Protect Species Podcast
This podcast is a production of the Global Center for Species Survival, which is a partnership between the Indianapolis Zoo and the International Union for Conservation of Nature Species Survival Commission (IUCN SSC). We record all episodes at the Indianapolis Zoo in the Bedel Financial Media Studio, made possible by a generous gift from Elaine and Eric Bedel.
Protect Species Podcast
Running Wild with Storytelling: Crafting Conservation Narratives That Inspire Change
Meet Justin Grubb and Alex Goetz, the remarkable duo behind Running Wild Media, whose passion for wildlife has transformed childhood dreams into a pioneering force in conservation storytelling. Travel back with Justin to his high school zoo school days where "Running Wild" first took root, and follow Alex’s path from aspiring zookeeper to filmmaker, fueled by awe-inspiring series like Planet Earth. Together, their stories unfold into a narrative enriched with humor and shared enthusiasm, charting how their unique experiences converged at Bowling Green State University to birth a media company that’s reshaping the way we connect with nature.
Immerse yourself in the art of conservation storytelling, where the focus is not just on breathtaking wildlife but the communities that bring these stories to life. We explore how starting with a clear impact in mind and using a theory of change can craft narratives that resonate deeply with audiences, as illustrated by films like "Hellbent." Through meaningful characters and engaging storytelling, we highlight the transformative potential of documentaries to inspire global conservation efforts, making viewers active participants in preserving our planet.
Links:
Running Wild Media
Hellbent Documentary
Running Wild Media Show Reel
The ORIGINAL Running Wild
What are the elements of a good story? Compelling imagery, memorable characters, heightened emotion. You'll find them all in wildlife documentaries, and today we're joined by two award-winning conservation storytellers, justin Grubb and Alex Goetz from Running Wild Media. I'm Justin Burkoff.
Speaker 2:And I'm Monnie Boom. Welcome to the Protect Species podcast, where we celebrate biodiversity and converse with conservationists.
Speaker 1:So welcome Alex and Justin. We're going to start with the hard part. Who are you? No, can you briefly introduce who you guys are? Tell us a little bit about how Running Wild Media came to be.
Speaker 2:And why is it Running Wild Media? It's a cool name.
Speaker 3:Thanks for having us. I feel like Justin has a great story. He's been digging in the archives recently to find the origin of Running Wild Media, so I have to let him take it away on this one.
Speaker 1:I'll have to interrupt. The videos are exceptional. They're on Running Wild Media's social media and they are worth a watch.
Speaker 4:I appreciate that. Thanks for that little tag. Yeah, I can go ahead and start.
Speaker 4:My name is Justin Grubb and I am one of the co-founders of Running Wild Media and I really got started with my interest in wildlife and all that kind of stuff with an interest in being a wildlife biologist and so my approach to storytelling and the work that we do is from that sort of perspective, combining my interest in science with storytelling.
Speaker 4:And the origin of Running Wild kind of came about when I was in high school I had a strong interest in being like a television host, like a Jeff Corwin or a Steve Irwin, and so I really enjoyed conservation education videos and producing stuff to get people really excited about the outdoors. And at the time time I was also part of a zoo school program in high school through the Delaware Area Career Center at the Columbus Zoo, and the school news came out and did a couple of segments with me called Running Wild with Justin, and I would just run around the zoo and I would just give the most random animal facts that I could find and like half the time I would read them off the sign and they'd be like how do you know? I'm like well, the sign right here says it, and so stuff like that. It was like a total joke.
Speaker 1:I appreciate this very literal interpretation.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so like the intro of the show was just me running like, because I also did track at the time- oh, it combines both things.
Speaker 2:That's beautiful yeah.
Speaker 4:So I was just like sprinting and you know, like the intro video, I'm like running down the hill or like rolling down a mound of mulch or sprinting across this like field, and it's not really clear why, but it was just like the action.
Speaker 4:It's because it's called running wild people, yeah, and it's like, yeah, like one man's dream to run wild with nature or something like that. So that's kind of like where the name came from. But then, you know, I went to college, went to Bowling Green, studied biology, met Alex, and we ended up getting a grant through our university to go down to Costa Rica and shoot a wildlife documentary and we called it running wild in Costa Rica. And so it was like this concept, this TV show concept, very similar to before. We were just kind of running, running around. It was a little bit more focused in Costa Rica because we were looking for something more focused.
Speaker 1:I was just.
Speaker 4:Costa Rica because we were looking for something more focused. I was just yeah. So you know, we were looking for snakes, looking for birds, looking for crocodiles and everything. But then, while we were there, we kind of decided, like you know, this concept could be more than just like a TV show, it could be a production company and we could do conservation work as a visual storytelling company, versus just trying to do these like running wild episodes. And so that's where the idea of running wild media truly came to be in the jungles of Costa Rica, and that's when it went from me sprinting around on camera to like this actually like focused, impactful storytelling, conservation focused media company that we are today.
Speaker 2:I love it. Justin Grubb, the Usain Bolt of wildlife documentaries. Alex, how has that affected?
