The Joe Rogan Experience - #1912 - Steven Rinella

Episode Date: December 20, 2022

Steven Rinella is an outdoorsman, conservationist, writer, and host of "MeatEater." Watch season 11 now at www.themeateater.com.

the Joe Rogan experience you know and then when this FTX thing happened I'm like of course yeah of course you fucking scumbags I've become obsessed with that shit oh my god I just like because I'm already imagining like the fucking how many people are writing that fucking screenplay right now. Oh, we Were wrong, let's talk about this. Yeah, I'm fascinated by it. I'm fascinated by scammers. Mm-hmm You know, I'm I I knew a lot of scammers in my pool hall days I knew a lot of I knew a guy that was one of the first guys that ever was involved in credit card fraud.

Back in the early 80s. His name was International Sal. He was a fucking character. Like a real character. Sal? Sal. International Sal. That's what they called him. Because he was like a mob guy. Essentially. And what they would do

is they would go to grocery stores, or department stores, essentially. And what they would do is they would go to grocery stores or department stores, rather. And, you know, they had those carbons when you would – the old days with credit cards? Oh, yeah. I remember that. Yeah. They would take those carbons and someone would sell him the carbons. And then they would print copies of credit cards. And then they would buy a bunch of shit.

And then they would sell that shit. And they would come to him with bags of money to the pool hall and then that's a good idea and he would blow it all he would blow it all it's it's like we always talked about it's like it's he he had dirty money and he couldn't keep it it's like he was he couldn't win like he could not win like if the nine ball was four inches in front of the hole he would find a way to dog it oh like the cosmos knew that the money was no good yeah yeah it was something it was like is it in his head he had the worst case of buck fever i've ever seen in my fucking life it's just like yeah it's like he's got like the devil and the angel on his shoulders and the

angels giving them like the angels give him advice yeah so he loses money. And he was a good guy. He was a good guy. He just came from a life of crime. But he was a good guy. It's weird. I wonder what his last name was because we were looking up people with our last name, and we found a Sal Ranella in Joliet Prison. I liked how much it sounded like Salmanella, you know?

Yeah, I don't know. He died of cancer a few years back. And actually a friend of mine's mom who worked in, you know, I guess it's a hospice when they take care of people in their dying days. Yeah. And he came into there and my friend contacted me. Guess who's in the hospice it's international style oh my god no well so it's it's sad when is a good he i mean i say he's a

good guy obviously did terrible things robbed those fucking credit card companies blind made millions of dollars but he was a good guy like he was always friendly he's always a good guy. He was always friendly. He was always a good guy. I had a friend get her credit card stolen recently, and they bought a bunch of stuff, electronics from Best Buy, and then made a charitable donation. Like, that'll cover it. They felt bad and made a charitable donation. Well, some people feel like if you steal— It's like a feed the—you know, it was like feed the children or something.

They're like, this will clean it out. That's a total sociopath. Some people, they just do it, but they're like, wow, there's got to be a way to balance this out. Did you hear that Target lost, what was it, Jamie, like $400 million last year from looting? $400 million. Really? hundred million dollars last year from looting four hundred million really yeah because all these people in the last year or so just during the pandemic people were like stealing shit you know became a thing like in in some states i had no idea it was that bad it's bad in some states they've closed down all the walgreens they've closed down all these different because they made a law where

if you steal less than 900 dollars worth of stuff they can't even arrest you they don't even do anything about it so people would just walk in have you ever seen those videos no well i've seen the videos i didn't know about i didn't know about them being prompted by i didn't know that that activity being inspired by particular rules as much as just like a breakdown of, you know, I don't know, like a breakdown of desire, like for a while, like a desire to, to engage with certain kinds of law breaking. Well, it was, there was that.

And then there was also, I think after the George and during the George Floyd protest organized retail crime has driven $400 million in extra profit loss this year at Target. That is organized. During the George Floyd protest, there was so much looting. I don't know if you saw the stuff in New York. It was crazy. Oh, for sure. Yeah. Where the cops were standing by. They were just standing there watching them smash windows and run into stores. And that was that de Blasio guy, like super leftist mayor of New York, just kind of allowed it all to happen. And it's like it's based apparently on an old theory about rioting where you just let them burn it out of their system,

have a temper tantrum. I think that so much is there's a lot of – this isn't just – I didn't make this up, but there's a lot of governance by theory going on. Where it's like it's sort of – a lot of people are left to be like, Bahamut, that doesn't make any sense. Well, you got to think who these people are. It's a theory though, right? Who these people are that want to be mayors and want to be governors. They're a bunch of loony people for the most to be mayors and want to be governors. They're a

bunch of loony people for the most part. There's not a lot of competition. There's not a lot of super rational, really well-educated, super successful in business people that wind up becoming governors and mayors, which is probably what you would need to be. You need to be someone who's really good at organizing business. And there was a guy that was running in New York, and apparently he got really close. He was ahead in the race for a while, but then he wound up losing to some woman who's the new mayor of Los Angeles. Was it Karen Bass? I just heard a guy saying that that's the politicians that are going to win now. He was a strategist, a Republican strategist, and he was saying that his prediction was it was going to be like the technocrats

that people were getting i don't know where he's getting this from but it made me feel optimistic that people are getting more interested in like um that that his view of the midterms is that voters are getting interested in in like pragmatic problem solving again and not ideology well once ideology comes crashing back on you and falls apart and your business collapses and that's what you're seeing with a lot of people it's like just the just the reality facing them where their ideology is not sustainable and then they're like jesus christ like i've lost everything here we got to get somebody who's like some fucking hard-nosed business person. It's going to get everything running correctly.

I had an interesting thing happening right here in Austin the other day, speaking of law enforcement. I was down here for a couple days. It was my daughter's birthday, so my wife and my daughter came down with me, and we spent a couple days just knocking around town. We went down to check out those bats that come out of the Congress congress bridge oh my god it's cool it's wild we're walking down there and i become aware we're going on the sidewalk and i become aware of like all this honking and yelling and shit at an intersection and as i'm i'm walking up to a car and there's a woman like honking and yelling and she's pointing into the car and i go and realize this guy like uh i thought he had a heart attack just keeled over the steering wheel in the intersection okay so he had his back window down like halfway down for whatever reason

and i'm in there and i got him by the shoulder and i'm trying to shake him awake. And I think he's had a heart attack or died. I don't know what's going on. I'm yelling to my wife, call 911. I'm trying to get his door open, but his doors are locked. And I'm trying to reach up to hit the unlock button because the thing's only half open.

And me yelling and saying, you all right, you all right? He perks up and like take stock of the situation and just goes off through the green light so now i feel like i'm like complete not complicit but i feel like it's like become my responsibility that he's gonna i don't know he's gonna die kill somebody i call 9-1-1 my wife had already called 9-1-1 she got sick of waiting on hold and gave me the phone. She went in to try to find, she had left my daughter's swimsuit somewhere. She went in to try to find my daughter's swimsuit.

I waited, waited, waited. She came out. I was still on hold and I was like, ah, he's gone now. It's just someone else's problem. I never had that happen to me. I'm not like a habitual 911 dialer. 911 is apparently in a lot of of places it's not that good anymore i was i mean i was shocked how long did it take how long was she on hold for man i want to say

10 minutes but i don't i don't know i don't want to exam i wasn't really paying it i was kind of pre i wasn't really watching him i was a little bit preoccupied, but like a long time, you know. God, that's depressing. That's so depressing. There's never been a time in my life where I felt like things have broken down as much as they have over the last three years. Yeah, yeah. Just like, what the fuck? And the thing about things breaking down is, boy, they can break down quick, but building them back up again, that takes a long time.

Yeah. That takes a long time. You'll be able to see that play out in Ukraine at some point in time. Yeah, for sure. I mean, those fucking buildings that are destroyed, too. How do they rebuild? They have cities that are just completely leveled. I don't know.

How do they even build that back up? In the back of my head, looking at them, I was like, man, how do you, yeah, how do you, you know, I don't know. It's decades, decades and decades and decades and decades. Yeah. It's depressing. And, you know, our only hope is that it doesn't get worse. That's your only hope at this point in time. It's just like somehow or another it doesn't continue to decelerate or accelerate rather.

Mm-hmm. I'm reading a terrible book about this too. What is it? In the middle of this book called The Kill Chain. It's all about how China has a technological superiority over America because our systems don't communicate with each other and we don't have machine learning with all our military systems and how far behind they are in terms of what's available and what they have available in terms of artificial. They're comparing right now computers now that can beat people in the game Go, which I don't really understand, but apparently it's very sophisticated, and also StarCraft II, which is a very complicated game and

now computers are just wiping out the best players in the world and not making any mistakes and and how that kind of computer learning is being applied in China but it's not being applied in America and that all of our systems are kind of antiquated and that we update hardware first and then software so like we don't have like you, you know how your phone is constantly upgrading? They're comparing that. When they learn new things and they find exploits and they patch them up, you get an update on your phone. Yeah.

They don't have that. So it's like they're really fucked in terms of also the military branch's ability to communicate with other military branches. They essentially have to call each other. It's not good. What's the book? It's called The Kill Chain. It's not good.

The Kill Chain, it refers to systems, like that these systems have to work in conjunction with each other in order to be successful. Sure, yeah. And this thesis of this book is that it's not, they don't work together at all. And that it's very bad. And then if we do wind up in some sort of a real large international conflict, we're kind of fucked. It's very depressing. And how China has been working towards this goal for a long time. And they have the advantage of their government completely controls all of their businesses. So the businesses only work within the interest of the Chinese government.

Yeah. More depression. No, sounds like I'm reading a book called Rising Wolf, The White Blackfoot. What is that? I first, oh, it's a book about this kid. It's a book about this kid in the 1700s that, I'm sorry, 1800s, that came out with the Hudson Bay Company up into the vicinity of Calgary and then was assigned out to the Blackfeet.

And the Blackfe feet took him south and he and he just wrote his chronicles spending a bunch of time with the black feet oh wow that's fascinating dude and before i read it i contacted our mutual friend dan flores to see if he was on the up and up because i've read historic accounts that later dan would be like yeah that guy played a little fast and loose with the reality. But he was saying that this guy checks out, like his account is regarded by historians to be fairly accurate. Wouldn't that be one of the,

there it is right there. Wow, look at these guys. Wow, that's him. Could you imagine living back then, man? No, it's just amazing. I mean, he experienced amazing stuff i don't know if it's like you know reading books about the past versus the future i don't think i've ever read a single book i don't think i've ever read a single non-fiction book about the future

really ever i don't think i ever have only about the past they don't know i mean it's all speculation a non-fiction book about the future is like it could be proved completely full of shit in just a couple of years yeah it's probably feels pretty dicey writing books yeah by the time you publish it there's probably something comes out that completely disproves your whole idea yeah no it's uh i don't know if i find more comfort and uh but i don't know if i read for comfort but yeah i've i've never read a book about like like what you're looking at like uh um you know i like i just like books about shit that are i like books about shit that already happened like after an election i like reading people after an election i like reading books about where people analyze what happened yeah i would never read a book that came out right now that was telling me what was going to happen at the next election.

Right. Right. How the fuck could they know? Yeah. So it's like once it all happens, I like to look at it. The elections are fascinating to me because I don't particularly have an opinion about election fraud, but I do have an opinion on fraud. And it always exists. There's always been people that are full of shit that are manipulating things and saying that they're not. And we're finding this out now with Twitter. Now that Elon Musk purchased Twitter

and he's finding that, you know, they literally had FBI people embedded in Twitter that were holding back information from him. Like there was a guy that he fired that was an FBI guy that worked for the FBI at one point in time and now was one of the head guys at Twitter and was withholding information from him while he was trying to release information about allegedly. I should say allegedly, so I don't get in trouble here with this. was saying essentially is this person was a bottleneck to releasing this data where they were trying to find out like why did president trump get banned you know what was going on in terms of shadow banning conservative people and how much how much coordination was going on inside the company to try to suppress certain ideologies and magnify other ones and it's pretty stunning i'd be curious i'm curious how much of that stuff's in there how hard it is to find and how much people were just being more discreet with text messages and phone

calls yeah there's probably a lot of that but you know i think with corporations they tend to do things on slack you know that they have an internal messaging system slack yeah so i don't use it but i know about it i think i think it's all recorded unfortunately i'm the only person i'm the only person in my company that doesn't use slack drives everybody crazy i'm just like i feel like there's like so many ways to get a hold of me you know like a fourth one yeah like you email me you call me you text me now i gotta have another one knock on your door i didn't even want him counting that yeah it's like holy if you text me now, I got to have another one. Knock on your door. I wouldn't even count that. Yeah.

It's like, holy shit, man. If I ever get to the point where this podcast has Slack, I'm going to sell it. You and Jamie can Slack all day? I'm going to sell it to AI. Because they can already do, they did an AI interview with me and Steve Jobs. I never met Steve Jobs. So they put together a podcast with me and Steve Jobs. Oh, yeah. I heard about that.

It's fucking wild because you listen to it and you'd believe it's true. Well, it's too bad that FTX collapsed because he was going to use his money to battle AI. He wanted to, you know, like this whole deal, the, what's it called? Effective altruism. Yeah. Part of his crusade when he got the dish now, you know, he was going to get around to dishing out the billions of dollars to charity and he was going to battle pandemics and AI. Interesting. So now that funding dried up.

I guess AI is coming for us after all. The funding of pandemics, the issue with that is that they fund research, and some of that research is gain-of-function research. And that's what they think led us into this whole fucking thing in the first place. And the government, well, Fauci most certainly didn't tell the truth about it and uh that's why elon made a tweet yesterday that his pronouns are prosecuted and everybody's going well i saw i don't you know i don't uh it's funny you can i can follow his i can follow his Twitter account by just reading the news. It's like, on one hand, every tweet he makes becomes an article in the Wall Street Journal. Yeah.

It's amazing. It's pretty crazy. You can take X number of characters and then basically say something and then have professional journalists turn it into 800 to a thousand word news pieces yeah yeah it's pretty great to have that be your reality for him just anybody if i could be like hey you know here's the thing i think and then and then someone would translate it into this really like well-thought article with pros and cons and quotes and shit you know i mean it's like an amazing machine. So I don't, I don't, I'm like, I'm very much in tune with everything he tweets without ever reading the tweets.

You know, this idea, like there's like an object in its shadow. His tweets are an object, but they make a shadow. Do you follow me? And I'm like looking at the shit, like i'm just like looking at the shadow all the time right it's incredible power yeah to have it's also an industry right because these people need things to write about and all you have to do is like just you always have resource you just go to his shit and immediately you can write a story yeah like if you don't know what what am i going to write about today ukraine is kind of what's the same old same old i need

something juicy. I've only, I've had that happen a couple of times and I had it happen recently where I was, I went duck hunting with Co Wetzel, who's a musician. And, and so I had a thing on Instagram where I was with Co and he had a thing on Instagram. And then the next day we saw a big article about our it was an article about our having hunted as though there was someone that was there it was like a reported piece based off pictures and captions whoa and they wrote like a reported piece I mean this has happened to you 10 times a day oh yeah it happens yeah I i hear about things and i i don't read anything about me but i hear about things from other people like what's going on with that thing

you know what are you talking about like yeah i read an article that you know people are upset because of this and that and like oh i'm a sucker for joe rogan story because i know you people send them to me it's so strange it's a strange strange time oh i feel bad i don't know maybe that's not the word man i feel bad is it bad i don't know maybe i feel bad for you the way that shit happens because you kind of want to you know that shit will happen and i'll kind of i don't know who to tell, you know. You kind of want to be like, man, you got it all wrong, man. But you don't know who to talk to. Well, it's weird because on one hand, it strengthens the group of people that know me and know the podcast and listen to the podcast.

But you get all these people that just get like a soundbite or get an article or the title of the article. And that's, look, I'm guilty of that. I the title of the article and that's like i'm guilty of that i read titles of articles and then that's i send them to my wife all the time she's like did you read it i go no she goes that's not really what it's all about i'm like yeah but the title's fucking juicy yeah no but that's that's what goes on today i was surprised by you a couple times when um uh that you don't like to even it's a little bit fatalistic on your part you don't even want to participate in journalism about you that's fatalistic yeah because you could do you know i mean even if you could get that one little quote and then it's not worth it. Yeah, but you don't even...

No. It's not... Well, first of all, for your mental health, it's not good. It's not good to think about yourself. I don't think that's very healthy. Certainly, it's not good to think about other people's opinions of yourself. I think that you... Then you're farming off your own opinions to other folks and letting them decide.

Yeah, but to have a... And I'll use the word, when I use the word credentialed, I don't mean flawless, but I mean like a somewhat vetted news organization. Is prepared, okay. Even the New York Times is sketchy today. It is.

Everybody is. Everybody's sketchy. Okay, here, let me take a break from my advice. Let me take a break from the advice I'm trying to give you to tell the story I heard the other day on NPR. This is like, I have, you know, so I'll argue, I was arguing with Giannis one day about, we were talking about something, and he was trying to argue that, like, of bias, there's like the least amount of bias here, there, wherever, right? And he had cited NPR as being, he felt lower on bias than many others but there I heard a story where they're talking about climate change activists destroying famous works of art okay yeah and they had they sort of like gave a soft condemnation of the practice, but then said,

it just goes to show how artwork remains relevant and part of the dialogue. Oh God. And I was like, I'm trying to imagine if QAnon people were sabotaging major works of art, what the coverage would be like. Yes. That's a good point. Do you know what I'm saying? Yes, yeah.

And it was just, I don't even think they can see it. Well, the problem is QAnon. I support climate change activists. Therefore, I have to act lukewarmish on the morality of destroying works of international significance. Right? And I'm like, you would never do that if it was a different people trashing these works. No, no, never.

When the Taliban blew up the Buddha. Right. Were they like, wow, you know, it just goes to show, you know, how important that artwork is. Never. You know what I'm saying? There's no way they would have done it. Right.

The QAnon may be not the best example. No, it's a shitty example. It's so easily disproven. Yeah, it's a shitty example. But maybe more like Tea Party people. Sure. Tea Party people. Pro-life individuals.

Right-wing ideology. Yeah, like pro-life individuals destroying works of art. Yeah. They would not on NPR go like, eh, eh. In defense of those people that are doing that, they're not really destroying the works of art. They're throwing soup at glass. Because all those works of art are protected. Yeah, chanting themselves.

They describe some item as gunk. I don't know what that was. I thought that was shoddy journalism. Oh, back to my advice, though. Okay. was i thought that was shoddy journalism going oh back to my advice though okay so i feel like like you i know you know about it there was a piece and i don't know if it was the new york times and new york times magazine about you how long ago i don't know they someone had asked me to comment i said do i you know you're like i'm not talking to him i'm not going

anywhere near it that one wasn't that bad. I heard about that one. No, but why did you not get in there? Why would I? I put out enough content. People can form their own opinions. Isn't that funny though? No one pays attention to all the content you put out. Not that no one does, but you know what I'm saying?

