May 15, 2019 - The Joe Rogan Experience
01:34:36
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
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unidentified
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Oh! | |
| Hey, fella. | ||
| What do you got there? | ||
| What is that? | ||
| Legal marijuana in your hands? | ||
| You want a closer look? | ||
| You activist you? | ||
| I'm such a radical, man. | ||
| The streets are not safe when I'm out on the loose. | ||
| Are you radical? | ||
| Pfft! | ||
| Yeah, regular guy with an irregular amount of stress. | ||
| With the walrus right there. | ||
| Dude, you don't mind my putting it there. | ||
| No, no, not at all. | ||
| Happy to come back and see it. | ||
| No, it stays on the desk. | ||
| This means as much to us as anybody except for you. | ||
| Well, it's nice to see it. | ||
| This is my happy place. | ||
| This is my safe place. | ||
| I've got to travel across the country to be safe, but it's certainly a pleasure to be here again. | ||
| Joe, I always have to thank you. | ||
| Listen, brother, I thank you too. | ||
| I was texting Whitney today. | ||
| I said, you're a hero. | ||
| You're a legitimate hero. | ||
| For people who don't know what this is all about, I'll give everybody the backstory. | ||
| Phil used to work at Marineland. | ||
| He was an orca trainer, and he also trained a walrus named Smushy. | ||
| Smushy is still allegedly in captivity at Marineland, although there's no photographic evidence. | ||
| But you're pretty sure she's still there? | ||
| I was told that she is still there, and she's in good shape, and I'm hanging on to that. | ||
| Since you came on the podcast the first time, which was how many years ago now? | ||
| So six years ago. | ||
| I think that's 2013. So he's been... | ||
| Living this lawsuit life for six years, trapped in a lawsuit with a gigantic corporation with incredible amounts of money that's been trying to crush them. | ||
| And they've made up stuff. | ||
| Well, tell me what's happened. | ||
| Give me your perspective on how it all went down. | ||
| So, back in 2012, I was forced to make a very difficult decision. | ||
| I elected to speak out against the conditions of which Marineland's animals were living in. | ||
| I did so knowing the risks, knowing that Marineland was a litigious company, but I did so on account of the fact that the animals were suffering incredibly. | ||
| Before quitting, I had an agreement with Marineland that, look, I'm leaving. | ||
| This is long before I'd spoken out. | ||
| I'm leaving, but we have to establish that I can maintain this relationship with the walrus because I imprinted on her. | ||
| It's important to stress that, that she thinks I'm her mom. | ||
| She was a baby. | ||
| She was a baby when she came in, so she was wild caught, and you can imagine, probably witnessed her mother get slaughtered. | ||
| That's the method of collecting babies by the captors in Russia. | ||
| And so she comes in traumatic at the age of, we estimate about 18 months of age, which is pretty old in fact. | ||
| In our experience, at Marine Land's experience of acquiring these wild-caught baby walruses, and through a sort of traumatic experience with her that I was there with her, this anomalous thing happened where her brain circuitry opened up, and much like in the wild where, in the case of herd animals, the babies become familiar with the mother's sound, sense, look, everything. | ||
| All the senses are acute. | ||
| They're aware of where they are so that they can... | ||
| You know, find each other amidst these thousands of animals. | ||
| Well, this happened to her. | ||
| So the brain circuitry opens, suddenly I'm imprinted on her. | ||
| I wasn't prepared to leave Marineland unless it was of the understanding that I can continue to help her because historically my relationship with her, you know, had everything to do with her health and wellbeing. | ||
| I quit with the understanding with Marineland. | ||
| This was to be the case. | ||
| I've been gone for a month. | ||
| I come back unannounced. | ||
| They don't want to let me in. | ||
| They're hiding something. | ||
| I get in. | ||
| I see her. | ||
| She's in terrible shape. | ||
| I snap a few photos. | ||
| I leave. | ||
| Now amidst this... | ||
| When you say terrible shape, what do you mean? | ||
| She was emaciated. | ||
| She was bone dry. | ||
| She hadn't eaten in... | ||
| My having been gone a month was the longest she and I have ever actually been physically apart. | ||
| I'd been trying to wean my presence off of her so that other trainers could be able to maintain a healthy diet for her, a healthy lifestyle. | ||
| So she was emaciated because she wasn't eating? | ||
| Because of stress? | ||
| I wasn't there. | ||
| For that month, I can't say, but she was certainly not eating. | ||
| She was super skinny. | ||
| They had her, of course, on a bunch of drugs, which include psychotics, Valium, antidepressants. | ||
| When I saw her, my jaw hit the floor. | ||
| It's important to note that during this... | ||
| Some newspapers had been calling. | ||
| They wanted to know why I quit. | ||
| If we back up a little bit, it should be noted that in 2007, my relationship with Smushy sort of took off in the early sort of internet viral days and whatnot. | ||
| We made front page of like CNN and Jimmy Kimmel did a piece. | ||
| So there was sort of that backstory of the, I guess you would call it a fluff celebrity type thing. | ||
| But nonetheless, my having left, people started to ask questions. | ||
| I started fielding calls from this newspaper who was keen on doing an investigation of marine land. | ||
| So I wasn't going to participate. | ||
| I had no interest, again, stressing Marineland's litigious history. | ||
| And also, look, I've got this relationship with a walrus that I sort of have to maintain. | ||
| I have to keep this relationship with Marineland healthy enough. | ||
| Once I'd realized they weren't holding onto that end of the bargain, you know, the panic sets in. | ||
| I'm a first-time mom. | ||
| I should be stressed. | ||
| So I basically called the newspapers and I said, you put my face, my name, it doesn't matter. | ||
| You just print it. | ||
| Let's go. | ||
| Let's get the story out. | ||
| Story gets out. | ||
| Well, Marine Land, as expected, starts their lawsuit. | ||
| It's almost like a scorched earth. | ||
| They take a scorched earth sort of method. | ||
| And this was when the original owner was alive. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| He's no longer alive. | ||
| He died during this- He died last year in June, in fact. | ||
| So years into this litigation. | ||
| So- They sued me. | ||
| They sued me for a million five. | ||
| They sued my girlfriend. | ||
| They sued other activists. | ||
| They sued newspapers. | ||
| They're suing everybody. | ||
| The mistake they made is in all of their absurd allegations that they've yet six and a half years into litigation yet to prove any of it. | ||
| They cannot. | ||
| It's never going to happen. | ||
| It doesn't exist. | ||
| It's a fictitious lawsuit. | ||
| It's full of lies and bullshit. | ||
| Bottom line, the mistake they made is they sued me for plotting to steal Smushy. | ||
| That's where the headlines take off. | ||
| And they also called me the Kanye West of animal training. | ||
| Yeah, I remember we went over that. | ||
| That's how I got your attention on the internet. | ||
| This is why. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, no, no. | |
| That's not how you got my attention. | ||
| Well, I sent you a tweet. | ||
| I sent you a tweet. | ||
| Yeah, but the Kanye West part didn't get my... | ||
| Well, no. | ||
| You said they called you. | ||
| The tweet was, I said, Joe, you just say when I'll book a flight to come to LA. I sent you the link to the story. | ||
| The headline was, Kanye West of animal training being sued for plotting the steal of walrus. | ||
| You wrote, they called you the what? | ||
| And then you slid into the DMs and said, dude, if you're ever in LA, I said, you just say when. | ||
| Well, I started reading the story. | ||
| When I started... | ||
| I've... | ||
| I wrote a piece a long time ago on my blog, and I talked about it in one of my comedy specials, that I had a crazy experience with dolphins once, when I was really, really high. | ||
| And I had this, I mean, it sounds silly to even talk about, but I almost feel like I kind of understood that they're like us, but they just don't alter their environment. | ||
| Well, I realized, like, when they were playing with us, when they were jumping by the boat, and they were looking at you. | ||
| They were looking at you while they were jumping around with the boat. | ||
| And I was like, they're playing, and they're looking at you like a person would, like a water person. | ||
| They're interacting. | ||
| There's almost a language at this point. | ||
| There's some level of bridged gap in these. | ||
| When you get to see that they're expressing themselves in interest in you and whatnot and scoping you. | ||
| When you get really close and establish a relationship with these animals, that's when things start getting real squirrely because you start to find that happy medium language. | ||
| And now all of a sudden you are starting to sort of speak, so to say. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, I started getting really weird feelings about Sea world and animal captivity. | ||
| Why do we need that in this day and age? | ||
| This isn't the dark ages. | ||
| We shouldn't be putting whales and orcas and dolphins, putting them in these tanks, these fucking water swimming pools. | ||
| They're fucking swimming pools. | ||
| And you have these things that are probably as smart as us in some different way. | ||
| We're so prejudiced in that we only think of intelligence as something that can manipulate its environment. | ||
| That's our problem. | ||
| We're like, look at them. | ||
| They're a bitch-ass world. | ||
| They don't have any houses. | ||
| They can't write a letter. | ||
| They're fucking stupid, man. | ||
| Stop it. | ||
| They're stupid. | ||
| Dolphins apparently have a cerebral cortex that's something around 40% larger than human beings. | ||
| They have super complex languages. | ||
| Their emotional intelligence is the mystery and it appears that it's far beyond anything we ourselves can understand. | ||
| Same as orcas. | ||
| They've got that They've got another part of the brain in the front, which is its function in the front of the cerebral cortex. | ||
| That function is for communication and it enhances their emotional capacity to a point where we don't really know the depth of which they are, the power of their emotion. | ||
| But we know that they stay with their families for their lifetimes. | ||
| The males born from the mothers will rarely leave the mother's side. | ||
| Quite literally, the distance of an orca itself. | ||
| The only time that male will go on is when it's matured and it will go to procreate and then back to the mother. | ||
| And it will live its entire life as such. | ||
| And the sad fact about that is, in my experience working with male orcas, one of which caught from the wild, a big bull orca is... | ||
| He was a mama's boy. | ||
| You can see something was missing. | ||
| He was traumatized from something. | ||
| And of course, even myself as a regarded whale expert in the capacity of working at a fricking place like Marineland, even I would have never known this information when I started this. | ||
| This is not information that was available to us back in, I started in 2000. It makes sense now. | ||
| This animal is traumatized from birth. | ||
| His will to live is just gone. | ||
| It appears to me and in my experience, the male sex of Well, I've worked with seals, I've worked with sea lions, I've worked with walruses, dolphins, belugas, and orcas. | ||
| All of them die younger. | ||
| The males die younger. | ||
| And I think, well, definitely in the orcas and the dolphins' cases is they just don't have that will to live without that strong... | ||
| Maternal figure in their life. | ||
| This is what I try to explain to people that don't see it and they think that the dolphins get treated well or the orcas get treated well. | ||
| This is what imagine if someone stole your son and put him in an air box at the bottom of the ocean. | ||
| And dolphins and whales and fish just came by and stared at him. | ||
| Imagine. | ||
| And he lives his life like that. | ||
| With no contact other than with his dolphin handlers or whoever's taking care of him. | ||
| And he just lives in this box, missing his family, missing his loved ones, missing his life. | ||
| Confused, lost. | ||
| And with... | ||
| A language that is, especially with orcas and dolphins, they have a language that's so complex, we haven't been able to really decipher it. | ||
| We don't understand how it works. | ||
| You know, John Lilly spent, they spent, I think, decades working on trying to get dolphins to speak human noises. | ||
| He had a bunch of studies that he did. | ||
| And he even had a, it's a crazy story. | ||
| I'm sure you've heard of it. | ||
| The woman who lived with the dolphin, she tried to establish a relationship with the dolphin where they made an apartment that was half underwater. | ||
| But the dolphin always wanted to fuck. | ||
| So she just jerked the dolphin off. | ||
| And when she jerked the dolphin off, that was the only thing that calmed him down. | ||
| And then she could do her work. | ||
| So for her, it was just like a technicality. | ||
| I just gotta jerk this dolphin off. | ||
| It's an animal. | ||
| It wants to be rubbed. | ||
| All the moral stuff that's attached to that is all in my own head. | ||
| She's like, I'm just gonna be a scientist. | ||
| And they were like, cut! | ||
| Get that fucked! | ||
