Wild Times: Wildlife Education - TWT #81 - Bradley Trevor Greive Talks Adventure Beast & More!

Episode Date: November 1, 2021

You asked for it (and so did we)! BTG is back and more gregarious than ever! Enjoy, you rascals. Love you! Patreon @ https://patreon.com/wildtimespod All the link @ https://thewildtimespodcast.com

Wild Times. Here we are. It's the Wild Times. A very special episode, indeed. My favorite thing about this episode is not that BTG is joining us. No, no, no. It's that Retep is not here. That's my favorite part of this episode already. Anyway, this is the Wild Times podcast. I am your host, the broologist Fores Galante. Joining me today is an adventure bro, BTG, Bradley Trevor Greve, friend of the pod. How you doing, brother? Good, mate.

Good to be back. Even better that Retef's not here. I was a bit worried we wouldn't have a devil's advocate, by which I mean token idiot, but I think we'll get by. We'll try. And to mediate between these two buffins of the biological sciences, Mr. Patrick DeLucah, the broducer. What's up, Pat? Hey, pal. I'm happy to be sort of just the mediator between you two. I mean, you guys have a long-standing feud.

I think there's going to be sparks flying. It's four inches, but it's thick around. So I feel like, you know, I still win in some regard. It's all about the girth. That's right. As we know. So BTG, let's address the elephant in the room. And I'm not talking about you.

I'm talking about your TV show on Netflix. Has premiered Adventure Beast. How's the feedback, dude? It's an amazing show. It is not what I expected, by the way. Oh, really? Oh, really? Not at all.

I would ask you, what your expectations were, but I don't care. What I will say, though, is, look, it's come out really well. I mean, we're not breaking records. We're not Birdbox or The Maid, but we have made the popular on Netflix list in the first 72 hours.

If you haven't seen the show, Adventure Beast on Netflix, it's only been out since the weekend. It's worldwide on Netflix. It's going great. I'm getting a ton of love from our kind of people. So, Bros. And broologists,

Or all are just adjacent. The people who love wildlife and wildlife adventures are really into it. And the audience is just growing every day. So I hate to say this. It's a success. And if you bet against me, you can all get fucked. It's awesome, man. I've really been enjoying it.

It's funny. I think I texted you. You did. And I was like, hey, sitting down to watch it, pretty excited, going to binge it with my son. My son's two years old, by the way. He made it, or rather I allowed him to make it about three minutes. And I was like, okay, this is not for my son. It's like there's like a full blood wipe as somebody's arm is being ripped off.

And I'm like, you know, I appreciate the hell out of this, but my two-year-old's not getting to watch the rest of this. My daughter's the same age as your son and she's not watching it either. Look, it is listed as adult animation. And just to be clear, there's no offensive jokes in there. There's no profanity. No, I should say that. But we stuck with accuracy.

And some of the things that I don't, even though I love, I love some of the Disney shows, I love BBC nature, I love all these things. But what I dislike about them is how sanitized they are and all these veils of censorship. You know, we live in a world where animals live, die, reproduce, you know, and we wanted to get into all of that. So we are very accurate about what would happen in certain situations. And the other two things that drive me crazy about most wildlife shows, and I think we're all in the same boat here because we don't make those kind of shows, is that someone says they're going to look for X and they just find X. They don't see anything else.

And no one gets injured. I mean, tell me of a single production that either of you have been on where someone didn't get messed up in some way. Nope. Whether you slip out of a boat on rocks or whether you take a thorn or some wait-a-while across the eyes, or a set of rams horns to the nuts. It happens every single time. And so in Adventure Beast,

obviously the animated action is hilariously insane, but the consequences are accurate. If you mess with a bear, you're going to get eviscerated. If you, you know, every animal that you pick, just because you love animals, doesn't mean they love you back. That's right. Even though you're trying to talk about them

and be their champion for conservation, doesn't mean they want to be hand. And even if they don't mind it, doesn't mean they suddenly won't freak the hell out and just take a chunk out of you. So we've dialed that up to 11, obviously, had a lot of fun with it. It's not for little kids. Animals live, die, have sex, salivate, ejaculate on this show. But it is a lot of fun. It's 100% accurate.

And I think most people, even, maybe especially the fans of this show, are going to be delighted by the strange and, you know, genuinely shocking array of wildlife facts, which are a little. bit outside of what you normally hear we'll see. No, no question. If you're keeping it pretty close to as real as possible, you know, when I've been out in nature with you, you always have your cock out when you're looking for animals.

Right, right. And that's, you know, like you do water divining with a stick. So my extended penis draws me towards the highest concentration of dangerous wildlife. And that's just a gift that I have. Speaking of keeping it real and dangerous wildlife,

I got to ask you a question. So I'm two-thirds of the way through season one. So I got three, this is a three-part question. Did you actually have a beard at age 10? No. Oh, all right, damn it. I was definitely, but I remember, I remember, I remember being 11. I remember being 11 and playing rugby.

And there was a kid, his name was Eric Carrasco. And he was, he was actually, I had 11. I was 12, I think he was 11. He was a year younger than me, and he had a proper moustache. Yep, there you go. And I was very intimidated by that moustache. And I think maybe the seed for this glorious beard was planted by Eric Carasco, who was a fabulous athlete too, by the way, really ran the ball straight and hard.

And so I really went out on my way to try and hurt him, because I felt if I could take his power, I would also take his moustache. And it didn't work out for me until probably. 15, 16, the fuzz started coming in. Okay, that's part one. What's part two? Part two is, is it Billy or Bobby the Baboon trainer? Was he a real person?

He's a composite of several primatologists that I know that have been bitten badly by various primates. I mentioned that from the show before. I'm always been a little bit frightened of primates. I find them fascinating. But I think, you know, most primates are the white trash. of mammals and and they'll cut you with a knife after just

one shot of moonshine so you know I'm very I used the term frightened and I'll stand by it but very wary of primates and particularly the bigger ones baboons genuinely give me the willies but you've met Jane Goodall I've met Jane Goodall she's missing two of her fingers bitten off by chimps

now Jane Goodall Right the earth mother Teresa of chimps has her fingers ripped off, ripped off through the bone with a bite. Think about how much intensity. Remember, chimps have a jaw that's stronger than ours, but not by a lot. So think about how much

malevolent intent went into ripping off Jane Goodall's fingers. They wanted to do that. If that happened to her, what can we expect coming our way? So yeah, so Barry the Baboon Man is a composite of several primatologists

I know that have donated part of their person to Kent bow. Well, I think you, no, hold on. My third, he answered my third question, which was, are you actually scared of baboons? And, you know, then we can dig into that. But I think you just answered it because, yeah, baboons are, baboons are nuts. Well, that's what I was going to ask you for us.

Do you share BTG's sort of, not fear, but extreme respect of the danger of primates in the while? So, that's a good question. I should respect them more. I grew up with Chukma baboons in Zimbabwe, right? We have a lot of them. And I grew up with them my whole childhood. I had vervet monkeys as a kid. You know, we rescued two of them.

One of them chippy I write about in my book, blah, blah, blah. And we used to torment the hell out of the baboons. And I think I've told some of these stories on the pod. One of the things we used to do is there's a troop of baboons that lived on our farm. And we take Sazza, which is like cornmeal, and we put a rubber snake in side of it. So first we'd take Sazza and wrap it in newspaper and throw it to the baboons. And they'd furiously unwrap the newspaper and eat the Sazza. And you do that like three or four times. Then you take a rubber snake, roll it in Sazza, the cornmeal, and then roll it in the

newspaper and throw it out. And the baboons would get to it, furiously rip it out, and they'd bite it and they'd see the snake and they'd freak out and panic and one would faint. And I mean, we used to torment the hell out of the baboons because, sort of like BTG says, they're the white trash of the mammal world. So they're fun. mess with, and they'd mess with you back as well. In hindsight, when I think about some of the stuff we did, like we trapped a baboon on our houseboat once in Lake Cariba, baiting them in with a loaf of bread, I'm very lucky that I didn't get absolutely shredded. But, you know, I grew up with them, so I kind of always knew them. They were like a known idiotic danger that

you could kind of toy with. So I think it's a slightly different level. But yeah, no, they're They could be terrifying for sure. But as a teenager in Zimbabwe, they're like your raccoon here in the U.S. where you're like, oh, there's a raccoon in the trash can. I'm going to go throw it a banana, except there we have baboons running around. Now, see, that's an interesting comparison because raccoons and baboons are, you know, the majority of the troop are average size, some young, some all, whatever. But then you have a baboon zilla and a raccoon zilla.

