Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 533: Coyote Peterson

Episode Date: October 22, 2022

Coyote Peterson, the wildest human we've ever met, joins the DTFH! Check out Coyote's youtube channel, Brave Wilderness. You can also follow him on Instagram and Facebook, and be sure to check out B...raveWilderness.com. Original music by Aaron Michael Goldberg. This episode is brought to you by: East Fork - Get yourself some nice, durable ceramic pottery/kitchenware/drinkware from East Fork! A company that pays a living wage to its workers! Lumi Labs - Visit MicroDose.com and use code DUNCAN at checkout for 30% Off and FREE Shipping on your first order! BLUECHEW - Use offer code: DUNCAN at checkout and get your first shipment FREE with just $5 shipping.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 When life gets crazy and when doesn't it? ShopRite helps you keep it all together. Now with a little extra help from Instacart. If you need your groceries now-ish, but your options for going to ShopRite are later-ish or never-ish, you can get everything you need delivered through Instacart right to your door in as fast as an hour.
Starting point is 00:00:17 Skip the shop and savor more of your crazy, busy life with ShopRite and Instacart. Visit instacart.com to get free delivery on your first order. Offer valid for a limited time, minimum order, $10 additional terms apply. Greetings to you, my dearest listeners. It is me, Dee Trussell,
Starting point is 00:00:35 and you are listening to the Duncan Tressel Family Hour podcast. This is a special intro because I'm actually streaming myself recording it to an audience of 38 people right now. It's pretty incredible. 38 human beings, theoretically. 38 individuals have gathered together to watch me record this intro.
Starting point is 00:01:00 And it looks like we have a question coming in from one of the stream viewers. Let's hear that question now. What is the reasoning behind the stream? Well, the reasoning behind the stream, and first of all, I just wanna say thank you so much for watching me record an intro to my podcast and not just the stream watcher who asked the question,
Starting point is 00:01:21 but to all of you, thank you for being here. You know, what is the reasoning behind the stream? Is a great question that it's just not that easy to answer in less than 23 to 29 hours, but I'm gonna try. I was in Acapulco. I was at a restaurant in the evening with my consultants. I have 33, I had 33 consultants.
Starting point is 00:01:51 I have 32 consultants now. And I don't know what I was thinking, but I had a pretty hefty block of gold. And I threw that gold into the aquarium where there was two great white sharks and a mako shark. Now, for all the people watching on YouTube, you're not gonna get an apology from me. I know that's what people do.
Starting point is 00:02:18 They stream on here and they apologize. I'm not apologizing. When I threw that gold into the aquarium, I'll tell you what I was thinking. I was thinking how beautiful it would be to see the gold glimmering beneath the great white shark's beautiful body. I was not thinking that one of my consultants
Starting point is 00:02:38 would jump into a shark-filled aquarium to try to retrieve the gold. I was not thinking that when he tried to climb over into the aquarium, he would cut his hand on my steak knife and that the blood would go into the water and would work the sharks up and do a horrible frenzy
Starting point is 00:03:00 and that they would rip him, limb from limb, right there in front of all of my consultants, everyone in the restaurant. And when I laughed, I was not laughing. I wasn't, if you don't understand horror, sometimes people laugh when bad things happen. And so a video emerges soon that shows me laughing when one of my consultants is eaten by two makos
Starting point is 00:03:28 and a great white. Please understand that like a lot of people, what sounds like laughter is weeping. So regardless, the other 32 consultants recommended that I start live streaming my intros and that maybe I could sort of work in the truth of what happened in Acapulco before it hits the interwebs, kind of get ahead of the curve.
Starting point is 00:03:56 So thank you for that question. Let's see if we have any more. Okay, it looks like we have another question from one of our streamers. As I've been recording this stream, the viewership has diminished. We're down to two people watching this and this is a question coming in from Lewis.
Starting point is 00:04:14 Why can't I get a girlfriend? I used to be like you, no one to treat my good. No one to beg me to hate Lewis. I used to be like you. Lewis, it's me, the carpenter and that climbed into your ear when you were a little boy. I burrowed down past your eardrum
Starting point is 00:04:41 and I've made a little nest in your brain. I just want you to know, I love the way your brain tastes. Most importantly, I love you. And I know that if you go to a grave and cry a lot and pray, a lich will rise from the money pit and you'll be able to make a girlfriend of that lich and maybe marry it one day.
Starting point is 00:05:04 Thanks for the great question, Lewis. Friends, if you want to participate in random DTFH YouTube streams, you can just subscribe to my YouTube. It's Duncan Tressel on YouTube. Links will be at DuncanTressel.com and now a word from our sponsors. I want to thank East Fork
Starting point is 00:05:25 for supporting this episode of the DTFH. East Fork is a pottery company located in Asheville, North Carolina and they make some of the most beautiful, magical, incredible pottery that I have ever encountered. This is J.R.R. Tolkien level mystical stuff. There's a difference. When you are drinking tea or coffee
Starting point is 00:05:51 from your handmade magical mug, there's a difference in the way it tastes compared to whatever your other mug is. I'm just telling you, this is stuff that seems like it was made by fairies but it wasn't made by fairies. It was made by human beings who are getting paid a living wage by the good people who are running East Fork.
Starting point is 00:06:14 I spent a long time talking to them on the phone and they are awesome. They really care about the people working at their company but most importantly, they really care about the incredible pottery that they are putting out into the world. So if you want to get someone an amazing Christmas gift, if you want to get yourself like a nice new dinner wear set,
Starting point is 00:06:36 EastFork.com, that's where you got to go. It's EastFork.com, check them out. The mugs are microwave safe and if someone can break a mug, it's me. If like I have one real talent in the world, it's destroying nice things. These things have not been shipped harmed at all by my rough handling of them
Starting point is 00:07:04 and they're beautiful. Even better, EastFork has raised over a million dollars for social justice oriented activist groups and nonprofits but most importantly, their pots, their mugs, their plates are badass. Again, that's EastFork.com, check them out. Get yourself some nice pottery. Thank you, EastFork.
Starting point is 00:07:31 And we're back. My Texas friends, come and see me. I'm gonna be at Hyena's Comedy Club in Dallas, in Houston on the 11th and 12th of November. In the next year, lots of dates coming in. I hope you will come and see me live. You can find all the dates at dunkintrustle.com. Finally, I would love it if you would subscribe
Starting point is 00:07:50 to my Patreon. It's patreon.com forward slash DTFH. You'll get commercial free episodes and the opportunity to hang out with a throbbing, thriving genius community. We gather twice a week for a weekly meditation and our family gathering. We are currently writing a book together
Starting point is 00:08:07 and we'd love for you to join us. It's patreon.com forward slash DTFH. And now with us today is the wildest human I've ever had a conversation with. This is a man who is not afraid to shove his hand into boxes filled with hornets. This is a man who has been stung, bitten, stabbed and poisoned by all varieties of insect
Starting point is 00:08:38 and snake life out there. But most importantly, this is somebody who's got a really great heart and is trying to save the black rhino. He's just super cool and I love his show. You can find it on YouTube. It's called Brave Wilderness. It's highly entertaining.
