Welcome to “Ear Biscuits,” the podcast where two lifelong friends talk about life for a long time! I’m Rhett. And I’m Link. This week at the round table of dim lighting, we’re tackling the question what would be our ideal wild animal companion? Yeah, and you may think to yourself, “Why would you be worried about that?” It’s not that we’re worried. We’re obsessed all of a sudden. We both experienced something via a screen that has now piqued a certain interest that I didn’t know I had. This all goes back to, well, how you may have experienced it through the lens of my social media. Shout-out to rhettmc on Twitter. Okay. I Tweeted a while back, “Netflix got me crying over a damn octopus,” and I used the octopus emoji, which, don’t think I’ve ever used it in any context. Oh, you used the emoji? Why not? Did you type octopus, and then it popped up, and you’re, like, “Oh, there’s an emoji?” Well, of course. Yeah ’cause you didn’t know. I wouldn’t have known that was a- Yeah, yeah, and I was, like- I don’t know how to find an emoji if it doesn’t pop up. There’s certain times when I’m, like, thinking, “I feel like this conversation calls for an emoji, but I’m so inadequate.” You do the visual search through all the options? Because that’s happened to me a couple times. Yeah, and then that’s just soul-crushing, and then you’re, like, you know what? Is this a food or a traffic sign? This is not me. This is not who I am, and then I just. You leave it off. I leave it off. Well, um- But if it pops up, I’m, like, “Oh, an octopus!” And Twitter will do that for you. So we’re, of course, talking about the Netflix documentary “My Octopus Teacher,” which I watched and then Came to work the next day. told Link about. And you were just gushing about this, this Netflix documentary. Right, so we’re gonna talk about that, and we’re also gonna talk about some other animal friendships, and then we’re gonna talk about, like we said at the beginning, the wild animal friendships that we might want to personally instigate. Now, let me say spoiler alerts forthcoming because, actually, spoilers forthcoming is a spoiler alert. You might wanna go and watch “Octopus Teacher.” It’s called “My Octopus Teacher,” on Netflix. Now, we’re gonna discuss it in great detail. I do not think that anything that we’re gonna say is going to make it where you don’t want to then also watch it, But, but. but, if you don’t want, if you’re a spoiler-averse person, you wanna go watch it right now. Not even that, I would even, you know, it’s, I think, yeah, there’s a couple of things in the documentary that I just wanna speak about plainly, that I do think it’s better to experience cold, which is why I did not tell my family- You were talking to Christy about it. It wasn’t at work, or maybe it was at work, and then- No, no, I was talking about it when we had our, actually, I invited you and your wife over to take a dip in the hot tub. Oh, yeah, that’s when you were talking about the hot tub. The first sorta, like, hot tub dip of COVID there. And then I, I went back home, and I think it was that night, or it’s maybe the next night, and Christy, poor girl, she has gotten herself into a binge-watching spree of “One Tree Hill.” I didn’t get her permission to talk about this. There’s only one way to get somebody outta that. Is with an octopus. Octopus. Eight limbs to pull you out of “One Tree Hill.” She goes to bed a lot earlier than me on a weekend, and so I’ll burn the midnight oil, and I’ll watch something, and I was, you know, she was upstairs, and she went upstairs earlier, and I was, like, “What you doing?” She’s like, “Oh, I think I’m just gonna watch “One Tree Hill.” I was like, “Okay, okay. I’m not going to watch that. That’s your, that’s the thing that-” And you know what, there’s a lotta nostalgia. I’m not gonna make fun of her for watching this thing. She’s seen it all before. Well, she said, “You know what? Turns out, I haven’t seen it all. She didn’t finish it? I would just catch it when I caught it, but it wasn’t a binge thing.” It was before the days of binging. And now, she’s, like, putting all the pieces together and reliving her, I think we were newlyweds when she watched that. How many pieces are there to put together? I mean, there’s just one tree and one hill. It turns out there’s a surrounding community and lots of, I don’t know, there’s basketballs involved, and there’s a kid. There’s a couple with- Multiple basketballs? I don’t know how many, but I went downstairs, and I watched the “My Octopus Teacher,” and then the next morning, she’s like, “What did you end up doing?” And I told her, and she was like, “I wanted to watch that! Rhett wouldn’t shut up about it, and I kinda wanted to watch it!” My wife was upset that I watched it without her, but, you know, I got into it not knowing how impactful it was gonna be on me personally. I did not tell her anything about it that you hadn’t already told her, and I didn’t tell the kids anything, but we got the kids to watch it, and I watched it again. Twice! I watched it twice, homie! Was it good the second time? It was good the second time, and I rarely watch anything the second time, and it was still good, so I- I just wanna give people permission. Yeah, there’s permission to not listen. I’m not a spoiler-averse person, and I know you are. I am. But so if you’re like me- And I’m even saying you can, you can still listen to us and then watch it. Right, what I’m saying is- But it’s not ideal. Some, ’cause I don’t like telling people who’ve just tuned in, to use an antiquated term, to this podcast to then go enjoy some other media. That’s just not good business, Link. That’s not good business. So I’m just saying that you can go and watch it if you really want to, But if you’re listening- but watching it and seeing it from the perspective of the filmmaker is going to be much better than us talking about it. And then you should come back and listen to us. So if you, again, what I was trying to say was it’s not just about spoilers, is if you know you’re looking for things to watch and you’re committed to listening to this, and you promise that you’re gonna come back and listen to this, if you promise, then I’m gonna say, “You know what, stop this right now, Yeah, if you come back. and do it in that order.” Right. But we’re also gonna talk about other things. If we set you free, if it’s true love, you will come back. We both have other stories that are in a similar vein of the “Octopus Teacher.” Unlikely animal/human, like, legitimate friendships. Yeah. Like, friendships that are kinda mind-blowing, that I did not know were possible. And now that we do, it might change the trajectory of our lives. And entire lives. But we’re gonna talk about that stuff too. I got, I got some, I’ve read up on some. You’ve read up on some. So we’re gonna get to that, but I’m mostly gonna dig deep into my soul because that seems to be what happens in these situations. Something happens on the soul level when people spark friendships with wild animals. Did you weep during “My Octopus Teacher”? I felt the pressure to weep because you not only Tweeted about it, but then you talked about it at length. I think we’ve established that it doesn’t- And I didn’t. It doesn’t take much for me to weep while watching something. I weep during commercials occasionally. I wept- But you’ve learned why. I’ve learned why? Right? I thought from therapy, you learned why. Well, it’s a combination. I don’t wanna bait you here. No, it’s a combination of two things. Number one, I am actually in the, I don’t know the name of it, but I’m in, like, what would be called, believe it or not, the sensitivity triad of the enneagram. I don’t know if that’s the correct term, but there’s basically a few numbers that are actually significantly, I am actually on the sensitive side of the spectrum of people, but I also have a personality based in all kinds of things, you know, that has kinda shielded me from my emotions, so there’s this weird thing that happens, where there’s actually a very high level of sensitivity that is happening in me