Rejected TV Pitch to the World’s Wildest Animal Encounters

Mark Vins2:17

I was into scouts. Um, I did it for a while. Uh, I didn't continue on. I got into sports in high school and that kind of took over. But, uh, yeah, up until high school I was into it.

Mark Vins2:27

Uh, tennis. So, I grew up a competitive junior tennis player. Uh, I did travel tennis. Uh, I was with a club group from Columbus and we went all over.

Mark Vins2:37

Did not play in college. Um, I did, uh, when I was 16 and under, I got up to about 112, I think, was my highest ranking in the nation. Uh, was a high Midwest level player. Uh, unfortunately, I dealt with some injuries when I was in my 18 and under years, a back injury that was just kind of like lingering. And by the time I got to college, it gave me some some perspective. And I and I had some other interests I wanted to explore. You know, as an athlete, you spend a lot of time focusing on something and really nothing else.

It gave me a chance to say, "Hey, maybe there's some other cool stuff I want to do."

Mark Vins3:11

Uh, so I changed my major a lot, but basically I ended uh with a construction management degree and a theater minor because my interest was in film and video, and that's where I met my now business partner, Coyote Peterson. So

Mark Vins3:28

So a lot of the classes that I took were in film and video just they had nowhere to put us because there was no official film program at Ohio State. So I was just in the theater department.

Mark Vins3:37

But you know I I did have to learn how to build sets and we took some like you know basic theater stage craft.

Mark Vins3:45

And film making and lighting and you know storytelling, screenwriting those kind of things.

Mark Vins3:53

Once again product of an environment uh you know growing up in Ohio going to the movies was a big big deal. like that was the thing

And uh I just loved it and just couldn't wait to go back as soon as I got a driver's license. Gosh, I think I was at the movie theater almost like four or five times a week.

Mark Vins4:09

Oh, yeah. Like every night I was going to see a movie. They This is back when they had like the you know, you had like the the frequent flyer card see. So I would uh Yeah. I would have unlimited movies and I would just go and I would just watch every movie I could. Yeah.

That's interesting.

Mark Vins4:21

The first eight years, uh, all of my creative stuff was really like moonlighting, you know, like really just trying to find a foothold in the entertainment world, which, you know, being from central Ohio, there was really none. The only work that we could really get on board with was like music videos, corporate gigs, things like that. So, my my business partner and I, Coyote and I, we started like working on screenplays.

We worked on television pilots and sizzle reels and and one of them happened to be the very early concept for Brave Wilderness which at the time was called the reptile show is just about reptiles because we have these like crazy snapping turtles in Ohio. Like that's our big apex predator. So we were like jumping in ponds catching well coyote was jumping in ponds catching these giant turtle. I mean these are like 40 lb predatory turtles. They're pretty awesome.

And uh that was like our first subject. And then of you know, of course, as we started to really think about how to build this into a show, we're like, we had to do all animals. So then it became Brave Wilderness. Okay.

Tried to sell that as a television series, everybody told us no and that it would never work in a million years.

Mark Vins5:28

Um, I think a lot of it had to do with who was pitching it if I'm being honest. You know, we we had no credits. There was, you know, uh it's a space where like your you know, credits and all those kind of things matter. Uh but we uh we kept at it. We kept making, you know, we kept taking the notes back, making new sizzle reel. And this happened for like three or four years.

Mark Vins5:49

And uh eventually Jim Lderbeck actually uh he he used to run um VidCon.

Mark Vins5:58

Still a good friend. He uh had a company that he sold to Discovery Digital Networks. Yeah.

And he knew what we did. He knew what we were capable of. He knew we were very ambitious. So he said, "Hey, I've got like a deal for you guys." So we got this like GM buy power car deal to make 10 short form nature videos like our sizzle reel and that was like the start of Brave Wilderness because that gave us like the early funding we needed to go and on our first trips we instead of making 10 videos we made like a hundred

And we didn't know at the time but that was like a huge leg up to starting on YouTube because now we had a library to distribute and we were ahead of the you know the content curve. Yeah.

It's like one of the hardest things about this business is

You got to have the next video. Yeah.

So, we had we had a head start and when we started releasing uh started making content on YouTube, it took off. It was like catching a freight train. We were

To 10 million subscribers in like 3 years and it was life. Oh my gosh. It was

Mark Vins6:59

Yeah. Um, so every like everyone, we started with zero subscribers

And we were just putting out these videos because we had them,

Not really thinking too much about strategy or thumbnails or anything.

Mark Vins7:12

Right? But then we started noticing like, oh, like these videos are starting to get views and we like to engage in the comment section and we would, you know, basically anyone who commented back in those days would get a response, all 10 of them. Uh, and you know, we we started developing this community and that's when I started to notice it. I was like, "Oh, there's something here." And then there was like this New York Times article with like Jenna Marbles and some other really big YouTubers.

I was like, you know, the future of YouTube millionaires. I was like, what? Like this is like a place you can actually start a business. And that was the big light bulb moment. And this was all converging at the same time that our the subscriber gra uh base was growing. We hit 10,000 subscribers. And I was like, "Okay, I think if we just do this, we can make a run at it."

Mark Vins7:56

And I built like one of those, you know, really um old school thermometers on the wall to a million subscribers. Like if we can make it to a million subs,

I think we can actually have something here. And we just put our heads down and went to work and that was it.

Mark Vins8:17

So I want to caveat this with this was a very different YouTube course than today. So it was a subs a subscriberbased algorithm back then. Meaning like

The more reoccurring customers or audience that you built the more likely your next video would be successful. So there was like tranches of success like there was like 10,000 100,000 million subscribers and you would you would see in correlation with your view count things would get better and better and better. So, um, you know, we were looking at the videos and really just AB testing. We were like putting a video out. How did that do? Taking that feedback directly, implement it to the next video and rinse and repeat.

And you do we were doing that three times a week. We were releasing three VODs a week back then,

Which for VOD for anyone who who doesn't know that, it's a video on demand, meaning like a regular YouTube video.

Mark Vins9:05

Uh, this was before shorts. It's a long time ago. So, uh, you know, we started to gain some success and we had this one video where coyote let a little porcupine quill him and to show people how to remove quills correctly because people's dogs out in the west get hit by porcupines.

Mark Vins9:26

Saddest thing ever.

Mark Vins9:31

So, you have to, because they're barbed, you have to actually twist a little bit.

Mark Vins9:35

So, you have to rotate the barb. If you pull it straight out, it's going to take a lot of it's very painful. Take a lot of flush with it. So, but if you sl If you twist it and do it quickly, you can get them out. You can also decompress by clipping the tips of the quills. So, there there's like a lot of pressure that keeps those there's like if you can imagine like reverse fish hooks on a microscopic level. That's what it's not a smooth surface.

It's like

It's going the wrong way. So, if you clip and release the pressure, it

The rigidity of the barbs goes down

And then you can more easily twist it out. So, we showed people how to do this.

Okay. And

Mark Vins10:07

Yeah. Any anything that get any flush.

Mark Vins10:10

At the tip.

Mark Vins10:12

It's pressurized. Yeah. It's like a vessel.

Mark Vins10:22

And then twist it out and then uh to get to the point, the video did really well. Like big outlier. like and we're like, "Oh, well, it's not a secret that people like to see others go through these experience and not have to do them themselves." So, we're like, "What else can we do? We can't get quite by a porcupine every week." Uh, and we at the time were reading this really cool book called Sting of the Wild by Justin Schmidt. And, uh, he is an or sadly he passed away a couple years ago, but Justin was an entomologist from the University of Arizona, specialized study in uh, insects and invertebrates.

And he was he did this crazy thing where he went around the world and got stung by 83 different species of insects to rank them. And we were like that is that is unbelievable that somebody would just do this. Like he didn't have like a YouTube he just did this as like pure science.

Yeah. And uh we're like man you know what if we did a couple video essays on you know to sort of take Justin's work a little bit further and show people because you his book it's just words and he has like you know the scientific scale like what if we showed people this experience started doing it and it it caught instant fire. I mean it didn't take but two or three releases of these videos and the cow killer specifically still to this day our most watched video ever.

Uh we gained over 300,000 subscribers in a day.

Oh my god. This is back when you would go on a website called SocialBlade to see your live uh subscriber count and in the hundreds place it was like a gas meter like ding ding ding ding and I'll never forget

Mark Vins11:50

We were we were in the office just like jumping around and we're like this and it was exciting but that night when I went to bed I couldn't sleep and I was like

Life is different now. Like I I knew definitively in that moment that there was before this and then there's after this.

Mark Vins13:46

The cow killer. So, a cow killer that [snorts]

It's it's a uh common name. So, there's scientific names for animals and there's common names. Common names are just more interesting.

Yeah, I know. Uh, so a cow killer is a velvet ant and it's a wingless wasp. It's not even an ant at all. It's just a fuzzy wasp without wings and it's a female. So she has a stinger. Her stinger happens to be the whole length of her body. So like for like body size to stinger ratio, it's the longest stinger of all insects.

Mark Vins14:12

So it's giant.

Mark Vins14:14

And they live all over the southwest. And actually around here you see some in in some Tennessee. Yeah.

Mark Vins14:21

Yeah. So the males can fly. The females don't fly. They're they're a it's called a paricettoid wasp. So what it does to reproduce instead of making its own nest, it will go into another nest, lay an egg, its egg will hatch first and eat the other eggs from another species, and they just lay one. So yeah, it's it's a pretty nasty reproductive life.

Mark Vins14:43

Yeah, like another ant like ants or wasps. They they'll like go down in they'll burrow into like an ant. They'll crawl down into the hole to where their larvae are. They'll lay their egg and then that will be the food supply for their offspring.