And you get a big one that isn't taking any of your shit, and they can all kill your dog and whatever else. And that's, you know, that's the thing. And so the baboon thing is, firstly, you're an idiot for doing that. Secondly, it's wonderful that you didn't get messed up. But the other thing is that kind of behavior, which we've all done, that kind of behavior, it's often not us the big rough and tumble chaps who get punished for it. It's the little kids. And so when I was a kid growing up in Asia, we had lots of macaques. You know, pig-tale macaques, lion-tale macaques.

And they'd be around, we'd throw food to them. And I was never mean to them. But I remember two violent incidents, neither of which were provoked. One was my sister, who's a year older than me, one grabbed her hair through the fence and pulled her head into the iron bars, like really, really hard. and we had to, we grabbed and we couldn't get at it, and we had to grab a bunch of sticks and we were sort of jabbing it through this iron bar fence.

And the other one bit the nose off our friend's three-year-old daughter. Jesus. Holy shit. Yeah, so the point is that baboons, like all intelligent mammals, make a risk assessment prior to an attack. And

so if they think they can do you, they'll do you. And if they don't, they won't. But the thing that throws us off about the drunken white trash that is the Chaka baboon, it is that the mob mentality. Yeah, exactly. We could call it a pack mentality, but it's not. It's more of a mob mentality like people. Because when the switch is flicked and suddenly you get 50, 60, 100, 300, depending how the size of the troop is, it's all just going.

It's January 6th at the White House, but baboons doing shit that they would never normally do. and that's how they tear leopards to pieces. Exactly. And that's how they tear apart a hyena. Things they would never actually attack. And so even though the record of baboons killing people is virtually zero, they have attacked children, then they'll do it again. And chimps, in some cases, as you well know,

what's the name, Victoria National Park, whatever it is down in... Yeah. They hunt other primates, and they've been known to hunt kids. So you've got to be careful. But yeah, they do. They give me the willies because I know they're thinking just as clearly as I am about what they're going to do. But what they're going to do is very, very dark. And I do want to be clear, in case this is anybody's first time listening to this pod, obviously I'm not endorsing harassing wildlife or baboons.

It's just when you grow up and you're a kid and you mess with stuff. It's like catching a slimy frog and throwing it at your friend when you're 12 years old, right? Yeah. We all do it. It's just in Zimbabwe. it's on a different level. It happens to be, yeah, it happens to be animals that here seem incredibly exotic. Right.

And, but, yeah, I mean, that's, as you say, that's your, I mean, raccoon is a good example because it's an animal that's incredibly dangerous in close quarters if you get a big one that's ornery. Right. But at the same time, they're also mischievous and hilarious and into everything. Exactly. Exactly. So, no, I get it.

No one thinks you're a complete dick except for Retep, who's not here. Yeah. So I had, I rescued a vervet monkey when I was growing up, right? It was abandoned by its troop. We were tilling the field, and we found this little blue-colored vervet monkey, you know, shivering by himself. And we rescued him. We later found out three years later he died of heart palpitation. So his troop had actually abandoned him because his mother could tell him was weak.

Exactly, yeah. And Chippy was, for all intensive purposes, my best friend. I love this monkey. He used to sleep in the top of my mosquito net, like a bunk bed. I'd get out of bed in the morning. He'd hop onto my shoulder. We'd go to breakfast. He'd run in the oatmeal and pushing my dad's hair.

My dad would try and kill him like three mornings a week. I mean, we had like the most hilarious relationship. But the reason I tell the story is because chippy, and again, vervet monkeys are not like baboons. They're small. They're still mischievous, but they're shy, they're small, they're quiet, you know, they're not like a big chakma baboon. And chippy was still such, even with a defective heart and as a baby, when he hit adolescence, he was still such a troop animal. and he looked for who he could pick on that was weaker and younger to further your point, PTG. And this was my little sister.

So my little sister, Summer, is two years younger than me. And we obviously grew up in the same household. And Chippy never bit me once. I mean, you know, nibbles and things and like rough housing and stuff never bit me, never messed with my mom, my dad, anybody in the house. But my little sister, who was, you know, a foot shorter than me and two years younger than me, was his target, 24-7. He was on my shoulder and I walked into her room or she came into the playroom or something.

He would launch at her, start ripping her hair out, biting her neck. I mean, he just hated my little sister. And it wasn't because she was mean to him, nothing. She actually tried to like like him. But it was because she was the smallest and the weakest in the troop. And Chippy was like, all right, I'm going to establish my place as like one above her and just constantly belittle and degrade her. And yeah, anyway, needless to say my dad and my son.

sister felt the same about chippy. Well, that's the thing, that they're trying to ascend the social order because that gives them, at the genetic level, they know, that gives them greater access to food and sexual rights and territory, and so they work out where they are by who's beneath them and who's

above them. I tell you a trick that I learned in the Amazon, I've told you this before, but I was with a native Amazonian guy called Yuri, and we were up the Amazon Negro, and And we were at this, we're working with the Amazon Rangers, but basically their primary role is to capture poachers and the monkeys and the parrots that were capturing for the pet trade. Of course, they won't ever tell you where they got them, so you can't put in exactly where they have to be.

But they go through a quarantine place. Is Peru? Peruvian Amazon? No, this is Brazil. It's about three hours north of Manaus or northwest. Okay. Yeah. And so they had this quarantine island, one for parrots, one for primates, and they put them there for three months. if they didn't have disease, they'd start opening the cages for a soft release. And anyway, long story short, there was a woolly monkey there,

which is a particularly beautiful type of neural monkey. And Rattap! Hey! All right, I got to go. See you guys. I'll take over from here. Everybody can go now, except for BTG. We were just talking about the drunken white trash of mammals. And here you are.

I made it for five minutes. Pat, why do you look so angry? All right. because your connection is trash always is it like two plastic cups and string what the hell is that is it no good is it not working

well we can we can see you unfortunately it's not great what about now can you hear me now how's the move going give us a quick check-in and then we're gonna get back to animal stories tell us how you moves going is your girlfriend carrying the heavy boxes

while you do this is that what this is about that's what this is about the movers are uh the truck almost filled uh All right, fuck off, Pat. Fuck you, BTG. All right. You're garbage. Bye.

Have fun. It's not working. So, actually, that was the most lucid pretense ever been. Anyways, as I was saying, we were, we had this, there's a woolly monkey, a young woolly monkey that, by sheer coincidence, was born during quarantine. So even though its mother was released, it could have hung around and was doing the soft-release thing for its entire life because it was semi-domesticated by virtue of the fact that it had access to food. And most of the monkeys would gradually filter their way back into the rainforest.

And Wollies are naturally, correct me if I'm wrong, BTG, I don't mean to interrupt your story, but they're naturally pretty shy and elusive, right? They're not something you get very close to very often. Yeah, they're quite a robust monkey, but they don't tend to come down to the ground very much. And anyway, they're very beautiful, very dense fur, a little bit like an otter. Yeah, they're stunning. Anyway, this one was. was, as I said, by sheer chance, became semi-domesticated. Anyway, I was hanging around there for a while. I obviously hadn't shouted for several days.