Speaker 3:you. Well, I feel like as we got older we had to shift to be a company and have Justin less in front of the camera, because we just we were more of like a fast-paced walk wild. As we got a little bit older, you know, you just don't run as well as you used to. Yeah, the knees man yeah, I don't want to sprint soon it will be ambling yeah, so we had to change and pivot. You know, the market demanded it. Um, we just weren't meeting expectations anymore.
Speaker 2:Um no, it's been great.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's. It's got a fun origin story and I think, um, for my introduction, I'm Alex Getz. Um, I had a similar upbringing where I wanted to work with animals. Uh, I thought I'd be a zookeeper or biologist of some sort and I just realized once I got to high school and I started failing my science and math classes, I'm like a biologist might not be in my future. This might become pretty difficult, and so I started to kind of explore what other alternatives I had. Somebody had introduced me to the Planet Earth series at the time and it just like blew my mind. I'd grown up watching Animal Planet and all these hosted TV shows. But then when I finally saw that program, I was like, oh yeah, like people get paid to do this. And so I went to Bowling Green State University in Ohio as well, worked at a local PBS station, I studied film and minored in environmental science. I studied film and minored in environmental science and I think during one of our production meetings at the PBS station, Justin came in Was he?
Speaker 1:breathing really hard Running past.
Speaker 2:Shouting a random fact at you and leaving again.
Speaker 3:And his random fact was I want to make a wildlife show. And then he just dipped out and I was like, yeah, that's the dude, I need to know him, I need to know him, and I have to make a wildlife show. And then he just dipped out, yeah, and I was like, yeah, that's, that's the dude, I I need to know him, I need to know him, and I have to catch him.
Speaker 1:So then, a then, a two-year chase yeah the blow dart is, you know, really get into it yeah, so it's.
Speaker 3:It's kind of been history ever since. I mean, it's been a pretty awesome experience. We've gotten to go all over the place and kind of from that first month long trip in Costa Rica just backpacking and filming whatever animals we can find, it's just been a snowball. From there that you know, more and more opportunities have come up to go to even weirder and wilder places to tell stories. That's great, that's awesome.
Speaker 2:Admittedly, I always wanted to be, like you know, in wildlife documentaries. Also because I've seen, like you know, all the cool documentaries like Planet Earth is awesome and all the various other Shout out to the BBC Natural History Unit Great documentaries, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:And to Running Wild.
Speaker 2:Thanks Again, bbc. They're more like the walking genre. Yeah, opposed to, I was definitely not a very kind of ambitious child in high school, or the German equivalent is the first thing that I want to say. I didn't have these big ambitions, I just wanted to have fun. So that's where I went wrong. But what are the kind of things that you've already done? I mean, you went to Costa Rica. What did you see? What did you film there? What were some of your other projects? Because that sounds super exciting.
Speaker 3:Well, we filmed the sloth pooping. Apparently that's a big deal.
Speaker 2:They climbed down from the trees to do that right. The guide was like this is the best footage.
Speaker 3:You'll get this whole trip and I'm like alright, whatever, but kind of since then I mean we've gone all right, whatever, but kind of since then I mean we've gone all over. We worked with National Geographic in Africa and we road tripped kind of around South Africa, mozambique, namibia and Botswana and we've been all over the place. I don't even know how to pick a story anymore. Justin, what do you want to highlight?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean, costa Rica was a lot, lot of fun. That's kind of where we both were miserable together for the first time, you know, in the jungle, getting sunburned, you know, eating rice and beans, and really deciding, yeah, eating termites too. I did some of that, um, and we decided, like this this could be a really fun thing. We both survived. We didn't hate each other at the end of the trip. And so our next trip, I believe yeah, I think our next trip was actually to Honduras and we worked on a film about the Garifuna people who live there sustainably with the reef ecosystem, and we lived on this island for about a week and a half, two weeks, where it was like the whole thing could fit inside of a soccer field. There was about 150 people there. So that was, like you know, a documentary that we put together. We were still in college at that point. So that was like another really big trip that we that we were able to accomplish trip that we were able to accomplish.
Speaker 4:And then we started just kind of financing our trips, breaking even sometimes on trying to make a film.
Speaker 4:We would find something that would be really interesting and we're like, oh, we want to go do that, and so we would try to figure out a way to fund it.
Speaker 4:And just doing that, like Alex said, it's led us to Africa, where we got to travel around for part of an assignment with Nat Geo Wild, and we were recently in Indonesia working with hornbills, and we do a lot of stuff around the United States as well. As we kind of travel around the world and work with other communities and learn about the work that they're doing, learn about the work that they're doing, we're really starting to want to cover a lot of this stuff that's going on here in the United States, especially in the Midwest. As you know, we're looking for new stories, and that kind of leads us to our newer projects that we have going on that are all kind of based in Ohio or based in Pennsylvania or based in North Carolina and stuff like that. And so you know, we have been around the world, but there's a lot of really cool and fascinating stories right here in our backyard that we want to start telling.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think, I think that's really interesting. It leads me to a question that we want to kind of dive into, and we'll talk more about the projects individually as we go. But you know, conservation storytelling is the description right, Like that's how you guys describe yourself. You both mentioned that's. You know the, the avenue that brought you together, as well as running, Um, but you know what are the elements that make a good story? How do you, how do you kind of rank or decide what stories you want to tell, and does the story dictate how you tell them? Or do the people that you interact with dictate how these stories get told?