Mark Vins14:57

I know, right? So, they have a really bad sting. And because a lot of people see them in like cow pastures, they're called cow killers cuz the the myth is if a cow cow gets stung by one of these, it kills the cow. That's not true.

Mark Vins15:11

But it's very painful. And

Mark Vins15:14

Uh I don't think they really sting cows, if I'm if I'm being honest. I think it would be pretty hard for a cow to get stung by a cow killer just because of a hoof. But

Okay. Okay. the uh

Mark Vins15:25

Yeah. I mean, most people get stung by things because they're messing with it. I mean, like just trying to grab it because it's colorful. It's fuzzy. A lot of kids would probably grab it and it

It'll sting you right away.

Mark Vins15:34

And now Justin rated this as one of the top. So, his rating system was different than ours. Ours we made is out of 10. So, it makes a little bit more sense to most people. His was out of four.

Mark Vins15:44

So, um four being the And it was it was a top sting. So that one just blew up and we

Mark Vins15:57

Well, yeah, cuz we were a two-man band. Like his his the early responsibilities where Coyote was the host and the writer and the editor and I was the producer, camera operator, and just business logistics. Yeah. I was just taking care of like travel and all that stuff.

I had a lot of hat. We all had a lot of hats making it work. And uh we had a couple of our friends who were very dedicated to the project that were like some of our first hires.

Mark Vins16:20

So Mario, um Chance, Chris, the guys that we still work with today.

Mark Vins16:25

We're all on that trip and it was

Yeah. It's nice to actually have a conversation where I can like think because I I don't think about those days very often anymore.

Mark Vins16:34

But it was exciting.

Mark Vins16:39

How do you find the calculator? Yeah.

You got to look for it. So like

Mark Vins16:44

We were in Arizona. So we were uh just outside of Tucson.

Mark Vins16:47

Uh you know Tucson that Sonoran Desert Wilderness has some of the coolest wildlife in North America. Like you're talking like Gila monsters like one of the only venomous lizards in the world. Uh lots of species and variants of rattlesnake. You've got javelina pigs everywhere. You've got um crazy arachnids like sun spiders that are like these like sulpy. Have you heard of a camel spider? They have those. They're actually crazy cuz they are attracted to light. So at night they will run at you.

Mark Vins17:15

Yeah, they have tarantula hawks out there. So like these the one of the largest wasps in the world is a tarantula hawk. They actually u can the reason they're called that is uh they will grab a spider uh this giant wasp will grab a spider, lay an egg in it. So it's like a parasettoid wasp again.

Mark Vins17:30

And then they have these cow killers. They have you know they had so

Mark Vins17:44

And I have filmed a lot of those toads and those toads will actually eat anything. I've seen those toads eat bats.

Mark Vins17:56

We can call it a velvet ant. A velvet ant.

Mark Vins17:59

So, we catch it. And at [clears throat] the time, we didn't have all of our our tools that we use today. We've kind of refined this process, but we basically are like, "Okay, we let's we'll put it in a capsule, show people this this insect, teach people about what it does and why it is what it is, and then, you know, we're going to have Coyote get stung." Count down from three,

And we're going to film the whole thing.

Mark Vins18:22

Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's because here's the thing. Um, granted, we are showing people what it's like. That's like one of the points of our videos. But until you do it yourself, like there's not a lot of there's not a backlog of experience to pull from.

So it is going into the unknown and how I react to his thing will be different than how you react to the next person. So you don't really know until you do it. It is a leap of faith.

So there's a lot of anxiety that goes into it. And then of course he gets stung and me is like the producer, camera operator, director. I have like multi-cam setup. I got my camera guys there. We have macro. We've got, you know, wide shot. you know, I'm doing the A camera trying to, you know, track Coyote and his motions and, you know, we filmed all these videos and but it wasn't until we were in post that we realized like how like cool it looked with all these different perspectives.

Mark Vins19:11

And of course over the years we built upon this, like we refined it, but it it was pretty close. That video was pretty close. I think it still holds up today.

What do you mean? Like when you when I watch that video, I've only seen it a couple times since we released it, but like I watch it like a couple years ago, uh just to see how we used to do things. It it's probably 85% of how we do it today.

Mark Vins19:35

Yes, you got to have epipens because um excuse me, the most dangerous situation that can happen from like an insect sting is you go into shock. So anaphylactic shock where you know of course you can

Your throat can close it affects your respiratory system

Mark Vins19:54

So when you're envenomated when you know a foreign body enter enters your bloodstream your immune response is to create an inflammation event. So you're and it's supposed to be localized.

Mark Vins20:08

You can get a lot of redness. Uh your your whole arm can swell up.

Mark Vins20:18

Yeah. Supposed to isolate it. Okay.

So it's like think about it like it's injected in your body's like oh no I don't want that to spread. I'm going to isolate this.

Mark Vins20:26

That's effectively the response. The problem is is sometimes your body can overdo it.

Mark Vins20:30

And it now thinks that oh no like because it's in your bloodstream it's everywhere

And it has you have a systemic response where all over your body you're starting to have inflammation. You can lose your I mean you can lose feeling it affects your nervous system. Uh this early symptoms of anaphylactic are like um numbing of the tongue, swelling of the tongue, tingling in all on your extremity. So if your fingers and toes go numb, that's a bad sign.

And there's like emergency protocol that you need to implement right away so you don't die because you can die pretty quickly with this. So uh especially when you're in a remote place away from medical care. Uh but so we always carry EpiPens. An EpiPen u epinephrine, anyone who's like really allergic to bees is probably carrying one right now. Y

And uh it gives you a period of time that suppresses that immuno response so you can get to a hospital or get to a real

Mark Vins21:22

A lot of times they're going to monitor you, put you on a steroid, you know, try to like treat the acute symptoms, but really what they're they're there to do is if you need intubation, like so if you need a breathing machine, okay? So if like you know it gets really really serious, they can actually treat you in the field. I think you have to do one of those like TRA tube things. I it'd be bad. It'd be very bad.

Mark Vins22:43

Yeah, you're beyond hives.

Mark Vins22:56

I'm glad we could laugh about this now because I'm sure at the time it was not funny.

Mark Vins23:32

Yeah. I mean it it can get scary and that that's actually the first step you should take is take a histamine. Yeah.

So that because effectively what those a venom is a protein and it's trying to like you know bind to your histamine receptors. So the antihistamine will help prevent that. But even that's not enough if it's too far along. But yeah,

I would say the one thing that you should have done is had someone monitor you because like it's just like getting a concussion, like going to sleep.

You're not able to tell people if you're in trouble anymore.

Mark Vins24:42

Yeah. Well, and and you hear about these stories all the time about people becoming allergic out of nowhere, like beekeepers developing allergies out of nowhere. People do it for like decades

And then all of a sudden boom, one day they go into shock. Like it

Mark Vins24:56

It's really an a mysterious thing in the world of like biology of like how these allergens actually react and why is it case by case, why is it circumstantial, why did it happen to me, no one else in my family has this. Yeah. So it it and you know that's one of the reasons we make these videos is to sort sort of demystify a lot of these experiences. These these are real experiences people have often.

Mark Vins25:22

The velvet ant. The cow killer.

Mark Vins25:27

So, the stinger. So, the velvet ant, for those watching on the video, you see my finger. It's about a little less than an inch.

Mark Vins25:32

Okay.

Mark Vins25:34

The stinger's an inch. So, the stinger is about the same size. So, you imagine like this furry fuzzy ant is on the skin. All a sudden this giant hook stinger comes out and fishes around almost like it's just looking for a way to get in and under the skin

Mark Vins25:47

Yeah. And then it starts popping like poles because a lot of times

Again these animals this is a defense response. They're not they're not in there like exactly knowing where they're going to sting. They're just going to sting anything they can

And it just starts you know tap dancing around his skin and each one of those is a sting. Oh

And then he starts you know going into the normal reaction which is like your pain response. So that's like the first thing is the pain response and it takes over

It kind of takes over your your whole environment because you don't really know how bad it's going to become and it's getting worse and worse and worse and there's like anxiety and

You know uh we're also so it's clear like we're making a show, right? So you're trying to like tell the camera what's happening to you. So it's part like what's happening to me, let me tell you. And it's like in between those two priorities, you get this like performance.

And that's what I would describe it as.

Mark Vins26:40

I think in general he's just more animated. Yeah. Like he he is really kind of like that all the time.

Mark Vins26:45

Yeah.

Mark Vins27:10

But,

Uh, I think the gravity of it was is that that we're on this train to a place that we've always wanted to go, but we have no idea where the stop is. Like, it's just sort of you're just hooked to this thing and you're traveling constantly. Those early years from like 2015 to probably 2019, I was on the road like 300 days a year.

Mark Vins27:30

I barely I home did not feel like home. It felt like a hotel.

Mark Vins27:33

Yeah. Just I would go home for like sometimes only 12 hours to like grab the bills, do a quick laundry, change, and then right back out the door again.

Mark Vins27:46

So, uh yeah, it's actually interesting. Uh you bring up the trips because it's it's been like this like expanding web. Yeah. Yeah.

So it started in North America like started epicenter in Ohio. We then went to Florida, Arizona, Montana as like our core, you know, grounds for making content. From there we expanded to Costa Rica and then Australia.

Mark Vins28:07

Yeah, that was ironically that was also our first like sizzle reel trip

Which is a whole another story.

Mark Vins28:14

So we made our first Brave owner sizzle reel. We're trying to do the television series in Costa Rica. That was so that was like years prior. But

We knew because we went on that trip, we we had some contacts. So we're like, we're going to Costa Rica. It's super biodiverse. The animals are very exotic because what works for us beyond the bites and the stings are just like really exotic novel animals that people have never seen.

