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Jan. 17, 2023 - The Joe Rogan Experience
02:36:29
Joe Rogan Experience #1927 - Forrest Galante
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Main voices
f
forrest galante
01:16:36
j
joe rogan
01:15:00
Appearances
j
jamie vernon
02:08
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Speaker Time Text
unidentified
Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out!
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
What's up, buddy?
Hey, bro.
Still alive.
joe rogan
You are still alive.
This is a truthful title to this book.
forrest galante
That's true.
It's ridiculous, but it's true.
And it's catchy.
That's the whole point.
joe rogan
Dude, I watched your show the other day, the television show.
What is the television show?
forrest galante
Mysterious Creatures?
joe rogan
Yes.
forrest galante
The new one?
Yeah.
joe rogan
And you were looking for some wolf thing?
forrest galante
The red wolf.
joe rogan
Yeah.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
But they didn't think it was a red wolf.
They thought it was like some mystical beast.
forrest galante
An Ozark howler.
joe rogan
Oh, my goodness.
Which, you know, I mean, wolves do howl.
forrest galante
Yeah.
No, that was an interesting story.
If you look at the timeline from when this cryptid, this howler popped up, it's right when the red wolf was starting to plummet in its numbers.
And as soon as wolves plummet, they call to each other, right?
They howl.
unidentified
Oh.
joe rogan
That makes sense.
forrest galante
So it's like, oh, we're hearing this thing and the spooky thing that we've seen running around the woods.
And it's like, well, yeah, it's wolves trying to find each other.
And it happened to also overlap with when moonshining was like a big deal.
So they perpetuated the rumor of the howler to keep people out of the woods.
joe rogan
Right.
forrest galante
So it like checked all these boxes to like make up this animal.
joe rogan
Is there any cryptid that you find compelling?
forrest galante
Just the...
I think we talked about it before, the Megatherium, the giant ground sloth in Peru.
joe rogan
Yeah.
forrest galante
That's the only one...
I mean, depends what you define as cryptid, right?
Like, I'm not a Bigfoot guy or Loch Ness monster, but...
Thylacine could be considered a cryptid, right?
joe rogan
Yeah, because it was alive, we do have video footage of it, and there's been a bunch of sightings.
forrest galante
Yes, but now you have all these Bigfoot-esque people, right?
All these sort of tinfoil hat guys who are like, it's here, I've seen it, or whatever.
And so it's like started to fade into this cryptid realm.
And I still think that in Papua New Guinea, there could be an extant population.
joe rogan
Why in Papua New Guinea?
forrest galante
So they used to range...
We got right into this.
This is great, by the way.
So they used to range from PNG, from New Guinea, all the way down to Tasmania.
And then as people came over, they brought dingoes with them, right?
And this was like 4,000 years ago.
And then the dingoes out-competed the thylacine in mainland Australia and, in theory, in Papua New Guinea.
But dingoes were never introduced into Tasmania, which is why thylacine occurred for so much longer in Tasmania.
unidentified
Hmm.
forrest galante
However, why in Papua New Guinea is because it's such a dramatic habitat.
There's so many, like, valleys and canyons and things that dingoes just probably couldn't traverse.
That would mean that there's isolated, unexplored areas that the thylacine, because it had evolved there, could still be thriving without the competition.
joe rogan
And for people who don't know what a thylacine is, it's a Tasmanian tiger.
unidentified
Yeah.
forrest galante
It's a marsupial wolf, crazy jaw, stripes.
joe rogan
Crazy jaw.
Really wild looking.
forrest galante
180 degrees.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Cool looking animal.
Yeah.
forrest galante
So when you talk about cryptids and blah, blah, blah, I still think that these animals could be out there.
joe rogan
Didn't you go looking for one at one point in time?
forrest galante
Twice.
unidentified
Twice.
joe rogan
And did you have any sightings or any, at least, I mean, amongst the people that you were around, or any credible reports?
forrest galante
No.
Well, reports, yes.
I mean, there's a guy named Nick Mooney, who is like an incredible, that's Benjamin, the last living thylacine in the zoo in Hobart, Tasmania.
A guy named Nick Mooney, who's like...
A state biologist, a renowned naturalist and biologist who has no reason to make this up or anything, and he swears that he saw one in Tasmania about 25 years ago.
And he's like, I know every animal in Tasmania.
I am a biologist.
I work with Fish and Game or whatever their equivalent is.
He's like, why would I make this up?
He's like, I didn't even tell anybody for a year or two because I didn't want to be called a kook.
unidentified
Wow.
forrest galante
And then he came out with it and sort of began this whole thing.
But yeah, I mean, definitely some credible sighting.
joe rogan
How would one even do a survey of those areas?
If you're talking about like rainforests and tropical jungles and just dense wooded areas, how would one even find what's in there?
forrest galante
And for the most part, unexplored too, especially when it comes to PNG and Western Papua.
Well, that's the thing.
I think that's the barrier to entry, right?
Anybody can go to Tasmania, drive down a highway and be like, oh, I looked and I didn't find it, which is basically what I did.
But to get into those places that they could be extant...
Requires helicopter support, refuels, tons of local ground support, you know, like local hunters and tribal people that know the land.
And so it's a big, expensive operation to try and get into these places.
And then, that's just getting in, then you'd pepper it with trail cameras, baited cameras, you'd do some scent trailing, some sound calling, you know, all these, I mean, you're a hunter, you know these techniques.
joe rogan
Well, it's interesting because we know that mountain lions are real, but most people don't ever see a mountain lion.
forrest galante
Right.
joe rogan
And a lot of people that live in, like, these heavily wooded areas don't see mountain lions.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Like, it's hard to find one, and they're everywhere.
forrest galante
They live in our cities.
joe rogan
Yeah, there's a shit ton of them.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
So you might get lucky and catch one, but the populations are pretty great in terms of, like...
forrest galante
Right.
joe rogan
Like, if you're in Colorado or if you're in Utah, I mean, they have a lot of mountain lions, and it's very rare that you see one.
So imagine if there was a very small population of mountain lions or Tasmanian tigers, and you went looking in a much more wooded area, much more dense environment.
forrest galante
Much larger, too.
Huge swaths of unpopulated land.
And if they were intelligent and cryptic like a mountain lion, which they probably were because they were at the top of the food chain, they know and they choose not to be seen.
Like P-22, right?
The mountain lion that lived in LA. We have a big photo of him out here.
The one with the Hollywood sign?
unidentified
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
That's a great picture.
forrest galante
I love that photo.
joe rogan
He's dead now.
forrest galante
Yeah, exactly.
joe rogan
Did they kill him?
Did they euthanize him?
forrest galante
They euthanized him, yeah.
joe rogan
Something's wrong with him, right?
He was badly injured or something?
forrest galante
I think he got hit by a car.
I think.
Don't quote me on that.
But yeah, some injury.
I think it was a car strike.
And he was an old cat as well.
So, yeah.
joe rogan
What do you think of the Orang Pendek?
forrest galante
I think it's interesting.
Have you ever seen that motorcycle video?
Where the guy's on the motorcycle and he sees the little guy run across?
joe rogan
Yeah.
forrest galante
So that's supposed to be Orang Pendek, right?
joe rogan
Well, let's see if we can find that.
unidentified
Sure.
joe rogan
That one is weird because...
forrest galante
Yeah, there you go.
joe rogan
Like, is that real?
unidentified
Yeah.
forrest galante
It's so...
And is this a kid?
You know?
That one looks over-embellished.
But if you watch the actual video...
Yeah, so this is the video I've seen.
I think that we love humanoids.
Like, as a species, we love the idea...
joe rogan
Just play the video.
jamie vernon
It doesn't play.
It's all still frames.
joe rogan
All of it?
jamie vernon
It's all someone talking about this.
It's not the video.
joe rogan
Oh, well, that looks so fake.
forrest galante
Yeah, it does.
joe rogan
That's a still frame of it?
But that could just be a naked dude.
forrest galante
Totally.
joe rogan
That could be a crazy person.
unidentified
That totally looks like a dude.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
That doesn't even look that hairy.
forrest galante
But I think...
joe rogan
Look at the proportions.
Looks like a person.
Did they have something to judge it by?
I've seen the actual video though, Jamie.
See if we can find the actual video because that's not it.
forrest galante
Yeah, this is the same one I've seen.
I think in relation to the motorcycle and the guy, even though there's some forced perspective, it's tiny.
So it looks like a dude, but that would be like a four foot tall guy.
joe rogan
So here's these guys, they're on this motorcycle, racing along.
forrest galante
Was that the one?
I felt like it ran across before.
joe rogan
Yeah, that one looks fake.
forrest galante
This one looks fake.
joe rogan
That one looks like a full-on setup.
The guys slow their bike down just in time.
forrest galante
Yeah, this one's nonsense.
joe rogan
What?
Well, that was where it ran across the road.
The one that I saw, though, I thought it was dark-haired.
forrest galante
And it ran like this way across the road, right?
joe rogan
Yeah, and it was a very quick and brief video.
forrest galante
Same.
That's the one that I'm thinking of as well.
jamie vernon
17 million views.
forrest galante
Well, maybe this is probably it then.
joe rogan
But I don't...
It's hard to remember because I've seen so many stupid fucking videos.
But I seem to remember it looking almost like an ape person.
forrest galante
I think, my opinion, and I'm not really, you know, I'm not really qualified to speak on, like, these humanoid cryptid things, but, like, we have Khoisan in southern Africa, right?
The small Bushman?
joe rogan
Mm hmm.
forrest galante
You know, in Borneo, Sumatra and places like this, there are still very isolated groups of tribal people, you know, and sure, they're talking about proportions of small people and all of that.
But what's stopping a teenager?
Doesn't matter.
I don't care what tribe you're from.
If you're a teenager, you're going out there and you're being rebellious.
Right.
joe rogan
Right.
forrest galante
From going out with a spear to going on a hunt and deciding to continue going, and then he crosses a road, you know, and now it's become a Bigfoot, Oran Pendek, or whatever, because he gets startled.
Maybe he's doing something illegal or wrong or whatever and runs.
Somebody catches it on their helmet cam, and now it's perpetuating into this big thing.
joe rogan
Or they see it in low light.
They see it at dawn.
Yeah, if you think about that island of Flores, though, that's where things get interesting.
forrest galante
Mia Flores, right?
joe rogan
Well, the Homo floriensis.
How do you say it?
forrest galante
I'm not sure.
joe rogan
I think it's Homo floriensis.
forrest galante
Yeah, I'm not sure.
joe rogan
Floriensis.
But that's the little hobbit person that they've confirmed lived alongside people as recently as...
I forget how long ago.
forrest galante
It's like 8,000 or 10,000 years ago or something like that.
joe rogan
They think it was fairly recent.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Within, you know, like after the Ice Age.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
Which is pretty crazy.
forrest galante
Yeah.
I mean, you know, and there are across the human species, there are so many diverse looking cultures and tribes and peoples, right?
We're all humans, but, you know, Aboriginal people, African people, Indonesian people, Asian people, we all look different, you know, and we all have You have these own distinct characteristics.
And so to think about, you know, imagine being a Westerner or whatever, being an Indonesian like in that video, and then you see someone who looks so different than your own culture, and you're not expectant of it.
It's very easy to let your imagination turn into this whole other species, this cryptic thing, versus like, maybe this is someone from a different tribe who's in a different area.
I mean, I don't know.
I'm just saying it's...
joe rogan
And then there's also, they keep finding new extinct species of humans, right?
Like Denisovans and all.
I think there was another one that they found recently that they're trying to figure out what it is.
But they're very human-like in terms of Homo sapien-like, but a slightly different branch of the chain.
forrest galante
Yeah, with different, like, jaw morphologies or cranium shapes or whatever.
And, yeah, I think we used to, up until 15, 20 years ago, only think that there was, like, two or three species of humanoid ever.
joe rogan
Right.
forrest galante
Right?
And now there's, like, I want to say eight species.
joe rogan
Yeah.
forrest galante
Which is pretty crazy.
joe rogan
Well, that leads me to Bigfoot.
Because I think that all these stories of Bigfoot, I think like the Native Americans have a bunch of different names for some creature that lives, some large hairy creature.
And we know about Gigantopithecus.
I think that's what that is.
I think people just have a distant memory of it.
forrest galante
Like a remnant memory that's evolved over time.
joe rogan
Yeah, which is probably the same thing as dragons, and I know we talked about that before.
forrest galante
We talked about that, yeah.
And also, by the way, it could be the same thing as thylacine, going back to that, right?
Like, they could have been in PNG, where these tribes are still talking about them 4,000 years ago, and this lore of the striped dog that sounds weird, that has this funny jaw, has been passed down generation to generation, To the point where somebody's out on a hunt or a walk and they see a flash and they go, oh, that was that striped dog my grandfather told me about.
Now it's real.
joe rogan
I saw a squirrel once in Alberta and for a full second I thought it was a wolf.
forrest galante
Please tell me how that happened.
joe rogan
I was looking for wolves.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
I was looking for it to be a wolf.
I definitely saw a wolf once.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
And it was pretty cool.
It was either a wolf or a large coyote, but I'm pretty sure it was a wolf.
forrest galante
In Alberta?
joe rogan
Yeah.
Because it was at dusk and it ran across the road.
And I was with Cam Haynes and we both noticed it.
It looked like a wolf.
forrest galante
Just too big and stocky.
joe rogan
But it was, you know, distant, getting dark.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
Hard to tell.
But they're up there.
There's a shit ton of them.
For sure.
I mean, they have tons of trail cameras on them.
forrest galante
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
And they see them there all the time.
But I saw this thing run across this downed tree.
And it was the tail of this squirrel.
And for a full second, I was like, oh my god, is that a wolf fur?
That's a fucking squirrel.
God, you're dumb.
That was like...
That was how it played out in my mind.
forrest galante
But you had already made it to be a wolf in your head.
unidentified
Of course!
forrest galante
And if you hadn't seen the rest of the squirrel, you had always seen a wolf.
joe rogan
Oh yeah, I saw a wolf, bro.
forrest galante
Yeah, exactly.
joe rogan
Which is what I think people do with black bears that stand up on hind legs, and they see Bigfoot.
forrest galante
Black panthers.
You see a house cat run across the road out in the woods, and it's black, and the perspective, you don't have any scale, and you go, I saw a black panther.
joe rogan
Yep.
Yeah.
But I mean, the wolf thing is interesting because it's like, you know, they're reintroducing wolves in different parts of America and now they're trying to do it to Colorado.
And it's like, I hope you guys know what you're doing.
Because this idea that you're going to be able to control their populations once you reintroduce them, you're not even going to find them.
forrest galante
Correct.
And I mean, we've seen a wolf pack, I'm blanking on the name of it now, but it's moved all the way down from Washington through Oregon.
Now it's all the way to Central California.
San Luis Obispo County, Central California.
joe rogan
Really?
forrest galante
I don't think they're resident, but they've dipped in because we have tracking collars on them, right?
unidentified
Wow.
forrest galante
So they've come all the way from Washington, all the way through Oregon.
joe rogan
San Luis Obispo.
forrest galante
Isn't that wild?
joe rogan
Wow.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
They're amazing.
forrest galante
Incredible.
And they are helpful to the environment.
You know, they do fill a role.
And they out-compete the coyotes and, you know, their population's insane.
joe rogan
They'll also kill your kids.
forrest galante
They'll also kill your kids.
unidentified
Yeah.
forrest galante
They can.
joe rogan
I mean, they are fucking predators, and they don't have any rules.
Like, we are so goofy and naive when it comes to the idea of predators.
We think, like, well, we have an agreement, a spoken agreement with the people of the forest.
Living beings of the forest, I am your friend.
I used to live in Boulder, Colorado, and there's this lady I knew who was a yoga instructor.
That says a lot.
I told her.
She was the best.
I told her that I saw a mountain lion.
She goes, well, when I go into the woods, I literally say a prayer, and I let the creatures of the woods know.
I know them, and I offer no harm.
I am there only to just peacefully walk amongst them.
I am not a threat.
I'm like, you shut the fuck up.
forrest galante
Go for a walk through the African bush for one night and see how well that does.
joe rogan
What are you talking about, lady?
You zig and you could have zagged and you run into a bear and you're fucking dead.
100%.
They eat yoga instructors too.
unidentified
This idea that you're going to like, I send out a message of peace.
forrest galante
We've become so jaded in the sense of, like, nature is in harmony and balance.
That's like this Western idea of, like, everything so harmonious in nature.
joe rogan
It's terrifying.
forrest galante
It's the opposite, you know?
joe rogan
It's such a dumb perspective.
It is.
It's so misinformed.
It's just based on idealistic perspectives.
It's based on, you know, this idea of a utopia that exists in the woods.
It's just not.
It's tooth, fang, and claw.
forrest galante
Correct.
joe rogan
It's fucking chaos.
forrest galante
It's also based on disconnect, in my opinion.
If you've spent time in the wild, if you've spent time, I don't care if you're fishing, hunting, hiking, camping, whatever, but somewhere that is really raw, you're like, holy shit, no.
It's not all Shangri-La out here.
It is eat or be eaten.
joe rogan
Yeah, not at all.
No other video of the Orang Pendex?
jamie vernon
That seems to be it.
I found a video that looks less fake, but it's the same video, so it just did a better job.
joe rogan
Alright, let's see what that one looks like.
It looks less fake.
jamie vernon
Oh, actually, I just lost it, I'll be honest with you.
I have the one that we looked up.
It's that video.
joe rogan
It's the same one?
jamie vernon
All the stories, all the Daily Mail, everything goes back to that video.
joe rogan
Oh, okay.
forrest galante
Must have been that.
I think I might have seen just a clip of it.
joe rogan
Probably.
forrest galante
Not that longer.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Yeah, they probably didn't show the one where he's running on the road itself because it looks so fake.
forrest galante
So it looks like shit.
Yeah.
Versus the one where he darts across.
joe rogan
Yeah, it looks like a naked person.
forrest galante
Yeah, it does.
joe rogan
Like a person in a spandex costume.
unidentified
No.
forrest galante
Dude, I went to a wedding in downtown Los Angeles a couple years ago, and there was a guy, probably had a mental illness, but he was like 6'5", walking down downtown LA, butt naked with this massive schlong just bouncing between his knees.
It looked like a different species to me.
I mean, this huge beard, like 6'5", massive dude just trotting down the street of LA. If you saw that in the woods, going in between the trees from a distance, you'd say, oh my god, there's giants in the woods.
I'm a Bigfoot believer like that.
If I had seen that exact guy cruising through a park, cruising out in the woods, I'm a believer.
joe rogan
Especially if he's covered in dirt and it's dark out.
forrest galante
Exactly.
joe rogan
Well, mentally ill people do wind up moving to the woods.
forrest galante
It's happened.
joe rogan
Yeah, I mean, it happens all the time.
I remember there was this one guy who was famous in Maine for, he was a legend, that he would break into people's houses and steal their stuff.
And then they found out that he was a real person.
And he had dropped out of society in like the 1970s.
And just decided to completely live by himself.
Like, he didn't talk to people for decades.
Oh, wow.
And he was by himself, alone in a tent in the woods, and he would just steal stuff from people's houses when they weren't around.
forrest galante
Wow.
joe rogan
Yeah, and like live off of whatever he found or ate.
And I don't know what his woods craft was like.
Is this it?
Stranger in the Woods.
Yeah, this is the story.
unidentified
Sounds like it.
joe rogan
For 27 years, Christopher Knight lived alone in a clandestine wooded camp in tiny Rome.
I don't know what that is.
Undiscovered and unaided, breaking into camps to steal what he needed to survive.
When he finally captured and arrested in April 2013, the story of the North Pond Hermit made headlines worldwide.
But Knight spoke only to one journalist, Michael Finkel.
In an exclusive excerpt from his new book, Finkel explains the origins of the whispered myth that haunted central Maine for decades, the legend of the stranger in the woods.
forrest galante
It's pretty cool.
joe rogan
It is kind of cool.
forrest galante
It's cool.
He, like, did his own...
joe rogan
Yeah.
forrest galante
Look, I mean, I'm sure he had all kinds of probably issues, right?
joe rogan
Oh, yeah, for sure.
forrest galante
But he lived his own...
Like, he made his own path.
He lived off of stuff.
It reminds me...
Have you ever heard of the Japanese survivor in Guam?
Have you heard about that story?
joe rogan
Yes, I did.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
Tell that story.
forrest galante
So, from my understanding, during World War II, there was a crash in Guam from a dogfight, and this Japanese pilot or guy who was in the plane went and hid in a cave up on a mountain in Guam, and he spent until like 2002 living in this cave Thinking that World War II was continuing and he thought he had a better life living in a cave and living off of the jungle because Guam is like a hub for I think United or Delta, one of the major airlines.
