Bertie Gregory: Saving the Animals (Even the Ones That Are A**holes)

Trevor and Eugene go wild with world-class explorer and nature documentarian Bertie Gregory to tackle one of life’s most important questions: are animals a**holes? From whale poop and chimp gangs to elephant stepdads and guanaco hunts, Bertie pulls back the curtain on the animal kingdom’s messiest, funniest dramas—before landing on the surprisingly moving truth about climate change and what’s at stake….for them, for our planet, and for us.

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

• 0:04Speaker 00

  In history, there have been these mass extinction events. And we're now in one. When the rate of extinction goes up incredibly high, this sort of this big purge. And I think with with humans, we often talk about wanting to save the world when actually, in the long term, world, the planet.

• 0:23Trevor Noah?

  World is fine.

• 0:24Speaker 00

  It's gonna be just fine. It's just whether or not we exist or whether we exist on a place that's actually, you know, nice to be, we're not just sort of surviving.

• 0:33Trevor Noah?

  I think that's where the groups that do these things have done really well. They have sort of participated in making us think of it as save the world, which then arrogantly puts us at the center of it again in the wrong way. You know, it's like, ah, do you want to save the world? And it's like, all right, world, if you need me, I'll save you. And it's like, no, no, no, no, no, my friend, no. Do you want to be alive?

• 1:05Trevor Noah?

  This is What Now with Trevor Noah.

• 1:15Trevor Noah?

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• 1:50Trevor Noah?

  This segment is brought to you by Google Pixel. You know what's really frustrating? Knowing the exact information you need is somewhere on your phone, but still ending up wasting your time digging through five different apps just to actually find it.

• 2:05Trevor Noah?

  Thankfully, Google Pixel 11 is designed with Gemini intelligence, so it can proactively find the information I need right when I need it. Like my flight info and travel days, or my calendar when Eugene texts me to hang out. Oh, sorry Eugene, I'm booked. Learn more about what Google Pixel 11 can do at googlestore.com. These AI features are available in select countries and languages for users 18 and over, and make sure to check responses. Yeah, booked forever, forever. This episode is brought to you by Verizon. Pretty much every brand offers rewards these days, but most of them, let's be honest, they aren't that rewarding.

• 2:48Trevor Noah?

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• 3:30Trevor Noah?

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• 3:57Trevor Noah?

  Aw, man. Alright, so now I can ask you the question. So where are you coming from?

• 4:02Speaker 00

  Uh, Mexico.

• 4:04Trevor Noah?

  Alright, what were you doing in Mexico?

• 4:06Speaker 00

  Uh, so I was filming for a new project for Disney Plus, which that one is under NDA, so I won't be allowed to talk about that one. No, that one's a secret.

• 4:14Trevor Noah?

  About cartels. You have the most wholesome NDAs of anybody I know, by the way. Like, other people who have NDAs is like, yeah, no, the drug cartel, yeah, the settlement, this whole thing. And then with Bertie, it's like, I have an NDA. Oh, why, Bertie? It involves penguins. It involves penguins. Penguin's secrets. Yeah. We can't give away the penguin's secrets. And cheetahs and just cute little animals and I can't tell you their stories. So first of all, welcome.

• 4:42Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 4:43Trevor Noah?

  Thank you so much for coming. Just to give people a bit of context, even Eugene, everyone. Like Bertie is one of my favorite explorers in the world.

• 4:54Speaker 02

  You've been excited the whole day.

• 4:55Trevor Noah?

  I genuinely have. I've been excited for a long time. Because when I first met Bertie, I met I met him at like a conference type thing. And it was a room full of CEOs, you know? These are cold, heartless human beings.

• 5:10Speaker 02

  Whoa, hold on there Luigi.

• 5:14Speaker 02

  That was nice. That was very nice.

• 5:18Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, it was cold like I'm talking about like cold calculated. Show me the the KPIs and the, you know what I mean? And the the return on invest, ROIs. Lots of TLAs flying around. All of those things, all of those things. And then Bertie steps up on stage. And he goes, I'm I'm going to play you a little video. And all the other videos have been like growth, numbers, expansion. And then Bertie comes up and he's like, allow me to play your video. And it's like.

• 5:47Trevor Noah?

  It's like animals and you see people in the room. Start going onto their phones to check the stock market real quick.

• 5:55Trevor Noah?

  And then 10 seconds in, everyone's phones go down.

• 5:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:59Trevor Noah?

  And I think the first one you played for us might have been the whales. Or it might like the first one I saw of yours. And let me tell you something.

• 6:09Trevor Noah?

  I cannot tell you that I've had more experiences where I've felt like I've been transported to a completely different world. Than when I've watched the films that this man makes, even snippets of them.

• 6:26Trevor Noah?

  Transform you to another world, make you think of animals completely differently. In fact, I would, how would you?

• 6:33Speaker 00

  But the best thing is, it is our world. And I think that's the coolest thing is that.

• 6:38Trevor Noah?

  Maybe that's why you make it so. How would you describe what you do? Like, do you think of yourself an explorer, documentarian? What would you say you do?

• 6:45Speaker 00

  I think my job is to get people excited about the natural world and aware of some of the challenges it faces. And I think most importantly, understand that looking after wildlife isn't just something that's like a nice thing to do because like penguins are cute.

• 7:03Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 7:04Speaker 00

  We need it for so many things we rely on. And if nature is not healthy, we're not healthy. Um, so I guess trying to dispel the myth that, yeah, you sort of, you know, looking after nature is at odds with enterprise and all the things they were listening to.

• 7:19Trevor Noah?

  The money side of thing. So, okay, do me a favor. Actually, play me any, like an old video, anything that you have, just like, because.

• 7:27Speaker 00

  Well, let's, we started with whales.

• 7:29Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 7:29Speaker 00

  Oh, let me find the whales. Yeah.

• 7:31Trevor Noah?

  So like, you know how like, like the best video on your phone is probably.

• 7:36Speaker 02

  Hey, hey, hey, my man, he don't know my life.

• 7:43Speaker 02

  Two words.

• 7:46Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 7:47Trevor Noah?

  Tucked in.

• 7:50Speaker 02

  Thine cloaca.

• 7:55Trevor Noah?

  All right, all right, so what is this?

• 7:56Speaker 00

  Animal reproductive systems, really.

• 7:59Speaker 00

  So, so what you're looking at here, this is a, a gathering of whales in Antarctica. And.

• 8:06Speaker 02

  What was the occasion?

• 8:07Speaker 00

  Each one of the, a big party. Uh, e- each one of those whales, uh, is 25 meters long. So what's that?

• 8:15Trevor Noah?

  Uh, we use meters.

• 8:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, okay.

• 8:17Trevor Noah?

  Just let everyone else figure it out for themselves.

• 8:19Speaker 00

  Very long, about double the length of a Greyhound bus. That's a nice way of thinking about it. Yeah, yeah.

• 8:24Speaker 02

  So every time you see this little fountain, the blowhole?

• 8:26Speaker 00

  So, yeah, each one, yeah, these are fin whales. They're the second largest whale in the world. And we went down to Antarctica, spent a lot of time rolling around on a boat, feeling very sick. But we ultimately managed to film the the largest gathering of fin whales ever recorded. There were three hundred of them together. And this was a not only an amazing thing to to witness because it's just loads of massive whales, but it's one of the kind of greatest conservation success stories of our time. Because these whales were hunted to the brink of extinction during the whaling era.

• 8:59Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 9:00Speaker 00

  And and now they're making this incredible comeback. And yeah, that's exciting, not just because, yeah, like penguins are cute.

• 9:07Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, right.

• 9:08Speaker 00

  But because of so many other reasons, you know, the the whales in Antarctica, that's not just a great thing. They're coming back for Antarctica. But, you know, new science is telling us that whales are really good at capturing carbon through a couple of different processes. And so if we want to, you know, fight climate change, save the world, yes, we should plant loads of trees because they're good at capturing carbon, but we also need to help the whales come back.

• 9:29Trevor Noah?

  Wait, wait, wait, I need you to explain this. Whales capture carbon?

• 9:32Speaker 00

  Right, so a couple of different processes. The first reason that whales are really good at capturing carbon is because they go around their whole life eating food, eating carbon essentially. And then when they die, they sink to the bottom of the ocean. And some of them get eaten at the surface, but a lot of their bodies, it traps that carbon deep down in the bottom of the ocean.

• 9:52Trevor Noah?

  I've never thought of where whales die.

• 9:54Speaker 00

  Right, yeah, they sink, whale fall.

• 9:56Trevor Noah?

  No, but I never thought of, I don't know why I never thought of like where.

• 10:00Speaker 00

  Where they go.

• 10:00Trevor Noah?

  Whales, yeah.

• 10:02Speaker 02

  You've probably never seen a full episode of my six hundred pound life, no?

• 10:09Trevor Noah?

  I'm so sorry.

• 10:10Speaker 00

  All right, you're good. What, should we just move on?

• 10:12Trevor Noah?

  I'm so.

• 10:13Speaker 00

  So. But the second process, which is much more interesting, is this thing called the whale pump.

• 10:18Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 10:18Speaker 00

  Okay, so let me, let me, let me try and break.

• 10:26Trevor Noah?

  Okay, wait. Activate worst part of Eugene's brain. Activate worst part of Eugene's brain.

• 10:32Speaker 00

  But it's nothing to do with reproduction.

• 10:34Trevor Noah?

  Okay, okay.

• 10:34Speaker 00

  Okay, so. In the ocean.

• 10:37Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 10:37Speaker 00

  In the deep, you have lots of cold nutrient-rich water, okay? There's a lot of nutrients in the deep.

• 10:43Trevor Noah?

  Okay, got it.

• 10:44Speaker 00

  Part of the problem is that at the the surface, uh, the place where the light hits, uh, it's called the photic zone. So the the light hits lots of microscopic plants in the water column near the surface. The light's hitting them, but they they lack some really important nutrients in order to grow.

• 11:00Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 11:00Speaker 00

  So they have light from the sun, but but they need these key nutrients. So what the whales do is that they eat at depth and then they have to come up to the surface to breathe.

• 11:11Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 11:11Speaker 00

  And when they're at the surface, they can't poop when they're under pressure at depth.

• 11:16Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 11:17Speaker 00

  They have to come up to the surface and that's where they poop. So they have been feeding in the deep, eating all those those key nutrients that is missing in the surface. They then swim to the surface, breathe, take a big poop, and they fertilize that surface layer. So it kicks off the food chain.

• 11:31Trevor Noah?

  The photon zone.

• 11:32Speaker 00

  The in the photic zone, exactly. So so actually, you'd think, okay, if the whales come back, they're gonna eat all of the the krill. But actually, it's it's kind of the opposite. It's like the krill, it's it's like this paradox in that the more whales there are, the more krill that they eat, the more they're coming up to the surface and fertilizing the surface layer. That creates more phytoplankton, the little microscopic plants. The krill eat the phytoplankton, so there's more whales and it just goes on and on and on. So it's this amazing runaway train.

• 12:01Trevor Noah?

  It's amazing.

• 12:02Speaker 00

  And I could have explained that in much fewer words and much better, but you got the idea.

• 12:06Trevor Noah?

  No, it you see, it can't be better. So this this is this is what I think, this is what I think makes it exciting is, one, you you're like really passionate about it. But two, you connect the dots between these worlds that don't seem connected in in any way, shape or form. Like, for instance, the significance of the whales is something that I think most people miss out on. The significance of most animals, to be honest with you, you know what I mean? A lot of the like nature documentaries that I watched as a kid, they were just about an animal. In isolation in a way.

• 12:37Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 12:38Trevor Noah?

  This lion is trying to hunt and it's going to go and get this zebra.

• 12:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:43Trevor Noah?

  That's the story.

• 12:44Speaker 00

  In a faraway place, the end.

• 12:45Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, that was it. That was it. Oh, for me, it wasn't a faraway place. It was like next door. But it's true, though. It's just like, yeah, this is what they're doing.

• 12:51Speaker 02

  It's true. He grew up in the middle of the Serengeti.

• 12:54Trevor Noah?

  No, A, you know what I'm talking about. How far were lions from you?

• 12:58Speaker 02

  Very close.

• 12:59Trevor Noah?

  Exactly. So I'm not saying like, like next door, but you know, it wasn't like another world for us. It was like, yeah, oh, that's what's happening there. But but but what your work does is it tells that story, but then it goes into the deeper layers that connect us to these animals. And then how the environment is connected to them and how the environment connects to us and then how it plays back. Like, why was it significant that those three hundred whales were meeting?

• 13:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:23Trevor Noah?

  And you were capturing that? What was the significance of that encounter?

