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Conversation Lesson

Dan: Alrighty, unlikely friendships.

Aaron: Unlikely friendships.

Dan: We’re unlikely friends.

Aaron: We’re very unlikely friends, we’re very unlikely friends.

Dan: You being, having the tap dancing. You’re a major tap dancer.

Aaron: That’s right. Yeah, tap dancing is my number one hobby.

Dan: I was on the football team, captain of the football team. Who would have thought?

Aaron: That a tap dancer and a football player…

Dan: That we would be friends.

Aaron: In your dreams, buddy.

Dan: You were kind of a jock, actually.

Aaron: Well, I played lots of sports when I was younger.

Dan: Ping pong, right? You were a captain?

Aaron: I actually was the captain of the ping pong team in my house. We had a ping pong table.

Dan: Ah, but don’t be modest, high school.

Aaron: Yeah, in high school I played soccer and tennis.

Dan: You were a captain.

Aaron: I was the captain of the tennis team.

Dan: Golf, you were a big golfer.

Aaron: No, I wasn’t a big golfer, no. My father played a little bit.

Dan: Get your story straight. You told me you were on the golf team.

Aaron: I did not tell you that. I think that’s in your dreams.

Dan: All right. You think I’m dreaming about you playing golf?

Aaron: I think you are, I think you are.

Dan: Better check yourself. Yeah, that’s good.

Aaron: …before you wreck yourself. Yeah, so.

Dan: All right, unlikely friends.

Aaron: Unlikely friends.

Dan: Besides us.

Aaron: Yeah.

Dan: I mean, I feel like we’ve covered this animal, unlikely friendship.

Aaron: Yeah, I’m sure from time to time it comes across in some of our lessons, because it’s interesting.

Dan: I did a Google search of interspecies friendships. Not a Google search, a YouTube search. And I think there was five thousand or six thousand results.

Aaron: Okay.

Dan: So yeah, it’s a major, it’s a major… Everybody loves watching deers and hedgehogs paling around.

Aaron: Yeah, of course, right. Hanging out together, having a good time.

Dan: What’s your favorite interspecies video?

Aaron: My favorite interspecies video?

Dan: Yeah.

Aaron: I really like the one of the reunion with the lion, Christian the lion.

Dan: Uh huh.

Aaron: I thought that was pretty amazing, because here’s this, you know, they brought the lion up from a young pup, right? So of course they had a nice relationship. The lion probably saw them as his parents in some way.

And when the lion was sent back to Africa, it actually became the head of a whole pride of lions. I mean, it was one of the leaders, and it was living as a wild lion. It had been how long since they had seen the lion? Over a year, at least. If not, what?

Dan: I think it was more than that. But I mean…

Aaron: It was like two years, and then to…

Dan: It’s this feel good story, but what are these guys doing with a lion in their apartment?

Aaron: That’s a totally different subject.

Dan: That’s not a good thing.

Aaron: Yeah, how did they get away with that? Wouldn’t that be illegal to have a lion?

Dan: Yeah, it was the 60s man, everything goes.

Aaron: Can you imagine your nextdoor neighbor having a lion? What would you feel about that?

Dan: Yeah, yeah.

Aaron: I’m nervous enough if my nextdoor neighbor has pitbulls.

Dan: Right, right.

Aaron: But a lion? Oh my goodness! Yeah, so anyway, when they saw the lion, it’s just amazing that something that’s living out on the plains like that and killing animals to, wild animals, hunting them, and to maybe fending off other males.

Just a very rough existence. To see these men again after several years, and be so playful and recognize who they are. I mean, that’s just amazing. So I liked that one, that was a good one.

Dan: Yeah, he looks like a cat playing with them. I’ve had cats all my life, and the way, that’s how my little house cat that weighs a couple of kilos wrestles with my arm. But that lion was wrestling with their neck in that way.

Aaron: Yeah. I mean, yeah, one little mistake and…

Dan: Yeah, that easily could have gone the other way. That easily could have ended up in a blood bath. What was that story of that Las Vegas tiger show?

Aaron: Uh huh.

Dan: They were some magicians; they did some tiger show.

Aaron: Oh yeah, the white tigers, maybe? Was it white tigers?

Dan: What were they called?

Aaron: Yeah, I can’t remember, but they’re very famous.

Dan: Anyhow, they had decades working with these tigers.

Aaron: So they had an intimate relationship with them, long-term relationship.

Dan: Yeah, one day they looked at them and said, “You’re food now.”

