Transcript of Tara Stoinski Returns (primatologist) New

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert Experts on Expert. I'm Dax Shepard, and I'm joined by Monica Padman.

Hi.

And today we have returning primatologist Tara Stojnski. She is the CEO and chief scientific officer of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, and she worked closely on this incredible documentary that I saw, really importantly, by the director of My Octopus Teacher.

Yeah.

And Chimp Empire.

Yeah.

Maybe my favorite animal doc I've ever seen. Uh, and this new documentary is called A Gorilla Story, and there's the most insane footage in it. What they captured over these couple years they were filming is incredible. It's so good. She's so knowledgeable. And, um, you know, these are highly endangered, beautiful treasures on planet Earth. So if you're inclined, please go to the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund and support that. Please enjoy Tara Stoinisky.

He's an object expert.

He's an object expert. He's an object expert. How are you? Good!

Hi, Monica, nice to meet you in person. Yes, in person!

Oh my gosh, welcome!

Thank you so much.

Yes, so thrilled to be here in this amazing space.

Where did you travel from?

Atlanta.

What if you said Rwanda?

No, no, I was there a couple weeks ago, but no, came from Atlanta this time.

What part of Atlanta? Do you know Monica's in Atlanta?

Yeah, last time.

Yeah, I'm from outside Philly, but I've been in Atlanta for 30-plus years.

You sound like Monica's mom.

Really?

Yes. You don't hear it?

Oh my God, I don't hear it.

You gotta listen for it.

I got some combination of like the Philly Atlanta accent or something.

Oh my gosh, I don't hear it at all. But you know, you can't like hear your mom.

No, your mom, your mom's just not an entity. She's just— yeah, yeah.

You can't even hear yourself. I can remember back in the days of answering machines.

Yes.

One time, like, playing an answering machine, and there was this person like, hey, it was like for my husband, boyfriend at the time probably. And they're like, hey honey, how you doing? Wondering what you're doing later. I'm like, who is this woman calling? Oh my God, I totally didn't recognize my own voice. That's funny. I, I don't know if you're like this. I can't go back and listen to anything I've done. I went and listened to our last podcast so I wouldn't like repeat myself, but it was painful. For me, and then I was like, "Oh, there's a transcript. I could just read it and not have to listen to myself." We have to.

We have to get used to it at some point.

I started doing that. I listened to like a third of it so we wouldn't repeat ourselves. It was Zoom, but I was like, I didn't like Zoom. I mean, as much as it was lovely.

It's so different.

It's so different. I'm speaking in that one as if you are on the other end of a soup can and a string. I'm like, "Ah, I know!" Like, I'm shouting at poor Tara. Yes. I was like, I can't do this. And who cares if I repeat myself?

Yeah.

Is what I said.

Because maybe some people who haven't heard the first one need some background.

So, okay. So you're in Atlanta. Are you in a suburb by—

No, I am just east of downtown. So Grant Park, like right near the zoo.

You're in a cooler area.

Yeah. It's great because I'm super convenient to the airport, which is where I feel like I spend a lot of my time.

A lot of your time.

Yeah.

How old are your daughters now?

So my daughters now are 19 and 17.

Oh my Lord.

So I have one in college. She's a sophomore in college. And the other one, we are deciding in the next— she's deciding in the next few weeks where she'll be at college.

May I suggest?

That's great tuition.

She got into Georgia, which we were thrilled about.

That's so fun.

Got into Tech.

It's less fun.

Yeah. Better school?

Probably considered better.

Very science-y.

In certain areas.

Yeah. Like engineering. Mainly give it engineering. Not marketing. So I have to— have to go for tech. But she, from the start, has been like, "I really wanna go out of state," with our whole family being from the Northeast. So I don't think she's gonna end up in New York.

Okay, well—

Well, good for her.

No! And she's a homebody too.

She's gonna end up back there.

So we'll see.

And how does the 19-year-old like college?

Oh my God. So she is a sophomore at Duke and has drunk the Duke Kool-Aid. She loves it. I've gotten really into Duke basketball now.

Uh-huh.

And I've been surprised at how heartbroken I have been in when they didn't end up going all the way. And I already— I'm a big fan of the Philadelphia Eagles, so I feel like I already have my heartbreak, even though we did win the Super Bowl recently. I'm like, I can't take on another stress team. Like, I paced the house. I had to go for a walk after this game. And at halftime, she was like, if we win the whole thing— so they lost. They didn't make it to the Final Four this year. They were number one ranking team. So she's texting me like, I'm gonna get a tattoo if they win. And I saw she put it on Instagram, and then she went, well, that didn't age very well.

Also, for you, That's a built-in win-win.

Yeah.

Either they win and you're delighted or they lose and your daughter doesn't get that tattoo.

Exactly.

Yes. That's very true.

I think that's very true. You could enter that one like very, I'm gonna win either way.

Yeah.

Not to blame her, but she might've caused—

Oh, you think she might've? 100%.

'Cause like she's not meant to have that tattoo on her.

We have a lot of superstitions in our house. Like we dress our dogs for all the Eagles games. They wear Eagles gear and then if they're not winning, they have to switch jerseys.

Yeah. It's fun to care.

Yeah, it is.

You have several. Alma maters.

I do.

Yeah, which are they?

So I did my undergrad degree at Tufts University in Boston, did a master's in biology at University of Oxford in England, and then did my PhD at Georgia Tech.

You're not even pushing for that, even though you—

I don't think it's the right school for her. She's not interested in science. And the other thing is her 3 closest friends are all going there.

Yeah.

And I'm really proud of her. She really kind of wants to break out and do something new, and that's been something she's been saying for a couple years. So I mean, I would love her to go to Tech. It's 2 miles from my house. I told her, I'm like, I never go to Tech's campus. I'm not going to come and bug you, but you can come home if you want, you can visit the dogs. But I'm very proud of her for wanting to go off and have some independence.

Athens is in the city. It's not—

Tell me more.

In the city. If she wants to have best of both worlds, she can just go to Athens. It's just an hour away and some change.

I know.

And it's so fun.

I don't know the last time you drove from Athens to Atlanta, but I think that's a lot of change. Hour and change. I think there's— I think something in the change adds up to more than—

It's really close, actually.

Yeah.

Yeah.

From my parents' house to Athens, it's like an hour and 10 minutes.

Well, but to Atlanta proper.

I just went, I just gave a lecture up there a couple weeks ago and yeah, it's not that bad. I mean, you go through cow country. Oh yeah. Yeah. You're going through the country to get up there.

But yeah, you see a lot.

Athens proper is really cute. It's so cute.

And your husband, was he very academic?

He was a lawyer.

No one's heading in that direction.

No, older one for sure.

Oh really?

She's a great arguer. She'll be fabulous at it.

Oh great.

Yeah. She's interested, I think also in international law, diplomacy, which you always wonder like what your what maps onto them. And neither of them wanna do science per se, but they've spent their whole childhoods going to Rwanda with me. And so I think that part of it she really likes. She's going to do a semester in Madrid in the fall. And so I could see her heading in that direction, not like straight up corporate law or something.

Okay. So back to what does your normal yearly schedule look like?

Yeah, I am usually in Rwanda about once a quarter, and that has been kind of dictated by my kids because I've been a single mom since they were 6 and 4. So during the school year, try not to be gone for more than 3 weeks at a time. In Rwanda. I do a lot of travel in the US as well for conferences or meet with donors. And then in the summers, we go for a longer period of time because they would come with me. So we'd be there for 6 weeks or so. So we have like a communal house. It's like being in college again. Sometimes we have 12 to 15 people living in it, 3 bathrooms. So it's very interesting, especially when you get the teenage girls in there as well. But when they were little, they would stay home. They would play in the garden because they can't go to see the gorillas. We're not like in the forest proper. We're outside the forest.

What's the age limit? Curious.

15.

Because I was watching with my daughters last night the doc, and I have been telling our oldest daughter, who's very interested in going to Africa, I've been telling her since she was 3, when you're 16, when you're 16. As I was watching, I was like, I'm not sure if you're allowed at 16, but this is delightful. So 15 and up you can go.

Yeah. So they both have now gone just in the last few years to see the gorillas.

There was no sneaky sneak?

No, no sneaky sneak.

She was like, the rules. But can you imagine traveling all the way to Rwanda As a little kid and spending 10 years there and not seeing the gorillas? I mean, they must have been like, "Let's go." Let's go.

And they've been on safari, so they got to see the other stuff. But the gorillas themselves, yeah, they just saw for the first time recently.

So they're like in the garden in there?

Yeah, they're just hanging out. Well, the thing is, like, particularly in the summertime, like, a lot of researchers come over. So they've got friends from all over the country. They would see the same people again. Sometimes people bring their kids.

Okay, great.

So they had like a little cohort of folks that they would hang out with. And then starting in high school, my older daughter's like, "Uh, can I go to summer camp?" camp instead. Yeah. The younger one though, last summer was probably her last summer and she was sad. She really loves it there.

Yeah.

So it's just comfort zone for her. It's something she's familiar with. If the pizza place closes that she goes to, we have two pizza places in town. Of course, two girls, one likes one pizza place, the other likes the other pizza place.

I'm so comforted to hear that.

Right.

I will say my younger daughter, she's a peacemaker. She very much is my husband's personality.

Okay.

So she's a peacemaker. So if the older one really wants something, she's like, fine.

Okay, this is a sad question to ask, but it's very obvious to me that I'm thinking about it now. So our younger daughter, to me, is like a carbon copy of my wife. I mean, they're so similar. It's crazy. And because of that, there's been a lot of interesting things. One just being, oh, weird, I get to kind of parent a younger version of my wife.

Yeah.

And I want to give her everything I think my wife deserved. Right. There's just a lot of weird things in the mix. So, because your husband's passed, does that, do you think, compound that, where it's like she's also the last living thing you can touch that's still him in that way?

In a lot of ways. And it's funny, one of the things— She's super empathetic, and she doesn't want to see anyone get hurt, doesn't want to see any animals get hurt. I lead with my head, and so does my older daughter, and she very much leads with her heart. And my husband led with his heart. And it used to frustrate me, 'cause, like, I want to know what's happening in the news, I want to know what's happening in the world, and he would be like, "Tara, I don't." would just don't want to watch it. And it would irritate me because I'm like, how do you not want to know what's going on? But it physically hurt him. And, you know, this big 6-foot-4 guy, I didn't get that.

Yes.

But now I see it. I can see it in my little one. I'm like, oh, this is how you're wired. And this really does pain you to see others in distress.

She has a different nervous system than you do. Yeah, completely.

Yes.

And he did.

I feel like I understand him better in some ways getting to parent her.

This is a great transition. So in the documentary, there's all kinds of gruesome moments.

Yeah.