So all these planes are coming in and out every day and he thinks it's World War II continuing.
unidentified
Wow!
forrest galante
And there's military bases and everything else in Guam.
joe rogan
Was it really 2002?
forrest galante
Jamie would have to look, but it was very recent.
joe rogan
I thought it was like the 80s or something.
I didn't know.
He must have been old as fuck.
forrest galante
Yeah, he was like in his 70s or something.
I don't know.
I'm probably getting the date wrong.
joe rogan
We'll find it, but still.
That's so crazy.
But can you imagine?
How would you know?
How would you know?
And what if you fucked up and went in too early?
forrest galante
Right.
joe rogan
You know, and it is still World War II and they shoot you.
forrest galante
Exactly.
joe rogan
You just hang out for another year.
forrest galante
Yep, just spend a couple more days in the cave.
joe rogan
Oh, my God.
jamie vernon
There's two stories, actually.
We'll go with this one first is the one you were talking about.
joe rogan
Okay, so this one...
97. 97. Oh, died in 97. He died in 97. So years of service, 41 to 45. And then it says 1972, I guess.
But do you see that?
forrest galante
28 years of hiding in the jungles of Guam.
joe rogan
Yeah, I think that's what we're talking about there with 45. So they found him in 72. I just saw a story this morning, which it's not new.
jamie vernon
Apparently it was in 2013. There was a man took his two sons after Vietnam came, and they were hid in the woods for 40 years.
unidentified
Wow.
joe rogan
Forced to live off rats and make loincloths out of tree bark.
Man who spent 41 years living in the jungle after fleeing Vietnam War makes emotional return to his former home.
41 years.
Look at the picture of him.
jamie vernon
Social skills, obviously, and he didn't know what a woman was.
Really?
His father didn't tell him what a woman was.
They saw five people their whole life and hid from them in the woods and they saw them.
This is according to what I read earlier today.
joe rogan
Oh, my God.
forrest galante
Do you think, like, would you, if you're put into his position, is it worth living like that?
joe rogan
He's 85?
jamie vernon
His father was.
joe rogan
Oh.
Father 85. I just looked at that really quick.
I'm like, God damn, he looks great.
Maybe that's how we're supposed to live.
jamie vernon
Yeah, Rat Head was his favorite.
Rat Head.
joe rogan
Well, who doesn't like a good Rat Head?
Why is his haircut so good?
forrest galante
That's a good question.
joe rogan
This is bullshit.
jamie vernon
I think this is after they found him and they took him back to take pictures.
Oh, fuck off.
joe rogan
They redressed him.
jamie vernon
This is horseshit.
joe rogan
Yeah, they redressed him.
They redressed him in rags.
jamie vernon
That's what he looked like.
forrest galante
For the photos.
joe rogan
That's what he looked like when they found him.
unidentified
That's a little better.
joe rogan
Yeah, that looks like a guy living in the woods.
Wow.
unidentified
Rathead.
joe rogan
He was eating ratheads.
What does it say?
His son was killed?
unidentified
What does it say?
jamie vernon
I'm not sure.
joe rogan
One day his wife and two of his sons were killed by a mine explosion, putting him in a state of shock.
He took his two-year-old son and fled into the jungle, thereafter never having any contact with anyone else.
The pair survived by foraging fruit and cassava from the forest and planting corn.
They wore loincloths made of tree bark and lived in a timber hut raised five meters above the ground.
Cassava is not the stuff that you need to boil and filter and strain.
forrest galante
No, no, no.
joe rogan
What am I thinking of?
unidentified
That's the other stuff.
forrest galante
Probably taro.
Taro root?
joe rogan
Is that what it is?
forrest galante
Yeah.
Cassava is like a potato, basically.
joe rogan
Right, right.
What is the one that actually has strychnine in it?
It's very common in the jungle of Central America and South America.
forrest galante
I think taro is what you're referring to because it's very starchy and basically inedible until you boil it down.
joe rogan
Is that what it is?
forrest galante
I think so.
joe rogan
Mmm.
forrest galante
That doesn't sound familiar.
joe rogan
Doesn't sound right.
unidentified
Hmm.
joe rogan
Tarot, I know what tarot is.
But tarot, like, they make tarot chips.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
Like, you could eat tarot chips.
This stuff, they boil down, they turn into like a meal.
forrest galante
Oh, I'm not sure.
joe rogan
Smash it and do all kinds of, I thought it was cassava.
forrest galante
Everything, like, when we've worked down in the Amazon and stuff, in the remote areas of the Amazon, everything's boiled.
That's just how everything's, like, day one you're like, oh man, this fresh boiled piranha is so good.
Day 13 you're like, please God, no boiled piranha for breakfast.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Isn't it interesting?
We've gotten to this point as a society where we eat what we enjoy.
forrest galante
Right.
joe rogan
Not what's...
Instead of what just keeps you alive.
forrest galante
Right.
joe rogan
I was with Steve Rinella once and he caught a beaver and we cooked the beaver.
And one of the things that he cooked was the beaver tail.
And he said that it was a staple amongst trappers.
forrest galante
Okay.
joe rogan
That they really liked beaver tail because it was a good concentration of fat.
It was a great source of fat.
forrest galante
I imagine it's just a big fatty tissue.
joe rogan
It's disgusting.
forrest galante
Yeah, I bet.
joe rogan
But when you're dying of fat, like you need fat, like you're starving, like fat is literally what you crave, then it becomes delicious.
Then it's not a matter of, you know, oh, I prefer fried chicken.
Well, I'm a pizza guy myself.
We eat based on our flavor preferences.
forrest galante
It is interesting, because taste is so elemental to what we decide to do every single day.
Oh, I like this, I like that.
But that's not the point of food.
The point of food is nourishment, right?
It's to keep your body strong and you continue to have energy, and yet we've completely abandoned that notion.
In fact, so much so that we have the opposite problem, where we're over-nourishing, at least with fats and oils and things like that, constantly.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's...
I mean, if people could come from the past, back from those pioneer days, and see people today, they'd be like, oh my god, this is wild.
Everyone's fat.
forrest galante
Because that was like a sign of being healthy back then, and wealthy, right?
You could afford to be fat.
They'd be like, wow, this is great.
joe rogan
Well, I don't know about healthy, but it was definitely a sign of wealth and the fact that you didn't have to work.
When you look at those paintings from the Renaissance of those Rubenesque women, that was attractive.
We were psyched if you found a big fat lady.
forrest galante
Yeah, big old gal.
joe rogan
Yeah, that girl, she's eating good.
That's what I like.
forrest galante
That's what I need at home.
joe rogan
I like some skinny farmer lady.
I like some royal lady who gets to just have fruit given to her while she lays down.
forrest galante
Last time we hung out, you were doing pure carnivore.
joe rogan
Yeah, I'm doing that now.
forrest galante
You're doing it now?
joe rogan
Yeah, because it's January.
January is World Carnivore Month.
I don't know who fucking made that up.
forrest galante
Why not?
joe rogan
I mixed in a little fruit.
I eat fruit because I find when I don't do that, I did straight carnivore for the first few days.
I think the first eight or nine days.
But it's hard.
I was slogging through workouts.
forrest galante
Just no energy?
joe rogan
Yeah.
And they say there's an adjustment period, just like keto.
Have you ever done a keto diet?
forrest galante
Not for more than a week at a time.
joe rogan
It takes a while to really get your body to turn ketogenic and to start burning fat instead of carbohydrates.
And there's a thing they call the keto flu, where it feels almost like you've got the flu.
Sounds awful.
Not really like the flu.
It's a bad way of describing it.
It's more like you're not well-rested.
forrest galante
Gotcha.
Gotcha.
joe rogan
So, like, when I would work out, I would, like, have to really push through these workouts.
Like, you feel like you're missing a gear.
unidentified
Sure.
forrest galante
That's what it feels like.
Just none of that extra ATP to, like, burn.
joe rogan
Yeah.
You can't get into fourth gear.
It's weird.
It's like...
It doesn't feel good.
unidentified
After...
forrest galante
Oh, sorry.
Go ahead.
joe rogan
I'm just saying, but when I added fruit, that goes away.
forrest galante
That's what I was going to ask, yeah.
After we hung out and you were doing that, I read Paul Saladino's book, The Carnivore Code, I think it's called, The Carnivore Diet, the one where he eats meat, fruit, and honey, and bases it, because he's been on your show before, right?
Yeah, so I read his book, and I thought it was really interesting, you know, the whole idea of, like, those are the most sought-after foods in the world, and they are for most cultures, but definitely not all cultures, right, which I think is...
joe rogan
It all depends on what the resources are, right?
forrest galante
Of course.
joe rogan
Yeah, I mean, if you're dealing with a culture that has access to an enormous amount of rice, an enormous amount of or cassava, or whatever those things are, you know, there's different things that people eat where they, you know, they just eat it because of convenience.
forrest galante
That's availability.
joe rogan
Yeah.
forrest galante
And cost and effort, right?
joe rogan
But if you have access to all the food and you really wanted to live an optimal lifestyle, I do think that organs are primary.
It's like eating liver and eating heart is very, very good for you.
And then eating red meat, especially like lean red meat, is very good for you.
forrest galante
Yeah.
It's all about Lucky Charms.
It's all about Lucky Charms.
I saw your post.
joe rogan
Isn't that nuts?
forrest galante
That was wild.
joe rogan
Isn't that nuts that that's a real, like, NIH-funded food chart that places Lucky Charms above eggs?
forrest galante
There were so many things, too, not just the Lucky Charms.
I mean, that was preposterous, but there were so many things that I'm like...
joe rogan
Chocolate-covered almonds.
unidentified
Right.
forrest galante
That's healthier than a steak.
unidentified
Fuck off.
joe rogan
That's candy.
forrest galante
Exactly.
joe rogan
That's literally chocolate.
Yeah, there's almonds, but it's fucking chocolate, which is sugar...
And some cacao.
forrest galante
Yeah, that was wild.
joe rogan
Straight horse shit.
These people are criminals.
They're all being paid off.
They've all been paid off by these big food corporations.
forrest galante
By the big food industries.
joe rogan
For sure.
Well, it's been proven that there's been a bunch of these people that are like fat doctors that are trying to tell you that there are no junk foods and it's really...
forrest galante
Oh, I haven't heard that.
joe rogan
It's shaming people.
Yeah, big fat ladies that are saying this.
You know, the same kind of ones who don't want you using the term fat.
forrest galante
Sure.
joe rogan
But they're being paid off by, like, these companies that make, like, fucking ho-hos.
forrest galante
Oreos and blah, blah, blah.
joe rogan
Cookies and shit.
forrest galante
Sure.
joe rogan
Yeah, I mean that kind of food, maybe not those in specific, but those kinds of foods where they're readily available at supermarkets.
In general, other than rice and some beans and some other stuff that you get in the center of the grocery store, all the shit around the edges is what you want.
You want the stuff that's fresh.
You want the stuff like the vegetables.
They have to replace them all the time.
That shit in the boxes in the middle, most of that stuff's not good for you.
forrest galante
Of course.
joe rogan
Unless it's canned or bottled.
I mean, there's tomato sauces and stuff that's in the center that's fine for you.
forrest galante
Still packed Some of them.
joe rogan
I mean, there's organic ones that aren't.
But the outside, that's what you want.
You want where the milk is, where's the cheese, where's the eggs.
It's on the outside.
It's refrigerated.
forrest galante
Yeah, there's a reason you have to eat it fresh.
joe rogan
Yeah, you gotta eat it quick.
And it's really, like, a lot of the stuff, especially pasteurized and homogenized milk, there's a real good argument that that's not even good because your body's like, what is this weird liquid protein stuff?
This is not, like, where's the enzymes that are supposed to be available in raw milk?
forrest galante
So what's your feeling on like a protein shake?
Like you're doing this carnivore thing, you're obviously getting tons of protein.
You're not doing a protein shake as well, are you?
joe rogan
No, it's not necessary.
I mean, if you're eating meat, most of what I'm eating is meat and eggs.
That's mostly what I'm eating.
forrest galante
That's a dream diet, really.
joe rogan
But the thing is, I feel great.
I'm very clear-headed and I have a lot of energy.
Every time I do it, every January, I'm like, God, why don't I eat this way all the time?
The problem is, I'm a glutton, and I really love pasta, and I really love cheeseburgers, and I really love pizza.
I fucking love pizza, man.
I love bread.
It tastes great, but it's definitely not my thing in terms of what my body responds to the best.
My body responds the best to fruit, and meat, and eggs, and organ meats, and That's really, and fish.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
My body responds the best when I eat that stuff.
And when I eat that stuff, my body's like, yeah, great, this is awesome.
Like, I can eat a steak and then go right on stage.
forrest galante
Yeah, and you feel fine.
You feel good.
joe rogan
But if I eat a bowl of spaghetti and go on stage, I'm fucking...
forrest galante
You're a drip.
Yeah, for sure.
joe rogan
Eat a whole pizza and go on stage.
I'm so dumb.
It's like it takes away like 30% of my mind capacity.
forrest galante
Clarity, yeah.
So let me ask you this, and if you've covered this kind of stuff before, by all means, we can skip over it.
Do you get more aggressive when you're on the carnivore diet?
joe rogan
I think you do.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Why?
forrest galante
Well, you think about carnivores worldwide, right?
Taking humans out of the equation, just pure carnivores, lions, wolves, so on and so forth.
There's definitely a correlation between the need to eat meat and the drive for eating meat.
And that drive comes from aggression.
That's why they're fighting.
That's why they're in competition.
That's why they're at the top of the food chain.
So this is a personal theory that's grounded in nothing.
But I would think when you're eating nothing but meat, which is going to spike your testosterone, it's going to make you feel and act more like a carnivore and less like an omnivore.
And be more aggressive and be more dominant.
I don't know.
Again, you've had people on the show far more qualified, but it's just thinking as a biologist who's studied carnivores, you see that aggression comes from a place of, it's cyclical.
The food makes them aggressive, the aggression makes them acquire food.
joe rogan
Yeah, I noticed that the first time I did it.
The first time I did it, the very first carnivore month, I noticed, I was like, God, I feel a little aggro.
But I also wonder, because that was when I went very strict carnivore, and I was having a really hard time working out.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
Like my workouts were pretty diminished.
And I think maybe I wasn't exerting enough energy.
forrest galante
Interesting.
joe rogan
Because my body's very accustomed to working out really hard almost every day.
unidentified
Sure.
joe rogan
So it's like, I feel like if you just maintain, like if you get your body to a point where it's accustomed To, like, exertion, especially explosive exertion, jujitsu, kickboxing, kettlebells, like that kind of thing.
My body's very accustomed to that.
Sure.
And so when I backed off of it, I wonder if that is what was responsible.
forrest galante
Because you had this pent-up.
joe rogan
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
forrest galante
Makes sense.
Interesting.
joe rogan
And then I think on top of that, there's the only eating meat thing.
And then I also think maybe it's not that that gets you aggressive, but that the bread and the pasta sedates you.
forrest galante
That's probably more accurate.
joe rogan
Probably more accurate.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, you're right.
Yeah, I think that's probably it.
forrest galante
I feel like crap, and I'm not strict on diet like you are or anything, but if I eat a big bowl of pasta or half a pizza, it's the same thing.
You just feel like, I'm going to go sit on the couch.
I'm not going to do anything.
joe rogan
It makes a difference.
Anybody who says it doesn't is in denial.
You just really like bread and pasta.
forrest galante
Which is understandable, because it's delicious.
joe rogan
It's the best.
I fucking love it, man.
But I just limit it to treats, and I know that I'm going to get wrecked.
I almost feel like it's me going out and getting drunk.
I don't like to do that very often, but when I do do it, let's go.
forrest galante
Eat a cake.
joe rogan
Eat a whole cake.
Eat a whole cake.
unidentified
Good for you.
joe rogan
But if I have to choose between cake and pasta, I go pasta every time.
unidentified
Oh, really?
joe rogan
Yeah, sweets are okay.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
Sweets are okay, but I'll have a small bowl of ice cream and it doesn't seem to affect me very much.
I don't think it's the sugar, and sugar clearly does affect me, but I think the big effect is the bread.
forrest galante
Oh, interesting.
joe rogan
Yeah, I don't think my body likes that.
And in fact, my daughters have legitimate gluten sensitivities.
They have allergies.
Yeah, like they've gone to allergists to get tested.
And one of my daughters is allergic to basically like all kinds of stuff.
She's allergic to dogs and cats and horses.
forrest galante
You have a dog, don't you?
joe rogan
Yeah, but he's washed.
forrest galante
Gotcha.
joe rogan
He's clean all the time.
And they're used to him.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
And we had dogs before him.
They've always had dogs.
forrest galante
So they've grown up with it.
joe rogan
Yeah.
forrest galante
And that doesn't develop an immunity over time?
joe rogan
I think it does.
forrest galante
Okay.
I would think so.
joe rogan
But cats didn't.
The cat thing is rough with them.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
You know, like their grandmother has cats in her house.
And when we go over there, they don't react very well.
Huh.
Yeah.
Cats, like that cat dander, the thing is you can't wash a cat.
Right.
forrest galante
Right.
They don't scratch you to shit.
joe rogan
When I wash my dog, he likes it.
He's getting a massage.
He's like, oh yeah, man, rub my back.
My cat's like, wow!
unidentified
Wow!
joe rogan
Don't try to fuck you up.
You try to wash them in a sink.
Some cats you can, though.
forrest galante
Yes.
joe rogan
Some cats are calm.
forrest galante
I have no allergies to a house cat that I've ever experienced.
Rub a cat in my face, whatever, right?
We don't have a cat, but I've just never been allergic to one.
If I'm around big cats, lions, elephants, or sorry, elephants, lions, tigers, not that I've been that close to tigers, but with lions hands-on and stuff, I am dripping my nose, my eyes, everything.
So I don't know what the divide is there, but yeah, I definitely have a major allergy to big cats.
joe rogan
My daughter has a major allergy to horses, to the point where we were in Italy, and we got a ride on one of those horse-driven carriages in Rome.
And we're like, oh, this will be fun, get driven around.
And my daughter's eyes started swelling, and then we realized, like, oh, she's having a reaction to the horse, and it's up there.
It's just being downwind of this horse.
Outside!
Outside!
forrest galante
Crazy.
That sensitive.
joe rogan
Oh yeah, very sensitive.
So we got off the thing and we had to get to a pharmacy and find some like Benadrine or some shit.
Whatever their Italian equivalent is.
forrest galante
Benadrilla!
Can I tell you a funny allergy reaction story?
joe rogan
Sure.
forrest galante
So we're working in the Amazon 2019 and we got this camera guy.
His name's Johnny, right?
We call him Boogie.
He's got these big old knees.
He always wears cargo shorts.
Ridiculous looking guy.
joe rogan
He's got big knees?
forrest galante
He's all knees, because he's got long legs and a tall guy.
Anyway, we love Johnny.
So we love Johnny, and we're working in this area that has these parasitic wasps.
And these wasps are attracted to our headlights, because we're working at night, we're doing crocodile work.
And so every night we're getting zapped in the neck and in the face, like one or two, whatever.
My one cameraman, Mitch, he has a pretty bad reaction, puffy eyes, has to get the EpiPen, everything, right?
We're hanging out at camp like one of the mornings after everything, you know, getting stung up every night, it blows, whatever, but it's not the end of the world.
And you hear Johnny, our camera guy, hops out of his hammock and he goes, oh shit!
And we're like, look, and he's dancing around like holding his junk, right?
joe rogan
Oh no.
forrest galante
And we're like, ah ha ha, you got stung, you got stung.
One of these parasitic wasps flew up his shorts and got him on the tip, right on the head.
unidentified
Oh!
forrest galante
It gets so much better, Joe.
joe rogan
Oh no, it planted something in there?
forrest galante
No, not quite.
So he's dancing around, he's howling about his dick, and we're laughing our asses off and making fun of him, right?
As you do with a group of guys in the jungle on a field expedition.
And we have this medic named Josh.
He's like the calmest, quietest, you know, he's like your typical military medic.
He's never going to get upset or excited because it just makes everybody get upset and excited, right?
And Johnny, after a couple hours, he goes to Josh and he's like, hey man, I'm like...
Can you take a look at this?
And we're all like, we're in camp watching this go down.
And we're like, yeah, we gotta just keep an eye on what happens.
And Johnny goes sort of around the trees and Josh is with him.
He pulls his pants down.
We can't see anything.
We just see Josh's back.
