Wild Times: Wildlife Education - TWT #64 - Extinct or Alive Behind the Scenes w/ Mark Romanov

Episode Date: June 28, 2021

Wildlife Cameraman, Mark Romanov joins us to talk shop. Lots of Extinct or Alive behind the scenes, and working on Blue Planet 2. Join our amazing Discord community full of wildlife and adventure enthusiasts @ https://discord.com/invite/zzTxnrHnS8 Patreon @ https://patreon.com/wildtimespod All the links @ https://thewildtimespodcast.com We love you!

Wild Times. Yeah, mate. Yeah. What's going on? Wild Times number 64. Welcome in, everybody. We're excited about this one. Mostly because Forrest isn't here, but we've got someone much more interesting.

Oh, yeah. I'm here as usual, the producer, in a great mood. Retep, the professor, is there looking very pasty. His lighting is, you might need some more warm lights in there. You look like a vampire. Listen, I've been working with Riverside to fix an issue with my camera being out of sync for the past three weeks. This is their fix. Makes me very white.

I had to turn off the auto exposure. That's the issue. Hello, sir. Who do we have here? That young cherubic face on the third box. We've been since, so this is our 64th podcast. We've been trying to get this guy on literally since we started. he's very difficult to track down.

I think the Brosners are going to be fascinated to talk to legitimately world-renowned wildlife photographer and underwater photographer who has DP'd some of the best underwater documentaries in the world. Mark Romanov. What's up, Mark? That's quite an introduction. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here in my own home. Thanks for having me. Yeah, dude.

So I've worked with Mark a bunch. We've done some shark stuff and then a whole bunch of, you know, filming things that are on the land on Extincter Alive and a couple other things. What do people know you from the most, like what's the most popular? I know you worked on Blue Planet, Whale Wisdom, which is something that Attenborough did that's on Netflix, right? That one's on CuriosityStream. Okay. Yeah. And that, in terms of breadth of work, was a much larger project for me, shot.

over several, several years. Yeah, Blue Planet 2, I was on a bit of. That's probably the most recognizable to the average person, but breadth of work was much smaller there. But the original Blue Planet, I think I was like eight years old. Oh, okay. Yeah. So when you saw the original, the OG Blue Planet,

were you like, I want to do this shit? Did it inspire you? And then when you got on to the second one, you were like, I've made it. I have arrived in life. Basically, yeah. Yeah, no, I loved the first one and planet Earth too. And as a kid, I would, that was like what I gave people for presents, like Christmas

present. You were getting a Planet Earth DVD from your boy, Mark. Nice. And, yeah, and then ended up working a lot with one of the principal cinematographers for the original Blue Planet and learned a lot from him. So, yeah, it's been a journey. but a great one. How does, you're from Pennsylvania, right, Mark?

Yeah, grew up there. Central Pennsylvania? Kind of near Philly. Gotcha. But like how does a farm boy like you, who's, you know, into playing football and stuff like that? You know, when you, little known fact about Mark is that he was a big star running back

in Pennsylvania High School football. And Pennsylvania is like a big deal. Like Friday Night Light status, dude. Yeah. I had moved out to Santa Barbara by then. So it was not quite as impressive. Yeah. So look, we have a, I was telling Mark, you know, a ton of listeners of ours, you know, I follow some of them on Instagram.

We get tons of questions. So many of our listeners are either aspiring wildlife photographers or professional wildlife photographers. Like, how, like, what was your first step in getting into it besides just, like, taking some pictures of butterflies with like one of those yellow disposables. Yeah, good question. I did a program called Island School in the Bahamas where I lived for four months or so in high school. And I was diving every day. And the day before I went, two days before I went, I got a little underwater camera.

So then Q, you know, months of every day going out and shooting really terrible photos underwater, but learning a lot and having a great time. Yeah. And then I thought I was going to be in the side. science is I was doing research at UC Santa Barbara and thought I'd go down that route. But I looked at what impacts people, and I think programs like Planet Earth have a huge educational value and get people caring about wildlife and wild systems, where it's my heart's with the science, but you can spend four years on a project that a dozen people will read

your end paper. And that's basically what happened to me. But also, like, the day-to-day, like, forest. has talked about it a bunch. Like, you know, he's like, you know, I got this internship and I was all excited to do this thing for the summer and literally I was just gardening, you know, or like. Yeah. Like the day to day of like being on a shoot where you're diving every day to try and get a shot

of orcas is exponentially more fun most likely than what you'd be doing if you want the science route, I have to think. That's definitely true. Yeah. In my four years of working in a lab, I think I had like, three days of field work and the rest of the time was processing my samples and data analysis and writing paper. Dude, you know, our audience mark is like, probably 70% of our audience is people who are at

that step right now. Like between 20 and 23, like figuring out their next move. So I think it's really good to hear it sounds awfully monotonous, man. Like I know it's, it does a lot of good and we get a lot of. information, but like, you got to live your life, man. I've got to get out and have some adventures. We do certainly, as you're well aware, work a lot with researchers, local researchers, and they're invaluable to us to finding wildlife and help find new stories and so forth.

But it is fun to be able to bounce around and have the diversity get to work with all these different groups instead of being with one for so long. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I mean, even in our field in general, like TV, photography, media, we were doing the gig economy thing before it existed, man. I never had a job as like an editor, an assistant editor for more than a couple months, Max. So it is nice to kind of get out there and, well, in your case, see the world. In my case, see many different post-production offices.

Yeah, you got to see the shots, though. You got to be dazzled by. In 1 to 10 ratio, an awful pixelated quality while setting. Well, Mark, you've done a bunch of, you did a bunch of Extincter Alive shoots as the DP out there with Mitch, who's been on the show before. Mitch got hammered, by the way. Like, he legit, like, clown himself. Like, halfway through, he was mumbling drunk. Like, his girlfriend started microwaving something right next to him.

It's a shit show. Tell me your, the funniest thing. that happened behind the scenes on a shoot or just the moment that made you laugh the hardest on an extinct or a live shoot oh boy way to put him on the spot deluca come on yeah he's pretty quick he's a pretty quick young guy his pretty still work he hasn't drank as much booze as us yet yeah well this is a very serious question you know um yeah important and there were yeah there were times we're all just dying laughing. I thought I knew what you're going to say.

I thought I had the low-hanging fruit. I thought you were going to go with Columbia when Forrest took too big of a snort of the jungle powder. Well, go ahead. So what happened with that? He didn't think he was okay. He thought he was not okay. I've seen the footage.

And you guys are dying. Well, he isn't okay. I think he's permanently damaged from that. It was a scarring experience for him. Yeah, that went off the rails very quickly. What happened? You know what was a great one? Yeah.

You were there, Patrick. It was after we, after, when we were getting out of Glockgos and that was, you know, I don't want to say with our tail between our legs, but we were sneaking out of there to some extent. Yeah. Happy to get back on mainland. And then it was like, I don't know, 5 a.m. It was really early. It might have been 4.30.