It'd be like, you talk for, I don't know, how many hours a week do you talk? A lot. Yeah. Yeah. But then someone will talk for you and it gets a lot of gravity it doesn't get as much gravity as each episode probably not no not even no you're right you're right i can see your point i can see your point the amount of people that listen to each episode dwarfs everything that's ever been written about me ever for sure so there's that i'm not

saying like that's a problem i mean sure rationally I understand the numbers but I'm saying hmm like that's a that's an interesting approach you I don't think you can continually engage again I don't think you can't have a hit piece no one can make a hit piece it's gonna no one's gonna make a hit piece on you that's gonna reach more eyeballs than you yeah well if I was just like an actor on a show that would be a real problem if someone makes a hit piece about you. Because you lose your position on the show. Yeah, you lose your position on the show for sure. And also you don't have an outlet to explain yourself other than those other media outlets and you're subject to their bias.

Yeah. You know? But this is a weird – we're in outrage culture. We're in a culture of clicks and clickbait. And everybody just wants things to be outrageous and incite anger. And that's also accentuated by the algorithm of social media, which is a real problem. I don't know if you ever watched that documentary, The Social Dilemma. Oh, yeah.

Fucking terrifying. Oh, no, no, no, no. No, I didn't watch that. I watched the one, Social Network. Sorry, wrong couple decades. Not terrifying. Oh, no, no, no, no. No, I didn't watch that. I watched the one Social Network. Sorry, I was wrong a couple decades. Not terrifying. Wrong a couple decades. No, but I still have that actor.

Like, whenever I hear Mark Zuckerberg, I always think of the actor. Yeah. Not Mark Zuckerberg, you know? I didn't ask him what he thought about that when I had him in here. But he's a reasonable- No, I haven't watched Social Dilemma. He's a reasonable person. I saw you had him on, but I haven't listened to that.

He's a very reasonable guy. He's a very nice guy. Like, you talk to him outside of it. Again, didn't want that. Didn't try to become that person. Was trying to make a social media, like, application for people in college where they could, like, write stuff about themselves. No, wasn't it, like, I don't like no wasn't it like i don't know wasn't like a dating thing or something well i i can't i'm too i'm not

i don't know i definitely i know there was some part of that shit that it was like hot or not remember that were you like upped or downed i didn't watch the movie oh okay well i mean in the history of the thing there's some part of it where it was like, like I said, I shouldn't, because there's literally millions of people that know this history better than me, so I'm going to back out on saying what I'm going to say, because I'm probably fucked up about it. I think all he was trying to do was make like a MySpace type deal. You know, make some sort of innocuous social media thing. And no one knew that social media would ever become what it is now. So now you got this guy that's in charge of this company that literally affects the way world politics go. And like they can overthrow governments with propaganda using his platform. And in countries, when you buy a phone,

that's like the thing that comes preloaded on your phone. And like they think of internet as Facebook. Like that's what they use for messaging. That's what they use for everything. And it's billions and billions of people. And imagine like being that guy. And, you know, he's constantly attacked too everything that he says gets scrutinized and analyzed and put under a microscope and that's got to be a very

bizarre way to live as well oh yeah i'd crawl into a deep dark hole because he didn't ask for that that's not what he was trying to do you know and this podcast i didn't try to make it this big i just kept doing it yeah that's all i did uh i think i can't remember if i ever asked you about this or not but i think a thing that happens and i puzzle over it is the idea that if no i did ask you about this once the idea that as more people listen to you, you have more of a responsibility to like reflect. Yeah. As more people listen to you,

you have more responsibility to not be whimsical or goofy or say crazy shit just to stir the pot. I never say crazy shit just to stir the pot. I'd say it for fun like if there's comedians in here and we're talking shit we say crazy shit just for fun like there's this podcast i do called protect our parks and it's a joke name because ari one of the guys that i do it with ari shafir he there was a park in new york city that they were going to level and now it's like fucking condos they're going to put a prison there and a park in New York City that they were going to level and now it's like fucking condos

they're going to put a prison there and a bunch of shit and he was like it's a fucking great park this is bullshit you know like so do what you can to try to and so we were ragging on him like he's saying Ari we got to protect this park Ari and they obviously they did level it

you know so the name of the podcast became protect our parks just for fun but that is the most ridiculous podcast ever like we just four of us we're always high and drunk and we're talking crazy shit and just talking over each other and it's just really rowdy and nuts but there's no responsibility it's like that it's not responsible at all yeah completely irresponsible podcast but it's not a purpose. Like, it's not like we're doing it to try to stir people up.

We're just doing it to talk shit and have fun. That's the benefit of being a comedian though. Like you always have that. Like you, like if you say something outrageous, it's like, it's not really what you mean. Just talking shit,

just having fun. Yeah. But people will, this is a weird time where people will pretend that talking shit is not a thing that everything you say cannot be ingest at all and you know if you take it and put it in a quote in an article like it you know like joking around opinions could be completely misconstrued what's your take on um i just read a piece the other day in the journal it's about a executive at apple an apple executive who's a car enthusiast yeah have you already talked about this no no we haven't

but yeah so there's a there's a tiktoker whose shtick is that he'll at he'll catch people in luxury cars i gather noteworthy cars and his like, hey, what do you do for a living? He approaches an Apple executive. The detail that matters to me the most is the guy's with his wife. He's not at a work function and he's with his wife, which totally changes how he answers.

Yeah. He's with his wife and he decides to quote a movie that's becoming increasingly obscure as the years go by, which is the movie Arthur. Which is like a comedy about a drunk. Who is that? Dudley Moore. 1981.

Okay. And he says, someone says, what do you do for a living? And he said he's trying to be funny and he quotes Arthur. Let's play it. Oh, here we go. That's awesome. What do you do for a living? I race cars, play golf, and fondle big-breasted women. But I take weekends and major holidays off.

Oh, God. That is quite the career. I'm looking to get into that. His wife is laughing. If you're interested, I've got a hell of a dental plan. Oh, God. You do it all. You do it all.

And you participate in this activity. His wife is laughing hilariously. She thinks it's funny. that guy's job ain't no more yeah they fired him for that and i was trying to explain it to my wife the other day and you know what though i was trying to explain it to her um in the aftermath of my 911 incident here in austin so we didn't get her full take it's pretty apple exec was fired after being caught on video joking about fondling big-breasted women, said he stayed up all night trying to get the TikTok down before it went viral. Imagine being that TikTok dude and having that dude get a hold of you to say take it down. You're like in a real, that might be you really feeling like you had a lot of sway for that moment he was in

the company for 22 years 22 years and they fought they fired him for quoting a movie a joke a joke quoting a movie which his wife who was right next to him thought it was hilarious yeah it's a it's a tough one this is a fucking bizarre time of recreational outrage. The idea that someone would be actually outraged at him quoting that movie in front of his wife. Like, that is crazy. And that you could lose your job for that. It almost makes me want to not buy an Apple phone. It really does. It just makes me so angry that you would do something so stupid.

You know, we're in the strangest of strange times when it comes to that shit because the purity test is impossible for every especially when you catch someone like that you know that no one's passing those these purity tests you know you catch you probably just fucking around having a great time driving this beautiful car at a car event right wasn't it a car event just trying to have fun being a car event? Just trying to have fun. Being silly. Bye. Yeah. Yeah, that's your public take on breasts.

Forever. I know. I read that, and I was like, oh, that's a really difficult one. That's a really difficult one. It's horrible. And the thing is, the company would face backlash if they didn't do that. But how much? And for how long? Like, you know, like say, although we don't condone it, the guy could say, I'm sorry, I was just quoting a movie.

I thought it was funny. I realized it was offensive. My apologies. And I'm going to donate all this money to big-breasted women who have back problems. Sure. But the fact that they face zero backlash for firing that guy, that's disturbing because they're, they're incentivized to make the worst choice. The worst choice is to fire this guy for something silly. Just a joke.

Yeah. The tonality of the thing I read was, was had, I don't know, man, I read between the lines a little bit of eye roll, but it wasn't condemnation. Condemnation is appropriate for that. Not for him, but for the company. No, that's what I mean. It was a little bit of like, wow. I mean, because like I said, it pointed out like his wife, you know, I don't know why it changes so much for me that his wife was there, but it changes a lot for me. It does, because if he was just some playboy, some guy who's just working at Apple, making millions and being a jerk.

But even then, it's not being a jerk. He's quoting a movie. And his wife thought it was hilarious. She's right next to him. She thinks it's so funny. And he's an older guy, so he remembers Arthur. I remember that quote. See if you can find the quote from Arthur.

This was reported in September when it happened happened the video was recorded in august uh this had the incident i suppose happened in september but why don't i just read about it the other day i know these articles i'm seeing are just posted this past week i'm wondering why it's going around again now it's kind of seems the timing is a little weird well he's been talking about it now oh that might be why he sat he sat for a portrait in the journal article. So he's going on like a press run about it. Well, you know, he might be fixing to take some legal. Okay.

He probably is, and justifiably so. I mean, is that... Come on. But you know what, man? We're also doing... You know what? We're doing the... Let me re-approach this

you might remember that you recently had bill mair bar mar yeah mar you know on on your show and i listened to that with great interest and he had he was talking about you know he's like historically regarded as like you know very noteworthy liberal, but he was expressing, you know, that the left gives them so much good material and his kind of crusade against present culture and certain things around free speech and all that. And that conversation, this one we're having right now, got me to thinking that, that you almost can fall into the same trap. And I don't even know how it's different.

Is the outrage, recreational outrage, at what point is the recreational outrage about this stuff become its own form of recreational outrage? Like, you know, you hear it, you hear crazy stuff from any spectrum, right? You hear it, you hear crazy stuff from any spectrum, right? You hear crazy stuff and you're like, this has gone too far. You're like, jeez, I'm just like everybody, you know? Yeah. I'm sort of like becoming everybody else. Yeah.

Because I sit around being like, holy cow, really? With his wife? I wonder where it goes. That's the thing. Because it seems to be accelerating. Like if that guy did that 10 years ago, no one would bat an eye. Yeah. But now it's outrageous.

Listen, man. And the grounds for firing. It definitely, I mean, I have definitely, and not only in a, up saying in the atmosphere where like in the atmosphere i grew up like very normal things to say i have definitely taken note that um it's hurtful to some people it's hurtful to people and i don't get that much out of saying i'm not like sacrificing something right growing up i mean it's just i mean without you know you could sit around all day and talk about how it you know it didn't mean anything um whatever uh just like stupid shit you'd say in junior high. Right. And now, you know, over the time that's gone on, I've realized, you know, I don't know why I didn't think about saying that. I definitely don't need to say that. It's not what I think.

It's not how I feel. I'll happily expunge that from the old vocabulary. Right. Right. I mean, it just happens. Yeah. It just happens. Yeah, it just happens. And it's that that that sort of self-censorship and the idea of being a more empathetic person is a good thing. Right. But as long as it's reasonable. But the thing is, the problem with that kind of stuff is it continues to go in the same direction where more and more things become forbidden and toxic to the point where, you know, the Elon Musk joking around

about my pronouns are prosecute Fauci. Jimmy Kimmel made a tweet back to him. He said, your pronouns are ass and hole, which is pretty funny. But then... Did he really? Yes. And so then I read that and there was people saying, please don't joke about pronouns.

It's transphobic to joke about pronouns. So they were chiding him for participating in a joke about pronouns. Hon, so Jimmy Kimmel was doing it. Oh, yeah. He was doing it, too. Yeah, he was doing it, too. No, he was being accused of joking about it, too. Yes.

So they were upset at him, even though he was attacking the appropriate person. He was doing it in a manner which is also construed as being transphobic. They were saying that his tweet is transphobic. In that case, do you think that's him or a writer? Can't you tell? Jimmy Kimmel? No, it's him, for sure. Okay.

Yeah, definitely. That's a good one. He's a comic. That's a good one. I mean, he used to host The Man Show. I mean, he's done some pretty outrageous shit back in the day. Yeah. You know, for hee-hees and ha-ha's.

No, that's a good joke on top of a good joke. Yeah, it's a good joke. Funny thing to say. He's had a real problem with Elon from the beginning of this thing. But it's like he's in this leftist thought bubble he's in the most leftist thought bubble available which is Hollywood and you know and I think also you know he famously there's some videos of him in blackface and those came out and he had apologized for them and I think he took that hit and like really doubled down the other direction i mean that's just speculation but he you know now

is a guy that goes after people like elon musk yeah which is you know he's elon is thought of as being because he's willing to uh put people on with uncomfortable opinions and he's he's like releasing people that were banned from twitter uh because because of things that they had said he's like as long as you haven't done anything illegal i'll let you back on no no so he's doing a lot of that so it's a lot of people are upset by that because they think you know well you're you're platforming bigots and hateful people and it's a fucking it's a it's a weird conversation because i'm i'm a free speech believer i think the way to counter someone's inappropriate even someone like kanye west that says ridiculous shit uh anti-semitic things the way to counter that is to counter that with

more thoughtful opinions on what he's saying and point out that what he's saying is inaccurate in many ways hurtful in many ways like point it out like talk let's have discussion don't silence the guy would you have him on the problem you invite I remember one time you invited him to come on long years ago he was on oh yeah he's been on oh yeah yeah sorry I remember you inviting him to come on about like years ago. It's like no one wants to talk about mental health. I remember you said like, yeah, said something to the effect of any time, but I didn't know that. Oh, it's a good conversation to listen to if you want to understand how he works, because he he works in rants, these long and sometimes when you're ranting you know especially when you're a guy like that you really don't exactly know what the fuck you're saying while you're saying it you're sort of justifying it while you're saying it and you're like working stuff out in real time and sometimes you go down roads that are just not fruitful that's like me yelling at my kids man you gotta back up and regroup and unfortunately for him he does not do that he doubles down

and then he continues to double down and then it's gotten worse and he posted a star of david that was wrapped up in a swastika he just you know yeah what made him a i've said this ad nauseam but what made him a great rapper is he's incredibly prolific and wildly creative like he's just he can just go and go and go the problem with that when you apply that to talking about serious issues is like it's not just a rap lyric it's it's your opinion on things and you know his opinion the way he raps is like everything's got like so much power behind it. It's just bam, bam, bam. And his music and the beats and everything.

And it's just overwhelming. But with dialogue, it requires a more thoughtful understanding of how people are going to interpret what you're saying. And I don't think he thinks that way. I think he just rants. Yeah. thinks that way i think he just rants yeah there was a i should remember better details on it but there was a it was a legal question again i can't remember what state it was was whether your music could be used against you in court to capture your state of mind oh wow, wow. I bet Jamie'd find that in no time. The problem with that is, like, people absolutely say things in rap lyrics and rock and roll lyrics that are theatrical.

It's not that they mean that. It's just like Quentin Tarantino's dialogue in a film. Yeah. He's making a character, and what he means from that character is you know he's trying to paint a film trying to paint a picture inside of a film yeah it's like that old it's like that old joe rogan joke how come no one's mad at uh um johnny cash for killing the man just to watch him die exactly exactly and guess what bob marley never really shot the sheriff. That was not real. Proposed federal bill to limit music lyrics being used as evidence. Jesus.

It's more about specific acts that were committed and when and where they were committed. Oh, like details of crimes. Okay, yeah. Well, that's the thing about, like, gangster rap is that they will actually detail specific things that they've been accused of, which is more problematic. Oh. It's like OJ's book, If I Did It. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. I had a copy of that. I think my wife threw it out because I can't find it. She's tight-lipped. Somebody gave me. I forget who. Some comic gave me a signed copy of OJ's If I Did It. Really? Yeah. I never even cracked the book

i don't even think i ever even i think it was sealed you better watch out because he'll break into your house trying to get his shit back it'll be his own you'll think it's his own memorabilia i think he's done with that isn't it amazing that that's what he went to jail for yeah there's that uh norm mcdonald bit where it's uh him trying to establish his bona fides in prison and he's like well hey man i killed my wife and a waiter you know they're like no you did not like the fellow prisoners can't take him seriously right trying to establish his bona fides that's funny funny. No, you were acquitted, bro. That shit ain't real.

All you did is get your merch back at gunpoint. Yeah. Did you ever see the rap video that OJ Simpson did? Mm-mm. OJ Simpson, when he got out, he- Oh, I heard about it, but never saw it. Yeah, with naked women. Did a rap music video with scantily clad women where he's like dressed

wasn't he dressed like a king? Wearing like a crown and a cape and shit. Something like that. We played it before. It's pretty ridiculous. No I didn't know about it. But you know

I think there was a time where he was just trying to figure out a way to make money and he just leaned into it. Dude that big ESPN documentary was phenomenal man.

On him? Yeah. I never saw it. Really? Made in America no dude that documentary my god it's good it's long it's a real commitment that documentary starts out talking about like la okay the layout of la and the different neighborhoods and where the sports stadium is located and you're like how in the world are these people going to bring this home an oj documentary and holy shit do they yeah i mean it is if you want to understand i'm gonna say what if you want to greatly enhance your understanding of money, celebrity, justice in America, made in America, it's phenomenal.

It's good. I feel like you'd like it the most. I'll check it out. I didn't even know it existed. Oh, yeah, it's unbelievable. Yeah, I never heard of it. It's unbelievable. And I'm sitting there thinking, man, these guys are losing a lot of viewers right now when it began.

Because I thought people were like, I want the part about the blood. There it is. Best documentary feature. OJ Made in America. Can you remember where you were when they read the verdict? Oh, yeah. I remember where I was when they read the verdict, and I remember where I was during the car chase. Oh, yeah. I remember where I was when they read the verdict. I remember where I was during the car chase. Oh, yeah. I was in a bar in Muskegon, Michigan, called Bo Nicky's with Eric Kern, my late friend.

Wow. During the car chase and the verdict was read. I was renting. I was renting a home in Grand Rapids, Michigan, with some dudes I didn't really know. And I was cutting through the living room. And they were watching. I was at a... I was probably going out to some other bar. I was at a bar too. I was at Boston Comedy.

It was a comedy club in the village. We had heard about it. And we're like, what the fuck is going on? OJ Simpson is in a car chase with the cops. And Made in America, they talked to some of the jurors. And the jurors were like, it was never about whether he did it. It wasn't for me. Yeah.

Well, it was after Rodney King. Yeah. It was about LAPD. It was about LA. I mean, they kind of flat out say it. My mind wasn't totally there as much as it was about LA, LAPD. That's what I was here to talk about. I'm paraphrasing, but more or less.

It's like trying to figure out how to fix policing. It's like clearly the way to fix policing is not give them unlimited power and let them do whatever they want to do. That's not the way to do it. So is the way to do it to diminish their power greatly and diminish public perception of the police and public opinion of the police to where it is now or where it was during the George Floyd riots at least? No, that's not how to do it. Like defund the police. That's not how to do it. I think that's ridiculous, man.

It's ridiculous. and maybe even elevating the position of being a police officer to make it more difficult to achieve and make it pay better and make them much more highly trained and, you know, treated almost like the way you would treat like special ops groups in the military, you know, where it's an honor to be a part of that group. And it's a very difficult power to attain because to be a police officer in some places in the country it's pretty fucking easy they don't have a lot of cops and you know and you see some cops and they're just grossly overweight like some of the saddest things to me are uh these uh breakdowns that they do like um on video they'll do like uh martial arts breakdowns of how bad cops are at uh physical altercations oh i've never seen Yeah, there's a bunch of them. I can picture that being like ripe for comedy in some respects. It's ripe for comedy, but it's also ripe for jujitsu instruction.