compared to an average person, but I have sort of a shell of a personality that will make you think that I’m not experiencing the things, and actually, I’m so good at constructing the personality that I can actually keep the sensitivity and the emotions and the feelings from my own brain, like, hidden from myself, and so I would’ve told you before therapy, “I am not a sensitive person. Yeah, I cry at commercials sometimes. My dad’s the same way. He’s always done that.” But that’s actually a sign of that. Yeah, and it means there’s, there is a deep level of sensitivity that exists in my person that has to find a way to come out in order for me to be in equilibrium, and so what ends up happening is often, instead of dealing It comes out in an octopus. with, like, sitting there and crying about something that’s happening to me personally, I will see something happening between a man and an octopus on Netflix and begin to weep because there’s a lotta potential for sensitivity there. Now, that’s not to say, it seems that I’m implying that I cry in, like, things that pertain to my real life, and it’s, like, that doesn’t happen either. So I might have a couple of layers. But anyway, now that But you’ve only been going to therapy for less we’re talking about me. than a year. We’re, right, we’re gonna, I’m gonna divert this stream back to the streaming of the documentary. So, and you’ll tell me when you cried. I have a good guess, but I had, it was actually. Multiple times. Oh, okay. Well, then, I have three guesses. But yeah, it’s, I mean, it’s gonna be my wreck at the end of this thing. Spoilers! Spoiler alert, there it is. Now, they’re not gonna hang on for the wreck! So this thing, just to give a little overview via Wikipedia, just for the sake of time, “My Octopus Teacher” came out on the fourth of September of this year, 2020. It’s 85 minutes long. It’s outta South Africa, and it is in English. “The film shows how, in 2010, Foster,” who is- Craig Foster, he’s a filmmaker that then became the subject of this film that uses footage he shot and some footage that was shot by another cinematographer and then directed by two other people. So “Foster began free-diving in a cold, underwater kelp forest at a remote location in False Bay, near Cape Town, South Africa.” So we’re talking about the Horn of Africa, like, the southernmost point in Africa, which, you know, it’s down there. It’s getting, it’s cold, it’s getting cold down there, and this dude would swim in the water in just a pair of shorts, and we’re talking about, like, not scuba diving. And goggles. We’re talking about snorkeling. He had, like, a snorkel and a mask, fins, a weight belt in order to kinda get down into the kelp forest, and a pair of shorts. It’s called free-diving. Free-diving. He was holding his breath to go down, and it was, he said the water would get as cold as, I had to Google the conversion, but, like, 45 degrees Fahrenheit. Yeah, it’s actually- And that sounds crazy to me! It’s unnaturally cold. If you get in 60-degree water, that’s frigid-feeling. Well, just last night, I jumped into my pool. As you can see, we’re the jacket boys today. We’ve got on jackets. Jacket weather is finally here in California, and I got into my pool last night, and it said on the thermometer that it was 70 degrees, but I felt like I was getting into a refrigerator. So to think about, and when we did the ice bath, it was in the 50s. 55, 58. So 45 degrees, and we’re talking, and it’s phenomenal. He said, at one point, early on the documentary, when he’s, you know, he said, “After a year,” because he dove every day. Every day, without exception. “After a year,” he says, “you start to crave the cold.” I’m like, “After a year?” I don’t, you know, anything that catastrophically numbing and painful and death-defying. But don’t you want that? When he said that. I, you know, but yeah, I wanted, if it would, like, maybe after a week, you start to crave the cold? After a year, you start to crave the cold? Well, and a little, a little bit of background that what got him to this point, so he was a documentary filmmaker. He is a documentary filmmaker, and he essentially had a mid-life crisis, right. He had been working on some documentaries, and one in particular that was, like, following a tribe somewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa, and, you know, he had a kid, and he began to just kinda feel disconnected and felt like he needed to drop everything, didn’t know if he would ever film anything again, didn’t know if he was gonna pick up a camera again, went back to the Horn of Africa to get into the water because his family had had a house, which, did you see the house that they showed that was literally- It was below the tidal line, so, like, the waves crashed. How do you build that house? Sometimes, waves would go into the house. Waves would go into the house, and we’re talking about, like, on a cliff, not like sandy beach. Yeah, and that’s what he grew up doing, so he went back to his roots. He wanted to go back to the roots. And he would, like, ’cause he went skin-diving as a kid, and so, he just went back there, not filming, and then he, he came upon an octopus, not a special octopus, just a normal octopus. And in fact, what is it called? or something? Yeah, yeah. Wait, I don’t know what. It’s a common octopus. That is not what it is, but it is just a common octopus. And so, the things that he learned, observed, and started to film and share with the viewer, were just amazing, so, you know, I wanna get into that, but first, we should promote some merch. Oh, yeah! Let’s get it outta the way. Okay, let’s do that. At this point. Do you know Chunk? I do know Chunk. Got a sweatshirt and a T-shirt. It took Chunk a while to talk us into actually To get some merch. launching, you know, selling some merch for them, But it’s the type of thing you could wear. They’re so relentless, how often they contact us and ask us all these ridiculous things, but we said, “Okay, now that you don’t really make many appearances on our channels anymore, now is the time to begin selling your merch.” Well, here’s the thing: if you’re a fan of Chunk, you’ll enjoy wearing this, but it’s also a cool thing to wear because people will think that it is a real band, and it just seems just on the cusp of believability, so it would spark either strange looks or maybe even a conversation. That’s dangerous. Yeah, the Chunk World Tour. Only at amazon.com/mythical. Now, one of the things about octopuses, is it octopi? Is that correct, octopi? Through the power of the internet, I think that most people who have an internet connection have learned That they’re smart. that they’re smart. This is something that, like, five years ago, maybe most people didn’t know, but now most people are, like, “Yeah, I seen that crazy video where the octopus, like, changes color.” I didn’t know that octopuses could, octopi could change color and could do weird things like walk on two legs and- Sprout horns over their eyes. And then I also didn’t know that if you’re doing the IQ thing, the animal IQ thing, that these things would actually rank just a little bit above a dog in intelligence, which seems nuts to me, and on top of that, two-thirds of their cognitive power is in their limbs. Wild, I mean, they evolved on a completely different Branch. branch, and, you know, when we were hanging out, and you were gushing and gushing and gushing about it, Like an octopus shooting out ink. Mike, our friend, ended up saying, he was, like, “You know, the way that they’re so intelligent, if they, the way that they evolved, if they didn’t live, if they only-” Why can’t I put this thought together? “They only live a year. If they lived as long as we do, evolutionarily speaking, they would be running the earth.” They would have developed technology, and they would have vehicles to come on land and farm everywhere and create the internet. That’s why it’s so remarkable We’d be nothing. that in the movie “Arrival,” the alien beings are octopus-like, and I thought that was super, you know, appropriate. The