I'm imagining I'm looking at it like you. I'm like, yeah. And also, this is how it works. Like, let's just start with this is how it works.

Yeah.

So there's going to be a lot of gnarliness along the way. I even said to them beforehand, anticipate this could happen and fanicide is likely to follow this event we just saw. Like, just buckle up while we're watching that. This could happen. But okay. Let's start with— there was a great doc, took 6 years to make. It's called The Gorilla Story, told by David Attenborough. So how did you get brought in to work with this team to do this?

It was great. It was during COVID I can still remember, like, sitting, you know, in my living room. And we were connected to Silverback Films, which is a funny name for the film company because of the silverback gorillas. And we got on the phone with them, and they were like, "What's happening with the gorillas? What would make a good story?" And I was with a colleague of mine, Veronica Vachelio, who is kind of like She's like the modern-day Dian Fossey. She's lived in Rwanda for 20 years, knows these gorillas in and out.

She doesn't go home to anywhere? She's full-time there?

Yeah, she's full-time there. She's from Rome originally. She's one of our two non-Rwandan staff that are based there. So we're like, "Really, the story of Pablo's group?" It's such a phenomenal group. It broke every record. There's just such an amazing story that's never been told. So that's what we kind of pitched to them. And then it worked out so well that the executive producer of the film actually had worked with David Attenborough for a number of years. So he went back to him, There's this iconic scene where when David went to Rwanda in 1978, I think, he was there to do a story about the opposable thumb. So this very technical, anatomical story.

He thought he was gonna be watching from afar. They're gonna get some close-ups of the opposable thumb.

And he's sitting there, and all of a sudden, this 3-year-old little fluffball comes and just sits in his lap.

Oh my God.

And he's just like laying all over him, and David's laying on his back, and like he's laughing, and Pablo's just kind of squirming around.

Pablo is the gorilla? Yeah, little boy gorilla. How old was he?

He was 3.

It's the dream interaction. You're not supposed to have it. But boy, what a dream.

And we don't anymore, right? Like, that was back in the day when we didn't realize how susceptible they were to our illnesses. So now we try and stay a distance from them. But yeah, I mean, he describes it as probably the most iconic moment in his history of filmmaking. And he's turning 100 next month.

Wow.

Well, okay, great. So that's something I wanted to address right away. So we're watching it, and I'm taking notes as we watch, but I missed what year. That footage was from Life on Earth, one of his docs. And my daughter says, "Oh, it was 50 years ago." But I'm watching him present day be interviewed about this project, and I'm like, "No, I bet it had to be 30 years ago 'cause he looks like he's maybe 85." And yet next month he turns 100.

That's wild.

And Monica, he's speaking so articulately about this experience.

Yes.

And so just vibrant and alert. I'm like, "This dude might see 130." Right, exactly.

I hope. But I mean, it's amazing, Monica, 'cause he took journals. And so he has the whole description of getting to meet the gorilla, of getting to meet Pablo. So, to get him then to come on and narrate the story, 'cause his voice is also just so iconic, right?

00:14:08

Oh, yeah.

00:14:08

Unfortunately, he didn't get out to be there with the filming, and that group is really hard to film. So, what ended up happening was he did that series, and then that was Group 5 at the time. So, it was one of the original groups that Dian Fossey started studying. And then in 1993, the silverback of that group died, and the group split up. Group split. It went into Shinda's group and Pablo's group. And so Pablo actually formed his own group.

He became a big silverback. Alpha.

At that point, he was 18. So he was like, "I'm taking all of these individuals," and formed his own group. Pablo's been dead since 2008, but that group is still called Pablo's group.

I imagine it's kind of like when you get picked for, like, kickball. Okay. You know, there's two captains.

Uh-huh.

Yeah. It's like, "I'll take you.

I'll take—" Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's like that. The ones that Pablo were smart.

Yeah, well, Pablo picked ice.

Yeah, and then some of them probably snuck over there.

Okay, I was gonna say, how does that work? Is it just seamless or they fight over it?

Well, it's a big plot point in this doc as the story unfolds, but what's really unique about Pablo's group is that he, when challenged by the upcoming alpha male, decided to form a partnership instead of get dethroned. Which was really unique.

Yeah. We haven't seen that many of these dominance transfers from one male to the other. And we actually didn't get to observe that one because it happened '94-'95, which was right at the height of the genocide in Rwanda. So we weren't in the forest, or the teams weren't in the forest every day like we are normally. So when they sort of came back and could observe the group, Kanspi had taken over dominance. But Pablo stayed in the group. The two of them were very aligned, and the support that they gave each other let this group grow to 65 animals, which an average gorilla family is 10 individuals. Wow! So way, way bigger. The biggest group of gorillas ever recorded anywhere. And it's definitely come down in size since then, but it just achieved all of these amazing records. Because of this partnership. Yeah, because of this partnership.

Also, at the time he was recording that original doc, he said of all the animals he had ever interacted with, this was by far, when you look in a gorilla's eyes, the thing he felt like there was the most humaneness, for lack of a better word, of any animal he'd ever— and at that point, he had lived look every animal in the eyes, presumably. And at the time there was 250 in that area.

We call it the Virunga area, so it's 3 countries: Congo, Rwanda, Uganda. They were down to 250.

And so it's 1,000-ish today? It is.

There's 600 in that population, and then there's another population that at the time he was there actually wasn't being studied there in Uganda, and there's 400. So across the two there's 1,000, but where he was it's gone from 250 to to 600, which is great. Yeah. But it's taken 40-plus years to do that.

And that's just the Highland or all?

Just mountain gorillas.

Okay. So right away I have a question about having such a tiny genetic pool. And I'm curious, I feel like either we're overly scared of inbreeding or gorillas are unique. What is going on? Why aren't we seeing like a ton of genetic defects and whatnot in such a small gene pool?

That's a great question. And we do know that they're inbred. Like when we go to do paternity work, we have to get a lot a lot more genetic information to be able to figure out who the dad is than you would in a population that maybe hadn't had so much inbreeding. And we do see things like we see webbing between their fingers and their toes. Sometimes they have what we call them walleyes, where their eyes don't line up in the center.

Ooby is cross-eyed as a motherfucker. Yeah, we're like, he's so cute, but we're going like, where am I? Where— I mean, he is.

And that's because of the— yeah, we think it's probably because of the inbreeding. So I think the worry is is, of course, if you have a disease that enters into the population, and when animals don't have a lot of genetic diversity and you only have 1,000 of them, it could be really devastating.

And what about the problem of kind of recessive disorders?

Yeah, other than those things, we haven't seen too much of that. The good news is over the past decade or so, when I started working in that park, there were 7 families of gorillas. That was in the early 2000s. Now there's 24 families of gorillas. Oh, really? Yes. They were living in kind of bigger groups, and those groups are fissioning. But what it means is that more males— 'cause, you know, there's a dominant male in each of those groups— more males are getting to breed. So you're sort of spreading out the genetics a little bit more than when you had them living in kind of these supergroups of 65 animals. Right.

And the other males in those groups aren't allowed to breed? They do.

They have to, like, sneak it in. Sneaky sneaky. Yeah, sneaky sneaky. And actually, what's really interesting— so, Canspy and Titus, another male that a movie was made out of, they remained dominant in their group, but for the last 8 years, He didn't actually sire offspring. Again, so, it went Pablo to Kanspy, Kanspy to Giturasi, and that's kind of where the modern-day story starts. In this movie, Giturasi's the dominant male. And he was siring all the offspring for the last 5, 6, 7 years of Kanspy's life. But Kanspy was totally still dominant, the elder statesman, was very well respected. The females really bonded around him. I think one of the things this movie shows and we see is that we think a lot about the males in gorillas 'cause they have all that size and strength, But alliances, and particularly who the females like, and who they follow, and who they support, plays a much bigger role in gorilla society than I think we initially realized 40 years ago. Wow. Interesting. It's about the ladies.

Beautifully documented in this. So, yeah, we meet— Pronounce his name again. It's so hard for me.

Gichurasi. Gichurasi. I know. And these are actually the easy Kenyirwanda names. Some of them are like 27 letters long. We were really lucky. All the main characters had relatively easy names in this film. I was so happy. Okay, so when we start the doc, Gichurasi is—

is the silverback of this group. And there are how many members? 18. 18. So it's pretty good size.

It's good size, but think about it, went from 65 all the way down to 18. I think the smallest it ever was was 17. It's still almost twice a normal gorilla family, but it's much smaller than what we were used to.

Okay, so, and then we meet Abuzu and Monica. Abuzu, immediately you're like, oh shit, he is a male that's coming into his size, and he is at a phase where he's gonna make a run for it. And it's just so obvious for a long time before it happens. The look on his face at all times is mad doggy. He's mad dogging everybody he looks at. He looks so angry and grumpy. I don't know what's going on biochemically with him. He's probably peak testosterone. Exactly.

He's an 18-year-old male, so he's just got hormones going everywhere. And when's it going to be my chance?

And now what's really heartbreaking is there's another male. And how old is—

Mphora was probably around 13 when we started filming.

Okay, so 5 years younger, still a big male, but not as big big as M'Buzu. And M'Buzu, to show his strength and prowess, starts bullying. I hate him. By the way, you watched Chim Empire. Yeah. Remember the whole arc of you hate that dominant male, and then you realize, like, oh, he's so lonely.

I know, but I still—

and then he's— everyone wants to kill him, and then he's got to go first in the battle. You start going like, no, that's a shit job. I know it's a shit job. It's a shit job. Yes. The adolescents are having fun, the ladies are having fun.

He doesn't have to take that job.

He has to, or he won't reproduce.

He's too exciting to take that job.

I think Pablo was like, "Hey, man, I'm gonna let Canspy take a lot of the stress. I'm gonna support him and be around and reap all the benefits, but maybe take a little bit of pressure off." Pablo's leading with charisma.

Like a human, you can see charisma in Pablo's face.

There's a line in the movie that's like, "Gorilla males don't lead by strength alone." And that is so true. Obviously, you need to have a certain size and strength. And part of the reason that Abuzu was able to take over was that Gitirasi was like, was sick. And so he had a few days where he wasn't well. He was kind of staying behind the group. And those males are smart, right? And Mbuza saw that, and he went in and took advantage of that.

What do they do? It's gnarly. And again, back to Mfuru— Mfura. Mfura. Mfura. Good luck, Dax. Uh, Mfura. Again, he's taken a couple from Mbuza before Mbuza challenges Gichirati. So So, his whole bottom of his chin is just sliced open. The full top of his head where you can see his skull is just wide open from the incisors. So, it's just these two 400-pound gorillas just kind of wrestling, but there's tons of biting going on. And they captured it.

That was the crazy thing. So, just as a funny aside, when we first got on the call with these folks— So, the director was the director of Chimp Empire.

