Pod Insights Pablo Torre Finds Out Exclusive: The Harambe Tapes, Revealed About this episode Ten years ago today, one gorilla's death broke the internet, from sports and politics to million-dollar memes. But Harambe's life was a tragic battle over name, image and likeness — including files the Cincinnati Zoo worked to suppress... until now. Desus Nice and Katie Nolan help Pablo get to the bottom of what gorillas in our midst can teach us about ourselves.
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Transcript 10,685 words · 8 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre, and today, we're gonna find out what this sound is.
0:06 Speaker 01 I'm accusing myself of this conversation because I think it's bull Pablo, that you are trying to capitalize off a dead gorilla. We would never do that.
0:15 Speaker 00 Right after this ad.
0:19 Speaker 02 I've got big news. I switched to Verizon and got the new iPhone 18 Pro. Shh. I can keep my old phone, and I also get the latest iPhone every year. Shh, anything else? Verizon let me choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on them. Everybody, listen up. Shh. Switch to Verizon and get the new iPhone 18 Pro now. No trade-in needed, and the latest iPhone every year with Simplicity Plan. Plus, choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on us. Simplicity Plan with Simplicity Pro required. Plan and device payment purchase are separate agreements with separate terms. Service plan for Watch or iPad required. Additional terms apply for all offers.
0:49 Speaker 03 At Humana, our Medicare Advantage plans are easy to understand and easy on your wallet. Like offering more benefits than you'd get from original Medicare alone, and including dental, vision, and hearing coverage in every plan. And the best part is, every plan has a $0 or low monthly plan premium, which makes it easier to save, too. So this Medicare planning season, plan well with Humana. Learn more at gethumana.com. Humana is a Medicare Advantage HMO and PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.
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2:30 Pablo Torre? I've been waiting so long to do this episode with you guys. And I love, as always, that you don't have any idea what-
2:36 Speaker 00 I hate it, as always.
2:37 Speaker 05 I'm terrified.
2:38 Speaker 00 I hate it, as always, so.
2:40 Pablo Torre? You have folders in front of you?
2:41 Speaker 00 I see them.
2:42 Pablo Torre? I have what has been alleged to be a [BLEEP] eating grin on my face. That is how much I'm enjoying having-
2:47 Speaker 00 Is this-
2:48 Speaker 05 I don't know.
2:48 Speaker 00 Are we gonna like it as much as you like it?
2:50 Pablo Torre? I can't totally be sure.
2:53 Speaker 00 Great.
2:54 Pablo Torre? I do know that Dee's is nice, Katie Nolan, you are both my friends.
2:58 Speaker 00 For now.
2:59 Speaker 05 For now.
3:00 Pablo Torre? And also animal people.
3:02 Speaker 00 What's going on? Yeah, uh-huh.
3:04 Pablo Torre? And-
3:04 Speaker 00 We do like dogs.
3:05 Pablo Torre? You have, you have, you have dogs?
3:07 Speaker 00 Yep.
3:07 Speaker 05 Is this about something that happened a couple of months ago in Prospect Park? Cause the dog came at me. I'm just saying, like-
3:16 Pablo Torre? It's about something that we got at our tip line. Here Pablo Torre finds out. Fans, whistleblowers, they will dial 513-85-PABLO.
3:27 Speaker 05 Is that in area codes with Ludacris?
3:29 Speaker 00 Oh, good.
3:30 Speaker 05 That's how I reference everything. 212-513-212.
3:34 Pablo Torre? I don't know if Ludacris has hoes in Cincinnati, Ohio.
3:38 Speaker 00 Mm-mm, no, I think Famously doesn't mention it, yeah.
3:41 Pablo Torre? But this is the area code we were randomly assigned by Google. But cosmically recurs-
3:46 Speaker 00 Interesting.
3:47 Pablo Torre? Because this was earlier this year. We got a tip.
3:52 Speaker 06 Hi, my name is Jeff McCurry. I'd like to see if you would like to show the world the secret videos that the Cincinnati Zoo has tried to keep quiet for 10 years. These videos are very graphic. They absolutely are real. Everybody that's seen them is just speechless. Anyway, I look forward to hearing from you. We have several months till the 10th anniversary. And I thought I'd reach out to you and see if you're interested in breaking this story. Thank you.
4:27 Speaker 00 Was Harambe Cincinnati?
4:29 Speaker 05 Oh, wow.
4:31 Pablo Torre? On May 28th.
4:33 Speaker 00 Oh, my God.
4:34 Pablo Torre? 2016.
4:35 Speaker 00 Oh, my God.
4:36 Pablo Torre? Exactly 10 years ago, at the Cincinnati Zoo.
4:41 Speaker 07 Outrage over an incident at the Cincinnati Zoo when a three-year-old boy fell into the gorilla enclosure Saturday. For 10 agonizing minutes, onlookers watched, including the boy's mother, who cried out to him. Mommy's right here. At one point, the 420-pound male silverback named Harambe grabbed the boy's ankle and dragged him through the water. Mommy loves you. I'm right here.
5:04 Speaker 00 Unfortunately, we only have just a little bit of a window of what happened, right? What I really want to see is how the heck this child ended up at the top of the barrier, through the brush, and into the moat. We don't have that yet.
5:14 Speaker 06 The bottom line is that once that little boy was in the hands of that gorilla, unfortunately, that's a death sentence for the gorilla. Did the zoo make the right call?
5:22 Speaker 01 The gorilla's behavior was textbook protective behavior for a gorilla. They run around with their kids like that in the wild. The kids know to jump on the back. Any gorilla expert should know that gorilla was not acting violently towards that child.
5:35 Pablo Torre? And after all that attention, all that news coverage, of course, came the memes.
5:42 Speaker 00 This is an interesting sign. What does this mean?
5:45 Pablo Torre? Uh, I'm sure you all heard about Harambe the gorilla. He was murdered in the Cincinnati Zoo. And I'm just saying, like, [bleep] out for Harambe. That's a rallying cry. Yeah.
5:52 Speaker 00 So you're [bleep], you pull it out for Harambe?
5:55 Speaker 01 I mean, if Harambe was here, he'd be out right now. You know, you could see some people that are running up right now. Yeah, for Harambe! Okay, thank you. Yeah, for Harambe! All right. Get out for Harambe, you know what the [__] it is. Hey, get out for Harambe! The death of this gorilla has given me a lot of joy. I hate to say it. Oh, tremendous. Not in a bad way. Yeah. Like, RIP Harambe, for real. But it's been really funny.
6:20 Speaker 05 You could have given me 10,000 tries. This is, I did not think this is going to be disgusting.
6:26 Speaker 00 No chance. Why us?
6:27 Speaker 05 Rest in peace, Harambe.
6:29 Pablo Torre? Well, one reason why is that Deezus, personally...
6:33 Speaker 05 I did not shoot him.
6:35 Pablo Torre? ...happened to tweet quite a bit about Harambe, according to our records.
6:39 Speaker 00 I bet you did.
6:40 Speaker 05 2016? Oh, yeah. My only wish was Harambe was alive to see us go to state win. He was a big fan. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Had a lot going on in 2016. Or maybe not that much going on in 2016.
6:50 Pablo Torre? And when we tell the young people of America what 2016 was like, it's really important to, like, educate them.
6:59 Speaker 00 Sure.
7:00 Pablo Torre? Barstool made an empire out of Harambe's stuff. I remember seeing on Pardon My Take, which was, I think, like, the, one of the main, like, centers of Harambe content. They were, like, fantasy drafting, and Joe Burrow drafted Harambe as a defensive end for the Bengals.
7:19 Speaker 06 You gotta take Harambe, right?
7:20 Speaker 05 Mm-hmm. Yeah.
7:22 Speaker 06 I mean, the strength to weight ratio is just way higher than humans. I mean, that's a easy seven sacks a game, I'm sure.