|
unidentified
|
What? | |
| I think they were also injecting ketamine into the dolphins or something as well. | ||
| I do not know if they were doing that into dolphins, but I do know that they did some experiments with LSD and that John Lilly, who is one of my personal heroes, he's the creator of the flotation tank. | ||
| This is all John Lilly stuff. | ||
| He was a pioneer in interspecies communication. | ||
| He would take acid and think that he was communicating with dolphins. | ||
| Did you know you're on the cover of one of his books? | ||
|
unidentified
|
What? | |
| Yes. | ||
| What are you talking about? | ||
| Your face is... | ||
| I mean, it's a spitting image in one of his books. | ||
| One of Lily's books? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Dude, I have to look this up. | ||
| Creepy conspiracy time traveler shit. | ||
| Dude, it's in there. | ||
| There you are. | ||
| How is that not you, man? | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| How is that not you? | ||
| That's fucking weird, man. | ||
| That's fucking weird. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| So that's a program. | ||
| I can't read that. | ||
| What does it say? | ||
| Something? | ||
| The human biocomputer? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I didn't read that one. | ||
| I read the deep self, though. | ||
| The deep self's really interesting. | ||
| And the deep self, I think the deep self is the one that also has diagrams on how to build a tank. | ||
| He was trying to get people to build tanks. | ||
| He was like, listen, man, I found some shit out. | ||
| You gotta try this. | ||
| The last time I was here, not the last time, two times ago, you actually sent me to Crash. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| My man Crash. | ||
| Shout out to Crash at the Float Lab. | ||
| Yeah, and he, you know, I thought I'd be in there for an hour. | ||
| Turns out I was in there for a couple. | ||
| And when I came out, I'm like, dude, I was waiting for the knock. | ||
| He's just like, oh, no, man, let's just let you stay in there. | ||
| I'm like, oh, shit. | ||
| I'm looking at the time going. | ||
| Crash is like a legit hippie. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah. | |
| He's great. | ||
| He's great. | ||
| He's the mad scientist behind Float Lab. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's why those things are so well engineered. | ||
| When I met him, I was like, what? | ||
| I was like, because tanks before that, I first got a tank in like 2002. Somewhere around then. | ||
| 2002, 2003. And it was great. | ||
| But it was like, it would break. | ||
| Things would go wrong. | ||
| It flooded my basement. | ||
| It was like, there was disasters. | ||
| And then my friend who was a tank technician, there's actually tank technicians, he said, listen, you've got to check out this guy in Venice. | ||
| Some mad scientist down there in Venice was just making these super over-engineered float tanks. | ||
| And he goes, they look like walk-in meat lockers. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I was like, what? | ||
| You had like a pod installed? | ||
| It was a very good tank. | ||
| It's just that it wasn't as well constructed. | ||
| It also wasn't nearly as expensive. | ||
| He went the distance. | ||
| He went the distance. | ||
| And he still keeps coming over here. | ||
| I've got to change things. | ||
| We're upgrading. | ||
| Good for him, man. | ||
| He's trying to enhance the experience for everyone. | ||
| Yeah, he's always trying to make it better. | ||
| He's the front of the line. | ||
| And when I first started working with him... | ||
| When I first started having him on the podcast and I hired him to build me a tank and all that jazz, there was no tanks. | ||
| It was real rare that you'd find tank centers. | ||
| Now they're fucking everywhere, man. | ||
| They're everywhere. | ||
| Well, I'll say this. | ||
| The experience I had in his tank versus the one that I... There's a local place from where I'm from was hands down a different experience because he really isolates you there. | ||
| Whereas this was like a pod that they bought and installed in a room. | ||
| I mean, it was a great place. | ||
| Well, his is super insulated, so there's no fucking noise getting in that thing. | ||
| And he gave me the tour, the whole backstage tour. | ||
| I was all back there checking shit out. | ||
| It's wild, right? | ||
| Yeah, he's got a serious complex there. | ||
| It's hard to appreciate, but when he first started making tanks like that, which, again, I think I bought one of his tanks in 2005, I think, somewhere around then. | ||
| Dude, there was no one making anything like that. | ||
| He was making these super high-end, crazy fucking double-wall insulated tanks. | ||
| And you get in there and it's just nothing. | ||
| Just nothing and you just You just get taken into the This and it's a good place to think about the subject that we're talking about today We've got to stop doing that with dolphins and orcas. | ||
| It's going to be thought of the same way we think about slavery today. | ||
| That it's horrific, we can't understand it, and we can't believe that compassionate human beings would be willing to isolate members of a super social, highly intelligent animal species. | ||
| And just put them in swimming pools. | ||
| It's fucking barbaric. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| It's torture. | ||
| What's sad here is, you know, we're years removed from the documentary Blackfish. | ||
| And, you know, that was really impactful. | ||
| I mean, arguably responsible for the paradigm shift that we're experiencing here in North America and other places, of course. | ||
| But maybe it's time for people to revisit it. | ||
| I know SeaWorld, their stock and their value is sort of going up. | ||
| Now, granted, they change their numbers. | ||
| They skew it. | ||
| They have free beer day. | ||
| They pump the numbers up. | ||
| They have all these different promotions, whatever. | ||
| I mean, everything that comes out of these facilities, Assume it to be all bullshit, by the way. | ||
| It's all bullshit, but not enough people question them on it. | ||
| But as we speak, while we're amidst sort of a paradigm shift here, and I mean, I can speak to it because, I mean, I'm very happy to say that we have very effectively decimated marine land and we'll talk more about that. | ||
| But over in China, this is now a burgeoning business. | ||
| And we discussed this a year and a half ago, and it's tenfold now. | ||
| It's happening very quickly. | ||
| And I'm sure you're familiar with the whale jail situation in Russia. | ||
| Have you seen that? | ||
| No, I have not. | ||
| They've got, enclosed in this bay, they've got over 100 wild-caught belugas and orcas. | ||
| So there's about 10 orcas, if I'm not mistaken. | ||
| And some activists flew a drone over it. | ||
| This got worldwide attention, a lot of outcry, a lot of anger, of course. | ||
| So what happened was... | ||
| Jamie's showing it to us right now for the folks that are listening. | ||
| And we're looking down at what looks like swimming pools with, I guess those are belugas? | ||
| Those have all been sold. | ||
| Those are essentially sold and ready to go to China. | ||
| But on account of the fact that the activists got this and created a real worldwide stink, all the negative press that came of it, they've now resolved that they want to try to, well, they've hard considered releases. | ||
| The governor in the area signed an intent-to-release agreement with the Whale Sanctuary Project, who sent a team to assess the animal's health and whatnot. | ||
| And this was all of like three weeks ago. | ||
| It was not a long time ago. | ||
| And they assessed that all these animals should be released. | ||
| There's a couple of issues. | ||
| There's a couple of things that are becoming conflicting. | ||
| A, it's going to require a lot of cost if it's done responsibly. | ||
| B, it appears... | ||
| Okay, so what's happened is, as we know, Russia's not exactly a democratic environment. | ||
| Only one person makes the decisions. | ||
| On account of what becomes of these whales, whereas there was some PR stunts to say, hey, we want to release them, we want to do this to sort of mitigate the global outrage, the captors have propagandized this entire effort to free these whales as a means for the West to undermine Russia's economy, so the whale trade economy. | ||
| Here's where Marineland comes into play, in a theory at this point, but it has these very intense implications. | ||
| What we know about what Marineland is doing currently in their transition from Brilliantly successful business to virtually decimated, thank you, is they're shipping their whales out. | ||
| We know two are going out. | ||
| If it's not this week, it'll be very soon. | ||
| I'll be shocked if they're not out. | ||
| I'm in LA, so I can't say that it's happening right now. | ||
| I think it may very well be happening this week. | ||
| They're going to Spain. | ||
| We know that five other permits have been requested to send these animals now to the states. | ||
| So is it they're liquidating? | ||
| Yeah, they're liquidating. | ||
| But the issue is, if in fact Russia catches wind that Marineland is sending their whales, let's use the worst case scenario, to China. | ||
| It validates... | ||
| The Russian captors' propaganda and concerns. | ||
| Suddenly what we're concerned is going to happen is those animals, suddenly Putin says, forget it, sell them, ship them out. | ||
| That's a scenario. | ||
| Why would he do that? | ||
| Because again, the captors of propaganda is that the West wants to cripple Russia's economy, their wild whale sale economy. | ||
| So if Marineland is selling whales to China from Canada, Then suddenly the captors have a point. | ||
| They'll say to Putin, look, they're selling whales. | ||
| Why is it such an outrage that Russia's doing it when Marineland's doing it? | ||
| So there's that concern. | ||
| The other one, and this just came up within the last 20 hours, is it appears rather than go the most responsible route, which we know is going to be a costly endeavor, but we're game and we're ready. | ||
| Is they're now considering just dropping the nets and saying, see you later. | ||
| And letting all the animals go. | ||
| Here's what we suspect. | ||
| They're going to let the orcas go because they were captured illegally. | ||
| There's some gray area as to whether the beluga whales have been captured illegally or not. | ||
| So I think it'll probably start with the orcas. | ||
| Rather than move them to where they were at the same time of year when they were captured so that they can be next to their transient pods or their pods, they just want to drop this net and say, see you later. | ||
| Well, that's as irresponsible as it can get. | ||
| But... | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| It's like making someone a slave for how many years and then letting them move somewhere on the planet. | ||
| But imagine, their hope, you can imagine, would be, oh, see, it didn't work. | ||
| Oh, Jesus. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| This is a big issue. | ||
| We're on it. | ||
| There's a great team of activists over there. | ||
| Would it be accurate to say that maybe what these groups are doing right now is recognizing that there's probably going to be some radical changes in the way these things are permitted, what's legal, what's not legal, and what people are tolerating is just not the same as it was 10 years ago? | ||
| Catch them and sell them as fast as you can. | ||
| Yeah, just get out while you can, because it might come a point in time when not only could they not sell it, but they might be responsible for doing exactly what you said and bringing it back to the area where its family would be, which would be an incredible cost. | ||
| It would be an incredible cost. | ||
| It would be an undertaking unlike any other rescue that we know of. | ||
| How much would something like that cost? | ||
| I can't even imagine. | ||
| I would be the wrong person to ask. | ||
| I can't put a figure on it. | ||
| I just know that it would take a lot of time. | ||
| There would be a lot of dedicated... | ||
| I mean, we would need vessels. | ||
| You'd have to track the pods. | ||
| Yeah, you'd have to figure it out. | ||
| You'd need vessels that would be able to bring the whales out. | ||
| And you would have to be able to somehow or another get it close enough to the other whales without freaking them out. | ||
| It's a whole thing, but it's possible. | ||
| I mean, that's the important part. | ||
| Fuck, man. | ||
| It's just one of those things that I really think as people we're going to look back on and we're going to go, man... | ||
| How did we, in 2019, not know that that was insane? | ||
| That is not a chicken. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| I mean, that's not like something you could just keep in a cage. | ||
| So let's back up to, as you know, for well over four and a half years, five years now, I've been advocating for Bill S203, which is a national Canada-wide ban against whale and dolphin and porpoise captivity, so that would include no more breeding, no more import, no more export, any of that, okay? | ||
| This, by the way, is going down as the longest bill ever researched in Canadian history because there's been a lot of issues from opposition. | ||
| One senator in particular, in fact, if I can have a moment to just give Senator Don Plett a big ol' I win, you piece of shit. | ||
| Which camera do I look at for that? | ||
| I win, you piece of shit. | ||
| Sorry, I should be more humble. | ||
| Was that the other guy? | ||
| The lawyer on the other side? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, no. | |