balancing factor for me is that they’re Beautiful. Oh. Gross. Not beautiful to me. I’m like, “Oh, gosh!” Like, the first thing I told you was, like, “Yeah, but when I think about an octopus, I think about them being able to squeeze through tight places because they’re just so gelatinous, and I just get this, I-” When I went to the aquarium, and I saw one put all of its arms through this little hole, and I was, like, “What are you doing?” And then all of a sudden, it, like, the bulbous head of the octopus, it just kinda started shoving its own head through this hole, and that was very disturbing to me. I was, like, “You’re gonna get stuck! No one’s gonna be able to yank you outta there,” and it was just, but then it effortlessly went through, but it was just, like, gross! I think the thing that’s scary to me about them, first of all, they’re scarier on land than they are in the water ’cause they’re not moving very gracefully, but there’s also, and I don’t know if I- They’re not typically on land, but there was a scene where this one was on land. When you see the videos where, like, they get caught in a net, and then they try to get back into the ocean, and it’s kinda crazy, there’s some good YouTube videos about that. Yeah, flapping around. But I think there’s a movie, an old movie, where there’s, like, an octopus that’s killing a bunch of people. It may be a squid, but there’s a beak. It’s called “Octopussy.” It’s a James Bond film. There’s a beak in there, up in them. Like, if you were to take Underneath. the legs and, like, expose it, Yeah. which doesn’t happen in this particular documentary, there’s a mouth in there that is powerful and can do things, and I’m scared of things like that, like beaks. He talks about how there’s a, he calls it a drill, where he can drill a hole into a shell, at a very particular spot, that will make the mollusk or whatever that’s inside just, like, let go of the shell, and then- Well, it injects it with some kinda venom that paralyzes it. At a certain spot, yeah. But it’s gotta be a very particular part of the snail inside the shell. Okay, so to continue the story, he dives every single day for a year, and then at some point, he just runs into this octopus, and he realizes that, okay, so octopuses, this is another thing I didn’t know. Octopuses, I’m gonna say octopuses. I know it’s wrong, but I just, octopi sounds stupid. Octopuses have dens, so there’s, like, a place at a particular rock, under a little rock, where this thing lives An octopus garden. and returns, an octopus garden, and he’s, like, okay. In the shade. “This is where I live, and this is where I’m gonna be every time you come and see me.” So he’s like, “Okay, this is cool.” And he decided to go there every single day, and in the opening of the documentary, there’s a sound bite of him saying something like, “And there, but there was a boundary that I discover that you just don’t cross,” and I’m like, “Is he gonna, is he gonna, is he gonna expose himself to this octopus?” I thought that he was gonna potentially make love to the octopus, but then I was like, I don’t think this would be on Netflix. Because you hear about the scientist who had the relationship with the dolphin, and there was a sexual component, or at least there was, like, a, there was a, there was a masturbation component in order to get the dolphin to be more compliant, and today, we’re not talking about that. We’re not saying anything, That’s next week. but it did conjure those fears among my brain cells, but that’s not what they meant, but we can get back to that. The boundary was a relational one, and there’s also a documentarian part of this thing because, I mean, It’s a feat of filmmaking. the fact that, like, the things that he observed, like he observed the octopus using, wanting to inspect the human, and then using a shell as a shield, and then slowly approaching behind, like, holding it up like a shield, and then finally- Sticking another tentacle out. And finally making contact with him, and then realizing that there’s a curiosity on the part of this octopus that he never named. I mean he never gave the octopus a name. I think that’s a good point. It’s a good observation. I think, and that’s the boundary, I think. Part of the boundary was he didn’t name the octopus. He wasn’t trying to make it, he wasn’t trying to make it a pet, and he was also, as you will see in a second, not trying to insert himself into the natural flow of nature that was going to happen with this octopus. We can gush all day about all the things we learned about octopi, but you can get that from the documentary, but the thing that was interesting was, I mean, he could see the octopus predator swimming around, that pyjama shark, and then he was scared, and he would go back every day, like, “What’s gonna happen?” And then, freaking, he films a shark attack, his friend the octopus! I mean, they were, they had a bond at this point! The octopus knew him, would come out. They would swim together. You know, he would, like, swim on his, the octopus would, she would hold onto his hand, and- And it would, like, the octopus would come up and settle on his chest- And give him a hug! ‘Cause he’s not wearing a wetsuit. That’s part of the deal. He wanted to be as close to nature as possible, so this almost naked man has this octopus just nestling on his chest! He didn’t reach out, grab the octopus, and put him on his chest. No, the octopus did it. He let the octopus instigate. Take the initiative. But you left out an important point, which was he was filming it. Once he was like, “Oh, I’m gonna start filming this thing. I’m gonna take my camera down there.” He had developed this trust, this bond, and then it was following him, and he dropped a lens off of the camera, and it spooked the octopus, and it did not go back to its den. So the next day, he goes back. The thing is not in its den. He goes back the next day, it’s not in its den. He’s like, “Oh, crap, I’ve ruined this relationship. We had built this trust,” and that You broken up. was the first time I cried. I was already crying when he had the bond, and then he broke the bond. Oh, so you didn’t cry when he successfully tracked her down and reconnected? Oh, no, I cried again then. That’s number two? Yeah. Well then, was number three, I mean- It was at least three times. I mean, the big point of horror was him filming this shark Getting attacked. attack her and rip off one of her arms and just eat it, and then it gets to that boundary because he didn’t stop it from happening, but then he says, “I couldn’t resist,” basically, he couldn’t resist helping, so he, you know, she’s in, she’s holed up in her- She makes it back to the den. Yeah, on her own. With seven limbs. He’s tempted to help, but he doesn’t help. He just films her going back to her den, limping with one less arm, which has her brain it it. Yeah, lost a part of her brain. And then she’s, like, she’s too weak to even change color. Yeah, she just turns white. And so, but he did crack open shells. Like some mussels or something. Mussels or something, and serve it to her to have some nourishment. And she took it. She took it, but he said, “I don’t think it did much good,” but I think he might’ve been saying that because he crossed his own boundary, which I’m like, “Dude, you know, when you’re in a relationship with an animal, all bets are off.” Like, it’s not a pet, but there was a bond there, and he freaking, yeah, I totally understand that he had to, like, do what he could to help, but it seemed like a little too little, too late, until she freaking grew her arm back. Did you, I didn’t, I forgot that that was possible. I didn’t know it was possible. My jaw dropped. She grew the arm back, and so she had eight limbs again, and she kinda came back to life, and again, so he lost contact with her, tracked her down, learned how to track her movements by looking at the sand on the bottom of the ocean, reunites with her, watches her get attacked by the shark. She loses the limb, and then she gets back in business, and then sort of the, it goes on and on and