And Josh goes, oh, shit!
Like, this is coming from the medic.
And so we just, like, burst into laughter.
And we're like, we gotta see this thing, Johnny.
What is it?
Like, we gotta see it.
Dude, Joe, it looked like a baby's arm holding an apple.
unidentified
Like, it was just, the head was the size of a softball.
Apple?
joe rogan
It was that big?
forrest galante
It was so big.
And Johnny was like, what am I going to do?
Like, my penis is never going to work again.
joe rogan
Oh, my God.
forrest galante
And we're like two days from anything.
And so, anyway, the medic treated it.
He gave it a shot, whatever, whatever.
joe rogan
Did it work?
forrest galante
Yeah, it did.
The shot worked?
It did.
Johnny said it took like three weeks for it to come down all the way.
But it went down the majority of it that night.
joe rogan
I wonder if he jerked off during those three weeks.
forrest galante
I'm certain he did, yeah.
joe rogan
Oh, my God.
Imagine.
forrest galante
Dude, I've never seen anything like it.
joe rogan
Imagine if, like, when you nutted, you screamed in pain because you're stupid enough.
jamie vernon
I shouldn't have heard the story, and I shouldn't bring it up.
forrest galante
You should.
joe rogan
Yeah, definitely bring it up.
jamie vernon
It said it was a 12-year-old boy shoved a thermometer down the hole while he was masturbating, and it got stuck.
forrest galante
You're right, Jamie.
You should not have brought that up.
jamie vernon
So they had to go and do a keyhole surgery to get it out because it would have fucked up the organs or something crazy.
unidentified
Oh, my God.
joe rogan
Oh, my God, you dummy.
What kind of crazy kid is that?
What's he gonna be like when he's 30?
He's 12, he's stuck in thermometers in his dick hole.
forrest galante
While we're on the dick hole conversation, do you know about the Kandiru?
joe rogan
Yes.
forrest galante
Okay, do you know how they have to get it out?
joe rogan
No.
forrest galante
Okay, so for those that don't know...
joe rogan
Chinese boy, 12, shoved a thermometer down his...
Look at how they write thermometer in all capital letters.
Down his penis.
Needs it surgically removed from his bladder after pushing it too far.
unidentified
Dude.
joe rogan
Oh, Jesus.
jamie vernon
He dealt with it for nine hours.
joe rogan
But look at this.
Boy opted to insert the object into...
He opted.
jamie vernon
Opted.
joe rogan
Ah, he opted.
jamie vernon
As opposed to...
joe rogan
That's like, you know, choosing your insurance policy.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
It didn't insert the object into his urethra.
A risky practice.
It's risky.
It's called sounding.
It's got a name, so it's so common.
People are so crazy that they've just been stuffing stuff up their dick so many times they came up with a name for it.
When it got stuck, he endured agonizing pain for nine hours before seeking help.
Chinese medics extracted the tool by cutting a tiny surgical hole in his bladder.
unidentified
Yikes.
It definitely didn't come from any app, I'm sure, that idea.
jamie vernon
I'm sure you didn't get the idea from an app.
From an app?
unidentified
Yeah.
Why from an app?
jamie vernon
Where would a 12-year-old get an idea like that?
joe rogan
Oh, like TikTok?
forrest galante
He's saying it's a TikTok thing.
joe rogan
You think so?
jamie vernon
I'm not saying that.
joe rogan
Well, their TikTok is very regulated.
jamie vernon
I've never used it.
joe rogan
You're right.
We're just talking out of our ass.
That's a good point.
forrest galante
Very good point.
Candiru.
joe rogan
Yeah.
You should explain what it is.
It swims up your dick hole.
forrest galante
So it's this tiny parasitic catfish in the Amazon.
And what it does is it's attracted to urea, which comes out of fish's gills.
And it's a parasite, so it swims into fish's gills and lodges its spines into those fish's gills to feed.
But this nasty little bugger, because it's attracted to urea, will swim up your urethra.
Now, that's all fine and well, if you will, but it has reversed facing spines, so once it swims in, there's no swimming back out.
The same spines it uses to lodge into fish gills.
unidentified
Oh, boy.
forrest galante
No, that's a lamprey.
That's nonsense.
But once it's lodged in, the only way to get it out is to butterfly.
unidentified
Oh!
forrest galante
And lift it out.
joe rogan
Oh, God.
forrest galante
I'm not even gonna say it.
joe rogan
How often does that happen?
forrest galante
I don't think it's very regular, but yeah.
I can tell you when I'm in the Amazon, I'm like peeing back and forth just because I'm scared something will like swim up the stream.
joe rogan
Yeah, when you pee, like, are these people peeing with pants on?
forrest galante
I think so, yeah.
joe rogan
They wear shorts and still swims up the legs and gets in there?
forrest galante
I mean, I think it's just incredibly unlucky, but it's happened a lot more than once.
It's a relatively regular thing.
joe rogan
Oh, is that an operation?
forrest galante
Oh, look at that Reddit picture.
That's not real.
That's not real, but that's funny.
jamie vernon
This one is probably...
unidentified
Oh my god, get out of here.
joe rogan
Oh, get out of here.
I don't want to see this.
forrest galante
Yeah, it's a fun show.
joe rogan
Yeah, everything's trying to kill you.
Everything's trying to kill you.
unidentified
But I go into the forest with a peaceful intention.
joe rogan
I am your friend.
I am here to wander.
Do not eat me.
forrest galante
Please, fish, don't swim up into my urinary tract.
unidentified
Plus, I only eat vegetables so they know that I'm in harmony.
joe rogan
Well, so does a deer, bitch.
Dear only vegetables, too.
They fucked them up.
forrest galante
She's gonna be listening to this podcast and be very upset.
joe rogan
She does not listen to my podcast.
I will guarantee you that.
She's a nice lady, though.
She's just kind of wacko.
But a lot of them yoga people are wacko.
It's like something about that path.
forrest galante
I live in Santa Barbara, trust me.
joe rogan
Oh yeah, there's a lot of them up there.
A lot of rich ladies.
They try to find meaning after the kids leave the house.
They really get into yoga.
forrest galante
Right, or into their yoga instructor sometimes.
joe rogan
Oh, there was a yoga instructor that I knew that was doing that.
He was banging all these ladies.
He was so cheesy.
I couldn't believe it worked.
forrest galante
Like the ponytail?
joe rogan
Yeah, he didn't have the ponytail, but he would sing yoga songs in class, but he was like, Really into himself.
forrest galante
Yikes.
joe rogan
You know, people just give off a vibe.
Like, damn, bro.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
You know, like, almost like a televangelist-y vibe.
unidentified
Mm-hmm.
forrest galante
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
I'm sure he'd be a great cult leader.
joe rogan
Yeah.
No, not really.
No.
Only for dummies.
forrest galante
Yeah.
unidentified
Wow.
joe rogan
It wouldn't work.
You gotta, like, to be a really good cult leader, like, I think it's like a balancing act.
forrest galante
Well, you have to trick everybody into your thing, right?
Right.
Which takes some smarts, for sure.
joe rogan
There's a lot of them out there, though.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
I don't think you have to be that good to be a cult leader.
forrest galante
No?
joe rogan
You could be pretty shitty at it.
forrest galante
How do you find your followers?
joe rogan
That's a good question.
I think you start off being a self-help guru.
forrest galante
Oh, that makes sense.
joe rogan
Self-help guru, and then you eventually move people into some sort of a communal situation.
forrest galante
Yep.
joe rogan
Like, we don't need society.
We can do it better.
I'll be your leader.
And then he's banging everybody's wife and he wants all your money.
forrest galante
Doesn't sound terrible.
unidentified
It does if you're the guy whose wife is getting banged.
You're like, honey, I thought we were just going to be peaceful out here living off the land.
joe rogan
Well, you know, he wants to bless me.
forrest galante
Again, on Tuesday.
joe rogan
With his sex.
Parasitic wasps freak me out.
And there's a shitload of them.
forrest galante
There's so many.
joe rogan
There's so many species of parasitic wasps.
Yeah.
That's what's really fascinating.
And not only just parasitic in terms of entering humans, but also they inject their larvae into plants and logs and shit.
forrest galante
And can manipulate certain spiders, like the brain process, and like tarantula wasps, which we have in the States, are incredible.
You know, they can come down, lay eggs into a tarantula.
That manipulates the behavior of the tarantula, something about the chemicals and the brain chemistry, and then the eggs hatch out of the thing.
joe rogan
I thought it kills the tarantula first.
forrest galante
It does.
No, not first.
joe rogan
Eventually.
Oh, I was confused.
Well, I know...
I think I'm thinking of something else.
forrest galante
I might be mixing them up with another one, too.
There's so many.
joe rogan
Yeah.
I've read there's like a hundred.
There's like a hundred different parasitic wasps.
forrest galante
Yeah.
Isn't that crazy?
joe rogan
Nuts!
What a weird thing that nature has invented this creature that shoves its babies into some other creature's body with a needle.
forrest galante
Yep.
joe rogan
Look at this.
So this is the...
jamie vernon
This is a tarantula hawk going after a tarantula.
unidentified
Yeah.
jamie vernon
It's also parasitic.
joe rogan
Stinging it from the bottom.
Yeah, that's...
jamie vernon
I've never seen a tarantula stand up like that.
joe rogan
Yeah, he's like...
forrest galante
Getting slow.
joe rogan
He's like, oh boy, I'm confused.
So look how it crawls on its back.
forrest galante
Isn't that crazy?
joe rogan
And then jabs it in the body.
That's what's nuts.
Look how it reaches up.
Oh, I think he's dead.
forrest galante
I think you're right.
It does kill that.
Oh, you're right.
joe rogan
Ross will leave a single egg inside the spider's belly once it's paralyzed.
What a fucking nutty situation.
jamie vernon
It's changing the oil.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Well, there's so many of them, and then there's even more bizarre shit.
forrest galante
See that?
joe rogan
When the egg hatches, the wasp will eat the spider from the inside out.
Yikes!
And then there's even weirder shit, which is fungus.
forrest galante
Yes.
joe rogan
Like, fungus that, like...
forrest galante
I saw that for the first time recently in India.
unidentified
Really?
forrest galante
Yeah, I was finding these, um, hollowed out, I forget, like exoskeletons of mantises and all kinds of beetles that had mushrooms growing out of their heads, like weird, tentacly, yeah, and it was, um, you know, I only know about it what I've read about it and seen, I've never, it's not something I've been very deeply involved in, but the idea that a mushroom can manipulate the brain chemistry of a living creature It's unbelievable.
joe rogan
It's wild.
Not only does it manipulate it, but when they hatch, when the spores explode to infect all the other bugs around them.
unidentified
Right.
forrest galante
In like a vast area too.
And it's all transmitted by air.
So they just have to like be around and then it's like, oh, now I got a mushroom growing out my brain.
joe rogan
And what's also wild is that ants realize this is happening.
So they will drag an infected ant far away from their colony.
forrest galante
Oh, I didn't know that.
joe rogan
So that it explodes on its own.
forrest galante
That's fascinating.
joe rogan
I didn't know that.
Yeah, they figured it out.
How do ants fucking communicate?
Because if you see leafcutter ants, which I have in my neighborhood, leafcutter ants colonies that they have underground, where there are these sophisticated systems of ventilation, and they're literally fermenting leaves down there.
It's like, what?
forrest galante
I know.
joe rogan
How do you know?
How are you doing this?
How are you building a village?
forrest galante
And just recently I saw this thing where these ants made a rope to cross this big bit.
joe rogan
Yes, I saw that.
forrest galante
It's incredible.
joe rogan
They linked arms.
Someone's going to drown.
Someone has to go down.
unidentified
They have to.
joe rogan
If you think about that when they let go, everyone's not going to make it.
forrest galante
But that's what's so amazing about things like ants and bees is that hive mind, they don't all have to make it.
joe rogan
Right.
forrest galante
And that's like, it's for the greater good of the hive.
joe rogan
Yeah, here it is.
forrest galante
Yeah, this is the same exact one.
joe rogan
This is fucking bonkers, man.
Army ants build a bridge to invade wasp nest.
forrest galante
Yeah, look at that.
See the eggs?
They're carrying the wasp eggs out of the nest.
joe rogan
Oh my god, what a bunch of creeps.
forrest galante
I do a podcast called The Wild Times, and we were looking at this on The Wild Times podcast, and everybody that commented was like, there's a rope in the middle of that.
That's not real.
There's no rope.
No, look, you can see right through it.
joe rogan
That's what's crazy.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Is that it's just all ants.
forrest galante
That is just bodies.
That is just ant bodies working in this hive mind to figure out how collectively to accomplish a task as one unit.
unidentified
It's unbelievable.
joe rogan
Why'd they make such a long rope?
That's pretty stupid.
I guess they probably had to just swing over there.
unidentified
I don't know.
joe rogan
How did they swing over there?
unidentified
Right.
forrest galante
How was it connected?
joe rogan
Right.
How are they doing that?
forrest galante
I don't know.
joe rogan
How did they swing?
Imagine how fucking strong the ants at the very top that are hanging on to the board.
forrest galante
Holding the whole...
joe rogan
Holding a giant rope of ants.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
That are all a bunch of egg stealers.
forrest galante
You can see right through it.
Look at that.
It's unbelievable.
unidentified
It is nuts.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
It's really nuts.
What a crazy organism.
forrest galante
Yeah, it's fascinating.
joe rogan
And the fact that the biomass of ants, I think the biomass of ants on Earth is equal to the biomass of humans.
forrest galante
Oh, really?
I thought it was actually more.
unidentified
Really?
forrest galante
I thought there was more biomass of ants than there are of human beings.
joe rogan
Wow, is that true?
Let's find out that.
It's pretty impressive enough with 8 billion fatso humans.
jamie vernon
Correct.
forrest galante
And these little bitty things.
joe rogan
These little tiny things weigh as much as us.
If they weigh more, that's even crazier.
forrest galante
I used to work on a project.
joe rogan
See what that number is.
jamie vernon
Hold on, I'm trying to understand it.
It says the ant biomass is around 20% of human biomass, or the mass of carbon from nearly 8 billion humans now living.
I don't understand what it's saying.
forrest galante
Mass of carbon?
jamie vernon
I don't know why I brought that up.
The ant biomass also weighs around 12 megatons, which is about the equivalent of two pyramids of Giza on a scale.
unidentified
Wow.
forrest galante
That's cool.
joe rogan
That's two pyramids of ants.
jamie vernon
This other thing says ants make two-thirds of all the insects.
joe rogan
Really?
So it's only 20% of the biomass, human biomass.
Oh.
forrest galante
I was totally wrong.
joe rogan
Sounds better when you say as much.
forrest galante
Yeah, let's go back to the other way.
joe rogan
Even 20% when you see how fucking little they are.
forrest galante
Yeah, I know.
joe rogan
I mean, what are they, what, one millionth of a human?
forrest galante
If that, right.
Yeah, they weigh nothing.
I used to work at the California Channel Islands in front of Santa Barbara, where I live, and one of the projects that I worked on for way too long was ant eradication.
So they were trying to restore the Channel Islands back to, you know, before human settlement and really just rewild them and keep them pristine.
And the most difficult species to remove, hands down, were the Argentinian ants.
So all over California, we have these invasive Argentine ants, and they, you know, on one boat or another, they'd made it over to the islands, and it's just like, how do you remove that?
You know, it's easy to remove pigs or sheep or whatever from an island, because it's a closed-off area, but trying to remove millions of ants, I mean, it's just...
It's massively difficult.
joe rogan
The Channel Islands, I think it's the Channel Islands, used to be a big bow hunting destination.
forrest galante
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, because they used to have a bunch of different species that someone had brought over there at one point in time, like elk and deer, and they killed them all from a helicopter.
forrest galante
So there was elk on Santa Rosa, and then Santa Cruz, which is the biggest one, had sheep and pigs.
I think goats as well back in the day.
And then, you know, even Catalina still has bison.
And for a while they opened up...
joe rogan
They're like farmed, right?
They're not wild.
forrest galante
Yeah, they're not wild.
I mean, they're like...
Semi-wild, right?
They just reproduce, but it's all very managed.
But for a while, they opened up tag hunting, like, come out and get your elk and get your pig.
But then, eventually, the state just said, like, we gotta do something about it.
And this was kind of interesting.
The pigs on Santa Cruz Island, have you heard about the Judas goat?
Do you know what that is?
joe rogan
Yes.
Yeah.
forrest galante
So they did.
joe rogan
Explain that.
unidentified
Yeah.
forrest galante
The Judas goat is what happens when you can't.
joe rogan
They did it in Galapagos, right?
forrest galante
I think so.
I think that might be where it started.
But the Judas goat is a process in which, say you're trying to eradicate goats from an island.
Well, the goats wake up.
They get aware that there's a helicopter buzzing overhead and somebody's shooting them and they all start scattering and getting scared and it becomes harder and harder to get the last 10%.
So 10% of the work is eradicating 90% of the animals and then 90% of the work is getting the last 10% of the animals.
So, they do this thing called a Judas goat, where they go and catch a goat, put a collar on it, and then let the goat go, and the goat finds its friends 100% of the time, and they mow down all of the other animals and leave the Judas goat, who then pops over to the next group of goats.
So, you're a real shitty friend if you're the Judas goat.
joe rogan
Or you're just dumb as shit, and you're being manipulated by people.
unidentified
True.
joe rogan
I think they castrate them, too.
forrest galante
Yeah, I'm sure.
I'm sure, yeah.
But, um...
Anyway, yeah, so the Channel Islands, they got rid of all the sheep, got rid of the goats, if there were goats, I'm not sure, turkey, a few other things, but they couldn't get rid of the pigs.
And so they brought in hunters for a while, they opened it up, pig guys came and shot them, and then they tried to get guys, I think actually from here, from Texas, to come and fly and shoot the pigs and stuff, and the Channel Islands, Santa Cruz Island in particular, is so canyonous and difficult, they're having a really hard time, and for whatever reason, they brought in these helicopter pilots from New Zealand, who fly the fjords down there, And I was lucky enough to work on some of these projects, so I was actually in those helicopters going through these slot canyons and stuff.
It was really cool.
I wasn't doing any pig shooting.
I was going in for ants, like I said, and weeds and some other stuff.
And, yeah, and the helicopter pilots and shooters from New Zealand were the ones who managed to take out the final pigs on Santa Cruz.
joe rogan
Pigs can have three litters a year.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
That's what's nuts.
forrest galante
Well, we have, what is it, six million pigs in the United States now?
They came from 11. LAUGHTER Is that real?
unidentified
Yeah.
forrest galante
Wow.
11 pigs that were dropped off in Florida.
I think mainland Florida, maybe the Keys, but 11 pigs is what they believe.
joe rogan
And that was by the Spaniards, right?
forrest galante
Correct.
Yeah.
joe rogan
Nuts.
forrest galante
Isn't that crazy?
joe rogan
I mean, that's crazy, but maybe it's even crazier the fact that they brought smallpox as well and killed 90% of the Native Americans.
Yeah, that's nuts.
forrest galante
That's a little worse.
joe rogan
Yeah.
When you tell people that, because so many people, most people are aware there was a genocide of Native Americans.
unidentified
Sure.
joe rogan
But most people are not aware that most of it was due to disease.
forrest galante
Right.
joe rogan
When I had explained that to someone that it was 90% of the people were killed by smallpox, they were like, what?
forrest galante
And it was purposely introduced disease, correct?
joe rogan
I don't believe so.
forrest galante
Oh, it just came with people?
joe rogan
Yeah, it just came with people.
forrest galante
Interesting.
joe rogan
I mean, I don't think they really understood how to introduce diseases back then.
unidentified
I see.
joe rogan
Like the idea that they thought that you could have it on a blanket.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's true.
forrest galante
Oh, interesting.
joe rogan
Let's find that out.
I believe that myth has been busted.
But they know now that that's what killed off the Mayans.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
Because there was always this big mystery.
Like, where did the Mayans go?
forrest galante
Where did these people go?
joe rogan
They had this incredible civilization, so complex, and mimicked the cosmos and their architecture.
There's no evidence that the scheme worked.
forrest galante
Oh, this is regarding the blanket.
joe rogan
The infection of the blankets was apparently old, so no one could catch smallpox from the blankets.
Besides, the Indians just had smallpox.
Smallpox had reached Fort Pitt and had come from Indians, and anyone susceptible to smallpox had already had it.
Yeah, I just think it was just a thing that people had, and they brought it over, and then it killed everybody.
It also killed everybody in the Amazon.
forrest galante
And people here in the Americas had no tolerance to it, right?