I smelled like a monkey's ass. It befriended me. But it kept trying on this dominance thing and was biting me pretty hard. And at one point, split up on my thumb and so forth. And Yuri, my friend, indigenous friend, he goes, you've got to bite it back. You've got to bite it back hard. Oh, yeah. And I said, really?

He goes, it's the only way it'll respect you. So I grabbed his little skull and I bit his ear incredibly hard. And he screamed. He screamed like the second coming. And then he was fine. And he's just like, okay, you're my big monkey daddy now. And we got on great for the remainder of my tour. So, you know, you've got to learn how to connect with them at their level.

You can't reason with them. And giving them treats to try to win their favor, not like a dog. That's the opposite. It's the opposite. It just says, wow. You're propitiating to me because I'm some sort of God, you really are nothing. So you've actually got to kind of give the pain back in order to communicate that this monkey is not your boss. I mean, it basically, what you're describing is the exact process of American males in middle school.

I mean, yeah, or prison. Or prison. Yeah, but it's like, this is middle school. You've got five elementary schools all coming together. everyone, then there's about 75 fistfights in the first month because people are sort of establishing their place in the pecking order. And then it's all fine after that. Yeah. There's something to be said for that.

And that, well, that makes sense because we often think of many of these, even these top-level primates. And obviously the brain size and a primate can range from anything from a tiny lorice or a potter with a brain the size of a soybean through to, you know, a gorilla or orangutang. a gelada monkey which has a huge brain relative to its body size. So, you know, like people, the levels of intelligence vary, but in general terms, they're about as intelligent as a small child. So child politics, child conflict, child wars at school, if you can relate to it at that level, you'll probably do okay. That's funny. So did you make an Adventure Beast episode out of that? Do I get to see you biting the monkey in any of the shows? You know what? I didn't. I should make a note, if we're lucky enough to get a second season

of a Venture Beast, I'll put it in there. But there is a reference to it. So one of the highlights of that trip was dealing with Wakari's or Yulkaris, depending how you pronounce it. These are the ones that there are red, there are different types, black face, white face and red face, but the ones that I saw, the red face Wakari

is, again, a very unique monkey. It has, it's gifted, all monkeys mostly gifted in the trees, but this one's really special, like an acrobat, has a thick club-like tail, so it can't hang on to anything with it, but it uses it as a counterweight, which all tails work as counterweights, but in the air more effectively than any other monkey I know. So you'll see them doing a backflip

from one tree to the other and using their tail. It's like completely unreasonable. Like you can just jump it, but they go, oh no, I'm going to spider man this shit. And they love, they're actually, everyone was saying how impossible it was to get near them, I'll give you the tip. If you want to see a Wakari and you, you know, you sense them in the trees, get yourself a full, Brazil nut, okay? The full thing, which is about the size of a small orange, it's hard as hell.

Break it open, and then inside the segments, also like an orange, you stand a Brazil nut that you'd buy in a store, get your knife and split down the side of it to you get this perfect wedge of a nut. They're so hard to open, the Wacharis and the monkeys are throwing them from the trees,

and if you get hit in the head with that, you tend to stay down for a while. It's really hard. But they're so hard to open with the outside armor and the inner armor that if you pull out fresh Brazil nut flesh, you'll bring all the monkeys in the world to you. And I was able to get them to me to eat out of my hand

after about an hour, and then I'd sort of get them on my shoulder and then walk away from the tree. And once they couldn't jump to the tree, they would just sit there like a trained parrot and eat the nuts. It was one of the happiest moments of my life. So the Wakari does make an episode.

I think it's eight or nine as part of a story about animal smuggling. But it was a very special trip, but I recommend if you haven't done your time the Amazon, go to it, but also if you can volunteer to help the Amazon ranges repatriate these poached animals, it's a really rewarding experience. Yeah, and that's a citizen science program that pretty much anybody can do, right? You just sign up and go. Yeah. Just be fit enough to carry a pack for a few days. They hunt a lot of food along the way. We most, we, I say we,

other people, shot some fish with a bow and arrow, and we ate the fish and just had a great time. We lived simply, and it was really great. We even made cocktails, which we served in giant tropical flowers as cups. It was just a really fun, made a ton of traps, humane traps. I learned a lot of bush skills from them. I really recommend it. So one of my favorite parts, and I know this episode is not just all about your show, but one of my favorite parts of your show is the end credits, or I guess the after the end credits almost, where you and your niece are, is that your home? Where are you guys?

In the show? Yeah, when it goes out of animation and into real, whatever you call that. So it's, no, it's a set. It's a big set, it was across from Paramount, but it was meant to be modeled off my home. So it's like my home dot up to 11 with all sorts of, normally, obviously, when I thought it was your home when I first saw it, but I just, I couldn't tell.

It looks like it, but it's, It's, we're in the middle of construction now, so it doesn't look the same. But normally you see all the crap in the background. We've got the kind of adventure-ish bullshit that all of us have, you know, except for Pat, who whatever lives in a dungeon, apparently, on this show. But it has all that. So a lot of the props are just my props, which makes it even look more like my home because it's actually my stuff. But that was, yeah, the live action was fun.

And it was supposed to be a much bigger part of the show. It was supposed to be 30% of the show. But in the process of production, the tone shifted been from a kid's show to an adult show to a teen show, back to an adult show. And so by the time we finished the live action, it was pitched a little bit low.

So we ended up, and this was all directed by Zach Bornstein from Saturday Night Live. And it was very funny, and I love doing it. But now it's just a few special stings with real animals at the end. We had everything. Giraffe, yaks, big thousand-pound camels, lots of little critters.

I mean, it was, we did. I think we had about 70 different animals come through alligators. It was so much fun, so much fun. And amazed that no one died. I mean, I got stung, obviously, by scorpions about half a dozen times a day. But Denise, Cabanella, who plays my niece, Bonnie, she was so fearless. Oh, she's not your niece. That's not your real niece.

No, she's inspired by my real niece, whose name is Jessica. She's a geologist from Central Australia. But Denise is an actress, but she was so fun. I loved her straight away because first day on. set, she sees me getting the scorpions out. And then I had, I had, I had giant Africans, I had, sorry, I had emperors, I had, um, forest, giant forest scorpions. I had, uh, uh, giant hairy desert scorpions. And so I'm getting them all out and, because you don't want to use one too much, because they get tired and stress. So you, you know,

get about two shots with each, you put it away, you get another one. And the audience, I mean, this audience might pick it up, but most people can't tell the difference between one scorpion another. So I'm swapping out all the time. And of course, everyone, you know, and then you get zapped. It's not too bad. It's like a was sting. It's not great. I was going to ask,

I've always been curious about how bad a scorpion sting is. Down in Florida, you get them in your shoes, like where my dad lived in Key West, and you just see him skittering across the kitchen floor. So it's not that bad.

Some of them are terrible. Yeah. Some of them are very bad. You get a barked scorpion from Arizona and you're probably going to go to the ER. Gotcha. And particularly if you have any kind of heart condition.

One of the general rules of thumb for scorpions and is, and this isn't 100% accurate, but it's probably good to keep in the back of your mind, is that the lethality of their venom is inversely proportional to their size. So some of the biggest most

pincers in particular. Some of the most spectacular looking scorpions, like for example, the giant African or emperor scorpion, this is a big, big, big arachnid. I mean, it's huge. And it's about a big sting plus. You know, I mean, it's painful. No one ever felt better

after being stunned by one. But then you get some of these small ones from Australia and other places and they'll put you in the hospital. And if you have an existing condition, might even cause a heart attack. In America, most of the scorpions are quite small. But again, you've got the bark scorpion in the southwest that is incredibly deadly and painful.

But you also have the giant heritire, which looks more impressive. But again, it's like a wasp thing. I mean, it's painful. but, you know, it's not like, and all respect to Cody Peterson, who's always screaming because he's a drama student, it's not that, it's not that bad. It's not that bad.