on. The relationship continues. And then, lo and behold, the same dang gone shark comes back, or one of the sharks that hunts at this reef, comes back, and this point, this is when my mind started- I was like, “Am I experiencing reality correctly at this point?” Yeah. Because the octopus has the ability to pick up all these shells and ball itself up and shield itself. It looks like a soccer ball that’s made out of all these shells that it’s holding, and there’s a name for that as well. I can’t remember what it was, and the shark comes up. I do not think that this behavior was ever documented before he observed it. ‘Cause he says he remembered seeing that. The first time he ever came in contact with the octopus, it was in that state of this soccer ball with the shells, and he was, like, “What the hell is this thing?” And then he realized it’s an octopus protecting itself. And then there’s, like, epic battle with a shark that still is trying to eat the soccer ball of shells. And then, okay, two things, two remarkable things happen during the shark attack. The first thing that happens is that once this, the shark picks up the octopus and is shaking it around ’cause it realizes, “Okay, this isn’t a soccer ball. This is an octopus,” but the octopus gets away and swims out of the water, gets on the shore on a rock, and eventually has to get back in the water because it can’t stay out too long, and at that point, it gets on the shark’s back and rides the shark because it knows that the shark can’t eat it as long as it’s riding on it like it’s a freaking horse. But it rode it as a soccer ball of shells. Yeah, right, it kept itself in the shells while it did this. So that the shark was totally confused, and then when it brushed up against some coral, it just, ever so normally, it just brushed itself off and floated away. This thing is so freaking smart, and that’s why you observe this thing every day for a year, and you’re making this bond with it, and you’re saying, “Okay, I’m now going to film my best ocean friend getting eaten alive.” How much do you think was, of the footage that we were seeing in the documentary, was the footage that was captured in the moment when it happened, and how much was, like, filler, like, filling it, going back and filming later to make it make sense? Like pickups, like movie pickups? Like, I do think the octopus is smart enough to comply to pickups. Like, “Hey, can you get on the back of that pyjama shark again?” And you know, it’s like, “We’re gonna look at the continuity photos. You’re gonna get the same shells in the same place.” ‘Cause every single thing that would happen, I think he captured all of it, they would, he had incredible shots of it! And I think that was a level of obsession that I totally understand. It’s like, again, you’re making this bond, and then you don’t know what’s going to happen every day, and it’s like, “Is this the day that I come back, and the octopus is just not there, you know, has been attacked and is just gone? Am I gonna have to track it again?” But that’s why it’s so amazing to me that he didn’t intervene except in that one breach, you know, with feeding, and then it, you know, comes back, and it’s like there’s another octopus, they’re mating, they’ve mated, and then it’s like he knows that she’s gonna die at that point, so he’s coming back every day to see. That’s the end of the lifecycle. Yeah, only a year, something that smart. At what point in the process do you think that the inner filmmaker, there’s a spark sometimes, especially when you’re doing documentary film, there’s a spark. We don’t have a whole lot of experience with this, but I do remember it when we were making “Looking for Ms. Locklear,” which is really the only documentary we’ve ever made, full-length documentary, and once the search for our teacher became much larger, it became about the struggle of the Lumbee people, and, like, we found ourselves in Washington, DC, at a hearing, filming John McCain talk about, you know, and the Indian Affairs Committee. There was this moment, somewhere along the lines, where I was, like, “We’ve got something here,” right? He was, at what point do you think he understood the potential for what he was creating? I mean, he was a nature documentarian. I think it had to be pretty early, and I do think that was the factor because I’m not that familiar with him, but I have to believe that there’s these rules of you don’t intervene, you know. Well, there’s the famous photo that won a prize of some sort, whatever the photo prize is, of the starving child. Right. I don’t even remember what it was from. So there’s a journalistic principle that applies to nature as well that’s like- Well, and just to complete the thought, though, there’s a picture of a starving child that was walking to get food, and this journalist, photojournalist, took a picture of the child but did not assist the child, and I think the story goes that the child died, and when people found out about that, they were like, “Well, okay, what’s more important: your journalistic principles or the life of this child?” This isn’t a child, this is an octopus we’re talking about, but there is this sort of commitment to these journalistic principles that he went into the process knowing that, like, “If I’m gonna make this into something, I understand the type of criticism that I’m gonna receive, especially when it’s an animal, for intervening,” right? And he really, he held strong. I couldn’t have done that, and I found myself being angry with him, when the octopus was in that epic battle as a boulder. ‘Cause he coulda just reached out and, like, slapped a shark. But maybe that’s a good point to analyze because an extraordinary thing was documented that happened. You know, it’s like- And you don’t wanna see a human hand come in there and, like, thump the shark away. Yeah, this is not the story, you know, he was presenting her story, not their story, but really? I mean, when the directors took the footage, they presented his story, but it was more about how, you know, he had a son, and there was a connection to, it was what did the octopus teach him? And there was, you know, his takeaway was more of a, that we’re all connected. Right, well, and it raises a larger question, which I think we’ll get into as we begin to talk about some of these other scenarios, which is what part of this incredible connection between this animal that’s more intelligent than I ever understood, you know, and I think about, you know, my relationship with Barbara, your relationship with Jade, who is currently in your lap, and definitely, I attribute human emotions and human instincts to Barbara. Like, when Barbara looks at me with a, she gives me a facial expression that may be like, well, she’s confused right now, or she is annoyed right now, or she’s happy right now, and again, a lotta that is me projecting a human understanding onto a dog’s face, even though we do know that dogs since, you know, being domesticated, have developed these things that only exist with them and don’t exist with wolves, like the ability to make sustained eye contact with a human, to communicate via eye contact. That’s not something that would happen with a wolf, but even so, it makes sense that there is some sort of emotional connection. Like, I feel like when I’m doing my stretching in the morning, and Barbara comes and gets on my chest and, like, puts her head on my face or licks me or whatever, I don’t think that she’s just, “Well, I’m doing this because you’re gonna feed me later.” That might be a part of it, but I do think that there is an emotional component to it, but how much of this was an understanding that this octopus had? Which is like, and again, they wouldn’t put it in human terms, but, like, how much of it do you think was, insofar as an octopus can consider a human a friend, that was what was going on? It seemed that way. It really did. I mean, like the, he wasn’t- She, the octopus, was not getting anything from him, except for that one little time, he was not feeding her. He was not doing anything