Bear Grease - Ep. 460: Render - Cold Cases and Civil War

Episode Date: May 27, 2026

Jordan Sillars joins host Clay Newcomb alongside Render crew members Dr. Misty Newcomb, Kristie Spielmaker, and Josh “Landbridge” Spielmaker for a behind-the-scenes look at the making of his hit Blood Trails true crime podcast. Jordan shares stories from the field, lessons learned during production, and advice on the basics of how to avoid foul play in the wilderness. The conversation also turns to Bear Grease episode 457, Civil War Part 1: The Seeds of War, as the crew reflects on the moments, perspectives, and historical insights that challenged them or left a lasting impact. Thank you to our sponsor, Tecovas. If you have comments on the show, send us a note to [e-mail] Connect with Clay and MeatEater Clay on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Youtube Clips MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. My name is Clay Newcomb, and this is a production of the Bear Grease podcast called The Bear Grease Render, where we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the scenes of the actual Bear Grease podcast. Brought to you by Toccova's boots. I'm a cowboy bootman, and I've been wearing Tocobas for years. They're the most comfortable boot I've ever put on. Good boots for good times.

Man, am I excited? to talk about two things today. One being the Civil War, which has been just like been burning in my bones for years now. Finally get to talk about it with somebody.

Thank you all for being here. And we're just going to sit and listen to Clay talk about it. Our esteemed panel of Civil War experts have gathered. Yeah, exactly. Yes. Secondly, very excited

to have in the Toccova's hot seat today, Jordan Sellers. Yeah, good to be. Blood Trails, Meat Eaters, Acclaimed True Crime Podcast, Blood Trails. Now on its, how many seasons have we done? Second seasons. Yeah, we're in the middle of our second season. Okay.

So six episodes into season two. So now there are 14 episodes. So if you haven't started, you can, and you're going on a road trip, summer, we're all taking trips to the beach. Sitting on the mower like I was today. Exactly. You got 14 episodes. That's over 14 hours. of interesting

riveting crime stories. Yeah, thank you. Also joined by Josh Lambridge, Spillmaker, and his wife, Christy Lambridge. Hello,

Hello, Christy Landbrich. I've really been working on my mustache, Clay. And my lovely wife, Dr. Misty Newcomb. Hello?

Great to have you. Two of the biggest Civil War buffs I know, Christy and Misty, are here today to hash it out. Southern Bells. Southern Bells.

Wow. I don't know. Never been described like that. It's going to be good. So, Christy, you're a big fan of Jordan's podcast. Oh, yeah, definitely. I mean, Jordan, you don't know this, but you kept me company during some of the darkest moments of my life,

which were cleaning out our shop. Oh. Yes. So that was almost a true crime podcast because she wanted to kill me. It might have been a crime scene. Yeah. Hey, I'm, you know, I'll find out who did it. That's what I'm here for.

That's the good thing. It's kind of like having, I don't know if having a buddy that's a really good detective is better than having a buddy that's like a good protector. Do you understand? Like if I were killed, like Jordan just said, oh, I'd find out who did it. It's like, I mean, that helps me a little bit. I mean, not a lot. Exactly. I would at least tell everyone about, you know, whether or not someone else.

found out who did it. If it was a cold case, I'd tell them. And if it, you know, who found the murder, I'd tell them. Yeah. But I mean, what I'm saying is, like, probably a better friend would just be like, a bodyguard. Clay, yeah, a bodyguard. Essentially. Keep it from happening in the first place. Prevention. And that's, and that is why that we've brought Josh here today, he started a new podcast called Meat Eaters Bodyguard. That's right. That's basically what I do for Clay when we go on interviews. I'm there as the muscle. Okay. You're the muscle? There we go. Yeah. So, Jordan and I just had a brief conversation a minute ago. I asked him before we started, I said, are you ever concerned?

And this is a question that people ask me from the beginning of Barry Gris, but they say, are you ever concerned you're going to run out of content? And I said, I say no, but my field of interest is broader. Much broader than yours. Yeah. And you say, what do you say? I mean, not anytime soon. I have a list right now.

and I think there's over 80 stories now. Oh my Lord, for real? Yeah, for real. And my field of interest is pretty narrow. So we're looking at people outside, so hunters, anglers, campers, hikers, and some type of crime has been committed or is suspected of being committed.

So, like, this season, we covered a case of a hunter up in Maine who disappeared, never been found. We don't know a crime has been committed, but it's very suspicious because they've searched those woods over and over and over again, and they've never found him. And he just had cancer. He was very weak. It's very unlikely. He left. He was 70 years old. And so they're pretty confident something happened to him in those woods,

and then he was removed in some way. So those are the types of stories that we cover. And there are, unfortunately, quite a few of them. Yeah. But, yeah, we're not going to be running out anytime soon. Would you say that most of the stories that you have done thus far, there has been an element of foul play and error on the part of the person that died? I would say largely no.

Most of them have been... Just completely innocent hunters. Just victims, yeah. I mean, so the episode that came out this week is from down where I am, near where I am in East Texas. And it was of a big-time fisherman. He loved to fish out on Lake Sam Rayburn, which is the lake. He had a lakehouse out there.

He disappeared. His truck was found burned out. His boat was found shot. It was one of those pontoon boats. Someone had shot the pontoons in an effort to sink it, but it didn't sink because that's not how those boats, apparently. I didn't know this before, but you can shoot those boats and they won't sink. And so foul play is, is a suspect.

expected. And the more I talk with people about this guy, the more I come to find out he, um, kind of a larger than life personality. Everyone knew him in town. Um, but maybe a bit of a ladies man. Those words, those specific words were used multiple times by different people to describe him. But he was also married. Um, also I found out he was an outlaw. So a guy who maybe didn't you know, care so much about wildlife laws. So we don't know what happened to him. We don't know why he disappeared. We don't know anything, really.

But it's conceivable that something he got into is what led to his disappearance and presumed death. So there are some stories like that, but usually it's someone who was just in the wrong place, the wrong time met the wrong person out in the woods. Hmm. Okay, that's slightly unnerving. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. I was hoping you'd be like, nope, every single one had drugs, alcohol, gambling, horse racing involved, whatever. I mean, horse racing.

I was wondering if y'all picked that. That doesn't necessarily mean you're a bad person. But where I come from. We only race mules. Is it the racing or the gambling? I feel like it's the gambling. It's kind of, it's like throwing back on a joke that happened like weeks ago. that nobody thought was funny about horse racing being kind of a little sketchy.

Wow. Yeah. So it would only be gambling. And Judy and Gary Lee Lee Lee, my parents were raising hot springs. And so, you know, now mule gambling and racing, that's fine. Totally okay. I mean, because, you know, how serious could that be taken? It's interesting because you don't have, Clay doesn't have a really long list.

