Category: Viral

Dave Franco’s recently released thriller The Rental has been dominating the virtual box office this month. The concept for the horror about a home-sharing vacation that goes wrong was inspired by Franco’s personal anxiety around staying in a stranger’s abode. Yet the actor admits its not enough to actually stop him from using apps like AirBnB.

“I still use all of these home-sharing apps,” says Franco. “But I have to admit sometimes I found myself thinking about what could go wrong. It’s only natural. So the concept was kind of pulled from that paranoia.”

Franco even used home-sharing apps leading up to and during production, in some cases using those experiences to inform The Rental‘s script. We chatted with the actor from his home in Los Angeles about his complicated yet flourishing relationship with homestays and his newfound love for the Oregon Coast.

This is a movie about home rental that really takes place on a single property. How did you start your search for the right spot?

The house is an important character in the movie. So we did a very extensive search up and down the west coast and eventually found this perfect spot in southern Oregon. It is in a little town called Bandon, and the vibe in the area was ideal because there is so much natural beauty that would draw city dwellers into wanting to vacation there. But at the same time, there is the possibility for it to turn ominous under the wrong circumstances.

The house itself is perched on the edge of a jagged cliff literally in the middle of nowhere. I remember when I first scouted the house, I stayed there the night, in one of the bedrooms, and everything really changed in the house when the sun went down. There are so many of these large windows where I started to feel like I was in a fishbowl. And to a degree, it made me feel a little vulnerable, and exposed, like someone could possibly be watching my every move. That experience is what made me realize that it would be the perfect spot for the film.

Did you always have southern Oregon in mind? Or was that a place you found?

I originally set the film in Big Sur, which is maybe Alison and my favorite place in the country. It is logistically very difficult to shoot there though, so when this spot in Bandon became an option. I felt that not only does it have that Big Sur aesthetic, but it felt even grander. It almost made me feel like I was in Ireland. Getting everyone up there was a little bit of a headache — there aren’t any airports close by. The house is at the end of a two-mile dirt road through the woods. So you can imagine how much of a headache it was getting our giant trucks with the equipment down that narrow path. There were obstacles that came with shooting in the middle of nowhere but ultimately it was all worth it.

Had you been to that area before?

I had never been to the Oregon coast before, and I have now fallen in love with it. We look back on our time there very fondly, and genuinely talk about how nice it would be if we could find a way to live there part of the year. The nature. The people. The general vibe made us feel very at home. We stayed in a little cabin on the beach, and every night Alison and I would go out and see some of the sunsets, which were the best we had seen in recent memory. We brought our cat Harry with us, who had never seen the ocean, and he would just look out the window all day long. He has, sadly, since passed, but it was nice to have that time out there with him. It was a pretty special time.

Did you do any trips using home shares leading up to the filming?

Few months before we started filming I did go to an AirBnB in Big Sur with friends from my childhood. One of them brought their dog, and the constant maintenance and stress that came with trying to make sure that the dog didn’t destroy the house, or run away, was such an affecting experience that it inspired me to write a dog into the script. That was a last-minute addition to the plot, and it helped immediately add tension to the story, because they aren’t supposed to have animals on the property. For the rest of the film, the dog becomes a constant concern, and brings with him a whole other level of conflict.

How did you find the place that you and Alison stayed at during the shoot? What did you like about it?

We found it on AirBnB. What can I say? I guess I was trying to explore that mental disconnect that happens when we stay at a stranger’s home. I will say though that my paranoia has reached new heights since filming the movie. Now when I stay in a rental home, there is no question I am getting up on chairs and looking everywhere that there could potentially be a camera or anything like that. I liked that the spot was simple and quaint. It is actually called “The Old Rustic Cabin” and it definitely lives up to the name. I loved that it was on the beach more than anything. It was a nice place to put our minds at ease during a time that was bound to be a little stressful.

How did the cast get along during the filming process — which was already sort of quarantined in that it was remote and just used one set?

