The Bible tells us to take dominion over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
Our guests tonight take that literally by going out into God's creation and exploring
the great outdoors.
Now, we all need to do better on getting some exercise, but the Wild Brothers take it to
the next level.
I'm excited to learn more about their adventures in the wilderness, eating exotic foods, and
taming wild beasts.
Perhaps I can even learn a few things and use my new skills to finally catch and subdue
the liberal.
These shifty little fellers are often found in concrete jungles scurrying from one coffee
shop to the next.
They often make horrible screeching noises on Reddit and weird tweet sounds online.
Unfortunately, they are blind to the truth, and the only cure may be the Baptist bias.
The Bible tells us to take dominion over every creeping thing that creeps...
All right, thanks for joining us for the Baptist bias.
And that analog was so good, we almost had to do it twice there.
But no, so much thanks for coming and joining us on the show live.
We've got some special guests, the Wild Brothers.
I don't know how wild they're going to get, so we better buckle up.
Also, we will be taking some call-ins if you want to ask them some questions.
I know our guests have been kind of all over the world, done a lot of different kind of
exploring, and it'd be great to just hear from some of their personal experiences.
And so if you want to ask them a question live on the show, we'll be taking calls at
231-Baptist.
But I'm going to go ahead and kick it over to my co-host, Ben the Baptist.
How's it going?
Why don't you introduce our guest to us as well?
It's going great.
Thanks for having me on, as per usual, here on the Baptist Bias.
It's another week, it's another episode of our show, and we're a variety show here on
Tuesday nights.
We like to switch things up, and tonight we're doing just that with our guests, the Wild
Brothers.
What I find interesting about them is they did missions work, and it was through that
that they were inspired to spend a lot of time outdoors and to make content for their
own platform.
They have a streaming service, YouTube channel, all kinds of content about just God's creation
and just the importance of being active, and I think that's something that we all need
to work on for sure, but it's something I feel strongly about because as technology
continues to advance and there's a lot of good things that we could use technology for,
unfortunately though, one of the downsides is that it can lead to a very sedentary lifestyle,
and I'm sure we'll talk about that a little bit later on, but the Wildbrothers have some
good content, especially if you're younger and you want to learn more about this kind
of thing, or even if you're older and you're interested in being active in the outdoors
and trail life and things like that, so we'll be talking to them about that.
A couple of the brothers are joining us and I think Pastor Shelley, it should be a wild
discussion.
Alright, let's go ahead and bring our brothers on the show.
We got two of them this evening.
Why don't you guys say hello and introduce yourselves to us, to our audience.
Hey guys, good evening everyone.
My name is Morgan Wilde, I'm the oldest of the four Wilde brothers.
And I'm number two.
My name is Hudson Wilde.
Happy to be joining tonight.
And so, you know, you guys are out there.
Where are you guys even at?
I mean, you got a world behind you.
I mean, where do you find these elusive Wilde brothers?
They're on Earth.
We know that.
Yeah.
Right now, we call home the Panhandle of Florida.
So we're on the Gulf Coast.
Yeah.
Just chilling out.
Nice.
Yeah.
Bunker down right on a little bayou full of alligators and watching out for hurricanes.
Yeah.
We love it down here, but the world map behind us kind of keeps everything in perspective.
That's right.
All the places that we've traveled to and different areas that we call home across the
world.
I looked at some of your videos online.
It seems like and maybe I'm wrong for the timeline, but Hudson, did you like recently
get married?
Is that something that I saw?
Yeah.
Semi-recent.
We're just over two years now.
Okay.
Two years.
We're one year old.
I'm catching up.
I think myself as an old married man.
There you go.
So you've already fought.
You've already had a fight by now, right?
No, I'm just kidding.
Not many.
I have a wonderful wife.
Very easy to live with.
Yeah.
They're still in the honeymoon phase, Ben.
Yeah.
We are.
All right.
And you guys have two younger brothers as well?
Yes.
That's right.
Yeah.
So Keon and Asher cannot be joining us tonight, but they're a little spread out.
Keon is actually local right now, but he was busy tonight, couldn't tune in.
Plus, when you get four of us together, it's like we flip all screens.
Too many voices.
Two people would be plenty.
That's plenty of wild.
And then our youngest brother, Asher, he's actually currently in Indonesia right now,
versus a couple months.
So he'll be back in a few weeks.
But he's enjoying spending time back there on our old stomping grounds.
So we're kind of spread out right now.
But yeah, happy to be here and kind of represent the four Wild Brothers.
What I like to see is how you guys are still friends, apparently.
Is there any difficulty in kind of maintaining that relationship all four of you guys?
Do you kind of butt heads a little bit or does it seem like it's pretty easy so far
or what?
We had to figure that out very early on.
Living over in the jungles in a small house, 30 by 30 square foot, we ironed out a lot
of our arguments and disagreements when we were younger.
So now we're best friends and brothers make great coworkers.
That's great.
And your parents, what are they doing?
Are they still out in the wilderness somewhere or what are they up to these days?
Yeah, they are.
They're living on a boat off in some island region over in Indonesia working hard.
Oh, wow.
Indonesia.
Where have all of you all been?
Can you give us like a quick rundown of just kind of some of the places you guys have been,
wherever you spent the majority of your life?
Is it any one place?
Yeah, sure.
Mostly confined to Southeast Asia.
So all of our roots are actually based out of here in the Panhandle of Florida.
That's where my parents met and married.
My dad had a charter business and he was a boat captain, learned about tribal missions
and the incredible number of Bibleist people groups all around the world.
So it changed careers, changed trajectories and took his young family into missions.
So for kind of the early years of my life and as my brothers were born, we were kind
of different transitioning moves across the states as my parents sought to be equipped
through Bible school and cross-cultural and linguistics trainings for four years.
And then we moved to the country of Indonesia with the heart to reach an unengaged, unreached
people group, share the gospel with them for the first time, translate the Bible, and we
spent the first year in the island of Java.
And then we moved to the province of Papua, Indonesia, which is kind of the remotest province
of the country of Indonesia, which is the largest archipelago in the world, thousands
and thousands of islands, hundreds and hundreds of distinct language groups.
But we spent the majority of our lives there on the island of Papua among one unengaged,
unreached people group, the Wano people.
So most of our time was in Southeast Asia.
We've had the privilege of visiting different countries during our travels, but that was
for the majority of the time spent over there in Indonesia, so about 16 years of our lives
over there.
Wow.
Have you guys been to the Philippines or to Australia at all since you're on that side
of the world?
Yeah, I've been to Singapore, Australia a number of times, some of those neighboring
countries for sure.
Thailand, China, Japan.
Yeah.
Okay, wow.
Yeah, but never for too long periods, more short trips.
Interesting.
There's a clip of you guys that I want to share for our audience.
It's clip number one.
It talks about getting off the couch and into creation and kind of talking about God's creation.
I really like this video clip and I think it kind of introduces our audience a little
bit to you guys.
So we're going to go and play this clip real quick.
Clip number one.
Hey guys.
I'm sitting here on the couch and I'm just starting to feel kind of restless.
The adventures that we used to go on, we were catching new insects of science.
We're finding cryptic creatures and going places where no one had ever been before.
We can't really have that kind of adventure here.
What's left for us to find or actually discover?
A lot of commotion up here.
There he is right here guys, can you see him?
Crazy.
We're cross-country skiing over a frozen lake.
Can you guys hear that?
What do you think?
Man, I thought I was about to get a free haircut there for a second.
Hey guys, looks like we have a big gator right here.
There's nothing else out in this area, I don't think.
Guys, I found it.
I found it.
It's all across the riverbed.
I can't believe this.
We actually found it.
Thank you so much for today.
Thank you for this opportunity and for your beautiful creation.
This is what you can see right in the backyard, it's so beautiful.
Those are some pretty cool action shots you guys got there.
I'm kind of curious, how do you film these things?
You guys using some kind of a drone or something, someone manning that while you're out there?
How does the filming go down for something like this?
Yeah, we're a self-taught four-man film crew, so we grew up in remote places where no Western
naturalists had ever set foot, so a beautiful corner of God's creation, endless jungles
in our backyard.
So early on in our childhood, we started documenting our adventures for the purpose of exposing
our peers to the reality of God's mission, but also just inspiring and kind of spurring
them on to do more with their lives, but also an emphasis on outdoor and God's creation.
So we kind of picked up filming on the side as a side hobby and a side ministry, and that
kind of grew into more of a passion and something more than a hobby.
Now it's kind of our main jobs.
We tend to go to remote, kind of exclusive areas though, and so oftentimes it's difficult
to have a large film team with you, so because we got good at just kind of working amongst
the four of us, we kind of kept it up.
So each of us has a different role, either holding the camera or audio gear.
Our youngest brother, Asher, is a very talented drone pilot, so all those aerial shots are
Asher's doing.
He's always flying the drone and has it concealed either behind his back or right in front of
him.
Asher has a drone up in the air.
