Tara Stoinski Returns (primatologist)

Tara Stoinski (A Gorilla Story) is a primatologist, conservationist, and CEO and Chief Scientific Officer of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund. Tara returns to the Armchair Expert to discuss growing up outside Philadelphia, her academic path from Tufts to Oxford to Georgia Tech, and balancing motherhood with a career studying gorillas in Rwanda. Tara and Dax talk about documenting rare gorilla dominance battles, the challenges of filming endangered animals in the wild, and how gorilla social structures differ from chimpanzees. Tara explains the importance of long-term behavioral research, how early life trauma can impact animal behavior, and why strong social bonds are key to survival in both gorillas and humans. Take printer ink off your to-do list with HP Smart Tank | hp.com/SmartTank Check Allstate first for a quote that could save you hundreds: https://www.allstate.com/ See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:00Dax Shepard?

  Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert Experts on Expert. I'm Dax Shepard and I'm joined by Monica Padman.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Hi.

• 0:06Dax Shepard?

  And today we have returning primatologist Tara Stoinski. She is the CEO and Chief Scientific Officer of the Diane Fossey Gorilla Fund. And she worked closely on this incredible documentary that I saw, really importantly, by the director of My Octopus Teacher.

• 0:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:27Dax Shepard?

  And Chimp Empire.

• 0:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:29Dax Shepard?

  Maybe my favorite animal doc I've ever seen. And this new documentary is called A Gorilla Story. And there's the most insane footage in it. What they captured over these couple of years they were filming is incredible. It's so good. She's so knowledgeable. And, um, you know, these are highly endangered, beautiful treasures on planet Earth. So if you're inclined, please go to the Diane Fossey Gorilla Fund and support that. Please enjoy Tara Stoinski. We get support from AG1. Fall is that time when your body and mind are getting ready for the winter. You're settling in, bracing for the cold. Your body's already running a deficit from the shorter days and broken sleep patterns.

• 1:12Dax Shepard?

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• 1:57Speaker 01

  Well, that's also the thing. When you do it, first thing in the morning, you already feel kind of self-esteem because you're like, I already did something good for myself.

• 2:04Dax Shepard?

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• 2:48Dax Shepard?

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• 3:11Speaker 01

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• 3:12Dax Shepard?

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• 3:35Dax Shepard?

  How are you?

• 3:37Speaker 02

  Hi Monica, nice to meet you.

• 3:39Dax Shepard?

  Good. Hi, welcome. Thank you so much. Yeah, so excited to have you.

• 3:45Speaker 02

  Thrilled to be here in this amazing space.

• 3:47Dax Shepard?

  Where did you travel from?

• 3:48Speaker 02

  Atlanta.

• 3:49Dax Shepard?

  What, you said Rwanda?

• 3:50Speaker 02

  No, no, I was there a couple of weeks ago, but no, I came from Atlanta this time.

• 3:55Dax Shepard?

  What part of Atlanta? Do you know Monica's in Atlanta?

• 3:57Speaker 01

  Yes, we did that last time.

• 3:59Speaker 02

  I'm from outside Philly, but I've been in Atlanta for 30 plus years.

• 4:03Dax Shepard?

  You sound like Monica's mom.

• 4:06Speaker 01

  Really?

• 4:06Dax Shepard?

  Yes, you don't hear it?

• 4:08Speaker 01

  Oh my God, I don't hear it.

• 4:09Dax Shepard?

  Listen for it.

• 4:10Speaker 02

  I got some combination of like the Philly, Atlanta accent or something.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  Oh my gosh, I don't hear it at all, but you know, you can't like hear your mom.

• 4:18Speaker 02

  No.

• 4:19Speaker 01

  Your mom is just a mom.

• 4:21Dax Shepard?

  Entity, she's just, yeah, yeah.

• 4:22Speaker 02

  You can't even hear yourself. I can remember back in the days of answering machines. One time like playing an answering machine and there was this person like, hey, it was like for my husband, boyfriend at the time probably, and they're like, hey, honey, how you doing? Wondering what you're doing later? I'm like, who is this woman?

• 4:37Dax Shepard?

  Oh wow.

• 4:37Speaker 02

  Calling, and it was me. I totally didn't recognize my own voice. I don't know if you're like this, I can't go back and listen to anything I've done. I went and listened to our last podcast, so I wouldn't like repeat myself, but it was painful for me. And then I was like, oh, there's a transcript. I could just read it and not have to listen to myself.

• 4:54Speaker 01

  We have to. We have to get used to it at some point. We have to.

• 4:57Dax Shepard?

  I started doing that. I listened to like a third of it, so we wouldn't repeat ourselves. It was Zoom, but I was like, I didn't like Zoom. I mean, as much as it was lovely.

• 5:06Speaker 01

  It's so different.

• 5:07Dax Shepard?

  It's so different. I'm speaking in that one as if you are on the other end of a soup can and a string. I'm like, ah, I know. Like, I'm shouting at for Tara. Yes. I was like, I can't do this. And who cares if I repeat myself?

• 5:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, because maybe some people who haven't heard the first one need some background.

• 5:28Dax Shepard?

  So, okay, so you're in Atlanta. Are you in a suburb by Miami?

• 5:32Speaker 02

  No, I am just east of downtown. So Grant Park, like right near the zoo.

• 5:35Speaker 01

  You're in a cooler area.

• 5:37Speaker 02

  It's great because I'm super convenient to the airport, which is where I feel like I spend a lot of my time.

• 5:41Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. How old are your daughters now?

• 5:43Speaker 02

  So my daughters now are 19 and 17.

• 5:46Dax Shepard?

  Oh, my Lord.

• 5:47Speaker 02

  So I have one in college, she's a sophomore in college, and the other one, we are deciding in the next, she's deciding in the next few weeks where she'll be at college.

• 5:55Speaker 01

  May I suggest?

• 5:57Dax Shepard?

  That's great tuition.

• 5:58Speaker 02

  She got into Georgia, which we were thrilled about.

• 6:01Speaker 01

  It's so fun.

• 6:01Speaker 02

  Got into tech.

• 6:03Speaker 01

  It's less fun.

• 6:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:06Dax Shepard?

  Better school?

• 6:06Speaker 01

  Probably considered better.

• 6:08Speaker 02

  It's very sunny.

• 6:09Speaker 01

  In certain areas.

• 6:10Speaker 02

  Like engineering. We'll give it engineering. I'm a tech grad, so I have to like, have to go for tech. But she, from the start, has been like, I really want to go out of state. With our whole family being from the Northeast, so I don't think she's going to end up in.

• 6:25Speaker 01

  Okay, well.

• 6:26Dax Shepard?

  Well, good for her.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  No.

• 6:27Speaker 02

  She's a homebody, too.

• 6:29Speaker 01

  She's going to end up back there.

• 6:30Speaker 02

  So we'll see.

• 6:31Dax Shepard?

  And how does the 19-year-old like college?

• 6:33Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. So she is a sophomore at Duke and has drunk the Duke Kool-Aid. She loves it. I've gotten really into Duke basketball now. And I've been surprised at how heartbroken I have been when they didn't end up going. All the way and I already I'm a big fan of the Philadelphia Eagles. So I feel like I already have my heartbreak, even though we did win the Super Bowl recently. I'm like, I can't take on another stress team. Like I paced the house. I had to go for a walk after this game. And at halftime, she was like, if we win the whole thing. So they've lost, they didn't make it to the final four this year. They were number one ranking team. So she's texting me like, I'm gonna get a tattoo if they win. And I saw she put it on Instagram and then she went, well, that didn't age very well.

• 7:17Dax Shepard?

  Also for you, built in win win.

• 7:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:21Dax Shepard?

  Either they win and you're delighted, or they lose and your daughter doesn't get that tattoo.

• 7:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's very true.

• 7:26Dax Shepard?

  You could enter that one like very, I'm gonna win either way.

• 7:29Speaker 01

  Not to blame her, but she might have caught.

• 7:32Dax Shepard?

  Oh, you think she did?

• 7:33Speaker 01

  He's not meant to have that tattoo on her.

• 7:36Speaker 02

  We have a lot of superstitions in our house. Like we dress our dogs for all the Eagles games. They wear Eagles gear and then if they're not winning, they have to switch jerseys.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  It's fun to care.

• 7:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is.

• 7:46Dax Shepard?

  You have several alma maters.

• 7:48Speaker 02

  I do.

• 7:49Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, which are they?

• 7:50Speaker 02

  So did my undergrad degree at Tufts University in Boston. Did a master's in biology at University of Oxford in England. And then did my PhD at Georgia Tech.

• 7:58Dax Shepard?

  You're not even pushing for that, even though you.

• 8:00Speaker 02

  I don't think it's the right school for her. She's not interested in science. And the other thing is her three closest friends are all going there. And I'm really proud of her. She really kind of wants to break out and do something new. And that's been something she's been saying for a couple of years. So I mean, I would love her to go to tech. It's two miles from my house. I told her, I'm like, I never go to tech's campus. I'm not gonna come and bug you, but you can come home if you want. You can visit the dogs. But I'm very proud of her for wanting to go off and have some independence.

• 8:26Speaker 01

  In the city, it's not.

• 8:28Dax Shepard?

  Tell me more.

• 8:29Speaker 01

  In the city, if she wants to have best of both worlds, she can just go to Athens. It's just an hour away and some change. And it's so fun.

• 8:38Dax Shepard?

  I don't know the last time you drove from Athens to Atlanta, but I think that's a lot of change. Hour and change. I think there's, I think something in this change adds up to more than.

• 8:46Speaker 01

  It's really close, actually.

• 8:48Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, from my parents' house to Athens, it's like an hour and 10 minutes.

• 8:52Dax Shepard?

  Well, but to Atlanta proper.

• 8:54Speaker 02

  I just went, I just gave a lecture up there a couple of weeks ago and yeah, it's not that bad. I mean, you go through cow country.

• 8:59Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 8:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're going through the country to get up there.

• 9:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, you see a lot.

• 9:01Speaker 02

  Athens proper is really cute.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  It's so cute.

• 9:04Dax Shepard?

  And your husband, was he very academic?

• 9:06Speaker 02

  He was a lawyer.

• 9:07Dax Shepard?

  No one's heading in that direction.

• 9:08Speaker 02

  The older one, for sure.

• 9:09Dax Shepard?

  Oh, really?

• 9:10Speaker 02

  She's a great arguer. She'll be fabulous at it.

• 9:12Speaker 01

  Oh, great.

• 9:14Speaker 02

  Yeah. She's interested, I think, also in international law, diplomacy, which you always wonder like what your kids see, what maps onto them. And neither of them want to do science, per se, but they spent their whole childhoods going to Rwanda with me. And so I think that part of it, she really likes. She's going to do a semester in Madrid in the fall. And so I could see her heading in that direction, not like straight up corporate law or something.

• 9:35Dax Shepard?

  Okay. So back to, what does your normal yearly schedule look like?

• 9:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, I am usually in Rwanda about once a quarter. And that has been kind of dictated by my kids because I've been a single mom since they were six and four. So during the school year, try not to be gone for more than three weeks at a time. In Rwanda, I do a lot of travel in the US as well for conferences or meet with donors. And then in the summers, we go for a longer period of time because they would come with me. So we'd be there for six weeks or so. So we have like a communal house. It's like being in college again. Sometimes we have 12 to 15 people living in it, three bathrooms. So it's very interesting, especially when you get the teenage girls in there as well. But when they were little, they would stay home, they would play in the garden because they can't go to see the gorillas. We're not like in the forest proper. We're outside the forest.

• 10:19Dax Shepard?

  What's the age limit? Curious.

• 10:20Speaker 02

  15.

• 10:21Dax Shepard?

  Because I was watching with my daughters last night, The Doc, and I have been telling our oldest daughter, who's very interested in going to Africa, I've been telling her since she was three, when you're 16, when you're 16, as I was watching, I was like, I'm not sure if you're allowed at 16, but this is delightful. So 15 and up, you can go.

• 10:35Speaker 02

  15, yeah. So they both have now gone, just in the last few years, to see the gorillas.

• 10:39Dax Shepard?

  There was no sneaky snake?

• 10:40Speaker 02

  No, no sneaky snake.

• 10:41Speaker 01

  She was, she's the rule!

• 10:43Dax Shepard?

  But can you imagine traveling all the way to Rwanda as a little kid and spending 10 years there and not seeing the gorillas? I mean, they must have been like, let's go.

• 10:53Speaker 02

  Let's go. And they've been on safari, so they got to see the other stuff. But the gorillas themselves, yeah, they just saw for the first time recently.

• 10:59Dax Shepard?

  So they're like in the garden in there?

• 11:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're just hanging out. Well, the thing is, like particularly in the summertime, Like a lot of researchers come over. So they've got friends from all over the country. They would see the same people again. Sometimes people bring their kids.

• 11:11Dax Shepard?

  Okay, great.

• 11:12Speaker 02

  So they had like a little cohort of folks that they would hang out with. And then, starting in high school, my older daughter's like, ah, can I go to summer camp instead?

• 11:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 11:20Speaker 02

  The younger one, though, last summer was probably her last summer, and she was sad. She really loves it there.

• 11:25Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 11:25Speaker 02

  It's just comfort zone for her. It's something she's familiar with. If the pizza place closes that she goes to, we have two pizza places in town. Of course, two girls, one likes one pizza place, the other pizza place.

• 11:36Dax Shepard?

  I'm so comforted to hear that.

• 11:38Speaker 02

  I will say, my younger daughter, she's a peacemaker. She very much is my husband's personality.

• 11:43Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 11:43Speaker 02

  So she's a peacemaker. So if the older one really wants something, she's like, fine.

• 11:47Dax Shepard?

  Okay, this is a sad question to ask, but it's very obvious to me that I'm thinking about it now. So our younger daughter, to me, is like a carbon copy of my wife. I mean, they're so similar, it's crazy. And because of that, there's been a lot of interesting things. One just being, oh weird, I get to kind of parent a younger version of my wife.

• 12:07Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 12:08Dax Shepard?

  And I want to give her everything I think my wife deserved, right? There's just a lot of weird things in the mix. So because your husband's passed.

• 12:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:17Dax Shepard?

  Does that, do you think, compound that? Where it's like, she's also the last living thing you can touch that's still him in that way?