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's a really good question. And you know there's all kinds of storytelling, right, and all storytelling is very similar. You know you've got your characters, your rising action, your climax, all of that good stuff. But I think what makes conservation storytelling a little bit different is it's focused on people and the things that people are doing, because conservation is primarily working with people and communities and that's at the heart of what conservation is, and so telling stories that are rooted in that makes it conservation storytelling.
Speaker 4:And when we're looking for characters for a film, we kind of do it in a weird way where you know, like I mentioned, we kind of operate like a conservation organization where we sort of start with the end result in mind and work our way backward, like we want, we have a specific impact that we want a film to make, and so we'll start there and work back and develop that theory of change to see what we can do. And we kind of select characters in that process where we feel like a certain individual would fit a message or would help deliver a message more effectively to a community that we're trying to reach through that process, message more effectively to a community that we're trying to reach through that process and then within that, we try to find people who are authentic and open and are comfortable being on camera and are willing to share their story. And then we also look for really incredible stories. So, for example, we just created a film called Hellbent.
Speaker 4:This film's been about out for about a year now, and we started with wanting to help communities living in Appalachia identify what environmental injustice looks like and what to do about it, and connect these communities together.
Speaker 4:And through that process we found these two ladies who used rights of nature to stop the installation of an injection well in their community, thus protecting the hellbender and their community's drinking water. And so you know, they had a good story because they fought back, they were able to identify environmental injustice, they took the steps necessary to do something about it, and so they were a good model for other communities that we wanted to connect with for around this idea. But in addition to that, they were very outgoing. They said exactly what they had on their mind. They weren't afraid to tell people off, they were really funny, they came across really well on camera, and so they became the anchor point to this story because they were really fun to watch and they represented the communities that we were trying to connect with extraordinarily well for someone who's overcome adversity, someone who has done something really incredible for their community, but also somebody who is um authentic on camera and someone that other people can really um sort of get to get to know and understand fairly easily and that kind of thing.
Speaker 3:So yeah, and I think we stumbled into them and kind of an unorthodox way as well, I think they were going to be supporting characters of a larger film and then we filmed with them and we're like, nope, these are our characters. Like we had exchanged emails and I think maybe some phone calls, um, but it wasn't until you were with them in person that you're like oh man, you have the full experience. These are two true characters and we need to just shape this whole film around them and their experience, because there's no one who will tell it better. And it, I think, made a story about fracking a bit more lighthearted but also emotionally way more compelling, hearing their firsthand experiences rather than getting like a fracking expert to come in and talk about.
Speaker 3:If you do this, this is pretty bad. Like you know, a talking head is only so exciting and we've actually, the more we work on projects, we're like less talking head. We need more people on the ground, filming them kind of in their experience, like going about their day-to-day, and you know so we're not just like in infomercial, essentially for like, don't do this to the environment, um. So sometimes characters come about in a really interesting way, but also sometimes they're really hard to find and we kind of have to dig around a little bit to see what the most compelling way might be, like Justin mentioned, to achieve our goals.
Speaker 2:That's super interesting because you also mentioned that you're kind of starting from a point of you know, or you're kind of defining what impact you want to make with a documentary, and then go about this whole theory of change type thing how can we make that impact? So how do I best phrase that question? But, um, what do you think you achieve with your wildlife documentaries? They clearly have, um, impacted us massively. We've all mentioned our stories of like. We've seen planet earth.
Speaker 2:Our minds were blown um and we wanted to do that forever and some did it and some failed, like me. Um, but why? Why are these documentaries important? What can they actually change? How can they be? And we wanted to do that forever and some did it and some failed, like me. But why are these documentaries important? What can they actually change? How can they be part of this conservation puzzle? That's a lot of questions in one, or just one really bad phrased question.
Speaker 4:I don't know.
Speaker 2:I'm not one of the conservation storytellers. Can you tell?
Speaker 1:You're doing a great job telling it so far.
Speaker 3:Just keep asking more questions.
Speaker 2:The is the thing is I was very much like when you were like, oh, and then it's all about the characters and how they tell the story and I was like, why are justin and I doing this podcast?
Speaker 3:yeah, because we're characters, but in a really different sort of way yeah, not in the envisaged way I mean, I think, going going back to the initial question question which I latched on to and maybe I'll answer some of the subsequent ones good, I mean any of them, just pick one.
Speaker 3:Pick your favorite one, run with it, run wild I feel like we need to cut to like a little gif of justin sprinting every time we say the name we need to make that happen yeah, um, I mean we've, we've been really fortunate to work on a number of projects that range from like your traditional wildlife program, where it's just narration over animals looking cute, and we kind of seem to lean into projects like Hellbent when we have the opportunity. I think that we're finding these human characters to be stronger when it comes to achieving our goals that we set with a lot of projects. I think it's easier for people to look at a human character like Stacey and judy and hellbent and see themselves in them, and I think ultimately, our hearts have always been in conservation first, and so we would love to go sit in yellowstone for a month and we've done it multiple times to film a fox jumping headfirst into the snow or wolves hunting something, but then we usually have kind of an itch that we need to scratch where we're like what are we really accomplishing?