Aaron: Siegfried and Roy were the names.

Dan: Right, right, right.

Aaron: I don’t think, they weren’t killed, were they? It was just a…

Dan: No, they were attacked.

Aaron: They were attacked.

Dan: Or one of them was attacked. But yeah, I mean, it’s this feel good story to watch them together, but… I mean, part of why it’s so fascinating is because we know what could happen. The potential for things going wrong.

Aaron: Yeah. And the gorilla one was also amazing. Kwibi was the name of the gorilla?

Dan: Yeah, Kwibi.

Aaron: Because that was even a much longer interval of time. It was, what? Was it five years or ten years?

Dan: That was five years, yeah.

Aaron: Five years, or more, yeah. To live in the wild like that, and even the people that were living in that area said they hadn’t seen that gorilla in a while.

Dan: Right.

Aaron: When he was searching for the gorilla on the river, he was shouting out with his voice, which the gorilla probably remembered from its childhood, or when it was an infant, could recognize that voice after such a long time. As opposed to some other human voice. So that was amazing. And to see them come together again in reunion, so peacefully. Yeah, it was really nice.

Dan: Yeah. It was quite kind of sad though. You think about, you see this gorilla, he’s so happy to see his friend again. And then you know, the next day he’s gonna be gone.

Aaron: Yeah, right.

Dan: And with the gorilla, being that they’re cousins to humans, you imagine that they’re emotional depth is similar. You know, their sadness, or their connection to other beings.

Aaron: Right.

Dan: So yeah, I think we did another story somewhat recently about somebody who raised, for research purposes, raised a chimpanzee in their home…

Aaron: Yes, that’s right, yes, yes.

Dan: …as a human being, to see what would happen. This chimpanzee was wearing clothes and drinking tea and answering the door, and just thought it was a human. Then one day, it started to get big enough that it became dangerous, so they decided they had to bring it back to the jungle. Yeah, can you imagine how traumatic that would be?

Aaron: Yeah, sad. Really sad.

Dan: But you know, I guess, yeah, that’s the flip side of these feel good videos, is this kind of feeling that that shouldn’t be, that’s not meant to be. That that part of their nature is to be free and wild, and maybe they lose something when they’re confined or domesticated.

Aaron: Yeah, or forced to live amongst, you know, humans, when they’re not human.

Dan: Yeah, and that’s the thing, they can’t… I mean, domestication of cats and dogs took many, many generations.

Aaron: That’s right.

Dan: You can’t just do that…

Aaron: Immediately, right.

Dan: …in one generation, or else you get a chance where one of these animals can kill someone, and that’s why, in the situation with this lion and the gorilla they had to reintroduce them to the wild.

Aaron: Right.

Dan: So no gorillas, people.

Aaron: No, no, don’t pick gorillas.

Dan: I don’t want to hear about any gorillas in your house. No gorillas for Christmas for your kids.

Aaron: But guinea pigs are okay, guinea pigs are all right.

Dan: Guinea pigs are a little wild.

Aaron: They’re wild. I recently saw in my neighborhood a very strange animal.

Dan: Yeah, what’d you see?

Aaron: I don’t know what it was. It was in the sewer. It was in the gutter. It was a mammal, but I couldn’t recognize it. It was enormous. It was some kind of, like, mutated sewer rat, sort of thing. I don’t know, it looked like a giant rodent.

Dan: Uh huh, had you been drinking?

Aaron: No, no, no, no. No, of course not. I was walking home from the train station and I looked down in the drain, and there was this giant animal down there.

Dan: How big?

Aaron: I would say the size of a pig.

Dan: Uh huh.

Aaron: But it wasn’t a pig.

Dan: And what did you do? Did you run?

Aaron: No, I looked at it, and I just couldn’t figure out what it was, and then it scampered off.

Dan: You stare it down? You stare it dead in the eyes.

Aaron: Yeah, right. Well, it looked at me.

Dan: You said, “Make my day.”

Aaron: Yeah, it looked like a giant guinea pig, basically, but…

Dan: Uh huh, uh huh. You feel a little maternal instinct?

Aaron: No, I did not. No, no, no. No, it was actually kind of creepy, to be honest with you.

Dan: I don’t know if I buy the story.

Aaron: Well, you don’t have to buy it. It’s true. If I say it, it’s true.

Dan: You got photos?

Aaron: No.

Dan: No pics?

Aaron: Nope.

Dan: Didn’t happen.

Aaron: Yeah, right, right, right.

