The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1240 - Forrest Galante

00:00:02.000 All right, here we go.

00:00:03.000 Five, four, three, two, one.

00:00:08.000 Yes!

00:00:09.000 How are you, man?

00:00:09.000 What's going on?

00:00:10.000 Joe, I'm stoked, man.

00:00:11.000 I'm really good, really glad to be here.

00:00:13.000 I'm stoked, too.

00:00:14.000 Yeah.

00:00:14.000 Nice to meet you.

00:00:15.000 You, too.

00:00:15.000 Dude, you were on Naked and Afraid.

00:00:17.000 Sure was. 0.98

00:00:17.000 How ridiculous is that? 0.98

00:00:18.000 Sure was. 0.99

00:00:19.000 Dude, it's so ridiculous. 0.98

00:00:21.000 Like, to say ridiculous is such an understatement. 0.96

00:00:24.000 See, because they oftentimes will have an actual survival expert or a wildlife expert or someone who knows how to live in the woods.

00:00:30.000 Sure.

00:00:31.000 And that was the idea with you, to get a wildlife expert?

00:00:34.000 Definitely.

00:00:34.000 I mean, I'm kind of a combo.

00:00:37.000 I've practiced primitive survival for many years in a means to get closer to wildlife.

00:00:41.000 I just got back from the Amazon, and we had to feed ourselves every day.

00:00:45.000 We had to build shelter, blah, blah, blah.

00:00:46.000 And I don't do it for fun.

00:00:48.000 I do it as a means to be out further and stay longer kind of thing.

00:00:52.000 But it's got to be a little bit of a conscious effort, right?

00:00:55.000 Like, to have fun, like, fishing for your food and, you know, putting up shelter and stuff.

00:01:00.000 I mean, it's got to be, like, kind of cool to live like that for a little bit.

00:01:03.000 It's human nature, you know?

00:01:05.000 Like, we intrinsically want to hunt things and fish things and build a shelter and survive, and so it's totally fun.

00:01:11.000 I think it's, like, to your core, it's fun.

00:01:13.000 You know what I mean?

00:01:13.000 You just feel it.

00:01:14.000 Like, you know that you're doing something that's, like, primal human nature.

00:01:17.000 Yeah, the Amazon fishing clips that you have on your Instagram page, it's crazy.

00:01:22.000 You just throw a cast out there and you're catching a big fish instantly.

00:01:26.000 Bonkers.

00:01:27.000 Like, I've fished a lot of places.

00:01:28.000 I'm really into fishing and spearfishing.

00:01:29.000 And every...

00:01:31.000 Joe, I'm not kidding.

00:01:32.000 Every single cast was a fish.

00:01:34.000 A peacock, bass, or a piranha.

00:01:35.000 Every cast.

00:01:36.000 And where we were in the Amazon, super remote.

00:01:38.000 Like, not a lot of people go there.

00:01:39.000 I'm sure those fish have never, ever seen a lure, never seen a hook before.

00:01:43.000 And it wasn't like sport fishing.

00:01:46.000 It was like, okay, let's go catch 10 fish.

00:01:48.000 In other words, take 10 casts and we have enough food.

00:01:50.000 And that was it.

00:01:51.000 And it was amazing. 0.83

00:01:52.000 Does it make you think of what the ocean must have been like before people fucked it up? 0.84

00:01:56.000 Of course. 0.93

00:01:56.000 I mean, of course. 0.93

00:01:57.000 As a biologist, that's all I can think about.

00:01:59.000 Because I was in Hawaii recently, and we did some snorkeling, and when you're swimming around with the goggles on, looking down at the ocean, one of the things that's kind of shocking is how few fish there are.

00:02:10.000 I know.

00:02:11.000 Like, do you think this should be, like, teeming with life?

00:02:15.000 You're over these reefs, and you see, like, three or four fish, or five fish, or something like that.

00:02:20.000 It's so weird.

00:02:20.000 I mean, there are these pockets left in the world that are completely untouched, and it's like as soon as you get into one, you can see it.

00:02:27.000 You're like, this is what it used to be like everywhere, and it's like humans haven't had an impact.

00:02:32.000 I don't want to disparage anyone in Hawaii, but I don't think there's anywhere in Hawaii like that, because it's all so accessible.

00:02:40.000 I've been fortunate enough to see a couple of these pockets, and they're just booming with stuff, and it's like, this is what it could be.

00:02:46.000 Yeah, I mean, I guess that's like what it must be to just be in the Amazon itself as well, right?

00:02:52.000 For sure.

00:02:53.000 In the jungle, not just the rivers and the lakes or whatever's out there, but the actual jungle itself.

00:02:58.000 It was incredible.

00:02:59.000 The jungle there, so we were in Colombian Amazon, and like, talk about untouched by people, there's been this kind of ongoing conflict in Colombia for many, many years.

00:03:08.000 So we were the first Westerners to go there in over 60 years.

00:03:11.000 So the village we flew into, they'd literally never seen white people before.

00:03:14.000 And then we went 200 kilometers from that.

00:03:16.000 So like, middle of nowhere.

00:03:18.000 Did they want to touch you?

00:03:19.000 Yeah, hair.

00:03:20.000 Because their hair was very dark and very different.

00:03:22.000 And like, I'm not particularly fair, but just to touch like the hair and see the blue eyes and stuff, they were just loving it.

00:03:27.000 Were they friendly?

00:03:27.000 Super friendly.

00:03:28.000 Like...

00:03:30.000 The culture was very stoic.

00:03:31.000 There wasn't a lot of smiling or crying.

00:03:33.000 There wasn't a lot of emotional exchange.

00:03:36.000 But straight away they came and greeted us, shook hands, said hello.

00:03:41.000 It was really cool.

00:03:42.000 How do you set something like that up?

00:03:45.000 Do you have a liaison that acts as a go-between between you and the tribes?

00:03:50.000 Yeah, so we did in this case have one guy who communicated.

00:03:54.000 I speak Spanish, Spanglish, I guess, and they all speak Spanish from back in the day.

00:03:59.000 So we set it all up.

00:04:01.000 It's part of the wildlife stuff that I do.

00:04:03.000 We literally flew a DC-3, a World War II cargo plane, into this cocaine dealer's airstrip.

00:04:08.000 What?

00:04:09.000 That's how we got there.

00:04:10.000 I mean, like, mind-blowing stuff.

00:04:11.000 Current cocaine dealer or former?

00:04:13.000 Former.

00:04:13.000 Former, yeah.

00:04:14.000 Well, you know, TBD. It's still Columbia, right?

00:04:17.000 Exactly.

00:04:18.000 Wow.

00:04:19.000 Wow.

00:04:19.000 So yeah, that one was really cool.

00:04:21.000 Really remote.

00:04:22.000 How crazy is it that they learned Spanish from people who came over on boats from Spain and it just stuck?

00:04:28.000 Isn't that nuts?

00:04:29.000 And took over the whole, like, region.

00:04:31.000 Yeah, the whole world.

00:04:33.000 And there's this tribe in the middle of the Amazon that has this language from another continent.

00:04:37.000 Well, and Brazil, right?

00:04:39.000 From Portugal.

00:04:40.000 Right.

00:04:40.000 It's really incredible when you stop and think about it.

00:04:42.000 I mean, it's incredible, but it's also part of it's a little sad.

00:04:46.000 Like, wouldn't you have loved to have heard what their original language was?

00:04:50.000 Oh, absolutely.

00:04:51.000 Like, what it sounded like?

00:04:52.000 Well, they did.

00:04:53.000 So, it's funny, because when they didn't want us to understand what they were talking about, they would switch to their native Indian language.

00:04:58.000 So, they still had...

00:04:59.000 They were bilingual.

00:05:01.000 A community of 25 people that have never left, and they're bilingual.

00:05:04.000 Wow.

00:05:05.000 It's amazing.

00:05:06.000 Now...

00:05:07.000 Their native language is what?

00:05:09.000 What is it?

00:05:10.000 It's an Amazonian Indian dialect.

00:05:12.000 I honestly don't even...

00:05:13.000 They might have said the name, but I don't recall.

00:05:15.000 What is the name of their tribe?

00:05:17.000 Also, I'm not even sure.

00:05:19.000 They're so isolated, they're unaware of what country they live in.

00:05:22.000 They don't even know that they're in Colombia.

00:05:24.000 Really?

00:05:25.000 Really.

00:05:25.000 They're just like, to them, they're Amazonian.

00:05:27.000 They're not Colombian, Ecuadorian, Brazilian.

00:05:30.000 They're Amazonian.

00:05:31.000 Whoa.

00:05:32.000 Yeah.

00:05:33.000 So they just stay.

00:05:34.000 Stay.

00:05:34.000 Like, where they are, they stay.

00:05:36.000 And the village we were in is literally, I think it's over 200 kilometers from the next village of 15 or so people, and they don't have fuel, they don't have motors, you know, they're just in this pocket, and they just substance live.

00:05:49.000 And they're all barefoot, right?

00:05:51.000 Yeah.

00:05:51.000 Do they have those crazy splayed-out feet?

00:05:53.000 Yeah.

00:05:54.000 Big feet, you know, because they're not very big people.

00:05:56.000 They're like small Indian people, but really big, kind of useful feet. 1.00

00:06:01.000 And the way that, you know, they could run up and down trees and climb stuff, I mean, it was unbelievable.

00:06:06.000 Like, so much more athletic than you could imagine.

00:06:09.000 Imagine, right?

00:06:10.000 They've been doing that their whole life, right?

00:06:11.000 Their whole lives, yeah.

00:06:12.000 Now, when I say splayed-out feet, what I'm talking about is that people that walk barefoot in the jungle for long periods of time with their whole life, their toes spread out, and their feet almost look like a hand. 0.61

00:06:24.000 Oh, no way.

00:06:25.000 I did not, like, pay enough attention.

00:06:27.000 That might have been the case, but I didn't notice it.

00:06:29.000 You just look at their feet?

00:06:30.000 Exactly.

00:06:31.000 Yeah, it is kind of a weird thing to stare at dude's feet.

00:06:33.000 Yeah, for sure.

00:06:34.000 But, yeah, Steve Rinella, who's a good friend of mine, told me about that.

00:06:38.000 He was in Guyana, and it was the same thing, and they actually got some pictures and videos of these people's feet, but look at these guys up there.

00:06:45.000 Whoa! 0.71

00:06:46.000 Oh, no, I didn't notice anything like that.

00:06:48.000 Yeah, this is the, that's, how do you say that?

00:06:55.000 Horani?

00:06:56.000 Horani?

00:06:57.000 Horani?

00:06:58.000 Sounds right.

00:06:58.000 Horani, you think?

00:06:59.000 Horani.

00:07:00.000 Horani Indian splayed feet. 0.99

00:07:02.000 So, it's very strange.

00:07:04.000 It's kind of the opposite of what happens to women when they jam their feet into those little pointy shoes. 1.00

00:07:09.000 Right.

00:07:09.000 Where they get the toes kind of smoosh onto each other.

00:07:12.000 The ballet feet.

00:07:13.000 Yeah, it's horrible.

00:07:14.000 Instead of that, they're all crazy spread out. 1.00

00:07:16.000 What in the fuck is going on there? 0.99

00:07:18.000 The toughest hands, I think. 1.00

00:07:20.000 Yeah, the top's hands.

00:07:21.000 But the bottom is like wood feet.

00:07:23.000 But that's got to be like what our feet are supposed to be.

00:07:26.000 Probably, right?

00:07:27.000 Right?

00:07:27.000 Yeah.

00:07:28.000 Thick ass toes that actually have muscles in them that move. 0.77

00:07:31.000 That you can use like a tool, like your hand.

00:07:33.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:07:34.000 So when these guys just can climb up trees with them, so they grip the side of the tree with their feet like a hand.

00:07:40.000 Oh, I mean, I didn't notice, like I say, the feet just like that specifically, but the way they could, like, everything's covered in mud down there, right?

00:07:46.000 It's all wet, it rains every day, and they could run up and down these tree trunks, like, to get up and down the village, and here's me and my crew with our awkward cameras and stuff, and we're slipping and sliding and falling over, and, like, they're literally like, what's wrong with these people?

00:07:59.000 Why can't they walk?

00:08:00.000 We must have looked like infants to them. 0.99

00:08:02.000 Right, and you guys probably have boots on and shit that get muddy and fucked up. 0.99

00:08:07.000 Oh, totally. 0.99

00:08:08.000 Yeah, we're wearing muck boots, and my one buddy's got waders on, and we think we're all hard and cool because we've got all this gear, and they're just running around in shorts barefoot.

00:08:16.000 It is so fascinating when you see people that don't have contact with the outside world, like...

00:08:23.000 I'm sure you're aware of that recent story, the missionary was killed by the people on North Sentinel Island.

00:08:28.000 Absolutely.

00:08:28.000 Which is one of the weirdest places, because they've branched off from Africa 60,000 years ago or something like that.

00:08:34.000 Right.

00:08:35.000 When you're around these people, what do they do if they get injured?

00:08:40.000 So, funny you ask that, because we kind of had that same question, right?

00:08:45.000 And they don't leave.

00:08:47.000 They stay in the village.

00:08:48.000 They have a shaman at the village who blessed us with a crazy green powder, and that's a whole other story.

00:08:53.000 But they have a shaman, and he is their doctor.

00:08:56.000 However, he has no access to any Western medicine.

00:08:59.000 So, it's only his learned knowledge handed down through generations, plus jungle powders and whatnot. 0.84

00:09:06.000 And...

00:09:07.000 And that's it.

00:09:07.000 So we spent today, because we had a medic with us, doing village help, if you will.

00:09:13.000 Everybody had ringworm.

00:09:14.000 Everybody had respiratory infections.

00:09:16.000 There were a lot of lady problems in the village that our medic had to deal with. 1.00

00:09:21.000 I mean, there was a lot of health issues, and you don't even realize it.

00:09:24.000 I'm going to write something down before I forget.

00:09:26.000 I'm sorry, it's totally unrelated.

00:09:28.000 No, all good.

00:09:28.000 There's a doctor named Peter Hotez that's coming on the podcast, and I have to follow up on him.

00:09:34.000 When you start talking about the people in the jungle, he's an actual doctor who specializes in infectious diseases in jungle and tropical climates, and he's like, everyone's infected with something.

00:09:47.000 Everyone.

00:09:47.000 He'd have a heyday down there.

00:09:48.000 Yeah, I'm sure.

00:09:49.000 It's probably been.

00:09:50.000 Yeah.

00:09:51.000 But the...

00:09:53.000 So when these people have ringworm and all these different infections, do they treat it? 0.99

00:09:58.000 Do they have some naturopathic cure or some shit? 0.94

00:10:01.000 I think it's kind of a 50-50. 0.99

00:10:03.000 A lot of it they don't treat because it's just part of everyday life.

00:10:06.000 When I say everybody had ringworm, I meant...

00:10:08.000 Everybody had it.

00:10:09.000 So I don't think there was any kind of treatment or cure.

00:10:12.000 It was just kind of part of it, part of them.

00:10:14.000 But other things, you know, the witch doctor or the shaman was trying to treat.

00:10:19.000 And then we kind of went in and we had, like, medication for ringworms, so we dewormed everybody with the shaman's blessing.

00:10:26.000 And he was, like, super excited to have Western medicine in the village and...

00:10:29.000 Would you use, like, Lamisil or something like that?

00:10:31.000 I couldn't tell you.

00:10:32.000 I think it was...

00:10:33.000 It wasn't topical.

00:10:35.000 I think it was like a Vermox, like a pill that you take that kills the worms.

00:10:39.000 Hmm.

00:10:40.000 The weird thing about that is, like...

00:10:43.000 Don't you leave, and then they're going to get it again, right?

00:10:46.000 I mean, there's only so much you can do, right?

00:10:48.000 Yeah, totally.

00:10:49.000 We were having the same dilemma, and it was like, do we interfere because we're from the outside world?

00:10:54.000 Do we help?

00:10:55.000 And we talked to the shaman through our translator, and he said, please help, please help.

00:10:59.000 So we gave, including him, everybody this dewormer, but, you know, they'll just come back. 0.77

00:11:04.000 Yeah, and also they probably don't understand the consequences of taking some antibiotic that's going to do some weird shit to your whole biome. 0.95

00:11:12.000 Right, right. 0.61

00:11:13.000 And these are all the good stuff, too.

00:11:15.000 It's such a moral dilemma.

00:11:16.000 You're there and you're like, I want to help.

00:11:18.000 Do I? Is it helpful?

00:11:19.000 Is it hindering?

00:11:20.000 Our medic was like, it's undeniably going to help.

00:11:23.000 You know, they need this.

00:11:25.000 And so we went for it.

00:11:26.000 And it was, you know, it seemed to help.

00:11:28.000 Everybody felt fine, but we were only there a couple more days before we left.

00:11:32.000 So, who knows?

00:11:33.000 Yeah.

00:11:34.000 Wow.

00:11:34.000 You know, when you're talking about ringworm, are these guys covered in it?

00:11:37.000 They have big patches of it?

00:11:39.000 Like, what's it like?

00:11:39.000 Feet and legs had big patches of it.

00:11:41.000 Yeah?

00:11:42.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:11:42.000 And this, if you don't know, that's the same shit that's athlete's foot. 1.00

00:11:46.000 Oh, I didn't know that. 0.99

00:11:47.000 Yeah, ringworm and athlete's foot are the same kind of funk.

00:11:50.000 Oh.

00:11:51.000 Yeah.

00:11:51.000 That's why people tell you to pee on your feet.

00:11:54.000 I thought that was just for fun.

00:11:56.000 It could be for fun.

00:11:57.000 Depends on what you're into.

00:11:58.000 But I think that's the idea behind it, is that you're, somehow or another, you're killing the bad bacteria when you piss on your feet and you have athlete's foot. 0.99

00:12:08.000 That might be horseshit. 0.99

00:12:09.000 Maybe, yeah. 0.97

00:12:10.000 Yeah.

00:12:11.000 With me, you always have to check.

00:12:14.000 Yeah, definitely give that a little look-see.

00:12:16.000 But it's a real common thing with jiu-jitsu.

00:12:19.000 Gotcha.

00:12:19.000 Just all the mats.

00:12:20.000 Yeah, it's real common.

00:12:22.000 Guys get it.

00:12:25.000 People really fuck up where they like, Put bleach on it and a bunch of different things to try to kill it and it winds up getting worse and also fucks up all the natural skin flora. 0.82

00:12:34.000 Jock itch, athlete's foot and ringworm are all types of fungal skin infections known collectively as tinea. 0.95

00:12:41.000 They're caused by fungi called dermatrophytes that live on the skin, hair, and nails and thrive in warm, moist areas.

00:12:50.000 The jungle.

00:12:51.000 So it seems like they're just going to get it.

00:12:53.000 That's just what it sounds like.

00:12:56.000 What do they do for it?

00:12:57.000 What do they do for it?

00:12:58.000 I didn't see them treating that at all.

00:13:00.000 And when we pointed it out, they were like, yeah, yeah, we know about it.

00:13:02.000 They were more concerned with things that were dire.

00:13:05.000 There was an infant, maybe not an infant, maybe three years old, and he was hacking up a lung.

00:13:10.000 And he was asthmatic, according to our medic.

00:13:12.000 So our medic gave them an asthma medication, and he just said, if he has an attack where he can't breathe, give him this.

00:13:20.000 And, like, you know, to be super real with you, when we walked away, our medic was like, I doubt he'll live to see adulthood.

00:13:25.000 Oh, man.

00:13:26.000 Yeah.

00:13:27.000 And were you giving him inhalers?

00:13:29.000 Did you give him...

00:13:30.000 I'm not sure, to be honest, what it was that he left with him.

00:13:32.000 And what about, like, injuries?

00:13:34.000 What if they break a leg or something like that?

00:13:35.000 What do they do?

00:13:36.000 I don't think anything.

00:13:38.000 Yeah.

00:13:39.000 I mean, you've got to think, these people are climbing trees.

00:13:42.000 They must fall.

00:13:42.000 Constantly.

00:13:43.000 Fall, get bitten by stuff.

00:13:44.000 There's tons of venomous snakes out there.

00:13:46.000 It's wet, it's muddy, it's slippery.

00:13:48.000 They're building stuff out of very rudimentary tools.

00:13:51.000 I mean, it's nuts.

00:13:52.000 They have to get injured. 0.97

00:13:53.000 It's so interesting that we have this understanding of medicine and doctors and hospitals, but that's probably pretty fucking recent. 0.92

00:14:05.000 Oh, of course, yeah. 0.73

00:14:06.000 I'll tell you a story, Joe.

00:14:07.000 I was in Myanmar late last year, and we're down there filming this thing, and this kid, like 22-year-old crab fisherman, gets bitten by a crocodile.

00:14:16.000 Croc grabs him by the arm, grabs him by the thigh, and death rolls.

00:14:19.000 So it breaks the arm and, like...

00:14:21.000 I don't know, 15 places.

00:14:22.000 Compound fracture.

00:14:23.000 The real deal.

00:14:24.000 I can show you pictures of it.

00:14:25.000 It'll blow your mind.

00:14:26.000 And we hear about this, and we're minutes away.

00:14:29.000 It's kind of one of the similar situations where we're the first Westerners to be there in a long time.

00:14:33.000 We go bombing over at high speed, and we get there, and the mom is off mourning the death of her child, but her child is sitting there still alive.

00:14:42.000 They have written him off.

00:14:44.000 And mom is literally mourning the death of her child, and he's lying there, conscious, but like in total shock.

00:14:51.000 Fortunately, just because of the situation, we had a speedboat, everything else.

00:14:55.000 We bandaged him up, you know, tried to keep his arms stable and his legs stable, put him in our speedboat, and it was six hours by speedboat to a village that had a, or to a hospital, really.

00:15:04.000 And so he got there, and his life was saved.

00:15:07.000 But I asked, we asked the people in the village, what were you going to do?

00:15:11.000 And they're like, there's nothing we can do.

00:15:13.000 Wow.

00:15:13.000 So he was just going to bleed out or go septic, and that was the end of it.

00:15:17.000 Ooh, what a fucking rough way to go. 0.99

00:15:19.000 Right? 0.99

00:15:20.000 Ooh.

00:15:21.000 How did he get away from the crocodile?

00:15:23.000 Uh, I don't know.

00:15:24.000 I think he was just hitting it or hammering on it.

00:15:26.000 He was crab fishing in the water, and it came up and grabbed him, rolled a few times, and at some point he escaped.

00:15:32.000 How he even got back in the boat and made it back to the village, I have no idea, because his leg was shattered, his arm was shattered.

00:15:37.000 It was brutal.

00:15:38.000 And it was a canoe, you know?

00:15:39.000 It wasn't like he had a little motor or a wheel to drive.

00:15:41.000 He canoed back.

00:15:42.000 One of the most disturbing stories I ever read was these guys were kayaking in an African river and the guy in front of them got grabbed by a crocodile and that it went under and it plunged like a bobber as the crocodile pulled him out of the bottom of the kayak.

