Wild Times: Wildlife Education - TWT #58 - The Patreon Launch and More!

Episode Date: May 17, 2021

Another bonkers episode from the Wild Times crew! Patreon @ https://patreon.com/wildtimespod All the links @ https://thewildtimespodcast.com/info We love you!

We are back with the Wild Times, episode number 58. What is up, everybody? Thank you for tuning in. Do you guys know that we love you? We love you. Patrick loves you. Peter loves you. I love our brosners, so much so that we're going to start charging them.

So we'll explain that in a minute. But in case this is your first time ever tuning into the show, I'm your host, Forrest Galante. I am the broologist. I am joined by the lovely Patrick DeLuca, Papa P as they call him, the producer. What's up, Patrick? How are you? I'm great. And just to be clear, we will never charge you for this free podcast. It will always be free and weekly.

It's not a good intro. That was such a bad intro. It's kind of funny. So terrible. I'm good for us. I'm excited about the Patreon. I'm excited about it. I feel like there's so many new things that we can do. We've had so many meetings about it.

it, we've talked about it, I just feel like there's so much to come. I know. It's exciting. So I'm excited. I can't keep it in any longer. And that negative Nancy in my top right corner, I don't know where he is on your screen, is RETEP, the professor, PhD'd computer nerd, the guy who actually, for those that don't know, here's a truth.

I'm going to speak a truth. He is the glue that holds both this podcast and the Taco Bell franchise together. It is the true story. He's an amazing man. No, he is. No, look, it's true. Retep, without you, Patrick and I would have been so busy doing other stuff that we never would have been motivated to keep doing this, keep going, you know, working on the podcast,

growing the brand. It's awesome. You're the man. Thank you, Professor. Everybody loves you. How you doing, Retep? Thanks, man. I appreciate that intro a lot.

Now I feel bad that I've been talking shit about you, too, in the Discord for the past three weeks. We know. That's why we did that. The brosters know that. I am the glue that that holds us together. The first goal that we put out on the Patreon will be, if we hit $100,000 a month, Patrick and Forrest will quit everything else.

Top priority will be the podcast. 100,000 subscribers a month? No, $100,000 in revenue a month. We've got to make up your salaries, you crazy people. Of course we would quit our jobs and do nothing but podcast. But today's the day, the tip. Let's talk about it a little bit. Today is launch day.

The Patreon is live today. And you can find it at patreon.com forward slash wild times pod. That is what all of our usernames and links are at is Wild Times Pod. So patreon.com forward slash wild times pod. I'll also probably throw up a link. If you can't remember that, just go to the Wild Timespodcast.com forward slash Patreon. Is that too confusing? But, again, you're going to get all these fucking perks.

You're going to get extra podcasts every month on the Patreon. You're going to get extra exclusive, uncensored Patreon comment. We just had a little sidebar before we started recording today about how fun it will be to bring Darwin Awards back and bullshit like that where we won't get taken off of YouTube like we did before when it's on the Patreon. So stuff like that. All kinds of little perks. Go to the Patreon at patreon.com forward slash wild times pod to check out all the tiers and what you get with each one. And man, do we look forward to fucking rolling out some ridiculous content for you? Yeah.

It's going to be fun because you can do a lot of shit on there that we can't do on YouTube. We can do uncensored stuff, lots of video reviews. We have some big plans. A couple of things we're going to film with a lot of. real camera guy. That's going to be fun. The EOA breakdown? That's going to be awesome. Yep. Oh, yeah. Yeah. We're going to get drunk and watch Extincter Alive episodes and pause and make fun of Forrest and

comment and tell behind the scenes stories. It's going to be great. Oh, yeah. Another one I liked that we had, that we were throwing around was getting together in person and scrolling through our Instagram feed if you haven't been there. We just have tons of fucking ridiculous, awesome videos. Same thing. Sit down together and mystery science three, three, thousand that shit and just watch it with you guys and fucking, you know, have a good time. So a lot of good shit on that Patreon.

Check it out. So our Brosner's, oh, go ahead. I was just going to say, I'm so excited just about this podcast, this one that we're doing right now. That's what I was going to say. That's literally what I was going to say. I was going to say our Brosner's that have been with us a long time now, everybody keeps, we keep growing.

It's awesome. There's more and more stuff coming in. And one of the things that I have got is some Brozner DMs. You know, and... My favorite. They're the best. Like, you guys are the best. You send us news, and it's interesting.

So, in my line of work, as someone who focuses on rare, potentially extinct animals, I get sent all kinds of things, right? Sometimes I get sent my cat's stuck in a tree. Can you help? Sometimes I get sent to Indonesia to try and get a tire off a crocodile's neck. Sometimes I get sent very valuable things, and other times I get sent cryptic nonsense. and that happens probably the most. So Andrew Barron, at Andrew Barron, sent me a link. He says, guys, there's a Nessie Hunter

who's had his fifth sighting of the year. It doesn't look like a seal to me. What do you boys think it is? So WT. Willey's going to pull up the picture. Pull it up. First of all, what do you guys think? Nessie? Yes. No, C.

What do you think? No, I'm a hard no. I do not think a pleasiosaur. somehow survived, the asteroid impact. I don't believe that a plesiosaur is swimming around in Loch Ness. I was... What if I told you that this Nessie Hunter saw his Lockness? You never let me answer.

Oh, sorry. Son of a bitch. Sorry, sorry, go. So I was a I believed in this for a good while until I read one little sentence. And that was that the original OG picture of Nessie was right after it was released was found to be just

a zoomed in picture of a much much, much smaller animal. So like the original picture is like this very, it's totally debunked and so I don't believe it anymore. Okay. How do you know that? I didn't know that. I read one little sentence on

the internet and now that's what I believe. Everything on the internet is factual. Okay. Well, I don't know what Will's pulled up. here. I see Paris Hilton. That's a nice treat. Yeah, I see Paris Hilton also. Yeah. Ah, here you go. Here's the video. Okay. So what are we seeing here? Beautiful landscape. There's nowhere near the water. It's whatever's going on down by those bushes there. Okay. He's about 125 yards away. I'm seeing flashes here and there. Oh, something's coming out of the water there. A little bump. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Right on the right side there That's not a lockness monster, is it? How on? Okay, sorry. No, go on. Do your rant. No, do your rant. I was just going to say, how on earth is this?