Mark Vins28:38

Like poison frogs, like holding can you hold a poison frog? Uh like fair to lance snakes, like vipers. Like they have these uh eyelash vipers that literally look like Game of Thrones dragons that are bright yellow, like you know, stuff like that. And giant leaf cutter ants that are like marching up the trees with like big giant leaves in their mouths, you know, just like it it was like it's like a tropical paradise.

Mark Vins29:00

And so many colorful, unique animals. So we we went there and we it's still to this day probably the place we filmed the most.

Mark Vins29:07

I've probably been to Costa Rica no less than 20 times. Oh my god.

On production, not like for fun. So,

Mark Vins29:15

Poison frogs.

Mark Vins29:19

So, there some of them some of them that this is a big misconception. There's a lot of uh all amphibians actually, even bullfrogs locally here are toxic. Their skin has has poison in it.

Mark Vins29:32

Exactly. So, um there's just different levels of toxicity. So, because they're named poison frogs, which is a for those who don't know what a poison frog is, they're like the super colorful rainforest frogs that hop on the floor. They have usually really cool patterns and they can be like red, blue, bright green. Um, they were like a childhood favorite animal of mine. It's like what got me into like

Mark Vins29:54

Yeah. Yeah.

Mark Vins29:59

Well, you have to wash your hands. But yeah, they have they secrete a toxin in their skin that can actually like make you sick. And some of them are even toxic enough that can kill you. Really?

Yes.

Mark Vins30:08

You'd have to ingest it. So this like another misnomer. So if you have an open wound on your hand and the poison gets in, then you're you're poisoned.

Uh if you eat it, you're poisoned. If you touch them and eat something, you're poisoned. If you scratch your eye, it's almost like a hot pepper, you know, like if you ever like, you know, like a jalapeno, if you're chopping up a jalapeno, you actually scratch your eye or touch somewhere you shouldn't touch and you you feel the pain.

Mark Vins31:24

So, let's just but be glad he wasn't holding poison frogs because like that's kind of the same idea like if you touch this toxin and it can get in

Mark Vins31:46

I have no idea. And I have to imagine it's probably something like that's ritualistic from like thousands of years ago. But

Mark Vins31:54

Yeah. Like the uh so to answer your question about the the are they poison arrow frogs. Some of them are are like in South America, but like these ones in Costa Rica are pretty mild. Like you could you could like lick one and survive. You wouldn't feel good, but it's not going to kill you.

Mark Vins32:10

Yeah.

Mark Vins32:14

Poison's different. So like uh venom is going to cause an inflammatory response or a neuro response where like poison actually is your GI. So like that's going to be like a different system and EpiPen may not help.

Mark Vins32:32

If you're poisoned,

Mark Vins32:37

I just make sure I don't get poison.

Mark Vins32:40

I I honestly I think you have to just ride it out. In a lot of these circumstances where I'm envenomated for like uh the bite sting index they whether it's a marine worm or a jellyfish or whatever uh you're riding you're letting your immune system do its job.

Mark Vins32:54

That's effectively what's going on and that experience is what I'm trying to convey in the

Mark Vins33:02

So they are just a higher toxicity of venom because there's a lot more of it and we there there are like two types. There's neurotoxic and cytotoxic and hemattoxic cytotoxic and hemattoxic venom affect the blood and and the the body systems where neurotoxic affects you know your nervous system. Uh and they're bad. I mean they can definitely kill you. Um but luckily where there are very dangerous snakes usually people know how to deal with those snake bites. So like Australia for example,

They have I think I think it's like six of the most of the top 10 most deadly snakes on earth are in Australia.

Mark Vins33:34

And they only have like one or two deaths a year and a lot of people are bitten. Um they just know how to treat it because they're neurotoxic. So the way you treat a neurotoxic bite

Is they actually have these bandages that when you pull them tight enough they're they they're compression bandages. They make a cross.

So it starts as like a thin thing and when it's tight enough it's a cross. It shows you that you're containing the venom.

Yeah. And then you get to the hospital and once again once you're there if you need intubation they can intubate you or your body.

Mark Vins34:03

And they do that too. They can do that too. But unfortunately a lot of people are allergic to the antivenom. It can it can create a worse response. So god it's uh it's dicey. Like I would never test getting bitten by a venomous snake. Like that's not in the cards for me. No. I've been bitten by nonvenenomous snakes or mildly venomous snakes, but like never like I would never intentionally get bit by like a rattlesnake. You can lose an limb. I mean, people lose their hands.

It's for real.

Mark Vins34:36

Oh yeah.

Mark Vins34:49

Yes, that is a good sign. But don't be fooled. They can still like bite you.

Mark Vins34:53

You know, snakes are really misunderstood. They're feared. It's like a primal instinct. Uh probably because their venom is bad for us.

Mark Vins35:01

It's probably in our DNA to some degree to be afraid of them. But uh you don't really need to be because the only way a snake can bite you is if you're close to it. Yeah.

So just give it distance and you're going to be fine. And and

99 out of 100 times the snake is going to go the opposite way.

Mark Vins35:16

And time it comes at you step the other.

Mark Vins35:21

No. Uh and they're up there. That's like that's I would consider one of the lethal snakes where if you're bitten and not given medical treatment, you will die

Mark Vins35:30

Yeah. It it will happen rapidly within a few hours.

Mark Vins35:35

Yeah. So, if you get treatment, and it's not guaranteed that treatment will save you, but like it's it is treatable if you get the antivenom and you have the medical care. Uh, the most dangerous snake uh the inland taipan. So, I'm going to caveat this. The inland taipan is the most venomous snake and that's uh one in Australia. Um, but they're in places that humans really don't go. It's like extreme desert environment. Yeah. Um, so the one that gets people in the most trouble in Australia is the eastern brown, which is like number three on the list.

And th those snakes like they they'll they'll they'll be in like your bathroom, you know, like they I actually have friends in Australia and they're one of their main jobs besides helping people like us like film animals is to remove snakes from people's homes.

It's crazy.

Mark Vins36:19

Yeah,

Mark Vins36:32

Yeah.

And they have they their job is to basically milk these snakes. Yeah.

To create the antivenen. And it is crazy. I I don't know if Zach works anymore, but uh, if Zach's listening to this, what's up, Zach? Uh, he was like the main [clears throat]

Guy responsible for milking these snakes,

Mark Vins36:48

And he was he was doing this like dozens of times a day. And you just think about like repetition, you know, like in sports and things like that. like you can you kind of get complacent,

Mark Vins36:57

And I'm like, you cannot get complacent in this job.

Mark Vins37:02

Well, the rule is if if you're bit, you can't do that job anymore because your chances of going into an allergic anaphylactic state go up exponentially with every bite.

Mark Vins37:13

It's kind of a oneanddone job. Like if you if you're bitten and you survive the bite, you have to find a new line of work.

Mark Vins37:41

Yeah. And

Mark Vins37:43

I you know, I'm I'm a scuba diver and I certainly have limits. Like I have friends that do cave diving and do that tech stuff.

Mark Vins37:53

I have a friend named Zach down in Florida and uh he does a lot of cave diving

And he tells me like there are routes in these caves where like part of the the the way to know where you are is where you pass the bodies.

Mark Vins38:05

And I'm like you do and you still do this. He's like oh yeah all the time. Like that's green shoes. I'm like oh no.

Mark Vins38:11

Yeah.

Mark Vins38:57

So, uh, about 2018, I moved to LA because I was living in Ohio. We started the company in Ohio [clears throat] and the channel was based in Ohio and we still have an office there to this day.

Uh, I moved to LA because we got signed to uh, CIA. We had Hollywood agents and managers and, you know, we wrote books, we went on like speaking tours. They they kind of like did a 360 uh, conversion of the brand.

Mark Vins39:44

Yeah. And to and to be like politically correct about it. Like because I like a lot of those guys. Like they meant really well for us. Um but a lot of those things we weren't meant to do if that if that makes sense. Like you know we we make videos like we're content creators. We're not really like meant to go like

Sell tickets to auditoriums and like you know do theatrics on stage. So we we kind of got thrown into like the vortex of like the Hollywood machine and we came out the other side unscathed luckily but uh learned a lot of good lessons, learned about a lot more about what we shouldn't do um frankly and uh really learned that what we were doing on YouTube is is was already the right recipe.

Mark Vins40:50

Uh I think primarily one of the goals that agencies have and it it it's usually to the advantage of the talent is to fill your calendar.

Mark Vins41:03

To absolutely stuff

Mark Vins41:06

Yes. Which means you're working. So they want you to be on all the time.

Mark Vins41:10

Maxing out. And it got to the point where the channel started to suffer because we we got this Animal Planet show which was really fun to do. It was like 20 half hours with Animal Planet. Coyote really took lead on that because I did like the first 14 uh videos. But then it became obvious that like with all the other commitments, the YouTube channel was starting to suffer and I'm like that's our home. That's our

Mark Vins41:31

That's that's that's the Wellspring that makes all this other stuff happen. There's no interest in Brave Wilderness without our YouTube channel.

Mark Vins41:38

So that's when I made the jump to to becoming a host because we needed to continue to fulfill that content.

Mark Vins41:53

Yeah. And I mean, we have, you got to imagine, you do 700 videos with somebody, travel the world for years. You start having different interests. You're like, "Hey, like we've done this a lot. I'm going to go do my thing. Why don't you go you go take care of this really important commitment?" I mean,

Because we weren't just signed on as talent to do that plan show. We were the producer.

Mark Vins42:10

We were taking on the whole financial apple cart. Yeah. So, there's a lot of liability there. And that's, you know, I just really want to touch on the point of like the lessons I learned not to do. It's not to like overlever yourself out of your lane. And that can happen a lot of times when you have some success and you have people all of a sudden taking interest like a Hollywood agency. They're going to try to multiply that in other fields and it can really take you out of your lane.