I have to ask though, is he destroying any of these drones because our film crew struggles
with keeping them intact sometimes.
Oh yeah.
We've lost countless drones over the years.
There's many of them in the bottom of the ocean and remote jungles, we've lost a lot.
So he's not any better though.
At least you guys are losing drones in jungles and out in the middle of nowhere and all
of these exotic places and things of that nature.
Meanwhile, I'll come clean, I'll be candid with everyone, I lost one in a parking lot
one time when I felt like I could land it on top of a street light.
It can happen.
Whoops.
Well we love to memorialize all of our drone crashes by including those last shots in our
episodes.
So some of the shots, you'll see an epic shot where the drone's coming super close to a
rock formation or an island and then that's the end of the shot and people are like, how
did you do that, one second later it crashed right to the side and then fell into the ocean.
Or it's cool, you can actually reverse those shots, it looks like it's just coming out
of the rock or the trees.
Oh yeah.
Cool.
So there's all sorts of creative ways you can salvage those things.
What about film editing, y'all do your own film editing or how does that work?
Yep, we also do that.
So we wear a lot of hats, we're on film crew but also we take the roles of director and
producer and editors and story writers, all that stuff.
So it keeps us pretty busy but again, we never been able to have a film crew that can keep
up with us and most of the locations are hard to access and it's complicated and there's
red tape and so we like to leave a light footprint so we do all that in house as well.
That's great.
Yeah, we definitely have our share of filmmaking and it can be a lot of effort, a lot of energy.
I'm kind of curious, you also guys do some kind of like cartoon or animated stuff.
How exactly are y'all creating that?
I'm just kind of interested in that content like how you guys came up with that.
Great question.
When we first, our filmmaking really started as a hobby but more importantly the mission
behind it was really to reach our peers.
Every time we left the jungles, came back to the US, we're always so burdened for our
peers because they're really just running after the agendas of the world.
Even like the American dream, that kind of secular agenda has crept into our churches
in many ways, and they're just drawing young people to live for themselves, live for their
own desires and pursuits and careers, and God's word so clearly tells us that we need
to sacrifice and live for Christ and come to him and seek his direction in our lives.
And so a burden for our peers kind of sent us on this journey of filmmaking.
And when we reached the States, we started kind of doing some investigation work and
seeing like what kind of media is most influential in young kids' minds and what helps develop
their character and their virtues and their desires for the jobs they want to do when
they grow up.
We saw animation as being one of those key players.
And so that was kind of really the heart and soul behind us moving from reality TV to trying
a new endeavor and create our own animated series.
Well, I'm just kind of curious because we've been exploring these things like that too,
like trying to use like AI or other stuff.
Like, are you all using some kind of a software that generates animated characters or kind
of, I don't want you to still give all your secrets, but I'm just saying like, I'm just
kind of generally curious.
Oh, I see.
Yeah.
Yeah, so we use a combination of things.
Are you young?
Well, real quick.
Are you younger than Keon?
He's like the mastermind.
He's the creative in the family.
He's a great artist.
And so even from an early age, he loved art and drawing and using programs.
And so we didn't think animation was possible.
We consulted with some of the leading Christian animators in the industry and a number of
them said, like, phase one, you need a crew of like 30 to 50 people and a budget of 10
million to start your first season.
And I was like, we're overhead, they're like, all right, scratch that.
Animation is not for us.
But our brother Keane kept pushing us, like, boys, just buy me a special laptop.
I already found the program, give me a budget and let me see what I can do.
And so he's from the ground up really run with the program and is kind of his self-taught
animator.
So using some different animation programs has created, you know, the what are called
the puppets customized each one of them to kind of look similar to us and the movements.
So incredibly quickly he's mastered the art of animation.
Yeah, it's just laborious, painful, frustrating, and many hours equate seconds of animation.
So it's a lot of work.
But to answer your question, yeah, we're kind of using a combination of different things
including a little bit of AI for some stuff.
Yeah.
So he's drawing a lot of the characters and in like, I don't know what program, but just
maybe like Illustrator or something like that.
And then yeah, some of them.
Yes.
Okay.
Cartoon animator.
Yeah.
Illustrator.
Yeah.
One thing I want to point out about an animated series is that it's an option for Christian
families to show their children content that won't contain something objectionable.
And I think that for a lot of conservative Christian families or biblical families,
they want to live by the Bible.
They have those kinds of values.
It can be difficult sometimes to find something that you can put on for the kids, and you
don't have to worry about any kind of messaging that you don't want your children to hear
and see.
And so, again, as a father of three, Pastor Shelley, what are you, father of about 14,
15 now?
Six children.
Six.
That's invaluable.
And so I just kind of wanted to get your guys' perspective on that in terms of the philosophy
behind the animated series and really the motivation behind it and just talk to us a
little about the importance of putting out some content that Christians can enjoy and,
like I said, without having to worry about anything objectionable coming up.
Yeah.
Well, it's interesting because when you look at Christian media as a whole, it's notoriously
cheesy, notoriously low budget, and notoriously mediocre and lukewarm.
And so, unfortunately, that's just the reality of it, and there's different reasons why.
But the Hallmark, Pure Flix culture has also really sanitized most Christian media.
When it comes to kids' content, unfortunately, we've seen that there's some safe content,
what I would call safe neutral content, that most Christian parents end up letting
their kids watch.
And it's not overtly Christian by any means, but at least it's safe, and at least it's
clean.
At least there's nothing harmful.
There's a little bit of that, and most of that content actually comes from secular networks
and producers.
But the Christian families end up using it because there's not an alternative.
The only alternative is very cheesy, very low-budget, actual Christian ones.
And so, kind of the heart behind most of our productions is actually, we're not professionals
by any means, but we want to create content that's glorifying to God, that actually exalts
a life of sacrifice, adventure, living on mission, more than just, "I'm just going
to be a mediocre Christian and barely scrape by, and go to church on Sunday and pay my
tithe."
We want to actually create a culture and media that gets kids past that, to forsake their
dreams, to live all out for Christ, and actually experience at the end of the day that when
they're following Christ, it's the most fulfilling thing to do with their lives, and it's actually
the ultimate adventure.
So we want to glorify, we want to lift up content that shows the Christian life from
a cool perspective, that you can be cool and be a believer.
And that doesn't mean being crude or, again, embracing the kind of entertainment that the
world produces.
You can still produce clean content that's actually impactful, actually has a deep message.
And so that's something that we really feel strongly about, and we've just seen avoided
that kind of media as a whole, especially from a kid's perspective.
Most of the things that would be on all the basic Christian streaming platforms for kids
are they might be safe, but I don't know how formative they are in your child's world
view.
I don't know how much they're contributing really.
So with our animated series, Wild Bros, which will be coming out next year, we really want
to highlight the adventure of following Christ and show that the premise of the show is based
loosely off the experiences of our childhood adventures, my brothers and I, but to show
that when you live on mission, it will take you places you never dreamed and you'll get
to experience things you never thought possible and you'll be able to see God work in ways
that you just never would think.
Living on mission, living a life of faith and dependence on God, always on the edge,
that's exciting.
That's kind of some of the messaging that we really want to encourage.
We also want parents to feel like you're saying is good about the content.
There's nothing objectionable.
There's no secular messaging or even political spins and spiels.
You have platforms like the Daily Wire that are doing great things, but all their content
is nothing about it is overtly Christian, nothing about it is overtly building and strengthening
a biblical foundation.
It's really just fighting against the low culture, which is needed to a degree.
So we really want to kind of try to bring some fresh series and shows that really showcase
the power of a life of faith and living on mission and that get kids and families energized
and excited about in deeper ways living sacrificially and engaging in God's global mission, because
that's what we think is really important.
But some of the themes, it's the nuclear family, it's a strong bond of brotherhood that revolves
around having adventure together with the backdrop of missions, seeing the nations reached
with the gospel, and then in that also inspiring kids to that spirit of adventure, because
I think all kids are just wired for adventure.
And I think here in the US, most kids have to live vicariously through entertainment
or video games because they cannot lack that daily adventure or that excitement.
So we want to show kids really kind of real adventure.
There's still discoveries to be made out in the world.
There's still adventures to be had, and it's not a boring life, but the ultimate adventure
is following Christ.
Those are like the themes and the highlights that we want to bring throughout this show.
Going back to that trailer that you showed from the Off the Couch series, that was reality
TV, but actually the premise of that show was built on the foundation of what Hudson
just said.
Four years ago when we moved back to America full time, we thought that our days of adventuring
were over.
We thought that, wow, we're living in America, there's a naturalist here for over 200 years,
every rock and stone has been removed, every tree has been named, there's no new bugs,
there's no new nothing, right?
And so we were content to kind of, we found ourselves sitting on the couch a lot.
And then we set a challenge one day for ourselves, what if we just, what if we just like shit
to the paradigm, what if we actually got off our couches, put our phones away, got back
in creation and just see what happens?
And that really started a personal journey of seeing and experiencing that.