• 13:27Speaker 00

  Yeah. I think the key thing was that, you know, during the whaling era, whales, as I said, were hunted to the brink of extinction. And I remember I visited this island in the South Atlantic called South Georgia. And that was sort of the epicenter for Southern Ocean whaling. So that was where a lot of the whaling ships were based. And that's where they brought a lot of the whales they hunted in Antarctica back to to process the blubber and, you know, all that stuff. And I remember reading the logs from the whalers when they were there.

• 13:55Speaker 02

  From the ships.

• 13:56Speaker 00

  Exactly. And they would talk about there being so many whales in these bays that they were hunting in that you could have walked across their backs, just like mind-boggling numbers of whales. And that got me, I found that really depressing and like, oh, I'll like, that's all gone. Like, I'll never get to see that. But then, however many decades on, you know, the world came together and protected whales in the seventies. And now, you know, what's that, fifty, sixty years on from that ban, the whales are starting to make a comeback. And of course, they're not close, even close to what their original numbers were. But the idea that you can now go to Antarctica and see these, you know, biblically large gatherings of whales.

• 14:38Speaker 00

  You know, I go around the world. I realize I'm super fortunate to see animals doing amazing things. But everywhere I go, the guide, the scientist, the local person, they always say, what you've seen in this, on this expedition you've just done is amazing. But you should have seen how much more amazing it was ten, twenty, thirty years ago.

• 14:55Trevor Noah?

  That's sad.

• 14:55Speaker 00

  But in Antarctica with the whales.

• 14:57Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 14:58Speaker 00

  Seeing that gathering of three hundred whales. Like, no one's seen that for over a hundred years. Like, it hasn't been that good for more than a hundred years. And isn't that so cool? Like, the world is so full of doom and gloom that we can get it right. Like, and when we do, wildlife comes back on this, like, mind-boggling scale. And not only is it cool to look at, but it helps us as humans.

• 15:19Trevor Noah?

  So wait, is that why whales turned into assholes?

• 15:25Speaker 00

  Break that down for me.

• 15:26Trevor Noah?

  So, I mean, like, you know, we've been reading all these stories and seeing these things. I think it's the orcas.

• 15:31Speaker 00

  The killer whales off the, yeah.

• 15:33Trevor Noah?

  Just like going, by the way, why are they called killer whales? It's not because they kill us, right?

• 15:38Speaker 00

  Uh, I, I think it's actually from the, the, the translation. It's sort of been mistranslated. It's actually whale killers. So some killer whales hunt whales. Um, and so they're the whale killers.

• 15:48Trevor Noah?

  Damn, so they're not killer, they're killers of whales.

• 15:51Speaker 00

  But, I mean.

• 15:52Speaker 02

  They're killing.

• 15:53Speaker 00

  Technically.

• 15:53Trevor Noah?

  But everything is killing, technically.

• 15:55Speaker 02

  Dolphins don't.

• 15:57Trevor Noah?

  Well, they kill fish. What do you mean?

• 15:58Speaker 02

  They don't kill smiles.

• 16:00Trevor Noah?

  I'm glad you're here. We're gonna have every argument Eugene and I have about animals. You're gonna settle it today.

• 16:05Speaker 00

  But the other thing is.

• 16:05Speaker 02

  Shaved chimpanzees.

• 16:08Speaker 00

  And the killer whales are actually the largest dolphin. Uh, they're, they're big dolphin. Yeah, they're, well, they are toothed whale. The Adontocetes is the Latin fancy word.

• 16:15Trevor Noah?

  Everything I believed about a- anything is just going out the window.

• 16:18Speaker 00

  Coming back to your question.

• 16:19Trevor Noah?

  What I'm saying is like, do we know why they're attacking boats and why this is happening around the world?

• 16:24Speaker 00

  Yes, there's a couple of different theories. The first thing I'd say that it's not happening around the world. It's happening in one place, one, one pod. Um, I would say.

• 16:31Trevor Noah?

  So it's a gang?

• 16:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's one, it's one family, yeah.

• 16:34Trevor Noah?

  Oh, okay. Boat killers.

• 16:38Speaker 00

  So there's a couple of different theories. The first thing to say is if you actually watch most of the videos.

• 16:42Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 16:43Speaker 00

  The, the, these killer whales are just swimming up to the boats and being very curious and sort of bumping them and it's not attacking, they're just being curious. However, there are some that they're actually sinking the boats by, you know, headbutting them. Yeah, I mean, they are, I guess.

• 16:58Trevor Noah?

  Now, do we know enough about the whales to know if, like, to your point, attacking, not, could they be like playing a prank on us?

• 17:03Speaker 00

  Okay, so a couple of theories. One that is, is quite interesting is that, uh, the killer whales there, um, some of them hunt bluefin tuna. And the they have basically learned that when they hear uh certain boat noises of fishing boats, they're like, oh, dinner bell. Why would I chase one of the fastest fish in the sea when some dude over there is just caught a bunch on a hook?

• 17:24Trevor Noah?

  No way.

• 17:25Speaker 00

  Take out, you know, easy, easy meal. So they came over and and the the fishermen in the past, I I'm sure it still goes on, shoot at them. And so it you could see how the steps would would create whereby, okay, you know, one gets shot by.

• 17:41Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 17:41Speaker 00

  In the face, it gets angry, it rams a boat, it sinks and goes, huh, this is a thing you can do.

• 17:47Trevor Noah?

  Highly intelligent creatures, yeah.

• 17:48Speaker 00

  They're also highly intelligent. So it could be that that's not true. Uh and and actually, it's just that one time they, you know, accidentally bumped a boat and it sank and they went, well, that was entertaining. So let's let's do that some more. I I I think the idea that it's like they're like killer whales trying to attack and kill people is just ridiculous.

• 18:06Trevor Noah?

  So so this brings up another question that I've always had, and that is, can animals be assholes?

• 18:13Trevor Noah?

  Like, when you when you go and you you track animals and you you watch them and you are animals just being animals? Or do you see some animals where you're like, oh, no, that one is being an asshole?

• 18:23Speaker 00

  Uh, I mean, I guess, uh.

• 18:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, I guess so. I mean, okay, so so.

• 18:32Trevor Noah?

  Skunks are assholes. Why would you say that?

• 18:34Speaker 00

  Oh, they're just defending themselves.

• 18:36Trevor Noah?

  From?

• 18:37Speaker 00

  From from people.

• 18:38Trevor Noah?

  With their?

• 18:39Speaker 00

  Big things, but with, yeah, that thing.

• 18:42Trevor Noah?

  Thank you. But why would you think it's, I'll I'll tell you, I'll tell you a story and and maybe you can demystify this as well if you heard about. So one of the stories where I started thinking the there's a possibility that animals could be assholes was. There was a, there was a couple, there was a couple that was, no, there was a couple that was hiking in somewhere, I think in the US, it was like, you know, off on one of those mountain trails, blah, blah, blah. And um they got attacked by a bear, right? So they came across a bear. And then, you know, it was that whole thing, like, uh, play dead, whatever. So they like tried to play dead, then the bear was like.

• 19:12Speaker 02

  Never worked in the revenants.

• 19:14Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, then the bear was like, not cool, guys, not cool. And then the bear started like mauling them, whatever. So the the they they tell the story. So the the husband was like, all right, go tell the wife, like, run, run, run, I'll fight the bear.

• 19:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:27Trevor Noah?

  And then, yeah, and then the the wife ran. Then the husband was like, wow, wow. And then you can't fight a bear.

• 19:32Speaker 02

  Obviously.

• 19:32Trevor Noah?

  You can just like. Distract, I guess, whatever.

• 19:35Speaker 02

  Entertain it.

• 19:35Trevor Noah?

  You can entertain it. You can receive and entertain. Yes. You can receive the punishment and you can entertain the bear. And this happens, at some point, he's basically knocked unconscious. The bear stops and is like, wait, where did that lady go? Then the bear runs off, attacks the woman, mauls her, mauls her, mauls her. Then when she's also like, sort of like passed out, then goes back to the guy, then like goes back and forth. And then luckily they survived. But you know, like the, the bear like mauled them. But I remember going like, that bear might be an asshole. Or is there something we missed?

• 20:10Speaker 00

  No, let's break that one down. So when you see in the news, a, a wild animal has attacked.

• 20:16Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 20:17Speaker 00

  A human.

• 20:17Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 20:19Speaker 00

  The vast, vast majority of the time, it is because the human has done something wrong. So they, you know, they have got in between a mother and its cubs. They have backed an animal into a corner. They have misread an animal's body language. They have done the wrong thing. So the first thing I'd say is, it's very easy to kind of pin it on the animal and go, oh, the animal attacked the human.

• 20:40Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 20:40Speaker 00

  Let's just clarify, there are a, a very small number of cases whereby it was wrong place, wrong time.

• 20:48Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 20:48Speaker 00

  Um, and, and what I would say to sort of, I guess, humor your thing of, are, are some animals assholes? But animals have personalities and, uh, some are incredibly intelligent and, and they do like have bad days.

• 21:03Trevor Noah?

  Okay, okay. I like this.

• 21:04Speaker 00

  So, so you can meet an elephant, for example, in the morning and it's, it's very polite and does its thing. And you're there and it's there and happy days. And then this afternoon, you know, it might have.

• 21:18Speaker 02

  Hooked up with his girlfriend.

• 21:18Speaker 00

  Well, yeah, maybe it had his, maybe it had his ass kicked by a bigger elephant or, or whatever. And then, and then it's a completely different animal.

• 21:27Trevor Noah?

  Now it's a single elephant.

• 21:29Speaker 02

  With a huge memory.

• 21:30Trevor Noah?

  You, you, you know, you laugh about this, but like, I remember going on a game drive. And a friend of mine is a game ranger and he was telling me about how elephants display many of the similar characteristics that we do in our society. And one of them is if a group of young male elephants don't have like an older father figure elephant, they just get up to mischief. They, they destroy trees, they go like hunt rhinos, they just like kill rhino, they like do. And then they had to bring in an older male elephant. And then there was just order. And the older male was like.

• 22:05Speaker 02

  Stepfather.

• 22:05Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, well, yeah, basically the brother stepfather. And he was like, you don't be doing that shit in this house, boy. Me and your mom, me and your mom be talking about your ex's boy.

• 22:13Speaker 00

  But yeah, you need, they need like the wise old dude because, you know, elephants are famed as being this incredible matriarchal society where the female led herds. And, and we very often don't really talk about the social systems involved with the males. It's just this big bull that comes in all horny one day and has, has his way and then, and then goes off.

• 22:32Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 22:32Speaker 00

  And does male elephant things.

• 22:33Trevor Noah?

  Because he goes up by himself most of the time, right?

• 22:35Speaker 00

  Well, they also, the males have these bachelor herds. And, and you're exactly right that, that, yeah, if you get these groups of young bulls, they're often the ones that are causing all the mischief, you know, crop raiding and all sorts. You can see the cogs turning, can't you? Desperately whirring for an innuendo.

• 22:50Speaker 02

  By themselves in the bush.

• 22:53Speaker 02

  You had me, you had me at hello.

• 22:57Trevor Noah?

  So what are they doing?

• 22:58Speaker 00

  But, but coming back to whether animals are assholes. I mean, again, this is a very anthropomorphic viewpoint, but like some, uh, you know, I've, I've seen male dolphins go around in these male groups. And they'll just go up to like a young male dolphin and do very naughty things to it. And you're like, was that really necessary? But they've got this incredibly complex social system. And I think trying to compare ours, if, if you look at their social systems through our lens, it's very easy to go, well, you're being an asshole.

• 23:28Trevor Noah?

  I, I have often thought this, I've often thought to myself, like, you know, like people will say things about dolphins. They'll be like, oh, dolphins sexually assault and dolphins do all these things. That, that's what people will say.

• 23:38Speaker 00

  Who, which people? No, I, I mean, they, I, yeah.

• 23:41Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 23:41Speaker 02

  Hey, why do you defend him, Bertie?

• 23:42Trevor Noah?

  You gotta defend me, Bertie. This is, this is otherwise.

• 23:45Speaker 02

  He was a man, a creep without a family.

• 23:49Trevor Noah?

  But then, but then I wonder, to your point, to your point, if you are observing something from your point of view and you don't have the full context, you don't, you don't know what's happening, right? So, like, if, if animals were to see us engaging in S and M, they would also go back and report and be like, yo, the humans, man.

• 24:04Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 24:05Trevor Noah?

  I just watched this movie Fifty Shades of Grey. It's terrible.

• 24:08Speaker 00

  That's what they do.

• 24:09Trevor Noah?

  It's terrible what they're doing to each other. You, you wouldn't, so, maybe that, that's, that's like an interesting place to delve into with your work. How do you discern between, like, the animal world and what the animals are experiencing? And how we perceive what the animals are experiencing and what's going on in their world?

• 24:27Speaker 00

  Hmm, yeah, it's, it's an interesting thing to think about, because I guess one thing is, nature documentarians, you know, were often accused of anthropomorphizing things, but our job is to connect people with the natural world. So, to, to a certain extent, you have to sort of make comparisons to our world to sort of get people engaged.

