actually that rare. It's a ribbon seal. And I spent a lot of time in the Bering Sea, and I've never seen one. I really want to see one. And the other is Walachia, the Wallace Line. The Wallace Line calls me day and night. Interesting.

Yeah, if we can reduce some of the liabilities to an acceptable degree, my wife knows who she married. Yeah. Well, Bradley, this has been unbelievably awesome having you on here. It's so nice to hear your stories and your perspective. Let's talk about something

pretty exciting going on, something that is sweeping the nation of Australia, your film. And the U.S., baby. Thank you. Yes. And the U.S., of course. Of course, yes. Thank you for that truly natural-sounding segue. And I just want to, it's just,

you know what, thank you. And each of us, you know, in the entertainment industry, to whatever degree that we participate, appreciates how hard it is to make anything. It doesn't matter what it is. And if you're at home watching this or listening to this and you have a dream of creating a book or a radio show or a podcast or a TV show or a movie, just stick at it

because you just got to do that. And yeah, I'm very lucky. When I left the military, I was young enough to start another career. I had a successful career in publishing. I still do. But only when I came here to Los Angeles, and again, against my will, I just fell in love and this is where my, the woman of my dreams happened to be,

so I stayed here, realized that there was all these opportunities, and I decided to fall in love with the things that could only happen here. Sure. He's a strange side with, did you know how I got onto late-night television and how that happened?

No idea. This is so... You suck Jay Leno's dick? That was later. That was after news. Come on. What's... So what actually happened was,

how do I even get into this? It was a strange I wasn't looking for any of this okay I just write my books and do my wildlife stuff and I was fine with that Yep And then Chelsea Handler had the most successful show on E which was the Chelsea

Lately show And she had a number of wildlife experts On some of whom we know Are let's describe the most colorful characters And she was dating a hunky guy that was on a show and they broke up And And so she said let's

And so the preaches said, look, we're moving to the Tonight Show stage because Conan O'Brien just lost the Tonight Show. Had this beautiful new stage built at Universal down there. And they said, let's get someone more credible and more experience. And so they called Betty White. And I knew Betty White through conservation circles, because this is LA. That's how stuff happens. How stupid it is.

That is fucking crazy, buddy. Betty White calls L.A. Zoo. And Mike D. rest in peace. I don't know if you can see it. It's a snake hook back there between me when he passed. away, but he's like, and he's like, oh, BTG's in town, get him. So that was my interview. So now, guy with no intention to be on television, goes over there, and they tell me this

story, and here's what they basically said. They basically said, we want someone with more experience who has great information, who Chelsea Hanler doesn't want to fuck. And I'm like, thank, thank you? Anyway, but one thing led to another, and I realized this opportunity's existed. So I started looking for ways to bring my books into it. So I wrote a book called Penguin Bloom. It's about my 27th, 28th book. It's a beautiful true story about a family in Australia

who suffered a terrible tragedy when a wife and mother fell from a two-story building while on holiday in Thailand and shattered her spine, exploded both of her lungs, crushed his skull and a brain, and should have died. And miraculously didn't, but ended up paralyzed from the chest down, which is called a KL1. And only use of her arms. and neck and head.

So it was just this terrible story, and she sunk into a deep depression, and then just when she just constantly saw suicide, I don't mean like occasionally, I mean literally every other day she was planning how and when was the appropriate time to kill herself so that it wasn't so soon that it damaged her children, but not so late that a husband didn't have a chance

of finding a wife again. I mean, that's how... She's heavy. That's how far she had fallen emotionally. And then she ended up, one of her sons rescued a magpie chick that had fallen out of its nest and injured itself and it brought it home. And this woman used to be a neurosurgical nurse.

And that instinct kicked in and she started caring for the bird and caring for the bird. She discovered her sense of self again and ended up going on to do some quite wonderful things, including she was a champion kayaker and now she's the current two-time adaptive world surfing champion. Wow. Anyway, the book, I have the American edition here. It's called Penguin the Magpie in America, as opposed to Penguin Bloom. But the movie's called Penguin Bloom. And, you know, six years.

I spent writing that book and then the sequel, which is Sam Bloom, Heartache and Bird Song. Wow. And then turning into a movie, we're very lucky when we sat out. We're very focused on getting the right people. And I said, Naomi Watts is the only actress. I want to play Sam because she has that physicality. And Sam was a great athlete. And Naomi Watts is a great athlete.