It doesn't matter where you live, what corner of the map, what corner of creation, adventure
starts with getting off your couch into creation.
And there's so much just right outside our doors that can be discovered and experienced
that we would never realize because we're living in America, you know, like what is
there out there to be, to be experienced.
And so that's really the premise of Off the Couch and in the nine episode, season one,
it really takes, you see us getting off our couch, starting in our own local bayou here
right in our backyard and then going through multiple states and experiencing everything
from archaeological discoveries to finding aircraft like wrecks to diving on sunken ships
to experiencing the rarest mammal in the world, which actually happens to live in our backyard
here in Florida, not in Indonesia, the red wolf, all sorts of incredible things.
So the series really showcases that it doesn't matter where you are, as long as you have
that spirit of adventure and are willing to get offer cash into creation, there's all
sorts of adventure to be had.
Yeah, we've got some clips here of your animated series from another clip you guys had, and
I like the idea of the adventure mixed in there too, because I think for a lot of young
men we need to inspire them to be manly and be going out and doing activities that men
do and searching and exploring and obviously it's great to mix in their Christianity as
well and have something that's tied to the Bible so that kids can kind of couple those
two things.
They can make Christianity also have masculinity to it and adventure and excitement because
obviously suburban life can be different than what you guys are experiencing.
I mean I guess in Florida you still got some gators and you still got some stuff but you
know lots of parts of the United States it's kind of conquered and so as far as the wildlife
is concerned and you don't have to fight the natives.
I'm kind of curious you know out there on the wild are you guys actually experiencing
any kind of danger as well?
Could you share like maybe any stories of any actual peril or danger you guys actually
really face because some people don't realize that the world out there is a lot more dangerous
than a lot of parts of America or there can be uncertainty or confusion and I'm just kind
of curious if you guys have any stories about that.
Yeah, we have multiple, yeah, several close calls.
Which ones do we want to share?
Wasn't there something like the Island of the Four Kings, was there some danger with
that or something?
Yeah, well I think the first real kind of perilous moment was early on when we first
got to the jungle.
In certain areas there's like guerrilla warfare groups that are fighting for independence
and so there's some tight situations where helicopters had to come and save the day for
us and get us out of a sketchy situation.
But then there's also multiple times where it's just nature.
Our family built a 60 foot wooden double canoe to sail to America in and one of its maiden
of wages was kind of across the coast of Papua, about 500 miles, and there were some nights
where we were sailing past these big rivers and there had been flash floods earlier that
day that brought all this like giant trees and branches out to the water and so like
Han Solo kind of navigating our way through the ash wood field, with flashlights trying
to steer around these giant trees so that it doesn't sink our ship. But you know also
with with medical situations where we fought bouts of malaria and dengue and places where
there were no hospitals, and in fact that's one of the most deadliest creatures out in
the jungle is the tiny mosquito. Man, those things can cause a world of hurt. So yeah,
many situations where it's either hostile, you know, people, nature, you know, whether it be
like natural disasters or sickness, but some of our adventures as well, like on our boat or...
Yeah, two just battling the elements. Like we lived off grid for years and years and three
different locations, three different houses about among the same people, and it was really amazing
because you just lived a daily life of dependence on the war because you weren't taking for granted,
like electricity or water because we needed the sun every day to charge our solar panel so we could
keep a few lights on and charge computers. We needed rainwater for our third house. We
didn't have actually stream-fed water in that house, and so we had header tanks, and we're just
really daily and weekly dependent on thorns and rain because it would be just a couple of weeks
you'd have to ration the water if there wasn't any rain. So many experiences like that over the
years just taught us that, yeah, that life is fragile. It's easy to live here in America with
all the comforts, which are a blessing, but you tend to sometimes forget about the daily things
like food, water, sunshine that are so vital for most people in the world as they depend on those
things. So really living closely with the Lord and depending on daily was a great adventure as
well. Great for our childhood. You know, one thing that I think some people are afraid of,
not only just the dangers and the risks that you guys kind of brought up, but people going
on missionary journeys or trips like this and kind of isolating their family. I think sometimes
maybe they worry that their children will maybe miss out on childhood or growing up or they might
be weird or kind of adapt back to society. I don't know about you, Morgan. Are you married as well,
Morgan? Yeah, yeah, I am. So you guys are both married. You don't seem that weird. Is there this
danger of being a homeschool family out on the mission field or kind of being a part of normal
society? Because I mean, from my perspective, you guys seem pretty well adjusted. I'm just kind of
curious. Well, there's, yeah, I think homeschools are supposed to be weird, but you add like life
in the jungle and no man's land. Yeah, you can come out pretty strange. Yeah, I think there's,
I think there's those, there's weird people everywhere. I mean, there's some pretty weird
people here, you know? And it's really in every pocket and every local church, there's some
weirdos. It's just the reality. I mean, everywhere you go. So I think there's, there's always going
to be, you know, those people and ensure a lot of people have, have, you know, just a hard time
adjusting to cross cultural situations. There's a lot of challenges that come with that. We were
blessed to, to grow up there at a very early age, we moved to Indonesia. And so that was like normal
life for us. But my parents did a good job balancing kind of harmonizing our life and
cultural experiences there with also our, our, our identity as American citizens. And so they
did a great job raising us to, to understand our, our history and our citizenship and the
blessing that that is. And they also raised us to be American citizens and as much as possible to,
to teach us about American culture and way of life. And every three and a half years to four
years, we would come back to the States for about a nine month period for like a furlough,
a home assignment. So that really helped us just reintegrate each time, reconnect with old friends,
with family, experience life a little bit. And then we're back on the mission field for another
four years or so. So during those intermediate periods back in the States, it helped us just
learn more about our culture. But yeah, moving back, there's totally some culture shock and
some things we had to catch up on like, you know, driving and hey, how to use a credit card and all
those things that we weren't using on a daily basis over there. So there's definitely that
shift in transition. But by God's grace, we adapted pretty easily. And that can't be said
for everybody. But I feel like our parents did a great job just really teaching us the value
of family ministry. I think that had a world of difference in our story because we grew up
not feeling isolated, not feeling disconnected or underprivileged, not being able to experience
certain things that our peers were in America. We rather saw it as an amazing opportunity
and as a season of life that the Lord had called us to. And our parents really, from an early age,
equipped us with responsibilities in their ministry so that we felt like we were a part of a team.
We weren't just there on the side being dragged along through all these experiences but rather
they daily relied on us to be a part of the mission. So that helped create identity and
ownership for us as well in the ministry and I think that provided a lot of stability growing up.
But yeah, it was one of the main reasons actually we did a reality TV show early on during our team
years. It's because we saw that very issue limiting families from coming overseas and we just saw that
there's so many parents that we interacted with here in the U.S. that said, "I would love to go to
the mission field, but I'm terrified for my kids. I can't take my kids over there. They might get
hurt. They might turn out weird. How do we do education?" And so we did a whole several
different series to kind of showcase third culture kids can actually thrive on the mission field.
There are challenges, but there's also awesome adventures and kids can thrive over there and
have just amazing experiences. I'm curious about your homeschooling because my family,
we use the ABECA program, which is actually coming out of Florida, kind of probably where you guys
are at. But yeah, I'm kind of curious what curriculum or resources did you guys use while
you were abroad? Early on, we used a lot of Sunlight, it's called. And then in middle school,
like high school, my mom just did a conglomeration of different curriculums for different subjects.
So we used a lot of Apologia for science, Notting Grass for history, Matthew C for math.
Yeah, it was a mixture. Each year is a little different. It was really hard for her because
she would have to very intentionally plan ahead to have certain books shipped over,
which was really difficult. Other than that, homeschooling was pretty much the same as
anywhere else. We didn't have any co-ops or anything. We were a very small class.
But we had a great time. And we all graduated. Yeah, we all graduated. Great grades. And have
all excelled in college. Hasn't been an issue. So kudos to my mom. She did a great job. She's an
extremely hard worker, as well as my dad. So we really are grateful for them. And to all
your homeschool parents. Yeah, you guys are weird. It's a great way to spend quality time with your
kids and really instill a worldview that exalts Christ in them instead of five days a week having
them sit under somebody else. So it's a lot of work, but it's definitely a worthy cause.
Well, if they're homeschooled, they might miss out on becoming communist, but you know,
I guess that's a downfall. But I want to change it up a little bit. And I want to talk about
something that I think is in your guys alley. But in a few several years ago, at the arc,
where our encounter our encounter area, there was a debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham on
fitting all these animals on the arc. And Bill Nye was kind of hypothesizing that there's like 16
million species out there and that that would be mathematically impossible to fit on the arc.
