#613 - Forrest Galante

Forrest Galante is a wildlife biologist, adventurer, and TV host known for his shows “Animals on Drugs” and “Extinct or Alive”, along with his multiple Shark Week specials. Forrest joins Theo to talk about growing up a bush-kid under political turmoil in Zimbabwe, his multiple near-death experiences in the wild, and how to make an animal “de-extinct”. Forrest Galante: https://www.instagram.com/forrest.galante/ ------------------------------------------------ Tour Dates! https://theovon.com/tour New Merch: https://www.theovonstore.com ------------------------------------------------- Sponsored By: Celsius: Go to the Celsius Amazon store to check out all of their flavors. #CELSIUSBrandPartner #CELSIUSLiveFit https://amzn.to/3HbAtPJ Armra: Go to https://tryarmra.com/THEO or enter THEO to get 15% off your first order. Netsuite: Download the free CFO’s Guide to AI and Machine Learning at https://NetSuite.com/THEO. Valor Recovery: To learn more about Valor Recovery please visit them at https://valorrecoverycoaching.com/ or email them at [email protected] Perplexity AI: Ask anything at https://pplx.ai/theo and download their new web browser Comet at https://comet.perplexity.ai/ ------------------------------------------------- Music: “Shine” by Bishop Gunn Bishop Gunn - Shine ------------------------------------------------ Submit your funny videos, TikToks, questions and topics you'd like to hear on the podcast to: [email protected] Hit the Hotline: 985-664-9503 Video Hotline for Theo Upload here: https://www.theovon.com/fan-upload Send mail to: This Past Weekend 1906 Glen Echo Rd PO Box #159359 Nashville, TN 37215 ------------------------------------------------ Find Theo: Website: https://theovon.com Instagram: https://instagram.com/theovon Facebook: https://facebook.com/theovon Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/thispastweekend Twitter: https://twitter.com/theovon YouTube: https://youtube.com/theovon Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheoVonClips Shorts Channel: https://bit.ly/3ClUj8z ------------------------------------------------ Producer: Zach https://www.instagram.com/zachdpowers Producer: Trevyn https://www.instagram.com/trevyn.s/ Producer: Nick https://www.instagram.com/realnickdavis/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Theo Von?

  You ever realize that you spent your entire morning thinking about lunch? It's 9 a.m. and somehow I'm already in negotiations with myself about how I'm gonna spend $20 on a sandwich at noon. And then I eat it, or you eat it, or somebody eats it, and then an hour later, you're just standing in the kitchen worrying about what you'll do for dinner. And that's one reason why I've been into Huell. The Black Edition Powder is a complete meal you have instead of food, not a shake on top of food. Their powder starts at less than $3 per meal, has 40 grams of protein, and mixes with water or milk in about 30 seconds. I like Huell's shakes because they're clean and it's quick.

• 0:41Theo Von?

  I just want to make sure I have everything I need to keep going the way I want to keep going in a healthy manner. So with Huell, basically, lunch went from a daily logistical problem to a thing I can solve in about 30 seconds. Make healthy eating simple. New customers get an exclusive offer of 15% off online with my code WEEKEND at huell.com/weekend. That's H-U-E-L dot com slash weekend. Thank you to Huell for partnering and supporting our show. Today's guest is an outdoorsman. He's a master of animalia. Animals, means animals. He's known for his focus on animals close to extinction. He's a host on Discovery.

• 1:26Theo Von?

  He's been to some of the most insane parts of the world. I'm grateful to get to know him and learn about his life. Today's guest is Mr. Forrest Galante.

• 1:51Theo Von?

  Yeah, that's the best, dude. Forrest Galante, thanks for coming in, man.

• 1:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, dude, thanks for having me. Glad we made it work.

• 1:58Theo Von?

  Yeah, I really appreciate it. I'm excited, dude, I'm excited to talk about animalia and a little bit about your life so our listeners know who you are.

• 2:06Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:07Theo Von?

  Yeah, I was complimenting those shoes, dude, those things are nice.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  Dude, the GoRocks. Is this a company that's all about putting heavy weight on your back and training? And, you know, I spend a lot of time in a backpack, so I'm a big fan.

• 2:17Theo Von?

  Yeah, they look pretty springy, dude. I went with the boots.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  How do you like the cowboy boots? Is that your go-to? Are you a cowboy boots guy?

• 2:22Theo Von?

  About two days a week now.

• 2:24Speaker 01

  Two days a week?

• 2:24Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 2:25Speaker 01

  Trying to quit, though?

• 2:28Theo Von?

  You have none of these six milligrams.

• 2:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, there you go. That's a heavy dose of boot right there.

• 2:34Theo Von?

  Dude, what if they do come out with boots? Like, what if Zen or Alp comes out with a boot that has like nicotine in the rim of it? So like soaks into your body.

• 2:42Speaker 01

  Leaching into the feet. Yeah, getting that little head buzz. I'd buy them.

• 2:47Theo Von?

  Dude, I would put them on if I had to do one of those field sobriety tests.

• 2:51Speaker 01

  There you go. There you go. Yeah, you're like, I'm good from the knees up.

• 2:56Theo Von?

  Um, good to see you today. You were, you grew up in, I mean, you were kind of born into animalia there in like, on the edge of, of Africa.

• 3:05Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 3:05Theo Von?

  In Zimbabwe, that's where you grew up?

• 3:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly right. So, son of safari business owners. If I wasn't in school, we either lived on a farm or my family ran safaris. So I was out in the bush. So I've just been around wildlife my entire childhood.

• 3:18Theo Von?

  Oh, wow, that's you right there.

• 3:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, look at them teeth right there.

• 3:22Theo Von?

  I wouldn't want to get bit by that.

• 3:23Speaker 01

  No, yeah, I was part beaver growing up, yeah.

• 3:26Theo Von?

  Take, take me in a some of that, like what it's like growing up on, in like a safari land. Does it give you a different appreciation of animals? Does it make you more fearful of animals?

• 3:36Speaker 01

  It's a good question. I mean, I think anything you grow up with, you become used to, right? It's like this is the norm when you're a kid. You just expect that that's the norm. So I grew up, you know, I'd, I'd come home from school, kick my shoes off, run out on the farm, try and catch snakes or be looking for jackals or all these, you know, which is like a coyote, all these kinds of things that sort of is parallel to if you grew up on a farm here, right? If you're a farm kid here, you go out and, you know, you're from Louisiana. Maybe you see a cottonmouth or coyote in the bush or whatever, right?

• 4:02Theo Von?

  Yeah, just tickle a chicken or something.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  Tickle a chicken, you know? Yeah, that meant something else when I got to high school. But, uh, you know, I grew up thinking that was the norm and, and then I'd go out into the bush on safari with my family and it would be like, don't leave the tent after dark and stay here. And, you know, there were rules, but as long as you didn't break the rules, you were pretty safe. And what I saw throughout my childhood was like a decline in animals. You know, the same camps we'd go to where there used to be huge herds of elephants. There's now two or three elephants or big wild spaces. There's now farm fields. So I didn't really realize it as a kid, but as I got older, I was like, I don't like that. Like, I don't want, I don't want all that wild stuff to go away. And so I didn't really realize it when I was young, but over time, even as a child,

• 4:45Speaker 01

  I was like, this is something that I would like to dedicate my life to is making sure that all this wild stuff, spaces, animals, all of it doesn't go away.

• 4:53Theo Von?

  So I'm guessing you're thinking then along the lines of like conservation like that. Do you come out of your youth just feeling inspired towards that?

• 4:59Speaker 01

  That's a very nice way to put it. It starts by breaking a lot of rules, bending the laws a lot and just be in a, you know, you, you know, those kids, right? You're the yoink kid on Instagram. He's catching all the snakes and stuff. You're one of those kids.

• 5:12Theo Von?

  Got it.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? And so in, in the U S, there's a lot of laws against, you know, don't harass this and don't do that. In Zimbabwe, there's fuck all for laws, right? So, um, it's just kind of do whatever. So I think that love and that appreciation came from fiddling with everything.

• 5:27Theo Von?

  Got it.

• 5:27Speaker 01

  Catching it, trapping it, working with it. But ultimately, as you grow, as you fall in love with something, you want to protect it. And that's conservation.

• 5:34Theo Von?

  Hmm. And so what, what was, what was thinning the herds there?

• 5:39Speaker 01

  People, just mostly encroachment, a little bit of poaching, you know, ivory poaching and stuff, hunting elephants, but more like habitat encroachment, you know, villages popping up, big trees getting cut down for farm field, goats and things getting moved in, you know, stuff like that, like grazing and so pushing the animals out.

• 5:56Theo Von?

  And was it affecting like, were you guys on a bigger piece of like nature reserve or?

• 6:01Speaker 01

  The safari camps were, they were all out in the bush, but it would still, you know, you still would just see a general impact, like, like a thinning of animals.

• 6:10Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 6:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:11Theo Von?

  So did your family continue the safari business in Zimbabwe? Or how do you get from there, um, sort of to here into the U S?

• 6:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we tried to, but during the early 2000s, Zimbabwe was under something called the land reform campaign, which was President Robert Mugabe at the time, who, uh, declared himself supreme leader for life. Uh, he did this thing where-

• 6:35Theo Von?

  Like a boss, huh? Like Birdman?

• 6:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, he came in hard. Yeah. And, uh, he, uh, he made it, this land reform made it so that it was very, very hard. Like my family's six generations Zimbabwe, but basically it was a, it was a race war. And if you were white, you weren't supposed, you, there was a- A land reform campaign passed that meant that if you were black and you had heritage, you could come and take that land away.

• 6:58Theo Von?

  No way.

• 6:58Speaker 01

  Because you know of colonial settlement and things like that. Obviously, I grew up long after any colonial settlement took place. But yeah, we had gunfights and we had, you know, neighbors murdered and punguis, which is indoctrination through torture into the political party, the ZANU PF political party. There was some crazy political turmoil.

• 7:16Theo Von?

  Zimbabwe's land reform refers to a controversial program that began in 1980 and escalated in 2000, redistributing farmland from white commercial farmers to black Zimbabweans. So your family was?

• 7:28Speaker 01

  We were farmers.

• 7:29Theo Von?

  So you were farmers and this happened as you guys were there?

• 7:32Speaker 01

  So when I was a kid, I mean, it says here in 1980 is when it started, which it may have, but when I was a kid, we never locked our doors. There was no, we didn't have barbed wire fences, nothing. It was a very safe, very peaceful country, but in like 99, 2000, and then 2001, when we left, it got really bad, really quickly. And it was sort of an attempt by Robert Mugabe to retain power for his party, the ZANU PF political party.

• 7:56Theo Von?

  Oh, I see. So his party would feel like maybe they were going to be pushed out and so he's like, I need to do something drastic right now in order to stay in.

• 8:02Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 8:03Theo Von?

  And so I'm going to return this colonialized land.

• 8:08Speaker 01

  To the people.

• 8:08Theo Von?

  From whites to the black, to the black people.

• 8:11Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 8:12Theo Von?

  Got it. And so we're, but you saw that like in neighbors, you saw people's lands being taken over, stuff like that?

• 8:18Speaker 01

  Oh, I saw a kid get shot in the head. We saw everything. It was crazy. Yeah. I mean, there were gunfights, there, we had these war veterans settling on the fence lines. We were the smallest farm in the Shamba district. That was where I grew up. And so we were the last ones to get taken because we had the lowest political incentive or financial incentive, right? So you look at the area where we lived, there were all these huge farms, right? Million dollar a year plus tobacco farms and things. We were a tiny little ulstrum area, which is an exotic flower farm. And so we were the last ones to get grabbed because why bother with us, right?

• 8:48Theo Von?

  We'll get them at the end.

• 8:49Speaker 01

  Exactly. So we saw neighbors get murdered, these punguis, like I said, which is indoctrination through torture, crazy war chants, shootouts, everything. It was nuts for a little while.

• 8:59Theo Von?

  And would these groups just kind of come like in? Just trucks like and sort of would they come in like force was it the was it the government coming or was it just like citizens?

• 9:10Speaker 01

  It was it was pretty much just citizens like unemployed citizens basically and for the majority it was kids with guns. Wow. You know, you're fourteen fifteen years old. You grew up maybe on the streets of Harare and all of a sudden you have this dictator like president going, hey, those rich white guys over there, go get them.

• 9:26Theo Von?

  Right.

• 9:26Speaker 01

  You know, and they're like, okay, you know, you know, they call it war veterans that survived the war. There were no war veterans. It was just kids with guns like fourteen to twenty year old kids.

• 9:35Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  Um, and that's that's what, you know, shootouts and all this, but all that being said, I don't want to paint a bad light on it. It was incredible childhood. There was just a couple of rough years there. Yeah.

• 9:45Theo Von?

  Well, one thing that's fascinating about Africa, even like places that I've been there is you see the race, like the racial colonial, you see that it's very evident in a lot of places. You also see a lot of like, um, like black leadership that comes into power and gets very desperate and will try to, uh, own everything themselves as well. It's a

• 10:06Speaker 01

  It's a tribal mentality, right? It's like I I come from this culture, whether it's Shauna, Zulu, whatever it happens to be. And that tribe is like the way that I've been a dominant tribe is I dominate another tribe. Right? And this is not a racial thing. It's just it's a cultural thing and they're, you know, they they get leadership, whether that's being a president or being a minister or whatever it is, and then how am I going to retain it? I'm going to dominate another tribe. Doesn't matter if they're white, black, Zulu, Shauna, whatever. You know, it's just I'm going to dominate and that's it's a it's a crazy thing. I'll tell you a crazy story. I don't think I've ever told anybody this publicly. I grew up on a farm with two hundred, two hundred employees that worked on our farm, right? Like two hundred people that pick flowers, blah, blah, blah. My best friends were all black China kids, Zimbabwean kids.

• 10:48Speaker 01

  And I remember one day going to school. I was fourteen, so I didn't really understand what was going on, other than it was stuff was going bad. And my best friend, who had been my best friend since we were like seven years old, we went to lunch that day, like a random Tuesday. And the prefects, which is like the older, like the seniors, right? They come out and they're like, you two, come over here, like Forrest, go on that side. And I'm like,

• 11:08Theo Von?

  At school?

• 11:09Speaker 01

  At school, like proper school, you know, like button Down like in a very formal school like Forrest go over here and Malusi go over here. Malusi was my friend. Malusi is black and they're like go on this side. And I was like, why are we getting split up? And they're like, we're having a fight. Black versus white at school and my best friend who was felt as shocked as I would. He got like moved by the seniors to the other side of the rugby field to have a fistfight with us. And I was just like, why are we doing this? You know, I was like so confused because we didn't understand it. We were just little kids, but this racial tension got insane. And yeah, it just it boiled over and you've seen like Donald Trump, you know, just called out the South African president around it. But that's similar sort of thing is taking place in South Africa now.

• 11:52Theo Von?

  With the same type of energy, like let's take the land back from

• 11:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:55Theo Von?

  The white owners.

• 11:56Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 11:57Theo Von?

  Well, I think it's the same thing. Sometimes when you look at Hamas and Gaza.

• 12:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:01Theo Von?

  It's like a lot of people believe that Hamas was elected because they felt no other way to try and stop Israeli people from coming and just taking over their homes. That's a lot of what I hear from friends on both sides of it that like they just, they needed to do something drastic. Right? So they elected the most drastic element that they could.

• 12:24Speaker 01

  And I think that's a sign of desperation, right? Regardless of the situation. It's like, if you're desperate, you do something drastic. It's a hail Mary.

• 12:31Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  Right? Yeah.

• 12:32Theo Von?

  Yeah. Yeah. And I think some of that's even it's human nature.

• 12:34Speaker 01

  Totally. I do it myself, right? You're like, shit, what do I do? Let's just send it, you know?

• 12:39Theo Von?

  Oh, definitely. When it's getting late at night and your wife left you or whatever, and you just text some girl that you knew from a couple of years.

• 12:45Speaker 01

  Still up? Yeah, let's go.

• 12:50Theo Von?

  So I think that happens a lot. You saw someone get shot?

• 12:54Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, one of the neighbors, uh, we were riding our motorbikes and he got shot. Yeah. Yeah.

• 12:59Theo Von?

  I mean, so these groups, they come and then would they kind of kick people out of their homes? I mean, was that sort of how it was happening? And then how did you guys end up eventually leaving?