And a great emotional. athlete. And when she signed on, it all came together, Reese Witherspoon, a whole bunch of people produced it. Glenn and Ivan directed it, and it's the number one movie in Australia right now. And it's now on Netflix in 130 countries, and in fact, we sold every single territory.

So by the end of this year, every country in the world will have Pegman Bloom. Naomi's getting some Oscar love already, so I just feel really lucky. Holy shit, I mean... Is there anything you can do? Seriously, is there anything you cannot do? Like, seriously. I don't name something that you can't do. I could not go on dancing on the stars without killing somebody.

I'd love to see you on dancing with the stars, though. He's also a real chump in the sack. How do you know? I've watched. But no, dude, so Bradley, I mean, since I met you, you know, you had already written the book, but, you know, the movie process was happening, and it takes so goddamn long, so many years. But the reality is, more people will. will see this movie on Netflix and learn the story that way, probably then have read the book.

Obviously, the book's done well. I wish it wasn't so because I make a lot more money off the book. No, you're right. And the thing about the book, you get a chance to read. It's a very beautiful poetic, but also hard-hitting. We made the decision very early on to honor Sam and not to allow anyone to sugarcoat the nature of her injuries and disabilities to make able-bodied readers feel comfortable. And that goes back to experience I had when I was a soldier,

and one of our elite soldiers snapped his neck, getting out of the aircraft, the aircraft tilted, his static line hooked around his neck, and he broke his neck as he exed the aircraft. And he's a tetraplegic, a quadriplegic. And I was a brand new lieutenant at the time, and I would be required as duty officer to visit him when I was on duty.

Excuse me. And he was in the same hospital. but Sam Bloom, the subject of my books and movie, yeah, was in 13 years later. Wow. And he didn't want to talk to me, some rookie officer he didn't know, and it was a difficult time. And he came back to the regiment for a very special military parade we have on April 24th, which is called Kapyong Day. It's the anniversary of Kapiang during the Korean War in 1951.

And he always met friends were there, and very few of them wanted. to speak with him because they didn't know what to say. And they're embarrassed, but also because he became a symbol, a physical symbol of the fears that haunted them, that it could have been them. And it could have been any of us. And I remember thinking, you know, we've got to find a way to talk about these injuries because half a million young men, particularly and women, every year, will suffer a spinal cord injury.

And so one of the things I'm proud of is that we've donated money from the books and the film goes into the leading spinal cord injury researchers in every country that we're published. And that includes the US. We're with the Christopher and Dane Reef Foundation. And, I mean, think about it. It's just nerves that have to be somehow reattached. But we haven't worked it out

because the spinal cord has an insulating material to prevent, for one of a better term, nerve signal leakage. And so it's almost self-sealing. But we have got the talent to some. solve this. And I'm glad that Penguin Bloom not only is a beautiful uplifting story and a tear jerk, it will need a few tissues.

There'll be a lot of ugly man crying. I'm not ashamed of that. It's a beautiful story, and it's hopefully making a difference, and I'm very proud of it. That's awesome, dude. Congratulations. What a shitload of work went into something, theoretically as simple as something that you click on and distract yourself from

negative news for two hours. But when millions of people do that, what a beautiful thing. thing. That's amazing. I mean, and to have such an impactful message behind it and the, you know, the kind of research that it's donating towards, it's amazing, man. Congratulations, Bradley. That's really, that's phenomenal. I'm going to watch it tonight. I'm not just saying that. Oh, yeah. Christina and I are going to watch it tonight. So from Bradley's very touching story, and I don't mean that in any jokey way, Bradley, let me segue to something purely fucking ridiculous that we like to do on this podcast.

Oh, yes, of course. Can I get a drum roll for it? I almost forgot. It's time. Battle Royale. So this is the Battle Royale. It's our Brosner's favorite segment, Bradley. We're going to have you in on this.

We would never, never not have you in. It only takes three and a half hours. Are you down? I got, I've still got a third to go. I'm good. By the way, what's ever in drinking tonight? Chardonnay for Papa P. What do you guys have?