• 24:46Trevor Noah?

  Right, so we feel connected.

• 24:47Speaker 00

  You know, you find the underdog, or, you know, the, the whoever. I think the other thing is, you know, when we're trying to get close to an animal without disturbing it, you know, we, we want to film natural behavior, so we want to make sure the animal either doesn't know that we're there, or that it is, it knows we're there and it's kind of accepting of our presence. And a big part of that is being able to read animal body language. And just like we humans have a set of, you know, body languages, lots of animals do. I mean, we talked about crocodiles just before we started recording. They have, you know, very little body language. Their resting bitch face is very similar to their I love you face. So, let's park those. But in the case of, say, sharks, or, or wolves, they're, they're a great one, because, you know, they're very closely related to, you know, our pet dogs.

• 25:31Speaker 00

  So, we're very good, I think, in, in naturally interpreting

• 25:34Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 25:35Speaker 00

  wild wolf body language. But you know, when we walk into a bar and we want to figure out, like, where to sit, you look around and subconsciously you're analyzing everyone's

• 25:43Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 25:44Speaker 00

  behavior, and you know if someone's, you know, bright red in the face and, and clenched fist or whatever. Stay away from them, and then there's the smiley guy in the corner or whatever, I'm going to go sit next to him. Sharks, leopard seals, lions, they all have a set of, of, of body languages, you know, of cues, and it's our job to interpret those, those cues so that we can, you know, film them so that we're safe and they're safe, and also try and interpret what they're going to do next. And that's what I love, is that I found when I was starting out, I was crawling around, I I grew up in Reading, uh, near London, and it wasn't a particularly wild place. I lived near some farmer's fields.

• 26:24Speaker 00

  I used to go into the farmer's fields and kind of try and sneak up on deer and badgers and kingfishers and whatever. And everyone thought I was weird. I was like, you know, thirteen, fourteen, when you should be, I don't know, trying to talk to girls or something. Um, and I I found that I, because I was starting to sort of by accident, learn how to sneak up on these animals. I I had my eyes open to this incredible world, all these dramas going on the whole time, that everyone just walks past and has no idea. So it's, you know, it's it's not as far as sort of Doctor Dolittle being able to talk to the animals, but you sort of have like this, this ability to interpret animal behavior that most people don't have. And so you get this secret window into this other world.

• 27:07Trevor Noah?

  So when you're out there, would you say you have an ability to disappear into their world? Like, is is there? Because I've always wondered this about nature documentaries is I'm like, I've seen sometimes people just like lie in the same place forever. Sometimes you leave a camera behind. Sometimes you, how real slash untouched is a nature documentary when you're making it? How how much influence are you having over it? How much, you know, like, so like when the animal sees you or doesn't see you or, can you do something with your body language to to let a lion know like, we're cool. I'm just here to film you killing stuff?

• 27:41Speaker 00

  Uh, so what's really amazing about filming things like lions, sort of a, I guess, a a safari setup where you're in a vehicle, is that we benefit from the fact that um, some very smart people have been habituating lions and wild dogs and cheetahs and all those savannah animals to a vehicle. And so they are completely aware that the vehicle's there, you know, that they can see it, they can smell it, they can hear it. But because it has been in their landscape. For their entire life and their mother's life and their grandmother's life, you are just part of the landscape. So someone has done a bunch of hard work that we're then benefiting from. Often, we go to places where the animals are, you know, have never seen people before.

• 28:24Speaker 00

  And so a big part of the shoot is not filming, it's either hiding from the animal, figuring out how to get close and hide, or habituating the animal to our to our presence so that it knows we're there and is accepting of that. I mean, in the case of underwater filming, for example, it, you know, on land, often, if you're hiding from the animal, you can be in a little tent and you can be a couple hundred meters away with a really powerful zoom lens. Underwater, you're limited by the visibility of the water. So if the water, you can only see 20 meters. Well, you're not doing any hiding, like, the animal's gonna know that you're there. So you need to figure out, okay, how do I behave so that the animal is relaxed with me? I mean, one of my favorite animals to film is the leopard

• 29:07Speaker 00

  seal. They're these, I mean, they look like dragons, uh, and they live in Antarctica, and they can be absolutely enormous. And they have a very similar skull to a grizzly bear. So they're just this amazing top predator. Uh, well, not top predator, killer whale can eat them, because killer whales are.

• 29:22Trevor Noah?

  Because killer whales kill.

• 29:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, they're badasses.

• 29:24Trevor Noah?

  We've got this.

• 29:25Speaker 00

  So, um, yeah, so, so with them, I, I mentioned that all animals have, have personalities and they have different days. Uh, it's, it's sort of like a lucky dip when you get in the water with a leopard seal. You see this leopard seal and you're like, okay, I'm gonna get in. And very quickly, I'm gonna learn whether this is a leopard seal that is friendly, is not pleased to see me. You know, you, you just never know, and you learn very quickly. And sometimes you get out immediately because you're like, okay, that one didn't like me here. And some start very shy. And then in the space of an hour, you can sort of kind of flirt with them and, and get like, sort of pretend you're not interested in them. Sort of, they, they know where you're looking, so you kind of turn away, face your back,

• 30:06Speaker 00

  and they come sneak up on you, and then you go boo. Um, and, and it's amazing that you can have this interaction with an animal that, you know, may never have seen a human being before, but you can read its body language. Even cooler, it can read yours. You're not just a weird alien human. It's like, oh no, it knows where you're looking. It knows whether you're. They often mirror your your state. So it's really important that you're really chill.

• 30:31Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 30:32Speaker 00

  So they're really chill. If you get in the, I've been in the water, taking other people down there that that have, you know, never seen a leopard seal before. Um, and I take them in the water and they're really on edge and I hate it because the leopard seal is really on edge.

• 30:44Trevor Noah?

  Oh, wow.

• 30:45Speaker 00

  And then that person, you you get them out of the water and it's just me and the leopard seal. Suddenly leopard seal is a different animal. It's like, oh yeah, you sketchy Steve is out of the water now. We're cool. You can't trust sketchy Steve. Um, so yeah.

• 30:59Trevor Noah?

  I think, I think, I think I've always, I've been a sketchy Steve.

• 31:01Speaker 00

  Hey, been.

• 31:02Trevor Noah?

  I've been a kid. I'm still a sketchy Steve.

• 31:04Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 31:05Trevor Noah?

  No, because you know, I I can't, I can't just find myself. So I'm I'm always stuck in the loop. People will be like, just relax. Then I'm like, I would be relaxed if there wasn't this wild animal here. Then they're like, yes, but you relax. And then the thing is, I then remember videos I've seen of people who were too relaxed and didn't notice a shift in something. And then all of a sudden, life is not going well for them. Do you know what I mean?

• 31:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 31:29Trevor Noah?

  So I I I don't know. Like, are you comfortable around animals, like fully?

• 31:33Speaker 00

  Party animals.

• 31:36Speaker 00

  A bit sketchy. Never trust a party animal. Never trust a party animal. But I've I've always been, I love animals, but from a distance. But I've always been fascinated by animals. Um, that that come close to resembling human beings. So gorillas, chimpanzees. And I've often wondered, because I've I've once seen this video of chimpanzees hunting monkeys.

• 32:00Speaker 00

  That for me was the scariest thing ever. I've never, have you ever had an experience like that? I I I've never seen that. Yeah, there's a very famous troop. Um, uh, yeah, it's the, I think it's called the Ngogo troop. And yeah, there's, I'm not sure how big it is now, but at a, at a time, it was this enormous troop of chimpanzees. There was like fifty or sixty chimps living together. And yeah, they'd. They'd go and set very clever traps to eat colobus monkeys.

• 32:24Trevor Noah?

  Wait, wait, what? See, those are assholes. Surely they're assholes.

• 32:28Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, why, why, why does eating monkeys make, why does that make them?

• 32:31Trevor Noah?

  Okay, why are, why are all the other monkeys not doing this? Why the old other chimpanzees not doing it is my is my question rather.

• 32:39Speaker 00

  Well, so it's really interesting because they they don't do it all the time. It's it's it's sort of, okay, yes, it's a very rich source of protein that they do. But you know, most of the time they're eating fruits and things. And I think it's actually it's a huge sort of um it's almost a ceremonial thing for them. Like they get so amped and excited that it's a troop bonding exercise. It's not just we're gonna go out and get some food.

• 33:01Trevor Noah?

  There's designated roles, there's some who go and chase, shake down the tree and some who wait for the monkey to fall down. Then also when the monkey falls down and gets killed, there's also pieces that get divvied up.

• 33:11Speaker 00

  And who gets the meat first. It's you know, they're giving out favors for dominance hierarchy.

• 33:15Trevor Noah?

  That when we go out to like restaurants and stuff. Are you part of the ingongo? Then you're like, Eugene will be like, Trevor, you shake the table. Ryan's gonna order and then someone's gonna eat. I'm gonna eat the first piece. We're gonna I'm I've always wondered where you got that from.

• 33:31Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 33:34Trevor Noah?

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• 34:19Trevor Noah?

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• 35:05Trevor Noah?

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• 35:44Trevor Noah?

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• 36:28Trevor Noah?

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• 37:12Trevor Noah?

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• 37:49Trevor Noah?

  Do you, do you ever, do you ever find like human world just becomes like bleh because of the world you live in?

• 37:57Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 37:58Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 37:58Speaker 00

  I, I have a, what I, I describe as post, post shoot blues.

• 38:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:03Speaker 00

  So I, I come home from, you know, Antarctica or whatever. And I was, it, it's usually the first couple of days when I'm sort of readjusting to

• 38:14Speaker 02

  Normal life.

• 38:15Speaker 00

  A different world. Well, I mean, for me, what I struggle with is my normal life is expeditions and being far away. Um, and so, yeah, I'll be like stood in a, in a supermarket deciding what, what kind of salad I want to buy. And I'm looking around being like,

• 38:33Speaker 00

  what about penguins and icebergs? Can, can I just go back to doing that? It just seems so sort of insignificant.

• 38:42Trevor Noah?

  In comparison to the

• 38:43Speaker 00

  In comparison to the scale of that world. The significance and there's these dramas going on. Um, so yeah, it's, it's, it's really tricky to make that adjustment.

• 38:52Trevor Noah?

  What's, what's the, what's the worst experience you had? Like, you know, when you, you're on a shoot, you're trying to do something, things did not go according to plan and animal or like, was there ever a moment like that? I'm sure in all the years, because how long have you been doing it now?

• 39:05Speaker 00

  Uh, just over 10 years.

• 39:06Trevor Noah?

  Yeah. So, I mean, surely in that time, something has happened to you where you've gone, oof.

• 39:12Speaker 00

  Well, the most dangerous animal on every single shoot is humans.

• 39:18Trevor Noah?

  Boo.

• 39:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, every single time, the, you know, the times that I have been, you know, i- i- in danger is because of a human. That it's either directly from that human or the human has misinterpreted some animal body language and and has put us in a in a dangerous.

• 39:33Trevor Noah?

  Wait, you, like, you've been attacked by humans on a shoot somewhere?

• 39:37Speaker 00

  Uh, that, that, that has, yeah, that has, that has happened.

• 39:40Trevor Noah?

  Damn.

• 39:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, that was quite scary.

• 39:43Trevor Noah?

  Wha- what happened?

• 39:44Speaker 00

  Hmm, uh, we were in the Arctic, um, and, um. We were in a very remote camp and one of the people we were working with, uh, we didn't realize was a drug addict. And, um, not really sure what he was addicted to, but we were basically, uh, because of a storm. Our supply boat was was cut off. So every few days, we were meant to be getting supplies with food and and fuel and all kinds of things. What we didn't realize is that that boat was also delivering his drugs. Um, and while he was on the drugs, he was actually pretty functional, um, and he didn't get those drugs and started to, yeah, go.

• 40:21Trevor Noah?

  Damn, that's scary.

• 40:23Speaker 00

  Uh, and.

• 40:24Trevor Noah?

  This is in the Antarctic?

• 40:25Speaker 00

  It was in the Arctic.

• 40:26Trevor Noah?

  In the Arctic?

• 40:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:27Trevor Noah?

  Um, so you're like, you're, this, there's nowhere to go, there's no.

• 40:31Speaker 00

  No.

• 40:31Trevor Noah?

  This seems like, you know, you know, those movies, this, this seems like a perfect thriller horror movie scenario, where you'd be like, it's unrealistic.

• 40:39Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 40:39Trevor Noah?

  Explorers, the movie starts, they're off to see the animals, you know, the whole thing, and then they're exploring, they're exploring the animals. Then they're like, oh, there's a storm, there's a storm, we're hunkered down, oh, the boats are not coming in, Bertie, the boats are not going, we'll be fine, oh, our supply is running low. And then all of a sudden, someone's just like, ah.