Starting point is 00:09:01 And I just, I don't know how I got so lucky to get to have a conversation with Coyote Peterson. But he's here today. So everybody welcome to the DTFH Coyote Peterson. Not just the black rhino, but I'll call him a planet and also he's super cool and fantastic. So but the thing that I don't know
Starting point is 00:09:37 is our coyote. Coyote Peterson, welcome to the DTFH. It is really, really nice to meet you. How are you today? I'm great. Thank you so much for having me on the show. I'm greatly looking forward to this conversation. Thank you.
Starting point is 00:09:52 So what is going right like right now in a week in the life? Coyote Peterson, you are in between what? Like you you've just left some. I watched your most recent video. You stranded yourself in some horrific place that no one should be that somehow a dog survived there for a month.
Starting point is 00:10:14 You're out there in the heat and there's urchins. And now you're in between. What what are you? What's what's going on? He what are you looking for more miserable places? Do you have someone who works with you? He's like, I found a new kind of asp that you might want to get bitten by.
Starting point is 00:10:32 How does it work? Well, you know, what's funny is it just so happens that this week you're you're connecting with me two days after having put my feet into a box with 300,000 maggots. I actually filmed that in this very room two days ago. What without question, the grossest thing we have ever filmed on the world in this channel. We were like, all right, how can we make maggots entertaining?
Starting point is 00:10:58 And the idea was to take a turkey and put it out in the wild and get it filled with maggots and released like just like we knew we would ruin turkeys for everybody. So we contacted a maggot farm, Duncan, which is a real thing. And we bought 300,000 maggots, had them shipped to Ohio, and then we built it gets worse. It gets grosser. My amazing graphic designer, Emily,
Starting point is 00:11:24 came up with the idea of creating something called a meat sock. And we sewed together chicken skin and bacon and put it on my foot. So I had one meat sock foot and one naked foot in a box with maggots for over three hours to find out whether or not they'd eat human flesh. Wow.
Starting point is 00:11:45 Wow. What? OK. So run me through a meeting. Like, how does it work? Just run me through the meeting. Who pitches the ideas? Like, who's like, listen, I've got an idea.
Starting point is 00:11:58 Cody, you ever heard of a meat sock? Well, they don't exist yet, but it's a way to get maggots to chew on your feet. Look, I'm just wondering if they eat human flesh eventually. Run me through a meeting, a pitch meeting. How does it work? So we'll have these monthly brainstorming meetings myself and the entire Brave Wilderness team.
Starting point is 00:12:18 So we've got 17 people full time that work here in our Columbus office to mix myself, my production team, producers, editors, graphic designers, social media team. And you know, maggots are one of those things that just makes everybody's skin crawl. And we knew that we always wanted to do a maggot episode. And we connected with the Ohio State University, and they have some studies going on there where maggots are used
Starting point is 00:12:41 for many medicinal purposes, specifically in the removal of scar tissue or necrotic tissue. And so we know that they will eat dying human flesh, but we're like, will they eat living human flesh? They can. They tell the difference between the two. And while we were pretty certain that I wasn't going to be eaten alive by maggots,
Starting point is 00:12:57 we knew that we could make maggots entertaining in that sense. Now, what we did not predict was the smell that was going to come with the maggot. So they were raised on rotting salmon carcasses. And when we got them here to the office, they showed up in a Styrofoam box that was cooled and vacuum sealed. It smelled so bad.
Starting point is 00:13:21 Our entire office reeked for an entire day as we then unpackaged these maggots, put them into the container, and then I had to keep my feet in there for three hours. But it was a total of a seven hour period that I was in this small room with these 300,000 maggots. It was awful, but hopefully it's going to be wildly entertaining. What's going through your head?
Starting point is 00:13:41 What's going through your head an hour and a half in? What kind of things do you think it about to stay calm during that experience? Well, I guess the thing that I was most concerned about was my foot being encapsulated in a sock made from chicken skin and raw bacon. Yes. And whether or not I might actually
Starting point is 00:14:02 absorb some sort of grossness from that. And then once the maggots started getting in between the sock and my foot, and I could just feel them all moving around, and we knew they were eating. We caught really cool behavior of them eating through what we called the bacon brim, because the brim of the sock was made of bacon. We could see them burrowing through that.
Starting point is 00:14:20 And I did take a couple of little nibbles, but I think once they figured out that I was alive, they were not interested in eating me. And what was going through my mind is just please endure through this smell without vomiting into the container of 300,000 maggots, because it was bad. I mean, really bad.
Starting point is 00:14:39 One of the worst things I've smelled in quite some time. You are famous for putting yourself in not just for this. You're famous because you have this incredible personality. You're inspiring. You make us all want to go outside of our boundaries, outside of the confines of what we're afraid of. You're doing that for us. It's like, and you're, I'm sorry, but you've figured it out.
Starting point is 00:15:05 For some reason, human beings like to watch other human beings suffer. It's strange that way, but we do. And especially when we know you're probably going to be OK. But I'm curious about any techniques you have for calming yourself down when you find yourself in these dangerous situations that you keep putting yourself. And I'm fascinated by what you're talking about,
Starting point is 00:15:31 because it seems like you really don't know what's going to happen. Like you kind of, you can bet that you're not going to be the first human that maggots figure out they can eat. You're not going to do that. If you did, you would usher in a kind of an apocalypse, wouldn't you? Like it would spread through the maggot kingdom. Maggots would be these new piranha.
Starting point is 00:15:52 You would cause the end of the world to be like, that motherfucker, what? The maggots are eating my dog. So yeah, tell me what tricks do you have for finding calm within the storm? It's funny because they are always seemingly good ideas on paper, but they always don't work out the best.
Starting point is 00:16:15 And a recent example in an episode that's coming up in November, if it could possibly get worse than the maggots, was the angry yellow jacket box, which is an episode that just finished going through post-production. And if your imagination runs wild, you can already probably begin to figure out what that is. But we found a massive yellow jacket nest.
Starting point is 00:16:36 I put on a B-suit, first of all, to figure out whether or not yellow jackets can sink through a B-suit. Yes, they can. It took like 20 stings, just catching them. And we caught over 100 of them inside of this contraption we built that we called the angry yellow jacket box. And then my naked hand went into the box with the yellow jackets.
Starting point is 00:16:54 Now, we were doing this as an experiment to find out if 15 minutes after being abducted from their nest, were they still angry at me? And within one second, we found out that, yes, they were. Within three seconds, I was tapping out to say I've taken too many stings. This is insane. Well, my hand got stuck in the box.
Starting point is 00:17:12 It was in there for 10 seconds. And I took over 100 stings in 10 seconds. And it is the worst pain I have ever been through. So it has eclipsed as a whole the most pain I've been through from any one of my singular insect stings or creature bites. So over 100 yellow jacket stings in 10 seconds, and uncontrollable pain that lasted for over 24 hours.
Starting point is 00:17:39 Bad idea. That one was a really, really bad idea. Episode comes out in November, and I promise it's also super entertaining. Wow. So obviously, you've got doctors on hand. You've got all kinds. Because you can die.