Dan: But yeah. I mean, these, these… Another idea, reason why we might be attracted to these videos is that if, you know, a Bella the elephant can get along with, you know, the Labrador Retriever, the dog, this 9,000 pound elephant…

Aaron: These vast differences.

Dan: You know, even… Yeah, yeah.

Aaron: Why can’t humans just get along? You know? We’re so similar in so many ways, and just, we have little tiny, minor, you know, cosmetic differences, and we just can’t get along. Whether it’s your beliefs, or your, you know, where you’re born or where you’re from.

Dan: So maybe that’s why we’re attracted to these videos.

Aaron: Yeah.

Dan: Gives us a little hope that…

Aaron: Gives us a little hope that maybe we can overcome our differences.

Dan: Yeah.

Aaron: Yeah. But looking around in the world today, it just doesn’t seem like it’s ever gonna happen. It’s really, it’s like crazy stuff.

Dan: Right. Well, I mean, you have so much of human divisions and prejudice, and so much of it is based on fear.

Aaron: Yes, and ignorance.

Dan: Yeah, we see both of those, fear and ignorance. We see politicians manipulating that.

Aaron: Yeah, for their own gain. Yeah, that’s for sure. This happening in a big way right now in the world.

Dan: Yeah, we see nationalism on the rise in a lot of countries, including the U.S.

And, yeah.

Aaron: Oh yeah. And that empowers bigotry and separation, vilification of others.

That’s too bad.

Dan: Right. And yeah, recently we saw the KKK march in my home state, in Virginia.

Aaron: Oh, in Virginia, right. And there was violence there, was there not?

Dan: Yeah. One of these KKK, or I don’t know if he was in the KKK, he was one of these white power crazy guys.

Aaron: Right wing, white power guys, yeah.

Dan: Young guy, he got into a car. And then there was a much larger group of people protesting them, saying, “This is not acceptable to have these guys marching in our streets, talking about this racist stuff.” And this young guy, he got, one of these white power guys got into a car and he mowed down the protestors, and at least one woman died.

Aaron: That’s right. Did they ever catch that guy?

Dan: Yeah, they caught him. They caught him right away.

Aaron: They did catch him, okay. They put him in the slammer? They better have.

Dan: I mean, it’s pretty sad. I don’t want to turn this into political thing, but it’s a sad state of affairs when the President of the United States doesn’t know what side to fall on, on this issue.

Aaron: Yeah, it took him days to make a statement, didn’t it?

Dan: And his statement was, “There are good people on both sides of this divide.”

Aaron: Oh yeah, good people on both sides, right? Oh man. How embarrassing, it’s terrible.

Dan: Yeah, very embarrassing. But I also feel that it is indicative of the state of America. But at the same time, it also makes for good TV, that kind of division, and those kind of extremist people like seeing things that are on extreme of reality. And in reality, these marches in the states of these white nationalists are usually like 30, 40, 50 people.

Aaron: Right, but the media will make it look like something much bigger.

Dan: And the U.S. is a country of 300 million people. I don’t want to give people the impression that that is the way most Americans think or feel, or…

Aaron: No, definitely not.

Dan: But it definitely is a slice of our history and of, sadly, some small subcultures in the U.S.

Aaron: Right.

Dan: Which is where the last story fell, was one of the leaders of the KKK, the Ku Klux Klan.

Aaron: Grand Wizard.

Dan: Imperial Grand Wizard.

Aaron: Imperial Grand Wizard, whatever that means.

Dan: Yeah, they’re big on the fantasy terms.. Imperial Grand Wizard of the Invisible Kingdom, or…

Aaron: Knights of the, what is it? The Kingdom of Knights, or the Knights of the Kingdom of the KKK?

Dan: Yeah, invisible, I don’t know. But they use a lot of fantasy terminology. They’ve got the Imperial Wizard, who’s the top. And then there’s like a Grand Cyclops, which is also somebody high up.

Aaron: Oh really? Okay, strange.

Dan: Anyhow, the Imperial Wizard from, I guess the 70s or 80s, for a 10 year slice of time, he relocated. They found him recently in Belize, and he’s the owner of a $3 million hotel, which I imagine must be on the beach to be worth that much money.

Aaron: It must be, yeah.

Dan: He is living a life that just makes zero sense.

Aaron: Yeah, right. I mean, It’s a giant irony. And the crazy thing is, it would be different if he, like, had completely come clean, and he had had a realization, and he realized that his past views were just not correct, and he wanted to make amends and apologize to the world and become a better man.