And unfortunately, that happened to us, but it did produce some interesting results in the sense that like it made me a host.

Yeah. So like I we found that oh maybe we don't need to travel 300 days a year together. Maybe we can each do 150

Mark Vins42:45

Apart and now we can do now we can have other bandwidth to take on other projects. So uh yeah like it's just sort of like it's more like going through a maze and coming out the other side than it is like stepping in like a pitfall. I'm sure there are pitfalls but I don't look at it like that. I just learned a lot about

Parts of the media maze that I'm just not really in tune with.

Yeah. and and those those are like live events and like things that you know um have very little to do with like the content creation because I'm a content creator.

Mark Vins44:13

Yeah. It's it's on the schedule and uh there's a lot of logistics that happen behind the scenes to make this content possible. It is a big machine and it's not just like me and Coyote at the end of the day. We have like 13 full-timers that are with us. Yeah.

And a lot of people have dedicated their careers to to making this work.

Uh and yeah, there's only so much bandwidth on the calendar, you know. So that that's the other thing is you kind of can get in situations where you have like these like long range obligations. You're like, "Oh, I I have time to do that because that's not till like next March."

Mark Vins44:45

But the reality is next March is a lot closer than you want it to be.

Mark Vins44:49

And all of a sudden, boom, you're in the hot seat. And we we were lucky enough to come out the other side of, you know, that I would call it like the Hollywood era of Brave Wilderness. And now we're now, you know, I live in just outside of Boston.

Mark Vins45:01

Uh Coyote's still in Columbus. and we have uh great setups in each city. We came out the other side and and just to realize like what we were doing all all along was the right thing. And it's it's been interesting as a YouTube creator over the last decade. We've been doing this for 12 years going on 13.

And in that time, I've I've I've witnessed the huge directional shift of like everyone who's making on YouTube's trying to make it over to Hollywood and trying to make movies and be on TV. Now it's the complete opposite. It's like the polarity shift where like everyone like you see like Will Smith and like all these like A-list actors are trying to have presence on on YouTube and the interesting thing is it doesn't really work that well unless they're willing to commit to that craft. So what we're talking about like getting outside your lane, it's the same thing for them.

Yep.

Mark Vins45:48

So they're they're bites and stings. It just depends on what you're encountering, I guess. So like a tarantula bite is a bite. And they don't have a stinger, they have fangs.

Uh

Mark Vins46:07

Yeah. Yeah. It's all at the end of the day, it's all venom. So it's all like a chemical transfer.

Mark Vins46:23

Actually, it's very diverse. That's why it's so like mysterious because like the compounds you got to imagine like all this venom is a product of what they're eating. It's like from their food. So you can literally take a frog that would kill you in a second from eating it in the wild and have it in captivity and it'll be harmless.

Mark Vins46:42

Once it stops eating whatever it's eating in the wild alkoids that it's getting from like it's it the diet of like gnats and ants goes away so does the poison.

Mark Vins46:53

And it's not always true. is always like a breaks the rule. So like a scorpion is always going to be venomous. Like a snake is always going to be venomous. Will it be more or less venomous? I think that'd be an interesting study.

Mark Vins47:04

The uh the other stuff that I would say like would be noteworthy. I've been I've been stung by a murder hornet.

Mark Vins47:19

Yeah. which uh it was kind of it was funny because at the time we had already had a a murder hornet sting out and we had known about sort of like the truth of this news story. It was it you know put it this way. Was there a murder hornet that was found in the pack west? Yeah, I'm sure it was it got in on like an agricultural shipment or whatever. It it kind of stowed away.

Was there like a breeding population that we had to worry about? Absolutely not. Like to this day I've not seen a shred of evidence to the contrary. So We were of course looked at as like experts in the in the in this space.

Mark Vins47:57

I called the murder horn a miracle because there was a moment there when co first started happening. We were concerned because we couldn't travel.

Mark Vins48:03

You know like oh my gosh our plans are all scrapped.

Luckily we had a little bit of content in the pipeline but when that runs out what do we do?

Mark Vins48:10

And like everybody started watching Netflix and YouTube. So, uh, we actually, you know, on a business front benefited from like people needing that entertainment outlet. Yeah.

And the and the murder hornet for us was like the spark that kind of ignited this huge fire on our channel.

Mark Vins48:28

So, that that video in particular uh was when coyote got stung. I just about three years ago got stung myself and I could tell you there are certain insects where I'm like I could probably take a hundred stings and be okay and I'll it'll hurt but I'll I'll survive. I think you could maybe take three four murder horned stings and you probably wouldn't make it. Like it's just such a massive inflammation response because it's so huge. You got to think you have a you have a hornet that's 2 in long, which 2 in doesn't sound very big until you think about like this thing looks like an animatronic robot.

It's so big.

Mark Vins49:05

It it's it's very toxic.

Mark Vins49:08

Yeah. And it sound when it moves um you can hear its mandibles clicking like and you can hear its head turning. Its wings are very loud. It sounds like you know when they fly by you it's like you're being buzzed by a plane. It's like as they fly by and they're not that uncommon. You see them a lot. Like if you've ever been in Japan in a park, you're probably seeing giant Asian hornets. Now, are they the murder hornet, which is like a very specific variant of that species?

Only a few places have it. But there's just like regular Asian hornets. They're pretty close. They're And like right there.

Mark Vins49:43

Oh, yeah. And it would be pretty close to as bad. So, um

Mark Vins49:54

And here's what's crazy about what happened to me because I knew it was going to be bad, right? Like I I knew it was going to be like a top five. I didn't know it was going to be number one. But for me, um you know, like everyone knows like honeybees lose their stinger when you're stung by a honeybee cuz they have barbs where like a a wasp at your house like on your deck or something, they don't have barbs and they can sting you repeatedly.

To our knowledge, at the time, the murder hornet had a smooth stinger, but when it stung me, the stinger came out.

So, if you've ever been stung by a honeybee, you know that there's like a venom sack at the end of that stinger that continues to pump venom. So, it's not like I just got stung once. Like, I got stung and then I'm looking down at this stinger with the venom sack and I could see it pulsating.

Mark Vins50:38

And I instinctively I'm like, I got to get this out of my arm. This is this is horrible. This is like a worst case scenario. I yank this stinger out of my arm and I was doing this all for the biting index which I can touch on after the story. Uh and it instantly like draws blood like it's gushing down my arm.

Mark Vins50:54

It's like I got stabbed.

Mark Vins50:56

I guess technically I did.

Mark Vins51:01

The the pain was fierce. It was like an electrical fire underneath my skin. Very started very cute, then it spread up and down my whole arm.

In the hours later, my whole arm swelled up. I had like an elephant arm.

Really? Yeah, there's actually a video that I did the next day where I had to like kind of hide my left hand because it was just it was like twice the size.

It looked like I was wearing like a Mickey Mouse glove.

Mark Vins51:24

I knew when So when the when the venom start the reaction of the venom starts to spread, it usually stops. Like there's a point where it'll either be like a silver dollar. It may go up to your elbow. It may go up to your shoulder. If it gets past your shoulder, now you're talking like vital organs and things.

Mark Vins51:40

That's why we always do the test on the arm so there's some room to go.

Mark Vins51:43

I would never advise doing it like in the jugular. I mean, good way to die. But, you know, like it's starting to spread and it stopped at my shoulder. So, I knew like it's it's going to stay local here. So, I knew I was going to be okay. And I wasn't having any other symptoms, but it hurt obviously really bad. And then the swelling and the itching was unbelievable for like 3 or 4 days.

Mark Vins52:06

Yes, it does.

Mark Vins52:10

M I don't really I don't like benadryil cuz I have to produce other videos and it knocks me out.

Mark Vins52:15

Yeah. It just makes me want to sleep.

Mark Vins52:17

No. I Well, here's the thing. So, the BSI we we rank it on three different factors. So, there's intimidation, the pain of this thing, and then the aftermath. So, I kind of look at it like, well, if I use topical treatment,

I'm not really giving the aftermath a fair shake. So, I try because again, like I I don't expect other people to do this. This is sort of like a oneshot deal. Yeah.

So, I want people to know what it's going to the worst.

So, yeah. So, we document the whole aftermath and then we give it like of those three out of 10 scores, it gets an aggregate score and that's its ranking score.

Uh, and it it is the number one definitively.

Mark Vins52:50

Yeah.

Mark Vins52:54

It wasn't the direct next best, but the I would say the other probably the most terrifying test I've ever done was with a giant Asian centipede.

Uh, so you've probably all seen like little centipedes in your garden, right? Yeah,

They could bite you.

Mark Vins53:11

Its fangs are like a like a like a snake.

Mark Vins53:16

And and I've seen this happen. This was probably one of the worst things I saw Coyote take was was when he got bit by the giant desert centipede in Arizona. This is like a cousin,

But super exotic one I found in Borneo.

So I'm like in the middle of Borneo and I I knew this was going to be a big Raider, so I'm like I got to do this. Like and I didn't want to do it. And I'm like, this could be days of just like I could be bedridden. How bad this could be.

And I would, you know, when you're in a tropical environment, your sweat, your the sweat kind of penetrates your skin away. Your skin becomes like really like like cutprone, like if you like a little nick becomes like ash.

Mark Vins54:16

Exactly. So I'm water logged right about to get bitten by this giant thing and and each one of their legs are almost like a dagger. They're like they'll they'll rip into your skin. So it's like up and down my wrist just

Mark Vins54:28

They're biting so they f each leg is biting. No. So the top legs that's mandibles mandibles, but no, like the the top legs are modified fangs,

Mark Vins54:42

Yeah. They're like grappling hooks. They're they're basically like little like pickaxes.

Mark Vins54:48

It's pain. It's very painful.