And we were all at the airport in Kito. And it'd been a very stressful shoot. So Patrick had ordered a round of screwdrivers for the crew at about 4.30 a.m. And so we're standing there in the lounge and there's this big earthquake. And everything is shaking, everyone's running. And 8.9, mind you. That's huge. Yeah.

And it had been such a stressful last few days that everyone's running around with their, you know, looking like a chicken with a head cut off, except for our crew who's just standing there in the lounge with their screwdrivers, just sipping and just watching, just. Yeah. It's funny because, like, you know, I've heard it from Forrest's perspective. He's told the story before, but he, he didn't illustrate it that way, which is pretty hilarious. I mean, he said you guys were just like, whatever, but just. standing there while everything's tumbling down. And then the way he puts it, maybe this is just his embellishment,

but he tried to take charge or something and get everybody rallied. Can he say that? He certainly didn't. I mean, the best part of that was all the employees ran out screaming and so we kind of looked at each other, were like, okay, I guess we're going to have some more

screwdrivers. And Mitch was just so happy, but one of the cooks had fallen behind from the lounge. And all of a sudden the door swings open, completely knocks Mitch on his ass as the cook was running out. We poured another round of screwdrivers and then... You guys went behind the bar and poured around a screwdriver. We left money.

We did leave money. Sure, sure. We didn't steal. It's pretty unconventional, but it's a hilarious part of the story. Then we slugged him and then went out under the tarmac after the guy from the chicken stands came in screaming that we had to get out. Yeah. And blasted techno music through a jambox. everyone fucking hated us.

Oh, yeah. You guys are like the fucking Americans, man. Typical. Typical Americans. We were riding the high of this amazing discovery of finding this extinct tortoise, but also there were several days that unfolded after where we thought our footage was going to get stolen because there was a big dispute with the Galapagos Conservancy, and we realized they were potentially not happy about the fact that we filmed it,

and they were worried for us, was going to try and take all the credit. So there was this little bit touch and go for a few days. Yeah. But we did have some fun. We karaokeed. We got some ice cream, you know. What song did, Mark, what song did you sing karaoke?

I don't think I did, but I very well remember Patrick's. What was it? It's been talked about. Oh, is this the Rick Astley moment? Yes. What about Mitch? Did Mitch get hammered and make a fool of himself singing a karaoke? he had to have. I can't picture him not.

I'm sure he got hammered. I don't know if he made a fool of himself. Let me ask you this, Mark. What's the most stressful moment you remember from an Extincter Alive shoot? One of the most stressful moments and one of the funniest moments were not that far apart from each other in the Amazon. One of the most stressful was Mitch getting all stung up and our medic was very worried about him going into shock. So that was stressful because they're, was no there was no help what what what were the animals that stung them what were they were insects wasps yeah wasps but like particularly bad wasps like are they worse than the wasps that are in my backyard right now yeah and also because we were filming on these like dugout canoes and the

wasps were it was at night attracted to the lanterns and so there's no light anywhere except for these lanterns to film and so Mitch was filming right in front of forest and they were just lighting him up and then all of a sudden he was like i can't feel my face and uh yeah so it was seeing the medic who was like uh has you know military experience gnarly gnarly stuff uh seeing his reaction to that um that was that had to be the most stressful i would say um but that was within a day or so of a very similar circumstance where johnny was stung by just one wasp but in the last place he would ever want to get stung. And that was up there

at the funniest moments when he had to expose himself to the medic. And we were all standing there and we could just hear the medic. And he goes, oh, shit. Oh my God. That's not what you want to hear. If the medic is saying that. So he got, so

is this, he got stung in the dick and had to drop trow. And then he got stung again and went, oh God. No. The medic was like, the, no, when the medic's, like, swollen? saw, when the medic saw what had his, his penis had mutated into after the sting, his only reaction was, oh my God. Dude, it, it was like Patrick's microphone.

Well, in all fairness, Johnny's penis looks like that normally. Yeah. The medic had never seen it before, but he was shocked when he did. I heard he's in that one magazine, just weird dicks. You ever heard of that one? Weird dicks. No. I'm sure my girlfriend reads it. Well, I got a laugh from our guests. I don't care what you think.

But dude, on that shoot, you guys, I was told, Mark, that when you guys were in the Amazon, that there was, like, some local powder or drug or something that people were doing, and that, like, you got pretty into it. Like, I remember Forrest that at one point he just looked at you and your white t-shirt was, like, covered in this stuff. And he was like, dude, what was it? Yeah. I don't know what it was. was, but it gave me energy. And I think that those were the

most productive shoot days we had. They gave us that powder, and we were just running around in the jungle. Did you snort it, or how did you consume the powder? No, you... No, you put it in your mouth. Yeah?

It's like... It tasted like... It tasted like... I don't... I think you eventually spit it out. No, it did dissolve. Yeah, you're right. It tastes like macha or something. It tasted good. What does it do?

Does it make you like feel weird, fucked up or something? Not to me at all, but I seem to have a higher tolerance than, uh, um, some to it, uh, who didn't like it as much. But, uh, yeah, no, it just was energizing. It was like having a soda or something. It just, it was like a little caffeine or. Dude, did you ever try, did you ever try the, uh, beetle nut or whatever it's called? No. No.

Seeing their teeth, I did not want to try it. Do you know what this is? No, what's the, what is it? The beetlenut. What do you, you're scratching your butt? No, I was grabbing something on my pocket. I don't know what it's made of. I guess they like crush up beetle nuts and then like they treat it like dip, right?

Yeah. And it's just everyone, so like in Myanmar they were doing it a lot. A lot of people in like the rural parts of Vietnam would do this beetle nut. and it's like this bright bright red, like blood red. And everyone who choose beetle nut for whatever reason had all their teeth fall out except one

and the tooth itself is bright red. Okay. But I was kind of intrigued. I was like, I kind of want to try it. Just because you needed some dental work, some free dental work. No, I just, you know, I like to, like I'm constantly chewing gum

or I'm putting something in my mouth at all time. So I see these people packing these delicious-looking lippers and I'm like I kind of want to try one but they don't have any teeth so I'm not going to do it I wonder if the powder the jungle powder was caught have you guys ever heard of cot K-H-A-T I knew a guy out here from Ethiopia who would who was always doing it you worked at a head shop out here a smoke shop and it's basically like it's like a stimulant they chew it in in other countries it's like it's an actual drug so I wonder I wonder if that's what they were giving you and calling it junk jungle powder. It's very popular.

Couldn't have been. Not. No? Definitely not. I'd like to see. I'd like to see Forrest on some cot. He'd be running around like a lunatic. Yeah, it's green. Yeah, it's green. Yeah.