And I've actually researched this myself a little bit of like trying to categorize like how many
animals would be on the arc. But I wanted to play a clip from him. So he can at least explain,
you know, his viewpoint. And then I wanted to talk about it with you guys because
since you guys are world travelers, I want to kind of see if, you know, if I've missed
any animals in my, you know, basically conglomerate of list here. But let's go
ahead and play Bill Nye for a second to get this set up. So let's see if there are 4,000 years
since Ken Ham's flood. And let's say, as he said many times, there are 7,000 kinds. Today,
the very, very lowest estimate is that there are about 8.7 million species. But a much more
reasonable estimate is it's 50 million, or even 100 million, when you start counting the viruses
and the bacteria and all the beetles that must be extant in the tropical rainforest that we haven't
found. So we'll take a number which I think is pretty reasonable, 16 million species today.
Okay? If these came from 7,000 kinds, that's, let's say we have 7,000 subtracted from 15 million, that's 15993.
We have 4,000 years, we have 365 and a quarter days a year. We would expect to find 11 new species every day.
So you'd go out into your yard, you wouldn't just find different bird, a new bird. You'd find a different kind of bird.
A whole new species, a bird, every day. A new species of fish, a new species of organisms you can't see, and so on.
I mean, this would be enormous news. The last 4,000 years, people would have seen these changes among us.
So the Cincinnati Inquirer, I imagine, would carry a column right next to the weather report.
Today's new species, and it would list these 11 every day. But we see no evidence of that.
There's no evidence of these species. There just simply isn't enough time.
All right, you can go ahead and pause this clip or whatever. But earlier in this debate,
he brought up that there was this, you know, trying to fit these 16 million species on,
well, you know, on the Ark. And then he kind of here in this specific argument is saying,
"Well, let's just give Ken Ham the benefit of the doubt and say there was only 7,000 animals on the Ark.
How could you go from 7,000 to 16 million a day that would require us to have 11 new species of
"animals" every single day?" But I actually, see if you can pull up, I'm going to pull up my screen here in just a second.
I want to get to this particular chart. See if you can pull that chart up when you get a second.
I just typed it in, like how many animal species are there.
You want me to agree? I don't even know what I agreed to.
So if you actually look at just the number of described species, the one thing that Bill Nye is being pretty misleading on
is the fact that the vast majority of the "number of species" that we're talking about were of like bacteria.
And then like the second category was like insects.
And then like when you actually get into what we would typically think of as like animals or something,
and especially animals that were on the Ark, there's only 11,000 reptiles, 11,000 birds, 8,000 amphibians, 6,000 mammals.
So, you know, we're not talking about 16 million that were on the Ark or that were, you know, even from the 7,000 you'd have to get to 16 million.
We're talking about less than 100,000 even on this particular number, which is totally reasonable.
But I'm sure that you guys out in the wild have seen all kinds of crazy animals and new discoveries and things that you didn't even -- I don't even know.
Were there things out there you were like, "I don't even know what this is?"
It's an interesting argument, like you said, and if you wanted the full answer, go check out the Ark encounter and you can see they do a great job answering all these objections.
But I would just say that there's a lot of issues with that argument.
From our personal experience, we actually helped describe many different types of species of moths, butterflies, some potentially small mammals and birds as well for Hudson.
And so our family got to participate in that. We have some moths and stuff actually named after our family, our last name, so it's not impossible.
What you'll find is that there are some modern countries, especially in Europe, in the West, that have actually taken upon themselves because we have enough free time to actually go and find all these things.
In some countries in Europe, scientists are so desperate to find something new that they'll actually position massive lights on the coast to try to draw a new moth or something that they can then describe
and say, "Wow, we haven't found one of these yet." They're looking under every rock and under every crevice to try to find something new in some small European countries.
But most countries in the world are trying to survive, and so the last thing on their mind is looking for beetles and butterflies.
So most people in the world aren't interested in this, and they're not natural so hard, and they're not searching, and even if they could find something, there's no way to document it.
It's very, very difficult for the average person to actually get something scientifically approved as new species.
It's actually the formal process to getting something called, you know, this is a new species, it's extremely difficult.
There's not a lot of people in the world who are doing this, so that would be the first thing.
If all of us were looking, we'd be finding a lot more.
The second thing is that, like I said, most of the countries in the world where people are not doing this happen to have the most things that are not described for that very reason,
and so where we grew up in the jungle, there had been no Western naturalist, and so we had the benefit of having a clean slate, so pretty much every leaf, you know, was new.
All you had to do was go to a little stream and pick up some water beetles, and they would guarantee being new.
It wasn't difficult. All you had to do was go to certain elevations, certain altitude. It wasn't hard to find new things to science, and so I don't know.
But one thing that we had the privilege of seeing was just how quickly microevolution takes place.
So there's the macroevolution, where you have some giant change, and, you know, a monkey evolves into a person, which we believe would be false and can never happen.
But then you have microevolution, which I don't like the word, but it just means a variation of form takes place.
And so we got to see that on a regular basis as we collected numerous new species of insects.
And some would, you could directly see how it would morph.
Oftentimes something would happen, a landslide, something would cause one, you know, type of insect over here now to be isolated and over time would slightly change.
And some of the coloring, you know, on different butterflies, it was most noticeable with their coloring.
Slightly change, and if they're isolated long enough, they could actually, you know, interbreed and become its own species or subspecies is what we would describe.
And so that happens all the time.
And so it's not hard for one species, something to happen.
And, you know, part of that colony gets isolated and is over here and all of a sudden they morph into their own subspecies.
And so we got to describe numerous subspecies of butterflies and insects.
And so it doesn't take millions of years for, you know, one host or one kind to then kind of morph into multiple different species.
But as Ken Ham would say, it's all part of the same kind, you know.
A butterfly doesn't change through a grasshopper.
Right. So you're still just finding butterflies and beetles and moss and everything.
I actually made a list of my own several years back and just kind of just trying to go through different lists.
So I looked at like Wikipedia for their list of animals.
I looked at the Bible, like all the animals mentioned in the Bible.
I looked at bird classifications.
I looked at several other websites and I tried to combine them all into my own list.
And it's kind of hard to see all the data, but I have it pulled up on my screen here.
It's done your homework on the grass.
I calculated about 740 quote kinds of animals that would be put on the arc potentially.
And again, you know, there's going to be a speculation as far as like how do we really classify these and everything.
But what I thought would be kind of interesting is you guys could help me and maybe just think of maybe the craziest animal or things that you saw.
And I want to see if I have it in my list because I just want to know like if if you can help me refine this list a little bit.
So I was just kind of curious. What are some of the craziest things you've seen out there in the wild right away?
There's one that stands out of all the others. Are you familiar with the Echidna? Echidna? I'm not sure.
I want to see how you spell it. I tried to spell it. The first letter that came out of my mouth was wrong.
Okay, so I think it's this one. Is this what you're saying? The E-C-H-I-D-N-A. There you go.
Oh damn. I don't even know what that is. Let's look this thing up.
You need to look at this one. It'll blow your mind. So it's one of the only mammals in the world that lays eggs.
So the most famous one would be the platypus. Everybody knows about that. What a strange creature, right?
But he actually has a friend, the echidna. This is the other mammal that lays eggs.
It looks almost like a porcupine mixed with an anteater. They actually have pouches, but they lay eggs.
After their young hatch, they climb into their pouch. So they're actually a marsupial.
It's a mammal that lays eggs. And it's the craziest little critter.
It's a nocturnal marsupial that lays eggs. And it lives up in the islands of Papua, Indonesia,
but also on the island of New Zealand and some parts of Australia.
Really, really bizarre little creatures, but some are cute, some are a little bit scary looking.
Where did this evolve from, Ben?
This is its own kind.
I know, right?
Yeah, you're asking the wrong guy that question.
I want to pop in and just say, and we'll go right back to the animals.
I just want to pop in and say that when you bring up macroevolution and microevolution,
I think that a lot of people in the secular world, they seem to think that when Christians like us claim
we don't believe in evolution, we hold to a non-evolutionary worldview,
it seems like what they hear is that we're rejecting microevolution as well, which is observable.
And you guys talked about some of the variations that you were able to observe
and the changes you were able to observe and things of that nature.
And I think it's important to make that distinction between what I would categorize
and what the Bible categorizes as science falsely so-called, the macroevolutionary theory,
this idea that one kind can somehow through small variations end up turning into something completely different.
My biological ancestor being a fish or a single-celled organism or something like that.
And the microevolution process that you described where there are variations within kinds that happen
because they adapt and they change, but they're not switching to a completely different kind.
So I think it's important for people to understand the distinction between those two processes
because it'll help them, I think, understand where we're coming from a little bit better
and realize that as Christians, no, we don't reject science.
In fact, we embrace it and we love science.
We love science and I think you guys love science as well.
Yeah, absolutely.
I think the Christian worldview should make Christians the most scientific people of all
because we have a reason to be scientific.
There's purpose and an agenda behind it.
Absolutely.
Do you want to add to that?
Well, not only are there cool creatures, there are some dangerous creatures out there.
What are some of the dangerous creatures you guys have encountered?
We're actually really blessed.