00:15:59.000 Yeah. 0.99

00:15:59.000 I'm like, fuck. 0.99

00:16:01.000 That's awful. 1.00

00:16:02.000 Imagine being the guy behind him and watching that shit. 1.00

00:16:04.000 Just watching, yeah, and knowing that you're pretty much helpless. 0.99

00:16:07.000 Did you see any jaguars or anything?

00:16:10.000 I've never seen a jaguar.

00:16:11.000 I'm from Africa.

00:16:12.000 I don't know if you knew that.

00:16:13.000 So I've seen a lot of lions growing up.

00:16:15.000 My family did safaris.

00:16:17.000 And then I've seen mountain lions here in California, leopards, stuff like that.

00:16:20.000 I've never seen a wild jaguar.

00:16:22.000 Really?

00:16:23.000 Even when you were in the Amazon?

00:16:25.000 I think they're really elusive.

00:16:26.000 I know there's areas that are hot spots.

00:16:28.000 All of the locals were very nervous and kind of knew about them.

00:16:33.000 Like, you know, I went out for bushwalks at night and stuff, and I'd just go, me and one guy with a camera, and they were like, oh, be careful, like, peligroso, you know, very dangerous, don't do it. 1.00

00:16:43.000 But...

00:16:44.000 Peligroso means very dangerous?

00:16:45.000 Peligroso, like danger. 0.82

00:16:47.000 And so we just go and, you know, I'm not trying to act like we were tougher than them or anything.

00:16:52.000 We would love to have seen one, but they were very aware of them.

00:16:55.000 So they were there.

00:16:56.000 We just didn't happen to run into one.

00:16:57.000 Sort of like mountain lions.

00:16:59.000 Exactly.

00:16:59.000 Yeah.

00:17:00.000 Like, they say that mountain lions are, like, if you live in a place that has them, you know, Wyoming or Colorado or something like that, they know where you are.

00:17:07.000 Right.

00:17:08.000 They might be around you all the time, and you might rarely see them.

00:17:11.000 Exactly.

00:17:12.000 Maybe driving home, you see one skittering into the bush.

00:17:15.000 There was a nuts video, I think it was from the LA area, did you ever see it, where the security cams picked up this mountain lion that was walking through this very residential neighborhood, and you'd see people would walk by, and then 30 seconds later, he'd dip out of the shadows, and then dip back in, and then the next set of people would walk by,

00:17:30.000 and nobody had any clue he was there.

00:17:32.000 Yeah.

00:17:32.000 It's crazy that a giant predator can move around like that.

00:17:35.000 Right.

00:17:35.000 Yeah.

00:17:36.000 Yeah, so when you're there, like, what would you have done if someone got bit by a venomous snake or a spider or something like that?

00:17:43.000 Did you guys have any antivenom?

00:17:45.000 Were you prepared for something like that?

00:17:46.000 I mean, that's my department, right?

00:17:48.000 Like, as the wildlife guy, that's kind of my department is make sure nobody gets bitten, make sure nothing like that happens.

00:17:54.000 And we handled very many venomous snakes and caught anacondas and all kinds of great stuff.

00:18:00.000 We did have, like...

00:18:02.000 My main camera guy's name's Mitch.

00:18:04.000 He got absolutely lit up by these wasps one night, and we all were.

00:18:08.000 We got like 12, 14 stings each.

00:18:10.000 But I look back in the canoe at one point, and his eyes are just super swollen.

00:18:13.000 He's bright red.

00:18:14.000 He's sweating.

00:18:15.000 I'm like, Mitch, you okay?

00:18:15.000 He's like, uh-uh.

00:18:16.000 His throat started to close up.

00:18:18.000 He was having an allergic reaction.

00:18:20.000 So we had to hit him with antihistamines, and I'm not actually sure if the medic administered the EpiPen or not, but he was like...

00:18:27.000 We're in the middle of the jungle.

00:18:28.000 We're six hours from a village that's then a full day's travel by a charter plane from a hospital. 0.97

00:18:32.000 I mean, middle of fucking nowhere. 0.95

00:18:34.000 And his throat's closing up. 0.99

00:18:36.000 And that's why we take a medic with us.

00:18:39.000 Thankfully, we had this emergency medic.

00:18:40.000 He administered the antihistamines and Mitch was okay.

00:18:42.000 But these things do happen.

00:18:44.000 Do you ever, like, while you're on these crazy adventures, do you ever out there going, this is the last one?

00:18:49.000 Nah.

00:18:50.000 No way.

00:18:51.000 No way, man.

00:18:51.000 I love it.

00:18:52.000 I live for it.

00:18:53.000 Wow.

00:18:54.000 How long have you been doing this?

00:18:56.000 I mean, like, for TV, for Animal Planet, three years, I guess.

00:19:01.000 But the reason I got into that and doing it for TV is because I've been doing it, like, my whole life.

00:19:07.000 I grew up in Zimbabwe.

00:19:08.000 My mom was a bush pilot. 0.93

00:19:10.000 So when we weren't on safari, she was, like, flying us to these remote places in the middle of the bush, and we were going out on safari.

00:19:15.000 And, like, as long as I can remember, this has been what I do.

00:19:19.000 Now, when you go on safari, are you in those open jeeps?

00:19:22.000 Walking safaris.

00:19:23.000 What?

00:19:24.000 Yeah.

00:19:26.000 What are you doing?

00:19:28.000 We take a.458, an elephant gun, put it on your shoulder, and walking safari. 1.00

00:19:33.000 Goddamn, man. 0.99

00:19:34.000 Only during the day, right? 0.99

00:19:35.000 Yeah.

00:19:35.000 Cannot move at night.

00:19:36.000 And what do you do when you're confronted?

00:19:39.000 I mean, I've had some pretty close calls.

00:19:41.000 My wife, Jess, is here with me.

00:19:43.000 I saved her from a hippo.

00:19:44.000 Oh! 0.60

00:19:45.000 Yeah, we've had some pretty close calls. 1.00

00:19:48.000 Fuck, man. 1.00

00:19:48.000 One of the scariest pictures I ever saw was this guy, this African guy, running down the street and a hippo is chasing him. 1.00

00:19:54.000 And you look at the size of the hippo and you're like, good Christ, that thing is huge.

00:19:58.000 Joe, they are the scariest animals on earth.

00:20:01.000 Like, interacting with a hippopotamus, they're so erratic, they're so unpredictable.

00:20:05.000 If they feel threatened at all, I mean, they're just... 0.99

00:20:08.000 This video is fucking bananas. 0.99

00:20:10.000 This guy's on a motorboat, and the hippo is swimming after him like a torpedo. 0.99

00:20:16.000 So this is where I'm from.

00:20:17.000 This is Zimbabwe.

00:20:18.000 Really?

00:20:18.000 Yeah.

00:20:19.000 So is this common that they swim that fast?

00:20:22.000 They can move.

00:20:23.000 I mean, this is uncommon to have one chase the boat and come that close. 0.99

00:20:27.000 How fucking big it is, man. 0.98

00:20:29.000 Yeah. 0.99

00:20:31.000 So when you've had these close encounters, what do you do?

00:20:34.000 You shoot at the air?

00:20:35.000 You shoot at the ground?

00:20:36.000 Scare them away?

00:20:37.000 Fortunately, I've never had to put an animal down, but I know people that have.

00:20:41.000 That's the picture.

00:20:42.000 Look at that.

00:20:42.000 That's it.

00:20:42.000 That's the one.

00:20:43.000 What in the fuck? 1.00

00:20:45.000 How fast is that big bastard run? 1.00

00:20:48.000 I don't know. 1.00

00:20:49.000 You'd have to look up the exact speed, but definitely at top speed, definitely faster than human.

00:20:53.000 But they don't have the maneuverability.

00:20:54.000 You know, you can kind of duck and dodge behind trees.

00:20:56.000 So just don't run a straight line.

00:20:58.000 Exactly. 1.00

00:20:59.000 Fuck that. 1.00

00:21:00.000 19 miles an hour. 1.00

00:21:02.000 Yeah, what does a person run?

00:21:04.000 A rhino runs 31. Jesus Christ.

00:21:07.000 Jesus. 1.00

00:21:07.000 A fucking cheetah can run 75 miles an hour? 1.00

00:21:10.000 Uh-huh. 1.00

00:21:10.000 I thought it was like 50. Uh-uh. 1.00

00:21:12.000 Fuck! 1.00

00:21:12.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:21:13.000 75? 1.00

00:21:14.000 A crocodile's almost as fast as the fucking hippo. 1.00

00:21:17.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:21:17.000 Oh, my God. 1.00

00:21:18.000 They're quick.

00:21:19.000 18 miles an hour for a croc. 1.00

00:21:21.000 Fuck that. 1.00

00:21:22.000 Top speed for a sprinter's around 21, 22 maybe. 1.00

00:21:25.000 But that's not sustained.

00:21:27.000 Yeah, that's also a sprinter.

00:21:29.000 Yeah, I'm not saying a sprinter.

00:21:30.000 Not a doughy white guy like us. 1.00

00:21:33.000 Fuck. 1.00

00:21:34.000 Jesus Christ! 1.00

00:21:36.000 So if you're chased by a hippo, is there a move that you do?

00:21:40.000 Do you just have to go left and right?

00:21:41.000 Zig-zag, yeah.

00:21:42.000 Maneuverability.

00:21:43.000 So when we got chased, we got behind a termite mound, and then it kept going straight.

00:21:48.000 You're hiding behind termites! 1.00

00:21:50.000 Fuck! 1.00

00:21:51.000 Nothing says safety like termites. 1.00

00:21:53.000 Oh my god, dude.

00:21:54.000 That's so crazy. 1.00

00:21:57.000 Fuck, man. 1.00

00:21:57.000 So that's the scariest thing in Africa, in terms of interacting with human beings? 1.00

00:22:03.000 You know what the scariest thing in Africa is? 1.00

00:22:04.000 Mosquitoes.

00:22:05.000 Oh, of course, right?

00:22:07.000 All stuff you can see, all the big wildlife, you can kind of feel it out and you put yourself in the bad situations.

00:22:14.000 Mosquitoes, there's nothing you can do about it. 0.79

00:22:17.000 Yeah, my buddy Justin Wren, he runs Fight for the Forgotten Charity.

00:22:21.000 They build wells for the pygmies. 1.00

00:22:23.000 And he's been bitten.

00:22:25.000 He's gotten malaria three times.

00:22:27.000 And one time he got it like he didn't even get bit again.

00:22:31.000 The malaria just returned.

00:22:34.000 So it must be in some way systemic.

00:22:37.000 I believe it is.

00:22:38.000 I never had it, knock on wood.

00:22:40.000 My grandfather had it, but I know that it wrecks you for life.

00:22:44.000 Like, it can come back, you can get it again, it stays with you.

00:22:47.000 I think that's his situation, and he's a professional athlete.

00:22:51.000 He's actually a fighter for Bellator.

00:22:53.000 He's one of their heavyweight contenders. 0.99

00:22:55.000 Damn. 0.99

00:22:55.000 Has he said that it's affected his performance? 0.99

00:22:58.000 No, I don't think it has.

00:23:00.000 I think he's been okay with it.

00:23:02.000 He received treatment, but it's definitely wrecked him on three separate occasions where he was basically on death's door.

00:23:08.000 Right, right.

00:23:09.000 And one of them was when he was flying back. 0.99

00:23:11.000 Damn. 0.99

00:23:11.000 And he's just sweating and just rotting out on the inside. 0.99

00:23:15.000 Oof.

00:23:16.000 Awful.

00:23:16.000 So you want to ask what scares me?

00:23:18.000 That's it.

00:23:18.000 Yeah.

00:23:18.000 Like, I'll take a hippo, a snake, a croc, a leopard, anything over that.

00:23:23.000 Yeah, malaria is terrifying.

00:23:24.000 They say malaria has killed more people than anything ever.

00:23:28.000 Really?

00:23:28.000 Yeah.

00:23:29.000 Malaria has killed half the people that have ever died.

00:23:31.000 Oh my god.

00:23:32.000 That's insane.

00:23:33.000 Just make sure that's right. 1.00

00:23:36.000 That might be bullshit, too. 0.99

00:23:37.000 It sounds good. 1.00

00:23:38.000 I think it's real.

00:23:39.000 I think we actually have Googled this before, that malaria has literally killed 50% of all the people that have ever died.

00:23:45.000 That's insane.

00:23:45.000 Yeah, it's nuts.

00:23:46.000 I mean, people are worried about so many different things, and you should be worried about mosquitoes.

00:23:50.000 Exactly.

00:23:52.000 Apparently they're trying to genetically engineer mosquitoes to be devoid of malaria.

00:24:01.000 And they hybridize, right?

00:24:02.000 So my understanding is the way that it's done is they genetically engineer the males to reproduce with the females, which are the malaria carriers, and then the offspring of that generation can no longer carry malaria.

00:24:14.000 Yeah.

00:24:15.000 Wow.

00:24:15.000 Yeah.

00:24:16.000 Okay, malaria killed half the people who have ever lived.

00:24:18.000 That is bonkers.

00:24:19.000 Because it's a myth.

00:24:20.000 It's a myth?

00:24:21.000 Yeah, it would have had to kill, it says like, five and a half million people on average per year, every year for all of human history, and that's not...

00:24:27.000 I think it kills half a million a year.

00:24:30.000 I think the real number's like half a million.

00:24:31.000 Yeah, it says it would have to be five and a half million to kill everyone. 0.97

00:24:32.000 Oh, okay.

00:24:33.000 So it's just one of those things that people say.

00:24:35.000 I like it. 1.00

00:24:35.000 Well, I should probably shut the fuck up. 1.00

00:24:37.000 But what else is new? 0.99

00:24:39.000 So how many people have they killed?

00:24:41.000 A lot.

00:24:42.000 Okay.

00:24:43.000 We'll go with a lot.

00:24:46.000 So, are there other diseases? 0.98

00:24:47.000 I mean, there's not like typhoid and shit. 0.99

00:24:49.000 Isn't there like a fucking case of typhoid in California now? 0.99

00:24:54.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 0.99

00:24:56.000 Well, we've got some weird situations in this country with, you know, measles returning and polio returning.

00:25:02.000 Ebola came in.

00:25:04.000 Yeah. 0.80

00:25:04.000 What the hell? 0.80

00:25:06.000 Typhus outbreaks expands in L.A. and Long Beach.

00:25:09.000 Jesus!

00:25:09.000 Cool, thanks for having me down here, Joe.

00:25:11.000 Congratulations.

00:25:12.000 Did you notice my hand was sweaty when we showed up?

00:25:13.000 They're different, but...

00:25:15.000 It's different?

00:25:15.000 It's similar, but different.

00:25:17.000 It's not typhoid, it's typhus.

00:25:19.000 Oh.

00:25:19.000 It's a flea-borne typhus.

00:25:24.000 I'm terrified of Lyme disease too.

00:25:26.000 Have you had Lyme?

00:25:27.000 No, but I have a gang of friends that have had it and it wrecks them.

00:25:30.000 Well, you spend a ton of time hiking around and stuff out here.

00:25:33.000 Well, California doesn't have much Lyme, but East Coast, it's horrific.

00:25:38.000 It's like everybody that spends time outdoors in the Northeast seems to get it.

00:25:41.000 Yeah, and I don't know what you can do about that.

00:25:43.000 There was a vaccine that they were doing for a while, but one of my friends, her dad actually got Lyme disease from the vaccine.

00:25:52.000 Huh.

00:25:53.000 Like, he didn't have it, got vaccinated, and wound up catching it from the vaccine. 1.00

00:25:56.000 And I think they were like, okay, fuck this vaccine. 1.00

00:25:59.000 Sorry. 1.00

00:26:00.000 Because they had it for a while, I believe.

00:26:01.000 Jeez.

00:26:02.000 Yeah, that's no fun.

00:26:03.000 Yeah.

00:26:03.000 So, when you were a kid, you were doing this.

00:26:07.000 Like, you've been involved.

00:26:09.000 So, this is like the family business?

00:26:10.000 Yeah.

00:26:11.000 Sort of.

00:26:11.000 My family business was my mom's business, actually, was safari businesses.

00:26:15.000 So, like you say, sit in a Land Rover, see the animals kind of thing.

00:26:19.000 And they did a little bit of tourist walking safaris, but then I grew up on a farm in the outskirts of Harare, Zimbabwe.

00:26:26.000 And then whenever I wasn't in school, I was on the farm, running around barefoot, catching snakes, fishing, yada yada.

00:26:31.000 And then when my mom wasn't booked up, she had this little bush plane that she used for safaris, and we'd just adventure all over Africa.

00:26:38.000 Wow.

00:26:39.000 So, it's a great childhood. 0.98

00:26:40.000 That sounds amazing, but fucking terrifying. 0.78

00:26:43.000 I mean, it's like one of those things where it's what you're used to, right? 0.93

00:26:47.000 I found moving to the States at age 14 and, like, trying to find my place in the world and being this weird little private school kid from Africa way more terrifying than going to meet a tribe in the middle of the bush. 0.98

00:26:58.000 Really?

00:26:58.000 For sure, yeah.

00:26:59.000 Why?

00:27:01.000 I'll give you examples.

00:27:02.000 I always carry a pocket knife on me, right?

00:27:04.000 My first day here in the States, I go to school, I'm sitting in my uniform, because I went to a very proper English boarding school, pull out my pocket knife, start cutting my apple.

00:27:14.000 15 minutes later, I'm in handcuffs.

00:27:16.000 And I'm like, what did I do?

00:27:17.000 What did I do?

00:27:17.000 I literally had no idea what I had done wrong.

00:27:19.000 It was because I had a knife at school.

00:27:21.000 Everybody I had ever been to school with had a knife to cut their apple.

00:27:24.000 It was the standard thing.

00:27:25.000 So here I am with police and guns and badges and they're throwing me in handcuffs and taking me out of the school on day one in America.

00:27:33.000 And I'm like, this is the scariest thing I've ever seen.

00:27:35.000 And I didn't even learn until later that day that it was because I had a pocket knife.

00:27:39.000 And at no point did I think having a pocket knife was a bad thing.

00:27:41.000 So they didn't tell you?

00:27:43.000 No, they just grabbed me.

00:27:44.000 There was like this whole thing, like the knife went flying.

00:27:47.000 I was chained up and I was like, what's going on?

00:27:48.000 What's going on?

00:27:49.000 And they're like, you're in big trouble.

00:27:50.000 And I was like, why?

00:27:52.000 And, you know, it was like little culture shock things like that, that to me were like something I'd done every day my whole life.

00:27:58.000 And now I'm like getting thrown in juvie for it kind of thing.

00:28:01.000 When you think back about that, do you think that's just the consequences of being in a large population?

00:28:07.000 For sure.

00:28:08.000 Yeah.

00:28:08.000 I mean, like we...

00:28:09.000 Like I say, I went to school every day with a knife.

00:28:12.000 There was no violence issues.

00:28:13.000 There was nothing like that.

00:28:14.000 But then you come here where, you know, there's stabbings and stuff like that.

00:28:17.000 And it's because, you know, we had a...

00:28:19.000 I lived in a tiny country with a tiny population.

00:28:21.000 Do you think that it's possible that... 1.00

00:28:23.000 I mean, it's stupid, but there's no way you could live like that over here. 1.00

00:28:28.000 I mean, there's no way you could have kids with a bunch of knives. 1.00

00:28:30.000 Yeah.

00:28:30.000 No, I don't think so.

00:28:31.000 Not with this culture.

00:28:32.000 I don't think so at all.

00:28:33.000 I think that would be terrible.

00:28:34.000 And I get it now as an adult.

00:28:37.000 Nobody talked to you about it before you left the house?

00:28:39.000 No.

00:28:39.000 My mom didn't know.

00:28:40.000 She's from Africa. 0.98

00:28:41.000 You know, she's like, here are your things.

00:28:43.000 Here's your knife, son.

00:28:44.000 I'll put it in my pocket.

00:28:44.000 Make sure you sharpen it before you go to school.

00:28:46.000 Totally, man.

00:28:47.000 Wow.

00:28:48.000 So you were always doing these walking safaris?

00:28:52.000 You started out doing the driving ones, and then eventually you started doing the walking ones?

00:28:56.000 My family business did walking safaris.

00:28:58.000 They didn't do hunting.

00:28:58.000 It was all photographic.

00:29:00.000 And we were in the Zambezi Valley, so Zambezi River is one of the biggest rivers in the world.

00:29:03.000 So we'd do these walking safaris, and then we did canoe safaris as well, which is why I have so many hippo and croc stories, because we'd be canoeing down the Zambezi River and then taking photographs and seeing wildlife that way.

00:29:15.000 Wow.

00:29:16.000 What a crazy way to grow up, man.

00:29:17.000 It was awesome.

00:29:18.000 Your relationship to wildlife is just so different than the average person in this country.

00:29:23.000 For sure.

00:29:23.000 It's very intimate.

00:29:27.000 Regardless of being a scientist by trade, I feel like I have a very intimate understanding of animals because I grew up completely surrounded by them.

00:29:34.000 Now, what other countries have you explored?

00:29:37.000 I'm over 60 countries now. 0.99

00:29:38.000 Damn. 0.99

00:29:39.000 Yeah. 0.99

00:29:40.000 So, a lot.

00:29:41.000 All for wildlife work.

00:29:42.000 Whether it's for the show that I do, or for biology contracts before I did the show, or just because, like, for instance, when I got done with college, I was like, I had a tiny little business starting college, sold it, and was like, I'm going to travel the world and try and photograph these animals.

00:29:56.000 And I went to 28 countries looking for wildlife.

00:29:59.000 Did you have something to do with looking for the Tasmanian tiger?

00:30:02.000 Yeah.

00:30:02.000 Yeah, I did.

00:30:03.000 What do you think?

00:30:05.000 I think of all the extinct animals that have gone extinct at the hand of man, given the range, I don't know if you know this, but the Tasmanian tiger at one point ranged from Papua New Guinea all the way down to Tasmania.

00:30:16.000 So not just the island of Tasmania, but thousands, tens of thousands of miles.

00:30:20.000 I think given the range, the frequency of sightings...

00:30:23.000 The amount of untouched habitat in Australia and Tasmania and Papua New Guinea, where they just found a new dog species, by the way.

00:30:31.000 They did?

00:30:31.000 Yeah, the Highland dog in New Guinea, maybe a year ago now.

00:30:34.000 Incredible looking animal.

00:30:35.000 Like, absolutely.

00:30:37.000 Could there be a very small remnant population of thylacine, Tasmanian tiger, hiding out in an isolated pocket of habitat?

00:30:42.000 I totally think it's possible.

00:30:44.000 And these sightings, are they coming from credible sources?

00:30:47.000 Yes.

00:30:48.000 So, I did one expedition.

00:30:50.000 I've done two expeditions looking for thylacine, and one of them, I was literally talking to the man who is the head park ranger for, like, the entire North Queensland.

00:31:00.000 So, he's a scientist by trade, a biologist by degree, and he says, I saw four of them.

00:31:04.000 Whoa.

00:31:04.000 You know, so this isn't like some crackpot drunk who's like, yeah, they're here.

00:31:08.000 You know, this is a guy who is, like myself, a scientist, a biologist, and spends his life in the bush.