Oh, no kidding. So you're using the actual practical way. Yeah, because they're talking about how piss poor these guys are. Yeah, I'm with you. Imagine like your job is to enforce the law, which may or may not include deadly force, and restraining people. And you don't know how to restrain people. You have no idea how to do it. That's a big part of the job is to be physically capable of engaging in one-on-one hand-to-hand combat with a person. And you have zero ability.

Yeah. Which is wild. And then to learn it rough enough that you're able to do it without doing like way overblown response. Yeah. And then to learn it wrote enough that you're able to do it without doing like way overblown response. of a similar thing I feel about the polarality in America, where you have your experience, you have your lived experience, and then you have the experience that you understand to be true from the news. So from the news, you understand that we're in this period of tremendous divisiveness and America splitting apart at the seams. No one wants to engage anymore in a civil function.

Everything's, we're perched on the edge of violence. Okay. You get that. But then you analyze what is going on in your life as you go about your life like having a job raising kids engaging with the the the public school professionals where your kids go traveling around the country riding with with uber drivers dealing with whoever okay and you you'd be like you if someone wasn't telling you it was happening you wouldn't know that it's happening. Right.

This is a very personal experience for me. I wouldn't know. I would think that we were still having this kind of like an experience of American mutual respect across a bunch of different things. Like, that's my experience. Same thing. I grew up where if you saw cops,'d like turn the radio down right or being like a little bit worried about game wardens because you're probably doing something a little bit like you weren't supposed to do um but now uh in dealing with many law enforcement officials i deal with either at work or otherwise

law enforcement officials i deal with either at work or otherwise like i wouldn't see it yeah i wouldn't see i wouldn't see it that the profession was be called was that the profession itself was being called into question you know because it's not your lived experience yeah it's just like i don't you know i don't get it and a lot of people tell you well that's part of the problem because you you know your your privilege in so many ways so that's your experience but just funny to live in these to live in these realities like dual realities of what you understand to be occurring and then what you're seeing occurring you know yeah yeah that is a problem and it also you're dealing with the problems that are occurring to millions and millions of people, in fact, billions all over the world. And the only thing that you read about is things that are bad.

Yeah. That's a problem too. I was trying to enforce that with people when they have opinions of police officers. I'm like, you know, cause there's so many videos of cops doing shady shit. I'm like, yes, there's bad people at every profession. Every fucking profession that exists is just because some people just have poor character. They're just not good at what they do. But there's millions of interactions with cops and people every day. And nothing goes wrong. And they're fine and peaceful.

But you don't take that into account. So like when you're making – when you have an understanding of what's happening in the world in terms of people and their interactions with police officers, it's very biased by the information that you've been subjected to. And that information is almost entirely negative because you're only dealing with the stuff that you see that's horrible unless you've had personal experiences. see that's horrible unless you've had personal experiences. And then your personal experiences vary greatly depending upon the color of your skin, your economic situation, what part of the world you're living in. You know, I have friends that are black and they talk about getting pulled over and they said they are terrified. They feel like they could get shot at any moment where I have never experienced that. I'm always very respectful to the cops. I don't think they think, well, obviously a lot of them know who I am, so that's not a problem too. But'm always very respectful to the cops. I don't think they think, well, obviously a lot of them know who I am, so that's not a problem too, but it's, it's very different for, and to try to

get like a balanced, nuanced perspective of our problem with police and policing and crime in this country, it's very difficult to be objective, especially if you've had a horrible negative personal experience or a personal experience of someone that you're close to. It's weird. And it's also – this is also an information issue because you're juggling so much information. You have so much data to process and to try to put it all together and have a nuanced objective analysis of what it really is. nuanced objective analysis of what it really is. One time I was at a, I was in New York and I was going to a meeting with some,

there was these, these restaurant owners, fairly high profile restaurant owners, and they were looking to do this, this book project about their restaurant. And I wasn't a totally established writer at the time, and I was interested in doing this work for them. My agent set me up to have dinner with them. I'm going through a subway, and I didn't know about the knife rules in New York City. I had, uh, as I do now,

I have a pocket knife clipped to my, um, pocket. So the clips out and the knives in, and I realized just kind of this bum sort of like walking real close to me. And I look at him kind of like, what the fuck, you know?

And he flashes a badge at me and he takes me into this little room down in the subway system in New York. A bum. So a fake bum. Fake bum. Whoa. And I get, I had an Alaska driver's license. So he's like, ask me a bunch of questions about Palin. So I hung out with her.

Palin. So I hung out with her. And then I get a concealed deadly. I don't know. They take my knife. I get a court date. And I can't remember what the crime was. Something to do with like a deadly weapon wielding.

I don't know what the hell it was. It was like a real thing, right? I get a court date, but I get let go. I don't get arrested. I get detained and let go minus my knife with a court date. I go to my meeting. I'm now late for my meeting. I go to my meeting and it's a husband and wife team, financial partners in this restaurant stuff. I go like, Hey, I'm late. financial partners in this restaurant stuff. I go like, hey, I'm late. You'll never guess what. And I got a ticket.

He takes my ticket and goes into a back room. The dude's not in that back room five minutes. And he comes out and says, you can tear that ticket away. You can tear that ticket up. And I go, really? And he goes, yeah, it's done. And he goes, but I mean, really, you need to pull that ticket out right now and tear it up.

And it was over. So, oh, here's another thing. Why did you need to tear it up? He didn't want me having it as a souvenir. Oh, wow. Which I would love to have had it as a souvenir. You know what I'm saying? Another time, so another time,

my wife thinks I tell this story way too much for the relevance of it, but I got a drunken disorderly conduct. I got in a skirmish. I got beat up by the cops a little bit, but I had it coming. My buddy Fitz likes to point out that 45 minutes before this happened, I had said in about 45 minutes I'm going to be out of control. I'm supposed to be leaving for graduate school, scared shitless. You know, my dad realizes that, I don't know. It's like through like his church through the church he went to, he somehow find someone that

knows someone, right? I walk out of there getting a refund on my bail. Like my bail was 250 bucks. I got a $225 refund. And he asked me if I could afford the 25 bucks. Walked out the door. Because he found people that knew people. So you could grow up like with that shit. Yeah. And be like, have a way different understanding of how, you know what I mean?

Of what you can get away with. The legal process, right? You know what I mean? Of what you can get away with. The legal process, right? And I could have been not had that, a father with that level of ambition who didn't go to that church and might have been like, I didn't go to graduate school. Right. Because I had resisting arrest.

I had resisting arrest charges. Yeah. But all of a sudden I didn't. Because of connections. Imagine being Hunter Biden. Oh. yeah but all of a sudden i didn't now imagine connections imagine being hunter biden oh you feel like you get away with anything yeah and i'm listen my dad my dad never finished high school right so it's like he's not like he's not like that wasn't like that kind of power player right he's just a dude in the community that that started with the people at church and found his way doing like something very natural which is like protect your you know your kid screwed up protect your kid

yeah so yeah you can wind up with you know and uh you know i'm just saying it's more as like full disclosure and me saying that like my existence has led me to have certain things like i've had some should happen where for a lot of people that's not how it would have gone down right you could have done some jail time sure yeah or worse i had to be there all night you know that story there's a woman who got pulled over by the cops it's a pretty famous story of abuse he this woman gets pulled over by the cops and she's smoking in her car. And I think she wasn't doing anything crazy, like maybe speeding a little bit. Nothing crazy.

But she's smoking a cigarette in her car and the cop tells her to put the cigarette out. And she's like, why should I? I don't have to put the cigarette out. And he's like, get out of the car. And she's like, I'm not getting out of the car. Like, why are you detaining me? And he manhandles her arrests her she winds up dead in her cell what yeah because the secondhand smoke no no no yeah i mean yeah that but i mean winds up

they said she committed suicide but it's very suspicious the whole thing is very suspicious oh i do remember yeah remember that story no it's coming back that that that that claim is reminding me of the story but i didn't remember that that was the details that it was just about like whether or not you know she had the authority to smoke or not yeah i mean how do you not have the authority to smoke in your car i mean if a cop pulls you over it's one thing if he's arresting you and you you know you've done something horrible you got coke and guns in your car and you're a fucking psychopath but you're just speeding. And he's on some power trip and he tells you you have to put your cigarette out.

You don't want to. So he drags you out of your fucking car and puts you in a cage. And then somehow or another she winds up dead. And they said she committed suicide. But it's very suspicious. The whole thing is just like and it's a story of abuse. It's like and you can watch the video of it you watch the video from his squad car of him being abusive you know that's someone's different experience oh yeah and she's a black woman you know he's a white cop and that that kind of video

that's the those kind of videos and there's many of them that's what really accentuates this distrust that so many people particularly people of color you know people ethnicities minors minorities rather have this issue with police because that that's real you know that doesn't happen to me you know probably happen to you as I explained it doesn't yeah also as I explained it doesn't have to be one of those guys the cop tells me to you. As I explained, it doesn't. Yeah. Also, as I explained, it doesn't happen to me. One of those guys, the cop tells me to put it out.

I'll say, yes, sir. I'll put it out. Yeah. I'm not interested in like, I, you know,

when, if I ever get in a situation with a cop, I'm, it's all, sir. And, Oh, after my,

after my idiotic, uh, episode that one night, which was, it was at a, it was at like a um it was at muskegon summer festival or some shit like that i remember it was bob dylan's kid was playing jacob dylan remember uh wallflowers i've had him on the podcast yeah nice guy yeah it was him he was playing oh uh

what was i just getting at oh after that whole thing happened and I was like so stupid and really did something really stupid um my

my tonality in dealing with getting like pulled over for traffic violations is to be like my tonality is to be like uh

man I am so sorry for wasting your time yeah that's a good perspective yeah I mean cops are My tonality is to be like, man, I am so sorry for wasting your time. Yeah. That's a good perspective. Yeah. I mean, cops are, the amount of PTSD cops have is very underappreciated. The way they live their life, like anytime you pull someone over, you get shot in the face. At any second.

Sure, man. Shit can go. And there's a lot of those videos too. People don't think about that i mean the the job itself there's probably very few people that can do that job and come out of it and not be really fucked up you know i know a lot of cops from my years of martial arts and people i know that have you know seen horrific shit like that that are cops they're all fucked up all of them you know every day they're seeing something uh i work with a retired um i work with a retired cop one day i was talking to him about we were looking at a list of states ranked for suicide in montana um where i live and where he's from is top of the list. Really?

Yeah. Why? My guess is you have a lot of extreme poverty and really bad situations on a lot of reservations. There are multiple five or six large reservations where

there's just a a legacy of um despair in some of these places a lot of military so i'm guessing i don't know um i don't i don't even remember looking at all the states to see if you could find some kind of commonality between them uh however i said and we're looking at this and i said man can you believe there were like blank suicides in montana and he said man i feel like i've been to half of them and you know that shit's oh man that must wear on you know what i mean that's got to wear on you there's no way it doesn't because you you know you you build your view of the world based on what you experience what you take in you know in terms of media and writing and then your physical experiences which are more profound and imagine if your physical experiences include a lot of suicide.

Mm-hmm. I got another buddy. I don't want to be like slightly more cryptic. Because I just don't want to, I want to conceal his identity a little bit. Though I'm not going to say anything that would peg him. But he grew up in a town of 9,000 people. So he spent his whole life there and became a cop late right he had another career and became a cop and his must been in his early 40s when he became a cop 9 000 people and he he was forever transformed after just a couple years because he

said i thought i knew my town and i thought i knew the people in my town i don't know how i went through life not knowing what's going on you've told me about this before yeah shit the the amount of the amount of spousal abuse the amount of child abuse the amount of substance abuse he's like i simply i don't know how i didn't know but i didn't know but it was under my nose all the time 9 000 people so and he says now i can't like it's my town's not my town or it is but it's not what it's not what i thought wow yeah your town you think of it as your neighbors they're friendly guy at the grocery store is friendly oh i live in a great place you know me mom behind doors people are doing meth and beating the fuck out of each other yeah

yeah that's the you know that's one of the big stories in this country is chemical abuse like how many people are hooked on pills how many people are fucked up and addicted to substances i mean it's just a tremendous problem that if you don't experience it personally, one-on-one, you really have no idea. You really don't know. And then, you know, you encounter someone who's dealing with that, and then you massive problem in this country. Chemical abuse, meth, pills, opiates, you name it, amphetamines. I mean, it's just, it's a huge, huge fucking problem. And with that comes all kinds of violence, all kinds of abuse. If you're a cop, that's all you see. that's all you see mm-hmm yeah and if you're a guy like you or me just goes to the office says how your friends people you work with goes home your kids your wife unless you zig when you should have zagged and you run into one of those no you really don't know no you go down to the Thanksgiving potluck at your kids school and you're like man this community's full people who are just really dedicated to their children. Yeah, it's funny, but it's also fucked. Yeah.

Man, this podcast took a fucking dour turn. I don't know, man. I don't know. You bring it out. Is it me? I think it's just the times. It's you and that book about China you've been reading. Oh, man, it's times. It's you and that book about China you've been reading. Oh, man, it's rough. It's disturbing.

International politics scares the shit out of me. This Brittany Griner trade for that arms dealer scares the shit out of me. Man, you know what's funny? So I had one passive under. I had like one understanding of it where I'm like, oh, so she broke a rule. The rule seems like not that big of a deal. It's nothing. But, you know, as my friend Chris recently said, rules is rules.

So she breaks a rule. And I'm like, holy shit, they're really like using her as a political pawn. Yeah. they're really like using her as a political pawn yeah and then they get her back with an arms dealer trade an arms dealer and you wonder about whether that's an asymmetrical somehow an asymmetrical trade but i don't know i don't know what's going on and then you and then you just it's kind of like oh glad glad she's back and then you and then talk about the outrage machine then you read like a narrative that'd be like uh we traded uh international arms dealer what's his nickname dr death or some shit merchant of death merchant of death for a dope smoker we didn't get the marine back

the person didn't want the national anthem played at their games. Right. And you go like, Oh, there's a, there's a narrative that I, you know what I mean? Yeah.

There's like a well-crafted narrative that I didn't put together. Have you ever seen Russia's take on it? No. Oh my God. It's, it's kind of crazy. Cause it turned out that they offered one or the other. They offered either Paul Whalen.

Oh, really? Yeah. Or that's what, that's what they're saying. Yeah. Well, They offered one or the other. They offered either Paul Whelan, who was the Marine. Yeah. That's what they're saying. Yeah. Well, that's what NBC was saying as well. Really? They redacted it and changed their story. But yeah, that's supposedly it was a one versus one. You could pick which one.

And in Russia, there's this political show show sort of like a fox news type show where they're making see if you can find it jamie i'll send it to you if you do do you know what it is i'm trying to pull it up it's just not the link so the um in this uh thing they're just completely mocking like well he's one you know she uh he has one thing going against him he is a man and also you know he is white. Meanwhile, in Russia, top state propagandists reveal the narrative they'll be pushing to harm Biden and enrage Americans about the exchange of Brittany Griner for Viktor Bout by falsely claiming that it wasn't Russia's decision to oppose Whelan's release as opposed to Greiner. So it's hard to say. This person who's saying this is saying that it was Russia's decision to oppose Whelan's release, who they think was spying. I don't know if he was or wasn't.

He may have been. May have been arrested for espionage. But see if you can find the video. It's going to be in Russian. They don't have it known. But you see the translation. Well, people are listening now. Yeah the video, because it's going to be in Russian. They don't have it? No, but you see the translation. Well, people are listening now. Yeah, we'll translate it.

He's got a great point, Joel. Yeah, he does. So, of course, I was very amused, but not surprised, that Bout was exchanged for Griner and not Whelan. First of all, I congratulate Bout and his entire family for many years. We have been in touch with his family and with him personally to the extent it was possible. We

communicated with him to the extent that we could. Of course, this is a huge joy and relief for all of us. I can't even imagine... I can't say anymore, Jamie. You touched it. Just go full screen. But he was not exchanged for the heroic spy

because he is a spy. Whelan is a spy. He was apprehended while receiving information on a flash drive. He said he was supposed to get photos of churches and Sergei Posad on a flash drive. You send the church photos to WhatsApp, right? That's where we get them.

Look where I've been. Quality would be decent, no worse than on a flash drive. He is a spy. Therefore, to them, he is a hero. He is a hero, decorated Marine, covered in medals. He only has one, no two, no three problems. His first problem is he is white. Second problem is he is a man.

Third problem, he is a heterosexual. And they're laughing. This is not something that can be forgiven today. It's just a catastrophe. Yet here Griner beats him in every aspect. American voters were given a choice. A hero who suffered while serving his fatherland. A metal-covered hero who suffered during his service

to his fatherland, the United States. Or a black lesbian hooked on drugs. Oh, Jesus. Who suffered for a vape with hashish, and well-known for the sake of PR. American voters are choosing the obvious. I think for us, it's one more piece of good news. First good news is that the bout has returned. The second good news is that a nation that spits on its heroes to the extent that it

considers it significantly more important to free a rightly charged, well-known athlete. She didn't suffer because she served her motherland, but because she couldn't live for 10 hours without her hashish instead of freeing that person in prison for two years for serving his motherland. This says a lot about the state of this society. So this is just like basically Fox News in Russia. It's obviously a very propaganda driven show. But you have to. That's the thing about Russia.

You can't have a show that shits all over the government in Russia. You could never have one. MSNBC was openly mocking Trump and CNN was constantly talking about Trump and it was jacking up their ratings. That's not even possible in Russia. You can't have a show like that. The Brewskis would be all over your ass. Oh yeah. Yeah. Well, you couldn't have a society like this. This is what people don't understand when they try to impose censorship. It goes all the way through. You will eventually get to a point where it's only state sanctioned information that's allowed to be distributed if you allow censorship because they've already shown that the government is deeply embedded in social media. And this is one of the things that's most disturbing about these revelations about whether it's the FBI or whatever intelligence agencies were behind censoring certain people off of Twitter and removing certain people off of Twitter and removing certain narratives and certain stories like the Hunter Biden laptop story. If you support that because it fits with your ideology, ultimately you support government control over a narrative. And that is, it's going to go the other way. If a Republican gets an office, then you're going to deal with a similar problem. Imagine if there's, imagine if instead of Hunter Biden's laptop, it was Donald Trump Jr.'s laptop and Donald Trump Jr.'s laptop, he's getting foot jobs by prostitutes and smoking street crack in Vietnam.

You think they would have censored that off of Twitter? Holy shit, man. You think they would have censored that off of Twitter and said, we can't verify the information. We don't know whether or not it's true. It has all the earmarks of Russian disinformation. There's not a fucking chance in hell. That's the problem. The truth dies with censorship.

You don't get a chance to sort out what's real and what's not. The government gets to decide for you. And if you ultimately believe in censorship and you ultimately believe in censoring the people that have opinions that disagree with your own, that's where this goes. This goes to fascism. This goes to a terrible place that no one wants, that's unrecoverable. You can't recover from that. If you get to that point where the government controls the narrative completely and they get to dictate what gets distributed on social media, we're all fucked. All of us. The people that agree with the narrative, the people that disagree with the narrative, truth dies. uh it'll be interesting um what gets released if there's any additional information about the the collusion to uh go after people who didn't get on with uh covet orthodoxy

where the administration is actually flagging individuals yeah who'd be shut down and then they're pointing out where else to find them, or they've moved to this other platform. Can we get them off this other platform as well? They were on Facebook, now they're on Instagram. Can you go get them? Yeah. It's kind of fucked.