I mean, I remember getting stung by, getting stung by a sonoran giant centipede. And again, they can be fatal if you, yeah, I'm going to say, that's not good, yeah. It's not great. They can be fatal if you're small or have a heart condition. Again, not great, but it felt, it felt like it was both,

incredibly painful and it felt kind of cold in my finger where it got me. And then it, and this will sound strange. I felt like there was a bell ringing in my finger and that lasted for about 20 hours, just less than a day. And just for those who listening, again, don't, if you don't have to pick these things up, don't do it. But here's my goat. I don't know what you use for us, but when I get stung by any venomous insect or erected, my go-to, obviously not high-level stuff like a funnel web or what's going to kill you. But, Anything of this sort of medium to lower level, what I do straight away is I take an antihistamine tablet and I take two ibuprofen. I drink electrolytes, so Gatorade or whatever you prefer.

And then I clean it and I wipe it down and if I feel any tingling, I put on a steroid cream. And I do that immediately and I've never had a problem and I've been stung or bitten by obviously a lot. My go to is Benadryl, hot water, sleep. So, take a bunch of Benadryl, wherever you've stung, put it in the hottest water you can tolerate to try break up the venom a little bit, take a nap. What about chicken spit? I know where he's getting this from. Okay, what is chicken spit? I'll buy it.

I can't remember. I just remember that we were advised to use chicken spit. Oh, it was in Vietnam. It was Vietnam. It was the big, what the hell is the name of those centipedes? have there. Well, they're the same family. They're still Scolopendra. But they have the giant forest centipede with those yellow legs. And then they also have a variety that actually can swim underwater, which is such a mind-bending thing to have a centipede come out of the humus of the rainforest

and then swim underwater like a submarine. That's crazy. There's no way to get away from that thing. Yeah, you were handling, forest, you were handling it was a very large black centipede with really like brilliant red legs. Yeah, yellow and red legs. Or yellow and red legs. Yeah, I don't remember the species anymore. I don't know my centipedes that well. But I do remember the local guys were being like,

oh, if you get bitten, you need chicken spit. And we were all like, well, how the hell do you get chicken spit? We never found out. They never found out. They were ready to get some for us. Is that a local term for something else? Like moonshine? Maybe.

Maybe. Yeah. I mean, because I know a lot of people when I was in the army that is like, Whatever you got any kind of tropical rash or a bite or a plant that inflamed, everyone's like, oh, you got to piss on it. Everyone's got a piss on it. And I was like, okay. And I just, I remember some guy, are you familiar with Gympie Gympie or Gimpy Bush? I'm not. It's the most halacious plant on the planet.

It grows in northern Australia. It doesn't look that bad. It's a tree-like shrub. and it has a large kind of heart-shaped leaf and it's often there's a particularly intake that loves it often has holes in it's kind of a yellowy green the leaves sit flat

so on a horizontal flat leaf and the bottom side is covered in fine pale hairs and you get that on you and there is nothing in this world in the plant world that compares to that pain yeah G-G-Y-M-P-I-E G-G-Y-M-Bush

Gimpy tree, gimpy, gimpy, these are all the names for it. It's just devastating pain. And here's the beauty of it. Unlike stinging nettle or other things that I have either get you for a little while, it stays with you for months and years. And a little bit like prickly heat, certain conditions on malaria, it brings it back. And so it's very hard. And I remember we were doing a training exercise there in the Army, a jungle warfare school,

which is full of this stuff. And there was a fallen tree. in the rainforest which we were crossing and you know how slippery those get in the tropics and of course having destroyed the canopy now you've got this secondary rainforest

that just just gimpy everywhere and one of the guys fell off the thing I don't know if it was a gunner or something with a ton of weight fell off and rolled in the gimpie bush that got him everywhere and we ended up medivacking and that's how painful it was

but everyone's like oh yeah you just piss on it and it does nothing it does absolutely nothing Except for the guy who enjoys pissing on people, it does absolutely nothing. Hey, Forrest, have you seen, so David, I talked to David Carr, who was the producer in the field when we did the pilot for Extincter Alive out in Tasmania. He's the showrunner of a show that I wasn't even aware of called Kings of Pain on History Channel.

Have you seen this, Forrest? Yeah, my buddy Rob is one of the guys, he's a herpetologist from Southern California. Bradley, I don't know if you know him or not. But he's a herpetologist from Southern California. He's one of the two hosts. And King of Pain is literally, it's funny. I didn't know David Carr was show running that. It's such a small world.

I know. One of the, I mean, it's literally just a show that's a knockoff of Coyote Peterson's thing. That's what it sounds like. It sounds like they just took Coyote's YouTube idea and made a TV series. That's 100% what they did. And they were doing it, you know, for science to rate the pain indexes of animals. And it's just, you just... The Schmidt Index, they're just going to take it up to 11 and just keep adding animals to it.

And then they're just, and they're literally just like, you know, it's like watching a train wreck. You're just sitting there waiting for them to get bitten or terrorized by something. But, and I'm curious to know why you brought this up, Patrick, but one of the reasons, one of the things I wanted to say about it, Rob now has permanent ligament damage in his left hand because he decided to take a bite from, I want to say it was a retic, but it was some big python, and maybe an African rock. And it's, you know, they've got interlocking recurved teeth that are just, just awful. And I've been bitten by lots of pythons and boas, but small ones.

And, you know, usually when it's a big one, I avoided it at all costs. Yeah. He went there and did it intentionally and took it, like, right here on the forearm. And he can't move like two of his fingers anymore. Thanks to a show that paid him, you know, $5,000 in episode. I was going to say. Medically destroyed. That is such a Retepean,

move. Did he, was there a secondary infection in there or did it tear a ligament? I mean, what did he do? No, it's severed one or several of the ligaments in his forearm that connect all the way. Apparently not. He's got permanent damage. I mean, he can move his fingers and whatnot. I don't see him very often, but, you know, he was telling me about it. He can move his fingers, but they're like, you know, it's like very limited. I don't really know, but it was enough that this one python bite on the upper part of his forearm has impacted the rest of his life with moving his fingers. That's wild. You know, for a show that I'm sure they paid him like $2,000 to $5,000 an episode plus hospital bills.

And that was, you know what I mean? It's like they got nothing out of it. Yeah. The reason I asked, and I'll throw this to you first for us, what is the worst pain you've ever felt from an animal? So this doesn't include the snake bite that you got when you were a kid. kid because I don't know how much of that you felt, but just the stinging brutal pain where you're like, oh my God, this sucks. What is your dead fucking last? It's one of two things. It's either a bullet ant

that I got in Panama, which I'm sure BTG, have you been hit by a bullet ant? Oh, yeah. Where I come from, we have a super version that called the jumping jack. And yeah, it's just a hypodemic syringe with six legs. I mean, it's horrific. Yeah, it's terrible. So the bullet ant was really bad. And then one that like I really had to suck it up and this aired of course was those parasitic wasps that we were being stung with in Colombia during that Amazon thing and I you know it was a it wasn't that each one was excruciating but it only it was temporary but it was the fact that you know at any given time you were getting like 12 to 15 stings per per five minutes so it was just this constant and they went away within two or three minutes but it was such a constant

pain and then it swelled up and it was super hot and bubbly so I was like it's fine suck it up because I wanted Mitch to keep filming and us to keep running but like on the inside I was crying a lot. No that would you get that giant because it's a big thing people think that the was thing is like a beast thing it's like a

separate thing it's not it's an overpositor it's a dual purpose organ and it delivers so much pain and it can just keep going and keep going and it's a dirty needle so you get shit in there as well and it often gets sticky and yucky and

no, a wasp, big wasps are some of the ugliest things for sure. BTG, what's your absolute number one most painful damage that you've taken from an animal? Well, like my bearded friend, unfortunately we have a fairly long list to choose from. So I might give you a different answer

on a different day. But I remember one that I just knew I'd made a very poor judgment. And that was in French Polynesia and we got a coconut crab. Oh, God. Don't tell me you got a coconut. I love the coconut crab.