Everyone became a family. The smartest thing that I did was really spending the time to vet the cast and crew that I was bringing into the project. I wanted at least three glowing reviews of each person before I brought them on board. Obviously I wanted people that were talented, but it was almost just as important to me, if not as important, that everyone was very nice. And that they were going to work their asses off. So the casting and hiring process was a lot longer than usual, but in the end it made my job a lot easier than it could have been. Not just the work, but it made my life much more enjoyable as well. The group was just really friendly and wanted to hang out and help each other in our downtime.

How often do you find yourself using home shares?

I don’t use home-shares extensively, but I have been staying at AirBnBs for a handful of years now. I like them for the obvious reasons, like visiting a city or town and feeling more integrated into the town and lifestyle. You just feel more like a local when you are staying somewhere like that as opposed to a hotel. Since starting this movie people have asked me if I have any nightmare stories, and the truth is I haven’t really.

I do have a hotel horror story. I was staying in a pretty dingy one while working on a pretty small movie. I went out to work, and house cleaning turned over my room. I woke up, and there was a splotch of dried blood next to my face. I checked my body and I was not bleeding, so that was someone else’s blood obviously, and the “brand new” sheet that they put on my bed that morning. I called up production and asked them to give me a new hotel, because I draw the line at sleeping next to a stranger’s blood.

What kind of places do you like to stay when you use AirBnB?

I am really drawn to houses that are very isolated and in nature. Generally speaking, when we go on vacation, we aren’t the type of people who want to walk around and see all of the sights. We are more the kind of people who just want to lounge and read all day by a pool or by the ocean. We are looking to just turn our brains off as much as possible. The more remote the better. The primary goal is to spend time together, because during the rest of the year there is a lot of travel and work, which means that we don’t get to see each other as much as we would like.

Where would you like to go next and stay at a home share?

Joshua Tree is one of the places that I would like to go back to soon — I haven’t spent a lot of time there. But I love how strange it is. There is a weird vibe there, it feels like a different planet in a way. I love the rock formations. I love just getting lost in the park and seeing where you end up, because you could go there 50 times and end up somewhere different each time.

The Rental is now available on demand.

The fastest way to play the new Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater reboot is by eating a burrito Tony Hawk himself would enjoy. That’s because Chipotle and Activision, which is releasing a remastered version of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 And 2 this fall, teamed up for a promotion to get fans of handheld meals and skateboarding video games something they’ll all enjoy ahead of the game’s release in September.

Chipotle announced on Monday it would add a ‘Tony Hawk burrito’ to its menu as part of an event it will host on its Twitch channel on August 14 in which fans can buy a burrito and unlock the THPS 1 And 2 demo.

To be completely transparent here, the ‘Tony Hawk burrito’ isn’t exactly a custom menu item. It just seems to be his order at Chipotle: a chicken burrito with brown rice, black beans, mild salsa and guac. But if you’re willing to eat like Tony Hawk — and be one of the first 2,000 people to order it through the Chipotle app starting today — you’ll get the Warehouse demo of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 And 2 for PC, Xbox One or PlayStation 4.

If you miss out on the chance to play the demo, you can always watch the event itself and try to snag a free burrito for the effort. On Friday at 2 p.m., fans will get a better look at the remastered Tony Hawk when the game’s namesake hops on Twitch to play it along with skateboarder Jagger Eaton and actor Finn Wolfhard while they give out 5,000 free burritos along the way. We already know what the soundtrack will be for the game, but seeing how the first two games play on modern consoles is certainly intriguing, free burrito or not.

Believe it or not, there has been a lot of controversy lately about how people cook rice. According to CNN, the “outrage” was a reaction to a clip Malaysian comedian Nigel Ng posted as one of his personas known as Uncle Roger.

It was a hilarious (and harmless) satire about the method chef Hersha Patel used to cook rice on the show BBC Food.

Uncle Roger DISGUSTED by this Egg Fried Rice Video (BBC Food)

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In the spilt screen video with Uncle Roger on the left and Patel on the right, the comedian critiques Hersha’s process with comments such as she’s “draining rice with colander! How can you drain rice with colander? This is not pasta!” While the video was meant to be a joke, it sparked an outcry of people taking offense to her culinary approach to cooking rice. CNN describes the reaction as a “firestorm of dismay and disbelief.”