• 13:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. So basically they'd come, they'd surround the property or the farm, but, but white Zimbabweans, similar to like white South Africans or whatever. They're pretty hard people, grew up farming culture, you know? So they dig their heels in and say, bring it on. And they're ultimately end up being a shootout or something like that. And so what happened to us, and I can't speak for every farm, but. A lot of our friends, like a lot of our dads got murdered and all this other stuff. But what happened to us is my mom was a single mother with my sister and I on the farm at the time. And they came, they surrounded our farm and they came and they said to my mom, they're like, we'll give you 24 hours to leave. Or we're gonna kill you and take everything. And so my mom, and I remember I was 14, I ran upstairs and I grabbed my gun and I grabbed a knife and I was like, bring it on. And my mom like hit me and she's like, go get in the car, pack your shit and get in the car. And I was like, yes, mom.

• 13:55Speaker 01

  You know, and so we left. So nothing bad happened to us physically, but it was, it was just a very like ripped from everything overnight kinda situation.

• 14:03Theo Von?

  Wow. So Mama Galante had the sense, huh?

• 14:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank God, because I didn't, still don't, yeah.

• 14:09Theo Von?

  What happened to your dad? He wasn't there?

• 14:11Speaker 01

  No, they split up when I was pretty young and he moved into town and remarried and all of that. And he just didn't want to have much to do with it.

• 14:17Theo Von?

  And your mother ran a botanical farm out there?

• 14:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, ran the flower farm, flowers and oranges.

• 14:22Theo Von?

  Was it pretty beautiful out there with the flowers?

• 14:23Speaker 01

  So beautiful. So we had these big mesosassa trees. We lived on a copy, which like a granite mountain with the house on top.

• 14:29Theo Von?

  Mesosassa tree it's called?

• 14:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 14:31Theo Von?

  I wanna see it.

• 14:32Speaker 01

  It's really, yeah. Like your iconic African tree, yeah.

• 14:36Theo Von?

  Dude, there's something so amazing about being in Africa.

• 14:39Speaker 01

  Where'd you go when you went to Africa?

• 14:41Theo Von?

  We've been to Kenya, to, oh, Mombasa.

• 14:46Speaker 01

  Oh, Mombasa, yeah, on the coast there.

• 14:48Theo Von?

  Mombasa, oh, I'll tell you, this is just a funny story, it's different, but so we went to some bar there, it was called Florida. It was like, they give it like an American name because they know that like Americans are gonna come and

• 14:57Speaker 01

  Yep, totally.

• 14:58Theo Von?

  And get off of cruise ships and stuff. And I was there, I was on a thing called Semester at Sea, it's like a floating university.

• 15:03Speaker 01

  Oh, you went as a kid?

• 15:04Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 15:04Speaker 01

  That's cool.

• 15:04Theo Von?

  Yeah, and so it was pretty impressive. I worked in the bookstore on the ship and you got to, and that worked as my tuition. So I got to go on this crazy adventure. But we're there and one of my buddies, this little Jewish guy, he like got a, he got a blowjob from a local, possibly a prostitute or just a like

• 15:23Speaker 01

  Gray area.

• 15:24Theo Von?

  Yeah. From a nice gray area woman, cute girl. And he said that while he was taking his weiner out of his pants, that it cut on his zipper. And so now he's scared the whole time. He's like, we're in Africa. He's like, what if I catch something?

• 15:38Speaker 01

  He's getting AIDS. He's getting AIDS.

• 15:40Theo Von?

  He's like, dude, I'm getting AIDS. He's like asking people. He's like trying to nonchalantly ask people about AIDS at the bar and stuff. So dude.

• 15:48Speaker 01

  At Florida.

• 15:49Theo Von?

  He was so, uh, he was so neurotic. He ended up ordering a glass of vodka. And it was like three hours till our ride was coming and he literally stood over in the distance and put his weiner just into a glass of vodka and held it in there.

• 16:03Speaker 01

  I like the resourcefulness though. I feel like that would work. That might be the cure.

• 16:07Theo Von?

  Shout out to my buddy, Michael from South Florida, dude. He was, and he was an awesome guy. But anyway, that was one place that we went.

• 16:14Speaker 01

  Africa is a great place, man. It's, it's, it's wild. There's no political stability anywhere on the continent, in my opinion. But it's a great, it's just such a great continent. There's so much wildlife. There's so much freedom. There's nothing you can't do there. You know what I mean? If you can dream it, you can do it. It's, which isn't always a good thing because if you can dream of taking over people's houses, you can do it. But it's, it's, it's a crazy cool place. Yeah.

• 16:36Theo Von?

  So you grow up in this wildlife. I mean, everything about Africa, it's so perfect. Like even I remember being there and like, we would sleep at night with the mosquito nets. Like nature was just right there. Like it was like, you know, so much so that, you know, I mean, I grew up in Louisiana. We had mosquitoes, but we didn't have the nets. Like you had to keep these things, you know, you, I mean, if someone were big, you almost needed the Brooklyn Nets standing there to block them off. You know what I'm saying?

• 17:02Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 17:02Theo Von?

  But just the fact that nature's right there, you can feel it breathing in the distance. It always feels like there. So you grew up in that like dedicated, like, like immersed in wildlife. When did you kind of feel like you wanted to have it as a career?

• 17:17Speaker 01

  Uh, not until, I'll tell you, can I tell you a quick funny story about mosquito nets?

• 17:21Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 17:21Speaker 01

  So I grew up in this farmhouse, right? Like all open windows, no air conditioning or anything like that. Big open verandas and balconies and stuff. And we were plowing a field when I was probably nine or 10 years old. Found a baby monkey in the field, a little vervet monkey.

• 17:34Theo Von?

  Vervet?

• 17:34Speaker 01

  Vervet monkey. Yeah. They call them vermin monkeys because they're like pest monkeys. And I scooped him up, was like, what's wrong here? That little guy right there.

• 17:41Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah. He's doing blackface too, first of all.

• 17:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. He's gotta do something about that.

• 17:46Theo Von?

  Well, he may, he may just be lashing back at Drewski who just did whiteface the other day.

• 17:51Speaker 01

  Dude, I saw 200 million views or something. It was funny though. I don't know if it's bad or good, but it was funny.

• 17:57Theo Von?

  I think it's great.

• 17:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, dude, when he's driving around, he rolls down his window. He's like, you lost, boy? The guy's like, no, sir. It was so bad.

• 18:06Theo Von?

  And then he spits? And the funny thing is, he has that big hat on, so he has to like, kind of move.

• 18:11Speaker 01

  He moves his head out the window, dude. It's too, it's too much. I, I literally saw it this morning. I couldn't believe it.

• 18:17Theo Von?

  But take me through your story. I'm sorry, man.

• 18:19Speaker 01

  No, you're good.

• 18:20Theo Von?

  About mosquito nets?

• 18:21Speaker 01

  Long story short, I rescued this baby monkey. Turns out, and monkeys do this. Her mother, his mother abandoned him because he had a heart murmur, like a bad heart condition. So he got dumped in the field, right? Cause they do that to, then they can have another baby and it takes a long time to raise the baby, blah, blah, blah. So I scoop up this little monkey named Chippy and bottle feed him till his eyes open, the whole thing. And he ends up growing up and he's my bunk bed mate. So he'd sleep on top of my mosquito net. You know how there's like a round coil? And it comes down on a mosquito net? He'd sleep up there and every morning as I get out of bed, he'd jump down off of that onto my shoulder. We'd go down to breakfast and then he'd scamper off into the trees. And like, you know, that's a good depiction of like how I grew up wild wise. Like I had a monkey sleeping in my mosquito net with me, you know? Like it was, it was awesome, awesome childhood. Yeah.

• 19:07Theo Von?

  Yeah, there's just something about being there, especially when you're in a safari house. Like, like one of, you know, you get out into the bush and then sometimes you'll, you'll stay at kind of like a, it's kind of a hotel in a way.

• 19:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, a lodge.

• 19:19Theo Von?

  A lodge, yeah. And some of them would be nice and some would be very bare bones, but it was like, um, you know, you'd have the animal skin rugs and you'd have the nets and you just have a, a silence that was loud, but completely, it was like, God, it was like the thickest silence that ever was made.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  That's such a good way to put it.

• 19:39Theo Von?

  It was so fascinating. And your story reminds me of this guy. They had this guy. I want to say his name was Marco. Oh, I'm thinking of a guy, Dr. Wiggins. There was a guy, Dr. Wiggins, maybe John Wiggum? He, he had his, he raised his child with a monkey.

• 19:55Speaker 01

  Oh, whoa, that's cool.

• 19:57Theo Von?

  Oh, this is it. Sorry. Winthrop Kellogg.

• 20:00Speaker 01

  Oh, boy.

• 20:01Theo Von?

  Winthrop Kellogg's experiment, commonly known as the ape and the child, involved raising a baby chimpanzee named Gua alongside his own son Donald under identical conditions to study the effects of environment versus hereditary on development.

• 20:13Speaker 01

  That's crazy.

• 20:14Theo Von?

  Yeah. In 1931, Kellogg and his wife bought Gua, then seven and a half months old, into their Florida.

• 20:20Speaker 01

  It's always Florida. It's always Florida. There's nowhere else. Where else are you raising a monkey and an ape and a kid together? It's gotta be Florida. It's not like this is happening in London. You know what I mean? It's always Florida.

• 20:32Theo Von?

  It's our, that's our Africa.

• 20:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's our Africa.

• 20:36Theo Von?

  Into their Florida home to grow up with Donald, their 10-month-old son. Both children were given the same care and subjected to daily scientific observations. Can we see a video of it?

• 20:45Speaker 01

  There's no way this kid grew up normal.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 20:56Speaker 01

  Look at the, look at the little shoes on him.

• 20:58Theo Von?

  They put shoes on the chimp.

• 20:59Speaker 01

  You kidding me? Do you ever just think I was born in the wrong era? Like, if I was born in the 30s, I'd do this.

• 21:04Theo Von?

  Oh, for sure.

• 21:04Speaker 01

  I'd have nine kids and five chimps, no problem. And I live in Florida.

• 21:09Theo Von?

  Oh, it was a different time. Look at him right here. They're trying different stuff with him.

• 21:13Speaker 01

  That's crazy.

• 21:14Theo Von?

  Trying to put a hat on each of their head and then teach the monkey to keep it on its head. And he just keeps pulling it off the kid's head.

• 21:20Speaker 01

  Oh, man, that's nuts.

• 21:22Theo Von?

  And they're just tickling both of them. Yeah, if you guys get to watch on the YouTube, I mean, this is absolutely ridiculous.

• 21:28Speaker 01

  I've never heard of this. That's crazy.

• 21:29Theo Von?

  What were some of the findings? Can you go back? Oh, here we go. Gua learned many human behaviors. She dressed in clothes, walked upright. Ooh, used a spoon.

• 21:39Speaker 01

  That's crazy.

• 21:40Theo Von?

  Drank from a glass, opened doors, and imitated gestures of affection, sometimes outperforming Donald in motor skills and tasks. The Kelloggs concluded that there are definite limits to how much non-human species can be humanized. Towards the end, Donald began imitating Gua's chimpanzee vocalizations, raising concerns about potential language delays for the human child. Wow, so the human also ended up becoming more, more like the chimpanzee. Why did they end it? Did they say why?

• 22:10Speaker 01

  Because the chimp ate the kid's face.

• 22:15Speaker 01

  I mean, that's what all, that's how these things always end.

• 22:17Theo Von?

  It really is, dude.

• 22:19Speaker 01

  It's like, there's no good coming of this.

• 22:21Theo Von?

  Look, it's the same reason why we ended the pit bull circus that we were doing in our backyard.

• 22:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, right, yeah. Ends one way.

• 22:30Theo Von?

  Wentworth Keller concluded that while Ghul behaved like a human child in many ways, her physical and brain structure limited how human she could become, confirming the experiment's demonstration of hereditary limits. After the experiment, Ghul was returned to a primate center and sadly died less than a year later. Donald's later life was marked by tragedies while dying by suicide at 43. God.

• 22:49Speaker 01

  That's not good.

• 22:51Theo Von?

  In short, the experiment ended due to concerns about Donald's language development. Ghul is increasing strength and behavior, yup, and the practical and ethical difficulties.

• 22:59Speaker 01

  I mean, it's just, there's a whole argument for nurture over nature, but at the end of the day, chimpanzee is incredibly strong, they get violent, they're, the best way I think to describe it is, when a chimpanzee sexually matures, it doesn't mentally mature past that of like a toddler. So when a three-year-old throws a temper tantrum, it's like, be quiet, you know, and you restrain them or whatever. When a full-grown chimpanzee throws a temper tantrum, it rips you to shreds.

• 23:24Theo Von?

  Right.

• 23:25Speaker 01

  And it might not hate you or anything else, it's just a temper tantrum.

• 23:27Theo Von?

  Right.

• 23:27Speaker 01

  The same as a two or three-year-old does, right?

• 23:29Theo Von?

  Oh, that's fascinating. Um, yeah, I kind of interrupted you though, you were gonna, you were talking about, we were going into...

• 23:36Speaker 01

  Oh, well, you know what you were saying, sorry, I don't want to interrupt you, but you were talking about that thick silence that you get in Africa.

• 23:42Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 23:42Speaker 01

  When you and I were texting last week and you were like, dude, I'm overwhelmed at the moment. To me, that is the most like ground, that silence that you're talking about, that's what like brings me back, you know, like, cause I'm on my phone all day too, I'm sure you are, working and texting and emails and blah blah. That feeling though, that you just described, that thick silence, that being out in the bush, you don't have to be in a tent in the middle of nowhere, you can be in a lodge or whatever, but being a little bit disconnected from modern civilization and more connect, more plugged into the bush and the wildlife, I think that's the most grounding thing, man.

• 24:15Theo Von?

  And I think Africa, I do believe it feels like makes like the purest form of it. I can't explain it. I've tried to, yeah, I mean, you know, it just, I mean, they say it's the birthplace of civilization, I'm sure for a reason.

• 24:25Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 24:27Theo Von?

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• 25:06Theo Von?

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• 25:48Theo Von?

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• 26:33Theo Von?

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• 26:55Theo Von?

  So when did you know that it was kind of a career calling for you to work with animals and to work with nature so closely?

• 27:02Speaker 01

  I don't know if there was an exact moment, but you know, we came over to the States. We got kicked out of Zimbabwe, like I mentioned, came over here, went on welfare, bounced around. I got in trouble a whole bunch. Like I felt very confined coming to the US. Because I'd grown up on a farm, 200 acres, barefoot, guns, motorbikes, freedom. And then I came to Central California, or I'll actually start in Oakland, California, which is the pole, went into wealth, government housing, you know? And, uh, long story short, I felt very like trapped, I guess. Got in trouble a bunch. My mom moved us out of Oakland before I got in really bad trouble. Went to a little town in Central California called Cayucas. And, uh, it was great, like surfer town, 2,000 people.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  And I used to go diving and fishing all the time because that felt like the wildest place to be, like kind of connected me sort of a little bit back to Africa. And I think, long story short, I met a girl, I went to college, blah, blah, blah. But at some point, I wildlife, I'm one track mind. It's the only thing wildlife and rugby are the only two things I've ever really, really cared about. So I was like so passionate about it. And then I was like, well, I'm not going to be a safari guide in Cayucas, California. So I'll go to school to be a biologist and that was sort of the next best thing is like, I'll, I'll become a scientific animal guy instead of a physical animal guy. And then ended up coming back to being a physical animal guy.

• 28:19Theo Von?

  Yeah. Well, I'm glad you did, man. Um, you have a new show, uh, that definitely like sparked me up. It's animals on drugs.

• 28:27Speaker 01

  That's right. We were texting when I was in Columbia. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. It's on HBO Max as of like yesterday, I think.

• 28:33Theo Von?

  Oh yeah, dude. I was just like, dude, send me a gif from Columbia so I can snort.

• 28:39Theo Von?

  Take me through this show, Animals on Drugs, because you know, they had like the cocaine bear.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  Uh huh. Cocaine bear, the movie.

• 28:46Theo Von?

  Cocaine bear. And then they have, I was trying to think of some, oh, Cracoons would be good.

• 28:51Speaker 01

  Cracoons. How did I not think of that as a title? Come on, Cracoons.

• 28:55Theo Von?

  What is, from what's in that?

• 28:57Speaker 01

  That's a no brainer.

• 28:58Theo Von?

  What's that in your recycling bin?

• 29:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:01Theo Von?

  You see a little bit of smoke coming up from the recycling bin?

• 29:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, the bin's vibrating, yeah. Cracoons.

• 29:07Theo Von?