He doesn't have 80 potential podcast. he is looking for you know trying to mine out the heroes like rural redemptive stories of rural people would you agree or disagree with that characterization?

Sometimes I mean sometimes we're just doing like big historical stuff like civil war which is kind of a little bit unusual for Bear Greece because there's not a direct tie to hunting or necessarily even rural America directly I mean it's like all of America this is probably the biggest

like all-American thing that we've done in a long time. Yeah. But I'm just saying it's interesting that there's so much, he has such a longer list than you do. Well, and it's probably just the nature of the way he plans. Yeah, and it's not like 80 stories I'll definitely do. It's like people send in a story. I look it up briefly and think,

this could work, and I put it on the list. Yeah. Like, that's the extent of it, really. But I mean, 80 stories, that's years of work. Yeah, it's a lot. Yeah, it's a lot. It's a lot of hunters going missing under suspicious circumstances. But also, like, like, I have, I think I can think of three off the top of my head, spouses, killing their spouses and to make it look like a hunting accident.

Yeah. A duck hunting accident and then two deer hunting accidents. All three. Interesting. Probably not accidents. I wonder if that worries you at all, Clay. Yeah. Yeah.

I hope not. Never know. Just kidding. Just kidding. I don't hunt with Clay. Well, Josh and I took me turkey hunting a few weeks ago. And we're out at, you know, it's 5 a.m. And we're traipsing through the woods.

Yeah. And I'm a little ways behind Josh. And he's like, just turns in lux. And he's like, are you okay? And I was like, yeah, I'm great. I just probably shouldn't have listened to blood trails. For real. before we came out here.

Like, this was a little much. Just stay away from strangers. That's what I've learned. Just like, see a stranger. Just go somewhere else. Just go somewhere else. Go away. Oh, that's your hot tip.

Listen, I would say, don't get into conflict. No conflict ever. Ever. With a stranger. Maybe if, like, if they're obviously friendly and in their right mind, like, you know, it's fine. Talk to them. But like, if they walk through your hunt, if they mess something up, just don't say anything. Is that what a lot of your stories are about people kind of infringing on your

hunting property? No. So, well, he's got 80 stories. I'm just curious. There's, there are definitely a few that I haven't looked into in a lot of detail where there is some conflict over one actually up in Michigan allegedly conflict over a bear baiting location. Oh wow. And there was a gunfight basically that happened as a result. Yeah. But but definitely, I mean, we did one this season of a hunter. who just, it was in the parking lot of some federal public land. I can't remember exactly what it was, but some federal public land down in Florida in the Panhandle.

And they just got into a fight. The guy was walking his dogs and he said, hey, you should have orange on because there's hunters in the area. He didn't like that. We don't know exactly how it escalated from there, but it escalated to the guy walking the dogs, shooting the hunter. Holy smokes.

And killing him. And how long ago was this? Dogwalkers as peaceful people. This was just a few years ago. Wow. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, not long ago.

And so that's why I say, like, you just never know. And this guy, it turned out, the murderer had a history of aggressive confrontations with his neighbors, just like kind of a not great guy. And the hunter didn't know that. Wow. But he's not going to back down, you know. He probably should have. Not that it's, you know, at all his fault, but you just never know. who you're going to run in.

Well, I think that's great advice. Just general advice for life is just stay out of conflict. Yeah. Do your best. I mean, you know, there can be an ego thing rise up when someone really wrongs you that you feel like you need to stand in your space or whatever. That's rarely actually something you need to do. Like if someone like in the field.

Especially way out there somewhere. Yeah. It's one thing if it's like in a restaurant with a hundred people around you. It's another thing if you're by yourself with someone way out in the sticks. So stay out of conflict with strangers in the woods. Yeah. You know, I mean, that's a good tip for life. Hot tip, yeah.

This checks out. Gary Newcomb always taught me from the time I was a young kid. I was afraid of the dark. I was afraid of the woods. I really was more than the average kid. And he was always like, hey, you know, there's nothing in these woods that's going to hurt you except for people. and he always advised us just to stay away from people. You know, I mean, I'd say that's relatively good advice for the most part.

Stay away from people. I'm keeping a list here. Yeah. Tips for life for Josh. Yeah, exactly. I'm doing a lot of stuff wrong. Jordan. High risk lifestyle.

So the second season, of blood trails. What's your favorite episode you've done so far? One that stands out. One that was iconic. Second, the second season?

No, just all of them you've done. Because people ask me that all the time, and I'm always trying to like pick one bear, like if we were like, what's the best barrier, which one would you listen to if you only had to? So, that's a tough one.

So I can tell you our most popular so far this season, by far, has been the first episode we did. It's from up in Montana near Helena, a guy named Mike Kreitz was the victim. And Mike moved from Colorado to Montana, basically to live off the grid. He bought 80 acres up north of Helena and built a cabin

and kind of just kind of wanted to be left alone, but was also very kind of aggressive about keeping people off of his property. So really, he did have some neighbors who he got along with, but he had conflicts with other neighbors. And that's really at the heart of the story. is this conflict he had with a neighbor farther down the mountain from him. So, and then the other big thing about this story is that there's this easement.

There's a bunch of properties on this mountain, and there's an easement. So a road that is not like a county road. There's like this official, unofficial agreement that all the neighbors are going to be able to use this road. A neighbor farther down the mountain from Mike decided he didn't want people driving or entering his property at all. And so he would try to block off that road. This conflict escalated, escalated, escalated. There were shots fired at Mike that he got on video. And we got that video and it's in the podcast.

If you go on YouTube, it's there as well. You can watch that. And so that was the type of conflict that was going on on this mountain. Mike disappears. His remains are found a couple months later. And it turned out someone had actually cut him. him up. Dismembered him, yeah.

Yeah. Put him in two separate plastic bags, deposited those bags on two sides of a pass, the McDonald pass up there near Helena. And so they find these remains. This was all the way back in 2011. And so you think, well, they found the remains. They're going to find some DNA.

They're going to figure out who did it. And obviously, they're looking very closely at this neighbor, who he's been having conflict with. Kind of fast forward, and nothing really happens for a long time. They don't make any arrest. They can't figure out who killed Mike. Eventually, they connect some zip ties that were found on the remains. They had been used to zip tie the bones together.

They connect those zip ties to another neighbor, so different neighbor, not the guy who'd shot at Mike, different guy on that same mountain. They connected to him. He's prosecuted. goes to trial, but it's a hung jury. And then a year later, the prosecutor decides we're not going to refile the charges and try to prosecute them again because they don't feel like they have enough evidence.

