New York Post, Sunday, October 25, 2020
nypost.com
by ISABEL VINCENT
I
n 2006, when he found
himself in Australia, on the
first leg of his round-the-
world trek to study wild-
life, Evan Antin learned a
valuable lesson: “Don’t
feed the animals.”
But the then 21-year-old vet in
training, now the star of Animal
Planet’s “Evan Goes Wild,” couldn’t
help himself. He had been feeding a
hungry kangaroo pieces of bread
from his sandwich on a beach in Mur-
ramarang National Park. After the cu-
rious marsupial snatched the scraps
from Antin’s own hand, he decided
to put a morsel between his lips and
invited the kangaroo to take it.
“No, you don’t have to tell me that
was stupid,” writes Antin in his new
book “World Wild Vet: Encounters
in the Animal Kingdom” (Henry
Holt), out Tuesday. “I know. My
furry friend hopped over, leaned in,
and planted one on me.”
As Antin, now 35, recalls, “it was
more a bite than a kiss” as the kanga-
roo seized on his mouth and
clamped down hard.
Moments like these haven’t de-
terred Antin from getting “up close
and personal” with wildlife. Since
exploring the woods around his
home in Kansas as a child, he has
wanted to be a veterinarian, a job
that has since taken him all over the
world — from orangutans in the for-
ests of Borneo to venomous snakes
in the lawless wilderness of Darien
Gap in Panama and Colombia.
Boasting 1.3 million followers on
Instagram, Antin is regularly filmed
in tight T-shirts and jeans lying next
to baboons or cuddling baby slugs
in the wild. In 2019, GQ magazine
named him the most famous veteri-
narian on earth, “and probably the
sexiest.” The magazine chronicled
his strict weight-training routine,
which involves bench-pressing and
lifting heavy weights for an houreach day. He says he has been fol-
lowing the regime since he was 13,
and that being in top shape helps
him endure punishing trips through
the African savannah and South
American rainforests when he’s not
working at Conejo Valley Veterinary
Hospital in Thousand Oaks, Calif.
Antin is passionate about exotic
creatures, especially snakes. As a
teen, he came across a venomous
copperhead; fascinated, he brought
it home and kept it in a terrarium be-
side his bed. But when the animal
began to shed its skin, Antin picked
it up for a closer look and it bit him
on the nose, which immediately
swelled up. He drove himself to a
nearby hospital, where he immedi-
ately received four vials of anti-
venom, saving his life.One night in 2013, on the Indone-
sian island of Komodo, he climbed
on top of a shack to get a closer look
at a 7-foot-long green Timor python.
As he reached for the snake, he
crashed through the threadbare roof
and fell 10 feet to where local rangers
slept. Miraculously, he landed on his
feet.
Throughout his hairiest encoun-
ters, he learned to take everything
in stride, laughing at his strange en-
counters along the way.
In Tanzania in 2007, he spent part
of a college internship living with the
Maasai tribe. Before he left his host
family, the nomadic elders honored
him by killing one of their goats,
strangling the animal so its blood
clotted instantly. They then cut it
open to offer Antin the first taste.POSTSCRIPT Books
“I slurped a blood clot from the
tribesman’s hand and swallowed,”
writes Antin in his book.
But just as he thought he had en-
dured the worst, the Maasai tribes-
man reached into the warm goat car-
cass and pulled out a kidney for Antin
to eat. “He smoothly cut a slice from
it and extended it to me,”
he writes. “And so I ac-
cepted it, thinking of how
my mom always told me
to mind my manners at
the table.”
Antin is so obsessed
with wildlife that on a
trip to Costa Rica in
2009 with his girlfriend,
the journalist Nathalie
Basha, he checked into
their hotel and immedi-ately went in search of his favorite
reptile, the crocodile. He found one
in a nearby swamp but realized he
had left his camera in the hotel
room, so he gathered up the croco-
dile, wrapped his belt around its
snout and placed the animal gently
in the back seat while he drove back
to his hotel. There, he
persuaded his girlfriend
to return to the swamp to
photograph the beast.
“To her eternal credit,
after telling me I was out
of my flipping mind, she
put on her boots, slung a
camera bag over her
shoulder, and headed for
the door,” he writes.
The couple are now en-
gaged to be married.When Alex Kazemi sends out
e-mails, his signature includes this
note: “ALEX KAZEMI HAS NO SOCIAL
MEDIA ACCOUNTS,” it declares,
“AND NEVER WILL.” It’s a bold stance
for anyone in this age of nonstop
personal branding and 24/7 connec-
tivity, but given the age of the pop
artist and creative director — 26 — it
seems like a fabulous rebellion.
“The decision to avoid it came
from studying and watching my
peers and watching the anxiety
build in their lives around likes and
instant gratification. The scroll is in-
finite,” says Kazemi. “And I saw that
as being the opposite of what it
takes to be a professional writer, or
professional of any sort. I saw
friends becoming so focused on
building their brand and not focus-ing on building their craft.
I want to dedicate my en-
ergy to honing it. I bet
we’ll soon see a 12 step for
Instagram.”
It’s a sentiment more
people are sharing re-
cently, especially as docu-
mentaries like “The Social
Dilemma” have helped ex-
pose just how addictive
and insidious social media
can be — and that it was built that
way on purpose.
Energy and focus are two things
that fascinate Kazemi, as they’re at
the heart of his book, “Pop Magick: A
Simple Guide to Bending Your Real-
ity,” with a foreword by Rose
McGowan.
He explains magick — not to beconfused with magic — as
“the art in bending reality
in accordance with your
true will. Seeing reality as
an opportunity to bend or
change it... Directing
your energy and focus to-
wards a goal.” (It’s kind of
like “The Secret,” except
without the judgmental
aspect that many criti-
cized it for.)
Secular spirituality has been grow-
ing in popularity in recent years,
along with an interest in astrology,
witchcraft, the occult, and assorted
other New Age interests; according
to the Pew Research Center, 6 in 10
Americans share at least one “New
Age” belief. The “psychic services” in-
dustry exceeded $2 billion in revenuein 2018, topping
five years of con-
sistent growth,
according to re-
search conducted
by IBISWorld. These
things are especially
popular with millennials and Gen Z.
“As a collective, we feel quite pow-
erless right now. Growing up, we
were sold so many illusions about
what the world was. All these reality
shows, and then the social-media
era, which told us to be products,”
says Kazemi. “There was no sense of
spiritual energy. There was a real
spiritual poverty. Magick offers a
non-dogmatic spiritual sense, with-
out there being rules imposed on
people, and I think that’s why they
like it.” — Mackenzie DawsonBUZZ BOOK: ‘Magick’ gives spiritual enlightenment to youth
Alex KazemiBEAST
FRIENDS
FOREVER
Vet’s animal-adventure
memoir is a real hoot
Animal PlanetDr. Evan Antin was dubbed one
of People magazine’s sexiest
men alive, but he still roughs it
— eating goat entrails, kissing
kangaroos and nearly getting
killed by a snake.