Because they hadn't evolved alongside the disease, which had evolved over thousands of years or millions of years.
joe rogan
They had no natural immunity to it.
And then that's also what they believe was responsible for decimating the Amazon.
They think the Amazon had millions of people.
forrest galante
The Incans and the Mayans and all those things.
joe rogan
All those people.
forrest galante
I didn't realize that.
That's really interesting.
joe rogan
The really wild stuff that's being done on the Amazon is LIDAR. Oh, I know.
Where they're finding all this evidence of these ancient structures that were just overcome by the jungle.
forrest galante
Have you seen the Honduran Lost City of the Monkey God?
joe rogan
Yes.
forrest galante
There's a legit full civilization in Honduras.
Like a bustling city that they found in LIDAR two or three years ago.
Using LIDAR two or three years ago.
joe rogan
Just empty.
forrest galante
Empty.
But like a full scale city.
Not like a village or a town.
Like tens of thousands.
Yeah, look at that.
joe rogan
Fucking wild.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
But it totally makes sense, man, if you bring in smallpox.
I mean, smallpox kills like 90% of the people that get it.
forrest galante
Right, right.
joe rogan
So it just fucking decimated the populations of these places where these European settlers made through.
That's the whole story behind the lost city of Z, you know?
forrest galante
Well, I knew that the city went away, and Percy went to look for it with his son and his son's friend, blah, blah, blah, but I didn't realize that the idea that smallpox had wiped it out was the reason behind it.
joe rogan
Well, the theory behind it is, and all sorts of diseases, not just smallpox, but that when the Europeans first came through, when they first reported about these immense cities...
forrest galante
They were there.
joe rogan
Yeah, they were there.
And so then when people came back, like, a hundred years later, they're like, this is bullshit.
Because the jungle would just overcome everything.
forrest galante
And it can in so little time.
joe rogan
So little time.
forrest galante
It's crazy.
The rate of growth when the jungle's left alone is unbelievable.
joe rogan
And then there's the weirdness that the jungle itself is actually man-made.
forrest galante
Whoa, hold on.
joe rogan
I don't know about this.
Yeah, you didn't know that?
forrest galante
No, tell me.
joe rogan
Yes, most of the plants that are overwhelming the rainforest are from agriculture.
forrest galante
From ancient civilizations.
joe rogan
Yeah, I think it's like the ice cream bean tree and a bunch of other different trees.
But these trees were all trees that had been grown.
Yes, it is actually man-made.
One of thousands of earthworks built by remarkable but little-known ancient societies.
The Amazon prior to the arrival of Europeans in the Americas in 1492 is commonly depicted as a pristine wilderness dotted with small, simple communities.
Wow.
The Amazon rainforest created.
Yeah, click on that one.
This supposedly pristine, untouched Amazon rainforest was actually shaped by humans.
Over thousands of years, native people played a strong role in molding the ecology of this vast wilderness.
So these trees that overwhelm the rainforest, they were planted.
forrest galante
They're cultivated.
joe rogan
Yeah, and then they just, they became, they just run amok.
forrest galante
Interesting.
joe rogan
Yeah, they're just really fertile in the ground.
They had developed this type, was it called terra prata?
Terra Prada?
Is that what it's called?
They had developed a very specific type of soil that they actually...
unidentified
Oh, yes.
forrest galante
I know about this.
And we've been unable to replicate it.
joe rogan
Exactly.
forrest galante
Yes, I do know a bit about that.
Yeah.
But I guess the difference...
joe rogan
Terra Prada.
forrest galante
Yeah, that's it.
But I guess the difference being those were all native plants, right?
So while the Amazon may have been cultivated by different tribes in the Amazon, they're not getting those plants or trees from anywhere but the immediate surrounding area, right?
I mean, maybe not immediate, but within the South Americas.
joe rogan
I'm not exactly sure.
unidentified
Right?
forrest galante
Because it's not like they're importing olives from Spain, right?
They're using the resources.
joe rogan
Yeah, I don't think they're saying they're invasive.
I'm just thinking they're cultivated.
forrest galante
But that's fascinating.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's amazing.
forrest galante
Because you certainly don't think of that.
And you don't think of, at least in today's world, I don't think of the Amazon as being populous.
I mean, I'm not talking about Manaus and cities.
I'm talking about the wild Amazon.
You don't think of civilizations being able to impact...
That much vastness.
joe rogan
Graham Hancock thinks there was 20 million people living in it.
forrest galante
20 million?
joe rogan
Yeah.
forrest galante
Wow.
That's unbelievable.
joe rogan
He thinks it is a vast society.
forrest galante
Wow.
joe rogan
It was filled with human beings and structures.
And this is all being, like, they have only used LIDAR in a very small percentage of the Amazon.
forrest galante
Of course, yeah.
joe rogan
And they're showing all sorts of structures and irrigation systems and grids that indicate cities and blocks.
It's wild stuff, man.
forrest galante
I mean, it sort of makes sense in the sense of the abundance of resources down there.
It's easy to grow a population when you have so much natural resources.
Everything that you plant grows.
There's another side of that argument that I've heard paleontologists make, where when things are too easy, people don't evolve.
That's a different side of that coin.
But if you think about it from a logical standpoint of when things are easy, it's easy to increase your population.
When you're not fighting for survival every day because there's coconuts and palm trees and blah, blah, blah, blah, it's easy to reproduce and have more kids and grow a society versus when you're spending half of your life just trying to get by.
joe rogan
That's an interesting argument that when things are easy that people don't grow or evolve.
That seems weird to me because it would seem to me that once your resources were taken care of, once you have food and shelter, you have more time to think.
So you have more time to make life convenient, more time to sell goods that would be valuable to people, more time to improve and innovate on those goods.
forrest galante
But the argument is when things are too easy, you don't push the status quo.
So because there are so many abundant resources, you have no need to develop tools and technologies that advance society.
So the argument, I don't remember the scientists that said this, it's basically if you look along the band of the equator, those are at this time.
And this is an older, older publication, I believe.
Those were the least developed societies in the world.
As you get further away from the equator, you know, up into the Arctic, not the Arctic, but like up into Scandinavia and so on and so forth, you get more and more advanced civilizations.
unidentified
Hmm.
forrest galante
Because when there's a hard winter coming or it's just harder to survive, even though there's abundant resources, you need to adapt and overcome and develop in order to prepare for that winter, in order to prepare for a famine time period versus when it's all just available to you at any time.
joe rogan
The reason why that doesn't make any sense is Egypt.
forrest galante
Sure.
joe rogan
That doesn't make any sense because that's the absolutely most sophisticated culture pre what we understand of history.
unidentified
Yeah, true.
forrest galante
But not on the equator.
It is quite far from the equator.
joe rogan
It is far from the equator, but it's also like very, very lush.
forrest galante
Very.
joe rogan
Like the Nile Valley, they think, you know, 9,000 plus years ago was like extremely lush, which is one of the reasons why they were able to reach this high level of sophistication is because they had access to resources.
forrest galante
Which aligns with the idea that the Amazon had the same things.
And I agree with you, by the way.
I think that if you have an abundance of food and resources, you have a better ability to create.
joe rogan
Yeah, that makes more sense to me, but I don't think they're mutually exclusive.
I think both things could exist.
forrest galante
I agree.
joe rogan
Like, you could have it too easy, or you could have it to the point where there's plenty of food to hunt and gather, and you see no need to move out of the hunter-gatherer stage.
Sure.
But then you could also see, like, super sophisticated societies that lived in that area, like they think the Amazon was.
forrest galante
Right, right.
joe rogan
That they would innovate.
forrest galante
Totally.
joe rogan
Yeah, and it makes sense.
Also, you have a large population.
Even if it's a small percentage of people innovating, it's going to...
It's gonna impact the great number of people.
forrest galante
If you have enough people, there's gonna be people that are creating, right?
There's no way there aren't.
joe rogan
Yeah, and then people came through there with their cough and coughed on everybody and fucking killed them off.
forrest galante
That's that.
joe rogan
It's just really wild, man.
It's really wild if you think if that is true, that how horrific that is that they just basically reset everybody back to the Stone Age.
forrest galante
And if you think about, has that happened before, and will it happen again?
I remember distinctly thinking, well, at first, I think I might have told you this story, when COVID hit, I was in Indonesia, and I was like, this is stupid, it's like bird flu, it'll all be over in 10 days, and boy, was I wrong.
But I remember shortly after that, distinctly thinking, like, this might be the beginning of the collapse, right?
Like, this could be where...
Human population collapses like this is the plane that the planet has been waiting for this is our this generation of smallpox but it it obviously science and medicine overcame that at too fast of a rate and it really wasn't that lethal but it wasn't it was the fact that it wasn't lethal right even if science and medicine didn't do anything it wasn't gonna kill everybody off true true but I remember thinking because there's a lot of hysteria around yeah you know I remember thinking maybe this is it but I guess my point being do you think that that's gonna happen again It certainly could.
joe rogan
I mean, it has before.
It probably will again.
I mean, I was scared of it, too.
In March of 2020, I thought, oh my god, it's going down.
When they were shutting the country down, I was like, Jesus Christ, we're living in a movie.
forrest galante
Everything, right?
You couldn't go into a hospital.
You couldn't visit a grocery.
Everything.
It felt like the whole world was collapsing.
joe rogan
The problem is there was an irresponsible level of fear that was promoted by the media because the media has an interest in getting you to pay attention to what they're saying.
And that irresponsible level of fear, the problem with that is like even if they know what they're doing, they know that it's propaganda, people get sucked in and then they get scared forever.
And if you don't ever give them good data and you're always exaggerating the threat and exaggerating the death number...
Dr. Lina Nguyen, who was like the biggest proponent of, you know, shut everything down, shame the unvaccinated, cast them out of society, all that.
Now she's saying that they...
She had a recent article where she said they overestimated the amount of people that actually died from COVID. And I think she said the real number is about 30% of what they're claiming.
forrest galante
Oh, you're kidding.
Oh, wow.
joe rogan
Because when you die of COVID, if you also have cancer, if you're dying of something else, but you test positive for COVID, they call it a COVID death.
forrest galante
They call it a COVID death.
I remember reading that.
joe rogan
Even accidents and even people that like, because there was a financial incentive.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
It was just part of the problem.
Dr. Lina Wen slammed after admitting there's been an over counting of COVID deaths two and a half years late.
Wen claimed the actual COVID-19 death could be only 30% of what's currently reported.
There's also been, I mean, I don't know how the system exactly works, but there's been doctors that explained what incentive there is to put someone on a ventilator, what incentive there is to prescribe remdesivir.
forrest galante
Because it's all financial decisions, right?
Exactly.
joe rogan
Because of the emergency use authorization, because of the pandemic, there's all these.
And when you have money involved, things get fucking squirrely.
unidentified
Always.
joe rogan
They get real weird.
forrest galante
Always.
joe rogan
And then, I didn't realize, like, I'm so ignorant.
I didn't know that most hospitals, or a large number of hospitals, are privately owned.
They're businesses.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
I was like, what?
forrest galante
Yeah, you're like, wait a minute.
Where's this money coming from?
joe rogan
Something that the government funds so that we all take care of each other.
forrest galante
Not here.
Not in this country.
joe rogan
No.
And then you have the fact that pharmaceutical companies are responsible for 75% of the ads on television.
forrest galante
Really?
unidentified
Yes.
forrest galante
75%?
joe rogan
75% of the ads on television.
We're one of two countries on earth that allows pharmaceutical companies to advertise.
forrest galante
I had no idea.
joe rogan
The other one is New Zealand and they're far more restrictive than we are.
So you have so much financial incentive.
And we lost people in terms of losing their mind and their anxiety that never came back.
I just saw an article today about how I think it's time to mask up at award shows again.
forrest galante
Oh, really?
joe rogan
Yeah, see how you find that.
I was like, what the fuck are you talking about?
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
It's a cold.
forrest galante
Right.
joe rogan
It's basically gotten down to a cold now.
forrest galante
To the point, yeah, it's become so benign to human beings.
joe rogan
If you're that vulnerable, you shouldn't be going to the award show.
forrest galante
In the first place.
joe rogan
Yes.
If you're not healthy.
forrest galante
Right.
joe rogan
And also.
unidentified
Right, right.
forrest galante
Just make smart choices, right?
Protect yourself.
Stay back.
joe rogan
And there's still, still, after all these years, still, no encouraging people to take vitamin D. No encouraging people to lose weight.
No encouraging people to take care of their overall metabolic health so that they'll have a more robust immune system and they can survive these things.
Right, right.
forrest galante
Nope.
joe rogan
Nothing.
Nothing.
forrest galante
Almost the opposite.
I would say junk food's more prevalent than ever in pushing, you know, that whole...
I mean, fucking...
Lucky Charms, right?
joe rogan
Yeah, the Lucky Charms thing.
It might be time to mask up an award show.
It might be time to stop your fucking award shows.
How about that?
Nobody likes them.
You guys like them.
We don't even like them.
We watch them because there's nothing else.
The kind of people that really like award shows, they wish they were there.
Yeah, that makes sense.
I wish I was getting that award.
forrest galante
I don't think...
Do they even televise them anymore?
I don't even see them anymore.
joe rogan
I mean, they tell us the Oscars.
forrest galante
Yeah.
Well, I mean, I remember when that was like a big thing.
Like, you sit around and watch the Oscars.
I don't think I even heard the last time there was an Oscars.
joe rogan
Yeah, you heard when Will Smith slapped Chris Rock.
forrest galante
I did see that.
joe rogan
That's it.
forrest galante
Yeah, I did see that.
joe rogan
That was the last fucking dying breath of the Oscars, I think.
Yeah.
forrest galante
Interesting.
joe rogan
They don't work.
That's the other thing.
That's the other thing Lena Wynn said.
The cloth masks are essentially facial coverings.
Like, she didn't say that at the beginning of the pandemic, but she said it recently.
forrest galante
Interesting.
joe rogan
On CNN, they're like, huh?
forrest galante
Oh, they must have been very upset.
unidentified
What?
joe rogan
Well, I think she's realizing that her reputation is at stake.
forrest galante
I see.
joe rogan
And she's got to actually report real facts.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
And so that, like, and also the writing on the wall.
Like, when we're looking back at this from five years from now, Or 10 years from now, we're looking at adverse reactions, and we're looking at all these different things, and what we did to kids, how we stunted their development by masking everybody and keeping them at home.
The whole thing's nuts.
And it was a very mild pandemic in terms of, like, the Spanish flu and the Black Plague and the horrific pandemics of the past.
forrest galante
Right, right.
Very true.
I... One of my best friends sadly passed away during COVID in a rock climbing accident.
Not from COVID. But when he went to the hospital, he was climbing in Utah, fell without his helmet, and did his skull in.
And it was terrible.
Tommy Dutra, he was one of my best friends.
Amazing guy.
Incredible athlete.
Anyway, he went to the hospital and his dad called all of us, right?
All of his close friends and his family and everything else.
Nobody was allowed in the hospital.
His own parents had to say goodbye to him over Zoom when they pulled the plug.
joe rogan
Oh, good.
forrest galante
All of it.
It was right during the height of it all.
And because he was getting out and climbing and doing something active during the pandemic, you know, when everybody else was sitting inside, his own fault for not wearing his helmet, so on and so forth.
But terrible tragedy.
But just imagine not being able to say goodbye to your son in that situation because of that whole heightened, like we're talking about the heightened fear thing, right?
The heightened hysteria.
joe rogan
It wasn't even COVID positive.
It doesn't even make sense.
forrest galante
But they weren't allowed in the hospital.
Yeah, unbelievable.
joe rogan
I mean, there's two tragedies simultaneously, right?
The big ones that he died hitting his head while climbing.
forrest galante
Of course, of course, yeah.
joe rogan
What a way to go.
unidentified
Yeah, yeah, poor guy.
forrest galante
But he died doing what he loved, though.
He was an incredible climber and very passionate about it, so, you know.
joe rogan
Yeah, I talked to Gabor Mate about that, who's an expert in addictions and trauma, and he thinks that people that are drawn to free solo climbing, like the Alex Honnold types of the world...
forrest galante
The addiction of the adrenaline.
joe rogan
He's like, there's something wrong with the way they developed, and they're muted.
And maybe because of so much persistent trauma when they were young...
forrest galante
Oh, interesting.
joe rogan
I forget exactly how he described it, but that this is a reaction to trauma, like youthful trauma.
forrest galante
So they're putting themselves in trauma's way or harm's way to compensate for something that's happened historically.
joe rogan
They're putting themselves in trauma's way because that's the only way they feel things.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
I mean, I... Well, that's the only way they feel alive.
Like, they get this...
I don't know how you feel what someone else feels.
unidentified
Right.
forrest galante
How would you really know?
How do you answer that?
Yeah, right.
I mean, I can sort of understand that in a sense of, like, I'm not an adrenaline junkie.
Like, I don't go for skydives or, you know, any of that stuff.
It doesn't drive me.
But that thrill and rush I get of, you know, darting a bear or working with a lion or doing, you know, swimming with an anaconda, like, that fuels me for weeks.
Like, I... I'm getting goosebumps thinking about some of them right now because I get so excited by, and it's not just for a personal rush, but rather, you know, we're doing it for work or whatever, but those moments stick with me forever.
And I sort of get that, but not like, I'm just going to risk my life over this climb or whatever, you know?
joe rogan
What are your thoughts on giant anacondas?
Because there's always been this thing about enormous anacondas that live in the rainforest.
forrest galante
So, yeah, it's fascinating.
So, I love anacondas.
I believe, and I've got a colleague, Brian Fry, in Australia, actually, and he has a similar belief, that there are 30-foot anacondas.
Now, 30 is a big anaconda, but you're talking about those mysterious, like, 50, 100-footers.
Okay, so...
Take out the Amazon and take out anacondas for a second.
joe rogan
Okay.
forrest galante
Alright?
Think about where all the largest snakes are in the world.
joe rogan
Florida!
forrest galante
Well, now, yes.
But, you know, we've got all these wet tropical environments that house these huge snakes.
In Indonesia, you have articulated pythons, you have Burmese pythons, you have African rock pythons, Indian rock pythons, anacondas, all these big snakes.
joe rogan
Yeah.
forrest galante
The only place...
That has a wet, tropical, humid, high density of prey environment that doesn't have a massive snake is the Congo, Central Africa.
Now, stay with me.
These, that area is home to some African rockbites and stuff, but not big monster anaconda-sized ones, right?
But during World War II, there was a colonel who flew over there, and this is a well-respected colonel.
I'm sure, Jamie, you'll be able to find this very quickly.
A well-respected, like, I forget, he had, like, his wings or his patch of honor or whatever, like, very distinguished, who him and his two passengers in the plane both reported a hundred-foot-long snake.
They flew over it once, They were like, wait a minute, what is that?
They were Dutch, Belgium, and the Congo.
They flew over it once, went, what is that?
And flew over it two more times to verify it, and got so low to the ground that they said the snake struck at the airplane, and all three people, the pilot, this well-respected colonel, and the two passengers had the exact same story of this giant snake in Central Africa.
joe rogan
Interesting.
forrest galante
Yeah, and yet no big snake has ever been proven from there.
But it's also a very poorly biologically explored area.
And most of the time, when these animals get this big, snakes or otherwise, they're in very low...
Yeah, here's the picture.
joe rogan
They took a photo of it?
forrest galante
They did.
Yeah, they did.
They're in very low densities, so...
unidentified
Hmm.
forrest galante
That's the real photo over on the left there.
joe rogan
What do they think it was?
forrest galante
They thought it was a giant snake, a 50-foot long...
joe rogan
So that's the photo right there?
forrest galante
I believe so.
But the story's fascinating of these kernels...
joe rogan
But they don't know, like, what kind of snake?
They don't know if it was an anaconda or a python or...
forrest galante
It would be an undescribed species because the only snake there, the African rock python, doesn't get that big.
joe rogan
What is the biggest snake that we know?
Oh, it says it measured approximately 50 feet in length, saw brown-green with a white belly, has a triangle-shaped jaw and a head three by two feet.
Oh, my God!
A three-foot head!
The photo was later analyzed and verified to be genuine.
Van Lierd claims that...
Is that how you say his name?
forrest galante
I'm not sure, but that was the Colonel, Remy Van Lierd.
joe rogan
As he flew lower for a closer inspection, the snake rose up approximately 10 feet, giving a warning that it would have attacked a helicopter if it had been within striking range.
forrest galante
But imagine flying over and having a snake sort of lunge at a helicopter.
joe rogan
Imagine a three-foot snake head.
Jesus Christ.
forrest galante
So, Jamie, do you mind going to my Instagram quickly?
joe rogan
Literally swallow you alive, easily.
forrest galante
Dude, look at this one.