So, and like there's, I skimmed over tons of detail. Like, there's all kinds of stuff in that podcast. But I think that one has done really well because there's so much uncertainty about the story. There's a lot of speculation. You can have your own opinions about, you know, the guy that they, Got some. Charged. Did you listen to that one?

Yep. Okay. All right. Well, I'm curious to hear them. But that one really sticks out, especially this season. Just with the uncertainty of it. The, like, is Mike a good guy? Is he not a good guy?

You know. What do you think, Josh? Complicated. I think he did it. Ford? Yeah, I think Ford did it. Yeah. Yeah.

So if you haven't listened to the episode, Leon Ford is the guy that they eventually prosecuted. And the way they connected the Zipfited. And the way they connected the Zip. to him is they were kind of unusual zip ties. They were apparently like really large, heavy-duty zip ties. You couldn't, you can't really buy them at like Home Depot or lows. I've got some of my garage. Oh, oh. Yeah, this is, you are doing a lot wrong.

You did it. Yeah. Oh, boy. Re-themed so far. But, but he had access to them because he worked at an Air Force base out in Washington State. And there's a record of him checking out those zipsyms. zip ties like a couple weeks before Mike goes missing. The other big, there's two other big piece of evidence. One is the timing of it. So he didn't live up there on the mountain.

He had property up there, but he only visited every couple of years. So he visits, and like the next day, Mike goes missing. So that's kind of weird timing. Another thing is they... I've got an opinion. Yeah, they had trail cam footage of his truck going up there. The day Mike goes missing, and they don't really have footage of anyone else. But they can't pin it on.

Well, so I talked with one of the primary investigators who ended up, you know, bringing this case to trial. What he told me is like, if you take all of these things together, it's a very convincing, right? It's a pretty strong case. But each thing separately, you can really pick it apart, which is exactly what his defense did. And so that combined with the other guy. I think the other neighbor throws a wrench into the whole thing because the defense calls the other neighbor who shot at Mike up to the stand and he pleads the fifth, meaning he said, I'm not going to testify for fear of self-incrimination. Oh, man. The jury hears that and thinks, oh, well, this guy did it, right?

And so I actually got contacted by one of the members of that jury who told me it was like seven to five guilty. so it was very much split. And the jurors who said not guilty were like Ford could have done it. There just isn't quite enough evidence. And also this other guy, we feel like he was in on it. But he was never charged. So the whole thing is just a giant mess all the way around. Wow. Wow.

What are the ethics of like a story like that, like Josh just said this guy's name. on what are the ethics of telling these stories that, you know, someone, it's one thing to say this person was found guilty by trial, you know, and, but you're talking about stories, and I'm curious both about the families of the victims. Have you ever run into a situation where the families don't want the story told? Because I could, I could see that being the case, or a situation like this one where are you allowed to do what you're doing? You know, How do you navigate all that? Yeah, I mean, I think...

And what are the legal parameters for you? Yeah. So, like, if someone hasn't been convicted, you can't say they did it. You have to say they've been accused of it. Right. Right? I redact my statement. Well, but you can, I think, voice your opinion, right?

Like, I could, maybe I could say, I think he did it, right? But I have to say, I think he did. I don't tend to weigh in in the podcast. But yeah, you do have to be really careful. And especially if they have never been charged, but their name is out there. Like, we covered another case. Does that not bother you personally, though, to, like, say, just somebody, just. I mean, I guess you're just a journalist.

So you're just, like, telling what you're. Yeah, right. Like, I say, it's a matter of public record. It's a matter of public record. So, like, another good example, we covered a case from Kentucky where a, you know, law enforcement has been pretty vocal about who they think did it, but this guy has never actually been charged. But he has been named as a person of interest as a suspect.

And so as a journalist, I can say this guy, his name is Nick Halk, Nick Halk has been named as a person of interest in this murder. But then I also have to say he's never been charged. He maintains his innocence, right? And all that is true. And I don't know whether or not he did it. But I can say, police say he did it. So if law enforcement, law enforcement gives me a lot of cover as a journalist to say,

well, this is just what law enforcement said. Right. Right. And it's up to them whether or not they want to come out with names like that. So I want to revise my statement about Ford. If I had a magic eight ball and I shook it and turned it over, it would definitely say signs point to yes. But you're not into witchcraft. So you wouldn't have a magic eight ball.

Well, right. But scripture also. doing so much wrong today. Scripture also says the lot is cast in a lap, but the answer is from the Lord. Oh, no. Didn't say anything about eight balls. No. Yeah, I don't know if that counts.

They probably would use those. But in that story, that was crazy because there was a guy, the dad of the victim, of one of the victims, was putting billboards in town with people's names on it. Not Nick, but the brother, I think. Yeah. Yeah, Brooks. Yeah. So that's a crazy. That story is one of the most famous that we've covered. A lot of the stories we cover haven't been covered elsewhere for whatever reason. I don't know. People don't care about. And if obscure. Yeah, they're a little bit more obscure. But that one, guy named Tommy Ballard, was shot in the chest while hunting. And previous to that, a year before, his daughter had gone missing. And he'd been very vocal about who he thought

kidnapped and murdered his daughter. And so, and again. I haven't listened to this one, but I want to. Yeah. So again, and spoil it for us. In situations like that, I can present the evidence, right? He had been doing, been very vocal about this. He'd been naming these brothers, like, to the media. He had billboards around town. This guy killed my daughter, you know. And so then I can say, and then he was shot in the chest,

and law enforcement thinks the same people who kidnapped his daughter killed him. I don't have to say, well, I think he did it. Yeah. It doesn't really matter. right, what I think, but I present all of that. And, you know, people can kind of draw their own conclusions. Have you ever had any pushback? Like someone who's related to one of these stories, email you angry or mad or disagreeing? Have you ever gotten a letter from an attorney? Never gotten a letter from an attorney, not about blood trails. I have about some meat eater articles.