The island of Papua does not have, it shares a lot of the same flora and fauna as New Zealand,
whereas other parts of Indonesia have tigers and rhinos and monkeys and large dangerous animals.
The island of Papua has a lot of small creatures.
The most dangerous is probably the cassowary.
There's a lot of cassowaries out in the jungle, and they're large birds, kind of like an emu or an ostrich,
but they're very territorial and defensive, and their feet almost look like velociraptor feet.
They have these giant claws, and they will impale you and rip your abdomen open, so they're very dangerous.
They'll run and attack you, and also wild boar.
Wild boar and a lot of venomous snakes, but we were fortunate to live almost 7,000 feet above sea level,
so most of the venomous snakes were not around at that elevation.
But if you go down to the coast, like in the swamps and marshes, you have massive crocodiles,
even on the coast, saltwater crocodiles, which is the craziest thing.
You can be snorkeling in a massive, you know, 12 foot, 15 foot croc could be laying down there on the reef,
and they eat people, they're man eaters, so you have to watch out more on the coast.
There's a lot of dangerous, like, sea snakes, crocodiles, but where we're at in the highlands is, yeah,
we're pretty fortunate, we weren't, like, having to, you know, look above every tree and constantly.
There are a lot of snakes in some of the lowland areas, and one of my good buds pulled up this YouTube video,
and his uncle never came back home from work one day, his family got a little bit worried, they went out,
and sure enough, right where he usually takes a nap, they found his machete stuck in the ground,
and a giant python, and they cut him open, and his uncle came falling out.
He's like, "Look, they got it all on YouTube, take a look at this."
So there definitely are some large reptiles over there in the jungles that you have to watch out for.
That's crazy.
That doesn't sound very fun.
This is the cassowary or whatever?
There it is.
We actually had a pet one for a few years and it was lovable.
When they're little, they're actually very great pets.
It's when they get to their teenage years that they'll turn on you.
So nobody can keep a pet cassowary for a certain amount of years.
Ours was named KFC, which stood for Kentucky Fried Cassowary, and she was great.
Some of our videos feature her. She's pretty fun.
See, that to me, like on the onset, I can picture seeing that in a zoo or someplace
and not thinking that it's very threatening.
I don't know if you disagree, Pastor Shelley, but I look at that and I don't envision it hurting me in any way.
Those are the most dangerous animals because you have your guard off and you're just kind of thinking,
"Oh, it's friendly," and you get up there close and then all of a sudden it's talons or something.
Yeah, I've even seen playing golf, there was just a goose or a duck or something,
but a mother duck is really territorial, especially around her chicks.
Yes, they're bad news.
They're ducklings, I guess. Maybe they're ducklings.
I've seen a guy get bit by a duck and it'll really just nip the skin off of your body real quick.
A lot of animals are twice as scary if they're not behind a cage.
Whenever you're behind the cage and we're on this side, then it doesn't feel that threatening.
But if you're right there and there's nothing between you, suddenly it's a different experience.
A little survival tip though, the cassowaries, they have weird legs. They bend forward like this.
And so they're really good at running uphill.
But then if you run downhill, their legs are like this. They have a really kind of hard time going down.
Their joints are backwards. So they can't run downhill fast.
You got to run downhill as fast as you can and hopefully they can't keep up.
Well, there's a lot of animals. I have cassowary on my list too.
So now I'm going to challenge you guys because I think there's this dangerous predator that's out there
that makes really strange noises out in the wild.
And I'm kind of curious if you guys have ever come across one of these.
But let's go ahead and play Clip 7 and see what's going on in the wilderness.
You know, on second thought, I think we need to send Jacob out there
in the wilderness to find out why.
Previous thing I've seen all month.
Oh, by the way, they say the homeschoolers are weird.
I just wanted to put that out there.
These are all public school educated, so no, I'm kidding.
The liberal, have you come across this out in the wilderness
or is this something you've ever seen out there in the wild?
Uh, no. Not like that, Oliver.
Not like that. I don't want to grab my bow and, you know.
Yeah, it just takes it to the next level.
Yeah, that is something else.
I mean, it's kind of crazy, you know, people going out there in the woods
just hitting sticks. I mean, do even the tribes act this interesting
when you're out there in the bush?
No. When you're out there in the bush, you're focused on like,
alright, I need to provide food for my family, I need to go chop firewood
so we don't freeze tonight, and, you know, I need to protect my family
from the dangers of the jungle.
So if you start acting weird, you're going to be cast out of society.
You don't have room for that, you know?
Like, hey, we're all busy here, if you want to go be a crazy person,
go climb a mountain and do it by yourself.
And I was also going to say that's a total waste of exerted energy right there.
It's like that contributes to nothing that's on this side.
So people would say, they would actually refer to you as a crazy person.
So they would quickly repent of their craziness and come back and embrace normality if they're in the jungle.
Yeah, I think they were just trying to let out some steam.
These women, their lives are so hard out there in city life.
They have to come out and scream in the woods.
And detox a little bit. Yeah, get some bad vibes out.
They're just the wild sisters. We're talking to the wild brothers.
No. But you guys, obviously you guys got married.
So is this something that was kind of post the missionary work?
Did you find your wives like back in the states?
Or how did you guys meet your wives?
I'm kind of curious how that connection happened.
It's just like Tarzan Jane.
So she wasn't like screaming in the woods with a stick or something.
Tarzan Jane-y something? No.
So for my wife Alyssa, we actually met as childhood friends.
So her family, they were also involved in tribal church planning.
And Bible translation among an unengaged underage people group on the same island.
And since we're connected with the same organization,
we, you know, some, I mean, annually would connect over conferences or just fun retreats as a family.
So we're those childhood friends. That's how I met her.
And then your wife? My wife, she's from Montana.
I met her four years ago.
So our parents knew each other way back in missions training.
Her family, they were here in the States and our family just had never gotten together.
So when we first moved back to the U.S., we were living here in Florida on a bay right next to the Emerald Coast beach.
And her family was like, "We could really use a vacation. Can we come visit?"
So they came down and stayed with us for a week. I got introduced.
And then things kind of just progressed from there.
That's cool.
I have a question from the chat room here. Let me scroll up.
This one says, "Bill..." Well, I'm not going to read that one.
Okay, here's a question. "What kind of crazy foods..."
This is thebrojstew is asking this one.
"What kind of crazy foods have they had to eat, local foods?"
So he's asking about any unorthodox foods
that you've had out in the wilderness on some of your adventures
that you might want to share with the audience.
Yeah, some pretty unorthodox food.
But I'll say, nothing as distasteful as the American hot dog.
That's like way up there with like, "What is this? Are you serious?"
-Foreign substance. -Foreign substance in my body.
Yeah, everywhere you go, food is one of those things.
It's a part of, in a sense, material culture.
So the standards of food, what is good, what is not, what's spicy,
what's not at all, just varies.
But food is food.
I think some of what Americans would find distasteful
would probably be animal entrails, interesting organs,
the feet of certain kinds of animals.
Where we grew up, meat was a rarity, something scarce,
so you kind of just get in the store,
giant, fat-infused chicken breasts and all sorts of stuff, right?
Everything's on steroids and hormones and stuff.
So any kind of meat that you caught was like,
it was a delicacy and it was treated with respect,
and usually the whole animal was eaten.
So kind of like the First Nation people of the Americas,
and most people throughout history and still today,
how they would eat meat.
So anything that was hunted was eaten in its entirety.
So that led to a lot of uncomfortable, strange,
you know, organs and things that we would like reject,
or, you know, the fat on a wild boar that still has all his hair,
you know, singed on it.
Probably animal brains are my least favorite.
I'm just not a brain guy.
Every brain, doesn't matter what kind of animal.
Could be a bird, could be a--
Chilled monkey brains.
Exactly. Indiana Jones style is never tasty.
And then also, if you remove the teeth, you know, of an animal,
underneath is like a really soft, kind of gelatinous gum.
They love it over there.
For me, I'm just like, the texture totally throws me off.
Do they have Balut over there?
Do you know what that is?
Balut?
It's a Filipino food.
What is it?
It's basically like a half duck egg.
It's like a duck egg.
It's been fertilized but it hasn't been hatched and they basically eat it raw.
Yeah, they would eat, yeah they would totally eat it raw.
We've ate our share of those.
Half developed birds, yeah.
Is that good?
Especially the cassowary.
So the cassowary, that giant bird that you had up a bit ago.
Those things lay massive eggs.
I mean it's like this big.
And you have a fertilized dick in there.
It's like Jurassic Park.
No, it's literally, if you look up right now, cassowary egg.
And they're bright green.
They're beautiful.
It's incredible.
It looks like, it doesn't look real.
But they're massive eggs.
And yeah, they'll be half developed.
It's very hard to get a cassowary egg that's just the yolk that's early on.
Usually they're always half developed.
So you're kind of like, you know, trying to make it on land.
It's like a 70/30 chance.
You know, you crack it over the skillet and you're like praying.
Let's just be a normal egg.
Sometimes there's a little baby that flops out.