| This is the senator that has put every possible block in front of the passage of this bill. | ||
| He's tried to kill it silently forever. | ||
| I mean, this is an epic, epic story. | ||
| We've had to, as activists and the community at large, and again, I have to stress how much you've had a hand in this, is... | ||
| I've had to have these campaigns where we literally flood the Senate servers to the point of crashing it on a couple of instances where they were going to kill the bill very silently through a sort of procedure. | ||
| His role is called the Senate Whip. | ||
| So he actually yields a lot of influence and power. | ||
| He creates the committees where people do the studies and everything. | ||
| He sets the dates for the committees. | ||
| I mean, he had this thing studied for like 17 straight months. | ||
| It was absurd... | ||
| Again, the longest tenure in Canadian legislative history, it appears. | ||
| But this guy was doing his best to kill it. | ||
| What do you think? | ||
| Like, why was he doing that? | ||
| He's one of these guys who looks at this bill and he sees it as a activist, sort of left-wing, liberal, sort of fluff bill. | ||
| He doesn't see that it's necessary. | ||
| He went to Marineland as an invited guest. | ||
| He's very publicly declared his friendships for John Holder. | ||
| I don't want to speculate as to whether there's been any money exchanges, but I know he's certainly very interested in killing this bill. | ||
| And by virtue alone of activists pressuring and exposing all of his efforts, we actually saved this bill on a number of occasions. | ||
| The most notable of which was just a few weeks ago where in the House of Commons, it appeared this bill was going to die. | ||
| And literally at the 11th hour, I packed up. | ||
| We drove to Ottawa. | ||
| I had a tweet storm set up. | ||
| We put pressure on it. | ||
| I tweeted individual senators or rather individual members of parliament. | ||
| And I promised them. | ||
| And this is a sensitive time in Canadian politics for Justin Trudeau, the leader of the Liberal Party. | ||
| I promised them if this bill dies on account of the fact that what was happening was the liberals were going to propose amendments to the bill at the last second, that would send it back to the Senate for further review, at which point we know Don Plett was waiting in line to kill it. | ||
| There was nothing we could do at this point. | ||
| This was going to be his to kill. | ||
| The fact that this was being facilitated by liberals was really an infuriating thing. | ||
| But nonetheless, we applied an incredible amount of pressure. | ||
| I drove my ass down there. | ||
| I got there and I stood in front of every which one of them and I looked them all in the eyes. | ||
| I'm just like, I'm going to make you famous. | ||
| I'm going to make you famous, and I'm going to make you famous, and I'm going to make you famous. | ||
| And I don't want to speculate if that's what saved the day, although it was mentioned in the House of Commons that special interests pressured them at the last second, but in a last... | ||
| Is that legal? | ||
| Can you say that to someone? | ||
| I'm going to make you famous? | ||
| I think it's my most effective tool. | ||
| It's like a scene from, like, what's that... | ||
| What was the cowboy movie where Val Kilmer played Doc Holliday? | ||
| Remember? | ||
| Tombstone? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Sounds like a line in Tombstone, right? | ||
| No, you know what it's from? | ||
| The one with the Bon Jovi song. | ||
| You know, those... | ||
| You know, those... | ||
| What is that? | ||
| Those cute guys in the... | ||
| Was it the 80s or 90s that all did a Western movie together? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Young Guns. | |
| Yes! | ||
| That's it! | ||
| It's from that. | ||
| I'm gonna make you famous. | ||
| Oh, shit. | ||
| Sorry. | ||
| I knew I'd heard it from somewhere. | ||
| I think it's from that. | ||
| I'd hope it was my line, but nonetheless... | ||
| Remember Emilio Estevez? | ||
| This was arguably the campiest, cheesiest... | ||
| Of the cowboy movies. | ||
| Right? | ||
| Is it the campiest? | ||
| Today? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I didn't see it. | |
| I don't know. | ||
| They're all handsome. | ||
| Handsome devils. | ||
| Sorry. | ||
| So I show up. | ||
| So you show up. | ||
| Literally, right before the meeting starts, the entire committee stands up and leaves the room. | ||
| Now, we're there and we're prepared for this to die. | ||
| I'm there for a funeral. | ||
| They come back in. | ||
| The conservative members of the committee propose their amendments. | ||
| The liberals, which outweigh the conservatives, they're all voting. | ||
| So they're just knocking these things down, knocking them down, knocking them down. | ||
| And then suddenly it comes to the liberals' time to propose their amendments. | ||
| First guy comes up and he says, I'd like to withdraw my amendment. | ||
| Noted on the record, sits down. | ||
| Okay, we'll go to number two. | ||
| I'd like to withdraw my amendment. | ||
| Sits down. | ||
| Number three, I'd like to withdraw my amendment. | ||
| We're like, holy shit, I'm looking back. | ||
| We've got some people there that obviously with the same interests as me and I don't even know exactly what's going on at this point. | ||
| I just know that their faces are indicative that we might win this thing. | ||
| And the fourth member of parliament stands up, he withdraws the amendment and we save this thing in the last second. | ||
| And I absolutely know it was a pressure campaign because like I said, I was going to come on this podcast. | ||
| I've already had this date written for some time. | ||
| And this was going to have political implications that I don't know that the Liberal Party could have sustained. | ||
| It's a really bad time. | ||
| I think this came from the top down. | ||
| Whereas efforts to kill it came from the bottom up, this came from the top down. | ||
| You're not killing that bill. | ||
| I think people are understanding what dolphin captivity really is. | ||
| What orca captivity really is. | ||
| I think they're understanding that now. | ||
| And I think it's just one of those things that exists because it's always existed. | ||
| But if it didn't exist now, there's no fucking way anybody would ever let you do it. | ||
| If there was no captive dolphins and orcas, if someone just went around and kidnapped them with what scientists know now about their social structure and their community... | ||
| Dude, they're so complex. | ||
| They have fucking dialects, right? | ||
| They have dialects. | ||
| Orcas have... | ||
| They share languages in different regions and actually have a different accent of sorts. | ||
| I mean, it's really remarkable stuff. | ||
| Yeah, right. | ||
| It would be a global outrage if today, as day one, someone said, Hey, look at this thing. | ||
| Let's put this in this box. | ||
| But because we have them already... | ||
| Well, because we have them and there's some legacy businesses that have been around for a long time. | ||
| That's a great way of putting it. | ||
| You know, they have the means to fight. | ||
| They know now that, look, this is not going so well. | ||
| You can see it in all the advertising these days. | ||
| SeaWorld almost rarely shows any orcas in their commercials, although it seems the industry is sort of switching to baby walruses. | ||
| In fact, they're the new orcas. | ||
| They're sort of the new brandable cute. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah, it really is. | ||
| It's happening all over. | ||
| It's happening in Canada as well. | ||
| The Vancouver Aquarium is running with it. | ||
| Yeah, and same as SeaWorld. | ||
| If you go to their Twitter, it's, you know, I can't say that present day. | ||
| It's like literally the case today. | ||
| But yeah, a lot of baby walrus stuff. | ||
| It's where it's going. | ||
| It's just they know that they can run with that, at least for the time being. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| What's crazy in all this is here this bill is passing. | ||
| Now we know it's going to pass. | ||
| It should get royal assent come second week of June. | ||
| Shy of some catastrophe, this thing will become law. | ||
| That's why Marineland is trying to get rid of these whales as quickly as they can. | ||
| They got to get them out of here. | ||
| Because at least now they can just... | ||
| Well, it sounds like two export permits have been approved. | ||
| So two beluga whales are going to Spain. | ||
| Now, granted, that's being facilitated through the Vancouver Aquarium. | ||
| This becomes an ugly mess here because... | ||
| When it comes to zoos, they're all part of these associations, okay? | ||
| And these are industry voices. | ||
| Anytime you're told, well, this is an AZA accredited facility, you know, most schools, for instance, or general people would say, oh, well, it's accredited. | ||
| It's a good place. | ||
| No, no, no, no, no. | ||
| What that means is these places facilitate animal transfers and whatnot to other member facilities. | ||
| It's really just a club. | ||
| And this club protects animals. | ||
| The interests of these parks and keeps any type of oversight. | ||
| They're lobby groups basically. | ||
| So what's happened is now through the Vancouver Aquarium, Marineland is sending these whales to Spain, but they're claiming them to be Vancouver Aquarium. | ||
| Uh, whales, which is not true. | ||
| They were never on these animals inventory or rather this facility's inventory list. | ||
| There's never been any knowledge of any of this, but what's happened is because Vancouver Aquarium is accredited and has an affiliation with the AZA. So in Canada, we call it CASA, the Canadian Association of Zoos and Aquarium and Marine Land is in fact not, uh, they no longer have their accreditation. | ||
| They did, they didn't have the best of relationships shortly after all of our revelations. | ||
| Um, it's all just right now. | ||
| It's just the industry as a whole is breaking all of its own rules to facilitate getting these beluga whales. | ||
| Marine land has 51 of them. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| There's five born every year, but they always have 51 and they don't, they haven't shipped an orca out in nearly a decade at this point. | ||
| Um, I mean, you do the math that what's going on exactly. | ||
| So they're dying. | ||
| They always have 51. They don't ship them anywhere else. | ||
| I can attest that. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Uh, when I was there and in my experience, and you don't have to watch my words because I know Marine Land's lawyer, Andrew Burns is listening. | ||
| Hi, Andrew. | ||
| I'll see you next week. | ||
| Um, in my experience, uh, yeah, you're for as many animals are born, you're just about losing as many. | ||
| So you'll lose two old ones. | ||
| You'll lose three young ones. | ||
| Not all the ones that are born are going to be successful. | ||
| Just about half are. | ||
| So what's happening now is the industry wants that bloodline. | ||
| There's 51 captive orcas, whereas there's a lot of controversy in importing animals from other places. | ||
| The states can't, in fact. | ||
| They can't bring them in from Russia without a public consult period. | ||
| It might still be the case with Canada. | ||
| So actually, the public might actually be consulted about the import of these five belugas that Marineland is seeking permit for to export. | ||
| So that's something that certainly, as an activist level, I'll be helping to guide towards the proper resolution. | ||
| But Yeah, that's all happening. | ||
| It is a race right now to get rid of Marineland's animals. | ||
| It is a wild time. | ||
| It's a wild time to be inside the doors at Marineland, as I can imagine, in the fences. | ||
| And it's a most wild time for me to be on the outside because I've never in the last six and a half years of litigation and just of my advocacy and being sort of, you know, basically being engaged in war with Marineland, I've never seen them work harder to suppress me and to try to silence me than they are now. | ||
| As breaking news just today, Marineland had built this fence, aptly named Phil's Fence, around the park. | ||
| And just today we found out they blacked it all out with tarps. | ||
| Because come this Saturday, May 18th, and certainly I'm inviting everyone to come join me. | ||
| I'll be joining as a guest, a big demonstration outside of Marineland, and we're going to protest it. | ||
| As they're anticipating, because on account of my coming on this show, they worked very hard to try to keep me from A, coming, B, speaking of anything, C, certainly not promoting this event. | ||
| So I certainly hope that this event is a well-attended... | ||
| How do they try to do that? | ||
| Well, because we're in litigation, what happens in litigation is you come to a point where you start to negotiate. | ||
| And so there's things that they want from me. | ||
| There's things they really want from me. | ||
| They want my silence. | ||
| The problem is they're never going to silence me. | ||
| It's not an option. | ||
| I've said it before. | ||
| I'll say it again. | ||
| They can offer me a million dollars to shut up, go away. | ||
| It's not going to happen. | ||
| I'm not going to delete my Twitter. | ||
| I'm not going to delete any of my tweets that have the word Marineland in them. | ||
| Is this a request? | ||
| This is layers and layers. | ||
| There have been layers of requests. | ||
| Basically... | ||
| They'd hoped that I wouldn't come here. | ||
| They'd hoped something could be worked out. | ||
| In our litigation, we have... | ||
| So now, I chased Marineland. | ||