But he still retains the same sort of mentality, but he has chosen to live amongst the very group of people that he feels himself to be superior to. It’s just odd.

Dan: Well, in these interviews he acts like he maintains the same mentality. But his actions are very different.

Aaron: His actions speak differently.

Dan: He’s hanging out, he’s hugging them, he’s fist bumping them, he’s eating with them.

Aaron: And then, that community of people seem to accept him.

Dan: Yeah, they like him. I mean, they make jokes about him.

Aaron: According to the video and the article.

Dan: They make jokes about him, they call him the king of the rednecks. This interviewer, they went down there and interviewed people who said that, yeah, he’s confused and he’s crazy, but he’s really nice and we like him.

Aaron: Yeah. Didn’t he help out some guy? Somebody in a wheelchair?

Dan: Yeah, one of the guys was in a wheelchair and he gave him money, and he helped him. It was a black guy, somebody that in Bill Wilkinson’s past life, he claimed to feel that he should have nothing to do with.

Aaron: Right.

Dan: It makes no sense. He’s trying to hold on to opposite realities. It kind of made me feel that he doesn’t believe in that, but he’s not, something about his ego, he’s not willing to admit the truth, that he was wrong.

Aaron: The truth, right.

Dan: Another question is, why is he in Belize? Maybe he’s on the run from the Ku Klux Klan.

Aaron: He could be, yeah. Maybe he had a falling out with the Klan members, and someone threatened him.

Dan: Yeah, and maybe he’s worried they’re going to see this video, where he’s hanging out with people of other races, and they’re going to come try and kill him.

Aaron: Right. Who knows?

Dan: Belize, it seems like one of those places where people just go to run away.

Aaron: Could be. It’s a beautiful place. I spent maybe two weeks there.

Dan: What were you running from?

Aaron: What was I running from? I was running from you, man. No, I was just there, just hanging out when I was younger one summer. I was traveling through Guatemala, Mexico, and spent some time in Belize.

That area’s called La Ruta Maya, The Mayan Route. It’s the whole Mayan civilization was in that area. There are a lot of ruins and pyramids and…

Dan: What’s the closest country to Belize?

Aaron: Well, it’s bordered by Mexico and Guatemala.

Dan: Okay.

Aaron: It actually, a lot of people don’t know this, Belize is a popular diving destination, because it has the second largest barrier reef in the world.

It’s beautiful, it’s a beautiful place. Just beautiful trees and plants, and of course it’s got ocean and lots of reefs, coral reefs, and you can go diving and…

Dan: There’s a rain forest there too, right?

Aaron: Yeah, it’s a rain forest. And they have beautiful cenotes, which are kind of like springs. They’re very deep, and real crystal clear blue. And yeah, pyramids, and lots of wildlife, and it’s just a beautiful place. A lot of friendly people I met, as well. The main city, Belize City, is a little sketchy at times, especially after dark.

Dan: Yeah, you felt a little…

Aaron: You have go to watch yourself a bit. But that was, of course, 20 years ago. I don’t know what it’s like now. But I have fond memories of Belize. Yeah, you should go. Check it out sometime, man.

Dan: Well, you know, the other famous story out of Belize was with John McAfee.

Aaron: Oh yeah, yeah.

Dan: He was also kind of a man on the run.

Aaron: That’s right, he was on the run.

Dan: That’s a whole another story.

Aaron: He had to escape from Belize as well.

Dan: Yeah. But I think even going down there he was kind of on the run.

Aaron: Yeah, I think so. He’s a character.

Dan: Well, anyways, for people that don’t know, look up John McAfee. Anti-virus tech mogul who went on the run in Belize.

Aaron: Yeah, and then off the rails.

Dan: Yeah, yeah, quite insane. Maybe he was neighbors with Bill Wilkinson.

Aaron: Could have been, could have been.

Dan: By anyhow, as much as I don’t think Bill Wilkinson should be lauded, because he still seems to…

Aaron: Well yeah, he holds all of these insane views.

Dan: And hold all of these insane views. He does seem to be changing. If a guy like that can change, then maybe there are hope for some of the worst of us that we see marching in the streets in the U.S. Or even in the White House of the U.S.

Aaron: Yeah, it’s true. There’s a glimmer of hope in Bill Wilkinson. All righty.

Dan: All right, until next time.

Aaron: Okay, we’ll talk to you later.

Dan: See ya.

Aaron: See ya.