Starting point is 00:17:51 And this is no joke. Like, people die from bee stings all the time. So yellow jackets specifically are known for sending people into anaphylactic shock. There is a component to their venom specifically that causes you to swell. And the pictures and the footage of my hand, just 15 minutes after the fact, it
Starting point is 00:18:11 looks like two different humans because of the swollenness. Now, fortunately, I just had a normal, what we call a normal allergic reaction, I guess, to that many stings, where I didn't need to go to a doctor. But we do have an epinephrine pen on set for every one of these extreme stunts, just in case. So if I ever went into anaphylactic shock, boom, hit me with that EpiPen.
Starting point is 00:18:32 It's going to drag me out to the point where I'll be able to seek medical attention. At least that's what we hope, or that's what we've been told by our doctors. But no, there's never any medical professionals behind the scenes. We have medical professionals that we contact in advance. My team is trained in basic survival for a stage.
Starting point is 00:18:52 So we know that I'm going to probably be OK. So far, it's worked out OK. This is what I'm trying to get at, though. So in the midst of that, how are you calming yourself down? Or maybe you're not. Maybe you're just, I don't know. You're just get through it. You're white-knuckle it or whatever.
Starting point is 00:19:08 But do you have any, like, anything you refer to, anything that pops into your mind, any breathing techniques? What is your trick for staying calm in these situations? The lead up to it really is not that difficult now that I've done so many of these things. Like, at first, your adrenaline is going to get rushing regardless.
Starting point is 00:19:29 Any time that you, as a human, are like, oh, I am about to feel pain. And I know it's probably going to be pretty intense. The big thing you don't know is how long it's going to last. So the pain that came with this yellow jacket box specifically was on that level where, like, you can see in the video and the footage, like, man, like, he's messed up.
Starting point is 00:19:50 Like, you can see it in my face. You can see in my eyes. I'm just trying to breathe. I'm trying to calm my heart rate. Like, the adrenaline was flowing so fast, I got an instantaneous, like, splitting headache. So we're like, you're dizzy. You're kind of, like, whiting out.
Starting point is 00:20:05 And you're seeing, like, those white stars, like, if you've ever gotten hit in the head before. So all of that, it's just your body's reaction to the venom that is invading your system and the intense pain that your body's in, like, overdrive. And it's like, what have you done to me? And you do kind of have to put yourself in a meditative state. As you begin to realize this pain is not just, like,
Starting point is 00:20:26 you know, bumping your toe on the corner of a table, you're going to have to endure here. And by the time I got nine hours into this, man, it was the worst 24 hours I've ever been through. Wow. Wow. Now, this, what you're doing is so curious to me. Because how frustrating for an animal, it has developed this incredible defense mechanism.
Starting point is 00:20:53 And suddenly, you show up. And, you know what I mean? Like, how many millions of years of evolution to concoct the perfect poison to keep the apex predator away. And you're like, oh, no, no, no, no. I'm going to stick my hand right in a swarm of lots of you. Do you ever just marvel at how miraculous it is that creatures have figured out
Starting point is 00:21:25 how to secrete their own poison? It's phenomenal. I mean, especially insects. What an interesting alien world that they have. Because with insects, so it's the female insect that has what's the stingers is scientifically really known as an oviposter, right? So it's used for laying eggs.
Starting point is 00:21:44 Yet it also is connected to this venom sac that they use as a defense to ward off any attacker or invader of their nest that ultimately is going after their young, their larvae, or in the case of bees, it could be larvae and honey. And it's amazing how they've evolved to create these defense mechanisms that would drive any human running away screaming, usually in any instance, skunks, badgers,
Starting point is 00:22:09 foxes, raccoons. I mean, you name it. Anything that takes a sting from a yellow jacket is like, whoa, I am out of here. I mean, you just match the soft, squishy nose of a raccoon rooting around in a yellow jacket nest. I mean, a couple of stings to the face, and that creature is in some serious trouble.
Starting point is 00:22:25 So it's pretty amazing that the evolution that exists in our insects and arachnids on this planet. I want to thank Lumi Labs for supporting this episode of the DTFH. Say goodbye to those days of ODing on edibles and having that thing happen where you start wondering if you have a tapeworm inside of you from the catfish that you didn't cook enough. When you were at summer camp, no.
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Starting point is 00:23:55 to get free shipping and 30% off your first order. Links can be found at duncantrustle.com, but again, that's microdose.com, code DUNCAN. Do you ever, do you have any poisons that you use? I don't mean literal poisons, but what are your defense mechanisms? If they're, imagine this, there's an interdimensional version of you
Starting point is 00:24:39 and an interdimensional YouTube channel that likes to trigger the defense mechanisms of Apex predators in a technological society. So what would your defense mechanism be if you found yourself kidnapped by some super advanced alien put in a box and then it shoves its hand in to see what you do to get revenge?
Starting point is 00:25:06 Wow, that's a great question. Well, I think one of my defense mechanisms is more akin to like Wolverine from X-Men. I strangely heal very fast and I'm very resilient to a lot of things. One thing that a lot of people probably don't know is that I have strangely never had stitches and I've never had a broken bone
Starting point is 00:25:28 despite all knock on wood. Despite all the crazy things that I've gone through, I don't get sick very often. My mom thinks that science should study my blood considering the number of venoms that I've taken over the years to be like, is there something special about your blood that just allows you to style these things off?
Starting point is 00:25:46 But probably the thing that would defend me against any alien species would be my chattiness. I talk so much, they'd be like, well, we can't get this guy to shut up. So we're gonna go ahead and just let him go now because he's asking us too many questions. He's way too curious and everything we're poking him with,
Starting point is 00:26:03 he's got way too high of a pain tolerance. This is not a good one to stun. This creature delivers ear beatings unlike anything I've ever experienced. They could be open and looking at stuff and I'd be watching and be like, hey, do you guys know this and this and this and this? And they'd be like,
Starting point is 00:26:20 this is not how this was supposed to work out. I put 200 coyote beaters in my ears for 30 minutes and never experienced anything like a swarm of beaters. And this is, you know what? That's, I think your mom is onto something. I mean, isn't this, this is some sort of mythical idea, right? Like, oh God, what is it?
Starting point is 00:26:40 The princess bride, right? He'd like been taking poison to train himself to be immune to poison. But this is like, this might not just be fiction. It might be that over time by exposing yourself to poisons, you gain some special power.
Starting point is 00:27:02 Yeah, you know, there's a lot of people that ask that question and look in all seriousness, I do not believe there's anything special about my blood or my immunity. I think I'm just, I don't know, was born to live this role essentially and that's why I've been able to stive off any sort of infections.
Starting point is 00:27:23 I guess infections are another interesting thing to note. Like, times I've been bitten or scratched by things and it just kind of gone about my day, continued to muck around in a swamp. I mean, there have been times where snapping turtles have locked off a piece of my finger. We've literally wrapped it up
Starting point is 00:27:39 and I've gone right back to doing what I'm doing in the mud and the gun. A time specifically that comes to mind is we were filming an episode on Cayman in Brazil, in the Pantanal area. And like at Ding Dong, we caught a piranha on a fishing line and I was showing the piranha
Starting point is 00:27:58 and with my thumb, I was, I'm sorry, my finger, I was opening up its lip like this to show its teeth and my finger slipped and went right into its mouth and it just went, oh, like that and just bit the tip of my finger off. And there was just, it was a bloodbath everywhere. I mean, we're in the middle of shooting this episode for Animal Planet.