And that's a whole that's a story we could maybe get into. But no, and that's honestly one of the things I'm most proud of about blood trails is that, you know, so far I haven't really gotten any messages like that. Yeah, that's great. Usually the families that I've worked with have reached out and said, you know, we like the job you did. Or they just, some of them haven't said anything. Okay. So I don't know exactly what that means all the time. But, you know, I really try very hard to get the deal.

details right to tell the stories truthfully and accurately as far as I can to to admit when like I don't know I do that a lot to say like this is a theory this is speculation we don't know exactly what happened. And have you ever had a situation where a family reached out and said hey we don't we've heard you're talking about this we don't want you to talk about this story. The only one okay well there's been two cases in season one we covered um um a case of an elk hunter in Montana who went missing. And then his remains were found two years later. There was a lot of speculation that his hunting buddies who'd been with him had killed him,

which is probably not true. In that case, I did reach out to those hunting buddies who then were in contact with his wife. And they decided not to participate. And they didn't say exactly like his wife doesn't want you to do this, but they did say like we don't love that this is being brought back to public attention. Yeah. And the buddies kind of have a reason and it turned out there was a lot of details there that that things they maybe could have done that would have prevented this situation,

not that they killed him, but just like things they could have done. So they had kind of a reason. And, you know, they said like he has a son. He was young when this happened, but he's older now. And we think about those things very carefully and we try to, you know, tell the story in a responsible way. And for those families, I really try hard to present their loved one in like to humanize them to the audience. Because that, I think that gets lost a lot with these stories. True crimes, kind of infamous, right, for taking advantage of people suffering.

and so I really try. And so if the family talks to me, I love that because then I can actually do that. With this story, I had a hard time because no one really talked to me. And so we couldn't really say what kind of person Aaron was. I did have,

so the episode that's coming out Thursday when we're recording this, I wanted to cover the story last year. I reached out to the victim's sister who said, it would be great if you didn't cover this name. now because the murder is going to trial.

And we don't want a bunch of coverage on this until after the trial. Right, right. And, you know, I wrestled with that a bit because as a journalist, like, I don't love people telling me, like, cover this story now or not now or, you know, not this one or that one. At the same time, like, I'm not interested in, like, messing anything up for prosecutors who are going after a bad guy. And so we decided to hold the story until after the trial. And it was also a little selfish because, like, a trial is when all the details come out.

Right. And so it was going to be a better episode anyway. But so she did ask that. And she said, like, I'd be willing to help with this after the trial. And sure enough, I reached back out. And she was. That episode's coming out on Thursday. And I think it's one of the best of the season because we got a lot.

We got a lot of that episode. Nice. So the name of the episode is, finding justice for Dustin Jersom. Dustin Jersom was a Bozeman guy, actually. So he was up just south of Bozeman camping. And he got attacked by someone. They thought it was a bear attack at first,

which kind of tells you how bad it was. But they found the guy, and they locked him up. And I talked with everyone. I talked with all the detectives, prosecutors, defense attorneys, everyone. So that story is really fully formed. and I think people are going to like it. Sounds great. My last question, how do you sleep?

Yeah, I sleep okay. Yeah, covering the stories, I don't think, bothers me too much. So I will say the one time that it kind of crept up is we live on about four acres, but it's kind of like a neighborhood where everyone is on four acres, but we have like a back part of our property

that's all wooded, and our older two kids go out and play back there. Well, one day, we needed them to come inside, and we yelled for them and yelled for them, and yelled for them, and they weren't there. And like, it's not a huge piece of, you know, you can kind of like look and see both sides. And so I'm, like, starting to kind of freak out.

My wife is starting to freak out. And so I'm walking down the street because I think maybe they went to a neighbors. And as I'm walking, I'm like, this is like the beginning of a blood trail episode. I'm like writing the script in my head as I'm walking. Like this is not, maybe not super healthy. Yeah. So, but it doesn't like, you know, bother me just generally, I think. Just thinking about like those horrible things and how things change in an instant.

It, yeah. When you said you had only had you had. have 80 episodes scripted out in front of you. I was thinking about how statistically with the amount of people that are hunting, fishing, using American public lands, I mean, it's a very rare thing

for something terrible to happen. Yeah, super rare. So it's, it really is super rare. I mean, probably more rare than a lightning strike or something. I think it probably is. But we, We fixate on the anomalies.

Yep. You know. Yeah. We have a bias for the extreme things. And that's why it's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Yes.

Well, it's a good thing that we have the Civil War to talk about now. Lighter fair. Lighter fair. Yeah. Are you much of a Civil War guy? No, no, not really. I did grow up in Northern Virginia. So if I wanted to be, I really could have.

We would go up to Harper's Ferry occasionally. Oh. So it was right up there. The John Brown way. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. But no, I don't claim to know a ton about the war itself.

I was very interested, though, in kind of the cultural, the ways that it still impacts culture today. Well, that was a great point. So to tackle a Civil War series is a big bite. I mean, there's just a thousand ways you could do it. J.D. Hewitt was our expert guest. He has a really great YouTube channel. J.D. is a high school history teacher.

Yeah. And then has a really huge YouTube channel called History Underground. And, I mean, just top-notch expert in my book. And he says that there are people, there are academics who spent their entire careers learning about specific battles in the Civil War. I mean, like, there are guys that, like, their whole academic career has been about, you know, Gettysburg or whatever.

And so, you know, to think that you could bite off a big chunk about, and try to really understand the Civil War is a bold thing to do. But I've, you know, as I'm picking topics to discuss, it usually has to do with, some unanswered questions that I'm like, you know what, it's time I really understand that. And so the Civil War is something that, I mean, I would be as familiar as the next guy about, you know, I mean, I was just public school educated, went to college, maybe took a college history class, but really wouldn't have known that much about the Civil War, but did have this history that I disclosed on the episode,

which oddly was kind of I was a little bit nervous about like saying that where I came from in my and I was quick to not pin it on my dad because literally if Gary Newcomb were here he would be like who told you about that

but yeah just rural Arkansas this idea that the Confederacy was just this you know kind of honorable thing and we're going to get into it more in the future, but I mean, I think there is absolutely a way to, I mean, you know, look at your historical heritage and not be ashamed of something. I mean, like, when you look into this war, you see both sides have lots of crazy stuff going on. So, again, and I said,

I'm neither ashamed nor proud of that. It's just kind of the way it was, you know. And, and I've had multiple people from the northern United States write me and say they had no connection to the Civil War since this podcast is really? Well, like I had. Like I disclosed

that I had. Right, but so since that time Oh yeah, yeah, people... Because I surmised and so did J.D. Hewitt that in the north there was not this deep-seated pride that you fought for the north like there would be a pride in the South that your ancestors

fought for the Confederacy. And that's been confirmed by many people. Yeah. Yeah, that really rang true for me. I feel like that's probably true. And I was trying to think of why that would be true. Because usually if you are on the losing side, you're not the most proud. Yeah.

And so it doesn't, like intuitively, it doesn't quite make sense. I was wondering if maybe it's because, like, everything changed in the South. and so and so like you know things were kind of turned on their head but the north just sort of went along business as usual and so it doesn't it's not like it doesn't take up as much headspace um if you grew up in the north and that's where your family was from because there wasn't this like big moment where everything changed yeah um i wonder if that has anything to do with it yeah i thought jd's rocky analogy was pretty good pretty great i did too yeah yeah yeah um But I want to project about what's coming.

