Wild Times: Wildlife Education - TWT #93 - Coyote Peterson Talks Stings, Favorite TV Moments & Career Advice

Episode Date: March 28, 2022

Extinct or Alive host Forrest Galante and Papa P are joined this week by the King of Stings himself, Coyote Peterson! Coyote has been immersed in the wildlife field in a few different ways, so this episode is a GOLD MINE of info for wildlife nuts (we’re looking at you, brosteners). The Wild Times gang chat sting pain reviews, favourite memories from Brave the Wild, Coyote’s TV show, magic moments in Extinct or Alive, and go into how you can get into a career with wildlife. Don’t be like Retep, don’t miss this one. Enjoy, brosteners! TWT #93 - The Breakdown 00:47 - COYOTE PETERSON IN THE HOUSE 01:47 - Coyote Peterson as “the guy who gets bitten and stung” and Forrest Galante as “the extinct animal guy” 03:20 - How Coyote Peterson became the King of Stings 5:40 - Forrest’s career advice from Joe Rogan 6:45 - Coyote Peterson on turning Brave Wilderness on Youtube and Brave The Wild on TV 9:36 - “If Steve Irwin had the crocodile, Coyote Peterson had the common snapping turtle” 11:08 - How and how NOT to hold snapping turtles 17:17 - Forrest Galante thinks Coyote Peterson is a F***ING genius 18:15 - Coyote on Youtube vs TV 20:30 - Coyote Peterson gets stung by the Cicada Killer  23:28 - The King of Stings coming out of retirement?? 23:50 - Execution Wasp and Giant Hornet vs Bullet Ant 25:23 - Coyote Peterson’s gnarly sting from the Execution Wasp  27:15 - Coyote’s favourite memory from Brave the Wild: Pantanal Jaguars 29:07 - Forrest Galante’s best moment from Extinct or Alive  30:15 - The Broducer’s favourite memory from Extinct or Alive: Forrest sniffs green jungle powder 31:10 - Forrest geeking out about Australian Wobbegongs 34:25 - STORY TIME: 19 year old Forrest Galante gets bitten by a lemon shark (kinda) 37:56 - Pat’s pre-BR game: Forrest Galante vs Coyote Peterson 39:26 - Forrest pitches his top bucket list expedition 41:10 - Coyote pitches his dream expedition 43:15 - Forrest is scared to visit remote Papua New Guinea (but would 100% do it, no question) 44:56 - What’s next for Coyote Peterson? 48:57 - How do you start a career with wildlife for real?! 52:28 - Broducer Pat goes to Yellowstone 54:38 - Forrest is ‘dollar store Coyote Peterson” 1:01:13 - BATTLE ROYALE!! Classic BR: Create your own animal choosing elements of 3 animals - head, body, and legs - for an all-out battle in an arena. Caveat: your choices must be ONLY animals you have personally worked with. Snake draft, go! 1:03:06 - Pat’s first choice: HEAD of a 1200 pound Alaskan Brown Bear 1:04:46 - Forrest’s first choice: HEAD of a Taipan Snake 1:05:49 - Coyote’s first choice: HEAD of a Common Snapping Turtle 1:06:20 - Shoutout to Dave Sunshine, don’t let the boys down 1:06:38 - Coyote’s second choice: LEGS of a Wolverine 1:07:12 - Forrest’s second choice: LEGS of a Mountain Goat 1:07:55 - Pat’s second choice: BODY of a Fin Whale 1:08:40 - Pat’s last choice: LEGS of a Scolopendra (Red Centipede) 1:09:50 - Forrest’s last choice: BODY of a Fishing Cat 1:10:42 - Coyote’s last choice: BODY of an Alligator Gar 1:11:55 - Battle Royale RECAP 1:12:35 - Forrest’s quality outtro & where to see more of the King of Stings, Coyote Peterson Don’t forget to comment on the pod and vote for who you think won this Battle Royaaaaale! Leave a review on iTunes Apple Podcast: https://thewildtimespodcast.com/itunes-review/  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wildtimespod/  Official Website: https://thewildtimespodcast.com/  Info: https://thewildtimespodcas

Wild Times. It goes for it. Here we are. It is the Wild Times. I don't know what episode number. Who cares? Because we are on with a very, very special guest today. A longtime friend of mine, a longtime friend of all things animal and wildlife. But before I introduce that lovely man, I am your host, the broologist, Mr. Forrest Galante,

joining me, as always, looking very fly in his Pataguchi hat over there. The Spice Mun, Patrick DeLuca. What's going on, Pat? Got in late last night, spent four days in Yellowstone, snowy, beautiful. Bison moving through the snow. It was wonderful. But let's get to our guest. No one cares about me.

We shall, but we'll circle back to that. You love cold, miserable weather. All right. Well, the big, wonderful news, Mr. Coyote Peterson is joining the show. Thanks for having me, guys, looking forward to this. I feel like this has been many months in the making. I think we originally scheduled one of these. Gosh, I want to say last year and somehow our schedules then misaligned, but here we are.

Excited to be here. Well, to say you're a busy man is an understatement. I don't think there's anybody that listens to this pod that doesn't know who you are, but just in case, who are you? What do you do? Tell us about yourself. Thanks, man. That's very flattering.

Well, my name's Coyote Peterson. I am one of the hosts on the Brave Wilderness YouTube channel. I also did an 18-part series for Animal Planet called Brave the Wild, and I'm the guy who famously has been bitten and sung by a bunch of things, probably our most famous content, but certainly my goal is to always promote education, conservation, and just to have a grand old adventure out there in the wild. Yeah, I love that. And it's so interesting because you really have done such a remarkable job pivoting from,

it's really easy to get stuck with a brand logo, right? Like, I'm the extinct animal guy. It doesn't matter what I do now. I'm the extinct animal guy, right? I could literally go skydiving naked off, you know, the tallest building in Dubai, and I'd still be the extinct animal guy. But somehow— He must be extinct at that point, too. Yeah, too.

But somehow you have become so much, such a bigger figure than that. You do so many other things in wildlife and conservation. Tell us a little bit about how did you sort of get there. Yeah, well, what's funny is that, you know, I'd always happy to talk about any of the extreme stuff that we do with the bites and things. I know it's everybody's favorite stuff, but, you know, as you know, any good wildlife presenter will tell you to be a good wildlife show host, you don't want to be bitten and sung by stuff. And somehow, the fact that we brought that to the foreground and still found a way to weave

education about the misunderstood nature of a lot of these animals into our content really ended up being that silver bullet that broke us into this industry. And as you know, whether it's the entertainment world or the wildlife biology slash animals world. Both of them are very difficult to get into. So to ever crack that code and be able to build the brand and the rocket surprise that we did with brave wilderness is a unique thing. So a lot of right place, right time because of where YouTube was at when we started designing the content that really launched the brand into the stratosphere. But yeah, it's been a crazy ride thus far. And I certainly owe it to all those creepy creatures. A lot of our, a lot of our listeners,

and maybe it's just because we're so immature or because this is who listens to podcasts are, you know, people like 18 to 25. And we get a lot of feedback and a lot of questions about, you know, the vast majority of them are really interested in wildlife and want to work in the industry.

And I think a lot of them would love to be, you know, sort of making a difference by just being on camera and creating content. Yeah. So, like, obviously you're, you know, you've made it your full-time job. You have a bunch of employees. You've started this empire.

But it had to start with one video, one idea. Like, take us through year one. Yeah. So my business partner, Mark Vins, and I, and a handful of others, really conceptualized bravewilders years ago. So there's at least a four-year backstory before we launched on YouTube in 2014 that involved trying to get television networks to pick up the idea of a guy out there in the wild,

very much like Steve Arwin, catching, presenting, promoting education, conservation. And this is right on the come up of Bear Grills. I mean, Man versus Wild was as hot as it got at the time on Discovery. But as we all know, Bear was a catch and eat and show you how to survive. We're like, well, what if we took Bear's style with editing a camera and submersion into the environment and combined it with Steve's conservation and education? And everybody that we went and pitched to us like, it's cute. We see that you can catch snapping turtles.