  He's like.

• 29:09Speaker 01

  Smiling, yeah.

• 29:10Theo Von?

  Cracoons. So yeah, I was thinking of Cracoons. I'm trying to think of what else.

• 29:14Speaker 01

  That's actually a movie. I didn't even know that. That's hilarious.

• 29:17Theo Von?

  Cocoon is a movie? You're lying.

• 29:17Speaker 01

  2024 official trailer, Cracoon.

• 29:20Theo Von?

  Oh my god.

• 29:21Speaker 01

  I mean, look, so for that show, we capitalized on this, this hilarious thing that we're talking about. But the show's legit. It's, the reality is, animals are getting into like human substances across the world, right? Whether that's bears breaking in to get on booze and getting hit by trains and stuff because they're licking up booze off train tracks. Just a whole story I can tell you. The cocaine hippos in Colombia, like Pablo Escobar brought hippos over. They escaped. Now there's 200 of them. They're going crazy because hippos are not native there. In Florida, we found an alligator that actually tested positive for having meth in its system because it was living in the cesspool behind a meth house. So that's what the show is about. It's about, it's really at its core, it's a show about human wildlife conflict.

• 30:01Speaker 01

  But you don't get people to watch a show called Human Wildlife Conflict, but you do get them to watch a show called Meth Gator. You know, so that, that was kind of what it was.

• 30:09Theo Von?

  Oh yeah, or ketomice? That's what I was thinking.

• 30:11Speaker 01

  Ketomice, there we go. Man, we need, we need like four. You're like the ChatGPT of drug animals over here.

• 30:16Theo Von?

  You're like, oh, you see a mice go in a hole? What about a K-hole?

• 30:19Speaker 01

  A K-hole. He's just old.

• 30:21Theo Von?

  He's surrounded by cheese, but he can't even swallow.

• 30:27Theo Von?

  No, well, take me through some of that. Like, so, so take me through the Escobar one. Is that when I was texting you in Colombia?

• 30:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 30:32Theo Von?

  Yeah, what was that trip like down there?

• 30:34Speaker 01

  Sure. So, I mean, I had this idea to do that show a long time ago and really, originally I just wanted to go work on the hippo problem in Colombia. So for context, Pablo Escobar brought hippos to his personal zoo called Hacienda Annapolis in the 90s.

• 30:49Theo Von?

  He just wanted nice, he just wanted big animals?

• 30:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, he, he built this insane place down there. Um, and so he brought in giraffes and elephants and lions and all this stuff. When he died in 99, 93, when he died in 93, um, the Colombian government came in and they're, you know, they had a shootout, he died, whatever. Then they came in there like, we'll take the lions, we'll take the, the giraffes, we'll take whatever. Oh, we can't do anything about these hippos. Like hippos are gnarly. People think of hippos like Fantasia, happy, whatever. Hippos are gnarly animals. And so the hippos, they let out-

• 31:18Theo Von?

  They're angry?

• 31:19Speaker 01

  Super, super hungry.

• 31:21Theo Von?

  No angry, I said?

• 31:22Speaker 01

  No, uh, they are. They're just very territorial, very defensive. I think on my Instagram, there's clips of them charging me at the fence and stuff, but, um. Anyway, these hippos got out, four of them. Now there's over 200. There's no predators because it's Colombia, not Africa. There's no lions to eat them. There's no crocodiles to eat them. There's unlimited food and they're killing people and injuring people and, um.

• 31:44Theo Von?

  And so, and but some of them have also ingested cocaine.

• 31:47Speaker 01

  Well, there was a rumor that Pablo Escobar used to feed them coca leaves to make them more aggressive to kill his, uh, his enemies. Um, which is a really cool legend, whether it's true or not, I have no idea, but. Anyway, the Colombian government and I have been, so you know, I work on these kind of large scale animal projects. So I, I started speaking with the Colombian government about this when there was like a hundred hippos, like four, five, six years ago. And they're like, please help, we're underfunded, we're understaffed, we need whatever help we can get to help mitigate this problem. People in Colombia don't want to kill the hippos. They like them. They've created a tourist, uh, like a tourism industry around them. There's like kind of cute, the whole town there, um, where Hacienda Annapolis is, I'm blanking on the name of it now. It's like hippo theme. There's like hippo statues everywhere. They've created like a thing around them.

• 32:30Theo Von?

  But so they're dangerous, but also it's part of the culture now?

• 32:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. So it's a weird thing where it's like, okay, there's this huge invasive species that's super dangerous. But the average people love them. Like the people from Medellin will take weekend trips to go see them. And they don't want to kill them, but they don't want them to get worse because they'll hurt people. So what do you do? So we went down there and worked with the Colombian government with Coronar, which is the organization down there. And we came up with this sort of threefold approach, which doesn't kill them. So it's castrating them, chemically castrating them. Sterilizing them and relocating them. So I went down there with trank rifles and chemicals and vets and all these things and caught and caught and snipped nuts off of hippos.

• 33:08Theo Von?

  So chemically castrating. So take me on that. Are you finding them in the wild?

• 33:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. So we build bomas, which are like giant, like funnel traps, basically. And then we bait them in with giant bags of carrots and beets and things like that.

• 33:20Theo Von?

  Boma it's called?

• 33:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, there might be one on my Instagram. You might be able to find it.

• 33:24Theo Von?

  Do y'all sneak up on them?

• 33:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. So you, you, you sneak up on them. You find, yeah, that's like a boma, that second picture there.

• 33:31Theo Von?

  So a boma trap, it's kind of like a kennel?

• 33:33Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

• 33:34Theo Von?

  And you put a lot of good snacks in there?

• 33:36Speaker 01

  You put all the goodies in there and you make a tripwire so that when they go in, the door closes. And then they go nuts, you know, and they start banging against the fence and blah, blah, blah. So we're catching these hippos. It's super fun. And the little ones, you can chemically castrate with a chemical called gonokon. Meaning basically you shoot them with this dart and the chemical goes in and it stops them from ever sexually maturing. So they grow up, but they don't, if you go to that one on the far right there, down, oh, there's me doing surgery in the middle of the night. Yeah.

• 34:03Theo Von?

  Is this a castration surgery?

• 34:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, castration surgery.

• 34:06Theo Von?

  So this is surgery right here. So you guys have a hippo here that's been sedated?

• 34:09Speaker 01

  Yep. So this was a large female. She had four offspring with her. We chemically castrated all the four offspring with the gonokon, that chemical.

• 34:17Theo Von?

  Okay. So gonokon, you inject it. So now, are those asleep as well?

• 34:21Speaker 01

  No. So them you can do awake, but the gonokon only works if you're pre sexually mature. Once you hit adolescence, it's too late. It just, the effects would just wear off. So that's me darting them right there. I kind of saw it for a split second.

• 34:33Theo Von?

  Okay. So you, so you can dart them with the gonokon and it doesn't hurt them?

• 34:36Speaker 01

  No, it's just like, it's just like getting a shot and then they continue.

• 34:39Theo Von?

  They can't have children?

• 34:40Speaker 01

  They can never have children. They grow up.

• 34:41Theo Von?

  They're okay with it?

• 34:42Speaker 01

  They, I don't think they know. Yeah. To be honest, I think they still get all the fun.

• 34:46Theo Von?

  Okay, okay.

• 34:47Speaker 01

  And, and then, but then the adults that doesn't work on. So we have to go into the bush and catch the adults. And then actually perform surgery on them, which is what that video was, which is much harder to do.

• 34:57Theo Von?

  What do you have here? Pause it for me.

• 35:00Speaker 01

  So that's the mouth of a hippo held open with a piece of like metal pipe between the tusks.

• 35:05Theo Von?

  Oh my gosh.

• 35:06Speaker 01

  And then a breathing tube going into its diaphragm, so.

• 35:09Theo Von?

  Can you smell their breath while they're breathing?

• 35:10Speaker 01

  Oh yeah.

• 35:11Theo Von?

  Is it pretty intense or is it okay?

• 35:13Speaker 01

  And they mostly eat veg- well, they primarily eat vegetation, so it's not too bad, but it's kinda like horse breath.

• 35:18Theo Von?

  Like being at a salad bar or something?

• 35:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, they got some stuff in their teeth. It's hot. Like you get, you get your head up in there and it's like with this big, hot, sticky breath coming out. Yeah.

• 35:27Theo Von?

  Wow, that's crazy. And so you have their mouth probably open, they're asleep?

• 35:31Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 35:32Theo Von?

  And so what do you do then in order to, because you have to castrate them a different way?

• 35:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, so the males are easy. You just grab the nuts, lop them off, sew it up, right? Takes a few minutes from when they go to sleep.

• 35:45Theo Von?

  And you reach in through their mouth to do it?

• 35:46Speaker 01

  No, you just go down, downstairs.

• 35:48Theo Von?

  Well, why are y'all doing this then?

• 35:50Speaker 01

  That's just to keep them breathing and alive. So see, there's a pipe in the bottom, bottom right there, bottom left? That's a breathing tube. So that's just keeping them breathing. But this is a female. So females are way harder. You have to make an incision that's like this long. Reach in there, feel for the gonads, snip them, cauterize them, pull them out, and then close her back up. And if you don't close her up perfectly, one stitch breaks, water floods in there, get an infection and die. So it's got, it's a, it's like a 12 hour process per animal.

• 36:15Theo Von?

  Really?

• 36:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a big, and you have to do it at night because it's so hot. If you do it during the day, they overheat in the sun because it's Columbia. So like, you catch them, keep them as calm as you can until like 9:00 PM, then you start putting them to sleep and work all night and release them at like 4:00, 5:00 in the morning.

• 36:31Theo Von?

  Wow. And so how many people does it take to really pull this off, honestly?

• 36:35Speaker 01

  Honestly, we probably had a team of 30. Yeah. It's a big to do.

• 36:39Theo Von?

  Is it exciting?

• 36:40Speaker 01

  So exciting. I mean, I get goosebumps talking about it because it's just like, it's high adrenaline, the hippo's trying to kill you. You're, you're racing the clock before the sun comes up. You can't over anesthetize the hippo because then it dies. And if we kill one, the frigging Colombians are gonna kill us, you know what I mean? Not really, but they'll be so upset. My career's over.

• 36:57Theo Von?

  Yes.

• 36:57Speaker 01

  If I kill a hippo, giving certain, my career's over, right? I'm canceled across everything. So it's like, it's like all this action and adrenaline. It doesn't sound exciting because you're spending 12 hours like with your elbows deep in a hippo, but it's, it's really exciting. Yeah.

• 37:09Theo Von?

  I think it certainly seems high energy, especially since there's other people there and you guys are all locked in with this one mission.

• 37:15Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 37:15Theo Von?

  It seems like that game, remember that game Operation you played as a kid?

• 37:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:20Theo Von?

  It seems like that, but like the highest level.

• 37:22Speaker 01

  That's right. Yeah, exactly right. It's fun, man. It's cool.

• 37:25Theo Von?

  Wow, dude, that's incredible. So, uh, so that was the experience of going down there and, uh, and those animals, the drug relationship was that Escobar brought them over. And so that's why they're there. And so that gets you into that whole universe of hippos in Colombia.

• 37:39Speaker 01

  Exactly. It's not that the hippos are doing lines, you know, it's just that they got brought here through the drug trade and it's like a vessel to tell that story.

• 37:47Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 37:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that's network TV. That's, that's cable, right? I'm on Discovery. That's how you do it on Discovery.

• 37:51Theo Von?

  Oh, it's exciting.

• 37:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:53Theo Von?

  And it's, you know, it's cool.

• 37:54Speaker 01

  It's cool, man. Nobody else doing that stuff on TV, you know, like get to catch hippos and show the world how you cut their nuts off and like this whole like backstory on Pablo Escobar. And I mean, it's like, it's like a rodeo, you know, it's cool. Yeah. I like it anyway.

• 38:07Theo Von?

  Oh dude, it's fascinating to me. And do you get to keep any of the, um, animals nuts or not?

• 38:12Speaker 01

  Dude, I wanted to, but in order to travel with animal parts, you have to have CITES permits, which is this international conservation thing.

• 38:20Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 38:20Speaker 01

  I wanted a jar of hippo nuts on my shelf so bad, so bad, but I left them all in Colombia.

• 38:25Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah. Dude, you can't even fly out of Hawaii with an avocado.

• 38:29Speaker 01

  Nope. Nope. Same thing. Yeah. So imagine trying to explain, especially in Colombia, you know, I got them like wrapped up in a little bit of paper towel. It's tucked under my dirty underwear. They're like, what's that? It's like, yeah, that's gonna be hard to explain.

• 38:42Theo Von?

  But hey, I think they'll be glad that it's not cocaine. They'll be like, oh dude, yeah, he just said there's a couple kilos of fucking hippo nuts.

• 38:49Speaker 01

  It's Bam Bam, but a different kind. Yeah.

• 38:52Theo Von?

  Dude, I remember we went on a, um, I remember in South Africa, we had, we met, I was there doing performing one time with some really great.

• 39:00Speaker 01

  I bet you're huge in South Africa.

• 39:02Theo Von?

  Dude, we actually did really good there. I haven't been there in forever. I need to go back.

• 39:05Speaker 01

  Cause that's, that's being very familiar with that culture. Your style of comedy is so on brand for that South Africa like audience, I think, but sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you.

• 39:14Theo Von?

  No, I need to go. And it's, I think it's been my favorite country that I've ever been to.

• 39:18Speaker 01

  Let's go, man. I'll take you around. I'll show you the bush side of it.

• 39:21Theo Von?

  Dude.

• 39:22Speaker 01

  Let's go. You do it, you do a show and then we'll go out into the bush, catch some animals, work with some creatures. It'd be rad.

• 39:29Theo Von?

  That'd be really cool.

• 39:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, man.

• 39:31Theo Von?

  Dude, one of my goals, I was even gonna say, I was thinking about this yesterday, is I want to get more involved with nature. Um, like fishing, hunting, just learning how to uh be able to survive myself out in the uh woods over the next two years.

• 39:43Speaker 01

  It's such a grounding thing, Theo. I'm tell, I don't want to be all ethereal, but it it makes you so connected to the planet. It's such a good feeling when you feel self-sufficient out in nature.

• 39:53Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 39:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:54Theo Von?

  Yeah, I want that. I think it would just allow me a different level of peace, you know? And a different level of like, I don't have to be so attached to like um these more worldly things because I know that would be okay. You know, like a level of like um confidence.

• 40:09Speaker 01

  You you get confidence. You get such natural confidence and you, the outside, I don't know if you're like this, but you know, I'm also, not to your degree, but I'm in the public light as well.

• 40:18Theo Von?

  Mm-hmm.

• 40:18Speaker 01

  I I read these like negative comments on YouTube or whatever and I like get in my own head and I'm like, fuck, that sucks. Like, why do these people not like this or whatever? You go out in nature, there's no time for that.

• 40:27Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 40:28Speaker 01

  You know, you're there, you're you're working on the fish you're trying to catch or the bird you're trying to hunt or the animal you're trying to save. And that's what you're on. You're not checking your phone, you're not looking at tweets or YouTube comments, you're just there.

• 40:39Theo Von?

  Yeah, yeah, there's not like some little like uh like a bear cub in the distance on his phone.

• 40:44Speaker 01

  This loser's trying to hunt me. He don't know. Yeah. You're like, I'm trying really hard.

• 40:50Theo Von?

  Now, that would be cool, actually, if animals were like, these, look at these bitches trying to hunt us and they can't.

• 40:55Speaker 01

  You're like sitting in the blindies behind you taking a photo. He's like, look at this loser.

• 41:00Theo Von?

  That would actually be awesome, dude. Uh, but no, I do, I just, yeah, I think I'm missing out on a piece of existence.

• 41:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:07Theo Von?

  And I can kind of start to feel that. I didn't realize it for a long time, but I can start to feel it more and more.

• 41:12Speaker 01

  I like that.

• 41:12Theo Von?

  Um, but that would be great, dude. I'd love to put a show up over there and then we go do something cool.

• 41:16Speaker 01

  Let me know, man. I'm I'm gonna be in Zimbabwe at the end of October doing a big animal rescue. I don't know what your schedule's like. I'm sure that's pretty soon, but you know, let me know.

• 41:24Theo Von?

  But I could try to put a show up, uh, cause I wanted to go to like London anyway to interview this, um, there's a guy, there's a professor who specializes in

• 41:36Theo Von?

  genocides.

• 41:37Speaker 01

  Okay, that's that's deep. Yeah.

• 41:40Theo Von?