That footage is— That's come out since you and I spoke.

Yes, it has. And I don't know if you saw, but like 2 days ago—

There's a big war going on. Yeah, that's the war.

Oh, it is. 8 years.

8 years this war. 300 chimps are fighting. There's already 20 dead, I think.

Yeah. It's been an 8-year war. It's crazy. But so they had filmed chimps. The executive producer had worked on Disney Nature and filmed Chimpanzee movie. And so it was very funny because one of the first things they said to us, and you have to imagine this in a lovely British accent, which I'll pretend to do, but I can't really do. "Tora, do gorillas actually do enough to make an entire film about them?" Veronica and I are on the phone and we're like, "What? How can you say that to gorilla people?" Like, that's so insulting. Yeah. But you're kind of right. They are like big cows in a way, right? Like, they eat, they sleep. So they show up to film, and literally within, like, 2 days of filming, this dominant shift starts to happen.

Wow. Do you think these guys are starting it? What's his name? Reed, the director? James Reed. That's a good question. Yeah. So he's pretty lucky. He shows up with the chimps, and now we see this 100-on-100 troop fight. But they say this vision that's happening—

I was just reading about it this morning. This fission that's happening in the chimps, when a community fully splits, they think is about a 1 in every 500-year event. No! That's when they look at the genetics. What?! It's crazy.

Are they documenting that? Yes.

I think they kind of came in sort of in the middle of it. I don't know when they filmed Chimp Empire exactly, but it was already going on when they started filming.

There had been the split, and it was gaining momentum. But it was a smaller group, and then they were starting to challenge the main group. What's crazy to me about that is that—

so the way that chimps live, they have what they call a community. And the whole community is like, is sort of never together. So, they all associate in this community, but today I'm hanging out with you, tomorrow you're with Kristen, and I'm with Dax, and then the next day, all four of us are hanging out. And then eventually, this community split, and now the western side is coming back to kill their former community members. Oh my God! Why? And this had only been documented once before with Jane Goodall, but at the time with Jane Goodall, she had provisioned the chimps so that they would get used to her. So, she had kind of, like, put bananas out so that they would get used to her presence. And so, there was a lot of criticism. Oh, you know, you caused all this aggression by putting this high-value resource in the middle. Yeah. So there was some skepticism about whether this was, like, really natural. Natural. But this is completely natural.

Why? Just no one knows?

Like humans.

No one really knows, yeah. What's really interesting and cool about gorillas is we've been able to show that it's not like that at all. So we have families that fission, and when they come back together, they can be aggressive, particularly, like, if they're in their most prized part of their range. But for the most part, they'll come together, they'll play, they'll interact with each other. And this can be 10 years after a split. So a lot of the composition has changed. And so I think chimps are really interesting for looking at more of the warfare side of humans, and gorillas may be more for this kind of multi-level society where you can maintain relationships even if it's not in your core family group that you're with on a day-to-day basis.

We could also get into— there's a lot of explanations for that. A, the groups are much, much bigger for chimps, right? They're like 100-member groups. They have a much different mating strategy, right, where all the males are competing with each other. —hence the enormous testicles we talked about last time.

And she said, "You can't even find a gorilla's testicles." If we don't see the genitalia of a baby gorilla right after it's born because they're so fuzzy, we generally oftentimes don't know until they reach 10 or 11 if it's a male. Because males and females are the same exact size in gorillas until 8, and then their growth charts really diverge. Wow. So we have had these females that were really interested in mating when they were, like, 11, 12, and then suddenly we're like, "Oh, 'cause they're not females." Wow! They're males. So— That's how difficult it is.

They also go through one of the biggest growths from birth, right? So they're born at 4 pounds and become 450. That'd be like humans becoming 800 pounds.

It's crazy. Oh my God.

So yeah, the gorillas showed up. We were worried, are they going to do a lot? And I think at the time they thought they might use a lot of archival footage and then intersperse it with the modern day. And then they got so much. I mean, it's the most that gorillas have ever been filmed. I think they had 250 filming days. But Rwanda is really strict about time spent with the gorillas to protect the gorillas. So that 250 days was 1 hour a day. At a time. Oh my God. Yeah, 1 hour at a time. So to be there and be lucky enough to get these moments on film is just crazy. Wow. Almost impossible. Yeah. And these gorillas, the filmmakers don't stay in the forest. So they're in and out. They have one of the highest elevation ranges. So they're climbing 3,000 to 4,000 feet a day with their equipment to get to the gorillas, filming them coming back out.

So back to this story. So Mbuza has really bullied Mfura a bunch of times, and it's really, really sad. And as he's gets bullied more. He starts getting excluded more from the group. He had this one booby little infant— I don't know, infant. Yeah, he was 2.

He was infant—

was his buddy. And they played, and he was playing, and the mom came over and basically looked at him. He's like, you can't play with the baby anymore. And he knew. No, this is horrible. It's horrible. It's so heartbreaking. And then he is intermittently in and out. He's on the fringe, and then he'll wander. There's a year of him just being in this kind of purgatory of he's not really the group, but he's still trying to check in with the group. And in that time, Ubuzyu does attack— Gichurasi. Gichurasi. Mm-hmm.

When he was sick, as you said.

When he was sick, yeah. And at first, the females still really align with Gichurasi.

They follow him. He loses the fight.

Gichurasi loses the fight.

Yes, Gichurasi loses the fight.

Even despite the fact that he lost the fight, the females stay— Teta? Teta. She stays, and she's kind of the leader of the females. She stays very aligned with him.

Okay, wow.

And so, he can keep his dominance. I think these females are really smart. Really smart. They need these males to protect their infants because they are susceptible generally from males from other families that will come in and target their babies. So Gitirasi's health was not great, and they probably could see the writing on the wall, and so they did transfer allegiance to Abuzu. But Gitirasi stayed in the group. Oh, okay. And did sort of what Pablo had done, stayed in the group and helped support the group and keep that group together.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. We are supported by Allstate. Checking Allstate first could save you hundreds on car insurance. That's smart. Not checking the pockets of your jeans before doing laundry? Classic oversight. That mystery clunking in the dryer? Yeah, that was your lip balm's final moments. And somehow there's always one random receipt in there to dissolve into confetti. Yeah, checking first is smart. So check Allstate first for a quote that could save you hundreds. You're in good hands with Allstate. Potential savings vary subject to terms, conditions, and availability. Allstate North America Insurance Co. and Affiliates, Northbrook, Illinois. And what's kind of interesting too, Monica, is Abuzu goes from this scowl and he's so menacing looking. And it's funny because once he has the title, I don't know, unless I'm imagining or projecting, he can relax and he's now more playful with some of the infants. And his just whole demeanor changes. He doesn't seem to be bullying anyone else.

What about that other guy?

Well, this is what the craziest moment is. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And I got to ask you, okay, so Ubuzu finally reproduces, but he reproduces with a very important female. And this is to answer your question from 10 minutes ago. So explain what happened with her. Iyangé. Iyangé.

So what's interesting, I thought of you because she is a female that moved into the Pablo family. Family. So males can't move between families, but females can. So she moved into Pablo's family from the Sousa group, which is the group that you saw when you went to Rwanda. Oh, why? Yeah, have you met her? I met her. She probably wasn't bored. She was young. She had a bride. Females will usually leave their family around 9. She left at 6. Oh my God, which is pretty young. And it's oftentimes hard. It's a little bit like human society, like when a new female comes in, they get a a little bit bullied by the other females because it's kind of competition. The males want to pay a lot of attention to them, etc.

Yeah. Well, also just something new. Yeah, something new. Oh boy.

But she gets pregnant and she has a baby, and that automatically elevates your status because everyone wants to be around the baby.

They love babies. They love babies. It's so cute. But it's all documented, her coming in, and it's scary.

They just walk over. How are they doing this without words?

I don't understand. She just— starts kind of being at a distance, then closing that gap, and then she can figure out and delineate that it's Teta that is the alpha. So slowly she works her way over to her, and then Teta lets her play with one of her babies, and she's like, okay, I'm solid. Then Mbuzu is now the champ, and she gets into estrus, so they have a little baby. And again, now she's in the group.

She's in the group.

Okay, I have so many questions about your theories on this. So Then the bullied one, Mphura, comes. Well, we don't know this yet. What we know is her baby's killed.

And it is what happens when you exclude people.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Do bad stuff. Yes. But here's what's crazy, and I wanted to know. Uh, Boozoo was out mating with a woman.

He was distracted.

Okay, I got cheating.

Okay, there's like— I got 9 things right in this little section. One is Chimp males are trying to blast all day long. Hey, there's a leopard over there. You know, they're constantly— because they're competing. But now, interestingly, because Mbuzu has all access and there's 9 of them and 1 of him, he seems pretty disinterested. The female who's in estrus is like, she's got some leaves. She's like, check out my leaves. And she's doing all this stuff, and he's literally staring at her. And finally, like, all right. And I'm like, That's already upside down from the chimps. Do you find that those males are disinterested in sex more than other animals?

The females put on a show, like they come and they strut and they have like their sexy face. They do.

And the males are like, okay, fine. They're walking bipedally.

Well, you said because it elevates their status to have a baby. To have a baby. So that makes sense. And also if their penises are too tiny.

So he's off doing that, and then Mfuro comes and kills this baby. We don't know it, but everyone in the group knows that the baby's been killed. All the females are gathered around, they're mourning it. And you can see that Mbuzu, he knows he fucked up. Yeah. And he could lose the confidence.

They do. The thing about mountain gorillas, of the 4 types of gorillas, they're really the only ones that live in these multi-male groups. So if you look at the other 3 types, they generally just have 1 adult male. Because they live in this forest with tons of food, their social structure is different, but I don't think, like, it's caught up with them evolutionarily. So there's not supposed to be all these males living together. And so they haven't quite figured it out yet. The dominant male normally does most of the siring, but younger males can do it. And I think we talked about this last time, that they have this vocalization they do when they copulate. And these younger males will sneak off with the females, and they're hidden in the bushes, but they still make this vocalization. Like, they can't not make it.

00:33:55

Oh, yeah. We all understand that.

00:33:57

And the dominant male's like, "Oh, wait. What's happening?" [Speaker:MICHAEL] And you're gonna get smacked for that.

00:34:01

Yeah. [Speaker:MICHAEL] Even if it happens.

—like, they're not trying to let that happen, right? No, unless it's really young females, they generally will. 'Cause a lot of times, those females might have been their daughter, number one, the dominant male's daughter. Or the females go through this period of adolescent sterility where they're copulating, but they don't actually get pregnant. Oh. And so, one strategy a dominant male could have would be to let these younger guys practice when it's not really any cost to him. Because some males will stay in the group they're born in their whole life. And that's when you get the Pablo Canspy situation. And those groups fare really well. —because if the dominant male dies, you've got someone right there to keep the group together. Other males strike out on their own. And we found that what decides whether or not a male will stay is number one, does he get to practice copulating? Okay. So having that opportunity to practice is important, even if he's not necessarily making babies. And number two, what I think is really interesting is if his mom is still in the group. Aww. So even these 400-pound males, they don't, like, hang out with their moms, but their moms are probably a social lubricant for them.