00:31:13.000 He knows every animal in that area, and he goes, I saw four of them.

00:31:16.000 Wow.

00:31:16.000 So, like, how do you not...

00:31:17.000 Like, I get goosebumps talking about it, because how do you not, like, take that as credible?

00:31:21.000 No, that's about as credible as it gets.

00:31:23.000 Whoa, look at that cool-looking dog. 0.94

00:31:24.000 There it is.

00:31:25.000 What a freaky-looking...

00:31:26.000 The world's rarest and most ancient dog has been rediscovered in the wild.

00:31:29.000 So this New Guinea Highland dog was thought to be extinct?

00:31:32.000 Is that the idea?

00:31:33.000 That's right, yep.

00:31:34.000 So this thylacine, this area where they are, has there been a concerted effort to find these things?

00:31:41.000 Sort of.

00:31:42.000 I mean, it's one of those things where, like, I would say the thylacine is like the icon of animals coming back from extinction for Australia, right?

00:31:49.000 It's kind of like...

00:31:50.000 Everybody knows about it in Australia.

00:31:51.000 They all care about it.

00:31:52.000 But where these efforts are is like outside of Sydney or, you know what I mean?

00:31:56.000 It's close to home.

00:31:58.000 So there hasn't been a lot of expeditions really deep in to look for them.

00:32:02.000 And that's what I did.

00:32:03.000 So there's so much belief that the animal is still out there, that the...

00:32:09.000 Shoot, it's the university in Cannes.

00:32:11.000 I'm blanking on the name of it right now.

00:32:13.000 The university itself put money towards funding to find it.

00:32:17.000 So when you have a credible institution like a university going, here's money, go and find this thing, you've got to think, and I'm not a big conspiracy theorist, but you've got to think they have some intel that says, look, we're not wasting our money to look for something that's not there.

00:32:30.000 We've heard something, we've seen something, we caught something on a trail camera, let's prove it.

00:32:34.000 And so I actually teamed up with...

00:32:35.000 They caught something on a trail camera.

00:32:37.000 Hard to say.

00:32:38.000 But what they did do is fund this expedition.

00:32:39.000 So myself and the university, who's still ongoing with the research, went and looked in this area in North Queensland where I went.

00:32:46.000 And how far deep did you go in?

00:32:48.000 1,200 miles.

00:32:50.000 1,200 miles.

00:32:52.000 Yep.

00:32:52.000 Took 14 hours driving and then hiking from there.

00:32:55.000 Whoa.

00:32:56.000 Yeah.

00:32:56.000 14 hours on dirt roads.

00:32:57.000 Because this is the area where they've been sighted the most numerous?

00:33:00.000 This is where that sighting that I was talking about came from, from the biologist, as well as I think four other sightings.

00:33:06.000 The community up there is a place called Portland Roads.

00:33:08.000 You could look it up.

00:33:09.000 I think it's 12 people.

00:33:12.000 Wow.

00:33:13.000 And live totally, not like the Amazon off the grid, but off the grid.

00:33:16.000 You know, it's all like solar energy and build it yourself.

00:33:18.000 There's no power lines, blah, blah, blah.

00:33:20.000 So it's just this small group of kind of like people in the middle of nowhere and almost everybody in that community has seen them.

00:33:27.000 So that's where we based it out of and then went deep from there.

00:33:30.000 Almost everyone in the community.

00:33:31.000 And no one's taken a photograph that they have cameras?

00:33:35.000 Everybody's, you know, everybody's got a cell phone kind of thing, but it's like, it's always the same story where it's like, yeah, it was there, it was late at night, by the time I reached in my pocket, it had gone off.

00:33:44.000 Except for the biologist I was telling you about, who said it ran around with his dogs.

00:33:49.000 Yeah.

00:33:49.000 He's out camping and he's like, oh, there's this red eye shine and my dog goes nuts and runs over there.

00:33:53.000 And then there's four thylacine jumping around with my dog for like 15 minutes.

00:33:58.000 And he's like, I'm trying to get a picture and it's like 300 yards away.

00:34:01.000 It's in the dark and without the flashlight and the phone. 1.00

00:34:04.000 Fuck! 1.00

00:34:05.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:34:05.000 So it's basically 100% of this thing's alive. 1.00

00:34:08.000 I mean, as a scientist, you can never put that number, but to me, yes.

00:34:13.000 That's why I've done two expeditions and I plan on doing more.

00:34:15.000 I feel it's out there.

00:34:16.000 Like, it's a gut feeling that it's there.

00:34:18.000 Did you ever see that, um, there was a Willem Dafoe movie?

00:34:21.000 Yeah.

00:34:22.000 The Hunter, that's right. 0.87

00:34:23.000 And he goes and shoots the last one. 1.00

00:34:25.000 Bastard. 1.00

00:34:27.000 It was a weird movie. 0.96

00:34:28.000 It was a weird movie.

00:34:29.000 It didn't really work, right?

00:34:30.000 The movie was off.

00:34:31.000 It was very strange.

00:34:32.000 And there was like a scientific reason he had to find it or kill it or...

00:34:36.000 I don't know.

00:34:36.000 It was weird.

00:34:36.000 Someone was paying him, wasn't it?

00:34:38.000 Didn't someone hire him to do it?

00:34:40.000 But wasn't there a...

00:34:41.000 He was a bounty hunter for the animal because it had some weird genome or...

00:34:45.000 I don't remember.

00:34:45.000 I don't remember either.

00:34:46.000 It was weird.

00:34:46.000 Yeah, but that's how they died off, right?

00:34:48.000 People hunting them?

00:34:49.000 Put a bounty on them.

00:34:50.000 That's how bad it was.

00:34:51.000 Yeah, when settlers came to Tasmania, which was the last stronghold for them, they were killing sheep and sheep farmers' things, and the government was like, get rid of them.

00:35:00.000 You know, put a bounty on them.

00:35:01.000 And what year was this?

00:35:03.000 You'd have to cross-check.

00:35:04.000 It's been a while since I've read up on that.

00:35:07.000 But the last ones died off in the early 1900s, right?

00:35:10.000 That's right, in a zoo.

00:35:12.000 They're a little freaky-looking animal.

00:35:13.000 There is one set of footage from it ever, from the one in the Hobart Zoo, and you look at it, it's an insane-looking creature.

00:35:20.000 Yeah.

00:35:21.000 Just nuts.

00:35:21.000 You got that?

00:35:22.000 I'm trying to play the video.

00:35:22.000 It's not playing.

00:35:23.000 Oh, it's not playing.

00:35:25.000 Yeah, it's a freaky animal.

00:35:26.000 It doesn't even look real.

00:35:27.000 It looks like a cross between a tiger and a dog or something.

00:35:30.000 And it's kangaroo by Phonetics.

00:35:32.000 It's a marsupial.

00:35:33.000 So it's got a pouch, and it's just so weird.

00:35:36.000 Stripes and...

00:35:37.000 That's a strange thing about Australia and that whole area.

00:35:40.000 What's this marsupial thing and why didn't that catch on anywhere else?

00:35:43.000 There it is.

00:35:44.000 Look at him.

00:35:45.000 There's that freaky thing.

00:35:46.000 Wait till you see.

00:35:47.000 There's a shot where he kind of turns his face and does like a yawn.

00:35:50.000 And you'll see he can open his jaw the way like a snake does to almost 180 degrees.

00:35:55.000 I mean, it's bizarre.

00:35:57.000 Yeah, to swallow.

00:35:58.000 Well, coyotes are kind of like that, too. 1.00

00:36:00.000 Not quite so extreme, but when you see a coyote yawning, you're like, what the fuck? 0.99

00:36:06.000 Look at that. 0.99

00:36:07.000 Oh, that's so crazy.

00:36:08.000 Isn't that insane?

00:36:09.000 Yeah, it's like a crocodile almost.

00:36:10.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:36:11.000 What a strange animal, man.

00:36:13.000 I'm obsessed with him.

00:36:14.000 I'm totally fascinated by him. 1.00

00:36:16.000 Yeah, I hope you get a photo of these fuckers. 1.00

00:36:19.000 Me too, man. 0.99

00:36:21.000 So, in that area, did you guys set up trail cams?

00:36:25.000 We did 200 trail cameras.

00:36:27.000 Wow.

00:36:28.000 Yeah, and then the university that we partnered with, who didn't go as remote as we did, but they're still doing a big area, I think they have 10,000.

00:36:35.000 10,000 trail cameras.

00:36:36.000 Something crazy.

00:36:36.000 Maybe it's 1,000.

00:36:37.000 It's a huge number.

00:36:38.000 So what do you do with those?

00:36:40.000 How does that work?

00:36:40.000 So you do a grid pattern, right?

00:36:43.000 So you know how a trail camera works.

00:36:44.000 Motion's activated, blah, blah, blah.

00:36:45.000 So they literally, here's the mountains, here's whatever, and they set out all these undergrads, and they're like, place one every 300 meters, pointing in this direction, blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:36:56.000 And they just do a grid, and they do that for a month, Two months, whatever it is, collect them all and then move to the next grid and then move to the next grid and just blanket the area.

00:37:05.000 And I think, I could be wrong on this, but I think the search that they're doing, that university, is going to be the most comprehensive trail camera survey ever conducted.

00:37:13.000 And so, as far as you know, they don't have a photo of one yet.

00:37:17.000 As far as we know, but think of it this way.

00:37:19.000 Again, I'm not a big conspiracy guy, but if you're in a university...

00:37:23.000 This is probably as close as they have me.

00:37:26.000 There's a lot of these could be...

00:37:27.000 Did you see that?

00:37:28.000 There's a new one that just came out.

00:37:29.000 Whoa! 0.71

00:37:32.000 See, to me, that's a mangy fox.

00:37:34.000 That's not a thylacine.

00:37:35.000 No?

00:37:35.000 Look at the base of the tail.

00:37:36.000 It's very thin.

00:37:38.000 It's carrying in an upward curve instead of straight.

00:37:40.000 Like, if you look at a kangaroo's tail, it's very flat.

00:37:44.000 There's a lot of fox problems in Australia where they're introduced.

00:37:47.000 Could be wrong.

00:37:48.000 You know, as a scientist, I try not to get too excited when I see something that I'm like, this is it!

00:37:53.000 It's hard to tell because of the way the grass makes it look like he's got stripes on his back like a tiger.

00:37:58.000 Wow.

00:37:59.000 A trail cam has captured an image that has excited Tasmanian tiger hunters to the possibility the animal may roam freely across Australia.

00:38:07.000 Wow.

00:38:07.000 How big is that thing?

00:38:09.000 They're like coyote sized.

00:38:11.000 Very similar to a coyote in size.

00:38:12.000 Wow.

00:38:13.000 Yeah.

00:38:15.000 So, don't you think, though, that if they had definitive footage that they would release it to try to get more funding?

00:38:21.000 Dude, the problem is footage isn't definitive anymore.

00:38:24.000 Like, two years, last year, I got a photo of a leopard in Zanzibar.

00:38:28.000 The first time in 25 years, the animal was declared extinct, and we caught a video, not even a photo, a video of a Zanzibar leopard, and took it up the chain, and they're like, unless we have genetic proof, the animal remains extinct.

00:38:41.000 So, I think, you know...

00:38:44.000 It's so hard to say.

00:38:45.000 And Willem Dafoe.

00:38:46.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:38:47.000 Come on, Will.

00:38:49.000 So yeah, I think if the university had something, they're trying to get enough data to really present a case as opposed to throwing up a flag over something, one individual thing.

00:39:00.000 Is there a concern that a bunch of amateur wildlife hunters would go there?

00:39:04.000 What is this, Jamie?

00:39:05.000 What is this?

00:39:05.000 There it is.

00:39:06.000 That's my leopard.

00:39:07.000 Oh, that's the leopard.

00:39:07.000 Yeah.

00:39:08.000 Wow.

00:39:09.000 Have you seen that photo, or the footage, rather, of the jaguar that they found in Arizona?

00:39:15.000 Yeah.

00:39:15.000 That's really interesting, too, right?

00:39:17.000 Amazing.

00:39:17.000 That they're starting to make their way up from Mexico.

00:39:19.000 It's such a weird region, that, because here's this huge Sonoran Desert that you think none of these tropical animals can make it across, and for whatever reason, southern Arizona gets jaguars and codamundi and peccary and all these tropical animals.

00:39:31.000 What the hell?

00:39:32.000 I don't know the answer.

00:39:33.000 What the hell's going on that all these rainforest creatures are making it through this thousand mile stretch of desert and into southern Arizona?

00:39:40.000 Probably bored.

00:39:41.000 Could be.

00:39:42.000 Looking for cool places to visit.

00:39:44.000 You know, maybe they, I mean, maybe it's just like a natural instinct to roam and expand your territory.

00:39:49.000 There he is.

00:39:50.000 Yeah.

00:39:50.000 Look at that thing.

00:39:51.000 God, that's amazing.

00:39:51.000 That's an incredible animal.

00:39:53.000 So beautiful.

00:39:53.000 And it's huge.

00:39:54.000 Huge.

00:39:55.000 They're 200 plus pounds, right? 1.00

00:39:57.000 It's a big, fucking aggressive cat. 1.00

00:40:00.000 What's bigger, a jaguar or a leopard? 1.00

00:40:02.000 Leopard, right?

00:40:03.000 Leopard, yeah.

00:40:03.000 Yeah, and that's even bigger.

00:40:05.000 But it's such a beautiful animal, too.

00:40:07.000 And apparently they were all over North America.

00:40:09.000 Jaguars?

00:40:10.000 At one point in time.

00:40:10.000 Yeah, like that area, like Texas and Arizona.

00:40:13.000 During the Pleistocene?

00:40:14.000 Yeah.

00:40:14.000 Oh, interesting.

00:40:15.000 I didn't even know that.

00:40:16.000 When did they, I mean, they were pushed out of, I feel like, that might not be true, though.

00:40:22.000 I feel like they were more numerous in, like, Arizona and, like, the Southwest.

00:40:27.000 Yeah.

00:40:27.000 Makes sense.

00:40:28.000 I mean, we had so much megafauna here back in the day, there would have been a lot of prey for them.

00:40:34.000 Now, because of the fact that you spend so much time in the wild and, you know, and that you have this interest in these, what would you call, cryptozoology animals?

00:40:44.000 Well, I'm not a crypto guy, so just to be clear, and nothing against crypto guys, but I don't do Loch Ness or Bigfoot or anything.

00:40:51.000 I'm a true wildlife biologist, so I only focus on wildlife.

00:40:54.000 So, not to interrupt you, but I'm just very, very structured in the sense that I really only look for animals that we have an understanding of.

00:41:03.000 Right, right. 0.98

00:41:04.000 Well, yeah, the Bigfoot one is the most compelling, but also probably the most bullshit. 0.99

00:41:11.000 I think there's a mix there. 0.97

00:41:12.000 I think people believe that they've seen certain things.

00:41:16.000 Do I think that there could have been large primates that we attribute to Bigfoot?

00:41:20.000 Sure.

00:41:21.000 Whether they're still here or not, whether people have ever seen them, I'm so not well-read on that.

00:41:26.000 Isn't it interesting, though, that...

00:41:28.000 If there was one, it would probably be the most spectacular find ever.

00:41:34.000 But meanwhile, we have chimps and bonobos.

00:41:37.000 We have all these things that are real.

00:41:39.000 Well, because there's so much lore and culture associated with it now.

00:41:42.000 And not just our Western culture, but cave paintings of big hairy creatures and everything.

00:41:47.000 It would be this mind-blowing discovery.

00:41:50.000 Have you ever went and looked for the Bondo ape?

00:41:53.000 No, I know what it is, but no, never gone and looked for it.

00:41:56.000 They're sure that's a real thing.

00:41:57.000 Really?

00:41:57.000 Yeah, they've got skulls and hair samples and photographs and video.

00:42:02.000 And for people who don't know what we're talking about, it's a gigantic chimpanzee.

00:42:05.000 Right. 0.99

00:42:06.000 Like a six foot tall chimpanzee, which is just fucking nuts. 0.99

00:42:09.000 And it does walk erect, right? 0.99

00:42:10.000 Yeah, sometimes, yeah.

00:42:11.000 There's a camera trap photo.

00:42:13.000 There's a guy named Dr. Carl...

00:42:15.000 No, he's not a doctor.

00:42:16.000 I think his name is Carl Harmon.

00:42:18.000 Carl something?

00:42:19.000 Carl Harmon.

00:42:20.000 Harman, is that?

00:42:20.000 Amon.

00:42:21.000 Amon?

00:42:21.000 Carl Amon.

00:42:22.000 And he's a Swiss wildlife photographer?

00:42:26.000 Anyway, he set up a bunch of camera traps and he got one of them walking.

00:42:30.000 Amazing.

00:42:30.000 It's freaky.

00:42:31.000 And there's some photos of these gentlemen that shot one near an airstrip.

00:42:36.000 Huh. 0.99

00:42:37.000 And it's fucking huge. 0.99

00:42:39.000 You don't know how big the men are. 0.99

00:42:41.000 They might be small and it's in front of them.

00:42:43.000 But it is, without a doubt, one of the biggest chimpanzees you've ever seen in your life.

00:42:48.000 They have a crest on their head.

00:42:50.000 Their skull has a crest like a gorilla.

00:42:51.000 Huh.

00:42:52.000 Yeah, it has like the bone of the skull.

00:42:55.000 It kind of fuses up.

00:42:56.000 Interesting.

00:42:57.000 Do you have a picture of that?

00:42:58.000 I'd love to see it.

00:42:58.000 I'm not familiar with the anatomy of them.

00:43:01.000 Yeah, it's really interesting because I think for the longest time they didn't think they were real.

00:43:06.000 It's a part of that Michael Crichton book, Congo.

00:43:09.000 Remember, there was a really terrible movie that was made?

00:43:12.000 I know the book as well. 1.00

00:43:13.000 Look at the size of that fucker. 1.00

00:43:14.000 Yeah, that's insane. 1.00

00:43:15.000 Yeah, that's one of them.

00:43:17.000 And that doesn't look like forced perspective, you know what I mean?

00:43:20.000 It looks like they're right in front of them.

00:43:21.000 And that's one from the early 1900s, I believe, where these guys shot one, and they were like, what is this?

00:43:30.000 This is just giant chimp.

00:43:31.000 Go, see if you can find the one of the, there, right above is the one where it's walking right there, yeah.

00:43:36.000 Oh, that's the trail camera?

00:43:38.000 Wow.

00:43:38.000 The thing walking.

00:43:39.000 And he's erect.

00:43:40.000 Yeah, he's wrecked and he's, you know.

00:43:42.000 Is he?

00:43:42.000 These people that, one of the sightings, they saw one walk by a truck, like walk across a road.

00:43:49.000 They said it was the same height as the truck.

00:43:52.000 That's insane.

00:43:52.000 So they have like, you know, like a Toyota Helix or something like that.

00:43:56.000 And it's literally the height, like a six foot tall man, but a giant chimp. 0.97

00:44:02.000 And I mean, you know, to go back to the Bigfoot thing, you can totally see where we get that from, right?

00:44:06.000 For sure, yeah.

00:44:07.000 You look at this huge primate that's the size of a human being, and your brain instantly goes, it's mythological.

00:44:12.000 And I'm pretty sure that they didn't have photos of this thing until the 20th century, like the late 20th century.

00:44:19.000 No kidding.

00:44:19.000 Yeah.

00:44:19.000 That's amazing.

00:44:20.000 Yeah, it's a trip, man.

00:44:21.000 They nest on the ground like gorillas.

00:44:24.000 Like a gorilla.

00:44:24.000 Yeah.

00:44:25.000 Wow.

00:44:26.000 And the locals have two different names for chimps.

00:44:32.000 They call them tree beaters and lion killers.

00:44:35.000 And the tree beaters are the ones that are up in the trees, the smaller chimps, and the lion killers are these big ones.

00:44:41.000 That live on the ground.

00:44:42.000 Yeah, and apparently there's some either video footage or there was some eyewitness account of one of them eating a leopard.

00:44:51.000 No way. 0.99

00:44:51.000 So it was a dead leopard that they were eating, whether or not they killed it or they found it, but they were eating this fucking thing. 0.99

00:44:58.000 Regardless, like, to be a primate at the top of the food chain eating a big cat, I mean, that's nuts. 0.99

00:45:04.000 It's nuts.

00:45:05.000 Yeah.

00:45:06.000 Would you ever think of going there and trying to find those things? 1.00

00:45:08.000 Fuck yeah! 1.00

00:45:09.000 They're deep in there. 1.00

00:45:10.000 Great!

00:45:11.000 Yeah.

00:45:11.000 I think they're in a place called Bili.

00:45:14.000 Bili in the Congo. 0.97

00:45:15.000 That's where they think they are.

00:45:16.000 They've isolated a population of them there.

00:45:18.000 Really?

00:45:18.000 My mom just got back from the Congo and she still does her own adventure stuff.

00:45:22.000 And she was saying it's just like, she's been all over as well.

00:45:25.000 She's like, it's mind-blowing. 0.91

00:45:26.000 There's so much remoteness and unstudied area that there could be all kinds of things. 1.00

00:45:30.000 God damn, man. 0.99

00:45:31.000 Now, what kind of medication do you have to take if you're going to go there? 1.00

00:45:34.000 Because you have to take some anti-malarial stuff, right?

00:45:36.000 Dude, I'm a pincushion.

00:45:38.000 Like, I've had so many shots and pills and, you know, like, preventative, obviously.

00:45:44.000 I actually don't do malaria medication.

00:45:46.000 I just cover up.

00:45:48.000 Because it messes with your brain.

00:45:49.000 I don't know if you know that.

00:45:50.000 Like, they say the modern ones aren't bad, but the malarone...

00:45:54.000 Like, you have hallucinations at night, you have crazy sweats, like, especially if you're in hot sun, so I would rather be more focused, especially if I'm working with reptiles or stuff like that that can, you know, envenomate me, so I try to stay away from it and just cover up.

00:46:08.000 Wow.

00:46:09.000 Is there a specific type of clothing that's like anti-mosquito repellent clothing or anything like that?

00:46:16.000 I just do long sleeves and some bug spray.

00:46:17.000 And do you do a mask as well?

00:46:19.000 No.

00:46:19.000 No?

00:46:20.000 That's silliness.

00:46:20.000 Really?

00:46:21.000 It looks silly. 0.97

00:46:22.000 It does look silly. 0.93

00:46:23.000 No, I just do, you know, good old deet.

00:46:25.000 God, that stuff's got to be bad for you, too, though, no?

00:46:27.000 It melts you.

00:46:28.000 Like, if you get it on, like, say, these things, it will melt the paint off of the headphones.

00:46:33.000 It's so strong.

00:46:34.000 Ooh.

00:46:35.000 It's probably worse than the malware.

00:46:37.000 Have you ever used a thermoset?

00:46:39.000 What is it called? 1.00

00:46:41.000 Fucking... 1.00

00:46:41.000 Is it called a thermoset? 1.00

00:46:42.000 I think so.

00:46:43.000 I think that's what it's called.

00:46:44.000 It's a device that heats up.