  Yeah, and it's kind of just interesting, you know, so I just wanted to learn about why that happens over time.

• 41:44Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 41:44Theo Von?

  And, cause you would think that after a while in existence, we would get past that, you know?

• 41:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. The modern brain is like, we can't wipe out a group of people.

• 41:54Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 41:55Speaker 01

  Apparently not. Yeah.

• 41:57Theo Von?

  Yeah, like every article's always like, you can never do this again. And then it's like, hey, but we can do.

• 42:01Speaker 01

  We're working on it. Yeah.

• 42:06Theo Von?

  But then it's like, you know, in the end, you come back to some sort of survival. And sometimes survival is a sickness, I think, in people too, in a way, you know?

• 42:15Speaker 01

  What do you mean? Like, how is it a sickness in people?

• 42:17Theo Von?

  Well, just the fact that you would, you would, throughout history, there's been genocides and the people have annihilated other cultures. I mean, it used to be of, like a flat, a badge of honor.

• 42:30Speaker 01

  Totally. Like, look what I did.

• 42:31Theo Von?

  Right, like conquering and stuff like that. And that's kind of, who's to say that that's right or wrong? I'm judging it through my perspective today. But at the time, it was probably the most regal thing, you know?

• 42:44Speaker 01

  But doesn't it go back to, and I, this is not my area of expertise, I'm not anthropologist, but didn't, we're Homo sapiens, right? Didn't Homo sapiens wipe out like the two other hominids? You know what I mean? If, I don't know if you can fact check that, but I, I, I think there was Homo sapiens, Homo florentius and Homo something else. And Homo sapiens were like, nah, we, we gotta get rid of these other guys. You know, and that's like what we stemmed from, if I'm not, you know, yeah, what is it with Neanderthals and, I don't know?

• 43:13Theo Von?

  Let me see what it says. Oh, the, didn't, oh, we were just talking about this the other day. The Denisovans were outcompeted by Homo sapiens, but proof of a direct wipeout is absent.

• 43:22Speaker 01

  Oh, okay, there you go.

• 43:23Theo Von?

  Instead, limited resources and climate changes played significant roles. But who knows? I'm sure people got super tribal back then. One person could have had fire and they're like, we got, we gotta kill these people off before they come and get it.

• 43:36Speaker 01

  They're gonna take our fire.

• 43:37Theo Von?

  Right.

• 43:38Speaker 01

  We, we cannot let them take our fire. Yeah, totally. Yeah, I, but there you go, I'm wrong. So I, I, I didn't know that, but I thought there was that competition at play.

• 43:46Theo Von?

  At least you were wrong. I didn't even have a shot at that information, so. At least you're firing off.

• 43:53Theo Von?

  You've had, uh, you've had some, thanks so much for coming, dude. This is awesome.

• 43:57Speaker 01

  Of course, bro.

• 43:58Theo Von?

  It's so much fun.

• 43:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's great. I want to get you out there or at least see you go out there into nature and get connected with it.

• 44:03Theo Von?

  I would love to. It's really, the South Africa thing is the thing.

• 44:06Speaker 01

  Let's do it, dude.

• 44:06Theo Von?

  I think it's big and I love South Africa. And I would love to go over there for a show and just get to have a new experience there. And then just thinking what type of thing that I wanted to, I did get to swim with sharks there once, which was, which was pretty cool.

• 44:19Speaker 01

  Hans Bay of like Seal Island? Yeah, that's cool.

• 44:22Theo Von?

  Yeah, dude.

• 44:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a good experience.

• 44:24Theo Von?

  Bro, it was super scary. It almost felt. It was just unbelievable. We laid out there in that sun, dude. I got the craziest sunburn.

• 44:34Speaker 01

  Got crusted, yeah.

• 44:35Theo Von?

  I mean, like, colors of like fluid were just.

• 44:39Speaker 01

  Like purples and yeah, I know what you're talking about, man.

• 44:42Theo Von?

  What lagoon has been launched by the sun on my face? Because we went out with like some dude who I think he was just a mechanic who had like a couple hours on his lunch break.

• 44:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's like, yeah, we'll make it work. That's South Africa for you. Yeah. He's like, I got a boat. Yeah, we'll figure it out. Yeah.

• 44:59Theo Von?

  Dude, I mean, there was no cut. We're just lay, I mean, in the boiling heat.

• 45:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:03Theo Von?

  But we got in those cages in the round circular cage and we got in and some sharks came. One of them got stuck between two cages.

• 45:10Speaker 01

  Oh, no way.

• 45:10Theo Von?

  And the boat.

• 45:11Speaker 01

  Oh, cool. That's rad, dude.

• 45:13Theo Von?

  It was hairy. I got to reach through and touch one of them right on the head.

• 45:15Speaker 01

  I can see you getting fired up on it. That's the best thing about like an adult reconnecting with nature. Not to say you're totally disconnected, but you get this kid like enthusiasm and sense of wonder that's been gone since you were like seven years old looking at earthworms. You remember when you're a kid, you flip over a log, you're like, whoa, dad, look at this earthworm, you know?

• 45:33Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 45:33Speaker 01

  That goes away because you become an adult and then you get back into it and you're like, oh, that never really went away. I just like went a different direction. Yeah. I don't know. Sorry. What were you saying?

• 45:42Theo Von?

  Dude, no, that's such an important thing to say. That never went away. I just went a different direction.

• 45:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:47Theo Von?

  Because yeah, sometimes I think I even romanticize it like so much of like childhood stuff is gone, but it's, but there's ways that it's still there. It's just like, um, yeah, you went a different direction and that's okay.

• 45:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:59Theo Von?

  But you can always go right back. That's the best thing.

• 46:01Speaker 01

  That's what I think. Yeah. Soon we'll get you cutting off hippo nuts. Yeah.

• 46:06Theo Von?

  Oh, the thing I was gonna tell you was we went on a safari one day. This, there was like some diamond miner, right? Like some very rich guy, like some guy who was just fucking being rich or whatever. Like I tapped him on the shoulder. I was like, are you do, what are you doing? And he's like, being rich.

• 46:22Theo Von?

  He was like, he couldn't even fucking, you know?

• 46:25Speaker 01

  You don't even know.

• 46:26Theo Von?

  I saw him yawn once and he had forty dollars, right after yawned, he had forty dollars in his hand.

• 46:31Speaker 01

  It just fell out of his mouth. He's like, oh, that's where I put that.

• 46:34Theo Von?

  He had just that kind of wealth. But he took us to. He had his own animal sanctuary somewhere.

• 46:41Speaker 01

  Oh, interesting.

• 46:42Theo Von?

  And they took us there and we got to just go see um a lot of endangered species like the big five.

• 46:48Speaker 01

  Oh, sick, man.

• 46:48Theo Von?

  And a lot of endangered species. We just got to go look at them. Um, and then uh, six weeks later in my inbox and my email, I get an email from him. He goes, oh, that it's that's it.

• 46:58Speaker 01

  Oh, that's brutal. Oh, the rhino. Yeah.

• 47:01Theo Von?

  And this, I cannot believe you just found this. And uh, and this, and he sent me this picture and he goes, the rhinos that we that you guys went and saw two uh, a few weeks ago, poachers came at night and cut their horns off.

• 47:14Speaker 01

  It's so brutal, man. It's it's an ongoing war over there for the rhino ivory thing. Yeah, it's brutal. But things like this are important. You posting it, you know, to an audience that's not tuning in for animals that goes, holy shit, that's bad. That that's really cool. It's really important that people realize that.

• 47:29Theo Von?

  It's shock. I got, because you hear about it.

• 47:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:32Theo Von?

  But then I was like, oh, my God, the ones that we were looking at that we were so like enthralled by.

• 47:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:36Theo Von?

  And they were their whole body is left there in this one piece of them.

• 47:40Speaker 01

  Cut their face off. That's crazy. Yeah. Um, yeah, that's a bummer, man. Good for you for sharing it, though. I really think that's great.

• 47:46Theo Von?

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• 48:29Theo Von?

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• 49:06Theo Von?

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• 49:26Theo Von?

  What are some close encounters that you've had with animals out there, man? That, uh, that almost sometimes you're like, oh, you know?

• 49:31Speaker 01

  Oh, man.

• 49:32Theo Von?

  That gets that childhood engine, like, you know, just really revs it into the red area.

• 49:37Speaker 01

  I'm not an adrenaline junkie, or at least I like to pretend I'm not, right? But I get that rush when something like that happens. Literally, the hippo thing, I had a hippo charge me out of the water there that was crazy and everybody scrambled. I had an instance where a sea, uh, one of the craziest ones, I never forget, the one that always comes to the top of my mind. We were in Australia and we were interviewing people in this Aboriginal village, like way up north in far north Queensland. And as we're talking to people, I hear people screaming, shouting, "Ahh!" And I look over and there's this guy holding a cinder block over his head like this and he's about to throw it and I'm like, "Wait, wait, wait." And I run over and there's a coastal typhoon, which is one of the most venomous snakes in the world, big brown snake. Uh, and he's about to smash it with this rock and I'm like, "Wait, wait, wait, I'll catch it and move it for you."

• 50:20Speaker 01

  This thing right here, it's a big one, it was like five, five, six feet long. And, um, and so, uh, the guy, this Aboriginal guy's about to smash it, I'm like, "Wait, wait, like, I'll catch it and move it for you." And he's like, "Okay, whatever." And the snake disappears under the house, right? This is like a house on like, like, kinda like Louisiana where they elevate the houses a little bit, you know, down south there.

• 50:38Theo Von?

  Satan's right under them?

• 50:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And so there's, you know, they're up on like cinder blocks or posts or whatever.

• 50:44Theo Von?

  Dude, that makes me so scared, a snake under the house.

• 50:46Speaker 01

  So the snake disappears under the house and the guy's like kinda mad at me, he's like, "What the fuck, man? I could've killed the snake, now it's in the neighborhood, you know, blah, blah, blah." And I'm like, "Let me handle it, like, I'll take care of it, I'm sorry." And it all happened really quick, so I grabbed my flashlight and I grabbed, grabbed my snake hook, whatever, and I go looking for the snake. And my camera guys are filming, we're filming a show of Extinct or Alive, which is a show I did on Animal Planet a while ago.

• 51:06Theo Von?

  Yeah, we're gonna get into that in a minute.

• 51:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, and um, and my camera guys are filming, I look from one side of the house. Not yet, but I'm looking, I'm like crouched down looking and I see the snake in like the far back corner. And I'm like, oh, he's right there by the stairs. Come with me, like, we'll go get him. So I grabbed my light and I jog around the side of the house and I stick my head through the like slats in the stairs. They're like this far apart, right? So I can just kind of wiggle my head and shoulders in. And I know the snake's over here because I've just seen him from the other side of, under the house. I'm like, he's right over here. So I wiggle and I turn my light on, my headlamp, whatever it was, and I turn to the side and I'm like, fuck, where's that snake? I can't see him. And all of a sudden, I just feel like this on the back of my neck. The snake has gone around to the other side and he's moving around. These snakes are fast. And he's literally licks the side of my neck. You know how snakes stick their tongue out like that?

• 51:51Speaker 01

  And then he starts crawling over my neck and I just freeze and like, you see the hair on my arms right now, like it rattled me. Cause one bite, I was like 14 hours from a hospital, from one of the most venomous snakes in the world, a relatively aggressive snake. And I just freeze, I just stop moving.

• 52:05Theo Von?

  One bite, everybody knows the rules.

• 52:07Speaker 01

  That's right, that's right. Thanks, Dave. Um, and uh, yeah, so I just, I freeze while the snake fully slithers up over my neck. And then comes and coils up like three feet from my head over here. And then I like slowly back out. We ended up catching him 10, 15 minutes later, moving it, blah, blah, blah. But that moment where the snake like licked my neck, right behind my ear there. And then I started to feel like the underside of his mouth go on my neck. I was like, that's it. Like, I can't move, I can't do anything, I'm dead. Like, it's gonna realize it's sitting on top of a warm human. And that it's been chasing him and just go, and that's it, I'm finished. I was, I was the most rattled I think I've ever been coming out of that. Yeah, I was just so like on edge while that snake was crawling over me.

• 52:51Theo Von?

  As you're saying that, I can feel my glands almost like. Just like

• 52:55Speaker 01

  Tighten up, yeah.

• 52:56Theo Von?

  Yes.

• 52:57Speaker 01

  Dude, it was a horrible, horrible feeling. And that, that's my fault.

• 53:00Theo Von?

  You know what it is, and it's so, the fact that it's something so subtle, it's almost like a Dracula just being right there.

• 53:07Speaker 01

  And the hardest part was my stomach dropped and your instinct is like, pull out, you know, like panic immediately, get away. And if I had done that, if I had even jolted, I think it would have just been boop, you know, and so I just had to try, like, it felt like, like 10 minutes and it was probably 10 seconds that it went over my neck for, but I was just sitting there like, please, please, please, please. And then it went over. It was crazy, man. It was a terrible, terrible feeling. And it was very like novel, naive of me to go in and just stick my head in and like, be like, I'll be your hero. I'll help. It was stupid, you know, it was just stupid. And I learnt from that experience, so much so that I've done it again a dozen times, but like, I try not to be that stupid anymore, you know?

• 53:47Theo Von?

  Yeah, it's funny how sometimes ego and even knowledge can become a little bit of ego.

• 53:52Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 53:52Theo Von?

  Like enough knowledge makes you think confident, you know, confidence can just teeter over the edge of, um, of, uh, wisdom in a way.

• 54:02Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 54:03Theo Von?

  You know, the fulcrum of that is so fine tuned that yes, it's like, it's almost like when you're like, I know what I'm doing.

• 54:09Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 54:10Theo Von?

  Immediately you get checked by just, by existence.

• 54:13Speaker 01

  Well, confidence is complacency, right? So you're like, I got this. Step aside. That means I'm complacent. If I even have that attitude going into it, it means I'm not fully focused, right? Like, and, and that, uh, time and time again, every narrow miss I've ever had, which is not that many, but there's been a few, is because I've been, first of all, I've put myself in that scenario. It's not the animal's fault, right? This wasn't the snake's fault that I stuck my head under the, the, the house. But it's always because I'm overly confident to the point of being complacent. Like, yeah, I can stick my head in here. I'll find the snake, you know, it's, it's stupid.

• 54:46Theo Von?

  Right. Yeah, like, let me show, like, it's not even like, let me show off, but there's a part of you that gets so comfortable.

• 54:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 54:52Theo Von?

  That it, it almost just shows off because it's.

• 54:54Speaker 01

  Well, can I show you something?

• 54:55Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  Do you mind, sorry to ask you to do this. Do you mind pulling up the last YouTube video I just posted, um, on my YouTube channel? I, I don't want to dogleg us too long, but I'll show you where the snake almost got me recently. And again, it's a, it's a result of, uh, sorry, it's the one with the, that silly crocodile thing. Yeah, right near the end, maybe the last two or three minutes there. Yeah, right here. So look, so I'm holding the snake. This is a fertile one. It's the deadliest snake in, in the Americas. Killed, responsible for more deaths than any other snake in America.

• 55:22Theo Von?

  Now, where did you find this at, brother?

• 55:23Speaker 01

  Costa Rica.

• 55:24Theo Von?

  Ooh.

• 55:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so I'm holding the snake.

• 55:26Theo Von?

  And this is the deadliest snake in South America?

• 55:28Speaker 01

  In the Americas, total. Across all Canada, United States, South America, Central America. Huge one, biggest one I've ever seen. And for no reason at all, because it's a stupid YouTube video, he's peeing on me. I'm like, I'm gonna pin it and hold it behind the head. Now, watch here. I'm holding it and I'm, I'm showing off, like we just talked about. Tell them the camera all about, you know, this is this deadly snake and don't, this many people a year die from it. And you gotta be careful because of how they hide, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I start to loosen my grip here. See how I'm looking to the side and I'm jabbering to the camera? So my grip's starting to loosen. Now, watch what the snake does when he feels my grip loosen. Uh, it's coming in the next few seconds. I don't want to bore you, but...

• 56:04Theo Von?

  You can almost see him.

• 56:05Speaker 01

  He's eyeing, he's side eyeing me right now. And this is complacency because I'm busy presenting to a camera like an idiot, talking about how deadly the snake is, and I'm adjusting my grip. I'm not, not paying attention. Here it comes, any second here. Look at that. So he starts to open his mouth.

• 56:20Theo Von?

  Ah!

• 56:21Speaker 01

  See how close that is? That was me. Boots are up.