Yeah, Rolling Rock for... There you go. Massey. Lagovoolin? Wow. When you make Netflix movies, you drink strange, exotic scotch. Yeah, that's nasty. I'm drinking African water, aka gin and tonic, as I usually do.

Is that what's cool? I like that. So, Bradley, here's what we do. Every week we do this. The Brosters love it. They then vote on iTunes or the YouTube and let us know who wins. So. Okay.

Oh, I like this. I'm going to throw out a scenario. And what we're going to do is have a little draft. as Bradley smokes his corn cob pipe for those only listening and now watching, which is the vast majority of you. So, here's the scenario. You have to build, we're going classic because we have a special guest, a good friend, an old friend. I want to go classic.

We're fighting. We are fighting. God. Got it. All right. Game of Thrones style. Each of us are going to build a battalion. Oh, battalion.

You get 50, 50. 50 each of these animals. And it's going to be, we're just in four corners an all-out battle. Oh my God. And it's three picks, correct? Three picks, snake, drake. You have to pick. Yep. Okay. One mammal. Okay. One reptile and one bird.

Okay. Think about it. Do you want to pick a bird that's got big talons but can't fly? Or do you want to just pick a bird that can fly? I don't know. They have to be extant. You can't pick a host eagle, Bradley. I know you were going to do that. I was going to go with a host eagle.

You son of a bitch. So they have to be extant. One mammal, one reptile, one bird. You get 50 of each. And we're going to fight till death. Yep. Yeah, I like that. Last man standing.

Last man standing. I don't want to put Bradley on the spot since it's his first time. I'm going to put forest on the spot. Yeah, break me in. You get the first pick. Yeah, I'll play along. I'll play along. Okay.

So we've got 50 of each. What I want... God, I got to take something off the table here. That's the smart play. That's the thing. You've got to take shit off the table in this game. Yeah, I've got to take something off the table. So here's what I'm going to do.

50. Well, hang on. Can I ask a question first? Yes, of course. What is the terrain upon which we're fighting? Good question. It is a... It's basically, you know what a football field looks like? I do.

Imagine four of those together. So it's a dome. Obviously, people are watching. They've paid good money for this. Flatbed. It's a paper view situation. It's controlled. It's a controlled environment.

It's controlled environment. Flat, even terrain, grassy, grassy, as forest would say. So, yeah, no mountains, no ice, no snow. Okay. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Go ahead. All right.

I'm on the spot. I'm going to lead. I'm going to take something that I think is kind of obvious off the table early. Give myself a little leg up. You know, we've talked about this many times on air. My opinion, there is one man. that reigns supreme over all other mammals when it comes to fighting abilities, not necessarily size, not necessarily strength, not necessarily speed.

But I'm going to go lowland gorillas, straight off the table, 50 of them on my team, right out of the gate. Yeah, that's smart. They're going to lead the charge, aren't they? You son of a bitch. I mean, just tell me that, yeah, come on. Come on. So here's the thing.

I quit. Can I give up and take my animals and go start a private preserve? because I'm scared of that. I don't want 50 of those. Which lowland are you going with? Eastern or Western? Well, the Eastern are slightly bigger, I believe. However, they have a less harsh temperament, is my understanding.

So it's kind of a trade-off. But we go with Eastern Lowland Gorillas. Okay. Now I have to combat that. Big, aggressive, and the smallest penises relative to size of any priming. Well, I try and pick things that are similar, you know, like so that we can understand each other. All right, Retepp, since you don't understand snake drafts, you can't be on the end.

So why don't you go next? That's fine. Also, you didn't mention it was a snake draft at the beginning. My first pick is, and this is big in the news right now, a Army General in the U.S. just came out and said that the future is going to be devastated by swarms of drones, and it's going to be devastating. So I will have a bird that flies, obviously, and it will be the Golden Eagle, 50 Golden Eagles.

Okay. Any thoughts on? We're going to have a lot of power early. Yeah, I mean, that's 50 Golden Eagles. Oh, by the way, Bradley, it's assumed that these are all trained to do your bidding. Right. Sure. Yeah.

That's a very good call. I mean, you're looking at, what, a talent on crushing power then of up to, What is it? Like 400 PSI? That's something insane. I don't know. But yeah, I mean, there's no, there is no better skyborne predator than the Gulton Eagle. Thank you. By the way, I'm very similar to Johnny Inches on this podcast, Bradley. I look up bite force PSI constantly.