Speaker 1:Who are the people that this story needs to get to?
Speaker 3:And sometimes we're filming something that somebody's already filmed before and we're like cool carbon emissions. So we just flew out here and we're going to film this thing that somebody's already filmed, just to show it from a different angle, and we really are starting, and that somebody's already filmed just to show it from a different angle, and we really are starting. And that's where I think also focusing on the midwest region has become something we wanted to do, and staying a little bit more in the united states is like we know we can do more for conservation here as well, as we feel better about it and we feel like we can have a bigger impact with the stories we tell with a human character doesn't mean we won't want to film some like adorable footage of a hellbender floating along for hellbent. It just means that maybe there's a coinciding, like there's two storylines running parallel the hellbender story as well as the characters that we featured in hellbent.
Speaker 4:yeah, yeah, I, oh sorry, go ahead, justin.
Speaker 4:I was gonna add, just like each film really kind of has a different goal depending on, you know, who's approached us with a problem or what problem that we've sort of seen or identified in our community, and so they can really vary from you connecting communities around environmental injustice and showing a path forward to showing members of an indigenous community and how they've gone from poaching to protecting and creating a documentary about land tenure and land rights and showing characters that sort of embody that that area in that region so other people can watch and be like oh you know, I can, I need to get land rights or I could do this too.
Speaker 4:Or it kind of destigmatizes the idea of being a poacher, like it's okay to be a poacher as long as you start doing conservation stuff now or you're being inclusive and this kind of thing. So like that's another film that we've worked on. We've worked on films where the goal has been to be more transparent about a conservation initiative that's going on with the local community, to eliminate suspicion and distrust it. Really, you know, like I say, we have so many different goals with all of these different films that you know it's hard to to say exactly what we're up to, but the end result is to have some sort of a benefit to the communities and the biodiversity or habitat that we're trying to impact or has approached us in a way that they need our services to help with the challenge that they're experiencing.
Speaker 3:Just sprinting along the way. Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1:I keep that heart rate up.
Speaker 2:Oh, this will never go away. No, it won't.
Speaker 1:It's going to be around for a while.
Speaker 2:The running joke.
Speaker 1:Oh man not a running joke, somebody had to say it.
Speaker 2:You looked like you were going to say it and you didn't. We need one of those little sound effects boards where we can hit a boo button. We should.
Speaker 1:Yeah absolutely so. I think one of the things that hearing both of you answer that question is the impact changes depending on what the medium is or what the focus is the theory of change. The medium is or what the focus is the theory of change. Do you find that, as you've started to focus more domestically, more around the places that you two live or have grown up, do you find stories that are deeply compelling that people just don't know that they need to be told?
Speaker 3:I feel like that's the whole Midwest, like it's so overlooked in in the conservation efforts that happen here, because some of the charismatic animals don't want to hang out with you during the day, like a bison does out West. Like all of our attention tends to go to some of these like very specific spots, like Africa or like out West in California, and I think we've forgotten about a whole center of the United States and some of the species that call it home, as well as the people. I mean, really it's like Justin mentioned conservation tends to be a people problem and if we don't help them and there's some injustices happening, they don't have the means to take care of their environment then. And so when we explore things around the Midwest, yeah, we're definitely noticing. I mean, looking at places where I live, I'm learning things every day about species that I didn't know that existed. Like I didn't realize that we had rusty patch bumblebees that were being found in Northwest Ohio and I know that's an endangered species and the American bumblebee, which is being studied quite frequently over there as well, and there's all kinds of things that just keep emerging.
Speaker 3:But it does take that digging that I don't think a lot of the everyday people who aren't in this world have the chance to do, and so we're really trying to shine a light on, like, these whole ecosystems that kind of go unnoticed. They might be, you know, people's favorite walking trail, but they don't know that off that trail there's actually like a globally rare ecosystem that they're just kind of cruising through and it's just their everyday walk and they're not seeing some of the really exciting things that happen because they're not spending enough time there. So we will gladly sit for months on end in swampy conditions covered in bugs, filming those exciting things, so that we can hopefully get people really invested in those ecosystems.
Speaker 2:Sitting wild.
Speaker 3:Sitting wild Rebranding as we get older it's going to be helpful.
Speaker 1:The natural evolution of this experience.
Speaker 2:You're welcome. You may use that in future.
Speaker 1:No, I think that's a I mean, it's a phenomenal answer and it is. That thing is like it feels mundane because if you live here, it is just what you see, and not realizing that it is unique and it's in some cases, rare or exceedingly rare, and that you know it's. Viewing it through that lens of naiveness isn't the right word, but like viewing it through that lens of newness, if you know what's happening here that I wouldn't see if I was living in one of these far flung places that we often think about when we talk about conservation, storytelling.