• 56:26Theo Von?

  Dude, I'm ready for the coughing.

• 56:27Speaker 01

  Look at that, look at that. Oh, that is so close to my hand with that fang. Those fangs are two and a half inches long. So he was maybe a quarter of an inch from getting me, and that would have been my hand gone.

• 56:37Theo Von?

  Play that one more time, play that strike.

• 56:39Speaker 01

  There's that slow-mo strike just a few seconds back here. Look at this. Boom!

• 56:44Theo Von?

  And what, what method did he use to be able to make himself have the, uh, torque to do that?

• 56:50Speaker 01

  But it's, so if I had been holding the snake perfectly.

• 56:54Theo Von?

  Right.

• 56:54Speaker 01

  He couldn't have done that.

• 56:55Theo Von?

  Right.

• 56:55Speaker 01

  But I'd been holding him for two or three minutes, talking to the camera, showing off, because it's stupid YouTube.

• 57:00Theo Von?

  Right.

• 57:01Speaker 01

  And I had loosened my grip and slowly slipped down, so much so that he had leverage in his neck. So that was the problem. It's not, it's, it's my fault.

• 57:09Theo Von?

  His ground game was better.

• 57:10Speaker 01

  His ground game was strong. He would have whooped me. Yeah, and it was close, man. If I hadn't dropped him right there, I, I'm talking another half second, and that would have been just one nick, one fang into the hand? That's, that's definitely the finger gone, maybe my hand, you know?

• 57:22Theo Von?

  When a snake bite happens, what is, like, and especially when it's one that's as venomous as this, when you're saying?

• 57:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, highly venomous.

• 57:29Theo Von?

  How quickly can someone really lose like an appendage or something from that or potentially die? Like, how real is that?

• 57:35Speaker 01

  But it all depends, right? It's like saying, what happens if I get stung by a bee? Well, are you allergic to a bee? How much venom did the bee put in you?

• 57:43Theo Von?

  Got it.

• 57:43Speaker 01

  If you and I get stung by a bee, we're gonna react completely differently, right? My hand might swell up like a balloon. You might have a tiny little mosquito bite itch. So every human body responds differently to venom. And then there are multiple types of venom, and then there are cocktails of venom. So there's cytotoxic, hemotoxic, and neurotoxic, like brain, location, organ failure, different. And then there's cocktails. So some snakes have a cocktail of like location venom and organ venom, and some have respiratory venom. And so it's just crazy. That's why antivenom is such a difficult thing, because there's so many different kinds of snakes, so many different cocktails of venom. People all react differently to it. An allergy to venom means you're gonna die almost no matter what. Like, it's just, it's a crazy like variable of things. Yeah.

• 58:28Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 58:28Speaker 01

  But in that case, I would have been in big trouble. Yeah.

• 58:31Theo Von?

  God, dude.

• 58:31Speaker 01

  So don't do that. When we go back to the cool animal stuff, don't do that stuff. Yeah.

• 58:36Theo Von?

  Are there moments where you feel like some animals are of God and some animals are of Satan? Do you ever feel like that?

• 58:43Speaker 01

  Hippos are of Satan.

• 58:44Theo Von?

  Really?

• 58:45Speaker 01

  They're such angry frickin' animals. And there's a few animals like that, like cassowaries, if you know what they are, big vulture, velociraptor looking birds. There's a few animals that just, you know, I'm not very religious, so I'm using that term as jokingly, but there are some animals that just have terrible attitudes. Scroll down real quick. Check out that one where he's kicking, I saw it a second ago. He's kicking the guy's board. Like, look at that. You know, these things just come at you. They've got, they've got these talons, this head. Hippos are the same. If a hippo sees you, it's gonna charge. A Cape buffalo, like in Africa, they call them the Black Death. Because when they smell you or see you, they don't think about running, they just think about charging. And it's just, some animals just have this attitude.

• 59:29Speaker 01

  I don't think it's, I don't think it's an ethereal thing. I think it's that hippos and Cape buffalo and cassowaries, they've grown up with tons of predators. Historically, they've been hunted, so they're defensive instead of, their fight or flight is just a fight response.

• 59:42Theo Von?

  Got it.

• 59:42Speaker 01

  Do you know what I mean?

• 59:43Theo Von?

  Right. They don't have any other choice. Right.

• 59:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that is, that is just scary to work with those animals. Because at any given time, they're gonna turn on you versus run away from you. Yeah.

• 59:54Theo Von?

  Have you encountered, like, I'm sure whenever you get out into these worlds of animalia and some of these worlds where you probably don't even speak the language, have you encountered people that are as dangerous as the animals?

• 1:00:05Speaker 01

  Way worse. People are always, every close call we've ever, I mean, you know, not including those snake things or whatever, but every time that I've really felt threatened, which isn't like an instant spur of the moment. When you feel threatened from an animal, it's like, okay, it nearly bit me. That's over. When you feel threatened on a hull, it's because humans are so unpredictable. A good example is you're working in a country that has political unrest and they know that you've got money because you've got cameras or whatever. And now the government's got to get you, the mafia is going to get you. They've sent, you know, we had this instance in Myanmar where the government wanted to get us for having a drone and we had to flee and like, those are the scariest things, is the human element. And of all the places I've ever been, and I know this is an anomaly, but of all the places I've ever been,

• 1:00:48Speaker 01

  Papua New Guinea, the last time I went to Papua, I've only been once, but the time I went to Papua New Guinea, in 14 days, I saw two people get hacked by machetes. I was only there for two weeks.

• 1:00:58Theo Von?

  God.

• 1:00:59Speaker 01

  I mean, that's how like violent that society is and it's a very tribal culture and things. One was in the capital of Port Moresby. The other was actually near to this place.

• 1:01:07Theo Von?

  This is a real picture here?

• 1:01:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, real picture.

• 1:01:10Theo Von?

  And what's the place called? I'm sorry, I stepped on you?

• 1:01:11Speaker 01

  This was near to Tufo, an area called Tufo, yeah.

• 1:01:14Theo Von?

  So how do you know when you're meeting, I mean, this is a tribe, right?

• 1:01:17Speaker 01

  And they were lovely. Little bit scary at first, but it was the town people that were, that were the problems, that were high on betel nut and been drinking and fighting and those kinds of things. But this was a, a tribe, you see the guy on the left of me that has the, the shark mask on? So this was a tribe that had a very special, that's shark jaws on his face.

• 1:01:37Theo Von?

  Wow, it looks like Otis Nixon a little bit.

• 1:01:40Speaker 01

  Good athlete too, but.

• 1:01:42Theo Von?

  Yeah, Otis was great.

• 1:01:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. Uh, so this tribe had a special relationship with shark fishing. So we went to seek them out to try and find these sharks. And we went and like got in this burial cave where they kept human skulls, a whole thing. But then they took us to the village and we sat with this guy. The craziest part is these guys' names are like John Thomas and, and Thomas Johnson and because the missionaries have all been through there.

• 1:02:06Theo Von?

  Like Collier Anthony?

• 1:02:08Speaker 01

  Yes, it's insane, dude. They're all have these, these like British.

• 1:02:12Theo Von?

  Dear William.

• 1:02:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's so, you like meet this guy and he's like, looks all intimidating and stuff. And then he introduces himself as like Paul Johnson and you're like, okay, yeah.

• 1:02:22Theo Von?

  Yeah, his name is Philip Banks.

• 1:02:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's so strange.

• 1:02:26Theo Von?

  Prince of Bel Air, like, that's a crazy name.

• 1:02:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:30Theo Von?

  Yeah, there he goes.

• 1:02:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, what a happy looking dude, though.

• 1:02:33Theo Von?

  Oh, he was, man. He definitely was a happy. That guy was a great character. He passed away a few years back.

• 1:02:38Speaker 01

  Oh, shame.

• 1:02:38Theo Von?

  Yeah, I, um, wow, dude, yeah, so that would just be the scariest thing, like, have you ever, have you, have you gotten into a situation where you had to pay to get out of it?

• 1:02:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, many. I try not to like advertise that because it's truly bribes. It really is. Like, there's no other way to put it. And it's so funny, dude, I've never shared this. When you get back from a shoot, right? Usually my, my expeditions are funded by like Discovery Channel or Animal Planet or something. And then you, you submit like a cost or an expense report and they're like, what's this $4,000 for? And you're like, groceries?

• 1:03:11Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:12Speaker 01

  You know, because you like handed somebody a stack of 4,000 bucks cash to not, you know, take your car tires or something. And you're like, yeah, I just gotta lie about that, you know, like there's, you can't write bribe money on the invoice. Yeah.

• 1:03:25Theo Von?

  Well, it just goes to show that at, at every level of existence, right? Whether it's like, uh, first world, third world, 50th world, there's this, there's a checks and balances system of capitalism so often.

• 1:03:39Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 1:03:40Theo Von?

  And it's, and that doesn't even change. You can be in the shittiest place in the world. You pull up, you park your car. There's a guy that's gonna walk up and he's like, for $4, I'll make sure your car is there when you get back.

• 1:03:50Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:03:51Theo Von?

  And it's just, that's the cost of doing business.

• 1:03:53Speaker 01

  And if you don't pay the $4, you better believe your windows are getting smashed, you know, and you, you, you, it's funny because you talk to these guys in these offices at the networks or whatever, and they don't get what you just said. And you're like, no, no, I had to do that. Otherwise, there'd be no, like, they would have smashed the windows, taken all the cameras.

• 1:04:10Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:04:10Speaker 01

  You know, and it's like, oh, well, why did you have to bribe them? It's like, how do you not understand this? Like, it's, it's commerce, you know, like, this is how the world works outside of LA.

• 1:04:19Theo Von?

  That's perfect, man. You mentioned a little bit ago, one of your shows, Extinct.

• 1:04:26Speaker 01

  Or Alive.

• 1:04:27Theo Von?

  Or Alive.

• 1:04:27Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm, yeah.

• 1:04:28Theo Von?

  What was one of your most surprising discoveries while shooting Extinct or Alive?

• 1:04:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, the tortoise in that cover image from season two, that was probably the biggest one. It was crazy. We went to this island in the Galapagos that basically nobody goes to called Fernandina. That species of tortoise hadn't been seen in 114 years. And only one specimen in history that had ever been recorded 114 years prior by the California Academy of Sciences. So to date, that animal that I'm holding in that picture, which has been doctored for the like trailer poster thing, is the rarest animal in the world. There's only one known individual of that species, and that's her right there.

• 1:05:08Theo Von?

  Damn, and it's a woman, huh?

• 1:05:10Speaker 01

  It's a girl, yeah. Her name's Fern.

• 1:05:12Theo Von?

  Some, yeah, women, they, they, they're survivors.

• 1:05:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Dude, chicks are like, we're talking about survival and stuff. Girls are so much better at it than guys. It's not even close.

• 1:05:23Theo Von?

  Is that in the animal kingdom as well?

• 1:05:24Speaker 01

  Oh, I mean, I was talking about humans, but yeah, probably in the animal kingdom too. I mean, like, I feel like females, girls, women, whatever, they have more to fight for. Because they have kids to protect, you know, whereas a male, I'll just make more kids, you know what I mean? Like, I'm not investing all of my body energy into raising this one young. Like, I'll just go find another mate. I'm talking on like a very base evolutionary level. Like, it's just like, I'm gonna spread my seed. Whereas it's incredible how like tenacious and hardy female animals, women, everything are. It's crazy.

• 1:05:55Theo Von?

  Oh, dude, I think, and also, and also men have that, they have testosterone in them that like, you know, it's that I'm gonna put my hand in the fire.

• 1:06:04Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:06:05Theo Von?

  So right there, you're gonna lose 30% of dudes right there.

• 1:06:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:08Theo Von?

  Cause they're trying to taste a fucking car that's going by.

• 1:06:11Speaker 01

  That's, stick my tongue out, yeah.

• 1:06:14Theo Von?

  Let me look right here. In the animal kingdom are females generally better at survival than males. We looked at on perplexity. That's what we like to use. Females in the animal kingdom are generally better at survival. The males in a large scale study of 101 wild mammal species, females lived an average of 18% longer than males and more than 60% of those species. For most mammals, including species like elephants, lions and seals, females surpass males in longevity. The difference in lifespan between the sexes is often more pronounced in the animal kingdom than in humans, where women live about 7.8% longer than men.

• 1:06:50Speaker 01

  We're expendable.

• 1:06:51Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:51Speaker 01

  Like, think if there's, if there's one guy and 100 girls, you're repopulating the planet.

• 1:06:57Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:06:57Speaker 01

  If there's 100 guys and one woman, you're not. You know what I mean? Like, we are expendable. Males across all species, for the most part, are expendable.

• 1:07:06Theo Von?

  Fuck.

• 1:07:08Speaker 01

  Sorry, bro.

• 1:07:09Theo Von?

  No, I just, I felt something was, I knew something was off.

• 1:07:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that's it. Yeah. Damn it. Should have been a check.

• 1:07:15Theo Von?

  I know. I just gotta, I gotta wander around with a, I gotta get some new kneepads. I'm gonna have to get some protective armor.

• 1:07:24Speaker 01

  Gotta get some new kneepads.

• 1:07:25Theo Von?

  I gotta get some protective armor, dude, that's for sure.

• 1:07:30Theo Von?

  The idea that you're gonna find like extinct species is such like, it's a, it's a cool sport, right? Because it's like, it's, um, chasing this Atlantis in a way, kind of?

• 1:07:41Speaker 01

  It's the most ultimate hunting, form of hunting. You're looking for the rarest thing in the world, so much so that the whole world thinks it doesn't exist anymore. Yeah.

• 1:07:49Theo Von?

  Yeah, I'm thinking about, just thinking about extinction and stuff, it's like, where's that last day where people are just standing there with the clipboards and they're just waiting for the last, like, one of a species to die off and then they're like extinct?

• 1:08:02Speaker 01

  There it goes, yeah.

• 1:08:03Theo Von?

  Like, yeah, what classifies something as extinct?

• 1:08:06Speaker 01

  That's a great question, and that's part of the premise of like why we made that original show, Extinct or Alive, is like, it's some, for the most part, and I'm oversimplifying, but it's some stuffy dude, British dude in a smoking jacket going, "No, yes, I believe this is gone," you know, and then he like checks a box. And the problem with that is, from a conservation model, the second you check that extinction box, that's it. There's no funding, there's no effort, it's gone. Extinct doesn't mean hiding, or around the corner, or there's a few left. Extinct means, give up and move on.

• 1:08:35Theo Von?

  We're out 86, the dodo bird.

• 1:08:37Speaker 01

  That's it, yeah. And so, I think it's super arrogant for humans to come in and go, "That's extinct." I mean, not to, I don't want to belittle extinction, it's a very severe thing, but oftentimes, we give up too quickly. We go, "It's extinct, it's not here," or, now it's sort of been reclassified as like, "Lost to science," but for a long time, it was just like, "Oh, it's extinct, science hasn't seen it in 20 years, 30 years, 100 years." It used to be 30 years was the benchmark. And, um, it's just sort of an arrogant thing to come in and say like, you know, "Oh, I went to Borneo for 10 days, I promise you it's not there." It's like, shut up dude, you know what I mean? What the fuck are you talking about?

• 1:09:11Theo Von?

  Yeah, it sounded like you gave him a clue, you idiot.

• 1:09:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And, I'm oversimplifying it, but I think that's what ended up happening a lot, is, all this, you know, there's millions and millions of species of animal out there, tons and thousands of scientists and things, and they're like, "Oh, that one's gone, move on," you know, and what I like to do is be like, "Well, hold on, let's give the little guy a second shot here," you know? And I think why we were successful, why we found eight animals that were previously lost to science, was because we didn't give up after 10 days. Like, some of those expeditions were two months long, you know, living in tents, filming every day, like setting camera traps, going out baiting stuff, you know, it's, they were, they were hard work. I loved the work, but they were hard work. And then it's like, "Oh, there it is, we found it," you know, and the first time was like utterly shocking, but then we did it seven more times, and it was like, "Oh wow, there is a pattern

• 1:09:57Speaker 01

  here." And, I don't want to say it's just like our show and the work I did, but between that and some of the conservation organizations and stuff, there was a little bit of a mentality shift of, "Oh, wait a minute, it's not extinct, it's like a lost species, it's been lost to Western scientists studying it or finding it, so now, we'll put in campaigns to find lost animals, as opposed to just decide they're extinct and move on." And that's sort of changed things a bit.

• 1:10:20Theo Von?

  It's kind of like cold case files of animals.