I posted a picture the day before yesterday.
This is 18 feet, and look at the size of it compared to me and how scary this snake is.
Oof.
Now, to think of, yeah, like you said, you're like an M&M to a snake that size.
joe rogan
You're a Tic Tac.
You're one of them chocolate-covered almonds that are so good for you.
forrest galante
Whoa!
joe rogan
Look at the size of that thing!
forrest galante
That's an 18-footer, and look at how...
Granted, it's not 3 foot by 2 foot head, but still, that thing...
joe rogan
What's the weight on something like that?
forrest galante
It was over 200 at Broker's scale.
unidentified
Wow.
forrest galante
Yeah, it was over 200 pounds.
joe rogan
Wow.
Indonesian villagers claim to have captured a python that is almost 49 feet long and weighs nearly 990 pounds.
forrest galante
I've seen this.
It's not verified at all.
joe rogan
Do they have an image of it?
forrest galante
This might be the one that's on the tractor.
No, it's not.
There's a fake one on a tractor that floated around.
Well, it's just very forced perspective.
It's like a wide-angle lens and the snake is right in front, but it looks massive.
joe rogan
But this is NBC. This is NBC News.
Let's see if it has images, this sucker.
forrest galante
So these are all like retics and, you know, there are big snakes out there.
joe rogan
Look at the size of that goddamn thing.
forrest galante
Yeah.
unidentified
Jesus.
joe rogan
So, what is the biggest snake?
Is it a python?
The biggest snake that we know of?
forrest galante
So the heaviest is the reticulated python.
joe rogan
Look at the size of that thing.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
How big is that?
forrest galante
That's big.
It's probably 20-ish.
So there's quite a lot of 20-foot snakes out there.
And then there's a couple 21, 22s.
But that's it.
And so there's all these rumors of 30-foot snakes and 40-foot snakes and blah, blah, blah.
And there's nothing that's been verified outside of one skin, I believe.
I want to say from Indonesia, that is like, but skin stretch.
That's the other thing, too.
joe rogan
That says it turns out to be a tall tail.
It says, when Recreation Park in Indonesia put a huge reticulated python on show last week, keepers insisted to reporters it was 49 feet long, make it the longest ever caught, but the find turned out to be a tall tail.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
So how big was it exactly?
forrest galante
I bet it was 20-ish.
21, there it is.
joe rogan
Yeah, 21 feet still.
Yeah.
forrest galante
It's a big snake, man.
joe rogan
But not 50. Not 50. I have no idea why the snake has shrunk, said one keeper when asked about discrepancy as the snake lounged on a tree branch inside the cave.
But things do shrivel up when you catch them.
You know, like fish do.
Like when you catch a fish.
Yeah.
forrest galante
Well, definitely when you tell people about it.
jamie vernon
It's when you show people.
forrest galante
Yeah.
I went fishing here in Austin this morning.
joe rogan
Oh, did you really?
forrest galante
Right downtown.
Literally right in front of the Google building.
joe rogan
Oh, Lady Bird Lake.
forrest galante
Lady Bird Lake?
joe rogan
Yeah, there's a lot of bass out there.
forrest galante
It was awesome, man.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's a great little spot.
forrest galante
Yeah, really fun.
joe rogan
Right in front of the Google building.
forrest galante
Right in front of it, yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah.
So the biggest in the world is the python, right?
So they're bigger than anacondas?
forrest galante
So it's sort of a toss-up.
The reticulated python has been clocked as the heaviest snake in the world because they get fatter, but the anacondas have been clocked in slightly longer.
I think 26 feet is the longest ever recorded.
joe rogan
Did you ever see the Jennifer Lopez movie, Anaconda?
forrest galante
The documentary?
Yeah.
Yeah, it's great.
joe rogan
It's such a corny movie, man.
forrest galante
It's so good.
The bad, like, snake head if you watch it today.
joe rogan
Oh, it's so bad.
forrest galante
It's so bad.
joe rogan
It's so bad.
But that was always the rumor, is that there was enormous snakes in the Amazon and that, you know, you just didn't see them.
forrest galante
I do believe...
That there are some megafauna out there that are yet to be found, that are in low populations.
joe rogan
You believe in the sloth, the giant sloth?
forrest galante
I believe that has a...
And again, that's like the thylacine.
It's a proven animal.
It's been 10,000 years, but it doesn't mean that it couldn't be extant in certain remote areas.
Same with some of these big snakes.
Maybe not 50, because maybe these things are embellished, but maybe 30, maybe 35, right?
And I just think that there are a few, not a lot, of these big things out there.
If you're one of these uncontacted Amazonian tribes, of which there are still several, West Papuan tribes, whatever...
And you're seeing a 50-foot snake.
Nobody in the Western world, we're not hearing about that.
Those things can be happening, and those stories get embellished and passed on and all of that, but we wouldn't even know until Western science gets in there.
And it's sort of a double-edged sword, because once it does, it sort of ruins certain aspects of that.
But I do believe that there are big animals to be found still.
joe rogan
And the sloth one, I watched a documentary on it once.
It was this guy who was like risking his reputation.
He was a biologist.
And he had spent months in the Amazon.
He was very frustrated.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
Because he couldn't find anything.
And they kept saying, we saw it.
We saw it.
And he's like, where?
forrest galante
I know that feeling well.
And it's very frustrating because, you know, like I've even had people tell me they've eaten the thing that I'm looking for.
joe rogan
Really?
forrest galante
Yeah, when we were doing Extinct, you know, looking for the extinct animals, of which we had success quite a lot, but...
I've had guys be like, oh yeah, yeah, they're delicious.
I'm like...
unidentified
What?
forrest galante
Like, tell me where to find it!
Like, you've eaten it, and you have no reason to lie about this whatsoever.
Like, please just help me.
joe rogan
What was this that they said they ate?
forrest galante
That was regarding that caiman, remember that yellow caiman?
And we did find them, so that worked out.
But literally, I remember we're walking through the village day one before we even get in the canoes, and I'm like showing people these pictures of all the different species of caiman, and I kept pointing to the...
Trumpa Largo Amorillo, the long-nosed yellow one, right?
And everybody's like, yes, no, maybe, one time.
And then one guy's like, oh, those are delicious!
And I'm like, oh god, can we put this on Animal Planet?
I don't even know.
unidentified
Can you say that, that this thing is delicious?
joe rogan
Endangered species that you're eating.
Well, there was always these rumors of like these places where these billionaires would fly into in China and eat like gorilla.
Yeah.
Have you ever heard of that kind of stuff?
unidentified
Oh, yeah.
forrest galante
I've heard about it.
I believe it, too.
unidentified
Do you?
forrest galante
I really do.
Yeah.
I think that especially, you know, you say like especially with China where the eastern medicine and the status symbol of eating tiger whiskers and this, that and the other thing.
joe rogan
There's a status symbol of eating something that's forbidden and very difficult to acquire.
forrest galante
Exactly.
Exactly.
And, you know, China has so many billionaires now.
I forget what it is, but dozens and dozens of them, right?
Like, if that status symbol is important to someone with that much power and money, how are you not getting it?
joe rogan
Yeah, what a weird culture.
Your status is based on eating something that's endangered.
forrest galante
It doesn't even click in my head.
Like, I cannot physically understand it.
Like, no part of me is like, oh, I get that.
Like, I really want to eat some tiger whiskers.
joe rogan
Have we ever talked about the Bondo ape?
forrest galante
Yes, you have.
Yeah, I know you like the Bondo ape a lot.
Yeah.
Big lion-killing apes.
joe rogan
Well, this is a big chimpanzee that lives in the Congo.
Yeah.
The Congo is so incredible.
It's like, God, what an insanely rich resource-ridden place that's also a war zone.
forrest galante
And being absolutely raped and pillaged by big corporations in the Western world for resources and minerals.
Yes.
joe rogan
I had Siddharth Kara on who his book, I think his book comes out.
Does it come out next week?
It comes out the end of January.
unidentified
Okay.
joe rogan
But his book is all about cobalt mining in the Congo.
forrest galante
Oh, interesting.
joe rogan
It's horrifying.
forrest galante
I do want to read it.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Horrifying.
19-year-old girls with...
Babies on their back who are hand chipping cobalt out of the ground and then inhaling all these toxic fumes and powder, this dust.
And then that is in your cell phone.
That's how the cobalt gets into your fucking cell phone.
forrest galante
That's at your Apple store.
It's the new Blood Diamond, right?
It's the new...
And it's funny because I feel like the whole Blood Diamond thing and, you know, there's been lots of these things, but...
It all sort of went away because it got exposed, but I feel like no one's talking about the inhumane things that are taking place for our modern conveniences.
It's one thing when it's a luxury, like a blood diamond, right?
Or whatever.
But when it's like, oh, well, I can't live without my iPhone, you know, then it's like we're willing to turn a blind eye to it.
It's like people choose not to accept it because it's part of their life.
joe rogan
Just think about how many people who consider themselves social justice warriors and they do this complaining on a phone that's made by slaves.
forrest galante
Totally.
joe rogan
It's so crazy.
forrest galante
They're literally tweeting or texting or whatever their complaints on a thing that is contributing to the thing they're complaining about.
joe rogan
Well, they're contributing to the worst version of it in humanity right now.
forrest galante
Isn't it crazy?
joe rogan
Which is really crazy.
I mean, it's like literally human trafficking.
forrest galante
So in the book, does he actually go into the Congo and witness this?
joe rogan
Oh, yeah.
He took video footage.
unidentified
Oh, you're kidding.
joe rogan
His story is so compelling.
forrest galante
I must listen to it.
joe rogan
And he talks about it with such passion because he worked on this for years and years.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
And risked his life to obtain footage and to get access and to go to these, what they're supposedly, you know, ethical minds.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
And he's like, this is all horrible.
It goes, all of it is tainted.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
All the cobalt that we have, all of it is at least in some part coming from these, you know, what they would call...
It's basically just the most primitive version.
People in flip-flops with hammers chipping it out of the ground.
forrest galante
What's extreme poverty?
Yes.
joe rogan
It's more like slavery.
forrest galante
It is.
joe rogan
Calling it extreme poverty, I think, is not quite accurate enough.
They call them artisanal minds, which is hilarious.
forrest galante
Anytime you slap that word onto anything, it's fun.
joe rogan
Oh, it's artisanal.
Oh, great.
I think someone's making pottery somewhere.
forrest galante
Yeah, totally, totally.
joe rogan
Yeah.
So back to the Bondo ape.
Sure.
Is that – what is – because I know there was some controversy behind that, and there's some people that sort of denied its existence, but then Carl Armand got photographs of them, and they obtained skulls that were a chimpanzee skull that had a crest.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
Well, they also had like a crest, like the same way that a gorilla does.
forrest galante
My understanding, and this is not something I'm super familiar with, but there's no denying that they existed, right?
There was this insular gigantism that took place within this group of chimpanzees.
There was heightened aggression.
That's all known and documented.
But it wasn't a new species.
It wasn't a distinct species.
It was...
Sexual or rather natural selection that led to these animals being different and isolated and turning into larger, more aggressive chimpanzees.
That's my understanding of it.
joe rogan
But would that also make their skulls different?
forrest galante
It can do, you know?
joe rogan
Because like, okay, well, oddly enough, we have a skull of a chimpanzee.
forrest galante
Yeah, it's very cool.
joe rogan
This is made by Shane Against the Machine, who's a guy on Instagram who's an incredible artist.
unidentified
Oh, cool.
joe rogan
He's made a couple of pieces for the podcast, too.
unidentified
Oh, rad.
joe rogan
The difference is with this skull versus what they think the Bondo ape skull is, that the Bondo ape has like a bone mohawk down the center.
forrest galante
Right through here, yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, like a gorilla does.
forrest galante
Sure.
So, you know, sexual selection over time can evolve for anything, can adapt for anything, right?
That's why peacocks have the silly tail they have.
It doesn't help them fly, right?
It's only sexual selection.
It's being bred for.
So, you get a bunch of chimps stuck on an island, stuck in a region, and the females decide, for whatever reason, that a bump on the head is sexy.
Okay?
Now, every chimp that has a slight bump on its head is being selected for by the females to reproduce offspring.
unidentified
Okay?
forrest galante
Fast forward 15, 20 generations, maybe 200 generations, whatever, they all have a crest on their head.
That is how evolution begins.
Because now, you fast forward millions of years, and the sexual selection has been selected for over and over and over and over, and you're starting to turn into a new creature, a new organism altogether.
joe rogan
If I'm not, I don't think I'm incorrect here.
I think the crest indicates enormous mandible muscles.
forrest galante
Because the muscles attach up there?
joe rogan
Yeah, I think that's what the crest is for.
Because that's how it is with dogs.
forrest galante
Sure.
joe rogan
Like, have you ever noticed a difference between a dog that's castrated and a dog that's not fixed?
forrest galante
In temperament, sure.
joe rogan
The size of their heads.
forrest galante
Oh, interesting, yeah.
joe rogan
Like, my dog is a golden retriever, the sweetest dog in the world, but he has a pretty big head.
And the muscles in his head are big, on the sides of his head, because he has his testosterone.
Whereas we met this other golden retriever that was fixed, and he has this narrow little tiny head, and it's because he doesn't have any muscles.
forrest galante
So that's the difference of sexual selection, like the peacock, or what I explained, and natural selection.
So if these Bondo apes are only eating, and I'm just making this up, and I know the theories of them killing lions and everything, but if they're only eating coconuts, let's say, right?
joe rogan
And they have to tear them apart.
forrest galante
They have to rip through a coconut with strong jaws.
Well, if you got weak jaws or weak jaw muscles or weak mandibles, whatever, you're going to die.
So over time, again, the only ones that are surviving are the ones that have this ridge on their head that are naturally being selected for stronger muscles.
joe rogan
So they just think it's like a subspecies of chimp?
forrest galante
That's my understanding of it.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's what I had thought.
They don't think it's a different chimp, but they do think it's different in terms of its size and temperament.
forrest galante
And we see that all the time, right?
We see insular dwarfism where things are stuck on an island and they get smaller and smaller because of the lack of resources or gigantism for the opposite reason.
We see that all the time within species.
joe rogan
Or people that live in Iceland.
Enormous, giant fucking people who used to be Vikings.
forrest galante
Exactly, yeah.
joe rogan
How many world strongman champions have come from Iceland?
forrest galante
All of them?
joe rogan
A shitload of them.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
They're all like that guy, the mountain from Game of Thrones.
forrest galante
I was just going to ask you, is he from Iceland?
He's from somewhere up there.
joe rogan
I think he is.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
Is he from Iceland?
Well, his name is from Iceland.
forrest galante
Thor.
joe rogan
Thor Havorsund.
forrest galante
Exactly, yeah.
joe rogan
Try saying his fucking name.
But, I mean, that part of the world has produced an exorbitant number.
Look at the size of that fucker.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
Iceland.
forrest galante
Look at that name, though.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Yeah, look at that name.
forrest galante
Julius Bjornensen?
Bjornensen?
joe rogan
First of all, they're not even using real letters.
forrest galante
No.
joe rogan
What's that thing after the F? I have no idea.
unidentified
His name.
That's like a half a P, a half a B. A Brioblor.
forrest galante
Hafthor.
joe rogan
Hafthor.
Oh, it's literally transliterated as Hafthor in English.
Yeah.
forrest galante
Crazy.
That's a different species.
I'm sorry, that's a different species right there.
joe rogan
Look at the size of that fucker.
forrest galante
Look at that guy.
joe rogan
How big is that fucker?
forrest galante
Was he 6'9 or something?
But then his weight is astronomical.
Is he more than that?
joe rogan
His height?
forrest galante
6'8, I see it there.
203 centimeters.
joe rogan
Which, like, Shaquille O'Neal's looking down on that dude going, come on, bitch.
He's 7'1.
jamie vernon
230. He's got to be more than that now, right?
joe rogan
Oh, yeah.
forrest galante
Oh, that's nonsense.
joe rogan
That's not true at all.
forrest galante
Each of his quads weighs that.
joe rogan
Oh, maybe when he was 16. Even then.
jamie vernon
Yeah, it's when he started basketball.
unidentified
He started at 230. Oh, he's got it.
joe rogan
Well, I think he got really heavy.
But then he slimmed down to have a boxing match.
He had a boxing match with Eddie Hall.
forrest galante
Did he win?
joe rogan
Yeah, he won.
He actually looked really good.
It showed really good technique, too.
It wasn't like winging punches.
He was fighting like a boxer.
He trained for a long time for it.
forrest galante
I cannot imagine taking a hit from a guy like that, no matter who you are.
joe rogan
Can you imagine the size of his fucking mitts?
forrest galante
The momentum coming into that.
joe rogan
Yeah, just the sheer gravity behind each punch.
unidentified
Boom.
joe rogan
It is fascinating how people in that part of the world, I mean, they were the Vikings.
That's why they're so fucking giant.
forrest galante
That's where they've come from.
joe rogan
Yeah.
forrest galante
That's amazing.
So I wanted to talk to you about this cloning and the rewilding of the mammoths and all that stuff.
I'm going to Colossal tomorrow to learn a little bit more about it myself.
joe rogan
Explain Colossal.
forrest galante
Yeah, so Colossal Biosciences is this, if you ask me, incredible company.
And they are, by their own declaration, a de-extinction company.
So it's this guy, Ben Lamb, and he's got George Church, who's a world-leading...
I don't know the specifics, you know, of de-extinction and cloning and CRISPR and so on and so forth.
And they've come together and raised a ton of money, and they are de-extincting animals.
And the science is there.
Like, it's done.
All it took was the money, basically, behind it.
And they've put together this incredible Rolodex of scientists and people, and it's real-life Jurassic Park with purpose.
joe rogan
Where are they going to put them?
forrest galante
So there's a couple different things going on.
So the first one they're working on is the woolly mammoth, right?
And this isn't just for fun.
This has real, like, important conservation implications, which is really fascinating.
But they are planning on starting with, I think, 100 mammoths and putting them in this place called Pleistocene Park.
Something like that.
This park in Siberia that they've been doing this experiment on as to what happens when you add megafauna back into the Arctic tundra to offset carbon emissions.
joe rogan
And so they're using what DNA? They're using elephant DNA and mixing it with something else?
forrest galante
So it's Indian elephant is the closest living relative to the woolly mammoth.
joe rogan
And what does an Indian elephant look like?
Is it similar to an elephant?
forrest galante
Yeah, it's a smaller...
So African elephants are bigger.
They have the really big ears.
Indian elephants are typically the ones you'd see at the circus, you know, with the red, the pink in the ears, the smaller triangular shaped ears.
So just a different species of elephant.
And so they're taking Indian elephants, and they're using CRISPR technology, and they're using existing mammoth DNA, and they're making an embryo, and then they're implanting it into the Indian elephant, and 22 months later, an Indian elephant's gestation period, she will give birth to a mammoth.
joe rogan
A real mammoth.
forrest galante
A real mammoth.
joe rogan
So it's not like a hybrid?
forrest galante
That's...
Okay.
That's a good point.
So it is, in the sense of what they do is, if you imagine like...
If you imagine the DNA of an animal, right?
And then you imagine the fragments that are broken out of it, right?
What they're doing is they're taking that DNA of the...
And I don't understand the cellular side of it very well.
This is just my base level understanding of it.
I can talk about the conservation side of it.
But they're taking that double helix, that DNA, and all those pieces that are missing from the mammoth, they're putting in Indian elephant pieces.
So you end up with an animal that is...
Physically and morphologically identical to a mammoth, but has used all of the DNA from the closest living relatives in order to get there.
joe rogan
Boy.
And this process, how long does this take?
forrest galante
So I think they've been going for about five years on the science, but the science of de-extinction and cloning, I mean, you remember Dolly the Sheep, right?
That was like a known thing.
So that's been going on for a long time.
joe rogan
Well, you can get your cat cloned.
forrest galante
Exactly.
joe rogan
Or your dog cloned.
forrest galante
Exactly.
For like 20 grand, you can clone your dog.
Yeah.
joe rogan
Which is kind of creepy.
forrest galante
It is.
It's bizarre.
But the point is, the science has been there for a while.
There just hasn't really been the funding or the motivation for it.
But what I think is so fascinating, the reason I'm so emotionally invested in it, Is the conservation implications that it has.
Because what this company is ultimately doing is rewilding species that humans have removed.
And that's going to, in theory, in a lot of places, sort of fix the offset, the imbalance of the ecosystem.
joe rogan
That's interesting.
That's really interesting.