I mean, I have done several Pat's math segments where I add up the squeezing power of a coconut crab. So we got a coconut crab, and it was a good size. It wasn't like a record, but it was a big coconut crab. And I shaved a little area on my arm, and I tried to induce it to just grab some of the skin. So I kept that out here. It wasn't stupid to give it.

a finger or not a complete, you know, one of my nuts. I wasn't, you know, so I just put that. Anyway, now we can all take a pinching, right? We can all take a pinching. And you know when you kid and someone grabs your nipple and says whistle and you struggle through it. But this, it was just so unbelievable. And I knew instantly I had made a terrible, terrible mistake because it compressed this piece of skin down to nothing, like down to a piece of paper. And it was very painful and I started at a at a biological level just like flight instinct how do I get this out and I couldn't get it out and I couldn't open the thing and I had I got a screwdriver two screwdrivers and we were in between the claws just trying to get it open and in the end the only

way I could get it out is I started messing with its cloaca and I started putting my thumb up its butt but you know in the back there like it was and it and it turned to take on my other hand. And what the net result was that the skin in that area died. I'm sure. And it became kind of an abscess. And then it sort of flaked off. But it just, it, I just, it was like, you ever see that stuff on YouTube? You can watch this machine press crush things. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was just like that. But a living creature. The power, I thought, oh, it's a pinch. How bad can a pinch be? Right. Um, answer is, it's really, really bad. And don't do it.

How much bruising did you have around that, like, just from... Well, that was just that spot that died, basically. It was just that spot that... Well, in two spots, and then there was bruising in the middle, and that flaked out as well. But it just died. It was just... It literally killed off whatever it touched,

just with sheer pressure. It was just... Wow. And it sticks out because it was so incredibly painful, but also, as I said, I just completely misjudge it. Oh, it's a crab. How bad can it be?

Right. Really bad. And so that was one of the ones that I remember because I just remember thinking, you are such an idiot. And that stuck with me. I was just going to say, so just a quick, so Belgian Malinois,

depends on what source you look at, but are often cited as the dog with the strongest bite force. They're often used by like police units and stuff. They're the dogs you often see running after a suspect who's running through a field and they take them down. And he's, You coach the units in Africa, they're very popular there.

Yep. The coconut crabs pinch force is between three and four times the bite force of a Belgian Malinois. Right. And concentrated into a much smaller area than the size of a dog's jaws. And I've heard that pound for pound, they're basically 60 times stronger than a gorilla. You know, so it's just insane. Anyway, don't be messing with those coconut crabs.

And I mean, there are plenty of other incidents that were painful, but that one, that one was just so absurd. I just thought, this wasn't, this wasn't, this was avoidable. I did it to myself. It's too bad. It's too bad Retepp's not here because I know for a fact that he would ask if they're called coconut crabs because they taste like coconut when you eat them. I don't think they're in a product. No, people do eat them. Indigenous Australians ate them, but I know that no one in French Polynesia is eating them.

And I thought, that's crazy because they're everywhere. And they're huge. delicious. Yeah, but I've heard they're quite tough. And also, you have an embarrassment of seafood riches everywhere else. I don't know why you would go for that. It doesn't seem like it would be, it's like in Africa, right? It's funny because here in the States, people are always like, oh my God, can you eat it, whatever? You know, people are eating fucking possum and raccoon and all kinds of things. And then you go to Africa where like basically all the animals are delicious. And most of the native people are like, no, why would we eat that? Like, that's absurd. Like,

Like, we've got Eland over there. Why would we mess with the Impala, you know? Sure. Yeah, it's so funny when you have that sort of variety of options in the animal world, and you're just like, no, I'm not going to eat these other things. Like, I'll just eat the good stuff. Well, also, in the case of coconut crabs, it's just like, you've got this incredible red tuna just outside the reef,

a whole bunch of incredible fish outside the reef and lobster and everything. But it's just like, why would I eat the giant robot hand that's eating my garbage. You know, because that's what it looks like. And it's just, every night we just hear this bin get tossed over, and you'd go in there, it'd be like three or four coconut crabs just, like, rip it open. Rowing the garbage. Rip it open cans and eating whatever was in there.

They're just ridiculous. So a lot of our brosters are much younger than we are. We are older gentlemen. They don't look up to us, but we've been around the three of us. We've all been around longer than the vast majority of our listeners. And so I came up with a new little game. I assigned you guys a task last night. We're going to debut a new game, and I think people will like this.

It's called Five Little Joys. So here's the idea. It's just five pro tips from, we'll go one at a time, we'll each talk about them, just little things that make your life better. Now, these are not heady pieces of advice that you're going to hear. on motivational speeches. These are just little... No, no, no.

If you start preaching, I'm going to mute you. I just brought a whole bunch of scripture, that's what I was going to do. So this is five little joys. Pro tips from people that are twice your age. Forest, go first. All five or just one at a time?

Just one at a time. We'll throw them out. Okay. All right. Making your bed. Now, younger brosners, no, listen to me. Hear me out now.

Younger brosners are like, I don't make my fucking. bed, why would I make my bed? And I'm with you. Until about age 27, I don't think I ever made a bed. Sure. But now I get up, I loathe making my bed in the morning. I drink my cup of copy first, then I go back to the bedroom to make the bed. But when I get into a nicely made bed at night when I'm tired, it is infinitely better than getting into an unmade bed where the sheets are all tangled up by your feet and everything's a mess. You don't know where your pillows are. You get into a nicely made bed. It's like you've just

gone to a nice hotel room. Okay. I love that. BTG, what's your first little joy that you can impart? I'm not, yeah. My first tip is to grow a small

herb garden. Oh, nice. I used to, I used to, years ago when I was in Tasmania, I used to do a weekend radio show and for like four hours on a Sunday. And one hour is about food, because obviously, you know, the man likes to eat. And I used to get famous chefs on and talk about things.

And I say, what's the smallest, cheapest things you can do to make your meals better? And they said, they gave me three tips. And one was use good salt and pepper. The other is use good olive oil. And the last one was use fresh herbs. And or herbs, as you would say in America. I don't know why you disavow the assonance of the letter H. Absolutely makes no sense.

But you can, you can, for the very, very small amount of real estate. One tiny pot or a tray. You can plant some basil and some time and rosemary, cilantro, unless it makes it sick. There's a bunch of different herbs in a tiny tray to window sill, spray it with a mist here every day. You add fresh herbs to whatever shitty meal or TV dinner you heat it up.

Right. And it elevates it. And it just makes everything taste better. It's like a little comfort you can elevate every meal It makes everything a little fresher, nice. It's super easy. Even Rattep could do it. Grow some fresh herbs.

See, this is the best segment we've ever done. Because thousands of people are actually going to do a couple of things. What a great idea. That's a great idea. You know what? Making the bed, thankfully Christina makes the bed every morning. But these are actionable tips. Good one, Bradley.

Here's my first one. Let's hear it. Treat. treat the flight Is someone taking a piss? Oh, I was just mixing some collier to my coffin, son. Oh, nice.

That boy. Treat the flight to and from any trip, whether it's a vacation or a work trip, but it's specifically vacation. Day one's going to be a flight. The last day is going to be a flight. Treat it like it's part of the vacation. Oh, interesting.

The flight is part of the fun. embrace it and treat it as such. Interesting. So if you get to the airport, start the party right then. Get there an hour early. Order a cheeseburger. Have three or four. I'm not two drinks.

Have three or four drinks. This is a good tip because I hate the fucking travel day. I get stressed out. I get angry. I'm struggling with people. Well, and most vacations are a week long and two sevenths of it are travel days. So you're just, you're shrinking a seven-day vacation. down to five unless you take my pro tip number one.