| So back when Marineland's owner was still alive, I put forth a huge campaign to try to get him to be examined legally by my lawyer, much like I've had to sort of submit myself to. | ||
| But as these lawsuits and as litigation continues to reveal itself as just the perfect method of abuse, you know that they're just... | ||
| The only resolve these things appear to serve is to exhaust both parties and have them come together with a resolution. | ||
| So after six and a half years, Uh, Marineland seems intent on a resolution. | ||
| They don't want to go to examinations. | ||
| So while we were in, so while I was there to be examined a couple of weeks ago, my lawyer said, take a walk. | ||
| And the two lawyers began their talks. | ||
| We put off the examination because we believed there could be some good faith that could be shown between parties. | ||
| Um, it became quite evident that it was not the case. | ||
| And when we were to resume our examinations, which was to be last week, Marineland, on account of the fact that I was coming on this show, threw an absolute tirade and said, we are not doing this. | ||
| Now, bear in mind, this is a court-ordered examination date. | ||
| I've got a trial coordinator who is trying to nudge this thing forward because, I mean, that's a motion I had to win in the litigation itself, is to try to get someone to look at this thing so that it can actually move forward. | ||
| Like, let's get someone to manage it. | ||
| So we're in case management. | ||
| So that case management judge has issued a very aggressive schedule. | ||
| Back in February, we had a court date of which, thank you very much, I won handedly. | ||
| Marieland had to pick up just a little more than $12,000 of my legal bill, which is really... | ||
| On this particular motion in this event, kind of a drop in the pan, but nonetheless, a sound victory in court. | ||
| You know, we have a case conference call next week now. | ||
| I don't know where this stands because now Marineland has breached the court's order. | ||
| So we went, they didn't show up to the examination. | ||
| I got a fourth, what's called a certificate of non-attendance. | ||
| It means the person that was supposed to be examined that day didn't show up. | ||
| Marineland's owner, John Holder, who's now passed away, didn't show up to two of his examinations, knowing full well that I'd have to pick up the $1,700 just to be there to get the certificate, and he's just not going to show up, no big deal. | ||
| There doesn't seem to be any punitive damage at their end. | ||
| I mean, we're almost seven years into this thing, and they're still brutalizing me. | ||
| But we're at a point where they're actually in a very uncomfortable position of having to keep this thing. | ||
| If you don't want this litigation to be on the public record and transcripts and evidence and everything, you have to stop it. | ||
| Seems to me the courts appear to facilitate resolutions of that sort. | ||
| They like settlements. | ||
| I was promised a trial on day one. | ||
| It's what kept me going. | ||
| They're lying about me. | ||
| They're lying about everything. | ||
| Everything they're saying. | ||
| And they're trying to exhaust you financially? | ||
| Well, of course they are. | ||
| Are you countersuing them as well? | ||
| I'm countersuing. | ||
| The premise of my countersuit is so that they couldn't merely drop the lawsuit against me over a period of time and then that just be it. | ||
| And that I would then have to actually file a motion to get some costs back. | ||
| I'd be lucky to get 50% and everything. | ||
| In the early days, my lawyer said, let's sue him back. | ||
| And so we did. | ||
| I'm suing them for abuse of process. | ||
| They're using the court's time resources. | ||
| I mean, even for that matter, we can extend that to the police and other departments and organizations. | ||
| They're exhausting these things in bad faith. | ||
| They're doing it because they just want to try to... | ||
| Basically, they want to take away my right to free expression, which is a Canadian chartered right. | ||
| I mean, I'm protecting my own... | ||
| History here. | ||
| I mean, this is insanity. | ||
| I can't even believe that after six and a half years, I'm still here at risk of being silenced. | ||
| That the fact that, I mean, look, full disclosure, I'm out of money. | ||
| The last time I was on this show, we raised, I mean, and again, thank you so much. | ||
| 60, maybe almost 70,000, that's in a year and a half. | ||
| That's gone. | ||
| I spent my last penny last month. | ||
| It was a very aggressive last three months. | ||
| Do you have a GoFundMe? | ||
| I have a GoFundMe. | ||
| Give us the information. | ||
| Yes, please. | ||
| What is it? | ||
| If you go to savesmooshy.com, S-A-V-E-S-M-O-O-S-H-I.com, you can go there. | ||
| There's a small documentary. | ||
| It's a little dated now, but on account of the fact that legislation, nothing's really moved forward in the lawsuit, and the legislation is only just wrapping up. | ||
| It's still very current, so please spend the 14 minutes to sort of appreciate the story more. | ||
| I guess you'll get a better, more context to it. | ||
| There's You know, some footage in there, some backstage stuff. | ||
| You know, it tells the tale quite well. | ||
| It's a good piece. | ||
| Yeah, folks, if you're hearing this, please help it out if you can. | ||
| You know, Joe, I say it all the time. | ||
| It's the thing I hate to do most is ask for help. | ||
| It really makes me... | ||
| Well, your intentions are pure. | ||
| You really are a person who is going about this because you feel like you are uniquely qualified to talk about it. | ||
| You have the actual information. | ||
| You know what's wrong. | ||
| And you're a part of the system. | ||
| You understand it better than anybody on the outside. | ||
| And they have my walrus. | ||
| And they have your walrus. | ||
| Still, we think. | ||
| And so when in the litigation, my lawyer says... | ||
| Well, here's what Marine Land's prepared to offer. | ||
| I say to my lawyer, but what about the walrus? | ||
| And he says to me, dude, we talked about this. | ||
| This is crazy. | ||
| You're not getting a walrus. | ||
| I said to Marine Land, I don't want no money, not a penny. | ||
| I want the walrus. | ||
| There's two left. | ||
| Three have died in the last, really in mere months. | ||
| Secretly, I find out. | ||
| What would you do with her? | ||
| I mean, ideally what I would like is, I just want her transferred at this point to another facility. | ||
| I would love to see her transferred to the Vancouver Aquarium or there's a facility in Quebec as well. | ||
| I just want to possibly be in her life. | ||
| If she needs me, which I mean, there's a reason she's one of two still alive. | ||
| Would you move? | ||
| Would you move to Vancouver? | ||
| If suddenly Dan Bilzerian gets on the horn and says, Phil, I got this... | ||
| Well, actually, well, wait, there's a backstory to that, too. | ||
| I actually got some beef with him inadvertently, but we'll get back to that. | ||
| But, you know, if he were to suddenly say, hey, I got this Arctic beachfront home and... | ||
| Dude, I'll buy you a walrus. | ||
| Yeah, I'll move. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| I mean, she's got another 10 years of her life. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Dude, there's only one way to be with this walrus. | |
| Play the music. | ||
| Is there a better end to the story? | ||
| I mean, really. | ||
| It all sounds so crazy, Joe, but here, six and a half years ago, I was like, I want the walrus. | ||
| Suddenly, here I am negotiating for a walrus. | ||
| Call me crazy, but look at this. | ||
| So are they willing to negotiate for the walrus? | ||
| Is this actually in consideration? | ||
| Yes, but not without layers and layers and layers of compromise. | ||
| But bear in mind, Not in the capacity that I see it. | ||
| More of a, yeah, maybe. | ||
| Maybe we won't send her to China. | ||
| How's that? | ||
| Maybe we'll send her somewhere and not deter that facility from you visiting. | ||
| Maybe we could do that for you. | ||
| That's what, I mean, it's really bad faith to negotiate. | ||
| The problem with, the thing that I have a hard time dealing with is, look, we're in litigation. | ||
| In litigation, you have to exercise a certain amount of decorum. | ||
| And it's not exactly my strong point. | ||
| It's just not. | ||
| I find decorum to be just a thick layer of bullshit. | ||
| I just do. | ||
| You want to hope that there's going to be some type of good faith negotiation. | ||
| I want that. | ||
| Marineland negotiates with additional hostilities and threats. | ||
| It's not worked for them in six and a half years. | ||
| What makes you think it's going to work now? | ||
| So here I think we're going down a path of possibly good faith negotiations. | ||
| The owner, the villain of the story is gone. | ||
| He's out of the picture. | ||
| The new president who is the widow, the wife is a wonderful woman. | ||
| I mean, listen, I honestly and truly believe if the lawyer himself wasn't the controlling mind of the business now, sort of facilitating this transfer of, Of the business as it was to just being sold off, pieced off and distribute the wealth to the remaining family members. | ||
| I think that we could, I think the story ends on a good note. | ||
| I mean, I have no hostilities. | ||
| I have every reason in the world to despise the man who sued me. | ||
| And I don't. | ||
| I don't even think about him. | ||
| It was never about that. | ||
| They made every case in the world, every argument that this was personal. | ||
| Between me and him. | ||
| Well, that's because you look in the camera and say, fuck you to people. | ||
| It's personal between me and Don Plett. | ||
| You can bet your ass. | ||
| That's a different story. | ||
| But you know what I'm saying? | ||
| Did I make him famous? | ||
| In a way. | ||
| Maybe. | ||
| So, where do you stand right now? | ||
| Well, I don't know. | ||
| So next week we're having a case management. | ||
| The case manager is going to talk and we're going to see what becomes of Marineland's once again skipped examination. | ||
| It's so hard to believe this is still going on. | ||
| Dude, welcome to my fucking world. | ||
| From the time you first came on the podcast to now, this has been just a scratch and claw. | ||
| Every day of my life I live with this looming cloud of... | ||
| There's people out there that really want me... | ||
| I'm not talking physical threat. | ||
| They played their games. | ||
| I called every one of their bluffs at every corner of this thing. | ||
| But there's something about someone... | ||
| When you say they played their games... | ||
| Oh, they sent goons to my house. | ||
| There's video, in fact, that's on that documentary. | ||
| You'll see these. | ||
| They send some tough guys. | ||
| I mean, they were sending people at 6am harassing my girlfriend while she's taking the garbage out. | ||
| I mean, it really got pretty intense. | ||
| But we stood our ground. | ||
| I was like, this is not going to go down like this. | ||
| It's like, you're fucking with the wrong guy, dude. | ||
| Like, listen, I come from a place called Welland, Ontario. | ||
| I don't know that you're familiar with it. | ||
| I'm going to assume not. | ||
| Probably few people are, unless you're an avid hockey fan, because we have produced some pretty amazing NHL talent. | ||
| But, you know, there's a population of like 50,000. | ||
| I'm a Wellander. | ||
| I don't know any other... | ||
| And I'm a Frenchman. | ||
| I mean, it's probably another thing to stress, but I don't know any other way to deal with things other than sort of fight it out. | ||
| You know? | ||
| You don't cower and run. | ||
| You don't... | ||
| You know, you stare at the threat, especially when you're on the right side of things. | ||
| I'm not going to sit there and take shit. | ||
| I'm not going to... | ||
| It's not going to work for them to continuously try to threaten me because, dude, I'm invested. | ||
| And I'm not talking money. | ||
| I mean, it's like a hostage situation. | ||
| It's how it started. | ||
| My only interest is ending the hostage situation. | ||
| Not my only interest. | ||
| I shouldn't say that. | ||
| Of course not. | ||
| I have interest in... | ||
| I've been advocating for bills and obviously advocating letting people know they're sort of taking the veil off the bullshit that the industry purports to be. | ||
| Do you feel like you're negotiating for a hostage in smooshing? | ||
| They're... | ||
| They're using her as that type of chip. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| That's their bargaining chip. | ||
| That's what they got. | ||
| And they're keeping this constant pressure on you. | ||
| This constant financial pressure. | ||
| Additional threats. | ||
| Constant. | ||
| Like my lawyer, in fact, and this is where it gets kind of weird because listen, I don't understand. | ||
| He's supposed to be representing me. | ||
| The answer is no to everything. | ||
| Fight, fight, fight. | ||
| I want a trial. | ||
| He instead is coming with, listen, this is not how litigation ends, Phil. | ||
| You don't seem to understand how this ends. | ||
| You don't have a grip of how litigation works. | ||
| And I'm just like, I'm glad that I don't because my guess is I'm representative of about 90% of the population that don't know. | ||
| And it's important that we find out. | ||
| I was promised a trial because they said I was this, this, this, this, this. | ||
| Well, let's get to that fucking trial. | ||
| This is what I've been doing. | ||
| This doesn't end with negotiations. | ||
| I want the trial. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I don't understand. | ||
| Why would you sue me unless you want the trial? | ||
| Oh, because it's a bullshit lawsuit. | ||