7:31 Pablo Torre? We are all of the sports internet. And Harambe was our gorilla. Deezus, there are some headlines here that I'd like you to help us remember.
7:44 Speaker 05 Okay. Thousands of Americans vote for a dead gorilla.
7:47 Speaker 00 Basically.
7:48 Speaker 05 Yeah.
7:49 Pablo Torre? Which brings us to the next headline.
7:51 Speaker 05 Would Donald Trump have killed the gorilla? Harambe's death was the beginning of the fall of society?
7:57 Speaker 00 I'd hear that out. I would hear that out.
7:59 Pablo Torre? I don't want to be numb. To the idea that would Donald Trump have killed the gorilla? Was a headline.
8:06 Speaker 00 In what sense are they asking? Like, I don't think the president authorized the shot.
8:11 Pablo Torre? Be president to be.
8:13 Speaker 05 Yeah.
8:14 Pablo Torre? This was, this was a.
8:15 Speaker 00 Oh.
8:16 Speaker 05 Yeah, back then it was like, back then it'd be like, oh my God, we don't really know Donald Trump. We're like, would he possibly?
8:21 Speaker 00 We knew Donald Trump.
8:22 Speaker 05 Now?
8:23 Speaker 00 We knew Donald Trump.
8:24 Speaker 05 He'd pull out a penknife, dig his eyes out and gleefully say, I was the biggest gorilla ever. They would have voted for me. But we didn't know that back then. We were young city bumpkins. We knew nothing about primates.
8:34 Pablo Torre? Donald Trump, according to CNN, said that a Cincinnati Zoo probably had no choice but to kill a gorilla. It was a very tough call.
8:41 Speaker 01 It was amazing because there were moments with the gorilla, the way he held that child. It was almost like a mother holding a baby. Looked so beautiful and calm.
8:52 Speaker 00 What? Donald Trump said that?
8:54 Speaker 05 Yeah.
8:55 Speaker 00 Appeared beautiful and calm?
8:57 Speaker 05 Yeah.
8:58 Speaker 00 That, I don't like the way that feels.
8:59 Speaker 05 He's also really big with the gorillas. The gorillas would have voted for him 10 times.
9:04 Pablo Torre? But this, all of this, the news cycle that was Harambe, I really don't want to dwell on this too much.
9:11 Speaker 00 Which usually means he does.
9:14 Pablo Torre? There is also this headline.
9:15 Speaker 00 Elon Musk drops rap song eulogizing Harambe the gorilla.
9:20 Pablo Torre? You remember this?
9:21 Speaker 00 No, I don't. And please don't remind me of it.
9:36 Speaker 05 Wow, they weren't kidding. Drake has showed no growth on Iceman. What is this?
9:41 Speaker 00 You said, let's not dwell, so let's not dwell.
9:45 Pablo Torre? For the last four months, we have been unfortunately dwelling.
9:48 Speaker 00 Yeah.
9:48 Pablo Torre? We've been trying to figure out, in fairness, like, is Jeff the whistleblower? Is he full of [BLEEP]? Because what he has told us of this scoop, of these videos that he's promising, is, quote,
10:00 Speaker 06 This may ruin Harambe's reputation, but it may change the world's feelings about zoos.
10:08 Pablo Torre? End quote.
10:09 Speaker 00 So is this, this is gonna demonize Harambe? It's, what are they gonna show? That he reached across and brought the child into the? What could the tapes possibly show?
10:19 Speaker 05 They show Harambe's final words, with or without gang violence.
10:25 Speaker 00 Right, unless it's a video of Harambe just looking in the camera and being like, "Fuck this kid."
10:29 Pablo Torre? This kid.
10:29 Speaker 00 And grabbing the kid.
10:30 Pablo Torre? This kid specifically.
10:31 Speaker 00 Otherwise, I don't know what he could possibly do to change my...
10:35 Pablo Torre? Ooh.
10:35 Speaker 00 Wow.
10:36 Pablo Torre? Well...
10:36 Speaker 00 I hated that look.
10:38 Pablo Torre? Luckily...
10:39 Speaker 00 Great.
10:40 Pablo Torre? This is a show where we do find out.
10:42 Speaker 05 Let's go.
10:43 Speaker 00 I can already hear the "Wiccy wiccy wiccy wiccy wiccy wiccy wiccy wiccy wiccy" get your little theme song play.
10:48 Pablo Torre? I love the a cappella.
10:51 Speaker 05 You gotta hire her like Rockabilly from Caravaggio.
10:57 Speaker 05 Pablo, Pablo.
11:02 Speaker 00 That was good.
11:19 Pablo Torre? This message is brought to you by Apple Card. With Apple Card, you earn unlimited daily cash back on everyday purchases, like groceries, or merch, or tickets to the game. Plus, it can be used anywhere MasterCard is accepted. No matter your team, no matter where you shop, Apple Card is here to help you tackle game day. Apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval. Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank, USA, Salt Lake City Branch. Terms and more at applecard.com.
11:52 Speaker 02 I've got big news. I switched to Verizon and got the new iPhone 18 Pro. Shh. I can keep my old phone. And I also get the latest iPhone every year. Shh, anything else? Verizon let me choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on them. Everybody, listen up. Shh. Switch to Verizon and get the new iPhone 18 Pro now. No trade-in needed. And the latest iPhone every year with Simplicity Plan. Plus, choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on us. Simplicity Plan with Simplicity Pro required. Plan and device payment purchase are separate agreements with separate terms. Service plan for Watch or iPad required. Additional terms apply for all offers.
12:22 Speaker 03 At Humana, our Medicare Advantage plans are easy to understand and easy on your wallet. Like offering more benefits than you'd get from original Medicare alone. And including dental, vision, and hearing coverage in every plan. And the best part is every plan has a $0 or low monthly plan premium, which makes it easier to save, too. So this Medicare planning season, plan well with Humana. Learn more at gethumana.com. Humana is a Medicare Advantage, HMO and PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.
13:00 Pablo Torre? This is a story about two characters that I have come to really appreciate.
13:06 Speaker 00 Hmm.
13:07 Pablo Torre? This is a story about two parallel timelines, two primate species, two arguably parallel dimensions. And our first character is a 64-year-old man named Jeff McCurry, aka Jeff the Whistleblower.
13:21 Speaker 06 I know it sounds, you know, like I'm fooling myself or whatever, but I'm just being honest. I crazy [BLEEP] finds me. I was, congratulations to you, Pablo. I consider you in that list now. It's like, I met Pablo and the [BLEEP] wins a Pulitzer Prize.
13:43 Speaker 06 I was literally sitting in my chair thinking, man, 10th anniversary is coming up. I need to reach out to somebody. And I found and chose you. And you got back with me in minutes. I was like, holy [BLEEP]. This was the right person to contact. So it was a match made in heaven.
14:04 Pablo Torre? So describe the visuals on Jeff.
14:06 Speaker 00 As soon as you see behind Jeff, there are three-by-three, square-shaped, just portraits of Harambe.
14:14 Pablo Torre? In different poses.
14:15 Speaker 00 But some of them look a lot alike. Like, I would not have hung up the one on the top left next to the one in the middle top, because it looks too similar from far away. Those should be in separate parts of your wall collage.
14:28 Pablo Torre? The top middle one, that is like the photo.
14:33 Speaker 00 The one you've all seen that's been memed to high heavens.
14:35 Pablo Torre? Yeah. More importantly, though, what we're not noticing, and I just realized it right now.
14:40 Speaker 00 What's that?
14:40 Pablo Torre? The Harambe lapel.
14:42 Speaker 00 Yeah, when you say, "we're not noticing," I- Had seen it. It is like a um.
14:46 Pablo Torre? What is Jeff wearing?
14:47 Speaker 00 Now, it's almost like on a Adidas tee that would have, where it would have the stripes down the top of the shoulder.
14:53 Pablo Torre? Look at our drag race on.