I mean, this is, you know, how could you, there's no, it's not definitive, but this is about as definitive as Neil Waters' proof of a thylacine existed. Yeah, totally. Well, let me, let me, by the way, did I ever tell you guys that Nick Mooney emailed me like a week ago? No. What did you? No, you did not. So Nick Mooney, for those that are listening for the first time, we've been following along on the saga, is a very credible scientist that we worked with in Tasmania. Had some, you know, he knows everything there is to know about thylacine.

He got back to me, he was like, Forrest, I'm sorry, it took me so long to email you back. As you can imagine, I was swamped with nonsense regarding the alleged thylacine siting. It's all bullshit. This guy's always looking for attention. You know, he'll fight with anybody. He'll say anything. You know, he basically went on to just be like, don't ever listen to that guy. And I was like, fair enough.

Thanks. And that guy is Neil Waters, who is the founder of the Thylacine Awareness Group of Australia, just so we're clear, everybody. Do not listen to that blowhard fucking douche bag. Yeah, let's not start nonsense. But what I do want to say is anytime somebody has had five, four, three, even two sightings of a cryptic, cryptid, I feel much less inclined to believe them.

You know, when it's somebody that's like, I was out there, look, I have no reason to, like, jump up and down about this, but I'm telling you, I saw this thing that nobody else has seen. It's so weird. I know what I'm talking about. Like, I saw it. Then I'm inclined to kind of be like, wow, that's interesting. Like, this person didn't go out of their way.

Once you've seen something that nobody else in the world has seen five times, it's like, listen, guy, you're a lunatic. You're just, you're projecting. You're imagining something. something, you're seeing it over and over again, and you cannot understand why nobody is understanding you. It's just silliness to me. So our Kaelin Wangle, who's 28 years old, she's from Oregon, the United States, which also, by the way, has its own form of Nessie, I found out recently, was in, was at Loch Ness when she's had her fifth sighting of this creature.

So I don't know. The whole thing to me is just nonsense. Yeah, exactly. It's like if someone has a story where they're like, look, I don't believe, like, I don't even think ghosts are real, but here's, like, the one thing that happened to me that I couldn't explain. I'm always very interested. Versus, like, you know, you watch a paranormal show on TV and they're like, you know, every time that they have an itch, they think the ghost touched them. Exactly. You're just not.

Right. Yeah. So, unfortunately, no, no proof of the Lochness monster. So what did we think it might be? Sorry, go ahead, Retap. I'll tell you what I think it was in a second. but I found this interesting in the article, in the Daily Mail article, did you know that less than a quarter of the reports of the Loch Ness Monster are registered?

No. It's kind of weird, right? What does that mean? Well, meaning like, meaning less than a fourth of the reports that are ever told to, like, the authorities or whoever I assume is in charge of Loch Ness Monster sightings in Scotland, they just discredit three quarters of them, which, I mean, honestly, you should either discredit 100% of them or none of them. Do you know what I mean?

I feel like that's being, that's a weird way to handle it. That being said, it's exactly the same thing I do, right? Like half the thylacine reports I get, I completely discredit because I'm like, ah, this person's nuts. And then the other half or so, I'm like, oh, that's interesting. Tell me more. So there's like a weird thing going on there where it's like you're using human instinct to decide what's credible when really it's all the same.

It's all either bullshit or it's all not. Do you know what I mean? Like there's no delineation really and truly. Like you either have to take all of the information and process it or none of it and say that it's nonsense. So it's kind of a weird thing. I never really thought about that before. It's interesting because like when you talk to people about animals or cryptids or like, you know, in Madagascar, when we talk to the people about the kisawala, right, with sort of this half monkey, half man that lives high in the trees and makes really loud sounds.

It's like, I don't think they have a motivation to lie to your face. I believe this is a story they believe, but, you know, this thing's never been documented. Maybe it exists. Maybe not. But it's weird. It's like so hard to decipher. Like, I feel like, does anyone really even tell that, like, is there any premium on just telling the truth in general in society anymore? Yeah.

Yeah. We're so accustomed to just politicians literally just lying through their, like, the governor. of California, after he told people that they needed to wear masks in between bites of their food, the next day was released that he was at this very fancy restaurant, French laundry. And he goes, well, yeah, but we were outside the whole time. But the people who released the first pictures had other pictures. And then they clearly proved that he was actually eating dinner inside. And you're just, we're so used to being lied to.

Like, I feel like no one even care. Like, it's so bizarre. That, like, never became anything. Yeah. I don't know why I ran to about that. So what is it, Peter? You're asking what is it? I mean, from the video, it's a smudge in the water, right?

It could be a duck. It could be a wind line. It could be a fish swimming under the water. What is it most likely? It's the same thing that we always think is the Loch Ness monster. It's a gray seal, right? We know that there are hundreds of gray seals living in the ocean basically right next to, what is it? Inverness? What's the area?

Yeah. I think that's right. Yeah. So we know there are hundreds of gray seals and common seals living in the area right near that part of Scotland. That lock is connected to the ocean through various waterways. Like, you know, every time it's a seal. I don't know why people think it's a monster. That's what I think. Well, speaking of a possible monster, we'll pull up Brosner DM number six. Dominic Haynes sent us something cool. A new species has been discovered. You know Dee Haynes.

He hits us up all the time. Yeah, he's great. A new species has been discovered in Australia, forest. A venomous, a very large venomous tarantula. Oh, that's cool. Is it a true tarantula? It is not. It's actually, it's a type of trapdoor spider, some new species of trapdoor spider, which are super cool.

I don't know. Most people probably don't know what a trapdoor spider does. Can you fill in the brocerns? Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. So, first of all, most of all, Most tarantulas are not venomous, so that's why I asked that question. Sure.