| Well, then I want the trial because I need to show that. | ||
| I need that on my record. | ||
| I want that. | ||
| I want the truth. | ||
| They fucked up the wrong guy. | ||
| I hate to say it. | ||
| Of all the lawsuits they've launched, they've launched in excess of like 12 and threatened – and it's important to note I've been threatened and I'm constantly under threat of additional litigation. | ||
| I'm the only one left. | ||
| I'm the only lawsuit that's – I'm the only person who hasn't had to compromise their free expression. | ||
| It's a dirty secret about the legal business, right? | ||
| That this is a loophole. | ||
| This is something people can do to people, to silence them, just to drag them through hell for six years. | ||
| Maybe ten. | ||
| Who knows how long this goes. | ||
| And this is a case managed... | ||
| I mean, I had to fight in court at great expenditure to get this case management. | ||
| And if you put this up to the general public and have them look at what the actual facts are and have them look at what these people, what their business is, what they're actually doing. | ||
| It's game over. | ||
| It's game over. | ||
| It's a real problem for them. | ||
| The real problem is it's an indefensible activity. | ||
| Having those animals in swimming pools for people's enjoyment. | ||
| like But to follow that up with trying to crush people, trying to crush my fiscal sovereignty. | ||
| I mean, look. | ||
| No, there's nothing good on their side. | ||
| For what they try to do to you, for what the business is, it's all bad. | ||
| I like to operate in full sort of transparency because, look, I guess I'm sort of sponsored by the public, so I feel like a level of transparency in all this. | ||
| But, you know, I had a little bit of money. | ||
| I'd won a TV show called Wipeout and I had 50,000 Canadian dollars tax-free in the bank, which I sat on because I didn't know precisely what it is I was going to do with it. | ||
| And I felt like there was a potential of a rainy day around the corner. | ||
| It took that in the first six months to hire lawyers for everybody. | ||
| Everyone that was getting sued, I was cutting $5,000 retainers for going, there's a purpose for this money. | ||
| I only have it because I got on the show because of my relationship with the Walrus. | ||
| So I'm in for a good chunk of change here. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| The lengths of which and the ability corporations have to destroy individuals. | ||
| The fact that the court is there to facilitate it is precisely why I want to go to trial. | ||
| I've been told the figures are and please don't quote me and I'd love the facts, but I've been told that something in the area of like 90% of lawsuits get settled without going to discovery. | ||
| I want to be the 10% or less. | ||
| I want a resolution by the judge. | ||
| I can sleep at night if the judge says, okay, it ends with this. | ||
| Phil, you get $50,000 of your, at this point, in excess of $200,000 in legal bills and Marine Land, you lost. | ||
| So, you know, you got to eat the shame and walk away. | ||
| I would assume be more comfortable with that than if Marine Land said, here's $100,000. | ||
| Don't talk about the... | ||
| I mean, let's say in the best scenario they said, here's a chunk of change. | ||
| Let's just use $100,000 and said, just don't talk about the terms of the settlement. | ||
| But other than that, you have no impeded speech. | ||
| You can just be free. | ||
| I would be more comfortable with the judge's decision than that $100,000 because then at least I know exactly what it is that I went through. | ||
| The world can find out what function these courts have and what their version of justice is. | ||
| I mean, I'm just still – I'm trying not to be jaded because obviously it's a heavy load to carry in your day-to-day. | ||
| I've been on the cusp of crazy. | ||
| I'm thankful for plant medicine for sort of keeping me grounded and keeping me with the proper perspective. | ||
| Plant medicine, listen to you, hippie. | ||
| They do try to call me hippie a lot too. | ||
| That's interesting. | ||
| I mean – A little bit of a different version of hippie, I suppose. | ||
| I don't mind war. | ||
| Well, your guy cares about these marine mammals. | ||
| Now, walrus is like my daughter, dude. | ||
| It sounds crazy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I believe you, man. | |
| I hate to stress it, but as soon as you consider that factor, you're just like, dude, they've got your daughter. | ||
| That's a mess. | ||
| Try to put yourself into perspective that if they had your dog, your neighbor's got your dog and is... | ||
| I was unimpededly, by your definition, abusing or neglecting their life and you're there to just watch silently. | ||
| I mean, that's disgusting. | ||
| That's a disgusting scenario. | ||
| This is the poison that I live with. | ||
| I need a proper closure. | ||
| I'm relying on there being a level of justice so that one day I can... | ||
| Live in this world without being just that old, jaded dude. | ||
| Look, last time I was here, it was not nearly as fucking gray. | ||
| Like, I'm starting to feel the effects of long-term litigation. | ||
| You don't have a podcast, do you? | ||
| I want to do a podcast. | ||
| I'm urged to do a podcast. | ||
| Who's urging you? | ||
| Well, people, you know, they just, you know, Phil, you really should have a podcast. | ||
| Do a podcast. | ||
| It'd be a real simple thing for you to do. | ||
| I know. | ||
| I'm running out of excuses. | ||
| And you've got a lot to say, and you're a great talker. | ||
| Thanks, Joe. | ||
| I appreciate that. | ||
| Why don't you do it? | ||
| I am considering it, yeah. | ||
| People get mad at me that I keep suggesting that people get podcasts. | ||
| They're like, stop, bro, stop doing that. | ||
| You know, you said to me when we were in Toronto at dinner, you said, you should be a comedian. | ||
| I said, ah, I've heard that before. | ||
| You could be a comedian, for sure. | ||
| That's funny, because I've heard you mention that on the show a number of times, too, I imagine. | ||
| That, too, I've said to people. | ||
| Well, there's so few of us. | ||
| There's more podcasters than there are comedians, for sure. | ||
| Like, it's not even close. | ||
| There's, like... | ||
| I think there's more than 600,000 podcasts now on iTunes. | ||
| So yeah, there's not 600,000 comics. | ||
| That's a big pool to wade in, you know? | ||
| But I mean, I'm indifferent. | ||
| If I did, it would be for my own purposes. | ||
| But there's categories. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| And for someone new, I guess you'd probably be in, is conservation a category? | ||
| Or wildlife or something like that? | ||
| You know, you would launch pretty quickly. | ||
| And it would be fascinating for people to... | ||
| Have you ever heard, like, one of the really well-produced NPR podcasts, like The Dropout? | ||
| Did NPR do The Dropout? | ||
| The one on Elizabeth Holmes and the Theranos controversy, the blood scanning stuff? | ||
| Anyway, it's an amazing multi-part series that describes how these people made this phony blood testing technology and sold it and made millions of dollars and they were valued at billions and now they're literally virtually worth nothing. | ||
| So it's by ABC Radio. | ||
| That's who did it. | ||
| Nightline, that's what it was. | ||
| ABC News Nightline. | ||
| But something like that, if someone wanted to follow this and document it from the beginning in a podcast form, this is something that really could be like six one-hour episodes. | ||
| If you were talking about your history... | ||
| With training orcas, what you thought it was when you first got in. | ||
| We went into that in several of the other episodes. | ||
| But think about this. | ||
| You and I have talked now. | ||
| How many times have you been on now? | ||
| This is my fourth. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So each time has been like three hours. | ||
| So all those hours of discussion, if you condense that into your story, I think it would be super compelling. | ||
| And then you could also update people on the case. | ||
| You could update people on the state of... | ||
| Marine Mammal Captivity Legislation. | ||
| Because there are countries that are right now waking up and realizing this is crazy. | ||
| This is almost like human slavery. | ||
| It's like finding aliens and just keeping them in a cage somewhere. | ||
| The timing's right. | ||
| I don't doubt that. | ||
| It's perfect. | ||
| Again, with the looming litigation, I do get a little bit sort of tongue shy because this is just going to be... | ||
| I'll be sued again, man. | ||
| It kind of freaks me out. | ||
| It's the same premise of writing a book. | ||
| It's like, great, write a book, but it's like, I can't do anything with it because I'll be sued. | ||
| It's a virtual guarantee. | ||
| Now, the bright side is it seems to me like Marineland is not going to be around for a terribly long time. | ||
| Once they're dissolved, oh, you bet your ass I got lots to talk about. | ||
| I mean, I would love if I could speak of everything without having to sort of watch... | ||
| You know, I really do have to keep from saying a lot of stuff, not on account of it being illegal, but just on account of the fact that it will virtually guarantee me additional... | ||
| Hostilities and legal issues. | ||
| I can't do it. | ||
| I completely understand. | ||
| I do look forward to that day where I'm sort of free and unencumbered and can just be fucking me again, you know? | ||
| Yeah, well, if you're in that business right now, you've got to be looking at the future going, we've got to get out. | ||
| We've got to get out before they take us out. | ||
| That's precisely what's happening. | ||
| So the speculation is Marineland's lawyer is now the sole controlling mine. | ||
| And that's precisely what his job is to transition this from. | ||
| We know that they've sold property. | ||
| They sold the golf course. | ||
| They sold the campground. | ||
| We know now that they're... | ||
| I'll use the word selling. | ||
| It might not be the right term because Marineland claims there'll be no financial exchanges. | ||
| But that's yet to be seen. | ||
| Yeah, the writing's on the wall. | ||
| They're going to be gone. | ||
| I don't think the wife has any interest. | ||
| I mean, she's pushing 70-something. | ||
| She probably doesn't want to be a part of this. | ||
| She's never really had a heavy hand in it. | ||
| I mean, she sort of took care of the cash business aspect of it. | ||
| She had her role in it, but it wasn't like a management position making decisions on animals' health, importing, exporting, things like this. | ||
| It's just beyond her. | ||
| So what we've been told is that Marineland's owner, in his final days... | ||
| There's a wish list. | ||
| This is what happens to the park. | ||
| This is what happens with this. | ||
| This is what happens with this. | ||
| And you can bet your ass that there's something about a walrus and there's something about me in there. | ||
| What it is, at least that I know of right now, is obviously hostilities till the end. | ||
| I think that what's happening is the lawyer is fulfilling John Holder's wishes with me. | ||
| I think it's in the books that he can't just end this thing. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| It's a very precarious time. | ||
| I know. | ||
| The guy's dead. | ||
| Let it go, folks. | ||
| The lawyer doesn't like me. | ||
| We can't be in the same room. | ||
| You talk a lot of shit, bro. | ||
| You know what he actually said? | ||
| He stared at the camera. | ||
| Told him to go fuck himself or whatever he said. | ||
| That's going to be in court documents. | ||
| I didn't say that. | ||
| I said that to a senator. | ||
| But he'll run with that. | ||
| That's okay. | ||
| Will it be in court documents? | ||
| Oh, he's watching. | ||
| He's listening. | ||
| I mean, I sort of half hope that he sues you, Joe. | ||
| I hate to say that, but I sort of half hope. | ||
| Shut the fuck up, bro. | ||
| Sorry, dude. | ||
| I don't wish that on my best of friends, but man, that would be something. | ||
| It's not going to happen. | ||
| How the fuck do you know it's not going to happen? | ||
| No, you're just talking shit. | ||
| You just put it out there, man. | ||
| It's bad juju. | ||
| We talked about this last time, too. | ||
| I think that what they do in terms of that business, for their own sake, they should stop. | ||
| For everyone that's profiting off that, you've got to find an exit strategy. | ||
| And I don't just mean Marineland. | ||
| I mean, anyone who understands my language, that's hearing my words, you should stop. | ||
| This is not the future. | ||
| You can't do that anymore. | ||
| This is going to look horrible just a few years from now, where people who've seen blackfish, people who do understand what those things are, the more we find out about dolphins and orcas, The more we understand them, it's going to be more and more. | ||
| It's not like, oh, wait a minute, we just did some tests. | ||
| They're like crabs, bro. | ||
| They're dumb as fuck. | ||
| You can just eat them. | ||
| That's not going to happen, man. | ||
| We're more and more impressed with them the more we study them. | ||
| I am more than happy to negotiate with Marineland that rather than signing any type of non-disparagement, because I don't want my speech virtually locked in a legal document, I'm a forgiving person. | ||
| I don't need... | ||
| I'm only responding in kind to their hostilities. | ||
| They come at me with war. | ||
| I bring it back. | ||
| I don't want to. | ||
| I have to. | ||
| I take it right back up to where they bring it. | ||
| Then they do this. | ||
| I got to do this. | ||
