Episode Details

In today’s New Year’s Day episode of Based Camp, Malcolm and Simone Collins dive into a wild (literally) real news story: a California man has been sharing his home with a massive 550-pound black bear for over a month — and the government won’t let him remove it! 🐻🏠

They connect it to the infamous “man or bear” debate, discuss insane wildlife protection bureaucracy (wrong bear trapped, noise devices abandoned, homeowner banned from scaring it himself), and explore parallels with protected bat colonies forcing people out of their own homes.

The conversation spirals into fascinating tangents:

* Future of genetically edited pets (talking dogs, odorless ferrets, domesticated raccoons & foxes)

* Domestication experiments (Russian foxes, urban raccoons evolving cuter features)

* Bat biology, dinosaur parasites, superior bird respiration, and WWII bat bombs 🔥🦇

* Why government inaction is exploding (qualified immunity, pothole-fixing lawsuits)

* Self-defense fantasies, Home Alone cultural appeal, and Appalachian trickster vibes

Plus: bear stereotypes, Tasmanian devil cancers, T-Rex diseases, and why humans have the best immune systems.

Episode Transcript:

Malcolm Collin: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. Remember when that thing went around that was like, would you rather run into a random man in the woods or a bear? Yeah. Or a bear. Okay, so what have I told you? And this is, I kid you not a real news story that right now in California.

There is a white man being forced to live with a black bear. Oh, by the California government? I saw, no, I saw

Simone Collins: a headline, but I didn’t click through to it. I think on Drudged it was something like man, man, still Living with Bear, or something like that. Man. Can’t get rid of bear.

Speaker 18: . It’s been over a month since that 550 pound black bear moved into his home, . He can hear it from inside of his home.

Malcolm Collin: Why? Why does it matter?

That he’s a white man. I [00:01:00] don’t know, but it seemed to matter that it was a black bear. So I’m just telling the story as I read. ‘cause no, because

Simone Collins: if it were a grizzly bear, it would be a dead person, a dead body and a house. It’ll be a dead body soon with a, a black bear. It’s a large black bear, bear attack.

When they feel, when they’re approached aggressively or they perceive to be aggressively, or

Malcolm Collin: Simone, it’s living in his house. It’s living in his house. I mean, a lot

Simone Collins: of irresponsible people adopt tiger cubs and lion cubs. This is a wild adult bear. Yeah. Well define wild. You know, when, when, when you discover that, it, it’s been living around cities and people for so long that it, it has developed habits that have adapted to them. In fact, people have found that urban raccoons have developed different morphological traits from Oh, really? Yeah. They’ve, they, they actually have more dog-like traits now. They look [00:02:00] more approachable and friendly.

They floppier ears and I think shorter snouts, they just look cuter. So yeah.

Malcolm Collin: Oh, I’d, I’d be very interested to see you know, when we go to space, if we bring raccoons with us or something. I mean, I think, I think raccoon, I think

Simone Collins: that that’s already been foretold by the Marvel cinematic

Malcolm Collin: universe.

Speaker 3: you stupid raccoon. Don’t call me a raccoon. I’m sorry I took it too far. That meant trash panda. Is that better?. It’s worse. It’s so much worse.

Malcolm Collin: This is the thing it gives true, but like, if you, if you are as soon as we can start genetically editing animals.

Yeah, it’s gonna dra