• 12:25Speaker 02

  In a lot of ways. And it's funny, one of the things, she's super empathetic. And she doesn't want to see anyone get hurt, doesn't want to see any animals get hurt. I lead with my head, and so does my older daughter. And she very much leads with her heart. And my husband led with his heart. And it used to frustrate me, because like, I want to know what's happening in the news. I want to know what's happening in the world. And he would be like, Tara, I don't want to watch it. And it would irritate me, because I'm like, how do you not want to know what's going on? But it physically hurt him. And, you know, this big six foot four guy, I didn't get that.

• 12:55Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 12:56Speaker 02

  But now I see it. I can see it in my little one. I'm like, oh, this is how you're wired. And this really does pain you to see others in distress.

• 13:04Dax Shepard?

  She has a different nervous system than you do.

• 13:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, completely, completely. I feel like I understand him better in some ways, getting to parent her.

• 13:12Dax Shepard?

  This is a great transition. So. In the documentary, there's all kinds of gruesome moments.

• 13:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:18Dax Shepard?

  I'm imagining I'm looking at it like you. I'm like, yeah. And also, this is how it works. Like, let's just start with, this is how it works.

• 13:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:25Dax Shepard?

  So, there's gonna be a lot of gnarliness along the way. I even said to them beforehand, anticipate this could happen, and Phant aside is likely to follow this event we just saw. Like, just buckle up while we're watching that, that this could happen. But, okay, let's start with, there was a great doc, took six years to make. It's called The Gorilla Story, told by David Attenborough. So how did you get brought in to work with this team to do this?

• 13:53Speaker 02

  It was great. It was during COVID. I can still remember, like, sitting, you know, in my living room. And we were connected to Silverback Films, which it's a funny name for the film company because of the Silverback Gorillas. And we got on the film with them, and they were like, what's happening with the gorillas? What would make a good story? And I was with a colleague of mine, Veronica Vachellio, who is kind of like the modern day Diane Fossey. She's lived in Rwanda for 20 years, knows these gorillas in and out.

• 14:16Dax Shepard?

  She doesn't go home to anywhere? She's full-time there?

• 14:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, she's full-time there. She's from Rome originally. She's one of our two non-Rwandan staff that are based there. So we're like, really the story of Pablo's group. It's such a phenomenal group. It broke every record. There's just such an amazing story that's never been told. So that's what we kind of pitched to them. And then it worked out so well that the executive producer of the film actually had worked with David Attenborough for a number of years. So he went back to him, and then there's this iconic scene where when David went to Rwanda in 1978, I think, he was there to do a story about the opposable thumb. So this very technical anatomical story.

• 14:54Dax Shepard?

  He thought he was gonna be watching from afar. They're getting some close-ups of the opposable thumb.

• 14:58Speaker 02

  And he's sitting there, and all of a sudden, this three-year-old little fluff ball comes and just sits in his lap.

• 15:04Speaker 01

  Oh my god.

• 15:04Dax Shepard?

  And it's just like laying all over him, and David's laying on his back, and like, he's laughing. And Pablo's just kind of squirming around.

• 15:12Speaker 01

  Pablo is the gorilla?

• 15:13Speaker 02

  And Pablo was the gorilla.

• 15:14Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, little boy gorilla.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  How old was he?

• 15:16Speaker 02

  He was three.

• 15:17Dax Shepard?

  It's the dream interaction. You're not supposed to have it, but boy, what a dream.

• 15:21Speaker 02

  And we don't anymore, right? Like, that was back in the day when we didn't realize how. susceptible they were to our illnesses. So now we try and stay a distance from them. But yeah, I mean, he describes it as probably the most iconic moment in his history of filmmaking. And he's turning 100 next month.

• 15:35Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 15:35Dax Shepard?

  Well, OK, great. So that's something I wanted to address right away. So we're watching, and I'm taking notes as we watch, but I missed what year. That footage was from Life on Earth, one of his docs. And my daughter says, oh, it was 50 years ago. But I'm watching him present day be interviewed about this project. And I'm like, no, it had to be 30 years ago because he looks like he's maybe 85. And yet next month he turns 100.

• 16:00Speaker 01

  That's wild.

• 16:01Dax Shepard?

  And Monica, he's speaking so articulately about this experience.

• 16:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:06Dax Shepard?

  And so just vibrant and alert. I'm like, this dude might see 130.

• 16:11Speaker 02

  Right, exactly. I hope. But I mean, it's amazing, Monica, because he took journals. And so he has the whole description of getting to meet the gorillas, of getting to meet Pablo. So to get him then to come on and narrate the story, because his voice is also just so iconic, right?

• 16:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:26Speaker 02

  Unfortunately, he didn't get out to be there with the filming. And that group is really hard to film. So what ended up happening was he did that series. And then that was group five at the time. So it was one of the original groups that Diane Fossey started studying. And then in 1993, the silverback of that group died and the group split. It went into Shinda's group and Pablo's group. And so Pablo actually formed his own group.

• 16:48Dax Shepard?

  He became a big silverback.

• 16:50Speaker 01

  Alpha.

• 16:51Speaker 02

  At that point, he was 18. So he was like, I'm taking all of these individuals and formed his own group. Pablo's been dead since 2008, but that group is still called Pablo's group.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  I imagine it's kind of like when you get picked for like kickball.

• 17:03Dax Shepard?

  OK.

• 17:04Speaker 01

  You know, there's two captains. It's like, I'll take you.

• 17:07Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 17:08Speaker 01

  It's like that.

• 17:09Speaker 02

  The ones that took Pablo were smart.

• 17:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, Pablo picked.

• 17:13Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then some of them probably snuck over there as well.

• 17:16Speaker 01

  OK, I was gonna say, how does that work? Is it just seamless or they fight over it?

• 17:19Dax Shepard?

  Well, it's a big plot point in this doc as the story unfolds. But what's really unique about Pablo's group is that he, when challenged by the upcoming alpha male, decided to form a partnership and. Instead of getting dethroned, which was really unique.

• 17:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, we haven't seen that many of these dominance transfers from one male to the other. And we actually didn't get to observe that one because it happened ninety-four, ninety-five, which was right at the height of the genocide in Rwanda. So we weren't in the forest or the teams weren't in the forest every day like we are normally. So when they sort of came back and could observe the group, Kanspy had taken over dominance. But Pablo stayed in the group. The two of them were very aligned and the support that they gave each other let this group grow to sixty-five animals, which an average gorilla family is ten individuals. So way, way bigger, the biggest group of gorillas ever recorded anywhere. And it's definitely come down in size since then, but it just achieved all of these amazing records.

• 18:18Dax Shepard?

  Because of this partnership.

• 18:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, because of this partnership.

• 18:20Dax Shepard?

  Also, at the time he was recording that original doc, he said of all the animals he had ever interacted with, this was by far, when you look in a gorilla's eyes, the thing he felt like there was the most humanness, for lack of a better word, of any animal he'd ever, and at that point, he had looked every animal in the eyes presumably. And at the time, there was two hundred and fifty?

• 18:42Speaker 02

  In that area, we called the Verrunga area. So it's three countries, Congo, Rwanda, Uganda, they were down to two fifty.

• 18:48Dax Shepard?

  And so it's a thousand-ish today?

• 18:50Speaker 02

  It is, there's six hundred in that population. And then there's another population that at the time he was there actually wasn't being studied. There in Uganda and there's four hundred. So across the two, there's a thousand, but where he was, it's gone from two fifty to six hundred, which is great, but it's taken forty-plus years to do that.

• 19:07Dax Shepard?

  And that's just the Highland or all?

• 19:09Speaker 02

  Just mountain gorillas.

• 19:10Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so right away, I have a question about having such a tiny genetic pool. And I'm curious, I feel like either we're overly scared of inbreeding or gorillas are unique. What is going on? Why aren't we seeing like a ton of genetic defects and whatnot in such a small gene pool?

• 19:29Speaker 02

  That's a great question and we do know that they're inbred. Like when we go to do paternity work, we have to get a lot more genetic information to be able to figure out who the dad is than you would in a population that maybe hadn't had so much inbreeding. And we do see things, like we see webbing between their fingers and their toes. Sometimes they have, we call them wall eyes, where their eyes don't line up in the center.

• 19:49Dax Shepard?

  Ooby.

• 19:49Speaker 02

  Ooby.

• 19:50Dax Shepard?

  His cross-eyed is a motherfucker.

• 19:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:51Dax Shepard?

  We're like, we're-

• 19:52Speaker 02

  He's so cute though.

• 19:53Dax Shepard?

  He's so cute, but we're going like, where am I? I mean, he is-

• 19:55Speaker 01

  And that's because of the-

• 19:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, we think it's probably because of the inbreeding, so.

• 19:59Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 19:59Speaker 02

  I think the worry is, of course, if you have a disease that enters into the population, and when animals don't have a lot of genetic diversity, and you only have a thousand of them, it could be really devastating.

• 20:10Dax Shepard?

  And what about the problem of kind of recessive disorders?

• 20:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, other than those things, we haven't seen too much of that. The good news is, over the past decade or so, when I started working in that park, there were seven families of gorillas. That was in the early 2000s. Now there's 24 families of gorillas.

• 20:28Dax Shepard?

  Oh, really?

• 20:28Speaker 02

  Yes. They were living in kind of bigger groups, and those groups were fissioning. But what it means is that more males, because, you know, there's a dominant male in each of those groups, more males are getting to breed. So you're sort of spreading out the genetics a little bit more than when you had them living in kind of these super groups of 65 animals.

• 20:44Dax Shepard?

  Right. And the other males in those groups aren't allowed to breed?

• 20:48Speaker 02

  They do. They have to like sneak it in.

• 20:50Dax Shepard?

  Sneaky, sneaky.

• 20:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, sneaky, sneaky. And actually, what's really interesting, so Kansby and Titus, another male that a movie was made out of, they remained dominant in their group. But for the last eight years, they didn't actually sire offspring. Again, so it went Pablo to Kansby, Kansby to Gitcharossi, and that's kind of where the modern day story starts in this movie. Gitcharossi's the dominant male. And he was siring all the offspring for the last five, six, seven years of Kansby's life. But Kansby was totally still dominant. The elder statesman was very well respected. The females really bonded around him. I think one of the things this movie shows and we see is that we think a lot about the males and gorillas because they have all that size and strength. But alliances, and particularly who the females like, and who they follow and who they support,

• 21:35Speaker 02

  plays a much bigger role in gorilla society than I think we initially realized 40 years ago.

• 21:39Speaker 01

  Wow, interesting.

• 21:40Speaker 02

  It's about the ladies.

• 21:41Dax Shepard?

  Beautifully documented in this. So, yeah, we meet- Pronounce his name again. It's so hard for me.

• 21:46Speaker 02

  Gitcharossi?

• 21:47Dax Shepard?

  Gitcharossi.

• 21:48Speaker 02

  I know. And these are actually the easy Kenyuruwanda names. Some of them are like 27 letters long. We were really lucky. All the main characters had relatively easy names in this film. I was so happy.

• 21:59Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so when we start the doc, Giturasi is the silverback of this group.

• 22:04Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 22:04Dax Shepard?

  And there are how many members?

• 22:06Speaker 02

  Eighteen.

• 22:06Dax Shepard?

  Eighteen, so it's pretty good size.

• 22:08Speaker 02

  It's good size, but think about it, it went from sixty-five all the way down to eighteen. I think the smallest it ever was was seventeen. It's still almost twice a normal gorilla family, but it's much smaller than what we were used to.

• 22:18Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so, and then we meet Abuzu. And Monica Abuzu, immediately you're like, oh shit. He is a male that's coming into his size. And he is at a phase where he's gonna make a run for it. And it's just so obvious for a long time before it happens. The look on his face at all times is mad doggy. He's mad dogging everybody. He looks, he looks so angry and grumpy.

• 22:42Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 22:43Dax Shepard?

  I don't know what's going on biochemically with him. He's probably peak testosterone.

• 22:46Speaker 02

  Exactly. He's an eighteen-year-old male, so he's just got hormones going everywhere. And when's it gonna be my chance?

• 22:53Dax Shepard?

  And now, what's really heartbreaking is there's another male, and how old is?

• 22:58Speaker 02

  I'm four around, it was probably around thirteen when we started filming.

• 23:01Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so five years younger, still a big male, but not as big as Abuzu. And Abuzu, to show his strength and prowess, starts bullying.

• 23:12Speaker 01

  Oh, I hate him.

• 23:14Dax Shepard?

  By the way, you watched Chim Empire.

• 23:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:17Dax Shepard?

  Remember the whole arc of you hate that dominant male, and then you realize like, oh, he's so lonely.

• 23:23Speaker 01

  I know, but I still.

• 23:24Dax Shepard?

  And then he's, everyone wants to kill him, and then he's gotta go first in a band, and you start going like, nah, that's a shit job.

• 23:29Speaker 02

  I know, but. It is a shit job.

• 23:30Dax Shepard?

  It's a shit job!

• 23:32Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 23:32Dax Shepard?

  The adolescents are having fun, the ladies are having fun.

• 23:35Speaker 01

  He doesn't have to take that job.

• 23:37Dax Shepard?

  He has to, or he won't reproduce.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  He's deciding to take that job.

• 23:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think Pablo was like, hey, man, I'm gonna let Kanspy take a lot of the stress. And I'm gonna support him and be around and reap all the benefits.

• 23:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, you could play a different game.

• 23:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:51Dax Shepard?

  Pablo is leading with charisma, like a human. You can see charisma in Pablo's face.

• 23:56Speaker 02

  There's a line in the movie that's like, gorilla males don't leave by strength alone. And that is so true. Obviously, you need to have a certain size and strength. And part of the reason that Abuzu was able to take over was that Giturasi was sick. And so. He had a few days where he wasn't well. He was kind of staying behind the group. And those males are smart, right? And Abuzu saw that and he went in and took advantage of that.

• 24:17Speaker 01

  What do they do?

• 24:18Dax Shepard?

  It's gnarly. And again, back to Mfuru, Mfuru?

• 24:22Speaker 02

  Mfora.

• 24:22Dax Shepard?

  Mfora. Good luck, Dax. Uh, Mfora.

• 24:25Speaker 01

  Say it again.

• 24:26Dax Shepard?

  He's taken a couple from Abuzu before Abuzu challenges Gicharazzi. So his whole bottom of his chin is sliced up. And the full top of his head, where you can see his skull is just wide open from the incisors. So it's just these two 400-pound gorillas just kind of wrestling, but there's tons of biting going on.

• 24:47Speaker 02

  And they captured it.

• 24:48Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 24:48Speaker 02

  That was the crazy thing. So just as a funny aside, when we first got on the call with these folks, so the director was the director of Chimp Empire.

• 24:56Dax Shepard?

  That footage is, that's come out since you and I spoke.