Trapped door spiders, on the other hand, can be very venomous. So trapdoor spiders, what they do is they have a little burrow going down into the dirt, and they build over that burrow some kind of a door, right? So the burrow like this, they have this little door that latches over it, and they use their silk, their web, to build a hinge on that. And what they'll do is they'll sit right beneath the door, whatever that door is made out of, and they'll wait for something that feels like prey through vibrations in the earth to go by that hole. Then they'll pop open that latch, launch out of that burrow, grab on with their big venomous fangs onto whatever their prey is,

and drag it back into their burrow while the door closes behind them. So they have this little house, and it's perfect camouflage because it looks like nothing. It just looks like some dirt. And they hide in it. They can feel vibrations through the ground, launch out, grab their prey, pull it back, in, digest it with their venom, eat it, blah, blah, blah. So super, super cool animals. Yeah, that's amazing. Imagine you're just, like, how much does it suck to be on this thing's menu, right? Like, think about being the equivalent of a human, like, you're just walking

through the woods one day, and then all of a sudden a door flies open and a 15-foot tarantula comes out and bites you. Oh, man, like big, big animals are such sissies compared to, like, insects and reptiles and things. Like, we're lucky that they're not all. Like, if it was a level playing field, like, everything weighed 175 pounds, we'd be fucked. We'd be fucked. Like, humans would be so gone.

Yeah. This thing, this spider sounds, though, like the premise of a horror movie, man. Like a big one of these or like a colony of them that just invade a small town, start building trap doors and eating all the children and shit. So have you ever seen? the movie Aachnophobia. Oh yeah.

Oh yeah, dude. Did you know that that movie? That movie was filmed at my high school in California. Oh, really? Yep. So I went to a place called Coast Union High School

in Cambria, California for three years when I moved to the States and its claim to fame the high school of 300-something students was that the movie Arachnophobia was filmed there. And I'll tell you this.

That movie was filmed in like the late 70s, early 80s, not a single thing has changed not a desk, not a lamp, not a piece of wall art, not one thing has changed from when arachnophobia was filmed there. I'm going to go back.

I have not watched that since the early 90s. I think I might watch that tonight. It's such a good movie. It's not a bad call. It's great, dude. I wonder if it holds up. It's so funny. The premise is very legit.

It doesn't hold up. Like it's based on an invasive species. It's a, it's a, spider from South America that comes to the U.S. in a coffin, I believe. And the population starts exploding and then they take over to this small

town. You remember it better than I do. Yeah. I remember all those details. It's fucking great. I love that movie. Listen, I guarantee you that this does not hold up, first of all. Anything that has creatures that are, you know, whether they're constructed

in wardrobe or whoever does that on set or the CGI from back in the 80s never holds up. The premise might hold up. This is one I'd actually go for a remake for, honestly. I'd probably watch it and think it could be pretty sweet. Yeah. Typically, I'm not into that, but this one would probably be good. Oh, man, good film. Good film. Film Coast Union High School. Forrest, there was one, there was one that I saw, a news story that I saw. Did you see that South Africa is going to be the lion thing, banning the lion breeding? I was very happy about that, that they're getting away, they're doing away with the canned hunt.

You know, it's weird. It's like, I don't want to get Joe Exoticky in my input here, but it's like a little bit of a double-edged sword, right? So lion breeding, just like tiger breeding or anything breeding, is not a bad thing, right? Like, breeding animals is a good thing, especially when it comes to animals that are in peril. But when you start breeding them and then doping them up with drugs so that people can cuddle with them and take a picture and then euthanizing them and burying them under your yard or feeding your husband to them or whatever, then it becomes a very bad thing.

Right. So it's like the whole South Africa to ban lion farming for hunting and for tourist attractions and the bone trade, that's a good thing. Because like canned hunting is disgusting. Tourist attractions, it's like a, that's like a gray area. You know, if they're doped up and you're holding them, it's not disgusting. Or sorry, it is disgusting. If it's a tourist attraction as in you've bred a lion for captivity for the zoo, I would much rather that than a lion being captured from the wild for the zoo.

And then the bone trade, again, just fucking disgusting. Like, I don't understand why East Asian medicine or Asian medicine thinks that fucking lion bones do anything. It's just a bone. Yeah. It really diminishes their credibility and some of the other stuff that I think. think is or could be or is beneficial. You know, they have some like Chinese medicine stuff that actually works that doesn't

get taken seriously in the West. Yeah. But it's, you know, this shit is fucked up, man. It's like potions and voodoo. Here's the other thing. Here's the other thing I want to bring. And I'd actually, I'd love to hear you guys' opinion on this. So when the fisheries and environmental ministry of South Africa weighed in on this,

they actually brought this in as a bigger story, right? They brought this in as these animals are being mistreated. Okay, these animals include elephants, leopards, lions, and rhinos, right? Like, these are all animals that are being mistreated by breeding for these purposes. Let's shut it down. Now, on the flip side of that, okay, rhinos are going extinct, right? We know that. Every year, more and more poaching, like, it's amazing some of the efforts that are going into place.

But the fact is, rhino horn is so valuable in Asian medicine for fucking dick pills that we are, the poaching is insane. It is a big black market racket. Like, we've talked about that a number of times. Sure. Yeah. Now, there's a couple things in play, right? And let's switch focus from lions here for a second, because lions are not as in much jeopardy as rhinos.

There's a couple things in play, right? You can cut the rhinos horn off. Then what happens? Well, sometimes the rhinos get left behind. They're certainly defaced in the sense of, like, they're not as much of a tourist attraction. You know, they're not as interesting. It's sad, really, if you have to cut one's facial horn off. Yeah.

It's like cutting their dick off. You can poison the horn, which is a big expensive situation, which some people have done, and then you can trace it or people drop dead from doing it, and I'm all for that. But still, very, very difficult. You can try and do more anti-poaching enforcement, which happens all the time. It seems to fail no matter what, because simply put, the value is too high on the rhino horn, you know, and you can't pay anti-pochers enough. Yeah, corruption.