Interesting. Access to the dominant male. So, if you don't have your mom, and you're not getting to practice, you're much more likely to say, "Well, I'm just gonna strike out on my own and see if I can attract some females to join me from another family." And this would be Mfora.

Mfora, yeah. Okay, so what's wild in this part, I don't know, there's some kind of dissonance between how smart they are and the fact that they don't have language. So, the baby's dead. What you can also see, Monica, if you look closely, they don't call it out, but she clearly fought to save the baby 'cause she's injured. And she still has the baby.

And she still has the baby. And they will hold those babies for long periods of time, like weeks.

Too long. Oh my God. And so everyone knows this has happened, and Boo-Zoo's like, "I fucked up. I could lose my group." But she can't tell them who did it. It's so crazy. It's like they're so smart, and they're reading such nuanced— Can't they just go up to them like— Yeah, they're reading these incredibly nuanced moments perfectly. You can tell they're comprehending it. At all, and they don't have at least a hand sign for each other. So she can't tell. So no one knows. And then Mfura shows himself, and the look on her face, they all see and they know instantly it was him. Immediately, Abuzu goes in and attacks him. Now, here's the crazy thing, and I'm curious. The second Gichurasi I see he runs in and joins. And as he's running in to join, I yell to my kids like, oh my God, who's he gonna help? Yeah, because he was just overthrown. Yeah, like a chimp might have helped the other, right? So what would be your expectation in that situation? Is that all shocking or does that make total sense?

It makes sense to me that he would go for Ubuzu and help Ubuzu because Ubuzu is now the established leader and Mphura is in this troublesome— he's had bad behavior. Yeah, so he's better off aligning himself. The females have already aligned themselves with Abu Zu, he's going to be much better off on the right side of history.

Yeah, but again, he's reading that scenario, and Mfuru is now big. He's not the undersized version he was. So now it's like, it's a dangerous situation.

He's old, and it's like starting over with this new guy. Like, that doesn't make sense.

Yeah, all to say, they obviously kill him. They don't. And I don't know how he didn't die in that situation.

Yeah, no, they didn't kill him, but basically it sort of pushed him, said, we don't really want you "and the group." And then went so far as to—

In the past, they would let him just leave, and this time, they led a mission to chase him clear out of there.

When the researchers are watching this, or obviously, the filmmakers are selfish and in it for themselves. Is anyone like, "We need to step in"?

I mean, I know you can't, but like— It's so hard. Yeah! It's so, so hard. I was thinking about that with this chimp situation as well. I always think you could probably take our discussion and put people names on it, and it could be a human story, right? Like, all the intrigue and the drama— Yes, 100%. And she did this and he did that. And then to have to sit and watch this happen, it's really, really difficult. You're trying to be the impassioned observer. Dispassionate. Dispassionate observer. And it's really hard. But, you know, you want the best genes to survive. That's gonna be the best thing for the species in the long run. So we're just there to watch.

But it's tough. Yeah, because again, anthropologists have learned the hard way numerous times when they have intervened, they have often caused far more collateral damage than they initially intended.

But it's like you're seeing a little baby get killed.

I know.

I know.

It'd be so hard not to just be like, "Something's wrong with that one." Well, and let me tell you the follow-up to this now. So, the filming stopped 2 years ago. And in that time, Gitirasi has, we assume, died. So, he disappeared. We searched for him for months but couldn't find him. Oh, man. So, yeah. So, he's now left the group. The good news is there are 2 younger boys that are coming up, one who's the brother of Ubu Zu, that will hopefully continue to support him. But there was another infant death right at the end of filming that we weren't able to capture. We weren't sure what had happened, but the thought was that Mphura had killed that infant. [GASP] He's killed 4 infants in total. He keeps coming back and then killing them and leaving?

Yeah.

Infanticide is a pretty common reproductive strategy in gorillas, but it's always directed towards infants that are not in your family. Right. We've only had 2 other instances in 60 years years where an infant was killed by a male within its own group. Two? Two in 60 years. Oh my God. So, for this guy to kill 4 kids— And there were other infants that were born in the group that he didn't kill, and they were born to his aunts. So, that's really interesting as well.

Okay, great. So, I have several questions about what we think Mfuru's motivation is. For me, right away, I thought it was interesting that the first infant he killed killed was twofold. I could see motivation. One is it's Mbusu's offspring who just kicked him out. And then secondly, I know this is probably too much human projection, but it's an offspring of an outsider who has been accepted by the group, and he was an insider that had been thrown out. And it's just not hard to imagine that he hated her. And M'Buzu. And I'm just wondering, do we play armchair psychologist with them? What do you think is going on? What's your best guess?

My best guess is that when these females move into a family group, like I was saying earlier, it's a tentative time for them because they're not, like, fully integrated. And what we will see, and actually what Mfora tried to do later on after the movie finished, was the young males view that as their moment. Like, "Okay, before these females settle in, let me kind of herd them off and form my own group with them." So, I wonder if there was a little bit there was a piece of him that was like, hey, if her infant— because when a female has a baby, she is not interested in a male for another 4 years because she's busy taking care of that baby. She doesn't cycle, etc. So she's kind of off limits to him now. But if he kills that baby, and maybe she'll be like, hey, I'm not so safe in this group, my infant wasn't safe in this group, I'm gonna go off with this male. So it may have been trying to increase his chances to take her and form his own group, because we did have 2 females transfer in. He did successfully kind of take them off.

But I think they realized, we don't really want to be with you, and they came back. So now we don't— now we haven't seen him in a bit. We don't know where he is. We're very happy for the moment because we have young babies in there and we want them all to be safe. Cuz Pablo's group, since filming started, so about the last 4 years, has had 8 babies and only 3 have survived. So 4 were killed, one was a stillborn, and 3 have survived. So we don't like those numbers. Usually about 75% of kids survive, and this is what, about 30%? We want to see that group kind of stay stabilize.

Okay, now I don't know if this is counterproductive or sacrilegious, but I do want to get into the weird overlap. I do think it's fascinating how similar they are to us in many respects. And I have to say, with Mfuru— I'm never going to say it right—

that's why he kills. Yeah, they gave him—

what else was he gonna do? Again, since his behavior now doesn't follow a mating strategy, we would have to just say it's kind of like a mental pathology, what's happening with him. And I cannot help but see the parallel between the kid that's just completely bullied into oblivion and shows up at the school.

I've been thinking that this whole time. It's funny, 'cause coming in, I'm like, "Okay, what kind of questions is Dax gonna ask me?" Right? 'Cause I remember hearing when you talk about Chimp Empire a lot when it was on, and I told James Reid, I was like, "James, you should go on the show and talk," 'cause I know that he really has enjoyed Chimp Empire. Vampire. It's interesting 'cause we've had one other male that had a similar type of situation. He actually killed 4 adult males. Whoa! So, he figured— 'Cause normally males can die in fights, but usually they're not killed. They get injured, and then they get an infection, and they die from that, but they're not killed outright. But this male figured out kind of how to go for the jugular. Ah, literally. And so these males would bleed out very, very quickly. Ooh. And what's interesting in thinking about both of them them is they both had some significant childhood trauma. [Speaker:SHANNON] Yeah. [Speaker:KARA] So, Uranesa, who was the male who killed a bunch of other males, he was actually with Pablo when Pablo was badly, badly wounded in a fight and died from that fight.

So, he was kind of Pablo's right-hand man. So, he saw Pablo get very badly wounded and die. Mphora was caught in a snare, which can be very, very traumatic. When he was quite young, he was caught in a snare. His mom lived, but his mom died when he was about 12, but she— he had a much younger brother who was 3 and a half, who then he had to take care of. Had to raise. So I think it's interesting, like, what could early life experiences— what role might that play? Now lots of gorillas have had bad early life experiences, and they're just fine. Yes. But we're actually doing a big study right now where we're comparing the gorillas with the Gombe chimps from Jane Goodall, and then another population of chimps that are in the same forest as the Ngogo chimps, but it's in a different area. They're called the Kinyarwara chimps. And we're really interested in looking at early life adversity and what that means for later life outcomes. Because the gorillas amazingly seem to be much more buffered when something happens to them early on, probably because they have this really tight community that the chimps don't have.

And I feel like you see that a lot in Chimp Empire. I'm rewatching it, I'm like, "God, these guys feel so alone." [Speaker:LATIF] Oh, they're so alone. [Speaker:LULU] Whereas the gorillas are just with each other all the time. They're a cohesive unit. They stay together. And we were able to show that if a young gorilla loses its mom, it actually spends more time near other gorillas because everyone kind of comes and buffers them. And I've thought about this a lot with my daughters having lost a parent. Yeah. And what is the community you need to build around them to give them that social buffering that hopefully will help?

This was in your TED Talk. Give the statistics. There's some fascinating statistics. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So if a male chimp loses its mom even up to the age of 15— so they're weaned at 5, so they're nutritionally completely independent. If they lose their mom up to the age of 15, they have shorter shorter life expectancy than a chimp that doesn't lose its mom. And we don't see this with gorillas. And in fact, some of our most successful gorillas— Pablo lost his mom when he was 4.

But he had been taken on by Beethoven. Right.

And Titus had lost his mom. He lost his whole family. They were decimated by poachers. And he went on to become an incredibly successful male. And I think in part they get adopted by the silverback. So now you've got the number one guy in the group who's making sure You have prime access to food. He'll sleep with them at night. And then the whole group supports you. So, this social bonding that happens in gorilla families, which is really interesting. It's so interesting.

So, Mfura's bullying's not unique? I mean, maybe just 'cause I saw it, it was captured on camera, it seemed— But is that just standard? Should he have not reacted?

No, I mean, when we've looked at it, it's very rare for males to be kind of forced out of the group. Usually, they kind of choose to leave on their own, but they will get aggression directed at them. And maybe he was being inappropriate in other ways. I think Mbuzu was probably also just in a heightened state of arousal. Just taken over from Giturasi, he's trying to make sure everyone knows he's dominant. This male is kind of on his coattails, and so just putting him in his place, right? And there may have been other things going on that we didn't capture that happened, you know, when we're not with the gorillas, but my guess is it was a bit of that. And maybe Nforo was trying to take advantage of the situation and the uncertainty because one of the things that was really clear to us in watching watching it, the group did not expect Boo-Zoo to take over. Like, when that first fight happened, you can see they're all kind of like, "Wait, what's going on?" Because I think Itjirassi was about 28, so he wasn't past his prime. Kanspi lived to be 38.