• 40:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, and and it.

• 40:56Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 40:56Speaker 00

  And it started out sort of, oh, that was a weird thing that he just said. And then it it kind of escalated and he started making threats, uh, and then he he's he snapped and and jumped on. Um, yeah, one of our team and, yeah, was trying to, uh, strangle her and, um, yeah, another one of the team managed to get her off. And I I get him off and, uh, we were in polar bear country, so we were, you know, we carry shotguns. So there's just a lot of, you know, I I remember at one point looking at this situation with, yeah, him trying to get to her. And, uh, at my feet, there was a a shotgun for the polar bears and a a a paddle for a stand up paddleboard. And I was like, okay.

• 41:42Speaker 00

  What am I gonna pick here? Um, and then I was like, I'm just gonna use my words. Uh, and yeah, it all got very, very scary. Um, and I ended up, well, we, we ended up managing to distract him, get her away. Um, he had, I won't, uh, won't name her, um, get her away. And, um, sort of separated the two of them. And then my job was basically to distract him long enough for the rest of the team to make a plan to get, find a way to get evacuated from this remote place. So I, we, the reason we were out and away from the camp was we were trying to collect fresh water. So we need to go up the river. So I, yeah, we basically

• 42:25Speaker 00

  both went up this river into the.

• 42:28Trevor Noah?

  Just the two of you?

• 42:29Speaker 00

  Uh, we were with another guy as well. And yeah, we were distracting him and sort of, yeah, trying to keep him occupied. And he would, what was most scary about this was he would flip flop between, um, being this crazy, really scary person and then being absolutely lovely with not really any recollection of what had happened. It was sort of Jekyll and Hyde. And, um, I remember we'd filled up the water jugs, you know, I'd managed to stall him for about an hour. And I was on the stand up paddleboard that we were using to, to transport the water jugs. And he was walking on the, the riverbank next to me. And I was paddling along, just like, yeah, trying to keep him calm. And I remember

• 43:11Speaker 00

  he suddenly got really on edge and was rummaging around in his pockets. And I was like, oh God, what's he got in his pocket? Is it a, you know, a gun, a knife? Like, what is it? He looked really on edge. All of a sudden, he pulls out his phone and he's like, oh, I, I just set up a TikTok account. I'm, I'm gonna take a video of you on the stand up paddleboard, um, um, for my TikTok. Is that okay? I was like, this is a very strange situation to be in.

• 43:39Trevor Noah?

  Sketchy Steve.

• 43:40Speaker 00

  Um, yeah, sketchy Steve, yeah. And uh, by the time we got back to camp, um, yeah, the rest of the team had managed to make a plan that uh, there was a research plane in the area and they were able to actually land on the the beach that we were on. Um, and yeah, we we got our our team out and we actually made the decision to take the the guy with us because at the point that the plane arrived, he was in the good mood.

• 44:06Trevor Noah?

  So it was easy to get him.

• 44:07Speaker 00

  We don't wanna leave him here.

• 44:09Trevor Noah?

  Damn.

• 44:10Speaker 02

  Did you guys warn the pilot at least?

• 44:13Trevor Noah?

  Cause this is really like a movie.

• 44:14Speaker 00

  No, no.

• 44:15Trevor Noah?

  Cause now on the plane, it's like, oh, man, next thing you know, it's Bane.

• 44:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, and then, and then, yeah, so we we sort of chat to him and then we got got him, yeah, got back to the town and uh, yeah, and then went went our separate ways and.

• 44:26Trevor Noah?

  It make, when you tell a story like that, it makes me wonder like,

• 44:31Trevor Noah?

  how how did we, you know, uh, you, because you you work in this world now, how did we get to the place where? I think I'm I'm I'm safe in saying that more people in the world are terrified by animals than by like people.

• 44:45Speaker 00

  Hundred percent.

• 44:45Trevor Noah?

  Do you, do you?

• 44:46Speaker 00

  Whereas I I am completely the opposite that.

• 44:49Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but how did, but how did we get there? Like, where do these myths come from? Where do they? I mean, I clearly, we spoke one about one earlier where I was talking about like the the the killer whales and you're like, oh, they're attacking the bo- and everyone thinks this. I think a lot of people think this. And then you're like, no, one area.

• 45:02Speaker 00

  Well, classic, classic example is human fear of wolves. Okay, so, um, you know, there's lots of movies, yeah, Hollywood movies about wolves eating eating people and all this stuff. But, okay, in North America, how how often do you think someone gets killed by by a wolf?

• 45:22Speaker 02

  Shoot, maybe once a year.

• 45:24Trevor Noah?

  One time a year?

• 45:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:26Trevor Noah?

  I'm gonna say.

• 45:26Speaker 00

  So sharks sharks is is between five and 10 a year globally.

• 45:29Trevor Noah?

  Then I'm gonna say.

• 45:30Speaker 00

  With wolves, what do you think?

• 45:31Trevor Noah?

  Wolves, I'm gonna say. Attacked twenty times a year.

• 45:36Speaker 00

  Actually, fa- fatal.

• 45:37Trevor Noah?

  Fatal attack. Fatal attacks? Oh, no, no, no. Fatal attacks, I'm gonna say seven.

• 45:42Speaker 00

  Per year?

• 45:43Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, seven. Eugene?

• 45:45Speaker 02

  I'll say one.

• 45:46Trevor Noah?

  Wow.

• 45:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, one attack a year.

• 45:48Speaker 00

  What if I told you that in in recent history, so in the last, you know, few hundred years, that that number's actually more like two total?

• 45:57Trevor Noah?

  What do you mean in?

• 45:57Speaker 02

  In how many years?

• 45:58Trevor Noah?

  Not over, not average.

• 46:00Speaker 00

  No, no, no, no, no. Total since.

• 46:02Trevor Noah?

  No, come on, Bertie. Come on now. You're telling me we've made all these movies about a thing that happened two times?

• 46:08Speaker 00

  And in both those times, if you actually read about them, it is not conclusive that the wolf actually did it.

• 46:15Trevor Noah?

  Ah, ah, ah, ah.

• 46:17Speaker 00

  So then you ask the question, okay, why, well, who done it? Yeah, but why why do we have? Why does our society have this incredible hatred? You know, Little Red Riding Hood, the big bad wolf? Why why is it child that we taught that wolves are so dangerous when at the same time we keep their closest living relative in our homes?

• 46:34Trevor Noah?

  So I have a theory for this.

• 46:36Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 46:36Trevor Noah?

  But I I don't know if it's right or it's wrong.

• 46:40Trevor Noah?

  When I when I read through like old historical accounts of like explorers and travelers, people who are going around the world hunting, one of the things I've learned is whether they were colonizers or whether they were just like hunters. One of the most powerful tools they used to justify what they were doing was turning the the subject of their action into like a dangerous villain.

• 47:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:06Trevor Noah?

  You get what I'm saying? And so it's a lot easier, I think, to have people not judge you for killing wolves and and and, you know what I mean, taking their their furs if you tell them that you're protecting them.

• 47:19Speaker 00

  You you have hit the nail on the head.

• 47:21Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 47:21Speaker 00

  That is that is exactly why our our, you know, society has this hatred towards wolves. Because, you know, livestock farming is a is a huge part of our society. And wolves do sometimes kill livestock.

• 47:39Speaker 00

  And it is much easier to justify the killing of a wolf if everyone hates them.

• 47:45Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 47:46Speaker 00

  Just like, you know, with sharks, it's only very recently that everyone's sort of waking up to the fact that sharks might actually be really important to healthy oceans and we need healthy oceans.

• 47:56Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 47:57Speaker 00

  But prior to that, you know, with with jaws and our, you know, fear of sharks, no one really cares that sharks were getting getting killed.

• 48:04Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 48:04Speaker 00

  Um, so, you know, why would you wanna, you know, protect something that you're terrified of?

• 48:10Trevor Noah?

  What do you think people don't get about conservation? Cause you you've said it a few times, you know, it's like, not just because they're cute. Not just because they're nice. Like when I was growing up, that's all I watched in in most nature documentaries. It was sold as like this idea of like, they won't be here anymore. That's why we need to protect them because they won't be here anymore. And then it almost seemed like it's the novelty that that that justifies us protecting an animal.

• 48:35Speaker 00

  It's the right thing to do.

• 48:36Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, it was just like, it's it's the right thing to do. This is a cute animal that you'll never get to see. That's why you need to protect it.

• 48:42Speaker 00

  Which I think is a bad argument.

• 48:44Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, tell me more, tell me more.

• 48:46Speaker 00

  Well, because I, um, okay, so nature provides so many things that we need from uh, clean water, productive soils, the air we breathe, uh, the regulating our our climate, you know, we're we're part of this incredible life support system that's that's free. Uh, and it provides us with all these ecosystem services that we completely take take for granted. So, um, selfishly, we should want to look after the natural world because it's to protect ourselves. Um, you know, if we can, if we can look after the environment and make sure that wild systems are healthy, we make them more resilient.

• 49:28Speaker 00

  They they can then better protect us from, you know, the effects of of climate change or or, you know, whatever the the thing may be.

• 49:36Trevor Noah?

  Even like disease.

• 49:38Speaker 02

  Is what I've learned on some of these things.

• 49:40Speaker 00

  Okay, look at all of the the big sort of pandemics that have happened. Most of them come from the mistreatment of uh domestic animals or wild animals, or it's us being very naughty.

• 49:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, but.

• 49:54Speaker 00

  And unsurprisingly, bad things happen when when you're naughty.

• 49:58Speaker 02

  Because I love nature documentaries, I often often wondered to myself, aren't we getting in the way of evolution? Because sometimes you have those series where they show you the prehistoric relative of a certain creature.

• 50:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:08Speaker 02

  But because conditions change, humans interfered, they invaded certain spaces, the animals evolved to something else. Aren't we right now standing in the way of evolution of certain creatures? Because we just wanna conserve the way they look now for our own selfish reasons, because we just like what this bird looks like now. But the dodo bird, you know, was something else, and it became something else, and it became something else. Because life and the climate and the conditions around it changed.

• 50:32Speaker 00

  Um yeah, it's it's an interesting perspective. I guess what I would say is that evolution happens on uh very slow time scales. And what is different about what we are doing now, we are we are in, you know, i- in uh in history, there have been these mass extinction events.

• 50:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:49Speaker 00

  And we're now in one, the when the rate of extinction goes up incredibly high, the sort of this big purge. And I think with with humans, um we often talk about wanting to save the world when actually, in the long term, world, the planet.

• 51:04Speaker 02

  World is fine.

• 51:05Speaker 00

  It's gonna be just fine, it's just whether or not we.

• 51:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:08Speaker 00

  Exist or whether we exist on a place that's actually, you know, nice to be, we're not just sort of surviving.

• 51:14Speaker 02

  I think that's where the groups that do these things have done really well. They have sort of participated in making us think of it as save the world.

• 51:24Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 51:25Speaker 02

  Which then arrogantly puts us at the center of it again in the wrong way, you know, it's like like, ah, do you wanna save the world? And it's like, all right, world, if you need me, I'll save you. Then it's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, my friend, no.

• 51:38Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 51:39Speaker 02

  Do you wanna be alive? Do you get what I'm saying?

• 51:41Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 51:41Speaker 02

  Do you wanna be able to go outside and not have a summer that is literally unlivable? Do you want to be able to grow food? Do you not want an animal to come hunt your dog? Because like, that's the thing, I think, is is so amazing when you watch these documentaries and you go, oh, you know why this animal is here? Like hunting your dog or like catch.

• 52:01Trevor Noah?

  Your cat or it's because where it was supposed to be, there's no more animals. There's no more prey.

• 52:07Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 52:07Trevor Noah?

  You you get what I'm saying like polar bears I've seen are like coming further and further down as the as the the ice melts, right? They're just like coming more into like brown land territory, I think.

• 52:20Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, uh, yes, they're spending more time, you know, many polar bears spend the, you know, part of the year on the sea ice on the oceans frozen and then in the summer time when the ice melts, they spend the time on land sort of hanging out. And if they haven't managed to get enough calories during that that important time when they're on the ice.

• 52:40Trevor Noah?

  Uh huh.

• 52:40Speaker 00

  They need to go looking for stuff. And so, yes, they they will come into contact with, you know, they'll they'll humans. You know, they they they live in a very sort of inert smellless environment and then you have a human settlement. Suddenly that's like, oh, opportunity.

• 52:53Trevor Noah?

  Right, yeah.

• 52:54Speaker 00

  And they'll come into that. So, yeah, when when when we mess with wild systems, that's when you get more human wildlife conflict. But I think kind of sort of taking one step back. You talk about, you know, sa- saving the world and that idea. I think one of the biggest communication failures in history is that we have, you know, we've been led to believe that, um, you know, climate change is about, uh, it was just about temperature and and carbon emissions, these kind of abstract terms, right?