• 24:59Speaker 02

  Yes, it has. And I don't know if you saw, but like two days ago.

• 25:02Dax Shepard?

  There's a big war going on.

• 25:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's the war.

• 25:04Dax Shepard?

  Oh, it is.

• 25:05Speaker 02

  Eight years.

• 25:06Dax Shepard?

  Three hundred chimps are fighting. There's already 20 dead, I think.

• 25:10Speaker 02

  It's been an eight-year war. It's crazy. But so they had filmed chimps. The executive producer had worked on Disney Nature and filmed chimpanzee movie. And so it was very funny because one of the first things they said to us, and you have to imagine this in a lovely British accent, which I'll pretend to do, but I can't really do. Tara, do gorillas actually do enough to make an entire film about them? Veronica and I are on the phone and we're like, what? How can you say that to gorilla people?

• 25:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're like, this is our whole life.

• 25:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. But you're kind of right.

• 25:37Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 25:38Speaker 02

  And they are like big cows in a way, right? Like they eat, they sleep. So they show up to film and literally within like two days of filming, this dominant shift starts to happen.

• 25:47Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 25:47Dax Shepard?

  Do you think these guys are starting it? What's his name, Reed, the director?

• 25:51Speaker 02

  James Reed, that's a good question.

• 25:52Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, says he's getting pretty lucky. He shows up with the chimps and now we see this hundred-on-hundred true fight.

• 25:58Speaker 02

  But they say this vision that's happening, I was just reading about it this morning, this vision that's happening in the chimps, when the community fully splits, they think is about a one in every 500-year event.

• 26:08Speaker 01

  No.

• 26:09Speaker 02

  I guess when they look at the genetics.

• 26:10Speaker 01

  What?

• 26:11Speaker 02

  It's crazy.

• 26:12Speaker 01

  Are they documenting that?

• 26:13Speaker 02

  Yes. I think they kind of came in sort of in the middle of it. I don't know when they filmed Chimp Empire exactly. But it was already going on when they started.

• 26:21Dax Shepard?

  There had been the split and it was gaining momentum. But it was a smaller group and then they were starting to challenge the main group.

• 26:27Speaker 02

  What's crazy to me about that is that so the way that chimps live, they have what they call a community. And the whole community is sort of never together. So they all associate in this community, but today I'm hanging out with you. Tomorrow you're with Kristen and I'm with Dax. And then the next day, all four of us are hanging out. And then eventually this community split. And now the western side is coming back to kill their former community members.

• 26:50Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, why?

• 26:51Speaker 02

  And this had only been documented once before with Jane Goodall. But at the time with Jane Goodall, she had provisioned the chimps so that they would get used to her. So she had kind of like put bananas out so that they would get used to her presence. And so there was a lot of criticism. Oh, you caused all this aggression by putting this high value resource in the middle.

• 27:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:10Speaker 02

  So there was some skepticism about whether this was like really natural. But this is completely natural.

• 27:16Speaker 01

  Why? Just no one knows?

• 27:18Speaker 02

  No one really knows, yeah. What's really interesting and cool about gorillas is we've been able to show that it's not like that at all. So we have families that fission. And when they come back together, they can be aggressive, particularly like if they're in their most prized part of their range. But for the most part, they'll come together, they'll play, they'll interact with each other. And this can be 10 years after a split. So a lot of the composition has changed. And so I think chimps are really interesting for looking at more of the warfare side of humans. And gorillas maybe more for this kind of multi-level society where you can maintain relationships, even if it's not in your core family group that you're with on a day to day basis.

• 27:58Dax Shepard?

  We could also get into, there's a lot of explanations for that. A, the groups are much, much bigger for chimps, right? They're like 100 member groups. They have a much different mating strategy, right? Where all the males are competing with each other, hence the enormous testicles we talked about last time. And she said, you can't even find a gorilla's testicles.

• 28:14Speaker 02

  If we don't see the genitalia of a baby gorilla right after it's born, because they're so fuzzy, we generally oftentimes don't know until they reach 10 or 11 if it's a male. Because males and females are the same exact size in gorillas until eight. And then their growth charts really diverged.

• 28:30Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 28:31Speaker 02

  So we have had these females that were really interested in mating when they were like 11, 12, and then suddenly were like, oh, because they're not females.

• 28:39Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 28:40Speaker 02

  So that's how difficult it is.

• 28:42Dax Shepard?

  They also go through one of the biggest growths from birth, right? So they're born at four pounds and become 450. That'd be like humans becoming 800 pounds.

• 28:50Speaker 02

  It's crazy.

• 28:51Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 28:52Speaker 02

  So, yeah, the gorillas showed up. We were worried, are they going to do a lot? And I think at the time, they thought they might use a lot of archival footage and then intersperse it with the modern day.

• 29:00Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 29:00Speaker 02

  And then they got so much, I mean, it's the most that gorillas have ever been filmed. I think they had 250 filming days. But Rwanda is really strict about time spent with the gorillas to protect the gorillas. So that 250 days was one hour a day.

• 29:13Dax Shepard?

  At a time.

• 29:13Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 29:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, one hour at a time. So to be there and be lucky enough to get these moments on film is just crazy.

• 29:20Dax Shepard?

  Almost impossible.

• 29:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. And these gorillas, the filmmakers don't stay in the forest. So they're in and out. They have one of the highest elevation ranges. So they're climbing 3,000 to 4,000 feet a day with their equipment to get to the gorillas, filming them coming back out.

• 29:34Dax Shepard?

  So back to this story.

• 29:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:36Dax Shepard?

  So Mbuzu has really bullied Mfora a bunch of times, and it's really, really sad. And as he gets bullied more, he starts getting excluded more from the group. He had this one booby little infant, I don't know, infant?

• 29:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, he was two, he was infant.

• 29:51Dax Shepard?

  Was his buddy, and they played, and he was playing, and the mom came over and basically looked at him and was like, you can't play with the baby anymore. And he knew.

• 29:58Speaker 01

  No, this is horrible.

• 30:00Dax Shepard?

  It's horrible. It's so heartbreaking. And then he is intermittently in and out. He's on the fringe, and then he'll wander. There's a year of him just being in this kind of purgatory of he's not really in the group, but he's still trying to check in with the group. And in that time, Mbuzu does attack.

• 30:20Speaker 02

  Gitcherasi.

• 30:21Dax Shepard?

  Gitcherasi.

• 30:21Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 30:22Speaker 01

  When he was sick, as you said.

• 30:23Speaker 02

  When he was sick, yeah. And at first, the females still really align with Gitcherasi. They follow him.

• 30:30Dax Shepard?

  He loses the fight.

• 30:31Speaker 02

  Gitcherasi loses the fight.

• 30:32Dax Shepard?

  Yes, Gitcherasi loses the fight.

• 30:34Speaker 02

  Even despite the fact that he lost the fight, the females stay.

• 30:37Dax Shepard?

  Teta.

• 30:37Speaker 02

  Teta. She stays, and she's kind of the leader of the females. She stays very aligned with him.

• 30:42Speaker 01

  Okay, loyal.

• 30:42Speaker 02

  And so, he can keep his dominance. I think these females are really smart. They need these males to protect their infants.

• 30:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:48Speaker 02

  Because they are susceptible generally from males from other families that will come in and target their babies. So, Gitcherasi's health was not great, and they probably could see the writing on the wall.

• 30:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:59Speaker 02

  And so, they did transfer allegiance to Abuzu. But Gitcherasi stayed in the group.

• 31:03Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 31:04Speaker 02

  Did sort of what Pablo had done. Stayed in the group and helped support the group and keep that group together.

• 31:11Speaker 03

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

• 31:15Dax Shepard?

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• 31:59Dax Shepard?

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• 32:42Dax Shepard?

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• 33:04Speaker 04

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• 33:44Speaker 04

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• 34:08Dax Shepard?

  And what's kind of interesting too, Monica, is Abuzu goes from this scowl and he's so menacing looking. And it's funny because once he has the title, I don't know, unless I'm imagining or projecting, he can relax and he's now more playful with some of the infants. And his just whole demeanor changes. He doesn't seem to be bullying anyone else.

• 34:27Speaker 01

  What about that other guy?

• 34:28Dax Shepard?

  Well, this is what the craziest moment is. Okay, and I gotta ask you, okay, so Imbozu finally reproduces. But he reproduces with a very important FEMA. And this is the answer to your question from 10 minutes ago. So explain what happened with her.

• 34:43Speaker 02

  Iyange.

• 34:44Dax Shepard?

  Iyange.

• 34:45Speaker 02

  So what's interesting, I thought of you because she is a female that moved into the Pablo family. So males can't move between families, but females can. So she moved into Pablo's family from the Sousa group, which is the group that you saw when you went to Rwanda.

• 34:58Speaker 01

  Oh, why?

• 34:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:59Speaker 01

  Have you met her?

• 35:00Dax Shepard?

  I met her.

• 35:01Speaker 02

  She probably wasn't born, she was young.

• 35:03Speaker 01

  Child bride.

• 35:04Speaker 02

  Females will usually leave their family around nine. She left at six.

• 35:08Speaker 01

  Oh my god.

• 35:08Speaker 02

  Which is pretty young. And it's oftentimes hard, it's a little bit like human society. Like when a new female comes in, they get a little bit bullied by the other females because it's kind of competition. The males want to pay a lot of attention to them, etc.

• 35:21Dax Shepard?

  Well, also just something new.

• 35:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, something new. But she gets pregnant and she has a baby. And that automatically elevates your status because everyone wants to be around the baby.

• 35:32Dax Shepard?

  They love babies.

• 35:33Speaker 02

  They love babies.

• 35:34Dax Shepard?

  It's so cute. But it's all documented, her coming in, and it's scary.

• 35:39Speaker 01

  They just walk over? How are they doing this without words? I don't understand.

• 35:44Dax Shepard?

  She just starts kind of being at a distance, then closing that gap. And then she can figure out and delineate that it's Teta, that is the alpha. So slowly she works her way over to her. And then Teta lets her play with one of her babies. And she's like, okay, I'm solid. Then Imbozu is now the champ. And she gets into Esther, so they have a little baby. And again, now she's in the group.

• 36:08Speaker 02

  She's in the group.

• 36:09Dax Shepard?

  Okay, I have so many questions about your theories on this. So then the bullied one, Imfura, comes. Well, we don't know this yet. What we know is her baby's killed.

• 36:21Dax Shepard?

  And it is...

• 36:21Speaker 01

  Well, this is what happens when you exclude people.

• 36:24Dax Shepard?

  Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

• 36:26Speaker 01

  They do bad stuff.

• 36:28Dax Shepard?

  Yes, but here's what's crazy, and I wanted to know. Imbozu was out mating with a woman.

• 36:32Speaker 02

  He was distracted.

• 36:33Dax Shepard?

  Okay, I got...

• 36:33Speaker 01

  He was cheating.

• 36:34Dax Shepard?

  I got nine things right in this little section. One is... Chimp males are trying to blast all day long. Hey, there's a leopard over there. You know, they're constantly because they're competing. But now, interestingly, because M'Buzu has all access, and there's nine of them and one of him, he seems pretty disinterested. The female who's in estrus is like, she's got some leaves. She's like, check out my leaves. And she's doing all this stuff. And he's literally staring at her and finally like, alright. And I'm like, that's already upside down from the chimps. Do you find that those males are disinterested in sex more than other animals?

• 37:10Speaker 02

  The females put on a show. Like, they come and they strut and they have like their sexy face they do. And the males are like, okay, fine.

• 37:17Dax Shepard?

  They're walking bipedally.

• 37:18Speaker 01

  Well, you said because it elevates their status to have a baby.

• 37:22Speaker 02

  To have a baby.

• 37:23Speaker 01

  So that makes sense. And also if their penises are too tiny.

• 37:28Dax Shepard?

  So he's off doing that. And then M'Furo comes and kills this baby. We don't know it, but everyone in the group knows that the baby's been killed. All the females are gathered around, they're mourning it. And you can see that M'Buzu, he knows he fucked up.

• 37:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:44Dax Shepard?

  And he could lose the confidence.

• 37:45Speaker 02

  They do. The thing about mountain gorillas, of the four types of gorillas, they're really the only ones that live in these multi-male groups. So if you look at the other three types, they generally just have one adult male. Because they live in this forest with tons of food, their social structure is different, but I don't think like it's caught up with them evolutionarily. So there's not supposed to be all these males living together. And so they haven't quite figured it out yet. The dominant male normally does most of the siring, but younger males can do it. And I think we talked about this last time, that they have this vocalization they do when they copulate. And these younger males will sneak off with the females. And they're hidden in the bushes, but they still make this vocalization. Like, they can't not make it.

• 38:25Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, we all understand.

• 38:26Speaker 02

  And the dominant male is like, oh, wait, what's happening?

• 38:29Dax Shepard?

  And you're gonna get smacked for that.

• 38:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:31Dax Shepard?

  Even if it happens.

• 38:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:32Dax Shepard?

  Like, they're not trying to let that happen, right?

• 38:34Speaker 02

  No, unless it's really young females, they generally will. Because a lot of times, those females might have been their daughter. Number one, the dominant male's daughter. Or the females go through this period of adolescent sterility, where they're copulating, but they don't actually get Pregnant.

• 38:48Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 38:49Speaker 02

  And so one strategy a dominant male could have would be to let these younger guys practice. When it's not really any cost to him. Because some males will stay in the group they're born in their whole life. And that's when you get the Pablo Kansby situation. And those groups fare really well because if the dominant male dies, you've got someone right there to keep the group together. Other males strike out on their own. And we found that what decides whether or not a male will stay is number one, does he get to practice copulating?

• 39:16Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 39:17Speaker 02

  So having that opportunity to practice is important, even if he's not necessarily making babies. And number two, what I think is really interesting is if his mom is still in the group.

• 39:25Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 39:26Speaker 02

  So even these 400-pound males, they don't like hang out with their moms, but their moms are probably a social lubricant for them. Like giving them access to the dominant male. So if you don't have your mom and you're not getting to practice, you're much more likely to say, well, I'm just gonna strike out on my own and see if I can attract some females to join me from another family.

• 39:43Dax Shepard?

  And this would be Imphura.

• 39:44Speaker 02

  Imphura, yeah.

• 39:45Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so what's wild in this part, I don't know, there's some kind of dissonance between how smart they are and the fact that they don't have language. So the baby's dead. What you can also see, Monica, if you look closer, they don't call it out, but she clearly fought to save the baby because she's injured. And she still has the baby.

• 40:03Speaker 02

  And she still has the baby. And they will hold those babies for long periods of time, like weeks.