But he had been sick, so it was a bit of a shock. He sort of came in hot, so it took a little while. The group was unsettled, and so maybe Mfuru was taking advantage of that a little bit.

I was shocked how close the females were getting to them as they were fighting. And again, you don't see that in chimps. Everyone's smart enough to get out of there. Everyone gets involved. So, yeah, that told me that either those fights aren't as dangerous. There's some clue there that they were that close and engaged.

Yeah. No, the females often will. In one of them, I think it's Teta. You can see she's like biting. I don't remember if it was Mphura or Ubuzu, but she's in there right in the mix, biting. Like, break it up or like—

No, like joining the side.

Joining the side.

Oh, protecting at that time. Yeah. Okay, so back to the parallel with the kid at school. Yeah. It's interesting to see.

And between the chimpanzee Fire in this movie, one of the huge, to me, takeaway messages is the value of these long-term studies. We don't have that many of them. But Ngogo was a wonderful, peaceful chimp community for 20 years before this started happening. And then all of a sudden, they had a few members die that were kind of the connectors between these two neighborhoods. And then, you know, they just gradually over time got to the point where now they're going and systematically trying to eliminate the other population. You could have gone in for 20 years 20 years and never would have thought that would have happened. The same with the gorillas. Like, when Diane was first there, there was a lot of poaching of gorillas. So there was a lot of infanticide because when a male would get poached, that would give another male an opportunity to come in. 40% of deaths were infanticide. Then when poaching was eliminated, it was really stable, and for 15 years we didn't have a single case of infanticide. If you were a researcher that came in at that point in time, you would say, "Oh, gorillas don't commit infanticide." Wow.

It's not a reproductive strategy. Now we're seeing it again, but now it's much more natural. It's not caused by poaching. It's just the gorillas figuring out how they're gonna sort themselves out. It's these long windows of time that show us how complicated their society is. 'Cause if you went in for a shorter window of time, you might make assumptions just because whatever the ecological conditions were back then, they didn't need to fight. They could spread out, whatever. And then those ecological conditions change or something changes, and we see this whole other side of them that we hadn't looked at.

Observed before, right? Well, it's interesting. It kind of goes into just studying things, which is like you're there for a short window. Context isn't even what you're looking at, right? You're looking at the subject and not even recognizing, oh, the context is absolutely determining what the subject's doing. And we have no idea how different or similar this context is to 5 years ago or 10 years ago. Exactly, 100%. I wonder, does that bleed into how you look at us? Because I feel like I sometimes have a view of things that borders on sociopathic from my friends. And now let's talk about young males, men. It's like you're telling me we're gonna look at all the other primates, and you especially look at the great apes, and we see just how they act and what their role is and what they have to do, and all this chemistry they have to help them be aggressive in the moment they have to be, or take chances, or be daredevils to establish this, that we would have been excluded from that? Or because we're living in a civilization for 3,000 out of our 300,000 years, somehow you think we all just— our chemistry changed?

When you look at us, what What do you think?

That's a great question. I do think about it a lot. Like, I like to kind of sit back and just sort of observe people. And I think about it a lot when I get on planes. Here you are getting on a plane with 400 people you don't know. You're sitting like this. You're putting your life in someone else's hands. And we do it all the time. That is what I think is amazing about human society, 'cause that could never happen with gorillas. It could never happen with— Yeah, 100 strangers. Yeah, chimps. Never happen with chimps.

Yeah, we're not the same. I think sometimes you can look at it as like, we are animals. Animals. Well, we are— we come from animals, but we're humans. We're not the exact same.

We're not. And we have all kinds of tools in our culture to overcome our deficits that no longer serve us. But the point is, I don't say, hey, you gotta acknowledge boys are this real thing to excuse it. I say, hey, they have an uphill battle that's gonna go wrong if we don't have a great game plan, because they've inherited 65 million years of primate evolution, 6 million years of ape evolution, 3 million million years of hominid evolution. It didn't go away 3,000 years ago. That's a reality. So it's like, I'm not saying boys should be able to act any way they want because they were designed to be this way, but I'm saying we need a fucking game plan for them, whether it's sports or it's this or it's that. They're built to do this thing, and if we just think it evaporated because we have silverware, it's very naive, and we need a game plan.

Well, it's funny because Rob and I were just talking before you guys came in, and he was saying he has two boys, and I was just on Spring break with friends of mine that have young men, and it's just so interesting. They're so different. They are always moving. They're always active. They're always eating. It's so completely different than having girls. And I think that's some of the points that Scott Galloway has made. And I know he's been on your show. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What is the— Outlet? Yeah. Especially now, as more and more people are interacting more with screens and not with people, how are the older men in our society going to step up and be mentors to these younger men and help teach them the societal rules and norms that it's very easy now for you get lost in a virtual world or an online world that takes you down a different path.

Yes. Or I'm reading a book right now for a guest we have on Wednesday, and it's about this kid who goes astray in London, and he's got classmates that are sons of oligarchs in London, so they have great wealth, and he becomes obsessed with wealth. And these boys that are obsessed with the manosphere— like, what you're seeing in the simplest way is young males think they've found a way to have females. I mean, it's really It's really that simple at its core is, oh, that's a strategy. I see the video and there's a bunch of beautiful girls around this guy and he's got muscles and a Ferrari. That's the thing. Or this guy's at the nightclub. It's still about mates. It's never not going to be about mates.

It's also about, they say it in that doc, like money. So much of it is about money.

But what's the point of the money when you're 15, 16, 17? It's really all to have the girl in the bikini next to you. Like it is the currency currently. Been great meat. So I have meat to share with the group, and I'm going to elevate my status and gain access reproductively. There's always been things, or I'm going to protect everyone, and that's going to be my route. In an absence of these things that have gone away, now it's like, I don't know, if you're a young male, what is it? I guess it's money, or I guess it's a car, or I guess it's this or it's that. And we can't just go, no, you gotta not be that way. We have to have a solution for how they're supposed to get mates. That's not that disgusting thing none of us want.

Yeah, yeah. Probably calling them like bitches and sluts is like not the way. They're giving them horrible advice.

They're giving them horrible advice. And it's a two-way street. They are with women. So that's a reality. Like, you might dismiss those women that have chosen to be around those guys, but the 13-year-old boy doesn't know that you think those women have low priorities. He's seeing them with women. What do we do about that? That's the two-way street of it all.

But they're degrading dating them. They're like, I would never actually date someone like that, or if you were my daughter, I would disown you.

These are the things— Monica, it's disgusting. So no pushback. Yeah, it's just like, what's the solution? To say that those boys need to just be at 13 years old elevated and have our consciousness, that's not a solution.

But it's like, which alphas are they looking up to is the solution. Showing which alpha to look up to is the solution. And women do play a part in that.

Yeah, that's why I think it's not a good approach to put it all on one side. It's like, I think we have a collective issue. How do I make sure my daughter's not attracted to a guy who says she's a bitch and drives a Ferrari? That's part of this equation. For sure.

One thing though, with the movie, Dax, that I wanted to ask you about is, well, first of all, what was it like to watch with your daughters? What did they think? And then one of the worries that we had when the movie started was the behaviors we saw were so un-gorilla-like in a way. Like, they do have these dominance shifts. We We've seen 4 or 5 of them in 60 years. Pretty rare. It's usually pretty peaceful. Usually a male dies and the next one takes over. This infanticide was really rare. And so, a concern of mine at the start was, "Oh, you know, is the movie gonna go in the direction of showing this violent side and sort of portraying gorillas as chimps?" Which they really aren't. And I was really happy. I thought that the filmmakers did an amazing job.

You're afraid of making Jaws. Yeah, yeah. And making everyone afraid of these animals and not sympathetic.

Or maybe even a little bit of the Roe v. Wade went out, which is, "Uh-oh, gorillas are angry and kill and want power." And when most of the time, they don't. They don't.

And I think the takeaway should be the context, the context, the context. Yeah, we're all capable of good and bad. And when you control this other thing, you see this emerge. And when this happens, you see this emerge. So we can't control the behavior once it's emerging. We have to control the context before it emerges. It's just no— that's not the strategy, is in the middle of the, you know, Right. That's a great question. I don't know of someone who this is their very first exposure to gorillas. I think that would be hard to imagine. No one's not watched the many peaceful versions we've seen of the gorillas. But yeah, this is the singular thing they witness. I still think your scene of the whole movie— they're filming for 6 years.

They filmed for 2. Oh, okay.

6 years from— yeah. Okay, so they're filming for 2 years, and they have about 90 seconds of footage of fighting.

Yeah, yeah. No, it's true.

In reality. And then they and they have an hour and 58 minutes and 30 seconds of rolling around and hugging and grooming and caring for each other. So I guess you'll take whatever you want. Young boys will watch that. I'm a man and I'm watching it, and of course I'm going to be projecting onto that male. I'm like, yeah, that's what I would have to do, and I would do it. And I have tried to do it my whole life, and I want a family, and I will do whatever whatever that takes. So if it's jump things or protect them or whatever. So yeah, I'm watching it having this experience, and then my daughters and my wife are watching it going like, oh my God, these poor women have to deal with these men. Of course. But again, this is how this thing works. You could hate it or love it, but it is how it kind of works. So it's so well done. And again, we must be suspicious of Reed. I don't know how he's capturing— because they're so similar to us, you cannot help but to project onto them and to feel like you're watching a reality show of humans.

There's so many cute moments with the silverbacks, these big, huge males, holding these little infants, playing with them, they're sliding down their backs. And I was just thinking, like, as a dad watching it with your kids, to see that those interactions exist in gorilla society just like they exist in ours. I will say, I feel like the gorilla males, they are beloved. They are the center of attention. When it's resting time, everyone's resting around them. The moms leave their kids with them and go and go off and feed, and the males babysit. I do feel, because there's not as much intragroup competition, that for male gorillas, it's still a stressful lifestyle, but watching chimps is just, to me, it's like watching aliens. They're always making noise, yelling, screaming, running around. The gorillas, those screams you heard, that's like all you ever hear from gorillas. That's it, when there's a fight. Other than that, they're quiet. They just sort of grunt to each other, "I'm over here, I'm over here." [Speaker:MICHAEL] If we look at humans too, it speaks to resources a lot.

Yeah. The chimps might have to walk 3 miles to go to the tree that's in bloom. These gorillas eat everything around them at all times. They're never not eating. They're just moving 5 feet and eating more, and then moving 5 feet, then they take their nap, they wake up, they're right next to the food. So I think that's applicable to us. It's like when there's great resources and people aren't fighting over finite resources, you see a different side of animals.