except, like, being interesting. You know, she was interested, and there was a connection. There was a form of relationship, like curling up on his chest and stuff like that, or just, like, swimming together. I mean, he witnessed her being playful with fish. With the fish, yeah. You know, once you really understand how something works, and it’s extremely, you know, I’m so glad that we got a dog because, you know, until you experience a connection with an animal, you know, it’s not something that, it’s just not something you can judge from the outside, and that’s what I was doing, right. It does something within a human soul, I think, to have a connection with an animal. Let’s get to some of these ’cause I think that these are an exploration of that point. Yeah, well, I’m gonna talk about Dindim. Tell me about Dindim. The penguin. So in May of 2011, a guy named Joao Pereira de Souza, which I will just call Mr. De Souza from this point on. Okay. And I’m reading from a, points from a CNN article in 2016 about this. “A humble retired bricklayer rescued an injured penguin Where? in the state of Rio de Janeiro, or Rio de Janeiro, and the flightless bird was covered in oil and unable to move.” So oil spill. It was, you know, one of those situations where you got a bird covered in oil. So De Souza took him- We’re not talking sexy oil. We’re talking crude oil. Right, yeah, this is not a lubricant. Well, it is, I guess, but you know, yeah, not K-Y Jelly. “De Souza took him under his wing,” ah, pun, “and nurtured him back to health, thoroughly cleaning oil residue on the penguin’s body and feeding him for days until he was fit enough to return to the water,” so this guy basically lives on, like, an island nation, lives on the beach, essentially. Not an island nation, an island area near Rio. So, “He took him to another nearby island to set him free,” to set Dindim free, “and later,” of course, he hadn’t named him at this point, “later that day, he hears some squawking in his backyard,” and he’s like, “Holy crap, the penguin is back!” He came back to the backyard, and he, the penguin- Now, he wasn’t, like, he didn’t put him in an enclosure. He didn’t treat him as a pet. He did feed him, and he did touch him. Well, this penguin stayed with De Souza for 11 months, and then, he shed his annual coat of feathers, molted, or whatever the term is, and suddenly was gone. Like, he was nothing but feathers? He disappeared, no. That penguin was just a ball of feathers! I’ve been duped! All of a sudden, all of a sudden, he was not in his backyard. Okay. So at this point, De Souza is thinking, “Okay, that was a weird but awesome thing, this short-lived relationship with this penguin that I nursed back to health,” but then the next year, he came back. He came back. To the backyard. And that’s when you cry in the movie. And then he left again. Well, he’s marching. Haven’t you seen “March of the Penguins”? They do something, right? And for years, every year since 2011, he has come back to his backyard at the same time. It’s like an extended period of time. He, like, comes back in the middle of the summer and stays until, like, February, and then goes away, and then comes back at the same exact time, now- It makes you cry a little, you know. You can make yourself cry? It makes you well up because just imagine his, you know, the feeling. He did this, you know, selfless act of rescuing- Well, and you wanna cry, look at the- A flightless bird. Look at this video. Oh, no. And you have to describe what you’re seeing. Here he is. This him. He’s waddling. He’s waddling up. And he just puts his, he nuzzles him. What is he? He puts his beak on his face, and he doesn’t do this- He’s kissing him! He kisses him, and he doesn’t do this with any other humans. He doesn’t allow, if any other human tries to touch him, he bites them. Oh, wow. But he lets him give him baths. Slow-mo shower! He’s giving him a shower. And he’s just letting, he’s holding him. This is a humble bricklayer, Link. That’s a humble bricklayer. I mean, and just, and you know, it’s such a rewarding connection. It’s like you do a selfless act, and then it’s recognized. It’s like, “I owe you my life. I’m gonna come back, and I’m gonna nuzzle you, only you. I am not tame. I am allegiant.” I don’t wanna take any of the magic out of it, but I’m gonna tell you something that has been theorized about this particular situation. Now the first thing is, for those of you who are like, “How does he know it’s the same penguin?” Well, there were some scientists who asked the same question, and so in 2016, they tagged this, they drew graffiti on him. The penguin. They tagged Oh. the penguin so they could keep up with his location, and sure enough, it’s the same penguin, and he travels like 5,000 miles. Wow, but what? But, okay, and this is from the article, “While the idea of a penguin returning to visit every year seems surreal, Krajewski,” who is a scientist, “said that most Magellanic,” or- It’s like Magellan with an I-C, “Magellanic penguins are very loyal to their partner and nesting site. They nest in the same place every year and with the same partner.” So in the circuitry of this penguin’s brain is a commitment to monogamy, and so one theory is that he sees De Souza as his mate. He sees it as another penguin, and so, he has this tendency to bond and connect and almost imprint on this other being, and it just happens that, “Hey, yeah, you guys go and you spend time with other things that look like birds, and you do interesting sexual things with them, and it makes baby penguins. I just go hang out with a humble bricklayer.” Boy, you should see the brick he can lay. But still, it’s beautiful, and it’s sweet. I’d like to see your mate Tammy lay brick. Right, exactly. You know. That’s Dindim. I mean, I read an article about Yoriko the fish. In Japan, there’s this underwater shrine sacred to the Shinto religion, and there is a caretaker of this shrine, so he, like, he scuba dives down there, Hiroyuki Arakawa, and there’s this, like, I’ll call it a ugly fish. I’m just gonna say it. It’s a ugly, like, it’s a bottle-nose, bulbous-headed, sheepshead wrasse fish. It’s not pretty. It’s no octopus. And this thing comes up, and for 25 years, he greets her with a kiss on the forehead, but I watched the footage of it. I think you watched the footage too. A little less impressive. It’s just a big ole fish getting petted on the forehead, and then- It looks like it wants something. Yeah, it looks like it wants something. I mean, it snapped at him, and it seemed like it was eating something later, but he kisses it on the head. That doesn’t count for me. I mean, it’s like, that’s not special. It’s just like, “Hey, a fish knows you are gonna show up every day and maybe feed it or at least kiss it on the head.” And- I bet a little something comes outta your mouth that it tastes. A fish has got to be, and this fish looks really stupid. I mean, like, I think all fish are probably pretty dumb. This fish looks like especially stupid. I mean, the fact that it’s lived 25 years, I think, is just a testament to you don’t have to be that smart to make it 25 years in the ocean. But let me tell you about this, a crocodile. Okay. Okay. I got another one too. I just want, I wanna go ahead and skip to the crocodile. Okay, all right. ‘Cause I think it’s, this is crazy. All right. A dude named Chito is in, he’s in Central America. He’s a fisherman. He finds a crocodile, like, a small crocodile that’s been shot by a farmer ’cause it was coming out. It was coming, he has cattle, and shot this crocodile in the head, like, in the eye to kill it, but then he finds it, and he nurses it back to health over three years. And he’s, like, chewing stuff for this crocodile and then giving it to, like, showing the crocodile, “Oh, you need to eat this,” and then, like, feeding it stuff and, like, beans- He’s, like, demonstrating chewing? Yeah, to a crocodile. And it worked? A crocodile, yeah, and this thing- How big is this thing? Well, it was small, but then, over the three years of it regaining its vigor, this thing grew