• 53:28Trevor Noah?

  Right, right.

• 53:28Speaker 00

  So so I can say, oh, four hundred parts per million or or, you know, it's gonna go by three degrees like. Oh, oh, okay, I I sort of get it, but that's basically if you ask someone on, you know, on the street that isn't a climate scientist, what's climate change about? They're gonna tell you probably about carbon dioxide and temperature.

• 53:45Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 53:46Speaker 00

  But that's that they're not actually the problems. They are they are, you know, proxies for what the actual problem with is, is that those two things, when they go up, lead to the destruction of nature.

• 53:59Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 54:00Speaker 00

  So I feel like rather than talking about climate change and and how we need to fight that, we should just be talking about the destruction of nature.

• 54:07Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 54:07Speaker 00

  Because that I feel I I feel like everyone can get on board with the fact that if you cut down a really big old tree, that is a bad thing. Um, a- and so.

• 54:18Speaker 00

  If you also approach it in terms of the giant climate change and it's such a massive problem and requires so much global cooperation in our broken divided world, it's very easy to just throw your hands up and go, well, what am I meant to do as an individual? Whereas if you talk about the destruction of nature, suddenly you as an individual, whether you're the CEO of a huge company or a politician or just someone with a little impartment down the road from here, you can do, okay, they're on different scales, but you can do your bit to make the planet wilder and healthier, whether that be, you know, plant some plants in your garden that are insect pollinator friendly to help local bees or, or, you know,

• 54:59Speaker 00

  choose to protect a huge area of ocean if you're a politician. And the thing I love about that is that it's actionable and you will see quantifiable positive change. If you plant a bunch of wildflowers in your garden, you will see a bunch of insects coming to those that weren't there before. And isn't that cool? You know?

• 55:18Trevor Noah?

  The fact that everyone can have an impact even on like the tiniest level.

• 55:21Speaker 00

  Exactly. We talked about those CEOs, they're interested in ROIs. Well, there you go. Do a thing, gets better. Yeah, that's the problem with, with, you know, yes, of course, we need to look at our individual carbon footprints or, you know, changing our diets to, you know, consume less or no meat, you know, all these things you can do. It's very hard to quantify the impact of those, those things. You know, if you choose not to fly tomorrow, well, the, you know, the global temperature isn't going to come down because of your one action. You should still think about doing it. Whereas when it comes to rewilding the planet, like you will see a quantifiable positive change.

• 56:04Speaker 00

  And it, you know, people don't like being told to stop doing things.

• 56:08Trevor Noah?

  True.

• 56:08Speaker 00

  But what about if you do a thing and then it makes a better thing, you know, you know what I mean? I just think it's a much more positive proactive approach.

• 56:15Trevor Noah?

  It is actually, it is a proactive approach.

• 56:16Speaker 02

  But here's where I'm often conflicted when it comes to conservationalists and nature documentary makers is, for example, you'd go to the Ngorongoro Crater, shoot a bunch of animals, right? Put that out on television, people all of a sudden are interested in going and seeing these animals. Now all of a sudden, there's fifty thousand Land Rovers there, disturbing the exact same thing that you're trying to do.

• 56:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, it's a great, it's a great point. So I'm really glad, glad you point this up, brings up. So in, yeah, my new show on Disney Plus, Cheetahs Up Close, we filmed cheetahs in the Serengeti and.

• 56:50Speaker 02

  Cause cheetahs are gonna be extinct, right?

• 56:51Speaker 00

  Cheetahs are.

• 56:52Speaker 02

  They're pretty much gone.

• 56:53Speaker 00

  Not doing well.

• 56:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:55Speaker 00

  So there's, you know, there's, there's less cheetahs in the wild than there are lions, uh, less cheetahs in the wild than there are rhinos. You know, that, it's, it's not good.

• 57:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:05Speaker 00

  Um, but for some reason, I think maybe because they're really, really fast, everyone thinks they're okay.

• 57:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:11Speaker 00

  Um, but, but the rea-

• 57:13Speaker 02

  Metabolism, them waste.

• 57:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 57:16Speaker 02

  Would gain you a lot of enemies.

• 57:18Trevor Noah?

  Cause they're fast, they're okay, they do it.

• 57:20Speaker 00

  And, and, you know, David Attenborough said, said, summarized it really well that we are, we're, we're loving these animals to death.

• 57:27Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 57:28Speaker 00

  Because where they are, you know, people wanna go see cheetahs. And, you know, in, in places where tourism is badly managed, they get surrounded by vehicles. They can't sneak up on their prey.

• 57:39Speaker 02

  Oh, man.

• 57:41Speaker 00

  Bigger predators coming for them and their cubs, the hyenas, the lions, which is actually the biggest challenge that, that cheetahs face. And, and so.

• 57:50Speaker 00

  What I would say to that is.

• 57:54Speaker 00

  Wildlife tourism is an amazing thing if managed correctly. Because it gives a value to those animals alive.

• 58:03Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 58:04Speaker 00

  If you look i- in, in, you know, in many places um where uh well, a- as an example, I did a, did a show that that came out on Disney Plus a few months ago called Dolphins Up Close uh in, in the Azores Islands, which are a group of islands off of Portugal, exactly, in, in, in the Atlantic. And uh yeah, that community used to thrive on, on whaling, that was their big industry. And I interviewed this amazing whaler called Daniel. Um he'd spent his life whaling and, and spotting whales. Um and yeah, him and the community realized that actually people wanted to go see these whales and they are worth more alive than dead.

• 58:46Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 58:46Speaker 00

  Um and so he now.

• 58:47Trevor Noah?

  Also more sustainable.

• 58:48Speaker 00

  Well, he's now spots the whales and instead of calling a, a whaling boat onto them to harpoon them, he calls in a boat full of tourists to go in and take, take pictures. Now, of course, there is the potential for the, of that boat to be disturbing. But if managed correctly, it's, it's a much better thing. Cause I, I feel like in an ideal world, okay, maybe you could say that, well, we should protect these places and then, and then leave them alone and keep all the, all the people out. But, you know, conservation is as much about the animals as it is about the humans that live in that place. And those animals sadly in our, in our capitalist world have to have an economic value um to.

• 59:27Trevor Noah?

  Like everything in the world.

• 59:28Speaker 00

  To incentivize protecting them. So of course, there's the intrinsic value of looking after these animals. They're cute, they're wonderful, it's the right thing to do. But we need the, yeah, the extrinsic value, which is, which is the, the, yeah, the, the economic one um to, to make it, you know, ironically sustainable in, in the long term.

• 59:46Trevor Noah?

  It's the paradox of everything these days. You, if you don't have an economic, like, have you seen how um if they try like a program, let's say in Scandinavia, I saw that, you know, they were piloting a four day work week and whatever. People in the US were like, we'll never do that. In many places, they're like, this is stupid. And then someone wrote a paper about the economic benefits of it. And then all of a sudden, companies were like, yeah, we're gonna try this. We're gonna, we're gonna try it. They're like, oh, you'll actually get more.

• 1:00:11Speaker 00

  The financial incentive.

• 1:00:12Trevor Noah?

  But um look, that is the world we live in now. You have to show the economics, something, traffic doesn't get dealt with until somebody shows a.

• 1:00:22Trevor Noah?

  Politician, how much a a city is losing because of that traffic.

• 1:00:26Speaker 00

  But you can get very sad and cynical about it, but actually it's like, well, let's just play the game by their rules. And then and then and then we can all agree.

• 1:00:33Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, you just go like for every cheetah that dies, this is how much money you're losing in tourism, this is how much money you will lose in. This is how much money you will lose, this is, you know what I mean?

• 1:00:42Speaker 00

  So when.

• 1:00:42Trevor Noah?

  It's really interesting if you find the right incentive.

• 1:00:44Speaker 00

  Totally. When when we were there with the with the cheetahs, you know, the the reason that that national park exists and isn't just a giant. Cow farm or cow pasture is because of the money being brought in from each of the tourists that goes there now. We saw that in some places it is badly managed.

• 1:01:03Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 1:01:03Speaker 00

  So and actually a a a study came out that showed that cheetah cub. Uh survival was much lower in places that had a lot of tourism.

• 1:01:13Trevor Noah?

  Yeah. Oh, wow.

• 1:01:14Speaker 00

  Badly managed tourism. So it this isn't just like, oh, I feel like this is a bad thing when that cheetah family gets surrounded by cars. No, it's been proven. So therefore it's really important that that we, you know, do it correctly. And so that is, you know, it's on the guide. But I think also it's on us as people that go there and are guests in these places to ask questions. Because, you know, the the guides are under huge amounts of pressure there, you know.

• 1:01:42Speaker 00

  Safaris for various reasons have traditionally been incredibly expensive and and so very exclusive. Whereas now, you know, mass tourism, cheaper tourism is becoming possible and it means that. Uh, you know, just to make the economics of the trip work, if you're selling it for cheap. People will go on safari not for a week, they will go for one day.

• 1:02:05Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:06Speaker 00

  Now, the guide, he he will get a really big tip if he manages to find. You know, all five of the best animals, right? So he's just got to rip around and and and for some reason, now that we all have a phone and not, you know, rather than bringing a a normal camera. We now e- expect to get really close to everything to get a good picture of it. So we we saw, we we would follow these cheetahs uh fro- from a from a distance and then over the radio, you know, we were filming car and they knew what we were doing. So there was ah filming car. They're they're good at finding the cheetahs. We had the.

• 1:02:40Trevor Noah?

  They'll follow you.

• 1:02:41Speaker 00

  We had these amazing guides that would, you know, find stuff. All the vehicles would would come to us and we've created this horrible problem where now this cheetah family is is surrounded by cars very close.

• 1:02:51Trevor Noah?

  And the cubs can't hear their mom's call.

• 1:02:52Speaker 00

  Oh, all all that stuff. So we'd watch and people would be, they'd drive rather than sitting, you know, a hundred meters away, fifty meters away, like we would with our really powerful technology. They would drive all the way up and and so that the guide got a tip, they they wanna be in a good position. They'd lean out and take a picture on their phone of the cheetah right there. And and so actually, yes, you could blame that on the guide. Okay, it's his, you know, he needs to sort of.

• 1:03:17Trevor Noah?

  He's his family.

• 1:03:18Speaker 00

  Well, yeah, but he he needs to educate the tourists on, you know, da da da. But actually, I I think it's equally as much our responsibility to go, hang on.

• 1:03:26Trevor Noah?

  I blame the phone companies. Why aren't they making better cameras that can.

• 1:03:29Speaker 00

  Make longer zooms, yeah.

• 1:03:30Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah. They'll make more wildlife zooms so that people can zoom in. We need longer telephoto lenses. So get on it, phone companies.

• 1:03:38Speaker 02

  It's amazing how.

• 1:03:38Trevor Noah?

  You know what we should also do?

• 1:03:39Speaker 00

  No, you joke, but it's a good point.

• 1:03:40Trevor Noah?

  You know what we should also do is, you should start making like, I don't know how we'll do this ethically, we'll figure it out. We make like scam um nature documentaries where you just tell people this, but there's nothing there. And you just go like, ah, welcome to the jungles of Long Island where we found. And then you just just just diffuse people, you know what I mean?

• 1:04:02Speaker 00

  Oh, right.

• 1:04:02Trevor Noah?

  Some people are gonna get bamboozled. You you don't you don't have to put those out because Disney won't buy those, but just put them out online and it can just be like.

• 1:04:09Speaker 00

  Spread the humans out.

• 1:04:10Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? And just like make a thing and be like, guys, I found this place where you can see cheetahs for really cheap. And then just send them somewhere random.

• 1:04:17Speaker 00

  Spread them all out, yeah.

• 1:04:18Trevor Noah?

  This is, you know what I mean?

• 1:04:19Speaker 02

  I think I think those.

• 1:04:19Trevor Noah?

  We diffuse the thing.

• 1:04:21Speaker 02

  Those cameras work just fine. I've seen them being used at Beyonce concerts. People are sitting way at the back at the nosebleeds, but they're able to zoom in and see her. But all of a sudden, when there's a cheetah, you need to get closer and closer and closer.

• 1:04:32Speaker 00

  I think the other thing that seems to be a disconnect, I think, especially in our sort of, you know, I think it used to be that when you watched, uh, you know, BBC Planet Earth documentaries, that was kind of the only sort of, well, relatively, yeah, the only sort of huge, uh, amazing way to see a video of a whale, right? Whereas now, you know, you scroll through Instagram, you're just bombarded with everything. So I think we sort of normalized it. And so now, when, when lots of people do get to go to these amazing wild places, which I think is a great thing, um, for all the, you know, reasons we talked about, they sort of forget that actually this is a wild place.