Well, it's also kind of fucked when you realize that the CDC, where does their funding come from? Well, a lot of it comes from pharmaceutical companies. And where's this narrative coming from it comes from the government where does the television advertising come from well 75 of television advertising is a pharmaceutical companies like the narratives that they push you got to think they're at least slightly influenced by the people that give them all the money yeah you know, what's funny is we one time on our podcast, we were laughing about, we were talking about COVID getting into deer, right? Yeah.

Which is- It's real. Endlessly fascinating, yeah. Yeah, really fascinating. And we were laughing that it must've come through, it must've come through Doug Duren's pee. it must have come through Doug Duren's pee. And then we wound up getting flagged in one of those distribution channels for the truth about COVID.

Oh, my God. COVID misinformation. Yeah, it was like plugging it on, putting it all on Doug Duren. Well, what's fucked about COVID misinformation is a lot of the stuff that they were calling misinformation that would get you removed from social media now is just openly discussed as fact. Yeah, yeah. That's what's scary.

Yeah. That's why that kind of censorship is dangerous, because you don't get to find out what's right and what's wrong if you don't let everybody talk, including experts with problematic opinions. No, I think it'll be in time. with problematic opinions. No, I think it'll be in time. It'll prove to be a great case study because it happened so fast and affected like all aspects of communication,

all aspects of society, from local government to federal government, right? I mean, it was just like, it was so quick and so everywhere and then kind of ended relatively quickly yeah so rather than like some grad you know rather than some gradual shift over time you know you'd be able you'll be able to step back and no it won't be long like in five or six years you'd be able to step back and really go like okay here's what happened and you'd be able to step back and really go like, okay, here's what happened.

And you'd be able to look at like how ideas, brand new ideas emerged, were squashed, punished. People were punished for having ideas. Ideas came back out. It'll be a really interesting little segment to look at when it comes like the flow of information, how the flow of information is controlled, how narratives are reinforced, how people that pushed other ones were, you know, decried or delegitimize. And then like very quickly later celebrated or pointed out. Yeah.

I'd love to work on that documentary. That's a tricky one like in in in 25 years when there's a netflix documentary about covid yeah i'll be on there like a talking hand i'll be like i told him it's gonna be interesting to see in 25 years what distribution of information is like yeah where would you put the documentary about it yeah well where would you put any i mean i think if you think 25 years ago there was no internet no internet the way it is now at least yeah 25 years from now what are we going to be dealing with it's probably going to be something that's so profoundly different than anything we ever expected that it's it's almost like we were

talking about making a movie a non nonfiction movie about the future. It's impossible. That's 25 years from now, it's probably going to be neural implants, which I was reading a story today that like Elon might be in trouble. The Neuralink company because of animal abuse because they run these studies on monkeys and then they kill the monkeys, which they do all the time. Which they do all the time. Whenever they do these studies with animals, they wind up killing the animals to find out, like, what kind of an effect these things had on the animals by doing autopsies on them. And, you know, people are finding out that they did that to monkeys and that they opened monkeys' heads up and put these fucking Neuralink things in there. And this is outraging people, which is a very interesting moral dilemma. outraging people, which is a very interesting moral dilemma. Like if you can fix all these diseases, if you can cure paralysis, if you can greatly expand the ability of the human mind

through technology, but you have to kill a bunch of monkeys to do it. Are we okay with that? I don't think that that's going to become a, I don't think that'll become a widespread thing because you can't look at any, you widespread thing because you can't look at any, you can't, you can't look at any of our major medical breakthroughs, um, that didn't have some level of animal research. I think that on stuff that might strike people as relatively,

you know, what might strike people as relatively frivolous, you know, testing comfort levels of shampoos and shit right you can see people being like that that doesn't seem to me something that really warrants the use of animal experimentation right but i don't think i don't think that like the preponderance or like mainstream americans um are going to turn against medical research that involves animal experimentation once they understand how much of what they enjoy has been informed, influenced, discovered because of that.

I think you make some noise about it, but I have a hard time seeing that becoming an actual problem yeah i think it's going to be it's a point of outrage for some people particularly animal rights people but that is the nature of a lot of those experiments what do you think about that kind of shit like neural implants you ever thought about it you looked into it no i mean i might have read some things about it but no i don't have an opinion about it because No. You ever looked into it? No. I mean, I might have read some things about it, but no, I don't have an opinion about it because I don't understand. I'd have to have a question put to me, I guess, but I don't understand it enough

to have an opinion about it. It's a weird thing, and it's probably going to be the future. It's probably going to inevitably, whether it's 50 years from now or five years from now, they're going to be doing that. They're going to be doing that to people. Putting it in you with what in mind?

Enhancing your access to information. Got it. Increasing the bandwidth that the human mind has to information. Initially, it'll be for people with injuries. It apparently can be used for people with paralysis, and they'll be able to use you know I'm gonna crudely describe this to for anybody as an actual scientist they're going to be able to people that no longer have their spinal column has been severed they're

going to be able to bypass that and allow you to have access to your limbs with this technology. So initially it'll have some very acceptable applications where people go, this is great. This is groundbreaking. People who are paralyzed can now walk. But then ultimately what Elon said to me is you're going to be able to speak without using words. So there's going to be some sort of an interface that people have with each other. They're going to be able to be connected, whether it's through the internet or some other broadband type of technology. You're going to be able to access information, communicate with each other, and do all of it through these devices. I hope that thinking part you can turn off and on when you want, man. Arguing with your wife would be a disaster, dude.

Well, just access to the internet. Imagine access to everyone's opinions. Turn on your notifications for the whole world, and they're all inside your head. Sure. Fuck. So, no, I don't like the sounds of that. But the disease stuff, for sure. Who's going to argue against it?

That puts you in a weird – that puts you always in a moral bind would be, you know, you kind of get into like, well, you know, AI makes me very uneasy. However, want to put to use for national security or no, they want to put an implant in your brain. Okay, but what about allowing this child who's never walked, this child who's never seen to see oh yeah well in that case yeah but you know one of the things that you do is you interface with the natural world in a way that most human beings don't you're constantly in the wilderness you're constantly among wild animals in these wild places, and you have a very different view of society and a very different view of just life than most people do, I think, because of that. Yeah, I think that that stuff, I definitely think it informs it. Yeah. Yeah. I've tried to capture this in various ways too, but I think of,

I think, I look for the ways in which I think though of humans, in which humans are still animals. I mean, we just, we are like empirically, right? You know, you can't deny it.

Right. But no one, no one would come and say, you know, no one would come and argue that, you know, we're not a mammal. Okay. I just see the ways in which we're governed by similar impulses or in ways which our experiences aren't that different from that and i embrace it you know um i embrace it i try to get my i try to help my kids to see it as well and i think in some ways it causes in some ways that you in explaining things to kids or and think about yourself you you commit the uh what some people might regard as the crime of anthropomorphism, right? Where you give animals human attributes, human feelings.

But when I'm looking at wildlife with my kids, I do it all the time. You know, whatever. That buck is jealous of that other buck. Right. Right. That's just how you, that's how we'll naturally talk about what's going on in front of us around animals. You know? Yeah.

That bear is nervous about that other bear. You know, you just talk about it like you're watching interactions. it like you're watching interactions and so uh you know i try to invite that level of looking at i try to invite that level of looking at the outdoors in the way of looking at wilderness because i think it makes you it helps you be more connected to it gives you a reference yeah helps you be more connected to it i watched a video today of a wild goat that was breeding with a what do you call female wild goat nanny yeah yeah billy's nannies yeah and then uh um yeah billy's nanny the wild goat was breeding with this female wild goat and right next to him like 20 feet away was another wild goat breeding with another female goat. And this guy dismounts, runs over, and knocks that goat over.

Just charges in the middle of sex and just blasts this other goat and knocks him down. Sure. It's like, no, no, no. I'm the only one who gets to fuck. So there's some kind of jealousy going on with goats. I would love to watch that play out with my kids that's one of the things i like about it too is you can wind up uh god you can talk about rich stuff yeah you know watching it you talk about rich stuff with kids

man watching animals you know oh yeah there's so much to talk about i mean that world is so fascinating and you know for many people you get a little taste of it from documentaries maybe a little internet clip here or there or you know you see animals at the zoo you have very little exposure to what it what it's like to be around them in real life. You know, I didn't spend a lot. I mean, I fished when I was younger, but I didn't spend a lot of time in the wild, near wild animals. And I remember when you and I went on that first trip to Montana, the moment where I shot that buck,

which was the first animal I've ever killed, and that moment where, like like I locked eyes on it and we're in the wild and you see this thing and it was a totally unusual experience. I remember thinking like this is almost like bizarrely almost like psychedelic because the world, this world is so different than any other aspect of the world. The world where you're sneaking up on an animal, you're trying to be undetected, it spots you, you look at them, you know what's up, they kind of know something's wrong, and you're locked into this completely different vibration of existence. And I remember thinking, this is very bizarre. This is a very bizarre state. It's a vibration of existence. And I remember thinking, but this is very bizarre.

This is a very bizarre state. It's a state of mind. And I feel like it's also like a very bizarre state of mind that's recognizable. It's like a little door that you didn't even know you had in your room, in your house. Like, what's in this door? And you open the door like, oh, this is the hunter door. You didn't even know you had that door. And then all of a sudden you're in there.

I equate it with people. i tell people all the time i go you know that feeling that you get when you go fishing most people know that feeling when you catch a fish and everything just gets excited oh oh oh that is a feeling that's like deeply embedded in the human reward system there's something that tells tells you this is a great thing because now you are going to catch a fish, and that fish is going to feed your family. You're going to exist. You're going to live.

You're going to thrive. Whereas if you didn't catch a fish, you didn't get anything. It's an almost illogical lighting up of your system. Oh, it speaks to me in a big way. Everybody, to everyone. To kids it does. You know, my youngest, I took her fishing when she was like five years old. She caught a six-pound bass, fucking huge bass for her.

And she's like holding this thing, like the look on her face, the excitement of it all. It's like it does something to people that is like deeply ingrained in us. You know, it just ignites this thing that's a part of you that you didn't know was there i think as well you get uh in observing wildlife being around wildlife trying to get up on it and kill it at times and you get invited into just a different uh pacing yeah when i was we have a youth deer season so i was hunting youth deer season with my kids this year and we watched a deer he was quite a ways off but he had climbed up into view and was standing on this little ridge and something caught it he was going away from us

probably six seven hundred yards away and he climbed up this ridge and something caught his attention on the other side of the ridge and he locked up i mean locked up locked up standing there not like he not he didn't get into a position where he decided he was comfortable he just froze his step because something caught his attention and that deer for didn't move. I mean, didn't move a foot for 22 minutes. Wow. It didn't move its head. It didn't move its feet. It stood exactly dead still for 22 minutes. You think it was like a mountain lion or something?

I don't know. It was too far away. He just knew something was that caught his eye and held that position without settling in. And then at 22 minutes, it looked left. I'm not kidding you. When it got dark and we left, that deer was still standing there, but he looked left. He broke his gaze.

And you're like, and then to be tangled up in that, it's like, wow, wow man just the level of perception yeah and concentration and focus and the way that time it's so hard to understand how time moves you can't understand how time moves for stuff you know you'll find in the wintertime you'll find where a grouse will get snowed on so it's already in its place, and then it snows afoot. And so you'll jump the grouse out of the snow. There's no tracks leading to where it was. It snowed on it.

It stayed there, sometimes for days. And we'll have dozens of pellets, dozens of shit pellets underneath it. And then busts out of the snow and flies away. And it had been where it was sitting. It got snowed on, covered in snow, waited there, shat I don't know how many times over how many days, and then flies out of there. Just the passage of time. The passage of time, you can't even begin to understand it. Imagine that existence where every minute of every day you're wondering if something's

going to eat you. Yeah. I don't know. I'd love to get into it for a minute. I'd love to get into it for a minute. Which animal would you get into? I'd love to understand, like if you could understand for a bull or a buck or whatever, like how they feel, like how they feel sexual desire.

Like what does it feel like? Is it mostly comp? Is it like mostly, is it mostly a competitive feeling? Do you know what I mean? Is it mostly competition? I don't think it's like, um,

I don't know. Is it, I don't think it's passion. What does it feel like? Well, it's definitely not how, you know, it's not love. That's probably one of the weird things about human animals as opposed to other animals

is that our, our sex is intertwined with compassion and love for, for the vast majority of people. Yes. For the vast majority of people. Whereas with them, it's a pure desire to spread the DNA. At all costs. Yeah, at all costs. Or mostly all costs. Yeah, it's got to be wild. No, I'd love it. You know, bulls in the rut.

And especially when you consider that it only happens once a year. Yeah. That's got to be insane. Where this overwhelming urge all year round. They're not horny at all. Yeah. They don't even engage in any kind of sexual satisfaction at all. And then September rolls around

and shit gets wild. Yeah. Got blue balls by then. But it's just strange how nature works, how it coincides with the seasons so that the calves will be born in the spring. And it's so weird. Have you read Dan Flory's new book?

No, I haven't heard about, I've heard about it rather, but I haven't read it. Wild new world. He contacted me the other day. I joked with him where when I was reading it, I want to make a annotated version where I have commentary where I do all the

footnotes. Cause I want to be like, well, yeah, but I mean, you know, you also got to consider this the whole time reading the book. I'm like, yeah, but Dan, you can't say that without saying this.

What is the premise of the book? Well, okay. The premise, it's the story. So his new book, Wild New World, is a history of human-animal interactions. And it basically begins with the Chicxulub strike. Chicxulub? Yeah, it's a great word. I didn't know the word until I read his book. The Chicxulub strike. Chicxulub? Yeah, it's a great word. I didn't know the word until I read his book.

The Chicxulub strike. It's the impact strike in the Yucatan. Oh. Kills the dinosaurs. Kills the dinosaurs, okay. So it begins with the Chicxulub strike because what he's trying to do, he's trying to find a place to get into the American menageragerie okay american wildlife so he just starts there where you have you know you kind of like wipe the slate clean right and you bring in because he's trying to he's trying to explain how does north america have its bestiary and he just finds that as a good

place to enter the narrative about how we have the animals we have, where we got the American bestiary from. And it covers up until like yesterday. It covers up to like the current battle over wolf reintroduction. So it just is a story of humans and wildlife in America. He spends a lot of time on some things that I interviewed him at a bookstore and I was kind of busting his balls about some things that I interviewed him at a bookstore. And I was kind of busting his balls about some things he does in the book that I didn't like.

But areas where I disagree to them. But he spends a lot of time on, not a lot of time. Toward the end, he talks about the individuality in animals. Okay. animals okay us not having room or us not sort of like humans not allowing space for individualities and animals right i think at one point he talks about his dog he's like this this there's no other dog like this dog there's no other dog that knows that this dog knows there's no other dog that has the history this dog has there's no other dog that knows what this dog knows. There's no other dog that has the history this dog has. There's no other dog that processes the information around it in the way that this dog processes the information around it.

Why would we not extend that same thing to animals in the wild? Yeah, we would have to. You can't ignore the question. Right. You can't ignore the question. Right. There has to be individuality amongst wild species. I think some have tremendous individuality,

and I have to feel that some don't have as much. Like maybe trout. Yeah. Like, yeah, if you put on a spectrum like microbial, forget microbial life. If you put it on a spectrum, colony insects, okay? So like the ants in the colony, I'd be like, that has to be pretty low individual. Like I'm guessing lower individuality up to animals that live in social hierarchies, like really fine-tuned social hierarchies.

You got to be like, that's high levels of individuality. No one's going to look and say that a chimp doesn't, that chimps don't have high levels of individuality. Right. Because you got these animals that have these known personal histories right all right they got like they've conducted quests you know so that like reading the book it's um part of me me making the joke that i wanted to make a version where i do all the footnote commentary is it's like there's a lot of shit in there that a hunter there's a lot of shit in there a hunter can't ignore in the book about the role of hunting and extinctions right lots of lots of unpack man and even the role of like hunter base he even talks a lot about

hunter based conservation okay where you'd be like you know so you kind of want there to be a lot of elk so you can kill them right and you're like yeah honestly that's a part of it's a small part of it and it doesn't explain it all but sure that's there that's there it's definitely a factor it's there like i like other predators like to see a prey rich landscape do I need to apologize I don't think so no

but it's not everything you're apologizing to people that don't have that experience and don't understand what you're saying we apply individuality to specific animals like Cecil the lion or El Jefe that jaguar We apply individuality to specific animals like Cecil the lion. Sure. Or El Jefe, that jaguar that makes its way into America occasionally.

Yeah. I was reading an article about El Jefe yesterday. They were saying that El Jefe has been eating bears. Oh, really? Yeah, because bears don't know what a jaguar is. So they don't know to be scared of it. And they were making this uh they're supposing that maybe the bears would be even curious they would get near the jack oh yeah because they have probably some kind of point of reference with mountain lions and it doesn't pan

out yeah like what is that fucking thing have you followed the the jaguar debate that's going on right now no um it's a great one man so defining it's my big jag okay where i back up i'm gonna tell you an imperial like i'm gonna tell you something that's like objectively true okay okay it's objectively true that we had a population of Jaguars in the United States of America up until the 1800s. They just were. What's debated is how stable was it? How widespread was it? Some people would point to, well, like basically limited to southern Arizona. Some people would look and be, well, West Texas, New Mexico, southern Arizona. What about members of the Coronado expedition drawing a distinction between lions and jaguars all the way up like toward the

Platte River okay like why would they say both mmm you know I mean like there what are they confusing the Platte River oh so in the in the in the more in the southern plains the southern Great Plains of the United States flowing across Kansas okay oh wow where you have instances of people mentioning things that you sort of like look at and you're like, man, if they weren't talking about jaguars, what the hell are they talking about? How do they describe it? Leopards.

Okay. And a lot of times someone will say there'll be a reference to a large cat and you can't rule out, well, maybe in the historic record, they're probably talking about mountain lions. But what do you do in a case where you have a historic record and someone is in some oddball place southern colorado and they're talking about they have lions and leopards oh wow and lions and leopards so it's like i guess we're talking i mean they gotta be they have to be referring to jaguars right what much more widely dispersed so as as people get into talking about

jaguar recovery of which i'm a i'm a proponent with an asterisk when people get talking about jaguar recovery you have to define what that looks like and there are some who would say jaguar recovery in north america as a collaborative effort between us, Mexico, Belize, whoever else has rolled into this jaguar recovery plan. Jaguar recovery in North America would mean recovering them across core habitat. Okay, that's a term you hear all the time, like core habitat. So then you've got to argue over what is the line, what's core habitat for jaguars. And some people will argue, and many of them have motivation, some of them are honest, some of them have other kind of political motivation, to say that core habitat is not Arizona.