14:54 Speaker 00 Oh, it's his whole, oh my god. Sorry, it's a Harambe jersey. He plays for the Harambe's.
14:59 Pablo Torre? It's a Mitchell and Ness throwback from 1986 where Harambe paid for the Pittsburgh Pirates.
15:04 Speaker 00 Does it actually say on the front?
15:07 Pablo Torre? It says Fred Nats. This is the Fredericksburg Nationals, a single A affiliate of the Washington Nationals. Okay. And they had a Harambe night.
15:15 Speaker 00 Great.
15:16 Speaker 05 Oh.
15:17 Pablo Torre? And it got delayed because of COVID.
15:19 Speaker 00 But they still did it.
15:20 Pablo Torre? Well.
15:21 Speaker 00 You have to do it. You gotta go through with it.
15:23 Pablo Torre? Limited edition merch.
15:24 Speaker 00 What am I gonna do with all these Harambe jerseys?
15:27 Pablo Torre? It was the five year anniversary back then, and the proceeds were gonna go to the Dutch Gorilla Foundation. This was gonna be this whole game worn auction thing, and it all got derailed because of.
15:39 Speaker 00 A global pandemic?
15:40 Pablo Torre? A global pandemic.
15:41 Speaker 00 That'll happen.
15:42 Pablo Torre? But I think we should let Jeff explain what his sort of motive was when it comes to his friend.
15:49 Speaker 06 This is my way of honoring Harambe, wearing and displaying him as much as I can. So when your podcast gets out there and anybody that sees it, they'll, you know, they'll have to look at Harambe also too, not just me. It's odd to say, but I was friends with a gorilla, you know?
16:09 Pablo Torre? Worst T-Pay song ever.
16:13 Speaker 00 I was friends with the gorilla. He eating.
16:17 Pablo Torre? Speaking of someone who knows how to auto tune.
16:20 Speaker 00 He grabbing that kid. I'm friends with the gorilla.
16:24 Pablo Torre? But then, on Christmas Eve, 1985, when Jeff was 24 years old, he was hit by a drunk driver. He broke every bone in his body. He was in a coma for almost two weeks, but. This sort of like silver lining is he got a disability payout, meaning he essentially retired at 24. And in his late 30s, he sees an ad in the school paper for a photographer position.
16:51 Speaker 05 Mm hmm.
16:52 Pablo Torre? Photo editor says.
16:53 Speaker 06 You got a camera? I'm like, yeah. He goes, he has me two rolls of film. He says, you're our new sports photographer.
16:59 Pablo Torre? Hmm. And what he says is that he got invited into these worlds, dugouts, courtside. It's how he learned how to build trust with his subjects. My point is that this is actually something of a sports story.
17:17 Speaker 06 Being a photographer in general, people invite you into the world. But being a sports photographer, you get invited into worlds where nobody else is allowed.
17:29 Pablo Torre? While all this is happening, Jeff is still in extreme pain. Right? He's taking 120 pain pills a month. It's this combo of oxy and Tylenol. They don't even allow this stuff anymore. But then Jeff McCurry and Katie Nolan, you will now, I think, realize why you are also here for this episode.
17:45 Speaker 02 You know him?
17:46 Speaker 06 One time I walked in the doctor and she looked at me and she goes, wait a minute, Jeff, you're a [BLEEP] zombie. And then it dawned on me 10 years after. It's like, wait a minute, you idiot. You're having trouble sleeping. You never smoked weed because it helped you. It made you tired. Try that. And so I tried it and it just changed my life tremendously. And I had a doctor that I saw regularly and I went in, saw him one day and he's like, Jeff, what happened? You're so much better. And this was before legalization was very common and everything. And I'm like, you know, it's illegal. I don't know if we should talk about it.
18:28 Speaker 06 He goes, well, whatever it is, keep doing it because it definitely made you better. And I'm like, okay.
18:34 Speaker 05 Not the guy in Cincinnati with the white ponytail and the minor league jersey finding the benefits of weed. Who could have seen that coming? My God.
18:43 Pablo Torre? No.
18:45 Speaker 05 Jeff?
18:46 Pablo Torre? Discovered the beauty of the natural world in this way.
18:51 Speaker 06 And so I started growing for myself and got really good at it. I had a friend selling a house out in the country, out Rabbit Ash, Kentucky. If you've ever heard of it, they used to have a, their mayor was a dog for many years. Got them lots of.
19:05 Pablo Torre? Wait, hold on, hold on. I'm sorry. This is, I, I.
19:12 Pablo Torre? This is the town where the mayor was a dog.
19:16 Speaker 06 Absolutely. Yeah. He got reelected three or four times.
19:20 Speaker 05 Yeah. If you don't smoke weed and you're watching this, this is what it's like to smoke weed. You have a guy who was best friends with a gorilla, talking about a small town that had a dog as a mayor. That's called indica. There's a lot going on right now. You're listening to this podcast. You are not passing any drug tests for the next three days.
19:36 Pablo Torre? Whistleblower Jeff buys a house in Rabbit Ash to start growing weed. And I just need to establish people who are doubting us. The dog mayor thing was real.
19:47 Speaker 00 Yeah.
19:48 Speaker 07 We report today from Rabbit Ash, Kentucky, where at least 10 dogs, a cat and a donkey are running for mayor. Alas, Goofy became the nation's first elected official to be euthanized. But satisfied voters elected another dog, Junior, who himself recently went to that Big Bone Buffet in the sky. CBS News Chief Washington correspondent Bob Schiefer is keeping a close eye on the election.
20:15 Speaker 05 Well, Bill, it seems pretty obvious to me that this dog vote may be split 10 ways. And of course, that could greatly benefit the candidacy of Travis the Cat. The split does not seem to be helping Higgins, however, who may want to consider defining himself as a donkey rather than a jackass. But I do have to say, I admire his honesty.
20:38 Speaker 00 Dude, this is a different Dog Mayor than I was even thinking of. This is sick. I'm obsessed with this.
20:42 Pablo Torre? That was on CBS News.
20:43 Speaker 00 Yeah, no, I want to watch only stuff like that.
20:45 Speaker 05 Barry Weiss is never reaching this level.
20:47 Speaker 00 No chance. The dogs splitting it 10 ways, helping out the cat.
20:52 Speaker 05 There's graphics involved, there's deep dives.
20:54 Speaker 00 Maybe don't go by jackass, go by donkey. Perfect.
20:58 Speaker 05 Also, we can euthanize mayors because, I mean, Eric Adams dodges a bullet.
21:01 Speaker 00 That is truly... I can't believe that next dog got into the job knowing how the last one left office.
21:06 Speaker 05 I'll do a better job.
21:07 Speaker 00 Yeah.
21:08 Pablo Torre? This is where Jeff moves. He moves to, yeah.
21:11 Speaker 00 Rabbit's hash. Rabbit hash?
21:14 Speaker 05 Rabbit hash.
21:15 Speaker 00 Rabbit hash. Which is funny because my mom's always complaining that the rabbits are eating her weed. She has to put like specific, like a cage around her weed plant so that the rabbits don't eat it.
21:26 Speaker 05 And rabbit hash sounds like just the worst weed you've ever smoked.
21:29 Speaker 00 Yeah. Oh, dry.
21:30 Speaker 05 What is this, CB9? Like...
21:32 Pablo Torre? These are all issues that I think Jeff was probably personally familiar with.
21:36 Speaker 00 Yeah, and the mayor was working on.
21:38 Speaker 06 So I bought a house from a friend down there and filled it up with marijuana plants and was growing and thinking, okay, I'm gonna, you know, do this and make some money off of it. But before I made money off of it, regrettably, a friend of mine's brother-in-law, who we had let go to the place because it had a creek on the property and he would fish there. And he got pissed off at my friend's wife on Thanksgiving. And so he called Crime Stoppers twice and told them, you know, exactly where I was. And that's how I got, you know, arrested.