Leading up to rice-gate there have been instances of white chefs being accused of cultural insensitivity in their cooking methods. This tokenism is not considered overt racism, but is more of a subtle symbol represented by a cavalier nature of approaching the culinary traditions of a culture one might not fully understand or be sensitive to. A New York City restaurant had to close its doors less than a year from the day it opened due to a white chef proclaiming they would serve clean Chinese Food.

In lieu of the backlash sparked by the surprisingly controversial video, Nigel Ng and Hersha Patel posted a follow-up video to try and defuse any uprising spawned by the rice-cooking incident.

Uncle Roger Meet Egg Fried Rice Lady (@Hersha Patel)

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In the clip, Ng says,”Hey instagram! Guess who I just had dinner with?” The camera pans right to reveal Patel. Ng continues saying that in an upcoming post, “Uncle Roger” will be going to Patel’s residence for her to cook rice the “right way.”

It is official. We are offended by rice. It is a shame about the polar ice caps, racial injustice, the unexplainable logic to not wear a mask to prevent the spread of COVID-19, rising sea levels and a less than functional White House (which is the most polite way I can put that). But let me tell you, nothing grinds my gears more than someone who cooks rice in a non-traditional way. On that note, I am going to cook spaghetti and break the noodles in half before I put them in the boiling water. And because I am a rebel, I might let it cook so it is slightly beyond a dente. Take that, Italy.

Unless you’re Jared Leto and have just returned from a two-week internet-free retreat, you’ve probably seen Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s “WAP” video which took the internet by storm Friday. The NSFW song and video sparked a wide array of responses, from a Republican Congressional candidate saying the rappers are a result of children “raised without God” to Tiger King star Carole Baskin saying the video “glamorizes the idea of rich people having tigers as pets.” Now, even PETA has joined in on the “WAP” conversation.

PETA tends to release a statement any time a celebrity uses exotic animals for promotional purposes. Last year, Justin Bieber told the animal rights organization to “suck it” after they criticized his purchase of exotic cats. Now, PETA has spoken out about the leopards that appear in Cardi and Meg’s “WAP” video, saying they aren’t “Okurrr” with the cameo. According to Billboard, PETA critiqued the use of animals as props in a statement released Monday:

“If Tiger King taught us anything, it’s that tigers and other wild animals are abused for music videos, selfies, and gawking roadside zoo visitors. So if real animals were used instead of computer-generated imagery, the message sent is that animal exploitation is Okurrr—and it isn’t. If Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion really care about pussy liberation, they wouldn’t use suffering big cats as props.”

So far, neither Meg nor Cardi has responded to the organization’s statement but it should be noted that live animals were added in through green screen or CGI and it doesn’t appear that the leopards were ever physically on set.

Some of the artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

One of the reported reasons why black-ish creator Kenya Barris signed a deal with Netflix, besides the $100 million payday, was the “creative differences” he had with the Disney-owned ABC over a shelved episode of his Emmy-nominated sitcom. The episode, about Dre (Anthony Anderson) telling his infant son a bedroom story that “conveys many of Dre’s concerns about the current state of the country,” was shot in November 2017 and was scheduled to air on February 22, 2018, until it was removed from the schedule. But it will finally be released on Hulu, owned by… Disney.

“We were one year post-election and coming to the end of a year that left us, like many Americans, grappling with the state of our country and anxious about its future. Those feelings poured onto the page, becoming 22 minutes of television that I was, and still am, incredibly proud of. ‘Please, Baby, Please’ didn’t make it to air that season and, while much has been speculated about its contents, the episode has never been seen publicly… until now,” Barris wrote in a statement. The episode is available on Hulu now.

“I cannot wait for everyone to finally see the episode for themselves and, as was the case nearly three years ago, we hope it inspires some much-needed conversation — not only about what we were grappling with then or how it led to where we are now, but conversations about where we want our country to go moving forward and, most importantly, how we get there together.”