That was always fringe. Stray males, one or two here and there, long periods of absence, it wasn't core habitat. Other people would argue that arizona was absolutely core habitat and if we're going to restore jaguars and core habitat we're going to be restoring jaguars in some portion of the lower 48 meaning eventually and recovery would look a couple ways one is like protections and you would watch how jaguars are able to flow back and forth across the border. A big question around jaguar recovery is the border wall. How much would a border wall impact large mammal movements?

So that's an aspect. If we don't allow recovery in that way, or we make recovery in that way difficult, do we truck jaguars up and turn them loose in Arizona, New Mexico, West Texas? Really? You're going to turn them loose? Right. I love it, dude. I love them.

And I honestly don't think they live in such low population abundances and they have such huge home ranges. I don't think it would ever be that there was like a Jaguar problem. There's no Jaguar problem. Yeah. I don't think that you're going to have people, you know, the Kate where,

where, you know, you might recover wolves in some area and lose two thirds of the elk like seemingly overnight. I just, I can't picture that. That's, I think you'd lose a lot of lions. You a lot of mountain lions probably but do you think they'd be forced out or think due to predation i think that probably a common i think a combination of both

like them killing them and then just range reduction because it is big cat but dude i like i'm i'm a conflict averse enough where I don't want, it's like trucking them in to me as way in the future. Um, and man, it would be a political battle and you'd make a spotted owl out of the Jaguar. Hmm. You'd have some level of people that just came to hate them sons of

bitches. Cause they were a symbol of federal overreach, but them just coming across the border, I think is a great way. It's a great thing to root for. I love them. That's where they think El Jefe is coming through. Yeah.

That's one of the reasons why they call him El Jefe. He manages to make his way through the wall. Yeah. And there's, but it's, you know, for a Jaguar to come hanging out in the U.S., it's, you know, it's a dicey life. I don't think he knows. No. No, of course he doesn't. No, of course he doesn't know.

But you wind up, there's not like a great, in recent decades, there's not a great likelihood of establishing a habitat and having a female to breed with. Right. What's a big leopard or jaguar? A big jaguar? I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know what their max weight is mountain line like the high end is like what a couple hundred pounds man a lot of people like to say that you know people are like 200 pound lion uh they if they have a belly full of meat you know if they have a belly full of meat they get up to into the 170s but i had a guy so i had a conversation one time with a researcher in oregon who did a long he was a large he was a large carnivore biologist in oregon and he told me that he weighed over 300 of them on digital scales the biggest one he ever weighed that didn't have a belly distended with meat the biggest one he ever weighed was 164 interesting Interesting. But he said, when you get into these bigger numbers,

he says, is it so full that he can't barely get through the woods and climb a tree? Because you can get some good weights then. If he's got 30, because he can have 30 pounds of meat. They can eat 30 pounds of meat. Yeah, he can have 20 to 30 pounds of meat in his gut. That's your size. And he eats, imagine you eating 30 pounds of meat. his gut. Imagine that's your size and he eats.

30 pounds, yeah. Imagine you eating 30 pounds of meat. Yeah. Because that's essentially your size. And so when people get into a lot of these crazy weights, it's because of that. But he's talking about they're just like they don't, you know, they can get big, they can have a big live weight, but if you empty the stomach on them and weigh them, they're not like that.

But I think having a 250pound Jaguar is approachable. They're big. So it's 100 pounds bigger. Yeah, and they're like, you have to look up. I don't want to be quoted on the highest. Let's look it up. I don't want to be quoted on the biggest poundage ever found on a Jaguar, but God, they're fascinating. I've only ever seen their tracks, man.

I haven't seen one. I was minutes from seeing one one time. Where? In Guyana. seen one i came i was minutes from seeing one one time where in in guyana we went and pat we went and checked out this sandbar where these uh giant river turtles were laying their eggs and i was with some i was with some guys and they were indigenous and they go and dig eggs okay so they went to get some eggs to eat and you can see where the Jaguars had been digging up nests egg nests and also probably hunting the turtles on the beach we left went around the bend to camp some of these guys went back to take a bath at the beach they

went back and the Jaguar was standing back there again I'd never seen one though personally my favorite videos is watching jaguars eat caimans. Oh, my God. Sneaking up on crocodiles. Swam across. Oh, that's great. They're crazy animals. That I would have had no idea until the internet came around.

I had no idea that that was a commonplace occurrence. That's part of the menu. Oh, they're wild, man. So here it says males are heavier than females. Males can weigh from 126 to 250 pounds. Females can weigh 100 to 200 pounds, according to the Denver Zoo. Hmm. You know what else I want to talk to you about is you sent me a thing about the, you sent

me that buck, a picture of that buck. Which one? The Rampala buck. Which one is that? It's called the Rampala buck. Was that the buck where the guy faked it? Well. No?

Maybe. I want to do a documentary on it, dude. So let's explain that to people. I kept wanting to talk to you about it when I came on your show because it's such a fascinating story. I'm like, so in 98, it was 98. Maybe Jamie can pull a picture of this deer. In 1998. There it is.

Yeah, that's him. So it's a crazy story about this deer. Now, a little bit. So this takes place in Michigan in 1998. Now, the biggest white-tailed deer, the biggest typical white-tailed deer in the world is this deer called the Hansenbacher. Milo Hansen killed the biggest white-tailed, typical white-tailed deer in the world is this deer called the Hansenbuck, or Milo Hansen killed the biggest typical whitetail deer in the world. I think the Milo Hansenbuck was killed in the 80s, if I'm not mistaken. There's the Milo Hansenbuck?

There it is. Oh, man, that's a big buck. Yep, Canada. When you look at these pictures, notice, when you look at the Milo Hanson buck, you'll want to notice a couple things about it.

When you look at all these giant bucks, you'll want to notice how the burrs are positioned on top of his head, like how much space is between those burrs. And you'll want to notice like on these giant, giant bucks,

the presence of little extra points and little points here and there and shit. So anyways, this guy Milo Hanson kills this, in Canada, he kills this world record typical whitetail. We just had in our podcast the guy, the Huff Buck, where a guy in Indiana just killed

the biggest typical whitetail in the U.S. But he didn't beat, he didn't beat the Hanson Buck. How big is the Huff Buckuck i can't remember what the huffbuck was it's two plus oh unbelievable wow yeah didn't beat the hansenbuck i'll talk about the huffbuck too as i tell you about like controversy around the huffbuck that is like not there anymore but controversy emerged so he there was this guy, Mitch Rompala, is this Michigan bow hunter.

And weirdly, my old man knew Mitch Rompala because my dad used to measure bucks. And he would measure bucks for this place called Commemorative Bucks of Michigan. And Mitch Rompala was involved in Commemorative Bucks of Michigan. But one day, he, I think it was mid-November, Mitch Rompala in Traverse City, Michigan, kills a buck that's going to beat, that clearly smokes the Hanson buck in size.

Anytime something like that happens, there's like a lot of questions about, is it legit? Is it real? So one thing that becomes readily apparent is just the buck looks weird okay like his antler configuration is weird um he calls when you say weird what do you mean by just a weird configuration how absolutely perfect it is how the burrs sit on its head notice how the burrs seem to be coming out the side of its head hmm yeah how it's tipped out okay yeah so he gets this buck and it's gonnarayed and was he say let's say we want to x-ray it well he first off he comes forward with the but he's a very private person okay so everybody you already knows he's very private person he comes forward with the

buck and it's more like everybody else is saying that this buck is going to beat the hansen buck and then all these theories start to emerge that he had fabricated the rack that he had access to a deer farm so he was able to make this perfect rack and people are looking at the photo of the buck and its ear droops funny. There's blood in weird places. The antlers seem to be not colored quite correctly. And there's this idea that he killed a buck for real, cut open its hide on its head, took a fabricated buck rack on a skull plate and attached it. Whoa. However, a tribal game warden sees it at his house, doesn't see anything fishy about it. Whoa. However, a tribal game warden

sees it at his house, doesn't see anything fishy about it, and some guys come to officially measure the buck, just like in the picture you saw. They officially measure the buck, but they never examine the skull plate. All those people say,

these eyewitnesses are like, I didn't see anything wrong with that buck. But he won't put the buck, he won't enter the buck into the record books, citing a disagreement with the record books over some stuff. And he's like, a lot of people kill deer and don't enter them in the record books. People are also looking, they're like, a big buck like that's never come out. There's no big bucks in Traverse City.

Like, how's this guy kill this big buck where there's no big bucks? And people are like, yeah, but these giant bucks are freaks. Like, you don't kill multiple 200-inch white tails in one spot. But you'd be like, well, you kill a bunch of 170s and 180s and 190s. That does look weird. Well, that's another one.

What's that one? Well, that's where the story starts getting rich. Oh, no. So check this out. Well, the reason I want to make a documentary about this, it's legitimately unsolved. Milo Hanson, the guy that has the Hanson buck, he makes a lot of money renting his buck out to buck shows. This is no joke, dude.

You'll have trade shows. Not trade shows, but public sporting goods shows. Gun shows, state sporting goods shows, whatever. The people that organize it will pay to have the Hanson buck on display. But suddenly the Hanson buck isn't a hot ticket commodity anymore. Because everyone knows that the Ron Pollala buck beat the hansen buck so now he's seeing his rentals go down because like you're not the biggest buck we can't get the biggest buck because he doesn't want to show anybody but you're not the biggest buck they go to rampala and they have a non-monetary settlement and mitch rampala under threat of lawsuit Mitch Rompala agrees in a

non-monetary settlement that he will stop saying his buck is bigger than the Hanson buck why would you do that then people are like just get the buck x-rayed just get it x-rayed two people an individual two individuals

in Michigan come forward and say I'll give you $10,000 to let me x-ray that buck. He wouldn't take the money. Then he says, and a lot of his friends think that this is like his legitimate response and this makes total sense. Then he says, fuck it. I'm not showing anyone the fucking buck. I'm done talking about it. Not why I hunt.

I don't want to talk about it. Some years go by and it's put to rest sort of by someone saying it burned up in a house fire anyway. A lot of his friends are like, dude, that's totally a Mitch move. That's what Mitch would do. People also like try to make a big deal out of a criminal record he had to demonstrate dishonesty. But here's the other thing is he then establishes a website. And in the following years, weirdly, posts, like the picture you just pulled up,

posts a bunch more bucks that have the same look. That super wide, crazy look. The website's now gone, but he then, over the course of years, keeps shooting these crazy-looking bucks, which no one else in Traverse City is killing. But he says, but that's not why I hunt. i hunt and people like if that's not why you hunt why do you still have the website with all these crazy bucks that look like homemade bucks so he eventually just goes he like vanishes from the public eye and you gotta understand there is there is like there's generational wealth attached to killing the world's biggest whitetail.

Really? Oh, yeah. It could be leveraged. That Hanson buck, the amount of just endorsements and the never-ending display stuff. When Dustin Huff, the kid that just killed the new record, there you go. Home of the Hanson buck. World record whitetail deer. Scoring 213 and 5. Wow. There you go. Home of the Hanson Buck. World record white-tailed deer. Scoring 213 and 5.

Wow. 93. So he killed it in 93. Wow. And the Rompala Buck was 98. So big bucks were in the air. Dustin Huff, when he killed his buck, what's funny about him, so we had him on the podcast, he kills a big buck in Indiana.

He has no idea the buck's there. He's just out hunting. And there it is. Other guys in the area knew, but no one was talking to anybody. No one would tell anybody this big buck was there. And he kills this big buck. He right away, kind of knowing how shit goes when you kill a big buck, it's so funny, he right away calls the DNR in Indiana.

Gets someone on the phone. He's like, hey, man, I just killed a huge buck. I just want to tell everybody, and I want to get it all squared away that I killed this huge buck. No one someone on the phone. He's like, hey, man, I just killed a huge buck. I just want to tell everybody, and I want to get it all squared away that I killed this huge buck. No one will call him back. Then the rumors start flying. He poached it.

He's not actually a resident. He did this. He did that. Game wardens call him up. We understand you killed a big buck. I tried to tell you I killed a big buck. So now, after the fact, they come out and do a site inspection.

And he puts all the hysteria to rest. And then sold the buck for an undisclosed amount of money. Sold it? Oh, yeah. I'm sure it was a lot of money. What's a lot of money for selling a buck? Oh, I would... He won't say.

We pressed him on it. He won't say. I know him on it. He won't say. The only thing, I know one little detail about the buyer, which once I heard the detail about the buyer, I think I found who it was. Like, I think I know who it was. But he had, probably around for that buck, because it's not the world's biggest, it has to be, he wouldn't say, but like, guys I know that know, or it has to be a six-figure deal. Really?

Probably. He won't put it to rest. Or I think one of our guys that I work with real close, Spencer, I think Spencer, maybe Spencer came in and made a guess at 80 because he reports on that kind of stuff. So that's not the generational wealth thing, but the biggest, the biggest is the thing that

your kids, if that record stands, like, your kids will enjoy the benefits of that deer. This is 95. It says that Hanson Buck was worth up to a million dollars. Wow. That's, you know, 30 years ago. Wow. Yeah. You know, maybe I was full of shit.

That's a big gap. Maybe I was full of shit when I said generational buck. It said he made 600K a year. I don't know how when I said generational. It's a big gap. It's a big 600K here. I don't know how accurate that is either. Huh. We should explain to people that are uneducated about this or uninformed how bizarre the world of whitetail hunting is. Just like nothing else.

Because for people that don't grow up around it and don't understand it i follow a lot of people on youtube that have bucks and they're all named they have target bucks and so what these people will do is they'll set up food plots they have these large chunks of land they've invested shit tons of money yeah into creating habitat that would attract these deer. And this is not fenced in. This is just wild farmland. And in this farmland, like in Kansas and Iowa in particular, and some of these other states, these folks will set up food plots where they'll grow alfalfa and apple trees and all these different things that they feel and specifically just to attract bucks and then they set up cameras so they have these camera traps everywhere

and nowadays they have camera traps that are attached to cell phones so these camera traps they'll send you a photo on your trail cams they'll send you a photo scientists call them camera traps yeah everybody else calls them trail cams. I'm thinking of Bondo apes. That's where we get to that. So they get photos sent to their phone. Like, ding! Got a notification. Oh, shit. So it'll be

like one o'clock in the morning. Their phone dings by the bed. They'll pick it up and they'll say, oh my god, he's nocturnal. Oh, dude, it's the most addictive thing in the world. They'll call him one superstar and one's the gunfighter. And they have all these names for these bucks. And there's all these documentary-style videos on YouTube of these various big buck hunters who have dead – guys like Lee Lukoski. He's, like, one of the most famous ones who has this enormous farm in Iowa.

They have a target buck. Yeah. And Lee will pass on 170-inch bucks. Sure. Giant, huge trophy bucks that any normal person would be very excited. He wants them to grow bigger. And then there's competition with neighborhood farms because this buck will travel to other places, wherever the gals are, wherever the food is.

So they're trying to attract them to get them into this area. And these guys will hunt for day in, day out, 30, 40 days in a row, however long the season is, just stay up in that tree stand, just freezing their dick off all day long. I was reading this one account. This guy was talking about how it was the most frustrating season ever because he went like 40 days in the stand and everyone drew his bow back never even saw a deer that he could shoot but he was to talk about like this is what he loves about whitetail hunting is that if

on the 39th day a whopper could walk right through a 200 inch buck and he would shoot it but that this is an obsession with that part of the world that is largely unknown. Like I remember one time when I was on the road. I think I was in Nashville or it might have been Atlanta. And I went and did this local radio station. They were talking about NASCAR. And they were talking about this guy and that guy. And did you hear about that?

And I'm like, this is a world that I've never even heard of. Like you guys are excited about a guy who races a car in a circle? For real? But they knew everybody. Yes, they are. They knew everybody, and it was the local obsession. That is what it's like in the world of, you know, Midwest, big game, whitetail hunting. Yeah, that's all happened in my lifetime.

Really? Oh, yeah. whitetail hunting like that yeah that's all that that's all happened in my lifetime really oh yeah like that the i mean whitetail have always been like they are the most hunted in terms of man hours not the most harvested thing but in terms of man hours they are the most hunted animal in america you can hunt whitetails in most states. There's only a few exceptions where you can't hunt whitetails. They have a relatively small home range. So you can kind of have one stay close and nearby.

They do really well with humans, meaning development, agriculture. These things don't bother them. In fact, it seems to be helpful. They like edge habitats, so they're like agriculture and woods and housing developments, golf courses. None of this shit really seems to phase them like it does a lot of other highly sensitive wildlife. So you can just live and be in deer country and most people live in deer country and for most people it's the biggest thing around um and you can have like this very

long-term immersive experience with them you know clay newcomb uh he recently did a bear grease podcast about a buck he was obsessed with for many years. And then it got killed by some guy on a neighboring property who just got like shit lucky. Right. And Clay is like mourning about this and eventually brings this guy the shed antlers. He had found like he had over multiple years found the matching sets of shed antlers from this deer and the pictures and eventually gets over his morning and does a podcast episode about he actually the guy is on the podcast he goes to the guy and be like i need to talk to you about your deer and the guy didn't know what was going to

happen he didn't know if he's going to get in a fight or what when clay came and did that but he said there's a thing or two i need to tell you about that buck he killed and lays out that he's been that like he's he has five years into this deer wow how old was the deer i can't remember when the guy killed at seven years old or something like that but clay at early on might get some of the details wrong but clay at early on flagged it as this unusual like this buck with this unusual antler configuration and he watched it get bigger and then had a bad year and got smaller and clay thought well he's you know they'll always like if they live long they'll fade you know whatever at six years he'll throw the biggest rack he's

ever going to throw and then he'll have a couple bad years before he dies this buck throws a shitty rack but then comes out of it and throws a bigger rack. And just when you're questioning whether Clay's actually looking at the proper buck, the buck's got leg injuries, which makes it like a one-in-a-million leg injury array, front and rear. So you can always tell the buck he's got growths on his legs that you can just know that that's absolutely the buck. And he's obsessed about the buck. that you can just know that that's absolutely the buck and he's obsessed about the buck and then some guy rent a guy rents a house and decides to go out hunting behind the house and shoots the buck wow you know it's a funny story similar to that we had a turkey researcher um and uh they were studying how turkeys evade predation hunter human predation. And they had a turkey that

they actually started giving its coordinates to hunters. Here's where the turkey is right now. Here's where he's roosted. Try to get him. And they'd be able to watch the hunter on a tracking device and they could watch the turkey on a tracking device. They'd just watch all these turkeys just juke people. And they'd even put

good turkey hunters on them and good turkey hunters couldn't kill them. One day a guy gets in a fight with his wife storms out of the house drives down the road gets to the game management area sign pulls over to the side of the road walks off in the woods sits against the tree to cool off and kills that turkey wow shit locked into it shit locked into it but it was like so anyways this buck clay's like obsessed with the buck because like i said you can live with it that way and and there's not a lot of animals you're gonna there's not a lot of animals you can have that experience with where you see them over and over and over you grow up with them well you could be like at any point in time like

at any point in time you could sort of like walk out your door and like kind of sweep your hand and be like he's there somewhere right now. Do you have a conflicted view of what I would call almost like it's almost like free range deer farming? send you digital images through cell phone signals, and you're tracking their location, and you make it so that you lure them in there. I mean, obviously, it requires a lot of resources. No, I don't. No, I don't mean conflicted, but I mean,

I shouldn't say conflicted like you shouldn't do it. What I mean is, like, is it different? Because it's definitely different than if you go into the mountains and you stumble upon a giant mule deer and you track them and you hunt them and you kill them. That is a deer that you might have seen the day before or something like that. But this is not an animal that you have a relationship with. And you certainly didn't lure him into that area with a food plot and apples and shit. It's different. It's different. It's different.