Because it sounds like you're doing some cot. Yeah. Doing cot, baby. Are we starting our cocktails? Oh, I've already been drinking. I'm halfway through my cocktail. Mark's going with a delicious corona. I've got a horse banquet.

What do you guys? Got retit? A delicious tonic and or I mean fucking gin and soda. Ooh. Yeah, you probably should have gotten gin and tonic. I don't have any.

Also it has unnecessary calories, mate. Grow up, as much as a soda popsky. Let's get some quid on you. Well, I want to know, Mark, you've filmed underwater a lot, a lot of different projects. What is your favorite shot

that you've ever gotten? Ooh. A lot of, Good and hard questions today. One of the more memorable, I'd say, is in Costa Rica of a Brutus whale. Okay. Spelled B-R-Y-D-D-E-S. So you pronounce a little different than it's spelled.

Yeah, it looks like Brides whale or some. Yeah, I see it. Oh, it's huge. It's like a 50-foot-long whale. Yeah. And it was on a shoot. We were filming the lanternfish, McTophids. these big bait balls that come up and tunas and rays and birds, dolphins, occasionally sharks,

all these predators get them. And then at the end of the last day on the shoot, it was just me in the water. And this huge, brutus whale just came several times and fed right in front of me. How close was it getting to you? Like, one time it hit me. Oh, wow. Dude, that's so, I'm not. not like a terrified person in the water.

Like I'll snorkel, I've gone scuba a few times. You know, I generally am pretty comfortable. Seeing something that big, that close has to make your heart skip. It's just exciting. It's exciting. And the funny thing is it's, so it was all just breath hold, too. There's no scuba. And so, like, I wasn't deep down at all, but just below the surface.

And trying to get this shot of this whales that cruises by me. and I'm just holding the shot, holding the shot, and it just keeps going. Yeah. At some point I'm like, you know, I wasn't expecting it to be much of a dive because I was just down five, ten feet or whatever it was. Right. But the amount of time it took for a 50-foot animal to pass me was significant. Nearly killed you is what you're saying. I didn't feel in danger on that one. But as far as that goes, it's funny, like a lot of animals, there are things.

that we can do that at least give us the false sense of security or like we're in charge with sharks or different animals. And ultimately, you know, those animals are a lot more powerful than we are. But it seems that there are certain steps we can take to make ourselves more safe and make ourselves feel a lot more safe. An animal, the one animal that was not anything like that was orcas. And it's funny because, like, logically, orcas have never killed anyone in the wild. And yet you have this feeling when you're in the water with them.

It's like anything that they want to do at that moment they can do. And they're so dexterous and smart and they work together. And like with this photo, they were taking individual herring. One by one, the herring are, you know, small little fish. Right. And sucking off the meat, spinning out the head, the spine, and the tail. So for a human, I mean, the equivalent would be like, you know, tying a knot in a cherry.

Yeah. Right, right. So that was a vision. That's crazy. Yeah. So, you know, when they're doing that right in front of you and you know that they also take great whites and baby whales and everything else, it's like just, yeah, all inspiring. It's like anything this animal wants to do right now, it's going to do. Where are we?

Oh, sorry. Go ahead with a tip. Remember, we talked about a story a couple weeks ago. It came up. Was that a pot of orcas that was like? like attacking a pot of like humpback whales or some shit like that remember that we talked about that it was a pot of orcas that were attacking one single humpback whale that was like a whale watching cruise and they yeah happen to see this and of course those kids are now going to have

nightmares for the rest of their life we're on that trip where were you uh where were you were you were you free diving with these orcas yeah where was that norway coastal Norway I'm assuming that's like a dry suit dive No so you can't free dive in a dry suit You get to squeeze

So you have to be in a wetsuit in order to Free dive So yeah it's cold But It's funny like 10 years ago or so There was a Easter trip On our local whale watch boat And so there's a lot of families

Taking out their small kids And they had orcas Kill a young humpback whale on it. Oh, wow. Yeah, it was a scarring experience for some of the kids, but the boat captain at the time, I think, it was like, hey, this is once in a lifetime.

Of course. Right. Right. Yeah, dude, you're getting pretty close to these workers. How many are in that pod? That was maybe five or so. But they're quite curious. I mean, they'll come right up to you.

And it's clear, it's like some animals, when you see them, it's like, okay, well, I saw this animal. today. And other animals, it's like, I met this animal today. And that's how it is with orcas. It's like, they're looking at you in the eye. They know, they're checking you out. You're checking them out. And it's like

someone's home. Right. Dude, that's so fascinating though, because like, so Retep, we did a shoot. It was not for Extincter Alive. It was for another project, which we won't mention. But we're in Florida, this place called the Jupiter

ledge. And Mark was filming forest was producing, but he was in the water. And they were completely swarmed by, what, 50 bull sharks or 30? I mean, a lot. Yeah, a lot. You could see, if you looked all around you, you could probably count 30, which means they're probably more around too.

Bull sharks are, you know, they're a very, very powerful animal. Obviously, they're going to do whatever they want to you. But you guys spent two, three days, eight hours a day in the water. with them. And nobody seemed super fresdened, right? Like you guys at a couple points were like they're really hot, whatever, but you felt like you're in control. And then just you're saying it's just a completely different experience when you

see an orca, a totally different feeling. That's super cool. Yeah, I wouldn't say we were in control with those bull sharks. Okay. Okay. They were pretty hot. But everyone in the water was an experienced diver outside of about 40 seconds of someone else being in the water who was quickly pulled out.

But yeah, with everyone being that comfortable and being able to watch each other's backs, it was a manageable circumstance. But yeah, the funny thing about that, too, is that we ended up with less footage than if we had fewer sharks. Because if we could have isolated all of those sharks in one direction and had them in frame at the same time, it would have looked more impressive. But with 30 spread out around you, anywhere you point the camera, you might see a few sharks. But it was a lot scarier than it appeared ever in the footage. Well, of course, because if they're coming up behind you, that's the most terrifying thing, of course.

Right. Yeah. Mark, since I'm going through your Instagram, I brought up a picture that I want the story behind right now. It appears that you're in a full-blown dollar store penguin costume, like a Halloween costume. It is, yeah. But yet you're around legitimate fucking penguins. What's going on here? Yeah, I was a penguin for Halloween.

And then like three weeks later, I got a shoot in the Falklands. And there are several species of penguins there. And I was like, okay, I'm definitely packing away this suit. And I didn't tell anyone. And it's like a pretty exclusive. Island. There's this lodge and a lot of bird photographers go there mainly from the UK.

And, you know, it's pretty pricey and so forth to go there as a on vacation and a lot of these tourists have bigger lens than we did and all of that. They take it very, very seriously. Right. And so they're all lined up and

way down the beach outwalks this giant penguin. Dude, it's like a jackass fucking skit. It really is. Hey, I'm Mark Romanoff and I'm going to fuck with these tourists. Was this literally

just to fuck with the tourists? Or were you trying to like do some recon if you should shoot in the penguin suit the next day? I was wondering about that. And so like here I just knee down and you can see these penguins. They came up and they just started trumpeting all around me.