00:46:47.000 It's got like an element inside of it and like a little canister of gasoline. 0.97

00:46:52.000 And you put these sheets and it releases this very fine mist that you can kind of smell and mosquitoes fucking hate it. 0.98

00:46:59.000 No way. 0.63

00:47:00.000 Yeah, we used it in Alberta.

00:47:01.000 Alberta has very aggressive mosquitoes when they're out. 0.87

00:47:05.000 When they're out, they're out.

00:47:06.000 It's like clouds of them, right?

00:47:07.000 Yeah, because they're only alive for like three months.

00:47:09.000 It's gotta go!

00:47:10.000 It's like Alaska.

00:47:11.000 Have you ever been to Alaska?

00:47:12.000 It's the worst mosquitoes I've ever seen.

00:47:14.000 Crazy, right?

00:47:14.000 They pick you up.

00:47:15.000 Yeah, they're the size of pigeons and they're fucking everywhere. 1.00

00:47:18.000 Totally. 0.92

00:47:19.000 I went fishing with my friend Ari and we pulled up the car and we got out of the car and we opened the car door and within seconds, a swarm of mosquitoes was inside the car.

00:47:29.000 It's insane.

00:47:30.000 And we were screaming like, what? 1.00

00:47:31.000 What the fuck? 1.00

00:47:32.000 This is crazy. 1.00

00:47:33.000 It's like something out of a Stephen King movie.

00:47:35.000 Like, there's clouds and they...

00:47:37.000 I... Yeah.

00:47:37.000 That's why you asked me what I'm scared of.

00:47:39.000 It's that. 1.00

00:47:39.000 Fucking clouds and mosquitoes, man. 1.00

00:47:41.000 Well, we're very fortunate we don't have malaria here in the United States. 1.00

00:47:44.000 Yep.

00:47:44.000 Absolutely.

00:47:45.000 Because if it made its way over here somehow...

00:47:47.000 You know, I wear this fabric you're talking about, Thermosel, called Hex.

00:47:51.000 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:47:52.000 H-E-C-S. H-E-C-S, Hex, exactly.

00:47:55.000 And I wear it for a lot of reasons, because I definitely feel it helps me get closer to wildlife, but I've noticed mosquitoes do not like it.

00:48:02.000 Really?

00:48:03.000 So that's one of my coverups.

00:48:04.000 Explain what a hex suit is for people that don't know what we're talking about.

00:48:07.000 Sure.

00:48:08.000 So it's this interwoven carbon grid that actually holds the body's electrical energy and capacity, like the door of a microwave oven, like a Faraday cage, right?

00:48:17.000 And so you naturally emit electrical energy, and then when you wear this clothing, it's got this conductive carbon grid, and when you touch the ground or something, it grounds it and releases all the energy.

00:48:26.000 So birds migrate using...

00:48:28.000 Yeah, there you go.

00:48:29.000 Now, has it been proven that this stuff actually...

00:48:32.000 I mean, it has been proven that it has an effect on the electrical energy that you release, but has it been proven that the animals can actually recognize that electrical energy?

00:48:39.000 With certain animals, yes.

00:48:40.000 So we know electroreception is...

00:48:43.000 Certain wildlife is capable of it.

00:48:45.000 Birds use it to migrate.

00:48:46.000 Sea turtles use magnetic poles to migrate.

00:48:48.000 They just discovered, I believe, 2014, that lobsters' antenna have electrical detective sensors.

00:48:56.000 Electroreception is the word.

00:48:58.000 So, it's proven on some things, not everything.

00:49:00.000 You know, our understanding of animal behavior and animal adaptability is constantly growing.

00:49:06.000 So, it's passive.

00:49:08.000 You know what I mean?

00:49:09.000 I wear it because it's a passive technology.

00:49:10.000 It's like, I'm going to wear a shirt anyway.

00:49:13.000 Why not wear one that might or might not help?

00:49:15.000 So, I feel it helps.

00:49:16.000 My friend John Dudley is a bow hunter.

00:49:19.000 Yep.

00:49:19.000 A pretty famous bow hunter.

00:49:20.000 I know John, yeah.

00:49:21.000 Okay, and he swears by it.

00:49:23.000 Yeah.

00:49:23.000 Yeah, he wears them constantly.

00:49:25.000 He's like, it makes a big difference.

00:49:27.000 I think so.

00:49:27.000 You know, like, I'm not hunting.

00:49:29.000 I'm just trying to get close to stuff and interact with it or find something, but I feel it makes a difference.

00:49:34.000 You notice a difference personally?

00:49:35.000 Especially with birds, I've noticed a huge difference.

00:49:38.000 I've noticed a huge difference in the water.

00:49:40.000 Some mammals, I've noticed a difference.

00:49:42.000 But yeah, like John, I feel like it helps me get closer.

00:49:47.000 And, you know, it keeps the energy down.

00:49:49.000 Do you know what I mean?

00:49:49.000 Like, you're emitting all this energy.

00:49:51.000 You see this bear or whatever it is.

00:49:52.000 Your heart spikes.

00:49:53.000 Your adrenaline goes.

00:49:54.000 And it keeps that in capacity.

00:49:56.000 So I think we sense that.

00:49:58.000 I think certain creatures sense that.

00:49:59.000 And I like to keep that out of the equation.

00:50:02.000 Wow.

00:50:02.000 Right.

00:50:03.000 I guess it would be that there is something coming off of your body, and it probably would be an advantage for animals to be able to recognize that, just because we can't quantify it and put it on a scale or weigh it or something like that.

00:50:15.000 It's probably something going on.

00:50:16.000 Predator prey, right?

00:50:17.000 If you're a lion and I'm an antelope, and my adrenaline spikes and my heart's going, you're going to come for me.

00:50:24.000 But if that's out of the equation, the energy stays reduced.

00:50:28.000 Well, that's one of the weirder videos that I've seen, I should say, is people that are interacting with predators.

00:50:34.000 Like, people that have coyotes come right up to them while they're wearing those things.

00:50:38.000 Yep.

00:50:39.000 And turkeys as well.

00:50:42.000 Totally.

00:50:42.000 Like I said, birds.

00:50:43.000 Because birds have that in their brain.

00:50:45.000 They have, I'm going to quote it wrong, but they have something that they can detect electrical signals of what helps them migrate around the world.

00:50:52.000 So, for sure, I think it makes a difference.

00:50:54.000 Yeah, so what else do you use?

00:50:56.000 You use the hex suit?

00:50:58.000 A ton of different tools, man.

00:50:59.000 I mean, I customize stuff, you know, like in the Amazon we were looking for caiman and type of crocodile, so I built like a beefed up dog catcher that I use to try and lasso them.

00:51:07.000 I have a snake hook on me at all times.

00:51:10.000 A snake hook?

00:51:11.000 Yeah.

00:51:11.000 What's a snake hook?

00:51:12.000 So it's just this like, it's like a golf club with a hook on the end.

00:51:15.000 So I can work with venomous snakes without it reaching back and grabbing me.

00:51:19.000 It doesn't restrain them.

00:51:20.000 It actually like, their body sits in it.

00:51:22.000 I do a lot of reptile stuff.

00:51:24.000 So I always have a snake hook on me.

00:51:27.000 I mean, the list goes on.

00:51:28.000 A ton of trail cameras.

00:51:29.000 I use a lot of thermal imaging stuff, especially looking for wolves or something like that.

00:51:36.000 Wolves are active at night.

00:51:37.000 It's really hard to get a shot of them.

00:51:38.000 Put a thermal bird in the air, and you can see these animals running through valleys.

00:51:43.000 Wow.

00:51:44.000 Yeah, it's cool stuff.

00:51:44.000 You'd love it.

00:51:45.000 Well, I'm fascinated by wolves.

00:51:47.000 I think wolves, to me, are probably the most interesting animal in the wild.

00:51:53.000 Canids, man.

00:51:54.000 Wild dogs of all kind are unbelievable.

00:51:57.000 They're so at the top of their respective food chain.

00:52:00.000 Yeah, we have a lot of coyotes around here, and basically they're little wolves, the little sneaky wolves.

00:52:06.000 But real wolves, like wolves in Yellowstone, wolves in the northwest area of the United States, they have got to be some of the most majestic animals.

00:52:18.000 Oh, they're fantastic.

00:52:19.000 Because they operate together, always, as these packs.

00:52:23.000 So there's some sort of weird kind of communication and...

00:52:27.000 And what's amazing is, like, the social dynamic, like, within the pack, you know, the hierarchy, and then on a hunt, like, you go left, I go right, but without any verbal communication, and then coming together and making a kill.

00:52:38.000 I mean, it's mind-blowing stuff.

00:52:40.000 You know, you talk about not understanding wildlife.

00:52:42.000 We don't understand how they do that.

00:52:43.000 Right, right.

00:52:44.000 We don't understand what kind of communication is going on.

00:52:46.000 Do you think there's some sort of like telepathic or is it just facial and recognizing cues and patterns that they've established before of they see an animal, they know to flank it?

00:52:58.000 I definitely believe it's that.

00:52:59.000 Like, I definitely believe there is an intrinsic understanding of you go left, I go right, you know, facial recognition, you know, your expression tells me to do something, you're dominant, I'm passive, you know, learning that way.

00:53:13.000 But I also think there's something more than that.

00:53:16.000 Whether it's telepathic, whether it's a low frequency sound that is not audible to us, I have no idea.

00:53:22.000 But I do think it's more than just visual cues.

00:53:25.000 That's where, apparently, the myth of the werewolf comes from, is that wolves are so smart, they think that a wolf and a person were, like, combined together.

00:53:34.000 I don't believe that, per se, but I can see how that came up.

00:53:38.000 You know what I mean?

00:53:39.000 They're so smart.

00:53:40.000 African wild dogs are the same.

00:53:42.000 They hunt in these huge packs.

00:53:44.000 They go over these massive areas and then they'll push a single animal into one area to make the kill. 0.78

00:53:49.000 And they're not big animals.

00:53:50.000 They're, again, like a coyote size.

00:53:51.000 And they'll take down a kudu or some huge antelope.

00:53:55.000 I mean, it's incredible.

00:53:56.000 Well, African wild dogs are so cool looking, too, with those...

00:53:59.000 Black spots and yellow and all the...

00:54:01.000 Stunning.

00:54:02.000 They look angry.

00:54:04.000 They look freaky looking, you know?

00:54:06.000 I think they're my favorite.

00:54:09.000 You love wolves.

00:54:09.000 I love African wild dogs.

00:54:11.000 I just think they're so beautiful and majestic and unusual and they're just such a cool animal.

00:54:16.000 Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think all of them come from the United States.

00:54:19.000 I think all of them originally came from North America.

00:54:22.000 Cannids?

00:54:23.000 Yeah, all cannids came from North America.

00:54:25.000 I think that's...

00:54:26.000 Coyote America, the gentleman who's been on the podcast before, what is his name?

00:54:32.000 Is escaping me right now.

00:54:34.000 But he wrote about it.

00:54:37.000 Huh.

00:54:37.000 About all the various jackals.

00:54:40.000 Dan Flores.

00:54:41.000 Dan Flores.

00:54:42.000 That's it.

00:54:42.000 That is a fascinating book.

00:54:44.000 Yeah, I'm going to write it down.

00:54:45.000 I'd love to read it.

00:54:46.000 Great.

00:54:47.000 And I did a podcast with him years ago that's excellent, too.

00:54:50.000 He has all sorts of crazy insight as to Native American, North American animals that went somewhere else, like horses.

00:55:00.000 Horses were native to North America, but they weren't here when the European settlers came.

00:55:05.000 They went extinct.

00:55:06.000 They had been taken.

00:55:08.000 There were other places.

00:55:10.000 Apparently, wild horses from Europe all originated from North America.

00:55:15.000 And we're taken over and then brought back.

00:55:16.000 Somehow or another, and then went extinct here, and then were reintroduced with the European settlers.

00:55:22.000 Huh.

00:55:23.000 That's interesting.

00:55:24.000 Crazy, yeah.

00:55:24.000 And that's the thing, like, with what I do looking for extinct animals or proof that they're still out there, is, like, there are so many stories like that.

00:55:31.000 I didn't know that one in specific.

00:55:33.000 America's very well covered with eyeballs, but what's to say there isn't some remnant, small population, somewhere in the middle of nowhere that nobody has found these horses that have been untouched by human beings for millennia?

00:55:47.000 And that's what I do.

00:55:49.000 That's what drives me, right?

00:55:50.000 Find this pocket.

00:55:52.000 Find this animal that's been hiding out undetected for thousands of years.

00:55:57.000 Yeah.

00:55:57.000 So what other animals are you looking for?

00:56:00.000 A lot.

00:56:01.000 Like, we were talking about primates.

00:56:02.000 I'm going to Borneo to look for an animal called the Miller's grizzled langure.

00:56:05.000 It's a type of monkey.

00:56:07.000 I just got back, I was looking for an extinct caiman in the Amazon.

00:56:11.000 An extinct caiman?

00:56:12.000 Yeah.

00:56:12.000 What's the difference between that and the caimans that you see?

00:56:15.000 Just a different species, you know, just like there's many types of crocodile, there's many types of caiman.

00:56:20.000 You know, you have saltwater crocodiles, now crocodiles.

00:56:22.000 Same thing with caiman.

00:56:23.000 And I was looking for one with a very weird morphological variant.

00:56:27.000 It looks very, very different to any other.

00:56:30.000 What's different about it?

00:56:31.000 It's got a very elongated snout.

00:56:34.000 If you've ever seen a gharial, if you know what that is, a type of crocodile with this long, crazy nose, it's like the alligator family, the caiman family version of that.

00:56:42.000 This really long, skinny face.

00:56:43.000 Super light, super yellow coloration.

00:56:45.000 Just very different.

00:56:46.000 Last time one was seen was...

00:56:48.000 52 years ago, and then they had one in a zoo that died in the 80s, and nobody's found one since.

00:56:53.000 So just really cool.

00:56:55.000 And so yeah, the list goes on.

00:56:56.000 Last year I did leopards, and I did wolves in Newfoundland, and a bunch of really interesting stuff.

00:57:02.000 So it's fun, man.

00:57:03.000 You love it.

00:57:04.000 You should come with.

00:57:04.000 I'll talk to Animal Planet.

00:57:06.000 I'm scared. 1.00

00:57:06.000 I'm such a pussy. 1.00

00:57:08.000 What about giant sloths? 1.00

00:57:10.000 What are your feelings on those?

00:57:11.000 So, I've had probably three years of research into this, into giant sloths, because Manapuguri, I believe is how it's said, it's the South American name for giant sloths, I don't want to give away too much info before I get to do a chance at looking for it,

00:57:27.000 but after all the research I've compiled, there is, in my opinion, one location on Earth.

00:57:32.000 It's in high Peru, where nobody goes.

00:57:36.000 It's a bowl of mountains, impenetrable.

00:57:39.000 The only way in is a helicopter in the center.

00:57:42.000 To me, that ball is going to be like a primordial Eden.

00:57:47.000 All of the cultures surrounding it have old stories of giant sloths.

00:57:51.000 They all have different names for it, but they all have these stories of these giant sloths.

00:57:55.000 They were all hunted to extinction.

00:57:57.000 However, they've handed down these traditions.

00:57:59.000 But nobody except for a tiny handful of far-out tribal people have ever really got into this impenetrable ball. 1.00

00:58:07.000 And I think if they're anywhere, they're in there.

00:58:09.000 Wow.

00:58:09.000 I saw a documentary once about this scientist that was essentially risking his reputation trying to find a giant sloth somewhere, maybe in the Amazon, somewhere.

00:58:18.000 Probably Peruvian Amazon, that's where I'm thinking too.

00:58:20.000 And he kept talking to people that had seen it, and he never could get a hold of it, but he had been there for years.

00:58:27.000 Isn't that crazy though?

00:58:28.000 Like, why?

00:58:29.000 Yeah.

00:58:30.000 If you're a little Amazonian villager, you don't read, you don't have TV, there's no reason to make up science fiction, why say you've seen it? 1.00

00:58:39.000 Because you like to fuck with white people. 1.00

00:58:40.000 Could be. 1.00

00:58:41.000 Could be.

00:58:42.000 Like, get that dude with his stringy hair.

00:58:44.000 Yeah, I've seen that thing.

00:58:46.000 Oh, dinosaurs? 1.00

00:58:47.000 Fuck yeah. 1.00

00:58:47.000 Come on, I'll take you. 1.00

00:58:48.000 Five days in, you know, you're exhausted, covered with mosquito bites.

00:58:53.000 He's like, any day now, we're almost there.

00:58:55.000 Just over the next hill. 1.00

00:58:56.000 He's just going to wait for you to fucking rot out. 1.00

00:58:59.000 That would be a mean man. 1.00

00:59:01.000 That's a mean guy.

00:59:02.000 Leave you on a log.

00:59:03.000 All right, buddy.

00:59:04.000 Pat you on the back.

00:59:05.000 This is the last spot for you.

00:59:07.000 And I'll be taking this.

00:59:08.000 I'll take your binoculars.

00:59:11.000 I mean, yeah, there's no reason for them to lie, but that's like the thing that people say about everything.

00:59:18.000 Why would someone lie?

00:59:19.000 Well, I don't know.

00:59:19.000 People lie for a bunch of weird reasons.

00:59:21.000 People do it. 0.99

00:59:22.000 People are crazy. 1.00

00:59:23.000 They make shit up. 1.00

00:59:24.000 True. 1.00

00:59:24.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:59:25.000 I mean, to me it's like you have to take an eyewitness report of an extinct creature or a cryptope creature with a grain of salt, but you still have to take it.

00:59:35.000 Do you know what I mean?

00:59:36.000 You still have to bank it and consider it.

00:59:38.000 And so that's kind of the way I go.

00:59:40.000 I always talk to people, but then I do the biology, right?

00:59:44.000 I track, I put the cameras out, I bait, I scent, I do all of that stuff to try and get evidence of my own.

00:59:51.000 Because just going with eyewitness reports is, like you say, it's nothing. 0.83

00:59:54.000 Is there ever been any eyewitness reports that are just too ridiculous? 0.91

01:00:00.000 Oh, for sure. 0.97

01:00:01.000 Like what?

01:00:01.000 Oh, man, loads.

01:00:02.000 I mean, like, talking about the thylacine, for instance.

01:00:06.000 There was a guy that we met there who's like, yeah, yeah, there's thylacine everywhere.

01:00:10.000 They run around with the black cats.

01:00:12.000 And we're like, what? 0.82

01:00:13.000 He's like, yeah, there's Black Panthers too.

01:00:14.000 They like hang out together.

01:00:15.000 Black Panthers in Australia? 0.76

01:00:17.000 Exactly.

01:00:17.000 I made the same face you did.

01:00:19.000 So I'm like, okay, tell me more.

01:00:21.000 And he's like, yeah, you know, they like to hang out over there.

01:00:23.000 They're behind the trash heap. 0.99

01:00:24.000 They jump around with Black Panthers. 1.00

01:00:26.000 Oh, they're just fucking with you. 1.00

01:00:26.000 And I'm like, well, that's the thing. 1.00

01:00:28.000 I'm like, you're either crazy or you're completely fucking with me. 1.00

01:00:32.000 And I'm not sure which one it is because your eyes are telling me crazy. 1.00

01:00:36.000 Yeah.

01:00:37.000 Well, I mean, how many different pockets in the world are there like that basin that you said you got to get helicoptered into?

01:00:43.000 There's a few.

01:00:44.000 There's a few.

01:00:44.000 Yeah, you'd be surprised because, you know, we're here, we're in a city, we're so used to our modern conveniences, but there are totally untouched pieces of the world still.

01:00:52.000 Well, do you know David Cho, the artist?

01:00:55.000 I don't.

01:00:55.000 He went to the Congo, I think it was the Congo, to look for a dinosaur.

01:01:00.000 No way.

01:01:01.000 It was a really early Vice piece, back when Vice was first starting out.

01:01:06.000 And David is one of the more eccentric people that I know.

01:01:10.000 He's a multi-millionaire, made a shitload of money gambling, and also he made a shitload of money because he, was it Facebook?

01:01:17.000 Yeah, he painted Facebook.

01:01:19.000 What does that mean?

01:01:20.000 Like the wall?

01:01:21.000 Yeah, the inside.

01:01:22.000 They hired him to paint, like do these murals, and they gave him stock.

01:01:27.000 And that stock wound up being worth hundreds of millions of dollars. 0.99

01:01:29.000 And so now he's just this freaky, super talented artist who is just doing weird shit. 0.93

01:01:37.000 And one of the things they did was like, hey man, you want to go look for a dinosaur? 0.99

01:01:39.000 He's like, fuck yeah, I'll go. 0.99

01:01:40.000 Absolutely. 0.99

01:01:41.000 Why wouldn't you, you know?

01:01:43.000 But there's this video of him.

01:01:44.000 I want to say he was like 25 at the time, too.

01:01:47.000 I think he was pretty young.

01:01:48.000 Yeah, look at him there.

01:01:49.000 Oh, yeah. 1.00

01:01:50.000 So he's in the jungle in search of a fucking dinosaur. 1.00

01:01:53.000 Huh. 0.99

01:01:53.000 And it was one of those things where the locals were saying, hey, there's a dinosaur in the Congo. 0.99

01:01:59.000 Right.

01:02:00.000 Which doesn't totally make sense, but...

01:02:04.000 But, who knows?

01:02:05.000 Why not investigate it, kind of thing.

01:02:07.000 But, I mean, how big of an area would there have to be for there to be a species that we are not aware of?

01:02:14.000 Like, how big of an area?

01:02:16.000 Oh, I mean, you know, it's a generic question, because we discover you'd have to look up the numbers, but it's like 2,000 new species a year.

01:02:23.000 But little stuff?

01:02:24.000 But mostly little stuff.

01:02:26.000 There's an animal discovered...

01:02:28.000 Most recently, there's an animal called the saula.

01:02:30.000 It's an animal that I'm actually working on later this year.

01:02:33.000 And it is an antelope.

01:02:35.000 They call it the Asian unicorn.

01:02:36.000 Because for generations, people have been talking about this Asian unicorn.

01:02:40.000 And Western world's like, yeah, whatever, whatever, whatever.

01:02:42.000 And then finally, somebody went down there into the Laotian Mountains and was like, here's a skull and here's a skin. 0.98

01:02:48.000 And they're like, holy shit, this is a real thing? 0.97

01:02:50.000 And this is like, not populated, but there's plenty of people living there. 0.98

01:02:55.000 You know what I mean?

01:02:55.000 This isn't like the middle of nowhere.

01:02:58.000 This is where there's villages and tribes and people, and they're like, here's this animal.

01:03:02.000 Here's a skin, here's a skull. 0.79

01:03:04.000 And since then, I think one trail camera...

01:03:06.000 We're good to go.

01:03:26.000 Has been around forever.

01:03:28.000 People, little tribal people, have been talking about it in like a mythological way, the same way they would talk about dinosaurs in the Congo.

01:03:34.000 And the Western world's going, sure buddy, whatever you say.

01:03:36.000 And then somebody finally goes down there, does an expedition, just like David did, and goes, oh, it turns out it's here.