22:18 Pablo Torre? The federal government alleges in its 2005 indictment here that we obtained, that quote, "You did knowingly and intentionally manufacture and possess with intent to distribute approximately 350 plants of marijuana."
22:31 Speaker 06 450, actually, wasn't it?
22:35 Pablo Torre? He's like, "Check the stats."
22:36 Speaker 00 Check the stats, my average is much higher than that.
22:39 Speaker 05 Scoreboard.
22:41 Pablo Torre? Fact-checking wise, Jeff is, it turns out, correct. They found apparently 100 extra plants at the address next door. This all coming, by the way, from this count that was dismissed as part of his plea deal. All you gotta know for right now is that Jeff goes off to federal prison and we are going to turn our attention...
23:02 Pablo Torre? To Brownsville, Texas.
23:06 Speaker 00 We have the winner of our contest. It's the naming the baby with the Gladys Porter Zoo, and it's the baby gorilla. Tell us about it.
23:12 Speaker 06 Well, every morning I like to get up and run on my treadmill, and I listen to music. And I was listening to a particular reggae song, and the performer kept singing this word, Harambe, Harambe. And halfway through the song, she explained what it was, and it means to pull together, to help each other, sharing and caring, and come together.
23:30 Speaker 00 Wow, so hence the name. And we've got the baby gorilla right there, Dan. That's the child you just named. Harambe. Harambe is her name. Once again, what does it mean again?
23:39 Speaker 06 It means pulling together, coming together, sharing and caring about one another.
23:42 Speaker 00 And what is it, like Swahili?
23:43 Speaker 06 It's a Swahili word, yeah.
23:45 Speaker 00 Oh, wow, this is so, so fantastic. Congratulations to you. A free membership to Gladys Porter Zoo. We also want to... They put so much spice on the name the first time they said it.
23:53 Speaker 05 This is...
23:54 Speaker 00 Harambe.
23:55 Pablo Torre? They rolled that.
23:55 Speaker 00 Harambe.
23:56 Pablo Torre? Rolled that R.
23:57 Speaker 05 This seems like a Different Strokes reboot that should never have aired, like...
24:00 Speaker 00 Harambe.
24:01 Pablo Torre? A very special episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out. Describe, describe. Please describe, Katie.
24:07 Speaker 00 He looks like a cutie pie. He's just, he looks a little confused. He's just a baby, a tiny little baby, Harambe.
24:15 Speaker 05 He looks cute the way all of you were lying and saying Punch looked. Remember that little monkey?
24:20 Speaker 00 Punch the monkey. Punch was cute. What are you talking about? Excuse me, I don't think we need to...
24:23 Speaker 05 That's what's in the file. Punch was a federal agent.
24:26 Speaker 00 Punch was so cute.
24:27 Speaker 05 Notice he's disappeared. We haven't heard from Punch in months.
24:29 Speaker 00 Well, Punch made a human friend, and then I think everything was... There was also a lot of misinformation around Punch that got really weird really quick.
24:35 Speaker 05 He got into it, he found a girlfriend, he went all right.
24:37 Speaker 00 Yeah, oh, shoot, oh, shoot.
24:40 Pablo Torre? I think we can all agree that Punch the monkey was no Harambe. Lots of imitators.
24:44 Speaker 00 No duplicators.
24:46 Speaker 05 There you go.
24:46 Pablo Torre? And by the way, the name, meaning pulling together, coming together, sharing and caring about one another...
24:50 Speaker 00 How could it mean all those things?
24:52 Pablo Torre? Well, this is an ape that was named after a song by Bob Marley's widow. Do you know Harambe, please? First of all, Harambe is a Swahili word from South Africa. And Harambe relates to a spouse or sister.
25:27 Speaker 00 I'd like to apologize. Because she does say it means all those things.
25:31 Pablo Torre? Footnote cited.
25:31 Speaker 00 I needed to hear it from the primary source.
25:34 Pablo Torre? No, it's good. That's the due diligence that we want.
25:36 Speaker 00 I didn't trust that guy to be getting it right. I trust her.
25:40 Pablo Torre? I should say that Harambe, for those not familiar with his personal species, Western Lowland Silverback Gorilla, shares about 98.3% of its DNA with us humans.
25:51 Speaker 00 That's a lot of DNA.
25:52 Pablo Torre? It's a lot. Same species if you've ever seen Coco, another famous gorilla, who learned sign language. That's also a Western Lowland Silverback Gorilla. And, yeah, he loved to eat fruit. You know, one expert we talked to liken Western Lowland Gorillas in the wild to basically vegetarians living in a salad bowl. And so Harambe, born May 27, 1999, to Mother Kayla with a younger brother, Makoko. This is an uplifting story.
26:20 Speaker 00 Mm-hmm.
26:21 Pablo Torre? You know?
26:22 Speaker 00 Which worries me.
26:23 Pablo Torre? This is the story of Harambe, whose, I think, name, image, and likeness, from the very beginning, was very intentional.
26:31 Speaker 00 Mm-hmm.
26:32 Pablo Torre? Of value to the local news in Brownsville, Texas. Less uplifting
26:40 Pablo Torre? is this article, Katie, in your folder, from the Houston Chronicle in early 2002.
26:46 Speaker 00 Okay, this headline says, "Chlorine Gas Kills Gorillas at Valley Zoo." Subhead, "Firefighters Found Three Gorillas Unconscious And Several Others Suffering From Chlorine Inhalation." Three Western Lowland Gorillas died, and a fourth was in serious condition Sunday after a chlorine gas leak at the Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville. The gorillas were all groggy and unresponsive. The zoo identified the gorillas killed as 10-year-old Kayla.
27:16 Speaker 00 Her 11-month-old son Makoko and a two-year-old female named Uzuri.
27:24 Pablo Torre? This was Harambe's family.
27:26 Speaker 05 Ho.
27:27 Speaker 00 Oh.
27:28 Speaker 05 Wow.
27:29 Speaker 00 Okay.
27:31 Pablo Torre? It was a toxic gas leak, a space heater melted near a chlorine tank at the zoo.
27:36 Speaker 00 Oh.
27:37 Pablo Torre? His mom, Kayla, his little brother Makoko, another pregnant gorilla.
27:40 Speaker 00 We just melt them in this story?
27:41 Pablo Torre? Yeah, Harambe was like two and a half. And this AP story, Katie, the next one from the memorial service. It puts, again, just like a more vivid sense of what Harambe was like growing up.
27:57 Speaker 00 "Three gorillas remembered during service at Brownsville Zoo." This is a quote, "To see the gorillas so sad just sitting there, you can tell that there is a sorrow. There is something that they are missing." Mayor Blanca S. Vela said. "Grief counselors have visited with zookeepers and those close to the animals." Oh my God.
28:18 Pablo Torre? Notably, no gorilla therapists?
28:21 Speaker 00 The grief counselor is a human grief counselor?
28:23 Pablo Torre? For the zookeepers.
28:24 Speaker 00 For the zookeepers.
28:25 Pablo Torre? And those close to the animals.
28:27 Speaker 00 Okay.
28:28 Pablo Torre? But again, the question of like, okay, so what do we do with?
28:31 Speaker 00 Their grief.
28:32 Pablo Torre? What do we do with them? What is in the mind of a gorilla?
28:35 Speaker 05 Was Harambe just there staring at the caskets, just like crying?
28:39 Pablo Torre? Also, 2013, Harambe's father dies of heart disease. Two years later, 2015, teenage Harambe is on the move. This according to a press release thesis.
28:51 Speaker 00 Oh, in your folder.
28:52 Speaker 05 In my folder.
28:53 Speaker 00 Your turn.
28:54 Pablo Torre? From the Cincinnati Zoo.
28:58 Speaker 05 New rookie silverback in gorilla world for spring training.
29:02 Pablo Torre? Sports story. This is sports. He's traded from Texas to Cincinnati, Ohio, as the Cincinnati Zoo's curator of primates, who declined our interview request.