• 1:05:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:11Speaker 00

  And all these animals, it's, this isn't a zoo, it's not this abstract world that's in your phone. Like it's a real thing and actions that you take will decide whether or not this animal lives or dies. Like the stakes are that high. And I, I think it's sort of reminding people to that, that, that you, you, you've got to have this, this respect.

• 1:05:31Speaker 02

  I think it might, it actually might sound very trivial, but you are at Disney and Disney has made a lot of cartoons. I think animating and giving animals personalities has sort of skewed the way people should look at animals and not try to find out what the animals' personalities are, like you're explaining.

• 1:05:48Speaker 00

  But, but I would argue in a way though, that, that, that is sort of a, a traditional sort of documentary approach is, look at the grandeur of this amazing place and isn't it, and, and whereas.

• 1:05:59Speaker 02

  Cartoons.

• 1:06:00Speaker 00

  Well, or, or even now, I, I guess more recent nature documentaries, we do try and personify the characters.

• 1:06:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're fully characters now.

• 1:06:06Speaker 00

  And, and I think it's probably gone too far, um, but it is a way to sort of engage people and get people to fall in love, rather than just it being this like beautiful wallpaper.

• 1:06:17Trevor Noah?

  We'll be right back after this short break.

• 1:06:22Trevor Noah?

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• 1:07:07Trevor Noah?

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• 1:07:52Trevor Noah?

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• 1:07:55Speaker 03

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• 1:08:56Trevor Noah?

  What do you think we could take from the animals? I often wonder this, like that, like that dolphin bachelor crew that you're talking about.

• 1:09:02Speaker 00

  I knew we were gonna circle back to that.

• 1:09:03Trevor Noah?

  Why did you choose bachelor instead of? Good, that's what he said.

• 1:09:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:09:08Trevor Noah?

  Don't try that with me. Hey buddy, hey buddy. I already have a rap sheet with you, don't add more things unnecessarily. No, like, like I, I remember seeing that and I, I, I found myself wondering, I was like, are there any things we could take from nature? Do you ever see things where you're like, oh yeah, this, this could probably work for us as humans? We should, we should be doing this. This could be like a, a way of life. This could be a, you know what I mean?

• 1:09:32Speaker 00

  I, I don't know if this answers your question, but it's just popped into my mind that wild animals' lives are really, really hard.

• 1:09:42Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:43Speaker 00

  But they are really good at doing what they do and that's how they thrive.

• 1:09:50Trevor Noah?

  Really hard.

• 1:09:51Speaker 00

  They're really hard.

• 1:09:52Trevor Noah?

  They're really good at what they do.

• 1:09:53Speaker 00

  Right, they, they like, they're, they're, they're really focused. So what I take from that is, okay, for whatever I do, I've gotta do my best to get really, really good at it.

• 1:10:05Trevor Noah?

  Oh, okay, I like this.

• 1:10:06Speaker 00

  And I'm not saying that.

• 1:10:07Trevor Noah?

  No, no, no, specialize, like really go into. Go into something, get good at it.

• 1:10:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, uh, try and do your best to try and become like a master of it. Cause that's how you, that's how you, I'm not saying.

• 1:10:18Trevor Noah?

  Eugene, what would you say you are a master at if you were to say one thing?

• 1:10:24Trevor Noah?

  And you can't pick comedy, it has to be something else. I'm gonna rap sheet with you, my friend.

• 1:10:29Speaker 00

  And then actually, I wanna show you a video to show you how hard some animals' lives are.

• 1:10:34Trevor Noah?

  No, show us, show us, what you got, show us what you got. You have the most wholesome, like, camera role of any human being I know. You can get any girl. Like, just any. Let me see what's...

• 1:10:46Speaker 00

  Okay, so this is a female, uh, puma, mountain lion, or puma, uh, and she is hunting a guanaco, okay? Which is like a wild llama.

• 1:10:59Speaker 00

  She is so close.

• 1:11:05Speaker 00

  She's gotta be within thirty meters now.

• 1:11:12Speaker 00

  I think she's gonna go. Yep, here she goes. She's going.

• 1:11:20Trevor Noah?

  What are you cheering for? The llama?

• 1:11:23Speaker 00

  No, the mountain lion.

• 1:11:24Trevor Noah?

  Really?

• 1:11:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:11:31Trevor Noah?

  No!

• 1:11:38Speaker 00

  Go, Pataca, go!

• 1:11:44Speaker 00

  Oh my god, what a fight!

• 1:11:51Speaker 00

  She's got it, she's got it!

• 1:11:56Speaker 00

  The guanaco is still fighting, it's trying to buck her off!

• 1:12:00Speaker 00

  So my point is, animals have really hard lives.

• 1:12:04Trevor Noah?

  Whoa, but you can't just go and say, "My point is," after that. There are so many thoughts I had after that video. Eugene will ask his questions, and then I'm gonna ask my questions.

• 1:12:13Speaker 00

  Okay, break it down.

• 1:12:15Trevor Noah?

  First of all, mine's not really, uh, it's a question for society, really. Why don't we make that the experience when we're getting, like, takeouts?

• 1:12:24Speaker 00

  Imagine having to do, they have to do that once a week for their whole life.

• 1:12:27Trevor Noah?

  And I'm saying this selfishly as somebody who, you know... Yeah, cause like, sometimes I'm like, "Ay, man, it's so easy to eat the foods that I'm eating." And then I'm just putting on weight, and I'm like, "Ah, man, I just wish, it would be great if I walked into a takeout place, and then immediately had to get into a... Chichu, hold the... Can I get the chef? Two piece, you want four, four pieces, bring out more!

• 1:12:52Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:55Trevor Noah?

  Can I get fries? Bring another one.

• 1:12:58Speaker 00

  Get kicked in the face.

• 1:13:06Trevor Noah?

  I mean, it would be good for society. It's so unprofessional. It would be good for society. You know what I mean? And then at the end of it, when you're eating your fries and then everyone's there bleeding and stuff and they're like, how the hell is it here?

• 1:13:17Trevor Noah?

  It's dope.

• 1:13:17Speaker 00

  Really, really good fries.

• 1:13:18Trevor Noah?

  But you would, you would eat less of it. You know what I mean? Like that animal looks like it's crazy in shape. How many times does that hunt have to happen for that animal to survive?

• 1:13:28Speaker 00

  So that's a, a, a, an individual called Pataka. So she's like a known individual.

• 1:13:33Trevor Noah?

  For that puma to, to survive, how many times does Pataka have to do that?

• 1:13:35Speaker 00

  So she had her and her two tu- two cubs. She has to take down a, a guanaco, yeah, a sort of a wild, big wild llama like that. Maybe every, once every seven to 10 days.

• 1:13:46Trevor Noah?

  Yo.

• 1:13:47Speaker 00

  For her, for her whole.

• 1:13:48Trevor Noah?

  Yo. Every single guy struggle every. And take none a guanaca.

• 1:13:54Speaker 00

  And what's, what's crazy?

• 1:13:56Trevor Noah?

  The local bar. It's a guanaca. What, it's been, how long has it been?

• 1:14:03Trevor Noah?

  Barman, lubricate the guanaca.

• 1:14:10Trevor Noah?

  We can relate to this. I love how you're also cheering for, so how do you? No. Wait, how do you choose which animal to cheer for?

• 1:14:16Speaker 00

  Well, that's a tough one because, you know, a- as, as a wildlife cameraman person, we are, you know, we, we, we can, you know, never get involved. A- and so, you know, it's important to not, to try to, we, we, I guess, we're normally told to not get emotionally involved.

• 1:14:32Trevor Noah?

  You were really involved. You were screaming, go Pataka, Pataka, choking.

• 1:14:37Speaker 00

  But I, no, but I, what, what I mean by him.

• 1:14:40Trevor Noah?

  Kill him, Pataka.

• 1:14:41Speaker 00

  I was very emotionally involved, yeah.

• 1:14:42Trevor Noah?

  Kill him dead, Pataka. Guanaca's life don't matter.

• 1:14:47Trevor Noah?

  But you recall, man, go guanaca. Camera shaking. Pataka, kill him.

• 1:14:52Speaker 00

  I'm there sticking a leg out trying to trip it up.

• 1:14:55Trevor Noah?

  You sounded like Joe Rogan at, at UFC.

• 1:14:59Trevor Noah?

  Look at him.

• 1:15:00Speaker 00

  So what I was going to say, if I was allowed to finish, was we are normally told to not get emotionally attached, but often when you spend all day, every day, following an individual animal for a, you know, a month or two, and you know the stakes because you know it's cubs that it has to feed.

• 1:15:18Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:15:19Speaker 00

  I feel like often people want to choose the side of the prey because that's the thing being attacked. And I think that's often because, you know, prey is very cute.

• 1:15:28Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 1:15:29Speaker 00

  But my point often is, well, if, okay, if we're going to play by those rules and based on cuteness, baby predators are usually the cutest animals, like a baby mountain lion. Oh my God, they're so cute.

• 1:15:41Speaker 00

  So yeah, I don't think that's good logic, but that's sort of a side, side note there. But my point is with, with Pataka, her, her life is incredibly hard, but she is so good at doing that. She has mastered that. She's like an Olympic athlete.

• 1:15:55Trevor Noah?

  I really like that.

• 1:15:55Speaker 02

  Pataka, yeah, she's a single black mom.

• 1:15:57Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, that's fighting hard. My two cubs and I'm going, I'm going in there.

• 1:16:01Speaker 02

  Two cubs, public schooling.

• 1:16:03Trevor Noah?

  Going in there, doing it. Can I say like, that also is a, is a valuable lesson for life though, is.

• 1:16:10Speaker 02

  Don't be a single black mom.

• 1:16:11Trevor Noah?

  If, I mean, that one's the hardest thing to be.

• 1:16:13Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:16:14Trevor Noah?

  If you are, if you are going to, or rather, if we lived in a world where we were more able to see and spend time with other people, we might have a little more compassion for the situation that they're in. Because think about it, this is a random puma, and then just because you spent time observing her and her life with her cubs, you now had a vested interest in her survival.

• 1:16:39Speaker 02

  And success.

• 1:16:40Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, and I almost feel like if we just had a little bit of that in society, just think.

• 1:16:45Speaker 00

  It's just empathy, isn't it?

• 1:16:46Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but it, but it's, it's contact. And I mean, we've talked about this, you know, you know, I'm a big believer in this. Part of why I love pickleball and I always tell you these things, but like, if you meet people and if you spend time with them, you're just. More likely to be concerned about their well being.

• 1:17:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:17:02Trevor Noah?

  And who they are and how they are. And the further we are from them, the less, the less we're likely to consider them and their survival.

• 1:17:08Speaker 00

  But bring it back to the wolves we talked about. If you actually spend time with wolves in the wild, which I've been very lucky enough to have done.

• 1:17:16Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:17Speaker 00

  You very quickly realize that they are not these sort of mindless, man eating killers. They have these amazing social systems.

• 1:17:24Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 1:17:25Speaker 00

  And they are so stoked to be alive and in a pack and they, they.

• 1:17:30Trevor Noah?

  Love community.

• 1:17:30Speaker 00

  Love you. Oh my god, they love each other so much. It is so lovely. You know when like, if you have a dog and, and you come home and the dog. They do that, but there's like ten of them and there's no humans. And they're just having a great party with each other and sniffing each other and having an awesome time. That's pickleball. Yeah.

• 1:17:48Trevor Noah?

  Is it, is it true that, um, is it true that one of the greatest threats to these wild systems is how we expanding farming?

• 1:17:57Speaker 00

  Uh, I mean, in the case of wolves, yeah, I mean, conflict with livestock, but, but I guess it comes back to that empathy of if we just, if we don't, if, if we don't spend time with them documenting their lives, showing how amazing and, and awesome that they are. It's, uh, but they're, they're just, they're, they're not individuals, they're just wolves at a faraway place.

• 1:18:17Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:18:18Speaker 00

  It's very easy for someone to go along and be shooting them and go, yeah, terrible, evil wolves. It's, again, it's that.

• 1:18:24Trevor Noah?

  It's a double edged sword, right?

• 1:18:25Speaker 00

  You need that, that, that view into their world.

• 1:18:28Trevor Noah?

  So what were your questions about the video?

• 1:18:41Speaker 02

  That video.

• 1:18:45Speaker 02

  That video was heartbreaking.

• 1:18:48Trevor Noah?

  For, for why?

• 1:18:50Speaker 02

  I mean,

• 1:18:53Speaker 02

  and the person shooting the video has clearly chosen a side.

• 1:19:00Speaker 02

  And as the llama, you hear, in, they're fighting for your life.

• 1:19:06Speaker 02

  There's a guy there. Jacket. Shouting for your death while your own llama kids are watching you.

• 1:19:18Speaker 02

  Like most of it.

• 1:19:19Speaker 00

  It's kind of fair, yeah, it's kind of fair.