I really didn't have a idea of, like, how this was going to be scripted out. We just built an hour-long episode and kind of got up to the beginnings of the war. Like, we hadn't even started the war yet. And the next episode, honestly, is going to be quite a bit about pre-Civil War as well. We're going to talk about Lincoln. and just fascinating. And I would have known Lincoln, just in general overview, but when you start actually looking at what he said and what he did,

you realize that he's not quite the guy. I mean, not take anything away from him, but I mean, like, there's some bizarre quotes that we're going to read. That will rival the quotes from this episode, which were so unique and wild as well. But what I would just, just like to open the floor, Christy, Misty, Josh, Jordan, what stood out to you? And how could we, if I had anything to do over, I would have done the beginning of the episode over.

I felt like I kind of... In what way? Well, I don't know. I wasn't super happy with the beginning of the episode. You're not supposed to tell people that. Well, I mean, this is the render where we talk about it. Come on, John. It's all on the table.

Now, what stood out to you? Christy? I think what maybe the obvious thing that stood out is just what felt so duplicitous. Is that a word? Did I use that word, Misty? Excellent word. With Thomas Jefferson. Like, it's really hard to reconcile.

And I think even the episode, you were like, how, even a JD, like, how do you, like, how do you reconcile that? And there still was no answer. Like, it's very hard to reconcile that. I live one way. I profess that something. different should be happening. And how do you, how do you walk that out?

That was just fascinating to me. Yeah. So, and I don't have that resolution quite yet. I mean, yeah, I also didn't know that his mistress and his wife were half sisters.

That was news to me. I didn't know that either. Yeah, I mean either. Very weird. I, at the same time, it was like hard to reconcile.

It also felt very human to me. Like, like I have these ideals that I believe in, but like implementing them in my life would really be hard. You know, like I have this huge like plantation, this like this estate that I'm managing and to, you know, live my ideals out would just throw everything for a loop. And I'm not, I don't know if that was actually his motivation, but that, that strikes me as as very human. Yeah. You know, somebody wrote in and told me that Thomas Jefferson was in massive debt. Like he had a lot of financial debt.

And their assumption was that just the economics, the economics of it just didn't make sense for him to just free all his slaves based upon just his moral compass. Yeah. Yeah. So maybe it's something you hope will happen when you die. Like George Washington. Yeah. I think you mentioned he freed his. slaves upon his death, which is a bit of a cop-out, right? It's like you're not having to live through

the hardship that that would bring, but you understand this is a bad thing. And so you're going to try to rectify it. And to that in, I think a lot of times people, and you hear things like this, how can we possibly do that? We're just doing what the rest of the world is, we can't play by a different set of rules that everybody else plays by and stay competitive or whatever. You hear that in politics a lot. Like, until the law changes, we have to still operate by these standards. And I thought the whole thing, you know, just kicking the can down the road 20 years. Right. It felt like such a modern solution.

Yeah. It's a politician, right? It's a very politician. Yeah. And I think I wasn't, I knew, because I've taught classes, like high school classes on, on like the U.S. Constitution, things like that. And so I knew some of those things, but hearing it all together in this context, And it just felt everything, it feels a little bit like there's nothing new under the sun.

As you hear these things, it feels so political and how many laws are passed now with a sunset clause, that this, we're going to do this for now, but then this is going to go. And then when the sunset clause hits, it wreaks havoc on the system, which, you know, that just happened with the health care rules and things like that. And it's just, it's, yeah, it's people who want to take a stand but don't want to, are, they're just not able to get the political cover that they need in the moment. And so you put these parameters around it. And it is, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, what did you learn? Did you learn anything? Well, Jefferson, I didn't know about wife and sister. Um, I didn't know about that.

I'm trying to think if I learned. Because, you know, there's, when you make a podcast, you're trying to provide a service to people. And, uh, I mean, I, I learned a lot. Yeah. I learned a lot about the, about the, the way cotton was such a, I mean, I would have known that cotton was important and that was a big part of the southern economy, but to compare cotton to like the oil of the Middle East. I thought that was a very good comparison. I thought that was a very good comparison.

Yeah, it makes you, as you're like, oh, okay, I get it. Like, these people were willing to do anything to save this thing. And then, you know, I was also trying to address something that I've heard about just how the civil war is about states rights. You know, it wasn't about slavery. And I honestly didn't intend to just like get in this like big time conversation about slavery. But if you asked, I think 90% of the people in the country would say the war was about slavery. I think they would say that. Right.

but to really, including me, but now I know the ends and outs of it. And so I did learn a lot about, you know, that from the very beginning of the country, this was a tiger by the ears, what was taken out by Jefferson, or was put in the Declaration of Independence. I had no idea that was in there.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I just thought that was fascinating, tying what was left out of the Declaration of Independence to the Civil War, which is how many years separated? I mean, like, nearly 100. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, like, that was pretty interesting.

Yes. Yes, it was. And that the trouble persisted. Right. I mean, that's what's interesting. And I'm always just bewildered by our ability to revise history and just like, look back at these people and be like, how could they have been so dumb? But man, you can't cast shade on something as clearly wrong as like this kind of slavery. But at the same time, that had been going on since the beginning of time.

I mean, like, when people finally started writing stuff down in history, like they were writing about, I mean, they had slaves. We don't know even when it started. So this was like this practice that was very, normalized across basically all cultures. And I do recognize that there's like different levels of slavery and all this. And then so, you know, like a Thomas Jefferson, you know, kind of saying, all men are created equal.

But I don't know, it's just so easy to look back and just pin them, pin them to the ground. But at the same time, there was, I don't think it was ever okay to, slave a person right yeah but that that quote you had towards the end from the Mississippi was it Mississippi they're like Declaration of Independence that was I'd never heard

that before yeah that was pretty incredible and I thought that that was a great way of like explaining this was it was about the state's rights to have slavery yeah so it's kind of like

you can't just say it was about states rights. It was about slavery. It was about both. It was about them, that those two issues kind of married together. And that quote, I felt really kind of brought that home. And I'd never heard those, those types of arguments before. And you can see how people would be like, oh, our economy, like the whole economy will collapse, you know, and people are, are, you know, weak in a lot of ways. And like, if you say you're, you know, you'll lose your house if this happens, you're probably not going to want it to happen, which still happens today, you know.

Yeah. Who was the quote, Clay, towards, again, I think maybe towards the end of the episode where they were talking about the classes, like if the King Cotton. Yeah. King Cotton. Well, it was the... Eli Whitney. It was, no.