01:03:44.000 What is it about animals where we're so fascinated by the ones that might not be real or that might be hidden?

01:03:50.000 Like, what is it about them?

01:03:53.000 I mean, people love to study giraffes and things that are absolutely real, but they also have an even more compelling need to search for things that are not quite sure if they exist or not.

01:04:07.000 I don't know, man.

01:04:08.000 I think it's like...

01:04:17.000 I don't know.

01:04:31.000 I think it's probably a side effect of our compulsion for innovation.

01:04:36.000 Human beings are constantly trying to find out new secrets and find out new discoveries and invent new things and explore new worlds.

01:04:47.000 I mean, this is just something that's been a part of human nature forever, this desire to improve and to go further, find the next best spot, find the new thing.

01:04:57.000 You know, and then I think that also works with animals.

01:04:59.000 I think we have this desire to find animals that we didn't know are real or weren't sure are real.

01:05:04.000 Well, knowledge is the foundation of that, right?

01:05:06.000 To go to a new planet, we have to have the knowledge of how to get there, right?

01:05:10.000 To go to a new habitat, we have to know what's there.

01:05:12.000 And I think maybe that's kind of that deep-rooted desire is like we need to know about this thing in order to understand if we can innovate off of it.

01:05:21.000 Yeah, maybe.

01:05:22.000 Yeah.

01:05:22.000 Yeah, what did you think when they found that Flores man in Indonesia?

01:05:28.000 It's amazing.

01:05:29.000 Like, I'm not an anthropologist, so, you know, that's not quite...

01:05:32.000 Has that been 100%?

01:05:33.000 Is that 100% agreed upon?

01:05:35.000 I've only seen kind of headlines.

01:05:37.000 I have to defer to you guys.

01:05:39.000 I think there was one, there was some scientist that was disputing, but essentially they were talking about a three foot tall, hobbit-like man kind of thing.

01:05:46.000 Cave dwelling, little person.

01:05:49.000 That existed alongside human beings as recently as like 14,000 years ago.

01:05:53.000 Right, right.

01:05:54.000 Which is like, what?

01:05:55.000 I think it's completely believable.

01:05:57.000 I mean, the koi sand people in the Saharan desert are tiny. 1.00

01:06:01.000 How big?

01:06:02.000 Like four feet.

01:06:04.000 And until the, you might have to double check this, but I believe until the 70s, people used to go and hunt them.

01:06:09.000 Maybe it was earlier.

01:06:10.000 It was 60s or 50s.

01:06:11.000 But you could go and hunt this primitive-sized human being as like a hunt.

01:06:17.000 Like an old Englishman with his big mustache and his musket would go hunt these people.

01:06:21.000 Whoa! 0.71

01:06:22.000 And now we have an understanding that, you know, they're people. 0.98

01:06:24.000 Like, you can't Fucking go and hunt them. 0.96

01:06:26.000 But, like, what's to say there weren't tribes like that all over the world that other people used to hunt that drove to extinction? 0.98

01:06:35.000 Jesus Christ.

01:06:36.000 Right.

01:06:37.000 Say the name of it again.

01:06:39.000 You got it?

01:06:39.000 Khoisan.

01:06:40.000 Khoisan, yeah. 0.78

01:06:41.000 Let me see what these people look like.

01:06:43.000 In my opinion, they're beautiful.

01:06:45.000 Like, you'll see what you think.

01:06:46.000 But they're very small.

01:06:48.000 They're desert dwellers. 1.00

01:06:48.000 You know, there's not a lot of resources in the desert, so you don't get huge. 1.00

01:06:51.000 So they're perfectly adapted to the desert life.

01:06:54.000 They really used to hunt them?

01:06:56.000 Yeah.

01:06:56.000 And they look just like people?

01:06:58.000 I mean, you'll have...

01:06:59.000 Yeah, I'm trying to find a good picture.

01:07:02.000 But they're still around.

01:07:03.000 Like, these aren't an extinct race.

01:07:04.000 They're still there.

01:07:05.000 Oh, wow.

01:07:06.000 Yeah.

01:07:06.000 Have you ever seen The Gods Must Be Crazy?

01:07:08.000 Yes.

01:07:08.000 Yeah, it's like those people.

01:07:10.000 Those were kind of taller Khoisan, but those are Bushmen. 1.00

01:07:14.000 Wow.

01:07:16.000 So who are these people that used to hunt these?

01:07:18.000 Like I say, I kid you not, it was like the old English explorer would go and conquer Africa and hunt these people like they were an animal, you know? 1.00

01:07:26.000 Fuck. 1.00

01:07:27.000 Crazy, right? 1.00

01:07:28.000 And this was until the 1970s?

01:07:30.000 That might not be right.

01:07:31.000 That sounds too recent, doesn't it? 0.99

01:07:32.000 God damn, that sounds horrific. 0.98

01:07:34.000 Yeah, you might need to check that, but it was not as long ago as you'd think. 0.99

01:07:37.000 You know what I mean?

01:07:38.000 It was like, very recently they were still under hunting.

01:07:42.000 And they're people.

01:07:44.000 Yeah.

01:07:44.000 Jesus Christ.

01:07:46.000 Yeah, so that's probably what happened to a lot of the non-homo sapien human type people.

01:07:53.000 I would think so.

01:07:54.000 And even if it's not like for sport, it's for competition or resources or, you know, any reason.

01:08:00.000 Yeah.

01:08:00.000 And that's human nature.

01:08:02.000 Conquer. 1.00

01:08:03.000 Yeah, fuck, man. 1.00

01:08:05.000 That is so dark. 1.00

01:08:07.000 Right?

01:08:07.000 They would go and hunt small people with a rifle.

01:08:10.000 Yep.

01:08:10.000 You know, it's nuts.

01:08:11.000 Are there photos of people like posing with the dead ones?

01:08:14.000 Um, again, I'm not an anthropologist, I'm not sure.

01:08:17.000 Yeah.

01:08:18.000 It's brutal.

01:08:19.000 Oof.

01:08:20.000 Yeah.

01:08:21.000 So what other pockets of the world are like mostly unexplored or could perhaps contain some of these animals?

01:08:29.000 I think?

01:08:48.000 Ecological hotspot.

01:08:49.000 Nobody goes there.

01:08:51.000 Very impenetrable.

01:08:52.000 I read something about some part of the world where they thought pterodactyls might still exist.

01:08:57.000 There's so many of those things.

01:08:58.000 I don't know that one specifically.

01:09:00.000 Especially doing what I do, I hear them all the time.

01:09:02.000 Oh, you've got to go look for Bigfoots or pterodactyls or whatever.

01:09:06.000 Mammoths.

01:09:08.000 Could there be a large reptile that perhaps flies?

01:09:11.000 Sure.

01:09:12.000 It's possible.

01:09:13.000 Is there a pterodactyl as we know it?

01:09:15.000 I highly, highly doubt it. 0.99

01:09:17.000 But a large reptile that could fly would be a fucking trip. 0.99

01:09:20.000 They were around. 0.99

01:09:21.000 So you think it would be something that we don't know about?

01:09:24.000 Yeah, basically.

01:09:24.000 I think there's enough pieces of this world that are unexplored that there are still megafauna to be discovered.

01:09:30.000 Not a lot.

01:09:31.000 Not a lot by any means.

01:09:32.000 And I might get ridiculed as I go back to my scientific community for saying this, but my belief is there are these isolated pockets where small populations of megafauna still exist that we don't know about.

01:09:43.000 Whoa.

01:09:44.000 Yeah.

01:09:45.000 Well, South America is, I mean, how much of South America is actually populated?

01:09:50.000 I mean, you look at the size of the Amazon jungle or something, and it's, sure, there's communities and stuff, but not that much.

01:09:57.000 I mean, Australia, you know, if you're not on the coast, there's nothing.

01:10:01.000 Right.

01:10:01.000 You know, there's all these huge chunks.

01:10:03.000 Papua New Guinea, same thing.

01:10:04.000 Nobody goes up into the highlands there.

01:10:06.000 They just found a dog there, as you saw.

01:10:07.000 I mean, there's crazy stuff.

01:10:10.000 Now what do you think about these guys that are talking about bringing animals back?

01:10:17.000 Like, as a scientist...

01:10:18.000 Sure.

01:10:19.000 De-extinction is...

01:10:21.000 It's a weird word.

01:10:22.000 It is.

01:10:22.000 It's a weird word.

01:10:23.000 Reintroduction?

01:10:23.000 Is that a better word?

01:10:24.000 No.

01:10:24.000 They call it de-extinction.

01:10:25.000 Is that what they call it?

01:10:25.000 That's what they call it.

01:10:26.000 Yeah.

01:10:26.000 De-extinction is...

01:10:28.000 To me, it's fascinating, especially if it's something like, say, the passenger pigeon, right?

01:10:33.000 We used to have billions of them in the United States.

01:10:36.000 Wiped them out.

01:10:38.000 And now they're saying...

01:10:40.000 We can take the closest living relative, isolate some genes, and make a new passenger pigeon.

01:10:46.000 Is that worth it because it's something we wiped out in the last hundred years?

01:10:49.000 Yes.

01:10:50.000 I feel like we should heal the ecosystem by putting that back.

01:10:54.000 That being said, we still need to learn from our mistakes.

01:10:57.000 We need to take into account what we did and why we did it.

01:11:00.000 And like, do I think there should be a Jurassic Park and a bunch of mammoths and T-Rexes?

01:11:04.000 Absolutely not.

01:11:05.000 That's a waste.

01:11:06.000 Whether we can or cannot do it, to me that's a waste of scientific resources that could go towards conserving things that are on the brink.

01:11:13.000 Now when you say, like, heal or mend the environment or the ecosystem, when you would bring back something like a pasture pigeon, isn't like 90% of everything that ever existed extinct?

01:11:24.000 Sure, absolutely.

01:11:25.000 So does the ecosystem adjust and evolve and would reintroducing something like a passenger pigeon, would it kind of fuck things up that exist now where new animals have taken a different position on the hierarchy?

01:11:35.000 It's too short an evolutionary time.

01:11:37.000 So we're in what's called the sixth mass extinction event, right?

01:11:41.000 There's been five others before us.

01:11:43.000 The one we're in now, it's happening at 80% greater rate than it's ever happened before.

01:11:47.000 So we are wiping out things more quickly than the world can adapt.

01:11:52.000 So, you know, you go into an environment and you take out all the apex predators, the prey explodes.

01:11:59.000 The prey explodes, the grass gets eaten down, everything collapses.

01:12:02.000 Now, if you left that environment over time, over evolutionary time, it would adapt, right?

01:12:07.000 Maybe, say, all of the predators got a disease and they died out over 300 generations.

01:12:14.000 During that time, something would evolve within the environment to Adapt the prey so that it didn't wipe out the environment.

01:12:22.000 That's just kind of the nature's balance.

01:12:23.000 But when you go in there and do it in ten years or five years, it throws off the equilibrium.

01:12:28.000 So when you, in theory, when you reintroduce something that's been, and it's not theory, it's science.

01:12:34.000 They've shown this even right here in the California Channel Islands.

01:12:36.000 When you put something back that's missing from the ecosystem, it's like you're putting a piece of the puzzle back, right?

01:12:42.000 And then you can allow it to do its thing over evolutionary time.

01:12:45.000 What did they do in the Channel Islands?

01:12:47.000 So I was actually a big part of that, and I loved the project.

01:12:50.000 So the California Channel Islands were settled by agriculture.

01:12:52.000 There were sheeps, goats, pigs, blah, blah, blah.

01:12:54.000 There was everything brought over there, right?

01:12:56.000 And so not Catalina, but think about the Northern Channel Islands.

01:12:59.000 What happened was when all these animals were brought in, all the farmers were there, then golden eagles started coming over.

01:13:05.000 Golden eagles came over to eat the pigs and everything else.

01:13:08.000 They flew across the ocean?

01:13:10.000 Yep.

01:13:10.000 Flew across the channel, started preying on pigs and everything else.

01:13:12.000 There was an animal on the Channel Islands called the Channel Islands fox.

01:13:16.000 A very gorgeous, cute, cuddly little fox.

01:13:18.000 You can see him if you go to Santa Cruz Island.

01:13:20.000 There's loads of them now, thanks to the work that scientists have done.

01:13:23.000 Anyway, they were like, okay, the fox is being...

01:13:26.000 There it is.

01:13:27.000 Isn't he gorgeous?

01:13:28.000 A little cute face.

01:13:30.000 So the fox is being wiped out through habitat destruction through all these undulates that have been brought in.

01:13:35.000 So scientists got together and said...

01:13:37.000 What, undulates?

01:13:37.000 Like cows?

01:13:38.000 Yeah.

01:13:38.000 Yeah, domestic animals.

01:13:39.000 Cows, sheep, goats, etc.

01:13:41.000 So scientists came in and said, you know, the habitat's getting destroyed.

01:13:44.000 And that's just the keystone.

01:13:46.000 There were several species that were on the decline.

01:13:48.000 The livestock is wiping out the habitat.

01:13:52.000 The foxes are declining.

01:13:54.000 What do we do?

01:13:55.000 Well, obvious answer, let's remove all the livestock. 1.00

01:13:57.000 So we removed all the livestock, right?

01:13:59.000 Through helicopters, there was a lot of pigs that were causing damage, all that kind of stuff.

01:14:02.000 We removed it all.

01:14:03.000 Then the golden eagles started preying on the foxes because their main habitat was gone.

01:14:07.000 So now the foxes are under even more pressure.

01:14:09.000 So then we remove the golden eagles.

01:14:10.000 This is a very abridged version of what happened.

01:14:13.000 But now we've got the golden eagles also pushed out the bald eagle, which are fish eaters which lived on the island.

01:14:18.000 So now after loads of years of removing golden eagles, like relocating them, removing all of the livestock, Now you have a healthy population of Channel Island foxes.

01:14:26.000 The bald eagles are back.

01:14:27.000 They're eating fish.

01:14:28.000 The whole ecosystem is back in balance.

01:14:30.000 Had it been left the way it was, what you would have found at the California Channel Islands over, say, 20 or 30 more years, 40 or 50 more years, no foxes, no bald eagles, a ton of golden eagles, and a ton of pigs, and likely over time, pigs would have exploded to the point that they Easter Islanded themselves,

01:14:45.000 right?

01:14:46.000 They ate up all the resources, destroyed all the habitat, population collapsed, golden eagles collapsed, nothing left on the islands.

01:14:51.000 What do you mean by Easter Island themselves?

01:14:53.000 So you're familiar with Easter Island in South America?

01:14:55.000 I know what those statues are and all that stuff, but I'm not familiar with what happened to the island.

01:15:00.000 So that island was an ancient civilization that was the Mecca. 0.82

01:15:04.000 It had everything.

01:15:05.000 Offland.

01:15:05.000 It had big trees, tons of food, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

01:15:08.000 People settled there and they said this place is incredible.

01:15:12.000 It's paradisical.

01:15:14.000 And then they started cutting down the trees to fish.

01:15:16.000 They started eating all the mammals.

01:15:18.000 And what actually happened is because they were so remote, the middle of the ocean, nowhere near South America, nowhere near anywhere else, they cut down the last tree.

01:15:25.000 There were no more canoes.

01:15:26.000 There was no more food on the island, and the population collapsed.

01:15:29.000 The island was barren.

01:15:30.000 It was void of trees, void of life, void of anything, and they didn't have the canoes or anything to leave anymore because they cut down the last tree to build a boat or make firewood, and everybody there died. 0.99

01:15:40.000 Oh, shit. 0.98

01:15:42.000 So that's what happens when you use up every last resource. 1.00

01:15:46.000 God.

01:15:47.000 So, wow.

01:15:49.000 When did this happen?

01:15:51.000 I couldn't tell you.

01:15:52.000 Because I thought it was like a mystery to what happened to the population of Easter Island.

01:15:56.000 So they're pretty sure that this happened.

01:15:58.000 That's the scientifically accepted understanding.

01:16:00.000 And did they get this from fossils?

01:16:01.000 They get this from bones?

01:16:03.000 So they've sort of pieced it together?

01:16:06.000 Yeah.

01:16:06.000 Yep, they take isotope samples and measure carbon data and yada yada.

01:16:11.000 I think the heads are still a pretty big mystery.

01:16:13.000 Why?

01:16:14.000 I think certain people believe that the heads were calling to the gods to help save things because they were going so badly, yada yada.

01:16:22.000 But I believe the heads are still a pretty big mystery, but the actual anthropology, the population, the collapse is known to be due to running out of resources.

01:16:30.000 How long did it go for?

01:16:32.000 Couldn't tell you.

01:16:33.000 Do they have an idea of how long the population lasted?

01:16:36.000 I think it's all published.

01:16:38.000 I don't know off the top of my head.

01:16:40.000 But it was a thriving population that flew too close to the sun, as they say.

01:16:45.000 Because of Easter Island's small size, only 63 square miles, it quickly became overpopulated and its resources were rapidly depleted.

01:16:52.000 When Europeans arrived on Easter Island between the late 1700s and the early 1800s, it was reported that the Moai were knocked down and the island seemed to have been a recent war site.

01:17:10.000 Hmm.

01:17:11.000 Lack of supplies.

01:17:12.000 Yeah.

01:17:12.000 See the next one there?

01:17:13.000 Constant warfare between the tribes, lack of supplies and resources, disease, invasive species, and the opening of the island to foreign slave trade eventually led to Easter Island's collapse by the 1860s.

01:17:25.000 Wow.

01:17:27.000 So it didn't take long.

01:17:28.000 1700s to the 1860s.

01:17:30.000 That was a wrap.

01:17:31.000 Wow.

01:17:32.000 It was annexed by Chile.

01:17:33.000 And so they've never tried to repopulate the island with trees or anything else, and they just kind of leave it alone?

01:17:38.000 I believe so.

01:17:39.000 I know you can go there and visit it and see the heads, and I think there are some things there now, but it's barren.

01:17:44.000 There are no trees.

01:17:45.000 There's no, you know, it's all been depleted.

01:17:47.000 It's so crazy when they introduce animals to an island and it winds up fucking everything up, like Galapagos Island.

01:17:54.000 I'm sure you're familiar with the Judas goats.

01:17:58.000 Judas goats?

01:17:59.000 Are those the ones in the Galapagos?

01:18:00.000 Do you know how they do that?

01:18:01.000 How they eradicate goats?

01:18:02.000 It's really interesting.

01:18:03.000 Not from the helicopters?

01:18:05.000 Yeah, well, this is how they do it.

01:18:06.000 Goats like to hang out together, right?

01:18:08.000 But sometimes it's hard to locate them.

01:18:09.000 So they put a radio collar on one goat.

01:18:12.000 They castrate it, and then they let it loose.

01:18:14.000 And they gun down all the goats around it and let that goat go find the rest of the goats.

01:18:19.000 No way.

01:18:19.000 He goes and finds the rest of the goats, and they gun down those goats because they have the radio collar.

01:18:23.000 Yeah, so these...

01:18:24.000 What is this, Jamie?

01:18:25.000 It's a picture of a Judas goat, I guess.

01:18:27.000 He's just white. 0.54

01:18:29.000 Wow, that's what...

01:18:29.000 Hey.

01:18:32.000 Maybe.

01:18:32.000 How sad is that single goat's life?

01:18:35.000 He's like, new friends! 1.00

01:18:36.000 He's like, what the fuck? 1.00

01:18:37.000 Helicopters. 0.99

01:18:39.000 So I'm actually heading there on Monday.

01:18:42.000 They make you take your shoes off, right?

01:18:44.000 Scrub to make sure you don't have weird seeds in the bottom of your shoes.

01:18:47.000 I have to stop eating seeds.

01:18:48.000 Quarantine for 48 hours when we arrive. 0.99

01:18:50.000 Stop eating seeds so you don't shit it out. 0.98

01:18:52.000 Exactly. 0.98

01:18:52.000 Wow. 0.98

01:18:53.000 Quarantine for 48 hours.

01:18:55.000 Yep.

01:18:56.000 Wow.

01:18:57.000 Why is there so much concern about this one area?

01:19:01.000 I mean, it's the dawn of evolution.

01:19:03.000 It's where Darwin came up with the theory of evolution due to the finches.

01:19:07.000 It has been destroyed in some aspects, and the habitat has been fixed in a lot of places.

01:19:13.000 There's been great conservation efforts, and personally, I love what they're doing because they're trying to keep it pristine.

01:19:19.000 I think it's fantastic that there's a quarantine.

01:19:21.000 I think it's great that I'm not supposed to eat seeds for two weeks before going there.

01:19:25.000 And it's to keep it as perfect as it is.

01:19:28.000 Now, the island that I'm going to with my small team, It has, like, nobody ever stepped foot on it.

01:19:33.000 It's an active volcano.

01:19:34.000 It erupts every year.

01:19:35.000 It's this crazy, harsh environment.

01:19:37.000 We have to have a new pair of boots every day because it melts and shreds your boots just walking on it.

01:19:42.000 Whoa! 0.71

01:19:42.000 Yeah, it's been described as hell on Earth, so I'm stoked. 0.71

01:19:45.000 Wow.

01:19:46.000 Now, what kind of protective gear do you have to wear other than your boots?

01:19:49.000 Just long-sleeved clothing.

01:19:50.000 How hot does it get?

01:19:51.000 So, the guy was telling me it's like 45 degrees Celsius, so that's well over 100. And, yeah, we've got to be careful about water and hiking, and there's a lot of elements.

01:20:03.000 But that's the thing, is I'm looking for an animal nobody's seen in a very long amount of time, so you've got to go to these places nobody's going.

01:20:09.000 Wow.

01:20:10.000 That's incredible.

01:20:11.000 You know, it's interesting, the idea of invasive species, too, right?

01:20:15.000 Because, like, Hawaii is a good example. 0.94

01:20:18.000 Hawaii, there's been talk of getting rid of pigs. 0.99

01:20:21.000 Yep.

01:20:22.000 And a lot of the natives are like, well, slow down, because if we hunt them, we eat them, and if they're invasive, then what are we? 0.99

01:20:29.000 Right, totally.

01:20:30.000 Because the pigs were here right around the same time the people were there, and we've existed together.

01:20:35.000 They need each other, and it's culture.

01:20:38.000 You know, at that point, it's Polynesian culture to eat a fire-roasted pig and hunt your pig, and so it's a delicate balance. 0.84

01:20:45.000 Like, Hawaii's a perfect example.

01:20:46.000 There's mongoose that were introduced that destroyed the birds, and there's turtles, there's frogs, there's all kinds of things that have been brought in there, but none of those are culturally significant, whereas the pig, as you're saying, is a huge cultural significance.

01:20:59.000 So where is the balance?

01:21:00.000 Yeah.

01:21:05.000 Yep.

01:21:07.000 Yep.

01:21:09.000 Yep.

01:21:11.000 Yep.

01:21:21.000 And have you ever been?

01:21:22.000 To Lanai I have, yeah.

01:21:23.000 I was diving there.

01:21:24.000 I was spearfishing there.

01:21:25.000 Do you see all the Axis deer? 0.97

01:21:26.000 Everywhere.

01:21:27.000 It's bananas.

01:21:28.000 It's crazy.