There's no way that this works nowadays because people are so afraid after the tragedy that happened with Steve to ever give anybody that chance again to go out and actually physically interact with an animal. And we took about four years worth of nose and deals that almost were the right deal and built those into essentially the forced square into a round peg, make it happen on YouTube. And the second we realized that owning our own content and the creative vision and being able to put it out in the digital space was getting views and comments and subscribers, we're like, okay, we're on to something here. There's no executive telling us what we should shoot, how we should edit it, or what

story through line we needed to create. You hear that for us? Yeah, big time, like to heart. It's so interesting, though, because, you know, I'm pretty good buddies with Joe Rogan, and I was talking to Joe, we were driving out to this wolf sanctuary together, and he's like, dude, what are you doing? I'm like, what are you talking about? He's like, get out from under that fucking network.

I'm like, why would I do that? Like, they write my paychecks and like, you know, they like, you know, like, why would I do that? He's like, you've got to do it for yourself, man, as soon, just to your exact words, as soon as you're doing what you want to do and there's no network notes and there's no, you know, making act breaks for commercials and like you just do your own thing. It's just like it's so much better. It's so much more fun and stress-free. And that's exactly what you're doing. And it's so funny because I think the grass is always greener on the other side, right? And I'd love to hear your perspective of this.

Because I talk to YouTube people, and you've been on both sides of this. I talk to YouTube people all the time, right? Big YouTube stars and whatever, because people that are interested in wildlife conservation, they're like, oh, man, I just wish I could do like a network show. I wish I could do a TV thing. And then I talk to TV people all the time. You know, we had Adam and Rob on last week. And they're like, man, I wish we could do YouTube.

Like, YouTube seems so much better. And I like, I don't know. I mean, you're the only person I know that's really successfully bridged both sides of it. I'm curious to hear what you think has the best impact and the best experience. Yeah, you know, look, it is a double-edged sword in it from a certain perspective, right? Now, so the Animal Planet series that we did, Great the Wild, you know, technically was one season, 18 episodes. There were a number of factors as to why that show didn't carry on. Regardless of what those factors were, COVID was going to prevent it from happening regardless.

The show literally launched, and I was on the media press tour for that as COVID was just starting to happen, which was kind of crazy. So, you know, things work out the way that they do for a reason. But we had built such a following and a brand with Brave Wilderness that by the time we were having the real conversations with Discovery slash Animal Planet for making the show, we were able to negotiate a very unique contract into how we designed that show, how we put it through post-production, what the vision was. And we had a very amazing executive team that was behind that show as well. And I think that's where the biggest benefit for creating Brave the Wild came in is that you had an executive team that aligned with the creative team that essentially said, we're not trying to rework your formula, go out and do what it is that you do. We trust you're going to make it awesome.

We're just going to get out of the way. And that's why Brave the Wilde was really a great experience for us. But at the end of the day, you still have those parameters that you have to fit into. where your first stack needs to be seven minutes, 52 seconds, and 13 frames. We're like, wait, what? When you really get in there and you start making it, you're like, hold on, commercial breaks. Like, we knew this going into, but it was like, this is so archaic, you know, to have to work a story. And we don't fabricate anything really, right?

When we went to make Brave the Wild, we went out there and we produced the show exactly how we do with YouTube. And that is you make the story to the length that feels natural. So when we got into post-production, after our first big shoot in Australia, we really kind of had to remold some of the content and then the episodes we produced into the future locations because we realized hitting those commercial marks and building up those climactic moments to land for a commercial break didn't necessarily always fall exactly where their commercials were structured in. So we worked around those challenges, but where I'm ultimately going is that television is great if you can get the right experience and you've worked yourself into a position where you can control. to create it. Otherwise, stick in the digital space because it's the vision that you have that then becomes the most important story to tell at the end of the day for your viewers. Right. Yeah, that's really interesting. So I mean, sorry, go ahead for us. No, no, no, no, no, please. Go ahead, Patrick.

Well, I was just to say, so let's circling back to sort of, you know, your first year, you start releasing some stuff. Is it working right away? And what was, what was like the first video that you put out? So my background, I always would, say this is like one of my favorite i thought was really clever at the time but now probably sounds a little corny if steve irwin had the crocodile coyote peterson had the common snapping turtle there's not a whole lot of danger i mean there's really not many venomous creatures where i lived maybe a timber rattlesnake occasionally a black widow uh there's no catastrophic storms you know there's nothing dangerous the common snapping turtle was the most formidable foe i could find myself up

against whether through childhood or even starting to develop this TV show. But it was an animal that had never received any spotlight. And most of the time when I showed people pictures of me holding these giant prehistoric looking turtles, they were like, whoa, whoa, whoa. So wait, can I interrupt for one second? Was this pre-turtleman? Remember the boi-wee guy, like the turtle man guy? Was that pre-turtleman?

Technically, yes. We were already developing concepts for brave wilderness while I was catching snapping turtles. And then Ernie, the turtle man came out. and we were like, dude, this is going to be terrible. I'm pitching a show where we actually like these turtles because, you know, he's picking them up by their tails and swinging them around, tossing them up on the, that drove me crazy. But obviously, by the way, and I just want to, I want to interject for a second here and let you continue.

Our audience, as much as this seems like a business podcast and we'll get back to the animals a minute, our audience, very interested in this kind of stuff. So for anybody listening, there is a right way to hold comments. snapping turtles and a wrong way to hold common snapping turtles. In fact, I'll say there's two wrong ways to hold common snapping turtles. The one wrong way is any way in which it gets you, which is a number of ways, and it sucks. And I've only been tagged once and it was not, I'm sure, nearly as bad as, I don't know, the 7,000 times a coyote's been tagged by them at this point. And the second wrong way, which to me, it's amazing to this day that this was allowed on,

on like national television, because from an animal rights perspective, it's awful. But the second way is grabbing them by their tail and holding them up. These are big, lumbering, heavy animals. And when you pick them up by their tail, what that does is it puts a ton of stress on their spine. Now, keep in mind a turtle, its spine is connected all the way from the very tip of its tail to the front of its head through its shell. And so when you're picking up a 40-pound snapping turtle by the tail, its tail is sitting vertically and the rest of its body is trying to sit horizontally. that's like creating a back bend for a human being doing it the wrong

way and you'd see this guy, this turtle man guy and nothing against him. He was very entertaining but you'd see him on TV reach in and rip these things out by their tails and kind of swing them around by the tail. That would be the same as me grabbing you by your head and ripping you around by your neck just because your neck's flexible, right?

And your back's just flailing all over the place by this thing that shouldn't be supporting all that weight. And it was just, um, as an animal lover. I'm sure coyote, you can say the same thing. It was kind of hard to watch this guy ripping these things around. By the way, common snapping turtles, not critically endangered, not a big deal. Does that mean that we should be treating them unethically? Absolutely not, right? It's not like this guy was doing major damage, but he was definitely injuring some turtles by throwing him around like that. And I think I found that pretty upsetting. Yeah, I totally agree with that.

And look, there's a reason that called Wild Man is no longer a show. And regardless of my feelings on that production team's ethics towards what they do with animals. Not as much relevant today, but what we really try to aim to do is teach people, A, don't interact with snapping turtles, period, because they can really mess you up bad. And B, if you do have to move a snapping turtle, we try to show people what is the right way

that will keep you out of harm and certainly prevent any potential injury to the animal itself. So your first video is snapping turtle content, right? Yeah. Yeah, we started the kind of the building of the brand off a snapping, Turtles because it's what we had at our fingertips, so to speak. But Mark and I worked either just ourselves or with just a couple of other people for the first two years that we had launched YouTube. So we launched in September of 2014 and we finally quit our day jobs in June of 2016.