Yeah, the corruption is just insane. So what's the alternative? right it's like i had this talk with a group of friends of mine in zimbabwe the last time i was there and his stance my my one friend in particular who i won't name was like we need to farm the shit out of rhino he's like why don't we have thousands of rhino farms he's like we could farm them you know it doesn't have to be mistreatment we can farm them nicely we can cut off all their horns and and give their horns to asia drive the market down so much that rhino horn is invalid it's It's valueless.

You know, we make it so that rhino horn is worth less than a freaking chicken nugget because we're breeding them so much. Then people aren't poaching rhinos anymore. And I got to tell you, although I don't agree with the reason for it, I don't disagree with the methodology. You know, what are the other options? Like, I don't know, you know, there are labs making synthetic rhino horn, but nobody's fucking buying it because you know where the source that it came from. Right. So it's like there are all these things that people have tried to do. to combat

basically wildlife trafficking and trade of their parts but at the end of the day we don't have enough animals like should we be farming them in masses and flooding these markets because I don't think that's going to make the market go up the reason rhino horn is so valuable

is because it's such a limited commodity it's supply and demand because the commodity is so limited it makes it more valuable so if we made if we put millions of pounds of rhino horn lion bone elephant ivory, et cetera, out in the market,

they'd be valueless trinkets. You know what I mean? Then nobody would want them. So, I don't know. And I, yeah, I want you guys to weigh in because part of me feels like that is what we should be doing. And I know that sucks, but why is it any worse than farming chickens to eat?

You know what I mean? Like, it doesn't have to be, it doesn't have to be shitty farming. I'm not saying, I'm not promoting the fact that we do, like animal mistreatment practices. Like factory farming, yeah. There's so much space in Africa, guys. I mean, it's overpopulated in areas, sure, but there is still so much vast space. Why not have gargantuan rhino farms and elephant farms and lion farms?

Like, I don't know how I feel about that. Pat, I'll let you weigh in first. I mean, sounds great. I don't, but, you know, what you're talking about is basically creating a very expensive farming operation that has no return of investment. So the real question is who's going to pay for that, right? Well, the return would be huge in the beginning, right? Because in the beginning, all those parts are so valuable that the return would be huge. And maybe it's government subsidized.

I don't know. I don't know the answer, but. Yeah, because it doesn't work when you put pressure on a government to change a cultural thing, right? Like, we know that China is not going to ban a rhino horn. Yep. You know, even when, you know, even when the U.N., you know, we say waters are particularly. protected, you know, Japan still goes in and has whaling operations there. Right.

Right. Because no one really enforces it because we want to trade with Japan, right? And it's a cultural thing for them to eat whales. So, yeah, I mean, it's not going to work, I think, at the government level. So, yeah, really, you know, rhinos are kind of on their last legs, right? Just down to, like, 20,000 in the world. Yeah, sorry. I don't mean to over talk you.

But, like, fine, fine, why not make they're a Walmart of fucking rhino farm? Like if it's for like if one person gets super duper rich farming rhinos, so the fuck what if it keeps rhinos around. You know what I mean? Like we don't have to look at the economics of monopolies here. I don't think that's the question. It could be a race to the top. You know what I mean? It could be it could be first one to have a big rhino farm, you know, kind of like DeBier

diamond mines. Like they own all the diamonds basically, you know, and nobody hates them for it. So I don't know. There was, I mean, I remember reading an article a couple of years ago about, somebody who had invented a convincing fake rhino horn that they wanted to flood the market with. And, you know, I thought, I think that that's, so what the issue that I think you bring up, though, like, what's to stop the market from just expanding and getting even more? one, like, if you're actually breeding rhinos and you're getting the horns, like, how, like, how does that mitigate the threat to the animal and not turn into just like a massive factory farm? Well, devalues the asset and then you're doing it in a control.

But they're not buying it, but they're not buying it because of the value of it. They're buying it because they think it makes their dick bigger. I mean, that's not going to get. But the value is only so high because of the scarcity of it. So if there was a lot. lot of it, the value would be driven down. So there wouldn't be, it wouldn't be worth risking your life as a poacher or life imprisonment to go out and shoot one and chop off its horn if you could only get $15,000 for the horn instead of $15,000 for the horn, which you can get now. Right. But at the expense of, at the expense of, you know, but, but is that really going to push the demand? So what are you now producing more of the rhinos in the, in the factory, or in the farming setting? Exactly. That's the whole point of the farm.

Yeah, that's the whole point. But is the demand, but so what's the point? Is the point to, at the end of the day, you're just trying to prevent rhinos from what going extinct, right? Of course. Yeah, you're trying to flood the market and stop so that people, there's not so much demand and pressure on wild populations. So that, so that nobody's poaching rhinos and they don't go extinct. So is there like an effort right now where they're just, I mean, where they're trying to breed rhinos to begin with? and put them into the wild? Of course, yeah, of course. There's multiple rhino repopulation projects, many, but it's a slow and arduous process,

and what's so defeating for all the people I know that work in this industry, and truthfully, I only know one group closely that live in Zimbabwe, no matter how many rhinos they breed, they put them out on these big reserves, and they're getting killed by poachers. So, like, it's not even a net neutral. It's like a net negative.

Like, they'll breed 15 rhino, put 15. out and that year they'll lose 20. And so it's just like it's so demoralizing for them. And this is the same guy that I had this conversation with. He was like, I don't like, I don't want to continue. It's like I know I have to because I'm at least making a dent in the problem. And by the way, this exact guy that I'm talking about shoots like half a dozen poachers and

kills them per year. And it's like lawless and there's nothing to stop him. But he just like, he's like, I just can't stop because nobody else will do it. You know, it's like they'll just dry up and disappear if I don't do it. I'm just offsetting a slow problem and trying to, trying very hard to combat it. And his argument was like, I should be farming these things. And I'm not allowed to. I see a bigger benefit into counterfeiting them and then spreading misinformation

amongst the Chinese population. I really like the tactic of just poisoning the horn. Like, if that doesn't hurt the rhino, I like the idea that people are. I do too. And there was a whole like putting cyanide and rindexamines. rhino horns for a while. And I don't know why that dropped off, probably some stupid human rights group

or something. But it, that was like a big thing for a while, where they put cyanide in the rhino horn and people that were poaching it and taking it were dropping dead. And like, yeah, or the people that fucking use it. I mean, you don't really, you want to diminish the fucking demand.