But you know.
That's crazy.
It looks like a lime almost or something.
Yeah, it's not something.
It's like CGI.
Yeah, I think that looks enticing.
I'll let you try it, okay.
That's crazy.
Mass, massive omelet, you know.
See, I like them scrambled.
Well, you've got to catch your prey sometimes.
And there's a clip I want to play of you guys making a slingshot.
How to make a slingshot.
I'm kind of curious about if you ever had to use this to catch some food.
But let's play this clip real quick and learn how to make a slingshot.
And that my friends is a wrap, literally.
Alrighty, let's test it out.
It's important to shoot the slingshot the right way.
Don't be doing anything like this all sissy-like.
The correct way to hold it is to wrap your forefinger around the front Y piece.
Your thumb supports it right here.
You have it at a sideways angle.
Pull back and launch.
Awesome.
So that was how to shoot it.
Let's play clip four too.
I wanted to play also the one where you guys teach us a little bit how to make one I think.
Is that correct?
Full.
So let's play clip four too.
Yeah, let's play clip four.
And also make sure that they're responsibly sourced.
You don't want to just go hack down a beautiful, young, vibrant tree just for one little piece
of wood.
Step one, find your Y handle piece.
Super important.
And what I like to do is the squeeze test.
I like to take both the Y pieces in my hand and squeeze it as hard as I can.
If you can't break it, that means it's a good piece.
It's going to be strong.
It's going to last a long time.
Step two, we're going to attach the rubber tubing onto the Y pieces.
I oftentimes carry around rubber tubing with me.
What I like to do is take my pocket knife and just to carve a little bit right here
at the base of the Y and when we secure it, tie it down, it will be nice and snug.
It won't be moving around on the round surface.
What I want, I'm just going to measure, you want probably about an inch, an inch and a
half of excess rubber right here and this is where we're going to attach the rubber
onto the Y piece and then pull the remainder back and see about how far you want it to
be.
I want mine to be about a foot, that's my first piece and now I'm going to use this
as the measurement for my second piece so that they're exactly the same length.
So now that we've completed that, we're going to attach the rubber tubing.
The best method to do this is using rubber bands.
So what I do to tie this overlap, I'm going to take this end and I'm basically going
to just give it over to my other fingers.
Just like that.
I'm going to pull.
Nice.
I like this video.
It's like something we could just get our kids, like some of these tools and help them
make some slingshots.
Good old TrailFUSA.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's a great tutorial.
Just hope that the kids don't start shooting each other with the slingshots.
Right.
Do you shoot your brothers or animals?
Yeah.
That's the only problem.
So tell us a little about this, you know, kind of that video we just watched and making
slingshots.
Have you ever had to?
I mean, I'm sure you have.
Tell us about shooting him and your experiences with the slingshots there.
Yeah.
We group with bows and arrows.
That was our primary tool out in the jungle to shoot, defend, it was multi-purpose.
Shoot your brother if he's being a stinker, you know.
But arrows are a craft.
It takes a while to create a good arrow.
And so you spend all this time making 20 arrows, you go hunting and you lose half.
And you shoot an arrow in the jungle, you'll never find it.
So slingshot ammo is much more accessible.
We'd go through hundreds of rounds of slingshot ammo.
And so it was actually my father-in-law.
This was before I met my wife.
He came over there to do some construction work, I think, for a team.
And I got to meet him, I was I think at 12, Morgan, 14 or so, anyway, he's very young.
But he had a slingshot with him.
And he had made it when he was a boy in the Amazon jungle as he was a missionary kid.
So he gave it to me before he left, and that kind of became our example.
We modeled all of our slingshots after his, we called the Schroeder slinger, his last
name is Dave Schroeder, started a discipleship ministry called Mentoring Timothy, you guys
got to check it out.
Mentoring Timothy.
Anyways, his slingshot was our model for all of our slingshots.
And wow, we never left the house without our slingshots roped around our shoulders.
Just great for hunting with.
Yeah, where we grew up as well in the country of Indonesia, it's not legal for citizens
to carry any firearms.
So we didn't have like a .22 or anything, maybe like some redneck kid here would.
And so you could have like air powered rifles and stuff were allowed, were legal, but slingshots
turn out to be seriously dangerous and can mess you up if you know how to use them.
And we want to use like a little, pitiful little BBs that you might buy at Bass Pro
and stuff.
We would actually craft certain types of rocks for all of them.
So yeah, a whole rock quarry of slingshot, you know, and so I mean, it would seriously
like you hear the story like David and Goliath, like clearly the Lord was like with him, but
like, I mean, if you do it right, I mean, it can, it can like really hurt, hurt something.
So if you're, if you're, you know, hunting in moderation with respect, according to the
guidelines, things like birds or small mammals, you can really take them out.
And you take, when we got back to America, I had someone out with a slingshot and took
out a squirrel in the first like five minutes, we didn't realize that there was actual squirrel
fusions.
But look at all these dumb squirrels, they're so like accustomed to like people, they're
just like right in front of me, pop, you know, and you just, I mean, you take them out like
nothing.
You don't need a twin.
We were too savage when we first got back, it was like, I had the tiger, every, every
movie creature was food in our eyes.
And so it's like our grandparents kind of say, our boys, like there's, there's rules
and regulations.
You'll be like, there's squirrels in the backyard.
I wanted to plug the trail life USA channel and the playlist trail hacks.
That's actually how my wife discovered you guys is through the trail hacks playlist on
that channel.
She wanted to show some of that content to my son.
He's young.
He just turned four years old.
So he still has a ways to go before he can do some of this stuff on his own.
But we wanted to get him started young, but there's some cool videos on there, like the
one we just showed, how to make a rope, how to make trail bread, how to make pine needle
tea, cooking in a pit.
So a lot of these different tips that you have there in short form videos and people
could check it out.
But it does feature the Wild Brothers and some really cool tips for being on the outdoors
on the trail and making some of this stuff.
So I personally really enjoy it myself as well.
I need you to teach my dad how to do that because he has squirrel issues.
He's really into golf and they tear up his green and so he's always trying to catch squirrels
and he tried to get a BB gun but it didn't work so maybe he needs the Schroeder shooter.
He needs to get in this.
Do you know how fast that goes?
Feet per second?
Do you have any idea?
No.
I'm kind of curious.
I think you wanted to, it sounds like you were about to say something about the Trail
Life USA.
Oh no, I was just about to say, they're a great organization.
A couple years ago we started partnering with them to produce some content for them like
the Trail Hacks that you saw, but also just to partner on a bigger scale with their organization
because we really saw the value in their mission to kind of equip and mentor and disciple young
men in collaboration with local churches in the wake of Boy Scouts spiraling the drain.
So we really appreciate their values as an organization and it's been fun on a small
scale.
The last few years being back in America to actually partner to create some content
and try to be as much as possible, by God's grace, somewhat of a mentor or an example
because there's just not a lot of young guys out there who would make very good role models
unfortunately.
So it's something that we don't feel like we're definitely not influencers by any means
but according to the platform, what God has given us, we're going to be responsible with
and so it's something that we've started to do as we have our own families.
It's like, hey, people need good examples of strong men who are God, the men of integrity
and that just happens to be what Trail Life is kind of all about.
So it's been a fun partnership for sure.
And you guys have your own streaming platform as well that you guys are working on, the
animated content, some of the real life.
I think you've also done some film projects.
Yeah, documentaries.
Reality TV.
What is the future?
You're just kind of trying a lot of different things right now or do you have a big project
in mind?
What is the future of this streaming Wildbrothers?
Yeah.
Great question.
Thanks for asking.
We've been filming for about 10 years, most of that's just been unprofessional as a hobby.
The last two years, the four of us have been felt called by the Lord to collaborate and
work together for a season to produce content for our generation that gets them excited
about God's mission.
So, a year ago we launched our own streaming platform, it's called Wildbrothers TV and
it's the number one source of great commissions entertainment for children.
So something like Pure Flix, but it's for kids and it's all about God's mission, also
heavy emphasis on outdoor adventure content.
It's our own platform, it's our own app, it's a streaming platform akin to something
like Netflix or I don't know, DailyWire Plus.
But what's unique about it is that it's more of a membership than a subscription.
So we actually have a community of young Christian families from across the US and around the
world who are on the platform in addition to streaming, great commission, entertainment,
like you're saying ranging from reality TV to documentary, now to animation.
They also get to engage as members.
There's social media features, there's something called the adventure chat that people are
posting and communicating on every day.
And we have jump on monthly live streams with our community.
So the app is really neat because it takes a lot of membership features and kind of
our heart in it is really mobilizing a generation of young families who get re-engaged with
God's mission and are spurred on to live a lot for Christ.
So Wildbrothers TV is definitely the place to find all of our content, past, present
and future stuff.
We also have the privilege of partnering with different ministries, organizations, other
film producers to take some of their content on our platform as well.
So there are licensed some third party content.