So there's this big misnomer out there that Discovery came in and gave us all this money to start launching our show because we were attached to Discovery Digital Networks when we first launched our bottom. And for clarity, Discovery gave no money to our brand whatsoever when we launched on their digital platform. They didn't have any budgets. They were scooping up digital content creators that already had a YouTube presence. We had the chance to come in and pitch our concept, which at the time was for a show called Breaking Trail. They agreed to give us distribution for 12 pieces of content if we could go out and create them. So we got a small angel investment, less than $50,000 to

produce these 12 episodes, we stretched that, it was rough like $45,000, stretch that into 52 episodes, because we figured if we can make a year's worth of content to distribute, maybe Discovery will see the level of our talent and ambition, and they give us the chance to play on the big stage that would be Animal Planet. Long story short, that didn't happen right out of the gate, but we went two years traveling, spending all of our vacation time, our weekends, everything we could to continue making content. And we were releasing two to three piece of content on Brave Wilderness consistently every week for at one point it was like four and a half years straight before we even missed an upload week. So it was a massive commitment until things started going

crazy in 2016. And when we finally hit a million subscribers and then skyrocketed when the bite and sting content stuff started coming out, that's when the whole dynamic of Brave Wilderness shifted. and we pretty much took off and never looked back from there. So speaking of the bite and sting content, you're not the only guy who does his homework. You've been, what, two, three-ish years without really making that a focus of your pieces? Is that about right?

Yeah, so look, I don't want to be known as that guy that is just bitten and sung by stuff. I'm like, no mistake of it. We know how virally popular that is. We know that the audience loves it. We found a creative way to make it entertaining, yet still educational. But at the end of the day, like, you know, you have to pick a place to want to pivot. You know, you have to, when you're like me and you really want to be a guy that's on adventures,

teaching people about animals and really, at the end of the day, trying to promote a conservation effort or helping a different organization promote the work that they're doing, we had to segue away from that because while it never prevents us from being able to work with anybody, you can only go so far, right? Like, I'm not going to intentionally go out and get bitten by a venomous snake. I'm not going to go out and get maimed by a Nile crocodile. You know, there's a certain level where we strategically pick things that we knew people could encounter or would be afraid of, and then we tried to dispel a lot of the fears surrounding

those animals. And with the Insects sting pain index specifically, because, you know, you've got the stings, you've got bites. The stings is inspired by Justin Schmidt. I mean, it's just like when Steven Spielberg takes somebody's book and turns it into a movie, we saw Justin Schmidt's Sting of the Wild, which is a phenomenal book if you haven't had the chance to read it. We said, well, how do we take this from script to screen?

And we looked at what his most painful stings were. And we said, let's turn those into the Steven Spielberg movie and tell the scale through the digital side of things. By the way, you mentioned this earlier. And I just want to, I just want to fluff you for a second here. You're a fucking genius. Okay. And here's why.

because every good wildlife presenter in history since long before, since fucking Charles Darwin, right, has been like, here's the animal, we don't want to get stung and bitten by it. You're the fucking guy. You are the guy that was,

as a presenter, went, here's the animal. I'm going to get stung and bitten by it and show you what happens. And that's like a huge thing now, right? It's huge on TikTok, Kings of Pain show,

like your YouTube, massive, you know, like unbelievable. Like you're a fucking. genius, man. And to do that in a way that is like, hey, I'm going to do this to show you that I'm still alive. And like, yeah, it sucks, but it's not the end of the world and the animal's not a villain. It's brilliant. Nobody else came up with that. It's amazing. Well, thanks, man. I appreciate that.

I don't know if I consider myself a genius. I'm not going to go full comedy here, but, you know, we did, we did look at how the audience was reacting to it. And that's what's so cool about the digital space. YouTube specifically at the time, right? It was that immediate feedback from the audience where you don't get that with network television. Network television, you're lucky if your management team shows you the Nielsen ratings. And then you can be like, cool, arbitrary numbers for people who will sit through commercials versus collecting views, looking at comments, recognizing subscribers, and being able to interact with that audience and have them almost be like a sports team audience that's rooting for you

to get to the next level and the next level and the next level. And we rode that way very creatively with a sports team audience that's rooting for you to get to the next level and the next level. And we rode that way very creatively with the insect Sting Pantadex, and back to your point of me not doing as many of the bite and sting episodes as I had before. No, I don't, but we strategically still mix in a number of those every year, partially not because I have a wish to be in pain, but because some of those animals are so interesting, if we can find a unique spin to show you its abilities and get the views from the audience,

that puts that animal more in a spotlight than if I were to just look, get it in a jar. You guys want to see how this thing functions? Cool. I'm willing to be the guinea pig. Let's celebrate how cool this thing is. And then encourage you why, A, don't kill it because you can see how hard it is to find a hordecage. But B, you don't need to be afraid of it because I ultimately survive in the end. And could that ultimately go horribly wrong for me one day? Sure, maybe. Anybody could have an allergic reaction to something. But we do a lot of research in advance to make sure that we're properly prepared. Like I said, I'm never going to go out and get bit by a bushmaster or be like, cool, it's a baby great white shark. Let me put my

arm and it's not a good idea. So on that note of you still doing it occasionally, I watched a video earlier today that Kyle's going to pull up for us, which is you coming out of the Sting retirement to get tagged by a tarantula wasp. Oh, the cicada killer you mean? Yeah, sorry. It's not a tarantula hawk. Was it a skater killer? Whatever. A skater killer is the one that I came out of retirement for you. I'm so sorry. All right. I'm butchering. I don't know anything about animals. It's my first day. But with common names, people call everything something different. So I just wanted to make sure that we were at the same page. Kyle, that looks terrible.

Please make it larger. And then press play. So for those listening at home, we are watching Coyote Peterson about to take a sting from the cicada killer, which you're right. That is different from a tarantula hawk, correct? Yes. Okay.

I want to, so we can talk over this part because we want to see you get tagged. But I want to know, I've never done this, what you've done, what Robin and Adam does. What's going through your mind right now? You know, to be honest with you, I was, the more you filmed these, and I got asked this the other day in an interview, the scariest ones were the ones very early on. Now that I know what to expect and how to react, it's a little more palatable because I've gone through so many pain-inducing experiences, it kind of can know what to expect. And there was a really creative reason and behind why we did the cicada killer episode. Now, this one doesn't have a very painful sting.

Yeah, but just look at that fucking thing, dude. I hear what you're saying, but I'm looking at it going, uh-uh. You know, and this is from a guy that's been tagged by, I've been bitten by sharks twice, but I'm looking at this bug going, nope, I'm not in. Like, I'm not, I'm not into it. You do it. I will all watch. That's where I'm sitting.

It's, you know, it's, it's, it's that movie magic anticipation with editing and the tight shots and you see the stinger. And trust me, these things are incredibly intimidating. One of the hardest parts is always getting into the entomology forcepts, being gentle with the wings. Because remember, it's always about never injuring an animal, handling it carefully so that it can can go back into the wild, which this one actually ends up getting away right after the sting. It was one of the fastest takeoffs of any. insect that I've ever been sung by. You'll see that here in a second. Here it comes.

Here it comes. There we go. And wait for it. Oh, look at him. He's waiting a second. Oh, wait for it. There he is. Nope.

Yep, there he is. You do not look like you're enjoying that. No. Honestly, the two worst were the giant hornet and the executioner wasp. But the reason that we did the cicada killer is because of that huge media scare. that giant hornets were invading the United States. Right, right, right. Cicada killers and reporting them as giant hornets all over like the south,

eastern and part of the United States, specifically down in Texas where we filmed this episode. So we were like, okay, this is a really good opportunity to temporarily come out of Sting retirement to show people what the cicada killer is, why this thing really isn't that bad, and then ultimately why you don't need to be afraid of it, because they are out in droves every single year, year killing cicadas and, you know, doing their egg things. So, right, um,

cicat killer was a good one. But in, in moving out of sting retirement, we did just find something recently in South Africa that may warrant a second come out of steam retirement. I don't say anything about it too much yet, because I don't want to give anybody the idea, but we have something that may top the executioner loss as the new king of sting. So, wow, we'll see what We'll see what happens in the next few months here. So for those of us who, I don't know if I've seen the executioner wasp episode, let's assume some people that are listening haven't. Describe what happens as soon as that thing puts the stinger in you.