• 40:07Dax Shepard?

  Too long.

• 40:08Speaker 01

  Oh, my god.

• 40:09Dax Shepard?

  And so everyone knows this has happened. And Boozer's like, I fucked up, I could lose my group. But she can't tell them who did it.

• 40:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:16Dax Shepard?

  It's so crazy. It's like they're so smart and they're reading such nuanced.

• 40:21Speaker 01

  Can't they just like go up to them like?

• 40:22Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, they're reading these incredibly nuanced moments perfectly. You can tell they're comprehending it all. And they don't have at least a hand sign for each other. So she can't tell, so no one knows. And then Imphura shows himself. And the look on her face, they all see, and they know instantly it was him.

• 40:45Dax Shepard?

  Immediately Abu Zou goes in and attacks him. Now, here's the crazy thing, and I'm curious. The second Gitcha Rossi, he runs in and joins. And as he's running in to join, I yelled to my kids like, "Oh my God, who's he gonna help?"

• 41:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:03Dax Shepard?

  Because he was just overthrown.

• 41:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:06Dax Shepard?

  Like a chimp might have helped the other.

• 41:09Speaker 02

  Right.

• 41:09Dax Shepard?

  So what would be your expectation in that situation? Is that all shocking, or does that make total sense?

• 41:14Speaker 02

  It makes sense to me that he would go for Abu Zou and help Abu Zou. Because Abu Zou is now the established leader, and Mfora is in this troublesome... He's had bad behavior.

• 41:23Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 41:23Speaker 02

  So he's better off aligning himself. The females have already aligned themselves with Abu Zou. He's gonna be much better off on the right side of history.

• 41:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:31Dax Shepard?

  But again, he's reading that scenario, and Mfora is now big. He's not the undersized version he was. So now it's like it's a dangerous situation.

• 41:40Speaker 01

  And it's like starting over with this new guy. Like, that doesn't make sense.

• 41:43Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. All to say, they obviously...

• 41:46Speaker 01

  They kill him.

• 41:46Dax Shepard?

  They don't, and I don't know how he didn't die in that situation.

• 41:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, they didn't kill him, but basically sort of pushed him. Said, "We don't really want you in the group."

• 41:55Dax Shepard?

  And then went so far as to... In the past, they would let him just leave, and this time, they led a mission to chase him clear out of there.

• 42:02Speaker 01

  When the researchers are watching this, or obviously the filmmakers are selfish and in it for themselves. Is anyone like, "We need to step in." I mean, I know you can't, but like...

• 42:13Speaker 02

  It's so hard.

• 42:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:15Speaker 02

  It's so, so hard. I was thinking about that with this chimp situation as well. I always think you could probably take our discussion and put people names on it, and it could be a human story, right? Like, all the intrigue and the drama, and she did this, and he did that. And then to have to sit and watch this happen, it's really, really difficult. You're trying to be the impassioned observer. Dispassionate observer, and it's really hard. But, you know, you want the best genes to survive. That's gonna be the best thing for the species in the long run. So we're just there to watch, but it's tough.

• 42:45Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, because again, anthropologists have learned the hard way numerous times. When they have intervened, they have often caused far more collateral damage than they initially.

• 42:54Speaker 01

  But it's like you're seeing a little baby get killed.

• 42:57Dax Shepard?

  I know.

• 42:58Speaker 01

  And it'd be so hard not to just like send a dart that way.

• 43:00Speaker 02

  Well, and let me tell you the follow up to this now. So the filming stopped two years ago. And in that time, Gitch Rossi has, we assume, died. So he disappeared. We searched for him for months but couldn't find him.

• 43:13Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 43:13Speaker 02

  So, yeah, so he's now left the group. The good news is there are two younger boys that are coming up. One who's the brother of Abuzu that will hopefully continue to support him. But there was another infant death right at the end of filming that we weren't able to capture. We weren't sure what had happened, but the thought was that Mfora had killed that infant. He's killed four infants in total.

• 43:35Speaker 01

  He keeps coming back and then killing them and leaving?

• 43:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. Infanticide is a pretty common reproductive strategy in gorillas, but it's always directed towards infants that are not in your family.

• 43:45Speaker 01

  Right.

• 43:46Speaker 02

  We've only had two other instances in 60 years where an infant was killed by a male within its own group.

• 43:52Speaker 01

  Two?

• 43:53Speaker 02

  Two in 60 years.

• 43:54Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 43:55Speaker 02

  So for this guy to kill four kids, and there were other infants that were born in the group that he didn't kill, and they were born to his aunts. So that's really interesting as well.

• 44:06Dax Shepard?

  Okay, great. So I have several questions about what we think Mfora's motivation is. For me, right away, I thought it was interesting that the first infant he killed was twofold, I could see, motivation. One is it's Imbuzu's offspring who just kicked him out. And then, secondly, and I know this is probably too much human projection, but it's an offspring of an outsider who has been accepted by the group, and he was an insider that had been thrown out. And it's just not hard to imagine that he hated her and Imbuzu. And I'm just wondering, do we play armchair psychologists with them? What do you think is going on? What's your best guess?

• 44:51Speaker 02

  My best guess is that when these females move into a family group, like I was saying earlier, it's a tentative time for them because they're not, like, fully integrated. And what we will see, and actually what Mfora tried to do later on after the movie. Finished was the young males view that as their moment. Like, okay, before these females settle in, let me kind of herd them off and form my own group with them. So I wonder if there was a piece of him that was like, hey, if her infant, because when a female has a baby, she is not interested in a male for another four years because she's busy taking care of that baby, she doesn't cycle, etc. So she's kind of off limits to him now. But if he kills that baby, and maybe she'll be like, hey, I'm not so safe in this group. My infant wasn't safe in this group. I'm gonna go off with this male.

• 45:34Speaker 02

  So it may have been trying to increase his chances to take her and form his own group. Because we did have two females transfer in. He did successfully kind of take them off. But I think they realized, we don't really want to be with you, and they came back.

• 45:47Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 45:48Speaker 02

  So now, we don't, now we haven't seen him in a bit. We don't know where he is. We're very happy for the moment because we have young babies in there and we want them all to be safe. Because Pablo's group, since filming started, so about the last four years, has had eight babies and only three have survived. So four were killed, one was a stillborn, and three have survived. So we don't like those numbers. Usually about 75% of kids survive, and this is what, about 30%? We want to see that group kind of stabilize.

• 46:13Dax Shepard?

  Okay, now, I don't know if this is counterproductive or sacrilegious, but I do want to get into the weird overallow. I do think it's fascinating how similar they are to us in many respects. And I have to say with Mfurru, I'm never gonna say it right.

• 46:27Speaker 01

  That's why he kills.

• 46:28Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, they gave him, what else was he gonna do? Again, since his behavior now doesn't follow a mating strategy, we would have to just say it's kind of like a mental pathology, what's happening with him. And I cannot help but see the parallel between the kid that's just completely bullied into oblivion and shows up at the school.

• 46:50Speaker 01

  I've been thinking that this whole time.

• 46:53Speaker 02

  It's funny because coming in, I'm like, okay, what kind of questions is Dax gonna ask me, right? Because I remember hearing when you talk about chimp empire a lot when it was on. And I told James Reed, I was like, James, you should go on the show and talk, because I know that he really has enjoyed chimp empire. It's interesting because we've had one other male. That had a similar type of situation. He actually killed four adult males.

• 47:17Dax Shepard?

  Whoa.

• 47:17Speaker 02

  He figured, because normally males can die in fights, but usually they're not killed. They get injured and then they get an infection and they die from that, but they're not killed outright. But this male figured out kind of how to go for the jugular.

• 47:29Speaker 01

  Ah, literally.

• 47:30Speaker 02

  And so these males would bleed out very, very quickly. And what's interesting in thinking about both of them is they both had some significant childhood trauma.

• 47:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:40Speaker 02

  So, Gironesa, who was the male who killed a bunch of other males, he was actually with Pablo. And Pablo was badly, badly wounded in a fight and died from that fight. So he was kind of Pablo's right-hand man. So he saw Pablo get very badly wounded and die. And Fora was caught in a snare, which can be very, very traumatic. When he was quite young, he was caught in a snare. His mom lived, but his mom died when he was about 12. But he had a much younger brother who was three and a half, who then he had to raise. So I think it's interesting, like what could early life experiences? What role might that play? Now, lots of gorillas have had bad early life experiences and they're just fine.

• 48:17Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 48:18Speaker 02

  But we're actually doing a big study right now where we're comparing the gorillas with the Gombe chimps from Jingodol and then another population of chimps that are in the same forest as the Ngogo chimps, but it's in a different area. They're called the Kenyawara chimps. And we're really interested in looking at early life adversity and what that means for later life outcomes. Because the gorillas amazingly seem to be much more buffered. When something happens to them early on, probably because they have this really tight community that the chimps don't have. And I feel like you see that a lot in Chimp Empire. I'm rewatching it, I'm like, God, these guys feel so alone.

• 48:53Dax Shepard?

  Oh, they're so alone.

• 48:54Speaker 02

  Whereas the gorillas are just with each other all the time. They're a cohesive unit, they stay together. And we were able to show that if a young gorilla loses its mom, it actually spends more time near other gorillas because everyone kind of comes and buffers them. And I've thought about this a lot with my daughters, having lost a parent.

• 49:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:10Speaker 02

  And what is the community you need to build around them to give them that social buffering that hopefully will help?

• 49:16Dax Shepard?

  This was in your TED Talk. Give the statistics, there's some fascinating statistics.

• 49:20Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 49:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, so if a male chimp loses its mom even up to the age of 15, so they're weaned at five, so they're nutritionally completely independent. If they lose their mom up to the age of 15, they have a shorter life expectancy than a chimp that doesn't lose its mom. And we don't see this with gorillas. And in fact, some of our most successful gorillas, Pablo, lost his mom when he was four.

• 49:42Dax Shepard?

  But he had been taken on by Beethoven.

• 49:44Speaker 02

  Right, and Titus had lost his mom. He lost his whole family. They were decimated by poachers. And he went on to become an incredibly successful male. And I think in part, they get adopted by the silverback. So now you've got the number one guy in the group, who's making sure you have prime access to food. He'll sleep with them at night. And then the whole group supports you. So this social bonding that happens in gorilla families, which is really interesting.

• 50:07Speaker 01

  It's so interesting.

• 50:09Dax Shepard?

  So Infura's bullying's not unique? I mean, maybe just because I saw it, it was captured on camera. It seemed, but is that just standard? Did he have not reacted?

• 50:18Speaker 02

  No, I mean, when we've looked at it, it's very rare for males to be kind of forced out of the group. Usually, they kind of choose to leave on their own, but they will get aggression directed at him. And maybe he was being inappropriate in other ways. I think Mbuzu was probably also just in a heightened state of arousal. Just taken over from Geturasi, he's trying to make sure everyone knows he's dominant. This male is kind of on his coattails. And so just putting him in his place, right? And there may have been other things going on that we didn't capture that happened, you know, when we're not with the gorillas. But my guess is it was a bit of that. And maybe Infura was trying to take advantage of the situation and the uncertainty. Because one of the things that was really clear to us in watching it, the group did not expect Mbuzu to take over. Like, when that first fight happened,

• 51:01Speaker 02

  you can see they're all kind of like, wait, what's going on? Because I think Geturasi was about 28. So he wasn't past his prime. Kansby lived to be 38. But he had been sick, so it was a bit of a shock. He sort of came in hot. So it took a little while. The group was unsettled. And so maybe Infura was taking advantage of that a little bit.

• 51:18Dax Shepard?

  I was shocked how close the females were getting to them as they were fighting. Again, you don't see that in chimps. Everyone's smart enough to get out of there ASAP.

• 51:27Speaker 02

  Everyone gets involved.

• 51:27Dax Shepard?

  So yeah, that told me that either those fights aren't as dangerous. Some clue there that they were that close and engaged.

• 51:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, the females often will. And one of them, I think it's Teta. You can see she's like biting. I don't remember if it was Mfora or Ubuzu, but she's in there, right in the mix, biting.

• 51:43Speaker 01

  Like break it up or like I'm on someone's side?

• 51:47Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 51:47Dax Shepard?

  Attacking at that time, yeah. Okay, so back to the parallel with the kid at school.

• 51:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's interesting to see and between the chimp empire and this movie, one of the huge, to me, takeaway messages is the value of these long-term studies. We don't have that many of them. But Ngogo was a wonderful, peaceful chimp community for 20 years before this started happening. And then all of a sudden, they had a few members die that were kind of the connectors between these two neighborhoods. And then, you know, they just gradually over time got to the point where now they're going and systematically trying to eliminate the other population. You could have gone in for 20 years and never would have thought that would have happened. The same with the gorillas. Like when Diane was first there, there was a lot of poaching of gorillas. So there was a lot of infanticide because when a male would get poached, that would give another male an opportunity to come in.

• 52:35Speaker 02

  Forty percent of deaths were infanticide. Then when poaching was eliminated, it was really stable. And for 15 years, we didn't have a single case of infanticide. If you were a researcher that came in at that point in time, you would say, oh, gorillas don't commit infanticide. It's not a reproductive strategy. Now we're seeing it again, but now it's much more natural. It's not caused by poaching. It's just the gorillas figuring out how they're going to sort themselves out. It's these long windows of time that show us how complicated their society is. Because if you went in for a shorter window of time, you might make assumptions just because whatever the ecological conditions were back then, they didn't need to fight. They could spread out, whatever. And then those ecological conditions change or something changes. And we see this whole other side of them that we hadn't observed before, right?

• 53:20Dax Shepard?

  Well, it's interesting. It kind of goes into just studying things, which is like you're there for a short window. Context isn't even what you're looking at.

• 53:27Speaker 02

  Right.

• 53:27Dax Shepard?

  You're looking at the subject and not even recognizing, oh, the context is absolutely determining what the subject's doing. And we have no idea how different or similar this context is to five years ago or 10 years ago.

• 53:38Speaker 02

  Exactly, 100%.

• 53:39Dax Shepard?

  I wonder, does that bleed into how you look at us? Because I feel like I sometimes have a view of things that borders on sociopathic. From my friends in that, let's talk about young males, men. It's like, you're telling me, we're gonna look at all the other primates, and especially look at the great apes. And we see just how they act and what their role is and what they have to do, and all this chemistry they have to help them be aggressive in the moment they have to be, or take chances, or be daredevils, to establish that we would have been excluded from that? Or because we're living in a civilization for 3,000 out of our 300,000 years, somehow you think we all, just our chemistry changed? When you look at us, what do you think?