So they were super relaxed. Dude, yeah. Look at this guy right here, man. He's fucking just, he's loving it, man. Having a great time. Yeah. But it's funny with penguins, like originally watching March of the Penguins and some of the documentaries that have been done on them.

It's like, wow, this is phenomenal footage. How did the filmmakers get this behavior? And then if you go and spend any time around the penguins, it's like, they just do anything right in front of you. They don't, they're very funny. And they're just going about their business. So they're super, super fun. to watch, but maybe not that difficult to get cool behavior of.

They're like modern dodo birds, man. Let's hope we don't make them go extinct by being fucking utter clown asshole humans like we were back then. Infernda and the Galapagos, you know, we were just filming some B-roll and there was this little group of penguins, I think it was like four or five of them. And I was like, okay, I'm going to be super sneaky. I'm going to go in the water and come around this rock and have my phone ready and get like a really cool shot of these penguins.

So I came up, got this shot, and I really thought I was doing something really cool. Like I was kind of like mostly below the water just filming. And so then like the next day, uh, we go back and like, I can't remember if it was Mitch or Johnny just like literally walked up and they didn't give a shit. Like they were just like,

they will let you do whatever the fuck you want to do, especially there. What's the most scared you've ever been in the water? Was it with the orcas? Or was it with those bullet sharks? No, no, I really wasn't, uh, No, it's always human-related. It's always about propellers, boats and propellers, captains that,

especially if there's a language barrier and you're not sure if they're neutral. Oh, really? Okay. By far the greatest risk, I think, in the underwater work that I do is with inexperienced boat captain and being around a propeller. That's so funny because I would never process that fear. You know what I mean? But, like, of course, I would just be funny. focused on the shark yeah yeah no i mean dude totally that is i mean that is why i'm scared to do things

as a middle-aged man because i know that i don't have experience when i don't have experience do something i'm gonna die by some unforeseen thing like that's why i don't do things i'm just like no unless like like somebody is there who knows what the fuck they're doing but then also i have trust issues and i don't trust anybody so i don't i'm just like now this guy's not really looking out for me You guys hear about this shit You guys hear about this shit Where a guy went out on a dive With like a with like a bunch of like a captain or whatever the fuck

A guy was leading it And they just left him out there They just left him out there And that happens all the time Because I was like reading the comments on Reddit People were like oh yeah, fucking happened to me Happen to me I'm like Jesus Christ man

That's scary as fuck Well there was a movie called Open Water That came out in like 2004 that was supposedly a true story of two divers that got left and eventually they died. And it was just like one of those like ultra intense movies that just like went minute by minute. Like it played out in real time. Yeah. That is terrifying.

Oh my God. The thought of coming up and then the boat's gone is incomprehensible. Dude. See, this is the kind of show I want to see. Like fuck naked and afraid. They're on season 30. everybody knows what to do on it. You know, you find some jungle potatoes.

You get real fat before you go on there. Throw people into the middle of the ocean and see what happens. Sounds safe. Does you think you produce a show like that, pet? No. We had some concerns with that on the Shark Week with Forest in South Africa. Oh, yeah? I think something about saying that you're filming Shark Week in certain places,

the crew taking you out kind of wants to show you the most extreme version of what they do and compete with other shoots and so forth. And so, yeah, there were a number of days where Forrest and I were looking at each other, like, should we be out here? There was really bad weather and these squalls would come. Yeah, we got, we popped up like miles away from where we were supposed to be. and a different boat was there that picked us up. Are you kidding?

Not the one that we, yeah. Wait, so. What's your boat? What the fuck? So tell me, you pop up, you pop up and you look at each other and you're like, what the fuck? Like, are you like, is this what were, what happened? What went through when you saw the boat?

Yeah, I'm trying to remember the exact details of that. I might butcher it a little bit, but Johnny was on that dive and Forrest was on it. And Johnny came up earlier. he was having an issue with his air or something and he went up and i think he got on the original boat and forest and i kept drifting for quite a while so i mean it was and it was a ripping ripping current so it was literally miles um that we traveled oh my god and popped up and i think it was the boat that there was another there was another boat that was just doing topside and stuff like Mitch was on it i remember jesse was on it and um i think they had considered going in early because

They couldn't film any more topside and we were just diving and whatever. And someone had the idea that now just in case they should stay out. And then we popped up. And I think it was next to their boat. Yeah. And you were miles from your boat. That's fucking terrifying. Yeah.

Because we were supposed to, they dropped us off on this reef, but I don't think we ever made it to the reef because the current was just ripping so hard that by the time we got down, we were well past it. So we just kept drifting the rest of our dive. But they were then waiting for us back where that reef was. and yeah a couple other divers that trip were lost for uh i think it was about it wasn't that long but i don't know a half hour or so but a half hour is a long i was going to say every minute seems like a half hour when you're lost at sea yeah absolutely yeah that is nuts speaking

of uh mark's uh penguin furry costume i did see one thing in the news that i i can't wait till next week to mention All right. A new Netflix show is coming out later this summer called sexy beasts. Okay. Where people go on blind dates in public places, wearing prosthetics and makeup to make them look like animals. What?

What do you guys think? I think Mark will fit right in. He's already got the costume. That's my take. Hot take. I'm not in it for love just for the sport. Dude, I just, what do you think their explanation?

Because of course they're going to be. try to couch it as like, this is a social experiment that will help people find true love. Yeah. Dude. I mean, you know, it's like, look at what's on TLC, man. The state of television is just like, like this one is weird because like we, it's so niche to us. But I mean, you got a show on TLC that's called My 600 pound life. And somehow it's like the most entertaining, depressing show and you can't stop watching it.

I think they're just three. throwing some shit at the wall here and hoping that this catches on big time, man. That's what I think of it. Dude, the thing about my 600 pound life, because I have tuned in, that I can't stop. They always show the 600 pound people eating in bed right before they go to sleep. And it's usually, usually sweets chased down by a Coke. And they're not that mobile, so they go right to sleep. And I can't stop thinking about their teeth.

It really concerns me, man. I don't like going to bed. It's a hard show to watch. Dirty Coke mouth. Well, dirty Coke nose is one thing, but dirty Coke mouth. No. Just no, sir. If you have a Coke nose, you're not sleeping, mate.

So, Mark, as a former furry penguin, what do you think? What are your thoughts on this new reality show? I tried and I just felt like an outsider. Yeah. So. To the penguins? To the group of penguins? Okay.

They started to accept me, but it's, just it felt wrong. What if you got a call mark to be the director of photography for this show and they were willing to double your rate, your normal rate, would you do it? Oh.