You know, the other thing, Dax, I thought you would find fascinating about those Ngogo chimps is that they are incredible hunters. Hunters. I think it's the one example other than humans of one primate hunting another species into decline. So the red colobus monkeys there have declined by 90%, primarily because these— they're more efficient hunters. They're, like, on the level of wild dogs in terms of how well they hunt and coordination and everything. Because gorillas are vegetarians. Occasionally they eat an ant. You saw them eat ants. They don't even know how to eat them right.

That's the comedic portion of the film. I know.

I'm like, I'm like, can you just get a stick? Yeah, they suck.

They can't use tools. What are they doing? They're so elevated in this domain, and then over here it's like they're clumsily slamming their fist into this hole with a ton of these super biting ants.

Like, it really hurts when they bite you.

Yeah, it was not colonizer ants, it was something crazy. Yeah, whatever. Yeah, huge pinchers. And they're like, oh shit. And then they're trying to kill them so they can then pick them up and eat them.

I'm like, just go get a stick. Yeah, like a chicken stick. Eat it the proper way so we can publish that and everyone will love them because They are good tool users in captivity, but they don't need to out there. When you live in a huge salad bowl, there's not much you need tools for, so they just don't do it. The chimp people make fun of them all the time for being stupid, 'cause they all use tools.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. And they learned sign language. They've been taught sign language. Yeah, Koko, yep.

Is she our only example? I mean, I think she was the only one that it was done with. I don't think there were others that were in the sign language program, but yeah, she did.

You remember famously, she knew her kitty was not anymore. She signed that her kitty was dead. Koko had a kitty.

A kitty like a cat? A cat.

She had a cat. Oh, and it was hit by a car, and she understood that it was dead. She signed this unique sign.

They have pets?

No, this is the one that was raised in captivity and taught sign language.

Yeah, like she was kind of raised almost like a human child. Oh, wow. So it was a lot of studies in the '70s that were interested interested in seeing how much did apes really understand language, even though they can't verbally make language the way we can. How much do they understand it? Uh-huh.

Okay, I have a couple geeky questions. All right. In the doc, Attenborough says, and I'm paraphrasing, but he's talking about his first interaction with them in the '70s with Pablo and the others, saying, "Of all the animals, they see the world as we do, as humans do." And I read Ed Yong's great book where it talks about the Umwelt, that German word. And the Umwelt, for people who don't know, it's all of your senses taking in the outside world and constructing it into what's in your head. In your head, and that's your umwelt. And so some animals are seeing in infrared, and so that's their umwelt. So how much do we know about gorillas' umwelt? How do they see? How do they hear? How do they touch?

All very similar to us. I think their sense of smell, I don't know that anyone's tested it. I get the sense that their sense of smell is maybe it's still a little bit better than ours, but yeah, very visual. Similar eyesight. They see color. Yep. They're not like those birds that when we look at them, they're brown, and when they look at each other, they have like a huge red spot on their eye that we can't see. Which I think is so cool.

It's so cool. Okay, and then where are we at with tourism? Yeah.

Huge part of the conservation success story. So I think there's 13 different types of great apes when you look at species and subspecies, not including us. And they are all declining except for mountain gorillas. They're the only ones on the planet that are increasing in number. Now, at the species level, they're still critically endangered, which means that's one level before extinct in the wild. So very very much need support. But there's a lot of factors that have gone into that conservation success, but part of it is definitely tourism because that money helps fund the park and it also is shared with the human communities that live adjacent to the park. So they understand the value of— They're incentivized to keep them. For sure. The challenge with tourism is, you know, it needs to be done responsibly and well, particularly because these animals are super sensitive to the same illnesses that we have. So we have to make sure we're not bringing in anything to them, which is why each family is only visited for 1 hour a day. By a maximum of 8 people, and you're supposed to wear a mask when you're with them as well.

Well, that's new.

Yeah, that's new.

That's since COVID And you get up to where you can see them, and once they're seen, you have to stop. There's no more forward momentum. Now, if they come closer to you, that's fine. That's how it at least worked when we were there.

Yeah, I would say that more often than not, the rules are broken on getting too close to them. But it's not the people's fault. It's the gorilla's fault because a lot of times you can't move. You're stuck. And the guides are really good at telling you, like, don't move. Let them— they're just going to pass by. They'll only be here for a second because if you move or you startle them, that's when they might get a little bit nervous. I think they also like to put us in our place. Like, this is my forest. This big guy's here, but I'm the alpha. This is my forest.

I'm just going to let him know. I'm 2.5 times the size of you, my friend. I know you're big in your little world.

I will say I've never seen a tourist get pulled.

But you've heard that, right?

You've heard people say that. I mean, I'm sure some of our team members have that are with the gorillas more. And, you know, the males, when they display, They like to pick stuff up and throw it. If you're in the way, they might scoot you. But no, I take people to Rwanda all the time to see the gorillas. Never have had anyone get hurt. Bee stings are more likely what might bother them in the forest, or an ant bite, than the gorillas themselves. The guides are really good. They can read their behavior. Oh, they're next level. Yeah, and move you to the right spot. And the gorillas, they've seen people every day of their lives. So I think honestly, in their minds, they're like, okay, it's that hour where these weird ones that stand on their two feet instead of being, you know, on all four. These bald ones. Yeah, they're here for an hour. And they're gonna leave, and then we'll just go about our day. The kids are really interested a lot of times and wanna check you out. The males are like sleeping, and they'll turn their back on you, which to me is a sign they're very comfortable.

01:04:01

Yeah, yeah.

01:04:01

'Cause you don't turn your back on something that you're worried about. You wanna keep your eye on it. And you know, they'll be laying there, and then they'll just roll over and just continue sleeping. The one thing I will say about tourism is it's incredibly valuable, but it can't be our only solution for conservation because we saw it during the pandemic. People stopped traveling, or if there's an economic downturn, or if there's civil unrest. And so if all the money for conservation is being generated through one mechanism, whatever it is, tourism in this case, it's not sustainable. So we need a diversified approach to conservation if we want these kinds of animals to stay on the planet. I think that that's a really important part of it.

I remember learning that for almost all of them, baring your teeth's not good for each other. If like one chimp bares his teeth to another, that's kind of a threat. Is it the same in gorillas? Yeah. It feels like our interactions would be innately flawed 'cause when we're happy and friendly, were just like all teeth.

There's a lot of playing in the movie, and when they play, they pull their lips back and you can see their teeth really well. So I think it's not just the teeth, but it's all the other context that goes along with it. The same way we can make a scary face when we're showing our teeth, and you can just tell, is that person tense? Yeah. Like if they have a tense smile versus if they're really relaxed. The other thing that people talk about too is direct eye contact can be aggressive. And it can be, but they love to look at you. They like to come up and look. I always equate it to like when you're in an elevator. If you're in an elevator and someone's turns and looks at you, right? So you've got to know the context. If the gorillas are upset, you're going to look away, and that's a sign of respect, like I'm not challenging you. But otherwise, they're fine if you look at them. It's what's happening in the larger context.

Okay, my last question, and it's completely frivolous: did you watch Chimp Crazy?

I did not. I have a lot of friends that work in those areas trying to help chimps that are in situations like that, but I did not watch it as like a choice, because there's things I don't watch because I'm like, I refused to support that.

Was it that type of choice, or was it like, I have no interest in seeing this?

I know enough about that world to be like, I don't need to know anymore. Like, it's probably just gonna upset me.

Because I think if I were you, I might feel— and even I felt a little bit like— I felt this terrible "that's right" feeling. Like, yeah, you think they're this, and you're so naive, and you want a pet so bad. So part of me was fascinated in that way. Like, oh really, you think you can have a teenage fertile male chimp around you and that's gonna work out? Crazy. Oh, oh my Lord. Well, the documentary is incredible. I loved it. Watch it with the girls. I think everyone should watch with their family. It's great. And no, I don't think you'll walk away feeling like Jaws when the two 2-year-olds start wrestling. It looks like two stuffies came alive and started wrestling. I love that. It's true. They're so cute.

And I have to say too, I love the scenery of Rwanda. Like, it's so dramatic. I felt like that was a whole nother character just showing the mountains and what they look like, and that mist and the rain, and it's beautiful.

It's an Eden, for sure. When their babies are— are their teeth sharp? Was he in danger at all when the little baby was— No.

Um, that's a great question, Monica. I mean, I'm sure if the baby had bitten him, like, he could've broken skin. But when he might've been at risk is if he did something that, like, scared the baby, and the baby did a little vocalization. That it was nervous, and then you got mom, and maybe you got dad coming over to see what's going on.

So I'd probably just want to hang out with the little baby. Not if mom and dad are there.

It's really, I mean, they are like little fluffy.

I know, I really do want to touch one. But they're not soft.

Thank God.

Never mind, I don't want all the babies. They're not soft and cuddly.

It's more of a Brillo pad consistency. Okay, the movie is A Gorilla's Story told by David Attenborough. It is on Netflix. Netflix, and your team said Earth Day, April 22nd, but the internet says the 17th. The 17th. It's the 17th. Yeah. We've forgotten Earth Day. We don't need that tie-in. We don't need to cross-promote. Nah. Tara, it's so great to get to see you in person. It's so much more fun.

Thank you for having me back and letting me talk about my favorite subject for an hour and a half.

I love it. So fun. So interesting. All right. Be well.

We hope you enjoyed this episode. Unfortunately, they made some mistakes. We're recovering from something. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I'm recovering. Fully recovered.

Yeah, yeah. Um, Easter egg, maybe it will or will not make the final cut.

I— it will, cuz you want it to, and you want to.

I'm best to never see it, but I did insist on dancing in front of a guest. Yeah, which is of course real hard to to watch.

It was like— I don't know, what's the good— what's a good analogy?

It's like— well, you've probably never seen anything like it to compare it to.

To be clear, you danced to a song of this guest.

Yeah, because I love it so much.

You love it so much, and it is a great song. Oh, and, uh, you just had to do it. You broke the table in the middle of doing it, which I think is a sign of any great a great dance party is that a table gets broken.

Like, I was like, oh my God, now things are breaking.

Things are literally breaking down as we speak. Yeah, yeah. Um, in 8 years is the biggest swing I've taken for sure. Yeah. And I guess I just like want to know, you know, you're so different from me, you know. You like— sure, sure, sure. Like, you go— you know, you're acknowledging watching it. Like, this is— this is so weird. Weird. This is crazy. This is kind of inappropriate. Like, highly. Like, this— you're making this person watch you dance.

Yes, it's crazy. It could be super self-indulgent too. Exactly. Yes, it ran all these risks. I had the idea because I had been dancing to this person's song for a couple of hours today, and I had a fantasy that maybe they'd want to dance Dance with me to the song. And then so two things. It's like, I kind of want to do that, but I have to, I have to assess during the 2-hour interview whether this is going to be way too much for the person or not. So there was a really high likelihood I wasn't even going to ask. Okay. But I thought that their personality— you're like, maybe could handle it. Okay. And then they didn't want to dance with me. Yeah. And then I just felt like you can only believe so much when I tell you I like the song.