• 54:20Speaker 02

  That's a great question. I do think about it a lot. Like, I like to kind of sit back and just sort of observe people. And I think about it a lot when I get on planes. Here you are, getting on a plane with 400 people you don't know. You're sitting like this, you're putting your life in someone else's hands, and we do it all the time. That is what I think is amazing about human society, because that could never happen with gorillas. It could never happen with chimps. Never happened with chimps.

• 54:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're not the same. I think sometimes you can look at it as like, we are animals.

• 54:48Dax Shepard?

  Well, we are.

• 54:49Speaker 01

  We come from animals, but we're humans. We're not the exact same.

• 54:53Dax Shepard?

  We're not. And we have all kinds of tools in our culture to overcome our deficits that no longer serve us. But the point is, I don't say, hey, you gotta acknowledge, boys are this real thing, to excuse it. I say, hey, they have an uphill battle that's gonna go wrong if we don't have a great game plan, because they've inherited 65 million years of primate evolution, 6 million years of ape evolution, 3 million years of hominid evolution. It didn't go away 3,000 years ago. That's a reality. So it's like, I'm not saying boys should be able to act any way they want because they were designed to be this way. But I'm saying we need a fucking game plan for them, whether it's sports, or it's this, or it's that. They're built to do this thing. And if we just think it evaporated because we have silverware, it's very naive.

• 55:38Dax Shepard?

  And we need a game plan.

• 55:40Speaker 02

  Well, it's funny, because Rob and I were just talking before you guys came in, and he was saying he has two boys. And I was just on spring break with friends of mine that have young men. And it's just so interesting. They're so different. They are always moving, they're always active, they're always eating. It's so completely different than having girls. And I think that's some of the points that Scott Galloway has made, and I know he's been on your show.

• 55:59Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 56:00Speaker 02

  What is the...

• 56:01Dax Shepard?

  Outlet.

• 56:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, especially now as more and more people are interacting more with screens and not with people. How are the older men in our society going to step up and be mentors to these younger men? And help teach them the societal rules and norms that it's very easy now for you to get lost in a virtual world or an online world that takes you down a different path.

• 56:21Dax Shepard?

  Yes, or I'm reading a book right now for a guest we have on Wednesday. It's about this kid who goes astray in London and he's got classmates that are sons of oligarchs in London, so they have great wealth and he becomes obsessed with wealth. And these boys that are obsessed with the manosphere, like what you're seeing in the simplest way is young males think they've found a way to have females. I mean, it's really that simple at its core is, oh, that's a strategy. I see the video and there's a bunch of beautiful girls around this guy and he's got muscles and a Ferrari, that's the thing. Or this guy's at the nightclub. It's still about mates. It's never not gonna be about mates.

• 56:57Speaker 01

  It's also about, they say it in that doc, like money, so much of it is about money.

• 57:02Dax Shepard?

  But what's the point of the money? When you're 15, 16, 17, it's really all to have the girl in the bikini next to you. Like it is the currency currently, it would have been great meat. So I have meat to share with the group and I'm gonna elevate my status and gain access reproductively. There's always been things or I'm gonna protect everyone and that's gonna be my route. In an absence of these things that have gone away, now it's like, I don't know if you're a young male, what is it? I guess it's money or I guess it's a car or I guess it's this or it's that. And we can't just go, no, you gotta not be that way. We have to have a solution for how they're supposed to get mates. That's not that disgusting thing none of us want.

• 57:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, probably calling them like bitches and sluts is like not the way. They're giving them horrible advice.

• 57:48Dax Shepard?

  They're giving them horrible advice and it's a two-way street. They are with women. So that's a reality, like you might dismiss those women that have chosen to be around those guys, but the 13-year-old boy doesn't know that you think those women have low priorities. He's seen them with women. What do we do about that? That's the two-way street of it all.

• 58:07Speaker 01

  But they're degrading them. They're like, I would never actually date someone like that or. If you were my daughter, I would disown you. These are the things.

• 58:14Dax Shepard?

  Monica, it's disgusting. So there's no pushback.

• 58:16Speaker 01

  No, I know what you're saying.

• 58:17Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it's just like, what's the solution? To say that those boys need to just be at 13 years old, elevated and have our consciousness. That's not a solution.

• 58:25Speaker 01

  But it's like, which alphas are they looking up to is the solution? Showing which alpha to look up to is the solution. And women do play a part in that.

• 58:35Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, that's why I think it's not a good approach to put it all on one side. It's like, I think we have a collective issue. How do I make sure my daughter's not attracted to a guy who says she's a bitch and drives a Ferrari? That's part of this equation.

• 58:47Speaker 02

  For sure. One thing, though, with the movie, Dax, that I wanted to ask you about is, well, first of all, what was it like to watch with your daughters? What did they think? And then one of the worries that we had when the movie started was the behaviors we saw were so un-gorilla-like. In a way, like, they do have these dominant shifts. We've seen four or five of them in 60 years. Pretty rare. It's usually pretty peaceful. Usually a male dies and the next one takes over. This infanticide was really rare. And so a concern of mine at the start was, oh, you know, is the movie going to go in the direction of showing this violent side? And sort of portraying gorillas as chimps, which they really aren't. And I was really happy. I thought that the filmmakers did an amazing job.

• 59:29Dax Shepard?

  You're afraid of making Jaws?

• 59:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 59:32Dax Shepard?

  And making everyone afraid of these animals and not sympathetic.

• 59:35Speaker 01

  Or maybe even a little bit of the road we just went down, which is, uh-oh, gorillas are angry and kill and want power when most of the time they don't.

• 59:43Speaker 02

  They don't.

• 59:44Dax Shepard?

  And I think the takeaway should be the context, the context, the context. Yeah, we're all capable of good and bad. And when you control this other thing, you see this emerge. And when this happens, you see this emerge. So we can't control the behavior once it's emerging. We have to control the context before it emerges. It's just no, that's not the strategy is in the middle of the, you know.

• 1:00:05Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:00:06Dax Shepard?

  That's a great question. I don't know of someone who, this is their very first exposure to gorillas. I think that would be hard to imagine. No one's not watched the many peaceful versions we've seen of the gorillas. But yeah, this is the singular thing they witness. I still think your scene of the whole movie, they're filming for six years.

• 1:00:22Speaker 02

  They filmed for two. It was six years.

• 1:00:25Dax Shepard?

  Project. Okay, so they're filming for two years and they have about 90 seconds of footage of fighting.

• 1:00:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, it's true.

• 1:00:33Dax Shepard?

  In reality. And then they have. An hour and fifty eight minutes and thirty seconds of rolling around and hugging and grooming and caring for each other. So I guess you'll take whatever you want. Young boys will watch that. I'm a man and I'm watching it. And of course, I'm going to be projecting onto that male. I'm like, yeah, that's what I would have to do. And I would do it. And I have tried to do it my whole life. And I want a family and I will do whatever that takes. So if it's jump things or protect them or whatever. So yeah, I'm watching and having this experience. And then my daughters and my wife are watching going like, oh my God, these poor women have to deal with these men. Of course.

• 1:01:15Dax Shepard?

  But again, this is how this thing works. You could hate it or love it, but it is how it kind of works. So it's so well done. And again, we must be suspicious of Reed. I don't know how he's capturing. Because they're so similar to us, you cannot help but to project onto them and to feel like you're watching a reality show of humans.

• 1:01:34Speaker 02

  There's so many cute moments with the silverbacks, these big, huge males, holding these little infants, playing with them, they're sliding down their backs. And I was just thinking like, as a dad, watching it with your kids, to see that those interactions exist in gorilla society, just like they exist in ours. I will say, I feel like the gorilla males, they are beloved. They are the center of attention. When it's resting time, everyone's resting around them. The moms leave their kids with them and go off and feed and the males babysit. I do feel because there's not as much intra-group competition that for male gorillas, it's still a stressful lifestyle, but watching chimps is just to me, it's like watching aliens. They're always making noise, yelling, screaming, running around. The gorillas, those screams you heard, that's like all you ever hear from gorillas.

• 1:02:19Speaker 02

  That's it. When there's a fight, other than that, they're quiet. They just sort of grunt to each other. I'm over here, I'm over here.

• 1:02:24Dax Shepard?

  If we look at humans too, it speaks to resources a lot.

• 1:02:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:29Dax Shepard?

  The chimps might have to walk three miles to go to the tree that's in bloom. These gorillas eat everything around them at all times. They're never not eating. They're just moving five feet and eating more and then moving five feet. Then they take their nap, they wake up, they're right next to the food. So I think that's applicable to us. It's like when there's- Great resources and people aren't fighting over finite resources. You see a different side of animals.

• 1:02:50Speaker 02

  You know, the other thing, Dax, I thought you would find fascinating about those in GoGo chimps is that they are incredible hunters. I think it's the one example, other than humans, of one primate hunting another species into decline. So the red colobus monkeys there have declined by 90%, primarily because they're more efficient hunters. They're like on the level of wild dogs in terms of

• 1:03:13Dax Shepard?

  Coordination.

• 1:03:13Speaker 02

  How well they hunt and coordination and everything. Because gorillas are vegetarians. Occasionally, they eat an ant. You saw them eat ants. They don't even know how to eat them right.

• 1:03:20Dax Shepard?

  That's the comedic portion of the film.

• 1:03:22Speaker 02

  I'm like, can you just get a stick?

• 1:03:23Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, they suck. They can't use tools. What are they doing? They're so elevated in this domain. And then over here, it's like they're clumsily slamming their fists into this hole with a ton of these.

• 1:03:31Speaker 02

  Super biting ants. Like, it really hurts when they bite you.

• 1:03:34Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, well, it's not colonizer ants. It was something crazy. Yeah, whatever. Yeah, huge pinchers. And they're like, oh, shit. And then they're trying to kill them so they can then pick them up and eat them.

• 1:03:42Speaker 02

  I'm like, just go get a stick. Be like a chimp, get a stick. Eat it the proper way.

• 1:03:45Dax Shepard?

  Go fishing.

• 1:03:46Speaker 02

  So we can publish that and everyone will love them because they are good tool users in captivity. But they don't need to out there. When you live in a huge salable, there's not much you need tools for. So they just don't do it. The chimp people make fun of them all the time for being stupid because they don't use tools.

• 1:04:02Speaker 03

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.

• 1:04:14Dax Shepard?

  And they learned sign language. They've been taught sign language.

• 1:04:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, Coco, yep.

• 1:04:18Dax Shepard?

  Is she our only example?

• 1:04:19Speaker 02

  I mean, I think she was the only one that it was done with. I don't think there were others that were in the sign language program. But yeah, she did.

• 1:04:24Dax Shepard?

  You remember famously, she knew her kitty was not anymore. She signed that her kitty was dead. Coco had a kitty.

• 1:04:31Speaker 01

  A kitty, like a?

• 1:04:32Speaker 02

  A pet.

• 1:04:32Speaker 01

  Oh, a pet, okay.

• 1:04:33Dax Shepard?

  She had a pet.

• 1:04:34Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:04:35Dax Shepard?

  And it was hit by a car. And she understood that it was dead. She signed this unique sign.

• 1:04:41Speaker 01

  They have pets?

• 1:04:42Dax Shepard?

  No, this is the one that was raised in captivity and taught sign language.

• 1:04:45Speaker 02

  Like, she was kind of raised almost like a human child.

• 1:04:47Speaker 01

  Oh, got it.

• 1:04:48Speaker 02

  So it was a lot of studies in the 70s that were interested in seeing how much did apes really understand language, even though they can't verbally make language the way we can? How much do they understand it?

• 1:04:58Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 1:04:59Dax Shepard?

  Okay, I have a couple geeky questions.

• 1:05:00Speaker 02

  All right.

• 1:05:00Dax Shepard?

  In the doc, Attenborough says, and I'm paraphrasing, but he's talking about his first interaction with them in the 70s with Pablo and the others, saying, "Of all the animals, they see the world as we do, as humans do." And I read Ed Yong's great book where it talks about the umwelt, that German word. And the umwelt, for people who doesn't, it's all of your senses taking in the outside world and constructing it into what's in your head. And that's your umwelt. And so some animals are seeing in infrared, and so that's their umwelt. So how much do we know about gorillas' umwelt? How do they see? How do they hear? How do they touch?

• 1:05:35Speaker 02

  All very similar to us. I think their sense of smell, I don't know that anyone's tested it. I get the sense that their sense of smell is maybe it's still a little bit better than ours, but yeah, very visual, similar eyesight.

• 1:05:45Dax Shepard?

  They see color.

• 1:05:46Speaker 02

  Yep. They're not like those birds that when we look at them, they're brown, and when they look at each other, they have like a huge red spot on them that we can't see, which I think is so cool.

• 1:05:53Dax Shepard?

  It's so cool. Okay, and then where are we at with tourism?

• 1:05:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, huge part of the conservation success story. So I think there's 13 different types of great apes when you look at species and subspecies, not including us. And they are all declining, except for mountain gorillas. They're the only ones on the planet that are increasing in number. Now, at the species level, they're still critically endangered, which means that's one level before extinct in the wild. So very at risk, very much need support. But there's a lot of factors that have gone into that conservation success, but part of it is definitely tourism, because that money helps fund the park, and it also is shared with the human communities that live adjacent to the park. So they understand the value of gorillas.

• 1:06:36Dax Shepard?

  They're incentivized to keep them.

• 1:06:37Speaker 02

  For sure. The challenge with tourism is, you know, it needs to be done responsibly and well, particularly because these animals are super sensitive to the same illnesses that we have. So we have to make sure we're not bringing in anything to them, which is why each family is only... Only visited for one hour a day by a maximum of eight people. And you're supposed to wear a mask when you're with them as well.

• 1:06:57Dax Shepard?

  Well, that's new.

• 1:06:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's new. That's since COVID.

• 1:06:59Dax Shepard?

  And you get up to where you can see them. And once they're seen, you have to stop. There's no more forward momentum. Now, if they come closer to you, that's fine. That's how it at least worked when we were there.

• 1:07:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, I would say that more often than not, the rules are broken on getting too close to them. But it's not the people's fault. It's the gorillas' fault. Because a lot of times you can't move. You're stuck. And the guides are really good at telling you, like, don't move. Let them. They're just gonna pass by. They'll only be here for a second. Because if you move or you startle them, that's when they might get a little bit nervous. I think they also like to put us in our place. Like, this is my forest. This big guy's here, but I'm the alpha. This is my forest. I'm just gonna let them know.

• 1:07:36Dax Shepard?