That's good. Forrest, what's your number two? Yeah, number two pro tip, calling something really fun work. So what you do, and anybody can do this. Don't think that I'm the only one that, or Bradley or S3 are the only people that can do this because what we do for work is cool. Anyone can do this. You tell everybody, you got work to do, you're busy, and then you find a way to make something,

to do something fun and write it off as work. If it's Patrick and I, and Patrick, you know this very well. Patrick and I were like, we got work to do. So we sit around, we drink 12 beers and we bullshit on ideas that we could make a TV show out of, right? That's work. But it's really fun because I get to hang out with one of my best friends and drink a bunch of beers and talk. But it's work, you know? I like this.

Maybe you're golfing and you're trying to sign some account or something. I don't fucking know what job you do. You're out golfing. It's fun. But call it work. Don't lie to your stuff. Don't lie to other people. Just call it work.

It is work. So find something really fun. Call it work. I like that. Because it's about mentally, because a lot of people who are busy or successful tend to beat themselves up for the time that they're not working. It's just sort of beaten into our heads that we have to be so focused.

So yeah, I'm outgolfing, but I'm working. I love it. But you're working. Exactly. It's a bit like your airport thing. It's just a mental way of looking at something that you're doing. Call it work. I love that so much.

This is nice shifts. All right, my next point is the general advice and the field and so forth. And it's like, it's this. Never buy a knife that's bigger than your dick. Okay. Don't do it. As soon as, if you see a guy with a big knife, he's compensating. He doesn't know what he's.

There you go. So that's this forest knife. This is my actual field knife. It's just a short blade. nice and thick SV30 steel doesn't have to shopping it all the time and never buy a big knife you're only going to stab

yourself in the leg with it at some point it's going to snap at the tip it's just useless that the whole buoy story is just a drunken bum stabbing people in a bar it's all bullshit don't get a bowie knife if you're serious about Fieldcraft you buy a hatchet

hatchets are the tool I have as Pat I have a ton of hatchets I use them all the time. I keep him in great condition. This is called a small forest act. Obviously, is a big guy. This is actually a small forest act. It's bigger than a hatchet. I keep it in a beautiful condition. This is only been to the field once. I clean it when I come back. Here's the, always get a flat back on the head. Now it's a hammer for putting in pegs and smashing stuff. You can not just, it's a wonderful tool. It's good for blazing.

Plus, if you need to get up a soft wall, so not obviously hard rock, but certainly lime, stone or clay, you slam this in the side, it becomes a step, same with a tree, all your traps and all your fieldcraft, everything you can do with a knife, you can do it better with a hatchet. So get a hatchet. I prefer, I use a lot of Gransfors Brooks hatchets, but I don't give a shit. There's plenty of good ones out there. Get a hand-forged one. They're not expensive.

You can get a good one for 150 bucks, and it will last you a lifetime. So don't buy a knife bigger than your dick. And if you're serious about Fieldcroft, get a hatchet. I like that. That's a good one. All right. My number four is similar mental trick. But this is get an expensive looking.

It doesn't have to be expensive. Get a nice glass decanter. Something that would look appropriate, let's say, in the background of an office of the show Boardwalk Empire. Okay? Get a nice glass decanter and fill it with your run of the mill, 29, 9. bullet bourbon or whatever bourbon that's your daily sipper or not very expensive. This is not about tricking your company into thinking that you're fancy. This is about how you feel when you pour your whiskey out of it.

It makes you feel a little special like you're a little fancier than you are. Like you're really treating yourself good. It's just something that I've been doing for the last year. And it's really brought a little joy to my life. There you go. Nice. Very nice. Forrest, what else you got?

This is probably my most diabolical and cynical piece of advice. It is something that makes you feel better than everybody else, which is, it's just a wonderful feeling. It's when there's two lanes of traffic and you know that the highway is going to split. You don't line up in the long traffic line. You stay in the parallel lane, skip the whole line, and then slow down right before the exit, turn on your blinker, wait. for people to part and jump in. And you're just like, yep, I saved eight minutes of my life and I'm better than you. And I, you guys didn't think of this and I did.

And I know this is a shitty thing to do, but I'm doing it anyway and I'm going to embrace it and feel good about it. You are so L.A. You are so L.A. I don't live in L.A. I hate L.A. Exactly. It just feels so good. You like, you put your arm out. They let you into the lane. You look back at that long line of cars that you just.

just avoided and you're like, yep, I outsmarted all these other people. So if I can just a quick, a quick aside, I'm, I tend to be late to things. It's a problem I have. It's rude. It's a behavior that I abhor and other people. But I'm often late. And very early in my career as a lower level producer, I was given a big opportunity by a woman who turned out to be like my mentor when it came to producing. And it was to direct a voiceover session. And she said, she looked at me in eye the morning before and said, you can't be late because she wasn't going to show up. And I said, I know. I said, I won't be. I was running terribly late. And I lived in Sherman Oaks, and there's a horrible freeway split where 101 you have to merge onto the 405 South. And I was so much.

Exactly one I was thinking of, by the way. It's one of the worst ones in all of Los Angeles. It's so bad. And I never do what Forrest just said. And it's very difficult to do because people who make that morning commute are like banded together. We're not letting you in. And I was so freaked out and worried about fucking up this opportunity that I literally, my only thought was I have a really realistic from a movie set prop gun. And I was like, I have to bring this in the car and use it to get in. No, no.

And so like, you know, as I was like pulling up to do the merge, I was like, wait a minute. Like that's a felony. You'll go to prison. I didn't do it. That is a crime, sir. Yeah, but that was my thought. I was late. I was chastised, but it all worked out in the end.

So your next advice was carry a prop gun? No, no. It was just an aside. All right, BTG, what's your number three? Do you remember back in, like, the 90s when everyone was getting shot on the 10? Yeah. And people, the road rage, and it was just people were shooting everybody. It was the thing.

I had a crash in a rental car. I rear-ended a Volvo because I was trying to navigate with a map in my watch because there's no GPS back then and no mobile phones and abuse. I thought, wow, I'm going to be shot by a Volvo. This is not how it was supposed to go.

I'm going to, okay, my third piece of advice starts off general, but then I'll get more specific. And this is for young men and women, but everybody, but certainly as a young man, I did this and it changed my life.

Learn how to cook. There you go. Take cooking lessons. I've gone through, I did home economics. I did cooking at school to meet girls. My best mate and I are like, do I want to make a piece of shit birdhouse in wood shop?

Or do I want to meet girls? So we were the only two guys that went and did what they called those home economics. And it was fantastic. The only thing that ruined our plan was, unbeknownst to us, my best friend's sister graduated as a teacher and took over the class. And she was 100% onto us. And so she split us up and we didn't have great success. Having said that, we were never going to have great success.

But I learned the fundamentals of cooking. And then when I left the army, I didn't want to just eat slop anymore. I took French cooking lessons. I went to another cooking school. It was a lot of fun. I learned the basics. Now I can make a good meal. At home now, a little one, I do most of the cooking and I enjoy it.

So learn how to cook is the broad thing. No, it's a good one though. Even before that, what I would say is learn something that makes you feel happy. Learn this one dish, a simple dish that makes you feel happy. And the easiest one I could think of was pancakes. Learn how to make pancakes from scratch. Okay. And I'm going to give you a really simple recipe that I use.

It's so easy. So write this down or rewind it and play it back. And this is enough for one, smallish person. So I double this for myself and I triple it if my wife and daughter are eating. So it's so easy. One cup of plain flour. Okay. Two tablespoons of sugar.

This is the key thing. Two teaspoons of baking powder. So go and get your almond ham a baking powder, and that's what makes them fluffy, okay? So two teaspoons of baking powder, half a teaspoon of salt, just a pinch of salt, makes a big difference.

One cup of milk. So same, whatever flour in, that's how much milk you put in. And then two decent slabs or two tablespoons of butter. You melt that. One egg or two. two egg, it's up to you, mix it all together, and you're golden.