It's tough. Money talks, no. No? I mean, it is technically wildlife wildlife photography. I mean, technically, right? They might get some good shots. It'd be the easiest. Dude, back to

Blue Planet 2. which you spoke of earlier. Dude, I've watched, like, Planet Earth, Blue Planet 2. There was a really famous scene that went super viral. I think it was Planet Earth, too. I'm not quite sure, but it's one where there's a bunch of snakes chasing a lizard, I believe. Was that Blue Planet or was that Planet Earth? Do you guys remember?

Planet Earth, because Blue Planet was all underwater, hence Blue. That's right. That's right. But anyway, so I was, I remember watching that and just, being like, how the fuck, like, how was this shot composed? Like, just thinking about it. Like, you know, first of all, the angles and the way that they follow the snakes and all, obviously the editing and the high speed camera and everything. But how did they, like, time this? Like, is this just something that, like, what's your guess? Like, no, I don't mean specifically that.

I just mean, like, how does this happen? Is it just a waiting game? You wait for something like this to happen or like you know like you you you match the behavior the pattern you know where to go to find this combination of all of that or like how do you get these incredible shots yeah um specifically with those animals i don't know but but generally speaking uh there's like a pretty tight window when um the eggs would hatch and you can plan around that and it's probably pretty similar year after year, especially if you have, you know, if you're working with the park and the researchers and you know when the eggs were laid and so forth, you could dial it in pretty well. But a lot of those shots, I think, were mainly this, like, one guy who was living down there,

and he was down there for quite a while to do it. But, yeah, they absolutely nailed that sequence. Yeah, and it became, I mean, it just went viral. It was pretty cool to see that. It's like, because it's very hard with reptiles to make people feel a connection or have any kind of emotion outside of yuck or something. Right. And that's got to be the most successful example of making people emotionally invested in reptiles. Well, dude, you're rooting so hard for that iguana when you watch it. You know, after 30 seconds, you're just like, you're pulling for that iguana.

And it's never ending. It's so relentless. is like just give up man at a certain point just give up let them get shit yeah the uh so i saw a few have have you have you found yourself in like a position to because i've seen some of your stuff on the instagram where you were doing crocs like crocodiles alligators stuff like that i mean is that more of because they're so just pardon this stupid uh what i'm about to say but they're so reptilian that like they like you said like it's hard to connect with them a and be like it's either their behavior has got to be, and I don't know, so erratic or so like easy to track to get the pictures.

Like, which is it? Like, is it hard to get a good picture of like a reptile? You have to sit in wait. Do you have to like track what you think it's going to do? Or like, like the gators, the crocodiles specifically. Yeah. Yeah. And that was a, that was a shoot with Forrest, but we weren't so much going for natural behavior of the crocs.

but generally speaking with reptiles i mean it's it's a little more straightforward than working with uh mammals when where you have less of an idea of what they might do next it's right if you if you're really into reptiles um you develop kind of a sense of uh of what's going on with the animals and and what the animal wants they kind of cue you with their body language and so forth. Just more predictable, it sounds like. Yeah. Yeah.

Because this is fucking scary, terrifying. We're looking at a picture on your Instagram right now. You're very close to its teeth that could just destroy you. And it's like, it's just chill in there. It's a crocodile as well. For whatever reason, I'm much more scared of crocodiles, even though I know they're all very dangerous. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, so the key thing here is that it's clear water. And it's pretty rare to have any crocodilian in clear water. But you can't really do this type of thing in dirty water because they'll just sneak right up on you. But they lose a lot of their power when you can see them. I mean, sharks are the same way. It's the shark you don't see that you've got to be worried about. Mark was on a shoot for one of my projects in Ramri Island in Myanmar. when, that was, you know, focused around the crocodiles.

When a, was a kid a teenager that got attacked? Yeah. The teenage boy, probably 16, 17 years old, got bitten by a crocodile in very close proximity to where the crew was. And they went back to Aiden his rescue. Tell us about what happened there. Yeah. So they've got these huge saltwater crocodiles that live there that occasionally. attack people, occasionally kill people, and they've decided for the most part to live with

them. And it's just kind of a fact of life. And a lot of the men that live there work as fishermen and go wading into the water every day. And this guy went into, I think he was pulling a net out, but he went into check nets or something. And this croc got him. It death rolled him. He somehow got it off. We don't really know how. And it was, you know, we weren't asking a lot of questions once we were on him and he was injured. But somehow got it off and then he was laying on the bank for, I think, several hours before another fisherman happened to go by and pick him up and brought him back to the village. And I remember his mom was just like holding his head. And he was lying down. And I mean, he was on his way out for sure. So the fact of the reaction. The

that he had when you when you got to him one of his arms had been death rolled and was like twisted in multiple places and had puncture wounds there was a really bad puncture wound um like right by his groin that was quite close to an artery if i remember correctly that was the most worrisome one you get some bites on his his legs too um yeah one of his legs was all twisted up i think they were terrifying injuries and I think he'll be

you know to some extent handicapped his whole life because of them but um sure but yeah because there was the evacuation plan and medic there and um yeah he lived so he got him

to a medical center and he lived which was remarkable did you feel like he was I mean I saw the footage. And of course, the injuries are way worse than any injury that I've ever dealt with, right? And, you know, sometimes you stub your toe in the middle of the night and you just want someone to come cut it off for you. Yeah. You know, his injuries were, you know, essentially as bad as I've ever seen. Yeah. Was he, did you gather that he was feeling a level of pain that was extreme or extraordinary? Or did you think that shock had set in the way they say it does sort of protect you from that level of excruciating? pain. He was completely in shock. Okay. Completely in shock.

The only time I saw him, yeah, that his face was really like showing pain or when the medic was pouring, uh, it was alcohol or some kind of a cleaner solution into some of the wounds and that obviously was burning. Um, and then also, uh, the crew built a, uh, like a makeshift stretcher and, um, was carrying him. But the little like dock to get out to the boat is all made of, um, sticks that are like, I mean, maybe a couple inches in diameter at most. And I mean, it's very, very rudimentary dock and very difficult to walk on,

let alone carry someone on a stretcher on it. And so that was pretty uneven and wobbly. And then they had to lower him down because the tide was way down. So they had to like pass this stretcher off of this rickety dock. Yeah. It's not even a dock isn't the right word, but there's really not a word for what it was. And so, yeah, and we were really concerned at that point. Like, is the stretcher going to hold?

And, you know, a small movement could have kind of opened up his artery, the medic was saying. So everyone was concerned until he was in the boat. Well, we were still concerned. But, yeah, it wasn't. It's got to be so surreal. You know, you hear about these things. You see, and we talk about them a lot because we host a show that is largely about wildlife, about being attacked by an animal.