Like what does it feel like? How bad is it? Yeah. So when we created our, so Justin Schmidt is obviously the founder and the godfather of the insect sting pain index, right? We climbed up his sting index. He always had the bulleting at the top. Now, in all fairness, Justin called out that perhaps the warrior wasp was a

more painful sting, which of course we went out and experimented with. He was never sung by the giant hornet species, the true giant hornets that live in Japan. So we went out and got me stung by the giant hornet before we released the episode on the executioner wasp because we had filmed the executioner was before we did the giant hornet. And we held on to it for like a year building anticipation. Now, the way that we cataloged our sting index, we broke it down based on the science and impact of the species, right? So a bullet ant, incredibly painful sting, and if you take a whole glove of them

and put your hand in there, it's a nightmare. But for a single sting, it is really bad, but when you think about ants, you can run away from ants. Now, if you disturb a nest of warrior wasps or a nest of executioner wasps, they can chase you. Right.

You can run away, but they're going to follow. So in a sense, that gives them a slightly higher level of danger. So we ultimately ranked the giant hornet, which does kill people every single year, the Giant Hornet and then the Executioner Wasp over the bullet ant in our index. Now, when it comes to the Execution Wasp specifically, there is some sort of necrotic element to their venom because after I was stung by it,

what I went through two and a half to three weeks after the fact was actually a hole being cooked in my arm. It looked like a pockmark, you know, like for anybody that's gotten really bad acne and they got like divvits. I had a divot that was carved out in my arm from the venom of this watch. It just ate the muscle tissue or something? Yeah, I mean, not to the point where like I needed to go to the hospital, but it formed a huge, my arm swelled up to massive a size.

It formed this really hard ball underneath the skin that then began to like blister. And it formed this open wound that then eventually, you know, kind of turned into a scab. Scab popped off. And then there was like a gaping hole that eventually just. just turned into this thing. Jesus. It's on my scar. People are always like, can I see your scars?

And I'm like, well, from Stings, you don't really have a scar. And if you look at the scar on my forearm from where the execution wasp is, it's very small, not really that noticeable. But because of that effect, we looked at it. All right, well, let's see you got stung by a thousand of these all over your body. That makes it potentially really dangerous, not to mention the amount of venom you would take. So that's how we sort of scaled up our index. So Brave the Wild.

Okay, for those that don't know, we've mentioned it. Coyote had a show on Animal Planet did 18 episodes, Brave the Wild. Awesome show. It was very much so what you stated earlier, which was sort of that traditional look at like show and tell with wild animals, right? Which is really cool because you just don't see that any longer. I'm going to tell you what, no, first I'm going to ask you what your favorite moment an episode was and why, and then I'm going to tell you what mine was because I thought it was awesome.

Okay, cool. You know, I love something special about each and every one of those episodes, but the one for me that I think was the greatest, was the one that was the least, that I least expected. And you guys can appreciate this from a producing standpoint. When you capture a moment naturally in the wild and you realize you've got like a nugget of gold, now how do you go back and back produce the rest of the story to turn this thing? The Jaguar episode that we did in the Pontenau, the way that that came about is the entire Jaguar scene that we captured on camera was filmed without us intending to do a Jaguar episode.

The encounter happened, we managed to get it all on camera, and then we had set up trail cameras. The night that we set up the trail cameras was actually the same, what was the night that we caught the footage of, these Cubs and their mother, but we had already filmed the mother earlier that previous day. We had no idea we were going to catch them on trail camera,

but we knew we had this amazing beautiful shot of the mother. So once we had those two pieces, literally on the spot in the field, we were like, can we actually squeeze one more episode out of this location? And it's exactly what we did. We went back and found clever ways to pre-produce the search, pre-produced prey items in the environment, came in, Capi Barra, all of that.

And we essentially sculpted an episode that was never intended to be had or scripted in pre-production right out of the field. And that's, you know, the universe of Mother Nature giving you that one incredible glimpse at an animal. You guys know how hard it is to see Jaguars. Maybe not in the Porto-Jephyri area, but like down further into the Pontinau where they are not seeing Jaguars. We're in the middle of the nowhere. This was middle of nowhere. This was not a jaguar that was acclimated to human interaction. So to catch that moment, let alone her three cubs on a trail camera, we're like, we got to turn this into something.

So to me, that was one of the most meaningful experiences on Brave and Wild. And that's what, that's like what it's all about with the shows that I do. It's like you go out with these hopes and these plans and like we're putting ourselves in this weird spot and this weird remote location, hoping that we'll find these things. And whatever happens happens. I mean, so, you know, I'm not playing like, you know, I did this, you did this. but like so many times that is what builds it, right? Like going to Borneo, looking for a Miller's Grizzled Langer, coming across a family of orangutans that came down to visit us.

Like, that was it for me. Like I nearly started crying, you know? I didn't even plan on seeing orangutans. I know they're in Borneo, but that wasn't where we were going. It wasn't what we were planning. See them come down. And time and time again, it's those moments, whether we haven't been able to successfully make a whole episode out of them,

but whether they happen, you know, organically, or whether you expect them to happen and they don't happen, then something else happens, it doesn't really matter. But it's when those things happen that you go, this is like magic. Nothing you could ever write on paper, nothing you could ever plan,

nothing you could ever book could make this happen. And it's just, it's a wonderful feeling to experience that. Before you get into your favorite moment from Coyote show, my favorite moment from Extincter Alive was when you snorted the green powder in the Amazon. Wasn't planning on that. No, sure was not.

That wasn't in the outline. And it was not. No. I was not planning on spending my... You puked and tripped out after that, right? That was like the... Oh, God. You had to go to that process

where they'd give you the information, right? God, dude, I spent all night in the fetal position, just ralphing my brains out and cold sweats. I mean, I wasn't hallucinating, but I wasn't not hallucinating. It was just what a nightmare that was. And I still... It's up here on my shelf.

Here is the snail shell that the shawl that the shaman gave. me afterwards. That is a monkey bone, that is beeswax, and there's a giant snail shell that he stores the powder in. So got a keepsake out of destroying half my brain cells. But yeah, no, that was quite something. My favorite moment of your show, and it's funny because nowhere near the least dramatic, nowhere near the least exciting, but I'm obsessed with these creatures, never seen one in the wild was you finding and handling you piece of shit who I'm so jealous about a wabi gong in Australia. Okay.

Yeah. So I'm upset. I love carpet sharks, first of all. I think they're fascinating group of animals. But I've never seen a wabi gong, been to Australia five different times, never seen a wabi gong. And to see you walk around these tide pools and pick one up and talk about it, like all the tassels drooping. So cool.

It's such a cool animal, man. I love that. I thought that was, Kyle, pull up a picture of a wabi gau. gung so people watching know what I'm talking about because right now it's not making a lot of sense when you see it you'll get it it's incredible you know what tell me about that yeah you know what's funny about that force is that is another example of an episode that we did not anticipate getting oh wow we actually scouted that location because we filmed that same location for um the daytime typool uh episode that we had done yeah with the spellfish right and we scouted it at night

just to be like, what happens here at night? We were just curious. And this was just me and my team I was working with my Aussie boys that I'm always filming with. And we found a Wobie Gong and we're like, dude, this is crazy. Obviously, it's not something you could ever hold on to. And be like, well, we'll keep it until tomorrow and film with it. Let's come back and see if we can find another one.

And there were several of them. I mean, it really was hard to catch them. And they're not. dangerous and that like you know it's going to try to attack you but they're very flexible with their bodies and their teeth are insane so what i was always worried about especially when you're in the waves and you're in the darkness and the rocks are slippery is reaching your hands in and you know how lights reflect on water if you're doing a night shoot and you're on the the coastline yeah seeing those things underwater placing it because they'll stay there completely still

right so you're trying to shine them the rippling of the water and the waves coming and then you're sticking your hand in you've got to be able to use the way that i did it was to get the net in front of it because they actually move very fast so i get the net in front of it the second i would try to get my hand on its tail it would lunge forward and get into the net but then the way that they're so flexible very tough to keep them in the net my biggest fear was having one of those lock on in my hand because if you look up their skulls or anything online you'll see their mouth is like a bear trap and they're famous for having like that bite and lock Bulldog approach.

And that's where you have that human wildlife conflict where people will walk around in tie pools day or night. And if they can't see them, I step by them, your foot gets stuck in there. Yeah, you see those front teeth? Oh, yeah. Forget about it. And the thing is, they bite and they hold on. So imagine that clamp to your foot

and then trying to get it off. Like, for you, no. Nope. No, go ahead. I was going to play a little game. But if you're still on while you're gone, go for it. I'm going to tell a story. And then let's play a game. Yeah.