Mark Vins54:51

So to put it in context, these things like eat birds. They eat birds and lizards and they'll eat a They'll eat a rat. They'll eat a small animal.

Mark Vins54:59

Yeah. Yeah, I mean let's just let's just be grateful like they only get to about a foot foot and a half long. If these things were like 3 ft long, they probably we we would really have to worry about it.

Mark Vins55:08

But anyway, so my skin is like water logging and I've seen someone I saw a coyote get bit by one before. It did not really break the skin, but it got envenomated. This thing it like I as soon as I let it try to bite me, it like opened its mouth twice as wide and sunk its fangs in like a vampire and immediately gushing blood like coming out. And I'm like, first thought was like, wow, this is a lot worse than I thought it was going to be.

And I don't even know if we can air this. This is so gory. This is like blood everywhere. Yeah. So, we had to obviously cut around for like, you know, guidelines and things that YouTube makes us adhere to. But that one

Was way worse than I thought it was going to be and definitely the scariest that I've done.

Really? Yeah.

Mark Vins55:52

Rip it out.

Mark Vins55:53

Oh, instinctively you're not going to leave it there. Like it this thing's like it's its fang which is about a half inch long is all the way under your skin. You can see it under your skin.

Mark Vins56:04

It's they're smooth. So it kind of released. Uh

Mark Vins56:09

I Well, I in the if you watch the video I um Locky, who's one of our Australian guys, was with us on that trip and I I was like, "Locky, grab it." You know, like and he he jumped in and saved the day.

I would have stomped that [ __ ] These and when you see these are like probably the people are scared of spiders. If you're scared of spiders, you don't want to see one of these. The these are like the worst. They are the most terrifying

The most terrifying creature I think that is is alive.

Mark Vins56:36

Or maybe a bobbit. I filmed Bobbit worms, too, which is like an aquatic version of it.

Mark Vins56:46

Scorpions? So, I've done a number of scorpions. I did

Uh the worst one I've ever been stung by was uh the Arizona bark scorpion uh back in Tucson. And it's the only scorpion in North America that's ever caused like a human fatality.

Mark Vins57:02

Yeah. Most scorpions in in the New World, it's called New World scorpions are really not that potent.

Mark Vins57:08

Uh you can't have allergic reaction, but like the biggest one, the giant desert Harry, the one you'd probably see a lot of in Arizona, they're not that bad. It's like a beasting.

Okay. But the uh the bark scorpion is neurotoxic and they like to hang upside down on like logs. So when people have like wood in their backyard or like a stack and they're doing landscaping, usually they they grab onto something and get nailed.

And it was wild. Like it it numbed my arm all the way up to the shoulder. Like completely numb. Felt like I had like a Charlie horse. Yeah.

For 24 hours. And then my hand was numb for a whole week.

Mark Vins57:44

Could not could not feel any sensation. And it was like just like tingling.

Mark Vins57:52

Well, before this I had been stung by a stonefish, which is like the most venomous fish in the world. Kind of going through my greatest hits here, Ken.

Mark Vins58:00

So, that one I had I I kind of knew what I was in for. So, that that one I had I had taken like probably like more of a micro sting.

Mark Vins58:07

Usually people step on those.

I just took one barb to the hand.

Yeah. But that one barb like I didn't have feeling in these three fingers like from the pinky to the middle for like I think it was like three months.

Mark Vins58:18

Three months and no no sensation in these fingers.

Mark Vins58:22

I thought maybe I was in for it. But luckily it was only about a week.

Mark Vins58:25

That one. So it was it was bad. It's scary like when you start having that neurotoxic response and you you feel the feeling going away and it's spreading.

That's when the that's when you can get into a panic.

Yeah. And I just, you know, you kind, you kind of had the zen in that moment. Be like, I know what's happening. I know what to do if it goes any further than I'm comfortable with. Like that all the guys know where the hospital is. We always mark the nearest hospital. We have like an emergency satphone button where you can get hella like right away.

Mark Vins58:54

Yeah. Yep. We have we have like insuranceances and things that like have it all set up.

Mark Vins59:00

Well, you know, insuranceances are all about how many claims you have. So, as long as you don't have claims, you'll you'll for anything.

Okay.

Mark Vins59:10

Portuguese manow war?

Mark Vins59:10

So they probably only would be deadly if you were like swimming and you like seized up and drowned because of the sting and

Wait until like an well not maybe shock but like if you I could see if like you were like in a float of them if there were like multiple and you just got like covered and you just freaked out and like you weren't a strong swimmer. You could probably drown. Uh I don't I mean I guess you could be allergic to them. They're they're more neurotoxic. Uh they it was bad. The worst aquatic sting besides the stonefish that I've had was the fire worm. Uh which is it's a bristle worm that has like these fibrous uh sort of like uh they're almost like fiberglass going up and down their body and they detach into your skin

And I've been stung by them twice

And it is the longest lasting sting effect because I still get inflammation this day. It's almost like getting tattooed. Like right now, this spot in my arm, I can wake up on any random morning and have like a a welt there.

Mark Vins1:00:12

And and I know it's from that because like it just mechanically that's the only thing.

Mark Vins1:00:19

So they're kind of working through my skin and anytime they like get into underneath the dermis, it creates a

Mark Vins1:00:25

Response.

Mark Vins1:00:27

That one's freaky. That one's I would say if I have any concern long effect concern, that that's the only one.

And what is that thing called? It's called a fire worm, but it's it's a marine bristle worm. So, they they they look like the ones in Florida where we filmed this are like bright red and they have these like they almost have like these like beard of like white spines going up and down the bottom.

Mark Vins1:00:45

All over the rocks and stuff by the shore

Mark Vins1:00:49

Oh, yeah.

Mark Vins1:00:51

All the time. And actually,

Mark Vins1:00:55

Most people get them on their fingers.

Mark Vins1:00:56

So, I think you know the the skin on your fingers is a lot tougher. are probably harder for the, you know,

Mark Vins1:01:06

And you deal with these the same way. But so you know what to do, right? Like you just take tape, reverse like duct tape or, you know, masking tape and you like have to get them out that way.

Yeah.

Mark Vins1:01:25

not done a stingray. Uh I' I've filmed stingrays underwater, but I've never intentionally been barred by a stingray, but they are venomous. And I would say a big stingray, that's like, you know, unfortunately Steve Irwin passed away because it's it's like it's more of a mechanical wound. It's you're being stabbed by a giant like knife.

Mark Vins1:01:59

Isn't that always the answer? Like oh just pee on it. Uh we we've we've actually tested and to see if that that's true with certain stings,

Mark Vins1:02:09

Yeah. So, you know, the ammonia and your pee, like vinegar does it. It's essentially an acid that like denatures the protein in the venom.

But with a stingray, it's like it's more of a wound. So, it's like an open wound. It's a gap.

Mark Vins1:02:23

And you're getting all kinds of junk in there. Think about if you're on the beach, there's like sand and coral and get really infected.

Mark Vins1:02:28

So, yeah.

Mark Vins1:02:31

I've heard I've heard, you know, actually our our editor Chris has been stung by one. He said it was the worst thing that he's ever dealt with. Not for on camera, just being at the beach.

Mark Vins1:02:55

You know what's funny you say that cuz we did like this I was talking about like the live events that we were doing through the agency

We it was we partnered with AG on this did like 25 dates we wrote a book to like support it and it really cool in a sense where, you know, it wasn't really what we were supposed to be doing, but it was cool because we got to see our audience in person for the first time because on YouTube you just see the comments and the views.

So, we're we're playing some of these like, you know, clips that were like almost like previews into future videos and some of them were stings and people would just lose their minds laughing and it was like not the reaction we expected. We expected you would be like, "Oh, oh my gosh, this is wild." And it people were just dying laughing.

Mark Vins1:04:12

Yeah. I mean we definitely have different styles for how we react

And you know I wanted to obviously not just like carbon copy the way he does it. I I took it from more of like

A ranking approach like I wanted to catalog it. But yeah, Coyote just kind of gave people the raw experience of his reaction.

Mark Vins1:04:30

And yeah, it is entertaining to watch and it the response that people have is usually laugh.

Mark Vins1:04:42

That was uh interesting because I had an opportunity to make like a mini dock with YouTube, like a YouTube original. And uh we were originally going to do it as a series, but this is like precoid, so we're trying to manage it. We ended up saying like, "Okay, let's just pick like one thing to do." And it was called Brave Mission. And I partnered with uh Leonardo DiCaprio's uh NGO called Rewild.org and they have like amazing projects all around the world like trying to preserve habitat, trying to you know reforest areas which I'm a big supporter of and uh one of the like crisis areas in Africa is actually in the DRC in Veruna National Park and that's like one of the only place in the world these mountain gorillas live.

Yeah. And I was like, "Wow, this is like the story of a lifetime to get to go there."

Mark Vins1:05:32

Yes. So there a volcano's national park is is split between Rwanda, DRC, and Uganda.

Okay. So they're kind of like a a try a tri country.

Mark Vins1:05:42

And uh originally we were supposed to go to Rwanda, but when I heard about what's going on in the DRC, I was like, "This is the story to tell." And and it's like unbelievable what these rangers risk to keep those gorillas safe. They track these gorillas like every single day. There's like rebel militias out there that will kill them in a second. They

Because they're um there's a lot of um illegal trade of firewood and charcoal

Going on. They're de that's the major deforestation problem out there and it's an energy crisis. I mean at that part of Africa it's just a straight energy crisis where they don't have like fuel to cook their food or boil their water. So, uh, I was like, "Wow, this and and it's it's a, you know, in terms of the environment, it's the second largest rainforest in the world. It's like the lungs of the planet. Like, we need that rainforest."