Like, look at, well, that's, I mean, it's not true in the case of fucking like heroin and shit, but fentanyl is just killing the drug using, population when it comes to drugs, this doesn't even really do anything. And if the only thing it really does do when they fucking take it is kill 25% of people that take it, I would think that word would eventually spread and they would not want to take it or risk it as much.

No, I'm curious. I would agree. If like Viagra and Seattleis maybe are banned in these countries for some reason, because those are highly effective medicines that have been created by labs that, that are much cheaper than rhino horn right yeah 65 grand they're saying a single rhino horn can net a poacher 65,000 you us dollars it's a lot so much and I mean that's a lot of money to us like to us that's a lot of money if you live in a mud hut in Zimbabwe and and the average I don't I don't know what the average salary is in Zimbabwe anymore but it's now one of the poorest countries in the world

you're probably making, you know, on average, I don't know, Patrick can look it up, but I mean, it's got to be like a few hundred U.S. dollars per year. So imagine what that would do for your life, you know, and it's, it's, you're set for life. That's it. You're set. Yeah. The, the, uh, the, uh, it's six, $600 a year. The whole community.

$600. That's incredible. Yeah. So that would be like, to us, that would be like, one rhino horn is worth $10 million. I mean, that's not an exact correlation, but that's what it would feel like to us, right? I mean, I still wouldn't do it because I have a good quality of life. But if I was literally starving like people are in Zimbabwe, I would certainly consider it. Sure.

Yeah, they just had a bus last year in Vietnam where a single passenger was transporting $7.2 million worth of rhino horn. That's crazy. Something like 250 pounds of rhino horn in a bunch of checked bags. That's a lot. That's a lot. That's a lot of dead rhinole. Speaking, a more light-hearted smuggling story. Will, if you could pull up the picture from number five, I enjoyed this story.

A low- IQ smuggler tries to sneak 26 rare finches into America under his clothes. For those who don't know, Forrest, what's a finch? What kind of animal is it? A very small bird. Okay, so, yeah, they fly, right? They can fly. You shouldn't put 26 of them. They fly.

They sing. They're quite noisy. They're very, very noisy. So this plan sounds like it came right out of a cartoon Because basically it did He put each of the finches inside a hair roller With a netting on it And then lined the inside of his coat

And he also had them inside the tongue of his shoes And was walking around JFK airport Yeah He was walking around JFK dude Eating a slice of Sabaro pizza With 26 birds in his coat And it ends it ends just as you might think.

Yeah, exactly right. Good. Dude. Yeah, but I mean, like, what is this guy fucking thinking? You probably use his rhino horn to make his dick bigger. Like, are you kidding me? Like, these are fucking noisy birds

that are going to be making noise. I really wish there was a video of, like, him getting apprehended at the airport. Yeah, that's a bad. Sir, I mean, come on. By the way, as we've learned in the last podcast, 30 birds can quickly become 200 million, as we saw with the European Starling.

Yeah. They caught them. I'm not sure what they did with the birds. What do you think they did with the birds? Look at that. I guarantee you the TSA person that had this guy walk through the body scanner or felt him up was like, holy fuck, this guy's carrying a bomb. Holy fuck.

Because it's like all these tubes around his waist or whatever, like in his jacket. And then they're like, oh, no, it's just small birds in toilet paper rolls. Oh, what a relief. It's just 26. birds. Zero possibility of getting through security without scrutiny when you have what looks like dynamite

stretch here. I'm going to do some profiling here and people are going to get upset. Was this guy by chance from Indonesia? He was from Guyana, which I actually don't know where Guyana is. South America. South America. Interesting. Okay. The reason I guessed Indonesia is

there is a massive songbird trade in Indonesia, and it's like this whole thing. They have like flight competitions and races, and the winner of like the most beautiful songbird wins a huge prize, just similar to what we were talking about with regards to like rhino horn. Like the value is insane. It can be, if we look it up, I think the guy who won last year won like 14 million US dollars in Indonesian rupee. And so it's created this huge smuggling thing for basically fancy songbirds.

Indonesia. So I was just guessing this guy was en route to Indonesia to make a buck. I mean, have we talked about the camel beauty competition in Saudi Arabia with the $30 million prize? But I don't know if everybody's heard that episode. So reflect on it because it's hilarious. I would like to attend one because I think camels are super cool. They have the long eyelashes. But yeah, in Saudi Arabia, King Abu Aziz does a festival. and the top most beautiful camel is named

Miss Camel and it's $30 million in prize money and so recently like Miss America Miss Universe Dude and now they're Botoxing the camels Botoxing Giving him those lip fillers

That's how I found out about this Because the guy was busted His is like His fucking camel Had like 20K worth of fucking plastic surgery Going into the column There's 30 million Just pulled up a little picture here

Oh, totally. I'd be doing the same thing. I'd be like, show me in the camel rule book where it says no Botox. Show me. You show me where it says that. The ultimate stakes battle royale, man. I'm following the rules. What was the monetary amount, Pat?

32 million US dollars. Dude, it's insane. That's crazy, man. I would like to go to this podcast. I would too. I would too. I also think camels are beautiful. I get it. I get why there's a beauty contest for them. I don't see why it's worth $32 million, but I think they're a beautiful animal.

Because they got a lot of money in Saudi Arabia. Look, this podcast has, not in a depressing way, but in a way turned into like the animal use podcast, I'd say. Okay. So let me ask you this. You're from Pakistan. All right. You've grown up. You're Pakistani. You got nothing to do. You live in the desert. What are you going to smoke? I'm going to smoke weed. You're going to smoke meth. Got something else. What do you think? Retef, what are you going to smoke? I'm going to try and find some type of a hallucinogenic cactus button.