Okay. So it's interesting, right? You're looking at that shark. You're looking at those jaws going, man, if you got bitten, how bad would that be? So I'm 19 years old. Okay, 19-year-old Forrest Galante takes a family vacation to the Bahamas. All right? Sounds lovely.

It was. It was a treat. I'm there with my mom, my dad, my aunt and uncle, my cousin. She's like five years old at the time. You know, it's a whole family trip. We're having a great time. I go fishing off the dock. We're fishing, catching a little mangrove snapper. Oh, my God, I'm hooked up to something big. I reel it in, and it's about a three foot long lemon shark, okay? And I'm like, whoa, cool. At this point, I'd seen some sharks, but I don't think I'd ever caught one before. And I was like, I was geeking out on it.

I was like, whoa, a lemon shark. This is so rad. So I pull it up, throw it on the dock. And, you know, my uncle's there. My uncle's this big burly dude, and he's like, cut the line, cut the line. I'm like, no, I can't cut the line. I don't want to put it back with the hook in its mouth. And so I've never dealt with a shark before on the line. And so I've got it on the dock. And my family starts crowding around to see this shark. And I'm not blaming them.

It was totally my own fault. I put my foot closer to the shark. Okay. And sure enough, this little lemon shark just goes, boom, moves its head sideways, clamps down on my big toe. Okay? And the shark's only this big. Okay.

It's not huge. But this is where the story gets hilarious. So I start howling, right? I'm in full screen mode because this shark is locked on to my bear, my bear piggy toe. And there's a line and a fishing rod's falling in the ocean. My mom screeching her head off. And, like, you know, it's just like a calamity. And my uncle, that big burly guy I mentioned, comes running with like a stick.

And he goes, club it on the head. Now just think of the physics of this for a second. Big toe, shark mouth. And my uncle wants to start clubbing it on top of the. head by my toe. So I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. So I like stop him immediately. We managed to get a pair of pliers, open the shark's mouth, and I pull my toe out. You know, actually managed to get the hook out 10 seconds later, throw the shark back in the water. But the shark's bite, and I still have a funny little scar, has severed a nerve. And my big toe is

going like this. It's literally just like on its own doing this weird little like dance thing. And so my mom being my mom, who's already like freaked out and panicked because I've bitten by a shark. calls the hospital in Exuma Bahamas, which is the size of my garage, which is a one car. And she's like, there's a shark attack, and she's being very dramatic. And so we get in the car and casually drive over to the hospital. And the whole town of, God, I'm blanking on the name of the capital now, it doesn't matter. The whole town in the Bahamas has come to see because it's the second ever shark attack. And they're expecting this white boy to be ripped into and, you know, like the blood and guts.

And I come walking in going my toe hurts. And it was so embarrassing. I literally like hid my face when I walked in because there was like 150 people there to see this shark attack. Yeah, your shark bite was too weak, man. Yeah, it was pathetic. And it was super embarrassing. And I saw the doctor who was like, take some Advil and go away. And then I went back.

But yeah, just the, I've personally experienced what it's like to have a shark locked onto your body. And thank God my dufus of an uncle didn't club. it over the head and snap my toe off. And I wouldn't like to take that from a Wobbygong. No, I wouldn't know. Yeah, also good for the shark. All right. So let's just play a little game here, guys.

I'm an angel investor, and I've come to each of you. I love you both. And it's equal, and I don't know who I want to give this investment to. But I want nothing in return. I'm just being really generous here. I'd like to find... You're not from L.A. Got it.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. from a Sweden over here. Yeah, okay. I'd like to fund just a video or a mission that you guys would like to go on. I'd like it if you filmed it and posted it on your channel. I want it to be really epic, really big. Yeah. I want you to spend all the money on the mission, though.

Okay. What's the craziest thing you got? I'm looking at around between like $10 and $15 million to fund your just epic, epic journey. I mean, you want to get a submarine, go to the bottom of the ocean, you know, find an angler fish. only one of you can get it. So let's, Forrest, why don't you go first? I'm going to give you about 30 seconds of my time here. How are you going to spend my $1?

You got it. One second. Before we get started, can we just like sign a gentleman's NDA here that's neither of us can steal this idea from each other? And I'm going to go pitch that one to discovery. Yeah. As soon as discovery starts handing out $15 million checks, I'll steal it and I'll cut you in. No problems. Just make sure that's so expensive, Coyote, that there's no way for us can steal it.

That's all you have to do. Gentlemen's NDA. All right, gentlemen's NDA. Virtual handshake. Mr. Spiceman, thank you so much for having us today. It is wonderful to be in your presence. Honestly, your entire aura is captivating. It's just nice to be here.

Yeah. So with this generous donation that you're considering, I just want to let you know that money could, in fact, contribute to not only the, the greatest wildlife film in history, but one of the largest discoveries. What my team and I will do without Mr. Peterson, yuck, is we will take your money, and we will invest that in a massive logistical operation. We will have several helicopters, a large ship. We will enlist the help of hundreds of locals in remote Western Papua.

There, of course, we will go deep into the jungle. we will set out thousands of trail cameras in a grid formation into a region that is completely impenetrable, not only, sir, with the hope of uncovering thylacine, but also making all kinds of new wildlife discoveries. We will have botanists with us. We will have experts on New Guinea and fauna. We will undeniably run into cannibals and headhunters. There will be guerrilla warfare. Odds are there'll be some kind of a helicopter crash.

There will be sickness. There will be disease. this will all take place out of a base camp in the center of a jungle that nobody has ever been to. It's the best investment for your dollar. You, sir, could be credited with the discovery of the thylacine. I'll make the film and you can stay comfortable in Oswego, New York. Okay. Well, first, that's really captivating.

I really like the part about the cannibals and the sickness. It sounds really great. It's in consideration. Okay, lovely. Coyote, do you have something you'd like to do? Yeah, no, thanks. I appreciate the time and the opportunity to share this idea. So one of my big dreams, ever since I was curious, to be able to visit the islands that make up the chains in Indonesia that contain Komodo dragons, which essentially are the last living dinosaur-type lizard on our planet.

And what I would love to do is tell an IMAX-sized story, 70-millimeter, in the idea that we would go back in time. So what was it like for the very first explorers to have discovered Komodo dragons? So you're taking it back maybe to the early 1800s. I want an old-looking pirate ship-type vessel and have a crew where we land on the island, show nothing other than nature itself, document a series of species that ultimately leads up to a massive confrontation with enormous dragons, capturing their eating behavior, their fighting behavior, and depicts them as the last true icon of animal existence in the reptile world. and telling it from that older perspective, I think we'll give it a really cinematic approach,

and I guarantee you that we can distribute this in widescreen theaters across the nation. So whether you're watching it at the theater or at home, it's going to be an animal encounter you'll never forget. I love it. I love them both. I'm going to give you each $6 million. Yes.

Okay. We both win. Perfect scenario. So those are the bucket list adventures. This is sort of a long way of getting there, but it sounds like this. I thought someone was going to maybe go search for a giant squid, but that'd be cool what I would do.

I think if you had... I usually like to hinge my bets on things that I know I'm going to get on camp. You're actually going to find. Sure. People's money, but I like to be able to show them that I have something to show and return. Right, right, right. Good, good, as opposed to Forrest who's going to go look for an extinct animal.

But you still each get the six months. Is that what he's known as? Yeah, exactly. Not the naked skydive guy. It, uh, that, that would be, is that a bucketless item for me? Absolutely. Am I shit scared to do it at the same time? 100%. Let me ask you this for us.

Why are you so scared to do that? Every, and it's not because of the cannibals and that stuff, but everybody that goes into this really remote central western Papua- Papua New Guinea region comes out of there with some unknown lifelong illness. And I shouldn't

say everybody, but it's just like there are parasites that we don't know about, there are sicknesses. It is such a weird place, man. It's primordial in that part of the world. And it's like there are these diseases. I was talking to this guy who was, he's, what he does for living. He's interesting. Maybe I'm on the pod sometime. He goes into Papua New Guinea, not West Papua, and uncovers lost soldiers. So when a family member goes, oh, you know, like my uncle died in World War II, I don't know what happened to him. He gets on the ground and actually like works with local tribes and stuff and finds the airplane crash and finds the dog tags and sometimes just a pile of bones.