But if you look at, if you're measuring it on, if you measure human knowledge and let's say we're going to measure it in bits, okay, and we're going to measure output, we're going to measure human output in calories or whatever. The bits of information required to successfully do that on a piece of land and the calories required to successfully do that on a piece of land are

enormous and far outweigh the bits of information and calories expelled to get a deer in many other kinds of circumstances. Different skill sets. Like, I don't feel any personal desire to have a place where I grow big whitetails. Because to me, they don't, they're not as mysterious to me as they are to some people however the most productive chunks of privately owned ground that i know about from a biological

standpoint are chunks of ground that people are managing as recreational properties for for wildlife and hunting you can't if you're going to sit and say that you support there being wildlife habitat and you support private land conservation, you can't then sit and say that the person who's maximizing wildlife output on their property is somehow like, you know, a cheater, not doing it right. I'm definitely not saying that. Because holy shit, they do phenomenal wildlife work, and it's trickle-down. And you could, again, we talked about this earlier,

you could look at it and be like, oh, you're just doing that so you can kill that deer. Well, okay, sure. But the number of songbirds, the number of pollinators, the number of even predators, other things that thrive on some of these properties that are managed to be like quiet deer producing machines. Ecologically, there's a lot going on there. Yes.

I personally, man, like I think, and I'm raising my kids that feel the same way, mule deer are a thousand times cooler than white tails. Why? Because they're just mysterious. They're more mysterious. They're more mysterious. They're more sensitive. They're more mysterious. They're more mysterious. They're more sensitive. They're more sensitive. They're more mysterious. I just think that they're much cooler. How are they more sensitive? In what way? You know I was saying that white tails

love people. In general, mule deer don't. But they do in Colorado. You know, you can always, I know. In Boulder, I pulled over to the side of the road and there was a giant buck. And I pulled the car over and I was showing my kids and we got out and we're like, look, look, look can always, I know. In Boulder, I pulled over to the side of the road. There was a giant buck. Yes. And I pulled the car over and I was showing my kids and we got out. We're like, look, look, look, look, look.

It was like right there. It's like, this is a hurdle you wind up talking about. This is a hurdle you encounter when you're talking about mule deer because people will always be able to say, well, there's mule deer laying in my yard. Yeah. There's mule deer at the golf course. laying in my yard. It was Mildred at the golf course. As an area gets colonized by humans,

as areas become colonized by humans, those areas become better for whitetails and you'll see more whitetails. Okay? The inverse is true with Mildred. You can find, you can be like, well, there's some on the golf course but like if you look at like pieces of habitat one of the reasons that it's bad for

mule deer is because it's because it's good for white tails white tails are less sensitive and they can out-compete mule deer and white or sorry elk and white tails out-compete mule deer what mule deer is moreule deer are just more sensitive. They're more sensitive to everything going on around them. They're less likely to not want to go to an area. When places have been developed, it doesn't work well for them in the long run. I just think they look cooler. They're definitely cooler.

And we become accustomed to, like, I prefer to eat them. Really? Yeah, because I like that. You know, whatever people identify as gamey, I prefer. Like, you know, even my wife, who doesn't give, like, she doesn't care about mule deer racks. Like, if I try to show her, like, look at the size of this mule deer I got. She'd be like, oh, it looks like all the other mule deer. I don't, you know, who cares?

But she prefers to eat mule deer meat. Everything about them I like better. I like the places they live in they're wilder um they're less sort of touched you can go to certain areas and you might be the first person you can look at mule deer now and then and be like you know considering that he's only three four five six years old i might be the only person who's ever laid eyes on that thing. That's plausible. Right. You know? And then there's places where big mule deer become a trophy obsession.

Oh, of course. There's places that are extremely difficult to hunt, like the Arizona Strip. Yep. Where people become obsessed with getting a tag for the Arizona Strip. I drew this year probably the best tag in Idaho. Idaho is another place, right? Yeah. What was it like?

Unbelievable. Yeah? Unbelievable. I never had – it's almost like you got to be careful not to let it ruin you. Really? Yeah. I mean, I'll never draw it again. I shouldn't say I'll never draw it again.

I might not ever draw it again. Did you say i'll never draw it again i might not ever draw did you get a buck yeah second day really but but i had some friends that really hit it hard during archery season and they scoured that place and so and talking to my friends were like i would think think real seriously about checking here, here, and here. So they were in the wrong spot. No, no, no. No, they were telling me coming into it for rifle season. They had said to me I would like. Oh, so they helped you.

Yeah, they're like, you know, I would look there. I would look there. I would look there. I would not bother looking there, which was hugely beneficial to my experience. Well, I wound up getting one that they didn't know about. I got one that they hadn't found out about, but it helped me rule out.

If I had just done it off maps, I probably would have spent time in some places that they were like, I wouldn't look there. I would be looking here for this reason and so i started looking there i found the bucks that they knew about and then pretty quickly found a buck they hadn't even known about the big one nice one you got a picture yeah send it jamie real nice one airdrop that sucker real nice one hold on here have you ever hunted the arizona strip nope but i uh certainly would that's supposed to be the spot right yeah i mean they get fucking giant mule deer there right yeah it's a real famous spot

i've never hunted i got a lot of friends that have but i don't know enough about it how do i send it i don't know enough about it. How do I send it? I don't know how to send it to Jamie. Air drop it. Oh, okay. What is a world record mule deer? I've got to focus a long time to be able to do something like this. No people found.

Turn your shit on, man. It's on. Oh, there you are. Sorry. Go through? It's going. What is a world record mule deer oh i don't know what the world record i don't know what the biggest quite a bit bigger right if you can get it like a real freaking giant yeah that's a big that was nice wow no that was nice i got i've gotten one bigger in the past also oh no i got one bigger in the past in a general unit one time but that was a

that's a limited draw unit and dude we would have found I'm sure we would have found a bigger one if we kept hanging around looking I was with Phelps Jason Phelps and what do you think that measures in terms of inches Phelps measured it at 193 wow what is the other one that's like

deductions and shit yeah yeah yeah I saw that one that That was a 200-inch deer. Wow. But man, you know. But that's a deer that like you could search for a deer like that your whole life. I mean, I hunted mule deer for 20 years without getting a big one. World record final score of 218. But you know the stupid thing?

That's Pope and Young. What's the difference? That's an archery kill. Oh, okay. Yeah, go to Boone and Crockett. And then you get into it. You know what's funny about record books? You get into biggest archery.

226. Okay. You'll get into biggest archery, biggest rifle, and then biggest ever found. And the real giants are shit that was found. So they die off. Yeah, um the biggest bighorn ever the biggest bighorn ever i kind of dog on the people that keep track of the bighorn scores because the biggest bighorn ever was just found dead in a place called wild horse island

it's like it's not even it's an island in flathead lake in montana you can't hunt it okay the history of the island was it was going to be like this utopia where this guy was going to have like a lead economist a lead sociologist and shit we're going to live on this island and solve all the world's problems somehow over time became that there's like this little population of bighorns out there that you can't hunt but they're wild i'm making little quotes they're wild and one of of them died, and it's the new world record bighorn. And I'm like, kind of. Kind of.

They're not, like, historically even from the, you know what I mean? So anyways, when you get into record shit, like, the biggest shit, surprisingly, is always shit found dead or got hit by a car. Like, hunters don't get the biggest stuff. There might be some case I'm not thinking of where, but, but like the biggest whitetail isn't the biggest whitetail hunted it's just shit that got found what's the biggest whitetail that was ever found it's in the 300s or something like that it's like a no jamie can find that like some crazy ass non-typical where was that i don't even remember is that canada i can't remember where. No, it was in the lower 48, I think. The sheep hunting world is another bizarre subset world. That's big money.

White tails is blue collar. What? The hole in the horn buck. That's a real, is that a farm buck? No, no, no, no, no. Because it looks like a farm buck, right? No. I believe you.

It looks like a farm buck. Found dead by railroad workers. The deer is the king of kings. Got a bullet hole through his horn. Does it really? Wow. Or someone shot it. Look at the size of that thing. That's so ridiculous. That's the broder buck.

Three fifty-five and two eighths. But when you get into non-typical, the score is a lot higher. You know, we were talking about fake and bucks. The way they score bucks is so, one thing that's so goofy about how you score bucks is a buck can have its antlers count against itself. You're familiar with this? No.

So there's typical and non-typical. All right. Typical means very symmetrical. And for whatever reason, it's just like no one I know that likes to hunt takes this no one I personally hang out with takes any of this seriously, but they view that like a typical should be really symmetrical but it has to be super

atypical to be counted as a non-typical so if you have a buck, let's say you have a buck that has 5 points on one side and 6 points on the other side and you measure up all the inches of antler. They'll actually deduct the difference off the score because it's not symmetrical. So the thing will grow antler that they don't actually count.

But if it's so freakishly different, if it hits a threshold of asymmetry, then its asymmetry counts in its favor. So it can actually happen that you could feasibly kill a buck and break and grab, take a pair of pliers or a hammer and knock a point off its horns. And it actually becomes a higher scoring deer. Oh, that's so dumb. Isn't that dumb? That seems dumb, right? It's ridiculous.

Isn't that a that seems dumb right it's ridiculous is it a it's isn't that a weird thing though like that like one of the things that i really admire about john dudley uh-huh he doesn't score his bucks won't get him scored he won't get him scored won't score his bulls won't score his bucks he's i goes i just think it's gross huh he goes it just it's a great mature buck it's a great mature bull and john is one of those guys that has an enormous farm that he caters to white tails yeah i mean he does the whole thing he does food plots he does controlled burns i mean he details it if you go to knock on archery his instagram page he did well obviously john teaches right so he teaches archery he also teaches teaches tactics on how to hunt these big bucks and what he does in terms of how

he develops the habitat and how he doesn't go in under certain winds. And he rides in on an electric bike so he doesn't leave his scent when he walks. He's very, very serious. He's obsessive. Oh, he's obsessive. He moved to Iowa specifically to hunt bucks. That's why he moved there. He saved up all his money when he was working at Matthews and he got a piece of land and he started developing it for archery hunting and documented

the whole thing and obsessed with it. I mean, you can't talk to him during that time of the year. He's in a fucking tree stand, period. And he'll get a hit list buck that he has photos of these bucks. I don't think he names them. He might name them. I'm not sure. You can't not name them or else everything's that one buck. Right. Yeah.

Well, I think in his name- We were naming bulls the other day, and we just went from one just so we knew what we were talking about. The first one was Uno. That's a good way to do it. You can't have like people dog on naming them, but you can't. You go spend a day hunting where you're watching a couple bucks, and you're going to start referring to them in some way that you can be like,

there's that one buck over there, you know, and then that other buck over there. Eventually you're like, you know, the that other buck over there eventually you're like you know the three by five right right somehow it's just it's like normal it's like normal communication yeah give a name but people man people have a heyday with it and they get clever with it yeah so i i do like the fact that john doesn't measure them though yeah i think it was distasteful even though my dad measured deer i grew up around measuring deer like people bring their deer to my dad's house and he'd give you like an official score um but i i used to i guess i i feel like i used to overthink it and i overthought it

to the point where i thought it was distasteful but then um i really like mule deer uh it's the only thing i have that i've ever measured measured was mule deer and it just is a way to um i don't know i'm talking never measured any of your bulls no really yanni measured one of them one time but but i don't you know i don't really have any bulls that like i don't have any bulls that people would look at. I have one bull that people always are like, what's that bull score? And Yanni measured it. And when I tell people what Yanni measured, they always say that he must have screwed it up. I don't know that he did, but that's the thing everybody says.

He must have fucked that up. Is that the one that you got in Washington State on the television show? Yeah, that's a big one. That's the only bull I have where people ask me how big it was. But I got mule deer that people ask. Yanni says it was 340. And everybody's like, dude, that's a 360 bull. Whatever.

Yanni fucked up. That's what everybody says. I don't even know enough about it. I got to take it up with you. I got one of the guys I work with, Corey, man, he said, I'm going to come over and measure that bull. I'm going to come over and measure that bull. I think you should measure it. It looks a little bigger than that.

But it doesn't matter. It's an amazing bull bull yeah it it doesn't but it it's fun and I don't have to worry about if someone like thinks that it breeds some level of disrespect um if I uh disrespect mule deer um I don't know what respecting them looks like. No, it's not. There is a thing, though, that people do where they become obsessed with the number only. Sure. That does get weird. But that does things with anything that's quantifiable. You know, billionaires get obsessed with a guy.

You know, you have $100 billion. The guy has $130 billion. You get obsessed with beating him. You know, they get obsessed with their rankings on the world's richest man thing. I'm sure they do. I don't think Elon does, but I think a lot of those guys do. They get obsessed with that number. They want to be the number one guy.

It's a number thing with people. Yeah, I think that's true. The writer Pat Durkin, he covers, he used to be the editor at Deer and Deer Hunting and covers wildlife and everything. He had said how, he's got a couple quotes. Like, one is, big deer make people stupid.

And two is, he was telling me one time about, he used to cover a lot of big buck killers, okay? So, in his job, he used to have to track to track down like someone killed a new big buck like they chase the story they'll pay for rights to tell the story and um he was always dismayed on these a lot of these guys that would that would just consistently kill these big bucks he was always surprised he goes they can't if you ask them what kind of tree it was they were sitting in they can't tell you wow you know and know, and he's like, that changed his view on some of the real, like, consistent big butt guys.

It's a subtle thing, but he's like, they, he was like, somehow it surprised him that you could be so proficient at that but not be like what he would regard as a woodsman.

Yeah. I've always been impressed with woodsman people can tell you oh over there by the cedars you see that juniper yeah what which one's what how the fuck do you know what are you doing yeah i can't yeah i can't remember i can't i don't i might be i'm not doing a terrible disservice to how he put it but it was basically that like um it it knocked it down in his mind you could get so good at it without having uh like what he regarded as the fundamentals an overall comprehensive knowledge of the words and it's like you could kind of get it you could get that and not get the things that he always grew up thinking you needed to have that did you get to john's page john dud Dudley's Instagram? Yeah, I had, but the video, the only thing that I could see was there's a video and it was taking off the picture.

Just show some of the photos because he's got some cool bucks, one of them that he just shot a couple of days ago. He hunts all season long until he can get one. That's a mule deer. When I click on that, the picture goes away. Oh, it's one of those things. It's a video, yeah.

There are some, though, that he's got. The far right of that is the one that he shot. Yeah. That's a video? Yeah. So that's the buck. But there you go. This is one that he just shot.

one that he just shot and so again John will be out there day in day out a month plus at a time I don't know how long the Iowa season is but he gets these big and he's like self filming everything he films everything he has like the whole setup up there with video cameras on arms and he does them all himself so which complicates things right because he has to get the buck in focus and then once he gets the buck in focus yeah that's okay make that larger so you can see it and so he so this is the thing with john is that he's like really obsessed with education as well he explains what he does and how he sets everything up and when he goes in. Give a little volume on this. I'm just bumping more deer trying to get in for the morning hunts than what it's worth because the evening feed is the majority of the movement.

So I'm coming in here 11, 12 o'clock in the morning when everything's not out in the open and I'm getting on a food source. These are blinds that we built this year through an exercise, a brand new field. But what's unbelievable about these next couple hunts for me is these are critical hunts because a family member of mine waited five years, drew a tag, came in. I hunted with him during the rut. We rattled in an awesome buck, and he made what we thought was an awesome shot. A quarter and away, it looked a little bit high,

and just like what every bow hunter is eventually going to have to live through, we thought we lost this buck. We could not find blood. We looked and looked and grid-searched. He went back home he's been sick about it and then here we are only a few days before gun season and i just got a picture of this buck with the injury clearly visible i am going to focus on this deer it's a deer that i don't think is going to make through the through the winter with this injury so this is going to be critical going in e-powered as quiet as i can with my backpack middle of the day it's the name of the game

let's see what happens he wound up getting that buck so this is uh part of this story is he he did find that buck and you know the right shoulder was all fucked up and destroyed it's pus got one lung that arrow got one lung and this buck was still out there running this year i found a a buddy of mine hit a buck that he couldn't find and was worried sick about it and i found that buck playing grab ass with some does wow yeah he was real happy when i told him that john when he found another buck that he shot this year in oklahoma he pulled a broadhead out of its shoulder like as he was butchering the buck someone else had shot it with some he called it like a walmart three dollar special broadhead it was like a

cheap broadhead but it was stuck in the buck shoulder it was no no pus no infection no nothing we used to always think that losing them we always thought that like when you lost them they died but some of you a lot of me you know a lot of me lose so that ain't dead it's crazy how tough they are yeah it's really amazing yeah i always we like always thought it was a death sentence how about that one um famous photo where the arrow is through the body and then bone has grown around the arrow you can find it. It is the wildest picture. Yeah, it really is something. Because the arrow is embedded in this deer's body, and the body grows bone around the arrow. Yep. Which is so crazy. Like, look how deep that arrow goes.

You would absolutely assume that that's a dead animal, but nope. Look how the body puts bone around it. Yeah. Have I ever showed you my elk vertebra that has that's encased it's encased a broadhead no yeah it's got a muzzy broadhead grown into it Wow yeah built like it just grew around it it's probably about it's not even a quarter inch from the spine look at that one yeah that's crazy it's crazy cuz if you look at that shot you're like oh well that's in the boiler room that That's a dead animal. But nope.

Jim Bridger carried a broadhead in his shoulder for two years. Really? Yeah. Wow. When he had it cut out, they say it was the first Western-style surgery in the American West, I think, is when Jim Bridger had the broadhead cut out of his shoulder. Look at that one in its head. Oh, Jesus Christ.

My friend Brian Stevens shot a black bear through the center of its forehead killed it instantly with a bow yeah on purpose he said the bear was so close to him that it was one of those things where if he didn't shoot it it was going to find him and it was within this range of like 15 feet where he was worried that it could possibly rush him and So he was at full draw and he found the shot and he had confidence in his equipment and he's an amazing archer So he just center punched it right through the head. I have a photo of that you wanna see that? Yeah, I killed a boar from like this year with my bow from me to you And I did like within the same thing like something i

would never do which is just right into his forehead but that's i just shot him right through his forehead because he was just for me to you away wow that's crazy through the forehead he was i'd hit a different one that one run off squealing and that board came in so hot hearing all that squealing going on and almost got got to me and then stopped right there and yeah i would never like advise someone doing it at that distance it's just like it just doesn't but that's like a frontal shot i saw there was another thing that i saw on your show you took a frontal shot when you were in new mexico right yep that's a that's a risky shot right that's a tricky shot. Man, I used to think it was a no-no, but in a lot of conversations and talking to Phelps and other guys, I think that under the right circumstances, it speaks for itself, man.