Starting point is 00:28:17 I mean, there was so much blood. It was amazing how much blood came out of my finger. And the medic that was on set, he was like freaking out because of the amount of blood and we're like, well, he's gotta get back in the water to swim with these crocodilians. Like we're not going all the way back
Starting point is 00:28:31 to, you know, where our lodge was at. Like we just need to keep going. So they literally just wrapped my finger up, put it in a rubber glove and then I got back into the water. I mean, just ooze filled, disgusting, bacteria-ridden water in the Brazilian Pantanal with my open finger, I guess.
Starting point is 00:28:48 And then we cleaned it out later, no infection. You know, I don't know. Maybe there is something there, but- There's something there. There's something there. There's gotta be. Maybe the aliens need to come and pull some of my bodily fluids and blood out
Starting point is 00:29:03 and test that and use some value. I have an idea for how we can achieve that. I imagine you already have, by the way, but I was just, I was thinking to myself, wow, okay. So he's put himself through more difficult situations than most anyone like has ever experienced. I mean, I've been stung by a bee, a stingray got me on the foot when I was a kid.
Starting point is 00:29:24 I'm just, I still remember it. That sucked. But have you ever considered like maybe branching off with another show where you take really like bad acid? It's an adult version of Brave Holders. We call that dark wilderness in the Wilderness Productions office. If it's just like, all right,
Starting point is 00:29:45 let's experiment with Coyote Peterson and every drug that you could possibly feed into a human body and study the effects. It is a joke that's come up before to be like, man, how funny would it be if we just put you on a bunch of trippy things and just let you go to town with your chatty kathiness and see where that leads? I have a good argument for it.
Starting point is 00:30:04 I mean, because these, think of it, like all these hippies, they're out there like, they're blasting MEO, DMT, bufatin, you know, this is a venom. And I think you could argue that the psilocybin is potentially a defense mechanism. These mushrooms are manifesting in the hopes to like keep things from eating them. Though I think people would argue with that.
Starting point is 00:30:29 An exo pheromone, they're trying to teach us. I don't know. I find a guess. It's like, they're just trying to survive. But yeah, have you ever really seriously considered exposing yourself to psychoactive toxins so that it's not just the pain of the thing. It's that suddenly you're merging with the universe
Starting point is 00:30:53 while being poisoned. So what's crazy is, okay, so to answer that question directly, if ever the Brave Wilderness brand goes away from a direction that's family and brand friendly, I will definitely bring this show concept to you and we will go, well, then I gospel with it all. I can be your guinea pig. A lot of the things that I've been stung by
Starting point is 00:31:14 do actually have these secondary effects that, for example, after we did the Yellowjacket box, if that wasn't enough for this year, we were in Arizona and I did another episode on harvester ants. Now, harvester ants are a very famous ant species because they are one of the most venomous insects in the world, but they're yield of venom.
Starting point is 00:31:36 So the amount of venom that they inject with the sting is not nearly as large as some of the things like a wasp or a hornet. But when I was there, so the whole insect sting pain index world comes from an entomologist by the name of Justin Schmidt. This guy is an absolute genius. I don't know if you've heard of him before,
Starting point is 00:31:55 but he was the first guy to sort of get stung by all of these things. And we sort of Steven Spielberg, his book, Sting of the Wild, into everything we did in video form on the YouTube channel. But when I was in Arizona and did this harvester ant episode after filming the actual sting portion where I put my feet in the ant mound
Starting point is 00:32:14 for seven straight minutes. I just stood there and took seven minutes worth of stings. And that was to get all the shots, the thumbnail for the YouTube video. I mean, it was absolutely agony. Like my feet were beyond on fire. But about 20 minutes after doing this, I started feeling really trippy.
Starting point is 00:32:31 Like I was super out of it, almost not to love war. I was hallucinating by any means, but I felt almost out of body in a certain sense. Later that afternoon, when we went to Justin's house to do an interview with him, he told me specifically that indigenous people in the South, Western United States would take mounds, or they would dip things into harvester ant mounds
Starting point is 00:32:55 and put them into their mouths and get the inside of their mouth stung and they would go on a trip, essentially. So there is a sort of a toxin in the ant venom that does give you some sort of a high. And I definitely experienced it. And so did my director of photography Trent because he was stung multiple times
Starting point is 00:33:15 during the filming of that episode. And he's like, man, I'm feeling like super out of it right now. Like we both felt buzzed in a sense. Well, like how can you describe that high? What's it like? If you were to hyperventilate, so hyper with a non-substance induced sort of thing, if you were to hyperventilate,
Starting point is 00:33:35 or if you've been hanging upside down too long and you stand up really fast and you kind of have that rush of blood to the head, it's like that where you almost feel like this pulled out nature of your ability to see, hear, and comprehend basic human functionality. Like my wildlife biologist, Mario, was talking to me and we were driving in the van on our way to Justin.
Starting point is 00:33:58 So I'm like, dude, I think we've got to stop at a gas station. I need to get some Gatorade or some food or something. It's I am super out of it. I hear you talking to me, but I'm not putting together the words with the meaning of the sentence. You're really kind of out of it. And again, keep in mind that I took well over 100 stings.
Starting point is 00:34:17 I mean, it's impossible even comprehend how many stings in that amount of time because they don't just sting once. They lock on with their mandibles, so they bite and then they sting repetitively until essentially they run out of venom. Now they don't lose their stingers, but eventually their venom sac does deplete
Starting point is 00:34:32 and then it will fill back up after they continue to eat. Cause all of the toxicity from the venom comes from the microbial little world that they consume essentially. Wow. So do you try to not kill these creatures that are stinging you? Do you try to like?
Starting point is 00:34:48 Oh yeah. That's incredible. We're super careful. When we even show with this harvestry ant video specifically, there were piles of ants under the curve of my feet. So when I went and stood on the nest initially, no ants were there.
Starting point is 00:35:01 And then you breathe down at the nest or if you just kind of knock on it, once the first one comes up and it's like, oh, hold on, we've got an invader here. A single sting will release a pheromone that essentially tells the other guard ants, hey guys, we're going to the front line here. Something's not supposed to be here.
Starting point is 00:35:18 It might try to get into the nest. They sting and sting and sting and sting it. And strangely enough, after a while, they were kind of like, this guy's not going anywhere, so we don't know if there's much of a point in stinging him anymore. And then they just kind of won it all over me. But yeah, it took a lot of stings.
Starting point is 00:35:32 It was in between my toes that hurt the worst. If you've ever thought about getting stung in between your toes repetitively. No. Yeah, I've done this now. So this is curious to me. The idea that things in nature can sense aggression or can like get a vibe that, you know what?