• 1:19:23Speaker 00

  I guess, I guess if you would like the context, I can make a shame, I can make a shameless plug. If you watch the whole episode, it's part of a series called Animals Up Close on Disney Plus. You can see, you can meet Pataka, you can see her cubs, you can see the stakes, the challenges that she faces and why hunting guanaco is, is very challenging and far more often, the guanaco wins.

• 1:19:44Speaker 02

  I mean, the guanaco wins?

• 1:19:45Trevor Noah?

  That's stamping was, did you?

• 1:19:47Speaker 00

  Far more often, yeah.

• 1:19:48Speaker 02

  Far more often.

• 1:19:48Speaker 00

  Most of the time the pumas fail, they get bucked off and have terrible injuries.

• 1:19:51Trevor Noah?

  How many pumas are there and how many guanacos are there?

• 1:19:54Speaker 00

  There's a lot more guanacos than pumas.

• 1:19:54Trevor Noah?

  That's what I'm assuming. Yo, did you see how that thing was stamping on it?

• 1:19:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, they've got the crazy neck dip.

• 1:20:00Speaker 02

  Oh, that they do like.

• 1:20:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, what a strategy.

• 1:20:03Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, you like, you, you wanna jump on my back and crawl on my neck, I'm gonna neck dip you.

• 1:20:08Speaker 02

  You know what, actually you brought up farming and I think farming has done a lot for conservation as well. I was watching this one piece about um sturgeon. And how wild sturgeon had almost become.

• 1:20:19Trevor Noah?

  What is sturgeon?

• 1:20:20Speaker 00

  As in the fish?

• 1:20:21Speaker 02

  The fish that they use for caviar.

• 1:20:23Trevor Noah?

  Oh, okay, okay.

• 1:20:24Speaker 02

  So they, they, they.

• 1:20:24Trevor Noah?

  Crazy dinosaur.

• 1:20:25Speaker 02

  I'm not familiar with fish. Oh, yes, prehistoric looking fish, yeah. Okay. Gigantic.

• 1:20:29Trevor Noah?

  What, that one with the face like that?

• 1:20:31Speaker 02

  Okay, then what face was this now?

• 1:20:36Speaker 02

  What face was this?

• 1:20:37Trevor Noah?

  Was it wrong?

• 1:20:38Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:20:38Speaker 02

  Was it right?

• 1:20:39Trevor Noah?

  I don't know, cause I don't, I'm asking.

• 1:20:40Speaker 02

  I'm looking at it, Mina, yeah.

• 1:20:43Trevor Noah?

  Was that the one?

• 1:20:43Speaker 02

  You've seen wild animals before, what is this?

• 1:20:45Speaker 00

  I, I.

• 1:20:46Speaker 02

  Do it again.

• 1:20:46Trevor Noah?

  Is it close?

• 1:20:47Speaker 00

  Ah, sure. Yeah. I think it's fine, anyway.

• 1:20:50Trevor Noah?

  I'm just trying to clarify which fish.

• 1:20:51Speaker 00

  Keep, keep, keep going.

• 1:20:53Speaker 02

  Sorry, sturgeon, carry on.

• 1:20:56Speaker 02

  Sounds like a prestigious person, a sturgeon.

• 1:20:58Speaker 00

  So. Every time he says the word sturgeon from now, we're gonna do it again.

• 1:21:03Speaker 02

  So what they've realized is sturgeon was almost.

• 1:21:08Speaker 02

  Was was almost extinct because obviously they were being killed for their eggs. But it actually takes very long for a sturgeon to reach full maturity. So it can bear eggs.

• 1:21:19Speaker 00

  Can bear the eggs.

• 1:21:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, so they were getting extinct. So in the EU, they said no more wild sturgeon. So most of the carrier that you see now comes from farmed.

• 1:21:28Speaker 00

  Oh, as in fish farming?

• 1:21:30Speaker 02

  Fish farming, yes.

• 1:21:31Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:21:32Speaker 02

  So it's done a lot, obviously, for for nature conservation. They do it with.

• 1:21:35Speaker 00

  Does that count as nature conservation though? Back it up.

• 1:21:38Speaker 02

  Why?

• 1:21:39Speaker 00

  Uh, well, I would say that. Uh, I I don't know specifically a huge amount about the particular example with sturgeon. But if you look at other systems, uh, for example, farmed salmon or or even tuna. Um, which is which is ranch. Um, it's often used as a way to say, oh, this is much more sustainable. Because we're we're not affecting wild stocks. We're raising them in captivity. But actually, the reality is that it's complete and utter BS.

• 1:22:10Speaker 02

  Why?

• 1:22:11Speaker 00

  Um, okay, you take tuna, for example. So, um, bluefin tuna, uh, previously, uh, let's take the Mediterranean, for example. They would go on this, uh, they go on this crazy migration, uh, in the Atlantic. And then they, some of them come into the Mediterranean Sea to to to breed. And so they would go past, uh, certain European countries a couple of times a year on their way into the Mediterranean and on their way out. So these countries would get two chances to fish them each year when they swam past.

• 1:22:40Speaker 02

  On their way in and their way.

• 1:22:41Speaker 00

  And what would happen was they would, uh, fish a huge amount during that period. They would sell them, uh, mostly to the the, uh, Japanese sushi market.

• 1:22:49Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:22:49Speaker 00

  Uh, and it's classic supply and demand. You sell lots of tuna, uh, you flood the market, the price drops. So what they realized is instead of fishing them and killing them, uh, what if they ranch them? So they would go catch a whole bunch. They would put them in these huge nets and they would keep them alive in these nets throughout the year. So then they could sell them when the price was right.

• 1:23:14Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:23:15Speaker 00

  Um, and it was often said, oh, well, you know, this takes pressure off of hunting more in in, you know, from the wild.

• 1:23:22Speaker 02

  I mean, that seems right.

• 1:23:24Speaker 00

  Well, there's two flaws to this. One is if you're catching a huge, huge amount.

• 1:23:31Speaker 00

  Well, you're still removing them from the wild. You're not, you're not actually farming those. But the bigger issue is, okay, I visited one tuna ranch, okay? And they had twenty four nets. In each net, they had one thousand bluefin tuna. And these bluefin tuna can be-

• 1:23:46Trevor Noah?

  Those things are massive.

• 1:23:47Speaker 00

  They can be two, two to three hundred kilos, these fish. They're enormous. Uh, incre- yeah, so a thousand fish in one net. Guess how much food you have to feed one thousand bluefin tuna per day?

• 1:24:02Trevor Noah?

  Oh, shit.

• 1:24:05Speaker 02

  Tons and tons, I'm sure.

• 1:24:06Speaker 00

  Six to ten tons of fish per net. This one ranch had twenty four nets. That means they are feeding that farm up to two hundred and forty tons of prey fish per day.

• 1:24:19Speaker 02

  That has to come from somewhere.

• 1:24:20Speaker 00

  Where does that come from? It comes from anywhere in the ocean round the world. So, once a week, this enormous ship would turn up with herring from Norway, uh, anchovies from the coast of Chile, uh, sardines from the coast of South Africa.

• 1:24:38Trevor Noah?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:24:38Speaker 00

  Wherever it was cheap.

• 1:24:40Trevor Noah?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:24:40Speaker 00

  And these fish would get poured into these nets. We were, we were catching fish to feed fish.

• 1:24:50Trevor Noah?

  This sort of like- You know, the worst thing about-

• 1:24:52Speaker 00

  So, we're just hoovering up the, this, this is the dark, you're dark.

• 1:24:56Trevor Noah?

  The worst thing about learning is that it can make you very depressed.

• 1:25:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, a hundred percent.

• 1:25:01Trevor Noah?

  No, genuinely, because I think there's a lot of people out there, myself included, who'd go like, oh, this is much better.

• 1:25:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:25:07Trevor Noah?

  Because, you know, you're farming it and now, and then now you're telling me, oh, yeah, the second system effect of doing this

• 1:25:14Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:25:15Trevor Noah?

  has far more detrimental effects on the food supply and on the ecosystem than we thought previously. So then, so then, okay, then what, what do we do? I, I mean, that, that is part of the reason I've always liked your work as well is every time I've seen you, every time I've watched your videos, you'll always offer a solution. You'll always, you, you don't just go like, man, that's all folks, it sucks, you know?

• 1:25:39Speaker 00

  Right. Because there's enough depressing stuff in the world.

• 1:25:41Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah. What are some of the success stories that you've come across or you've been a part of where you go, oh, look, this is, this is like an- Achievable difference we can make. It's not big. It's not monumental. It's not like shutting down industries. It's not what what is what are some of the?

• 1:25:55Speaker 00

  Totally. Well, I mean, I really staying with the, you know, theme of the ocean, the really amazing thing about the ocean is that if you give it the chance, it it comes back on an unbelievable scale of this this speed. So a really awesome conservation success story. There's a place called Rajah Ampat in Indonesia. It's amazing archipelago. It looks like something out of a storybook. It's all these little islands covering green jungle. And around those islands underwater is some of the most amazing coral reef. But in many places in Rajah Ampat, you dive on those places and it's just a rubble field. Um. Because they've been dynamite fished. So that's when fishermen would come along. They would chuck a stick of dynamite into the water. It goes bang.

• 1:26:38Trevor Noah?

  The fish.

• 1:26:39Speaker 00

  All the fish come up to the surface, you know, dead, stunned. Uh. You get a quick, easy catch. But of course, the fragile coral reef is left destroyed. That coral reef is the basis of the whole ecosystem. And so once you've trashed that bit of reef, well, it's it's gone. You have to move to the next place. Now, if you're doing that on a very small scale. Okay, maybe that could work, but there's lots of people and it's, yeah, so it was trashed. So about twenty years ago, in a place called Mizzou, the community came together and they were backed by pretty significant private philanthropy. They came together and they said enough is enough. You know, the the ecosystem is is dying and as a fishing community, we are really, really struggling.

• 1:27:21Speaker 00

  So they basically just set up a no take zone. Uh. You're not allowed to fish in it. Many of the fishermen became um kind of rangers, you know. Some of them became dive guides and uh twenty years on, um uh they, you know, they've made this. This place has made an extraordinary comeback. And in that time, the biomass, that's the weight of living things. At some of the the key locations, it's gone up by six hundred percent. And it's one of the only places on earth where the biodiversity, so it's the number of different species, is actually increasing.

• 1:27:55Speaker 00

  And and they're also replanting the the coral reef. And and so.

• 1:28:01Speaker 00

  The coolest thing about that is that, okay, nature's thriving. Humans are directly thriving because, you know, they're being paid to be rangers and dive guides and all that stuff. But the best part is that the marine life doesn't understand the borders that we draw.

• 1:28:16Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:16Speaker 00

  Hmm. So it moves outside of those protected areas into the take zone. And so the local fishing community.

• 1:28:24Trevor Noah?

  Actually gets.

• 1:28:25Speaker 00

  Is actually doing really well.

• 1:28:26Trevor Noah?

  Yeah. It it's, I mean, it's it's so trivial to say, but it really is. It really feels like everything you say is just us not having a wide enough aperture to actually understand time.

• 1:28:43Speaker 00

  Well, often.

• 1:28:44Trevor Noah?

  And the benefits of things.

• 1:28:45Speaker 00

  You have to make a small, short term sacrifice.

• 1:28:48Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 1:28:49Speaker 00

  For a long term, massive gain.

• 1:28:52Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:52Speaker 00

  Not just economic.

• 1:28:54Trevor Noah?

  Yeah. It's it's all become extractive now. That's that's the issue is like. We live in a world where companies want to extract as much as possible from everyone all the time, as much as possible.

• 1:29:05Speaker 00

  And now, now, now, now, now.

• 1:29:07Trevor Noah?

  And so growth has no longer been something. And you see, you see that it's it's it's not one way or the other, by the way. There are many companies out there, especially like companies that haven't gone public, where they they make a shit ton of money. And the product is still good and the customer is still served and they and they treat their customers, their workers well. Because they get to define their own growth.

• 1:29:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:29:33Trevor Noah?

  Do you know what I mean? They don't have to just just like vacuum up.

• 1:29:36Speaker 00

  Shareholder value.

• 1:29:37Trevor Noah?

  Everything. Yeah. Shareholder value, like where's more, more, more, more. It's like, yeah, you it can be more.

• 1:29:43Speaker 02

  Sustainably.

• 1:29:44Trevor Noah?

  But sustainably.

• 1:29:45Speaker 00

  I do wonder if in

• 1:29:49Speaker 00

  X period of time, ten, twenty years, we'll look back on this time. You know, we.

• 1:29:56Speaker 00

  Now we look back on, you know, certain things that we've done in the past that we were like, those people were really bad. They, that was really bad. And, you know, when we look at, you know, things like slavery or colonization. And I wonder if in the future, we're going to look back on certain things that we're doing to the environment now and go,

• 1:30:16Trevor Noah?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:30:17Speaker 00

  What, what, what do you mean? You, you had, you did that for shareholder. What do you mean shareholder value?