29:13 Speaker 00 Uh oh.
29:14 Pablo Torre? Described in this introductory video.
29:18 Speaker 01 At 16 years old, as Harambe is now, it was time for him to kind of go out and find his way elsewhere, just like a young silverback might do in the wild. For many years, young silverbacks roam around by themselves until they can get enough size and enough experience to impress females to come and join him. So Harambe coming here is kind of like a rookie silverback in training. We've got a couple of good females for him to be with, and it's going to be a fun summer of introductions for Harambe, Chewie, and Mara.
29:47 Speaker 05 Okay, alright. A little NBA drafty.
29:49 Speaker 00 Couple of fun females for him to just to see.
29:53 Pablo Torre? Spring training before mating season is what brings Harambe to Cincinnati. And the press release, by the way, Deezus, further clarifies the process.
30:03 Speaker 05 Harambe, large for his age at 419 pounds, will be placed in a social group with two 19-year-old females. A typical gorilla group includes one silverback male and several females.
30:15 Speaker 00 Oh, okay.
30:16 Speaker 05 So the three will be together for social interaction and companionship.
30:20 Speaker 00 Okay, that's one way to put it.
30:22 Pablo Torre? Okay, the polycule gorilla, gorilla, gorilla polycule.
30:26 Speaker 05 Just monkeys with the party full you coming through today.
30:31 Speaker 00 Living in a compound.
30:32 Pablo Torre? Harambe was not quite at breeding maturity just yet. He was 16, but he's a star prospect.
30:39 Speaker 05 He is.
30:39 Pablo Torre? His measurables really strong. Spring 2015, it's April, and said prospect encounters a certain sports photographer.
30:51 Speaker 00 Oh, that's right.
30:52 Pablo Torre? Turned weed horticulturalist, who had recently gotten out of federal prison after growing, what he told us was, 450 marijuana plants. Although Jeff did want to make something very clear about that experience.
31:05 Speaker 06 Yeah, I pled guilty and went to a federal prison camp in West Virginia and spent 10 and a half months there. And I literally had my own golf cart. I could drive down the road. So, point is, all of us in the camp were always on our best behavior. It was like, hey, guys, we got this place. And there was no guards, there was no nothing. We were just there. And it's just, stay out of trouble, guys, and we'll leave you alone. And, you know, it was the best possible prison experience anybody could have, and it's still horrible.
31:41 Pablo Torre? When Jeff got out, he wanted to go where all people do with newfound freedom, suburban Cincinnati. And he found freedom in his camera. And so, one day during the spring training of 2015, Jeff goes to the Cincinnati Zoo, and he begins to take photos at Gorilla World.
32:01 Speaker 06 And somebody from the zoo came over to me and I said, "Oh, did you get a picture of that?" I'm like, "Oh, yeah, maybe."
32:08 Pablo Torre? And just like how he became a sports photographer back at the school paper, he gets enlisted. The photos were so good, and the zoo had staff photographers who were getting paid, that they said to Jeff, who was working while living off of his insurance payout, he's now 53 years old, whether he would work for free. And Jeff becomes a sports photographer turned weed horticulturist turned volunteer gorilla photographer. And it's important to note, for legal reasons, Katie, in your folder, that we reviewed Jeff's contract with the zoo.
32:42 Speaker 00 "By providing or allowing use of photographic files by the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden," no one ever talks about the botanical garden, you know what I mean?
32:50 Speaker 05 No, it's not for the gardens.
32:51 Speaker 00 "You represent, acknowledge, and warrant that said files are your original work and that you are the sole owner of all rights, title, and interests." Oh, I see what's happening here. Okay. So basically, signed in this contract, they said, "These things belong to you." You signing here means they belong to you. Which means if somebody were to get access to them, it would be him who would need to give you the authorization to air it somewhere.
33:21 Pablo Torre? Ooh, Jeff keeps receipts. Again, name, image, and likeness.
33:26 Speaker 00 Yeah.
33:27 Pablo Torre? And on April 15th, 2015, Jeff's camera...
33:32 Pablo Torre? This covers a glorious prospect.
33:35 Speaker 05 Oh.
33:36 Speaker 00 Aw, shut out.
33:38 Pablo Torre? This is-
33:39 Speaker 00 Shut out Harambe.
33:40 Pablo Torre? This is the photo. The one that, yes, we've been seeing, that has been viral all over the world many times over. It was Harambe in mating season. This is the same Harambe photo from Jeff's minor league baseball jersey on an NFL player's custom cleats, on all those memes, on all the RIP Harambe t-shirts. And he took it when Harambe was 16 years old on the first day they met.
34:07 Speaker 00 Wow.
34:08 Pablo Torre? On opening day.
34:10 Speaker 00 Okay.
34:11 Pablo Torre? And so, when you see that photo and you think of Harambe's backstory, you know, I think it's fair to assume like, yo, this is psychology of a damaged, broken gorilla who is orphaned because a gas leak killed his family and plunged his life into total chaos, forcing him across the country to be used as like this, I don't know, reproduction vehicle.
34:35 Speaker 05 This is like the worst version of The Blind Side I've ever seen, like.
34:39 Pablo Torre? And so, what becomes clear is that Harambe, in Jeff's view, wasn't personally so much searching for a mate for all this stuff that would attend the life of a glorious prospect. Harambe wanted a friend.
34:56 Speaker 06 And I was like, Damon Harambe, I'll hang out with you. I'll be your friend. And so, that's kind of how it started. And so, Harambe and I started hanging out. Whenever I would go, I'd stop by and remembering my prison experience, I remembered how great it was to get a visitor. If I could cheer you up for a few minutes in your day, make it better, you know, I'd go and hang out with him and he seemed to bond with me. He, you know, would come up to me as close as he could and, you know, pose for me and do all kinds of things for me, you know.
35:33 Speaker 05 He said, "Remember my prison experience?" I thought he was gonna bring like a cup of soup and a deodorant to Harambe, like, yo, look at that, my OG.
35:41 Pablo Torre? I do want to acknowledge the proud tradition in American culture and Hollywood entertainment of, like, gorilla psychological analysis. So King Kong, Gorillas in the Mist, Congo, Mighty Joe Young. We have often sort of like, thought and talked about like, what are these gorillas up to? And what Jeff says is that Harambe was really smart.
36:03 Speaker 06 But it also made his life, I think, more hard, knowing, you know, the situation he was stuck in. He was quiet. He didn't like to be yelled at, for sure. Anybody would yell at him, he'd walk away. You know, he'd go and hide, you know, go into his caves like, you know, I don't have to put up with this [BLEEP].
36:24 Pablo Torre? Harambe, by the way, as the subject in Jeff's sort of photographic line of sight, the same camera that he'd use to photograph athletes. Harambe could pose.
36:36 Speaker 00 Yeah. Yeah, he sure. Oh, my god.
36:39 Pablo Torre? Oh, look at the arch.
36:40 Speaker 00 I don't know what I'm allowed to say, but...
36:43 Speaker 05 I thought you said he was a silverback gorilla, not a bad bitch.
36:47 Speaker 00 Damn, damn, damn, damn.
36:48 Speaker 05 Because damn, alright? The camera is on.
36:50 Speaker 00 Yeah, this angle.
36:51 Pablo Torre? The back, the back is the shoulders.
36:53 Speaker 00 It's the shoulders and the arms that make me feel safe.
36:56 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
36:56 Speaker 00 Um, it's just me.
36:58 Speaker 05 Yeah, Tyra's sending him to the next round.
37:00 Pablo Torre? Yes.
37:00 Speaker 00 Sturdy.
37:01 Pablo Torre? Sturdy.
37:01 Speaker 00 A sturdy, remarkable gorilla. Oh, Harambe! Pop that thigh. That's what Myrtle does in shows. She'll just scratch the inside of her thigh. That's her favorite. She'll just pop it out like that.
37:14 Pablo Torre? And look, I should say Jeff admits that it is, again, it is odd that he became friends with a gorilla. He acknowledges that.