That's what I was thinking. I'm going to look for like a fruiting cactus and see if I could ferment that shit and drink it. Actually, that's what I'm going to do. Oh, yeah, baby. Well, I want to know who the first, I can only assume, young male Pakistani was, who figured out that he could smoke scorpions to get high. This is a real story that I just came across my leather desk. Leather.

Think of animal use. Yeah, it's pure leather. Pure leather. Yeah. So you can actually figure out. Apparently, yep. They are smoking scorpions for utterly bizarre reasons. The scorpions get them high for up to 10 hours.

This isn't a quick high, by the way. Wow. It's like equal. It was compared to being equal to a full-blown acid trip. So the first six, apparently the first six hours of smoking Scorpion is, is painful. It's your body is like shutting down. It takes a while for your body to acclimatize to it.

Then you just trip balls for like 10 hours. It's hallucinogenic, it's sensation of euphoria. Yeah. I'll weigh in quickly. Just because when I was a kid, I did a lot of drugs and I experimented quite a bit. And that was before the internet was really prevalent. So I don't know when the first person that did this did, whether it was word of mouth passed down generations. But I fucking smoked peanut shells rolled up in regular printer paper because, you know, we couldn't get rolling papers.

I was 13. I smoked dried banana peels. Why? Why did you do these things? What was the point? Because I had read and then I was told via word of. a mouth that these things can get you high. And I was curious.

What a mess of a child do you have for that? Me and my best friend, we, so we had a lot of mosquitoes in upstate New York, and we would go to the drive-in a lot, and you sit outside. So you could either sit in the car, we'd put a blanket outside. And they made these little green coils. It was called Pick, P-I-K, and you light them, and it was to repel mosquitoes. Oh, yeah, I remember those. Yeah, the little, yeah, I remember those.

Yeah. So we broke off a flat piece, poked a whole thing. poked a hole through it with a needle trying to create our own cigarette and attempted to smoke this mosquito repellent Mark, which I feel like That's worse than anything I did.

My shit was natural. You're fucking huffing chemicals lighted on fire. I feel like if either of our parents had walked in and seen what we were doing, they would have just been like, here's a pack of cigarettes. Like, what the fuck are you thinking? This is better for you.

Yeah. Yeah. But dude, with the scorpions, man. Will just brought up a picture this thing that I've never even heard of. There it is, though. Oh, you've never seen those mosquito coils? Man, I grew up on those things.

Highly effective, I would say. Yep, good to know. But dude, with the scorpion. Perfect. All the eagles in the area. It's got, it's a venom, right? The scorpion has a venom. They're smoking it.

Yeah. Which triggers a psychotic reaction. And several people have already died doing this. And it causes memory loss. It's like a mess. So they're finding these scorpions in the They're killing them. They're drying them out.

And basically they're getting high from the dried out venom, which is very, very toxic, of course. Like I said, it gets you high for 10 hours. The first six hours, apparently, you're just melting. Some say it's like an acid trip. Some say it's like psilocybin's. It's got hallucinogenic effects. Some say there's a station of euphoria.

But a bunch of fucking people are dying. Some people are going psychotic and are getting memory loss. Like, this just does not seem like a good idea in any sense of the word. No, I mean, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't bode well. I saw, yeah. No, no, I was just going to say it's the argument I always hear, you know, not that like I'm, I don't know, I talk to my friends about, you know, the certain drug use and stuff and they're like, oh, but it's natural, right, talking about smoking way too much pot or whatever, it's natural. Sure, sure. So is smoking scorpion, you know.

So is getting bitten in the neck by a rattlesnake. It doesn't mean that you should be doing it in excess amounts. Like, that argument to me just never flies. So we've talked about this before on the podcast. Yeah. Like, like, so, okay, mushrooms are unnatural. Why don't you go eat an eighth of those and tell me, tell me what happens. Right.

Or just eat, or just eat a single death cap mushroom and then see what happens. It's natural, you know, kind of be bad for you. It's called a death cap, but give it a whirl. Yeah. Yeah. Dude, I saw, so I saw a, I was driving on the street, obviously. There's a lot of, you know, people without homes here in L.A. and there was just a guy sit on the corner of a main street

that's about to get on the highway on the next block. And he was just sitting there. I mean, he was like awake, and he was sitting legs out completely with a bag and just a spray paint can had rolled out of the bag next to him. And he was just, like, dazed as if, like, you know, you ever seen those episodes of cops where they roll up on guys who are huffing paint. And he's got like,

and then I look a little closer as I get up to the stoplight, just fucking paint all over his face and shit. And I'm just like, God, man, this is fucking brutal. By the way, there's no, you know. And he's like 50 too, like a 50-year-old man. I'm just like, oh, my God. Think about the feeling, you know, just when you're hung over from alcohol, right? There's no way you wake up from passing out from huffing paint feeling spry.

Oh, can you imagine? No. Dude, that was the first thing I thought of was a throbbing headache. Charlie from It's Always Sonny. he went through his paint huffing phase. Yeah. So I thought this was... You know what?

So hold on, real quick. On the huffing story, we were talking about my home country of Zimbabwe earlier. Do you guys know what Jencom is? No. J-N-G-M? Nope. Jencom. J-E-N-K-E-M.

So when I grew up in Zimbabwe, it was an incredible place. Super wealthy, affluent. Literally, before I was born, it was one-to-one with the British pound, meaning it was a richer nation than the United States. Okay. Wow. It went to the poorest country in the world in under 10 years, thanks to the lovely president, Robert Mugabe. That's scary.

It is scary. But in the mid-1990s, when everything was starting to go downhill, it was still lovely then, but that's kind of when things started going. There was a super popular street drug among Zambian and Zimbabwean, like basically street rat kids called Jencom. And what Jencom was was an inhalant. and a hallucinogen created by shitting in a bag, fermenting it, and huffing it, from fermenting human waste that would blow your mind. That's not Zimbabwe, but regardless,

well, maybe it is, but regardless, dude, yeah, literally taking human waste, fermenting it in the hot sun and then huffing it to get high. And this was like a big thing. This wasn't like a small, lived thing. Did you ever try it? This went on for a while. Yeah.