  I'm two and a half times the size of you, my friend. I know you're big in your little world.

• 1:07:40Speaker 02

  I will say, I've never seen a tourist get pulled.

• 1:07:42Dax Shepard?

  But you've heard that, right? You've heard them say that?

• 1:07:44Speaker 02

  Sure, some of our team members have that are with the gorillas more. And then, you know, the males, when they display, they like to pick stuff up and throw it. If you're in the way, they might scoot you. But no, I take people to Rwanda all the time to see the gorillas. Never have had anyone get hurt. Bee stings are more likely what might bother them in the forest, or an ant bite than the gorillas themselves. The guides are really good. They can read their behavior.

• 1:08:06Dax Shepard?

  Oh, they're next level.

• 1:08:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, and move you to the right spot. And the gorillas, they've seen people every day of their lives. So I think, honestly, in their minds are like, okay, it's that hour where these weird ones that stand on their two feet instead of being, you know, on all four.

• 1:08:19Dax Shepard?

  These balls ones.

• 1:08:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're here for an hour, and they're gonna leave, and then we'll just go about our day. The kids are really interested. A lot of times, they want to check you out. The males are like sleeping. And they'll turn their back on you, which to me is a sign they're very comfortable. Because you don't turn your back on something that you're worried about. You want to keep your eye on it. And, you know, they'll be lying there, and then they'll just roll over and just continue sleeping. The one thing I will say about tourism is it's incredibly valuable, but it can't be our only solution for conservation. Because we saw it during the pandemic. People stopped traveling. Or if there's an economic downturn, or if there's civil unrest. And so if all the money for conservation is being generated through one mechanism, whatever it is, tourism in this case, it's not sustainable. So we need a diversified approach to conservation. We want these kinds of animals to stay on the planet.

• 1:09:03Speaker 02

  I think that that's a really important part of it.

• 1:09:06Dax Shepard?

  I remember learning that for almost all of them, baring your teeth is not good for each other. If like one chimp bares his teeth to another, that's kind of a threat. Is it the same in gorillas?

• 1:09:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:16Dax Shepard?

  It feels like our interactions would be innately flawed because when we're happy and friendly, we're just like all teeth.

• 1:09:23Speaker 02

  There's a lot of playing in the movie. And when they play, they pull their lips back and you can see their teeth really well. So I think it's not just the teeth, but it's all the other context that goes along with it. The same way we can make a scary face when we're showing our teeth. And you can just tell, is that person tense?

• 1:09:38Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:39Speaker 02

  Like if they have a tense smile versus if they're really relaxed. The other thing that people talk about too is direct eye contact can be aggressive. And it can be, but they love to look at you. They like to come up and look. I always equate it to like when you're in an elevator. If you're in an elevator and someone kind of looks at you, right? So you've got to know the context. If the gorillas are upset, you're going to look away and that's a sign of respect. Like I'm not challenging you, but otherwise they're fine if you look at them. It's what's happening in the larger context.

• 1:10:05Dax Shepard?

  Okay, my last question, and it's completely frivolous. Did you watch Chimp Crazy?

• 1:10:12Speaker 02

  I did not. I have a lot of friends that work in those areas, trying to help chimps that are in situations like that. But I did not watch it.

• 1:10:20Dax Shepard?

  As like a choice, because there's things I don't watch. So I'm like, I refuse to support that. Was it that type of choice? Or was it like, I have no interest in seeing this?

• 1:10:28Speaker 02

  I know enough about that world to be like, I don't need to know anymore. Like, it's probably just going to upset me.

• 1:10:33Dax Shepard?

  Because I think if I were you, I might feel, and even I felt a little bit like, I felt this terrible, that's right, feeling. Like, yeah, you think they're this and you're so naive and you want a pet so bad. So part of me was fascinated in that way. Like, oh, really? You think you can have a teenage fertile male chimp around you? And that's going to work out?

• 1:10:54Speaker 02

  Crazy.

• 1:10:55Dax Shepard?

  Oh, oh, my Lord. Well, the documentary is incredible. I loved it. Watch it with the girls. I think everyone should watch with their family. It's great. And no, I don't think you'll walk away feeling like Jaws. When the two two-year-olds start wrestling, it looks like two stuffies came alive and started. Yeah, I love that. It's true. They're so cute.

• 1:11:15Speaker 02

  And I have to say too, I love the scenery of Rwanda. Like, it's so dramatic. I felt like that was a whole nother character, just showing the mountains and what they look like and that mist and the rain and it's beautiful.

• 1:11:25Dax Shepard?

  It's an Eden, for sure.

• 1:11:27Speaker 01

  When their babies are, their teeth sharp, was he in danger at all when the little baby was?

• 1:11:31Speaker 02

  No. Um, that's a great question, Monica. I mean, I'm sure if the baby had bitten him, like, he could have broken skin, but when he might have been at risk is if he did something that, like, scared the baby and the baby did a little vocalization that it was nervous, and then you got mom and maybe you got dad coming over to see what's going on.

• 1:11:52Dax Shepard?

  Now you're in big trouble.

• 1:11:53Speaker 01

  So I probably shouldn't hang out with the little baby.

• 1:11:55Dax Shepard?

  Not if mom and dad are.

• 1:11:56Speaker 02

  It's really, I mean, they are like little fluff.

• 1:11:58Speaker 01

  I know, I really do want to touch on.

• 1:11:59Speaker 02

  But they're not soft.

• 1:12:01Dax Shepard?

  Thank God.

• 1:12:03Speaker 01

  Never mind, I don't want old ones anyway.

• 1:12:04Speaker 02

  They're not soft and cuddly.

• 1:12:05Dax Shepard?

  It's more of a Brillo pad consistency? Okay, the movie is A Gorilla Story told by David Attenborough. It is on Netflix and your team said Earth Day, April 22nd, but the internet says the 17th.

• 1:12:17Speaker 02

  The 17th.

• 1:12:18Dax Shepard?

  It's the 17th. We've forgotten Earth Day. We don't need that tie-in. We don't need to cross-promote.

• 1:12:22Speaker 01

  Nah.

• 1:12:23Dax Shepard?

  Tara, it's so great to get to see you in person. It's so much more fun.

• 1:12:26Speaker 02

  Thank you for having me back and letting me talk about my favorite subject for an hour and a half. I love it.

• 1:12:31Speaker 01

  So fun, so interesting.

• 1:12:32Dax Shepard?

  All right, be well.

• 1:12:35Dax Shepard?

  We hope you enjoyed this episode. Unfortunately, they made some mistakes.

• 1:12:43Dax Shepard?

  We're recovering from something.

• 1:12:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:45Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:46Speaker 01

  I mean, I'm recovering.

• 1:12:47Dax Shepard?

  You're fully recovering. Yeah.

• 1:12:50Dax Shepard?

  Easter egg, and maybe it will or will not make the final cut.

• 1:12:52Speaker 01

  Well, I, it will, because you want it to and he wants it to.

• 1:12:58Dax Shepard?

  I'm best to never see it, but I did insist on dancing in front of a guest.

• 1:13:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:02Dax Shepard?

  Which is, of course, real hard to watch.

• 1:13:08Speaker 01

  It was like.

• 1:13:11Speaker 01

  I don't know. What's the good, what's a good analogy? It's like.

• 1:13:14Dax Shepard?

  Well, you've probably never seen anything like it to compare it to.

• 1:13:20Speaker 01

  To be clear, you danced to a song of this guest.

• 1:13:25Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, cuz I love it so much.

• 1:13:26Speaker 01

  You love it so much and it is a great song.

• 1:13:27Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 1:13:28Speaker 01

  And you just had to do it. You broke the table in the middle of doing it.

• 1:13:34Dax Shepard?

  Which I think is a sign of any great dance party is that a table gets broken.

• 1:13:38Speaker 01

  Like, I was like, oh, my god.

• 1:13:40Dax Shepard?

  Now, now, things are breaking.

• 1:13:41Speaker 01

  Things are are literally breaking down as as we speak.

• 1:13:45Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah. Eight years is the biggest swing I've taken, for sure.

• 1:13:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I guess I just like wanna know. You know, you're so different from me, you know, you're like.

• 1:13:55Dax Shepard?

  Sure, sure, sure.

• 1:13:58Speaker 01

  Like, you got, you know, you're acknowledging it, like, this is.

• 1:14:04Dax Shepard?

  So weird.

• 1:14:05Speaker 01

  Weird. This is crazy. This is kind of inappropriate, like.

• 1:14:09Dax Shepard?

  Highly.

• 1:14:09Speaker 01

  Like, this, you're making this person watch you dance.

• 1:14:14Dax Shepard?

  Yes, it's crazy. And it could be super self-indulgent, too.

• 1:14:17Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:14:18Dax Shepard?

  Yes, it ran all these risks. I had the idea because I had been dancing to this person's song for a couple of hours today. And I had a fantasy that maybe they'd wanna dance with me to the song. And then, so two things, it's like, I kinda wanna do that. But I have, I have to assess during the two-hour interview whether this is gonna be way too much for the person or not. So there was a really high likelihood I wasn't even gonna ask.

• 1:14:42Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:14:42Dax Shepard?

  But I, I thought that their personality.

• 1:14:45Speaker 01

  You're like, maybe.

• 1:14:46Dax Shepard?

  Could handle it.

• 1:14:46Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:14:47Dax Shepard?

  And then they didn't wanna dance with me.

• 1:14:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:49Dax Shepard?

  And then I just felt like you can only believe so much when I tell you I like the song.

• 1:14:56Speaker 01

  See, that's where we.

• 1:14:57Dax Shepard?

  But if I'm willing to go to this super embarrassing level to demonstrate how I feel when I hear it, that would be like my most. Sure way of letting them know.

• 1:15:06Speaker 01

  I think he knew, you know, I think he knew before you danced that he that like it meant a lot to you that you love it and like because you were pretty effusive just in the words you were using about how much you loved it. So it came through.

• 1:15:17Dax Shepard?

  Words are easy though, they're cheap.

• 1:15:18Speaker 01

  No, they're not.

• 1:15:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:19Speaker 01

  Um, they came through, it came through, but you know.

• 1:15:22Dax Shepard?

  So it was unnecessary is what you're saying?

• 1:15:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:15:24Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:15:25Speaker 01

  Um, but then you, you did it and.

• 1:15:28Dax Shepard?

  We got through it.

• 1:15:29Speaker 01

  I, I guess, you know, some, I'm embarrassed, but I'm also in awe because I just could never, like, I, I just, I just like could and would never do what you, you just did, you know?

• 1:15:44Dax Shepard?

  Right, right, right, right.

• 1:15:45Speaker 01

  There's, there's like, wow, wow. He's so different from me and it's cool, and it's cool. You, you really don't care.

• 1:15:54Dax Shepard?

  I care, but not enough. I care, but not enough to overwhelm this other thing I think is pure that I want to do.

• 1:16:00Speaker 01

  I know. I think it was the watching.

• 1:16:03Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, watching is rough. It's kind of like if someone, like the worst would have been if I looked at you guys in the eyes while it was happening, which I never did.

• 1:16:10Speaker 01

  Oh my god.

• 1:16:10Dax Shepard?

  Okay, moving on, transitioning. That was that. I just think we needed to like, because it was one second ago.

• 1:16:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:16Dax Shepard?

  I haven't even caught my breath fully.

• 1:16:19Dax Shepard?

  It was quite a workout.

• 1:16:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, that's the thing, like when someone's dancing and you're being forced to watch, like every song is actually 45 minutes.

• 1:16:28Dax Shepard?

  And aren't you glad you had each other?

• 1:16:30Speaker 01

  I am glad, but then I also felt, okay, look, here's like what's, there's, it's complicated actually.

• 1:16:35Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:35Speaker 01

  Because I can't, you're one of my many fathers, if any of my fathers, you, my dad, Bill.

• 1:16:45Dax Shepard?

  You wouldn't want to see Bill dance?

• 1:16:47Speaker 01

  I don't want him to dance in front of me while this guest is here, while everyone's, actually, no, I don't, I don't want any of my dads to do that.

• 1:16:56Dax Shepard?

  I understand.

• 1:16:56Speaker 01

  And so, you know, I'm having like a very nap, a very like personal reaction, which is like, I absolutely.

• 1:17:06Speaker 01

  Need this to end, like, right now.

• 1:17:08Dax Shepard?

  The song is way too long. And it's a short one, it's like three minutes.

• 1:17:10Speaker 01

  But our guest is engaging with me during this because he is finding this very funny.

• 1:17:16Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:17:16Speaker 01

  Even though it's not funny, it's, it's, it's real, it's all very real.

• 1:17:21Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:21Speaker 01

  Um, and so, but then I was like, well, I don't wanna like gang up, I don't wanna like us be laughing at Dax, like, that's mean. So, I, I, can this just be over now?

• 1:17:34Dax Shepard?

  I committed, like, I committed, so whatever outcome I was, I was at peace with.

• 1:17:39Speaker 01

  I know, but it's like, so, I don't know, I just, okay, I'm glad it's over.

• 1:17:43Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:17:43Speaker 01

  Um, so, so, uh.

• 1:17:49Dax Shepard?

  Other update.

• 1:17:49Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah.

• 1:17:50Dax Shepard?

  I did, I threw that thing away and then last night, no problems, yeah.

• 1:17:54Speaker 01

  So it was the peptides?

• 1:17:55Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, definitely, cuz I took my, I took my nighttime vitamins and, and oils and omega threes, yeah, so everything was groovy.

• 1:18:04Speaker 01

  Well, figured it out, that's good, that was an experiment.

• 1:18:06Dax Shepard?

  Figured it out, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:18:07Speaker 01

  I was gonna ask, I'm glad you brought that up. Okay, um, my brother is, is like about to be here, he's seconds away. I'm now, I'm now upset I didn't plan things.

• 1:18:21Dax Shepard?

  In what way? Oh.

• 1:18:22Speaker 01

  I'm like, oh god, now what are we, what are we gonna do? Hey, this might be fun for our audience if they come into the city of Los Angeles, um.

• 1:18:30Dax Shepard?

  Well, first of all, has she ever been here? Your brother's visited you several times.

• 1:18:34Speaker 01

  Yes, she has, but.

• 1:18:35Dax Shepard?

  The only bad visitors are ones who've never been to LA, and naturally, they do have to go see Hollywood Boulevard, and they gotta see the sign, and they gotta see Santa Monica Pier, and, but none of us wanna do any of that.