01:21:29.000 And they're so beautiful with their spots, and yeah, they're amazing animals.

01:21:32.000 And, you know, I'm all for it.

01:21:33.000 Like, hunting is a tool for conservation?

01:21:36.000 Absolutely.

01:21:36.000 Yeah, but it's just bizarre that they did that.

01:21:39.000 They decided to let deer loose on an island with nothing to eat the deer but people.

01:21:43.000 Right.

01:21:44.000 And then when this was done, it was like King Kamehameha, which is, what year was that?

01:21:48.000 I couldn't say.

01:21:49.000 A long time ago, yeah.

01:21:50.000 A long time ago.

01:21:51.000 So, back then, I mean, I don't even know if they had guns.

01:21:54.000 I mean, how were they hunting these things back then?

01:21:56.000 Bows and spears, I presume.

01:21:57.000 Probably, right?

01:21:57.000 And they brought them over from Asia, right?

01:22:01.000 Yep, yep, they're from Asia.

01:22:03.000 Same thing with New Zealand, right?

01:22:04.000 There's axis deer, there's goats, there's all kinds of things.

01:22:06.000 Or not axis, but red deer.

01:22:08.000 There's all kinds of things down there.

01:22:10.000 And same thing, they're all brought in for sport.

01:22:12.000 Yeah, New Zealand's a weird one, right?

01:22:14.000 So is Australia.

01:22:15.000 They brought a lot of stuff over there from Europe.

01:22:17.000 But New Zealand, specifically, they were trying to make it like a hunter's paradise, right?

01:22:21.000 And I think it is, right?

01:22:22.000 Tell me if I'm wrong.

01:22:23.000 No, it is.

01:22:23.000 But it's a weird one because it's mostly high fence.

01:22:26.000 Dude, you're going to love this.

01:22:27.000 So, onto my extinct animal thing.

01:22:30.000 They took moose into New Zealand.

01:22:32.000 They took like 10 of them.

01:22:33.000 Small population.

01:22:34.000 Believe that they've been hunted out.

01:22:36.000 You know, they shot the last one, blah, blah, blah, blah.

01:22:38.000 There's one guy, crazy looking dude, long hair, long beard, like nuts looking guy, and he's been on the hunt, not hunt hunt, but like trying to prove that the New Zealand moose is still there.

01:22:47.000 He's found antler sheds, he's found bedding sites, some guy even got a picture of one standing on a rock, and you know moose.

01:22:53.000 To me it's 100% a moose.

01:22:55.000 And so there, in theory, somewhere down the South Island, there's one or two or three of these super elusive moose that have been in New Zealand for like 50 years.

01:23:03.000 Whoa.

01:23:04.000 Yeah.

01:23:04.000 Wow.

01:23:05.000 Well, New Zealand is so fucking rugged. 0.99

01:23:08.000 Yeah. 0.97

01:23:09.000 There's a friend of mine who's been there, my friend Adam Greentree, he's been there.

01:23:13.000 He lives in Australia and he goes there to hunt tar. 0.97

01:23:16.000 And, you know, they live in the- On the steepest- The craggiest shale where the rock's real slippery and it's just like cold as shit and really high altitude. 0.60

01:23:27.000 And you've seen them before, right? 0.94

01:23:29.000 Yeah, yeah, I have.

01:23:29.000 They look like a science fiction animal.

01:23:31.000 As me and the guys I work with like to say, stranger than fiction.

01:23:35.000 You look at it and you're like, that's not a real creature.

01:23:38.000 Like some kid drew that.

01:23:39.000 Yeah.

01:23:39.000 Like a big old shaggy weird looking thing.

01:23:42.000 This is the area where they think they are in New Zealand.

01:23:44.000 The moose?

01:23:45.000 Yeah.

01:23:45.000 Did you see that picture of the one on the rock sticking out?

01:23:49.000 That's right there.

01:23:51.000 Yeah.

01:23:51.000 Tell me that's not a moose.

01:23:52.000 That's a moose.

01:23:53.000 That's the last one that was last picture taken.

01:23:55.000 Oh, it was 1952. There's a recent one though.

01:23:58.000 There's one from like two or three years ago and I looked at it and I'm like, that's a moose.

01:24:01.000 Like, I don't know who's saying it's not, but it's a moose.

01:24:03.000 Wow.

01:24:04.000 I didn't see that.

01:24:05.000 Yeah.

01:24:05.000 From 1952. Yeah, that's 100% a moose.

01:24:09.000 Right.

01:24:10.000 But again, how weird is it that there's animals that you know are there, and then there's animals like, we must find this.

01:24:15.000 So they spend incredible amounts of time and all these resources.

01:24:19.000 Is that it?

01:24:19.000 Oh yeah, that's 100% a moose.

01:24:21.000 That's a freaking moose. 0.99

01:24:22.000 That's no doubt about it. 0.99

01:24:23.000 See?

01:24:23.000 That's what I'm saying.

01:24:26.000 God damn it, people! 0.99

01:24:28.000 Yeah, that doesn't even make sense that anybody would argue that. 0.99

01:24:30.000 Right!

01:24:31.000 That's a pretty clear picture.

01:24:32.000 But that's not proof, because they need genetic material.

01:24:34.000 They need fur. 0.67

01:24:34.000 They need something. 0.67

01:24:35.000 What do they think that is?

01:24:36.000 A cloud?

01:24:38.000 Exactly.

01:24:38.000 A rubber moose that someone stuck there to goof on people?

01:24:41.000 Are they, like, arguing that somebody could have computer generated it?

01:24:44.000 Yeah.

01:24:44.000 Just to fool people.

01:24:45.000 All those, you know, all those.

01:24:46.000 And I appreciate it, right?

01:24:47.000 As a scientist, I appreciate the fact that you have to have proof.

01:24:51.000 Right. 0.74

01:24:52.000 But it does get to the point of ridiculousness.

01:24:54.000 Yeah, well, it's certainly possible.

01:24:56.000 I mean, it's certainly possible that they've...

01:24:57.000 I mean, especially when you're looking at that insanely dense terrain.

01:25:01.000 Right.

01:25:01.000 You know?

01:25:01.000 Right.

01:25:02.000 But so, there are some efforts right now to try to de-extinct some animals.

01:25:09.000 There are.

01:25:09.000 Thank you.

01:25:10.000 Yeah.

01:25:10.000 Give me that new word.

01:25:12.000 And, like, what is currently going on right now?

01:25:15.000 They're calling it the dawn of de-extinction.

01:25:17.000 And it's a lot of...

01:25:21.000 Very, very intelligent genetic scientists that are trying to isolate specific genes that are specific to the animals that have been extinct and putting them into extant animals, animals that are still here, to basically make this Frankenstein animal,

01:25:38.000 because it'll never be the animal that's gone, right?

01:25:40.000 It will look like it, it'll behave like it, it'll think like it, etc., but it will never actually be the animal that we've lost.

01:25:47.000 At least not yet.

01:25:48.000 We don't have that technology.

01:25:49.000 Right now what we can do is isolate a genome, put it into an existing animal that gives birth to an animal that looks and acts very much like the extinct animal.

01:25:57.000 But it's some degree different because it's like a mammoth, for instance.

01:26:02.000 They would have to take some DNA from a mammoth. 0.68

01:26:05.000 Right.

01:26:05.000 That they would somehow or another get and introduce it to an embryo of an elephant, and then the elephant would give birth to a very hairy, very large tusk, like these isolated genetic codes, elephant.

01:26:18.000 And it would look like a mammoth, it would act like a mammoth, but the reality is, it's a shaggy elephant with big tusks.

01:26:24.000 Right, so if you did like 23andMe on it, it would show, oh, it's mostly elephant, but it's a little bit of a mammoth.

01:26:32.000 Yeah, I mean, if you think of a double helix, like a DNA strand, right?

01:26:36.000 You have these little bars in the middle of it.

01:26:38.000 So what they do is, this is a very crude way to explain it, but they pull out a bar from an elephant and they put in a bar from a mammoth.

01:26:46.000 And then eventually you get this mammoth.

01:26:48.000 And so this would be with like gene editing tools like CRISPR or something along those lines?

01:26:52.000 Exactly.

01:26:53.000 Wow.

01:26:53.000 And so how far away are they from doing this?

01:26:57.000 I mean, it's been successfully done a couple of times.

01:26:59.000 Really?

01:27:00.000 Yep.

01:27:01.000 They've given birth to a couple animals that are very, very close to the extinct animal.

01:27:05.000 Most of the time, there's problems, right?

01:27:08.000 It's infertile.

01:27:09.000 It has lung issues, whatever it is.

01:27:12.000 There's a couple different cases.

01:27:13.000 I'm not a geneticist.

01:27:14.000 I'm a wildlife biologist, so I don't really understand it, but they've done it.

01:27:19.000 They have successfully reproduced things that are gone, basically cloned things, and then the animal hasn't made it to adulthood.

01:27:26.000 Man, that seems really, really like playing God, doesn't it?

01:27:30.000 It is.

01:27:30.000 It is absolutely like playing God.

01:27:32.000 I feel like, I mean, are people doing it just because they can?

01:27:37.000 Is it one of those things?

01:27:38.000 Or is there like a real, valid, scientific reason for trying to reintroduce these animals or de-extinct them?

01:27:45.000 Well, the valid reason is to conserve the ecosystem, right?

01:27:48.000 Like we talked about.

01:27:49.000 But I think it goes back to what we were saying half an hour ago, which is, it's just that quest for knowledge, that can we do it?

01:27:57.000 The innovation, right?

01:27:58.000 Can we play God?

01:27:59.000 Can we fix it?

01:28:00.000 Can we take this thing that's gone and say, no, it's not?

01:28:03.000 Like, we have the tools to make it not gone.

01:28:05.000 Yeah, there was some article that I read where they were talking about reintroducing the mammoth to Siberia and that there would be some ecological benefit to reintroducing the mammoth because of the way they forage for food.

01:28:18.000 Sure.

01:28:19.000 They would have some sort of an effect on global warming.

01:28:21.000 Sure.

01:28:22.000 Do you know about that?

01:28:23.000 I don't know about that specifically.

01:28:25.000 See if you can find that, Jamie.

01:28:27.000 Reintroducing the mammoth to Siberia to benefit the environment.

01:28:30.000 Sure.

01:28:31.000 Look, whether that's accurate or not, until you put mammoths on the ground, how do we actually know?

01:28:37.000 It's a great theory, and that's what science is, right?

01:28:39.000 It's coming up with hypotheses and then trying to prove them.

01:28:42.000 And it sounds cool.

01:28:43.000 Like, do I want to see a mammoth walking around Siberia? 1.00

01:28:45.000 Fuck yeah! 0.99

01:28:46.000 But does that mean it's actually good for the world? 1.00

01:28:48.000 Hard to say.

01:28:49.000 Whoa.

01:28:50.000 Could bringing back mammoths help stop climate change?

01:28:52.000 Scientists say creating hybrids of extinct beasts could fix the Arctic tundra and stop greenhouse gas emissions.

01:28:59.000 I don't understand that.

01:29:00.000 I find it hard to believe, to be honest.

01:29:02.000 Maybe it's just some scientist's clever way of sneaking it in because he wants to play God.

01:29:07.000 Like, yeah, yeah, we're gonna fix everything. 1.00

01:29:08.000 Yeah, fucking use coal. 1.00

01:29:10.000 Who gives a shit? 1.00

01:29:11.000 We got mammoths. 1.00

01:29:12.000 We got mammoths, yeah.

01:29:13.000 Just give me the funding.

01:29:14.000 Give me the funding.

01:29:14.000 Exactly, man.

01:29:15.000 Trying to make mammoths.

01:29:16.000 That's sadly very real.

01:29:18.000 Well, is it really?

01:29:20.000 Oh, yeah.

01:29:20.000 I mean, look, if you're a scientist, right?

01:29:22.000 Right.

01:29:23.000 You, Joe Rogan, as a scientist, how are you going to make your career?

01:29:26.000 Are you going to make your career by raising money through being like, yeah, sure, I'll study cricket legs? 0.96

01:29:31.000 Or are you going to be like, look, give me the money to stop global warming by bringing back fucking mammoths? 0.85

01:29:36.000 You can make the outrageous claim if you think it's going to fund your research. 0.98

01:29:42.000 That's how you make your bones.

01:29:44.000 And that's one of the sad realities of some, certainly not all, science.

01:29:48.000 Well, mammoths, too, are so iconic.

01:29:52.000 It's such a freaky animal to study.

01:29:54.000 You know we had them here?

01:29:55.000 California Channel Islands?

01:29:56.000 Yeah, I heard that.

01:29:57.000 Pygmy mammoths.

01:29:58.000 Yeah.

01:29:59.000 How long ago was that?

01:30:00.000 I want to say pre-ice age.

01:30:02.000 Not actually sure.

01:30:04.000 But, I mean, still, can you imagine, like, you know, you're out fishing at Catalina and you look up and there's a pygmy mammoth on the cliff?

01:30:10.000 Yeah.

01:30:10.000 There's so many mammoth tusks in Alaska in particular.

01:30:15.000 There's an Instagram page where you can...

01:30:17.000 I'll send it to you, Jamie.

01:30:19.000 There's a page where they go and look for them.

01:30:24.000 And they basically use a high-pressure hose and blow them out of the side of a hill.

01:30:32.000 Is it like in ice or is it in like earth?

01:30:35.000 It's in earth.

01:30:36.000 Huh.

01:30:37.000 Yeah.

01:30:37.000 Okay.

01:30:37.000 The Boneyard, Alaska is the Instagram page.

01:30:41.000 If you go to the Boneyard, Alaska, you'll see what I'm talking about. 0.97

01:30:45.000 It's fucking incredible. 0.98

01:30:47.000 I mean, they keep pulling these. 0.99

01:30:48.000 They're using these hoses and cleaning off this dirt and they're pulling these intact tusks.

01:30:53.000 That's insane.

01:30:54.000 Well, there must have been so many of them that died.

01:30:56.000 And they're preserved.

01:30:57.000 I mean, whether it's mudslides or whatever.

01:30:59.000 Sure.

01:31:00.000 There's this one pocket where they're all concentrated.

01:31:03.000 Well, apparently they find quite a bit of them.

01:31:05.000 That's nuts.

01:31:05.000 You need one of those in the studio?

01:31:07.000 A mammoth tusk?

01:31:08.000 Yeah, man.

01:31:09.000 Yeah, I guess, but it seems like you shouldn't have it.

01:31:13.000 It's like ivory. 1.00

01:31:15.000 You don't want some rich asshole's house. 1.00

01:31:17.000 Totally. 1.00

01:31:17.000 What is that? 1.00

01:31:19.000 It's part of a skull.

01:31:20.000 Oh, short-faced bear skull. 1.00

01:31:22.000 Holy fuck, man. 1.00

01:31:23.000 That's a cool animal. 1.00

01:31:24.000 That's a cool animal. 1.00

01:31:25.000 Yeah, we've drooled over those fucking things many times on the podcast. 0.99

01:31:30.000 See right there? 1.00

01:31:31.000 You see those tusks?

01:31:32.000 Oh, yeah.

01:31:32.000 Bottom left.

01:31:33.000 Yeah, bottom left right there.

01:31:35.000 Those are some tusks that they pulled out.

01:31:36.000 That's nuts.

01:31:37.000 Yeah, and there's a ton of them, man.

01:31:39.000 I mean, these guys are constantly doing this and pulling these things out.

01:31:43.000 So let me ask you, you're hiking through there, right?

01:31:45.000 You're on a hike or a hunt or whatever.

01:31:47.000 You stub your toe on one.

01:31:48.000 What do you do?

01:31:49.000 You dig it out and put it on your pack?

01:31:51.000 You leave it?

01:31:52.000 Take a picture?

01:31:52.000 What do you do?

01:31:53.000 I don't know what the rules are.

01:31:54.000 Like, if you're in certain places and you find an arrowhead, you're supposed to leave it.

01:31:59.000 But rules aside, like, ethically, what do you do?

01:32:01.000 Yeah.

01:32:03.000 Well, it depends on how far away you are, right?

01:32:05.000 Sure.

01:32:05.000 Because that's a lot of weight.

01:32:07.000 That's fair.

01:32:08.000 That's fair, yeah.

01:32:08.000 I would say you mark a pin on a GPS and come back.

01:32:12.000 Because it's something you want, right?

01:32:14.000 As a human being, it's a treasure.

01:32:15.000 You found this incredible thing.

01:32:17.000 But ethically, you probably shouldn't touch it.

01:32:20.000 What do you do?

01:32:21.000 Well, these guys obviously know what they're doing.

01:32:22.000 Right.

01:32:23.000 But for me, I would say, I mean, look at that one.

01:32:26.000 Oh, my God.

01:32:28.000 That's crazy.

01:32:29.000 It is huge.

01:32:30.000 Did they wrap it up with tape?

01:32:31.000 Is that what they did there?

01:32:32.000 It looks like all those...

01:32:33.000 Those metal things to bind it together, sort of, maybe.

01:32:36.000 Oh, like to keep it from falling apart, maybe, as they pull it out of the water?

01:32:39.000 Or the dirt, rather? 0.99

01:32:41.000 If I was thinking of my best me, the best me would mark a pin and then alert some scientists and tell them where it is and leave it the fuck alone. 1.00

01:32:50.000 Don't be a greedy dick. 1.00

01:32:52.000 My worst me, I dig that bitch out and put it on my pack and not tell anybody and bring it back home. 1.00

01:32:58.000 I just don't know what the law is. 0.99

01:33:00.000 And even beyond the law, like here's this gentleman right here who's pulling this out.

01:33:05.000 Even if you don't know what the law is, what's right?

01:33:08.000 That's the question, right?

01:33:09.000 What's right?

01:33:10.000 What's the right thing to do?

01:33:11.000 Yeah, there might not be a good law yet, but there might be a, I mean, there clearly is a finite number of these things.

01:33:17.000 Of course, there has to be.

01:33:18.000 And they're prehistoric.

01:33:20.000 Now, let me pose this to you.

01:33:21.000 So, I know a guy, he's a treasure hunter by trade.

01:33:24.000 Very cool old guy, Australian guy, lived in Perth.

01:33:26.000 And for years, he's like, I know where this certain Spanish ship went down.

01:33:31.000 Long story short, he finds it, right?

01:33:33.000 Digs up one single gold coin, and he's like, it's here, I know it's here.

01:33:37.000 He's a big spear fisherman, adventure guy.

01:33:39.000 Goes, spends tens of thousands of dollars, he's not a rich man, spends tens of thousands of dollars, gets all this excavator equipment, goes to this very remote area of northwestern Australia, pulls up something like $10 million worth of treasure, takes it home, legally declares it all, tells the government,

01:33:55.000 gets all confiscated.

01:33:56.000 They give him three or four pieces.

01:33:57.000 You can see his treasure in the museum in Perth.

01:34:02.000 Here's this guy who would have retired, been a wealthy man, you know, had his whole life taken care of because of this thing he was obsessed with and then found, and then got the tools on his own dime to go and get it, declares it and has it confiscated.

01:34:13.000 Dude.

01:34:14.000 Well, that's weird because you find stuff in the ocean and they take it and people become billionaires, right?

01:34:19.000 They find Russian or Roman ships filled with gold coins and...

01:34:24.000 But for whatever reason, this was considered historically valuable, so it was taken for the museum, right?

01:34:31.000 And he got a few coins and no money.

01:34:34.000 I gotta look up the guy's name.

01:34:36.000 I know a similar story.

01:34:38.000 It's happened in America.

01:34:39.000 Okay.

01:34:40.000 The guy that went to hunt it got investors.

01:34:42.000 Right.

01:34:43.000 And when he got the gold, he just kept it.

01:34:47.000 When the investors asked for the money, he said, I don't know what you're talking about.

01:34:51.000 I lost it.

01:34:52.000 Or I don't know where I put it.

01:34:53.000 Or I don't know where it is.

01:34:54.000 So I think he's currently in jail under contempt of court.

01:34:58.000 Oh, jeez.

01:34:59.000 Being asked, where is it?

01:35:01.000 And he said, I don't know.

01:35:02.000 He's taking lie detector tests.

01:35:04.000 People think his kids have it or something like that, but they have no idea where it is.

01:35:09.000 It's a crazy story.

01:35:10.000 Well, that's a weird one, too, because, like, what are you going to do with it?

01:35:13.000 Right.

01:35:13.000 Like, if people are staring at you, they're, like, constantly looking, where is it?

01:35:17.000 Where is it?

01:35:17.000 You're like, I don't have it.

01:35:18.000 They're going to keep looking.

01:35:19.000 Like, how much is it worth?

01:35:21.000 Millions.

01:35:22.000 I think each coin might be worth a million.

01:35:24.000 You might have something like 20 to 30 of them.

01:35:26.000 It's, like, a lot of money.

01:35:27.000 It's insane.

01:35:28.000 Well, you've got to bring it to someone who's going to give you a piece.

01:35:31.000 You've got to bring it to someone, but then you're going to get caught.

01:35:34.000 Where'd you get the $5 million?

01:35:35.000 Then what?

01:35:35.000 Exactly.

01:35:36.000 Then what?

01:35:36.000 Oh, I found it.

01:35:36.000 Yeah.

01:35:38.000 Yeah, what do you do?

01:35:39.000 Well, it's interesting when things are historical, right?

01:35:41.000 You don't know, like, does it belong to a museum?

01:35:45.000 Does it belong to the person who finds it?

01:35:47.000 Right.

01:35:47.000 Like, what are the rules, and are we making these rules up as we go along?

01:35:51.000 It's, yeah.

01:35:52.000 Yeah.

01:35:52.000 It's worth $20 million.

01:35:53.000 I found a story.

01:35:54.000 He's still in jail right now.

01:35:55.000 Wow!

01:35:57.000 Jailed treasure hunter ordered to pay nearly $20 million.

01:36:00.000 Tommy Thompson.

01:36:02.000 Tommy Thompson sounds like the kind of guy.

01:36:07.000 What is that island?

01:36:09.000 There's one island that has...

01:36:33.000 What do they think's in there?

01:36:35.000 Some astronomically valuable treasure, right?

01:36:38.000 And I believe the island's changed hands like seven or eight times because people trying to find it have gone broke, digging it up, excavating it, exploring it, and there's booby traps and all this crazy stuff.

01:36:49.000 Yeah, there's some...

01:36:50.000 There's some sort of a method that they've devised where if you go deep enough, it just fills up with water so you can never get to the actual treasure itself.

01:36:58.000 Right. 0.97

01:36:58.000 So the people who put the treasure there might have fucked themselves. 0.97

01:37:01.000 Totally. 0.97

01:37:02.000 We're assuming they're so smart that they buried the treasure in a way that nobody could ever get it out, but they might have just buried it in a way that they couldn't even get it out.

01:37:09.000 I think that's the case.

01:37:10.000 I think it's one of those like, oh, we're going to keep it here and then they couldn't get it.

01:37:14.000 I mean, who knows?

01:37:15.000 But yeah, what a crazy story.

01:37:16.000 Yeah.

01:37:17.000 So do they know who did it?

01:37:19.000 I'm not sure.

01:37:20.000 See if you can find something on that.