| Then they do this. | ||
| I'm like, what are you fucking thinking? | ||
| It's like, if they would just dial it back, I can be a happy, smiley, not chirping, marine land guy. | ||
| I don't have to be... | ||
| I don't have to do that. | ||
| I've done what I've had to to be where I am. | ||
| The man who created this scenario is gone. | ||
| We don't need the hostilities anymore. | ||
| So what is the lawyer's motives exactly? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| But I can assure you, now that they've blacked out the fence, they're doing everything they can to suppress our information, they've bought up all the available billboards in Niagara Falls so that they've got Marineland signs because we have put up, as activists, activists have put up billboards, one of which was right at the entrance of Marineland last year. | ||
| It was a thing of beauty. | ||
| So they bought all these things up. | ||
| They really don't want bad PR right now. | ||
| My guess is trying to get rid of the animals, mitigate the PR losses, because there's already a sound foundation of it, of bad PR, and sell the property, get rid of it all. | ||
| And I think, you know, they're trying to fast track an accreditation so that they can facilitate animal movements and whatnot. | ||
| My greatest weapon right now, unfortunately, is that I can assure them a great deal of financial risk. | ||
| I have, and I certainly can and am right now. | ||
| They need to take that into consideration. | ||
| When you consider the price of a walrus, and let's just use the number 100,000, which is a grossly inflated number for a walrus, and let's say Marineland were to say, hypothetically, well, why would we give you a $100,000 asset when it's going to cost us less than that just to finish this litigation, and we'll owe you 25K at the end of some shit? | ||
| Why would we do that? | ||
| It doesn't make sense. | ||
| And I say to them, it's because I'm going to make that walrus cost you tens of millions. | ||
| Consider that. | ||
| Lose the hostilities. | ||
| I'll make you guys heroes. | ||
| We can do that too. | ||
| This narrative doesn't have to continue. | ||
| The narrative of war can end with the dead owner. | ||
| It could have ended, but... | ||
| Well, they're all invested in it. | ||
| And one of the things about lawsuits, it's like people, when they get it started, there's a game going on. | ||
| You're trying to win. | ||
| You're trying to win, trying to get the other side to cave. | ||
| I mean, this is a lot of what this is all. | ||
| And obviously, you've taken this very personally. | ||
| This is all part of you now. | ||
| Can I explain something really messed up? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I now, because we're coming to an end, the law that I've been advocating for is going to pass. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| This lawsuit is going to end. | ||
| The animals will... | ||
| I mean, we're going to find out what's going to happen to them in the near future. | ||
| We already know what's becoming of some. | ||
| I don't know what it's going to be like to live without a lawsuit. | ||
| It's going to be nice, bro. | ||
| You're going to be on the beach, your feet up. | ||
| When the prospect came around of me not having one anymore... | ||
| That's not how I saw it. | ||
| It's weird. | ||
| I'm oddly, strangely addicted and married to a fucking lawsuit. | ||
| I can't see past it. | ||
| Listen, we'll get you through. | ||
| You need more of that plant medicine. | ||
| I was going to look at that bag right there and it says insane. | ||
| I'm like, yeah, no, that's about right. | ||
| That's be real stuff. | ||
| That stuff will put you on the planet that's outside Pluto that we haven't discovered yet. | ||
| And I see you've got the Tyson Ranch box. | ||
| Oh, yeah, man. | ||
| I got a Tyson Ranch box. | ||
| He hooked me up. | ||
| And then that big box is from... | ||
| What is the company that gave us the big box? | ||
| It was Speedweed that helped, but I think the Xtrax company, ABX Xtrax, I'm not sure who. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I honestly don't know. | |
| We should shout out that company. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There's a couple different things in there. | |
| I was elbow deep in all these boxes, by the way. | ||
| Speedweed, they're the best. | ||
| They brought me a war chest, so get in there. | ||
| I'm actually going to be on Tyson's podcast tomorrow. | ||
| Are you really stoked? | ||
| I was supposed to do it yesterday, and I was kind of stoked, and then it got postponed to Thursday. | ||
| In what world am I sitting down smoking a bunch of weed with Mike Tyson? | ||
| Well, it's the one that was created on account of these crazy decisions that I've made, the fact alone that we've come together like this. | ||
| Dude, I'm talking with Whitney. | ||
| She says to you that I'm a hero. | ||
| She's my fucking hero, man. | ||
| I say it. | ||
| That crazy lady drove all the way to Texas with a fucking pig. | ||
| She tried to help this pig out that she found. | ||
| She fed the pig and then drove all the way to Texas with it. | ||
| I love her level of crazy. | ||
| I think it's just fucking perfect. | ||
| It fits exactly what this needs. | ||
| And again, I'm blessed that you sort of turned her on to me. | ||
| me and I know she was looking to have a conversation with you with regards to some legislation with dolphins and whale captivity and whatnot. | ||
| And you sort of steered her in my direction. | ||
| Let me touch on the Dan Bilzerian thing. | ||
| I heard, is he coming here in May? | ||
| Is that right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Not that I know of. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Someone had said to me, oh, I hear Dan Bilzerian's going to be on the podcast. | ||
| He's been on before, though. | ||
| Yeah, I know that he has. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He was on once. | |
| I thought that he was coming on soon. | ||
| It kind of made me nervous. | ||
| Why? | ||
| A couple weeks ago, Whitney's just drilling Dan Bilzerian on Instagram for having this polar bear. | ||
| There's a video of a polar bear at a fucking party and he's feeding it. | ||
| What? | ||
| A polar bear at a party? | ||
| It was a big brown bear, a grizzly. | ||
| It was a big grizzly bear at a party. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| Yeah, on an electric fence around and everything else. | ||
| Where was he? | ||
| Probably one of his crazies. | ||
|
unidentified
|
At his house? | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, Jesus, Dan Bilzerian! | ||
| What the fuck, bro? | ||
| Oh my god! | ||
| He had a fucking brown bear at his house! | ||
| Look at the size of that thing! | ||
| Oh my god, I'm getting anxiety! | ||
| Did he ever see the fucking... | ||
| What was the... | ||
| Yeah, the bear doo-doo. | ||
| Yeah, the one where the bear ripped the guy's throat apart. | ||
| That was one in a movie, too, wasn't it? | ||
| No, the bear was in a movie. | ||
| The bear was in a football movie. | ||
| What was that movie? | ||
| Basketball. | ||
| Was it basketball? | ||
| I think he's been in a few movies with Will Ferrell where he was playing basketball and he wrestled him in the middle of the basketball game. | ||
| Was that the bear? | ||
| Yeah, I think so. | ||
| Well, there was a bear that had been in movies and had done stunts in movies and this guy, the video was awful because the guy is literally just standing there and the bear just goes up to him and just decides to attack and rips his throat out. | ||
| In a second. | ||
| It's exactly that video minus the this, which can happen at any freaking time. | ||
| Only you got 45 girls in the back, scantily clad. | ||
| Easily could happen. | ||
| And what's really crazy is that that bear that killed that guy, they went back to training him. | ||
| They're not going to kill an animal that has value. | ||
| It's the same as the orca that killed all the trainers. | ||
| They're not going to kill him. | ||
| It's just not going to happen. | ||
| But they were trying to figure out whether or not he was going to do it again. | ||
| Like, Jesus Christ. | ||
| What are you, a soothsayer? | ||
| How are you going to figure out what a bear is going to do? | ||
| It's going to be a bear, asshole. | ||
| It's going to do bear stuff. | ||
| The people that are trying to have you interact with these animals like that, they're relying on the animal's shock factor, the shock and awe. | ||
| They're bringing these animals in close proximity to scare you. | ||
| That's a fucked up thing, man. | ||
| That's the bear right there. | ||
| Look at that. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| Throat apart. | ||
| It's so horrific. | ||
| So back to the Whitney thing. | ||
| So Whitney's just harping on Dan Bilzer. | ||
| He's deleting the comments as quick as she's tossing them. | ||
| So I decide, okay, well, I'm going to weigh in now, right? | ||
| So I throw a comment in, and I forget about it. | ||
| I go off, do my thing. | ||
| And then that night, I'm on the Phil DeFranco show. | ||
| Not me personally, but he actually takes the comment because, you know, he got a lot of likes and stuff. | ||
| I said something to the effect of, you know, that's an abused animal, blah, blah, blah, this and that. | ||
| I said something, you know, smoke more weed. | ||
| Anyways, they put the comment up. | ||
| Oh, by the way, the guy who handles the animal, he was sort of... | ||
| He was using some legal sort of jargon with me as if he maybe was talking about a lawsuit. | ||
| And I said, fuck it, sue me. | ||
| Legal jargon? | ||
| Oh, he went right into the... | ||
| The guy who trained the bear? | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is defamatory. | |
| Because I said, that's a starved, abused animal. | ||
| I mean, I know how to... | ||
| I know how... | ||
| In the history of wild animals, when has a bear ever walked out and said, hey, I'm going to become fucked friends with someone today. | ||
| You know, fuck this being a bear shit. | ||
| I'm going to become a buddy. | ||
| Well, they start them out when they're little cubs. | ||
| You know that. | ||
| Of course. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right? | |
| So... | ||
| They starve them. | ||
| They abuse them. | ||
| I mean, by my definition of abuse... | ||
| But do they have to do that to train them? | ||
| I know there are people who claim to love bears, that train bears, that take care of bears. | ||
| And I guarantee you they don't all do that. | ||
| It says big no-no. | ||
| There's nothing fun about abusing a drug-starved animal. | ||
| Delete this and your penchant for animal exploitation. | ||
| Smoke more weed. | ||
| I don't know if smoke more weed is going to help that, but... | ||
| It wasn't a chirp, though. | ||
| The way Phil DeFranco said it, I was like, smoke more weed, you fool. | ||
| I was just like, no, no, smoke more weed. | ||
| Like, go inside more. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| Got it. | ||
| Yeah, no, it wasn't a chirp. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| See, I feel like there are people that have bears that raise them. | ||
| I'm not in any way, shape, or form endorsing keeping bears in captivity. | ||
| But... | ||
| What I see is people that have these sort of intimate relationships with these really well-fed bears. | ||
| They're big and happy and they feed them and they get in the pool with them and it looks ridiculous. | ||
| But I don't think they're starving that bear and I don't think they're abusing that bear and I don't think you have to do that. | ||
| I don't think you can automatically assume that a bear is starved and abused. | ||
| So I assume the starved part, I certainly can't say. | ||
| But it's a big bear. | ||
| That was a fat bear. | ||
| Well, he's feeding it. | ||
| It might be hungry that day. | ||
| I mean, it's more tame. | ||
| But look at the body on the bear. | ||
| Oh, big. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Not emaciated. | |
| That's a well-fed bear. | ||
| You can have a well-fed animal that's hungry for a week. | ||
| There's no question about that. | ||
| You know, that... | ||
| But it's not likely that that thing starved. | ||
| And my definition of abuse is there's an electric fence around that fucking thing. | ||
| Is there? | ||
| Yeah, you can see it about the ankle. | ||
| There's a fucking electric fence at Dan Bilzerian's house? | ||
| Well, I'm sure whoever... | ||
| Go back to that picture! | ||
| I'm sure whatever installation the person who brought this thing does has to keep the animal within confines of sorts. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| Can't just outright... | ||
| Could you imagine if it just went on a model-killing rampage? | ||
| You think that's an electric fence? | ||
| That's, again, an assumption, I'll say, but, again... | ||
| I don't see how that wouldn't be... | ||
| What the hell does that serve as a bear? | ||
| It's just a trip line otherwise for... | ||
| Dude, that is so insane. | ||
| That's a well-fed bear though, son. | ||
| Look at that thing. | ||
| That motherfucker eats. | ||
| That is a big-ass fat bear. | ||
| If you want to get an animal to do something, if you want it to be docile, you have to train it. | ||
| You have to sort of... | ||
| There's breaking the animal in many cases, but I'll assure you, Joe, that food deprivation in training is your most effective tool. | ||
| It just is. | ||
| You can find a healthy balance, right? | ||
| Right. | ||
| But food deprivation is number one. | ||
| You've talked about this particularly with dolphins. | ||
| To be fair in my experience of wild animals, it is with marine mammals. | ||
| So I've not worked with bears. | ||
| There are bears at Marineland. | ||