Mark Vins1:06:31

And, uh, it's being burned down like at an exponential rate by these by these militias. It's how they're funding all their like illegal operations and, you know, their their wars

Mark Vins1:06:42

Yeah. To this day,

Mark Vins1:06:44

Well, they're just in a remote part of Africa. There's not much you can do about it. They're embedded. We would fly over these places. I know I'm kind of jumping through the story, but we would fly over and we would see their camps.

Uh, and I was with the head rangers. His name's Emanuel Damaro. He's unbelievable guy. And he risk he's been shot. He's been like risk his life all the time to like help these rangers. And he's he's the leader of the park.

Flying over these militants. I'm like, kind of close. Like, do you think they could hit us if they they shot? He's like, oh, we get shot all the time. You can hear them bouncing the bullets bouncing off the plane, but we're high enough where it'll just bounce.

Mark Vins1:07:15

And I was like, are you kidding me? And of course, I was already in the plane. I'm like, I can't wait.

Mark Vins1:07:35

In a in a microcond. We we saw um two Silverback Gorillas spar.

Oh my god, those videos are awesome. It it was it was like it was like a it was like a full uh to the card MMA fight. Like it was like brutal and bloody. A lot of it we couldn't show. Yeah. Cuz like one of the the subdominant male basically had half his face gashed off. [ __ ]

Cuz he just got bit in the face and and and just it's just a raw display of like their their power. I actually had a gorilla when we were filming. Unfortunately, didn't get on camera, but it was done with us and wanted us to leave. It ripped a tree out of the ground with its left hand. The tree was probably like four or five inches in diameter. Like it was a weed. It was boom and just like threw it on the ground in front of me.

And it was I'm like I'm out. Like you know. So that was a really cool experience because not only was that like a once in a lifetime trip to get to like have access to a a place and tell a story like that, but to get to see those gorillas in person. A lot of people were like, "Are we afraid of the gorillas?" It was like one of the most majestic

Animal encounters I've ever had. And you're right, like they do have a lot of relation with like how we are as humans, like you know, the the way they they raise their young. Like anybody who's a parent would be would recognize immediately how they're like chasing their, you know, the baby gorillas around and and how they're like keeping them safe. Like it's it's

Mark Vins1:09:02

Oh, yeah. They're mischievous.

Mark Vins1:09:07

So, they would. We weren't allowed to show any of that because it's uh one of the big concerns there. There's not many of these gorillas alive. I think they got taken off the endangered species list and they're now they're just threatened. But we can pass diseases.

Mark Vins1:09:22

Well, no, they're mountain gorillas. The silverback is are the males.

Mark Vins1:09:31

Yeah. When they when they reach a certain level of dominance, they they start to get gray hair. Oh, okay.

That's that's in they're like the big boss. They're like the leader of the tribe

And they uh the babies will come up and touch you out of curiosity

And you're not going to like you're not going there to like try to make contact but they're going to contact us. They just don't want to shown on camera. So those are things that didn't

Mark Vins1:09:54

They would they would touch you. They would kind of play with your boot cuz you know you want to sit down when you're around gorillas. You want to be very submissive.

Mark Vins1:10:01

Yeah. You don't want to make the silverback think you're there to do anything but hang out.

You're kind of sitting down like, you know, in a just like a, you know, very relaxed position and your boots out there. They'll come and grab your boot and start tugging on your shoelaces. Really? Yeah.

And the the silverbacks are as big as they are, they're they are elusive. Like I actually had one come out of the brush like I didn't even know it was there like brushed against my leg. I was like, "Oh my god." And you immediately like to sit down. That's what you do. Like you sit down and then you make these like deep like kind of like they're kind of soothing noises for a gorilla. It's like like you kind of make these growls

Really makes them know that it's okay.

Mark Vins1:10:38

And they teach you how to do all this stuff.

Mark Vins1:11:11

For sure.

Mark Vins1:11:31

It's it's like their extended family. Yes. The way these rangers and the DRC would uh track these gorillas, they would they they were always with a human guard every day because they're so vulnerable and it's what's vulnerable are the babies.

Mark Vins1:11:44

So they steal the babies for the pet trade. So the rebels will steal the babies. Yes.

Mark Vins1:11:49

Sell them

Mark Vins1:11:51

Nope. To private individuals. It's like that's a whole another conversation about the, you know, kind of underbelly.

Mark Vins1:11:58

A lot of Asian markets. There's a lot Yeah.

Mark Vins1:12:05

Yeah. I mean,

Mark Vins1:12:07

There's there's there is unfortunately like uh it's it's criminal, right? because it's illegal to own these things. Uh but there there is like a huge demand in certain parts of the world for like baby gorillas and exotic animals and and that so they're trying to protect that because you know the rebels who are selling firewood for like $2 a bundle look at a baby gorillas like a huge score.

Mark Vins1:12:32

Oh, they as long as you didn't get stomped by the silverback, they would be easy to catch. And they do they sleep like us. They build like a little nest at night. Yeah.

And they go to sleep.

Mark Vins1:12:41

They're not awake all the time.

Okay. So yeah, like the so basically these rangers are out there surveying not only the habitat of what's going on to prevent the rebels from coming in and they they get in the firefights all the time with these guys. Uh so they're all armed,

Mark Vins1:13:07

You would hope so.

Mark Vins1:13:14

Yeah. I mean, unfortunately, gorillas, as as formidable as they are, they are very they are very passive.

Mark Vins1:13:22

So, you could see how it could happen when you're around them, you see the vulnerable points. You're like, "Oh, yeah." Like,

A baby wanders off a little too far and someone's around, it could get snatched. Cuz the the babies are tiny. They're like They're like infants.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, and the um the rangers that have to protect them are literally tracking miles every single day in this rainforest. It's like unbelievable. They're so strong, too. Like the these rangers are fit. You want to talk about fitness? Oh my gosh, these guys are running laps around us.

Mark Vins1:13:50

Yeah.

Mark Vins1:13:54

That was in terms of like highlights, the DRC trip is is way up there.

Mark Vins1:14:02

To kind of give it a different spin. One of my favorite places I've ever been was was Japan. I I I tell people ask me a lot like where if I could go one place, where would you have me go? And I just think the culture,

The the just the hillsides and the the rural parts of Japan with the temples are just so

Otherworldly. So cool to be there and experience.

Mark Vins1:14:23

It it it feels like a dream.

Mark Vins1:14:25

In a lot of ways. I think that's what I like about it. It's it's like you're on a movie set.

It is awesome. And the food is just unbelievable. So yeah, like I think Japan those I've been there now twice. I think those are very high up there for me.

Mark Vins1:14:40

Galápagos. Yeah. It's weird because I'm literally like finishing that project right now. So we're about to release our first feature film. Um

Mark Vins1:14:48

Yeah, I could talk about it. I can't talk about the distribution plans just yet. So we're about to announce

But let's talk about what you did. So, uh, four years ago, uh, and this is like part two of the DRC project with Leo's team at Rewild. Uh, I got access to some places that have never been granted access for filmmakers before in the Galápagos.

Mark Vins1:15:09

Well, they're doing a lot of, uh, conservation projects there. The film is about conservation. The film is about like the work happening to preserve the Galápagos.

Mark Vins1:15:18

Didn't hurt to have Leo on our team. And, uh, YouTube as well. They uh they they got us this permit to Wolf Volcano which is the tallest peak in all of Galápagos and they have this really rare species of iguana called the pink iguana that lives up there. There's less than like 300 of them left and it's like

Mark Vins1:15:36

Yeah. You imagine like human beings like going to Mars and like setting up a colony on Mars like for these iguanas like that volcano is their that's it in the universe that we know that's the only place you will find the species

Really. And that in itself started to like present a unique story to me. I'm like, "Wow, well, we have this really unique opportunity to film the super rare species, arguably the rarest species in all of the Galápagos."

Mark Vins1:16:01

Attenboro.

Mark Vins1:16:04

The BBC. Uh, so yeah, I think no one gets to go up there. Really?

Mark Vins1:16:09

Yeah. It's

Mark Vins1:16:12

There's There's park r Well, the the Galápagos National Park in Ecuador do extremely good job protecting those islands.

Oh, really? It's harder for them to protect the fisheries. Like the illegal fishing is really hurting the sharks, which is also part of our story. But I knew having that access was like unique enough to build like a film around. I just didn't know it was going to become a feature. So we we were out there for 10 days. We had a 10-day permit, two days on the volcano. We filmed as deep as I could dive on wreck gear. So it was like 132 ft.

Mark Vins1:16:40

Recreational gear. So it's not like technical gear. It's like you talked earlier about the guys who do welding. Yeah. Like that's technical diving and it you need different support systems like

A guy with a camera on scuba

You know we we went as deep as we could and then um we went through the intertital zones and then climbed Wolf Volcano from the dive boat. So it's wireto wire as deep as you can dive to as high as you can climb in the Galápagos.

Mark Vins1:17:05

5600.

Mark Vins1:17:08

So but it was like an 8 mile trek across the volcano

Mark Vins1:17:12

And it was brutal. Still to this day, one of the hardest physical things I've ever had to do.

Mark Vins1:17:18

Uh, I had about a 60 pound back of pack of gear. So 60 pounds.

Mark Vins1:17:22

After after six days of intense scuba diving, we're talking like four to five dives a day.

Just I was already on like burnt ends like getting there.

Mark Vins1:17:36

It was more of a survey of like these different landmarks. So, we went to Darwin Island, which is which is the furthest island in the chain of the Galápagos. For those that don't know, the Galápagos isn't one island. It's like a chain of islands off South America.

And this is the most remote one.

So, we started there and then we went to the main island um of Isabela and climbed Wolf Volcano. But that dive site is notorious for its sharks. So, we were there filming like hammerhead sharks, tiger sharks, and it took us 5 days to film a goalpost shark, which ended up being a big key element to the story because there should be thousands of those sharks and they're just being overfished like crazy. And even the goalpost with that marine reserve protection area, they they can't stop the shark finning.