So I love that your head just went there. All right, Bradley, your next third pick. So Forrest has the gorilla. He's got some eagles. You need a mammal, a bird, and a reptile. What do you got? I'm going to take a different direction. I'm going to, with the bird, I respect the airborne assault,

but there's a certain level of amateur that that doesn't matter to, and I'm going to go with that for my bird. I'm going to take the southern double-waddle cassoware. That's a good pick. It's the most dangerous bird in the world. It is. It's the only bird with a real body count. I'm the governor of Taronga Zoo in Australia,

and we've only had two fatalities in the history, the 105 years ago at the zoo. One was a big cat, one was a cassoire. When I was a soldier, we would do jungle warfare training at a school in Tully, which is the wettest place in Australia. And even though it was only an exercise, we would carry all these blank ammunition, and then we would have one magazine of live rounds, not for the crocodiles. Wow.

For the castaways. Wow. Okay. Good pick. There are those. I feel like that's a really impressive ground game. And I'm specifically getting females, which are bigger and more. progressive. So I think we're in for good time.

Yeah. Wow. Sure. Jeez. So I'm scared at this point. You should be. I'm on the end here, so I get two picks. So, yeah, I'm pretty fucking scared because I see those guerrillas. I see 50 cassowaries. That's 100 cassowary feet that are coming at me.

That's correct. Good math. And probably up to 200 feathers. I'm sure they have at least two each. So I'm going to go. with just pure size. And the way that I'm going to train this animal is that it's also going to use noise to its advantage. To distract and confuse your

feeble-minded casuaries, Bradley, because I mostly just want to beat you. So I'm going to go with 50 African elephants. Oh, interesting call. Once they start stampeding, the sound of the rumble alone is going to confuse your animals.

they're going to think it's an earthquake. They're just going to be mortified. They have tusks. They can swing the... Look at that. You can't. You're fucked. All right.

So I've already won with that pick. So my next pick, this is the confusing one, which is the reptile. Because I'm trying to think of a reptile that can move quickly. I know what I'm going to do. Instead of having them move quickly, I'm going to take 50 of my next choice, which is my reptile, and I'm going to have them fan out around me and just protect me. So they're not on the offensive. The elephants are doing some of that.

Okay. Nile Kroc. Wow. Nile Kroc. How are you going to penetrate my circle of mouth-facing-out Nile Krocks? Oh, you somehow got through? Watch out for the tail. I'll tell you how.

I'll tell you how when it's my pick. Okay. All right. So I've got African elephants and 50 of those watching over. Papa Pete. You've got to round out the Savannah. Your third pick has to be from Southern Africa. There is no other option at this point. Wait for my bird. All right. So Peter,

you're up. What do you want to add to, what did you pick? Octopus? By the way, no, sorry about that. I could not hold it anymore. I had to take a Papa Pee, Pee, so sorry about that, I apologize. I heard everything. I'm up to snuff. And

oh man, I got a good one for you. I'm taking another reptile off the table here, because this is obviously the hardest one to pick after Papa Pete takes crocodile off the table. Wait, sorry, I fucked up. Bradley's up.

Oh, that's my fault. Yeah, that's what I thought. I was like, wait a minute. Oh, my God, you fuck up the snake draft. So I just take one? I don't choose more. I just choose like, only the people on the ends. Take one, yeah.

Listen, Bradley, these guys are fucking real smug about the way a snake draft works. I fuck it up every time and I constantly get shit on about it. Just whatever they say. Sorry, one pick, Bradley. You already have your bird. You have 50 casuaries.

You got a reptile. I have a strategy that I'll reveal at the end. Smart. Good. So I'm just going to, but you won't see it now, but you will see it soon and you'll regret it. Love this. So I already have the most dangerous bird in the world.