No, God, no. I wasn't a street rat. This is something I probably would have tried as a kid because it was accessible. It was free. Oh, look. Here's Will's pulling up how to make Jencom on the YouTube. If you're listening for the first time, yeah, don't Google this. But yeah, here's how to make Jenkum?

I mean, it's how hard is it? You fucking throw your shit into a fucking jar and you close it and you leave it in the sun. There, I told you how to make it. So apparently, in 2007, according to the Jencom Wikipedia page, in 2007, uh, Jenkamuse became a fad among middle school students in the U.S. Oh, come on. Oh, dude. I remember that.

That's right. No, you don't. Shut. Yes, I do. In the U.S., dude, because I fucking, I remember this. They were fucking, and I was like, that is disgusting. By the way, I wonder what this high is like. Pat, are you on the Wikipedia?

Do they tell you what the high feels like? It says it's a hallucinogenic. So, you know, I don't know. Oh, my God. I mean, does it. happened. I drank this thing in Greenland called Tarmigan. Tarmigan schnops. Okay. Sounds similar. Do you know what a tarmigan is for us? The bird tarmigan? Yeah, it's this Arctic bird that basically looks like a white bowling ball with a tiny head. And so in Greenland they make the schnapps

and it's really expensive. But they basically bury the bird underground ferment it, the gizzard, I believe, and ferment a bunch of tarmigan gizzards and then make a alcohol out of it. That tastes really good. You know, they'll flavor it with like strawberries or other stuff that they get, you know, imported. Sure. But you get undeniably high as fuck. And it's not, it does not feel like drinking alcohol. So you only have, like, you might have like two shots of this like with dinner. Like you have one with dinner and then like the other one's like, let's get weird now. Sure. And you really feel like you're kind of tripping a little bit. That's like that stuff. What's that movie Euro trip? They drink the green. Like labrins.

or something like that. Oh, they're drinking like old school wormwood absinth. Was it absinth? Yeah, absent. Yeah, absent. I got some in the freezer right now. I haven't had absent in years. But the old school absinth did the same thing, right?

Like, it made you weird. Yeah, like the real wormwood absence would make you hallucinate it. Because they always said that, like, Vincent Van Gogh was drinking a lot of that shit, and that's what made him go crazy. Dude, I, I, me and Pat drank a bunch of absinth in Seattle. There's an absent bar in Seattle that's just... Yeah, really? That's cool.

Legit absent is legal. Yeah, is legal in the U.S. these days. And let me tell you, sir, I call it truth serum, because you can have a few shots of it, and you get real warm, and you get... It's not like you trip balls or anything. It's like maybe you drank and did a little bit of cocaine. A little bit, just like a little line.

There's a lovely cocktail called a Sazirac. You've never had one of those for us? A Sazirac? Never. Never even heard of it. It's a classic, like, New Orleans cocktail that is an absence drink. And I say it's lovely. It's real harsh.

Like, the flavor is. You get one, and you're like, we're not going to be able to leave this bar. It's going to take me, like, two hours to drink this. Dude, you're so warm. It's like you're at a fucking nice dive bar in the middle of winter in Chicago, but it could be the middle of summer in fucking Arizona. You're just, like, in this comforting, cozy mode, talking to whoever's around you, the bartender, you just love everybody.

Retep, you're from Chicago. What's that nasty alcohol in Chicago? Malort, my friend. Malortz. Oh, God. I've ever heard of this. What is this shit? Oh, my God, dude. The first time I went to Chicago, this was like a whole thing. I was like 19. I had a fake ID. One of my best friends from university grew up in, in Chicago. And he's like, come out drinking, come out drink and bring your fake ID, all that. And we did all that. And every single buddy made me drink this fucking Jepson's Malorts.

Oh, my, dude, it's the worst taste. thing I've ever had. We went into a bar, and it was a pay-for bar, so it's like a $15 cover, but you have to spin the wheel. I guess you didn't have to, but you're supposed to spin the wheel, and it's like, you know, an AMF, like an Adios motherfucker, a tequila sunrise, like all these shots, and then like big red X, it says Jepson's Mallorts. And it was my first time I walked in, I spin it, it landed on Jepson's Malorts. I was like, yeah, sounds great. Like, almost threw up. Then, like, every Chicago. was like, you got to drink more,

malorts, you got to drink more. It was so gross. Nobody drinks it. I'm glad that happened to you, Forrest, because I've never seen anyone push drinks in more ludicrous ways than you. God. Going to New Orleans with this guy is a fucking disaster. Making you drink fucking tequila out of a boot or something.

Because they do this thing where you pay the waitress like 20 bucks, and they like come forcefully grab you, throw you in this barber's chair, and they have this at like half the places in the French quarter, and then they spin you around and they dump these shots down your throat, and you end up doing five shots. And Forrest was surreptitiously spending hundreds of dollars forcing many rounds of this on every single person on the crew when we were apt to shoot.

And then he went home and slept while the rest of us died. Correct. It was awesome. Nice. It was Mitch's birthday. It was Mitch's birthday. And she goes, she goes, she goes, the chick goes, the chick goes, She's like $5 for one, or was she was like $7 for one shot, $10 for two shots. Or it was just like, I don't know, it was 20 bucks for three shots.

And I was like, here's 60 bucks. And she's like, are you sure? And I was like, I'm very sure. So I gave her 60 bucks. And she shoved nine shots down Mitch's throat. And spinning me really fast in between each one. Yeah. So I saw Mitch was on our podcast and was inebriated.

within 30 minutes. I can't, I think, so what was Mitch like after the nine shots? He did better than me. I cried that morning. I'm not going to go. I got to go. Came out. Yeah, right.

Happy birthday, Mitch. Well, podcast, this one, unfortunately, we have to cut a little bit short, but not before. Not before. Yeah, baby. We're going old school. Last week, we went with cute animals. This week, we're not doing that. We can't.

We've got to go back to fighting viciously. And trying to kill each other. Okay? So here's what you got. Okay. The three of us are going to assemble a squad that are going to protect us and help kill the other person. There's only going to be one of us standing at the end of this.