On top of black-ish, which continues to air on ABC, Barris’ lineup of shows includes Freeform’s grown-ish, ABC’s mixed-ish, and Netflix’s #blackAF; he is also writing the screenplays for the Comedy to America sequel Coming 2 America (I’d be furious if that weren’t the title) and The Witches, based on the Roald Dahl book of the same name.

(Via the Hollywood Reporter)

If nothing below suits your sensibilities, check out our guide to What You Should Watch On Streaming Right Now.

I May Destroy You (HBO, 9:00 p.m.) — After getting some shocking news from Simon, Arabella heads to her mom’s birthday dinner where painful memories are unburied. Meanwhile, Kwame’s sex-bender leads him to meet a young man with a different idea of connection.

The Titan Games (NBC, 8:00 p.m.) — Six elite Titans return for the final rounds of competition where two men and two women will move on to face off on Mt. Olympus.

GAME ON: A Comedy Crossover Event (Netflix) — Netflix is recruiting some of its most popular family sitcoms for a comedy crossover event that’s giving major TGIF vibes. The casts of The Big Show Show, Mr. Iglesias, Ashley Garcia: Genius in Love, and Family Reunion deliver special episodes of their respective series all with a competitive theme but don’t worry, you don’t have to be a fan of all of them to tune in.

Lucky Day (Hulu) — This French-Canadian action-comedy starring Nina Dobrev and Luke Bracey might be a good choice if you’re in the mood for some controlled chaos. The premise of this 2019 film follows Bracey’s ex-con, who gets released from prison and almost immediately finds himself the target of a psychotic serial killer harboring a nasty grudge. Dobrev plays the girlfriend caught up in the whole scheme.

You can put this one in the “win column” for those who believe in equal pay. Leslie Odom Jr. took a stand and was not going to settle for anything other than what was fair.

The Hamilton star, who won a Tony Award for his portrayal of Aaron Burr in the most successful musical in modern history, simply sought a similar wage to white actors who had comparable roles in other musicals. As he explained to Dax Shepard on his podcast Armchair Expert, they did not contact his agent at CAA until after the announcement of the shows filming. When the offer finally came, it was disappointing.

“They came to me with an offer, ‘Leslie, we’re shooting tomorrow,'” Odom said, “and I’m like, here’s the thing: This is it. This is my area of expertise. This is all I have. This is my life’s work on the stage too. And so I just can’t sell it away for magic beans. I can’t give it away.”

All Odom was asking for is to be treated fairly. He told Dax, “So I can ask CAA [Creative Artists Agency], what does my white counterpart, what does Aaron Tveit make to do Grease Live! on TV? What does he make to do Grease? This is Hamilton live, right?” Odom said. “So when I found out what he made, Dax, I didn’t ask for a penny more. I didn’t ask for one penny more, but I said, ‘You must pay me exactly what that white boy got to do Grease Live! That’s the bottom line.'”

For Odom, this was no strong-arm tactic. He just wanted to be treated fairly. And it was no bluff, either.

“The day before we shot that movie I called out. I was not kidding. I was not coming to work the next day to do the movie. You know, I was not kidding. It was a principle for me and sometimes it doesn’t work out. Sometimes they look at you and go, ‘We’re just not paying it,’ and you have to go, ‘That’s OK.

Wait for It

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As most of us know, everything worked out eventually and Leslie Odom Jr. played Aaron Burr for the filming. It would be hard to imagine anyone else in the role. When Hamilton debuted, Disney’s streams were up an eye-popping 74% from the previous weekend.

“I love my white liberal friends, love white people, but, you know, don’t be in the streets talking about Black Lives Matter if my Black life doesn’t matter,” Odom said. “Like, essentially, don’t wait for the f***ing cops to kill me before my Black life matters. If my Black life matters, make sure I can take money home to feed my children.”

Odom should not have to fight just to be treated like everyone else, nor should anyone. Yet somehow, still, this is the world we live in. If someone like Leslie Odom Jr. has to fight this hard to be an equal, and he made it very clear that he sought equality as opposed to special treatment, then where does that leave us?