Right now we have a little over 200 titles that are coming out with new content that
comes out every Saturday and a lot of that is original content.
So we're not just like circulating the same old shows that have been around for the last
10 years on Pureflix and everything else, it's actually new and interesting content.
So it's definitely a fun community and it's been a fun challenge.
We a few years ago never first saw us doing something like this, but it's been really
neat to see the Lord kind of provide and give direction through the process and it's
still a startup.
It's only been going on for one year actually.
Yeah, we started last year in August, so it's just been over a year of Wildbrothers TV
actually being out for everybody, but it's quickly grown to be the number one source
of great commissions of entertainment for children.
So we want to continue to use that as our main vehicle to impact and equip and kind
of mobilize families, but there's also a lot of free stuff that you can see on our Wildbrothers
YouTube as well.
Yeah, we want young families and kids especially to move from like passivity to like action
and be excited about using their lives for things that really matter, you know, for what
God has climbed them into.
It's so easy to be lukewarm Christians here in the U.S. and kind of sit on the sidelines,
you know, to be a pure warmer instead of actually doing something that matters and being sacrificial,
living all out for Christ.
And so kind of our motto is following Christ as the ultimate adventure, whether that be
halfway across the world in a jungle or here in the U.S., the body of Christ is so diverse
and we're all called to play a part.
And so we want to just instill that in kids from an early age and excite them to the wonders
that God's going to call them to and the part that they get to play in His global church,
St. Albans Nation's reached, it's kind of the heart for our platform.
One thing you guys mentioned earlier in the interview about traditional Christian entertainment
media and you had brought up that some of it can be a little cheesy, some of it can
be perhaps of a lower quality, and that's not to bash anybody who's putting this content
out or anything like that, God bless them, they're trying and we appreciate that.
But I have to say, you're right, okay, and you know, it's nice to see that you're self-aware
about that and understand the ecosystem of Christian entertainment and realize that,
you know, that is kind of a drawback and I think for those out there who are listening,
you have Wildbrothers TV, the streaming platform, as an option now if you do want some Christian
media, some Christian entertainment that will provide you with not just quality but also
content that is good for the whole family and something that can actually influence
children positively. And I know we already discussed this but that is a big thing for
me as a parent is I want to make sure that if my kids are watching something on television
for entertainment that it is influencing them positively rather than negatively with all
the subliminal messaging and the woke and the left wing stuff, the liberalism and everything
like that that they cram into the entertainment, it is good to see that there is an option
out there.
Yeah and I like the mission also, I mean we do a lot of missions trips too, we've gone
to the Bahamas, Fiji, Philippines, Canada, Mexico, a lot of different areas and we don't
always document it as well as you guys have done and getting those cool screen, you know
those wide shot drone shots are really epic.
I mean their production is like way better.
Yeah the production quality is pretty…
Makes us feel pathetic.
It's pretty incredible considering you guys are pretty much self-taught and everything
but I think sometimes that's really beneficial you know they say a picture is worth a thousand
words and I think even in these scenarios like some of those shots you'll have look
really nice and they can kind of motivate people to want to go out there and explore
and you know spread the gospel themselves and so I definitely…
Observe God's creation.
I'm definitely motivated to try and capture better video on our next trip.
Yeah, well something to throw out there that's really unique about Wildbrothers TV and to
me is one of the hallmarks of it being something different and unique is that in addition to
just again streaming content one way like most platforms like I was mentioning there
is this community and one of the things that we started probably a little over half a year
ago was something on the channel called the Young Adventure Channel.
So in addition to all the different playlists and different content there is something for
our members and what's really unique is that when we started the Off the Caps into Creation
series accompanying those nine episodes are these challenge videos and each challenge
video is basically instructions for how kids can get off their caps into creation and they
go on a challenge akin to the adventure they just watched us doing.
Replicating their own adventures.
Replicating their own adventures and they follow something called the 3Ds which is discover,
document, devotion.
So they're discovering something new, they're documenting it whether that's drawing a picture,
capturing it on video like us, writing about it and then devotion.
They're giving glory back to their creator for it.
And so what's amazing is that our community actually goes out on their own adventures,
records their own experiences following the 3Ds and then uploads those videos.
We have little tutorials on how to edit your own videos.
These are all for young families.
They create their own content.
They upload it to us as long as it follows the guidelines.
We then post it on Wildbrothers TV on the Young Adventure Channel for everybody else
in the community to experience.
So we have over 50 of those, and we just started that not too long ago.
It's amazing to see how this has started a small movement of Christian families who
are also giving out their couches in the creation, giving glory back to their creator and inspiring
the whole community.
So it's a really fun place for not just one-way streaming content but also going on your own
adventures and participating and actually contributing content to the platform.
Makes it really unique.
So that's something that, just throwing that out there for young families to consider.
If you're looking for outlets for budding young filmmakers, that's a great place.
Because what we've seen is that there's so many kids and families who want to post up
on YouTube or want to post up on TikTok or Instagram, it's just not really an edifying
community.
It's like, it's just not a great place to try to start your own list of subscribers.
But while there's TV, you can post your own adventure videos and there's a great receptive
community there who's going to follow along, be encouraged, comment.
And so it's been like this almost in seed form, a place for young Christian filmmakers
to start exploring those same giftings.
Yeah, that's cool.
And you can get some feedback from people who would probably be interested in that type
of content, whereas you upload it to these big platforms and, you know, sometimes it
just seems like a drop of water on a hot stove.
It's kind of hard to get noticed.
Yeah.
Right.
Maybe I ought to trek back over to the Middle East and upload my own adventure videos.
That's a different kind of wild brother.
That's true.
There you go.
Yeah.
I want to also say something that I like about this stream and the Wild Brothers in general
is the value you place on observing and glorifying the Lord Jesus Christ, but specifically God's
creation itself and really not wanting to take God's creation for granted.
But the question I have for you guys is this.
A lot of us, we work an eight to five.
We have office jobs and things like that where we may not be able to enjoy God's creation
as much as we would like.
But do you have any tips for perhaps the average person on things that they can do, activities
they can do outdoors, whether it's hiking or whatever else, maybe something that you
think people should be doing more of just to enjoy the world that God has created for
us and the creation that He has given us for us to enjoy and to observe and basically to
glorify Him.
But do you have any tips for the average Joe out there who wants to get off the couch
themselves?
How do you do it?
Yeah, well, the first step is just that, getting off the couch.
We've seen that even with a little time spent outside, you grow in your appreciation for
the Creator, the one who has made this beautiful world around us, and you learn different attributes
about Him, His creativity, His power and His strength, and just the design order all around
us and His creation.
So get off the couch and like what we tell our community is just get out in the backyard.
That's like the closest little piece of creation.
As long as you're not in a big apartment complex and you literally don't have any dirt outside
the front door.
In those situations, go to a park, get outside and just take off your shoes, put your feet
in the grass and just enjoy being outside for a little bit.
But then beyond that, find hobbies and things that you like to do outside and then pursue
those because not everyone likes to go on a hike or even could or maybe would feel intimidated
by something like that.
How do you organize a trip to get on a trail?
Sometimes that can be intimidating.
But find things that you enjoy doing outside and then spend more time doing it.
Find time to carve into your busy schedules to get outside and just appreciate God and
the world that He's created because ultimately it is for our enjoyment.
The things that He's made, the trees, the grass, the birds, all that we see is for a
man's enjoyment for us to appreciate and reflect that glory and praise back to the Creator.
I think too, one thing that we coined upon moving back to America was something that
we called the Urban Machete and the Urban Machete is this right here.
So this little device that everybody carries in their pocket.
This is an Urban Machete.
When we grew up in Indonesia, everybody had a Machete and that was one of their main
tools.
They used it for everything.
Well, when you move back here, there's very little use for a Machete, but this is actually
the Urban Machete because you can navigate, you can call people, you can pay for things.
Pretty much you can Google things, you can calculate things.
This is the Urban Machete.
It's the main tool that you need for slashing through jungle and surviving here in America.
But most people see this as a toy, not a tool.
So a big part of that getting off the couch is also eliminating other things because we're
filling our time in a day doing something, whether it's watching TV or most of the time
it has to do with this, the Urban Machete.
But if you can start to shift your perspective from this being like something fun that I
have a million games and a million distracting activities on too, "Oh, this is a tool.
So this is how I survive here," that doesn't mean you can't have any social media.
But like this is an Urban Machete, this is my tool.
Just like a machete is very sharp and in the hands of somebody who is not skilled, does
not know how to wield it properly, it can cut you, it can really mess you up.
And the same way our phones are actually very sharp tools that if not used properly, treat
like toys can actually hurt us.
And there's a million things that you can think about on that, you know, how our phones
can hurt us be like a sharp machete.
So part of that getting off the couch into creation is also to start thinking about your
phone as like an Urban Machete.
This is my tool.
This is how I get around.
This is how I survive.
It's not just some toy to, you know, just mess around on all the time.
That'll really help you, I think.