• 1:18:45Speaker 01

  Things we don't wanna do when, when you live here, yes. Um, she has, but like, kinda briefly, so I do wonder if we're gonna need to check a few things off the list, we might need to. For anyone who's visiting Los Angeles, do, why don't you give your perfect day?

• 1:19:02Dax Shepard?

  Well, I know what I would do right now is I would, I would get online and I would book, and I would. Break the bank and I would go see whatever's playing at the Hollywood Bowl this weekend.

• 1:19:12Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:19:13Dax Shepard?

  I think that's the most special thing in LA is the Hollywood Bowl.

• 1:19:15Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:19:16Dax Shepard?

  And if you can get yourself into those little picnic area, it's so fun and magical.

• 1:19:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:22Dax Shepard?

  And anything like the Philharmonics playing, it'll be great.

• 1:19:25Speaker 01

  Interesting. Okay.

• 1:19:26Dax Shepard?

  Kid Rock, go take them to see Kid.

• 1:19:28Speaker 01

  I'm good. I'm good on that, but can you imagine? I mean, oh my god.

• 1:19:34Dax Shepard?

  I got a great surprise. You never know that they're from Georgia.

• 1:19:37Speaker 01

  They might. I'm talking about like, the Hollywood Bowl, no one would go.

• 1:19:42Dax Shepard?

  Wow.

• 1:19:43Speaker 01

  Like, it would be so interesting to see who would show up for that.

• 1:19:48Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:49Speaker 01

  I don't think they're booking him is my point.

• 1:19:51Dax Shepard?

  Probably not, yeah.

• 1:19:52Speaker 01

  Um, okay, that's great. Hollywood Bowl.

• 1:19:55Dax Shepard?

  Or Greek.

• 1:19:56Speaker 01

  Or some Greek. Okay, so you're going, okay, if you're booking, your brother's coming in town with his fiance.

• 1:20:04Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:05Speaker 01

  Um, and they're cool, they're fun, you know? You're, you have 24 hours with them, you're going concert.

• 1:20:13Dax Shepard?

  I would go Hollywood Bowl. And then I would wake up tomorrow morning and I would hike up to the observatory so they can look out over the city and see what a magical place it is.

• 1:20:21Speaker 01

  I might take them to Cara.

• 1:20:24Dax Shepard?

  Uh, Dodgers game.

• 1:20:25Speaker 01

  Okay, Dodgers game.

• 1:20:27Dax Shepard?

  Signature. I'm trying to give them things that will be uniquely LA.

• 1:20:32Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:20:32Dax Shepard?

  And then you'll take them to Silver Lake to eat, Echo Park, one of those fun little neighborhoods.

• 1:20:36Speaker 01

  I'm just gonna see what they're feeling.

• 1:20:38Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:39Speaker 01

  You know?

• 1:20:39Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:39Speaker 01

  What kind of cuisine are they interested in tonight?

• 1:20:42Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:43Speaker 01

  Ooh. Hmm.

• 1:20:44Dax Shepard?

  In a void, every time they mention the West Side, just act like you didn't hear it.

• 1:20:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:48Dax Shepard?

  Like if they want to go to the beach or something, just be like nah.

• 1:20:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, is that what you just did just now when I said Cara? Cause you just like didn't, you just kept talking.

• 1:20:55Dax Shepard?

  Oh, no.

• 1:20:55Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:20:56Dax Shepard?

  I, I, no, I wasn't intentionally doing that, no.

• 1:20:59Speaker 01

  I didn't know if you were showing me a way to do that.

• 1:21:01Dax Shepard?

  Demonstrating, no. Like I just did with Cara, just like, I didn't, did I hear that? Oh, you said something about the beach, I hadn't heard you. Anyways, have you guys been to the Hollywood Bowl?

• 1:21:09Speaker 01

  Uh, um, all right, well, I, I'm excited to have them and, uh, well, we're gonna report back on how it goes.

• 1:21:17Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, that's very fun.

• 1:21:19Speaker 01

  It is fun.

• 1:21:20Dax Shepard?

  Hosting your little brother and his lady.

• 1:21:22Speaker 01

  At my house.

• 1:21:23Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Did I knock a candle over too? There's something on the ground. Okay. All right, um.

• 1:21:31Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, that blew off, yeah.

• 1:21:35Dax Shepard?

  Uh, my kids love Jane's Addiction now. That's a huge win for me. Their ever-expanding, like, musical taste makes me so happy.

• 1:21:41Speaker 01

  That's fun.

• 1:21:42Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:21:43Speaker 01

  Cute.

• 1:21:43Dax Shepard?

  Cause we watched that Chili Peppers doc. Did you watch it yet?

• 1:21:45Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:21:46Dax Shepard?

  Did you watch it, Rob? No, I did not. It's fucking phenomenal. I cannot recommend it enough. It's a beautiful documentary. And I want to say publicly from the rooftops, Flea is the most beautiful fucking soulful human being. He's so sweet.

• 1:22:00Speaker 01

  Was Anthony Kiedis in it?

• 1:22:01Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:22:02Speaker 01

  I hope everyone remembers that Ryan, that our friend Ryan is obsessed with Anthony Kiedis. And when Anthony Kiedis was at your house for a second, he, I, I've never seen him.

• 1:22:13Dax Shepard?

  Short circuit.

• 1:22:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, he, the, his reaction was really something.

• 1:22:17Dax Shepard?

  What a reveal too, cause Anthony was a mummy for Halloween. So there was just a mummy in the house, if people remember. And then he unwrapped it. And it was like, it was like, I guess this is the Masked Singer. It was like a real.

• 1:22:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:28Dax Shepard?

  Real version of the Masked Singer.

• 1:22:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:30Dax Shepard?

  I'm working late, cause I'm a singer.

• 1:22:34Speaker 01

  Great song, Sabrina. You're a new artist for you.

• 1:22:37Dax Shepard?

  Did you know you can watch Coachella live on YouTube? I didn't know that until the second weekend.

• 1:22:43Speaker 01

  Uh huh, yeah, that's a bit, that's why like, that's why people had some interesting feelings about some of the performances because.

• 1:22:50Dax Shepard?

  During their couch?

• 1:22:51Speaker 01

  Well, no, I think they're like, oh, this performance is made for people watching at home. It's actually not made for me who's there. That's what a lot of people were thinking.

• 1:23:04Dax Shepard?

  I think a lot of people are dying to pile on and hate things.

• 1:23:09Speaker 01

  Well, I don't know.

• 1:23:10Dax Shepard?

  Like, I heard some feedback about the Bieber thing. I was like, oh, you fucking watched it? It's so incredibly pure and amazing.

• 1:23:18Speaker 01

  Right, but you watched it on, on YouTube.

• 1:23:21Dax Shepard?

  But I also talked to a bunch of people that were there and their fucking minds were blown. So the people that I talked to who were there were even more impressed than the people I.

• 1:23:27Speaker 01

  I think, I think everyone's allowed to have their own opinion about.

• 1:23:33Dax Shepard?

  Certainly people are allowed to have their own opinion. It also might be possible that people are dying to declare they hated something.

• 1:23:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:40Dax Shepard?

  Even if they don't, I think so often they actually don't have an opinion. They like saw it and they're like, I don't know whether that's good or bad. And then they start hearing this chatter. And so they hear a theory pitched.

• 1:23:53Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:23:53Dax Shepard?

  And when these things are pointed out, you're like, oh, I guess I did observe those things. I guess it was bad. I don't think they actually intrinsically felt that way.

• 1:24:01Speaker 01

  I think it depends on who's saying it, whether or not I think that or not.

• 1:24:05Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, if that person has halo effect.

• 1:24:07Speaker 01

  Right, cuz like I have a kind of hot take on something right now. And it would annoy me if people were like, oh, you just don't like it cuz you don't wanna like it cuz people like it. Cuz that's not true. There are real reasons why I I don't like it. I'm not gonna say what it is cuz I'm not here to blast anything.

• 1:24:24Dax Shepard?

  And now we're all dying to know. Oh, yeah, me and Hillbilly Elegy, yeah. Everyone around me is like, this book is so great.

• 1:24:29Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:24:30Dax Shepard?

  This book is full of shit.

• 1:24:31Speaker 01

  And it was like, oh, you just like don't like it cuz like everyone likes it and. Um, but not true. You had your own opinions.

• 1:24:39Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, of which I have too many and the less I have, the happier I am.

• 1:24:46Speaker 03

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

• 1:24:59Speaker 01

  Now, do you think you're having less opinions or you're just keeping them quiet?

• 1:25:02Dax Shepard?

  I keep them quiet.

• 1:25:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's not like it's actually making, or or do you think keeping them quiet is having a reverse effect and you're actually having less?

• 1:25:09Dax Shepard?

  For sure, in the way that like I've learned to overcome my urge to share my opinion, right? So I have some practice now with that and I live. Everything's fine. I no one heard my opinion and I had a great point, but it didn't even matter. So I observed that. That's interesting. And then you get better at fighting the urge.

• 1:25:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:28Dax Shepard?

  And then, yeah, I think the importance of my opinion in general has been downgraded. It's like, yeah, that's just a thought I have and my perspective.

• 1:25:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:36Dax Shepard?

  And it's equally as relevant as everyone else's. And it might make more sense mathematically or in terms of physics.

• 1:25:47Dax Shepard?

  But that is also just one way to observe the world and compute it.

• 1:25:51Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:25:52Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I'm less and less, as I age, religious about the empirical.

• 1:25:58Speaker 01

  That's good.

• 1:25:59Dax Shepard?

  I just now see it as like, yes, that's that's that's an avenue to examine life.

• 1:26:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:05Dax Shepard?

  But that's a lens to look at life through and in reality.

• 1:26:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:08Dax Shepard?

  And there's certainly many more. Our guest was closer to your age.

• 1:26:12Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 1:26:13Dax Shepard?

  But in the middle.

• 1:26:13Speaker 01

  Really? How old is he?

• 1:26:15Dax Shepard?

  He's born in eighty-four, so I guess he's just three years. And then I'm nine years, so it's not that very much in the middle. But I think because his, hmm, I'm ruining everything, never mind. I keep saying him, I don't wanna give that.

• 1:26:27Speaker 01

  It's okay, well.

• 1:26:28Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, our guest musical taste.

• 1:26:30Speaker 01

  I'm actually fine saying that. The guest who you danced for was a man.

• 1:26:36Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:26:37Speaker 01

  I think it's okay to say that, actually.

• 1:26:39Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I don't think I would have danced for a woman.

• 1:26:42Speaker 01

  The level, that is a no.

• 1:26:44Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah. Unless.

• 1:26:47Speaker 01

  Oh, God.

• 1:26:48Dax Shepard?

  I can imagine a case where like, again, Taylor Swift is so fucking confident. And if I said like, I love your song such and such, and I dance to it every chance I can.

• 1:26:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:59Dax Shepard?

  I can imagine her going, let's see it.

• 1:27:03Speaker 01

  I don't want her to do that.

• 1:27:04Dax Shepard?

  I know you don't, but it's a conceivable scenario, right?

• 1:27:08Speaker 01

  I mean, you just have to be like so ready.

• 1:27:10Dax Shepard?

  Like, I think Madonna would be like, yeah, go ahead and dance to Material Girl, I'll judge.

• 1:27:13Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:27:14Dax Shepard?

  Cause she's so confident.

• 1:27:15Speaker 01

  Yes, true. I just like, it adds a weird, it adds another layer.

• 1:27:18Dax Shepard?

  If I danced for Sabrina Carpenter, it would be really a rough look for me.

• 1:27:24Speaker 01

  I think for Taylor also, although not, like, again, because, look, if you're dancing for one of these people, that's viral. Like, everyone's gonna see it.

• 1:27:34Dax Shepard?

  What are you talking about?

• 1:27:35Speaker 01

  If you, if, if.

• 1:27:37Dax Shepard?

  If I danced for Sabrina Carpenter, oh, and then I danced for. Yeah, I'd be the laughingstock of America.

• 1:27:42Speaker 01

  Everyone in the whole world would see it and make an opinion.

• 1:27:46Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, they'd say she hated it, even if she was saying, I love it, I love it, I love it.

• 1:27:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:27:49Dax Shepard?

  She was forced to say she loved it.

• 1:27:51Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:27:52Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:52Speaker 01

  So, I mean, we're already gonna deal with that when we put this out.

• 1:27:56Dax Shepard?

  He might have to do a.

• 1:27:57Speaker 01

  Different level.

• 1:27:58Dax Shepard?

  He might have to make a statement publicly.

• 1:27:59Speaker 01

  I consent to that.

• 1:28:00Dax Shepard?

  I truly enjoy, I'm no longer in that situation and I still like it.

• 1:28:04Speaker 01

  And he made us, he made us put it up. He said, you better not cut that.

• 1:28:09Dax Shepard?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:28:09Speaker 01

  So, okay, wait, yeah, that guest is, is kinda.

• 1:28:13Dax Shepard?

  Their musical tastes were very informed by my same musical taste.

• 1:28:18Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 1:28:18Dax Shepard?

  So, in that way, I think we felt closer in age, but it was an illusion. It was an illusion of the same references.

• 1:28:26Speaker 01

  I can be so tricky in that way.

• 1:28:28Dax Shepard?

  Like, cause for you, John Hughes is, obviously, you're in this business, so you know about John Hughes.

• 1:28:32Speaker 01

  I love John Hughes.

• 1:28:32Dax Shepard?

  But John Hughes wasn't seminal work for you, was it? Other than Home Alone.

• 1:28:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, Home Alone is my touchstone. I mean, I saw, like, I saw Sixteen Candles, and I saw, and Breakfast Club was, was a big deal.

• 1:28:45Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:46Speaker 01

  But it was a big deal as like, yeah, it wasn't newly a big deal. It was like, yeah, this is something from.

• 1:28:53Dax Shepard?

  The way back.

• 1:28:54Speaker 01

  The before times that, like, supposed to hold up and be cool. It's like, cool if you like it.

• 1:28:59Dax Shepard?

  Sure, sure, sure.

• 1:29:00Speaker 01

  Callie had a Breakfast Club, um, poster.

• 1:29:03Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, that's a cool move. Yep, yep.

• 1:29:06Speaker 01

  And she, like, knew movies.

• 1:29:08Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:09Speaker 01

  That, that was that.

• 1:29:11Dax Shepard?

  She should have gone into movie publicity.

• 1:29:13Speaker 01

  Movie marketing?

• 1:29:14Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, she, yeah, she should have. She did, she did. Um, okay, so she had Breakfast Club. What do you think I had?

• 1:29:20Dax Shepard?

  Well, Good Will Hunting.

• 1:29:21Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah, but that one's obvious. So, like, Taylan, yeah, okay.