Keep in mind that this happened in the entertainment industry, which tries to remind us of how accepting it is of gender and race in every single awards show it puts on. One has to wonder how genuine some of that really is. If you want to learn how to walk the walk, take a lesson from Leslie Odom Jr. He didn’t want less than he deserved, and he didn’t want more than he deserved. He wanted what was fair, and for those who believe in equality, Odom just chalked up a win.

We’re living through an incredibly stressful time with the global pandemic, economic woes, social and political unrest, and internet comments filled with conspiracy theorists, but that doesn’t mean we can’t keep our sense of humor. In fact, laughter might be the most healing tool we have at the moment.

Pandemic humor can be tricky, of course—there’s nothing laughable about widespread illness and death—but it can be done. And it can even be done in a place not generally known for comedy, like a church sanctuary.

Father Nathan Monk, a former priest, shared photos from Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New Orleans on Facebook, which show how the church is creatively handling social distancing guidelines in the pews. The pews that should remain empty to keep people distanced have signs hung with blue painters tape.

The first quotes Jesus: “‘I have prepared a place for you…'” then adds, “Just not this pew.”

Next, referring to the loaves and fishes story in the Bible: “Jesus sat the 5000 down in rows…But not this one.”

“Zacchaeus climbed a sycamore tree to get a better seat…this pew was not it.” HA.

And they just get better.

“Abraham was 100 years old when Isaac was born. And if he were here today, he still wouldn’t be allowed to sit in this pew.” NOT EVEN ABRAHAM, PEOPLE. Find another seat.

Going way back to the Old Testament and Jewish Passover tradition in which people save a seat for Elijah at the Seder feast, one sign was a simple, “Reserved for Elijah only.”

How about a fun game of spiritual hide and seek? “‘You will find me when you seek me’…. Just not in this pew. Keep seeking.”

What if you think of this pew as the forbidden fruit? No touchy. No sitty.

“Remember when the Lord put a ‘Flaming Sword’ at the entrance of the Garden of Eden, so Adam and Eve couldn’t go there? ‘Flaming sword’ can also be translated blue tape.”

And in case that isn’t clear, “Jesus said take up my cross, not this pew.”

Nailed it. This church managed to keep a light mood and inject some Bible-based humor into an otherwise serious situation, got people to follow public health recommendations, and didn’t get preachy or judgey about it. “Fun” and “uplifting” are not generally words people use to describe public health mandates, but that’s how people in the comments on Monk’s post are describing these pew signs.

Well done, Redeemer Presbyterian. Helping us laugh so we don’t cry.

Forrest Galante is the wildlife biologist and conservationist the world needs right now. He’s engaging, he builds his conservation work on a solid foundation of science, and he truly loves all animals in a way that echoes Steve Irwin — gleefully swimming with sharks and gators. Galante is also an adventurer who spent his pre-COVID time globe-trotting around the world working in animal conservation while also trying to locate extinct species on his Animal Planet show Extinct or Alive.

To celebrate this year’s Shark Week, Galante teamed up with elasmobranchologist Dr. Dave Ebert to track three sharks off the coast of southern Africa — all thought to be extinct. The result, Extinct or Alive: Land of the Lost Sharks, is engaging, escapist TV that feels perfect for this moment in history. You get to travel with Galante to far-flung lands while also scoring great information about a group of fish that have suffered greatly at the hands of humans.

This week, we chatted with Galante over the phone about his new show. After talking about tracking sharks, we veered into the ever-changing world of animal conservation, hunting, and poaching in an unstable era. We had so much fun that we decided to drink a few drams of whisky with the man, t0o — check out last week’s UPROXX LIFE Expression Session below.

So before we get into the shows, let’s talk just a little bit about how you became a conservationist.

I grew up in Zimbabwe, which is a very wild place. But look, lots of people grew up in Zimbabwe and didn’t go on to be conservationists. In Zim, I was the son of farmers and safari business owners. So I spent my whole life in the bush and as I grew to become an adult, I decided that I love animals.