Couldn't be any easier than that. Flower, sugar, baking powder, salt, milk, butter. You mix that all together. It'll taste 20 times better than whatever shit you do in the shake and bake stuff, the instant's up from the supermarket. So if you can make pancakes from scratch, and then you put on that whatever you want, bananas, maple syrup, learn how to make pancakes from scratch, and every weekend becomes special. Simple tips.

These are called Little Joys. my number three is sort of another mindset thing as an older guy who made tons of financial mistakes when I was in my 20s. What I would say is feel free, spend your money on food and travel, never regretted. I've never regretted a cent I spent on food or travel. Find other places to save, right? So like that. I like that tip.

I've never looked back and been like, yeah, I'm really glad when I was 27, I splurged for that pair of jeans that I don't even know where it is now, right? Right. But I'm like, oh, that road trip was amazing. Or, like, I'm so glad we went and hiked around Kauai. Or I remember expensive meals that made me nervous because I had spent the money. I was like, why did I spend $200 on that awesome meal when I was in New York City for a night? Now, when you look back, food and travel are the two you'll never regret.

That's a good tip. I like that. It's so true, though. And people get in their heads about it. They're like, oh, I can't spend. that on that dinner, blah, blah, fuck it, just do it. Who cares? You'll be fine. You'll be dining out on those dining out stories forever.

Mind you, it does seem I want it coming from you and your true religion leather pants, but I respect it nonetheless. Good point. Forrest, what's your fourth tip? All right, so if you're like me, I'm very, I have problems with self-control and I'm very impulsive, okay?

If I'm being healthy, if I'm on a bend, if I'm on like a health bender, won't touch a piece of candy, you know, no sugar, nothing. If I'm going the opposite, I'm like, yeah, I'll have two burgers for dinner, fuck it. Um, you know, so I found, there's a helpful tip, put a treat on your actual grocery store list. So when you're going to the grocery store, you're like, I'm going to get a snickers. And then instead of walking around the grocery store and piling in candy and sugary cereals or just picking up plain skinless, boneless chicken breasts, you're like, all right, I'm going to buy a normal amount of groceries and one treat for myself. And you look forward to

that treat. You write it down on the grocery list. You're excited about it from when you write it down to you get back in the car and you start eating it on your drive home. Love it. Love it. Yep. BTG, what do you got? You got two more. All right. My number four is invest in your feet. Good one. I learned this as a soldier, you know, looking after your feet, good socks, good boots, looking after your boots. That's a good one. Your feet embrace the earth.

They take you everywhere you're going to go in life. Look after them. And so that means buy fewer shoes and better quality shoes and maintain them. I can look at someone and in two seconds know they're an amateur in the field by what they're wearing on their feet because they've got all these fancy Gortex bear grills, fucking padded pants and bullshit. And then they've got a pair of some sort of modified sneaker. and it's just like, you're not going to last a day out here.

What's your go-to? I mean, I know it's different for different environments, but is there a brand that you love? Yeah, I mean, there is and there isn't. I mean, I like the Arteric's winter boots. I think that I wear those in Alaska all the time. When Pat and I are up there, I went through two pairs. The early version, the rubber was pinning off a little bit.

But, no, I like the Arteric winter gear, and then I got to tell you, I use a lot of military surplus boots for desert conditions. And in desert, what you want is a softer sole that's thicker, is going to absorb the heat and take the pain out with the rocks. I always rip out the inner soul, and I put in an aftermarket higher quality one. Being a big man and a heavy man

and having had a lot of knee surgeries and so forth, I don't want to get additional pain fatigue from jarring through my ankles and my knees. So I put in a, you know, a $20-30, decent, really nice pair of aftermarket inner sole. But that's getting to my broader point, which is there is no all-purpose boot. That's just sales bullshit. 100% percent.

You want a wet and cold boot. You want a wet and cold boot. You want a hot desert boot. You want a jungle boot that's self-clean that has vents for the water to come out when you walk through a river. So investing your feet, it should be the most expensive piece of gear that you put on when you head out into the bush. If you cheat on your feet, your whole expedition is going to go down the toilet. It's a hot trek. It's...

Knetrek boots. I don't know if you've ever tried KanaTrek's BTG? I know. I like Tentrix. Oh my God. I love... For desert stuff. It's not...

And mountaineering as well. Yeah, but they're too light for the cold and wet, but they're great for the rocky and the hot. For the rocky desert stuff, which is where I do the majority of my stuff. Yeah. I love my... And they're $400 for a pair of boots, but you have them for 10 years. Instead of paying $60 a year, you know, it's the... I love them.

Well, I learned something from you for us. They're all like that. When we were doing the snowy, the Rocky Mountain Wolf, because, you know, the cold toes can ruin a fucking day, man, especially when you're, you know, 16 hours. And that's all you can think about. I, you do, you do muck boots in the snow. Yeah. Yeah. I like muck boots and thick, thick socks because they stay dry no matter what, you know, like gum boots, BTG.

They stay dry no matter. Yeah, gumboots. Yeah, well, well, well, wettons, whatever to call them. Wellingtons, exactly. Yeah, they stay dry no matter what. You can do, you know, if you get a size up a bit, you can get like four layers of socks on so your feet stay really warm. You can buy insulated ones as well. But yeah, no, I love muck boots for the snow.

You can get, you can get a high level one. There's a number of British companies do them, and they actually have a steel tang in the soul. So they're a little bit better on the rocks as well. No, no, no. If I was, I 100% agree. They're fantastic. In fact, when we were in Alaska Pat, you had to look at all the Klingat people. That's what they wear.

everywhere. I know. And I don't know anyone who's more suited to those conditions than they are. So, you know, I respect that. But no, good point. But definitely choosing your boots, people have one pair of boots, it's insane. You're better off to have one pair of pants than one pair of boots. Agreed.

Mine is, this is another food one, sort of touches on BTG's herb garden. Buy a $20 battery-operated pepper mill. I put, I mean, everything I eat, if it's just a simple fucking hard-boiled egg that's out of the fridge, a shitty thing that I microwaved, whatever, you get some good peppercorns in there, give it a little juzh. It makes, pepper goes great on everything, but not that shitty stuff that comes out of the shaker. A battery-operated pepper mill will change your entire kitchen game for $20. It's like grinding your own coffee. It's like another level. The flavor, you get a flavor bounce.

I love that. No, I love that. And it's, it's like your own dickhead waiter at the restaurant. Exactly. Do you want some pepper? Obviously, I want pepper. I'm holding this. So it's, you know. All right, Forrest, what's your last little joy? My last little joy, and this is one that it's hard to do. I'm preaching something that I only get to do very, very rarely. But it's something I love more. Every year I love it more and more. And it's something. I can only do maybe once or twice a year, and it means the world to me. A hammock nap.

You find a nice hammock, and you take a nap in it. Usually, it has to be a warm environment. Don't ever spend the night in a hammock. I don't believe anybody that says they spend a night well in a hammock. I've seen people do it. I can't stand it. But for an hour, 45 minutes, hour and a half nap in the shade in a hammock,

oh my, I am dead to this world. An earthquake. The ground could split underneath me and envelop the, planet, a meteor could strike. My whole family could be killed. I wouldn't budge. I wouldn't notice it. Nope, not a chance. If I am napping in a hammock, I am in pure ecstasy. Take a little, take a little hammock nap if you can get the opportunity. Wow. I was with you until your family died. Yeah, that's a little extreme. I thought, wow, that and the cutting in and the traffic, I'm like, no. Nope, this guy's out. Yeah. I have a hammock at the back.

I 100% agree. And just, you know, one of those ones. We don't have big trees at the back, so I just got one of those bracket things. And I couldn't agree more. I get a good book. Right. I read the book. I'll ask maybe 15 minutes.

Yeah, let me. And then I just look like someone, like a harpsil hunter just clubbed me in their head. And I just down. It's the best. It's so good. And you wake up feeling refreshed. It's not like when you get into bed for a nap and then it takes you three hours to wake up again. I don't know. Just a hammock nap. It's just the best. Good one.