It was the senator from South Carolina, James Hammond. What were you going to say about it? Well, I just, I mean, it rubbed me the wrong way. And I, like, and I think that whole philosophy exists today. I mean, if you don't have, I mean, how many, how many publications are there about CEOs, what they make, and then, you know, at the base of their company, what their entry level people make and the disparity between the two. And if you don't have the entry level person, you don't have the CEO who's getting paid, what they're being paid. It doesn't work that.

You know, it doesn't exist. And I thought, so today we don't have slavery in the sense of like a manual labor class that, you know, but he clearly says, if you don't have them, then you don't have the other classes and it's it's um i think that's my wrestle right is you're like you're like i don't it it hurts me to hear that like oh we have to so we have this class so you can have the other class that doesn't seem to jive with you i am that quote was fascinating to me essentially if you haven't listened he he he said he basically said slavery is the is the architecture of human existence. He said basically in the South,

we hire our menial working class for life and take care of them. And he said, you people in the North that don't have slaves, hire your slaves essentially by the day, don't take care of them, pay them poorly. And, I mean, it's a wild idea. It's a wild idea also because they didn't take care of them.

I mean, when we can, like, that's part of the thing that's a little bit, like, okay, great speech. It is built on lies. And I think you have to have to say that. And you can even just look in recent history, people who live through Jim Crow laws. Like, was that taking care of them? Was that, I mean, or sharecropping. Like, even take, there are people who are alive who live through those things. And so I think it's like, yeah, you're, that's not true.

Yeah. But what you're saying is just false, is not. true, you didn't take care of them. Maybe some people did. Maybe there were people who were, and that's one of the arguments that I think always exist, but, but it was a pretty, I mean, it was extremely oppressive environment. Yes. It was. And that was one of the things that, in the history books that I've read, that was one of the things that really stuck out about about slavery at that time in the, in the U.S. South was just how brutal, how brutal it was. Yeah, they call it chattel slavery. Yeah. Right? It's like very brutal.

And that's the difference, right? It's like the people who work as a day laborer, they could decide not to. Yeah. Exactly. Slave could not decide not. And obviously, the reason that quote is interesting and relevant is because it gives you insight into the people

that were willing to die for this thing. Because that's why it's like, wait a minute, why would someone be this devoted to the cause of slavery? Like, you know, trying to understand where someone could come from. So it's not that anybody today would agree with that, but it's just like, golly, you can at least understand a little bit of the way. I mean, you can understand the logic of the argument, but the problem is, is the argument itself is founded on lies. What he was saying was not true. Right.

And that's the, that's the, that's the whole thing. You have to just kind of shut off a part of your brain to be able to make that argument, a part of reality and facts to make that argument. think definitely the part of we take care of them. Exactly. But he did, he clearly stated, or what I heard is that this class does exist, so these other classes can also exist. Right. And I think that philosophy still exists in the world today. A hundred percent. Like that is the nothing new under the sun. Exactly. You were talking about earlier. And it's like, it looks different today. Yeah. And what we would see in modern America, but it's, that, that mindset still exists. Oh, yeah. Yeah. There's, which is wild, like, still kind of

to me that the class system still. Yeah, I mean, yeah. I'm trying to like break things down into simple concepts in my mind. And what kind of stands out to me is like this thing was perpetuated by greed. Like it all kind of came from a position of greed of keeping the economic status the way they wanted it. So people made money off of cotton. And I think that position of greed, cause people to compromise values and justify things that were really, when you break it down, are unjustifiable. Right. Mm-hmm.

For sure. Well, it was news to me as well that the backdrop of the Civil War was massive American prosperity. Yeah. You kind of wouldn't think about, I would have probably felt that on a civics test if it said, when was the greatest rise in American prosperity from this, you know, from antebellum, Antibalum America. I probably, and I'm not sure that we didn't continue to rise even at a faster J-curve after that, but America's rise to global prominence through economics began, you know, way before the Civil War.

And point being to what you said, Josh, is that prosperity breeds its own devils. Yep. Yeah, and expansion of the country, right? And that was a big reason for the war too, is like the country is expanding and these new states are being formed. Are they going to be slave states or free states? And I think it's hard for us now to imagine like the excitement of like growing your country and creating new states and the stakes of like, what is this new country going to be? and like are we going to be a country with slavery or not and you can kind of see why people would fight over that like if this is this giant new country we're making right now um you know what

what is it going to look like in the future mm-hmm this is uh so this book right here is the the main book that uh have have read and it's a good one battle cry of freedom it was written in the 80s pulitzer prize winning book It's a general overview of the Civil War And it's pretty thick Yeah, it is pretty thick What did you relate it to you? Thick is the Appalachian Bible

That's it. I guess people in Appalachian Family Bible. That's it. I guess people in Appalachia have to use the big print Because their Bibles are super thick. We had a family Bible. Did you all have one?

No. We had a family Bible. It was like this. I mean, it had lots of paintings in it and stuff. I think about like the importance of the Bible in my family, you know? I mean, and we didn't have a family Bible. Really? No. And like when my, when my grandma died, my mom, that's what she wanted,

was her Bible. And she brought it to me one day. And it was kind of like, it just happened. But my daughter was in the room, I was at the, I went, my daughter and I went to my mom's house. And she handed me, you know, we were looking through the box of things that she brought back after her mom died. And she handed me the Bible. And I start reading it and just reading her notes in it. like I just start crying. And my mom is sitting across from the room and she starts crying. And it's because it was just such a meaningful, you know, just such a meaningful part of my grandma's life.

And it's like this heritage that she passed on to us extremely, extremely important. At no point did anyone in our history have a Bible one. I mean, a family Bible that was passed down. This was just my grandma's personal Bible with her notes in it. It wasn't a family Bible. Like we didn't have one of those where you would register things. And I wonder, they were migrant people. Like all my grandparents were migrants and they were migrant farmers and she'd be taken out of school.

And I just can't help but wonder if it's not the more stationary you are, the more likely you are to have a giant Bible that's passed down intergenerational. And if you're moving... We do have a giant civil war book. We do have a giant civil war book. It's true. It's true. And yeah, I wish we had something cool like that, but we didn't. Mm-hmm.

Did y'all learn anything about John Brown? Oh, yeah. Would you have known that? No. No. I mean, yeah, I was aware of some of the things that he did, having been to Harper's Ferry as a kid. Oh, that's right.

Yeah, but I didn't know. You grew up up there. Yeah, I didn't know all of the details or kind of the implications for like how this, I mean, basically like a terrorist attack would spur the South and would like terrify the South. I'm sure I've been taught that at some point, but I didn't remember. Yeah, yeah. Well, so there's a college over here in Northwest Arkansas called John Brown University, and it is not the same John Brown.

Different John Brown. They're unrelated, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, no, I didn't, I wouldn't have known. That was a part of history that I would have not been too dialed on, but super important. And it's interesting how people, their lives become known for really more than what they were. Really, there was a huge emphasis in this particular book about how John Brown was like a madman.