Speaker 3:I think that on a recent trip Justin and I did to Indonesia, we were kind of lounging about talking to some of the researchers there and the photographers there and one of them was like you guys have cardinals, yeah, and I was like what I mean yeah? And he's like like where do you find them? I'm like in my backyard they're just hanging out and he was like that was the most beautiful bird I've ever seen. It just popped up on my Facebook one day and I was like where do you find this bird?
Speaker 2:I'm like I 100% agree. You know, originally from Europe. First bird I see in the US moving here a cardinal. I was like this is stunning and I still get very excited every single time I see one.
Speaker 1:If you listen to the episode we did with our colleague Dr Sam Avande. That was the bird he mentioned first.
Speaker 1:Moving here to the States was I wanted to see a Cardinal and he saw one in his first week and we were just walking across campus, you know, across the zoo, and he's like, wait, that's a Cardinal. And like the joy of something that is relatively normal for a lot of people and he's just like, nope, never seen one before. It was like on his life list, right, Like that kind of excitement is. You know, what the huge value of these sort of these conservation storytelling pieces are is that you can bring that newness or the idea that it isn't just mundane because you see it all the time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think sometimes you have to remind people that these animals have value, like intrinsic value, but also like an ecosystem value, and so it's like the Cardinal is exciting the first time. But then when you realize what the Cardinal does, you're like, oh wow, the Cardinal is also doing this thing. Or when you realize, like all the cool things that raccoons are doing your, your local environment, it's just like you got to kind of keep up fresh for people and that's something that we're we're hoping to do.
Speaker 3:Rummage through the trash Somebody's gotta do it the trash ecosystem services that's a stretch garbage disposal so we're gonna we have more questions we're gonna dive into.
Speaker 1:But one of the things we talked we've talked a lot about kind of that big conservation, storytelling, the documentaries, these kind of these smaller projects or larger projects that are very focused on a space or region, um, and that extends beyond the projects, the kinds of projects we talked about. So one of the things, one of the relationships that we have with the two of you, is you guys are putting together some of the media that's being utilized in our new chimpanzee complex. So how does that differ from the kind of impact stories that we've been talking about so far, or is it just a different style of an impact story?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I would say that it's very similar to the other projects that we're doing where it's very education focused. We've got our education goals that we're trying to hit. We want our audience to watch this video and walk away with certain information. So the process is very similar to how we do other films and other big projects and everything like that. It's just where these videos are viewed. The length of them, the information that we have to convey during the videos are slightly different, but that's just during the design process of the project that comes after we identify what we want that impact to be. So it's very, very similar to how we approach other projects With the International Chimpanzee Complex project.
Speaker 4:It's a lot of videos that we're working on Rather than just one big film. We have a lot of different videos and so we're trying to carry a story arc across 17 different videos so that you know there's enough overlap to get you to the next video. But you know it's interesting enough that the viewer is going to want to watch the next one and then the next one and then the next one, so that as they sort of watch all of these different videos that they feel really connected to the chimpanzee community at the zoo. They feel connected with the community around the world and they have an idea of how their actions impact chimpanzees and conservation efforts around the world.
Speaker 1:This podcast is a production of the Global Center for Speaks Survival at the Indianapolis Zoo. We record all episodes in the Beadle Financial Media Studio, made possible by a generous gift from Elaine and Eric Beadle.
Speaker 2:On this podcast. We've talked previously with wildlife photographer and National Geographic explorer, joel Satori. He obviously uses visual storytelling very much in his photography. As talked previously um with wildlife photographer, national geographic explorer, joel satori, um, he obviously uses visual storytelling very much in his photography as well to inspire conservation. How can we all do a better job of communicating the needs of, of biodiversity, of our ecosystems, of our habitats, our natural world? Give us a top tip. A top tip because now I feel stressed after all that you've said, and that we're not doing the job good enough.
Speaker 3:I mean, really, I think it is exploring I'm going to just keep hounding on this point, but it's just exploring your local backyards and your local ecosystems, you know, because those are the ecosystems you're going to find yourself in day to day, and you know, getting the word out about them and conserving them can take many forms. I mean, we've done photo exhibitions when it comes to things like American Red Wolves, and we've done films and we talk on podcasts and things like that. But also sometimes just having, like, a social media presence about a local place is enough, like to keep revealing to people day to day. Like you know, I walk to work and I walk through this native prairie and I saw this bee and this is really cool. We should protect this prairie. So I think that everybody can play a part with the thing they have in their pockets at all time.
Speaker 3:And that's just a phone. It doesn't necessarily need to be the biggest, best camera in the world. The phones have gotten so good, um, and now there's photos and videos that are winning awards that are shot entirely on somebody's phone. And it's just, I think, ultimately having a passion for an ecosystem and then finding a way to communicate how passionate you are about it in whatever medium excites you, and that could be starting your own podcast, and that could be, I don't't know, starting an instagram page for it. Whatever the kids do these days. I know it's not instagram, but you're showing your age.
