Egypt’s Lost Creatures, Uncontacted “Skull” Tribe & Congo’s “Big Foot” | Forrest Galante • 333
Julian Dorey · 5 Sep 2025 · 3h 5m
Guest: Forrest Galante · Host: Joey Def, Julian Dorey
A wildlife biologist and TV host recounts a childhood in Zimbabwe that ended abruptly during Robert Mugabe's land seizures, including a violent night when his family fled under gunfire, and their subsequent arrival in the US as refugees living on welfare in Oakland. He traces how he rebuilt a connection to wildlife through spearfishing in central California, stumbled into UCSB's creative studies program after a chance encounter with a professor, and eventually pivoted from underpaid field biology work into television after appearing on Naked and Afraid, later creating his own show about rediscovering species declared extinct. Much of the conversation covers specific expeditions: finding a Zanzibar leopard thought extinct for decades, locating the exceedingly rare Fernandina Island tortoise in the Galápagos, and searching for a mythical dinosaur-like creature and a possibly-extant duck species. He describes his work as an adviser to a de-extinction company, weighing the conservation upside of cloning endangered animals like red wolves against the unpredictable consequences of reviving long-gone species. Later segments cover a high-stakes elephant relocation in Mozambique involving helicopters, tranquilizer dosing risks, and a moment he tackled a struggling baby elephant, plus reflections on poaching economics, tribal encounters in Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu, and the tension between honoring indigenous practices and protecting fragile ecosystems.
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Timestamps link into the episode on YouTube.
- Childhood in Zimbabwe and land seizure violence
- Fleeing to the US and life in Oakland
- Discovering spearfishing in California
- Getting into UCSB and studying biology
- Frustrations with the wildlife biology career system
- Naked and Afraid and entering TV
- Rediscovering the Fernandina Island tortoise
- Advising Colossal on de-extinction and cloning ethics
- Poaching economics and rhino horn trade
- Elephant relocation operation in Mozambique
- Uncontacted tribe on Mo Island, Vanuatu
- Encounter with skull cave and shark-worshipping tribe
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Quoted from the auto-generated transcript, which mishears names and technical terms. podcite.com reports what a show said; it does not endorse or fact-check it.
“I was holding in my hand to this day the rarest animal in the world, the Fernandina Island tortoise.”