The way I like to describe it, Zach, remember when you were a kid and you flip something over like a log and you see an earthworm, right? And you’re like, “Oh my God, how cool is that?” Well, most people grow out of that. I did not. As I grew up, I wanted to know everything about that earthworm. I wanted to know what it ate, where it lived, what made it tick, what ate it, and so on. So as I got older, I turned my just plain love of wildlife, animals, and the sciences and went on to become an academic and got a degree in my passion to become a conservationist. I started as a biologist and realized my talents were really in communicating science far more so than academia. And so I began to communicate science on different platforms and ended up on television and been here ever since.

So, your new show, Land of the Lost Shark, is set in South Africa and Mozambique where you’re looking for lost sharks. How do you approach finding animals that are believed to be extinct?

I’ve made a niche in my world as being the guy that finds these animals — the animals that others can’t find. So in Land of the Lost Shark, I had the amazing privilege of teaming up with Dr. Dave Ebert, a world-renowned elasmobranchologist (AKA shark scientist) who’s named over 40 species of shark himself. He’s actually known as the “Lost Shark” guy. Dave and I are buddies. He’s awesome, man.

So, I reached out to Dave and I said, “Hey Dave, There’s a couple of regions in the world that are hotspots for lost sharks. One of them is my old backyard, southern Africa. Why don’t we go down there and work together and see if we can actually scratch up a couple of these things?” And Dave said, “Forrest, I’d love nothing more.” And so we took that to the network and said, “Hey, I know last year we found a lost shark in Sri Lanka, the Pondicherry, but this year, Dave and I — combining our expertise — him on a very academic level and mine on a more physical level — we think we might be able to be successful in finding even more than one lost species in these waters, off the coast of South Africa and Mozambique. What do you think?” And they’re like, “We love it. Good luck.”

So what makes your shark doc stand out?

The thing that’s different about is ours are much, much more of a scientific documentary. I think the headliner for sure — and don’t, I’m not trying to bash Shark Week — but I think the headliner for Shark Week is a Tyson versus Jaws. Things like “Swimming with Sharks,” you know?

Ours is rigorous scientific work with regards to trying to find these animals. We, in the course of an hour episode, there are around 14 different species of elasmobranchs, which is an incredible amount of animal diversity to have in a 44-minute episode of television.

That sounds fantastic. We’re both travelers. We’ve both been adventure travelers most of our lives. And for the first time in our adult lives, we’re living in a time when you can’t just jump on a plane and go. There’s a reality to that which has a pretty harsh pinch on conservation activities — you’re seeing poaching spike, etc.

How are you adjusting to not being able to travel, and thereby study and work?

What’s interesting is that I think people are taking polarizing opinions on what’s going on. And the reality is that there are both sides of the coin. What I mean by that is in some places we’re seeing great, great positive change. I assume at this point, everybody’s seen those stories of coyotes coming back into the cities and bears coming out of hiding. There’s a Malabar civet that was seen walking down the street in India. In some cases, with the shutdown and lock-in, animals are relaxing a little bit and they’re recovering in a sense. Even though it’s very short-term, where they’re able to come out of hiding and they’re able to reoccupy niches that have otherwise been occupied by human beings for as long as we can basically remember.

That’s been great for wildlife. It’s like giving it a breath of air. It’s like the pressure’s been taken off for a very, very short amount of time.

But then again…

On the flip side of that coin, the ugly truth has been rearing its head as well. With these government shutdowns, we’ve seen a spike in poaching efforts in certain places because if the government shuts down, the people that enforce anti-poaching and monitoring are also shut down and poachers are licking their lips going, “This is my opportunity.” So, in countries in southern Africa and in certain areas in Asia, we’ve seen a spike in poaching activity in rhinos, elephants, and big cats.

Then there’s the pangolin, well, this is insane to me because the pangolin is the species currently labeled responsible for the global pandemic. Yet that species has seen a massive spike in poaching during the pandemic because all of the people and enforcement that generally try and curb that have been shut down.

I mean, talk about a terrible turn of events. You’d think, if a pangolin gets labeled as responsible for a pandemic, maybe we’d stop consuming and killing them? But instead, the opposite has happened. It’s increased the demand, which is crazy.

I don’t want to be all doom and gloom but along with the global pandemic has come new — and I will use this term quite clearly here — bullshit remedies.

Can you give us an example of what you’d consider a bullshit animal remedy?