37:23 Speaker 00 Good, oh, good.
37:25 Pablo Torre? But the thing that helps explain it that I didn't know, of course, until we went so deep in the weeds on this. When Harambe was orphaned, he actually wound up being taken in by humans. His caretakers at the zoo in Texas, the ones that cut his umbilical cord, bottled fed him, changed his diaper. Humans! Like, this is, this is who dealt with him for his whole life. And so, we've been asking ourselves the question, like, how do you fact-check this friendship with a gorilla? And in Jeff's view, his scouting report, teenage Harambe was, quote, "a natural-born ham."
38:01 Speaker 06 He ignored his two girlfriends. They would be on different sides of the exhibit. He didn't seem interested in them at all. He reminded me of my Uncle Jim in so many ways where, you know, he's my favorite uncle. And growing up, he was always the uncle that gave us kids, you know, always teasing us. And, you know, the fun uncle, you know, the one in Harambe seemed like that where he, you know, he would do things to try and get me excited or to make, you know, expressions that, you know, just to get a reaction out of me. And I say, we talked all the time, you know, and he just grinned like there was no tomorrow.
38:42 Speaker 00 This is really sweet. I keep forgetting Harambe definitely dies, so this isn't going to stay happy the whole time.
38:47 Pablo Torre? Well, what happens to get to the point Katie is making is that Jeff and Harambe are clearly friends and they, according to Jeff, they loved each other. And so one day, exactly 10 years ago, this is Saturday, May 28th, 2016. This is the day after Harambe's 17th birthday.
39:07 Speaker 00 Oh, my God.
39:08 Pablo Torre? Jeff pulled up, as he often did, to Gorilla World.
39:13 Speaker 06 And as I'm taking pictures, all of a sudden, this boy grabs my shirt and pulls me. And I look over and he's standing on the fence, on top of the fence. And he almost fell in. And I said, get down, you know, screamed it. And then Dad is standing right behind him. And he looks at me, giving me this, you know, dagger eyes, like, how dare you yell at my kid. It happened so often, I had this standard speech. I said, sir, you don't understand. We're not worried about the gorilla killing your kid. Your kid is going to be dead when he falls 15 feet onto the cement down there.
39:54 Pablo Torre? So that was the day Harambe died, but that was not even the kid.
40:00 Speaker 00 Hmm?
40:01 Pablo Torre? That was earlier in the morning and Jeff McCurry was there and intervened and stopped it. But then.
40:09 Pablo Torre? That afternoon, Jeff McCurry, volunteer sports photographer, left. He had to go to a basketball game. His friend's teenage daughter, it turned out, would be future WNBA player for the Toronto Tempo, Lexi Held.
40:21 Speaker 00 Shout out.
40:22 Pablo Torre? And Jeff had to go take his camera elsewhere. And so Jeff heard the news pretty much like everybody else.
40:31 Speaker 06 So I went home and I'm downloading the pictures and going through them. And I have the TV on in the background, the news on. And all of a sudden it came on that they killed Harambe. I'm like, oh, what? You know, it's like, everybody asks, how'd you learn? It's like, I learned just like everybody else, on the news.
40:49 Speaker 01 Very emotional time at the Cincinnati Zoo. It's unprecedented. We have never had to kill a dangerous animal in the middle of an emergency situation.
40:59 Speaker 02 Cincinnati 911. Hi, my son's out in the zoo. Exhibit at the gorilla, there's a male gorilla standing over him. I need someone to contact the zoo, please.
41:07 Speaker 01 When it was determined that the child was being injured, not potentially injured, but was being injured, both down in the moat and then up on the ground,
41:17 Speaker 01 that we had to make a decision to shoot him, and we did.
41:20 Pablo Torre? What was your reaction when you first saw that?
41:23 Speaker 06 Heartbroken. I mean, just like, you feel whenever a friend of yours died, you're just like, no, I can't believe I'm not going to be able to spend time with him ever again. And it was, you know, and then to find out that not only is he gone, but, you know, you literally shot him in the forehead. I'm like, oh, man, that's, that's just awful. At least it's quick, but I learned that from the car wreck. I don't have a fear of dying because I don't remember any of it.
41:57 Speaker 06 You wake up later going, what the hell happened? So I'm comfortable that Harambe, his last thought was, I've got this little boy and I'm protecting him. And then he was, you know, the lights were turned off.
42:12 Pablo Torre? You may remember the debate about this. You know, it was like, who do you blame?
42:18 Speaker 05 Right.
42:19 Pablo Torre? Now, I should say that amid all the literal and figurative litigation, like, no charges were filed against the mom, no charges filed against the zoo. Prosecutors concluded that their use of lethal force was necessary. And the aforementioned mom posted on Facebook a couple of days later thanking bystanders.
42:35 Speaker 00 As a society, we are quick to judge how a parent could take their eyes off of their child. And if anyone knows me, I keep a tight watch on my kids. Accidents happen, but I am thankful that the right people were in the right place today. Thank you to everyone that helped me and my son.
42:50 Pablo Torre? She deleted that post later, as of course one does. The memes set in, the whirlwind sets in. And we did request an interview with the mother, the father, the boy in question, and a family spokesperson said, quote, "They're not interested in doing any interviews at this point. Actually, never." Which is fair. The boy, though, I'm happy to report.
43:15 Speaker 00 If you say graduated college, I'm leaving. That's, he can't be that big already.
43:19 Speaker 05 Have you watched this show? It can't be that simple. He's about to drop something that's gonna blow our brains. You know who the boy grew up to be? Wemby. And you'd be like, alright, that makes sense. That makes sense. Alright, Pablo.
43:32 Pablo Torre? I am merely here to say he is now a sophomore in high school. He's an athlete, he does play basketball.
43:40 Pablo Torre? He also plays football and he runs track.
43:42 Speaker 00 Multi-sport athlete.
43:44 Pablo Torre? Most relevantly, perhaps, to this program, he even wrote a sports story for the school's news website.
43:49 Speaker 00 Whoa.
43:51 Pablo Torre? A sports journalist whose privacy we will respect.
43:54 Speaker 00 Of course.
43:55 Pablo Torre? As for the Cincinnati Zoo, they did not respond to our interview requests. And as for Jeff, he says that even though, of course, he lost his friend and he feels insane, you know, regret at not being able to say goodbye.
44:12 Pablo Torre? He does not blame the mom of the kid in question. He says the exhibit should have been more safeguarded.
44:18 Speaker 06 And it was a zoo's fault because we knew that, that the kids were running wild. So that exhibit had to be bulletproof and it wasn't. And so that I've always thought, in my opinion, that made it all the zoo's fault and none of the mother's fault. She had three other kids, she looked over the other kids. And this little boy, he got through the barrier that should have been bigger and stronger. And, you know, it's, it happens so often.
44:47 Pablo Torre? And so for the sake of being fair and balanced, we reached out to independent gorilla experts. Of course, there are lots of theories, like why couldn't you have tranquilized him?
44:58 Speaker 00 Yeah.
44:59 Pablo Torre? What if you like tried to offer a trade, like, you know, here's some food? Maybe he would have given up the kid and sort of relinquished, you know, his hold on him. Whether a trade of fruit for boy would have worked.
45:13 Speaker 00 I've done it.
45:13 Speaker 05 Fruit for boy. There used to be a party on the Lower East Side, back when New York was a real city.
45:18 Pablo Torre? Meanwhile, Ron McGill.
45:20 Speaker 06 My name's Ron McGill. Until just about a week ago, I was the Communications Director, Goodwill Ambassador at Zoo Miami. I retired after 46 years.
45:28 Pablo Torre? Friend of the show, friend of the Dan Lebatard Show, friend of Metalark Media. He says that, yeah, that would not have worked.
45:35 Speaker 06 Well, let's try to negotiate. Let's see if we can bargain. Let's see if we can give him some bananas and he'll give us the boy. This is just stupidity. You can't do that.