Yeah. Dudley feels the same way. He shot a lot of them that way. Under the right circumstance, it's just like unbelievably deadly. And there's a lot, there's plenty of shots that like, that, you know, under the right circumstances are deadly, but I used to think it was just categorically a no-no. But I had my mind changed by conversation,

like a lot of conversations with a lot of people and um and I've seen it twice now where it's just done properly is just deadlier than a heart shot yeah there's a lot of stuff there right you got to get it like right where the beard touches it's like as long as you you don't hit the top of the rib cage. Yeah, and it is, man. I can't find it. It's in there somewhere. I think that there's great arguments against it

where you just don't have as much room to fudge, but I think at certain distances, I think at certain differences with certain levels of proficiency, it strikes me as like incredibly deadly. Well, yours was perfect. Yeah. He took a step. Yeah.

And that was like 20 yards, right? I think it was 24 yards. Yeah. So nice and close where you don't really, you're not concerned. I was already drawn back. Yeah. Nice and close. And just was like, man, there's no way I'm not going to,

there's no way I'm going to miss. there's no way I'm going to miss. There's no way I'm going to do this. Have you paid attention to Joel Turner? Do you know about Joel Turner? No. Well, you know, everyone always talks about buck fever and you talk about the moment. The way I describe to people how crazy bow hunting is because you might in most things where you get good at them you can practice them but you don't really get a lot of practice i think you may be

telling about this one time over the phone you don't get a lot of practice in actually pulling the trigger actually releasing the arrow because especially if you're elk hunting once a year, you have like one moment a year. So you have all this anxiety built up into this one moment. And there's two different types of – there's controlled shooting and then there's what's called an open loop system. There's a closed loop system and an open loop system. And you want to operate in a closed loop system where you have complete control over the shot from the beginning to the end. It's never, it's never just like, it goes off. And the way you do that is to have a mantra in your mind and to repeat that mantra.

So you're in the present moment through the entire shot process. Joel Turner has a website called Shot IQ. And Joel Turner was a, he was a SWAT instructor. And so he's very aware of high pressure situations where people tend to panic or people tend to flinch. And this is the best way to avoid doing that, to avoid getting yourself into an open loop system. Now, an open loop system would be like swinging a baseball bat. Like once you're swinging that bat, that bat is swinging, right? You're just going, ah, let it go. A closed loop system, in the closed loop system, you could stop at any moment. You could let down at any moment.

You're in complete control of the situation. You're not overcome with anxiety. I mean, obviously, you're very anxious, right? It's a big moment. But in order to stay, to keep that in the conscious mind, he recommends and he teaches how you use like a mantra. Like he has a whole thing that he said, like he has a whole process in the draw cycle. And then he has a whole process during the shots. How long is the mantra? It's pretty quick. You know, it's like a drawback and aim, uh, get it done, watch it to keep it.

And then when I used to have a sticker on the riser, my bow that my dad put there, and I was a kid that said, stay calm, pick a spot. That's good too. Yeah. And if you could say, stay calm, I never remembered to read that sticker. That's the problem, right? But it's that moment while it's happening. It's like, ah! Yeah, yeah.

It's a huge thing, man. And if it doesn't happen a lot, like if you're a guy like Remy Warren that shoots a lot of things with your bow, you don't think about it like that because you do it so – or Cam Haynes, a great example. He hits the trigger, whereas Joel Turner recommends a surprise release. And during a surprise release, you're pulling through the shot and the shot breaks. Yeah, yeah. And you are aware of the process the entire time, but there will be no flinching because you literally don't know when it's going off, you know, which is ideal. And so his whole system, he has a very comprehensive system on his website that's designed to inform your mind and to train your mind to be able to stay controlled during these very high pressure situations. Yeah.

Yeah, it's very, very beneficial. I wish that I would have gotten on to, there was a time in my life when it would have been good to get onto that because it used to happen to me. And I'm not saying it doesn't anymore. But I've found that just so much exposure and then a decreasing sense of like, if I don't do this, it'll never happen. Right, right, right,

right, right. There's that, that I realize like, this is your big chance. It'll never happen again. Right. If you don't get this,

you'll never, do you know what I mean? And like, like getting through that, I've gotten through it, not by, I've gotten through that sense, not by overcoming it through any,

any sort of game I've done with myself. I was gotten through that sense of just like long-term exposure hunting with my kid now it's funny because one of the biggest things i'm trying to explain all the time and my daughter will be well yesterday she turned old enough to hunt but um he'll be just like just trying to like suppress the excitement yeah stay calm trying to suppress the excitement to try to teach them just to be like calm all the time i remember when i was on that hunt with you the first hunt i was in the middle of like rain we were i had the the i was like lying down on the ground and i had the deer in the sight and I was thinking of squeezing the trigger, but I was realizing that I was letting my heart race too much.

And then there was a little too much movement. And I remember I had to go, hold on. And I stopped myself and I just calmed myself down for a second or two and settled down. But I recognized that I was in this sort of panic state. I was like, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't do that. Don't let that overwhelm you. And thank goodness I did. I probably would have fucking shot a mile over its head. You know, a great thing I've, there's no, you can't do this with archery, but the thing that I've done with my boy is, uh, I've done it in a couple of circumstances. I make them dry fire on something. Yeah, that's good. Like one time we were in a, we were, he, we were, he in a couple circumstances. I make him dry fire on something. Yeah, that's good.

Like one time he had a doe tag. We're trying to fill his white-tailed doe tag. Whatever happened, I didn't like what I was seeing as he was getting ready to shoot. I'm like, no, no, no, no. And I wasn't worried about the opportunity passing. And I made him, he dry fired twice. And I'm like, now we're going to put a round.

I could just see that he was a little wound up. Yeah, yeah. And that was real helpful. But there there's no that's a good way to ruin your bow yeah that's not good with a bow but if if you think about like any other thing that you do that you get good at you you have time to do that's the thing with fighting too when people have never fought before the first fight that they ever have is fucking filled with anxiety. Dude, I could be in a 10-minute fight and I probably wouldn't even ever register that it was happening. You can't even believe it's really happening. But, I mean, I'm talking about like a competition.

So competition is even more crazy because you're ready for it. And then you're thinking it's going to come in an hour. Like, when am I up? I'm up in two hours. And then you're just laying around the dressing room and you have to stay loose. So you're hitting pads a little bit and you're warming up and you're stretching and you're getting ready. And then all of a sudden, are you ready? Are you ready? Fight. You're like, ah, but the guys who do it a lot,

they get to this point where they can perform at an elite level, even in the most high pressure situation. But that's accentuated by experience. The more experience you have, like a guy who has 50 fights has an enormous advantage over a guy who has two or three fights because you've just been there so many times before and you could stay calm. You know that you can perform under those bright lights. For UFC fighters, it's a really big moment to make that debut. And a lot of them have had a bunch of professional fights before. We'll get guys that have had like 15, 20 fights outside of the organization. Then they get to the UFC and then they can't believe it.

They're in the fucking octagon and they clamp that door shut. And then they look around and then, you know, they see Herb Dean. Are you ready? are you ready are you like oh my god is this really fucking happening that you mean whenever there's a thing that you're preparing for for so long and then it's one moment but with a fight at least you can kind of move around and get loosened up you know you can move around you could avoid you could you have skills with when you're drawing back on an animal if you've never done that before that moment is just like it's just one moment you know just one thing you release one arrow and it's so

overwhelmingly anxiety ridden for people I think that the real you know when you spend time around really exceptional really talented hunters they're also able to operate they're also able to operate uh they're also able to do what they need to do in very like compressed time frames and do unexpected stuff do you know i mean like they're like they can make decisions yeah they fall outside of things fall outside of practice yes like and that that's like i feel that for a large measure that's that's an experience thing as well. I think so.

I think that applies to almost everything. It certainly applies to stand-up. It applies to stand-up comedy. Like if something happens outside the norm. I remember when I was coming up in the early days, one time I was doing really well on stage and I knocked my drink over and I didn't address it. And then I bombed. Because like everyone could tell, I freaked out that I knocked my drink over, but I didn't say it, and then I bombed. Because everyone could tell I freaked out that I knocked my drink over, but I didn't say anything about it.

And then I lost my composure, and then all of a sudden it was downhill. I had all this confidence. Everything was going well. People were laughing. Everything was going pretty good. But I had only been doing comedy like a year and a half or something like that. It was very sketchy, very touch and go. I see that when I'm watching a comedian

and I see him deal with a heckler or an unexpected thing. I'll sometimes think like, oh, they really are smart. Like that they did, that they were so, because you watched it happen. Yes. You watch someone say something, you know it's not rehearsed, and they respond in a way that you're so jealous of that they would have ever thought to have said that and like oh shit

their mind is fast it's not just a routine yes they've also done it thousands of times the thing about stand-up is when you get in the groove you're doing you're performing like for me i'm performing multiple times every week that's the only way you get in a groove we i was on a phone a plane yesterday with ron white and we were talking about that and he was talking about how long it took him to get back into his groove from covid you know because covid he took like eight months off and then he started getting back into the groove when the show started opening up again and he goes you know and ron is such a fucking character goes for a while i was doing a ron white impression on stage i was like what do i sound like what do i do he goes i was surprised how long it took me to get back into the fucking groove you know he had to just do a

bunch of shows and then get loose yeah and then he was also we were talking about how some comics they something happens and they forget whatever it was that used to make them good and then they can't do it anymore like they lose that fucking voodoo they lose that connection that they have to what they do it's uh and again it's a lot of it is performance and it's anxiety and there's a lot of things that are at play you know and but i've done a lot of shit man and i think that hunting is probably one of the most anxiety-ridden things i've ever done like the the where you just have to wrestle with your uh your your nervous system where you have to like shut the fuck up and stay calm you have to have that like

dominant conscious mind that goes no no no no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Like a little weird thoughts are coming to your head. Like, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. No room for you. Stay in the groove. Stay in the groove. But if you don't have experience doing that, I can imagine for some people they're having a fucking heart attack. They're like hyperventilating.

They can barely keep their arms straight. Yeah. they're like hyperventilating they're like they could barely keep their arms straight yeah i've i've worried about uh as i've lost some of that i've worried about um what that means well it's just experience i think yeah i'm like man maybe i'm getting lower t no it's it's probably like the same thing that happens when you do stand-up a lot. Yeah, I just don't, like I don't, yeah, I don't, like all that, just all the emotions, man. Like the dread and the, you know, the worried about dicking it up. And it'll never, I'll never, it's like so much more. It's just like I'm just so much more calm now. But you know what I wanted to, the thing I wanted to ask you about when you brought up performing, I've always wanted to ask you this.

Do you get where, do you ever start feeling like way overexposed? I don't mean like too much media, but do you ever feel like when you come off doing shows, do you want to go crawl into a hole or do you want to like go out with people you don't know? Most of the time when I come off stage, I want to go relax somewhere with friends, get something to eat or I want to go home and write those are the things i like to do i like

to go home and watch tv watch a documentary or write yeah yeah do you ever feel like uh like people just seeing uh like you've laid out too much of yourself and shit like that oh for sure yeah I clearly have I've ever one time this is a couple years ago. You tell me you wish you were 10% less pain Yeah, that's I was trying to do with this Spotify thing man. I was like like cuz Panicking because at the beginning of the Spotify thing our numbers dropped like way lower because we now we're exclusive to this one platform We used to be on iTunes and YouTube. And then all of a sudden we're just on Spotify. And he's like, wow, so many less people listening. I'm like, good, good. Let's keep it that way.

I want to be 10% less famous. Yeah. Unfortunately that didn't happen. The opposite happened, but it's, um, yeah, it's, uh, there's a a lot a lot going on with something like that we have that many people scrutinizing your words and all the shit you do and but that's also what i do you know so it's like you get more accustomed to it and then your level of what you're comfortable with changes yeah after we you know i don't do many live shows but when i do do live shows god feels like man just leaves me feeling like I enjoy it. But holy shit. It's a lot. Yeah.

Holy shit. Just makes you want to just like, I don't know. But there's so many things going on. Especially you're doing a live podcast. You have all these people on the stage with you. You're navigating this conversation. You're sort of orchestrating it. And then if someone's trying to talk while you're talking, you're like, but I have this thing I got to get out of my head. And then, you know,

it's like, you got to know when to talk and when not to talk. And also, you know, you have a thought that comes across. And what people don't realize is one of the difficult things about podcasting is when you have a thought in your head and you're trying to get it out and someone else is talking, it's very difficult to maintain that thought, which is one of the reasons why people talk over each other. They just jump in. They're like, I got to get this out and I can't help myself. And you get better at like maintaining those thoughts without interjecting and interrupting someone else's thought. Because if you do interrupt that person, that person will be a less enjoyable guest. They won't be as good because they won't be

at their best oh yeah yeah so you have to figure out like when do i talk like when what is the right amount of listening what's the right amount of talking and for some people that shit could be exhausting yeah it's hard for me and when you're done like well also you're doing it in front of like a theater i never do that i never do podcasts in front of like live i mean i've done a couple in my in my day only one of my own show that i ever do in front of a live audience and i decided it's a different thing it's like what people like about this podcast is that it's a conversation if you do it in front of a live audience especially if you're doing it with comedians and they're going to play to the crowd oh yeah it was funny is you do something kind of

irrational where there's a very small fraction of the people that will experience it this is why we i don't record them and release them anymore because there's such a small percentage of the actual listeners that are sitting there in that moment right then but you are so beholden to them and catering to them yeah because you have to look them in the eye yeah and when it's when it's distant and digital you don't you don't feel as you don't feel that obligation yeah that you feel when you got like they like bought a ticket shit man right you better yeah and then these are more valuable than anything else right that that

screws with you it's also kind of cool for them if you don't release it if you don't release it it's like they were this is a moment that's just a shared moment with everybody in that room and it's very unique and you leave there going that was a lot of fun yeah yeah i don't think i'll i don't think i'll do those. I've only done, I haven't done, I did like one post-COVID live show and we did one in Billings. And our audience broke the theater's record on alcohol consumption,

which had been previously held by Rob Schneider. Oh, that's crazy. I just saw Rob Schneider this weekend. I went to see Adam Sandler and Rob Schneider opened for him. Tell him his alcohol record at the Alberta Bear Theater in Billings has been shattered. How big is the theater in Billings? I can't remember. I mean, it's sub-2000.

So what is the biggest theater you guys have ever done your shows at? 1,600. Oh, wow. We sold out at 1, minneapolis nice you know isn't that kind of crazy huh isn't it kind of crazy oh yeah super crazy man um i was gonna do a bunch of we're we're signed up to do we're gonna do a whole shitload of live shows before covid and they got canceled and rescheduled and eventually it was just done. Did you lose interest in doing it or?

No, I didn't lose interest in doing it. It's not my, I enjoy it, but I'd rather, I just need to have room to do other stuff too. Yeah. You know, I still like, I like to write. I like to work on things like that. So I need to have room to be able to do that. It's complicated, right? When you're trying to juggle multiple different things that you do and try to allocate time for individual things hard to get in mind space it's hard to get

the room for it I still like to write a lot I'll always write I'll always write I know I'll go back to it I mean I do it now but I shouldn't say I'll go back to I'll go out at some point in time when I'm like an old man I'll just probably just write whatever writing looks like like however it's distributed you know it's the thing i like most do you and i get to keep my hand in it right now you know yeah do you enjoy the audiobook process love it yeah love it the audio originals yeah totally cool and it's funny like looking back in 2000 shit when i was coming out of graduate school, I was so afraid of other kinds of media

because it had just been like magazines, books, magazines, books. And then I was so afraid of everything. Why? Because I just didn't understand that you could – I didn't understand that there was a possibility. I just didn't understand how to distribute ideas and i didn't understand that that what i want to talk about is the main thing and i don't care on what platform i talk about it i thought i just thought that like writing books was it and it became that like amazon and the

what's going to happen with the book business and whatever you know that it's killing the small bookstore and books are never gonna be the same and all this kind of stuff always just scared the shit out of me but then i eventually i realized that that i was never it's never that i needed to write books i just needed to be able to make material and i had a set of ideas that i want to be able to use and create material around and i don't care if it gets printed in a book it's fine with me if it it's fine to me to have it the other ways it could be something on insta like it could be that like make a thing just for instagram make a thing just for youtube make an audio original that will never be book form make a book that will never be audio i'm comfortable like i i don't i don't anymore look and be like, well, that's more important than that.

It's more important than that. Like a hierarchy of, of sort of like what gatekeepers you went through, you know, to get there. So I just view it now. Like I like work on a set. I have a set of ideas, a set of experiences, a set of things. And I, and I put them where it makes the most sense. experiences, a set of things, and I put them where it makes the most sense. And that alleviated a ton of stress for me. Are you doing video with your podcast as well?

No, we have. We've done little segments and we might, we're moving into a new studio and we're hopefully going to get it where it's better. But our stuff's like, we've toyed with it, but we haven't fully satisfied it people really enjoy watching stuff even if they leave it on the background they like watching while they do other stuff we've we've we've definitely messed with it we were doing segments for a while um that weren't like we were doing segments for a while but they were never as they would never do as well on youtube as our other stuff did but i could picture making a separate thing for it especially when we get into a space we can just do a better job of it where it looks better um it's just it's very hard and like in our studio

now it's very hard to get like a good product that anybody can be proud of so you're you're building out a studio yeah so you've you've completely settled into Montana. You're there forever now? Oh, I mean, I don't know about forever. We've got young kids. They're old enough now where they know. We used to just move them around. Yeah. They just wake up in a different place.

Yeah. Now they're very entrenched. But, yeah, I don't imagine. I mean, I can't speak forever, but for now, for a long time coming, yeah. Yeah. For a long time coming, yeah. Yeah. For a long time coming. I don't want to do, I don't want to, it'd be a big fight to move our kids. I don't want to move them.

Yeah. Well, how old are your kids now? So we have seven, 10, and 12. 12 is like the latest you can kind of move them and have them be okay with it. I feel like if you move a kid at 14, it's like you bring them to a new high school fuck yeah if we needed to i mean if we needed to we would but um it's not that like we need to we would but it's just it would feel sort of uh rude yeah just be like i'm not the the motivation isn't going to come from me there's not there's not like a thing i know enough about my future in the coming years what i'm going to do and shit it's not like uh there's not going to be

some opportunity where if i moved away it would be great right well especially for what you do like montana is kind of the perfect place yes we just we've we're just set up there now and i can like be there and and i know what i'm going to be i know how how i'm going to be working for a long time to come and so i just it's just not an issue. It's also like a high level of people that are in the outdoors, that love the outdoors. Yeah. Every time I go to Montana, I'm always blown away just by the views, just the way it looks. We got an office. So we have an office in Montana.

We have an office in Haley Idaho so Sun Valley right is that what first light is yeah and these are like the places that you met like you know you look at any time like one of these magazines comes out with the ten best towns ten best mountain towns whatever hell you know yeah so I was like a talk is it gonna be like Sun Valley is it to be like Sun Valley? Is it going to be like Ketchum? Right. Or Bozeman, you know? And dude, you would not believe.

And also the amount of people that moved during the pandemic could just pack up and move and they'll like figure it out later. You would not believe how that it winds up being that it's actually very difficult to recruit into these places. It's so weird. To get people to move there. Yeah. Really? We just think that, like,

you'd be able to hire anyone you wanted. Because they'd be like, are you kidding me? I can move to Ketchum or I can move to Boz. It's hard for people to just fucking move anywhere. Yeah.