• 1:29:25Dax Shepard?

  Oh, God, like, um, like, How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days, or some rom-com?

• 1:29:29Speaker 01

  Closer, I, closer.

• 1:29:31Dax Shepard?

  What was it?

• 1:29:32Speaker 01

  Uh, Ocean's Eleven.

• 1:29:33Dax Shepard?

  Okay, sure, a lot of guys on that poster.

• 1:29:35Speaker 01

  Ocean's Eleven, we had Ocean's Eleven in our dorm.

• 1:29:38Dax Shepard?

  Oh, in your dorm.

• 1:29:39Speaker 01

  Ocean's Eleven, we had Breakfast Club, we had Clueless, that's a cool one, that's hers. I had Good Will Hunting.

• 1:29:46Dax Shepard?

  So cute when you're young, and you're like, you want everyone to know, like, you're like, you're defining your identity by what movies you like. It's so adorable.

• 1:29:52Speaker 01

  It is, it's just like.

• 1:29:53Dax Shepard?

  Every boy had a Pulp Fiction poster, like, ah, that's what I like.

• 1:29:56Speaker 01

  Display of your identity.

• 1:29:58Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 1:29:59Speaker 01

  And it's so.

• 1:30:00Dax Shepard?

  It's not yours.

• 1:30:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's so, well, well, Good Will Hunting, I feel, I, I feel fine about that. And Ocean's Eleven is in my tops. But like, I had Royal Tenenbaums, which I love. I love that movie. But it was a display, it was a display, like, I'm someone who.

• 1:30:16Dax Shepard?

  Has elevated tastes.

• 1:30:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, Wes Anderson, ever heard of him? Probably not, and I'll teach you about it.

• 1:30:22Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I'm smart.

• 1:30:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:24Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:25Speaker 01

  Like, and that scene, that scene with the blood going, when he's, he's committing suicide. Uh, that scene is really upsetting, actually. It's a great song, playing.

• 1:30:35Dax Shepard?

  There's a lot of great music in Wes Anderson films.

• 1:30:37Speaker 01

  Great movie, great movie, oh my God. Um, speaking of movies.

• 1:30:42Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:30:43Speaker 01

  Speaking of favorite movies of all time, guess what's knocking on?

• 1:30:48Speaker 01

  Not Heaven's Door, but like

• 1:30:49Dax Shepard?

  The release schedule door?

• 1:30:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:51Dax Shepard?

  What?

• 1:30:52Speaker 01

  Devil Wears Prada 2.

• 1:30:53Dax Shepard?

  That's gonna be big for you.

• 1:30:55Speaker 01

  I'm so nervous.

• 1:30:57Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 1:30:59Speaker 01

  Cause it means so much to me.

• 1:31:00Dax Shepard?

  You love the first one. I can recognize it's a well-made movie.

• 1:31:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:05Dax Shepard?

  But obviously it wasn't like

• 1:31:07Speaker 01

  You don't have an emotional attachment.

• 1:31:08Dax Shepard?

  I called Aaron and I'm like, holy fuck dude, did you see fucking Prada? I already like, I'm already shortening it because I'm so in on it. Did you see Prada?

• 1:31:16Speaker 01

  Prada.

• 1:31:17Dax Shepard?

  Fucking Devil Wears.

• 1:31:18Speaker 01

  Oh god.

• 1:31:20Dax Shepard?

  Movie rips, brother. This woman's so fucking mean to this chick, but this chick's like, fuck this.

• 1:31:27Speaker 01

  Well, that's pretty

• 1:31:29Dax Shepard?

  That's a take.

• 1:31:29Speaker 01

  productive.

• 1:31:32Speaker 01

  But yeah, it's a very meaningful

• 1:31:34Dax Shepard?

  Is Marilyn then? Everyone's in, everyone's back.

• 1:31:36Speaker 01

  Well, one person's not back.

• 1:31:38Dax Shepard?

  Who's not back?

• 1:31:39Speaker 01

  The boy. The boy is not back. But he just did a commercial or something where he like is at Starbucks and is like, yeah, I'm not in it. Like, they address it. It's kinda interesting.

• 1:31:50Dax Shepard?

  Through a Starbucks commercial?

• 1:31:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. But I'm, I'm, it's a meaningful movie to me and I don't think I ever would call and be like, dude, have you seen?

• 1:32:02Dax Shepard?

  Prada?

• 1:32:03Speaker 01

  Prada? I would never do that, but I watch it, you know?

• 1:32:09Dax Shepard?

  Oh my god.

• 1:32:10Speaker 01

  Oh, I told him to just go in.

• 1:32:13Dax Shepard?

  That's okay. He's trying to be polite and ring the doorbell.

• 1:32:16Speaker 01

  It's just when you write it down a lot.

• 1:32:18Dax Shepard?

  I am.

• 1:32:18Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:32:19Dax Shepard?

  It's okay. Don't, I know he's your little brother, but act like he's just a friend.

• 1:32:23Speaker 01

  I still

• 1:32:24Dax Shepard?

  I know, you gotta try to, it's time to kinda, you gotta shift the lens.

• 1:32:27Speaker 01

  Why? It's not like I'm like gonna sit here for another five minutes. It's just a quick like, yeah, I just, I wrote it a lot.

• 1:32:33Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I'm just saying, um, as, as siblings age, it can be sometimes helpful to force yourself to imagine they're just a friend.

• 1:32:41Speaker 01

  I know, but I'm saying if it was just a friend.

• 1:32:43Dax Shepard?

  You would say what? Fuck off, you fucking annoying little shit prick?

• 1:32:46Speaker 01

  No, I would just be like, I said it.

• 1:32:48Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:32:49Speaker 01

  And then I'm over it.

• 1:32:50Dax Shepard?

  That's just a standard.

• 1:32:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, because scroll up, you know, it's like scroll up.

• 1:32:54Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:32:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's just scroll up is all.

• 1:32:56Dax Shepard?

  A standard biz.

• 1:32:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, um.

• 1:32:58Dax Shepard?

  Want to do some facts?

• 1:33:04Speaker 01

  No, yeah, I know, you gotta go.

• 1:33:06Dax Shepard?

  I got a flight to catch.

• 1:33:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, let's go, let's go, let's keep it moving. Facts. Okey doke, so this is for...

• 1:33:15Dax Shepard?

  Tara Stoinski.

• 1:33:16Speaker 01

  Yep. Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.

• 1:33:18Dax Shepard?

  Our returning primatologist. That's a great doc, I can't wait for you to watch it.

• 1:33:22Speaker 01

  I know, I'm really excited to watch it.

• 1:33:23Dax Shepard?

  It's so good.

• 1:33:24Speaker 01

  Gorillas are so interesting.

• 1:33:26Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:26Speaker 01

  And chimps. Um, how many gorillas and chimps are there left in the world? This is according to the cocoa.org gorilla foundation. Status of worldwide gorillas are... All are endangered. Eastern lowland gorillas, found in Rwanda, Uganda, and DRC. 700 mountain gorillas and several thousand eastern lowland gorillas.

• 1:33:49Dax Shepard?

  Several thousand, did you say?

• 1:33:50Speaker 01

  Um, 700 mountain and several thousand.

• 1:33:53Dax Shepard?

  Several thousand, that's good.

• 1:33:55Speaker 01

  Down from 17,000 in 1990s. Then there's western lowland gorillas, found in Cameroon, Congo, Central African Republic, some other places. As many as 100,000 western lowland gorillas.

• 1:34:10Dax Shepard?

  Oh god.

• 1:34:11Speaker 01

  That's good, it says down 60% from past 20 to 25 years, but that is still good.

• 1:34:16Dax Shepard?

  It's not 600 or 250 that they were down to at one point.

• 1:34:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. Cross river gorillas, that live on the border of Cameroon and Nigeria, 200 to 300 total. These are the most endangered subspecies. Then mountain gorillas, um, count as a thousand. Up from 700, 10 years ago, so that's good. Chimps, there are between 170,000 and 300,000 chimps in the wild.

• 1:34:45Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:34:46Speaker 01

  They're also endangered. Oh, are gorillas born at 4 pounds and die at 450 pounds. Gorillas weigh, yeah, four pounds, 1.4 to 1.8 kilograms at birth. And full grown male gorillas weigh between 300 and 485 pounds.

• 1:35:02Dax Shepard?

  Four eighty five.

• 1:35:03Speaker 01

  And females 200 to 250. Do gorillas see in the same color as us? It says, couldn't find a reliable source confirming it, but it appears that gorillas see very similarly to humans' full color spectrum. There was a study done in 2008, proving that gorillas and chimps have color preferences supporting that.

• 1:35:20Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I think any animal that subsists largely on fruit.

• 1:35:26Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:35:26Dax Shepard?

  Is gonna develop that.

• 1:35:28Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. And then, are gorillas sense of smell better than ours? Gorillas depend more on sight than smell, unlike monkeys. They have a good smell, though, can scent sweat on humans. Uh-oh.

• 1:35:39Dax Shepard?

  Oh, fuck.

• 1:35:40Speaker 01

  For you.

• 1:35:41Dax Shepard?

  I might have to wear deodorant the day I go back.

• 1:35:42Speaker 01

  Or the musk of an unknown gorilla. They can smell that. Males use a female's odor to determine her reproductive status.

• 1:35:52Dax Shepard?

  Sure.

• 1:35:53Speaker 01

  That's it.

• 1:35:53Dax Shepard?

  Well, I had watched the doc with the girls, and then, of course, it renewed, they didn't want to go to Africa so bad. And I've been telling Lincoln, as I said in the episode, that I would take her when she was 16, which would put Delta at?

• 1:36:05Speaker 01

  Fourteen.

• 1:36:05Dax Shepard?

  Fourteen. And what's the age track?

• 1:36:08Speaker 01

  Fifteen. So she's gotta be seventeen.

• 1:36:11Dax Shepard?

  So I had to give bad news.

• 1:36:14Speaker 01

  Uh-oh, did everyone get upset?

• 1:36:14Dax Shepard?

  Well, it's great, actually, because anytime you can force your children to make hard decisions, I think it's good practice.

• 1:36:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:22Dax Shepard?

  And I said, so listen, I kinda got good news and bad news. The good news is you don't have to be 18. I was fearful that you had to be an adult, but you do have to be 15.

• 1:36:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:30Dax Shepard?

  No. Yes, you have to be 15, which means, Lincoln, we can't go till you're 17. She's like, why? And I'm like, we're not leaving Delta in a hotel while we go.

• 1:36:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. But you guys could go in this, oh, when are you supposed to go?

• 1:36:45Dax Shepard?

  Well, that's another thing. I would, only because I did it this way the one time, and it was perfect, which is we went in the rainy season, so nobody's there. And I love that. I wanna say it's springish.

• 1:36:57Speaker 01

  Oh, okay. Because I was gonna say, if you go in December.

• 1:37:02Dax Shepard?

  You just nailed it. If I went on March 26th.

• 1:37:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:37:07Dax Shepard?

  Delta will be 15 and Lincoln will be 16.

• 1:37:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:11Dax Shepard?

  We don't have a problem. Anyways, I was like, well, look, so now you're gonna pick. You wait an extra year and get to go see gorillas? Or go at 16 and we don't see gorillas?

• 1:37:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, and they chose right.

• 1:37:22Dax Shepard?

  Sophie's Choice. I don't, they haven't given me an official verdict yet, but.

• 1:37:26Speaker 01

  I see.

• 1:37:27Dax Shepard?

  I think probably in Lincoln's mind, there's still a way to go at 16 and not bring Delta, which would be a natural sibling response.

• 1:37:34Speaker 01

  Well, no, she'll go at 16 and Delta will be 15 at the beginning of the year.

• 1:37:39Dax Shepard?

  Wow, I didn't even do that math. I'm an idiot. Yeah, there's three months where they're the same age.

• 1:37:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, one year apart.

• 1:37:46Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, all right, well, that's it.

• 1:37:48Dax Shepard?

  That's it. Watch that doc, it's phenomenal.

• 1:37:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:52Dax Shepard?

  Oh, I didn't give my pledge for the other thing and the fact check.

• 1:37:55Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:37:56Dax Shepard?

  I'm watching this reality show called Secret Millionaire.

• 1:38:02Speaker 01

  Ooh.

• 1:38:03Dax Shepard?

  Peter Seraphinowitz is the host of it.

• 1:38:05Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:38:05Dax Shepard?

  Do you remember who he is? He's a comedian. He's English. We're friends with him. He was in Couples Retreat and we became very good friends with him. I love him. And these, season one, I think it was 12 people check into this resort. And you go to the room and everyone's got a box inside. When they open it up, one person has a million dollars in the box.

• 1:38:23Speaker 01

  Ooh.

• 1:38:24Dax Shepard?

  And then they gotta try to figure out who's got the million dollars and they vote someone out. And it's so good. We have had more fun watching the show than I think any other show we've watched as a family. It's so good. And then last night, Kristen was working in San Francisco for the day. So we did Cafe 101, Rummy Cube.

• 1:38:47Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 1:38:48Dax Shepard?

  What a fun game to play while you're waiting. Rummy Cube, then race home for season two, episode one of the new season.

• 1:38:56Speaker 01

  What's it called, Secret Millionaire?

• 1:38:58Dax Shepard?

  I think Secret Millionaire.

• 1:38:59Speaker 01

  Okay, cool.

• 1:39:01Dax Shepard?

  It's great. I hope you give it a shot.

• 1:39:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I will.

• 1:39:03Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 1:39:04Speaker 05

  Million Dollar Secrets.

• 1:39:06Dax Shepard?

  Million Dollar Secret, much different. What did I say, Hotel Rwanda?

• 1:39:10Speaker 01

  Secret Millionaire.

• 1:39:11Dax Shepard?

  Okay, Secret Million Dollar Secret.

• 1:39:13Speaker 05

  Very close.

• 1:39:14Dax Shepard?

  If you get secret and million in your search,

• 1:39:16Speaker 01

  You'll get it. That's the one.

• 1:39:18Dax Shepard?

  People are devious.

• 1:39:19Speaker 01

  Ooh, they are. I thought that during Beast Games.

• 1:39:22Dax Shepard?

  Oh, ding ding ding, primates. You know, we evolved deception.

• 1:39:25Speaker 01

  That's really true. You're right.

• 1:39:26Dax Shepard?

  It's a strategy.

• 1:39:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know. Yeah, dominate.

• 1:39:30Dax Shepard?

  Everything.

• 1:39:31Speaker 01

  All right, I'm gonna check it out.

• 1:39:32Dax Shepard?

  All right. Love you.