There's a lot of debate about whether or not humans killed off the woolly mammoth, though, isn't there?
forrest galante
I think there is.
Yeah, I think there is.
And I can't really speak on that, but I do know that when the mammoths disappeared...
So, the Arctic used to be like the savannas of Africa.
It used to be big grasslands, right?
It wasn't all covered in trees and things.
And that's a recent adaptation since the mammoths went away 10, 20,000 years ago.
And so that's...
What's happened is the permafrost up there is melting pretty rapidly, right?
Underneath that permafrost is like one and a half trillion tons of carbon.
And once that carbon enters the atmosphere, it heats things up like crazy.
So by removing those mammoths...
And I can explain why the mammoths keep it colder, but by removing those mammoths, it's allowing that permafrost to melt much quicker and release more carbon.
So the idea, from a financial standpoint of how they make money, is the carbon offset of putting mammoths back into the environment.
joe rogan
How do they make it colder?
forrest galante
So it's a couple different things.
Basically, when there's trees and shrubs, they take in more heat, and that heat transfers into the ground.
So in this Pleistocene park, this park that they've been doing this experiment in Siberia for a while, they've put in a couple hundred animals that aren't mammoths, right?
They've put in ox and reindeer and things like that, and they're knocking trees over with the tractors.
And once they knock trees over and they simulate a mammoth knocking the trees and shrubs over, the fleet grazers are able to keep the vegetation from regrowing.
So when the vegetation doesn't regrow, you get all this grassland, and the grassland has snowpack.
The snowpack gets stumped, so there's no insulation.
It reflects more light.
It's like three or four different processes that make the ground, I think on average it's like eight degrees colder.
So it keeps things more frozen.
So once we removed all the megafauna from the Arctic, through hunting or maybe other means regardless, once they were removed, the Arctic got warmer.
The Siberia and Alaska got warmer, and so slowly we're getting more and more carbon emissions from up there.
But by putting these animals back, and I just love the idea of going up to the Arctic and it looking like the African savanna, right, with all of these incredible animals.
But by putting these animals back, it in theory will make the Arctic colder, slow down the melting of the permafrost, which will in turn trap the carbon for longer in the ground.
joe rogan
So they're going to start with the woolly mammoth.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
And what other animals are they thinking about doing this to?
forrest galante
So what I know of right now is the woolly mammoth and the thylacine, which is another reason I'm so excited.
joe rogan
So they are going to bring back the thylacine.
forrest galante
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
And how are they going to do that?
forrest galante
So there's, it used to be the quoll, but now it's an animal called a dunart that's the closest living relative.
And so, you know, thylacines were around pretty recently, right?
I mean, we're just looking at video of one.
So they have really good DNA from the thylacine, and then they're going to use the existing DNA from a dunnart, which is a very small marsupial, put them together, remake the thylacine.
The only problem is, my understanding is, they cannot use the dunnart for surrogacy because the dunnarts are like this big.
So they have to do an artificial womb and all of that.
But yeah, I think the technology is there.
unidentified
An artificial womb?
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
This sounds like a fucking horror.
forrest galante
Isn't it crazy we're living in this time?
joe rogan
Yeah, it sounds like a horror movie.
forrest galante
But it's so insane!
Even three years ago, if you're like, hey, we're bringing animals back, we're going to put mammoths back in the Arctic, you're like, shut up!
Put on your tinfoil hat!
It's happening!
joe rogan
It's so crazy!
When are they projecting the first woolly mammoth will be launched?
forrest galante
2024. What?
Yeah.
joe rogan
Next year?
forrest galante
Next year.
End of next year.
joe rogan
Oh my god.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
And they're going to bring it to Siberia.
forrest galante
And put it in this Pleistocene Park where there are all these other animals and they're going to see how it does.
Like how does it behave?
How does it interact with the environment?
Does it replace the tractors in the sense of cooling down this little park area?
Yeah.
It'll be fascinating.
joe rogan
Are they going to do saber-toothed tigers?
forrest galante
I hope so.
No, I don't know.
I don't know.
joe rogan
That would be incredible.
What a wild animal those must have been to look at.
forrest galante
Sabertooth?
joe rogan
Giant teeth.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
Like literally hang out of their mouth.
And apparently they're so sensitive that they could find jugulars.
forrest galante
With those teeth?
joe rogan
Yeah.
They could feel the pulsating jugular with their teeth.
forrest galante
Just because of the nerve endings?
I didn't know that.
That's amazing.
Homotherium, right?
That's what that genus was called?
I don't know.
And that stuff, that's the fun Jurassic Park side of it, right?
Would I like to see a saber-toothed cat?
joe rogan
Yes, who wouldn't?
forrest galante
But the idea that, like, hey...
Ten years from now, there's going to be several thousand thylacine back in Tasmania.
Facial tumor disease is going to go away.
The overabundance of prey is going to disappear.
joe rogan
Facial tumor disease?
forrest galante
Facial tumor disease is a thing that a lot of the animals, and particularly the Tasmanian devils have in Tasmania.
It's herpes on the face.
But it comes from an overabundance of prey because the alpha predator, the thylacine, has been knocked out.
So if you go drive down a road...
Yeah, look at it.
Poor bastards.
It's bad.
It's herpes.
It's actual herpes.
joe rogan
Oh my god, it's horrible.
forrest galante
It's horrible.
joe rogan
And that's the Tasmanian tiger, which is...
forrest galante
The Tasmanian devil.
joe rogan
Sorry, Tasmanian devil.
What a crazy little animal that fucker is.
forrest galante
They're so cool.
joe rogan
And the noises they make.
forrest galante
Yeah, they're wild.
joe rogan
See if we can find a recording of Tasmanian devil noises.
forrest galante
Yeah.
But anyway, I'm just excited because it's like...
It's crazy.
It seems like we live in an alternate universe where these things are real now, which is just so crazy compared to a few years ago.
joe rogan
What does it...
Here we go Look at those little fuckers They're going mouth-to-mouth with each other.
forrest galante
If you're camping in Tasmania, which I've done for thylacine searches and stuff, and you hear that, it is the most blood-curdling, terrifying, and then they're this big.
But you hear this and you're like, something is going to rip me to shreds.
joe rogan
And it's just these little buggers.
They look like a French bulldog.
forrest galante
Yeah, look at them.
joe rogan
They're real cute.
forrest galante
Really cute.
joe rogan
Does anybody ever have them as pets?
I wonder if you can domesticate them.
forrest galante
I don't know, but my number one pet's a wombat.
Have you ever seen a pet wombat?
joe rogan
No, they have them.
forrest galante
Oh my god, dude.
joe rogan
People have them as pets?
forrest galante
I mean, in Australia, like as rescues and stuff.
I don't know if they're in the pet trade, but I went to a place in South Australia.
joe rogan
Aww.
Aw, look at the little Tasmanian devil.
Aw, look, he's a little puppy.
They're adorable.
forrest galante
They are.
joe rogan
But this is like little tiny babies.
Maybe it's like some animals, like you get to a certain age, you can't really keep them anymore.
forrest galante
I wouldn't think they'd make very good pets.
I went to a place in Tasmania where they dragged a wallaby carcass in that had been hit by the road.
It was like the cartoon version of piranhas, you know, where they come in and it's like, and they rip it to shreds.
These things ripped this dead wallaby to nothing.
It was like maybe 10 of them in under a minute.
Really?
Just to nothing.
To just bones and gnawing.
It was wild to see.
joe rogan
Most people think of the Tasmanian Devil as that cartoon.
That's literally...
If people think about that, it's one of the only animals where the cartoon is more popular than the actual animal.
forrest galante
Agreed.
Yeah, agreed.
joe rogan
Like, I couldn't pick that animal out of a lineup.
Right.
What is this?
Now I can, because I'm looking at it right now.
Yeah.
Look at these little...
Let me hear some volume.
unidentified
Wow.
They're only weigh about seven kilos?
forrest galante
Gotta love Australians.
jamie vernon
There's also a wombat here, too.
unidentified
A little cutie.
joe rogan
That's a wombat here?
forrest galante
Look, look, look, look!
This is what I'm talking about!
joe rogan
That's a wombat?
forrest galante
Yeah, that's a juvenile one, but they're just little trucks.
joe rogan
A little cutie.
forrest galante
I love wombats.
I think they're so adorable.
joe rogan
And so people keep those as pets as adults?
forrest galante
Yes, they do.
There was a woman I met who had one in her house.
Man, we had this video on our little podcast.
I don't know how to find it, but it was hilarious.
And this woman hand-raised this wombat, and it ran around her house like your dog does.
But the thing is, it's like this truck.
They're super low to the ground, huge shoulders.
And if it decided to run through the dog gate or through the refrigerator, it just went bowling straight through it.
It was amazing.
joe rogan
Cute little guys.
forrest galante
Oh, I think they're so cute.
But these guys have unbelievable mange in Tasmania.
Like, Jamie, if you type in, you know, wombat mange, we've looked at a lot of gross animal stuff today, but it's like, it's brutal.
And the reason the mange is so bad, there's no predators, and they're way overpopulated.
And so when there's that many animals in a small environment with overpopulation, they get diseases.
joe rogan
Oh, look.
forrest galante
Yeah.
So all this is potentially fixable, you know, if you put a predator, the right predator, back in Tasmania.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Right.
And so that would help Tasmania.
And are they planning on doing this to other continents?
Oh, that's terrible.
forrest galante
That's what they look like, though.
That image you saw for a split second there, that's what they, not all, but that's what a ton of them look like in Tasmania with this rampant mage.
joe rogan
Well, that's the Chupacabra.
forrest galante
Straight up.
joe rogan
The chupacabra is a coyote.
forrest galante
A mangy coyote.
joe rogan
That has horrible manes.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah.
And they've captured them.
Like people, we call it a chupacabra.
forrest galante
And it's sitting in a cage, all terrified, eyes are swollen shut.
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's just a fucked up coyote.
forrest galante
Yep.
joe rogan
The North American mammals, like, are they planning on eventually doing that North American mammals as well and reintroducing some?
forrest galante
I'm not sure.
Well, the mammoth would be in Alaska, so that's North America.
Siberia all the way to Alaska.
So that mammoth steppe environment, those grasslands, used to range from Spain all the way to North America, like all across the Bering Land Bridge.
And all that ice was like trompled and blah, blah, blah, all these savannah lands that are now big forests.
joe rogan
Are you aware of the Alaskan boneyard?
Did you watch that?
forrest galante
I heard pieces of it because a couple people texted me about it, but I need to listen to the whole show.
I mean, John sounds like a fascinating guy.
joe rogan
He's the best.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
But his place that he has in Alaska, like, they've been on, and it's not a big area where he's finding this stuff.
He's got two areas, and one of them that he's been getting bones, what he calls boning, this one area for decades, is only six acres.
forrest galante
That's all it is?
joe rogan
Dude, it's nuts.
The concentration.
So that's what it looks like.
It's like the side of a cliff, and they blast it with water until they see things, and then they pull out these bones.
But they've found animals that were not supposed to be there.
forrest galante
I remember he said that.
joe rogan
Yeah.
forrest galante
He said, like, I believe...
So scimitar cats were the cat that was native to that continent, to Alaska, right?
Not saber-tooth.
Saber-tooth, big teeth.
Scimitar is like a smaller tooth version.
And then he's found saber-tooth skulls on his property.
So all of history, all of humans are like, oh no, there's only scimitar cats in Alaska.
They were never saber-tooths.
And he's found actual saber-tooths.
joe rogan
Yes.
And he's only looked in six acres.
forrest galante
Can you imagine?
joe rogan
That's crazy.
I mean, they don't know what was going on in that area.
Like, why are there so many dead animals?
And why did they all get, like, frozen into the permafrost?
forrest galante
Into one spot.
Yeah.
joe rogan
Right.
forrest galante
Tar pit, or who knows?
joe rogan
So, I've connected him with Randall Carlson.
Look at that.
Isn't that incredible?
forrest galante
That's gotta be a saber tooth.
joe rogan
That's a cave lion.
I don't know if they thought that was there too.
So I've connected him with Randall Carlson.
I'm in the process of doing that and Randall is a proponent of the Younger Dryas impact theory.
The Younger Dryas impact theory is somewhere in the neighborhood of 12,000 years ago, there were some impacts from comets.
forrest galante
Oh, interesting.
joe rogan
And it probably wiped out most of the animals that we're thinking about, like North American megafauna, like 65% of them were wiped out somewhere around that time period.
forrest galante
From impact.
joe rogan
He thinks they're wiped out from comet impact.
forrest galante
Interesting.
joe rogan
And he thinks that's why you're finding these massive storages of these dead animals in this one specific area.
forrest galante
So why would that funnel animals into one area?
joe rogan
Because they were already there, but they died all at once.
forrest galante
I see.
joe rogan
So it's not like over the years.
It's like an instantaneous mass die-off.
And he's got photographic evidence of these mass die-offs as well, too.
Because one of the things that they found in terms of woolly mammoths, they found enormous fields of them.
Where they've not just found like one dead one, but hundreds of them.
And they find them with broken legs.
And he thinks that's indicative of the impact of whatever happened.
I mean, it's almost like a bomb going off.
They just get smacked back.
But that these things most likely died in mass.
And that this area where John Reeves has in Alaska is a particularly fertile area, a particularly rich area for finding these skeletons.
forrest galante
And it makes sense, right?
Why else would you have 300 dead animals with fractured bones in one spot?
joe rogan
Exactly.
forrest galante
Or whatever the numbers are.
joe rogan
And he has so much.
He has thousands and thousands of bones.
And many, many, many, many full tusks of woolly mammoths.
forrest galante
Which are worth millions of dollars, right?
joe rogan
He's got millions of dollars worth of tusks.
He's got them all over the place.
He's got stacks of them.
They find them all the time.
forrest galante
Jaws.
joe rogan
Jaws, yeah.
So it's the Boneyard Alaska.
forrest galante
That must be a mammoth jaw, right?
Because it's got the flat grinding teeth.
joe rogan
Yeah, yeah.
Look at those teeth, man.
Isn't that incredible?
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
So it's the Boneyard Alaska on Instagram, and he's got it very detailed.
forrest galante
He's invited me up there, actually.
He sent me a message after, I think, our first show.
Somehow we got on the same topic.
And he sent me a message.
joe rogan
Yeah, we talked about him, and he said he got 15,000 new Instagram followers from our conversation.
unidentified
Oh, really?
forrest galante
Good for him.
unidentified
That's great.
joe rogan
And then he's like, all right, I'm only going to talk to Joe and tell my whole story.
And so we had him on.
He's wealthy.
He doesn't have to talk to people about stuff.
forrest galante
Right.
He's choosing to.
joe rogan
Yeah.
So he just does it because he wants to.
forrest galante
Yeah.
unidentified
Good.
joe rogan
So he won't talk to journalists.
He's getting all these phone calls from New York Times and these people.
He's like, fuck off.
forrest galante
Well, I read a thing the day or two after you guys did your show that he started like a bone rush in the East River of New York.
People going to look for bones that have been dumped in the East River.
joe rogan
Apparently they were.
According to the records, they dumped a shitload of them and he gave out the very specific location.
So now there's guys combing the bottom with radar and looking for these things.
It's really interesting.
forrest galante
Do you know if anybody's found anything yet?
joe rogan
I don't believe anybody has.
That'll be fascinating.
Wasn't it the 1930s that they did this?
The 40s?
jamie vernon
Yeah, there was a bunch of miracles yesterday about it.
joe rogan
Oh, look at this.
Treasure Hunter, search New York City's East River.
Ha ha!
Isn't that funny?
This all came from my stupid little podcast.
forrest galante
All from your show.
You created a rush.
joe rogan
CBS News is re-reporting this.
Look at this.
forrest galante
Look, it even says spurred on by Joe Rogan podcast.
jamie vernon
Look at that.
joe rogan
The New York Post, they always show me some love.
forrest galante
Oh, nice.
That's so funny.
Yeah, no, that's incredible.
I don't know.
That whole extinct megafauna thing.
The fact that North America, we used to have cheetahs and giant llamas and like...
joe rogan
Huge lions that are bigger than African lions.
forrest galante
Huge lions, like the amount of...
And the abundance, too.
It wasn't like today we have great animals in North America, but the abundance is so much lower than Southern Africa.
But it used to be like something like eight times higher.
joe rogan
Yeah.
forrest galante
Can you imagine, like, just walking...
Imagine, like, this wasn't here in Austin.
You decided to walk three blocks, and you saw, like, 500 giant animals.
unidentified
I mean, it's amazing!
joe rogan
Yeah, that used to be here.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
Nuts.
Have you ever heard of the American Prairie Reserve?
forrest galante
Prairie Reserve?
unidentified
I don't think so.
joe rogan
Is that what it's called, Jamie?
What is that thing?
Rinello talked about that.
They're trying to buy up...
Massive swaths of land and reintroduce bison.
Yeah, American prairie.
So they're going to reintroduce bison and a bunch of different animals to this area.
And they're even doing block management in these places.
And they essentially want to rewild some of the Great Plains.
forrest galante
I think that's great, man.
I think rewilding is the key to conservation in the future.
I mean, have you seen that in...
joe rogan
Scroll back up, please, so I can read that, Jamie.
It says, Bison used to number in the millions on the Great Plains, but animals in conservation herds now stand at around 31,000 and are considered near-threatened.
Because most conservation herds are less than 500 on small landscapes, the species is listed as ecologically extinct, meaning bison no longer play their critical roles in shaping prairie biodiversity.
So what they want to do is bring them back.
forrest galante
And allow them to influence the environment and help the ecosystem.
joe rogan
Only an estimated 360,000 bison were made in North America today.
Of these, less than 10% live in conservation herds.
Most of the bison on the landscape today are raised for commercial purposes.
And what's really crazy is they got down to almost extinct.
forrest galante
Yeah, to a few hundred, I think.
There's an incredible place, the Bass Pro Shop's headquarters in Springfield, Missouri.
The guy, Johnny Morris, the guy who runs it, he's built a museum next to the Bass Pro headquarters.
It's like a personal museum, but anybody can go to it.
And his big thing is the bison.
And so you walk through this hallway and they have all these ancient pictures of the bison and these piles of skulls.
Guys used to stand on a literal...
You can probably find it, Jamie.
There's this picture of these two hunters that killed...
I don't know how many bison, but it's literally a mountain of skulls that they're standing on top of.
And because they used to, I'm sure you know this, just sit on the railway and ping them off and all of that.
And anyway, it's just fascinating the amount, the abundance of those animals that used to be in the American prairie.
joe rogan
Yeah, the pictures of people standing on piles of bones are so horrible.
forrest galante
Revolting.
joe rogan
It's so gross.
Like, what they did and the quickness in which they did it, where they almost eradicated the bison from North America.
And, you know, they weren't even eating them.
forrest galante
No.
joe rogan
They were eating tongues.
forrest galante
Right.
joe rogan
And they were getting the skins from some of them later on.
But a lot of it, they were doing it for the tongues.
forrest galante
Well, and I don't know if you know this or not, but the majority of the reason they killed him was in order to diminish the survival of the Native American people.
joe rogan
Was that really the majority of it?
forrest galante
I believe so.
That was the big motivator, at least in the early days, to kill bison was because it allowed the Native Americans to survive off of that animal.
Because they were so reliant on them.
So there were all these campaigns like, go out and kill the bison, head out west, have fun, shoot them from the train.
Because if you depleted those numbers, the Native Americans were forced to move or they just didn't have...
joe rogan
Forced to go into the reservations.
forrest galante
Exactly.
And so it was a very ugly thing.
And that part of it sort of covered up, right?
That doesn't get spoken about a lot.
joe rogan
It's a...
I mean, it most certainly was a tragedy, but like almost like inexcusable to the point of extinction.
They got so close.
forrest galante
I'd say it's inexcusable.
joe rogan
It was...
Well, obviously inexcusable.
I don't mean inexcusable, like unfixable.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
That's a better word.
forrest galante
Sorry, I see what you're saying.
joe rogan
When you look at the size of the piles of bones they were standing on, and like that they didn't see how fucked up this was, I don't believe that.
forrest galante
You know, we always say, oh, we didn't realize.
Like, we thought it would last forever.
I don't believe, especially because it happened in one generation.
joe rogan
Yeah, quickly.
forrest galante
Very quickly.
I don't believe that those guys, whomever they were, whether they loved hunting, didn't love hunting, loved shooting bison, whatever, I don't believe that they couldn't tell that they were having a massive impact.
joe rogan
Oh, they had to quickly.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
They had to.
I mean, if you're shooting millions of them, which is just nuts.
Are you aware of Dan Flores?