You do? I'm now going to take the most aggressive snake in the world. It's taking my tech. That's the eastern Tai Pan. and it just and I love these guys because first of all the venom is not quite as deadly as the inland type end or the

fierce snake but it's so close it doesn't matter we're talking an LD 50 and over 3 million so welcome to the NFL of snakes I had one slither over my neck Bradley true story that's not that's not good I hated that I remember doing an operation in the northern in northern Queensland and we

had to clean our gear at a trailer park and they took all our weapons off us my handgun my assault rifle, my knives, everything. Grenades, gone. When got showered, come out of the shower, and there's this Eastern Taipan coming through these trailers, and this idiot

picks up a cavity brick and throws it at it, which it just ducks, and then attacks us, and we're screaming, my little girl, because what are you going to do? Take out my towel and flick it with my fallace or my towel. I know what I'm going to do. I didn't have 14 and a half inches of chameleon dong.

Not quite. It was a desperate time. I'm taking Eastern Tai Pan because it's hyper-aggressive, and it will attack everything again and again, and everything it attacks will be dead before the end of the pay-per-view. Smart. Oh, by the way, it will also blend in nicely with the, because what I forgot to mention was that we're playing in Green Bay,

and so the turf is sort of that, the grass is that color. So that's hard. That bright green, nice. You got lucky. All right, Peter, you're up. Peter, you've had some time to think. Okay. So I'm debating between two different reptiles.

Luckily, Bradley didn't pick mine, but he made a very solid strategic decision on going with a highly aggressive venomous snake. And I'm wondering if, okay, all right, I'm going to go with my original pick, and I'm going with a reticulated python. They get up to 350 pounds. They might not be venomous. However, they are large, and there will be 50 of them swarming every other animal on the ground, while dealing with my golden eagles so far.

We understand that you Googled Snake and saw a Python picture. No, no, no, I was going to pick a Python, but no matter what, I just didn't know the specific kind. Well, and then when he said that, I was going to pick something else, but I was like, no, I'm sticking with the original. Okay. Forrest, you're up for two. I'm up for two. You only got two more, sir. Well, and it's tough.

You know, it's tough. There's obvious picks. There's Komodo dragons out there that you think are tough. They're not. You know, there's bad picks like picking a python and a fight. I mean, that's just a bad idea. It's a bad to a knife fight, really. Yeah, the best eagle's been taken off the table.

It's getting down to the wire here. So here's what I'm going to do. Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to approach with bird first. Now that, you know, you could go, oh, I want a harpy eagle or something like that, but you've already got the golden eagle, Peter. So that's locked up in the big, scary bird assault. So I'm going to go for speed.

You know, I'm going to take the Peregrine Falcon. It's not the biggest. It's not the meanest, but you better believe it's the fastest. And if it's coming at you, that's like a bullet with talons, right? So I'm going to go paragraph. And by the way, they're doing whatever you ask them to do because you're telepathically communicating. So that's smart, man. Boom.

Oh, that's, wow. It's a speed play. I like that. It's a speed play. I think I can take out all of Peter's Golden Eagles with my peregrine falcons based on speed alone. Sure. Wow. I mean. There will still be problems.

Especially when you're dealing with the other two people's birds as well. Right. But anyways. Hey, you know, let's see what happens here. We'll see. Now, my final pick, and this is one that's, you're not going to expect it. You're not going to expect it. You're thinking Tai Pan, you're thinking Black Mamba.

You know, you're thinking crocodile. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm going for a snake. No, no, no, no. I'm going for a snake that's subtle in its damage, right? The African mole steak, also known as the stiletto snakes, has fangs. has fangs that stick out either side of their mouth. Right?

Now, when a Taipan bites you, it's great. You know, it comes up, it bites you. That sucks. Don't get me wrong. It's great. Yeah. He's got one direction, though. This is the hammerhead of the snake world, right?

The stiletto snake can just roll through there, just going left and right. Fangs on either side. Super aggressive. By the way, tiny, tiny little snake. It's about this big. Tiny, tiny little thing. You're never going to see it. It's just going to be roaming around in the one.

inch grass. You're not even going to know it's there. Before you know it, everybody's limbs are going to be rotting off. The cassowary, forget about it. He's got one leg. You know, Patrick's elephants, they're dead. They don't even know what's happening to them. And these tiny little stiletto snakes with their funny little fangs are just killing everybody on the ground. Michael and the Eagles will be destroying those snakes. They'll all be eaten within 10 minutes. You're wagering on necrosis to win this? I love how he said subtle. It's like, no, this is a an all-out battle. How long

is this event? I'm figuring like two hours, Max. Well, what I'm hoping is that they're all in crippling pain, lying on the ground, dying. I'm not saying that they're going to drop dead like they will from the Tai Pan bite. But when my stiletto snake comes over and just

in the side of your elephant foot, then my Lolan gorilla just starts hammer-fisting your chest, it's all over for you. You're done. You're done. It's like getting kicked in the balls. It sounds exciting, but I got to tell you, in terms of venom, it's just, I mean, there's a Taipan, and then there's a condom with a face drawn on it, which is what you've chosen.