45:43 Pablo Torre? And unfortunately.
45:45 Speaker 00 Shooting him in the head was the only way?
45:48 Speaker 05 What's even sadder is Harambe was just protecting that little boy that he wished someone protected him when he was a little boy.
45:54 Speaker 00 Oh no, are you doing that on purpose? It's very sad to me.
45:56 Speaker 05 It's very sad.
45:57 Pablo Torre? And so what Jeff McCurry is left to do as Harambe's friend, and again, the guy who has this contract and these photographs, is protect his friend's name, image, and likeness. He was surprised, of course, by the virality of it. He wasn't trying to cash in. In fact, his whole thing as the de facto representative of Harambe's estate is to make sure that people honored him and did not use his NIL against what Harambe would have wanted.
46:27 Pablo Torre? And so this photo, which got shared an estimated 25 billion times, this is the thing he trademarked. He also trademarked Harambe's name. Jeff McCurry is the guy who possesses all of this NIL. And in fact, when he saw that Pardon My Take was making all this money off of this t-shirt, Jeff McCurry sent a legal notice.
46:54 Speaker 06 We agreed to a confidential settlement and they stopped selling them because they did not have permission. We're both very happy with the settlement is what I can say.
47:04 Pablo Torre? Which led us to, of course, seek necessarily a response from PFT commenter Big Cat and their producer Hank Lockwood.
47:12 Speaker 01 Just a little fill in on what happened in the summer of 2016 when Hank made those t-shirts. This podcast probably wouldn't exist to this day if that gorilla hadn't gotten shot. But then Hank, being the savvy marketer that he is, jumped on the opportunity. Yeah, I just wanted to make a t-shirt, a funny t-shirt to wear to a music festival. Our t-shirt guy sent it to me three weeks too late, so I didn't even get to do that. But I took a picture and I didn't know what I created. I'm accusing myself of this conversation because I think it's bullsh** Pablo that you are trying to capitalize off a dead gorilla. So, uh, yeah, I'm not going to comment anymore. You're trying to get your views and your clicks off a gorilla. We would never do that. I'm doing clicks and likes, the internet game.
47:52 Speaker 01 But I think Hank, you came to terms with the photographer. We had a mutual agreement and everybody's happy, correct? Yeah, sure. Same like that. Yeah, yeah. The gorilla? Listen. The guy that took the Harambe picture? I'm not going to say anything on the record because I don't know the answer to that. I'm gonna say on the, I'm gonna say on the record, it's been 10 years, so facts are fuzzy. I'm gonna say, uh, you know, 10 years ago today, it was a very sad day in our lives. But we move forward and we find new animals to capitalize off and exploit. Yeah. So, uh, follow my dog on Instagram, please. Now watch PFT.
48:27 Pablo Torre? I gotta say, like, on some level, they are fundamentally, of course, correct, right? Like, the speed with which I responded to the voicemail we got.
48:35 Speaker 00 That's true.
48:36 Pablo Torre? I smelled.
48:37 Speaker 00 Waiting by the phone.
48:38 Pablo Torre? I smelled the clicks and the likes.
48:40 Speaker 00 Uh huh.
48:41 Pablo Torre? The internet, the intention economy, social media, I of course recognize that. People couldn't get enough Harambe and now there's the promise of, wait a minute, I could get exclusive bespoke? Secret Harambe. Especially because these are the videos that, according to Jeff McCurry, the Cincinnati Zoo tried to keep quiet for the last decade.
49:06 Pablo Torre? And, look, I promised you guys that we would deliver on the lost Harambe tapes. And so for the last four months, we have been vetting, yes, the weirdest whistleblower in sports podcast history. And so I present to you now. Do I have the, uh, hold on. I gotta get my DVD player out. As I plug in a physical DVD player.
49:29 Speaker 05 It's gonna be a video of Harambe smoking a cigar or just, he's like, if you're watching this, I'm dead.
49:34 Speaker 00 Do you know how to use this?
49:34 Pablo Torre? No.
49:35 Speaker 00 Why do you look so new here?
49:36 Speaker 05 That's because I.
49:37 Pablo Torre? When's the last time you used?
49:38 Speaker 00 Very recently, actually. I made a friend of mine watch the first season of Halt and Catch Fire, which I have on DVD.
49:44 Pablo Torre? Oh, hold on.
49:45 Speaker 00 Oh, wow.
49:46 Speaker 05 Oh.
49:48 Pablo Torre? And so we present to you the video of the world's most famous gorilla that was killed on the world's most viral zoo video without any comment, but filmed with great care by Harambe's personal photographer and apparent best friend.
50:06 Speaker 00 Oh, my God.
50:09 Speaker 00 Oh, my God, into his own hand.
50:14 Speaker 05 Uh, he is a.
50:16 Speaker 00 Oh, my God, he just pulled a poop out of his butt.
50:18 Speaker 05 Yeah, a very nice cob-sized poop.
50:20 Speaker 00 Green. Do not eat it. Do not!
50:23 Speaker 05 Yeah, he protein maxing.
50:24 Speaker 00 God, oh, my God.
50:26 Speaker 05 See, a lot of people don't realize you create your own fiber. You don't have to go buy it from a store.
50:30 Speaker 00 Circle of life.
50:33 Speaker 05 There we go.
50:34 Speaker 00 Oh, holding it in his mouth while he does other stuff like it's a breakfast bar.
50:39 Speaker 05 There we go. We used to be real eaters.
50:41 Speaker 00 Like it's a Nutri Grain on his way out of the house for work. He had it hanging out of his mouth.
50:47 Speaker 05 Okay, it's important to always get a granola bar in before you work out.
50:52 Speaker 05 Harambe ate [BLEEP] his whole life. And it went out like this. Not Harambe eating the forbidden spinach wrap.
51:01 Pablo Torre? It is so like, the shape of it is like.
51:05 Speaker 00 It's like a fro yo. It's like a poop berry. It's like a, um, the way he eats a little and then kind of like rolls it around in the front of his mouth like it's a piece of gum.
51:16 Pablo Torre? It has a good mouth feel. No, and the thing is like, he's gleefully eating it. Like he's at a Michelin star restaurant. He's like, he's like, you know, do you have any, uh, you know, like a little, a little sauce on the side?
51:29 Speaker 00 I don't know, what is his, hold it in his mouth.
51:31 Pablo Torre? A bordelaise sauce perhaps? Harambe got his own little portable empanada mamas back there.
51:37 Speaker 00 Do their taste buds work the same as ours?
51:40 Pablo Torre? I mean, 98, over 98% of the same genetic code.
51:43 Speaker 00 Yeah.
51:43 Pablo Torre? Wow.
51:44 Speaker 00 And I see the resemblance a bit.
51:45 Pablo Torre? That's fresh silverback.
51:46 Speaker 00 There's parts that I see.
51:48 Pablo Torre? This is from seven months before Harambe's demise, his death, all the way up until two months before.
51:54 Speaker 00 That could have been the final shit he ate.
51:57 Pablo Torre? And I think it's important, as we are again, trying to figure out why and what was Harambe thinking to hear from Jeff.
52:07 Speaker 06 So Harambe had this behavior that he would do regularly and he would only do it when we were alone because other people would scream at him and he didn't like screaming and I wouldn't scream at him out loud. I'd scream in him and, you know, mentally, telepathically, god damn it Harambe, stop. I don't want to see this. So anyway, one day I'm there and the lighting is just perfect. I'm there all alone, Harambe comes right up to me and he does this behavior. And so I was like, all right, you son of a bitch, I'll, I'll videotape it. So I videotaped him doing this and I'm looking at it and I was like, oh man, this is amazing. And I can't believe this.
52:50 Speaker 06 And so I pack up my stuff and I'm leaving and I ran into a VP. I said, hey, hey, come here, come here. I need to show you this video I just took of Harambe. You're not going to believe this. I don't know when it will happen or what, but this is going to make Harambe the most famous gorilla in the world when people see this video. And I showed it to him. And he just kinda went white.