01:37:21.000 Oak Island.

01:37:22.000 So that television show is, it's just like, they're just like going, well, now what?

01:37:26.000 Right?

01:37:27.000 I think they're just digging and trying.

01:37:29.000 So you can't suck all the water out, right?

01:37:32.000 Because it's getting water from the ocean.

01:37:33.000 Well, it's subsea level.

01:37:34.000 So yeah, it just, you know.

01:37:36.000 Constantly filling up.

01:37:36.000 Right.

01:37:37.000 So unless you go down there with a submarine.

01:37:38.000 I think they've put divers in it.

01:37:40.000 They've had metal detectors.

01:37:41.000 I don't really know.

01:37:42.000 I'm not super familiar with the show.

01:37:43.000 I just know someone that was there.

01:37:45.000 And yeah, I think it's this pretty serious ongoing thing.

01:37:50.000 Buried treasure, right?

01:37:51.000 Remember when you were a kid, it was X marks the spot?

01:37:53.000 The coolest.

01:37:54.000 The so-called Knights Templar Cross is one of the most exciting treasures found there.

01:38:00.000 Really?

01:38:01.000 They found it?

01:38:02.000 It's so-called.

01:38:03.000 It says, upon first glance, it resembles a Knights Templar Cross.

01:38:06.000 Do they have a picture of this thing?

01:38:07.000 That's in the show right here.

01:38:08.000 Hmm.

01:38:09.000 Hmm.

01:38:10.000 So, yeah, when they find these, if they, in the open ocean, when they find these things, it's whoever finds it gets to keep it, right?

01:38:18.000 I think so.

01:38:18.000 If it's in international waters.

01:38:19.000 I believe so.

01:38:19.000 So when they have, like, these ancient Roman ships.

01:38:22.000 But you still have to bring it back into port and declare it.

01:38:25.000 Yeah.

01:38:25.000 What makes it historically valuable.

01:38:27.000 Like, I think there's, it's a lot, I feel like there's a lot of loopholes where you can get screwed out of your find.

01:38:33.000 Yeah.

01:38:34.000 Man.

01:38:35.000 Yeah, that's a weird one.

01:38:37.000 Who owns that?

01:38:38.000 Right.

01:38:39.000 Who knows?

01:38:40.000 Yeah.

01:38:41.000 I don't know.

01:38:42.000 It's just interesting to me that there were so many ships that went down that you can find these things in the ocean still.

01:38:48.000 And they're filled with gold, these Roman ships.

01:38:51.000 And people retire off of it and spend their whole career and lose every dime they have trying to find one.

01:38:57.000 Yeah, and how do they coordinate?

01:38:59.000 Do they read like old logs or something like that and try to figure out which way the people went?

01:39:03.000 I have no idea.

01:39:05.000 Hmm, man.

01:39:06.000 So what other like crazy trips do you want to do that you haven't done yet?

01:39:13.000 There's a lot, man.

01:39:14.000 I mean, the one that I've had on my bucket list since I was...

01:39:16.000 So there's a couple.

01:39:17.000 One is, there's really one place on Earth left where there's true cannibals. 0.99

01:39:21.000 It's Papua New Guinea.

01:39:22.000 And unlike the missionary that went in, you know, with an agenda, I would just love to actually see these cannibalistic tribes. 0.85

01:39:30.000 So I'd love to do that.

01:39:32.000 Nobody has successfully, unless it's happened very recently and I'm unaware of, successfully done Source to Sea of the Congo River from guerrilla warfare, from crazy waterfalls, disease.

01:39:41.000 That's an expedition I'd like to try.

01:39:43.000 And then when it comes to wildlife, I mean, the list is infinite.

01:39:47.000 There's so many of these animals that I'm desperate to try and find.

01:39:50.000 Those sound like very dangerous trips.

01:39:52.000 Like visiting cannibals?

01:39:55.000 Yeah, I mean, like, I don't know how to say this without sounding arrogant, but that's what sounds exciting to me.

01:40:01.000 Right.

01:40:01.000 You know, is giving that shot that other, taking that shot that other people aren't taking.

01:40:05.000 So, have people visited these cannibals and come out of there before?

01:40:09.000 Yep, yep.

01:40:09.000 There was a Nat Geo photographer who got some incredible photos.

01:40:13.000 They're called the Caraway Tribe.

01:40:15.000 And he went in there, took him a while for them to kind of assimilate and get comfortable, and then he got these photos that are just mind-blowing.

01:40:22.000 Now, how often do they practice cannibalism?

01:40:26.000 It's not a daily thing.

01:40:27.000 It is a spiritual thing where they actually eat the other tribes deceased after a war or an intertribal conflict as a way to ward off bad spirits.

01:40:39.000 So it's not like a daily thing.

01:40:41.000 It's not like they're going out hunting each other.

01:40:42.000 It's more like when these things occur, they have to eat a certain killer, a certain body to keep evil spirits at bay.

01:40:50.000 Do they get that version of mad cow's disease that cannibals get? 1.00

01:40:54.000 Was it Jakob's Krutzfeld?

01:40:56.000 I know what you're talking about.

01:40:56.000 I'm not sure.

01:40:57.000 I think it's probably infrequent enough that they're not getting it.

01:41:00.000 Because in the South Pacific, they got that all the time, but they were eating each other all the time.

01:41:05.000 Yeah.

01:41:06.000 Well, I think you get it from nerves, right?

01:41:08.000 And nerve tissue or brains.

01:41:10.000 It's brain, yeah.

01:41:10.000 That's where they're getting it from.

01:41:12.000 It's essentially mad cow disease.

01:41:13.000 Exactly, yeah.

01:41:14.000 Is this guy hanging out with them there?

01:41:16.000 It starts off with sound and he's eating something.

01:41:18.000 I don't think he's eating people with them. 1.00

01:41:20.000 He's going to eat a fucking person? 1.00

01:41:22.000 That's not a person. 1.00

01:41:23.000 That's a pig or something. 0.98

01:41:24.000 I don't think they'd show that. 0.97

01:41:26.000 But yeah, look at the tribe.

01:41:28.000 I mean, they just look amazing.

01:41:29.000 Yeah, but it's just so incredible that there's still people that live the way they lived many, many, many thousands of years ago, and they essentially just get their resources from the land, from the area they live, and they're just rocking it old school.

01:41:43.000 And then for me, like, the cultural significance is huge, but what's the biological area like, right?

01:41:50.000 Nobody's going in there.

01:41:51.000 How much biological study's been done?

01:41:53.000 The answer is none.

01:41:56.000 And these people have large population.

01:41:57.000 Look at that lady! 1.00

01:41:59.000 Isn't she amazing? 1.00

01:42:01.000 Wow.

01:42:04.000 Yeah.

01:42:05.000 Have you read Sapiens?

01:42:08.000 Sapiens?

01:42:09.000 No, I'm not sure.

01:42:11.000 Evolutionary book about human history.

01:42:13.000 Noah Yuval Harati.

01:42:14.000 I think that's the name of his.

01:42:15.000 He's amazing.

01:42:16.000 Writing it down.

01:42:17.000 Yeah, it's a great book.

01:42:19.000 But one of the things that they talk about in the book was these nomadic tribes that would...

01:42:24.000 Yeah, that's it.

01:42:26.000 Yuval Noah Harati. 0.99

01:42:28.000 I fucked up his name. 1.00

01:42:29.000 They would talk about these nomadic tribes that would kill the old ladies. 1.00

01:42:35.000 Like, kill the people that were burdens. 1.00

01:42:37.000 And eat them? 1.00

01:42:38.000 No, just kill them. 1.00

01:42:40.000 Just talking about when people became a problem. 1.00

01:42:42.000 They would just kill them.

01:42:43.000 And this was normal. 0.84

01:42:44.000 But they got along together great.

01:42:46.000 Everybody was laughing and smiling.

01:42:47.000 Everybody's really friendly. 0.99

01:42:48.000 But as soon as someone seemed to be a problem, they'd fucking club them from behind. 0.99

01:42:52.000 Yeah. 0.99

01:42:53.000 It's like, this is going to sound just awful, but doesn't that make sense?

01:42:57.000 It kind of does. 0.97

01:42:58.000 It sucks, but it kind of does. 0.98

01:42:59.000 Right? 0.99

01:43:00.000 Like, you're a burden on the community or on the society. 0.99

01:43:03.000 You know, there's no fucking old folks home out there. 1.00

01:43:05.000 Yeah. 0.99

01:43:06.000 Like, that's, it's crazy.

01:43:08.000 Like, to us in our culture, that's absurd, but as a culture removed from the rest of the world, it makes sense.

01:43:14.000 Like, you're a burden, you know, you've had a good life, it's time to move on.

01:43:17.000 And they're nomadic.

01:43:18.000 That's the other thing.

01:43:19.000 It's like they have to keep moving. 0.95

01:43:21.000 So if someone stops, and there's one guy, he was sick, and so they left him on a tree, and he became covered with buzzard shit, because the vultures would just sit over him and wait for him to die, but he eventually recovered. 0.99

01:43:33.000 And he caught up with the rest of the tribe, and for the rest of it, they called him something like buzzard shit or something like that. 0.98

01:43:39.000 That was their nickname for him. 0.97

01:43:42.000 Yeah.

01:43:42.000 Imagine being that guy.

01:43:43.000 Imagine sitting under a tree looking up at vultures being like, it's moments till I die and they're going to drop down and eat me.

01:43:49.000 At least they're... 0.78

01:43:51.000 Polite enough to wait for you to die. 0.98

01:43:52.000 That's true. 0.63

01:43:53.000 The guy probably couldn't have fought him off.

01:43:55.000 That was a hyena. 0.99

01:43:56.000 Yeah.

01:43:57.000 Yeah, dude.

01:43:58.000 Hyenas. 1.00

01:43:59.000 They're the trippiest of all the animals, the matriarchal society of them where the females have the fake dicks. 1.00

01:44:05.000 They're amazing. 1.00

01:44:06.000 How bizarre.

01:44:07.000 So weird.

01:44:08.000 Crazy faces, crazy biology and anatomy.

01:44:11.000 Yeah.

01:44:12.000 You know, the fellow form, the cat-like, but doesn't belong to any family.

01:44:15.000 Yeah.

01:44:16.000 Super weird.

01:44:17.000 Love them. 1.00

01:44:18.000 They have a giant fake dick. 1.00

01:44:19.000 The females have a giant fake dick they give birth to. 1.00

01:44:22.000 They do. 1.00

01:44:22.000 Birth out of, rather. 1.00

01:44:23.000 Yep.

01:44:23.000 They have unbelievable biting power, too, right?

01:44:26.000 Yep.

01:44:26.000 The strongest mammalian jaw pressure on Earth.

01:44:29.000 What a weird looking animal, too.

01:44:31.000 Even the way it walks.

01:44:32.000 It's all shouldered.

01:44:34.000 Totally looks like a villain.

01:44:35.000 Yeah.

01:44:35.000 Like its upper body is higher than its lower body.

01:44:39.000 It's very strange.

01:44:40.000 Very.

01:44:41.000 What is it like when you encounter those in the wild?

01:44:42.000 Are they sketchy? 0.99

01:44:43.000 Very cowardly. 0.97

01:44:44.000 Very wary at all times. 0.88

01:44:47.000 Like...

01:44:49.000 I've encountered them a lot.

01:44:51.000 And when you're in Africa, if you're taller than it, it generally won't attack you.

01:44:55.000 So people get super scared of hyenas.

01:44:57.000 When I was a little boy, I learned if you're running in the bush and you see a hyena, stand up and put your arms up like that.

01:45:02.000 They say that about cats too, right?

01:45:03.000 Like mountain lions? 1.00

01:45:04.000 Look at that motherfucker. 1.00

01:45:06.000 Jesus. 1.00

01:45:07.000 Look at that thing, man.

01:45:09.000 That's so cool.

01:45:11.000 You don't like them, huh?

01:45:13.000 Oh, sure.

01:45:14.000 It's very cool.

01:45:15.000 It's not at my house.

01:45:16.000 It's so creepy looking.

01:45:18.000 Yeah.

01:45:18.000 I love when they circle lions, too.

01:45:21.000 When they get enough of them together and they start circling and snapping at the lion's legs.

01:45:25.000 Strength in numbers.

01:45:26.000 Yeah.

01:45:27.000 There's a documentary on this one male lion who would kill all these hyenas, and he was like the enforcer for the tribe.

01:45:35.000 No way. 0.99

01:45:36.000 You see how the hyenas would come in and fuck with the female lions? 1.00

01:45:38.000 Wow. 0.99

01:45:39.000 This giant male would come out of nowhere and there's a video of it, a video of him smashing these hyenas, just grabbing them with his giant head, shaking them, snapping them and tossing them in the air and then chasing after another one and killing them too. 0.82

01:45:53.000 Unreal.

01:45:54.000 No, I haven't seen that.

01:45:54.000 That's amazing.

01:45:55.000 Have you ever seen Relentless Enemies?

01:45:57.000 You ever seen that documentary?

01:45:59.000 Netflix?

01:46:00.000 No, no, no.

01:46:01.000 It might be on Netflix.

01:46:03.000 Dude, I've got so much homework to do.

01:46:04.000 Yeah, Relentless Enemies is a documentary about a very rare pack of lions that branched...

01:46:12.000 The river changed its course and left them stranded on an island with water buffalo.

01:46:19.000 Okay.

01:46:20.000 So they...

01:46:22.000 Developed like a much larger frame and they're like far larger than regular lions.

01:46:29.000 Like the female lions in this pack are as big as male lions anywhere else.

01:46:34.000 They're enormous.

01:46:34.000 They don't even look real.

01:46:36.000 Is this relentless?

01:46:36.000 Yeah, it's from 2006. Oh, it's not very old.

01:46:38.000 There's also a book.

01:46:39.000 Oh, okay.

01:46:40.000 But what's really cool is that they've evolved to take down these enormous...

01:46:47.000 Buffalo.

01:46:48.000 Sure.

01:46:48.000 So the cats, when you look at them, they look like a lot, that looks normal there.

01:46:53.000 That's what I'm saying.

01:46:54.000 But it's all relative, right?

01:46:55.000 That looks like a normal one, but some of them look so muscular.

01:46:58.000 Yeah.

01:46:59.000 They almost look fake.

01:47:00.000 Oof.

01:47:00.000 Oh, he's getting his...

01:47:01.000 Oh, wow.

01:47:02.000 He's got the calf.

01:47:03.000 She's getting the calf.

01:47:04.000 Yeah, Cape Buffalo are terrifying, too, by the way. 1.00

01:47:06.000 Fuck yeah. 1.00

01:47:07.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:47:07.000 She's like, oh, let that go. 1.00

01:47:09.000 Fuck it. 1.00

01:47:10.000 But there's, you know, very few things that they can eat on this one island, so they've developed this ability to just have larger frames, and they're much more muscular. 1.00

01:47:20.000 Yeah.

01:47:20.000 And apparently there's, what's really interesting is there's this pack that's really big, but then there's another pack that lives on the island that's normal sized.

01:47:29.000 Huh.

01:47:29.000 Yeah.

01:47:30.000 So they must be eating the smaller prey species.

01:47:32.000 I don't know, man. 1.00

01:47:33.000 I'm too stupid. 1.00

01:47:35.000 It's the same thing. 1.00

01:47:36.000 Look at the size of that fucker. 1.00

01:47:37.000 Look at that female. 1.00

01:47:38.000 Look at the musculature in the hindquarters.

01:47:39.000 Yeah, I mean, she's built like a male. 1.00

01:47:41.000 She's built like a large male lion.

01:47:43.000 On steroids.

01:47:44.000 Yeah, that's a big female. 1.00

01:47:45.000 Yeah.

01:47:46.000 The same thing that happened in Newfoundland, Canada, with the wolves.

01:47:49.000 You love wolves?

01:47:50.000 So there was this island, Newfoundland, and these wolves, gray wolves, were isolated there for a long, long time, and all they were eating were moose and caribou.

01:47:59.000 So they just got huge.

01:48:00.000 And they were bright white because it was a snow-covered island like 80% of the year.

01:48:04.000 And there were just these massive white wolves, all jacked, all shredded, chasing around moose and caribou.

01:48:10.000 Wow.

01:48:11.000 It's just the way nature allows animals to adapt to their environment is just unbelievably interesting.

01:48:19.000 It's what I live for, honestly.

01:48:21.000 It's so fascinating.

01:48:22.000 The ecological niches that each animal fulfills and the roles that they play within each other, it's all perfectly balanced.

01:48:31.000 And to see it and understand it, it's fantastic to see the individual, but to understand the big picture of the environment and the roles that are filled, as you say, it's mind-blowing.

01:48:40.000 Yeah, there's a documentary on the Congo from the BBC from, I want to say, like the early 2000s, maybe even late 90s.

01:48:48.000 And it goes into that, into detail about how all these animals have adapted.

01:48:52.000 And like dikers, there's dikers in the Congo that swim underwater for as much as 100 yards. 1.00

01:48:57.000 No way.

01:48:57.000 And they eat fish.

01:48:58.000 Some of them eat fish.

01:48:59.000 A fish-eating antelope that swims.

01:49:02.000 A fish-eating antelope that swims.

01:49:03.000 Nuts.

01:49:04.000 Yeah, and then all these animals that got trapped as this area, these grasslands, turned into rainforest. 0.99

01:49:10.000 These animals that were essentially grasslands animals, like antelopes and stuff, are stuck in the fucking jungle, the swampy jungle.

01:49:18.000 And you see these big packs of antelope running through this swampy jungle area where they just don't look like they belong there. 0.98

01:49:27.000 They look like they belong in fields.

01:49:28.000 And that's how speciation occurs, right?

01:49:30.000 So that Dica over a millennia develops fangs to catch those fish and a crocodile-like face and webbed hooves or, you know, I don't know. 1.00

01:49:37.000 I'm making shit up. 0.95

01:49:38.000 But the point is that's how you get these crazy new species. 0.99

01:49:41.000 And here in the middle of Congo in this tiny little pocket is this animal that nobody's ever seen before kind of thing.

01:49:46.000 And that, like, to me, that's what it's all about.

01:49:48.000 Go to the Congo, find that thing.

01:49:50.000 You know, is it there?

01:49:51.000 What is it?

01:49:51.000 That's why someone like me is so incredibly thankful that there's someone like you out there.

01:49:56.000 Because I don't want to go there.

01:49:58.000 I don't want to go there, but I want to look at your Instagram page.

01:50:01.000 I guarantee you'd love it.

01:50:01.000 I'm sure I would love it.

01:50:03.000 I'm 100% sure.

01:50:03.000 I'm 100% sure you're right.

01:50:05.000 I'm also 100% sure I'm not going.

01:50:08.000 But I'm happy that you go.

01:50:10.000 Thank you.

01:50:11.000 I'm so fascinated by animals and just animal life and adaptation.

01:50:15.000 I think it's one of the more interesting things about this planet.

01:50:17.000 Definitely.

01:50:18.000 Is these weird organisms that are trying to figure out their way to survival.

01:50:24.000 And we're just one of them.

01:50:25.000 And they're adapting and moving and changing.

01:50:26.000 And we're always finding new ones. 1.00

01:50:28.000 I found a fucking snake. 1.00

01:50:30.000 I posted it up on Twitter recently. 1.00

01:50:33.000 Like a week or so ago.

01:50:35.000 A snake that has a tail that looks like a fake spider. 1.00

01:50:39.000 Have you seen that fucking thing? 1.00

01:50:40.000 I'm not sure. 1.00

01:50:41.000 Do you know the species of it?

01:50:42.000 I know the species if you said the name.

01:50:43.000 I think it's from Iran.

01:50:47.000 And it's a rattlesnake.

01:50:48.000 Scaled viper?

01:50:49.000 Yeah.

01:50:49.000 Scaled pit viper?

01:50:50.000 Is that it?

01:50:51.000 Yeah, it's a viper, not a rattlesnake.

01:50:52.000 Horned viper.

01:50:53.000 Horned viper.

01:50:54.000 Have you seen that thing?

01:50:55.000 I know what they are, yeah.

01:50:56.000 Incredible.

01:50:57.000 It looks like a spider.

01:50:58.000 Right.

01:50:59.000 And it tricks birds into coming down and trying to snatch the spider.

01:51:02.000 Here we go.

01:51:02.000 The Iranian spider viper.

01:51:06.000 Spider-tailed viper.

01:51:07.000 Like, look at its tail.

01:51:08.000 That is crazy.

01:51:10.000 I mean, I'm looking at that in a video, and it looks like a bug.

01:51:13.000 Right.

01:51:14.000 And so this thing moves its tail, and it perfectly blends into the rock around it.

01:51:18.000 Like, look at that.

01:51:20.000 Unbelievable.

01:51:20.000 I mean, that amount of camouflage and adaptation, like, how does that happen?

01:51:24.000 It's incredible.

01:51:25.000 Like, look at this.

01:51:26.000 Boom! 1.00

01:51:27.000 Oh, gotcha, bitch! 1.00

01:51:28.000 Dunzo. 1.00

01:51:29.000 And the bird's like, what was that that almost got me?

01:51:32.000 Yeah, it's insane.

01:51:34.000 What an adaptation.

01:51:36.000 I mean, like, you see the anglerfish.

01:51:38.000 That's a very bizarre adaptation as well.

01:51:40.000 Same thing, just out of the head.

01:51:41.000 Yeah.

01:51:42.000 It's unbelievable.

01:51:44.000 I mean, the fact that creatures can create that without, you know, it's not like they're doing it knowingly.

01:51:49.000 Right.

01:51:50.000 Some handful of snakes at one time started waggling their tail and realizing that birds came in.

01:51:55.000 Yes.

01:51:55.000 And then over generational time, this tale evolved little spikes and little things, and all of a sudden you have this whole population of animals that look like that.

01:52:03.000 Like, that's insane.

01:52:04.000 I mean, what is it? 0.99

01:52:05.000 How the fuck does that happen? 0.95

01:52:07.000 I mean, how does something grow something like that? 0.99

01:52:09.000 A lure.

01:52:09.000 Right.

01:52:10.000 It grows a lure off of its head.

01:52:12.000 And it's like, hey, look, it's something for you.

01:52:14.000 You know you want to eat it.

01:52:16.000 Look at that one.

01:52:17.000 Oh my god, that's got a worm. 0.98

01:52:19.000 I mean, that thing literally has like a fishing worm, like a bass worm. 0.81

01:52:23.000 I mean, it's so amazing all of this adaptation and all of these... 0.99

01:52:28.000 Look at that fucking monster with a light growing... 0.99

01:52:32.000 I mean, it's got a flashlight on its head. 1.00

01:52:33.000 But it's just so amazing how much adaptation there is and how all these things...

01:52:38.000 Sort of work together, right?

01:52:40.000 Like, there's the bacteria, and the fungi, and the plant life, and the animal life, and the predators, and the prey, and it all sort of works together.

01:52:51.000 And when something doesn't work, it just sort of drops off, and then the system sort of resets itself in a new order.

01:52:57.000 I mean, to me, there is no—you're saying it's one of the most fascinating things—to me, there is nothing more fascinating.