And you know what, I think there's a time to consume digital media, obviously, and we
were talking to some guys who produce digital media.
We're producing digital media right now.
Yeah, we're streaming, okay?
So it's not like I'm just totally anti that.
But here's the thing, there's also a time to put the thing away, put the electronics
away and just grab a baseball, grab a football, grab a soccer ball, go out.
And you know, I remember this was back when Pokemon Go was a fad.
I don't know if you remember this, Pastor Shelley, when this thing was being, I do.
I went to the park with my wife, I'm not exaggerating.
Every single person there was just like this on the phone doing the Pokemon Go thing.
And again, I'm not saying never consume digital media.
However, I think there needs to be a resurgence in parenting that says, let's put the phones
away for a while, let's step outside, let's throw the baseball around, let's go to the
park on the swing set and be active and enjoy the outdoors with the kids rather than
just be addicted to electronics all day.
I'd like to shoot some swirls.
Shooting some swirls would be fun, with a slingshot that you learn to make courtesy
of the Wild Brothers on the Trail Hacks playlist.
Hudson taught me how to make a slingshot over here.
It happens so quickly.
Our parents were good to limit our screen time at an early age and so you grow a greater
love for being outside than your devices and as we got older and had more responsibility
and were allowed to be on devices more, we actually more times than not shows to be outside
than on our devices.
If you can cultivate that from a young age, there's just a greater longing to be outside,
do productive activities, use your hands, enjoy your hobbies and if you steward that
at a young age when your kids get older, they'll choose that over electronic devices.
Well, I really appreciate you guys for what you're doing and coming on our show and talking
about this.
You guys have a really positive energy and it's really infectious and I really like that
about you guys.
I really like the content quality that you guys have and I haven't necessarily consumed
a ton of it yet but I really liked a lot of the videos that I've seen.
The animated series looks really professional so I was kind of curious.
It's pretty impressive to hear that you guys are making that in-house so you got to give
your brother some props from me on that.
And we need more Christian content in general and not just Christian content but just content
promoting good things like you said, adventures and missions and these type of activities.
Our church is very mission oriented.
We love to talk about the Bible but it's good to also kind of incorporate that into real
life with some adventures and fun activities and things like that.
So I really appreciate you guys coming on the show.
I wanted to give you a last minute here to plug anything or bring anything else up.
Is there something else that you guys wanted to share with us this evening?
Yeah, no.
I would just say people out there are interested or curious about Wildbrothers TV and what
the content is.
Feel free to go over to wildbrothers.tv and try a free trial or I think our Labor Day
sale is still active.
I think it's a wild labor.
All caps wild labor like a 30% off discount is still valid till tomorrow.
So take advantage of that.
If you jump on, try the free trial, you like it, go ahead and use that coupon to secure
your annual subscription.
Follow us on socials and keep up to date.
We're really excited about our animated series.
I think it's going to be super cool and unique.
Yeah, so track along on our socials to stay up to date with all that.
This has been a great experience.
We appreciate the opportunities to connect with you guys and it's always encouraging
to see other believers networking and this is what it's all about and this is the kind
of stuff that we do too.
It's all grassroots.
It's all about just this right here and disfellowshipping as brothers in Christ and exhorting each other
to live on missions.
So we really appreciate the opportunity and it's been a lot of fun.
Now I'm going to subscribe to the Baptist Bias, absolutely, so I can track you.
Well, that little intro caught my attention because I've been listening to more of these
episodes.
So we are a really, really different show.
So we try to do all kinds of different things.
You guys are really kind of niche, like in the sense that you have a really consistent
product and I really like that.
But we have theological shows, we've had debates, we've had political guests, we've had all
kinds of stuff.
And of course, most of the people we interview don't have the Baptist Bias.
We're trying to get them to have the Baptist Bias, right?
Or we're just not hiding our bias when we come on a show, at least, right?
And so we like to interview all kinds of different people and kind of come to their worldview
and collaborate on ideas that we can share on and try to influence each other in a positive
way.
And so I think sometimes our audience lives in an echo chamber pretty easily.
We're independent from the Baptist, we're King James only, and we're pretty conservative
and traditional.
But I like to have this show to kind of go out there and talk with all kinds of different
people and get some different perspectives and to collaborate with other individuals
and just kind of see what's going on, try to influence them for the better.
That's super important.
That's so good.
Now more than ever, I feel like we as believers, we really need to know what we believe and
why we believe it and where it stems from scripture, because if we just are told these
things to believe and we have these different ideas but we don't really know where it comes
from or why we believe them, that's a dangerous place to be. You're going to be thrown to
and fro by the waves and doctrines of the world. I love that you guys are kind of bringing
on different topics, different theological or doctrinal issues and saying, "Hey, this
is what other people are believing. Let's look at the merit, but what do we believe
and where does that come from scripture?" I think that's really important.
This season is really different, almost every single guest.
Every episode, wildly different. No pun intended.
Of course. When I heard wild, I was like, "Are these guys crazy or what?" It's just
the last name. It's a really cool last name.
It is a cool last name. We're pretty chill. It's a blessing and a curse. We always get
mixed vibes. A lot of people are like, "That's a crazy adjective," so they're completely
turned off or they're curious. It's one or the other and then they meet us and they're
like, "Oh, you guys are such an undersell. You're the most chill people ever."
I love the name because it's provoking. It's engaging. Thank you guys so much for coming
on the show and I look forward to sharing some of your animated content with my family.
If it's animated, my kids will watch it 100,000 times. I'm tired of VeggieTales. I want something
else.
The good news actually for the animated series is it's not going to technically come out
until probably next year, but the first pilot episode is actually streaming on the Wild
Brothers TV. The proof of concept pilot episode is actually out right now and you can go watch
it.
The other episodes will drop as they're made.
He made this episode so enjoy it, but no, he made it in like two months I think if you're
together. It's our proof of concept. The other ones to come are going to be even better.
He's working on some of the other episodes. Man, they're so cool.
It's a great place to get introduced to the series and that's only for the Wild Brothers
TV members, but if you want to start following the movement, that's a great place to start.
So again, Wild Labor, that's the coupon code at your checkout experience at Wild Brothers
TV. Love to see you there on the platform. We're also there every month on Zooms.
And on the Adventure Chat. So get on the safe social media platform there on Wild Brothers
TV and just introduce yourselves if you join the community. We'll say hi.
Great. Well, thanks so much for coming on the show. We have a different guest for all
of the other shows. Who's our guest this upcoming next should be Richard Gage, shouldn't it?
Oh, yeah. So for September 10th, which is the day before 9/11, we're having the former
CEO of the Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth coming on and going to talk about all
the stuff that happened. He also has his own network that he's created. And I'm really
excited to have him on as a guest. You've actually hung out with him before.
We hung out for a couple of days. He was in Florida when I lived there for a while. He
was there for a few different events. I met him at one of the events and I wanted to just
volunteer to help him set up and things like that. He stayed at my apartment for a night
because he needed a place to stay. So I really got to know Richard Gage very well during
that time period. It was great to hang out with him and learn a lot about where he came
from, how he arrived at some of his conclusions that he's arrived at regarding that event.
And I think next week should be an informative show, a different one and an exciting one
as well. So looking forward to talking to Richard Gage again after all these years.
It's been a while. A lot has changed since the last time we hung out, but it's going
to be fun.
Yeah. And you want to check out that show live. You can call in, put in your questions
in the chat because we'll probably take a few callers for that episode. And I'm looking
forward to that interview that we're going to have scheduled next week. Also, for those
that did our locals sign up for the t-shirts, we've already sent out our first batch of
t-shirts for all of those individuals. So, we have been getting several emails of people
that signed up and we sent out those t-shirts for you. Also, if you want to follow us, you
can follow us at baptisbias.com/join. That's our mailing list where we send out the links
for our show. We're still on Rumble, for now. You always want to get on the email list because
you never know where we're going to be. I'm really looking forward to next week's episode.
Make sure you guys join us live. It really helps the show. We like to get your comments
as well. You can share it on the platforms for us as well. Thanks again to the Wildbrothers
for coming on. It was a great episode. Ben, is there anywhere else they can find us?
If you want to end up signing up, or I should say subscribing to our podcast feed, you can
do so by just using the keywords "The Baptist Bias" on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, Google
Podcasts as well. We would, of course, invite you, if you haven't subscribed yet, to our
Rumble channel to do that because that's where the video feed is broadcasted to. Take part
in the chat room as well. We want you to interact with other listeners during the feed so you
can get their feedback on what's going on. You can talk amongst yourselves. And every
once in a while, if the comment is good enough, it may actually make it to air. So there's
your incentive. But we invite you to come back Tuesday night, next Tuesday, 8 p.m. Central
Time for another edition of the Baptist Bias. And this is my own personal slogan for the
show. You never know what you're going to get.
Well, that's going to be rich. Do it for us this evening, guys. Look, everybody's got
a perspective out there, but you need to get the Baptist Bias.