Name: Forrest Galante: Real-Life Explorer, TV Host, and Biologist | You Made It Weird
Uploaded: 2025-08-20T14:00:56.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Forrest Galante: Real-Life Explorer, TV Host, and Biologist | You Made It Weird' from Pete Holmes on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-08-20. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Forrest Galante: Real-Life Explorer, TV Host, and Biologist | You Made It Weird' from Pete Holmes on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-08-20. Transcript available.

Forrest Galante: Real-Life Explorer, TV Host, and Biologist | You Made It Weird

You made it weird, you made it weird, yes you did, you made it weird, yeah. You
made it weird, with Pete Holmes. You made it weird, yes you did, you made it
weird, yeah.
What's happening weirdos? This is Forrest Galante. Galante. Who is Forrest Galante?
Well, you probably know if you clicked on this episode, or maybe you don't.
I didn't until I heard him on another podcast, and I thought he was fascinating.
He's an American outdoor adventurer. He's our first adventurer. He literally
risks his life. He goes on these, we're going to hear about a bunch of them,
daring expeditions, seeking out primarily almost near-extinct animals.
I should have just said near-extinct, not almost near-extinct, near-extinct
animals. He's also the host of Extinct or Alive on Animal Planet, Mysterious
Creatures with Forrest Galante, and he's also on Shark Week, which is something
I just did, which is how we thought it would be fun to connect now.
Is it still Shark Week? I don't think so. But anyway, only a couple things to
plug up top. I'm currently touring. Go to PeteHolmes.com for tickets.
The next shows are Washington, D.C., Boston, Massachusetts, New Hampshire,
Washington State, St. Louis, Cleveland, Florida, just all of Florida, Doral,
Florida at the Miami Improv, Chicago, Pennsylvania, New York, New York at Town
Hall on November 14th, and then November 15th in Atlantic City.
Hope to see you out there, guys. PeteHolmes.com. It's my favorite tour that I've
ever done, and I really hope you can make a show, and thank you to everybody
who's been coming out.
Oh, I'm good, man. Yeah, sounds good. I'm stoked to be here.
Well, great. Okay, now we can start. That's our natural intro.
Oh, sorry. Yeah, I was just saying thank you in general.
I'm glad you're here. It's really nice to meet you. I've never met a real-life
adventurer.
Yeah.
Isn't that what you are? I mean, you're like, what is that video game? My
favorite video game. I can't remember it. It's called... You know it?
Oh, fuck my face. Indiana Jones, the video game.
Oh, like Uncharted.
Uncharted. Yes. I always want to call it Fallout, but you're like real-life Uncharted.
Thank you. That's an honor. I mean, I get all kinds of titles. Biologist,
wildlife enthusiast, expert, adventurer. I don't know what else.
The last one was the most interesting, though. Biologists, people go like, oh,
this guy's looking at cells under a microscope.
Yeah, totally.
Nobody likes that.
Totally. And I don't know anything about that either.
Wildlife enthusiast, now I feel like I feel bad because there's things... The
world is so... The environment is so screwed and you probably know exactly why.
Sadly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then adventurer, I'm like, okay, he's running around with dust on his
leather jacket.
That's true. I do a lot of that.
Let's go with that one.
Yeah.
Do you really?
A lot of that.
Okay. So I was listening to you on another podcast and what I was craving was
like, I don't normally do this, is will you tell us who you are and what you do?
Because I was looking for my footing. It took a while to figure it out.
Yeah. My wife never knows how to answer that question.
Yeah. How do you answer it?
Well, I say I'm just a lowly wildlife biologist, but the reality is at this
point, I think I'm a wildlife communicator or educator.
So I like to travel around the world, work in some of the most remote and
hostile environments, work with indigenous and tribal people to expose
incredible wildlife.
And it doesn't matter if it's human wildlife conflict, whether we're working on
mitigation methods, looking for extinct species, working on translocations or
relocations, basically any wildlife that needs exposure and needs help.
Yeah.
I work on those projects.
Okay. Thank you. Got it.
Right off the bat, I'm like, how difficult is that to navigate when you're
dealing with like an extreme cultural difference?
Like if they're like, we eat dolphin fin or whatever, and you're like, hey,
stop doing that.
Yeah.
How do you as an American like navigate that seems like it could be politically
very touchy?
It can be. And there've been people that have been like upset and offended by
things that I've done.
I mean, pretty small, not really like broad things.
Yeah.
But I grew up in Zimbabwe in Southern Africa.
Yeah.
So I learned how to work with indigenous people, with tribal people, the far as
far as the cultural customs go.
I think one thing that we can all agree on, I don't care what side of the
political coin you fall on, social coin you fall on, whatever it is, whether
you're left, right, red, blue, it doesn't matter.
We all want wildlife on the planet, right?
It makes us better, makes the planet healthier, makes everything better.
So sometimes it takes education or figuring out very complex issues, whether
that's governmental or conservation-based or whatever it is, and going, hey, I
know you've been killing X for this many years, but just don't do it here.
Like, if you just leave this one little patch of forest alone, then all the
animals, once they reproduce, will breed over, and right outside your village,
you'll have more things to hunt.
And if you can educate people that way and just say, look, I know you've been
doing it a certain way for this long, but you want it to be sustainable.
You want to be able to hunt or kill or eat or fish or whatever it is forever,
here's a way to do that so that you can continue to grow your family, grow your
culture, grow everything.
Yeah.
Just do it this way, as opposed to a blanket, like, we can kill everything
anywhere.
I'm already so interested.
That was really interesting.
We can end the podcast here.
Okay.
Well, that was good to see you, Pete.
All this way.
No, I'm just like, it was very interesting to hear you say you have to think,
just basic negotiation, like, what does everyone want?