to 16 feet long. That’s a big animal. It’s a huge crocodile! And then he named it Pocho, and he puts it back, and once it recovers, he sends it away, and then he gets up the next morning, and that thing has come back and is in his yard. And then he does it again, does it three times, and the crocodile, Pocho, just keeps coming back and hanging out in his yard. He doesn’t want to leave Chito. And so, then Chito is compelled to spend more and more time with this crocodile, to the point that his wife starts to think he’s sneaking around on him, and then it realizes it’s a crocodile but gets jealous that he’s spending his- The wife gets jealous? And they get a divorce. He wasn’t making love with it, was he? No, he wasn’t. He was just spending more time with the crocodile than he was spending with her, and he’s quoted as saying, “Another wife I could get. Pocho was one in a million.” Well, you could say that again. He did get another wife, and they had a daughter, and the daughter’s not allowed to, like, be around Pocho, but Pocho will not leave, so he’s spending all this quality time and learning all the intricacies of, like, how the crocodile looks and all this stuff, and he starts swimming with the crocodile, and there’s, like, a Nat Geo documentary, which incidentally, is shot by the same person who was the cinematographer on “My Octopus Teacher.” Really? Yeah, and in the opening shot, you see this huge crocodile, like, in the water with his eyes at the water level, and then his mouth opens, and you know how you’ll see a crocodile’s mouth just gape open, and then you realize no, this is not the crocodile’s mouth gaping open. There’s, like, a huge bald head in its mouth. No, the crocodile’s mouth is shut, and a bald-headed man, I mean, Chito, is underneath the crocodile, pushing his head up and revealing himself. This is, like, the opening shot of this Nat Geo documentary, and he, like, he rides on its back, and he, this is a reptile! You would think that this couldn’t happen because again, the way that the reptilian brain develops! They’re not that smart. I mean, it’s like, yeah, it’s- We have a number of layers of brain on top of the core of our brain. Basically, the reptilian brain is just instinctual! That’s what’s so crazy about the octopus is that it’s evolutionarily so much more separated, but yeah, a crocodile, I mean, but- Why doesn’t he eat Chito? I mean, his name is Chito, after all. It is spelled differently, but it’s not as compelling as the octopus thing because you can’t attribute as much intelligence to the crocodile, but, I mean, there’s enough there- There’s a lot more risk, though. There is a bond, and there are many documented cases of people, like, with, you know, after years and years of having a pet reptile, and he was a pet, but he was still free to go. He’s free to go now! They’ll turn on you and just kill you at any point. Didn’t he die? He died at age of 50 in 2011, but the interesting thing is how- The crocodile. The crocodile, yeah. Chito described it as whenever he would play with the crocodile, he said it was like being with God. Like, the dude was obsessed with this connection because it can become so, I’ll say magical. You’re able to cross this impossible boundary, and it’s, I mean, you could tell in his interviews just how meaningful it was to him to have that connection, and it is interesting to explore, like, how much of that is, you know, projection, but it’s real for him, and it’s important for him. Well, we have a tendency, you know, post-Enlightenment, and especially in the Western world, we have a tendency to do what we’re doing, which we kinda just naturally do, which is to try to break it down to just its naturalistic elements, but there is- An emotional component, Well, I would say it seems. even a spiritual component, right, potentially. Okay. ‘Cause what I’m getting at is insofar as That’s what he did, yeah. when you talk about the idea of oneness, right, and the idea that consciousness is a thing that exists. I’m not saying I subscribe to this idea, but it is a very intriguing way to look at the universe, and the idea that there may not necessarily be, there could be, a God who is somehow separate from this creation and was the one who set everything into motion, but to me, there’s a slightly more interesting idea that, in many ways, seems more compelling, that God is in everything, right, and is sort of, the universe is essentially a physical expression of a consciousness that exists that you and I and this wooden desk are all a part of. This is something that I used to, when I- And I’ll just break in and say I don’t know if it’s, it may be more interesting and compelling. It is interesting and compelling to me as well, but it may be because it’s a little more, it’s a newer idea to us, but- Well, I’m gonna talk about that because I actually feel like, I remember when I used to hear about different Eastern religions, and I heard about it in the context of growing up in a conservative Christian home, in a church where the way that we would interpret, say, Hinduism, Buddhism, whatever, like when I learned that there were all these specific gods associated with different objects in Hinduism, to me, I was like, “That’s ridiculous,” right. I remember thinking that as a kid. I was like, “That seems kinda, that seems sorta archaic, and it seems like an old kind of idea that you would attribute, you would find a god in a rock-” Mystic, it was mystical. What I’m saying is I belittled the idea. I’m not saying that it was mystical. What I’m saying is I looked down on the idea. I thought that it was a bad way to look at the universe. I thought that it was a simple way to look at the universe, and I was like, “When you can-” Or an ignorant. Yeah, yeah, or like, “That kinda makes sense. Like, maybe those people haven’t evolved to a place where they can appreciate the idea of a personal Creator God,” but one of the things that I’m kinda, I’m reevaluating again. I don’t know where I fall in this perspective, but when I think about that, I’m like, “Oh, it isn’t necessarily just a simple, super-simple sort of dismissive view that I had, which was attributing a god or magic to every single thing, but to me, it’s a way of kind of expressing that idea that there is life. There is God, whatever the word you wanna use. There is consciousness in all things, and sort of more of a sense of fabric of the universe, right, and so, I do think there’s been times in my life where I have felt connected to things that it would be like, it’s weird to feel connected to a plant, right, but if you go back from a scientific standpoint to the point where, well, we come from the same place. We’re all stardust. At one point, the same atoms that make up that plant, you know, the same atoms that make up me are gonna become the same atoms that make up a plant, that make up an animal, that make up the next Jade, and what I’m getting at is, are you using Jade as a visual example right now? I am, yeah. And so, your connection with Jade is, again, the Western Enlightened view is that this is a lesser creature that is here for your benefit. This is here for you. The idea that you’re human, and therefore, you must exercise dominion over all things on earth, and that everything is here for your exploitation, there’s a different way to look at things, which is we’re all part of the same system in a much more integrated and thorough way than we ever appreciated, and when you think about it like that, maybe what’s happened between Chito and Pocho is a sort of strange, it’s an anomaly, but it’s an expression of that type of connection that can happen between beings. I’m not gonna swim with a croc to find God, but he did. Right! He did, and his second wife was with it, so. Yeah! Yeah, I mean, it is interesting. I do want you to get to the lion. You know, I had heard about this, but this is a, the relationship narrative associated with this, is flooring. Well, and this is a video that you’ve seen, if you’re one of the 100 million people who have watched it. Christian the lion. You may have seen about 