Name: Joe Rogan Experience #1988 - James Reed
Uploaded: 2023-05-18T00:00:00.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1988 - James Reed' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-05-18. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1988 - James Reed' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-05-18. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #1988 - James Reed

Joe Rogan podcast check it out the Joe Rogan experience trained by day Joe Rogan
podcast by
night all day what incredible piece of work you put together I mean that was I'm
so impressed and
I loved it so much I mean I don't even know where to begin and well I'm very
pleased you liked it
uh you you tell me why do you want to begin where did it how did it start like
how long did it take
first of all to get embedded to the point where they allowed you to be around
them like that okay
so I mean we should tell her but it's a chimp empire it's chimp empire yeah so
four part series chronic
chronicling the this unusual period in the go-go chimpanzees lives right and so
we
we we're very very lucky basically there's there's a scientific project out
there that's been
working and go-go for almost 30 years now so scientists when they first arrived
the the
chimpanzees were not habituated to humans at all so they kind of came knowing
there was a big group of
chimps out there and but they but they didn't know anything about how many
there were or who they were
and and they had to go through this process of habituation which which
basically means sort of
following them around and getting them used to humans observing them so in
those early days the
chimps would just run off they'd have total fear for for humans so they weren't
even able to to see
them let alone study them but that that's what they gradually overcame that
fear and and to the point
where the scientists can just arrive with their notebooks and gently follow
them around kind of
within the group every day so after years of doing that it makes it possible
for a film crew to to come
in and kind of literally walk in their footsteps so so that that process of
actually being accepted into
the chimpanzees group was sort of we we had this we had this previous
scientific project that enabled us to
do that um and in terms of for the for the series um we had like 400 filming
days we knew that we wanted
to be sort of observing them from in detail and from sort of within the group
and yeah we were able to do
that with a great crew lightweight equipment and sort of follow them around
constantly for about 400 days
wow i mean the footage you guys acquired it's it's it's really amazing it's i've
never seen anything
like it it's like it's like a chimp was carrying around a camera i mean was
there any moment where
they interacted with you guys where you thought like maybe you were threatened
or in danger
you know there's yeah if if you're filming lines or something from a from a
sort of safari vehicle
you you film them with a with a long lens and you're kind of spying on them
from a distance so
they they might sort of clock that you're in a car from a long way away but you're
you're observing
them and you're you're kind of not part of it you're you're looking in from the
outside
with chimps partly because of the the habitat they work they they live in right
it's it's it's a dense
rainforest so if you were 50 meters away you you can't see anything so you need
to be close to the
chimps to to observe and film them and and also wouldn't be a good idea to try
and creep around and
and hide from them they they wouldn't like that so you sort of you you
peacefully gently kind of make
your presence known and they sort of they they acknowledge you when you turn up
they're certainly sort of
checking you out um but then they go about their daily business and it is it's
incredible how little
interaction they have and and and how little that they sort of ever ever even
come close to interacting
with you wow but what about if you have food or something that they want do
they get curious about
things like that you know they're very careful there and that the the
scientists for years have sort of
made sure that you know the strict rules that you you can't take you you take
food in but it's in
concealed containers you don't eat in front of the chimps that that's exactly
the sort of thing that could
cause a situation if there was some association with food or something that you
had that they wanted
so that's really carefully managed and there's it you know they don't associate
you with food
and they just treat you as a sort of passive observer having said that you know
you are you're right in
there and you know they could be just sitting around peacefully sort of playing
or grooming each other
or they could be doing something quite aggressive and they could be fighting or
they could be patrolling
for another group or or hunting and then even though none of it is sort of
targeted at you they are
behaving in in in a way that can be quite intimidating around you was what was
i mean i think the most
disturbing thing to me with chimps is well there's two things one that they
murder each other but two
the hunting of the monkeys watching them hunt and kill and eat monkeys is so
weird for i mean i think was
david attenborough the first one to capture that on film i don't know whether
he was the first one
actually i think jane goodall back in the day when she was doing the gum well
she still has the gunway
chimp site but i think she and maybe a nat geo team i think they sort of
documented it for the first time
um and at that point nobody knew this this happened and then i think on the david
attenborough project
it was documented as well but in ngogo you know they're the biggest group ever
known and they
are very strong and powerful group and there's a lot of males and it is often
the males that are involved
in the hunting and they have taken hunting monkeys to a to another level was
that what is that like
to witness live because primates eating primates i don't know why but it's just
it it doesn't feel
right visceral reactions i think yeah it feels you know because you kind of