But the actual active, like when it's actually happening to you, it has to be just, I wonder if we can even really process what's happening as it's happening. That's, that's rough. I mean, were you able to, I mean, I feel like, and correct me if I'm wrong, but when you're in a situation like that, either helping or the fucking, you know, the victim of it, dude your animal your animal brain just takes over kind of like and you just i mean you just do things that are that you know what to do you know apply pressure whatever i mean is that how it was for you mark or what do you i don't have a medical training so luckily the medic was with us

forest had some medical training um so those that knew what to do uh did spring right into action um i i didn't so i knew that the best thing for me was to just be a and anything that they said they needed to quickly get it done. But yeah, I wasn't I wasn't going to tell the medic how to treat the situation. Sure, sure. The medics were there. But yeah, but yeah, I think I would have felt I certainly would have tried to take more of a leadership role if I was alone or, you know, someone who was going through that. But yeah, they step back on that one.

Some interesting studies on like extreme fear and stress. And one of the things that I read was saying that adults, when you're under extreme fear stress, like the example that it was given in this book is like if you were in a plane and the cabin started filling with smoke, you know, life and death situation, that the level of processing

basically reverts to the equivalent of an eight-year-old. So like, essentially, like, you know, if you're in a plane that's filling with smoke and it's all full of adults, it's the equivalent of if the entire plane was full of eight-year-olds. And so it sort of quickly devolves to chaos And actually one of the things that's referenced in this book is in like plane crash scenarios, people who have read and studied the card, like the stupid card that's a near little flap are more likely to survive.

Really? Then if you don't read the card. So like my buddy Sam Sheridan who actually wrote this really, really cool book about basically just about survival. He's like, I read the card every time. He's like, even though I know it's the same shit, I always. read the card when I sit on a plane. Dude, the fucked up part, the most fucked up part about

this story is that all that dude's friends went right back into the water the next day to continue their jobs, man. Like, and that's fucking nuts, dude. Because, you know, like, how do you, how do you fucking just, you got to? I mean,

you're just forced into going back in there because that's how you make your livelihood, but man, that's wild. In America, we complain about micro aggressions, right? In the U.S. life is so easy that we complain because people called us by the wrong pronoun. I'm not getting political about that. But like when life's really easy, you make simple shit seem hard versus like my best friend got death rolled by a crock yesterday, but my family's not going to eat unless I go right back to that spot and catch some fish.

Pat, I was just, I was just texting you about fucking the guy who was grunting at the gym. slamming his weights down. And then, and I was just like, I could not control my rage and my anger every time he grunted, every time. And then like I, yeah, and then I was like thinking about how I just let that bullshit

fucking bother me so much. Like there's a chair on the side of the road that hasn't been picked up by the fuck it for like a month. And like just all this shit. And I'm like, I'm like, this is only ruining my fucking life. Like that's all it's doing. Like the fact that I'm letting this shit bother me, I want a goddamn strategy where I can just be like, nope, not getting angry. Fuck it.

Like, don't care. And it's usually booze until I have too much. And then it's the opposite of that. I think that there's a certain, you know, I've said this a lot. It's like, I'm terrible in a minorly bad situation. So like Verizon double charges me. It's chaos. Can't handle it.

I revert to being an eight-year-old. I feel like I'm pretty good in really bad situations. You know what I mean? Like there's a guy, you know, a guy, you know, maybe six months ago. I think I talked about it on the show, you know, pounding on my door at 4 a.m. wearing a Viking helmet. You know, I very quickly knew what I was going to do. I felt prepared.

But like, you know, the neighbor parks and he's blocking my driveway by a foot, it's the day's over. Days ruined. Yep. Yeah. much calmer than pat or eye. Do you let negative nonsense that society pulls on your ass fucking bother you as much as we do?

Yeah, but I often work alone in remote places and have no one to blame but myself. So, you know, you quickly, like, get tired of getting mad at yourself over something you forgot or whatever

and roll up the punches a little bit, but it's a lot easier to get mad at other people. Yeah, everybody's got their fucking version of this, I'd imagine. And anybody who's pretending or seems like they don't, they're the worst fucking offenders out there. They're just bottling it up,

pushing it down. Serenity now. Serenity now. Insanity later, gentlemen. Retep, do we have a jingle? Can you just play a random jingle? Because I think it's time for one of our weekly games. Ooh, yeah.

Top three. And DFL. Here we go. So this is a game that we play, Mark. You can go last so you have time to think about it. This is top three and DFL. What that means is you give your list of your top three favorites of something, and then DFL stands for dead fucking last.

The worst place. In this case, the category is places in the world that you have been. So it's your top three favorite places that you've ever visited, and then dead fucking last, the worst place you've ever visited. Retep, I'll let you go second since I came up with it. I'll go first. Okay. I've got my guaranteed top two.

I've got my guaranteed top two. All right. So first, I'm going to go with my definite favorite place I've ever been that absolutely blew my mind. It is Nook Fjord, which is in central Greenland, maybe closer to southern Greenland. Nook is the capital of Greenland, and there's a place called Nook Fjord, which is basically tens of thousands of little islands and inlets off the western coast of Greenland. It is incomprehensible how huge everything is. I mean, everything is so big that you'll be just like hiking towards something and you'll think like I'll be there in two hours and then you hike for two hours and it looks exactly the same. it's it's it just looks like something out of avatar world i recommend that everyone if they ever get a chance

in their life go see greenland because it it makes alaska look like a miniature it makes an arctica look like fucking downtown detroit greenland is absolutely incredible so that's my definite number one okay uh number two i was actually there with mark romanov uh hansong dong cave oh yeah in Vietnam. I think I went into that trip with a lot of buildup because I'd been looking at pictures of it for like 10 years and I'd always wanted to go. Yeah, you were talking about that well before you did it.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, actually going there, it was pretty amazing. What did you think of Hans Sandong, the biggest cave system in the world? He's just like fucking hated it. It's my DFL. Yeah, it's like not many landscapes.

get me excited. Right. But that was just next level. Unbelievable. The thing about that, too, like, not only did you guys go into the, you know, you did the biggest cave in the world, you went in there, you did the whole experience, somehow you got somebody to bring you a bunch of booze and food to have a birthday party in it. Well, yeah, we had porters.

We were, you know, when we went in there, we definitely had porters who made us all look like buffoons the way they would skip from rock to rock in their flip-flops in their fucking sandals but that is a breathtaking landscape there's a rainforest growing in the middle of a cave then number three is a place i haven't been for work i've only been for a vacation i've been three times i've been there with you retep the north shore of kauai in hawai yeah it is just set up it's an adult playground hikes waterfalls paddleboarding down rivers uh enjoying delicious cocktails by four o'clock every single night. I highly recommend the North Shore

of Kauai for vacation. DFL, dead fucking last. I'm trying not to be too shitty here. What's the worst? I know where it is. Brisbane, Australia. Okay. Now, we have a lot of

the outback, the bush. It's not. It is not the bush. The Brewsterers, we have a lot of Australian listeners, Mark. And so I'm sad to say Brisbane, but I think it's because I had such a bad experience. I went there for a weekend trip. But because I had no money, I had to take like an earlier flight than my friends. So I flew in and then my friends that were coming

to see me, because I was studying in Australia, their flights got canceled and all the air traffic out of Sydney got grounded. So I had a three-day weekend alone in Brisbane, got mugged. After I got mugged, I flagged down a cop who then detained me because he said I was trying to buy heroin. Took away my passport, kept me detained for about three hours. And then I finally got out of there, went and sat down at this little outdoor cafe to just get a beer and just calm my nerves after this, you know, having a knife in my back and then being detained.