Interesting guy. He's from Ohio owns a bike shop. Yeah. And anyway, he was just telling me, he's like, yeah, every time we go, somebody comes down with something that means they can never return. And I'm like, I don't want to do that. Like, I want to go. I want to have this experience. But like, he's like, yeah, it's like, it's like if yellow fever mixed with malaria with like AIDS. And I'm like, I don't know what that is, but I don't want to. It's got a lot of Ebola in there, too. It's a tough one. Yeah. So that's like the,

the, ugh factor. But if somebody gave me 15 million, would I do it? Of course. No question. Yeah. It's an expensive one.

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Cool. So, Coyote, what else have you got coming up? What else is on the docket? Like, tell us a little bit else more about,

you know, the things that you have planned. You're always up to such cool stuff. Yeah. I mean, the cool thing with, what we've done with Brave Wilderness is it's really, I mean, we've been so fortunate to have opportunities just presented to us left and right, it seems like. We currently have an animated

series that's in development, which is just always been a dream of mine to like, dude, I grew up on cartoons. Like I could actually be a cartoon. Let's fully go for it. So that's something that we're working on this year. In the realm of production for the Brave Wilderness YouTube channel, we just got back from South Africa, putting a big focus into a, white and black rhino conservation. Filled with both of those species, we're going to be launching a big fundraiser later this year to try to raise some significant support for a reserve in South Africa,

specifically that will allow them to open up the right amount of land for a breeding population of black rhinos, which I'm sure you guys know is the most critically endangered rhino species in Africa. When it comes to our next journeys, we are going to be headed to British Columbia in April to do an episode on Sturge. which we're very excited about. I've loved sturgeon ever since I've little kids. So I watched Mysterious Creatures episode. You've got Forrest the other night of catching a sturgeon.

That was super cool. I'm hoping that I get to feel the power in one of those guys on the line. It's so much fun. Dude, I don't want to interrupt you for more than a sec here. But I've caught a lot. I've caught Marlon. I've caught tuna. I've speared tuna. Those sturgeon are wild. Like they are so strong. And to see that thing launch out of the water in like a 15 foot deep river, it's amazing. Yeah, living dinosaur, that's for sure. We're going to be going back to Brazil this year. We're going to be telling a story about the success of the Jaguars at this point in the Porto-Jafri area

where you see all the famous planet Earth shots. Like if you want to go film a Jaguar eating Kamen, this is the spot to do it. I did, by the way. I don't know if you've seen it. It's my most viral video on anything ever. It was an iPhone video filmed by my wife. She gets no credit. and it's got like 35 million views on TikTok or something,

which is exactly that, yeah. At Porto-Jeprey? Yep, yep. Okay. Yeah, so what we thought would be interesting because we were like, all right, well, we want to go tell the success of the ecotourism that's blossomed there since people started protecting the Jaguars, the safe approach that you can take to seeing these animals.

Can we capture that hunting behavior with the Cayman? I know how tough that is. We're going to obviously take our shot at it. But really what we want to tell is the story of how people get those shots. So it's going to be a little bit more of the documentary perspective of how you get into position to get those planet Earth quality moments. So we're looking forward to that one. And then beyond that, we have a couple of different storylines up in the air. And it all depends on whether or not we end up doing a second season of this show called Wild Field Trip that we produced for YouTube originals last year,

which is a very kid-centric concept where, I take young, budding, adventures or conservationists behind the scenes at wildlife centers or conservation, we're working with conservation groups or out into the wild. We did this past year, of course, I know you worked with the Endangered Wolf Center. I think we were there just a couple weeks after you working with Regina and Stephanie and her team. I saw Stephanie posting about, yeah, it's such a small world. So, yeah, if we do a second season of wild field trip, that will predicate the second half of my production year. other than that, either that or we'll be off on some other big adventures that we have in pre-production now.

Love that. So look, if you're willing to stick it out and spend four and a half years posting three pieces of content every day before you can quit your day job, you can get to the point where you're literally just taking wildlife adventures all over the world as your job. Yeah. The big thing about the digital, you know, a lot of people want to know, how can you get this job at this point? I mean, you know, as you guys can attest you, it requires an incredible amount of work. But the coolest thing is that nowadays, having digital distribution platforms, so whether you're trying to make it into the YouTube game or you've found some success in Facebook,

you know, because it's monetized now for certain creators, or you're trying to break in through TikTok, which obviously is having a massive effect on how people are telling stories, what their attention span is and just giving people that opportunity to distribute ideas. it is much more doable today than it was, you know, forced when you and I were trying to come up and make it into the space. And that's good, it's a really good thing at the end of the day, but it is going to overly saturate the space in some regards. And I just want to encourage anybody that wants to go out and do this to really do your homework

and know that you're doing it right. You've got to know about animals. You've got to know about locations. You've got to get the right permits. Like what we don't want to see, I know myself, you, Patrick, you know, before, us like to see people going out there and doing it the wrong way that's going to put either themselves or those animals at risk. We make it look easy because we have great teams behind us and we do so much work to make sure that we're crossing the T's and dotting the eyes to get

this content to share with you guys. Anybody that's looking and watching is not just really, nilly run out there with the camera and magically get these moments. There's a lot of work and research that goes into it. I think that's one thing that, uh, First of all, people that listen to the show and watch this show, this podcast, they are always interesting behind the scenes. But one thing that I think most people don't realize that are interested in this field or want to get into this field, it is incredibly, coyote's right, by the way.

Can you pick up your phone and start making animal content and get millions of views these days on TikTok, Instagram, whatever? Absolutely. And that's awesome. But the amount of work and effort, it's very restrictive, right, to get into to work with animals. Like you have to dot your eyes and cross your teas like Cody says. The amount of permitting and paperwork and working with governments and working with NGOs and working with large organizations to get access to do sometimes absolutely mundane

bullshit is unbelievable. Like I mean like Patrick, think about the amount of work that we put into not finding the tortoise, just stepping foot on that island. Yeah. I mean, two years of permitting. paperwork to step foot on an island. That's all. Not set up a camp, not not, not poop there, not not dig something up. Just step foot on it. It took two years. And I mean, it's bananas to think about like the amount of effort that goes into some of these things sometimes. And I think people often

overlook that. Like they look at your life, coyote, my life, whatever, Patrick, you producing. And they don't realize that 95% of your time is spent figuring that out. The five percent of your time is what you're seeing on social media or TV or whatever it happens to be. Yeah, the end product is 1% of the effort that you put in, right? Yeah. It's a huge amount of time spent in post, a huge amount of time spent in pre-production. And then like when you really think about like, oh, I have this amazing adventure in Greenland, but that was one percent of the time that you spent working on set project, right? Right. Right. Which it's funny because I'm sure there's like a bunch of, you know, people that are making way more money than I, Forrest and I are on TikTok.

that I just got out with my cell phone. Right. You just got to have nice tits. Patrick, tell us about your Yellowstone trip. Oh, it was good. It was just a little,

I have a much bigger shoot coming up. But yeah, it was perfect. I wanted to get in and get some really good stuff in the snow. And so we just took snow coaches out to some really remote parts of like Hayden Valley and Lamar Valley and Yellowstone. It was,

the weather was amazing because it was just squalls, like all four days. It would be like these 30 minutes. squalls. So you would get that sideways, you know, the snow just coming down and sheet sideways. So you get all those shots of the bison huddling by the thermal vents and all that stuff. And then the sun would come out. And then you get really beautiful stuff where you could see all the mountains and the peaks. And it just basically did that in these little half hour cycles. Saw a couple pretty cool, had a really great vantage point on a bear den. And the mama was still

sleeping, but the cubs were like super anxious and were kind of just pacing around outside the den, which was really cool. No wolves, though. Didn't catch any wolves. Oh, gotcha. But, yeah, it's, dude, the abundance of elk there is unbelievable. I mean, they're like, they're like ants. Like, they're just everywhere.