You see what I'm saying? So build your ultimate team. Oh, this is old school. You can pick one mammal, right? So you pick a mammal, but you only get one of them. Okay. You pick a reptile. But you get 10 of those reptiles, and you pick a bird, and you get 25 of those birds.

They have to be extant. You can't pick an extinct animal. Don't try and pick a host eagle forest. I know you're going to. So you get one mammal, 10 reptiles, 25 birds. For Tep, you're the first. This is obviously a snake draft, right? No pun intended.

25 snakes. Obviously, and I know everybody's going to hate me. Again, it's a cop out, but fuck off. I'm picking 25 Golden Eagles. I win Game Over Goodnight. You and your Golden Eagles. Listen, we saw it in the last episode. Take an eight-year-old, young girl.

And basically, if it wasn't put under command, would have taken it to the nest and roosted on her. That's not what roost means, but yes. I don't know what that means. All right. Just like the word roost. I'll go second here. I'm tempted to go.

Yeah, I'm going to do this because I think Forrest might pick it. As much as I want to be able to attack from the sky, I am going to forfeit the brilliant flying that will help an aerial attack, and I'm going to take 25 casuaries. Going hard land. Yeah, I'm going with a full-on land attack. 25 caswaries, huge claws on their feet. They're very dangerous.

They can kill humans. Yeah, 25 casuaries. They can kill humans. Should we all go? Well, I guess it doesn't work that way. I was going to say all do birds, then all do reptiles, then all do mammal. But it doesn't really work that way in a snake draft. You're up for any two you want.

I am. I am. All right. I'm going to get started with my one mammal. I'm going to take what I think is the obvious choice. Some would debate that. I'm going to go with a single African bull elephant. Yeah. I was going to pick that with my next pick.

Pat, shut up. Go on, Forrest. I will. I will. So next up, I've got 10 reptiles. Now, I think the obvious choice people would think would be a gaggle of crocodilians, but I'm not going to do that. No, sir, no, sir. I'm going to take the very simple, something I don't think we've ever used on this show, but also the most aggressive venomous snakes that I've ever had to deal with. One of the only snakes that really freaks me out to this day, I'm going to take 10 black mambas. Wow. Okay. You literally just took my mammal and my reptile. Yes.

Oh, snap. Shouldn't have gone to the wind. God damn it. Okay. Ah, it feels good. All right. I'm going. Dead air.

I keep thinking. I'm going to go with my mammal. Well, I was going to take the bush elephant because I like the idea of sending them into just charge and stomp on. So much mass. So much size. Reptiles. All right. So I've got my 25 caswaries.

I'm going to take my one mammal that is going to be very simple, very elegant. One polar bear. That's going to do a tremendous amount of damage. One polar bear. Yeah, that's going to be hard to contend with that. They are terrifying. Flanking it on either side. Okay.

It's terrifying. All right. Is it my turn? I don't know what's happening. Okay, do I pick two or one? I got two now? Two, yeah. Okay, so my mammilia is going to be, and I didn't know it was a mammal, I just looked it up,

but it will be a hippopotamus, and they are vicious, they are responsible for killing 500 humans per year, and it will easily swallow your polar bear hole and your stupid cassoaries. My next animal is going to be a reptile. I do know what those are. It could be a lizard or a snake. And I will pick, since in a recent podcast, I learned that reticulated pythons can swallow five-foot children whole. I will take, how many do we get of those? $25.

$10,000, $10,000. No, no, 10, 10, 10. 10 reticulated reticulated pythons Very very slow moving Not going to be a problem To ignore those So to add to my polar bear

Literally Okay go on My fucking golden eight eagles Will be very difficult To handle off my slow reticulated python So I got my polar bear Flanked on each side

With 25 caswheres I'm going to add to that 10 very quick moving Very venomous Western Taipan Or inland typans Inland Tai Pans, yep. They're going to be a real problem to contend with.

I did want Black Mamba because they're known for being more aggressive. Yep. But, you know, you win some, you lose. Tai Pan more deadly, though. I mean, my Golden Eagles will dive bomb at 150 miles per hour, take each of them out. It's not even, it's ridiculous. Well, that's what you thought until I came in with my final pick, the obvious pick of a Peregrine Falcon, or should I say 25 of them, who are much faster than your Golden Eagles.

They're basically flying bullets. That's going to round out my winning team. Me and you are on the same team. We're on the same team. We're going to be taking him out and then we can fight, okay? Okay. All right. You always accused Forrest and I have kissing each other's ass.

Do you really think that we're not just going to immediately team up against you and then be like, want to go to the bar? Me. Game over. Me and Forrest have been having secret sidebars talking shit about you for the past year in 10 months. True. Yeah, that's what we do. Many.

like several per day. Understood. Multiple text messages. All right. Let's listen, Brousners. People. All right. Brosners,

weigh in. Let us know. Whose team do you think is going to have last man standing? Is it my team with a single bull African elephant? 10 black mambas and 25 peregrine falcon?

Is it Pat's team of a single polar bear? 10. Sorry, no, I'm mixing up my order. What was it? I'm sorry. I have 10. 10 inland typanes and 25 cassoiri. That can't fly.

Or a TEP's team of 25 giant golden eagles. Boo yeah. 10 reticulated pythons. And one adorable hippopotamai. That's right, baby. Let us know in the comments. Let us know who you think's last man standing. Tell us what your ultimate team is.

I challenge you, Brosner, to find a team that could take down any of our teams because those are three pretty solid teams. Pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. Don't come at us with your nonsense. All right, Retef, do the thing. Tell them where they can find us.

Yeah. Yeah. The Wild Timespodcast.com forward slash info. The Patreon is now live. That is patreon.com. Forward slash wild times pod. Go to the Wildtimespodcast.com forward slash info for the links. If you don't feel like type it in that Patreon link,

just go to the Wild Timespodcast.com. slash info to find that link and all of the other links to the iTunes to the to the to the YouTube to the merch yeah baby all the bullshit and uh you know fucking good night I love you night we love you