Speaker 1:There you're showing your age but I think one of the things you know we talk you know we've talked to a number of people on this podcast doing really interesting stuff around the world, but one of our most popular episodes I think it was number two was with dr lu. Dr Luke Jacobus was about mayflies and him looking for mayflies locally here in Indiana, species that have been recorded and haven't been seen in decades, and it is you know, it's, it's his passion project. He teaches full time and then he spends his time on the weekends going and searching these you know these, these spots where these animals had been seen, and trying to find them again and having random conversations with random people on their property about like. Did you know that this super rare, you know insect that you probably don't know exists, or you, you know, swat away with your hand, is like is found here exclusively, and that you know that sense of ownership is something that he really, you know, when he talks about it really, you know, lights up and really enjoys that ownership of like.
Speaker 1:This is a local species that a lot of people just don't even notice and there's such a huge conservation value and a huge conservation story around it. And one of the things that you know, we talk about charisma, you know, and often charismatic in animal spaces refers to large animals, and it's not necessarily the case. Charisma is about something that's attractive, right, and you can make anything attractive if you tell a good story. And so that's one of the things when you mentioned the stories that you guys have told is, is that story component such a huge portion of how you make that impact? And it doesn't matter what the species is, it matters what the story is and often the characters that are a part of it yeah, I was gonna say particularly in the in the mayfly episode, the characters that are part of it oh, they're so good.
Speaker 2:He has the best stories to tell of his little um cruising around like indiana and kind of going to all of these different places in his bug shirt and, uh, people inquiring what that man in the bug shirt is doing. And yeah, the the best, the most sensational stories.
Speaker 3:Um, definitely a character so I mean, those are the people you need. They're like gateways into getting excited about something you never thought about. I think justin and I were in in chile last year and we were with a moss researcher and he thought he found this really rare chunk of moss on a rock at the top of this mountain and he cried and I'm filming and I'm like this dude's crying about a piece of moss, yeah, but like that moment sounds outrageous when you say it out loud that some grown man cried at moss. But that's something that gets tugs on the heartstrings still, I think, seeing the passion that people have for something, whether it's like an exciting species or not.
Speaker 2:I'm not going to lie, that's one of my favorite things working with a lot of well, as people would probably say uncharismatic species, although obviously, charisma is in the eye of the beholder, and the thing that I just enjoy most is that you meet a lot of really amazing characters who get excited about stuff that nobody else I've ever seen before got excited about, and that, to me, is contagious. It's just wonderful, it's just all the emotions, whether they're talking about their favorite dung beetle or their favorite mussel, their freshwater mussel.
Speaker 2:Their freshwater mussel. Indeed, it's just wonderful. So we need more of those people on the podcast. We have them guess what all of them are like that on the podcast, apart from these two.
Speaker 4:No, no, no, I'm kidding yeah, I mean that just kind of goes to show, like the the importance of emotion in the characters that we choose. Like, every human experiences emotion. So that's like the common ground. You know you could find someone who doesn't care at all of emotion in the characters that we choose. Like, every human experiences emotion. So that's like the common ground. You know you could find someone who doesn't care at all about a dung beetle, but they've experienced the same emotions that this researcher has, who does care about the dung beetle. And when you put that researcher on camera in front of someone who doesn't seem to really care about the beetle, they're experiencing those same emotional things at the same time. And then you can start to get that individual who didn't necessarily know about the animal, to start caring about it because they feel that connection through emotion. And so that's why the storytelling and finding good characters and everything is so important in conservation storytelling, good characters and everything is so important in conservation.
Speaker 1:Storytelling? Yeah, I agree, and I think you know that one of the things we've talked about is that planning right, like you're. Like we have a plan, like there's an impact we want to make, we have a theory of change. So these are the things that we've mapped out that want us to take us there, and characters are part of it. So you're planning all of this, but they're unscripted. This is unscripted, right, like it's unscripted fiction. You're asking somebody a question and getting a real answer back. It's you know, there's unpredictability, there's running, as always. How, how do you manage that when things don't go the way that you want?
Speaker 2:it to that don't run the way you want.
Speaker 3:Hmm, run the way you want.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's a good question, Believe it or not. We have experienced a few instances in which things don't go the way we want it's almost like wildlife doesn't want to cooperate?
Speaker 3:What?
Speaker 4:Yeah, well, it kind of goes in hand too with another question that we often get is how many projects are you working on? It's like, well, at any given time we have like 20 projects, because at any point any of them could end without really any prior notice, because someone could change jobs, someone could go on strike, someone could. You know, there's all kinds of things that could happen that would end a project. You know there's all kinds of things that could happen that would end a project. And so, yeah, I mean sometimes we just have to adjust where we go back to the drawing board and we decide that we need to approach the film a little bit differently. Sometimes we have to remove that character entirely from the film. Sometimes we go out looking for a specific animal and we don't find it, and so we have to rely on another animal in order to tell the story. One particular story is about helmeted hornbills that we're working on right now, and Alex and I both went out to try and set up trail cameras in a tree to film a hornbill going into its nest cavity for a period of, you know, five or six months. So basically, alex and I went and got certified to climb trees. We procured the necessary equipment. We practiced for a year. We got the trail camera equipment that was very expensive, we got it all connected and wired together and figured out all of the little problems that you get with technology and we put this whole plan together to film a nesting sequence of a helmeted hornbill.