group you group primates
together yeah and we're sort of separate in a way that's how you think of them
anyway and i think
also you spend so much you know if you if you're interested in chimps or you
spend time around them
you can't you're constantly making connections between you and them so you're
feeling even though
it's kind of a one-way thing you're feeling those similarities all the time and
then you but then
you see how they behave to other primates and and it's quite it it's shocking
you you can't believe
that as sophisticated as they are and how connected you feel to them you know
they they they don't feel
that sort of level of compassion or empathy for for other primates at all and
they are yeah they they
hunt them regularly yeah how many did you witness them kill it was it was quite
a lot i mean you know
we've it's a completely sort of true authentic story that we documented so so
everything in there
is is what happened and in in the order that it happened but obviously we were
there for 400 days
so there's quite a lot of things that we filmed that didn't make it in now we
didn't keep anything back
that we thought was relevant to the story but there are sometimes other
examples or other hunts for
hunts is a really good example you know we didn't we didn't put in the series
every time they hunted a
monkey because it would be a lot of hunting monkeys we we saw it quite a lot um
you know i remember
on the on the second shoot but it was the first time the a new camera crew had
had come out and i was with
one of the camera women lauren and she she was really experienced women in
filming in hostile and remote
locations but had never filmed chimps before and wasn't really used to the
environment and and on our
first day out they they hunted a big black and white colobus monkey and you
know i mean it's everything that
goes along with it it's the sort of the the cooperation the the teamwork um you
know there's a tension in in
the air when you know that they're going to hunt they've decided to hunt but it's
not on yet and
they're sort of moving around the forest trying to get in a in a position where
they can successfully catch
this monkey but then once they go for it and then they're just chasing it and
it and and it's chaos
and you know they they are organized in a way they know exactly what they're
doing but you're sort of
running around after it and you quite often don't know don't know exactly what's
happening where's the
monkey where are the chimps and she she was just like where am i like what what
have i got myself into
but she was absolutely amazing because she sort of you know held the shots and
a lot of what she filmed
that day is is in the series actually but i don't know the energy when you're
there and you're watching
it the the energy of the whole thing takes over and you know maybe this isn't a
good thing but i think
when you have seen it quite a few times and you accept it as part of the the
natural relationship between
these two species you do become slightly desensitized to it um and yeah i
remember first time i saw it
being being very shocked but once you've seen it quite a lot and you know it's
a natural part of
their lives you yeah you don't you don't feel the same way about it actually is
that their preferred food
do you think well they they're mainly fruit eaters ripe fruit specialists so
you know their territory is
is filled with uh fruiting trees and those trees fruit at different times and
at different cycles
and they have this incredible knowledge of of all the trees that are in their
territory
and and they have a good idea about when they're going to come into fruit as
well so they're always
moving around this vast territory and sort of checking out what's in fruit and
what isn't and they'll know
that something's that it's not quite it's not quite ripe yet it's not but but
that'll that'll stay there
and they'll come back and they'll they'll feed off that tree in the in in the
days immediately after
so that's really that's that's they have to survive they they they depend on
fruit
monkeys seem to provide a sort of a a different uh purpose in in the chimpanzee
community they're
definitely valuable from a nutritional point of view but there seems to be
other things going on as
to why they hunt and you know i don't know i'm going to use some of the wrong
terms here that scientists
probably wouldn't uh wouldn't support but they they do seem to enjoy it it does
seem to provide some
sort of cooperative function you know it's not it's not sport but at the same
time you know it's it's
not purely for survival it's the the something else there and i think in in you
know when you watch them
share meat after they've they've hunted a monkey that's when some of its sort
of function becomes
clear because who who catches the monkey and then who gets a share of that
becomes a really political
business and and and that feels you know from from our perspective watching it
that suddenly it all sort
fell into place a little bit because who gets meat and who doesn't has a sort
of um it's very political
yeah it seemed like that in the documentary where it would in particularly uh
when the female with the
baby got some and the one male that didn't get very upset and attacked her yeah
that's that that's a kind
of a classic example of it or yeah you know they're all there trying to get a
piece of meat because
they want to but um it risks upsetting other chimps not because there's only so
much meat there's only
so much a lot of chimps yeah and there's sort of the strongest alliances are
being sort of served in
in that situation so sometimes you know chimps get a scrap here or there in
that particular instant
she she made it away away with quite a big share of the monkey and i think you
know i wasn't there
filming that particular moment but i remember the the crew saying when they
came back it did feel like
that that's trouble actually good good for you for getting a share but actually
that's you you're
going to get into trouble somehow but because you know whether she was aware
that there was somebody
who's you know a high-ranking male was being excluded at the same time so there
was this tension