• 1:30:22Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:23Speaker 00

  What, what's going on there?

• 1:30:24Trevor Noah?

  I think you, you're, you're assuming we'll still all be around for that. Cause the, this is the weird thing. You know, um, the other day I started like reading about extinction level events. One thing that's most terrifying about them is how they, it's just like a tipping point. You know, it's, it's just like one thing that tips and then all of a sudden,

• 1:30:45Speaker 00

  It unravels.

• 1:30:46Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, it just unravels. It's like, oh, you, you lost this much forest or at a certain time, this changed in the atmosphere and then all of a sudden all the trees died. And then that caused the thing and this caused, but it's just like, it's just a tipping point.

• 1:31:00Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:31:01Trevor Noah?

  And then the world has to go to sleep for a few hundred years or thousand years and then,

• 1:31:05Speaker 00

  This got very dark and, and depressing. And so what I would say is that, uh, yes, we obviously have big challenges, but there are so many good news conservation success stories.

• 1:31:19Trevor Noah?

  Now you're gonna see why I love Bertie.

• 1:31:20Speaker 00

  There are so many and not, not to say that you, we should, you know, bury our heads in the sand and ignore the rest of the world.

• 1:31:25Trevor Noah?

  No, no, no, no, no.

• 1:31:27Speaker 00

  La, la, la, la, la. But if we focus on when we've got it right, rather than going naughty, naughty, this is what you did wrong. I feel like it's, yeah, it comes back to that thing of, uh, yeah, if you're told not to do something.

• 1:31:38Trevor Noah?

  You will do it.

• 1:31:39Speaker 00

  Yeah. You're gonna do it. Whereas if you're told, well, you can,

• 1:31:42Trevor Noah?

  What you can do.

• 1:31:43Speaker 00

  Inspire and celebrate the wins.

• 1:31:44Trevor Noah?

  So what's the thing that's, that's inspired you most recently where you've gone like, oh, this, what, what are you working on right now? Actually, like you always, every time I see you, you're working on something more crazy and more interesting. And it, it just goes in the most random directions.

• 1:31:57Speaker 00

  Uh, so I'm working on a couple of different projects, uh, with, with Disney Plus. It's really exciting. Uh, continuing my Up Close series.

• 1:32:04Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:05Speaker 00

  Uh, so in each episode, we, we go and,

• 1:32:07Trevor Noah?

  Do animals ever recognize you, by the way?

• 1:32:09Speaker 00

  That's funny. Like, aren't you that guy?

• 1:32:12Trevor Noah?

  No, I'm being serious.

• 1:32:13Speaker 00

  Was cheering when my mom.

• 1:32:17Trevor Noah?

  Are you the Pataca guy?

• 1:32:18Speaker 00

  Are you the?

• 1:32:19Trevor Noah?

  No, what I mean is, I mean this genuinely. Because you go back to some places, I'm assuming.

• 1:32:25Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:32:26Trevor Noah?

  I wonder if you've ever encountered any animal that has in some way shown you like a familiar, like, cause, cause you, you know the animals is what I'm saying.

• 1:32:35Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:32:36Trevor Noah?

  Have you ever had that encounter where an animal has sort of like gone like, oh shit. Obviously not going like Bertie's that you.

• 1:32:41Speaker 00

  Well, so in the case of Pataca, so the reason that I know her is that when she was a cub, when she was six months old, um, in twenty seventeen, I filmed her for a BBC David Attenborough series.

• 1:32:55Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:55Speaker 00

  Called Seven Worlds, and I was filming her mother, Samiento. And Samiento was, was fighting to protect her cubs, you know, and feed her cubs and raise her cubs. And one of those cubs was Pataca. She was six months old. She was this little fluffy cub.

• 1:33:08Trevor Noah?

  This is the context you should have given us early. We thought she was just out here cheering for a murderer. You've known her since she was a child.

• 1:33:13Speaker 00

  So then I went back, yeah, four, five years later, and now she has not only survived, which is a big deal for, for puma cubs, because they don't have great survival rates, but she was now this pa- her mother had passed away, Samiento, and now she'd taken over her mother's territory and was raising her own, her own cubs. Now, it felt like going back to see this long lost friend.

• 1:33:34Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:33:34Speaker 00

  And, and obviously she was just like.

• 1:33:36Trevor Noah?

  I don't know you.

• 1:33:37Speaker 00

  Who, who are you?

• 1:33:38Trevor Noah?

  I think if you do it long enough, it'll happen.

• 1:33:41Speaker 00

  Um.

• 1:33:41Trevor Noah?

  I genuinely do. Here's, here's what, and maybe it's the types of animals, don't get me wrong, I'm not expecting a crocodile to be your friend, but I do think like an elephant, maybe a whale, I'm willing to, we'll, we'll, we'll have this conversation.

• 1:33:52Speaker 00

  Why not a crocodile? Okay.

• 1:33:53Trevor Noah?

  I don't think crocodiles roll like that.

• 1:33:55Speaker 00

  I, I recently.

• 1:33:56Trevor Noah?

  I just don't.

• 1:33:56Speaker 00

  I was recently on a project that, um, he- hopefully, uh, Disney will be okay with me talking about it, because it's not the main focus of the show, but I did meet a manta ray.

• 1:34:08Trevor Noah?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:34:09Speaker 00

  Like, huge, giant oceanic manta ray.

• 1:34:11Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:12Speaker 00

  Five meter plus wingspan.

• 1:34:14Trevor Noah?

  Hmm. Five meet, oh, yeah, I don't, I don't think they could get that big.

• 1:34:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:34:17Trevor Noah?

  Moana's grandmother did.

• 1:34:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:34:21Trevor Noah?

  That was beautiful imagery, Eugene. I hate it when you do that to me, but I love it.

• 1:34:26Speaker 00

  Manta rays have, relative to their body size, the largest brain of any fish. They're actually incredibly intelligent and they pass the mirror test. So they they can recognize themselves, which is pretty mind boggling. But this particular manta ray, she came over to us on our first dive at this particular location. And she was really friendly and she sort of parked over our heads. And I won't tell you what what she did, because that would be giving the game away. Okay, cool. The episode's about, we'll we'll park that down the road. But what was amazing was that for the the rest of the five days that we were at this location, every single time we got in the water, she would come and find us.

• 1:35:10Trevor Noah?

  See, this is what I was asking.

• 1:35:11Speaker 00

  Now, the question is, okay, they are technically capable of differentiating between humans.

• 1:35:18Trevor Noah?

  Uh huh, uh huh.

• 1:35:19Speaker 00

  So was she just a massive attention seeker and went to go and be really nice to everyone? Or was there something special about us and she wanted to come hang out with us?

• 1:35:30Trevor Noah?

  I think we know the answer, Bertie.

• 1:35:30Speaker 00

  I hope it's the latter, but maybe not.

• 1:35:32Trevor Noah?

  She had a Disney plus subscription. She was like, that's Bertie. And then she was like, you know, let me go say what's up.

• 1:35:39Speaker 00

  She's like, I want to be in that show.

• 1:35:40Speaker 02

  Moana is on Disney.

• 1:35:42Trevor Noah?

  Oh, yeah, Moana is also on Disney. Look at this. It's a collaboration.

• 1:35:45Speaker 00

  Cross pollination.

• 1:35:45Trevor Noah?

  We've done, huh? This is what they call synergy in the corporate world. Synergy, Eugene. You, they'll love you and you must go to corporate one day. You gotta go and do it. Bertie, this has been amazing, man. I think I'm I'm really excited for like everything. I I just like, you know, because I'll I'll I'll tell you why. Because you've helped me and I think millions of other people who've watched the shows, understand the link between the worlds and not in like a cheesy way, just genuine in like a, you know, like ROI kind of way. You've really helped people go like, oh, wow, all right, we need that that that animal. We need those. We need all of these animals. We need these creatures to survive. So that we can get our food, so that we can live our lives, so that we can, you know what I mean?

• 1:36:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. No, I love I love the fact that you emphasize that because, you know, humans always think they can go elsewhere.

• 1:36:36Speaker 02

  Like if things don't work out in this reef, they can go somewhere else.

• 1:36:38Trevor Noah?

  Planet D.

• 1:36:39Speaker 02

  Planet, yes, and then Planet B.

• 1:36:41Trevor Noah?

  This guy.

• 1:36:41Speaker 02

  But.

• 1:36:42Trevor Noah?

  Sorry, carry on.

• 1:36:43Speaker 02

  But now you've made it possible, or for me to even imagine that we must coexist with the animals that we've displaced. We don't have to be away from the Ngorongoro Crater to be close to the animals or to love them even, you know, we can be there, we can love them to death. But I think you've done a lot, man, and I hadn't known much about you until we spoke today and I see your passion and I see why my friend here loves you so much.

• 1:37:06Speaker 00

  Oh, well, thanks very much for having me, guys.

• 1:37:08Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:37:08Speaker 00

  Good to chat and getting people to care about animals in the natural world. And I would encourage people wherever they live, even if it's in the middle of a city, even if it's like here in New York. There are, this city is home to the fastest animal on earth, peregrine falcon, that will be hunting off the skyscrapers not far from this very room. So it doesn't matter where you live.

• 1:37:27Trevor Noah?

  I've always wondered if I was really seeing those.

• 1:37:30Speaker 00

  It doesn't matter where you live, there is amazing wildlife to be found.

• 1:37:33Trevor Noah?

  I was like, that looks like a falcon, then I was like, Trevor, it's a pigeon, clearly it's a pigeon. You can't just see a falcon in New York City.

• 1:37:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, you can.

• 1:37:39Trevor Noah?

  But you can.

• 1:37:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:37:41Trevor Noah?

  Huh.

• 1:37:41Speaker 00

  So, yeah.

• 1:37:42Trevor Noah?

  Give us a tip for how to sneak up on animals as you depart, like, like in a, in a good way. Cause when you said that, I was like, I, I wanna, I wanna get close and like, what are the do's and don'ts?

• 1:37:54Speaker 00

  Well, the most important thing is knowing, knowing your subject, knowing, knowing the animal. And, uh, and, and I think just spending time, spending time outside. And that sounds kind of obvious.

• 1:38:04Trevor Noah?

  Be outside.

• 1:38:05Speaker 00

  Be outside.

• 1:38:05Trevor Noah?

  First rule, be outside.

• 1:38:07Speaker 00

  Go look and, and, uh, yeah, no, no, knowing the animal and you, you, you wanna know as much about it, do as much homework as you can about it, research about it.

• 1:38:16Trevor Noah?

  So don't just like, don't just like go out there.

• 1:38:17Speaker 00

  No, well, no, no.

• 1:38:18Trevor Noah?

  Learn on the job.

• 1:38:18Speaker 00

  No, no, learn on the job for sure, but the reason that it's good to know things or be with someone that knows things is because one, that means you've got a greater chance of actually finding it in the first place.

• 1:38:28Trevor Noah?

  Oh, yeah, this is true.

• 1:38:29Speaker 00

  And, and understanding what the heck it's doing when it's flying around or doing whatever. But the other thing is, is coming back to that loving them to death, you make sure that you can understand the cues that it gives off when it's, you know, comfortable with you being there, uncomfortable, so that we make sure that when we're watching animals, it's on their terms and they are beautiful.

• 1:38:47Trevor Noah?

  This is, this is, this is exactly why I only go to like a nightclub or a bar with Eugene. Because then he can help me spot the situations. And then Eugene will be like, whoa, whoa, whoa.

• 1:38:59Speaker 00

  He's interpreting the Walmart.

• 1:39:00Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, Eugene goes like, ah, ah, ah, don't say hi. Ah, ah, ah, calm down, don't, don't make eye contact with that guy. Absolutely. Shake your hips here, Trevor, and then, you know, that's how. Because before me, you used to just feed on carcasses.

• 1:39:17Speaker 00

  Sort of works as an analogy.

• 1:39:19Trevor Noah?

  I made a terrible mistake engaging you at all.

• 1:39:22Speaker 00

  It was nearly really wholesome.

• 1:39:24Trevor Noah?

  Thanks so much. No, man, but thank you. Thanks for, thanks for indulging. This was fun, man. Thank you, buddy. Oh, man, this is great.

• 1:39:32Trevor Noah?

  What Now with Trevor Noah is produced by Day Zero Productions in partnership with Sirius XM. The show is executive produced by Trevor Noah, Sanaz Yamin, and Jess Hackel. Rebecca Chain is our producer. Our development researcher is Marcia Robiu. Music, mixing, and mastering by Hannes Brown. Random other stuff by Ryan Parduth. Thank you so much for listening. Join me next week for another episode of What Now.

• 1:40:04Speaker 03

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