And no sooner does that happen. I get my beer. I'm enjoying my first sip. And a party bus pulls up along where I'm sitting out by the sidewalk. And a guy pulls down his pants and spreads his butt cheeks open and presses his butthole up against the glass. And I swear to God I almost puked. Like it was really close to puking.

So I had a terrible weekend in Brisbane. That's my DFL. Routette, what do you got? All right. I'll be quick. So Kauai is actually mine. I moved it down to my third because you picked it. But dude, amazing.

There's a fucking hike where you basically hike along the coast. And it's a very long hike. And you go to this beach. You see a waterfall. you do all this shit. It's just, and it's where Jurassic Park was filmed, part of it.

It's great. And then my second one is, dude, and it's domestic. Just camping in fucking Yosemite is amazing, dude. Yosemite is fucking amazing, man.

Out of all the places I've been, it's right here, it's not far away, and I fucking love it. There's bears that. Have you been there, Mark? I've never been.

Yeah. And I've had, quite a bit of work in the surrounding area in the eastern Sierra. And I mean, that could be in my top three, too. The more time I spend there, the more I love it there, the more I'd love to have a cab in there and just... Do you.

Honestly, it's so much to do. Yeah. Awesome. And then my next is fucking Paris. I was only there for one night because I got fucked and had to stay in London for two extra days. And fucking London is like being in any town in the U.S. after you're there for two days and see all the shit. So I was bummed. We got there.

And then, dude, it was the middle of summer. We were right by the Notre Dame there on the river. And it was just the whole fucking thing, like people on the grass, boats going by. It was warm out. Fucking Notre Dame's all lit up. Fucking people playing guitar, drinking wine until like two in the morning. I was only there for one night. Sounds romantic. Who are you there with? I don't want to talk about it. But it was fucking amazing. So, uh, I loved it. And my, my dead fucking lass, as I wrote here, is Los Vangis by accident. I had a typo.

But Las Vegas is the fucking, I don't, say what you want about Florida. I wonder why. Retep? Wonder why? You say what you want about Florida, wherever the fuck else. Las Vegas is, it's a disgusting fucking desert where just people go there to get fucked up. And don't get me wrong, I've done it. I do it myself.

but the last time I was there I've been arrested there for bullshit Maste, Taste, but the thing that pisses me off the most was the one trip I took there where I got fucking pickpocketed and some fucking dumb bitch came up to me

I'm sorry, listen Listen, she fucking came up to me and she like was being drunk and I was like pushing her away and she was like being ridiculous and I didn't know like I was just trying to get her like off of me. I was outside the wind or something. And then I go inside

to the restaurant. I realized she had pickpocketed me and she stole, she tried to, she wasn't able to get my whole wallet. But she was able to get one of my fucking credit cards and my god damn driver's license. So I'm in Vegas now and I got to fly back

and I go to the fucking airport and I'll try to make this quick. But anyways, long story short, like I got to go through this whole rigumerole to get through because I don't have my fucking ID and I don't have a credit card. So they do this whole thing. And the TSA attempted to steal my fucking laptop,

and I called them on their bullshit. And it was flat out. Tried to steal it from me, dude, not. And I was hung over as shit. I was up until 5 in the morning after I got pickpocketed. And I fucking hate Las Vegas. If you like it, that's your thing. That's great.

I hate Vegas. All right, Mark, you've traveled the world. What's your top three? What's your DFL? Number one, I got to say the Azores. um archipelago in the north atlantic um portuguese uh the marine life there is just fantastic you get you know the water's thousands of feet deep and then you get these uh islands that that just shoot straight up and so it's kind of a big meeting spot for all these different um pelagic uh fish and marine mammals

and so forth um and the whole the whole culture's uh great there's just people playing and music playing their music on cobblestone streets until you know three a m multiple nights a week having a great time and everything's super affordable the uh scenery is breathtaking the water's warm it's just everything is great you know there's a lot of a lot of conspiracy theorists that think uh the azores is where atlantis was actually uh the legend of atlantis what was based in the aesors yeah i might have done an episode of tv about it last year and for National Geographic. Yeah, we're looking at the pictures of the Azores.

If you're not on the YouTube and you're just listening, we put a lot of fucking imagery in this podcast. Come and take a look. It's definitely amazing. Looks fucking incredible. Yeah, I was said I didn't get to go to that shoot. God, it looked just breathtaking. And the crew ended up getting rained out like four days in a row.

Sorry, they didn't get rain out. They got blown out because they were trying to go out on boats. So it was windy. So they just had like four consecutive off days to hang at this beautiful resort in the Azores. And everyone was like, yeah, that's one of the best shoots I've ever been on. This is crazy. Wow. What else you got, Mark?

That's number one. Got two more. Yeah, number two, I'm such fond of memories in Alaska. And it's, you know, it's not that exotic of the places I could name. But I've been there quite a few times. and including my summer after my freshman year at university. It was kind of the first summer in many years that I didn't have something to do. I didn't have like a summer job or a summer camp or anything and I wasn't worried about applying to a school.

So it was just wide open. So I was trying to figure out what I was going to do that summer. And so I told everyone I'm in a skinny dip to Arctic Ocean. And I had no plan. Hadn't thought it through. And so then, you know, school let out. And a few days went by and I got to do this. So I packed up my car and just headed north and just kept going north.

Oh, he drove. Holy shit. Yeah, it drove. So I spent about six weeks just camping all around mostly in Alaska. Got on research vessels way out into the Western Aleutians and finally made it all the way up to Prudo Bay for my skinny dip. But just endless exploring there. Endless camping and exploring in a vast wilderness that. is a you know fairly easy for me to do since i can drive there and speak the same language and

and so forth and just great wildlife especially that and the cat my and um and all that so very fond memories in uh in alaska nice number three um there's so many just awesome spots for wildlife and like i wake up in the morning and all i think about is filming wildlife so i'm to go a totally different direction here and say, um, Ireland. Because, yeah, I don't have, um, I don't like like people all that much. You don't. You do not. But no.

But if you want to have just like a great human experience, I've been Ireland a couple times and it's just just the live music and the people and how friendly they are. And, um, it's just a wonderful time, especially Galway. Very romantic little city. Let me ruin Ireland for you real quick. Yeah, please. The people are... The people are definitely nice to your face, but then they're talking mad shit behind your back.