People definitely want to move and then they get to talk into their family. Yeah. And their wife's like, we're not fucking going anywhere. Yeah, that's the thing that blows my mind. Like, on one hand, it's like everyone in the world is trying to get there except the people that you're trying to offer jobs to.

Yeah. I don't know, man. I feel super lucky that I found this place, like, when I decided to move. And that, like, COVID kind of helped me in that way. Like, presented this opportunity and that everybody was on board. My kids were the first ones on board. They were. Because we came out here and we went to the lake and no one was wearing masks.

They were all jumping in the water. And California was spooked out. Yeah. They had full COVID anxiety in California when we came out here. We came out here. We were sitting together in a restaurant. I'll never forget. It was in May of 2020.

We were sitting together in a restaurant. My kids were like. It was in May of 2020. We were sitting together in a restaurant. My kids were like, I can't believe we can go to a restaurant. Because you had to wear a mask when you got in. And then they took your temperature. They did like a little thermometer on your forehead, a little digital thing. Check to see if you don't have a fever. And then you sat down. I was like, this is crazy.

I'm like, what is that testing for? No one knew back then. There was no vaccines. Telling it's going to be a good documentary. Yeah. Well, it was a good thing to live through because it also shows you the difference between how some people deal with big changes and big moments. Like there's people that have a certain level of anxiety that exists. Like they're already freaked out by regular life.

And then COVID comes along and it just ramps it up into this uncontrollable level. Just the other day I was driving and I saw a guy in his car with his fucking mask on. I'm like, bro, you're alone. Like what do you do? Do you just like wearing a mask? Like what is this? Like what do you, do you think you're pretty? And it was a surgical mask.

It wasn't even a good one. I was like, this is so strange. Like what are you doing? Have you ever, do you know the writer pretty? And it was a surgical mask. It wasn't even a good one. I was like, this is so strange. Like, what are you doing? Have you ever, do you know the writer Margaret Atwood? I've heard the name. Okay. She has a book called The Handmaid's Tale. Yes. And it's this dystopian future.

Yeah, my wife loves that show. Oh, I haven't seen the show. Yeah. I'm familiar with, maybe what I'm going to say, I don't know if it's in the show or just in the novel, but in the novel, The Handmaid's Tale, is this dystopian future where um there's like a religious revolution of sorts anyways men hold all the powers it's like an insane patriarchy and it follows this woman through this and she loses track of her husband he's gone but in the book i keep telling people this story when we're talking about covid because in the book she's sort of like talking to her dead or gone husband

and she's asking there's one thing i need to know though, is like, was there some part of you that kind of liked it? You know, she's wondering of her husband about when she lost all of her rights and he like controlled the household. She's like, did that somehow speak to you in some way? Like, was there a little bit of you that liked that power that you had? Like, was there a little bit of you that liked that power that you had? And looking back, like, and looking back on the pandemic, there are certain players that I'm like, some part of them liked it.

A little teeny bit, like, it spoke to some thing about how much influence you could wield. Sure. And, like, there's something where like some people, they'll never admit it, they kind of dug it. Well, there's a bunch of people that like telling people what to do, but they didn't have the opportunity. But if all of a sudden they can yell, put a mask on! And you have to do it. No, some people dug it.

You kind of have to do it. Like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, I'll put a mask on. It spoke to some deeply infantile. Authoritarian. Some thing where I'm like, yeah, you kind of liked it, dude. I feel like you kind of liked it. And then there's also some people that like being told what to do.

Yeah, yeah. They like that, too. They like that there's rules. They want everyone else to have to follow them, too. We were joking around about this because we went to see Roger Waters here. Oh, you did? Yeah, and it was great. Awesome show. Roger was on the podcast, too. We were joking around about this because we went to see Roger Waters here. Oh, you did? Yeah, and it was great.

Awesome show. Roger was on the podcast too. It was great. He plays pool. God, I don't like, dude, this keeps embarrassing me. I didn't know that. Because I go on, I go into Spotify and I scroll and I'm like, can I listen to that?

But I don't know that I'm missing things. Well, there's so fucking many of them. I mean, I do have Roger Waters. Yeah, he was great. Very interesting guy. Brilliant guy. Dude, I can't wait to listen to that. How long ago was that? A few months ago.

Yeah. A few months back. I need a new system. Very interesting guy. But anyway, we go to his concert, and everyone backstage is wearing a mask. I mean, everyone. And I'm like, this is bizarre. Like, you have to wear a mask. Like, if you want to go back there, you have to wearing a mask. Mm-hmm. I mean, everyone. And I'm like, this is bizarre. Like, you have to wear a mask.

Like, if you want to go back there, you have to wear a mask. I'm like, I was hanging out with them all day. Like, we were on a podcast together all fucking day. I was breathing. I hugged them. You know, we played pool together. Like, no one had a fucking mask on. And then we get to this thing, and okay, we all have to wear masks.

So it was me and Hinchcliffe and Ari and Duncan. And'll we all have to wear masks it was me and hinchcliffe and ari and duncan and so we all just fucking put a mask on and so we're we're hanging out backstage and i'm you know i'm ever i'm telling i'm yelling at everybody put your fucking mask on bro put your fucking mask on like it's like some of the guys like took their mask down by the chin my guy but over the nose over the nose And it became like a fun thing where we were joking around about like telling each other to put our masks on. And to do it right. The thing is, though, once you go out into the audience, then you take your mask off. So now you're around everybody.

And then you go backstage, put your mask back on. Like this is a game. This is like a bizarre game. And one of the guys that worked on the crew was like, it's just a way that everybody lets everyone know that they're leftist. And I go, you think? He goes, yeah, that's what it is. I go, I always say it's the Democrats MAGA hat. He's like, yes, that's what it is. Because he's like, he goes, it's gone. It's fucking COVID. It's over. Like, this is a crazy thing to do it. My friend got it. I called him today.

He's 70, and he got COVID. And I sent a nurse to his house and the whole deal. I'm like, are you okay? How you doing? He's like, yeah, I got a little bit of a cough or something. Bigger deal. And he's fucking, he's kind of a fat guy, and he's 70. It's like it's over.

Okay? His name started with a J? No, no, no. The fluke. I don't know who that would be. Who's that? Who's J? I was trying to think of a flute. I don't know who that would be. Who's that? Who's Jay? I'm trying to think of a friend of yours that you'd send.

Joey Diaz? Yeah. No. I sent nurses to Joey, too. I'm like a friend of yours that you'd have a parental feeling towards. No, no, no. He's not even a close friend. He's just a friend.

Oh, good. I called him for something else. And he told me, I go, what's going on, man? How you doing? He's like, actually, I got COVID. And I said, all right, tell me where you're at. I'll have a nurse come to you. And I got him an iv vitamin drip and all that that's good so but the point is like he wasn't worried and he's 70 yeah you know i'm like you're gonna be all right like this it's over

okay this shit is not what it was in march of 2020 when everybody was shitting their pants and they're shutting the government and shutting the country down this is a different thing now so like if you're still wearing a fucking mask in your car today, that's you. Like you have to deal with whatever that is. I always hold out to them. I'm like, I don't know what they got going on at their home or with themselves. Well, they might have. Yeah.

I mean, they might be going through chemotherapy or something. Sure. I always hold that out. But not when you're in your car. Not when you're in your car. Not when you're in your car. You're in your car by yourself. And you don't even wear a good mask. You're wearing a fucking goofy-ass face mask

that doesn't even stop shit from getting in your mouth. Oh, yeah, man. I just got, oh. I was sitting in the airport when they dropped the flight. Oh. Oh. Yeah. People cheered. They announced it.

Dropped the mask recommendations? Everybody cheered. I got on the next plane, not a person on that flight. It was a flight into Montana. I remember walking in there and couldn't believe not a person on the plane. My buddy was in the air on an Alaska Airlines flight. He was in the air when it happened and he came down with a garbage bag. Wow. And he said, some people made a big scene out of putting their thing in the garbage bag and some people made a big scene out of not.

Oh yeah. I mean, I read people on Twitter and there's people that are saying, I'm still masking up for other people's protection. I read this guy, he made a post about how he's vaxxed. He's had two boosters and he still wears a mask for other people's protection. And he made a big declaration about it on Twitter. And all these other people that are fucking shut-ins are all like responding to it. Good for you. Amazing. Good for you. It's like, buddy, it's over. It's over for you it's like buddy it's over it's over and it's over until it's not over again which is what's really scary because now you got a bunch of people that are really used to complying and well you got also you got a lot of people who are just not going to comply that's true what happens next time around yeah we're not talking about not

wanting to turn the jaguar into the spotted owl meaning that it becomes it stops being an animal and becomes like a social symbol yes right um holy shit to the next administration needs to try to get people to mask up yes i mean they're like oh fucking fauci before he left was telling people they should mask up against the flu like buddy why buddy. Yeah, I mean, I don't care about... I'm not... There's a big difference between what you choose to do. Recommendation versus

requirements. Recommendation is fine. Choosing to do shit, fine. It's like it's the mandates that burn people. It's the mandates that burn people. I went out like... I went out and got a vaccine. Our kids never did. I went out and got a vaccine.

It never bothered me. But making people, I found it to be really problematic. Because I kept trying to think of other scenarios. I'm like, what else would you, even when dealing with employees or something, what else is analogous that you could make someone go do? Well, not only that, but now we're finding that if people got vaccine injured, so if you have a mandate in your business and then people got vaccine injured, you can't sue the vaccine manufacturers, but now they're starting to sue the businesses.

So the businesses that forced them to do the vaccine. Oh, I was wondering starting to sue the businesses. So the businesses that forced them to do the vaccine. Oh, I was wondering if that was ever going to happen. It started to happen. There's at least one case that I know of. It's the problem is it's like, it's one thing if you're telling people to do something that you have a long history of like a long-term data, You know exactly what the repercussions are. But when you're telling people to do something where you don't have long-term data and you have studies from the pharmaceutical that's based on biased data that's interpreted by their scientists,

and then they throw out any studies that show negative effects or lack of positive effects, and they can highlight. They can run 10 studies and two of them get the required results well like what they're looking for yeah and then the other eight don't they throw those out it's it's complicated because you're dealing with a company that you're dealing with a business that's really just about making a lot of money and you, also a business that's had a bunch of criminal complaints, a bunch of like lost lawsuits for fraud. They've had criminal judgments against them for billions of dollars. And we're expecting these people to be honest with us.

And you're trusting them. And especially if you know people that have been injured by other pharmaceutical medications. Like I know people personally that took stuff that wound up getting pulled from the market years later and they got fucked up by it like badly yeah and it's just you can't you can't just mandate people take something that doesn't have a history of long-term use one of the things i found uh happening to me though is i just wanted that shit to end yeah and and i'd feel sometimes frustration with like like if it seemed like something this is early early on the pandemic if it seemed like there was some ray of hope that something was going to fix the problem right and let you go back to all the normal shit right i would get a little

frustrated early on with people who wouldn't get with the program not because just because i wanted i was like come on just like let's of course do whatever we got to do to be able to go and do the work our work whatever like just let's just get this taken care of yeah after why you're like this isn't it's not going to be like that it's not going to get taken care of. Then after a while, you're like, this isn't, it's not going to be like that. It's not going to get taken care of in the way, it's not going to get taken care of in the way, like a compliance, it's not a compliance issue. Well, that's the problem with the way they distribute information because they withheld that from us. They pretended that it was going to stop transmission. They didn't have any data on that.

And in fact, they didn't even test to see if it stopped transmission. They tested to see if it produced antibodies yeah i sat around thinking when they got that thing out that was i thought that you take it yeah you don't get it you don't give it to anyone and dude and i don't regret it but i went down i was i got it early and i went down thinking that let's just go do this and get back to normal i did too i thought that was the end of it. Before I became, like, this person that resisted everything, I was lined up for it. I went to the UFC to get it because the UFC had allocated a bunch for all their employees. But it was on a Saturday, the day the fights were, and they said, I thought I could get it at the UFC because they have a doctor that works there. I'm like, can you give it to me, like, right before the fights?

And Dana was like, yeah, they'll give you the vaccine right before the fights. I'm like, perfect. So I go there and then I called Dana like as we got there. I said, hey, I'm here. Where can I go get the vaccine? And he goes, let me get you in touch with the doctor. So he puts the doctor on. I talked to the doctor.

We actually have to administer it at the hospital. So can you go to the hospital on Monday? I was like, no, I have to go home. I go, but I'll be back in two weeks. In that time, they pulled the vaccine because people were getting blood clots. Oh, yeah. And I was like, holy shit. And then two people I know had strokes in that time.

And I was like, what the fuck? And then I just started thinking about all the things that i know about pharmaceutical companies and all their deception whether it's oxycontin isn't addictive or whether it's vioxx isn't going to cause you to have a stroke or all these different things that i knew i'm like hold the fuck on and then trump got over it and i was like if that fat fucking kick it all of a sudden i'm not scared and then chris christie. And I was like, if that fat fuck can kick it. All of a sudden, I'm not scared. And then Chris Christie got it. I'm like, hold the fuck on, people.

Like, are we sure this is what everybody is saying? It's like this doom and gloom is in the air. And everybody's so goddamn terrified. And by then, I knew quite a few people that had COVID and survived it. And even people that didn't even take vitamins and weren't taking care of themselves. And I was on like fucking ultra health protocol when that was going down. I'm like, I am going to fucking just keep my body humming and oiled at a hundred percent. So if this shit comes down the pipe, I'm ready. Yeah. It's a wild thing to go through all of it. I mean, and all of us have experienced it. These last three years are very strange.

Like one of the strangest upheavals of just the way discourse was handled, the way content was censored, the way you were allowed to talk about things. And even the way things that were described as misinformation and disinformation that turned out to be absolute fact. And then you know that they knew it was absolute fact when they were labeling it disinformation and how in cahoots the pharmaceutical companies were with the government and social media. It's like, wow, it's eye opening. It's very, it's very eye opening and pretty fucking wild. And it's an educational experience on the human condition and just about how people deal with adversity.

What was the, I wonder if they're going to do, you know, remember the 9-11 report and the Kennedy report, what the hell are those things called? Congressional report. Yeah. If they're going to do one on that, depends on who's in office. Depends if the Republicans get in. Depends on who has power, you know, because, you know, if the people that were in charge of the administration while the suppression was going down, which, you know, initially was Trump.

Yeah, it spanned two administrations. Initially was Trump. But then, you know, the vaccine rollout, you know, a lot of it happened during the Biden administration and a lot of the censorship happened during the Biden administration. And also the collusion between the social media companies and the government happened during the Biden administration. So it's like, who knows? Who knows?

I mean, if we continue to have Democrat presidents, we might never find out what the fuck is going on or what happened. We'll find a little bit about what's getting released through these Twitter documents that Elon's releasing, which is pretty wild. Yeah. It's interesting who was scared of it and who wasn't too you know there was that was interesting too to see some people just fall apart and freak out some of my friends fell apart and freaked out you know oh i saw i mean i saw a lot of it among um yeah people that are near and dear to me. And I remember trying to convince my mom to get scared. Oh, really? Your mom was, that's hilarious. She's right. She's old, man. Yeah. My parents, the same way they were the

opposite though. They were shut-ins. They just fucking isolated from everybody for a whole year. It was really hard on them emotionally and psychologically. And then they slowly drifted back. You know, I mean, after they got vaccinated, they started coming around. But I didn't see my parents for a year. Yeah. Early on, I was kind of hoping that my mom got, she was real upset about some of the things that were happening politically in Michigan. And I just want her to not lose sight of. Right.

It is a thing you can catch. And especially for people that are vulnerable, that's when the vaccine is very valuable. For people that are older, I'm a big advocate for it. And people that are of high risk, it might make the difference between you getting really fucking sick or just getting a little sick. Yeah. Yeah. fucking sick or just getting a little sick. Yeah. Yeah. But you know, there's also a lot of shit they didn't tell people to do that they knew because it's not, there's no benefit to them financially. Like take vitamin D. That's one of the early things they found out is that people

that were in the ICU with COVID, a very large percent of them were deficient in vitamin C, which is crucial to the function D. D. Oh, you said C. Sorry. Did I say C? Sorry. D, vitamin D. Because vitamin D is crucial to your immune system, and it's very difficult to get. If you're not out in the sun every day, you're not getting vitamin D unless you supplement. You're not really getting it that much from food. You really only get it from supplements or better from the sun. The sun's the best way to get it. I mean, that's the way it's, it's really a hormone that your body produces because of sunlight.

And it's crucial to immune function. They knew that early on and they were never telling, there's no fucking news stories telling, please supplement with vitamin D. No one's telling you that. There was, it was a lot of very frustrating stuff for me too, because I have these long form conversations with nutritionalists, nutritionists and epidemiologists and people who really understand about the immune system and weren't beholden to pharmaceutical companies especially like independent people that have podcasts and scientists and and people that weren't on board with the mainstream narrative they're like there's a lot of things you could be doing to protect yourself and we should be telling these people to do this and there's a lot of things you could be doing to protect yourself. And we should be telling these people to do this. And there's no discussion of this.

It's just like this one very binary solution. Take this medicine. Must get it. Get it, get boosted, keep going. Even after I got COVID, which I got over pretty quickly, there was people that told me get vaccinated now. And I was like, why would I do that

after I got over the disease when natural immunity from recovering from the virus is seven times better protection than the vaccine. They're like, well, it's even more protection. So you want me to join your team. That's what it is. Yeah.

It was, you know, it's funny that that was the order in which I went, got it. And then later got a vaccine. Well, a lot of people were was the order in which I went. Got it, and then later got a vaccine. Well, a lot of people were telling you that's the best way to do it, because you get more protection, which is fine if that's what you want to do. Yeah, there was a travel restriction component of it, too, that I was concerned about. That was a big issue.

I just decided I'm not going to travel. I just was like, I'm going to hold on here, because I just know the history of pharmaceutical companies and how all these things, everybody's like, oh, just take it, just take it. Everything's fine. It's not addictive. It's not going to kill you. And then years later, the truth comes out. It's like it's a longstanding story. It's a narrative that plays out over and over and over again. But everybody was like, but not this time.

This time we're being honest. I got a buddy his initials are if he's listening his initials are sm and i would fight with him early on but like why not just go because we you know uh we're tied in on some stuff and i'll fight with him be like just go get the stupid things. You don't need to worry about it. Like, what's going on? Like, if we're going to go to whatever,

and he just would not. And it was so funny because I remember even thinking like, this guy is so rational about everything in his life and he's so like calculated and doesn't screw up. And I'm like, why can he not?

And what was his thought? That he didn't see the need. He's like young, healthy, didn't see the need, and wasn't comfortable with someone telling him to go do it. And then it's so funny because I would bust his balls, and gradually now I'm like, oh, that son of a bitch was like, you know. He was right. I'd never gone and said it to him, though.

Call him up. He'll know. All right, man. Well, we just did three hours plus. Yeah. So we should wrap this bitch up. Are you hungry? Want to get something to eat before we hit the road?

Yeah. All right. Let's do it. All right. Bye, everybody. Thank you.