There was one really cool thing, though, I'll tell you. So this was actually yesterday morning. We just hear this noise, right? We're in this valley, and we just hear this noise. And I'm with a bunch of people that spend, you know, have spent their whole life in Yellowstone. it sounded like it came from an animal but nobody knew what it was it was this like weird unholy like whale and we're like everyone's looking each other and just rang out across this valley we couldn't even tell where it came from we're all looking each other we're like what the fuck and then all of a sudden I would say a group of maybe six a huge group of elk just started booking it across this valley I mean running like they were being chased by wolves

and we were like what what in the fuck just happened and nobody had any idea what made that noise or if that was what spooked the elk, but it was pretty cool. Was it a satchwatch? That's what we're joking about. We were like, is this a saskwatch thing now? We thought we're just doing a natural history thing on Yellowstone. Yeah. Yeah.

Didn't get it on camera, but that was really cool. I got some laundry to air. I got a bone to pick with coyote. It's not good. Yeah. Here we go. The number one comment I get on TikTok. when I post a video of me spazzing out about an animal,

I put the tortoise video up there. I put the Miller's grizzled languor find up there. I think the Cayman, I can't remember anymore. The number one comment I get, verbatim, discount Coyote Peterson, dollar store Coyote Peterson. And every single time I'm like, I know Coyote Peterson. He's my buddy. We are doing different stuff.

Fuck you, guy. Not to you, Guy. To the poster. I swear to God, if you go on my TikTok, right now look at any of my top videos there will be 30 comments that say dollar store coyote peterson and i'm like that is fucked up i've never heard somebody say that about you to me because i think we do such different stuff oh i know i know i know i don't find it funny i don't mean you don't have beards and sometimes you do also wear a cowboy hat so true it's true i guess maybe people could

possibly confuse the two but no i think what you and you team are doing is is so unique in its own right and honestly man when when i signed on with animal planet and we were really hoping that we could revitalize me i had that dream of like man could could getting to play on the stage of animal planet where steve irwin and jeff corwin and jeremy way where these guys have all played before was an honor unto its own sure and you know as any wishful kid would be at that point thinking that man maybe i could help revitalize you people's draw towards cable television. And then when I heard about Extincter Live,

because your show was filming, the first season of Extinct was filming while we were developing our contracts. And then your show launched just as we were getting ready to produce ours. And I was like, man, like this could be like the comeback of the Steve Irwin-Jef, Jeff Corwin era, where Animal Planet is really reinvesting in wild animals.

And in all fairness, Kurt Tomdorf, who was the president of the animal, animal planet at the time. He saw that vision, but unfortunately, discovery as a whole just didn't want to take it there. And that's not to show any hate towards the network, but I understand from a business perspective, the majority of the shows they produce, right? The aquarium, the Irwin's, Northwood's Law, Texas Law, single location, boring camera team, make it happen day in and day out. Like, you know as well as I know, and probably most of the listeners don't know, A show like Extincter Alive or a show like Brave the Wild is insanely expensive and timely to produce.

And like West Forest, I know you guys do not believe in the world of staging. And for anybody that doesn't know what staging is, that means hiring people who have animals in captivity to place them in the wild so you can pretend to find them and catch them. And we pride ourselves in not doing that. And when we talked to network executives about that very early on before we even signed contract, And they're like, so tell us how does it work? And we're like, how does what work? Like, how do you get a good? And I was like, time and money and patient.

And they're like, yeah, can't you, isn't it like somebody just, I'm like, sorry, guys, this is not the 90s anymore. Totally. You have to do this the right way because the second somebody figures out, you brought in a monitor lizard in a bucket and threw it out in the sand and we're like, all right, I better catch it now. You're over. You're canceled.

And to do this the right way, the way. that, you know, we produced our shows, the way that you're producing your shows. It's real. I watched the first episode of Mysterious Creatures last night. Make no mistake. You cannot take a Nile Crocodile and put it inside of a metal. You guys built. Like, anybody that thinks that would have a scene. You die. Anybody that tried to do that would die so quickly. You know, so that element, going back to my point about the networks, is they want something inexpensive and fast. How do you turn and burn, turn and burn? And You know, look, if they had really been committed to reinstating the world of animals on animal planet,

you would see shows like Brave the Wild and Extincter Alive and many other concepts from both of our camps flooding that space. And it's no offense to the network. The problem is the eyeballs are not on cable television. I can tell you what you already know and anybody that's listening and watching, those ratings are doing this. Oh, yeah. It is literally like a woolly mammoth stuck in the tar grasping for its last breath of air. Like cable television's dead. And anybody who tells you otherwise clearly is living in an archaic world.

Like if you're not getting into the digital game now or the streaming game, you're done. That's it. Yeah. It's the, you know, I worked in TV long before everyone was streaming everything. And, you know, I've seen the drastic budget reductions. And it's not because the networks don't want to give the money out. They want to produce amazing shit. It's just, you know, everything went digital and it ruined shit for all of us who work in cable TV.

Right. And really, it becomes advertising dollars at the end of the day. That's the big thing that a lot of people don't understand from the business perspective is that that commercial space is extremely valuable. And a lot of these big brands and companies are like, well, I can get the same bang for my buck with more guaranteed eyeballs in the digital space and pay digital creators a lower budget mark for printing commercials in their content than you can on television. So it's a huge shift. And obviously, Discovery made their shift to a streaming service. And, you know, Nat Geo is under the Disney banner and whatnot. So people are fine in ways.

But I still get pitched cable television concepts. And I'm like, why? I can't get that in front of enough eyeballs. It's more entertaining for me personally as a creator to produce in the digital space and have that scene and shared with specifically a younger audience than it is hope that people are going to turn in. tune in on to Gable Television and sit through a commercial. Yep, totally.

Dude, Forrest, you got anything else for Coyote? I know we've got to wrap up shortly here. No, yeah, we were running out of time, unfortunately. I could chat. I mean, Coyote and I have catch-ups every couple of weeks on the phone, and we chat for way too long. So I know everything going on in his life, more or less. But, no, we're good.

I think I'm good. I mean, I was thinking maybe we could play a little game? Yeah, let's close it out with the game. Yeah. All right. battle royale oh shit no i'm having to think of one on the spot

and if you come up with one right now that's fine um all right so coyote on this podcast we do a thing called battle royale i don't know if you've heard it or seen it before but at the end of every episode we do a battle royale and the way it works is you you come up with something and we'll come up with patrick i'm hoping patrick's thought of something in the time i've explained it sure you come up and you build your team, your creature, whatever it is, and they all compete or fight for something, and then the audience members weigh in on who had the best pick. So Patrick, what do you,

you got anything? I can come up one. Oh, no, I've got one. We've never done this one before. Okay. So you're going to, you're going to create your own animal, okay? Okay. It's going to have a head, it's going to have body, it's going to have legs. This is the classic battle royale. Classic VR. Love it. You draft your head, you draft your body, you draft your legs. But, and it's just an all-out, we are going to battle our animals in an arena, an all-out fight. Wow. Traditional. Love it. Here's the thing. It can only be animals that you have personally worked with.

Whoa, that's clever. Never thought of that one. That's really good. So we'll go snake draft, coyote, and we're going to hit. So meaning like, you pick, then Patrick picks, then I pick two, and it goes back down. Do you know what I mean? And how many pieces, parts are we laying out? Three. Three, three parts of the. Head money. And you can't have any repeats.

No repeats. Got it. Right. No repeats. So Patrick, why don't you go first? I feel like. Yeah, make the guy who doesn't handle animals for a living. That's what I was going to say.

By only a slim margin, you get the advantage of going first. Okay. Well, I did it. I mean, I'm just going to start with my head. Yep. Yeah, I'm going to start my head. So I filmed a documentary in the islands outside of Juneau, Alaska, with our friend Bradley Trevor Greve. Yep.

About Alaskan brown bears. I saw many of them. I saw the, I wasn't as close as, well, I probably got within about 80 feet of a couple. I'm taking the head of a giant 1,200-pound Alaskan brown bear, ferocious jaws, giant teeth. Just the head itself is very intimidating. Yeah. I'm taking the head of an Alaskan brown bear. All right. Forrest, you go next. Okay. And by the way, Coyote, everything scales to the body size is what we typically do.