10 years ago, there was a video that went viral, and it’s obviously, like, old footage. It’s from the late ’60s, and I think the original version doesn’t even have any sound, but there’s these two very hippie-looking white dudes with long hair and bell bottoms, and they’re, like, out in Africa. Bell bottoms, yeah. And next thing you know, there’s a freaking lion that still seems to be juvenile. It doesn’t have a mane yet, but it’s a freaking 500-pound creature that could easily kill them. Starts running up to them, and you’re like, “Oh, no, what’s about to happen?” And it jumps up, and it hugs this dude, and then it’s just, like, licking him and hugging him and frolicking, and then it goes up to the other guy, and the same thing happens, and they’re, like, laughing, and it’s one of these things, you’re like, “What?” I’ve seen this before, like on “Tiger King.” You know, I’ve seen people interact with big cats that were raised in captivity, but these guys are in the middle of Africa, the bush, and this thing comes out. So the story behind this is that, again, late ’60s, there’s two Australian dudes who see a lion cub for sale in England ’cause there was an exotic animals market at that time. They purchased this thing. They’re in their early 20s. They’re not trying to take advantage of the thing. They’re just like, “Who knows where this thing’s gonna end up? Let’s give it a good life,” and they do this. They raise this thing in their apartment, in their flat, in England, and this lion cub grows over the course of a year and is their pet and stays in their house, rides in the back of their convertible Mercedes everywhere they go around town, goes to parties with them, becomes friends with their friends, and there’s, like, an account of him jumping up on a woman that was one of the lion’s friends, and he accidentally, like, claws her dress, and it falls to the floor, like, all these crazy, surreal that seems like some sort of, like, Wes Anderson movie, where there’s this lion friend who is going along with these guys. Now eventually, they realize this cannot continue. He’s too big. He’s never shown any signs that he’s gonna hurt anybody, but he doesn’t really understand his own strength, and it’s probably not moral to keep this thing in England. Probably not. So they take him to Kenya, where they just, what, drop him off or whatever, and at this point, you’re thinking, “This thing has never lived in the wild. Surely this thing’s gonna die.” Well, if you watch that video, you’ll see one of the things that happens is after they’re interacting with this male lion, all of a sudden, a female lion comes up to them and starts interacting with them, not in the same way, but it’s basically just right there next to them, walking around. Curious? Curious, and, like, coming up next to them and kinda rubbing up on them. They put Christian the lion in the bush and came back three months later, thinking they would never see him again. Three months later? Three months later, he comes up to them, hugs them like that, and then brings them his wife, and they meet. They stay there for nine days, and they meet his wife and his kids. They have a litter, whatever the correct term, of cubs. So he’s- That couldn’t have happened in three months, though. Ah, I think it could. You can have babies in three months? Maybe if you’re a lion. I don’t know what the gestation period is. I don’t know if I’ve got all the facts right, but I do know when he came back, he had, he introduced them to his wife and kids. He made it. He made it. He made it, and he made it. And then they never saw him again. I don’t know, the story kinda ends there, but these guys, when the video went viral in 2011, they ended up going on, like, “The Today Show,” and of course, they were much older at this point, and then they signed a movie deal where Zac Efron was gonna play one of ’em, and I don’t think that ever happened because I looked, and I couldn’t find it. Yeah, the whole captivity thing is a- It complicates it. Complicates this conversation, but I mean, the fact that there’s, you know, having a connection with an animal, one of the things this highlights is how extraordinary it was with an octopus, you know, going back to that. You know, ’cause they’re just, you know, you might have one in an aquarium, but you’re not gonna have an actual relationship, this connection, and it was just, it’s mind-blowing. Does it make you think twice I like ’em more. about enjoying octopus at a fancy restaurant? It gives me an easier excuse to not eat it. You don’t like it. I’ve had it a couple of times, And I really do like it. and I didn’t hate it, but I’ve never seen it on the menu and said, “I gotta have this.” And I am the exact opposite. If I see it on the menu, I order it, without exception. If octopus is on the menu, I order it. What about now? Ah, man, this is tough. Seriously? You cried three times? Well, again, I’m not trying to go philosophical here, and I’m also not trying to justify my own behavior, but just go with me on another little journey for a second. Okay, okay. Okay, and don’t hold your dog up in the middle of it. Just stay with me. I’m not. I’ve thought about this, and I thought about this as it relates to the morality of eating meat, right? It’s something, I actually think about it on a pretty regular basis, right, and if you follow that sort of oneness idea in that we’re all connected, I mean, first of all, the distinction that we make between plants and animals, obviously, there is a distinction between plants and animals. There are some weird sort of intermediate things, and I do think that for whatever reason, the closer something gets to our level of intelligence, for good reason, it becomes weirder to eat it, right, but everybody draws the line at some point. Some people say anything with eyes, anything with a face. Some people say anything with a conscience, as however you define that, but there’s a lot of, there’s actually a lot of evidence to suggest that there is a level of consciousness amongst plants, right. When you eat a plant, you are killing it. You’re constantly murdering microorganisms that have some level of consciousness just by being a person, meaning that there is a give and take that happens between beings in the universe. Now, there are some things that you can point to that really seem totally, unnecessarily exploitative, like factory farming as an example, right. When you begin to see an animal simply as a source of food, and its existence is just for the benefit of you being able to eat exactly the right kinda beef that you want or whatever, and then of course, what the net effect of that is is that there is an animal that is being bred in a certain way, in a certain environment, that is just to be eaten, which is different than hey, there’s a deer that’s out here enjoying its life, doing its thing, being a part of nature. It’s going to be killed by something eventually, right. It’s usually, animals in the wild don’t usually die of natural causes. They end up getting eaten by predators, and so, there are points at which a human enters the food chain and says, “I’m the predator, and I’m going to.” Anyway, I believe that you can kill an animal for the purpose of it being food and do it in a respectful way that is actually respecting its life. I think that that’s a possible thing to do. So all that to say from a moral standpoint, while I understand someone saying, “From a moral standpoint, I will not eat animals, period,” I think that it’s a much more complex thing than a lotta people maybe are willing to admit because there’s a lotta gray in that equation. So you will eat the octopus. Well, I guess what I’m saying is, again, not trying to defend myself and justify myself, but I honestly feel, my perspective is I can be absolutely amazed at the octopus, appreciate the octopus in a way that I never did before, and still eat the octopus. I don’t even like having- Like, I don’t have to- What I’m saying is, if I get to a point where I have to disrespect an animal in order to be able to eat it, I’m not saying I