| It's a disgusting display. | ||
| It's archaic. | ||
| It looks like it's out of the 1800s even. | ||
| I mean, it really is a disgusting place. | ||
| But... | ||
| The practice was to starve them. | ||
| And what people do there is they pay like, I think it's a buck and they get like this, this little cup full of corn pops and the bears are like waving. | ||
| Historically there's been bears. | ||
| I mean, he's got, they've got like 40 or 50 bears in this little confined space. | ||
| I mean, there's nothing, there's no more, no greater abomination of nature than I can imagine than a solitary, largely solitary animal. | ||
| So they're confined to a bunch of them of the species. | ||
| And then historically, they have ripped each other apart. | ||
| Oh, Jesus Christ. | ||
| Dude, it's crazy. | ||
| You can actually delve into Marineland's history deeper than I can. | ||
| You get to hear the full spectrum of some of the things that happened. | ||
| And bear in mind, and it's important to note, it was a different time. | ||
| Different times, different things happen. | ||
| And that was the norm. | ||
| It's a starkly contrasting time to when Marineland started. | ||
| But the stories are really jaw-dropping. | ||
| It's really jaw-dropping stuff. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| On one hand, when you have children and you bring a child to the zoo, on one hand, it's really fascinating to watch this little person look at all these different animals and freak out and see how amazing it is. | ||
| But that's the only pro, is introducing human beings, like little human beings in particular, to these animals. | ||
| Everything else is a con, except for the animals that are like really endangered and they protect them and help breed them and then Sometimes they're responsible for some reintroduction efforts. | ||
| But other than that, it's an animal prison, man. | ||
| It's weird. | ||
| I don't take the position or ideology. | ||
| I'm not this person that's trying to represent an ideology necessarily. | ||
| I'm not against all zoos, but I have to say that there's nothing more sad than seeing elephants, cats, bears. | ||
| Cats, man. | ||
| The cats, when they're pacing back and forth, I mean, just get them out of there. | ||
| Whose purpose are you serving? | ||
| Is that good for you? | ||
| I mean, seeing an animal that's got zookosis, I mean, it's a mental case. | ||
| And we don't know what the fuck's going on in their head, so we have no idea how disturbed they are. | ||
| Most people just watch and think this is just maybe normal or something, right? | ||
| A lot of people, we're not... | ||
| See, because the veil is only now sort of coming off and people are sort of now getting the truth on the matters, you start to see things for what they are. | ||
| I watched a video on YouTube some weeks ago and it was Marineland in the 70s and man, was this place busy. | ||
| And the people were just – I mean they were climbing over each other to be next to the pool. | ||
| I've never seen anything like it. | ||
| I worked there 12 years. | ||
| I've never seen the amount of people that this thing had. | ||
| And when you looked in the pool, there's a bull orca who's – he spans the literal length of the pool that he's in on the side with his – We're good to go. | ||
| You're looking at exactly what you see today in terms of the animals and the conditions that they're in. | ||
| Yet here, these people, having knowing nothing about it, just in the awe, the beauty, the majesty of these animals, the majestic nature of these animals, and yet we couldn't see for ourselves whatsoever how abusive and gross this was. | ||
| It was really a weird and strange thing. | ||
| But that's, you know, Marineland's a legacy business. | ||
| They built themselves on having people come and experience the shock and awe of these animals, and they did very, very well. | ||
| But that time is long gone now. | ||
| Long gone. | ||
| I think we're going to come to a time in the future where people think the same way about zoos. | ||
| I think we're going to realize, I get that you want to see them. | ||
| I get it. | ||
| I get you want to see them. | ||
| I want to see them too. | ||
| But god damn, we gotta stop doing that. | ||
| Like, this is no way also for... | ||
| The problem is, humans don't have any real experience with animals. | ||
| We have experience with dogs and cats, which are these domesticated, weird little fluffy friends. | ||
| They are not animals. | ||
| We don't have much experience with real animals. | ||
| And even the animals that you have experience with, they're urbanized. | ||
| You know, like pigeons that you can feed, or squirrels that take peanuts from you. | ||
| You get out into the world, and the world of the wild, of forests and mountains, and you see actual real animals, and it's almost psychedelic. | ||
| There's like a weird paradigm shift that goes through when you see a wild animal. | ||
| In the actual wild, like, oh, this is where it's supposed to be. | ||
| It kind of feels weird because you're in their world. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Because now you're like, oh, what? | ||
| because the series of tools that that animal has in its world that doesn't translate in captivity, for instance, is like, wait a second, that thing can spring on me, climb up, like I'm in its world now. | ||
| To me, that's the awe of the experience of witnessing animals because since the year and a half that expired from our last show, I had the gift of seeing dolphins in the wild. | ||
| I went down to... | ||
| I can't remember what beach it was, but it was while I was in California. | ||
| And that was my first experience, in fact. | ||
| Again, I'm from a small place. | ||
| And then this year, I was able to go to Washington State and see orcas in the wild. | ||
| Now, I've jumped off orcas rostrums into the air so high that you're looking down into a Dixie Cup to land. | ||
| I mean, that's pretty awesome. | ||
| But there's nothing... | ||
| Like having seen a fuckin' bull orca with an eight-foot mass on his back swimming next to his mother and all the... | ||
| I'd never... | ||
| My heart sunk into my stomach. | ||
| I'd never seen anything more majestic. | ||
|
unidentified
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Wow. | |
| Wow. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Do you know anything about what's going on in the Pacific Northwest where there's a pod of orcas that exists primarily on Chinook salmon and they're starving? | ||
| So in fact, I'm glad you mentioned that because just yesterday and today, a bunch of different protections are being announced for the southern resident killer whales. | ||
| Which are in the Salish Sea. | ||
| So it's going to impede sort of vessel. | ||
| They're really focusing on doing what they can. | ||
| What's happening there is they've got this snake river dam system that needs to be... | ||
| What happens is they put this system in and the Chinook are just dying. | ||
| They can't get through. | ||
| The flow is gone. | ||
| And they put the system in a long time ago. | ||
| A long time ago. | ||
| So it's virtually over time has been decimating these populations. | ||
| No one really knew why, but we're at the point now that we know that these orcas exclusively eat Chinook. | ||
| And there's just not enough. | ||
| And whereas they used to be massive ones, now they've got these little tiny ones. | ||
| And you know, there was a, I mean, the plight of the Southern resident killer whales is really, I'm glad that it's gotten, getting global attention. | ||
| I'm sure you're familiar with the mother who lost its calf and mourned for an excess of like 40 days and carried her on her head in the type of vigil. | ||
| I mean, this was, this captivated the world. | ||
| I mean, you can't look at an animal capable of such suffering without being acutely aware of the damage you're doing when you separate them from their family and natural environment. | ||
| Let me explain the difference. | ||
| When bears see their cubs dead, they eat them. | ||
| That's the difference. | ||
| You're talking about something that's insanely emotional. | ||
| It's a different kind of animal. | ||
| That's the thing that we're learning is the most notable aspect of these animals is their emotional intelligence capacity. | ||
| I'm afraid of what it is, the depth of which we're going to find out. | ||
| That they're capable of bond, because... | ||
| Well, particularly if there's ever some sort of a way of translating communication. | ||
| If they figure out a way of breaking down those sounds and expressions into something that we can decipher. | ||
| Right now, I don't think they know much. | ||
| I've been underwater with orcas and dolphins, and I've heard them... | ||
| Forget, I can't even tell you the sounds. | ||
| I mean, they've got a wide array of sounds. | ||
| But, you know, I could... | ||
| To the best of my abilities, I could tell you when an animal was excited based on their sounds they were making. | ||
| Like when our orca, Neosha, was pushing me underwater to do a rocket ride, which is when you jump off into the air and you do this big majestic jump, you I knew it was going to be a good one. | ||
| When she let out this squawk at the bottom of the pool before pumping her tail and launching, you just knew it, man. | ||
| She was on. | ||
| She was on fire. | ||
| And then there was other times where you just knew she wasn't into it. | ||
| And I could know by the sounds. | ||
| You could really determine underwater sound alone. | ||
| You could really get to know your animal. | ||
| Again, I was there 12 years. | ||
| I mean, I really got to experience a lot of things other people could never really truly understand, which is really why it's really important that I'm able to speak to these things because, I mean, even when it comes to the legislation that is passing. | ||
| I've had my name mentioned in the House of Commons. | ||
| I mean, this is a national stage. | ||
| I've had it mentioned in the Senate. | ||
| I mean, people care about what is coming up. | ||
| Just a few days ago, a Niagara MP. Actually, this would be a great video if you could pull it up. | ||
| It'll be on my Twitter. | ||
| It's one of the things I retweeted. | ||
| But the MP, the local MP, he bashes Marineland. | ||
| I mean, that is a thing of absolute beauty. | ||
| I'm glad that I'm able to talk and explain to people what it is that my experience has shown me and the things that I know. | ||
| If people know, they'll do better. | ||
| The problem with that video is if we play that video, it gets claimed. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, really? | |
| It's a House of Commons video. | ||
| It's public. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's a government thing. | |
| Those usually are okay, but I don't know if it's up to you. | ||
| Is it from a news source? | ||
| Oh, but you know what? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The group that put it up, because they... | |
| Okay, sorry about that. | ||
| If you go to my Twitter and you check it, it's something to marvel. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's beautiful. | |
| You have to be really careful with YouTube. | ||
| No, I understand. | ||
| We've had a shitload of problems. | ||
| I can assure you this, Animal Justice will have no problem with you doing this. | ||
| I'm good friends with the... | ||
| That's okay. | ||
| But we'll just tell people how to get to it. | ||
| Put that back up so I can read that. | ||
| It says, Marineland, an unfortunate place with horrible conditions. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Yeah, he's, I mean, this is a member of parliament. | ||
| This is on the, you know, this is the big stage right here, and he's finally, and it took a long time for people, anyone in public policy to ever wade into this subject. | ||
| Now we've got people outright saying, like, this place is a hole. | ||
| I mean, wow, how far we've come in the last six and a half years. | ||
| The world is changing, my friend. | ||
| Very quickly. | ||
| It's changing whether people like it or not. | ||
| And this is one that I think it's unavoidable. | ||
| This discussion and this resolution, this has to be, we have to come to grips with what that is. | ||
| It's just all kinds of wrong, man. | ||
| It's all kinds of wrong. | ||
| And the fact that they're still suing you after all these fucking years. | ||
| As if they think it's working, as if it's serving them any purpose. | ||
| Here I am again on the fucking JRE. | ||
| Like, are you kidding me, dudes? | ||
| You don't even know the favor you're doing me. | ||
| You don't even know what you've done. | ||
| Like, come on. | ||
| What do you want to accomplish? | ||
| What have you failed in accomplishing? | ||
| And what do you think you're going to accomplish by continuing? | ||
| This is the virtual definition of insanity. | ||
| It's not a good move. | ||
| Jamie, who was it that was on the podcast that was explaining the processes in place of reintroduction into the wild? | ||
| They were going to have stages and nets and stuff like that. | ||
| And these big outdoor areas where they can transmit dolphins and orcas to. | ||
| Who was that? | ||
| Do you remember? | ||
| Too many goddamn conversations. | ||
| Was that me? | ||
| Was it you? | ||
| We spoke of the Whale Sanctuary Project. | ||
| I mean, that's essentially the basis of it and the goal. | ||
| Maybe it was you. | ||
| Was it discussing how there's places where they're going to have intermediate steps? | ||
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
| Maybe you guys expanded on it with someone else, but no, that is the basis of this project. | ||
| The good news is the Whale Sanctuary Project, this thing is going to happen. | ||
| It is the future. | ||
