Mike and Teeg had a podcast back before podcasts were cool – The Fish Schtick, a fishing podcast with Brian Bennett from MoldyChum.com.

Now, Mike hosts Wild & Exposed – an awesome podcast for people who are interested in wildlife, photography, and for sure wildlife photography.

Mike sent an amazing case of candy, and we dig into it today. We don’t try it all, but we give away a giant gummy hamburger that Mike sent to us.

First candy is the Super Cola. Super Japanese. Smells like a cleaning product. Michelle spits it out immediately. Ryan is shocked. Tastes like a cleaning product at first. You have to power through that, and then it’s like having flat generic cola.

Ryan, “It’s like an extreme lemon drop dipped in Lysol.”

Michelle, “I can’t remember the last time candy caused physical pain.”

Ryan, “On some of the trips we go on, you’re in the field for 10 or 15 days. If I had this, I’d gut through it on those trips because you get so hungry for sugar.”

This candy came from an Asian market in Chicago. It’s like a bunch of little food trucks, but inside. You order by picture. But in addition to that they have a grocery store, and they have these crazy candy aisles. So Mike went through there, and got the funkiest stuff he could find.

10 years ago, Mike & Teeg shot a TV pilot. Michelle helped with one of the early versions. Randy Joe Heaven, Marcia Rubin were the co-hosts.

We were going to fish 50 states in 50 days, you’d see it as it’s being made with daily “webisodes.” There would be events every three days or so, so people could be PART of the show. We were before our time – the world wasn’t ready for that kind of thing. We had some network offers but they were bad offers.

We were going to start in Hawaii and end in Alaska.

The pilot: https://vimeo.com/4668897?fbclid=IwAR3wGAAyGz5ZUKQ8IeoZWKUcpzUzCjh3f_4Y12rcxOAMqe6Tu39-W5i8XYU

Different Edit: https://vimeo.com/9728709

Mike has shot other pilots and full shows – but rather than digging into that, we dug into one of his most recent adventures. He rebuilt a 1987 Toyota truck that he always loved. Then he drove the Al-Can highway from Denver to Anchorage by way of Yellowstone … that’s like 3500 miles. First breakdown happened by the time they reached Yellowstone.

Canada is just so vast … and by the time you get to Alaska, you still have 10 hours to drive. You don’t see other people. You might see one car an hour up in the Yukon.

There are two routes, they did the northern route because it has more settlements. The other way is prettier, but they wanted to play it safer with this old vehicle.

They thought they’d camp along the way, but not knowing if it would have been safe, they ended up staying in little hotels.

Mike’s advice: if you ever do it, give yourself three weeks minimum, one-way.

Jumping into Candy #2 – another Michael Mauro find. Japanese Flower Kiss Candy. The wrappers are all different colors, but the candy inside all seems to be the same. This is Grandma candy dish candy. It’s good. It’s kind of like the strawberry wrapped hard candies. Fruity and good. Nice. Sweet. Sweeter than a lot of Asian candy. Like American candy sweet.

Michelle: “I’ll carry these in my purse in about 20 years.”

Mike: “Kind of like grapefruit, passion fruit, lychee.”

Ryan: “Too bad it’s not Durian!”

Mike started out in biology, and he tells his origin story at Mesa Verde National Park. He chaperoned a photographer in the back country.

The gear changed a lot, he was shooting just stills when he went to Antarctica but back then, carried a mix of film and digital.

Going to Antarctica on a Russian icebreaker crossing the Drake Passage, one of the roughest pieces of sea in the world. The crew didn’t speak English, so Mike just watched their faces “to see if they seemed nervous.”

There were 110 or 120 people on the ship, and the first morning, only 10 showed up for breakfast. The seas are so rough that everyone has an upset stomach. Walking down the halls was like being a pinball in a pinball machine. Laying down in your bunk and looking out the window, you’d see sky … then sea … sky … then sea.

Mike was hired not just to take photos there, but to teach people on the way there during the over-seas passage how to take good photos. He was a presenter.

You’d expect Antarctica to be all ice. In reality, you see beaches, cobblestones, rocks, grass. The ship would be in the bay, and they’d run ashore in inflatable Zodiac rafts. They photographed all kinds of penguins, seals, whales and birds like cormorants.

Since those animals see so few humans, they’re not afraid of us. But the fur seals will run you down.

Beaches were surrounded in ice, and glaciers and icebergs calved off all the time. You could gauge if it was a big enough piece of ice to get you wet by if the penguins would run.

Teeg can’t resist post-holiday candy, so Teeg had to get us into some after-Easter super discount candy.

Russell Stover Truffle Eggs and Russell Stover Sours Watermelon Eggs.

The Truffle Eggs are of course delicious.

The Sours … it’s impossible to imagine that any company made this with the intention of producing pleasure.

Ryan: “This is uncool. It’s white chocolate with sour watermelon flavor, but it’s extremely gross.”

Michael: “THE AFTERTASTE!”

Ryan: “It’s like someone said, ‘Hey, I got an idea!’ And now they’re fired.”

Michelle: “You know how Super Cola started disgusting and then got OK? This starts OK and then gets awful.”

Teeg starts out liking it … keeps on liking it … conversation about potted meat … STRUCK BY ABHORRANT AFTER TASTE comes later, and Teeg can barely talk.

Meanwhile, Mike talks about eating food in Africa. “You never know what you’re eating. It’s some sort of meat in a sauce with noodles or something.”

He gets sick every time he’s in Africa … but he doesn’t think it’s from the food. He thinks it’s from weird germs over there.

Eating zoo animals: “I had elephant and I didn’t like it. They cherish it. It was dried meat. I wouldn’t search it out, but I’d eat it if I was really hungry.”

The best eating is in Argentina. The best meat in the world.

But Mike also lives in Alaska part of the time, so he eats moose, elk and bear. He doesn’t hunt bear, but he gets it from people. Favorite is moose. If you like bison, you’d like moose. It’s the most natural eating.

Mike hung out with Sean James, the guy from the myselfreliance YouTube channel for a week. Sean follows the footsteps of Dick Proenneke. He has a cabin out in the wilderness of Alaska.

Last show we had Teeg’s brother Ben on, he has the Benstown YouTube channel, he built a cabin and does antique tool restoration.

Mike’s taken an interest to watching YouTube channels about guys building tiny experimental planes, and he’s had his share of time flying into the back country in small planes, landing on skis or floats.

We rate the candy, talk about Sporting Dog Podcast, and Mike teases a potential future show: our friend Travis Ford recently shot a documentary about a chocolate maker in Guatemala.