would, you know what I’m saying, I don’t disrespect- I don’t think that a cow’s life is pointless. I don’t think that, I have sympathy for a cow. I eat beef at the same time, and you know, listen, I may get to a point where it’s like, that contradiction is something that is truly a contradiction that I can’t live with, but I actually think there’s more compelling reasons to stop eating meat than the moral dilemma around the life of an animal, but anyway. Well, what about this? What animal would we each choose, wild animal would we choose to have a best friendship with that would remain wild? Not domestication, not making a pet, not putting in a pen or in your house or in your convertible, but like if you could go into, on their terms, be friends with that animal, what would it be? I really like the idea of being, of, like, scuba diving. I can’t do this, the skin-diving. You could, though. No one can do it at the beginning. That’s what I’ve heard. I know, I just- No one can do it at the beginning. I have an anxiety of, like, holding my breath, like, it’s tough. Everyone has that anxiety. That’s what I, where were we talking about this before? Oh, it was that book, the book I told you about that I wanted to do a whole episode on that week. We can talk about it later, but the guy talks about it in the book that everyone Well, I know that. has this underwater anxiety. I’m saying that, but, like, I would love to get my scuba license. I’ve wanted to do that ever since I’ve been snorkeling a couple of times. I’m, like, “Man, I wanna go deeper, but I don’t wanna have to hold my breath. Oh, yeah, there’s scuba diving.” I’m actually more freaked out by the scuba than I am the free-diving. So I’m, well, so I’m thinking in that realm. It could be an octopus for me now. It could be. Well, I think you gotta pick something original. That’s been done. You have to have a “My Sea Bass Teacher.” That would be your documentary. I mean, there’s some of the mammals in the ocean. Any mammal in the ocean. Or clearly, a dolphin, a dolphin connection. I don’t know, I guess I do wanna- Seahorse, you like little horses. Ah, they’re not smart. Well, what if they are? You don’t know that. What if you could have a little seahorse that just nestles up into your chest region? Yeah, that’s cool. I would want one of the bigger ones, though. The biggest seahorse is for you. How big do they get? I think they can get as big as your thigh, no. No way a seahorse gets that big. Maybe as big as my foot. I don’t think a seahorse gets that big. I think they could be Maybe at some point in the distant past. a size 11 foot. US, US size 11 shoe. You’d think they’re- Well, I gotta ask this question now. How big can a seahorse get? “Can range in size from 0.6 inches to 14 inches long!” I’m telling you, man. That’s a size, that’s a size 14. Yeah, that’s a big, that’s a big seahorse, man. You can find a big, size 14. Can seahorses kill humans is also- And they, they could nuzzle in a way that a horse would. It says, “Might seem like the most harmless, unassuming creatures under the sea, but they’re actually one of the most deadly.” Okay, forget it. What? Just a normal horse on land. You’re gonna be killed by a seahorse. You know, I mean, people have these connections with horses. There’s, like, therapy associated with horses. Like, they have this, like, cosmic connection to people. So I just gotta go back to a regular horse, final answer. What’s your answer? But it has to be a wild horse. Yep. It can’t just be like a horse in a stable somewhere in Burbank. Yeah, it has to, I only am gonna, Like a mustang. I’m gonna ride it only by invitation. Like, it’s gonna have to kneel down and kinda, like, when the horse picked up Aragorn when he was, like, totally decimated, he seemed dead, and the horse, like, basically put him on its back, that’s how it would have to happen, but it would after, like, a year. Well, mine is, my animal is horse-like in a sense, and it’s also, I think I’ve been on record saying that this is my favorite animal: giraffe. I’m a very, I’m tall, I’m a very large man, and the idea, could you imagine what it would be like to be friends with a giraffe? Just think about that for a second. First of all, they’re obviously They’re so tall. gentle and sweet. Have you seen the eyelashes on those things? They are also rideable, and that’s not, I’m not in this just for the ride, but riding a giraffe would be one of the more badass things that you could do. Again, this would be in the context of a friendship. It wouldn’t be in a context of- It would have to be initiated by the giraffe, I’m saying. Yeah, there’s no saddle. I wouldn’t have a saddle made. I’d be riding this thing bareback, and I would be holding on to its neck. I wouldn’t even be grabbing onto its hair because I might hurt it. It’s kinda like riding a hobby horse or, like, a carousel horse. Yeah, and this is only if, again, if I was invited to ride it, but I think that if you are in a friendship with a giraffe, I think that’s part of it. I just think you’d be walking with it, and it would just be, you know. I think I might grab on to one of its legs, like one of those little stuffed animal monkeys. Like a child? That just, like, stays on a leg, and I just hold on to the leg and go around, and then occasionally, it throws me up and lets me walk up its neck to see what it sees. You’re kinda missing the relationship. I was looking for more of, like, you would read aloud to it. Well, but this is all a part of it. You’d read aloud to your giraffe. I’m just talking about the more sensational things. Okay, is that your final answer? And there is a place, there is a hotel. Yeah, it’s called Disney World. There’s a hotel in Africa where, again, I don’t know, I don’t know if these things are, like, just on the premises. I don’t know the situation. I’m not advocating, like, pet giraffes. Like, giraffes need to be in the wild, but there is a hotel where you eat, you’re in your room, and you’re, like, eating breakfast, and the giraffes come in and, like, interact with you. I think it’s giraffes. I’ve seen this, yeah. I’ve seen a picture of it. I don’t know about the, I don’t know about if its ethical, so I’m not saying I’m doing it. If they’re wild giraffes that have somehow just become comfortable with people, then I might go. If they’re, like, giraffes that they’re keeping and making interact with people for money, then I’m not a part of it. Well, I think that’s where the hotel comes in. Well, I mean, maybe the giraffes are, what are the giraffes getting outta me? I don’t know, yeah. I’m just saying you’re out in wild. You’re reading a book to a giraffe. Just keep it pure. You’re the one muddying everything. Just keep it pure, man. Listen, the world is complex. And when it, and when it gets attacked, you can’t intervene. I don’t know what I would do in the case of a, anything that it can hurt a giraffe I’m a tell you right now. is probably not something I could do something about, but you as a seahorse man. I would intervene with my friend because I’m not a nature documentarian, and that’s why I’m not, because I want the seahorses to be, I’m gonna do everything in my power to protect my seahorses, well, my seahorse friends. They’re not mine. I don’t own ’em. Oh, so you did go back to seahorse. Oh, yeah. I took you back to seahorse. I thought you went to land horse. Yeah, that’s right. I could have a, I could have both. Okay, so tell us what you think. You know what, you don’t have to tell me what you think about the controversial things I said. There’s already enough of that. Just tell us what you think about, just tell us about “Octopus Teacher.” “Octopus Teacher.” What did the octopus teach you? Yeah. #EarBiscuits. We’ll speak at you next week. To watch more “Ear Biscuits,” click on the playlist on the right. To watch the previous episode of “Ear Biscuits,” click on the playlist to the left. And don’t forget to click on the circular icon to subscribe. If you prefer to listen to this podcast, it’s available on all your favorite podcast platforms. Thanks for being your mythical best.