Speaker 4:And for those who are unfamiliar with the species, they live in Southeast Asia. The female and the chick are in a nest cavity for a period of five months out of the year and the male will actually seal them inside this nest cavity and feed them. And they're really hard to film. I've been trying to film these things for years. Actually, it took me about three years to first see one in the wild, and so we're working on this film. That kind of parallels the story of a villager that lives in Indonesia who used to hunt these animals. Who now protects them, him and his group. They call themselves Smart Patrol. They live under this tree during the entire duration of the nesting season to protect it from other poachers and everything.
Speaker 4:And so Alex and I get to the jungle, we get our backpacks, which weigh like 120 pounds because they're full of ropes and carabiners and cameras and everything. We hike them all the way up to this mountain. It's like an eight-hour hike, and you know, we get to the tree and we start setting up all the ropes and everything, and we start shooting the ropes into the top of the tree and getting all carabinered up and ready to go, and then we hear squawking coming from the top of the tree, and the people that we went out there with had said that the tree was empty. The helmeted hornbill that was there had just left, and so we had this period of a few days to go and set up the cameras so we wouldn't disturb them.
Speaker 4:Well, it turns out, when we were going up there and the team was getting us ready, another hornbill had moved into that nest and started nesting and actually had solidified a female inside, and so at that point we had to pull down the ropes, disconnect, put everything away and come down the mountain, because we didn't want to be there because it was disrupting the nesting cycle of a hornbill.
Speaker 4:We didn't want to. You know, with everything we do, we put the animal welfare first, and so we packed up and left, and that documentary is just kind of sitting in this weird limbo like, well, what do we do now Because we can't get the footage to complete the sequence that we were hoping for. Because of climate change, the nesting is very unpredictable with these birds and it's hard for us to get out there and get the camera set up and everything to get the sequence. So we're kind of changing the story a little bit, but that's just kind of how it goes. You know, that's just the adjustments you have to make in the field to make sure that, at the end of the day, the animal's best interests are what's at forefront of the work that we do.
Speaker 3:I love the expedited version of that story that he just gave, because I had a little bit of like PTSD flashbacks to this whole experience.
Speaker 3:We were like on call for the researchers, like they sat and they watched the nest and they're like we will let you guys know as soon as they leave and you can book a flight and you can be out here. And we were sitting there for like a month and they're like they're gone and we booked flights, traveled all the way out there, had to hike up this mountain and hire local villagers to help carry a bunch of additional stuff and we were like come back in four days because we'll be done by then. Day one. Everything falls apart and we have too much stuff. We were supposed to leave half the stuff behind in trees and so we couldn't just hike it back down the mountain by ourselves. There wasn't enough people, they left us, and so we just had to lay around camp for like four days three days just waiting for people to come get us again and they all show up expecting a lighter load and they're like what is?
Speaker 2:this and we're like yep, something squawked at us and we can't climb this tree anymore. I really want to know how you're going to spin this documentary into like I don don't know a review of climbing equipment or something like that.
Speaker 3:It's like I'm this carabiner is for I have some great behind the scenes footage of, like an ambitious Justin, like getting all the ropes ready, and he's like, yeah, we're going to climb these trees. And then you cut to the shot of just everybody looking horribly disappointed sitting in the jungle and it's like that's just it right now. That's where we sit.
Speaker 1:so we're coming up towards the kind of the end time. I have a question that leads in off of is that the fun anecdotes? No, well, it might be you can answer.
Speaker 1:My question is when you guys came up with this concept when you were in costa rica. Since that time, what is the weirdest skill that you've added to your repertoire that you never expected? Because you guys mentioned we're tree climbing certified, which on its face sounds ridiculous, because at some point there's no doubt my mind you both climbed trees as a child, right like no certification needed. So that's like that's a skill set and there's obviously a lot of technicality to it when you start talking about ropes and you know pretty significant time should be certified more.
Speaker 2:Children's probably should be certified. Well, like what other say?
Speaker 1:weird skill set, if you're like yeah, I added this in, this is something I never thought I'd do. But like, here we are. Oh man, I've stumped them.
Speaker 4:That's a good question, because a lot of the stuff we do is stuff that I've always wanted to like scuba diving climbing trees or just running across fields for no reason at all.
Speaker 4:I would say one skill set that I feel like I've developed quite well is bonding with a wild animal to the point where you're being accepted as being close to it to get good footage or photography and like what I mean by that is you kind of like you pick an animal, that's just.
Speaker 4:These are all wild animals that we work with, so it's just you know you say you got this animal like let's call it a mountain goat or something right, and like you gotta like approach it a certain way.
Speaker 4:You gotta like show certain body language that you're not threatening.
Speaker 4:But you also want to know, like where the wind is blowing so it doesn't smell you, and like you want to and obviously when you start taking photos and video it knows you're there and everything but you want to like have your body language be the least threatening possible and then like knowing when to start moving up and when the animal's comfortable with you or when the animal doesn't want you there. You know how to back up and like kind of just you know border, you know work that line to like where you're maximizing your ability to get good photos and get good video, but also like staying away and getting natural behavior from the animal and all of that good stuff and making sure that the animal's comfortable. That's actually one of my favorite things about my job too is just like spending that time with a wild animal and then when you get what you need, you guys just kind of we go our separate ways and the animal's completely fine and I got the footage that I need. So that's kind of a weird skill.