You know, if Patrick decides to put that head on a centipede, it's not like, you know, just gets pulled around. Question real quick, though. Does the body also constitute the legs and feet? Like, are we using head body. Head body legs. You get three, three pick. Head body legs are separate. Is the body the part that has the legs? Like, so if I pick my body, it has that animal's legs. Nope. Nope. It's just up to the like the torso area. Torso, yeah. So then all these animals have no legs.

No, you get free-pix. You draft legs. You draft legs as well. Head? Oh, so you, but there's, you can't do tail. So it's head, body, legs, not. The tail is included with the body. Yes.

I see. Yeah. You'll, you'll get there. Don't worry. Yeah. It understands it because we've done 115 of these. Yeah, correct. Yeah.

Correct. That's okay. All right. So, you like, Cody, it's inspired by like when you were a little kid and you put the head of an elephant on the, you know, the body of a whale and the legs of a cheetah, you know, that kind of thing. Yeah, exactly. It's that. It's that stupid. So I like that.

I like where Patrick's going. I'm going to take a different offensive approach because, look, I could do something toothy, but he's got a bear. They're terrifying. So I'm going to start with the head as well. And I am going to take the head of a typan. Very aggressive, miserable snake. That's the bastard that crawled over my neck when I was under a house in Australia that I thought was definitely going to end my life.

I'm going to give it the head of a taipan. Okay. Interesting. Just because I want to make sure everything's clear. So your head that you pick will always scale to the size of the body. So if you pick a big head, you want to pick a big body versus a small body, right? Nope, doesn't matter. Doesn't matter.

Whatever body size, I could pick the head of a hippo. the body of an ant, and then it will, the whole creature will be the size of the ant. Okay, so the body is what determines the size of it. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Well, I will also go head on this one, so I can keep it in order.

I'm going to go with my spirit animal, my reptilian spirit animal, and I'm going to go with the snapping turtle, not only because, and the common snapping turtle, not the alligator snapping turtle, because the common snapping turtle has the reach, it has the power, and it has the sharpness of the beak they can cut through pretty much anything. Bite force, too. Strongest bite force of the snapping turtle species. Very nice. Narnly head, intimidating head.

Yeah. Very terrifying. And by the way, we have this guy, Dave Sunshine, who draws these up after the podcast. So you're going to get to see what your crazy creature looks like. Dave, you better not let me down. All right. So because it's a snake draft, you go again now. So you can pick the body or the legs next.

Body or the legs next. Okay. I'm going to go with the legs of a Wolverine. They're extremely athletic. They allow the animal to move very quickly. They can climb. The claws do not retract, and the paws are exceptionally big with very, very powerful claws, and they're always out.

So whatever that's going to be a tornado whirlwind of is going to destroy something in its path. Also, I would say that's the Wolverine is one of my favorite videos of yours that I've seen. That was very cool. Yeah, that video is amazing. That picture where it's unreal. Okay. All right. So I'm taking a strategy here that is very nimble. I'm going to inject you with venom. I'm not just going sheer brute power like Patrick. I'm not going. I don't know what coyote's doing. Something terrifying, Wolverine and Snappydress. That's insane. So I've got the head of a Tai Pan. Okay. We're fighting in an arena. So I am going to give my animal the legs. of a mountain goat. It has the agility. It can climb up and down the sides of the arena. It's going to bounce around, very springy, and it's going to come in for these quick attacks, typan venom to the neck. I like it. I like it. You haven't gone body yet, so I don't know how big your animal is. I don't either. I'm still working on that. The show that really sort of set up my

career into the next level was a show called Whale Wars on Animal Planet. We filmed lots of different whales. but we never got we never actually filmed a blue whale on that show unfortunately so i'm going to go with the body the very large body of a fin whale fin whale that uh second largest whale in the world yep yep very sad a couple of the seasons that we were filming there they they filmed them taking fin whales up the uh onto the factory ship uh but yeah body of a fin whale to go with my scaled up alaskan brown bear head Great. Oh, and I went first, didn't I?

So legs. Yep. Legs. I just desperately want to give this the legs of a tarantula, but I've never worked with one. I've never done a spider show. Wait. Wait, wait, wait. Have we been together with a tarantula?

I don't think so. Not that I remember. I don't think so. I don't think so. That would have been really scary. Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to go for sheer intimidation. I've got a huge animal.

Huge. Giant browned our head. I'm going to try to scare your animals out of even attacking mine. I'm going to give mine the legs of whatever that red centipede in Vietnam was. Yeah. I can't remember what it was called. I'm blanking on it now, too. The Kings of Pain guys knew exactly what it was.

I'm blanking on the name of it. The giant centipede, doesn't matter. Gnarly little white legs, hundreds of them scaled up to the size of a fin whale. That's my creature. Smart, by the way, because when you've got this big globulous body, having hundreds of little crawly legs. Smart, smart, smart. Yeah, yeah, yuck.

Your animal is possible. How big is your animal going to be here? Man, I was going to go like elephant body, but at this point I'm very outmatched in size. So I've got the head of a Taipan, the legs of a mountain goat. I'm going to put this whole thing on the body of a domestic house cat. I mean, this big. It's this big.

It's agile. It's very slinky. It can bounce around. I'm going to ride your centipede whale, envenate it, no problems. I'm still not sure what size Coyote Peterson's dealing with, but no problems. Your whale's going down.

I'm going to crawl up it, bite it a bunch of times. You're never even going to know it's there. Body of a domestic house cat. Yeah. Sorry, real quick. In what show were you working on where you interact with domestic house cats? I was going to call it out. I mean, I've seen a lot of cats.

That's a good point. fine. Fishing cat. I'm changing it to the body of a fishing cat, which I got to work with in Indonesia. There you go. Thank you. Coyote, how are you going to round yourself out? So I'm on body at this point. So I've got the head of a snapping turtle, which has got the power and its beak and its bite force and the cutting and the crushing, not to mention the length and the speed of that neck. I've got the legs and feet claws of a wolverine for the agility, the speed, and just the ferocity of whatever that was starting part. And I'm going to give you the body of the alligator gar completely and slippery.

So I'm pretty sure that a bear or a snake couldn't bite through that. And even if you'd try to grapple onto it, I'd slip right out, spin around, and rip you apart, and lock on with the jaws and the claws. So, snap and turtle, wolvering alligator gar. I feel confident about this. God, isn't it? It's amazing how much better the podcast is when we're Tep's not here, by the way. You're going to get accused of bullying him, but it's going to be at least 300 comments. Oh, my God. So, yeah, Coyote, our other buddy, Peter, that's typically the other host of the show, we bully him a lot on air. And he deserves it, by the way. Like, he's the worst.

And we are going to get canceled for bullying at some point. Because it's just like, yeah. To recap, Browsoners, weigh in. Let us know who won this very special Battle Royale. Is it Patrick with the head of a bear, the body of a giant fin wheel, whale, covered in the legs of a centipede? Is it coyote's snapping turtle-headed alligator guard bodied Wolverine-legged monstrosity? Or did the very agile body of a fishing cat with the head of a typan and the legs of a mountain goat? That is a mess. What the fuck?

I'm really hoping he does the drawings this week because these are pretty funny looking. Yeah. I don't know. Good drawings. Yeah. These are awesome. Let us know, Brostner's way in. I'm not going to do the whole Retep thing.

If you're listening to this, you know, we have a YouTube channel, we have a Patreon, we have a Discord. I don't know what the fucking links are. Just go and find it. You know, just use Google. At Coyote Peterson on all the socials. And YouTube's amazing. And if you haven't found it already, you've got like five, like you can binge it for the next five

years and you'll still have shit to watch. Yes, for God's sakes, if you're not, or if you're a listener of this and you're not following Coyote on every single social platform, just get out. Just stop listening. Unsubscribe. Hit the, see that little unsubscribe button, hit it. We don't need you here.

Don't do any of that. Just go follow Coyote. Yeah, it's going to follow Coyote. It's always a pleasure to chat with you, buddy. Thanks so much for joining us on the podcast tonight. Patrick, it's been very refreshing not having Peter here. Yep. And good night, everybody.

Thanks for having me, guys. Thank you.