So, it's a problem.

Mark Vins1:19:23

They have a lot of weird stuff that they eat out in. I mean, I'm sure being in Japan like they they eat some pretty exotic stuff. So, I'm sure it didn't really like register to you like exactly what it was and and

Mark Vins1:19:36

There's no value.

Mark Vins1:19:50

It's pretty brutal what they do. And and that's the only value piece,

Mark Vins1:19:57

Yeah, it's pretty very inhumane.

Uh but it's very hard to police cuz a lot of these sharks, they're they're pelgic animals, meaning that they're they're migratory. They're moving. So even if the goalpost is protecting their sharks, they can't stop that shark from going to a place where it's going to get finned.

Mark Vins1:20:13

And it's it's starting to create a real impact like visibly. And that's going to be part of our our film. Not that like Brave Wilder, like we're not like a a super political brand. Like we we we try to give people like the facts for what they are. We we argue that on behalf of the wildlife and the environment, like we should do our best to protect these places and these things, how to do it.

That's not really our role. So, uh but I will say that the uh

The Galápagos and Ecuador have done a really good job preserving what's on the islands. So there's seal populations, other migratory birds, and these pink iguanas because we work so often with like reptiles that like a big focal point. So like we we go through and we film this shark. I don't want to give it all away, but had a great shark encounter and then we do the intertitle zone with the marine iguanas. The only iguana that can swim in salt.

Mark Vins1:21:04

It was It was like watching little mini uh Godzillaas swimming around you.

Mark Vins1:21:11

Oh, yeah.

You are freaking crazy. And then we climbed this this volcano that I really underestimated. Like I you know 5,000 ft is not that

Aggressive, right? You have like all these guys doing these like 12s and 14ers and stuff. I'm like it's 5,000 ft.

Mark Vins1:21:27

So I overpacked my bag and you know we didn't take into account that we were on the equator

Like the heat it was 100°.

Mark Vins1:21:33

And we're carrying a 60 lb pack and we have limited water and I ran out of water about halfway up.

So what the hell did you do? Well, there was supposed to be like a water hole. Like I would have I would have literally drinking drank anything. I would have I would have drank literally any liquid.

Mark Vins1:22:50

Panic.

Mark Vins1:23:25

Oh my gosh.

Mark Vins1:23:31

And when you're in those circumstances, it becomes the reality. It's hard to describe. Really hard to describe cuz I think you did a pretty good job describing, but like

I I had a tear come out when I got when we finally got the water. We spoke the whole film.

Mark Vins1:24:06

Uh, from like tip to tip, three and a half ft. So, they're

Mark Vins1:24:12

Oh, no. They're not like a Komodo dragon.

Komodo dragon. Those are like sevenfooters like Yeah. So, about half the size.

Mark Vins1:24:20

So, they're they're all pink with like black tiger stripes. They're they're awesome. They're a very cool

Mark Vins1:24:28

No, not venomous.

Mark Vins1:24:30

Sure. Yeah, they'll probably whip you with their tail, too.

Mark Vins1:24:33

They eat these like little scrub berries up there. They have like they're like almost like a a little yellow grape, like bush berries,

Mark Vins1:24:42

No, they're they're vegetarians.

Mark Vins1:24:44

And they used to be all over the Galápagos, but there's like a land species of iguana. It's like yellow and a lot of them are like rusty red color

And they've just outco competed them to this peak.

The other thing is because these uh pink iguanas need volcanic soil to reproduce. That's where they lay their eggs.

Mark Vins1:25:03

Volcanoes erupt.

Mark Vins1:25:04

So like systematically the thought is systematically like one island at a time these things have been wiped out. So this is the last population. So it's really just a matter of time.

Mark Vins1:25:15

the the takehome is like hopefully through like research and conservation we can find a way to like sort of arc this species, but I mean inevitably they're probably done.

Mark Vins1:26:01

Yeah, it it doesn't happen to everyone, but like ask some of those rangers who died on Mount St. Helens. Like, you know, like it does happen.

Mark Vins1:26:13

Yeah. There's a whole film about it.

Mark Vins1:26:14

Yeah.

Mark Vins1:26:29

It's happened a couple times.

Mark Vins1:26:30

So, you know, it's interesting to see like that the extreme ecourism because I would consider like volcano watching or storm chasing. Like you see a lot more people getting into this. Like there's like volcanoes in Iceland. Yes.

That you can just go there, fly drones around, and it's just like magma just like coming out. And I'm like, man, like what if what if you just catch like the wrong air pocket and it just goes boom and you're there?

Mark Vins1:27:04

I remember that. I remember that. Have you been to Iceland?

Mark Vins1:27:28

I I only got to go I've been there for like a 5day trip. I made one video there. It's like again when you talk about places that are otherworldly. It's certainly one of them.

Mark Vins1:27:59

Yeah. Anybody who likes Game of Thrones like you got to go to Iceland.

Mark Vins1:28:04

Unlike Japan food. No,

Not as good

Mark Vins1:28:13

Yeah.

Mark Vins1:28:16

I went I think it was mid June. It was like in the sweet spot of like the good weather. It rained every day.

Every single day. [gasps]

Mark Vins1:28:29

Uh let's see. Gosh. Um, we have a lot of videos that we're in post on right now from a trip that we just did in uh the Amazon in the Peruvian Amazon.

Mark Vins1:28:42

Okay, so I'll tell you this is one of the things that is the unknown sort of like animal interaction that I didn't expect in uh the like Amazon especially like near the border of Brazil, they have uh a lot of like tribal communities, right? So like we fly into Lima, we go from Lima to I think Cusco, is that the name? I think it's like Cusco. So most people go to to see Machu Picchu.

Mark Vins1:29:07

But we went the other way.

Mark Vins1:29:08

We 9 hours down a logging road, a single lane road that is like kind of dilapitated. Like we're crossing streams on this road

Mark Vins1:29:16

Driving. Then we get to this village where the road ends and we take a boat 3 hours.

Mark Vins1:29:22

So you want to talk about being like off-rid? We are way off grid.

I'm assuming you had no cell reception. I don't want to give a free ad, but like Starlink is incredible.

It was like unbeliev It's an unbelievable technology.

Mark Vins1:29:37

I I think it's going to take over all internet.

Mark Vins1:29:43

100%. Yeah. So anyway, uh hopefully those other companies are are aware of that. I'm sure they're going to figure out something.

Mark Vins1:30:07

Sphere or whatever they call it

Physics. Yeah.

Mark Vins1:30:22

It is so fast.

Mark Vins1:30:22

So, we're offgrade with Starlink, so we did have, you know, comps, but we're there to film like really exotic wildlife. I was there with a a company called Wilderness International. Uh they're awesome. They're like reforesting the rainforest. They're really cool. Uh, and so we're in this remote camp way off- grid.

And I'm thinking like, okay, got venomous snakes. We got, you know, a lot of stuff that I got to be aware of. I got to be on my toes like always. And then like at night, one of the researchers came over. He's like, hey, so like you want to wear long sleeves at night. Like, you know, obviously we have mosquitoes and malaria and stuff like that, but like don't get bit by those whitewing gnats. There's like these little tiny sand flies that have like silvery wings and in the light they look white.

And uh these whitewing nuts,

Mark Vins1:31:23

Cuz they're everywhere. They're everywhere. And they happen to some of them happen to carry this prozzoa, a flesheating prozzoa called leash manasis.

And there are different variants of this prozzoa. Some there are like neotropic versions where it can it's fairly treatable. It's not easy to get rid of. But like this one in particular is like bulletproof. like you it's almost impossible to get rid of this without like heavy metal intravenous therapy. So basically chemotherapy for months if you get this.

Mark Vins1:31:54

And all the researchers like yeah if you guys were here for like 6 months you definitely get it. And they're like showing us their like basically scars from where because it goes through your whole system but like it manifests in like a wound that just gets worse and worse and worse. It can take your hand, your arm like this.

Mark Vins1:32:10

Yeah. And and all the locals that are there. They must the locals must have some immunity cuz they're just getting lit up like no problem. But when you're bit by one, it's not like a mosquito bite where it hurts and then it itches.

It feels like icy hot. It's almost like a It has like a cool sensation to it.

And we would be out every night and I would get back and I'm like I'm like like trying to like be like, "How do I feel right now?" And I would always feel like I felt icy hot on my neck.

Mark Vins1:32:34

And it you're there's about a three-month incubation window for it. So like we just cleared recently.

Mark Vins1:32:40

So like that's what I'm working on right now. So now we're working on a bunch of these videos that we shot there and like there's some pretty cool stuff coming.

Mark Vins1:32:50

So we haven't really worked with uh like uh a lot of the native uh tribes in the Amazon. There were some people there working with us that were native but

Mark Vins1:33:02

This would have been the trip to do it on. I mean in the Manu region there there are a lot of um you know uncontacted tribes. That's what they call them. Uh, and like the local tribal people that we were with were like helping us kind of stay clear of their areas because

Mark Vins1:33:18

Yeah, they they know where those and it's it's for their benefit, too, because they don't want to introduce disease and stuff like that.

Mark Vins1:33:29

Probably. Yeah, I think so. I mean there are certainly like tribes in the Amazon that do make contact and that would be interesting to have like very you know defined cultures that have been around for like thousands of years the way they do it that are undisturbed. So yeah that's something we could do.

Mark Vins1:33:48

You know Africa it's huge as you know.

Mark Vins1:33:52

Yeah the gorillas. We did South Africa there. Um I filmed in Egypt. U

Mark Vins1:33:58

Yeah that was interesting. Uh,

Mark Vins1:34:01

Uh, I filmed on the coast in the Red Sea.