All right, PTG, what's your last one here? This is going to go back to more of a mental state thing with some practical tips, but I think it's really important to go through life with a mindset that you are going to discover something interesting that day and to wake up assuming that you're going to see something cool you've never seen before. And if you think that, then it's much more likely to happen. And you've seen me or heard me criticize, you know, a lot of cryptid shows where they don't find anything at all. They don't find Bigfoot, obviously, but they don't even find anything else. And that shows why it's completely fake, because you can't really be in the forest or anywhere else and not find things you haven't seen before. I remember we're in Madagascar,

and we were looking for all sorts of the usual exotic lemurs and reptiles and whatever else. and just found this massive forest stale on a tree. And it was just really fun. And that's part of the joy of life is discovering new things, new to you anyway. And so one of the ways I remind myself of that, and I encourage you to do this, is I just carry a coin with me,

just a standard coin. This is a quarter, an American quarter, 25 cent piece for those who are not Americans. And it's a standard coin. Everybody knows what it weighs and how wide it is. And I carry this. because I have a dream of discovering a new species of beetle or a new species of insect.

And 10,000 new insects are identified on average every year, every year. And I want to be one of those one day. I want to be the guy that discovers this new thing. So you have a coin, you see the bug, you put the coin down beside it, you take a photo with your smartphone, and now you have a scale reference that means something to be verified by somebody else.

And so it's a simple tip. carry a coin is a frame of reference, but mentally it tells me that today is going to be a good day. I'm going to see something I've never seen before. And it doesn't matter where you are. In the middle of a busy city, in the middle of a desert, in the middle of a rainforest, halfway up a glacier, it doesn't matter. That mental state of being on a journey of discovery, of being some kind of explorer, it makes you happier and your life because you know there are surprises waiting for around the course. And you're ready for it, right? When you have the coin, it means you're anticipating.

So even if that anticipation lasts 10 years, it doesn't matter because you're still anticipating it. You're going to be, and that's how life is, right? It's as I say, the Army, you know, prior preparation prevents piss poor performance. Having that preparation ready, mentally puts you in the space to succeed. And it doesn't matter if I don't get it today, tomorrow, whatever, it's going to happen. But, you know, between the three of us, we've all seen things that we've never imagined we were going to. We didn't go there for that. I remember coming across a rough scale news.

in Alaska, you know, one of the most deadly neurotoxins in America. It's just, and of course, it's so poisonous that it didn't bother to, it's just like, yeah, whatever, pick me up, fool. And I was wearing gloves. And I was just like, this is so cool. I'm there to track bears. And I had this happy moment with this incredibly deadly neurotoxin-filled newt. I just thought it was the best.

And you know what? The other day, I don't know if you followed this story, I was thinking you guys immediately, because it was a perfect extincter alive. the new Holland mouse, which we haven't seen for 17 years, I posted about it, yeah. Just popped up on Flinders Island and Tasmania, where I'm from. And this is a gorgeous little native Matsupil mouse. It's basically a marshmallow on legs.

And it just bang, I'm just like, oh, that's so cool. That's the kind of little thing. It just brings you so much joy. So, yeah, that's my five. That's a good one. Love it. I'm going to even go deeper than BTG just did. Pine-scented candles.

What I want you to do is there's a place in L.A. called Home Goods, which is like a much cheaper version of like a Pier 1 imports. I've got one right over here in my garage. They're $7.99 each. The great thing about a pine-scented candle is, you know, you live inside. Like I grew up in the Northeast. We had tons of pine trees everywhere. Right. And it's one of the things that I really miss. And when I see a neighborhood in L.A. that has pine trees, I'm always, like, very jealous that people can afford those houses because I can't. But you just keep them with the lid off. You don't even have to light them. And you walk into the – every time I come into the garage now, I get a little whiff of pine. And it makes me feel like I've done something outdoors, even though I haven't yet because I'm stuck inside, you know, on my computer. I have one on my desk in my office. It's just an absolute treat. It's a year-round item, not only at Christmas time. Treat yourself to two or three pine-scented candles, leave them in places around your house, leave the lid off.

It'll help you connect with the outdoors a little bit when you're inside. Very nice. Very nice. I may have one rule with candles, and that is I don't want any candles that smell like food. Oh, yeah, that's weird. I just get hungry. Is that even a thing?

Do they make food? Yeah, pizza candles? Pumpkin pie, and I just chocolate. And then I just, you know, just the digestive juices, just corroding my visceral cavity. My favorite one, when I used to go to hospital, obviously I've been there many, you know, 20-something one time for surgeries, when I come back and I'm all messed up and I can't move and I'm bleeding out of my butt.

What I like is I like tube roses. And you can get tube rose candles or roses of the valley. Smells so fresh. And again, you feel like you're outdoors a little bit. You know, like when you drink Diet Coke and you get that chlorine out of taste, makes you feel like you've swung 50 laps. Yeah, yeah. It's a little trick, and it just feels good.

But I love that. I love that pine smell. I love that idea a lot. There you go. Let us know, Brozner, if you loved or hated this segment. Also, let us all know if you try any of our little joys, and if they bring a little joy to your life. Forrest, we got to wrap up soon here.

Any closing thoughts? No, it's, you know, my closing thoughts are, I'm super stoked to have BTG on on the show with us. Loving Adventure Beast, I really am. I'm not just saying that. I'm four or five episodes in. It's really a lot of fun. I love the blend of humor with, you know, wildlife knowledge.

And that's what's great is you get to, you don't have to be a wildlife dork to watch it. You can just want to sit around and watch something for the fun of watching it. And you come out of there going, wow, I just learned something about Numbat mothers or whatever it happens to be. So, yeah, no, thanks. Thanks, BTG for joining us. a pleasure to have you. And one of these days, we got to all figure out a way to get out into the field and do something together. Oh, for sure. Well, absolutely pleasure to be here. I look forward to coming in the podcast all the time. I'll be back. You're in for a treat virus,

because episode five, I think, is my favorite. It blows up the misconceptions about wildlife sex and gender, which is hilarious. Because most of us just awkwardly sat through sex ed at school or with our parents or some of us at Sunday school. And we learned all this bullshit mythology stuff. I was going through my ancient Greek books and seen some of the observations of early field biologists from, you know, from, you know, a thousand years ago. And they had identified some of the things that we know today.

You know, like female hyenas have the false penis and false testicles. And the females engage in, you know, conalinguists. And it was just all these things, they didn't have it exactly right, but they knew kind of what they were seeing. But in their mind, they went, oh, the females become males.

And now there are plenty of animals that do that. You know, Ribbon Mores all start as males and then become females. Rass is all kinds of stuff. The biggest, rass, the biggest clownfish go from male to female. Group can go male, female, male, female, as often as they want. But it was just, I think it's my favorite episode just because so many people are shocked that how queer the planet is and how things really are. It's a lot of fun.

So you're in for episode five. Nice. Thanks for the love about the show. Congratulations on your new show. which is awesome. Oh, thanks, and I just can't believe, this is our year.

I mean, we get shows coming out everywhere, but Ted's not here. This is the best fucking day ever. Anyway, love me to see you both, De Luca. Thanks for having me on.

Of course. And just, I love to come back on and whenever you'll have me. I just love it. Yeah, man. And check out Bradley at Tasmanian underscore Grizzly

with two Zs. It's a great Instagram. Follow. Obviously, Forrest, you probably already follow. if you're listening to this, because how else would you have found this show? Good point. And if you like the podcast, we'll put the link to the Patreon, where we do four extra video

podcasts a month and an AMA and all sorts of shit. Yeah, let's all get together and hang out, you know? We should do it. Yes, 100%. We must. Let's do it. Let's get some drunk white trash monkeys and have out of it. I think we will.

Bro bananas at Retev. Yeah. All right. We love you guys. We'll see you next time.