I know an Irish guy, and I'm telling you, this is what they do. They're very nice. It's just like people from England, the UK. Then they get home with their family. My sister lives there with their husband now, and I know they're just constantly talking shit about me because I'm, you know, just whatever. American, this, that. This is what they do. Yeah, but who cares?

If they're nice to your face, you clocked the good experience, put it in the bank, move on to the next one. Who cares what they do when they get home? This is where I need that off switch. Boom, stop thinking about it. Had a great experience. No negativity here. Now, Mark, I have what scientifically has been deemed a very punchable face.

And I just always sort of assumed if I went to Ireland that a lot of people would just knock me out. Is that your experience? Yeah, maybe if you stayed in, like, Dublin. I mean, I did not care for Dublin at all. Yeah, gotcha. Loud, bad music and immature people and a lot of partying and can't handle their alcohol. Just not a good time.

So get out to the countryside and then it's amazing. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I was in, I was in Dublin. I was there for one day, one night. And again, it has that thing where I was just like, this is exactly like any fucking city I would go to in the United States.

I feel like I wasted a day of the trip, you know? Yeah. Yeah, I agree with you there. I think Ireland for me too, I mean, they have Atlantic salmon and there's a little marine life and so forth, but there's not really much wildlife. And so there's not even the opportunity for me to wake up and try to sneak out and like film something or go see something. It's like, I have to be fully present and just hang out.

And so that's refreshing in a way. Nice. All right. And then what's your, what's your DFL mark? You're dead fucking last. Yeah, that's a tough one.

Don't worry about offending people. Just go for it. Oh, wait. Blinking on the name of the small city, but where I went with Forrest and Mitch

for the crock special, the crock with the tire around its neck. Oh, yeah. In Indonesia. The amount of just pollution there was just

disgusting. It's just like you watch the, yeah. I mean, they're going over the, they're like driving their mopeds over their bridges, literally just as they're driving the moped, throwing a trash bag full of trash off the bridge into the water. Oh, God. You can routinely see that.

And then it's, you know, big surprise that we're there because an animal has trash around it. Right. And then there were a lot of political issues that Forrest was dealing with, but we weren't very welcomed necessarily. There's just a lot of politics and stuff. So it was like, we didn't really feel welcomed and it was super dirty and it was difficult to get to and we weren't there for very long and it was just a little stressful.

Yeah, it sounds like for all three of us, our DFL was based around a bad personal experience. Yeah. It can be tough to see that, man. Like, like, I loved both trips that we did to Madagascar. I don't feel like I ever need to go again. But also, like, you know, routinely you would see people. I mean, at one point I remember we were filming and we saw a dead dog floating in this little whirlpool of trash. And people were fishing just dropping their lines in this trash whirlpool with a dead dog.

And, like, you know, you see certain things like that and it's grim. But, like, in Madagascar, you also get out to, you know, out of the cities and see amazing stuff. And it's all, it all feels worth it and see cool wildlife. Yeah, that Indonesia trip I heard sucked from beginning to end. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then the capstone on it was, yeah, we got pulled back a couple days early because of COVID.

And the world was shutting down. So it was a big, it's not a good week. Yeah, that pooped on your experience. Dude, the thing about that you just said, though, about, you know, Madagascar and you're seeing the dog floating in there and stuff. Like, I think just in general, man, I, as I get older, I don't want to live in a fucking urban area. Like, L.A. is just tons of urban areas. It's just a sprawling urban area. And I used to love it.

Like, I love fucking being able to walk somewhere, go somewhere to a bar. And then COVID hits, man. And it's like changed me. Like, I don't need, like, okay, there's been a year where I wasn't going to a, fucking bar or anything. And I realized, like, well, what the fuck am I doing here? Like, everything was closed. I couldn't go anywhere. And I'm kind of just living in a place that is what you're talking about. I mean, I'm surprised I haven't seen a fucking dead dog floating in the L.A. River, except it's completely burned dry because we're going through the worst drought

in a thousand years. Why am I here, man? Come on. That's all I'm saying. Well, I think we should all relocate to Bend, Oregon or somewhere in Montana. We can sell our crummy condos and buy giant houses there. It'd be great. Mansions. Hey, Mark, it's been a absolute pleasure to have you, man. Thank you for coming on. Thanks for having me on. I think our listeners are going to find you much more interesting than Retepper I do.

Wait, what about to battle royal? No battle royal? I can't do it today. Got family in town. All right, just Brosner's know. It's on Papa P. His Instagram is at The Spiceman. Carry on, mate. Where can people find you, Mark, to find

like, cool shit that you've shot or follow your photography. On Instagram at Mark period, Romanov. And Mark Romanov.com. I'll try to keep it updated. Yeah, yeah, you're really good at that. You're very techs. You're very into social media.

Yeah. Yeah. But no, it is a great follow. Mark.com. Spelled just how it sounds. Like, you know, just imagine Romanov. He's like a guy from Siberia, and that's how it's spelled. But dude, Mark, thank you for coming on, man.

I look forward to our next adventure together. Retepp? Yeah. Me too. Thanks for having me. What should people do? First of all, they should go follow at mark. Dot Romanov on Instagram.

And then right after that, since you're on there already, go follow at Wild Times Pod, where you can find our podcast. You can find all kinds of cool videos on our Instagram. And, you know, all the shit. Find us. You know, go to the Wild Times Podcast. podcast.com forward slash info for all of the links to all of the YouTube

to the Patreon where we just posted bonus episode number four and there's a little teaser of that on Instagram people are loving you Papa P fucking just

woo woo woo yeah I'm a good dancer man I'm a good mover doing some shit oh by the way we teased it on the last one we have secured

our studio we get the keys July 3rd Retep and I are going to set it up it's in Santa Barbara mark so we'll We'll have to be over for a sleepover. Yeah.

But yeah, we get the keys to our new studio, July 3rd. We'll be, everything's going to be in person on real cameras moving forward after that. Super stoked. It's cool space. So get ready for just more banter, more bullshit. More banter. Special shout out. We have somebody helping us with a new TWT Clips channel on YouTube or we're posting some of the best stuff from the podcast over to 64.

episodes there are now. Tons of shit. That channel's going to be loaded. So if you ever wanted to send your friend some bullshit we talked about, you're like, yeah, fuck that. It's too much of a pain in the ass to send him a clip from a full podcast. The clip's going to be on TWT clips on YouTube. Love you guys. Take us out. Take us out. Do it fast. I'm trying. I don't know why it's not working. Quickish. Is it playing? What's going on? Nothing's happening. Here we go. Oh my God. I fucked it up. Here we go. You double. There we go. You double slampy to sneakby. Woo. Love you guys. Wild times. Live read.