He truly understands the spirit of the battle royale. He does, yeah. All right, Peter, why don't you add to your already dead crew of 100 animals? What do you have? Yeah, right, my golden eagles and my fucking pythons will be destroying everybody. Very slow. And even if they're not,

there are 350-pound bodies that are all over the field will be tripping and distracting the cassouaries and everybody. else who's running around out there. So what do you want to have a mammal left? Yeah, I know. I know what I got left out. No, I'm not going to pick a lemur.

Fucking idiot. What about an oven mitt? I'm going with a polar bear. 50 polar bears, 1,200 pounds, fucking vicious. And let me tell you, all they need is two hours to fuck up every last one of you motherfuckers. That's good.

That's right. That's right. I respect that, except for one thing. What's that? This is an indoor event. It's, the conditions are mild. Two hours. They've got, they have that level of fat. I give him 15 minutes.

Tops. Sweater. They are, they are. This is why I don't want to have biologists on the goddamn podcast. I've said it before. Do you remember, they're napping in the corner while everybody else is about it. You remember, you remember Philip Seymah Hoffa masturbating and boogie nights? Yeah, of course.

that's your polar bears after 15 minutes. They're just gasped and sweating. It doesn't matter. Everybody will be dead in 10. I like how Bradley also, he really gets it because he's already just made up that it's an indoor event now, which was not previously stipulated,

but it's an indoor event. Well, you did say a dome. I mean, but that is how this works. You just kind of decide how it's going to be wearing your own head. That's right. It's a rolling to me. All right.

So Bradley, what are you going to add to your team, your crew? Oh, man. Look, There's some great choices out there and some incredibly stupid ones. But here's my strategy.

And I look at you DeLuca as kind of like a guidepost of what not to do. Yeah, you don't want to be a male model, you know. Right. No, well, a hand model anyway. And I just, you know, I just like, why are you always choosing second best? You know, you go for the Nile crocodile,

which is smaller and less aggressive than the Indo-Pacific Estuarine crocodile. You know, and then you pick the African elephant, which looks great. And it's classic view. It's a sock down the pants. It impresses the girls. But when it comes to fighting, it's more about, it's not about size. It's about aggression.

Okay. I'm going to pick 50 male Asian elephants in must. Wow. Wow. All right. They're faster in a smaller area than an African elephant. and even a female Asian elephant has 10 times the testosterone levels

of an African male elephant. Is that true? I didn't know that. That's fascinating. It is true, and that's why they're incredibly ornery. They're very aggressive, and now my strategy is revealed. By having the quick, aggressive, and incredibly venomous snakes on the ground, moving around, is going to scatter people. The cassowaries are basically just berserkers

with knives on their feet and scatter people. Sure. And nothing pisses off. a male Asian elephant en masse more than intrusion and movement and they're just going to be running around crushing heads. That logic is flawless. It's such a good. It's very, very good.

That logic is flawed. I mean, I'm fucked. I'm supposed to be the resident smart biologist on this show. Can you leave, please? No. You're killing my body. Bradley, that's very well done. I've still got a third.

He's the only person I've ever battle royaled against that I would say could come in second, possibly against. And here's the thing, Bradley. You have come in second, and that's great for a first timer, but not first. Because I don't think your elephants are going to do that well when they can't see anything. And so what I'm going to do for my last pick is draft my bird, which will be trained exclusively to pick out the eyes of all of your mammals. So what I'm going to do is pick my new favorite bird because I've been doing a lot of research on this bird.

The Great Horned Owl. You're obsessed with owls of that. I'm really on an owl kick right now. So the Great Horned Owl is the biggest. Slow owl. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Slow.

It knocks fucking beavers out of the tree or whatever, porcupines. Beavers. It is the largest owl in North America with a wingspan of five feet. It eats porcupines. It knocks porcupines out of trees and eat them. It's not top. That's not hard. That's impressive.