53:14 Pablo Torre? I cannot stress enough how much the zoo really did not want this.
53:18 Speaker 00 I can imagine.
53:20 Pablo Torre? If you could read the email, please, from a communications executive at the Cincinnati Zoo, three months after Harambe's death.
53:26 Speaker 00 Hi Jeff, a while ago, we talked about the possibility of you selling your Harambe videos and donating the proceeds. That is very generous, and before, everything spiraled out of control, seemed like a good idea. Now, with all the memes and global interest in Harambe, we would really not like the videos to be made public. They would only make media attention unbearable and prolong this ordeal for all of us. So we would appreciate it if you did not move forward with plans to make the videos available. Thanks for all that you do for us. We really appreciate your time and talent. I've even stopped taking photos around here, cuz I know yours will be better.
54:08 Pablo Torre? Wow.
54:08 Speaker 00 Thanks. And now, listen. I do kinda see where they're coming from on that. That if everyone wants to know already about Harambe, and what they find out is that he's eaten it straight from the tap, I just think that it would have become an even, somehow, even bigger phenomenon.
54:34 Pablo Torre? The scientific term for the practice of eating your own [BLEEP].
54:37 Speaker 05 It's nasty. It's called nasty.
54:39 Speaker 00 Let's guess the root word. It's gotta be, uh, opathy? Is the end of it an opathy?
54:46 Pablo Torre? Coprophagy.
54:48 Speaker 00 Okay, close.
54:50 Pablo Torre? Coprophagy, C-O-P-R-O-P-H-A-G-Y. And scientific papers, research, independent gorilla experts say this is rare in the wild. But gorillas in captivity will more frequently eat their own [BLEEP] out of stress and boredom.
55:10 Speaker 00 That's even sadder. I do not like, I do not like that. He's only eating his own [BLEEP] cuz we locked him up.
55:15 Pablo Torre? When we showed the poop tapes to independent experts, aforementioned a panel of gorilla... Scientists such as Dr. Ian Redmond.
55:23 Speaker 01 My name's Ian Redmond. I'm a naturalist by birth, a biologist by training, and a conservationist by necessity.
55:32 Pablo Torre? He said, "Look, either Harambe could have used more food and was just hungry, or Harambe just wanted to get a reaction." Amid all this stress and anxiety, Harambe wanted to capture the attention of humans.
55:52 Speaker 01 Possibly the reaction of the humans to that might reinforce that. When I do this, the humans all make funny noises and, you know, so the human, that's gross, response, "Yeah!" might be a curious feedback mechanism. When I do this, they do that. So I'll do it again and watch them do that again.
56:20 Speaker 00 A ham. He did say that he's a ham. And what is the... That is, if humans fully committed to the bit, the hammyest thing that guy at a wedding could do is poop in his hand in the middle of the dance floor and then start eating it.
56:34 Speaker 05 That's the next level crowd work right there.
56:35 Speaker 00 It is. It is.
56:37 Pablo Torre? Is this gorilla psychologically broken? And/or is this gorilla expressing something that we too can recognize? It's important to see that Jeff, in his point of view, had a personal perspective.
56:56 Speaker 06 The zoo was always talking about how they want to do all this enrichment for the animals and this and that and the other. It's like, "Yeah, that's great. You're trying, but they're in prison. There's just nothing you can do to change that that's not healthy for them. That's not good for them. It's mentally damaging, you know, to anybody that has a brain, any creature that has a brain."
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58:38 Pablo Torre? It's a look, I am not trying to turn this into a big, like, anti-zoo thing. I'm actually conflicted about, like, what? What do we do? What do we do with this? Right? Like, here is this video that we got, and I could not be more enthusiastic about immediately seizing upon it. And I'm trying to be journalistically fair and, again, climb into the mind of a gorilla and figure out, like, do we show this? How do we contextualize it? How do we scientifically sort of validate this? And I was thinking about, like, okay, so this gorilla that was stressed and anxious and cooped up and was misread by all sorts of people.
59:21 Pablo Torre? What he was trying to do, if nothing else, what everybody agrees on on all sides of the story is that he was trying to get the attention of humans.
59:33 Pablo Torre? And I was like, I know what that feels like. The whole idea of like, this is a story about an animal that shares over 98% of its DNA with humans. And what this video says is not, you should think of Harambe differently necessarily. It's that you should maybe see him like, we kind of see ourselves.
59:57 Speaker 00 Is Pablo about to eat his own [BLEEP] in this studio?
59:59 Speaker 05 It's not even that. It's not even that. You know what? Like, I usually don't beef. I get this invite from Pablo.
1:00:05 Speaker 00 I know.
1:00:05 Speaker 05 Thought I was a friend. Thought I was gonna come in here, a good time, some chuckles maybe.
1:00:09 Speaker 00 Same.
1:00:09 Speaker 05 Katie's gonna be there? Great time. Oh, great. My soul has been crushed.
1:00:13 Speaker 00 I know.
1:00:14 Speaker 05 I have no idea what I'm gonna see when I look in the mirror now. I'm just gonna be in a blank stare on the train. I don't know if I should cry, be outraged. Am I a prison abolitionist? Are guerrillas not getting enough [BLEEP]? I don't know what's going on right now. Do I have to do something for inner-city guerrillas? Do I gotta find the kid that fell in this? Why would you put this mental anguish on me?
1:00:32 Speaker 00 Why is this coming across my desk?
1:00:33 Speaker 05 Okay. Also, you had to read more.
1:00:35 Speaker 00 I know.
1:00:36 Speaker 05 So there was like, he can't be, he can't handle this information. So now, now I'm gonna be like, they don't even trust me. Now I'm gonna go home and eat my own [BLEEP].
1:00:44 Speaker 00 Now I'm sad about a 10 years ago tragedy again. God forbid anybody goes like, what's wrong with you? You having a tough day? And I have to go, please, don't ask, cuz would you believe it's Harambe? And they would go, geez, she's one of those. Ay, ay, ay, get over it. You know what I mean? But it's, you brought this all freshly back up. What if he's just a goof? He was just goofing. He was just trying to be a silly goof to get you to laugh. All Harambe wanted was for you to laugh and for that little kid to please get out of... He was like, I'm gonna get you out of here. I gotta drag you, but get out of here. You don't wanna be stuck in here. You'll start eating your own butt. Get out. He was probably trying to take the kid out so the kid would not have to eat his own poop for his own enjoyment. And what did that get him? A bullet between the eyes.
1:01:29 Pablo Torre? And the thing I am left realizing, as Jeff offers one more thought, is that apparently, there is something that he did wanna tell Harambe.
1:01:40 Speaker 06 I always, you know, wish I could tell Harambe. It's like, damn, you became, you know, everybody loved you so much, you broke the internet.
1:01:51 Speaker 00 Harambe was a complex animal with a really tragic backstory that just wanted to make people laugh.
1:02:01 Speaker 05 We didn't know him. But in learning about him, do we not learn more about ourselves?
1:02:06 Speaker 00 Whoa.
1:02:07 Speaker 05 And we have to ask ourselves this question.
1:02:09 Speaker 00 What do you think it tasted like?
1:02:10 Speaker 05 Who's a real primate? Oh, I mean, he was eating good, too. He was eating good, too. So you know it was like a neutral loaf. It probably had some good chunks in there.
1:02:17 Pablo Torre? So much fiber.
1:02:18 Speaker 05 I'm sure not too much sodium, you know?
1:02:20 Speaker 00 Oh, yeah, a good balance.
1:02:21 Speaker 05 A good balance, maybe some chutney.
1:02:24 Pablo Torre? I don't know how to end this episode.
1:02:26 Speaker 05 I think that was it right there.
1:02:37 Pablo Torre? This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark Media production. And I'll talk to you next time.
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