Like everybody was just like, this guy was crazy. Yeah. And it's, it's, it's, I could hear the, the, the modern news cycle of the, the other side, like saying, oh, you think it's okay. to like kill people because John Brown for sure right women and children was on like the right side you know today of this thing about yeah there shouldn't be right slaves yeah slaves should be set free like I think we all could agree that's that's the good side to be on on this deal yet he was murdering people with a broad sword yeah so it's you know you can hear this this side of the media going those guys are crazy

Yeah. We're just down here, you know, doing our agriculture. Yeah. So anyway, you just, you see all this stuff. But then John Brown becomes massively more than what he actually did. He didn't have a backup plan. His military, his tactics were just bizarre. It was suicide mission.

Didn't work. Did you say it was like 17 people or something in total? Yeah, I think it was 23. I think it was 17 white people and then five blacks. Yeah. And then they did not get a single slave to come with them. So they actually did get some arms, go down into some plantations and like bust into some place and be like, let's go.

Got guns. And people were like, wait a minute, what? I mean, that's the way I understood the story to be. And just a few. So it's like it didn't work at all. but then his legacy, you know, sparks this thing. Yeah, yeah. I thought it was so funny.

The comment that Lincoln makes to the Uncle Thomas Cabin, Heret Beatrice Stowe, like the little lady that started this war. It's like, whoa, I wonder how she felt about being told that. Have any of you all read Uncle Tom's Cabin? Yeah. Have you read it? You read it in school? Yeah, I think I did too.

Did you? I think that was one of the, my mom always bought books from some magazine. And boy, we were bored in Hatfield in the 80s. We read all those books. And that was one of the, that was in that little subscriber thing that she had. That was one of the books that she bought. Well, I started reading it. I've got it.

And it, you know, that book, during the 1850s sold in America only second to the Bible, which at the time was kind of the bestseller. But it does really show the power of culture in turning, like even Lincoln's comment to her. It shows the power that really the arts and the, you know, there would be different things now that would probably be as influential. But it shows the power of those things and just stories to shift a narrative

and to shift perspective and to, ignite people into action and in engagement with this because it's kind of like the example he gave of the the kids you know in the cobalt mines in Africa it's there it bothers you but I thought that was a good it was it's so good it was yeah it puts things in perspective yeah because I mean I when he said it I've like had this sense of guilt yeah why does that not bother me more you know yeah as you have a giant watch on your hand that probably probably has lots of precious metals in it. Probably.

Add that to the list of things Josh is doing wrong. Yeah, but Josh, this has really been an opportunity for us to cross-examine your life. Well, now that I'm 50, everybody's after me. Yeah. Well, the, I'm excited about the rest of the Civil War episode. When I do these, I feel like if I had like a trophy room, Like I would have podcasts like up on the wall. I mean like deer heads.

That's the way it kind of feels like, yep. Like gold records. Got that taken care of. Civil War dusted off. You'll feel good when you're done with this series. I will. Yeah. Because it's been on the docket for a long time and I was kind of over planning for it.

Yeah. I was thinking, man, this is going to be so hard. This is, I need to get all these guests. I don't really know where to start. And I finally just was like, I'm just going to start with JD. We're just going to dive in. He was a great first guest. He really was.

He was a great narrator. And I quit trying to feel like I needed to, we needed to service people that really knew a ton about the Civil War. Like, I just thought, man, I'm probably a pretty central figure in terms of knowledge of the war. And I don't, I don't know that much. But I'm very interested in it, should. and I feel like J.D. brought some really interesting stuff. And it's just going to, it actually keeps getting better.

Yeah. Well, I feel like you started at the right place, right? Because when you ask someone like, what do you think about the Civil War? One of the first things they think is, well, what started it? Where, you know, is it about states' rights? Is it about slavery? And the first episode does a great job of kind of outlining the complexities of that. Yeah. I also think the points you made about like kind of marveling at how this is still relevant

175 years later. That's super interesting. It did make me think. So my wife's, her grandparents on her mom's side, that family has been in San Antonio, like South Texas area for hundreds of years. But her grandmother was born in like the 1920. like 1923. And I knew her. And of course, you know, my wife knew her. She lived to be, you know, late 90s, I think. It occurred to me that like if she was born in 1923, her grandparents would

have been around. Yeah. So like I interacted with. My wife grew up interacting with someone who knew people around during the Civil War. Yeah. Yeah. Which really kind of makes it seem much closer to our day, even though so many things seem so different. Like, people are around who knew people who told them about the Civil War, which is crazy to think about. But, you know, it kind of makes sense. You can understand why it's still relevant and people still talk about it and are interested. Yeah. So I think people are going to be, how many episodes do you think it's going to take?

12. 13. Yeah. Kent Burns over here. Yeah. You know, we'll probably do, we'll probably do three. Yeah. I'll probably do three because what I don't really.

care to get into as like all the specifics of the battles and different stuff i mean i don't know there's there's a lot of yeah there's a lot of information about those things i'm i'm i'm interested in the main players robert e lee ulysses s grant lincoln um other people that were you know like a john brown or or i'm just interested in like kind of some of these big players and um i had I had a guy write me, a friend of mine, T.L. Jones, he wouldn't mind me saying his name. He grew up in East Tennessee. This goes back to your statement about why is it still relevant,

why are we still talking about it? And he said, and I'm going to paraphrase what he said, but he said, growing up, he never heard anybody talking about the Civil War. But in the 60s and 70s, the symbolism of rebrands, rebellion, particularly the South latched onto. And that's when, and, you know, I'd have to get some of the details to really fully quantify what he's saying. But I believe that he talked about mascots becoming the rebels. And a lot of the Civil War statues and different things didn't happen in that.

Interesting. In 1870. Yeah. They happened like in the 60s and 70s. Dukes of Hazard, like massively popularized the Confederate flag, which was always called the Confederate flag. But I grew up knowing it as the Rebel flag. The Rebel flag, stars and bars. Yeah.

And so he picked up on that we kind of attached to the symbolism. And honestly, when he said it, I was like, yeah, I think that's what the people that I was around and even me, I was interested in. It was like kind of a rebel. Right. You know, just a rebel. Yeah. But if you look at what was going on in the 60s and 70s in the South with civil rights and things like that, I think even that has its roots in something pretty terrible. Yeah.

I mean, pretty, and it was rebellion against what? it was rebellion against this move for civil rights and inequality. And that's, and it was, it was this, they had, I mean, I think that that's a big piece of the, of the, of the story. And I think growing up in Arkansas, I'm working in some of the, the fields that I've worked in and the places that I've worked in. It's like the legacy of the civil war can, I feel like you, you, you get like pockets of time where it just hits, hits really hard. the reconstruction era, the Jim Crow laws, then you get into the 60s and 70s in that fight. And you're still feeling the pangs of that.