Dan Flores, he's a professor, I think, out of New Mexico.
I think one of the universities in New Mexico.
But he had a paper that he wrote called Bison Ecology and Bison Diplomacy.
forrest galante
Oh, okay.
joe rogan
And his belief is that When you look at the millions and millions of bison that were in North America at one point in time with these massive herds, he's like, that is not historically...
It's not what people initially saw when they first came to North America.
And he believes the reason for that is that the Native Americans, when they got knocked down by 90%, They were the primary predators of the bison.
unidentified
Sure.
joe rogan
And so then the bison numbers rose to these extraordinary numbers.
Sure.
And that it was due to the fact that these Native American populations had been killed off by smallpox.
forrest galante
That allowed.
joe rogan
Yeah.
So it's his belief that with the use of the horse and with the use of rifles, that Native Americans on their own were on their way to extirpating the bison.
forrest galante
I don't doubt it.
You know, there's quite a lot of species throughout history that have gone extinct at the hand of man that were already, even without man, not even Native Americans.
I mean, no human being.
They were ready.
Their timeline was running out.
Like, they were on their way out.
The Great Auk is a great example.
joe rogan
What is that?
forrest galante
So it was basically a penguin from the north.
Because, you know, penguins are from the southern hemisphere.
It was basically a penguin from the northern hemisphere.
joe rogan
How do you spell it?
forrest galante
A-U-K. Great auk.
joe rogan
Is there a photo of those fuckers?
forrest galante
I don't think there's any photos, but there's a lot of artist illustrations.
Great auk.
joe rogan
Yeah.
forrest galante
Beautiful, beautiful bird.
And they...
joe rogan
Real penguin-like.
forrest galante
Very, yeah.
And they provided oil and mostly down.
Meat as well, but mostly down.
So there was a huge rush.
I've actually held that specimen.
But there was a huge rush for auk down for their feathers.
Oh.
But these animals, they numbered in the millions when humans, quote-unquote, wiped them out, which they did.
I'm not saying they didn't, but they only...
See their range over there on that range map?
See the red one?
See the little spots?
Those are actually...
So their range was massive, but those 19 or whatever spots you're looking at are their only isolated populations.
So while there were millions and millions of auk, they only lived in, like, 19 spots.
Wow.
way to extinction already from other forces because they used to have this vast range and then it was isolated into these handful of isolated populations and then humans found them and wiped them out but had humans not found them likely over another million years or so maybe less they probably were on their way out because they were already isolating into these small pockets and the I'm blanking on it now the gillemote is it the gillemote No, it's a different bird, was out-competing them.
Another native bird was out-competing them.
Not the gillemot, I'm blanking on what it's called now.
joe rogan
How did people kill off the passenger pigeon?
Because wasn't the passenger, weren't there millions and millions of passenger pigeons?
forrest galante
Millions.
Millions.
Yeah, they said they'd black out the sky right here, right here in Texas, yeah.
So, one, they were hunted tremendously, but the main reason that they totally went extinct was they were such a flocking bird that once their numbers were reduced to the point that they couldn't have such large flocks, they weren't successful any longer.
So they weren't able to continue their normal behavior once their flock density got too low.
unidentified
Oh.
forrest galante
So it wasn't like they shot every, I think they did shoot every last passenger pigeon, you know, like, they shot the last one, but it wasn't the last one because they had shot every single other surviving one.
It was the last one because we shot them up, and then their population started to decline, and once their population got to a certain, like, capacity, they no longer had the ability to behave the way that they had typically behaved in these huge flocks, and that was making them unsuccessful.
joe rogan
How did they not know that they were on their way to getting rid of them?
How did they not know that that was happening?
forrest galante
Again, I don't believe they didn't.
I think they did.
joe rogan
Isn't it crazy how different people look at things like wildlife conservation today versus just a few hundred years ago?
It's like, whoops, guess we killed all the bison.
forrest galante
Totally.
That's why radical conservation, like bringing back mammoths and rewilding wolves and stuff like that, we need that, Joe.
joe rogan
Yeah.
forrest galante
Because conservation, I'm sorry, and this is going to upset a lot of people, I don't give a shit.
We fucking suck at it!
We've been doing it for like a hundred years, and we are losing every single year.
We are not winning.
There are small little successful stories, don't get me wrong, but on a grand scale, we are losing the conservation game.
So radical conservation, I don't care what it is, coming up with crazy science experiments and bringing stuff back, putting wolves in the else's, whatever it is, trying something is better than not trying anything and continuing down the path we've been going.
joe rogan
The only animals that we're really good at conserving are the ones we want to eat.
forrest galante
Oh, yeah.
joe rogan
The ones we want to shoot.
unidentified
Yeah.
Which is great.
joe rogan
So, like, there's more white-tailed deer in North America today than there were when Columbus arrived.
forrest galante
Right.
And that's fine.
joe rogan
Which is 100% because of hunting.
forrest galante
It is.
joe rogan
And also because of agriculture.
forrest galante
Right.
joe rogan
Because they flock to these agriculture areas.
forrest galante
Cornfields.
joe rogan
That's why, yeah, like, places like Iowa, where there's all these farms.
Like, there's so many deer, giant deer in Iowa.
forrest galante
Right.
joe rogan
Yeah.
forrest galante
But that's fine.
You know, placing a monetary value on an animal in order to save it is great.
But nobody's going to start hunting Tasmanian tigers, Tasmanian devils, right?
Like, what for?
So, there are...
I completely agree with you.
I'm pro-hunting when those funds are used the right way.
They can be mismanaged, and they are all the time, especially in places that are more corrupt.
joe rogan
It's actually amazing the job that wildlife biologists have done in this country and conservationists have done in this country.
They're really pretty goddamn good at setting up the correct number of tags and making sure that the habitat is preserved and allocating that money for rangers and wardens and making sure that these people monitor these animals and stop poaching.
Definitely.
forrest galante
In North America, we are very good at it, like on a global scale.
The problem is we always, doesn't matter if you're North America or anywhere, wait until the very end to do it.
joe rogan
We wait until shit's really bad.
forrest galante
Right.
Oh, there's only 12 of them left or whatever.
Now we're going to put in all this effort.
It's like being preventative instead of reactive is the ticket moving forward.
And we are starting to make that shift.
joe rogan
I am so interested in seeing what they decide to do.
If this really takes off in Siberia with the woolly mammoths, if they reintroduce them, not just in Alaska, but then bring them into Montana and bring them into the lower 48, and then start reintroducing other things.
If they can figure out how to do that with a saber-toothed tiger, that would be fucking weird.
forrest galante
That would be so scary.
joe rogan
That would be wild.
forrest galante
They're talking about, I think, I might have these numbers wrong, but I believe their 10 or maybe 20 year goal is 600,000 mammoths over like 1.3 million miles.
So covering that whole, you know, because the thing is...
joe rogan
600,000 mammoths.
forrest galante
That's a lot of mammoths.
But they'll start reproducing on their own, right?
It's not like they're going to make them all.
joe rogan
Tourism involved.
I mean, how many people would want to go and travel to see woolly mammoths?
forrest galante
We're going.
You and I are going to see them.
joe rogan
100%.
forrest galante
Yes.
Let's go.
joe rogan
Let's go.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
I wonder if there's going to be groups of people that want to hunt them with spears and put lawn cloths on and shit.
forrest galante
Fine.
It's just like the whitetail, dude.
Who cares?
If that funds it and it keeps it going.
joe rogan
You can hunt them, but you can only hunt them using the tools and weapons that were available when they were alive.
forrest galante
Barefoot in the Arctic with a stone spear.
joe rogan
Yeah, no boots.
Fuck you.
No tents.
Fuck off.
Like, you could have a teepee.
You gotta make it yourself.
forrest galante
With the mammoth skin.
Yeah, right.
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, that would be wild.
People would do it.
forrest galante
Would you do it?
joe rogan
No.
unidentified
No?
joe rogan
Fuck that.
Dude, I... Hunting with a bow and arrow is tricky enough.
Hunting with a spear, fuck off.
forrest galante
That's crazy.
There are people that do it though, right?
There are spear hunters, like that's a thing?
joe rogan
Subsistent hunters.
forrest galante
No, I mean like as a sport.
joe rogan
Assholes.
forrest galante
Oh, okay.
joe rogan
Yeah, I mean it's too unsuccessful.
You're not good at it.
It used to be legal to hunt with a spear in Alberta until a guy killed a bear with a spear and made this awful video about it and it was a big deal.
And then Under Armour got in trouble because they didn't support these people.
They weren't even really sponsored by Under Armour.
These people, since there was this recent thing with them with poaching and they got...
Accused of poaching and I think they got sentenced to probation and they're not allowed to hunt in certain states, but it's like, why would you hunt with a spear?
Like, hunting with a bow and arrow is very effective.
If you're disciplined and like, I am very accurate with a bow.
I can shoot, I shoot an index card that I set up at a target regularly at 85 yards.
forrest galante
And you're consistent.
joe rogan
Yes, and I'm consistent.
I practice every day.
This is not a thing where...
With a rifle, much more accurate.
forrest galante
Sure.
joe rogan
And I'm much more consistent.
It's much easier to do.
So you could make the argument that it's better to hunt with a rifle.
I definitely could see that.
But if you do the work, and if you are disciplined enough, and if you practice enough, and if your technique is right, You can be very, very effective with a bow.
I mean, you can go out there and see all the skulls I have.
I mean, I've seen a lot of elk with bows and arrows and a lot of deer.
I eat them all.
This is a very effective way to get meat, but a spear is so inefficient.
forrest galante
And you're maiming the animal.
joe rogan
Yes, and you're not going to kill it quickly.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
You know, I mean, unless you get the drop on one that's sleeping, and you're like five feet away, and you chuck it right through the ribcage and kill it quickly.
forrest galante
What's the likelihood of that?
joe rogan
Not very likely.
The likelihood is that you're going to wound this thing, and then you're going to chase it down, and then you're probably going to stick it again.
forrest galante
Right, and it's miserable for everything.
joe rogan
Yeah, this guy, I think the spear he threw it had a GoPro on it.
forrest galante
Oh, okay.
So you got this horrible perspective.
joe rogan
It was all for social media.
It was all for the clicks.
And then they made it illegal.
So now it's illegal in Alberta to hunt with a spear because of this one individual.
forrest galante
That's probably good.
joe rogan
And I think it is good.
Use a rifle.
Use a bow and arrow.
forrest galante
Right.
joe rogan
You know, you can kill them very easily with a bow and arrow.
I mean, they allow baiting up there.
forrest galante
Gotcha.
joe rogan
Because they have to reduce the populations.
They have a very high number of black bears up there.
forrest galante
I see.
joe rogan
Very high.
And so they use baiting, which is they'll set out like donuts.
Sure, sure.
forrest galante
And the bears come.
joe rogan
And you can shoot two bear a year.
forrest galante
Oh, wow.
joe rogan
Yeah.
So you're, you know, there's, and they're trying to give out tags because they want people to hunt these things.
forrest galante
Is the number of black bear overpopulated due to them eating people's garbage, due to not enough grizzly bears?
Like, why are there too many black bears out there?
joe rogan
The grizzly bear population is increasing, too, to the point where they're making an argument that you should have tags for grizzly bears.
forrest galante
Interesting.
joe rogan
My friends John and Jen, who live up in Alberta, and I've been up to their place before, they're seeing a lot of grizzlies now.
They're seeing them all over the place.
forrest galante
Oh, interesting.
joe rogan
But by far, more black bear.
But you know what the biggest population of black bear in North America is?
forrest galante
Where?
joe rogan
New Jersey.
forrest galante
Really?
joe rogan
More black bear per capita in New Jersey than anywhere else in the country.
They're everywhere.
forrest galante
I have had an ongoing, I don't know if you've seen any of this on my Instagram stories, I haven't posted on my page, but I have had an ongoing battle with a mother black bear and her cub.
Have you been seeing this?
No.
In your yard?
In my yard, yeah.
joe rogan
In Santa Barbara?
forrest galante
In Santa Barbara.
joe rogan
Yeah, there are a lot of them.
forrest galante
I've lived there for 15 years, I saw one once on a hike on a hillside, and then six months ago, I wake up, there's all this ruckus, you know, I'm fast asleep, I'm like, what's going on?
The dogs bark, and I head outside, and there is a black bear on top of our chicken coop ripping the panels off.
unidentified
Whoa.
forrest galante
And I run up to it, I'm screaming, I'm like, hey, get out of here, bear!
I'm in my boxers, I don't even have a light on, nothing.
Because it was Santa Barbara, nothing, like, happens at night there, right?
joe rogan
Yeah.
forrest galante
And we have an acre, and so it's pretty spacious, but it's all fenced in.
This black bear has torn through our fence, come in, ripped the chicken coop to shreds, killed my kid's favorite chicken, killed all the other, you know, we have like 20 chickens.
Well, we did then, now we have like five.
And it has just been gone through these chickens.
And so I scare that bear off, I'm like, that was an anomaly, it'll never happen again.
Happens again the next night.
joe rogan
Well, now they know where the chickens are.
It's going to happen constantly.
forrest galante
So I've been trying all these non-lethal mitigation methods, right?
So we reinforced the fence.
Didn't work.
I put up these proximity alarms.
That worked at least for a few months.
Bear came back, killed our rabbits.
We had two Flemish giant rabbits.
They're a child now.
Now I'm thinking about getting a paintball gun and putting some mace in it or something.
I don't want to kill the thing.
joe rogan
You're not allowed to kill them.
That's part of the problem.
And I wouldn't, anyway.
I would.
You'd have to get a depredation permit.
forrest galante
A tag, yeah, sure.
And I mean, I'm sure if I called Fish and Game, or maybe they're going to hear this, it's going to become a thing, but...
joe rogan
They're never going to stop.
The thing about bears is when...
forrest galante
Once they know.
joe rogan
Yeah, once they know, they get habituated.
unidentified
And you can't stop them.
forrest galante
You cannot stop them.
joe rogan
You can't stop them.
forrest galante
Any other animal I've ever encountered or worked with, you can mitigate, like...
Almost very easily.
Put up a fence, no problem.
Right, done.
joe rogan
No, they're gonna keep coming.
forrest galante
This girl and her cub...
joe rogan
Have you ever seen the video of these giant bears brawling in far Rockaway, New Jersey?
forrest galante
No.
joe rogan
Oh, you need to see this, because it's crazy.
It's a very residential neighborhood.
forrest galante
And they're just clawing at each other.
joe rogan
Normal suburbs, where kids are waiting for the school bus, and we're talking like 300-pound-plus black bear going at it.
Look at this.
forrest galante
They're on the guy's porch, practically.
Holy crap.
joe rogan
So they're fighting over garbage.
Like, who gets access to the garbage?
Look at the size of these fuckers!
These are big bears!
I mean, this is the kind of bear, like, both of these bears are the kind of bear that you'd want to hunt.
Now, the governor of New Jersey, the most recent governor, he ran on a platform of stopping the bear hunt.
unidentified
Oh, interesting.
joe rogan
Because all the dorky liberals that live in, like, the, you know, in the nice cities, they don't have any idea what the problem is like.
forrest galante
The majority of the voters don't understand or connect with the problem.
unidentified
Exactly.
joe rogan
Which is the same in a lot of places where these urban areas vote on things that happen in Rural areas.
Yeah, in rural areas where they have no idea what the problem is.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
So the amount of human-bear interactions went up so much, by over 200%, that they had to reinstate the bear hunt within two years of him being the governor.
forrest galante
Really?
unidentified
Yeah.
forrest galante
Wow.
joe rogan
So, like, right away.
So, what did he get it in?
2020?
And then by 2022, he's like, okay!
Enough.
forrest galante
And has it made an impact?
Has it helped?
Keep killing them.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Well, they're going to start hunting them again now.
unidentified
Gotcha.
joe rogan
And they're actually going to raise the number of bears you're allowed to kill.
forrest galante
Gotcha.
joe rogan
And raise the number of tags.
forrest galante
Just to level it out.
joe rogan
They have to.
There's so many of them.
forrest galante
That's the thing people don't understand, is, like, we're at a state...
Where we have to manage the wildlife.
We don't have a choice.
This idea that, like, let's just let it all roam free and everything, it doesn't work that way anymore.
There's too much human development, there's too many urban areas, and we have made an imbalance.
If everything was wild and natural, sure, I completely agree, leave it alone.
But it's not, this is not natural.
These bears have bred in a residential area, they're feeding on garbage.
joe rogan
It's totally natural for them to be fighting on stairs.
forrest galante
Totally, yeah, that's what I mean.
joe rogan
That's their natural battling habitat.
forrest galante
And I'm not saying get rid of the bears.
Don't wipe out bears.
No one's saying that.
But it has to be managed.
joe rogan
You have to manage them.
And you also have to make them fearful of humans.
I mean, the thing about what you're doing, trying to scare that bear off, it's not going to work.
forrest galante
No, I agree with you.
joe rogan
I mean, when they catch bears going into people's garbage, they have to relocate the bears.
They call them naughty bears.
forrest galante
Yeah.
Naughty bears.
Naughty bear.
joe rogan
And then they relocate them.
Because if you don't relocate them, they know where the garbage is.
Why would they go hunt a deer when they could just go into your garbage?
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
And pull out that Subway sandwich that you didn't finish.
forrest galante
Well, my ultimate solution is we have five chickens left, and if those five chickens go, we're done with chickens for a little bit.
joe rogan
That's my ultimate solution.
Unfortunately, you live in a state where there's no way you can get a permit to shoot that thing.
forrest galante
Yeah, I don't know.
joe rogan
Especially if you live in only one acre.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
One acre is not good even with a bow and arrow because you get a pass through and it can hit somebody's fucking...
unidentified
Totally.
joe rogan
As a matter of fact, my friend Bruce said that one of his neighbors, someone shot a crossbow through a deer and it went through their window and stuck into their wall.
forrest galante
Holy shit.
joe rogan
Yeah.
unidentified
Can you imagine that?
joe rogan
One of his neighbors' walls got...
Penetrated by a crossbow bolt.
But whoever did that's a fucking asshole.
Yeah, they're idiots.
And it's not legal either.
forrest galante
I'm sure.
joe rogan
It's some jackass.
forrest galante
I'm sure.
joe rogan
Who wanted to shoot a deer, maybe for food.
forrest galante
Probably poaching the deer with a crossbow, and yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, probably.
I mean, that does happen.
I mean, it does happen, especially, you know, in poor neighborhoods.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
Like, you could get so much meat off of a deer, you know, eating it for weeks and weeks.
forrest galante
Dude, last time I saw you at your LA studio, you gave me like 40 pounds of elk.
I think I had my last piece like three months ago.
I savored that.
I kept it.
I dulled it out.
I'd only have it on special occasions.
It was so good.
joe rogan
Yeah, I eat so much of that.
forrest galante
I know you do.
joe rogan
Thank you for that.
My pleasure.
forrest galante
It's so good.
joe rogan
It's so good for you, too.
It's so nutrient-dense.
It's like no other meat.
forrest galante
It really is.
joe rogan
It tastes different.
It looks different.
It's more firm when you push on it.
It's like...
forrest galante
And you do the liver, the heart, everything from it, right?
joe rogan
Yeah, I eat everything.
Yeah, I eat everything.
I've been feeding the liver a lot to my dog, too.
forrest galante
Yeah?
joe rogan
Yeah, I cook it and...
forrest galante
Maybe that's why he's got that big head.
joe rogan
No, he's just...
But, my God, the way he eats it, it's crazy.
forrest galante
He goes nuts for it?
joe rogan
Yeah.
Like, frenzied, like he's a little crackhead.
He can't help himself.
forrest galante
We get tuna in California.
I think I've shown you some pictures.
I'll scrape the carcass, scrape the frame, and get all the bits of mushy, fatty tuna that's quite delicious, to be honest.
But then I'll just boil it for the dog.
The house stinks when you're boiling it.
You have to cook it outside, whatever.
But then you give this dog just a bowl of boiled tuna meat.
joe rogan
Oh my god, they go nuts.
forrest galante
They go nuts.
I've never seen him look at his dog food or kibble or a treat or anything like that.
joe rogan
No, that stuff sucks.
forrest galante
Yeah, exactly.
joe rogan
But you give him some elk liver, they go bonkers.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
He loves it.
forrest galante
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
He sits there staring at me, salivating, little drips on the ground.
forrest galante
He goes nuts.
joe rogan
It's funny.
forrest galante
He probably knows when you're cooking it, right?
joe rogan
Oh, yeah.
forrest galante
He's dialed in.
joe rogan
Yeah, he knows also when I'm using a chopping board that there's a 1 out of 10 chance he's getting some of that.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
So he'll sit there, he hears chop, chop, chop.
forrest galante
Wired in.