Right.
We want wildlife.
Right.
It's interesting to think of the planet as a body, and wildlife is almost like
white blood cells or red blood cells.
It's like good for the whole system.
Very much so.
Which is tricky.
Sometimes I do that.
I'm like, the planet smokes.
You know, the rainforest is like our smoking cigarettes all day.
A hundred percent.
Like, we're not a very healthy planet, if it's a body.
And it's a good way to think about it.
It's very intuitive of you to realize it's a body, but everything on the planet
is connected.
A mosquito in the Arctic, a lot of people think there aren't mosquitoes in the
Arctic, but a mosquito in the Arctic is somehow connected to the air in the
Amazon.
You know what I mean?
And all, everything is connected.
And I think we all understand that we need all these things.
Like, one thing that people never think of, Pete, you just did Shark Week promo,
right?
Yeah, yeah.
So I just did a couple Shark Week shows.
If sharks disappear from the planet, you and I, your producer over here, our
families, they're gone.
Really?
Gone.
If sharks cease to exist on planet Earth, we're dead.
What?
Yeah.
Why?
Because sharks are bioregulators for the ocean.
They have what's called a trophic cascade.
They control the ocean and the health of the environment.
I know a trophic cascade.
Pardon me.
I'm just kidding.
No, keep going.
Keep going.
But if sharks cease to exist, the oceans become imbalanced.
The ocean is our largest producer of oxygen on the planet.
It's also our largest producer of food on the planet.
Those two things go away.
We go away.
Wow.
And people forget that.
We're killing sharks at a rate of, fact check me on this, but it's like 8
million sharks a year or something like that, right?
Because of accidental tuna pulls?
No, no.
Or we're just killing them?
We eat them.
The shark fin soup's a big trade in Asian countries.
I'm sorry, but no soup.
No soup can be worth this.
Especially when you think about shark fin soup as might as well be human ear
soup.
It's just cartilage.
Oh, really?
That's all a shark fin is.
It's just cartilage.
It's the same stuff.
Same exact stuff.
Yeah.
Brutal.
Yeah.
Brutal.
But isn't that crazy to think we're that connected to a shark, which, I mean,
we don't look at it.
See, I knew that about like bees.
Yeah.
No bees, no these.
That's the t-shirt and it's plants.
Yep, exactly.
But I never thought of oxygen.
And seafood is like so much of our diet?
Is that what it is?
Or is it algaes or what?
No, it's something like 91%, again, fact check that number, of the world relies
on the ocean for their main source of protein.
Wow.
You know, so yeah, so seafood is the majority source of protein for the
majority of the world.
Yeah, I've watched, what's that, alone?
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's great.
They're always going to the river.
You have to.
The river pays out.
So the people that are chasing the land animals, I'm like, that's really cute,
bro.
Like, good luck.
They spend a month like lobbing arrows at things.
Yes.
And then some guy goes down the river and catches eight salmon and you're like,
why don't you just do that?
Or you just have a net.
There's just a net in a current and they check it and they're like, there's all
these fish in it.
And the dumb guy that wants to be the hero chasing the boar.
Right.
I'm like, first of all, something's going to steal it.
That's right.
If you kill it.
Yeah.
That's, it's the dumbest.
Look, I would last half an hour on that show, but I know my strategy would be
go to the ocean.
Go to the water.
And you need the fat and all that sort of stuff.
Like, it's good.
Exactly.
It's a good livable thing.
You're underselling yourself.
I think you'd last a good, good 24 hours.
Well, I, you know, my strategy, I think I'd be good at keeping myself sane.
Like I wouldn't be good at all the survival stuff, but I'd be good at being
alone.
Are you good?
Are you good in that kind of environment?
Like I don't do well when I've got no one around for a long period of time.
I, maybe I'm flattering myself.
Maybe I would go absolutely nuts.
Yeah.
More nuts.
More nuts.
I actually, sorry, I want to get back to your fascinating life, but I think I
would go the
castaway approach.
I would make a God.
I would talk to it.
Start talking to inanimate objects.
I would build like a universe.
I'd be like, well, I have to talk to this guy.
Like just to pass the time.
Yeah.
Like I'd have a rich culture.
Dude, I can just imagine, I can just imagine you like throwing jokes at a
volleyball and
it's just, and you're like, I told you that was a good one.
Of course.
Yeah.
I would do little shows.
You'd have to.
The people.
I could both see that.
There was a guy on alone that was like, figured out like how little he could
move.
Uh-huh.
And he was like, cause if you move, you burn calories.
So I'm just going to stay still.
I was like, you're not going to make it.
No way.
The women have a so beat on, I'm saying, including you as a guy.
It's not like either of us have been on that show.
Yeah.
But the women murder on that show because they understand like, I'm going to
make a beautiful
place to be.
Like you, you have to want to live.
That's right.
That's right.
And that's what art is too.
It's like, why do we make art?
It's so you don't just jump off a cliff.
I'm not even trying to be funny.
It's like people lose hope if there's not something to like look at and enjoy.
And historically on that show, it's always the women that are like, I made a
sauna.
Exactly.
You know what I mean?
And the guys are like, don't move.
I'm like, you'd be useful in a hunt, but like, you're not good at making life
worth living.
You have to, you're a hundred percent right.
And that's why, you know, women for the most part make better homemakers and
everything
else.
Because you need to live in that joy.
Yes.
Otherwise, what are you living for?
And that's been, yes, encouraged.
I'm certain men can and could do it.
And there's got to be more of that for sure.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, it's interesting when you were talking about the balance of sharks
and don't hunt
over here.
I'm a Joseph Campbell person.
I like myths and I'm always, there's so many myths about