And when we first covered this in the school I worked for when the kids were really young, I talked to people, we have good friends from the Caribbean. And we talked about, like, why is this so different to cover in the U.S. than it is to cover in the Caribbean? Because there's no, like, emotional, the emotional ties to this subject are much different when you cover it in the Caribbean. And you cannot say that they had different experiences in that time period. You know, I mean, and one of my friends said, I don't know many people who are alive.

Like when it was over, it was over in the Caribbean. And there's not people who are alive today who can tell you the stories of the harsh discrimination that they experienced like there are in the U.S. Because it just kept going. Is it lasted so long? Yeah, the repercussions of it lasted for so long. Yeah. And I'm thinking about like my parents' lifetime, your parents' lifetime. I have stories of my childhood of some of these things still, some of this discrimination

that really starts back at our founding, persisting. And so I don't know, I just think it's like really dark stories, not, yeah. And so I just think. Yeah, not something to be celebrated. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Well, it is fascinating. It seems like so long ago, but it wasn't that long ago.

Right. Yeah. I mean, it just wasn't that long ago. Like our grandparents, my grandparents, your grandparents, would have known people that were alive in the Civil War. Like, we knew World War II veterans. Right. Right. That's essentially what it would have been like. Yeah. Like my grandfather, who was like a massive influence in my life, well let me think about that yeah yeah yeah he would have known civil war vets like i knew him essentially my grandfather was born 1919 yeah about like about like your wife's grandmother yeah yeah i mean that just it's just like wow yeah yeah that wasn't that long ago i mean and i think you mentioned

the podcast something about like if an alien came down right and and i forget the context of that but if an alien came down i i think and saw in such a short amount of time our country going from chattel slavery, not a person, right? We can buy them and sell them like a commodity to where we are now in the space of time for basically like two generations of grandparents. It would be incredible, right? Like they would say that's a pretty amazing, that's pretty amazing progress in the, you know, relative to human history, a pretty short amount of time.

Yeah. And I'm amazed by that. learning about the Civil War, thinking about that time, thinking about where we are today, you know, it's a pretty incredible story overall. Well, I'll leave you with one foreshadowed piece of data that will come out, and it's pretty interesting. But the American Civil War, which we now see really was fought about slavery. Right.

There has never been in the history of the world an enslaved group of people that was set free by another outside group. Oh, so history would say they've been set free by their own mat-like. That's unique, as I understand it, that is unique to the situation in America. Interesting. Does that make sense? You all seem not enamored. I'm trying to find it. Like basically everywhere else in history that there has been a group of marginalized people that were,

never was there an outside group that it really had nothing to do with them that came in. I see. Oh, the north. Like emancipated. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Huh. I thought that was interesting. That isn't? Yeah. Because I mean, I think. I think most of most things would come from the inside. Yeah, right. You're going to have to convince me on that.

Yeah, Missy's incredulous. I'm looking forward to hearing it. You can take that up with Mr. James McPherson. Hold on, hold on. Josh, give us a closer while I try to find this. I don't believe that I'm not ready to believe James. He's not earned my trust just yet. Well, as Clay finds his quote, I want to throw in a couple of things, unrelated to the Civil War.

Make sure and check out the Bear Grease YouTube channel. Yes. Bear Nukem is throwing out some fantastic content. My wife watched his entire video of rebuilding the Suzuki 99. Oh, did you really? She was riveted. I was. She was riveted.

It was fantastic. So he's putting out some great stuff. So make sure and pay attention to that. Number two. starting June 1st, we're going to be opening up a bear grease podcast, bear grease feed survey, listener survey for everybody to take that. And we'll be announcing it again because it won't be open until June 1st. So it'll be after this podcast comes out.

But get on there. Fill out the podcast. We want to know what you guys think about. the content, about the, the schedule that it comes out, all our feet, everything. There's some great questions in there. You guys can help us discover what you want to hear more of. So do that. That'll be up in June 1st.

We'll be announcing the link for that. So just be ready. So get on there and do that. Also, Jordan Sillers in the Tukovas hot seat. Courtesy of Ticova's, you will be receiving a pair of Tukovas. Oh, yeah. Jordan. Look at the surprise on his face.

He's like ready. He's like stoked. Oh, I am super stoked. As he's wearing a pair of like pristine Nike's. Yeah. I know. I just got these.

I needed new shoes. It's look good. Thank you. Yeah. Good looking. Yeah. I have a pair of Tocovas. Oh, really?

I have their ostrich skin. Oh. Okay. Extremely soft, extremely comfortable. So I am. Listen to that plug for Ticocas. Beyond excited. And I'm not, that's pretty sincere.

Yeah. I am very excited about this. I would love new ones. her tokova's boots. That's right. That's right. So, yeah, you'll be receiving that from from Tocova's. Thank you. Thank you Tocovus. Yeah, thank you to Covis. Anyway,

I've not been able to find it, but I will. But isn't that where we're going? You don't need to find it today. You're going to have to sell me on that. Just make sure it's in the next podcast. I had one more question. I forgot to ask. Am I allowed to ask it? Clay, we have time. I'm just going to keep thumbing here. You keep thumbing. I was super intrigued when you were talking on the podcast and you basically said, all I'm doing is I'm asking questions at JD,

like we were driving down the road in a truck. Mm-hmm. And I was curious if you were driving down the road in a car. Prissy doesn't have a truck. So what would be the car with the question? The conversation in a car would have just been a little more comfortable and quiet. Because when you're in my truck, you have to yell. What do you think about the Civil War?

You want to roll the windows up for a minute. The air conditioner doesn't work very good. Yeah, and there's just a like a little bit more stress in the room because, like, I hope it makes it to the next destination and the recurring nature of the AC to turn off at this point in the truck's life. Okay. I'm satisfied. Great.

Well, I can't wait. Thanks for listening. Thanks for coming, Jordan. Yeah. Really appreciate it. I look forward. I know everyone's looking forward to more blood trails and how to avoid being a blood. trail.

No conflict. No conflict. No conflict. In the woods. Avoid strangers. Avoid strangers. Yeah. In the woods.

In the woods. Have a good relationship with your spouse. Yeah, exactly. Keep your wife happy. That's key, actually. One of my big tenants has been keep your friends close, your enemies closer. I follow you around everywhere. What's that saying?

Thanks, everybody. Thanks so much. Keep the wild places wild because that's where the bears live. This is an I-Heart podcast, guaranteed human.