Starting point is 00:35:53 I don't think this thing's trying to hurt us. We've been stinging it over and over. Let's just relax. We'll work around this swollen foot filled with our venom. Have you noticed that in other species that just the very fact that you're intentionally inviting a sting might be changing their behavior somehow? So with the Harvester ants, I think
Starting point is 00:36:19 it was a little more unique. For example, when we were talking about the yellow jackets, the yellow jackets would have just been stinging until I was dead. Like they were just angry. They're not angry because they don't like humans. They're angry if you've disturbed their nest. And when they're at the end of their life cycle,
Starting point is 00:36:33 they've got nothing to lose. I mean, I imagine for a hornet, if you've gone your entire life cycle, because they die every year, if you've gone your whole life cycle and you've got the opportunity to go out on the front lines defending the nest, kind of pretty awesome way to go. Yeah, let's go to Valhalla, Valhalla of Ornans.
Starting point is 00:36:51 Yeah, and yellow jackets don't die after they sting. So the only thing that necessarily loses its sting right after a sting is a honeybee or different bee species. So yellow jackets, like the Harvester ants, can sting again and again and again. And while I noticed more of a peaceful calm with the Harvester ants, if you're talking about fire ants, which are a much smaller species,
Starting point is 00:37:12 they are more aggressive, and they will not stop stinging. They just go and go and go. But you're talking hundreds of Harvester ants to hundreds of thousands of fire ants in variants within a nest. So it's a different sort of onslaught. But most of the stings that I've taken have been individual stings, versus there
Starting point is 00:37:33 being an entire swarm of something taking me over. Friends, the nights are getting longer, and that means there are more hours for you to make love to your partner. This episode of the DTFH has been sponsored by Blue Chew. It's a unique online service that delivers the same active ingredients as Viagra and Seattleis. But in chewable tablets, it's a fraction of the cost.
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Starting point is 00:39:34 And I thank Blue Chew for sponsoring the podcast and for giving me your new ambulance medicine. You're a dad, and I'm a dad. And you know what we love? You know how it is. When you find shows that your kids can watch, it's the best. You know something that isn't like some of the stuff out there disguises itself as something your kids could watch,
Starting point is 00:40:16 but it's like trying to sell a bunch of bullshit. Or it's, who knows? It just seemingly, I don't know. There's some weirdness in it. So tell me about how you figured out a way to create a family-friendly show that is also dangerous, that's also putting out there that could potentially make kids think that they could do something that's dangerous.
Starting point is 00:40:49 Because when I watch your show, it's like, this is perfect for kids. Your energy is perfect for kids. It's awesome. So tell me about that. What are you summoning up there? What is that energy? What is the motivation behind that?
Starting point is 00:41:04 Yeah, I love that question. Great question. I love getting to delve into that world. So I grew up in the golden era of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. I mean, I am a living product of those two men's and their team's brilliance. So Steven Spielberg was influencing me
Starting point is 00:41:25 since before I even knew who Steven Spielberg was. I used to rent the Jaws VHS tape from the video store. My mom would pause the VHS recorder for me so I could trace the few images of Bruce the shark that actually popped up in the film because I loved sharks so much. The reason I mentioned that is I was absorbing Steven Spielberg culture because I like sharks.
Starting point is 00:41:48 And then eventually became Jurassic Park, E.T., Indiana Jones, and Onward and Upward. But what I recognize George and Steven did with Jurassic and Star Wars, let's just use those two as an example, they found a way to make entertainment that was perfectly palatable for adults but managed to create that lunchbox
Starting point is 00:42:08 vibe that was selling not necessarily merchandise but entertainment to a younger generation and you wanted to be a part of that culture. So for me, Jurassic Park was the biggest thing that could have ever happened in my childhood. I had all the toys. I mean, I thought I was in Jurassic Park. Hell, I practically think I still am at this point.
Starting point is 00:42:29 So it was that influence that sort of helped myself and my entire team and my business partner, Mark, and I to say, OK, well, you're not going to recreate Jurassic Park. You're not going to recreate Star Wars. These are empires that have already been built. What can we do based on our interests and based on that influence?
Starting point is 00:42:49 And we looked at the world of animals and recognized the fact that there were a couple of things that lined up strangely and sadly. Steve Irwin passed away in 2006 and he was a huge inspiration of mine. And we saw this huge gap in the marketplace for somebody really being that passionate about animals. Bear Grylls, who is also a massive influence on me,
Starting point is 00:43:11 he was just starting to hit his stride with man versus wild. It was fast-paced editing, cool music, jumping out of helicopters and airplanes. But where he was catching animals, instead of educating people and celebrating them, he's eating them for survival purposes, which worked for that show. So we said, all right, how do we take the brand
Starting point is 00:43:30 building of Spielberg and Lucas, the excitement and passion of education and conservation of Steve Irwin and mix it into that Bear Grylls fast-paced platform? And that is what we did. And that's how Brave Wilderness was born with those influences. And then we just went and did it. Because every television network out there
Starting point is 00:43:50 told us it wouldn't work. And we landed on YouTube at a time when digital distribution was just beginning to hit its zenith. And between 2016 and 2019, those were the biggest heydays for us in the YouTube space. And we're a little over 20 million subscribers now. And we distribute through all sorts of different realms. But we launched in 2014.
Starting point is 00:44:15 And once the Sting Index stuff started in 2016, people really started taking notice. And we used those extreme episodes. They do have that super adult draw-in vibe to them. Still friendly enough for kids, because I'm not swearing and I'm not smashing an animal because it stung me. And then we used those to draw people into our bigger conservation initiative episodes.
Starting point is 00:44:39 And the big backbone to all of this was there has to be an education. The entertainment is always here, but you've got to have the education too. So even if you're just showing up to see me get stung and roll around on the ground in pain, at least you're going to walk away with knowing a couple things about this animal that you probably never even heard of.
Starting point is 00:44:57 See, that is what I like about it, is because you draw people in with this cool, gory, juicy thing. But then within it, you're really articulating. You're teaching stuff, even in this conversation, you're teaching me things that I've never heard of before. And I think that must be the wind in your sails there. Because if you were just trying to do some kind of gory,
Starting point is 00:45:25 edge-lordy thing, I don't think it would be anywhere as addictive as your show currently is. It's something about you that's lighting up everything behind it. And that's what I'm curious about. What is that? What's your deal, man? Coyote, what are you?
Starting point is 00:45:44 Are you some kind of Buddhist? Are you a meditator? Are you a religious person? What's going on with you? No, I'd say I'm a perpetual child. I mean, I'm 41 years old, but I'm permanently stuck in that 13-year-old mindset that I'm interested in. It's so funny.
Starting point is 00:46:05 People are like, oh, man, cool. So what are you and your friends into? I'm like, vintage sports cards, collecting dinosaur figurines, nose-leg teeth, legs, legos, and action figures. You should see our Brave Holders office is literally just filled with the different toys that we loved as children. Only now we're a bit older, and we have real jobs,
Starting point is 00:46:26 and we can afford to buy these things we wanted as kids. So I think that's part of the magic, is I relate to a younger generation. And I hope that I always will because of my childlike curiosity and wonder for our planet. I have a huge appreciation for everything that is the world that we live in. And every time I get to spend time with an animal,
Starting point is 00:46:49 whether it's admiring it from a distance or getting the chance to be gently hands-on with it, I look at that animal as a superstar. My responsibility is to try to make this animal, even though it may be scary or uncomfortable for it in the sense that, oh my gosh, I've been abducted by a human. The second that this animal realizes it's not being bitten, scratched, or essentially eaten,
Starting point is 00:47:13 they calm down. And they're just kind of like, what's up, dude? What are we doing here? What are these weird devices? And why are you talking about me like this? And why are you so excited to hang out? Like that animal is going to hopefully be a star that's going to get millions of views.
Starting point is 00:47:26 And in the grand encyclopedic nature of human existence, as long as Brave Holders can keep bringing people that quick form of entertainment and education about an animal, we feel like we're doing the right thing. So I think all collected together, it's the curiosity, the wonder, the appreciation, and this continued drive to want to make a successful brand inspired by the people that
Starting point is 00:47:50 did it before me that keeps this train running. You are always out in the wilderness. You're out there in not just real wilderness. Not like the wilderness. Like I might go on a hike out here in Austin or something. I mean, you're out out there where you're seeing the world as people saw before. Electricity, I mean, maybe not everywhere,
Starting point is 00:48:18 but a lot of places you've been. So forgive me for asking this. You see a lot of weird stuff out there. You see any UFOs? You see any weird stuff out there? I have had only a couple of experiences UFO oriented where I was like, I don't know what that was. And I'm like, I want to believe that it.
Starting point is 00:48:40 I guess anything that is an unidentified flying object to the interpreter is a UFO. I've never seen anything where I was like, yep, that was definitely an alien ship. But I've seen some strange stuff definitely out west in the desert. And my mom lives out in the middle of nowhere outside, like 45 miles outside of Tucson, right
Starting point is 00:49:03 close to the border of Mexico. And she has seen some weird stuff out there at night in the desert in the sky that she's not a skeptic by any means, but she's a lot based in science and reality. And she's like, I can't explain what I saw with certain lights or what certain lights did in the sky or were in one spot. And then boom, boom, boom, boom, they shot off
Starting point is 00:49:27 in different directions. And she was just like, well, if they're coming for me, they're coming for me. I guess that's it. But nothing she said that was ever scary, just stuff that she's seen. And I've never seen anything to that extent, but I'm always looking and I'm always curious about it.
Starting point is 00:49:42 Do you get into the cryptid stuff? Do you spend any time ruminating over that when you're out in the wilderness and you hear something in the woods that you haven't heard before? Does it ever cross your mind? Shit, that could be a Chupacabra, a Sasquatcher. I don't know, you know, any number of things. Well, what's funny is, so I love Bigfoot and Sasquatch.
Starting point is 00:50:05 And I have since I was a super young kid, because when my friends and I were younger, we thought we saw a Bigfoot. I mean, I was like eight, nine, 10 years old. What it turned out we saw was a black bear. We lived in a small town called Newberry, Ohio in Jogger County where there are not black bears. So this was a black bear that was migrating through.
Starting point is 00:50:25 But we came across it in the woods, and we know this for a fact because it ended up on the news that night, it was spotted in another area. We're like, holy cow, that has to be what we saw. Right. Well, after that, though, I got super into Bigfoot. And, you know, I don't know how long of a story we want to make this, but we tried
Starting point is 00:50:41 to do a Bigfoot episode earlier this year that turned into a huge marketing debacle that was just the biggest blow up thus far in Brave Wilderness's existence. We did a Skull episode. I don't know if you caught wind of that or saw that anywhere. I did hear about that. OK. Yes.
Starting point is 00:50:59 So here's the truth behind the Bigfoot Skull. While the entire time, this was always created as a what if scenario. The Blair Witch Project, which I thought was brilliant marketing back in the Blair Witch, we had this idea to be like, oh, to get ready for advertising the Bigfoot Skull what if episode, I dropped an Instagram post that also fed to Facebook
Starting point is 00:51:22 and it was super cryptic, but was like Skull found, could be Bigfoot, smung the lit through TSA. And it just got way out of control. I bought it. All these organizations picked it up and it was just like, oh, no, what did we do? I bought it. You bought it.
Starting point is 00:51:39 I was like, OK, it makes sense. He's out there all the time. I get it. He probably found a Bigfoot Skull. Finally, we know there's, oh, shit, you boy. You you Blair Witch does. I did. But here's what we did not anticipate,
Starting point is 00:51:53 which was a huge learning curve for us. I mean, and as a brand, you always got to take your your foibles as a lesson into what are you not going to do next. Right. I think the big thing is we had huge internal conversations about this after the fact to say, OK, where did we go wrong there?
Starting point is 00:52:11 And what we ultimately landed on is that because Brave Wilderness is so factual, so true to what we say we're going to do, like we're famous for being the channel that doesn't click bait. Right. If I tell you I'm going to put my arm in the mouth of an alligator, my arms going in the mouth of an alligator. So when people thought that Coyote Peterson and his team maybe found the skull of a primate in the Pacific Northwest,
Starting point is 00:52:35 it was just like game over. This has to be real. We didn't have the foresight to be like, oh, marketing it like Blair Witch would blow it so out of proportion before the episode came out where it was clearly defined as a what if scenario that it was it was too late at that point. And unfortunately, it angered a lot of people.
Starting point is 00:52:56 And we do we do feel feel bad about that. I mean, I love Bigfoot, but I can tell you now the Bigfoot community probably wants to burn me at the stake. So they're like, we'll be able to rectify all that with the right Bigfoot content. Look, you're forgiven. I get it, man. If I if I if I was at the helm of the type of ship that you
Starting point is 00:53:15 have crafted, you want to do experiments. You want to do you want to see what what happens if we try this or that. And with that one, I get exactly why you did it. And I think anyone who loves the show has forgiven you already. We get it. It's like you were just trying something out. We just the thing is like we had so much fun making that
Starting point is 00:53:35 episode. I watch all of the like my cadence of show watching is the Ghost Hunter shows, the Treasure Hunter shows, the solve mysteries, the unexplained like the ancient aliens. Like I love these shows. I love watching them myself. So we went after the let's make almost sort of like a mockumentary Bigfoot thing.
Starting point is 00:53:57 We're going to go out there and look. This is what it could be. And then we definitively put a break in the episode where we're like everything moving forward is a what if scenario. But again, that got so overshadowed by the overly hilarious project posts that I made. That is what really gave us the context of how vast and how quickly social media can just roll a snowball off the hill
Starting point is 00:54:22 that turns into an avalanche. Because we just didn't see it coming. I mean, we would have never marketed the episode like that if we thought it was going to do what it did. Look, I think anyone in their right mind is fine with what you did. Now is the time though. Again, here's the other spin off.
Starting point is 00:54:41 It's like, look, OK, we're going to get through this family friendly thing. Once my kids are in high school, then we start our show. It's not just Psychedelics. We are going to take you and we are going to like send you to like Antarctica. We are going to get you up in one of those space planes so that you can tell us, is there a hole in the middle of
Starting point is 00:55:05 Antarctica? How come people can't go there? Of all the people, I would like to enjoy watching traversing Antarctica to try to find out, is the Earth hollow? It would be you. It would be you. So cool. It's on the Earth?
Starting point is 00:55:24 Do you get into that much, the Hollow Earth stuff, the idea that there's like some massive, weird hole in Antarctica that leads to some kind of other realm in the Earth? It's one of my favorite theories. I don't believe it, but I love it. I don't know. I don't know a whole lot about that theory. If someone were to say, look, we're going to give you a budget
Starting point is 00:55:49 to go out and explore what that is, I would jump at it in a second. I'm all about learning or going places that are the unexplored, the unknown. And I think that's, for myself, it's like a hardcore adventure. My thing is always, what is the next thing that I can do, the next experience I can have, or the opportunity to see something that maybe somebody else hasn't seen.
Starting point is 00:56:14 And there's not a whole lot of that left. So I try to really absorb and appreciate the things that I'm getting to see in my own lifetime that I think we are all beginning to recognize could be disappearing or quite arguably are disappearing off the face. I have yet to see a polar bear truly in the wild. And I mean, that's on my bucket list. And while I could do that in a number of places, I really want
Starting point is 00:56:38 to go to a place called Ringle Island. I don't know if you've ever heard of that before. I have not. What's believed to be the last place where mammoth were walking the planet. And there are scientists that are still finding mammoth bones and tusks out in the riverbeds, not buried. Just they're out there.
Starting point is 00:56:55 It is literally a lost world up near Russia. It's like the northern part of Russia. Whoa. Yes. Go. You got to go. That would be so cool. It's hard to get to.
Starting point is 00:57:08 And unfortunately, it's controlled by Russia right now. So I think that's going to make it even more difficult to get to. But not a good time. Maybe not the best time to try to get a visa to go look at mammoth bones. You might have to wait a little bit longer. Yeah, well, I mean, that's what I love about. You know, I think we have a shared interest there.
Starting point is 00:57:30 And I think maybe we both have a kind of shared healthy skepticism too, like we're able to kind of ponder these things, but not get swept up in them or get lost in them. But yeah, I'm always fascinated by the phenomena where out of the blue, a creature that they were sure had gone extinct just shows up, like a parrot they thought had been wiped out or some insect or whatever. And I always wonder, where did it come from?
Starting point is 00:58:00 Like, how did it just suddenly appear on the landscape like that? And my stoner conclusion is clearly it wobbled up from the hollow earth. Like, there must be some some other like biome underneath us that these things kind of come out of every once in a while. But yeah, and you never know. You know, I think the ocean is another one of those places filled with so much mystery and things that are down there that maybe we have never seen every once in a while.
Starting point is 00:58:31 These crazy or fish get like washed ashore and people are like, oh, my God, it's a sea dragon. You know, there's there's so many weird things out there that we as humans are so busy being wrapped up in our day to day lives and social media and the 24 hour cycle of work, sleep, eat, work out, do whatever that sometimes we forget to look around at the things that are here on our planet. And that's one of the reasons I love getting to explore different environments,
Starting point is 00:59:01 especially on other continents, because you can see an assimilation between different species in different regions. But also just placing yourself out there in the middle of the wild to see these animals in their natural environment acting and interacting with each other in the way that the universe meant them to be. And that's something that I always try to absorb and remember, regardless of getting it on camera, I try to keep it in my mental hard drive up there to be like, cool, I got to experience that in my lifetime.
Starting point is 00:59:30 Isn't it kind of sad? You know, like the the I don't know. I know you remember this. I mean, at least if I had to roll the dice, remember when. It crossed your mind when you're a kid. The first time that you would never see a dinosaur that you would never see. Do you remember that pain, that heartbreak when it like dawned on you? I will never get to see a Tyrannosaurus Rex,
Starting point is 00:59:56 except in these weird paintings. I'll never witness one. I it still bothers me. Why am I acting like it still bugs me? You know, anytime you hear about, oh, they're going to bring a mammoth back to life or anything, I get excited. I was showing my kid an ostrich and like I was about to get into. And this is was a dinosaur at one point.
Starting point is 01:00:16 But I didn't know how to articulate it in a way. But isn't it kind of sad when you're out there and you're seeing these creatures? Some part of you is realizing like I might be one of the last people to see these things out here in the wild like this. It's kind of heartbreaking, isn't it? Yeah, you know, I think the thing that's heartbreaking is how do we get people to really want to make a difference for these things? We did a big project or so in the midst of it this year.
Starting point is 01:00:48 We launched a fundraising campaign called Save the Horns, that is with a couple of different partnerships surrounding a wildlife reserve in South Africa. And we filmed a really cool rhino episode there earlier this year that featured white rhinos and black rhinos. And for context, black rhinos are the most endangered rhino species left on our planet. So there is barely five thousand of them left in the wild.
Starting point is 01:01:12 And the reason they're disappearing is because of the poaching of horns. It's taken for false medicinal purposes. So there's absolutely no value to taking a rhino home. But these animals are being poached and we're working on a project now that is creating a expanding a reserve on rewilded habitat that will create a stronghold population of these animals for generations to come. Because we don't effectively eliminate poaching in the next decade, which we're not going to do.
Starting point is 01:01:41 Don't let anybody fool you like we're not going to stop that. Like eventually black rhinos in their natural range now are going to be wiped out. So we're working on that reserve population that is far away from where the majority of poaching is happening to make sure that there is a future for this species. And until you get out there and you're working with these animals, I mean, I was hands on with a black rhino. And these things are these things are like dinosaurs.
Starting point is 01:02:06 You feel like working with a triceratops when you're next to one. And until people really have that experience and can see it, it's understandable why people may not take much time to think about a rhino. It's like, oh, cool. I've seen one in a zoo. I've seen one on TV. I've seen them in cartoons. But until you recognize what an important part of an environment they are and how few of them there really are left based on something as ridiculous as horn poaching, it does kind of hurt your heart a bit.
Starting point is 01:02:36 Yeah. It I mean, don't this is probably the most naive question ever. But don't the poachers like don't they realize what they're doing? Like, doesn't it cross their minds that they are participating in the elimination of a creature from the planet they're on? Or are they? Oh, they know. But it's a very complicated structure,
Starting point is 01:02:58 the whole hierarchy of these essentially kingpins that are running this industry that are selling these horns on the black market to southeastern Asian countries. You've got really, really low income poverty stricken areas. And if some of these poachers are actually put into a position where they've got sort of the gangsters, if you will, of these horn circuits will come in and say to somebody, you're going to either go get us these rhino horns or we're just going to go ahead and kill your family.
Starting point is 01:03:32 I mean, to these people, it's like, well, I guess I'm better. Go kill those rhinos and get those horns. And that's not it in every instance. But the value of a rhino horn is worth more than gold, oil or diamonds on the black market at this point. Is that not crazy? Rhino horn is the most valuable, like natural material on our planet per. I believe it's per ounce of ground up rhino horn.
Starting point is 01:03:57 It's insane. You know what rhino horns made out of? Keratin, our dead, our dead hair cells, essentially. If the rhino horn is just compacted hair, what does it do? What do they think it does? What do they what does it do? What do they think it does? Nothing.