Bear bile is one. We’ve seen a huge increase in the mistreatment of bears and the poaching of bears for their bile. We’ve seen that increase in the demand simply because some bullshit Eastern medicine is saying bear bile can cure coronavirus. So now, all these bears are being culled and are living through terrible mistreatment for that bullshit.

So there are both sides of the coin. Some of it is good. Some of it’s sad. I think the pandemic has given people that work in wildlife a chance to see people’s true colors. Those that poach have seen an opportunity to poach further. Then there are those who have seen the silver lining, which is animals trying to recover.

I grew up understanding the link between hunting/fishing and conservation in the United States as it pays for it. And I understand how in some places in Africa tagged hunting pays for conservation as well. But it feels like that’s not enough anymore. That system was already on very shaky ground, to begin with — especially in southern Africa. So now that this pandemic has helped expose that, we have to ask, “Okay, well, what do we do next?”

That’s one of the most unfortunate things, Zach, is that there is no cure-all. Every species needs its own management, its own policies, and everything needs its own strategy. There’s no magic button.

I take that back. There is a magic button, right? There is one magic button and that is to cease all habitat destruction and hunting practices immediately. But there’s a very big difference between being an optimist and being a realist. And that “magic button” is unrealistic. There’s absolutely no way the entire world stops encroaching on wildlife habitat and taking wildlife. So without that being a possibility, and it’s not, the thing that makes wildlife sciences so difficult is that each animal, whether it’s an insect or a rhinoceros, needs its own management plan.

And those plans have to be constructed by scientists — like me and those far more skilled than myself — in order to implement those plans. They have to be studied and everything I’ve just listed requires time, money, and resources that, frankly, the world doesn’t have right now. So that’s a really tough question to answer. I mean, there is no immediate solution. Now, that being said, there are wonderful people and organizations that are fighting to combat all the negativity. Then what people can do is support those groups and organizations and causes.

What are you working on next and how difficult has it become to do your work?

We’re still working. Wildlife work never sleeps. Although we’re facing more challenges than ever with travel restrictions, my team and I are doing what we can to continue to fight the good fight. We have more projects coming up domestically. I can say that I certainly have more academic work currently than I do television work because that’s just the nature of the pandemic. Things are quiet and relatively on hold, but at the same time, we’re utilizing that.

We’re doing the best we can to spread awareness and share the message. I have some projects coming up on some news sites and sources around the world. Some of them are talking about the mistreatment of wildlife during COVID and things like that. And yeah, you just keep plugging away. I think it’s going to be a little bit more domestic for the foreseeable future than most of my work has been in the past, but so be it. Charity starts at home, so does wildlife work.

You can watch Forrest Galante on “Extinct or Alive: Land of the Lost Sharks” on the Discovery Channel on Tuesday, August 11th, at 8 pm EST. You can also follow Galante’s work on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

SpongeBob’s best friend might finally get a show of his own. Patrick Star, the beloved starfish who lives under a rock on the same street as the notorious pineapple under the sea, may soon have his own spinoff show at Nickelodeon.

Variety reported Monday that after more than two decades of scene-stealing moments as SpongeBob’s neighbor and best friend on SpongeBob Square Pants, Patrick and his family will be the focus of a new show currently the works at Nick.

A “SpongeBob Squarepants” spinoff series centered around SpongeBob’s pink friend is in the works at Nickelodeon, Variety has confirmed with sources. Bill Fagerbakke is set to voice the character once more.

The series will center around Patrick and his family, as the friendly starfish host a talk show.

If the wording of the story is to be believed, a talk show will be the center of the show’s focus. It’s unclear if Tom Kenny’s beloved sponge will be a part of the package, but it seems likely he shows up every now and again despite Patrick getting prime billing. What’s Bikini Bottom without SpongeBob, right? But a show that’s focused on Patrick — who has long had some of the show’s best lines and jokes — is certainly something fans will embrace.

SpongeBob has been on air since 1999, and a third SpongeBob movie is expected later this summer. Expanding the IP is certainly a long time coming. Just don’t let Patrick answer the phone at Viacom or this whole deal might fall apart.