• 1:10:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally. It's like, go back in, you know, check, check the records, yeah.

• 1:10:26Theo Von?

  Yeah, it's like, ah, I don't think we had a, let's see if we have a better DNA sample now.

• 1:10:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And the technology's come so far.

• 1:10:32Theo Von?

  Dude, this sounds just like cold case files.

• 1:10:34Speaker 01

  It is, it is, man. It's the same thing. It's forensics. It's animal forensics.

• 1:10:37Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:38Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 1:10:38Speaker 01

  It's cool.

• 1:10:39Theo Von?

  Are there animals out there who are, that are almost extinct? Like, do you believe, are we get, like, does extinction happen every week on the planet and we just don't realize it? How common is it?

• 1:10:50Speaker 01

  3,000 species per year.

• 1:10:52Theo Von?

  Nuh-uh. You're lying. You're lying.

• 1:10:54Speaker 01

  That's the estimated number, yeah. And a lot of things, a lot crazy, right?

• 1:10:57Theo Von?

  Fucking what?

• 1:10:59Speaker 01

  Bro, a lot of things are going extinct before we've even described what they are. Like in the Amazon where there's all this clear cutting and stuff.

• 1:11:05Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:06Speaker 01

  There are little species of, and I'm not saying they're, I'm not talking about a buffalo, you know, I'm talking about a bug this big or a little orchid or something. But before we've even described what it is, or looked into the medicinal properties of it, or tried to conserve it, it's gone because we wipe out that chunk of habitat. There you go.

• 1:11:22Theo Von?

  The estimated number of species that go extinct every year ranges from about 2,000 over 100,000, depending on which scientific estimates and total species counts are used.

• 1:11:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, we, we, we, I know this is the chat GPT answer or whatever perplexity answer, but we dug into this pretty heavily across a bunch of organizations. And we estimated it was close to about 3,000. Now, most of that, as in like 2,500 are plants. But the other 500 to 700 or so are, are animals that are going extinct every year.

• 1:11:49Theo Von?

  But to think that we're losing plants, which are, I mean, unbelie, just the things that they're, the medicine and stuff that they're finding in plants, the possibilities.

• 1:11:59Speaker 01

  And it's, it's, again, going back to the technology standpoint, the more that we advance our technology, the more we use that technology to realize that old ancient ways of medicine and herbal medicine and stuff actually is really effective. Look at the supps game now, right? Like you go on, it's like, supplements. You know, every supplement's like, oh, this is, I'm making all this up, but like berberine, which is a derivative of an almond shell or whatever, you know, and it's like,

• 1:12:24Theo Von?

  beetroot.

• 1:12:25Speaker 01

  Beetroot. You're like, that's medicine.

• 1:12:27Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:27Speaker 01

  You know, we, it's so crazy because I think medicine swung, swung so far away in the pendulum where it's like, it has to be fully synthetic. And it's like, oh, wait, half the shit isn't working, giving you terrible side effects. Well, look over here. Beetroot actually is a great detoxifier. Why don't we just do that? You know, it's like, it's like the pendulum swung too far and now it's swung back a little bit. Where it's like, yeah, all these, all these natural things actually help us. And when you're losing 1,500 species or so of those a year, I'm not saying any of them are going to cure cancer, but. They might, you know, who knows? Like, we haven't tested it.

• 1:12:59Theo Von?

  Yeah, it's fascinating. It's crazy to think that that's that um that that's where we are. And and and how much of that is just evolution? And how much of that is man-made, do you think, or man like uh involved that the that's that we that species become extinct?

• 1:13:19Speaker 01

  It's a little bit of both, and I think the one of the things that we see a lot is people are like, oh, it's all humans fault. That's why everything's going. Extinction's been around forever, you know, like extinction's not like. We're not going to get rid of extinction, and we shouldn't, but what we shouldn't do is accelerate it. And that's the problem, you know?

• 1:13:34Theo Von?

  Extinction been around, dude. I've been getting rid of these hoes forever, you feel me?

• 1:13:38Speaker 01

  That's it.

• 1:13:41Theo Von?

  I'm just joking, hoes.

• 1:13:43Speaker 01

  Sorry, hoes. I'm very respectful. Um, yeah, but it's it's uh it's interesting because I think man-made extinction. So they say that we're in the sixth great mass extinction event right now. There've been five others throughout history, like when the dinosaurs went extinct, when the when the earth froze over, the great freezing, or whatever it's called. I don't I'm not an anthropologist, paleontologist, so I don't really understand that as well, but they say right now we're in the sixth great mass extinction event, and that is that is directly caused by human beings. So my thing is like, we shouldn't end extinction. We shouldn't stop extinction. We just shouldn't be like racing towards it as much as we can. And when you're killing like, you know, a million, eight million sharks a year, or whatever it is we're fishing and cutting down

• 1:14:25Speaker 01

  a thousand acres of rainforest, I'm making all these numbers up, a thousand acres of rainforest a day. We're like racing towards extinction. We're like, how fast can we get rid of these things, you know? And that's the problem. Like, that's where we need to just reassess. I'm all for human growth and development and everything else. We need it. Like, we need to make the planet sustainable, but we got to do it in a way that's also fair to all the species, you know what I mean? So that we don't collapse.

• 1:14:49Theo Von?

  Kind of on this topic, I have a question about extinction, like um and the the the idea that I know those companies now that are bringing back or attempting to bring back extinct species, right? That's been something that I know you're kind of close to.

• 1:15:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, de-extinction.

• 1:15:02Theo Von?

  De-extinction. Um, but first I was wondering, do you think that after a lot of your time being in nature and spending time around nature and animals? Do you feel like humans are supposed to be here? Or do you feel like, do you feel like we are an additive or a deterrent?

• 1:15:23Speaker 01

  Where it's, it's really interesting question. What we should be as humans is docents of this planet. We're the smartest creature on this planet, bar none.

• 1:15:32Theo Von?

  Docent, what does it mean?

• 1:15:34Speaker 01

  Uh, the guardian of the planet. We should be the ones cultivating this garden that is planet Earth and taking care of it. Instead, and I don't know when this happened or how this happened, and this may be a weird take on it. It almost feels like we're like a, like an ant colony, like a parasite on the planet. Where we're, we're just like over-expanding and just sort of taking over this whole thing. And I don't think we intend to do that. And I don't think there's a single human being on this planet that's like, we should wipe out everything, we should take over. But everybody like running on their hamster wheel of survival and needing to eat and needing clean water and needing new shoes and blah, blah, blah. It ends up being this sort of almost like parasitic thing on the planet.

• 1:16:13Speaker 01

  And instead, what, what I think we need, and this is such a weird answer, but is this sort of mentality shift of like, okay, there's a lot of us, there's eight billion people here, or 10 billion, whatever we're up to now. How do we take care of the planet so that the planet takes care of us? Instead of how do we industrialize as much as possible and take from the planet? And I don't think people want to take from the planet. I don't think generally they do. It's just, I believe we should be here, we're supposed to be here. But I think we've lost sight of the fact that as the most, what's the Peter Parker quote? With great power comes great responsibility. We have that power. We need to be responsible for that planet.

• 1:16:51Theo Von?

  Yeah. Yeah, I almost wish there was like a breathalyzer for people that were in power.

• 1:16:57Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 1:16:58Theo Von?

  So you could just see if they're fucking like, dude, like, all right, just blow in here, make sure you give a fuck about.

• 1:17:03Speaker 01

  You good, you good, here, blow.

• 1:17:04Theo Von?

  Yeah. Have you watered your plants at home today?

• 1:17:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. You good to drive this planet or not? Yeah.

• 1:17:11Theo Von?

  Hey, I'm gonna need you to pull this planet over to the side of the road for a second.

• 1:17:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, let's take it. Let's take a quick look at you. Yeah.

• 1:17:19Theo Von?

  Dude, that's hilarious, bro. Thank you, bro. That's so funny. But yeah, I don't understand why, if we can tell if somebody's drunk, we can't tell if they have a moral compass when it comes to

• 1:17:32Theo Von?

  trying to be ethical or, you know, trying to, yeah, try, I guess, trying to care about things outside of themselves, you know? But maybe that's coming.

• 1:17:40Speaker 01

  I think it's coming, and I also don't think, like, I hate the idea of me sitting here and going, "Theo, don't, don't use a plastic bag at the grocery store. Come on, man." And like guilt tripping you. I use plastic bags at the grocery store.

• 1:17:54Theo Von?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:17:54Speaker 01

  But you know what I mean? It's like, that, what's the bigger offset? It's like, okay, you know, like, fine, we shouldn't be using as many plastic bags, but also, like, let's just choose, make smaller choices that add up that don't impact us. You know what I mean? It's like, don't be preachy, just care a little bit.

• 1:18:10Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:11Speaker 01

  It's it. It's not that hard. You know what I mean?

• 1:18:13Theo Von?

  Yeah, and I think also that, I think some, you know, we're all at such the whims and responsibilities of so many bigger corporations, not to put it on to them, because we all play a part in our own governance as humans and just governing ourselves. But the fact that, you know, that we live in societies that have dirty water, just the things where you're like, what are we doing?

• 1:18:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:38Theo Von?

  Right? Like, we could be doing so much better than this.

• 1:18:40Speaker 01

  I think so many of these things are becoming cool and mainstream, though. I just saw a thing from Mr. Beast a couple days ago, where he got like, I don't know the number, like a million people clean water. That's as mainstream as it gets, man. He's the biggest YouTuber on the planet, and YouTube's the biggest medium on the planet. Like, I think that's awesome.

• 1:18:56Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:56Speaker 01

  You know, like, if you're making clean water for people that don't have clean water mainstream, how cool is that?

• 1:19:02Theo Von?

  Hell, yeah, dude. Yeah. I've been hearing about this initiative for a while. Let me see. Mr. Beast launched his Team Water campaign in August 2025 to provide 2 million people with clean water.

• 1:19:11Speaker 01

  Two million people. Heck, yeah. That's so cool. Like, how much cooler is that than like, you know, like, "Watch me drive my Lambo" or whatever, you know? It's like, this is mainstream now.

• 1:19:20Theo Von?

  Bro, 100%, especially the fact that...

• 1:19:24Theo Von?

  Everything is becoming privatized. The fact that the government of Michigan couldn't do this for their people.

• 1:19:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:19:30Theo Von?

  But here, he, you know.

• 1:19:31Speaker 01

  Right. And individuals doing it as opposed to a nation or a government. That's badass. And I think, I really, I mean, I'm always an optimist, but I think the world is gonna like follow suit. Like, I feel like people, when people like Mr. Beast are leading the charge, everybody else can be like, yeah, this is rad. This is awesome.

• 1:19:47Theo Von?

  Well, it's funny that somebody who had to come along to take care of like, help the environment was, had Beast in their name, you know?

• 1:19:53Speaker 01

  It's kinda badass. Yeah. It's pretty cool. Yeah. Especially for a vanilla white guy like Jimmy.

• 1:20:00Theo Von?

  The campaign's core promise is that every dollar donated provides one year of clean water for someone in need. That's all.

• 1:20:05Speaker 01

  So cool.

• 1:20:05Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I think, you know, like, not that I'm anywhere near a Mr. Beast level, but like, this is what I hope to do one day, is to make wildlife conservation and science mainstream and cool.

• 1:20:17Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:17Speaker 01

  You know, it's like, if it's cool, people will do it.

• 1:20:20Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:20Speaker 01

  You know?

• 1:20:22Theo Von?

  Yeah, I agree, man. I think, I think you're right. I think having the attitude that that's where we're headed, that let's take some of this stuff out of the government's hands, let's put it into people's hands, because a lot of government has gotten so corrupted and can be so corrupted, even going back to like what you're talking about in different countries and where you grew up and how, like, the influence of government can get so, um, it can get so desperate.

• 1:20:44Speaker 01

  Definitely.

• 1:20:45Theo Von?

  Whereas hopefully the heart of an individual human and, and individual humans overall can, um, can hopefully remain, uh, can, can remain more hopeful and uncompromised. Um, you would hope.

• 1:20:59Speaker 01

  No, in, no organization, government body, NGO, is gonna have the passion and the drive of an individual. Obviously, Mr. Beast's thing is clean water for people.

• 1:21:08Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:21:08Speaker 01

  Nobody, I don't care if you're the government of the United States, you don't have that same passion that that individual has. You know what I mean? And that's where impact comes from. It comes from that, that passion.

• 1:21:18Theo Von?

  It's so true. And you start to realize that sometimes too. Like, you're like, oh shit, I see how some, somebody cared.

• 1:21:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:26Theo Von?

  And they just kept caring.

• 1:21:27Speaker 01

  And they just kept doing it. And they just kept hammering it until we all cared.

• 1:21:30Theo Von?

  And it started to figure things out.

• 1:21:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's rad.

• 1:21:33Theo Von?

  Um, I want to talk about the de-extinction, right?

• 1:21:37Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:21:37Theo Von?

  So, take me into some of that world. There was a company, there's a company Colossal?

• 1:21:41Speaker 01

  Colossal Biosciences.

• 1:21:42Theo Von?

  Colossal Biosciences, who recently, they were in the press with recreating the dire wolf.

• 1:21:47Speaker 01

  That's right, yeah.

• 1:21:48Theo Von?

  And it, was it actually recreated?

• 1:21:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, so there's some interesting stuff here. So I, you know, our buddy Joe Rogan, I, I connected him with Ben Lam, the CEO of Colossal, and they went and spoke about it. And I'm a, I'm a conservation advisor to Colossal. So I don't, can't tell you much about genetics, because I don't know much about it, but I know a lot about conservation. So I help say, here's where we should put the dire wolf if we release them, that kind of thing. You know, the conservation side of it. Not going to release dire wolves, by the way. But that's, that's the role that I fill there. So I'm luckily on the inside of this de-extinction thing. The dire wolf's interesting. Uh, there's a woman named Beth Shapiro who's in charge of it, and she can explain the genetics wholeheartedly. What my understanding of is it or isn't it a dire wolf, which is your main question,

• 1:22:33Speaker 01

  is Colossal found through, they did more genetic sampling than anyone else has ever done. And they found that the dire wolf was actually closely related to a gray wolf, which is what they built their dire wolf after, or they ma, they built it from, rather. Uh, versus the people who got upset and said, this isn't a dire wolf, is because they thought the dire wolves were originally more closely related to jackals, which is a different kind of canid. Um, so my understanding, which is very limited, because I'm not a geneticist, is that they did make basically a giant white gray wolf, which is what a dire wolf was, according to the most varied genetic sampling that's ever taken place. Not an expert, but I think the thing to think about is not the minutia, at least for me, of is it a dire wolf, isn't it? What genes does it have?

• 1:23:17Speaker 01

  It's like saying, are, are you a human and am I a human? Well, but Theo's got long brown hair and Forrest has short brown hair. This guy has a beard and that guy has a goatee. It's like, wow, they're not the same. It's like, right, but we walk the same, we talk the same, we eat the same. You know, we fill the same ecological niche. And I think that's the point of what the science is.

• 1:23:34Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 1:23:35Speaker 01

  Putting dodos back in Mauritius is going to help the forest. Putting thylacine back in Tasmania is going to help with the overabundance of all these macropods, which are like marsupials. Um, and that's what Colossal's trying to do with the de-extinction, at least as I understand it. And I think that's awesome.

• 1:23:50Theo Von?

  Okay, so, so do you think that they, so they're kind of creating something as close as possible?

• 1:23:56Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:23:57Theo Von?

  Okay, and by creating something as close as possible and putting them back into animal society, basically, it will help fulfill a space that could help nature be more robust?

• 1:24:09Speaker 01

  Exactly, that's, that's a perfect way to put it. A good example is like, imagine aliens came to Earth, and they found a tribe in the middle of the jungle, and the tribe had jaundice, and they're like, oh, all humans are yellow. Right? Now the aliens think humans are yellow. That's how humans are. That's how we look at, say, Tasmania. We go, oh, Tasmania is an island nation that just has tons of roadkill and a bazillion macropods. Well, it actually shouldn't. It's very unhealthy, just like our, our tribe with jaundice, right? Like, it's a very unhealthy population because it's lost that little niche, that thing, and in this case, we're talking about a thylacine, which is like a Tasmanian tiger. So if they bring that back, or something very, very close and similar, it looks like it, walks like it, talks like that, acts like that, and it's not like they're just gonna be like, alright, we brought them back, chuck them out there, you know, it's gonna be a slow thing,

• 1:24:53Speaker 01

  and that's the part that I like to help with. But if they're able to put that back into the ecosystem, they're gonna balance out that ecosystem. And that balance creates health.