Mark Vins1:34:04

It's like a swimming in an aquarium.

Mark Vins1:34:06

It's like a fish tank.

Mark Vins1:34:08

Uh, Asia is a real interesting place for us cuz it's really untapped. So, of course, Japan, but we just did our first big Asia production like a year and a half ago where we went to Thailand and then, you know, spent a lot of time in Malaysia. So, like diving, I've been to like Indonesia and, you know, parts of the Coral Triangle, but like never like really done the land stuff.

Yeah. Borneo like in Malaysia is wild. That is a crazy place because the super exotic colorful animals much like Costa Rica but like they have a lot of the hazards that you have in like Australia where you have some super venomous snakes got like cobras and all this stuff and then you have like um saltwater crocodiles.

So you go to the beach and you're like looking around cuz we were at this like cool this place called the culvert. It was a really cool resort. The only reason I recall is because they had these like

Circular concrete structures. Yeah.

They're almost like I think they were like catch basins or something that they turned into rooms.

So it was like it was a really crazy experience. But they had a beach and we would go down and we were like walking around the beach and we got back to the the main lodge one night and they're like, "What are you guys doing down at the beach?" Like, "Oh, we're just going to going down there to hang out." They're like, "You know we have saltwater crocodiles. You cannot hang out on the beach. You're not even supposed to be down there." The sign went down.

You're not supposed to be down there. And like literally that night we were driving around and I saw a giant salty right there.

Mark Vins1:35:30

In a microssecond. Yeah, that's probably when it comes to like a predatory animal that will actually kill you. I think the saltwater crocodile is maybe number one.

Mark Vins1:35:42

Close second. Close second.

Mark Vins1:35:48

In the water?

Mark Vins1:35:49

Oh gosh. Well, I pro I probably have to lean crocodile because like at least it'd be over faster.

Yeah, the polar bear might take a little minute. A minute or two. Yeah.

Either one bear attacks and like cat attacks like those are I'm sure you've seen the videos.

Those are brutal experiences

Mark Vins1:36:15

Hanging off. Oh, so scary. And that I mean, yeah, because you're gonna you're going to have a fight with that animal and you're probably you're probably gonna live for longer than you want.

Mark Vins1:36:45

Yeah. You're you're supposed to um with a black bear, you're supposed to to fight.

Mark Vins1:36:51

With a grizzly bear, you're supposed to uh play dead.

Mark Vins1:36:55

And then with the polar bear, you're supposed to pray

Because that's all you're going to be able to do.

Mark Vins1:37:28

You saw a mountain line

Mark Vins1:37:59

Yeah. They don't care.

Mark Vins1:38:12

How far were you from it?

Mark Vins1:38:41

You did exactly the right thing. And I would say out of all the animal videos I've ever watched, the one that always gives me like the most anxiety is is that mountain line video where it's coming down the trail and like the ground cuz like I I feel like I've been in enough of those like situations where I can really picture being there and I don't know what you do like.

Mark Vins1:39:04

All you can do,

Mark Vins1:39:16

There's millions of years of programming in that species where like if something moves away from you, that means it's food.

Mark Vins1:39:34

Yes. I mean, so this is interesting because sharks are are similar in this way where like any predatory animal, uh, it's its whole livelihood depends on its ability to catch food.

Mark Vins1:39:47

So, if you think about it, if if there's any risk that you could prohibit it from catching food, it's going to die.

Yeah. So if you are an adversary, even though you know there's no way you're fighting off a mountain line, a full ground mountain line, it's probably you're probably done.

Mark Vins1:40:02

It looks at it might second guess and be like, you know,

This is not really what I was expecting. It's not running. I'm I'm going to pass.

But if you run,

It's like game on.

So that same sharks are the same way. Like if you turn your back on a shark, it it will come and and nibble on you.

Mark Vins1:40:35

Yeah.

Mark Vins1:40:57

I've never seen one. Not not in not in the wild like that. I've seen them in, you know, captivity.

Mark Vins1:41:09

Yeah. And usually they're on you. They're they're like ghosts. Amazing stalkers.

Mark Vins1:41:32

Yeah, we we've contemplated on like tagging along with one of those groups over the years. Not that we would shoot the mountain line, but like I think it is fascinating like how to actually like go on an expedition to find a mountain line. Yeah. They find them with dogs.

Mark Vins1:41:48

Yeah. From what I understand, what you do is you go out after a snow, like fresh snow. You

Drive the road till you see tracks.

Mark Vins1:41:55

You stop there, you camp for the night. First light, you let the dogs go and then they go find them out. Like you might be a mile away, you might be 30 miles away.

Mark Vins1:42:12

Yeah. you know, like uh I'm I'm getting more and more into like wanting to do like large format films. Like the Galápagos uh is our first feature. So like the uh the DRC Brave Mission was a short I think it was like close to 30 minutes. The Galápagos is is like 78 minutes. So it's it's a full-blown feature doc

And I've really enjoyed that experience. So

Uh beyond making content on Brave Wilderness, I'm really excited to do more films. So like and you know really explore not only like nature categories but like interests of mine like you know I'd like love to make a film on like marathons and like running and like you know I'm I'm getting more and more into that and that's how like we kind of met each other. So

Yeah I as much as like um I love making the weekly content on YouTube will continue to do so. It just it scratches a different creative itch.

Get to have a project that I can sit with for a few years and it's just a different approach to it. Um the Galápagos film, for example, we did three different re-edits for that.

Mark Vins1:43:14

Yeah. So, we filmed that like four years ago. First edit was was very rough. There's a lot of things that we wanted to change about the story. Filmed some new interviews. saw it a second time and we're like, you know, these interviews are ver this called verite, which means it's like like this, like a a very candid conversation.

Mark Vins1:43:31

Uh and wasn't punching enough. So, we're like, let's let's really like hone in on the specifics of the interviews that we want to get and re-shoot those. We did them again and it just it brought the film to life.

Mark Vins1:43:42

And that was our first fora in making a large format. So, I I really want to explore that more. That's that's probably what's next for me.

Mark Vins1:43:48

Yeah.

Mark Vins1:43:54

I'm gl I'm glad I didn't have to. My my one thing I told myself is like I'm not stopping. Like there is no stopping. You mentioned I think you gave me a soft out. You're like there is a water break somewhere along the trail. I'm like nope not stopping. And I I appreciate you uh your your uh your um recovery run, which I think is what you're doing today from a workout is my workout run. So I think we met together.

Mark Vins1:44:37

Real Mark Vins on Instagram.

Mark Vins1:44:44

Uh it's called Reef to Ridge. We're going to we have a a film festival premiere coming this fall and then it will be available on streaming shortly after.

Mark Vins1:44:54

Oh man, you know, I think I have a lot of stories left to tell and yeah, you know, just kind of keep paying attention to what we're doing on Brave Wilderness and YouTube and you know, we we're exploring with our audience that we built over the last 12 years and I hope I get to do it for another 12. So

Mark Vins1:45:20

Good question. There's a lot of them. I haven't gotten to 83 like Justin did. Uh I'm probably in in the 50s.

Mark Vins1:45:35

Truthfully, a honeybee.

Mark Vins1:45:36

A honeybee. people for whatever reason uh the venom of honey bees are do not mix well with humans.

Mark Vins1:45:48

It's like anything the more calm you are the more calm they are. So is when you swat at bees that that's probably the best way to get stung.

But you mean it's not bad to like recognize it as a threat. So they do a thing called swarming.

Mark Vins1:46:02

And when the bees are swarming they're releasing a lot of pherommones and it's chaotic for them. And if you get caught in a swarm, like it can be very bad. A lot of people die that way. So, like here's a story. When we were in Borneo,

I uh the last day of the trip, uh

Locky, one of the fixers that we work with, the wildlife experts,

He loves golf. They had this like really cool golf course. And I said, "Hey, if we get done in time, we're going to go play around at that golf course."

And the reason I'm bringing up this, like I'm not like a big golfer, but like I I I play occasionally, but they made us take out B insurance. And I was like, "What is that?" Like what what's this fee? I'm like, because you know, I thought I was just kind of like getting jipped. And uh they're like, "Oh yeah, if you get sworn by bees, you're going to need emergency medical attention, and this is part of that insurance." And I was like, "What are the chances we're going to play a round of golf today and get sworn by bees?" Sure enough, second hole, I thought I heard fighter jets come like like an air squadron.

And we had to hit the deck and I'm not kidding you, a cloud of bees flew right over us. Like it was insane. Yeah. So yeah, glad

Mark Vins1:47:05

Yeah, we we hit the deck. We were on the T- box

Mark Vins1:47:08

It was very loud. It like came out of nowhere like all of a sudden you hear this buzz like like a low hum and it got louder and louder and we looked over and we saw this cloud

Coming at us

And then instinctively just hit the deck.

Mark Vins1:47:22

No, I think they were going and we were just in the cross. We were just just in the path.

Mark Vins1:47:27

And they flew right over us

And no one got stung. No one got stung. And they were probably like 10 feet off the ground.

Mark Vins1:47:33

But it felt like they were right on our level. Like it was it was intense. So

Mark Vins1:47:39

Yeah. It it's it's been an adventure and uh I love I still love it. I love making YouTube videos. Uh I love engaging with the audience on on that platform. I think I think I'll always make YouTube videos even if the large format stuff works out. Hopefully it's like a compliment. But you know the world and places I never dreamt I'd get to see a cool ride.

Mark Vins1:48:11

Thank you. Thank you, Ken. And great job on the book. I got to say, guys, Ken's book, I'm sure you've heard on if you're listening the podcast, I am so grateful. I I I found that book when I did. I was running in Aruba and uh you really inspired me to keep running under those like 100% humidity, 90° days out there. So, thanks for that that book and it's it's super inspiring to be here. Thank you, Ken.