Come on, bro.
joe rogan
Let this be the time.
Let it be liver.
Yeah, but, you know, animal organs, it's funny how human beings at one point in time favored animal organs.
forrest galante
Right.
joe rogan
But it was the primary thing that we liked to eat.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
You know, like I had Sonny from Best Ever Food Review.
He's got that, have you ever seen that YouTube show?
forrest galante
No, I don't know.
joe rogan
It's a great YouTube show.
And he travels all over the world Eating with tribal people and going to exotic locations and eating their foods and it was amazing.
He spent time with the Hadza in Tanzania and he spent time with all these different tribal people where they killed a goat and they're scooping up the blood, the coagulated blood and swarping it.
So he's eating it there with them.
forrest galante
Yeah, that's gnarly.
joe rogan
And they also take raw liver and squirt bile on it and gallbladder juice.
forrest galante
Oh, don't eat bile.
That's gnarly.
joe rogan
And they enjoy it.
That's what they like.
They like to dip it in bile and blood and a mixture of the two.
forrest galante
I get eating liver.
I've had the blood mixed with milk that the Maasai drink.
They put a plug in the neck.
I've had that.
It's palatable.
I've accidentally cut the bile open on a fish once or twice and just...
Oh, dude.
I mean, maybe mammal bile's better, but I highly doubt it.
joe rogan
He says it's not.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
He says it's awful.
forrest galante
So gross, dude.
joe rogan
He says it's fucking disgusting.
forrest galante
Yeah, I bet.
joe rogan
But for whatever reason, these people have developed a taste for it, which is really fascinating.
forrest galante
But it probably goes back to what we were saying earlier, which is, have they developed a taste for it, or do they just know that it's that good for them?
So their brain is telling them, because of the options available, eat it.
joe rogan
Right.
forrest galante
This is going to benefit you.
joe rogan
Yeah, there's no options.
It's just survival.
forrest galante
Right.
joe rogan
Yeah.
But liver was always a big thing with the Comanche.
The Comanche would take liver, raw liver, and they would squirt bile on it.
forrest galante
Oh, I didn't realize that as well.
joe rogan
It's crazy.
It's a very common thing to eat it that way.
unidentified
Yeah.
forrest galante
It's become trendy again, too, and maybe it's just the pages that I follow or whatever, but I'm seeing way more of the eat animal organs that consume every part of it now than I ever did even a year ago.
joe rogan
I think that started off with Paul, Paul Saladino, and then it moved its way to the liver king.
forrest galante
Sure.
joe rogan
And unfortunately, I think there's a lot of people that were duped into thinking they could actually look like that guy if they were eating raw liver and raw testicles.
forrest galante
But the message of eat those things is a good message.
joe rogan
Yes.
Eat those things.
Eat organs.
That's really good for you.
But the idea that that's going to turn you into...
But I did read something about...
Oh, actually, I was informed by a friend that eating testicles...
It is possible that eating testicles has an androgenic effect.
forrest galante
Oh, interesting.
joe rogan
And you can actually get some oral form of testosterone from eating testicles.
See if you can Google that.
Because they've tested some testicle supplements.
And through testing these testicle supplements, they found trace amounts of what would show up in a drug test as taking oral testosterone.
forrest galante
No kidding.
joe rogan
Yeah.
forrest galante
Also just saying testing testicle supplements three times fast.
I was like waiting for you to fumble.
It was testing testicle supplements.
That's cool.
I mean, you're eating testosterone, right?
So it's just there is something there.
You're not just digesting it, I guess.
You're actually absorbing it.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
And well, Rocky Mountain oysters was always like a big thing that cowboys would eat whenever they would castrate Yep, yep.
And turn them into steers.
unidentified
It's good.
forrest galante
Have you had it?
joe rogan
I have.
forrest galante
It's good.
joe rogan
Tastes great.
It's not bad.
forrest galante
I mean, everything deep fried tastes good.
joe rogan
Yeah, I mean, it's not the best thing in the world.
Right.
You know, there's definitely, I'd rather have a ribeye.
forrest galante
Yeah, any day.
unidentified
It's better.
Yeah.
joe rogan
But it's edible.
forrest galante
You're not like forcing it down.
You're like, this is not bad.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's not nasty.
forrest galante
Right.
joe rogan
It's just like, this is not bad.
Yeah.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
But it's, you see anything about that?
forrest galante
No.
joe rogan
Some people have looked at this.
Google...
jamie vernon
This is an explanation about it.
joe rogan
No, I understand.
I was going to tell you, Google the whole package.
Google testosterone found in the whole package.
Desiccated testicle supplements.
Because I think the whole package is one of those liver king supplements.
He...
Him and Paul Saladino both were partners in one of these companies, whether it's Ancestral Supplements or the other one, where they sell desiccated or dehydrated liver and heart and kidneys.
And I've taken their supplements.
They're really excellent.
But I think one of them, I think it's called The Whole Package, has been shown to contain some oral form of testosterone.
forrest galante
Is it The Whole Beast?
Because I've seen that being...
unidentified
No.
joe rogan
Oh, hold back.
forrest galante
You're right.
Yeah, okay.
jamie vernon
It says it's got testicle in it, but I don't see anything about testosterone.
joe rogan
Yeah, but I mean, the actual testing of it, not from them, from someone else.
forrest galante
But I think that's great, that people are choosing to eat these things, not just for their health, but the fact that there's much less animal waste.
It's not all just going to dog food and things like that.
It's like people are starting...
It's trendy.
It's cool.
Paul, Liverking, whomever, they're turning this into a thing.
joe rogan
Yeah, Jamie, he actually sent it to me.
Hold on a second.
I can send it to you.
Now I'm remembering.
Hang on one second.
Yeah, it is.
I mean, it is good in that regard.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
Give me one second.
Here it is.
Jamie.
unidentified
Why?
joe rogan
Is your airdrop on?
There it goes.
unidentified
All right.
joe rogan
Okay.
Are you receiving that?
unidentified
Okay.
joe rogan
So, pull that up.
So, this is someone actually tested it.
And this is what the results were that they had found.
And this is from the whole package.
So, Androstein 317-dione, 20 nanograms per gram.
I don't know what any of this means.
Testosterone, 250 nanograms per gram, to 300 nanograms per gram.
So, what it is, is showing...
That there's some kind of androgens that are available that people have detected in this supplement.
Now, is that orally active?
That's the question.
Like, does it actually increase your testosterone by eating it?
unidentified
Sure.
joe rogan
I have no idea.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
I'm not the guy for that.
But eating organs, just the sheer nutrient content of like liver per se.
I know a lot of people who, like my friend Derek, he eats one ounce of liver every day.
Does he do it raw?
No, he cooks it.
forrest galante
He cooks it.
Okay.
joe rogan
But he does it just for sheer, just for health benefits.
forrest galante
Yeah.
And he feels a genuine change from eating it.
joe rogan
It's undeniable that it's a nutrient-dense food.
It's really a superfood.
forrest galante
I know it's been said on social media and stuff, but a lot of animals pick the liver if they have their choice.
A lot of predators pick out livers.
Orcas, lions, hyenas, all kinds of things.
Wolves.
If they have the choice, they are eating the liver immediately.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's fascinating.
Yeah.
forrest galante
Well, that tells you something, right?
That really does.
It tells you that there is so much vital nutrient in that organ that it's being selected for over muscle meat, over other tissue.
And you get different stuff from different parts of the animal.
Skin has different stuff.
But the fact that that's being selected for first...
I mean, that should be an indicator.
I think we can live our lives by things animals show us.
joe rogan
Yeah, well, you definitely can learn something from them.
You've done a lot of diving, and you do a lot of fishing.
Are you concerned at all about mercury levels in fish?
forrest galante
Yeah, yeah.
I think that, you know, if I had a diet of exclusively bluefin tuna, I'm certain I'd get, you know, mercury poisoning, foggy-headed, you know, all the things that come from that.
But as long as you're varying it, you know, and you're not, like, I think being pescatarian with wild apex fish, like, there's certain choices, right?
Certain fish have much lower mercury levels than others.
joe rogan
And it's the apex ones, the ones that are the predators, they're the ones who get the higher fish content or the higher mercury content because they're eating all these other fish that spend a lot of time in the depths of the ocean where the heavy metal poisoning is.
Is that the idea?
forrest galante
That's part of it.
It's really just the bioaccumulation.
So every fish has the same amount.
This is very vague, but every fish has the same amount of mercury.
But if you're a fish at the top of the food chain and you eat a thousand small fish, that's all that mercury is accumulating because it doesn't dissipate.
Versus if you're a fish lower down in the food chain like a sardine, that's just eating microorganisms and algae.
It's not accumulating a lot of mercury.
joe rogan
It's interesting you say that because I tested positive for arsenic from sardines.
unidentified
Really?
joe rogan
Yeah.
forrest galante
How does that happen?
joe rogan
I got a blood test and my doctor was like, you got arsenic in your blood.
I was like, what?
forrest galante
That's terrible.
joe rogan
Yeah.
And he goes, it's not a lot.
He goes, it's a very small amount.
He goes, but what are you eating?
And he goes, are you eating any sardines?
I go, yeah, I eat a lot.
I eat like three cans a day.
I was eating a lot of sardines.
Young and single and stupid.
And he said, don't do that.
He said, let's do it again in a couple of months.
Just cut that out of your diet.
Cut it out of my diet.
Went back.
Nothing.
No arsenic at all.
forrest galante
Do you know how the arsenic is in sardines?
I don't even know about that.
joe rogan
Just heavy metal toxins.
They spend a lot of time in the low depths of the ocean where a lot of that stuff accumulates apparently.
forrest galante
And all the radiation is more, yeah.
So there was a lot of concern about our eastern bluefin tuna population, right?
There's a population of bluefin tuna that basically just swim between Central America, us in California, Northern America, and over to Japan and back.
They just do this big circle every year.
And there's a lot of concern that when they're going over to Japan from Hiroshima and things like that, they're picking up a lot of radiation.
And that's actually activating the mercury, right?
joe rogan
Oh, really?
forrest galante
Yeah, so there's been published studies on this, and I don't know exactly how much it's affected in those fish, but the fish going over there undeniably have higher amounts of mercury than the fish over on the west coast of the United States.
joe rogan
Wow.
The radiation activates the mercury.
unidentified
Yeah.
forrest galante
Yeah, there's been some...
I don't understand how.
I don't understand how it's connected, but yeah.
joe rogan
How much time is there left in the ocean for these fish?
If you think about how quickly...
We want to talk about how we wiped out woolly mammoths and we wiped out bison...
We are wiping out fish at a fucking staggering rate.
forrest galante
An alarming rate, yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah.
forrest galante
And what's crazy, before we talk about how much time is left, scientists predict that eight years is all it would take to bring it back to 100%, or maybe it was 98%.
unidentified
What?
forrest galante
If we stopped fishing the ocean for eight years, it would be back to nearly 100% fecundency, 100% perfect, nearly.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
But we'd have to get all the countries on board.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
That means for eight years all the fishermen would starve.
forrest galante
And not to mention fish is the primary source of protein for like the majority of the planet.
joe rogan
Is it really?
forrest galante
It is, yeah.
joe rogan
The majority of the planet.
forrest galante
Yeah.
That's certainly everywhere coastal.
But the majority of the planet's majority of protein comes from fish.
Wow.
Yeah, which is why.
And we are.
I mean, we are wiping out, you know, it's 100 million sharks a year we're killing.
Just sharks.
100 million a year.
Just think about that.
That is so many animals.
Wow.
It's crazy.
Are the oceans fucked?
My short answer is no, because I don't like to think in that doom and gloom.
I think that we have the ability and the knowledge to overcome it.
We just have to figure out how we're going to do that.
I think if we continue at the rate that we're doing it, we're going to see a big collapse.
And by the way, people seem to forget about this.
If we lose the ocean, we all die.
It's the biggest carbon neutralizer.
It gives us all of our protein.
Like, there's a million reasons why the ocean, it's where all our rain comes from.
Everything is connected to the ocean.
And if we fuck that up completely, we're gone.
joe rogan
Yeah.
forrest galante
And yet, here we are, like, day after day, doing everything we can.
joe rogan
Just dumping stuff into the ocean.
Using giant nets and scooping up every fucking living thing that gets caught in it.
forrest galante
Everything.
Those trawlers that are, like, scraping the bottom, all the starfish and skates and Carl Reeves.
joe rogan
It's crazy that we do that.
Meanwhile, I love sushi.
forrest galante
It's the best.
Favorite food in the whole world.
I know, but...
But we're all hypocrites in that regard.
joe rogan
It's so fucked.
There's just so many goddamn people and so much need.
I mean, if people were forced to gather their own food and hunt for their own food, and you had a few months out of the year that all you did was hunt and fish, and then you stored it all and stockpiled it.
You know, we'd have a completely different thought about, like, where food comes from.
forrest galante
100%.
joe rogan
But the fact that you could just pull in a jack-in-the-box, get a burger.
Right.
Eat a piece of cow, no problem.
unidentified
Flay a fish.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah.
forrest galante
It's the connectedness, man.
I stand by that.
I think I've become more and more of a proponent for it as I get older.
But it's just, like, people need to connect with nature and connect with animals.
If they can do that, they can have appreciation.
They're more willing to make smart choices.
I'm not saying don't eat sushi.
I fucking love sushi.
It's my favorite food in the whole world.
But I still try and make smart choices.
Like, I try not to get five orders of bluefin tuna for the obvious reason that that's typically bluefin tuna that's getting wiped out, right?
But it's because I'm connected, because I go diving, and I love the ocean, and I see those fish.
And so I just think people need to connect to nature more.
joe rogan
Yeah, we're very disconnected.
It's just such a new thing, too, that human beings live in these massive population centers, like Los Angeles and New York, and are so removed from the process of where their food comes from.
forrest galante
Completely and utterly.
To the point that humans are disgusted by it.
You see these comments online, like, oh my god, how can you cut that fish up?
Or how can you fillet that deer or clean that elk or whatever?
It's like, Where the fuck do you think your food's coming from?
joe rogan
Yeah.
forrest galante
And they're disgusted by the process, and yet those are the same people that are going and eating it.
joe rogan
Well, and they're the same people, if they're not eating fish and meat, they don't understand what monocrop agriculture is doing to the earth.
forrest galante
And that's ten times worse.
joe rogan
It's the worst.
forrest galante
Dude, we went to Borneo.
I've never been so heartbroken in my entire life looking at an environment.
We went to Borneo to look for this primate species, Miller's grizzled langur.
What are you looking for?
joe rogan
You just mumbled that out.
forrest galante
Sorry.
The Miller's grizzled langur called the Dracula monkey.
It's a monkey with this big collar.
We found it.
First one seen in 30 years.
We got it on a trail camera.
joe rogan
What does that look like?
forrest galante
It's awesome.
Jamie can pull it up.
You know what a langur is?
joe rogan
So you found one?
So they were thought to be extinct?
forrest galante
Yeah, for 30 years.
Yeah.
unidentified
Wow.
joe rogan
They call him a Dracula monkey?
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
Whoa!
What a cool looking monkey.
forrest galante
The picture to the left is our picture.
That one right there.
joe rogan
Right there?
forrest galante
Yeah, that's my picture.
unidentified
Wow.
forrest galante
I think.
Yeah, I think that's our picture.
Rare monkey discovered.
joe rogan
Rare monkey discovered in Borneo.
forrest galante
Yep.
So they hadn't been seen for like 30 years, and there's this incredible professor I worked with, and she pointed me in the right direction, then we worked with the right people.
There's me right there in the Dracula Monkey.
And anyway, yeah, so we went and found this guy.
But the point being, we landed in Borneo.
We drove for two days to get to this primary piece of jungle.
For two days, all we saw was oil palm.
For two days.
I'm not joking.
It's just...
Like, eight, nine hours of driving per day, plantation after plantation of monoculture.
One singular crop.
Wiping out virgin primary jungle to plant this oil palm.
It was devastating.
Nothing lives in it.
joe rogan
And palm oil is used for...
forrest galante
Everything.
joe rogan
Everything.
forrest galante
Your Nutella, your peanut butter, your...
It's like the cheapest version of oil.
And so it's in tons, especially sweet food products.
It's in everything.
Everything.
And again, I love Nutella, but I try not to buy it because I've been to Borneo and I've seen it.
I'm not saying everybody can do that, but at least I've been connected to it enough to now try and make those decisions.
And it's just, man, that monoculture and seeing it.
And then you get into this tiny little patch of virgin jungle, right, that's like, whatever, a couple hundred miles or whatever, tiny compared to the island.
And it's so alive and virgin.
Yeah, this is what it looks like.
Just for days, Joe.
I'm not kidding.
It is devastating to see.
joe rogan
And so all that wildlife, all that habitat is all destroyed for this monocrop.
forrest galante
Yep, all gone.
Yes, look at that picture.
1950 versus 2020. Look at that.
1950, look at the amount of virgin jungle.
2020, look what's left.
joe rogan
Wow.
It's literally like there's maybe 30% left.
forrest galante
And so we drove up that sort of coastline that you see there, and you just see nothing.
Yeah, exactly.
Thanks, Jamie.
And it's unfathomable that we can do this.
And it's because it's cheap.
It's because labor in Indonesia is cheap.
It's cheap to produce the crop.
Everything's getting torn up like that, looking like those mines, and that's just for plantation.
And nothing...
You go into it at night, right?
Like with a headlamp or whatever.
Silent.
Just silent.
No crickets, no bats, no birds.
Silent.
You get into these little patches of jungle, noises and crickets and bugs and bees and monkeys.
joe rogan
I heard the night in the jungle is just deafening.
forrest galante
It's amazing.
It's deafening, but I don't care who you are, you will sleep well listening to it because it's natural.
It's like the kind of thing you pay for to play, you know, when you go to sleep, sleep sounds.
And it's like loud and crazy, but like you lay down and you listen to it and you just drift off right to sleep.
Whereas if I'm in New York, you know, and like in a high rise staying there, I can't sleep at all listening to the ambulances and the, you know, it's crazy.
joe rogan
Yeah, no, I can't either.
I don't like hearing that shit.
Well, Forrest, still alive.
It's your book.
It's available now.
Did you do the audio version of it?
forrest galante
I did.
joe rogan
Did you narrate it?
forrest galante
I did.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Nice.
forrest galante
My scratchy voice, if you want.
joe rogan
Happy!
I love when an author reads their own book.
It's really depressing when they hire some actor to read it when you know they're disconnected from the subject matter.
Especially something like this.
forrest galante
You helped me write that.
You don't even know that.
joe rogan
How did I help you?
forrest galante
When we went to see the wolves together, we're sitting in the car, and you're like, dude, get out from under the thumb of these networks.
Do your own thing.
Do more of it.
Because I was griping about how tough it is to get, you know, Animal Planet Discovery, whatever, on board for some of these projects.
And you're like, just go fucking do it, dude.
And I was like, all right.
And that was like, I think we hung out in January and COVID hit in March.
And COVID hit, and I was like, well, I'm stuck at home.
I'm going to write a book.
joe rogan
Well, I'm glad you did, Ben.
I'm glad you're thinking along those ways, because I think if you did a show and just did it on YouTube or did it on some other platform, I mean, you'd probably have way more views even than you're getting off of the networks, because people just aren't watching TV like they used to.
People are really fascinated by the internet.
They're watching things on their phones, they're watching Apple TV and Netflix, and that's where people are getting it from the internet.
forrest galante
You're right.
And that's where I'm going.
We've started this thing called The Wild Times, which is our YouTube thing.
And it's super fun.
It's very like talk show, you know, but we talk about wildlife news and what's happening in the world and started to do some content for it.
unidentified
Beautiful.
forrest galante
It's fun, man.
And I'm still doing the shows.
It's on YouTube and Spotify and all those places called The Wild Times.
joe rogan
Is it your YouTube channel?
What is the channel itself?
forrest galante
There it is.
Right there.
joe rogan
Okay, Wild Times Pod on YouTube.
forrest galante
Yeah.
joe rogan
Alright.
forrest galante
And it's fun, and that's, you know, the book, and I'm still doing Shark Week shows and stuff like that.
I'm just trying to do all of it.
unidentified
Beautiful.
forrest galante
And a big part of that is thanks to you.
joe rogan
My pleasure, brother.
I'm excited you're doing that.
Thank you very much for being here.
Go get the book, folks.
It's out now.
unidentified
Alright.
joe rogan
Thanks.
unidentified
Thanks, dude.
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