Speaker 3:I did not think that the skill was going to be non-threatening body language. But here we are, our sneakyness we can be really sneaky is essentially what he boils it down to, and it's weird. I actually kind of agree, like, and I don't even know how to describe it to somebody, but you just know like, all right, I can move forward now and this animal, this bison's not going gonna charge me. Um man, my first immediate thing for me was so unexciting compared to that, it was like taxes, finance also really small business skills yeah um important, very important yeah, I think um.
Speaker 3:You know, I think patience is really the biggest thing that I never like. I always had some.
Speaker 2:Goes hand in hand with taxes, though, doesn't it? Paying patience taxes?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think that in my day to day life. I definitely don't exhibit enough patience. But there have. We can go on a full four week shoot doing the exact same thing every day and somehow just hit like a zen state where we're just like up at the right time. We don't. Sometimes we just go about like not speaking to each other for a while which I know would be odd for most people but like I do that with justin all the time, yeah this podcast would be really difficult, it would be weird, um, but you can hit like a weird meditative state, and I mean one instance in particular.
Speaker 3:We were in yellowstone for like four weeks trying to film foxes mousing. I think that we we were at like the last two days. We had filmed nothing of these foxes mousing and jumping into the snow to catch voles and stuff for like 26 days and we were just cruising along. You just do the same thing every day and you hope for the best. You might see one and that's exciting. And then the very last days you finally get it and it's just like immediately, all of that time just gets crushed into like one moment and you're like, oh, I was here for a month, I forgot, and you just have that moment in your mind now. It's weird, I don't know how to describe it no, that makes total sense.
Speaker 2:Um, but let's, let's, let's, um. Just finish off with, apart from all the running and the health benefits from it, uh, what's the most rewarding part of your job? What do you like most about what you do?
Speaker 1:I'm gonna add a caveat, is it? As good as you imagined it when you were in high school, running around fields or whatever it is you did and then shouting animal facts as a second part of that is what is the most rewarding thing and what gives you hope, and ideally they'd be the same thing.
Speaker 4:But they don't have to be all right.
Speaker 4:Well, for me, I think the most rewarding part of my job is just seeing the change that the work that we're doing brings about, like the changes that it makes on the communities that we're working with or the people that we're working with, because we're working with people's real lives and so when we're able to tell a story about their life and it changes it in a positive way, it's extraordinarily rewarding. Positive way, it's extraordinarily rewarding as well as protecting ecosystems, raising awareness for species that are on the verge of extinction and getting people to do some sort of action as a response to a project that we're working on. And actually to see those numbers and to see those changes is extraordinarily rewarding. And that's what keeps us going, cause, like, what we do is hard. You know it's not easy to do a whole film and to keep going, and you know the industry is not the most stable industry in the world, so, like, sometimes we don't know where our income is coming from next month or two months down the road and we just got to keep going.
Speaker 3:But at the end of the day, seeing the change that we're making is what keeps us, keeps us moving forward, yeah, and I think following up with that, like the characters that we meet who are so passionate about it, is really what keeps the hope up is seeing somebody get so excited about something like a mayfly, and then that inspires me.
Speaker 3:Every time we do a project, I think I get a little bit more inspiration to explore those local ecosystems, to try and get people excited about lesser known species. And I mean, I think at the same time you're seeing all of this like doom and devastation in the news about environments you know being lost. It's also important to remember and it's not a one toto-one ratio, but like at the same time we're losing stuff. We've got great organizations that are restoring stuff and so keeping that in mind gives me hope and trying to bring a, you know, shine a light to those stories so that people see that it's not entirely doom and gloom. It's definitely not great, but it can be. It can be better and there's ways to do it.
Speaker 1:I think that's a great, great point to uh to end it on. I think that it answers the question extremely well and I think it's one of the things that we, both Monty and I, experienced when the work that we do is you meet these people that are passionate about you know, you name a species and there's somebody out there that's truly passionate about it and it's really revitalizing to see the work, the recovery and the effort and want to be a part of it and help support it.
Speaker 2:I'm just nodding. I realized it's a. It's an audio.
Speaker 1:Yes, not a visual medium.
Speaker 2:Must stop nodding and just say entirely.
Speaker 1:Well, we want to thank you guys both for for your time. We really do appreciate it. We to thank you guys both for for your time uh, we really do appreciate it. We, you know, appreciate what you guys do. Uh, we'll put links to your guys's you know media and stuff on our, our stuff, our socials and all of that, so people can get a better feel for the kind of projects that you guys are working on that you find so rewarding and that are impactful and I wish we could unearth some of those very old, early running wild videos that would be funny.
Speaker 2:Find one of those for sure and if not, we'll just make it a new game where we just run around and just shout random animal facts, because that seems like a great game that could be a lot of fun.
Speaker 3:It might be disruptive in our office, though I encourage this, thank you, thank you both for having us.