01:53:02.000 Like, I'm, you know, I'm obsessed with it.

01:53:05.000 I live for it because I find it so interesting. 0.91

01:53:08.000 Now, when you study these things, do you ever try to think how the fuck that happened? 0.99

01:53:14.000 If you see that spider-tailed snake, is there anyone that has an idea that this was just a lucky break that this one snake had a freaky tail and then he got to fuck a lot because he ate a lot of birds? 0.99

01:53:28.000 That's the idea, man. 0.98

01:53:29.000 I swear to God, you just summed it up.

01:53:31.000 That is the idea.

01:53:33.000 One or two or three snakes kind of got this adaptation.

01:53:36.000 Just a random...

01:53:38.000 Random genetic sequencing that led to maybe a white blotch on the tail.

01:53:42.000 Something unique.

01:53:42.000 Doesn't it not seem like that though?

01:53:44.000 It seems like they fashioned it.

01:53:46.000 But over time.

01:53:47.000 They did, but over millennia, right?

01:53:49.000 Over thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of years, what happened was, say there's two snakes with a white spot on their tail.

01:53:56.000 We're good to go.

01:54:14.000 To reproduce with, to continue the gene pool, and so that's what happens.

01:54:18.000 It keeps evolving.

01:54:19.000 It's like a peacock, right?

01:54:20.000 You've got this crazy big tail that it's attracting mates with.

01:54:24.000 It's not useful to the bird.

01:54:25.000 You know, it's entirely made for showmanship, for peacocking, if you will.

01:54:30.000 And over generational time, it gets bigger and crazier and more elaborate and more colorful, and the females literally flock to them, and that's the animal that continues on.

01:54:39.000 I really wish there was a way, and maybe there will be sometime in the future, where they're going to be able to show you with some sort of supercomputer sequencing, where they'll be able to look at the DNA of this thing and say, oh, this is the exact progression.

01:54:52.000 This is what it started off with, and this is what it became.

01:54:55.000 This is how some sketchy-looking forest chicken became a peacock.

01:54:59.000 Totally.

01:54:59.000 This is how some freaky snake became perfectly adapted to its environment.

01:55:05.000 I mean, that thing looks exactly like the rock that it sits on.

01:55:08.000 It's perfect.

01:55:08.000 Perfect.

01:55:08.000 Yeah.

01:55:09.000 It is incredible.

01:55:11.000 I'm like you.

01:55:12.000 I'd love to know who Patient Zero is.

01:55:14.000 Who's the first one? 0.99

01:55:16.000 Yeah, because stupid people like me look at that and they go, okay, well, that's got to be a plan. 1.00

01:55:19.000 There's got to be something. 1.00

01:55:20.000 There's a higher power.

01:55:21.000 There's something that is looking after these things and making them evolve this way.

01:55:26.000 Right, right.

01:55:27.000 I mean, it's super interesting.

01:55:29.000 What about cephalopods, like octopus and cuttlefish and the way they adapt to their environment?

01:55:36.000 That's even freakier, right?

01:55:37.000 Because they do it instantaneously.

01:55:39.000 And have you ever heard the theory that octopus are from out of space?

01:55:42.000 Yeah, we talked about that with Brian Cox the other day. 0.99

01:55:45.000 Yeah, I'm not super well read on it, but it looks like a damn alien. 0.98

01:55:49.000 Yeah, he was very incredulous. 0.98

01:55:51.000 But, you know, he's obviously smarter than both of us.

01:55:54.000 Right.

01:55:55.000 So he gets to be.

01:55:57.000 Yeah, it's like me looking at that going, man, it doesn't make sense.

01:56:00.000 Of course it doesn't make sense. 1.00

01:56:01.000 I'm stupid. 0.96

01:56:01.000 But he's, you know, when we're looking at this, but this is apparently like peer-reviewed, published paper about the possibility of octopus being reintroduced. 0.96

01:56:10.000 And I think it has something to do with the way RNA and DNA is on them, right?

01:56:15.000 Do you know?

01:56:16.000 I don't understand it well, but yes.

01:56:17.000 It's like the thought that the population came from out of space because of the DNA sequencing suggests something that makes it extraterrestrial adaptability.

01:56:27.000 Yeah, he was super skeptical because he was saying that they're essentially so close to everything else here that it doesn't make sense.

01:56:32.000 But the other theory was it might be just this is the path of life.

01:56:36.000 And the reason why it's so close to us is that this is the way all life, even if it's extraterrestrial, gets established.

01:56:42.000 This is just...

01:56:44.000 I don't believe octopus are from out of space, but I love the theory.

01:56:46.000 I love the idea of it.

01:56:47.000 It looks like it's from out of space.

01:56:49.000 It's just wacky.

01:56:50.000 Well, it's such a cool thought.

01:56:53.000 These things came from out of space.

01:56:55.000 That's also a thought about psilocybin mushrooms from the weirder people that they came on asteroids and their spores. 0.99

01:57:02.000 I've heard that.

01:57:03.000 I don't know if you know this, but they've proven that certain, I don't know about psilocybins, but certain mushroom spores are impenetrable to the vacuum of space.

01:57:10.000 Yeah, they can survive.

01:57:11.000 Yeah, that's bananas.

01:57:13.000 I pick a lot of mushrooms, not psilocybin, but a lot of porcini, a lot of chanterelles.

01:57:18.000 I do a lot of foraging.

01:57:20.000 It's really fun.

01:57:21.000 Are you aware of Paul Stamets?

01:57:23.000 No, I don't know that name.

01:57:23.000 Oh, he's amazing.

01:57:24.000 One of my favorite podcasts ever. 0.99

01:57:27.000 He's a mycologist and a fucking trip in every sense of the word. 0.99

01:57:32.000 A super genius mycologist who had the craziest story about being in high school. 0.99

01:57:37.000 And what did he say he took 20 grams of mushrooms and climbed a tree during a lightning storm?

01:57:42.000 Wow. 0.98

01:57:42.000 Like something fucking, something where you hear him tell the story and your hands start sweating. 0.98

01:57:47.000 No way. 1.00

01:57:48.000 20 grams or 10 grams or 20 grams, like something fucking bananas. 0.99

01:57:51.000 Something that would kill a moose, yeah. 0.99

01:57:53.000 Well, it wouldn't kill it, but it would definitely make it think it's not a moose anymore.

01:57:56.000 Right.

01:57:57.000 And it essentially changed his life, stopped him from stuttering.

01:58:00.000 He used to stutter, and he did this, and he stopped stuttering.

01:58:02.000 No way.

01:58:03.000 Yeah.

01:58:03.000 I've heard about guys that microdose with mushrooms, with psilocybin, and it heightens their focus and cures their autism.

01:58:12.000 I'm not very well read on that, but there's a whole idea that microdosing with these chemicals that are naturally produced can actually have very positive effects.

01:58:22.000 Yeah, there's quite a few people who do that.

01:58:23.000 It's really common.

01:58:24.000 Yeah.

01:58:25.000 Yeah, I've talked to a lot of people that do that.

01:58:27.000 Oh, really?

01:58:27.000 And they also microdose with LSD. There's a lot of that going on.

01:58:30.000 Yeah, a lot of Silicon Valley people are microdosing with LSD. It's funny, because the one person that I know that's done the microdosing with mushrooms from Silicon Valley.

01:58:37.000 Yeah, people grind them up into pill form.

01:58:40.000 And in fact, a lot of fighters are doing that now.

01:58:42.000 Really?

01:58:43.000 Which is really strange.

01:58:43.000 Yeah.

01:58:44.000 So why would that help you as a fighter?

01:58:47.000 It's not a mental focus thing.

01:58:48.000 It's a physical thing at that point, right?

01:58:50.000 Well, it gets you into the flow state.

01:58:53.000 Interesting.

01:58:54.000 And so, like, with fighters, the real thing is, it's not just your skill, but it's your ability to execute that skill under pressure.

01:59:02.000 Huh.

01:59:02.000 Right?

01:59:02.000 So there's an overwhelming amount of anxiety, there's extreme consequences to...

01:59:06.000 Getting hit or going wrong, getting knocked out.

01:59:09.000 Losing a fight is absolutely devastating.

01:59:12.000 It's devastating emotionally.

01:59:13.000 It's devastating physically.

01:59:15.000 It's devastating psychologically.

01:59:16.000 It changes your perception of who you are and how you fit into the world.

01:59:21.000 And that sometimes, I shouldn't say sometimes, oftentimes impedes performance.

01:59:27.000 Sure.

01:59:28.000 Kind of come back from it kind of thing.

01:59:29.000 Well, it's not just that.

01:59:30.000 The consequences of it possibly go wrong make you hesitate.

01:59:34.000 The stress of it all is very constricting.

01:59:38.000 It's very difficult to operate under that stress.

01:59:40.000 Sure.

01:59:40.000 The mushrooms, for some people, alleviate that stress and put you in this elevated state where they say, and I've never fought on mushrooms, but they say that when you're on mushrooms, you actually can see what a guy's going to do before he does it.

01:59:56.000 Interesting.

01:59:57.000 Yeah, you have a sense of what they're going to do that's a much more heightened sense than you would if you were just in a normal sober state.

02:00:03.000 So do you think you're picking that up through, like, biological cues?

02:00:06.000 Like, you could see the muscles twitching in the arm before the punch comes?

02:00:09.000 Or, like, what?

02:00:10.000 How do you think that?

02:00:11.000 That's a good question.

02:00:11.000 I haven't done it.

02:00:12.000 I don't know.

02:00:13.000 You know, I've never sparred on mushrooms.

02:00:15.000 It doesn't sound like a good idea.

02:00:16.000 But it's really common.

02:00:18.000 They say it is a good idea.

02:00:19.000 The guys who do it love it.

02:00:21.000 Yeah.

02:00:21.000 Interesting.

02:00:22.000 And guys have, like, you know, had some really extreme positive results.

02:00:26.000 Huh.

02:00:26.000 Yeah.

02:00:27.000 That's fascinating.

02:00:28.000 I never thought as an athletic performer, an athletic enhancement, that would be a thing.

02:00:32.000 Yeah.

02:00:33.000 It's not just the...

02:00:35.000 I mean, I don't think it makes you move faster or hit stronger or hit harder, but I think what it does is it puts you in the zone.

02:00:42.000 Interesting.

02:00:43.000 There's states that you get into where you just...

02:00:46.000 You can't do no wrong, and they're usually very elusive.

02:00:50.000 They come and they go.

02:00:51.000 You know, you get them like...

02:00:52.000 Do you ever play pool?

02:00:53.000 A little bit.

02:00:54.000 I mean...

02:00:55.000 But you know how sometimes you play pool for a few hours and then you just all of a sudden feel like you can't miss?

02:00:59.000 Yeah.

02:00:59.000 You just have this feeling of where everything's going to go.

02:01:01.000 That's...

02:01:01.000 Even if you're not very good, sometimes those will come for like two, three shots and it's the zone.

02:01:06.000 Sure.

02:01:06.000 You know?

02:01:07.000 And that elusive state of like...

02:01:11.000 And then sometimes you're like, wow, I can't believe I'm in the zone.

02:01:13.000 Then it goes away.

02:01:14.000 Right.

02:01:14.000 You know?

02:01:16.000 Maintaining that flow state.

02:01:18.000 But do you think it takes emotions out of it?

02:01:20.000 Like, is that why you're in that state?

02:01:22.000 Like, if you're not emotionally attached to that shot or that punch, maybe you can execute it better.

02:01:27.000 It's possible.

02:01:27.000 I mean, there's a lot of speculation of what's going on and what's causing this elevated state of consciousness.

02:01:33.000 It's interesting.

02:01:33.000 Yeah, I don't know.

02:01:34.000 Maybe I'll just start microdosing on mushrooms and going out to chase snakes around.

02:01:38.000 Maybe.

02:01:38.000 Maybe you'd be more in tune with the environment.

02:01:41.000 Or maybe I'd get bitten and die. 0.76

02:01:42.000 That's true, too. 0.98

02:01:44.000 You'd be like, hello, little snake.

02:01:45.000 I'm your friend. 1.00

02:01:46.000 He's like, fuck you, you are. 1.00

02:01:47.000 Okay, so I'm not a big drug guy by any means, but I think you'll love this story. 1.00

02:01:52.000 Yeah.

02:02:10.000 And I'm like, okay, what does that mean?

02:02:12.000 He's like, come to the Moloko, which is the, like, spiritual house. 0.73

02:02:14.000 So, we go to the spiritual house, we sit around, we talk, and we talk, and we talk, and it's like hours of, not like asking him to go, but just like, almost like idle conversation where he's almost like interviewing us, like, well, what are you doing?

02:02:26.000 Where are you going?

02:02:27.000 Where are you from?

02:02:28.000 And he doesn't really understand any of this, right?

02:02:29.000 He's like, he's living in this community.

02:02:31.000 Long story short, he goes, okay, you can go, but you have to take this blessing.

02:02:36.000 And we're like, sure, whatever you need for us to go.

02:02:39.000 So he pulls out this snail shell.

02:02:40.000 I can show you a picture of it.

02:02:42.000 It's a snail shell with a monkey bone in the top and a tube worm to close it.

02:02:46.000 And in this snail shell is this green powder.

02:02:49.000 And he's like, this is what you need for the blessing.

02:02:51.000 So he goes around the circle and through a monkey bone pipe, he blows this green stuff in your nose. 0.65

02:02:56.000 Is that called a kuhay? 0.97

02:02:58.000 Not by that word that we heard.

02:03:00.000 I couldn't tell.

02:03:01.000 The name of the pipe?

02:03:02.000 No, no, the stuff they blow up your nose.

02:03:03.000 Is it DMT? It's coca leaf.

02:03:06.000 Oh, okay.

02:03:07.000 Mixed with a bunch of a root and tobacco, I believe, like all together.

02:03:11.000 And anyway, so he goes, there's five of us in my crew.

02:03:14.000 He goes around the circle and he hits three guys and they all go, whoa, my brain feels like I've got chlorine on the head, you know, whatever.

02:03:19.000 He blows it into your nose.

02:03:20.000 Yeah, so he gets really close.

02:03:21.000 He's got this long tubular monkey bone pipe and he goes, and it just blows it up into your nose.

02:03:26.000 And Hits three of my guys, and I'm watching a little bit nervous because, like, I'm very, like, standoffish on drugs.

02:03:32.000 Like, I know things affect me very strangely.

02:03:35.000 Anyway, hits three of my guys.

02:03:36.000 They go, oof, you know, eyes watering, and they're like, wow, it's actually a great feeling.

02:03:40.000 Gets to my turn.

02:03:42.000 In the nose.

02:03:44.000 All of a sudden, I feel like I've got acid on my brain, like chlorine in my head.

02:03:48.000 I break into this sweat.

02:03:50.000 My eyes explode, and I'm like wobbling like this.

02:03:54.000 And 30 seconds later, I'm just curled over in the fetal position, just projectile vomiting.

02:04:00.000 Cannot hold it together.

02:04:01.000 And Lorenzo, the tribal shaman, goes, good.

02:04:06.000 Good.

02:04:07.000 And we're like, why is this good?

02:04:08.000 And he's like, he had a bad spirit in him.

02:04:10.000 If he had gone up the river, he would have been killed.

02:04:12.000 He's just got the bad spirit out.

02:04:14.000 This is why I had to bless you.

02:04:15.000 Now you can go.

02:04:17.000 And I was the only one that hit like that out of our five-person crew.

02:04:19.000 Everybody else was like, ooh, my brain's sore, whatever.

02:04:21.000 I was literally fetal position, feverish, puking, crazy.

02:04:26.000 And I've never done any drugs, like hard drugs.

02:04:28.000 Like, it's just not my thing.

02:04:30.000 And this thing just hit me like a ton of bricks.

02:04:33.000 After he said that, did you think...

02:04:35.000 I mean, you're a scientist.

02:04:37.000 You're a very smart guy.

02:04:38.000 But was there a part of you that was like, man, is this guy right?

02:04:42.000 Yes.

02:04:42.000 That's what's so crazy.

02:04:43.000 Because I'm a fucking scientist. 1.00

02:04:45.000 I don't want to believe that. 1.00

02:04:47.000 I don't want to believe fucking jungle medicine made me not die. 1.00

02:04:50.000 But this guy, here I am. 0.99

02:04:51.000 Nobody else fucking affected. 0.98

02:04:52.000 I'm sitting in the fetal position puking my brains out and the guy's going, good, now you'll be safe. 0.99

02:04:56.000 Yeah. 0.99

02:04:57.000 And the whole fucking trip, I've got that in the back of my mind going, maybe the whole reason nothing's going wrong is because I just had green fucking powder blowed up my nose. 0.99

02:05:04.000 Whoa. 0.99

02:05:05.000 Yeah.

02:05:05.000 Super weird.

02:05:07.000 And I, nothing has ever affected me like that.

02:05:09.000 I mean, curled up, puking, shivering.

02:05:12.000 Shivering.

02:05:12.000 Were you trying to make logical sense out of this?

02:05:15.000 Was there ever a thought where you're like, maybe in this extreme environment that's so utterly different than any other place in the world that these rules are different?

02:05:27.000 Absolutely. 0.97

02:05:28.000 I mean, I'm sitting there going, going into it, I'm like, cool, yeah, I'll do the stupid powder if it means I can go on my expedition, you know what I mean? 0.99

02:05:35.000 Like, I'm not, like, embracing it. 0.99

02:05:37.000 I'm just, like, going through the motion to get my job done as a scientist. 0.98

02:05:41.000 And then I had this experience, and I'm not saying I was enlightened or awoken or anything like that, but all of a sudden I attributed my success and my safety in small part to this green fucking powder blown up my nose by a shaman through a monkey bone. 0.92

02:05:57.000 And the thing about it is, even if that's not true, if you think it's true, and then you wind up being okay, and you have confidence that you're going to be okay, and maybe you have less anxiety and make better critical decisions because you think that everything's going to work out...

02:06:13.000 Exactly.

02:06:14.000 Totally.

02:06:14.000 Because I was super focused on my mission.

02:06:17.000 Right.

02:06:17.000 We were very, very successful in what we set out to do, and I... I feel like because I had that crazy experience and here's this old little jungle Indian going, now you're going to be okay, I didn't have any anxiety going into the situation.

02:06:33.000 And before that, I had no thought of it ever playing a part.

02:06:37.000 Well, like the mindfuck of the placebo effect, right?

02:06:40.000 Totally. 0.73

02:06:40.000 We know that that's real. 0.73

02:06:41.000 So there's some sort of a physical effect by believing that something works.

02:06:46.000 Right.

02:06:46.000 But is there a change in the way you interface with reality if you believe that you've experienced some sort of spiritual enrichening and that some bad spirit has been released from your body?

02:07:02.000 Is that possible?

02:07:03.000 I think so.

02:07:04.000 I think it changes your own reality because of your perception of the outside world.

02:07:08.000 That is a freaky thing for a scientist to say.

02:07:10.000 Right?

02:07:11.000 Right?

02:07:11.000 And this is, like, I am a hardcore academic.

02:07:14.000 I've never considered spirituality, religion, anything.

02:07:18.000 And I had this, just fucking ten days ago, this crazy experience that has, like, changed my mindset on... 0.98

02:07:25.000 On crazy jungle medicine and drugs and catching animals, everything, because this one guy blew crap up my nose and I puked everywhere. 0.99

02:07:32.000 Wow.

02:07:32.000 Now, has this made you want to experiment with other plant medicines?

02:07:36.000 No.

02:07:37.000 The only reason I did that is because it was a necessity to do what I was doing.

02:07:42.000 It was coming from an expert, if you will, but a person who saw it as a necessity to do what I was doing, and I was under his guidance.

02:07:49.000 To go out and pick a mushroom and try it and have an experience, I don't see the benefit in that.

02:07:56.000 But when someone who lives in that community, embraces that wild jungle, says, this is my home and this is how you do it, I will absolutely do it.

02:08:03.000 So you do it, like, out of respect.

02:08:05.000 Absolutely.

02:08:06.000 Yeah.

02:08:07.000 What if they wanted you out of respect?

02:08:08.000 There's a bunch of those different snuffs that they pump up their nose, and one of them is, I think it's some form of 5-methoxy-dimethyltryptamine, which is that stuff that comes off of toads.

02:08:19.000 Oh, gotcha.

02:08:19.000 Yeah.

02:08:21.000 And it has a bunch of other stuff in it, too, and they do the same thing.

02:08:23.000 I think that one's called a kuhay. 0.93

02:08:25.000 Okay.

02:08:26.000 I've read it, so I don't know if I'm saying that right.

02:08:28.000 That must be a hallucinogenic, right?

02:08:29.000 Yeah, they blow it up your nose and you see Jesus.

02:08:31.000 Yeah.

02:08:32.000 I mean, look, if it was the same situation where he's telling me you've got to do this to go to work, do your job, whatever, absolutely I'd do it out of respect.

02:08:40.000 Wouldn't you?

02:08:41.000 Yes.

02:08:42.000 Yeah.

02:08:42.000 Yeah, I think you kind of have to.

02:08:44.000 Totally. 1.00

02:08:44.000 I mean, you'd be an asshole. 1.00

02:08:45.000 I mean, I think, you know, when you're in the world of these people and they've survived in this world for eons and this is their environment and, like, you kind of have to let go and give in to this. 1.00

02:08:58.000 Absolutely.

02:08:59.000 Yeah.

02:08:59.000 You have to embrace it.

02:09:00.000 Mmm.

02:09:01.000 Man. 1.00

02:09:02.000 Dude, you live a fucking cool life. 0.98

02:09:04.000 It's weird. 0.99

02:09:04.000 It's different. 0.99

02:09:05.000 It's really cool.

02:09:05.000 Thanks, man.

02:09:06.000 It's really cool.

02:09:06.000 Well, thank you for coming here, man, and sharing this stuff with us, and thanks for doing what you do.

02:09:11.000 It's fucking awesome.

02:09:12.000 I love it. 0.95

02:09:12.000 It's been an absolute pleasure. 0.95

02:09:13.000 I've really enjoyed it.

02:09:14.000 My pleasure, dude.

02:09:15.000 Thank you for coming, man. 0.99

02:09:16.000 Got my hands sweaty thinking about all this shit. 0.96

02:09:19.000 Tell people how to get a hold of you on Instagram, Twitter, and all that jazz. 0.99

02:09:23.000 Yep.

02:09:24.000 My name, Forrest Galante, F-O-R-R-E-S-T, Galante.

02:09:28.000 I'm on all the social media platforms.

02:09:30.000 Is it Forrest.Galante?

02:09:32.000 On Instagram, yes.

02:09:32.000 On Instagram.

02:09:33.000 On the others, there's no dot.

02:09:35.000 Look me up.

02:09:35.000 Love chatting to people.

02:09:37.000 And thank you again.

02:09:38.000 My pleasure, man.

02:09:38.000 It was really fun.

02:09:39.000 Thank you.

02:09:39.000 Awesome.

02:09:39.000 Thanks, Joe.

02:09:50.000 Thank you.

The Joe Rogan Experience - February 06, 2019

Joe Rogan Experience #1240 - Forrest Galante

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript