#2536 - Eric Goode & Jeremy McBride

(upbeat music) - Joe Rogan wants that, check it out. - The Joe, Rogan, experience. - Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (upbeat music) - Good bro, gentlemen, good to see you again. You have back in the world of crazy people and animals. I watched episode one today, like, oh God. First of all, where the fuck do you find these people? - You live in that world, like you, you're in the world of reptiles. We should just explain. It's a docu-series, it's on HBO. It's called Monsters of God. And it's all about the reptile trade, which may or may not be responsible for Florida having 500,000 pythons. - Yeah. (laughing) - It's, it's debatable, right? Like, it seems like it was partially pet owners who let them go. And partially, there was some sort of a reptile research facility or something like that. - Well, there's different theories. It was a hurricane theory. It was the people let it go, go. I think they're more reasonable one 'cause I had a Burmese python in the '70s when I was a teenager. I have a photo of it around my neck. - What happened to it? - People buy them when they're this big. And then when they're 15 feet, they let them go 'cause what are you, you know, in there? - Is that what you did? - I did not let it go, but I- - What did you do? - I have no idea what happened to it, to be honest. I had a lot. - That's weird. I know. - You had a monster and it just, you don't know what happened to your monster? (laughing) - I think when I went to college briefly, I gave it to someone and then I don't know what happened to. But I gave my whole menagery way to people when I went to college. I had reptiles in my room. - Is there an extra level of responsibility when you're giving away monsters? You know what I mean? Like if you have a chihuahua and you said, and your friend's like, I'll take her, I'll love her. That's, you know, you don't really have to worry about your, you know, you have a fucking python, you're giving away a python? - You gotta worry about your chihuahua 'cause the pythons in the Everglades are gonna eat your chihuahua when it gets away. - Well, certainly, you worry about that. But I mean, you don't worry about your chihuahua being a monster. - I'm kidding, yeah. - I mean, if you have a 15 foot python, that can eat a lot of things. And it kind of needs to eat a lot of things. - Yeah. Yeah, Burby's pythons did really well in South Florida. iguanas did really well in Florida. You know, they weren't there in the beginning. - That's a good way to put it, did really well. Another way to put it is invasive species that's destroying the ecosystem. - Well, they're like us, Joe, they're like us. We came here and we took over. - Yeah, I guess, in a lot of ways. - So, why did you choose this particular subject for this new docu-series? - I'm not gonna let Jeremy talk, no, he'll talk. But I'll just, I mean, a lot of it starts with me. He can play me, Jeremy, Jeremy, good play later. - We guys did chimp crazy, which is one of my favorites. It's so fucking insane. That world is so insane. - Well, episode one is kind of setting the table. It gets better, it gets more off the charts when you imagine. - I can only imagine. - When you was two and three and four. But, and five. Yeah, it all started, but first of all, I'm a reptile guy. I've been keeping reptiles and studying reptiles for over, you know, I'm an old guy, I'm older than you are. So, you know, I've kept them for, I don't know, 60 years, you know, plus I've kept reptiles. Since my parents gave me a tortoise when I was six. And I was catching rattlesnakes in my lunch box and horn lizards and you got horn lizards in Texas here that are really cool, I had rattlesnakes. I've been bit by rattlesnakes, it's not fun. - You got bit by rattlesnake? - Yeah, but that's another story. - More times than one? - No, I got bit once 'cause I learned my lesson after the first one. - What happened? - It wasn't good. Don't get bit by rattlesnake, on my foot. - Did you experience necrosis, necrosis, rather? - You know, so normally you would get necrosis, necrosis where you'd fish your finger with rot and then there's the guy, you know, the doctor that I went to at a hospital, you know, in the emergency- - Pull up the microphone. - The doctor, you know, in the emergency room said, the last guy in here that got bit by rattlesnake lost his toe or something or lost his digits and he said, good thing you didn't get bit on a finger 'cause the necrosis can rot away your finger. And he said, good thing you got bit on the middle of the foot, you're gonna be okay. But this type of rattlesnake I got bit by, the most venomous rattlesnake in the country is called a tiger rattlesnake. It's not the most dangerous. Most dangerous is probably a majave rattlesnake or an eastern diamond back rattlesnake. But you have western diamond backs here. But I got bit by rattlesnake that had both hemotox and and neurotoxin. So the necrosis was less evident with me. It was more like a co-bro-arch was starting to stop breathing and I felt like someone had put sandbags on my chest an hour into it. But the first thing you sense is obviously the, it feels like someone jab me with an exacto knife. I looked down and the rattlesnake was retracting into a burrow. I looked at my foot but then you taste a metallic taste in about 15, 10 minutes, 15 minutes and you realize, uh-oh, this wasn't a dry bite. But it's not fun. I got a lot of antivenom. They make a different antivenom today. I got bit 25 years ago. And how long does it take you to recover from something like that? You know, the most painful part was the serum sickness from the antivenom. The lose, stop breathing thing. I remember I was on a gurney and I felt like I was gonna stop breathing but weirdly not that painful. But like you, but yeah, you feel like you're gonna die and stop breathing. But the serum sickness is just unbelievably intense for weeks and you just have the most insane fever and you've got these red blotches all of you. But they make a different serum now. That one was made out of horse antibodies that they put into and my body didn't like those horse antibodies. Oh God, yeah. So also maybe don't wear burkin stocks when you hike. That's probably the river sandals. Yeah. Because I got bit, most people got bit fucking around with a rattlesnake. I was. What is this, Jimmy? They used all of the antivenom at the hospital and had to go get more from another hospital. Ran out of antivenom after using a whopping 36 vials. Holy fuck, man. Oh, yeah. Yikes. They're fucking scary, man. I've had dogs bit. I had this one dog. He got bit twice. Yeah. It was real problem. His face would swell up. I had to bring him to the vet. But luckily they have antivenom for dogs. It works pretty well. Yeah. He was kind of out of it for a few days and he came back. How fast the response? Not bad. Yeah. Not bad. It was funny because he got bit once. He was a crazy dog. He was always killing lizards. Like that was his thing. Like anything in the backyard he would kill. And he got bit by the rattlesnake and I knew it. Because I was out there. I heard him. I heard the commotion. I saw the snake. I knew what it was. So I got him to the veterinarian immediately. They got on the end. His face swall up. But they got him the antivenom. He was good. And then he got bit again, like maybe a year later. And I brought him to the vet because I saw him get bit by rattlesnake. And the vet was like, "Well, I don't see any swelling and I don't see a hole." But he had developed a resistance to it because he had gotten bit once. And so then I got him home. And then all of a sudden his face started swelling up. My off. Fuck. And I bring him back to the vet. And then he had to get the antivenom. But a good sized dog. Yeah. About a 90 pound dog. Yeah. It's a western dog but back rattlesnake I got out there. California, I don't know. Oh, it was in California. It was in California. Oh, so it wasn't out here. Yeah. It did me that probably. It saw the specific rattlesnake. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. We had a problem in my California house. One of the houses that I used to live in. It was there was a lot of it. Yeah. It was very canyony. Yeah. It was a lot of stuff. That's the same snake that bit me. Yeah. Yeah. Spooky man. We were running once. We were running the trail. I realized that the log that I thought was across the road was a giant rattlesnake. It was fucking pig, man. The biggest one I had ever seen out in the wild and the dogs didn't notice it. They ran right over it and then I ran over it. Oh, fuck, man. And then I'm trying to figure out what to do because I know we're going to have to come back this way when we go back up the hill. So I'm throwing rocks at it, trying to get it to run away. Yeah. Yeah. So I've handled a lot of rattlesnakes in my life and cobras and other snakes. And to get bit that way is very unusual. Usually people are being jerks and idiots and munk and handling a snake and it bites them. Where we at? We just walk. I was hiking in the mountains in North of LA just a bit and I was actually looking for snakes as I'm in this snake. And I didn't see the snake, the snakes saw me first and I was bushwhacking. I was on a trail. I didn't see it and it bit me on my foot. So you have this lifetime experience with reptiles and snakes and so you just decide, you must have interacted with a lot of these really crazy people and just decided this is the next. Yeah. Takes one to no one. Yeah. Be careful. The next point of focus. It's everywhere. I'll start it. Yeah. Yeah. No, no. Listen. I was, you know, a closet or reptile guy living in New York City hanging out with, you know, Madonna, cool people in the '80s and '90s. I had a nightclub and I had friends with lots of artists, Andy Warhol and I never really talked about reptiles. Actually Andy asked me, what am I going to do with my money? He interviewed me one time for Andy Warhol TV and I said I'm going to buy reptiles and I actually said I'm going to buy tortoises and he said tortoises. But I was pretty closeted but I still kept them in New York and, you know, fast forward when I decided to try to do a film about it. I had been traveling all over the world to Madagascar and Sulawesi in different parts of South America, trying to study reptiles and especially turtles and tortoises that were very rare. I started filming people, like, you know, kind of notable people, Christopher Walken and, you know, Slash and, you know, all kinds of people that I knew in New York City and I would just ask them to hold a turtle or tortoise and say some words like PSAs and I was doing that with these two guys. guys named the Safty Brothers. And fast forward, they now, Josh has just had a film called Marty Supri with Timothy Chalamet. It was up for an Oscar. Little that I know that I was working with these kids that were going to be these new filmmakers. And we were making these films. And then we made a short film about reptiles. It's crazy called Trophy Hunter. It's very short. And we did that together. And then I said to them, hey, man, you guys will read this new book called The Lizard King. It's about the reptile world. Let's do a talk about the reptile world. And I'd already told Fisher Stevens, a friend of mine, hey, let's do a talk about this book The Lizard King. And he said to me, how are you going to do that doc without getting killed, Eric? He wanted Oscar for the Cove. And I thought, I'm going to get these good guys and do a talk about reptiles. So anyway, we started in 2000. Why do you think you're going to get killed? He read The Lizard King. And he said, you're going to do a story about this guy that went to prison for 100 years. And this other guy that is the Pablo Escobar reptiles. And he just said, it's a dark world. I don't know how you're going to do this without getting killed. So what is about the lizard world of the reptile world that makes it so dark? Like, why are those people do you think attracted to it? Well, not all of them are scary people. And I would say a lot of them may be misunderstood a little bit. But in the case of Mario, there was a crossover with drugs, smuggling drugs and animals into the country. But for background, what is different than these other films that we've done? This was an industry story. That kind of looks back at the past half century. What most people don't know is illegal wildlife trafficking represents about a $20 billion dollar your industry. It's kind of underreported, actually, only after guns, drugs, and human trafficking. And what's really interesting about that is there's a convergence of all of it while life trafficking also involves drugs. And trafficking of guns. There's a lot of mix, mixture of it. Whenever people are bringing in things illegally, they tend to be a risk-taking type. Of course, but in the kind of pre-customs TSA days, as intense as it is now, it was very easy to carry animals and carry wildlife. Yeah, that was something I didn't even think about until I was watching. I was like, oh god, I remember those days where they didn't check your bags. And they didn't even check your ID. You just had a ticket. And you just get on the plane. So you just get on the plane with lizards. Now, most cases, you strapped your body, right? The thing about what was so interesting about reptiles, in this case, within the trade, is they're portable. They're nature with handles. You go, you see in the early episode of episode one, people traveling around the world, finding where endangered animals put in their suitcase and bringing them back, putting them on a priceless and selling them to a consumer. And that was the kind of early days. I mean, the story, the lizard king, but many much in our series, it's handful of guys, mainly guys, start a multi-billion dollar industry. And you see this kind of innovation happened over the course of the series as the years go on. But when we say multi-billion, I have to contextualize that. When people say that, the wildlife trade is multi-billion dollar industry. You got to remember, it's a lot of its consumption. The aging population eats a lot of turtles, a lot of snakes, a lot of its traditional medicine, a lot of its skins. And plant material. Aligator skin bags, crocodile skin bags, lizard skin bags, snake skin bags. So it's a lot more than just the exotic pet industry. But that's gotten enormous in Asia. They took a page out of our playbook about 25 years ago. China is now a huge consumer of not just eating these reptiles, but keeping them as exotic pets. That didn't happen before 25, 30 years ago. Asia. Asia. Why does California have a ban on pythons again? Pythons are not endangered, right? Well, it depends on the type of python. But yeah, the python-skinning business actually is where all the Burmese pythons came from in the '70s that I had as a kid. They would skin the pythons, take the eggs, incubate the eggs, sell the baby pythons to the United States and other consumer countries that wanted baby pythons. Most of the pythons that are skinned in Southeast Asia, and I've been to python-skinning places in Sumatra, blood pythons, reticulated pythons, Burmese pythons, but mostly blood pythons, reticulated pythons, are wild cod. And most of them are not endangered. But they're less and less pythons out there, but they're not endangered. Those pythons. Well, it's a shit ton in Florida. That's what I don't understand. I mean, there's this giant problem in Florida where they're overrun with pythons. And yet California, you can't sell pythons skins. It seems like there's a solution there. You know, people want pythons skins. Oh, look, a place that's overrun with pythons. Maybe you should get your pythons skin there. Yeah, the cooler pythons skins are not Burmese pythons. The ones in Florida. The cooler ones people like Nick Cage and what was that feeling where he's wearing that pythonskin jacket is to reticulate it, pythons. Oh, that heart. Yeah, wild heart that's gold and black, that cooler pythonskins just happen not to be Burmese pythons, which are the ones running rampant in Florida. Although they should make those trendy and use Burmese pythons, but they're not usually. You don't rarely see Burmese. There it is. That's a reticulated python. That's not a Burmese. That's the one people want. That's from Southeast Asia. That's not the one running wild in Florida. Is that illegal in California right now, then? That jacket. Is that right? I believe so. I don't believe you can get it imported. I think let's try. I had read something about python being one of the things that they made illegal. Why California bands pythonskin? Band dates to 1970. Oh, aimed at protecting endangered and vulnerable species, particularly the Indian python, which was on the endangered species list. California chose to pivot all python products rather than distinguish by species, created an extraordinarily broad statute banning all python imports. Oh, that's interesting. I thought it was fairly recent. Well, that's where the laws I think are really screwed up. When they basically say all pythons are bad to sell when the Indian rock python is endangered. And there are a few endangered pythons. But to say all pythons cannot be used for the skin trade and sold in California because of one python out of many pythons. Welcome to California. I happen to live there. I know what it's like. I love Austin, by the way. I might buy a house next to you now. Austin rules, but California's just so overregulated everything, so particularly wildlife. On the same thing we're in Florida, though, with the green iguana, Eric, right? I mean, at the same time. Yeah. Yeah, same thing, how so? Regulation. I mean, again, there's 45 types of iguanas in the world. Do you not know that? No. Oh, yeah, there's a whole YouTube community of people hunt iguanas and cook them in exotic ways. They make iguana stir fry in South Florida. Yeah. And it looks good. I mean, I don't know anything about what it tastes like, but this guy made like a stir fry over rice. And they were eating it and they were like, oh my god, it's sensational. Like teriyaki. Look, very good. Everyone always says crock, alligator, iguana, rattlesnake, tastes like chicken. But yeah, they eat the tail. I mean, I mean, I have to, you can imagine. I've a really messed up algorithm from being involved in this for so long. But that I never came across. But you know, the frozen, they, when they came to this guy, yeah, they use the legs. They cook the legs. Yeah, in the back of the tail. There's the tail. Yeah. So he's got it marinating, ziplocked it. Then it looks like he's going to, oh, look, he's got the whole thing. Oh, wow. Usually it's the back of the tail, like crocodiles. You eat the back of the tail. But it's far out. I mean, there's a, there's a, wow. Look at that. He's eating the whole thing. In Mexico, I always see them make, you know, the guana tamales out of the back part of the guana. So you put it in the comato? Oh, wow. Damn. And he's got a little saucy's making here with some butter and spices, basting it. I mean, why not? If it tastes good and apparently it does taste good according to all these guys that have seen on YouTube channels. Like, they're pretty honest about it. Like, they bring it to the family. They let the family try it. I think, you know, that might be the only way out. Because they're everywhere in Florida. Like, when it gets cold out, they fall out of trees. Yeah, they fall out of trees. I love their news reports. They're fucking big too, man. They're massive. There's some, some channels where these guys hunt them. And some of them are like four and a half, five feet long. This episode is brought to you by OnEx Offroad. Ever wonder how to reach these epic mountain legs that are tucked away dispersed campsites? With OnEx Offroad, you'll find legal open trails around you and even better guided trails mapped by real off-roaders. Each one includes photos, terrain descriptions, and difficulty ratings. So you'll know if your vehicle's capable before you go. Unlike other apps, OnEx gives you turn-by-turn directions on the trail and their new dispersed camping layer shows where you can legally set up camp. You'll also get private land, boundaries, public land, overlays, and the ability to download maps for offline use so that you're never guessing even when you're off the grid. It's a powerful tool built for serious off-roaders. Try OnEx Offroad for 50% off. Go to onxmaps.com/JoRogan. It's crazy. The males get crazy, and they get very orange and really big the male iguanas. They're so beautiful. They're such a cool looking lizard, man. There's a lot of really cool iguanas. And in our show, we feature what's called a Fiji Island iguana, a very endangered iguana that unfortunately people in the private sector in this country cannot own zoos, can own them. I don't know why private people can't own them, but the San Diego Zoo and this zoo and that zoo can have Fiji Allen iguanas. But they, in our show, they literally, this one guy says, it's reptile magic. It's like reptile art of Fiji Allen iguana. You might want to put it up there. It's really good. - Just the beauty of it? - Yeah. - Just the sheer beauty, the sheer beauty, it's like yellow lemon highlights. - Turquoise and green, and it's a very endangered iguana. - So the Florida iguana problem, was that all people's pets that got released? - Probably. - Well listen, also what's, again, going back to the show, but, you know, the central figure of the book is this guy named Mike Van Nostrum and his dad, Ray Van Nostrum. They ran an enterprise called Strictly Reptiles in Hollywood, right? It's in Hollywood. - Yeah. - Hollywood Florida. - Hollywood Florida, yeah. And they're sort of this like, you know, I would call it like more of a fulfillment center for wildlife all across America. - Filmed center. - They are. I mean, in a way, they're this-- - So like it's a Amazon, what you do is a warehouse. - Like, I want it toward us. - Yeah. - They were selling 5,000 iguanas a week. - Well, green baby iguanas. - They got it to that point. So the story goes, dad moves to Florida, starts a business. It evolves. Jurassic Park comes out. Everyone wanted a pet dinosaur. The green iguana market went on fire. He was selling 5,000 a week. And, you know, I was a 90s kid. I had a iguana in my bedroom. - Jeremy's a virgin, but he did have a-- - I had a pet iguana in that. - Two to reptiles. - That unfortunately passed away. The rock thing, you know, the heated rock, you know, that happens. But yeah, no, there's sort of-- - So the story's a rock thing? - No, they have this like rock thing where it sits on and it keeps it warm and then I think it kept on too long. I think he cooked his iguana. - Oh. - Yeah, sadly. - Cooked his iguana. - Thanks. - But I've learned a lot. - But just filled with these unintended consequences, you know, I think this idea of a big movie coming out at the correlation to, you know, driving, you know, demand for pet sales. - Thank God, people can't buy a fucking Velociraptor. - You know, yeah. - 'Cause people would have 'em. They'd have fences set up in their yard. - Joe, you've had the closest people on the show, I think. - Oh yeah. - They want to bring back one of those and a woolly mammoth. - Well, there's no chance that they can bring, with current technology, they don't have dinosaur DNA. It's too old. - I'm joking. - But they're, I mean, I've met the dire wolves. It's wild. They brought back the dire wolf. - It's not the dire wolf. - What does that mean? - I mean. - If you talk to genesis, it is a bunch of different traits. - Don't go down that rabbit hole. It's close to a dire wolf. - I mean, I don't know what that means. 'Cause like we decide what a dire wolf is, what a dire wolf isn't. But if you take literal dire wolf DNA, that's 7,000 years old, and you add it to these gray wolves and this is what they did, and they created essentially a dire wolf. It's like, people are arguing over semantics. Whatever it is, that's not a wolf. It's very different. It looks different than a regular wolf, like a gray wolf. The stature is different. It has a mane. It's really crazy looking. They're white. They're stockier. They're built differently. Like you see, like, oh, that's different. Well, like main wolves in Argentina look very different than our wolf. So there are very different types of canines, wild dogs, and Africa look very different than our, so yeah. But yeah, I mean, one thing I'd just say about iguana assistance where we're on it is that, 'cause I'm on an organization called the International Aguana Foundation, and we protect iguanas around the world, and people get confused. They go, "Oh, iguana, that's so common. "They're falling out of trees in Florida." But there are a lot of really rare cool iguanas. There's about 45 species, and there's pinky iguanas in the Galapagos Islands, land iguanas. There's marini iguanas. There's a very rare high elevation pinky iguana. There's another land iguana in the Galapagos. So there's a, you know, marini iguana. But that lizard was fairly recently discovered. And there's some iguanas that were thought to be extinct, Joe, like the Jamaican iguana. And that was thought to be extinct forever. The Jamaican iguana, but they found a tiny population recently. So there's a lot of iguanas that are in trouble. And, you know, we should care about iguanas and they're not just green iguanas. Yeah, that's the pinky iguana. That's the marini iguana and a regular Galapagos land iguana. And then you see some of the pink form. Jamie, see if you can find a video on Florida people hunting iguanas. Sit Florida people hunting giant iguanas. 'Cause some of them are so big. You just, you see them, you're like, oh my God. Are those bad to eat though? Are they the big giant ones? Would you eat one? Have being like a reptile pet guy? I've never seen that. You know the size of that one? Yeah, that's a male. That's a male. When they get orange like that, yeah, that's a big male. I mean, these things are gigantic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now that's a common green iguana and the males lose their green and get that incredible yellow orange. Those are males, yeah. And they're crazy how many of them there are though. I mean, it is just over one with iguanas. I guess they have no natural predators, right? There's nothing that eats them there. But not once they get big like that. When they're little, some birds are prey and some snakes gonna eat baby iguanas. But not once they're like that. But they're pretty chill. I mean, they don't really do much harm. Well, don't they know the people's crops and the people's houses? No, they do. They do do damage. They're not supposed to be in Florida. Let's put it that way. And iguanas like water, typically. They like to be around water, the green iguanas. But you know, reptiles have a bad PR problem and that's why we're here, Joe. We're trying to elevate the publicity of people loving reptiles and not killing them. This dude is all out there killing him. Who's this dude? Top shelf anglers on Instagram. He's like, you can do an expedition. Oh, so he's just a Florida guy that's enjoying the green outdoors and also-- No, that now is a different. That's a called a tetasaurus. That's a type of Central American Mexican rocky guana. That's not a green iguana. So Florida has a variety. Yeah, they have those as well. And they have tagoos in Florida that come from South America, a different type of lizard that's invasive in Florida. And all of it is pets. Yeah, people loving it. I had no idea that many people had iguanas. That it could be this big of a problem. Pedaguanas were everywhere at one time, yeah. And is this really-- That's the tagoos. That's also invasive in Florida. That's crazy, OK. I used to sleep with one of those when I was at Teenager. That's make with legs. That's what it does. Look at that face, right? And that lizard really loves to eat eggs. I used to feed mine eggs. So I've seen them in the wild eating eggs, bird eggs, duck eggs. When I lived in the valley, there was a reptile store. And it was a place where I used to go buy goldfish because I used to have piranhas. And that's why I used to have turtles too. And the turtles were way more vicious than the piranhas. When you put goldfish in with the turtles, turtles-- They're crazy, man. And they grab a hold of them. And they're biting them. It's like very drastic park, like watching a little-- Now they get a snapping turtle. Yeah, well, these are just a little green sliders. Sliders, is that what they're called? But they had a crocodile monitor in that place. And I briefly thought, maybe I could figure out an enclosure, put a crocodile monitor, feed it rabbits and shit. Don't get bit by a crocodile monitor. That's close to a commotor I can bite. They have scappled teeth. They're serious, getting bit by a crocodile monitor. It looked pretty vicious. I mean, they just look like dinosaurs. It's like a forgotten thing of the pat. There it is. There's a crocodile monitor. Look at that face, man. That totally looks like a dinosaur. Well, there's Tommy, who's-- Yeah, that's the guy who's feeding it. One of them, chicken. Oh, Tommy. There, the weirdest fucking people. Because I kind of understand the chimp people more. Because the chimp people, like a chimp, is interacting with you. It's a mammal. It's a primate. It's intelligent. There's a lot going on. There's emotions and jealousy and chimp's-- they're connecting with you. These things, they're just looking into the abyss. Tell the chimp rip your head off. Yeah, well, I'm not advocating for people to have chimp with the bats. I just say I understand the appeal of that chimp. I think it's a crazy idea. Well, it's actually a baby chimp. I think if everybody's even remotely thinking about it, they should watch chimp crazy. Yes. But yeah, especially the babies, they're so cute. And then they eventually get to the point where they kill your neighbor. But it's just you don't want-- I just get the appeal of it. The appeal of the reptile thing to me, it's just very strangely. These people love them. Well, I used to keep snakes and lizards. But I ultimately-- they were my gateway drug. And then I ultimately got into tortoises. Because I like the tortoises coexisting in the garden. I like plants, I like plants. And so it didn't feel like they were in a cage. And they kind of-- maybe I'm anthropomorphizing my tortoises. But I kind of felt like they were having a pretty good life in my garden. So for sure. So I like keeping tortoises. They don't want to eat a rabbit, particularly. They want to eat some lettuce or some greens. So turtles and tortoises is what I gravitated to. And then I found out one day they're the most endangered group of animals on the planet, along with primates. If you measure it by how many turtles and tortoises are in the world and how many are facing extinction, along with primates. So then I was like, OK, I want to do something to help them. And this show we're doing is really to teach people about the evolution of the reptile trade and to make people realize they're cool. And they shouldn't be disposable pets. Also, freak show. And freak show, of course, I'm really good at freak shows. As I said, it takes one to know one. But it's different. There what's different, though, is that this isn't Some like side hustle for animal love gone wrong. You know, it's it's there's these people there's this this the animal the reptile people the hurt people are Incredibly obsessive about you know living art about these living things. They like the it's like a baseball card Like they used the hurt people hurt her. Yeah, could we hurt her her patology or people her patology amphibians and reptiles? Yeah, I'm sorry. Well, you know, you don't the hurt the hurt people hurt people. No, but but it's you know, it's it's it's really a trade form to run scarcity and You know this sort of desire and adventure people have going out to find the rarest of the rare You know and bringing it back and selling it trading it keeping it. I'm in that car. You are in that category I'm in that category. I'm not the guy that just wants the little pet bearded dragon. I want the Rolls-Royce or reptiles, but it's different than like you know an individual person that has an attachment to a chimpanzee that she saw with you know watching Tarzan when she was growing up and she wanted to have that in her life So in other words freaky people freaky people. Yeah, extreme extreme obsessions But it's about kind of you know psychology of people in this in this particular very niche way Well any time you're dealing with extreme animal people It's about the psychology of the human being that's really invested in it, right? Yeah Best in show. Yeah, for sure, and these are these are very unusual people because it's a very unusual thing to be connected to something that really doesn't give a Fuck about you like we're really concerned about this pink iguana that pink iguana doesn't give a fuck about people If all the people on earth died it would just keep going about its business and not Shed a tear. Yeah, especially things they can kill you in this way. Mm-hmm Like a type pan or whatever. Someone playing with that An inland type pan is a venomous snake from Australia that may be the most venomous snake in the world But it's all relative because a black man. Yeah, you know. Yeah, Australia has a lot of venomous stuff Spiders boxed the only fish a lot of snakes that are very dangerous Australian tiger snake brown snake inland type and they're all things that Equally can kill you so it's to say one's more dangerous than the other they're all kill you Is there anti venom for all of them? No actually, so it's a good question So some snakes like you know Texas has a coral snake for example A very venomous elapid type of snake like a cobra not like a rattlesnake And I think they have less and less anti venom for snakes that rarely buy people because like sea snakes the coral snake Which is the red black and yellow one? They have in East Texas You know when the dog gets bit by the one you were talking about your dog getting bit by rattlesnakes a lot of time The vet doesn't know because you can't even see the bite the snake bite is so tiny So some snakes do not have any venom some really dangerous snake the coral snakes didn't have any venom for them I think I heard that maybe not anymore. I'm sure it's faded so what happens if you get bit Well, there may be some antivenom but there's not a lot of it antivenom Is gotten very expensive and it's very sophisticated now and it's mostly for you know in the US for vipers, you know for rattlesnakes You know, but I don't know a good question that would be something someone smarter than me would know about coral snake antivenom But it's an elapid like a cobra You know friend of mine had two of them in her carport Yeah, they took pictures of it and sent it to people and everyone's like yeah, that's keep away from that Just chillin in her carport Yeah, but they're generally not aggressive is that the deal? Yeah, there's a saying and it doesn't fit all because there's qualsnakes that don't have this But yellow against black is a friend of jack Uh yellow and black against red is Anyway, I can't even say I'm getting it wrong, but there's a saying and it doesn't hold true for all qualsnakes Because there's some qualsnakes outside of the US. They don't have that same pattern. So if there's no antivenom They take you to the hospital. What do they do? They stop making the I mean, they're so stop making it. It was cost is that what it says effective. I think that's what I hear cost ineffective No longer cost let people die cost effective is a crazy thing to say when it comes to fucking people while I mean Yeah, I was I was right for a change Maybe the socialists are right Cost effective is crazy. So what do they do? Uh, you know, I heard every rattlesake joke after I got bit and there's one that's these two guys are out hiking and someone gets bit here And they go to the doctor and the guy says you got to go back and suck it out of him and that guy just says to him We got you're gonna die. So maybe you die with a qualsnake. Yeah, just leave you die the bad thing I was we would recently were looking at this the way of treating rattlesake mites not too long ago By the way, they sell these Johnson and Johnson you sell these kits where you used to have one right you you'd you'd you'd actually literally slice out and you suck out The suck out the venom out of your out of your bite does it actually work? No, that was what's incredible about it There's when you when we were young they had these little rattlesake kits, you know, I'm a little older you but It was insane what they told people to do back then they told you to cut yourself And then put a tourniquet and then suck the venom out which is completely insane because when a rattlesnake Strikes, you know, they never hold on a rattlesnake. They strike and let go immediately and then they track their prey And it's literally like a hyperdermic needle going into your body and the you know the venom is already just like when they inject you with something It's already in you can't suck the whatever a doctor Should you do if you get bit by Ronald B be mellow in my case I walked to my car Luckily, I wasn't too far away from my car and I was up in the mountains about an hour away from a hospital I drove while I drove like a bad out of hell to the hospital actually, but you're supposed to be calm And get to a kid incredible. Yeah, and it was just bullshit, huh? Well, everything taking that to the woods like we're fine Everything you shouldn't everything you shouldn't do today Everything you should and so you just stay mellow get to the hospital and if they don't have any anti venom you just die Well, in my case, they didn't have it in the hospital They had to get see you Highway patrol to bring it from another from Ventura Um, and it took about 45 minutes and I thought it was gonna die on the gurney But yeah, you get to a hospital and you get anna venom if it's a bad bite and if they don't have any venom you die Well, it depends on the kind of snake like water moccasins usually aren't lethal, but certain rattlesnakes can kill you And how much time do you have from the time you get bit where you must get the anti venom in you? I mean in my case. I swear to God. I thought I was gonna stop breathing about two hours into it It just slowly feels like this pressure on your chest like you can't breathe Yeah, like you like you It felt like someone to put sandbags all over me and like you have this pressure and you feel like you're gonna stop breathing Yeah It's kind of bizarre. What's that guy Ross Ross Allen? Yeah, he has the world record for the most Is it Cobra bites? No, I think you're talking about a serpentarium and that same guy Bill Haas He lived to like a hundred but and I know people that inject themselves with venom I was in Myanmar and Burma one time this guy had snake tattoos all over him and he was a snake wrangler at this zoo and the central Burma And every tattoo he had he had put on his body he had put some venom in it So he could handle these really dangerous crates, which are like Cobra's and he was this guy with all these snake tattoos But he'd invented himself so you'd have antibodies so he could Handle these snakes and if he got bad he wouldn't die But early roadside attractions in South, I mean, that's the part about Florida. It goes back It's in the 50s and 60s. It had you know Miami Serpentarium was an amazing looking place had just giant Cobra um, you know with sculpture basically Here's a question if they do that with allergies where they give you like a little bit of the allergen develop a resistance to it Could they do that with snakes that's like if you live in a snake prone area? Should you do that? No, but that's the idea. Why wouldn't you do that? There's there's a guy right now in the US That's doing it. I think they're doing a film upon about him injecting all these venomous snake venomous into him like a pin cushion But no, I don't think people should do it but people do do it not not a lot of people But this guy does build up your antibodies and you know that you're going to come in contact with snakes listen when that be Is it bad for you to do? Look The country that I think has the most Deadly snake bites is probably India the country where there's the most deaths and in Venomation the snake they Probably kills more people of the world as a puff out or an Africa, but it's many countries But I think India has the highest US. It's pretty low chance you're going to get Killed by a snake you're going to get killed driving your car or shooting someone with your gun You know, it's highly unlikely that the odds are very low that you're going to die from a snake bite no matter where you live in the I understand that you it's all well and good, but that doesn't comfort you if you get bit by a snake Like oh, what are the odds? You have to deal with it or buy one of those kits. I think most people live Joe I think most people yeah, I mean there's a few people that die this year in California But typically it's like only a few people a year die in the country for snake bites And is it generally because they just don't get to medical treatment in time or they're older or you know They get bit three times Like not just once by the rattlesake You know we have more venom in them. Is it true that the young ones give you more venom than the old ones? No, young young ones have a More condensed more dangerous venom, but big snakes will are much more dangerous because they can put far more venom into you If the little ones have have a more potent venom, but they can't inject as much into so it's that's kind of people Misunderstand that stat. Yeah, not that I'm a snake expert. I'm more of a turtle expert and I am more of a freak expert So I'm good at finding these crazy people to come comfortable being around these people? That's a good question. Because there's a psychological aspect too, particularly like chimp crazy. There's something about those people that makes me uneasy watching it on TV. Like you are so far gone. Like some of these people are so far gone in terms of just being a normal, present, rational person. There's a courtship and sometimes that courtship takes years to get someone willing to be interviewed. It's generally the reptile world can be very guarded. People that have them don't want the feds coming and taking their rare reptiles. They don't want animal rights groups, PETA coming and busting them. They don't want people coming because they're very valuable. Some reptiles are worth a lot of money. So they're very guarded and to get access to a lot of these people took a lot of time at times. And sometimes that relationship would go up and down. And there were times when people that I was interviewing really did not like me. There was something that happened. And then I'd have to go there. And I'd be nervous because that person may have been someone who did a lot of time in prison and did some heavy things in his life. So yeah, there are times when you're just kind of like, you know, is this the time I'm going to go there and he's going to really fuck me up. Well, I didn't like you. You know, man, you know, like listen, I like this guy. He's done what he's done in the past. He was sentenced to 100 years in prison. He got out for whatever reason. But that guy, why do you go to jail for 100 years? Well, Mario Tabrawi was sentenced to 100 plus years in prison. He got out early because he must have had some serious information. What was the crime? Murder and drugs. And he got out early because he said he had information. He must have. He did 12 years. No one knows what. No one knows what. He only did 12 years from murder and drugs. But I like him. Oh, great. I wasn't the one murdered. I wasn't in his life. In fact, then he's kind of a, he really actually does love animals. I mean, in his way, and I was nervous sometimes going to his place a few times. Well, why was he mad at you? Oh, fuck. Do you remember all the times he was mad at me? He's mad at me. He's probably mad at me right now as I'm speaking. Yeah. I definitely will be after the show, probably. Yeah. Well, that's, this is the next episode. There's an entire episode that talks about kind of the 80s in Miami and the sort of overlap between the drug trade and illegal wildlife trade and the reptile trade. And he's a central character in it. Now he's kind of more tangential because it's really about this guy, Ray Van Nostrand, guy from New Jersey, moved down to Florida, started a business that became strictly reptiles as I was referencing. But yeah, I mean, I don't think there was anything like particular, but he would get very particular about very specific things. Like if you were, you could be right about a million things that he hated, but wrong about one thing that he cared about the most. And he would categorize you to be this person that is, you know, there's an expression on or among thieves, and he weirdly has this kind of honorable side, and certain things I would say to him would make him really upset. But I have to say the only time I was ever shot at my life was in fucking Miami. I was shot at, you know, going to a pay phone in the early 90s and a van trying to go to a nightclub with a bunch of people. And these guys were walking towards me and they started just blowing out the windows of the van. I remember I didn't go to the nightclub. I went back to my hotel and I woke up in the morning with that chopped, you know, car glass all in my hair. I had long hair back then. I had hair back then. But Miami was, you know, it was pretty wild in the 80s and early 90s. I have a good friend, my friend Steve did his residencies and ophthalmologists, his residency in Miami in the 80s. And worked in emergency rooms. And he said it was fucking insane. It's like so many gunshot wounds, so many drug deals gone bad, so many heists. He said it was like an insane place to work. I really say that because I said to all my characters, I said, what's it like, you know, having been in and out of prison so many times he goes, bro, everyone in Florida's been in prison, you know, and I was kind of like, what's it like? You know, everyone in Florida's been in prison. It's not any place with shady people, right? Have you seen cocaine cowboys? Yeah, yeah, phenomenal, right? And that story where you find out that the entire graduating class of the police academy either wound up murdered or in jail for corruption. Have you seen Bad Lieutenant? Yes. I'm friends with Harvey. He's good in it, man. Oh, yeah, no, it's great. But there's parts of this story that are a little like Bad Lieutenant. You'll see in the end, you know, well, what you'll like about this second episode about this period, it's from the point of view of this young at the time, you know, coming right out of college, young DE agent, DE agent on the beat chasing bad guys. And he was assigned this guy, Mario, to Brawley. The case that was a cold case, no one could ever touch him. And you see him kind of chase after him. And, you know, understand the whole weaving of this story. But it's a really, you know, being around that guy was to get, you know, talking about the subjects in this animal world, you know, law enforcement. This guy sleeps with a gun every night and gets literally orgasmic with the thought of this guy coming to his house. There's like a hideaway guy. The guy that he put in prison for a hundred years that got out. He literally waits and you'll see a line in the show that it's kind of unbelievable what he says about that. Yeah, but just, you know, it lives in this kind of, we went to go see him. He lives in this kind of very kind of, you know, country part of West Virginia. And he's good with guns. Good with guns. And he would just, you know, he would brag about all the gun, you know, the Pulitzer you can find from this, you know, left over from the Civil War in his backyard. And, you know, he was very, very good with the gun. We did a lot of shooting Verite with him. And he was just a really, at the time, very generous with this with his time wanting to tell his story. But, you know, clearly killed a lot of people and would make some very soft references to, to that that would be very unnerving, you know, like, yeah, you're really great with, I've never shot a gun. He's, I don't have anything against it, but I've never shot a gun. And I would talk to him about it. I'm interested in it. And he'd be like, yeah, I've had to use it a lot, you know, more than I'd like to admit. So, you know, you're in these places. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's. But what's so peculiar about this guy, his name's Larry Loveless. He was a DEA agent in Florida back in those days. He put this guy in prison, you know, bringing, this guy was bringing a lot of drugs from, you know, he was Cuban. And you'll see it in episode two. But he really just doesn't understand how the guy got out of prison. And the fact that the very guy that put him in prison would know that, that they, like, the, whoever the powers that be that put got him out of prison after 12 years, you would think he would know, you know, but he's still to this day worried, worried about retaliation. Well, it should be, so this was what's cool is that his dad was actually the person, he was like an HR person for kind of the Cuban, it was at the time of the Cuban Bay of Pigs, you know, invasion, that kind of era. And he was responsible for taking care of all these kind of Cuban exiles during that time. And he would, he was being the one that was going to go into house to house and giving people checks. So we had this kind of very interesting network of people and had this incredible access. And so what they, what, what was been insinuated is that, you know, his dad had these relationships and knew where everyone was and knew all these people and had information that was useful to the government at the time. That's the idea. Gave information, no surprise. Or he helped bring down the real Pablo Escobar, or he knew a big drug lord that government wanted and they made a deal. Who knows? But it could have been, there's lots of theorists. Why didn't injustice, though, like even this guy, you know, some, you know, we filmed 200 people over how long 15 years, really, the last six was more intense. More than 200 people. And you never get everybody in. And I remember meeting this guy, Tony Biscaro, remember him? Yeah. He was the, this guy was part of, he flew planes for drugs, you know, he got busted with like, I think 600,000, you know, pounds of weed at the time. He served the single largest sentence for marijuana smuggling crime, 40 years, 40 years, got out maybe five years ago. And can you imagine coming out of prison for the longest sentence and then going to Miami and you're seeing weed stores everywhere? Life's over, these weed stores are, it's like insane to me. That's fucked up. But, but that was at a time. Look, Pablo Escobar, like there were people around Pablo Escobar, they got indicted. That was, they were trafficking ivory horns and stuff. Like it was very, you know, there were one degree of separation for like wildlife crime and drugs in that era. Why do you think there's that connection? Easy, concealment, concealment. I mean, look, I don't want to exaggerate. I think it, there's been connections, you know, like you can put cocaine inside of a boat, constrictor who's going to open a box at customs or, you know, fish and wildlife service and look inside the boat constrictor. So there's some pretty ingenious ways to, meaning you put it in their stomach. Yeah, like you either like force feed the boat constrictor, like, you know, like you put them in those balloons, you put cocaine in or you even, and then you have to cut them open to get your cocaine. Yeah, you cut them open and get your cocaine. But even, but even more. I remember New York when the fish markets used to put drugs. He's so casually about that. By the way, fish, fish markets used to put the drugs in fish and the, and they, you know, in the fish market. Like a New York. Yeah, because no one wants to handle the fish and open up the fish and they shove all the drugs into the fish. So, you know, like smelly, dangerous animals are good cover for drugs or, or even more simply, you know, trafficking wildlife. There was a little legal version of that. So what they would do is take the crates and they'd pack them and they'd put the drugs at the bottom and they'd put, you know, another layer of animals and they'd put some, they'd mix in some, you know, local-like animals that were really rare but looked like the common animals so they'd mix them together and then they'd put something like, you know, spitting cobras up the top. No one was reaching into the crate when there was these like very dangerous animals. So that's how they kind of got, they were able to prey on the lack of resources at these kind of major ports of entry and realize that Fish and Wildlife didn't really have any resources at the time. They had limited wildlife inspectors, they had to go through these, you know, volumes, values and crates and they played these games. Many Commodo dragons that made it into this country came in illegally in a crate and they would just put a little Commodo dragon in with some other monitor lizards and the inspectors couldn't tell the difference and they'd go through and the Commodo dragon that bit Sharon Stone's husband, Sharon Stone's husband at the Los Angeles Zoo was one of those Commodo dragons. So it was somebody's private collection and they got released at the zoo? No, it was in a sting that's in our show where they were bringing in illegal animals coming from a guy in Malaysia who's sort of the Pablo Escobar, the kingpin globally of all the reptile animal trade, a guy that we finally accessed after COVID who his name is Anson Wong and he was sort of the you know, bad guy number one in the world for reptile and animal smuggling. And so he was sent into my interval and I'll, you know, he did the longest, longest sentence in the US for wild crime ever at the time in the 90s. He was busted in Mexico and then brought extradited into the US but he was bringing in Commodo dragons and really rare reptiles and the zoos were the beneficiary of those reptiles once they were confiscated. So the LA Zoo, San Diego Zoo, Brax Zoo, a lot of these animals came from reptile smugglers. Wow. Very much at origins of collections, yeah, pursues. And I would also imagine the kind of people that are really in the reptiles probably also do drugs. So they probably know a lot of people in that world. Yeah, it's like a cross-section of your Hotsnakes, which are the venomous lot of bikers. Hotsnakes. Hotsnakes means. That's what they call them. Hotsnakes. Or that kind of can kill you. Yeah, they're called Hotsnakes. Interesting. But yeah, a lot of bad-ass guys and there were some definitely drugs. Listen, I did drugs in my life. So way. Yes. Come on. I'll go on. I've done everything. I had nightclubs in New York City for many years, Joe. Yeah, I'm like, you know, embombed. It's made me live longer. Maybe that's what saved you when you got bit by the rouse night. I probably. But you got to think that the type of people that are going to be even interested in having a snake is a pet that's a very unusual person. Yeah, I don't know. Come on. You know people that have six kids have ball pythons. You've got kids. They like a baby, a ball python. They're clean. You don't have to feed it every day, like a rabbit or a dog. You can go on vacation, leave your ball python. They're a good pet. A lot of snakes. I don't think of them as a pet. I think of as a monster that you feed that allows you, you know, it's not big enough to eat you. So it just allows you to feed it. And then you have to keep it in this box, which is kind of weird. Well, that's why I like tortoises. You don't have to keep them in a cage or a box. Because there's a snake. The experience is comfort because they're in a terrarium. Listen, there's a lot of myth out there that, oh snakes can live in a little teeny like sweater box or shoe box. And you can put them in rocks like you see in snake stores and snake reels. The truth is real snakes in the wild do not live in little boxes. They may go in the underground at certain time of year at hibernate. They may, but they come out and they hang out like us and they move around. And most snakes do not live in a little teeny box. But yes, they can survive in a box. But there's all different kinds of snakes. There's racer snakes and indigo snakes and snakes that need to move fast and go places. And then there's some snakes like a ball python that can be in a more confined space, but you can't generally. But generally like when people keep them as pets, they keep them in some common aquarium, right? Yeah. And they should, they should give them more space. They should absolutely give them more space. I mean, part of what we're trying to do in the show is try to tell people, be responsible. Don't treat reptiles like disposable pets like a toy that you break one week and then you buy another one and you break it and the parents buy another one. You know, they're living creatures. The death toll when you import these animals is amazing. I mean, so much mortality. We don't talk about mortality, whether it's zoos or people bringing in these reptiles or even myself over the years, you ask me what happened to that snake. It probably died. It probably was flushed down a toilet by someone's mom, you know, you know, like baby green turtles that you had as a kid. Like what happened to most of us? How long does snake look? Like how long does a python live? This episode is brought to you by Visible. It's officially summer folks and boy, what a summer we are having. It feels like one of those good old fashioned summers we just want to enjoy every moment and keep up with the action. Your best companion this summer, Visible Wireless. Visible gives you unlimited 5G data and unlimited hotspot powered by Verizon for just $25 a month. So you can make this the summer of fun and savings. Visible is more than just a wireless plan. It's unlimited wireless designed to always keep you connected with no contract to tie you down. Switch today at Visible.com, plan start at $25 a month or get our premium Visible plus pro plan and save $10 on your first month when you use promo code Rogan. Terms apply, see Visible.com for plan features and network management details. So the longest lived animal terrestrial animal on the planet is a giant tortoise. They can live almost 200 years. I have tortoises that are over a hundred years old. What about snakes? Snakes generally most snakes don't live more than 30 to 40 years, but there are a few that my lizards can live 70 years. Some of the big land iguanas can live a long time. Those ones in Florida? I don't know about green iguanas, but there are some that can live 50 to 70 years. Some of the big lizards tortoises live the longest. Some crocodilians can live a really long time. Snakes live the least, the lesser time compared to the most of the other reptiles. That was another thing they found in Florida in the Everglades. They found Nile crocodiles, and they think that they might have a breeding population. There's a suspicion, but it's basically from people having them as pets. I've swam with Nile crocodiles. That's no joke. Why did you do that? I was in Madagascar. They have a form of Nile crocodile in Madagascar. They don't quite as big as the mainland crocs, and I was looking for turtles, and then I saw the crocs. Nile crocodiles, and as you know, saltwater crocodiles are the two crocs that really kill the most people. People come and watch their clothing next to the shore, the croc comes up and grabs them. You really got to watch it with Nile crocodiles. If they're in Florida, they're much bigger than American crocodiles. Yeah, they have a shoot on site order for them, or they did at least this article that I was reading. It's from a while back. I didn't know that well. They've done a couple of them. I know they've captured at least two of them. Well, the biggest reptile in the world in terms of weight back to our size cover station is a saltwater crocodile. It's neck and neck with a leather back seat turtle. They're both over 2,000 pounds. So you imagine a 2,000 back seat turtle is that big? I had no idea. That's great. I would have never imagined that a seat turtle would have the same body weight as a saltwater crocodile. They're neck and neck over 2,000 pounds, both of them. That's a big, big turtle. Well, I know that there's legend about Congo crocodiles. There's crocodiles that people had supposedly seen back in the early 1900s and the 1800s that they thought were 40 feet long. The thing about crocodiles is I don't think they die of old age. I think they just stay alive until they die. I want to be a crocodile. They keep getting bigger. That's the other thing, depending upon their food source and how much I think in captivity they wind up dying. But I think there's some thoughts as to why that happens, how they're actually eating or they're getting fed. What's the difference between the way they live in the wild? But there's some accounts from back in the day where these guys were on a boat and the crocodile was bigger than the boat they were on. I mean, the thing about crocodilians and I think there's about 27 different types. But once they get to a certain size, they're vulnerable when they're little. Birds and fish and things can kill them and eat them. But once they get to a certain size, like you're saying, they're pretty much invincible. Nothing can kill them. And some of them develop a taste for people. Yeah, just movement in the water and just because they're an ambush predator. Yeah, well, they hunt people. And they probably hunt people. My friend Jim Shocky, he got hired to go to Africa. I forget what country it was. But he got hired to kill these crocodiles because they were praying on people. And while he was there, someone got snatched up while he was in camp. There's everybody there had like missing a leg by taking another calf. Everybody was all fucked up. I was good friends with Peter Beard and he would go to Kenya and Ethiopian call crocodiles and there's a really incredible photo of him inside a crocodile that they killed. And he's like riding in his, you know, journal, but he's half his body is in a huge Nile crocodile. But he would go and call. all of them for probably similar reason as you said. - Yeah, once they start targeting villagers, once they find that there's a place that they can hunt and get regular food, they're there all the time. They're so sneaky that what they developed was these people had put posts into the ground in the water. So into the area where they would wash their clothes and gather food, they essentially built like some sort of a containment area, where the crocs couldn't get through these poles. So what the crocs did was go round the poles and into the water, so they had figured it out. - Smart. - That's creepy, that's creepy. Where they, they've realized like, oh, the people go, like they must have been watching and realizing, oh, the people go into this area, so I gotta go on the ground at night, and then I'll go back on the water and then I'll catch these fuckers slipping. - And they're patient. They can wait years. - They're intelligent. - They can wait a long time before they eat anything. - Yeah, they don't have to eat for a year, right? - Yeah, yeah. - Are they intelligent? - Yeah. - Well, they, they're one of the few reptiles that actually really does defend their babies. Like, you know, like a snake doesn't do that. Yeah, yeah. - Wow, yeah. - Wow. - Wow, that's amazing. - What a dinosaur, man. - What is that, a saltwater or a nile? - This is a saltwater croc. - Yeah, is this Australia? - In Australia. - Wow, that, wow, those things ran the whole world at one point in time. - Yeah. - It's just weird. There's still creatures like that roaming around, you know? - That's a throwback. - And there's some really endangered crocodiles. And you'll see in our show, I think even episode one, there's the zoo curator that says, oh, we bought a few Philippine crocodiles from this dealer. I think it's in the first episode. And Philippine crocodiles today are super endangered. You know, like there's still some really, really rare ones. Not saltwater crocs and not nile crocs, but there's some really endangered-- - Is that a thrill for these guys that they get something that they're not supposed to have as a part of it? - Yeah, for sure. - Take a rare baseball card. - No, it's like rare art. It's like having a, yeah, yeah. - And then there's a-- - I get excited by seeing something I never saw before. I'm like, it's hidden in a candy store. - Yeah. - Well, when I see a cool, like pink landing one, I've never seen one in the wild or anywhere. And I've been to the Galapagos, so yeah, it's a thrill. It's a huge-- - I put in your backpack and take it home is probably not encouraged. - I'd stuff it down my pants. No, I'd be too scared. - Well, you wouldn't want to do that, right? - Well, ever since natural habitat. - No, I wouldn't want it. You know, my mother gave me a good moral compass with us. She used to say to me when I was a kid, don't play God-era, cannot, keep my, I was keeping things and she'd tell me, you gotta let it go at the end of the summer. So I was lucky to have that because a lot of people didn't have that mother and I did. So I kind of, against my better judgment when I was a kid, I did bad things that my mother didn't like, but later in life, she was right, keep it in the wild. - Yeah, for sure. - Well, they're fascinating in the wild. It's just like I do appreciate them in the wild. I just, I'm perplexed as to why people would, they would have their life revolve around taking care of reptiles. It just seems really odd. - Well, people get into it and they get addicted, they buy more and more and more and then they get divorced and they get rid of them all or they get burnt out on it 'cause after a while, it's a lot of work taking care of a lot of reptiles. So it's kind of like, you know, people get really into it and sometimes it's hard to sustain it, you know. - But more trade than the other collectible culture. - Trades? - More trade, more, you know. - Like I'll give you a crocodile and sell trade, yeah. - What's going on here, Jamie? - Bear, bear gold bladder for her. - I've never seen this footage. - That's a shark, so it's stealing a shark that a guy caught. Well, that must be American crocodile, right? It's Australia, okay, a lot of sharks in Australia, that makes sense. - I don't know. - Wow, so it just stole this guy's fish. Okay. - Which has been your interest in wildlife? - Well, man, I'm fascinated by wildlife. I'm just much more interested in mammals for whatever reason. I mean, I'm interested in these things. I've found them fascinating, but they're not as compelling to me for whatever reason. And I always wondered what that is. Like, you know, I did this thing on social media once, the social media hierarchy of dead animals. And I said like fish, filets of fish, no one cares. Dead fish, people care a little more, but not much. Dead turkey, not that big a deal. Dead deer, okay, now we're getting weird. You know, dead bear, now people get mad at you. It's interesting. You know, I went to this thing called Safari Club International in Vegas. It's the biggest trophy hunting, you know, convention. And I was filming undercover and I started out, you know, asking, yeah, can you taxidermy this and that. And then I kind of, you know, raised the bar. And I said, you know, can you taxidermy a chimp for me? No, yeah, we can do a chimp. So what about an orangutan? You know, we could do an orangutan. Anyway, and I was going around to different taxidermists in this giant convention. They had elephants and lions and all kinds of stuff. Eventually I asked them if you could taxidermy a human, you know, and then suddenly I noticed all these guys starting to follow me, you know, and there was a big NRA booth and a lot of people had guns and eventually they surrounded me. And I was trying to get rid of my, you know, camera gear and throw it in the garbage and stuff. But it was interesting where the line is and what you're allowed to take. Well, it sounds like you're a fucking psychopath. You're asking if you could taxidermy a human. You don't think that's, they probably thought for sure you're a fed or someone-- Or a joke. Undercover. I mean, obviously, it was kind of, it was kind of a joke. But they literally started putting eyeballs on me and say, who the fuck is this guy? Yeah. Yeah. Would you? Yeah, but they would-- Hey, how do you take a fucking human and turn into a statue? People have shrunken heads. I know people with shrunken heads, actually. Right. You know, they collect them. But no, it's pretty macabre. The fact that they would taxidermy a chimp and a rangatang and a gorilla. So who are these people that said they would do that? They're just-- Just taxidermists that are in this convention that taxidermy were a big game. How would one even-- So someone would have to smuggle it back. A lot of what happens is-- and a lot of the, you know, when zoo animals die, sometimes they send it to people that taxidermy. So I know people that get a lot of zoo carcasses and they, you know, taxidermy a chimp. I've seen it. But yeah. So when a zoo has the option to sell the dead body and then someone turns it into a taxidermy statue, it's gone on for a long time. I-- nothing against zoos, but that was one way to get really unusual animals. Like, I have a friend, I mean, a guy I know that's taxidermy a number of commotor dragons that came from zoos because people don't have commotor dragons in the private-- Right. --in the private sector. But I guess no harm, no foul. It's already dead. But I guess I make-- the point you're making, I'm just sort of saying, it's interesting how fish, even though certain fish can live over 100 years, certain rockfish, and longevity, that's incredible. We don't think of them in the same way as we think of these higher-- Right. We don't care at all. Yeah, we don't seem to-- but, you know, it's going fishing is much more common than going hunting. Yeah. Now that I say what I just said, you know, maybe that's a little twisted. What do you mean? About taxidermy a person. Well, he is twisted. Yeah. Yeah. You guys said that out of context. Whoa. You could buy this. Yeah. It says it's real. Let's try to look and see if it was fake, but-- What? How is that legal? It's a document. Oh. I'm not sure on the screen. I made one. Oh. There's a friend. It's only three grand. I mean. No, the guy that has the taxidermy-- he's got a funny name for his museum. Yeah. He's got the commotor dragon. But now that I think about it, he had a number of taxidermy gorillas. Yeah. Now that I think about it. Now, do they say where they got this from? Does it say how they acquired this body? The document might be fine if I have to pay for the document. That's fucking weird. But to your point about this kind of societal reaction to different wildlife issues, I think. Yeah, that's what we're super curious about. What drives people's obsessions around certain things. In this case, this happens to be part sport, part industry, part obsession with scarcity. But that is all, in this case, leading more to destructive extinction problems. Very few animals, more and more animals, are threatened with extinction than ever before, particularly reptiles. Now, one out of every five are threatened with extinction. And it's growing in an accelerated rate, mainly because of things that we explore in our show, pet trade, exotic, smuggling, all of that. But to get people to care about things that can harm you, believe it or not, we have challenges with subject matter in the show that we'll get notes back and it might be too hardcore for people to see because it's a brutal, volume-based industry. There's a lot of-- Yeah, but we try not to show the bludgeoning and the cruelty of the animals. We try to avoid that with Tiger King and Jim Crazy in this show because people turn the channel. So, if we wanted to, we could do that. Well, I think we're just-- But I'm more talking more about the point of like, how do people respond to something through an interest, and what turns them on, what turns them off? And what is it about us that has this connection to certain, why are there turtle people? Why do you like turtle? Why do you think people vilify reptiles? You like mammals. You said, why do you think people aren't so keen on reptiles? Well, they're not like-- us, right? There are different sort of predatory lizard thing, and I think in our mind, the harkened back to the days where these things were real problem for human beings, I think crocodiles and alligators, they enact, there's a visceral reaction that people have to them that I think is warranted. It's genetic probably. But you don't think, because we like to talk about the warm, cuddly, charismatic animals like a panda bear or a koala bear or a, you know, well that I think is anthropomorphism that's done by Disney movies. Of course it is. Yeah, because people in the pioneer days didn't think of bears that way. Right. But I would argue that a bear, you know, a Kodiak bear, a polar bear, a lion is a lot more concerning than most reptiles, you know. So why we vilify reptiles and have that, you know, feeling about them is I think maybe more as to what you said about the anthropomorphism. You can't, a snake has no legs like us. They don't breastfeed their babies like a bear or like a mammal. They have a forked tongue. They have no ears. A snake is weird. They're nothing like us. So maybe we feel so removed from them and they're scary, even though they're really not that scary. We talked to this guy. We were, the Disney thing is so interesting to me, because that, that was actually something that I was kind of deep on, this guy, Carl Saphina, he's more of a anthropologist or he's more of a behavioral. He's like an animal behaviorist and sort of more in the groove of like, you know, animal welfare and animal behavior. Yeah, but this sort of creation of anthropomorphic characters through Disney, I mean they were, you know, if you track this sort of correlation to, you know, entry points into, you know, mainstream culture, you know, it's, you know, they're easy, they're great devices for human emotion, but then there's this more perverse side of, you know, it creates these demands for pets. You know, Zootopia, we would snakes like Zootopia had a snake as a central character and it's going crazy in China, you know. Well, that's a pop culture thing, like, you know, but that's the, you know, so these well-intentioned things and these wings which we portray animals. Meaning Nemo, everyone wanted a clownfish, Harry Potter, Harry Potter, everyone wanted a baby owl. I was in Asia after Harry Potter and they, I was like, why are there like 50 baby owls in this market and they were Harry Potter birds? That's a byproduct of pop culture, right? Yeah. You know, you know, Jurassic Park everyone wants their little beardy dragon because they want a miniature dinosaur. So who knows what's going to happen after months as a guy, they're all going to want snakes again. Hopefully you have some radars. Did Tiger King open up the door for that, you think? Did people like look at that and find it appealing? Like, that's rob a mission. Well, I think I'm looking for my niche. I think it gave the opposite of people like, maybe questioning, questioning, it's like deliverance. It's a little deliberate. It came the way you're talking. Maybe question when you take a photo with a baby tiger at a roadside zoo. I think that was more, more, you know, because it was so big in pop culture. I want to get me a tiger after Tiger King. I want to get me a little baby tiger. Okay, so if we're going to play into this lane, it's like, look, everyone was shocked that you could buy, you could basically go in for free. Well, we've talked about it before on the podcast, but there's more tigers and captivity in Texas than all the wild in the world. Yeah. Yeah. And people's private collections. Yeah. I think we're ligen also as a, is it plays a big role in the vilification of reptiles, particularly snakes, you know, like, you know, something about that. I don't mean any of complex and, you know, the snake is bad. Serpent. Serpent, yeah. I was, we were more people dream of snakes in this country than any other thing we buy. It's mostly negative dreams or something. Not sharks? No, snakes. There's a, like, nightmare snake dreams. Google did this sort of, like, you know, infographic by country. And, you know, what is the most common dream that people have and it's usually about snakes. I have like someone chasing me or panic dreams. I never have a nightmare about a snake. We never hear of, like, a phobia directly attached to sharks. You know, you have a videophobia, which is a fear of snakes, but you don't hear of a shark ophobia. Or arachnophobia. Right. Yeah. Spiders. Yeah. People are freaked out by spiders. Oh, yeah. I, I think that's a genetic thing. I think there's a memory. Yeah. I think someone either was bit or know someone that was bit and that information got transferred down to their offspring. Yeah. I'm pretty sure of that because hosting fear factor, I got to see people with, like, legitimate arachnophobia and legitimate a videophobia where it is, like, nothing else. Yeah. Like, they see it and they fucking freak out. Like it's irrational. Yeah. It's like everything in their body saying you got to get out of here right now. Yeah. Yeah. And it's not like everybody else. Everybody else who looked at it was like, oh, yikes. And then a few people, they had that genetic memory, I think. Yeah. That's just a theory. And it's cultural. It's cultural. Yeah. We have a lot of Mexican guys that work with us and every year, we do a snake course when the snakes start coming out in the spring and I show them how to put a rattlesnake on their staff meeting. He ever does. Yeah. So only thing I care about. But I don't want people killing snakes that work for me. And I'm like, hey, you don't have to kill the snake and they're so used to taking the machete and cutting the snake's head off. We don't do that. We move the rattlesnake and we put it somewhere else. We move the gopher snake, the king snake. But they just have this, you know, some of them as you were just saying, just can't wrap their head around even touching the snake because they just instilled in them, you know, from their parents or from whatever their childhood that they're scared of snakes. And it's hard to change. But with kids, like I'm sure with your kids and your daughters, like, I see with little boys, you know, six and three, how their reaction and they're not fearful. Like, and it's partially because of the influence of the work that I'm doing. But, you know, I watch them interact. I see their friends. I see their cousins that are fearful. They have adverse reaction. I also think it's like, you know, your exposure to it. Yeah. You know, a lot. And you're right. Probably some genetic kind of. Definitely exposure to, I mean, if you grow up and you're used to being around different kinds of animals in the wildlife and different things, you probably be more comfortable around unique animals. But if your person grows up entirely in the city, yeah, does your parents like animals? Do they? Dogs. We had dogs and cats. Normal stuff. I had a weird bomb. I had a weird bomb that likes snakes. So, I played a role in it. Oh, okay. And like salamanders. Oh, that explains a lot. She would take me to pet stores and actually steal the snakes and salamanders and steal them and put them in her purse and then take me out into the woods and we'd let them go. So that's kind of another. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. She didn't like seeing them in cages. Wow. But she didn't mind kleptomania. So I got good at stealing for a while. It's an odd mom who's like really in the snakes. It's an odd mom. No, she just wanted to free them. Oh, I understand. She had aquariums. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I didn't grow up around any of that. I didn't know anybody who had a snake as a pet. Nothing I can remember. Really? New Jersey. Well, I was born in New Jersey but I grew up all over the place. I lived in San Francisco until I was 11 and I lived in Florida from 11 to 13. I actually was around a lot of alligators during that time. There it is. Yeah, we're in Gainesville and there's a place called Lake Allis there that had a lot of alligators. You see it all the time. I think when I was there one lady got a totally impressionable age. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I was around a lot. But they were weird. They didn't do anything. They just laid on the shore. You could see them and you could be fairly close. Even though they could have clearly chased me and caught me because they can run like 30 miles an hour. Right. They could have caught me if they wanted to. They didn't. They weren't really interested in people. Apparently, they had plenty of food and they were at that time they were actually endangered. So alligators like they were telling people not to feed the marshmallows because people would throw marshmallows on the lake because they could watch the alligator come up and eat the marshmallow. They like marshmallows. And they said, hey, these are not good for alligators. Yeah. They're super worried about alligator diabetes or something. Whatever. Yeah. Yeah. But they were concerned about like giving that alligator alligators sugar rush. Yeah. They were concerned about giving the alligator non-nutrition food, which I thought was funny because they were saying that they were endangered. And it's amazing that in the 50s and 60s they were really endangered and it was hard to find an alligator. And think about that now and how to believe it's hard to believe in how the Endangered Species Act did help all the eagles birds of prey because it actually it actually worked because of DDT. But it brought back alligators and now alligators like you can't even imagine they were endangered. They're like ubiquitous in Florida. Oh, they're everywhere. They literally say every pond has the potential to have an alligator everywhere you look. They move around. They're very overpopulated. Yeah. It's interesting about this work in the show that spans so much time. We had, which you share in this curiosity, but we had great access to all of these great people in different industry. So you have heads of the zoo, you have DOJ, DEA, US Mission Wildlife Service. Collector is the bigger suppliers and you have all aspects of this sort of industry and what the show became as we were working through the edit is this kind of real, clear story of unintended consequences, which is the more you enforce, you have great laws that happen, but it triggers something else and that triggers something else. And you see this kind of time after time after time again. And in some cases it leads to some positive things like ESA or the Danger Species Act, or you have a pop culture event that drives sales of the animal that's going to be poached out of extinction. So it's a really interesting way of looking at this and analyzing it in a way. What you realize, you'll see, Joe, if you continue. and you're watching that the pathology behind everyone, the law enforcement, they're going after their price, right? They're going after, their big trophy is the bad guy. The bad guy, you know, the dealer, the smugglers going after the rarest reptile. The zoos got very competitive with reptile houses in the 70s and 80s 'cause they started realizing they were very popular. Some of the most popular things in zoos are reptile houses. They wanted the commotor dragon, the rare reptile. So, and the collector, like guys like me, that really dig reptiles wanted, like the pink, you know, glopicus land iguana that no one has or they're this, the unattainable. So everyone kind of is going after each other, the reptile, the feds are going after the bad guys and it's a similar pathology and what you find out in the end of the series is there's a scene where law enforcement has something that you can't believe. And it's a little like doing a film about, you know, cocaine cowboys and the law enforcement has a garage full of heroin and cocaine that they're selling. So it's like, it gets very gray and the psychology is similar between the-- - The only difference between the prisoner and the guard at the bars. - Well, that's the sort of kind of thing. - And you'll see there's no clear ride and wrong and sometimes the laws don't work. So it's messy and sometimes there should be laws where there aren't laws, you know, back to the marijuana-- - Yeah, I thought it's going back to the marijuana analogy like fucking, it how twisted it is that someone goes to prison for 40 years of a pot and now you can go to a weave shop every corner in Oklahoma, right? But it's a very messy, complex story that was hard to weave together and I think it was the most challenging for us, certainly more challenging than Tiger King. - At the most proud. I think it's really deep and it's a good one. - And we lived. - And we lived for now. - You guys spend a lot of time on these. - Yeah. - This is one of the things that I found shocking why you were just discussing this. You were saying it was like six years. - More. - More. - How many, so when did you plant the seed? - Well, the seed was planted really in my head when I read this book The Lizard King in 2008 and I tried to buy the rights from this author, Brian Christy, who wrote this incredible book The Lizard King in 2008. So that's almost 20 years ago. I didn't start filming until 2014 with Josh Safdie and that was the beginning. But Tiger King and other things got in the way. So yeah, maybe six years if we were to condense that time. - But when we saw you a couple of years ago, we were making many projects along this. 'Cause you can't do 'em all. It's a very unstructured way of working. We don't have a certain amount of shoot days. It's kind of a flow. We like these longitudes. - We shoot multiple projects at the same time. And we're lucky because a lot of our worlds are in certain places. So it's one-stop shopping in Florida. There's a lot of interesting people, a lot of colorful people that are hitting some of these themes that we're exploring in different works. So I think, so we're able to kind of do that. But the duration's great because like, sometimes constraints are, no, I think it's great in some ways. If you're able to kind of balance other work because holding out for access to a really important person might not happen in the first go about, you know, a year later or two years later. - What is the common factor that you guys, is it fucked up people? Like that you guys are looking for when you decide what kind of documentaries you're making? - Not just. That would be a two-superficial. - Well, there's too many fucked up people out there, Joe. - But fucked up people in connection with wildlife is the theme of the big three that you've got. - And people that have a story that's somewhere hidden in there. So we cast a wide fucking net. Like we filmed shark people in taxidermists and the guy that reads the most long-tailed Macat Monkeys for medical research where we got COVID from. We're filming so many different subcultures of animal people and other people. And then you sort of hone in on something. And so the monkey mom thing became chimed crazy, you know, and we started seeing a story there. So it's not like we just go out and just lock into something and there's a story, we have to kind of find it. And I would say this is not a good recipe for people that want to make documentaries. Like anyone's starting out in life to try to make docs. Don't do what we do 'cause it's not a good way to get rich and it takes forever and you may never have a story. And so it's like-- - That's what I'm getting at. - It's like, it seems like-- - We got lucky that Joe exotic tried to kill Kellabaskin while we were filming. We got lucky in a sense that, and we got lucky he didn't kill her. And we got lucky in a sense that Tonya could nap to chimpanzee. This is not a recipe for success, you know. We film, film, film. We do a lot of shit that no one ever sees. - Joe exotic DMs me all the time on Instagram. - I was still, he wants to get out. - You know, there's a way maybe we can get him out by the way I'll tell you after the show. I'll tell you after the show. - Do you want him to get out? - You know, the government made a deal with him before the trial. They said, we'll give you, you can do six years or you're gonna have a trial. Six years, he's been in jail now for nine years or whatever it's been. He would be out right now if he made that deal. He thought he was gonna get off and I was like, Joe, I was on the phone with him every day at the time from prison. I said, take the deal. I don't know, I'm not into throwing people in prison and throwing away the key forever. - Time is in jail too, you know. - Right, we're good at the perjury. I think she doesn't deserve to be in there for four years, you know, for perjury. - Well, she didn't need to kidnap another chimpanzee. You know, we tried to help her, but she didn't. She was her own worst enemy. - Well, it's people are obsessed. - I think also what attracts the crime element is the sentencing is low for wildlife trafficking. Wildlife crime. - Well, do they really consider that when they're getting involved? Like, oh, no big deal, only do four years. They really think of that. - I think they're going back to it, they keep doing it. - Yeah, but I think that's because they're obsessed. They're trying not to get caught. They're, I don't think they're looking at it and bouncing out the low sentence rate and going, "This is a good thing to get involved in." - I think that involves a whole lot. - It's pre-stiff crime, you know? - I think it's a risk factor that's considered in especially in a sense of life. - I think most of them, Jeremy, I think most of them think they're going to get away with it or they're smarter than the feds. - But they have this sort of, you know, worst case thinking about if there was something to happen, it's eight months at a camp. - Right, you know? - A lot of them go to prison multiple times while we were filming this show. During the filming, we were shocked that one of the lead guys in our film was under investigation. Being indicted, he didn't tell us. And then finally he said, "Guys, I'm going to prison." And we don't cover it in the show because it was just too much. But we were like, "Why, you've been filming with us for two years and you're going to prison now?" And then he finally got out of prison. We filmed him more and he's got an ankle bracelet. And he'd been prison five years before that or I don't know, eight years before that. So there's a lot of, what was he going to prison for? This time for smuggling turtles that were going out to Asia, three striped mud turtles. Yeah, that we're no longer bringing wildlife into buy and collect. It's actually coming out of our country into China. - Really? - Yeah. - What stuff are we exporting to China? - Well, there was a lot of it's Eric, the one recently that happened. - I just took it a conversation three weeks ago. A 300, three-toed box turtles that come out of the central part of the U.S. Oklahoma, Missouri. And two weeks later, the guy was busted coming in to Mexico with turtles and I took those turtles to a social wildlife service. So animals are coming into the country out of Mexico, you know, different countries. And then we're exporting now, which is new in the last 10 years. A lot of native turtles and reptiles and other wildlife to Southeast Asia and Europe. - And how are they getting there? - Mostly, it's mostly air cargo carry on this particular conversation. Three weeks ago, they busted the guys with more box turtles in their luggage once they got to Hong Kong in China. Like I said, China, Taiwan. - A lot of stocks. - Malaysia, Jakarta, the reptile industry is enormous for now keeping them as exotic pets, enormous. I mean, it's, you know, in Asia, like the bird world, the birds are called the cut flowers of the wildlife tray in Asia because like we might have a bouquet or a plant in our house, they have a bird cage in Southeast Asia. And there's something like some insane statistic about how many people have a bird in their house. And when you go to the bird markets in Jakarta, it's just surreal or in Thailand, there's one in Bangkok called Chattachat Market. These huge, you know, animal markets, you know, we talk about where COVID came from, but the scale of these animal markets, you know, bush meat, wildlife, it's on a scale that's beyond your imagination. So you actually see, what are they selling? - They're selling reptiles, they're selling birds. - For meat. - No, no, these are for pets. - Okay. - The birds are ornamental in your house, you have a songbird, you have an owl, you have a whatever, you can't put people better. - So they just have like a wildlife mall, it's effectively like an enormous wildlife mall. - An outdoor mall. - Yeah, and in that, within that mall, there's also seafood, and then there's the reptiles, and then there's the birds, it's like messy. No wonder maybe COVID came from that. COVID didn't come from that. - I don't know. - Yeah, it came from a fucking lab. - I think you're maybe right. I have a friend, bless his heart, he's a good friend of mine. He said it was a zoonotic disease, it didn't come from a lab, but now I'm beginning to think it might have come from it. - I think a lot of people were influenced to say that it was a natural spillover, because they did want to admit that we were fucking around with gain of function research. - I think the evidence now shows that they have been-- - Yeah, pretty clearly. But also, it seems like if you see these kind of things, a lab or excuse me, these markets, you would say, what is this right here, Jamie? - Child of Chalk. - Kind of a market. - Which one is this? - This is one of those markets. - Yeah, Jakarta. - Oh, I've been to these markets in Jakarta, yeah. - And it's just a wildlife market. And so it's all pets. So what is it about Asia that has such a desire for animals? - And those are the Harry Potter elves. That footage is where-- - Yeah. - Yeah. - Like what it is, wealth. - Same things in the US that we're driving the US. - But it's also more common, Asia? - Well, in China alone, there's over a billion people, so there's just more people. And just the scale and the size of Asia and China is much bigger than the US and Europe combined. So they have a bigger market and the climate's pretty good to keep exotic animals like Florida. So it's like on steroids, the collectors in Asia. - And why I think the industry, the trafficking numbers don't under-reported is, you know, you have this, there's like one person, one person that is responsible for coordinating in the US. One person, she's in Delaware, who is responsible for coordinating with the US Fish and Wildlife to deal with, you know, these placements of confiscated wildlife. If they're able to even detect them. I think it was something like 10,000 animals in the last few years were coming through LAX. Basically the torrents, the border and LAX. - It's very, one little sample market. It's very understaffed, under manned, to build a manage all the while of coming in and out of the country. There's not enough. - So even with dogs and detection advancement, they're finding ways to get animals out. And then the sad truth is that they've been starved into hydrated, you know, recovering them as impossible. You know, you've gotten lucky with rewilding animals back in New Jersey and stuff like that through this organization, but, you know, it's a, it's a harmful reality that it's actually still happening, you know, without our service. - The percentage of wildlife that leaves the country, leaves the country, native wildlife to this US. It's like 50% is kind of marine stuff, like coral and invertebrates that are in the ocean. And the rest is mostly reptiles, mostly turtles. Mammals are very small these days, birds are very small. So for whatever reason, you know, turtles and the US has the most, out of any country in the world, we have more species of turtles and tortoises than any country in the world. We have 51 species in the US. Mexico second, you know, India, I think it's maybe third, but so Asia now really wants these turtles, where you grow up, you know, in New Jersey, in other places where we have these really cool turtles, spotted turtles, bog turtles, wood turtles, really beautiful colored eastern box turtles. Once they get to Asia, they're in the many thousands of dollars. The shipments had just went out that we received the confiscation from, it was about half a million dollars, just those turtles. Once they get to China. So it's big money, and they use mules, and the people they got arrested are busted, usually aren't the real ones that are, you know, organizing the whole thing, it's like drugs. - Well, that's a good thing about this documentary series is that you guys are exposing this to people, 'cause I think most people would be completely unaware. - No idea. - Oh, yeah, no idea. You know, animals in the zoos came from. - Is there an issue with people stealing eagles and trying to import them as pets? - So raptors are really interesting. So that's sector of the bird world. I mean, the bird world is so vast. There's the songbird people. There's the parrot people really high-end, you know, high-a-synth macaws that are so expensive. One high-a-synth macaws, like, you know, $60,000 to they are $50,000 or whatever it is, $40,000. But raptors are increasingly popular in the Middle East, you know, golden eagles and all these really far out birds of prey. And in the US, we have really strict laws when it comes to birds of prey and owning them in falconry. Bobby Kennedy is a falconry guy. He loves falconry. But it's gotten more popular again around the world having, you know, big birds of prey. - 'Cause it's interesting, you know, I have friends that live in Alaska and in Alaska, eagles are really common. Like, they're all over the place up there. Like, they don't even think anything of 'em. - Yeah. - You know, especially the guys who go salmon fishing when they come back from salmon fishing, you literally have like 30, 40 eagles just waiting on lawn for these boats to arrive. 'Cause they know that they're gonna throw the carcasses out. - Bald eagles. - Yeah, bald eagles. - Bald eagles, yeah. I would imagine some people would want those as a pet, especially in other countries. - Yeah. - In the US, only Native Americans can have, like, eagle parts, unless you have a permit. Like, it's pretty-- - Eagle parts? - Well, you know, like feathers for their addresses. Like, Native Americans can still do things with birds. - Oh, so if you have a stuffed eagle in your house, that's illegal? - I think it's illegal. - Did you ask those guys to get stuff you an eagle? - Well, they'll be interesting. Well, that's where we draw the lawn. - By the way, I don't know if they actually have them, but we have this footage. I mean, imagine going in the confiscations room at LAX, it's incredible. - Oh, really? - Yeah, it's incredible. You have like, you know, tiger, you know, just all this rare animal and transformed into so many objects at home. A table, a rug, a pool queues. - I was reading about this that there was a place in China where people could go to eat endangered species, and they would have an endangered species menu, and they would have like a dinner every now and then, you know, like rarely, but it was by invitation only, and these like super-weird, wealthy people would go out there, and they would, you know, eat the lion. - If you're listening, invite us, we'd love to explore. - You know, it's funny, it's fucked up, you say that, but it's-- - I make it back. - It's funny, you say that, because, you know, we went to this big turtle show in China, and, you know, there's, you know, this huge turtle show, like a car show, and there's girls, like, in skimpy outfits with banners, like, you know, like a car show, but it's massive, and all these rare turtles are selling as pets, but then for lunch, they have these like dim sum tables that are round, and everyone's sort of turtle soup, and it's like, how twisted is that? I'd be like, you know, a reptile show in the US, and we've lots of reptiles shows in the US, and now, at lunchtime, you're eating reptiles. - Well, China's a whole different thing. - I think this is a visibility paradox thing. You have this, you know, charismatic, you know, symbolic thing. There's a very few, a lot of protection around them. People want it. - What do you say about Eagles? - Just talking about what people want, what they don't, they can't have. That's the through line in this world. - But Eagles, especially for rare stuff. - Eagles are like American alligators. They've bounced back since DDT, and, you know, the book that what's her name did in the late '60s, '70s, Silent Spring. That was the book that really changed everything for Eagles and Birds of Pride. - Yeah, but it's a marathon. - They cut her book, what was her name? Silent Spring, the author. She changed everything, 'cause no one listened to her about DDT and pesticides, which were making the eggs of Birds of Pride not viable. - And it really took her, really took her. - Yeah, Rachel Carson. It really took her toll. Rachel Carson was an unsung hero. People should know her name, and I forgot it for a minute. But she really is why you have all Eagles, you know, making that turn. - What were they on the verge of extinction? - Because of pesticides we were using, 'cause of DDT was doing this thing to the eggs where pelicans, Birds of Pride were disappearing at alarming rates because of spraying of DDT for agriculture for pesticides. - Wow. - And then we banned it in Eagles and Birds of Pride came back. - Yeah. - Paragraphy and Falcons all of it. It bald Eagles, Golden Eagles, yeah. So anyway, yeah. - Yeah, that's a weird animal, the bald eagle, that's our pet, that's our national animal. - Yeah, so it's strange. It's a partless raptor. - It's a fishing eagle, yeah. - There are fishing eagles all over the world that are similar to bald eagles, it's just a fishing eagle. - That's what it is. - It's just such a cool one. - Yeah. - And it's something about watching them swim away with a salmon, their talons. - Yeah. - Well, I also photography's gotten so much better over the years, right? You can, I know there's probably a video you're referencing. - I mean, where we live, where we live, there was that eagle cam and there was a sick eagle, bald eagle, and it was taken, it became national. - It became national for you? - Yeah, where we live. And it became national lose two weeks ago. - Golden, a bald eagle. - Really? - Yeah, yeah. And if you go, bald eagle, California, it's in the town we live in where they took it and they're bringing it back to health. But the amount of money that poured in to help that eagle was unbelievable for this little place. - Going back to how people care, it's remarkable. - But people care more about eagles than had that been a turtle or a snake that was rescued. - Well, that's the eagle's America's bird. - Yeah, it's America's bird. - I mean, people have a tattoo on their back. - Yeah, yeah. - There's something about an eagle, it's just. - It's iconic. - There's a lot of snake tattoos these days. - I'm sure, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But there's something about the eagle tattoo's different. It's like, "Murk!" - But then the grizzly bear, you know, such an adverse reaction, so controversial. - They eat a lot of people. (laughs) - There's a reason why the California state flag has a grizzly bear on it and there's no grizzly bears in California. - We have a friend that's actually trying to bring it back. - Good luck. - We mentioned this to you last time and you were like, "Why?" or something. - Let 'em naturally return. Reintroduction is always a disaster. Reintroduction of wolves in Colorado right now is a fucking disaster. - Well, they're back, they've now migrated into California and they've been in some wolf sightings, even down in Zelda. - Quite a few. A friend of mine, filmed one, we showed it on the podcast. He filmed one near Bakersfield. - Exactly. - Yeah, a black wolf that was out in the field, near Bakersfield. - Yeah, they can go incredibly long distance. - Reintroduction works in some places. It's getting better. I have a good friend that's reintroducing jaguars back to Northern Argentina. They're doing a pretty good job. But yeah, it's tricky. You're like condors, California. - But it's a different. been reintroducing animals to where there's agriculture and where there's a bunch of animals that are in pens, and then they start eating them. - No, no, don't do that. - That's what Colorado's experiencing now. - But I've worked with Ted Turner's group for many years in New Mexico on reintroduction programs, and the guy that did the wolf rewilding of Greywolves is this guy named Mike Phillips, who works for Turner. And yeah, they have a real PR problem, and Grizzlies are gonna be a bigger PR problem. - Yeah. - To get people to wrap their arms around that idea, bringing Grizzlies back to California. - Well, there's certain states where they're over-populated, and there's a lot of argument they should be relisted, and that people should be able to hunt them again, like they do in Alaska. - But the Native Americans in California do by and large want Grizzlies back, and they have this new technology that might be able to keep them kind of in certain areas. It hasn't, they haven't figured it out fully yet, but hopefully they keep them in a certain area, 'cause you know, Grizzlies migrating into LA, like the wolves right now might not be a good idea. - Well, you already have the mountain lions. There was a great video the other day. I don't know if you guys saw it of a mountain, a guy's backyard in Santa Monica. - Yeah, that's a big cat. - I have them in my backyard all the time, do you? - I think that's motivated by a displacement from fires, right? - It's also pets, we have people's pets. - Yeah, yeah. - We have these cameras, it's too close. - Who's talking about, they eat them all the time? - No, no. - Pets get snatched at them, but all the time. - Jeremy, this woman down the street for me was walking her dog at three in the afternoon. The mountain lion grabbed her dog. She's literally on La Dera, she's walking her dog, a little dog, and the mountain lion just jumped and grabbed her dog. She's looking at the dog holding a leash and goes, "I better let go of this leash," and she did. And she never saw a dog be there. - I'm sort of saying this little particular suburban part of Santa Monica, it's not very common. - Well, where I live, the eat people's dogs. - It's so common because you don't see them. - Where I live, they eat dogs. - Where I live, the mountain lions are eating people's dogs from time to time. - They do it all the time. - We were talking about a marine cow. I think it's marine, let's Bay area, wherever it is, where they have these depredation tags, where they have to shoot problem mountain lions 'cause they're eating pets, and they find out that that's half their diet. Half their diet is pets. - Well, I see them on my cameras, wait, wait, there's a motion detector cameras, and we see them at three in the morning, right in front of my house. - Look at that fucker. - I rarely see them with a naked eye. - That face, man, is that crazy? - Well, you got one, you got one. - But that one gets hit by a car and they build a bridge across the road, you know? It's kind of amazing. - Well, you got a nice mountain lion in the lobby out there. - That was from my friend Adam. He hunted down Colorado. That was a depredation mountain lion. That mountain lion had picked a ranch, and it was killing all the calves, and they actually got to it right after it had, it didn't even kill it. It was eating it while it was alive, and then it ran, they've ranted all the dogs, had ranted off the carcass. They had to shoot this calf. It was just torn apart and still suffering alive, and then they killed it. - Luckily where I am, we have a lot of deer, and we find a deer carcass from time to time that's a mountain lion kill. - Oh for sure, yeah. But you know, back to our show, I wanted to just say one other thing about sort of the ending, which it was really fortuitous. I just want to bring it up even though you're not there yet, but it's boiler alert. - Well, it's not really this boiler alert, but I'll say this, I spent about 20 years working in Madagascar with some rare Madagascar tortoises. And I eventually, I was trying to save this tortoise in Madagascar, and I did a 16 minutes piece with Leslie Stahl, took her to Madagascar, a New Yorker piece on this tortoise. I failed, everyone failed. The tortoise functionally went extinct to Madagascar. The poaching was so intense. And the tortoise had a very high-- - What is it, what is it pleasure tortoise? - Well, it's a reptile that arguably has the most value in the pet trade over almost any other reptile in the world. There may be something close, like a feed jaw on the guan or maybe a commotor dragon, but it's, you know, some of them can be worth as much as 100 grand. And people in Madagascar are so poor in the, especially in the area where this animal comes from. And it only existed in a tiny part of Northern Madagascar. That's it. - There it is, yeah. - So where are they going? - Mostly to Asia, there's a direct flight out of Madagascar to Bangkok, and their pets. - Yeah, and some of those photos, I mean-- - So is it possible to buy them in Asia and bring them back to Madagascar? - Well, so this is where I'm going. Very hard to do that because of health screening. I took that photo over there, that little guy. I took some of these photos I even took, actually. Oh, that's a guy that works for us. Anyway, I've been working with this species of tortoise for almost 20 years. And we were able to get some confiscated plasher tortoises out of China and Taiwan. And we waited patiently for 15 years to try to breed them. And right when we finished this show, and this is a tortoise that's never been bred successfully in the Western world. No zoo, institutions have tried to breed them and failed. We were lucky enough to get our first hatchling of this really endangered tortoise right when we finished the show. And so we filmed it, and it made it into the end of the show. But it's a story about the reptile trade, and this was the story in the end of the show, about a confiscated group of animals that came from the reptile trade, the rarest and most valuable tortoise in the world. And today, we're trying to bring it back to Madagascar, which we're working on, which is happening, as we talked to. - And is the problem that if you bring them back to Madagascar, people are going to go to Madagascar and steal them again, and then use them in the pet trade? - So, yes, to be blunt. And so it's somewhat symbolic. It's somewhat about showing Madagascar that we're not trying to profit and take their natural heritage and what they should rightfully should have. So part of it is showing that we can go full circle, confiscate an animal that was in the illegal exotic reptile trade, breed it, and then return it to Madagascar. But the part that no one wants to talk about that's really controversial is, in this particular case, it's not like one thing fits all, I said this to the folks that are working with this tortoise Madagascar to try to save it, hey, the only way you're going to take pressure off of this tortoise, it's like drugs, is if you either legalize drugs, or you know, from the case of drugs, or make this tortoise available for people around the world so they can have it, because it breeds quite easily. Breed them, try to have them in the private sector in institutions and zoos. They turn out not to be that difficult to breed, even though no one's ever bred them in the Western world in Europe or the US. - Well, it takes a long time to reach maturity, right? - Well, it's an animal that takes longer, twice as long as a human, or three times, they don't reach sexual maturity until they're about 30, years old, 40 years old. They can do it, you can raise them faster in captivity than in the wild. So they are very slow to reproduce, they're not like rabbits, they're the opposite. And they're so few of them. And so they're very, very, very, very valuable. The only way, ultimately, I think you can really take the pressure off of the poaching is to allow people to start to have them. That's irradiated tortoise, which we also breed. - Wow, that is wild. - So the dremelene is a way to get your-- - Well, so, we get your value. - Our organization is the group with Dural that did this dremelene, to try to deface them, like cutting off a rhino horn, so poachers wouldn't take them. So we were dremeling those tortoises shell to basically deface the tortoise. So poachers would not take the tortoises. It ultimately didn't work. - So they're just taking them because they're beautiful. And if you fuck up their shell-- - They have the, most, they have the highest dome shell of any tortoise in relation to the size. - So wild. - They have an incredible longevity, well over 100 years they live, and they're gold. - And so that dremelene that you did, that's the top of it right there? - Yeah, yeah. - And that didn't help. We did that, you can see it over there, the center, that's called the vertebral scoots of the tortoise, and we dremeled them, and we put MG for Madagascar and a number, and we were hoping that defacing the tortoise would make collectors not wanna have them, but it didn't work in the end. - Somebody told me, this is a good time to bring this up, that turtle shells, when you look at a turtle shell, it's almost representative of a calendar, and that there is around the outside edge of the turtle, there's like 28 different little squares and then the center, there's 13, so it's basically like a 13-month, 28-day lunar calendar. Yeah, this is it. How weird is that? - Yeah, that's really interesting. - The lunar calendar on a turtle's back. - Yeah, a lot of turtle facts. - I did not know that one, actually. - You didn't know that one? - I know a lot of cultures like Asia and American Indians believe that the earth sits on a turtle. - Yeah, it's turtles all the way down. It's turtle substance on. - Yeah, I didn't know about that, that's interesting. Wow. - Isn't that weird? - Yeah, that's interesting. - Like why? What is that all about? That's very strange that it coincides. It's like exact to what a lunar calendar is, very strange. - Yeah, that's super interesting. I mean, turtles have been on planet earth longer than dinosaurs, they've been here for over 200 million years, so they've been around a long time, so there's been people who've been playing with turtles forever, so maybe they came up with a lot of things that relate to turtles. - But it's odd that it syncs up with a 28 day lunar calendar. - I know sports stadiums are in the beginning or things that were shaped like that, like a geodesic dome came somewhat from how turtles are designed. Like there was some architectural thing that came. - That makes sense. - From turtles, yeah. - The geodesic, like the structure of it to keep rigidity, yeah. - Yeah. - And I know turtles, the first writing, the earliest writing was on the plastron, the bottom of a turtle shell in China, maybe some of the earliest writing, going back some really, I don't know, a couple thousand years. So turtles have been used for all kinds of things, for writing, for medicinal medicine, especially in Asia, it's gone back thousands of years. using turtles for Chi and for you know vitality and all these kinds of things if you get sick you to make some turtles a lot of weird stuff with that stuff I have to do with a lot of horn things yeah boners like hey guys well they really like they really they really put some fire and scrap the local bone script on the bottom of a turtle shell look how cool that looks go back to that beautiful right beautiful six thousand two hundred BC six thousand six hundred to six thousand two hundred BC go into the images again of the deriding on it look how cool that writing is I mean this one's beautiful right that one's beautiful that's wild but I think it was some of the earliest writing was on turtle shells like well it sounds like it if it's six thousand BC yeah six thousand BC I mean that's that predates ancient Babylonia yeah or at least what we know about it so turtles have been used in Native American culture forever yeah yeah I've got a lot of extinction events that's the ox capula I mean there are turtle farms in China that you cannot believe they're breeding these turtles mostly Asian box turtles Chinese box turtles and these people are multi multi millionaires and they sell one turtle for as much as like twenty thousand dollars one turtle and the wild caught turtles are more valuable than the farm turtles but there's turtle farms that are breeding they're called a golden coin turtles it's a Chinese Asian turtle that can fetch huge amounts of money why is the wild one worth more it's like wild rhino hone is horn is worth more because they think the wild rhino eats things that are medicinal versus just a captive rhino that's eating hay and it's the stuff they eat that goes into the horn which makes sense like your fingernail it's carrot and so the wild rhino horn is going to have more good stuff for you and of course they'll probably grate some viagra in it to make you really believe that it gives you like an erection you know they'll cheat but no this is does no it's wild it actually works it well they do grate the viagra in the rhino horn sometimes but the wild turtle is just eating things and has more cheat than the farm turtle but they have these enormous turtle farms like you know fifteen story buildings that are all turtles Jamie I gotta see this so wild turtle farms in China China so turtle farms and this is all just for pets no this is for consumption this is you'll pay 20 grand now there's 20 grand for consumption for consumption for like a golden coin turtle if it's a wild one like big money they want to eat it yeah but then in China you can also pay $100,000 for a you non box turtle a you non box turtle can be $100,000 so these are these turtle farms yeah but this is all for like turtle soup yeah but these are soft shell turtles in this image that you're looking at I'm talking about things like golden coin turtles much more valuable turtles for consumption than these soft shell turtles why are they worth more is it just because it's rare oh this guy I know this guy guard state turtle I know like I knew Jersey he's a good guy crystalline well that's a golden coin turtle so we breed these in where we are where we work with turtles and we send these back to China from time to time okay but why explain the why is it worth 20,000 for whatever reason this turtle is called a golden coin turtle quora trifasiata is a scientific name and it is very coveted and it apparently it has certain properties that can cure cancer and other diseases and so this turtle is high on the list for consumption for medicinal reasons but but where allegedly can cure cancer yeah is there any false beliefs but you can see 20 grand 40 grand 20 grand is highest 40 grand for a fucking turtle yeah and to eat it yeah but then there's turtles it can be 100,000 or 200,000 so is it just because it's difficult to acquire that it's like a status thing that it's worth 20 or 40,000 dollars well they're they're very rare in the wild now but they farm them but they're very endangered it's a critically endangered turtle we breed them you know at my facility but you know there's a lot of people in China and if you want to save someone's life you'll pay whatever it takes to save someone's life so when they're buying it for 20,000 dollars or buying it to try to save someone's life or someone sick or they really want good health and they're wealthy okay so you could just get it just as like a prophylactic turtle you eat it for medicine to make sure you don't get sick something like it sounds insane though that it's 20,000 dollars for a turtle if you look up Unan Box Turtle it was thought to be extinct for 50 years and they rediscovered it and a Unan Box Turtle today if you could even get one would be hundreds of thousands of dollars another turtle similar to that and are they eating those too? no that one's so rare there's so few of them that one is people buy it as an exotic pet that's really rare so this is kind of a cat it's a tricky situation because and on one hand if they're extinct in the wild and these people have them as pets maybe you can recover them somehow or another yeah no that's not that's an American Box Turtle that's not a. or they're in a zoo for example by the way so that's why that's a turtle that's being shipped to that's a US turtle from the East Coast that's being sold and smuggled to China and other parts of Asia because look how beautiful our turtles are in the US God it has a pretty turtle oh you do have a photo of a Unan Box Turtle it's just not the one there that bland thing is a Unan Box Turtle do you want to love it? yeah that one that's kind of right right there? no no that's a three-toed Box Turtle that one that one that one that one can be where that can be where 200 thousand dollars we get him right what? that turtle that turtle was thought to be extinct for over half a century that's a boring ass turtle that other one that you're training him on now well don't get me down the turtle rabbit hole but that one where your cursor was just over the one that we yeah that got no the one to the left yeah the right of it right that one yeah that one's cool shit that's a male Eastern Box Turtle they always have read eyes it's so beautiful yeah it's beautiful but solutions to the scarcity problem that's a male Eastern Box Turtle you know pet trade can commercializing aspects of it can reduce what's important about this conversation actually is people think of ivory rhino horn you know whales and they have no idea that a turtle pound for pound could be more valuable than a rhino horn possibly you know a turtle idea you know nobody knows this but it's crazy what the money involved in these back to the you know confiscations we're getting and the trade and turtles going out of this country is in the millions and millions and millions and millions and there are people in China and other parts of Asia that are getting very rich in the turtle trade and we always think here about pangolin scales rhino horn you know ivory and those things are important but the turtle trade is really massive and the reptile trade is massive and there's a lot of money and they're easy to transport because a turtle doesn't need to eat or drink just wrap them in socks put them in a box shove them all in there put them in diapers tape them up ship them they don't even need much air they feel a little air but they have a very low blood pressure not like we have a higher blood pressure than reptiles and they can live without water or food as you know for a very long time so they're you know like wildlife nature with handles you can just transport them anywhere and if they're really worth $20,000 to $40,000 in your bag and they really are they really are worth that that is crazy I would have never guessed and I would never guessed that it's for consumption that's even more worth it well no the turtles that are leaving this country going to China are for exotics for exotic pets but the ones that are eating yeah that it's worth $20,000 that's insane yeah at least is there a market for snake meat? yeah so if you've been to Taiwan or China there's these snake parts where you can literally have a snake bleed out while it's alive a cobra and put it in your drink there's snakes there's a snake you want to talk about diarrhea look at a diarrhea you get from snake blood I was many years ago oh my god I was in Myanmar in Burma at a snake place and they were just loading snakes up in these trucks like you know big trucks just stacking snakes and they were heading into China so the snake meat, the snake snake meat is big in China you know look tiger penis, tiger this tiger bones back it up tiger parts tiger penis tiger penis tiger penis is a big delicacy over there? I think they're you know they're more creative than we are they eat a lot of stuff that's a fact but the tiger penis thing I was not aware of that's a delicacy I don't know what that does for you maybe that's another viagra kind of thing but you know there's tiger farms and they part them out and they sell them to China so there's tiger farms that are just for consumption yeah tiger bone wine tiger this, tiger that tiger bone wine it sounds like it's more of that you know you know but tigers what Jamie? it's like a rhino horn type deal I think I think that's given them I believe to increase virility enhance male sexual performance dog, dog, dog, tiger fallacy woo one tiger penis but a turtle is worth more than a tiger guys that's crazy and but I didn't know that there was a market for tiger meat yeah and is it the all the meat of the tiger or just dicks there's just a chop with the right Joe I've been to the turtle farms I've been to the snake bars I haven't gotten into the tiger penis the future of Chinese medicine hey this guy is doing a workshop we should go to this workshop what is this guy teaching a couple of years ago he's on the run right now don't get me started to talk about animal penises my favorite movie as a kid was a movie called Birds Do It Bees Do It I don't even know if it still exists but all it was was animals having sex from a praying man like eating the hat off of the mail to a rhino and it was a great movie, just sex. - I did not know that there was a market for the meat. What is that? Tiger Dick? - Yep. - Nice. - I would have thought it was like crazy looking. - That looks like a new to brag, a sea slow. - It looks like a piece of sushi. (laughing) - I am definitely excited. - No, it looks like a piece of sushi. - Yeah, it looks like cash, a dinner lunch. - It looks like something you get at sushi by scratch. So when they're having these tiger farms or they're farming the meat, how are they cooking tiger meat? Like what does that go into? - Listen, I'm not-- - Is that really common over there? - Even though I did tiger king, I'm not an expert on tigers. I do know a little bit more about reptiles, but I have a friend that did a movie called, I think it's called, what's it called? Carla Monde did a movie about the tiger industry in Vietnam in Cambodia and farming tigers. And I think it's called, God, I can't remember. But anyway, there's a whole tiger industry and people breeding tigers in parts of Asia for tiger parts. - It's still illegal, but they definitely still do it. - Yeah, it's not like that. - Interesting, consumption tiger meat is highly illegal though an illicit black market persists, primarily fueled by commercial tiger farms. Despite strict domestic bands, thousands of tigers are bred in captivity across the country creating a complex web of illegal luxury consumption is a crazy word. That's a crazy phrase, luxury consumption of tiger meat, traditional beliefs and international conservation concerns. - Well, it's what you just said earlier that started this conversation that people go to restaurants and eat exotic animals and bear gallbladder. - Bear gallbladder, I bet another thing. - Yeah. - That way, back to monsters at God, look up Chinese giant salamander farms. Those are unbelievable. That's a salamander this big that can eat, like a rat or a rabbit. It's a salamander that they eat in farm in China. - I've seen that online, I've seen them cook it. - And that's a TikTok video. - And that's a really rare animal. Those guys are really rare, so. - Oh, really? And yet they're still cooking them and eating them. - There's two types of giant salamander. So there's your Japanese giant salamander and the Chinese one, the Chinese one is massive. - Especially that? - Is massive. And they're just-- - What do you mean? - It said the one I stumbled down that it says it's AI, so I was thinking out. - Oh, it's an incredible animal, but they farm a lot of things that you would never think of. Yeah, turtles, salamanders. - I just, the luxury consumption market, just seeing that phrase, it's like, what a weird culture. You have luxury consumption of highly illegal endangered species. And that's, well, that was what a friend of mine who had been to China said that was what the whole Rhinohorn thing was. It wasn't even as much as they believed that it would do it. It was just that this guy had Rhinohorn. - Static symbol, staph. - Very wealthy people. Guys got a, you want some Rhinohorn tea? Let's have a seat. - I got a gentleman. - Come to my wine cellar and in it I got some Rhinohorn. I got a couple turtles that were a couple. - What's the difference between that and where wine from 50 years ago? - Well, first of all, an animal doesn't die. It's just wine. Yeah, you don't have tiger dick in your wine. What is the tiger bone wine? What is that about? - I don't know. - Is it wine, they soak in bones of tigers? - Sure, it's a barrel. - Is that what it is? - I mean, they have sake with vipers in them. There's a snake in Japan called a habu. And I remember getting sake in this really incredible snake was in my sake. But, you know, like, look, we're hypocrites in this country. We eat tuna and they're endangered in Asia. They eat other things, they're endangered. - Are they endangered? - Tuna, endangered? - Well, certain species of tuna I think are becoming pretty endangered. They're not what they were. - They certainly don't, not the same numbers that they used to be at the turn in the center. - Yeah, yeah, so I think it's easy to point fingers at other parts of the world when we've done a lot of things here. You know, we had passenger pigeons that, you know, made the skies dark and we shot every one of them. We had Carolina Parakeet. We almost got rid of our condors and bison. We've done a lot of damage, but there's a lot of damage. - Not you and me. - We would say we, people, people, people that lived here. It's not us. - Well, why is our show called Monsters of God? - We're the monsters, out the reptiles. We did a lot of damage in the past. - Some of us. - Some of us. - Yeah, some of us. - It's a very small percentage of people that are out there eating turtles. - Well, you're a good guy and I know that actually. Somehow you didn't have the, maybe the mother I had, but you must have had something good. - Well, with my love of animals? - Yeah, you got a good moral compass. I've watched you when you, you know what's right and wrong. - Well, certainly eating tire deck. (laughing) I think this is better ways to go about your life. - But the recovery stuff is real. You know, there's a lot of cool stuff happening with species recovery and in this case, the plowshare tortoise is on its way back. I mean, you have to kind of still protect it for a while. That's expensive, that's expensive, you know? Anti-poaching and security, it's a lot of work. - I agree that it's important, but I am also fascinated by our desire to sort of manage nature because 90, whatever percent of any animal that's ever been alive, ever is done. They're all extinct. Everything goes extinct. - And a lot of our good intentions, managing nature doesn't work oftentimes. - Oh, no, you do a terrible job. (laughing) - Well, especially when we bring it in, we were talking about this yesterday with Hawaii. They brought in Mongoose to eat the rats, but Mongoose are diurnal rats. - Diurnal rats, right? - That's right, that's right. - And we never saw each other. - Yeah, Hawaii, it's fun to you say Hawaii, 'cause Hawaii's kind of the poster title of all the states in the country of extinction. Second is California, but Hawaii really fucked up Hawaii with cats. Mongooses were more in the Caribbean, but also Hawaii. And Mongooses is why, back to the Jamaican iguana. The Jamaican iguana was extinct. We thought it was extinct because of Mongooses. We just recently found a small population, but it's a very rare iguana. - Reading a very similar thing happened with the salamanders in China. They were not originally thought of as anything special until the mid-twentieth century, when famine forced people to find new stuff to eat, they started eating them and liked it, so they'd made it in a lot of places to do that. - Oh, and that's what led them to? - Well, so then they went to just them and back into the wild, 'cause there were too many of them, which created a new problem, it says. - There you go. - They created a new species. So now you have hybrid salamanders, which is also like what we have here in Austin. - It's the same story over and over again. - What did these fuckers look like? - Look at giant, whoa! - Can I see photos of a giant salamander? - They are so massive, they're so massive. - Size that thing. There's a bunch of videos of guys cooking them and walks outdoors, and so is that another thing where it's like one of those exotic things that you're not supposed to have, and that's why they're cooking it? 'Cause I mean, it looks, there's a funny one we're dude singing. He's like wrapping over it. The guy's cooking about a guy cooking a dragon. - This is how you cook a dragon? Yeah, they're pretty impressive. But it is a weird desire that people have to eat something like incredibly exotic and rare. Whoa, look at that sucker. - Yeah, that's a real one, yeah. - Giant salamander, cooked eight ways. - Yeah. - And the, I don't know what the word is, "Gyman," "Gyman Seafood," "China." - You know, that was one creature we wanted to film, and I never got to film for monsters of God, 'cause that also is a monster of God. - So these guys are taking them, they're alive, and they're gonna bring 'em over and kill 'em and cook 'em. So this is an endangered animal that this guy's killing and cooking? - Yeah. - Wow, that's crazy. - But they sort of know it. It's not by necessity. - They know it's endangered, and he's still boiling it up. So it's the fact that this luxury item that you get to eat this luxury item. - It looks like, let's see what it looks like at the end. Kind of crazy, a lot of meat. Looks delicious, would you eat it if you were there, or would you feel bad? - I wouldn't eat it, but I've been-- - It's already there though, it's already dead. - I've been in Southeast Asia with friends that ate dog, you know, and I just couldn't eat it, but I'm not very adventurous, I'm-- - I would only have, the only way I'd eat it, dogs if I tried to bite one of my kids. (laughing) You know, but if it's like, dogs, it's different. But you know, we eat cattle, and in India, they don't eat cows, and then other places eat horses, and then they eat dogs. - Sure. - We have our own, you know, sort of cultural norms about certain animals that we just can't wrap our head out of the ways we justify them. - But I've seen dogs being killed in Sulawesi by in huge numbers in Indonesia, just the way they kill them, and then they take these blow torches and burn the air off of them. And people buy them just like you're in a regular grocery store. The way they, you know, and it's just what's normal in one culture, those are snapping turtles. Americans snapping turtles. What's normal in one culture? - So have these been imported into Asia? - Yeah, they're big. - And we still eat those, by the way, in New Orleans and the Southeast, we eat snapping turtles. - I don't know if I mean, we eat them in gumbo, but in Asia, they really love our American turtles. - And snapping turtles are not endangered in America. - No, but alligator snapping turtles are-- - Well, those things are crazy looking, yeah. - Which is a-- - They have this-- - Which you have in Texas, by the way. - They have what? - That's what they date. - They're an ambush predator. They have a little appendage on their tongue. - Oh, fish is a tragedy of them feeding us, is incredible. - They've got alligators. They're serving up alligators too? - Crocodiles. - Crocodiles. - Crocodiles. - Yeah, Crocs. - Jesus Christ. - Wow. - Imagine just hanging out there, watch his buddies get butchered. - You're good at finding gruesome stuff over there. - I mean, there's a lot out there. - You're gonna really-- - There's a lot out there. - Roast have a lot of people. - So, you know, you see, you guys have a bunch of projects, always kind of in the works like How do you go about choosing them? We just find these very bizarre people and these very bizarre niche groups. And I think, listen, I'm more aware of time as I get older. So you've got to choose carefully what you want to do because it takes time to make these projects. So a lot of them, we hope there's some silver lining or something maybe positive about telling these stories and not just frivolous stories about freaky people. But it helps to have some freaky people in a story to make people interested sometimes. But that's not the real goal. We're also doing projects I have nothing to do with wildlife. I did a documentary in the last 10 years about my mom and my parents. And I don't know if anyone will ever see that. And they both died. But I did that to keep them relevant. And I had a crazy family, a gay father, and a crazy mother who was into animals. And so, you know, everyone has a crazy family. But we did a story that we're working on about New York. And we're also doing some other animal stories. So not everything gets these light of day. Right, but these last three big ones that you guys did are all about people and their bizarre relationship with strange animals. Yeah. What else, what's next? I mean, we're doing a really interesting project right now that should come out next year that I think you'll like. Joe, I have to say, there are big carnivores in it again. And some really far out people that you know, and you may have known personally. I don't think I can tell you who they are. But they were very famous. Anyway, anyway, but we're doing a project about that. And we're doing what a tease you are. I know. No, it's coming into the tease, too. I had too much coffee, sorry. And then we're really interested in a few other topics that people don't really talk about. We always talk about the charismatic megafauna. And we're interested in some other groups of animals that we don't even think about. But it's also, I mean, this time we live in media, you know, there's so much stuff that gets made that no one sees. And it's a shame, especially some of this independent work, especially some of this documentary work. It takes many, many, many years. And many people are only really able to show to the people that know about the issues. And nothing happens. Especially if there's an impact aspect to it. So I think our formula's great. It happens to be, you know, these subcultures that have a higher intensity of finding crazy people or people with far out beliefs. More than anything, it's more beliefs that are more interesting that make us curious. So I think that's the sort of mixture of conservation storytelling plus far out beliefs, you know, in a niche that are able to zoom out and talk about themes of extinction or attachment or ego or crime, you know. Maybe there's something to the over-fishing thing to do. Because there's been a lot done on an issue. It's a huge issue. There's been a lot done on it. But I think there hasn't been a doc on over-fishing. At least he's spier. See, the problem was pretty good. The problem with a lot of those traditional documentaries, they tend to preach to the-- The town is boring. Well, they tend to preach to the converted, not the unconverting. You want to reach a bigger audience by somehow telling that story about over-fishing in a way where you can get more people seeing it. They don't know the issue. And the other thing I would just say, over-fishing is a big deal. Invertebrates, insects, butterflies. And what's happening with insects is a big deal. We're losing a lot of really weird insects. And they haven't even been described yet. Marinefish and even tropical fish is really interesting to us. Where do all the saltwater tropical fish come from? How do you get them? They dynamite the reefs in the Philippines. They don't breed easily saltwater tropical fish. Freshwater ones typically do. There's a lot of different groups of animals that we don't really think about and talk about that we kind of take for granted. And we think of them as disposable. We'll just put more tropical fish in our aquarium in a Vegas hotel. And imagining the extinction businesses are going to solve our problems. I think that's also interesting to us. And it's just not a consciousness or smaller vertebrates than invertebrates. But I would just say one of the things that I think we do, you probably are aware of, that people think you have to be in a city to get the weird chick going on, New York City, LA, whatever, big cities. And what I've found is oftentimes is the places that you least expect it. Some weird suburban landscape where you start turning over the rocks. And you find and see that there's weirdness happening everywhere. And that is a theme in our stories. It's not gravitating to the big cities to find it. It's places where the guy next door to you, next door where you live, has a garage full of hot snakes and the cobra escapes one day. And it's in your yard or whatever the fuck the story is. But it often is in places that you wouldn't expect it to be. - Your friend's car port. - Yeah, you know. - Well listen guys, thank you again for being here. I really appreciate it. Thanks for all the work that you guys put in. You've really entertained the shit out of me over the years and disturbed me. - Okay. - So it's available, Monsters of God, when does it come out? - Tomorrow. - Tomorrow. - So when this comes out? - August 6th, August 6th. - All right, beautiful. - Thank you. - Thank you for having us again. - Thanks for being here. - Thank you so much. - Bye guys. (upbeat music)