Starting point is 01:04:11 They the false medicinal purposes. Rhino horn will be ground down and cut together with other things. It could be anything from like sexual stimulation through the curing of cancer. It doesn't matter what they market it as rhino horn will cure this. Rhino horn will cure that zero medical proof that rhino horn does anything. And honestly, the biggest problem is that you're never getting pure rhino horn. Anyways, whoever is making pills with rhino horn, yeah, they're putting a small percentage of rhino horn mixed in with a concoction of other things.
Starting point is 01:04:44 And then it gives somebody like, oh, maybe I'm getting better or more. Yeah, the rhino horn I've been the rhino horn. I've been getting lately is really not great. No, it's not like you used to be the old days. Remember that it's not like my mama's rhino horn. So because it's being cut with gummy bears. Yeah, that's what it is. Yeah, it's kind of sweet.
Starting point is 01:05:01 But they left them in the back of the cars. They're melted a little bit. My least favorite kind. So wait, let me get this straight. We've got a few more minutes. You're you're going to take rhinos. Where are you? Wait, where are you taking them again?
Starting point is 01:05:14 You're taking rhinos to a protected reserve. Where is this? So myself and Global Conservation Force, which is a group based out of California, Bear Grylls, who's a partner of mine in this project. I'm not sure you're familiar. Yes, we are working to establish this reserve population at a place called the Carricka Game Reserve in the eastern Cape of South Africa. And we have this big vision.
Starting point is 01:05:41 It's a five phase plan. We're now moving from phase two to phase three. Wow. We went into 2023, where we will be moving a new coalition of Cheetahs and new pride of lions and expanding territory for elephants. But the most important thing about this whole campaign is that we recently dropped several fence lines and opened up several others that take this rewilded habitat, important point being rewilded.
Starting point is 01:06:05 So it used to be farmland and that's been re-designated over the past 30 years into pristine habitat specifically for black rhinos. And the size of this property will allow for us to bring in a population of breeding black rhinos. So you need between eight and 12 black rhinos for the population to be diverse enough to breed. And we have hit all those marks. We've gotten the permits at Carricka Game Reserve.
Starting point is 01:06:29 So it's all happening. It's really exciting. And it's a campaign that it's called Save the Horns. It's still going now. We launched it about six months ago. We've raised quite a bit in just the past six months. And we're going to keep going until we get through phase five, which we essentially connect these two big reserves together.
Starting point is 01:06:48 And it would be the largest wildlife corridor in the eastern Cape once these two reserves are connected together. Wow. How are you going to keep the poachers out, though? How are you going to keep the poachers out? That comes with Global Conservation Force and having the right anti-poaching unit ranger teams in place and also technology. So there's a lot of technology being implemented into this specifically with
Starting point is 01:07:12 how we're tracking the presence or the awareness and the wherewithal of every single animal that goes onto this reserve. So for example, let's say, just think of it as like a tracking beacon for a very simple explanation sake on one black rhino. Let's say that that beacon has not moved in multiple days. It's kind of like, okay, so many might have gone on and poached that rhino. But here's the ticker is that based on where that tracker might be, that tracker may have gotten taken with the poachers and could ultimately help take
Starting point is 01:07:45 down poaching circuits based on the fact that these poachers have no idea that horn very well may have a tracking transmitter in it, which can then lead anti-poaching unit rangers to take down a bigger syndicate. So there's a lot of technology, a lot of science and a lot of like stuff linked into it that I don't want to reveal too much, but it's very well thought out for sure. We got to figure out a way to make these rhino horns venomous. You see, that's the move. That's the move to bio engineer these creatures to the horns explode.
Starting point is 01:08:16 The horns are filled with snakes, something that I'd like where you're going with this, if we could just get snake eggs inside of the horn. So if the horn is removed, it explodes and everybody gets covered in snakes. They would still figure it. They'd figure out a way around it. Wouldn't they? The big thing is, is we need to make rhino horns valueless. That's the problem because there's such a high value on them based off of this
Starting point is 01:08:41 false medicine until you, and it begins with education, right? So a big part of our job is to educate people that there is no value to these horns, taking these horns from rhinos is not helping any human sustain. We need to stop the poaching by devaluing and educating the next generation of people to say, you know, I don't need rhino horns for my, you know, medicinal purposes here. It's not working. We got to synthetically grow these things.
Starting point is 01:09:10 You have to create the diamel of rhino horn. Like some rhino horn that is, you couldn't tell the difference between the two. If you did that, you would destroy the whole industry, right? Like, could you theoretically, synthetically grow a rhino horn? Well, I mean, here's the thing. It's like, why couldn't you just take, you know, go to the barber shop and take a bunch of human hair and collect it off the floor? I mean, it's keratin, it's skin cells.
Starting point is 01:09:33 I mean, you know, I don't know what the difference is between why rhino horn is perceived as more value versus, you know, the beard grown off of my face. I know there have been farms before, and this is not something that I believe is by any means legal, but there have been black market farms of people raising rhinos, cutting the horns and selling the horns on the black market. I think there's some syndicates that have tried that before that have ultimately been taken down. But again, it really roots down to just making people realize that there's
Starting point is 01:10:04 no value to a rhino. It's pubes, you're eating expensive pubes. Yes, that's it. It's pubes. There's nothing special about them. That's for sure. Just compacted hair. I've been hands on with one.
Starting point is 01:10:19 I mean, it just, it looked like if you were like, take a magnifying glass, look at it. Oh, it's a gazillion hairs seemingly all glued together into a shape that, you know, rhinos used to rub on stuff and battle and defend themselves. And yeah, it's their facial ornament. I've eaten pubes. It doesn't do anything. You're one step ahead of me.
Starting point is 01:10:39 Maybe a future episode. Save the rhinos by eating pubes. It's like the ice bucket challenge, but with pubes, right? Coyote, thank you so much. This has been such a thrilling conversation. It's so nice to meet you. Thank you so much for putting out such incredible content and for saving the rhinos and for giving my kids something they love to watch.
Starting point is 01:11:02 Thank you so much for being on the show. You are amazing. How can people connect with the rhino conservation? Or is there anything you can I can send my listeners to? Yeah, no, lots of great stuff happening in the Brave Wilderness universe. Of course, the first place to stop, if you're looking to just go down the rabbit hole of entertaining edutainment, the Brave Wilderness YouTube channel, just search Brave Wilderness on the internet or on YouTube.
Starting point is 01:11:27 If you're interested in getting involved with rhino conservation, just go to savethehorns.com and you can find how to get involved with that initiative. But don't get it with so much fun being on the show. I'm a huge fan of the work you've done. So it was a true honor to be here today. Thank you. And yeah, looking forward to hopefully maybe being back on the show at some point or any future collaboration, you just let me know I am all about it.
Starting point is 01:11:49 I love you. Thank you. I'm going to take you up on that coyote and stay safe out there. We need you. So please take it easy. You don't want no more hornet hand stuff. You're the best. Have a wonderful day. Thank you.
Starting point is 01:12:04 Thanks, man. You too. That was Coyote Peterson, everybody. All the links you need to find Coyote will be at DuncanTrestle.com. Much thanks to our sponsors and much thanks to you for listening. I love you and I'll see you next week. Until then, Hare Krishna. A good time starts with a great wardrobe. Next stop, JCPenney.
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