See, that's where we—

but if I'm willing to go to this super embarrassing level to demonstrate how I feel when I hear it, that would be like my most sure way of letting them know.

I think he knew, you know. I think he knew before you danced that he— that like it meant a lot to you, that you love it. And like, because you were pretty effusive just in the words you were using about how much you loved it, so it came through. Words are easy though, they're cheap.

No, they're not. Yeah.

And they came through. It came through.

But, you know, it was unnecessary is what you're saying. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. But then you did it and we got through it. I guess, you know, some— I'm embarrassed, but I'm also in awe because I just could never— like, I just— I just, like, could and would never do what you just did, you know? Right, right, right. So there's— there's like, wow, wow. Wow. He's so different from me. And it's cool. And it's cool. You really don't care. I care, but not enough.

I care, but not enough to overwhelm this other thing I think is pure that I want to do.

I know. I think it was the watching.

Yeah. Watching is rough. It's kind of like if someone— like, the worst would have been if I looked at you guys in the eyes while it was happening, which I never did. Oh my God. Okay, moving on. Transitioning. That was that. I just think we needed to, like, because it was 1 second ago. I haven't even caught my breath.

Holy—

it was quite a workout.

Yeah, I mean, that's the thing, like, when someone's dancing and you're being forced to watch, like, every song is actually 45 minutes.

And aren't you glad you had each other?

I am glad, but then I also felt— okay, look, here's like what's— there's— it's complicated actually, because I can't— you're one of my many fathers, if any of my fathers. You my dad, Bill. Bill.

You wouldn't wanna see Bill dance.

I don't want him to dance in front of me while this guest is here, while everyone's— actually, no, I don't. I don't want any of my dads to do that. I understand. And so, you know, I'm having like a very nat— a very like personal reaction, which is like, I absolutely need this to end. Like, right now. Yeah, yeah.

The song is way too long. And it's a short one. It's like 3 minutes.

But our guest is engaging with me during this because he is finding this very funny. Yeah, yeah. Even though it's crazy— not funny, it's, it's, it's real. It's all very real. Yeah. Um, and so, but then I was like, well, I don't want to like gang up. I don't want to like us be laughing at Dax. Like, that's mean. So I should have handled it.

Just be over now. I committed. Like, I committed. So whatever outcome, I was, I was at peace with.

I know, but But it's like, I don't know, I just— okay, I'm glad it's over. Yeah, yeah.

So, uh, other update. Yeah, I did. I threw that thing away and then last night, no problems. Yeah, so it was the peptide. Yeah, definitely, because I took my nighttime vitamins and oils and omega-3s. Yeah, so everything was great. Well, we figured it out.

That's good. That was an experiment.

Figured it out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was gonna ask.

I'm glad you brought that up. Okay, um, my brother is, is like about to be here. He's seconds away. I'm now, I'm now upset I didn't plan things. In what way? Oh, I'm like, oh God, now what are we, what are we gonna do? Hey, this might be fun for our audience if they come into the city of Los Angeles.

Um, well, first of all, Has she ever been here? Your brother's visited you several times. Yes, she has, but the only bad visitors are ones who've never been to LA, and naturally they do have to go see Hollywood Boulevard, and they got to see the sign, and they got to see Santa Monica Pier, and—

but none of us want to do any of the things we don't want to do when, when you live here. Yes, um, she has, but like kind of briefly. So I do wonder if we're gonna need to check a few things off the list. We might need to. For anyone who's visiting Los Angeles, why don't you give your perfect day?

Well, I know what I would do right now is I would, I would get online and I would book and I would break the bank and I would go see whatever's playing at the Hollywood Bowl this weekend. I think that's the most special thing in LA is the Hollywood Bowl.

Okay.

And if you can get yourself into those little picnic-y areas, it's so fun and magical. Yeah. And anything like the Philharmonic's playing, it'll be great.

Interesting. Okay. Kid Rock, go take them to see Kid Rock. I'm good on that. Oh, can you imagine?

I mean, yeah, I got a great surprise. You never know that they're from Georgia.

They might. I'm talking about like the Hollywood Bowl. No one would go. Wow. Like, it would be so interesting to see who would show up for that. Yeah, I don't think they're booking him is my point. Probably not. Yeah. Um, okay, that's great.

Hollywood Bowl or Greek.

Okay, so you're going— okay, if You're booking to your— your brother's coming in town with his fiancée. Yeah. And they're cool. They're fun. You know, you're— you have 24 hours with them. You're going concert.

I would go Hollywood Bowl, and then I would wake up tomorrow morning and I would hike up to the observatory so they can look out over the city and see what a magical place it is.

I might take them to Cara. Dodgers game. Okay. Dodgers game.

Signature. I'm trying to give them things that will be uniquely LA. Okay. And then you'll take them to Silver Lake to eat, or Echo Park, one of those fun little neighborhoods.

I'm just gonna see what they're feeling. Yeah. You know, what kind of cuisine are they interested in tonight?

Yeah. And avoid— every time they mention the West Side, just act like you didn't hear it.

Yeah.

Like if they want to go to the beach or something, just be like, yeah.

Is that what you just did just now when I said Cara? Because you you just like didn't— you just kept talking. Oh no.

Oh, I, I— no, I wasn't intentionally doing that.

No, I didn't know if you were showing me a way to do that, demonstrating.

Oh, like I just did with cars. Just like, I didn't— did I hear that? Oh, you said something about the beach. I hadn't heard you. Anyways, have you guys been to the Hollywood Bowl?

Um, all right, well, I, I'm excited to have them, and, uh, well, we're gonna report back on how it goes.

Yeah, that's very fun. It is. You're hosting your little brother and his lady at my house. Yeah, did I knock a candle over too? There's something on the ground. Okay, all right. Um, yeah, yeah, that blew off. Yeah, uh, my kids love Jane's Addiction now. That's a huge win for me. They're ever expanding, like, musical taste. Makes me so happy. Yes, cute, because we watched that Chili Peppers doc. Did you watch it yet? No. Did you watch it, Rob? No, I did not. It's fucking phenomenal. I cannot recommend it enough. It's a beautiful documentary. And I want to say publicly from the rooftops, Flea is the most beautiful fucking soulful human being. He's so sweet.

Is Anthony Kiedis in it? Oh, yeah. I hope everyone remembers that Ryan, that our friend Ryan is obsessed with Anthony Kiedis. And when Anthony Kiedis was at your house for a second, I've never seen him short circuit. Yeah. His reaction was really something.

What a reveal too, because Anthony was a mummy for Halloween. So there was just a mummy in the house, if people remember, and then he unwrapped it and it was like— it was like, I guess this is The Masked Singer. It was like a real— yeah, real version of The Masked Singer. Yeah. I'm working late. Yeah, because I'm a singer.

Great song, Sabrina. Oh my God, a new artist for you.

Did you know you can watch Coachella live on YouTube? I didn't know that until the second weekend. Uh-huh.

Yeah, that's I think that's why, like, that's why people had some interesting feelings about some of the performances, because they're on their couch. Well, no, I think they're like, oh, this performance is made for people watching at home. It's actually not made for me who's there.

That's what a lot of people were thinking, because I think a lot of people are dying to pile on and hate things. Well, I don't know, like, I heard some feedback about the Bieber thing. I are you fucking watched it? It's so incredibly pure and amazing, right?

But you watched it on YouTube.

But I also talked to a bunch of people that were there and their fucking minds were blown. So the people that I talked to were there were even more impressed than people I—

I think everyone's allowed to have their own opinion about—

Certainly people are allowed to have their own opinion. It also might be possible that people are dying to declare they hated something. Yeah. Even if they don't— I think so often they actually don't have an opinion. They like saw it and they're like, I don't know whether that's good or bad. And then they start hearing this chatter. And so they hear a theory pitched.

Right.

And when these things are pointed out, you're like, oh, yes, I did observe those things. I guess it was bad. I don't think they actually intrinsically felt that way.

I think it depends on who's saying it, whether or not I think that or not. Yeah.

If that person has halo effect. Right.

Because like, I have a kind of hot take on something right now. Mm-hmm. And it would annoy me if people were like, oh, you just don't like it because you don't want to like it because people like it. Because that's not true. There are real reasons why I don't like it. I'm not going to say what it is because I'm not here to blast.

Now we're all dying to know. Oh yeah. Me and Hillbilly Elegy. Yeah. Everyone around me was like, this book is so great. Correct. This book is full of shit.

And it was like, oh, you just like, don't like it because everyone likes it. Everyone likes it, but not true. You had your own opinions.

Yeah. Of which I have too many, and the less I have, the happier I am. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

Now, do you think you're having less opinions or you're just keeping them quiet? I keep it 'em quiet. Yeah. It's not like it's actually making, or, or do you think keeping them quiet being quiet is having a reverse effect and you're actually having less?

For sure. In the way that, like, I've learned to overcome my urge to share my opinion, right? So I have some practice now with that, and I live. Everything is fine. I— no one heard my opinion, and I had a great point, but it didn't even matter. So I observed that. That's interesting. And then you get better at fighting the urge. Yeah. And then, yeah, I think the importance of my opinion in general has been downgraded. It's like, yeah, that's just the thought I have in my perspective. Yeah. And it's equally as relevant as everyone else's. And it might make more sense mathematically or in terms of physics, but that is also just one way to observe the world and compute it. That's right. Yeah. I'm less and less as I age religious about the empirical. That's good. I just now see it as like, yes, it's a factor. That's an avenue to examine life. Yeah. But that's a lens to look at life through. And in reality, Yeah. And there's certainly many more. Our guest was closer to your age, but in the middle.

Really? How old is he?

He's born in '84, so I guess he's just 3 years, and then I'm 9 years, so it's not that very much in the middle. But I think because his— I'm ruining everything. Never mind. I keep saying him. I don't want to give it away.

It's okay. Well, yeah, our guest's musical taste. I'm actually fine saying that the guest who you danced for was a man. Oh, okay. I think that's okay to say that, actually.

Yeah, I don't think I would have danced for a woman.

The level— that is a no. Yeah, yeah.

Unless— oh God, I can imagine a case where, like, again, Taylor Swift is so fucking confident, and if I said, like, I love your song such and such and I dance to it every chance I can— yeah, I can imagine her going Let's see it. I don't want her to do that. I know you don't, but it's a conceivable scenario, right?

I mean, you just have to be like so ready.

Like, I think Madonna would be like, yeah, go ahead and dance to Material Girl. I'll judge.