• 1:25:01Theo Von?

  Got it.

• 1:25:02Speaker 01

  Gets rid of diseases, gets rid of over, overpopulation, all the things that throw a system off balance. Which I think's cool, and that's why I love it. Like, I love the idea that we can right humanity's wrongs, like where we've to, the stuff with like dire wolves and mammoths are less for me, but the stuff where they're like, here's where humans took an animal, killed it till it was completely gone, and here's where we can come in and go, we can fix it? Then I'm like, let's go.

• 1:25:29Theo Von?

  Let's go. Do you know if you, if we would ever be able to create, like, you know, create the woolly mammoth, create a, a...

• 1:25:43Theo Von?

  Dinosaurs, you know, do you know that if that if that's possible?

• 1:25:47Speaker 01

  What I know is that if you take something that has really healthy intact DNA and has a close living relative, for instance, you take the mammoth, because mammoths only died out 10,000 years ago. And so there's lots of fresh DNA frozen in ice and tusks. And you know that guy John Reeves up in Alaska, you know who that is?

• 1:26:05Theo Von?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:26:06Speaker 01

  This guy's got this crazy place where he gets all these tusks and mammoth chunks, stuff. He's even eaten mammoth, crazy dude, super cool.

• 1:26:11Theo Von?

  No, really?

• 1:26:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, this guy. So he's constantly getting mammoth parts, right? So there's really good DNA. Now, you take you take that and you take an Asian elephant, an Indian elephant, and they're 99.6% related to a mammoth. Okay, so now you've got really good DNA. You've got an animal that's 99.6% related. All you've got to do is combine those to get that 0.4% and you've made a mammoth, essentially.

• 1:26:37Theo Von?

  Dude, and then you made a movie called Mameths.

• 1:26:39Speaker 01

  Mameths, Meth Mammoth, Meth Meth, Meth Meth?

• 1:26:43Theo Von?

  Meth Meth, the Meth Meth.

• 1:26:44Speaker 01

  The Meth Meth, that's hard to say.

• 1:26:46Theo Von?

  And they all have lists.

• 1:26:47Speaker 01

  And, yeah, that's right, that's right.

• 1:26:49Theo Von?

  Dude, being on meth and having a list would be the worst.

• 1:26:54Speaker 01

  Boy, that'd be hard to follow.

• 1:26:55Theo Von?

  Wow, so so that's what you're saying. So it's like, we're gonna get, so you're getting as close as you can get?

• 1:27:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:04Theo Von?

  Do you think we could get into like actually increasing the scale then over time? I mean, do you think some of those things are possible?

• 1:27:09Speaker 01

  I do. Yeah, I think with technology will be. And that's why I don't think a dinosaur is possible. Because dinosaurs died out millions of years ago.

• 1:27:15Theo Von?

  Right, it's too far off.

• 1:27:16Speaker 01

  That DNA is just shattered, you know, it's like the the puzzle's too hard to put back to. You take an egg, you crack it, it's like, oh, these cracks goes back together. You smash it, you're like, I can never get that egg back together. You know, it's like that. That's how I see it. Yeah.

• 1:27:28Theo Von?

  Now, how interesting would it be then, though, that if certain companies own the DNA?

• 1:27:36Theo Von?

  Or own this genetic mapping that's able to put these things back together. Then now animals would in some way become kind of privatized in a weird way.

• 1:27:44Speaker 01

  I think it could. I really do. Like, you know, I don't know what, how that would work. But imagine you're this crazy billionaire and you're like, alright, the technology's there. I know it's gonna cost $500 million to bring back a, I'm making this up, Titanoboa. I don't know if you know what that is. Giant 50 foot long anaconda.

• 1:28:04Theo Von?

  Bring them up.

• 1:28:05Speaker 01

  So, there's probably no such thing as healthy Titanoboa DNA. But what we could probably do, I'm making all this up as we go, with the technology, is take a regular anaconda, take out its growth restrictor through genetic engineering, and make it 50 feet. And this guy's like, "I want, I want the Titanoboa's and I have 500 million." Now he's just privatized this mutant creature.

• 1:28:28Theo Von?

  Probably Nicolas Cage would do it.

• 1:28:30Speaker 01

  Yeah? You think?

• 1:28:31Theo Von?

  I think-

• 1:28:31Speaker 01

  Seems like a Nick Cage kind of thing to do.

• 1:28:33Theo Von?

  Yeah, I think it would just be cool, you know, you teach a Titanoboa to just bring you some, bring you and your date some almonds or something while you're watching Shane Gillis's tires on Netflix or something.

• 1:28:47Speaker 01

  That's just the weirdest image I just painted in my head as you said that.

• 1:28:52Theo Von?

  Let me, bring up the information on the Titanoboa. Let me just rattle it off so we know what it is.

• 1:28:57Speaker 01

  That's pretty, pretty, it's just watching Shane Gillis's tires.

• 1:29:01Theo Von?

  Titanoboa is an extinct genus of, of giant boaed, the family that includes all boas and anacondas, snake that lived during the middle and late Paleocene. Was first discovered in the early 2000s by a tropical research institute.

• 1:29:17Theo Von?

  Is the largest snake ever found at the time. Titanoboa could grow up to 42 feet long, perhaps even to 47 feet long, and weigh around 1,600 to 2,500 pounds.

• 1:29:29Speaker 01

  That's crazy, man. Like imagine, imagine a snake that was eating full grown horses.

• 1:29:37Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:38Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? That is so crazy to think about. Yeah. But I don't know, yeah, to, to your point, I think they could privatize these things. I certainly know that that's not what Colossal's goal is. They're just trying to fix the ecosystem and get carbon credits and whatnot. But it, it, it's a crazy thought. It's a crazy thought. Nick Cage, don't do it.

• 1:29:59Theo Von?

  Yeah, dude, it would probably be like some of the richest people ever would be doing it. Probably Nick Cage. Sam Altman would probably have some, you know, like a beautiful parakeet or something that's never, that makes a sound that only he can hear.

• 1:30:14Speaker 01

  What would you have?

• 1:30:15Theo Von?

  Oh, I'd have probably one of the most famous, probably, probably I would have a hamster or a gerbil.

• 1:30:23Speaker 01

  Okay, a giant one or just a standard?

• 1:30:26Theo Von?

  Pretty big.

• 1:30:26Speaker 01

  Pretty big, I like that, like you ride it to town.

• 1:30:29Theo Von?

  I mean, I would at least break it out to show the ladies at night.

• 1:30:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's smart. Yeah, pick up gerbil.

• 1:30:33Theo Von?

  Yeah, they're like, what is that?

• 1:30:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're trying to pick up Richard Gere or what are you doing over there?

• 1:30:39Theo Von?

  They're like, oh, is that a French bull gerbil?

• 1:30:41Speaker 01

  French bull gerbil. Nah, I just breathe funny.

• 1:30:47Theo Von?

  Dude, that'd be so great. If you had a French bull gerbil, you would get all of the girls.

• 1:30:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, nothing gets bust like a French bull gerbil. That's a fact.

• 1:30:56Theo Von?

  Oh, it would be wet. Watching a French bull gerbil get out of the pool and then shake itself off after?

• 1:31:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. The girls are just like, oh, Theo, I'm yours.

• 1:31:06Theo Von?

  Braziers are just landing on it?

• 1:31:08Speaker 01

  It's like a, it's like a rock concert.

• 1:31:11Theo Von?

  Um, are there any species that you think should go extinct?

• 1:31:17Speaker 01

  I don't think, I mean, there's invasive species that need to go locally extinct. Like, we shouldn't have Burmese pythons in the Florida Everglades, right? I don't know if you know about that, the big snakes in the Everglades? Yeah, they're a problem. Like, that's localized extinction that should happen. But that's again, because we've caused a problem. There are other animals, and this is a very unpopular opinion. They're trying to make themselves extinct. Panda bears? Panda, if you, Theo, if you're at a zoo, and you go to a mama panda bear and you offer her an apple, she will hand you her baby for that apple. True story. You can literally find a video of what I just said. I mean, these things are trying to go extinct. I don't want them to go extinct. They're incredibly cool. But they are so dumb. Like, look at this. Give mama an apple and you can just take her baby away. I mean, that should not be. You know what I mean?

• 1:32:02Theo Von?

  Cause they're just so, they're just addicted to the food?

• 1:32:05Speaker 01

  They're, they're food motivated, they're bad parents, they're- They're sort of a creature that, and I, again, I don't want to see them go extinct. I think they're super cool, but they're sort of a creature that naturally was probably edging towards extinction before humans intervened. Another good example is the great auk. So this is a bird that once had colonies of millions and millions.

• 1:32:24Theo Von?

  The great auk.

• 1:32:25Speaker 01

  Great auk. It's like basically, so penguins are from Antarctica, the south. This was kind of our version, the northern version of a penguin. Yeah, yeah, northern penguin.

• 1:32:34Theo Von?

  Let's go.

• 1:32:35Speaker 01

  And they had these huge colonies of millions of birds, but during the, when, when down feathers became a thing, we drove them to extinction. Humans did. But had we not done that, had humans not done that, they probably were on their way towards extinction anyway, because their numbers had shrunk and shrunk and shrunk. Their colonies had shrunk and shrunk and shrunk. There was only 10 or 12 or whatever colonies of these birds left. So they were like on the road to extinction anyway. And then humans came in and put the nail in the coffin.

• 1:33:04Theo Von?

  Got it.

• 1:33:04Speaker 01

  So naturalized extinction does happen and it's a normal thing. But it's probably not good when industrial consumption, like I'm going to take every feather from every auk I can, comes in and speeds up that process. And the reason I say it's not good is because nothing else can adapt. All the animals that would eat great auk, that relied on great auk, all of a sudden they're gone overnight, whereas if they slowly die out over time, nature is such a complete system that something else comes in to take its place. The animals find a new food source, a different bird comes in and starts nesting there. You know what I mean? Like it adapts. Whereas if we just come in and drop the knife, it's like, oh shit, like the whole thing's broken.

• 1:33:45Theo Von?

  What's the greatest example of that where humans have come in and affected an ecosystem so much with kind of like leading to the extinction or loss of an animal that you believe has had the largest effect?

• 1:33:58Speaker 01

  Probably a combination of things in Australia. Like in Australia, we came in, we brought cane toads, which is a big frog from South America that we brought them in because we started farming sugarcane in Australia and then they got cane beetle, which is a parasite. So they're like, hey, let's get cane toads in to eat the cane beetle. Well, the problem is these giant ass toads. Toads that you're seeing here, they came in, they have these venom sacs. See those big bulbous things behind its eyes? That's full of venom.

• 1:34:24Theo Von?

  Fuck.

• 1:34:25Speaker 01

  And nothing in Australia has ever been adapted to tolerate that venom. So they brought these cane toads in. Cane toads, everything would try and eat them, all the goannas and the snakes and stuff, and they'd be dropping dead. And so this single frog, this act of bringing in these frogs to help combat the cane beetle, has probably had one of the greatest ecological disasters in history. And like the country of Australia is at something like a 70% reduction in animals because of these things.

• 1:34:53Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 1:34:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's crazy. And that's a hu- straight human fumble, like we're gonna put, we're gonna bring, it wasn't a removal, it was bringing something in, but it, same, same effect.

• 1:35:02Theo Von?

  Who brought them there?

• 1:35:04Speaker 01

  Sugarcane farmers, I don't know who specifically, yeah.

• 1:35:08Theo Von?

  God, that's wild, dude.

• 1:35:09Speaker 01

  It's crazy.

• 1:35:10Theo Von?

  We were, we were doing a, we were doing some shows up in, uh, I want to say it was Maine or New Hampshire, right along the coast.

• 1:35:16Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 1:35:16Theo Von?

  And we went down, but it's by the docks, cause it was beautiful down there to see in the boat. It was like a, kind of like all, like about an hour before sunset. And we had a show nearby and we just stopped in this little town. And some of the guys who, they were bringing in lobster traps.

• 1:35:34Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 1:35:35Theo Von?

  And they all, they had all these things on them called sea squirts.

• 1:35:39Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:35:39Theo Von?

  It was a plant, see if you could bring it up.

• 1:35:41Speaker 01

  It's like a, like a sponge, right?

• 1:35:42Theo Von?

  Yeah, it was like a thing that it got, it looked hollow, it almost looked plastic. Sea squirts, also known as acidians or tunicaits, are marine filter feeders with a sack-like body covered by a tough cellulose-based tunic. Yeah, they almost looked like it was a candy or something, it was just full of like, kind of water. They filter bacteria and plankton from water drawn through their siphons and their larvae possess a primitive backbone, making them a part of the chordophyllum.

• 1:36:11Theo Von?

  What does it say that they, how did they get to America?

• 1:36:15Speaker 01

  Are they invasive?

• 1:36:16Theo Von?

  This, this, these, these guys were saying these were all invasive, they all came from Asia.

• 1:36:21Speaker 01

  Oh, really? Oh, that's interesting. Oh yeah, they're invading Long Island Sound. Attaching the hulls of commercial recreational ships, being transported in their ballast water. A process known as hull fouling.

• 1:36:33Theo Von?

  They also could have been introduced via aquaculture shipments such as oyster seed or by hitchhiking or fishing equipment.

• 1:36:40Speaker 01

  There's another huge example of that called a zebra mussel, or zebra mussel, which is in all the lakes across the US. And they get so bad, see how they grow on everything? That like your boat engine and stuff gets filled with them. And it's crazy because all you have to do is run your live well, you know, to go bass fishing or whatever, and the fry is microscopic. So then you have one drop of water with a little bit of fry in it and you take your boat to another lake, they're all over the lake.

• 1:37:04Theo Von?

  What does fry mean?

• 1:37:06Speaker 01

  Uh, like the larval stage, the baby.

• 1:37:08Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 1:37:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:09Theo Von?

  God. I know, and that's man, that's man doing that probably most of the time.

• 1:37:15Speaker 01

  And oftentimes, like the cane toad was an intentional, this is completely unintentional. And we've done that over and over, like taken rats to New Zealand and Hawaii and blah blah. And it's just humans doing what humans do, you know, just traveling and learning. Crazy thing, you know dingoes? We brought dingoes to Australia. Humans brought dingoes to Australia 4,000 years ago. When Aboriginal people came across from Indonesia, New Guinea into Australia, they brought dogs with them and those dogs were dingoes. They're like the OG invasive species. And they're like a national treasure in Australia, but they've been there 4,000 years, but humans actually brought them there.

• 1:37:50Theo Von?

  Yeah, they weren't even supposed to be.

• 1:37:51Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:37:52Theo Von?

  Dude, that's the kind of shit that happens, dude, my step grandmother, she brings her fucking cat over to Thanksgiving and everybody's fucking pissed.

• 1:38:00Theo Von?

  That thing is a piece of shit.

• 1:38:01Speaker 01

  Most cats are, I hate cats, but yeah, I feel you. Peeing everywhere, yeah.

• 1:38:09Theo Von?

  What is one of your biggest like sleeper creatures? Like a creature that we are all kind of sleeping on that people don't know how awesome it is, or that just doesn't get the acclaim that it should, do you think?

• 1:38:20Speaker 01

  Uh, you know what I think's a good one? Soft shell turtle. A turtle with a soft shell. Why? It's so crazy.

• 1:38:27Theo Von?

  Very brave.

• 1:38:28Speaker 01

  Dude, it's brave, it's nuts. These things evolved away from having a hard shell.

• 1:38:32Theo Von?

  It's like a gay dude in the military kind of, you know?

• 1:38:36Speaker 01

  No, I don't, please explain.

• 1:38:38Theo Von?

  I don't know how to explain, I'm just guessing.

• 1:38:39Speaker 01

  Fair enough, yeah, fair enough. It's just brave, it's just brave, yeah.

• 1:38:44Theo Von?

  Never mind, thank you for your service. Don't ask, don't shell.

• 1:38:48Speaker 01

  Uh, don't ask, don't shell. I don't know. I think these things don't get enough credit. You see them on highways in Florida and stuff.

• 1:38:56Theo Von?

  So they're really, the shell is soft?

• 1:38:58Speaker 01

  Soft. It's like, feels like leather.

• 1:38:59Theo Von?

  No.

• 1:39:00Speaker 01

  And it's just such a weird, like, if you think about a turtle, you think about this, this like, living rock, its flippers, its head, its feet, whatever, then you got this guy. Like, what the hell's this guy doing? He's got this leathery shell, they get like this big, there's certain species that get, if you look up the raphidus, they get massive. Like, I'm talking about the size of a car.