| They're They're well into the process of finding a site. | ||
| Considerations are being made for a Washington State site, a Vancouver site, but it appears as though they're settled on maybe Nova Scotia. | ||
| The community there at large is looking to work with them. | ||
| That's wonderful news. | ||
| And I'll tell you something, Joe. | ||
| Once this law gets royal ascension, becomes law, what happens is Marineland is not able to export the animals unless the minister of the DFO, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, concurs that it's in the animals' best interests. | ||
| Well, if such a site exists and Marineland is keen on getting rid of their animals, we'll have a place for them. | ||
| I told you last time I was here that my dream is to save whales. | ||
| This might happen. | ||
| Additionally, if there's a real concerted effort, a real effort to rescue those animals in Russia, I may very well be a part of that team. | ||
| So where six and a half years ago I was speaking of a crazy dream where there was no blueprint, there was no foundation, I just sort of threw myself into the universe and said, I'm just going to hang my hat on a dream. | ||
| I'm watching in real time as it's materializing. | ||
| That's a hell of a perspective. | ||
| Humbling. | ||
| That is amazing. | ||
| This thing that we were talking about with the Pacific Northwest, it's the resident population that has an issue because they only eat Chinook salmon, but then isn't there... | ||
| A, another pod that comes through. | ||
| There's transients and they're thriving because they eat everything. | ||
| The transients are, they're, they're giving birth. | ||
| They're doing quite well. | ||
| They eat marine animals. | ||
| They eat marine animals. | ||
| It's correct. | ||
| In fact, while I was there, when I was there, the guy that was with us literally said, can you smell that? | ||
| I'm like, no, what is that? | ||
| It's like, smell that sort of oily, weird. | ||
| It's like a seal is getting eaten somewhere. | ||
| Whoa! | ||
| Next thing we know, we saw the activity, you know, the dorsals and everything, and yeah, sure as shit, there's a pot of... | ||
| They have a certain smell? | ||
| She could smell that the seal was being eaten. | ||
| Why can't they teach these smart whales to fucking eat what their friends are eating? | ||
| Why do they have to be rude? | ||
| It's like they won't eat Chinese food. | ||
| Fuck Chinese food. | ||
| Bro, you're starving to death. | ||
| No, I want a burger. | ||
| It's a rare occasion, but there's something called a super pod where it's actually a congregation of all the different families of orcas into this event where they all congregate and it's a big social event. | ||
| And there's a conference that happens every two years in Washington State called Super Pod, which is organized by a good friend of mine, Jeff Ventry. | ||
| It's an amazing event. | ||
| I look forward to being there again and speaking. | ||
| I get to... | ||
| Another place for me to speak and roam about with experts and whatnot and learn a great deal of things. | ||
| But we were on the cusp of that almost happening because the boats are radioing to each other. | ||
| Like, okay, well, we've got a family going this, we've got a family going this. | ||
| It's like, wait a sec, there's three families going in the same direction. | ||
| It's like there's going to be a crossing of paths. | ||
| And this is where the boaters get real excited, either at the prospect of a super pod of sorts or... | ||
| Conflict? | ||
| Do they have conflict? | ||
| Yeah, they could be, but I mean, for the most part, it's verbal. | ||
| They just tell you, like, stay away from it. | ||
| Fuck you! | ||
| Yeah, I imagine their messages are quite clear. | ||
| And you've got a 15,000-pound bull male orca giving you the bird. | ||
| Yeah, you're going to listen. | ||
| Fuck, yeah. | ||
| Especially a transient. | ||
| Their mouths, man. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| When you see their mouths wide open and see their teeth, you're like, what the fuck are you? | ||
| Why don't they start eating mammals? | ||
| And I wonder if anybody's ever studied the difference in the behavior between the transient pods that eat the marine mammals versus the behavior of the ones that only exist on salmon. | ||
| Maybe they have a different... | ||
| You know, like Avatar? | ||
| Like, there's different kinds of people up there? | ||
| My go-to source is Ingrid Visser. | ||
| She is a top... | ||
| She's the woman in New Zealand that swims with orcas, rescues orcas. | ||
| I mean, she is a top... | ||
| Really, the global spectrum of wild orcas scientists. | ||
| She'd be the one to talk to about that. | ||
| I mean, you want to talk about a fascinating person to talk to. | ||
| Holy shit, the wealth of knowledge she has. | ||
| And she is a... | ||
| She's a very passionate advocate, and I'm very proud to have done some very good work with her. | ||
| I'd love to talk to her. | ||
| I want to have her on the show, dude. | ||
| Yeah, I would love to talk to her. | ||
| I'm so curious about those things. | ||
| She would blow your mic if there was a difference at all in behavior. | ||
| If you were to invite her on the podcast, she would get on the next flight from New Zealand and come here, I can assure you that. | ||
| Don't speak for her, bro. | ||
| I like being home. | ||
| Fuck you, Phil Demers. | ||
| I think she may have actually told me that. | ||
| Maybe she told me that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They're amazing animals. | ||
| I've always said that, and this is coming from a self-admitted Bigfoot dork. | ||
| I'm a Bigfoot dork. | ||
| I really wish Bigfoot was a real thing. | ||
| But if Bigfoot was a real thing, it wouldn't be nearly as cool as an orca. | ||
| No. | ||
| Like, if we found some big, stupid, stinky ape that's been hiding from people forever, we'd be like, wow, that's cool. | ||
| But is it much cooler than a chimp or a gorilla? | ||
| What, just because it's bigger? | ||
| No, what an orca is... | ||
| Is really cool. | ||
| That is a super intelligent super killer that eats sharks. | ||
|
unidentified
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Stealth. | |
| Killing machine. | ||
| That has great whites tucking tail and running. | ||
| Just fuck up a great white shark like it has no business being in the ocean with it. | ||
| They're the perfect weapon in their world. | ||
| I mean, there's nothing that touches them. | ||
| They're literally at zero risk. | ||
| They have no predators. | ||
| I mean, they're just too damn strong and too damn smart and coordinated. | ||
| They do their kills as teams. | ||
| I mean, you're literally up against an army out there. | ||
| Try to be a 500-pound seal and that would be a big seal. | ||
| An army of... | ||
| 13,000 pound killer whales. | ||
| Who sort of enjoy playing with you a little bit before you die. | ||
| I mean, I'll interpret it as play, but more often than not, it's training the young ones on how to kill and stuff. | ||
| It could be a brutal thing. | ||
| I mean, I don't love watching it personally because I've worked with SEALs as well. | ||
| I mean, it's... | ||
| I take team orca all day. | ||
| Yeah, me too. | ||
| You're not getting great odds, but put the house on it and you'll get some returns. | ||
| One of the most amazing videos I ever saw was an orca with a beached seal. | ||
| The seal, he had bitten it and tossed it through the air and the seal had made its way to the shore. | ||
| And it was actually on the land just with a little bit of water. | ||
| And the orca beached itself. | ||
| Grab the whole seal and just start smashing it in the water there. | ||
| And you see the water just flood red with blood. | ||
| And then it hops back and wiggles itself back into water and swims away. | ||
| And you're like, holy fuck. | ||
| Isn't that crazy? | ||
| Holy fuck. | ||
| These things beach themselves. | ||
| That thing's 15,000 pounds. | ||
| It's so big. | ||
| Now, do they ever get stuck? | ||
| Yeah, they do. | ||
| They do in New Zealand, in fact. | ||
| That's where Ingrid's work is really special. | ||
| Dude, this is a crazy story. | ||
| I have a friend that I grew up with, Matt Harrison. | ||
| He went on to be a real... | ||
| Involved in the army. | ||
| He's like decades into the army now. | ||
| He was on a training mission in New Zealand. | ||
| They were doing this training on a beach. | ||
| And didn't they get called to go perform an orca rescue? | ||
| He's just like, oh, what? | ||
| So now he's running and now they've got shovels. | ||
| They're trying to figure this thing out. | ||
| And now Ingrid shows up. | ||
| She's the person to call. | ||
| And now there's a photograph. | ||
| I'm waking up in the morning to a photograph of Ingrid at this end of an orca. | ||
| And my friend Matt Harris from the same place as me, a little town in Welland at the other end of the orca. | ||
| And I'm like, you gotta be fucking kidding me. | ||
| And I got to reunite the two of them back in In Niagara Falls in the summer because Ingrid had come down again. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh my God. | |
| Dude, these are blessings that I couldn't have even ever imagined. | ||
| And yet here he was, and he'd be the first to tell you when he came back, it changed his world. | ||
| It changed him. | ||
| Never again. | ||
| Marineland, done. | ||
| Whereas before it might have been, you know, it wasn't necessarily the case. | ||
| He was part of this rescue. | ||
| He's a changed man. | ||
| Like he's just, I mean, now he's fascinated with orcas. | ||
| Like you can't imagine. | ||
| He got the bug now. | ||
| That's amazing. | ||
| Listen, is there anything else? | ||
| Probably a million things, but no, no, we're done. | ||
| For sure. | ||
| I'd like to give a couple shout-outs. | ||
| Please do. | ||
| Give your shout-outs to the Kanye West of marine mammals. | ||
| What'd they call you? | ||
| The Kanye West of what? | ||
| Kanye West of animal training. | ||
| Oh, there you go. | ||
| Absurd. | ||
| So, Animal Justice Canada, I gotta do a shout-out to Camille, who's an excellent lawyer. | ||
| Wait, they're calling you the Kanye West of marine mammals? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, there it is. | |
| That's it. | ||
| From November. | ||
| Wow, bro. | ||
| 2013. That started it all, man. | ||
| I say, wait, they're calling you the Kanye West. | ||
| Wow, the Kanye West of Walrus training? | ||
| The House to defend himself against a $1.5 million lawsuit. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Yeah, shout out. | ||
| Listen, man, it's been an honor to be your friend. | ||
| Oh, dude, you've changed the landscape of all of this, by the way. | ||
| I know you don't. | ||
| Look, I get it. | ||
| I can do this all day. | ||
| The first shout-out is to you, the last one's to you, the one in the middle's to you, every one of them. | ||
| You've changed my world personally, but you've really changed the landscape of this entire thing. | ||
| Whitney said it best today, she goes, you know, Joe really is the guy to move the needle on this thing, and I'm like, you're damn right. | ||
| So, like, a couple of fucksy worlds out there as often as you can, and just... | ||
| Keep this stuff up because you've had a heavy hand in all this. | ||
| Along with, for instance, Senator Wilfred Moore, who's the person who tabled this piece of legislation, Murray Sinclair. | ||
| I got to extend a thanks to the leader of the Green Party, Elizabeth May, who's really taken this thing, it's her baby, and processed this thing through. | ||
| And yeah, if you didn't hear me shout out your name, sorry. | ||
| Can't do it for everyone. | ||
| There's some very satisfying things about having a podcast and one of the really satisfying things is being able to let people know about something that for them is very important. | ||
| There's many people that are listening to this, there's many people that are hearing this that are trying to understand with your busy life, with your bills and your relationships and your work and You're also living in a world where something is happening that most likely would be thought of as a horrendous act. | ||
| Just a decade or two decades and then we're gonna be looking back saying how the fuck did we let this slide? | ||
| How did we do this? | ||
| And I think guys like you if it's not for your sacrifice many Millions of people don't understand this as well. | ||
| And that's real. | ||
| That's you. | ||
| That's a hundred percent you Your sacrifice your ability to describe it so eloquently and your courage to keep fighting this is This is very important. | ||
| It's very important for the human race. | ||
| I've had faith through and through and it's not failed me. | ||
| Listen, you're right. | ||
| You're right when it comes to this. | ||
| You're right when it comes to these marine animals that are super intelligent being stuck in swimming pools. | ||
| It's fucked up. | ||
| It's got to stop. | ||
| It's got to stop while we understand what it is. | ||
| You can't keep your head in the sand with this. | ||
| This is madness. | ||
| This is a terrible, terrible thing. | ||
| And we need to stop it. | ||
| Well, as much as I've had a hand in it, thank you, Joe. | ||
| My pleasure. | ||
| Listen, thank you. | ||
| Walrus Whisperer on Twitter? | ||
| Instagram, yeah. | ||
| I'm just learning Instagram, but I'm getting pretty good. | ||
| Is it all Walrus Whisperer? | ||
| Well, the one on Instagram has got a little bit of a different, but it's attached to my Twitter there. | ||
| But if you look up Phil Demers, you'll find it all. | ||
| I'm easy enough to find. | ||
| You're a bad motherfucker, Phil. | ||
| Thanks, my friend. | ||
| Bye, everybody. |
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