That's impressive. Contend with that beak. It makes a scary hissing sound. You don't want to be around when that happens. You'll get scared. So as my owls peck out each of your mammal's eyes, my crocodiles protect me, and my elephants do the rest. No, not against BTG's fucking elephants. You have a whole thing.

You have root for someone else. Yeah, what are you rooting for someone else? I have that kind of charisma with my colognes. It's true. It's true. The problem you have with African elephants, and don't get me wrong, they are gods. Yeah. But their social behavior is not designed to fight a bunch of people.

They're designed to corral and protect each other. I don't think it's going to happen for you. No way. Well, if you, look, for all the Brosner's listening, if you want to listen to BTG's bullshit, you know, vote for him. Right. If you like Forrest and you think he's made a good team, vote for him, obviously, mine's great. And Retepp is just fucking preposterous.

You know, Retep's here. He's a part of it. That's important to him. He'd have me a tree beaver. A tree beaver I was sold. You know, we're not big on participation trophies in this podcast, but Peter gets one every week. It's ridiculous. I've clearly won this battle royale.

It comes to play. You're out of your fucking mind. These are possibly my best picks ever. That's the worst pick you've ever made. You've drafted herpes as one of your animals several times and reticulous. They didn't want that battle royale, thank you. What, the herpes eagle? Is that what he drafted?

No, herpes. He thinks it's an animal. He's a bit confused about many things. Yeah, just like you were confused about snake drafts. These assholes like to pick and fucking prod at technicalities constantly in battle royale. It's ridiculous. I'd never heard of battle royale until today, but now it's all I live for. It's fun.

And by the way, Bradley, you did a great job. I will call to our many brosters to, hey, if you'd like us to have Bradley, back on. Tell us, because I'll beg him to do it if he has time. And if you think he should just fuck off, then tell us that too. That's right. I don't see what we can't do both. Either way, if you hate him or you love him,

go see Penguin Bloom. It is available. We'll be available in every country. Amazing story. It truly touching. It sounds like an amazing movie, and you are an amazing fucking guy, and you have some great stories, and I've really enjoyed this. And by the way, we haven't even talked about your time as an astronaut in Russia, which is, I'm not lying.

about that's real, so we have to have you back on, mate. We have to. There's no choice. I can, I'll give you the short version, vomiting in helmets. Of course. Well, we're about the long version, so we'll try and, we'll beg them to come back on. I can promise you that. Well, can I just say is an absolute joy to be part of this.

I'm so glad you called DeLuca. It's been far too long. We used to catch up for breakfast every now and then, and the pandemic, unfortunately, has driven the tyranny of distance between friends and colleagues. And so I came on this just to catch up with you and hang some shit. There's a joy to finally, finally meet you, Forrest. As I said, we've crossed paths in so many bizarre places. You know, some of the people you work with are some of the people that I work with.

And I know that when I've reached out for help and said, hey, I'm in the middle of God knows where I need to know, where did you go for this or that. And your guys have always been generous. And I appreciate that. Oh, likewise. Peter, I'll probably forget you, but it's been great. Likewise. And, no, seriously, gentlemen, this is a really fun podcast. Thanks for your support of the movie.

I mean, that was incidental. I'm just glad to be there. If you ever want to talk shit about Wild Wonders, give me a call. Beautiful. For sure. Thank you, everybody. And by the way, real quick, before we go, this guy, Bradley-Trev-Greeve is, like, colleges have him come and, like, lecture biology students. We're the only podcast in the world that has him come on and get shit-faced drunk with us.

Because it's a lot of fun. Yeah, there we go. Go ahead, Peter. Sign us out. Be sure if you're listening via audio to go check out the YouTube so you can see BTG's beautiful face. You don't want to look at anybody else on this podcast. Wild Times, the Wild Timespodcast.com, backslash info for all the links to listen everywhere. BTG, love you.

Oh. You other two idiots. Hey, real quick, for all the people listening on iTunes, come check out the YouTube for the daily videos. This week we will announce the winners of the electric sunglasses and the Wild Time shirt. So those will only be announced on the daily videos on the YouTube. So come check that out. And get your fucking $200 sunglasses that for a sponsor hooked us up with. Nice.

Yeah. Good night, everybody. Good night.