• 1:39:18Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 1:39:19Speaker 01

  A soft-shell turtle. Talking about an animal that just doesn't get enough credit.

• 1:39:23Theo Von?

  A turtle is just crazy, isn't it?

• 1:39:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. They're insane. They're weird. Look at these guys. Look at these penis-headed things.

• 1:39:30Theo Von?

  It's nice to have like your kind of to-go home on your back or whatever, but it's just crazy.

• 1:39:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. They're insane. They're such weird, cool animals and don't get enough credit.

• 1:39:42Theo Von?

  I think because they feel so, I wonder, are they nervous? That's why they pop back in their shell? Or are they?

• 1:39:48Speaker 01

  Oh, it's called out, you know?

• 1:39:49Theo Von?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:39:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, their, their defensive mechanism is to go into their shell unless you're a soft-shell. Then it's being fast. Yeah. They've, they've evolved to be faster instead of retreat.

• 1:40:03Theo Von?

  Oh, that's a large one you showed right there?

• 1:40:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, the raphidus. Yeah, and they get huge. So they're, this is an animal that there's currently believed to be, uh, three left, one male with a broken penis and two females.

• 1:40:16Theo Von?

  Nah-uh.

• 1:40:17Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:40:17Theo Von?

  So. So they gotta fix that wiener on him.

• 1:40:20Speaker 01

  So, yeah, it's, uh, it's pretty sad. So we went and did a show on these guys. It's crazy. It's a whole political turmoil, everything. So the male, there were two males and two females. And one of the males died because a kid dropped a brick on its head from the enclosure in a, in a zoo in China, in Suzhou, China, I believe. So now there's one male and two females.

• 1:40:38Theo Von?

  That's an op.

• 1:40:38Speaker 01

  Then, uh, yeah, then the male, they tried to, tried to breed it or something, broken dick. Legit broken dick. Yeah. So now they've got two females in this lake in Dongmo in Vietnam, and one male in China, I believe that's where the current numbers are. And neither country is willing to give the other their turtles, but it wouldn't really matter anyway because it's got a broken dick. So the whole thing's kind of, kind of fucked.

• 1:41:02Theo Von?

  Somebody, so Trump needs to arrange a meeting between all of these people, I think.

• 1:41:06Speaker 01

  You know, I think he should sit down and be like, alright, how are we fixing this dick? You know? I know we got some other stuff going on, but how are we working on this?

• 1:41:14Theo Von?

  Wow, the most widely cited figure is two confirmed individuals, both male, one in Suzhou Zoo, China, and one in Dongmo Lake, Vietnam. Dang.

• 1:41:23Speaker 01

  I thought one of those males died, like I was talking about. I'm not sure, but oh yeah, last known female died. Uh, I don't, it's, yeah, it's hard to track. I think it's one male and two females that we know of.

• 1:41:33Theo Von?

  The, the future of the species now depends on last ditch conservation and breeding efforts, as well as the possibility of verifying additional, uh, individual turtles. Wow.

• 1:41:42Speaker 01

  So we went out to Dongmo Lake and we ran EDNA and got samples and even filmed one of these animals. Um, and this is where like colossal biosciences, right? Like if they could get a, an X and a Y chromosome, a male and a female, they could make those turtles. And that would be awesome. That's where like that technology, to me, there's no ethical concern. There's no moral concern. It's like, hell yeah. Like we went and got these samples, male and female chromosomes, tissue, built new turtles, ground up, good to go.

• 1:42:11Theo Von?

  Are they out there, are they searching for these things? And how are they doing it? How are they trying to get, um, DNA or genetic material so that they can, uh, create or recreate or reestablish species?

• 1:42:24Speaker 01

  Well, I don't think, oh, you mean, how's colossal doing it?

• 1:42:26Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're, they're, they're going all over the world. They're digging up stuff like that guy, John Reeves, that place in Alaska they're getting samples from. Uh, they've been on multiple digs in Mauritius, getting dodo samples. Yeah, they're, they're collecting all that kind of stuff.

• 1:42:39Theo Von?

  How much more animals existed at one time, do you think? Like what percentage are we down to right now?

• 1:42:44Speaker 01

  Oh, that's a good question. Um, we have a lot of diversity in this era, more so than like when there were dinosaurs and stuff like that. That's, that's, I mean, fact check me on that, but yeah, it's mammalian diversity is higher than when like reptiles were at their peak. And yeah, there's a lot of mammals. It's really good. Yeah. But you know, we have eliminated a lot, like we talked about, but we're still, and I don't believe in this whole like we're fucked thing. Like we're still in, the planet's incredible. Wildlife's resilient. Like we're not down that much. Yes, we've knocked huge populations down, meaning we've knocked down, you know, shark species to 10% of what there were, we've, our populations, we've knocked down certain mammal species to five or 10% of what they were. That's all it takes to bring it back.

• 1:43:26Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? Like you just back off a little bit, they'll, they'll bounce right back.

• 1:43:30Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:43:30Speaker 01

  There's a study that got put out a few years ago. I'd be curious if anybody's done a study since that said if you didn't, if we as human beings didn't fish the ocean for seven years, it would be back to 99% fullness of what it's at now. That's it. Seven years is all it would take allegedly. That's not very long. We can't do that because 99% of the world's protein comes from the ocean or something like that. But that's all it takes for nature to like build, fight its way back up, you know?

• 1:43:55Theo Von?

  Do you think there's a certain country or certain part of the world that they, you find that they have it right when it comes to nature and to animalia?

• 1:44:05Speaker 01

  No. I think there's lots of places that are trying, you know, the Galapagos has done a really good job of like really taking care of their islands. Like you go through quarantine when you go there and blah, blah, blah. And there are other play like Palau, which is a tiny little island nation. I think it is either the only or definitely the first country in the world that said no commercial fishing. It's like, go out and kill your own fish all you like and eat them, but we're not doing any commercial fishing.

• 1:44:30Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:30Speaker 01

  That's awesome. You know, it's like, you want to go out and shoot a fish? Go shoot a fish. But you know, you're not buying it from a purse saner who's killing dolphins and wiping out coral reefs. Like that kind of thing's awesome. But you know, we wouldn't be having Nobu in, in Tennessee if, if that existed. So it's, you know, it's a trade off.

• 1:44:45Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:44:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:46Theo Von?

  Yeah. And whoever fucking brought Nobu to Tennessee is out of their fucking mind, dude.

• 1:44:50Speaker 01

  I don't know if there is one, but yeah.

• 1:44:52Theo Von?

  I think there is actually. I don't know. Every time I see somebody going to something where it's like they're trying to put it in Nashville, I'm like, what are you doing? You know?

• 1:44:58Speaker 01

  Dude, Nashville's, Nashville's wild. I got to walk around today.

• 1:45:01Theo Von?

  It's fun.

• 1:45:02Speaker 01

  It's cool, man. It's busy. I'm gonna go out this evening, check out Broadway, right?

• 1:45:06Theo Von?

  Yeah. You have some other friends here or no?

• 1:45:07Speaker 01

  I got a friend here. Yeah. He's gonna meet me. I mean, you're welcome to join, but we'll go check it out. Yeah.

• 1:45:11Theo Von?

  I might try to come say, hey, or go get a snack with you or something.

• 1:45:14Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:45:14Theo Von?

  Um, anything else you want to chat about for us? I think this has been a good first episode so far, do you think?

• 1:45:19Speaker 01

  Dude, I think it's great, man. I'm just like, if you're, if you're interested, I'm interested. My thing is like, people love it. I'm into it.

• 1:45:25Theo Von?

  I want to go to South, I want to do that South Africa thing.

• 1:45:28Speaker 01

  Let's do it, man. I'm happy. And if, if, you know,

• 1:45:31Theo Von?

  October may be too soon.

• 1:45:33Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:45:33Theo Von?

  But I could always do it in the spring or something.

• 1:45:37Speaker 01

  If you're planning on going, let me know and I'll try link with you and then we'll go do some really cool, like a safari thing for a few days. But I'm talking not like, hey, let's go on safari. I mean, like, hey, Theo, let's go catch giraffes and put radio collars on them.

• 1:45:50Theo Von?

  No way.

• 1:45:51Speaker 01

  Like something that people don't get to do that we'll do through the conservation groups that I work with.

• 1:45:55Theo Von?

  That house arrest bracelet on your neck.

• 1:45:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, take that, boy.

• 1:45:58Theo Von?

  Yeah. He's just showing up to his, uh, to his PO.

• 1:46:02Speaker 01

  Dude, the ladies are like, that's a bad giraffe right there. That's a bad giraffe right there.

• 1:46:09Theo Von?

  Is there an animal that you wish could speak up for itself ever better?

• 1:46:13Speaker 01

  Uh, man, that's a good question. Uh, an animal that could speak up for itself. Yeah. You know what the vaquita is?

• 1:46:20Theo Von?

  The vaquita?

• 1:46:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. Ever heard of that?

• 1:46:22Theo Von?

  No, but I'd damn, I'd put some damn cheese on one of them.

• 1:46:25Speaker 01

  Sounds pretty good, doesn't it? Yeah. Well, it's Mexican, so that makes sense.

• 1:46:29Theo Von?

  Oh, it does. Yeah. I'll take it with the verde sauce.

• 1:46:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, that makes sense. But these little guys, smallest porpoise in the world, there's now estimate, estimate between nine and 11 of them left on the planet.

• 1:46:40Theo Von?

  Which is the worst to have nine, 11 of them left. Sounds fucking like bad luck.

• 1:46:46Speaker 01

  That's a bad sign. Yeah. I wish these guys could speak up for themselves because they're, they're just these crazy cute little dolphins. They're driving towards extinction. There's not a lot that can be done based on how things are going. They, they need to, they need to flip her up to somebody and just be like, eh, eh, eh, eh, help, eh, eh, eh, and we'd be good.

• 1:47:04Theo Von?

  Vaquita.

• 1:47:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:06Theo Von?

  Oh, they look like the quokkas of the sea.

• 1:47:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, nice. Good pull.

• 1:47:09Theo Von?

  Where their smile is kind of built on.

• 1:47:11Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 1:47:12Theo Von?

  It's funny how some animals, God kind of put a smile on them. So you would just see that they're okay, you know?

• 1:47:17Speaker 01

  I mean, you look at a quokka and you're like, right, well, we're never letting that thing go anywhere. It's too cute, you know? If everything was cute, we'd be good.

• 1:47:25Theo Von?

  Why are some animals only in one spot? Cause aren't the Quokas only native to an island off the coast of Australia?

• 1:47:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, near to Perth, yeah.

• 1:47:33Theo Von?

  I mean, that's crazy to think on a whole planet.

• 1:47:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:36Theo Von?

  That they're that specific of a place. I mean, that's wild, isn't it?

• 1:47:39Speaker 01

  It's cra- yeah, so they get there as something else, like as a small wallaby or whatever. And then, like with the Quoka, for instance, they're like, oh, wait, having tails doesn't help us. So year after year, shorter tails, shorter tails, shorter tails. Hey, wait, having this big goofy smile and these big fat cheeks, that's actually good because we store food. I'm making this stuff up, but you know, and then they breed more and more and more. And then before you know it, you've got its own species that's stuck here. That's completely different from these guys because their environment dictates that these characteristics make it useful for this place only.

• 1:48:10Theo Von?

  Hmm.

• 1:48:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. I don't know if that makes sense.

• 1:48:12Theo Von?

  Yeah, it does. Well, I think it shows also why humans have adapted and become different ways because they needed to become fit for their territory.

• 1:48:20Speaker 01

  Exactly, yeah. You look at, what is it, the Sudanese, South Sudanese, the tallest people in the world? Like, why are those guys so tall? You know what I mean? And it's obviously genetic and cultural and everything else, but these guys are all over seven feet. Like, that's incredible that that only takes place in that one area.

• 1:48:35Theo Von?

  Why, why did they need to be so tall? Do you know?

• 1:48:38Speaker 01

  I don't know. I would like to know.

• 1:48:40Theo Von?

  Let's look it up right now and see if we can get a little bit more information.

• 1:48:42Speaker 01

  I'd like to go there. Wouldn't you like to stand around with seven foot tall people? It sounds so interesting.

• 1:48:47Theo Von?

  Yeah, until you frickin', you know, until you hit your head on something and realize that it's like, oh, God.

• 1:48:52Speaker 01

  Wipes you across the face. Oh, boy, that's not what I wanted.

• 1:48:55Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:56Speaker 01

  Then you and your buddy from Florida high school are sharing the same problem.

• 1:49:00Theo Von?

  Yeah, it's like, like, you see that person that's blindfolded and the pinata hits him when he's swinging around?

• 1:49:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:07Speaker 01

  Danglers get ya.

• 1:49:09Theo Von?

  South Sudanese people, particularly the Nili, Niliotic groups like the Dinka and the Nuer are among the tallest in the world, largely due to a mix of genetics, natural selection, and nutritional factors. The tall, lean bodies of the South Sudanese, Nilotis, help with thermoregulation in a hot, dry climate.

• 1:49:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:28Theo Von?

  Longer limbs facilitate heat dissipation, supporting survival in tropical conditions. A phenomenon aligned with the Bergmann's and Allan's rules in biology.

• 1:49:37Speaker 01

  How crazy is that? It's so damn hot here that we're gonna make you taller so that you can off gas more and stay cooler. And by the way, you're all gonna be seven feet tall. Like, that's so cool.

• 1:49:49Theo Von?

  That's fascinating.

• 1:49:50Speaker 01

  Isn't that wild?

• 1:49:51Theo Von?

  Well, yeah, it's just fascinating how, I mean, I mean, it's all just fascinating. To exist is fascinating to me.

• 1:49:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, and we're lucky we live on this planet, man. I mean, not, not that I know where else we'd live, but there's just so much cool stuff here.

• 1:50:05Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:06Theo Von?

  And I think that's one thing that's just nice to even get to talk today, man, is just a reminder of that, you know? Just a reminder of it.

• 1:50:11Speaker 01

  Dude, I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on, man. It's, it's, it's really cool. Oftentimes when I talk, do podcasts or whatever, I talk to guys that, you know, we have similar interests. We talk a lot about, you know, I know, they know a lot of, like even Joe, right? Like when I do Joe's show, he knows a lot about animals.

• 1:50:26Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:50:27Speaker 01

  He's an animal nut. But to talk to you, who, no offense, but maybe knows less or has less connection, you see that, like I was saying earlier, that child sense of wonderment, be like, no way. You know, like, that's so cool that you can bring that back.

• 1:50:41Theo Von?

  Yeah, thanks, dude. Well, I just, yeah, I feel lucky to get to talk to people. I feel lucky to get to learn. I mean, I feel like, you know, like even just to be inspired today that I want to go back to South Africa, you know?

• 1:50:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:50Theo Von?

  And that it would be neat to go do something there, you know? One of my friends said yesterday, I was talking to him. I don't know if I was talking to him on the phone. Let me think about who it was really quick. Oh, damn, can't remember. But he goes, man, you know what's crazy to think? He goes, if you think about your life, think about how many summers you have left.

• 1:51:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's not that many.

• 1:51:12Theo Von?

  And you're like, whoa.

• 1:51:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, what, we got 20, 30 summers left, you know?

• 1:51:17Theo Von?

  It just starts to put the perspective of your life, you know? If even, you know, if you're 25 and say you have, uh, you know, until you're 65, you can kind of do whatever you want. You have 40 summers left, right? That's a lot of summers, but that's not that.

• 1:51:32Speaker 01

  But it's not that many summers, dude. And if you think, like, I think of my, this past summer, like, I basically worked all summer. I was on the road. I barely had a time to hang out with my kids or go, go to the lake or do any of the summer things. That's it. I lost one of those. Never getting that back. That summer's gone. It's gonna be cold when I get home now, you know? Like, that sucks.

• 1:51:51Theo Von?

  It's cool. Yeah. But it's nice today to be able to be reminded of that and just be reminded that nature's out there waiting for us, that there's a lot of things that are happening out there and that we're lucky to exist and be a part of them, man. Yeah, brother. Forrest Gant, thanks so much for coming in. People can check out Drug, Animals and Drugs. Animals on Drugs. Animals on Drugs right now. And I challenge you guys in the comments of this episode, if you can think of any good names for, um, uh, drug, animal. Oh, yeah. Crossovers, we need them. We need more kraken. Yeah. We need more kraken. Thanks, Forrest.