Right. Because she's so confident. That's true. I just like, it adds another layer. If I danced with Sabrina Carpenter, it would be really a rough look for me. I think for Taylor also. Although, like, again, because look, if you're dancing for one of these people, that's viral. Like, everyone's gonna see it. Speaking of opinions, if you—

if, if I dance for Sabrina Carpenter and you danced, yeah, I'd be the laughingstock of America.

Everyone in the whole world would see it and make an opinion.

Yeah, they'd say she hated it even if she was saying, I love it, I love it, I love it. Right? She was forced to say she loved it.

Exactly. Yeah. So, I mean, we're already gonna deal with that when we put this out.

Yeah, he might have to do it. He might have to make a statement publicly. I consent. I truly enjoy I'm no longer in that situation, and I still like it.

And he made us— he made us put it up. He said, you better not cut that. Mm-hmm. So, okay, wait. Yeah, that guest is— is kind of—

Their musical tastes were very informed by my same musical tastes. Uh-huh. So in that way, I think we felt closer in age, but it was an illusion. It was an illusion of the same references.

I can be so tricky in that way.

Because for you, John Hughes is— obviously, you're in this business, so you know about John Hughes. I love John Hughes. But John Hughes wasn't seminal work for you, was it?

Other than Home Alone. Yeah, Home Alone is my touchstone.

But the other stuff.

I mean, I saw, like, I saw Sixteen Candles and I saw, and Breakfast Club was a big deal. Yeah. But it was a big deal as like, yeah, it wasn't newly a big deal. It was like, yeah, this is something from— The way back. The before times that like supposed to hold up and be cool. It's like cool if you like it. Sure, sure, sure. But Callie had a Breakfast Club poster. Yeah. That's a cool movie. Yep. Yep. And she like knew movies. Yeah. That, that was that.

She should have gone into movie publicity.

Movie marketing. Yeah. Yeah. She, yeah, she should have. She did. She did. Um, okay. So she had Breakfast Club. What do you think I had? Well, Good Will Hunting. Okay. Yeah. But that one's obvious. So like, okay.

Oh God. Like, um, like How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days or some romcom.

Yeah. But closer. I closer. Poster. What was it? Uh, Ocean's Eleven.

Okay, sure, a lot of guys on that poster.

Ocean's Eleven. We had Ocean's Eleven in our dorm. Oh, in your dorm? We had Ocean's Eleven, we had Breakfast Club, we had Clueless. That's a cool one, that's hers. I had Good Will Hunting.

So cute when you're young and you're like, you want everyone to know, like, you're like, you're defining your identity by what movies you like. It's so adorable. It's just like every boy had a Pulp Fiction poster.

Everything's just a display of your identity, and it's so terrible.

It's not yours.

Yeah, Yeah, so, well, well, Good Will Hunting, I feel, I, I feel fine about that. And Ocean's Eleven is in my tops. But like, I had Royal Tenenbaums, which I love. I love that movie. But it was a display. It was a display.

Like, I'm someone who has elevated taste.

Yeah. Wes Anderson, ever heard of him? Probably not. And I'll teach you about him.

Yeah, I'm smart.

Yeah, yeah. Like, and that scene, that scene with the blood head going when he's, he's committing suicide. That scene is really upsetting, actually. But great song playing.

There's a lot of great music in Wes Anderson films.

Great movie. Great movie. Oh my God. Um, speaking of movies. Yes. Speaking of favorite movies of all time, guess what's knocking on— not heaven's door, but like the release schedule door. Yeah. What? Devil Wears Prada 2.

That's be big for you. I'm so nervous.

Oh, because it means so much to me.

You love the first one. I can recognize it's a well-made movie. Yeah, but obviously it wasn't like— you don't have— I called Aaron like, holy fuck, dude, did you see fucking Prada? I already like— I'm already shortening it because it's— I'm so in on it. Do you see Prada? Prada. Fucking Devil Wears. Oh God, movie rips, brother. This woman's so fucking mean to this chick, but this chick's like, fuck this.

Well, that's pretty productive. But yeah, it's a very mean— is Marilyn then? Everyone's in it. Everyone's back. Well, one person's not back. Who's not back? The boy. The boy is not back, but he just did a commercial or something where he like is at Starbucks and is like, yeah, I'm not in it. Like, oh, they address it.

It's kind of interesting through a Starbucks commercial.

Yeah. But I'm, I'm, I'm— it's a meaningful movie to me, and I don't think I ever would call and be like, dude, have you seen Prada? Prada? I would never do that, but I watch it, you know.

Oh my God.

Oh, I told him to just go in.

It's okay, he's trying to be polite, ring the doorbell.

You're right, it's just when you write it down a lot I am. Okay.

It's okay. Don't— I know he's your little brother, but act like he's just a friend. I still— I know. You got to try to— it's time to kind of— you got to shift the lens.

Why? It's not like I'm, like, going to sit here for another 5 minutes. It's just a quick, like, yeah, I just— I wrote it a lot.

Yeah, I'm just saying, as siblings age, it can be sometimes helpful to force yourself to imagine they're just a friend.

I know, but I'm saying if it was just a friend, you would say what?

Fuck off, you fucking annoying little shit prick.

No, I would just be like, I said it. Okay. And then I'm over it. That's just a standard. Yeah, because scroll up, you know, it's like scroll up. Oh, okay. Yeah, it's just scroll up is all.

A standard biz. Yeah. Um, want to do some facts?

No. Yeah, I know you got to go soon. I got a flight to Cali. Yeah, let's go, let's go, let's keep it moving. Facts. Okie doke. So this is for Terry Tara Stoyansky. Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.

Our returning primatologist. It was a great doc, I can't wait for you to watch it.

I know, I'm really excited to watch it. It's so good. Gorillas are so interesting. Yeah. And chimps. How many gorillas and chimps are there left in the world? This is according to the coco.org Gorilla Foundation. Status of worldwide gorillas are, all are endangered. Eastern lowland gorillas found in Rwanda, Uganda, DRC, 700 mountain gorillas and several thousand eastern lowland gorillas. Down— several thousand, did you say? Um, 700 mountain and several thousand.

Several thousand, that's good.

Down from 17,000 in 1990s. Then there's western lowland gorillas found in Cameroon, Congo, Central African Republic, some other places. As many as 100,000 western lowland gorillas. Oh God, that's good. It says down 60% from past 20 to 25 years, but that is still good.

It's not 600 or 250 that they were down to at one point.

Yeah. Cross River gorillas that live on the border of Cameroon and Nigeria, 200 to 300 total. These are the most endangered subspecies. Then mountain gorillas, um, count as 1,000, up from 700 10 years ago. So that's good. Chimps, they're between 170,000 and 300,000 chimps in the wild. Okay. They're also endangered. Oh, are gorillas born at 4 pounds and die at 450 pounds? Gorillas weigh, yeah, 4 pounds, 1.4 to 1.8 kilograms at birth, and full-grown male gorillas weigh between 300 and 485 pounds, 480, and females 200 to 250. Do gorillas see in the same color as us? It says, couldn't find a reliable source confirming it, but appears that gorillas see very similarly to humans, full color spectrum. There was a study done in 2008 proving that gorillas and chimps have color preferences supporting that.

Yeah, I think any animal that subsists largely on fruit is going to develop that.

And then, are gorillas' sense of smell better than ours? Gorillas depend more on sight than smell, unlike monkeys. They have a good smell though, can sense sweat on humans. Uh-oh. Oh, fuck.

For you, I have to wear deodorant the day I go back.

Or the musk of an unknown gorilla. They can smell that. Males use a female's odor to determine her reproductive status. Sure. That's it.

Well, I had watched the doc with the girls, and then of course it renewed— they want to go to Africa so bad. And I've been telling Lincoln, as I said in the episode, that I would take her when she was 16, which would put Delta at 14. And once the age uh, track?

15. So she's got to be 17.

I had to give bad news. Oh, did everyone get it? Well, it's great actually, because anytime you can force your children to make hard decisions, I think it's good practice. Yeah. And I said, so listen, I, I kind of got good news and bad news. The good news is you don't have to be 18. I was fearful that you had to be an adult, but you do have to be 15. Yeah. No, yes, you have to be 15, which means Lincoln, we can't go till you're 17. She's like, why? And I'm like, we're not leaving Delta in the hotel while we go.

Yeah, but you guys could go in this— oh, when are you supposed to go?

Well, that's another thing. I would only— because I did it this way the one time and it was perfect, which is we went in the rainy season, so nobody's there, and I love that. I want to say it's spring-ish.

Okay, because I was gonna say, if you go in December, you just nailed it.

If I went on March 26th. Yeah, exactly. Delta will be 15 and Lincoln will be 16. We don't have a problem. Anyways, I was like, well, look, so now you're going to pick. You wait an extra year and get to go see gorillas, or go at 16 and we don't see gorillas. Yeah. And they chose— Sophie's Choice. I don't— they haven't given me an official verdict yet, but I see. I think probably in Lincoln's mind there's still a way to go at 16 and not bring Delta, which would be a natural sibling response.

Well, no, she'll go at 16, and Delta will be 15 at the beginning of the year.

Wow, I didn't even do that math. I'm an idiot. Yeah, there's 3 months where they're the same age. Yeah, well, they're 1 year apart. Yeah.

Yeah. Um, all right, well, that's it.

That's it. Watch that doc, it's phenomenal. Yeah. Oh, I didn't give my pledge for the other thing in the fact check. Oh, I'm I'm watching this reality show called Secret Millionaire. Peter Serafinowicz is the host of it.

Okay.

Do you remember who he is? He's a comedian. He's English. We're friends with him. He was in Couples Retreat, and we became very good friends with him. I love him. And these— season 1, I think it was 12 people check into this resort, and they go to the room, and everyone's got a box inside. When they open up, one person has $1 million in the box. And then they gotta try to figure out who's got the million dollars, and they vote someone out. And it's so good. We have had more fun watching the show than I think any other show we've watched as a family. It's so good. And then last night, Kristen was working in San Francisco for the day, so we did Café 101, Rummikub. Nice. What a fun game to play play while you're waiting? Rummy Cube, then race home for season 2, episode 1 of the new season.

What's it called? Secret Millionaire, I think.

Secret Millionaire. Okay, cool. It's great. I hope you give it a shot. Yeah, I will. Oh, Million Dollar Secrets. Million Dollar Secret. Much different. What did I say? Hotel? Secret Millionaire. Okay, Secret Million Dollar Secrets. Very close. If you get secret and millionaire in your search, it's going to bring you there. That's the one. People are devious. Oh, they are.

I thought that during Beast Games.

Oh, ding ding ding, primates. You know, we evolved deception. That's really true. It's a strategy.

Yeah, to mate. Yeah, dominate everything. All right, I'm gonna check it out. All right, love you.

Love you.